TW: brief mention of grooming in second half of the chapter
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George POV.
When I rolled over I let out a low, tired groan, waking up too early for my liking. I didn’t know what time it was, nor did I care, all that I knew was it was too early. I had work this evening, but before then I had no plans, so I could lay in bed for at least another eight or nine hours.
Wilbur walking into the room woke me up again, just before I was about to slip back into a blissful sleep. “Morning.” He greeted, surprising me since I had thought that he had gone home last night, but I guess not. “I brought us some breakfast.”
“Did you spend the night?” I questioned while rubbing my eyes.
“Yeah. You had nearly passed out after we’d set up all your new social media accounts. I helped you to bed and decided to bring some breakfast this morning. It’s on the table right now.” He explained before walking out of the room to leave me to get ready.
Reluctantly I sat up, climbing out of the bed as the smell of hot food wafted into the room through the door that Wilbur had left open. I pulled on a hoodie over the shirt I had slept in before walking down the hallway. Wilbur was sitting on one of the armchairs and had set up the food, which he had gotten from a McDonalds which was a ten minute drive away.
I settled down on the other armchair, with the couch between us being covered in blankets from Wilbur having slept there. My phone was sitting on the coffee table, having been moved since I had put it down last night, although only by a few inches. I didn’t say anything though, figuring that Wilbur must have moved it in the night.
“It’s so funny how tired you were last night.” Wilbur laughed while we ate. “All we’d done was go to the mall and get you a phone and set you up a couple of accounts and then you were exhausted.”
“Not my fault.” I responded. “This internet stuff is so confusing, I had a headache all afternoon.”
“You’re funny reacting like that.” The brunette hummed. “There are some people who work on the internet and they get rich as hell.”
“Well anyone who’s job is based around the internet must be insane.” I grumbled more quietly, causing my friend to chuckle before we went back to eating.
The two of us ate in near silence, that was until my phone vibrated on the coffee table between us. When we noticed it I quickly wiped my hand with a serviette before grabbing it, and when I read what was on my screen my eyes widened. Wilbur was watching me and raised an eyebrow at my expression, giving the one word question of ‘what?’
“There are so many notifications from all of the social media apps that I made an account for.” I explained, looking at the row of notifications that covered the lower half of my screen. The number of notifications for each was so big that I couldn’t even process it. Wilbur’s eyes furrowed for a moment as he moved over to look, before nearly choking on his food.
“How did I get so many?” I questioned. “I haven’t said or done anything on any of the accounts, not yet at the very least.”
“Well Clay called you last night.” Wilbur explained. “You’d gone to sleep at that time so I answered, but he asked what your name was on the apps so he could follow you.”
“He did?” I asked, a faint smile growing on my face at the mention of the blond. Wilbur noticed my expression and smirked at it before nodding.
“Yeah he did.” The brunette responded. “You can have a look. He said he’d message you about it on one of the apps, so you could see what it’s like.”
My face brightened up further as I opened my phone and went to twitter, briefly glancing at some of the notifications with at least five thousand followers and people mentioning me in their own posts. I went to dms, seeing many messages from strangers but a couple of names I recognised. Sapnap, Karl, Bad, and Skeppy had all messaged me.
But at the top was a message from Clay which I opened so that I could read it. It was a simple message of ‘it’s cool you're on social media. I followed you back on all the accounts for your Instagram and TikTok as well’ followed by a picture of a heart. Beneath that message there was a picture, it was a cartoon penguin waving while saying ‘hello’.
“Aww that’s sweet.” Wilbur hummed, still looking over my shoulder. “He sent you a gif. You should send one back.”
“How?” I questioned, since I barely knew what a gif was, much less how to send one.
“Don’t worry, I’ll show you.” He stated, sitting on the floor beside the armchair and beginning to instruct me on what to do to send a gif.
Clay POV.
I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I checked George’s profile once I’d woken up, and seeing how many followers he’d gained overnight. Honestly I wasn’t surprised, since it was a common occurance to see people follow someone that a celebrity was following, and in this case the celebrity was me, and the one I was following was George.
That wasn’t all though. I was having some drinks with a bunch of my friends last night at the bar at our hotel. Sometime after our fourth round of drinks I told them about George getting on social media, and they all asked for his account name so that they could follow him as well, and that caused a bunch of their fans to begin following the brunette.
Seeing the large number of followers would most likely overwhelm the brunette had made me feel guilty. I knew he wasn’t a big fan of being the centre of attention, and having several thousand followers on each app that he’d gotten was the exact opposite of that. In an act of apology I opened up private messaging on Twitter.
I didn’t want to start by sending him some weird ‘I’m sorry’ speech, and so I instead started with a gif saying ‘hello’. It was plain, but I figured that George would find the animated penguin waving adorable. After I sent it I went to mindlessly scroll through the app, since I didn’t know how long it would take for him to see it.
Many different people were commenting about how George was on Twitter now, along with other apps. They went on to talk about how since I was his second follower there was definitely some romantic relationship. Just like always though, there were some haters, complaining about either me, or George, or both.
‘His boyfriend looks young. Are we sure Clay isn’t gr**ming him?’ one hating me asked. Another comment read ‘Did you guys see the post of Clay’s boyfriend with another guy. Can’t believe he’s cheating on the hottest actor ever.’ Then there were some general ones about how we both sucked, or my movies were bad, and I ignored them all.
A notification sounded as I got a response from the message I sent the brunette and I clicked on it. He had sent a gif back, most likely with the assistance of Wilbur. It was a dog popping his head from around the corner with it also saying ‘hi’ at the bottom. I sent a message back asking the brunette how he was, but just after I pressed send I got another message.
This was from somebody that I knew about but had never interacted with myself. It was a TV company, and they sent those standard messages which would be used by most companies to send to millions of people at once, talking about anything from ads to scams. This instance it was not for millions of people, instead it was just for two people.
Our names were the first things on the message ‘Clay Smith and George Henry Davidson.’ It was a message asking for an interview with the two of us.
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1395 words