nobody said it was easy

by luminoussbeings

Summary:

Assad blinks. On the screen, the silver haired man goes rigid; at the same time, he feels Eric stiffen behind him. And then it hits him with a gunshot moment of clarity that it’s them on the screen, their public display of affection getting broadcasted to the entire bloody stadium, and Assad’s body is moving before he can process anything more than that.
“Uh oh,” quips Chris, as Assad’s knees hit the steel of the bleachers, “either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.”

Or: Assad and Eric are caught in the Coldplay Jumbotron that reveals your affairs

Assad gets his first inkling this isn’t going to end well the minute he mentions the band’s name. 

He’s sprawling on the floor of Eric’s trailer while Eric sits at his desk and taps out something on his laptop, thinking up and shooting down a hundred different ways to casually work it into conversation, and then Eric scratches his head. Flex of the biceps, vein popping out in his forearm, and all of Assad’s thoughts exit his mind, words tumbling out with no preamble. “Do you know Coldplay?”

Eric doesn’t even blink. “Depends. You mean that yuppie band whose music sounds like they’re trying to sell me a Toyota Highlander, or a naughty activity involving nipples and ice cubes?” He pushes his glasses up his nose and raises an eyebrow at Assad before turning back to the laptop. “If it’s the former, then in passing. If it’s the latter, then I’d say not personally acquainted, but more than eager to change that.”

Assad looks away, trying not to let on how his hopes are crashing at stupidly irrational speed.   “I don’t think they sound like an automobile commercial.”

“I can name three ads I’ve heard them in, like, right off the top of my head. And I can’t remember where I put my keys most days, so that’s really something. But don’t worry, the doc at the pre-shoot physical told me I’m free from cognitive impairment, though they did want me to look into an ADD diagnosis. You know what I told him? I said, Doc, if I wanted to go back on meth I’d have done it by now. Jesus, kid, how the hell you can sit like that is beyond me.” 

Eric says all of this in rapid-fire speech, and Assad blinks at the non-sequitur before glancing down and noting that he’s tucked his right leg over his left hip, with his left foot wedged under his arse, arms wrapped around the whole contraption, creating a kind of pretzel-like situation that he hadn’t thought too much about other than that it seemed like it would be comforting.

“It’s comfortable,” Assad says, unwrapping his arms. Half-truth. Doesn’t need to be explaining why he needs comforting after asking Eric an innocuous question.

Eric rolls his eyes. “Course it is. God, I miss my thirties. Guess this is my sign to start exploiting those limber hip flexors while you’ve got 'em. Anyway, what’s this about Coldplay? Something happen?”

“It's nothing,” Assad says immediately, because he’s realizing now how stupid and impulsive that Ticketmaster purchase had been, and the rush of embarrassment is making him feel like he needs to run three kilometres just to escape it. He un-pretzels himself and hauls to his feet, shrugs vaguely toward the door. “Besides, I should—“

“Nope, not gonna work,” Eric says, giving a final pointed click of the touchpad before shutting his laptop and swiveling in the chair. “You gotta tell me.”

“Seriously, forget about it.” Sweat begins to drip from Assad’s hairline, and he reaches down to pry the laptop back open. “Go back to your— whatever that was.”

“Notes on some pages for Jo, and I’ve just finished, thank you very much.” Eric shuts the laptop again and folds his arms. “You’ve got my undivided attention, so shoot.”

Assad forces a smile, ignores the twist in his gut. If you willingly enter an affair with a married man, Assad has always believed, then you really have no business feeling bitter every time you hear the wife’s name. He’d never wanted to be like Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally, crying he’s never going to leave her every few months like a fool. Because Assad’s a lot of things, but he’d like to think he isn’t naive. He’d had no illusions about how this was going to play out.

For some reason, though, it’s harder for his subconscious to accept than it should be. He’s just glad he’s spent his entire adult life making a living off playing pretend. 

“It’s really not a big deal,” he says, and pictures the parentheticals that would accompany this dialogue if he were playing the cool younger mistress: measured, nonchalant, above it all. “It’s just, I had an extra ticket to their concert tomorrow, and I was going to ask if you wanted to come with.”

A pause. “Oh,” Eric says, his voice a little different. 

Shit. Maybe Assad had fallen just a little bit short of nonchalant. He presses a knuckle to the crease of his forehead and wishes he were still on the floor, twisting himself into a knot small enough to disappear. “But obviously,” he adds, “now that I know you think it’s Toyota commercial music, you’re under no obligation to—”

“Of course we’re going,” Eric interrupts, a slow grin spreading over his face. “You want to take me on a real date, babe? Sure as hell not going to say no to that.”

Assad’s cheeks burn. “Not a real date,” he says. “And I can resell the tickets, it’s not a big—”

“No chance. It’s already decided.” Eric grabs Assad’s wrist and tugs him down to wrap his hips around Eric’s waist. The chair is really too small for all of that—Assad’s feet plant firmly on the floor, and even still the spindly thing groans under their combined weight—and it gives Assad the odd sense of himself as an overgrown puppy trying to clamber into a lap that’s now much too small. A smile tugs out of him against his will, and Eric smirks to see it. “Yeah, there we go, that’s better.” He fits his hands around Assad’s waist, rubs his thumbs on the knobs of Assad’s hipbones, smiles wider when Assad shivers. His mouth drags close to Assad’s ear. “And maybe we can try out the ice cube thing when it’s done. Little reward.”

Assad pulls back. “You need a reward for spending time with me? I’m offended, Eric, really. Maybe I should go see if Jacob wants the ticket instead.” He taps Eric on the jaw and whispers, “You’re not the only married man who’s looked down my shirt, you know.”

“Unbelievable,” Eric grouses. “That posh accent can’t hide how much of a brat you are.” Assad starts an immediate protest, but there’s a twinkle in Eric’s eye that lets Assad know he only said it to piss him off, because Eric’s habitually calling pretty much anything east of Boston posh, and no matter how many times Assad has tried to explain that Geordie is far from it, Eric would only smirk and go, Whatever you say, Queen Elizabeth, and they’d have to change the subject because being reminded of the English royalty while in bed did not do brilliant things for Assad’s already tenuous ability to maintain an erection on Zoloft. 

Assad’s not having that problem now. Eric’s bulge is thick and solid through the denim, and he’s running his hands over Assad’s ribs, callused thumbs kneading the small of his back, and Assad is achingly hard as he tips his forehead down to breathe into Eric’s mouth.

“If I’m such a brat,” he murmurs, half coy, half serious, “then what are you gonna do about it?” He shifts, and the line of his cock presses into the curve of Eric’s stomach.

Eric bites his lip. His hands slide down from Assad’s back into Assad’s pants, a handful of cheek in each palm, and Assad lifts his hips and gets in one dizzyingly good grind before Eric’s phone buzzes on the desk.

“Oh, sorry,” Eric says, picking it up. “I should take this.”

Assad nods, a little lightheaded, thighs locking around Eric’s waist to keep from losing his balance. There’s a confused few seconds where Eric’s pawing at him and Assad thinks it’s a cue to start in on another grind before it clicks that Eric’s trying to shoo him off his lap.

Mortified, Assad jumps to his feet and stumbles backwards. Eric’s already got the phone to his ear, and he nods at Assad, mouths thanks, see you later , and then swivels back to the desk. 

This time, Assad doesn’t need to be told twice. He opens the trailer door just as Eric says, “Hey, Trav. No, I’m not busy,” and he doesn’t stick around to hear anything else.

On the lot, the sun beats like a laser, the air oppressive with humidity. Assad sinks to the burning hot asphalt and catches his breath. Trav. Travis. Eric’s son. The younger one. Born just a year after Assad. Subject of Assad’s online stalking more than he can really explain even to himself.

They’d been joking around one time, Assad talking about some television programme he’d loved as a kid, and Eric had groaned and said Travis used to love it too, that Jo made him put up with it even though the theme song would give him an instant migraine. 

“Maybe Travis and I should hang out, some time,” Assad had said lightly, pressing himself closer into Eric’s side. “I bet we’d get along.”

Assad had expected some wry quip, some off-color teasing in response. Instead, Eric’s hand had stilled on Assad’s hip and he’d said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Assad had flushed immediately. “Joking,” he’d muttered, even though he didn’t know if that was entirely true. But really, what had he expected? Sunday dinner at the Bogosians? Getting all buddy-buddy with the sons of the man he’s fucking? No. Maybe. He didn’t know. Only that it was a mindfuck, this whole thing, to love someone so much that you wanted to know everything about them, wanted to know their best friends and closest family and everyone else they loved, and who loved them in return—but knowing you never could. Relegated to a footnote in the margins, the artificial liminality of a relationship that has to pass for friendly colleagues, at most. So don't wish for anything more than that. Don’t be the desperate cliche. Don’t be Carrie Fisher. Don’t invite him to the Coldplay concert like he’s your uni girlfriend you think you’re going to impress enough to get taken home to mum and dad.

Too late on that one, but fuck it. Assad gets up from the pavement. He’s done for the day, and he gets back to his hotel room without really knowing how. Flips on the television for some background noise while he’s in the shower. When he gets out, a smooth voice is informing him of the deal on a BMW, and Chris Martin is singing triumphantly in the background. 

Assad buries his head in his pillow.

*

Five minutes into the first song, it’s clear that however bad Assad had thought this would go, the reality is even worse. 

Eric is standing gamely by Assad’s side, politely bobbing his head to the music, and Assad is miserable. The only concerts Assad’s heard Eric talk about are bands Assad’s never heard of. He’s so embarrassed he could die.

Assad turns to Eric after the second song. “Look, let’s just go.”

“What?” Eric frowns. “Why?”

“You’re not—I’m not— this isn’t your scene. You hate this.”

“Assad, I couldn’t give two shits about the music,” Eric says plainly. “It’s just nice to spend time with you.”

A bloom of warmth at that, but it sours in the heat, turning algal and toxic. Assad covers it with a harsh laugh. “Right. Our ‘real date’.”

“Yeah,” Eric’s voice takes on an edge. “What’s so funny about that?”

Assad turns, because they’re not doing this right now, they’re not. 

Then he turns back. “Sorry, it’s just—you want a real date, but I can’t even meet your family? I don’t even know what your kitchen looks like, or how your voice sounds when you’re talking to your friends, or—”

“Jacob’s my friend. Rolin’s my friend. You’ve heard me talk to both.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Shhh,” says a middle aged white lady to their left, and Eric rolls his eyes. 

“Cause God forbid you miss a word of Viva la Vida, right? Heaven weeps—”

“Eric,” Assad hisses.

“What?” Eric snaps, then huffs after another pointed look from the woman, but he lowers his voice and leans in closer. “Look, what do you want, Assad? ‘Cause I’m really trying my best here, but you’re throwing me for a loop. I thought you were okay with all this. I thought you understood—”

“I do,” Assad says.

“Really? Then what’s all this about wanting to see my goddamn kitchen all of a sudden?” Eric blows out a breath, shakes his head. “I love you, kid, but you know I’m not about to let you move in.” 

Assad feels the words like a blow to the chest, knocking his heart into a tachycardic rhythm. “Right.” I love you. The skip-beat soaring wings of that phrase; the immediate crash of the qualifier. The implication that Assad is just some pathetic dog, pawing at the door to be let in. “Because that’s all I'm after. To move into your bloody flat. Believe me, the rental market isn’t that bad—"

“Assad,” Eric says. His thumb is pressed to the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut, lip tucked under his teeth like he’s fighting back a migraine. Sweat dampens his curls. His face is paler than Assad remembers.

In spite of himself, Assad’s ire shifts to concern. Eric’s been getting more headaches than he used to, and he swears it’s nothing, but Assad’s grandfather had passed when he was younger than Eric is now and it never escapes him how easy it is for everything to spiral downward so quickly.

Assad takes a breath. Without meaning to, his mind spools backwards through time, finding not his grandfather, but his mother. The one horribly awkward conversation he’d ever had the courage to broach about his sexuality. The silence that had stretched and stretched like the fraying of a rope, until at last she took his palm between her hands and said, “I love you no matter what.” For a moment, there was nothing but the unbelievable lightness of relief. And then she’d continued, voice as serious as the grave, “But you must understand that this path will only make your life more difficult.”

Assad’s eyes had burned, and he can’t remember how he’d responded, probably muttering anything to get the conversation over as fast as possible. But he knows he hadn’t really believed her. The world was changing, or so he’d thought, twenty-three and wide-eyed and so confidently optimistic. Marriage equality had just passed in Parliament. The marches he and his friends walked in had hundreds of participants. There was organization and grassroots momentum and energy, and it had seemed impossible that the problems of his parent’s generation wouldn’t be solved by the time he hit thirty.

But she’d been right, of course, in every way possible. His life was hard enough when he was just a queer Muslim trying to break into the RSC. And that was before he had to go and start a relationship with a married man three years shy of the American male life expectancy. 

Assad was not, he had to admit, in the habit of choosing the easy option.

But now Eric is pulling his hands from his face and blinking at Assad, and Assad can see that he doesn’t look sick, only a little sweaty from the stadium sun, a little tired from a week’s worth of late call times.  “No, sorry,” he says, sighing heavily, “that came out wrong. I don’t—Christ, kid, what are we fighting about, again?”

Assad blinks back at him. And he’s just as tired, just as sweaty, and he’s suddenly sick of the difficult path. None of this will ever be simple, but of the options available, he can take the easier one. “I think it was about how I’m too cool for Coldplay, but you’re insisting we stick it out til the encore.”

“Right,” Eric laughs, snapping his fingers. “That was it. So come on, you snob. We’re going to have fun.”

He gets his arms around Assad’s waist, sways his hips back and forth, sings gravelly and low in Assad’s ear, “But that was when I ruled the world, ” and Assad groans and says “That’s not even the song they’re playing, they do have other songs—ten albums of them—,” and Eric is nodding and going uhhuh, sure, and his hands feel so good on Assad’s hips, steady and strong, and Assad’s laughing now too, and he can’t remember now why things had seemed so complicated. It’s easy, loving Eric. Simple as swaying together in the baking sun, Eric’s belly pressing to the hollow of Assad’s spine, groin against the cleft of his ass, arms locked around Assad’s front, just two anonymous people in a stadium of thousands. Two people who love each other. Why make it more difficult than that?

The woman next to them is rolling her eyes, but Assad doesn’t care. He’s watched a million straight couples get frisky in public. She’ll survive.

Another song passes. Eric’s hands creep under Assad’s shirt. “Bit sweaty under there,” Assad warns, as the hands climb up to cup his chest. 

Eric snorts. “You think that’s bad, kid, then you should get a whiff of my balls.”

Assad’s mouth goes dry. “Yeah?” Eric’s thumbs are massaging into the meat of Assad’s breasts, and he squirms a little, presses his butt against the soft bulge of Eric’s jeans. His lips crack when he speaks. “You promise, mister?”

“Patience.” Eric tweaks a nipple scoldingly. “They’ll be around when it’s over. Sticking it out till the encore, remember?”

Assad knows this is a fight he’s not going to win, so he doesn’t try. Easier options. And it’s nice, to give in, to lean back and let the beauty of the evening wash over him. The amber sun that’s finally beginning to dip below the stadium walls. The soaring guitars, the beat of drums syncing with Assad’s steadily thumping heart. The aftershave-sweat smell of Eric so close to him, tacky skin against tacky skin. 

The crowd is beautiful too, a million colors and shapes, pairs of mothers and daughters and cousins and friends and lovers. The band is putting some of them up on a Jumbotron, spotlighting with a kiss cam, and it’s lovely and sincere enough that Assad feels unexpectedly weepy at each pairing. A freckled teenage boy whose face goes as red as his hair as he stands on tiptoes to plant a sheepish kiss on the cheek of the tall girl beside him. A frizzy-haired white woman hand in hand with a dark-eyed butch; when she spots herself on the screen, she pulls the other woman into a dramatic dip and kisses her fiercely to a swell of whoops and cheers. A middle-aged black couple who give a slow kiss to each other, then blow one for the crowd. Ten thousand hands reach up to catch it, Assad among them. A silver-haired white guy with his arms up the shirt of a younger South Asian man, both of their faces caught is soft, contented smiles. 

Assad blinks. On the screen, the silver-haired man goes rigid; at the same time, he feels Eric stiffen behind him. And then it hits him with a gunshot moment of clarity that it’s them on the screen, their public display of affection getting broadcasted to the entire bloody stadium, and Assad’s body is moving before he can process anything more than that. 

“Uh oh,” quips Chris, as Assad’s knees hit the steel of the bleachers, “either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.”

The crowd ripples with laughter. The woman who’s been giving them the stink-eye all night looks away, like even she’s embarrassed. Assad’s heart pulses so nauseatingly fast he feels like he might be sick. Above him, Eric gives an awkward smile that’s tight around the eyes, and after an eternity or three seconds later, the camera moves to another couple.

Assad doesn’t move. 

“Assad,” Eric mutters. “Get up. That’s not helping.” 

Assad still doesn’t move. The afterimage of his caught-out face is seared in his vision like a retinal burn, hazing out everything else. Then Eric prods him sharply with his foot, and Assad returns to himself enough to rise to his feet, to turn toward the aisle and slip wordlessly past the tight wall of bodies. A moment later there comes a shuffling sound of sorry and scuse me and Assad knows Eric is following, but he doesn’t look back, doesn’t halt the mindless pumping of his legs until he’s down the six flights of stairs from their balcony seats and almost to the doors, almost free, when Eric grabs him by the arm and gasps, “Slow the fuck down, kid. This ain’t the moment I wanna have a heart attack.”

Assad stops, chagrined. Eric braces his hands on his knees. After a minute, he says, “So. I guess that was pretty embarrassing, huh?”

Assad still doesn’t trust himself to speak. He gulps a few of the breaths he’d missed during his escape, rakes his hand through his hair, and says with quiet and deliberate precision, “Fuck.”

“Yeah, I know, right? Like, what are the chances?” Eric’s straightened up by now, and he’s got his phone out, tapping at the Uber app. The soft way he swears under his breath is far too nonchalant for what Assad thinks the situation requires. “Damn surge prices. They’re robbing us blind.”

Assad blinks. Maybe he does need to start slipping Eric some of his Adderall. “Eric—fuck the surge prices. What are we going to do ?”

“We’re going to ride with Linda back to the hotel,” Eric says, gesturing at his phone to the ride he’d secured, “and then we’re going to stop by the ice machine, as promised. Oh, come on, kid,” he groans when he sees Assad’s face, “Don’t lose your head. It’s embarrassing, but it’s over now. You lived.”

Assad presses his thumb and forefinger to his temple. “Over?” he grits. “They had us on camera.”

Eric snorts. “And you think they were, what, live-streaming that shit to CNN?”

“No,” Assad says, and he can’t believe he has to spell this out to another adult with a working brain and reasonable aptitude for critical thinking, but then he remembers with a surge of frustration every oblivious blunder Eric’s made on social media, and maybe this kind of attitude makes perfect sense. “What I think is that there were ten thousand people in there with cell phones and Twitters and Tiktoks—“

“Please,” Eric says dismissively. “Hate to break it to you, but we’re not that kind of famous. Guarantee you no one’s paying that much attention.” Before Assad can object, Eric grips him by the bicep and steers him out the door. “Come on, Linda’s waiting. We can talk more about it in the car.”

They cram into a cheerful blue Hyundai whose cloth seats practically gasp cigarette smoke when they sit down. Linda turns out to be a talkative woman with a thinning silver mullet who hits it off with Eric right away. They spend the next twenty minutes bonding over favorite bands, a show they both caught in Trenton in the 80s, how nothing these days comes close to that level of authenticity and feeling. “What about you, dear,” she finally asks Assad, and Eric claps him on the shoulder and says “This one just can’t get enough Coldplay.”

Fine, Assad thinks. They’ll talk about it more in the hotel. 

But they don’t talk about it in the hotel. 

Assad, wrung out and on the verge of shutting down, tells Eric he’s going to go stop by his own room to take a shower. Eric nods, but then says there’s a shower in his room, too, and really, it’d be pretty environmentally irresponsible to do it separately, but if Assad wants to be an ecoterrorist, Eric’s not going to stop him, and on and on like that until finally Assad cracks a half smile and follows him to his room. 

The water is cool and blissful as it cracks over Assad’s scalp. He lets it run for a minute, feeling the heavy saturation of his hair, the stream sliding down his nose and pooling at the curve of his lip, and then steps aside to let Eric squeeze in. 

“Get my back for me, will you?” Eric asks, handing Assad a bar of soap. “Think I pulled my shoulder out trying to keep up with your damn sprint.”

“Sorry,” Assad murmurs. He takes the soap. It’s a solid, thickly cut slab, scented with a spice that’s warm and earthy. It’s much nicer than the cheap ones from the hotel, and he wonders if Eric had picked it out for himself, or if Jo had packed it for him. A consistent bit of home amid the travel. Is that the kind of thing people do for their spouses? Assad doesn’t know, but he’d like to imagine himself doing that for someone, one day.

The soap lathers well. Assad works it between his hands, then picks up a cloth and dampens it under the spray. Eric’s shoulders tense a little at the first touch, but they relax after a few seconds, smoothing out into a broad canvas. 

It’s a remarkably lovely back, Assad thinks, from an objective standpoint. Exquisite contrast of firm muscle couched under delicate, crinkling skin. Freckles and sunspots and raised lines of old scars, sparse silver hairs and a few brown moles. Assad strokes over all of this with the cloth, then sets it aside. His fingertips make trails through the suds. The blunt edge of his thumbnail carves down the skin until Eric shivers.

“Get lost back there?” Eric asks, craning his neck as much as he can. Assad leans forward and rests his chin on Eric’s shoulder so Eric’s lips just barely brush his cheek. 

“Not lost,” Assad says. “Just being thorough.” His voice is a little shaky. He drags his hands from Eric’s back down his tapered waist, then slides them around to rest on the soft paunch of Eric’s belly. Assad’s cock is caught loose and limp between his body and Eric’s arse, and despite the abundance of stimuli, Assad doesn’t think that’s changing anytime soon. This isn’t going to be a night for hip flexor acrobatics or nipple play, but Eric doesn’t seem to mind.

“It’ll be alright, kid,” he says softly, and he’s not talking about erections. He clasps a broad hand over Assad’s, rubs his thumb absently in the space between Assad’s knuckles. “Promise you.”  And his voice is so steady with authority, so calm, so resonant and trustworthy, and he’s so much older and wiser than Assad and has lived through so much, has stories for every situation Assad could ever dream, and maybe Assad really is just a foolish kid for blowing this out of proportion. He doesn’t want to fight with Eric, not tonight. Easier options, he reminds himself. What difference will it make, anyway. What’s done is done.

“Okay,” Assad says. He presses a kiss to the side of Eric’s neck, soap and spice on his tongue. “I trust you.”

*

Assad’s body hasn’t quite adjusted to Eastern Standard. In fairness, he hasn’t done much to help it along, too many nights of crashing early and waking up in time to call his mum before she leaves for work. So it’s not much of a surprise when he finds himself wide awake at four, curtains dark and Eric a lightly snoring lump beside him. Like every time this happens, he shuts his eyes again for a good thirty seconds before giving up and reaching for his phone. 

He scrolls Instagram reels for a few minutes, favoriting a few recipes to try for later, and then, with the guilty furtiveness of a smoke break, he opens Twitter. 

Mindless scrolling passes another half hour. Depressing news stories flit by, juxtaposed with some mildly funny jokes and updates about his favorite shows, a few pictures of himself sprinkled in between. This sort of thing has been difficult to get used to—he wishes the algorithm would understand that the last thing he’s interested in is pictures of his own face, let alone his own face paired with commentary from strangers—but it doesn't freak him out as much as it once did. He keeps scrolling. Snorts a little at a dril tweet, likes a gif of Erin Moriarty’s new costume, and then his heart drops to the bottom of his chest.

A blurry picture of himself fills the screen. Himself, and Eric behind him, and Eric’s hands up his shirt. 

am i crazy or is that gil eavis from succession?

Assad’s hands are shaking so badly he can hardly hold the phone. The Gil comment was the original post. The quote tweet says, bitch that’s daniel and armand from interview with the VAMPIRE. 

Assad squeezes his eyes shut. Counts backwards from ten. Slaps his cheeks, opens his eyes, and wills this all to have been a too-vivid dream. Stress nightmares. Wouldn’t be the first.

But when he unlocks his phone, the tweet is still there.

Panic fists his gut like he’s going to be sick. But there’s only a hundred or so likes, and he relaxes fractionally, because that’s not terrible. Fandom posts can be so insular. It may not get much more traction than that. 

Then he realizes he was looking at the stats on the quote tweet.

The original post, when he pulls it up, has 46,000 likes.

Assad’s breath is coming out in a pinched wheeze, like a straw that’s been crushed through the middle. The picture in the original tweet wasn’t a clean image, he notices now. It was a screenshot of a Tiktok. The small number next to the heart says 486.2K. 

Assad stuffs the phone under his pillow and presses his fist to his forehead as hard as he can. Then he turns to the sleeping lump beside him.

“Eric,” he says, and despite the way his insides feel like they’re being churned through a blender, his voice is remarkably calm. “Eric, get up. I need to talk to you.”

“Mmm,” Eric grunts, and rolls over with the blankets wrapped more tightly around his chest, until Assad snatches them away and flicks on the lamp. 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, where’s the fire?” But Eric doesn’t have much more time for grumbling before Assad grabs Eric’s glasses off the side table and shoves them on his nose.

When Eric’s blinking into what seems like semi-alertness, Assad shows him the quote tweet. Then the original tweet. Then the Tiktok screenshot, and the Tiktok itself, which, in the time since its capture, has jumped to 520.4k likes.

When Assad’s done, Eric’s face has gone pale. He runs his hands through his hair, brings them to his mouth, then digs them back into his scalp. “I, uh.”

Assad waits. Years of wisdom, bad scrapes and near misses and lessons learned the hard way, all of it stored behind those sleepy silver curls.

Finally Eric rubs his eyes and says, “I need to call my wife.” And there’s no authority or surety in his voice at all, nothing but exhausted defeat and a note of real fear.

Assad has been such a fool.

“You do that,” Assad says. He’s already climbing out of bed.

*

[video description: Zoomed in shot of a Jumbotron. A man in his mid-thirties with curly dark hair and brown skin rips himself away from the silver-haired pale skinned man behind him, a look of panic on his face as he drops out of frame. From offscreen, a voice says, “Uh oh. Either they’re having an affair or else they’re just very shy.”]

caption: y’all coldplay totally just exposed these guys having an affair LMAOOOO

*

@dykedannymolloy23: this is so devils minion coded it’s insane. don’t care for e*bogo but we really do have to give it up for the character commitment 

@assadbootyluvr: NO ASSAD PICS FOR MONTHS THEN BOOM WAKING UP TO ZAMASIAN CANON???? NEVER KILL YOURSELF

@vampeenis: first dan n phil now zamasian…. rpf warriors stay winning 

@jamreidersonupdates: jam next pls pls pls

@marimand17: Ok I’m just going to say it it’s fucking WEIRD the way DMers are jumping on this like it’s their fictional ship. these are real people’s LIVES. Eric bogosian is a married man with children can you all be normal for three seconds. Real people have been hurt by this

@jermabush: get it peepawwwww

@armandspubes: oomfs said we can’t enjoy the ebogo/az thing bc  “real people have been hurt by this” good grief is it illegal to be a fujo now? 

@armandsboobs: Reply to @armandspubes: factsssss. anyway i bet the wife was watching like [image description: two stills from the film Brokeback Mountain. The first image depicts characters Ennis and Jack locked in a passionate kiss. The second shows Ennis’ wife watching them. The image has been digitally altered using FaceApp to give her a wide, pleased smile.]

@autisticsamwinchester: not naming names but does anyone think it’s actually really misogynistic the way people act like wives can’t be hurt by their husbands cheating on them with men because they’re having a “fujo moment” or whatever. take women’s pain seriously not everything is about stupid yaoi all the time oh my god 

@lawrenitezminion: OLD MAN YAOI ON THE TIMELINE MY DAY IS BLESSED!!! Doodled this quick to celebrate [image description: lineart comic panels of an older man getting vigorously fucked over by a younger man, droplets of cum flying near his perky bottom]

@brattybottomrolinjones: Honestly, this made me really sad. Assad and Eric have never spoken publicly about their sexualities and it’s really problematic of Coldplay to force them to come out. Celebrities don’t owe you their personal lives.

@danielshart: Reply to @brattybottomrolinjones: Girl coldplay didn’t “force them” to do anything that old man was groping assad’s tits in front of god and everyone. if you do that and claim to be closeted you deserve an outing idgaf

@buddie4ever69420: Okay i dont even go here but THIS is the ship yall are so stoked about? Girl… im so sorry but im about to issue an apology to aaron taylor johnson and his wife i didn’t realize the struggle was worse

@jimins_udders: everyone spreading that coldplay cheating video like it’s so funny but that old white man is clearly taking advantage of zaman. You can tell by his expression that he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want him touching him. How old was he when they met bc i bet you anything this is a grooming situation

@gaysie: I’d give anything to fondle assad zaman’s tits like that oh my god i bet they were sweaty and perfect eric you’re the luckiest man in the world i need to drink their bathwater 

*

Assad lays flat on his carpet and waits for the room to stop spinning. 

He pictures Eric in the other room, hands shaking as he dials Jo. What would he say? Assad doesn’t know, but his mind is wandering to strange places, filling in with an impossible but intoxicating story. I’m sorry, Eric would start—weakly, at first, then gaining strength the longer he speaks, but I love him. I won’t give him up for anything. And Jo wouldn’t understand, would rage and berate and plead, but Eric would hold firm. He’d offer to stay with her, to make an arrangement that they could all live with, but she’d refuse. She wouldn’t want to share. Selfish like that, when Assad has shared for so long. And that would be the end of them. So Eric would come back to Assad, knock on his door and take his hand, and they’d belong to each other alone. They’d get their own apartment in the city and decorate it however they wished. Fuck each other on the sofa and king-sized bed and cold bathroom floor until both their hips were killing them. And when they managed to get to their feet Assad would stroll on Eric’s arm like he belonged there, go to theatre openings and galleries and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, dinner parties with groups of lively and interesting friends. Call Eric out on his contrarian shit and get comments like Ooh, I like this one, Eric, where’d you find him? Trips to the Hamptons or Cape May or any other coastal town, rubbing sunscreen on Eric’s back and tasting salt and fried fish and wandering around with nothing to do but love each other. 

It would be so unbelievably good. And it would never, ever happen. 

Assad tips his head so his cheek rests on the carpet. Yarn scratches roughly at his skin. This close, the rug is fairly disgusting, bits of dust and crumbs and tangled hair caught in the fibers and magnified by his proximity. He watches the tear roll over the bridge of his nose and sink down to join the fray. 

What is going to happen, Assad understands, is that his life will get significantly more difficult. His extended family members will pull up Aol.com to check their emails, and a clickbait headline will make them frown as they recognize Assad in the thumbnail. They’ll call his mother. Has he lost his mind? So publicly? Everyone in his community will look at him differently. The neighbors he’s had since he was seven, the teachers he’d reconnected with after finding some initial success, the classrooms he’d gone back to visit and tell the wide-eyed students not to give up. There would be no more of these invitations, Assad knows.

His older sister will be distant. Last year, she’d broken up with her long-term boyfriend because he’d cheated on her with a younger girl, some kid fresh out of uni. Assad had answered his sister’s Skype calls every day for a month as she’d cried and said cheaters would all rot in hell, and the side pieces too, because fuck that, no feminist solidarity for girls who do that shit knowingly, and Assad had nodded murmurred how sorry he was even as he checked his notifications for texts from Eric. 

No, his sister will not be sympathetic.

Professionally, Assad will be slotted into the new category of ‘openly gay actor.’ The distinction may seem meaningless, right now, because his highest profile roles have been queer, but his agent has explained patiently and tactfully time and again that this doesn’t necessarily close any doors. David Corenswet had gotten his break playing queer in a Netflix drama, and now he has a wife and an upcoming blockbuster. Did Assad want to be in a blockbuster one day? He wanted financial stability, so of course he did. Why make a difficult career more difficult? So don’t deprive yourself, but stay private. 

Private. When Assad had checked an hour ago, the video was up to 900k likes.

He gropes around on the carpet until he finds his phone. His fingers hover over the Tiktok app, then Twitter, then land on the call button instead.

It rings three times before picking up. “Mum,” he says, voice catching in his throat. “No, I'm alright. I’ve just—have you been online today? I’ve got something to tell you.”

*

The meeting with AMC is brief. 

Eric sits beside Assad in a too-short folding chair. The quick nod he’d given Assad when he walked in is the most they’ve interacted since three days ago, when Assad had left Eric’s bed. Eric’s cheeks look sunken, his hair unkempt. His trousers are wrinkled like he’d picked them up off the floor. For the first time since Assad’s known him, Eric seems older than he ever is.

Across from them are reps from the HR and PR teams. They’re both harried-seeming women in their early forties with tight buns and dark circles under their eyes, like they’d been flown out here abruptly to deal with a disaster that they had little to no interest in. Which, of course, was the case. Assad can’t bring himself to feel bad for them.

HR goes first, breaking in without preamble. “So, here’s the good news. Since neither of you is in a supervisory role over the other, your relationship isn’t technically violating any company conduct guidelines. But going forward, we need to—“

“I’ll stop you right there, Cindy,” Eric says, folding his arms. “There is no relationship.”

Assad’s fingers, which he’d been wringing unconsciously in his lap, fall still. 

HR gives a weary sigh. She sips at a takeaway cup of Tim Hortons, winces, then takes another deep drink before setting it back down. “Mr. Bogosian. I don’t care how you label it. But if there’s a romantic or sexual linkage between you and Mr. Zaman, it’s our responsibility to—“

“I mean,” Eric says, “sure, there was one, but it’s over now. Mutual decision. So I don’t think we need to bother with all this hoopla, right?”

He doesn’t look at Assad as he speaks, but HR turns her eyes to stare him down. “Mr. Zaman? Is this correct?”

Assad’s face itches under the heat of her gaze. “Apparently.” 

“Sorry?”

“I mean, yes. Mr. Bogosian is correct.”

HR lifts a brow, but doesn’t say anything else, just heaves a weary sigh and shuffles her papers as PR leans forward to take her turn. 

“Okay, then. We can move on to—shaping the narrative, we could say.”

Eric snorts a little, but there’s no humor in it. “Great. And how do we do that?” 

“We say nothing,” PR says bluntly. “We don’t feed the flames, and it’ll die out. People will move on more quickly than you think, believe me.”

Assad frowns. “Are you sure we shouldn’t—?”

“Yes,” she says, and her voice is firm, but not harsh. “I’ve handled more of these than you know, and this is far from the worst case I’ve seen. Trust me, without anyone losing their jobs or getting physically hurt, this will die out in a snap.” Real kindness softens her voice. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’ll be okay.” 

There’s no ring on PR’s finger, Assad notes, but a band of paler skin stands out against her deep California tan, like she’d only stopped wearing one recently. A silver bracelet hangs from her wrist. Two names are inscribed on its surface, two dates; the chain is inlaid with two gems that he thinks might be birthstones. She’d been thumbing over the bracelet the whole time she’d been speaking to him. Assad feels a little guilty for thinking of her as a corporate drone.

“In light of that,” she’s saying, and Assad snaps back to attention, “we think it’s best if neither of you attend Comic Con this year. It’s not a punishment,” she adds quickly, “we just think it would help things blow over. Reduce the temptation for unwanted questions. Let the online speculation die down.”

“Sure,” Assad says, and he gives her a numb, forced smile. “Makes sense.”

*

When they step out of the makeshift office back into the trailer lot, Assad grabs Eric before he can slip away. 

“Glad we had such a long talk about that mutual decision.” He can’t keep the bitterness from his tone, but it feels wrong coming out, even to him. He doesn’t want to play this role, he reminds himself. But the contours of the archetype are walling him in, feeding him his lines like a teleprompter. 

“Yeah, well,” Eric says, and his voice isn’t unkind, just tired and matter-of-fact. “What’d you think was gonna happen? I’m not ending a forty year marriage for you.” 

It’s nothing Assad hasn’t expected, but he still weathers the words like a physical blow. “I didn’t think that was going to happen,” he says, enunciating each word slowly and carefully.  “I guess, you know, I just believed what you told me, and what you told me is that it would never come to that.”

“And wow, look at that, I was wrong. Big whoop. I’m not all-knowing, kid. I’m not—fucking George Washington or the Buddha or God or whatever, no matter how much you seem to think of me that way.” Eric’s words take on an edge, and Assad’s anger stirs, because if Assad had ever treated him like that it was only because Eric encouraged it. Eric liked to paint himself as the wise old savant, the guy who’s been around the block and seen it all, Assad the fresh young canvas in need of instruction. It wasn’t Assad’s fault. “So, obviously, I misjudged,” Eric’s saying. “It happens. Now I’m the one paying the price. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

“You’re the one paying the—are you serious right now?” Assad scrapes out a laugh and has to turn around in a tight circle before he can speak again. “Do you think you’re the only one affected by this? The things they’re saying about me—to my family, my mum and dad, my friends—calling me a homewrecking slut, a gold-digging fa—”

“Gold digging? Honestly, I’m a little flattered by that one. Wonder how much they think I’ve got. Bronze-digging is probably more like it, or—” 

“Not the point,” Assad says tightly. 

Eric blows out a breath. “I know.” He rubs at the back of his neck, sighs again. “Look, you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s a shitty situation for us both.”

Assad nods, because that about sums it up. They’re quiet for a moment. Trailer doors open and close, cast and crew bustling in the midday rush. They both stare at the side of the building for longer than is reasonable.

Without turning, Eric finally says, “Assad, I’m always going to care about you. Nothing will change that. But you know we can’t—see each other like that, anymore.”

“Yeah,” Assad says. 

“I don’t want you to worry. We’ve still got to work together, right, and I’ll be completely professional. You can relax about that.” 

Assad says nothing. He hadn’t been worried about the two of them working together. The work was what he could always depend on, no matter what else was going on, even back to those early days in season one when he was going out of his mind wondering if he was imagining the way Eric was looking at him. But to accept that the door is closed to anything beyond it—no more following Eric home after the shoots, no more pretending Assad uses his own room as anything more than a closet—it punches through him with a sudden and choking grief.

“I’m sorry,” Eric says again, and his hand hovers over Assad’s shoulder. Assad’s breath catches in his throat. He can feel the heat of that hand, its phantom weight, the charge in the air at the moment before touch, and then Eric draws it away without ever meeting his skin. 

*

Twenty-two days of filming have elapsed. The next forty-eight pass without incident. PR was right. Attention spans are short, and scandals get buried so quickly by fresh drama. To the unfamiliar eye, it would be like nothing had happened at all. 

But Assad is as attuned to the rhythms of this production as he is with his own heartbeat, and he can feel the disruption like a constant murmur rippling through everything they do. It’s in the way everyone is scrupulously polite around him and Eric, the old bawdy teasing that used to lighten the breaks between Daniel and Armand’s scenes replaced with silences and awkward pauses. It’s in the way Jacob and Sam are more careful with each other than ever, no longer going out on the weekends just the two of them, always looking over their shoulders for cameras.  Assad registers that he could hold some bitterness that it was he and Eric who got caught, when Jacob and Sam have been arguably more public, but he doesn’t really feel it. Most days, he feels nothing at all.

He starts hanging out with Ella towards the end of the shoot. She’s young and loud with a soft pink mouth and tits that are frankly a little unbelievable. Best of all, though, she doesn’t walk on tiptoes around him, doesn’t treat him any differently, because she hadn’t known him before any of this to begin with. It’s easy, being with her. Easier option. Isn’t this the path he should’ve taken in the first place?

They’re getting coffee one morning at the place round the block, Ella in sleep-mussed braids and tight bike shorts and one of Assad’s old sweaters, Assad in a pair of loose gray sweats and a t-shirt that he thinks now may be on backwards, and he notices that a table of girls in the corner of the cafe have abruptly fallen silent. A few of them have their phones out.

Ella hasn’t noticed. She’s leaning forward to talk to the barista, and without thinking too much about it, Assad lays a palm on the curve of her butt as he leans in to give his own order. 

By the time they exit, the table of girls are all typing furiously on their phones.

That night, when Assad drops by Ella’s door to pick her up for dinner, the door slams open at the first knock.

“Did you do this on purpose?” she demands, brandishing her phone. Through the quivering screen, Assad makes out a series of sequential images posted on Twitter. The first shows him glancing directly at the person holding the camera. The next shows him leaning down with his hand on Ella’s arse. 

“Ella,” he tries, voice sounding lame and limp even to his own ears. He can’t think of anything else to say after that, but it doesn’t matter. She’s already shutting the door in his face. 

Without any particular emotion, Assad turns away and starts back toward the elevator. The hydraulics hum after he presses the button, and he folds his arms while he waits, squeezing tight around his shoulders as if that will somehow tether him to his body.

When the door opens, Eric is blinking back at him.

“Oh,” says Assad.

Eric’s wearing a white button-up shirt and a windbreaker jacket that crinkles like tissue paper as he reaches up to adjust his glasses. There’s a small damp stain on the front of his collar, like he’d been a little messy at dinner and gotten sauce down his front. Something brittle in Assad is cracking just to see it. 

“Hey, kid,” Eric says as he steps past Assad into the hallway, and the single heady syllable of that word slides between Assad’s ribs like an ice pick. “You going out? Tell Ella to bring a coat if you do, it’s getting chill—“

“No,” Assad says, getting into the elevator as the doors slide closed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

*

The shoot ends. Assad gets drunk enough at the wrap party that he can’t remember anything besides a seemingly endless procession of deep red shots, and then the sticky concrete bruising his knees as he’d heaved his guts into the toilet. After an indeterminate period of time, two bodies had appeared around him. Flashes of Jacob’s gentle hands stroking back his hair. Sam’s broad thumbs rubbing circles on his back. The dual comfort and shame of having them there, as if they were his parents finding him in a compromising position, and he’d wanted to rip himself away just as much as he’d wanted to cling to their legs and beg them to let him sleep in their bed. 

He’d woken up alone in his hotel and flown back to London that night.

The months pass. Assad hadn’t planned to book anything new after the shoot, the stretch of free time nominally left open for him to work on “script writing.” This, he can see now, was a comically huge mistake. He produces only blank pages or streams of consciousness so laughably pathetic that he prints them out just to feed them to the shredder.

But one day, something makes him pause before shredding his latest batch. There’s something there, he thinks. A glint of something amid the slop, something real and sparkling waiting to be teased out. He goes back to the laptop. He writes, and edits, and writes some more. He prints out pages and decides they’re worse than anything mankind has ever produced, shreds them and deletes the file and empties the trash folder for good measure. Then he wakes up sweating in the middle of the night and painstakingly glues the shreds back together, starts again.

He finishes the draft. Sends it to his agent with a feeling like his head is disconnected from his body, then tries to eat the same bowl of cereal for nearly an hour straight. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It’s just something he tried. It doesn’t have to—

His agent calls back before the hour’s through.

Assad books a flight to New York the next day.

*

The Trader Joe’s in Soho crowded. Everything here is cramped and overpriced and has Assad sorely missing Tesco’s, but the truth is, the play’s workshops are keeping him busy enough that he doesn’t have time to cook much more than frozen meals anyway. It’s for the best.

He’s sticking a box of what Trader Joe’s passes off as palak paneer into his basket when Eric calls.

Assad stares at the phone for a long moment. He’d been wondering if Eric would find out he’s in the city. Part of him is surprised it took him this long, and the other part was convinced Eric would move area codes just to get away from him. He shifts the basket to his left arm and brings the phone to his ear.

“Hey babe,” Eric says immediately. “While you’re at SCA, can you poke around for a print or something we could put in the guest room? I’m not digging the old stuff. I think we need a refresh.”

Assad pauses. “I think you have the wrong number,” he says, keeping his voice light.

“Wh—oh, Jesus. Assad? How—?”

“You called me,” Assad says, and Eric groans. 

“Christ. I’m sorry, kid, I don’t know why I— I just dialed your number without thinking about it.”

“It’s okay,” Assad says, and it is. He feels oddly serene as he drifts down the chaos of the aisle, Eric’s voice in his ear settling over him with the warmth of an old familiar sweater. 

“I swear I’m not going senile. I just saw your picture in the paper the other day, and I guess I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Really?” Something coy slips into Assad’s tone. “Nothing untoward, I hope.”

Eric guffaws at that, but Assad notes that he doesn’t directly refute it. “Congrats about your play, by the way,” is all he says instead. “Really impressive. You’ll be a superb director.” 

“Thanks,” Assad says, and he means it. “It’s been—a lot.”

“I bet. First one I put on, would’ve been dead on my feet if it weren’t for the uppers. Wait—you’re not on anything, are you? I’m failing my mentorly duties. Don’t do drugs, kid, and all that.”

Assad laughs softly. “No. The city alone is enough of a drug for me.” He cringes a little after he says it, wondering when he started talking like a Girls character, but Eric hums thoughtfully. When he speaks, his voice has gone soft, too. 

“Yeah, it can feel like that, when you’re young.”

They’re silent for a moment. A child wails in her mother’s shopping cart to Assad’s left. Wheels bang on tile flooring. A bell rings loud and shrill to signal more cashiers to the register. 

“You at a zoo or something?” Eric asks.

“Trader Joe’s in Soho.”

“So what I said,” Eric quips, and Assad laughs obligingly. “Hey, that’s actually not far from me at all,” Eric adds after a moment. “I’m just two blocks down the street.”’

“Oh, really?” Assad asks, as if he hadn’t memorized Eric’s address, as if it wasn’t on his mind every time he stepped out of his tiny subleased flat.

“Yeah,” Eric says. He pauses, and Assad pictures him rubbing his thumb over his lip, bouncing his right leg the way he has a habit of doing while thinking. “You know, it’s been a pretty boring week for me. Jo’s guest lecturing back in Sydney for the semester, and besides my bodega guy I’ve barely seen anyone’s face in days.”

“Sounds tough.” Assad keeps his voice neutral, and Eric groans.

“Still making me work for it, aren’t you,” he says, and heat starts to work its way down Assad’s neck. “What I mean is. If you’re not too busy today. I think I remember you once being very adamant about wanting to see the inside of my kitchen.”

Assad’s lips curve. “I did say that, didn’t I.”

He pauses. Eric waits. Assad feels the store churn around him, the clumps of families and friends and spouses, the solo shoppers weaving between them like stray leaves in the wind. 

He looks at his basket, all the frozen foods that are rapidly thawing in the summer heat. It would be easier to head straight in the opposite direction back to his flat, to unpack all this and get ready for the week. It would be easier to bid Eric a polite goodbye, to say it was nice to reconnect, but he really had to get going. Easier to spend the evening working on his notes and revisions and stage directions and everything else that requires his pressing attention.

Eric’s breath is scratchy on the other end of the line. Assad wonders if he still uses the same type of soap. If a dermatologist had taken off any of the moles from his back. If his hair is still silver, or if most of it has faded to white.

The mother beside Assad scoops her crying child into her arms. The girl goes quiet immediately, peering over her mother’s shoulder to stare at Assad with serious brown eyes. When Assad smiles at her, her face stills for a moment before breaking out into a brilliant mirror. 

Assad’s feet are carrying him toward the store’s exit as swiftly as they can go. His basket is abandoned somewhere in the frozen aisle. The events of your life don’t happen to you to teach you a lesson, Assad thinks. You can’t always take the easier option.

Eric’s breathing is still audible over the phone. Something a little nervous in its quaver, but something hopeful, too.

“I’ll be right over,” Assad says.

Notes:

title from the scientist by coldplay because ahaha. btw if this is ever seen in a faraway point in time where people have forgotten about the summer 2025 coldplay incident you can read about it here for context
iconic moment thank you for the rpf inspiration real life cheaters

gil succession vs iwtv crowd inspired by my buddy ajovial im glad i can always count on you to be funnier than me

ending inspired by conversations with friends because that's an affair novel of all time for me and i spend toooo long thinking about zamasian aus of that ahahaha anyway im rpfing on tumblr thank you for reading!!
ice cube play may get a follow up oneshot bc now i want to think about that