Crazed and Confused
Title: Crazed and Confused
Fandom: RPS! CW/Twilight (Yeah, yeah. Judge away.)
Rating: R
Summary: Rob Pattinson's agent has had it.
Notes: Un-beta'd and inspired by the ridiculous amount of Pattinson-related press, CW and the crazy of months-long writer's block. Wrote this around Christmastime and forgot about it until, well, now. Oops.
Crazed and Confused
Robert realized there might be an inkling of trouble when his agent called his cell a dozen times but only left one voicemail.
"We have to talk."
His agent seemed always in a perpetual state of Damage Control, harassing Rob's handlers (one for New York, one for California) to keep him behaved, and forcing him into media training each time MTV posted an interview or whenever a fan report hit the Internet. But where was his agent when he had to flee San Francisco when the hordes of school-aged girls and their middle-aged teachers shut down a store? God, he had been in the actual news, not the entertainment magazine kind, but honest-to-god news with footage of bewildered policemen and girls wearing his Cedric Diggory face on their t-shirts. Where had his agent been, then?
Nowhere.
Which, coincidentally, happened to the name of the club he had been invited to by another industry person. He'd been invited by so many of these people to their favorite places, drinking drinks charged on their cards and listening to rock and synth and whatever cool music Americans are listening to these days. Places and introductions and opportunities were a blur, the way the world looks as seen through the meniscus of a shot glass.
These people actually remembered Rob's name this time, even though they'd been introduced many times before. So many important movers and shakers are taking a chance on him when deep down, they know what everyone else secretly dreaded and had accepted; that these characters at the industry mixers, the journalists, everyone in this club, is a hack.
"Dude," Kellan hissed into his ear, his mouth practically in Robert's ear over the god-awful singing on stage and the tipsy cacophonous chatter around them, "do not be a dick. You are sounding like a dick."
Robert had been telling this bloke Keith, who happened to be somebody's agent's friend's colleague, his thoughts on a pressing industry matter: namely, why Hollywood's crossing the pond to steal British leading men. It's because American men are absolute girls. Really.
And Keith, he just nodded, as though Robert had just deconstructed Bryony Lavery or Peter Nichols.
"I don't. I can't hear you," Robert replied, lying through his smile. He rather liked Kellan and thought it unfortunate that he would be remembered for his breakthrough performance in 90210, Twilight and that web site run by horny mothers. Fucking Jesus. "Keith is not a dick."
"That's right," Keith said, with that indecisive twitch of someone torn between following their natural instinct (leaving this conversation) and sticking around to suffer for their work (staying, deluded into believing that Robert Pattinson is the next big thing. Which was bollocks). "I am not a dick. What're you drinking? This round's on me. Hey, what do you think of this Sheila girl, huh?" -- Keith gestured at the blonde on stage, warbling off-key over the back-up track of her own studio-refined vocals -- "They're saying she could be the next Britney, by way of Joan Jett and that chick from Goldfrappe."
"I am having whatever she's having," Robert answered winningly, pointing vaguely at a crowd of twenty-something women in very short skirts and nursing bright-colored cocktails. "Thanks, mate."
He felt a twinge of guilt for Keith, but plenty more for Kellan, who didn't have to hang out with him but did because he truly considered himself a good friend. That, and everyone bailed. Ashley and Jackson first, then Nikki; Cam showed up for, like, ten minutes then left; and Kristen bolted as soon as her boyfriend showed up, breaking Robert's heart and the six-drink limit he'd set for himself this evening.
Robert groaned.
"... and you are getting the terror sweats," Kellan was saying, looking concerned. "Do you see that camera over there? It's on. It's on us. Come on, man."
He let Kellan's hands straighten his sweaty shirt and right his posture. Apparently, Robert's agent has gotten to him, too.
"Yeah. Yeah, I see the light." It blinked green, a tiny pinpoint of steady light in a room illuminated by LED lighting and the fabricated ambiance of exclusivity. Robert squinted, topped off his drink and looped an arm around Kellan's neck, drawing him closer. "It's over there watching you. Don't do anything stupid, my friend. Do not act like a dick."
It was Kellan's turn to groan.
***
"U cant get fired from this job. u signed a contract," Kristen's text read.
"I know that," Robert said as soon as Kristen picked up her phone, thrilled that she did. He doesn't believe in texting; it was impersonal and his inner grammarian despaired of his infatuation for someone who can't be arsed to add two letters to make a complete "You." "I was just kidding. But why can't we have fun with this stuff? Aren't we trying to promote and engage fans? Levity never hurts, Kristen."
"Calling your fanbase and the author responsible for your movie's source material insane is not levity, it's inappropriate and unprofessional." As if she should talk, that minx.
"But you agree with me." He contemplated his comb, then tossed it in the bin before misting the air with Febreeze. He strode to and fro in the fog of sweet, neutral deodorizer. "I know you do," he said, and smiled when he heard the smile in her voice.
"I liked your interview," she conceded.
"And I like you," he beamed, laying it on thick as his handler, accompanied by Kellan and Ed Westwick, walked in. No one in this country has any manners. "Enough to marry you, maybe. I have an empty studio apartment, a piano and a pallet of pepperoni Hot Pockets. It's yours if you want to give us a try."
Kristen laughed and then hung up.
"People in this country have no manners," he declared. "Hey, Kellan, Ed. New York Handler."
"What's up, Rob." Kellan made a beeline for the vanity mirror.
"Your agent is still waiting for your call," the handler said, giving him the hairy eyeball. "So you should call."
"Ugh." Ed said, showing his pond-crossing traitor colors in the form of the ponciest-looking neckerchief Robert's ever seen. "You look like shit. Your hair is excreting its own product."
"Perfect," Robert said. "I'm ready for my autograph signing."
***
His agent saw the video from the night before on a web site.
"What is this?" his agent demanded, face red and crumbling with disbelief over a video conference call. "Why are you making out with Kellan? Why are you licking the wall?"
"It's the angle, it's misleading. May I remind you that Kellan is taken? I have no intention of breaking up his relationship -"
"I'm not dating anyone!" Kellan yelled from the hotel bathroom.
"- with those Twilight mothers," Robert finished, cackling at Kellan's expense.
His agent was at the limit. Robert knew that he ought to be grateful for this type of exposure. This was America, land of infinite chances. It's the place to establish a career, especially if your greatest film credit to date was the dead guy whose face got stepped on by Ralph Fiennes. Here, you can strive for a mediocre career, and leave behind lean years of surviving on Potter residuals.
But, Hollywood frightened him. Its gears, it cogs, the pressure it exerted to establish evergreen franchises; the way it turned him into that kind of actor for whom fame and adulation weren't enough, now "the work" has got to have meaning, too. Cam's always on him about fucking off with that shit.
"Work is work, man," Cam always argued. "You think that PA over there comes into work every morning thinking, 'Gee, I'm going to give it my all and make the best fruit smoothie ever'? Hell, no. She's thinking, I can't wait to get my check and live and forget I have to be back on the set by four a.m. We play pretend for a living, and so does she.
"She pretends this is all important." Cam punched him in the shoulder, hard. That guy's always knocking whatever body part was within a swing. "It's not. It's just work, Rob. Let's have fun."
His agent was dovetailing into the memory of Cam's conversation.
"This is work, Robert. Work. We're all pulling for this movie and all you seem to want to do is talk shit about it. Can you hold off until you and I are no longer professionally affiliated?"
"That's harsh, it really is." Robert made room for Kellan on the bed, on which the laptop sat, beaming his agent's abnormally high stress level across three time zones. "I am very passionate about 'Twilight' and Stephenie's dream vision of forbidden love. Forbidden love between teenage girl and vampire, psychic baby and werewolf," he added rapturously over Kellan's snickering.
If it was possible, his agent would've reached across the internets and all the states to smack Robert (and Kellan) upside the head. It was official. Rob Pattinson's agent has had it.
"I'm sending you to media training."
"Rob's developed immunity to that," Kellan piped up with a degree of pride.
"Yes," Ed said, speaking up. "This is where I come in."
***
Ed's idea of "media training" involved clubbing.
"I don't get it."
The clock on Robert's phone read "2:03 a.m.," and Kellan has long since gone home to his hotel room. Unlike their previous outings with the cast, this time Kellan had no reluctance to leave him alone at this ungodly hour. His reasoning was lopsided; something about feeling all right leaving Robert with another Englishman being more acceptable than leaving him with someone like Taylor or Cam or the mercy of New York City.
"Just watch," Ed eyebrowed.
"Are you in on this as well?" Robert asked the blond Ed introduced as Chace.
"Yep," Chace answered before taking Robert's beer. "And I'm cutting you off. Er, we are cutting you off."
"This isn't some kind of 'intervention,' mind," Ed cut in after seeing puzzlement on Robert's face. "This is the first step."
Oh. Robert got it: they were being watched. But when he swept a cursory glance at the dancefloor, bar and the dimly lit booths populating the club environs, there were no eyes, no cameras.
"The first step to what?" This was ridiculous. He could feel himself getting sober and the whole place becoming less, well, tolerable. Sobriety reminded Robert of his shyness, the nagging self-consciousness he could never seem to master.
"Yo, what up, Efrons?" a new guy broke in. He was slim, blond and had a matching blonde girl in a protective clasp. She eyed Robert, Chace and Ed with interest. "High School Musical movie is playing down the street."
"Chad," Ed said, nonplussed. "Always a pleasure and a delight. Have you met my friend, Robert?"
"What the hell's up with the hair, man?" Chad asked as he initiated Robert in the first of many bro fist-bumps.
***
"I get it, you wanna look greasy," Chad said from the depths of Robert's hotel wardrobe. "It's in, that's tight. The key word here, bro, is 'look.'"
He emerged holding up a bowling shirt and Robert's Bruce Lee slippers. Both cost him five bucks at a thrift store in Los Angeles, and Robert loved both of them intensely.
"What's wrong with those?"
"You know who wears these?" Chad said in a tone used for children and particularly dim people. "No one. Even the homeless reject this." He threw the slippers and shirt in a box he had labeled 'For Burning.' It was standing next to a smaller box that read 'For Donation' and contained several too-large shirts and sweaters that Chad had deemed too effeminate ("You'll just confuse the girls you wanna mack on.").
At this rate, Robert thought, he might as well walk around naked. The idea both amused and terrified him. He said so to Ed.
"You got paid," Ed reasoned. "Buy clothes that actually fit you."
"This is gross." Chad wrinkled his nose, though not so much in distaste for the shoes and shirt, but a whiff of something even more precious. "That better not be what I think it is, man. Get that shit outta here."
"Chad's anti-drug," whispered James, another friend of Ed's and Chad's, who was now dating the latter's ex-wife. "He can quote the D.A.R.E. handbook. It's kinda impressive."
Robert had no idea what the hell James meant, but he could venture a guess. He was developing a headache. This was media management all over again, except now he was getting fashion consultations from a group of blokes who came of age wearing clothes women picked out for them.
"I don't know where you're hiding it, but," Chad complained, before spinning around to face the room, a pair of gray briefs gingerly pinched between his thumb and index finger. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"You can e-Bay that, you know," Kellan said.
Everyone laughed. Bastards, all of them.
It was time to intervene.
"Look, guys, I appreciate what I think you're trying to do -"
"We're preemptively saving your career!" said Kellan, who Robert now came to realize was the latest recruit into this CW network thing. Whatever that was.
***
Babies have never been this comfortable.
The hammock enveloped him, swayed him back and forth, a lanky six-foot long baby bundle. His bare feet touched green grass here, cool asphalt there. The air was thick with the smell of grilled meat and fish. Robert could get used to this, the Texan winter.
"You have to embrace it." Chace said, philosophical as he flipped over a steak on the barbecue grill. He, too, was barefoot, dressed in board shorts and a ratty t-shirt. "Accept it. Be resigned, if you gotta be, but accept it."
"Oh, I know," Robert said. It's been a week since he heard from his agent, and he took that as a positive sign. "But why's it got to be a sin to be human about it? Take any person, right, and put him or her in a room or in a public space. Now, add a dozen strangers, a hundred strangers. Thousands, even. All of them excited and loving you, or the thought of you. Whatever. All these people loving you and the idea of you and screaming, crying. The police may be called in, and it is madness. Isn't it natural to be just a little overwhelmed."
Chace sipped a beer, but didn't offer one to Robert. "Yeah, of course. But it comes with the territory. In many ways, it's up to you, and not them, to make the situation comfortable for you."
Ed sauntered over, bumped shoulders with Chace. "Chace pretends he's surrounded by lingerie models. Me, I think that it could be worse. Like, at least there are no nudes of me floating around." He paused, contemplating. "That I know of."
"That'd be a fright," he acknowledged and flipped open his cell phone to read a text. I think im gettin fird!11, Taylor texted. Do u kno nething?
No, I do not. Your agent sucks. Robert texted back.
His eyes drooped. Ed and Chace's voices blended with the comfortable lull of the background, tenor and baritone accompaniments to the suburban sounds of a normal neighborhood enjoying its Sunday afternoon.
"This is, by far, the best media training that's ever been inflicted on me," he said to no one in particular, and smiled. "All that's missing is a cute girl."
"Well, hello." The hammock quit its swaying, and when Robert opened his eyes Leighton was in his field of vision, pretty and put-together in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. "I heard the funniest thing," she continued, "that Ed's padding his CV with skill sets such as 'personal savior' and 'media training associate.'"
Ed's head perked up at the sound of his name. "I do it out of the kindness of my heart, thanks."
Sunlight slid over her locks, dark and glossy. It reminded Robert of Katie Leung's and the way it felt against his cheek. It wasn't his fault for falling a little bit for his co-stars. He wondered where life had taken Katie - was she in university, studying film or literature, as she told him she would?
"If I could add just one more thing," Leighton said.
She rose and walked up to Ed, snapping shut the second and third buttons of his shirt, before hovering over Robert. The fragrance of her hair surrounded him, and he couldn't help the tickle of pleasure inspired by her nearness. Her fingertips were warm where they brushed his skin. When he looked down, he saw that the second and third buttons of his shirt had been done.
"It looks douchey when guys do that," Leighton said, scrunching her nose. "We get it, okay? You're hot. The baby chest hairs, not so much."
***
It's been a week and a half since he'd talk to Kristen. He was beginning to feel really pathetic. The marriage proposals were only jokes, for crying out loud.
Mostly.
"Mostly I'm envious of her boyfriend," Robert told Ed's new friend, a guy named Jensen. "I mean, he's short, pallid and talented. I'm developing a complex."
"You're talking about Kristen Stewart?" Chad interrupted, whistling as he fist-bumped Robert. "She's a hottie."
"It's normal to develop a deep relationship for your co-star," Jared shrugged. "There's a lot of intensity and trust involved."
"Jesus Christ, Jared," Chad rolled his eyes. "Do you say 'I love you' before or after?"
"Hey, man, you know it's true." Jared held up his hands. "Not everything's gotta be gay. Although if that your thing...I completely accept you for who you are."
"What do you call a Texan with a horse under one arm and a cow under the other?" Chad returned.
"Hungry?"
"Bisexual."
"You sick fuck, that barely makes sense!" Jared exclaimed, guffawing along with everyone.
The exchange stayed with Robert after he left Jared's house. There was something about the tone of these interactions, a curious tension not unlike what lay between Ed and Chace and Chad and Jared. He could infer lines drawn and crossed and redrawn, without regret, with little consequence. It was a dirty incestuous pool. But they were friends, they looked out for each other, and what's better, they were all working in concert to thwart the system into their favor.
This whole CW thing, Robert decided, was insane. Yet he's the one being treated for being crazed and confused.
"Most of the time, you have let it go," Jensen said when they were inside, putting glasses in the sink and beer bottles in the trash bin. "Crushes happen all the time. If it happens, it happens. If she's got a boyfriend, lay off."
Truth was, Robert had lost track of the joke. The joke had blurred between fun instigation and sincere affection. He's always had a thing for serious girls who knew what they wanted in life, which tended to be anything but acting. First, Katie and her studious nature, and now Kristen and her off-putting, endearing seriousness.
Maybe he'd been doing what Cam had suggested all along: having fun with the mania induced by this movie, having fun with the idea infatuation. Anything to distract from the all-too-familiar tailspin of being too late, too behind; too old to go to university, too drunk to come up with a graceful exit strategy, too much of a dick to listen to the people trying to make a living for him and off of him.
Sooner or later, everyone's going to know he's a dick.
Maybe he belonged here, after all.
***
Robert's the last person anyone should ask about body-building, but here was Taylor anyway, trying to pull him into a discussion about body dysmorphia.
Robert knew the disorder was a serious one, and that he should probably stop the kid from torturing his frankly decent body. Not that he swings that way, for chrissakes. He's just looking out for the youngest cast member. Underneath it all, Robert considers himself a nice person.
"Yeah, they'd probably give a bigger damn that you take your trash out like a normal person or are still alive driving your crapmobile," Taylor moped into his burger.
Ed, Chace and Chad, seated across them, exchanged glances. No, not concerned ones like, Oh, this is perhaps a cry for help. Well, maybe Ed and Chace, a little. But, Chad didn't even bother to hide the conniving going on in his head. The look on his face read, Oh, I got this.
Robert shrugged helplessly and patted Taylor on the arm. Taylor just went on looking miserable.
"What you need is a girl," Chad spoke up. "Do you watch the Disney Channel? My girl, Kenzie, knows this girl..."
Later, after Taylor left - stiffing them the check, Jesus - Chad let Robert in on an industry secret.
"The love eventually fades," he said. "Some people are okay with that, others not. Take heart, my douche - nothing lasts forever."
***
Killing time during a red-eye flight was a bitch. At least he's got company.
Robert's bound for Los Angeles for an unavoidable meeting with his agent, some last-minute promotional stuff and his inevitable reunion with the world's most flammable car: his own.
"I don't see why this has got to be more complicated than it is," said Mike, Jensen's golfing buddy. Jensen was asleep across four empty seats at Terminal 16A, Jared sitting across him playing his PSP while keeping an eye on his co-star Misha's bag while the latter chatted on his cell a few yards away. Mike said he had to look in on his apartment outside Los Angeles to make sure rats and squatters haven't taken over.
"Not to sound like a girl here, but at the end of the day you're making someone out there happy. Not the executives or whatever, but the consumer for whom you are doing this," Mike said, obviously in a mood to share some wisdom.
"Even hacks have to make a living," Robert pondered.
"I'll take it one step further. Everyone is a hack. So what? What else are you going to be? All roads lead us to where we're supposed to go."
"I'll up that," Robert said, getting into this sleep-deprived analogy thing they have going. "We walk those roads, and now, we're here."
Jared looked up from his PSP, his eyes traveling from Mike to Robert and back. "You guys are killing me," he said.
"Have some perspective here," Misha said, as though he had been a part of the conversation all along. At least he looked compassionate. Thoughtful, even, as if he's been examining all this from a good, objective angle. "Did you have any professional plans outside this profession?"
Robert shook his head.
"Then have fun," Misha smiled.
"Preach, brother," Mike nodded.
Jared glanced up from his PSP. "Until now, Misha used to play serial killers for a living."
"Yeah," Misha agreed. "That was not so much fun."
***
bought guitar. want to jam? Kristen's text said. there better be hotpockets or else.
Robert smiled. He was feeling unnaturally flush.
His agent, on the other hand, was confused.
"What...is this?" the agent asked when prompted to make a fist for fist-bumping. "I don't understand. Are you behaved now, or what?"
"Yeah, yeah...you got it," Robert beamed, beatific. "Enjoy it, though, my fretful agent-friend. Nothing lasts forever."
Fandom: RPS! CW/Twilight (Yeah, yeah. Judge away.)
Rating: R
Summary: Rob Pattinson's agent has had it.
Notes: Un-beta'd and inspired by the ridiculous amount of Pattinson-related press, CW and the crazy of months-long writer's block. Wrote this around Christmastime and forgot about it until, well, now. Oops.
Crazed and Confused
Robert realized there might be an inkling of trouble when his agent called his cell a dozen times but only left one voicemail.
"We have to talk."
His agent seemed always in a perpetual state of Damage Control, harassing Rob's handlers (one for New York, one for California) to keep him behaved, and forcing him into media training each time MTV posted an interview or whenever a fan report hit the Internet. But where was his agent when he had to flee San Francisco when the hordes of school-aged girls and their middle-aged teachers shut down a store? God, he had been in the actual news, not the entertainment magazine kind, but honest-to-god news with footage of bewildered policemen and girls wearing his Cedric Diggory face on their t-shirts. Where had his agent been, then?
Nowhere.
Which, coincidentally, happened to the name of the club he had been invited to by another industry person. He'd been invited by so many of these people to their favorite places, drinking drinks charged on their cards and listening to rock and synth and whatever cool music Americans are listening to these days. Places and introductions and opportunities were a blur, the way the world looks as seen through the meniscus of a shot glass.
These people actually remembered Rob's name this time, even though they'd been introduced many times before. So many important movers and shakers are taking a chance on him when deep down, they know what everyone else secretly dreaded and had accepted; that these characters at the industry mixers, the journalists, everyone in this club, is a hack.
"Dude," Kellan hissed into his ear, his mouth practically in Robert's ear over the god-awful singing on stage and the tipsy cacophonous chatter around them, "do not be a dick. You are sounding like a dick."
Robert had been telling this bloke Keith, who happened to be somebody's agent's friend's colleague, his thoughts on a pressing industry matter: namely, why Hollywood's crossing the pond to steal British leading men. It's because American men are absolute girls. Really.
And Keith, he just nodded, as though Robert had just deconstructed Bryony Lavery or Peter Nichols.
"I don't. I can't hear you," Robert replied, lying through his smile. He rather liked Kellan and thought it unfortunate that he would be remembered for his breakthrough performance in 90210, Twilight and that web site run by horny mothers. Fucking Jesus. "Keith is not a dick."
"That's right," Keith said, with that indecisive twitch of someone torn between following their natural instinct (leaving this conversation) and sticking around to suffer for their work (staying, deluded into believing that Robert Pattinson is the next big thing. Which was bollocks). "I am not a dick. What're you drinking? This round's on me. Hey, what do you think of this Sheila girl, huh?" -- Keith gestured at the blonde on stage, warbling off-key over the back-up track of her own studio-refined vocals -- "They're saying she could be the next Britney, by way of Joan Jett and that chick from Goldfrappe."
"I am having whatever she's having," Robert answered winningly, pointing vaguely at a crowd of twenty-something women in very short skirts and nursing bright-colored cocktails. "Thanks, mate."
He felt a twinge of guilt for Keith, but plenty more for Kellan, who didn't have to hang out with him but did because he truly considered himself a good friend. That, and everyone bailed. Ashley and Jackson first, then Nikki; Cam showed up for, like, ten minutes then left; and Kristen bolted as soon as her boyfriend showed up, breaking Robert's heart and the six-drink limit he'd set for himself this evening.
Robert groaned.
"... and you are getting the terror sweats," Kellan was saying, looking concerned. "Do you see that camera over there? It's on. It's on us. Come on, man."
He let Kellan's hands straighten his sweaty shirt and right his posture. Apparently, Robert's agent has gotten to him, too.
"Yeah. Yeah, I see the light." It blinked green, a tiny pinpoint of steady light in a room illuminated by LED lighting and the fabricated ambiance of exclusivity. Robert squinted, topped off his drink and looped an arm around Kellan's neck, drawing him closer. "It's over there watching you. Don't do anything stupid, my friend. Do not act like a dick."
It was Kellan's turn to groan.
***
"U cant get fired from this job. u signed a contract," Kristen's text read.
"I know that," Robert said as soon as Kristen picked up her phone, thrilled that she did. He doesn't believe in texting; it was impersonal and his inner grammarian despaired of his infatuation for someone who can't be arsed to add two letters to make a complete "You." "I was just kidding. But why can't we have fun with this stuff? Aren't we trying to promote and engage fans? Levity never hurts, Kristen."
"Calling your fanbase and the author responsible for your movie's source material insane is not levity, it's inappropriate and unprofessional." As if she should talk, that minx.
"But you agree with me." He contemplated his comb, then tossed it in the bin before misting the air with Febreeze. He strode to and fro in the fog of sweet, neutral deodorizer. "I know you do," he said, and smiled when he heard the smile in her voice.
"I liked your interview," she conceded.
"And I like you," he beamed, laying it on thick as his handler, accompanied by Kellan and Ed Westwick, walked in. No one in this country has any manners. "Enough to marry you, maybe. I have an empty studio apartment, a piano and a pallet of pepperoni Hot Pockets. It's yours if you want to give us a try."
Kristen laughed and then hung up.
"People in this country have no manners," he declared. "Hey, Kellan, Ed. New York Handler."
"What's up, Rob." Kellan made a beeline for the vanity mirror.
"Your agent is still waiting for your call," the handler said, giving him the hairy eyeball. "So you should call."
"Ugh." Ed said, showing his pond-crossing traitor colors in the form of the ponciest-looking neckerchief Robert's ever seen. "You look like shit. Your hair is excreting its own product."
"Perfect," Robert said. "I'm ready for my autograph signing."
***
His agent saw the video from the night before on a web site.
"What is this?" his agent demanded, face red and crumbling with disbelief over a video conference call. "Why are you making out with Kellan? Why are you licking the wall?"
"It's the angle, it's misleading. May I remind you that Kellan is taken? I have no intention of breaking up his relationship -"
"I'm not dating anyone!" Kellan yelled from the hotel bathroom.
"- with those Twilight mothers," Robert finished, cackling at Kellan's expense.
His agent was at the limit. Robert knew that he ought to be grateful for this type of exposure. This was America, land of infinite chances. It's the place to establish a career, especially if your greatest film credit to date was the dead guy whose face got stepped on by Ralph Fiennes. Here, you can strive for a mediocre career, and leave behind lean years of surviving on Potter residuals.
But, Hollywood frightened him. Its gears, it cogs, the pressure it exerted to establish evergreen franchises; the way it turned him into that kind of actor for whom fame and adulation weren't enough, now "the work" has got to have meaning, too. Cam's always on him about fucking off with that shit.
"Work is work, man," Cam always argued. "You think that PA over there comes into work every morning thinking, 'Gee, I'm going to give it my all and make the best fruit smoothie ever'? Hell, no. She's thinking, I can't wait to get my check and live and forget I have to be back on the set by four a.m. We play pretend for a living, and so does she.
"She pretends this is all important." Cam punched him in the shoulder, hard. That guy's always knocking whatever body part was within a swing. "It's not. It's just work, Rob. Let's have fun."
His agent was dovetailing into the memory of Cam's conversation.
"This is work, Robert. Work. We're all pulling for this movie and all you seem to want to do is talk shit about it. Can you hold off until you and I are no longer professionally affiliated?"
"That's harsh, it really is." Robert made room for Kellan on the bed, on which the laptop sat, beaming his agent's abnormally high stress level across three time zones. "I am very passionate about 'Twilight' and Stephenie's dream vision of forbidden love. Forbidden love between teenage girl and vampire, psychic baby and werewolf," he added rapturously over Kellan's snickering.
If it was possible, his agent would've reached across the internets and all the states to smack Robert (and Kellan) upside the head. It was official. Rob Pattinson's agent has had it.
"I'm sending you to media training."
"Rob's developed immunity to that," Kellan piped up with a degree of pride.
"Yes," Ed said, speaking up. "This is where I come in."
***
Ed's idea of "media training" involved clubbing.
"I don't get it."
The clock on Robert's phone read "2:03 a.m.," and Kellan has long since gone home to his hotel room. Unlike their previous outings with the cast, this time Kellan had no reluctance to leave him alone at this ungodly hour. His reasoning was lopsided; something about feeling all right leaving Robert with another Englishman being more acceptable than leaving him with someone like Taylor or Cam or the mercy of New York City.
"Just watch," Ed eyebrowed.
"Are you in on this as well?" Robert asked the blond Ed introduced as Chace.
"Yep," Chace answered before taking Robert's beer. "And I'm cutting you off. Er, we are cutting you off."
"This isn't some kind of 'intervention,' mind," Ed cut in after seeing puzzlement on Robert's face. "This is the first step."
Oh. Robert got it: they were being watched. But when he swept a cursory glance at the dancefloor, bar and the dimly lit booths populating the club environs, there were no eyes, no cameras.
"The first step to what?" This was ridiculous. He could feel himself getting sober and the whole place becoming less, well, tolerable. Sobriety reminded Robert of his shyness, the nagging self-consciousness he could never seem to master.
"Yo, what up, Efrons?" a new guy broke in. He was slim, blond and had a matching blonde girl in a protective clasp. She eyed Robert, Chace and Ed with interest. "High School Musical movie is playing down the street."
"Chad," Ed said, nonplussed. "Always a pleasure and a delight. Have you met my friend, Robert?"
"What the hell's up with the hair, man?" Chad asked as he initiated Robert in the first of many bro fist-bumps.
***
"I get it, you wanna look greasy," Chad said from the depths of Robert's hotel wardrobe. "It's in, that's tight. The key word here, bro, is 'look.'"
He emerged holding up a bowling shirt and Robert's Bruce Lee slippers. Both cost him five bucks at a thrift store in Los Angeles, and Robert loved both of them intensely.
"What's wrong with those?"
"You know who wears these?" Chad said in a tone used for children and particularly dim people. "No one. Even the homeless reject this." He threw the slippers and shirt in a box he had labeled 'For Burning.' It was standing next to a smaller box that read 'For Donation' and contained several too-large shirts and sweaters that Chad had deemed too effeminate ("You'll just confuse the girls you wanna mack on.").
At this rate, Robert thought, he might as well walk around naked. The idea both amused and terrified him. He said so to Ed.
"You got paid," Ed reasoned. "Buy clothes that actually fit you."
"This is gross." Chad wrinkled his nose, though not so much in distaste for the shoes and shirt, but a whiff of something even more precious. "That better not be what I think it is, man. Get that shit outta here."
"Chad's anti-drug," whispered James, another friend of Ed's and Chad's, who was now dating the latter's ex-wife. "He can quote the D.A.R.E. handbook. It's kinda impressive."
Robert had no idea what the hell James meant, but he could venture a guess. He was developing a headache. This was media management all over again, except now he was getting fashion consultations from a group of blokes who came of age wearing clothes women picked out for them.
"I don't know where you're hiding it, but," Chad complained, before spinning around to face the room, a pair of gray briefs gingerly pinched between his thumb and index finger. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"You can e-Bay that, you know," Kellan said.
Everyone laughed. Bastards, all of them.
It was time to intervene.
"Look, guys, I appreciate what I think you're trying to do -"
"We're preemptively saving your career!" said Kellan, who Robert now came to realize was the latest recruit into this CW network thing. Whatever that was.
***
Babies have never been this comfortable.
The hammock enveloped him, swayed him back and forth, a lanky six-foot long baby bundle. His bare feet touched green grass here, cool asphalt there. The air was thick with the smell of grilled meat and fish. Robert could get used to this, the Texan winter.
"You have to embrace it." Chace said, philosophical as he flipped over a steak on the barbecue grill. He, too, was barefoot, dressed in board shorts and a ratty t-shirt. "Accept it. Be resigned, if you gotta be, but accept it."
"Oh, I know," Robert said. It's been a week since he heard from his agent, and he took that as a positive sign. "But why's it got to be a sin to be human about it? Take any person, right, and put him or her in a room or in a public space. Now, add a dozen strangers, a hundred strangers. Thousands, even. All of them excited and loving you, or the thought of you. Whatever. All these people loving you and the idea of you and screaming, crying. The police may be called in, and it is madness. Isn't it natural to be just a little overwhelmed."
Chace sipped a beer, but didn't offer one to Robert. "Yeah, of course. But it comes with the territory. In many ways, it's up to you, and not them, to make the situation comfortable for you."
Ed sauntered over, bumped shoulders with Chace. "Chace pretends he's surrounded by lingerie models. Me, I think that it could be worse. Like, at least there are no nudes of me floating around." He paused, contemplating. "That I know of."
"That'd be a fright," he acknowledged and flipped open his cell phone to read a text. I think im gettin fird!11, Taylor texted. Do u kno nething?
No, I do not. Your agent sucks. Robert texted back.
His eyes drooped. Ed and Chace's voices blended with the comfortable lull of the background, tenor and baritone accompaniments to the suburban sounds of a normal neighborhood enjoying its Sunday afternoon.
"This is, by far, the best media training that's ever been inflicted on me," he said to no one in particular, and smiled. "All that's missing is a cute girl."
"Well, hello." The hammock quit its swaying, and when Robert opened his eyes Leighton was in his field of vision, pretty and put-together in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. "I heard the funniest thing," she continued, "that Ed's padding his CV with skill sets such as 'personal savior' and 'media training associate.'"
Ed's head perked up at the sound of his name. "I do it out of the kindness of my heart, thanks."
Sunlight slid over her locks, dark and glossy. It reminded Robert of Katie Leung's and the way it felt against his cheek. It wasn't his fault for falling a little bit for his co-stars. He wondered where life had taken Katie - was she in university, studying film or literature, as she told him she would?
"If I could add just one more thing," Leighton said.
She rose and walked up to Ed, snapping shut the second and third buttons of his shirt, before hovering over Robert. The fragrance of her hair surrounded him, and he couldn't help the tickle of pleasure inspired by her nearness. Her fingertips were warm where they brushed his skin. When he looked down, he saw that the second and third buttons of his shirt had been done.
"It looks douchey when guys do that," Leighton said, scrunching her nose. "We get it, okay? You're hot. The baby chest hairs, not so much."
***
It's been a week and a half since he'd talk to Kristen. He was beginning to feel really pathetic. The marriage proposals were only jokes, for crying out loud.
Mostly.
"Mostly I'm envious of her boyfriend," Robert told Ed's new friend, a guy named Jensen. "I mean, he's short, pallid and talented. I'm developing a complex."
"You're talking about Kristen Stewart?" Chad interrupted, whistling as he fist-bumped Robert. "She's a hottie."
"It's normal to develop a deep relationship for your co-star," Jared shrugged. "There's a lot of intensity and trust involved."
"Jesus Christ, Jared," Chad rolled his eyes. "Do you say 'I love you' before or after?"
"Hey, man, you know it's true." Jared held up his hands. "Not everything's gotta be gay. Although if that your thing...I completely accept you for who you are."
"What do you call a Texan with a horse under one arm and a cow under the other?" Chad returned.
"Hungry?"
"Bisexual."
"You sick fuck, that barely makes sense!" Jared exclaimed, guffawing along with everyone.
The exchange stayed with Robert after he left Jared's house. There was something about the tone of these interactions, a curious tension not unlike what lay between Ed and Chace and Chad and Jared. He could infer lines drawn and crossed and redrawn, without regret, with little consequence. It was a dirty incestuous pool. But they were friends, they looked out for each other, and what's better, they were all working in concert to thwart the system into their favor.
This whole CW thing, Robert decided, was insane. Yet he's the one being treated for being crazed and confused.
"Most of the time, you have let it go," Jensen said when they were inside, putting glasses in the sink and beer bottles in the trash bin. "Crushes happen all the time. If it happens, it happens. If she's got a boyfriend, lay off."
Truth was, Robert had lost track of the joke. The joke had blurred between fun instigation and sincere affection. He's always had a thing for serious girls who knew what they wanted in life, which tended to be anything but acting. First, Katie and her studious nature, and now Kristen and her off-putting, endearing seriousness.
Maybe he'd been doing what Cam had suggested all along: having fun with the mania induced by this movie, having fun with the idea infatuation. Anything to distract from the all-too-familiar tailspin of being too late, too behind; too old to go to university, too drunk to come up with a graceful exit strategy, too much of a dick to listen to the people trying to make a living for him and off of him.
Sooner or later, everyone's going to know he's a dick.
Maybe he belonged here, after all.
***
Robert's the last person anyone should ask about body-building, but here was Taylor anyway, trying to pull him into a discussion about body dysmorphia.
Robert knew the disorder was a serious one, and that he should probably stop the kid from torturing his frankly decent body. Not that he swings that way, for chrissakes. He's just looking out for the youngest cast member. Underneath it all, Robert considers himself a nice person.
"Yeah, they'd probably give a bigger damn that you take your trash out like a normal person or are still alive driving your crapmobile," Taylor moped into his burger.
Ed, Chace and Chad, seated across them, exchanged glances. No, not concerned ones like, Oh, this is perhaps a cry for help. Well, maybe Ed and Chace, a little. But, Chad didn't even bother to hide the conniving going on in his head. The look on his face read, Oh, I got this.
Robert shrugged helplessly and patted Taylor on the arm. Taylor just went on looking miserable.
"What you need is a girl," Chad spoke up. "Do you watch the Disney Channel? My girl, Kenzie, knows this girl..."
Later, after Taylor left - stiffing them the check, Jesus - Chad let Robert in on an industry secret.
"The love eventually fades," he said. "Some people are okay with that, others not. Take heart, my douche - nothing lasts forever."
***
Killing time during a red-eye flight was a bitch. At least he's got company.
Robert's bound for Los Angeles for an unavoidable meeting with his agent, some last-minute promotional stuff and his inevitable reunion with the world's most flammable car: his own.
"I don't see why this has got to be more complicated than it is," said Mike, Jensen's golfing buddy. Jensen was asleep across four empty seats at Terminal 16A, Jared sitting across him playing his PSP while keeping an eye on his co-star Misha's bag while the latter chatted on his cell a few yards away. Mike said he had to look in on his apartment outside Los Angeles to make sure rats and squatters haven't taken over.
"Not to sound like a girl here, but at the end of the day you're making someone out there happy. Not the executives or whatever, but the consumer for whom you are doing this," Mike said, obviously in a mood to share some wisdom.
"Even hacks have to make a living," Robert pondered.
"I'll take it one step further. Everyone is a hack. So what? What else are you going to be? All roads lead us to where we're supposed to go."
"I'll up that," Robert said, getting into this sleep-deprived analogy thing they have going. "We walk those roads, and now, we're here."
Jared looked up from his PSP, his eyes traveling from Mike to Robert and back. "You guys are killing me," he said.
"Have some perspective here," Misha said, as though he had been a part of the conversation all along. At least he looked compassionate. Thoughtful, even, as if he's been examining all this from a good, objective angle. "Did you have any professional plans outside this profession?"
Robert shook his head.
"Then have fun," Misha smiled.
"Preach, brother," Mike nodded.
Jared glanced up from his PSP. "Until now, Misha used to play serial killers for a living."
"Yeah," Misha agreed. "That was not so much fun."
***
bought guitar. want to jam? Kristen's text said. there better be hotpockets or else.
Robert smiled. He was feeling unnaturally flush.
His agent, on the other hand, was confused.
"What...is this?" the agent asked when prompted to make a fist for fist-bumping. "I don't understand. Are you behaved now, or what?"
"Yeah, yeah...you got it," Robert beamed, beatific. "Enjoy it, though, my fretful agent-friend. Nothing lasts forever."