Fandom: Inception/TDKR RPF
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Joe/Tom
Length: 2100 words

Summary:

Tom finds himself clutching a pair of unmentionables in a very posh hotel lobby in Swakopmund. The rest is inevitable.

A/N: Set in the present (July 2012), in the Unkissed 'verse. Said 'verse has been jossed all to hell and back by, you know, the real world. So please consider it to be, not an actual complete fictional world with its own carefully-planned logic, but rather a shameless excuse to write tinhat fic where Joe and Tom are sekrit boyfriends.

Thanks to Lately and stars_collected for audiencing.

N.B.: This is not the Unkissed fic I expected to be writing in light of the delightful Tom/Joe/some-other-guy-who-cares photo that surfaced yesterday. But this is what came to me as I was fixing lunch, and I know better than to argue with the muses after nearly nine years of writing fic.

Disclaimer: None of this is the least bit true. Except for the part about the Namib desert leaving sand in your arsecrack. That much I can claim as personal experience. D:

Fine Taste

Tom checks in with the front desk when he gets back to the hotel. It’s been a marathon day, shooting in the Namib desert. He’s with some people, film people; they're all chatting about the production in a friendly way, tired but cheerfully loopy, the way you get after a long workday.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Hardy, there’s something for you,” says the girl behind the desk, and comes back with a flat packet, hands it over.

Tom has no idea what this thing could be. There are, in fact, any number of items he's likely to receive via courier while shooting on location in Namibia: something from Warner Bros maybe, or his agent. If he’s lucky, it might be from Rachael; he'd asked for her to send the latest braided necklace Louis made in his nursery class, to be converted into another bracelet for his collection.

Still, Tom loves a surprise in the mail, even the mildly disappointing kind that turns out to be a stack of paper-clipped sheets with a lot of 'sign here' flags. He doesn't study the package too closely, then, other than noting that it's a flat A4-sized document international courier envelope; he just pulls the cardboard tab and strips it away whilst continuing to talk to the film people, stood there in the lobby.

Tom sticks his hand into the envelope, pokes around a bit, and closes his fist round something soft and floppy and fine. He lets go, frowns, and pulls the sides of the cardboard envelope apart a little so he can peer inside. No papers, no paperclips, no 'sign here' flags. Just — a certain pair of satisfyingly small grey pants.

"Not what you'd expected?" asks one of the film guys, the assistant something to someone else. Tom can’t remember anyone’s proper title, not at this particular moment.

"No, not," Tom hedges, hoping against hope that he's not blushing even though he feels his ears getting warm. "It's nothing, just — something — a personal joke." He nearly said 'something from my kid' before realising that this would lead to demands to see whatever it was. 'Personal joke', though, probably sounds more like what it actually is. God knows what they're all imagining is inside the envelope, now: most likely, nothing so homely and plain as ordinary gents' underpants in a soft grey bamboo-blend baby-rib.

Someone suggests drinks at the restaurant attached to the hotel. Tom blows out an exhausted sigh and chases it with a regretful grin. Five minutes earlier it would even have been a genuine response; but Tom's a fair actor, he doesn’t mind admitting.

He does the math as he tries to maintain a quick-casual stride on his way towards his room. Eight hours between here and L.A., except, no — he's in Jersey this week, or he was. Shit. Either way, it's earlier there, it's afternoon or maybe evening. In other words, Joseph is likely to be awake; he's also likely to be in the middle of some bit of business about the movie, or HitRECord, or one of the other million projects he juggles.

Serves him fucking well right, Tom decides with a sharp private grin, and pushes his hotel room door open.

Tom is less delicate about it now he's gained the privacy of his suite. He tears the envelope open, one clean hasty rip of cardboard.

It's exactly as he feared: grey pants, and not a jot more, no word of explanation, no note, no photograph. They're a bit flattened from having been squashed inside the courier envelope for their transatlantic voyage, but Tom can tell that they'd been folded before being stuffed into the parcel. He shakes the pair of underpants now, unfurling them with his fingers pinched on the soft elastic waistband.

Yes, crumpled, a bit, but not apparently — used.

Tom flips over the parcel, driven by a sudden wave of worry, assures himself of the sender upon seeing Joe's square scrawling hand on the shipping label. On the customs declaration where you put what manner of thing you’re shipping and how much it’s worth, Tom sees that Joseph's written 'clothing (t-shirt)' and '$15'. Tom laughs, reflexively, because it's so perfectly Joseph, such a delightful and contradictory mix of the proper-adult-professional and the filthy-rebellious-sex maniac.

He doesn't hesitate now, just drops the envelope to the floor, bunches the fabric up in his fist, and presses the pants right to his face. Breathes in, deep. Joseph would be appalled, probably, but he can't have expected Tom to do otherwise. Tom's done as much in person, too often for Joseph to claim ignorance or an innocent intention.

Especially — Tom thinks, pleased — especially as Joseph obviously spent an entire day going round in these pants before mailing them off to Tom. They're not dirty, per se, but they smell of Joseph, the Joseph underneath the layers of soap and deodorant and hair product and faint overtones of nicotine. This is the Joseph unfit for public consumption, just as Tom likes him best.

He can't remember the last time he'd got so hard untouched; Tom makes it over to the couch feeling a little dizzy, delighted, and wriggles his phone out of his pocket whilst keeping his nose buried in the pants, feeling like an inquisitive dog.

"Oh hey," says Joseph in his lovely and utterly fake work-voice, deeper than his natural timbre and just a tiny bit cool. "Can I call you back in—"

"Not a bloody chance," Tom cuts in, lowering the pants to speak. "Be alone. Now."

"I — okay, sorry, just "— and there's a spate of muffled talking, Joseph with his palm over the phone. Tom spreads the pants over his thigh while he waits, taking a moment to picture them on Joseph, his taut round arse, the soft heavy bulge at the front.

"What's this?" Tom says, suddenly noticing black ink along the inside back of the waistband.

“Ah, just a minute," says Joseph, still sounding distracted and distant and rumbly. Not free and clear yet, but getting there.

"But what if I want to be eaten?" reads Tom aloud; full as his head is with lines from the Mad Max shooting script, it takes him a moment to place it. "Oh, you saucy," he murmurs, beaming and trailing his thumb over Joe's sharpie-point printing. "You tart," he says, hoping a little cruelly that Joseph is trying to hold a serious but normal conversation with whoever's holding him captive this minute.

Tom gets his jeans open one-handed, yanks them down enough to free his cock, and strokes a few times just listening to Joseph fumble his hand over the phone on the other end. Tom's staring hungrily at the lettering, the slight smearing of the letters that prove Joseph had written on them first and then worn them all day long on set, probably left an inky mirror image of the text on the skin above his arse, fuck, fuck. "Does this make me the wolf?" asks Tom; his own voice has gone a little strange now, somewhere between breathy and growling. "You want me to eat you, Joseph?"

There's a slam and then blessed silence. "Fuck you," says Joseph, but it's obvious it's spoken through a helpless smile. "Fuck. You."

"Fuck you!" returns Tom, indignant and grinning right back. "I nearly dropped your fucking filthy little pants onto the feet of the first assistant DP, a moment ago."

Joseph laughs, unrepentant. "Shit, did you?" he laughs. "Serves you right for not reading the return address, dumbass."

Tom tilts his hips up into the next stroke and looses a little grunt. It gets him farther along than he expects, rowing cheerfully with Joseph, sat here with one hand on his dick and the other touching Joe's underwear. "I wish I could eat you," Tom says, changing gears, "swallow you down."

"Fuck," says Joseph thickly, "there's no fucking lock on this door, fuck."

"Put your back up against it," Tom advises, "come on, I'm — nearly"—

"Right, okay," says Joseph, laughing a little wildly. "Hang on, let me catch up, fuck, are you already"—

"I'm close," Tom says, and he is, just from thinking of Joseph leaning up against the door, hurrying to get his jeans unbuckled, his fly down, Joseph with that dreadful hairstyle and his big fucking biceps and it's not fair Tom hasn't seen him yet, not tasted him, not had him up against a door with Tom's thumbs digging into the hollows of Joe's hips, Tom's face buried blissful in Joe's scent, swallowing round him and tonguing him and barely able to breathe except in quick-sharp gasps that fill Tom's head with more of Joseph.

“I want you to come right on them," Joseph is saying, voice shaking like he's really fucking his hand hard, too. "Come on them and then send 'em back to me, fuck, fuck."

Tom barely processes this in time, but he fumbles the pants up off his thigh and shoots into the fabric, messy and slick and long. "Shit, I was going to wear these," he says, the instant his mind clears a little. "On set, tomorrow."

"I'll send you another pair," says Joseph, urgent, the smallest bit irritated. "Tom, come on, fucking — say something else."

Tom casts his mind about for something to say, though it's difficult to find inspiration in his own post-coital haze. "I wouldn't care if someone walked in on you," he says, opting for honesty, feeling reckless. "I wouldn't care if everyone on this production saw me holding your pants in my hand, saw that you want my mouth on you."

Joseph makes a rough desperate sound; it's good, then.

“They should know," Tom goes on, "how I bite you, how you like it." He pauses long enough to gauge Joseph's progress by the speed of his breathing — very fast, very close. "You're like an addiction that fucking loves me right back, you mad delicious creature."

Joseph chokes and comes, trying to be quiet, not managing very well.

It's the idea of it, for now, that gets Joseph fired up. Tom knows perfectly well that he's not ready, they're not ready for the world to be in on their secret, but Joseph's got enough of the adrenalin junkie in him that he gets off on the idea now — gets off hard, by the sounds of it.

"God," he says, "my fucking attorney is out there. Jesus Christ, Tom."

Tom laughs, full-throated, unrepentant. "So he's charging you an obscene amount of money for each minute you spend wanking in his private loo?"

"Worth it," Joseph says, good-natured, panting. “Shit, I totally got come on this shirt. Is he gonna notice if I go back out with it tucked in?"

"Probably," Tom allows. "Fuck it, you're paying him."

"True," says Joseph. "I've really gotta get going, though."

“Yeah, I know," Tom says, "and I've got to sleep, I'm up in the dunes at dawn tomorrow."

"Right, go hose the sand out of your asscrack," says Joseph. "I have to wash my hands really thoroughly."

"Mm," agrees Tom, sleepy now, dropping the properly soiled pants off to the side. "Thanks for the surprise."

Joseph laughs, obviously a little distracted by the busy work of putting himself to rights. "I do, you know," he says, "love you right back."

"I know," Tom says fondly. "I fucking miss you."

"You should," says Joseph, "my abs are so so cut, right now."

"Agh, sod right off," Tom groans, pained by the reminder.

"I'll call you tomorrow," says Joseph. "Text me when you're done for the day."

***

In his trailer the next afternoon, Tom uncaps the sharpie he begged off a PA. He opens the plastic bag with Joseph’s properly messy little grey pants, spreads them out on the desk, and hastens to double-check the lock on his door before going back and smoothing a flat place on the back waistband of the pants. Joseph’s printing on the inside of the band has bled through in little dots.

You want what I want, Tom prints in his own messy hand, and folds them up, mindful of the dry stiff patches.

Back in a fresh envelope, addressed to Joseph’s place in Los Angeles. Tom hesitates, though, before adding his own pair to the packet. It’s not quite right; Tom doesn’t have Joseph’s artistic sensibilities, not really, but even so — he knows it’s not right.

Tom uncaps the pen again and writes — on his own pants this time, and right over the main bit of fabric instead of limiting the words to the waistband:

Step off the path, if you’d like to.

Maybe, Tom thinks, maybe it’s not just about the idea of it anymore.

******

A/N: I linked to the hR poem in question in the text above, but you don’t really get the complete experience unless/until you watch JGL narrating (in his own words) “a tasteful poem about cunnilingus”.