Is This How It Starts?

I think I'm developing weird feelings for a guy in my unit I'm posting this anonymously. I really don't want to post this, but I've got nowhere else to say it. I'm twenty-three, a sergeant. Two and a half months left before discharge. Let me say this up front — I was never that kind of person. I've only ever dated women, I've had three girlfriends, I watched the same porn everyone else did, and honestly if gay stuff came up in conversation I was the guy who got a little uncomfortable. So I don't understand what this is either. Last fall a new guy came in. Two years younger than me. I'll just call him K. At first I didn't think anything of it. Good at his job, quick on the uptake, decent kid — that was it. If anything he frustrated me. He couldn't say no to anyone, so he'd end up taking the fall for everything. I stepped in and sorted it out for him a few times. That's when he started sticking close to me. I tried to figure out when it started going wrong, and there's one specific night I keep coming back to. Last December we had night watch together. It was brutally cold. Around three in the morning K got a nosebleed. He gets them a lot, but that night it was bad. I balled up some tissue for him, told him not to tip his head back, and I was pinching his nose shut with my hand, and he looked up at me. That's it. That's genuinely all that happened. Nothing happened. But in that second something inside me got put together wrong. I can't explain it any better than that. I just thought: oh no. This is bad. After that night everything changed. My eyes look for him without me deciding to. At meals I check where he's sitting. If he sits next to me I'm in a good mood all day. If he's laughing with someone else I'm not. When the duty roster goes up I count down to the days we overlap. During PT everyone strips their shirts off and I can't look in his direction. I try not to look, then I worry that not looking is weirder, so I force myself to look and then look away again. This has been going on for months. One time he was sick and sleeping in the barracks and I put a blanket over him. Just a blanket. My hands were shaking. I'm twenty-three years old. Does it make any sense that putting a blanket on someone makes my hands shake? The problem is that K has a girlfriend. They've been together since before he enlisted — three years now. She hasn't dumped him, she visits every couple of months, letters come regularly. On the days a letter arrives he walks around grinning to himself all day. She came to visit last month and I met her. She was lovely. She thanked me for looking after her boyfriend and bought me a drink. I smiled and took it. I couldn't sleep that night. I don't know why this has to be happening to me. I wasn't a bad person. Now I'm the guy who accepts a drink from a decent woman and thinks things he shouldn't be thinking. When K talks about her I listen. I give him advice. When they fight I tell him how to make it right. But I realized recently that every time he says they fought, my mood lifts a little. Realizing that made me want to throw up. I've searched about it on the base computers. Whether this is a normal thing. Whether everyone gets like this after long enough in here. Some people said it's just not seeing women for so long. Some said it's having nowhere else to put your feelings. Some said it goes away after discharge. I read those threads over and over. Because I wanted so badly for that to be what this was. But it happened on leave too. Four days of leave — I saw friends, I drank, I even went on a blind date, and I was still thinking about him. She laughed and what came into my head was the way he laughs. I felt awful for her. That thing about it going away after discharge — I don't believe it anymore. Here's the part that scares me most. K genuinely likes me. He looks up to me. He tells me everything — what he did with his girlfriend, what he's doing after discharge, what he wants when they get married someday. This week he said he wants the two of us to take a trip together once we're both out. I was so happy about that I couldn't sleep. And I hated myself for being happy about it. He thinks I'm just a good senior to him, and meanwhile I'm lying to him. Every day. Smiling right next to him. I can't tell him. Do you know where I am? The second I say it I'm finished and so is he. How would I get through two and a half more months? Anyone who's been in here knows how fast word travels. But I can't suddenly go cold on him either. He'd just assume he did something wrong and start walking on eggshells. That's the kind of person he is. It actually happened — I cut back on talking to him for a few days and yesterday he came up to me and asked, hyung, did I do something wrong? I told him it was nothing. It's two in the morning and I'm sitting in the bathroom writing this. Two and a half months. I get through two and a half months, we both go home, we don't call each other, it fades out, and in a few years he's someone whose wedding I show up to with an envelope of cash. I know that's the right answer. I know. But earlier tonight he asked me — hyung, we'll still talk after you're out, right? I said of course. I smiled while I said it. I never knew smiling could be that hard. What am I supposed to do? Do I just spend two and a half months pretending nothing's going on? Or should I start pulling away now? But if I pull away it's going to hurt him. Telling him is off the table. I'm not even asking about that. If anyone's been where I am, I just want to know what you did.

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