Chapter 4

FOUR

It was a gut reaction,something visceral and ancient, but something Sawyer had never been very good at suppressing. Even though he held Casper’s hand as they dashed up the dark staircase and into the hushed and empty rooms of Wodehouse Abbey, his heart still pounded and his childhood instincts shouted at him to run and hide.

“We’re going to smash into the furniture if we’re not careful,” Casper said as they sped through the dining room. There was a hint of humor in his voice, but the last thing Sawyer felt as he dodged around a chair at the far end of the long dining room and into the dim hallway, lit by lights that had been switched on in other parts of the house, was funny.

“In here,” he whispered, pulling Casper into yet another of the house’s many parlors.

This one had faded, rose-colored wallpaper and a few small bookshelves, making Sawyer think it was probably a lady’s reading room in years gone by. There were a few chairs and a small sofa that probably passed as comfortable in Victorian times. The room also contained a table with an antique record player in one corner, and a radio that had probably blasted broadcasts of World War Two reports at some time in its past.

There was just enough space on the other side of the bulky radio for two grown men who should know better to squeeze together without being seen. Sawyer tugged Casper toward the spot and huddled down, bringing Casper with him.

“Are we hiding?” Casper asked, sensible enough to keep his voice quiet. “It’s really not necessary, you know. Harry can be a bit of a stuffy old bore, but he’ll understand why we were in the kitchen.”

Sawyer shook his head. He could swear that he heard crashing and smashing in the distance. The sound of his dad’s angry, drunken voice seemed to echo through his brain as well, which was a sure sign that he was making things up, and that he probably needed to go to therapy. Again.

“Just…wait for a second,” he said, clasping Casper’s hand tighter.

There were sounds from deeper in the house. Because it was the middle of the night and everyone, for the most part, was asleep, every tiny noise was magnified. Distinct clattering and other noises that could very well have been someone cleaning up the things they’d left out on the kitchen island floated up through the dusty stillness.

Sawyer closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to breathe. It was not his dad on a drunken rampage, looking to take his anger out on the son he was most disappointed in. Granted, his dad had never done more than jerk him around a little and berate him for being soft. His dad wasn’t an abuser on the level of some stories he’d heard about, not then, not now. But to a skinny kid with hardly any defenses, the mean words and slurred disappointment had been more than enough to scar him.

The fact that he’d reacted so strongly to something inconsequential now was more a sign of the Hollywood and social media stress he’d been under than anything else. Social media as an entity had a lot in common with his dad dead drunk.

“This reminds me a bit of when I used to hide in the houses my parents took me to, actually,” Casper said in a cheery voice.

The stark difference in Casper’s mood from his own was enough to shake Sawyer out of the blast of old trauma he’d stumbled into. It was enough to make him laugh and fall back on his old standby of pretending everything was a joke.

“It’s a right old walk down memory lane, isn’t it,” he said, forcing himself to laugh as well.

Casper turned his head and looked at him. He knew. The man wasn’t stupid. In fact, he was one of the most intelligent and cleverest people Sawyer had ever met. But even if he’d been as thick as a whale omelette, he probably still would have seen right through Sawyer’s attempts to pretend he hadn’t just freaked out on an epic scale.

“Is something?—”

Casper’s question was cut off as footsteps sounded in the hall not that far from them.

The two of them tensed and huddled together, like they really were two naughty hall boys shirking their downstairs duties and hiding from the butler. The footsteps got closer, and moments later, Harry Wodehouse marched past the parlor’s doorway, muttering “…actors and gypsies and all sorts of undesirables invading my house like brigands.”

Casper made a snorting sound and clapped his free hand to his mouth. Even in the near complete darkness, Sawyer could see the man’s eyes sparkling with mirth.

That definitely did things to him—things that turned his insides to mush and made him want to keep holding Casper’s hand until everything was better. It even made him want to laugh right along with Casper, mostly at his own ridiculousness.

They sat there for a few seconds longer, listening as Harry moved on and headed up a staircase somewhere else in the house. Then they waited a bit longer until the house was completely silent again.

“I think the coast is clear,” Casper whispered, turning to grin at Sawyer again.

The implication was that they could get up and go about their business, probably heading up to their rooms and calling it a night.

Sawyer did not want to call it a night, even though he had an early call the next morning.

“We’d better wait a bit longer to be sure,” he whispered, squeezing Casper’s hand.

Casper tightened his grip as well, and it was like the ghost of the turkey he’d just eaten in sandwich form flapped around in his gut. He couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re right, of course,” Casper said with exaggerated seriousness. “It is absolutely essential that two grown men in their thirties huddle in a dark corner of the duchess’s reading room at one in the morning.”

That was enough to make Sawyer blurt out a laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s ridiculous, I know,” he said. “But—” He thought about coming clean and sharing some of the trauma of his family and the fears of the here and now, but he didn’t really know Casper well enough to saddle him with that mess so soon. “It’s just that we’re all here by the grace of His Grace, the Duke of Malton, and we’d better not cock up and shit on his hospitality.”

It was a lame excuse, but Casper hummed gravely and nodded. “No, we couldn’t do that. Not when the entire Wodehouse family has been so kind as to let us bastardize their sacred family history.”

Sawyer found the tiniest of openings to change the subject and pounced on it. “Are we bastardizing the true history?” he asked, shifting to face Casper more fully. The result was that their knees knocked together, and since both of them were wearing just pajamas, it felt more intimate than it should.

“Well, not really,” Casper said, making a face, then looking up at the spots of moonlight coming through the window and projecting the patterns of the lace curtains against the far wall. “It’s impossible to tell anyone’s story completely accurately,” he went on. “The day to day lives of even the most interesting humans are extraordinarily dull. I’m sure you know as well as anyone that watching people eat their breakfast, go about their work, and have an ordinary day does not make for the best entertainment.”

“No,” Sawyer agreed with a nod of his head. But it sure made for a relaxing break from the constant rat-race of a career in the public eye. Or a childhood that had left scars.

“The showrunners and writers haven’t falsified anything in the account of that summer house party,” Casper went on. “From all accounts, it really was something of a gay bacchanal. Those officers had a lot of steam to blow off after the Napoleonic Wars ended, and the government really did leave a lot of them high and dry when it decommissioned almost the entire navy, once the conflict ended.”

“And what about Percy?” Sawyer asked, surprised at just how interested he was in learning more about the character he was playing from someone who probably knew as much about the man as anyone.

Casper grinned right away, showing that he knew a lot. “Percy Montague was a character,” he said. “He was exactly the sort of person who showed up to house parties uninvited, and then stayed long past the date he was supposed to leave. There are several accounts in correspondences from the time about people being warned to lock up their wine and their footmen when Percy came to visit.”

Sawyer laughed, liking the man even more than he already did. “All of my research shows that he was a flamboyant, unapologetic degenerate.”

“Oh, he was,” Casper said. “At least until Clarence Bond came into his life. Once those two met, much more of the truth about Percy’s situation came to light.”

“And that situation was?” Sawyer asked, leaning slightly toward Casper. He really wanted to know. He wanted to talk to Casper, to listen to Casper tell his stories of men like them who had lived and loved—and probably had to hide those lives and those loves—centuries ago all night.

“Percy was broke,” Casper said. “His father had completely ruined the family fortune with one mad scheme after another.”

The happy fluttering in Sawyer’s stomach turned to something heavier and anxious. So Percy had problems with his father, too, did he?

“It turned out that the reason Percy was always showing up at other people’s houses to stay there, eat their food, and drink their wine, was because he had nothing of his own but a gutted house and constables chasing him to throw him into debtor’s prison.”

Sawyer gasped and sat straighter. “Really? Why didn’t anyone tell me this when I was preparing to play the part?”

“They didn’t?” Casper said, straightening as well. The gesture put more space between them than Sawyer wanted. “I thought you actor sorts were supposed to get an entire dossier about the characters you were playing when they were real people.”

“I was given a collection of Percy’s letters and diaries,” Sawyer admitted, feeling a little hot with shame. Or maybe that was the continued proximity to a man who he was fancying more with every second that passed. “I read as many of them as I could, but I’ve got this premiere in a few weeks, and everything has been about doing press for Start at the Beginning lately.”

“I can imagine,” Casper said.

Before he could stop himself, Sawyer huffed a humorless laugh and mumbled, “I’m not sure you could.”

As soon as he heard himself and caught how sullen he sounded, he winced.

“Sorry, that sounded awful,” he apologized.

“It’s fine,” Casper said, letting go of Sawyer’s hand to rub his arm.

It came as a shock to Sawyer that they’d still been holding hands. He didn’t think he’d ever sat in the dark in a duchess’s reading room in the middle of the night, holding hands with a man while talking about the troubles of people who had been long dead, and felt so comfortable and at home doing it.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to be a big deal celebrity,” Casper went on with a light laugh.

“I’m not a big deal celebrity,” Sawyer laughed breathlessly, lowering his head. He swallowed, then glanced up at Casper again. “Actually, I think I might be. Or, at least, I’m about to be.”

“That’s what I’m hearing,” Casper said. He peeked down at Sawyer’s hand, then surprised Sawyer by taking it in his again.

Sawyer nearly gusted out a breath of relief at the gesture. It was astounding how comforting it was to have someone simply take his hand.

No, it wasn’t simply taking his hand. It was holding onto him in a moment when he was vulnerable but didn’t want to be. It was an implicit understanding of everything that he was going through, even though Casper couldn’t possibly know the depth of it all.

Well, there was a way to fix that.

“Everyone has this idea that being a big star is all fun and games,” he said, staring right into Casper’s eyes, which was easier in the dark. “And I’m not complaining. I’m really not complaining, I swear.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Casper said in a soft voice.

Sawyer smiled for a moment before going on. “I fully accept that celebrity is the price we actors pay for positioning ourselves to get the plum roles. My agent has told me time and time again that the more visible I am, the more marketable I’ll be. That’s why he signed me on with a top-notch publicist. If I’m marketable, then directors will want to work with me, I’ll get the good parts, I’ll put more zeroes on my paycheck, and I can stay in the game long enough to make the sort of money that will mean I never have to work again, unless I want to.”

“And that’s what you want?” Casper asked.

“Well, I’d like to be able to live without any financial fears, yes,” Sawyer said. “It’s true that A-listers make millions, but the vast, vast majority of performers barely make enough to survive. It would be nice to be one of the few who can keep their head above water and breathe.”

“That sounds similar to the publishing world,” Casper said with a lopsided smile. “Just because someone publishes one or two dazzling bestsellers doesn’t mean they’re actually able to make a living off their writing. It takes something extraordinary for that to happen.”

“Right,” Sawyer said. His heart beat faster as he built up to the confession he needed to make. “The thing is, with this impending superstardom comes way more exposure than I ever thought I’d have to worry about.”

“And you don’t want that exposure?” Casper asked, looking surprised.

Sawyer swallowed. Here it was. The moment he’d known would come with someone at some point. He was glad it was Casper who he was telling and not some interviewer who had caught him off-guard during a press junket.

“I don’t want a certain type of exposure,” he said, lowering his eyes. It was easier to talk when he didn’t have to look directly at Casper. “The thing is, I’m…I’m not out publicly. I mean, everyone basically knows I’m gay,” he glanced up to meet Casper’s eyes again, “but I’ve deliberately not talked about my sexuality. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want it to be a thing. Because it’s not really a thing, not at all. Not to me, at least.”

“I can see that,” Casper said, nodding, though Sawyer didn’t think he’d actually gotten the point. “Everyone wants to sexualize celebrities to the extreme these days.”

“Yes,” Sawyer said, beyond relieved that Casper was sympathetic. “I hate to sound cliché saying it, but I just want it to be about the work. I don’t want people prying into my personal life and drawing their own conclusions based on what they see on a screen somewhere.”

And God only knew what sort of madness and aberration they’d uncover if they went digging with him.

“Can’t you just not talk about it?” Casper asked with a slight frown.

“I’ve tried, and so far no one has cared,” Sawyer said. “But now rumors are swirling on social media that I’m gay.”

“But you are gay, aren’t you?” Casper asked.

“Yes, of course,” Sawyer said, shaking his head a little. “But that’s nobody’s business.”

“I’d like it to be my business,” Casper said.

Something that felt like a blossom of spikey sunlight exploded through Sawyer’s body with its epicenter at his heart. As warm as it made him, though, it also put him on edge.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Casper said, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “I shouldn’t presume anything of any sort.”

“No, it’s alright,” Sawyer mumbled, suddenly feeling like he was standing on shaky ground. There were still so many more things about himself that were essential he explained to Casper if they were going to continue as friends, but he didn’t know where to start.

“I’m not sure it is alright,” Casper said, inching closer to Sawyer. “I’d like it to be, though. I really like you, Sawyer.”

“I really like you, too,” Sawyer said, having a hard time catching his breath. “Despite what it might look like, I don’t make friends easily.”

“I don’t either,” Casper said. He raised a hand and rested it on the side of Sawyer’s face.

The touch had Sawyer’s brain short-circuiting. He liked it, but he didn’t like the expectations that came with it. He wanted to be close, physically, with Casper, but he had limits. Limits that most people didn’t understand. Was Casper someone he could press his limits with, or was he someone who would respect those limits.

God, he hoped Casper would understand and wouldn’t hate him for?—

Right in the middle of that thought, Casper leaned into him, forcing the very moment he was dreading. Casper came at him lips first, and Sawyer panicked.

“No, I can’t,” he gasped, pulling away so hard that he knocked the radio behind him, sending it sideways for a heart-stopping moment. Fortunately, it didn’t crash over, but Sawyer felt a little like he did.

He launched to his feet and stumbled away from Casper.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Casper said, struggling to his feet as well. “I didn’t mean?—”

“No, I’m sorry,” Sawyer said, writhing on his spot. What was wrong with him? It was just a kiss.

But in general, kisses implied consent. They led to more. More was expected. In his line of work, more was demanded. Too much more.

Sawyer definitely didn’t want more.

“I…I should go,” he said, twisting this way and that, as if looking for a way out, which was ridiculous when there was a large, open doorway right behind him. “I’m sorry if I….” He had no idea how to finish the sentence.

“No, it was my fault,” Casper said. In the dim light Sawyer couldn’t tell for sure, but he was reasonably certain Casper was blushing up a storm. “It’s wrong to try to kiss someone without asking first. I’m deeply sorry.”

“It isn’t that I don’t want—” Sawyer stopped himself, surprised that those words would blunder their way out of his mouth. Because he did want, he had wanted to kiss Casper. That in itself was astonishing.

It was too much for him to think about with everything else going on.

“Good night, Casper,” he said hoarsely, pushing a hand through his hair. “Thanks for telling me about Percy.”

That felt like the lamest possible way to escape the situation he’d landed himself in, but it was all he had. With a sharp grimace that contorted his face into something beyond embarrassment but not quite at the level of tears, he turned and fled the room and the one man he’d felt for a second he could connect with.