Hey guys, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year! This is Chapter 21, I honestly still can't believe all the lovely feedback you give me, cheers to everyone who stuck around until now!
Chapter 21: In which Ian's face gets spared
Anthony woke up and his epiphany hit him so hard in the chest that he might have fractured a rib or two.
This feeling was crawling all through him and made his fingertips tingle. He stretched his arms and placed his feet on the floor, wriggling his toes absentmindedly.
He ripped open his wardrobe to find something fitting to wear and scratched his head. He really needed a haircut. He also acutely needed to buy some decent clothes, gosh, there was nothing in here he wanted to wear. He finally just grabbed what lay on top and went to the bathroom to get dressed.
When he was finished, he frowningly messed with his hair and decided that he really needed a haircut. He might as well go to the hairdresser's today, he thought whilst entering the kitchen.
He grabbed some cereal and started munching listlessly on his Lucky Charms. When he heard the familiar knocking sound of Ian's door hitting the wall next to it, both panic and anticipation bubbled up in his gut and the last time he had checked he had been a 26 year old dude, not a thirteen year old girl.
Ian trotted around the corner, scratching his back and yawning loudly. The cuffs of his sweatpants were lapping over his bare feet and Anthony was cursing Ian for evoking mother hen resembling feelings in his chest.
It became worse when Ian tried to reach up for a new jug of milk and had to stand on his tip toes whilst stretching up, revealing a small strip of milky white skin stretching over his hip bone.
Anthony hoped he wasn't staring too obviously.
Ian had finally got hold of that damn milk jug and returned to the table. Anthony was finished with his share, but decided it wouldn't hurt to eat some more.
He pointedly looked on his watch when Ian ruffled his hair and wiped the sleep out of his eyes, scrunching up his nose in a way that should be illegal in all of the fifty United States.
Maybe also in Canada.
Anthony nearly jumped when his knee bumped into Ian's under the table and god, he wasn't conspicuous at all. A short image of him hooking his leg with Ian's shot through his mind and he mentally slapped himself.
"Anything you've got to do today?" he asked and hoped his voice was the normal pitch as usual.
"Ugh, not really, I think. Thought about a lovely date with the playstation."
Anthony smiled and just pretended his heart hadn't jumped at the word "date".
"Well, I think I'm going to the hairdresser's. You want me to bring something for you?"
"What, from the hairdresser?" Ian's left eyebrow jumped like every time he was messing with someone.
"No, in general, dumbass." Anthony noticed shocked that that swearword sounded almost like a pet name.
"Surprise me" Ian said and grinned and that image was playing over and over again in front of his eyes. Anthony blinked and coughed: "Okay. Will do."
Shit. He was so doomed.
#
He couldn't shut it down. When he was driving, he saw Ian's sunglasses lying lonely and forgotten on the passenger seat and he couldn't help but smile, just because this showed that they were still doing everything together. He smiled when he drove past the playground they had shot so many videos at. Everything reminded him of Ian, even to the point he randomly grinned at a guy in a big truck.
He drove on, only realizing after a while that he had driven past Kalel's house without having spared her a single thought.
The hairdresser had a barbershop pole set up and Anthony started to despise himself when he felt his mouth corners twitching up. He was greeted very warmly by his long-time hairdresser Valerie who brought him a glass of fresh lemonade.
Whilst she was washing and cutting his hair, they chatted about random subjects, for example she asked about VidCon and if they knew a "Tyler Oakley" she was a huge fan of. Anthony had heard the name, didn't properly know him, though, but promised her to get an autograph if he would happen to meet him.
When he was finished she combed through his hair a last time and pulled him up into a bone-crushing hug.
"Thanks to you, Mila and I finally plucked up the courage to tell our parents."
With unusually bright eyes she fiddled with his bangs.
"Give all my love to Ian, please. How are things going?"
Anthony physically felt the blood rushing into his face and hastingly said: "Good! He's good."
Valerie only patted his cheek with a very fond look and winked: "Still in the honeymoon phase, I see. So brave of you to start dating after such a long time. And you told me you were "just best friends.""
She laughed, but Anthony's heart suddenly felt a lot heavier than before.
"Who would have thought?" he murmured and picked up his hoodie, "listen, I need to go now-sorry."
"Was nice seeing you again" she smiled and waved, "give Ian a kiss from me!"
Anthony nearly ran out of the shop.
#
His heart was still pumping viciously when he was back in the car and he cursed Valerie for raising hopes in his chest, alongside a guilty conscience whispering that he had lied to her and awe because "their" outing video had actually encouraged two friends of him to overcome their fear of rejection.
Anthony had already made out of earlier conversations with Valerie that her father was conservative in a way her daughter couldn't and didn't want to understand.
He sighed, her last words still ringing in his ears.
He tried to suppress images of him leaning over the table and stealing Ian's smug expression away or to just randomly walk up to him and kiss him out of the blue.
He clicked his fingers nervously on the steering wheel and sighed, once again. He had to brace himself for a long time of pining.
He bet that fate was slapping her knee and cackling with glee at his sight.
#
Ian was sleeping on the couch, controller in one hand, loosened up and resting next to his body, palm up.
Anthony actually had to swallow. Because his first instinct wasn't to draw a penis on Ian's forehead anymore but to mark it with a kiss and spread a blanket over his body.
Ian's fingers twitched and Anthony nearly felt like someone had witnessed him committing a crime.
Somehow he was surprised that there was nothing in him that tried to un-feel these big thunderstorms of emotions.
Maybe because you know that it would be in vain.
They still came unexpected though and it was as if his whole body was shifting now, as if these emotions where changing him right from the spine and the core of his body.
He neither drew a genital on his face nor wrapped him in a blanket, but poured Ian a glass of energy juice and placed it on the couch table.
In his head- or probably more in the left side of his chest- he awoke Ian with the old Sleeping Beauty Technique, or at least a gentle shake; in reality, he grabbed the controller from Ian's stomach and turned up the volume of Skyrim to a brutal maximum, making Ian sit up straight in the couch.
"I was told to say "Hi" from Valerie."
Ian hummed noncommittally and reached for the glass next to him.
"Maybe I should go to the hairdresser's as well, I feel like giving the old bowl a trim." He flopped back on the couch.
"I like it the way it is right now", Anthony remarked before he could stop himself.
"Maybe it's time to just freshen it up a bit, you know." Ian stated and fed Anthony's twisted mind with ambiguous material.
"Do as you please" Anthony responded, "but don't get a Vokuhila."
#
Anthony might have to thank fate for letting him fall, because it brought so much beauty into his life, something he could appreciate properly.
Small glances made his heart race as if he stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, swift touches catapulted him into endless heights.
The sun brought light to paradise, because it made his fingers twitch in anticipation just to think that around one corner, he would walk into Ian.
His head felt just like the cloudless, blue sky, because finally all those walls in his mind had been broken down.
Maybe he thought, just maybe my mind knew longer than myself.
#
Bare with my fluff. I just love this too much.
Thanks to everyone out there,
Lots of Love,
Lucy