under the bright lights
title: under the bright lights
author: xmexandxyoux .
pairing: sean/tom
rating: pg for language
word count: 2,660
disclaimer: dear empires, i am sorry. don't read this. i do not own empires, this story is fiction.
summary:
his back to the pillar, the guy has taken out a guitar and begun to strum, singing softly, in a way that makes tom’s breath catch in his throat. he is singing about someone named hayley. tom turns around to look, but he pivots back every few seconds for fear that the singer will see him... it wasn’t only the voice but the essence of this guy that intrigued tom. he could just feel the positive energy just radiating from him and if there is one thing tom needs in his life, it’s positive energy.
a/n: i think my only beta was paige, so i salute you for all the cheerleading i got on this as well as the proofreading. <33
credit: title and lyrics belong to empires.
“dammit, tom! i needed someone for this gig fucking two days ago!”
nick paces, running his hands through his hair, although it’s already disarrayed. nick is prone to tizzies and he never fails to make tom feel three inches tall, despite their friendship.
“i’ve got it!” tom has a rare eureka! moment, where an idea seems to hit him smack in the brain. “there’s - there’s this guy - in the subway!”
“in the subway?” nick echoes, peering at tom with one eyebrow raised, a skill tom had never been able to master.
“yeah, yeah. there’s this guy, he plays the guitar and he sings!” tom’s enthusiasm mounts as he speaks. “i can ask him tomorrow on my way in.” he feels relief and pride at such an idea. he feels knocked down a peg by nick’s obvious skepticism.
“all right. but one more day and i’m calling in eric.” tom groans inwardly. eric was tom’s colleague and had been one-upping tom since day one, the fact that tom had known nick since before he could even grow a moustache notwithstanding. eric was tom’s biggest threat and nick knew it, using it often and to his advantage.
-
you’d think a music exec like tom could actually afford a car. but nooo, on account of his shitty salary. nick has his fingers in so many pies, leaving only a small section of his attention to salaries -tom’s in particular. he doesn’t realize (or care) how hard tom works. so tom has had to make his commute on the subway for the past two years. en route he will occasionally stop for the daily singers and dancers, struggling to be heard and seen over the din and hustle-bustle of the station. if he’s feeling charitable, he’ll give them a little money, but he rarely pays much mind. which is why when he discovers sean, and the entire world seems to melt away, his voice being the only thing tom hears, tom is a little startled at his own reaction.
it is three weeks prior to the argument with nick. when tom gets to the station, on time, he notices someone who isn’t usually there. his back to the pillar, the guy has taken out a guitar and begun to strum, singing softly, in a way that makes tom’s breath catch in his throat. he is singing about someone named hayley. tom turns around to look, but he pivots back every few seconds for fear that the singer will see him. however, that doesn’t seem to be as big of a problem as tom thinks, considering the singer probably wouldn’t have stopped singing had a marching band procession passed through the station, he was so invested in the music. it wasn’t only the voice but the essence of this guy that intrigued tom. he could just feel the positive energy just radiating from him and if there is one thing tom needs in his life, it’s positive energy.
so tom begins to make an effort, just a few minutes at first, and then ten, fifteen, he leaves the house earlier to listen to the mysterious subway singer. eventually he begins to drink his coffee there, looking out at the tracks with his back to the singer but both ears tuned on him. they don‘t speak, but after three weeks, tom feels like he should compensate the singer for his wares.
as tom’s train pulls in, he drops a twenty in the case and scurries off. the guitarist hadn’t been looking, however, upon seeing the money, he makes a mental note to thank his benefactor profusely. the next morning, upon spotting him, he calls.
“hey!”
the stranger doesn’t appear to have heard him, and only when he calls again, does the stranger turn. he walks over, bending down so he isn’t towering two feet over sean, who is sitting. sean shines his bright smile right at the pensive stranger as he speaks.
tom can’t help but notice the lovely blueness of his eyes, which had been previously obscured by his hair. “i saw what you did the other day, the money. it was very kind. thank you so much.” tom is blushing, he can’t help it. he hadn’t expected to be found out, and now he’s being treated like some sort of philanthropist.
“oh no, it’s no big deal, really.” except it is a big deal, and they both know it.
“it’s a big deal for me. twenty bucks is probably more than i make here in a week.” tom doesn’t know what to say, so he makes a series of hand motions indicating that really, it was nothing. but he is obviously lying, because it wasn’t likely that any sane person who could hand out twenties like candy would be taking the subway.
“you’re really good.” sean beams, positively beams, making tom weak in the knees.
“thank you so much.” tom’s legs have pretty much given out, so he sets himself down on the concrete across from sean, the guitar case between them. already sean has accumulated quite an impressive collection of pennies. “i’m sean.” he holds out his hand and tom shakes it, gently. he’s afraid that if he so much as looks at sean the wrong way, he will disappear into a puff of smoke and tom’s life will return to monotony. and he doesn’t want that. also, he thinks that if sean doesn’t let go of his hand or stop smiling, he’s going to have a heart attack. tom doesn’t, because with a roar and a whoosh, his train arrives. sean drops tom’s hand and looks down at his feet. “oh, do you have to catch a train?” sean would feel really badly if tom would miss his train just because he was sitting there talking to him.
“nah, it’s okay. there will be another one soon.” fuck nick, tom thinks, smiling to himself. the next train was tom’s perpetual second choice, seeing as he had to transfer, but he supposes the slight trouble is worth it. “what do you do when you’re not here?”
“i’m a student at northern illinois u. i’m majoring in english. i love it. i’m here for a little while in the morning to make some spare cash and then i have classes. what do you do when you’re not here?”
“i’m in music management for an indie label. it started out as a favour for a friend, but now it’s turned out to be a shitty job with long hours and too much time at a desk.”
“that’s cool, that’s really cool. but if you hate it, then why don’t you quit?” sean says, as if it’s obvious.
“it’s a long story. right now it’s all i’ve got and it does pay the rent, so i probably shouldn’t be complaining.”
“you shouldn’t waste your time on something you don’t like. what do you want to do?”
“well, maybe something like café’ management… i mean, i already have the degree…” sean interrupts him suddenly but gently.
“tom.” tom isn’t going to lie, it gave him a little shiver when sean said his name. “what do you want to do?”
“music. i want a band.” tom admits. he feels embarrassed. the dream he’d deferred has just come back to bite him in the ass. sean leans back, satisfied. the second train arrives as tom’s fretting over whether sean will make him admit to something else too personal he doesn’t tend to tell strangers, even really cute, earnest ones. “i should go.” sean nods.
“it was nice to meet you, tom.” tom mumbles something incoherent and heads off to resume his daily grind.
-
“this isn’t about someone else you’re climbing into bed with, is it? because tommy baby, we’ve been through this before, with that girl, scarlett? yeesh. She sounded like a chorus of chipmunks. and what’s-his-name, drake? fucking hell. awful.” tom can feel heat rise to his ears and neck at the semi-implication of nick’s sentence, but he knows what nick means is, this better be good.
-
tom is anxious to get to the subway the next morning. he finds sean in his usual place, singing a song tom had come to know as “shame”. sean finishes the verse as tom sits down.
“what would you say if i told you i had a gig for you?” sean blinks at tom as if he’d just spoken those words in swedish. he looks baffled.
“i’d say thanks but no thanks. i don’t want a gig. i don’t want a label. i want to go to school to teach kids the wonders of hemingway and eliot and fitzgerald, which is what i’m doing. this is just a side thing.” tom couldn’t have been more surprised had sean slapped him. he’d thought everyone wanted to get signed. wasn’t that the point?
“so that’s a no?” he tries not to look as disappointed as he feels, but he knows his inevitable sulk gives him away completely. sean tries to make amends.
“i mean, maybe under the right circumstances…” sean trails off, leaving tom to get the bait.
“as a personal favour? to me?” tom asks hopefully. tom is grasping at straws here. he wants this to work out so badly. sean smiles slowly, absently touching the hairs on his chin as if they are a bushy beard.
“okay.” he says finally. tom wants to rent a skywriter to proclaim his gratitude.
“do you have a cd or a demo or something? i need to show my boss.” sean reaches into the inside pocket of the guitar case and pulls out a cd in a thin brown paper covering. there’s a track listing handwritten on the outside and it is taped precisely. tom wants to ask why sean has a demo if he doesn’t want to be signed, and as if reading his mind, sean answers.
“i have a few of these in case someone who’s listening wants one, i guess. they’re name your price, but for you, it’s on the house.” tom feels like a bumbling idiot.
“thank you. so, um, i’ll, i’ll let you know.” tom’s smiling and stuttering and he takes that as his cue to go.
“hey, tom?” sean calls at his back. “you should smile more often.”
-
nick listens to the demo straight through, face blank. as he listens, he purses his lips and steeples his hands, looking quite frankly, like a critic. which he is, sort of. tom listens a bit differently, swaying, eyes closed, finding that he knows a lot of the words. sean sounds even better recorded. when the cd is done, nick looks up at tom, who has been sitting on the edge of his seat for the past twelve or so minutes.
“all right.” nick says with an eye roll. “now get to work on those fucking piles on your desk.”
-
the event is small but packed. several hundred people, many of them important in tom and nick’s world but irrelevant in sean’s have attended, looking to be impressed. the café’ is supposed to be quaint, but to tom it looks as quaint as a hooters waitress, and about as authentic as well. it’s a pseudo-vintage building, a new building made to look noir and nostalgic. tom hates it, but he doesn’t get paid to voice his opinions. nick makes sure of that. he wishes his label wasn’t sponsoring it.
there is no backstage, (in fact, there’s barely a stage, merely a raised platform) so tom sits with sean in a corner as the room fills up, sean with a pepsi and tom nursing the rum-and-coke that sean so desperately wants. however, he knows that even one drink will mess up his voice and while he doesn’t want to be signed, he doesn’t want to leave people with a bad impression, either.
“i’m really fucking nervous.” and it is evident in the way sean’s glances dart about the room like a fly, the drink before him that’s barely been touched, the stack of shredded napkins in front of him.
“how is this different than what you do in the mornings? people stare and listen there, too.”
“because in the subway no one knows me. no one knows my name. no one has any expectations. all the people here expect to be entertained.“ tom wonders why anyone would want to be so anonymous but feels ludicrous upon realizing that anonymity was what had brought sean to him. or him to sean. tom instantly feels responsible for sean’s being there and comes up with a plan.
“hey,” he says. “i have an idea. you know when you spin in a circle, you’re supposed to focus on one spot or object so you don’t fall over?” sean nods uncertainly. “so don’t look at them, just look at me. then you won’t be nervous.” it occurs to tom that had he been in sean’s place, looking at sean would make him exponentially more nervous, but maybe sean is different.
“i mean, i could try. if the fuckin’ lights aren’t too bright.” at the moment, drunken nick, the emcee, stumbles onto the stage and mumbles a few choice phrases about sean and how talented he is, and over the course of his two-minute speech, he mentions that sean is looking to be signed no less than three times. after the third time, sean takes the microphone from nick and clarifies,
“actually, i’m not looking to be signed. i’m just doing this as a favour for a friend.” judging by the looks on the faces of the people in the crowd, that was probably the wrong thing to say. people here obviously had no appreciation for honesty. sean sets himself on the stool, feeling awkward, and asks himself why, again, did he agree to this? then, squinting out into the meager crowd, he sees tom making his way to the center. thus sean begins.
he plays all the songs tom knows from the subway, and in tom’s opinion, plays them flawlessly. his manners are also unrivaled: he thanks the mostly unresponsive crowd after every song. tom had expected hoarseness and missed chords, to be honest, due to sean’s general uneasiness, but he is pleasantly surprised.
yet when sean prefaces his last song with, “this is a new song. i’ve never played it for anyone before,” tom is bewildered. sean seems to be looking at tom more profoundly, and when he begins, there is a discernable change in his voice. it has become softer. the audience seems to be reacting positively; they have begun to clap.
mark me up
you’ve been sweet but can you show me rough
i think we’re lovely when we screw up
give me a part of you for a part of me
tom is rooted to his spot; no part of him seems to be moving except for his heart, which he fears will burst from his ribs and land in sean’s hand. he idly hopes sean won’t damage it. tom thinks that he is going to faint. he can’t breathe. he isn’t sure he wants to.
sean has written a song. for him.
-
when sean is done, he pushes through the crowd to find tom, or maybe tom finds him, but it doesn’t matter because nothing does. the entire world doesn’t matter. it plays a minor role. tom opens his mouth and begins to ramble before he can think properly about what he is saying: that sean had actually provided him with a reason to get up on time in the morning, that he found himself humming, “i will guide you in the night” in times of stress, that holy shit, you wrote a song about me. but what he’s saying is irrelevant because before he can even finish sean places a finger on tom’s lips and utters some of the most beautiful words tom has ever heard.
“stop talking so i can kiss you.” and then he does.