The Deep End

As a matter of fact Alan did go round Austin's house the following week; despite his doubts that it was just friendly conversation to fill up the silence and to keep the intense stares at bay.

"Hey, Alan." Austin called from the kitchen. He wondered around in pursuit of said kitchen. Finally arriving in the doorway, he looked around at the ingrediants all placed neatly on the counter top.

"So, Oreos or unicorns?" Alan asked.
"Both?"
"Both."

They just about managed to make the cake mix without severing limbs or putting each other in concussions. Maybe running around trying to smear cake mix on each other's faces hadn't been the best idea.

It was all in the oven, and they were placing the icing sugar in a bowl when the telephone rang. Austin excused himself, and promptly scurried off into some unknown part of the house. Alan estimated the amount of icing sugar they would need and tried to busy himself with making icing.

After a few minutes the icing looked done; so Alan wandered around seeking out Austin for his verdict. He was in a hall way leading to god knows where, and he heard a faint voice from the room to his right.

"No, Mum I ha- Yes, yes I know I hurt her, and I am sorry but I couldn't live like tha- Of course I miss you. I am sorry but just let me get my shit together okay? Then we'll go from there. Okay, bye Mum, I love you too."

A bang sounded as if a body had hit the floor. Alan hunted for the door, and when he finally got to it, it was flung open, revealing a saddened Austin with red circling his eyes.

"Um...Are you okay?"
"Not really, but I don't really want to talk about it."
"Okay then... Well the icing seems done?"
"Okay."

They continued, and due to the efforts of both, the comfortable atmosphere had returned.

They stood for a few passing moments of silence to admire their work. Admittedly, the unicorns cakes hadn't turned out as well as he Oreo ones; neither of them were artists capable of masterpieces so they were sure it didn't entirely matter that the unicorn resembled a mutilated rhino.

"Damn, we did well."
"Yup." Then they both plucked a random cake of the top and began to eat them.

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"I should probably be getting home." Alan hadn't exactly emphasised the severity of the problem as he had a biology test the following day and had attempted not a single minute of revision. It was nearly 7 o'clock, he hadn't had dinner and hadn't done his homework.

"Yeah, sure, you can take some cakes if you want?" Austin sat up from where they were lounging on a sofa together, huddled to stop Alan from falling off the side.

"Nah, it's okay." Alan was rolled off the side of the sofa by Austin, and landed heavily. He whined. Austin just mockingly rolled his eyes.

Alan walked out to the hall, pulling his shoes on his feet. Calling "Bye Austin!" over his shoulder, he made for the door.

"Wait, Alan!" Turning round at the noise, his heart near gave out because Austin was so close to him. In his hand he gripped a slip of paper. "Here, then maybe we could talk a bit more?" Austin asked, his eyes burning with anxious hope. It was his number.

His. fucking. number.

"Sure, yeah, of course we can." Alan beamed up at him and accepted the piece of paper, subtly checking it had the correct number of digits.

Alan threw his arms around him in a surprise hug. To his relief Austin hugged him back. Embarrassment still cast redness on his cheeks; he hoped he didn't think he was some weirdly attached kid.

They awkwardly abandoned the hug, with Austin clinging on too long but Alan found the red that painted his cheeks rather endearing.

"Bye, then."
"Bye."

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Dark was filtering into the blue of the sky and before long it was an empty shade of dark blue. Alan completed his homework with minimal effort; it was difficult to concentrate when he had Austin's number laying on the desk next to his German text book. Still, it was done, and he had successfully not thought of Austin in eight minut- fuck he did it again.

He had eaten with his dinner perched on his lap, as he hurriedly shovelled pasta into his mouth while he wrote some bullshit sentence that he knew didn't make any sense whatsoever.

It was all done and he was left sitting there tapping in Austin's number into his phone, and sending a message to confirm that it wasn't some dodgy number, and Austin hadn't secretly ran away to France and changed his name to 'Jean-Paul hon hon hon baguette eiffel tower' or some shit to escape the clasp of the clinging kid that lived on his street.

"Hey, this is Alan." He texted. Not five minutes later he received one that read:
"Hey, Ashby, nice to see you successfully could use a piece of technology without hurting yourself :D"
"Just because I didn't have the ability to work your DVD player doesn't mean I am useless with every other since piece of technology."
"You nearly had sparks flying out of it."
"It is a talent of mine :3 I'm gonna go to bed now bye see you around Aust c:" Alan typed the affectionate nickname without realising and only when he was too late did he notice.

Luckily Austin didn't think anything badly of it and replied:

"Bye then, sweet dreams ginger c:"

Content with his achievement of gaining Austin's number, he settled into bed and soon enough he was sleeping.