Part Three, We Are the Crowd
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“I’m not telling you who it fucking well was,” says Tommy tiredly. “This is embarrassing enough, okay?” He slouches lower in his seat.
“I know who it was,” says Annette, his manager. “That man you brought to the meetings last week, the tall guy with the hair. The photographer.”
“Yeah,” says Tommy. “But I’m not telling you his name.”
Annette rolls her eyes. “Why, because he’s such a good guy? He sold you out, honey. You’re bared-assed all over every tabloid in town thanks to this punk.”
“Don’t care,” says Tommy. He’s being childish and doesn’t care. “I don’t wanna talk about him. Let’s just do what we can, okay?”
There’s not a lot, as it turns out; Kerry releases a short statement on his behalf about how the photos were for personal use - obviously, fuck - and asking the media to respect Tommy’s privacy. It doesn’t do a blind bit of good, and as he leaves Annette’s office building there’s a horde of paps waiting, and he tucks his shoulders down and ignores their shouted questions and the flashbulbs and the crowd and gets in his car.
He doesn’t go home, doesn’t even think to himself about why he’s avoiding it, just drives himself to Mike’s place, his old apartment that smells like stale beer and sweaty boys and gym socks, where there’s always pizza and beer and nobody wants him to be a role model.
Mike looks up slowly when he comes in, blinking up at Tommy from his seat on the couch. “Rough, man,” he says, and Tommy just nods. Mike holds up a game controller. “Madden?”
“Yeah,” says Tommy. He toes off his shoes, drops his jacket on the bookshelf, and plops down next to Mike. “Bring it.”
With one thing and another, Tommy doesn’t get back home for any length of time for almost a week. He sleeps on the couch at Mike’s the first night, then ducks home quickly early in the morning to pick up some clothes and hightails it out to Burbank to see his Mom.
She cooks for him and lets him vegetate in his room and frowns at his drinking, and then kicks him out on Monday morning because Tommy’s aunt is coming to stay and she’s a shrew who thinks tattoos are the devil’s handiwork and hairdye is for hussies. (She hasn’t actually seen Tommy in almost eight years, through his mother’s careful orchestration, and possibly still thinks he’s a cherub-faced teenager.)
At some point over the weekend one of the Olsen twins OD’ed on cough medicine and staggered around a club vomiting on people and then the other one called a press conference and had a panic attack in front of the collected media of Hollywood. Nobody’s talking about Tommy, so he feels safe enough to Google himself, wincing and flinching pre-emptively.
The photos are everywhere, of course, but to his surprise, nobody seems particularly shocked. Tommy’s reputation for being outrageous, making out with drag queens and wearing lots of leather and corrupting the innocent youth, seems to have worked in his favour. Ausiello posts the photos with no more commentary than Oh, that crazy Ratliff kid, and Perez has half a dozen posts of increasing excitement and ever more white splatters, but there’s an article on AfterElton all about privacy and trust and how it’s really not fair to treat celebrities like public commodities or zoo animals. He sneaks a peek at his twitter feed and it’s split pretty evenly between creepy comments about his dick (and creepy photoshops of the pictures) and fans worrying about his feelings and the fact that he hasn’t tweeted since before the photos came out.
He tweets Hanging with my mom all weekend is badass. Right? And smiles at the replies that roll in.
He calls Annette, and she shouts at him for being uncontactable all weekend and tells him he’s got a party to go to tonight. He suspects the latter is punishment for the former, but he goes home and picks an outfit and leaves again, hangs out at a friend’s place until it’s time to go. His friends are awesome and don’t ask him once about the photos.
The party is standard Hollywood bullshit, paunchy aging producers and bankrollers pretending that the starlets hanging off their arms meant anything more than money. Tommy gets quietly drunk in a corner and is belligerent as hell when some random guy broaches the subject of the photos with him.
He wakes up in a hotel room, thankfully alone, with his phone jangling away in his ear, the generic ringtone for when he doesn’t know the person calling. He squints warily at it and answers, his voice still rough with sleep.
“Mr Ratliff?” The voice is familiar, though for a moment he can’t place it and doesn’t answer, which the woman takes as permission to keep talking. “It’s Marcia, from Five Star Real Estate?”
“Oh,” says Tommy blankly. “Yeah, hi.”
“I’m sorry for disturbing you so early.”
“It’s fine,” says Tommy. He rolls over and squints at the clock; it’s gone eleven. She’s just being polite, hearing the grogginess in his voice.
“I’m calling about the property you were interested in earlier this year? I know you were disappointed when another buyer took it before you could make an offer. Unfortunately that’s fallen through and the house is still on the market. I wanted to check if you were still interested, before we started showing it again.”
Tommy falls on his back across the bed, sheets tangled around his hips. “Um. Maybe. Can I maybe get another look at it before I say yes?”
“Of course!” she hastens to assure him. “Absolutely, there’s no pressure at all. You just seemed to really like the place, I’d feel awful if you missed out on a second opportunity for it.”
“Great.”
“How does this afternoon work for you?” Yeah, no pressure. Tommy squints at the ceiling, but can’t recall anything pressing he’s got on.
“Why not.” They arrange to meet at the house in a couple of hours, and Tommy rolls back over lets himself sleep for a couple more hours.
The house is just as beautiful as he remembers. He tunes out Marcia’s gushing and bubbling and concentrates instead on the quiet clean feel of the place, the tall trees blocking away the neighbours but not the sunlight and the rooms too small to feel isolating and lonely, too big to be cramped. Marcia takes a call, and he slips out the back, to the wide patio with the pool and the barbequing area and some low-maintenance shrubs and trees to give it some colour.
“So what do you think?” says Marcia, pushing back the screen door. “Ooh, isn’t this yard great? You could have some great parties out here.”
Actually, that’s what Tommy likes about it - it’s small enough he can’t really see some wild Hollywood event going on here. It feels like a place to hang out with a few close friends, drink some beers and play some music and chill, not party up.
“Let me think about it,” he says eventually, and Marcia frowns.
“Oh. Well, I’ll see what I can do - I have some other clients who’d be really interested in this property. Bungalows are very in right now.”
Tommy tips his head to the side, quizzical. “Huh. Guess it wasn’t meant to be, then.”
“I’m sure I can work something out!” she says, quickly, and Tommy shrugs.
“I’ll send somebody around to assess the property,” he tells her, because that’s what his parents did when they were looking at buying a house in Burbank, and the guy told them it was a bad investment, and three years later they drove past that house and you could see the huge cracks in the exterior walls where the foundations had shifted.
“We have an assessor on staff,” she tells him snippily.
“Just a precaution,” he says, because he’s tired, and he likes the house, but he doesn’t like the bubbly, pushy estate agent, and as fun as drawing it out to torment her is, he wants to go home.
For Mr Ratliff - or Mr Ratliff’s money - the assessment guy gets out there before close of business that day, and his report is in Tommy’s email by nine the next morning. Tommy lets Marcia stew in her juices for a full day after that, but eventually he tells Lissa, his assistant, to call her and set it up. He wants the fucking house.
He crashes on Mike’s couch again that night, but by the weekend he’s got the keys in his hands and vaguely wonders how long it would have taken if he’d done it himself instead of leaving it to the very competent hands of Lissa and Marcia. He’d signed what Lissa gave him to sign, and he was in by the following Monday.
“It just seems a little sudden, sweetheart,” says his Mom, her arms full of blankets in the middle of the master bedroom. “Don’t get me wrong, the house is gorgeous, but it was awfully fast.”
“I looked at this place months ago,” he says. “I kind of regretted not taking it then, so when it came back up, I took it.”
She sighs, and sits on the bed. “I know. Don’t mind me, I’m being silly.”
Tommy pauses in rearranging his bracelets and turns to give her his full attention. “Is this about Dad?”
Her mouth presses thin. “No. Not exactly.” She rubs her cheek. “You were just - for so long, you were like my grown-up baby, you know? You came to stay all the time, you were always around, and then you got that role and suddenly it was all different.”
“I didn’t mean to abandon you,” he says, guiltily, but she waves a hand.
“Oh, like I didn’t know you were coming to get fed, you freeloader. Most mothers’ boys cut that out when they’re done with college. I’m lucky you stuck around as long as you did.”
“I could come see you more,” he offers, and she laughs.
“Oh, it’s not that, honey. I just never thought you’d be the one buying houses on a whim. I figured you’d be hitting me up for rent money until I retired.”
“You’re lonely,” says Tommy quietly, and she shrugs, careless.
“Maybe I’ll get a puppy,” she says brightly, and he slides onto the bed next to her and hugs her tightly.
“Maybe for Christmas I’ll get you one,” he says. “If you’re good.”
“I’ll name it after you,” she promises.
His Mom stays a couple of days to help him get settled in, and he doesn’t protest like he might have before. They don’t talk about the pictures, though one morning he comes down to the kitchen to find her systematically cutting a page from the morning paper into flesh-toned confetti.
“I think I’ll take a holiday,” she tells him calmly. “I’ve alway wanted to go to England.”
With his mother gone the house is empty and quiet and Tommy spends a lot of time just puttering around rearranging things. It’s unbearably domestic to stack his paltry collection of saucepans in the roomy cupboards, to arrange and rearrange his guitars and horror movie posters and genuine memorabilia in the study, to put pictures of his family on the mantle over the gas fire he’ll never use in the California heat.
He’s a little bare on furniture - the perils of moving from a two-bedroom apartment into a four-bedroom house - but there’s no rush on that, and after a couple of days he feels like he’s got everything just how he wants it so he treats himself to a night in with a bottle of wine and a John Wayne marathon. He catches himself yawning and ready for bed not long before midnight, and laughs at himself in the bathroom mirror at how old and boring he’s getting.
It takes some concentration and mental juggling, but he manages, mostly, not to think about Adam. When he goes out in public, there’s paparazzi around, and he’s reminded strongly, not just because of the obvious connection, but because they keep shouting things about those fucking photos and he has to ignore them twice as hard. So he tries not to go out too much, at least not where the paps hang around, and he’s so busy that’s fine.
Allison gets back, and they have to do post-production stuff, which takes twice as long as it might otherwise because they keep goofing off in the recording studio where they’re supposed to be dubbing dialogue, doing stupid voices and trying to make each other crack up. He takes her back to his place and cooks for her in his new kitchen and she wanders around the house admiring his posters and mocking his dorm-room box-furniture. He gives her beer to shut her up.
“So are we going to talk about your new porn career?” she asks, over the triple-fudge dessert.
“Fuck off,” he says automatically, and she sucks icecream off her spoon and waits. “It wasn’t fucking like that,” he says eventually.
“Guy wants to take naked pictures of you and it wasn’t like that?”
He shrugs. “He was a nice guy. I liked him. Like, a lot.” The sting has lessened some with the weeks, now that he’s not seeing the fucking things in every magazine and website anymore, but it’s been replaced by a kind of melancholy ache.
“Apparently not so nice,” she says sympathetically. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”
Tommy ducks his head. “Take this as a lesson,” he says. “Free from me to you. Don’t fucking trust anybody.”
She winces. “Oh, baby.” She puts down her spoon and comes around the table to hug him, tuck his face against her shoulder and pet his hair. “Don’t do that, don’t say things like that. You trusted a bad guy, but that doesn’t mean you should never trust anyone.”
“Just maybe not paparazzi in the future.”
She pulls away and blinks down at him bemusedly, one hip hitched up on the table. “Are you telling me, Tommy Ratliff,” she says eventually, “That you let a fucking paparazzi take naked god damned photographs of you? Willingly?”
“Paparazzo,” he says, “Just one,” and she upends his bowl of half-melted icecream into his hair.
“Fucking moron,” she says, while he curses and hobbles to the sink, trying not to let it drip down his shirt collar. “Fucking moron, what is wrong with you.”
“My taste in friends,” he replies, sticking his head under the faucet. “Leave me alone to die pathetically, please.”
She sighs and comes over to adjust the temperature of the water so his head doesn’t feel throbbing and icy. “I just don’t see how you could possibly have thought that was a good idea.”
He tilts his head against the flow of warm water and doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t have a good answer. A couple of dates, some hanging out, and some fabulous sex, and he’d handed over everything to Adam, just like that. He followed his instincts, instead of his sense, he’d let a fucking pap take naked photos, yeah, Alli was right to dump icecream in his stupid hair, he deserved it. Dumbass.
He’s sniffling dolefully by the time Alli shuts off the water and drops a clean dishtowel on his head. “I liked him,” he tells her when he stands up, all the blood rushing out of his head suddenly, making him sway. “I really fucking liked him.”
“I know,” she says, and hugs him while he drips sticky water all over her shirt and they both pretend he isn’t crying a little.
He tells her about Adam in fits and starts, about how Adam was nice even when he was being a vulture, and the photos with Raja and the drag show and Adam’s old-fashioned idea of dating and the art school application and the really awesome sex.
“And he didn’t say anything?” she asks, when he’s done.
“Never called,” says Tommy. “Never answered my calls. Number’s disconnected now. I don’t care.”
He doesn’t care right up until Annette tells him she’s got another date lined for him, casually drops it at the end of their weekly meeting, oh, ps, you’re going to a party with this girl on Friday.
“No,” he says, and Annette’s carefully-groomed eyebrows inch upward.
“You’re busy Friday?” she wonders, and he shrugs and shakes his head. “You have something against Miranda? You haven’t even met her.”
“No more dates,” he says. The idea sits uncomfortably in his stomach, of going out and spending time with a person and having them look at him like that, like they know something about him. Everyone looks at him like that these days. People know his stories before he tells them, having read his interviews, they know his background, his history, his likes and dislikes. It was creepy before, and now, with his naked body easily accessible on the internet, it’s a thousand times worse. He can’t go on a date like that, exposed this badly, even if it’s a sham and he doesn’t care about the person he’s with.
Annette’s mouth presses thin. “Look, I know you had a problem with the photographer guy. But she’s under contract with our company, there’s no way she’d run her mouth.”
“Not happening,” says Tommy. “No, I’m not bargaining with you, Annette, it’s not happening. I’ll go to the stupid party, but by myself, and if I hear even a whiff of a rumour that I’m dating anybody even remotely connected with this management company,” she jumps and looks a little guilty here, but he barges on, “I swear I’ll engineer the biggest, sleaziest, most drug-addled party in Hollywood’s history and be photographed doing coke off an underage male dancer’s ass.” He waits a moment to be sure the message has sunk in. “And I’ll punch the first person to ask me about it.”
“Okay,” she says after a pause. “Keep me updated on that situation, will you?”
“Sure,” he says, as sweetly as he’s able. “See you next week.”
“Don’t forget that fundraiser on Saturday,” she says, as he leaves.
The fundraiser is for gay youth visibility or something - something Tommy probably cares a lot about actually, but he’s just here to be a talking head. These events always have the same people at them, though, so there’s a lot of faces he knows, and he’s more relaxed than he might be elsewhere. It’s always the same round of queer-and-queer-friendly actors-musicians-celebrities, and all Tommy has to do is show up, smile on the red carpet, deliver some soundbites, and he can drink champagne and trade dirty jokes with Neil Patrick Harris’ husband and hit on all the horrified straight kids from Glee for the rest of the evening.
He’s in the middle of buying a drink for the angel-faced kid who’s laughing and blushing and being egged on by his older castmates when Zac tackles him from behind in a great big bear hug.
“You!” he says. “How was Europe?”
“Me!” Zac agrees brightly. “It was awesome. Come with me if you want to live.” He drags Tommy protesting into a corner. “Look, I get you’re pissed about the photos, man, but don’t you think you’re being a little mean? At least talk to the dude.”
“Huh?” Tommy’s aware his confused face is kind of unflattering, and he wipes it away and smiles blandly for the event photographer who snaps he and Zac all chummy in the corner, doubtless setting off another round of rumours.
Zac sighs. “I mean, I get it, you know? It sucks. But I think you’re overreacting.”
Something hard and angry wells up in Tommy’s chest, and he leans in close to hiss, “You’re actually seriously on Adam’s side in all this? Are you fucking kidding?”
Zac jerks back. “Woah. Dude. All I’m saying is, you obviously were okay with him taking the pictures, okay?”
“That doesn’t make it okay for him to fucking sell them,” Tommy snarls, and storms off, leaving Zac spluttering.
He texts for his car to come round, gets roped into a group photo with Perez Hilton, who cops a feel and tries to grill him again about the fucking photos, which he dodges by latching onto the guy from My Chemical Romance whose name he can never remember, and then his phone buzzes to let him know his car is waiting. There’s a text from Zac, which he ignores, and one from Annette, irritated that he’s skipping out early, which he also ignores.
When he gets home, his house, which had previously seemed so cosy and welcoming, feels huge and empty and impersonal, and he kicks things on his way to bed, moody and tired.
Zac calls him first thing in the morning, and then again, every half an hour, leaving message after message that Tommy deletes without listening to them.
He’s got a photoshoot on Monday afternoon, so he attempts to stop feeling sorry for himself, showers and shaves and shows up sober and well-rested instead of hungover and smelling of three days worth of tequila and burritos. But he isn’t really in the mood to deal with anybody, so he plants his ass in the makeup chair and shuts his eyes.
“Morning, honey,” chirps his makeup artist, and Tommy cracks an eyelid - it’s a very tall, thin guy, brown-skinned and bespectacled.
“Hi,” he says, and shuts his eyes again, unwilling to make conversation.
There’s a little sound of surprise, and then strong, cool hands on his face. The guy tsks and mutters something about a proper moisturising routine before slathering his face with cold cream. His hands are firm as he turns Tommy this way and that, murmuring the whole time, mostly to himself, as brushes and sponges flit over Tommy’s skin.
“Can I tell you something, honey?” the guy says eventually. Tommy opens his eyes, blinks at himself in the mirror. He looks awesome. This guy is really good; he’s made Tommy’s exhausted face look attractively wan and vulnerable rather than gross and sleep-deprived.
“Sure,” says Tommy agreeably. Never pays to piss off the makeup people. Shit like that gets around.
“His bag was stolen.” The guy’s back is to him, as he fusses over the little pots and brushes on the counter. The non-sequiter comes out of the blue, and for a long moment, Tommy can only stare at him, scrabbling to reconnect the conversational dots. The guy looks over his shoulder. “Adam, I mean.”
It’s the angle that does it, the eyes over the coy slope of shoulder. “Raja?”
A flash of a smile. “Sutan, today, but yeah.”
"Oh my god.” He’s never seen Raja - Sutan - out of drag, and the difference between the ultra-glam, super-groomed diva and this scruffy, sweet-faced man is striking. And then Tommy’s brain catches up with Sutan’s words and he flails his arms around. “Wait, what?” he squeaks.
There’s a bang on the door. “We’re ready for you, Mr Ratliff.”
Sutan grabs his hand, squeezes it. “Look, find me after, okay? It’s important, Tommy, really.”
“I will,” says Tommy, numbly.
The photographer is one of those people who has quote-unquote artistic vision, and Tommy’s role is not so much photographic subject as it is poseable doll, so he puts on his best model face and moves as directed and lets his thoughts go elsewhere.
His bag was stolen. Adam, I mean. Tommy can’t even get his head together enough to work that out, but as he sprawls out on a chaise and somebody points a fan at him, blowing his hair back, Sutan’s words play over and over in his head like a mantra.
“And you could maybe,” says the photographer, in his frustrating faux-European accent, “lift your shirt a little? Or take it off, yes, I think so.” He makes a gesture with his fingers, and licks his lips.
“No,” says Tommy flatly. He’s always been pretty solid on that point - he’s not ashamed of his body, but he’s not that interested in showing it off. Clothes can disguise the little belly he gets after a couple of lazy weeks of too much beer and too little movement, or the skinniness of his ribs, or his pancake-flat ass, but he’s not getting naked, he’s never done that, and he doesn’t like the leer on this guy’s face.
The photographer looks irritated. “Come, it is art, yes? We all know you are not shy.”
Tommy feels his fingers curling into fists. The set, which twenty seconds ago was bustling, has gone dead silent, like everyone’s taken a breath at once. Tommy takes his own breath, draws on all his skills to keep his voice level. “I don’t mind if it’s art,” he says, as mildly as he can. “But I’m not interested in helping you get your rocks off. It’s not shyness.” He stands up, stretches a little, and plants one hand on his hip, cocked and sassy. “I just don’t like you. Later.”
He ambles off towards his dressing room, ignoring the sputtering of the photographer and the shocked whispers and the scattered applause and catcalls.
Sutan looks up as he comes in. “That was fast.”
“Tell me you don’t actually work with that guy,” says Tommy, yanking off the scratchy shirt he’d worn for the photoshoot.
“Not usually,” said Sutan. “I called in some favours when I heard he was shooting you today. My friend seemed only too happy to switch, though, so I have some idea.”
Tommy pauses and stares at him, and Sutan shrugs. “Okay. I’m gonna change, and we’re gonna go for coffee, and you’re gonna explain all this.”
“Roger that,” says Sutan. “Don’t smudge, though, you look perfect.” He touches Tommy’s cheekbone with an air of professional pride.
By the time Tommy’s back in street clothes, somebody’s called Annette. She calls to yell at him, and he follows Sutan out of building with his phone tucked against his shoulder, arguing with her. Once he’s explained, she relents and promises tighter contracts regarding the behaviour of photographers - “Maybe something like the contract we have for minors, you prissy bitch,” she grumbles.
“Don’t hate on my privacy standards,” he says, but there’s no heat to it, because he knows that she really will follow it up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Sutan orders some great big froofy coffee drink thing that does not, as far as Tommy can tell, actually contain coffee. Tommy orders as much caffeine as can be legally contained in a single serve, adds a healthy helping of sugar, and scalds his mouth waiting for Sutan to finish stirring and fussing and adding cinnamon and chocolate powder.
“You’re killing me here,” he says finally.
Sutan looks up, his mouth softened into a smirk. “So how are you, Tommy Joe?”
“What did you mean, his bag was stolen?”
“We never talk anymore.”
“Raja, please.” Tommy doesn’t even care that he’s being pathetic.
Sutan takes his hand. “His bag was stolen, honey. When he was on his way home from your house a couple of weeks ago. It had his laptop, his camera, his phone, his wallet, everything. I can get a copy of the police report if you like.”
“So,” says Tommy. “So it wasn’t him,” and saying it aloud makes him want to cry with relief and vomit from guilt. He was right, his instincts were right, Adam hadn’t sold him out. “But he didn’t call or anything?”
“Phone was in the bag,” says Sutan briefly, sucking milk-foam off his spoon. “Didn’t have your number, couldn’t answer calls. Kind of hard to get hold of you, you know?”
Tommy puts his head down on the table, eyes stinging. “Oh wow.”
“Deep breaths,” says Sutan comfortingly. “You’re not gonna pass out, are you?”
“Maybe,” Tommy mumbles, and Sutan pats him on the back of the head and applies himself to his coffee-thing.
Once Tommy has collected himself from his slightly embarrassing fit of the vapours, he lifts his head. “Is he mad at me?”
Sutan tilts his head. “No? I don’t think so, anyway. He’s a little hurt, I guess.” He runs his finger around the rim of his cup and licks it. “I mean, he understands. But he spent a couple of days sitting on your doorstep waiting for you to come home so he could explain in person.”
Tommy remembers, with a pang, that he hadn’t been home much those first few days after the photos broke. Also, “I moved house.”
“I heard,” said Sutan drily. “So did Adam, when his letters came back ‘no longer at this address’.”
“Well, fuck.” Tommy covered his face. “I feel like such an ass now.”
“Yup,” says Sutan brightly. “But you’re pretty. He’ll probably forgive you, if you forgive him.”
“For what?” asks Tommy, slightly hysterical.
Sutan laughs. “Oh, he’s all freaked out about how you’ll hate him for pressuring you to take the photos in the first place, and how you’ll never trust him again, and it’s all his fault, etc.”
Tommy realises he’s chewing on his cuticles, a bad habit he thought he’d lost. “Do you have his number? His new one?”
“Of course,” says Sutan. “Oh my god, come here.” Tommy scoots around the booth and lets Sutan hug him tight and pet his hair. “This has been weighing on you an awful lot, hasn’t it, sweetie.”
“The photos weren’t so bad,” says Tommy, muffled. “I mean, they were really fucking bad. But it was worse cause it was Adam. I liked him so much.”
“He would never do something like that.”
“I know that. That’s why it was so bad, because then it looked like he had and that meant everything about him was wrong. It sucked.”
Sutan goes, “Awww,” and kisses the top of his head. “Everything’s okay, honey.”
“You’re my favourite,” says Tommy.
Sutan gives him Adam’s new number, but he also tells him Adam is performing that evening at a bar with some friends - “Oh, he’s an awesome singer, and their lead singer ran off with some yoga instructor, so he’s just filling in, because he refuses to even consider making a career out of it since he spent six months in the chorus line of some musical and then slept with the director.” And Tommy, of course, decides to go for the option with the most dramatic potential - hey, he’s an introvert, yes, but he’s an actor, and a dramatic little bitch at heart.
So he dresses up carefully and touches up the awesome job Sutan did on his face and curls his hair, which is a pain and he hasn’t done it in ages, and puts on these awesome heeled boots and goes to the bar. It’s full before he gets there, a big line outside the door, but Tommy sidles up to the door and flutters his eyelashes and evidently the bouncer’s girl is a huge fan, so Tommy signs the back of a flyer and slips inside.
It’s hot and crowded and kind of dark; so much the better. Tommy fights through the crowd to the bar, gets a drink, and finds himself a nice dim patch of wall with a good view of the stage. He doesn’t have to wait long before the band comes on, no fanfare or anything. The guitarist is a stocky guy with a goatee and a rad mohawk, the drummer is very tiny and not wearing a shirt, and the bassist is tall and skinny and swaying like he’s maybe kind of stoned. At the front of the stage, Adam is tall and beautiful and edible, legs that go for miles in those skintight pants, sparkly black shirt unbuttoned to the waist, glitter all over.
Tommy’s barely caught his breath from the sight when the music starts with a crash and Adam opens his mouth and blows off the fucking roof. Tommy has to cling to the wall to stay upright, because Adam is totally transformed when he sings, and his voice is like revelation, and Tommy can’t believe he didn’t know Adam could do this, that Adam had this in him.
They do four songs and take a break, and Tommy staggers over to the bar and orders another beer, because he’d totally forgotten about the one he had and it’s gone all warm and gross. He leans against the bar - slumps against it, more like, feeling sticky and oddly post-coital, vaguely thinking about how he’s going to have to pull out his guitar and jam with Adam sometime in private after they get all this shit sorted out, because Adam’s voice is like the best sex ever except not, and Tommy really kind of wants to skip all the awkward making-up bits and just pin Adam to a wall and see if he can make Adam’s voice go that high again.
And then he turns around and Adam’s standing a little ways down the bar. Crowded as it is, Tommy’s got no good way of getting to him or even getting his attention, but Adam’s close, a couple of feet away, laughing at something and gesturing with a martini glass.
And then he turns his face down and there’s a boy snugged up against his side, and it takes Tommy a moment to place him - the beautiful brown-eyed ex that Adam had been moping over, smiling up at him with an expression of open adoration. And Adam is laughing, easy, one arm over the boy’s shoulders in a casual way.
Tommy’s going to do the noble thing and leave quietly, maybe call Adam tomorrow or the next day for a quiet ‘sorry-it-didn’t-work-out’ conversation with his dignity intact. He sure as hell can’t face Adam now, shredded by regret and jealousy and Adam’s voice, with that brown-eyed boy hovering around and Adam all lit up and shining.
But it’s so crowded, people pressing him against the bar, and before he’s gotten halfway to the exit the band is already back onstage and slamming into the opening chords of Enter Sandman. And Tommy - he just can’t, can’t move or breathe, sure as hell can’t leave, pinned there like a butterfly listening to Adam sing this song like the closest thing he’ll ever find to having sex without getting his clothes off first.
And it only gets worse, because Tommy finds himself pressing closer to the stage as Adam finishes with Metallica and purrs his way into some Nine Inch Nails. Closer. If Tommy believed in god, he’d be praying about now, because he’s one overly-friendly bar patron from coming in his pants and it’s entirely possible he’ll finish out the night scratching out some pretty brown eyes in some twisted possessive cat fight over a guy who has every reason to never talk to Tommy again all because of the way Adam sound growling out how he wants to fuck you like an animal.
And then, right before they start the next song, Adam glances out at the audience and spots him. Tommy sees the minute it happens, the way Adam freezes briefly, his mouth opening just a little. The guitarist pokes him in the ribs, and he snaps back to what he was doing, darting occasional anxious glances at the crowd.
Tommy couldn’t even tell you what the final song is, just that he spends it in the crowd, buffeted on all sides by the sweaty press of bodies with Adam’s voice growling through his bones and sweat dripping down the back of his neck.
And then it’s over, the spell is broken, and Tommy’s about to start heading through the crowd to the exit before he can do something stupid like make soppy emotional eye-contact with Adam. But the crowd is insane and he ends up inching his way along the back wall and then somebody grabs him by the waist and he yelps and looks down into a pair of brown eyes.
“Hi!” chirps Adam’s tiny beautiful ex-boyfriend. “I’m Cheeks, and you’re the luscious Tommy.”
“Hello,” says Tommy, wriggling free. “Excuse me, I’ve gotta go.”
“No, I have to say something first,” says Cheeks, and for such a tiny dude, he’s pretty fucking wiry, hangs on to Tommy’s waistband and plants his skinny little ass. “No, look. It’s no fun flaunting my hot new boy in Adam’s face when he’s already so miserable.”
Tommy thinks he’s misheard over the din of the club for a moment, and then he just wants to beat his head against the wall. He’s really gotta stop jumping to conclusions. Cheeks pats him on the shoulder. “I thought I would like him being miserable,” he says thoughtfully. “Turns out, not so much. Maybe we really can give the whole ‘friends’ thing a shot.”
Tommy stares at him, and the guy flashes him a bright grin, and goes up on his toes to kiss Tommy’s cheek. “He’s in the back room. They’re expecting you.” And he shoves Tommy in that direction and flounces off towards the bar.
Tommy’s luck runs out when somebody recognises him, and he spends a couple of minutes in a tangle of fans, signing autographs, before he’s able to excuse himself. It’s thinned out a bit by then, and he manages, by keeping his head down and not making eye contact, to get over to the stage door pretty fast. He bumps into the drummer, coming out, and the guy blinks at him and steps around him wordlessly, leaving the door ajar, and Tommy shoves his hair back and steps through.
It’s a dingy little room, too-bright over head fluorescents, a worn couch, a tangle of sound equipment. The guitarist is sprawled out on the couch, but Adam is up and pacing, big and bright and loud in the little room, and he stops when he sees Tommy, trembling.
“I’m out,” says the guitarist, and claps Tommy on the shoulder on his way past, closing the door behind him, blocking out the sounds of the club.
“Tommy,” says Adam, quietly, wondering. “Tommy, oh my god.” Something seems to snap in him. “Oh, Tommy, I didn’t - you have to believe me, I didn’t sell those photos, I swear, I got jumped on my way home and my camera got stolen and I wanted to tell you but I didn’t have your number or anything!” Two steps forward and he’s so close
“I know,” says Tommy. He sways forward, his knuckles brush Adam’s shirt.
“You,” says Adam. His hands twitch, by his sides.
“I called you and called you,” says Tommy, feeling as if his head is floating above his body somewhere.
“My phone,” says Adam.
“I know,” Tommy repeats. “Sutan explained.”
“Oh.” Adam drags in a breath, his eyes wide and very bright. “So. You’re here?”
Tommy licks his lips. “I came to give you my new address,” he says. “I moved.”
Adam breathes out, not looking away. “I wondered,” he said. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
“I’m here,” says Tommy, stupidly. Without his permission, his fingers are curled in the front of Adam’s shirt, clenched tight and they won’t uncurl.
“You’re here,” Adam echoes softly, and his head comes down and his hands come up until Tommy feels like he’s surrounded by Adam, his warm breath and the sweaty-aftershavey-leather smell of him, Adam’s nose pressed against his cheek and Adam holding his face.
Something tight and anxious in Tommy’s chest, something that he wasn’t even aware of, loosens, and his arms come up around Adam’s waist. They stand like that for Tommy can’t tell how long, arms around each other, just breathing.
They break apart when the door opens, and the bass player stumbles in, girl under his arm. “Don’t even think about it,” says Adam mildly, and pushes the door closed again, forcing him and his friend to back up for it. Tommy stands back, just a bit, lets his arms drop, the moment broken. “Come on, says Adam, taking his hand, and tugs him to the couch.
He means to sit down next to Adam, put some space between them so they can talk the way they need to, but the couch is old and sagging and they tip into each other, so Tommy doesn’t even get the chance to breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he manages to stammer out. “I should have tried harder to find you, after.”
“It’s so not your fault,” says Adam, his face all scrunched up, regretful. “Oh my god, I can’t even imagine what you must have been thinking.”
“I was so mad at myself,” Tommy confesses, and Adam looks horrified. “Because I - I trusted you, and I felt like such a fucking chump.”
“Oh, Tommy,” murmurs Adam. “Fuck, this was all my fault.”
Tommy shakes his head no, and then they’re talking over the top of each other, apologies and reassurances and denials and Tommy can’t stand the noise, so he tilts his head up and kisses Adam quiet. But it isn’t quiet, of course, the wet noise that their lips make, the throaty groan that comes out of Adam at the contact, the barely-audible sound of his hand in Adam’s hair, Adam’s on his jaw, the creak of leather and denim as he crawls into Adam’s lap and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.
“I’m sorry,” Adam mumbles into his mouth. “Tommy, baby.”
Tommy bites him. “No talkin’,” he slurs. “More kissin’.”
Adam gives this distressed little whimper. “Somebody’s gonna come in,” he protests, but Tommy is stuck back on the whimper, and Adam’s voice on stage all over the place and sexy, and maybe getting Adam to sound like that again.
Somebody does come in, then, and though all Tommy hears is a startled apology and the door closing, Adam pushes him away, more firmly. “Lemme take you home,” Tommy says. “I wanna fuck you.”
“Anything you want,” says Adam. “But, um, not here. I don’t think another scandal would be good for your image.”
“Fuck my image,” says Tommy, and fumbles his phone out of his pocket to call a car.
Out of respect for his long-suffering driver, Tommy manages to keep his hands off Adam for the ride home, crammed into a corner of the seat with his fingers tucked under his thighs as Adam watches him across the car, wide-eyed and helpless.
“So,” says Tommy, desperately trying to remember how to make conversation. “How’d your application go? For art school?”
Adam makes a face and shakes his head. “I didn’t get it in. All my shit was on my laptop, which.” He shrugs.
“Oh, god. I’m so sorry.” Tommy feels a totally unwarranted rush of guilt - it’s not like it’s his fault Adam got robbed, but he feel responsible anyway. “What are you going to do?”
Adam pulls a face. “I have no idea. I thought I’d finally figured something out, you know, like I could stop drifting around all these dumb dead-end soul-sucking jobs, but, I guess not.”
“I’m sorry,” says Tommy.
“Okay, look, one of us is going to have to stop apologising sooner or later,” says Adam, and reaches over to squeeze Tommy’s knee. “I’ll figure something out. It’s okay.”
“You can be my kept boy,” Tommy offers. “You’ll have to be naked and oiled all the time, but the pay isn’t bad.”
Adam snickers. “God, don’t tempt me.”
“The hours are awesome,” Tommy tempts, and he’s pretty sure Adam is about to tackle and vigorously ravish him in the back of his town car right then except they’ve arrived at Tommy’s place, and they tumble out the back of the car and into the foyer, laughing.
“Gonna show me your new place?” Adam teases, slowing down, dragging Tommy with him.
“No,” says Tommy. “I’m gonna fuck you. Come on.” And he drags Adam to the bedroom, ignoring Adam’s laughing attempts to comment on what he can see of the decor in the dark.
His bed’s messed up still, unmade from this morning, clothes and shoes strewn on the floor, unpacked boxes shoved against the wall. He trips, or maybe Adam does, and they go crashing onto the bed, all of Adam’s bulk and strength and warmth pressing him down, the breath going out of him, and he’s dizzy and shaking all over.
“Baby,” Adam is saying. “Tommy, Tommy, oh god, baby.”
“Yes,” says Tommy, not even sure what he’s replying to. “Come on, fuck, yes.”
Somewhere in the frenzy of undressing that follows, Tommy’s pretty sure he hears Adam say I love you, and even though it’s way too soon, way too fragile and new the only reason he doesn’t say it back, over and over, is that Adam finds something else for his mouth to do that drives all thought out of Tommy’s head.
The first thing Tommy sees when he wakes up is Adam’s broad, freckly back, sprawled out over Tommy’s bed like he belongs there. He’d roll over and go back to sleep - or roll over and fit himself against that amazing expanse of warm skin and start some shit- except his bladder is protesting and his mouth tastes like shit and he has a vague memory of something he’s meant to be doing this morning.
He rolls out of bed and does the bathroom thing, wanders out to the kitchen feeling slightly fresher, bullies the coffee machine into functioning. He’s got no idea where his phone is, and that’s the only way he’s going to figure out if he’s forgotten something important, so he drifts around from room to room looking for it aimlessly, clutching his coffee.
He hears something going off in the bedroom, and it doesn’t sound like his phone, but he follows the noise anyway. Adam is awake, leaning over the edge of bed, rooting around in the pile of clothes, and Tommy takes a moment to enjoy the view of Adam’s ass sticking up like that with the sheet sliding down his hip. “Morning,” he says. “You want coffee?”
The ringing stops, and Adam curses, muffled. “Morning,” he says, sitting up. His hair is sticking up all different directions and there are pillow creases on his face. “Time’s it?”
“’Bout ten,” says Tommy, strolling over until his knees bump against the bed. “Hi.”
“Hi,” says Adam, smiling sleepily, and takes Tommy’s coffee to set it carefully on the nightstand so he can draw him down for a kiss. “Oh, hi.”
Another electronic jangle interrupts them. And Adam breaks away with a muttered, “Mother fucker.” He leans around Tommy to snag his jeans and poke through the pockets, but before he manages to extract the device, it stops again.
“Just turn it off,” says Tommy, petting the back of Adam’s neck with his thumb. “They’ll call back if it’s important.”
“It’s Monte,” says Adam, frowning. “From the band. He already called, like, four times.” He thumbs over the phone screen.
“He’ll call back,” Tommy insists, reaching down to bat the phone away. “Adam.”
“Let me just,” says Adam, and then the phone chimes again, cursed thing, and Tommy wants to whine in frustration, except Adam’s hand suddenly tightens on his hip, hard.
“What?” says Tommy. “Bad news?”
He cranes his head to try and read the screen, but Adam switches the phone off and drops it on the nightstand. “No. Come on, then,” he says, laughing, and pulls Tommy down.
Later, when Adam is in the shower bellowing out Dirty Diana in this totally amazing falsetto and Tommy is sprawled sticky and happy and exhausted across the sheets, he reaches over and grabs the phone off the nightstand. He doesn’t mean to pry - in his post-coital haze he genuinely does think it’s his phone, same model as Adam’s, and he still can’t shake the feeling there’s something other than nailing his gorgeous boyfriend he’s meant to be doing this morning. So it takes him a couple of minutes blinking stupidly at the text up on the screen before it clicks and a slow, delighted smile takes over his face.
From: Monte
Hey man that record producer LOVED us last night. They want to sign the CV so long as your voice is out front. CALL ME sucker!!!!
“Tommy!” Adam calls, his voice billowing out of the open bathroom door with the steam. “Are you still sleeping?”
Thumbing the phone off quickly, Tommy stumbles upright, and heads into the bathroom to wash Adam’s back.
FIN
If you liked the story, please check out the fabulous art and fanmix writinchica2k made me here!
“I’m not telling you who it fucking well was,” says Tommy tiredly. “This is embarrassing enough, okay?” He slouches lower in his seat.
“I know who it was,” says Annette, his manager. “That man you brought to the meetings last week, the tall guy with the hair. The photographer.”
“Yeah,” says Tommy. “But I’m not telling you his name.”
Annette rolls her eyes. “Why, because he’s such a good guy? He sold you out, honey. You’re bared-assed all over every tabloid in town thanks to this punk.”
“Don’t care,” says Tommy. He’s being childish and doesn’t care. “I don’t wanna talk about him. Let’s just do what we can, okay?”
There’s not a lot, as it turns out; Kerry releases a short statement on his behalf about how the photos were for personal use - obviously, fuck - and asking the media to respect Tommy’s privacy. It doesn’t do a blind bit of good, and as he leaves Annette’s office building there’s a horde of paps waiting, and he tucks his shoulders down and ignores their shouted questions and the flashbulbs and the crowd and gets in his car.
He doesn’t go home, doesn’t even think to himself about why he’s avoiding it, just drives himself to Mike’s place, his old apartment that smells like stale beer and sweaty boys and gym socks, where there’s always pizza and beer and nobody wants him to be a role model.
Mike looks up slowly when he comes in, blinking up at Tommy from his seat on the couch. “Rough, man,” he says, and Tommy just nods. Mike holds up a game controller. “Madden?”
“Yeah,” says Tommy. He toes off his shoes, drops his jacket on the bookshelf, and plops down next to Mike. “Bring it.”
With one thing and another, Tommy doesn’t get back home for any length of time for almost a week. He sleeps on the couch at Mike’s the first night, then ducks home quickly early in the morning to pick up some clothes and hightails it out to Burbank to see his Mom.
She cooks for him and lets him vegetate in his room and frowns at his drinking, and then kicks him out on Monday morning because Tommy’s aunt is coming to stay and she’s a shrew who thinks tattoos are the devil’s handiwork and hairdye is for hussies. (She hasn’t actually seen Tommy in almost eight years, through his mother’s careful orchestration, and possibly still thinks he’s a cherub-faced teenager.)
At some point over the weekend one of the Olsen twins OD’ed on cough medicine and staggered around a club vomiting on people and then the other one called a press conference and had a panic attack in front of the collected media of Hollywood. Nobody’s talking about Tommy, so he feels safe enough to Google himself, wincing and flinching pre-emptively.
The photos are everywhere, of course, but to his surprise, nobody seems particularly shocked. Tommy’s reputation for being outrageous, making out with drag queens and wearing lots of leather and corrupting the innocent youth, seems to have worked in his favour. Ausiello posts the photos with no more commentary than Oh, that crazy Ratliff kid, and Perez has half a dozen posts of increasing excitement and ever more white splatters, but there’s an article on AfterElton all about privacy and trust and how it’s really not fair to treat celebrities like public commodities or zoo animals. He sneaks a peek at his twitter feed and it’s split pretty evenly between creepy comments about his dick (and creepy photoshops of the pictures) and fans worrying about his feelings and the fact that he hasn’t tweeted since before the photos came out.
He tweets Hanging with my mom all weekend is badass. Right? And smiles at the replies that roll in.
He calls Annette, and she shouts at him for being uncontactable all weekend and tells him he’s got a party to go to tonight. He suspects the latter is punishment for the former, but he goes home and picks an outfit and leaves again, hangs out at a friend’s place until it’s time to go. His friends are awesome and don’t ask him once about the photos.
The party is standard Hollywood bullshit, paunchy aging producers and bankrollers pretending that the starlets hanging off their arms meant anything more than money. Tommy gets quietly drunk in a corner and is belligerent as hell when some random guy broaches the subject of the photos with him.
He wakes up in a hotel room, thankfully alone, with his phone jangling away in his ear, the generic ringtone for when he doesn’t know the person calling. He squints warily at it and answers, his voice still rough with sleep.
“Mr Ratliff?” The voice is familiar, though for a moment he can’t place it and doesn’t answer, which the woman takes as permission to keep talking. “It’s Marcia, from Five Star Real Estate?”
“Oh,” says Tommy blankly. “Yeah, hi.”
“I’m sorry for disturbing you so early.”
“It’s fine,” says Tommy. He rolls over and squints at the clock; it’s gone eleven. She’s just being polite, hearing the grogginess in his voice.
“I’m calling about the property you were interested in earlier this year? I know you were disappointed when another buyer took it before you could make an offer. Unfortunately that’s fallen through and the house is still on the market. I wanted to check if you were still interested, before we started showing it again.”
Tommy falls on his back across the bed, sheets tangled around his hips. “Um. Maybe. Can I maybe get another look at it before I say yes?”
“Of course!” she hastens to assure him. “Absolutely, there’s no pressure at all. You just seemed to really like the place, I’d feel awful if you missed out on a second opportunity for it.”
“Great.”
“How does this afternoon work for you?” Yeah, no pressure. Tommy squints at the ceiling, but can’t recall anything pressing he’s got on.
“Why not.” They arrange to meet at the house in a couple of hours, and Tommy rolls back over lets himself sleep for a couple more hours.
The house is just as beautiful as he remembers. He tunes out Marcia’s gushing and bubbling and concentrates instead on the quiet clean feel of the place, the tall trees blocking away the neighbours but not the sunlight and the rooms too small to feel isolating and lonely, too big to be cramped. Marcia takes a call, and he slips out the back, to the wide patio with the pool and the barbequing area and some low-maintenance shrubs and trees to give it some colour.
“So what do you think?” says Marcia, pushing back the screen door. “Ooh, isn’t this yard great? You could have some great parties out here.”
Actually, that’s what Tommy likes about it - it’s small enough he can’t really see some wild Hollywood event going on here. It feels like a place to hang out with a few close friends, drink some beers and play some music and chill, not party up.
“Let me think about it,” he says eventually, and Marcia frowns.
“Oh. Well, I’ll see what I can do - I have some other clients who’d be really interested in this property. Bungalows are very in right now.”
Tommy tips his head to the side, quizzical. “Huh. Guess it wasn’t meant to be, then.”
“I’m sure I can work something out!” she says, quickly, and Tommy shrugs.
“I’ll send somebody around to assess the property,” he tells her, because that’s what his parents did when they were looking at buying a house in Burbank, and the guy told them it was a bad investment, and three years later they drove past that house and you could see the huge cracks in the exterior walls where the foundations had shifted.
“We have an assessor on staff,” she tells him snippily.
“Just a precaution,” he says, because he’s tired, and he likes the house, but he doesn’t like the bubbly, pushy estate agent, and as fun as drawing it out to torment her is, he wants to go home.
For Mr Ratliff - or Mr Ratliff’s money - the assessment guy gets out there before close of business that day, and his report is in Tommy’s email by nine the next morning. Tommy lets Marcia stew in her juices for a full day after that, but eventually he tells Lissa, his assistant, to call her and set it up. He wants the fucking house.
He crashes on Mike’s couch again that night, but by the weekend he’s got the keys in his hands and vaguely wonders how long it would have taken if he’d done it himself instead of leaving it to the very competent hands of Lissa and Marcia. He’d signed what Lissa gave him to sign, and he was in by the following Monday.
“It just seems a little sudden, sweetheart,” says his Mom, her arms full of blankets in the middle of the master bedroom. “Don’t get me wrong, the house is gorgeous, but it was awfully fast.”
“I looked at this place months ago,” he says. “I kind of regretted not taking it then, so when it came back up, I took it.”
She sighs, and sits on the bed. “I know. Don’t mind me, I’m being silly.”
Tommy pauses in rearranging his bracelets and turns to give her his full attention. “Is this about Dad?”
Her mouth presses thin. “No. Not exactly.” She rubs her cheek. “You were just - for so long, you were like my grown-up baby, you know? You came to stay all the time, you were always around, and then you got that role and suddenly it was all different.”
“I didn’t mean to abandon you,” he says, guiltily, but she waves a hand.
“Oh, like I didn’t know you were coming to get fed, you freeloader. Most mothers’ boys cut that out when they’re done with college. I’m lucky you stuck around as long as you did.”
“I could come see you more,” he offers, and she laughs.
“Oh, it’s not that, honey. I just never thought you’d be the one buying houses on a whim. I figured you’d be hitting me up for rent money until I retired.”
“You’re lonely,” says Tommy quietly, and she shrugs, careless.
“Maybe I’ll get a puppy,” she says brightly, and he slides onto the bed next to her and hugs her tightly.
“Maybe for Christmas I’ll get you one,” he says. “If you’re good.”
“I’ll name it after you,” she promises.
His Mom stays a couple of days to help him get settled in, and he doesn’t protest like he might have before. They don’t talk about the pictures, though one morning he comes down to the kitchen to find her systematically cutting a page from the morning paper into flesh-toned confetti.
“I think I’ll take a holiday,” she tells him calmly. “I’ve alway wanted to go to England.”
With his mother gone the house is empty and quiet and Tommy spends a lot of time just puttering around rearranging things. It’s unbearably domestic to stack his paltry collection of saucepans in the roomy cupboards, to arrange and rearrange his guitars and horror movie posters and genuine memorabilia in the study, to put pictures of his family on the mantle over the gas fire he’ll never use in the California heat.
He’s a little bare on furniture - the perils of moving from a two-bedroom apartment into a four-bedroom house - but there’s no rush on that, and after a couple of days he feels like he’s got everything just how he wants it so he treats himself to a night in with a bottle of wine and a John Wayne marathon. He catches himself yawning and ready for bed not long before midnight, and laughs at himself in the bathroom mirror at how old and boring he’s getting.
It takes some concentration and mental juggling, but he manages, mostly, not to think about Adam. When he goes out in public, there’s paparazzi around, and he’s reminded strongly, not just because of the obvious connection, but because they keep shouting things about those fucking photos and he has to ignore them twice as hard. So he tries not to go out too much, at least not where the paps hang around, and he’s so busy that’s fine.
Allison gets back, and they have to do post-production stuff, which takes twice as long as it might otherwise because they keep goofing off in the recording studio where they’re supposed to be dubbing dialogue, doing stupid voices and trying to make each other crack up. He takes her back to his place and cooks for her in his new kitchen and she wanders around the house admiring his posters and mocking his dorm-room box-furniture. He gives her beer to shut her up.
“So are we going to talk about your new porn career?” she asks, over the triple-fudge dessert.
“Fuck off,” he says automatically, and she sucks icecream off her spoon and waits. “It wasn’t fucking like that,” he says eventually.
“Guy wants to take naked pictures of you and it wasn’t like that?”
He shrugs. “He was a nice guy. I liked him. Like, a lot.” The sting has lessened some with the weeks, now that he’s not seeing the fucking things in every magazine and website anymore, but it’s been replaced by a kind of melancholy ache.
“Apparently not so nice,” she says sympathetically. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”
Tommy ducks his head. “Take this as a lesson,” he says. “Free from me to you. Don’t fucking trust anybody.”
She winces. “Oh, baby.” She puts down her spoon and comes around the table to hug him, tuck his face against her shoulder and pet his hair. “Don’t do that, don’t say things like that. You trusted a bad guy, but that doesn’t mean you should never trust anyone.”
“Just maybe not paparazzi in the future.”
She pulls away and blinks down at him bemusedly, one hip hitched up on the table. “Are you telling me, Tommy Ratliff,” she says eventually, “That you let a fucking paparazzi take naked god damned photographs of you? Willingly?”
“Paparazzo,” he says, “Just one,” and she upends his bowl of half-melted icecream into his hair.
“Fucking moron,” she says, while he curses and hobbles to the sink, trying not to let it drip down his shirt collar. “Fucking moron, what is wrong with you.”
“My taste in friends,” he replies, sticking his head under the faucet. “Leave me alone to die pathetically, please.”
She sighs and comes over to adjust the temperature of the water so his head doesn’t feel throbbing and icy. “I just don’t see how you could possibly have thought that was a good idea.”
He tilts his head against the flow of warm water and doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t have a good answer. A couple of dates, some hanging out, and some fabulous sex, and he’d handed over everything to Adam, just like that. He followed his instincts, instead of his sense, he’d let a fucking pap take naked photos, yeah, Alli was right to dump icecream in his stupid hair, he deserved it. Dumbass.
He’s sniffling dolefully by the time Alli shuts off the water and drops a clean dishtowel on his head. “I liked him,” he tells her when he stands up, all the blood rushing out of his head suddenly, making him sway. “I really fucking liked him.”
“I know,” she says, and hugs him while he drips sticky water all over her shirt and they both pretend he isn’t crying a little.
He tells her about Adam in fits and starts, about how Adam was nice even when he was being a vulture, and the photos with Raja and the drag show and Adam’s old-fashioned idea of dating and the art school application and the really awesome sex.
“And he didn’t say anything?” she asks, when he’s done.
“Never called,” says Tommy. “Never answered my calls. Number’s disconnected now. I don’t care.”
He doesn’t care right up until Annette tells him she’s got another date lined for him, casually drops it at the end of their weekly meeting, oh, ps, you’re going to a party with this girl on Friday.
“No,” he says, and Annette’s carefully-groomed eyebrows inch upward.
“You’re busy Friday?” she wonders, and he shrugs and shakes his head. “You have something against Miranda? You haven’t even met her.”
“No more dates,” he says. The idea sits uncomfortably in his stomach, of going out and spending time with a person and having them look at him like that, like they know something about him. Everyone looks at him like that these days. People know his stories before he tells them, having read his interviews, they know his background, his history, his likes and dislikes. It was creepy before, and now, with his naked body easily accessible on the internet, it’s a thousand times worse. He can’t go on a date like that, exposed this badly, even if it’s a sham and he doesn’t care about the person he’s with.
Annette’s mouth presses thin. “Look, I know you had a problem with the photographer guy. But she’s under contract with our company, there’s no way she’d run her mouth.”
“Not happening,” says Tommy. “No, I’m not bargaining with you, Annette, it’s not happening. I’ll go to the stupid party, but by myself, and if I hear even a whiff of a rumour that I’m dating anybody even remotely connected with this management company,” she jumps and looks a little guilty here, but he barges on, “I swear I’ll engineer the biggest, sleaziest, most drug-addled party in Hollywood’s history and be photographed doing coke off an underage male dancer’s ass.” He waits a moment to be sure the message has sunk in. “And I’ll punch the first person to ask me about it.”
“Okay,” she says after a pause. “Keep me updated on that situation, will you?”
“Sure,” he says, as sweetly as he’s able. “See you next week.”
“Don’t forget that fundraiser on Saturday,” she says, as he leaves.
The fundraiser is for gay youth visibility or something - something Tommy probably cares a lot about actually, but he’s just here to be a talking head. These events always have the same people at them, though, so there’s a lot of faces he knows, and he’s more relaxed than he might be elsewhere. It’s always the same round of queer-and-queer-friendly actors-musicians-celebrities, and all Tommy has to do is show up, smile on the red carpet, deliver some soundbites, and he can drink champagne and trade dirty jokes with Neil Patrick Harris’ husband and hit on all the horrified straight kids from Glee for the rest of the evening.
He’s in the middle of buying a drink for the angel-faced kid who’s laughing and blushing and being egged on by his older castmates when Zac tackles him from behind in a great big bear hug.
“You!” he says. “How was Europe?”
“Me!” Zac agrees brightly. “It was awesome. Come with me if you want to live.” He drags Tommy protesting into a corner. “Look, I get you’re pissed about the photos, man, but don’t you think you’re being a little mean? At least talk to the dude.”
“Huh?” Tommy’s aware his confused face is kind of unflattering, and he wipes it away and smiles blandly for the event photographer who snaps he and Zac all chummy in the corner, doubtless setting off another round of rumours.
Zac sighs. “I mean, I get it, you know? It sucks. But I think you’re overreacting.”
Something hard and angry wells up in Tommy’s chest, and he leans in close to hiss, “You’re actually seriously on Adam’s side in all this? Are you fucking kidding?”
Zac jerks back. “Woah. Dude. All I’m saying is, you obviously were okay with him taking the pictures, okay?”
“That doesn’t make it okay for him to fucking sell them,” Tommy snarls, and storms off, leaving Zac spluttering.
He texts for his car to come round, gets roped into a group photo with Perez Hilton, who cops a feel and tries to grill him again about the fucking photos, which he dodges by latching onto the guy from My Chemical Romance whose name he can never remember, and then his phone buzzes to let him know his car is waiting. There’s a text from Zac, which he ignores, and one from Annette, irritated that he’s skipping out early, which he also ignores.
When he gets home, his house, which had previously seemed so cosy and welcoming, feels huge and empty and impersonal, and he kicks things on his way to bed, moody and tired.
Zac calls him first thing in the morning, and then again, every half an hour, leaving message after message that Tommy deletes without listening to them.
He’s got a photoshoot on Monday afternoon, so he attempts to stop feeling sorry for himself, showers and shaves and shows up sober and well-rested instead of hungover and smelling of three days worth of tequila and burritos. But he isn’t really in the mood to deal with anybody, so he plants his ass in the makeup chair and shuts his eyes.
“Morning, honey,” chirps his makeup artist, and Tommy cracks an eyelid - it’s a very tall, thin guy, brown-skinned and bespectacled.
“Hi,” he says, and shuts his eyes again, unwilling to make conversation.
There’s a little sound of surprise, and then strong, cool hands on his face. The guy tsks and mutters something about a proper moisturising routine before slathering his face with cold cream. His hands are firm as he turns Tommy this way and that, murmuring the whole time, mostly to himself, as brushes and sponges flit over Tommy’s skin.
“Can I tell you something, honey?” the guy says eventually. Tommy opens his eyes, blinks at himself in the mirror. He looks awesome. This guy is really good; he’s made Tommy’s exhausted face look attractively wan and vulnerable rather than gross and sleep-deprived.
“Sure,” says Tommy agreeably. Never pays to piss off the makeup people. Shit like that gets around.
“His bag was stolen.” The guy’s back is to him, as he fusses over the little pots and brushes on the counter. The non-sequiter comes out of the blue, and for a long moment, Tommy can only stare at him, scrabbling to reconnect the conversational dots. The guy looks over his shoulder. “Adam, I mean.”
It’s the angle that does it, the eyes over the coy slope of shoulder. “Raja?”
A flash of a smile. “Sutan, today, but yeah.”
"Oh my god.” He’s never seen Raja - Sutan - out of drag, and the difference between the ultra-glam, super-groomed diva and this scruffy, sweet-faced man is striking. And then Tommy’s brain catches up with Sutan’s words and he flails his arms around. “Wait, what?” he squeaks.
There’s a bang on the door. “We’re ready for you, Mr Ratliff.”
Sutan grabs his hand, squeezes it. “Look, find me after, okay? It’s important, Tommy, really.”
“I will,” says Tommy, numbly.
The photographer is one of those people who has quote-unquote artistic vision, and Tommy’s role is not so much photographic subject as it is poseable doll, so he puts on his best model face and moves as directed and lets his thoughts go elsewhere.
His bag was stolen. Adam, I mean. Tommy can’t even get his head together enough to work that out, but as he sprawls out on a chaise and somebody points a fan at him, blowing his hair back, Sutan’s words play over and over in his head like a mantra.
“And you could maybe,” says the photographer, in his frustrating faux-European accent, “lift your shirt a little? Or take it off, yes, I think so.” He makes a gesture with his fingers, and licks his lips.
“No,” says Tommy flatly. He’s always been pretty solid on that point - he’s not ashamed of his body, but he’s not that interested in showing it off. Clothes can disguise the little belly he gets after a couple of lazy weeks of too much beer and too little movement, or the skinniness of his ribs, or his pancake-flat ass, but he’s not getting naked, he’s never done that, and he doesn’t like the leer on this guy’s face.
The photographer looks irritated. “Come, it is art, yes? We all know you are not shy.”
Tommy feels his fingers curling into fists. The set, which twenty seconds ago was bustling, has gone dead silent, like everyone’s taken a breath at once. Tommy takes his own breath, draws on all his skills to keep his voice level. “I don’t mind if it’s art,” he says, as mildly as he can. “But I’m not interested in helping you get your rocks off. It’s not shyness.” He stands up, stretches a little, and plants one hand on his hip, cocked and sassy. “I just don’t like you. Later.”
He ambles off towards his dressing room, ignoring the sputtering of the photographer and the shocked whispers and the scattered applause and catcalls.
Sutan looks up as he comes in. “That was fast.”
“Tell me you don’t actually work with that guy,” says Tommy, yanking off the scratchy shirt he’d worn for the photoshoot.
“Not usually,” said Sutan. “I called in some favours when I heard he was shooting you today. My friend seemed only too happy to switch, though, so I have some idea.”
Tommy pauses and stares at him, and Sutan shrugs. “Okay. I’m gonna change, and we’re gonna go for coffee, and you’re gonna explain all this.”
“Roger that,” says Sutan. “Don’t smudge, though, you look perfect.” He touches Tommy’s cheekbone with an air of professional pride.
By the time Tommy’s back in street clothes, somebody’s called Annette. She calls to yell at him, and he follows Sutan out of building with his phone tucked against his shoulder, arguing with her. Once he’s explained, she relents and promises tighter contracts regarding the behaviour of photographers - “Maybe something like the contract we have for minors, you prissy bitch,” she grumbles.
“Don’t hate on my privacy standards,” he says, but there’s no heat to it, because he knows that she really will follow it up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Sutan orders some great big froofy coffee drink thing that does not, as far as Tommy can tell, actually contain coffee. Tommy orders as much caffeine as can be legally contained in a single serve, adds a healthy helping of sugar, and scalds his mouth waiting for Sutan to finish stirring and fussing and adding cinnamon and chocolate powder.
“You’re killing me here,” he says finally.
Sutan looks up, his mouth softened into a smirk. “So how are you, Tommy Joe?”
“What did you mean, his bag was stolen?”
“We never talk anymore.”
“Raja, please.” Tommy doesn’t even care that he’s being pathetic.
Sutan takes his hand. “His bag was stolen, honey. When he was on his way home from your house a couple of weeks ago. It had his laptop, his camera, his phone, his wallet, everything. I can get a copy of the police report if you like.”
“So,” says Tommy. “So it wasn’t him,” and saying it aloud makes him want to cry with relief and vomit from guilt. He was right, his instincts were right, Adam hadn’t sold him out. “But he didn’t call or anything?”
“Phone was in the bag,” says Sutan briefly, sucking milk-foam off his spoon. “Didn’t have your number, couldn’t answer calls. Kind of hard to get hold of you, you know?”
Tommy puts his head down on the table, eyes stinging. “Oh wow.”
“Deep breaths,” says Sutan comfortingly. “You’re not gonna pass out, are you?”
“Maybe,” Tommy mumbles, and Sutan pats him on the back of the head and applies himself to his coffee-thing.
Once Tommy has collected himself from his slightly embarrassing fit of the vapours, he lifts his head. “Is he mad at me?”
Sutan tilts his head. “No? I don’t think so, anyway. He’s a little hurt, I guess.” He runs his finger around the rim of his cup and licks it. “I mean, he understands. But he spent a couple of days sitting on your doorstep waiting for you to come home so he could explain in person.”
Tommy remembers, with a pang, that he hadn’t been home much those first few days after the photos broke. Also, “I moved house.”
“I heard,” said Sutan drily. “So did Adam, when his letters came back ‘no longer at this address’.”
“Well, fuck.” Tommy covered his face. “I feel like such an ass now.”
“Yup,” says Sutan brightly. “But you’re pretty. He’ll probably forgive you, if you forgive him.”
“For what?” asks Tommy, slightly hysterical.
Sutan laughs. “Oh, he’s all freaked out about how you’ll hate him for pressuring you to take the photos in the first place, and how you’ll never trust him again, and it’s all his fault, etc.”
Tommy realises he’s chewing on his cuticles, a bad habit he thought he’d lost. “Do you have his number? His new one?”
“Of course,” says Sutan. “Oh my god, come here.” Tommy scoots around the booth and lets Sutan hug him tight and pet his hair. “This has been weighing on you an awful lot, hasn’t it, sweetie.”
“The photos weren’t so bad,” says Tommy, muffled. “I mean, they were really fucking bad. But it was worse cause it was Adam. I liked him so much.”
“He would never do something like that.”
“I know that. That’s why it was so bad, because then it looked like he had and that meant everything about him was wrong. It sucked.”
Sutan goes, “Awww,” and kisses the top of his head. “Everything’s okay, honey.”
“You’re my favourite,” says Tommy.
Sutan gives him Adam’s new number, but he also tells him Adam is performing that evening at a bar with some friends - “Oh, he’s an awesome singer, and their lead singer ran off with some yoga instructor, so he’s just filling in, because he refuses to even consider making a career out of it since he spent six months in the chorus line of some musical and then slept with the director.” And Tommy, of course, decides to go for the option with the most dramatic potential - hey, he’s an introvert, yes, but he’s an actor, and a dramatic little bitch at heart.
So he dresses up carefully and touches up the awesome job Sutan did on his face and curls his hair, which is a pain and he hasn’t done it in ages, and puts on these awesome heeled boots and goes to the bar. It’s full before he gets there, a big line outside the door, but Tommy sidles up to the door and flutters his eyelashes and evidently the bouncer’s girl is a huge fan, so Tommy signs the back of a flyer and slips inside.
It’s hot and crowded and kind of dark; so much the better. Tommy fights through the crowd to the bar, gets a drink, and finds himself a nice dim patch of wall with a good view of the stage. He doesn’t have to wait long before the band comes on, no fanfare or anything. The guitarist is a stocky guy with a goatee and a rad mohawk, the drummer is very tiny and not wearing a shirt, and the bassist is tall and skinny and swaying like he’s maybe kind of stoned. At the front of the stage, Adam is tall and beautiful and edible, legs that go for miles in those skintight pants, sparkly black shirt unbuttoned to the waist, glitter all over.
Tommy’s barely caught his breath from the sight when the music starts with a crash and Adam opens his mouth and blows off the fucking roof. Tommy has to cling to the wall to stay upright, because Adam is totally transformed when he sings, and his voice is like revelation, and Tommy can’t believe he didn’t know Adam could do this, that Adam had this in him.
They do four songs and take a break, and Tommy staggers over to the bar and orders another beer, because he’d totally forgotten about the one he had and it’s gone all warm and gross. He leans against the bar - slumps against it, more like, feeling sticky and oddly post-coital, vaguely thinking about how he’s going to have to pull out his guitar and jam with Adam sometime in private after they get all this shit sorted out, because Adam’s voice is like the best sex ever except not, and Tommy really kind of wants to skip all the awkward making-up bits and just pin Adam to a wall and see if he can make Adam’s voice go that high again.
And then he turns around and Adam’s standing a little ways down the bar. Crowded as it is, Tommy’s got no good way of getting to him or even getting his attention, but Adam’s close, a couple of feet away, laughing at something and gesturing with a martini glass.
And then he turns his face down and there’s a boy snugged up against his side, and it takes Tommy a moment to place him - the beautiful brown-eyed ex that Adam had been moping over, smiling up at him with an expression of open adoration. And Adam is laughing, easy, one arm over the boy’s shoulders in a casual way.
Tommy’s going to do the noble thing and leave quietly, maybe call Adam tomorrow or the next day for a quiet ‘sorry-it-didn’t-work-out’ conversation with his dignity intact. He sure as hell can’t face Adam now, shredded by regret and jealousy and Adam’s voice, with that brown-eyed boy hovering around and Adam all lit up and shining.
But it’s so crowded, people pressing him against the bar, and before he’s gotten halfway to the exit the band is already back onstage and slamming into the opening chords of Enter Sandman. And Tommy - he just can’t, can’t move or breathe, sure as hell can’t leave, pinned there like a butterfly listening to Adam sing this song like the closest thing he’ll ever find to having sex without getting his clothes off first.
And it only gets worse, because Tommy finds himself pressing closer to the stage as Adam finishes with Metallica and purrs his way into some Nine Inch Nails. Closer. If Tommy believed in god, he’d be praying about now, because he’s one overly-friendly bar patron from coming in his pants and it’s entirely possible he’ll finish out the night scratching out some pretty brown eyes in some twisted possessive cat fight over a guy who has every reason to never talk to Tommy again all because of the way Adam sound growling out how he wants to fuck you like an animal.
And then, right before they start the next song, Adam glances out at the audience and spots him. Tommy sees the minute it happens, the way Adam freezes briefly, his mouth opening just a little. The guitarist pokes him in the ribs, and he snaps back to what he was doing, darting occasional anxious glances at the crowd.
Tommy couldn’t even tell you what the final song is, just that he spends it in the crowd, buffeted on all sides by the sweaty press of bodies with Adam’s voice growling through his bones and sweat dripping down the back of his neck.
And then it’s over, the spell is broken, and Tommy’s about to start heading through the crowd to the exit before he can do something stupid like make soppy emotional eye-contact with Adam. But the crowd is insane and he ends up inching his way along the back wall and then somebody grabs him by the waist and he yelps and looks down into a pair of brown eyes.
“Hi!” chirps Adam’s tiny beautiful ex-boyfriend. “I’m Cheeks, and you’re the luscious Tommy.”
“Hello,” says Tommy, wriggling free. “Excuse me, I’ve gotta go.”
“No, I have to say something first,” says Cheeks, and for such a tiny dude, he’s pretty fucking wiry, hangs on to Tommy’s waistband and plants his skinny little ass. “No, look. It’s no fun flaunting my hot new boy in Adam’s face when he’s already so miserable.”
Tommy thinks he’s misheard over the din of the club for a moment, and then he just wants to beat his head against the wall. He’s really gotta stop jumping to conclusions. Cheeks pats him on the shoulder. “I thought I would like him being miserable,” he says thoughtfully. “Turns out, not so much. Maybe we really can give the whole ‘friends’ thing a shot.”
Tommy stares at him, and the guy flashes him a bright grin, and goes up on his toes to kiss Tommy’s cheek. “He’s in the back room. They’re expecting you.” And he shoves Tommy in that direction and flounces off towards the bar.
Tommy’s luck runs out when somebody recognises him, and he spends a couple of minutes in a tangle of fans, signing autographs, before he’s able to excuse himself. It’s thinned out a bit by then, and he manages, by keeping his head down and not making eye contact, to get over to the stage door pretty fast. He bumps into the drummer, coming out, and the guy blinks at him and steps around him wordlessly, leaving the door ajar, and Tommy shoves his hair back and steps through.
It’s a dingy little room, too-bright over head fluorescents, a worn couch, a tangle of sound equipment. The guitarist is sprawled out on the couch, but Adam is up and pacing, big and bright and loud in the little room, and he stops when he sees Tommy, trembling.
“I’m out,” says the guitarist, and claps Tommy on the shoulder on his way past, closing the door behind him, blocking out the sounds of the club.
“Tommy,” says Adam, quietly, wondering. “Tommy, oh my god.” Something seems to snap in him. “Oh, Tommy, I didn’t - you have to believe me, I didn’t sell those photos, I swear, I got jumped on my way home and my camera got stolen and I wanted to tell you but I didn’t have your number or anything!” Two steps forward and he’s so close
“I know,” says Tommy. He sways forward, his knuckles brush Adam’s shirt.
“You,” says Adam. His hands twitch, by his sides.
“I called you and called you,” says Tommy, feeling as if his head is floating above his body somewhere.
“My phone,” says Adam.
“I know,” Tommy repeats. “Sutan explained.”
“Oh.” Adam drags in a breath, his eyes wide and very bright. “So. You’re here?”
Tommy licks his lips. “I came to give you my new address,” he says. “I moved.”
Adam breathes out, not looking away. “I wondered,” he said. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
“I’m here,” says Tommy, stupidly. Without his permission, his fingers are curled in the front of Adam’s shirt, clenched tight and they won’t uncurl.
“You’re here,” Adam echoes softly, and his head comes down and his hands come up until Tommy feels like he’s surrounded by Adam, his warm breath and the sweaty-aftershavey-leather smell of him, Adam’s nose pressed against his cheek and Adam holding his face.
Something tight and anxious in Tommy’s chest, something that he wasn’t even aware of, loosens, and his arms come up around Adam’s waist. They stand like that for Tommy can’t tell how long, arms around each other, just breathing.
They break apart when the door opens, and the bass player stumbles in, girl under his arm. “Don’t even think about it,” says Adam mildly, and pushes the door closed again, forcing him and his friend to back up for it. Tommy stands back, just a bit, lets his arms drop, the moment broken. “Come on, says Adam, taking his hand, and tugs him to the couch.
He means to sit down next to Adam, put some space between them so they can talk the way they need to, but the couch is old and sagging and they tip into each other, so Tommy doesn’t even get the chance to breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he manages to stammer out. “I should have tried harder to find you, after.”
“It’s so not your fault,” says Adam, his face all scrunched up, regretful. “Oh my god, I can’t even imagine what you must have been thinking.”
“I was so mad at myself,” Tommy confesses, and Adam looks horrified. “Because I - I trusted you, and I felt like such a fucking chump.”
“Oh, Tommy,” murmurs Adam. “Fuck, this was all my fault.”
Tommy shakes his head no, and then they’re talking over the top of each other, apologies and reassurances and denials and Tommy can’t stand the noise, so he tilts his head up and kisses Adam quiet. But it isn’t quiet, of course, the wet noise that their lips make, the throaty groan that comes out of Adam at the contact, the barely-audible sound of his hand in Adam’s hair, Adam’s on his jaw, the creak of leather and denim as he crawls into Adam’s lap and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.
“I’m sorry,” Adam mumbles into his mouth. “Tommy, baby.”
Tommy bites him. “No talkin’,” he slurs. “More kissin’.”
Adam gives this distressed little whimper. “Somebody’s gonna come in,” he protests, but Tommy is stuck back on the whimper, and Adam’s voice on stage all over the place and sexy, and maybe getting Adam to sound like that again.
Somebody does come in, then, and though all Tommy hears is a startled apology and the door closing, Adam pushes him away, more firmly. “Lemme take you home,” Tommy says. “I wanna fuck you.”
“Anything you want,” says Adam. “But, um, not here. I don’t think another scandal would be good for your image.”
“Fuck my image,” says Tommy, and fumbles his phone out of his pocket to call a car.
Out of respect for his long-suffering driver, Tommy manages to keep his hands off Adam for the ride home, crammed into a corner of the seat with his fingers tucked under his thighs as Adam watches him across the car, wide-eyed and helpless.
“So,” says Tommy, desperately trying to remember how to make conversation. “How’d your application go? For art school?”
Adam makes a face and shakes his head. “I didn’t get it in. All my shit was on my laptop, which.” He shrugs.
“Oh, god. I’m so sorry.” Tommy feels a totally unwarranted rush of guilt - it’s not like it’s his fault Adam got robbed, but he feel responsible anyway. “What are you going to do?”
Adam pulls a face. “I have no idea. I thought I’d finally figured something out, you know, like I could stop drifting around all these dumb dead-end soul-sucking jobs, but, I guess not.”
“I’m sorry,” says Tommy.
“Okay, look, one of us is going to have to stop apologising sooner or later,” says Adam, and reaches over to squeeze Tommy’s knee. “I’ll figure something out. It’s okay.”
“You can be my kept boy,” Tommy offers. “You’ll have to be naked and oiled all the time, but the pay isn’t bad.”
Adam snickers. “God, don’t tempt me.”
“The hours are awesome,” Tommy tempts, and he’s pretty sure Adam is about to tackle and vigorously ravish him in the back of his town car right then except they’ve arrived at Tommy’s place, and they tumble out the back of the car and into the foyer, laughing.
“Gonna show me your new place?” Adam teases, slowing down, dragging Tommy with him.
“No,” says Tommy. “I’m gonna fuck you. Come on.” And he drags Adam to the bedroom, ignoring Adam’s laughing attempts to comment on what he can see of the decor in the dark.
His bed’s messed up still, unmade from this morning, clothes and shoes strewn on the floor, unpacked boxes shoved against the wall. He trips, or maybe Adam does, and they go crashing onto the bed, all of Adam’s bulk and strength and warmth pressing him down, the breath going out of him, and he’s dizzy and shaking all over.
“Baby,” Adam is saying. “Tommy, Tommy, oh god, baby.”
“Yes,” says Tommy, not even sure what he’s replying to. “Come on, fuck, yes.”
Somewhere in the frenzy of undressing that follows, Tommy’s pretty sure he hears Adam say I love you, and even though it’s way too soon, way too fragile and new the only reason he doesn’t say it back, over and over, is that Adam finds something else for his mouth to do that drives all thought out of Tommy’s head.
The first thing Tommy sees when he wakes up is Adam’s broad, freckly back, sprawled out over Tommy’s bed like he belongs there. He’d roll over and go back to sleep - or roll over and fit himself against that amazing expanse of warm skin and start some shit- except his bladder is protesting and his mouth tastes like shit and he has a vague memory of something he’s meant to be doing this morning.
He rolls out of bed and does the bathroom thing, wanders out to the kitchen feeling slightly fresher, bullies the coffee machine into functioning. He’s got no idea where his phone is, and that’s the only way he’s going to figure out if he’s forgotten something important, so he drifts around from room to room looking for it aimlessly, clutching his coffee.
He hears something going off in the bedroom, and it doesn’t sound like his phone, but he follows the noise anyway. Adam is awake, leaning over the edge of bed, rooting around in the pile of clothes, and Tommy takes a moment to enjoy the view of Adam’s ass sticking up like that with the sheet sliding down his hip. “Morning,” he says. “You want coffee?”
The ringing stops, and Adam curses, muffled. “Morning,” he says, sitting up. His hair is sticking up all different directions and there are pillow creases on his face. “Time’s it?”
“’Bout ten,” says Tommy, strolling over until his knees bump against the bed. “Hi.”
“Hi,” says Adam, smiling sleepily, and takes Tommy’s coffee to set it carefully on the nightstand so he can draw him down for a kiss. “Oh, hi.”
Another electronic jangle interrupts them. And Adam breaks away with a muttered, “Mother fucker.” He leans around Tommy to snag his jeans and poke through the pockets, but before he manages to extract the device, it stops again.
“Just turn it off,” says Tommy, petting the back of Adam’s neck with his thumb. “They’ll call back if it’s important.”
“It’s Monte,” says Adam, frowning. “From the band. He already called, like, four times.” He thumbs over the phone screen.
“He’ll call back,” Tommy insists, reaching down to bat the phone away. “Adam.”
“Let me just,” says Adam, and then the phone chimes again, cursed thing, and Tommy wants to whine in frustration, except Adam’s hand suddenly tightens on his hip, hard.
“What?” says Tommy. “Bad news?”
He cranes his head to try and read the screen, but Adam switches the phone off and drops it on the nightstand. “No. Come on, then,” he says, laughing, and pulls Tommy down.
Later, when Adam is in the shower bellowing out Dirty Diana in this totally amazing falsetto and Tommy is sprawled sticky and happy and exhausted across the sheets, he reaches over and grabs the phone off the nightstand. He doesn’t mean to pry - in his post-coital haze he genuinely does think it’s his phone, same model as Adam’s, and he still can’t shake the feeling there’s something other than nailing his gorgeous boyfriend he’s meant to be doing this morning. So it takes him a couple of minutes blinking stupidly at the text up on the screen before it clicks and a slow, delighted smile takes over his face.
From: Monte
Hey man that record producer LOVED us last night. They want to sign the CV so long as your voice is out front. CALL ME sucker!!!!
“Tommy!” Adam calls, his voice billowing out of the open bathroom door with the steam. “Are you still sleeping?”
Thumbing the phone off quickly, Tommy stumbles upright, and heads into the bathroom to wash Adam’s back.
FIN
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