Is My Straight Best Friend In Love With Me?

Another gay guy that has fallen for his straight best friend. That's what this story is, so if it's tired and trite for you, move on, but this is currently my story.This all starting about 5-6 years ago when we met working at a nightclub. I was just freshly 22 working in a gay bar as a barback and shortly after I started he began working there as a bartender.(For the sake of this story, my name will be Dan and he will be Mike.)I'm kind of a mixed hispanic-white descent with a twinky, thin frame and an outgoing personality. Mike is just a couple years older than me and mixed european descent, a little taller, a little larger due to a beautifully muscular physique.I don't know exactly when our friendship began to bloom but basically I would work as his barback and over time he would specifically request to work with me on an everyday basis. We were probably buttering eachother's bread. I would go above and beyond to cater to his needs and he was a hot straight bartender being nice to a little twink kid like myself and allow me to do shots behind the bar with him.About a year or so goes by of us being friend's and he had broken up with this girl he casually dated for a while and we used to do this thing where for every straight girl at the (gay) bar we worked at that I brought over to him, he would give me a shot. Now, I'm a 22 year old party animal so for me and he's a good looking muscular man wearing nothing but underwear, so this task is easy for me.One day, one of my old tricks from the suburbs comes in to my club and I see he's with this girl, his roommate. I'm like, oh this is cake. She seems nice enough, got it. I bring her to the bar, get my shot and yeah. He and the chick hit it off and actually end up starting to date.I've had a boycrush on him since day one and he's definitely turned me down on the drunken occasion I've thrown myself at him so while I'm not in love with him at this point, IDGAF currently that he's with this girl.Anyway, about a year goes by with them hard partying with each other on a daily basis and they begin to fall hard in love with each other. She's with him almost every single day that they end up getting their own place together and she quits her job in the suburbs and becomes a manager at our club.(Im not sure the Timeline but there is definitely a period between here where me and him have a huge blowout fight. I heard a rumor of him straight up making out with another guy at a club and I don’t know, maybe because it gave me a glimmer of hope, when I was out with him and his current best friend, I casually mention it to him to ask if it were true. The fucking faggot immediately runs up to Mike and tells him – or maybe asks him, who knows – and Mike immediately changes his attitude toward me completely. He checks out. Stops talking to me. Requests that I never work with him. Verbally attacks me every chance he gets. All this, in front of his girlfriend manager and during work. I’m not one to back down, so I play that game with him. In fact, this rumor of him making out with a guy/being gay, only gets worse DUE to his current feud with me. By being so offended by my mere question and by our mutual friends and acquaintances wondering and asking me how could such good friends become enemies so quickly, I would happily explain. But honestly, though curious, I originally took the rumor with a grain of salt myself, but his reaction only made it more intriguing and due to how terribly he was treating me and how his girlfriend the manager was doing nothing about it, I was happy to make his day a little stressful myself. – Anyway, several months later, I decide that I while willing to wash my hands of any previous friendship, I’m at a place where I’ll make one last effort to mend things so I can comfortably say, “At least I tried” before I completely walk away from it. I ask his girlfriend to ask him if he wants to join one of my sports teams he had played with me on a year or so previously. Shortly after he confronts me downstairs and we have an emotional apology to one another ending with a sweet hug and a kiss. Back to being great friends once again. --- Not sure how relevant this is to the story, but figured I would include it all just in case.)Very shortly after, he and his girlfriend decide to have a child together. They're absolutely ecstatic but, the pregnancy puts a stop to his girlfriend’s ability to drink, party, do drugs and hang out with everyone.For a while, things are fine but it puts a strain on their relationship. Well, at least in my opinion. I’ve expressed this to him before and he kind of disagrees so I suppose I have to qualify that it’s just my opinion. Anyway, in my opinion, their entire short relationship was about her dating one of the, if not THE most popular hot straight bartender in the gayborhood and meeting all his friends, meeting new people because of him, being exposed to the nightclub lifestyle and being able to drink & party every single day/night being able to simply just enjoying each other’s lust and company.She becomes all depressed and jealous of him at every single moment. Hating that he’s beautiful while she’s gained (even more) weight and that he’s able to drink because she’s pregnant and that he’s able to see his friends (because he works at a bar and is able to go out for a drink or two at a late night bar briefly after work).Eventually, even after having the baby, all they do is fight every day. Our relationship grows. We become confidantes. I feel more comfortable around him than most people and he loves to hear me talk and happily listens as I preach in detail my many opinionated perspectives on life, love and happiness. It’s an amazing feeling.About 3 years of their tumultuous relationship have gone by with me playing DR. Phil and I had been spending almost every single day with him and his girlfriend. We would have dinner together. We would have cocktails together. It would be a strange day when we did NOT spend time together. Even though it took me multiple years to get over my disdain for his girlfriend, I had become able to tolerate and even appreciate her at time, though she still irked me in many ways. Partially due to my growing love for him and partially due to her being an absolutely dreadful cunt.One day, she did something to me that was completely inappropriate. She took a compromising photo of myself while I was sleeping and sent it to him as well as showed it to at least one of her coworkers. I keep my composure at the time when I found out, but I play it cool and act like nothing but go dead silent because I just feel like, I want to fucking flip out on her but I’m at this place in life where I want to be more adult about the way I handle my anger. And btw, months have gone by, this bitch still hasn’t even sent me an apology text. In fact, I’ve even come to find out that she was able to figure out some nonsensical way in her head to be mad at me over it… This is totally fine with me because I couldn’t possibly care less. It just makes it easier for me to move on without having to be a dick back. I’ve literally just said nothing. Haven’t even talked shit about her behind her back or anything.Shortly after that, she gets into a drunken rage one day and beats the shit out of him with a metal rod. He’s pissed at her. His family from Europe is in town and they have to go visit. Something is said to him by one of his family members that really enlightened him to his current situation and about relationships in general. Now at this point, she’s beaten him, made him unable to see his good/best friend like he used to, his family has pointed out and enlightened him to their noticeable incompatibility and THEN her mom moves in with him, his girlfriend and their baby into their ONE-bedroom apartment. Now he’s over it and finally admits that this can’t go on any longer and decides to move out (and has actually done an amazing job of leading them to both handle it amicably.I realize that this story has become less about my relationship with him, but more about his deteriorating relationship, but just keep in mind we had been very close throughout that entire time. We would took his daughter for a 40 mile backride back and forth on her first camping trip. We’ve cuddled. When we go out to the bars together he lets me hold onto his arm. We’ve had many late nights just sitting in the dark on the beach drinking a beer talking about anything and everything. Our closeness as friends is undeniable to me. I already know that I love him but as friends (and as a gay man, as a friend that also wants that DICK).Anyway, we’ve naturally been spending more and more time together and even quality alone time since he doesn’t have to always be the one with the baby anymore as he typically was during his relationship. He would come over to my apartment, cook for us, he would help me set up my apartment (because I had recently moved in) and do just about anything for me. He’s been an absolute dream.We’re close enough at this point that in the last week or so, there have been multiple times where we’ve taken molly and just lied in our underwear exchanging masses and cuddling. – I know, to the masses, this is automatically a sign that he’s gay, but we’ve been friends for years, he knows that I love him and there have been plenty of opportunities for us to have hooked up in the past and they haven’t happened yet so I’m of the school of thought that we’re just closer than most friends and with less barriers. It’s like we’re closer than friends but not close like a relationship. It’s difficult to define.I’ve even pitched to him, after several drinks and on molly, the idea of just being boyfriends but since he’s straight and I’m gay, we just have an “open” sexual relationship with other people. I felt like this could maybe be the perfect situation because we can just “love” each other and still be able to fulfill our sexual desires by not being limited to one sexual partner the rest of our life. If anything, I feel like it’s really just me losing out because I “do” love him in a capacity that would like to be sexually realized. But anyway, I’m just willing to take what I can get. – He never said yes, he said something like “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” And I was like well start now by saying calling me baby and saying goodnight (because he was on his way out the door when I brought it up) and obligingly he said goodnight baby, but noticeably did it only because I told him he had to.So where I’m at right now, we recently went out with each other and friends, were having a great time. I wanted to buy some molly so we could have another one of our fun massage sessions again in the near future but I didn’t have money on me at the time so he bought it instead. Well in the heat of the moment of him handing it to me, he said let’s take it and I immediately obliged, though it’s not what I was hoping for at the time. I had forgotten that I hadn’t eaten all day and I had done several shots during our previous sport match (excuse the awkward wording but it’s an attempt to be vague in some capacity to allow myself deniability if anyone I know reads this and connects any dots) so my beat body was just not prepared for the roll I was feeling and I had to leave. He sweetly helps me get an Uber so I can go home and I’m already feeling overwrought with emotion due to the molly, and I know he’s rolling too, but still at some point shortly after I get home he texts me “I love and care about you” which has me melting already but I know it could be because I said I didn’t feel well being out in my condition and he may just be being nice. Then later, just before I went to sleep, I text him goodnight and he responds “Night baby,” and I damn near died.It’s just made me, I think, finally acknowledge to myself that I am basically madly in love with him and pretty much literally worship the ground he walks on but am also frustrated with the fact that I’ve never been more in love with anyone ever before in my entire life and that person fucking happens to be straight.We definitely express love and tenderness toward each other when not on drugs but they’re in a, probably more pleasant for me, capacity when we are doing things like drinking and MDMA because it is a ‘touch’ gayer, rather, more affectionate and honestly, I would do molly with him every single second of every single day to maintain and grow that closeness that I’m just stressed out about I move forward. I don’t want to lose anything with him, but the way my heart feels, it’s like a balloon stretched out as far as it can go and I feel like it might pop soon and I don’t know what that pop is going to be.Professing my love will change things. It definitely will. And unless his reaction is, “I love you too let’s officially be together” nothing else will suffice and at the very least, I don’t want to lose an ounce of what we currently have.I think I’ve basically concluded that I’m going to do nothing at all and just hope this feeling subsides, but either way, thoughts, opinions, advice and criticisms are all welcome. What do you think?