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Entry tags:	ai fic: other pairings

AI FIC: there are no indisputable truths (Tiedam, NC-17, 1/2)
TITLE: there are no indisputable truths
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17
PAIRING: Tiedam
SUMMARY: Fucking is easy, having a boyfriend is hard. Established relationship.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Title by way of Ozzy Osbourne. Yes, I am trying to hit every song on the Tiedam playlist. Call it a goal.
AUTHOR’S NOTES DEUX: OKAY. I had a thing planned, where if I got to meet the band after the Diamond Ballroom show and Andy was not a dick, I was going to stop writing him as such. Then the crazy bus chick happened. I don’t know if the person for whom I do it is happy or sad now. :) But it could have been a watershed moment!
CONTAINS: Public boytouching and improbable sex on a hardwood floor. It’s boilerplate, people, I have to do it, but there’s really nothing objectionable in here. You are, of course, still welcome to contact me with any questions that you may have.



They were calling it Dave’s Official I’m Kicking You Fuckers Out party, even if he got pissed every time they did that. (Sooner or later, Neal figured, David had to realize that that was exactly why they were doing it.) They were not calling it End of an Era or some maudlin shit like that, because Neal and Andy made a solemn pact between the two of them that they were allowed, no, obligated to throw David right the fuck into his pool if he started showing signs of one of his occasional bouts of turning into the most emo kid this side of Rockstar Land, especially since none of them were going any farther than Silver Lake or Echo Park. When Neal pointed this out, and told him that, no, really, it was Los Angeles, he didn’t care if it was fucking early November, the water was not going to be that cold, David made a face and swatted at his head, saying, “You’re not the only guitarist in LA, motherfucker.”

“I’m the only one willing to move halfway across the country for you, so beat that,” Neal said, taking a swat at him in return, and he figured that that has to settle it, knew that that had to settle it when all that David did was make a face at him and didn’t reply again right away.

“You bringing Adam?” he said finally, all mock-casual like he didn’t know good and well that Neal and Adam were a lot more than the odd couple of rock and roll friendships, that Neal himself hadn’t been the subject of more tabloid snapshots over the past few months than ever before in his life and nearly as many crowing phone calls from Tulsa, old friends saying that they had just known that Neal would settle down eventually. (If it had been possible to flip someone off or glare them into submission over the phone, Neal would have done it.)

“Sure,” Neal said after a long pause. He knew that it was a shade too long when David’s eyebrow started to go up. “Football and beer isn’t really his thing, though, so...” And with that many people around, what they were going to have would be suspiciously like a date, not just a convenient opportunity to meet in public and maybe grab something to eat before they fucked, and that was something else entirely from their normal arrangement. “Don’t know how much he’s going to be into it.”

“Shelly’s going to be there, and I don’t think that she gives a damn, either,” David said. He paused, frowning. “Or Joey, really, for that matter. Bring him. It’ll be fun. Your boss says so.”

“One of these days,” Neal said, and leveled his finger at David. David did not look nearly frightened enough for his own good. “You are going to do that at the wrong time, and then you’re going to wonder why you’re at the bottom of your own fucking pool and Andy and I are standing to the side and laughing at you.”

“Couple more weeks and I’ll have a gate, I’ll have to buzz you in before you can ever think about throwing me into the pool,” David said without rancor. “And you don’t know the code.”

“You can’t keep your secrets when you’re sober, let alone when you’re drunk,” Andy said on his way through the room. Neal wasn’t even sure that he knew what the rest of the conversation was about.

David looked as if he was thinking up a rebuttal, only to let it go when he realized that Andy was speaking the truth. “Call him, invite him,” he ultimately said to Neal instead. “Your camp counselor says so.” Neal rolled his eyes.

*
Adam sounded groggy when he answered his phone, even though it was nearly noon. “Yeah?” Neal muttered an obscenity under his breath as he realized that he was probably catching Adam on one of the first handful of days that he had actually had off since his album came out, with the whirlwind of publicity to drive up interest before holiday sales and getting ready for a tour that spring. Then it also occurred to Neal that he and Adam hadn’t met the previous night, so what the fuck was Adam doing that had him this worn out when it’s not that far before noon, and maybe he needed to rethink this entire proposition before it went too far.

No one had ever been able to accuse him of thinking too hard before he leaped. “Dave’s having a thing tonight,” he said, “you’re coming, by the way.”

Adam let out a low, scarcely awake chuckle on the other end of the line that went straight to Neal’s dick and reminded him yet again that they hadn’t been able to squeeze in a rendezvous the night before. “I am, huh?” There was a rustling in the background; Neal pictured Adam still in bed and just starting to stretch. “What’s going to be at this thing of Dave’s?” Adam was able to make a single syllable sound dirtier than any other person that Neal had met before in his life.

He leaned his hip up against David’s new couch--he hadn’t been able to wait for his own house to be ready and had just moved it into the rental--and grinned. “Pizza, beer, and football,” he said. There was a ringing silence from the other end of the line. “And if you’re very lucky, my dog might try to sit in your lap.”

The silence grew even longer, until Adam said finally, “I hang out with you for your sense of humor.”

He hung out with Neal based upon how quickly Neal had learned to give perfect head, but Neal didn’t think that this was the best time to point that out, when he didn’t know who might be within hearing distance. He could feel the corners of his mouth turning up as he continued, “And if you’re very, very lucky, I might let you stay the night.” Now that there was talking more their language.

“Make sure there’s vodka,” Adam informed him sweetly. “I’ll be there at eight.”

*
They were trying very hard not to destroy the house before they all moved out and scattered their separate ways (to different fucking corners of Los Angeles, for Christ’s sake, Neal had heard Andy telling David on no less than three separate occasions when David had started getting That Look). Call it a gift to the landlord. It meant that Sixx’s nails had been trimmed immediately after Neal had picked him up from the boarding kennel, so that he would not destroy the hardwood floors in the final two weeks that Neal lived there with his mad dashes from one end of the house to the other, that beers were not being set haphazardly on any surface that would have them and then staying there until someone wandered by and picked them up again, and that they were absolutely, under any circumstances, not having the kinds of ragers here that they had held with regular frequency while they had still been on tour. As far as parties that were supposed to signal the end of their misspent youth or some shit like that went, Neal privately thought that it was sickening how domestic it was. Kyle was there, with Nichole but no Hayden.

(“He’s in this--stage,” Kyle had explained, still managing to look harried and faintly amazed even after he had been on David’s couch for the past two hours with no signs that he planned to move again, and Nichole only slightly better. “Where he drinks things.”

“That’s...new?” David had looked as if he might be reconsidering the wisdom of ever having children.

Nichole had pointed at the beer that David had set down at his feet without thinking. Cursing, David had gone to rescue it before it left those telltale signs of living in the house that they were all hoping to avoid, but she only shook her head to indicate that that was not what she had meant. “That,” she had said. “Anything. He downed half a bottle of olive oil while I was trying to make dinner last night, I almost took him to the ER. I thought that they were just supposed to eat bugs. He can’t be anywhere in the same house as alcohol, I can’t explain that to CPS, even if this place was kid-proofed.”

“Ah.” David now definitely looked as if he were reconsidering procreation.)

Andy and Jennie were taking up a loveseat by themselves, their legs tangled up within each other enough so that they only way to tell where one ended and the other began was by the fact that those would have been the prettiest shoes that Neal had ever seen on Andy’s feet. Since Jennie technically didn’t live in Los Angeles, what she was doing out there while Andy conveniently happened to be looking for a house remained a bit of a mystery, but it became somewhat less of one every time that Andy amiably flipped someone off when they asked. He also started to look slightly green when Joey arrived with Shelly and they found a way to melt into each other with the exact same ease that he was displaying with Jennie, but neither did he cobble together a hasty excuse to sit somewhere else. Neal did not think that Andy would have any trouble swaying David over to his side on the throwing people into the pool for their own good front if he said what he was thinking, and kept his mouth shut.

And, shortly after eight, he had Adam. “You’re late,” Neal said as he opened the front door. He waved to the trail of paparazzi that followed Adam everywhere while he was grabbing him by the arm of his jacket and pulling him inside. He even thought that he saw one or two of them wave back; if they were starting to recognize each other, then surely he and Adam would stop being a story soon so that they could knock that shit off.

“You should flip them off,” Adam said cheerfully as Neal shut the door. “I wish that I could. And fuck you, rock star, eight is fucking early.” He ruined it by smothering a yawn against the back of his hand; even under his concealer, Neal could see that there were dark circles beneath his eyes.

“Yeah, you look like you’re all revved up to shake your ass.” Neal didn’t hesitate before he took Adam’s hand to lead him into the living room; he could feel Adam’s smile even though he wasn’t turning his head to directly see it. Adam dug in his heels, just for a second, and so slightly that no one who didn’t already know him well would be able to perceive it. It never ceased to amaze Neal, how much Adam could all but drop his pants and flaunt his dick when they were out in front of the paparazzi who dogged his every move, but with people whose opinions actually mattered, he suddenly became unaccountably...almost shy.

Adam said quiet hellos to the assembled crowd and then curled up on the couch beside Neal, pausing first to toe off his shoes so that he could curl his feet under his thighs. “Eat something,” Neal murmured to him. “I won’t feel comfortable feeling you up later unless I buy you dinner first.”

Adam put his mouth against Neal’s shoulder to smother his laugh. “I didn’t sign up to date a gentleman,” he said, but reached obligingly for a slice of the pizza that they were all sharing. He consumed the one slice and then only picked at a second, and only played with a beer on top of that before setting it down beside his shoes. Sixx padded into the room shortly afterwards and then began licking enthusiastically at the condensation gathering on the glass, getting one or two good swipes with his tongue around the rim before Neal was able to pull it away from him. He considered chastising Adam about his weird weight obsession, like being a dude-shaped dude was suddenly a bad thing, before realizing that Adam was a solid weight against his shoulder that had barely moved, even when Neal had to lunge in order to stop his dog from intoxicating himself. His eyes were heavy-lidded and fixed steadily upon the television screen, even though Neal knew for a fact that Adam would not have been able to name either of the teams running back and forth.

“You could have told me, if you were too tired to come,” Neal murmured to him as he settled back and Adam reassumed his position with his head resting in the crook of Neal’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have been pissed.”

Adam answered in the form of a jaw-cracking yawn rather trying to refute Neal’s claim. “I wanted to see what it would be like to be with you when we weren’t trying to cram something into a six-hour layover,” he said, barely audible against Neal’s clothing. Neal, very aware that there were other people in the room doing their damnedest not to eavesdrop and not entirely succeeding, and not certain what the correct response would have been in any case, just wiggled his shoulders until he was in a position that would allow the both of them to remain comfortable and said nothing.

Adam didn’t even pretend to be interested in the game, and after thirty minutes Neal glanced down and saw that his eyes were closed and that he was breathing deeply. He remained that way even through the exultant shouts and deep moans that marked the next two hours; taking into account that Adam was seriously one of the lightest sleepers that Neal had ever met in his life, it was something of a miracle that he had made it over to the house without driving into a tree.

“Oh, man,” Dave said, staring at Adam in faint pity once the post-game heads were doing their wrap-up. “Going on tour is going to kick his ass.”

Neal poked cautiously at Adam’s shoulder and was rewarded by Adam turning into the contact and letting out a soft sigh. He made that sound right after sex, too, when he was settling in for whatever sleep the two of them could get before they had to dash off again; Neal hoped that his face didn’t color, and that David would be unable to interpret the cause if it did. “Maybe he’ll behave better than we did.” David looked at him, barely able to hold back his snicker. Neal shrugged. “Maybe.”

“And maybe he won’t be grabbed inappropriately at least a dozen times within the first three shows, and maybe Kool-Aid will start being made out of rainbows,” David answered easily. “Since we’re talking in maybes.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Neal answered without malice, and of course Adam chose that moment to turn into him further and make another one of those soft sounds that somehow managed to be innocent and wanton at once. Neal didn’t bother to control himself from rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling; David didn’t bother trying to hold back his snicker. He shook at Adam’s shoulder instead and said, “Come on, you’re not driving if you can’t walk a straight line.”

“I didn’t even finish one beer,” Adam said as he stirred and started to sit up. He yawned so hard that Neal swore he heard his jaw pop.

“Yeah, exactly.” Neal grabbed Adam’s forearm and pulled. Adam threw a longing look back on towards the couch. “If you sleep there, you will wake up with inappropriate things written on your face.”

Adam pulled a face and then stumbled sideways against Neal in a way that Neal did not for own second believe was accidental, one long, warm press of body to body. “So you’re telling me that you guys are really fifteen year-olds.”

“At every available opportunity,” David said from his chair without remorse. He waved as Neal flipped him off and then dragged Adam off down the hallway towards the room that was still Neal’s, at least for the next few weeks.

“I am way too tired to fuck you,” Adam muttered with his face pushed against Neal’s shoulder-blades. “Just so you know. And I am also way too tired to let you fuck me.”

“Poor baby,” Neal answered, but destroyed the moment with a yawn of his own. Okay, so maybe he was worn out, too, from this vacation that wasn’t really a vacation. He hardly even paused to check out Adam’s ass as Adam disentangled himself from Neal and then leaned over Neal’s dresser without asking so that he could rummage for something to wear to bed. The one that they were going to be sleeping in. Without fucking each other. Neal was too tired for the freak-out that he could feel building behind his eyes, and also too tired to fully realize that it was there at all. He stripped off his own clothes while Adam stumbled into the bathroom to wash his face instead, didn’t crawl into the bed so much as one moment he was standing and the next his legs were informing him that they were refusing to hold him again until he proved that he could show anything at all resembling sense. He was nearly asleep by the time that Adam reemerged and slid beneath the blankets with him, stirring to full wakefulness just long enough to reach behind him and put his hand against Adam’s hip.

Adam pushed his face against the skin between Neal’s shoulder blades and mumbled, “You know it’s going to be a headline tomorrow: ‘Adam Lamber enters house full of people, doesn’t come back out again. Some of them were even women.’”

Neal snickered and answered back over his shoulder. “Go to the window and drop your pants, that’ll really give them something to talk about.”

“I’m too tired to get up.” Adam displayed his point with a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’ll let them see my dick in the morning.” He pressed his face more firmly against Neal’s back and continued, barely audible, “I have four days off, don’t wake me up before noon for anything less than a blowjob.”

This was back to territory that they could handle. Neal swatted at Adam’s thigh and said, “We’ll see who wakes who up,” before he turned more fully into the covers and closed his eyes.

*
It was still taking him a little time upon waking every morning, back at the house, to realize that he was in his own actual bed rather than a bunk or a hotel room with Kyle dozing only a few feet away. It took him even longer than that to remember that he had gone to sleep in this bed with someone else lying behind him, someone who was not there now, even though Neal could stretch his hands out across the sheets and feel that they were still faintly warm.

Someone that he had slept with in his bed. Someone that he had only slept with in this bed, and had been so tired that he had not entertained serious thoughts of doing anything else with in this bed. There had been times during the summer and fall when they had both been so exhausted that they had risked the camera flashes and hired cars because they were too damned tired to risk driving themselves to their rendezvous, and they had still managed to fuck enthusiastically enough to make each others’ eyes roll back in their heads.

Oh, fuck him running.

Neal swung his legs over the side of the bed and only barely managed to avoid landing on Sixx, who had been sleeping stretched out on the floor beside it. Sixx lifted his head up long enough to give Neal a quizzical stare before he laid it back down again, clearly having been in his spot for a long time and having no plans to leave it again any time soon. Adam had only been to the group house a handful of times, and each time Sixx had followed him silently and almost reproachfully from room to room, as if he thought that he was facing a rival for Neal’s affections that could be ousted by Sixx shadowing him determinedly enough.

“I like the two of you in entirely different ways,” Neal told Sixx before he extended his foot so that he could scratch his dog’s belly with his bare toes. Sixx chuffed and rolled partway over so that Neal had better access. “And you shouldn’t be sleeping, either, what kind of guard dog are you?” Sixx chuffed again and then stuck out his tongue as if he would have licked Neal if Neal had been willing to come any closer, but damn it if he was not too comfortable where he was.

Your dog likes him, Neal thought as he pushed himself up from the bed with a rising sense of what was not panic, goddamnit, he didn’t do panic, but maybe it was still a little like being hit in the head with a two-by-four all the same. That’s only one step below your mom liking him. This is a good thing. He still thought that he might have walked through the living room and into the bright, open kitchen that David had insisted upon even though he still couldn’t manage boiling rice half the time like he thought he was going to be shot.

Adam was awake, his hair still rumpled from sleep, still wearing Neal’s pants and now having helped himself to one of his t-shirts as well. He was leaning over the counter and cradling coffee between his hands, watching David do something over the stove and wearing a dubious expression. Adam smiled when he caught sight of Neal.

“Hi,” he said, and pointed to the enormous, sleek machine on the counter that Neal thought had been a much wiser investment than an entire kitchen. “I made coffee.” He pointed at David, and the dubious expression came back. “He’s making...something else.”

“It’s going to be an omelet,” David said forcefully. Neal craned his neck and saw the detritus of what looked like at least one tomato, a green pepper, and cheese scattered across the counter. The smell coming from the pan was turning from savory to acrid at an alarming rate.

“Ah,” Neal said delicately. He grabbed a cup of coffee for himself and came to stand at the corner with Adam. Adam leaned his hip up against Neal’s automatically, and Neal’s body stiffened before he could stop himself, earning him a look that didn’t know whether to be curious or concerned.

“I talked him out of eggs benedict,” Adam said to Neal out of the side of his mouth. “I didn’t know what kind of security deposit you guys had put down on this place.”

“I can hear you, and I can handle this,” David called over his shoulder. Neal could hear him muttering obscenities as he continued to poke at whatever omelet-aspiring thing it was that he had assembled in the skillet. Neal wasn’t certain if he was swearing at Adam, or at the eggs.

“I think you saved us more money than you know,” Neal said to Adam.

“Fuck both of you, I’m going to make you eat this.” There wasn’t any rancor in David’s voice, though; that and the fact that it was before noon told Neal that he was catching up on his sleep debt nicely. By mid-October, they had all not so much asked Michelle for time off before they transitioned from tour to studio as they had said that they would be taking time off, both to deal with real estate issues and to actually relax, or there was a very strong possibility that a certain tour bus would find itself set on fire. Joey had been nicer than any of them about it. David had made Andy apologize.

“Notice that I am awake,” Adam told Neal. “Notice that no blowjobs occurred this morning.” David swore and started stabbing the eggs very hard.

“I didn’t wake you up,” Neal defended himself.

“Unfortunately. I have to go meet with some people today, talk tour.” Adam made a waving gesture that was supposed to be nonchalant, ruined it by how he couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “So I’d love to hang out, but I’m running late. It would be awesome if this break thing involved an actual break.”

“Threaten to set something on fire,” David said cheerfully.

Adam seemed to think that David was joking until he saw Neal nodding solemnly. “That one will stay in the ‘maybe’ file.” He drained the last of his coffee and put his mug into the sink before strolling back in the direction of Neal’s room. David turned around slowly so that he could stare at Neal. Neal stared back without remorse.

“You and a certain blonde shook the fucking walls,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it, your delicate sensibilities are not going to be offended by the word ‘blowjob’.”

Adam reemerged a few minutes later, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket. “What do you think they’ll make of me wearing the same clothes that I showed up in?” he asked, flashing a wicked grin and then waving at Neal when Neal moved to walk him to the door. “Don’t worry about it, I know the way.”

Yeah, but they usually made out for a few minutes before they had to go their separate ways again. Neal settled back with his coffee, uncertain if Adam was doing this because he knew that he was going to have ready access to Neal again whenever he wanted it, and what Neal was supposed to think about it if that was the case. He watched Adam go before he returned to his room to get dressed himself--”Useless,” was directed at Sixx, who was now ensconced in the center of the bed--and heard his phone start to ring almost before he made it back to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“We’re going out dancing tonight.” Neal could hear Adam fiddling with his car radio in the background, turning it down so that they could talk. There was an edge of something that Neal wasn’t quite sure of in his voice.

“I hang out with you for your sense of humor,” Neal repeated back to Adam, and Adam laughed, the first real laugh that Neal had heard out of him that morning.

“Whatever. You’re going to meet my friends, I’m going to show you off, you’re going to get so drunk that you won’t be sure it’s even me grabbing your ass on the dance floor. Best night of your life.”

Neal highly doubted that, but Adam sounded happy, and he was as fucking useless as his dog. “You could have asked me inside the house,” was all that he said.

“You’re being weird, that’s why I didn’t want to.” The tightness again. There was no confusion, though; Neal guessed that he had enough of it for both of them. “I’ll pick you up at ten.” Adam hung up without bothering to say goodbye. Neal set his phone back down on the counter and sighed before he realized that David was watching him. The first tendrils of smoke were starting to curl out of the skillet.

“What?” Neal finally asked, more snappishly than he had intended.

David just looked at him for a beat longer before he said, “Oh, you’re definitely fucking eating this,” and went back to what he had been doing.

*
Neal wasn’t certain what someone was even supposed to wear to hang out in a dance club--and he was definitely just going to hang out, whatever the hell Adam thought about actually seeing him dance--and there was no fucking way that he was going to ask David or Andy for advice. Not until he had bulked up on enough steroids to throw the both of them into the pool at once. He settled on jeans and a t-shirt with a leather jacket thrown over it, and was at the door and jingling his keys anxiously in his hand almost before he heard Adam’s car pull up.

“Oh, my God, you are adorable,” Adam said as Neal slid into the passenger seat. He eyed Neal up and down in such a way as to make sure that Neal understood that “adorable” was not primary adjective that Adam was thinking of right then, and Neal was starting to think that he was just a bit overdressed by virtue of not already being nude. “You know, you can put the keys away. They don’t work without a car, and I promise that no means no with me.”

Neal laughed, grabbed Adam’s arm before he quite remembered how awkwardly they had left things between them that morning. “I was not about to hang out in that fucking living room any longer than I had to,” he said. “My friends are dicks.” Adam’s smile was slow and wicked. “Hey, hey. No objectifying them, not unless you want me talking about your brother’s hot bod.”

Adam blanched. “The name thing is weird enough. Don’t worry, Sunshine, I am totally, one-hundred percent okay with just objectifying you.” This time Adam’s leer was way too over the top to be real, and Neal couldn’t help himself from laughing. Adam’s hand found its way to the top of his thigh a few moments later, and Neal’s hand found its way on top of Adam’s a few moments after that, and he almost, almost forgot that he had been coming out of his own skin just that very morning. There was a swarm of cameras as soon as they pulled up and left the car with the valet at a building that advertised itself through the fact that it seemed to need no advertising at all. Neal thought that he had been used to camera flashes everywhere that he looked, when he and the guys had started touring with Dave, but outside of a handful of fans, most of the flashes had not been directed at him. It was disconcerting, months after their whatever-the-hell-it-was had been started early that summer, to realize that a good half of the questions being yelled out were for him to answer. He tightened his grip on Adam and pulled him closer as if he meant to shield Adam with his body before he quite knew what he was doing, and Adam’s glance towards him was fond.

“Adorable,” he repeated, and sounded like he meant it. He let himself stay snugged up next to Neal as they were allowed entrance, giving the paparazzi a few half-hearted waves but not even bothering to engage in his ordinary light banter. Looking at him sideways while Adam was standing onto his toes to look deeper into the club before Adam realized that he was watching, Neal thought that he looked quieter and sadder than normal than was his wont when he wasn’t specifically trying to be “on.”

“I’m a fucking tool,” Neal muttered beneath his breath. They were already being buffeted by music already as they slid from night air that was about as cold as Los Angeles ever got and into heat produced by a crush of bodies and the promise of sex; he didn’t intend to be overheard.

“Of course you are,” Adam chirped. “You’re a phase that I’m going through.” But he squeezed at Neal’s hand and then tugged him purposefully through a mixed-gender crowd that seemed to be made up of one writhing, dancing mass that thought choosing partners was so 2004, heading towards a booth in the back. Neal cast an eye around at both the obvious expense and the even more obvious lack of material of the majority of the clothing being worn and decided that it was actually possible to be both over- and under-dressed at the same time. There were already several people sitting in the semi-circle, including a smaller man who eyed Neal up and down sharply as if he was giving him a test. Adam nodded to each of them in turn and then held up his and Neal’s interlocked hands. “Everybody, this is Neal. He’s my...he’s my Neal.”

When Adam would have allowed their hands to fall, Neal purposefully kept them up. “He’s my Adam,” he said, saw Adam grin before he was being shoved towards the booth. He wound up pressed knee-to-hip with the smaller man, who still kept his head tilted slightly to one side and looked at Neal with a steady, scrutinizing stare.

“Hi,” he said as he put out his hand for Neal to take. “I’m Brad. I was his Brad.”

An ex situation. Neal thought about the atmosphere that would arise if he were to invite Alexis to the next of his and Adam’s dinner dates and could have reached over and casually killed Adam. He turned a look Adam’s way. Adam laughed, a bright, happy noise that had Neal reaching out and tugging him down and into the booth with them before the sound could echo away.

“Buy me a drink, you asshole,” Neal said against Adam’s ear.

Adam laughed again. “I’m going to buy as many drinks as it takes to get you out on that dance floor,” he said before he signaled for a member of the waitstaff. He looked at Neal’s face. “I think it’s a good thing that I brought my wallet.”

“Yes,” Neal said with great conviction, and listened to Adam laugh again. They sprawled up against each other in the booth until the drinks came, Neal throwing back his shot and feeling the glow start to spread through him immediately as he signaled for another. Through the whirlwind introductions of people that Neal could barely keep track of, friends that Adam had worked with while he had been doing theater, friends who were doing what he had been doing a year previously and just trying to get the door open, friends who were just friends, Neal could feel Brad watching him more often than not, not hostile, only--watching. There was a protective note in it that Neal was finding it harder and harder to wrap his mind around the more that he drank, because Adam had introduced himself early that summer as one of the least in need of protection people that Neal had ever met in his life, and he kind of wondered now if David and Andy hadn’t cornered Adam at some point and given him the verbal version of the stare that Brad was giving Neal now. If that was the case, then Neal was going to make them both apologize.

It was enough shots later to make Neal feel relaxed, warm, and only a little uncertain that his legs would agree to take his orders later when he tried to stand, and countless people coming by the booth to give their congratulations to Adam, that Adam finally stood and tugged hard on Neal’s arm. “Come on, I’ve given you enough time to get hammered. You’re dancing with me.”

“Have I forgotten to mention before that I don’t dance?” Neal asked even as he was allowing himself to be pulled out of his seat and stumbling just slightly into Adam, flush second of body against body that might not have been intentional, but he was completely going to pretend that it had been if he was asked, just because of the way that Adam’s eyes dilated further in the dim and flashing light and he gave an inhale that Neal saw rather than heard.

“You didn’t forget,” Adam said, all bright easy smile and lithe body that he was perfectly happy to keep pressed against Neal’s now that it had found its way there, hands sliding into the back pockets of Neal’s jeans just in case he got the bright idea of pulling away. Neal’s hands were on Adam’s waist; he did not recall the moment when he had put them there. “I’m just not taking no for an answer.” His mouth against Neal’s neck and then gone again before Neal could tilt his head back to make sure that Adam had all of the access that he wanted. “And I would have told you long, long before now if I had a problem with the way you move.”

His hands were lower now, against the small of Adam’s back and with an option to travel further southward than that, too, and Neal was thinking that he was liking his semi-public display of what was generally a private affection just fine. Even when he was keeping an outright grin subdued, there was a slight quirk at the corners of Adam’s lips, like the outcome of his entreaty was a foregone conclusion and he was just waiting for Neal to catch up. With his eyes mostly pupil, the slim ring of iris left behind was very blue.

Neal reached behind him for the shot that he had not attended to yet and downed it, all the while watching Adam watching his mouth. Adam’s was the throat that bobbed up and down as Neal answered simply, “Find us someplace dark.”

“All right, then, see you guys later!” Adam called over his shoulder to his friends as he seized Adam by the hand and dragged him off into the milling mass of people. He slid through like he was born for it; Neal had absolutely no idea how many people had touched him by the time that Adam had found that relatively isolated corner, far back on the opposite end of the club, where the only other bodies were silhouettes half-seen and easily ignored. With the shots thrumming in his blood, it was easy to put his hands back onto Adam’s waist, pull him close and let Adam start the rhythm that was almost, but not quite, fucking. When Neal moved his hand up to Adam’s throat, he could feel how fast his pulse was fluttering beneath the skin.

“I have no idea how many people put their hands on my ass out there,” he said. He had his hand splayed out against the hollow where Adam’s clavicles met. He felt the laugh before he heard it.

“I’ll make an announcement,” Adam murmured back to him. “No one is allowed to put their hands on your ass but me.” He demonstrated; Neal was barely aware that they were still dancing and not just getting ready to rut right then and there, and wondered if that was not exactly how those half-seen shapes just far enough away to ignore had gotten started. He couldn’t think of a better time to kiss Adam, hard, tasting what Adam had been drinking himself and feeling Adam’s hands just starting to slide beneath his shirt and onto warm skin. This was more like it, this was what they were good at. Neal put both of his hands into Adam’s hair, cradling his face.

“Hmm,” Adam hummed his appreciation. He parted them only so that he could run his tongue lightly across each of Neal’s piercings in turn. “God, I fucking love these things, you have no idea,” he whispered to Neal. “When you go down on me, and I can feel them against my thigh--”

“I’m going to go down on you right here and now if you keep that up,” Neal growled back. He put both of his hands against Adam’s ass and jerked him hard against him. Adam hissed between his teeth, did something that Neal thought could hardly still be considered dancing, considering that he was all but riding himself off on Neal’s thigh.

“Just--” Adam sank a little lower and gasped. “Not what you need to be saying to me as discouragement. And I know that this place isn’t about to call the cops for indecent exposure.”

“Mmm.” Neal thought about whether or not he was willing to drop to his knees and take Adam’s dick in his mouth, suck him off slow and sweet as his own special kind of revenge for making Neal dance, when what they were doing right now wasn’t that far from fucking as it was. He thought that the idea wasn’t the worst one that he had had tonight by a long shot; there were already people out on the dance floor, male and female, who were showing nearly as much skin as Adam would be bearing to him. “Keep talking.” And palmed Adam’s half-hard cock through the front of his pants with enough force to make Adam swear and squirm. “I love listening to you talk.” He had never been with anyone who made as much noise during sex as Adam did, or who worked as hard to get Neal to answer him in return.

“Sweetheart, you keep that promise, and this whole club will hear me yelling,” Adam said to him, and grabbed Neal’s hips hard as Neal obviously did something just right. “I’m glad you came out with me tonight.”

“Starting to get glad that I came out, too.” Neal kissed the side of Adam’s neck, gently just long enough so that Adam knew he was there, and then bit and suckled at the flesh hard enough to ensure that there would be a mouth-shaped bruise to mark where he had been in the morning. “We’re so fucking good at this.” He was drunk, but he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t tell he was about to say something monumentally stupid. Just drunk enough that he couldn’t seem to call the words back before they exited his mouth, though. “Why the fuck don’t we stick with what we’re good at, and fuck that other shit?”

It was completely bizarre, to feel the temperature of someone’s skin drop by at least ten degrees from one second to the next. Adam used his eerie grace to disentangle his body from Neal’s own, seemingly without touching more than one inch of Neal’s skin at any given time. Neal wanted to tell Adam that they had far better uses for Adam’s ability to detach his spine that that, even in their darkened alcove, and was just sober enough to realize that that would be about the worst fucking thing that he could possibly do.

“And here I was hoping that I was being paranoid,” Adam said, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “What the fuck, Neal? Are you ashamed of me or something?”

Neal rubbed his hands over his face and tried to clear away both the shadows from his brain and the sweat that was collecting at his temples. “I’ve been in and out of the fucking tabloids with you since June, why the fuck would you think that I’m ashamed of you?”

“Because you’ve gone from being weird to being an asshole in the span of fourteen hours?” Adam wasn’t crossing his arms over his chest; he was still keeping his distance back from Neal and looking very much as if he wanted to. “I thought you wanted to come out tonight--”

“You would have been upset if I hadn’t--” And it would have fucking slaughtered him to hurt Adam, Neal realized, and this was probably a very bad place for the kind of un-rockstar-like panic attack that he thought that he needed to have. This was David’s territory, not his.

“Because I wanted you to meet my friends!” Adam was yelling now. As loudly as the music was playing, there was still no way that it echoed far, but Neal still saw more than a few heads turning their way. He swore to God, if the camera phones started coming out, he was going to pull every single one of them out of their owners’ hands and break them. “I’ve fucking met all of yours, why is it so hard to believe that maybe I want you to know all of mine, too?”

“We’re just supposed to be fucking!” Neal didn’t think that he intended for his voice to go that loud. Little late after the fact. “It wasn’t supposed to get more complicated than that!”

Adam actually rocked back onto his heels a little at that; his face went blank too quickly for Neal to tell how deep his words had gone, only to know that that level of calm could not possibly be real. “Huh,” Adam said after a long moment. “Well, in that case, Neal, if all you wanted was a dildo, I highly suggest this thing called ‘the internet.’ The sellers there are amazingly discreet.” He turned and slid back through the crowd with as much ease as he had led Neal amongst the bodies before, leaving Neal standing alone with his blood rising high in his cheeks.

End Part One

Continue to Part Two