Chapter Text
Andrew lay sprawled across his expensive sofa in his expensive apartment, his spine all crookedly perched against the cushions and his head tilted in a weird angle to look at the T.V., watching the random show that he had on with about twenty percent of his attention. It was well over the middle of the night, two or three a.m., but his sleeping schedule was all off during off-season anyway, so he didn’t bother fighting it. He still had another week of denial before he went back to waking up early to play stickball again.
So instead, he popped a piece of popcorn in his mouth, watching as the girl ran away from her billionaire blind-date. She barely managed to steer clear of his secretary’s car, as the strangely young and fairly attractive billionaire CEO stared after her in confusion, clearly already in love, although certainly not realizing yet the obvious fact.
“This is so unrealistic,” Andrew muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing as he popped another popcorn into his mouth. “CEO’s are never this young. He’s like twenty. He looks younger than me.”
Never mind that he was barely older than that himself, and a millionaire, thanks. But still. Something about the entire k-drama just seemed so unrealistic to him — because, well, c’mon. Never mind the too young and too attractive actors; the sheer obliviousness of the characters to things so obvious… The girl, Shin-Hari something or other, was so obviously trying to drive the guy away that it just drove Andrew nuts to see her successfully failing her mission by making the guy fall head over heels for her, instead. Or at the very least, making him not turn around and run away for his life from her craziness.
“It’s just a show,” Andrew muttered, returning his attention to the screen. “It’s not supposed to be realistic.”
So he grit his teeth and kept watching, because he had nothing better to do with his life than complain about romantic comedies. The episode ended just in time with his popcorn, and he pulled himself up to go make some more, screw the hour — but exactly when he stood up, his phone started ringing somewhere in the apartment.
He paused the show and went looking for the source of the ringing, finding the phone where he’d left it, all the way over in his dark bedroom. He squinted at the screen lighting up with the incessant ringing.
“What the fuck,” he said, picking up, “are you doing calling me at fuck o’clock in the morning, Hemmick? Some people are sleeping.”
“Andrew!” Nicky yelled in his ear, so sudden that Andrew distanced the phone away from him. “Code red! Code red!”
“Huh?”
“THE PRESS THINKS YOU’RE STRAIGHT!!”
Andrew blinked at the darkness, before letting out a short sigh and stalking out of his bedroom and back into the dimly-lit living room, where the T.V. has dimmed a little, too. “Huh?”
“The dreaded time has finally come, by dear second-favorite cousin,” Nicky said, his voice just a little lower, though still too lively for Andrew. It was late. He was tired. Never mind that it was a tiredness wholly chosen by his refusal to go to sleep, but whatever. “Your depressing sexual inactivity has brought on the end of days.”
“And today, on top one-hundred phrases that make me wish I didn’t have an eidetic memory,” Andrew muttered. “If you called me just to harass me, I’m hanging up.”
“No!” Nicky exclaimed. “Didn’t you see? On twitter?”
Andrew let out another short sigh, flopping back against the sofa and sinking down against it. “See what.”
“The article,” Nicky said, with a low, chilly voice, sounding like he was shuddering, and like Andrew should shudder too. “You have to see it, Andrew. You’re going to die. It’s blasphemous.”
“Hang on,” Andrew said, pulling the phone away from his ear, putting Nicky on speaker and opening twitter. There, at the top of his feed, the first tweet he was greeted with was:
Breaking News! Exy Star Andrew Minyard Has a Girlfriend, Confirmed!
Andrew stared at it for a second, dumbfounded.
“RIGHT?!!” Nicky yelled at him. “It’s a disaster! The end of times! Time to shut down the entire industry!! And they fancy themselves journalists,” he sneered, huffing with distaste. “You have to fix it, my dear favorite cousin. Or I might just die, and you’ll grow up without a cousin figure.”
“I’m twenty-five,” Andrew flatly said. “I don’t need a cousin figure.”
“See, that’s something someone who does would say,” Nicky annoyingly— sorry, knowingly — said. “You have to agree with me that this needs to be fixed, right? It needs to be fixed right now. You’ve sat idle for too long, and it has finally gotten out of control.”
“What d’you expect me to do?” Andrew dryly asked, glancing at the paused episode. “Let them tweet whatever. I don’t care.”
“Code red,” Nicky said again. “Time to get you publicly laid, my dear third-favorite cousin.”
Andrew hung up on him, discarding the phone to the depths of the sofa as he got himself comfortable. He found the remote and unpaused the episode, watching with twenty-five percent of his attention the intro roll. His phone started ringing again, and he let out a long, exasperated sigh, before finding the phone without looking and putting it to his ear. “What.”
“I’ve got a plan,” Nicky told him, confident. “Your reputation and dignity can still be salvaged.”
“It’s just a tweet, Nicky. Nobody gives a shit.”
“I do, and so do you,” Nicky insisted. “Just hear me out.”
“No.”
“A blind date.”
“Nope.”
“With Kevin Day.”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed. “The Sexy Exy guy?”
“Yes, exactly! Not only is he hot,” Nicky enthusiastically said, “but he’s also notoriously gay, too. The press is always on his ass for it, but I mean, I always stan a confident gay.”
“The same press that said I’m straight?” Andrew dryly said.
Nicky fell quiet for a moment. “You know, you do make a solid case.”
“There you go, then.”
“But,” Nicky stressed, “I know he’s gay because I know a friend of a friend who once went on a date with him. Said he was a little crazy — which was why he never called back — but overall, pretty attractive.”
“No,” Andrew flatly said.
“Oh c’mon, just one date!” Nicky exclaimed. “Just enough to set up the press. C’mon, Andrew, you love setting up the press.”
“I love nothing.”
“It’s gonna drive them nuts, and then some.”
“No.”
“Totally bamboozle them. Destroy their careers. Implode the journalistic field as we know it.”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed a little further as his eyes followed what went on on the screen.
“I’ll owe you one,” Nicky said. “I just need this for my own sanity, my dear favorite cousin, or I might just actually, literally die.”
“Just once,” Andrew said.
“Well, it would be better if you were caught having a long-term—“
“Once or not at all,” Andrew cut him off. “I don’t have time for any useless relationships. I’m busy.” Watching ridiculous romantic comedies at fuck o’clock in the morning. Blah blah semantics, whatever.
“And that attitude, my dear cousin, is exactly why you have been depressingly single since forever now.”
“I get laid,” Andrew denied. “Every so often.”
“Yeah, at some obscure club and with no feels whatsoever,” Nicky said. “D’you even know how different it feels when feels are involved, my dear second-favorite cousin? It’s like losing your virginity all over again. It goes all slow and sa—“
“If you start describing your sex life to me, Nicky, I will kill you and then myself,” Andrew flatly interrupted.
“—vory. And don’t get me started on the—”
Andrew hung up, throwing the phone to the other side of the sofa and sinking deeper against the cushions. With just the slightest bit of agitation, he returned thirty percent of his attention to Shin-Hari’s being a walking-talking disaster on his flatscreen.
“So unrealistic,” he offhandedly grumbled, pettishly increasing the volume. “People like that don’t exist.”
***
“No way,” Neil said, popping a piece of popcorn into his mouth. “Again?”
“I know!” Kevin exasperatedly said, throwing his hands up. “It’s like I’m cursed!”
“I’m telling you, you need to change your name and flee the country,” Neil knowingly said, watching with half his attention whatever show Kevin had going on his T.V. Something about a love triangle, or an extortion, or something, he didn’t really get it. The second half of his attention was fixed on Kevin, who was frantically pacing his way across his apartment. “It does wonders when pursued.”
“For the one-hundredth time, Neil, I’m not you, and I’m not gonna do that,” Kevin said. Neil shrugged, throwing a piece of popcorn into his mouth.
“Your loss.”
“Maybe I got scammed,” Kevin muttered, halting. “Maybe somebody leaked my phone number, and now people think I’m a hooker or something because of that exy magazine cover.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe they’re talking about a different Kevin Day?”
Neil shrugged again. “Could be. It’s a pretty basic name.”
Kevin then flopped on a chair. “And for some reason they all seem to keep thinking I’m gay, too.”
“Maybe if you didn’t keep agreeing to go on dates with men, it would be a different story,” Neil offhandedly said, stretching a little against Kevin’s sofa. He had a great time eating Kevin’s food and taking over his T.V., even though the shows were weird and the popcorn was too buttery. “And then actually showing up, on top of it—“
“I don’t show up, you show up.”
“Yeah, under your name,” Neil retorted, throwing another popcorn into his mouth. “Besides,” he added, vaguely gesturing at Kevin’s general existence. “You just give off that kinda vibe.”
Kevin glared at him. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Neil grinned. “So what’s the plan this time?”
Kevin gave him an enthusiastically meaningful look, and it took Neil a second to register, his grin instantly fading.
“No, no way.”
“Oh, c’mon—"
“The last guy nearly called the cops to perform an exorcism on me, Day,” Neil said, gesturing accusingly with a piece of popcorn. “D’you know how hard it is to do damage control when there are rumors going around about a possessed, nutcase redhead? I’ve nearly gotten fired before even starting for public misdemeanor,” he stressed, throwing the popcorn at Kevin. “I had to dye my hair brown again to convince them it wasn’t me.”
“Which, by the way, had no right working, in any capacity,” Kevin dryly replied, catching the second popcorn catapulted at him before it hit him in the face. “And you’re being just a little dramatic.”
“No, no I’m not,” Neil said. “I’m never going on your dates ever again, Kev. Deal with your own problems yourself.”
“But it’s such a neat system!” Kevin insisted. “You pretend you’re me and go out every once in a while, and I get to be me but without any of the downsides.”
“Gee, putting it nicely,” Neil dryly said.
“You need the fresh air, Neil.”
“You know what I need? I need you to stop harassing me,” Neil said, throwing another piece of popcorn into his mouth, catching a glimpse of some twenty year-old billionaire complaining about having to go on a date for the peace of mind of his dying grandpa, on the screen. Pfft, rich people problems, he absently thought. You’d think they’d stomach the horror of dating for the sake of the billions they were making. “Just grow a backbone and tell them you’re in a relationship. Maybe then they’d actually stop coming.”
“Yeah, I would.”
“…But?”
“But I didn’t do that,” Kevin finished, voice defeated. “I just never know how to turn people down.”
Neil blinked at him. “Just say no. That’s really all it takes. I do that all the time.”
“C’mon, Neil, just this once,” Kevin insisted. “I swear it’s the last time.”
“Nope,” Neil slickly said, grinning. “See? S’easy. No, nope, never. No way.”
“I’ll pay you.”
At that, Neil’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth, and he glanced at Kevin. “Ten.”
“Hundred?” Kevin said, sounding a little disgruntled. “Don’t you think it’s a bit much?”
Neil shot him another glance from where he was sprawled out on the sofa, throwing, with feeling, another piece of popcorn into his mouth.
“Thousand?” Kevin exclaimed, shooting up to his feet. “Are you insane? Ten thousand bucks for a blind date?”
“Hey, it’s your mess, not mine,” Neil indifferently said, throwing yet another piece of popcorn into his mouth, all casual. “Take it or leave it, Kev. I’ve done enough dirty work to get you out of those dates and nearly destroyed my reputation in the process, so I won’t do it for less.”
Kevin scowled at him. “Yeah, but don’t you think it’s just a bit much?”
“That’s my final offer,” Neil definitively said. He kept eating popcorn, absently watching the k-drama’s drama unfold — as Kevin stood there all conflicted, before flopping back down into his seat with a heavy, defeated sigh. “Fine. But make extra sure he’s not gonna call again.”
Neil mischievously grinned at him. “Sure thing, Kevin. By the time I’m through with him…”
“Yeah, yeah, pass my popcorn,” Kevin cut him off, making grabby hands for Neil’s bowl. Neil shifted it out of his reach, continuing to munch on what was left of the popcorn with his eyes fixed on the screen.