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Chapter 23: In which Ian is a life-saver

VidCon was everything and nothing like last year. Anthony felt the same excitement buzzing through his veins as last year, moving along, flooding in the same direction as thousands of other people did. He felt the same kind of strange connection he always sensed at this place. He felt connected to a group of girls wearing Tobuscus T-shirts and to the guy wearing a bacon strip costume, taking pictures with mere strangers around him.

Already in this exciting and strange surrounding he felt strangely familiar. It had been the same thing over the last few years they had been visiting.

But at the same time, he felt more on edge, highly aware of any touch, any contact created. He could practically feel the stares they received and he cursed himself for questioning them. Everyone he looked at he felt would as soon as he had moved on several lengths of jostling people start talking about them behind their backs. Everything had a new kind of sharpness to it, the voices of people had become louder and the lightnings of uncountable camera flashes harsher.

The only constant was Ian moving next to him and it felt oddly comforting to have someone moving the same way, quiet and taking in the exact same impressions.

The sky was surprisingly cloudy for L.A. and Anthony hoped it wasn't a bad omen for later. He knew this mixture of excitement and anticipation building slowly and steadily up, but this year there was a shot of panic in there was well.

He recalled what had happened yesterday evening, when they had been high on the delight of seeing their friends and slightly drunk on the drinks catered by several waiters moving through the crowds.

They had been picked up at their room by Harley and his crew and Ian had skilfully closed the door so that they didn't see there was only one bed in their room. The whole party room had been drenched in shaky purple and yellow light and the bass was thumping through everyone's ribcages.

There were so many people that dancing had become a mass movement, like they were performing a flash mob in which one had to fit their body into the only free places left. It had been a jigsaw of moving bodies. Anthony's eyes had immediately darted to Ian who again had started a conversation with Zoella. Anthony remembered how his gut had dropped several inches.

He cringed when he remembered how his drunk self had slung an arm around Ian's shoulder, marking territory that didn't belong to him. Fortunately, Zoella had been asked by Markus Butler to dance with him and so it hadn't appeared strange to her. His arm had rested where he had put it and Ian had not complained.

Anthony smiled when he ducked out of the way of a photo being taken. He remembered how it had felt so amazing to let his weight rest at least to a certain point on Ian, to rely on him to hold him. They had drunkenly swayed while several co YouTubers came to talk to them or to drink to something with them.

#

They were heading for their own table in the North Block of the Centre where they would sign autographs for their fans.

Anthony could already see them queuing for meters on end and in Anthony's head he suddenly realized once again that the numbers shooting up next to a newly posted video did not represent statistics, not how much money they earned, but actual people watching their videos, maybe even enjoying themselves. Anthony tried to realize that each of these people were not just happening to walk into meeting them, like you stumbled upon a YouTube video, but had been waiting here for hours. It made his insides wiggle around.

Him and Ian quickly entranced through an "Only Staff Permitted" door and made their way onto the little space that would be theirs for the next few hours. On a sign, the first people came up to them.

Lots of people in Smosh shirts, wearing The Neighbour Bracelets or Awesome Shorts, lanky teenage boys with braces that reminded Anthony a bit of Ian and himself, shy girls and the odd grown up came forward and they signed a shirt or an arm or a hat or whatever their fans had brought along.

There were large groups of friends laughing and Anthony felt a twist of jealousy; he would have wished to have that kind of social group in high school, it had always just been their odd group of outcasts. His mom would have never allowed him to go to LA alone with them anyway.

Anthony felt an even stronger pang in his heart when a girl with a Canon Penis Shirt showed them a small Smosh symbol tattooed on her wrist and asked whether she could make a photo with them.

"Sure you aren't regretting that?" Ian asked her, cautiously touching the ink with his index finger, as if he were afraid it would smudge under his fingertips.

"Oh, I don't" she replied "it's my lucky charm."

Anthony quietly thanked her when he gave her back her camera.

There were a few people who asked them about Ianthony, and Anthony knew he could have never avoided this, but nevertheless his pulse raised to its double rate every time someone asked them, honest curiosity in their faces, what to make of the video. They would joke, never giving a clear answer, exaggeratingly calling each other pet names and Anthony knew that he would never call Ian Boobear or Honey or Sugar or Angel or whatever he had sometimes called Kalel, but that he would stick to his name. It already gave away more of his feelings than he had ever intended to.

Fans came and they went and it was incredibly exciting to see them and some of them were nervously giggling when they asked for an autograph and some of them looked completely stricken.

"Sorry" a young man said "it's just like I always see you on my computer so it's weird to see you not in a YouTube video. Also, my computer is quite shit and it's nice to see that you aren't lagging in real life. Sorry, I'm rambling." He looked down on his hands, nervously playing with his fingers.

"I think I know what you mean" Ian said and punctuated his words with a large smiley face next to his name, "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw NigaHiga in real life for the first time, it was really weird." The guy blushed and smiled at his freshly signed mobile phone case. "Thanks Ian."

He gave him a smile and Anthony hated himself for feeling a punch of jealousy although that guy had been super nice. He cleared his throat: "We have to thank you."

Time flew and their time was up after what had only felt like half of an hour, but when Anthony got up from his chair he did feel a bit cramped. With a sudden wave of realization he saw that their live performance would be in less than three hours.

Ian cracked his back: "Let's grab something to eat and then head back to the hotel, shall we?"

#

Anthony felt like having a heart attack. They were different from the ones he had when Ian looked at him, because that was something dangerously similar to love and that always hurt alongside all the pleasure. No, these were the kind of attacks he had had long before Ian had become to be more than a friend. Even before Ian had become any kind of friend.

These were the attacks that made his ears ring, like a broken alarm clock, his fingers clam and his calves tense. His muscles did not obey him, especially not the big one in his chest. He was sitting in the backstage area. And by the phrase backstage he actually meant back behind the stage. He could here see the innards of the hall, wires and scaffolds, boxes and lost microphones.

Ian had gone to the bathroom, for the probably twelfth time and there were several technicians and other people. They were the blood cells, Anthony thought, moving around in the bowel and keeping the whole thing going. He was dysfunctional in this place, like a cell moving in the wrong body part. And while blood cells usually transported oxygen, he on the other hand was lacking it severely.

I can't do it.

He had sat down on one of the boxes standing around and had given up on doing anything useful. He knew that when he had one of these panic attacks it was the best to shut himself out of whatever was happening around him. The problem was that, losing contact to the rest of the world was highly impractical when you were supposed to do a comedy act on a stage surrounded by thousands of people.

He was threading his numb fingers in his lap, kneading them while his head gunned him down with several pictures of how he would mess up, like forgetting his lines, like throwing up, like accidentally letting slip that the video hoax on their channel had given his heart a hundred-eighty-turn. His throat was dry, his knees trembling and his feet feeling as if they were losing contact to the ground beneath them. He was angry at himself. How did he manage to mess this up as well? He knew that something would happen, something incredibly bad and that it was his fault.

I can't.

His eyes, in contrary to his mouth, were damp and he felt how hard his hand shook when he wiped away a stray teardrop spilling over the brim of his self control.

And then Ian came back, moving quieter than usual, as if he was afraid someone out there could hear his footsteps over the noise the crowd made. He leaned against the wall made out of stacked cartons next to Anthony and said: "They said seven minutes to go."

Anthony didn't react because he felt that if he would, the whole cask holding his composure that was already leaking would drop and create a thunderstorm of feelings flooding Ian. He hoped he would just let him be.

But obviously, he didn't.

"Hey, everything alright?" Ian glanced down at him, but Anthony ground his teeth together, stubborn to not let him see the mess inside.

Probably as a reaction to Anthony's not-reaction, Ian was suddenly crouching before him and testily staring into his eyes. "Anthony?" Anthony looked down at his hands that were shaking even worse than before.

"Shit" Ian swore "you are having one of them."

Both of them knew what he was referring to.

Anthony's lip trembled slightly, another small stream managed to escape his eyes, a fresh spring making its way down a rocky slope.

He felt sorry for burdening this on Ian, he knew that his best friend had nerve problems before their stage performances as well, knew that Ian hated emotional confrontations like this.

But he couldn't help it.

Ian slowly started rubbing circles on Anthony's forearms, sometimes grazing his hand, making Anthony's index finger twitch slightly.

He still could not bear to look into Ian's face, instead watching Ian's arms move around Anthony's.

"Anthony, you can do it."

I can't.

"Remember all the other years? I nearly pissed myself beforehand, and it always worked out just fine."

But it's not this year.

"The people here, they aren't the people who call us names, they support us no matter what. And even if they aren't, then screw them."

Ian's hand lay on Anthony's shoulder and it was warm and sticky and reminded Anthony of the night he fell for his best friend.

"They aren't even worth thinking about, you hear me? They've got nothing on us."

And Ian suddenly smiled as if he remembered something.

"No-no-nothing on us, babe."

And when Anthony looked up, he returned Ian's smile, shakily and teary, a rocky slope drenched in morning dew.

"Did you just call me babe?"

"Maybe."

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Did you recognize the end from somewhere? ;)

See you next time :)

Love you, Lucy