At the End of Day

[hiddlesgasm]

They all file out of the studio amidst copious laughter, shoulders bumping into shoulders and the good-natured jokes and gentle ribbing that comes from a group of people that have spent so much together between filming and interviews and various appearances, conventions, and so on. It's their last interview for a few months, and Tom tries not to admit how sad he is about it as he steals a look at Robert through his lashes as he laughs lightly at something that Mark says. He knows that he should just ask, but it's the hard thing about being gay. That if you ask, and someone says no, it always makes things a little weird. And he's... he's just not willing to take that risk.

But, at the same time, things are so easy, so comfortable between them. The way that he'll touch him, comes up and hugs him, the hand at the small of his back those few times when they've done interviews as just the two of them. That warmth, the comfort of his presence. He's almost sure. Almost. But there's that niggling doubt, of being the only openly gay man on the cast, the fact that he just doesn't know, because there's always that chance. And he just... he doesn't want him to pull away from him.

Some of the others have tried to encourage him, to tell him to just ask him, but he always shies out of it. That warm smile and a shy look as he taps his slender fingers against his arms and tries not to make it obvious just how interested he is. But Robert is affectionate, warm, reassuring, always has that glimmer of dark promise in his eyes, that curve to his mouth, and he wants to kiss him, feel his body against his. But he doesn't quite have the courage.

He doesn't notice at first, when the other members of the cast start drifting off as the head back toward the limo that will drop them all off. It's not that rare for Scarlett to have things to do, or for Chris Evans to have an important phone call. What is weird is all of these things happening within about a five minute span of each other, so that by the time they make it out to the sidewalk, there's no one left heading to the limo except Robert and him, and it makes his heart skip. He sees what they're doing. And it's sweet, but infuriating, and he tries to pretend that he doesn't see what's going on but he can't help squirming a little and giving the other man a sheepish sort of look as his fingers brush against the back of his neck.

Comments

[starkhasaheart]

Robert sometimes prefers the larger interviews, rather than when they’re paired off or singled out. If he’s not quite in the right frame of mind, it takes some of the pressure off. The others are there to answer when he can’t quite get out what he means to say. And they’ve all spent enough time together that he finds that, more often than not, if he’s struggling to find a word or finish a sentence, that someone else knows where he was going and can pick it up where he’d left off. Frequently that person is Tom, but he’s not the only one. Today there had been points in the interview where questions directed to him felt as though they were being answered in conversation with Tom, rather than to the interviewer. He definitely caught himself a few times simply turning away from the camera, but he just had to hope it wasn’t as obvious as it felt. He tried to catch himself, keep it an even balance between talking to Tom, to the others, and looking at the interviewer, but he feels as though he failed somewhat.

At points, he could hardly help it. He’d begun the interview with his arm casually behind Tom’s chair, his hand against his back — because it was comfortable there and because it was an excuse to touch Tom through the entirety of the interview — and by halfway through when he needed to shift or risk his hand going numb, Tom nearly dove for his hand and he had to do something. It unsettled him somewhat, interrupted what he was in the middle of saying, but he managed to right it, he hoped, without much notice. Replaced his hand and carried on talking, fumbling somewhat over his words, satisfied at least that he’d prevented Tom from taking his hand mid-interview. Not that it would be the worst thing, or that he couldn’t have played it off. Not that he hasn’t hugged Tom on stage at events, practically climbing on him like he’s a tree at times. Maybe it’s something about his mood today, just knowing that this is the last event they’ve got for a few months and he’s keyed up at the idea of it, and not sure how he’d deal with it if Tom launched himself into his lap on camera today.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to. The thing ends fairly uneventfully, and they’re all headed out to the limousine. He’s talking to Tom about something he’d starting telling him on the way in when he notices people beginning to slip away. “Hey, okay, don’t say bye then,” he calls after Scarlett as she slips away, her phone pressed to her ear and waving, smiling back at them. In calling to her, he nearly misses Mark and Chris Hemsworth going the opposite direction.

“You, too?” he sounds half-amused, half-insulted, but he can’t believe this. “Come on, guys, what about dinner? I’m starting to get offended…”

When he looks back at Tom, he sees Jeremy and the last remaining Chris parting ways and it’s just him and Tom left standing a half dozen feet from the limo. Robert is the last to catch on to what’s happening, but he does catch on.

“They ditched us,” he says to Tom, trying to play it cool. Because he knows. Of course he knows. He’s not obvious about it — he’s not out — but he is interested. That much, he thinks, should be fairly apparent, if you’re looking. It’s not as if he’s like this with everyone. Not quite to this degree, anyway. Sure, he might hang on some of the others here and there for a laugh or a photo op, but it’s the kind of playful tumbling about that comes from months together spent on set, weeks spent shooting and re-shooting the same sweat-soaked fight scene three inches from each other’s faces. They’ve all somewhat gotten to the point where personal space is a thing that doesn’t quite exist anymore. It’s just that these times where he spends a little too much of an interview touching, or spontaneously hugs Tom’s legs instead of posing like a normal person should all mean something a little bit more. And sometimes with Tom, he’ll go for the laugh just so that it’s not so obvious.

So of course he can tell. He can see that Tom knows what’s going on, too — he’s not a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination. Tom looks uncomfortable, sheepish, rubbing his neck as he tries to figure out what to do in this new situation, how to recover from it. Fortunately for the both of them, Robert’s almost always moving about five steps ahead of where his mind even is at the moment. “Tell me you’re still coming out for dinner. Or, wait, no — something came up and you’re bailing on me too?”

It’s his not-very-subtle and yet noncommittal way of asking Tom out to dinner, alone, without making it obvious that that’s what he’s doing. But that’s obviously what he’s doing. Especially when he’s pulling off the perfect faux-hurt puppy dog expression, as though he’s trying his hardest to convince Tom to stay.