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It wasn't anything weird. It was just a bunch of guys, going out for a drink, and talking about all the gay sex they weren't having.
Except for Barrowman, who'd been with his boyfriend since the dawn of time, and thus was probably having gay sex on a pretty regular basis. Hopefully, anyway.
It started when Tennant went on that talk show and they told him about pornographic fan-fiction, which gobsmacked him so thoroughly that he mentioned it to John because pain shared is pain lessened. And John admitted with absolutely no shame at all that of course he knew about it, because hello, free gay porn starring himself. What's not to love?
"Oh, are we talking about slash again?" Gareth asked as he joined them, sipping a coffee, and David looked at him a little wide-eyed. Gareth grinned. "It's all in good fun."
"You knew about this?"
"Mmyep. Most of it's absolute crap, mind you, but the ones who can actually spell and work the punctuation-mark part of the keyboard do all right."
"It's hot," John said decidedly. "Except for the ones where they spell 'Harkness' wrong."
"Keyboard-mashers," Gareth added. "Honestly, someone needs to give the internet a lesson regarding your friend, the full stop."
As it turned out, even the Harry Potter people knew about slash. Thewlis laughed when he heard David's horrified thoughts on the subject.
"Well, I lucked out, because mostly they don't write about me so much as they do book-Lupin. Apparently he's massively well-hung. We can all dream," he added thoughtfully.
"And this doesn't upset you?"
"No, but then he existed long before I played him, so I tend to just remind myself they're writing about that Lupin and Sirius, not my Lupin or Gary's Sirius. Besides, it's much more disturbing when they write about the kiddies."
"Surely you're not put out, David, all that adoration heaped on your admittedly crazy-haired head," Oldman said, when polled.
"No -- well, no," Tennant said uncomfortably.
"Just close your eyes and think of England," Thewlis advised.
But apparently word of his anxiety about all this porn had got round, and when John asked if he wanted to get a beer down the pub he didn't think twice about it until Gareth and Thewlis showed up as well, carrying thin sheafs of paper and grinning.
"We have done," Gareth said solemnly, "extensive research upon the topic of pornographic depictions of your person."
"Oh, my god," Tennant said faintly.
"And we've prepared several interesting passages for your consumption," John said. "It was a terrible trial."
"There are pictures," Thewlis added, a wide, cheerful grin on his face.
Of course he had to have his revenge after he spent all night listening to them read highly unrealistic depictions of his appearance, not to mention the Doctor's sexual tastes and prowess in bed (John feigned awe, Gareth read with a wicked, almost religious cadence, and Thewlis kept inventing naughty limericks).
Three days of horrified fascination later, he emailed the most grammatically incorrect fiction he could find to Gareth, hung terrible "manips" of a naked man with John Barrowman's face on his trailer windows, and delivered up every large-penised description of Remus Lupin he could find to David Thewlis in a plain brown envelope the second time they went drinking together.
"You know really you're only egging John on," Gareth remarked around a cigarette. "Now he has motivation to read pornography, instead of just spare time."
The third time they met up for drinks John brought Scott along as an honourary member, and also made up little membership cards for the Almost Gay Porn Stars Drinking And Darts Society.
"This is the strangest male bonding ever," Tennant said, face in hands.
"Guys and porn? I think this is pretty ordinary," Thewlis observed.
"It's gay porn!"
Both John and Scott cocked eyebrows at him.
"About us, I mean! Or -- people we play! But us, because they look like us, in -- in our pants! And everything!"
"Oh well," Gareth said, a wicked grin developing as he held out his PDA. "If you want gay porn about us..."
And that is how David Tennant met RPS.