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Paul's a little taken aback when they introduce him with the odd skittishness of studio people expecting a blow-up at any moment, and instead all Jim does is blink slowly at him, roll his shoulders and furrow his brows as his eyes travel slow from Paul's face all the way down to his feet and back again.
"Hey," Jim says, mouth curling into the tiniest, unreadable half-smile.
~*~
The second time they meet they're in the same room for ten minutes before Jim gets close enough to blink at him, slow and surprised, and say, "Hey," again.
"Hey," says Paul.
"You know those flashes can blind a person," says Jim, nodding at some guy with a Speed Graphic on the other side of the room and shoving his hands into his pockets.
"Is that a fact," says Paul.
"Yeah," says Jim. "Gotta be careful." He's silent for a long moment, watching the camera thoughtfully. Paul takes the opportunity to look at him, the curled-over set of his shoulders like an unconscious cage around the soft faraway look in his eyes. It disappears as he looks back at Paul, his gaze bright even as his mouth stays slow.
"I didn't see you, man," he says. "Not wearing my glasses."
"That bad without them, huh?" says Paul, surprised.
Jim shrugs. "I kinda like it," he says.
Paul mulls that over. "You get to miss out on talking to people you don't want to?"
Jim's cheeks dimple, not quite a smirk, and he glances away when he says, "Stand closer to the ones I do."
~*~
It's still early in their acquaintance when Jim darts, "Kiss me," at Paul in front of the cameras, and Paul says without thinking, "Can't here." Jim laughs, startled and real, and it doesn't hit him until after how easy it was, how sweet Jim can look when he wants to and sweeter still without meaning it, and he thinks this is really someone worth knowing, even if the prospect is a little frightening, even if sometimes Jim's as brash and obvious with his shy lingering looks as the ones he gives without knowing are unintentionally brash. Or maybe just because of it.
Paul's kind of fascinated.
~*~
"He's sweet on you," one of the Warner Bros. crew says to Paul half-jokingly when they're both in the same fiery, summer-ridden steelwork of a lying Los Angeles in spring.
"What?" Paul frowns.
The guy nods at where Jim is sitting, slouched back in one of the chairs. His knuckles are pressed to the wet open curve of his bottom lip and he could almost pass for asleep if it weren't for his eyes, bright beneath the drooping sweep of his lashes and fixed on Paul.
Paul waits 'til the guy is gone and goes to crouch by Jim's chair. "You sweet on me, Jim?" he asks, grinning.
One of his hands skims the inside of Jim's knee as he lifts an arm to keep his balance. It's not a surprising accident, with Jim's legs sprawled wide as they are.
"Sure," says Jim. "You're real pretty."
Paul laughs. "I bet you say that to all the girls," he says.
Jim shrugs. "Not all the boys." He lifts a hand like he's going to reach out but drops it again, pulling his lighter from his pocket instead and flicking it open and shut, open and shut, watching the way the metal throws little motes of light onto his fingers. When he glances up his eyes narrow in on Paul's mouth and he shifts his leg under Paul's hand, pressing outwards. He smiles a little at the heat bleeding over Paul's cheeks and says again, mumbled, "Real pretty."
Paul blinks; suddenly, unnervingly aware of Jim's mouth, the little lick of hair come loose and curling over his forehead.
"You got eyes nicer'n any girl I know," says Jim. "Or boy." He's not looking at Paul.
He could kiss Jim. Push himself up and kiss the darting uncertainty right off his face, and the underlying assuredness, too, that odd way he's shy even when he's sure, the way he's both introvert and extrovert, sincere and sly, slow and sharp; kiss away all the contradictions, all the riddles, settle his palm over the smooth jut of collarbones and hollowed-out skin and make it that simple.
Instead he says, "Thanks, Jimmy," and presses his fingers deliberate, point-by-point, into the warm crevice behind Jim's knee. "That's nice of you to say."
Jim snorts. His eyes dart from Paul's own to his mouth and back again, quick and unconscious.
It's like a girl fluttering her lashes, Paul thinks, only entirely unaffected.
"So we're going to be friends then," he says, pushing himself to his feet.
Jim tips his head to look up at him. "Sure," he says. There's a little furrow between his brows.
"Good," says Paul. He grins. "You're not as big a sourpuss as I heard you'd be."
Jim's lips quirk. "That's nice of you to say," he says.
Paul laughs.
~*~
In New York Jim has no time. Paul hears things about girls and dates and fast-paced executive dinners, all suited up on Broadway nights 'til he heads back out west like a pilgrim to the pull of Hollywood. Funniest thing is out here he's the myth now, the bright young thing blazing on a trail of promised success, some elusive magic contained between the walls of his apartment.
They pass once by chance on Bleecker. Jim's wearing his glasses, camera in one hand and cigarette in the other, some guy trailing behind.
Jim says, "Paulie!" and hugs him with one arm flung out to protect the camera, the other pressed tight around Paul's ribs. It's less of a hug, really, more a half-tackle into the nearest wall.
When he pulls back he grins and says, "Roy here's trying to teach me to take real nice pictures, aren't you Roy?"
Roy says, "Sure thing," with a wry smile.
Jim looks half-frantic, like the streets and crowds and small audience gathered to watch him from the other side of the street.
"Well," he says, "We best be off. Hope I didn't bruise you, Paulie, you're lookin' real pretty again today."
Paul laughs. "I guess next time you can take my picture," he says.
Jim chews on his lip. "Nah," he says, squinting thoughtfully along the footpath, a habit ingrained from too many scenes without his glasses. He shakes the camera a little. "Reckon there's some things best not to try and catch on here. Not 'til Roy's showed me how it's all 'sposed to come out right, anyway." He throws Roy a joking, petulant little glance.
Jim's grin is the last thing Paul sees of him that time in New York, suspended for just a moment before he drags on his fag and refocuses through the camera lens, glasses askew.
~*~
Hollywood is something of a battlefield. When he's there filming The Silver Chalice Paul thinks longingly of New York, the grimy smell of rain and coffee and exhaust fumes stilting the night. Los Angeles is bewitching, frightening and foreign, not the brash cracked-open kind like Okinawa but some stealthier, slinkier thing. Stay in Los Angeles long enough and it starts to make a terrible kind of sense, the girls in their clicking heels and starry earrings like flashing eyes running the dark streets, the pitched battles over scripts and screen tests and studios.
In New York there are ugly boxers fighting in arenas before crowds and cameras, cuts and bruises like clear declarations of intent. You can't hide any truth in New York. In Los Angeles there are wet, carefully painted lips and sly half-broken promises, everything you see a calculated projection, an image constructed by someone else. This is the only truth of Los Angeles.
In New York there is space to breathe still. In Los Angeles there are lights domed over the boulevards like advertisements for brighter and better skies.
It's the weather Paul appreciates most about this place; the orange California sunrises and clean salty winds. The New York frost is bold. It doesn't lie. Neither does the California weather, with all its slow creeping sweetness, and most mornings Paul wakes up to warmth and sweat and remembers where he is, sets his shoulders for the day ahead.
It makes him think of Jim, all of it: Jim's mouth like a loaded gun, like the battles Paul's fought at home and abroad rolled into one strange primetime matchup, like New York and Los Angeles meeting in the Midwest. Like waking up occasionally in the strange grey half-light before dawn and forgetting for a moment everything you know.
~*~
"You want the truth?" Jim leans back in his chair with that way he has, sprawled like he's ready to sleep, or listen real careful and slow, or make love.
"Yeah, what's the truth?" Paul tilts his head.
"There ain't any," says Jim. "You like me, other people like me, other people don't." He shrugs.
"It's that simple," says Paul.
"That goddamned simple," says Jim.
"And you're not even a little bit nicer to me," says Paul.
Jim looks down at the table, tugging at the napkin under his glass. "Maybe a little," he says. "But that's 'cause I'm sweet on you." He glances up, smirking.
Paul nods. "Makes sense," he says.
He clenches his hands against his thighs, nails stinging into his palms, because Jim is looking at him like that again, that way he has like he wants Paul and isn't trying to hide it, that odd, entirely unique demeanor that's simultaneously a little bit shy but also a little bit brash, like all the parts of him Paul's ever seen, eyes on his mouth. The somewhat sly truth he wants Paul to see. Paul looks away so won't have to see what comes after, that cracked-open moment where he flicks his gaze up and doesn't look anything like the brat they warned Paul about, doesn't look anything but young as he is, and vulnerable as inevitably comes with it. This is the truth he can't hide. Somehow neither is any less real than the other; one is deliberate and the other isn't, but they both mean the same thing, and it's a little bit overwhelming, knowing that Jim wants him the same way he consciously projects and not, knowing that this truth runs right through him, doesn't change or disappear under the surface.
Paul's been aware for some time that these cute things Jim says to him have lined up dizzyingly close with the rare flashes of Jim's utter nakedness, but it's maybe this moment that hits him the hardest, that he lets himself think about it the most.
"It doesn't matter, anyway," Paul says, lifting his glass halfway to his lips. It wouldn't be near as bad if he didn't want to reach across the table and close his fingers over the fragile inside of Jim's wrist, trace the blue veins and press his mouth to the pulse, and give him what he wants. "The girls like you plenty. That's all that matters, in show business."
"Yeah," says Jim. "In show business."
~*~
One time Jim leans towards him at some terribly sleek studio event and whispers, like a stolen moment, "What was it like in the War?" and Paul has an awful moment of stage fright right there alone with just him and Jimmy, like in this throwaway second he needs to tell Jim just how bone-shatteringly terrible it was like it's life and death.
Jim says, "Paul, Paulie, you okay?" curving a hand over his elbow.
Paul breathes and says, "Yeah, yeah. It was-- it was terrible, Jimmy, and I wasn't even in it proper. I should've been. Maybe that makes it worse." He shrugs. The awful moment is gone.
Jim nods and says, "'S the stupidest thing in the world, except once it's happened, and then it's the most important."
"Yeah," says Paul. He blinks. "Yeah."
"You scared?" says Jim.
"I was," says Paul. "Still am, too."
"Me too," says Jim. "Any man who says he ain't 's a goddamn liar."
Paul laughs. "You're strange, Jimmy," he says. "I like you a lot."
Jim half-smiles, tucking a cigarette neatly into his mouth. "Glad you like strange, Paulie," he says.
"Better way to be than most others," says Paul.
Jim nods slowly. "You think you're gonna be real famous?" he asks after a long moment, watching the crowd through his mouthfuls of smoke.
"N-- no," says Paul, letting the sound sit on his tongue, thoughtful and drawn-out. "No, that'd be arrogant of me to say. I just want to make a picture I'm proud of." He shrugs, laughing a little. "Something I can stand my friends watching while I'm in the same room."
"Yeah," says Jim. "Reckon it ain't so much to ask. Not for you."
Paul bumps his shoulder. Something inside him unfurls, warm and pleased. "Yeah?" he says.
"Yeah," says Jim. He smiles, not at Paul but for him, it feels like, directed aimlessly away across the room. There's something about the way he does that, makes Paul and people like him, people fascinated by Jim, people drawn helplessly towards him-- most people, Paul wouldn't be afraid in reckoning-- want to catch it and pull it, him, back in to them.
"You either, you know," says Paul.
The moment after is strange, conspicuously absent of some weighted word or action. Jim just glances at him and away again, a pleased smile settled in one corner of his mouth.
They're whisked apart in the renewed kicked-up buzz of the event, then, but Paul catches Jim watching him at odd moments through the rest of the night, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes smirking, sometimes something softer, and once with his lip between his teeth and his eyes dark.
Paul looks away before he does something stupid, like blush right here in front of his wife, or leave her side to go talk to Jim 'til he looks that way again.
~*~
In Hollywood Paul rents an apartment not too far from the Warner Bros. lot. It's still strange, the heat and wide-open skies, and even if they remind him of bright Ohio days it's always the east coast he misses, the grey drizzling hours huddling in his coat for warmth. The comfort of warm coffee in his hand.
It's nice enough, though, he supposes. In the mornings he stands by the kitchen window and looks out over the trees and clear blue distance and listens to the atomic early morning quiet, the calm before the storm of mid-morning heat and scrambling to remember lines and names and times and places.
Jim knocks on his door there. When Paul answers he's wearing jeans, a plain white t-shirt and a slightly too-long in the arms woolen cardigan, open and heavy, weighed-down below the line of his hips. His fingers are peeking from beneath the cuffs, fine-boned and white-tipped where his arms are crossed over his chest.
"Hey," he says, ducking a half-smile. He's wearing his glasses. His shoulders are raised a little, arched close to his chin.
"Hey," says Paul.
"I'm here for my babysitting," says Jim, tilting his head. "You gonna take me out?"
"Sounds more like a date to me," says Paul, biting back a smile.
Jim shrugs. "Could do that," he says. His eyes slide away from Paul's face, looking somewhere over his shoulder, but his mouth is still curled at the corners.
Paul laughs. "I'm gonna keep you in," he says. "But treat you nice."
"Yeah?" says Jim. "You're a real gentleman, Paulie. You got anything to drink?"
"Sure," says Paul. "Come on in."
"Nice digs," says Jim, following Paul into the living room.
"Thanks," says Paul. He pulls a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers from the mantle, settling on one side of the coffee table and pouring out a finger into each glass. "Where are you staying?"
"Friends." Jim sits on the other side and pulls one glass towards him. "Thanks."
Paul nods, knocking his glass against Jim's.
Three fingers later, Jim says, "We should call it quits. Before someone gets hurt."
"It's whiskey," says Paul.
"Yeah," says Jim. "Goddamn death trap."
Paul looks at him. Jim looks thoughtful, eyes focused somewhere around Paul's mouth. Paul swallows. "Hey," he says. "How you been?"
Jim flicks his gaze up. "Living it up," he says.
"Really?" says Paul, a little stupidly. He glances idly at the thin film of whiskey lining the bottom of his glass.
"Really," says Jim. "Would you believe that." He leans forward a little, stretching his hand across the table. Its trajectory is blocked by the bottle. He pours himself another half-glass of the whiskey and slouches back in his chair. "I've been good," he says.
"Behaving," says Paul, "Or happy?"
Jim laughs, caught off-guard. His cheeks dimple, smile-lines creasing his eyes, and Paul feels oddly, overly pleased.
~*~
"It's pretty out here," says Jim later, leaning over the balcony railing, head angled towards the street below. The lights are muted this far up, settling like some gentle, stuttering thing over the slick divot of his lips, and when he breathes out the smoke mingles with his breath on the air. He looks over his shoulder and catches Paul watching him. "Hey, you want a smoke?"
"Sure," says Paul.
Jim digs into his pocket with both hands and fumbles out a Chesterfield. He hands it to Paul, and his lighter too, and just as it clicks in Paul's hand, the flame flaring to life, Jim reaches out to tuck another cigarette behind his ear, fingers light, thumb brushing the shell.
Paul shivers and looks up. "Thanks," he says.
Jim nods and looks away. The shudder of his lashes is easy to see; he's left his glasses inside the apartment.
"You want another drink?" says Paul, leaning back against the balcony. It digs into the small of his back, not wholly uncomfortable.
"We finished the bottle," says Jim.
"Oh," says Paul. He blinks slowly and scrubs at his cheeks with the back of his hand. They feel very warm.
Jim is watching him again, chin tucked into his shoulder and head tilted away, eyes slitted. "Kiss me," he says.
Paul blinks again. "Can't," he says. It feels almost rehearsed, automatic, like he was expecting the necessity for denial. "Can't, Jimmy."
Jim nods and glances away. Paul breathes out. "Kiss me," says Jim again.
Paul closes his eyes. "I have a wife," he says.
"She ain't here," mumbles Jim. When Paul looks at him he's dragging deep on his cigarette, eyes focused out over the city. "I ain't gonna steal you away. And I'm only gonna ask one more time." He looks back at Paul, and there's something strange in the way he's holding himself. Paul frowns until he realises that it's because he's completely still. "Kiss me."
Paul's heartbeat trips and swoops in his chest, part pre-emptive guilt, part something else. He plucks the cigarette from between Jim's fingers and crushes it out on the railing, and then his own. Jim turns into his space, lips close, smoke-tinged breath warm and whiskey-sweet, and whispers, a little hoarse, "I asked you."
Paul says, "You did," and ducks into the last inch of space between them.
Jim kisses slow and wet, filthy but not ungentle, hands sliding hot over Paul's hips and then nudging between them to splay over his stomach, fingertips edging beneath the buttons on his shirt, skidding over the skin there. It's the strangest feeling, when Paul closes his mouth over Jim's upper lip and slants his gaze down between them, to where Jim's hands are pressed flat and solid against everything that's quivering inside him: the clenching and unclenching, the coil of want and uncertainty.
He whispers, "Jimmy," and Jim hums low in his throat, scratching lightly at the skin beneath Paul's navel and then turning his hand to press his knuckles against the buttons.
He pulls back, too, some considerable length of time later, mouth open and eyes leveled somewhere around Paul's shoulders, and Paul thinks about three things, then: the rasp of Jim's stubble against the hollow of his palm; the way Jim is touching but not holding him, thrumming with light little fidgeting movements; and how terribly, achingly he wants, this unsettlingly shy beautiful boy with his low litany of sure words and his oh so dangerous abyss of a smile.
He mumbles, "Hold me," against the corner of Jim's mouth, and when he pulls back to look Jim's lips are curled in a smile, almost a smirk, and he looks right at Paul like the coyest of girls through his lashes, and Paul kisses him, and kisses him, and feels the adrenaline spike like the sharpest of street corners throwing him heart-stoppingly off-tilt.
Jim curves his hands over Paul's sides, and kisses back.
~*~
It feels like waking up after a long, strange sleep when Jim pushes him back into the still lit-up apartment, hands under his shirt properly now, sealed warm to warm skin.
Paul blinks in the light. He leans back a little and says, "Jimmy, Jim, wait." Jim is a force of focus, like this, licking and learning like he knows just exactly how mad he wants to drive Paul.
Jim licks his lips. "What, you think I just wanted to kiss you like some pretty little schoolgirl?"
"No," says Paul. "No."
"Then what?" says Jim. "You change your mind?"
"No," says Paul again. He ducks his head a little, nose nudging against Jim's temple. "I guess I'm scared," he says on an exhale.
He keeps his hands curved high over Jim's ribcage, where he can feel the reassuring racecar thrum of his heart.
Jim makes a soft noise, something like a laugh, something like a snort. "What you scared of, Paulie?" he says. "Not me, I ain't scary in the least. You got no business being scared of me."
"No," says Paul. He laughs a little. "I'm scared of how much I want you, Jimmy."
Jim's silent for a long moment. Then he says, quietly, "Ain't nothing to do but take me if you want me, Paulie."
"Yeah," says Paul. "Yeah." He shrugs a little, skin grazing on Jim's. "Feels like the kind of thing that could change a man, that's all."
"Life's the kind of thing that could change a man," says Jim. "You gonna stop kissing all the pretty girls just 'cause it could change you?"
"You're not a pretty girl," Paul mumbles against his cheek.
"Son of a bitch," says Jim, digging his fingers into Paul's hips. "I know that."
"I didn't mean anything by it," says Paul. He pulls a thumb slowly over Jim's bottom lip.
"You gonna fuck me, or are we gonna sit here yammering like old ladies?" says Jim, wet and lewd.
Something about it works though. Paul blinks and leans back and sees Jim, just Jim here in his Hollywood apartment, frightening like he always thought it would be but not so much that he can't laugh like he's letting something go and say, "Shouldn't say things like that, Jimmy, it could get you in trouble."
Jim says again, "I ain't gonna steal you away," and Paul believes him, because he can't steal one person to keep when he steals everyone without meaning. There's just no room.
Jim isn't his even when he's offering himself up so prettily, even when he really wants it, but Jim can't help that, and Paul wants too, so he takes.
Jim isn't his, but he yields under Paul's hands like something greater than his beating skin and shifting bones, and it's not about owning so much as belonging, here in Hollywood, here with Jim.