Work Text:
The roar of laughter still echoed in Phil's ears as he stepped off stage, the adrenaline coursing through his veins like electricity. Five hundred people had just lost their minds over his "Milk man" bit, and goddamn, there was no feeling in the world quite like it.
"Killed it tonight, Mr. Ellis," said a stagehand, offering him a bottle of water.
Phil accepted it with a nod, his chest still heaving slightly. "Thanks, man. Full house?"
"Standing room only. They're still applauding out there."
He could hear it—the sustained thunder of appreciation that hadn't quite died down even though he'd already taken two curtain calls. Phil allowed himself a small smile as he navigated the backstage corridor, high-fiving tech crew members as he passed. Three months ago, he'd been doing open mics in what felt like basements, and now he was selling out the Leicester Square Theatre.
"Phil! Phone call," the venue manager called out, holding up a cordless phone. "Says it's your agent."
"Tell him I'll call back. I need to decompress for a minute."
The hallway narrowed as he approached his dressing room, the walls plastered with peeling band posters from acts that had come through over the years. Phil traced his fingers along them, wondering if someday his name would be emblazoned on walls like these. Not as an opening act, but as the headliner.
He pushed open the door to his dressing room—a generous term for what was essentially a glorified closet with a mirror and a small couch. But it was his closet for the night, and right now, it felt like a palace.
Phil froze in the doorway. There’s a man in his dressing room, and for once it’s not one who’s just there to tell me he’s shit. Reece is holding a white paper bag, the kind you might keep a sandwich in if you were socially normal or twelve years old, and he’s shaking his head at Phil in that way that only Reece Shearsmith can, as if he’s not disappointed in him, but in the universe for letting me exist.
“I won’t keep you long,” he says, “I just wanted to say you were tremendous. That bit about the dog and the bath mat—honestly, Phil, I think that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and you know I worked with Steve Pemberton for twenty-five years, so the bar is—” he holds his hand at waist height, “—admittedly, quite low.”
He pushes the bag across the table. It’s heavy, and when Phil looks inside, there’s a very large, very pink Bakewell tart. “You looked peckish,” he says, and then, “You always look peckish,” and then, “You’re not diabetic, are you?”
Phil shakes my head. “Not yet.”
“Good. Because I’d hate to be responsible for your death. It’s supposed to be a surprise, but I’m here for the matinee, too. It’s all anyone at the theater can talk about. You’re the talk of the town, Phil. The North Shields Gazette is calling you ‘the next Lee Mack, but with more self-hatred.’”
“That’s a very specific brand,” Phil says. His hands are trembling, so he put them under the table. “Thank you. I mean it, Reece. You have no idea how much—”
“Oh, I have every idea,” Reece interrupts, with a gentleness that makes him want to cry and then crawl into the ventilation ducts and live there for a decade. “I know exactly what it’s like. You do the thing, the thing is well received, and then you’re alone with your own head for hours and hours, and the only person you want to talk to is—”
He stops, and Phil can see the moment he notices. He looks down, then up, then down again. He does not look at Phil's face.
Phil looks, too. And, yes, there it is, right on schedule, like a faithful pet or an embarrassing rash: his erection. It is outlined—no, more than outlined, it is sculpted—against his jeans. It is the most prominent thing in the room, apart from Reece Shearsmith, who is now looking at it with an expression hel cannot read. Maybe horror, maybe delight.
Phil tries to say something, but all that comes out is a noise like a dog whistle. Reece is still staring, but in a clinical way, like a pathologist who has just been handed the world’s largest tumor.
“It’s the adrenaline,” Phil says, finally. “From the show. It does that. Sometimes.”
Reece is silent for a long, long moment, and then he laughs: a short, explosive bark. “Is that what the kids are calling it now?” He picks up a biro from the table, twirls it, puts it down again.
“I’m sorry,” Phil says, because it’s the only thing he knows how to say.
The older man shrugs. “Don’t be. I once got an erection at an awards ceremony. I was sitting next to Olivia Colman, if you can believe it. You’re in good company.”
Phil tries to laugh, but his throat is closing up. “Did you ever tell her?”
“I think she knew,” he says, and then, “I think she was flattered.”
Phil tries to laugh again, but the sound is strangled by his own mortification. He wills himself to calm down, to think of anything less humiliating—his childhood dog being spayed, the Queen’s funeral, the time he fell into a canal in front of his entire year group—but nothing works, not when Reece is looking at him through those thick, black glasses with a gaze so heated it could caramelize sugar.
He tries to stand, to adjust, but the chair’s arms catch his hips and he nearly tips the whole thing backwards. Reece, still perched on the edge of the dressing table, doesn’t move to help. He just watches, eyes narrowing with focused amusement, as if he’s watching the world’s shittest magic trick.
“It happens,” Reece says, voice lower now, almost conspiratorial. “Honestly, I’m more surprised it doesn’t happen to everyone, every time. The adrenaline, the lights, the… attention.”
Phil swallows. “That’s not the only thing, though,” he says, the words escaping before he can reel them back. “It’s you. You’re—” He flaps a hand, helpless, like a drowning man gesturing at the lifeguard who is also the cause of the riptide.
Reece raises a single eyebrow. “Me?”
“You’re sort of a big deal,” Phil manages. It comes out as a wheeze.
Reece lets the silence rest between them, lets it stretch until Phil’s face is burning. Then he puts both feet on the floor, walks over, and stands in front of Phil, close enough that Phil can smell the citrus of his aftershave and the faint, metallic whiff of biro ink on his hands.
Reece leans in, his voice almost a whisper. “Well, we can’t have you in a state for your next show, now can we?”
Phil blinks. His heart is pounding so hard his vision is strobing at the edges.
Reece drops to his knees in front of him.
For a second, Phil thinks he must be hallucinating, that this is some elaborate fever dream conjured by too much Red Bull and not enough sleep. But Reece is real, solid, and improbably gentle as he rests one hand on Phil’s thigh, the other bracing himself on the chair.
“If you don’t want this,” Reece says, “now would be an excellent time to tell me to fuck off.”
Phil can’t speak. He just shakes his head, once, sharply, like a dog shaking off water.
Reece smiles, just a flicker, and then he undoes Phil’s jeans with the practiced, unhurried dexterity of a man who has done this before, and done it well. The sound of the zipper is deafening in the little room.
Phil closes his eyes, but he can still feel Reece’s breath, warm and steady, the way his fingers slide under the waistband of his boxers, the careful, almost reverent way he frees Phil’s cock. He can’t believe this is happening; he’s never been blown by a BAFTA winner before.
Reece doesn’t tease. He doesn’t make a production out of it. He just leans forward and takes Phil in his mouth, slow and deliberate, and Phil has to bite his tongue to keep from making a noise that would bring the entire cast and technical crew running.
He is hyperaware of every sensation—the scrape of stubble, the pressure of Reece’s lips, the way his glasses slide down his nose and catch the light from the dressing room mirror. Phil wants to remember this forever, wants to tattoo the image behind his eyelids, but it’s all happening too fast, the pleasure building in a way that’s completely unfair, like winning the lottery and then dying of a heart attack before you can cash the cheque.
He clutches the armrest, knuckles whitening, and nearly loses his mind when Reece does something—Jesus, what is that, a twist, a flex, a bloody magic trick—with his tongue. The man was wasted on comedy; he could have been a concert oboist, or a heart surgeon, or the world’s most expensive sex worker. Phil finds himself babbling, not even sure what words are coming out, only that they are all demented and all true.
“Oh my god, yes, that’s—fuck, that’s brilliant—how are you—” He stares down, meets Reece’s eyes, and almost comes on the spot at the glint of mischief there. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? You’re—Christ—utterly—” He loses the thread, gasping as Reece does it again, and then again, each time more assured, more devastating.
He can feel his legs shaking. He can feel the burn of the seat beneath his thighs, the sweat pricking at the nape of his neck, and the hot, slick, obscene perfection of Reece’s mouth. It should be illegal. It should be televised. If this was a Taskmaster task, Phil would be winning.
Reece hums around him, a low, satisfied noise, and Phil’s hips buck involuntarily.
“Sorry—sorry—” Phil stammers, but Reece just tightens his grip and takes him deeper, utterly unbothered. Phil is so close to the edge he’s practically tap dancing on it. He’s going to make a mess, he’s going to embarrass himself, but Reece seems to know, seems to want it, seems to be urging him on with every precise, expert movement.
It’s only as he’s seconds from coming, his breath stuttering, that Phil blurts out, “I—I had a boner—every live recording on Taskmaster, you know? Every time you sat down I’d—just—instantly—” He can’t finish, partly because Reece does something devastating with his hands, partly because he’s coming, hard, with a strangled gasp that echoes off the dressing room walls. Reece doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just takes it, all of it, and then lets Phil’s cock slip from his mouth with a satisfied sigh.
Phil slumps back, boneless, his mind a blank white flash. He’s dimly aware of Reece rising, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a tissue from the makeup station, and giving Phil an appraising look over the rims of his glasses.
“Good?” Reece asks, as if he’s just handed Phil a particularly nice sandwich.
Phil is incapable of speech, so he just nods, once, twice, and then drops his head into his hands, groaning with a mixture of delight and horror.
Reece laughs, the sound low and private. “If it’s any consolation,” he says, “I was hard as a rock on that panel show we did together last month. Had to hide it behind a clipboard. I think Daisy May Cooper noticed.”
Phil makes a noise that might be a laugh, or a sob, or both. He fumbles for the Bakewell tart bag, as if it might anchor him to reality. “You’re a monster,” he says, muffled.
Reece’s smile is wicked. “That’s what Steve always said.”
Phil tucks himself back in, zips up, and tries to breathe normally, but his heart is still rattling around his chest like a moth in a lampshade. “I can’t do the matinee,” he says, “I’ll just be thinking about this.”
Reece shrugs. “You’ll be brilliant. You always are.”
He moves to the door, but pauses with his hand on the knob. “I’m at the pub round the corner after. If you want a pint. Or, you know, something else.”
Phil nods, eyes still glued to the desk. He hears the door close, and only then does he let himself laugh, quietly, helplessly, at the impossibility of his own life.
He looks at the Bakewell tart, thinks about the skill in Reece’s hands and mouth, and wonders if he’ll ever be able to eat dessert again without getting an erection. Probably not.
He stands, legs shaking, and heads for the stage. The show must go on. But first, he’ll have to change his pants.