[Tom's loft III]
When Tom appears the next day, he is dressed up. Dressed up like only a boy with way too much money and who's lived in that too-much-money for all his life. His suit looks brand new, his hair is sleeked back, and his smile looks recently-bleached. He might even be wearing makeup.
"Get dressed!" He makes shooing motions at Alex and Jay - the latter is one with the super nintendo, and the former is watching, making backseat-driver comments. "And get Davis would, would you, too? He has to come. I swore he would be there. And, you know, make him look okay?"
"He hasn't come out of his room since that call, except to eat drink and piss." Alex pauses Mario's intense duel with Birdo and glances over the couch at Tom. "So you get him out. You're the one that wants him to go. He'd probaly just angst up the party."
"Oh, lay off on him." Jay says and heads off, knocking on Roger's door. "Come out here, you recluse. We have to go to this party for Tom's connections otherwise they get pissed and you have to be there so we can show you off. Or something. I don't really know. But you have to come."
"I'm not coming."
"Come or we'll take away your guitar and kick you out of the loft." Tom shouts from next to Alex (who is absorbed in the Super NES again) on the couch.
"That's totally a guilt trip." Jay mumbles. Tom nods and shrugs and points out the Goomba that just killed Alex. Roger appears, unimpressed, in the doorway.
"Christmas isn't the time for showing off people like they're items." He says slowly. "It's about being with family and people you care about."
Alex looks at him and shakes his head. "Get dressed, Roger. I know that Tom got a suit for you and you
have to look like you weren't just pulled out of Alphabet City."
"Besides." Tom says, slightly acidly. "If Christmas is for friends, then why are you here?"
"You're my friends." Roger says with a shrug and absolutely no feeling behind the words.
Tom shakes his head and sighs. "Why aren't you with Mark?" The voice is faintly accusing.
Roger stares at Tom for a long moment. The silence between them is tangibly thick, and even when Jay coughs to try to break it, he doesn't help. Roger looks like he's going to punch Tom, but he deflates, shrinking. "I'll get dressed." He mumbles, and Alex leads him off.
"I'm worried about him." Jay says to Tom, once the other two are gone. "Really."
"He'll be fine, he just needs to get over his boyfriend or go back to him." Tom shrugs and makes sure he is looks good in the mirror. "It's only a relationship. If his music just sucks ass, we'll just guilt him into going back. It's not that hard." Inside the room they can faintly hear conversation, but the words are impossible to make out.
It doesn't sound like an argument. When Roger finally comes out, Tom claps. Roger looks like them. Clean, expensive. Rich. "You look awesome, Davis." Roger shrugs.
"Let's just get this over with?"
Alex and Jay go to change and come back.
Tom looks at Roger. "Hey, try and act at least a little full of life, alright? Just this once?"
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"My uncle, he has connections inside Virgin, you know that, right?" Roger nods, so Tom continues. "So every year, he throws this big work party and everyone comes and we have to too, and I talked to him earlier today and promised that you'd come andbe, I don't know, lead-guitar-y for him. Except do you think you could not tell him you used to be a Bohemian, or the Alphabet City bit? He kind of has a hate thing going on against them."
Roger wants to ask if that's where Tom got it from, but he doesn't. He just nods. "Sure. No problem."
"Great. Thanks."
The other two come out, and the four of them go to the party. At the party, Roger does more fake-smiling and lying then he's done in his life. He shakes fifty thousand hands, flashing them smiles, telling them how great it is to meet them, how much he's adored what these people have done - he doesn't even remember their names. He is dragged around by Tom, who fills him in beforehand on what these people did, and Jay tells him how he should smile and act and be careful because so-and-so had a bad finger so don't shake to hard and don't stare at that mole on who's-his-name's face and be careful about that girl over there becuase she hits on everyone and they know he is taken and this and that and everything and he wonders if being rich means being this
fake.
Because if so, he doesn't want to be rich.
Tom finally drags him over to his uncle, who reminds Roger of the first guy who he wanted to be hired by - short, fat, bad toupe, expensive suit. "Roger, this is Michael Andrews. Mr. Andrews, this is Roger Davis, our new lead."
Andrews smiles, and his fake smile tops the list of all the fake smiles Roger has ever seen. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Davis. Are you enjoying your run with the boys?"
"Roger, please." He flashes a fake-smile of his own. "And absolutely. I've never had a more fun group to work with." Lie. "We just all click." Lie. "I bet this wil be one of the greatest experiances of my life, really." Half-lie. "Because everyone is just so open, you know?" LIE.
"Oh, I agree." Roger sort of drones out Andrews' voice. He wonders what Mark is doing for Christmas Eve. Maureen. They were probaly going out with Collins and Mimi. Having fun. Enjoying themselves. Being true. Not so fake that he was nearly sick to his stomach.
Three hours later they get out of the party and come home. Roger has never changed into his pajama bottoms so fast in his life. "Where's your shower? I think I need to get all that fake off me."
"Welcome to corporate America, Davis." Jay says and laughs. "Where everything is about money. Souls are ten cents and kisses are ten grand. It's the second room to the right."
Roger follows the instructions to the shower and strips down and turns on the water. It's hot. Holy shit. They have so much hot water. Here's a reason for staying. He leans against the shower wall and allows the hot water to melt all his problems away. The band. The fakeness. The lack of his friends. Mark.
The hot water does not help him with Mark. Quite the contrary. The hot water reminds him of every time he's ever seen Mark, sending his brain off into a wild tangent of them two together, for real, with no Maureen and no Mimi and just them. Together. He imagines how Mark's chapped, thin lips would feel against his own, how Mark's tongue would feel sliding against his. Some part of his mind (the logical part, the part that runs away, that makes plans, that wants him to seal himself from the world) complains, riots vehmently, but the rest of him is so far gone it isn't even funny. He patches together all the times he's seen Mark without a shirt on into a vague slideshow puzzle, and before he knows it, one hand is wrapped around himself and pumping and he's whispering Mark's name over and over again. He tries to imagine what Mark looks like under the boxers, and a sound spills from his mouth as he can just see Mark, just beyond that stupid fucking wall that they call reality. Behind that wall, Mark is slinking up to him, so he can take off Mark's glasses and kiss him so intensely that their teeth click together and the world dissolves to them and Mark looks up to him and whispers --
"DAVIS, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT IF YOU JERK OFF IN MY SHOWER, BUT CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF!"
That was not Mark's voice. That was Tom's voice (and the banging on the door he does) that jerks him out of his trance and he looks at himself and flushes. He shouldn't be thinking about Mark at all. And especially like this. Oh god. He cannot believe he has a hard-on for his roommate. He wonders what Collins thought when he first started liking men, and wonders if it was as bad as this.
He figures fuck it, and goes back to Mark. Mark's scrawny little body, his small smiles, his blonde hair, his long fingers. Mark's long fingers would feel great on Roger, he bets. Mark's figure against his own, together. Mark in him. Oh god. Just imagining the feeling, what it could be like, nearly sends him over the edge and a sound comes from his mouth and he doesn't know what it is. He tries to imagine being in Mark. Tight and wet and stretched and hard and fast and god, Roger nearly comes right then and there from just imagining. And Mark would press against him and moan and scream and whimper and it's that, trying to see the sounds spilling from Mark's mouth, how Mark would arch and stretch and coil and he finally comes in the shower and just sort of lets himself fall to the floor, sitting there and letting the water spray him in the face. He can't believe this. He cannot believe what he just did, for Mark, to Mark, in the shower. God, is he screwed up, or what? He finds his legs and stands back up and tries to aim the showerhead at where he came. Once this is finished, he tries to not think about Mark as he washes his hair (he can't help this, and his mind jolts back to how Mark's hands would feel playing with his hair, and that little jolt that zaps it's way down his body) and cleans himself.
Once this is done He turns the shower off and dries himself off and puts back on his pajamas. "Well." Tom smirks and goes into the bathroom himself. "Nice long, hot shower good for you?"
"Fuck off." Roger mutters, and flips him off.
"Mmm, Mark." Tom says with a snigger.
"Fuck off." Roger snarls, this time, and slams his door.