"Ian, I think we should tell them," Anthony declared.

Ian didn't look up from his phone. "Who should we tell what?"

"We should tell the fans about us."

This was enough to make Ian turn his phone off and look up at his boyfriend. "You serious right now?"

"Yeah," Anthony said, folding his arms and maintaining an adorably sincere expression. "I think we should make a video and just… come out about it."

"But everybody just barely started to shut up about you and Kalel," Ian protested. "Now you want to throw this at them?"

Anthony nodded; his brown eyes were determined, and Ian realized that not only was Anthony serious about this, he'd also given it a lot of thought before bringing it up today.

"But Anthony, you know how they'll react to something like this. It'll be terrible! Everyone will be calling us fags and saying we cheated on our girlfriends with each other and blowing the whole thing ridiculously out of proportion!"

"Dude, that pretty much already happens in the comments sometimes. It won't be that different."

Ian exhaled and ran a hand through the front of his bowl-cut hair. "I just don't see why we have to share this part of our lives with the viewers. Doesn't it seem like we should just keep it private?"

"Keeping our lives private and keeping some huge-ass secret are two totally different things. I don't think we should have to keep something this big a secret from our viewers."

"What, like they deserve to know?" Ian argued. "We don't owe them all the details of our personal lives."

"Come on, man, they're our fans. We wouldn't be anywhere without them! No, they don't deserve to know about every little detail, but they also don't deserve some fucking lie."

Ian sighed. "They're just a bunch of kids, man. I mean, sure, we owe them a lot, but they're our viewers, not our friends."

"I used to agree," Anthony said, "but then Kalel and I started doing WULAS and I realized there were almost 2 million people who just wanted to watch us live our lives and shit, and they really did care about us."

"There were also several thousand who got butthurt and unsubscribed as soon as you and Kalel broke up."

Anthony's expression wilted a bit, and Ian felt bad for being so harsh.

"Anthony, I'm just… the idea of putting ourselves out there after all this time just freaks me out. People on the internet are such dicks for no goddamn reason and I don't want to have to listen to a bunch of bullshit about our relationship."

Anthony sat down on the couch next to Ian and took his hand. Even after dating for the last three weeks, Ian still had to fight off the knee-jerk reaction to yank his hand out of Anthony's and ask him what the hell he was doing.

"I don't think you're just afraid of that, Ian," Anthony told him. "You've had a hard time being open about our relationship with anyone."

"That's not true!" Ian said indignantly. "I'm not ashamed to be with you if that's what you're thinking. And that's not why I say we shouldn't come out to our viewers."

"No, I know you're not ashamed. But you are afraid of being judged. I mean, god, it took me a week to convince you it was okay to tell the Smosh Games crew. You've got the worst case of homophobophobia I've ever seen."

Ian frowned. "Homophobo— what?"

"Homophobophobia. Y'know. Fear of homophobes."

"That's not a thing," Ian said. "You made that up."

"No shit, dumbass." Anthony nudged him with his elbow. "But my point is that opening up about our relationship would probably be good for you. Besides, do you really want to have to keep such a huge part of our lives totally secret? It'd suck ass, man."

"So what? We tell them and then we just turn the second channel into 'Smosh is Horny' and 'Sexy Time with Smosh?'"

Anthony chuckled. "We'll figure it out as we go. You never know, 'Smosh is Horny' could turn out to be our biggest success yet."

Ian rolled his eyes, but the mirth on Anthony's face coaxed a smile out of the younger man. "No, but seriously. Coming out could change everything about our channel."

"It doesn't have to, though. We can still do the same stuff and be the same crazy people, but without having to worry about keeping our relationship some big secret."

Ian took a deep, pensive breath and then nodded slowly. "Yeah. Okay, then, let's do it. We might as well, right?"

"Really? I convinced you already?" Anthony asked with a laugh.

Ian shrugged. "Yeah, I'm cool with it. This is going to sound cheesy, but honestly as long as we're in it together, I'm pretty sure we can handle a helluva lot of internet bullshit."

"So as you probably already know by now, our lives have taken a couple of big turns in the last few months," Anthony told the camera. "We both recently ended some long-term relationships because we didn't feel they were working out the way we wanted."

He paused, gathering his next words. "A few weeks ago, Ian and I got started talking about all this stuff—why we broke up with our girlfriends, what made him finally decide to move down to LA where I've been living, and so on. And we kind of realized that we each had only one real reason for all those decisions, and as lame as it sounds, the reason turned out to be each other."

Anthony paused again with a slight frown on his face and turned to Ian. "Is this sounding completely pathetic, dude?"

Ian shook his head. "You're doing fine, Anthony, don't worry about it."

"I just feel so serious," Anthony complained as he nervously ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm never this serious and normal with you on camera."

"That's why we're putting it on the Anthony Padilla channel, right? So we can be Anthony and Ian instead of Smosh."

Anthony nodded and sighed. Despite the confidence he'd shown while trying to persuade Ian to agree to this, he still hadn't fully convinced himself that it was a good idea. Anthony read the comments on almost all of their videos and he was all too familiar with how shitty people could be on YouTube.

"Okay," he said. "Let's do this."

Both boys turned back to the still-rolling camera and, to Anthony's surprise, Ian started to speak.

"Basically, what Anthony's trying to say is that he and I are in love with each other."

Anthony blinked and then interrupted the vlog yet again, not caring that he'd have tons of footage to edit out later. "In love?" he repeated.

Ian sighed, sounding slightly annoyed. "Well it's true, isn't it?" he challenged.

"Of course. I just expected you to say we were, you know, bisexual or dating or together but not… say it like that."

"Was it too cheesy for you? 'Cause I can just say we're together, if that'd make you feel less awkward." Ian's tone was definitely annoyed and defensive at this point.

Anthony realized then that Ian was the one feeling awkward, though he was trying his best to hide it. Ian must still be hesitant to be so open about their relationship, but he was willing to go through with it because of Anthony.

"No, it wasn't cheesy," Anthony replied. "It was actually pretty damn perfect."

"Then quit interrupting me, asshole!"

Anthony chuckled and slipped an arm around Ian's shoulders. He felt his boyfriend stiffen and he started to pull his arm back, thinking he'd gone too far.

Ian stopped him by grabbing his hand. "It's okay, man. This is cool."

"Really? It's not too gay for you?" Anthony was half-joking and half-serious.

"Dude, we're coming out to the entire internet; I don't think we could do anything gayer than that."

Anthony's stomach did a little flip at the reminder, though it relaxed when he felt Ian settle into his arm. He took a breath and went back into vlog mode.

"So I know it seems like a lot will change now that Ian and I are dating, but most everything will stay the way it's been up till now. There won't be any effect on the content of our Smosh videos, which we'll still be releasing every Friday."

"The only place you'll really see any difference," Ian contributes, "will be on stuff like the second channel, where we're a little more casual."

"And I'm going to try to post vlogs on this channel every so often and those will definitely be different from the usual stuff," Anthony said. He paused for a few seconds and then said, "Well, I think that's about all we really have to say. We'll keep you guys updated on Twitter and Instagram and all that, and there'll be new videos coming out as always."

"Yep. And guys, keep the bullshit out of the comments, okay?" Ian said. "I'm already anticipating a whole slew of insults and shit, but I still just want to tell you guys ahead of time to shut the fuck up if you're planning to type some homophobic crap in the comments."

Anthony laughed, shook his head, and said, "Well, on that note, I guess that's it! Bye guys!"

He reached out and turned the camera off. He felt a strange mix of relief and heightened apprehension; now that the video was finished, the only thing to do was upload it and wait for the response.

Beside him, Ian laughed under his breath.

"What?" Anthony asked.

"Think of all the Ianthony fangirls… god, they're gonna be thrilled. We'll probably be able to hear their screams when this video comes out."

"Oh, they won't be that thrilled," Anthony said.

"How come?"

"'Cause we didn't show them one of these." He leaned forward and kissed Ian, feeling the other man's smile against his lips.

"Ian, I think I fucked up," Anthony said morosely the next day.

"What'd you fuck up?" Ian asked, glancing up at his boyfriend.

Anthony flopped down on the couch next to Ian with a sigh. He had his phone out and was staring glumly at the screen. "You were right; we never should have told the viewers about our relationship."

"Yeah, it's pretty damn bad, isn't it?" Ian said in a neutral voice. He was forcing himself to maintain his customary "whatever" attitude and hide his more negative thoughts.

"Oh my god," Anthony muttered, slicing a hand through his upswept hair. "Have you read some of these comments?"

"I've been intentionally avoiding YouTube, but I'm still getting all sorts of them on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It sucks."

"That's all you have to say? 'It sucks?'" Anthony asked incredulously.

Ian could tell the comments must've been getting to Anthony because he sounded pretty pissed. "Well, I knew they were going to be awful, so I kind of psyched myself out for them."

"Yeah, you were right, by the way. There are at least a hundred people who've been saying we must've cheated on Kalel and Melanie and that's why our breakups were so close together."

Ian rolled his eyes. "They're full of shit. But Anthony, just shrug it off. I don't think we fucked anything up. We chose to do the video and I actually don't regret it at all. I'm glad we won't have to keep it a secret from everyone."

"I don't think it was worth it," Anthony said. "Now everyone knows and… it just seems like it was a really stupid decision."

"Even if it was, there's nothing we can do about it now, so stop feeling like shit and wishing we hadn't done it. Besides, I'm pretty sure you've been disregarding at least two thirds of the comments we've been receiving if you think they're all bad. There are lots of people supporting us."

"Yeah, but you know how it is. One negative comment will stick with you longer than twenty positive ones."

Ian reached out and set a hand on Anthony's shoulder. "This isn't the first time we've seen negative comments about our stuff, Anthony, and it isn't going to be the last. Don't let them get to you." He reached out and took the phone from Anthony's hand. "Just put this down for a while and think about something else. Give it a week and everything will be back to normal."

"Okay," Anthony sighed.

Ian watched him, trying to gauge his mood. He looked so resigned and dejected with those sad, brown, puppy eyes that Ian knew he had to do something.

"You know what? Let's order some pizza and play video games all afternoon," Ian said. "Just like old times."

Anthony smiled a bit. "You realize that exactly nothing is the same as it was when we were in high school, Ian."

"Oh, that's not true. The two most important things are still the same."

"And what are the most important things?" Anthony prompted.

"Well, first of all, we're still together and we're still best friends. But more importantly, I'm still going to make you order the pizza, 'cause you're my bitch."

Anthony's face finally split into the big smile Ian had been waiting for. "You're an asshole, you know."

"Yeah, but you know you love me," Ian said teasingly, returning Anthony's smile.

"Yep, I sure as fuck do."