“Your garbage is full.”

Michael looks up over the top of the espresso machine, peeking through the long line of white paper cups to see what obnoxious and horrifying person has come to torment him. There’s a line-up of caffeine-deprived socially-dysfunctional morons that wriggles back and forth around merchandising displays all the way to the door of the store, he and his shift supervisor are the only ones on the floor, and Michael’s making espresso drinks so fast that his shoulder and biceps are starting to ache from pulling the lever on the old bastard of a machine.

A big hand pushes an empty cup (that’s destined to contain a half-caf no-foam extra-hot macchiato) aside and Michael is looking into a pair of inexcusably pretty green eyes. Tom fucking Welling.

“Thanks for letting me know,” Michael says and though his voice is trying for bright and cheerful and “I’m a can-do partner!” it comes out more like irritated and harried and “please fuck off now.”

At least there was a please in there somewhere.

He’d heard that Tom Welling was a regular at this location but didn’t quite expect to see the guy on his first shift in the store. Michael’s not one to get thrown by celebs and he knows that because he was a minor celeb himself about seven years ago. Still, it’s unusual that a hot guy from TV looks even prettier in person -- so often, features that are perfect and regular on a screen look overlarge and slightly unbalanced in real life.

Three lattes later, Michael’s putting a sleeve on a double tall non-fat cappuccino, and he looks up to see that Tom Welling is standing at the front of the line for retrieving drinks.

And Tom Welling’s eyes are fixed on the way Michael’s sliding that sleeve over the white cup, high and snug and oh.

Interesting.

Michael grins in spite of himself and in spite of the insanity surrounding him, and makes full eye contact as he sets the drink on the bar. “Double tall non-fat cappuccino!” he calls, and holds on long enough that Tom Welling’s fingers brush against his own when Tom wraps his hand around the cup.

“I guess I picked a bad time to bug you about the garbage,” says Tom Welling, and when he smiles suddenly, Michael feels the slightest bit giddy.

“Unless you were offering to change the bag yourself,” Michael leads, arching one eyebrow and noting that Tom Welling doesn’t wear a wedding band.

With a short forced laugh, Tom shakes his head and fidgets with the sleeve of his cappuccino. “Thanks,” he says finally, raising his cup to his lips, turning as though to go. But he stops, looks back, and smiles again, almost nervously. “Have a good day.”

Michael says it about a dozen times in five minutes, but once in a while he means it. “You too,” he says, sincerely, and gets back to work.

Tom Welling.

Hmm.

The next time he’s in, Michael’s working is a closing shift, so he doesn’t see Tom. He still hears about him.

“One of our regulars was asking about you yesterday,” says the shift supervisor while Michael’s locking the door and gathering garbage from tables around the store.

“Did I spit in her coffee?” Michael asks, and pushes a chair out of his way.

The supervisor laughs. “He didn’t mention if you did. He just wanted to know if your name was Michael.”

Michael looks up, surprised. He doesn’t get recognized much anymore, and certainly not up here in Vancouver. “What did you say?”

“He didn’t ask for a last name, so I just said yeah. I thought maybe he wanted to complain about something.”

“How kind of you,” says Michael. “And?”

“He said you used to be on a TV show, he thought.” She drops a blender lid and swears. “Anyway, I said you were new. And that I didn’t know if you were.”

Almost asking, but not quite. Michael likes her, but he doesn’t know about the rest of the staff, so he’s not sure which way to go. Still, any idiot with an internet connection and access to his last name could go to the IMDb and find out for themselves -- Michael Rosenbaum (I) actor (Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane, 1999). Then it would be, “You know Selma Blair?” Yes, she’s secretly a bulimic hermaphrodite. And, “I don’t remember that show. Was it good?” No, it was a formulaic piece of shit playing on the Friends theme and it tanked halfway through the second season. And, worst of all, “So why did you quit acting?” To pursue my dream of working at Starbucks, why else?

Yeah, the inevitable. Michael can only go skipping from location to location for so long before someone figures it out. “Who was it?” Michael asks. “The regular.” Deliberately avoiding the supervisor’s question.

“Tom Welling,” she smiles, waggling her eyebrows. “He plays Clark Kent on that show Smallville.”

“Yeah,” Michael says shortly, and then goes to bag the garbage. When his co-worker shows signs of pressing the issue, he blasts her with a wide grin and starts singing along with the radio, squeaky falsetto and cheesy dance moves, and soon she’s laughing too hard to talk.

He just needs a little longer to figure out how the hell Tom Welling knows anything at all about the guy who was very nearly his co-star.

Michael’s on till the next morning, tired and bleary-eyed and not particularly looking forward to the rest of the day. He’s stuck working with someone whose name ends in ‘i', so of course she can’t quite seem to remember the component ingredients in any kind of bar drink.

“Hey,” says the next customer, not in the distracted way of most pre-caffeinated customers. Michael looks up with a fake half-smile, his fingers already on the till buttons.

Tom Welling. “Hey,” Michael answers, adding the second half of his smile.

Tom just keeps smiling back at him for two or three seconds, his eyes flicking down to the counter and back to Michael’s eyes over and over, until Michael finally decides that enough is enough.

He clicks his tongue quietly, signaling bored impatience, and then says, “What can I get for you?”

“Oh,” says Tom, blinking out of his grinning trance and, yeah, blushing prettily. “Oh, I’ll have a cappuc-- no. Um. I’ll just get a venti dark roast.”

The person on till pours the drip coffee, and Michael has a funny suspicion that this is why Tom Welling changed his mind partway into his order. Michael announces the total and takes Tom’s crumpled blue five, hands him his change and feels Tom’s big warm fingers drag along his palm during the transfer, and yeah. Okay. So Tom Welling is into Michael. Nothing to be alarmed about there, it’s not like he or any other barista can go for more than three shifts in a row without one pervert or another hitting on them.

But Tom Welling isn’t exactly a typical barista-perv, Michael reminds himself as he goes to pour Tom’s venti dark roast. For one thing, he’s straight and married (Michael knows how to use IMDb too) and for another -- for another…

“So you, uh,” says Tom, lingering long enough to draw glares from the people behind him in line, “you’re Michael, right?”

“Yeah,” says Michael, and nods at the next person who is already edging forward. She lights into her order and Michael is vaguely aware of the way Tom is still standing at the till, just off to the side in front of the pastry case.

“And half-sweet, did I say half-sweet?”

“Yeah,” Michael nods, Tom Welling on the periphery of his vision like a large vivid hallucination. “Yeah, you did.” He calls the drink and while he’s making change, Tom steps closer again.

“Because I think we’ve met before. You just look really familiar.”

It’s such an obvious line that Michael finds himself grinning as he shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says, keeping his gaze fixed on the till, the next customer.

“No, really, I’m sure we’ve --”

“We haven’t,” Michael says, and the words are oddly harsh, so much so that Brandi or Cindi or Kerri looks over at him with sudden interest. Michael half-laughs and looks over at Tom, who has gone pink-cheeked and seems hurt, like an overeager puppy whose overtures were rebuffed. “I’m -- I would remember,” Michael says, more evenly. “Meeting you. I’d remember.”

Their eyes lock for a moment, and it suddenly gets serious in Starbucks. Then the guy who’s been waiting to place his order says, loudly, “Gimme a half-caf latte. Venti. Extra shot, extra hot. No foam,” and Michael looks away first.

When Michael finishes taking the impatient man’s order, Tom is over by the napkins and milk, sweetening his coffee with his broad back turned.

And by the time Michael lets himself look again, Tom is gone.

Michael calls ICM as soon as he gets off work, walking down 70th with his cell phone against his ear. The receptionist is walking the line between a polite ‘fuck off’ and a careful interrogation of his credentials, but it’s not until Michael squints hard and manages to pull his erstwhile agent’s extension number out of the ether that she relaxes into the friendly cooing tone he used to get all the time.

“Let me just see if Ian’s available,” she says, “and then I’ll transfer you over.” Two staticky clicks and half a ring later, and Michael’s plugged back into Hollywood like he never left.

“Michael!” exclaims Ian warmly. “Man, how have you been, we’ve missed you!”

Yes, missed him so much that when Michael called to terminate ICM’s contract with him, they’d argued for about five minutes before conceding. “I’ve been okay,” Michael says. “I’m living up in Vancouver, actually. Funny, huh?”

Ian agrees that it’s funny with a forced laugh. “So, to what do I owe this pleasant surprise?” he asks as soon as he possibly can.

“Don’t get excited,” Michael says in a flat tone. “Nothing’s changed on my end, so unless you want to try and convince me that the rest of the universe has changed, then --”

“I still think you’re blaming us for something that we had no control over,” says Ian, finally sounding more like the guy he was last time they spoke.

“Regardless, that’s not why I called,” Michael sidesteps neatly. “I just wanted to ask you -- back when I was up for Lex Luthor, did anyone show Tom Welling my screen tests?”

“Ohh,” exhales Ian slowly and thoughtfully. “Look, I can’t tell you off the top of my head if they did. That would be in the producers’ court. But I mean, it would be strange if they had. Because from what I heard, they were having a hell of a time getting Welling to sign. I don’t they were exactly sitting around showing him films of his potential co-stars. Why do you ask?”

“Just curiosity,” says Michael.

There’s a slight pause, and Ian tries again. “Are you working at all? I know you said you wanted to get back into the theatre, I could pull some strings.”

“I’m not in the business anymore,” Michael answers. “It turns out it was just easier to leave altogether."

“But with your talent,” exhales Ian, but stops. It makes Michael smile -- for all the ass-kissing Ian does, he’s genuinely having difficulty delivering a sincere compliment. “What about writing? You used to write.”

“You’re going to go out and hawk my scripts now?” asks Michael, laughing.

“I know people who --”

“Thanks, Ian. You answered my question. I appreciate it.” He snaps his phone shut and walks faster.

His heart is racing and he doesn’t quite know why.

Smallville is in reruns on some Canadian channel and Michael drinks three beers just watching one hour. He’s never caught the show before, has actually deliberately avoided it, but now it doesn’t have to be about Michael and what he’s missed. It can be about Tom instead, what Tom does.

The storyline is derivative: Lex Luthor marries in haste and doesn’t get a chance to repent at leisure before Clark Kent saves the day, discovering his heat-vision powers in the process.

Tom Welling is wooden but not nearly as bad as Michael might have guessed. The producers practically ordered him out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog; it was a running joke even back then before he’d been signed, when Michael and John Schneider were trading low-pitched rumors in the casting director’s office. Michael feels oddly proud of Tom as he watches with a long-dormant critical eye. Yeah, Tom has a slight tendency to mumble his lines whenever he’s trying to emote, but the episode gives him a few scattered comedic moments, and Tom really shines in those.

The writing is stilted and the pacing is jerky, but the show is beautifully shot, and Michael gets a fourth beer and changes to the Canucks game while he tries to accept the idea that being part of Smallville might not have been a terrible thing. He brushes an alcohol-clumsy hand through his short dark faux-hawk and tilts the last of his beer down his throat.

He probably would have looked ridiculous bald anyway.

Michael gets up, trying to head for his bed. He winds up in front of his laptop instead, whose sole purpose for the past several months has been nothing more than a porn-retrieval-device. This time, he finds himself staring at a blank word processing document template, heavy Courier font blinking grey, requesting things like ‘Insert Title Here’ and ‘Click here to insert character name for dialogue’.

He scrolls down impatiently and clicks on the first large gray block, then starts typing hastily, like he’s on a deadline.

Working at Starbucks, at least as a reliable nearly-full-time barista, is not unlike having a newborn baby. Michael can’t remember the last time he slept for more than four hours continuously. Heaven for him would be two days off in a row with no chance of being called in for overtime.

Heaven is a long way off when he wakes up at 3:30 in the morning and staggers into the shower. Right, opening shift starts at 4:30 and today is -- it’s…well, it’s some weekday and Michael’s going on two hours of rest.

He achieves a sort of consciousness about halfway along his walking route to work, shrugging his shoulders in for warmth inside his gore-tex rain jacket and listening to the big trolley buses shushing past. Of course, the first thing his mind goes to is yesterday’s conversation with ICM.

Tom probably hasn’t ever seen Michael’s screen tests, if Ian’s right. So maybe Tom just remembers Michael from the sit-com he used to be on, or maybe one of the handful of movies where he’s had minor roles. Michael was telling the truth when he’d said that he’d remember meeting Tom, so it’s got to be something like that.

In which case, Tom has no idea that Michael had anything to do with Smallville, however briefly. By this time, five years have gone by, and Michael would be surprised if anyone on the production team even remembers that he exists, much less that he was once slated to co-star.

It should put Michael at ease to realize this, but it doesn’t. He’s edgy and exhausted and his mind still feels vaguely out of focus, which hasn’t happened for a long time. Too little sleep, too much beer, and maybe just a little dollop of stress from having spoken to Ian yesterday -- Michael halts momentarily in his trudging and looks down at his shoes.

“You,” he orders darkly, fixing a glare on his right foot, “are going to behave today. Got it?’

His foot doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t show any signs of rebellion either as Michael starts walking again. When he stumbles a little a few steps later, Michael is content to blame it on the darkness and a slight unevenness in the pavement.

The store is warm and glowing-bright and thankfully, Michael’s working with another guy today, so they go about their opening duties in intent masculine silence, each nursing a mug of coffee between tasks. “Late night?” asks the co-worker about ten minutes before opening.

The coffee’s helped a little, so Michael’s speech is clearer than it might have been an hour earlier. “Yeah. Catch the game?”

“Fuckin’ heartbreaker, man,” says the other man, shaking his head.

Michael just nods and volunteers himself for till duty. Which has nothing to do with the distinct possibility that Tom Welling might be in again today.

“Venti dark roast,” says Tom again, more confidently than yesterday, and Michael smiles as he keys in the order. It’s amazing how late eight o’clock can feel if you start work before five. It’s easy to concentrate now, to work around the blurry patches in Michael’s tired mind. He hasn’t spilled anything and he hasn’t had to repeat himself to customers and he’s moving effortlessly between the till and the pastry case and the percolator.

What he’s not capable of doing, Michael discovers as he looks at Tom Welling, is making small talk. He’s still just smiling like an idiot, his mind a perfect blank. Even the default Starbucks dialogue has evaporated. At length, he grasps onto something he heard earlier in the day, and manages, “Fuckin’ heartbreaker of a game last night, huh?”

Michael just said ‘fuck’ to Tom Welling.

Who looks confused and slightly shocked.

Which makes sense, because a normal barista doesn’t casually throw ‘fuck’ into a simple sentence when serving a customer.

Tom clearly has no idea what Michael’s talking about, and of course he doesn’t, he’s not a goddamn Canadian or a Rangers fan, and that means that he’s going to do the guy-thing where he just nods and agrees, because no guy wants to admit that he possesses less than encyclopedic knowledge about any given sport.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he just cracks a brilliant grin and laughs. “Hockey?” Tom asks, handing over his money.

“Hockey,” Michael agrees, making change. “Have you heard of it? Sport where people strap blades to their boots and slide around on the ice and hit a little black disc with sticks?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” says Tom, and there’s some kind of Starbucksian miracle happening right now, because there’s no one else in line. No one.

“You never played when you were a kid?” Michael asks, more seriously now, turning to get Tom’s coffee.

“Can’t even skate,” says Tom. “I never learned how.”

The words are out of Michael’s mouth before his brain can offer approval. “You should try it. I could teach you.”

Bad idea, bad idea, but Tom’s eyes go bright and sweet and Michael’s glad he already put the cup of coffee down or it’d be all over the counter. “Really?”

Michael lifts one shoulder. “Been skating since I was walking.” He can’t look away from Tom’s clear gaze, the way he’s beaming at Michael.

“I’m --” Tom says, suddenly awkward, and extends a hand, shaking his head at his own hesitation. “You’re Michael, and I’m -- Tom.”

“I know,” Michael says, but takes the hand and shakes it anyway. Tom’s hand is ridiculous. Big and warm and soft.

“So -- I have to get going, I have to be at work in like seven minutes,” Tom rushes, letting go and reaching for his coffee, “but maybe I could call you?”

Michael has never done this before, even though it’s practically in the employee manual. He picks up a drink sleeve, steals his co-worker’s sharpie pen, and writes out his number in black digits across the green logo before slipping the sleeve onto Tom’s outstretched cup. “Have a good day,” he says, and tries to smile before realizing that he’s been smiling all along.

“You too,” says Tom. He pauses, then adds, “I look forward to learning how to skate from a real live Canadian.”

Tom is all the way out of the store before Michael’s brain digests that last statement.

It seems that Tom didn’t check out IMDb after all -- because Michael’s birthplace is listed right under his name. And unless male models really are as dumb as they’re supposed to be, Michael doubts that Tom wouldn’t recognize New York as being one of the lower fifty.

It’s just as well that the mystery of how Tom knows Michael has been reopened, Michael supposes. It gives him something else to worry about, something other than how the hell he’s going to teach Tom Welling to skate when he hasn’t been on the ice himself in five years.

Tonight’s Smallville is far stupider than last night’s episode, though it probably doesn’t help that Michael is watching while sober this time. Now he’s seen the show once, he’s able to give himself a bit more critical distance from the thing, and he focuses on Wentworth Miller’s performance in the role of Lex Luthor.

Michael can’t quite deny that Wentworth is a good actor, though he does seem to be more in the Tom Welling line of training: when the scene calls for it, he can deliver a brooding blue stare with the best of them. In fact, he delivers the stare almost non-stop. In scenes where he and Tom interact, it’s like a battle for whose lips are the fullest, whose eyes are the heaviest-lashed, and Michael finally gets why it is that the producers would have wanted to play his own unconventional appearance against Tom’s overwhelming prettiness. Wentworth and Tom are almost too much when seen together, too much the same -- though it does allow for a certain fraternal vibe that is almost disturbing when combined with the heavy subtext of the Lex-Clark friendship.

Michael wonders idly if Tom and Wentworth ever screwed around, but dismisses the notion almost immediately. The air of antagonism that drifts between the supposed friends has got to come from the actors, not the director or the script. Tom and Wentworth are probably about as friendly as two spoiled sleek housecats meeting for the first time. It’ll be all too easy for the writers to make these characters into enemies.

Michael blinks down at his open file and smiles. He appreciates a bigger challenge.

The phone rings about half a page later, and Michael’s irritation quickly flickers into interest as he considers the possibility that Tom is calling already.

“Hello?” he says into the receiver, juggling his laptop and the remote as he mutes the TV and saves his file.

“Hello sweetheart, how are you?”

“Hey Mom, I’m good,” Michael says, automatically turning the TV’s volume back up.

“Any auditions this week?” she asks.

She doesn’t know he quit acting, of course. Too complicated to explain. “I’m up for one role,” he lies, flipping away from Smallville, heading for the cartoon network. “They’re looking for someone who can play hockey.”

“Sounds perfect for you,” she enthuses, the ever-supportive mom.

Michael looks over at the little orange pill bottle on his end table and sighs shortly. “Got my fingers crossed,” he says.

Three days go by and Michael doesn’t see Tom or hear from him. Michael forbids himself to obsess about this, and occasionally he even succeeds in shutting his brain up because the screenplay he’s writing (he’s now admitted that it’s actually a screenplay) has become vivid and all-important. He hasn’t written for months, hasn’t wanted to write for even longer, and as a result, Tom Welling’s seeming indifference takes a backseat to the characters and plot unwinding in Michael’s mind during the walks to and from work.

It’s a waste of time, of course. Michael’s not going to do anything with the screenplay even if he finishes it. He’s left the business and that’s that, and it’s just this weird hobby of his.

He’s certainly not fantasizing about getting Tom to read it and asking his opinion.

(If Tom ever calls.)

Michael thinks best when he’s moving, so on the third day that Tom doesn’t call, Michael decides to break up his routine of long idea-generating walks with a trip to the local indoor rink.

His skates need sharpening, but there’s a machine right outside the concession so Michael slams them in with a couple of toonies, trying not to imagine what his coach would say about letting an automated box do a poor job of what professionals are trained to do well. It’s not like his Bauers have seen the light of day recently anyway, he thinks as he listens to the scream of his blades inside the aluminum machine.

Right, skates sharpened and new laces laced, and Michael pays his admission and steps into the arena. This time of day it’s a free-skate, and he sees that he’ll be sharing the ice with three fourteen-year-old 2010 figure skating hopefuls, a three-year-old helmet-wearing boy and his overeager hockey dad, and two seniors who look healthy and spry as only Vancouverites can. Michael shivers a bit in the chill but resists donning his hoodie because he’ll be warm enough after being on the ice for a while.

If only his legs will cooperate.

The skates feel heavy and strange, digging into parts of his ankle and arches that have lost their muscle tone, but Michael’s hands are confident as he tightens his laces and tugs his boot-cut jeans down over the black plastic. He doesn’t give himself time to think anymore, just pictures Tom Welling’s open smile, and clomps awkwardly to the gate opening to the ice.

Three glides after his first hesitant step onto the rink’s surface, Michael can feel the huge grin splitting wide on his face. He’d forgotten this, god, this freedom and speed and the cold whip of air as he picks up the pace, his arms swinging easily back and forth as he gathers energy to cut straight across the rink. His ankles are immediately sore, his calves ache, and his nose starts running from the cold, but Michael is still grinning like an idiot. Fuck, yeah.

Michael spins past the dad and his toddler, and waves, watching the little guy pushing hard on his runners as he laughs and windmills his short arms. Michael passes two of the figure skaters and winks just to see them blush and giggle, and then he goes to make a quick stop just to feel the edge of his skates grate against the smooth ice.

His right foot doesn’t get the message in time.

Next thing Michael knows, he’s slammed up against the boards, shoulder to the wall, his palms red and burned with cold, the whole right side of his body numb and tingling from where he wiped out. The old man is extending a hand with a concerned face, and even though Michael knows it’s not anyone’s fault but his own, he shakes his head and scowls and gestures that he’s fine.

“Hit a bumpy patch?” asks the older man sympathetically.

“Must have,” Michael grunts, pushing himself upright and feeling now how his right foot is clumsy and skittish, like it belongs to someone else. He manages to make it back into the box, keeping his right side to the boards and making short uneven glides like the three-year-old on his runner skates. He is aware of something huge brewing just under the surface of his skin, some big unnamed emotion, but he thinks he can keep it under wraps just long enough to get to the privacy of his apartment.

He tries once, twice, and again, to pinch his skate’s laces between fingers that feel huge. It’s no use -- his right hand can’t grab onto anything so small and intricate as a knot. Michael realizes he’s breathing hard and loud, and he forces himself to concentrate, be patient and relaxed and everything he’s supposed to be to make this work.

His right hand gets the lace this time, only to have it slip away at the last second.

The storm breaks, and Michael slams his foot down hard in a sudden eruption of fury. “Dammit!” he shouts, his voice hollow and lost in the vast space. “Goddamn fucking piece of shit bugger.” Slamming his heel down again and then striking his useless right hand against the bench.

Too much typing. Too many late nights. There are twenty reasons why this whole skating thing was a stupid idea, but the excuses are flimsy and annoying and they don’t feel like they should have been enough to send Michael flying down onto the ice, to strand him here with his skates on like a peewee player whose dad is too busy to help.

Michael drops his head down into his palms and waits until he feels like he can think in a straight line. Then, with deliberate slow movements, he reaches down and pins the laces down with his awkward right hand before starting to pick at the knot with his good fingers on the other hand. It takes fifteen minutes to get his skates off.

“God, what happened to you?”

Michael reaches up and rubs at the short cut across his right eyebrow. He hadn’t even noticed it until he was halfway home from the rink yesterday. He felt something wet and realized it wasn’t raining for a change. His fingers came away bloody when he reached up to check. “Hockey,” he lies, and waggles the scabbed eyebrow at his shift supervisor. “Think I need stitches?”

She gets up on her tiptoes and hauls his head down to take a closer look. “Ick. Did you go to the doctor?”

“American,” he reminds her. “I can’t just wander into a medi-center like you.”

“Crappy deal,” she says, and releases his head, mussing up his hair on the way. “Well, you’re definitely on the till this morning. You’ll gross everyone out if you’re working the bar. They’ll think you’re going to drip brain juice into their espresso.”

“I think most of our customers could use a little extra brain juice,” Michael replies thoughtfully as he fixes his hair.

She laughs and agrees, but still shunts him over in front of the till.

Which is fine by Michael, even though it’s Saturday and it’s not likely that Tom will be in.

Except suddenly, he is.

“Hey,” Michael says, grinning helplessly even as some girly part of him wants to shout Why haven’t you called?

“Hey,” Tom answers, his own grin surfacing even as he chews on his lower lip like he’s trying to hold back the smile. He is by far the most awake person Michael’s served today. “Working on a Saturday?” he asks, reaching down to clutch the edge of the counter as he leans in.

“You too,” Michael observes, and realizes that he’s been instinctively hiding his cut with one hand, pretending to scratch his forehead. He drops his hand and watches Tom’s expression go from happy to concerned. Michael saves him the trouble of asking and pulls a rueful face, pointing at the cut. “Hockey. Are you sure you want to try skating?”

“Hey, scars are sexy,” Tom insists, back to the sweet smile, complete with that intense green gaze. His eyes even drop to Michael’s upper lip, and Michael’s licking the line of a scar there before he can stop himself.

The girl behind Tom in line sighs loudly, and Michael turns to his co-worker at the other till. “I’m taking my break,” he says, “right after I get this gentleman’s order.”

The other barista divides a look between Michael and Tom and rolls her eyes, but nods anyway. Michael rings up Tom’s cappuccino and pours himself a decaf before waving Tom behind the counter. “I have to get going pretty soon,” Tom says, hesitating for a moment. Michael snags a pumpkin scone from the pastry case and glares meaningfully. Tom laughs and follows as Michael’s shift supervisor pretends not to notice that Michael is breaking the rules.

They get settled at the tiny staff room table sitting across from one another. Michael is covertly contemplating the pleasing breadth of Tom’s palms wrapped around the white paper cup when Tom leans back, freezes, and then laughs tightly.

Michael hears the slight tension in the sound and looks up to find Tom’s gaze fixed on the bulletin board over Michael’s shoulder. Michael turns to see.

Oh. Damn. He forgot about that.

There’s a pin-up of Tom next to about half a dozen pictures of other celebs who frequent this location, and someone’s scrawled across Tom’s neck with a Sharpie: “Venti Dark AKA Yum Yum Give Me Some!!!”

There are about three different ways Michael could play this situation, and having done the Hollywood thing himself, he even knows which way is most socially acceptable. However, being -- well -- being Michael, Michael does the complete opposite. “Oh my god,” he says, feigning shock and amazement, looking between the picture and Tom. “You’re him!”

Tom is frozen for a second before he catches on that Michael is fucking with him, and he breaks into more natural-sounding laughter. “I’m flattered, really,” he says, waving one hand in an imperial gesture. “I’m honored.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Michael says, leaning back in his chair to snag the picture from the board. He folds it in half and hands it to Tom. “Did you see what we wrote about Nicholas Lea?”

Tom squints at the board again. “Number One Starbuck?” he reads, confused.

“That’s not a ‘b’ in ‘Starbuck’, cowboy,” Michael grins, and watches with interest as Tom blushes. “Don’t worry,” Michael assures him. “You’re totally the first runner-up.”

Tom is holding his own picture open, studying it absently. “I don’t always get a venti dark roast,” he complains, but he’s smiling again.

Michael has to kick Tom under the table to get his attention before pushing half of the scone in Tom’s direction. “No, I shouldn’t,” Tom says, wincing and rubbing his stomach like he’s Mary Kate Olsen.

“Pussy,” says Michael. Tom picks up the pastry and bites into it, kicking Michael’s feet in response.

They drink and eat in silence for a minute, trading smiles and glances until Michael is pretty sure that they’re both on the verge of getting their dicks revoked by the Manliness Regulatory Board. He finally breaks the silence.

“So when are you going to tell me about how you lost my number?” he asks, chasing the question with a swallow of hot coffee.

“I did! I really did!” Tom blurts, eyes wide. “Well, not actually lost, but one of my co-workers saw the number on the drink sleeve and she thought it would be funny to show it to everyone, and then I never got it back.”

“Did you tell her you needed it in case of a late-night booty call?” Michael asks, already forgiving Tom, who is (of course) helpless in the face of some barely-legal mouthy co-star. If Michael was taking bets, he’d say it’s that zippy little blonde chick who plays one of Clark Kent’s high school friends.

“I tried to tell her it wasn’t funny,” Tom says, all serious and intent. Michael cracks up, and then Tom does, and then they’re both just laughing helplessly. Michael ends it by grabbing Tom’s hand and flattening it palm-side up on the table between them. He snags the pen clipped onto his green apron and uncaps it to scrawl his number on Tom’s skin.

“Is this better?” Michael asks, and suddenly he’s aware that Tom’s laughter went away as soon as they touched. He looks up and finds Tom watching him, his deep-lidded eyes fixed on Michael’s face, studying him.

For long seconds, Michael is sure that Tom is going to kiss him, but then Tom speaks instead. “I know you,” he says slowly. “God, where do I know you from?” He’s almost talking to himself, the words low and murmured and intimate and Michael feels his own eyelids dropping, his gaze lowering to where Michael’s fingers have Tom’s big hand pinned.

He could tell Tom right now. He could tell Tom that he used to be on TV and in the movies, but then suddenly Michael wouldn’t just be the cute barista Tom’s flirting with. Michael would be a colleague, he’d be in the business, and Tom would look at him differently. Michael bites the inside of his cheek, feeling Tom’s gaze on his face, trying to convince himself that honesty is the best policy.

“So, call me,” Michael says at length, looking up.

Tom sits back as he pulls his hand free, and the moment is broken. “I will. Allison can’t play keep-away this time, right?” He waves his hand in demonstration.

“Just make sure you write the number down somewhere before you see her,” Michael advises. “And remember, if she gives you a hard time about it, tell her ‘booty call’.”

They stand up. Tom gets his drink in one hand and his picture in the other. He gives the pin-up one last look before he tears it down, crumples it up in his fist, and tosses it in the garbage. “I’ll get you guys a real one,” he promises, as though Michael gave a shit.

“Yeah, yeah,” Michael says dismissively, pushing Tom out the door with an elbow to the side. “You’re still just the first runner-up.”

It’s not like he doesn’t have friends. Michael knows about a dozen people in Vancouver alone who might merit the title. They meet sometimes, go out to dinner or catch a Canucks game. Sure, they don’t exactly sit around and ponder the meaning of life but they’re guys, and guys are generally content without having to do that.

And it’s not like he doesn’t date, either. Michael transferred locations almost entirely because of a thing with a co-worker that ended badly a few months back. They’d both thought they could get past it, but they couldn’t. Michael pretended like it was his problem and that’s why he’d left, but he knew it was really her. She didn’t know when to back off -- ironic, considering those were the exact words he’d shouted at her right before he put in for a transfer.

She still calls sometimes, but Michael doesn’t pick up.

So, yeah. Michael isn’t anything like a social outcast. If he’s lonely sometimes, it’s only because part of him misses the constant extroverted display of Hollywood. He fills his head up with characters instead, but now he’s actually finished a first draft of -- well, of something.

Finished, and it’s gone quiet in his head for a while, and Michael feels hollow.

He ponders his options -- call someone up, go and grab a beer. Or flip on the TV and let it be the background noise as he tidies up his apartment. Or grab his skates and try, try again.

Michael hates all the options. It’s five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and he’s full of the kind of elastic energy that he used to take for granted. He stands in the middle of his tiny studio apartment, bouncing a little on his toes.

The phone rings and Michael dives for it. Tom.

“Hey,” he says breathlessly into the receiver.

“Michael,” says a voice that does not belong to Tom.

“Hi,” Michael says, annoyed at himself for thinking Tom would call so soon. “Uh, who is this?”

“It’s Ian.”

For fuck’s sake. “Ian,” Michael repeats tersely, and immediately begins to pace.

“Look, Michael, just wanted to let you know -- I made a couple of calls and checked. Tom Welling never saw those screen tests.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Michael says warily, frowning at his bare white wall.

Ian is quiet for a second, probably waiting for Michael to gush with gratitude.

“Is that the only reason you called?” Michael asks, sparing Ian the trouble of being subtle.

“Actually, no,” says Ian, confident again. “I mentioned your name at a lunch meeting I had, and you wouldn’t believe the response I got. Michael, if you ever want back in -- and you dictate the rules, man, you know that -- I’d always be willing to represent you again.”

Michael is about to tell Ian to go fuck himself when he turns his head and catches sight of his open laptop, the draft of the screenplay winking at him. It makes his heart thud even faster just to contemplate it, but he opens his mouth anyway. “So, you’re talking guest roles on TV?”

“If that’s what you’re after,” says Ian. “TV or the movies, Mikey, you name it.” Full ass-kiss mode, but it’s been a long time since Michael bought into that bullshit.

“I want to meet with some producers,” says Michael in a rush. “I want to pitch an idea I have for a series.”

The slightest hesitation, but it’s enough to tell Michael that he just shot too high. “Sure, Michael, let me make some calls and see what we can do. Do you have a fax machine? Can I fax you a contract?”

“You know,” says Michael, pivoting and heading for the other end of the room, “I’d actually like some time to think about this.”

“Sure, I’ll fax you the contract and you take your time,” says Ian magnanimously.

“No, I’ll call you back and let you know,” says Michael hastily. “Appreciate your help, Ian.” And he hangs up.

The phone rings again not more than ten seconds later. Fucking Ian. Michael picks up the phone again and bites a greeting into the receiver.

“Uh, hey, is this Michael?”

Tom.

Tom Welling.

Michael’s whole body goes warm and boneless as he drops down to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Hey, just the booty call I was waiting for,” he says, grinning helplessly.

Tom’s car isn’t the uber-manly SUV or truck Michael might have expected. He pulls up to the curb in a wine-red little Toyota Echo, and Michael’s still laughing with surprise as he clambers in. “Nice vehicle,” Michael comments, pronouncing the ‘h’ in vehicle with a hillbilly twang.

Tom flushes a little and shakes his head, smirking. “It’s got the best head and leg room,” he tells Michael earnestly. “Most important thing in a car when you’re tall.” He looks different somehow, but Michael can’t quite place it.

“Here I thought the most important thing was whether or not it attracts pussy,” Michael jokes, pulling his seatbelt around his hips and liking the way Tom has one arm across the back of Michael’s seat as he twists around and edges the car back.

“Yeah, well, my wife didn’t really care about that,” Tom says absently, and throws the car back into drive. His arm is gone from the back of the seat again. Michael misses it. “She wanted something safe for the car seat.”

Michael goes cold abruptly, like he’s just wiped out on the ice again. Wife and car seat?

Tom glances over from the sideview mirror as he signals to pull back into traffic. “I should say ex-wife,” he corrects himself with a rueful smile. “Jamie and I separated about a year ago, but we’re still working on the divorce settlement.” He looks over again and swings out onto the road, gunning the little engine to merge with the busy traffic.

One year. Divorce. Michael can breathe again. Now, if only there was some way to find out whether Tom realizes that he and Michael have been flirting. Some Hollywood guys can be remarkably obtuse when it comes to sexual chemistry because they’re used to everyone trying to fuck them. “Where are we headed?” Michael asks, because Tom wouldn’t say on the phone.

“Well, there’s a thing,” says Tom, shrugging, “in West Van. It’s, like, a casual get-together that Went’s holding.”

Fuck, no. Michael can’t -- he can’t -- he casts around in his mind for excuses. He already ruled out the skating thing by making up a story about his skates being in the shop for sharpening. What can he say now? That he hates actors? That would only make Tom feel like an ass.

“But unless you really want to sit around and listen to everyone talk about themselves,” Tom says, “I’d rather not go.”

“Definitely not,” Michael says, relieved.

Tom looks over as he pulls into a right turn lane, heading away from downtown and the North Shore and ‘Went’. “I’d rather just hang out with you,” he says, and Michael has to meet Tom’s eyes because Tom’s voice has suddenly gone sleek and low.

And that addresses Michael’s second worry, because even if the tone of voice and the look are up for interpretation, the way Tom reaches over and squeezes Michael’s knee with his huge warm hand -- is really not a very mixed signal.

Tom has definitely been flirting on purpose.

Tom takes them east, away from the expensive stores and glass-fronted buildings, more and more east until they’re negotiating narrow streets and contemplating signs that only use English as a subtitle. “Lucky Super Pearl Jade Restaurant?” asks Michael as Tom noses the Echo into a tiny spot.

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” says Tom, throwing the car in park. “Do you come to the night market often?”

Michael’s never been to the night market in Chinatown, but he’s heard of it, and he says so.

“Shame on you,” says Tom as he unbuckles. “Bad Vancouverite.”

Perfect chance to let Tom know that Michael’s not really a Vancouverite, that he’s not even Canadian, but then Tom is out of the car and Michael’s scrambling to keep up.

“I thought we’d grab dim sum and then hit the market later,” Tom suggests, looking hilariously out-of-place in a crowd that mostly only reaches as high as his shoulder.

Michael nods, then realizes why Tom looks different than usual. “Where’s the hoodie?” he asks. “And the sunglasses? Aren’t you going to go incognito?” Tom doesn’t usually actually pull the hood up or wear the sunglasses inside the store, but the minute he steps outside they’re both in use. Tonight he’s just wearing a dark blue button-down shirt and dark worn-looking jeans.

Tom grins and lifts one shoulder. “I don’t usually get recognized down here. There might be a couple of people asking for --” He stops himself with a blush, as though it’s too embarrassing to even say. “Does it make you uncomfortable? Because I can grab a pair of sunglasses in one of these stores if --”

“Nah,” says Michael hastily. “I don’t mind. But if you sign any autographs, you have to do one for me too.”

“You want my autograph?” asks Tom, disbelieving.

“And I get to say where,” Michael concludes with a wink.

Tom pretends to consider this, and then nods. “Sounds fair.” And then he reaches out, slips his arm around Michael’s shoulders, and steers them both towards the restaurant.

Tom is surprisingly comfortable here, so much so that Michael almost feels jealous because this Tom -- speaking casually and spreading his long limbs out in relaxation -- has never shown his face at Starbucks. He seems to know the server and though his conversational Chinese seems to be limited to grinning and trying valiantly to pronounce ‘chow mein’ the way the girl does, he is obviously familiar with the menu.

“And that stuff that comes in, like, dumplings, with -- is it duck? And the orange sauce with it?”

The waitress rattles off something in Mandarin and Tom beams like he recognizes the name of the dish. “For two?” she asks, which is the most English she’s spoken so far.

“For two,” Tom agrees, checking with Michael first. “Tsao meeyeh,” he adds with great care, and the server laughs at him before repeating ‘chow mein’ back to him effortlessly. “Have I got it now?” Tom asks, all eager eyes and wide smile.

“You are expert,” she tells him condescendingly. “You have perfect.”

“Tsao meeyeh,” he says one last time, slowly, and she walks away giggling.

Tom turns his attention back to Michael and pours them each a cup of green tea. “Soon you’ll be fluent,” says Michael.

“And I can get a role on that space western where everyone speaks Chinese,” says Tom, shaking his head. “Can you do accents? I’m so jealous of people who can do accents.”

“I’m good with English and Scots and Aussie, and Brooklyn,” says Michael, “pretty much anything that’s an English-speaking accent. But I’m not as good with, you know, European accents.” Tom’s eyes go wide, and Michael realizes that most non-actors probably don’t have this sort of information on the tip of their tongue. “What about you?” Michael asks, clearing his throat and diving for his tea.

“I can’t,” says Tom, spreading hands wide with helplessness. “They wanted me to do an English accent once on the show, I forget why, and they brought in a dialect coach and I spent hours in my trailer saying, like, ‘The rain in Spain’ and shit like that, and finally the coach just went and told the director to figure out another way of doing the episode.”

“I could teach you,” Michael offers automatically, and what’s with him and offering to show Tom how to do things? But Tom is smiling sweetly. “If you want. I mean, I took some classes. I used to act.”

There, that was done. And left up to Tom’s interpretation.

“Say ‘chow mein’,” Tom orders, as though testing Michael.

“Tsao meeyeh,” says Michael, just as the server comes back bearing bowls of egg-drop soup.

“Very good! You better than him,” says the server admiringly.

Tom looks betrayed, and Michael laughs.

If Michael let himself think about it, he might have worried about what they would talk about. The recently divorced, he knows, have to pick their topics carefully unless they want every sentence to start with, ‘we used to’ or ‘once we’. As for Michael, he can only share so many stories about working at Starbucks before he has to resort to mentioning where he’s from, what he’s done with his life that he wound up working for practically minimum wage in the food service industry at the age of thirty-three.

It’s a good thing he didn’t let himself worry about it, then, because he and Tom don’t talk about work, or about home. They talk about Chinese food and Vancouver, and veer off into the B.C. interior, then swing all the way across the continent to New York, and somehow wind up arguing over whether or not movie musicals should make a comeback. Then the dumplings arrive and Michael teaches Tom how to talk like Keanu Reeves. They call their food ‘gnarly’ and ‘excellent’, complete with doofy head bobs, and after about ten minutes, Tom’s actually doing a decent impression.

“It’s like you’re an actor or something,” Michael pretends to marvel, and then he pretends not to notice the pleased blush that floods up to Tom’s ears. It’s like that, then -- Michael should have guessed. Those studio exec fucktards have obviously made it their business to make Tom feel like a living prop instead of the artist that he wants to become. Michael is surprised by the fierce protectiveness that surges inside him at the thought, and he tries to stem it by reaching across the table and laying his hand over Tom’s.

Tom looks up, surprised but interested.

“Repeat after me,” says Michael, slowly, catching Tom’s gaze and holding it. Tom is wary, like Michael might be about to deliver a personal affirmation, but he goes with it. “I wish I knew how to quit you,” he drawls in his best Jake Gyllenhaal voice.

Tom cracks up and then they finish their dessert on a mountain in Wyoming, referring to their green tea ice cream as ‘real nice and ruffreshin’. Tom gets stuck on the ‘cain’t’s and Michael tells him that the trick is to never move his lips or tongue unless absolutely necessary.

This comment earns Michael a clear green ‘oh really?’ look and then Tom leans across the table to bestow a cold sweet green tea kiss. It’s over by the time Michael gets his eyes closed, and when he opens them again, Tom is settling back into his chair with a satisfied look.

“Absolutely necessary,” Tom drawls, tipping an invisible ten-gallon hat at Michael.

Michael tries to laugh and ducks his head as he licks away the traces of Tom’s kiss. “Shee-it,” he manages at length, and then they’re both chuckling again.

It’s dark out now. They head for the main market, towards the noise and the paper lanterns, separate but brushing elbows once in a while. When Michael looks over, he notices all over again that Tom is ridiculously pretty. Even in the half-light -- no, especially in the half-light -- he’s perfect.

Tom catches him looking. “Hey,” he says, almost shyly, and then reaches down to get an arm around Michael’s waist as they keep walking.

They study pirated VCDs and contemplate cutesy stationery with frogs and kittens and broken English slogans. Tom buys a bag of brown-hulled grape-like fruit he calls ‘dragon eyes’ and makes Michael try one, peeling off the strange hard husk and pushing the round golfball-sized thing between Michael’s lips. “It’s sort of like melon,” he tells Michael, licking his fingers with utter innocence.

Michael remembers to chew and spit out the seed and swallow and agree with Tom that it’s like melon, but all his attention is for Tom’s fingers, glistening with sweet juice and saliva.

“Healthy, too,” Tom continues, digging in the bag for another globe of fruit. “It’s got anti-oxidants.”

Michael laughs because Tom’s like a sticky-fingered version of every health-obsessed TV actress he ever met. Tom laughs too, as though he’s not quite sure what’s funny, and Michael notices that Tom’s eyeteeth are sharp like fangs.

“Want any bling for your cell phone?” Tom asks, inclining his head towards a booth that glitters with LED lights.

Michael catches Tom by his sticky fingers as Tom turns away, pulls him back so they’re facing each other. There’s a light in Tom’s eyes like he gets what Michael’s after, and he cradles Michael’s chin with his free hand before he bows his head.

Tom tastes like melon and ice cream and tea. He’s solid and warm and his mouth is almost too wide. And then his lips part and Michael licks inside, and Tom makes a rough breathy sound, his arm going around Michael’s back to pull him in closer. Somewhere behind Michael and to the left, there’s a dragon dance, and somewhere down the street, there are little firecrackers popping and spinning, but everything contracts into this single point until the dragon dance and the firecrackers are part of Tom’s touch, part of how he glides his fingers just under the waistband of Michael’s denim jacket.

“God,” Tom breathes as they break apart, no Keanu or Gyllenhaal in his voice, no one but Tom reacting to Michael and this kiss.

Michael wants to make a joke about people getting him confused with God all the time, but his voice has dried up somewhere in the space between the melon-fruit and this instant. All he can do is study how Tom looks with his pupils blown in the dim light, the way his lips are wet and hungry.

“God,” Tom says again, and his hand pulls Michael in again reflexively while he examines Michael’s face like he did earlier that day. “I’ve known you forever.”

It’s time to tell him, Michael knows it. He can’t let Tom go on thinking that it’s some cosmic connection between them when probably it’s just that Tom caught an episode of bad sit-com TV sometime in the late nineties.

Yeah, it’s time to admit who he is, time to let go of the pretense, but then Michael’s voice says something else entirely. “In that case,” he says, “it’s probably not that big a deal if I put out on the first date, right? I mean, since you’ve known me forever.”

Tom laughs and kisses Michael again, and now it’s different because Tom tastes like Michael, they taste like each other, and Michael may or may not be making small happy noises.

Tom pulls away this time, and now he lets Michael’s waist go. “It kills me to admit it,” he says, not breaking eye contact, “but I wonder if we should take things slow anyway.”

Michael has almost always seen that sort of line as a red flag, a sign that the other person is in this for a longer haul than Michael’s looking for. It’s usually the way Michael knows to go and seek sluttier pastures. But Michael intertwines his fingers with Tom’s and they go wandering down the market hand in hand.

He has to tell Tom.

But not yet.

The skating rink is busier this time. Michael hesitates, mistrustful of his feet, but he forces himself to go out on the ice. His physiotherapist from five years ago would be glad to know that Michael has finally ceased to be the worst and most bull-headed patient in the universe. After all, he’s trying, even though he doesn’t know if he can do it.

He spends twenty minutes cautiously circling the rink before he begins to pick up the pace. He can still feel how sore he is all along one side, where he fell the last time he was here, but the soreness serves as a reminder. Michael listens to his body and practices his left turns, which are easier on his right half. After another twenty minutes, Michael notices that his right hand is tingling with pins and needles, and so he gets off the ice while he can still untie his skates.

His cell phone says he’s missed five calls: two from Starbucks, probably wanting him to fill a shift, two from Ian, who still hasn’t given up on harassing Michael, and one from Tom. He redials the last number as he tosses his duffel bag over his shoulder.

“Dude,” he says into the phone.

“Dude,” replies Tom warmly.

“I thought you were stuck out in the countryside?” Michael half-asks. Tom had said something about filming in Abbotsford all day and night.

“I am. But they don’t need me until after sunset now, so I’m sitting in my trailer with nothing to do.”

“I’m flattered you thought of me,” Michael says dryly.

“Other than the thing I’ve wanted to do all day, of course,” Tom revises, “which is to call you.”

“Lucky you,” Michael says. “I even called you back.” But he can’t keep his smile from getting into his voice.

“So I was wondering,” says Tom, “if you would mind swinging by my place to just, you know, let my dog out for me?”

Michael is dumbstruck for a moment before Tom’s muffled laughter makes itself heard through the phone. “Oh, for sure,” Michael says easily, pushing his way out into the weak and waning sunlight. “I’ll water the plants while I’m there, too.”

“You’re a good friend, Michael,” says Tom with false sincerity, and just that -- just hearing Tom say Michael’s name -- it’s enough to make goosebumps erupt all down the length of Michael’s arms. He’s now wondering how long it’s been since he thought of Tom in conjunction with his last name, how long since he became ‘Tom’ and not ‘Tom Welling’.

“Friend and housekeeping fairy,” Michael jokes back in a campy voice.

“And killer barista,” adds Tom with great fervor. “My coffee was swamp water today. I can’t believe you weren’t there to serve my every need.”

“Well, I tried to get onto the opening shift, but no one wanted to trade,” Michael says, and it hits him that his tone of voice has suddenly gone serious. He didn’t intend to tell Tom that. He clears his throat and does a hasty 180. “What kind of dog?”

“He’s a pug,” answers Tom after a short pause. “His name is Cook.”

“Cook?” repeats Michael incredulously. “A pug named Cook?”

Tom makes an embarrassed noise. “My niece named him?” he tries.

“You know, it’s a good thing you’re pretty,” says Michael as he digs for his sunglasses because he’s walking west and the sun is glaring right in his eyes. “Because otherwise, you’re a total disappointment as a Hollywood hoodlum.” His fingers close around the sunglasses case and Michael pauses mid-stride to put them on. “You drive a Toyota, you own a pug, and you don’t like talking about yourself at all.”

Tom laughs. “Well, I’m no Nicholas Lea,” he says, his voice a tease.

“Enh, you’ll do,” Michael shrugs, resuming his walk. He can’t stop thinking about it, though -- Tom’s practically a poster boy for everything anti-Hollywood, and maybe that’s what’s so compelling about him.

If things had gone differently, if somehow Michael had ended up as Tom’s co-star after all, Michael thinks that maybe the two of them wouldn’t have gotten along much better than Tom and Wentworth. Back then, Michael was all about the celebrity and the picture-perfect life. Acting was something he loved doing, something he was good at, but his true passion used to be for making it big. And Tom -- he wants to do a good job, he wants to prove himself, but it seems like his career is just this crazy gig that forced itself upon him.

“So, tomorrow?” Tom begins, and Michael realizes he’s been quiet for a while, letting the silence grow between them. “Did you manage to get yourself on an opening shift?”

“Yeah, I did,” says Michael, startled into more honesty. “Will you be there, or am I getting up at 3:30 in the morning for no good reason?”

“I’ll be there,” promises Tom. “Last day of shooting tomorrow for this episode.”

“Then you have a couple of days off?” Michael pretends to guess. “Like, a couple of days in which you could, for example, master the art of skating?”

“Well, maybe just a couple of days in which I can bruise the hell out of my knees and ass without making the girls in make-up cry,” Tom says, and a beat of silence follows. “Um, that was way more suggestive than I intended.”

“Skating,” says Michael, watching with regret as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, “is a damn sexy sport.”

“You could make anything sexy,” says Tom, almost too softly for Michael to catch it, and Michael suddenly has an image of Tom sprawled on a worn couch in his trailer, cupping his cell phone to his ear, talking in a low coy voice as he fixes his gaze on the ceiling.

“No,” says Michael, and the sun slips lower. “That’s your job.”

“Mmm,” hums Tom, either half-asleep or half-hard by the sound of it, maybe both.

“You have to go,” says Michael, because the sky is flaring orange and pink straight ahead.

“No, I don’t,” says Tom in a lazy voice. “Hey, did I tell you that I liked kissing you yesterday?”

Michael’s mouth goes dry. “No, you didn’t.”

“Kept thinking about it all day,” sighs Tom. “And I was thinking maybe we should kiss some more. Soon.” Then there’s a muffled thud, and Tom’s voice pops back to its normal tone. “Oh, shit, that’s my five-minute call.”

Michael suddenly notices that he’s been standing stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk for the last minute or so, other pedestrians stepping around him like he’s a rock in a stream. “Told you that you had to go,” he says, wondering when twilight happened and when his body quit working.

“So, tomorrow morning?” Tom says, and it almost hurts that his voice is once again alert and playful and entirely too distant. Michael can feel the miles separating them.

“I’ll be there,” Michael tells him.

“Okay, cool,” says Tom, and Michael can picture him standing now, rubbing the hair at the back of his head where he mussed it by lying down. Stretching until a bit of his belly’s showing between his t-shirt and his jeans. His face a little too bronzed from the make-up they sponge onto his skin. “And remember -- go easy when you water the jade plants,” he adds with an audible grin. “They’re succulents, they thrive in drier conditions.”

“I should have told you sooner,” says Michael, shaking himself back into motion, “that I don’t take orders from anyone who owns a pug named Cook.”

“My niece named him,” repeats Tom automatically.

“Water your own plants, you television actor,” Michael answers, and they both laugh.

“Tomorrow,” Tom says, and Michael echoes the word back before they hang up.

It just might be good. Michael reads and rereads and keeps picking things apart and putting them back together, but the whole -- the elements of the story, the character introductions and how they’re all interacting -- it’s really almost good. He’s got a second file open with three pages of outlines for other episodes, ranging from incredibly vague to detailed planning of act breaks. Yeah, it’s come out as one-hour comedy-drama, and Michael thinks it might be good.

There’s no one he can show it to, though. His mother loves everything he does beyond all sense and reason, his father disparages everything he does as though to balance out the unconditional love. His friends in Vancouver mostly don’t know the first thing about the business, and his friends in L.A. are too close to everything for Michael to risk showing them something that still feels raw and personal. Talking to Ian again is out of the question, too much baggage and too much opportunity for humiliation. And Tom -- christ, loaded phone conversations and Chinese food kisses aside, Michael barely knows the guy. If Michael gave him a script, Tom might think that’s the only reason Michael’s been hanging around with him, like Michael is using him to get into the producers’ pants.

Which Michael wouldn’t be -- and Tom would know that if Michael could just gather enough courage to tell Tom who he really is, or who he used to be. But that’s too much to contemplate, and so Michael ends up printing out the script, binding it the proper way, proofreading it seventeen times, and tossing the damn thing onto his bedside table in frustration.

He can’t show it to Tom without telling Tom the truth.

And telling Tom the truth would only lead to more confusion.

Michael flops facedown on his mattress, drifting into whatever troubled rest he can get in the two hours before his alarm will sound.

Tom comes into the store looking only marginally more awake than Michael feels. It’s barely 6 a.m. and Tom probably dragged his ass back from Abbotsford short hours ago. Michael hasn’t ever worked on an hour-long drama -- his sit-com was all shot on sets and during sane hours -- but he knows how hard Tom must be working. It’s written in the circles under Tom’s eyes.

Eyes which are meeting Michael’s over the barrier of the espresso machine, which are suddenly looking livelier and brighter. “Yeah, um, grande non-fat cappuccino,” he says to the girl on till, not looking away from Michael.

She rings it up and takes his money, and still Michael can feel Tom’s gaze heavy on him as Michael keeps doing his job, pulling shots and steaming milk, calling drinks and smiling automatically at grouchy customers. Tom’s gaze like the weight of a hand on the back of his neck, and when Michael has the cup for Tom’s drink in his hand, finally he’s allowed to look up and return the favor, or threat, or promise. “How’s Cook?” he asks.
“Plants doing okay?”

Tom’s eyes are all unfocused and fixed on Michael’s mouth, and Michael’s pretty sure that Tom’s back in that sweet-talking sleepy zone he was in last night by the end of their conversation. Tom hasn’t heard a word Michael just said. Tom, Michael is certain, is just thinking about kissing Michael’s mouth.

“Shooting any nude scenes today?” Michael asks experimentally, and watches with a half-smile as Tom nods a little. Too easy, so Michael sets about making a cappuccino in the most overtly sexual way he can: tamping down the espresso grounds with deliberate smoothness, stroking his fist up the lever of the machine and tugging gently at it as he pulls the shot, sliding his index finger over the rim of the little espresso shot-glass before tipping the hot liquid into the paper cup, then making a show of checking the milk’s temperature with the long thermometer before pulling the steam wand out and jacking it clean with a cloth. The final touch is to slip the cardboard sleeve up on the cup, the exact motion that Tom liked that first day, and when Michael lets himself look up again, Tom is --

Oh, wow.

Flushed and dark-eyed and open-mouthed and all but coming this very second. Michael goes from smug bastard to wild lust in the two seconds it takes to set Tom’s drink down on the bar. He made Tom look like that, and god, that must be exactly what Tom looks like when he’s -- and Tom has him pinned here, has Michael frozen and searing hot and desperate and trapped in the most delicious way, just from that look on his face, that look like Michael is dropping to his knees in front of Tom, and whoa, since when is Michael even remotely the submissive one when it comes to sex?

“Thanks,” Tom manages, his flush brightening with embarrassment.

“Yeah,” Michael answers stupidly and realizes from the direction of Tom’s nervous look that he’s clutching the wet cloth from the steam wand, tugging it compulsively between his hands to keep from reaching across the bar and just getting Tom by his jacket and hauling him in closer. Was he really tired a minute ago? Michael has never been this awake in his life.

“Um. You can’t take a break right now,” Tom says, his own hand closing and opening on his drink.

“No, I really --” Michael looks helplessly over at the line of customers and the row of paper cups on the espresso machine. “I really can’t,” he says despairingly, hating every single person in the store because they’re all preventing him from pulling Tom into the bathroom and making it so Tom gets that look on his face all over again, for all the right reasons this time.

Tom exhales, and Michael is strangely gratified to hear how unevenly the breath escapes. “I’ll call you tonight,” he says at length. “When I’m done for the day.”

“Yeah,” says Michael again, nodding. But tonight is too far away, and the bathroom is just over there.

“Hey, Mike, need a hand?” asks the shift supervisor pointedly. They’re not allowed to cuss each other out on the floor, her voice reminds him, but she’s practically doing it with her tone anyway.

Back to work, but Michael can’t make himself move while Tom’s just standing there, all tall and rosy-cheeked and turned on. “No, I’m good,” he tries, hoping that Tom will move soon.

“Because we’re getting a little backed up here,” she says, “since you took five weeks to make that last drink.” Edging closer and closer to actual cussing.

“I’m sorry, my fault,” says Tom, breaking the tension even if it doesn’t make any sense. “Talk to you later, Michael,” he finishes as casually as he can, considering that he and Michael have just jointly invented espresso-powered eye sex.

“Yeah, later,” Michael says, carefully watching his own hands and not letting himself look at Tom’s retreating figure. The espresso machine suddenly reverts to plastic and metal, and that’s how Michael knows that Tom is gone.

The buzzing under his skin lasts almost an hour longer.

“You’re falling asleep.”

The words are soft wisps of air against Michael’s cheek, but not distracting enough to force his eyes open. “No’m not,” he protests with a tongue that’s lobbying for fewer vowels.

“Yeah, you are,” Tom says, dropping the whisper. His voice is loud enough to pull Michael’s heavy eyelids up. Tom is leaning in close, smiling and secretive. The movie keeps screaming around them, but Michael has long since lost track of the plot.

“Sorry,” Michael manages, shifting upright in his seat and trying to casually swipe the corner of his mouth as he checks for vagrant drool. “I’ll go and get a cup of coffee from the concession,” he offers, though the very thought is almost enough to make his brain go on strike along with his tongue.

“No,” says Tom, and his fingers are suddenly curled tight around the hair at the nape of Michael’s neck, pulling Michael’s head down -- down on Tom’s shoulder. “Sleep,” he orders softly, and those big fingers start swirling Michael’s short hair around in soporific circles.

“M’the worst date ever,” Michael tells Tom, but already he’s lost all ability to protest properly because Tom’s shoulder is broad and solid and warm and Tom smells good and Tom’s hand is just scratching gently at Michael’s scalp, like Michael is Cook the pug.

The soundtrack roars and Tom laughs at something Michael can’t see through his closed lids, and everything drifts into wordless sound.

Even though Michael doesn’t know what movie they’ve watched, even though Tom ends up nudging him out of his seat and then out of the theatre, even though Michael is basically making an ass out of himself in front of the first person in a long while who has made Michael feel like this -- it’s good. Because when they get into the Echo, Michael slightly refreshed by the damp cool air in the parking lot, Tom looks over at him.

“I think you sleep even less than me,” he says, narrowing his gaze at Michael like a censorious parent.

Michael feels his smile appear, instinctive reaction, and Tom reaches out to smooth a hand over the line of Michael’s jaw. It starts out as a vaguely affectionate gesture but something must change in Michael’s expression, because suddenly Tom is leaning in and holding Michael’s face steady. He presses his lips to Michael’s briefly, then backs away to murmur, “I’ve wanted to do this since this morning.”

No more words. Michael awakens under Tom’s kiss and if he thought about that for too long he might be prone to drawing Disney comparisons, so instead he forces his pins-and-needles right hand up to hold Tom’s head in place. Tom is making soft hungry sounds. The kiss has left the fairy-tale arena and is now edging into something much more immediate as Tom’s fingers toy with the tail of Michael’s t-shirt and then push under it at the back. Michael takes this as an invitation, and his own hand goes exploring, around and under and up and --

“Wow, you’re a lot hairier than advertised on TV,” Michael says in one of those moments when his mouth and his brain experience total failure to communicate.

Tom laughs and breaks away, pulling back and hiking up his t-shirt at the front to expose one hell of a six-pack. He’s really not porn-star bare like Clark Kent; his stomach is dusted with fine sparse dark hair that gathers into a suggestive arrow as it approaches Tom’s belt buckle. Tom’s looking too, rubbing his hand over the uncovered skin like he’s surprised as well, so Michael feels a little less stupid for his comment. “It’s been a couple of weeks since I had to do any skin work,” says Tom, semi-apologetically. “I guess I’m getting kind of au naturel down here.” Then he seems to clue into the obvious, and he looks up with a sharp grin. “You watched my show?”

Michael lifts one shoulder and pulls a pained face. “It was either that or, you know, Gilmore Girls.”

“You chose me over Gilmore Girls?” Tom asks with an even brighter grin.

“Well, it was a rerun,” Michael explains, deadpan. “It’s the one where Lorelei and Rory have --”

Tom cuts off his explanation with a puppy-eager kiss.

“Is that thanks for choosing you over Jared Padalecki?” asks Michael as soon as Tom releases him, “because, in all honesty, if it had been you versus Supernatural, I’m not sure you would’ve won.”

“That was an apology,” Tom says playfully. “No one should have to watch my show.”

Michael is supposed to laugh and help Tom shrug this off, but he catches the glint of something too serious in Tom’s delivery. He is stuck for a moment, wanting to offer some reassurance but uncertain if it would sound condescending or pandering. Finally, he reaches out his hand and covers Tom’s own where it’s still splayed over all that chiseled flesh, like Tom’s trying to cover up the fact that he’s real. Except Michael thinks that it’s the opposite, that maybe Tom’s really trying to convince himself that he’s not a fake. Michael urges Tom’s hand aside and takes a second to scratch his fingernails through the short dark hairs before leaning in to kiss Tom.

He wants to say it -- you know you’re fucking gorgeous, but trust me -- it’s not what I like best about you -- but he can’t, because why should Tom believe him? Michael can’t exactly explain that he’s done the Hollywood-perfect thing and found it wanting, that his favorite aspect of Tom is how he’s so much the opposite of all that bullshit. So Michael settles for kissing Tom, kissing and kissing him until Tom maybe understands it anyway, by osmosis or telepathy or just by the way Michael’s moving his mouth over Tom’s, hungry for Tom and not just for Tom’s attention.

But it seems the message hasn’t quite gotten through anyway, because when Michael goes to put his hand over Tom’s cock, Tom’s there in an instant, catching Michael by the wrist and holding him captive. They’re both breathing loudly in the quiet of the Echo’s interior and at first no part of Michael comprehends why Tom would want to stop this. Gradually his neurons start checking in again, and Michael remembers that they’re in a parking lot in a car in the middle of the city and maybe this isn’t exactly how Tom planned his coming-out party. Maybe this isn’t how Tom planned to fuck Michael the first time.

“Let’s just,” says Tom, like his throat is tight and swollen too, “just --” And he releases Michael’s hand to touch the back of Michael’s neck, stroking gently. “Keep it simple,” he finishes, and kisses the underside of Michael’s chin.

Simple, right, thinks Michael as they start kissing again, restricting hands to above the waist and mouths to above the shoulders. Like he’s a fucking teenager again with a girlfriend who sets limits on everything. Only back then, he never got that it wasn’t about frustrating the shit out of Michael. It was all about the girl needing to know that she could trust him.

Michael wants Tom to trust him.

It occurs to him that the best way to go about this is definitely not to say something that starts with the words, “Hey, guess how I know so much about being on a fucking horrific car-crash of a TV show?”

They have to buy skates first so they meet at the Canadian Tire on Chestnut the next morning. “Isn’t that, like, a tire store?” Tom asked over the phone, and Michael had laughed.

“How long have you been in Canada and you never checked out Canadian Tire?” Michael had teased him. “What, all your retail experiences have been limited to Starbucks?”

“Sometimes I go to Ikea,” Tom had said defensively.

Now they’re cruising the hockey equipment aisles at Canadian Tire and Michael’s giving Tom a run-down of the merits of various brands and models of skates while Tom frowns and pretends that he’s seriously worried about this.

A stock-boy walks down a few paces from them and gives them the distracted sort of glance that’s common for service personnel at this kind of old-fashioned Canadian establishment -- like the kid’s not sure if it’d be polite to ask Tom and Michael if they want help. Michael catches his eye, so the boy puts down two boxes of skates and ambles over. “Can I get you a size?” he asks, and looks down at Tom’s feet with expert eyes. “Oh, jeez.”

Michael follows the kid’s gaze and sees what’s exciting the commentary. Tom has pontoons for feet.

“How big?” asks the kid, but his voice signals that he’s already abandoned hope.

Tom gets pink in the face before he admits it. “Fourteen.”

“But that’s only a thirteen here,” Michael interjects hastily, “because it’s one size smaller for skates.”

“We can special order most of the higher-end brands,” offers the stock-boy. “You in a hurry?”

“Hockey players are huge,” Michael protests.

“Yeah, the NHL doesn’t shop at Canadian Tire,” says the kid wryly. “You want something today? Let’s see.”

They end up digging through all the cardboard boxes on display for twenty minutes before the stock-boy goes into the back and emerges (another ten minutes later) with one dented dusty box of CCMs. “They’re thirteens,” says the stock-boy flatly as he shoves the box in Tom’s direction, clearly ruing the day that he decided to make eye contact with Michael.

“Are these good?” asks Tom doubtfully, and the stock-boy is gone before Tom can even look up.

“They’re decent,” says Michael, popping the lid of the box and frowning at the contents. “If you decide you want to skate more, we’ll come back and custom order a better pair.” He has his doubts about the skates, but it’s impossible to tell yet if they’ll do.

“I guess I should have warned you about my feet,” says Tom sheepishly.

“Well, you know what they say about big feet,” says Michael with a leer, heading for the check-out.

“It’s hard to find skates for them?” says Tom. He’s playing dumb and it’s impossibly cute and that’s the only reason Michael caves and lets Tom buy his own damn skates.

Michael should be more nervous but it’s as if Tom’s nervous enough for the both of them. He kneels by Tom’s feet like Tom’s a seriously overgrown four-year-old, Tom’s skate blade pinioned between Michael’s thighs as they jointly shove Tom’s giant foot into the stiff new plastic skate. “Ow,” says Tom.

“They always hurt at first,” says Michael.

“Ow ow,” says Tom, grimacing.

“Hang on, it’s better when they’re laced.” Michael hauls hard on the fat white laces, tightening and re-tightening for a few minutes until Tom’s foot and ankle are corseted neatly.

“How is that better?” asks Tom. “Ow!”

“It cuts off your circulation and eventually your foot goes numb,” grins Michael. “Come on, other foot.”

Five more minutes and Tom sits kicking his heavy heels against the concrete while Michael ties his own skates much more quickly. “Do yours hurt?” Tom asks, clearly catching the ease with which Michael is moving.

“They’re broken in,” Michael says by way of explanation, and stands. He extends a hand to Tom, but Tom scowls and pushes himself to his feet unassisted.

And promptly tips to the left. “Whoa.”

“Skates are narrow,” Michael grins. “Sorry, we should have gotten guards for you. Makes it easier.”

“I’m good,” says Tom, but he puts his hand on Michael’s shoulder as they head towards the ice. “We’re going right out there? Isn’t there some sort of pre-skate warm-up?”

“That was it,” Michael tells him, and takes Tom’s hand as Tom gingerly steps over the threshold onto the rink. Tom is white-knuckled and wide-eyed, his gaze glued to his feet and the ice like they might disagree if he looks away for a second.

A five-year-old goes whizzing by and Michael tries (mostly successfully) not to laugh at the look of consternation on Tom’s face. “It’s Canada,” Michael says. “If it makes you feel any better, none of these people can play football to save their lives.”

Tom growls low in his throat and Michael takes Tom’s other hand so they’re face to face. Tom isn’t happy to let go of the boards, but he only wobbles slightly as they shuffle away from the gate. “Okay, basics,” announces Michael, gliding backwards as slowly as he can, tugging Tom along so that Tom only has to keep his skates pointing forward to balance. “Have you ever rollerbladed?”

Tom scowls in response.

“That’s okay, it’s not that similar,” lies Michael. “When you’re skating, you just want to always be pushing back on the outside of the blade on the foot that’s not moving.”

Tom makes some noise that seems to indicate utter confusion, so Michael leads them back to the boards and anchors Tom there so he can demonstrate. Both feet turned out a little, he pushes slowly forward with his left foot, keeping his right foot braced by the pressure of pushing back against the outside of the blade. The next glide is the opposite, and Tom watches carefully as Michael explains. “Like a V. Or a weird T,” he says, and Tom tries it, keeping one hand on the boards. Short jerky glides, but Tom gets it, so Michael gets Tom away from the boards by grabbing his hands again and skating backwards slowly as Tom moves forward, gradually gaining confidence so that his pushes get stronger and his glides lengthen.

“Got it,” says Tom, and Michael lets go, swerving aside as Tom takes off across the ice. Tom’s long arms have found their motion now, swinging side to side for balance, and even if Tom’s still focused down at his feet, he’s actually moving pretty fast. His legs get the rhythm next, and soon each glide isn’t a fresh impulse of motion, but a smooth push to maintain momentum.

This is when Michael realizes he didn’t tell Tom how to stop.

Full speed ahead, Michael takes off after Tom, but his whole right side is stupid today, and Michael doesn’t dare to push himself as hard as he wants to do. Tom seems to recall his lack of braking knowledge as he sees the boards approaching, but instead of trying to slow down for impact, Tom decides to improvise a turn.

He wipes out in a magnificent sprawl of long limbs, and Michael’s trying not to laugh, but Tom’s just so -- angry. Michael reaches him, skids to a halt, and clambers down on his knees to help Tom up. “Ow,” says Tom, irritably.

“But at least your feet are numb now, right?” Michael says cheerily. “Come on, we’ll work on the stopping thing.”

Tom’s a quick study, hatred of the ice aside, and by the end of an hour, he’s gotten good at starting, stopping, and even turning on his own. “We just need to get a stick in your hands next,” says Michael, impressed with Tom’s progress.

“Ha,” says Tom, and straightens his upper body as he executes a neat little circle. But a smile is flickering on his face in spite of his attempts to feign crankiness, and Michael impulsively grabs Tom’s hand. Tom looks askance but Michael just cracks a grin and tugs on Tom’s arm. He’s surprisingly unexhausted, probably because he’s spent more time watching Tom than skating himself, so Michael is sure he has this much left in him -- a mad haul down the length of the ice, maybe showing off a bit for Tom, maybe just crazy-happy in the freedom of motion. With Tom on his weak side to keep him steady, it’s like it used to be.

Tom is laughing and panting to keep up, three glides to every two of Michael’s even with Tom’s long legs, so Michael slows down as they cross the blue line, spins out in front of Tom and grabs his other hand. They lose enough speed that when their skates bump together a little and Tom wobbles, it’s just funny and not disastrous. Tom guides them the rest of the way while Michael free-loads, holding Tom’s hands and only giving the occasional backwards push. Tom (who still needs work on his braking) stops them by letting Michael’s back slam gently up against the plexiglas behind the goal, and letting Tom’s whole body bump into Michael’s right after, so they both get the breath knocked from them a little.

Not nearly enough of an impact for Michael to feel this breathless, but it doesn’t matter because he hasn’t felt Tom like this before, tall and solid and heavy and with one taut thigh pressed between Michael’s legs. “I’m starting to feel my feet again,” says Tom, but his gaze is flirting back and forth between Michael’s eyes and his mouth, like he can’t decide which is more intriguing.

“Then my work here is done,” says Michael, and tilts his chin up because he kind of wants his mouth to win. It was almost an hour last night, an hour of kissing in the Echo in the parking lot, but Michael’s mouth misses Tom again already. Tom, who is flushed from exertion and cold and whose hair is just a little bit sweaty around the edges.

Tom takes the obvious hint and delivers a perfect public skating rink kind of kiss, quick and doubled and promising things about ‘after we get out of here’.

“Hot chocolate,” says Michael into Tom’s open mouth. “Watery hot chocolate with stale marshmallows and a hot dog and mushy McCain french fries.”

“Sounds perfect,” says Tom. He leads Michael back to the gate and the bench where they left their sneakers.

“My shoes feel weird,” complains Tom, pushing a limp accordion fry into a puddle of ketchup. “Like, flat and big.”

“They always do after skating,” Michael says. “Are you this big a baby about everything involving your feet?”

“I make up for it with confidence in other areas,” replies Tom lewdly.

Michael sits back in his plastic molded chair and wonders if Tom’s trust in Michael has gone below his belt yet.

Cook the pug is an ugly ugly creature. He’s wall-eyed and snuffle-nosed and his mouth is wide and full of pointy teeth, like a rejected muppet. The only thing that makes him remotely tolerable from an aesthetic point of view is the way he’s got Tom wrapped around him.

“Who’s a good boy?” Tom asks, grinning as he wiggles Cook’s stubby horrible ears. Cook is licking maniacally at the air separating him from Tom, and while Michael certainly appreciates the impulse, he doesn’t really like the thought of all that dog-spit covering parts of Tom that Michael wouldn’t mind licking for himself. “Oh, are you good? Are you? Did you miss me, boy? Yeah? Did you?”

Michael doesn’t mind dogs. They can be slobbery and smelly, but Michael respects their honesty. Mostly, he objects to dog people, who insist on asking their dogs questions, as though they could answer beyond increasingly enthusiastic licking. However, it’s kind of cute on Tom.

Tom has now moved from kneeling on the floor with Cook clambering up his torso, to rolling flat on his back and curling up around Cook’s wriggling body, giggling and making incomprehensible happy noises.

Okay, yeah. It’s really cute on Tom.

Tom gets control of himself in another minute or so, and rolls onto his knees to offer Cook up to Michael like some sort of reward. Michael reaches out a hand and strokes the short soft fur between Cook’s shoulder blades. Cook lolls his tongue and blinks his grotesque eyes at Michael, clearly secure in the knowledge that he is the most important one in the room.

“You like dogs?” asks Tom, as though any answer other than ‘yes’ would be acceptable at this point.

“Good boy,” Michael tries, but his voice won’t do the squishy adoring thing. He sounds like he’s coaching Tom at skating again.

“Poor guy gets lonely during the day now,” says Tom, now getting to his feet with Cook cradled, football-like, in the crook of his elbow. “I should have let my ex take him when we split, but --” he pauses to grin again, directing his smile at the pug -- “well, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him -- best thing to come out of the whole mess.”

Michael watches Cook and Tom reconnect like it’s been years since they saw each other, and thinks that maybe it’s not just Cook who’s lonely these days. Tom heads for the back door and punts Cook out into the drizzling rain, stares after the dog for a minute through the glass, and finally seems to recall that he has company. He turns and leans against the patio door, hands jammed in his jeans pockets and a self-conscious smile on his lips. “So, yeah… this is my house.”

Michael pretends to notice this at the same moment, looking around the room he’s had plenty of time to study already. “It’s nice.” It is nice, muted tones and non-committal in terms of a color scheme. The lamps are centered perfectly on the end tables and the cream-colored wall-to-wall carpet is pristine. There is nothing to indicate that a human inhabits this space, let alone a dog. Tom either has a killer housekeeper or he’s a bit of a clean freak.

Tom twitches the vertical blinds straight as Michael watches and Michael guesses it’s the latter. Right, so -- Tom is not going to see the inside of Michael’s apartment until he’s had time to hire a professional industrial cleaner.

“Yeah, it’s, ah, it’s home.” Without Cook between them, they are both suddenly aware that Michael is in Tom’s space, that they decided jointly to come here after dinner, and that neither of them is quite sure what they expect from each other.

Cook’s toenails collide with the glass and Tom moves quickly to let him in. Michael’s not willing to sit through another round of Pug/Human Love, however, so he intervenes by noisily dropping down onto the leather sofa. Cook boots it across the room and joins him, and so does Tom, more slowly.

“Do you want something to drink?” asks Tom, perched on the edge of the leather seat and idly ruffling Cook’s ears.

Michael waits a moment to be sure that this question isn’t directed at the dog, and then says, “Whatcha got?”

Tom bites his lower lip in thought. “Red wine? Some soda, I think, but it’s all diet.”

Healthy, of course. He’s got to be, with the network on his ass. Michael opts for the red wine and Tom comes back from the kitchen with two oversized glasses that are probably each holding half the bottle. Michael manages to keep from chugging his portion by reminding himself that he’s had too long a day already and it’s only a matter of time before he starts showing it. The wine will only worsen the situation.

“What’s on TV?” Michael asks at length, because Tom looks like he might start fondling the stupid dog again.

Tom lunges for the remote and flips on the TV, and they start heckling everything that pops up because that’s a comfortable guy thing to do. Tom pauses for too long on Space and they both pretend like they have no interest in Stargate: Atlantis until the commercial break comes and Tom starts surfing again.

At some point, Cook the pug wanders off in search of some dog thing. Michael takes his chance and insinuates himself closer to Tom. Tom’s arm goes around Michael almost immediately. Michael idly appropriates Tom’s wineglass and steals a sip, which earns him a surprised look followed by a smile. But now Tom’s non-remote-wielding hand is free, and it closes on Michael’s shoulder and starts stroking the cotton of Michael’s t-shirt.

Everybody Loves Raymond, and Michael has to remind himself not to tell the story about when he met Ray Romano. M*A*S*H, and now Tom’s thigh is pressed tight to Michael’s. CSI and they gag in unison at some vivid oversaturated flashback sequence. A CFL game. A commercial for dish detergent. Tom’s fingers have slipped lower and are toying with the hem of Michael’s shirt sleeve, like there’s something particularly alluring about Michael’s bicep. Trading Spaces. A movie with a courtroom scene.

The Simpsons -- universal ‘must-stop-here’ guy territory. Tom laughs at Homer and Michael smirks at all the unexpected jokes. It’s almost the top of the hour so they’re catching the last eight minutes of the show and it makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter because now Tom’s fingers are inside Michael’s sleeve, the sexiest tease ever, and Michael sets the wine glass down on the floor gingerly, not wanting to interrupt.

Tom’s hand goes away, but it’s okay because suddenly it’s back, and it’s on Michael’s thigh, drawing lines that stutter to a stop inches from Michael’s hip, over and over, and they’re both watching the yellow cartoon people but neither of them is laughing anymore. Michael puts his arm across Tom’s stomach, idle gesture like he’s just shifting affectionately closer, but it means that his head is on Tom’s shoulder and his legs are curled up under him so that Tom’s hand is stroking the inside of Michael’s thigh now. Tom moves in response, like he’s getting more comfortable too, arm around Michael once more and Michael’s hand on Tom’s leg (up high, on the inside, relaxed half-fist) and Tom’s hand in Michael’s hair and Michael’s fingers trying to feel skin though Tom’s shirt, and --

Collision of mouths as they both give up the pretense. The television melts into background noise and the kiss moves from lazy to intense in seconds. Michael needs Tom’s shirt off so he starts tugging at it, and Tom doesn’t stop him, only responds by pulling Michael’s own t-shirt up, up, and over his head. Tom makes a hungry sound when he sees Michael’s bare skin, mouth descending to press open kisses and licks to Michael’s collarbone, the line running down the center of his chest. Then Tom’s shirt is off and Michael has a chance to sit back and look, stare really, because Tom is a fucking work of art and it’s been a long time since --

Tom’s hand on Michael’s belt buckle, and Michael might actually say something like, “Oh, thank god,” but it’s all lost as Tom fumbles and laughs and Michael starts to feel something weighing heavy on his right side, something numbing and unpleasant that he chooses to ignore. He underscores this choice by pressing his palm down over the denim that’s trapping Tom’s own erection. Tom’s ass lifts in response and their mouths meet again while Tom shakes a little, his fingers wrestling with Michael’s fly and his hips dancing under Michael’s insistent touch.

Jeans open, such a relief, and Tom urges Michael to let him tug the boxers and denim down. Michael tries to kick his legs free but they’re trapped and his right side is going sleepy, and his only thought is that it’s a good thing that he doesn’t have to talk right now because his words would only come out all tangled and mushy. Tom’s talking, though, murmuring things like, ‘so hot’ and ‘thought about this’ and ‘need your cock, god.’

Michael’s always been shit for subtlety, so he guides Tom down with one hand on the back of Tom’s head, all but pushing Tom to his knees. “Hang on, hang on,” says Tom, desperately, “where’d that fucking wine glass go?”

Right, on the floor where Tom’s knees have to go, and Michael isn’t thinking at all beyond that -- Tom on his knees, Tom’s mouth on Michael’s cock -- when he sits up and reaches for the glass with his right hand. Feels the slick surface between his fingers, pulls up so he can safely set the thing down on the coffee table, and it all goes wrong with a splash.

“Dammit,” says Michael, because he used his fucking right hand and that was idiotic and Michael’s shoving Tom aside so he can see what he’s done. The glass is on its side, with Michael’s clumsiness permanently written into the carpet beside it in large red splotches. “Fug!” he exclaims, but he didn’t want to leave off that consonant; his ‘k’s have taken off for the night and that means Michael should, too. But first he has to help Tom deal with this mess.

“There should be a dishtowel in the kitchen on the oven door,” says Tom, down on his haunches beside Michael, laughing and sounding serious all at once.

“Shi, sorry, sorry,” Michael says, scrambling to his feet. His cheeks feel hot and his tongue is slow and heavy. He can hear that he sounds drunk, hear the stupid way the words are getting backed up in his mouth only to emerge misshapen and unfinished. He bolts for the kitchen, needing escape more than caution, and he would have been fine, too, if Cook hadn’t decided to leave some chew-toy in the middle of the floor. It snags the top side of Michael’s left foot and his right is too far gone to save him.

Down flat on his face, crashing loudly like a moron, because this night apparently has to end as embarrassingly noisily as possible.

“Are you okay?” asks Tom, concerned and low-voiced and gentle. Michael shakes off Tom’s touch as he pushes himself up from the floor. The pile of the carpet is deep so Michael’s not hurt, except for his pride, which is smarting like a son of a bitch. Can’t meet Tom’s gaze, can’t look that way, but even out of the corner of Michael’s eye he can see that there’s something off about how Tom looks. Concern and surprise are taking a distant backseat to something closer to stunned realization, a stricken pale aspect that Michael’s never seen from Tom before. It can only mean that Tom’s sussed out that something’s wrong with Michael, that spilling wine and tripping and slurring his speech aren’t just weird personal quirks.

“I’ve gotta go,” says Michael hastily, nabbing his abandoned t-shirt and wrestling his weak right arm into the sleeve. His open belt buckle clangs but at some point after leaving the room, Michael will figure out how to do that one-handed.

“I -- are you --” begins Tom, then stops.

“I’ll get the bus.” He heads for the doorway, then pauses. “Sorry about the rug.” Mangled words, lame words, Michael feels his face burning and can’t stop hating who he’s become.

“You. It’s.” Tom has been reduced to disjointed monosyllables.

“Good night.” Michael escapes, narrowly avoiding a second spill over the dark prone form of Cook the pug as he bolts for the front door.

Seven steps, maybe eight, down the dark lamp-lit sidewalk before Tom’s hand clamps down around Michael’s bicep. Of course Tom’s not one to let a date storm away unhindered -- the guy drives a Toyota, for god’s sake.

But Michael’s not one to put up with being cajoled into reason like an overemotional teenage girl. He whirls around to face Tom, upper lip curled and shoulders thrown back in pre-emptive defiance.

“Will you just fucking let me go?” Michael spits, shaking off Tom’s concerned hand.

“No!” answers Tom, surprisingly loudly. His brows are drawn together and his cheeks are hectic red and Michael realizes that this is no manly rescue mission and Tom’s no knight in shining armor. “No, you’re not running out on me.” His hand is back, and how did Michael not notice how big Tom’s hands were? His fist is around Michael’s upper arm like a vise, like all that Superboy bullshit is more than just a character on TV.

“I don’t need rescuing,” Michael says, trying to pull away again but this time Tom’s got his bad side and he nearly loses his balance. “I don’t need your pity.”

“You think this is pity?” flashes Tom, eyes glittering and dangerous in the half-light. “This is common fucking sense, Michael! You’re in no shape to be going anywhere by yourself.”

Michael would argue but it’s hard to negotiate when he’s being held up by the person he’s arguing with. Instead he struggles mutely and ends up being hauled back towards Tom’s place. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, hearing now how sloppy his consonants have become.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” says Tom reasonably, his sudden fury having receded as abruptly as it arose. His hand flattens and shifts to Michael’s lower back, becoming a gentle guiding presence instead of a forceful imperative. “We have to get to sleep and worry about it tomorrow.”

Michael balks inwardly but to his traitorous body, sleep sounds like a damn good idea, and so he remains quiet while he and Tom kick off their shoes, while Tom flicks light switches off and turns deadbolts and shoos Cook outside one last time, while the three of them form a straggling wagon train headed up the stairs - man, pug, man. Michael doesn’t talk until Tom hesitates in front of a closed door.

“I don’t have the spare room made up,” Tom lies transparently, as though the guy whose entire house is ready for a magazine shoot wouldn’t keep a guest bed ready with crisp fresh-smelling linens. “But my bed’s big.”

Michael meets Tom’s gaze and decides that this gesture is more than what it seems -- a ploy to keep Michael close, yes -- but Michael would also bet a week’s wages on the certain knowledge that Tom hasn’t shared his bed since his marriage fell apart. He’s equally certain that Tom’s obvious falsehood is a signal -- that the whole truth and nothing but aren’t necessarily part of tonight’s plan. Michael can hide behind his own lies if he wants to, is what Tom’s saying, and so Michael does. “I just need to sleep this off,” he offers, and Tom accepts it with a nod, like half a glass of wine would be sufficient to bring Michael to this state. Tom opens the door and they go into the master bedroom.

They shimmy out of their jeans and socks before clambering in on opposite sides of the king-sized bed. Tom clicks off the bedside lamp and they lie still listening to each other breathe for several minutes. Michael can feel his exhaustion pressing down like the weight of Tom’s hand, but he can’t get his mind to stop whirling, worrying about what’s happened tonight and what will happen tomorrow morning. Part of him still wants to escape and it’s strange and counter-intuitive to find himself here, trapped in a bed with the last person he wants to see at the moment. If Michael were at home, he’d be able to jerk off, shut down his brain long enough to let his body take over. Instead he’s lying on his side facing the wall, hearing the slow cadence of Tom’s unsleepy breath and trying to convince himself that he’s safe here.

At length the mattress creaks and the covers flap, and Tom’s right behind Michael, not touching but close enough for Michael to feel his warmth. “Do you mind?” he asks, as though the question could only refer to one thing. Does Michael mind Tom’s closeness? Tom’s touch? Tom’s hand down his boxers?

Since the answer to all of the above is an emphatic ‘no’, however, Michael merely shifts back into Tom’s embrace. Tom’s bare arms wrap around Michael, short soft armhair tickling and broad fingers stroking. Tom’s head sinks into the pillow next to Michael’s and a moment later his lips press firmly but briefly against the knob at the top of Michael’s spine. It’s so simple, so unerotic compared to their activities on the couch mere minutes earlier, but Michael’s suddenly blazingly hard, and when he tilts his ass back reflexively, he discovers that Tom is too.

But it all goes so slowly, like they’re underwater, like Tom understands what it’s like when Michael’s like this -- half numb and waterlogged and heavy. Tom curls around Michael, covers him and surrounds him like a blanket, layering slow kisses -- pressed around the shell of Michael’s ear, down the blade of his jawbone, over the soft silk-sticky skin of his eyelid, and then seeking out the tender place under Michael’s chin where the stubble ends. Michael can only react with breath and catches of his throat because he’s lying on his left side and his right side’s checked out for the night. Tom is moving like the most patient man in the world and yet when he shifts again now, seeking a better angle to kiss Michael’s collarbone, his cock briefly digs into Michael’s hip like a blade, hard and urgent.

Michael’s never done this, been this submissive object of desire, never felt what it’s like to have his partner’s fierce lust break over him so gently like foamy waves on a shore. Tom is so controlled and Michael is so under his control, and when Tom finally finally reaches down to palm Michael’s erection through his boxers, Michael can only make small sounds of approval.

“Tell me if you need to stop,” Tom says, this giant leonine man thrown over Michael with all his energy focused on being as gentle as possible, and Michael’s mind buzzes with imagination -- Tom kneeling between Michael’s thighs, stroking them open and saying the same words -- Tom with his knuckles clenches in Michael’s short hair, guiding his swollen cock between Michael’s lips, back and back and in and in, and --

“Please,” Michael murmurs, and Tom understands, gets his huge hot palm under the elastic waist and around Michael’s cock where he starts pulling with long unhurried strokes. It’s maddening and perfect at the same time. Michael’s left arm comes up of its own volition and curls around Tom’s head, holding him close and letting him know that he’s doing everything right. Michael’s brain is completely silent except for all these images -- Tom inside Michael, driving slow and deep and long while Michael twists against the sweet agony -- Tom sliding his cock along the wet U of Michael’s curved tongue, pulling on the nape of Michael’s neck to get the right angle.

Tom’s breathing hard for all his outward calm, and his breath is bursting on Michael’s tense neck where Michael’s arm has him pinned. His fist picks up the pace, his thumb flicking up over the slick head of Michael’s cock on the next stroke, and while this is all nice, and amazing, and okay -- the best handjob ever -- Michael needs something more.

So does Tom, it seems, because the next instant, his hand is gone. Michael doesn’t have time to complain because Tom is pushing Michael’s boxers down his thighs, he’s performing a similar operation on himself, and when Tom settles back into place, he’s kneeing Michael’s legs apart, just enough to -- oh. Michael’s legs close again, his thighs squeeze to test the connection, and Tom growls low before reclaiming Michael’s erection and beginning to stroke and thrust at the same time. Tom’s huge cock is pressed into the space at the top of Michael’s thighs, the head -- wet, slick, hot -- pushing gently into the back of Michael’s balls with every thrust. Never done this before, it always seemed like a junior high kind of maneuver, but Michael had never anticipated the hotness of the sensation, the literal heat and hardness and length of Tom’s cock against the sensitive skin of Michael’s inner thighs.

Michael’s inner sub is coming out of the closet in a spectacular way, Michael’s brain helpfully providing more scenarios than he can process -- all the ways Michael could take that big cock inside his smaller frame -- Tom pressing in from above, Michael’s legs shaking with his knees set in the notches above Tom’s hips -- Tom from behind, palm pushing Michael’s shoulders and head down like a recalcitrant dog -- Tom holding Michael’s head steady as he knelt over Michael’s shoulders, fucking down Michael’s throat with impatient abandon. Tom everywhere, in every part of Michael, every broken place and secret dark corner, battering down his defenses and his thoughts, leaving only room for this -- this twist and stammering push into Tom’s tight fist, this hard repetitive slam of Tom’s strong pelvis against Michael’s trembling ass.

“Ah, god, god,” says Tom abruptly, and shoots against Michael’s balls. Michael closes his eyes and comes too -- he’s been on the brink for hours, it seems, only waiting for Tom’s permission to let go.

Tom holding Michael, cradling him against his chest like an infant, like a treasured amazing thing, like Michael’s broken and the only thing that can make him whole again is the broad shelter of Tom’s palm, hiding his injured skull from the rest of the world. The image is vivid and almost overwhelming, and Michael has to open his eyes and watch his real right-now fingers unclench from the sheets, has to open his legs and feel Tom’s softening cock slip away, has to roll his head back against Tom’s sweaty chest and listen to Tom’s big heart slamming against the drum of his ribs, before Michael can convince himself that this is reality and the other is just a dream brought on by violent orgasm.

Tom is already asleep or close to it, so Michael’s the one who reaches for the tissue on the night stand and makes a hasty clean-up, wiping Tom’s loose fist, Michael’s own belly, the space between Michael’s legs and down his thighs, and finally Michael balls up the tissue and throws it to the floor, rolling away from the wet spot and on top of Tom.

Cook jumps up on the bed, apparently having waited for his chance, and Michael falls asleep grinning at the warm weight of the pug’s body nestled between their legs.

Michael wakes up slowly, almost immediately aware of his surroundings and yet not quite willing to deal with them all at once. He’s alone, yes, but in Tom Welling’s bed, and he kicked his boxers off in his sleep because he can feel them bunched up by his feet. He’s naked and alone and there’s sunlight on his face and birds singing and somewhere downstairs there’s music. A radio. A radio and a voice singing along.

Tom.

Michael rolls onto his stomach and grins into his pillow at the memory of the night before. The grin falters a little as he remembers the red wine, the fall onto the carpet, Tom’s determined grip on his arm. But then Tom sings, particularly off-key, and the grin is back.

There’s a little chink of tags and Cook is next to him, wiggling his tail and panting in Michael’s face.

“You have bad breath,” Michael tells Cook sleepily.

Cook winks one eye.

“Me too,” Michael confesses, and throws back the covers. Both feet on the carpet, flat, testing -- and yes, he slept long enough for once, because everything feels almost normal. There’s a bathroom just off of the bedroom. Michael pisses, rubs some toothpaste over his teeth with his finger, and swishes with mouthwash before going back to find his boxers and a t-shirt. It’s then that he notices the alarm clock on the night stand: it’s eleven o’clock. Michael slept for about twelve hours.

Down the stairs with Cook winding between his feet as though to prove how much more agile Michael is today, and they both find Tom in the kitchen. He’s not barefoot like Michael -- he’s wearing orange flip-flops, navy track pants, and a green t-shirt that says ‘berc om e itch’ in peeling yellow letters. He’s an eyesore, even by Michael’s standards.

He looks up from the stove and flashes Michael a smile. He’s gorgeous. “Eggs?”

“Coffee?” counters Michael hopefully, and moves in the direction of the carafe he spots.

“Don’t you get enough of that at work?” asks Tom, sucking on his thumb and then waving it in the air. “Ouch.”

“What, did you touch the frying pan?” asks Michael, hopping onto the counter and taking a slug of his coffee. “Fucking hell!” he exclaims a moment later, coughing around a mouthful of acid disguised as coffee.

“Well, there’s a reason I come to your store every day,” laughs Tom while Michael shoots him a dirty glance and goes about disposing of Tom’s evil version of coffee before setting up a fresh pot to brew. “Eggs?”

“Are you better at cooking than you are at brewing coffee?” Michael asks suspiciously.

“Yes. Mostly.” Tom slides some scrambled egg onto a waiting plate and pushes it towards Michael.

Michael picks up a piece of egg with his fingers and chews it. “Needs salt.”

“Salt’s bad for you,” Tom answers, but points out the saltshaker anyway.

So, okay. This is -- nice. Barring the huge weight of the undiscussed events of last night -- both sweaty and otherwise -- this could almost be a pleasant morning. Michael finds a stool and sits at the counter eating eggs with his fingers until Tom notices and pushes a fork his way with an impatient roll of his eyes. They eat in mutual silence, Tom absently mouthing his burned thumb between mouthfuls, Michael keeping a weather eye on the percolator, ready to leap into action as soon as it’s finished.

“Do you want to --” begins Tom, haltingly, just as Michael pours his second cup of coffee. “Go skating again?” It’s not what he meant to say, but Michael’s not about to complain.

“Nah,” says Michael. He may be in great shape this morning but he’s not prepared to spend another day pushing his limits. “What else can we do?”

“Well,” says Tom, and kicks Michael in the ankle with his flip-flop as Michael settles back onto the stool.

Michael cuts Tom a curious glance and can’t help laughing when he sees what Tom looks like when he’s actively trying to be suggestive. “I thought you wanted to talk,” he says, “not that I mind.”

Tom looks down and away as a rosy blush rises in his cheeks. “Talking’s overrated.” And then, with dizzying abruptness, his green eyes are fixed on Michael’s face. “I think that we both know what we would say anyway.”

We do? thinks Michael, crazily. It’s as though Tom’s realized something, as though he knows something he can’t possibly know, and yet -- what else could he mean? It can only be that Tom has realized who Michael really is, or who he was not so very long ago.

“It’s weird,” says Tom, putting his fork down and reaching out to hold Michael’s free hand. “Like we were meant to meet each other, but it somehow didn’t happen until now.”

God knows how, Michael thinks, but Tom’s figured it out. He knows that the two of them were supposed to be co-workers. Maybe he’d talked to a producer, dropped Michael’s name? It didn’t really matter how: the truth is out -- well, most of the truth -- and now Michael feels himself relax fully for the first time in Tom’s presence. He feels the smile break over his face, reaches up with his refreshed right hand, and pulls Tom in close for a kiss. It’s all so strange and real and Tom’s orange flip-flop is dragging its worn foam toe in a line down Michael’s anklebone.

This would be the perfect time to finish with disclosures, Michael knows. It would be so neat and simple to just pull away and tell Tom about that night five years back, the dark and the blank places in Michael’s memory, and all the ways his life has splintered around a single half-hour he doesn’t even remember, but Tom’s lips are wide and his hair is tangled and messy, and Michael decides that it’s all going to make more sense later.

It turns out that Tom has many frustrating personal rules about boundaries and their measured and timely removal. It’s not just the ‘no hands below the waist on the first date’ rule that Michael’s already encountered. Tom says, “Let’s shower separately,” and “Let’s not rush into that yet,” and he says, “I don’t want to take things too far.” Even for Michael’s newly emancipated bottom persona, Tom’s regulations seem unfair and dictatorial.

Lucky for Michael, it seems like every single one of them is made for the breaking.

Tom wants them to shower separately, so Michael makes a point of getting undressed in front of him, walking around the room as he does so, and then being unable to find the shampoo in the shower.

“It’s in the white bottle!” shouts Tom over the spray.

“What?” says Michael, feigning deafness.

“The. White. Bottle!” Tom shouts again.

“What?” repeats Michael.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” says Tom, and comes into the bathroom. Michael can see his bath-robed form through the wavy pebbled glass. “White. Bottle,” he says again.

“Where?” Michael gestures helplessly.

Tom pulls the door open and points at the huge white bottle directly in front of him.

“Oh,” says Michael, and runs a hand over his chest. “Thanks.” He smiles at Tom and Tom stares back. “Maybe you should stay,” Michael suggests. “In case I can’t find the soap.”

Tom watches Michael pinch his own nipple, then nods. “I’m here to help,” he says, shrugging out of his robe and stepping inside. “After all, you are my guest.”

“Exactly,” says Michael as he drops to his knees and opens his mouth.

“Let’s not rush into that yet,” says Tom, ten minutes and one orgasm later, when Michael’s lying on his back in the middle of the bed, both of them shower-wet and breathing hard from making out. Michael’s just asked Tom if he does rim-jobs and that’s when Tom got all skirty, and normally Michael would take that as a big ‘no’ except for the way that Tom’s cock is pushing a big ‘yes’ signal into Michael’s hip.

“The thing is,” Michael says, “normally I don’t like the idea of someone eating my ass, but with your mouth --” He lets his voice trail off and his hand do the talking, fingertips grazing Tom’s red open lips. “God, you’d open me right up. With your tongue in my --”

Tom actually puts his palm over Michael’s mouth, looking furious and about to laugh and horny as hell all at once. “You’re -- god,” he gasps, and Michael lets his legs fall open just a bit more in reply. Tom groans and thrusts, and then he’s going down. Michael bites his lips against the smile that wants to surface, and then he’s just biting because Tom’s using his teeth, gently but firmly.

Michael opens around Tom’s tongue like he’s made of butter.

“I don’t want to take things too far,” says Tom, minutes and ages later, Michael panting and desperate, Tom kneeling between Michael’s thighs and surging slowly forward, pressing his lubed sheathed cock against Michael’s entrance. “Maybe we should just --”

Just like he imagined last night, Michael’s knees are trembling with need, Tom’s everywhere, above and around. “God, fuck me,” he begs, far beyond the point of strategy or teasing.

Tom slides in with a single stroke and Michael’s throat feels raw, like Tom’s there too.

“I didn’t mean to,” says Tom, and now he’s the one who’s shaking while Michael gentles him with long strokes down his sweaty back, easing Tom down from the intensity of his orgasm. Tom puts his face in the safe place between Michael’s ear and his shoulder and shivers. “I wanted to hold off until -- until I was sure. That this was real, between us. I tend to get carried away, I get caught up and I --”

Michael turns his face to kiss Tom silent. “I love your orange flip-flops,” he tells Tom. “And you fuck like an angel.”

Tom cracks a grin and they both subside into the pillow, drifting in pleasant post-coital drowsiness.

“And how was the audition?” Michael’s mom asks, all sweetness and sincerity.

“Ah, I don’t know,” says Michael, playing for time as he eases down into his armchair. What audition? He can’t keep track of the fake auditions he tells her about. “They haven’t, uh. Gotten back --”

“Well, I have a good feeling about that one. Hockey, you can do.”

Oh, yeah, the hockey role. “I don’t know, Mom -- it’s a while since I played.”

She huffs. “I think I know what you can and cannot do, Michael.”

She has no idea, and it’s been a while since that seemed funny, but Michael laughs now, thinking about being on his knees in the shower this morning, shaking while Tom dipped his tongue into Michael’s ass, begging and arching his back while Tom slid into him. His mom has no idea. “You have faith in me,” he says reassuringly.

Talking to his mom always reminds Michael to take care of himself, mostly because he can all too clearly imagine how she’d react if she knew and saw him neglecting his meds. While they chat about what’s new at home, Michael pops the lid on a couple of prescription bottles and dry-swallows the pills. When she asks why he sounds like he’s got something in his mouth, he admits to eating fried chicken and lets her scold him about his diet.

When he hangs up, he checks his messages and gets four more from Ian. The last one is kind of funny, because Ian’s getting pissed, and when he’s pissed, his talent agent façade starts to falter: “Rosenbaum, you stubborn son of a bitch, will you goddamn well call me back? I’ve got four producers sitting at their desks with their thumbs up their asses waiting for me to call them and tell them more about your brilliant fucking screenplays. Look, just fax me. Two pages, handwritten, point-form, whatever. Give me something.” Ian rattles off a number and keeps ranting. “I don’t know what it’s like up there in Canada, but you gotta believe me, Mikey, what happened to you isn’t a career death sentence. Plenty of guys are breaking the mold, you’re not the only gay --”

Michael presses 4 and listens to the first part of the message. He writes down the fax number and deletes the message before it finishes playing.

As if being gay has anything to do with it.

Somehow, between all the fucking and the cooking and the mocking of Tom’s casual wardrobe, Tom and Michael hadn’t gotten around to talking. Michael had actually been looking forward to talking shop -- it’d been years since he’d had contact with another actor -- but it just hadn’t come up. Considering Tom’s overall attitude towards his own celebrity and Hollywood in general, Michael supposed it wasn’t that surprising.

What was perhaps more surprising was Tom’s continued silence on the topic of Michael’s physical meltdown. Other than occasionally casting Michael a concerned searching look, Tom hadn’t asked a single question. For someone as impulsive and nosy as Michael, this was almost incomprehensible. It seemed like Tom was giving Michael all the time he needed to share the second part of his history. And Michael, who had not as yet shared that story with another human soul, found this strangely guilt-inducing.

Maybe that’s why he feels so compelled to be open about everything else. Maybe that’s why, when Tom comes into the store the next morning looking thoroughly exhausted and yet almost obscenely unwound, Michael takes a deep breath and passes Tom five paper-clipped printed pages along with Tom’s morning venti dark roast.

“What’s this?” Tom asks, smiling. He’s wearing a baseball cap and his dark hair is escaping in messy fingers all around his ears and the nape of his neck. Michael wants to curl them around his knuckles.

“It’s -- just. If you have time. Can you read it?”

Tom’s bright clear expression closes abruptly as he looks down and sees the title page with its credit and list of characters. “A script?”

“Nah, it’s just --” Michael is faltering in the face of Tom’s abrupt mood shift. “Know what, forget it, it’s --” He goes to take it back, but Tom pulls the script out of reach and reaches for his coffee with the other hand.

“Guess I’ll catch up with you later,” says Tom, cold and angular and eyes averted, and this is just weird, isn’t it? Tom knows Michael’s in the business, this shouldn’t feel so much like an imposition. Michael’s not that much of a has-been, is he? It’s on the tip of Michael’s tongue to blurt out the truth -- that he’s about to send those pages off to his agent, that he just wants another human to say that they’re not shit before he does it, that Michael thinks he’s put more of himself into those pages than he’s let anyone see in the past five years. That this is trust, not taking advantage.

Instead he takes a step away from the counter, lifts his chin up just a little, and smirks. “Yeah. Later.” Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you too is raging in a tight ball at his center, and Michael can’t make himself listen to anything else or he’ll -- he’ll --

Tom slams a plastic lid on his coffee and leaves, shoulders hunched in his denim jacket, so defensively postured that he garners a few startled looks from other customers. His hand on the door is an audible slap.

Michael has to ask the next customer to repeat his order three times.

It rains all afternoon while Michael tries to sleep. His studio apartment seems small and bleak in the gray light. Every time he opens his eyes, he remembers Tom’s hand slamming on the metal push plate of the door, remembers the finality written in the set of Tom’s shoulders. Michael fucked up, and he doesn’t understand how.

Finally he gives up on sleep and tugs his laptop into bed with him. Ten new e-mails from Ian -- god knows how he got Michael’s new e-mail address -- and boingboing.net has two articles worth reading, one involving a new Asian fad for the erotic pouring of paint over bikini-clad lithe girls, the other (of course) about gay animals.

It’s sheer masochism to type Tom’s name into the search field on Google’s homepage. It’s downright mental illness to click on the link to the picture hits. Tom is everywhere on Michael’s screen, lounging and pouty and serious and young and dark-lashed and beaming. Tom with Wentworth Miller, the two of them back to back, arms crossed, looking taut and irritable. Tom with John Schneider, more like brothers than father and son, grinning and handsome. Tom with Kristin Kreuk, head bowed to press lips but not quite touching. Tom manipped into a hundred Superman outfits with varying degrees of skill.

Michael goes back to the text hits, scrolls a few pages, and finds an interview transcript.

The article is footnoted by a long tail of commentary by fans, many applauding Tom’s discretion, others deploring his habitual recalcitrance when it comes to personal details. Curiosity piqued, Michael scrolls back up and reads for himself:

Q: I hear you took your role as Superman a little too seriously once. Can you tell us about that?

A: Oh, yeah. Uh. Yeah, one time -- just after I got the part on Smallville -- I saw a guy getting beaten up and I stepped in.

Q: So you saved the day?

A: Nah, anyone would have done the same.

Q: How did the victim react? Did he recognize you?

A: Um, he was in pretty bad shape at the time. And, yeah. This was before we started shooting.

Q: Did you tie up the attackers and drop them off at the local police station like Superman would do?

A: It wasn’t really a joking kind of situation. It was --

Q: Did it change you? Playing the hero?

A: It wasn’t a publicity stunt. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Q: Is that a ‘no comment’?

A: Yeah. No comment.

No comments are forthcoming from Michael’s brain either. He’s frozen and disbelieving -- there’s no way. There’s no way! But the timing -- just after Tom’s casting on Smallville, before they started shooting -- and where else would Tom have been in that short period of time but -- well, it could have been L.A., okay, but --

Hands trembling, Michael goes back to Google and tries ‘Tom Welling + rescue + victim’. Knowing how agents like to bandy about the same four anecdotes for any given client, Michael is certain that the incident will be described elsewhere, maybe in more detail. Sure enough, weeding out several disturbing pages that turn out to be fiction involving Tom Welling rescuing doe-eyed girls from various torrid situations, there are three more hits. Two are less detailed than the previous account, but the third --

Welling once took his onscreen role out into everyday life. Shortly after accepting the role of a teenaged Clark Kent on the WB’s top primetime show ‘Smallville’, the then-24-year-old actor came across a real-life crime in progress.

“Two guys who seemed pretty intoxicated were assaulting another guy just outside this club in Vancouver. No one else was around so I went up and got them to stop,” narrates Welling modestly when questioned about his Superman-like heroics. “It’s no big deal. I mean, I’m glad I helped out, but it’s nothing any passer-by wouldn’t have done.” A small frown appears on his handsome face. “I hope the guy was okay. I never heard what happened after the paramedics took him to the hospital.”

“Most actors might have stuck around to take their share of the limelight,” I suggest with a smile.

He frowns more deeply. “I don’t really agree with that.” When I press him further, he will only reply with, “No comment.” “Seriously?” I ask, baffled by the young man’s seeming humility. “No comment,” he repeats firmly.

The headline of the article, when Michael scrolls up to look, is: “Tom Welling: Man of Mystery meets Man of Steel’. The rest of the article alternates between drooling over Tom’s looks and bitching about his taciturn nature. Michael reads through it several more times before the realization truly hits him.

Five years ago, Tom Welling saved Michael’s life.

“What are you doing?” Michael asks, and the shift supervisor looks up from her armful of stuffed Starbucks marketing gimmicks.

“Hugging the bearistas,” she says, as though this is perfectly normal behavior for an adult.

“Okay,” says Michael, drawing out the word. “Why?” It’s not even light out, they haven’t opened yet, and Michael’s feeling decidedly impatient with humanity already. This isn’t helping.

“They need love,” she answers, and deposits the armful of bears back in the basket. She extricates one and holds it out. “Try it.”

“No one man can contain enough gay to do that,” answers Michael evenly, and she laughs before replacing the bear and going behind the counter to attend to the pastry display case. Michael resumes his own task -- arranging chairs around the tables -- with brutal efficiency. He’s oddly aware of himself today, of his existence and of the space he occupies. He notices things that are ordinary and yet strange: the shape of his wrist bones, the mottled colour of the tiles, the empty hissing sound of the store before the music is turned on.

Michael’s startled to find himself here, he realizes. Like the past five years have been some kind of extended strange dream and he should be waking up any second now. But waking up to what? To his old life full of producers and agents and contracts? It’s surprisingly distasteful -- but when Michael thinks about it, he’s aware that it’s been some time since that old life felt like it was his by right. Yet there’s this paralyzing sense of loss, and it makes no sense when, if anything, he should be rejoicing that he’s finally done what the head injury recovery therapist urged him to do: “Accept that you’re a different person now and move on.”

Five years of not accepting anything but the certain deadly knowledge that no one could find out what happened. Not his family, not his agent, not his best friends. Not any of the guys and girls he’s fucked and romanced since. Not any co-workers, not any customers or managers. And most of all, hugest of all -- not Tom. Because to have any chance at all with Tom, Michael can’t be anything but the kind of guy Tom deserves -- sleek and funny and sexy and not fucking brain-damaged.

But Tom knows. Tom can’t help but know. Tom’s the one who found Michael, who salvaged him. That’s how Tom first saw Michael: bleeding and incoherent, hurt and terrified. And if Tom saw that, then -- then what Michael’s really lost is any chance of being normal again. Tom sees how broken Michael is, and Michael really really can’t handle that thought.

“See? Told you!” The shift supervisor’s voice interrupts Michael’s spiral of panicky thoughts, and he blinks back into the present to find himself with both arms wrapped around a Starbucks bear, squeezing the hell out of it.

Startled, Michael loosens his embrace and holds the bear at arms length to study it. The bear’s wearing khakis, a t-shirt, a gray hoodie, and a baseball cap. It’s practically a bear version of Tom.

“I won’t tell anyone,” says his shift supervisor, elbowing him playfully. “Come on, there’s still lots to do.”

Michael watches his hands while they work. This has got to be a dream.

His cell phone plays the Imperial March from Star Wars, which Michael chose because he thought that’s what he would have liked before. When he tries to summon a current opinion -- here and now, Rosenbaum -- he only comes up with indifference.

The area code isn’t local, so Michael answers unthinkingly, knowing that it’s not Tom. “Hello?”

“Rosenbaum!” Ian’s voice is so high-pitched it’s practically squealing. Michael pulls the phone away from his ear reflexively and steps around a group of people waiting at a bus stop.

“Look, I know I haven’t --” begins Michael defensively.

“I thought we had a deal!” explodes Ian. “You little sneaking piece of shit, we had a deal!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Michael bites into the phone, thoroughly confused.

“What am I talking about? I’m talking about getting this fucking smarmy e-mail this morning from fucking Greg Beeman of all people, raving about what a fucking huge talent you are and how come I never plugged you as a writer?”

“Who the fuck is Greg Beeman?” asks Michael, genuinely baffled.

“Who the --” Ian repeats bitterly. “Don’t play dumb with me, Rosey, I’ve been representing you too long to fall for that bullshit.”

“You haven’t represented me for five years!” Michael points out, getting angry simply from the tone of Ian’s voice.

“Oh, it’s gonna be like that, is it? Fine! Fucking fine!” shouts Ian, and hangs up.

Michael snaps his phone shut and stops in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the blinking LED in dismay. He’s not sure how or why, but he’s pretty certain he’s somehow managed to piss Ian off on a colossal scale.

The Imperial March sounds again while Michael’s still standing there staring, and he answers automatically, noting the 604 area code -- Vancouver. “Yeah?” he says, stunned.

“Uh, hi, could I speak to Michael Rosenbaum please?” The caller is unfamiliar, but the cadence of speech is hasty, clipped, and American.

“Yeah,” says Michael, swiveling to accommodate other pedestrians passing him, and finally stepping off the sidewalk onto the grass. He rubs a hand through his hair and breathes out. “Yeah, you got him.”

“Michael? Oh, sweet, I was hoping you’d answer. My name is Greg Beeman, I’m a director on Smallville. Look, Michael, I understand you’re friends with Tom Welling?”

Friends? They were? “Yeah, I know Tom,” agrees Michael. What the hell is going on?

“Great,” enthuses Beeman, like this is some sort of breakthrough. “Yeah, Michael, he showed me your script.”

Oh.

Oh.

“It’s just --” Beeman pauses, like he can’t quite find the words. “Look, Michael, I love this stuff. You’re pretty goddamn funny, you know that?”

Tom showed the script to this guy? Tom read the script? “I -- uh. Thank you!”

“Hey, are you busy tonight? Could you come down and we could maybe grab dinner and talk about it?”

“Talk about it?” Michael repeats stupidly. About what? About Tom?

“It’s early days, Michael, but I have some friends at Fox and they’d eat this up, I’m telling you. If we can just get together and hammer out some details, I’d love to work with you on this pitch.”

A network pitch. A network pitch of Michael’s show. Suddenly Michael can barely breathe, and all thoughts of Tom evaporate. He turns around, looking for someone to high five and has to slap a tree trunk instead because, yeah, he’s alone in the middle of the fucking street. “Uh, yeah,” he says hastily. “Look, Greg, I have more. Like, I have the pilot draft, if you want to see --”

“Yeah, yeah, bring it all,” says Beeman, and there’s shouting in the background. “Michael, I gotta go, my lighting director is ready -- but do you know where the set is?”

Beeman dictates some directions, making the assumption that Michael has a car, and Michael doesn’t correct him. They’re meeting at 7 p.m. while the actors and crew are on dinner break. Beeman talks so quickly and things have changed so abruptly that Michael’s almost dizzy by the time he hangs up.

He’s back.

There’s no time to think for the rest of the afternoon. Michael has to go home and get a shirt and pants express dry-cleaned, then he has to bus over to the local car rental outlet and max out his already strained credit card to get himself a car for the next week. He has to get to Kinko’s and get his pilot script properly formatted and bound. He gets a haircut after flirting his ass off with the male receptionist at the nearest salon, and then he has to head back to pick up his dry-cleaning, go home and change and jump back in the car because fuck, he’s going to be late and to top it all off, it’s still rush hour and the freeways are clogged with commuters.

He pulls into a gas station once he finally reaches his exit. Michael gave up smoking a few years back but this is a special occasion. He drives the rest of the way to the set alternately hanging his lit cigarette and his head out of the window of his non-smoking rental car.

Security gives him a suspicious once-over, but Michael looks Hollywood and he knows it. He’s even wearing his big-ass sunglasses like it’s California and not Canada. He explains that he has a meeting with Greg Beeman, the guard makes a call, and suddenly Michael’s getting ushered across a lot littered with trailers, lighting equipment, and harried-looking interns. The air smells like rain and wet sawdust and like home.

“They’re running behind,” says the intern assigned to Michael. “Do you wanna come and watch the last couple of takes?” Her grin says it all -- the kid still gets a huge kick out of simply being here, seeing a show come together.

“Ah,” stalls Michael. He hadn’t thought of this -- what if it’s Tom? Tom may have read the script and thought it was worth showing to his director, but that’s not the same thing as reconciliation. Tom’s absence from the store this morning speaks for itself. “What are they shooting?”

“It’s a scene with the Luthors,” says the intern, “on the mansion set. Have you ever seen John Glover work?”

“No,” says Michael, relieved. He knows how these things go -- by the fifth season of a show, if a lead isn’t actively shooting a scene, he won’t be caught dead near it. Tom’s safely in his trailer, guaranteed. Now Michael only has to hope that no one significant recognizes him as the guy Wentworth Miller was called in to replace.

They slip in past the doors with the sign - CLOSED SET - and emerge into the cable-strewn chaos of the area just off the set. There are the standard director-style chairs, simply emblazoned with the Smallville title logo. The intern waves Michael towards one but he shakes his head with a smile and continues to edge around the periphery of the set until he’s within view of the monitor. It looks like they’re doing coverage of the scene, mostly John Glover’s angle, but the two actors are in so tight that Wentworth has to stick around as a human prop instead of getting some intern to read his lines.

Glover is eerie on the monitor, the camera so very close that Michael feels like he’s larger than life even on the small screen. Television acting always seems overdone when viewed live because the nuances become so exaggerated. With Glover, it’s ten times more so.

The director -- Michael looks up with interest to see what Greg Beeman looks like -- calls cut and they move back for another take. The monitor flickers to Miller’s angle and Michael smirks because the guy is clearly seriously pissed off. “Beeman, what the hell?” he asks. “It’s already ten minutes over, let’s wrap the goddamn scene.”

“Somebody get this boy a donut!” shouts Beeman, and everyone laughs but Wentworth. They’re stopping to watch the last take on the monitors, so Michael impulsively seeks out the craft services table and puts a cruller on a plate for Wentworth. He ignores the halting orders from the intern, who’s trying to keep her charge under control, and walks right out to the set where Glover and Wentworth are waiting.

“No thanks,” says Wentworth dismissively, waving Michael and the donut away.

Michael arches an eyebrow and pushes the donut in Glover’s direction. No way Glover would remember him, so this is probably okay. Sure enough, Glover just smiles warmly and shakes his head before extending a hand in welcome. “Hi, I’m John,” he says.

Michael gives his first name and shakes Glover’s hand. “Just visiting,” he offers. “I’m a friend of Tom’s.” God, it’s so weird, because it feels like yesterday that he met Glover for the first time, and yet it’s as though it never happened.

“Okay, last take!” shouts Beeman. Michael beats a retreat, eating the cruller enroute. He hasn’t had a chance to eat since his shift that morning.

It’s actually three more takes and close to half past seven by the time Beeman lets everyone go for dinner. The intern finally gets a chance to unload Michael by introducing him to Beeman.

Greg is warm and talkative and he walks Michael off the set with his arm around Michael’s shoulders. He takes the script Michael’s carrying and flips through it while they get settled in the director’s trailer. “Did you take a course in screenwriting?” Beeman asks, clearly surprised by the formatting and binding.

“No,” admits Michael. “I just have a few friends in the business.”

Beeman shakes his head as though to reject this explanation. “You must have read a hell of a lot of scripts. This is practically ready to shoot.”

“Thanks,” says Michael, and jumps as the trailer door bangs open behind him. He turns and sees Tom poking his head inside. They lock eyes for the briefest of moments before Tom turns his attention to Beeman.

“Greg, when are we starting to shoot the scene tonight? No one came to tell me.” Tom drums his fingers on the doorway where he’s clutching it before tossing a casual, “Hey,” in Michael’s direction, like an afterthought.

“Hey,” Michael answers, but more warmly.

“Uhhh,” Beeman’s groaning, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Can you get to make-up to get freshened up in half an hour?”

“Yeah, no problem,” answers Tom with a half-smile.

“You’re a good kid, Tommy,” Beeman calls after Tom’s retreating back. He looks at Michael again. “I love that guy.”

“Me too,” Michael answers reflexively, feeling his heart racing while he tries to maintain outward calm.

“Okay, so -- here are some of the thoughts I had,” says Beeman, and then there’s no more room for worrying about Tom because they have less than an hour to talk this thing through.

Afterwards, Greg tells Michael to come down to the set -- the barn loft this time -- and watch while they get the master. “It’s like a well-oiled machine at this point,” Beeman says, Michael following in his wake helplessly. “No surprises on the set of Smallville.” He flashes a grin at Michael. “Guess that’s why I’m ready to take on a new project. I must miss the insanity.”

They are suddenly in a barn, surrounded by hay bales and cameras, and at the eye of the TV hurricane is Tom Welling, orangey with make-up and looking intently at the rolled-up shooting script in his fist. He’s mouthing lines to himself, either memorizing still or trying to find a different spin on the words.

“Hey, Greg,” says Tom, not looking up but obviously sensing their arrival, “can I bug you about a line reading?” Greg bustles over and Michael subsides into a chair, taking in all the details accrued by a five-year-old television set. Someone’s carved initials into the banister of the stair rail, and there are several publicity photographs pinned to Clark’s bulletin board like they’re memorabilia. Tom himself is sitting on the set couch like it’s his own personal couch and not a dusty prop.

“Hi, I just need you to sign this statement,” says someone at Michael’s elbow and a moment later he’s promising in writing not to disclose any details of the episode they’re shooting. The intern looks at his signature, smiles, and bustles away.

Kristin Kreuk comes in next, clutching a mug in one hand and a pair of pumps in the other. She’s wearing big fuzzy slippers on her feet which will presumably be replaced by the pumps once they start shooting. She waves abstractedly at Tom and flops down onto the couch beside him, tucking her slippers up under her and sighing. She’s small and beautiful and young, but somehow much more grown-up than the last time Michael saw her, when they were running lines together for the pilot. He remembers being told that Lana might be a love interest for Lex later on in the series if the pilot got picked up, and also remembers thinking he’d feel like an utter pedophile if that happened. It’s not much better now, but at least Kristin doesn’t look like a ninth-grader anymore.

“Okay!” shouts Beeman abruptly, and everyone looks up from their tasks. “We’re going to block the scene while we finish setting up, so quiet on the set please. Where’s Glen?”

Glen, seemingly the director of photography, appears so he and Greg can plan the shoot. It’s the sort of thing they’d normally do over dinner, Michael thinks, but as Greg said, this show practically runs itself. The flow of film vocabulary from everyone around them makes Michael both giddy and homesick, and he’s so distracted by remembering everything he used to know about this part of acting that at first he doesn’t hear the comment that comes from someone to his right.

“Pardon?” he says, blinking to attention and turning to see who’s standing beside him.

Oh, fuck.

It’s Kristin.

“I said, long time, no see!” she repeats with a smile. “God, Michael, what are you doing here?” She throws open her arms for a hug and Michael puts his arms around her in response. “I wouldn’t have recognized you except Amy saw your name on the release form and came to ask me if you were the same Michael Rosenbaum who was almost on the show.”

Amy -- oh. Of course, the eager young intern who is probably also some kind of annoying expert in Smallville trivia. Amy, apparently buddy-buddy with one of the series’ stars, or at least trying to be. Michael sees the culprit and glares at her, but Amy the intern’s too busy wiggling with glee to notice his annoyance.

“I had a meeting with Greg,” Michael manages, beginning to feel like this whole day has been one giant shock. “About -- we’re writing a pilot for Fox.”

“How do you know Greg?” asks Kristin, clear hazel eyes blinking. “He came on board after the pilot.”

“I -- well.” Now everyone’s looking this way, and unsurprisingly, because how often does a television star squeal and hug a random stranger watching the taping? “Tom introduced me.”

“Tom?” Kristin repeats, and fuck. Yes, Tom’s now paying attention too. Michael throws him a helpless glance, hoping Tom isn’t still so angry that he won’t help out a fellow actor in distress. But Tom just looks dumbstruck as Michael feels.

“Yeah, Tom,” Michael nods, waving a hand beseechingly. Tom understands this gesture, at least, and comes over to join them.

“You know Michael?” Tom asks Kristin, and fuck if this isn’t starting to feel like a Shakespearean comedy or maybe an Abbott and Costello routine. “How do you know Michael?”

“From the pilot,” Kristin says, as though this is blatantly obvious.

“You mean you’re going to be on his show?” Tom asks, glancing from one to the other, like he really doesn’t get it and --

Oh.

Tom really doesn’t get it. Tom still doesn’t know who Michael was, who he used to be before that night that Tom saved him. Michael’d assumed that Tom had figured it out, that he knew Michael used to be an actor.

But that was before Michael discovered that he and Tom really had met before, in a way. Tom didn’t recognize Michael from TV, he recognized him from the rescue five years ago -- and from then until now, no one had ever told Tom that Michael Rosenbaum was a name he should know.

Kristin’s answering Tom. “No -- I mean, when Michael was cast as Lex. God, I totally forgot about that.” She beams. “You look so great!”

“Lex?” Tom repeats.

“Where the hell are my actors?” bellows Beeman.

Michael just might start laughing hysterically, if he can only gather enough breath to do it.

“Wait, you’re an actor?” Tom asks, grabbing Michael by the arm.

“I was an actor,” Michael says.

“Tom, Kristin, let’s go!” Beeman shouts.

“You were supposed to be Lex?” Tom says, shaking his head as though to clear it.

“How do you know Michael, then?” Kristin asks, looking from Michael to Tom and back again.

“I thought you knew,” Michael manages weakly, because Tom’s grip is tightening and his eyes are snapping with emotion.

“How the hell could I know that? How the hell could I know any of it unless you bothered to tell me, Michael?” Tom exclaims angrily. “Do you have any other secrets you’d like to share while we’re having confessions?”

“Okay, what’s going on?” asks Beeman, breaking into their huddle.

Tom doesn’t falter, his gaze still trained on Michael. “I trusted you, and you’ve been lying to me this whole time.”

“I swear to god, I thought you knew,” Michael repeats urgently, stepping in closer. “Tom, you have to believe me, I didn’t know you were the one who --”

Tom lets go of Michael’s arm and turns away. “Sorry, Greg, let’s go.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Greg asks, concerned.

“I have no idea,” says Kristin when Tom and Michael don’t answer. Tom, in fact, is already over on the set, pacing and glaring down at his script again.

Michael wets his lips and exhales shakily. “Look, Greg, I have to motor. But I’ll call you, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Greg, watching Tom with concern, obviously figuring out that Tom and Michael are more than just buddies, or that they were. “Yeah, later.”

Michael smokes half a pack on the way back home. Fuck the cleaning deposit.

He hardly sleeps all night, alternately surging out of bed to call Tom, to explain, and then flopping back onto the mattress, paralyzed with indecision. Tom might not believe Michael, and why should he? From the outside, it looks exactly as though Michael played on Tom’s attraction to him just to get his script read. But if that were the case, then Tom wouldn’t expect Michael’s call now that his objective had been met -- but then, Michael isn’t sure he’s ready to face Tom’s anger because there’ll be a lot of explaining and that means --

Michael will have to say some things out loud, things that he’s kept buried under miles of concrete.

The next day at work is clumsy and horrible. Michael feels like he’s wearing mitts and his female co-workers roll their eyes when he says he can’t lift the crate of milk jugs for them. His speech starts to slur around noon and that’s when he realizes that he hasn’t taken his meds since yesterday morning.

“I’ve gotta run home for a minute,” he tells his shift supervisor.

She laughs and then catches his eye, sees his seriousness. “What? Why?”

Michael waits for his heart to start tripping but it doesn’t. The words just emerge as if Michael’s said them a hundred times before. “I’m on anti-seizure drugs,” he tells her. “I forgot to take them yesterday.”

Her eyes go wide. “God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Michael reassures her.

“But you’re talking kind of --”

“It happens when I’m tired,” he says. “It’s from a head injury a few years back.” He takes a deep breath. “That’s why I can’t lift the milk today, my right side gets weak.” He said it. He said the word ‘weak’, that word he’s hated ever since the neurologist first used it.

“I -- didn’t know.” She is almost reproaching him, but her concern is too overwhelming for her anger to be clear.

“Yeah, sorry,” says Michael, palming the back of his neck and jamming the other hand in his pants pocket. “So -- I have to go. Can you cover me for like twenty minutes?”

She is clearly torn -- he’s not supposed to leave during a shift, but it’s also a serious matter. “Yeah, yeah. Go. Hurry!”

Even though he feels like shit, Michael can’t keep from grinning as he heads down the street towards his apartment. One person down, hundreds to go.

It’s nearly three o’clock and Michael’s just about done for the day. The shift supervisor put him on bar because there’s less talking to customers and he can pull the shots left-handed if he needs to. He’s already a little tired of the gentle treatment he’s receiving at her hands but he figures that it’ll only last another few hours anyway, so he shuts up and deals with it.

“Oh, someone called,” she says over her shoulder as Michael pours his last latte of the day. “Asked if you were working today, and for how long. I told ‘em to come before three if they wanted to catch you.”

He’d admitted to Beeman that he’s been working at Starbucks, and Beeman had grinned and threatened to come by and buy a drink from him, but it’s far too early in the day for Beeman to have a spare moment. And if Beeman’s busy, so is Tom. Michael frowns as he sleeves the latte, wondering who the hell else would want to catch him here.

Whoever it is seems to have missed his or her chance, Michael thinks, watching the final 4 seconds of his shift tick away before heading to the back room. Untying his apron is much easier than untying skates, thankfully, and he’s just emerged back onto the floor when he hears it:

“Venti dark roast to go.”

He looks up, startled, and finds Tom looking back at him from the other side of the counter.

“Sorry I’m late,” Tom says, nodding at the clock. “I was hoping you’d still be here.”

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Michael asks, winding his apron around his right arm as though Tom could see its uselessness.

“There’s a night shoot today so Beeman gave me a free afternoon.” Michael notices a small triangle of orange make-up under Tom’s earlobe, a place he missed in his hurry to get here by three.

“Good,” says Michael, subconsciously limiting himself to simple words. “Cool.”

“So, do you have a minute? I thought we should talk.” While Tom’s posture isn’t exactly open, it’s not drawn up with anger like it was yesterday either. It seems like they’ve both had time to think things through.

Michael’s instinct is to make an excuse, avoid letting Tom see him when he’s this exhausted -- but Tom already knows. And it’s so easy to just admit the truth again. “Yeah, sure,” he says, and steps out from behind the counter. “But just so you know, I’m kind of messed up today. I get like this when I don’t get enough sleep.”

Tom takes his cardboard cup and they leave the store together. Tom’s Echo is parked outside around the corner but with a tacit understanding they continue past it, heading aimlessly down the side street into the quiet Vancouver neighborhood. For two blocks, neither of them speaks, and then they both speak at once.

“I’m sorry --” “I should have --”

They laugh awkwardly and then Michael waves them both down to sit on a patch of grass outside someone’s fenced yard. “From the beginning?” he asks, and Tom nods. “Okay. I used to be an actor.”

“I looked you up yesterday,” Tom answers, nodding. “You were in a Keanu Reeves movie.”

“A bad Keanu Reeves movie,” Michael clarifies, and they both laugh again. “Anyway, yeah. I got cast as Lex Luthor back when Al and Miles were putting together the pilot. I was up here in Vancouver for some screen tests and we even rehearsed a few scenes. And then one night I was out at a club on Davie --” He pauses, because here’s another ocean-deep element of the story. “I was high and drunk and I shouldn’t have been there alone, but I was. Truth is, I don’t even remember what happened. I don’t remember the attack, I don’t remember what happened next. I just remember waking up in the hospital the next day.”

“You don’t remember me?” Tom asks, leaning forward. “But you were awake, I talked to you!”

“Head injury,” shrugs Michael. “It usually involves memory loss of the incident itself. All I knew was that I went to a club, got trashed, and woke up with broken ribs and a big hole in my brain.”

“It was two guys,” says Tom, flatly, avoiding Michael’s gaze. “They were calling you names and kicking you. I chased them off and came back to you, called an ambulance, waited for the paramedics. I took off because I didn’t want my name in the papers about it.”

“Most celebrities would,” Michael tells him, echoing the words of the interviewer from the article. “It’s great PR to save someone’s life.”

Tom looks at Michael now, all seriousness and intense focus. “You were hurt really really bad,” he says in a rough tone. “I was scared and sick and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I was not some kind of fucking hero.” The last spoken through clenched teeth, an effort to express and Michael has to close the space between them enough to get his hand in Tom’s hair, angle his head, and kiss him quickly and deeply.

“You fucking saved my life,” says Michael. “I had a skull fracture and my brain was bleeding. If you hadn’t called the ambulance, I would have died on the street.”

They breathe each other’s air for a second and Michael remembers the weird flashback he had the first night he and Tom fucked -- the strange sense of being cradled against Tom’s chest, being sheltered and hearing Tom’s racing heart against his ear. He might, after all, remember a little of that night.

They part slowly and Michael keeps talking. “I knew I couldn’t shoot the pilot, I knew I was out of the project. But I didn’t want anyone to know that I was hurt.” No, not quite true. “I didn’t want anyone to know that I had been gay-bashed and I was brain damaged,” he clarifies painfully.

Tom takes the words in without the slightest ripple of judgment. He’s still and silent and just watches Michael, listens.

“I couldn’t really handle the thought of anyone knowing. I figured I could just lay low until I was better and find more work somewhere else. So -- I called my agent and told him that I had just been outed in a really spectacular way, that I was pretty certain the producers on Smallville wouldn’t want a fag playing Lex Luthor, and I asked him to call them and give them my pre-emptive resignation. He didn’t argue, he just did it. And that was it.” Michael remembers the sick fury that had possessed him in those weeks following the attack, the way he’d alternately raged at his physical therapists and his broken body, the way he’d fought against every restriction they tried to place on him. He was discharged while he was still unable to dress himself and that was when Michael realized he wasn’t going back to Hollywood any time soon.

“When you said you knew me from somewhere, I thought you meant you recognized me from TV,” Michael concludes heavily. “I never guessed it was you that night. They never found the guys who did it and I never would have pressed charges anyway.”

“Why not?” asks Tom, bewildered.

“Because,” Michael says wryly, “that would be the same as admitting that they hurt me.”

Something bursts like a dam inside Michael as he says this sentence, and all semblance of ironic manly control is destroyed. He looks down and sees his hands shaking, feels his breath catching and his vision wavering with tears, and it’s like the instant before a long fall -- he knows he’s going to fly apart before it happens.

Tom catches him, steadies him, and Michael spends long seconds trying to regulate his too-fast breathing against the fabric of Tom’s grey hoodie before Tom’s fingers stroke down his back. “I’ve got you,” Tom says, and Michael -- lets Tom get him.

They wind up at Michael’s apartment where Tom tucks himself around Michael while they both sleep for a few hours. Michael wakes up to Tom berating the contents of his refrigerator. “I didn’t know that salad dressing went bad,” he says irritably.

“Pizza delivery menus are on the microwave,” Michael tells him, stretching and testing his right side. It’s better. Everything’s better, clearer, inside Michael’s head. Why did it matter to him that Tom might see his apartment in its natural disgusting state? He can’t quite remember what it felt like to worry about that.

After Tom orders pizza, they sit on Michael’s futon couch and Michael finishes the story. “I couldn’t go home until I was better and I couldn’t stay in Vancouver without a job, so I got work. At first I did a few retail things, and then I got into Starbucks and I’ve been there ever since.”

“You never went home?” Tom asks, surprised.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve gone a few times,” Michael assures him. “But I can’t go for very long because if I have one sleepless night -- well. You saw what it’s like then.”

“And you never went back to work? Seems like acting would be better money than slinging lattes,” Tom presses. His bare feet are tangled up with Michael’s in the space between them.

Michael lifts one shoulder. “Same thing. I might have to explain what happened. So I just stayed here.”

Tom’s toes wriggle against Michael’s. “Until you met me.”

“I started writing,” Michael admits. “I’ve always liked screenwriting, but I never took it very seriously. Anyway, when I figured you’d realized I used to be an actor, I thought there was no harm in giving the script to you to read, get your opinion.”

Tom’s mouth makes an O shape of realization, which makes Michael laugh. “God, I thought --” begins Tom, and then blushes. “I shouldn’t have thought that.”

“I should have told you,” Michael admits. “I’m sorry.”

Tom accepts this with a nod and focuses his gaze on the place where their fingers are twining together now. “It’s so weird to think that we were almost co-stars.”

“Think we still would have ended up fucking?” Michael asks with a smile.

“Hey, I wasn’t hanging around Davie Street for the hell of it,” Tom answers, grinning back. He lunges forward and pins Michael down along the length of the couch while he kisses the breath out of him. “I still have an hour before I’ve got to go back to the set,” he leers, and kisses his way across Michael’s neck.

Michael thrusts up into Tom’s warmth, firmly resolving that he’s going to have to stop playing bottom when it comes to the two of them -- right after this. “Just between you and me,” he says, scrabbling at Tom’s hoodie zipper, “what’s really going on with Clark and Lex?”

Tom makes a face and wrestles Michael’s wrists into his possession, holding them together about Michael’s head. “Nothing at all. If it had been you and me, on the other hand…” He dives down and licks his way inside Michael’s mouth.

The buzzer interrupts them, announcing the arrival of the pizza.

“Pizza’s supposed to take thirty minutes,” Tom grumbles while Michael searches for change.

“The pizza place is downstairs and two doors over,” Michael answers. “Why do you think I order from there?”

They eat in amiable silence, but a call from Beeman summons Tom back to work earlier than expected. Tom leaves Michael only on the condition that they meet up again whenever Tom gets finished shooting.

“When’s that?” asks Michael, distracted by the way Tom’s fingers are crawling up the back of his shirt.

“Late-ish,” says Tom ambiguously.

“So, eleven? Midnight?”

Tom’s other hand goes down the back of Michael’s pants. “Two? Three?”

“You’re a fucking tease,” says Michael, because Tom’s hand is inside his boxers.

“No teasing,” Tom vows, and bends down to kiss Michael. “You’ll see.”

Michael’s definitely going to show Tom he’s not a bottom. Right after tonight.

He hits the rink to distract himself and winds up in the after-school free skate, surrounded by hockey-crazy eight-year-olds and giggling junior high girls. Still, it’s good to feel the resistance of his strengthening muscles, to feel all the little sore places from the last skate, and from his session in bed with Tom on the weekend.

“Can I borrow this for a second?” he asks, addressing one of the taller hockey players. The kid’s maybe eleven, but his stick is obviously the property of his dad or an older brother because it’s too long. It feels about right in Michael’s hands and he zips crosswise over the rink, dribbling an imaginary puck on the blade. The grip is a bit awkward -- Michael’s dominant hand having to take a bit more of the workload than it used to -- but nothing he couldn’t get used to.

He could do this. He could play hockey again.

“Thanks,” he says, returning the stick, and skates off.

Ian calls again on the way back from the rink and while Michael’s hesitant to answer, he’s too content with the universe at the moment to let Ian’s temper ruin his mood.

“Rosenbaum!”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Michael answers, suspicious because Ian sounds cheerful again.

“Look, I just got off the phone with Jeph Loeb and he tells me you popped by the Smallville set yesterday, caused a bit of a stir.”

“Did I?” Michael can hardly believe it was only yesterday.

“Apparently he heard I might still represent you, wanted to know if you might be interested in a guest star role on the show later in the season.”

“Huh,” says Michael, now playing this out for sheer pleasure. “What kind of role?”

“Sounded like a single episode but I’m angling for a longer arc, maybe three episodes?”

“Huh,” says Michael again, and god this feels good. Not caring. “Yeah, maybe. I want to see the script first.”

There’s a pause. “Anything you want, Rosey. I’ll take good care of you.” Casually, he adds, “Oh, and I need a fax number so I can send you a representation contract?”

Michael grins. “I don’t have a fax -- can you just fire it over to Greg Beeman? He’ll get it to me.”

“Sounds great!” Taut and pleasant and ass-kissing as ever.

“Okay, we’ll talk later then,” says Michael, and hangs up. Michael can forgive and forget. He just likes to hear Ian squirm.

It’s four fucking thirty in the morning by the time Tom calls. Luckily Michael fell asleep watching an infomercial, so he’s less irritated than he might otherwise have been. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he says into the phone by way of greeting.

“It’s a Beeman episode,” answers Tom. “Look, if I were directing it would have been over by one. But Beeman can’t get a single take of a light switch.”

“How far away are you?” Michael asks blearily, rolling over and stretching on the lumpy futon.

“Two blocks. Do we have any pizza left? I’m dying here.”

“You said no teasing,” Michael grumbles, and Tom laughs before hanging up.

It’s worth it -- four-thirty in the morning or anytime -- when Tom comes in the door of Michael’s darkened apartment, smelling like fresh rain, tasting like make-up, and pressing, hot and urgent, against Michael’s body. “God, I missed you,” he says into Michael’s open mouth, and just like it never left, his hand is down the back of Michael’s pajama pants.

“How are you this awake?” Michael asks, not a little enviously, because he’s still a bit groggy (though increasingly hard) and Tom’s like a live wire, crackling and lightning-fast.

“Caffeine pills,” Tom replies. Michael’s flat on his back on his own bed a moment later while Tom pulls Michael’s pants over his hips, down his legs, and throws them over his shoulder. “And thinking about doing this to you.”

He goes down on Michael hungrily with his talented fucking amazing wide red mouth, and Michael wishes he’d stumbled into a light switch before letting Tom in, because he needs to see this, see Tom rolling his tongue over Michael’s cock, see if it’s making Tom horny with that high-up pink flush in his cheeks. But Michael can’t see, he can only raise his hips and moan, grabbing handfuls of dark curls and hanging on.

Tom takes Michael right to the brink and then pulls off, breathing hard.

“Don’t fucking stop,” Michael manages, tugging at Tom’s hair ungently.

“I don’t want you to come yet,” Tom explains, and pulls his shirt up. Michael lets go of Tom’s head long enough to allow this, then gets his hands back in Tom’s hair and pushes down. “I thought you weren’t awake yet?” Tom asks wickedly, with one eyebrow raised.

“No teasing,” Michael reminds Tom.

“Oh, I’m fucking deadly serious,” says Tom, and spreads Michael’s thighs wide apart before getting his shoulders under them and --

“Holy christ,” Michael cries, forgetting to hold on, forgetting everything but the clever tip of Tom’s tongue as it plunges inside. Michael’s heels are kicking against Tom’s sides, his back is arched like a violin bow, his whole body is begging. His mouth tries for words but only sounds emerge.

“On your hands and knees,” Tom says when he stops, then pauses to look down at his handiwork, at Michael’s spread and wanting ass. “God, I love eating you out.”

Michael almost comes right there, but the knowledge that Tom’s going to be inside him keeps him in one piece. He finds his limbs long enough to turn over, spreads his knees and gets his ass up in the air, down on his elbows in front and okay, he’s rocking back a little even as he gets settled, because he wants this now.

Tom must have found the lube and condoms Michael left on the bed, because he’s pressing two fingers inside Michael almost right away, and Michael can hear the crackle of the condom wrapper in Tom’s free hand.

“Can you feel this?” Tom asks, and Michael bites back a sarcastic comment about not having much of a choice what with Tom’s two biggest fucking fingers jammed in his ass. “This connection between us,” Tom clarifies, sounding not a little broken himself. “Like we’ve never been apart, not really.” He scissors his fingers and Michael shouts. “Isn’t there some saying in, like, the Chinese culture or something, that if you save a man’s life, he belongs to you?”

Tom pulls his fingers back out and the condom wrapper crackles louder while Michael hears the sound of Tom jacking himself, of Tom rolling the condom on, the click of the lid as he lubes himself. “Do you feel it?” Tom asks, and pushes Michael down into the mattress with one palm between his shoulderblades as Tom parts Michael’s ass with brutal steadiness. “I own you.” Balls-deep, Tom eases up on Michael’s back a little only to pull out and slam back in.

“No comment,” Michael answers, and is possessed.

One year later

Hockey games all smell the same, and Michael can’t help but crack a grin at that -- celebrity charity hockey or not, the locker room still stinks like sweat and feet and ass.

“I’m the only one who can’t lace his own skates,” mutters Tom, red-faced as Michael kneels on the floor in front of the bench. “Jesus, I don’t belong here.”

Michael wedges the blade of Tom’s custom-ordered size fourteen Bauers between his thighs and hauls on the laces. “It’s not that you can’t lace your own skates, Tommy,” he cajoles, grinning. “It’s just that I do a better job.” He sits back and gestures for the other foot. “I let you put your cup on yourself, didn’t I?”

“Fuck you,” Tom says, but he can’t hold back his smile. It only lasts a second before he subsides into frowning. “Remind me again why you’re not the one going out there?”

“Because, Mr. Big Shot, no one wants to pay hundreds of dollars to watch an unknown television producer play hockey. My show’s not even on the air for four more months. They’re here to see your fine CW star ass.”

“As it slides across the rink when I fall on it. Michael, I’ve only been skating for like a year. I can’t play hockey!”

“I’m telling you, just keep your stick on the ice,” Michael advises soberly. “You’ll be fine.”

“Someone’s stick is on the ice,” Tom grumbles.

“You’ll be spectacular, kiddo,” Michael apes in a Humphrey Bogart voice.

“I’m gonna look like a damn fool is what,” Tom shoots back, because his Brokeback Mountain voice is still his best imitation. Michael blames too many late nights with the Texan yahoos from Supernatural.

With sidelong glances to make sure the locker room is abandoned, they duck in and steal a quick kiss. They’re not exactly in the closet -- hell, they go everywhere together these days -- but they’re not about to volunteer for the cover of “Out” magazine either. It’s put Tom a bit more on the periphery of the celeb scene and it’s also sealed the deal on Smallville’s sixth season being its last -- but both those things actually make Tom pretty happy.

Being forced to play hockey for Michael’s vicarious pleasure, on the other hand -- “Stop pouting, you big baby.” Michael pinches his cheek and shakes it gently. “Remember the deal? You go and play hockey, and --”

“You go home to your family and tell them about what happened to you,” Tom concludes, suddenly intent. It’s been a bone of contention between them all along -- though Michael often shares the fact of his brain injury (though not the details of the incident) with people he knows and works with, he hasn’t gathered the courage yet to tell the whole story to his parents. And until he tells the story, he can’t tell them about Tom. “Okay, let’s do it.” Palms braced on either side on the bench, Tom pushes to his feet and wobbles there. Michael stands too, straightening his shirt collar and dusting off his jeans.

When he looks up, it’s to find Tom watching him with the clear green gaze Michael remembers from that first morning in Starbucks. “What?” he asks, a little disconcerted because they were just joking about sticks on the ice and protective cups.

Tom’s hand comes up and rubs against Michael’s short crew cut before diving in for a second kiss. “Nothing,” he tells Michael, pulling back. “Just picturing you in your little green apron.”

“Do you miss my little green apron?” Michael asks, punctuating the question with a bite to Tom’s jaw line.

“Sometimes,” Tom admits, and yes. He’s blushing again, for entirely different reasons.

“I have good news for you then,” Michael says, backing away. Tom’s due out on the ice and the game’s about to start. “I kept it.”

He just has time to watch Tom’s pupils blow wide with interest before Michael ducks out and heads for the stands.

“And, from the CW’s hit drama, Smallville, number 35, Tom Welling!” Michael settles into his seat beside Beeman and cheers with the crowd as Tom glides out onto the ice looking serious.

“Look at him, he’s totally crapping his pants!” shouts Beeman cheerfully.

“Nah,” Michael answers, waving a hand in dismissal. “I gave him something to look forward to once he gets through this.”

Beeman, typically, doesn’t catch this, only sits on the edge of his seat and heckles Tom loudly about being a television star who can’t skate. “I love that guy,” he tells Michael as he sits back again.

“Me too,” says Michael, and smiles because it’s true.