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Mostly because every time the truth gets a little too close, he explains it away.

Like, of course he wants to spend every second of every day with you.

You're his best friend.

That's what best friends do.

Of course he starts saving memes on his phone because he knows they'll make you laugh. Half his camera roll is screenshots he hasn't sent yet because he likes building up a little collection for when you're having a bad day.

That's normal.

Of course he shows up to class with your favorite breakfast sandwich without asking; he knows you never eat before your 8 a.m. lectures, no matter how many times you insist you will.

That's normal.

When he finds himself checking his phone at one in the morning because you mentioned going to a party, that's normal too.

Not that he’s a creep, stalking you or anything—you both have location sharing on.

Lots of friends do.

So maybe he checks it before bed if he knows you’re going to be out late.

Maybe he stares at the faint glow of his phone in the dark, watching the little circle with your picture drift across the map until it finally settles at your apartment.

Maybe the tight knot of worry sitting in his chest eases the second it does.

Maybe he sleeps better.

That's normal.

He's allowed to worry.

Friends worry.

When he walks into a crowded lecture hall and automatically scans for you before he even finds a seat, that's normal.

When he spots a sweatshirt in a store window and immediately thinks you'd like the color: normal.

When he buys two coffees and only realizes afterward that you're not actually there: normal.

When something funny happens during the day and the first thing that enters his mind is the sound of your laugh:

That's perfectly normal.

...Right?

The point is, he's got an explanation for all of it.   

He's a computer science major. He runs on logic. Patterns. Variables. Inputs and outputs. Problems that can be solved if you stare at them long enough.

Feelings are just another system.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

Then Ethan shows up.

And suddenly all of Keys' explanations start throwing errors.

Because Ethan is, objectively speaking, kind of a douche.

A frat bro whose entire personality seems to consist of flexing in mirrors, lifting heavy things, and three different sports that all involve chasing a ball around a field.

Yet somehow, you're interested.

Which means every Friday night now consists of you sitting cross-legged on the floor of his dorm room, happily providing updates on Ethan Carter from Alpha Delta Whatever.

And Keys is discovering that he actually hates hearing about him.

A lot.

More than what feels reasonable, or healthy.

More than he can explain away with the same two words he always defaults to:

Just friends.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

Keys is supposed to be studying for finals.

The laptop glows in front of him, three hundred lecture slides stacked into an exam that’s worth sixty percent of his grade, all of it waiting for him to care.

He reads the same sentence four times, retains none of it.

Because every thirty seconds, his attention drifts back toward you.

You're sprawled across the beanbag in the corner of his room, one he definitely didn't buy specifically because you liked sitting in it.

The late-afternoon sun filters through the blinds, laying thin stripes of light across the carpet. Every so often, one of those lines drifts over you, catching on your cheek or the edge of your smile before slipping away again.

A loose strand of hair falls across your mouth while you're talking. You puff air at it without looking up from your phone, still smiling, completely unaware of how beautiful you look when you’re not trying to be at all.

You don't notice him staring.

You never do.

“...it’s weird, ‘cause he’s actually kind of nice in person.”

Keys hums. “Mm.”

“And he invited me to that party next week. You know, the end-of-year one at Sigma Chi?”

Another hum, slightly delayed this time. “Cool.”

You slowly lower your phone.

“Dude.”

“What?”

“You're not even listening.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“No, you're not.”

“What? No, I am, swear.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Okay. What’s his name?”

Keys freezes.

“...Chad?”

Your glare is instantaneous.

Unfortunately for you, Keys finds this particular expression incredibly endearing.

The way your nose scrunches, the tiny wrinkle that appears between your eyebrows and the annoyed huff you let out in barely contained disbelief.

It's adorable.

Which is probably a totally normal thing to think about your best friend.

“Chad? Really?”

“Shit, is it Brad?”

“Keys.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, holding up both hands in surrender. "In my defense, statistically speaking, there was a decent chance I was right."

“No, there wasn’t,” you counter, still glaring at him, though the corners of your lips betray you first. “And it’s Ethan.”

Keys grimaces. “That's worse.”

You blink once.

Then you reach forward without a word, snatch the nearest thing on his desk—a crumpled receipt—and fling it at him.

It smacks directly into the bridge of his glasses, bouncing off his nose.  

His face scrunches up reflexively, eyes briefly crossing as he tries to follow where it landed.

“Hey!”

You burst into a laugh, bright and unfiltered, the sound of it filling the tiny space of his dorm room in a way that makes everything else feel quieter by comparison.

And there it is.

That stupid feeling.

That small lift he feels somewhere under his ribs every time he manages to pull that sound out of you.

It happens fast. Familiar by now, but never really less noticeable.  

A feeling he's never quite managed to explain away, no matter how many times he's tried.

It's embarrassing, honestly, how much he likes it.

How your laugh can cut straight through whatever mental noise he’s sitting in and change the shape of it completely.  

And despite the uncomfortable weight that's been sitting in his chest ever since Ethan entered the conversation, Keys can't stop the smile pulling at his mouth.

Because making you happy has always been his favorite thing.

Even when it costs him.

Maybe especially then.

He rubs the bridge of his nose where the receipt hit, nudging his glasses back into place.

He watches you grin from across the room.

The way your pretty lashes flutter in slow blinks as the last of your laughter fades out of you.

Then you glance back down at your phone with a soft hum.

“Ethan said they're renting a DJ.”

The warm feeling disappears so fast it almost gives him whiplash.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

And suddenly, that's all Keys can think about.

Ethan. Ethan. Ethan.

His mind racing, supplying comparisons he knows are unfair.

Ethan doesn't know your coffee order.

The extra pump of vanilla you ask for when you're exhausted. The way you always say you're getting a small and somehow leave with a large. The fact that you'll drink coffee that's gone completely cold because you get so engrossed in conversations you forget it exists.

Ethan doesn't know you hate thunderstorms but love the rain.

That you'll sit by a window for hours listening to it hit the glass. That every single time, without fail, you'll insist you're not sleepy right before falling asleep.

He doesn't know that when you're anxious, you start picking at the skin around your thumbnail.

Or that when you're sad, you rewatch the same three movies you've loved since middle school.

He doesn't know that you hate grape-flavored anything with a level of passion that's honestly a little concerning.  

He doesn't know that when you're upset, the first thing you say is, “I'm fine.”

And that when you're really upset, you call him.

Keys knows all of those things.

He knows hundreds of those things. Thousands, probably.

Little pieces of you gathered over years of lectures and late-night conversations and random Tuesday afternoons that didn't seem important at the time.

And maybe that's what hurts.

Ethan's known you for, what, three weeks?

Keys has known you for four years.  

Four years should mean something.

Shouldn't it?

So what does it say about him—about all those years, all the ways he’s come to know you—if you still look at Ethan the way you do?

And for the first time, Keys wonders if this is what “just friends” is supposed to feel like.

If everyone else’s friends take up this much space in their head.

He clears his throat, and drops his gaze back to the screen.

“I thought you didn’t even like frat parties,” he mumbles, pushing his glasses up his nose.

His voice is perfectly casual, eyes fixed on the blinking cursor in an empty word doc while he pretends to type something he isn’t actually writing.

You shrug. “I mean, maybe this one will be different.”

The cursor keeps blinking.

On. Off. On. Off.

His throat feels strangely tight

“Yeah.” He swallows. “Maybe.”

And in the silence that follows, he's forced to reckon with a truth he's spent years avoiding.

He doesn't actually care about Ethan.

Ethan is just a symptom.

What scares him isn't some frat guy you've known for three weeks.

It's the possibility that, one day, you'll stop being his person.  

The person who gets your random 2 a.m. texts when your brain won’t shut off and you just need someone on the other end of it. The inside jokes that don’t make sense to anyone else. The “holy shit, did you see that?” look you send across a room when something funny happens, because you already know he caught it too. The late-night calls that start with “are you awake?” and drift into silence until one of you falls asleep first. The shoulder you lean into when you’re tired. The hand you squeeze in crowded parties when you feel overwhelmed.

Your safe place. Your home.

One day, he’ll stop being that person.

And someone else will take his place.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

It won’t leave him alone.

The thought that one day, he won’t be the first person you reach for anymore.

So Keys does what he always does when something starts getting too loud in his head.

He overcorrects.

He buries it.

Finals prep becomes a kind of tunnel vision. He scrolls through lecture slides on autopilot, rewrites class notes in slightly different ways just to keep his hands moving, just to keep his brain busy enough that it can’t wander back to you.

Just friends. That’s the rule.

So he acts like it.

He sits a little straighter when you’re close. Keeps his replies a little too short whenever you text.

Just Friends.

And sure, he still shows up to study sessions with your favorite dining hall blueberry muffin and an extra bag of sour gummies—only because you get cranky when you're hungry and always end up stealing his.

Just Friends.

And sure, he helps you set up a study planner app on your laptop—something for exam tracking, color-coded and slightly over-engineered, because you started using sticky notes again and he can't stand how easily they fall off. He ends up fixing it twice when you click the wrong setting and everything rearranges itself—only because it’s easier than watching you struggle through something he knows he can solve in seconds.

Just Friends.

He saves your seat in the library with his backpack without looking up from his screen. Installs the plug-in that stops your tabs from crashing when you have too many open. Renames your files so they’re actually readable when you give up halfway through organizing them. Slides his charger across the table when your laptop hits ten percent because yours only works at a very specific angle.

Just Friends.

He walks you back from the library late at night even when you insist you’re fine on your own, your hands brushing in the dark, slowing his steps to match yours because he knows you hate walking fast.

Just Friends.

He practically lives in the library now. He’s pretty sure his bloodstream is mostly caffeine at this point, the rest denial.

Anything. Literally anything else.

It almost works.

Until it all goes to shit three days before finals.

You’re sitting cross-legged beside him on the floor between two shelves because all the tables were taken hours ago. Both of you are running on fumes, at that late-stage of studying where the pages go blurry and nothing really sticks anymore.

In hindsight, sitting this close was a mistake.

Shoulders pressed together, thighs bumping in the tiny gap of space between you.  

He really should be studying.

He isn’t.

His laptop is open in front of him—half a presentation deck finished, a blinking cursor waiting in a paragraph he stopped reading ten minutes ago. He’s moved on to his coding assignment instead, because logic feels easier than thought right now. But even that isn’t going right. He keeps rewriting the same function, changing variable names that don’t matter, deleting lines just to put them back again.

He pushes his glasses up harsher than necessary, jaw tight, eyes narrowed at the screen as his fingers fly across the keyboard.

Delete. Rewrite. Undo. Redo.   

Beside him, your hoodie shifts as you lean closer, grazing his arm. He feels it right away—the soft rustle of fabric, the familiar scent of your body spray—and his attention snags on it before he can stop himself.

You've stopped looking at your notes.

You’re looking at him.

He doesn’t look back.

“Keys?”

“Mm?” he answers automatically, still typing.

“Keys, can you stop typing for a sec?” your voice is quieter than usual. “I need to ask you something.”

“Yeah, hold on, I just have to—” he starts, eyes still locked on the screen.

Your hands slip into his space before he finishes his sentence.

They settle over his fingers, gently stilling him in place. Your thumbs press lightly over his knuckles, rubbing soft and slow, and his breath catches in a way he doesn’t manage to hide.

You’re close.

Close enough that he can’t escape anymore, nothing left to hide behind.

He swallows, eyes flicking down to where your hand is still covering his before forcing himself to look up at you.   

The laptop light washes over your face in soft blue, catching on your lashes, the faint tension between your brows. You’re chewing on the inside of your cheek.

A nervous habit, he’d know it anywhere.  

“Okay, so…” you start, chest lifting in a quick breath, like you’re trying to steady yourself before you lose your nerve. “I need to... ask you something.”

You inch closer, still not letting go of his hands.

“And you have to promise you won’t make it weird.”

That makes him pause.

“Make what weird?” he asks carefully.

“Just—” you frown, shaking your head a little. “Just don’t laugh, okay?”

His expression shifts immediately. Eyes sharpening, concern cutting straight through the exhaustion that’s been dragging him down for hours.

He’s tired, but he knows that tone.

It’s the one you get when you’ve been worrying about something for too long and finally run out of ways to deal with it on your own.

“Hey,” he whispers, softer now, brows pulling together as he studies you. “I’m not gonna laugh. What’s going on?”   

Your gaze drops to your hands, thumb brushing over his knuckles again.

“So... hypothetically… if I needed to learn how to, um…”

You stop again, fingers tightening around his.

Keys is painfully aware that you're technically holding hands right now.

“...how to what?”

You swallow.

Then, like ripping off a bandage, you blurt it out all at once:

“I don't know how to give a guy a blowjob.”

And Keys’ brain does something it’s never done before.

It stops.

Whatever thought he had a second ago drops out of reach like it’s been yanked away. A hard screech, all the gears in his head catching at once and locking up the whole system.

Even running on two cans of Monster and finals-week delirium, he has absolutely nothing.

For a second, he just stares at you.

Then the heat hits.

It starts at the back of his neck, rushes up along his jaw, spreads straight to the tips of his ears. The pink flooding his cheeks is bad enough. Surely it can't get any worse.

Then you blurt out the rest.

“And I need you to teach me how.”

Well.

Shit.

So much for Just Friends.