#osterland

Harrison chuckled, again.

"It's going to be fine..." The blonde produced a full mouth yawn at the end part, removing his glasses and tossing them over the magazine.

Sleepyhead. Seeing that Tom turned the lamp off, sinking into his own seat, shutting his tired eyes.

He knows it's going to be fine. It... It's just that it doesn't feel fine. How does he even explain this?

...

"We can eat a burger. If it will make you feel better..." Harrison offered as the two boys dragged their luggage trolley across the airport.

Definitely, a burger can't make him feel better.

"I said I am fine," Tom repeated, sounding almost frustrated. Because wasn't this the thirteenth time, Harrison was asking him this question?

"You don't look fine though..." He defended in a soft voice.

But it just added to Tom's bubbling irritation.

First, the man who was supposed to pick them up at the airport hasn't arrived yet. Second, that person was telling him how he was just a few miles away for the last two hours and now he wasn't even picking up the call (if things couldn't get any worse). Third, Tom's feet were aching. Fourth, he wanted to sleep in a comfortable bed. Fifth, he didn't like people trying to pursue him into changing his mind and Harrison was doing exactly the same.

"Okay... But can you eat for me? I am really starving."

Tom stopped at his friend's words, leaving the trolley as his hands rest over his hips.

"Mate you got a completely different abdomen. You can eat for yourself!"

"Please..." Harrison did his stupid little pout, making Tom roll his eyes but it was all for vain. He knew well that his friend won't take no for an answer.

With a final huff, Tom relaxed his tensed shoulders, giving in.

"OK."

Soon, he found himself sitting at the counter of an open Burger joint inside the airport itself as he watched Harrison eat.

"Now why are you stealing my chips?"

Well, he wasn't just watching...

"Doesn't your stomach fill up when I eat?" Tom mocked, throwing another finger chip into his mouth and licking the salt off his fingertip.

"And I thought, my best mate wasn't any regular creep..." Harrison produced a gagging noise but then instantly stuffed his mouth with a big bite of the burger.

"Yeah, he is a PhD scholar." Tom rolled his eyes again, chewing on the chip.

That made Harrison laugh. He tried shutting his mouth tight, pressing a hand over his lips as his cheeks swelled, struggling to stop the food from falling out of his mouth.

Tom failed to contain his own grin that split his face. He joined Harrison in the meal as his own order arrived. He watched his phone ring off and away. For once he didn't care about reaching the hotel any earlier. They were fine here. He felt fine here. Didn't he?

...

"Whoa, this is huge!" Harrison dropped the bag on the floor with a thud, instantly rushing to take a look at the bathroom. He checked the other room and then the spare bathroom... Then the kitchen, the balcony and then rushed back to the living room which also served as the outer, larger bedroom, where Tom was still standing unmoved, arms folded across his chest.

"It's huge..." He repeated, letting the adjective trail off his lips.

Tom opened his mouth to say something but Harrison was quick to cut him off—

"Which room should I take? The inner one or the outer one?"

The brunette scrubbed a hand down his face, "The inner one because I seriously don't want your hundreds of shoe pairs invading our living area."

Harrison's brows quirked, "How-how do you know?"

"You posted it on Twitter." Tom shrugged.

"You don't even use Twitter!"

"Yes, and your fans did repost the video on Instagram tagging me."

"Well, then they are your fans. Traitors!" This time Harrison had his hands folded across his chest, dramatically swaying his head to the other side.

There was a pause.

"... Did you actually bring them all?" An amused smile formed on the corner of Tom's face as Harrison licked his lips.

Unnecessary drama... If it was something, the boys would have called it their personal quirk.

"All for you..." Harrison replied, smirking, maintaining the eye-contact with the other boy.

But it was too fatal. He gave up.

"Actually, no I didn't." He rolled his eyes this time.

The victorious smile reached Tom's ears but he was too tired to care. He could kill to sleep on that soft bed. So, he jumped up on the mattress, discarding his shoes and pressing his face against the silky fabric of the pillow.

"I am taking the outer room anyway." His voice came out muffled, not that it was unintelligible.

"Twat." Harrison whispered, twisting his mouth. He was anyway going to invade Tom's space and Tom knew it.

...

Tom won't call himself sad or melancholic. It was just that Harrison had so many... friends.

He had always been great at maintaining relationships even with the people he met in Year Five. But Tom really only had Harrison, despite all the enormous extra amount of people he knew because of Billy Eliot or The Impossible and now even the Marvel Universe. Even when Tom was meeting Jacob Batalon for the third time, it was Harrison who could crack up the conversation. And they were meeting for the first time!

Tom was visibly jealous of this. It wasn't the angry or hateful kind of jealous. It was a sad one. It made him feel as if he was putting in less amount of effort than Harrison. It made him feel as if he was not doing enough— dishonest, insecure and what not...

He felt stupid for feeling this. Yet, it didn't stop him from feeling it more than often. Not that Harrison would ever make him feel this way. He felt worse for knowing and yet feeling all the same.

"Hey, Holland?"

It was Jacob's voice that brought him back to reality.

"Mind if I steal your boyfriend? We are liking each other way too much." Jacob winked, looking at Tom and then at Harrison.

They were inside Jacob's trailer where Jacob was sitting on his chair and Harrison was standing beside him, leaning over his shoulder on his elbow. While Tom was standing opposite to them, basically out of the conversation. Jacob's statement did only one job— make him more anxious than before. Dread settled at the bottom of his stomach, his breathing got laboured and his heart almost stopped.

"We--we aren't boyfriends."

That made the two boys laugh more but Tom only got more confused and felt more left out. Harrison must have noticed because—

"Tis' just a joke. Relax." Harrison shook his head, looking directly at Tom.

Tom could best produce a spluttered laughter, ready to leave for the set.

"Jacob likes teasing. Which means we are gonna be shipped a lot from now on." Harrison giggled as they waited for Tom to be called for the scene. He was wearing that overly tight Spider-man suit, way too uncomfortable.

"... And that doesn't bother you?" He swirled his neck to look at his best-friend, wondering...

"Why would it bother me? It's just a joke. Normal between friends." Harrison shrugged his shoulders like it was...

Normal...

If Harrison is saying then it must be normal.

It has to be...

...

"That was sick! I totally didn't assume Laura to be 'the' prankster. Z was so not ready!" Harrison laughed as he emerged from his room, rubbing his wet hair with a towel. Tom hummed in response busy scrolling through his phone. Harrison tried to ignore it, not caring about whatever Tom was busy gazing into his phone but he could read the uncomfortable longing in his friend's brown eyes. His own laughter died in his throat as he sat beside Tom, giving him a side glare.

Three weeks they were together in this hotel suite which made Harrison more aware of Tom's expressions than any other time. And today, all he noticed was Tom's eyebrows furrowing more and more as he looked into the device. Harrison snatched it off his hands when he suspected him of—

"Hey what?!" Tom yelled, trying to take it away but Harrison was quick to raise it up in the air, using his height advantage. He looked into the screen.

— stalking Henry. He was scrolling through Henry's Instagram profile. Tom sunk into the cushions realising that he was caught red-handed. He watched the softness of Harrison's eyes vanishing replaced by something close to anger as he scrolled through his phone.

"We talked about this, right?" His voice came low as his line of sight shifted from the device to its owner. Tom didn't reply, rather looked to the other side, at the empty wall.

Harrison's nostrils flared. He tossed the iPhone to the side and stood up, pushing his glasses that had fallen to his nose tip back to his eyes.

"He's a piece of shit and you are still clinging onto him?" It was a statement disguised like a question to cloud the fact that Tom didn't have a choice than to accept that his ex-boyfriend was in fact a piece of shit. He was supposed to move on.

But does Harrison have any idea how difficult it was to move on? Does he has any idea how many times he looked at people, thinking he would fall in love with them but in a few days the truth would hit him hard on the chest?

He couldn't.

He can't.

At least, things with Henry were so much better. They lasted the longest. Two years were the longest he had been with someone and not felt drifting apart. Until...

Tom started, voice higher than it should be: "Just because you don't like him, that doesn't mean I---" But he was interrupted by a voice even louder.

"Of course I don't like him. I don't like arseholes!" There were mixed lines of anger and worry on Harrison's forehead. He paused, breathed from his mouth and added in a lot softer voice: "Don't you remember how it was with him?"

Until, he saw himself in the mirror. Until, he noticed the dullness in his eyes that used to glint with enthusiasm. He saw those dark circles, the loss of sleep, the loss of self-esteem.

He even stopped dancing, the thing that once meant everything to him. The thing that paved the way to everything he loves now. And he left it because Henry didn't like seeing him dance. Wear skirts and perform ballets. And he loved Henry so much that he stopped doing it.

No, he never loved Henry.

Henry was his weakness manifesting as a person, taking form in flesh and blood.

"I... I am just seeing his pictures, not that I am going back to him." Tom stated, his pride trying to overshadow his vulnerabilities.

Harrison again exhaled, sitting back on the sofa beside him.

"It's not just about physical things. It's also mental. We talked about it. You deserve so much better Tom and no one even close to Henry." He kept his palm over Tom's knee, looking him into his eyes, "Henry is your past. Gone. He doesn't even deserve a space in your memories."

Tom would have argued but he remembered that they have had this conversation in the past and that Harrison was right.

Henry told him what was good and bad for him. He decided everything for Tom and that's what Tom loved. He loved that he will no longer be responsible for any wrong decisions he ever made. That he would have someone else to blame for all his failures but he was so wrong.

It was his mistake. Considering the possibility was his mistake. Accepting Henry in his life was his mistake. Letting Henry make decisions for him was his mistake.

Henry tried to push his friends away from him. He did push all his friends away. But Harrison was the only one to push back. Push back even harder.

Harrison stayed with Tom no matter how much he pushed him away because Henry said Harrison was not right for him. Still, Harrison knocked at his door, asked about his day, told about his day, wished him New Year before anyone else.

Harrison even knocked at his door when Tom had completely given up, accepted that the gear of his life was no longer in his control. Harrison gave him his chest to keep his head on and cry. Harrison listened to him patiently and understood everything even when Tom was sure his words were just sobs, completely unintelligible.

And right now, he was again pushing Harrison away and Harrison was pushing back with a stronger force. Something hot and wet flashed through his eyes, collecting at the bottom of his eyelids. He wiped it off before it could fall down or before Harrison could notice.

His chest constricted imagining what if that tear had dropped. That it's been so many years after Harrison had those steel braces over his teeth removed or when Tom was no longer afraid of never growing taller and reaching Hollywood... And yet, Harrison would still give his chest for him to lay his head over and patiently hear his sobs and understand his distorted speech.

"Sorry. I shouldn't be so harsh on you..." Harrison apologised removing his hand from Tom's knee but the touch still lingered. He could still feel the warmth of the touch on his skin.

But Harrison was not harsh at all...

Tom smiled this time, looking into his best mate's blue eyes. "No, you are right. Henry is shit."

Harrison smiled too and got up again, stretching his arm is Tom's direction with his palm facing up. His hair fell on his forehead when he looked down at him, exactly like a bungee jumping rope.

"We should go out then. Refill that brain of yours with memories that will be worth memorising." He cheered.

But Tom knew there were moments worth memorising even in those times with Henry. All those moments he had his friend with him. The one who wore those metallic braces, complained about those acne on his forehead or how thin he was and joined gym at fifteen but then never went there the next day.

"Yes." Tom placed his hand above Harrison's. Harrison who no longer had those braces or those teen acne neither he chickens out of the gym training...

Tom did skip over a small detail. That little itch in his fingers when he noticed Harrison's curls falling over his forehead. The desire to touch them and push them back. He had clenched his fists momentarily until he unclenched them back to put his hand over Harrison's bigger ones. He pretended that that itch didn't exist.

Or that he liked holding his hand...

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