Fic: The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants (bandslash)
ETA: This fic is completely finished! I never intended it to be a series. Really. >_>
Title: The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants
Author: Nicola
Fandom: RPS: Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Pairing: Gabe/William, Gabe/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,077
Disclaimer: The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants is a novel by Ann Brashares.
Summary: When William and Gabe begin sharing clothes, a magical connection emerges between them. Except, less "magical" and more sexual.
Note: For fleener. Plus, a big thank you to harmyjo for the beta-and the handkerchief joke is hers. ;)
Don't follow the fashion stylings of Messrs. Saporta and Beckett? Here's a handy-dandy key.
-----
The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants
"oh hell
you fit me so well"
(Giant Drag)
"You can't leave," William said, a hint of a whine entering his voice. He lowered his magazine and shot Gabe a look that suggested he was doing something terrible and traitorous by going home.
"We're gonna go bowling," William added. He fidgeted, bouncing slightly where he sat on the bed. "Tom knows some kid who'll let us in after hours. It'll be fun. We can, you know, do shots and then see how many of those skittle things we can knock over."
"Pins," Gabe corrected him absently as he searched the hotel room for his jacket, "they're called pins in bowling."
"Wait, what's the difference between bowling and skittles?" William asked. He sounded genuinely interested.
"I… think that in skittles you, like…" Gabe frowned. Trying to remember this kind of useless information was required during a typical conversation with William. He laughed suddenly. "I have no fucking clue, Bill!" He glanced fondly over at William and then said firmly, "But I can't come bowling. I have to get going. My flight's in two hours."
William shrugged. "You could take a different flight," he pointed out, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Gabe ducked down to check under the bed. There was a light saber and a broken flower vase hiding under there, but no jacket. "I gotta go, man. I don't even have any clothes here." He let out a low laugh as he straightened up. "I packed for two days-it's already been five."
"Borrow something of mine!" William suggested. He tossed aside his magazine and scrambled excitedly off the bed. He began rifling through the closet. Gabe noted that most of William's clothes were scattered across the floor, brightly-colored piles of crumpled t-shirts appearing like mole hills in the carpet. However, William produced a pair of faded blue jeans from a hanger. He held them out to Gabe. "Here."
Gabe eyed the jeans skeptically. William was both skinnier and shorter than him. Although, the jeans did look slightly less skin-tight than William's usual style.
Undeterred by Gabe's silence, William yanked out of the closet a white shirt and thrust it into his hands. It was a dress shirt, but it looked ill-cared-for and worn from age.
"I don't have any clean underwear," Gabe pointed out.
"So…"
"You want me to go commando in your clothes."
"Sure, why not?" William seemed supremely unconcerned. He flopped back onto the bed and then squinted up at Gabe. "This means you're staying, right?"
Gabe hesitated and then muttered, "Fuck it. New York won't miss me."
William broke into a wide smile. "Cool," he said, sounding a little breathy. He reached over and grabbed his Sidekick from the night stand. "I'll text Tom about the bowling thing."
Gabe kicked off his shoes and began unbuttoning his own pants. He glanced over at William, who was intent on his messaging. Gabe undressed slowly. By the time he had lowered his jeans and reached for William's pair, Gabe guessed that William's interest in his phone had become carefully studious. Gabe pulled on the jeans, tucking himself in. They were certainly a snug fit, but remarkably comfortable.
William's head was bent low over his Sidekick. A single lock of hair fell in his face, its curl tickling at the corner of his mouth. Gabe watched the way William exhaled hard, buffeting his hair away. William's eye-line flickered, as if he were about to sneak a glance in Gabe's direction. Gabe pulled off his t-shirt and reached for William's shirt. He buttoned it carelessly, smirking as he continued to watch William. "I'm done," he said at last.
William looked up, finally. "Hmm?" he said with wide-eyed nonchalance. He paused and then added, "Tom's setting things up."
"How do I look?" Gabe struck a pose, so that his hips jutted out, Beckett-style. He pouted his lips momentarily into an ostentatious kissy-face.
William grinned. "You're missing one thing!" He reached down and untied the scarf from around his knee. "C'mere," he commanded.
Gabe edged nearer as William scooted over so that he was sitting on the end of the bed. With what struck Gabe as near-reverence, William fastened the yellow patterned scarf around his leg. He pulled it tight, knotting it with a flourish.
"There!" William leaned back, looking noticeably smug. "You're all done."
"William," Gabe said seriously, "I've been meaning to say… you know the handkerchief code only applies when it's in your back pocket, right?"
William stuck out his tongue and Gabe began to laugh.
*
Gabe really meant to return the clothes. When he got home to New York, he threw them in the washer along with his own clothes. When he took them out of the dryer, he set aside William's jeans and shirt and handkerchief and made a mental note to mail them to Chicago.
Three weeks passed. Gabe succeeded in sticking an orange post-it with William scrawled across it on the heap of clothes. He still forgot to mail them. More to the point, they were three weeks in which Gabe didn't do any laundry. As he was getting ready to go out, the pile of William's clothes by the door suddenly seemed a more appealing option than wearing his vintage YSL black pants for a fourth day running.
"Are you… a failed teen model?" His friend Hannah choked on her own laughter as she fingered the frayed hem of William's white shirt. "You look like a print advertisement for some low-grade Abercrombie rip-off." Suddenly, Hannah began pulling apart the buttons. "Show a little skin, darling! You'll never sell those horrible clothes otherwise!"
Gabe swatted her away in irritation (although he didn't redo the buttons, because she was probably right; the more skin the better in an outfit like this).
"What's with the handkerchief, anyway?" Hannah continued. "You know the handkerchief code only applies when-"
"Yeah, yeah," Gabe cut her off, "real funny."
"But really, darling." Hannah's laughter subsided and she returned to her drink, eyeing him with continued amusement. "I think it's sweet that you're wearing your boyfriend's clothes. It's very… couple-y." She made a face at the word and then hurried on, "But sweet."
Gabe soon realized that the answer to dealing with Hannah's jibes was to get very, very drunk. She grew bored of him around the seventh drink and left with a guy who he suspected actually was a teen model (he looked young enough, anyway). Gabe downed another whiskey sour and realized that someone was standing very close to him. Expecting it to be Hannah, returned from her conquest, Gabe opened his mouth to make a crack about statutory rape. He stopped when he turned to see a man standing beside him.
The man was blond, classically (if generically) good-looking; muscled, but not ostentatiously so; well-presented (and definitely not wearing a pair of ancient GAP jeans). He looked a little like Matt Damon. If Gabe had a type, he was definitely not it. "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked with an easy smile.
"Don't worry, I'm drunk enough." Gabe had meant it as a joke, but a slight slur really did muffle the words. He laughed.
"… do you want to go somewhere?" There might have been a precursor to the question, but Gabe didn't bother to listen.
"Why bother." Gabe downed the last of his drink.
The man took a step backward. He held up his hands. "Hey guy, I was just asking a question. It's cool."
Gabe took a step forward, closing the distance between them again. "Hey guy," he said satirically, "I was just giving you an answer." He groped blindly for the man's crotch and gave his erection a good squeeze. "Meet me in the bathroom."
The feeling of being pressed against the stall door was a familiar one; reassuring after a shitty night. Matt Damon Guy gave surprisingly good head, but Gabe was too drunk to offer much more than an unthinking hand-job in return.
"My name's Steve, by the way," the man said wryly as he zipped up his pants.
Gabe wiped his hand on the edge of his-William's-white shirt. "Yeah?" he said disinterestedly.
Matt Damon gave him a wry smile. "You called me Bill."
Gabe never did mail the clothes back to William. The jeans, shirt and handkerchief made it into his wardrobe. He rifled past them occasionally, but he didn't wear them again.
He ended up dating Matt Damon Guy for three weeks. He was aware of the perversity of it all. Sex with men was no big deal; kissing them-ostentatiously and with no real intent-was practically expected. But dating men-buying stale popcorn to eat at bad movies; playing footsie under the table in it restaurants-that wasn't something Gabe did.
Except, there was something that Gabe found instantly stimulating about the glint of amusement in Matt Damon's eye; his infuriating habit of letting the word Bill slip past his lips. Gabe had never figured himself for someone so easily manipulated, but Matt Damon liked to ask about Bill-
"Who is he, your boyfriend?"
"Shut up."
"No, tell me. You're in love with him."
"Fuck you."
-and Gabe could never seem to get a real answer out. Matt Damon even zeroed in on the single photograph of William in Gabe's apartment. It was a blurry shot, ostensibly of a city skyline on the last day of tour, but William had ducked into frame at the last moment and now he smiled out at Gabe from the far right of the picture.
"This him?" Matt Damon smirked. Gabe made an incoherent grunt of irritation and slammed the other man back against a bookcase. He kissed him hard and thought of soft, lens-blurred features and a guileless smile.
That was the thing, of course. William-Bill-was not his boyfriend; fuck knows, they weren't in love. Their relationship had always been resoundingly, exhaustively platonic. If he was honest with himself, Gabe couldn't entirely figure out why. But when William invited him to crash at his hotel room, it meant just that: a spot on the floor. When William hugged him, he was an irritating blend of childish and coquettish-but it was never a precursor to much of anything. And when William loaned Gabe some clothes to wear, it was… just clothes.
*
"You're not wearing that." Gabe plucked at William's waistcoat in mock-horror.
William swatted at his hands, looking mildly annoyed. "Why not?"
They stood in the middle of Gabe's bedroom. Gabe wore a striped t-shirt under a suit jacket; his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, even though the sun had long since set ("and we're, like, inside," William had pointed out). William had on his idea of formal wear: a pale-coloured waistcoat that Gabe was pretty sure he'd stolen from the Sixteen Candles video shoot.
"You look like fucking Oliver Twist."
"Really?" William seemed obliquely pleased by Gabe's comment. He fingered the fraying hem of the waistcoat.
Gabe gave him a long, hard look. "Let me make it better." A mischievous smile leapt onto his face. "Or worse."
William was visiting the City for three days. Saturday night at Misshapes had faded into the pale sunrise of Sunday morning as they had wandered the streets, blind drunk. It had been with a rush of sleepy pleasure that Gabe had awoken at three p.m. that afternoon to find William asleep on his couch, limbs spread wide.
This also happened to be the weekend that Gabe was going to orchestrate fucking William Beckett. Not that Bill knew that yet.
William shrugged into a jacket that was pale blue, luridly striped. He looked uncertainly up at Gabe, shaking his hair out of his eyes. "Perfect, darling," Gabe murmured, stepping into William's personal space. He coaxed the brown scarf tighter around William's neck, rubbing distractedly at the hollows of his collarbones.
"I look good?" William asked. He sneaked a look in the mirror and then refocused on Gabe.
Gabe smoothed at William's lapels, letting the palm of one hand linger on his chest. He felt the hot urgency of William's heartbeat.
"You look so good," Gabe whispered, "I could drop to my knees right now and give you the best blowjob of your life."
Gabe felt the lurch of William's heart and then pushed him away with a gentle shove. He turned around, catching the briefest glimpse of William's expression of glazed shock. Gabe walked toward the door in long strides.
"Come on," he said matter-of-factly. "I said we'd meet Hannah at ten."
Gabe lolled at the bar, watching William dance with Hannah. She was thrilled with him, of course; her very own Ken doll to play with, and one that didn't balk when the DJ played vintage Madonna. Gabe, meanwhile, found himself bored and antsy. He couldn't tease much amusement from this particular club. (It was Hannah's choice: "next week the lines will be around the block! I swear! We're so ahead of the crowd!") It was too dark-or not dark enough. Claustrophobic or wrongly laid out. Whatever. Gabe was tired of it.
He ordered another drink, ignoring the drunkenness that seemed to be prematurely creeping up on him. When he glanced back in William's direction, Gabe saw that Hannah had moved away. William was shimmying close to blonde with legs that didn't stop and tits that couldn't be real. Their heads bowed close together. Gabe didn't need to hear to know what William was whispering in her ear.
The bartender pushed a drink in his direction. He picked it up and pressed the cool glass to his forehead; he felt headache-y, hot with non-specific shame.
Gabe motioned to the bartender. "I can get a taxi outside, yeah?" As the bartender nodded, Gabe pulled a fifty from his wallet. "And I'll take the bottle."
Gabe sat on his couch in the dark. He had made a vague swipe at the light switch as he had arrived home, but it was a tricky motherfucker. The city was so light polluted that pale yellow light filtered in through the windows, anyway. The bottle had spilled and rolled away from him some minutes-hours-earlier, but it didn't matter: the alcohol had done its job.
Someday, Gabe thought, he will move somewhere quiet and calm. He will live in a house surrounded by nothing but land-snakes permitted only if they rattle quietly. The kind of place where you can hear an individual car pull up outside; where footsteps in the corridor aren't drowned out by your neighbor's Bob Dylan obsession. He imagined a house upstate and fell into what might have been sleep.
Gabe blinked and refocused as a figure loomed over him. William wobbled slightly and crashed onto the couch beside him, folding his limbs into an awkwardly comfortable sitting position.
"Left the door open…" Gabe muttered. He had the sensation of barely resurfacing through drunkenness.
"You left it open for me," William said. It was half a whisper; his vocal chords worn down from Jack Daniels and shouting to be heard.
"For you… you fucker." Gabe leaned his head back against the leather of the couch and didn't look at William.
Beside him, William squirmed. He pulled his arms out of the pale blue suit jacket, wriggling free. "I told her I was on Broadway," said William, with alcohol-imbued randomness. "I think she believed me." William let out a throaty laugh that turned into a dry cough.
"Broadway's not hip," Gabe replied, with difficulty (his headache was returning), "you shoulda said off-Broadway. No, off-off-Broadway."
"What about off-off-off-Broadway?" William laughed again, giddy at his own joke. "Off-off-off-off…" He trailed off and laid his head next to Gabe's. William let out a slight sigh, releasing the final echo of his laughter. He huffed out another non-sequitur: "My flight's at eight, Gabe. That's early.
"Gabe…
"Gabe…"
Finally, Gabe looked over at William. "What?"
"You still have my clothes." William's head rolled to one side, his expression clear and glassy.
Gabe felt irrationally annoyed. "So? You have mine." He reached out and yanked at the scarf William wore-no longer expertly tied, but looped carelessly around his neck. He yanked harder and the material pulled tight. William released a sharp breath. Gabe saw a gleam of anticipation in William's eyes.
He itched to make William gasp, cry out, scream his name. Finally, his grasp slackened. He loosened the scarf, rubbing his fingertips over the exposed skin of William's neck. "Keep it," he muttered. "Keep the clothes."
William's smile was lopsided and unexpected. "You know… I stole your t-shirt," he said.
"What?"
"Last year, during the eff-oh-bee tour, I stole your shirt. The black one," William confessed, repentant as an imp.
"Why the fuck would you do that?" Gabe couldn't conceal his astonishment.
William shrugged carelessly. "Maybe I'm a kleptomaniac." He paused, as if genuinely considering it. (Gabe was reminded of Pete: eternal collector of neuroses and sicknesses.) "Maybe I just wanted…" Seriousness quivered momentarily across William's face, before he sank back into merry drunkenness.
The idea had been seduction-or a version of it. Maybe not with wine or candles or cooing sweet talk, but William was to fall into his arms-literally and figuratively. For one reason only: to prove that Gabe could make it happen. It was acceptable for Gabe to want William only if William wanted him back-wanted him harder, more desperately in return. It was acceptable only if the power lay with Gabe.
Gabe pulled William close, his arm hooking awkwardly behind William's neck. He smelled like… soap, sweat, a persistent stench of whiskey. And high-end women's perfume. It was somehow fitting that William always tended to smell like other people. His wide-eyed innocence seemed to court it: as if pieces of other jigsaws had been pressed wrongly into his puzzle. Once, Gabe had hugged him after spending a gloriously unremarkable day together and he had caught the oak-y, burnt smell of cigarette smoke lingering in his hair.
("You smell like me," Gabe had commented, feeling irrationally charmed.
"Yeah? You should quit," William had replied with Gen-Y, clean-living superiority. "Bad habit, Gabe."
"Like you're one to talk about bad habits.")
Gabe felt William slacken in his arms. He had imagined a slow, teasing first kiss-merely as a suggestion to wantonness. But this-this felt like something to fall into. His headache receded into a dizzy rush of sensation as he kissed William full and deep.
-----
Title: The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants
Author: Nicola
Fandom: RPS: Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Pairing: Gabe/William, Gabe/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,077
Disclaimer: The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants is a novel by Ann Brashares.
Summary: When William and Gabe begin sharing clothes, a magical connection emerges between them. Except, less "magical" and more sexual.
Note: For fleener. Plus, a big thank you to harmyjo for the beta-and the handkerchief joke is hers. ;)
Don't follow the fashion stylings of Messrs. Saporta and Beckett? Here's a handy-dandy key.
-----
The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants
"oh hell
you fit me so well"
(Giant Drag)
"You can't leave," William said, a hint of a whine entering his voice. He lowered his magazine and shot Gabe a look that suggested he was doing something terrible and traitorous by going home.
"We're gonna go bowling," William added. He fidgeted, bouncing slightly where he sat on the bed. "Tom knows some kid who'll let us in after hours. It'll be fun. We can, you know, do shots and then see how many of those skittle things we can knock over."
"Pins," Gabe corrected him absently as he searched the hotel room for his jacket, "they're called pins in bowling."
"Wait, what's the difference between bowling and skittles?" William asked. He sounded genuinely interested.
"I… think that in skittles you, like…" Gabe frowned. Trying to remember this kind of useless information was required during a typical conversation with William. He laughed suddenly. "I have no fucking clue, Bill!" He glanced fondly over at William and then said firmly, "But I can't come bowling. I have to get going. My flight's in two hours."
William shrugged. "You could take a different flight," he pointed out, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Gabe ducked down to check under the bed. There was a light saber and a broken flower vase hiding under there, but no jacket. "I gotta go, man. I don't even have any clothes here." He let out a low laugh as he straightened up. "I packed for two days-it's already been five."
"Borrow something of mine!" William suggested. He tossed aside his magazine and scrambled excitedly off the bed. He began rifling through the closet. Gabe noted that most of William's clothes were scattered across the floor, brightly-colored piles of crumpled t-shirts appearing like mole hills in the carpet. However, William produced a pair of faded blue jeans from a hanger. He held them out to Gabe. "Here."
Gabe eyed the jeans skeptically. William was both skinnier and shorter than him. Although, the jeans did look slightly less skin-tight than William's usual style.
Undeterred by Gabe's silence, William yanked out of the closet a white shirt and thrust it into his hands. It was a dress shirt, but it looked ill-cared-for and worn from age.
"I don't have any clean underwear," Gabe pointed out.
"So…"
"You want me to go commando in your clothes."
"Sure, why not?" William seemed supremely unconcerned. He flopped back onto the bed and then squinted up at Gabe. "This means you're staying, right?"
Gabe hesitated and then muttered, "Fuck it. New York won't miss me."
William broke into a wide smile. "Cool," he said, sounding a little breathy. He reached over and grabbed his Sidekick from the night stand. "I'll text Tom about the bowling thing."
Gabe kicked off his shoes and began unbuttoning his own pants. He glanced over at William, who was intent on his messaging. Gabe undressed slowly. By the time he had lowered his jeans and reached for William's pair, Gabe guessed that William's interest in his phone had become carefully studious. Gabe pulled on the jeans, tucking himself in. They were certainly a snug fit, but remarkably comfortable.
William's head was bent low over his Sidekick. A single lock of hair fell in his face, its curl tickling at the corner of his mouth. Gabe watched the way William exhaled hard, buffeting his hair away. William's eye-line flickered, as if he were about to sneak a glance in Gabe's direction. Gabe pulled off his t-shirt and reached for William's shirt. He buttoned it carelessly, smirking as he continued to watch William. "I'm done," he said at last.
William looked up, finally. "Hmm?" he said with wide-eyed nonchalance. He paused and then added, "Tom's setting things up."
"How do I look?" Gabe struck a pose, so that his hips jutted out, Beckett-style. He pouted his lips momentarily into an ostentatious kissy-face.
William grinned. "You're missing one thing!" He reached down and untied the scarf from around his knee. "C'mere," he commanded.
Gabe edged nearer as William scooted over so that he was sitting on the end of the bed. With what struck Gabe as near-reverence, William fastened the yellow patterned scarf around his leg. He pulled it tight, knotting it with a flourish.
"There!" William leaned back, looking noticeably smug. "You're all done."
"William," Gabe said seriously, "I've been meaning to say… you know the handkerchief code only applies when it's in your back pocket, right?"
William stuck out his tongue and Gabe began to laugh.
*
Gabe really meant to return the clothes. When he got home to New York, he threw them in the washer along with his own clothes. When he took them out of the dryer, he set aside William's jeans and shirt and handkerchief and made a mental note to mail them to Chicago.
Three weeks passed. Gabe succeeded in sticking an orange post-it with William scrawled across it on the heap of clothes. He still forgot to mail them. More to the point, they were three weeks in which Gabe didn't do any laundry. As he was getting ready to go out, the pile of William's clothes by the door suddenly seemed a more appealing option than wearing his vintage YSL black pants for a fourth day running.
"Are you… a failed teen model?" His friend Hannah choked on her own laughter as she fingered the frayed hem of William's white shirt. "You look like a print advertisement for some low-grade Abercrombie rip-off." Suddenly, Hannah began pulling apart the buttons. "Show a little skin, darling! You'll never sell those horrible clothes otherwise!"
Gabe swatted her away in irritation (although he didn't redo the buttons, because she was probably right; the more skin the better in an outfit like this).
"What's with the handkerchief, anyway?" Hannah continued. "You know the handkerchief code only applies when-"
"Yeah, yeah," Gabe cut her off, "real funny."
"But really, darling." Hannah's laughter subsided and she returned to her drink, eyeing him with continued amusement. "I think it's sweet that you're wearing your boyfriend's clothes. It's very… couple-y." She made a face at the word and then hurried on, "But sweet."
Gabe soon realized that the answer to dealing with Hannah's jibes was to get very, very drunk. She grew bored of him around the seventh drink and left with a guy who he suspected actually was a teen model (he looked young enough, anyway). Gabe downed another whiskey sour and realized that someone was standing very close to him. Expecting it to be Hannah, returned from her conquest, Gabe opened his mouth to make a crack about statutory rape. He stopped when he turned to see a man standing beside him.
The man was blond, classically (if generically) good-looking; muscled, but not ostentatiously so; well-presented (and definitely not wearing a pair of ancient GAP jeans). He looked a little like Matt Damon. If Gabe had a type, he was definitely not it. "Can I buy you a drink?" he asked with an easy smile.
"Don't worry, I'm drunk enough." Gabe had meant it as a joke, but a slight slur really did muffle the words. He laughed.
"… do you want to go somewhere?" There might have been a precursor to the question, but Gabe didn't bother to listen.
"Why bother." Gabe downed the last of his drink.
The man took a step backward. He held up his hands. "Hey guy, I was just asking a question. It's cool."
Gabe took a step forward, closing the distance between them again. "Hey guy," he said satirically, "I was just giving you an answer." He groped blindly for the man's crotch and gave his erection a good squeeze. "Meet me in the bathroom."
The feeling of being pressed against the stall door was a familiar one; reassuring after a shitty night. Matt Damon Guy gave surprisingly good head, but Gabe was too drunk to offer much more than an unthinking hand-job in return.
"My name's Steve, by the way," the man said wryly as he zipped up his pants.
Gabe wiped his hand on the edge of his-William's-white shirt. "Yeah?" he said disinterestedly.
Matt Damon gave him a wry smile. "You called me Bill."
Gabe never did mail the clothes back to William. The jeans, shirt and handkerchief made it into his wardrobe. He rifled past them occasionally, but he didn't wear them again.
He ended up dating Matt Damon Guy for three weeks. He was aware of the perversity of it all. Sex with men was no big deal; kissing them-ostentatiously and with no real intent-was practically expected. But dating men-buying stale popcorn to eat at bad movies; playing footsie under the table in it restaurants-that wasn't something Gabe did.
Except, there was something that Gabe found instantly stimulating about the glint of amusement in Matt Damon's eye; his infuriating habit of letting the word Bill slip past his lips. Gabe had never figured himself for someone so easily manipulated, but Matt Damon liked to ask about Bill-
"Who is he, your boyfriend?"
"Shut up."
"No, tell me. You're in love with him."
"Fuck you."
-and Gabe could never seem to get a real answer out. Matt Damon even zeroed in on the single photograph of William in Gabe's apartment. It was a blurry shot, ostensibly of a city skyline on the last day of tour, but William had ducked into frame at the last moment and now he smiled out at Gabe from the far right of the picture.
"This him?" Matt Damon smirked. Gabe made an incoherent grunt of irritation and slammed the other man back against a bookcase. He kissed him hard and thought of soft, lens-blurred features and a guileless smile.
That was the thing, of course. William-Bill-was not his boyfriend; fuck knows, they weren't in love. Their relationship had always been resoundingly, exhaustively platonic. If he was honest with himself, Gabe couldn't entirely figure out why. But when William invited him to crash at his hotel room, it meant just that: a spot on the floor. When William hugged him, he was an irritating blend of childish and coquettish-but it was never a precursor to much of anything. And when William loaned Gabe some clothes to wear, it was… just clothes.
*
"You're not wearing that." Gabe plucked at William's waistcoat in mock-horror.
William swatted at his hands, looking mildly annoyed. "Why not?"
They stood in the middle of Gabe's bedroom. Gabe wore a striped t-shirt under a suit jacket; his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, even though the sun had long since set ("and we're, like, inside," William had pointed out). William had on his idea of formal wear: a pale-coloured waistcoat that Gabe was pretty sure he'd stolen from the Sixteen Candles video shoot.
"You look like fucking Oliver Twist."
"Really?" William seemed obliquely pleased by Gabe's comment. He fingered the fraying hem of the waistcoat.
Gabe gave him a long, hard look. "Let me make it better." A mischievous smile leapt onto his face. "Or worse."
William was visiting the City for three days. Saturday night at Misshapes had faded into the pale sunrise of Sunday morning as they had wandered the streets, blind drunk. It had been with a rush of sleepy pleasure that Gabe had awoken at three p.m. that afternoon to find William asleep on his couch, limbs spread wide.
This also happened to be the weekend that Gabe was going to orchestrate fucking William Beckett. Not that Bill knew that yet.
William shrugged into a jacket that was pale blue, luridly striped. He looked uncertainly up at Gabe, shaking his hair out of his eyes. "Perfect, darling," Gabe murmured, stepping into William's personal space. He coaxed the brown scarf tighter around William's neck, rubbing distractedly at the hollows of his collarbones.
"I look good?" William asked. He sneaked a look in the mirror and then refocused on Gabe.
Gabe smoothed at William's lapels, letting the palm of one hand linger on his chest. He felt the hot urgency of William's heartbeat.
"You look so good," Gabe whispered, "I could drop to my knees right now and give you the best blowjob of your life."
Gabe felt the lurch of William's heart and then pushed him away with a gentle shove. He turned around, catching the briefest glimpse of William's expression of glazed shock. Gabe walked toward the door in long strides.
"Come on," he said matter-of-factly. "I said we'd meet Hannah at ten."
Gabe lolled at the bar, watching William dance with Hannah. She was thrilled with him, of course; her very own Ken doll to play with, and one that didn't balk when the DJ played vintage Madonna. Gabe, meanwhile, found himself bored and antsy. He couldn't tease much amusement from this particular club. (It was Hannah's choice: "next week the lines will be around the block! I swear! We're so ahead of the crowd!") It was too dark-or not dark enough. Claustrophobic or wrongly laid out. Whatever. Gabe was tired of it.
He ordered another drink, ignoring the drunkenness that seemed to be prematurely creeping up on him. When he glanced back in William's direction, Gabe saw that Hannah had moved away. William was shimmying close to blonde with legs that didn't stop and tits that couldn't be real. Their heads bowed close together. Gabe didn't need to hear to know what William was whispering in her ear.
The bartender pushed a drink in his direction. He picked it up and pressed the cool glass to his forehead; he felt headache-y, hot with non-specific shame.
Gabe motioned to the bartender. "I can get a taxi outside, yeah?" As the bartender nodded, Gabe pulled a fifty from his wallet. "And I'll take the bottle."
Gabe sat on his couch in the dark. He had made a vague swipe at the light switch as he had arrived home, but it was a tricky motherfucker. The city was so light polluted that pale yellow light filtered in through the windows, anyway. The bottle had spilled and rolled away from him some minutes-hours-earlier, but it didn't matter: the alcohol had done its job.
Someday, Gabe thought, he will move somewhere quiet and calm. He will live in a house surrounded by nothing but land-snakes permitted only if they rattle quietly. The kind of place where you can hear an individual car pull up outside; where footsteps in the corridor aren't drowned out by your neighbor's Bob Dylan obsession. He imagined a house upstate and fell into what might have been sleep.
Gabe blinked and refocused as a figure loomed over him. William wobbled slightly and crashed onto the couch beside him, folding his limbs into an awkwardly comfortable sitting position.
"Left the door open…" Gabe muttered. He had the sensation of barely resurfacing through drunkenness.
"You left it open for me," William said. It was half a whisper; his vocal chords worn down from Jack Daniels and shouting to be heard.
"For you… you fucker." Gabe leaned his head back against the leather of the couch and didn't look at William.
Beside him, William squirmed. He pulled his arms out of the pale blue suit jacket, wriggling free. "I told her I was on Broadway," said William, with alcohol-imbued randomness. "I think she believed me." William let out a throaty laugh that turned into a dry cough.
"Broadway's not hip," Gabe replied, with difficulty (his headache was returning), "you shoulda said off-Broadway. No, off-off-Broadway."
"What about off-off-off-Broadway?" William laughed again, giddy at his own joke. "Off-off-off-off…" He trailed off and laid his head next to Gabe's. William let out a slight sigh, releasing the final echo of his laughter. He huffed out another non-sequitur: "My flight's at eight, Gabe. That's early.
"Gabe…
"Gabe…"
Finally, Gabe looked over at William. "What?"
"You still have my clothes." William's head rolled to one side, his expression clear and glassy.
Gabe felt irrationally annoyed. "So? You have mine." He reached out and yanked at the scarf William wore-no longer expertly tied, but looped carelessly around his neck. He yanked harder and the material pulled tight. William released a sharp breath. Gabe saw a gleam of anticipation in William's eyes.
He itched to make William gasp, cry out, scream his name. Finally, his grasp slackened. He loosened the scarf, rubbing his fingertips over the exposed skin of William's neck. "Keep it," he muttered. "Keep the clothes."
William's smile was lopsided and unexpected. "You know… I stole your t-shirt," he said.
"What?"
"Last year, during the eff-oh-bee tour, I stole your shirt. The black one," William confessed, repentant as an imp.
"Why the fuck would you do that?" Gabe couldn't conceal his astonishment.
William shrugged carelessly. "Maybe I'm a kleptomaniac." He paused, as if genuinely considering it. (Gabe was reminded of Pete: eternal collector of neuroses and sicknesses.) "Maybe I just wanted…" Seriousness quivered momentarily across William's face, before he sank back into merry drunkenness.
The idea had been seduction-or a version of it. Maybe not with wine or candles or cooing sweet talk, but William was to fall into his arms-literally and figuratively. For one reason only: to prove that Gabe could make it happen. It was acceptable for Gabe to want William only if William wanted him back-wanted him harder, more desperately in return. It was acceptable only if the power lay with Gabe.
Gabe pulled William close, his arm hooking awkwardly behind William's neck. He smelled like… soap, sweat, a persistent stench of whiskey. And high-end women's perfume. It was somehow fitting that William always tended to smell like other people. His wide-eyed innocence seemed to court it: as if pieces of other jigsaws had been pressed wrongly into his puzzle. Once, Gabe had hugged him after spending a gloriously unremarkable day together and he had caught the oak-y, burnt smell of cigarette smoke lingering in his hair.
("You smell like me," Gabe had commented, feeling irrationally charmed.
"Yeah? You should quit," William had replied with Gen-Y, clean-living superiority. "Bad habit, Gabe."
"Like you're one to talk about bad habits.")
Gabe felt William slacken in his arms. He had imagined a slow, teasing first kiss-merely as a suggestion to wantonness. But this-this felt like something to fall into. His headache receded into a dizzy rush of sensation as he kissed William full and deep.
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