*****

I hate press screenings.

Wow. Right. I've never thought that before. Not like I've been in this situation with every goddamned press screening I've ever bothered to attend, getting reminded why I don't bother attending in the first place. It's the same reason I'm faintly grateful that the Academy has been steadfastly ignoring me for almost twenty years now. It's always the same crowd. The critics peering down their noses even while they crawl over each other for half a chance to press their own screenplay off on somebody halfway influential; the starfuckers offering blowjobs in the bathroom; the producers clustered in a corner beaming at each other like they didn't spend the last year or so cutting the knees out from under the movie and like they won't pass the buck if it doesn't make a few hundred million. Meanwhile I'll be over here, my back against the wall, drinking. Heavily.

I don't play nice for many people anymore. Sam. Robert. Peter Jackson, the one time I worked with him. Rick. Tim, not because he needs me these days but because of the memory of a kid who kept fleeing to the bathroom to puke as the first screening of Edward Scissorhands bombed.

Yeah, I know it's pathetic.

Speaking of the devil himself, he's wandering this way. He sees me and a look of relief crosses his face. Shouldering through the crowd, he stumbles into me, grabs my arm and asks, "Have you seen Helena?"

Wow. That was coherent. It must be important. I shake my arm free. "She's over chatting with some exec."

Tim sighs and stands on tiptoes, trying to look over the crowd, "Which? Damn it, she's supposed to be, y'know, sitting still."

Oh. It's an eight-month-along-father-to-be thing. I tap his arm, hand him my drink, and inform him, "You need this more than I do. Did you tell Helena to sit still?"

Tim glares at me, knocks the drink back anyway. "Yeah."

"That's the problem. You don't tell a pregnant woman anything. You suggest it strongly, with application of liberal bribes."

Tugging a hand through his hair, Tim mutters, "The book didn't say that. What if somebody bumps her? What if she trips or something?"

"Tim. She's a pregnant woman, not an incendiary device."

"You obviously didn't read the same book."

"What to Expect When You're Expecting, aka 'do one little thing wrong and your child will turn out headless, a leper or a sociopath and it'll be your fault.' Yeah, I read it."

Tim, who put a hand over his eyes apparently to count to ten, looks at me through his fingers. "Before or after she threw it at you?"

"After."

"Oh, good. Me too." Lifting his head, he lights up and dives back into the crowd. He comes back a second later, tugging Helena behind him. His attention is all for her, and as anybody who's ever seen Tim work can tell you, that's a disturbing amount of attention. "Are you okay? Did anything break? Here, sit down, Danny'll get up."

News to me. But I like Helena; I respect the fact that if anybody fucks with her boyfriend, she's happy to quietly cut their brakes and make it look like an accident. She's the kind of woman Tim probably needs in his life, someone to butch it out where he can't. Besides, she has that sort of glow around her that pregnant women do. A happy flush. It's moderately disgusting, but I never said I wasn't a sucker. I get up.

Helena glares at Tim, glares at me, then drops into the chair with a huff of breath that she probably wouldn't admit was relief. Tipping her head back, she says to me in that crisp accent, "Could you make him stop?"

"Sorry."

"Bastard."

"Hey, you picked him."

Helena makes a face at me, then looks at Tim and seems to soften a little. Hard to be rough on a guy who dropped to his knees on the red carpet and has his cheek against your stomach.

If I'm a sucker, Tim's an even bigger one. But then I'm told I'm not exactly a badass when it comes to Mali, so I have little room to bitch.

After a moment, Helena tangles her fingers in Tim's hair. He looks up at her. It's a charming tableau. I'm going to edge away before it makes me diabetic.

Of course, that knocks me out of my safe, reclusive little corner. I edge through the crowd, avoiding eye contact and trying to project the old 'touch me and you'll lose a hand' aura I perfected in Boingo. Maybe I can find another corner, or another drink, or both.

Truth be told, I'm not looking forward to this. It's not that I hate the movie, which was the case with Planet. Big Fish is probably the best, most honest thing Tim has done since Edward. Which is part of the problem.

I lost my father a few years ago. We were close, and it was abrupt. He died when I was doing a score- Apes, actually, another reason I can't watch that fucking thing anymore- and I finished it anyway. Tucked it away. Didn't deal with it. Aggressively avoided it, if I want to be honest.

It was a rough scoring session, sometimes. Between me and Tim, who lost both his parents in the last three years, there was always somebody leaving the room with suspiciously red eyes.

I'm not the same arrogant bastard I used to be, before I lost my band and my wife in the same chunk of time, but I'm not a complete stranger to him either. Even if this is California, even if it is catharsis, I'm not getting in touch with my 'wounded inner child' in the middle of a few hundred critics that would fall on me like wolves.

Besides, there's something about the kid I spent fifteen years protecting having kids of his own that makes me feel... well, fucking old. I'm not ready to be Uncle Danny to Tim's kid, just like I'm sure as hell not ready to be Grandpa. (A fact of which Mali and Lola are painfully aware, let me assure you.) Rick's older than me, but he acts younger.

Maybe I can go sneak out, get drunk, have anonymous sex and get arrested.

Ha.

Someone bumps into me, hard, and I turn to snarl only to find myself looking at six plus feet of... oh, great.

I nod at Eddie Vedder, mumbling superstar. Don't get me wrong; when Tim throws down and says 'no, Danny, we have to have this guy over the credits', I'm not going to throw a tantrum. I might have ten years ago, but whatever. His movie.

Doesn't mean I can stand it. He seems like a nice enough kid, but Jesus Christ. With lyrics like that, with a movie like this, would it kill him to fucking enunciate?

What are you supposed to say to a business acquaintance? I settle on, "Hey."

He nods back. Like I said, nice kid, and with a band as big as his is he's pretty low key. Cute, in a 'what in God's name did you do to your hair?' sort of way. He looks uncomfortable in the middle of all this fuss and pretension, a fact that ups him in my opinion. "Hey," he says. "Nice theatre."

Nice seems to be the word of the night. I glance around at the gilded walls, the red velvet, all faded opulence, and nod. "Yeah. Very Tim."

He flashes a crooked grin which, actually, scales him out of cute and into attractive. "You're uncomfortable as hell."

I nod at the drink in his hand. "You're one to talk."

The grin broadens, briefly, then fades. He's got very honest eyes, bright, earnest. "I hate these things. Even for my own stuff. It's an excuse for the important people who, if they had a damned thing to do with it, were giving the guy who actually did the work hell the whole way. Then, when something good comes of it despite their harping, they sit around and congratulate themselves all night."

He sounds like Johnny, shortly before Johnny bolted to France. He sounds like me, before I got too tired to bitch about it anymore. I step back a little so I can get a better chance of meeting his eyes. Tall, skinny fucker. "Very direct of you."

Eddie shrugs. "Used to it."

I smirk. "Isn't everybody."

"Yeah." Eddie shifts, turning his head to follow some star who has awed murmurs following her all the way to the bar. He doesn't look impressed. When he looks back, he says in a rush, "Look, you want to go get a drink?"

I blink at him, caught between half a dozen choruses of 'oh, bad idea' echoing in my head, then settle on amused detachment. It's a state that's served me well over the years. "Already been."

Eddie huffs out a breath, then shakes his head. Very intense. Very no bullshit. Interesting. "There's a bar down the street. I think we can sneak out. You want to come with me? I could use somebody to talk to."

So earnest. I can't help poking at him once or twice. "Yeah? Nobody else'll go with you?"

Eddie looks at me for a second, then grins and shrugs. "Nobody interesting."

How the hell am I supposed to turn down a line like that? I meet his grin with one of my own.

He doesn't even flinch.
*****
So we sneak out one of the back doors, through the kitchen. All I need to know about breaking and entering, I learned from my brother. We slide through the crowds of hopefuls and slip, mostly unnoticed, into the bar at the end of the street.

And there we get drunk. Very, very drunk. The kind of drunk where you find yourself at two in the morning doing body shots with a complete stranger and a liquor you don't even like.

But hey, enough about Steve and my touring habits.

"So," Vedder is saying, one hand moving idly to punctuate his points, "there's, like, this fucking jingoistic conservative regime ruining everything."

I lean the side of my head against the wood siding of the bar. "Yeah. And?"

Vedder stares at me for a moment, thrown, then musters up enough intoxicated dignity to say righteously, "Pisses me off."

I snort. "Been pissed off for twenty years, kid. It doesn't get anything done."

"Well, no." Rolling the shot glass between long, long fingers, Eddie sniffs. "Not if you don't do anything about it."

"Like what? Get arrested? Set myself on fire in a public square? Write my congressman?"

"Person."

"Right." I eye the bottle of whiskey that the despairing bartender finally just left with us to deal with as we wanted. "It doesn't get anything done."

"Gets more done that doing nothing."

"Idealist."

"Cynic."

I smirk at him, without much humor, and grab the bottle by the neck. "I'm an old man. It's my prerogative."

Vedder shakes his head at me. "You're not old. You're, what, forty-five?"

"Fifty. Thanks."

Vedder looks at me. His eyes are piercing. Even drink doesn't fog them up. After a moment, he says in a low, smoky, suddenly serious voice, "Maybe I like older guys."

I falter with my hand on the bottle, then recover. "Yeah, well. I hear Ian McKellan's single."

He laughs, but there's a darker edge to it, and he looks away, out the window. "Yeah," he says slowly, like he's tasting the word. "Yeah."

I pour a shot, roll the shotglass between my fingertips. It's already smudged with fingerprints. I get it half to my mouth when he says suddenly, "You know you're letting yourself get old."

I stop so short that a bit of the whiskey spills over the edges of the glass. Knocking the rest of it back, I set the glass down and glare at him. "Fuck you."

He laughs, like that was the reaction he wanted. Reaching across the table, he takes my wrist. Maybe he has a point about where I'm letting myself go, because I don't wrench away. "Your music," he says, gravely serious despite the slurring on the edges of his voice, "has so much rage. Beauty. Passion."

Without much conviction, I met his eyes. "Maybe that's where it all goes."

"Bullshit. There's no quota." Vedder peers at me, owlish and young and arrogant as hell. "When did you stop trying?"

"Choke on it and die," I suggest, with about as much as dignity as I've got left, and that time I do try to yank my arm away.

He holds on. I think I might have that good old bruise pattern on my arm again tomorrow, the four-fingers-thumb pattern. First time in years. Some fucked up part of me seems to have missed it, because I don't let him hold on; I keep tugging, making it worse.

Eddie bends, calm as fuck, though I'm gratified to see that he's having trouble keeping my hand still. He bends, and he presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist, and he lets me go.

I've been pulling so hard that the sudden lack of counter-tension jerks me back into my seat.

We look at each other. My wrist feels hot, and when I spare it a glance I half-expect to see burns in the shape of his fingers.

On the jukebox, John Lennon sings about love being all you need. Thanks for the music, John, but you'll excuse me if I don't take advice on humanity from the guy who was shot in the back.

Eddie grins, grimly, and reaches for the bottle. "Yeah," he says shortly, "sorry."

If I leave it at that, he won't take it gracefully, but he'll take it and let the kiss drop. If I stopped and thought about it, I'd do that. Hell, it's the smart thing to do. Responsible. Sensible.

Bullshit.

I stick my hand out, between Eddie and the bottle. He stops, looks at me, a funny quirk to his eyebrows. I clear my throat, but my voice comes out husky. "There's whiskey on my fingers."

Eddie looks at me, his eyes dark and impossible to read. Somehow it doesn't occur to me to pull my hand back. Maybe I'm tired of compromising. He'll do it, or he'll hit me. Either way, I'm fine with that. Sex and violence, my old friends.

Finally, one corner of his mouth tilts up. Laying his fingers over my pulse, where his mouth touched, he dips his head down to my hand.

His mouth is hot, hot as his hands and his words, his fire. Like being slapped out of a hallucination by reality, to the gritty imperfection of a sport bar's dark corner. He licks in slow, easy strokes like a cat, idle, lazing over fingertips and knuckles to the soft places between the fingers. It's not subtle, no song and dance seduction, no promises.

He bites, a quick nip that jars more than it stings, then raises his head to look at me. "So," he says, apropos of nothing, his voice throaty.

I take my hand back, take the bottle. Pouring a last shot, I drink half. The rest I slide across the table, into his hand.

He takes it without a sidelong look, downs it, baring long white throat. Putting it down with a thunk, he watches me, head tilted a little. Idle curiosity.

I feel subtly, deceptively sober. Apparently this is the most rational thing in the world to do. Or maybe the world's most irrational. Anybody who assumes humans are rational has obviously never met one. "You got a hotel room?"

"Yeah."

Fucker. He's going to make me ask. "You want to go?"

He gives me a long stare, one that traces the skin like the dull edge of a knife. Then he smirks. Picking up the bottle by its neck, he stands and wanders over to the bartender, weaving between abandoned seats.

I'm guessing that's a yes.
***
It's a yes.
****
Thump. "Fuck." The hiss of skin on skin, the low wet noise of fingers shifting somewhere deeper. Eddie groans. "Yeah, Danny. Harder- ah, you bastard," as the fingers slide away.

I slide my cock into him, instead. Which is about as compliant as I get.

Eddie hisses, fingers twisting brutally into the sheets. When that passes, he gasps a laugh and a choked, "Fucker."

It takes a moment to remember words. He's burning inside, and tight as hell, and it's been a very long time. "Of course," I tell him, less smoothly than I'd like.

He laughs, catches his breath when I move again, arches his spine like a cat. His shirt is still on, though lopsided and hanging off one shoulder. Tearing off buttons will do that. I bend down and trace the bite-marks with my tongue, letting myself drive into him hard enough that his whole body hitches.

Yeah. I needed this.

A shaky breath. Then Eddie cranes his head back, that horrible blond hair sticking to his face with sweat, and growls, "More."

So I give it to him.
*****
When I wake up, stretching out an exploratory hand before I bother lifting my head, the bed is empty and cool.

Thank fuck. It takes a good one-night stand to know when to leave. It takes an even better one to remember to leave coffee on the nightstand.

Rolling over, coffee firmly in hand, I survey the damage. The sheets are mostly off the bed. The bedspread wandered off to parts unknown. There's a lamp on the floor; I think we knocked it on the way in. I hurt. All in all, a job well done.

When I actually bother to look over at the nightstand, rather than groping for coffee and glasses, I find a little parchment card. I pick it up, expecting to see an unfamiliar scrawl, but instead there's Helena's neat, very English writing.

I would complain about you keeping me up all hours, but the performance was worth it. Thank you, darling.
- H.

Darling, my ass. At least I managed to get the pregnant woman laid.

Settling back against the strewn pillows, I drink the coffee and consider the man in the mirror. There's an old, lazy arrogance in his eyes again. Been a while since I saw that look. I like it.

It'll be a good day. For me, anyone.

No guarantees for anybody else.
****
End.