Work Text:
It was not altogether rare for Raoul to get texts from Hamid in the middle of the night. They’d been together for several months now, and Hamid was a night owl even if Raoul liked to be asleep by midnight. Usually, though, they ran along the line of sexts, and they were never all that urgent. So when at 2:30 AM Raoul woke up to an incoming call and saw the caller ID name the caller as “Daddy_Daroga_XD”, he was unsure what to think. Their relationship was close, but not such that they would call each other for emergencies, and Hamid knew he didn’t do booty calls after nine. Scowling, he picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Raoul. Did I wake you?”
“Yeah. It’s a work night.” Being the son of a multi-millionaire, Raoul didn’t exactly have a job, but he still had enough responsibilities to keep him busy. And tomorrow was packed. “You know I go to bed early. Is this important?”
“I needed to warn you. It’s a disaster. Raoul, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think…”
“What’s the disaster?”
“There’s a video of us online.”
“There’s a what?”
“Google your name. It’s…”
It was, to say the least, compromising. Raoul watched it through twice while Hamid babbled over the phone, ignoring the apologies and attempted explanation and the recurrence of the word “Erik.” This…this was bad.
Hamid’s face was blurred out in the video, which left all the focus on Raoul. His face, his body, were quite clear. He was tied to a bed, completely naked and begging to be fucked until Hamid eventually complied. The video was seven minutes long, and ridiculously good quality. Fucking HD or some shit.
It had been taken from Hamid’s bedroom. The angle was weird, a little high, but Raoul recognized the bed easily. He’d made a study in the patterns on those sheets, geometric prints in blue and brown. When he was in the zone, he found them poetic. Now, staring at a video on a tabloid site, he found them panic inducing.
“Please, sir,” he heard his voice saying in the video. Reedy, computerized, and hideous. The worst thing was he felt like saying the same thing right now. Please, sir, tell me this is all a bad dream or some kind of game gone wrong. Please, sir, can you make it better for me the way you always do.
“God. Do I always sound that pathetic?”
“What? Raoul. That’s…Look. You need to focus.” Hamid, usually so masterful, sounded like he was on the verge of panic. “This video is already up on several sites. By morning…”
“How do we take it down?”
A long pause.
“Hamid. We need to take it down.” Raoul’s nails dug into his palms. “How do we take it down?”
“We can’t. It’s too late. I wanted to warn you because it’s bound to…”
“No, we need to take this down. You don’t understand. My father will see this. We can’t let my father see this.” His father didn’t even know he was gay.
“Raoul. It’s too late to take it down. Besides, I’m no hacker.”
“Hamid, I can’t…”
“Explain this.”
Raoul’s father crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. On the coffee table, the video was paused. Even on the screen of a cell phone, Raoul’s face was easily recognizable. Were it not, the headlines of the article would have been happy to explain everything.
Raoul kept his hands behind his back. His father hated it when he fidgeted. “Sir, it seems someone planted a camera in my boyfriend’s apartment.”
“Your boyfriend,” his father said. “Not…what did you say?” He hit play, then paused after a few interminable seconds of begging. “Oh, yes. Your daddy.”
Raoul’s face was hot. “We sometimes, um. We like to roleplay.”
“Yes, and now the whole world knows.” His father snorted. “God. If you had to be someone’s bitch you could have kept it to yourself, couldn’t you? Even your brother knew better to make sex tapes.”
“I didn’t make this. I didn’t…”
“So you let yourself get played. A bitch in more ways than one.” His father shook his head. “If it weren’t for the resemblance I’d wonder if you were really my son sometimes. Hell, at times like this I still do.”
Raoul bit his lip. “I’m sorry. I…”
“This after you told all the media outlets you were dating that Daae girl. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough. And now this. You are singlehandedly destroying our family’s image. It’s almost impressive.”
“It won’t…Look, it’s 2018. People aren’t as…”
His father scrolled down in the article to the comments and then held them up for Raoul’s perusal. The first positive comment was ten down; it was a woman complimenting the size of his dick.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses.”
“I wasn’t trying to…Look, Dad…”
“Please never call me that again.”
Raoul’s eyes were watering. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear them. His father snorted and shook his head. He turned to Philippe, who was standing silently by the side of his armchair. “Handle the media fallout. Keep your idiot brother away from the reporters. I trust you to take care of this mess.”
Raoul pressed a hand to his eyes, trying to pull his face together. His brother pulled him out of the room, and he blindly followed. They were barely in the hall when he broke down into sobbing.
“You can’t expect him not to be mad,” Philippe said after a moment. “He’ll get over it.”
Raoul laughed hysterically. His voice came out high, reedy, pathetic—just like in the video. “Phil. I fucked up.”
“It’s just a sex tape. I’ve had compromising photos released of me before. Ten years ago, you know, everyone wanted to know everything about me.” Philippe chuckled calmly. “When the media’s done calling you a slut they’ll call you a playboy. They always want to see a rich boy’s good side, trust me.”
“Your photos were with women. White women. And Dad’s never mad at you,” Raoul protested. But he did accept a handkerchief when Philippe offered. “God, I fucked up.”
“Well, you didn’t know your…man, here, was taking video. That’s not your fault.”
“It wasn’t Ha—I mean, my boyfriend didn’t do it. He had no idea someone had planted a camera.”
Philippe just looked at him.
“I know him. He would never do that without asking me.”
“Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do,” Philippe said wisely. “Your trusting nature is a good quality, but people will always take advantage.” He rubbed Raoul’s back. “You’re the victim here. Father will see that, and so will the papers. Soon enough. I’d like to have a word with this boyfriend of yours. What did you say his name was again?”
“You’re not going anywhere near him.”
“I just want to talk.” Philippe’s tone was cool. That meant he was lying. “Maybe you’re right. It could have been someone else. Apartments in this city are easy to break into. I’m sure he could explain it to me.”
“No.”
“Father left it to me to clean things up. You have to let me.”
“No.”
“It has to have been Erik,” Hamid said.
Raoul had him on the phone. His door was closed and locked, and he spoke quietly. “Erik.”
All he’d wanted was to tell Hamid about the current situation—himself not allowed out of the house, the press on the doorstep, his family stretched like a rubber band. He didn’t want explanations. Especially unlikely ones.
Raoul had never met Erik. He’d heard enough about him over the past months. Hamid’s crazy ex—he’d been the one to break the relationship off and yet he was still obsessed with Hamid for some reason.
“He knows how to pick locks.”
Yes. And he knew how to trail people through the city. Hamid could spot Erik in every shadow when they walked down the street together, at least when he was in a certain kind of mood. Sometimes he restlessly murmured Erik’s name in his sleep. Once or twice he’d let it slip when they were in bed for other reasons, too, but Raoul had never called him out on it.
“So he snuck into your apartment and hid a camera in the wall.”
“It seems the most likely explanation.”
“Mm.”
“It’s a bad sign. I hadn’t thought he was fixated on you.” Hamid’s voice was tense. Raoul hated it. He’d called Hamid looking for support, for confidence. Instead he got this. “Don’t go anywhere alone, Raoul. Stay in…”
“If you weren’t listening, I’m being forced to stay in the house anyway.”
“Good. Good.”
“No, it’s not…”
“You need to be around other people. You need to be protected. Take this seriously.”
“You think I’m not? My father’s an inch away from kicking me out of the house. The only reason he hasn’t is because the press frowns more on homophobia than promiscuity. And Philippe wants to fix this by somehow scapegoating you…you’re welcome, by the way, I didn’t rat you out. He doesn’t even know your name.”
“Thank you.”
Raoul paused.
“This could ruin my career if I was identified. I’m sorry to make you face this alone. Just…please.”
He sounded pathetic when he begged too. “I told you, I’m already protecting you. I’m not going to change my mind.” Raoul swallowed. “We’re both victims. Like you said, this is Erik.”
“Unfortunately there can be no doubt of it.”
“No doubt,” Raoul repeated. “No doubt.”
It was not virtue that made him believe in Hamid. He had to. He’d trusted Hamid with so much of himself over the course of their relationship, practically all of himself. The thought that Hamid could betray him made his stomach sick.
“Well…stay clear of the press. I’ll call you later. We won’t be able to meet for a while.”
“Stay safe.”
“Because of Erik. Right.” Raoul rubbed his eyes. “Well. Goodbye.”