FIC: Go Fish (Ryan/Simon, NC17)
Author: Clio
Title: Go Fish
Pairing: Simon Cowell/Ryan Seacrest
Rating: NC17
Summary: The story of how Ryan put one over on Simon, and they both (almost) got what they really wanted.
Length: 2500 words
Disclaimer: People sort of belong to themselves, don't they? Which means this is a work of fiction.
Notes: Set during season 2 auditions in Miami, and based on a (true) story Simon tells in his book. Because everything I write is in the same 'verse, it can be considered a prequel to Who's Afraid of Janis Ian.
Thanks to dollsome and thepodsquad for posting the quote that inspired this story, ladyjaida for her enthusiasm and encouragement, evil_erato for a last minute gut check, and dana_kujan for the excellent beta that absolutely made this story better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We were put up in a hotel about ten miles away from South Beach, and Ryan and I decided to switch over to the Shore Club, which is right on the beach. […]
That night we went to a club, where Ryan put the moves on a cute girl who worked for the show. As far as I was concerned, Ryan wasn't going to get a girl if I wasn't, and I didn't want to because I was dating someone. We went back to the hotel, the three of us, and I was already in bed when I overheard Ryan out on the terrace, feeding this woman the most ridiculous lines imaginable. I actually heard him say, "I wonder why the stars in Miami are so much brighter than the stars in L.A.," and, "This may sound corny, but I believe destiny brought us here." Then he actually said, "Your eyes match the color of the ocean." That was it. I walked out onto the terrace, started talking about work, and then suggested the three of us stay up and watch the sun rise. "You know," the girl said, " I think I've got to leave now." As far as I'm concerned, I did her a favor; she would have seriously regretted spending the night with Ryan.
-Simon Cowell, 2003
When we went down to Miami for the auditions for season two, I was on top of the world. The show had been renewed, I wouldn’t have to deal with Dunkleman, and I was starting to get some notice in the industry. At this point, I hadn’t seen Simon in some months, and while we had been fucking fairly regularly while the show was on, it was easy to think of that as a summer fling, long since over. When he suggested we get a suite together over at the Shore Club I thought it was his way of rekindling things, but then … nothing but flirting. It was odd.
But you know I can’t leave well enough alone, so I went to this assistant producer, Kate, who’d been a PA on one of the kid shows I’d done for Merv Griffin. Kate was the sort of girl that I’d tended to go for at that time, petite and blonde, but we only went on one date before I realized I liked her too much to date her and she realized why. Now that I was sole host, it was good to have an old friend around.
But Simon didn’t know that we knew each other, which made her perfect. As we walked from dinner to a club nearby, I pulled her from the crowd and said, “Kate, I need a huge favor.”
The rest was easy. Every time Simon would glare in our general direction on the dance floor we would start laughing, which of course just improved the illusion that we were flirting. The bartender supplied us with fruit juice spritzers in cocktail glasses, and Kate made her giddiness at the joke we were playing look like drunkenness.
When the club closed down about 3am, Simon insisted on walking the two of us back to the hotel, where we sat out on the terrace outside the suite and tried not to giggle while I fed her the worst lines I could think of and she lapped them up like a kitten and said stuff like, “Wow, Ryan, it’s so amazing that you’re the one host but there are three judges. It’s like you’re the most important one!”
It only took about fifteen minutes of this before Simon came out and put a stop to it by yammering about the new season and then suggesting we all stay up to watch the sunrise. Of all the corny things! Kate bid a fairly hasty retreat, and as I walked her to the door she whispered, “Sure you can handle this?”
I turned to look at Simon, who waved from the terrace, smiling and full to bursting with self-satisfaction. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure.”
After she left, I put on a scowl and headed back out to the terrace. “What the fuck, Simon?”
“Please, you were making a complete drunken arse of yourself over that girl.”
“Shut up. I’m not drunk.”
“You both would have been embarrassed in the morning,” he continued, not listening to me as usual. “Really, aren’t you above trying to pick up PA’s?”
“Assistant producer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, instead of being completely unimportant she’s marginally unimportant.”
“You had no right to fuck that up for me.”
“I had every right! The way she was lapping up those dreadful lines you were feeding her, she was clearly just using you, and we all would have had to deal with that for the rest of the season.”
“So any girl who wants to fuck me just wants to get ahead? Nice.”
“You know how precisely attractive you are. But she wasn’t attracted to you. I could see it in her eyes-or rather, I couldn’t see it.”
Shit. “Whatever happened, and I don’t agree with you, I would have handled it. I can take care of myself, you know.”
“Sometimes I don’t think you can. That’s why you need me.”
I had worried at the beginning about being able to go through with this fake fight, but trust Simon to be so obnoxious that I was becoming genuinely irritated. “You know what I think, Simon?”
“Enlighten me” he muttered, lighting up a cigarette.
“I think you are being awfully possessive, is what I think.”
“Me? Possessive of you?” Simon laughed. “Hardly.”
“Oh really? Insisting I share a suite with you at a separate hotel, then spoiling my action?”
“I’m not possessive, I’m merely more sensible then you are. She wasn’t the right girl.”
“That’s bullshit. Kate’s harmless and you know it. Any girl I brought up here, you would have seen to it that she left before anything got going.”
He blinked. “That’s-that’s not true.”
I was right. That fucker. “I haven’t seen you trying to get anything started. The only one you’ve flirted with here is me.”
Simon scowled, but he still seemed a little off balance. “I’m seeing someone.”
“Didn’t keep you out of my pants last summer.”
“You’re different. You know that.”
“Because I’m a man? You know, for a former casual fuck you sure are trying hard to keep me to yourself.”
“Former casual fuck?” Simon asked, looking out at the ocean.
I shrugged. “I haven’t seen any moves from you,” I replied. “I don’t remember any declarations of love and exclusivity, either.”
“Didn’t know that was required.”
“It isn’t, but if you still want me, you have to let me know.”
I watched as he took a last drag and stamped his cigarette out. He stared out at the ocean, his elbows leaning on the railing, the breeze ruffling his hair. I held my breath; had I done all this for nothing? Had I misread him? And where was all that sexy arrogance from five minutes ago?
Finally, he turned to me, looking me up and down in that way that makes me feel naked no matter how many clothes I have on, then pushed off from the railing, took my head in his two hands, and kissed me. Aggressive as always, he nearly bent me over backwards, and I had to grab onto his shoulders to stay upright.
He released my lips. “Still want you? I can’t seem to stop wanting you. Got it?”
I knew that later I would go over and over that bizarre statement, in my head and with my friends, until the thought was stale, but in the moment all I could say was, “Got it.”
“Let’s go,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of his bed. Simon moved me back into the suite, pulling off my jacket as we walked. He pushed me back on the mattress, making short work of removing the rest of my clothes and his, then reached into the drawer in the nightstand.
“Do you always travel with lube?” I asked. “Man in every port or something?”
“No,” he replied, rolling a condom onto his dick. “I was going to tease you this week, get you begging for it. But now you’ve forced my hand, and you’ll have to be punished for that.”
“Oh? How?” I asked, trying not to sound too excited, though the sight of him coating his dick thickly with lube made it tough not to.
He tossed the tube to me. “You want to be fucked, then prepare yourself.”
So, he wanted a show, did he? Well, I’d been doing it alone all fall, pretending my fingers were his, pretending my dildo was his big dick, and I knew how he loved to look at my ass. I got up on my knees, squeezed a nice big gob of lube onto my finger tips, then leaned down on one elbow and reached back to push two fingers into my hole. I rolled my hips as I scissored my fingers, moaning in anticipation. My dick had gone rock hard just from the one kiss and the stripping; he’d grown all his chest hair back and I had to admit, it suited him and his beast-like masculinity. I looked over my shoulder, not because I needed to see what I was doing, but to see how he was reacting, and I wanted him to see my face, too.
Simon’s eyes were heavy-lidded with lust and his lower lip was sucked between his teeth as he stared at my fingers working my little hole. It was so sexy to watch him all but drooling over me that it made me feel sexier, and more outrageous, so I spread my legs so I could move my hips a little more, thrust my ass at him like strippers do. I remembered he liked my fingers, too, liked sucking the length of them to tease us both, so I went a little slower, sliding the length of them as far in as I could and then pulling them out, fucking myself on my hand. I was ready for him but I wanted to drive him crazy, which would mean he’d fuck me harder, so I needed to make sure I was as wet and open as I could be. I slid in a third finger, moaning again as I massaged my prostate and relaxed my muscles.
“Right, enough of that,” Simon said, climbing up on the bed behind me. “Fisting comes later.”
I bit my lip at the idea of it, something I’d never tried, but he was right; now was time for fucking. No sooner had I pulled my fingers out and put my hand back under me than he slammed his dick into me, hard, and I pushed back until he was in me to the root. He grabbed hold of my hips and started pounding furiously. I knew I’d probably walk funny the next day, but what did I care? I’d pushed him past his limits and now I was getting what I wanted.
The wall behind the bed was the one between our two bedrooms, so I felt free to yell his name as loud as I wanted, just like when I was alone. “Yes, fuck me, Simon, fuck me harder.”
“You gave me quite a performance, didn’t you, you little tart,” Simon said.
You don’t know the half of it, I thought, but I didn’t have the breath to say much other than, “Yes, Simon.”
“Little tarts like you get what they deserve, don’t they?”
“Yes, Simon.” I lifted the lubed up hand to grab my dick but he pushed my hand away.
“I’ll take care of that.” He stopped thrusting, his body pressed up against mine, and then he leaned back, sitting on his haunches and pulling me back with him, so I was half kneeling, half sitting in his lap. “Open your eyes and look at us, Ryan.”
There was a mirror hanging on the wall above his bed where a headboard would be, and I could see us, naked and sweaty, our skin glowing in the moonlight spilling in from the terrace. I leaned my head back on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Aren’t we a pair?” he asked, his lips brushing against my ear.
“Yes, Simon,” I replied, and we were, him so dark and muscular and hairy and powerful, and me, paler and smoother and lithe and looking really rather compliant. No wonder he called me a perfect little bottom; if I were a top, I would have fucked me, too.
“Sit up a little,” he said, and I pulled up onto my knees a touch so he had room to thrust. He gradually worked back up to the blistering pace he’d set, only this time his hand, still slick from putting lube on his own dick, was wrapped around mine. It was the first time we’d done it in front of a mirror and it was hot, watching him work me over, fisting my dick and fucking me and sucking on my ear, feeling the muscles in his back working hard under my fingertips. I did my bit, too, clenching and squeezing his cock with my ass and moaning up a storm because I know he likes hearing what he does to me, especially when I’m beyond speech. It was all so overwhelming, and then I was coming, spraying into the air, come landing on my thighs and his and getting all over his hand.
I was spent, leaning against him, and he was thrusting into me still, grunting into my ear, his hands on my hips, making my body shake, which was pretty sexy to look at in the mirror. He must have thought so too, because he looked up and our eyes met. He stared at me, like he does, and then he came, pulling me close against him, splitting me in two, and god, I’d missed it more than I’d ever known.
We flopped over sideways, out of breath, and even after he slid his dick out of me he held me close, spooning me, which was a new thing. I just drank it in, feeling warm and amazing, even though I knew it didn’t really mean that, but in that moment, it was almost enough.
After a while Simon said, “Awfully big tub in the bath.”
I smiled. He even remembered how I hate to be sticky. “And there’s no wet spot on my bed,” I replied. We snogged in the tub, spending time on the parts of our bodies we’d ignored in our rush to get fucking, topping off the warm water until we got wrinkled. Then we threw on a couple of robes, ordered some mimosas and fruit from room service, and did end up watching the sunrise, sitting out on the terrace. It was actually kinda romantic, even though he mostly wanted to try to throw berries in my mouth.
Later, when he sent me a review copy of his book, I saw that he had included this incident from his own perspective and clearly had never realized what was actually going on. So I brought Kate to his book party, where he was surprised that we had become so close so quickly and Kate said, “Oh, Ryan? I’ve known him for years! We worked together on a show back in ‘99 and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Simon just stared at her and you could see his mind working as it all clicked into place. He smiled at Kate and said, “Oh really? Isn’t that interesting?”
I added, “Yeah, it was great to reconnect that night in Miami.”
“We had fun, didn’t we?” Kate added, getting into the spirit of the thing. “All three of us. I saw it was in your book.” She batted her eyelashes.
“Yes, it was a very memorable evening,” Simon said. He turned to me and said, softly, “Well played, Seacrest.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Go Fish
Pairing: Simon Cowell/Ryan Seacrest
Rating: NC17
Summary: The story of how Ryan put one over on Simon, and they both (almost) got what they really wanted.
Length: 2500 words
Disclaimer: People sort of belong to themselves, don't they? Which means this is a work of fiction.
Notes: Set during season 2 auditions in Miami, and based on a (true) story Simon tells in his book. Because everything I write is in the same 'verse, it can be considered a prequel to Who's Afraid of Janis Ian.
Thanks to dollsome and thepodsquad for posting the quote that inspired this story, ladyjaida for her enthusiasm and encouragement, evil_erato for a last minute gut check, and dana_kujan for the excellent beta that absolutely made this story better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We were put up in a hotel about ten miles away from South Beach, and Ryan and I decided to switch over to the Shore Club, which is right on the beach. […]
That night we went to a club, where Ryan put the moves on a cute girl who worked for the show. As far as I was concerned, Ryan wasn't going to get a girl if I wasn't, and I didn't want to because I was dating someone. We went back to the hotel, the three of us, and I was already in bed when I overheard Ryan out on the terrace, feeding this woman the most ridiculous lines imaginable. I actually heard him say, "I wonder why the stars in Miami are so much brighter than the stars in L.A.," and, "This may sound corny, but I believe destiny brought us here." Then he actually said, "Your eyes match the color of the ocean." That was it. I walked out onto the terrace, started talking about work, and then suggested the three of us stay up and watch the sun rise. "You know," the girl said, " I think I've got to leave now." As far as I'm concerned, I did her a favor; she would have seriously regretted spending the night with Ryan.
-Simon Cowell, 2003
When we went down to Miami for the auditions for season two, I was on top of the world. The show had been renewed, I wouldn’t have to deal with Dunkleman, and I was starting to get some notice in the industry. At this point, I hadn’t seen Simon in some months, and while we had been fucking fairly regularly while the show was on, it was easy to think of that as a summer fling, long since over. When he suggested we get a suite together over at the Shore Club I thought it was his way of rekindling things, but then … nothing but flirting. It was odd.
But you know I can’t leave well enough alone, so I went to this assistant producer, Kate, who’d been a PA on one of the kid shows I’d done for Merv Griffin. Kate was the sort of girl that I’d tended to go for at that time, petite and blonde, but we only went on one date before I realized I liked her too much to date her and she realized why. Now that I was sole host, it was good to have an old friend around.
But Simon didn’t know that we knew each other, which made her perfect. As we walked from dinner to a club nearby, I pulled her from the crowd and said, “Kate, I need a huge favor.”
The rest was easy. Every time Simon would glare in our general direction on the dance floor we would start laughing, which of course just improved the illusion that we were flirting. The bartender supplied us with fruit juice spritzers in cocktail glasses, and Kate made her giddiness at the joke we were playing look like drunkenness.
When the club closed down about 3am, Simon insisted on walking the two of us back to the hotel, where we sat out on the terrace outside the suite and tried not to giggle while I fed her the worst lines I could think of and she lapped them up like a kitten and said stuff like, “Wow, Ryan, it’s so amazing that you’re the one host but there are three judges. It’s like you’re the most important one!”
It only took about fifteen minutes of this before Simon came out and put a stop to it by yammering about the new season and then suggesting we all stay up to watch the sunrise. Of all the corny things! Kate bid a fairly hasty retreat, and as I walked her to the door she whispered, “Sure you can handle this?”
I turned to look at Simon, who waved from the terrace, smiling and full to bursting with self-satisfaction. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure.”
After she left, I put on a scowl and headed back out to the terrace. “What the fuck, Simon?”
“Please, you were making a complete drunken arse of yourself over that girl.”
“Shut up. I’m not drunk.”
“You both would have been embarrassed in the morning,” he continued, not listening to me as usual. “Really, aren’t you above trying to pick up PA’s?”
“Assistant producer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, instead of being completely unimportant she’s marginally unimportant.”
“You had no right to fuck that up for me.”
“I had every right! The way she was lapping up those dreadful lines you were feeding her, she was clearly just using you, and we all would have had to deal with that for the rest of the season.”
“So any girl who wants to fuck me just wants to get ahead? Nice.”
“You know how precisely attractive you are. But she wasn’t attracted to you. I could see it in her eyes-or rather, I couldn’t see it.”
Shit. “Whatever happened, and I don’t agree with you, I would have handled it. I can take care of myself, you know.”
“Sometimes I don’t think you can. That’s why you need me.”
I had worried at the beginning about being able to go through with this fake fight, but trust Simon to be so obnoxious that I was becoming genuinely irritated. “You know what I think, Simon?”
“Enlighten me” he muttered, lighting up a cigarette.
“I think you are being awfully possessive, is what I think.”
“Me? Possessive of you?” Simon laughed. “Hardly.”
“Oh really? Insisting I share a suite with you at a separate hotel, then spoiling my action?”
“I’m not possessive, I’m merely more sensible then you are. She wasn’t the right girl.”
“That’s bullshit. Kate’s harmless and you know it. Any girl I brought up here, you would have seen to it that she left before anything got going.”
He blinked. “That’s-that’s not true.”
I was right. That fucker. “I haven’t seen you trying to get anything started. The only one you’ve flirted with here is me.”
Simon scowled, but he still seemed a little off balance. “I’m seeing someone.”
“Didn’t keep you out of my pants last summer.”
“You’re different. You know that.”
“Because I’m a man? You know, for a former casual fuck you sure are trying hard to keep me to yourself.”
“Former casual fuck?” Simon asked, looking out at the ocean.
I shrugged. “I haven’t seen any moves from you,” I replied. “I don’t remember any declarations of love and exclusivity, either.”
“Didn’t know that was required.”
“It isn’t, but if you still want me, you have to let me know.”
I watched as he took a last drag and stamped his cigarette out. He stared out at the ocean, his elbows leaning on the railing, the breeze ruffling his hair. I held my breath; had I done all this for nothing? Had I misread him? And where was all that sexy arrogance from five minutes ago?
Finally, he turned to me, looking me up and down in that way that makes me feel naked no matter how many clothes I have on, then pushed off from the railing, took my head in his two hands, and kissed me. Aggressive as always, he nearly bent me over backwards, and I had to grab onto his shoulders to stay upright.
He released my lips. “Still want you? I can’t seem to stop wanting you. Got it?”
I knew that later I would go over and over that bizarre statement, in my head and with my friends, until the thought was stale, but in the moment all I could say was, “Got it.”
“Let’s go,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of his bed. Simon moved me back into the suite, pulling off my jacket as we walked. He pushed me back on the mattress, making short work of removing the rest of my clothes and his, then reached into the drawer in the nightstand.
“Do you always travel with lube?” I asked. “Man in every port or something?”
“No,” he replied, rolling a condom onto his dick. “I was going to tease you this week, get you begging for it. But now you’ve forced my hand, and you’ll have to be punished for that.”
“Oh? How?” I asked, trying not to sound too excited, though the sight of him coating his dick thickly with lube made it tough not to.
He tossed the tube to me. “You want to be fucked, then prepare yourself.”
So, he wanted a show, did he? Well, I’d been doing it alone all fall, pretending my fingers were his, pretending my dildo was his big dick, and I knew how he loved to look at my ass. I got up on my knees, squeezed a nice big gob of lube onto my finger tips, then leaned down on one elbow and reached back to push two fingers into my hole. I rolled my hips as I scissored my fingers, moaning in anticipation. My dick had gone rock hard just from the one kiss and the stripping; he’d grown all his chest hair back and I had to admit, it suited him and his beast-like masculinity. I looked over my shoulder, not because I needed to see what I was doing, but to see how he was reacting, and I wanted him to see my face, too.
Simon’s eyes were heavy-lidded with lust and his lower lip was sucked between his teeth as he stared at my fingers working my little hole. It was so sexy to watch him all but drooling over me that it made me feel sexier, and more outrageous, so I spread my legs so I could move my hips a little more, thrust my ass at him like strippers do. I remembered he liked my fingers, too, liked sucking the length of them to tease us both, so I went a little slower, sliding the length of them as far in as I could and then pulling them out, fucking myself on my hand. I was ready for him but I wanted to drive him crazy, which would mean he’d fuck me harder, so I needed to make sure I was as wet and open as I could be. I slid in a third finger, moaning again as I massaged my prostate and relaxed my muscles.
“Right, enough of that,” Simon said, climbing up on the bed behind me. “Fisting comes later.”
I bit my lip at the idea of it, something I’d never tried, but he was right; now was time for fucking. No sooner had I pulled my fingers out and put my hand back under me than he slammed his dick into me, hard, and I pushed back until he was in me to the root. He grabbed hold of my hips and started pounding furiously. I knew I’d probably walk funny the next day, but what did I care? I’d pushed him past his limits and now I was getting what I wanted.
The wall behind the bed was the one between our two bedrooms, so I felt free to yell his name as loud as I wanted, just like when I was alone. “Yes, fuck me, Simon, fuck me harder.”
“You gave me quite a performance, didn’t you, you little tart,” Simon said.
You don’t know the half of it, I thought, but I didn’t have the breath to say much other than, “Yes, Simon.”
“Little tarts like you get what they deserve, don’t they?”
“Yes, Simon.” I lifted the lubed up hand to grab my dick but he pushed my hand away.
“I’ll take care of that.” He stopped thrusting, his body pressed up against mine, and then he leaned back, sitting on his haunches and pulling me back with him, so I was half kneeling, half sitting in his lap. “Open your eyes and look at us, Ryan.”
There was a mirror hanging on the wall above his bed where a headboard would be, and I could see us, naked and sweaty, our skin glowing in the moonlight spilling in from the terrace. I leaned my head back on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“Aren’t we a pair?” he asked, his lips brushing against my ear.
“Yes, Simon,” I replied, and we were, him so dark and muscular and hairy and powerful, and me, paler and smoother and lithe and looking really rather compliant. No wonder he called me a perfect little bottom; if I were a top, I would have fucked me, too.
“Sit up a little,” he said, and I pulled up onto my knees a touch so he had room to thrust. He gradually worked back up to the blistering pace he’d set, only this time his hand, still slick from putting lube on his own dick, was wrapped around mine. It was the first time we’d done it in front of a mirror and it was hot, watching him work me over, fisting my dick and fucking me and sucking on my ear, feeling the muscles in his back working hard under my fingertips. I did my bit, too, clenching and squeezing his cock with my ass and moaning up a storm because I know he likes hearing what he does to me, especially when I’m beyond speech. It was all so overwhelming, and then I was coming, spraying into the air, come landing on my thighs and his and getting all over his hand.
I was spent, leaning against him, and he was thrusting into me still, grunting into my ear, his hands on my hips, making my body shake, which was pretty sexy to look at in the mirror. He must have thought so too, because he looked up and our eyes met. He stared at me, like he does, and then he came, pulling me close against him, splitting me in two, and god, I’d missed it more than I’d ever known.
We flopped over sideways, out of breath, and even after he slid his dick out of me he held me close, spooning me, which was a new thing. I just drank it in, feeling warm and amazing, even though I knew it didn’t really mean that, but in that moment, it was almost enough.
After a while Simon said, “Awfully big tub in the bath.”
I smiled. He even remembered how I hate to be sticky. “And there’s no wet spot on my bed,” I replied. We snogged in the tub, spending time on the parts of our bodies we’d ignored in our rush to get fucking, topping off the warm water until we got wrinkled. Then we threw on a couple of robes, ordered some mimosas and fruit from room service, and did end up watching the sunrise, sitting out on the terrace. It was actually kinda romantic, even though he mostly wanted to try to throw berries in my mouth.
Later, when he sent me a review copy of his book, I saw that he had included this incident from his own perspective and clearly had never realized what was actually going on. So I brought Kate to his book party, where he was surprised that we had become so close so quickly and Kate said, “Oh, Ryan? I’ve known him for years! We worked together on a show back in ‘99 and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Simon just stared at her and you could see his mind working as it all clicked into place. He smiled at Kate and said, “Oh really? Isn’t that interesting?”
I added, “Yeah, it was great to reconnect that night in Miami.”
“We had fun, didn’t we?” Kate added, getting into the spirit of the thing. “All three of us. I saw it was in your book.” She batted her eyelashes.
“Yes, it was a very memorable evening,” Simon said. He turned to me and said, softly, “Well played, Seacrest.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~