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Luke has a wide mouth.
When he sings at karaoke, it accommodates every note belting from his chest. When he smiles, it eats up at least half of his face. When he sucks Assad’s cock, here in the muffled quiet of the restaurant’s toilet, Assad feels every centimetre of that broad tongue scrape beautifully against the underside of his shaft.
“Fuck,” Assad pants, head knocking back against the wall. “Wow, Luke, that’s really—”
Luke doesn’t break off, but his eyes are crinkling in obvious pleasure at the praise. He’s always been like that, lighting up so completely when he gets an approving word from a director that Assad half-expects him to start wagging his tail.
Assad’s feeling generous, so what the hell. He lays it on a little more. “You’re really quite good at this,” he says, fingers on Luke’s cheeks, feeling the outline of his own cock through the skin, and Luke seems to vibrate with desperation, the strokes of his tongue quickening, going sloppier and wetter, drool slicking Luke’s chin when Assad takes it between his fingers. Luke’s eyes snap to Assad’s, pupils huge and nakedly eager and a little afraid, like he’s scared Assad will somehow change his mind, will tell him off or scold him for poor performance. Something seizes low in Assad’s belly before he comes in Luke’s mouth.
Gentle touch on the thin skin of Assad’s balls, big soft hands cupping him and supporting the base. When Luke’s lapped up the last drops from the head, he pops back to his feet, grinning wide enough to swallow the sun.
“It was okay, then?” Luke asks.
Assad stuffs himself back in his pants and gives Luke a look. “Now you’re fishing.”
“Maybe,” Luke admits, equal parts cheeky and bashful, and Assad pulls him in by the hips to kiss him quiet.
“More than okay,” he says around Luke’s tongue, pulling back only when his phone buzzes in his pocket.
Luke, oblivious, grins at him before heading to the sink to wash his face. When Luke’s head is under the rusting faucet, Assad pulls out his phone.
On phone with Jo until 8. U can come over after if U want.
Assad checks the time. 7:30. The hotel’s only a few minutes walk.
Alright, mister, he types. Be ready.
“So I was thinking,” Luke says, turning back around. He’d been a little too enthusiastic washing his face and a ring of damp encircles his collar, shiny droplets catching in his thick lashes. “I’ve got my PS4 hooked up back in my room. Haven’t got much use of it, yet, but would you want to play a few rounds of FIFA so I don’t feel silly for lugging the thing all the way out here?”
Assad opens his mouth, but in the beat of silence Luke adds, “Winner gets a special prize,” with an honest to god wink and waggle of his eyebrows.
“Oh,” is all Assad can say.
Here’s the thing: they’ve fooled around before, and they’ve hung out before, but the two were never linked. No morning sex and staying for breakfast; no afternoon anal and teatime snacks. No evening blowjobs and playing video games until they fall asleep with their hands in each other’s pants. Nothing that could be plausibly construed as a relationship. Just casual sex, with separate but simultaneous professional friendship. Neat. Easy. Simpler for everyone, to keep it that way. No risk of anyone getting hurt.
Until this point, Luke had never given any indication of wanting anything more than that. But now he’s looking at Assad with his big, buoyant hope as tangible and bright as a balloon in front of him, and when Assad says, “I’m sorry, mate, I’d love to, honestly, but I can’t tonight,” he's forced to watch it puncture in real time.
Luke’s nodding rapidly. “No, of course,” he says. “Totally! Forget I said anything.” The droplets caught in his lashes make his eyes look wet, and he’s ducking his head, pulling on a smile that barely moves his face.
Fucking hell. There’s no reason declining on post-coital FIFA should make Assad feel like he’s kicked a puppy, but somehow it does. The idea of Luke preparing for the shoot and happily packing his video games, all of that boyish, a little out-of-touch eagerness that makes it clear he still sometimes thinks of this job as more like a summer camp than how they all pay rent—it hurts something inside him with an almost physical ache.
Because the problem is, of course, that Assad really would like to go play FIFA with him, really does find Luke charming despite all the reasons he shouldn’t, that private school fumbling and air of general cluelessness that should be insufferable in a grown man but somehow manages to come off as endearing, because behind it all is a genuinely kind person, big-hearted and sweet in a way that the world should’ve knocked out of him by now, and Assad would probably have already said yes if his phone weren’t buzzing in his pocket with another response from Eric.
“Hey,” Assad says, reaching out unconsciously for Luke’s arm. “I’m really sorry.”
“No, it’s cool,” Luke says, shrugging him off and attempting to lean casually against the wall. He miscalculates the distance a little and stumbles, slamming his elbow into the tile with an audible thwack. “Oopsie,” he says immediately, voice lit with the too-bright cadence of someone trying not to cry, and they both wince at the falseness, Luke’s entire face flushing pink as sweat trickles from his hairline. “Right. I’m going—I’m going for a smoke. See you.”
“Luke—” Assad tries, but Luke’s already ducking past him and pushing out the door.
Assad stays in the bathroom for another minute, fist pressed into his forehead, trying to understand what the hell just happened—and what, if anything, he’s supposed to do about it. For lack of a better option, he takes out his phone.
Watch out kid. I’m gonna show U a trick my wife taught me before U were even born.
Ha. Eric says that every time. But arousal builds through Assad anyway, because it’s so damn good every time; good in the way Assad’s learned to crave; good in the way he can’t ever seem to push from his mind, even on set, even in interviews, even now, with the murkiness of guilt bleeding through his desire. Stupid. Irrational. Eric’s got his own deal with Jo, and Assad doesn’t owe anyone anything, never made any promises.
But he throws open the door anyway, craning his neck to see if he can still glimpse Luke, and smacks straight into a warm body.
“Shit,” he groans, phone going clattering out of his hands, unfinished message still open on the screen. The other body stumbles back, and Assad remembers himself, apologetic hands reaching out to steady their waist. “I’m terribly sorry, miss—Roxane?”
She laughs, smoothing her hands over her skirt. Dark red hair falling soft over her bare shoulders, faint sweetness of wine on her breath. “You sound surprised. Did you forget we’re all neighbors?”
“No, of course,” Assad blinks. She’s right. It’s not like he never sees anyone around; they all live in the same two-block radius. “Sorry, I’m just—distracted.” He thumbs unconsciously at the silky fabric clinging to her narrow hips, and then realizes there's no reason to still be touching her. He drops his hands hastily.
“Oui. Distracted by that boy you sent crying out of there, yes?”
Assad’s face heats. “That’s not what happened.”
“No?” Roxane smiles, then spots Assad’s phone on the ground, messaging screen left damningly open. She’s bending to pick it up before Assad can block her. “Oh,” she says, reading the screen and giving a performative double take. “Perhaps this is your distraction. Love triangle, is it? How chic. No wonder that boy looked like his heart had been cleft apart.”
“Whoa,” Assad laughs, trying to stifle a surge of annoyance. “No one’s cleaving any hearts. We’re all just having a bit of fun, yeah?” And that’s right, isn’t it? Luke knew that from the beginning. It’s not Assad’s responsibility to coddle everyone’s feelings.
“Of course,” Roxane demurs. She holds the phone out to Assad and a sly smile plays again on her lips. “But you’ll have to tell me about those tricks one day.”
“Roxane—” Assad starts, reaching out to snatch back his phone and ready to put his foot down on the whole damn subject, because as much as he wants to be a good sport he can’t take talking about this any longer. He doesn’t want to think about Luke and his soft hands and wide, eager mouth; doesn’t want to think about Eric’s sleazy grins and thick cock and how well he knows how to use it. Doesn’t want to acknowledge that all his no-strings arrangements are getting more and more entangled by the day, or the reason behind it that he won’t let himself confront.
Before he can say more, his fingers brush against Roxane’s palm.
Heat sparks between their fingertips, in time with the flickering of the dim hallway light. A storm had been threatening earlier, and the wind picks up now, howling against the wooden building, rattling the yellowed glass of the squat, cozy windows.
Assad looks at Roxane, and she looks back. He sees now that she had never been out of line at all. Just teasing. How warm her smile is. How dark are her lips, her eyes, the chemise hanging loose over the curve of her breasts. How lovely to feel the heat of her body here in this narrow space, to breathe the wine-sweet scent of it.
How little room there is to worry about anything else if he’s looking only at her.
Assad takes his phone from her palm and very deliberately switches it off. It slides as inanimate as a stone into his pocket as he steps a little closer. Roxane doesn’t move, but tilts her chin up toward Assad’s, unflinching.
“I’ve got some things I could show you now, if you’d prefer,” he says, letting his voice drop low.
*
Luke is regretting this as soon as he ducks outside the building.
The wind tears at his face, rakes wild through his hair, snuffs out his lighter every time he manages to coax a flame.
He looks ridiculous. Feels it, too. Running away because no one wanted to play with him—is he serious?
But in the moment, he hadn’t been able to help it. Assad might’ve been good at keeping his feelings compartmentalized, but Luke has been about to burst for weeks. He feels like the pathetic schoolboy again, oblivious, naively trusting. Like the first time he’d given his team captain a handy in the football locker room. How he’d touched the boy as he was ordered, how he’d been so stupidly proud when the boy came sticky and fast in Luke’s hand. How Luke had mistakenly thought that made the two of them close enough to earn Luke a seat beside him on the bus.
The image of how the captain had looked at him is still seared into his brain. As if Luke were the lowest, most deluded creature on earth. Flaming red cheeks as he’d walked up and down the aisle, meeting only unyielding faces of the rest of the team, finally taking the seat beside the coach, a bad-tempered widower who perennially mistook him for another boy called Lester. Telling himself that it was way more fun to watch football than play it, anyway, and maybe this would be his last year on the team.
So, fine. Maybe Assad hadn’t looked at him quite as horribly as all that, but he might as well have. The point was clear enough. Intimacy with another bloke’s genitals does not equate to other intimacies. A lesson he’d thought he’d learned, until Assad’s warmth and smile and hypnotic voice made Luke foolish enough to forget.
He flicks his lighter halfheartedly, scuffing his shoes against the cobblestones.
“Need a hand with that?” a voice calls over the wind, and Luke turns.
Jacob’s smiling at him, looking effortlessly unruffled despite the storm, and Luke’s posture jerks straighter as he tries in vain to fix his hair. One of Jacob’s hands is thrust in the pocket of his black denim jacket, the other pointing to Luke’s cig. “I’ll shield you,” he says, “if you give me a drag.”
“I thought you’d quit,” is the first thing Luke thinks to say.
Jacob laughs. “Now you sound like my wife. Just the one, alright? Here, come on.”
Jacob snaps his fingers, and Luke obeys with a dog-like efficiency that should probably embarrass him, but can’t really make a dent in everything else he’s already got going on.
Jacob’s hands make a protective globe around the tiny flame as Luke ducks into him. The end of the cigarette lights up cherry red, and he takes a few shaky drags before handing it over. Jacob inhales deeply and returns it after only one, just as he’d promised. Luke manages to get it back in his mouth, the paper dampened from both of their lips, before the wind picks up and it winks out again.
“I think that’s my sign,” Luke sighs. “Should probably think about quitting anyway. Thanks, though. Hey, do you want gum or something?”
“Sorry?”
“I just mean. Er, will it be a problem if your wife smells it on you when you get home?”
“Nah,” Jacob says, but something in his easy expression gets a little more strained. “We’re not like that. Besides, she took our girl to Paris for the weekend. Disneyland.”
“Oh,” says Luke. He digests that for a second and then bumps his shoulder into Jacob’s. “Is that why you’re out here bumming fags from blokes on the street, then? Lonely in that big house of yours?”
“Something like that,” Jacob says.
The wind picks up again, almost loud enough to drown out their voices. Luke stumbles a bit, off balance, and the warm weight of Jacob’s hands settles on his waist.
“Easy there.” Jacob’s close enough that Luke can see all the myriad tones in his warm brown eyes, the slight crookedness of his white teeth.
“Sorry,” Luke says, inanely, somehow short of breath. Jacob rubs Luke’s hip bones with long, slim fingers, unhurried and kind, and then withdraws. Luke immediately misses the touch, however perfunctory it may have been. His body feels like a livewire, desperate for contact of any kind. Suddenly the thought of going back to sit in his hotel room alone for another night is excruciating.
It’s unbearable enough that he’s opening his mouth before he can stop himself, because fuck it, maybe he’s unteachable. “Hey, uh. If you’re not busy, would you fancy some video games? I’ve got FIFA, GTA, Battlefront, a few others. It’s all set up in my room.”
Jacob stares at him for a moment like he’s not sure he heard him right. “You mean you actually brought a console?”
“Er—yeah.” Luke bites his tongue and waits for Jacob to laugh at him; Jacob who’s a real adult with kids and a wife and a Spotify profile that gets enough streams to actually recoup the cost of the recording time.
Jacob does laugh, but nothing about it is mean. It’s a bright, joyful sound, matching with the solid clap of his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “That’s brilliant, mate, are you serious? I could literally kiss you. It’s been nonstop Bluey and Peppa pig on our screens for two years now, and I love 'em to bits but sometimes I’d do anything to game again. You’re at the cast hotel, right? Can we go now?”
“Uh,” Luke says. “Yeah! I mean, yeah, that’s cool. Good to get out of the storm and all that.”
Jacob takes Luke’s hand, his palm warm, and tugs him toward the hotel, the wind battering their backs. Luke can only follow, heartbeat racing in a way that has nothing to do with the exertion.
*
“She is finished?” the waiter asks, motioning to Roxane’s half-empty plate.
“Not yet. Thank you—uh, děkuju.” Delainey flashes him a tight smile and lays her hand across the table protectively, even though it’s looking more and more like Roxane’s not coming back.
Delainey had seen to that.
No, she thinks. Don’t do that.
The tendency to blame herself for every bit of interpersonal drama was both innate and perversely comforting, but she’s doing her best to give it up. She’s twenty-four now. According to pop-sci twitter accounts, that means her brain is nearly fully developed. So she should be mature enough to recognize it’s not all her fault.
But she doesn’t think it’s all Roxane’s, either.
How had it all happened? The day had started out so lovely. Sleeping in on a rare weekend off, video chatting with her sister into the early afternoon. Roxane stopping by, like she often did, swinging her legs off the side of Delainey’s bed. Straddling that line of friendliness and flirtation that they’ve walked since the beginning.
Delainey had never known what to do with it. This was only her second TV show, and her first major role; she still didn’t quite know what the rules were. Maybe this was how everyone acted, especially when your characters were romantically involved. Maybe all costars left their hands on your waist for a beat too long when they passed you, touched your neck and complimented you with the warm effusiveness of a close friend, close enough you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for more.
Why not, right? How would Delainey know? She’d tried watching the other pairings of actors for clues, but that had only ever left her more confused.
Today she’d thought some of that confusion was finally eased. Roxane on her bed, stretching out the elegant lines of her arms. Flopping back on the blankets, hair spilling around her shoulders, lovely and soft as an impressionist painting. “We should go enjoy our day off,” she said. “But I’m so tired, and this bed is so comfortable…”
Delainey laughed and swatted playfully at Roxane’s elbows. “You’ve got a bed just like it, don’t you? Why not have a kip up there?”
“Not just like it,” Roxane said, grabbing Delainey’s wrist. “Yours smells like you.”
“That better be a good thing,” Delainey warned, pulse pounding under the circle of Roxane’s fingers, and Roxane grinned.
“It’s an inestimable improvement.”
Delainey didn’t have time to formulate a response before Roxane was dropping her wrist to pat the rumpled stretch of bed beside her. “Come. Just close your eyes. Fifteen minutes, no more. Then we will go adventuring.”
Delainey sighed. “Fifteen minutes,” she reiterated, and climbed in beside her.
It wasn’t fifteen minutes. She woke hours later, afternoon light dimming through the windows, Roxane’s arm slung around Delainey’s waist, everything soft and bleary, dream-like at the edges. Roxane rolled over into her and pressed a kiss to Delainey’s shoulder blade, and it didn't feel confusing at all. It felt natural.
When Delainey kissed Roxane’s mouth, that felt natural too.
Every ensuing sensation unfolded as if promised. The heat of Roxane’s tongue, the smoky warmth of her perfume. The slight tackiness of her fading lipstick. The soft weight of Roxane’s breasts, the hard peaks of her nipples rubbing against Delainey’s own. Roxane’s fingers slipping into Delainey’s panties, swirling through the wetness between her legs, circling and pressing and working Delainey to an ever-increasing state of breathlessness. Coming apart on Roxanne’s hand, then watching her bring her fingers to her mouth. All of it as easy as anything. Why had she ever thought this would be difficult?
When they were finished, Roxane looked at the clock and tutted. “Alors. Maybe the only adventure we have time for is dinner.” Her voice was sleep-roughened, a little thick. The international school she’d attended had left her English mostly unaccented, but her expressions brought out the French, and the slight rasp on the foreign words made Delainey’s stomach flip with desire.
They freshened up. Delainey attempted to fix the damage the unplanned nap had done to her unwrapped hair. She should’ve been more cross with Roxane—fifteen minutes, come on—but her eyes were stuck on the lipstick tracking from her mouth to her jaw, and she had to turn from the mirror before she smiled too hard.
After they’d both washed, they slipped out down the stairs arm in arm, something near-giddy lightening Delainey’s steps. She had the peculiar, school girl-esque glee of getting away with something she shouldn’t. Didn’t quite make sense, but her mind was in a million places, torn between the street in front of her and the lingering heat of her bed.
The restaurant was only a block away. That was all they ever called it—the restaurant, despite however many others populated their neighborhood alone. But for some reason this was the one they all inevitably gravitated to: small and charming and candlelit, dark wood paneling and friendly staff and a well-stocked bar.
Sure enough, Delainey spotted a few of the coven actors at a corner table once they were seated. Roxane waved to them, and they nodded back, but didn’t seem immediately inclined to come speak with them, which Delainey was grateful for.
They chatted easily during the dinner. Roxane had ordered pasta with a wine-dark sauce, and she swirled her fingers in it when it arrived. Licked each one clean while locking eyes with Delainey, who laughed and called her a daft duck, even as more heat pooled between her legs with every finger Roxanne slid into her mouth.
The coven actors—Suzanne and Esme—paid their bill and stopped over. Delainey had spotted Luke and Assad at the bar earlier, but they’d slipped off toward the back and hadn’t noticed Delainey or Roxane. Which was how she wanted it, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate.
“Delainey!” Suzanne said, hair loose and free from the tight pins that Celeste’s costume required. She squeezed Delainey’s hand with genuine fondness. “Lovely to see you out, for once!”
Delainey’s face warmed. Suzanne didn’t mean anything by it, but it was true that Delainey probably kept to herself more than the rest of the cast, and embarrassment prickled at her palms that her absence was apparently noticeable. She didn’t mean to be deliberately anti-social—she got on well with everyone, found them welcoming and charming and lovely, but—she just needed a break, sometimes. A few hours where she didn’t have to perform for anyone, where she could keep her headphones on and not move her face until she’d recharged enough to do it all again the next day. So if she usually went to dinner after she knew the rest of them had already left, she’d thought that was justified.
Esme turned to Roxane, speaking in the same light, joking tone. “Oh, so good of you to take the girl out. Next week we can switch off, if you like. Give everyone a chance at custody.”
Delainey stiffened. She wanted to bark at Esme that she wasn’t an actual child, regardless of who she played on TV, but Roxane was already laughing awkwardly. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said, putting a palm on Delainey's hand.
Delainey pulled it away. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”
Suzanne and Esme left shortly after that, and Roxane rolled her eyes at their backs. But the ease from earlier had evaporated. The air felt too sticky with friction. She picked at her food, gave one word answers to Roxane’s questions or said nothing at all.
It wasn’t that she meant to be sullen. She just needed some time to recalibrate, that’s all. She’d thought one thing, and then, in her bed, another. Now her head was spinning again, and trying to make sense of it in the thick loud press of the restaurant was giving her a migraine.
It was possible that everything that happened today had only been Roxanne taking pity on her. Poor Delainey, listening to music by herself again, why doesn’t someone make her socialize, make her act normal. So good of you to take the girl out. Get her off, too, while you’re at it.
Roxane kept pushing and prodding. What’s wrong, what is it. But Delainey couldn't articulate anything she was thinking, and the pressure of Roxane’s insistence only made it worse. She didn’t know if her voice would even work if she tried.
Finally Roxane gave up, setting her napkin lightly beside her on the table. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to find the ladies’ room.”
She still hasn’t returned.
But Delainey keeps telling the waiters otherwise.
She doesn’t feel bad about hogging the table. The restaurant’s emptied out by now, just a few sparse diners and the barman, and Delainey keeps her head tilted down into her third glass of wine.
Gradually she’s aware of a presence coming toward her, and she lifts her head to tell the waiter that he can clear the plates this time, no use pretending otherwise, but pulls up short.
“Sam,” she says. She sits up a little straighter, tries to act like she hasn’t been moping into a wine glass for the past half hour, and resists the urge to touch her hair or check her teeth.
Sam’s hair is pulled back in a scruffy bun, hands slouched in his pockets. Something about his face looks foreign to her. Lost, almost. It’s not an expression she’s used to seeing on him, and it unmoors her, slightly, like the table is tilting below her.
“Mind if I sit?” Sam asks, and then his far-away eyes seem to focus on the half-eaten plate. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re waiting for someone?”
“No,” she says, shoving the plate to the end of the table. “Be my guest.”
*
Roxane holds Assad’s gaze for a long moment. “I’d like that,” she says finally. “But I’m afraid I’m needed back in the dining room.”
Assad nods slowly. “No problem.” He doesn’t know why he’d assumed she’d come here alone, anyway. “I’ll walk with you, yeah? Left my jacket at the barstool.”
Back in the restaurant, most of the tables have emptied out, but a few straggling diners remain. Two of them make Assad do a double take. “Hey,” he says, nudging Roxane with his elbow. “Look at that, huh? Never would’ve guessed there was something going on with those two, but.” He shrugs, and Roxane follows his gaze to a petite table for two, where Sam and Delainey have their heads bent toward each other, Delainey’s hand cradling Sam’s jaw.
A shutter falls over Roxane’s face. “Ah,” she says, halting at the entrance of the hallway. “I forgot. I actually need to—head out, I think. Out the back.” She turns on her heel.
“Roxane,” he says, but she’s not stopping. Torn, Assad hesitates for a moment before darting into the bar area to grab his jacket—and Luke’s, abandoned on the seat beside his—and then bounds through the door to follow Roxane out the back.
The wind tosses stray bits of cardboard and empty plastic bottles along the alleyway. Roxane’s marching briskly toward the hotel, but Assad catches up easily. The joy of having legs longer than just about all of your costars. “Hey,” he says, reaching out for her arm, and she whirls to face him, something fierce and aggrieved in her expression.
“It’s about Delainey, right?” Assad asks. “Did something happen?”
Roxanne smiles thinly, shivers in the wind. Her hair is a dark red tornado around her. “Yes. No. I don’t know. God,” she groans, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. “I feel like a teenager again.”
Assad shrugs on his jacket and drapes Luke’s over her shoulders. Luke’s clothes are always a half-size too small for him, so it’s not a bad fit, but when she jostles it trying to tug it on, six foil-wrapped XL condoms spill from the pockets, landing on the cobblestone before immediately getting strewn about into the wind.
“Oh,” says Assad, watching them fly.
“Oh,” Roxanne repeats, voice sounding more normal as she tries to hold back a laugh. “You two had a busy night planned, I take it.”
Now it’s Assad’s turn to groan, and Roxanne laughs in earnest, stopping abruptly when Assad catches her waist. “Here’s a proposal,” he says. “I won’t ask about your situation if you won’t ask about mine.”
“Deal,” she says. And then they’re taking off hand in hand toward the hotel. Assad’s room, because it’s a lower floor, because he can’t wait even the extra minute it would take to climb the stairs. He doesn’t want to think about Luke’s hopeful pocketful of condoms blowing into the gutters, about the unanswered text from Eric burning on his darkened phone. He wants to think about getting his mouth on Roxane’s cunt, and so that’s what he does, hoisting her on the bed and hiking up her skirt, hands spreading flat on her hips as he pushes aside her panties and buries his head between her legs.
She’s gorgeous. The curling hair framing her pussy. The sounds she makes. How wet she is. How she tastes, rich and warm. How her fingers feel gripping his hair, directing him where to focus, lips closing over the head of her clit as he sucks until she’s gasping, but not too out of breath to ask, “Is this how you tongue your boys?”
“Not talking about it,” he grunts, and slides in fingers until she’s not asking anymore.
*
“So,” Luke says, fiddling with the TV and glancing back a little nervously. “The games for the PS4 are on the nightstand, if you want to pick.”
“Cheers,” Jacob says. He thumbs through the stack casually, and Luke gulps down a mouthful of one of the bitter Czech beers he's got stuffed in his fridge.
Jacob’s already finished his bottle, and the lines of his body are comfortable and loose as he inspects the titles. “Are some of these Nintendo?”
Luke winces. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to mix them together.” He scoots over to grab them, but Jacob closes a hand around his wrist to stop him.
“Did you bring a Switch, too?”
“Er, yeah,” Luke says, rubbing the back of his neck. And then, because he feels the need to justify himself, he adds, “I play Nintendo a lot with my little cousin. He likes those games.”
He neglects to add that David is twenty-four, not fourteen, and that Luke had bought all those games to play himself.
But Jacob doesn’t seem to mind, flipping busily through the games. “This is awesome, man. Why didn’t you ever mention this stuff earlier? Oh,” he brings one of the games close to his face, smile widening, “you’ve got the new Smash? I was pretty wizard at it on the GameCube, not gonna lie. Haven’t played this version, but I bet I can still beat you.”
“Oh, you’re on,” Luke grins.
An hour later, Luke hasn’t managed to win a single round, but he’s succeeded in reducing Jacob to side-stitching laughter with his stalwart refusal to stop playing as Princess Peach.
“Do you have something against strong women?” Luke asks.
“No, of course not. Which is why I find it offensive that you keep playing her just to blow it. You’re weakening her image. It’s anti-feminist.”
“Hey. I’m a brilliant feminist,” Luke says indignantly. “You’re talking to a 2019 attendee of the ASM Management Women’s Retreat. It’s not my fault you’re some—some Smash Bros prodigy.”
“It’s all in who you main,” Jacob corrects. “And I can’t help that Kirby’s got better powers. You’d know that, if you ever switched it up.”
“Not a chance. Have you seen that little kiss move I can do? No beating that.”
“Please. That thing is weak.”
“You think I’m a weak kisser?”
“Not what I said.”
“Cause I can show you,” Luke continues, too boldly, and then he’s leaning in and kissing Jacob.
Jacob’s lips are soft, but they don’t move. Luke pulls back, tentative. He might’ve been reading it wrong. He’s been known to do that.
But then Jacob kisses back, all gentle pressure and plush mouth. “Okay,” he says into Luke’s neck. “Maybe you’re a bit more powerful than Princess Peach.”
“Now who’s the anti-feminist?”
“Shut up,” Jacob says, one hand sliding around Luke’s waist and the other behind his ear, mouthing at Luke’s throat. Luke tosses his controller aside—cringing a little when it slams into the wall, he’s not sure if he can afford to lose the security deposit—then slides himself fully into Jacob’s lap.
He kisses Jacob with all the energy he’d been saving, and Jacob responds measure for measure. And it’s amazing, incredible, perfect, until real life starts to cut in through the beer-eased lust, and Luke’s heart starts to thump even faster. “Wait,” he pants. “I thought—uh, your wife, and, well, you and Sam—”
Jacob laughs, but not unkindly. “No offense, mate, but I’m not trying to marry either of you.” He licks at Luke’s earlobe. “So I don’t have a problem with it if you don’t.” Sucks a bruise under Luke’s jaw, lets the barest edge creep into his voice when he says, “But we can always stop, if you like.”
“No,” Luke gasps, even though it’s not quite making sense to him. “No, I need—”
His hard-on rubs painfully into his jeans, rutting against Jacob’s stomach, humiliation and hurt pounding through him until he nearly whines.
“Relax,” Jacob says. “It’s not a crime to enjoy yourself.” The words have the ring of tired repetition, like it’s an argument he’s used to having.
Before Luke can fumble it further, Jacob puts his hands on Luke’s hips and repositions him so his groin presses into Jacob’s, so Luke can feel the firm bulge against his own. Luke grinds on it instinctively. Jacob maneuvers them to recline back against the bed, so Luke is on top of him, and Jacob’s hips lift to meet Luke’s desperate humping.
“We can take these off, you know,” Jacob says, tugging on his jeans, but Luke shakes his head, body heating in the way he knows means he’s probably going pink all over.
“This is—fine,” he pants. He knows what Jacob said, but somehow it doesn’t feel as guilty if they leave the clothes on. And besides, he’d shoved his last handful of condoms in his jacket pocket like an idiot, and they’re currently still forgotten in the restaurant.
“Suit yourself.”
Luke kisses his jaw, his weekend stubble. Jacob smells good, fresh and clean, like something herbal that he wants to call eucalyptus. Luke’s t-shirt is dampened with sweat and he’s pretty sure he’s not giving soap-fresh right now, but if Jacob cares, he doesn’t show it, rocking up into Luke’s throbbing bulge. His dick is aching, pain and pleasure of the rough denim, the hard pressure of Jacob rubbing against him. It doesn’t take long for him to come, sticky and fast, seeping through his briefs. “Blimey,” he croaks. Buries his head in Jacob’s shoulder. Collapses on top of him, boneless, feels Jacob shudder and come below him, hands stroking over the small of Luke’s back.
They’re quiet for a moment. The game menu still blares from the TV, deep voice booming CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER at odd intervals. Jacob puts his hands on Luke’s head and slowly guides him up from his shoulder to look Jacob in the eye. “Hey,” Jacob says seriously. “Listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” Luke mumbles.
Firm pressure of fingertips on his cheeks, jaw caught in a trap of strong thumbs. Jacob’s almost stern expression as he says, “We’re not leaving this hotel room until you manage to beat me at least once. But I’m not going easy on you, so you better learn to change it up. Got it?”
Little shiver of pleasure at the command in his tone. Yeah. Yeah, Luke can do that, if Jacob’s telling him so nicely. What wouldn’t he do, if Jacob only asked.
“Got it.”
*
Sam lowers himself carefully into Roxane’s seat, and it’s the clear effort he expends in keeping the movement steady that lets Delainey know he’s a little intoxicated. Okay. So maybe that explains part of this, but not all.
Sam has always been somewhat of an enigma to her. Not like Jacob, whose role in her life was instantly legible from the moment she met him—warm and big-hearted and jocularly fraternal, someone she could joke with and tease, someone she could call ten years down the road and he’d still drop everything to help her. The kind of show-stopping but generous scene partner you’re always hoping to be paired with on set, then feel like you’ve won the lotto when you are.
It was different with Sam. It wasn’t that he wasn’t kind—because he was, and a consummate professional, ever-polite. But there was a stiffness to their interactions that she couldn’t quite decode. A tension, she’d call it when feeling optimistic, when she wanted to pretend that the way he spoke to her with unnecessary formality was obscuring some deeper feeling to the contrary.
An awkwardness, she’d call it, when she needed to keep it real.
By the time they got to Prague, some of it had eased, and Delainey thought maybe she’d imagined the whole thing. Overplayed it into something dramatic, when really Sam might just be a little shy. Sam was a bit like her, she’d noticed, in that he rarely ate with the main cast, unless it was him and Jacob. He took walks alone by the Vltava every morning, no matter the call time. She knew, because she’d seen him, on the occasions she managed to get up in time to squeeze in a jog. He always nodded at her politely but never attempted to draw her into conversation, which she appreciated. Sam clearly didn’t think she needed pity-babysitting just for being an introvert.
Sam does something with his face that might be a smile, but his lips never manage to curve beyond a flat line. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ears while Delainey gulps the rest of her wine.
The silence has been stretching too long. She needs to fill it before the tension eats her alive, so she opens her mouth, just as Sam does the same.
“So what are you—”
“Did you talk to Hannah about—”
They both break off, laughing awkwardly, and Sam holds up his hands in deference. “No, go ahead.”
“Um,” Delainey says. “The rest of the trial. Have you and Hannah chatted about how you’re playing that, yet?” She feels stupid as soon as she says it. This is Sam’s biggest scene of the season—he’d probably been talking about it before Delainey was even cast. She just meant—well. She’d read the script. Claudia looking at Lestat, Lestat looking back. They were a week out, but she’d been busy enough with the earlier scenes that it hadn’t come up yet.
Sam considers it seriously, though. “It’s a hard thing, isn’t it? That last exchange between Lestat and Claudia.” Something tingles in her that he’d known exactly what she was talking about. The same involuntary pulse of desire she’d always felt around professors, coaches, directors; anyone older, anyone with authority. Stop thinking about it. But his voice makes Claudia’s name something rich and smooth as butterscotch, and he’s looking at her so intently, like she matters, like he’d hang on her every word.
“I think it’s love,” Delainey says impulsively. “I mean. Not all of it. Clearly. But it’s still there. And—god, this sounds corny—but that’s what our show’s about, isn’t it?”
Sam mulls this over, not disagreeing. “You mean, me loving you, or you loving me?”
Delainey’s face warms, although slipping into personal pronouns when talking about their characters is something they do all the time. “You love me, I think. But—not enough to save me. And I’m looking at you like I know that, but part of me is still going, please. And I hate you so much, but the kind of hate you can only manage if you loved them once.”
Sam nods, slowly. “Want to practice?”
“What—now?”
Sam grins, and then his face morphs from slightly intoxicated older coworker to an immortal vampire on the brink.
Delainey’s not about to be outdone, so she pushes aside her wine glass and locks in. Lets her shoulders dip a little, neck hanging, eyes casting upward, pouring every drop of pain and confusion and betrayal into that look. Sam’s lower lip trembles. His eyes are glassy, his pupils wide as dinner plates. Whenever her friends saw pictures of him, they joked that he must be on something, for eyes like that. She wonders if they were right. She wonders what she looks like, right now, looking up at him.
She reaches out like she’s straining for him in the audience. How Claudia would, never to reach him. But Delainey is sitting two feet away and it’s not hard at all to touch his face. To cradle his smooth-shaven cheek. The air electrifies. The wind rattles the windows like a freight train, overhead lights flickering, then going out completely. Delainey holds her breath as darkness drops like a shroud. The whites of Sam’s eyes gleam in sparse candlelight. Her hand is moving, as if by its own accord, to his mouth. It only seems natural to brush her fingers on his lips. His lips, pulling the tips of her fingers into his mouth.
Interminable moment of blunt pressure on the pads of her fingers, the wet stroke of tongue. She’s breathing rapidly enough that she’s starting to feel a little lightheaded. Sam could be a statue, frozen under her touch, and the howl of the wind builds to a crescendo, echoes with the blood rushing in her ears.
At once, the lights blink back on. Clatter of plates, clinking of glasses from behind the bar. Soft murmur of conversations in English, Czech, German. The wind dims to a background hum. Without ceremony, Sam releases her fingers, and she withdraws them to her lap.
“Why did you come here tonight, Sam?” Delainey asks softly. “I thought you’d be with Jacob.”
Sam swallows. “I was,” he says. Smiles ruefully at the table. “But.” One shoulder rises in a blasé shrug that’s immediately undermined by the jittering of his knuckles against the tabletop, and then his body seems to sag, palms pressing into his eyes. He leaves them there for a moment, bracing the weight of his head. Says, more to himself than to her, “I’m so sorry. Don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ll—go back. Leave you alone.”
“You don’t have to,” she says, trying not to sound desperate, not to sound affected by the way she can still feel the indents of his teeth on her pointer finger. “It’s cool, really. I don’t mind.”
“Maybe you should.” He peels his hands from his eyes and looks up at her, terrible smile twitching in and out of life. “I’m ruining everything. Don’t let me ruin you too.”
Heat pours through her at the words. He looks like a mess. He looks like exactly how Delainey’s feeling.
“Whoa,” she says, trying to play it for a laugh, because what else is she supposed to say to that. “You know we’re not actually in a melodrama, right? No one’s ruining each other. That’s not, like, a thing that happens in real life.”
Silence for a moment, then a mask drops back over his face, the glimpse of anguish gone. Consummate professional. “Right,” he says. Scrape of his chair as he stands up, light press of his fist into the table. “Sorry for—all of this. Sorry. Hope you have a nice evening.”
Then he’s ducking out towards the exit before Delainey can blink, and she thinks: no. She doesn’t want to wait around for Roxane to remember she exists, or for someone else to take pity on her. So good of you to take the girl out. Right now, she just wants Sam, who got her fingers wet at the dinner table and nearly got the rest of her to follow, Sam who miraculously thinks he’s the fuckup, Delainey the normal one.
She digs a fistful of bills from her wallet and throws them on the table, then runs out after him.
*
Sobering up quickly in the cold air. Regrettable, but rectifiable. There’s a bar around the corner, he thinks. Hasn’t been there himself, but heard from the others the drinks are strong. Worth the risk of running into someone else he knows? Probably not, Sam, get it together.
Well. Heading there anyway. What’s another poor decision.
Inside the bar, blinking moment of disorientation. It’s not the neighborhood pub he’d imagined, but a claustrophobically lively nightclub. Flashing of strobe lights, pulse-quick pounding of techno. This, more than anything else, sobers him the rest of the way.
Sam ducks into the unattended coat check and leans his head against the wall.
What he wants most, right now, besides a stiff drink or a line of something stronger, is to talk to Jacob. Like the former, he’s almost certain the latter would make everything worse, no matter how good it would feel in the moment.
How badly he wants it anyway.
Yesterday night, Jacob’s voice on the phone, cool balm to the fever of his brain. Empty nest this weekend. Sam, knowing better, but weak, unable to stop himself. I could come over. Breath coming shallow and thin until Jacob assented.
He liked their section of Prague at night. The subdued quiet, just enough of a heartbeat to know it was still alive. Jacob’s house wasn’t far, but when he reached the door his face was sheened with sweat. He rapped his knuckles once and thought, come on, Sam. Not too late to do the right thing, this time. Nothing had to happen. They could just talk.
Jacob opened the door. Dark eyes gone soft and fond, thick lashes and five o’clock shadow, lean curve of his body draping against the door frame. Desire for him so acute that it felt like an injury.
They would not just talk.
Sam went inside anyway.
In the morning, waking to the warm fragrance of Jacob’s skin. Nose brushing the back of Jacob’s beautiful neck, slender and perfectly shaped, the point of his ear and the slight razor-burn irritation at the line of his hair. Happiness sprouting like an extra set of lungs. To feel Jacob beside him was to be able to breathe.
He lay there until it was impossible to ignore how bright the room had gotten, sun slatting in through cracks in the blinds. Sighing, he rolled over to pick up his phone from the cluttered nightstand and winced when he saw it was nearly afternoon. So many hours wasted—but then, they’d made up for it last night, hadn’t they. Warm feeling just to remember it. Jacob’s body blanketing his, touching each other like they shared one mind. Cradled by the rightness of that memory until he set the phone back down, and his eyes snagged on the small picture frame behind it.
Jacob and Aisling, smiles huge. In Jacob’s arms, their child, twisting in the stirrings of a tantrum. Stubby hand reaching out for her father’s face. Her father, looking at her with more love than anything in the world. Picture of wholesomeness and radiant devotion. Gorgeous photograph. Gorgeous family.
Sick weight dropping in Sam’s chest. Jesus Christ.
Impossible, then, not to be poisonously aware of how he’d spent the night on Aisling’s side of the bed. His face making indents on her pillow, his body pressing languidly into that of her husband’s. Smiling picture of her on the nightstand watching it all. Cuckoo infiltrating the sparrow’s nest, that’s what he was, and the hate he held for himself in that moment was like a hemorrhage.
Still, when Jacob woke, Sam was silent. Cowardly that way, wasn’t he always. Just a few more hours of pretending. Soaping each other’s backs in the eucalyptus-steamed shower. Dripping water in the potted plants, look, I named them after us. Eating floppy ham sandwiches in the sun-drenched kitchen, hips bumping together as they washed plates in the shallow sink, and Jacob’s easy expression through all of it. As if any of this were normal. As if Sam weren’t trapping Jacob in this malignant fantasy world of his own selfish desires. Sure, let’s play house, while I drink from a mug painted with your child’s handprint. Smile back at him, come on, Sam, you can do it.
But he couldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t as good an actor as he thought, because finally Jacob looked him in the eye and told Sam to just come out with it.
Fiddling with the lip of the mug. Difficult to talk about, even when asked directly. Finally Sam inhaled quick through his nose and said, “Look. You’ve got a great life. A wonderful one.” Brief twitch of his smile to show Jacob he wasn’t bitter, and then, quietly, “I’m not going to be the one to ruin it for you.”
Funny look in Jacob’s eye. “Is that what you think you’re doing? Cause I thought we were having a nice day, to be quite honest. And a nice night before that.”
Sam rolled his lips under his teeth. Same frustrating obtuseness he always gets, some misguided attempt at sparing Sam’s feelings, but Sam won’t let him get away with it this time. “Jacob. You know.”
“No, I don’t,” Jacob said, deliberately airy. “Because I’ve told you how it is on my end. But for some reason, you don’t seem to believe me.”
Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. “Because this is wrong. If anyone found out, you know the internet. Christ, when your daughter’s old enough for school—the things she could read, the things people could say to her—”
“Calm down. There’s already gifs of our bare arses together, I think we’ll survive.”
“That’s different,” Sam said, and the composure in Jacob’s voice only made Sam’s grow more agitated. “You did a gay role. So what? Doesn’t have to mean anything, you know that. You’ve done straight ones, too, and way more of them. You haven’t crossed any lines you can’t walk back.”
Jacob shook his head, squinting at Sam like he couldn't figure him out. “What’s this really about, Sam? My marriage? Because I’ve told you a hundred times. I love my wife. And she loves me. And we’re both adults, and we’re both in this industry, and we both understand that things in our situations can get a little—complicated.” He spread his palms, picked up his mug and put it back down, then looked back at Sam, eyes dark and intent. “Like, we’d had it out about this stuff years ago. Decided all of it before getting married, what we were cool with, what we weren’t. And I told you this was cool.” He looked away, and his voice changed slightly. “So I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little insulting that you won’t respect me enough to believe I’m capable of deciding that for myself.”
“That’s not—”
“Oh, it’s not? Then what is it, exactly—my sexuality?” Something hard and bitter in his tone. “Please tell me you’re not actually trying to save my soul.”
Said it like a joke, but wasn’t it true? Sam had corrupted him, him and his beautiful family. Taken them outside the realm of normality and into something secret and perverse, something that could cost Jacob everything, employment and respect and relations with his loved ones. Rumors that could follow him forever, could even affect custody of his kid, with the way the world was going. Jesus. Sick feeling again. True, maybe if Sam weren’t here, it would’ve been someone else. Roxane, maybe, all that time spent sucking at her neck on set. But there was a leniency the world granted those kinds of affairs. They weren’t dangerous. They weren’t unnatural. They weren’t a perversion of the soul.
“I’m just saying,” Sam said, “that if you’ve got these—urges. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to find a woman you could fuck instead.”
For a moment, the room was dead silent. Hum of the refrigerator. Intermittent drip of water from the tap. Then Jacob laughed, a short, rough sound, harsh like the breaking of glass. “Wow. Okay. Not even going to unpack that. Look, if you want to play the tortured Puritan, be my guest. But leave me the fuck out of it.”
Happy to.
In his room, bottle of whisky. Pill or two, what was the harm. Sense of utter aloneness, complete alienation from the rest of the living world. Like God had drawn a line between all that was good and all that was rotten and he’d ended up on the wrong side, beating ineffectually at the glass, watching everyone he loved depart without him. Better for everyone if he just—
Needed to talk to someone, anyone. Walking quickly through the street, down towards the restaurant where he was bound to find at least one familiar face. Hoping for Ben. Hell, even Alan or Craig. Someone older, someone with experience, someone to calm him down.
Instead he’d found Delainey.
Look how that had turned out.
Can’t stay in this coat check much longer. Can’t get himself to move, either.
Rush of cold air, all sound sucking out into the vacuum of the wind as the door opens. And there she is, once again. Almost deliriously attractive in her short skirt and long boots. Brushing back her windswept hair, strobe light catching on her luminous brown skin. So young. Another mistake he’d almost made. Not too late on that one, though. Can still stop himself before the rot in him infects her too.
“Hey,” she says, and his nerves relax by a fraction. Steadying property to the sound of her voice, like a grounding rod or warm mouthful of cognac. No, you’re sick in the head, Sam, she’s just talking. Don’t take advantage of that, too. “It’s rude to run out on people.”
Faint beads of perspiration on her temples. Chest heaving a little, and he tries not to watch the rise and fall of her breasts through the open neck of her shirt. She catches him at it anyway, intercepting his gaze with cool, determined eyes, and he looks away. Flicker of shame.
He takes a half step back, but she only draws closer. “Delainey,” he warns, her name a half-tortured sound under his breath. But even as he speaks he’s pulling her near to him. Dragging his mouth over her neck. Hands on her hips, body so small and compact beneath his. Breathing the floral traces of her perfume, low ragged sounds falling into his ears. Parting her lips with his tongue.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, kissing her again, and then again, because he is weak, has always been weak. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Stroke of her tongue, the sweet purity of her mouth. Press of her knee between his thighs. “I want this.”
Simple words. Shouldn’t strike him so deeply, but for whatever reason, they do. She wants this. Sound body and mind, and she wants this. And he can do that for her.
He draws them deeper into the racks until rows of coats swallow them whole, then slides his hand under her skirt.
*
Assad is having a fantastic night.
Sex with Roxane was fantastic. Eating her out, the wetness of her cunt pushing everything else from his mind. The way she rode him, tight clench of her body around his cock, begging her to go harder, faster, and she was more than happy to oblige. Pulled his hair when he asked, scratched her long nails down his chest until it was marked with thin, angry lines. Didn’t laugh at him or anything, seemed to know instinctively what he needed and the force required to deliver it.
In the quiet afterwards, pain and pleasure receding, things were slightly less fantastic. His thoughts circled back inevitably to where they’d started. Image of Luke playing video games alone, a solitary, boy-like figure silhouetted in the television glow. Image of Eric sitting on the edge of his bed, glancing alternately between his big silver watch and then his phone. Brilliant job, Assad. If it’s just sex, no one would get hurt, isn’t that what you told yourself? Class A performance right there.
Roxane was walking back from the mini fridge, Assad’s t-shirt skimming the tops of her thighs. Devastatingly sexy, but he could barely muster the energy to smile at her. She gave him an equally wan one in return, then held up a single bottle of beer. “Last one.”
“Cheers,” he said, and she climbed back into bed beside him.
For a while they flipped halfheartedly through channels, passing back and forth the beer and his pen. They watched the last twenty minutes of some mindless, Czech-dubbed cartoon on Adult Swim, and then the beer ran out.
Assad set down his pen. “So,” he said.
“So we should go dancing,” Roxane nodded, like that was the only sensible conclusion of his thought. And shit, maybe it was. Not like he had anything better planned.
She got up off the bed, found her skirt balled on the floor and tugged it back on. “I’m keeping your shirt, though,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ll have to find something else.”
“Menace,” he said. But he liked the look of it on her anyway, the androgynous bent it gave her outfit when paired with the long, slit-leg skirt.
Stretching his arms to his sides, his fingers skimmed something silky smooth among the sheets. Roxanne’s discarded top, the lace neckline cut in a deep V. Flowy fabric. Adjustable straps. “Think I’ve found something,” he said.
Inside the club, the music is fantastic. The house mix throbs under his skin, electric and pulsing, annihilating three-quarters of his worries with the force of its hypnotic beat. An espresso martini takes care of the rest, and then he’s soaring.
Assad looks fantastic, too, if he can be so vain as to admit it. Roxane’s silky top stretches over his chest, hem sitting above his navel, the chill air on his bare stomach keeping his nipples erect through the thin fabric. His eyes he’d lined with subtle kohl, and his lips are glossed from contact with Roxane’s. No wonder he’s getting looks, he thinks, and the attention makes him swing his hips a little more, throw his shoulders back and dance with more provocation. But it’s all for fun, really. The only one he’s looking at is Roxane. Enough complications in his life as it is.
Roxane is a fantastic dancer. The twirl of her skirt, the bare flashes of her thigh, the undulation of her body under the strobing lights. It’s brilliant. He wants to take a picture of her, arms thrown carelessly above her head, gorgeous as a still from a film scene. He wishes he had his camera, but his phone will do, though the screen is still dark. Why? Out of battery? No, he’d just turned it off. He powers it up, and after a moment the missed texts buzz through.
One at 8:15. Get lost on ur way?
8:19. Still in room 44 genius.
8:44. U ok kid?
Nothing after that. What time is it now? Past ten.
He stows his phone away before he can start to panic and takes a deep gulp from his martini. Fantastic bartenders, too, perfect bitterness of the vodka marrying with the smoothness of the liqueur.
Perfect evening. Never been happier.
It’s still early, but the club is filling steadily. He recognizes Joseph in one corner, Genevieve in another. Some of the crew, too; the team that does his hair and makeup. Lovely people. He should go say hello, shouldn’t he? They’ll be so happy he’s wearing eyeliner, always telling him he was made for it. He’s taken a few steps through the crowd when Jacob and Luke walk through the door. Together.
Okay. That’s—unexpected, for sure. But it’s not like Assad cares. Luke can hang out with anyone he wants, of course he can. No problem. Fantastic.
He watches Jacob throw his jacket in the coat check. Luke, jacketless, rubs his arms a little from the chill, eyes scanning over the crowd and immediately finding Assad’s.
Assad full-body pivots back to Roxane, face burning. She hasn’t noticed anything. Eyes half closed, still lost in the music. Assad puts her hands on her hips and tries not to look anywhere else. Cool air on the bare skin of his stomach, door opening once more. Don’t think about it. Just feel the heat of her against you. Nothing else matters.
But Roxane must feel the disturbance in the Force, because she’s looking around now, and her body goes rigid when she spots something over Assad’s shoulder. She stutters back a few feet. And fuck, he’s afraid to look, but it’s just Sam. Oh—and Delainey. Well. Explains why Roxane’s gone tense as a rod.
Selfishly, he wants to pull her close again, wants to keep hiding in the skin of her neck and hope that everyone he knows clears out. But that’s not fair. Roxane has been kind to him tonight, far more than he deserves. It’s okay, he mouths to her. Go get ‘em.
With a nod, she touches his arm, then parts through the crowd toward Delainey.
Assad turns back to the bar, wondering whether another martini would make things better or worse and deciding he doesn’t care either way. Tap at his shoulder. He doesn’t turn. Could be someone just brushing by. Crowded in here, after all.
Another tap, more insistent this time. “Assad.” Luke’s voice, and there’s no hiding, not anymore. “Um, hi— blimey, you look fantastic,” he says when Assad finally turns to face him, raking his eyes up and down over Assad’s chest with all the subtlety of a cartoon character. And it’s so patently ridiculous, so earnestly horny, that Assad can’t help but laugh a little, reaching out to touch his wrist in greeting.
“Thanks, Luke. You look nice as well.”
“Ach,” Luke waves him away, cheeks pinkening. But he does look nice. Different pants, brown and white chequered pattern tight against his hips. Hair a little wilder than before.
The bartender comes back with Assad’s drink, and he takes the excuse to look away. Sips for a moment, and then, eyes on his glass, says, “Listen. There’s some things I need to talk to you ab—”
“No,” Luke cuts in, forceful despite the slight quaver of his voice, and Assad’s surprised enough to look up. Luke’s worrying at his bottom lip, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “Can I just—please, just let me say mine first. Because I get it now. Casual, right? That’s all you wanted, and I see that, I respect it. And I won’t ask for more, I promise. So you don’t have to be worried about anything. Like, I know you’re not trying to marry me, it’s just a bit of fun, right? Don’t have to get any feelings involved—”
Assad kisses him. After a moment of complete stillness, during which Assad starts to genuinely worry that Luke’s heart had stopped, Luke cautiously kisses back.
“What if I want feelings involved?” Assad says in his ear, close to be heard over the music. “What if I don’t want casual.”
Luke pulls back a little. His voice is uncharacteristically sharp. “Don’t make fun of me. I—there’s no need to be cruel.”
Pain, deep like a bellyache. Luke’s half-downturned eyes, slight wobble of his lower lip. “Luke,” Assad says, as gently as he knows how. “I’m not. I like you. A lot. More than I’ve wanted to admit, to be honest.”
Luke’s throat bobs. “What are you saying?” Still wary.
“I’m saying I want to date you,” Assad says, looking directly into his eyes. “I’m saying I want to fuck you and I want you to fuck me and I want you to stay after for breakfast and FIFA and the Arsenal match, even though your team is shit, which I’ll prove when you stay to watch Newcastle.” He can see it all as he says it. A hundred happy mornings unspooling in front of him. Luke’s cramped, sunshiney room in Los Angeles and Assad’s cramped, ever-gray flat in London. Airport pickups, shy grins, I’ve missed you. Making each other come on the car ride home, barely able to wait for a red light.
The corners of Luke’s mouth are tugging up. But then he asks, carefully, “When you say date me. Does that mean only me?”
Assad swallows. U ok kid? Sent two hours ago, unanswered.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly, closing his eyes for a minute. “Can that be something we work out as we go?”
Luke’s silent for a moment, thinking, and Assad holds his breath. Then Luke says, “God yes, if it means I get to keep doing this,” and then he’s kissing Assad, again and again, lips on cheeks and throats, broad hands sliding up the bare skin of Assad’s back. Assad’s hands are cupping the thick curve of Luke’s arse in his silly chequered pants, and their foreheads are tipping together, tacky skin against skin, and Assad whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”
*
The music in this club would’ve only been cool, like, ten years ago. Maybe. If she’s being generous. But that’s not going to stop Delainey from having a great fucking night.
It’s already on the upswing. The way Sam had touched her, the illicit thrill of risking discovery, though the closest they’d gotten was someone tossing a black denim jacket on the rack nearby. Still, that must’ve been enough for Sam, because he’d taken one look at the thing and gone white as a sheet. Delainey could tell not much was going to happen after that, but that was okay. She felt buoyed by her own daring. The pleasure that brought her was enough for now.
Out on the main floor, colors and sounds collide in a bright cacophony. She spots people she knows immediately, but it doesn’t feel as grating as it did in the restaurant. She’s just glad to be here. Nothing to prove.
Sam dances by her side for a bit, but then he melts away into the crowd. That’s okay, too. Jacob’s here, she’d noticed, and it’s clear they have something to work out. She can relate, anyway, as she spots Roxane cutting through the mob towards her.
“Hi,” Roxane says, and she seems a little nervous, tugging at the collar of her oversized t-shirt.
Weirdly, Delainey isn’t nervous, not at all. “Hey,” she says, voice cool. “Got lost on your way to the ladies’ room, I take it?”
Roxane’s face flushes a bit, but her voice is equally cool when she says, “No, just stopped to say hello to a friend. It seemed my date was no longer interested in speaking to me, so I assumed she wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh, so I was your date, then?” Delainey lifts an eyebrow, and a little bitterness seeps through her composure. “I thought I was just your charity case for the week, you know. Doing your duty to bring the girl out of her shell, and all that.”
Roxane frowns with seemingly genuine confusion. She steps closer, dropping the aloof tone they’d both been using. “Is this about what Esme said? Did that seriously bother you?”
“Of course it bothered me,” Delainey hisses. “And you just sat there and didn’t say anything to refute it.”
“I didn’t think I had to! Been in bed with you barely an hour before, thought that made it pretty obvious how I felt.”
“I never find it obvious how you feel,” Delainey says, harsh, biting out the words. She looks away, blinking back a prickle of wetness at the corner of her eyes. No crying, she tells herself. Great fucking night, remember? “I don’t know,” she says after a moment. “I guess I thought… maybe you were just being nice, or something. Maybe you do that stuff with everyone.”
“Not like that, I don’t,” Roxane says. “Oh, Delainey. Esme’s a loudmouth idiot. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that sooner—and didn’t tell her, to her face.”
Delainey laughs. “I mean. She’s not all bad.”
“No, but I’m trying to make a grand point,” Roxane says. “I want to defend my maiden’s honor. Do you think she’s in this club?” Roxane twists over her shoulder to look. “Because I’ll tell her right now, swear to God. That little tart can mind her own business, or I’ll—”
“Roxane,” Delainey says, pulling her in by the wrist, “please do not cause an HR-violating incident on my behalf.” And then they’re both laughing, relieved but still tentative, as Roxane’s arms settle around Delainey’s shoulders.
“Dance with me?” Roxane asks, voice soft, and Delainey can only nod.
*
As soon as Luke steps away from Jacob’s side, Sam cuts in to take his place.
Jacob tenses when he sees him, but doesn’t turn away, which is probably more than Sam deserves.
“So,” Sam says, clearing his throat. “You and Luke, is that right? Found someone who could have fun without—how’d you put it—being a ‘tortured Puritan’ about it?”
“Right,” Jacob says, crossing his arms, then uncrossing them and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well. Sort of.” Sam waits for a minute. “I think,” Jacob continues, “that I forgot how…complicated, it can be, for someone on the outside of it.”
“Mmm,” Sam says. They’re sequestered at the edge of the crowd, where they have the dual advantage of relative quiet and a good view of everyone else. Sam watches for a moment as Assad tries to ignore Luke tapping his shoulder. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I think I forgot how to listen when you tell me what you want.”
“Yeah,” says Jacob. “Forgot how not to be an arsehole, too.”
“Ouch.”
“Deserved, mate.”
“Yeah,” Sam says, sighing heavily, “it was. I really am sorry, Jacob. The last thing you need is me telling you what to do.”
They watch the crowd for a minute; Luke’s eyes are now locked cartoonishly on Assad’s bosom.
Jacob glances at Sam sidelong. “I’m sorry, too. I can tell you’ve got some—stuff, maybe, that’s weighing on you." He hesitates for a moment. "Maybe some stuff about us being blokes.”
Sam stiffens a little. “I’m not homophobic.”
“Not saying you are,” Jacob says mildly. “Just saying things can be hard, sometimes.”
Well. That much is true, isn’t it. And here’s Jacob, too good for him as always, looking at him with more kindness than Sam has ever earned. “I’m sorry,” he groans, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’ve cocked everything up, haven’t I.”
Hands on his waist, rubbing over the bones of his hip. Oh, air again, at that touch. Breath in his lungs. Jacob peels Sam’s hands from his eyes. “You haven’t cocked it up,” Jacob murmurs, then a mischievous glint enters his eye. “But if you wanted to make it up to me, I wouldn’t be opposed…”
“Yeah,” Sam says, pressing his nose against Jacob’s. “Yeah, I can do that.”
*
Talking to Jo always puts Eric in a good mood. After forty years, the sound of her mellow voice is still a security blanket and aphrodisiac all at once. God, he loves her. Misses her. She’s in Berlin for a workshop this week, and even the thought of her on the same continent is comforting.
When he gets off the phone, he still has plenty of time to get ready before Assad comes over. He straightens up a little, dusts off some of the crumbs from his side table and digs out his favorite bottle of lube. Gets distracted hate-reading some Atlantic article, then jumps when he realizes it’s already 8:05.
Assad is usually scarily punctual. Like, knocking politely at Eric’s door the second the clock ticks over from 7:59 to 8. Well, maybe the nerd is finally loosening up a little, Eric thinks fondly, and settles back on the bed to wait.
By 8:15, though, Eric is a little miffed. He sends a quick text on the off chance that Assad forgot, and then another.
Staring at his empty bed for a moment, he shrugs, then takes out his cock. Might as well get started, Assad there or not.
No shortage of things to think about, that’s for sure. He gets his hand on his dick and begins to stroke, picturing Assad’s long, slender fingers, the way his acrylics clack together when he adjusts his grip, the unthinkable eroticism of watching them drag teasingly over Eric’s slit. Jo was never big on nails herself. Too impractical, utility-wise and cost-wise, she always said. Eric wouldn’t even be able to picture them on her, but he loves the feel of her natural hands. Her square, blunt nails, her soft palms, the way she sometimes kept her ring on when she fingered him, just to torture him a little. He’s working himself faster now, cock growing hard and aching, and maybe he’d better slow down a bit, doesn’t want to come before Jo even—
No. Assad. It was Assad he was waiting for, not Jo. Get it together, Eric, can’t be jerking off to your wife while you’re waiting for your extramarital hookup.
But Assad is forty minutes late, and Eric’s been around long enough to recognize when to throw in the towel.
He sends one last text just to check, comforting himself that if something was seriously wrong, Jacob or Sam or one of the millions of cast group chats would’ve told him by now.
Then he pulls up the train schedule.
Only four and a half hours to Berlin. If he catches the next one, he’ll be there in time to make sure Jo gets a hearty filling of his bratwurst before her morning meetings, and he can take the train back the next night. Maybe it’s impractical, maybe not. You need to see the people you love. In seventy years, Eric’s never found anything more important than that.
He grabs items at random—passport and lube, those are the big ones—and shoves them in a backpack, then hustles out the door.
On the way to the train platform, it hits him that he’d forgotten condoms. Shit. They’d started using them again when they both picked up some extramarital affairs, trying to be courteous to all involved parties. But old habits die hard. Most times, Eric still needs to be reminded.
The wind howls then, ruffling his hair and screwing at his eyes, and something smacks directly into the middle of his chest. “Would you look at that,” Eric wonders, finding a foil-wrapped condom in his palm. XL, even. Perfect size. Sometimes the universe just smiles on you.
*
Eric gets a text after Jo’s gone off to work.
Hey, Eric. Apologies about last night. Something came up, but it was rude of me not to let you know. I’m really sorry.
Eric grins. Poor kid’s probably tying himself in knots over it. He stretches his shoulders, feels the lingering warmth from Jo’s side of the bed, and types back:
No problem, kid. Catch U next time.