Half Blood Hill

Taleis Heap

Taleis' cheeks flush red, and he feels his heart thudding just a little bit faster, but he ignores that. Instead, he laughs and says, "Oh my gods, Mum, shut up. You're embarrassing me!" Taleis tries his best to sound like an annoyed teenage girl, even though he knows he probably failed.

A part of Taleis wanted to just relax into the hug, but he knew he couldn't. That would be weird, because he's only ever allowed himself to do that when he's actually sad, and that's the thing. Taleis isn't sad right now, and he doesn't want Aidan to think he's sad, because he's not. Taleis isn't sad, and if Aidan thinks he's sad he'll worry, which isn't a good thing. Well, it kind of is, because it means he cares, but that's not the point. The point is that he's worrying, and Taleis just doesn't like it when Aidan is anything but happy because, well, he's Aidan.

Taleis is starting to think that his brain isn't really making any sense, because of course Aidan is Aidan, and really, who likes it when other people are sad? And then he realizes that he's just kind of going in circles, so he tries to think of something else to think about, something that isn't Aidan's arms wrapped around him or the warmth of Aidan's body or something that just isn't Aidan, but it's kind of concerning how difficult that is proving to be.

'Seriously, Taleis, it's just Aidan. Calm down. He's your best mate, not your fucking crush.' He happily ignored the voice in the back of his head saying that yes, Aidan was his crush and possibly the love of his life, which is really fucking stupid. Because really, people only fall in love with their best friends in books. Taleis can't remember any of the many stories he's heard of real life people falling in love with their best friend. The only times he's ever heard of it is in books, like Harry Potter or Take a Bow, and Take a Bow was a stupid book, anyways. He had read it in middle school and the only character he really liked was Ethan, but then there was the fact that he acted like a sore loser when Emme got a boyfriend.

Taleis had kind of lost faith in the whole best friends falling in love thing, anyways. For Taleis, it had been a kind of always thing. Something that had been there from the start. And part of Taleis thinks that he should just admit that yeah, he loves Aidan, probably had since they were ten, but another part of him thinks that no, he doesn't love Aidan. Not like that. Things had been like that for a while, really. Which was really annoying, and not your regular, run of the mill type of annoying. This was annoying as in you half want to pitch yourself off of the side of a building, and the other half just thinks you should just check yourself into an asylum already.