ChyanFic: Welcome to the Danforth family
Okay, I knew that Chad wasn’t the most punctual guy in the world but being late for more than an hour was weird, even for him. We didn’t have special plans for our date, so the time we’d meet didn’t really matter. We’d wanted to just hang out and… you know, do stuff you do in the backseat of a car with your sex-hungry but still extremely closeted boyfriend.
I was really looking forward to our date and when Chad didn’t show up at our meeting place and his cell was disconnected (I tried five times) I got worried and finally made my way over to his house.
So, yes… I always worry too much, I know that. But… what can I say, that’s just me.
So I arrived at Chad’s house (I’d never been there before but the small nameplate above the bell said: “Home of George, Alyssa, Chad, Miles and Linus Danforth”, so I guessed I was at the right place) and rang the bell.
There was tremendous noise coming from the inside; music mixed with swearing and some rattling and scratching that sounded like heavy furniture was being moved around. I thought no one had heard me ringing but eventually the noise broke off and then the door was opened. Chad stood before me looking ready to tear my head off.
“What?” he barked before he’d even looked at me.
“Hey,” I greeted him, “I thought we had a date?”
“Ryan, it’s you!” my boyfriend jumped and his face broke into a grin, “Thank God you’re here! Come on in!”
He stepped aside to let me pass and I took a quick look around what was obviously the living room. Though I had been right earlier, there had obviously been some furniture-moving involved.
The couch was positioned in a weird angle at one side of the room (and that was definitely the wrong place for it) and the TV table was turned around with the screen towards a wall. Several blankets were spread out over the most unusual spots, such as on the floor or hanging from a coffee table and even covering a lamp. And there were cushions everywhere.
It was definitely not your everyday interior decoration.
Chad seemed to notice that I was staring at the chaos with a somewhat shocked expression on my face because after closing the front door and then giving me a brief peck on the lips he quickly tried to explain:
“Sorry for the mess, dude. It’s not always like this.”
“Did someone break in here?”
“What? Oh, no!” Chad grinned sheepishly and took my hand to lead me over to a plush looking brown armchair. He pushed me into it and then sat next to me on the armrest, one jeans-clad leg dangling over the side and the other brushing mine in the seat. He leaned back against me and I instinctively put my arm around his shoulder, looking at him from the side and still waiting for an explanation.
When none came I prompted:
“I thought we were gonna meet at the parking space?”
“I know and I’m really sorry but…” Chad looked at me with an apologetic smile on his face, “I couldn’t make it because…well, my mom had to take Miles to the dentist and forced me to look after the other brother-monster.”
I knew that Chad’s two little brother’s were really getting on his nerves every other day but I’d never heard him call them that. Today they must have annoyed him big time.
“Oh,” I replied a little downcast, “okay, but… you should have called.”
“I wanted to, Ryan, really, I did!” he assured me quickly and then looked away embarrassed. “But… I couldn’t! I don’t know where every stupid phone of this house has gone!”
The words ‘stupid phone’ were more shouted than said and Chad threw angry glares around the room all the time.
I turned his chin gently to make him look at me and asked:
“Your phones have gone lost?”
I couldn’t really believe that you could misplace all the phones. Surely, I’d left my cell in odd places, too and then couldn’t find it for days but… every phone? Even the house device? That sounded more than odd to me.
“They haven’t gone lost, Ryan,” Chad replied, “my stupid brother is hiding them!”
Oh, well… that at least explained the chaos around. Chad had probably been searching all over the place for the hiding spot. I imagined him tearing the place apart in a frenzy, crawling around on all-fours with his big beautiful hair falling into his face and getting more and more worked-up, throwing cushions and everything around…
… and I couldn’t help but smile at the mental image. I’m sure he’d been adorable.
Chad had noticed my smile and groused:
“It’s not funny, Ry! You can’t be in a house with a stupid four-year-old and not have a phone around! What if there’d been an emergency?”
That made me smile even wider. Chad was just too cute. He played the cool one all the time but really, deep down inside, he worried about home emergencies and the safety of his brother was the first thing on his mind. He truly cared for his family, and that was…
“You’re really cute, you know that?” I grinned and pulled his face down for a soft kiss.
Chad’s grumbled reply was swallowed by my lips nibbling his’ and when my tongue sneaked into his mouth he returned the kiss with a moan.
Chad slid from the armrest onto my lap, turning his upper body around in the process so that our bodies were pushed together in all the right places, and his hands found their way into my hair while mine wandered up and down his T-shirt-clad back.
My precious pink hat got knocked off during the impromptu make-out session and rolled somewhere behind the armchair but right now I couldn’t care less.
It was always like this. The kisses of my wonderful sweet boyfriend made me forget the world around (even my hats, and that’s saying something!) and reduced me to a right bundle of fluttering nerves and crazy-going hormones. They left me a babbling fool… only without the babbling because… you know… mouth otherwise engaged right now.
And well… talking was much overrated these days anyway.
So… it was really no wonder that I didn’t listen to the sounds around us and I didn’t hear the car that suddenly pulled up the driveway.
But Chad did.
In one stunning movement he stopped kissing me and jumped up from my lap with a look of sheer horror in his eyes.
“Shit! My mom!” he exclaimed and while I was still trying to get my raging hormones under control and my breathing back to a normal and unsuspicious level Chad was already dashing around the room and picking up the spread-around cushions.
I leaped up to help him pull the couch back into its original position near the window and by the time we heard the back door being opened we’d returned the living room to a… well, not exactly neat but clearly to a more tidy place than before.
Okay, I hadn’t known the original organization of the living room and there were still some blankets draped in odd places (and my pink hat was missing, I suddenly noticed) but it seemed as if the room looked okay to Mrs. Danforth because when she entered the next moment with a boy around six or seven following closely she didn’t spare a second glance at the furniture arrangement.
Well, could be because she was looking at me with a curious but friendly smile on her face.
“Hi mom,” Chad greeted her and with a glance in my direction he added, “ugh, mom, this is Ryan. Ryan, my mom.”
I quickly put on my most well-mannered smile (I wasn’t an actor for nothing) and walked over to shake her hand.
“Hello Mrs. Danforth, nice to meet you,” I said politely, “Ryan Evans.”
“Ryan,” she took hold of my hand and squeezed it gently, “nice to meet you, too. Finally,” she emphasized the last word with a glance in her eldest son’s direction and then addressed the boy next to her:
“Miles, sweetie, why don’t you go upstairs already? I’ll be there in a minute to tuck you in.” And watching her son dash up the stairs she added: “And don’t wake up Linus!”
I had walked back over to Chad to say my goodbye’s when his mom suddenly addressed me again.
“So, Ryan…”
She didn’t get further though because the next second something small and red (or was it someone?) came dashing out from under the blanket-covered coffee table and, giggling cutely, rushed over to Mrs. Danforth to hide behind her back.
“Linus?” she crouched down to face the small child (who was clad in some sort of cute red flannel sleeping overall) and asked surprised: “What are you doing here? Chad, why is he not in bed?”
She’d scooped up what apparently was Chad’s baby brother and had turned around to face her eldest son with Linus snuggled up in her arms.
“Mom, I…” Chad stammered and stared at his brother furiously. “You monster, what are you doing out of bed? And where did you put the damn phones?”
“Chad, language!” Mrs. Danforth said sternly and then she put the wriggling child back down to the ground.
With another set of giggles Linus dashed back under the coffee table where he’d been hiding the whole time obviously.
Realizing that the cute Mini-Chad (for he really looked like the spitting image of my boyfriend) had probably witnessed our whole make-out scene from his hiding place I felt my face heat up instantly.
And the shocked look on Chad’s face told me he was clearly having the same revelation.
“Linus, come out of there!”
But Mrs. Danforth wouldn’t have had to call her son back because the tiny boy was already emerging from under the table again.
He came back out pulling a big box after him and I could make out four or five different phones laying neatly next to...
…my precious pink hat!
Before I got the chance to say something the Mini-Chad had grabbed my hat from the box and put it on top of his cute brown locks.
I couldn’t suppress a snort at the sight and it seemed that neither could Mrs. Danforth. Chad was the only one not laughing; his face was still sporting a look of pure embarrassment.
“You look really cute, honey,” Chad’s mom said to her youngest, “but I think you should now return the hat to Ryan.”
The small boy shyly hid behind his mom’s legs and so it was Mrs. Danforth who eventually handed back the beloved headgear to me.
I placed the hat on my blond hair (at the jaunty angle of course), said “Thank you” and turned to Chad to lead me to the door.
Mrs. Danforth was meanwhile carrying Linus up the stairs and was just about to shout a “Goodbye, Ryan” over her shoulder when I heard the small boy in her arms ask:
“Mommy, is Ryan a girl?”
Now that question made me pause in the doorframe and I looked at Chad and then up to his mother who’d stopped ascending the stairs at that.
“Now, why would you think that, sweetie? Of cause Ryan’s a boy just like you and Chad.”
The small boy’s face showed the cutest expression of deep thinking I’d ever seen but I knew right away that whatever would come out of his mouth next, it would leave me and Chad in the biggest of troubles.
“But boys only kiss girls, right? Timmy Summers told me that boys and girls kiss when they like each other. He didn’t say anything about boys kissing other boys.”
OH GOD!
I could practically feel Chad blushing furiously next to me without having to look at him. But, well… I couldn’t spare him a glance right now because I was way too hypnotized by Mrs. Danforth first smiling at the boy in her arms and then at me and Chad standing frozen to the spot.
“Well,” she answered finally, “I guess then Timmy Summers doesn’t know everything because, Linus, sometimes boys kiss other boys, too.”
“Really?” Linus frowned.
“Really,” his mom stated and took the last few steps further up the stairs.
“Oh, okay! So…,” Linus was still trying to get this right, “then Chad likes Ryan, right?”
“Well,” Mrs. Danforth said and threw another smile at us, “I’m sure he does, honey.”
She let Linus down on the floor and gave him a tenderly shove. “And now off to bed with you, my little spy! I’ll be with you in a sec!”
Linus dashed away and Chad and I were still standing rooted to the spot when Mrs. Danforth had come down again to join us at the door.
“Mom, I…” Chad finally broke out of his shocked state and stuttered, “I, ugh… we…”
“Calm down, Chad. It’s not as if I didn’t know already,” she still had that gentle smile on her face and I couldn’t help but repeat:
“You know?”
“Of course I do!”
“But… but how?” Chad managed to ask.
“Honey,” she smiled, “for the past few weeks you’ve been walking around with that silly grin on your face whenever the name Ryan fell. And that was at least three times a day. Ryan this and Ryan that… I’m meeting Ryan for homework, mom!… Ryan and I are going to the movies… every day, in and out! And you thought I wouldn’t notice?”
The smile had changed briefly into a mock frown but then Mrs. Danforth pulled her son into a hug and whispered something into Chad’s ear. I didn’t hear what it was she’d said but Chad blushed and smiled quickly back at her.
“So… you’re okay with this? Us?” I asked because I simply had to know for sure.
“Well, now that I’ve finally met you…” she smiled and looked directly into my eyes, “ of course I am, Ryan. Welcome to the Danforth family!”
And then she pulled me into the hug, too.
THE END
I know this is silly and fluffy and probably completely OOC but… don’t you just love the little spy Linus?