Nothing Could Stop it (Chapter 9)
“How do you like that big meat, Anthony?” He shook his head, rolling his eyes for the camera and placing his burger onto the plate before him. We were back home, had been for exactly one week if I thought about it, because we had shot a hasty Lunchtime With Smosh in LA right after the Sam episode. Seemed longer ago than a week. Coming back had been emotional, for some reason. Maybe because we went through a shitload in LA, with me falling in love and all and us coming so close to loosing Smosh.
“This again, Ian? I’m not your girlfriend” He smiled and the sight was adorable with his cheeks puffed up at his gigantic intake of food.
I put down the camera and reached across the table to grab his hand. “Yeah, but you’re my boyfriend now and that’s a million times better.” I took in the sight of our hands clasped on the smooth, black surface of our table. I glanced into his smiling face, eyes shining with happiness.
This thought had come to me hundreds of times throughout this last week, but I was still taken aback with everything that had changed in such a short period of time.
It seemed like I left the house straight and arrived back gay. Was that even possible? Or maybe not as drastic as gay, but just fallen in love with Anthony in that short time. But, was THAT even possible? I can’t remember feeling anything homosexual for the man before LA, but I could be wrong. I had always found him sorta kinda maybe attractive. I always loved his laugh. I always loved being around him, working with him, joking with him, touching him. Innocent touches, but the need for connection had still been there. OK, maybe had just been blind.
There really was no use analyzing it anymore. Maybe it had all happened fast, or maybe it had been building up all throughout the course of our friendship; maybe I only noticed my love when we were put in the movie situation. That when the prospect of kissing Anthony came up, I realized that I wouldn’t really mind that. Actually, I was really curious what it would be like. I wanted to. I had to. When I finally did kiss him, it all snapped in place. I loved Anthony, man or not, and we were meant to be together.
It was simply luck that he felt the same way.
And then that movie role. God. Don’t get me started. I recall with fondness tearing Samuel a new asshole. Anthony and I liked to rehash my bad ass moment again and again.
After my refusal to sign the contract, Anthony had looked at me like I had seven heads and he even voiced his confusion. But I was intent on Sam, I silenced Anthony and narrowed my eyes at the filthy bastard before me.
“What this about ‘relinquishing our rights to Smosh’, Sam? Were you planning on telling us this little detail?”
Anthony gasped audibly and he scrambled to grab the papers off the desk and read what I was talking about.
Sam didn’t say a word. But he had looked like he was gonna piss himself.
“On second thought, I think we’re actually going to have to pass on this offer. Such a pity too, because it was the perfect opportunity.”
I rose and motioned Anthony up with a jerk of my head. He obliged. I was still staring at Sam, hoping my face was mean and scary enough to keep the asshole quiet and scared shitless. “Too good to be true, obviously.”
I picked up his contract, tore it in half, and threw the pieces to the table. I made my way to the door, a dumbstruck Anthony following me. I pulled open the door and stuck my foot in. I was going to leave it at that, get the hell out of there before I actually punched Sam in the face. But I felt like he needed something else.
“Oh and Sam.” I almost laughed at the way his head snapped up to meet my glare. He shrunk from it, he seemed to transform into the shape that I knew him better as: a stupid, arrogant, snotty teenager. He was a kid in an over-sized suit coat.
“You don’t fuck with Smosh. You can fuck with us, we can handle it. We’re grown men and can deal.” I faced him completely and tried to give him the nastiest, most disgusted face I could pull. Gone was my usually easygoing attitude. Gone was any semblance of happy or merciful. I was downright seething. “But you keep your goddamn hands off our baby or there will be hell to pay.”
With that, Anthony and I walked out the door. Closed that chapter of our lives.
Or maybe not, because we were still deciding if we wanted to take legal action against the douchnozzle fucktard asshole-licker. Anthony took his contract, a smart move as now we had evidence that he was trying to trick us.
I still can’t believe Sam did that. Who does that? He obviously felt stronger about having a share of Smosh than we previously thought. He joked about it in our first meeting, All Anthony and I could come up with was that he was jelly of our success and regretted the day that he stopped contributing in the Smosh website. His fault, not ours. He was the one who didn’t want to make videos. He was the one who “grew up” and decided that Smosh was immature and worthless.
Yeah right. He was as far from “grown up” as possible.
Stupid fucker.
But Anthony and I would take care of him. One way or another. I didn’t make threats that I didn’t keep. I just hoped for Sam’s sake that I never actually see his face again.
I realized that my food was still in front of me, uneaten, growing colder by the second. Anthony’s fingers were no longer weaved between my own and his burger was almost completely gone. I shook my head a little and grabbed at my own lukewarm teriyaki burger.
“What’s up, man? You ok?” Anthony’s head was slightly cocked and his warm, brown eyes stared at me with a comforting mix of worry and reassurance.
“Oh nothing. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Shit.”
“Well, that’s gross. I was hoping it would be something more profound and a little less…disgusting.” He smirked and I wanted to wipe it right off his pretty face.
“Oh shut up. I was just thinking about our whole trippy LA extravaganza.”
“Oh.” He nodded thoughtfully and his fingers absentmindedly gathered and dropped some lettuce that had escaped from his burger and fallen to his plate. He licked his lips.
“That whole week was just…odd.” He met my gaze…timidly? “If I could go back and tell myself before the trip that I would end up…with you” He dropped his head to stare at his plate. I observed the tips of his ears turning red and smiled a little at the prospect. It wasn’t easy to talk about these weird new feelings. Lust was easier to comprehend and…erm act upon. But admitting that you liked the feel of being wrapped in your best friend’s arms? Or being with them? Or loving them? Uncharted territory. Scary. The fear of rejection was there, yes. But at the same time, it just wasn’t masculine. Dudes didn’t admit that shit.
“I definitely wouldn’t have believed it.” Anthony finished his thought but refused to look at me. It was as close to a ‘I fell in love with you’ as I was going to get.
“Me too, Ant. Something about the trip. I guess I just realized a few things about you that I didn’t think about before.”
He nodded. I could almost laugh at how bad we were just beating around the bush. Oh well. Our emotions would come out in the open sooner or later, we just had to give it time.
“You know what sucks, though?” Anthony’s face had taken on a look of incredulity, his eyebrows were knit together and his nose scrunched. I was curious beyond belief.
“What?”
“Ever since we got that email about the acting role, our life revolved around it. We planned that whole trip mostly so we could act in that goddamned movie. And then when we found out that we’d be…uh kissing, we were indecisive and stressed. And then we decided to do it and we couldn’t wait, in fact we ended up practicing on our own. Ian, we ended up doing it in the hotel bed.”
Me cheeks burned at the mention of that night. Not that we hadn’t done more upon our arrival home, it was just that we didn’t often speak of it yet. “Yeah, what’s your point?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“All of that happened because of the tiny prospect of us kissing on a low budget movie set. Our life was completely changed because of it. And we never actually got to do it. It was a hoax, a lie, a ploy. It changed so much crap and it never really happened.”
I started at his revelation. It was kinda weird, wasn’t it? Something so tiny, something that never really ended up happening, had such a huge impact on us? It made me wonder if it was just fate. I mean, I’m not a superstitious or religious guy. But something made me think that Anthony and I were just meant to be, and nothing could have stopped us ending up together. I wish I could tell Anthony my ideas. I’m not sure I could ever put them into words.
“Yeah, it’s weird.”
“No, it sucks.” He whined, jutting out his lower lip and puckering his forehead.
I let my deep introversion about fate and the stars slip from my mind and rolled my eyes at him. “I’m sorry, Padilla. But that’s the way life goes sometimes.” We sat in silence for a moment, both of us lost in thought. A sudden idea sprung to my head and I smiled at the clever thought. “Buuuut, it doesn’t really have to stay that way, I guess.”
He stared at me questioningly and watched as I rose and held out my hand. He took it, still looking at me like he had no idea what was going on. I pulled him up and away from the table and brought him to the middle of the room.
I smiled slightly and brought him closer. I slid my arms up to his forearms and looked into his expressive, brown eyes with all the adoration I could muster. It wasn’t hard, to be honest. I felt a decade of friendship, memories, secrets, hard work, and laughter all wash through my mind. As clichéd as it sounded, Anthony had been with me through thick and thin. He was loyal, kind, intelligent, inspiring, determined and beautiful through and through. I loved him. Always had, always will. I felt tears prick at the corner of my eyes. I wish I could tell him everything. I wish he could read my mind.
I suppose actions spoke louder than words. And that was what I had to use. Just like on the very first night back in the LA hotel a little more than a week ago. When he uttered those beautiful words about liking me more than a friend should. Instead of explaining, I took action. It was reassuring that whenever words failed me, I could always do that.
I pulled Anthony closer, rubbing our noses together and letting him feel the smile that grew on my lips.
“Action” I whispered. And with that, I pulled him toward me to meet our lips together. I reveled in the taste of him, the feel of his perfect mouth, an sweet envelopment of delicious warmth. Would I ever get tired of sharing in this intimacy with Anthony? I don't think so. We could be together for an eternity and I would never get tired of it. Anthony got the just of my idea, this was making up for the lost movie scene that we would never do. But we ended up going way past 6 seconds.
And hell, maybe it ended up going past just kissing too. Maybe we ended up taking it the next step further, right there on the carpeted floor. That's something that definitely would have never been included in that movie. But I could care less that this wasn't like the movie kiss. Just like I could care less that we weren't going to have enough footage for our interrupted Lunchtime with Smosh episode. And I didn't care that the next level relationship with Anthony probably wasn’t going to be particularly easy. I didn't care that the future was unsure and fuzzy.
All that mattered was here, now, and Anthony. All that mattered was showing him my love, since I wasn’t exactly ready to voice it quite yet.
However, I could have sworn that I heard a whispered ‘I love you’ in the throws of our heated passion, from which mouth it came from: I couldn’t tell you. Hell, it’s possible that I imagined it.
But no matter.
We would say it to each other one day.
Nothing could stop it.
A/N Wow guys. It's done (except for the whole hotel night thing that I'll write later on ;P). I'm a little emotional. I mean, this was my first chaptered story! Y'all have been so kind and supportive, I thank you all soooo much. Tell me how you liked this and the entire story as a whole. Did you like this ending? I'm not entirely confident in it. I feel like it was a little anti-climactic because it seemed like it was building to the kissing thing. Would you guys like an alternate ending where they DO the scene? That might be interesting. Idk. Hope you guys liked it, tell me if you didn't (or did, haha).
“This again, Ian? I’m not your girlfriend” He smiled and the sight was adorable with his cheeks puffed up at his gigantic intake of food.
I put down the camera and reached across the table to grab his hand. “Yeah, but you’re my boyfriend now and that’s a million times better.” I took in the sight of our hands clasped on the smooth, black surface of our table. I glanced into his smiling face, eyes shining with happiness.
This thought had come to me hundreds of times throughout this last week, but I was still taken aback with everything that had changed in such a short period of time.
It seemed like I left the house straight and arrived back gay. Was that even possible? Or maybe not as drastic as gay, but just fallen in love with Anthony in that short time. But, was THAT even possible? I can’t remember feeling anything homosexual for the man before LA, but I could be wrong. I had always found him sorta kinda maybe attractive. I always loved his laugh. I always loved being around him, working with him, joking with him, touching him. Innocent touches, but the need for connection had still been there. OK, maybe had just been blind.
There really was no use analyzing it anymore. Maybe it had all happened fast, or maybe it had been building up all throughout the course of our friendship; maybe I only noticed my love when we were put in the movie situation. That when the prospect of kissing Anthony came up, I realized that I wouldn’t really mind that. Actually, I was really curious what it would be like. I wanted to. I had to. When I finally did kiss him, it all snapped in place. I loved Anthony, man or not, and we were meant to be together.
It was simply luck that he felt the same way.
And then that movie role. God. Don’t get me started. I recall with fondness tearing Samuel a new asshole. Anthony and I liked to rehash my bad ass moment again and again.
After my refusal to sign the contract, Anthony had looked at me like I had seven heads and he even voiced his confusion. But I was intent on Sam, I silenced Anthony and narrowed my eyes at the filthy bastard before me.
“What this about ‘relinquishing our rights to Smosh’, Sam? Were you planning on telling us this little detail?”
Anthony gasped audibly and he scrambled to grab the papers off the desk and read what I was talking about.
Sam didn’t say a word. But he had looked like he was gonna piss himself.
“On second thought, I think we’re actually going to have to pass on this offer. Such a pity too, because it was the perfect opportunity.”
I rose and motioned Anthony up with a jerk of my head. He obliged. I was still staring at Sam, hoping my face was mean and scary enough to keep the asshole quiet and scared shitless. “Too good to be true, obviously.”
I picked up his contract, tore it in half, and threw the pieces to the table. I made my way to the door, a dumbstruck Anthony following me. I pulled open the door and stuck my foot in. I was going to leave it at that, get the hell out of there before I actually punched Sam in the face. But I felt like he needed something else.
“Oh and Sam.” I almost laughed at the way his head snapped up to meet my glare. He shrunk from it, he seemed to transform into the shape that I knew him better as: a stupid, arrogant, snotty teenager. He was a kid in an over-sized suit coat.
“You don’t fuck with Smosh. You can fuck with us, we can handle it. We’re grown men and can deal.” I faced him completely and tried to give him the nastiest, most disgusted face I could pull. Gone was my usually easygoing attitude. Gone was any semblance of happy or merciful. I was downright seething. “But you keep your goddamn hands off our baby or there will be hell to pay.”
With that, Anthony and I walked out the door. Closed that chapter of our lives.
Or maybe not, because we were still deciding if we wanted to take legal action against the douchnozzle fucktard asshole-licker. Anthony took his contract, a smart move as now we had evidence that he was trying to trick us.
I still can’t believe Sam did that. Who does that? He obviously felt stronger about having a share of Smosh than we previously thought. He joked about it in our first meeting, All Anthony and I could come up with was that he was jelly of our success and regretted the day that he stopped contributing in the Smosh website. His fault, not ours. He was the one who didn’t want to make videos. He was the one who “grew up” and decided that Smosh was immature and worthless.
Yeah right. He was as far from “grown up” as possible.
Stupid fucker.
But Anthony and I would take care of him. One way or another. I didn’t make threats that I didn’t keep. I just hoped for Sam’s sake that I never actually see his face again.
I realized that my food was still in front of me, uneaten, growing colder by the second. Anthony’s fingers were no longer weaved between my own and his burger was almost completely gone. I shook my head a little and grabbed at my own lukewarm teriyaki burger.
“What’s up, man? You ok?” Anthony’s head was slightly cocked and his warm, brown eyes stared at me with a comforting mix of worry and reassurance.
“Oh nothing. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Shit.”
“Well, that’s gross. I was hoping it would be something more profound and a little less…disgusting.” He smirked and I wanted to wipe it right off his pretty face.
“Oh shut up. I was just thinking about our whole trippy LA extravaganza.”
“Oh.” He nodded thoughtfully and his fingers absentmindedly gathered and dropped some lettuce that had escaped from his burger and fallen to his plate. He licked his lips.
“That whole week was just…odd.” He met my gaze…timidly? “If I could go back and tell myself before the trip that I would end up…with you” He dropped his head to stare at his plate. I observed the tips of his ears turning red and smiled a little at the prospect. It wasn’t easy to talk about these weird new feelings. Lust was easier to comprehend and…erm act upon. But admitting that you liked the feel of being wrapped in your best friend’s arms? Or being with them? Or loving them? Uncharted territory. Scary. The fear of rejection was there, yes. But at the same time, it just wasn’t masculine. Dudes didn’t admit that shit.
“I definitely wouldn’t have believed it.” Anthony finished his thought but refused to look at me. It was as close to a ‘I fell in love with you’ as I was going to get.
“Me too, Ant. Something about the trip. I guess I just realized a few things about you that I didn’t think about before.”
He nodded. I could almost laugh at how bad we were just beating around the bush. Oh well. Our emotions would come out in the open sooner or later, we just had to give it time.
“You know what sucks, though?” Anthony’s face had taken on a look of incredulity, his eyebrows were knit together and his nose scrunched. I was curious beyond belief.
“What?”
“Ever since we got that email about the acting role, our life revolved around it. We planned that whole trip mostly so we could act in that goddamned movie. And then when we found out that we’d be…uh kissing, we were indecisive and stressed. And then we decided to do it and we couldn’t wait, in fact we ended up practicing on our own. Ian, we ended up doing it in the hotel bed.”
Me cheeks burned at the mention of that night. Not that we hadn’t done more upon our arrival home, it was just that we didn’t often speak of it yet. “Yeah, what’s your point?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“All of that happened because of the tiny prospect of us kissing on a low budget movie set. Our life was completely changed because of it. And we never actually got to do it. It was a hoax, a lie, a ploy. It changed so much crap and it never really happened.”
I started at his revelation. It was kinda weird, wasn’t it? Something so tiny, something that never really ended up happening, had such a huge impact on us? It made me wonder if it was just fate. I mean, I’m not a superstitious or religious guy. But something made me think that Anthony and I were just meant to be, and nothing could have stopped us ending up together. I wish I could tell Anthony my ideas. I’m not sure I could ever put them into words.
“Yeah, it’s weird.”
“No, it sucks.” He whined, jutting out his lower lip and puckering his forehead.
I let my deep introversion about fate and the stars slip from my mind and rolled my eyes at him. “I’m sorry, Padilla. But that’s the way life goes sometimes.” We sat in silence for a moment, both of us lost in thought. A sudden idea sprung to my head and I smiled at the clever thought. “Buuuut, it doesn’t really have to stay that way, I guess.”
He stared at me questioningly and watched as I rose and held out my hand. He took it, still looking at me like he had no idea what was going on. I pulled him up and away from the table and brought him to the middle of the room.
I smiled slightly and brought him closer. I slid my arms up to his forearms and looked into his expressive, brown eyes with all the adoration I could muster. It wasn’t hard, to be honest. I felt a decade of friendship, memories, secrets, hard work, and laughter all wash through my mind. As clichéd as it sounded, Anthony had been with me through thick and thin. He was loyal, kind, intelligent, inspiring, determined and beautiful through and through. I loved him. Always had, always will. I felt tears prick at the corner of my eyes. I wish I could tell him everything. I wish he could read my mind.
I suppose actions spoke louder than words. And that was what I had to use. Just like on the very first night back in the LA hotel a little more than a week ago. When he uttered those beautiful words about liking me more than a friend should. Instead of explaining, I took action. It was reassuring that whenever words failed me, I could always do that.
I pulled Anthony closer, rubbing our noses together and letting him feel the smile that grew on my lips.
“Action” I whispered. And with that, I pulled him toward me to meet our lips together. I reveled in the taste of him, the feel of his perfect mouth, an sweet envelopment of delicious warmth. Would I ever get tired of sharing in this intimacy with Anthony? I don't think so. We could be together for an eternity and I would never get tired of it. Anthony got the just of my idea, this was making up for the lost movie scene that we would never do. But we ended up going way past 6 seconds.
And hell, maybe it ended up going past just kissing too. Maybe we ended up taking it the next step further, right there on the carpeted floor. That's something that definitely would have never been included in that movie. But I could care less that this wasn't like the movie kiss. Just like I could care less that we weren't going to have enough footage for our interrupted Lunchtime with Smosh episode. And I didn't care that the next level relationship with Anthony probably wasn’t going to be particularly easy. I didn't care that the future was unsure and fuzzy.
All that mattered was here, now, and Anthony. All that mattered was showing him my love, since I wasn’t exactly ready to voice it quite yet.
However, I could have sworn that I heard a whispered ‘I love you’ in the throws of our heated passion, from which mouth it came from: I couldn’t tell you. Hell, it’s possible that I imagined it.
But no matter.
We would say it to each other one day.
Nothing could stop it.
A/N Wow guys. It's done (except for the whole hotel night thing that I'll write later on ;P). I'm a little emotional. I mean, this was my first chaptered story! Y'all have been so kind and supportive, I thank you all soooo much. Tell me how you liked this and the entire story as a whole. Did you like this ending? I'm not entirely confident in it. I feel like it was a little anti-climactic because it seemed like it was building to the kissing thing. Would you guys like an alternate ending where they DO the scene? That might be interesting. Idk. Hope you guys liked it, tell me if you didn't (or did, haha).