Happy Birthday To You~ (PointCrow x SmallAnt)

Happy Birthday To You~

Eric's birthday was coming up and, surprisingly, Tanner was invited.

He hadn't expected it at all to be fair. He knew that they had apologized and made up, but it was still taking him some time to get used to the fact that they were actually friends again. After all, he had spent over a year trying to make peace with having lost Eric forever to his own stupid antics.

But the surprise was definitely a welcome one.

However, he had absolutely no idea what exactly to do here. I mean, he had to travel all the way down to the US, get accommodations, and most importantly, a gift for Eric.

He was definitely going to buy him something, but that felt lacklustre. He was more of a gesture kind of guy, especially if the recipient gets a kick out of it. And Eric deserved more than something materialistic. Also, he didn't want to just give him something, it felt so empty, devoid of meaning, he wanted to do something more meaningful than simply buying a present. And Tanner also wanted to show him how much he meant (only as a friend of course).

So he opened his browser and started looking for ideas of what he could do. Until he followed a link in a random post that opened up a YouTube video.

It was the famous version of Happy Birthday from Marilyn Monroe.

And that gives him an idea. It would really be fitting to the whole theme, and Eric and the rest of the crowd would probably find it very funny to get a whole performance of Tanner embarrassing himself trying to imitate Marilyn's seductive tone.

Yes, that was it. There was no undertone to it, nothing weird about the fact that he had to pick this particular version of the song over any other. Tanner was definitely not trying to unhealthily cope with humour about his unrequited love.

Because yes, he kind of liked Eric a bit (much). Hell, he had publicly teared up over their fight, over losing him.

But that was long ago. Now they're friends again and that is way better in every way because he gets to have Eric in his life. And he'll take whatever he can get. Because since he had been given another chance, he couldn't afford to fuck up their friendship again. So he had planned to use it to be part of Eric's life as much as possible, and for Eric to be part of his own too, of course.

God, he was hopeless, wasn't he? Pining after his friend like a sad lonely loser.

"No, stop", he said while smacking himself in the face. He needs to stop thinking about it because otherwise, it would consume him. Again.

Instead, he focused on studying Marilyn Monroe's mannerisms and tone. He still had quite some time for that, since Eric's birthday was a few weeks away, but he wanted to be ready because he really needed to nail the delivery. It was quite the song to sing to just a friend after all.

God, he hopes the joke will land and not make things awfully awkward. Tanner would literally die of embarrassment if he ruined the ambience at Eric's birthday.

Hopefully, everything will go well.

* * *

Abby was still finishing setting up the table as Eric started to greet the first guests.

They hadn't really planned much at all, only getting the minimum you expect at a birthday party. A cake, a "happy birthday" banner, some colourful paper plates (because Eric refuses to do the dishes on his birthday) and those stupid cone hats that they still couldn't understand why they were so popular. Oh, and, of course, Abby also planned some activities to do before cutting the cake and opening gifts. Eric had no idea what those were because she had insisted that it should be a surprise.