Work Text:
Tim is aware that afterparties are part of the endless cycle of events and post-events and post-post-events and, of course, one can never forget the pre-events, that give fashion as an industry its reason to exist. Without afterparties, an entire category of expensive clothing changes would be eliminated from the celebrity budget, and then how would the designers keep themselves in diamonds and swizzle sticks?
He is aware, but he reserves the right to find his own compelled attendance at afterparties to be deathly dull. Stultifyingly boring. Unbearable.
This is what it has come to: swanning slowly about the room and coming up with adjectives for his own misery.
“Tim.” Heidi appears beside him, one hand holding her skirt down while the other handles her drink. She is a pro, this one. Makes it look easy. “You look so bored.”
“Hello, dear.” He sips his drink and makes a face. “I am bored, that’s true.”
“You know who else is bored?”
“Everyone?”
“No.” She takes him by the shoulders and turns him ninety degrees to the right. “That one.”
He obediently looks in the direction he’s pointed and sees Zac leaning up against a pillar, being talked at by one of the pretty young things from Vogue. “He looks busy to me.”
“Oh, he’s talking, he’s flirting, but he’s bored, Tim, so bored. Just like you.”
“Heidi, are you anywhere in the vicinity of arriving at a point?”
She sighs and gives him a push, sending him exactly one step in Zac’s direction. “Go be less bored together.”
“Oh dear.” He shakes his head and takes another drink, adjusting his glasses. “Heidi, I assume you’ve had too many martinis if you’re confusing me for your children again. Interfere in their lives, not mine. My life is off-limits.”
“Your life is boring.”
“Very rude, Miss Klum.”
“I’m not being rude, Tim. You have been being rude.”
He raises an eyebrow at her, feeling his face go into teaching mode as automatically as breathing at this point. “Continue.”
“That poor thing has been circling you for three years now, Tim! And all you do is ignore him. It’s so sad. It’s like kicking a puppy.”
“Mr. Posen is certainly not a puppy, Heidi.” Tim frowns. “In fact, if what the gossip columns say is true, he prefers to be holding the leash.”
“Well I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she says breezily. “All I know is that he gazes at you and he smiles at you and you ignore him and it’s sad! He wants to hold hands and make out a little and then take you back to his boudoir.”
She pronounces it with such excessively correct French that it makes him want to boop her on the nose. “Heidi, I’m not going to give up a lifetime of celibacy for Zac Posen.”
“Why not? He’s cute, he’s charming.”
“Because I have principles. And reasons.”
“Boring.”
He sighs and waves his hand at her. “Go away now. Ruin your ex-husband’s life, not mine. Shoo.”
She scrunches her nose. “Is it because of the turtlenecks?”
“What? No.” He takes another sip. “Though they definitely don’t help.”
“Don’t judge a man by his clothing, Tim!”
“That’s very odd, coming from you.”
“I see beyond appearances to the beauty within.”
“Mm-hmm. The excessively muscled, terrible conversationalist bodyguard within.”
She smacks him on the arm. “Too far. Go play with Zac.”
He finishes his drink and glares after her. He is most certainly not going to play with Zac.
But he might go over and talk to him. Because there’s nothing else to do, and that Vogue creature is getting the impression that he’s actually interesting.
**
Zac has opted to take the night off from turtlenecks, which is praiseworthy, although the yellow and green paisley ascot he’s wearing instead is not.
“Are you afraid of vampires, Mr. Posen?” Tim asks as he walks up. He shoots the Vogue child a half-smile and a tilt of the head. Tim once stopped Michael Kors at ten paces with that smile. The Vogue child promptly has somewhere else to be.
Zac blinks at his retreating back, then at Tim. “Vampires?”
Tim places his palm over his own voicebox. “You take such care to cover your throat.”
“Oh! Well.” Zac shrugs. “Everyone needs a personal affectation, don’t you think?” He takes a drink before he continues. “Also, please, not Mr. Posen. Don’t we know each other better than that by now?”
“A personal affectation, like you said.”
“But it holds people at arm’s length, instead of just being a quirk.” Zac smiles slightly. “And it makes me feel like a student again.”
“You were an excellent student.”
“Well, thank you, I know that.” Zac’s smile gets significantly broader. “And you were an excellent teacher, as anyone who ever went to Parsons would tell you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“We all would. Trust me. Crushing on Mr. Gunn was as close as we got to a team sport.”
“Goodness.” Tim forces a laugh. “That makes me feel old.”
“Why? It shouldn’t. It’s flattering, all of the young gays of Parsons fantasizing about you.”
“Oh my. Now we’re up to fantasizing.”
“Tim.” Zac looks over the rim of his glass at him, then lowers the glass. “You did know.”
Tim waves his hand, trying to dismiss the subject as easily as the Vogue staffer. “It’s not the sort of thing one dwells on.”
“It’s the sort of thing I would dwell on, if it was aimed at me. I did plenty of dwelling from the other side.”
Tim sincerely hopes that Heidi isn’t watching this and laughing at him. She probably is. She’s probably mouthing “boudoir” at the back of his head. “I’m not sure what to say.”
Zac laughs softly. “You can leave it at ‘Thank you, Mr. Posen,’ I guess. I’m making you uncomfortable.”
“Not intentionally, I know.”
“I guess part of me is still the kid who desperately wanted you to notice him.” Zac makes a face and laughs again. “I sound like one of the talking-head pieces on the show. Sorry.”
“I noticed you. I still notice you. You’re very… noticeable.” Tim clears his throat. “I’m very proud to have worked with you. And to be working with you now. You’re fantastic.”
Zac gives him a distinctly skeptical look, but tilts his head in acknowledgment and hands his empty glass off to a passing waitress. “The drinks at this thing are terrible.”
“They are.”
“Maybe we could go have a better drink somewhere else.”
Tim looks up. “Pardon?”
Wherever she is, Heidi is definitely laughing at him. Zac isn’t, though. “We’ll have a drink and talk about completely neutral topics. I promise.”
Tim isn’t sure he believes that at all, but it has to be better than an afterparty.
“Lead the way,” he says, and Zac grins.
Maybe Tim is just a little bit flattered, after all.
**
Zac’s idea of a place to have better drinks is his condo. Tim probably should have seen that coming.
“I have good liquor,” Zac says patiently. “I promise not to tie you to the couch and ravish you.”
“From what the gossip columns say, you’re more likely to give me a couple thousand dollars, put me over your lap, and spank me.”
Zac’s eyes widen and he laughs out loud. “I’m not sure what to react to first, that the waiter sold the story, that he overplayed how much I paid him, or that you read gossip columns.”
“You don’t know that it was him. According to the writeup, you did it in the middle of a crowded dining room. Plenty of eyes.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.” Zac moves over to the bar in the corner. “Name your poison.”
“Oh, surprise me.”
“If you say that, you’re encouraging me to show off.” Placing two glasses on the bar, Zac selects a bottle with a flourish. “Gin rickeys it is.”
Tim settles back on the couch, closing his eyes briefly. The world is very strange, and Heidi Klum is probably at fault. These are two things he can hold on to.
“Don’t you have dogs?” he asks without opening his eyes. “I know I’ve heard you talking quite animatedly about dogs.”
“I do.” Zac’s footsteps cross the floor and a cool glass is pressed into Tim’s hand. “They’re all bedded down for the night, though.”
“Several, right? Betty, Candy, Flopsy, Muffy, something like that?”
Zac laughed softly, closer than Tim expected. “Betty Blue, Candy Darling, and Tina Turner.”
“That’s nauseatingly cute.”
“So are they. I have pictures on my phone.”
“Oh yes, the ritual sharing of the pictures of the children.” Tim opens his eyes and takes a long drink. “Please do.”
The dogs are cute, as dogs go, and Zac’s affection for them is as charming as the way his ascot is coming loose around his throat. Tim does his best not to let his eyes linger, but from an aesthetic point of view--purely an appreciation of fashion and form--it’s very nice.
Zac finishes his drink and gets to his feet. “Another?”
“I’m only halfway through mine.” Tim holds his glass up as evidence. “I’m an old man, Zac, you won’t have to work very hard to drink me under the table.”
“That’s not my intention. I hoped we would talk, not pass out.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Zac refills his glass and comes back to the couch. “Life. Clothes. We’ve crossed dogs off the list. Not work.”
“I appreciate what you bring to the judging, you know. An actual focus on the construction and design, instead of just…” Tim waves his free hand. “The overall look.”
“The look is important. The impact.”
“Yes, but you remind them all about the practicalities, too. It’s good to see.”
Zac smiles faintly. “We’re talking about work.”
“We are.” Tim nods. “What else do people talk about? Politics? Religion? Sex?”
“I thought you wanted neutral topics.”
“Television. And the weather.”
“Tim.” Zac reaches out and cups his hand against Tim’s jaw, turning his face until they’re looking at each other. “Please tell me you don’t really want to talk about the weather.”
“I really don’t. But I don’t think you want to talk about television or sports, either.”
“No.” Zac runs his thumb slowly across Tim’s chin. “I really just want to…”
Tim knows better than to let Zac kiss him. He knows better in a great variety of ways. He’s made his decisions and he’s lived his life and this isn’t good for either of them, or what they want, or, God knows, for the work on the show…
But Zac kissing him feels lovely.
Zac pulls back slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s… it’s a bit… awkward.”
“Entirely on my side, I promise.” Zac sits up a bit straighter, trying to force a smile. “You’re always the consummate gentleman.”
Tim clears his throat. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to. I’m not… I’m not a schoolboy with a crush, Tim. I can absolutely control myself.”
“It’s not entirely your control I’m concerned about, Zac.” Zac’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes do, and Tim hates himself a little for what he just did and what he’s about to do. “I made certain decisions, and promises to myself, and… choices, about how I live my life, and I feel strongly about them.”
Zac’s quiet for a moment, and Tim isn’t sure which of their hearts he can hear pounding.
“Of course,” Zac says finally. “I respect that, so much. You’re a remarkable person, Tim.”
“There’s no need for flattery. Hush.”
“A remarkable person,” Zac repeats, a smile hinting at the edge of his mouth. “And a gentleman.”
Tim tuts softly and shakes his head. “If you insist.”
“I, however.” Zac pauses and puts his hand on Tim’s wrist. “I am not a gentleman. So what I’m going to do is, I’m going to go into the bedroom.” He nods down the adjacent hallway. “And I’m going to leave the door ajar. And you should feel absolutely free to do whatever your conscience and your choices dictate. Stay and listen. Stay and watch. Stay and make yourself another drink. Or go, if that’s what you need to do for yourself.”
Tim stares at Zac’s hand. “That is… extremely unfair.”
“Is it?” Zac gets to his feet and raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see how. It’s your choice.” He unknots his ascot and tugs it free, exposing his throat. “No pressure.”
“No vampires here either, I see.”
Zac grins. “Not at the moment.”
Tim sighs and turns his hands palm-up on his knees. “I never ended up in these situations with Kors, you know.”
Zac’s eyebrow goes even higher. “You should have. It probably would’ve been fun.”
Before Tim can quite formulate a reply to that, Zac turns and walks away, across the room and into the hallway. He’s hardly graceful; there’s challenge in his movements, not art, but when he slips the buttons of his shirt and shrugs it off his shoulders to the floor, the effect is the same as a more deft seduction. Tim casts his eyes to the ceiling. He’s arranged his life specifically to guard himself from this exact metallic taste of temptation. Zac is not playing fair.
Except that, as Zac pointed out, there’s no coercion here. Tim has absolute freedom to follow his own desires.
He stands up and goes to the bar, pouring himself more gin with an indiscriminate amount of tonic on top. He drinks, closes his eyes, and listens. From this distance he can’t hear anything at all.
A few steps down the hallway bring him the whisper of fabric on fabric and skin; a few more, the shifting sounds of a mattress and bedframe far too expensive to creak. The gin burns cold behind Tim’s eyes and he steps again, and again, until he’s in the doorway of Zac’s bedroom and looking inside.
Tim remembers being young and beautiful enough not to care about being either. Artless, graceless, careless, beautiful through lack of discipline. The most delicate form of beauty, the shortest lived, the one he guides his students and himself away from through focus on craft and skill and technique.
Yet here he stands now, glass in hand but hardly enough liquor in him to stand as an excuse, much less a cause. And he must admit he finds himself in thrall to plain aesthetics.
Zac's bed is draped in dark, rich scarlet, with gold accents; a cliche choice but one he's embraced with such enthusiasm that Tim can't help but accept it. The color is beautiful against Zac's skin (of course), and soft and pliant beneath every movement of his body (of course), and the placement of bed, bedding, body, doorway, viewer us too artful and precise not to be of deliberate design.
Mr. Posen, Tim thinks, is a very clever, very naughty boy. And saying either of those things will land him in even more trouble than he currently is: grappling with his principles and hopeless aesthetics.
He takes another drink and tilts his head, considering the fall of dark curls against sweaty forehead, the tone of flushed-red skin against the paleness of inner wrist and inner thigh.
Visuals are Tim's skill. He isn't qualified to consider the merit of Zac's rough hitches of breath or low, unconsidered moans. It's not his place to venture an opinion. His body, below and beyond discipline, wishes to anyway.
He could easily turn this into a lesson and provide a critique. That is his other skill, and he could take the flush of arousal and stupid already-fading beauty right out of Zac with sharp eyes and a few words. He won't, and he doesn't want to. But it's a comfort to know he could.
He drinks and watches and lets the alcohol move through him hot and slow, lets Zac take his time and perform like the silly and beautiful thing he is, lets his heart beat and his body feel how it will. He finishes his last swallow as Zac finishes his exertions and looks across the room, meeting Tim's eyes over the edge of his glass.
"You stayed," Zac says, his voice rough and surprised.
"I did." Tim places his glass carefully atop a side table that is undoubtedly antique and not meant for rings like the glass is going to leave. "And now I should go."
Zac wants to argue, it's clear from his face; he wants to push his win and see how far it goes. But Tim's face must also be clear; no farther than this. Zac drops his eyes and nods.
"Better than the party, anyway," he says. "Do I dare to hope?"
"Fishing for compliments is gauche," Tim tells him. "And pick up your clothes before they crease. Shame on you for treating good clothing that way."
Zac's laughter follows Tim back down the hallway, and through the walk home.