Work Text:
The beard was still there when Thom came home from New Orleans. He'd gotten off the plane, began the process of coming down from the lazy, hazy Louisiana heat back into the familiar rush of New York, and the only thing that was out of the ordinary was that Ted was still refusing to shave the beard he'd started a month or so before.
"You're trying to turn into Grizzly Adams," Thom said when he came back into the office again. Ted looked up from the notes he was making on the table and shrugged at him.
"I'm just lazy. How was New Orleans?"
"Nawlins? Hot. Nice change. What's this?" Thom leaned over Ted's notes. Ingredient lists, and names of organic grocery stores. "What's the plan?"
Ted waited for Thom to finish shuffling his notes around. "It's all there, Thom. I love New Orleans, did I ever tell you that? Back when I was a kid, I used to have it all mapped out - take off from college, do Mardi Gras, not come home for a week."
"How'd that work out for you?"
"The way it always does. You bring us back any beads?"
"Okay. Y'see -"
Ted laughed.
"I haven't even finished yet. I had 'em, and they were in a pretty little bag and everything, except then -"
"There's going to be a bar involved somewhere in this story, isn't there?"
"No. No. Yes. But it wasn't -"
"You never change, Thom." Ted pulled his notes back into some kind of order. "You still jet-lagged?"
"I'm all right. I'll sleep in the car or something."
"That's healthy," Ted said. "You think you'll be up to going out this week?"
"What've they got planned? I thought we'd gotten all the plugging details out of the way when the new season started."
"No, not - there's this new place Jeanie told me about, some new vodka bar. And I was thinking -"
"Ted, there's bars all over the city."
"Do you want to do market research with me or not?"
"Market research," Thom said, laughing. Then, "Wait, why do you need -"
"I never thought I'd see the day when you would turn down -"
Ted didn't like people tagging along when he was working. He talked with them, worked out a plan of action, but he did all his research on his own; Thom thought it was because he didn't want to be distracted.
"Ted, I think that beard's starting to grow into your brain."
Ted leaned back in his chair, adjusting the stem of his glasses between his thumb and index finger. "I just figured." He looked deflated and resigned at the same time, and Thom had the thought that he'd missed out on something important, that it was too late to make it better, so he started babbling, "I mean, I know you like doing this stuff by yourself so I thought this was like the same thing, I mean, if you really want me to help out, I will, it's no problem, I just -"
"Thom," Ted said wearily. "Calm down."
"I was - I don't mind, it'll be fun."
Ted looked up at him. He half-smiled, the dimples in his cheek fading into light brown stubble. "Only if you'd like to."
*****
Thom met him at the bar, at about eight. Ted clapped his hands together as though they were about to embark on something very exciting and said, "All righty. You've got a ride home, hmm? This might take a while, and I'd like if we both had designated drivers."
Thom said, "Ted -" But Ted was already beckoning him into the bar, saying, "So it's only been here for about a month. Jeanie said it used to be a tobacconist's place. Don't quite understand the change in industry, but." He shrugged.
Inside, it was a miniature version of a gentleman's club, with small oaken tables and equally small, red leather seats. Thom said, "Looks like the whole room got left in the dryer too long. What are you planning for this place, anyway?"
"Something intimate," Ted said. "Someone brings their wife, their girlfriend, they have a fun little night of tasting, it'd be cute." He slid out of his coat and laid it on the chair next to him. "What do you want to try first?"
Thom squinted at the tattered paper menu. "What haven't I tried, Ted?"
"Are you really asking?"
"Well, yeah. You know. Recommend me something."
"Mmm," Ted said. He pointed at the menu, seemingly at random. "Try that."
"Okay."
He'd been expecting Ted to take notes, or talk to the waiter about what they were drinking, but instead he seemed to be just quietly sipping and contemplating, without comment. Thom said, in between mouthfuls of some delicate raspberry-flavored vodka from Romania, "How're you going to remember what we drank?"
Ted looked up from his glass. "I'm keeping track of you, too?"
"Of course."
Ted ran a finger under his chin, rubbing along the stubble. "Photographic memory."
"Uh-huh."
"Tell me about New Orleans again," Ted said.
"What's there to tell?" Thom put his glass down and scanned the menu for something else. "It was fun being on the float. You had to, like, fight for elbow room with that Sex and the City guy. They gave me this crazy hat that I think Carson would have wanted...Ted, what are those cakes called? They're, like, cinnamon things with icing sugar on them and they put plastic dolls into the dough? That really sounds strange, but -"
"No, I know it. I know it. Um -"
"You find the doll in the cake, you get good luck," Thom said. "That's what they said."
Ted beamed at him. "King cake. That's it, right?"
"King cake, yeah."
"So did you find it?"
"Hmm? Oh. No. No good luck."
"You'll have to go back next year."
"Wearing my tinfoil suit. It's really goddamned humid down there. I got off the plane and my hair went poof."
Ted pushed his glass to the side and signaled grandly to the waiter. "I was always there for working holidays. Mardi Gras was beyond me. You know they wanted me to be on a float or something down in Carmel?"
"Do they even have floats in Indiana?"
Ted looked curiously at him. Thom said, "What?"
"Just wonderin' about you," Ted said. "I said no."
"Yeah? To the float?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Ted accepted another glass of something clear from the waiter. "Oh, why not," he said into the glass.
By the time they'd finished tasting all the available alcohol, it was close to midnight. Thom, buzzed if not outright drunk, said, "Do you think you could use it?"
Ted shrugged. There was a faint alcoholic flush spreading over his throat, showing through the open neck of his shirt. "I haven't decided yet. Wanna grab a cheeseburger with me?"
"Cheeseburger," Thom groaned. "That's just lurid, Ted. I'll watch you eat."
Ted dragged him around the corner to some pub or another that was still serving food; he ordered roast beef sandwiches and beer. There was a flurry of activity around the tables when they walked in, which Ted seemed unconscious of and which Thom only noticed because Ted didn't. Ted leaned against the banquette, drinking; his beer stein left little marks of moisture on his fingers.
"What's that rhyme again?" Ted said. "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear? Or is it the other way around?"
"It's...it's something, anyway," Thom said. He was thinking he was just about done for the night; the beer tasted like sour water, and he didn't want to cap off the night by puking in some dive's men's room.
The food arrived, a gigantic white plate of beef and bacon; the waiter went to refill Ted's beer. Ted rolled his shirt cuffs over his wrists.
"You're good, right?"
Thom nodded and made a face. Ted shrugged. He picked the sandwich apart and ate slowly, compartmentalizing the sandwich into separate parts.
"I was thinking," Ted said grandly. "What would've happened to me if I'd been born forty years earlier, Thom? Did you ever play that game?"
"Eh," Thom said. "I never felt the need."
Ted looked at him over the tops of his glasses. "Just me, then. I was thinking, I never would've gotten out of Carmel, probably."
"You probably wouldn't have come out, either," Thom said.
Ted suddenly looked hurt. "Well, I could've."
"Ted, I know you. You barely managed to come out of the closet in the nineties. What would've happened in the fifties?"
Ted scowled at him. "I could've been Allen Ginsberg, Thom."
"I think you've gone nuts."
"Could have, too." Ted took another drink. "'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...' You're eating my fries."
"Am not," Thom said with his mouth full. "You're imagining things."
"Eh." Ted shrugged. "I mean...Oh, you're probably right."
"What, about..."
"No." Ted pushed his plate away. "About everything."
Thom looked at him across the table. Ted's eyes were tired and blurry. He looked like he needed a shower and a blanket.
"Want to come crash at my place?" Thom said. "I'll get a cab."
"Nnn," Ted said noncommittally.
Driving through the dark, Ted stared silently out the window, running his finger over the stubble on his chin. Thom felt suddenly desperate, cracking jokes just to hear his own voice, and even the cabbie didn't seem to notice.
"This is it," Ted said with finality.
"What?" Thom said, just glad to hear him talking.
"Thom, you're so...You know how you can just say things? And do things? Like that?"
"No."
"Thom," Ted said. "I'm trying to say something. I'm trying to do something. I'm trying to change something."
Thom knotted his eyebrows. "But why do you need to?"
"No," Ted said fiercely, and propelled himself across the seat, small, hot hands running over Thom's shoulders and across the hollow of his throat. Thom was too surprised to move. Ted's knee was digging into the side of his thigh. The cab jerked to the side.
"Ted -" Thom gasped out, his heart suddenly beating in his throat, his hands limp and useless on Ted's wrists. "Ted, what -"
"I'm changing things," Ted said stubbornly. "See? I'm changing things."
"You don't -" He could feel Ted shaking against him. Ted's hands were in his hair, the side of his thumb stroking Thom's temple. His stubble scraped against Thom's cheek; his skin felt raw, tender-hot. "Oh, honey."
"Don't," Ted said. His voice had a catch in it, still unsure, scared maybe? Thom wasn't sure. "Thom -"
"I wasn't -" Thom said against his ear. Ted pressed his forehead to Thom's. One shuddery breath, and Ted was parting his lips, mouth slick and hot inside, his teeth nibbling against Thom's lower lip.
Ted was almost in his lap, stomach against his, and the seamed vinyl of the cab interior was damp and sticky as his shirt rode up. The cabbie was coughing in little nervous breaths, but Thom wasn't in a position to really make him feel comfortable right now.
Ted pressed his thumb against Thom's cheek, faint pulse beating, his shoulder fitting into the space under Thom's arm. "You understand," he gasped in between kissing Thom, "See? You understand?"
Thom whimpered into his mouth, trying to remember how to work his hands. He felt caught up in something, rushed along without really understanding, and that was something he couldn't say.
"Honey -" he said faintly, touching Ted's skinny shoulder. But that was wrong, he'd timed it badly, because as soon as he'd done it Ted had shook him off and slid back across the seat as if nothing had happened. Thom was trembling and sweating and trying not to ejaculate, and the cabbie was staring at the road and humming frantically, and Ted was staring out of the window with mild, blurry eyes.
The cabbie drove them to Thom's apartment. Thom tipped him heavily in a last-ditch effort to prevent him making a phone call to the gossip columnists at the Post, poured Ted out of the cab and dragged him upstairs.
"Aspirin," he babbled on the elevator ride up, "That's all you need, just a little aspirin..." Ted didn't answer.
Inside the apartment, he propelled Ted onto the couch, did his best to shush the dog, who had noticed new company in the apartment and gone into a barking frenzy, staggered into the kitchen and smoked two cigarettes, one after the other, and felt his heart rate slow down.
"God," Thom said. How much of this was just late night craziness and how much was...He wasn't going to think about it. He was going to bring Ted some water, put him to bed, go whack off in the bathroom and try to forget what had happened. His head was swimming.
Ted was passed out on his couch. He'd managed to get his glasses off, at least; he was holding them like a security blanket, curled up in one fist. Thom put the water on the coffee table and retrieved them before they got broken. Without the glasses, Ted's face looked soft and worn behind the stubble, as though he'd been awake for weeks and only just succumbed.
"Oh," Thom said, his voice quiet and exasperated. He sat down on the empty space on the couch. Ted shifted; his foot brushed against Thom's pants leg.
"Goddamnit, Ted," Thom said, but he was too tired and confused to really mean it. He stroked Ted's ankle absently.
He sat in the half-dark with Ted and listened to him breathing. When he was thinking about getting up and trying to go to bed, Ted twitched awake and stared at him for a minute or two.
"Hello," he said finally. "Are we at my apartment, or yours?"
"Mine," Thom said. "You've been passed out. You're not going to throw up on my couch, right?"
"Well, I wasn't planning on it, Thom," Ted said. He heaved himself into a sitting position. "Ow. Okay, I'm thinking I overestimated my capacity a little."
"Really."
"I haven't done this since college," Ted said. "This is embarrassing."
"I'm thinking you're trying to have a midlife crisis, Ted," Thom said. "Most guys just go buy a sports car."
"Yeah, you'd think. Did you get a sunburn or something? What happened to your face?"
Thom touched his mouth, his face. It felt scraped raw. "You kissed me," he said finally. He swallowed. He'd been hoping it meant something, after all, that it hadn't been something they could forget about and laugh over. "In the cab. You kissed me, Ted."
Ted blanched behind the stubble. "It was...I was thinking I just dreamed that."
"Are you sorry?"
"Are you?" Ted said, so softly Thom had to strain to hear it.
"I don't know what I am," Thom said.
"I was thinking I could be like you," Ted said. "For once in my life. I was thinking that."
"But you don't -"
"I thought that would work," Ted said. "If I wasn't. You know. "
"Oh," Thom said quietly.
"Do you understand, Thom?" Ted said. "I just...I don't want it to be the same. It's been like that. I don't..."
Thom nodded.
"You know."
"Ted," Thom said.
"Yeah?"
"You know what I was thinking?"
"No."
He touched Ted's shoulder. Ted looked at him sideways, unsure, waiting. Thom eased him into his arms.
Thom said, "I was thinking that you can be anyone you want to be. As long as it's you."