fic: The Fatherless, Set 5/5
Pairing: Zach Condon/Shia LaBeouf, RPS.
Wordcount: 4620
Notes: Installments thirteen, fourteen and fifteen of fifteen.
set I - set II - set III - set IV - set V
xiii. How the house burnt down
Zach doesn’t see Shia until a week after the crash. He kind of doesn’t want to go back to Los Angeles, he kind of can’t afford to, and really. He knows he’s not on the medical center’s list. Not if Shia’s publicist wrote it out, anyway. Family and employees only, probably. And Entertainment Weekly keeps Zach pretty informed. Which is disturbing.
So he waits, and ponders the devastation of a crushed hand - four hours of surgery - and he leaves a voicemail or two. Shia doesn’t call back.
And that’s really the only reason he goes.
He calls Shayna from the airport and asks her if it’s possible for him to visit Shia at the center. Get some kind of pass, or maybe she could put his name on a list.
“Oh kid,” she says, “Just come over, he’s been home since yesterday.”
Shia is lying face down in his bed, cotton print pants in blue and grey, bare soles sticking off the edge. They’ve put his entire hand in a cast that’s more a bandage and a straightener like you get with a sprained finger, and he’s stuck it all out at an angle from the bed. The duvet is collapsed onto the floor and the windows are closed against the bright blue air.
Zach says, “Hi,” and it’s a question. He hovers in the doorway.
Shia sits up immediately, he can’t hide the surprise on his face: equal parts relief and guilt. Everything’s right there to be read. He says, “Oh god,” and starts to stand up, but Zach just comes over and crawls onto the bed, pushing him down onto his back.
Zach’s a little surprised at this feeling in his gut when they look at each other. Like the months apart, in Brooklyn, on set, never happened. Except for the fresh and older layers of misery on his face, he looks the same. Little details that Zach forgot. A little bit of scruff, his face banged up on the side, cuts from glass. He’s still hard and tanned for filming, the neighborhood jerkoff in an action star’s body. Zach runs a hand along his ribcage, that bizarre gun tattoo, and settles down to put his nose against Shia’s throat. Breathes shallowly there.
Says the only thing that’s both reassuring and truthful, “I’m really glad you’re okay,”
Shia says back, fast, words that sound like they’ve been repeated a thousand times already and caught in his throat every time: “I fucked up.”
Zach chooses his reply, opting for honesty. “It could’ve been worse.”
“I could’ve killed Isabel. I could’ve killed that asshole.”
“Were you drunk?” Zach regrets it as soon as he asks. He doesn’t want to be on that side of the argument. Right or wrong, it won’t help.
Shia makes a sound in his throat like he has a thousand answers for that but not one of them covers it. “I can’t talk about it,” he says, quietly, finally.
He can’t talk about it, but it’s in his eyes and his voice. Lying there on the bed half his body stiff and stubborn. He can’t talk about it, but he can talk about the doctors. He says they gave him a lot of painkillers, that he’s supposed to regain full mobility but it’s not a hundred percent sure. He’s more worried about his knee: it’s black and huge and could actually hurt his career whereas there are workarounds for a gimpy hand.
Neither of them says it, but chronic joint pain is really the least of his worries, career-wise.
Zach, who knows he is selfish, but can’t really help himself - it’s a mix of Shia’s own limp denial, and the closeness of the room and the months of missed phone calls and text messages - nuzzles in close and works against Shia’s bare skin with his mouth and his palm until he gets a response.
It’s tepid, but it’s something. Mostly, Shia just lies there, voiceless, as Zach kisses him, and murmurs vague platitudes more for the sound of a voice than as legitimate reassurance. He doesn’t have any of that, neither of them knows what’s going to happen. If it will actually be alright, or not.
He kisses Shia’s good palm and rubs his fingertips through Shia’s hair and then fists Shia’s hard-on through the worn cotton of his pajama pants. He alternates urgent and gentle because the shallow whimpers are a little disturbing and when he asks, “Are you okay? Do you want me to stop?” he just gets a whined “Please.”
Eventually he stops on his own, without having gotten either of them off, because as much as he wants it - his own hard-on doesn’t go anywhere - he doesn’t want Shia like this. Half here. Half elsewhere.
They lie beside each other on the bed, Zach still holding Shia’s good hand, and eventually, Shia says, voice a little strained, too high: “I’m really sorry, Zach.”
“Well,” Zach says. He tells himself to get used to the frustration. To this other person, already wrecked and in no need of another guilt trip. To be patient. “What are we going to do?”
Shia just shakes his head, and turns onto his side. Facing him, at least. But his mouth is drawn so tight that it looks like a smile might actually be painful. For once, Shia just doesn’t answer.
Zach thinks it’s probably a good thing that he didn’t book a return flight to New York. He knows he’ll stay for a while. Probably until Shia can talk about it, probably longer.
xiv. I am dressed embarrassment
The first day back, and he feels like every head turns to track him as he walks through the congestion on set. Like, no matter how busy everyone is, who’s yelling, what’s going on, they can all pause to look at him and pass judgment.
He shows up at 4:30 AM, spends twenty minutes in makeup - they make the half-cast look dirty, too - and goes to find Michael.
Michael sends him back to makeup - dirtier - and they start shooting the military ramp-up scenes half an hour later, going from interior rooms to exterior shots around the base as the light stabilizes.
Shia says his lines too hard and quick at first and Michael yells at him from across set until he softens up. Gets a little wide-eyed, which isn’t too hard. There are probably fifty uniformed extras - some of them off-duty pilots and airmen - watching him stand and deliver, on top of Josh and Jon and all the lines back and forth. It’s overwhelming, being back.
He’s trying really hard to be professional but even Josh just kind of looked and shrugged when he showed up. He remembers every name that sent him a card or a voicemail, and they are far outnumbered by the ones that didn’t. Which, yeah, he gets. Because it is his fault, almost entirely, and who sends a get-well card to a drunk driver?
But it still counts, to him, whether or not they cared.
He tries to look penitent and humble, keep his eyes down when he walks across the tarmac to get some breakfast five hours in.
Isabel smacks him on the shoulder and says, “They’ll get over it,” even though she’s getting the same stare. Maybe she’s used to it because she’s been back on set for a week already, shooting the workarounds, or maybe she honestly just doesn’t care. She sucks back her protein smoothie and tilts her chin for him to come find a seat with her. Everyone thinks they’re screwing, now. Mandy could pretty much put her on the payroll for keeping him straight in the public eye.
Shia digs into his salad. Salad for breakfast while everyone else eats the muffins, and no dressing because even the thought is nauseating. It’s the pain medication wearing off. He took one last pill this morning because he didn’t want to be slowed down for filming, but now his stomach is churning. Probably half of it is anxiety, but still. He pops another cherry tomato, swallows it.
Jon stops by to nod and say, “You remember what we talked about,” and Shia nods back, although Jon gave probably three hours worth of lecturing and advice last week when he took Shia out to lunch in Santa Monica, and it’s hard to remember any one thing above the rest.
Shia’s done the salad and considering another coffee when Michael’s PA swings by and issues an incoherent stream of explanation about some audio thing that ends with “So everyone not on alpha sound take twenty.”
Shia heads to his trailer to hide out for the duration, even though Isabel pulls out a pack of cards and gears up for a round of Texas Holdem with anyone who isn’t bolting to the set to do their job.
Shia would rather keep to his little toilet and a jug of water.
Twenty minutes turns into an hour - he falls asleep - and when someone knocks on the trailer door he has a moment of panic, afraid he’s held them all up again. He’s the one that makes the mistakes, and it’s getting to be a natural reaction: guilt and apologies, guilt and apologies.
But it’s Zach standing there on the concrete outside. Zach, who turns and says thanks to the gofer who evidently showed him which trailer to knock on.
Shia squints in the sunlight and says, “Who let you in here?”
Zach is holding a paper bag and a water bottle. “I brought you some breakfast.”
Shia makes a face and steps back to let him in.
Zach gestures, “No, outside, c’mon.”
They sit out under the awning of someone else’s trailer and Zach hands Shia a greasy bagel with a fried egg and melted cheddar. It’s from Marty’s, the place with the plastic chairs near Dodgers stadium that Shia considers pretty much every time he has to eat.
“So, seriously, they just let you in?” Shia chews, rescues some falling cheese, eats that too. It’s better than medicine, the grease settles over his uneasy stomach, stills it.
“I don’t know, I gave them my name at the gate.” Zach shrugs.
“Weird, dude,” says Shia, and drops it. He definitely put Zach’s name on the list in New Mexico, hoping the kid might feel the need to visit the fam and drop in on him, too. He’d never mentioned it, though. Kind of a jerk fantasy, anyway. He also hadn’t thought the site manager would just pass the same list onto the Air Force. Considering national security, and all.
But he’s really happy to see a friendly face. He can’t name anything he’d rather do than ditch the crowds and head out to the desert with Zach.
“Are you gonna stick around?” he asks. He doesn’t care if his preference shows, if the question sounds a little strained around the edges.
“Sure, I mean. If I’m not going to be in the way.” Zach doesn’t sound thrilled, but kind of interested, anyway. A little hesitant.
“No way.” Shia crumples his bag. “We just sit around jerking off all day anyway. You’ll see.”
It’s easier with Zach beside him. Probably because everyone has to act like the film crew version of themselves when presented with an observer. They have to show Zach what a professional set looks like, and that doesn’t involve eyeballing the star for his social lapses, and it puts a high gloss on all the tired jokes and standard introductions.
Everyone is acting, now. It’s reassuring, it makes Shia feel safe, like his fuckup was a temporary thing or like it never really mattered to begin with. He feels forgiven even though he knows he’s nowhere close to it.
Isabel invites them to join the poker game - she’s dealing, probably because she got called out on hustling everyone else - and just as Zach sits down to join the call comes back to resume places.
“Awh, c’mon,” says the grip with the flush, poised to drag back most of his pile of chips.
“Always next time, Barry,” says Isabel, pocketing her cards.
Shia takes his place on set, gets his nose powdered and his skin sprayed - dirtier, says Michael - and mostly stands around in the background while Josh and Jon argue what the script calls “battle plans,” three times over.
Then, later, Shia emotes to the Bumblebee stand-in outside, and that’s six takes of saying “You’re the best car, the very best,” like a sailor’s wife before her man goes off to war. On Michael’s instruction, he emotes hard.
But having Zach standing back there with the PAs, watching makes Shia question his taste for quality work. Sometimes he wonders if maybe Zach wouldn’t prefer a Ryan Gosling type over this action star crap. You know. If they were ever going to be out about it. More indie cred, anyway.
On the seventh take, Shia goes for that extra hint of subtlety in his sailor-wife gig, and gets yelled at for slacking.
They wrap before the sun gets low enough to qualify as anything but retina-damaging, and Isabel has a phone hanging off her ear in three seconds flat. As they head out to the parking lot she calls from her car, “LaBeouf, we’re hitting up Amernet with Megan and her guys. You two in?”
Shia glances at Zach, who looks interested. He perks his eyebrows and murmurs, “Club or pub?”
Shia gives Isabel and her car pool - Barry and a dude from makeup, Wanda the PA, Lisette from lighting - the thumbs up. “See you there.”
“It’s casual,” he says to Zach as he rolls the ignition, “Like, no bump-n-grind or anything.”
“There’s food?” Zach says.
“Hell yeah, bro.” Shia pulls into the line to get out through security. Isabel’s Prius is three cars up, he recognizes someone in every single vehicle around them. Right now that feels more like being surrounded by peeping toms than friends, but a month ago he would’ve called these people family.
It’s too bad.
“Are you okay?” Zach doesn’t put a hand out, but he’s watching Shia stutter up, down and sideways every time he lets himself think for more than a half second.
Shia kind of shrugs and smiles and says, “I feel fucking stupid.”
“What, because of them?” A vague gesture at the three hundred people jammed in their sun-baked vehicles around them. Traffic inches forward, scattershot angles polarizing into a single line. The studio set up a bus, but no one takes it; they all just wish everyone else would.
“Can’t blame them.” Shia waves at someone - Carlos, audio rec assistant - to cut in. He takes the moment as the guy pulls ahead to put his face into the steering wheel, exhale a groan against the vinyl. “It’s all me.”
Zach doesn’t have much reassuring to say besides, “It’s not going to last forever.”
Shia rolls his eyes and straightens as he takes the next three feet that have opened up. He tries to keep breathing. “Yeah, but this traffic jam might.”
Zach says, “Seriously, you could just stop, after this. We could both stop.”
Shia snorts. “What would we do?”
“Move to Morocco. I’d play accordion in a roving beach orchestra for tourists and you could, I don’t know, tell people’s fortunes on the sidewalk.”
Shia grins at the hatchback tailgating him in the rearview. “That sounds decent. You’d get a sunburn.”
“I’d wear a hat.”
“You’d wear like, a beekeeper suit and little white gloves.”
“Your Spanish would be shit, and you’d constantly be telling people about their salty fortunes and promising naps”.
“My Spanish is awesome.”
“Your Spanish is fine if you’re mouthing off to cops about what you’re gonna do to their sisters and daughters.”
Shia laughs and says, “Yeah. Okay. So Morocco.”
Zach says, “Morocco. When we’re done with this crap.”
Shia signals and gives a wave to the airman standing on guard at the gate. “I’m done now.”
“No you’re not. First we gotta go to this place and get some burgers and pretend you and that girl are making out in the VIP room or something.”
“Oh yeah.” Shia cuts the air conditioning as he accelerates onto the freeway, letting the air whip in through the open windows. “Maybe you want to stop at Marty’s first?”
“Again?” Zach puts a hand in his hair and leans against the door. “Sure.”
“Alright,” says Shia. Good. They have a plan.
xv. Strike Up The Band; We Have Survived
Shia tells probably a dozen different people that Beirut is playing, and every single one of them blows him off.
There are a couple that he knew wouldn’t come, Lorenzo and Mike G. and David, but that’s because they’re all into like, metal, and rap, and metal with rap in it. Which he can see the appeal in, right, they own black SUVs that need that kind of shit pumping out of them at stoplights. And the girls, Katie at least calls to tell him she’s not interested, but everyone else leaps on her excuse like it’s the last lifeboat, bachelorette party, whatever.
So Shia goes without an entourage. Even at the last minute he calls a couple semi-acquaintances - Megan, Joel, god, doesn’t he know anyone who doesn’t listen to Rihanna or Evanescence? He’s so sick of fucking Rihanna and Evanescence - but no. No one wants to drive the ten minutes to the theatre and snag a barely-legal parking spot in the back alley, and then find a spot to stand just above the pit and grab a beer and watch probably the best show they would’ve ever been to. If they’d bothered. Jerks.
He scopes the crowd, because he’s half-pretending like he’s waiting for someone, and after a while he’s so used to checking the faces of everyone who walks by that he forgets that he actually is there alone. Maybe whoever threw that party where he first heard Gulag Orkestar will walk up and say hi.
That’s probably his last, best hope, even if he has no idea who they were. He was pretty drunk, and woke up with an illegible scrawl starting with a large B inked on his thigh in sharpie, and a coverless CD in the truck’s cab, which he thinks he might’ve stolen.
But Shia doesn’t recognize a single face. Everyone’s wearing really tight jeans and some people look like they’ve never spent a day at the beach, and between the faded stripes and haute-military tunics he feels like he’s practically in a different city. Like his mall jeans and baseball cap and green t-shirt with fried eggs where the boobs should go is maybe a little déclassé for this crowd.
But fuck that shit, Shia doesn’t care about his hipster cred. He claps for the openers as they get off the stage. He asks the girl beside him to save his spot on the rail. She gives him the guns and a broad yawn and he goes to buy a t-shirt.
There’s kind of a line, kind of a swarm, and Shia is thinking what the fuck to himself when he realizes why all the stripes and tunics have descended on the merch table at this instant: Zach Condon himself is behind the table, conducting a hurried conversation with their sales girl, who is rolling her eyes and trying to push him out of there because it’s pretty much looking like he’s gonna cause a riot.
Shia’s been through a few celebrity swarms himself - Harrison pretty much creates one wherever he goes, except with like, middle-aged men who want his opinion on their limp-dick crisis rides - but it’s pretty funny to see the hipsters get screechy-voiced and desperate. All clawing hands and feigned cool and weepiness.
Shia decides to forgo the shirt, heads to the bathroom instead.
There, in the much brighter light, one dude gives him the double-take, but then remembers urinal etiquette and calms himself with some admirable self-control. There is no post-piss hand-shaking, anyway. Shia appreciates that.
He goes back to his spot and the guns-girl has apparently invited some other, more appropriately attired, persons to take up his primo vantage point. They’re smoking up, and while Shia’s not above introducing himself - not naming himself, but just cracking a joke to get him in and letting them do the rest of the work - he can see that there’s a security guard already headed over to lay down the smack.
Shia shuffles around some more, and takes up a lesser stand behind some overexcited record store clerks as the stage lights come down.
-
The house lights come up and Zach is standing sweating in the alley outside, smoking and shaking a bit and wondering what the fuck kind of crowd wants three encores. He can’t stay out for long, god forbid he get pneumonia in sixty degree weather and end up in the hospital, and plus the kind of crowd it was tonight he figures they’ll come back here before long. Wait for him.
Sometimes he feels like a rock star. Mostly, though, it’s just awkward and he wants to be at home. Or even at the hotel, he’d take the hotel, too.
He goes back inside and helps Nick with his kit because everyone else is standing around shooting the shit with whoever’s lingering by the stage. Kristin always likes talking to the truly appreciative, which is probably good, because the same stunt was the only thing that got Pallett to arrange a string section for the last album. She turned her violin parts into half the show. She’s fearless.
Zach kind of suspects that she enjoys sending on the most rabid to torment him, though, because he turns around with a cymbal stand in each hand and gets a faceful of indier-than-thou from the ironic-fanny-pack-wearing crowd. There’s a girl, and another girl, and a dude who looks like a stage double for one of the Hives, skinny tie, suit-sneakers and all. He gives them all a cautious pause, feeling a little cornered.
Nick comes in with an affable, “Hey guys, how’s it going tonight?”
And in two voices, the kids come back with, “Oh Zach, I just wanted to tell you how great the show was, I just, best show of my life, I can’t even tell you, I wish I could swallow you whole, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
At the same time the Hives guy is making noises about offering to help out with the kit and Zach just shakes his head like, are you kidding me? “Thanks for coming out tonight, guys,” is what he manages. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show.”
He is. He is glad, although it’s taken him two years to go from petrified to devoutly grateful to kind of unnerved again.
These people, they hear who he was two years ago, sometimes six years ago, and they know him intimately - and worst of all, they know they know him - and it’s fucking frightening, sometimes. It makes him want to be someone else entirely, all over again.
The girls, they say, “You’re really great, Zach, you were spectacular,” like they’ve all just finished banging or something and he says - what else can he say? - “Thanks.”
He looks at Nick for some kind of support but he’s gone, taking the floor tom with him.
Kristin makes eye contact, though, and sends the venue manager over to shoo people off. Zach just - Zach takes the cymbal stands to their boxes by the doors, tucks them into the foam and hands them off to Ken, and then turns around and heads back outside because it’s the only place he can think to hide again.
One show, one show to warm up for the Australia tour because they were here for the night anyway, and then it’s going to be forty days of hard labor down there. He should be rested, amped up, prepared. But instead he gets so wired, and overwrought, and then he gets mean and self-absorbed. It’s like living inside yourself, watched from all angles. He’s not ready for anything at all, right now.
As he lights another cigarette he steps out of the way of a huge-ass truck that’s rolling down the alley. He cups his hand around the flame and looks up as the tanned arm hanging out the driver’s side window manifests a face right in front of him.
“Hey, good show,” says the face, and Zach looks at the guy, wondering if maybe he’s going to get shot.
He stares back, and voices the standard: “Thanks.”
The guy drums his steering wheel. Zach can hear his own music playing inside the cab, and feels a little weirder. It definitely looks like a rap-rock truck. The driver says, “You guys did a pretty good job of keeping this secret from eighty percent of the city. But still, you packed them in there.”
Zach considers that, the number of faces he could see when the lights flashed outward. Usually, he tries not to look. But he says, “It was kind of last minute. We’re just on our way through.”
“I don’t know how half these kids heard about it. I heard about it this morning, had to call like, five different people to make sure I had a ticket.”
Zach smirks at the idea. “Yeah, it’s not like we sell them at the door.”
The guy raises a hand, “Hey, how was I to know? I wasn’t risking it.”
Zach puts out his smoke, drops it into the tin can under the blacked-out window. “I can pretty much guarantee that there is always more room at our shows.”
This guy is so different from the usual crowd, the ones that arrive by subway in New York or hybrid in California or in massive car pools from two states over in the Midwest. Fleets of bicycles in Europe. This guy looks like a drug dealer or maybe a paparazzo or something. He looks a little illicit, anyway.
And he seems to take Zach’s self-deprecation as a promise. He sticks out a hand, almost crawling through the window to do it and says, “So I can tell them my name’s on the list next time? It’s Shia.”
Zach shakes the guy’s hand - it’s firm and dry, where he knows his is always a little limp, tepid - and says, “Yeah, I’ll write that down,” and then wonders if he means it. He says, helpfully, “We’ll be back through in April again.”
Shia gives a curt nod, satisfied. “Alright, boss, ” he says, “I’ll be there. Make sure you spell it right, ok? I-A. ”
Zach kind of squints and nods, and Shia makes the peace sign as he rolls on down the alley, that big black truck crushing garbage as it goes.
And Zach goes inside, and dutifully writes down the one name on a piece of paper, which he tucks in his trumpet case. And forgets about entirely.
-
A month later, Zach’s standing in the wings at the Wiltern writing out a set list when he gets a slap on the shoulder and another warm handshake. “Seriously, Zach, you’re kind of a douche.”
Shia has pulled out something in argyle in an attempt to blend in, but Zach just stares at him blankly for a good thirty seconds.
Shia laughs at his expression, falters, pauses and says, “Remember, we talked-”
But Zach just blurts, “Aren’t you the guy from Transformers?”
And Shia doesn’t even roll his eyes as he puts out his hand - again - and says, “Yeah, I’m Shia. Nice to meet you. I love your work.”
Wordcount: 4620
Notes: Installments thirteen, fourteen and fifteen of fifteen.
set I - set II - set III - set IV - set V
xiii. How the house burnt down
Zach doesn’t see Shia until a week after the crash. He kind of doesn’t want to go back to Los Angeles, he kind of can’t afford to, and really. He knows he’s not on the medical center’s list. Not if Shia’s publicist wrote it out, anyway. Family and employees only, probably. And Entertainment Weekly keeps Zach pretty informed. Which is disturbing.
So he waits, and ponders the devastation of a crushed hand - four hours of surgery - and he leaves a voicemail or two. Shia doesn’t call back.
And that’s really the only reason he goes.
He calls Shayna from the airport and asks her if it’s possible for him to visit Shia at the center. Get some kind of pass, or maybe she could put his name on a list.
“Oh kid,” she says, “Just come over, he’s been home since yesterday.”
Shia is lying face down in his bed, cotton print pants in blue and grey, bare soles sticking off the edge. They’ve put his entire hand in a cast that’s more a bandage and a straightener like you get with a sprained finger, and he’s stuck it all out at an angle from the bed. The duvet is collapsed onto the floor and the windows are closed against the bright blue air.
Zach says, “Hi,” and it’s a question. He hovers in the doorway.
Shia sits up immediately, he can’t hide the surprise on his face: equal parts relief and guilt. Everything’s right there to be read. He says, “Oh god,” and starts to stand up, but Zach just comes over and crawls onto the bed, pushing him down onto his back.
Zach’s a little surprised at this feeling in his gut when they look at each other. Like the months apart, in Brooklyn, on set, never happened. Except for the fresh and older layers of misery on his face, he looks the same. Little details that Zach forgot. A little bit of scruff, his face banged up on the side, cuts from glass. He’s still hard and tanned for filming, the neighborhood jerkoff in an action star’s body. Zach runs a hand along his ribcage, that bizarre gun tattoo, and settles down to put his nose against Shia’s throat. Breathes shallowly there.
Says the only thing that’s both reassuring and truthful, “I’m really glad you’re okay,”
Shia says back, fast, words that sound like they’ve been repeated a thousand times already and caught in his throat every time: “I fucked up.”
Zach chooses his reply, opting for honesty. “It could’ve been worse.”
“I could’ve killed Isabel. I could’ve killed that asshole.”
“Were you drunk?” Zach regrets it as soon as he asks. He doesn’t want to be on that side of the argument. Right or wrong, it won’t help.
Shia makes a sound in his throat like he has a thousand answers for that but not one of them covers it. “I can’t talk about it,” he says, quietly, finally.
He can’t talk about it, but it’s in his eyes and his voice. Lying there on the bed half his body stiff and stubborn. He can’t talk about it, but he can talk about the doctors. He says they gave him a lot of painkillers, that he’s supposed to regain full mobility but it’s not a hundred percent sure. He’s more worried about his knee: it’s black and huge and could actually hurt his career whereas there are workarounds for a gimpy hand.
Neither of them says it, but chronic joint pain is really the least of his worries, career-wise.
Zach, who knows he is selfish, but can’t really help himself - it’s a mix of Shia’s own limp denial, and the closeness of the room and the months of missed phone calls and text messages - nuzzles in close and works against Shia’s bare skin with his mouth and his palm until he gets a response.
It’s tepid, but it’s something. Mostly, Shia just lies there, voiceless, as Zach kisses him, and murmurs vague platitudes more for the sound of a voice than as legitimate reassurance. He doesn’t have any of that, neither of them knows what’s going to happen. If it will actually be alright, or not.
He kisses Shia’s good palm and rubs his fingertips through Shia’s hair and then fists Shia’s hard-on through the worn cotton of his pajama pants. He alternates urgent and gentle because the shallow whimpers are a little disturbing and when he asks, “Are you okay? Do you want me to stop?” he just gets a whined “Please.”
Eventually he stops on his own, without having gotten either of them off, because as much as he wants it - his own hard-on doesn’t go anywhere - he doesn’t want Shia like this. Half here. Half elsewhere.
They lie beside each other on the bed, Zach still holding Shia’s good hand, and eventually, Shia says, voice a little strained, too high: “I’m really sorry, Zach.”
“Well,” Zach says. He tells himself to get used to the frustration. To this other person, already wrecked and in no need of another guilt trip. To be patient. “What are we going to do?”
Shia just shakes his head, and turns onto his side. Facing him, at least. But his mouth is drawn so tight that it looks like a smile might actually be painful. For once, Shia just doesn’t answer.
Zach thinks it’s probably a good thing that he didn’t book a return flight to New York. He knows he’ll stay for a while. Probably until Shia can talk about it, probably longer.
xiv. I am dressed embarrassment
The first day back, and he feels like every head turns to track him as he walks through the congestion on set. Like, no matter how busy everyone is, who’s yelling, what’s going on, they can all pause to look at him and pass judgment.
He shows up at 4:30 AM, spends twenty minutes in makeup - they make the half-cast look dirty, too - and goes to find Michael.
Michael sends him back to makeup - dirtier - and they start shooting the military ramp-up scenes half an hour later, going from interior rooms to exterior shots around the base as the light stabilizes.
Shia says his lines too hard and quick at first and Michael yells at him from across set until he softens up. Gets a little wide-eyed, which isn’t too hard. There are probably fifty uniformed extras - some of them off-duty pilots and airmen - watching him stand and deliver, on top of Josh and Jon and all the lines back and forth. It’s overwhelming, being back.
He’s trying really hard to be professional but even Josh just kind of looked and shrugged when he showed up. He remembers every name that sent him a card or a voicemail, and they are far outnumbered by the ones that didn’t. Which, yeah, he gets. Because it is his fault, almost entirely, and who sends a get-well card to a drunk driver?
But it still counts, to him, whether or not they cared.
He tries to look penitent and humble, keep his eyes down when he walks across the tarmac to get some breakfast five hours in.
Isabel smacks him on the shoulder and says, “They’ll get over it,” even though she’s getting the same stare. Maybe she’s used to it because she’s been back on set for a week already, shooting the workarounds, or maybe she honestly just doesn’t care. She sucks back her protein smoothie and tilts her chin for him to come find a seat with her. Everyone thinks they’re screwing, now. Mandy could pretty much put her on the payroll for keeping him straight in the public eye.
Shia digs into his salad. Salad for breakfast while everyone else eats the muffins, and no dressing because even the thought is nauseating. It’s the pain medication wearing off. He took one last pill this morning because he didn’t want to be slowed down for filming, but now his stomach is churning. Probably half of it is anxiety, but still. He pops another cherry tomato, swallows it.
Jon stops by to nod and say, “You remember what we talked about,” and Shia nods back, although Jon gave probably three hours worth of lecturing and advice last week when he took Shia out to lunch in Santa Monica, and it’s hard to remember any one thing above the rest.
Shia’s done the salad and considering another coffee when Michael’s PA swings by and issues an incoherent stream of explanation about some audio thing that ends with “So everyone not on alpha sound take twenty.”
Shia heads to his trailer to hide out for the duration, even though Isabel pulls out a pack of cards and gears up for a round of Texas Holdem with anyone who isn’t bolting to the set to do their job.
Shia would rather keep to his little toilet and a jug of water.
Twenty minutes turns into an hour - he falls asleep - and when someone knocks on the trailer door he has a moment of panic, afraid he’s held them all up again. He’s the one that makes the mistakes, and it’s getting to be a natural reaction: guilt and apologies, guilt and apologies.
But it’s Zach standing there on the concrete outside. Zach, who turns and says thanks to the gofer who evidently showed him which trailer to knock on.
Shia squints in the sunlight and says, “Who let you in here?”
Zach is holding a paper bag and a water bottle. “I brought you some breakfast.”
Shia makes a face and steps back to let him in.
Zach gestures, “No, outside, c’mon.”
They sit out under the awning of someone else’s trailer and Zach hands Shia a greasy bagel with a fried egg and melted cheddar. It’s from Marty’s, the place with the plastic chairs near Dodgers stadium that Shia considers pretty much every time he has to eat.
“So, seriously, they just let you in?” Shia chews, rescues some falling cheese, eats that too. It’s better than medicine, the grease settles over his uneasy stomach, stills it.
“I don’t know, I gave them my name at the gate.” Zach shrugs.
“Weird, dude,” says Shia, and drops it. He definitely put Zach’s name on the list in New Mexico, hoping the kid might feel the need to visit the fam and drop in on him, too. He’d never mentioned it, though. Kind of a jerk fantasy, anyway. He also hadn’t thought the site manager would just pass the same list onto the Air Force. Considering national security, and all.
But he’s really happy to see a friendly face. He can’t name anything he’d rather do than ditch the crowds and head out to the desert with Zach.
“Are you gonna stick around?” he asks. He doesn’t care if his preference shows, if the question sounds a little strained around the edges.
“Sure, I mean. If I’m not going to be in the way.” Zach doesn’t sound thrilled, but kind of interested, anyway. A little hesitant.
“No way.” Shia crumples his bag. “We just sit around jerking off all day anyway. You’ll see.”
It’s easier with Zach beside him. Probably because everyone has to act like the film crew version of themselves when presented with an observer. They have to show Zach what a professional set looks like, and that doesn’t involve eyeballing the star for his social lapses, and it puts a high gloss on all the tired jokes and standard introductions.
Everyone is acting, now. It’s reassuring, it makes Shia feel safe, like his fuckup was a temporary thing or like it never really mattered to begin with. He feels forgiven even though he knows he’s nowhere close to it.
Isabel invites them to join the poker game - she’s dealing, probably because she got called out on hustling everyone else - and just as Zach sits down to join the call comes back to resume places.
“Awh, c’mon,” says the grip with the flush, poised to drag back most of his pile of chips.
“Always next time, Barry,” says Isabel, pocketing her cards.
Shia takes his place on set, gets his nose powdered and his skin sprayed - dirtier, says Michael - and mostly stands around in the background while Josh and Jon argue what the script calls “battle plans,” three times over.
Then, later, Shia emotes to the Bumblebee stand-in outside, and that’s six takes of saying “You’re the best car, the very best,” like a sailor’s wife before her man goes off to war. On Michael’s instruction, he emotes hard.
But having Zach standing back there with the PAs, watching makes Shia question his taste for quality work. Sometimes he wonders if maybe Zach wouldn’t prefer a Ryan Gosling type over this action star crap. You know. If they were ever going to be out about it. More indie cred, anyway.
On the seventh take, Shia goes for that extra hint of subtlety in his sailor-wife gig, and gets yelled at for slacking.
They wrap before the sun gets low enough to qualify as anything but retina-damaging, and Isabel has a phone hanging off her ear in three seconds flat. As they head out to the parking lot she calls from her car, “LaBeouf, we’re hitting up Amernet with Megan and her guys. You two in?”
Shia glances at Zach, who looks interested. He perks his eyebrows and murmurs, “Club or pub?”
Shia gives Isabel and her car pool - Barry and a dude from makeup, Wanda the PA, Lisette from lighting - the thumbs up. “See you there.”
“It’s casual,” he says to Zach as he rolls the ignition, “Like, no bump-n-grind or anything.”
“There’s food?” Zach says.
“Hell yeah, bro.” Shia pulls into the line to get out through security. Isabel’s Prius is three cars up, he recognizes someone in every single vehicle around them. Right now that feels more like being surrounded by peeping toms than friends, but a month ago he would’ve called these people family.
It’s too bad.
“Are you okay?” Zach doesn’t put a hand out, but he’s watching Shia stutter up, down and sideways every time he lets himself think for more than a half second.
Shia kind of shrugs and smiles and says, “I feel fucking stupid.”
“What, because of them?” A vague gesture at the three hundred people jammed in their sun-baked vehicles around them. Traffic inches forward, scattershot angles polarizing into a single line. The studio set up a bus, but no one takes it; they all just wish everyone else would.
“Can’t blame them.” Shia waves at someone - Carlos, audio rec assistant - to cut in. He takes the moment as the guy pulls ahead to put his face into the steering wheel, exhale a groan against the vinyl. “It’s all me.”
Zach doesn’t have much reassuring to say besides, “It’s not going to last forever.”
Shia rolls his eyes and straightens as he takes the next three feet that have opened up. He tries to keep breathing. “Yeah, but this traffic jam might.”
Zach says, “Seriously, you could just stop, after this. We could both stop.”
Shia snorts. “What would we do?”
“Move to Morocco. I’d play accordion in a roving beach orchestra for tourists and you could, I don’t know, tell people’s fortunes on the sidewalk.”
Shia grins at the hatchback tailgating him in the rearview. “That sounds decent. You’d get a sunburn.”
“I’d wear a hat.”
“You’d wear like, a beekeeper suit and little white gloves.”
“Your Spanish would be shit, and you’d constantly be telling people about their salty fortunes and promising naps”.
“My Spanish is awesome.”
“Your Spanish is fine if you’re mouthing off to cops about what you’re gonna do to their sisters and daughters.”
Shia laughs and says, “Yeah. Okay. So Morocco.”
Zach says, “Morocco. When we’re done with this crap.”
Shia signals and gives a wave to the airman standing on guard at the gate. “I’m done now.”
“No you’re not. First we gotta go to this place and get some burgers and pretend you and that girl are making out in the VIP room or something.”
“Oh yeah.” Shia cuts the air conditioning as he accelerates onto the freeway, letting the air whip in through the open windows. “Maybe you want to stop at Marty’s first?”
“Again?” Zach puts a hand in his hair and leans against the door. “Sure.”
“Alright,” says Shia. Good. They have a plan.
xv. Strike Up The Band; We Have Survived
Shia tells probably a dozen different people that Beirut is playing, and every single one of them blows him off.
There are a couple that he knew wouldn’t come, Lorenzo and Mike G. and David, but that’s because they’re all into like, metal, and rap, and metal with rap in it. Which he can see the appeal in, right, they own black SUVs that need that kind of shit pumping out of them at stoplights. And the girls, Katie at least calls to tell him she’s not interested, but everyone else leaps on her excuse like it’s the last lifeboat, bachelorette party, whatever.
So Shia goes without an entourage. Even at the last minute he calls a couple semi-acquaintances - Megan, Joel, god, doesn’t he know anyone who doesn’t listen to Rihanna or Evanescence? He’s so sick of fucking Rihanna and Evanescence - but no. No one wants to drive the ten minutes to the theatre and snag a barely-legal parking spot in the back alley, and then find a spot to stand just above the pit and grab a beer and watch probably the best show they would’ve ever been to. If they’d bothered. Jerks.
He scopes the crowd, because he’s half-pretending like he’s waiting for someone, and after a while he’s so used to checking the faces of everyone who walks by that he forgets that he actually is there alone. Maybe whoever threw that party where he first heard Gulag Orkestar will walk up and say hi.
That’s probably his last, best hope, even if he has no idea who they were. He was pretty drunk, and woke up with an illegible scrawl starting with a large B inked on his thigh in sharpie, and a coverless CD in the truck’s cab, which he thinks he might’ve stolen.
But Shia doesn’t recognize a single face. Everyone’s wearing really tight jeans and some people look like they’ve never spent a day at the beach, and between the faded stripes and haute-military tunics he feels like he’s practically in a different city. Like his mall jeans and baseball cap and green t-shirt with fried eggs where the boobs should go is maybe a little déclassé for this crowd.
But fuck that shit, Shia doesn’t care about his hipster cred. He claps for the openers as they get off the stage. He asks the girl beside him to save his spot on the rail. She gives him the guns and a broad yawn and he goes to buy a t-shirt.
There’s kind of a line, kind of a swarm, and Shia is thinking what the fuck to himself when he realizes why all the stripes and tunics have descended on the merch table at this instant: Zach Condon himself is behind the table, conducting a hurried conversation with their sales girl, who is rolling her eyes and trying to push him out of there because it’s pretty much looking like he’s gonna cause a riot.
Shia’s been through a few celebrity swarms himself - Harrison pretty much creates one wherever he goes, except with like, middle-aged men who want his opinion on their limp-dick crisis rides - but it’s pretty funny to see the hipsters get screechy-voiced and desperate. All clawing hands and feigned cool and weepiness.
Shia decides to forgo the shirt, heads to the bathroom instead.
There, in the much brighter light, one dude gives him the double-take, but then remembers urinal etiquette and calms himself with some admirable self-control. There is no post-piss hand-shaking, anyway. Shia appreciates that.
He goes back to his spot and the guns-girl has apparently invited some other, more appropriately attired, persons to take up his primo vantage point. They’re smoking up, and while Shia’s not above introducing himself - not naming himself, but just cracking a joke to get him in and letting them do the rest of the work - he can see that there’s a security guard already headed over to lay down the smack.
Shia shuffles around some more, and takes up a lesser stand behind some overexcited record store clerks as the stage lights come down.
-
The house lights come up and Zach is standing sweating in the alley outside, smoking and shaking a bit and wondering what the fuck kind of crowd wants three encores. He can’t stay out for long, god forbid he get pneumonia in sixty degree weather and end up in the hospital, and plus the kind of crowd it was tonight he figures they’ll come back here before long. Wait for him.
Sometimes he feels like a rock star. Mostly, though, it’s just awkward and he wants to be at home. Or even at the hotel, he’d take the hotel, too.
He goes back inside and helps Nick with his kit because everyone else is standing around shooting the shit with whoever’s lingering by the stage. Kristin always likes talking to the truly appreciative, which is probably good, because the same stunt was the only thing that got Pallett to arrange a string section for the last album. She turned her violin parts into half the show. She’s fearless.
Zach kind of suspects that she enjoys sending on the most rabid to torment him, though, because he turns around with a cymbal stand in each hand and gets a faceful of indier-than-thou from the ironic-fanny-pack-wearing crowd. There’s a girl, and another girl, and a dude who looks like a stage double for one of the Hives, skinny tie, suit-sneakers and all. He gives them all a cautious pause, feeling a little cornered.
Nick comes in with an affable, “Hey guys, how’s it going tonight?”
And in two voices, the kids come back with, “Oh Zach, I just wanted to tell you how great the show was, I just, best show of my life, I can’t even tell you, I wish I could swallow you whole, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
At the same time the Hives guy is making noises about offering to help out with the kit and Zach just shakes his head like, are you kidding me? “Thanks for coming out tonight, guys,” is what he manages. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show.”
He is. He is glad, although it’s taken him two years to go from petrified to devoutly grateful to kind of unnerved again.
These people, they hear who he was two years ago, sometimes six years ago, and they know him intimately - and worst of all, they know they know him - and it’s fucking frightening, sometimes. It makes him want to be someone else entirely, all over again.
The girls, they say, “You’re really great, Zach, you were spectacular,” like they’ve all just finished banging or something and he says - what else can he say? - “Thanks.”
He looks at Nick for some kind of support but he’s gone, taking the floor tom with him.
Kristin makes eye contact, though, and sends the venue manager over to shoo people off. Zach just - Zach takes the cymbal stands to their boxes by the doors, tucks them into the foam and hands them off to Ken, and then turns around and heads back outside because it’s the only place he can think to hide again.
One show, one show to warm up for the Australia tour because they were here for the night anyway, and then it’s going to be forty days of hard labor down there. He should be rested, amped up, prepared. But instead he gets so wired, and overwrought, and then he gets mean and self-absorbed. It’s like living inside yourself, watched from all angles. He’s not ready for anything at all, right now.
As he lights another cigarette he steps out of the way of a huge-ass truck that’s rolling down the alley. He cups his hand around the flame and looks up as the tanned arm hanging out the driver’s side window manifests a face right in front of him.
“Hey, good show,” says the face, and Zach looks at the guy, wondering if maybe he’s going to get shot.
He stares back, and voices the standard: “Thanks.”
The guy drums his steering wheel. Zach can hear his own music playing inside the cab, and feels a little weirder. It definitely looks like a rap-rock truck. The driver says, “You guys did a pretty good job of keeping this secret from eighty percent of the city. But still, you packed them in there.”
Zach considers that, the number of faces he could see when the lights flashed outward. Usually, he tries not to look. But he says, “It was kind of last minute. We’re just on our way through.”
“I don’t know how half these kids heard about it. I heard about it this morning, had to call like, five different people to make sure I had a ticket.”
Zach smirks at the idea. “Yeah, it’s not like we sell them at the door.”
The guy raises a hand, “Hey, how was I to know? I wasn’t risking it.”
Zach puts out his smoke, drops it into the tin can under the blacked-out window. “I can pretty much guarantee that there is always more room at our shows.”
This guy is so different from the usual crowd, the ones that arrive by subway in New York or hybrid in California or in massive car pools from two states over in the Midwest. Fleets of bicycles in Europe. This guy looks like a drug dealer or maybe a paparazzo or something. He looks a little illicit, anyway.
And he seems to take Zach’s self-deprecation as a promise. He sticks out a hand, almost crawling through the window to do it and says, “So I can tell them my name’s on the list next time? It’s Shia.”
Zach shakes the guy’s hand - it’s firm and dry, where he knows his is always a little limp, tepid - and says, “Yeah, I’ll write that down,” and then wonders if he means it. He says, helpfully, “We’ll be back through in April again.”
Shia gives a curt nod, satisfied. “Alright, boss, ” he says, “I’ll be there. Make sure you spell it right, ok? I-A. ”
Zach kind of squints and nods, and Shia makes the peace sign as he rolls on down the alley, that big black truck crushing garbage as it goes.
And Zach goes inside, and dutifully writes down the one name on a piece of paper, which he tucks in his trumpet case. And forgets about entirely.
-
A month later, Zach’s standing in the wings at the Wiltern writing out a set list when he gets a slap on the shoulder and another warm handshake. “Seriously, Zach, you’re kind of a douche.”
Shia has pulled out something in argyle in an attempt to blend in, but Zach just stares at him blankly for a good thirty seconds.
Shia laughs at his expression, falters, pauses and says, “Remember, we talked-”
But Zach just blurts, “Aren’t you the guy from Transformers?”
And Shia doesn’t even roll his eyes as he puts out his hand - again - and says, “Yeah, I’m Shia. Nice to meet you. I love your work.”