Taylor always likes their visits to Asia, few and far between as they are. Their first trip to Thailand had been packed full of the typical tourist stuff, but that bored him. What Taylor really loves is just to go out on his own and get to know a city. He can’t exactly pretend to be a native here, not with his face, but he is surprised and relieved to find that he can slip up and down the city streets quite unnoticed.
Isaac and Zac have brought their wives along for this trip but Natalie is back in at home, most likely just waking up for one of the last doctor’s appointments of this latest pregnancy. He should call her, but he doesn’t. When the interviews and appearances are done for the day, he slips out of the hotel unnoticed and takes off down the street without a plan.
Taylor is free, just the way he likes it.
The longer he wanders, the farther away he gets from the hotels and tacky tourist shops. The sticky heat is seeping into his skin and he has to find some sort of respite from it. The streets are less crowded where he walks now and he slips under a neon sign easily without feeling like he’s being watched.
He’s not even sure what to do once he’s inside the disco. Order a drink, maybe dance. He hadn’t thought this far ahead in the plan when he began this trek across the city and now he just feels awkward and alone. He stands conspicuously at the bar, clutching his rum and coke like it might give him answers or guidance. Each sip brings Taylor no closer to any sort of solace. He slams the empty glass onto the bar and that doesn’t provide any satisfaction either.
A hand grips his arm and presses a glass into his hand. Taylor blinks and suddenly there’s a man in front of him with an almost familiar face. He’s not sure what to do at first, but the man wraps Taylor’s hand further around the glass and that shouldn’t ease his confusion or worry, but it does.
“Thanks?”
“Not every day you get to buy Taylor Hanson a drink. In fucking Thailand.”
The voice is familiar too, and that might-be-evil grin. Taylor knows now.
“Scott.”
He’s not had reason to think about Scott for years but there was a time when the thought of him seemed to follow Taylor around like a ghost. They only met once or twice at the parties and events that Taylor and his brothers were shuffled around to, and he doesn’t feel like he knows Scott half as well as he ought to. He wants to ask how he’s been but he finds that he can’t do anything but watch Scott slowly sipping his beer. The two of them are like photo negatives. Scott is thinner than Taylor remembers and made all of hard lines, while he’s only softened around the edges over time.
But underneath, Scott looks happy. Taylor knows his own sadness is seeping out in the same way.
“Are you on vacation?”
Taylor is so deep in his own head and his second drink that he almost doesn’t register Scott’s words. When he does, he struggles to find his voice again. “Promotions. We’re coming out with a new album soon, you know how it is.”
There’s a flicker of something in Scott’s eyes for just a second before he replies with some quip about the press stuff they both know too well.
They make small talk like old friends but it feels like an act. Their lives are so different now that the most normal thing about the entire encounter is that they’re the only two in the room speaking English.
“You should get away from all that bullshit for a while,” Scott finally says, as they both slam their empty glasses onto the bar.
“Yeah, maybe I should.”
It isn’t a concession and it isn’t an admittance, but it’s enough. Scott flings a few bills at the bartender and has Taylor by the arm again before he can protest. His calloused fingers wrap loosely around Taylor’s wrist, fitting like an old familiar bracelet, and they are out the door in seconds. Scott’s confidence amazes Taylor. Somewhere along the way his own confidence just turned to an act, but here’s Scott, pulling him around by the arm, shoving locals out of the way with growled words that are probably curses, and just looking completely at home.
Taylor thinks he could kill to feel that at home anywhere.
Scott shoves him into one of those funny little taxis that Taylor can’t remember the name of and rattles off something to the driver. It must be an address, Taylor realizes.
His address.
The city flies by in a colorful blur and it makes Taylor’s head swim. It’s enough to keep him from focusing on the questions bubbling up to the surface. They aren’t even really questions, because he knows the answer. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, he should have run away from Scott when he had the chance. Yes, he should stop this.
But he won’t.
In minutes the cab deposits them in front of some anonymous little brick building. The alcohol makes its presence known when Taylor’s feet hit the pavement. His legs sway and the sidewalk seems to curl and dip beneath him. A pair of arms – Scott’s arms, he realizes more slowly than he should – wrap around him and pull him back from what was shaping up to be a very painful fall. He looks down at Scott – thinner, shorter, but in that moment so much less frail than he is. Suddenly Taylor feels very stupid and dizzy in a way that he doesn’t think the alcohol can be blamed for.
For a few seconds too long, the two boys stand face to face, Taylor’s hands resting on Scott’s shoulders, Scott’s eyes a mirror image of the confusion that Taylor feels. He needs to break this connection, needs to put some distance between the two of them. It’s dangerous anyway, going back to Scott’s apartment with him. He needs to break away from Scott before –
He kisses Taylor.
It’s gentle. Far, far more gentle than Taylor expects. It’s almost like Scott is afraid – afraid of what? Hurting him? His fingers dig into Scott’s shoulders as he leans down to deepen the kiss. He wants Scott to know it’s okay, even if it really isn’t.
Scott pulls away just at the moment when Taylor feels his brain emptying and all of his thoughts focus on that kiss and those lips. Now that they are no longer connected, Taylor feels self conscious, realizes he’s standing in the middle of a street in god-knows-where-Bangkok and Scott’s looking up at him with that evil grin again.
“We should go inside.”
His hand slips into Taylor’s easily, too easily, and he’s pulling him toward a door and now up the stairs. Memories are flooding back, replaying like movies behind Taylor’s eyelids. He watches Scott practically gliding up the stairs, can’t seem to pull his eyes away from the other boy’s body, taking in every almost familiar movement.
The apartment is small. Tiny, really. The walls are white but kinda dingy and it looks sort of temporary. Clothes and guitars and bits of recording equipment are scattered all around the living-sleeping-everything room, but it still doesn’t really feel lived in. It feels like a breathe held in, just waiting for one little push to exhale.
Taylor jumps at the feeling of Scott’s hand on the small of his back, nudging him further into the room. There’s nowhere to sit but the bed and he figures that’s probably how Scott planned it anyway. So he sits, awkwardly, tensely on the edge of the mattress.
Scott fumbles through a pile of trash and things on the counter that divides the kitchen from everything else. Taylor isn’t sure what he’s doing all hunched up there until he sees the cloud of smoke drifting up. He turns around and offers the small pipe to Taylor, but he shakes his head. He figures he can at least make one good decision that night to balance out all the bad.
Scott shrugs and takes a few more hits before he seems to tire of it of and sits down on the bed, just a little bit too close to Taylor. Their knees touch, jeans against jeans, but Taylor doesn’t shy away.
“I kind of live in a shit hole,” Scott says with a hoarse chuckle. “It’s not what you’re used to, I guess.”
“It’s not a shit hole,” Taylor replies but it comes out sounding like a lie. “You’re happy here, though. Right?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
“Then that’s better than what I’m used to,” Taylor admits, his eyes flickering away from Scott’s as he says it. He doesn’t want to see the smug look that’s probably taking over the boy’s face.
Instead, Scott sighs. “I don’t think either one of us ended up with the life we really wanted. But you make the best of whatever shit they throw at you, you know?”
Taylor nods dumbly, his focus drifting to the hand resting so naturally, so carelessly on his thigh. He watches his own hand grow a mind of its own and join Scott’s, his thumb caressing the rough skin. He doesn’t know how to reply without giving away more than he wants to, so they just fade into silence. It’s an oddly comfortable silence, though, highlighting how much more comfortable they are together than they ought to be.
“How long has it been?” Taylor finally asks, his voice coming out gravelly and the words feeling like rocks in his mouth.
“Oh, Jesus… I think we were seventeen,” Scott replies.
Taylor trails his hand up Scott’s arm, following the pattern of the letters. “You didn’t have this back then.”
“Like you haven’t changed too?”
That damn grin again. He can’t decide if he wants to punch Scott or kiss him, and that’s a very, very familiar feeling. The last time they were together he couldn’t hold back and he still wears a scar above his eyebrow as payback for it.
This time, he chooses the second option.
He crushes his lips against Scott’s, trusting his strength to give him the advantage. But Scott isn’t resisting. He wants this too. Scott grabs fistfuls of Taylor’s hair, scrambles to get closer and closer. Their sweat dampened shirts cling together and the way their scents, sweat and soap and cologne, mix together make Taylor’s head go hazy.
He lets Scott take over. That’s what he really needs – just to give in and be lead. With strong hands, Scott pushes Taylor onto his back. Their limbs tangle together and Taylor isn’t even sure who is touching who, whose hands are roaming where.
It seems he can’t get his clothes off fast enough, can’t remember how to even work the button on his pants. Their skin is searing hot and the feeling of Scott seems burned into his flesh. He imagines he’ll wake up the next day with hot red handprints tattoed all over his body, painting a sinful picture on his arms and chest and legs and —
He can’t hold back the pitiful moan when Scott wraps his hand around his length. His hips roll upward on their own, colliding painfully with Scott’s. He needs to be closer, needs more. Scott’s small nod lets Taylor know that he knows and he feels the same way.
After that, his mind goes all fuzzy and everything else in the world fades away, everything but the feeling of Scott moving inside him. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything like this and he wants so much to remember every detail. Their bodies slide all over the sheets, both grasping desperately at whatever patch of flesh they can. Taylor tangles his hand in Scott’s hair, pulls him in for kiss after kiss.
It’s all over much, much sooner than Taylor wants but he knows his body can’t handle more anyway. He aches everywhere but he doesn’t mind. He wants to feel it, wants the memory of it to be physical.
“You’re not so bad, Hanson,” Scott mumbles as he falls back against the pillow.
Taylor wakes to sunlight streaming in through the blinds and a searing pain in his temples. He is tangled in sheets that don’t feel right and for a minute he isn’t sure where he is. Then he sees the body next to him, the hair sticking up at crazy angles from a head buried in the pillow. He peels back the sticky covers and sits up, searches the floor for his cell phone.
Thirteen missed calls, four voicemails, twenty-seven text messages.
A handful from Zac and the rest from Isaac, of course. He groans, knowing he should have expected this. He can’t hide from his life, not even for a night. Scott stirs and mumbles something Taylor can’t quite make out. A moment later he feels the bed shifting and a hand on his shoulder.
“They sending out the search parties yet?”
Taylor chuckles softly. “I think that’s the next step.”
Scott stands and stumbles into a pair of jeans, doesn’t even bother with underwear and seems to shrug off the idea of a shirt, too. He steps into the kitchen and begins to fix a pot of coffee while Taylor searches the floor for his own clothes. He shoves his phone in his pocket without looking at half the messages. He can’t deal with it right then and he knows they’re all going to say the same thing anyway, just in different words.
“How much longer are you in Thailand?” Scott says, finally breaking the awkward silence.
Taylor stands and pulls his shirt over his head, trying to ignore how it smells. “Just two more days, I think. We’ve got some more radio things and a concert.”
Taylor isn’t sure what else to say, so he just accepts the coffee cup in silence. He takes a few sips of his own, then watches Scott leaned so casually against the counter, sipping his coffee.
“See something ya like?” Scott asks, his eyebrows wiggling.
“If I said no would you believe me?”
Scott laughs. “Not really.”
Taylor sets his coffee cup on the counter with an awful clatter that makes him wince. “Look, I should probably go… I can’t stay around here all day.”
“Yeah, yeah. You gotta get back out there and please the teenyboppers,” Scott says with a smirk.
“Right now I’m more worried about my brothers than the teenyboppers.”
He nods. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell them where you’ve been.”
“Right, like they really need to know about that,” Taylor says and immediately regrets it. “I mean, I just don’t–”
“Don’t want them to know?” Scott offers. “No need to associate yourself with me. I’m the fuckup, not you. Right?”
Taylor takes a step closer to Scott, feels the heat between them. “That’s not what I said. We’re both fuckups, okay? Just not quite the same way.”
“Well, now we’re fuckups together,” Scott says, his voice soft and low.
“I guess we are.”
Taylor pulls the coffee cup from Scott’s hand and sets it next to his on the counter. He grabs Scott’s face in both hands and closes the distance between their bodies. Their bodies are pressed tight together and he kisses him hard. He needs Scott to remember this one, to be certain that the memory will be burned onto those lips for good.
Scott is the one to end the kiss. He gives Taylor a gentle shove away and another smile.
“Go on back to your rockstar life now.”
“If I’m ever back here…” Taylor trails off, feeling his pockets to be sure he still has his wallet and the hotel card that will help him find his way back.
“You get to buy the drinks next time.”