Shoot by Lau

“Morning, Jason.”

“Good morning, sir.” The guard didn’t even look up anymore. Darren padded his way past the blazing SONY sign prominent in the main lobby of the Australian branch building, and pressed the up-arrow on the controls between the banks of elevators.

The doors swished open with a peaceful “ping”, and Darren leaned against the polished, brassy-colored walls, bopping his head to the muzak. Today was a photo shoot just like any other photo shoot. And, tired of dicking around, Darren had finally realized that this meant he could wake up ugly, hung over, and unbathed, and the photographers would still mold him in their image.

It was freeing. He was wearing a baseball cap. Any hats would have spontaneously combust upon contact with the threshold of the old Darren’s apartment, but the new Darren was beginning to love casual.

And soon the elevator doors would open, and he would enjoy the frantic bustle around him as he stayed calm and aloof. This was a new diva, he discovered – one that was higher than the rest, one that kept his head instead of throwing a tantrum about everything. He had set Leonie off with lack of reaction more often than the other way around, and it was ever so pleasant to watch her turn shades of red while he had his nails filed.

It wasn’t so much that he enjoyed people running about like headless chickens for his sake. He just enjoyed the fact that he wasn’t a part of that anymore.

The doors slid open on the eighteenth floor, and, indeed, there was a bit of commotion erupting already, slightly to the left of what had already been built up as the set for the photo shoot. Darren smiled to himself and strode from the elevator door, tennis shoes squeaking softly on polished marble floors. If he walked too quickly, he’d fall on his face and lose a good amount of money because of it. So he took it slow.

What was unusual today, however, was that the panic was not flowing in a sudden tsunami toward the elevators, and him. People were running away from him, something that hadn’t happened in so long he had to stop and wonder if maybe he’d insulted someone very badly at the party he attended last night. But then he realized they weren’t simply fleeing… they were running toward something. There was a focal point in the melee.

He turned, calmly, to one of the interns who was straggling behind and asked him, “What’s going on?”

The intern was boggled. “You mean, you don’t know yet?”

“He doesn’t know yet?” Someone else this time. “How can he not know?”

“I don’t know,” said the first intern, turning away from Darren. “You heard, right? I mean, obviously you’ve heard. When did you know?”

“Oh, yesterday afternoon.”

“Shut up. You did not…”

Darren let their argument drift over his shoulder as he stepped up to the end of the back, trying to press through with this shoulders. After a moment he gave up and waited for Leonie, or someone else, to spot him so he could get this over with and go back home to bed, and wait for his headache to kick in.

It didn’t take long.

“Darren!”

Good old Leonie. Panicked already.

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the center of the crowd. “Thank God you’re here. Now someone can explain it.”

Everyone looked at him expectantly.

“Explain what?” Darren asked meekly.

Leonie’s face washed out, and everyone started murmuring what the two interns by the elevators obviously already knew: Darren didn’t know. How could he not know?

“This,” Leonie said, and thrust the newspaper into his hands.

Darren had only had time to recognize the fact that, yes, there was a crossword puzzle on the page before someone tore it out of his hand and demanded his presence across the room. The photographer was being paid by the hour, after all, and Darren wasn’t the money maker he used to be.

He spent one agonizing hour in hair and makeup, having the same woman tell him seven different ways that his hair was damaged enough to qualify for government support from ten-plus years of dying, and that if he didn’t quit those late night parties, the bags under his eyes were going to turn into suitcases and dammit didn’t anyone have any respect for her position here?

Darren nodded without moving his head and looked sympathetic as much as he could with cucumbers over his eyes.

After being introduced to the photographer for what he thought was probably a second or third time (but not wanting to point this out because either way it would mean that Darren hadn’t remembered him from previous introductions) and still not remembering his name, except that it was French, Darren was plopped gracelessly down on a giant red cube and made to wait.

Under glaring lights.

Wearing foundation.

For a very.

Very.

Long.

Time.

“His makeup is melting,” the woman insisted, flapping her hands and applying something she called “translucent fixing powder” which had less to do with fixing something broken and more to do with afixing, in the kind of subtle way that superglue has.

“Now, we wait,” the photographer said.

“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Darren grumbled to himself. The crowd’s temper seemed to have died down, and he wondered vaguely if he could get his hands on that crossword puzzle to occupy his time while they waited for a mysterious apocalypse or planetary alignment or whatever the hell was keeping this show from getting on the road.

“He’s stuck in traffic!” came a shout from across the room, from another intern with a poorly cut suit and a large cell phone up to his ear.

“How much longer?” He and the photographer shouted simultaneously.

“Twenty minutes,” the intern said, and then listened for a moment before adding, “hopefully.”

Darren groaned and the photographer fussed with his filters.

At some point in the next ten to fifteen minutes, the photographer decided that “that shade of black is just all fucking wrong on you” and Darren was recalled into wardrobe, which meant that the hair stylist had to redo his hair. Only she was nowhere to be found, so Darren did it up himself as best as he could and hoped that she wouldn’t notice.

Now wearing all charcoal grey and padding in bear feet, Darren made his way back out to the set and settled again on the mysterious giant red cube. With all the shuffling back and forth Darren had noticed that half of the crew had disappeared somewhere, and when Leonie brought him a bottle of water (with a straw so as not to smudge the makeup) he asked her what on earth was going on.

She just looked at him like he had two heads, but that was nothing new, so Darren stared back at her expectantly. She crouched down next to him. “Darren, don’t you even remember signing for this shoot?”

Darren’s gaze shifted to a glare, and he said, “When do I ever sign for these things? SONY tells me when they want them done, and that’s that.”

Leonie sighed and took the bottle of water back from him, and settled it behind the red cube out of range of wandering feet. “You should never have given him authorization to be able to sign your name…”

“Give who?” Darren asked, irritated. “Besides, I gave you that, too. And you’re the one who usually puts these things together. You knew about it before hand…you even called last night to make sure I wouldn’t be late.”

Before she could reply, her cell phone rang and she gave him one last pitying glance before standing up and getting out of range of everyone else’s earshot. Darren felt a cold sweat running down his spine. What was going on? Where had everyone gone? And what on earth was he supposed to know that he didn’t?

The fallen newspaper was still sitting on a low table near the set.

Darren eyed it suspiciously before leaning far enough to nearly tip over to grab it, and the pages rustled angrily as he brought them back down to his lap. Newsprint be damned, they could do his foundation over again for all he cared. He flipped the paper over to the back cover of the entertainment section just as the double doors from the hair styling area flew open, and people bustled out once more.

There was a very large color photo. That was the first thing Darren noticed. Slightly dated, from the look on his face, and the headline…

The people bustled closer, but his head was dipped toward the page.

“Split personalities...”

“Darren, we’re ready to begin. Could you please put the newspaper down? And can we please get some of these people out of here?” The photographer was stalking across the set, and Darren’s bare toes curled into the shaggy red carpet underneath his feet.

“...it was all taken out of context, and suddenly we were broken up...”

Darren looked up, shakily, at Leonie, who was watching him closely. She took the newspaper from him and smoothed its pages, and set it on the table close to his hat.

“Okay?” She asked.

“Not really,” Darren replied, his mouth dry and his hands cold all at once. No, he probably shouldn’t have given him permission to sign his name to things…

“Daniel, get your ass on the set,” the photographer commanded, and the blonde jumped and hopped to, jogging a few steps onto the plush carpet and throwing himself into a sprawl at the feet of the cube. He was dressed in a pinstripe suit and vest and Darren had to stifle the urge to simply lean down and strip it all off, and let him sprawl that way naked, the way he should be.

No shoes.

He grinned up at Darren, tipping his chin back, and their eyes caught.

“Sorry I’m late,” Daniel whispered. The camera click-click-clicked. “Traffic’s hell.”

“Um,” Darren said.

“Hope you don’t mind. About the band. I mean, you didn’t really need a solo career or anything.”

“Um,” Darren said.

“Right?” Daniel said.

“Gentlemen, please!” The photographer said.

After a few hours of clothing changes and restylings of his hair, Darren was moving in automatic and the photographer ran out of film. As he was running to place an order for several more roles (and cameras) to be brought up to the studio, Leonie ordered a break for food and a bit of breathing room. By this time Daniel was chatting with the original intern and most of the rest of the crew had gone downstairs to beat the camping reporters about the head and face with their own limbs.

Wardrobe was getting interesting, Darren decided as he flicked through the hangars and pulled out a coat made entirely of blue feathers. Not to mention the fact that, hey, apparently he was in Savage Garden right now.

“Add some green puffy paint and you’ve got an authentic JC Chasez coat right there,” Daniel said from behind him. Darren hung up the coat very slowly, took an even slower breath, and turned.

He was lounging in the doorway, wearing only the trousers to the pinstripe suit, and had his hands in his pockets.

“Meep,” Darren replied and his hands fought for purchase on a wall at his side.

Daniel took one step closer and pulled the wardrobe door shut behind him.

And before the latch had clicked completely, Darren was on him, smooth hands running over smoother skin and up into feathered and always multi-colored hair. And then there were slick mouths, and Darren noticed that Daniel’s arms were like some kind of sex god's and he’d probably been working out.

“Surfing,” Daniel spared his lips for a moment to get out, and that was when Darren noticed that he’d been speaking out loud and decided to forgo the internal monologue for some well earned face-sucking.

At least, until Leonie ended up pounding ferociously on the door approximately twenty seconds later, demanding that they get the hell out of there and stop goofing around.

Darren wrested his own hands from Daniel’s hair and smiled quietly. “You’re going to need to see the hair stylist again.”

Daniel wiped his thumb across the corner of Darren’s mouth, smudging away some lipstick. “Funny how you can’t seem to stop touching me.”

“Ha,” Darren agreed. “It’s simply awful.”

“So you’re not mad about this?” Daniel’s faced showed that he frankly didn’t care what Darren’s feelings were about the current situation, but that he felt he should ask out of obligation.

“Not right now,” Darren admitted. “But I’ll make it up to you tonight.”

“Going to take me home and fuck me until I can’t move?” Daniel opened the door and they stepped back into the room, where the bustle had resumed.

“That’s the plan,” Darren said, and slipped one warm hand around the bare waist of his old-and-new band mate. “I hope you don’t have plans for the next week.”

Daniel smiled down on him. “I think I can clear my schedule.”