Firsts

First Fight

Anthony sits on the couch, chin in hand, foot jittering on his knee as he subconciously counts each and every mili second that he waits. It's times like this that he misses Kabuki. That sweet little jungle cat had a habit of crawling into the attractive boy's lap every time he was irritated and the purring ball of fur seemed to ease any annoyance. However, Kabuki is not here. Kabuki is with Kristin probably in her lap as she scrolls down tumblr, looking at makeup and pretty clothes on slim, beautiful girls, girls like her, girls like Melanie.

The door opens and Ian comes striding in with a stupid grin on his face but Anthony only notes this through the corner of his eye. He won't give the other boy the satisfaction of knowing that he was waiting for him. Instead, Anthony directs his glare at the television as Face Off contestants valiantally (and some not vallianty) stand beside their made up monsters. It's an old season, stashed away on Netflix but Anthony doesn't mind, he'd never seen it before anyway.

"Oh hey, that's cool," Ian says as he casually sits next to Anthony, "They made that?"

"Yeah, it's a competition for like movie makeup artists," the annoyed boy answers flatly.

He keeps waiting, his irritation turning to anger. He's waiting for his dimwitted friend to notice that something's wrong but instead the clueless boyfriend keeps staring at the screen, mesmerized by the work of the competitors.

"These are really cool," Ian says, "Is this the finale or something?"

"Finale's the next episode."

"Oh," there's an awkward pause, the one Anthony's been waiting for that signals that Ian's finally clued into the situation, "....you have yourself a little marathon?"

"Yup."

"That's cool...you do anything else today?"

"Nope."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

The television is suddenly overbearing and Anthony can swear he hears the static hum of it. It's not voices and dramatic music anymore but the sound of technological nails clawing down a chalkboard made of white noise. He could just reach over and slap Ian, slap him right across his grinning, stupid face.

"Is something wrong?" Ian asks quietly.

"Where were you today?" Anthony asks a bit too curtly.

"I- I told you I was having lunch with someone."

He avoids saying her name and that just makes Anthony angrier. Like she's some kind of special taboo subject or something. Like he doesn't know who she fucking is. Like he can hide her. And the fact that Anthony thinks that makes him feel creepy and in turn he's just angrier for it.

"Yeah, I remember that," Anthony answers, "but since when does lunch go past ten o'clock at night?"

Ian lets out a spiteful breath, sort of sigh that had a word in it that got swallowed instead.

"You're really doing this?" Ian asks.

"Doing what? Being pissed at you? Yeah. I am."

Ian gets up from the couch and suddenly Anthony wants to take it back but he can't. He'd been waiting, sitting there in a pool of his own sweat for nine hours. By the time it hit five in the evening, Anthony was worried. He paced the floor, sending playful, casual texts to try and get some informtation. When it hit seven, he'd more or less curled into a ball and told himself not to worry. For the past two hours he'd just sat there, slowly steaming and now that Ian is here in the flesh and smiling no less it's just too late to take it back.