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The driver rapped the screen as it lowered with a mechanical whir. “Sorry, no smoking!”
Was he fucking joking? They’d been at a standstill for twenty minutes in bumper-to-bumper limousines, also known as the douchiest traffic they’d ever gotten stuck in.
“Through the window?” Matt called through, cigarette between his teeth, paper sticking to his lips. He gestured to the already half wound down window, giving an on-the-spot demonstration of how far he could stick his head through it into the L.A. heat.
“Sorry, no smoking,” was the driver’s reply, firmer this time. He rolled the screen back up, effectively ending the conversation.
Matt shoved the cigarette behind his ear and stared at his lap. The creases in his dress hadn’t dropped out yet. Karen had fussed about steaming them, but what did it matter really? He traced the shape of one of them, a pink line on pinker silk throbbing yet another shade of pink beneath his fingertip. Acid, man. It did some trippy shit.
Sprawled across the opposite seat, Trey was mesmerised by the grain of the limo’s (probably) faux leather armrest. The pattern on his gauzy green dress was subtle, and thank God, because even the slightest textures swelled and writhed in Matt’s vision, shifting from pretty cool to pretty damn unsettling dangerously fast if he stared too long. Even the sound of his own breathing was overwhelming if he focused on it.
Closing his eyes helped. The safe darkness behind his eyelids hosted a prism of colours, a kaleidoscope spinning faster than he could perceive… but that was all it was. He could handle some colours.
“Matt?”
Matt ran his tongue along the backs of his teeth, feeling every ridge and plane, poking the tip into the gap between his incisors. Somehow, his mouth felt way too big and way too small all at once. He’d thought the same thing about his hands earlier, too.
Had Trey said his name, or did he imagine it? Maybe Trey could beam thoughts straight into his brain. Sober Matt would’ve folded his arms and shook his head at that, but sober Matt was clearly a closed-minded douchebag.
“Matt?”
“Yeah?” Did he say that or think it?
“I’m… I’m, too fucked up,” Trey slurred.
Too fucked up, huh. Matt opened his eyes and found Trey hunched opposite him, the brown waves of his cheap wig swinging over his shoulders as he rocked back and forth. Being ‘too’ anything meant there had to be a pre-defined limit. Too drunk, too late, too—
“Matt!”
“What?”
“I’m gonna freak out! I’m serious.”
Slinking to Trey’s side of the limousine—smacking his head on the roof on the way over, fuck—he slumped beside him and slung an arm over his shoulder. Trey’s immediate nuzzling felt kind of strange in the semi-public of a limo, even stranger with Matt’s chest bare and his hand sliding easily into that little triangle cut-out of fabric at the small of Trey’s back, but there was no quicker way of calming him down than physical contact.
Trey was twitchy. “I’m gonna have a bad one, man. I know it.” His breath was uncomfortably hot, and that wig made Matt itchy, but he’d put up with worse.
“You’re fine.”
Trey was definitely more out of it, which didn’t add up what with there being pound for pound more of him to go around. Though, he’d gotten wasted before they dropped acid—Matt’s suggestion after Trey called him in a panic a half hour before they were due to meet, claiming he was too nervous to do the fancy dress thing after all. Probably best he didn’t suggest they crack open the complimentary bottle of champagne quickly going warm in the crappy cool-box minibar.
The limo crawled forward a few meters. A few meters closer to their end goal, the antithesis of everything they stood for. The bullshit middle-finger circus that was the Oscar red carpet.
“I don’t wanna get out,” Trey mumbled. Rich, from the guy who hadn’t wanted to get into the limo in the first place because he didn’t want to stop looking at the white lines in the parking lot. Matt practically had to bundle him in here.
“Doubt we ever will,” Matt said, giving Trey’s waist the most reassuring squeeze he could manage with his curiously small-big hands. “Fucking traffic.”
“Good.”
Trey’s hand flopped onto Matt’s lap, the heat of his palm seeping through the thin silk like a brand. He’d been fascinated with the dress while he was coming up, once he’d recovered from almost puking with laughter at Matt trying to walk in heels. While Trey had gone all out—painted his toenails with drugstore nail polish and everything—Matt couldn’t be convinced on the heels. No, Karen, his loafers didn’t go with the dress, but the dress didn’t go with him and that was kind of the point.
Trey’s hot hands wandered, dragging like warm honey over Matt’s body. Being touched felt totally weird when you were high—good weird though. He toyed with the fabric at Matt’s thigh, the bracelet that kept catching on his arm hair, the thin straps over his shoulders that slid down every ten seconds.
“You won’t leave me, will you?” Trey asked feebly. His fingers were still twisted in Matt’s spaghetti straps, almost clinging.
Matt could’ve joked about some Hollywood movie star whisking him away, but Trey wasn’t in the mood for jokes right now, and he knew what he meant. “I won’t leave your side.” His deep inhale rushed loud in his ears while he gathered the mental energy to finish his sentence. “I’ll do all the talking. You stand there and look pretty.”
That placated Trey apparently, even with the limo moving again.
Running his finger along the deep V of Trey’s dress, he followed the hem down to those sequined shorts that left glittering smears of silver-green in his peripherals, demanding his attention. Their texture was strangely wonderful, sharp yet flat, and they made the most satisfying sound when he dragged his fingernails over them. Touching Trey was always fascinating, tripping balls or otherwise.
“Tickles,” Trey huffed as Matt poked the green folds at his waist.
“Sorry.” He didn’t stop, though. He simply transferred his fondling to Trey’s wrist, stroking his fingers along his sleeve.
Everything felt hyperreal, textures turned up to eleven. Every stitch of raised embroidery on Trey’s dress felt pronounced. Against his fingertips, the mesh fabric felt magnified, its every tiny cell as big as honeycomb in Matt’s head. He fixated on them, sure that if he really concentrated, he could count them like the hexagons in chicken wire.
Trey’s bare legs were equally satisfying to explore, even if a PDA alarm blared somewhere distantly in the back of Matt’s head. However nice it felt to stroke Trey’s thighs, to trace the shape of his kneecaps and feel him giggle hotly against his ear, he shouldn’t be doing it here. The driver had eyes and a rear-view mirror; he’d seen Matt go to light up earlier. Fuck him though.
Palming the soft gradient of Trey’s tan line, he wondered what his legs would feel like if he’d shaved them. He almost did. Matt had walked into the gents and found his leg kicked up on the sink, razor in hand. They’d unanimously decided hairier legs were funnier—and razors on acid were dangerous—but it hadn’t stopped Matt fantasizing about kissing his smooth, shaven thighs, about his tongue discovering just how high he was willing to go with that razor.
A month back, Trey shut his hand in a door and had his fingers taped together for a few weeks. He’d been an absolute bitch about it, obviously, and Matt had been the lucky recipient of yet another responsibility: shaving Trey’s face. He’d only done it twice, but both times Trey had positively purred and had been incredibly receptive to Matt getting a boner over it. Blow-job level receptive.
“I’m gonna tell him to take us back,” Trey said under his breath, staring at the thin red lines Matt’s nails had drawn on his thighs. The commotion on the other side of the limo’s blackout glass had grown louder since Matt last paid attention to it.
“Marc’s waiting for us,” Matt whispered, brain lagging in the memory of wiping shaving cream from Trey’s top lip, kissing his baby-soft jaw, his dick in Trey’s warm, willing mouth.
“He won’t care.”
“Dude.” That was a warning: he was about to use his serious voice. “Karen did not sit gluing diamonds to a pair of flip flops for you to pussy out.”
“She’s getting paid!”
When Trey’s mind seemed made up, the best tactic was distraction. “You’re gonna win a fucking Oscar.”
“Nah.”
“Well, I hope Marc wrote a speech at least.” He’d know if Trey had. He’d have wanted Matt to comb through it and improve every joke. He’d have wanted him to tell him where he’d gone too far on trashing Hollywood, like a lawyer picking libel from one of their scripts.
“Kinda hoped you’d do that,” Trey mumbled. And wasn’t that just typical.
“I’m just your hot date, remember?”
Trey smiled at that. That had been the original plan: Trey in a tux, Matt all dolled up on his arm. Once Marc wanted in, they settled on being his hoes. That was a bigger fuck you, honestly.
Their dresses were a league better than the pirate costumes or bobble-headed mascot outfits that would’ve had them escorted from the red carpet in seconds. If they’d been able to agree who should be the captain, they might’ve ended up as Spock, Kirk, and Bones. That was a good suggestion. Next time, maybe.
The driver’s screen came down again, and Matt didn’t bother untangling himself from Trey’s clammy limbs.
“Three minutes,” he said, bored, sending the screen back up before it had lowered all the way.
Trey tensed. Matt’s stomach had flipped too, so Trey’s must’ve been in knots. The acid’s brain-fog almost had him believing they’d never leave this limo again, but reality didn’t in fact end on the other side of its doors. The red carpet was 180 measly seconds away, apparently. They had to prepare themselves.
“I can’t do this,” Trey rushed, shaking his head. “Fuck! There’s no way I can do this.” He slapped his hands over his eyes and started panic-cursing, a stream of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck making him sound like some potty-mouthed helicopter.
“Breathe, dude.” Pulling Trey back against him, he peeled his hands from his face and held his wrists steady. “The vultures’ll shoot some pictures, then we’ll get changed.”
One of their assistants was meeting them inside with their passes and a bag full of bottled water, fresh clothes and, hopefully, gum. Somehow, Matt didn’t think a reminder of that would convince Trey to stop panicking. There was something that’d catch his attention, though.
“You don’t wanna miss Robin, do you?” They hadn’t had much say in the Blame Canada performance, but it was bound to be a spectacle. “And Elton?” If Elton couldn’t get Trey’s attention, they really were screwed.
“Shit.” Trey slumped back, eyes filmy as he stared at the roof and chewed his fingers. “I… don’t know.”
The blinking of hundreds of flash bulbs was close enough to make its way through the window. Light bounced off Trey’s fake curls, glinted from his earrings. Matt thought he heard the light briefly, a weird high-pitched sound like his ears popping, though that could’ve been the limo’s brakes or, more likely, being totally ripped on LSD.
Trey’s eyes widened. Outside, rows of bodyguards held back the tides of crowded bodies, contained the commotion and activity beyond the limo’s safe bubble.
“Come on,” Matt said, shuffling to the seat by the door. The glare from outside already had him wincing.
As the limo rolled up to the spot where it’d deposit them, Matt’s held onto the door handle to anchor himself and stop his head spinning. There were probably ten cameras for every person on the red carpet, and there were a lot of people out there. While that wasn’t intimidating normally, it sure as hell felt it right now. He gripped the handle harder. Shit. Were they actually doing this?
They had to do the thing they came here to do. If he just did it, ripped the Band-Aid off and got out, Trey would follow. They’d got this.
“Remember what we agreed?” Matt asked.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, Trey nodded, mouthing along to what he silently recited—and hey, maybe Matt could read his mind. ‘A magical night’. Don’t talk about the dresses. Be polite. They’d said it over and over at the studio, even tried writing it down before they realised how utterly bizarre pens were when you’re tripping and got totally distracted by writing whatever shit came to mind. That was going to be an interesting bunch of scribbles to return to sober.
Matt slid on his sunglasses and squeezed Trey’s hand in one last gesture of reassurance. The limo had stopped. The cameras had all turned towards the latest drop-off delivery of talent. It was now or never.
“Ready, Miss Lopez?”
Trey looked dizzy, but he managed a “yeah” which was good enough.
The door clicked open, the limo’s humid quiet vanishing as the surreal new atmosphere rushed in.
“Let’s go.”