Both Sides of the Bed

They've shared a bed for two years. Only one of them knows it was never about the mattress.

Felix Brearley has loved his best friend since they were fourteen. He's catalogued it, conjugated it into dead languages, filed it under things that will never be said. Twenty years of friendship. Two years of a double bed he bought himself, sixty quid off Gumtree, and never once explained.

Joel Sayer is straight. Ask anyone. He's also the man who crossed the hallway in first year with a story about a mattress and never went back, who buys oat milk he doesn't drink, and who can't account for what his body does when Felix walks into a room.

Then Joel gets a girlfriend.

Then somebody else starts looking at Felix.

And Joel, who has never once had to think about any of this, finds that he can't stop.

Both Sides of the Bed is a twenty-year slow burn about the person who has been in the room the whole time, and what it costs to finally look at him.

Good to know

• Tropes: best friends to lovers, flatmates, only one bed, bi-awakening, found family, coming out.
• Setting: contemporary British, Sheffield and the moors.
• Heat: open door, 5/5.
• Ending: standalone with a happy ever after.