Chapter Text
“He sucks. He sucks so bad, Nancy.” Jonathan huffs out into the cell phone pressed up against his left ear.
He was standing out on the balcony of some large mansion-like estate he hadn’t bothered to check the name on. It was warm and dry, lacking the sticky humidity of the midwestern heat he was used to in the summertime. The rainbow lights of the Los Angeles cityscape created a dappled bokeh effect against all parts of the horizon, circling around the purple-blue night sky–big, sprawling, and surrounding. Even still, there was an almost suburban feel to it all due to the size and distance between the residences; private, but still very much present on the edge of the epicenter of everything. Jonathan might have thought it pretty in another context, but all it did at the moment was feel suffocating. All it did was remind him that there’s too much residual light pollution to see the stars.
“What? Jonathan, you haven’t even been out there a week.” Nancy’s voice responds, disbelieving and amused.
“It’s been 8 days, actually.” Jonathan says, flatly, already knowing she knew that.
“Well.” –Ah. There it is. The tone. The very special sort of nuanced suck it up buttercup he’d heard Nancy adopt time and time again when she was ready to put her foot down and move on from whatever the current conversion was. – “That means there’s only three weeks left.”
He was complaining. He knew he was complaining. Jonathan didn’t usually muster up the energy to complain, especially to Nancy. Complaining never felt like it accomplished anything productive and he often adopted a head-down-power-through work ethic when things weren’t going smoothly in lieu. However, when Nancy called him up to ask how everything was going in a voice that felt just a little too cheerful in contrast to the headache that had been plaguing him for the last 2 hours, Jonathan was overcome with the overwhelming need to complain. Just a little. For once.
“Only,” Jonathan repeats back at her and feels his fingers twitch involuntarily. He regretted promising Will he was going to finally quit smoking because a cigarette would be a great way to make the sourness of his mood more palatable. He felt acutely aware of the tension in his shoulders and how he was clenching his jaw. “I should have never let you talk me into this in the first place. You know I hate working with other people when you’re not there.”
“Then you have got to stop being so good at photographing them.”
In truth, if Jonathan had a choice, he would only shoot nature. Animals. Plants. Weather. National Geographic-type shit. The product photography Nancy often required for advertisements and various other marketing media did not fall under his preferred modus operandi.
But.
But.
Gig economy was gig economy and a paycheck was a paycheck and Jonathan always had a tragically hard time saying no to Nancy. Nancy was painfully particular in a way Jonathan never seemed to have a huge problem managing, something many others couldn’t claim, even with their best efforts. It probably had something to do with the fact he already had a general idea of what she did and didn’t want from extensive experience no one else could come close to. Old-friend status, tried and true, from the before times of their now-gone youth.
Once or twice, he’d even been jokingly referred to as her work husband, a classification she always corrected hastily: If Jonathan was anything, he was her work wife, thank you very much. One, who, even after many attempts, still turned down every offer for a permanent full-time position out in Boston with her.
Instead, they had a system: She’d call him up every two to three months when she had a difficult project and the budget available to justify his rates and he’d spend some defined period of time fulfilling her requests until they were complete so he could then spend the following two to three months doing whatever the hell he wanted to back in middle America (‘bumfuck middle of nowhere’, as she lovingly called it) until she flew him out to the east coast again.
So when she came to him with a laundry list of gigs out in LA– not Boston –and the name of a single model who she said was going to fulfill all of them in some wild and crazy haphazard schedule that made an absolute mess of his Google Calendar as soon as Nancy shared it, Jonathan thought she playing some sort of elaborate prank on him until he found himself seated on a plane out of Chicago headed to LAX with a return ticket that wouldn’t be good until a month later.
She put them up in an Air B&B— both of them, for some reason. The model’s name was Steve, and, from the moment of first contact, Jonathan was left with the distinct impression that he was a bit of an ass. An impression the other had done very little subvert in the last week and a day.
Nancy sighed. “What’s the worst thing Steve’s done? Honestly?”
“He’s probably the most unprofessional person I’ve ever shot. I don’t think he understands the concept of holding still for more than two seconds. He seems allergic to doing any actual work beyond showing up on time and sometimes getting him to even do that is a struggle.” Jonathan exhales then adds, “And he’s been using my toothpaste every single day.”
Nancy makes a sound on the other end of the line that’s a not-so-subtle half-stifled laugh. Of course, she finds this hilarious.
“And tonight, Nancy, tonight , he dragged me to some house party. And by dragged, I do mean literally.”
“How fun!” She finally says. “Whose is it? Anyone I’ve heard of?”
“Nancy, we have to get up at 7 a.m. tomorrow. Which means I have to get up at 6 am to make sure he actually gets up at 7.”
“When was the last time you even went to a party? One that wasn’t your brother’s birthday?” She asks, then adds, “He told me he knows a ton of people out there. That’s great for networking, you know. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a little sleep for that kind of thing.”
“I don’t want to network, I know you .” Jonathan sighs. “That’s enough.”
“Flattering.” Nancy responds and he can hear the eye roll. “I’m sure he’s just trying to be friendly.”
“And I don’t really want him to be friendly, I want him to be professional. I don’t like being friends with someone I’m supposed to be working with. It makes things too messy.”
“Now I know that’s not true, Jonathan.”
“You’re the exception.”
“Then you’ll have to make another.”
“Nancy.”
“At the very least he’s nice to look at?”
“I guess,” Jonathan concedes, reluctantly, because he could actually give her that one. “But I expected he’d be at least baseline good to look at to get hired at all. You have standards.”
“Oh yeah? And how would you rate him then? To your standards?”
“Baseline good to look at.” Jonathan repeats, flatly. “Still sucks otherwise.”
The thing is, that was sort of a lie. Steve was attractive in that sort of easy, natural way that’s entirely unteachable–a real diamond in the rough type of guy. Jonathan absolutely understood why Nancy snatched him up even as raw and unpolished and unprofessional as he is. He just looks great in anything, doing anything, in any goddamn setting. The end result always ends up better than Jonathan expects, even if the process to get there is an absolute slog and a half.
Steve also happened to sort of be Jonathan’s type–well, er–aesthetically, anyway. Tall, nice hair, big hands, a thousand watt-smile that does funny things to Jonathan’s gut when it’s shot in his direction… just… he… he was really fucking nice to look at, okay? And all that would be fine, dismissible even, if they didn’t have to cohabitate in a place that was so small and Jonathan wasn’t literally being paid to look at him so much.
“Well.” –there’s that same tone from before. Nancy’s clearly done talking about this too–“Just, focus on that then. Or try to god, what was that thing you used to quote from Nietzsche? Something, something resilience ?”
The voice Nancy slips into is lowered, mockingly, in a drall like she’s both distinctly trying and not trying to mimic the cadence of Jonathan’s own. It’s something he probably should take offense at, but despite that, he huffs out a laugh and, despite himself, he smiles.
“You know, I absolutely hate that you knew me in college, I was so pretentious. Gave you way too much ammo that I never knew would keep coming back to haunt me years later. ”
“Oh, Jonathan,” She tuts and he can hear the smile in her voice, too, “You’re still pretentious. It’s consistently one of my favorite things about you, actually. It's so easy to take you down a peg.”
Jonathan gives an exaggerated scoff and Nancy laughs again and in a way he didn’t exactly expect, he does feel a little better.
Before the conversation can go anywhere else his attention is pulled down below the balcony. There’s a loud splash and uproarious laughter as someone gets thrown into the Olympic-sized pool in the middle of the backyard. Jonathan squints and notices the person who had been tossed in is Steve. He frowns and turns around, leaning his back against the railing, away from the revelry.
“What was the reason you couldn’t come, again?”
Jonathan thinks, not for the first time, if Nancy were here things would be better. Jonathan thinks if Nancy were here Steve might actually choose to listen to words the first time they’re said instead of the ninth or tenth. Jonathan thinks if Nancy were here she could get dragged along to things like this and Jonathan could instead curl up in bed at 11 p.m. and watch whatever random video documentaries on YouTube he could find until he fell asleep.
“I’m busy Jonathan. Deadlines!”
Jonathan had never known Nancy to miss a deadline once in her entire life. Truthfully, she often worked up to 6 months in advance and he figured that was part of the reason she scheduled out this rigorous month-long stint in the first place. It was a flimsy excuse. He didn’t think she actually expected him to believe it, but it was the only one she gave.
“I believe in you to find some sort of common ground with Steve. Connect or bond or something. I don’t know. Just–” She paused. “Just figure out a way not to kill each other in the remaining three weeks. For me? I happen to like both of you. Okay?”
Jonathan looks out into the night, eyes tracing along the lights of the city, wishing he could find the edge where they’d petered off into nothing, but there’s too many, too much. Then there’s another shout from the backyard below, a loud crash, and another series of splashing sounds before an eruption of cheers and whooping sounds fills the air. He doesn’t even look down this time, instead tilting his head upwards, trying to ignore the headache that’s absolutely coming back with a force.
Still, there are no stars.
“Maybe if I don’t wander off into the desert never to be seen again, first.”
๏๏๏
“Turn a little to your right and lift your chin up.”
“Pretty sure my left is my good side.”
They started shooting about twenty minutes ago. It was twenty minutes during which Jonathan concluded Steve might have decided to go above and beyond and reach new and exciting levels of uncooperative. Every pose is second-guessed, every adjustment a bargain.
He frowns. Or, it’s more accurate to say, he frowns deeper.
“Yeah, maybe if you’re blind.”
Jonathan’s usually not one for arguing back, really subscribes to the head-down power-through mentality when things don’t quite go according to plan, but something about Steve that gets him to bite back.
It’s itchy. It’s persistent. It’s so annoying.
He holds the camera up to his eye and twists the lens, pulling in the light needed as he adjusts focus. At the same time, Steve adjusts himself too, but overly so, and the end result is that his body finally looks right but his head is angled wrong and the way it’s shifted is messing up his hair. Jonathan grumbles, makes an annoyed sound as he lowers the camera back down, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I'm tempted to come over there and pose you myself."
Steve makes his own equally annoyed sound, before he blows air at one of the few pieces of his hair that’s fallen into his face.
“Do it then. If it will get your panties out of whatever twisted them up.”
Jonathan retains the frown as he stomps over to the set, letting the camera fall and catch on the strap around his neck as he reaches up and starts to fuss with Steve’s hair.
“When you lean left, this piece of hair obstructs your eye. If you turn your head like–”
He moves one hand up to grip Steve’s jaw, thumb settling into the dip behind his ear, forcibly tilting his head to the position he wants.
“This–”
Jonathan’s other hand reaches out and pulls at a few strands of hair, adjusting them back so they flow with the swoopy style that seems to come naturally when hair and makeup get a hold of Steve.
“It opens your face up and draws attention to the brightness of your eyes. Tilt too far to the left and there's a harsh shadow, especially with the lighting here.”
“You think my eyes are bright?”
Jonathan looks at him like the answer should have already been obvious.
“Yeah?”
Steve makes a contemplative hum as Jonathan tucks a few more pieces of hair behind Steve’s ear. He steps back.
Steve looks good. Like really good. And it's not just the designer clothing, the fashion, the poignant design.
“Perfect.” He says then makes the mistake of looking down into his eyes and is suddenly acutely aware that Steve is staring holes in him.
As soon as Jonathan steps away, Steve twitches and then reaches up and scratches behind his ear. Jonathan feels his eye twitch, everything that had been perfect, once again undone. This is why he hates photographing people. Mountains didn’t fucking move.
“Can you please be professional?”
“What makes you think I’m a professional?”
"Never said you were. Was just hoping you could find it in yourself to be for once.”
“Okay fine. I'll be still as stone. Honest to God– if you agree to come out again later? Tonight?”
Jonathan gives him a weird look.
“Your attempted bargaining chip is agreeing to do your fucking job?”
Steve looks taken aback, like he really hadn't considered that being the angle before, but then the moment passes and he smiles too wide in a way that really grates on Jonathan’s nerves.
“Yeah.”