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Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader, Smut
Later that day, Maddy texted.
You were on the tube back to your flat with your forehead nearly touching the window, watching London smear itself into black glass and reflected fluorescent strips.
Maddy had sent four messages in a row.
How was your homework session with Tom?
Did you murder him?
Did he murder you?
Scale of 1 to 10 how unbearable was he?
You stared at the messages for too long, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Your first instinct was to write something flippant.
Something easy.
Something that turned the whole evening into a story you could tell without admitting it had left you feeling peeled open in strange places.
You typed:
11
Then deleted it.
Typed:
We argued for forty minutes about desire, guilt and a desk scene we are definitely going to ruin.
Deleted that too.
Finally, you wrote:
Homework technically done. He remains impossible. French people remain repressed. I remain employed, for now.
Maddy replied almost instantly.
That sounds like sexual tension with better subtitles.
You looked at the screen.
Your face went hot, which was ridiculous because there was no one there to see it except an elderly man opposite you holding a Tesco bag with one baguette sticking out of it like a weapon.
You typed back:
You are unwell.
Maddy:
And yet I’m right.
You locked your phone.
Then unlocked it.
Then locked it again.
The window reflected your own face back at you: lipstick bitten off, hair slightly damp from the rain, eyes too alert for someone who was supposed to be tired.
You could still feel the café.
Not physically.
That would have been easier to dismiss.
You could feel the shape of it.
The table between you. The two Americanos. Tom’s phone lighting up. His irritation. Your own. The awful, ridiculous moment when you had both laughed because neither of you knew what else to do with all that pressure.
You could feel the moment before you left, too.
See you next week.
As though Monday were not already waiting with its mouth open.
By the time you reached your building, you had rewritten your face into something normal.
You were good at that.
Not happy.
Not calm.
Normal.
James was in the sitting room when you came in, laptop open on the coffee table, one foot tucked under him on the sofa. He looked up when the door opened, but only briefly, as if he had already decided your return did not require much of him.
“You’re late.”
You slipped your coat off.
“Am I?”
“I thought you would have been back an hour ago.”
You paused.
“We lost track of time.”
He had not asked anything before you left, but now, apparently, there was a record in his head of how long you should have been allowed to be gone.
“We?”
There it was.
Small.
Barely anything.
You bent to unlace your boots so he could not see your face.
“People from work and I.”
James made a vague sound.
Not disbelief.
Not acceptance either.
Something in between. Something designed to make you fill the silence with more detail than you wanted to give.
You did not.
In the corner of the room, tiny hamster Tom began throwing himself around his cage with the manic determination of a creature who had never once known dignity.
You looked over.
He was on his wheel, running furiously and achieving absolutely nothing.
You stared at him.
“Mood,” you muttered.
James looked up from his laptop.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
You crossed to the cage and opened the little door.
Hamster Tom stopped running and looked at you with bright, bead-black suspicion, whiskers twitching. He was small and round and dramatic, with a ridiculous pale patch on his head that made him look permanently affronted.
You held your palm out.
“Hello, tiny idiot.”
James sighed.
“Please don’t take him out on the sofa.”
“I’m not taking him out on the sofa.”
You took him out on the sofa.
He sat in your hand for all of three seconds before making a desperate bid for freedom up your sleeve.
You laughed properly for the first time all evening.
The sound surprised you.
James looked over, expression faintly irritated.
“You’re going to lose him.”
“He lives in a cage, James. Let him experience narrative complexity.”
“He’s a hamster.”
“Exactly. Stakes are high.”
Hamster Tom popped his head out from inside your sleeve like a very small spy.
You laughed again.
James closed his laptop halfway.
“Can you not let him crawl all over you? It’s unhygienic.”
You looked at him.
“He’s cleaner than most people.”
James did not smile.
Not even politely.
That killed the laugh in your throat more efficiently than you wanted to admit.
You put hamster Tom carefully on your lap and cupped a hand around him so he could explore the folds of your jumper without falling. He immediately tried to chew the hem.
“No,” you told him. “That’s cashmere. Have some respect.”
James watched you for another moment.
Then said, “There’s an event next Thursday.”
You did not look up.
“What event?”
“The Harrington thing. Private dinner first, then the drinks.”
You blinked.
“James.”
“What?”
“I’m shooting.”
“In the evening?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t know that.”
You stroked one finger gently over hamster Tom’s back. He froze, then relaxed under your touch.
“I have a closed set Monday. Kurt’s already annoyed. The whole week might run long. And late. And super annoying.”
James’s expression changed very slightly at the phrase closed set.
“Closed set,” he repeated.
You kept your eyes on the hamster.
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“A scene.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Your hand stilled.
Hamster Tom immediately took advantage and tried to climb toward your shoulder.
“It’s the only one I’m giving.”
James was quiet.
Then he leaned back against the sofa.
“You know, most people would tell their fiancé what they’re doing.”
The word fiancé sat between you.
Heavy.
Useful to him.
Still not fully real to you, despite the ring you had worn to the café like proof of something you did not want examined.
You lifted hamster Tom and returned him to his cage, partly because he needed to go back and partly because your hands needed an occupation.
“Most people don’t have NDAs.”
“Don’t hide behind that.”
You shut the cage door.
The little latch clicked too loudly.
“I’m not hiding.”
James looked at you for a long moment.
Then, with the smoothness that always unsettled you, he changed the subject.
“Your father’s producing that new show for Channel Four, isn’t he?”
You turned around slowly.
“What?”
“The new one. The political thriller.”
“I think so.”
You knew so.
Everyone knew so.
It had been in Deadline last week and then in every British industry newsletter twenty minutes later. Your father was producing it with two men who still called themselves independent despite owning half of Soho between them.
James smiled a little.
“Looks interesting.”
You stared at him.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
You crossed your arms.
The room felt too warm suddenly. Too tidy. Too staged. The lamp beside the sofa put a soft, expensive glow over James’s face, over the laptop, over the stack of books he had arranged but never actually read.
“Why are you asking about it?”
He gave a small laugh.
“Do I need an agenda to mention your father’s work?”
You said nothing.
James set the laptop aside.
“There may be a part in it. Not lead, obviously, but something interesting. A recurring thing.”
There it was.
Not even hidden particularly well.
You felt something inside you sink, not from surprise but from the tired inevitability of it.
“And?”
“And you could suggest me.”
You looked at him.
“To my father.”
“Yes.”
“About a part.”
“Not like that.”
“How, then?”
James’s jaw moved.
“Just casually. You know.”
You laughed once.
It came out sharper than intended.
“That’s literally like that.”
His expression cooled.
“I’m not asking for anything improper.”
“You’re asking me to put your name in front of my father for a part you haven’t auditioned for.”
“People do that all the time.”
“People also call that nepotism.”
James’s eyes sharpened.
“Interesting, coming from you.”
There was a second where the whole room seemed to tip.
You stared at him.
He knew he had hit something. Not the precise thing, maybe, but close enough to feel the reaction in the air.
Tom’s voice came back unwanted.
Convenient.
You got cast opposite me in a Kurt O’Callaghan film produced by your father.
You hated both of them suddenly.
Tom for saying it like it was fact.
James for picking the same bruise without even knowing it was fresh.
You looked away first.
That was the mistake.
James saw.
Of course he saw.
His voice softened, which was worse.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I meant you understand how the industry works.”
“Do I?”
“Better than most.”
He stood and came toward you.
Slowly.
Carefully.
The way he did when he wanted to turn the temperature of a room without anyone noticing him touching the dial.
“I’m not using you,” he said.
You had not said he was.
That made it feel more true.
James reached for your hand.
Your instinct was to pull away.
You did not.
That was the worst part of it: the tiny, humiliating betrayals your own body made in rooms like this. Not because you wanted his hand there exactly, but because refusing it would become another conversation. Another accusation. Another hour of explaining why something had changed when you were too tired to survive the explanation.
His thumb moved over the ring.
Your ring.
“I’m asking because we’re meant to help each other.”
You looked down at his hand over yours.
“That’s not what help means.”
“It can.”
“James.”
“One conversation. That’s all.”
His voice stayed low.
Close.
Private.
It was the voice people believed in at dinner parties. The voice that made him sound reasonable even when the thing he wanted had teeth.
“Mention me. If your father thinks I’m wrong for it, fine. I’ll accept that. I’m not asking him to give me anything.”
You looked up at him.
“You are, though. And despite all this, you two get along, so why don’t you ask him yourself?”
The softness disappeared.
Only for a second.
Enough.
“You know why I won’t ask him myself,” he said, “and, for what it’s worth, it’s actually quite exhausting having you assume the worst of me.”
Your stomach tightened.
There it was again.
The turn.
So smooth you nearly missed it.
He had asked for the favour. You had objected. Now you were the cruel one.
“I’m not assuming the worst.”
“You are.”
“I’m reacting to the thing you asked.”
“No, you’re making me feel like some kind of opportunist for asking my future wife to put in a good word.”
Future wife.
You hated how often he had started saying it since the ring went on.
Not because the words meant nothing.
Because they meant too much.
Because he used them like architecture.
A house around you.
A locked door.
You slipped your hand free gently.
“I’ll think about it.”
James studied your face.
“That means no.”
“It means I’ll think about it.”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make me beg for normal things.”
You looked at him then.
Properly.
There were a lot of things you could have said.
Normal things do not make me feel trapped.
Normal things do not sound like invoices.
Normal things do not require me to spend my father’s name like currency.
Instead, you said, “I’m tired.”
James held your gaze a moment longer.
Then stepped back.
“Fine.”
Fine never meant fine with James.
It meant the argument had been put in storage.
It meant it would come back later, better armed.
You went to bed before him.
Not because you were ready to sleep, but because the sitting room had become impossible.
In the bedroom, you changed out of your clothes and into one of James’s old shirts because it was the first thing you found on the chair. It smelled faintly of him. Expensive detergent. Aftershave. Something controlled and clean.
You sat on the bed with the script beside you.
The desk scene was marked in yellow.
Then pink.
Then underlined in pencil.
Then annotated in your own handwriting from three different moods, none of them helpful.
Jason crosses to Rose.
Rose does not move away.
He kisses her.
She lets him.
No.
She kisses him back.
No.
She wants him to stop and wants him not to stop and hates him for understanding both.
You stared at that line for a long time.
Your phone buzzed again.
Maddy.
Alive?
You picked it up.
Typed:
Barely. Hamster Tom is the only emotionally stable man I know.
Maddy:
That rodent is named Tom and you’re pretending this is normal?
You smiled despite yourself.
He has range.
Maddy:
Unlike human Tom?
You stared at the message.
Human Tom.
His hand catching your earring.
His phone lighting up with Layla’s name.
His voice saying, “I think sitting in a café arguing about whether a look across a dinner table is guilt or desire is not going to magically make next week go well.”
You typed:
Human Tom is a professional hazard.
Maddy replied with a skull emoji and then:
Desk scene tomorrow?
You did not answer straight away.
On the other side of the door, you heard James moving around the flat.
Cupboard.
Tap.
Footsteps.
A pause outside the bedroom that lasted just long enough to make your shoulders tense.
Then he came in.
You locked your phone and placed it face down.
James noticed.
Of course he noticed.
His eyes went to the phone, then to the script, then to you.
“Still working?”
“Trying to.”
He came around to his side of the bed.
“Is this the closed set thing?”
Your fingers closed around the edge of the script.
“James.”
“What? I’m asking.”
“Don’t.”
He stood there for a second, shirt half-unbuttoned.
He looked handsome.
That was always inconvenient. His beauty was not warm like Tom’s, not restless or alive or infuriatingly human. James had the kind of polish that looked expensive even when he was barefoot. Sharp cheekbones. Smooth mouth. Eyes that could soften on command.
You had loved that once.
Or thought you had.
Maybe you had loved being chosen by someone who looked like he could have anything.
Maybe you had confused being held with being kept.
James sat on the bed beside you.
“You know I don’t love the idea of it.”
You did not look at him.
“You don’t know what it is.”
“I know enough.”
His voice stayed careful.
Not cold, exactly.
Worse, maybe. Careful meant he had already rehearsed the reasonable version of whatever he wanted to say.
“I know closed set usually means intimacy. And I know Sturridge is playing your lover.”
Your stomach tightened at the way he said Tom’s name.
Not suspiciously.
Not as though he knew anything.
He didn’t.
That was almost the worst part.
James had no idea that Tom was the man from New York. No idea that you had already had Tom’s hands on you without choreography or modesty garments or Marie calmly marking beats from the side of a room. No idea that the problem with Monday was not only professional nerves, or embarrassment, or the pressure of doing a scene that would be watched and judged and cut into trailers by strangers.
James just hated him.
Simply.
Cleanly.
For his own reasons.
You closed the script.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“It’s acting.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
James looked at you then, and for once something like irritation cracked through the polish.
“Yes. Of course I know that.”
You stared at him.
He exhaled and rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
That stopped you more effectively than defensiveness would have.
James did not apologise quickly.
Not unless he needed to regain ground.
“I’m not being fair.”
You said nothing.
He looked down at the closed script between you.
“I know what closed sets are. I know what intimacy scenes are. I know the choreography, the modesty garments, the intimacy coordinator, the whole deeply unsexy machinery of making something look spontaneous when it isn’t.”
He gave a small, humourless laugh.
“God knows I’ve done enough of them.”
You watched him carefully.
“Then what’s the problem?”
His jaw shifted.
For a moment, he looked away.
Not because he did not know the answer.
Because he did.
That was worse.
“Him.”
The word landed softly.
You went still.
James looked back at you.
“That’s the problem.”
“Tom?”
His mouth tightened.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Say his name like I’m being absurd.”
You blinked.
“I didn’t.”
“You did a bit.”
You almost laughed, but the room was too tense for it to come out properly.
“James.”
“I know,” he said, sharper now, then caught himself. “I know. It’s stupid.”
You said nothing.
He leaned back against the headboard, shirt still open at the throat, looking infuriatingly calm and not calm at all.
“I can’t stand him,” he said. “And I hate the idea that he gets to kiss my fiancée for work. That’s it. That’s the ugly, small, pathetic thing. I know it’s acting. I know I don’t get to have an artistic objection. I know I’ve done scenes worse than whatever this probably is.”
His eyes flicked to the script.
Then back to you.
“But it’s him.”
Your chest felt tight in a way you did not like.
Because this was harder to fight.
If he had been cruel, if he had been patronising, if he had implied you did not understand your own job, you could have sharpened yourself against it.
This was worse.
This was almost honest.
You hated that most.
Because James had always been most dangerous when he sounded like a man admitting to his own flaws rather than arranging yours in front of you.
You looked at him for a long moment.
Then, because you were tired, because he was handsome, because he had apologised, because some stupid reflex inside you still wanted to reward the version of him that could almost tell the truth, you sighed.
“Come here.”
James blinked.
“What?”
You reached for the open edge of his shirt and tugged once.
“Come here.”
His eyes moved over your face, careful again, checking whether this was a trap or mercy.
Maybe it was both.
He came closer.
You shifted onto your knees on the bed, the script slipping sideways beside you, and put your hands on his shoulders. He let you. He always let you touch him when he thought he was winning something.
“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” you said.
His mouth tightened instantly.
“I’m not jealous.”
You smiled faintly.
There was no real happiness in it.
“Shh.”
His brows drew together.
“Don’t shh me.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
For a second, he looked as if he might argue anyway. Then his gaze dropped to your mouth, and whatever clever answer he had prepared died there.
You kissed him first.
That helped.
Sometimes it was easier when you chose the first movement. Easier to pretend the rest followed from want rather than surrender, easier to confuse control with desire if your hand had been the one to pull him in.
James exhaled against your mouth. His hand came to the back of your neck, not rough, not gentle. Possessive in that polished way of his. Like even tenderness could be a form of ownership if done with enough confidence.
You kissed him harder.
He responded at once.
Of course he did.
James had always been good at this part. Not warm, exactly. Not generous in the way that made you feel seen. But skilled. Attentive when he wanted to be. Beautiful enough that your body could still mistake familiarity for safety if you did not ask too many questions.
His hands slid under the shirt you were wearing.
His shirt.
The old cotton dragged up your thighs and over your hips, and for a moment his fingers paused there, at the bare skin underneath, as if the fact that you were wearing something of his and almost nothing else pleased him in some private, possessive way.
You felt it.
That tiny shift in him.
The satisfaction.
The claim.
It should have made you angry.
Instead, it made your stomach tighten.
You hated that, too.
He kissed you again, deeper this time, with the kind of confidence that assumed your body would eventually remember how to answer him. His thumb pressed into your hip. His other hand moved up your spine beneath the shirt, warm and deliberate, mapping places he already knew.
The ring on your hand caught briefly in his hair.
You pulled back.
He looked up at you.
“What?”
For one horrible second, you nearly said, Nothing.
You nearly swallowed the discomfort like you always did.
Instead, you touched his cheek.
“Slow down.”
James’s face changed.
Barely.
But enough.
Then he nodded.
“Okay.”
The word was gentle.
The pause after it was not.
Because he had heard slow down as rejection.
Because everything with James was either devotion or betrayal, and sometimes it exhausted you so badly you wanted to sleep for a year.
You kissed him again before he could turn it into hurt.
That was the compromise.
You softened the no with your mouth.
You let him have enough of you that he would not ask why he did not have all of you.
His hand tightened at your waist.
The kiss changed.
Warmer.
Hungrier.
A little resentful now, which should not have made it better and somehow did, because at least resentment was honest. At least resentment did not pretend to be care.
He pushed the script off the bed without looking.
It hit the floor with a soft slap.
You flinched.
James noticed, because James noticed everything, but he did not stop.
His mouth moved to your jaw, then your throat. He knew exactly where to kiss you, exactly how much pressure to use, exactly when to pause and let your body catch up.
That was the thing about being known.
Sometimes it felt like intimacy.
Sometimes it felt like surveillance.
His hand slid higher beneath the shirt, thumb brushing the underside of your breast.
Your breath caught.
James heard it.
Of course he heard it.
He smiled against your skin.
“You’re tense.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired lately.”
There it was.
A hook hidden under concern.
Your eyes opened.
“James.”
He lifted his head.
“What?”
You looked at him.
Really looked at him.
At the smooth face, the unbuttoned shirt, the pretty mouth. At the man who had just admitted his jealousy like a wound and then still managed to make your exhaustion sound like a failing.
“Don’t talk.”
His expression shifted.
For one second, he looked amused.
Then offended.
Then intrigued.
“Fine,” he said softly.
And kissed you again.
You let yourself fall back against the pillows.
Not because you were helpless.
Because it was easier than standing in the middle of the room with all that unsaid between you.
Because the script was on the floor.
Because Monday was waiting.
Because Tom’s name had been in James’s mouth and now Tom was in your head, too, which was unfair and humiliating and impossible.
James moved over you.
The shirt rode up around your waist. His body settled between your thighs with the familiar weight of him, and you felt the heat of him through the remaining layers of clothing, felt the impatience he was trying to disguise as tenderness.
His mouth found yours again.
His hand moved down your side, over your hip, to the inside of your thigh.
You tried to stay there.
In that room.
In that bed.
With your fiancé.
You tried to let the physicality of it pull you under.
James above you. James’s hand at your waist. James’s mouth against your skin. James, who knew the shape of your body, the habits of it, the things that usually worked if everything in you was behaving.
But nothing in you was behaving.
Your mind kept slipping sideways.
A café table.
A rain-dark window.
Tom laughing once, short and unwilling, because you had said something cutting and he had hated finding it funny.
Tom’s eyes on your ring.
Tom’s hand catching your earring on set.
Tom saying, almost angrily, “I’m trying to make Monday survivable.”
You closed your eyes harder, as if that could shut him out.
James must have mistaken it for pleasure, because he made a sound against your throat and moved with more certainty. You answered because you knew when to answer. You touched his hair because he liked that. You arched because your body remembered the choreography of being loved by him, or used by him, or some terrible private thing in between.
For a while, it almost worked.
That was the awful part.
It almost worked because James was familiar. Because your skin had learned him before your brain had learned how often he made you small. Because sometimes history lived in the body long after the heart had started packing its bags.
His hand found you properly then.
Your breath broke before you could stop it.
James went still for half a second, as if pleased with himself, then touched you again with more intention. Not rushed. Not clumsy. He was too experienced for that, too careful in his pride. He knew how to make you react. He knew when your body softened, when your knees shifted, when your breath changed from performance into something less controlled.
You hated that he could still do that.
You hated that your body did not care about politics or manipulation or whether affection came with conditions.
Your body only knew pressure.
Heat.
Familiar hands.
A mouth at your collarbone.
You turned your face into the pillow and tried to quiet yourself.
James kissed your cheek.
“Look at me.”
You did.
Not because you wanted to.
Because obedience was sometimes faster than arguing.
His eyes held yours while his hand kept moving, and there was something so intimate and so wrong about it that your throat tightened.
He wanted proof.
Not pleasure.
Proof.
That you were there.
That you were his.
That the ring meant what he needed it to mean.
Your body gave him just enough proof to keep going.
Your mind gave him nothing.
When he undressed you, he did it slowly, watching your face as though every flicker there belonged to him. He pulled the shirt over your head and dropped it beside the script on the floor. Cool air touched your skin. You felt suddenly exposed, not because you were naked, but because James liked you that way when he was uncertain.
Open.
Readable.
Unable to hide behind fabric or jokes or work.
You reached for his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders.
He let you.
The bed shifted beneath both of you. His skin was warm under your hands, familiar muscle and expensive aftershave and the careful restraint of a man who liked being wanted more than he liked wanting.
You kissed his chest.
His stomach tightened.
For a second, something like satisfaction passed through you.
There.
A little power.
A little evidence that you could still affect him.
Then his hands went to your waist and he turned you, rolling you under him again, taking the moment back before you could enjoy it.
Your eyes opened.
He kissed you.
Deep.
Hard enough to make thought blur for a few seconds.
You let it.
You needed it.
You needed your mind empty.
You needed your body louder than your guilt.
James pushed your legs apart with his knee and settled closer. There was a pause, brief but loaded, where he looked down at you as if asking and not asking at the same time.
You nodded.
It was small.
Almost invisible.
He saw.
Of course he saw.
When he entered you, your hands gripped his shoulders.
Not from pain.
From the shock of being brought so completely back into your own body.
A small sound escaped you.
James shut his eyes.
His breath changed.
For a few seconds, neither of you moved.
It should have been tenderness.
Maybe once it would have been.
Now it felt like a door closing.
Then he began to move.
Slowly at first.
Careful.
Controlled.
The way James did everything.
You tried to meet him.
You tried to make your body say yes with enough conviction that your mind would believe it.
His mouth moved against your jaw. His breathing roughened. One hand slid beneath your back, lifting you closer, keeping you there, skin to skin.
The rhythm built.
Your head fell back.
Your body began to respond despite you.
Heat gathered low in your stomach, reluctant and uneven, more ache than pleasure at first. You chased it because chasing was easier than thinking. You let your hands move over his shoulders, his back, his hair. You let yourself make sounds because silence made him sharper, and James was easier when he thought he was pleasing you.
But the pleasure kept slipping out of reach.
Every time it came close, something inside you tightened against it.
James noticed.
His jaw tensed.
His pride entered the room like a third person.
He slowed.
Kissed you more deeply.
Shifted his angle.
Tried again.
You knew what he was doing.
That made it worse.
He was trying to win your body back.
From exhaustion.
From doubt.
From Tom.
Though he did not know that last part.
Not yet.
You turned your face away.
James caught your chin and brought you back.
Not hard.
Not enough to accuse him of anything.
Enough to remind you.
“Stay with me,” he said.
Your chest went tight.
“I am.”
The lie came too quickly.
His eyes moved over your face.
“Are you?”
You kissed him before he could see too much.
He let you.
For a little while, that worked too.
Mouths were useful like that.
So were hands.
So was movement.
So was the body’s desperate ability to keep accepting what the heart had not agreed to.
He rolled onto his back and pulled you with him.
You went because resistance would have made the room real again.
You sat above him, thighs bracketing his hips, hair falling forward around your face. His hands settled on your waist, then slid down to your hips. His gaze moved over you with a hunger so open it almost startled you.
For a second, you remembered why you had fallen for him.
Or thought you had.
James was beautiful like this.
All polish stripped down to skin and breath and need.
Looking at you as if you were something rare.
Something chosen.
Something he could not bear to lose.
Then his hands tightened, guiding your hips, and the illusion cracked.
Chosen was not the same as free.
He looked up at you.
“There,” he said, voice low. “Better.”
You did not know whether he meant the position, or the mood, or you.
You bent and kissed him before he could say anything else.
Don’t talk, you thought again.
Please don’t talk.
His hands moved with increasing confidence, guiding the rhythm, and you tried to follow the feeling where it wanted to go. You tried to let pleasure become simple. You tried to let your body do what it was supposed to do, what it usually did when you could stop thinking long enough to be inside yourself.
But your mind would not stay with him.
It kept searching for heat and finding the wrong memory.
New York.
A hotel room with the curtains open to the city.
A stranger who had not known your name and somehow made you feel less managed than the man under you now.
A hand at your hip.
A mouth near your ear.
A voice, rougher than James’s, amused even when it was filthy.
Tom.
You almost opened your eyes.
You didn’t.
That was the mistake.
Because the dark behind your eyelids gave him shape.
Not the actor.
Not the co-star.
Not the man James hated for perfectly separate reasons.
The man from New York.
The man you had let touch you before you knew what he would become.
The man who had looked at you on that balcony through cigarette smoke and made silence feel like an invitation instead of a punishment.
Your breath changed.
James felt it.
Of course he felt it.
His grip tightened on your hips.
You hated yourself for responding.
You hated your body for finding the path at last and taking it through the wrong door.
James said your name.
You barely heard him.
You were too far inside the memory now, too close to the edge of something you had been trying all week not to admit still existed.
Tom’s mouth.
Tom’s hands.
The heat of New York.
The reckless relief of not being watched by someone who already owned the story of you.
Your whole body went sharp.
“Tom—fuck.”
The room stopped.
Not for you.
For James.
You did not notice at first.
You were still moving, still breathing, still caught in the last bright, humiliating rush of sensation that had nothing clean in it. You pressed your hands against James’s chest as it passed through you, smaller than it should have been, stranger, almost painful with the effort it had taken to arrive.
Then the silence changed.
You felt it before you understood it.
James had gone still beneath you.
Too still.
Your eyes opened.
For one suspended second, neither of you moved.
You lifted your head slowly.
James was looking at you.
Not angry.
Not yet.
Something worse.
Blank.
Carefully blank.
The kind of blankness that meant every thought behind it had become too sharp to show.
Your heart began to hammer.
“What?” you whispered.
His gaze held yours.
Then he blinked once.
“Nothing.”
Your stomach dropped.
Nothing was not nothing.
Nothing was blood under a rug.
Nothing was a body in another room.
Nothing was James deciding where to place the knife later.
You looked at his face, searching for what you had missed, what you had said, what had happened in the few seconds your mind had betrayed you completely.
He smoothed a hand down your back.
The gesture was almost tender.
That made it worse.
“Come here,” he said.
Your throat tightened.
“I—”
“Come here.”
His voice had changed.
Not much.
Enough.
You obeyed before you decided to.
You lowered yourself against him, suddenly cold, suddenly aware of everything: his skin under yours, the sweat cooling at the back of your neck, your own pulse beating too hard, the lamp burning softly beside the bed, the script lying open where it had fallen.
Jason crosses to Rose.
Rose does not move away.
James turned onto his side and pulled you against him.
To anyone else, it would have looked affectionate.
To you, it felt like being held in place.
You waited for him to say it.
For the question.
For the accusation.
For Tom’s name, thrown back at you with teeth.
But James said nothing.
That was when you understood he had heard.
Because if he had not heard, he would have been talking.
James always talked when he thought he was safe.
This silence was strategy.
You stared over his shoulder at the half-open wardrobe, at the line of his shirts hanging in colour order, pale blue to white to black. Everything about him arranged. Everything controlled. Even now. Even this.
His hand moved slowly over your arm.
Up and down.
Up and down.
Comforting you, perhaps.
Counting you, more likely.
Your phone buzzed on the bedside table.
Once.
Then again.
Maddy, probably.
You did not move.
James’s hand stopped.
“Are you going to get that?”
You swallowed.
“No.”
Another pause.
Then he kissed your forehead.
It was so gentle that you wanted to cry.
“Good.”
The word slid under your skin.
You closed your eyes.
In the dark, Tom was still there.
Not as memory now.
As consequence.
James’s breathing evened out after a while, but you knew he was not asleep.
He was too controlled for sleep.
You stayed perfectly still against him, one hand trapped between your bodies, your ring pressing a small, hard circle into your own palm.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader,
YOUR POV
On Sunday afternoon, you left James’s flat telling him you were going to see friends.
You hated that.
Not because it was a particularly elaborate lie. It was barely even a lie, if you were generous with the definition of friends and cruel with the definition of seeing.
But it still sat wrong in your mouth.
James had looked up from his phone when you said it, nodded once, and gone back to whatever he was reading.
He did not ask which friends.
He did not ask where.
He did not ask when you would be back.
Somehow, that made it worse.
On the tube, your knee bounced so violently the woman opposite you looked at it twice. You tried to stop. Then you started chewing the inside of your cheek instead. Then you checked your phone, checked the time, checked the route, checked the time again, forgot what stop you were at, panicked, realised you were still three stops away, and then the train stopped between stations for six full minutes while the driver made a calm, useless announcement about a delay.
By the time you reached the cinema, you were late, too warm, irritated, and already rehearsing three different apologies in your head.
Tom was waiting outside beneath the cinema awning.
He looked annoyed already.
Of course he did.
His coat collar was turned up against the rain, his hair damp at the front, one hand buried in his pocket while the other held his phone. His thumb tapped against the side of it in a fast, uneven rhythm.
Not impatience exactly.
Something worse.
Restless. Wired. Too alert.
You knew that rhythm.
You did it with pens.
He looked up when he saw you, and his expression did something infuriating. It sharpened first with irritation, then changed. Not softened. Not exactly. But altered. Annoyed.
You stopped in front of him, breathless.
“Sorry. Tube was delayed.”
He blinked once.
Then remembered to be irritated.
“You can’t be on time?”
“I just said the tube was delayed.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes, Tom, I control the Northern line. It’s one of my many sinister nepo-baby privileges.”
His mouth moved like he did not want to smile.
He did not smile.
Annoying.
“We’re going to miss the start.”
“We’re not. There’ll be adverts.”
“I hate adverts.”
“Good thing the cinema industry has survived your disapproval.”
You followed him inside, digging through your bag for the ticket and producing, in order, lip gloss, a receipt, a set of keys, one loose earring, a pen lid without a pen, a pen without a lid, and no ticket.
Tom watched you for exactly two seconds before saying, “Do you need help?”
“No.”
“You look like you need help.”
“I look like someone with a complex internal filing system.”
“You look like someone being defeated by a handbag.”
You found the ticket wedged inside your script.
“Found it.”
“Heroic.”
You ignored him and nodded toward the concession stand.
“Do we want popcorn and drinks?”
Tom looked at you as though you had just suggested abandoning the film entirely and going bowling.
“What?”
“Popcorn.”
“I heard what you said.”
“Then why did you say what?”
“Because, unlike you, I am not here for fun.”
You stared at him.
“God, that is such a tragic sentence.”
“We’re here to work.”
“We’re here to watch a film in a cinema. The popcorn is thematically appropriate.”
“Thematically appropriate.”
“Yes.”
“For a French drama about repression?”
“Especially for a French drama about repression. Someone has to bring joy into the room.”
“Must it be you?”
“Apparently.”
He gave you a look.
You gave him one back, then turned to the boy behind the counter.
“Small popcorn, please.”
Tom closed his eyes briefly.
“Of course.”
“And a water.”
“Heroic restraint.”
“I’m learning from the master.”
His eyes opened.
For one second, the look between you caught wrong.
Not funny.
Not light.
You both felt it.
Then the boy behind the counter shoved the popcorn toward you and said the price, and the moment broke.
You paid, tucked the bottle of water under your arm, and took the popcorn with more dignity than the situation deserved.
Tom watched you.
“You’re actually getting it.”
“I said I was getting it.”
He looked like he wanted to say something cutting, but you had already walked past him with your popcorn, and annoyingly, he had to follow.
When you got inside, the cinema was busy. Not full exactly, but full enough that the remaining seats looked either taken, defended, or hostile.
Tom checked the tickets.
Then stopped.
You nearly walked into his back.
“What?”
Tom looked down at the tickets again as though the numbers might rearrange themselves if he glared hard enough.
“What?” you repeated.
His jaw shifted.
“Our seats.”
“What about them?”
He did not answer immediately, which was never a good sign with Tom. Silence from him was not peace. Silence from him was usually irritation gathering itself into a more efficient shape.
You leaned around him and looked.
Then you saw.
At the very back, tucked slightly to one side, were two wide joined seats with a shared armrest folded up between them. A couples seat. Not two separate seats. Not even two seats pretending to respect personal boundaries. One of those ridiculous wide cinema seats built for people who wanted to sit with one person’s leg over the other person’s thigh and share overpriced chocolate buttons in the dark.
You stared.
Tom stared.
Neither of you moved.
“Oh, absolutely not,” you said.
Tom looked at you. “You think I booked them?”
“I don’t know your life.”
“I did not book us a couples seat.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You looked like you were about to.”
“I looked horrified. There’s a difference. And I know Kurt booked them. He handed us the tickets, remember?”
The trailers were already playing. The cinema was dim and busy, bodies shifting in rows, coats being shoved under seats, whispering couples leaning close, someone two rows down rustling a paper bag with the violent confidence of a person who had never experienced shame.
You glanced around for alternatives.
There were none.
Every spare seat was either occupied, blocked by bags, or located so far apart that Kurt’s assignment would become even more unbearable than it already was. A man near the aisle caught you scanning and tightened his hand over the empty seat beside him with such territorial panic that you looked away.
Tom exhaled through his nose.
“Fine,” he said.
You turned on him. “Fine?”
“We sit. We watch the film. We leave. Nobody dies.”
Tom moved first, because of course he did. He stepped into the row with that narrow-shouldered, careful cinema movement people did when trying not to kick anyone’s knees, then stopped at the seats and looked at them again with open disdain.
You followed, clutching your popcorn and water and trying to look like a person entirely unaffected by the fact that you were about to sit beside him in a seat designed by someone with aggressive opinions about intimacy.
You sat down.
The seat dipped.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
Enough that the side of your thigh nearly touched his before you shifted away with too much speed.
Tom noticed.
Obviously.
He sat stiffly beside you, coat still on, shoulders set, one hand braced on his own knee like he was preparing for turbulence.
“This is Sven’s doing,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Sven booked the tickets. Not Kurt. It say’s his name right here.”
You looked at him. Then at the tickets. “Our assistant director booked us a couples seat?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“Because he has the emotional range of a fourteen-year-old boy with access to the internet.”
You pressed your lips together.
Tom turned his head. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m respecting your pain.”
“You’re enjoying my pain.”
“Those can coexist.”
His mouth tightened, but again, annoyingly, there was that almost-smile. Not a smile. Tom did not give you the satisfaction. But the corner of his mouth betrayed him by about half a millimetre before he looked back at the screen.
The lights dropped further.
The room darkened around you.
And then, because the universe had clearly developed a cruel little sense of timing, you shifted slightly and your perfume moved with you.
Tom went still.
You noticed. Not fully. Not the reason. Only the sudden pause of him beside you, the tiny interruption in his breathing, the way his fingers flexed once against his knee.
“What?” you whispered.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“I was reacting to the advert.”
“You were reacting to an insurance advert?”
“I did, and you should mind your own business.”
You rolled your eyes and turned back to the screen.
Tom did not.
For half a second, he looked at the side of your face in the blue-white flicker of the adverts and hated himself with impressive efficiency.
It was the same perfume.
Exactly the same.
He knew that was unreasonable. He knew there were probably thousands of women who wore it, or variations of it, or whatever expensive thing it was with its sweet-clean-skin warmth and faint powder underneath. He knew memory was a liar. He knew scent was worse.
But his body knew before his mind could argue.
New York.
The lift doors closing.
Your wrist near his mouth as you reached past him for the button.
The bed, the sheet twisted low around your waist.
The balcony after, rain-dark city beneath you, your robe sliding off one shoulder while you stole his cigarette and pretended not to cough, eyes watering as you insisted you were fine.
You had smelled like that.
You had smelled exactly like that.
And the worst part was that you did not know. You could not know. You had so many different perfumes, probably sent to you in glossy boxes by companies hoping you would wear them somewhere photographed or put them on to your Instagram feed. You probably picked this one without thinking, sprayed it onto your throat while late and anxious and half-focused on three other things.
Tom, unfortunately, was more predictable.
He always smelled the same.
Soap. Smoke. Laundry detergent. His own skin. The faint expensive sharpness of whatever cologne he had worn for years because once he found something that worked he stopped thinking about it.
You knew that smell too.
You hated that.
You hated that in the dark, with your shoulder almost touching his, you could place him with your eyes closed.
The trailer ended.
The cinema quietened.
You reached for your popcorn.
Tom’s eyes flicked down before he could stop them.
You caught him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep saying nothing.”
“You keep asking.”
You lifted one brow, then your gaze caught at the open edge of his collar.
There, just above the line of his shirt and half-hidden under the damp turned-up collar of his coat, was a mark.
Not dramatic.
Not theatrical.
But unmistakable.
A faint purple-red bruise at the side of his neck.
You looked at it for one second too long.
Tom realised the exact instant you realised.
His hand moved toward his collar.
Too late.
You leaned back, popcorn balanced in your lap, and whispered, “Big night?”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
“Watch the film.”
“That answers that.”
“It answers nothing.”
“It answers a lot, actually.”
“Are you always this interested in other people’s private lives?”
“That depends…”
His jaw tightened, which you enjoyed more than you should have.
“Watch the film,” he repeated.
You did.
Mostly.
At first, you tried hard. You genuinely did. You had your water. You had your popcorn. You had the very stern knowledge that Kurt would ask about this and expect you to have something more intelligent to say than the seats were hostile and Tom smelled unfairly familiar.
The film was French, black-and-white in the opening and then not, because apparently repression came with colour grading. There were long silences, glances held across rooms, doors half-closed, cigarettes smoked beside windows, a marriage rotting slowly under excellent table manners. People kept not saying things so aggressively that after twenty minutes you began to feel personally attacked.
Beside you, Tom barely moved.
Except he did.
Not in the obvious ways.
His thumb tapped once against his knee, then stopped. His foot shifted, then locked still. His breathing changed during certain scenes, particularly the ones where the actors did nothing but look at each other while the whole cinema seemed to lean forward waiting for someone to break.
You noticed those things because you were trying not to notice anything else.
Trying not to notice the width of him beside you.
The heat of his arm.
The fact that, when you both reached for popcorn at the same time after you offered him some out of politeness, your fingers brushed.
Barely.
A nothing touch.
Except it was not nothing, because both of you pulled back like you had been burned.
You stared at the screen.
Tom stared at the screen.
The married woman in the film stared at her lover across a dinner table and said something devastatingly quiet in French.
You had no idea what the subtitle said.
You were too aware of the side of Tom’s hand resting near yours in the dark.
A few minutes later, it happened again.
Not popcorn this time.
Your elbow shifted when you moved your water bottle. His hand was on the shared space between you because there was nowhere else for it, because the seat was evil, because Sven was a child, because the universe hated professionalism.
Your elbow knocked his wrist.
“Sorry,” you whispered.
“It’s fine.”
He said it too quickly.
The film kept going.
People suffered elegantly.
Rain hit windows.
Someone had an affair without removing more than one glove.
Tom leaned back slightly during a long shot of a woman standing alone in a kitchen.
You stole another glance at his neck.
He caught you.
You looked away at once.
He leaned closer, just enough for his voice to reach you and no one else.
“Do you mind?”
“I’m watching the film.”
“You’re watching my throat.”
“Your throat is currently more expressive.”
His mouth twitched.
You hated him.
You hated him most when he almost laughed.
By the final scene, the cinema had gone utterly quiet. The film ended with no music, no release, just the protagonist sitting alone in a room while dawn slowly whitened the curtains. It should have been pretentious. It almost was. But it worked.
Annoyingly.
The credits began.
No one moved immediately.
The silence after was heavier than the film itself.
People began gathering bags, whispering in low voices, standing with the strange solemnity audiences sometimes had after films they did not know whether they had enjoyed or survived.
You stayed seated.
So did Tom.
The credits rolled white on black.
For once, neither of you had anything sharp to say.
That made you nervous.
You shifted the empty popcorn tub between your hands.
Finally, you said, “Should we go to a café?”
Tom looked at you. “Why?”
“To do our homework.”
“I have done enough homework for one evening.”
“Kurt told us to come back with one shared conclusion.”
“Kurt says many things. And he’s not actually going to follow up on this.”
“He might follow up and then he might punish us for not doing our jobs.”
Tom sighed and rubbed at his forehead.
You watched the movement. His fingers. The mark on his neck again. The tiredness he was pretending was irritation.
“I’ve got half an hour,” he said at last.
“Generous.”
“My daughter is home alone with her friend, and it has me worried.”
You turned to him quickly. “You’re leaving a child by herself?”
Tom gave you a flat look. “She’s pretty much sixteen.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“You have a teenage daughter?”
His expression changed slightly, not softening, but something near it. “Why does that surprise you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I knew you had a daughter. I just didn’t expect her to be that old.”
“Sorry my personal timeline is inconvenient for you.”
“It is a bit. Makes you seem very adult.”
“I am forty.”
He stood before you could answer.
You followed him out into the aisle, the two of you doing that awkward cinema shuffle again. Outside, the lobby was bright enough to feel rude. Your eyes adjusted slowly. People spilled around you, discussing the film in various tones of intellectual confidence.
The rain had eased when you stepped outside, leaving the pavement black and reflective under streetlights. The nearest café still open was narrow and warm, with fogged windows and tiny round tables pressed too close together. It smelled of coffee, wet coats, sugar, and old wood.
Tom held the door open.
You looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Again with nothing.”
“You opened a door. I’m processing.”
“I can let it hit you next time.”
“That would feel more on brand considering the last week.”
You took a table by the window because it was the only one free. Tom sat opposite you and immediately looked too large for the chair, knees angled to avoid yours beneath the table. You tried not to find that funny.
A waitress came over.
“Americano,” Tom said.
“Americano,” you said at the same time.
You both stopped.
The waitress looked between you with mild interest.
Tom recovered first. “Two Americanos.”
She left.
You stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing.”
He gave you a look.
For a second, something tightened in his face.
Then his phone buzzed on the table.
Once.
Then again.
His eyes dropped to the screen.
You did not mean to look.
You looked.
Layla.
The name flashed bright and unmistakable before he turned the phone face down.
You leaned back.
“Coffee shop girl?”
Tom looked up slowly.
“Excuse me?”
“The one from the coffee shop near the studio. The pretty one.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
His tone had turned clipped.
You should have stopped.
You did not.
“She seems quite young.”
Tom’s face hardened.
“Funny you care.”
“I don’t.”
“You brought it up.”
“I made an observation.”
“You do that a lot. Make observations. Then pretend you’re not making judgments.”
You smiled without warmth. “Rich coming from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me. You’re very good at pretending opinions are professional concerns.”
His phone buzzed again under his hand.
He did not look at it.
You did.
He noticed.
“Stop looking at my phone.”
“Stop having a phone.”
“Brilliant solution.”
“I’m full of them.”
The waitress returned with the coffees. You both went quiet while she set them down, neither of you looking at each other, which somehow made the tension worse.
Once she left, you reached into your bag.
“I have notes.”
Tom watched.
You pulled out your script first. Then a book. Then a second book. Then the loose earring from earlier. Then lip gloss. Then a receipt. Then the pen without a lid. Then another pen that did have a lid but did not work when you scribbled on the receipt. Then a packet of gum. Then your phone. Then, finally, a small notebook with a bent corner.
Tom stared at the table.
You gathered the displaced objects with as much dignity as possible.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing a face again.”
“I’m admiring your so called complex internal filing system.”
“Shut up.”
His eyes had dropped to the book.
“Slaughterhouse-Five?”
You glanced at it. “Yes.”
“Interesting choice of some light reading material for the tube.”
“It’s a good book.”
“Wow,” he said as his gaze lifted. “That’s finally something we can agree on.”
There was a pause.
You regretted saying it lightly because it had not come out light.
Tom looked at you differently for a second.
Not kindly. You were not sure he knew how to do kindly with you. But with attention.
You picked at the edge of your notebook.
“Reading helps,” you said.
“With what?”
You shrugged. “Focus.”
He waited.
You hated that. The waiting. The way he did not fill silence just because it was there. The way it made you want to spill more than you meant to.
“And not overfocusing on things I shouldn’t overfocus on.”
Tom’s hand stilled around his coffee.
Irritatingly, he knew that feeling too well.
The mental snag. The loop. The repeated scene played until it lost all proportion and still refused to dissolve. A word. A look. A mistake. A person. A night. A scent.
His eyes moved, without permission, to your wrist.
Then back to your face.
You did not notice.
Or pretended not to.
“Anyway,” you said too brightly, opening the notebook. “The film.”
“Yes. The film.”
“We need one shared conclusion.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Great. So what’s yours?”
Tom sat back, coffee untouched. “It’s about the violence of restraint.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
“That’s your conclusion?”
“Yes.”
“The violence of restraint.”
“Yes.”
“You sound like the back of a festival programme.”
His eyes narrowed. “And you sound like someone who eats popcorn during repression.”
“It was a perfectly reasonable snack.”
“It was loud.”
You pointed your pen at him. “You are unbearable.”
“You asked for my conclusion.”
“And then you gave me a phrase with a smoking habit.”
“It is not a phrase with a smoking habit.”
“It absolutely owns a black turtleneck.”
Tom leaned forward. “The entire film is built around what the characters refuse to do. Refuse to say. Refuse to touch. The tension exists because everyone is disciplined to the point of cruelty.”
“Fine,” you said. “Yes. But that’s not enough.”
“It is plenty.”
“It’s half the point.”
“What’s the other half?”
“That repression is only interesting when something is actually pushing against it.”
His eyes sharpened.
You tapped your pen against the notebook, then forced yourself to stop.
“The film doesn’t work just because people don’t touch,” you said. “It works because they want to. Badly. Constantly. It’s not restraint in the abstract. It’s desire under pressure.”
Tom looked at you for a second too long.
You realised what you had said.
How you had said it.
Badly. Constantly.
The air between you changed.
Again.
Then he looked down at his coffee and said, “That is what I said.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You said violence of restraint.”
“Because desire under pressure becomes violent.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing with less glitter on it.”
“Glitter?”
“You heard me.”
You laughed once, disbelieving. “You think my analysis has glitter?”
“I think your analysis performs for attention.”
Your smile vanished.
Tom knew at once he had gone too far.
Or perhaps not too far.
Too accurately.
Which was often worse.
You closed your notebook halfway.
“Right.”
His jaw shifted.
“That wasn’t—”
“No, go on.”
“I’m saying you sometimes choose the most decorative version of the truth.”
“And you choose the most joyless one.”
“I choose the precise one.”
“No, you clearly choose the one that might make you sound less vulnerable than you actually are.”
He went very still.
There it was.
Too close again.
Your own pulse jumped because you had not meant to say that either.
Tom looked at you across the tiny table, and for one second the café seemed to narrow around him. Rain on the window. Coffee steam. Your notebook between you. His phone face down under his hand, silent now.
“You do not know anything about my vulnerabilities. In fact, you barely know me,” he said.
“No,” you said. “You are right. I barely know you.”
His mouth tightened.
You should have stopped.
You did not.
“And you barely know me, so don’t talk to me about performing for attention. You’ve spent half this job deciding I’m too immature for the role because it suits whatever story you told yourself about me before I opened my mouth.”
Tom’s eyes flashed. “I have not decided that.”
“You literally said I lacked experience.”
“You do. You freeze in every scene.”
“You mean during every closed-set intimacy scene with a man who had spent the first week of our working relationship glaring at me like I’d ruined his life?”
“That is not why you froze.”
“You don’t know why I froze.”
“No. But I know the role needs more than cleverness.”
The words landed hard.
Not loud.
Worse.
Clean.
You looked at him.
Tom held your gaze, angry and certain and not certain at all beneath it.
You said quietly, “And there it is.”
He looked away first.
You hated that it hurt. It should not have. You had heard worse. From critics. From men. From directors. From people who liked your father and resented you for being born near power. From people who pretended not to know your name while using it to sharpen every opinion they had of you.
But from Tom, it landed somewhere inconvenient.
Perhaps because he was talented.
Perhaps because he had seen you fail.
Perhaps because part of you still remembered his mouth against your neck in a hotel room before he had a name, before you had one, before he could look at you like you were a problem cast by committee.
You set the pen down.
“You know what’s funny?”
“I suspect I won’t find it funny.”
“I looked you up.”
His face changed.
“Oh, Christ.”
“No, it was educational.”
“I’m sure.”
“You did a movie for your dad.”
Tom’s gaze hardened immediately. “I was a child.”
“So?”
“So that is not remotely the same thing.”
You leaned forward. “No? Having a father in the industry only counts as nepotism when it’s my father?”
“I did not build a career off my father.”
“And I have not built mine off mine.”
“You got cast opposite me in a Kurt O’Callaghan film produced by your father.”
“I auditioned.”
“So did other people.”
“Yes. And I got cast.”
“Convenient.”
Your face warmed.
“Careful.”
Tom’s expression flickered.
You did not give him time.
“No, actually, let’s do this. You want to talk about convenience? Fine. My father being a producer is convenient when people want to explain away anything I do well. It is never convenient when they want to talk about the work itself. Then suddenly it’s a stain. A cheat code. A reason not to look properly.”
Tom said nothing.
You picked up your coffee and took a drink even though it was too hot.
It burned your tongue.
You pretended it had not.
“I have worked since I was a teenager,” you said. “I have auditioned. I have lost parts. I have been told no by people who liked my father and by people who hated him. I have done theatre for money that would not even cover my rent. So don’t sit there with a hickey on your neck and a superiority complex and tell me I am not good enough.”
Tom stared at you.
The hickey comment, unfortunately, undercut the speech slightly.
Not enough to ruin it.
But enough that something dangerously close to amusement crossed his face before he suppressed it.
You saw.
“Oh, don’t you dare almost laugh.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“You said hickey,” he began, as if that explained anything, “and I couldn’t help but—”
“No.”
Tom stopped.
You pointed the pen at him.
“No. You don’t get to make that the part you react to.”
His mouth pressed flat, but his eyes were still bright with the effort of not laughing.
You shook your head in response and looked down at your notebook. Then at your hand. At the ring James had given you, sitting there like a witness to the absurdity of it all. You had not even thought about it when you left the flat. You had put it on out of habit. Or fear. Or both.
Tom’s gaze dropped to it too.
His expression closed.
There it was again.
James.
The thing between you that was not between you because neither of you had agreed what it was allowed to be.
You pulled your hand back under the table.
Tom looked at the window.
For a while neither of you spoke.
The café noise returned slowly around you. Cups clinking. Milk steaming. Someone laughing too loudly near the counter. Rain ticking lightly against the glass.
You cleared your throat.
“Back to topic.”
Tom’s mouth tightened, but he nodded once.
“Yes.”
You opened the notebook again with hands that only shook a little.
“Fine. Shared conclusion.”
“The film uses repression to create tension.”
“Too broad.”
“Of course it is.”
“And the tension comes from desire being forced into small gestures.”
“That is better.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
You kicked his shoe under the table.
“Accidentally,” you said.
“That was not accidental.”
“Prove it.”
He leaned back, and for a second his eyes looked almost alive with irritation. Not the cold kind. The better kind. The kind that made the room warmer.
“Fine,” he said. “Small gestures. But not just desire. Guilt too.”
You paused.
He continued, more serious now. “The husband knows. Or suspects. The wife knows he knows. The lover wants to be chosen but also wants to remain innocent of destroying anything. Everyone is performing innocence. That is where the tension sits.”
You looked at him despite yourself.
That was good.
Annoyingly good.
You wrote it down.
Tom watched your pen move. “What are you writing?”
“The useful part.”
“All of it was useful.”
“Some of it had turtleneck energy.”
He rolled his eyes.
You kept writing.
The more you argued, the better the notes became. That was the worst part. Neither of you agreed easily, but you sharpened each other. You said desire, he said guilt. He said restraint, you said performance. You said the camera made the audience complicit, he said the blocking did. He argued about silence. You argued about touch. He said the film’s erotic charge came from refusal. You said no, it came from the possibility that refusal might fail.
“That’s the same thing,” he snapped.
“It is not the same thing.”
“It is.”
“It is not.”
“You are impossible.”
“You are so frustrating.”
“You don’t listen.”
“You don’t explain, you pronounce.”
“Because I know what I mean.”
“Do you? Or do you just enjoy sounding certain?”
Tom leaned forward again. “And do you enjoy misunderstanding me, or is that just natural talent?”
Your pen stopped.
You looked at him.
He looked back.
Then, horribly, both of you laughed.
Not much.
Not warmly.
But enough.
Enough that the anger had somewhere to go for one breath.
You hated that too.
You hated how easy it was to dislike him and how much energy it gave you. You hated how he made you sharper. You hated that arguing with him felt more honest than most people agreeing with you.
Tom looked down first, pressing his tongue against the inside of his cheek as though punishing himself for the laugh.
His phone buzzed again.
He glanced at it.
His expression changed.
Your irritation cooled slightly despite yourself.
“Your daughter?”
“No.”
You watched his thumb hover over the screen for half a second before he turned the phone face down.
A small, nasty little understanding moved through you.
“Coffee shop girl?”
Tom’s eyes came back to yours.
“None of your business.”
“That’s a yes.”
“That is not a yes.”
“It’s absolutely a yes.”
“It’s a none of your business.”
“Funny how those sound identical coming from you.”
His jaw tightened.
“You are remarkably invested in my phone.”
“I’m remarkably invested in patterns.”
“No, you’re invested in being irritating.”
“You make it very easy.”
“And you make it impossible to have a simple conversation.”
“This was never a simple conversation.”
The almost-laughter was gone now.
The fragile, strange little break in the tension folded in on itself, and there you were again. Across from each other. Too sharp. Too close. Coffee going cold. Notes half-written. His phone face down between you like another accusation.
Tom sat back.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“Just write down your conclusion and I’ll pretend to agree with it.”
You stared at him.
“You’ll pretend to agree with it.”
“Yes.”
“That’s your solution?”
“It is efficient.”
“It is lazy.”
“It is realistic.”
“Kurt asked for a shared conclusion.”
“And he will get one.”
“That you don’t actually agree with.”
“I can act.”
You laughed once, without humour.
“Wow. Great. Lovely to see you respecting the work.”
His eyes flashed.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like I’m the one wasting time here.”
“You just called the entire point of this evening something you’re willing to fake.”
“No, I said we cannot spend much more time on this nonsense.”
The word landed.
Not dramatically.
Worse than that.
Plainly.
You looked at him.
“You think this is nonsense.”
Tom exhaled sharply through his nose.
“I think sitting in a café arguing about whether a look across a dinner table is guilt or desire is not going to magically make next week go well.”
Your expression changed before you could stop it.
Tom saw.
Of course he did.
His mouth pressed shut, but it was too late.
“Next week,” you said.
He said nothing.
“The desk scene.”
Still nothing.
Your fingers tightened around the pen.
That was the scene both of you had been not talking about. The one Marie had already flagged. The one Kurt had circled twice in the schedule.
The one that required trust.
Or something close enough to trust that the camera could not tell the difference.
You smiled faintly.
It was not a nice smile.
“Right,” you then said.
Tom ran his hand through his hair.
“Listen Y/N, I am trying here.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Because from here it looks a lot like you’ve already decided I’m going to fail.”
His eyes sharpened.
“No, what I am saying is that doing this exercise is not going to stop you from locking up on set.”
You went still.
There it was again.
Clean.
Cruel.
Not shouted, which made it worse.
You closed the notebook.
Tom’s expression flickered immediately.
Regret. Frustration. Something too quick to name.
“That came out—”
“Clearly?”
He looked at you.
You pushed the notebook into your bag with none of your usual chaos. One clean movement. Script. Book. Pen. Phone. Everything shoved in hard.
“Great growth,” you said.
“Y/N.”
“No, really. Lovely evening. Very productive. We watched a film about people unable to say what they mean, then came here and recreated it badly.”
He stood as you stood, because apparently even leaving had to become a competition.
“Don’t walk off.”
“Why? So you can pretend to agree with me for another ten minutes?”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Neither are you.”
That stopped him.
For a second, neither of you moved.
The café carried on around you, indifferent and warm. Someone laughed near the counter. The waitress wiped down a table. Outside, London shone wet and black through the window.
Tom looked tired suddenly.
Not older.
Just tired.
He said nothing then and you pulled your coat tighter around yourself and stepped back from the table.
“See you next week.”
His jaw shifted.
“Y/N.”
You looked at him.
He seemed, for one second, like he might actually say something useful.
Something honest.
Something that would make the whole evening worse in a different way.
Then his phone buzzed again on the table.
You both looked at it.
Layla’s name lit the screen.
Whatever was about to happen died there.
You smiled faintly.
“You should get that.”
Tom did not touch the phone.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Do that.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re right,” you said. “I’m leaving.”
You turned before he could answer.
This time, he did not follow.
Outside, the cold air hit your face hard enough to make your eyes water. You told yourself it was the wind. The damp. The stupid brightness of the streetlights on wet pavement.
Behind you, through the café window, Tom remained standing by the table, one hand on the back of the chair, his phone still buzzing beside two untouched coffees and a notebook page neither of you had managed to turn into peace.
You walked away annoyed.
Furious, actually.
With him.
With yourself.
With Kurt.
With the film.
With the desk scene waiting on Monday like a dare.
And with the horrible, undeniable fact that some small, traitorous part of you still wanted to know what Tom would have said if the phone had not lit up.
Hello! I hope you are doing well!
I saw that you mentioned seeing the movie The Man I love with Tom and Rami. Can I ask you where you saw it? <3 I want to make gifs so much!
Thank you so much, have a nice day!!!
At the Sydney Film Festival and god I would love gifs of Tom making out with Rami
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Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader, Smut
Tom’s POV
Looking back at Friday night, Tom should have said no when Anya and Frank suggested they spend some quality time together.
There were several practical reasons.
He had an early start in his head even when he did not technically have an early call. He had Ellie from around lunchtime. He had Kurt’s ridiculous French cinema punishment waiting for him on Sunday. He had a co-star he apparently could not stand within three feet of without turning the entire film into a border dispute. He had smoked too much. He was tired. He was irritable.
He also knew exactly where this was going.
That was the problem.
It was not surprise. It was not temptation arriving in some unfamiliar shape, catching him unprepared and morally winded. It was Anya and Frank. Which meant the danger was not that he did not know what they wanted. The danger was that he knew.
The hotel was five minutes away and the suite Anya had booked was exactly what Tom expected from her, which was to say expensive, theatrical, and faintly indecent before anyone had done anything in it.
Low amber lighting. Wide windows. A sitting room arranged around a cream sofa. A bedroom visible through open double doors. A bathroom beyond that, pale stone and glass, the large shower already suggested by the architecture like a dare.
On the sideboard, waiting in an ice bucket, was a bottle of wine.
Tom stopped.
“You ordered ahead.”
Anya slipped out of her coat and dropped it over a chair.
Underneath, the silver dress clung to her like liquid metal.
“I did.”
Then Anya crossed to the sideboard and lifted the bottle.
“Hmm.”
Tom raised a brow.
“What does hmm mean?”
Anya smiled, still holding the bottle.
“Hmm means that I think it is amusing how you are pretending to be annoyed while Frank is pretending not to enjoy it.”
Frank laughed under his breath.
Tom took off his jacket and threw it over the back of the sofa.
“You two are unbearable.”
“And yet,” Anya said, opening the bottle with the neat confidence of a woman who had never waited for a man to do anything useful, “you are here.”
The cork came free with a soft, obscene little sound.
Frank looked at Tom. Tom looked at Frank. Anya looked at both of them and smiled.
She enjoyed this part. She always had.
Not only being touched. Not only being wanted. Anya liked arrangement. She liked knowing exactly how a room shifted when desire entered it. She liked watching men who knew themselves well enough to stop pretending they were simple. She liked Tom with women, yes, but she liked him differently with men.
It amused her, softened her, sharpened her.
Because with Frank for example, Tom’s control did not vanish. It changed shape.
With Frank, there was less decoration. Frank did not flatter him into surrender. Frank waited. And Tom, because he was not out of his depth and had not been out of his depth with this for a very long time, made him wait just long enough to make the waiting worth it.
Anya poured three glasses.
She gave the first to Tom.
He accepted it, holding her gaze over the rim as he drank.
Anya watched his mouth touch the glass. Frank watched Anya watching. Tom saw both of them. Of course he did.
He lowered the glass.
“What?”
Anya leaned one hip against the sideboard.
“Nothing.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
“That means something from you.”
Frank took his own glass from her.
“Everything means something from Anya.”
“Exactly,” Tom said.
Anya sipped her wine, unbothered.
“I am enjoying the view.”
Tom’s mouth twitched.
“Of London?”
Her gaze moved from Tom to Frank, then back again.
“Among other things.”
Frank smiled into his glass.
Tom looked at him.
“Don’t look pleased with yourself.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“Usually.”
Anya gave a low laugh.
There was history in the room.
Not romantic history, not exactly. Nothing any of them could have fit into polite language or explained to a journalist without making everything sound cheaper than it was.
But history all the same.
Anya was one of the very few people who knew this side of Tom.
Ruth had known, eventually. Halfway through their relationship, after some careless late-night honesty, Tom had told her about the men before her. Not many. Two in total. Experiments at that stage as he was young, in his early twenties, trying to figure himself out. He didn’t announce it loudly. Not in the way people confessed something shameful, because he had never believed it was shameful until he watched Ruth try, and fail, to make peace with it.
She had wanted to be fine with it. That was almost worse.
For years, she had tried to accept it in theory while recoiling from it in practice. Their relationship had ended for other reasons too, bigger reasons, older reasons, the slow grinding down of love into resentment and routine, but that had been one of the fault lines beneath them. One of the places where Tom learned that honesty did not always make him safer.
So, he had never told Liliana about this side of him for example which, now, he knew was foolish.
The problem with Liliana was that everything between them had been elegant, photographed, curated. She liked men complicated in ways that made them more glamorous. Not in ways that made her question the version of herself standing beside them.
Tom’s relationship with Liliana had lasted five years. Maybe six, depending on when he counted the beginning and when he admitted the end had started. It had carried on right up until a few weeks before he met you in New York.
Then, half a year or so after Tom finally ended it with Liliana, Anya happened.
And Anya had been different. Anya had not been love. That helped.
At first, Anya had been sex and wit and no consequence beyond the room they were in. She had been older than most of the women who wanted to be impressed by him, more difficult than most of the women who wanted to save him, and far too open-minded to treat any of his appetites as a crisis.
The first time with Frank had been after an awards dinner several months earlier.
It had been a hard week for him. The kind where he smiled so well in public that anyone who loved him even a little would have known something was wrong. Anya had looked at him across a private bar, head tilted, eyes glittering with something too precise to be sympathy, and said with devastating calm:
“You are performing happiness so badly tonight.”
Tom had taken offence.
Naturally.
Frank, who was with her at the time, had laughed.
That was how it started, really.
Frank had been an old friend of Anya’s then. Someone she trusted. Someone she found handsome in a way that did not require explanation. She had brought him along casually, almost carelessly, not intending anything except company, wine, and perhaps the pleasure of putting two interesting men in the same room and seeing whether conversation survived.
It did. Barely.
Tom had disliked Frank on sight, which Anya found promising.
Frank had not seemed remotely offended, which made Tom worse.
Three hours later, somehow, they were in Anya’s kitchen. Tom’s shirt was half undone. Anya was sitting on the counter with a glass of wine, watching the two of them circle each other with increasing lack of subtlety, and Frank was telling Tom, very politely, that for a man who looked that good in a suit, he seemed bizarrely intimidated by Anya.
Tom had stared at him and laughed.
“I’m not intimidated by Anya.”
Frank had smiled.
“Of course not.”
“I’m not.”
“Sure.”
Anya had gone very still.
Because she saw it before Tom did.
Or perhaps Tom saw it and simply chose, for once, not to step away from the seeing.
The charge in the room shifted. Not toward her. Not away from her either. Around her. Through her. A current she had accidentally made by introducing the right two men and then refusing to interrupt the result.
Frank’s smile had lingered half a second too long.
Tom’s gaze had dropped to his mouth.
Anya had thought, with sudden, bright clarity: Oh.
Then, because Anya had never been the sort of woman to let an interesting thing die of politeness, she took a slow sip of wine and said, far too lightly:
“You know, I’m still here.”
Tom looked at her at once.
Frank did too.
Anya smiled.
“Don’t stop on my account.”
Tom’s brow lifted.
“Don’t stop what?”
“Whatever this is.”
“There is no this.”
Frank laughed under his breath.
Anya pointed her glass at him.
“See? That laugh means there is absolutely a this.”
Tom looked at Frank.
Frank looked back, amused and calm and entirely too handsome for someone Tom had decided to dislike on principle.
“I was only laughing because you’re very defensive,” Frank said.
“I’m not defensive.”
“You’re spectacularly defensive.”
Anya’s eyes brightened.
“He is, isn’t he?”
“Very.”
Tom looked between them and Frank’s smile shifted. Less teasing now. More deliberate.
He looked at Tom properly. Not at the suit. Not at the loosened shirt. Not at the performance of irritation Tom was wearing like armour.
At him.
“Would it bother you?” Frank asked.
Tom’s expression did not change, but something in the room tightened.
Anya noticed his hand still on the edge of the counter beside her. The way his fingers pressed once into the marble. The way his mouth parted slightly before he corrected it.
“Would what bother me?”
Frank’s gaze dropped to Tom’s mouth again.
This time, he did not pretend it was accidental.
“If I kissed you.”
Anya nearly smiled into her wine.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was perfect.
Tom did not move.
For one long second, his whole face became unreadable in that controlled, actorly way that probably worked on rooms full of journalists and people who wanted access to him.
It did not work on Anya.
It did not seem to work on Frank either.
Then Tom gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
“You’re asking very politely for someone who has been baiting me for an hour.”
Frank’s smile was slow.
“I’m polite when it matters.”
Anya leaned forward slightly, unable to help herself.
Her eyes moved from Frank to Tom, then back again, bright with sudden, wicked interest.
“By all means,” she said softly.
Tom looked at her.
For half a second, something like warning crossed his face.
“Anya.”
She only smiled, lifting her glass as if making a toast.
“I said by all means.”
Frank’s gaze stayed on Tom.
He did not move.
That was clever of him.
Annoyingly clever.
He had asked the question, but he left the answer in Tom’s hands. Left Tom room to retreat, to laugh, to sneer, to turn it into a joke and walk away intact.
Anya watched the calculation pass across Tom’s face.
The irritation.
The curiosity.
The pride.
The want.
Then Tom gave a low, disbelieving laugh and stepped forward.
“You’re both impossible,” he said.
Frank’s mouth curved.
“That wasn’t a no.”
“No,” Tom said, his hand closing in the front of Frank’s shirt. “It wasn’t.”
Then Tom kissed him.
Not cautiously.
Not experimentally.
Not like a man being led somewhere unfamiliar.
He kissed Frank as if the idea had annoyed him mostly because it had taken Frank so long to offer.
Anya went still on the counter, wineglass paused halfway to her mouth.
Because Frank had asked.
But Tom had chosen.
And that was hotter.
For half a second, Frank had the upper hand.
Then Tom took it from him.
His fingers tightened in Frank’s shirt. His other hand came up to the side of Frank’s neck, changing the angle, deepening the kiss, making Frank either follow or admit he could not keep up.
Frank followed.
Barely.
Anya set her glass down very carefully beside her.
“Oh,” she murmured.
Neither of them stopped and, after that first encounter, it had become occasional.
Unscheduled.
Never sentimental.
Never entirely casual either.
A hotel here. A house in Italy once. A night in Paris after a premiere where Anya had pretended not to know Tom was watching Frank’s hands all through dinner.
They knew the choreography now.
They also knew when to break it.
******
Tonight, Anya let the wine do the first work.
They sat in the low-lit sitting room, Tom on the sofa, Anya beside him, Frank in the armchair opposite at first, too relaxed, one ankle over one knee, wineglass loose in his hand.
That was deliberate.
Distance could be its own form of touch when everyone in the room knew it would not last.
Tom leaned back, legs apart, glass resting against his thigh. His shirt collar was open. His hair already slightly wrecked from the day. He looked less like a movie star here. Less polished. More dangerous for it.
Anya curled sideways, one bare foot tucked beneath her, her silver dress riding high on her thigh. She traced the rim of her wineglass with one finger and watched Frank watch Tom.
“He’s doing it on purpose,” she said.
Tom did not look at her.
“Who?”
“Frank.”
Frank lifted his brows.
“I’m sitting quietly.”
“Exactly.”
Tom looked between them.
“You’re both insane.”
Anya smiled.
“No. He’s making you come to him.”
Frank’s gaze stayed on Tom.
“Is it working?”
Tom drank his wine.
Slowly.
Then he set the glass on the table and stood.
Anya’s eyes brightened.
Frank did not move.
Tom crossed the room with the unhurried ease of a man who knew perfectly well what his body did in low light. He stopped in front of Frank’s chair and looked down at him.
Frank tilted his head back.
“Hello.”
Tom rested one hand on the arm of the chair.
“You are being very smug.”
“I have every reason to be, it seems.”
“Do you?”
Frank’s eyes dropped briefly to Tom’s belt, then returned to his face.
“Clearly.”
Anya made a quiet sound of approval from the sofa.
Tom looked over his shoulder.
“Comfortable?”
She smiled.
“Extremely.”
“You’re just going to watch?”
“For now.”
Frank’s fingers came up, touched Tom’s wrist where his hand rested on the chair.
A small touch.
Nothing hurried.
Tom looked down at it.
Then back at Frank.
Frank smiled.
And that is when Tom bent and kissed him.
Anya went very still on the sofa.
She loved that too. The change. The clean snap of it. Tom’s hand sliding from the armchair to Frank’s jaw, the kiss not tentative, not experimental, not confused. Nothing about it uncertain. Tom knew how to kiss a man. Knew where to put his weight. Knew how to make control look generous until it was not.
Frank’s hand came to Tom’s waist.
Tom deepened the kiss.
Frank made a sound low in his throat.
Anya’s thighs shifted slightly beneath the silver dress.
Tom heard.
He broke the kiss and looked at her.
His mouth was damp now. Softer. Crueler.
“Still just watching?”
Anya’s smile was slow.
“For now,” she repeated.
Frank laughed against Tom’s mouth.
Tom looked back down at him.
“What’s funny?”
“You.”
“Careful.”
“There he is.”
Tom kissed him again, harder this time, then drew back just enough for Frank to follow.
Frank did.
Of course he did.
Anya watched Frank’s control fray by increments. His fingers tightening at Tom’s shirt. His shoulders losing that beautiful lazy line. His mouth chasing Tom’s when Tom pulled back half an inch.
It was not one-sided.
That was the beauty of it.
Frank could undo Tom by doing almost nothing.
Tom could make Frank impatient by making patience look like a poor choice.
Anya set her wine aside.
“Come here.”
Tom did not move immediately.
He looked at Frank first.
Frank looked back.
For a moment, it was just them.
Then Tom straightened and offered Frank his hand.
Frank took it.
Anya’s gaze dropped to their joined hands.
Her smile changed.
Less wicked now.
More private.
The bedroom was lit even lower than the sitting room. Soft lamps. White sheets. The city beyond the windows. The bed broad enough for three people who had done this before and still knew it would not be enough once they started.
Anya stood by the bed and let Tom come to her.
He touched her like he knew her too.
Because he did.
His hand at her waist. His thumb finding the place where the dress met skin. His mouth near hers, not kissing yet.
“You are enjoying yourself.”
“Yes.”
“At my expense?”
“A little.”
Frank stood behind him now. Close, but not touching.
Anya’s eyes flicked past Tom to Frank.
“At his too.”
Frank smiled.
“I feel appreciated.”
Tom looked over his shoulder and smiled.
Anya reached between them and took Frank by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer until Tom was between them.
Not trapped.
Never that.
Placed.
Tom allowed it, because Tom liked being handled only by people who knew the difference between taking and asking without words.
Frank’s chest came against his back.
Anya’s body pressed to his front.
Tom’s breath altered.
Not because he was out of his depth.
Because he knew exactly how deep it went.
Anya noticed.
Her smile softened into something almost tender before sharpening again.
“There.”
Tom looked down at her.
“Don’t narrate.”
“You like when I narrate.”
“I like when you think I do.”
Frank’s mouth brushed the back of Tom’s neck.
“Liar.”
Tom’s eyes closed for one second.
“Everyone keeps calling me that tonight.”
Anya touched his face.
“Because you keep pretending.”
The second glass of wine sat unfinished on the bedside table.
The rest of the night unfolded around it.
Not messy at first.
Measured. Teasing. Familiar enough for confidence, unpredictable enough for heat.
Buttons opened. Fabric slid away. Frank’s watch came off and landed with a soft thud beside the wine. Anya stepped out of the silver dress and left it in a bright spill on the carpet. Tom’s shirt went last, because Anya insisted on taking her time with it, undoing one button, then stopping to kiss Frank over Tom’s shoulder, just to feel Tom’s impatience gather under her hands.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” Tom said.
Anya looked innocent.
“Doing what?”
Frank kissed the side of Tom’s throat.
“Making him wait.”
“He is very pretty when he waits.”
Tom gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Pretty?”
Anya looked him over shamelessly.
“Yes.”
Frank’s hand moved down Tom’s chest.
“Unfortunately.”
Tom turned his head and kissed Frank again, partly for the word, partly to stop him smiling.
Anya watched.
That was the part she did not always say aloud.
Watching them changed the room.
There was something deeply satisfying about Tom like that. Not softened exactly. Not submissive. Never simple enough for that. But altered. Less polished. More honest in the places he usually kept immaculate.
With Frank, he became rougher around the edges.
With her, he became theatrical.
Between them, he became something dangerously close to relaxed.
And Tom, for his part, knew she was watching and played to it without making it cheap.
He turned Frank toward her deliberately. Kissed him where she could see. Let one hand slide into Frank’s hair and hold there while Frank’s mouth moved against his. He knew the line of his own body in profile. Knew what she liked. Knew how Frank’s breath changed when he was displayed rather than hidden.
*************
The shower came later.
Or maybe before.
Time loosened after the wine.
The bathroom filled with steam and pale light, the three of them moving with that particular ease of people who had stopped needing instructions. Tom reached in first to test the water. Frank made a comment about him being fussy. Tom pulled him under the spray before Frank could finish the sentence.
Anya laughed from the vanity.
“Careful, Frank. He’s sensitive tonight.”
Tom looked out through the steam.
“I’m not sensitive.”
Frank, wet hair falling into his eyes, smiled against Tom’s shoulder.
“No. Very sturdy.”
Anya slipped into the shower with them, water catching in her hair, running over her shoulders. She fitted herself against Tom’s side and kissed the corner of his mouth.
“And handsome.”
Tom turned his head and kissed her properly.
Frank’s hands settled at his hips.
The steam made everything closer. Sound. Skin. Breath. The occasional clink of glass when Anya, absurdly, reached out of the shower for her wine and took a sip with her hair wet and her mouth swollen.
Tom stared at her.
“You are ridiculous.”
She offered him the glass.
“And yet.”
He drank from it.
Frank watched his throat move.
Anya watched Frank watching.
Then she smiled.
Eventually, Tom set the glass aside with dangerous care.
Not because he was finished with the wine.
Because he was finished being watched without answering for it.
He turned back to Frank under the water and kissed him until Frank’s shoulders hit the tile with a dull sound softened by steam. Frank laughed into his mouth, but the laugh did not last. Tom did not let it. One hand caught Frank by the jaw, the other braced near his head, and the kiss deepened into something less playful, more deliberate.
Anya came in behind him.
Her hands slid over Tom’s ribs, then lower, palms flattening against wet skin as her mouth found his shoulder. She was smiling at first. Tom felt it against him. Felt the curve of her amusement, the little pleased breath she let out when Frank’s hand caught at Tom’s waist.
Then Tom reached back for her without looking.
His fingers closed around her thigh, pulling her closer, and her laughter caught.
Turned into a breath.
Turned into silence.
The room narrowed to steam.
Water running down Tom’s back.
Anya pressed warm behind him.
Frank in front of him, hair wet, mouth swollen, eyes lifted to Tom’s with that infuriating calm beginning to break at the edges.
Tom looked down at him.
Frank’s smile came slower now.
“Still defensive?”
Tom’s mouth curved.
“Still talking?”
Frank’s gaze dropped.
So did he.
Anya went still behind Tom.
Not because she was surprised.
Because she wanted to see it properly.
Frank sank lower with unhurried confidence, one hand sliding down Tom’s thigh, the other steady at his hip. No question this time. No performance of asking when the answer was already in the way Tom’s body had gone taut and ready beneath Anya’s hands.
Still, Frank looked up once.
Not asking.
Checking.
Knowing.
Tom’s hand braced against the tile.
His fingers spread against the wet stone.
Then Frank’s mouth found him.
Tom’s head dropped forward for half a second.
Just half.
A rough breath left him, swallowed almost immediately by the steam and the water and Anya’s mouth at his shoulder. His body reacted before his pride could clean it up. Hips shifting once, then stilling. Stomach tightening under Anya’s palms. His free hand moved to Frank’s hair, not forcing, not guiding exactly.
Holding.
Frank knew what he was doing.
Of course he did.
That was part of the problem.
There was nothing uncertain in it. Nothing tentative. Frank took his time in a way that made patience feel indecent, as if he had been waiting all evening to see whether Tom would let the room reach this point and was now going to make him admit it had been worth the wait.
Anya watched Tom’s face.
That was what she liked most. Not only Frank on his knees. Not only Tom’s body giving him away by degrees. The face. The control fighting pleasure and losing beautifully.
Tom caught himself and lifted his head.
Looked at her instead.
Anya loved that. The confidence of it. The trust.
The fact that Tom could be undone and still entirely present. That he could have Frank’s mouth on him, his hand in Frank’s wet hair, his breath breaking apart in careful, furious pieces, and still look at her as if this was not surrender.
As if it was invitation.
Anya reached for his face.
Her thumb moved over his cheekbone, then down to his lower lip.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
Tom’s mouth curved, strained but wicked.
“You talking to me or him?”
Frank laughed softly against him.
The sound went through Tom hard enough that his hand pressed flatter to the tile.
Anya saw it.
Frank felt it.
Tom closed his eyes for one second, then opened them again like he refused to give either of them the satisfaction of losing him completely.
Anya’s thumb dragged over his lower lip.
“Both.”
Frank’s hand tightened once at Tom’s hip.
Tom’s breath hitched.
Anya smiled.
“Mostly you, though.”
Tom gave a low, broken laugh.
“Liar.”
“No,” she said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Just generous.”
Frank looked up again then, eyes dark, mouth wet, expression far too pleased with himself.
Tom looked down at him.
For a second, all three of them held there.
Steam.
Water.
Wine still on the ledge somewhere behind them.
Anya’s hands on Tom.
Tom’s hand in Frank’s hair.
Frank kneeling as if patience had finally become its own kind of cruelty.
Then Tom smiled.
Not soft.
Not overwhelmed.
Wicked.
“Don’t look smug,” he said.
Frank’s answer was not verbal.
Tom’s head fell back against Anya’s shoulder.
This time, he let it.
After that, teasing became harder to maintain. Not impossible. Nothing with them was ever completely without teeth. Because they were still themselves.
Frank still made some dry remark against Tom’s hip that made Tom swear at him.
Anya still told Tom he was being dramatic when he pressed his forehead to the tile and laughed breathlessly.
Tom still found enough arrogance to tell Frank he had always been better on his knees than in arguments, which made Anya make a delighted sound and Frank bite him into his upper thigh just hard enough to make him regret the sentence.
But the playfulness sat over something darker.
Hungrier.
A little less tidy.
By the time they reached the bed again, the wine was gone, the room was warm, and all three of them had stopped pretending the evening was merely a favour to Tom’s stress levels.
Anya stretched across the sheets first, hair damp, mouth red, one arm above her head.
The bed received them badly.
Three people were always too many and never enough. Elbows. Laughter. Someone’s knee in the wrong place. Anya complaining that Frank was stealing space. Frank saying Tom was worse.
Then, later, much later, Tom lay in the middle of the bed staring at the ceiling.
The room smelled of wine, steam, skin, and the faint remains of Tom’s cigarette smoke clinging to his discarded jacket.
Anya was draped along his left side, one leg over his thigh, her fingers drawing idle patterns over his stomach. Frank was on his right, propped on one elbow, his hair still damp, looking almost offensively pleased with himself.
Tom’s breathing had slowed.
His face had changed.
The tightness was not gone entirely, but it had been moved out of the centre of him.
Pushed to the edges.
Made manageable.
Frank studied him.
“Feeling better?”
Tom stared at the ceiling for another second.
Then, because denying it would have been too obvious even for him, he exhaled and said,
“Yes.”
Anya smiled against his shoulder.
Frank’s expression softened in a way Tom did not want to examine too closely.
“Good.”
Tom turned his head slightly, catching the warmth in Frank’s face before he could avoid it.
That was the problem with Frank. He could be wicked for hours and then, without warning, look at Tom like this. Like the point had not been the wanting. Like the point had been getting him quiet enough to breathe.
Tom swallowed. Then looked away first.
“But it’s getting late.”
Anya’s fingers paused against his stomach.
Frank did not move.
For a moment, the room held very still around them.
Then Frank said, quieter,
“Stay.”
The word changed the room.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Tom’s body went still.
Anya’s hand resumed moving, slower now, as if she had expected this part and did not intend to interfere.
“No. I should go,” Tom then said and Frank sighed.
Not surprised.
Not angry.
Just Frank.
“Of course you should.”
Tom sat up, reaching for the sheet.
“I’ve got Ellie tomorrow.”
“In the morning,” Frank said.
“Yes. Picking her up at ten.”
Anya rolled onto her back.
“You could sleep for a few hours and then head back.”
Tom reached for his trousers on the floor.
“I don’t sleep well in hotels.”
Frank’s brows rose.
Anya laughed outright.
Tom looked between them.
“What?”
“That,” Frank said, “is an astonishing lie, even for you.”
“I don’t.”
Anya lifted herself onto one elbow.
“Darling, I have seen you sleep through a thunderstorm in Milan with room service knocking for ten minutes.”
Tom pointed at her with his belt.
“That was exhaustion.”
Frank sat up against the pillows, sheet low at his waist.
“This is also exhaustion.”
“Different kind.”
“Convenient.”
Tom pulled on his trousers.
“You know how crowded three people in one bed gets.”
Frank’s eyes moved over him slowly.
“You didn’t mind a minute ago when you were wedged between Anya and I.”
Anya made a delighted sound.
Tom paused, one hand at his waistband.
Then he looked at Frank.
“That was different.”
Frank’s smile was infuriating.
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Tom searched for an answer.
Anya watched him enjoy failing.
Finally, he said, “There was a purpose.”
Frank laughed.
“Sleep has a purpose.”
“Not one I currently require.”
Anya’s lips curved.
“He means he is frightened of waking up affectionate.”
Tom grabbed his shirt.
“I am leaving because I have a child.”
“You are leaving because you always leave,” Frank said.
There was no accusation in it.
That made it worse.
Tom stopped buttoning his shirt for half a second.
Then continued.
Wrong button.
Naturally.
Anya noticed.
“You’ve done it wrong.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Frank looked amused again.
Tom swore under his breath, undid two buttons, and fixed them.
Anya watched him with lazy fondness.
“Be kind on Sunday.”
Tom’s hands stilled.
“Don’t.”
“I am serious.”
He looked up.
“I am not unkind.”
Frank’s expression said several things.
Tom pointed at him.
“Do not.”
Frank lifted both hands.
“I said nothing.”
“Your face did.”
Anya sat up properly now, sheet gathered at her chest.
“You can be very sharp when you feel cornered.”
“I am aware.”
“And she corners you.”
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“She lies.”
Anya tilted her head.
“Maybe she does. But come on, Tom, the age lie was barely a lie at all.”
Frank watched him carefully.
Tom stared at him.
“We are not doing this.”
“No,” Frank said. “You are leaving before we can.”
Anya smiled faintly.
Tom hated them both.
He really did.
Or he would have, if hate had not required more distance than he had ever successfully maintained from either of them.
He pulled his belt closed.
Frank got out of bed and crossed to him without bothering to dress.
Tom looked at him once, then deliberately looked away.
Frank noticed.
Obviously.
At the door, Frank took Tom’s coat from the chair and held it out.
Tom accepted it.
For a moment they stood very close.
Too close for exit.
Frank’s hand stayed on the coat even after Tom had taken it.
“Text when you get home.”
Tom rolled his eyes.
“Yes, Dad.”
Frank’s mouth curved.
“You could call me Daddy if you wanted.”
Tom stared at him.
Anya laughed from the bed.
“Frank.”
“What?” Frank said, still looking at Tom. “I’m being supportive.”
Tom shook his head, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
“You are an idiot.”
Frank’s smile widened.
“Handsome idiot.”
Tom exhaled through his nose, amused despite himself.
“Unfortunately.”
Frank’s hand tightened once on the coat between them.
For a second, the joke thinned into something quieter.
Tom saw it happen.
The warmth in Frank’s face.
The want that had survived the teasing.
The invitation to stay, still there, even after Tom had already refused it.
Tom looked away first.
Then, because leaving without doing it would have felt meaner than leaving at all, he leaned in and kissed him, which was enough to shut Frank up. But not enough to let the room win.
When Tom pulled back, Frank’s smile had changed. Softer now. More dangerous.
“Text me,” he said.
Tom opened the door.
“Goodnight, Frank.”
From the bed, Anya lifted one lazy hand.
“Goodnight, impossible man.”
Tom glanced back once.
“Goodnight, unbearable woman.”
Then he left before either of them could make staying sound reasonable.
The following day….
At four minutes past ten the following morning, Tom arrived at Ruth’s.
Ruth opened the door before he had even knocked properly.
“You’re early.”
Tom looked at his watch.
“I’m four minutes late.”
“Exactly.”
Behind her, Ellie appeared at the bottom of the stairs with her headphones around her neck, one trainer untied, and her hair clipped back in a way that suggested she had given up halfway through whatever she had been trying to do.
She looked exactly like a person who had been told to pack a bag twenty minutes ago and had spent nineteen of those minutes doing something else.
“Dad.”
“El.”
She came forward and let him kiss the top of her head, though she rolled her eyes as he did it, because apparently dignity had to be defended even in moments of affection.
“You packed?” Tom asked.
“Mostly.”
Ruth turned.
“Ellie.”
“I said mostly.”
“That usually means no.”
Ellie sighed with the full-body exhaustion of a girl tragically born to unreasonable people.
“It means my charger is upstairs.”
Tom smiled despite himself.
“Go get your charger.”
Ellie looked at him.
Then –
“I will in a minute.”
Ruth’s mouth tightened.
“Ellie. Upstairs.”
Ellie lifted both hands in surrender and disappeared again, thudding back up the stairs.
Tom waited until she was gone before looking back at Ruth.
“About tomorrow—”
Ruth’s face changed immediately.
“Tom.”
“There is that thing I need to do for the new movie.”
“That thing?”
“It’s kind of research.”
“On a Sunday.”
“I’ll only be gone for two hours.”
“You have her this weekend.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He exhaled, already tired.
“Ruth.”
“No, don’t Ruth me. You wanted her to stay with you this weekend and now you won’t be there.”
“I am only going to be gone for a few hours.”
“Yes, during which you will leave your fifteen-year-old daughter on her own.”
“She’s nearly sixteen, Ruth. She can stay by herself for a few hours.”
“Oh, it’s nearly sixteen now, is it?”
His jaw moved.
“Yes. She will be sixteen in two weeks, so it’s nearly sixteen.”
“It’s convenient, though, isn’t it? When she wants to go to a party, she’s fifteen. When you need to disappear for work, she’s nearly sixteen.”
Tom looked away.
That landed more cleanly than he wanted it to.
Upstairs, a drawer slammed. Then another one. Then Ellie’s voice, muffled through the ceiling.
“Where is my black hoodie?”
Ruth didn’t look up.
“In the wash because you left it under your bed for a week.”
A silence.
Then: “That’s so unfair.”
Tom closed his eyes briefly.
“God.”
“Yes,” Ruth said. “Parenting. Still happening when you’re not around.”
He looked at her.
“That was unnecessary.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
Ruth folded her arms.
“Maybe. But it isn’t entirely untrue.”
For a second neither of them spoke.
He had not smoked all morning, and suddenly the lack of it sat under his skin like an itch. His fingers flexed at his side. Ruth noticed. Of course she did. Ruth had known him before he had learned to make the worst parts of himself look charming.
“I’m taking her tonight,” he said. “We’re going to that play she wanted to see. Dinner after. She’s staying at mine. Breakfast tomorrow. I’m not abandoning her. But if you want me to bring her back before I head out for a few hours in the afternoon, I can do that.”
“No, Tom. I have plans” Ruth said. “And I am very grateful for you fitting her into your busy schedule.”
Tom stared at her.
“That’s uncalled for.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You have always loved her,” Ruth said, quieter now, which somehow made it worse. “I’ve never doubted that. But loving her isn’t the same as making space for her.”
His expression hardened.
“You don’t get to say that, Ruth.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Don’t I?”
“No. You work too. You have things. You have weekends where you need cover, and I have said a hundred times she can stay with me whenever she wants to, or whenever you need her to.”
“That is not the same thing—”
“It is exactly the same thing when you’re standing there implying I don’t make space for my daughter.”
Ruth’s mouth closed.
Tom lowered his voice, but there was anger in it now. Real anger. The controlled kind, which was usually worse.
“She is almost sixteen. We both agreed the court orders we had in place don’t really fit anymore because she decides where she wants to be and when. That was not me avoiding responsibility. That was us accepting she isn’t five.”
Ruth looked away for half a second.
He kept going.
“So don’t make this about me not making space. Make it about tomorrow if you want. Make it about the studio. Make it about me being shit at giving you notice. Fine. I’ll take that. But don’t make it about me not wanting her.”
Ruth’s face shifted.
“I didn’t say you didn’t want her.”
“No,” Tom said. “You just found a nicer way to mean it.”
Before Ruth could answer, Ellie reappeared at the top of the stairs.
“You both can stop arguing now, because it’s fine,” she said. “I’m old enough to stay home on my own. I do it all the time.”
Ruth turned sharply.
“That is not the point.”
Ellie blinked.
“It kind of sounds like the point.”
Tom looked up at her.
“El, do me a favour and check you’ve got everything. Bag, charger, toothbrush, whatever terrifying skincare things currently own your bathroom.”
“They’re not terrifying.”
“One of them has acid in the name.”
“That’s normal.”
“Deeply reassuring.”
Ellie rolled her eyes again, but she went back upstairs.
Tom waited until her footsteps had retreated.
Then he looked at Ruth.
“Can we not do that in front of her?”
Ruth’s eyebrows lifted.
“Do what?”
“Turn a scheduling issue into a custody hearing while she’s standing there.”
The words sat between them just as, from upstairs, came a muffled crash.
Tom shut his eyes.
“Should I ask?”
“No,” Ruth said. “It only encourages her.”
Despite everything, he nearly smiled.
Ruth saw that too.
Her face softened, then tightened again, as though she resented him for still being able to make her almost laugh.
She then took a deep breath and changed the topic.
“While we’re discussing encouraging things,” she said, “she is still asking about Maya’s party next weekend.”
Tom’s expression cooled at once.
“No.”
“Tom.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know the details.”
“I know Maya.”
“You know a rumour.”
“I know there’ll be older kids there.”
“There are older kids everywhere.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not being funny. She is nearly sixteen as you said and you cannot treat every party like the opening scene of a cautionary documentary.”
“That specific party, no.”
“You haven’t spoken to Maya’s mother.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You do, actually, if you’re going to ban it on instinct.”
“It’s not instinct.”
“It absolutely is.”
“No,” Tom said. “It’s experience. This girl has always been a bad influence for El.”
Ruth stared at him.
Then she laughed once, not kindly.
“God, you sound like my father when I was a teen.”
He winced.
“Thank you for that.”
“I mean it. She needs freedom.”
“She has freedom.”
“She has supervised freedom.”
“Because she is fifteen.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. Then spoke again.
“You were not exactly an angel at her age.”
Tom laughed once.
“Yes, and look how calming that is as an argument.”
“You survived.”
“That’s not a parenting strategy.”
“No, but it is perspective.”
Tom looked toward the stairs.
“I had too much freedom.”
Ruth’s expression shifted.
Just a little.
“Maybe,” she said. “But you can’t lock her inside because you remember what you did with yours.”
He said nothing.
Because that was irritatingly close to the truth.
Ellie came down again with her bag over one shoulder, hair clipped messily away from her face, expression suspicious.
“Why did it go quiet?”
Tom looked at her.
“Because we solved all our indifferences.”
Ellie glanced at Ruth.
“That sounds like bullshit.”
“Ellie!” Ruth said.
Tom reached for Ellie’s bag.
“Come on then. Time to go.”
Ellie handed it over.
“Yes, boss.”
Ruth stepped aside, but not fully.
“Text me when you get to your dad’s.”
Ellie groaned.
“Mum.”
“Text me.”
“I always text you.”
“No, you send a blank photo with no context.”
“That counts.”
“It does not.”
Tom took Ellie’s bag.
“She’ll text.”
Ruth looked at him.
“You’ll make sure?”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow—”
He held her gaze.
“I’ll be back as soon as it’s finished.”
Ruth stared at him for a moment longer.
Then she looked at Ellie.
“Have fun tonight.”
Ellie’s face softened, though she tried to hide it.
“I will.”
Ruth kissed her cheek. Ellie tolerated it for half a second before wriggling away.
“Okay, okay.”
Tom turned toward the path.
Behind him, Ruth said, “Tom.”
He looked back.
Her voice was quieter now.
“Don’t let work become the thing she has to compete with.”
He didn’t answer straight away.
Then he nodded once.
“I heard you.”
Ruth’s expression said she knew that was not the same as agreeing.
Still, she let them go.
**********
The play that night was strange, which meant Ellie loved it.
Tom spent most of it watching her watch the stage.
She sat forward, elbows on knees, chin in hand, eyes narrowed with total attention. She always looked more like herself in the theatre. Less guarded. Less busy pretending not to care. Every so often, something would happen onstage and her mouth would twitch before she decided whether she was allowed to laugh.
He loved that about her.
He loved all of it, really.
Even the eye-rolling.
Especially the eye-rolling.
Afterward, they went for dinner at a small place around the corner where Ellie ordered chips and something green she did not eat.
“You liked it,” Tom said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You cried.”
“My eyes watered.”
“That’s crying.”
“Because the lighting was intense.”
“Terrible thing, theatre. All those lights and feelings.”
She kicked him under the table.
“You’re annoying.”
“I know.”
She stole one of his chips.
“It was good.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah.”
That was all he got.
It was enough.
The next morning, Ellie made toast in his kitchen and left every cupboard open.
Tom followed her around closing them until she turned with a plate in one hand and said, “Do you have a problem?”
“Many. Currently, the cupboards.”
“I was going to close them.”
“When?”
“Eventually.”
“Beautiful. Love an abstract timeline.”
She grinned.
He was still smiling when her friend arrived just after eleven, all bright eyes, oversized jumper, phone already in hand, and polite terror at seeing Tom in real life.
“Hi, Mr Sturridge.”
Tom looked pained.
Ellie groaned.
“Don’t call him that. It makes him weird.”
“I’m already weird,” Tom said. “But yes. Tom is still fine Nina. I am not sixty yet.”
The girl nodded quickly.
“Right. Sorry. Tom.”
Ellie dragged her into the living room, where they immediately began spreading bags, chargers, hair clips, snacks, and at least three drinks across the sofa like they were colonising new territory.
By around one o’clock, Tom stood in the doorway.
“I’m going out for a couple of hours.”
Ellie looked up.
“For the studio thing?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Research for the film.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“The psychologist one?”
Tom paused.
“Yes.”
“With Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“And Y/N Y/L/N, right?”
Her friend’s head snapped up.
“Y/N Y/L/N?”
Tom looked between them.
“Yes.”
Ellie’s friend sat up straighter.
“She is so cool.”
Tom blinked.
“Excuse me?”
Ellie looked at him as though he had just revealed he did not know what bread was.
“Everyone at school is obsessed with that show she was in last year.”
“What show?”
Her friend said the title before Ellie could.
“It’s about this woman in a time loop.”
Ellie nodded, suddenly animated.
“It’s like Black Mirror. Same director. Eight episodes, and this girl keeps waking up in the same day, except then you realise it isn’t actually the same day, and she thinks there’s this massive conspiracy, but actually it’s all connected to the psychiatric hospital she is in because she is insane. Y/N plays the girl and she tries to break out but never makes it and then there is that big twist.”
Tom stared at her.
“Right.”
“She’s amazing in it,” her friend said.
Ellie pointed at him.
“Did you seriously not watch it? I had put that show into your list on Netflix.”
“No.”
“Dad.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You literally work in acting.”
“That doesn’t mean I’ve seen everything.”
“You’re filming with her.”
“Yes, I had gathered that.”
“You have to watch it.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes.
“That means no.”
“It means I will keep it in mind.”
“That also means no.”
Her friend leaned forward, shy but unable to help herself.
“Is she nice?”
Tom hesitated.
Only for a fraction of a second.
Unfortunately, Ellie had inherited too much from him.
“Oh,” she said. “She’s annoying.”
Tom looked at her.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did with your face.”
“My face said nothing.”
“Your face is very loud.”
Her friend laughed.
Tom pointed at Ellie.
“I’m not discussing my co-star with you.”
“Again, that means she’s annoying.”
“It means I’m your father and I have boundaries.”
Ellie gave him a look.
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up her phone.
“I follow her on Instagram.”
Tom stopped.
“You what?”
“I follow her on Instagram.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s cool.”
“She posts about books and weird cafés and her hamster.”
Tom stared.
“Her hamster. Of course.”
“Yes,” Ellie said, delighted now because she could tell she had found something. “He’s called Tom.”
Her friend covered her mouth, laughing.
Tom went very still.
“That’s not –“
Ellie’s grin widened.
“Her hamster. Is called. Tom.”
“I heard you.”
“Did you know?”
“I may have heard about the hamster, yes.”
“Oh my God.” Ellie sat forward. “That’s so embarrassing for you then.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“I did not name the hamster.”
“No, but imagine being in a film with someone who has a hamster with your name.”
“That is not—”
Tom rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I’m leaving.”
Ellie laughed.
“Wait, no, I want to show you.”
“I have absolutely no interest in seeing a hamster.”
“That’s a lie. Everyone has interest in seeing a hamster.”
She turned her phone around before he could stop her.
There it was.
A small, round, pale thing sitting in someone’s hand, looking furious with existence.
Under it, the caption read:
Tom disapproves of my schedule.
Ellie dissolved.
Her friend nearly fell sideways into the sofa.
Tom stared at the screen.
For one ridiculous second, all he could think about was your hand in the photo. The little ring on your thumb. The bitten nail on your index finger. The casual intimacy of seeing something from your private life when your actual private life had, so far, mostly involved you looking at him like you wanted to set him on fire.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
Saturday came around next.
A day off set.
In theory, that should have made you feel better.
In practice, you woke up already tired. Already irritated. Already too aware of James’s hand sliding over your waist beneath the duvet as though the day had opened with a question you were expected to answer correctly.
Morning sex was normally one of those things you liked.
With James, lately, it had become something else.
A test.
A reassurance.
A small performance neither of you named.
You were not in the mood.
Not even close.
Your body felt wrong from the second he touched you. Too awake in some places. Too distant in others. Your thoughts kept slipping. The call sheet. The scene for Monday. Kurt’s voice. Tom’s mouth too close to yours. James’s breathing against your neck. The fact you had forgotten to reply to Maddy. The faint scratching sound from Hamster Tom’s cage in the next room.
Static under your skin.
But James kissed your shoulder, murmured something soft, and you told yourself it was easier to go along with it than explain why being touched suddenly felt like having every nerve asked to behave.
So you let him.
You made the right sounds. You moved at the right moments. You reached for him when you knew he wanted you to. You faked an orgasm so convincingly that afterward James looked pleased with himself, kissed your forehead, and went to shower.
You lay there for another minute, staring at the ceiling.
Then you got up.
Lunch at your parents’ house had always been one of those events that pretended to be casual while requiring emotional preparation.
Your mother called it “just lunch.”
It was never just lunch.
It was a table laid properly at one in the afternoon. Linen napkins. Polished cutlery. Flowers your mother claimed were “from the garden” despite nobody ever seeing her cut them. It was your father pretending the wine had not been chosen carefully. It was your mother asking whether anyone wanted more salad in a tone that suggested the only correct answer was yes.
It was the house smelling of roast chicken, beeswax candles, and the kind of money that insisted it was taste.
It was also your brother turning up against his better judgment, wearing sunglasses despite the grey weather and carrying a bag of pastries as both an offering and a shield.
James came with you.
Of course he did.
He liked your parents.
Or rather, he liked being liked by them.
There was a difference.
Your mother adored him in the way mothers adored men who wore good coats, brought wine without being asked, and spoke to them as though their opinions mattered even when he had no intention of being changed by them.
Your father liked him a lot.
Just not as an actor.
Secretly, your father thought James was terrible at his job.
He had never said it outright, because your father had mastered the art of expressing disapproval through silence, but you knew. You could tell by the way his mouth barely moved whenever your mother praised one of James’s performances. By the way he said “interesting choices” when what he meant was wooden. By the way he watched James talk about work with the same faintly pained expression he used when someone misquoted Shakespeare at a dinner party.
But your father thought James was good for you.
Reliable.
Presentable.
Established.
A sensible counterweight to all the things your father found difficult about you.
Your mess. Your noise. Your lateness. Your impossible attention span. The way you lost your phone while holding it. The way your emotions arrived too quickly and left too late. The way you could light up a room and set fire to it in the same breath.
James was clever, controlled, and unlikely to embarrass himself at a dinner table.
To your father, that counted for a great deal.
Your brother, Arthur, liked him least.
Which meant that, on days when you were fighting with James, you tended to like Arthur most before he had even taken off his sunglasses.
Arthur was already on the doorstep when you opened the door.
“You look terrible,” he said.
You stepped aside.
“Lovely to see you too.”
He kissed your cheek, then held up the pastry bag.
“I brought emotional support croissants. So don’t say I never contribute to this family.”
“You contribute vitamin deficiency and emotional instability.”
“And yet I remain the favourite.”
“Of who?”
“Myself.”
You laughed properly then.
For the first time all morning.
Arthur’s eyes flicked over your face, and beneath the teasing you saw him clocking things. The tiredness. The tension around your mouth. The way your hand kept opening and closing at your side, thumb pressing against each fingertip in a pattern you had started doing on set when you were trying not to visibly unravel.
Arthur noticed.
Arthur always noticed.
He just preferred to weaponise humour instead of concern.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out.
A small black fidget spinner.
You stared at it.
“Why do you have that?”
Arthur looked offended.
“Because I am an attentive brother and a man of many resources.”
You took it before you could pretend you did not want it. Your fingers closed around the cool plastic with embarrassing relief.
Arthur smiled, but softly now.
“Before you shred Mum’s napkins and she starts speaking in that terrifying nursery-school voice.”
You looked away.
“I don’t shred things.”
Arthur glanced pointedly at your left thumbnail.
You put your hand behind your back.
James appeared behind you.
“Arthur.”
Arthur’s smile adjusted by half an inch.
Not fake.
Not warm either.
“James.”
There it was.
A whole family dynamic in two names.
James’s hand settled at your back.
Not possessive enough for anyone to call it possessive.
Enough for you to feel it.
Arthur’s gaze dropped to it.
Then to the spinner in your hand.
Then back to your face.
His eyebrow moved.
You gave him a warning look.
He smiled innocently.
James glanced at the fidget spinner.
“Are we bringing toys to lunch now?”
Your fingers tightened around it.
Arthur’s smile sharpened.
“Only emotional support mechanisms. Sadly, I couldn’t fit a therapist in my pocket.”
James gave a polite laugh.
The kind he gave people he considered amusing in small doses.
You hated that you could tell.
“I just don’t think encouraging it helps,” James said.
Arthur looked at him.
“Encouraging what?”
James’s expression remained pleasant.
“The behaviour.”
Something hot and ugly pressed behind your ribs.
Arthur did not look away from him.
“The behaviour being… her trying to sit through lunch without chewing her own hand off?”
“Arthur,” you said.
He looked at you, still smiling.
“What? I’m engaging.”
James’s jaw tightened.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No,” Arthur said. “People rarely do.”
Your mother swept in before anyone could enjoy the tension properly.
“Arthur, sunglasses off. You’re inside.”
“I’m protecting myself spiritually.”
“From what?”
Your father called from the dining room, “He’s been here thirty seconds.”
“And already I’m being lectured,” Arthur said.
James’s hand remained at your back.
You spun the fidget spinner once, low at your side, hidden against your thigh.
Arthur saw.
His eyes warmed.
The dining table looked like your mother had prepared for visiting diplomats rather than her adult children. Roast chicken. Potatoes. Greens. Salad. Bread. Three kinds of condiments nobody needed. A bottle of white chilling in a silver bucket and a red already open because your father considered preparation a moral virtue.
Arthur dropped into the chair opposite you and immediately stole a potato before anyone sat down.
Your mother slapped his hand with a napkin.
“Arthur.”
“I’m fading.”
“You’re twenty-eight.”
“Exactly. No longer resilient.”
You sat opposite him.
James sat beside you.
Your father at the head of the table.
Your mother at the other end, which had always felt less like seating and more like architecture.
Hamster Tom, obviously, had not been invited.
James had looked relieved when you said you were not bringing him.
“You can’t bring a hamster to lunch,” he had said.
“I could.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Different sentence.”
He had given you that patient look.
The one that made you want to bite something.
You had left Hamster Tom at home with extra food and one stern warning not to destroy any further infrastructure in your absence.
He had ignored you.
Probably.
You missed him already.
At least Hamster Tom’s disapproval was honest.
For a few minutes, lunch almost worked.
Your father poured wine.
James complimented the house.
Again.
Your mother complimented James’s jacket.
Arthur made a tiny gagging noise into his glass.
You kicked him under the table.
He kicked you back.
James glanced down.
“Everything alright?”
“Fine,” you said.
Arthur smiled into his wine.
The fidget spinner sat in your lap beneath the tablecloth. You spun it with one hand while pretending to listen. The rhythm helped. A little. Enough to stop your knee bouncing. Enough to keep your attention from splitting into thirteen directions at once.
Your mother beamed at James.
“How was Paris?”
James sat a little straighter.
“Productive. Beautiful, obviously. I had a meeting with Lucien Marceau that went well. Potentially very well.”
“Lucien Marceau,” your mother repeated, impressed despite not knowing who that was.
“He’s developing a financing structure for European co-productions on independent films.”
Your father nodded, genuinely interested.
“Tax incentives?”
“Partly. Also private equity. The usual dance. Something worth investing in, maybe.”
Arthur leaned toward you and whispered, “The usual dance sounds like what finance men call mating.”
You choked on your water.
James paused.
“Sorry?”
You coughed.
“Nothing.”
Arthur’s face was angelic.
“Just admiring the dance.”
Your father hid a smile behind his glass.
Your mother did not notice.
She was too busy looking at James with approval.
“It must be wonderful to work with people who are serious.”
You felt that land before you had time to brace.
Arthur did too.
His eyes flicked to you.
James, either not noticing or choosing not to, gave a modest shrug.
“Seriousness is useful.”
Arthur picked up his knife.
“Tragic slogan.”
“Arthur,” your mother said.
“What? I’m engaging.”
Your father turned to him with faint relief.
“How is your installation going?”
Arthur’s expression brightened at once despite himself.
“Chaotic. Expressive. The perfect form of art, really.”
You smiled.
“Good title.”
Your father leaned back.
“This is the Shoreditch project?”
“Yes. Sound installation, some projection work, some live performance if the fire inspector doesn’t ruin my life.”
Your mother’s mouth tightened.
“Why would a fire inspector ruin your life?”
“Because he lacks imagination.”
James smiled politely.
“What’s the funding model?”
Arthur’s eyes flicked to him.
“Prayer and donations. Not very lucrative.”
You laughed.
James did not.
Arthur took pity on him.
Barely.
“Some private backing. A small grant. A donor who thinks I’m more organised than I am. I intend to maintain the illusion until opening night.”
“Do you have a commercial partner yet?” James asked.
Arthur set his glass down.
“James, are you asking because you’re interested in my work or because you’re physically incapable of hearing about a project without trying to make it scalable?”
Your mother sighed.
“Arthur.”
James gave a small laugh.
Too small.
“No, fair. I’m sorry.”
Arthur lifted his glass.
“Apology accepted.”
You hid your smile in your napkin.
Arthur saw.
His eyes warmed.
There it was.
The little bridge between you.
Always there, even in rooms designed to separate people into roles.
Daughter.
Son.
Fiancé.
Producer.
Mother.
Problem.
You and Arthur had survived by turning the room sideways and laughing at the furniture.
Your mother, apparently deciding the conversation needed redirecting, turned to Arthur with the bright, brittle energy of a woman walking everyone toward a minefield while holding a salad bowl.
“Are you still seeing that man from the gallery in Soho?”
Arthur’s fork paused.
The table changed.
Not visibly.
Worse.
Internally.
Your father looked down at his plate.
James went very still in the polite way people did when they sensed family history and wanted front-row seats without admitting it.
You stared at your mother.
Arthur set his fork down with care.
“His name is Leo.”
“I know his name.”
“Then you could use it.”
Your mother’s mouth tightened.
“I was only asking.”
“You asked whether I was still seeing that man.”
“Arthur.”
“Yes. I’m still seeing him.”
A silence settled.
Not large.
Not loud.
The kind of silence your family specialised in. The kind where everyone pretended the subject was neutral while every object on the table became suddenly fascinating.
Your father adjusted his knife.
Your mother reached for the salad.
James looked at you.
You reached for the bread basket.
“Good,” you said. “Leo’s lovely.”
Arthur’s eyes flicked to you.
Quick.
Grateful.
Hidden before anyone else could make it sentimental.
“He is.”
“And he has excellent taste when it comes to interior design.”
Arthur nodded gravely.
“That’s why I keep him.”
You smiled.
Your mother did not.
“I just wasn’t sure if it was serious.”
Arthur’s smile sharpened.
“Why?”
Your mother blinked.
“Why what?”
“Why wouldn’t it be serious?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“You implied it.”
Your mother sighed softly.
“Must everything be an argument?”
Arthur looked at you.
You looked back.
There it was again.
Family motto number two.
Must everything be an argument?
Usually said by the person who had just started one.
Arthur leaned back.
“Actually, since we’re all discussing my private life right now, I would like to bring him to the wedding.”
Your mother’s hand stopped on the salad tongs.
James’s eyes flicked to you.
Your father took a sip of wine and said nothing.
Of course.
You looked straight at Arthur.
“Of course.”
His face softened.
Just a fraction.
“Thank you.”
“I like him. I would have invited him anyway.”
“That’s good to know, seeing how he thinks you’re terrifying.”
“That means he’s intelligent. I am scary as hell.”
Arthur smiled.
Your mother set the salad tongs down.
Too carefully.
“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”
There it was.
Small.
Polite.
Rotten.
You turned to her.
“Why?”
“I only mean weddings can be complicated with guest numbers.”
“We haven’t picked a venue.”
“Which is exactly why these things should be discussed sensibly.”
Arthur laughed once.
“Sensibly.”
“Yes.”
“Meaning quietly and suitable to your agenda.”
Your mother’s cheeks flushed.
“Don’t twist my words.”
“I’m not twisting them. They arrived like that.”
Your father set his glass down.
“Arthur.”
Arthur looked at him.
“What?”
Your father held his gaze for a second.
Then looked away.
Coward.
You loved him.
You hated him.
Both were true.
Your mother looked distressed now, which was somehow worse than her looking angry.
“I only mean there will be older relatives there. People who may not understand.”
“Understand what?” you asked.
She looked at you.
“Y/N.”
“No, what? Understand that Arthur is in a relationship?”
“A male partner,” she said, quieter.
As if saying it softly made it less ugly.
Arthur smiled.
It was not a happy smile.
“Yes. Very shocking. Alert the Times.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“Don’t make it easy.”
James shifted beside you.
You could feel him deciding whether to speak.
You silently begged him not to.
Naturally, he did.
“I’m sure we can accommodate Leo,” he said smoothly. “Numbers permitting.”
You turned to him slowly.
“Numbers permitting?”
James looked surprised by your tone.
“I only mean practically.”
You put your fork down.
“Leo is my brother’s partner. That makes him more important than, I don’t know, Aunt Lydia.”
Your mother inhaled.
“Aunt Lydia is family.”
“So is Arthur.”
Arthur looked down at his plate.
James held up one hand.
“I’m not saying Leo can’t come.”
“You just said numbers permitting.”
“Because venues have capacity limits.”
“For one person?”
“For everyone. That is how capacity works.”
You stared at him.
“Don’t be an ass.”
Arthur coughed into his napkin.
Your father said, “Enough.”
You looked at him.
“No, actually, not enough. Mum just implied Arthur bringing his partner to my wedding would be some sort of controversial statement, James tried to turn him into a capacity issue, and you’re sitting there pretending neutrality is wisdom.”
Your father’s face hardened.
Your mother looked wounded.
James went cold beside you.
Arthur stared at his plate, but his mouth twitched.
Not because it was funny.
Because if he did not smile, he might do something worse.
Your mother’s voice became careful.
That was how you knew she was about to say something worse.
“I am not against Leo.”
Arthur looked up.
“How generous.”
“I am not. I simply think there are occasions where discretion is kinder to everyone.”
Your skin prickled.
The fidget spinner in your lap whirred faster beneath your thumb.
“Discretion,” you said.
“Yes.”
“About him being gay.”
Your mother flinched.
“Don’t be crude.”
“Gay isn’t crude.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t think I want to.”
Your mother turned to you fully then.
“This is exactly what worries me about your generation. Everything has to be declared. Named. Displayed.”
You stared at her.
“Oh my God.”
“Don’t use that tone.”
“No, genuinely. I can’t believe this conversation is actually happening.”
Your father cleared his throat.
“We don’t need to decide the guest list today.”
Arthur smiled faintly.
“Of course not. Lunch is the place for pretending.”
You loved him so much in that moment it hurt.
Your mother looked down at her plate.
James touched your knee under the table.
A warning.
A calming gesture.
A reminder.
You moved your leg away.
His hand stilled.
Then withdrew.
Good.
Your father took a breath, clearly choosing a safer subject.
Unfortunately, your father’s idea of safer was usually just a different kind of control.
“Speaking of the wedding,” he said.
You laughed once.
You could not help it.
It escaped before you could make it polite.
Everyone looked at you.
Your father paused.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Arthur muttered, “Seamless pivot.”
Your mother ignored him with effort.
“We do need to discuss it, darling. These places book far in advance.”
“I know.”
James straightened slightly beside you, grateful to be back on territory where he believed he had authority.
“I sent the three options.”
“I know.”
“Have you looked?”
You picked up your wine.
“Not properly.”
James’s mouth tightened.
Your thumb slipped against the fidget spinner. It clicked against your ring.
James looked down.
“Can you not do that at the table?”
You froze.
Arthur’s face changed.
“Do what?”
James nodded toward your lap.
“That.”
You closed your hand around the spinner.
Heat rose in your face.
“Sorry.”
Arthur leaned back.
“She’s not juggling knives, James.”
“I’m allowed to find it distracting.”
“And she’s allowed to regulate her nervous system during lunch with the emotionally repressed Addams Family.”
Your mother stared at him.
“Arthur.”
“What? I’m including myself.”
James looked at you.
“I just think you rely on things like that because people keep handing them to you.”
You blinked.
“Things like what?”
“Distractions.”
The word landed exactly where he meant it to.
Your father looked down at his plate again.
Your mother sighed in a way that managed to be both gentle and disappointed.
“You can’t keep avoiding things,” she said.
You looked at her.
“I’m spinning a piece of plastic, not fleeing the country.”
Arthur’s eyes flashed with approval.
James did not smile.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Uh-huh,” you said.
Arthur’s mouth twitched.
James noticed.
Of course he did.
His expression cooled further.
Your father folded his hands near his plate.
And there it was.
The shift.
You knew it before he spoke.
The thing Kurt had explicitly asked him not to do arriving at the table between chicken and salad.
“How is the film going?” your father asked.
Too casually.
You looked at him.
“Fine.”
James made a small sound beside you.
Not quite a laugh.
Not quite disbelief.
You ignored him.
Your father’s gaze stayed on you.
“Kurt said the first week was uneven.”
Your stomach dropped.
There was a small pause.
Arthur looked from your father to you.
Your mother looked relieved to have moved away from Leo.
James looked interested.
Too interested.
You felt your face go very still.
“Did he?”
Your father’s expression softened.
That made it worse.
“He also said your solo scenes are very strong.”
“Lovely.”
“Y/N.”
“What?”
“I’m not criticising you.”
“No. You’re just giving me notes at Saturday lunch.”
Your mother said, “Don’t be dramatic.”
Arthur murmured, “Third family motto.”
Your father gave him a warning look.
Arthur took another potato.
James leaned back slightly.
“Is the issue your co-star? Because that would make complete sense to me.”
That landed with more force than it should have.
You turned to him.
“Excuse me?”
James shrugged one shoulder.
“You said the other night that he was irritating.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And difficult.”
“I did not say difficult.”
“You implied difficult.”
You stared at him.
“Why are you speaking?”
Arthur choked on his wine.
Your mother’s eyes widened.
James’s expression cooled.
“I’m trying to help.”
“No, you’re trying to be right.”
“About your co-star?”
“Yes.”
James laughed once.
Short.
Humourless.
“Well, forgive me for remembering that I warned you he was a bit of a dick.”
Your father’s gaze sharpened.
“James.”
James lifted a hand.
“I’m not saying anything outrageous. I’ve met him. I’ve heard things. Y/N herself said he’s irritating.”
“I’m allowed to say he’s irritating,” you snapped. “But that doesn’t mean you get to dissect it at family lunch.”
James looked at you.
Really looked.
Something changed in his face.
“Why are you defending him?”
The table went silent.
Your throat tightened.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“No. I’m objecting to you using my work problems as proof that you were right about a man you already disliked.”
“Because I had reason.”
“You had a run-in at an awards event and turned it into a moral thesis.”
James’s jaw flexed.
There.
You had hit something.
“A run-in?”
“Yes.”
“He embarrassed me in front of people.”
“He told you to let a woman finish speaking.”
Arthur’s head turned very slowly toward James.
You wished, briefly and intensely, that you had not said that out loud.
James’s face sharpened.
“You weren’t there.”
“You told me about it.”
“No. I told you he inserted himself into a conversation that had nothing to do with him.”
“Because you interrupted someone.”
Arthur whispered, “Oh, this is delicious.”
Your mother hissed, “Arthur.”
James’s voice lowered.
“He had no right.”
“To ask you not to be rude?”
“To make me look like one of those men.”
The words sat there.
One of those men.
You stared at him.
Arthur’s smile disappeared.
Your father’s eyes narrowed.
James seemed to realise too late how much he had revealed.
He leaned back.
“The point is, he enjoys making people uncomfortable.”
“You mean he made you uncomfortable.”
“I mean he is arrogant, erratic, and clearly difficult to work with.”
“You don’t work with him.”
“No, you do. And you look miserable.”
That landed.
Because it was true.
Not in the way he meant.
But true enough to hurt.
Your father saw it.
Of course he did.
He leaned forward.
“Y/N.”
You turned on him before he could soften his voice any further.
“Don’t.”
“I’m worried.”
“I know.”
“You seem exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.”
“You seem unhappy.”
“It’s the first week.”
“Kurt said that too.”
“Then listen to him.”
Your father’s mouth tightened.
“Kurt also said maybe you’re not ready.”
The table went silent.
Completely this time.
Even Arthur stopped moving.
Your face went cold.
Not hot.
Cold.
That was worse.
“He said that?”
Your father realised, instantly, that he had gone too far.
Too late.
“In context.”
You laughed once.
“Oh. Context. Well, that changes everything.”
“Y/N—”
“No. He told you that in a production meeting, and you brought it here.”
“I am your father.”
“You are also the producer.”
“I can be both.”
“Not when it suits you differently every five minutes.”
Your mother said, “That is unfair.”
You looked at her.
“Is it?”
James said, quietly, “Maybe everyone is reacting because you refuse to admit this is affecting you.”
You turned back to him.
“And maybe I refuse to admit things to people who use them against me.”
His face shut.
Good.
Your father’s voice lowered.
“No one is using anything against you.”
“This entire lunch is everyone using concern as a knife and then acting wounded when Arthur and I bleed on the tablecloth.”
Arthur made a tiny sound.
Almost a laugh.
Almost pain.
Your mother looked appalled.
“That is an awful thing to say.”
“It’s an awful lunch.”
“Y/N,” James snapped.
There it was.
Not loud.
But enough.
The table heard it.
Arthur’s eyes went sharp.
Your father looked at James.
You looked at him too.
James’s mouth tightened.
He sat back, forcing control over himself.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you’re being unreasonable.”
Arthur set his fork down.
“Brave sentence.”
James ignored him.
“You are. Everyone here cares about you, and you’re treating that like an attack.”
You stared at him.
“Because none of you are listening.”
Your voice cracked slightly on listening.
You hated that.
The room softened around it in the worst possible way.
Your father reached for the gentle tone.
You could see it coming.
“If the material is too much—”
“Stop.”
“Y/N—”
“No. Stop.”
You pushed your chair back.
The legs scraped against the floor.
Too loud.
Perfect.
The fidget spinner slipped from your lap and hit the floor, skittering beneath the table.
Everyone looked at it.
Your mother looked pained, as though your neurology had just embarrassed her personally.
James looked irritated.
Arthur bent down, picked it up, and placed it calmly in your hand.
“There.”
James exhaled.
“Arthur, honestly.”
Arthur looked at him.
“What?”
“You don’t have to encourage every impulse she has.”
The room went very still.
You stared at James.
Arthur smiled.
Not kindly.
“Do you hear yourself when you speak, or is it a surprise to you as well?”
James’s face hardened.
“I’m trying to help her function.”
“She functions,” Arthur said. “She’s not a broken appliance.”
Your chest hurt.
You closed your fingers around the spinner.
Arthur’s voice dropped.
“She’s overwhelmed. There’s a difference.”
For a second, no one spoke.
Then your father said, too quietly, “Enough.”
You looked at him.
“Yes,” you said. “It is.”
You stood.
“James already did this. I don’t need you doing it too.”
James’s eyebrows lifted.
“I did not do anything.”
You rounded on him.
“You said maybe the movie was too much for me.”
“Emotionally.”
“Oh, good. That makes it much less patronising.”
Your mother said, “He’s only concerned.”
“Everyone is always only concerned.”
There it was.
The truth.
Or part of it.
The room went quiet again.
You pushed your chair in too hard.
“I need air.”
James reached for your wrist.
Not hard.
Just enough.
“Y/N.”
You looked down at his hand.
Then at him.
The silence sharpened.
Arthur was standing before you even said anything.
James let go.
Good.
Very good.
Arthur smiled without warmth.
“I’ll come.”
Your mother sighed.
“Arthur, don’t encourage—”
“Breathing?” Arthur said. “I’m very radical.”
You walked out before anyone could stop you.
The garden was aggressively tasteful.
Trimmed hedges. Stone path. A little table under an olive tree your mother had imported from somewhere and spoken about for six months. The air was cold enough to make you aware you had left your jacket inside.
You did not care.
Arthur came out behind you and closed the door gently.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Inside, through the glass, you could see your father leaning back in his chair, one hand over his mouth. James was saying something. Your mother was listening with her head tilted in sympathetic attention.
That made you angrier.
Arthur leaned against the wall beside you.
“Well.”
You laughed once.
“Don’t.”
“I was going to say that went beautifully.”
“Arthur.”
“Sorry. Trauma response.”
You folded your arms tightly.
“I hate this family.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do currently.”
“Currently is allowed.”
You looked at him.
He had taken off his sunglasses at some point. Without them, he looked more tired than he liked people knowing. Older too. Still beautiful in that irritating family way, but softer around the eyes.
“Mum was awful,” you said.
Arthur looked out at the garden.
“Mum is Mum.”
“That doesn’t make it fine.”
“No.”
A pause.
Then he said, quieter, “Thank you.”
You swallowed.
“For what?”
“Leo.”
“Don’t thank me for the absolute bare minimum.”
“In this family, the bare minimum often arrives overdressed and late.”
You laughed despite yourself.
Arthur’s mouth twitched.
Then he nudged your shoulder with his.
“You know she’s going to lose her mind when you invite Maddy.”
You glanced at him.
“Maddy is my best friend.”
“She is, and she also once called Mum’s charity friends perfumed fascists within earshot.”
You smiled.
“That was one of her best afternoons.”
“Iconic, really.”
Your smile faded.
Arthur saw it.
Of course he did.
“You alright?”
You stared at the olive tree.
“No.”
He nodded once.
No panic.
No lecture.
Just acceptance.
That was why you told him things.
Not all things.
But more than most.
“Is it James?” he asked.
Your throat tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Arthur did not say, that means yes.
He was kind sometimes.
Annoyingly.
“Is it the film?”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“Your co-star?”
You closed your eyes.
“I’m jumping into the nonexistent pond.”
“I’ll help you dig one.”
You laughed.
He nudged you again.
“Talk to me.”
You shook your head.
“You can’t tell Dad.”
Arthur went still.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
“Alright.”
“Or James.”
“I rarely tell James anything unless I am forced by you or, maybe, a judge.”
You breathed out.
It shook slightly.
Arthur’s face shifted.
“Y/N.”
You stared at the olive tree until the leaves blurred.
“Remember that guy in New York?”
Arthur’s eyebrows rose.
“The almost-forty-year-old Mr No Name?”
You closed your eyes.
“Yes.”
“The one who made you act insane for weeks after because he found—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
Arthur’s mouth twitched.
“What? That’s what Maddy said.”
“Maddy says many things. Most of them should not be repeated in daylight.”
“She was very specific.”
“Arthur.”
“Fine.” He lifted both hands. “I will not discuss the sexual awakening of my younger sister over Mum’s imported olive tree.”
You covered your face.
“Please stop talking.”
“I’m being supportive.”
“You’re being vile.”
“Supportively vile.”
Despite everything, you laughed.
It came out too sharp at first, then softened into something almost normal.
Arthur watched you carefully.
Then -
“Alright. Continue.”
You pressed the heel of your hand against your eye.
“It’s him.”
Arthur stared at you.
“Who?”
You looked at him.
His expression changed.
“No.”
You said nothing.
“No.”
You swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Tom Sturridge?”
You covered your face.
“Yes.”
Arthur’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again.
“Fuck me.”
“That was, unfortunately, the issue.”
Arthur made a strangled sound.
Not quite a laugh.
Not quite horror.
“Did you know when you took the film?”
“No.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
You looked at him.
“Arthur.”
He lifted both hands.
“Sorry. Sorry. I’m processing. Jesus Christ.”
You laughed, but it came out too sharp.
“Yes. Fuck. Exactly.”
Arthur dragged a hand through his hair and looked back through the glass doors toward the dining room.
“And James doesn’t know.”
“No.”
“Dad doesn’t know.”
“No.”
You looked down at the fidget spinner in your hand. You had not realised you were moving it again. Back and forth. Not spinning properly. Just flicking one edge with your thumb.
Arthur noticed.
He did not comment.
Thank God.
“We can’t work together,” you said. “We just can’t.”
“Because you slept together?”
“Because he’s a dick.”
Arthur tilted his head.
“How is he a dick?”
You looked away.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It probably matters a bit.”
“I don’t want to get into it today.”
Arthur studied you for a second.
Then nodded.
“Fine.”
You breathed out.
Inside, James turned his head, looking toward the garden doors.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
By the time you wrapped, it was almost nine.
Tom left first.
You were held back for a makeup continuity photograph, a wardrobe note, and then five entire minutes searching for your phone only to discover it in your jacket pocket, where it had been the whole time.
When you finally left the studio, the air had cooled and the streetlights had come on.
You walked toward the tube because the thought of another Uber made you feel trapped.
You had made it nearly half a block when you saw him.
Tom stood outside an Italian restaurant not far from the studio, his jacket open, cigarette between his fingers, looking marginally more alive than he had an hour earlier.
He was not alone.
The woman beside him was unmistakable even before your brain supplied her name.
Anya.
You had, naturally, looked her up after Nadine mentioned the model.
Not obsessively.
Not really.
Just enough to know she was in her late thirties, divorced, famous for a perfume campaign where she looked wet, expensive, and on the verge of ruining someone’s life.
In person, she was almost offensively beautiful. Tall, angular, long hair. She wore a black coat over something silver and moved like people were meant to make space for her. Nothing about her seemed accidental, which made the looseness of her smile more alarming. She looked like someone who knew exactly what she was doing and found everyone else charming for taking longer to catch up.
The man with them was harder to place.
Not famous, you thought, or not famous in a way that had reached you. Good looking, dark-haired, maybe late thirties and the kind of face that became handsome by refusing to ask for it. He wore a dark green jacket over a black T-shirt, hands bare despite the cold, a silver ring on one thumb. His laugh was warm. Low. Not performative.
He had one hand resting loosely at the back of Tom’s shoulder.
You noticed that.
Of course you noticed that.
Tom clocked you at once.
His whole body changed.
Not much.
Enough.
He straightened slightly. The cigarette lowered. The man’s hand slipped from the back of his shoulder to between his shoulder blades, a subtle movement, but not a retreat. Tom did not move away from it.
His expression shut halfway, not cold, not warm, just abruptly guarded.
You could have crossed the road.
You considered it.
Then decided you were not going to start dodging him on public streets like a criminal.
You slowed as you passed.
“Hi.”
Polite.
Neutral.
Adult.
Horrible.
Tom looked as if he hated that you had managed all three.
“Hi.”
Anya turned her head toward you with immediate interest.
Her eyes moved over your face, your bag, the folded script pages sticking out, then back to Tom. Not jealous. Not threatened. Worse.
Entertained.
“Who is that?” she asked, not lowering her voice.
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“My colleague.”
You gave Anya a tight smile.
“Y/N.”
“Anya.”
Her accent was light. Hard to place. Her smile was worse because it seemed genuine and amused.
The man beside Tom looked at you too.
More quietly.
More curiously.
His gaze did not sweep. It assessed.
Then he smiled, small and easy, and you understood at once why people probably told him too much.
Tom sighed through his nose.
“And Frank.”
Frank lifted two fingers in greeting.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
His voice was calm. Slightly rough. The kind of voice that made you think of late nights, expensive whisky, and people saying things they meant to regret later.
Anya’s eyes flicked back to Tom.
“So, she is the co-star?”
Tom’s expression became pained.
“Yes. The co-star.”
You should have left.
Instead, because apparently your survival instincts had resigned sometime around Monday, you said, “The co-star he is now forced to bond with on Sundays.”
Anya’s face lit up.
“Forced to bond?”
Frank laughed.
Tom shot you a look.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Anya leaned in slightly, delighted.
“Why?”
Tom said, flatly, “Because apparently we have no chemistry.”
“Ouch,” Frank said.
His hand was still at Tom’s back.
Not quite still, actually.
His thumb moved once.
Slowly.
A small absent press through Tom’s jacket.
Tom did not react.
Or rather, he reacted by not reacting.
Which told you more.
You looked away too quickly.
“Very artistic, isn’t it?”
Tom looked at you.
For one second, the street noise seemed to drop.
Then you looked away first.
“Anyway. See you Sunday.”
“Unfortunately,” Tom said.
Anya’s brows climbed.
Frank laughed again, softer this time.
You gave Tom one last bright, false smile.
“Try not to overprepare.”
“Try not to freeze.”
The words came too quickly.
Too sharp.
Too close to the bone.
You felt Anya’s attention sharpen.
Frank’s too.
Tom seemed to realise it at exactly the same moment you did.
His jaw shifted.
You smiled again.
Smaller now.
Meaner.
“Goodnight.”
Then you walked away before any of them could say anything else.
*******
Behind you, Anya waited approximately three seconds before speaking.
“Well.”
Tom closed his eyes briefly.
“Don’t.”
“I said one word.”
“It was a loaded word.”
Frank, who had been watching you disappear down the pavement with a lazy sort of interest, looked back at Tom.
“She’s pretty.”
Tom opened his eyes.
The look he gave Frank should have killed him on principle.
It did not.
Frank only smiled, slow and unbothered, as though Tom’s irritation had arrived exactly on schedule.
“Helpful,” Tom said.
Anya’s smile widened.
“Very pretty.”
“She’s also very irritating.”
“Ah.”
Tom looked at her.
“What?”
“You like her.”
He laughed immediately.
Too quickly.
Too sharply.
Entirely falsely.
“Fuck off.”
Frank’s mouth twitched.
Anya looked delighted.
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“You sound very annoyed.”
“Because she’s annoying.”
“No.” Anya took one step closer, her eyes thoughtful now, too clever for comfort. “You sound annoyed in a very specific way.”
Frank nodded.
“You have the look.”
Tom turned on him.
“What look?”
Frank lifted both hands, cigarette smoke curling between them from where Anya had taken a slow drag of Tom’s cigarette.
“The look.”
“That explains absolutely nothing.”
“It explains itself.”
Anya reached out and stole the cigarette from Tom’s fingers again, as casually as if she had done it a hundred times before.
She probably had.
Her fingertips brushed his on purpose, but only for a second. Nothing anyone across the street could have photographed into a scandal. Nothing useful. Nothing damning. Just a model taking a cigarette from an actor she knew too well, both of them standing under the awning of an Italian restaurant with the door opening and closing behind them every few minutes.
Frank moved at the same time, not toward Tom exactly.
Beside him.
Close enough that his shoulder nearly touched Tom’s, but not quite. His hand came up, as if he were adjusting the collar of Tom’s jacket, and for one brief second his fingers rested at the back of Tom’s neck.
A public gesture, if anyone noticed.
Friendly.
Practical.
Nothing.
Except Tom’s shoulders lowered half an inch.
Just half.
Anya saw it.
Frank saw it.
Tom clearly hated that they saw it.
Frank let go before it could become anything obvious.
“For the record,” he said, “I agree with Anya.”
Tom gave him a flat look.
“I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not.”
Anya tilted her head, cigarette between two fingers.
“You are into her.”
“I am not into her.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“You looked like you wanted to bite her.”
“I often want to bite people who irritate me.”
Frank’s brows lifted.
“That is not the correction you think it is.”
Tom stared at him for one long second.
Then he looked away, jaw tight, gaze flicking once in the direction you had gone.
“Not anymore,” he said eventually.
Anya’s amusement sharpened.
“Not anymore?”
Tom exhaled.
“Not like that.”
“Ah.”
“No. Not ah.”
“That was definitely an ah,” Frank said.
Tom took the cigarette back from Anya and dragged from it with more force than necessary.
The ember glowed hard in the dim light.
A car passed slowly on the street. None of them moved closer. None of them touched again. All three of them had been in public too many times with too many cameras waiting for a hand in the wrong place, a mouth too near an ear, a gesture turned filthy by a headline.
So they stood like friends.
Like colleagues.
Like three attractive people outside a restaurant after work.
Only the little things gave them away.
The way Anya angled her body toward Tom without looking at him.
The way Frank’s attention kept returning to Tom’s mouth and then politely leaving again.
The way Tom did not step away from either of them.
Anya studied him through a stream of smoke.
Tom sighed and then came the admission.
“She is the girl from New York.”
Frank’s expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
His smile faded into something more interested.
Tom looked between them.
Then he swore under his breath.
Anya’s eyes lit.
“Oh my God.”
Frank’s eyes lit.
“What girl from New York?”
Then Tom sighed again.
“Lower your voice.”
Anya laughed, quiet but wicked.
“She is the tamagotchi girl?”
Frank blinked.
“The what?”
Tom looked pained.
“Don’t ask.”
“The girl from New York,” Anya told Frank, delighted now. “The one he shagged well before I even met him and whom he never really shut about even a year later.”
Frank turned his head slowly toward Tom.
“Oh, she is the one who you thought may have lied about her age?” he then asked.
Tom nodded.
“Yes,” Tom said through his teeth. “And that stays between us.”
Anya placed one hand over her heart.
“Darling, everything stays between us.”
Frank smiled again.
“Even you, sometimes.”
For half a second, Tom tried not to laugh.
Failed.
It escaped him in a rough breath, reluctant and tired and real enough that some of the tension finally left his face.
Anya looked pleased with herself.
Frank looked pleased with Tom.
Tom hated them both for it, probably.
“So,” Anya said, lowering her voice now. “Let me get this straight. Tamagotchi girl is your new co-star, and you went from—”
“Don’t.”
“—whatever spectacular thing happened in New York—”
“Anya.”
“How long was it again?”
Tom stared at the pavement.
Frank’s interest deepened.
“How long?”
Tom took another drag.
“Six hours.”
Frank gave a low whistle.
“Impressive.”
Anya’s smile turned indecent.
“Very impressive.”
“It wasn’t six hours of—” Tom stopped himself, closed his eyes for half a second, and regretted every choice that had brought him here. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Anya said. “Continue.”
Tom looked back down the street again, but you were gone now. Swallowed by the corner, the tube, London, your own enormous talent for leaving rooms before anyone else had finished bleeding in them.
His mouth tightened.
“She indeed lied about her age.”
Anya’s expression shifted.
“Okay, how old was she really then?”
“Twenty-two.”
Frank’s brows rose slightly.
Tom flicked ash from the cigarette.
“She told me she was twenty-eight.”
“Ah,” Anya said again, softer this time.
“No. Still not ah.”
Frank watched him carefully now.
“And what else is bugging you about her now? Other than the lie about her age.”
Tom’s jaw hardened.
“She was apparently engaged when he hooked up.”
“Apparently?”
“I didn’t know at the time.”
Anya’s amusement faded another fraction.
“She cheated?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“And now?”
“And now she is in this fucking film I am shooting because her father produces it.”
Frank tilted his head.
“Did she get herself cast?”
Tom’s silence was answer enough, or not answer enough.
Frank noticed.
“Do you actually know that?”
Tom’s eyes came to his.
“I know who her father is.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Tom looked away first.
Anya tapped ash neatly onto the pavement.
“Is she good?”
The question irritated him more than it should have.
Because the answer was not clean.
Because nothing about you was clean.
Because when you were bad with him, you were impossible. Guarded and skittish and furious. You missed beats, filled silences, froze under his hand as if he had already done something unforgivable.
And then, away from him, you were—
Tom dragged a hand over his mouth.
“She’s not good for this.”
Anya’s eyes narrowed.
“That is not what I asked.”
“Well, that’s all I’ve got,” Tom snapped, then immediately seemed annoyed at himself for saying it.
Frank smiled faintly.
Tom looked at him.
Frank held the look, unbothered.
Tom hated, sometimes, how little Frank needed to do to make a room feel as if it had acquired a second door.
Then Tom continued -
“She infuriates me,” Tom said. “Every time we have to do anything remotely intimate, even just touch, she freezes. Then she looks at me like I’m the problem, which makes me the problem, because apparently my face is doing something unforgivable.”
“Your face often does something unforgivable,” Anya said.
Frank nodded.
“It’s one of your stronger features.”
Tom ignored both of them.
“I want this film to work.”
There it was.
Bare, for a second.
The thing underneath the vanity and the irritation and the defensiveness.
“I spent months getting into this character. The script is good. The part is good. The whole thing could actually be good if we could stop ruining every scene we have together.”
Frank watched him for a beat.
“But pretending not to like someone usually involves less eye contact.”
Tom gave him another flat look.
Frank smiled back as though Tom’s irritation was something he enjoyed the shape of.
Anya slipped her arm through Tom’s, but lightly. Elegantly. The way women did on cold pavements outside restaurants when they wanted to look affectionate without giving a photographer anything too useful.
Her hand rested at the crook of his elbow.
Not his chest.
Not his waist.
Nowhere a headline could make a meal of it.
“You are very grumpy tonight.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“With your pretty co-star.”
“With my impossible co-star.”
“Same thing, apparently.”
Tom shook his head.
“You two are unbearable.”
Frank’s smile deepened.
“And yet,” he said, “you texted us.”
“I texted Anya.”
“Yes, darling,” Anya said, entirely unbothered. “And I brought a friend.”
Tom’s eyes flicked to Frank.
Frank looked back at him with lazy innocence, one hand in his pocket, shoulder brushing Tom’s as if by accident.
It was not by accident.
Nothing about Frank felt accidental.
“Did you?” Tom said.
Anya smiled.
“I also booked a suite.”
Tom stared at her.
“Of course you did.”
“It has a very nice large shower.”
Frank leaned in slightly, his voice lower now, amused at the edge.
“Huge, apparently.”
Tom looked between them.
Anya’s face was open, wicked, beautiful in a way that looked expensive even under streetlights. Frank stood close enough that the heat of him was obvious, close enough that anyone watching carefully would notice Tom did not move away.
For one second, Tom looked as though he might object on principle.
Then Frank’s knuckles brushed, very briefly, against the back of his hand.
Tom’s mouth tightened.
Not with annoyance this time.
Anya saw it.
Frank saw it.
Tom definitely knew they had seen it.
“Subtle,” he said.
Frank’s smile did not move.
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
Meanwhile, back at the studio…
Meanwhile, on Friday night, after filming had wrapped for the week and everyone sensible had gone home, your father came by the studio.
Not because he was worried.
Obviously.
He was a producer.
Producers checked in.
Producers reviewed footage.
Producers asked practical questions about schedules, overtime, lighting resets, and whether a director who smoked too much and answered emails like ransom notes was staying on budget.
That was the official version.
The unofficial version was that your father had spent the entire first week trying very hard not to hover, and by Friday evening his self-control had run out.
The studio had that strange after-hours feeling. Half alive. Half abandoned. Cables coiled against walls. Light stands pushed into corners. Set pieces left in eerie domestic arrangements with no actors inside them. Somewhere down the corridor, crew were laughing too loudly while someone packed cases. The air smelled faintly of dust, hot equipment, coffee, and the last cigarette Kurt had absolutely not been allowed to smoke indoors.
Your father found Kurt in the viewing room.
Kurt had one foot on the edge of a chair, sunglasses pushed into his hair, a paper cup of coffee in his hand, and the expression of a man being forced to evaluate his own children under fluorescent light.
Your father stood behind him, watching the monitor.
On screen, you were sitting alone in Rose’s bedroom.
The take was quiet.
Still.
Almost too still.
You were not doing much. Just sitting on the edge of the bed with your hands in your lap, staring at a wall as though something inside it had asked you a question you did not want to answer.
But your face did something small.
So small most people would have missed it.
Your father did not.
Neither did Kurt.
The scene ended.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Kurt reached for the keyboard and paused the playback.
“That one’s good.”
Your father said nothing.
Kurt looked at him.
“Don’t do the proud father face.”
Your father’s expression cooled at once.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were about to.”
“I am allowed to think she did a good job.”
“You are. Quietly. Somewhere else.”
Your father’s mouth twitched despite himself.
“You’re unbearable.”
“And yet you keep funding me.”
Kurt clicked to the next clip before your father could answer.
Tom appeared on screen next.
Office set. Low light. His sleeves rolled up. His tie loosened just enough to suggest a man who had not yet decided whether he was tired or dangerous.
He said almost nothing.
Forty seconds of silence.
A turn of the head.
A slow breath through his nose.
His eyes dropped once to a file on the desk, then back to the unseen person in front of him.
It should have been boring.
It was not.
Your father watched closely.
Kurt, irritatingly, looked smug.
The clip ended.
“That’s why I cast him,” Kurt said.
Your father glanced at him.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Was I?”
“Yes. You were thinking, unfortunately, the bastard is good.”
Your father did not answer.
Which was answer enough.
Kurt took a sip of coffee.
“Controlled. Specific. Doesn’t overplay. There’s a scene in the office where he says almost nothing for forty seconds and manages to make silence look like a moral failure.”
Your father gave a dry smile.
“Useful.”
“Very.”
Kurt moved on.
Olivia’s scene was next.
Excellent.
Sharp.
Prepared.
Then Jason and Mara’s bedroom scene, which had apparently wrapped in three takes because some actors came to work emotionally functional.
Then the parents’ material.
Your father went still when the monitor cut to you opposite the actors playing Rose’s parents.
The room on screen was bright and cruel. Too tasteful. Too expensive. The sort of room where love had been replaced by manners and nobody had noticed until it was too late.
You stood near the doorway, arms folded too tightly over your stomach.
The actress playing your mother said something soft.
The actor playing your father looked at you like disappointment was a family inheritance.
Your face did not collapse.
That was what made it worse.
You stayed composed.
You looked practised.
Your father watched in silence.
Kurt let the scene play a little longer than necessary.
When it ended, he stopped the footage.
“The parents’ material is good,” Kurt said. “Actually, very good. Your daughter and the actors playing Rose’s parents have something cruel and recognisable between them.”
That made your father still.
Only for a second.
Kurt noticed.
Of course he did.
He did not comment.
Sometimes his restraint was more cutting than his bluntness.
Your father looked away from the monitor and picked up the weekly production notes from the table.
“And the rest?”
Kurt leaned back in his chair.
“The rest is uneven.”
Your father looked up.
His gaze sharpened.
He was very good at that. At making attention feel like pressure. You had grown up under that look, had learned to speak faster or cleaner or not at all depending on how much patience remained behind it.
Kurt, to his credit, seemed mostly immune.
“Uneven how?” your father asked.
Kurt clicked another file open.
“Watch.”
The next scene loaded.
You and Tom.
Therapy office.
Not the kiss.
Not yet.
Just the two of you sitting opposite each other in an artificial room, pretending not to want things the script had already decided you wanted.
Even before either of you spoke, the problem was visible.
Your shoulders were too high.
Tom noticed.
His eyes flicked to you, quick and sharp.
You noticed him noticing.
Your jaw tightened.
He delivered his line too coolly.
You answered too fast.
There was tension, yes.
But not the kind the film needed.
It did not feel like two people fighting attraction.
It felt like two people refusing to give each other oxygen.
Kurt paused it halfway through.
The frozen image was not flattering to either of you.
Your father’s expression did not change.
That meant it had changed a lot.
“Play the next one,” he said.
Kurt did.
It was worse.
Tom stepped closer.
You braced.
Not dramatically.
Not enough for the average viewer to know what they were seeing.
But enough.
Enough for the camera to catch it.
Enough for Tom to catch it.
On screen, his face hardened by one degree.
You shut down by two.
The scene went flat.
The monitor went black when the clip ended.
For several seconds, the room was silent.
Then your father set the schedule down.
“That bad?”
Kurt made a face.
“No.”
A pause.
“Uneven.”
“You already said uneven.”
“Because it remains the correct word.”
“Where is the issue?”
Kurt looked at him.
A beat.
Then another.
“Tom and Y/N.”
Your father’s face became very calm.
Too calm.
“What about them?”
“They’re not working.”
“Not working.”
“Not together.”
“Individually?”
“Individually, they’re both giving me what I need.”
“But together?”
Kurt exhaled through his nose and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Together, they’re locked. Guarded. Everything that should have pressure has friction instead. Not useful friction. Defensive friction.”
He pointed to the monitor.
“She braces when he gets close. He notices her bracing and gets annoyed. He gets annoyed, she shuts down. She shuts down, he gets sharper. Then they both stand there looking like they’d rather testify against each other than fall into bed.”
Your father’s jaw tightened.
“That is not ideal.”
“No. It is not.”
“Is he making her uncomfortable?”
The question came too fast.
Too father.
Not enough producer.
Kurt looked at him for a moment.
“Yes.”
Your father’s whole posture changed.
Kurt lifted one hand immediately.
“Not like that.”
“Kurt.”
“I mean she is uncomfortable around him. Defensive. Over-aware. Angry. Possibly intimidated. I don’t really know.”
Your father stared at him.
“You don’t really know?”
“No, I don’t. Because I am not her therapist, and neither are you.”
That landed badly.
Kurt let it.
Your father sat back slowly.
“Has something happened between them?”
“Marie asked her.”
“And?”
“She said no.”
Your father waited.
Kurt drank his coffee.
Your father’s mouth thinned.
“Do you believe her?”
Kurt looked through the glass into the darkened studio for a second.
Then back.
“I believe she does not want to talk about whatever is making her body behave like that.”
The words landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
Your father looked down at the production notes.
For one second, he was not the producer with the schedule, budget, locations, contingency plans, and weekly reports.
He was your father.
The man who had once checked every car you got into. Who still believed, in some private and immovable part of himself, that if he knew enough, controlled enough, intervened early enough, nothing truly bad could happen to you.
Which would have been sweet.
If it had not also been suffocating.
“Maybe she isn’t ready,” Kurt said quietly.
Your father’s head came up.
“For the film?”
Kurt did not answer quickly.
That was answer enough.
Your father’s face cooled.
“You cast her.”
“Yes.”
“You told me she could do it.”
“I still think she can.”
“But?”
“But thinking someone can do something and watching them do it are two different stages of the same gamble.”
Your father did not like that.
No producer liked uncertainty.
No father liked uncertainty dressed in professional language.
“Is this about experience?”
“Some of it.”
“And the rest?”
Kurt gave him a flat look.
“The rest is what I just said.”
Your father’s fingers tightened around his pen.
“Tom has a reputation.”
Kurt’s brows lifted.
“Does he?”
“Don’t be naïve.”
“I try not to be.”
“He is talented, yes. I know that. But he isn’t a saint.”
Kurt laughed once.
“Most actors aren’t saints.”
Your father’s eyes hardened.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Kurt leaned forward, elbows on his knees, coffee forgotten.
“But to reassure you, father to father, if I thought he was doing something unsafe, he would not be on my set.”
Your father watched him.
“You’re sure?”
“Marie runs a tight ship.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is. It means the intimate material is monitored, structured, agreed, reset, checked, and documented. Nobody is improvising their way through your daughter’s boundaries.”
Your father’s expression did not soften.
“And outside of that?”
Kurt sat back.
“Outside of that, I think the problem is very simple.”
“Which is?”
“They clearly don’t like each other.”
Your father stared at him.
“That’s your professional assessment?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t like each other.”
“Correct.”
“That is the problem?”
“Yes.”
“Not misconduct. Not pressure. Not confusion around the intimacy work.”
“No.”
Kurt picked up his coffee again.
“They just don’t like each other and they’re both stubborn enough to turn that into a technical problem.”
Your father looked back at the black monitor.
He did not speak for a while.
When he did, his voice was quieter.
“She’s twenty-four.”
“I know how old she is.”
“He’s forty.”
“I know how old he is too.”
“He has more experience.”
“Yes.”
“More power.”
“On paper, maybe.”
Your father looked at him sharply.
Kurt did not flinch.
“In the room? With her? I’m not so sure.”
Your father’s expression shifted.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she irritates him.”
“Irritates him.”
“Profoundly.”
Kurt almost sounded pleased by it.
“He’s controlled until she does something he can’t predict. Then he gets sharp. She feels judged, so she becomes impossible. Then he gets colder. Then she gets more defensive. It’s a miserable little loop.”
“That sounds like a problem.”
“It is.”
“Then fix it.”
“I’m trying.”
Your father looked away first.
Only for half a second.
Enough.
Kurt sat back.
“So I’ve given them homework.”
Your father’s eyes narrowed.
“Homework?”
“Yes.”
“They are adults.”
“Then it should be easy for them to stop behaving like teenagers.”
“What homework?”
“They’re seeing a film Sunday. Together. Then discussing it for an hour. Quietly. Without assistants, fathers, fiancés, friends, or anyone else turning it into an emotional tribunal.”
Your father stared at him.
“You are sending my daughter out on a date with her co-star?”
“I am sending my two leads to a cinema.”
“Kurt.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Whatever you’re about to do, don’t.”
Your father’s face hardened.
“You don’t know what I’m about to do.”
“You’re going to talk to her.”
A pause.
Your father looked down at the schedule.
Kurt snorted.
“Jesus.”
“She is my daughter.”
“She is also your actress.”
“She is my daughter first.”
“Not on my set.”
The words cracked cleanly through the room.
Your father’s eyes lifted.
For a second, the two men simply looked at each other.
One of them used to being obeyed.
The other allergic to being managed.
Your father spoke first.
“I will speak to her as a producer.”
Kurt stared at him.
Then laughed.
Not kindly.
“Bullshit.”
Your father’s face went cold.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Careful.”
“No, you be careful.”
Kurt leaned forward again, all the lazy insolence gone from him now.
“Because if you go to her with that look on your face and a producer’s vocabulary wrapped around a father’s panic, you are going to make this worse.”
Your father said nothing.
“She already knows you’re watching.”
Still nothing.
“She already knows everyone is waiting for her to fail.”
Your father’s jaw tightened.
“I am not waiting for her to fail.”
“No. You’re waiting to catch her before she falls, which feels exactly the same when you’re the person trying to stand up.”
That landed.
Badly.
Kurt let that land too.
Your father looked back at the monitor.
The paused image had returned somehow.
You and Tom in the therapy office.
You braced.
Tom sharpened.
Two people caught mid-failure by a camera that had no mercy.
Your father’s voice was low when he spoke.
“What do you suggest I do, then?”
Kurt picked up his coffee.
“Nothing.”
Your father looked at him.
“Nothing?”
“For forty-eight hours, yes. Nothing.”
“And if Sunday makes it worse?”
Kurt smiled without humour.
“Then I’ll have two actors who hate each other in a more informed way.”
Your father did not smile.
Kurt sighed.
“Or maybe they’ll stop performing the argument and start doing the work.”
Your father looked unconvinced.
“You think a cinema fixes this?”
“No.”
“Then why send them?”
“Because right now the only thing they have in common is the scene they keep ruining.”
Kurt tapped the monitor once.
“They need to talk about something that isn’t this. Not each other. Not whatever private nonsense is making them act like feral cats in a locked room. A film. A shared object. A way into the work without either of them having to admit they’re frightened.”
Your father studied him.
“You think she’s frightened?”
Kurt’s expression shifted.
Just slightly.
“I think she’s twenty-four, ambitious, exposed, and acting opposite a man she doesn’t trust yet in material that asks her body to tell a story which her head isn’t ready to tell.”
Your father looked down.
For once, he had no immediate answer.
Kurt stood, gathering his coffee and the stack of notes from the table.
“Let me direct the film.”
Your father’s eyes lifted.
“I am letting you.”
“Then let me direct your daughter.”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
Your father looked back at the monitor.
Then at Kurt.
“Forty-eight hours.”
Kurt nodded once.
“Good.”
“But if I think she is being pushed too far—”
“Then you’ll tell me, and I’ll ignore the parts that are paternal and listen to the parts that are useful.”
Your father stared at him.
Kurt smiled.
“See? Collaboration.”
Your father did not laugh.
But he did not argue either.
Which, for him, was practically surrender.
Kurt walked to the door.
Then paused.
“And please…”
Your father looked up.
“…do not call her tonight.”
Your father’s silence was answer enough.
Kurt pointed at him.
“I mean it.”
“Goodnight, Kurt.”
“That was not agreement.”
“Goodnight.”
Kurt shook his head and left.
Your father remained in the viewing room after he was gone.
For a while, he did not move.
Then he looked back at the monitor.
At you.
At Tom.
At the tiny space between you that somehow looked more dangerous than a kiss.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
The next five days did not get better.
They got organised.
Which was worse, somehow.
Every morning started too early. Every night ended too late. The studio became a strange, airless little country you kept entering before your brain had fully assembled itself and leaving after your body had given up trying to pretend it was fine. You learned where the good coffee was. You learned which corridor had the least foot traffic when you needed to reread a page without someone asking whether you were alright. You learned that Kurt hated people hovering near video village without purpose, that Sven could run a set like a military campaign while looking mildly bored, and that Marie saw absolutely everything.
Everything.
Which was inconvenient.
James came back from Paris on the third night.
You were sitting on the floor in front of Hamster Tom’s cage, trying to coax him away from chewing the corner of his wooden bridge, when James walked in with a suitcase, two garment bags, and the glow of a man who had spent three days being admired by people in nice lighting.
“What is it doing?” he asked, stopping in the doorway.
You looked up.
“Living.”
James frowned at the cage while Hamster Tom destroyed the interior with great purpose. He had dragged bedding into one corner, shoved a chew stick into his wheel, and was now attempting to dismantle the little wooden bridge as though it had personally insulted him.
“It’s very loud for something that small.”
Hamster Tom paused mid-chew and stared at him.
You were almost proud.
“He has a big personality.”
“It’s a hamster.”
“So?”
James stepped over one of your scripts on the floor, picked it up with two fingers, and placed it on the coffee table like it had personally offended him.
You kept your face very still.
Hamster Tom began chewing again, louder.
James looked at him.
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“That’s because you called him a rodent.”
“He is a rodent.”
Hamster Tom shoved his nose through the bars.
You gave James your sweetest smile.
“Careful. He understands classism.”
James glanced at you sharply.
He did not laugh.
That was James all week.
Not cruel.
Not exactly.
Just there.
Present in the flat in a way that made the walls feel smaller.
Every night, he asked how work was before you had even taken your shoes off.
At first, you answered.
Sort of.
“Long.”
“Difficult.”
“Fine.”
“Kurt liked a take.”
“I forgot my phone in wardrobe for twenty minutes and thought I’d lost it forever.”
James listened in the way he listened to most things that were not directly about him — politely, for the first thirty seconds, and then with a faint waiting quality, as if he was giving you a reasonable amount of time to finish before returning the conversation to something useful.
Usually wedding venues.
Sometimes his own project.
Often both.
“I spoke to Lucien in Paris,” he said one night, leaning against the counter while you stood at the sink eating cereal from a mug because bowls had become too advanced. “He thinks the funding might move faster if production attaches someone recognisable. I told him that was obvious, but apparently hearing it in French made everyone feel clever.”
“Mm.”
“Are you listening?”
You blinked.
You were not.
You had been thinking about Tom missing a cue in rehearsal and pretending it had been deliberate. The way his mouth tightened afterward. The way his hand had gone to the edge of his script and then stopped, hard, like he had caught himself moving and punished the impulse.
“Yes.”
James’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“What did I say?”
Your spoon paused halfway to your mouth.
“French people are clever.”
He stared at you.
“Never mind.”
You winced.
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
“You’ve been tired all week.”
“Because I’m working.”
“So am I.”
There it was.
Not a fight.
Not quite.
Just the little correction he liked to place into rooms when you were taking up too much space.
You put the mug down.
“I know.”
His face softened, but only in the way it did when he had decided to be patient with you.
“Maybe you’re letting this get too big in your head.”
You went still.
“What?”
“The film.”
“I know what you meant.”
James sighed.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“React like I’ve attacked you when I’m trying to help.”
You stared at the cereal going soggy in your mug.
“Right.”
He stepped closer.
“I just wonder if maybe it’s a bit much after all.”
You looked up then.
“The movie?”
“This movie.”
There was a distinction in the way he said it.
This movie.
Kurt’s movie.
Tom’s movie.
The sexually charged indie film full of therapy rooms, bad decisions, and the man James had warned you about with the smug satisfaction of someone who wanted to be proven right.
“It isn’t too much,” you said.
James watched you for a beat.
“You’ve barely said a positive thing about it since you started filming.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
“No, Y/N. I asked whether the film might be too much for you emotionally, not whether you are incapable. There’s a difference.”
There was.
Technically.
Emotionally, not one you cared for.
On that same night, when you made the mistake of admitting Tom was irritating, James looked up from the wedding venue brochure open on his laptop and said, immediately, “Told you.”
You regretted speaking before the words had even finished leaving your mouth.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t sound pleased.”
James leaned back in his chair.
“I’m not pleased. I’m unsurprised.”
“That is the same thing in a nicer coat.”
His mouth tightened.
“I warned you about him.”
“Yes, James. You did. Congratulations. Would you like a certificate?”
That became a fight.
Not a large one.
Not dramatic.
Just one of those domestic arguments that began with a sentence about your co-star and somehow ended thirty minutes later with James asking why you had not looked at the three venue options he sent.
You had no answer.
Not a good one.
Not one that would make sense.
Because the truth was not that you had forgotten.
Not entirely.
It was that every time you opened the links, the idea of wedding menus, linen choices, ceremony rooms, guest numbers, and James standing beside you in a tailored suit made something in your chest go strangely quiet.
Not happy quiet.
Not peaceful quiet.
Extinct quiet.
On Friday morning, you had sex with him before work because he reached for you in bed and you had no graceful way of refusing.
It was not terrible in any spectacular way.
That almost made it worse.
It was familiar. Efficient. Soft in the right places. Predictable in a way that should have been comforting and instead made you feel like you were watching yourself from the corner of the room. There was nothing especially wrong with it, which meant there was nothing obvious to point at and say, there, that is why this feels wrong.
James kissed your shoulder afterward and said, “You were somewhere else.”
Your eyes were on the ceiling.
“Sorry.”
“Work?”
“Mm.”
“Or him?”
You went still.
James propped himself on one elbow.
“I meant Kurt. The director.”
You looked at him.
He smiled faintly.
That smile again.
The one that made you feel like you had failed a test he had written in invisible ink.
“You’re very jumpy.”
“I have to be on set in forty minutes.”
“Right.”
He leaned down, kissed you once, then got out of bed and said, as if the two subjects were naturally connected, “Please look at the venues today. I like the second one, but the capacity might be tight.”
You lay there with the sheet pulled to your chest and thought, absurdly, of Tom’s hand at your skirt.
Of how furious you were with him.
Of how your body had reacted to him with humiliating precision.
Then you hated yourself for thinking about it.
Then you hated Tom for existing in your head at all.
Then you were late.
Again.
*********
By Thursday that week, you had also stopped telling Jess much.
Not because she asked nothing.
Because she asked too much.
Jess: how was set?
Jess: did he say anything today?
Jess: was he normal?
Jess: did he mention the coffee girl again?
Jess: sorry ignore me
Jess: don’t ignore me actually was he weird?
You understood it.
That was the horrible part.
You understood every question.
Jess was not trying to make your life harder. She was trying to locate herself in the aftermath of someone else’s casual cruelty. She was trying to know whether she had mattered enough to leave even a dent.
But after the third day of answering carefully, you felt like your whole life had become a hallway full of Tom-shaped doors.
James asked about him.
Jess asked about him.
Maddy asked about him, but at least Maddy did it with knives out and wine nearby.
So you stopped whinging to Jess.
Then, slowly, you stopped whinging to James.
Which left Maddy.
Maddy received the full, unfiltered disaster in a series of increasingly unhinged texts sent from makeup chairs, toilets, corridor corners, Uber back seats, and once from under a costume rack where you had gone to retrieve a dropped earring and stayed for forty seconds because nobody could see you there.
You: he corrected my mark today with his eyes
Maddy: with his eyes?
You: yes
Maddy: jail
You: he does this thing where he says nothing but it sounds like he is footnoting my incompetence
Maddy: hate him
You: he tapped his pen for twelve minutes
Maddy: did you count
You: unfortunately yes
Maddy: for someone who hates her co-star you mention him a lot
You stared at that message for too long.
Then typed back:
You: because he is an asshole and I am collecting evidence
Maddy: sure
You: don’t sure me
Maddy: sure
You nearly threw your phone into a laundry basket.
The days themselves blurred into scenes.
Your solo work remained good.
Infuriatingly good, apparently.
You had a sequence with the actors playing Rose’s parents on Wednesday afternoon, and something about them made the work easier. Maybe because the scene had a structure your body understood. Family tension. Polite cruelty. A mother pretending not to see. A father asking questions like weapons.
You knew how to play that.
You did not have to think.
You just stood there, let your face close by degrees, and said your lines with the contained politeness of a woman who had learned early that rage was more dangerous when swallowed whole.
Kurt barely spoke after the take.
He just watched the monitor, then said, quietly, “That.”
The actress playing your mother squeezed your arm afterward and said, “You’re very good at looking like you’re about to vanish.”
You smiled before you realised that was not necessarily a compliment.
“Thank you?”
“It was a compliment.”
“Good.”
“Mostly.”
You liked her.
The actor playing your father was older, dry, and kept forgetting where he had left his glasses. You found them on top of his head twice. The second time he said, “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”
You told Maddy immediately.
Tom’s solo scenes were also good.
You knew because everyone kept saying so.
Not to you exactly.
Around you.
Which was worse.
You heard a gaffer say, “Tom nailed that solo scene.”
You heard Sven, headset pressed to one ear, tell Kurt, “Tom’s done in two if you want him released.”
You heard Kurt say, “No, give me one more. He’s got it, but there’s something in the stillness I want.”
Of course there was.
Of course there was something in the stillness.
Tom seemed to be made of stillness when he needed to be.
Until he was not.
Until his thumb started moving against a script corner.
Until he forgot to eat.
Until he smoked too quickly.
Until he paced between setups and then stopped dead the second someone looked at him, as though motion itself had become incriminating.
You noticed that too.
You noticed everything about him, which was becoming a serious professional problem.
And the more you noticed him, the more you realised he noticed you noticing. Not always. Not openly. But sometimes his eyes flicked over at the exact wrong second and caught you looking at his restless hand, his fidgeting with the script, the cigarette he had not lit but kept rolling between his fingers as though the object alone might settle him.
He was good at stillness.
He was not naturally still.
That was the irritating thing.
You had started to suspect his calm was as constructed as yours.
Just better funded.
Then Olivia arrived.
Olivia Wilde came on board on Wednesday afternoon, sweeping into the makeup trailer with a tote bag, wet hair, and the kind of calm presence that made everyone else seem slightly over-lit.
She was in her late thirties, maybe older, maybe younger — one of those women whose face carried intelligence more obviously than age. Dark eyes. Wide mouth. No obvious panic. She wore jeans, a loose white shirt, and a long black coat despite the studio being warm. She introduced herself to everyone by name, remembered yours immediately, and apologised to a runner when she nearly stepped on a cable.
You liked her at once.
Which was annoying, because Olivia was playing Mara.
Jason’s wife.
She was not in many scenes, but all of them mattered. A flashback in the bedroom. A confrontation in Jason’s office. One closed-set intimate scene that, according to the sides you had no business having read, revealed the marriage had not been simply unhappy.
It had been hungry.
Wrong.
Mutually destructive.
The sort of marriage that looked sophisticated from the outside and rotted in private.
Olivia sat beside you in makeup, smiled through the mirror, and said, “First week?”
You blinked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only because you still look personally offended by the schedule.”
You laughed.
A little too gratefully.
“I am.”
“Good. Stay that way. The day you stop being offended by call times is the day the industry owns your soul.”
You liked her even more.
Then she met Tom.
And that, unfortunately, went well.
Not flirtatious.
Not openly.
Just easy.
Professional.
Warm.
They hugged. He smiled. Properly. Not the almost-smile he kept using around you like a weapon. A real one. You knew by now that they had worked together before, twice. Olivia teased him about something he had said in a Q&A years ago, something about suffering being more interesting than happiness on camera, and Tom looked briefly embarrassed.
“I was twenty-eight and insufferable,” he said.
Olivia laughed.
“You’re still insufferable. You’re just quieter about it.”
He laughed too.
Actually laughed.
You hated everyone.
Their first scene together was done by the end of the afternoon.
Three takes.
Three.
You were not present for the closed-set material, obviously. Marie cleared the room properly, and only essential crew remained. You were on another set doing pickups with Rose’s mother, which should have kept your mind occupied.
It did not.
Because forty minutes later, Sven walked past and said into his headset, “Jason and Mara bedroom scene wrapped. Three takes. Kurt’s happy.”
Three takes.
You nearly missed your cue.
The actress playing your mother looked at you.
“You alright?”
“Yep.”
You were not.
Because now there was Olivia too.
Lovely Olivia.
Calm Olivia.
Professional Olivia.
Olivia who could apparently walk into a sexually loaded scene with Tom and wrap it inside three takes while you had frozen over a therapy-room silence and turned an implied kiss into a scheduling hazard.
You texted Maddy from the bathroom.
You: olivia did an intimate scene with him in 3 takes
Maddy: hate her
You: no she is lovely
Maddy: worse
You: i know
Maddy: did he annoy her
You: apparently not
Maddy: interesting
You: don’t
Maddy: sure
**********
The scenes with Tom remained the problem.
Not all of them.
That was what made it worse.
Sometimes a take worked in pieces.
A look.
A line.
A silence that almost became something.
For a moment, the whole room would lean forward, sensing the beginning of the thing Kurt wanted.
Then one of you would kill it.
Usually you.
Sometimes him.
Often both of you with the terrible efficiency of people destroying evidence.
He would hold the silence too tightly, and you would fill it too fast.
You would look nervous, and he would start looking annoyed.
He would soften half an inch, and your body would brace like you were about to be criticised.
You would finally settle into a beat, and his frustration would flicker across his face for just long enough to make the take unusable.
There were other things too.
Tiny things.
Your things, though nobody called them that out loud.
You lost your pencil, found it in your hair, put it down, lost it again, then got distracted by a prop file because one corner of the fake medical form had been folded incorrectly. Tom watched you notice it. You watched him watch you. Then he noticed the same corner and smoothed it with one finger when nobody was looking.
You hated that.
You forgot a cue because someone behind camera unwrapped a mint too loudly. Tom missed his next line because a light flickered above the office door and his eyes kept dragging toward it, irritation flashing in the muscle near his jaw.
You hated that too.
Not because it annoyed you.
Because you recognised it.
The body betraying the brain in small, stupid ways.
The attention catching on the wrong thing.
The effort of pretending focus was effortless.
By Friday afternoon, the pattern had become visible.
Not only to you.
To everyone.
Kurt stood behind the monitor, jaw tight, while Sven stood beside him with his arms folded and Marie hovered just far enough away not to make it look like she was hovering.
On screen, you and Tom were sitting opposite each other in Jason’s office, speaking lines that should have been loaded with implication.
They landed flat.
Not because the acting was bad.
That would have been easier to solve.
It was worse than bad.
It was guarded.
Every interesting thing between you seemed to happen in the half-second after Kurt said cut, when you looked away too fast or Tom’s jaw tightened or the air snapped with something nobody could put on camera because both of you kept burying it under irritation.
Kurt watched playback.
Tom stood on one side of the room, one hand in his pocket, the other worrying the folded edge of his sides.
You stood near the bookshelf, one foot hooked behind the other, thumbnail pressed into your palm to stop yourself picking at it.
Sven glanced from Tom to you.
Then to the monitor.
Then back again.
You saw it.
He was clocking something.
You did not like that.
Kurt exhaled through his nose.
“Again.”
Again.
Again.
Again.
By the fifth take, Tom’s frustration was no longer subtle.
Neither was yours.
“Can we reset from the second line?” Tom asked, too controlled.
You turned your head.
“Why?”
His eyes came to yours.
“Because that’s where the beat is being missed.”
“By me, you mean.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Kurt lifted one hand.
“Enough. Reset.”
Sven’s mouth twitched very slightly.
Not amusement.
Not quite.
Concern, maybe.
Later, when you passed video village on your way to wardrobe, you heard voices you were clearly not meant to hear.
Kurt first.
Low.
Irritated.
“Tom’s solo work is great. Olivia’s stuff is great. Y/N with the parents, excellent. Her solo scenes, very strong.”
A pause.
Then Sven.
“Together?”
Kurt made a sound.
“Together, I’ve got nothing I can use.”
Your stomach dropped.
You stopped moving.
Just for a second.
Marie’s voice came next, quieter.
“It isn’t nothing.”
Sven said, “No. It’s not no chemistry.”
Kurt exhaled.
“Then where is it?”
Sven did not answer immediately.
When he did, his voice was thoughtful.
“Under a lot of concrete.”
Marie said, “They’re bracing.”
“They’re fighting the scene,” Kurt muttered.
“They’re fighting each other,” Sven said.
Another pause.
Then, softer, almost to himself:
“Not the same thing.”
You moved before anyone could see you standing there.
Your face burned all the way to wardrobe.
By Friday evening, Anita, the actress playing Jason’s secretary, had gone home sick, one of the corridor scenes had been pushed, and the schedule had become the kind of mess that made assistant directors look like they might start killing people with clipboards.
You had just finished your last scene of the day — a short, miserable exchange with Rose’s father that went well enough for Kurt to say “fine, moving on” with obvious relief — when Tom appeared near the edge of the set.
You saw him before he saw you.
Or maybe he had already seen you.
It was impossible to tell with him.
He stood half in shadow near the fake office corridor, shoulders slightly hunched, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a folded call sheet. His hair was messier than it had been that morning. His face looked tired. Irritated. Too sharp at the edges.
You immediately turned the other way.
“Nope.”
Tom’s brows lifted.
“Sorry?”
“No. Don’t start.”
He stepped closer.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You have the face.”
“What face?”
“The face where you’re about to make something my fault.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Wonderful.”
“Due to a scheduling issue and Anita being sick, Kurt wants to reshoot the office kiss tonight.”
You stopped.
The whole day seemed to tilt slightly.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“It got pushed.”
“And now it’s been unpushed.”
“That’s not a word.”
“I’m aware.”
You stared at him.
“Why are you telling me?”
His expression flickered.
Something almost like restraint.
“Because we’d be running until nine, and Marie needs to do the practical reset before we shoot.”
“Again. Why are you telling me?”
Tom inhaled through his nose.
His thumb moved once over the folded call sheet.
Stopped.
“Because I need to know whether you’re okay with that before we put everyone through it.”
There it was.
Reasonable.
Professional.
Almost considerate.
Which somehow made you angrier.
“Before we put everyone through it?”
His eyes sharpened.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, of course not.”
“Y/N.”
“You mean before I freeze again and ruin the evening?”
His jaw flexed.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You never do. You just orbit it.”
For a second, he looked genuinely tired.
Then the tiredness hardened into irritation.
“Fine. You want blunt? This scene cannot take another three hours.”
Heat flashed through you.
“There he is.”
“I’m not attacking you.”
“You’re just being professionally disappointed in my existence.”
“For God’s sake.”
“No, seriously, Tom, say it. You don’t think I can do it.”
“I think you can do it if you stop deciding I’m the enemy every time I come within three feet of you.”
You laughed once.
Sharp.
“That’s rich.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You look at me like I’m about to hurt you.”
The words landed strangely.
Not because they were cruel.
Because they were not.
Because they were too close to something Marie had said with her eyes all week and too close to something Kurt was beginning to say with his silences.
Your mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Tom saw that too.
Of course he did.
His expression shifted.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“I’m not,” he said, quieter. “I won’t.”
The room seemed to narrow.
You were aware suddenly of how close he was. Not touching. Not even really near enough for anyone else to notice. But close enough that your body registered the heat of him before your brain could issue its usual warnings.
“You have,” you said.
His eyes flickered.
“What?”
You should not have said it.
You definitely should not have said it.
But the week had scraped you too thin, and the words slipped through before pride could stop them.
“You have hurt me by behaving like a dick.”
Silence.
Tom’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone else would catch from across the room.
But you saw it.
The irritation cracked. Something else moved underneath it. Guilt, maybe. Or recognition. Or the horrible awareness that the two of you had spent five days pretending the damage was professional when it had never been only that.
His gaze dropped to your mouth.
Just once.
There and gone.
Your breath caught.
His did too.
Barely.
The air between you changed so quickly it was almost embarrassing.
One second, fight.
The next, the dangerous softening underneath it.
The place the film wanted.
The place both of you avoided every time there was a camera in the room.
Tom’s voice was low when he spoke.
“This is impossible.”
He then snapped and you stepped back.
Too fast.
“Don’t.”
He blinked.
The moment shut.
Both of you seemed to hate that it had existed.
Sven’s voice cut across the set.
“Tom, Y/N — makeup and wardrobe need you both now.”
You looked away first.
“Great.”
Tom dragged a hand over his mouth.
“Yeah.”
Neither of you moved for half a second.
Then you went in opposite directions, which was ridiculous because wardrobe was the same place.
*********
Marie did the practical reset fifteen minutes later in the office set.
The approach.
Jason’s hands.
No improvisation.
No surprise that had not been discussed.
You said yes to everything.
Tom said yes to everything.
Marie watched both of you like she was reading a document with half the words blacked out.
The first take failed before the kiss.
You crossed the space too quickly, as if Rose wanted to get the mistake over with. Tom responded too late because he was watching your face instead of listening to the beat. Kurt cut immediately.
The second take failed because you stopped short.
The third because Tom’s hand came up a fraction too early and you flinched.
Not much.
Enough.
“Cut.”
The word cracked through the room.
Tom stepped back at once.
Hands down.
Jaw tight.
Marie’s eyes moved to you.
You nodded before she could ask.
“I’m fine.”
Nobody believed you.
Fourth take.
Fifth.
Sixth.
The problem kept changing shape and remaining the same.
Too fast.
Too stiff.
Too careful.
Too annoyed.
Too aware.
Too much body and somehow no heat on camera.
By the seventh take, Tom’s frustration was visible.
Actually visible.
And the guilt which had appeared on his face just hours earlier had vanished again completely now.
Which meant it must have been worse underneath.
“Cut.”
Kurt lowered his head for a second.
Tom turned away, then turned back.
“This scene isn’t going to happen if she keeps freezing.”
The set went still.
Not completely.
Film sets never went completely still.
But enough.
You felt the words hit your face before you had time to arrange it.
Marie said, immediately, “Break.”
Kurt’s jaw worked once.
Then he lifted a hand.
“Ten minutes.”
People moved.
Not quickly.
Carefully.
As if the air itself had become breakable.
You stepped away from the door and folded your arms so tightly your fingers pressed into your ribs.
Tom looked at you.
You did not look back.
Marie came to you near the hallway set.
Not too close.
Never too close.
That was why she was good.
“Can we talk for a second?”
You stared at the floor.
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
You looked up.
Marie’s expression was calm.
Too calm.
“Did something happen between you and Tom?”
Your heart lurched.
“What?”
“Not on set. Before. Or today. Or during this week. I’m not asking for gossip. I’m asking because Kurt, Sven, and I can all see you brace when he gets close and you look clearly uncomfortable when he touches you.”
Your mouth went dry.
“No.”
Marie waited.
You hated that.
“No,” you repeated. “Nothing happened.”
It was technically true.
If you defined happened very narrowly.
If you ignored New York.
If you ignored rehearsal room three.
If you ignored the almost-kiss ten minutes ago which you still weren’t sure was a thing, because what even was that?
If you ignored every ugly sentence and every stupid look and every bit of heat your body kept producing in the least useful possible context.
Marie watched you.
“Alright.”
She did not believe you.
But she did not call you a liar either.
“Then I’m going to say this as plainly as I can. Your body is saying no before your mouth gets a chance to say yes. If that no is real, we stop. If it’s nerves, we adjust. But I need you to know the difference.”
You swallowed.
“It’s nerves.”
“All of it?”
You looked away.
A beat too long.
Marie’s voice softened slightly.
“Y/N.”
“It’s nerves,” you said again, because any other answer was impossible.
The break ended.
The set came back.
This time Kurt did not crouch.
He stood in front of both of you with his arms folded, visibly tired and no longer interested in pretending otherwise.
Sven stood near the monitor, expression unreadable.
Marie remained just off to the side.
Kurt looked from Tom to you.
“Alright. I’m going to be frank because subtlety is wasting time.”
Your stomach tightened.
Tom’s jaw shifted.
“We’ve had some excellent scenes this week and some bad ones. Your solo work is strong. Both of you. Tom, your scenes with Olivia are excellent. Y/N, your scenes with the parents are excellent.”
That should have felt good.
It did not.
“Together,” Kurt continued, “I’m seeing very little usable chemistry. Even in the takes that technically work, it’s not landing. And if that doesn’t change, this film becomes much harder than it needs to be.”
The words sat there.
Brutal.
Clean.
Tom looked at the floor.
You looked at the door.
Kurt turned to Tom first.
“Your expressions are good in isolation, but the second she misses a beat, they turn into annoyance. I can see you judging the take while you’re in it.”
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“Because she misses the scene beats.”
Kurt’s eyes sharpened.
“Yes. And if you look annoyed, I can’t use any of it.”
A pause.
Tom inhaled.
“Okay. Noted.”
Then Kurt looked at you.
“And you — look less scared.”
Your face burned.
“I’m not scared.”
“The camera disagrees.”
You hated him for that.
Not a lot.
Just briefly.
Kurt pointed toward Tom without looking at him.
“Tom isn’t going to bite you.”
A beat.
Then he glanced at Tom.
“Will you, Tom?”
Tom’s eyes flicked to yours.
For one insane second, something almost alive moved there.
Then he looked back at Kurt.
“No.”
Sven, traitorously, coughed into his hand.
Kurt ignored him.
“Good. Different approach.”
He turned toward Marie.
“We’ve got enough of the room. I don’t need a close-up on lips. I don’t need to watch them negotiate the entire thing. We imply the first kiss from behind. Rose crosses to him. We see enough to know she initiates. Then Jason reacts too strongly, turns her back against the door, kisses her for five seconds, then she pushes him off and leaves. Abrupt. Messy. They both feel it’s a mistake. But the implied kiss takes long enough to make it real. That’s the scene.”
Marie nodded, already recalculating.
“Then we reset the physical beats.”
“Yes.” Kurt looked at you both. “And for the love of God, stop trying to prove you feel nothing. The entire film depends on the opposite.”
Neither of you spoke.
Sven’s eyes moved from Tom to you.
There it was again.
That look.
As if he did not believe the problem was absence.
As if he could see the exact shape of what both of you were trying to strangle.
Marie stepped in.
Professional.
Precise.
She rebuilt the choreography.
Your approach.
Your hand at Jason’s sleeve.
Your head angle hidden from camera.
Tom’s pause.
His turn.
His hand placed flat on the door beside your shoulder, not on your body until the agreed beat.
Your palm to his chest.
Your push.
His release.
Your exit.
Repeatable.
Safe.
Boring in prep.
Dangerous on camera.
The first take was awkward.
The second had something.
The third was good enough.
Not magic.
Not what Kurt wanted, probably.
But usable.
You knew it from the way he watched the monitor in silence for a long moment, then rubbed both hands over his face.
“Fine.”
Fine.
Not good.
Not yes.
Fine.
At that point, fine felt like an award.
You stepped away from Tom as soon as Marie cleared the take.
He stepped away from you too.
Too quickly.
Both of you pretending it was professional distance and not self-preservation.
Kurt looked between you.
Then, suddenly, seemed to make a decision.
“Right. Homework.”
You blinked.
Tom looked up.
“What?”
“Homework.”
“For the film?” you asked.
“No, for my emotional wellbeing.”
Sven made a noise that might have been a laugh.
Kurt pulled two tickets from the back pocket of his jeans and handed one to you, one to Tom.
You looked down.
An indie cinema.
Sunday afternoon.
A French film.
Black-and-white still on the ticket, some devastating-looking woman smoking by a window, a man standing behind her as if he had ruined both their lives and was considering doing it again.
Of course.
“What is this?” Tom asked.
Kurt’s patience finally gave out in the quietest possible way.
“A bonding exercise.”
You stared at him.
“Absolutely not.”
Tom said, at the exact same time, “No.”
Kurt looked pleased for the first time all evening.
“Good. Unison. Build from there.”
You glared.
Tom looked murderous.
Kurt continued.
“That film is close to the emotional grammar I want in this. Desire without comfort. Distance that makes intimacy worse. Faces doing one thing, bodies doing another. You are both going together, then spending one hour afterward discussing it in a quiet room somewhere without killing each other, ideally.”
“Kurt,” Tom said.
“No.”
“I have my daughter this weekend.”
You looked at Tom before you could stop yourself.
His daughter.
You knew, vaguely.
Or maybe you had read it once and shoved it into the messy drawer of information labelled Tom Sturridge: do not open.
But hearing him say it aloud changed something.
Not softened.
Just complicated.
Tom’s jaw was tight.
“I already have less time with her than I’d like.”
Kurt’s face did not move.
“It is a two-hour film and a one-hour conversation. You’ll survive.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
You looked down at the ticket again.
“And if we don’t reach some grand artistic conclusion?”
“You will.”
“You seem very confident.”
“No,” Kurt said. “I’m desperate.”
Sven did laugh then.
Quietly.
Kurt pointed at both of you.
“And when we resume shooting in two days, I want one shared conclusion about what the film does with tension. One. Shared. Conclusion. If you come back with separate essays, I will know you failed.”
Tom looked at the ticket like it had personally insulted his family.
You folded yours once.
Then unfolded it because you did not know what else to do with your hands.
Kurt noticed.
Of course.
His eyes dropped briefly to the ticket in your hands, then lifted back to your face.
“And maybe,” he added, “spend one hour speaking to each other like colleagues instead of enemies.”
Neither of you said anything.
Tom’s silence was practically architectural.
Kurt looked between you both.
“Because next week we are filming the first sex proper scene, and right now I would rather set myself on fire than have him bend you over a desk.”
Your face went hot.
Tom looked away.
Sven coughed into his fist.
Marie did not react, which somehow made it worse.
Kurt continued, entirely unmoved.
“I am not asking you to like each other. I don’t care if you like each other. Some of the best screen chemistry in history has come from people who wanted to throw furniture at one another. But I do need you to trust each other enough to do the work.”
His gaze moved to Tom.
“That means you stop punishing missed beats while you’re still in the take.”
Then to you.
“And you stop bracing like proximity is an accusation.”
Your throat tightened.
Tom’s jaw flexed.
Kurt pointed at the tickets again.
“Film. Conversation. One conclusion. Come back with something useful.”
Tom looked down at his ticket.
“And if the conclusion is that we still don’t work?”
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Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
By the time you got through the rest of the day, you felt scraped thin.
Not tired, exactly.
Not in any normal, earned way.
More like your nervous system had been held too taut for too many hours and was now twanging angrily under your skin. Your shoulders hurt. Your jaw hurt. Even your hands felt strange, because every few minutes you realised you were doing something with them without meaning to — picking at the edge of your thumbnail, worrying the seam of your sleeve, unlocking your phone and staring at the screen only to forget entirely why you had picked it up in the first place.
Luckily, there were no more scenes with Tom.
Which was probably for the best.
The office kiss had been pushed.
Not cancelled.
Not mercifully removed from your future.
Just pushed back for about a week, give or take, allowing you and Tom to get to know each other through other scenes first.
After the failed kiss scene, you had two short solo bits— one in the corridor set and one in the dingy little on-call room they had dressed to look overused and faintly miserable — and somehow you got through both on instinct alone. The almost insulting part was that the second Tom was no longer standing in front of you, your body seemed to remember how to function.
Your lines came easily.
Your marks were clean.
Kurt gave almost no notes at all beyond a small timing adjustment and one quiet, approving, “Good.”
It should have made you feel better than it did because one of these scenes was quite complex, showing Rose having a total meltdown.
Instead, you carried the earlier scene around inside you like something hot and splintered.
The stiffness in your shoulders.
The way your body had betrayed you.
The look on Tom’s face when Kurt pulled the scene.
The clipped edge in his voice afterward.
I don’t know what you can handle.
It stayed under everything. Under your next line. Under every reset. Under the endless stop-start rhythm of the set, the brush of makeup touch-ups, the lighting tweaks, the crew conversations happening around you as though you were not internally reliving your own humiliation on a loop.
Even when people spoke to you normally and you answered normally, part of you still felt as though something ugly and obvious had been exposed in front of everyone and they were all simply too polite to name it.
By late afternoon the studio had taken on that worn, stale energy film sets sometimes got, where everybody was still working but nobody was moving quite as sharply as they had in the morning. Cables were still being dragged. Coffees were still being carried around half-drunk and gone cold. Headsets still crackled. But the first-day edge had dulled.
You were standing near a folding table between setups, peeling off part of your costume jacket with one hand and tapping your phone against your thigh with the other, when Kurt appeared beside you.
“Come have a cigarette with me.”
You looked up so fast you nearly dropped the phone.
For one stupid second your stomach dipped.
A cigarette with Kurt sounded suspiciously like a private conversation, and a private conversation after the day you had just had felt dangerously close to some calm, professional discussion about concerns.
You tried to keep your face neutral.
Failed.
“Am I in trouble?”
Kurt let out a short laugh and reached into his jacket pocket.
“Jesus, no.”
He nodded toward the side exit.
“Come on.”
You followed him anyway, though your chest still felt tight and over-alert, your foot catching once on the threshold because apparently even walking had become too much to ask of your body.
The air outside was cooler than inside the studio. Evening was starting to gather at the edges of everything. The smoking area was deeply unglamorous — just a concrete patch beside the building, a metal bin, a couple of old crates doing their best to pass as seats, and a view over the parking lot full of crew cars, vans, and equipment trucks.
The sky beyond it had gone pale gold in that flat industrial way that never looked romantic.
Only tired.
Kurt leaned back against the wall, lit his cigarette, then held the lighter out to you.
You took it, even though you were not sure you actually wanted the cigarette. Your fingers fidgeted with the lighter first, flipping the lid open and shut twice before you caught yourself and stilled.
He noticed.
Said nothing.
For a moment he just smoked and looked out over the lot, as though the two of you were standing there companionably rather than having any sort of meaningful exchange at all.
Oddly, that helped.
You took a drag, mostly to give yourself something to do with your hands.
Kurt exhaled slowly.
“You look like you think I’m about to fire you.”
You gave a brief, humourless laugh.
“Maybe not fire me, but possibly suggest that I should reconsider my career choices.”
That made him look at you properly.
Not sharply.
Just properly.
“Have I given you any reason to think that?”
You looked down at the cigarette between your fingers.
“No.”
“Right.” He took another drag. “Then don’t invent it.”
You let out a breath through your nose.
It was such a Kurt thing to say. Mildly blunt. Not cruel. Not padded either. He never seemed interested in turning something into a drama when simple honesty would do.
For a second neither of you spoke.
Then he said, quieter this time, “It’s the first week.”
You looked at him.
He shrugged one shoulder.
“Sometimes the first week is ugly. People are finding rhythm. Finding tone. Finding each other. Figuring out where nerves live in their bodies. None of that is unusual.”
You stared out at the parking lot.
“That bad, was it?”
Kurt snorted softly.
“I’ve seen much worse.”
That surprised a real laugh out of you.
Small, but real.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I once had two actors who couldn’t make eye contact for three full days because they’d been sleeping together for months and neglected to inform anyone in production.”
You glanced at him, then started biting your nail before you could stop yourself.
You caught it.
Too late.
Kurt’s eyes moved to your hand.
Then away again.
“That sounds horrific,” you said shyly, lowering your hand and wondering whether Kurt knew something, whether he was being pointed, or whether you had simply become so paranoid that every sentence now sounded like a threat.
“It was very annoying.” He tapped ash into the bin. “Today wasn’t catastrophic. It was just early.”
Early.
That sat easier than disaster.
Easier than failure.
Easier than the horrible certainty that maybe you simply could not do this.
Kurt glanced at you again.
“Your solo scenes are fabulous, by the way.”
You blinked.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He gave you a look. “You’ve got instinct. The camera likes you. You listen well. You don’t overdo things. That’s half the battle.”
Something in your chest loosened a little.
Only a little.
But enough for you to feel it.
“Didn’t exactly help in there with the stupid kissing scene.”
“No.” He stayed matter-of-fact. “Because that wasn’t about talent.”
You went still.
He glanced at the cigarette in your hand, then back at your face.
“That was nerves. Awareness. Too much thinking. You’re young, and young actors often overthink scenes like this.”
You looked away before he could read too much in your face.
Because the awful thing was that he was being kinder than Tom had been, and somehow that nearly undid you more.
Kurt, mercifully, did not linger there.
He just kept speaking in the same calm tone.
“You and Tom will get used to working with each other and once you trust each other a bit more, I think these scenes will come easier for you.”
Your mouth twitched.
“You think?”
“Yes.”
He sounded irritatingly certain.
“He’s a very talented actor. Annoyingly talented, sometimes. I cast him because he doesn’t push when a scene asks him to stay still. He doesn’t overcompensate. He doesn’t act the emotion twice just to make sure the audience saw it.”
You looked down at your cigarette.
“You like him.”
“I like what he does on camera.”
“That sounds like a distinction.”
“It is. Because I don’t really know him personally.”
That almost made you smile.
Kurt took another drag, then added, “I was impressed by his latest film. There’s a stillness in him now. He used to be more restless on camera, more interesting than disciplined. Now he’s both. You’ll learn a lot from him if you let yourself.”
You gave him a sideways look.
“That sounds suspiciously like you’re telling me to be less dramatic.”
Kurt smiled.
“I’m telling you not to decide on day one that the sky is falling.”
You exhaled, smoke catching briefly in your throat.
“Very different.”
“Completely.”
Then his expression shifted slightly.
Not softer exactly.
More deliberate.
“And I want you to know something else.”
Your stomach tightened again.
“Okay.”
“I didn’t cast you because your father suggested it.”
You went very still.
Kurt looked out across the car park, as if that made it less awkward.
“Your father and I don’t always work well together. We respect each other, usually. We annoy each other, often. If anything, him wanting something makes me immediately suspicious of it.”
Despite yourself, you laughed.
“That sounds like him.”
“It sounds like me too.”
You looked down at your shoes.
Kurt continued.
“I cast you because you auditioned well. Because I could see you opposite Tom. Because you have the right kind of contradiction for Rose — sharp and exposed at the same time. Defensive, but not empty. Young, but not simple. And, from what I’ve seen in your other work, you can act out emotionally charged scenes rather well.”
Your throat tightened.
You did not know what to do with that.
Praise was sometimes harder to hold than criticism. Criticism at least gave you something to fight. Praise just sat there, warm and uncomfortable, asking to be believed.
Kurt flicked ash into the bin.
“You just need to have a bit of faith in your abilities.”
You gave a small, brittle smile.
“That sounds horrible.”
“It is.”
“Any alternatives?”
“Plenty. Most of them involve ruining the film.”
You laughed again.
Quieter this time.
More real.
Kurt pushed off the wall.
“Go home. Eat something. Sleep.”
You rolled your eyes, but something inside you had settled.
Not fixed.
Not healed.
Not remotely ready for tomorrow.
But slightly less convinced that you had destroyed everything by existing incorrectly.
You finished the cigarette and followed him back inside.
By the time you were wrapped properly, the sky had darkened.
You changed out of costume, scrubbed Rose off your face, collected your things from three separate places because apparently you had spent the day shedding belongings like emotional debris, and ordered an Uber while standing near the studio doors.
*********
The drive home felt thin around the edges.
Not awful.
Just strange.
Your knee bounced at red lights and, every time you stopped thinking about Tom, your brain handed you another image anyway.
By the time the Uber stopped outside your building, your shoulders ached.
Inside, the flat looked exactly the same as you had left it, which somehow made the whole day feel even more surreal.
Shoes by the door.
Mug in the sink.
Cardigan over the arm of the couch.
Script pages sticking out of your bag.
No James.
You stood in the hallway for three full seconds before you remembered why.
Paris.
He was in Paris for three nights.
A work thing. A shoot for a minor role. And networking apparently. Something he had explained while you were reading sides and trying not to throw up with nerves. You had nodded at the time and immediately filed it into the part of your brain where information went to die.
“Right,” you muttered to the empty flat. “Alone. Forgot that.”
From the corner of the room, Hamster Tom made a furious rustling sound.
You turned slowly.
Two dark little eyes stared at you from the cage with an expression that somehow managed to convey betrayal despite being located on a rodent the size of a tennis ball.
“Don’t start.”
Hamster Tom immediately started chewing the bars.
“I said don’t start.”
Chew.
Chew.
Chew.
You dropped your bag onto the couch, kicked off one shoe, missed with the other, nearly tripped, and crouched beside the cage.
“I had a difficult day.”
Hamster Tom shoved his nose through the bars.
“Yes, I know you’re hungry. Everyone is hungry. Emotionally. Spiritually. For pellets.”
You opened the cage with the weary focus of a woman diffusing a bomb.
He climbed halfway onto your hand before you could stop him.
“No. No, Tom. Actual Tom has been enough Tom for one day. You cannot also be difficult.”
Hamster Tom ignored this and attempted to explore your sleeve.
“Fantastic. Boundary issues from both of you.”
From somewhere inside your bag, a tiny electronic chirp of outrage sounded.
You froze.
Then groaned.
Your Tamagotchi.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
You transferred Hamster Tom back into his cage with more dignity than either of you deserved, then dug through script pages, lip balm, receipts, two pens you had apparently stolen from set, and an empty protein-bar wrapper before finding the Tamagotchi wedged at the bottom, blinking its little needy pixel face at you with righteous fury.
“Oh my God, alright, I know. I am sorry, Fred.”
You stood in the middle of the living room in your socks, feeding a tiny digital creature with the kind of weary concentration usually reserved for surgery.
“You’ve had a terrible day? Imagine mine.”
It beeped again.
“That’s very unsympathetic.”
Then, your phone buzzed in your other hand.
Maddy.
Just the sight of her name made something in you soften.
Maddy: how was first day on set
You typed back immediately.
You: shit
The typing bubble appeared at once.
Maddy: excellent. jess and i are coming over with takeaway and wine
You stared at the message.
Then remembered, again, that James was in Paris.
Which was apparently something everyone else had retained better than you had. Because neither of them would have volunteered to come over if James was at home also.
You: how do you know he’s not here
Maddy: because you told me twice last week and then forgot every time
You: that sounds fake
Maddy: find the wine glasses, disaster girl
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
By the time they arrived, you had managed to change into a jumper, feed Hamster Tom properly, keep Fred alive, and pick three scripts off the floor before deciding that was enough domestic achievement for one evening.
Maddy let herself in first because she had keys and almost no respect for doors.
Jess followed behind with takeaway bags held against her chest, her smile already a little careful.
Maddy looked you up and down.
“Yeah, alright. You do look like you’ve been through something.”
You took the wine from under her arm.
“You say the sweetest things.”
“I know.” She glanced toward the cage. “Hi, Tom.”
Hamster Tom emerged from his little wooden house as if summoned by praise.
Jess smiled faintly.
“He’s getting fat.”
“Don’t body-shame my son.”
Maddy snorted and moved into your kitchen like she lived there, pulling open drawers, finding glasses, opening cartons, making the flat feel less empty by sheer force of personality.
Something about her being in your kitchen, opening takeaway, moving around the flat like she belonged there, helped.
Not enough to erase the day.
But enough to take the edge off the humiliation of it.
You all ended up on the rug with takeaway and wine, because none of you ever bothered pretending to be proper adults when it was just the three of you. Maddy sat opposite you, one leg tucked under herself. Jess sat beside the couch, quieter than usual, picking coriander off her noodles and pretending that was not a full-time occupation.
Your own foot jiggled nonstop under the coffee table until Maddy glanced down at it once and you deliberately sat on it to make it stop.
She took one sip of wine and fixed you with a look.
“So.”
You already hated that tone.
“So?”
“How was working with your one-night night man who also happened to be Jess’s two-time asshole?”
Jess went very still.
Just slightly.
You noticed.
Of course you noticed.
You stabbed at your noodles.
“Horrible.”
Maddy blinked once.
“That bad?”
You laughed without humour.
“I think he might actually hate me.”
Jess looked down at her food.
Maddy, unfortunately, looked delighted in the worst possible way.
“Excellent. Much worse than I thought. Start at the beginning.”
So you did.
Not elegantly.
Not in order.
Just in tired, irritated clumps.
You told them about seeing Tom properly again. The handshake in front of your father. The private confrontation. The fact that he had very obviously not enjoyed discovering you were the producer’s daughter. The way he kept saying it like an insult wrapped in a job title.
Maddy’s brows climbed steadily higher.
Jess kept picking coriander off her noodles.
You kept going.
You told them about the agreement to keep the one-night stand quiet because if it came out now it would complicate everything — production, your father, the film, the optics. You told them about the age thing too, because apparently your mouth had decided the evening was a confession booth and your brain was too tired to supervise it.
“And you know he made this enormous deal out of it when he found out I wasn’t twenty-eight, because obviously, by now, he knows.”
Maddy paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
Jess looked up.
You kept going, because stopping now would have meant thinking.
“Which, fine, I know I shouldn’t have lied. I know that. But he was acting like I’d personally lured him into some moral catastrophe. He kept saying how bad it would look if it was to come out because he was nearly forty and I was only twenty-two, like I’d been wearing a school uniform in the hotel bar or something. I don’t know.”
Jess opened her mouth.
You barely noticed.
The words were coming too quickly now.
“And then—”
You stopped.
Because the next part arrived with full force.
The coffee shop.
The 22-year old.
The hypocrisy of it.
Maddy leaned forward.
“And then what?”
You let out a sharp laugh.
“And then he goes out and shags the twenty-two-year-old barista after work.”
Silence.
Not huge.
Not dramatic.
But immediate.
Jess’s hand stopped moving over the carton.
Maddy’s expression shifted at once.
You realised what you had said a second too late.
“Shit. Jess. I am sorry.”
She looked up.
Her face was carefully blank.
Too carefully.
“So he’s seeing someone?”
Your stomach dropped.
“Casually. Apparently. I don’t know. But I heard rumours.”
Jess nodded once.
“Right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.”
It obviously was not.
Maddy gave you a look that said stop talking without actually saying it.
Unfortunately, your brain had never been especially obedient.
“There’s also a model maybe. The wardrobe girls know everything, which is really fucking weird if you ask me. So really, he might be sleeping with half of London by that point.”
Jess’s mouth twitched without humour.
“Sounds like him.”
That landed worse than you expected.
Maddy set her wine down.
“Okay. He’s a hypocrite. Continue.”
You rubbed both hands over your face.
“He thinks I’m a nepo baby.”
Maddy’s expression hardened.
“Of course he does.”
“He basically said he doesn’t understand how someone with no intimate screen experience gets cast in a film this sexual unless everyone is pretending my surname has nothing to do with it.”
Jess looked up sharply then.
Even through whatever hurt had just crossed her face, that got her.
“He said that?”
“More or less.”
“What an asshole,” Maddy said.
“Yes. Thank you.”
You took a gulp of wine, then immediately regretted it because you had barely eaten.
“And the worst thing is I did fuck up the scene.”
Maddy frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“We had to film an office kiss scene. I kept coming in too early. Missed a cue. Locked up. Froze. All that.”
Jess’s eyes softened a little despite herself.
“That happens.”
“Yes, well, it happened repeatedly.”
“First day,” Maddy said.
“Kurt said that too.”
“Because Kurt is right.”
You made a face.
Maddy ignored it and then asked -
“What did Tom do?”
You picked at the label on the wine bottle.
“He asked what that was and said I am out of my depth.”
Maddy stared at you.
“Sorry?”
“Quietly. Like a prick.”
Jess’s mouth tightened.
“That sounds like him too.”
You glanced at her.
Careful now.
Too late, but careful.
“He was mostly just… sharp. We were mostly angry with each other.”
Jess’s fingers tightened around her fork.
Then, quietly, “Did he talk about me at all?”
Your chest tightened.
You looked at Maddy.
Maddy looked at you.
No help there.
You turned back to Jess.
“Briefly.”
Jess swallowed.
“And?”
You hated this.
You hated him, suddenly, for making you sit here with one of your closest friends and navigate the wreckage of something he had apparently considered so casual it barely required follow-up.
“Nothing much. We were arguing. It wasn’t exactly a calm conversation.”
Jess nodded.
“But he mentioned me.”
“I mentioned you first.”
Her eyes flicked up.
“Why?”
“Because he was being sanctimonious about the age thing and I said it was rich, considering you’re my age.”
Maddy closed her eyes briefly, as though receiving pain from the universe.
Jess went still.
“Oh.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“No. I know.”
But her voice had changed.
You could hear it.
The hurt.
The embarrassment.
The reminder that she had liked him, and he had not called, and now he was on set with you, counting intimacy pages and apparently sleeping with baristas and models and whoever else crossed his path.
“He said it was casual,” you said, then immediately wished you had not.
Jess laughed once.
Small.
Awful.
“Of course he did.”
You looked down at your wine.
“Jess, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
“No,” she said, after a second. “It isn’t. But it’s also not your fault.”
Maddy pointed at her with the neck of the wine bottle.
“That is the first sensible thing anyone has said tonight.”
Jess looked at you.
“I told you it would be weird.”
There it was.
Quiet.
Not accusing.
Still sharp.
“I told you not to take the movie.”
Your stomach tightened.
“Jess.”
Maddy cut in immediately.
“That’s not helpful.”
Jess looked away.
“I know.”
“She can’t make career decisions around him being emotionally lazy.”
“I said I know.”
The room went quiet.
Hamster Tom chose that exact moment to begin running furiously on his wheel.
All three of you looked over.
Round and round.
Tiny feet.
Maximum drama.
Maddy lifted her glass.
“At least one Tom in this story is productive.”
Despite everything, you laughed.
Jess did too, though hers was softer.
The tension loosened.
Not gone.
Just less dangerous.
You leaned back against the couch and closed your eyes.
“He’s such a dick.”
“Yes,” Maddy said.
Jess said nothing.
You opened one eye.
“Sorry.”
She shook her head.
“No. He is.”
Maddy gave a solemn nod.
“Growth.”
Jess threw a napkin at her.
***********
Later, when the wine bottle was almost empty and your food cartons were half-abandoned on the coffee table, and after Jess and Maddy left and the flat returned to quiet, your phone buzzed while you were brushing your teeth.
James.
James: sorry, long day on set? paris is so nice though. you’d love this hotel. how was your day?
You stared at it with toothpaste in your mouth.
The truth sat there, enormous and impossible.
Horrible.
Humiliating.
Complicated.
You spat into the sink.
Then typed.
You: okay. tired. going to bed. love you
A moment later:
James: love you too. don’t forget to look at wedding venues please. i sent you three options. you need to pick one soon or we need to push the date again.
You stared at the message.
Wedding venues.
After Tom.
After Kurt.
After Jess’s face.
After twenty-three pages of intimacy and a coffee shop girl and a hamster named Tom chewing at the bars like he had a grievance against the world.
You typed:
You: sure
Then you put the phone face down on the counter.
In the living room, Fred beeped.
Hamster Tom chewed something he absolutely should not have been chewing.
Your script sat on the coffee table, open to tomorrow’s scenes.
You stood there in the bathroom doorway, exhausted, barefoot, half-lit by the sink light, and thought of Paris.
James.
Wedding venues.
Tom’s lips.
Nope. No absolutely not.
Kurt saying, You just need to have a bit of faith in your abilities.
You laughed once.
Quiet.
Humourless.
Then you went to bed without looking at the venues.
**********
Across town, Tom was trying very hard not to think about the day either.
He was better at that than you were.
Usually.
Tonight, not so much.
Layla’s flat was small, warm, and too bright, with plants on the windowsill and an unmade bed pushed against the wall beneath a crooked framed print. The room smelled faintly of vanilla, clean laundry, and the coffee she always seemed to carry home on her clothes no matter how long she had been away from the café.
Tom moved through it quietly, gathering himself back into pieces.
Condom into the bin.
Shirt from the floor.
Boxers.
Trousers.
Socks, somehow, from opposite sides of the bed.
Layla lay on her stomach with the sheet pulled lazily over her hips, chin resting on her folded arms, watching him with the sort of amused openness that had been pleasant, uncomplicated, and exactly why he had kept coming back.
At least, that was what he told himself.
“You want a cigarette before you go?” she asked.
Tom looked over his shoulder.
Her hair was loose over one cheek. She looked young in the soft light. Younger than she did behind the counter. Younger than she did when she was teasing him in public, all glossy confidence and quick hands around coffee cups.
Something in him tightened.
Not guilt.
Not exactly.
He hated that the distinction mattered.
“Yes,” he said.
Layla smiled.
“Thought so.”
He leaned down and kissed her once.
Briefly.
Enough to be affectionate.
Not enough to become a conversation.
Then he pulled his T-shirt over his head, found his cigarettes on the little table beside the bed, and followed her through the narrow door onto the balcony.
It was not really a balcony.
More of a metal ledge with ambitions.
It overlooked a small courtyard boxed in by brick walls, bins, fire escapes, and one stubborn tree growing out of a square of soil someone had probably forgotten existed. A few windows glowed across the way. Someone was cooking garlic. Somewhere below, a door slammed and a man laughed too loudly into his phone.
Tom lit his cigarette and leaned his elbows against the railing.
Layla came out behind him in a dressing gown, bare feet silent on the cold metal.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
That was the part he liked.
The part after, when nobody required anything from him yet.
When the body had been given something to do and the mind had a few brief seconds of quiet.
Except tonight the quiet did not hold.
It filled, almost immediately, with the set.
With Kurt’s voice.
With your face when he had said producer’s daughter.
With the little blank moment after he had asked whether you remembered your lines.
With your hand at the hem of your skirt.
With the way your eyes had lifted in the final take.
I don’t usually tell people this.
He took a drag too sharply.
Layla watched him from the side.
“You weren’t all there today.”
Tom exhaled.
“Was I not?”
“No.”
“You seemed to still have a great time.”
She laughed at that, low and easy.
“I always have a great time with you.”
His mouth twitched despite himself.
“Good.”
“But that wasn’t what I said.”
Tom looked down into the courtyard.
“Long day.”
“Has filming been difficult?”
He tapped ash over the railing.
“You could say that.”
Layla leaned one hip against the wall, studying him with more attention than he particularly wanted.
“Your co-star came in today. Twice.”
Tom’s hand stilled for half a second.
Then moved again.
“Did she?”
“Mm-hm.”
“The studio café is very popular.”
“She seemed lovely.”
He gave a short laugh.
Not warm.
Not quite mocking.
“Did she?”
Layla’s smile tilted.
“And very pretty.”
Tom looked at her then.
Properly.
“Where are you going with this?”
Layla lifted both hands, innocent.
Too innocent.
“Nowhere.”
“Layla.”
She laughed.
“Fine. I’ve heard rumours about that film.”
His jaw tightened.
There were several answers available to him.
Most of them bad.
He chose the flattest one.
“It’s work.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you sound jealous.’
Layla looked amused now, not wounded.
That was another thing he liked about her. She rarely mistook him for less difficult than he was.
“I’m not jealous.”
“Good.”
“I’m observant.”
“Dangerous trait.”
“You would know.”
That landed more accurately than he liked.
He took another drag and looked away.
Layla stepped closer, folding her arms loosely over her chest.
“So?”
“So what?”
“Is she nice?”
Tom laughed once under his breath.
This time there was no humour in it.
“No.”
Layla’s eyebrows lifted.
“No?”
“Irritating.”
“That was fast.”
“Some people are efficient.”
She watched him.
He could feel it.
The cigarette burned between his fingers.
The courtyard below stayed indifferent.
“And for what it’s worth,” he said, more sharply than he intended, “jealousy doesn’t suit you.”
Layla did not flinch.
She only smiled a little.
“Good thing I’m not jealous, then.”
Tom looked at her.
She shrugged.
“We said casual.”
“We did.”
“But casual doesn’t mean blind.”
He said nothing.
The problem was, she was right.
Casual had always suited him because it came with rules simple enough not to become accusations. No promises. No explanations. No emotional audits at midnight. No one asking whether he was alright in a voice that suggested they already knew he was not.
Layla had been good at casual.
Better than Jess.
At least so he thought.
And that thought made his stomach twist.
He looked down, jaw tight, and flicked ash too hard.
Jess.
Of course Jess was in this too.
Because apparently every stupid thing he had done in the last year had been patiently waiting for the same call sheet.
Layla was still looking at him.
“I’m not asking you for a declaration,” she said. “I was teasing.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth.
Suddenly tired.
Properly tired.
Not the useful kind.
“I should go.”
Layla studied him for a moment.
Then nodded.
“Okay.”
He stubbed the cigarette out in the little ashtray balanced on the railing.
They went back inside. He picked up his jacket, checked his pockets for his wallet, phone, lighter. The habitual inventory. Things he could control.
Layla sat on the edge of the bed, tying her dressing gown tighter.
“See you Friday night?”
Tom paused.
Friday.
He had plans Friday.
A catch up with someone from another life of his not many people knew about.
“I can’t Friday.”
Layla tilted her head.
“Filming late?”
“No. Catching up with a friend.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He almost smiled.
Apparently everyone said nothing like it meant several paragraphs.
“Next Monday?” he asked.
Layla looked at him for a second longer.
Then smiled.
“Yeah. That works.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
She stood, crossed the room, and kissed him by the door.
This one was softer.
A little slower.
A little too much like a question he had no intention of answering.
When she pulled back, she looked at him with that same amused, observant expression.
“Try sleeping before then.”
That actually made him smile.
Small, but real.
“Goodnight, Layla.”
“Goodnight, Tom.”
He left with the taste of her on his mouth and smoke still in his lungs.
Outside, the night had cooled properly.
Tom walked down the stairs and out into the street, jacket collar turned up, phone heavy in his pocket, mind refusing the neat blankness he had been trying to force on it all evening.
He thought of Layla’s smile.
Jess’s texts he had never answered properly.
Anya’s name in some gossip column he had pretended not to see.
Your face in rehearsal room three.
Your hand at your skirt.
Your voice through your teeth.
Go to hell.
He lit another cigarette before he reached the corner.
He told himself it was because he wanted one.
Not because the day had followed him.
Not because the film already felt less like work than it should.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
By early afternoon, you were back in makeup for touch-ups.
Which sounded minor.
A dab of powder. A bit of lip colour corrected. Hair smoothed. Skin brought back under control after lunch, fluorescent lighting, and the deeply unfair experience of existing.
In reality, it felt like being reassembled for public failure.
Natalia tilted your face toward the light and frowned at your mouth.
“You’ve been biting your lip.”
You immediately stopped biting your lip.
Which, naturally, proved her point.
“Have I?”
She gave you a look in the mirror.
“Yes.”
“Maybe Rose bites her lip.”
“Not unless Kurt tells me she does.”
You tried to smile.
It came out terrible.
Natalia dabbed at the corner of your mouth with a cotton bud.
“Relax your jaw.”
You relaxed it too hard.
She paused.
“Not like you’re dead.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise. Just unclench.”
Across the room, Tom was standing near the door with Sven, half in conversation, half elsewhere. He had changed back into the office-scene costume now. Sleeves rolled. Collar open. Hair slightly adjusted back into Jason’s tidy ruin. He held his script in one hand and a cigarette packet in the other, thumb moving over the cardboard edge.
Not opening it.
Just touching it.
Stopping.
Touching it again.
Sven said something low that made him look away and give one short almost-laugh.
Then Tom’s eyes lifted to the mirror.
Caught yours.
Only for a second.
You looked down immediately.
Natalia noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Everyone on this set had eyes like hunting dogs.
“Still alive?” she asked.
“Unfortunately.”
Her mouth twitched.
“Good. Hold still.”
By the time she finished, your mouth had been restored to Rose’s mouth, which seemed unfair, because Rose was about to be kissed and you were the one having the nervous system event.
A runner came to the doorway.
“Marie’s ready for you both on the office set.”
Your stomach dropped.
There it was.
No warning trumpet.
No dramatic music.
Just a runner with a headset and a clipboard, casually announcing your execution.
Tom pushed away from the wall.
You stood too quickly and nearly knocked your knee against the makeup station.
Natalia caught the brush pot before it tipped.
You both looked at it.
Then at each other.
“Very smooth,” she said.
“Thank you. I trained.”
She smiled, but softer now.
“Breathe before you go in.”
You did.
It did not help.
Marie pulled the two of you aside just before the final scene of the day, like she had promised.
It was on the office set, late afternoon in the story, the first real break in the therapist-patient line. Not dramatic. Not messy. Not some wild, impulsive thing that could hide behind chaos.
This one was worse in its own way.
Quieter.
More intimate.
More exposed.
A pause at the door. Rose upset, raw, halfway out of the room. Jason saying her name. Rose stopping. Turning. He crossed the distance. He held on to her, gently but abruptly and then she kissed him. Once. Then he kissed her back. A mistake neither of them corrected quickly enough.
Simple on paper.
Everything awful was simple on paper.
Marie stood between the two of you with her notebook and that calm, grounded energy that seemed impossible to shake.
“Alright. We keep this precise.”
She pointed lightly as she spoke.
“He says your name. You stop. Turn. One step back in. He closes the space. Hand to upper arm first.”
She looked at Tom.
“Not waist. Not neck. Upper arm.”
Tom nodded once.
“Understood.”
Then she looked at you.
“You receive that contact. You don’t have to lean into it yet. Just don’t pre-emptively pull away. Then, on the kiss itself, if you’re still comfortable with it, his other hand comes to your jaw.”
Your throat tightened.
Not because of the words.
Because of the word jaw.
Because your body, completely unhelpfully, remembered his hand there.
New York. Balcony light. His thumb at your chin. The soft pressure that had made you lift your face without thinking.
You nodded too fast.
“Yes.”
Marie watched you for half a beat.
“Say it properly.”
Your face warmed.
Tom looked down at his pages.
Not at you.
That was somehow worse.
You swallowed.
“Upper arm first. Then jaw. First kiss about three seconds. Then the second kiss. He kisses back, then he starts to pull away. Then I close the second beat.”
Marie nodded.
“Exactly.”
Kurt stood just off to the side, coffee in hand, watching closely.
“I want it restrained,” he said. “It needs to feel like neither of them meant to do it, but neither of them can quite stop it either.”
Marie nodded.
“Restrained is fine. But it still has to live.”
That line sat in your chest more heavily than it should have.
She walked you through the choreography once without cameras.
It should have been manageable.
It should have felt technical.
You hit your mark. Turned when you were meant to turn. Stopped where you were meant to stop.
Tom stepped toward you.
His hand came to your upper arm.
Careful.
Deliberate.
Almost overly neutral, if anything, as though he was making absolutely certain no one in the room could accuse him of anything uncontrolled.
His fingers barely tightened.
His other hand lifted to your jaw, stopping just before contact.
“Here?” he asked Marie.
Not you.
Marie checked the angle.
“Slightly lower. More along the jawline than cheek. Don’t cover her face from the camera.”
He adjusted.
His fingers touched you properly then.
Lightly.
Professionally.
And somehow that made it worse.
Because there was no mess to react to. No spontaneity to blame. Just the awful, neat reality of him standing close enough for you to feel the heat of him, touching your face like it was blocking, when your body still knew too much about him for it to feel like work at all.
Your breath caught.
Small.
Barely anything.
Tom felt it.
You knew he felt it because his hand went still.
Not tighter.
Not softer.
Still.
Marie noticed before anyone else did.
“Take a breath.”
You did.
Badly.
Marie’s voice stayed even.
“Again.”
You did.
Tom stepped back on her cue.
The absence of his hand was almost as bad as the contact.
“Good,” Marie said. “Again from the top, no kiss yet.”
You ran it again.
And again.
Blocking went fine.
Technically.
That was the insult of it.
Technically, you could do everything.
You could stop at the door. You could turn. You could let him close the space. You could keep your hands where they needed to be. You could breathe through the contact.
Technically, you were not failing.
Your body, however, was making private arrangements to betray you later.
Then they brought camera in.
Closed set was called. Even for just a kiss.
Somehow, that made everything worse.
Not better.
Not safer.
Worse.
Because once the room had been cleared of the non-essential people, all that remained were the people who mattered. The people who would absolutely notice if you got this wrong.
Kurt by the monitor.
Marie near frame.
Sven.
Camera.
Sound.
Script supervisor.
Focus puller.
A handful of bodies trying very hard to be professional and invisible while preparing to watch you kiss a man you had already kissed before, a man whose mouth you remembered too well for this to feel remotely neutral.
You stood at the office door with your bag over your shoulder, waiting for the cue.
Tom was by the desk, sleeves rolled, already in position.
Still.
Composed.
Not looking at you.
That should have made it easier.
It didn’t.
Because the problem was not that he was making a thing of it.
The problem was that he wasn’t.
He looked so calm. So contained. As though this was only work. As though he had not once had you under him in a dark room in New York, had not once kissed you like he already knew exactly how you sounded when you stopped thinking.
Your mouth went dry.
“Rolling.”
“Speed.”
“Marker.”
The clap snapped through the set.
“Action.”
You hit your line.
A little too sharp, but usable.
You turned toward the door. Reached for the handle.
Behind you, Tom said your character’s name.
“Rose.”
You stopped.
Turned.
And there it was already.
That horrible, immediate awareness.
Not romance.
Not chemistry.
Awareness.
Your whole body seemed to understand before your brain did that he was about to come close, and there would be nowhere to hide from it because the scene required you to stay exactly where you were and let him.
He crossed to you.
His hand came to your arm exactly where Marie had placed it in rehearsal. High on the upper arm. Careful. Controlled. Not intimate enough to protest. Not impersonal enough to ignore.
And even that was difficult.
Because it was not just a hand on your arm.
It was his hand.
Warm through the fabric. Steady. Deliberate.
All at once, you were conscious of everything at the same time — the weight of your bag strap on your shoulder, your own pulse in your throat, the heat in your face, the lights, the camera, the fact that if you looked down you would see his fingers holding you in place.
Your shoulders tightened before you could stop them.
You knew it.
You hated that you knew it.
And the worst part was that he knew it too.
You saw the smallest pause pass through him.
Barely anything.
A split-second hesitation.
The actor in him adjusting. The man in him realising you had already gone stiff.
Then you leaned in, just as scripted, because the scene required it.
The kiss landed lightly.
And it was awful.
Not because it was rough.
Not because he did anything wrong.
Because he didn’t.
He was careful. Almost maddeningly careful. His mouth only just there, as choreographed, giving you exactly the shape of the beat and no more once your lips met his.
It should have made it easy for you.
It should have let you act out the kiss.
Instead, it made the whole thing feel even more exposing.
Because there was no chaos to disappear into. No suddenness. No mess. No excuse.
Just the neat, unbearable fact of his mouth on yours while half a dozen people waited for you to look as though you wanted it.
And you couldn’t.
Your hands stayed useless at your sides. Your mouth barely softened. Instead of kissing him, you endured it as he tried to lead, trying to safe the scene. That was the horrible truth of it. You endured it for the length of the count, every second dragging because you were conscious of the texture of his lower lip, the faint warmth of his breath, the controlled pressure of him not pressing harder because he could feel you weren’t there.
“Cut.”
Silence.
Not dramatic.
Not sharp.
Just flat in a way that was somehow more embarrassing.
Kurt leaned slightly closer to the monitor.
Marie stepped in at once.
“Okay. Reset.”
She looked at you properly.
“How are you?”
Your face was burning.
“Fine.”
You said it too quickly.
You knew you did.
Marie knew you did.
Everyone probably knew you did.
Across from you, Tom had already stepped back to his mark. He did not say a word. But there was tension in him now, visible despite how hard he tried to keep it tucked away — in the set of his shoulders, in the line of his mouth, in the way he flattened the pages in his hand and then flattened them again, as if irritation needed somewhere small to go.
Marie’s voice stayed calm.
“Again. Drop your shoulders. Don’t brace before he touches you.”
You nodded.
“Yep.”
Second take.
This time, you tried to prepare for it.
Which turned out to be its own disaster.
Because now you knew exactly what was coming.
You knew the line. The turn. The step. The hand at your arm. The look. The kiss.
And that knowledge made your body anticipate it too early. By the time he said your name, your nerves were already stretched too tight. By the time you turned, your breath was too shallow. By the time his hand touched your arm, you were practically waiting for impact.
Then his other hand came up to your jaw.
And that was worse.
So much worse.
His fingers were gentle. His palm only just touching. But the hold of it — light, guiding, intimate in a way that upper-arm contact was not — made something in your chest seize.
It was suddenly impossible not to remember other versions of this.
Not to remember him touching your face when there had been no camera, no crew, no marks taped to the floor.
Not to remember the simple private ease of kissing him when nobody expected a performance out of it.
That was the problem.
Kissing him was not the problem.
Kissing him like this was.
Kissing him while pretending there was no history in your body.
Kissing him while people observed.
Kissing him while he stayed maddeningly professional and you had to meet that professionalism with something that read as desire instead of panic.
You kissed him anyway.
He kissed you back as scripted and you froze so badly this time that you could feel it happening from the inside.
Your lips went still. Your chin locked under his hand. Even your stomach seemed to pull tight, as if your entire body had mistaken the moment for something it needed to survive rather than act.
Tom pulled back exactly on cue, but the second he did, he stepped away a fraction too quickly.
Not enough for anyone to call it out.
Enough that you felt it.
Enough that you knew he had felt how absent you were.
“Cut.”
Kurt sat back.
“No. There’s nothing under it except panic.”
The humiliation of that was instant and physical.
A drop straight through your middle.
Not because he was wrong.
Because he was right.
Marie stepped in again.
“Let’s strip it back. Forget about her initiating. Let’s have you both meet in the middle. Three seconds. It can look messy, so long as it feels safe.”
Tom nodded once, clipped now.
“Fine.”
You glanced at him.
He still was not looking at you, but his thumb rubbed once against the side of his finger in that restless way he had when he was irritated, then went still again, like even that tiny tell annoyed him.
Kurt called from the monitor, “I need conflict, yes, but I also need want. Right now it looks like she’s trying to survive him.”
Your stomach dropped so hard it almost hurt.
Because that was exactly what it felt like.
Not that Tom himself was frightening.
Not that you thought he would do anything wrong.
But the moment felt impossible to get through cleanly. Every second of it split between too many realities at once — the scripted one, the private one, the professional one, the humiliatingly personal one.
You were trying to remember the line between actress and woman and body and pride, and by the time his mouth touched yours, there was nothing left in you except sheer, rigid self-consciousness.
Marie repositioned you both.
“Look at him before he touches you,” she said gently. “Don’t wait to be startled by it.”
You swallowed.
“Okay.”
Third take.
You looked at him.
That was a mistake.
Because then it was his face.
His actual face, close enough now that you could see how hard he was trying to keep everything neutral. The contained patience. The jaw held a little too tight. The effort of someone who did not want to embarrass you but also clearly did not want to stand there failing through take after take while a whole set watched.
And suddenly it became impossible not to think about what he must be thinking.
That you were inexperienced.
That you were out of your depth.
That the nepo-girl casting disaster rumours, if anyone had them, would write themselves.
That he was having to compensate for you.
That he regretted ever touching you in New York.
That he could feel every ounce of your stiffness and was now trapped managing it in front of other people.
His hand came to your arm.
His other hand rose to your face.
He leaned in.
And before the kiss had even properly landed, your body betrayed you again.
A tiny recoil.
You did not mean it.
Not enough to step back.
Not enough to break the choreography.
But enough.
Enough that he felt it.
Enough that he hesitated.
He stopped before the beat had fully happened.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way that broke the scene wide open.
Just a split-second withdrawal, instinctive and controlled, the reflex of someone who had felt you go rigid for the third time and was not going to press forward into a kiss your body was refusing.
Marie moved immediately.
“Cut it.”
The room went quiet.
Tom stepped back properly now and looked away, one hand on his hip, jaw tight. He still did not say anything. But the frustration was there all over him now, restrained so hard it was almost worse than anger.
You folded your arms around yourself before you could stop them.
“Sorry.”
Tom’s head shifted slightly at that, but he did not look at you.
Marie came to stand in front of you.
“You do not need to apologise.”
Then, to both of you:
“We’re not getting anything useful if she’s bracing this hard.”
Tom finally spoke, voice clipped.
“Can we just reset it and go again?”
Marie turned to him at once.
“No.”
Not cold.
Just absolute.
Tom looked at the floor for a second, then nodded once, jaw flexing.
Accepting it.
Not liking it.
Kurt came off monitor, thinking fast.
You said too quickly, “I can do it.”
Even to your own ears it sounded awful.
Defensive.
Thin.
Desperate.
Tom let out a short breath at that.
Not a laugh.
Not quite.
Just a very obvious exhale that made it painfully clear he did not think forcing another take right now was going to save anyone.
You looked at him immediately.
He still was not looking at you.
Which was somehow the worst part of all.
Kurt caught the whole thing.
He glanced between the two of you, then said, calm but decisive, “No. We’re not doing this now.”
Your stomach dropped.
“Kurt—”
He shook his head.
“Listen. I think the issue is that this scene is too early for where you two are at. Not in the story. On the floor. Because this entire movie relies on chemistry and, right now, you don’t have it.”
Tom finally looked up.
Kurt gestured between you both.
“There’s too much awareness, too much tension, not enough ease yet. That’s not a failure. It just means I’m not getting what I need today.”
Marie nodded beside him.
“Agreed.”
Tom looked away again, dragging a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated now, though still directing it at the situation rather than at you.
The scene had collapsed.
Everyone knew it.
No one was saying it cruelly, which somehow made it feel worse.
Kurt checked the pages in his hand.
“We’ll postpone the kiss. Move in some other office scenes first. More dialogue, more proximity, more time working opposite each other before we come back to this.”
Tom said nothing.
You said nothing either, because humiliation and relief had hit you at exactly the same time and left you feeling strangely hollow, like your body had gone through something far more exhausting than one failed kiss on a set had any right to be.
Then Tom finally said, still looking at the floor rather than at you, “Fine.”
Only one word.
But edged enough that it lodged under your skin anyway.
Not cruel.
Not blaming.
Just strained.
Kurt softened a fraction.
“This is day one. I’m not worried.”
Tom gave a short nod that suggested he was not nearly as convinced.
Marie touched your arm lightly.
“Take five.”
You shook your head too fast.
“No, I’m alright.”
That was when Tom finally looked at you properly.
And the expression on his face — tense, controlled, unconvinced, and maybe, buried under all that irritation, faintly wary of pushing you harder — made your chest tighten again.
Marie noticed.
“Take five anyway,” she said.
You gave one short laugh with no humour in it.
“Right.”
Then you turned and got out of the room before anyone could see how badly your hands were shaking.
********
The corridor outside the set felt colder than it had a minute ago.
Not properly cold.
Studio cold.
Artificial cold.
Air-conditioning and concrete and that strange stale stillness film sets always had once you stepped just far enough away from the lights.
You stopped beside the wall and folded your arms across yourself so tightly it almost hurt.
Your face was burning.
Your mouth still felt wrong.
Not kissed.
Not wanted.
Not even embarrassed in a simple, clean way.
It felt raw, over-aware, humiliated. Like the shape of the failed scene was still sitting on your skin. His hand on your arm. His mouth on yours for barely a second. The awful instant your whole body had betrayed you and gone rigid while everyone watched.
You closed your eyes.
God.
A kiss.
It had only been a kiss.
Not even one of the difficult scenes. Not one of the scenes you had been dreading since the second you read the script.
Just a kiss in an office doorway, and you had managed to make it look like you were being held hostage.
The door opened behind you.
You did not turn at first.
You knew it was him.
Of course it was him.
You heard the door shut harder than it needed to, then his footsteps coming towards you, quick and irritated and with none of the careful neutrality he had been forcing on set.
When you finally looked around, Tom was already there, jaw tight, one hand shoved into his pocket, the other going briefly through his hair before dropping again.
He looked annoyed in a way that made your stomach immediately twist.
Not lightly annoyed.
Not amused.
Genuinely frustrated.
He looked at you for half a beat and then said, flatly, “What was that?”
You stared at him.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.” His expression did not shift. “What was that?”
Heat climbed even higher into your face.
“I know it was bad.”
He gave a short, sharp breath through his nose.
“Yeah. It was.”
The words landed like a slap.
Because of how plainly he said them. Because there was no softening around them. No attempt to rescue your pride before he stepped on it.
Your chest tightened.
“You don’t have to talk to me like that.”
“How am I meant to talk to you?” His voice was clipped now, frustration sharpening it. “Tell you it was fine? It wasn’t fine.”
He took a step away, then back again, too wound up to stay still.
“Listen, Y/N, I can work with nerves,” he said. “I can work with awkwardness. I can work with Marie adjusting choreography, Kurt moving scenes around, all of that. What I can’t work with is not knowing whether this is first-day panic or whether you genuinely cannot do this.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
Not because he raised his voice.
Not because he was trying to humiliate you.
Because he sounded serious.
Professional.
Like he was no longer talking about one bad kiss but about the shape of a much bigger problem, and whether you were one.
Your arms tightened across yourself.
“I can do my job.”
Tom dragged a hand through his hair, already frustrated enough that he could not quite stay still.
“Can you?”
The question landed like a slap.
You stared at him.
He kept going before you could answer, too wound up now to stop himself.
“Because I’m trying to be realistic here. That was the easiest intimacy beat we have. It was a kiss. That’s it. No body positioning, no half-naked choreography, no fake urgency, no desk, no shower, no scene where we’re meant to look like we’re seconds away from ripping each other’s clothes off.”
Every word made your skin burn hotter.
“Tom—”
“No, because I’m in this too.” His jaw flexed. “I care if it works. Kurt cares if it works. The film depends on it working. And if you can’t even act a simple kiss without freezing, then what the hell are we meant to do when we get to the scenes where we’re pretending to fuck?”
The words hit like a physical thing.
Not because they were loud.
Because they were precise.
Practical.
Because he was not speaking like a man trying to wound you. He was speaking like an actor looking at a problem and trying to work out how disastrous it might become.
And somehow that made it worse.
You stared at him.
Your face felt hot enough to hurt. Your chest tight, breath stuck too high.
He was still talking.
Of course he was.
Still too wound up to see what every sentence was doing.
“I’m being serious, Y/N. That was the easy version. That was the stripped-back, nothing beat. We’re not even near the difficult stuff yet.”
You could feel your throat tightening.
Because all you could hear underneath it now was the same thing, over and over.
You can’t do it.
You’re not up to it.
You’re going to fuck this up for everyone.
Tom raked a hand through his hair again, restless and annoyed and far too invested to soften any of it.
“There are whole scenes hanging off this. Big ones. Story-wise, emotionally, structurally. If the intimacy doesn’t work, the film doesn’t work. It starts looking ridiculous.”
That one landed so hard you almost flinched.
Because there it was.
Not just that you had a bad day.
Not just that you had messed up a kiss.
That you might be the weak point in something bigger.
That you might be the one who made it all look stupid.
You folded your arms tighter across yourself, fingers digging into your sleeves.
“Right.”
He frowned at your tone.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you act like I’m attacking you for fun.”
A laugh almost came out of you, but it would have sounded too close to crying, so it died somewhere under your ribs instead.
“You think I’m not good enough.”
The words slipped out before you could stop them.
Tom’s expression shifted.
Not softer.
Not kind.
Just briefly thrown.
“That is not what I said.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He stared at you.
You could see him trying to recalibrate, trying to pull the conversation back toward whatever version of honesty he thought he had been offering. But it was too late now. The damage had already been done. Every careful, rational thing he had said had landed in exactly the worst place.
His voice came out lower.
“I’m saying right now I don’t know if you can handle this.”
That did it.
Whatever had still been holding in your chest just gave way.
Because that was worse, somehow, than if he had been cruel. Worse than if he had been mocking. Worse than if he had called you spoiled or amateur or a nepo hire.
I don’t know if you can handle this.
You looked away fast before he could see too much on your face.
Too late, probably.
Your eyes were already burning.
Tom saw the shift and stopped for half a second, like he had only just realised how hard he had hit. But then the frustration got there first again.
“I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“Why?” you said, too quickly. “So I can thank you for it?”
His jaw tightened.
“No. So this doesn’t turn into a disaster later.”
Disaster.
There it was again.
Film.
Problem.
Disaster.
Every word making you smaller.
You looked at him and suddenly all you could see was exactly how this must look from his side: the producer’s daughter cast in an R-rated film with pages and pages of intimacy she had clearly never been ready for, freezing on day one while everyone else had to rearrange around her.
Humiliation curdled into anger so fast it made you dizzy.
“You know what? Fuck off.”
Tom blinked.
Actually blinked, like that had caught him off guard.
“What?”
“Fuck off.” Your voice shook on it, which only made you angrier. “Seriously, Tom. Fuck off.”
He stared at you.
The irritation in his face cracked then, just slightly, letting something else through. Realisation, maybe. Regret arriving a beat too late. The dawning awareness that he had come out here worried about the film and somehow managed to make you feel like a casting mistake.
“That’s not what I meant.”
You laughed once, sharp and miserable.
“Of course it is.”
Silence sat between you for one ugly second.
Tom opened his mouth again, like maybe he was finally about to say the right thing.
Or maybe just a less awful one.
Before he could, a voice cut down the corridor.
“Tom! Two minutes!”
Both of you turned instinctively.
One of the ADs was halfway out of a side door, headset on, clipboard tucked under one arm.
“We’re set on the office insert. Kurt wants you now.”
The timing of it was so absurd it almost felt deliberate. Like the universe refusing to let either of you finish the conversation properly.
Tom looked back at the AD, then at you.
For one second, he seemed torn between the set and the fact that you were standing in front of him looking like you might either slap him or fall apart.
The AD called again.
“Tom.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yeah. Coming.”
But he did not move immediately.
His eyes came back to yours, the frustration still there, but muddied now by something far less certain. Like he could feel the whole conversation hanging wrong between you and had no idea how to fix it in the three seconds production was about to allow him.
“Y/N—”
You shook your head once.
Hard.
Not trusting yourself to speak.
Because if you opened your mouth right now, you were either going to start crying in front of him or say something vicious enough to make it all worse.
Tom saw that too.
Saw the way your face had gone still in the dangerous way people’s faces did right before they lost control of them.
The AD again, sharper this time:
“Tom, now.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, swore quietly under his breath, then looked at you one last time.
“We will talk later.”
That should have sounded angry.
It mostly sounded frustrated.
Uneasy.
Like he already regretted half of what he had said and did not know what to do with the other half.
You found your voice just long enough to answer.
“Go.”
One word.
Flat.
Cold.
Much steadier than you felt.
Tom hesitated for one beat more, then turned and walked back toward set, shoulders tight, one hand dragging through his hair as he went.
You watched him until he disappeared through the door.
Then the corridor went quiet again.
Too quiet.
And without him there to stay angry at, all that was left was the humiliation.
The awful, suffocating certainty that he had looked at you after one failed kiss and seen exactly what you feared most.
Someone not ready.
Not capable.
Not enough.
Your eyes burned properly now.
You pressed your lips together hard and started walking the other way before the first tear could fall where anyone might see it.
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom, Bi Tom, Bi Reader
You went to wardrobe first.
Not together.
Of course not together.
That would have required the universe to show mercy, and apparently the universe had taken one look at your first day on set and decided to start drinking before noon.
You walked ahead of him down the corridor with the assistant between you like a traumatised buffer, your script held against your ribs and your hip still throbbing from where you had clipped the crate in rehearsal room three.
Tom followed behind.
Not close.
Not far enough.
You could feel him there with that same irritating awareness your body seemed determined to maintain against your better judgment. Footsteps steady. Slightly longer stride. Quiet in a way that still managed to feel loud.
The assistant glanced back once.
Then immediately looked forward again.
Excellent.
Wonderful.
So she had absolutely heard enough to know something had happened.
Wardrobe was chaos in miniature. Racks of clothes. Steamers hissing. Shoes lined under tables. Half-labelled garment bags. Someone swearing softly at a missing belt. Someone else with pins in their mouth and a pencil behind their ear. Nadine, one of the wardrobe women, looked up when you came in and immediately narrowed her eyes at your skirt.
“There you are. Rose first.”
You lifted a hand.
“I am Rose.”
“I know, darling. That’s why I’m looking at you like that.”
You glanced down at yourself.
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve got to undo whatever you did before you arrived.”
Behind you, Tom made a sound.
Not quite a laugh.
Not even really audible.
You heard it anyway.
You turned your head just enough to glare.
He looked past you at a rack of jackets, expression almost saintly.
Nadine caught your chin lightly between two fingers and turned your face back.
“Don’t move. Makeup will do the face, but costume needs the silhouette.”
“Right.”
“And breathe. You’re standing like a hostage.”
“First day.”
“Mmm.” Nadine’s eyes flicked past your shoulder to Tom. “That explains one of you.”
Your face warmed.
Tom’s jaw shifted, but he said nothing.
They took you behind a curtain and began the strange, intimate, impersonal business of making sure every part of you looked like someone else. Your skirt was tugged flatter. Your blouse loosened at the throat. A cardigan was considered, rejected, then reconsidered. Someone adjusted the seam at your waist and asked whether the shoes pinched.
You answered too quickly.
“No. They’re fine. Great. Very shoe-like.”
Nadine paused with a pin between her fingers.
“Very shoe-like?”
“I don’t know why I said that.”
“Nerves?”
“Probably brain damage.”
She smiled around the pin.
“Hold still.”
You tried.
You failed.
Your fingers went to the hem of the skirt. Then the side seam. Then the call sheet folded in your hand. Then the hem again. Nadine gently caught your wrist and lowered it.
“Not yet. Save the fidgeting for the camera if Kurt wants it.”
You gave her a tight smile.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Half this industry is held together by anxious women and men pretending they’re talented.”
From the other side of the curtain, someone said, “Tom, arms out.”
You did not look.
You absolutely did not look.
Unfortunately, the curtain gap existed.
And your eyes, which were traitorous, found it at once.
Tom stood near the mirror while another wardrobe assistant adjusted his cuffs. His jacket had been swapped for a darker one, more severe, more clinical. His shirt sat open at the throat in a way that was probably deliberate for the character and personally offensive to you as a person trying to have a normal nervous breakdown.
He looked tired.
Not visibly.
Not to anyone sensible.
But there was a faint tension around his eyes, a hard set to his mouth that had not been there when you first saw him that morning. His thumb kept finding the edge of the script tucked under his arm, worrying the paper, stopping, starting again.
Then his gaze lifted in the mirror.
Caught yours through the gap.
For half a second, neither of you moved.
Then Nadine stepped into your line of sight and snapped the curtain shut.
“No distracting yourself.”
You looked at her.
“I wasn’t.”
“Sure.”
By the time wardrobe released you both, you looked more like Rose and less like a woman who had spent the morning lying to her fiancé, insulting her co-star, being insulted by him, and shaking hands with a man who had once had his mouth on her intimate parts.
Progress, apparently.
Tom emerged a moment later.
He looked like Jason.
That was the first problem.
Not fully.
Not yet.
But enough.
The clothes had shifted him. Made him cleaner. More contained. The softness of his own clothes had been replaced by something deliberate and controlled. A therapist with expensive restraint and a history in his eyes.
Annoyingly good casting.
You hated that too.
The assistant reappeared at the end of the corridor.
“Marie’s ready for you both now.”
Of course she was.
The intimacy meeting happened in a smaller room off production, one of those rooms that looked temporary even if it had been standing for twenty years. Mismatched chairs. A folding table. A whiteboard with half-erased blocking notes. Bad instant coffee. A bowl of mints nobody had touched because the entire room seemed to know mints were about to become a loaded subject.
Kurt was already there, leaning against the table with his arms crossed, talking quietly to Marie.
Marie looked exactly like the kind of person you wanted in charge of an uncomfortable conversation.
Calm. Alert. Warm without being soft.
She had a notebook open in front of her, glasses low on her nose, and the slightly terrifying composure of a woman who had seen every possible version of actors pretending they were fine.
She smiled when you came in.
“Good. Come in. Sit wherever feels least weird.”
That was, unfortunately, a trap.
Everywhere felt weird.
You took the chair nearest the door.
Tom took the one opposite you.
Naturally.
Marie noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She looked between you both once, then did not make a thing of it, which somehow made you trust her more.
“Alright,” she said. “This is an initial run-through. We’ll do separate practical check-ins before each intimate scene, but I like everyone to understand how I work before we start putting bodies under lights and pretending that adrenaline is professionalism.”
Kurt lifted his coffee.
“One of my least favourite kinds of professionalism.”
Marie pointed her pen at him.
“And yet your industry runs on it.”
“Tragically.”
You almost smiled.
Tom did not.
His pen rolled once between his fingers, then vanished into his fist when he caught himself doing it.
Marie saw that too.
Her gaze moved briefly to your hands, which were folded too neatly in your lap.
Then back to her notes.
“My job is not to tell either of you how to act. My job is to make sure the intimate material is safe, clear, repeatable, and agreed before a camera is on it. Kissing, sexual contact, implied contact, partial undress, restraint, body weight, breath proximity, anything where vulnerability is being told through someone else’s body — that comes through me.”
You nodded.
Tom nodded.
Too quickly, both of you.
Marie’s mouth twitched.
“That was a very convincing pair of nods from two people who absolutely did not process all of that.”
Kurt made a quiet sound of amusement.
Your face warmed.
“I did process it.”
“Good,” Marie said. “Then process this bit too. Boundaries are not a one-time document you sign and then suffer through. They can change. People get tired. People get sore. Someone’s nervous system does something inconvenient at five p.m. that it did not do at ten a.m. Someone has had an argument. Someone is masking too hard. Someone says they’re fine because they think that’s the easiest way out of the room.”
Her eyes moved between you and Tom.
There was no accusation in it.
That was somehow worse.
“There is no prize for being chill,” Marie said. “Chill is usually useless information.”
Your foot started bouncing.
You stopped it.
Tom noticed.
You saw him notice.
Marie continued, calmly ruthless.
“If you hate mint, say so. If stubble is a problem, say so. If neck touch is fine in theory but awful on the day, say so. If you need a reset because your brain has gone loud, say so.”
You looked down.
Tom’s pen moved once against the side of his thumb.
Neither of you spoke.
Marie let the silence sit for exactly long enough to prove she was good at her job.
Then she moved on.
“Across the film, we have seven kissing scenes and five sex scenes. They escalate in emotional complexity more than explicitness. Today is only the first kiss. It is not mechanically complicated, but it matters because it sets the grammar for everything after it.”
Kurt nodded.
“It needs to feel like a mistake they both want to repeat.”
That landed in the room.
You looked at the table.
Tom looked at Marie.
Neither of you looked at each other.
Marie made a note.
“Right. So later today I’ll set approach, eyeline, hand placement, duration, breath spacing, and the separation. Nothing gets improvised. If the scene needs surprise, we choreograph the surprise. Understood?”
“Yes,” Tom said.
His voice was controlled.
Too controlled.
Marie glanced at him, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
“I know you do, Tom. We’ve worked together before.”
Something about that landed strangely.
Not badly.
Just sharply.
Of course they had worked together before.
Of course he had sat in rooms like this, calm and professional, discussing hand placement and breath spacing and camera-safe contact as if it were weather. Of course this was not new to him. Of course he knew how to make the awkward parts look easy.
Your fingers found the corner of your script.
Pressed.
Released.
Pressed again.
Marie’s gaze shifted to you.
Not missing it.
Not making a spectacle of it either.
“How about you, Y/N? Understood?”
You looked up too quickly.
“Yes. Understood.”
Too fast.
You heard it yourself.
Marie waited half a beat.
Tom’s eyes flicked to your hand on the script, then away.
You forced your fingers still.
Marie’s voice stayed gentle but firm.
“Say it back to me.”
Your face warmed.
“What?”
“Not because I think you weren’t listening,” she said. “Because sometimes the brain nods before the body has caught up. Especially on a first day.”
Kurt took a sip of coffee and wisely said nothing.
You swallowed.
“Right. Um. Nothing improvised. You set the approach, eyeline, hands, how long it lasts, breath spacing, and how we separate. If it’s meant to feel surprising, we still choreograph it.”
Marie nodded.
“Exactly.”
Tom leaned back slightly in his chair.
Not smug.
Not quite.
But composed enough that it annoyed you anyway.
Marie noticed that too.
“And both of you,” she added, looking between you, “are allowed to ask for a reset. You do not push through confusion because the room is busy. You do not change something because the take feels good. You do not decide mid-kiss that instinct is more interesting than consent.”
Tom’s jaw shifted.
“Understood.”
You nodded.
“Understood.”
This time, slower.
Then, Marie turned to you.
“Now, Y/N, my understanding is that you’ve not filmed scenes like this before?”
Your throat tightened.
You hated the question.
Not because it was unfair.
Because Tom was there.
“No.”
You felt rather than saw his attention sharpen.
Marie nodded once, not making it a confession.
“That’s fine. First time is not the same as incapable. It just means we build it more deliberately from the start. You do not need to be impressive in prep. You need to be honest.”
You nodded.
“Okay.”
“Also,” Marie said, glancing between you both again, “no one has to answer personal questions in this room. I don’t care who has or has not done what privately unless it affects safety or choreography. We are talking about the characters and the agreed action.”
The irony sat between you like a lit match.
Tom’s face did not move.
Yours did not either.
Heroic, really.
Marie flipped a page.
“The office kiss today: Rose initiates proximity without fully admitting she’s initiating it. Jason lets the line blur before he catches himself. That means both of you need to know where the line physically is. If the audience feels loss of control, lovely. If the actors lose control, useless.”
Kurt smiled faintly.
“Put that on a T-shirt.”
“I’ll invoice you.”
For the first time, Tom almost smiled.
Almost.
You saw it and hated that it made his face look briefly less unbearable.
Marie closed the notebook halfway.
“Any obvious concerns right now?”
You said, too fast, “No.”
Tom said, at almost the same time, “No.”
Marie looked at you both.
Then at Kurt.
“Fantastic. Two totally relaxed people.”
Kurt’s eyes flicked between you and Tom with faint amusement.
“My favourite.”
You pressed your lips together.
Tom leaned back in his chair, pen still in his hand. He looked composed enough to be carved out of stone, except the pen was upside down now and he had not noticed.
You noticed.
He caught you noticing.
His jaw tightened.
Marie stood.
“We’ll do another check in before the scene this afternoon. For now, wardrobe has you both cleared, makeup next, then therapy office for your scenes before lunch. And remember — come to me early if something changes or if you have any concerns. Especially if either of you starts performing ease instead of feeling it.”
You gathered your script.
Tom did the same.
Kurt started talking to Marie about the closed-set call sheet for the afternoon, which left you and Tom momentarily side by side near the door.
Not alone.
Not private.
Still too close.
He glanced at you.
“Well,” he said quietly, “that won’t be awkward at all.”
You looked straight ahead.
“It won’t be unless you make it so.”
His eyes sharpened.
“That’s rich coming from you.”
You turned your head.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked as if he considered saying several things, all of them inadvisable.
Then his gaze dropped briefly to the script in your hand.
“Nothing.”
“No, go on.”
His mouth tightened.
“Tell me again, Y/N. How many scenes like that have you filmed?”
You stared at him.
A second passed.
Then you said, quietly, “None.”
He gave one short breath through his nose.
Not kind.
Not quite cruel either.
Worse, somehow.
Unimpressed.
“Exactly.”
Your spine stiffened.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You do realise you say nothing in a way that means several paragraphs.”
His eyes came back to yours.
“I counted twenty-three pages of intimacy after I found out you were attached.”
Heat rushed into your face.
“You counted them?”
“Yes.”
“That’s incredibly normal of you.”
His jaw tightened.
“I was trying to work out how concerned I should be.”
“About what?”
“About spending the next few months pretending to make out with the producer’s daughter in front of a camera while everyone congratulates themselves for taking a risk.”
For a second, you only stared at him.
There it was again.
The same little blade.
Producer’s daughter.
Not actress.
Not co-star.
Never just you.
“Taking a risk?” you repeated.
Tom’s expression stayed flat.
Controlled.
Cruel in the way people were cruel when they thought calm made them right.
“It is a risk.”
“Because I haven’t filmed intimacy before?”
“Because this film is built around it.”
Your fingers tightened around the script.
“It’s built around two characters.”
“It’s built around obsession, desire, transference, sex, shame, and about twenty-three pages of physical escalation.”
He said it too evenly.
Like he had made a list.
Like he had sat somewhere after learning your name was on the call sheet and counted every kiss, every hand, every implied undressing, every scene that required you to stand close enough to remember New York.
Your throat felt tight.
“And you don’t think I can handle that.”
His eyes flicked over your face.
Briefly.
Too briefly to be gentle.
“I don’t know what you can handle.”
That was worse.
Somehow, that was worse than if he had simply said no.
You smiled, but it came out sharp.
“Right. Because I’m a child, obviously.”
His jaw flexed.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you just keep finding more sophisticated ways to imply it.”
“You have no on-screen experience with this kind of material.”
“I have experience acting.”
“On stage.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, does that not count?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
Tom looked away for half a second, dragging his thumb over the edge of his pages.
When he looked back, his voice had dropped.
“What I mean is that I don’t understand how someone with no intimate screen work gets cast in a film this sexually charged unless someone in the room is pretending her surname has nothing to do with it.”
The words hit cleanly.
Too cleanly.
For a second, you forgot every clever thing you had ever said in your life.
Then your face went hot.
“God, you’re annoying.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, it’s me being polite.”
He opened his mouth.
You walked out before he could improve on it.
*********
Then came makeup.
Makeup was worse.
Not emotionally.
Logistically.
Emotionally, everything had already been terrible, so at least there was consistency.
You sat in a chair in front of a mirror rimmed with lights while Natalia from makeup tilted your face left, then right, then sighed at your real makeup as if you had personally insulted her craft.
“You put foundation on this morning?”
“I panicked.”
“With a brush?”
“With fear.”
Natalia paused.
Then laughed.
“I like you.”
“Give it time.”
She started removing almost everything you had done before rebuilding you as Rose: less polished, more tired around the eyes, softer mouth, skin that looked like skin, not armour. Your own face slowly disappeared and came back wrong.
Better.
Worse.
Useful.
Across the room, Tom sat in another chair while someone worked on his hair. He had a book open in his lap now.
Of course he had a book.
Of course he could do that. Drop into a book like the world had not just tried to chew through both of you.
His knee moved once.
Stopped.
His fingers tapped once against the spine.
Stopped.
The makeup artist said something to him and he looked up a fraction too late, as if dragged out of somewhere else.
You looked away.
Natalia caught it in the mirror.
Her eyes flicked from you to Tom, then back to your face.
Interesting.
You immediately disliked that she had eyes.
“Don’t move,” she said.
“I didn’t.”
“Your face did.”
“That seems unavoidable.”
She smiled and dabbed under your eye.
“Not in this job.”
By the time makeup finished, you were keyed so tightly that every small delay felt like someone plucking a nerve. You read the same three lines six times. Forgot them. Remembered them. Forgot whether forgetting them was normal. Checked the page again. Lost your pen. Found it behind your ear. Had no memory of putting it there.
Tom passed behind your chair once, close enough that you caught the scent of him.
Coffee.
Cigarettes.
Clean shirt.
Something else underneath that your body recognised with humiliating enthusiasm.
You went very still.
He did not look at you.
Which was somehow worse.
Your first scene was without him.
Thank God.
Or, at least, thank God in theory.
It was Rose arriving at Jason’s office for the first time and speaking to his secretary. On paper, it was barely three pages. Rose came in too early, lied about not being nervous, made a brittle little joke, then sat in the waiting area pretending not to look at the closed door.
Simple.
Which meant, naturally, you nearly tripped over your mark on the first take.
Not badly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that your foot landed slightly outside the tape and the camera operator made a tiny adjustment that everyone pretended not to notice.
You noticed.
Of course you noticed.
The second take was better until you picked up the wrong magazine from the side table.
The third take, you got the magazine right but cut off the actress playing the secretary.
The fourth, you overcorrected so hard that the pause between her line and yours became long enough to qualify as experimental theatre.
Kurt watched from behind the monitor, not irritated exactly.
Just intent.
That was somehow worse.
“Good,” he said after the fourth take, which did not feel true. “Now stop showing me that Rose is uncomfortable and just be uncomfortable.”
You nodded.
“Right.”
“You’re playing the result. I want the effort. She’s trying to seem fine. That means sometimes she almost manages it.”
“Okay.”
Sven, Kurt’s first assistant director, stepped in with his clipboard and a headset pressed to one ear.
“Tom’s ready on the other set.”
Kurt did not even look away from the monitor.
“Run him.”
That was how efficient Kurt worked.
No wasted minutes. No indulgent first-day cushioning. While you were pretending not to panic in the waiting room, Tom was across the lot shooting a solo scene with the other unit — Jason alone in his office, reading Rose’s file before meeting her. Kurt had Sven bouncing between the two set-ups like a human metronome, keeping both scenes moving with terrifying calm.
You hated how impressive it was.
You hated more that it meant there was no time to fall apart properly.
By take five, something clicked.
Not beautifully.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
You came in, missed the secretary’s eye by a fraction, smiled too late, sat down too carefully, and picked at the edge of your sleeve while pretending you were not. The secretary asked whether you wanted water. You said no too quickly. Then yes. Then no again.
Kurt let it run.
For the first time all morning, the silence did not feel empty.
It felt usable.
“Cut.”
You froze.
Kurt leaned back from the monitor.
“Good. That one.”
Your lungs remembered they existed.
“Really?”
He gave you a look.
“Don’t sound so surprised. It makes me question my judgment.”
You almost smiled.
Almost.
Then Sven appeared again.
“Tom’s wrapped the solo. We’re turning around for the next scene.”
Your stomach dropped.
Of course.
There it was.
The mercy was over.
By the time the two of you were called for the shared scene, the atmosphere had changed again.
Not softer.
Never that.
Just sharpened.
The scene was simple on its face.
First therapy session.
Your character in the chair opposite his. You talking, haltingly, about a piece of childhood trauma in a way that made it clear you were testing him more than confessing anything. His character listening, professional but interested. The beginning of trust. The beginning of curiosity. The faint beginning of something neither character would name.
Simple, which in film language usually meant impossible.
You were placed in the chair first.
Wardrobe tugged your skirt flatter over your knees. Makeup blotted the shine off your nose. Someone adjusted a strand of your hair and apologised, though they were not remotely sorry. A runner moved the box of tissues half an inch to the left. Then back again. Then Kurt decided he hated the lamp and the lamp disappeared.
You sat there through all of it, hands folded in your lap, trying not to fidget.
Which meant you fidgeted internally instead.
A much worse system.
Tom stepped into frame a moment later, now fully in costume again, notes in hand.
He did not look at you while the camera was being set.
You did not look at him either.
He looked different after his solo scene.
More settled, maybe. More inside the character. The restless irritation from earlier had not vanished, but it had gone quieter, tucked behind Jason’s professional stillness. He moved into the chair opposite you with that awful ease experienced actors had when they knew how to make waiting look like thought.
You hated him for that too.
Kurt walked over with that intent, hyper-focused energy directors got when they could see the shape of a scene but not quite make the actors give it to them yet.
“Okay,” he said, crouching slightly between you both. “Text is fine. I’m not worried about text. What I need is the thing under the text.”
He pointed lightly between you and Tom.
“This is their first proper session. She doesn’t trust him. He knows she doesn’t trust him. She’s still here. He notices everything. She notices that he notices. That’s the scene.”
You nodded.
Tom nodded too.
Kurt looked at you.
“Play with the hem of the skirt a bit at the top of the scene.”
Then at Tom.
“And you clock it. Don’t underline it. Just see it.”
Tom’s gaze moved, briefly, to your hands.
Not yours.
Rose’s.
Supposedly.
Your skin still reacted.
Kurt stood.
“There should be intrigue before there’s disclosure. Right now you’re both trying to survive until the first line. Don’t. Let the air happen first.”
“Okay,” you said.
Tom gave a brief, “Yeah.”
Kurt stepped back.
Everyone reset.
You sat in the chair, hands folded too neatly in your lap, then let one move to the edge of your skirt as instructed. The fabric was soft and a little too thin. You rubbed the hem between your fingers once, then again, looking anywhere but at him.
Across from you, Tom settled into the chair.
One ankle over his knee.
Notebook open.
Pen in hand.
The room quieted.
“Rolling.”
“Sound speed.”
“Marker.”
The clap.
Then—
“Action.”
And because nerves were treacherous and Tom had spent the morning being unbearable, the second he looked at you — really looked at you, calmly, professionally, in character but not quite enough — you started too fast.
“I don’t really sleep much, so—”
“Cut.”
Kurt held up a hand.
Not annoyed.
Not pleased either.
“Don’t rush the first beat.”
You nodded once.
“Yep.”
Reset.
Again.
This time you waited.
Technically.
Your fingers worried the skirt hem. You looked at the carpet. You felt Tom watching. Felt the camera. Felt every person in the room waiting for you to do the thing you had apparently been hired to do.
Then your eyes lifted to his and your brain fired the line out like a distress flare.
“I used to think it was normal, the—”
“Cut.”
A pause.
Then Kurt, patient but more pointed now:
“You’re feeding it too early. Let him watch. You don’t have to rescue the silence.”
You let out a breath.
“Sorry.”
Tom said nothing.
He only leaned back slightly in his chair, pen tapping once against the notebook before he caught himself and stilled it again.
That was somehow worse than if he had sighed.
Third take.
You decided not to look at him.
A brilliant plan, except the scene required you to look at him.
You fixed your eyes on your own fingers, rubbed the hem of the skirt once, twice, waited, felt him looking, felt the whole room waiting with him—
And then missed your cue entirely.
The silence stretched.
Too far.
You could feel the exact second it stopped being charged and became awkward.
Kurt let it go another beat, probably because he was cruel or brilliant or both.
Then Tom, still in character, prompted gently, “Rose?”
It was the line from later in the scene.
The wrong place.
Still useful.
Still humiliating.
Your head snapped up.
“Sorry, I—”
“Cut.”
Your face went hot.
“Sorry.”
Kurt stepped in.
“Don’t apologise in the take.”
“Right. Sorry.”
A few people smiled.
Not unkindly.
You wanted to die anyway.
Tom looked down at his notebook, mouth unreadable.
Fourth take.
This time you came in at the right moment but shifted too far forward in the chair and landed half off your mark. The focus puller caught it. Barely. You saw the camera operator’s shoulder adjust. That was enough to ruin you.
“It wasn’t always bad, I just—”
“Cut.”
Kurt exhaled through his nose.
Not impatient.
Not yet.
“Stay on your mark.”
“Yep.”
“And stop checking whether you’re on your mark. That’s not the character’s problem.”
“Yep.”
Tom’s pen moved once.
Stopped.
You saw it.
He saw you see it.
Fantastic.
Fifth take.
You got the mark.
You got the silence.
You got the first line.
Then you looked at Tom’s hand as he made a note and forgot the second line entirely.
Not because you did not know it.
You knew it.
You had known it in the car, in makeup, in the bathroom, in the tiny panic spiral by the coffee machine.
But now his hand moved across the page, and some traitorous part of your memory supplied New York instead of dialogue.
His fingers around a cigarette.
His hand on your waist.
His thumb at your jaw.
Gone.
Blank.
The whole line wiped clean.
Tom looked up.
In character.
Maybe not entirely.
“Take your time.”
That was Jason’s line.
It was also Tom’s voice.
Low.
Measured.
Too close to kind.
You hated that most of all.
“Cut.”
The room went still.
Not terrible.
But enough.
Kurt looked between the two of you, thinking.
You could feel your pulse in your throat.
Tom looked down at his notebook.
Then at you.
Then finally, in a voice pitched low enough that only you and maybe the script supervisor closest to frame could hear it, he said, “You remember your lines, yeah?”
Your head turned so fast it was a wonder no one noticed.
He was still looking down when he said it, as if it were nothing.
As if he had not said something pointed at all.
You stared at him.
“Yes,” you said through your teeth.
His eyes lifted then, cool and unreadable.
“Just checking.”
Heat flashed straight through you.
You smiled at him with no warmth whatsoever.
“Worried I’m out of my depth?”
One of his brows moved the slightest fraction.
“Worried you’re in your head.”
That would have landed better if he were not so clearly enjoying irritating you.
Kurt, mercifully or perhaps unmercifully, clapped his hands once.
“Alright. Tiny reset.”
He stepped closer again, attention on you this time.
“Stop performing the discomfort. Just sit in it. You don’t need to earn the scene in the first three seconds.”
Then his gaze flicked to Tom.
“And you — less waiting for her to get it right like a schoolmaster. You’re not irritated with her. You’re intrigued.”
That one landed.
You saw it in the brief hardening of Tom’s jaw.
“Got it,” he said.
Kurt looked between you both again, then backed away.
“One more.”
You inhaled slowly and let it out.
Reset.
Chair.
Skirt hem.
Breath.
Silence.
Across from you, Tom settled again, but this time the energy coming off him was different.
Not softer exactly.
Just less sharp-edged.
The annoyance tucked away. His focus cleaner. More dangerous for being quieter.
“Action.”
You looked at your hands.
Touched the hem once.
Twice.
Waited.
He saw it.
You knew he saw it because the slightest thing changed in his face — not concern, not yet, but attention narrowing. Noting. Wondering. The therapist seeing the tell.
The man behind the therapist, for one split second, interested in the nervous habit because it was yours.
You let the silence sit.
It stretched.
This time, you did not rescue it.
This time, you let it make you uncomfortable.
Let Rose hate being seen.
Let yourself hate that he was the one seeing.
Then, finally, without forcing it, you looked up.
“I don’t usually tell people this.”
Tom’s gaze held yours for half a beat too long.
Then he said, quiet, careful, exactly right, “That’s alright.”
Something in the room shifted.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
You felt it.
Kurt felt it too.
The rest of the scene went almost unnervingly smoothly after that. You talked about fear in the clipped, detached way the script required. Tom asked the questions as though he already knew more than he should. You glanced at his hands once when he made a note.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
But this time it stayed in the scene.
Rose noticing Jason noticing.
Jason pretending not to notice that she had noticed.
Your voice thinned on the line about doors being locked.
Tom’s face changed by almost nothing.
A smaller breath.
A stiller hand.
It was infuriatingly good.
The scene ended on him watching you leave and you not looking back.
“Cut.”
Silence.
Then Kurt stood up straighter and pointed at both of you.
“Yes. That.”
A crew member relaxed audibly.
Someone behind the monitor murmured, “There it is.”
You looked away immediately, pretending to smooth your skirt as if your pulse was not suddenly much too fast.
Tom closed the notebook, stood, and handed it absently to props.
You could feel him not looking at you, which was somehow worse than if he had.
Kurt was already talking.
“That’s what I mean. It’s tiny, but it’s there. The interest. Keep it disciplined, but keep it.”
“Got it,” Tom said.
“Yep,” you said.
Then, because apparently he could not resist having the last small dig, Tom moved past you toward his mark for the next set-up and said under his breath, without looking at you, “So, you do know them. Good.”
You turned your head just enough to look at him.
“Go to hell.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Which was honestly more irritating than if he had done it properly.
**********
By the time lunch was called, you felt wrung out and wired at the same time.
Too tired to speak.
Too restless to sit.
Too hungry to eat.
A devastating combination.
You followed Nadine and another wardrobe woman, Tessa, to a small café just outside the studio lot because the canteen smelled too aggressively of hot oil and despair. The café was narrow and bright, with blackboard menus, chipped wooden tables, and a glass cabinet full of pastries that looked better than they probably were.
You ordered a coffee you did not need and a sandwich you knew you would not finish.
Then you saw him.
Tom was at the far side near the window.
Of course he was.
Because apparently the day had committed to coincidence as a genre.
He sat alone at a small table with a book open beside his plate, picking at a salad with the absent concentration of someone eating because a human body required maintenance. Tea instead of coffee. One knee angled out beneath the table. Hemingway on the cover, battered paperback, corners softened.
You almost turned around.
You should have turned around.
You wanted, very badly, to mind your own business.
For once.
Just once.
But before you could move, a young woman stepped out from behind the counter carrying a takeaway coffee and a paper bag.
She was pretty in a way that looked effortless until you noticed every effort. Glossy hair. Tiny waist. Oversized jumper slipping off one shoulder. No visible nerves whatsoever.
She placed the coffee and bag beside Tom’s salad.
He looked up.
His expression changed.
Not hugely.
Just enough.
Recognition. Familiarity. A quick softening around the mouth before he tucked it away.
Your stomach did something stupid.
The woman leaned slightly closer, lowering her voice.
Not enough.
“I put one of those almond things in there for you.”
Tom looked into the bag and smiled faintly.
“Thank you.”
“You’ll actually eat it?”
“Probably not.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
You hated that.
You hated that you had told him something very similar a little over a year ago.
The woman glanced toward the counter, then back to him.
Quieter now.
Still audible.
“See you tonight at mine?”
Tom did not look around.
He did not seem embarrassed.
He just folded the top of the paper bag once, carefully.
“Yeah. Might be late.”
“That’s fine.”
Her smile changed.
Small.
Private.
Annoying.
Then she walked back toward the counter.
You looked away so fast your neck nearly hurt.
Nadine, unfortunately, had also seen.
Of course she had.
Her eyes were already bright with information.
She leaned closer to you and whispered, “He’s been hanging out with her for a few months now.”
You stared at your untouched sandwich.
“Has he?”
“Mmm. He had another movie with the studio before this one. That’s when it started, apparently.”
You told yourself not to ask.
You were an adult.
You were mature.
You had self-respect.
Then your mouth opened.
“How old is she?”
Nadine gave you a sideways look.
“Twenty-two, I think.”
Twenty-two.
For a moment, everything in you went very still.
Not because you cared.
You did not care.
You absolutely did not care.
You had no claim on him. You did not want one. You barely wanted to be in the same room as him without committing a crime. He could spend his evenings with whichever pretty café girl he liked.
But twenty-two.
Twenty-two, after that sanctimonious little courtroom speech in rehearsal room three.
Twenty-two, after I was nearly forty.
Twenty-two, after do you know what this looks like from the outside?
Hypocrite.
The word arrived so cleanly it almost calmed you.
Nadine kept going, because gossip women had a survival instinct for weakness.
“Not exclusive though, from what I heard.”
You should have stopped her.
You did not.
Tessa looked up from her soup.
“Nadine.”
Nadine ignored her.
“What? He’s been seen with that model too. Anya something. The Danish one. Pretty and tall. I can’t remember her surname, but she is in that swimsuit advert.”
Tessa sighed.
“That describes every model in London.”
You looked toward the counter before you could stop yourself.
The coffee shop girl was laughing with one of the baristas now, head tipped back, completely unaware that she had just become evidence in your private case against a man who had insulted you for lying about being twenty-eight.
Your voice came out too casual.
“What’s her name?”
Nadine blinked.
“Whose?”
“The coffee shop girl’s.”
“No idea.”
You looked at her.
“So, you know he’s apparently sleeping with her, how long it’s been going on, where it started, and possibly her age, but not her name?”
Nadine shrugged.
“Everyone calls her Tom’s coffee shop girl.”
Something about that made you feel briefly, unexpectedly sorry for her.
Then irritated again.
With him.
With everyone.
With yourself.
“Wonderful. And why does everyone know so much about my co-star’s private life?”
Tessa gave you a look over her soup.
“Because everyone knows everything.”
Nadine nodded solemnly.
“Especially on a studio lot.”
“That sounds deeply unhealthy.”
“It is.”
Tessa added, “Also Natalia from makeup has a crush on him, so she’s extra observant.”
You remembered Natalia’s eyes flicking in the mirror.
Wonderful.
So not only was the set full of gossip, it was organised gossip. Departmental gossip. Gossip with infrastructure.
“Wow,” you said.
A chair scraped beside you.
Sven, Kurt’s assistant director, dropped into the spare seat with a tray and the unimpressed expression of a man who had walked into exactly the conversation he expected.
His eyes moved from Nadine, to Tessa, to you.
Then, without even pretending to guess, he said, “Gossiping about Tom again?”
Nadine put a hand to her chest.
“We are not gossiping.”
Sven looked at her.
“Nadine.”
She lasted half a second.
“Fine. Slightly.”
“You do realise he can hear more than you think.”
“He’s all the way over there.”
Sven looked at Nadine.
“And?”
Tessa snorted into her soup.
Nadine leaned back, entirely unrepentant.
“He’s an easy target.”
Sven’s face arranged itself into grave, exaggerated disappointment.
“God. I am so disappointed in you people.”
Nadine rolled her eyes.
“So disappointed in us, why don’t you go and sit with your friend over there?”
Sven looked across the café to where Tom was sitting alone with his book, tea, and mostly untouched salad.
Then he picked up his coffee.
“Excellent idea.”
“Traitor,” Tessa said.
“I am morally superior,” Sven corrected, already standing.
Nadine waved him off.
“Tell him we were saying lovely things.”
Sven gave her a look over his shoulder.
“I’m not lying so you can appear to be more professional than you are.”
Then he stood with his tray and crossed the café.
You tried not to watch.
You failed.
Tom looked up when Sven reached him. Whatever Sven said made Tom’s mouth twitch, not quite a smile, but close enough to be irritating. He closed the Hemingway around one finger to keep his place, leaned back slightly, and answered.
They seemed familiar.
Not close exactly.
But easy.
There was a shorthand there. The kind people got from long days on a previous set. Shared exhaustion. Shared jokes. Shared knowledge of who was difficult, who was late, who needed too many takes, who smoked when they were annoyed.
Sven sat opposite him for a few minutes, talking quietly while Tom picked at the salad and ignored the pastry bag. Then Tom pushed his chair back, took his cigarettes from his jacket pocket, and Sven followed him outside.
Of course.
A smoke.
Naturally.
Apparently every difficult man in film exited scenes by poisoning himself elegantly.
The door swung shut behind them.
Nadine waited precisely three seconds.
Then Tessa pointed her spoon at her.
“Less gossip with Sven around.”
Nadine rolled her eyes.
“He’s dramatic.”
“He’s right.”
“He’s always right. It’s one of his most annoying traits. But he is also invested.”
You looked toward the glass door.
Through it, you could see Tom and Sven standing just outside the café, not close enough to hear, but close enough to see the easy angle of their bodies. Tom lit his cigarette first, then held the lighter out for Sven without looking. Sven leaned in, said something, and Tom gave him that almost-smile again.
You looked away.
Too late.
Tessa noticed.
“They’re friends?” you asked, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near invasive.
Nadine shrugged.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Tessa said, “Sven worked with him last year. On that film with Rami Malek.”
You looked at her.
“Tom did a movie with Rami Malek?”
Tessa blinked.
“Yes. So did you, didn’t you?”
For a second, your brain stalled.
Then caught up.
“Oh. Yes.”
Nadine stared at you.
“You forgot?”
You heard how defensive that sounded and immediately made it worse.
“I just didn’t know Tom and Rami had worked together. Not that it matters. Obviously it doesn’t matter. People work together. That’s literally the job. I just meant I didn’t connect those two facts in my head, and now I have, and apparently my mouth decided everyone needed to be informed of the process.”
Tessa watched you for a beat.
Nadine’s mouth twitched.
“Right.”
You picked at the corner of your napkin.
“Great. Good. Glad we all experienced that.”
Tessa stirred her soup, amused.
“Small world in this industry.”
You looked down at your untouched sandwich.
Then toward the window again, where Tom was smoking with Sven, head tilted slightly as he listened, one hand tucked into his pocket, the other holding the cigarette near his mouth.
Small world.
Too small.
Horribly small.
A world in which your fiancé hated Tom because of a BAFTAs argument. Jess had slept with him and cried about it. You had slept with him without knowing his name. He had slept with a coffee shop girl on another studio lot. Sven had worked with him before. He had worked with Rami. You had worked with Rami. Natalia had a crush on him. Nadine knew everyone’s business except the actual names of the women involved.
And now you were supposed to spend the afternoon kissing him in front of a camera.
You stood.
“Often too small.”
Tessa looked up.
“You going?”
“Yeah.”
Nadine frowned at your plate.
“You’ve barely eaten.”
“Not hungry.”
“Take the sandwich.”
“I won’t eat it.”
“Take it anyway. Actors fainting in front of the cameras creates paperwork.”
You took it because arguing required energy you no longer possessed.
As you turned for the door, Tom looked through the glass.
Just briefly.
Smoke in one hand. Sven beside him. Hemingway abandoned inside beside his cold tea.
His eyes met yours.
For one second, neither of you moved.
Then his gaze dropped to the sandwich in your hand.
Back to your face.
A small crease appeared between his brows.
Not concern.
No.
You refused to call it that.
Attention, maybe.
Annoying attention.
You looked away first.
“See you on set,” you said to no one in particular.
Then you walked out, your untouched sandwich in one hand and your script in the other, your appetite somewhere back in rehearsal room three with the bent pages, the fake lamp, and every ugly thing Tom had said before proving, over lunch, that the industry was not only too small.
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