Beau wasn’t sure why he’d so readily agreed to take Buddy out for drinks. It had been a moment of madness, inviting him out to get completely sloshed in a place so public that he might break the other man’s career before he’d even made it. His own reputation was already in tatters and he’d only agreed to this latest script to help win people over. Anya, as well intentioned as she was and forever Beau’s sole champion – even in the face of false accusations and a narrative that was sending him on a one-way trip to the morgue – had insisted that there was nothing millennials loved more than watching two white men go at it in an R-rated film or series. She was certain he’d have the masses back on his side in no time.
Still, he wasn’t sure what had possessed him to try and buddy up – no pun intended – to his new costar. There was no reason at all they couldn’t be consummate professionals on set, and total strangers off. Beau had rarely made the same efforts with past costars, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little bit endeared by the other man’s naïveté. Beau knew firsthand what the industry could do to you, how it could chew you up and spit you right back out, and he had surprised himself by wanting to ensure that didn’t happen to someone so new on the scene.
The pub they’d agreed to meet at was a bit of a dive as far as Beau was concerned, but it suited him just fine. He wasn’t the sort of person you’d expect to see in a sports bar, which is why he’d hoped it would be the perfect place for him to slip under the radar. Still, he’d taken the extra measure of a baseball cap to obscure his face, feeling confident that the newly formed stubble that dotted his jaw – grown out of laziness and a touch of shame-spiraling – would be enough to throw people off his scent.
He was usually a touch more clean-shaven and refined than this, something that more closely resembled the way Buddy was standing in front of him now, actually.
The other man was breathless, giving the impression that he’d rushed there, and his attire did not match that of the venue. Beau should have found it annoying, the fact that he’d shown up looking so completely out of place that it might blow his cover almost immediately. Instead, he was a little charmed.
“I’d let you borrow mine, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the look,” he smirked, arching a brow as he quietly appraised the other man. It was completely shameless, the way his gaze raked up and down Buddy’s form, enjoying the cut of his (admittedly low budget) suit jacket and the way his t-shirt seemed perfectly sculpted to his torso. His heart gave a defiant tug in his chest at the thought, heat rushing to his cheeks as well as between his thighs. These were not the sort of ordinary thoughts you had when looking at another man, and so he tore his gaze away abruptly, his head hung low as he stared holes into the QR code that the other man was surveying now.
With a non-committal shrug, he gestured to the two pints that were waiting on their table. One was already half-full, with Beau wasting no time in necking it the minute the glass had hit the table, and the other still housing a semi-perfect head on it. He’d read somewhere that the Cleven’s were Irish, and this was just about the only pub he’d been able to find in this hellish city that could pull a decent pint of Guinness. He hoped his stereotype paid off and Buddy wasn’t about to tell him he was more of a cocktail guy.
“Here’s one I prepared earlier,” he smiled, a little cheekily, lifting his gaze to finally meet Buddy’s once more. “Drinks are on me today.”
Buddy felt a little breathless, standing here in front of Beau Ramsey and knowing he was the person the other man was here to meet. It still seemed so surreal to him that all the acting classes, the after-school drama groups and the heap of rejection e-mails sitting inside his inbox after another bombed audition, had finally paid off. He was here to meet Beau, sit with him, get to know him, all with the certainty that they were preparing to work together in the future. How lucky was he!?
A giggle left him at Beau’s quip. He wanted to laugh at all the right times, respond positively to everything he had to say to him. Anything to find himself on even footing with the other man.
“No, no, you keep it,” he grinned, holding up a hand. “You suit it much better than me.”
He gave Beau a quick once over, noting the stubble on his jaw that wasn’t typical of all the looks and styles cameras usually caught the other man wearing. But Buddy decided it suited him. It made Beau look rugged, and now he wondered if the moustache he was growing for his own part in the movie now seemed ridiculous in comparison. Beau’s beard was growing in effortlessly, whilst Buddy’s was so deliberate, he immediately began fretting that it would expose him for the tryhard he truly was.
He was so caught up in wondering if he could rip the whole stupid thing off in one go, that he didn’t fully comprehend what Beau was doing until a pint of Guinness was pushed in front of him.
“Oh!”
A smile lit up his face as he hooked his feet around the rungs of the chair he sat on and pulled the pint towards him.
“That’s so funny. I mean, Guinness is Irish, see, and I don’t know if you know this but I’m actually Irish,” he explained.
He knew he didn’t sound totally Irish. His accent was an amalgamation of every movie star he’d ever been infatuated with. He’d adopted James Stewart’s transatlantic twang in the early days of primary school, much to the dismay of his teachers. Since then, he’d tried to copy certain little dialects and tones that he heard in a film and was fascinated by. Robbie was so clearly from the Clevens’ homeland, and so were their parents. But Buddy truly sounded like he could be from anywhere, which was always a plus when casting directors wanted nothing more than a plain-old, home-grown American standing in front of them. Buddy could hide his nationality behind whatever was required of him.
He picked up the pint and took a drink, foam clinging to his upper lip. Truthfully, he didn’t drink beer all that much, but he wasn’t going to say that in front of Beau, not when the other man had gone to the trouble of buying him one.
“Thank you,” he smiled.
He relaxed a little, not feeling as much like a fish out of water. The TV speakers were still a muffled din around them, as well as the volume of the crowd that had gathered, but Buddy was intently staring at Beau.
“And thanks again for meeting me here. You didn’t have to, I was just… Sorry, this is so insane to me! Like, you wouldn’t believe! I can’t get over the fact that I get to work with someone like you. It’s… it’s…” He brought his hands up by his face and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s crazy. But I’m so excited.”
