THE day had been long and Austin's heart was heavy with love. Despite the weight it was carrying, it felt light and airy in his chest, yet somehow still not as light and airy as the fluttering of wings in his stomach, swarms of butterflies erupting wildly whenever he noticed Tanner trying to catch his eye.
It was cute the way he did it, really. Whenever he finished up a preoccupying task or snapped himself out of a distracted gaze, he would immediately crane his neck and search around for Austin, his eyes dancing curiously and darting eagerly around the parlour. Until their eyes met, the ever so slightly distressed expression remained painted in furrowed brows and a tighten in his full, flowery, pink lips.
"What are you doing after work?" Tanner asked, slipping down at the table in the corner of the parlour where Austin had been staring out of the window. Their limited amount of working coworkers swiftly served the customers who were decreasing more as the minutes passed and the evening drew to a close.
Austin shrugged and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, "Going home. Sleeping."
The way Tanner was looking at him when he refocused his gaze made his heart stop still in his chest; the love pouring from his blue, blue eyes was so pure, the devotion so angelic, the adoration so dear. In those frustratingly fleeting and premature (no matter how long they actually lasted) moments, his heart swelled right into his throat.
"What are you doing after work?" He forced himself to ask.
Almost shyly, Tanner glanced down at the table and shrugged. He did this sometimes as the day stretched on; sometimes the night brought him even more alive then he probably already had been, but on occasion he'd been known to subdue to the languid lullaby of nightfall and this made him more bashful than he usually was. When these lazy nights passed over them, it was only natural that some of his bright assurance faded with the setting of the sun.
"I don't know," Tanner said softly. Suddenly, his eyes found Austin again and his tone shifted. "Am I meeting your mom soon?"
The silver blinking of the stars, proud and wise over the beach, shifted into sharp beams of blue when Austin snapped his gaze quickly towards Tanner. Obviously, he'd been caught off guard and with the the immediate panic adorning his face, he doubted there was anything he could've said to prove otherwise. Not that it mattered; there was nothing else to prove anyway.
"What?" Was all he could croak out.
With the smile playing on his lips, Austin half-expected a pair of white, fluffy wings to grow out of Tanner's back. "No rush," he insisted, fiddling with Austin's fingers, inspecting the ways that they moved and tracing his own fingers over the flexing tendons, the carved knuckles, the flower stem veins and the rosebud fingertips. "I was just thinking out loud, I guess. I don't wanna weird you out or anything."
He shook his head hastily. "You haven't," he said, pausing a moment before he continued: "You should meet her soon."
Honestly, he hadn't really seen this coming. It had been the furthest thing from his mind. In fact, in his mind, Tanner and his mom weren't even on the same plane of existence. No matter how hard he tried, he could never quite clearly envision them in the same room or having a discussion or laughing together. He loved his mom, but she was a little difficult to get along with sometimes— even if you knew her better than anyone in the world— and he didn't know how well she would take to Tanner's gentle, jovial nature.
It wasn't often that he imagined Tanner meeting his family, but when he did his mind always wandered back to what pictures Tanner may have already about his mom and his sister. There was no secret about him not having a father figure, but his relationship with his mom being more of a touchy subject was something that he knew Tanner could painfully sense. It was one of those unspoken truths that never really needs to be overtly addressed to be understood as complex and. . . Different, he supposed.
Still, some part of him must have expected that Tanner was to meet her at one point. He'd met Tanner's family, after all, and not just met them but dined with them, watched movies with them, played board games with them, enjoyed family gossip and friendly chatter with them.
But in the same breath, Austin was pretty sure they weren't official. There hadn't been any questions asked about it and they hadn't even openly brought it up so there was no way he was going to assume they were together.
Besides, it didn't matter if they went on dates and spent time with each other's friends and kissed each other and did things that were a little more. . . Private with (and to) each other. None of that meant that they were together and, just like that, Austin was concerned with a new burden on his shoulders, a new weight in his chest.
What if Tanner never wanted a relationship out of this? What if there were sub-textual clues that Austin should've been picking up on that would've told him this was nothing more than a summer fling? How could he be sure he wasn't just someone Tanner was using to keep himself entertained, who he would promptly forget about or distance himself from as soon as school started up again?
They had been sat in a comfortable silence since there had failed to be any response to Austin's hurried remark about them meeting. He figured that Tanner probably picked up on some kind of incidental discomfort at the mention of his mom and had most likely decided that adding onto what had already been said would only increase the risk of further discomfort.
So there they sat. Tanner was gazing at the sky and Austin was gazing at Tanner. As Lickety Split had emptied out, their coworkers (who they owed their lives to for all the fooling around they got up to) let them be, not bothering to interrupt their shared silence.
Truthfully, Austin had no idea what Tanner's intentions actually were when he thought about it. He'd been so caught up in the fun they were having that he hadn't really stopped to consider what happened if— or when— it ended. Who could blame him? Whatever they had was swift and sweet and uncontrollable, and if you paused to think for even a second before grabbing something like that then it could slip right through your fingers. When an opportunity like that comes around, you seize it and you love it and you hold it close to your chest and you feel it in-between your hands.
Maybe if he was a little braver then he would've broken the silence. Maybe he would've asked what the point of this was, but he didn't feel like he wanted to be brave tonight. Tonight, he wanted to be quiet and he wanted to do nothing more than enjoy the fact that there was a beautiful boy in front of him who had the world in a pair of hands that he was holding out just for Austin.
NOTE
A chapter that was maybe a little more reflective than usual, but I hope you enjoyed reading nonetheless. Only one more chapter left after this! As always, thank you for reading and I hope you tag along for the posting of the final chapter :')
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Sunday. 29. August. 2021.
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Sun Kissed ✓
Short Story[BXB] Two boys, an ice cream store and a summer to fall in love. ✩✩✩ Outgoing Tanner makes it a mission to befriend his reserved coworker Austin over the course of the summer and turns out to be more successful than he ever could've hoped. [ July...
