Perfect Imperfections

By the time they got back to their room after the show, Jeremy was so exhausted Reg had to hold him up in the shower and carry him to bed afterward. Well, maybe he didn’t have to do those things, but he wanted to. Reg loved the feeling of Jeremy in his arms, loved the way Jeremy leaned into him, trusted him, needed him. When they crawled under the comforter, Jeremy immediately scooted close, pressing his naked body against Reg and clinging tightly. Reg engulfed him in an embrace, kissed his head, and told him to rest. With a soft sigh, Jeremy did exactly that.

The first thing Reg noticed when he rose to consciousness the following morning was that Jeremy’s slender legs weren’t tangled with his. “JJ?” he said, his voice deep and rough with sleep. “JJ?” He patted the mattress with his eyes still closed but was forced to open them when he encountered nothing but a cool sheet.

Normally, Reg was up before Jeremy, and if they had something scheduled before eleven, he invariably had to wake Jeremy up. Usually, he succeeded with his passive-aggressive method—singing or whistling as he walked around the room wearing his heavy boots, opening and closing drawers and doors at random. But occasionally he’d have to haul the big guns out—jumping on the bed, tickling Jeremy, or, his favorite: straddling Jeremy’s torso with both his elbows and knees planted on the bed and his face inches from Jeremy’s. Staring at him from that position inevitably resulted in Jeremy waking with a shout.

Sitting up, he rubbed his palms over his eyes and then blinked rapidly to focus. Jeremy wasn’t in bed. Actually, he wasn’t in the room at all. A quick glance at the clock on the nightstand told Reg it was barely after nine. With a groan, he stretched his back and reached first one arm and then the other over his head.

“JJ?”

He slid out of bed and padded over to the bathroom. Also empty. Once there, he waited for his morning erection to fade, drained his bladder, and then splashed some water on his face and brushed his teeth.

“Where are you?” he muttered to himself as he walked back into the room. His phone was on the nightstand where it had been plugged in next to Jeremy’s phone, which was gone. But both their wallets were still there.

“Damn it, Bill, I mean it this time!” The familiar sound of Jeremy yelling drifted in from behind the curtains leading to the balcony.

So that was where his fiery superstar had gone. Reg wouldn’t have minded being woken up to support Jeremy while he talked to his manager; in fact, he would have preferred it to Jeremy being alone and having nobody to soothe his sure-to-be-ruffled feathers. But it was sweet that Jeremy had tried to let him sleep in. He’d have to thank him for that later. Maybe with a nice firm hand job. Because nothing says “I’m grateful” like a palm wrapped around your dick.

As he walked closer to the balcony, Reg could hear Jeremy more clearly. The fact that he was raising his voice helped too.

“How am I supposed to respond to them when they’re in my face with a camera?” he shouted. “Great. Great. Well, next time give me a script, yeah? Because I’m not that clever.”

Jeremy paused, and Reg could hear his footsteps. He pulled the curtain to the side and saw him pacing back and forth across the small stone-paved area. The space was gorgeous, with potted trees lining the entire perimeter. It was private enough that even a zoom lens wouldn’t be able to capture Jeremy and high enough that nobody would be able to hear him. If Jeremy was going to let off steam, Reg wanted to make sure it was in a place where it wouldn’t make headlines.

“Those are songs, Bill! Writing lyrics isn’t the same as knowing what to say when they’re taking pictures and yelling things at me. Hell, I’m still trying to come up with an appropriate response to the shithead who asked how I knew my father was really my father.”

The rudeness and lack of consideration from the paparazzi never ceased to amaze Reg. It was as if they’d decided as a group that celebrities weren’t human and therefore social norms and basic decency didn’t apply to how they should be treated.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. He fingered his shirt collar and then bit down on it. “Five years ago, maybe. Don’t you remember?”

He was holding the phone to his ear with one hand and dragging his shirt over his lips with the other. Then he threw his arm up in the air.

“Super. You can be pissed that I’ve been wasting my time trying to come up with a snappy response to a dumbass comment for five years, and I can be pissed that every single day I hear more dumbass comments because your dumbass staff can’t figure out what ‘undisclosed location’ means!”