Part One, We Are The Crowd
"Master Post"
He notices the guy even past the flashing lights as he steps out of the club.
He stands out, alright? He’s head and shoulders above the other paps, and even though he’s popping away like the rest of them, something catches Tommy’s eye. Probably the seriously rad jacket the guy is wearing, with the spikes on the shoulders.
The guy pulls his camera away from his face and stares at it like it’s betrayed him, and then jerks his gaze up to Tommy’s. There’s a dozen shouting photographers between them, and Cristian’s already at the car, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s scheduled to come out ten minutes behind him to run the gauntlet and Tommy can’t be here cluttering up the paps lenses. He’s the next breakout thing, maybe, but not a superstar.
He gets in the car, leans his head against the seat. It’s soothingly dark and Cristian is quiet, but the lights are still going off behind his eyelids, flash flash flash, and the bassline of the club is still running up his spine and making his ears ring, all the way home.
He sees the guy a few more times, usually on that same strip, working the trendy clubs and restaurants frequented by the rich and famous. He’s always at the back of the pack, never shouting, and not snapping away with the usual fervour. For a pap, he’s kind of half-assed. But he’s better than most, never yells insults or accusations to get a rise out of Tommy.
One night one of Tommy’s other regulars - a total dick with a horrible orange shake’n’bake tan - yells something at best disgusting and at worst actually criminal about Tommy and his underage costar, and Tommy feels bile rise up in his throat. He likes Zac, he really does - the kid is smart and cute and talented as hell, but he’s a kid, and Tommy is so fucking sick of that rumour. He turns, his hands balling into fists, searching for some really cutting remark short enough to turn into a catchy headline.
But then shake’n’bake pitches forward, suddenly, and he slips, and he puts his hands out to catch himself a little too late. Both his face and his camera hit the pavement, hard, and all Tommy has to do is sidestep him on the way to the car. He very carefully does not throw a look of gratitude at his defender, who is wearing a barely plausible expression of wide-eyed “oops”, totally incongruous with all that eyeliner and leather.
He makes a point of searching the guy out after that, whenever he’s in the area, which is depressingly a lot. It’s not even slightly his scene, but his handlers insist it’s good press, and he gets the feeling they’re delighted to have an openly bisexual guy to play with, so he’s out on dates at least four nights a week, beautiful vapid specimens of both genders eager for a ride on the latest fucking fun train.
He goes home alone, though. He’s not a whore.
He quickly comes to the conclusion that his leather-clad defender is probably the worst pap in existence. He’s not pushy or rude, doesn’t shout. He always hangs back a little, too, never elbows his way forward.
He actually stands back out of Tommy’s way when Tommy’s escorting a drunken girl - some CW star, maybe, he can’t fucking remember - out of a restaurant and into a cab, and holds the cab door as Tommy levers her into the backseat. When Tommy turns around, he realises that the guy is actually using his big broad body to shield Tommy and the girl from the other paps, looking vaguely puzzled but not even moving as they jostle up against him, shove cameras around his wide shoulders and over the top of the car door.
It’s a little island of calm, but his date is moaning sadly and the paps are even more rabid than usual, so all Tommy can do is flash him a grateful smile and crawl in the cab after her, shut the door behind him.
The next time he sees the guy, it’s not a publicity thing, and they’re worlds away from Beverly Hills and their trendy run of nightclubs and bars. He’s in Burbank, visiting his mom, catching up with old friends. Tommy’s been coming to this coffee place since he discovered the wonder of caffeine in his teenage years, and none of the staff so much as bats an eyelid at the sight of him, and it’s so refreshing he kind of wants to tuck himself into a corner and stay there forever.
So he does that, ducks up to the out-of-the-way booth behind the potted fern where he’d gotten to second base with Jamie Palmer in senior year. It’s in a corner, can’t really see it from the main part of the cafe, so hardly anyone ever sits there, but when he slides into the booth, he finds himself blinking stupidly at a very familiar pair of blue eyes.
The dissociation is so intense it takes him several seconds to place the man in front of him. This is about the last place you’d expect paparazzi to end up, even slightly hapless, good-natured ones, but here is Tommy’s pet pap, staring at him with an expression of vague puzzlement.
“Are you following me?” squeaks Tommy. Seriously, he is not that famous to justify stalking when he’s not even doing anything interesting. Maybe if he were actually in Hollywood and the coffee was some gnarly imported shit that cost twenty dollars a cup and he spilt it on a Hilton sister. But he is at a kitsch place down the street from his parents house in fucking Burbank, and seriously, what is this guy doing here, Tommy is taking back every nice thing he ever thought about him, even about his pretty eyes.
“No!” The guy looks totally stunned, and there are, now Tommy looks, books and shit spread out on the table in front of him, like he’s just kind of hanging out studying or something. There isn’t a camera in sight. “Shit, what are you doing in Burbank?”
“I grew up, like, two blocks from here,” says Tommy, before he realises this is probably not great information to give to a pap. But the guy just kind of nods and looks relieved.
“Oh, thank christ. I was worried I was stalking you by mistake or some shit, and instead it’s just, like, fate.” He smiles all sunny. “I’m Adam, by the way.”
Adam is three months younger than Tommy and eight inches taller. He has a younger brother and his parents are divorced. He became a paparazzi by accident and completely hates it, but ever since the perfectly innocent photos he took at a party were published in OK! With Sandra Bullock's husband highlighted in the background hustling a buxom waitress into a closet, he can’t get work anywhere else in Hollywood.
“No-one wants to hire a snitch,” says Adam mournfully. “Not even to wait tables or anything. Apparently I’m a security risk. And since I never got anywhere with singing, well.”
“Well, it explains why you’re such a crappy paparazzi,” says Tommy, and Adam scowls at him. It’s kind of adorable.
“Paparazzi is plural. The singular is paparazzo.” He sounds a little hurt. Tommy pulls a face.
“What’s the plural for bottom-feeding scum-sucker?” he asks curiously, and watches hurt, annoyance and then bright-edged laughter go across Adam’s face in quick succession.
“Casting directors?” says Adam, and they both laugh.
“Oh my god, look at me going on about myself like this,” says Adam eventually. “You’re Tommy Joe, man, why are you even talking to me? That’s crazy.”
“I’m fucking sick of talking about myself,” says Tommy. “All the fucking questions, man. All the same questions, too.”
“Really though,” says Adam, leaning his chin in his hands and fluttering his eyelashes. “When you say bisexual, you really mean gay, don’t you? You’re just being a selfish, indecisive tart with all this bisexual stuff.”
Tommy nods. “It’s totally true. I’m trying to further the homosexual agenda. You know, sneakily. Through the easily-led and impressionable youth.”
Adam nods sagely. “And what was it like kissing the deliciously nubile Zac Efron, who, I feel it bears mentioning, was underage at the time of filming?”
“I do love underage boys,” says Tommy agreeably. “But he drooled. I’ll have to fix that when I make him my harem boy.”
Adam cracks up, and god, he’s pretty when he smiles.
And he’s a big fan of Dare Not, too, blathers on for about five minutes about how much he and his friends all loved it and his boyfriend totally cried at the end, and then he veers off into a tangent about how great it is that they’re starting to portray gay romances in the media, because he had, like, no role models growing up, and how it’s subversive and affirming at the same time, and he waves his hands around and beams happily as Tommy just kind of nods and bobs along serenely in the conversational current.
“Oh my god, why can’t I stop talking about myself,” says Adam again, covering his face.
“I don’t know,” says Tommy. “But it’s totally hilarious to watch.” His coffee is almost gone, and cold by now, but he finds he doesn’t want to leave. It’s so absurdly easy to be here and talk to Adam, like they’re friends or something. “Hey, how come you’re in Burbank? Do you live round here?”
Adam goes a little red. “No, I live in WeHo. World’s tiniest apartment and all. Some friends of mine were doing some photoshoot thing near here this morning, with body paint and suburbia and this, like, poodle skirt with pearls? I didn’t really get the whole statement, but whatever. Lee’s teaching me how to be a proper photographer, not all this pap bullshit.” He shuffles the papers he’s got all over the table nervously. “He’s helping me look into some art schools.”
“That’s awesome,” says Tommy, genuinely impressed.
Adam shrugs. “Better than being a shutterbug. Turns out I actually really like photography, so.” He looks a little embarrassed.
“That’s so cool,” says Tommy. “I’m fucking terrible with that shit, I can barely dress myself. My stylist gets so mad.”
“But you look pretty in front of the camera, which is the important part,” says Adam, and Tommy pulls out his best Marilyn pout and Adam laughs so hard he starts sliding off his seat. They fill in a couple more minutes making silly faces at each other, until Adams phone buzzes right in the middle of one of the best Blue Steels Tommy’s ever seen, and Adam jumps a little in his chair.
“Oh shit, that’s my ride,” he says, looking apologetic. “I gotta go. It was - man, it was so nice to meet you.”
“And you,” says Tommy, and he genuinely means it, shakes Adam’s hand and watches him gather up his paperwork and stuff it into his messenger bag.
“Oh, hey,” says Adam, as he’s turning to leave. He drops a napkin on the table, phone number scrawled on it. “Always useful to have contacts in the press, right?”
He sees Adam again at the opening of some restaurant, the hottest new spot that’ll be gone in six months. The food sucks, comes in tiny portions and is bland and squishy, and there’s all these rules about wine. His date for the evening - some guy from a reality show, who Tommy might actually be interested in if he weren’t so extremely teenaged - abandons him shortly after the entrees are taken away largely uneaten, and Tommy glares at the table and wishes desperately he were at home on the sofa with a beer and a burrito, and maybe Mia, so he could complain all about how his life is totally harder than anyone’s ever.
His date arrives back at the table to say he’s just run into a producer for a show he wants to get on, and they’re going to a club, and Tommy should totally come. Tommy turns him down as gently as he can, says he’s tired and just going to go home.
He sneaks out the back door, and Adam is leaning against the wall by the dumpster, cursing at his camera, and a grin stretches Tommy’s face.
“Rough night?” he says, and Adam shoots a glare at him, before he recognises him.
“Tommy!” He makes this abortive little motion with his camera, then rolls his eyes and drops it so it hangs around his neck.
“See, this is why I’m fucking broke, man. You’re coming out the back of the trendiest new eatery in town while your date parties it up with whoever, and instead of taking pictures and paying my rent, I just wanna ask what’s wrong and maybe tell you a stupid joke so you’ll laugh.” Adam glares. “Thanks. Now I have ethics or some shit, that’s great.”
“I’ll pay you not to take my picture. Would that be appropriately seedy for you?” asks Tommy. He ducks his head and puts a hand up, like he’s trying to hide, flinching away.
Adam laughs, sort of, a little huff. “Well, now I feel like a scumbag. So, the world is right again.”
“Holy crap, do you ever not have what it takes for this job,” says Tommy.
“It’s fucking pathetic, right? On the other hand, you just got abandoned by a kid whose claim to fame is his ability to dislocate his own shoulder in time to the 1812 Overture, so.”
They regard each other in the dim light of the alleyway, and Tommy shrugs. “Wanna go for a drink?”
And that’s how Tommy ends up on the TMZ homepage making out with a drag queen.
Wait, go back.
Tommy insists they stop at a burrito stand on the way to a bar where they won’t be hassled, and Adam makes grossed-out protesting noises as Tommy blissfully devours the delicious carbs and protein and grease and then goes suspiciously quiet as Tommy licks his fingers clean. Score.
The bar is, as promised, dim and quiet and about as un-hipster as you can get, and they order drinks and sit opposite each other and drink in grim silence until Tommy feels less like wanting to stab everyone and Adam looks less like he wants to pass out from misery.
“Okay,” says Tommy, setting aside his bottle. “So, my evening sucked. You?”
“I’m being evicted,” says Adam.
“Well, you win,” says Tommy, and buys another round of drinks.
Adam gets a text from a friend not long after that, and mutters something about a club they’re going to in WeHo, “Kind of, you know, alternative?” he says. “Very gender-friendly.”
Tommy thinks that sounds fucking perfect. “I,” he announces, only slightly drunkenly, “am going to solve both of our problems.” He picks up Adam’s camera and shoves it at him. “You will take me to this amazing club, and then take pictures of me at this amazing club, and then you sell them to the highest bidder for rent money, and people will be all shocked and stop trying to set me up with fucking teenagers and you won’t be homeless. Okay?”
Adam stares at him. “I’m fairly sure this is a terrible plan,” he says. “But I can’t think of a concrete reason why we shouldn’t.”
So they go to the club, and Tommy meets Adam’s friends, and there are cocktails. Adam dutifully snaps away as Tommy does body shots off a boy in a leather harness and gets felt up by a girl sporting an enormous purple strap-on dildo and progresses steadily from sweetly tipsy to pretty fucking smashed.
Then Adam’s ex shows up, and he is tiny and brown eyed and very beautiful, and he keeps a stiff distance from Adam as Adam retreats to sulk in a corner. Tommy wanders over and sort of collapses on top of him, smiling, because he’s drunk and Adam is big and smells nice and Tommy had no idea how badly he needed to fucking decompress.
“We should do something awesome,” says Tommy happily.
“I thought we were,” says Adam, and he pets Tommy’s hair tentatively.
“I mean, like, really awesome. I should make out with somebody totally inappropriate. That’d pay your rent for six months.”
“That’s an awful idea,” says Adam, but then Adam’s friend Raja slides in the booth on Tommy’s other side. And Raja has seriously the most gorgeous eyes, and long, lovely fingers, and is wearing this cool dress that covers to the throat at the front and leaves her long, lean back completely bare. And she puts one hand on the back of Tommy’s neck and says, “Oh, sweetie, I just loved you in Dare Not.”
And that’s how Tommy ends up on the TMZ homepage making out with a drag queen.
His management flips, of course, but at least they stop trying to whore him out to the paps and start looking for actual work for him. In the meantime, he’s got a little part - just a couple of weeks worth of his time - in this crazy post-apocalyptic thing JJ Abrams is doing.
So he ends up out in the desert where they’re shooting for a while, wearing a lot of distressed leather and cultivating his stubble and playing with prop guns. He’s playing a protective older brother-type to a group of scared teens, which means he's once more spending ninety percent of his screen time with people who think Korn is oldies music.
It’s cool though, because the kid with the most screen time with him is this awesome chick with hair that looks like it’s trying to eat her head. Allison’s totally crazy, in a big, balls-out teenage kind of way, and they click right from the start. She has a bigger part than him - he gets killed off at the end of the first episode so she can have a cool revenge-driven character arc - but JJ thinks their chemistry is just the best thing ever and promptly rewrites half a dozen scenes for more Tommy and adds a couple of flashbacks to boot, so Tommy ends up spending a month out in the desert pulling Allison’s pigtails and wondering when in hell people started taking him seriously.
He's not the desert-epiphany sort at all, but getting back to LA is like a slap in the face. Everything’s way too bright and loud and he has about six million unread emails and people calling him and he nearly gets collected by a car when he steps onto the road without looking. Eventually he just goes home and buries himself under his comforter with a stack of scripts and ignores the world.
That only works for a couple of days before a breakout pop star with the same management as him needs a date to some awards show. He's on the inexplicably blue carpet on the arm of a pretty dark-haired girl who thinks tattoos are, like, so gross, restlessly surveying the shouting photographers as she poses and preens, when it occurs to him that he's looking for Adam.
Which is absurd, because Adam doesn’t work the awards show circuit. Tommy thinks you need proper press credentials and backing from a publication to get in that door, and Adams freelance.
But it jogs his memory, so the next day he digs up Adams number and calls him.
“lo.” Adam sounds half asleep.
“Shit, sorry, did I wake you?” Tommy checks his watch - it’s well and truly after lunchtime.
There’s a pause, and Adam’s voice comes back clearer. “Tommy?”
“How’s it going?”
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” says Adam. “How have you been? You haven’t been around much.”
“Working hard. You wanna do something?” Tommy picks absently at his nailpolish.
“Uh, right now?”
“Or whenever. Just go for some drinks or something.”
There’s some shuffling noises on the other end. “I should bring my camera?”
Tommy blinks. “Only if you’re so desperately short of rent money that snaps of me drinking PBR and kicking your ass at pool would be worth something.”
“Oh,” says Adam quietly. “Yeah, actually, that sounds good. Not the camera thing. The rest.”
Tommy gets clocked a couple of times outside the bar, and he sees a couple of camera phones pop up when he gets in, but nothing intrusive, and he doesn’t plan on being particularly scandalous tonight, unless hanging out with a pap counts.
“Holy shit, you’re tanned,” says Adam admiringly, as soon as he spots him.
“Fuckin’ Nevada,” agrees Tommy. “Twenty-two fucking days. And the director wanted us to be all method and shit, with the isolation and the low-tech thing, so I was barely allowed a cellphone at all. I thought I was going to die.”
“Oh,” says Adam, and his head tips up, this funny little smile. “Oh, okay.”
“What?” Tommy asks.
“Nothing,” says Adam. “You just - you didn’t call, and I thought you were mad at me or something.”
Tommy has to take a moment to fill in the blanks in that sentence. “What - about the TMZ thing? Are you kidding?”
Adam shrugs, looking embarrassed. “I sold pictures of you making out with a dude in a dress! Most guys would be upset!”
Tommy laughs. “I fucking told you to take those pictures, man, I posed for the damn things. Tell me you got a good payout.”
Adam grins. “Enough to pay for semester of school and live off for a couple of months.”
Tommy has to high-five him then, clinks his bottle against Adam’s luminescent cocktail glass, and they drink to the media.
He's distinctly less impressed with the media when the pictures of Zac hit the gossip rags, because the first he hears about it is some asshole shoving a camera in his face and asking if he feels guilty for turning the Disney golden boy.
“It was an accident,” Zac says on the phone, later.
“The kissing, or getting caught?” Tommy’s exasperated. He adores Zac, really, but the kid is so fucking young sometimes.
“Um,” says Zac.
Of course, the scandal means that all the entertainment shows are playing that clip from Dare Not that they were all jizzing over when the movie first came out. Tommy catches it when he's channel surfing that evening and stops to watch, because he's narcissistic enough he can’t help it. There’s the rain, and him and Zac under the bridge, soaking wet, and Zac’s shaking and breathing hard - nobody could say that kid can’t act his face off - and he says “Simon, please,” in this cracking voice and turns his face up and Tommy kisses him like he wants to crawl inside and stay for a while.
It had been freezing that day on set, and afterwards they had rushed back to Zac’s trailer - the heating was broken in Tommy’s - stripping off their soaking clothes and wrapping up in big blankets and huddling around the little oil heater, burning their icy feet on it and defrosting their hands with big mugs of hot chocolate. Zac had been giggling and shy, tousled head poking up possum-like from his blanket cocoon, pressing his lips together and touching them with his fingers and running his tongue over them, restless. Tommy had teased him about his kissing technique until Zac had roused enough to insult Tommy’s bad breath and his mother all in one sentence, and they’d talked trash at each other until a PA came to see what all the noise was about and scolded them for leaving their wet costumes in heaps all over the floor.
He gets a call from Adam, who says “Did you turn Zac Efron gay, you saucy little minx?” and then laughs for five minutes straight while Tommy curses at him and shrilly denies everything.
“I think you could do it, honey,” says another voice on Adam’s end, and Tommy knows that voice.
“Hi, Raja. Nice to hear from you.”
“I’m Sutan today, sweetness, but it’s nice to hear you too. Kissed anybody interesting lately?”
“You know you’re my forever girl,” says Tommy.
“Well, in that case, you have to come to the show I’m putting together,” says Sutan primly, and then yelps “Fuck!” in a very unladylike way before Adam’s voice comes back on the line.
“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, Tommy,” he says, which only piques Tommy’s curiosity.
He calls Zac again after Adam hangs up. “Hey, wanna do something outrageous?” he asks, which is how he and Zac end up front row at this insane circus of a panto that’s part drag show part musical theatre part rock concert. Every single performer and half the audience is covered in glitter and wearing crazy costumes and insanely talented, and Tommy and Zac clap along and enjoy the hell out of themselves despite looking very out of place in jeans and t-shirts.
Then one guy forgets the lines to a song and steps out of time in a dance and everyone goes “Oooh” as a very tall dude in even taller glittery platform boots comes out dressed all in black leather and wielding a paddle, and he scoops the guy up and gives him a playful spanking right there on stage while the audience whoops and catcalls madly. Then the guy with the paddle turns to the audience and it’s Adam, sweet cheerful hapless Adam with his puppy-dog eyes and dorky laugh, standing there twirling a paddle purposefully with this dark, intent look in his perfectly made-up eyes, and he's so tall and gorgeous and so extremely Tommy’s type, shit, how did he not notice this?
And then Adam holds up one hand elegantly and the crowd goes dead silent like someone’s flipped a switch. Tommy’s belly clenches. Yes please. Adam lifts the microphone and says something in this velvety-smooth voice about bad boys needing to be punished, and beside Tommy, Zac whimpers a little and shifts in his seat.
You and me both, thinks Tommy, as Adam rumbles something about watching very carefully for any more misbehaviour, and stalks off stage with a threatening flourish. There's a beat, and then the show swings back into motion, mid-song, as if it never stopped.
Despite his sudden, totally inappropriate boner, Tommy is on his feet with the rest of the audience at the end of the show, cheering for more, and he drags Zac backstage after it’s all over and fights through the lace and feathers and glitter until he can hug Adam, who’s back to being just Adam again, laughing at himself.
“God, I was so praying nobody would screw up,” he says, red-faced. The paddle is dangling from a strap tied to his wrist now. “I don’t know how Sutan talks me into this shit.”
“You love it, don’t even pretend,” says Raja, appearing out of nowhere. “Oh, honey, you brought me a present!” Zac, still hanging onto Tommy’s arm, makes a squeaky sort of noise and edges backwards. You’d think he’d never been hit on by a six-and-a-half foot drag queen before.
Tommy makes hasty introductions and he and Zac are quickly surrounded by admirers. Zac gets over his nerves pretty fast and drops into talking-to-fans mode, and Tommy lets himself be petted by Raja, which several other people take as permission and he ends up fielding questions about his haircare regime while being stroked by a guy wearing peacock feathers and a harness and not much else.
He's about to suggest they get out of the cramped backstage area and go get drinks or something, but then he turns his head and sees Adam’s got his arm around the pretty, delicate boy who’d messed up and needed spanking. Adam’s head is ducked down so he can talk right into the boy’s ear, and they’re both smiling, the boy’s eyes shining as he giggles at whatever Adam’s telling him.
“You’re buying me a drink, pretty,” says Raja, right by his ear suddenly. Tommy turns so he can snuggle against her chest. She’s slim, almost breakable, but Sutan towers over him by a good eight inches and Raja is all that plus heels, so he slides right under her arm and hangs on.
“Your show is awesome,” he tells her. “Fuck being a movie star, I want to work for you. You have glitter.”
She kisses the top of his head. “You’re always welcome, honey, you know that, but we’re going out there, and you’re going to buy me something enormous and froofy and pink. With an umbrella in it.”
“Is this a drink or an outfit?” says Tommy, and lets himself be herded.
He ends up buying a round of drinks for most of the cast and half the audience, and its not until he’s halfway through a very tall neon purple drink that tastes inexplicably of mango that he realises he left Zac backstage signing autographs for drag queens. Oops.
Adam emerges toward the end of the purple-mango drink, and he’s got his little spanking buddy tucked under one arm and Zac under the other, and Tommy takes one look at Zac’s smitten face and rolls his eyes.
“A vodka tonic,” Adam announces, “and two glasses of milk for the kids.”
Zac and whats-his-face produce identical furiously embarrassed expressions. “Fuck you,” says Zac clearly. “Taylor and I are going to hang out with the cool kids.” He grabs the wrist of the boy under Adams other arm - Taylor - and tows him over to Tommy. “Tay, this is Tommy. He'll get us drinks.”
“He will not,” says Tommy. “Hi.”
Taylor waves shyly. This close he looks about seventeen under the unflattering dark makeup. Tommy has the urge to scrub his face clean and start over; more muted, less vampish. He’d be cute. “I’m a fan,” says Taylor. “I mean, of both of you. I loved Dare Not.” He darts a slightly anxious look at Zac, who’s still got him by the wrist. “You don’t have to buy me a drink.”
“Well, no,” says Tommy. “Zac’s just bratty that way.” He ruffles Zac’s hair, and Zac swears and ducks away.
“I mean,” says Taylor. “You don’t have to buy me a drink; my cousin’s the bartender. Adam’s just being a dick. He makes fun of me cause I’m the baby of the cast.” He shoots a wrathful look at Adam, and Tommy watches in fascination as everybody who sees it does a double take. It’s a bit like seeing a cocker spaniel puppy burp a fireball.
“Cute,” Adam croons. He reaches out like he's going to ruffle somebody, and Zac and Taylor back away hastily, so it’s Tommy who ends up getting his hair messed.
Then Adam spots the remainder of Tommy’s tall purple drink and demands one for himself, only Tommy has no idea what it’s called, but rather than asking someone they just end up drinking their way through a fair swathe of the cocktail menu, trading sips and spilling sticky everywhere until they’re completely hammered. Adam’s smiling, big and glittery and still wearing all that leather, sitting on the barstool next to Tommy with his long legs going in different directions and licking sweet booze off his long fingers, and Tommy wants to kiss him, rather badly.
Then Zac falls off the table - why is he on the table? - And Raja comes and says “Maybe it’s time the kids went home, huh?” in this pointed way, so Tommy calls for a car. He piles into the back with Zac and Taylor, who promptly curls up and falls asleep on him, and its only once they’re moving that he notices Adam’s in the front seat with the driver, giving him directions.
But Taylor falls asleep pretty much straight away, and even when Tommy rouses him, he can’t get his own address out, and Zac looks like he doesn’t know if he wants to protect Taylor from all harm or snuggle up and fall asleep with him, and Adam’s craning his head around from the front seat, openly curious and grinning.
Tommy rolls his eyes and tells the driver they’re all going back to his place.
Tommy’s apartment is not huge. It’s a two-bedroom, but the spare room is full of guitars and his computer and boxes he never unpacked when he moved to LA properly after his first role, almost three years back. Since Dare Not he can totally afford something better, but when he has the time to look he’s usually not that interested, and when he gets cabin fever and really needs something bigger, he never has time. A couple of months back he was seriously interested in this one house, but that’s when his Dad got sick and by the time he’d gotten around to calling the estate agent back the place had been sold.
They haul Taylor into the bedroom and drop him and Zac on Tommy’s bed - he’d put clean sheets on that morning in the hope that somebody would appreciate them, though a couple of drunken underage twinks wasn’t what he had in mind. (Or if it was, it wasn’t this scenario.) He stands back and stares - the bed is big, but there’s no way all four of them will fit without getting way more friendly than they are, so he and Adam share a shrug and pussyfoot out, closing the door behind them.
“Does Zac actually go for guys?” Adam asks in a half-whisper, setting his glass in the sink.
“No idea. Does Taylor?”
Adam’s face squishes up in thought, and he shrugs. “It never came up.”
“Not even while you were spanking him?” Tommy mutters, more childishly than he intended, and turns to go into the living room. He’ll sleep on the couch.
“Hey, for the record,” says Adam, and grabs his wrist. Tommy doesn’t expect it, so it topples him off balance, and Adam’s drunk enough it’s not very controlled, and the end result is that Tommy goes crashing into Adam’s chest, pinning him back against the counter.
There’s a fuzzy drunk moment and then they’re making out. There’s no intermediate stages - no meaningful eye contact or coy glancing at lips, just, bam, one second standing against the counter, next minute getting hitched up on it while Adam tries to lick his tonsils. Tommy is all on board with this plan, though he distantly wishes he was more sober, because he's kind of numb with cocktails and this would be so much more awesome if he could control what his hands were doing.
“Holy shit, this is a terrible idea,” Adam pants, breaking away.
“It is,” Tommy agrees, but he's got a heel digging into Adam’s back and a hand tangled in Adam’s hair and to be perfectly honest, he’s drunk enough he doesn’t really give a shit. “Should we stop?”
“Um, probably,” says Adam, and get his hands under Tommy’s thighs, picks him up easily.
Fucking hell, that’s hot, how he can haul Tommy around so easily, how big he is. Two steps across the kitchen, Adam’s broad shoulder bounces off the wall as he stumbles, and they both laugh.
“Don’t even think about trying the bedroom,” says Tommy, clinging to Adams neck. “Can you imagine if this shit got out?”
Adam changes direction, heading for the living room instead. “Rising star in orgy with underage co-star and paparazzo,” he says.
“Its kind of long,” says Tommy, and squeaks as Adam drops him on the couch. “There might have to be sub-headings.” He wants to say more, but Adam topples down on top of him and kisses him, all sloppy and friendly, hello.
“For the record,” Adam says, a little later. “This is still a terrible idea.”
Nothing happens - or at least, Tommy is still wearing his pants when he wakes up the next morning, as is Adam, sprawled on top of him. It’s awkward for about thirty seconds and then Taylor and Zac come tumbling out of the bedroom, wearing between them a hodge-podge of last night’s club clothes and what looks like whatever they could find in Tommy’s top drawer. Tommy curses them for t-shirt stealing bastards and goes to glare at the coffee pot. He’s cranky right up until Zac comes up behind him to snuggle him around the waist and make happy noises, because seriously.
“Fuck you,” he says, as Zac reaches around him to press the magic sequence of buttons to make the coffee machine produce something drinkable.
“You love me really,” says Zac.
“I don’t know whether to be madly jealous or get my camera out,” says Adam, behind them. “Can you fucking imagine.”
Tommy totally has a comeback for that, but right at that moment, the coffee machine goes ding and he’s very busy.
Once everyone’s caffeinated, Tommy calls a car. All jokes aside, he can totally imagine the headlines that would result from Zac emerging dishevelled and hungover from his place with two strange and attractive men from last night’s drag show. Actually, he should totally check to see if that’s hit the tabloids or anything.
“Hey,” says Adam, turning back as the other two pile into the car. “Go out for dinner with me?”
Tommy stares at him. “Uh.”
“If you’re busy tonight, maybe tomorrow?” says Adam. “I know some places that are a bit quieter, you know, private, so you shouldn’t be hassled.” He smiles, this sheepish, hopeful look on his face, his eyeliner smudged under his eyes and his hair in wild disarray.
Tommy can’t remember the last date he went on that wasn’t organised by a nosy manager or publicist, just because he liked someone. He can remember the last time he got laid, but the sex with the lead dancer in Katy Perry’s latest video had been something less than spectacular and he hadn’t seen her again. The thought of going out with Adam, on a date, going to dinner and talking and holding hands and maybe going home with him after, only not drunk or escorting a couple of sozzled underage twinks this time, make it all the way to the bed, maybe finding out if Adam was as spectacular in bed as his kisses promised - it’s terrifying, wonderful.
“Answer him, man, and let’s go,” comes Zac’s cranky voice from inside the car.
Adams knuckles are white where they’re clutched around the side of the car door.
“Not tomorrow,” says Tommy. “I have a thing. I’m a busy man.”
Adam’s face falls. “Oh. Okay.”
Tommy rolls his eyes. “Seriously? You’re giving up that easy? I’m a little insulted. You’re not even trying.”
Adam blushes. “How about Thursday?”
“Premiere.”
“Friday?”
“Charity concert.”
“Saturday?”
“Saturday I could do, but I’m supposed to put in an appearance at this new club in the Hills at midnight, if you wouldn’t mind finishing up early.”
Adam shoots him a dark look. “You’re being difficult on purpose, aren’t you.”
Tommy bats his eyelashes. “Pick me up at seven on Sunday.” He tweaks Adam’s collar and kisses his cheek, waves goodbye to the boys in the car, and sashays back into the building even though swinging his hips like that makes him feel vaguely nauseated.
Next
He notices the guy even past the flashing lights as he steps out of the club.
He stands out, alright? He’s head and shoulders above the other paps, and even though he’s popping away like the rest of them, something catches Tommy’s eye. Probably the seriously rad jacket the guy is wearing, with the spikes on the shoulders.
The guy pulls his camera away from his face and stares at it like it’s betrayed him, and then jerks his gaze up to Tommy’s. There’s a dozen shouting photographers between them, and Cristian’s already at the car, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s scheduled to come out ten minutes behind him to run the gauntlet and Tommy can’t be here cluttering up the paps lenses. He’s the next breakout thing, maybe, but not a superstar.
He gets in the car, leans his head against the seat. It’s soothingly dark and Cristian is quiet, but the lights are still going off behind his eyelids, flash flash flash, and the bassline of the club is still running up his spine and making his ears ring, all the way home.
He sees the guy a few more times, usually on that same strip, working the trendy clubs and restaurants frequented by the rich and famous. He’s always at the back of the pack, never shouting, and not snapping away with the usual fervour. For a pap, he’s kind of half-assed. But he’s better than most, never yells insults or accusations to get a rise out of Tommy.
One night one of Tommy’s other regulars - a total dick with a horrible orange shake’n’bake tan - yells something at best disgusting and at worst actually criminal about Tommy and his underage costar, and Tommy feels bile rise up in his throat. He likes Zac, he really does - the kid is smart and cute and talented as hell, but he’s a kid, and Tommy is so fucking sick of that rumour. He turns, his hands balling into fists, searching for some really cutting remark short enough to turn into a catchy headline.
But then shake’n’bake pitches forward, suddenly, and he slips, and he puts his hands out to catch himself a little too late. Both his face and his camera hit the pavement, hard, and all Tommy has to do is sidestep him on the way to the car. He very carefully does not throw a look of gratitude at his defender, who is wearing a barely plausible expression of wide-eyed “oops”, totally incongruous with all that eyeliner and leather.
He makes a point of searching the guy out after that, whenever he’s in the area, which is depressingly a lot. It’s not even slightly his scene, but his handlers insist it’s good press, and he gets the feeling they’re delighted to have an openly bisexual guy to play with, so he’s out on dates at least four nights a week, beautiful vapid specimens of both genders eager for a ride on the latest fucking fun train.
He goes home alone, though. He’s not a whore.
He quickly comes to the conclusion that his leather-clad defender is probably the worst pap in existence. He’s not pushy or rude, doesn’t shout. He always hangs back a little, too, never elbows his way forward.
He actually stands back out of Tommy’s way when Tommy’s escorting a drunken girl - some CW star, maybe, he can’t fucking remember - out of a restaurant and into a cab, and holds the cab door as Tommy levers her into the backseat. When Tommy turns around, he realises that the guy is actually using his big broad body to shield Tommy and the girl from the other paps, looking vaguely puzzled but not even moving as they jostle up against him, shove cameras around his wide shoulders and over the top of the car door.
It’s a little island of calm, but his date is moaning sadly and the paps are even more rabid than usual, so all Tommy can do is flash him a grateful smile and crawl in the cab after her, shut the door behind him.
The next time he sees the guy, it’s not a publicity thing, and they’re worlds away from Beverly Hills and their trendy run of nightclubs and bars. He’s in Burbank, visiting his mom, catching up with old friends. Tommy’s been coming to this coffee place since he discovered the wonder of caffeine in his teenage years, and none of the staff so much as bats an eyelid at the sight of him, and it’s so refreshing he kind of wants to tuck himself into a corner and stay there forever.
So he does that, ducks up to the out-of-the-way booth behind the potted fern where he’d gotten to second base with Jamie Palmer in senior year. It’s in a corner, can’t really see it from the main part of the cafe, so hardly anyone ever sits there, but when he slides into the booth, he finds himself blinking stupidly at a very familiar pair of blue eyes.
The dissociation is so intense it takes him several seconds to place the man in front of him. This is about the last place you’d expect paparazzi to end up, even slightly hapless, good-natured ones, but here is Tommy’s pet pap, staring at him with an expression of vague puzzlement.
“Are you following me?” squeaks Tommy. Seriously, he is not that famous to justify stalking when he’s not even doing anything interesting. Maybe if he were actually in Hollywood and the coffee was some gnarly imported shit that cost twenty dollars a cup and he spilt it on a Hilton sister. But he is at a kitsch place down the street from his parents house in fucking Burbank, and seriously, what is this guy doing here, Tommy is taking back every nice thing he ever thought about him, even about his pretty eyes.
“No!” The guy looks totally stunned, and there are, now Tommy looks, books and shit spread out on the table in front of him, like he’s just kind of hanging out studying or something. There isn’t a camera in sight. “Shit, what are you doing in Burbank?”
“I grew up, like, two blocks from here,” says Tommy, before he realises this is probably not great information to give to a pap. But the guy just kind of nods and looks relieved.
“Oh, thank christ. I was worried I was stalking you by mistake or some shit, and instead it’s just, like, fate.” He smiles all sunny. “I’m Adam, by the way.”
Adam is three months younger than Tommy and eight inches taller. He has a younger brother and his parents are divorced. He became a paparazzi by accident and completely hates it, but ever since the perfectly innocent photos he took at a party were published in OK! With Sandra Bullock's husband highlighted in the background hustling a buxom waitress into a closet, he can’t get work anywhere else in Hollywood.
“No-one wants to hire a snitch,” says Adam mournfully. “Not even to wait tables or anything. Apparently I’m a security risk. And since I never got anywhere with singing, well.”
“Well, it explains why you’re such a crappy paparazzi,” says Tommy, and Adam scowls at him. It’s kind of adorable.
“Paparazzi is plural. The singular is paparazzo.” He sounds a little hurt. Tommy pulls a face.
“What’s the plural for bottom-feeding scum-sucker?” he asks curiously, and watches hurt, annoyance and then bright-edged laughter go across Adam’s face in quick succession.
“Casting directors?” says Adam, and they both laugh.
“Oh my god, look at me going on about myself like this,” says Adam eventually. “You’re Tommy Joe, man, why are you even talking to me? That’s crazy.”
“I’m fucking sick of talking about myself,” says Tommy. “All the fucking questions, man. All the same questions, too.”
“Really though,” says Adam, leaning his chin in his hands and fluttering his eyelashes. “When you say bisexual, you really mean gay, don’t you? You’re just being a selfish, indecisive tart with all this bisexual stuff.”
Tommy nods. “It’s totally true. I’m trying to further the homosexual agenda. You know, sneakily. Through the easily-led and impressionable youth.”
Adam nods sagely. “And what was it like kissing the deliciously nubile Zac Efron, who, I feel it bears mentioning, was underage at the time of filming?”
“I do love underage boys,” says Tommy agreeably. “But he drooled. I’ll have to fix that when I make him my harem boy.”
Adam cracks up, and god, he’s pretty when he smiles.
And he’s a big fan of Dare Not, too, blathers on for about five minutes about how much he and his friends all loved it and his boyfriend totally cried at the end, and then he veers off into a tangent about how great it is that they’re starting to portray gay romances in the media, because he had, like, no role models growing up, and how it’s subversive and affirming at the same time, and he waves his hands around and beams happily as Tommy just kind of nods and bobs along serenely in the conversational current.
“Oh my god, why can’t I stop talking about myself,” says Adam again, covering his face.
“I don’t know,” says Tommy. “But it’s totally hilarious to watch.” His coffee is almost gone, and cold by now, but he finds he doesn’t want to leave. It’s so absurdly easy to be here and talk to Adam, like they’re friends or something. “Hey, how come you’re in Burbank? Do you live round here?”
Adam goes a little red. “No, I live in WeHo. World’s tiniest apartment and all. Some friends of mine were doing some photoshoot thing near here this morning, with body paint and suburbia and this, like, poodle skirt with pearls? I didn’t really get the whole statement, but whatever. Lee’s teaching me how to be a proper photographer, not all this pap bullshit.” He shuffles the papers he’s got all over the table nervously. “He’s helping me look into some art schools.”
“That’s awesome,” says Tommy, genuinely impressed.
Adam shrugs. “Better than being a shutterbug. Turns out I actually really like photography, so.” He looks a little embarrassed.
“That’s so cool,” says Tommy. “I’m fucking terrible with that shit, I can barely dress myself. My stylist gets so mad.”
“But you look pretty in front of the camera, which is the important part,” says Adam, and Tommy pulls out his best Marilyn pout and Adam laughs so hard he starts sliding off his seat. They fill in a couple more minutes making silly faces at each other, until Adams phone buzzes right in the middle of one of the best Blue Steels Tommy’s ever seen, and Adam jumps a little in his chair.
“Oh shit, that’s my ride,” he says, looking apologetic. “I gotta go. It was - man, it was so nice to meet you.”
“And you,” says Tommy, and he genuinely means it, shakes Adam’s hand and watches him gather up his paperwork and stuff it into his messenger bag.
“Oh, hey,” says Adam, as he’s turning to leave. He drops a napkin on the table, phone number scrawled on it. “Always useful to have contacts in the press, right?”
He sees Adam again at the opening of some restaurant, the hottest new spot that’ll be gone in six months. The food sucks, comes in tiny portions and is bland and squishy, and there’s all these rules about wine. His date for the evening - some guy from a reality show, who Tommy might actually be interested in if he weren’t so extremely teenaged - abandons him shortly after the entrees are taken away largely uneaten, and Tommy glares at the table and wishes desperately he were at home on the sofa with a beer and a burrito, and maybe Mia, so he could complain all about how his life is totally harder than anyone’s ever.
His date arrives back at the table to say he’s just run into a producer for a show he wants to get on, and they’re going to a club, and Tommy should totally come. Tommy turns him down as gently as he can, says he’s tired and just going to go home.
He sneaks out the back door, and Adam is leaning against the wall by the dumpster, cursing at his camera, and a grin stretches Tommy’s face.
“Rough night?” he says, and Adam shoots a glare at him, before he recognises him.
“Tommy!” He makes this abortive little motion with his camera, then rolls his eyes and drops it so it hangs around his neck.
“See, this is why I’m fucking broke, man. You’re coming out the back of the trendiest new eatery in town while your date parties it up with whoever, and instead of taking pictures and paying my rent, I just wanna ask what’s wrong and maybe tell you a stupid joke so you’ll laugh.” Adam glares. “Thanks. Now I have ethics or some shit, that’s great.”
“I’ll pay you not to take my picture. Would that be appropriately seedy for you?” asks Tommy. He ducks his head and puts a hand up, like he’s trying to hide, flinching away.
Adam laughs, sort of, a little huff. “Well, now I feel like a scumbag. So, the world is right again.”
“Holy crap, do you ever not have what it takes for this job,” says Tommy.
“It’s fucking pathetic, right? On the other hand, you just got abandoned by a kid whose claim to fame is his ability to dislocate his own shoulder in time to the 1812 Overture, so.”
They regard each other in the dim light of the alleyway, and Tommy shrugs. “Wanna go for a drink?”
And that’s how Tommy ends up on the TMZ homepage making out with a drag queen.
Wait, go back.
Tommy insists they stop at a burrito stand on the way to a bar where they won’t be hassled, and Adam makes grossed-out protesting noises as Tommy blissfully devours the delicious carbs and protein and grease and then goes suspiciously quiet as Tommy licks his fingers clean. Score.
The bar is, as promised, dim and quiet and about as un-hipster as you can get, and they order drinks and sit opposite each other and drink in grim silence until Tommy feels less like wanting to stab everyone and Adam looks less like he wants to pass out from misery.
“Okay,” says Tommy, setting aside his bottle. “So, my evening sucked. You?”
“I’m being evicted,” says Adam.
“Well, you win,” says Tommy, and buys another round of drinks.
Adam gets a text from a friend not long after that, and mutters something about a club they’re going to in WeHo, “Kind of, you know, alternative?” he says. “Very gender-friendly.”
Tommy thinks that sounds fucking perfect. “I,” he announces, only slightly drunkenly, “am going to solve both of our problems.” He picks up Adam’s camera and shoves it at him. “You will take me to this amazing club, and then take pictures of me at this amazing club, and then you sell them to the highest bidder for rent money, and people will be all shocked and stop trying to set me up with fucking teenagers and you won’t be homeless. Okay?”
Adam stares at him. “I’m fairly sure this is a terrible plan,” he says. “But I can’t think of a concrete reason why we shouldn’t.”
So they go to the club, and Tommy meets Adam’s friends, and there are cocktails. Adam dutifully snaps away as Tommy does body shots off a boy in a leather harness and gets felt up by a girl sporting an enormous purple strap-on dildo and progresses steadily from sweetly tipsy to pretty fucking smashed.
Then Adam’s ex shows up, and he is tiny and brown eyed and very beautiful, and he keeps a stiff distance from Adam as Adam retreats to sulk in a corner. Tommy wanders over and sort of collapses on top of him, smiling, because he’s drunk and Adam is big and smells nice and Tommy had no idea how badly he needed to fucking decompress.
“We should do something awesome,” says Tommy happily.
“I thought we were,” says Adam, and he pets Tommy’s hair tentatively.
“I mean, like, really awesome. I should make out with somebody totally inappropriate. That’d pay your rent for six months.”
“That’s an awful idea,” says Adam, but then Adam’s friend Raja slides in the booth on Tommy’s other side. And Raja has seriously the most gorgeous eyes, and long, lovely fingers, and is wearing this cool dress that covers to the throat at the front and leaves her long, lean back completely bare. And she puts one hand on the back of Tommy’s neck and says, “Oh, sweetie, I just loved you in Dare Not.”
And that’s how Tommy ends up on the TMZ homepage making out with a drag queen.
His management flips, of course, but at least they stop trying to whore him out to the paps and start looking for actual work for him. In the meantime, he’s got a little part - just a couple of weeks worth of his time - in this crazy post-apocalyptic thing JJ Abrams is doing.
So he ends up out in the desert where they’re shooting for a while, wearing a lot of distressed leather and cultivating his stubble and playing with prop guns. He’s playing a protective older brother-type to a group of scared teens, which means he's once more spending ninety percent of his screen time with people who think Korn is oldies music.
It’s cool though, because the kid with the most screen time with him is this awesome chick with hair that looks like it’s trying to eat her head. Allison’s totally crazy, in a big, balls-out teenage kind of way, and they click right from the start. She has a bigger part than him - he gets killed off at the end of the first episode so she can have a cool revenge-driven character arc - but JJ thinks their chemistry is just the best thing ever and promptly rewrites half a dozen scenes for more Tommy and adds a couple of flashbacks to boot, so Tommy ends up spending a month out in the desert pulling Allison’s pigtails and wondering when in hell people started taking him seriously.
He's not the desert-epiphany sort at all, but getting back to LA is like a slap in the face. Everything’s way too bright and loud and he has about six million unread emails and people calling him and he nearly gets collected by a car when he steps onto the road without looking. Eventually he just goes home and buries himself under his comforter with a stack of scripts and ignores the world.
That only works for a couple of days before a breakout pop star with the same management as him needs a date to some awards show. He's on the inexplicably blue carpet on the arm of a pretty dark-haired girl who thinks tattoos are, like, so gross, restlessly surveying the shouting photographers as she poses and preens, when it occurs to him that he's looking for Adam.
Which is absurd, because Adam doesn’t work the awards show circuit. Tommy thinks you need proper press credentials and backing from a publication to get in that door, and Adams freelance.
But it jogs his memory, so the next day he digs up Adams number and calls him.
“lo.” Adam sounds half asleep.
“Shit, sorry, did I wake you?” Tommy checks his watch - it’s well and truly after lunchtime.
There’s a pause, and Adam’s voice comes back clearer. “Tommy?”
“How’s it going?”
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” says Adam. “How have you been? You haven’t been around much.”
“Working hard. You wanna do something?” Tommy picks absently at his nailpolish.
“Uh, right now?”
“Or whenever. Just go for some drinks or something.”
There’s some shuffling noises on the other end. “I should bring my camera?”
Tommy blinks. “Only if you’re so desperately short of rent money that snaps of me drinking PBR and kicking your ass at pool would be worth something.”
“Oh,” says Adam quietly. “Yeah, actually, that sounds good. Not the camera thing. The rest.”
Tommy gets clocked a couple of times outside the bar, and he sees a couple of camera phones pop up when he gets in, but nothing intrusive, and he doesn’t plan on being particularly scandalous tonight, unless hanging out with a pap counts.
“Holy shit, you’re tanned,” says Adam admiringly, as soon as he spots him.
“Fuckin’ Nevada,” agrees Tommy. “Twenty-two fucking days. And the director wanted us to be all method and shit, with the isolation and the low-tech thing, so I was barely allowed a cellphone at all. I thought I was going to die.”
“Oh,” says Adam, and his head tips up, this funny little smile. “Oh, okay.”
“What?” Tommy asks.
“Nothing,” says Adam. “You just - you didn’t call, and I thought you were mad at me or something.”
Tommy has to take a moment to fill in the blanks in that sentence. “What - about the TMZ thing? Are you kidding?”
Adam shrugs, looking embarrassed. “I sold pictures of you making out with a dude in a dress! Most guys would be upset!”
Tommy laughs. “I fucking told you to take those pictures, man, I posed for the damn things. Tell me you got a good payout.”
Adam grins. “Enough to pay for semester of school and live off for a couple of months.”
Tommy has to high-five him then, clinks his bottle against Adam’s luminescent cocktail glass, and they drink to the media.
He's distinctly less impressed with the media when the pictures of Zac hit the gossip rags, because the first he hears about it is some asshole shoving a camera in his face and asking if he feels guilty for turning the Disney golden boy.
“It was an accident,” Zac says on the phone, later.
“The kissing, or getting caught?” Tommy’s exasperated. He adores Zac, really, but the kid is so fucking young sometimes.
“Um,” says Zac.
Of course, the scandal means that all the entertainment shows are playing that clip from Dare Not that they were all jizzing over when the movie first came out. Tommy catches it when he's channel surfing that evening and stops to watch, because he's narcissistic enough he can’t help it. There’s the rain, and him and Zac under the bridge, soaking wet, and Zac’s shaking and breathing hard - nobody could say that kid can’t act his face off - and he says “Simon, please,” in this cracking voice and turns his face up and Tommy kisses him like he wants to crawl inside and stay for a while.
It had been freezing that day on set, and afterwards they had rushed back to Zac’s trailer - the heating was broken in Tommy’s - stripping off their soaking clothes and wrapping up in big blankets and huddling around the little oil heater, burning their icy feet on it and defrosting their hands with big mugs of hot chocolate. Zac had been giggling and shy, tousled head poking up possum-like from his blanket cocoon, pressing his lips together and touching them with his fingers and running his tongue over them, restless. Tommy had teased him about his kissing technique until Zac had roused enough to insult Tommy’s bad breath and his mother all in one sentence, and they’d talked trash at each other until a PA came to see what all the noise was about and scolded them for leaving their wet costumes in heaps all over the floor.
He gets a call from Adam, who says “Did you turn Zac Efron gay, you saucy little minx?” and then laughs for five minutes straight while Tommy curses at him and shrilly denies everything.
“I think you could do it, honey,” says another voice on Adam’s end, and Tommy knows that voice.
“Hi, Raja. Nice to hear from you.”
“I’m Sutan today, sweetness, but it’s nice to hear you too. Kissed anybody interesting lately?”
“You know you’re my forever girl,” says Tommy.
“Well, in that case, you have to come to the show I’m putting together,” says Sutan primly, and then yelps “Fuck!” in a very unladylike way before Adam’s voice comes back on the line.
“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, Tommy,” he says, which only piques Tommy’s curiosity.
He calls Zac again after Adam hangs up. “Hey, wanna do something outrageous?” he asks, which is how he and Zac end up front row at this insane circus of a panto that’s part drag show part musical theatre part rock concert. Every single performer and half the audience is covered in glitter and wearing crazy costumes and insanely talented, and Tommy and Zac clap along and enjoy the hell out of themselves despite looking very out of place in jeans and t-shirts.
Then one guy forgets the lines to a song and steps out of time in a dance and everyone goes “Oooh” as a very tall dude in even taller glittery platform boots comes out dressed all in black leather and wielding a paddle, and he scoops the guy up and gives him a playful spanking right there on stage while the audience whoops and catcalls madly. Then the guy with the paddle turns to the audience and it’s Adam, sweet cheerful hapless Adam with his puppy-dog eyes and dorky laugh, standing there twirling a paddle purposefully with this dark, intent look in his perfectly made-up eyes, and he's so tall and gorgeous and so extremely Tommy’s type, shit, how did he not notice this?
And then Adam holds up one hand elegantly and the crowd goes dead silent like someone’s flipped a switch. Tommy’s belly clenches. Yes please. Adam lifts the microphone and says something in this velvety-smooth voice about bad boys needing to be punished, and beside Tommy, Zac whimpers a little and shifts in his seat.
You and me both, thinks Tommy, as Adam rumbles something about watching very carefully for any more misbehaviour, and stalks off stage with a threatening flourish. There's a beat, and then the show swings back into motion, mid-song, as if it never stopped.
Despite his sudden, totally inappropriate boner, Tommy is on his feet with the rest of the audience at the end of the show, cheering for more, and he drags Zac backstage after it’s all over and fights through the lace and feathers and glitter until he can hug Adam, who’s back to being just Adam again, laughing at himself.
“God, I was so praying nobody would screw up,” he says, red-faced. The paddle is dangling from a strap tied to his wrist now. “I don’t know how Sutan talks me into this shit.”
“You love it, don’t even pretend,” says Raja, appearing out of nowhere. “Oh, honey, you brought me a present!” Zac, still hanging onto Tommy’s arm, makes a squeaky sort of noise and edges backwards. You’d think he’d never been hit on by a six-and-a-half foot drag queen before.
Tommy makes hasty introductions and he and Zac are quickly surrounded by admirers. Zac gets over his nerves pretty fast and drops into talking-to-fans mode, and Tommy lets himself be petted by Raja, which several other people take as permission and he ends up fielding questions about his haircare regime while being stroked by a guy wearing peacock feathers and a harness and not much else.
He's about to suggest they get out of the cramped backstage area and go get drinks or something, but then he turns his head and sees Adam’s got his arm around the pretty, delicate boy who’d messed up and needed spanking. Adam’s head is ducked down so he can talk right into the boy’s ear, and they’re both smiling, the boy’s eyes shining as he giggles at whatever Adam’s telling him.
“You’re buying me a drink, pretty,” says Raja, right by his ear suddenly. Tommy turns so he can snuggle against her chest. She’s slim, almost breakable, but Sutan towers over him by a good eight inches and Raja is all that plus heels, so he slides right under her arm and hangs on.
“Your show is awesome,” he tells her. “Fuck being a movie star, I want to work for you. You have glitter.”
She kisses the top of his head. “You’re always welcome, honey, you know that, but we’re going out there, and you’re going to buy me something enormous and froofy and pink. With an umbrella in it.”
“Is this a drink or an outfit?” says Tommy, and lets himself be herded.
He ends up buying a round of drinks for most of the cast and half the audience, and its not until he’s halfway through a very tall neon purple drink that tastes inexplicably of mango that he realises he left Zac backstage signing autographs for drag queens. Oops.
Adam emerges toward the end of the purple-mango drink, and he’s got his little spanking buddy tucked under one arm and Zac under the other, and Tommy takes one look at Zac’s smitten face and rolls his eyes.
“A vodka tonic,” Adam announces, “and two glasses of milk for the kids.”
Zac and whats-his-face produce identical furiously embarrassed expressions. “Fuck you,” says Zac clearly. “Taylor and I are going to hang out with the cool kids.” He grabs the wrist of the boy under Adams other arm - Taylor - and tows him over to Tommy. “Tay, this is Tommy. He'll get us drinks.”
“He will not,” says Tommy. “Hi.”
Taylor waves shyly. This close he looks about seventeen under the unflattering dark makeup. Tommy has the urge to scrub his face clean and start over; more muted, less vampish. He’d be cute. “I’m a fan,” says Taylor. “I mean, of both of you. I loved Dare Not.” He darts a slightly anxious look at Zac, who’s still got him by the wrist. “You don’t have to buy me a drink.”
“Well, no,” says Tommy. “Zac’s just bratty that way.” He ruffles Zac’s hair, and Zac swears and ducks away.
“I mean,” says Taylor. “You don’t have to buy me a drink; my cousin’s the bartender. Adam’s just being a dick. He makes fun of me cause I’m the baby of the cast.” He shoots a wrathful look at Adam, and Tommy watches in fascination as everybody who sees it does a double take. It’s a bit like seeing a cocker spaniel puppy burp a fireball.
“Cute,” Adam croons. He reaches out like he's going to ruffle somebody, and Zac and Taylor back away hastily, so it’s Tommy who ends up getting his hair messed.
Then Adam spots the remainder of Tommy’s tall purple drink and demands one for himself, only Tommy has no idea what it’s called, but rather than asking someone they just end up drinking their way through a fair swathe of the cocktail menu, trading sips and spilling sticky everywhere until they’re completely hammered. Adam’s smiling, big and glittery and still wearing all that leather, sitting on the barstool next to Tommy with his long legs going in different directions and licking sweet booze off his long fingers, and Tommy wants to kiss him, rather badly.
Then Zac falls off the table - why is he on the table? - And Raja comes and says “Maybe it’s time the kids went home, huh?” in this pointed way, so Tommy calls for a car. He piles into the back with Zac and Taylor, who promptly curls up and falls asleep on him, and its only once they’re moving that he notices Adam’s in the front seat with the driver, giving him directions.
But Taylor falls asleep pretty much straight away, and even when Tommy rouses him, he can’t get his own address out, and Zac looks like he doesn’t know if he wants to protect Taylor from all harm or snuggle up and fall asleep with him, and Adam’s craning his head around from the front seat, openly curious and grinning.
Tommy rolls his eyes and tells the driver they’re all going back to his place.
Tommy’s apartment is not huge. It’s a two-bedroom, but the spare room is full of guitars and his computer and boxes he never unpacked when he moved to LA properly after his first role, almost three years back. Since Dare Not he can totally afford something better, but when he has the time to look he’s usually not that interested, and when he gets cabin fever and really needs something bigger, he never has time. A couple of months back he was seriously interested in this one house, but that’s when his Dad got sick and by the time he’d gotten around to calling the estate agent back the place had been sold.
They haul Taylor into the bedroom and drop him and Zac on Tommy’s bed - he’d put clean sheets on that morning in the hope that somebody would appreciate them, though a couple of drunken underage twinks wasn’t what he had in mind. (Or if it was, it wasn’t this scenario.) He stands back and stares - the bed is big, but there’s no way all four of them will fit without getting way more friendly than they are, so he and Adam share a shrug and pussyfoot out, closing the door behind them.
“Does Zac actually go for guys?” Adam asks in a half-whisper, setting his glass in the sink.
“No idea. Does Taylor?”
Adam’s face squishes up in thought, and he shrugs. “It never came up.”
“Not even while you were spanking him?” Tommy mutters, more childishly than he intended, and turns to go into the living room. He’ll sleep on the couch.
“Hey, for the record,” says Adam, and grabs his wrist. Tommy doesn’t expect it, so it topples him off balance, and Adam’s drunk enough it’s not very controlled, and the end result is that Tommy goes crashing into Adam’s chest, pinning him back against the counter.
There’s a fuzzy drunk moment and then they’re making out. There’s no intermediate stages - no meaningful eye contact or coy glancing at lips, just, bam, one second standing against the counter, next minute getting hitched up on it while Adam tries to lick his tonsils. Tommy is all on board with this plan, though he distantly wishes he was more sober, because he's kind of numb with cocktails and this would be so much more awesome if he could control what his hands were doing.
“Holy shit, this is a terrible idea,” Adam pants, breaking away.
“It is,” Tommy agrees, but he's got a heel digging into Adam’s back and a hand tangled in Adam’s hair and to be perfectly honest, he’s drunk enough he doesn’t really give a shit. “Should we stop?”
“Um, probably,” says Adam, and get his hands under Tommy’s thighs, picks him up easily.
Fucking hell, that’s hot, how he can haul Tommy around so easily, how big he is. Two steps across the kitchen, Adam’s broad shoulder bounces off the wall as he stumbles, and they both laugh.
“Don’t even think about trying the bedroom,” says Tommy, clinging to Adams neck. “Can you imagine if this shit got out?”
Adam changes direction, heading for the living room instead. “Rising star in orgy with underage co-star and paparazzo,” he says.
“Its kind of long,” says Tommy, and squeaks as Adam drops him on the couch. “There might have to be sub-headings.” He wants to say more, but Adam topples down on top of him and kisses him, all sloppy and friendly, hello.
“For the record,” Adam says, a little later. “This is still a terrible idea.”
Nothing happens - or at least, Tommy is still wearing his pants when he wakes up the next morning, as is Adam, sprawled on top of him. It’s awkward for about thirty seconds and then Taylor and Zac come tumbling out of the bedroom, wearing between them a hodge-podge of last night’s club clothes and what looks like whatever they could find in Tommy’s top drawer. Tommy curses them for t-shirt stealing bastards and goes to glare at the coffee pot. He’s cranky right up until Zac comes up behind him to snuggle him around the waist and make happy noises, because seriously.
“Fuck you,” he says, as Zac reaches around him to press the magic sequence of buttons to make the coffee machine produce something drinkable.
“You love me really,” says Zac.
“I don’t know whether to be madly jealous or get my camera out,” says Adam, behind them. “Can you fucking imagine.”
Tommy totally has a comeback for that, but right at that moment, the coffee machine goes ding and he’s very busy.
Once everyone’s caffeinated, Tommy calls a car. All jokes aside, he can totally imagine the headlines that would result from Zac emerging dishevelled and hungover from his place with two strange and attractive men from last night’s drag show. Actually, he should totally check to see if that’s hit the tabloids or anything.
“Hey,” says Adam, turning back as the other two pile into the car. “Go out for dinner with me?”
Tommy stares at him. “Uh.”
“If you’re busy tonight, maybe tomorrow?” says Adam. “I know some places that are a bit quieter, you know, private, so you shouldn’t be hassled.” He smiles, this sheepish, hopeful look on his face, his eyeliner smudged under his eyes and his hair in wild disarray.
Tommy can’t remember the last date he went on that wasn’t organised by a nosy manager or publicist, just because he liked someone. He can remember the last time he got laid, but the sex with the lead dancer in Katy Perry’s latest video had been something less than spectacular and he hadn’t seen her again. The thought of going out with Adam, on a date, going to dinner and talking and holding hands and maybe going home with him after, only not drunk or escorting a couple of sozzled underage twinks this time, make it all the way to the bed, maybe finding out if Adam was as spectacular in bed as his kisses promised - it’s terrifying, wonderful.
“Answer him, man, and let’s go,” comes Zac’s cranky voice from inside the car.
Adams knuckles are white where they’re clutched around the side of the car door.
“Not tomorrow,” says Tommy. “I have a thing. I’m a busy man.”
Adam’s face falls. “Oh. Okay.”
Tommy rolls his eyes. “Seriously? You’re giving up that easy? I’m a little insulted. You’re not even trying.”
Adam blushes. “How about Thursday?”
“Premiere.”
“Friday?”
“Charity concert.”
“Saturday?”
“Saturday I could do, but I’m supposed to put in an appearance at this new club in the Hills at midnight, if you wouldn’t mind finishing up early.”
Adam shoots him a dark look. “You’re being difficult on purpose, aren’t you.”
Tommy bats his eyelashes. “Pick me up at seven on Sunday.” He tweaks Adam’s collar and kisses his cheek, waves goodbye to the boys in the car, and sashays back into the building even though swinging his hips like that makes him feel vaguely nauseated.
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