Ho Yay

"I've never understood this infatuation with Patrick Swayze." "That's unfair. I appreciate the man's work. The wild, animal Swayze of Road House. The sensitive, vulnerable Swayze of Ghost. Or that Dirty Dancing bad-apple my father forbids me to see." "That went to kind of a weird place." - Tycho, Gabe, Penny Arcade - Purge 2: The Purgeoning.

So, you have two very close male (or female, in rare cases) friends who do everything together and are generally pretty chummy.

Too chummy.

Ho Yay is short for Homoeroticism, Yay!, a concept that argues that there must be a subtext behind any platonic male or female friendship - or, in some cases, just in one character. These characters aren't gay, but the script, the acting, and the music, among other things, help make it seem that way...

More prominent Ho Yays include Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, Dr. Gregory House and Dr. Wilson, Captain Kirk and Spock, Mohinder Suresh and Sylar/Mohinder Suresh and Matt Parkman on Heroes, J.D. and Turk on Scrubs, any movie in which Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play the main role, pretty much any character in the Harry Potter canon, Denny Crane and Alan Shore, and Naruto and Satsuke.

Yeah, it's common.

A very common cliche exploited by slashfic writers.