Meet You There

Mojokitten

I seem to have written more Gale/Randy. Right. Considering I can usually barely scrape 2000 words, this is also like the longest fic I've written. (not counting my long abandoned 30,000+ word Dawson's Creek epic. it was fun being fourteen.) And I wrote it at a rate of about one word a day, so it took forever, even though very little happens. RPS, kids. It'll fuck you up.

(It's named for a Busted song. Heh. I feel the N*Sync songfics are not far behind. But. I like the song. I downloaded it from Elly's badass mp3 rotation site. I like Elly, too. In fact, this is for her, because she's cool, and reads fic when she doesn't even know the fandom. And also for qafhappy. This was supposed to be much pornier for her, but I just cannot handle the sex.)

Criticism is more than welcome.

rating: they say ‘fuck’ and have sex.
disclaimer: this never happened, it never will. gale harold and randy harrison are real people that I am using as fictional characters for entertainment purposes, which is probably morally questionable, but nevertheless fun.

small spoiler for like QaF 406



*******************

Where’s the world the doesn’t care?
Maybe I could meet you there –
Busted, ‘Meet You There’



1.


He woke up.

He woke up way too suddenly, blood rushing through his veins and slamming into his heart and he sat bolt upright, eyes wide open in the dark. It took him a moment to process where he was. The pain in his neck clued him in; asleep on the motherfucking sofa, again. Then he heard his cell phone, the obnoxious sound that woke him up, ringing and vibrating against the coffee table. He grabbed for it, the screen glowing green in the dark room. Reaching out, he knocked a half drunk mug of cold coffee off the table, and heard the crack of the mug and the coffee splash out.

‘Fuck,’ he said, to no one, and then flipped the phone open, put it to his ear and mumbled something that he hoped sounded like hello.

‘It’s Randy,’ the voice on the end of the line said. ‘I need you to come get me.’

‘Randy,’ said Gale, processing the two statements one at a time. ‘You need me to what?’

‘Come and get me.’

Gale played this over in his head a few times until it made some sort of sense. ‘Randy, what the fuck?’

‘I need you. To come and get me.’

Gale blinked, his eyes slowly focussing. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

-

It was raining as Gale backed his truck onto the road, lighting a cigarette, one hand on the steering wheel. He flicked on the headlights and looked at the fat drops of water caught in the light as they hit the road. He hoped Randy wasn’t waiting for him outside. Fucking idiot. He probably was. The roads were empty (of course they were empty) so he let himself roll over the speed limit, humming under his breath. He shook his head, trying to wake up properly, and when it didn’t work, flicked on the radio. Soft rock music rattled the speakers. (Time to get new speakers, he thought. He was on TV now. He could afford a decent fucking car stereo.)

It took half an hour of driving around the outskirts of a city he still couldn’t navigate properly till he found the street. He’d scribbled the name on the back of his hand in black biro, the only bit of information Randy could manage as to where he was. He saw Randy straight away, sitting on the steps outside some massive white house, his knees tucked under his chin, looking comically wet and despondent. Gale thought he could see coloured lights flickering in the windows of the house and wondered if it was a party. He pulled the truck up against the sidewalk and waited. Randy’s head jerked up in the headlights, and he got to his feet and jogged up the truck, one hand pushing wet hair out of his eyes.

‘What’s a nice boy like you -,’ Gale started to say as Randy climbed into the car, but he shut his mouth when he saw Randy’s expression. Randy sat down, slammed the door shut and stared straight ahead.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Gale glanced at him. Randy’s eyes were wide and he could see a muscle twitching in his jaw. ‘Yeah, thanks very much Gale, for trekking out to Buttfuck, Toronto, at 3 a-fucking-m to pick me up, I really appreciate it, you’re a great guy, if there’s ever anything I can –’

‘Let’s do this later, okay?’ There was a note of urgency in Randy’s voice. ‘Let’s go. Now.’

‘Fine.’ Gale started the engine, watching Randy in the corner of his eye. ‘Are you okay?’ he said, carefully.

‘I’m fine. Let’s just go.’

Gale pulled back out into the road and did a U-turn to head back the way he’d come. Randy’s irritation hummed, filling the truck. Bad vibes. Gale was biting the inside of his lip to stop from making stupid jokes to diffuse the badness, knowing it would only piss Randy off more.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Randy, as they pulled onto the highway that headed back home.

‘Okay,’ said Gale, with effort, half thinking he deserved some sort of fucking explanation for why he was driving around in torrential rain at 3am, half not caring.

Randy shook his head, droplets of water spinning off his hair.

‘There should be a towel on the backseat,’ said Gale.

Randy twisted round to look. ‘Oh, yeah. Thanks.’ He grabbed it and rubbed his face with it, before pausing and sniffing. ‘This smells of… this smells of dog, Gale.’

‘Oh, yeah. It might.’

Gale saw Randy’s glare out of the corner of his eye, but decided to ignore it. ‘Nearly home,’ he said, although they weren’t, at all, and his falsely cheerful voice reminded him of his dad on long family car journeys.

‘It was a party,’ said Randy, after a short silence. ‘A bad party.’

‘Okay,’ said Gale, trying to sound sort of disinterested, although he was interested, because Randy didn’t go to parties, ever. He hated them. When he was forced to go to them he sat in corners, getting drunk, until someone gave him an excuse to go home. Gale knew, because he’d helped Randy escape from cast parties and press parties and whateverthefuck parties a million times. Randy would idle up to him, blind drunk and swaying slightly, and whisper in his ear, ‘Come outside with me.’

‘What?’ Gale would say, smelling alcohol and mint on Randy’s breath as it hit his face, and trying to ignore the way his cock twitched when Randy leaned against him to support himself.

‘Come outside with me for five minutes, and then come back in and tell everyone I had a family emergency and had to leave.’

‘What?’

‘Tell them it was a death. Tell them I’m really upset.’

Yeah. Randy hated parties. Gale glanced at him quickly and then looked carefully back at the road. ‘So where’s your car?’

‘It’s at home,’ he said. ‘Someone gave me a lift.’

‘Right.’ Gale leaned forward, squinting through the windshield. The wipers weren’t holding out too well against the rain, and he couldn’t really see. Oh well. Wasn’t like there was anyone else on the roads to crash in to.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Randy said again.

‘I know. Did I say anything? I didn’t say anything.’

‘Good. So just don’t.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Good.’

‘Fine.’

They drove in silence for a while. Gale was usually okay with silence, but right now he wanted some conversation, something to keep him awake.

‘I need to get gas,’ he said, although he was pretty sure he had enough to get them home. But he could see the lights of a gas station ahead, and he’d smoked his last cigarette on the drive out. Time to restock.

‘Okay,’ said Randy. He leaned forward and started drumming his fingers on the dashboard.

‘You’re not like very tired, are you?’ said Gale.

‘Why should I be?’

‘Uh, I don’t know, have you looked at your watch lately?’

‘Are you tired?’ said Randy. In Gale’s tired, tired brain, his voice sounded vaguely accusing.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Yes. It’s four in the morning.’

‘I’m not tired.’

‘Yeah. I got that.’

-

The year they’d met, the first year of filming, Gale remembered being tired all the time. He was working longer hours than he could ever remember, and he went through four alarm clocks before he found one that could withstand being thrown against the wall when it went off at 6am. In interviews he talked about exciting and challenging and growing as an actor, and it was, he did, it was a headfuck exciting year and he remembered his phone ringing almost constantly. He remembered trying to sleep through it. The exhaustion got pushed to one side by that constant hum of excitement, new things, fame, blinking under camera flashes, so he spent the whole first year in a state similar to the 3am caffeine highs in college when he’d stayed up all night to finish a paper, that completely artificial awakeness.

His agent organised interviews in hotel rooms and discreet restaurants and it was a while before Gale learned to do them on autopilot, before he got his stock answers just right.

Interviews reminded him of high school, and the careers counsellor, Mrs. Benson, who worked in a cupboard in the basement of the science building, a hot windowless room where Mrs. Benson’s plants always died.

‘But what do you want to do, Gale? I know what you like, but what do you want to do?’ She was always leaning across the desk, clapping her hands together, giving him leaflets.

‘Um. Like. Art?’ he remembered saying, studying a spot on the wall behind her head.

She’d stared at him, hoping for more, and Gale felt bad, like he’d failed a test.

‘Most of the gay men I work with assume I’m straight, so…’

Endless journalists tapped their pens against their notebooks, waiting for more, and Gale had stared at the walls behind them, until he’d learned the precise brand of bullshit that they’d swallow.

-

Inside the gas station, electric lights buzzed over Gale’s head, hurting his eyes. He grabbed chocolate and cigarettes and paid, ignoring the who’s that guy? Do you know him from somewhere, isn’t he on TV? look the two cashiers exchanged, and when he got back to the truck, Randy wasn’t there.

‘Um,’ said Gale, looking through the windows at the seat where he’d left him. He shoved his cigarettes in his back pocket, tossed the chocolate onto the front seat, and wandered back to the store, wondering if Randy had gone inside. He hadn’t, and Gale sat down on the concrete paving outside and lit a cigarette, because there was nothing else to do when Randy did weird shit like this. It had stopped raining, but the ground was still wet, and Gale winced as he felt the damp seeping into his jeans.

Randy did weird shit like this a lot, Gale had noticed. He just – he was impulsive, or something. Temperamental. He wandered off on his own a lot. Sometimes he did it in the middle of conversations, and Gale would be left pretty much talking to himself. Those first weeks, he’d thought it was pretty rude, added it to the list of Things Not To Like About Randy he’d started making in his head, which included too young, too clever, and this one way of smiling he had, really careful like he’d practised it, that he always used when he knew something you didn’t. He spent half of the first year smiling at Gale like that.

‘What’s up with you?’ Gale would say, his voice harder than he meant it to be.

‘Nothing.’

But Gale was persistent, and would nudge his shoulder and follow him around saying ‘What? Come on, tell me. What’s up?’

‘There’s nothing up with me,’ Randy would say eventually, his voice flattening out and going heavy on the me, and Gale would decide not to pursue what ever cryptic clues Randy was dropping him that day. What went on in Randy’s head was Randy’s business. He just had to work with him. He didn’t have to like him.

Except he did really have to like him, because they had to spend a whole bunch of time rolling around naked together and Gale wasn’t really professional enough to do that convincingly with someone he didn’t like. So he’d made an effort to like him, and pretty soon it wasn’t that much effort. Once he’d figured him out.

Randy was just odd, was just weird like – a weird person, and eventually Gale decided to be okay with it. He could be weird too, anyway. He knew that.

He jumped when he heard Randy hiss his name, and when he turned he saw him beckoning to Gale from round the corner of the station. Gale rolled his eyes, sighed, and hauled himself to his feet, tossing his cigarette to the ground and watching sparks of ash bounce across the pavement before he ground it out under his foot.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said Gale, walking over to him.

‘I’m fucking hiding. Come here.’ When Gale got close enough he grabbed his arm and yanked him around the corner, pulling him out of sight of the truck and the one other customer and into an unlit alley, sandwiched between the gas station and some other abandoned-looking building.

‘So, is this a game? Because I’ll need to know the rules.’

‘It’s him. He’s back.’

‘Elvis?’

Randy stared at him.

‘Jesus?’

Randy pressed his hand against his forehead. ‘For fuck’s – no. Him. He’s parked next to you. That guy.’

A light clicked on in Gale’s head. ‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Yes. I’m sure. Shit.’

Gale was never good in these situations, bad situations. He never had a plan. He was not the person you should call on. He was liable to make bad jokes that made everything worse. He knew these things instinctively about himself. When problems came up, Gale liked to light a joint, sit back, think about it for a few hours, then maybe tentatively offer a solution.

‘So let’s just go,’ he tried.

‘Are you kidding? He’ll follow us. He’ll find out where we live. He wants to kill me.’

‘He doesn’t. He’s in love with you. If anyone’s getting killed, it’s me. He thinks I treat you like shit and got you a hustler for your birthday.’

Randy shut his eyes and dropped his head onto Gale’s shoulder. Gale heard him mutter something that sounded like Justin fucking Taylor.

‘Don’t blame it on Justin. I like Justin. He’s nice.’

‘I’m nice.’

‘You’re not that nice.’

Gale felt Randy sigh heavily against his shoulder. He slid his arms around his waist and tugged Randy towards him, pressing their bodies close together. He wondered if this whole night was actually turning out to be kind of exciting, the stalker and the dark alley and shit, yeah. It was kind of fun, really. Then Randy said -

‘This is such a bad day. A bad, bad day.’

- and Gale thought, okay, fine. Not fun.

Gale’s day hadn’t been that bad, although he hadn’t actually done anything that he could remember, so he wasn’t going to class it as good. He’d watched films, smoked a lot, ran out of coffee, gone to the store on the corner, bought some more. Spread scripts across his carpet, carefully, in order. Then messed them up trying to find a missing page. Fallen asleep and been woken up by Randy calling him. Not a bad day.

He knew what bad days were like. He’d had plenty. Different types for different stages of his life – bad days in college, with late papers and failed papers and girls he’d accidentally stood up crying on the phone. Bad days after, when his mother rang him every day to find out what his plans were, when he was going to settle down, choose a career.

Bad days now were days like when Randy wasn’t on set, days when he had to film sex scenes with extras, who’d thought they could handle it but freaked out as soon as they had to take their clothes off, and their tension and pissy attitudes rubbed off on everyone. Gale could always tell the bad extras, the bad supporting fucking artists, because they made him feel like the most professional man alive. But if Gale had a day like that and saw Randy at the end of it, he’d feel the badness ease back, feel like the evening would be okay. Seeing Randy if he hadn’t seen him all day felt like that first cigarette when he got off a plane, swapping dry, recycled air for sweet fucking perfection tar in the smoker’s lounge at the airport, and seeing Randy – it was the same. That relief.

Or else there were bad days when they were both on set but the scene wouldn’t go right, or they had a night shoot and they were tired, and Gale chain smoked in between takes while Randy spoke quietly on his cell phone in a corner to whoever the fuck, his boyfriend, probably, and at the end of it they said goodbye with frayed smiles and Gale slouched home to half a bottle of Jim Beam and passed out on his couch. Those were the days Toronto didn’t feel like home, and he missed his friends, his brother, his normal life with normal pretty girls, and bikes, things he knew how to fix.

Bad days for Randy apparently involved being followed around by his brand new stalker, known on set as The Guy, That Guy, or Creepy Fat Guy, who’d started turning up when they were filming and trying to talk to Randy between takes, camera round his neck and pathetic stupid fucking eager smile on his face. Gale hadn’t worked out if he was actually dangerous or not, but he knew he fucking hated him.

-

‘I’m pretty certain,’ said Gale, nearly half an hour later, ‘that he’s gonna be gone by now.’

‘Go and look, then.’ Randy sounded less worried, his voice muffled by Gale’s shoulder, where Gale was pretty sure he’d been falling asleep. He hadn’t said much in the last ten minutes. Gale pried his arms from around his waist, and went to peer around the corner of the building. The place was empty, yellow light from the gas station lighting up an empty parking lot.

He slid back between Randy and the wall.

‘Yeah, he’s gone.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Gale figured that would mean they could just leave already, and maybe now it was this late Randy could – should - just come back to his. The cold and Randy pressed against him in an alley was waking him up, waking certain parts of him up, reminding him he hadn’t gotten laid in like, a week.

‘So, then, are we gonna -,’ he shifted, trying to reposition himself against Randy. His dick was thrumming in his jeans. ‘Are we gonna go, then?’

It wasn’t like there wasn’t actually plenty of room for both of them. It wasn’t actually necessary for Randy to be pressing against him so hard he was practically inside him. I could have some personal space issues here, Gale thought.

And, okay, was it his brain fucking up, or was Randy pressing his hips against Gale a little too hard, and actually – yeah. He was. Rocking against him, leaning his face against Gale’s neck, breathing too heavily.

One minute was freaking out, the next he was coming on to him in an alley, and sometimes Gale was pretty sure Randy was like, a little bit schizophrenic, or something.

‘Cut it out.’

‘What?’

‘ I thought we were in mortal peril.’

‘Doesn’t the danger turn you on?’ said Randy, but was laughing before he could finish the sentence. Dirty talk, not so much his strong point.

‘Let’s go home and do this, okay?’

Randy reached down and cupped his dick, his balls, through his jeans. Okay. Hard now. ‘Do you want to wait that long?’

Good point.

‘Listen,’ he said, but then Randy was already fiddling with his zipper, and he could feel the blood draining out of his brain and going south. Fuck it. He tried to look exasperated or pissed off, or something, but then Randy kissed him, and he just closed his eyes. Everything they did together was great, but sometimes the kissing was the best part. Randy was a good kisser, better than girls; more visceral, more like he wanted you, really, really, wanted you.

‘Thanks for picking me up,’ Randy murmured, moving his mouth over Gale’s face.

Gale nearly laughed, I’ll pick you up anytime, baby, oh yeah, you betcha, and tried to find the focus to push Randy away and go the fuck home, where it would be warm and dry and -

‘I seriously think we should –,’ go, should have been the end of the sentence, but Randy swallowed it, lips back over his mouth and a cold, warming up hand sliding into his jeans. Randy was always fumbling and urgent when they did stuff outdoors, like he knew someone might see them, but didn’t care enough so stop.

Then Randy’s hand was wrapped around his cock, stroking, way way too fucking slowly, so slow it hurt, but he knew Randy would get harder, faster, because he knew Randy and knew what he did.

Gale’s eyes fluttered open, but Randy pressed his lips against Gale’s throat.

‘No,’ he said against the skin, his voice low. ‘Keep them closed.’ Then he kissed him again, open-mouthed and warm, and Gale shut his eyes.

With a gentle tug at his bottom lip, Gale felt Randy move away, his hand moving from his dick and for a second he nearly cried or screamed, but then he looked down through his eyelashes and saw Randy kneeling at his feet, sliding his hands around his waist.

‘You’re really hot like this,’ Randy whispered. ‘You’re perfect.’ Then he skimmed his tongue up Gale’s cock and closed his mouth around it. Gale’s hips jerked forward and he brought one hand round and twisted it into Randy’s hair, pressing the other hand back against the wall. Randy’s mouth slid down and took him in all the way, and Gale felt the bricks grazing the inside of his wrist. He tried to focus on that sensation, the roughness and the coldness of the wall, just to hold back, just to feel something solid, keep the ground beneath him. Randy made a sound, moaned around his cock, and Gale felt it, a vibration, like a charge, and god, he was so, so close already.

He said something, something like ‘fuck, Randy,’ felt a hot, wet lick at the head of his cock, and then Randy took his mouth away and brought him off with his hand, three hard strokes. Gale came, with a sound from his throat, and a wave of hot warmth that rolled down his spine and through his body, leaving him feeling like his knees would buckle and the ground was way too far away. But Randy was standing up again, leaning hard against him and keeping him in place.

‘Open your eyes,’ said Randy, and if Gale’s brain had been working he’d have wondered when Randy got to be so demanding. He opened them as Randy pushed his fingers through the hair above Gale’s ears and grinned at him, red lips and dark, shiny eyes.

‘I’ll do you,’ said Gale, breathlessly, thinking it sounded awkward and graceless and not how he meant it, but Randy just kissed him, smiled against his mouth and said, ‘Yeah, in a minute. It’s okay.’

‘I want to,’ said Gale, although hot sparks were still dancing across his eyes and he wasn’t sure he could remember his name, let alone how to give good head. He wanted Randy, though, right now. Wanted to taste him and hear him come and all the good Randy stuff.

‘I know,’ said Randy. ‘I know, Gale.’

Gale decided he had never liked his name more than when Randy said it, rolling it off his tongue in one syllable, Gale, evenly and quietly.

They were quiet for a moment. Randy had wrapped his arms around Gale’s waist and was nuzzling at his neck and Gale pretty much felt like he could stand there all night and not even feel the cold. The hum of traffic noise seemed farther away than he knew it was, and he wondered if they were okay here, or if someone – he - was going to come round the corner any moment. Gale was dimly conscious that his dick was still hanging out of his jeans.

‘Let me -’ Gale slid his hand under Randy’s shirt and felt the muscles there contract against the coldness of his hand. ‘Let me do you.’ God, there had to be a better way to say that.

‘No,’ said Randy. ‘I want to wait. I want to go home, I want to fuck you there.’

Gale concentrated on taking deep, even breaths, realising this plan was going to involve him having to drive.

‘Will you let me?’ said Randy.

‘Yes,’ said Gale, thinking right now he’d probably let Randy flay him alive, if that’s what he wanted to do, and since when did Randy ask, anyway? Randy had never asked, not from day one, that day, when he’d kissed him while they shared a joint behind his trailer. It was some location shoot, late at night, and he remembered Randy reaching for the joint but then folding his fingers around Gale’s wrist instead, and he remembered feeling a jolt, a switch flicking, and thinking Christ, yes, come on, now.


2.

Gale didn’t know why he was an actor. He didn’t feel like he’d been born to do it. He hadn’t been called to it by some higher power, and he didn’t know how he’d got there. It had just happened, the way people become managers of supermarkets without ever meaning to. Sometimes, when he met people who didn’t recognise him, he’d catch himself starting to say, I fix motorbikes. Then he’d rewind, and say, actually, I’m an actor. The responses were always the same, brightening smiles like hard light in his face and they always made him feel tired and heavy. Oh, really? That’s great. Would I know you from anything?

Yes, actually, you might have seen me ramming my cock up this blond kid’s ass on Showtime on Sunday nights.

I don’t actually get Showtime -

I fix motorbikes, he wanted to say, and their eyes wouldn’t light up like they did with the word actor, thinking fame and stories to tell their friends, you’ll never guess who I met. They’d frown, trying to think if they knew anything about motorbikes, and when they came up blank Gale would smile and ask them what they did, and they’d tell him because people always preferred talking about themselves, and then they’d walk away thinking Gale Harold was a nice guy, not trying to remember if they’d ever seen his show and wondering how they could benefit from knowing him.

Just after the first series aired he’d wondered if he’d made a huge mistake, thought about packing it in and going home, because fame – even minor fame – didn’t fit him right, wasn’t everything he’d ever wanted, didn’t seem to be making him happy. Not the way it should have.

‘I don’t know if this is for me,’ he’d said to Hal, although he had no idea why he’d thought Hal would understand. Hal was one of those people who wouldn’t make sense if he wasn’t famous. Hal definitely never freaked out if he got too much attention.

‘Oh, come on, man. It’s great,’ Hal had said, unhelpfully. ‘We’re actors, we’re famous, this is it, the life. We never have to worry about getting girls to sleep with us again.’

Gale couldn’t ever recall having worried about getting girls to sleep with him. There’d always been girls, wherever he went, and he’d put so little effort into pursuing them that he barely remembered getting them. They’d come, they’d gone, they’d been nice and pretty, and their features all blurred together in Gale’s mind. He couldn’t remember many names.

He remembered the guys. Maybe because there were only three, maybe because each one of them had cost him something, blood or tears or a little piece of himself and who he thought he was.

‘I don’t know if this is for me,’ he’d said to Randy, and Randy had said yeah, I know, me too.

Randy was a good actor. A great actor. Randy, maybe, was born to do it. Gale could tell from the way the muscles across his back and his shoulders would suddenly tighten during sex scenes, as if in his mind he was imagining that as the moment that Brian pushed inside Justin. Gale was used to seeing Randy’s shoulders push back together and the tense muscles ripple beneath his skin, like little waves, and Gale would think fuck, Randy is good at this. It was easier to act when your co-star knew what he doing, and looking at Randy’s back, his arms, the hair at the nape of his neck, was one way to forget about cameramen and directors and imagine Brian pushing inside Justin, imagine it was real and he was really there, really inside him.

‘Great stuff, guys,’ the director would shout, and Gale would quickly roll away and see Randy’s shoulders relax. It was good work they did together, he knew; they made it look real.

It wasn’t real, nothing like it.

-

The kettle boiled, clicked off, went quiet.

Gale lined two almost clean mugs up in front of it. ‘You really want coffee? You don’t want a beer or something?’ He blinked a few times at the digital clock display on the microwave. 4:47am. Hell if he knew what the right beverage to serve at 5am was.

‘I don’t know. I want – I don’t know.’ Randy was standing behind him, not touching him, but he could feel him there anyway, the way you feel people if they stand too close. It made his skin prickle.

Gale couldn’t remember why they were having coffee. They were supposed to be doing something else. He tried to trace the conversation back, back to the car – what were they talking about? They were here for something, and – fuck. So tired.

‘You’re still going to let me fuck you, right?’ Randy got closer, slid his arms around Gale’s waist, whispered against the back of his ear.

Oh, yeah.

‘Tell me what happened tonight,’ said Gale.

Gale felt Randy sigh, his body deflate slightly against his back, a whoosh of warm breath. He twisted round and nudged him with his leg. ‘Come on. What?’

‘Nothing. I just went to a party with some friends and I wasn’t having a good time and I didn’t have any way to get back.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s not it.’

‘I want to go to bed.’

‘Oh, shit.’ For the second time that night, Gale felt that light come on in his head. ‘Was he there?’

Randy shut his eyes and screwed up his nose, and Gale knew he’d hit it. It seemed obvious now – how the fuck else had the guy managed to follow them to a gas station in the middle of the night, unless he’d followed them from somewhere. Shit. He could be really slow sometimes.

‘Fuck,’ he said quietly. ‘How did he – fuck.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You should call the cops or something,’ said Gale and felt a sudden charge of anger and possessiveness. He kissed him, kind of roughly. He felt like leaving marks. Mine.

‘Yeah.’ Randy’s voice had gone tired when Gale pulled back. ‘Maybe.’

Gale wished he hadn’t brought it up. He needed to get Randy back to thinking about fucking him. Back to being happy sex Randy. Okay, so he’d gotten off only about an hour ago, but Randy still hadn’t, and Gale was a decent guy, well brought-up. It wasn’t polite, it wasn’t sex, unless you both got off at some point. He cleared his throat. ‘Fuck coffee. I want me some liquor.’ He grinned at Randy, wondering if he had that manic, drinking-at-5am look he’d seen in the mirror too many times.

‘Yeah,’ said Randy. And then, more decisively, ‘Yeah.’

Gale grabbed glasses and the half bottle of whiskey and wondered if he had any ice. Randy wandered over to the couch and cleared a space on it with his foot, kicking away the stuff Gale had fallen asleep on – a book, a magazine, an empty beer bottle – and sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Gale saw him scanning his eyes across the scripts he’d laid out on the coffee table, once crisp and white and ordered, now haphazard and stained with coffee rings.

‘You want to practise lines?’ he asked, his voice catching on a laugh. He picked up a page and read, in his stupid Randy mock theatrical voice. ‘You shouldn’t have said that to Michael, Brian. He was only trying to help.’

‘What did I say to Michael?’

Randy sighed, and leaned back, kicking his feet out in front of him. ‘Who the fuck cares?’

Gale dropped down next to him and pressed a drink into his hand.

‘You know what you need in here?’ said Randy, taking the drink and squinting up at the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. ‘A lampshade.’

‘I had one. It broke.’

‘I think – I think – you can probably afford a new one.’ Randy knocked back his drink in one shot, and Gale did the same. He felt it burn down his throat, hit his brain and instantly made his thoughts fuzzier around the edges.

‘How can you stand that light, anyway?’

‘I can’t,’ said Gale, honestly. He couldn’t. Mostly he just turned it off, sat in the dark and the light from the TV. Too much raw light fucked with his mood, his energy. It made him feel prickly, a mess of exposed nerve endings. He felt like that sometimes, like if the sun was too bright or people stared at him too hard. Randy sometimes felt the same, and he could always tell. He’d grab him and they’d sneak off somewhere, darker and quieter, smoke or talk or whatever.

One time, they’d hidden behind a set, the diner or Babylon, just that thin fake wall between it and them. The main lights had cut out, a power short or something, and everyone had cleared out. And Randy had been jerking him off, because they’d been filming a sex scene and hiding hard-ons all morning. But then they’d heard the cast come back onto set, heard the lighting guys talking and setting up, and Randy had clamped his hand over Gale’s mouth, so they wouldn’t hear him when he came. Gale remembered it was a long time before Randy moved his hand, like he thought some sound would escape as soon as he did, giving them away. They’d stared at each other, Gale breathing hard against his palm, voices on the other side of the wall.

‘This is so fucked,’ Gale had said when Randy took the hand away, the other still wrapped around his limp cock, and then they didn’t touch each other for three weeks.

When they touched again, they really touched, and Gale had Randy spread across his bed, smooth bright skin and those muscles across his shoulder blades tensing because of him

-

Randy’s tongue was working at the hollow curve at the base of Gale’s spine

‘Randy, come on,’ said Gale, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice.

‘Just lie still,’ said Randy, so he did, he tried, but -

‘Randy, I need -’

‘I know Gale. Ssh.’

Gale screwed his eyes shut, thought about getting Randy to say his name again.

‘Randy, come on.’

‘I know,’ said Randy again, and then Gale felt him move and felt a hand smoothing up his back until it was gripping his shoulder. Randy nudged Gale’s thighs apart with his knees, spreading him open and then leaning forward, pushing his legs back and twisting their feet together. Gale felt his weight across his back, warm and heavy and muscles going tight, felt him kissing along his shoulder blade, and then felt his dick nudging against his ass.

‘Wait -’

‘I know,’ said Randy, and Gale thought, okay, Randy knows everything. There was the rip of a condom packet and the smell of lube that was really something like plastic, but now smelt like sex just through association. Gale wanted to turn his head and watch him, but Randy had slid one hand up his neck into his hair and was holding him still, his face pressed against the pillow, his cock aching and hard against the bed.

And then Randy was pushing against him again, and Gale’s hips jerked, he tried to push back. He couldn’t help it. Fuck. Randy grabbed his hips and pulled him upwards, driving in, right then, at that moment, there, and Gale felt a hot stab of pain and grabbed at the sheets. He bucked up, instinctively, trying to get more of Randy inside him, and then Randy was, was there, riding him like, fuck, he tried to say Randy’s name, but all that came out was a sound, raw and stupid. Each time, every time, it always felt like Randy was splitting him open, taking him over, like he’d never think or walk or talk again, and it was never like this, never this good, this painful, never with anyone else.

Randy was moving, finding a rhythm, and each time he pushed in he made a sound, a short exhalation of breath. It was fucking beautiful, and Gale tried to lock onto the sound to hold back, keep from screaming into the pillow. He tried to think of something, think actual thoughts, but they just exploded in his head with each thrust, bursting like little bubbles, till his brain was just static and pinpricks of light.

-

After, everything was dimmer, dark around the edges, and Gale lay still with Randy breathing shallow, fluttering breaths against the back of his neck. Gale felt good, sore, heavy. The stickiness of the sheets didn’t bother him yet.

‘Hey, look, it’s morning,’ said Randy, his voice soft and scratchy. Gale closed his eyes against the sunlight splintering through the blinds.

‘It’s not,’ he heard himself mumble. ‘It’s night.’

‘It was the nightingale, and not the lark,’ Randy whispered, too seriously, and Gale wanted to roll his eyes, wanted to say for fuck’s sake, Randy, but he was bone-deep aching fuck-off tired, so he fell asleep instead.


3.

Gale heard the fizz and hiss of Randy tuning his radio in the kitchen, then it popped into clean sound, some rock song, and he heard Randy move, and a teaspoon clinking. Gale picked a pair of jeans off the floor and pulled them on, commando, and loped into the kitchen. He came up behind Randy, who was stirring coffee, and pressed the length of his body against his back. Randy, in last night’s jeans and shirt, with hair spiking up haphazardly, still looked impossibly clean, in a way that Gale never did. He smelled clean, whereas Gale knew he smelled like sex and sleep and cigarettes. Not bad or anything, just not Randy.

Or maybe he smelled a little like Randy too.

He tucked Randy’s shoulder under his chin, kissed his jaw, thought about sliding his hands into Randy’s jeans, wondered how long it would take to get him hard again. Not long, probably. Fucking kids.

‘You need to shave.’ Randy twisted round, pressing his lips quickly against Gale’s face in an almost kiss, and pressed a coffee mug into his hand.

‘Fuck that.’

‘Unless you want Juliet to do it for you.’

Juliet, fucking Juliet from the make-up department, the stubble nazi. You weren’t clean-shaven enough to go on camera until she’d sliced the top layer of skin off your face with her razor of death. Christ, they had to work today. Some stupid diner scene.

‘What time are we supposed to be in?’

‘I’m nine, you’re eleven.’

Gale squinted at the clock on the oven. It was 7:45. He could maybe sleep some more before he had to go, but Randy would have to leave, soon. No time to blow him in the shower. He was always frighteningly perfect like that – wet, with his head tipped back against the tiles, Gale’s name on the edge of his lips.

Gale set his coffee down and jumped up to sit on the kitchen counter, swinging his legs out and kicking them back against the cabinets underneath. Randy came over and slid between Gale’s legs, sipping his coffee. He looked at Gale for a moment, his face gone closed and unreadable, and then his eyes slid off Gale’s face and he looked at the space behind him.

‘If I see that guy -,’ he started.

Okay, fuck. Gale hated this guy so much. ‘You won’t. You won’t.’

‘He’s probably outside right now,’ said Randy.

‘He’s not. He doesn’t know where I live. He’s not stalking me.’ Gale tried to grin, but Randy had shut his eyes. Impulsively, Gale leaned forward and kissed his eyelid.

‘He probably followed us, fucking asshole, he probably -’

‘He didn’t.’ Gale felt he probably wasn’t being that helpful, but hell if he knew what to do about shit like this.

Randy opened his eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll beat him up for you,’ said Gale, and Randy laughed. Gale was relieved, or maybe offended. ‘Or, you know what? Tell Hal. Get him to do some karate moves on him.’ Gale sliced a hand through the air. Randy laughed again, and Gale felt the clouds roll away, the good post-sex morning place back again, until Randy said –

‘I have to go.’

Randy always had to go. Morning, evening: always leaving. ‘Call in sick. Make them reschedule.’ He rethought it. ‘Let’s both call in sick. I’ll tell them you gave me, like. Syphilis.’

Randy cocked his head to one side. ‘I don’t think you can get that anymore.’

‘You can’t go to work. You’ve been up all night.’

‘You once came to work and you’d been up for three days.’

‘That was different.’

‘How?’

‘Brian had cancer, I needed to look sick. It was like, whatever. Method acting.’

‘That’s not method acting. You partied in New York for three days. Method acting is - ’

Gale put a finger against his mouth. ‘Please, please don’t explain it to me.’

Randy’s lips curled into a smile. ‘Fine. But I’m going. I want to get some coffee before I go in.’

‘You’re holding coffee in your hand, right now.’

Randy screwed up his nose. ‘I want proper coffee with cream from that place near the studio.’

‘Giving something a pretentious fake Italian name doesn’t make it proper coffee.’

Randy shrugged. ‘I like the guy who works there on Mondays. He’s, you know,’ Randy ducked his head and smirked. ‘Hot.’

Randy wasn’t often superficial like normal people. Gale kind of liked it. He stuck his tongue in the side of his cheek. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘You’re hotter.’

‘I know.’

Randy grinned, dazzlingly, and Gale couldn’t help grinning back, which seemed wrong – too early, too little sleep.

‘I could come with you,’ said Gale, knowing he couldn’t.

‘Yeah. Sure.’ Randy’s voice went flat.

Gale could go with him, and Billy Bob Stalker would probably be outside taking pictures. The cast and the crew would talk and tell their friends and journalist’s eyes would light up, ‘what’s it like filming the sex scenes,, Gale?’ Camera lights would explode in their eyes, and their thing, their non-defined quiet Gale-Randy thing would be public property, and then it would be gone. It wasn’t about being straight, or gay, or whatever, anything. It was about being famous, and there was some shit you just didn’t do, like hold your co-star’s hand when you queued for coffee in the morning. It didn’t matter how much you wanted to.

‘I guess I’ll meet you there, then.’

Randy nodded, and they drank coffee in silence. Even if he was always leaving, Gale liked when Randy stayed, when they got their morning caffeine together. He liked Randy’s tired, nice eyes, and the warm laziness of him being there. Used condoms on the floor and overflowing ashtrays didn’t look so bad in the morning if someone else was there. Before he left, Gale kissed him, not like sex, just like – I like you.

‘Mm,’ said Randy, against his mouth, and Gale thought Randy probably liked him too.

‘Thanks for last night,’ he was saying as he walked out the door, ‘I owe you,’ and then he was gone. Gale grunted a reply and slid off the counter, shutting the door behind Randy and wandering back to his bedroom. He dropped down on the bed, and yanked the covers half over him, figuring he could sleep another hour or so before he had to get up, shower, go to work, be that Gale.

Randy was gone home and it was morning, so he put aside the odd, damaged night – a good night, better than it should have been - banked it in the Randy section of his brain, and set his alarm to go off at half nine. He’d probably be late, but they’d just have to do without Brian Kinney for a few extra minutes, because Gale was really fucking tired.

If he saw that guy today, he’d talk to him. He’d tell him where he could stick it. He’d tell him that Randy wasn’t Justin, Randy was a real person, real and angry, and he needed to stay the hell away from him. If the guy told him that he loved Randy, he was his biggest fan, he just wanted to talk to him - he’d say you’re wasting your time.

He’d say, you’ll never know him like I do.

end