Jake woke up. The first thing he noticed was his dry mouth, and the second thing was his sore ass. He blinked and tried to orient himself. A thin line of light through the crack in the door cut across their tangled, naked bodies. Ryan was still sleeping, one arm across Jake's chest, and one leg over his knee. Jake was partially on his side, his back to Ryan, and as he shifted his weight he felt Ryan's thick cock against his ass. They'd fallen asleep with Ryan still inside him.
They had drunk so much so fast that the last half of the evening was a blur of touches and tastes. Jake started thinking through all they had done and he struggled with a strange feeling of self awareness. It was like he was standing outside himself with a choice: regret everything and start walking back what they did with excuses and denials to save the friendship, or admit to himself the feelings he'd had for years but had never risked putting into words. The only reason he'd been spending his summers picking up girls with Ryan was because of Ryan. When they started high school and the pressure to play the part of the golden straight boy almost buried him, Ryan was his escape. They didn't need to talk about why Jake didn't usually make the first move on girls, or why they usually stuck to each other instead of spending more time going off on their own. They had hookups, but they still struck out and went home together more often than not.
Jake touched his friend's naked arm and Ryan squeezed them closer. Jake turned around and found Ryan was awake, watching him.
Their heads shared the same pillow, their faces inches apart, and Jake lay one arm under his head and the other against Ryan's bare hip.
Ryan shifted closer, tangling their legs.
Jake stepped back inside himself, knowing there was only one way he wanted to handle this, but also knowing that he would do anything Ryan wanted. Even if it meant forgetting everything and pretending it didn't happen.
"How, um," Jake started, but he had trouble forming the words. His senses were overloaded trying to capture the feeling of the moment so that even if it never happened again, he could remember the heat of their bodies, the smell of the still summer air, and the throb of Ryan's heartbeat through his naked skin.
"What's wrong?" Ryan asked, and he reached up to wipe a tear as it crossed Jake's nose.
Jake hadn't even noticed he'd started to cry. It had been so long since he had, since he'd been a kid scraping his knees on the playground. It was so alien to him now. But the pressure of all his thoughts and fears about what Ryan would say was suddenly making it hard to breathe.
Then Ryan placed his hand on Jake's cheek, his fingers sliding into his hair, his thumb stroking his skin, and Jake choked out, "I love you."
Ryan's eyebrows went up and the pressure in Jake's chest burst in a torrent of words, "I don't want to pretend like it was just a joke or say we were drunk or it was just an experiment or just a one-time thing-- I don't want it to be a one-time thing. It was--"
Ryan kissed him to shut him up.
