Title: Friendship (Bigger than that).
Fandom: BARE
Beta:
phrasemuffin Pairing: Jason/Peter
Rating: PG
Summary: Four reasons Jason McConnell does not have a crush on his best friend.
Jason McConnell did not have a crush on Peter. Jason McConnell could have told you very good reasons he did not have a crush on Peter, but of course you wouldn’t ask him, because why would you think something like that at all?
If you asked him, which you wouldn’t, Jason McConnell would tell you that he liked girls, wanker. He might tell you to go and do something inventive with your own roommate, and he would certainly point out to the room that unlike you, he stood a chance of getting laid sometime this millennium. By girls.
If you were someone more subtle, you might ask him if he had a crush right now, and keep your suspicions (if you had them) to yourself. And Jason McConnell would give you his wicked grin, and tell you that wankers like Matt had crushes: he had the balls to actually ask a girl out.
Sometimes Jason McConnell asked himself if he had a crush on Peter. The answer was always no, of course. He had a thing with Peter, a best-friend thing which he thought he was lucky to have. It was a thing which meant Peter knew when to shut up, and which meant Peter never expected anything more of Jason than that he be around. It meant that Peter asked few questions, but when he did they were the right ones, and he understood silences as well as words. It meant that Jason looked out for Peter, like he had when they were twelve and the school was big and strange. Peter didn’t need watching over so much anymore, but Jason watched anyway, and he didn’t think Peter minded. So the answer to the question Jason McConnell tried not to ask himself, except when he had to, was always no. He did not have a thing for Peter, he had this friendship thing with Peter. Best friends, the biggest thing Jason had ever had with someone else, and if sometimes Jason thought for a moment that he was about to push Peter against the locker-room wall and kiss the breath right out of him, then friendship was bigger than that.
When Peter asked if Jason had a thing for him, Jason said no. And then he said, in the interests of clarity, ‘What sort of thing?’ Peter stared at the floor and mumbled something which might have been ‘You know, a crush’. Jason said no, and he said ‘We’re best friends’. Then he pushed Peter against the dorm-room wall and kissed the breath right out of him, and Peter understood ‘this is bigger than that’.