A final deleted scene from Just Playing

Michael is insecure about his looks, and Jamie tries to do something about it, but ends up doing it for himself.

***

“Maybe, uh…” he began, uncertain of quite how to put it into words. “Um… you could be… that is… Look, I’m taking this course,” he lied. “A photography course.”

This jolted Michael out of his miserable ruminations. “What? You never said.”

“Just to while away the time on tour, you know,” Jamie explained, feeling sheepish and translucent. “Distance learning sort of thing, you know.” His mind lighted on the object he’d seen in Cal’s bag the other day: a state-of-the-art camera, just waiting to be ‘borrowed’. “Wait a minute.”

He went to rummage around in the absent drummer’s luggage, and the camera wasn’t difficult to find. Back at the window, he waved it in Michael’s face. “Our first assignment is to take a picture in… um…” He looked around him. “Oh yeah, in near darkness! It’s some kind of light and darkness thing, you know…”

“A claire-obscure?”

“That’s the one,” Jamie smiled, relieved that there was a fancy word to back up his crazy story.

Michael seemed unconvinced. “Why didn’t you tell me about this course before?”

“Oh… well, there’s been so much, you know, with the tour and…” Jamie spread his hands. “Anyway, you’d be the perfect object for the assignment.”

Object? Did photographers call them objects?

“What, lots of sharp angles that make for interesting shadows?” Michael muttered sullenly.

“No, but you’re my friend. You’ll be natural. I won’t have to work as hard as if I’m photographing someone I don’t know that well.”

Michael shrugged. “So take your damned picture.”

“Not just one,” Jamie said carefully. “I have to do lots… you know, so that I can learn and… um, get better.” And, deep inside him, he dared the thought, And this might just be the way to tell you. A safe way.

Michael groaned. “You’re going to torture me throughout the whole tour, then?”

Jamie laughed, knowing that he’d already won. “That’s the idea.”

Michael leaned his head in his hand and gazed out of the window again. The weak light over his head glimmered in his hair, and his bangs threw an ominous shadow across his cheek.

Claire-obscure…

Moving slowly, Jamie raised the camera to his face and peered through the lens. He pressed his finger down, and the shutter clicked. Michael started and looked at him.

“Jeez, you don’t waste time, do you?”

Jamie hung his head in boyish mock remorse, and Michael lost a brief battle with a smile. Oh good, he’s already distracted, Jamie congratulated himself. It’s working! And as Michael gradually relaxed, he let the shutter work its magic, committing image after image of his sweet friend to film.

For his sake, he reminded himself, ignoring the tiny voice that said, And mine.

 

***

 

The photos were developed at their next stop. Red hot and burning, they lay in anxious wait beneath the shirts and the socks in Jamie’s bag until the evening’s concert – a little better this time – was finally over. Clutching them with equal parts excitement and fear, he retired to his bunk on the bus to screen them before presenting them to Michael. It wouldn’t do to include any botched pictures with weird grimaces and eyes at half-mast in his all-important persuasion campaign. Those would just mysteriously disappear before Michael even got to have a look.

Lying on his stomach, Jamie ripped the envelope open. He pulled out the small pile.

And then he just stopped.

The rumbling of wheels against asphalt receded behind the rushing in his ears. It’s just Michael, he told himself. My… friend.

But the face in the photo was… He grasped at words of poetry, completely alien to him. Shimmering? Intense?

Breath-taking.

No. He tore his eyes from the image. Not breath-taking! Christ, no. But… He looked back at it, held his breath. Michael was half turned away, his chin in his hand – a slender, graceful hand, draping itself across his cheek. His hair was shielding half his eye, and his long lashes threw fuzzy shadows on his skin. And his mouth… it was moulded by a master, all the lines perfectly juxtaposed to form the prototype for mouths everywhere.

Christ! Jamie threw the pile down, but the pictures just spread out, revealing Michael’s gradual, almost cinematic transformation from oblivious to surprised and then on to laughing and happy. Every image a perfect moment, stolen from the clutches of time. Not a single one of them messed up or blurry. Just a string of masterpieces, caught on film by a freak accident. Jamie was no photographer, and Michael was no model, and yet between them, this world of beauty had been created.

Swallowing, Jamie gathered the pictures and once again went to sit opposite Michael by the window – the very place where the pictures had been taken. Michael was looking a little happier tonight, but he was still tired, exhausted from another show where he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.

“I’ll play better tomorrow,” he said as soon as he saw Jamie.

“We all have ups and downs, Mike.”

“I’d prefer to be magnificent all the time.”

Jamie chuckled. “Forget it. Did you take a look at the audience? Most of them were so high that we could have played one chord all night and they’d have been lyrical about it.”

Michael sighed. “I… I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jamie.”

A current raced through Jamie’s body, making everything tingle. He forced a laugh to play it down. “Anyway, the photos are done.” He tried for lightness, but instead he sounded completely freaked out. Michael noticed, and visibly braced himself for the torture to come.

“Alright, hit me with your worst.”

Knowing that nothing would convince him but the truth, Jamie just handed him the pile. Seeing the first picture, Michael grew very still. His lips parted slightly, as if on the verge of saying something, but he didn’t make a sound. Jamie held his breath and watched him as he leafed through the pile, growing stiller by the second.

When Michael finally looked up, his eyes were glistening. “This is how you see me?” he whispered.

Jamie choked. What kind of question was that?

Michael seemed to realize his faux-pas and waved a hand to erase it. “I mean, you really have an eye for…” he fumbled, cheeks reddening. “You’ll do well on your course,” he finally mumbled and handed the photos back.

“So can I continue? You know, taking photos of you?”

Blushing deeper, Michael just nodded.

Not wanting the moment to slip through his fingers, Jamie grabbed the camera, charged with colour film this time. Michael’s eyes widened at the sight, and then he composed himself, gazing straight at Jamie through the lens. Feeling a fine trembling start in the pit of his stomach, Jamie hurriedly pressed the button and let the machine capture the soul of his friend in a series of miniature explosions. Michael kept his countenance for a few seconds, but then the tension caught up with him and his lips pulled apart in a helpless, embarrassed grin. Willing his heart to stop beating so fucking hard against his ribs, Jamie kept the button pressed down, to catch that glorious smile in unblurred glory on film.

“Okay, cut it out now,” Michael muttered and stood up. “Don’t waste it all on me.” Clumsy with self-consciousness, he made for the sleeping compartment, out of the view of the lens. But Jamie wasn’t done. Drawn by something stronger than himself, he followed. “You’re going to document that too, or what?”

“What?”

“I’m undressing,” Michael explained. “You going to snap a photo of that, too?”

Jamie wanted to say no, but couldn’t formulate a thing.

“Okay, do what you like,” Michael shrugged, all but batting his lashes at his would-be paparazzo. Then he started worming out of his jacket and shirt. Unable to move, Jamie just looked at him, hand still clutching the camera. Michael glanced over his shoulder and met his gaze, shy and provocative at once. His cheeks were flushed, setting off the lion-tawny of his eyes. Jamie wanted to turn away, but had no power over his limbs.

Before long, Michael stood entirely naked in the narrow compartment, back towards him, not a thread on his body. After all this time, Jamie couldn’t stop his eyes from raking shamelessly over those curves and lines, tracing the graceful male figure that was his best friend. Everything about him was beautiful. Absolutely everything. Shapely calves transforming to tight thighs, muscle curving into abdomen and stomach, the hint of a backlit smudge of dark hair.

Jamie wanted to travel further upwards, to take in Michael’s arms and chest, the soft mass of hair tumbling down his back… but he came no further. Couldn’t coax his eyes away from that shapely ass. He traced the curves with mental fingertips, feeling his jeans shrink on his cock.

Hands strangely steady, he saw himself lift the camera. This is not why Cal brought it with him, his brain pointed out, but there was an empty space where his ability to process rational thought used to be. And when Michael half turned to say something, Jamie’s finger squeezed what he almost thought of as the trigger. The shutter clicked, and Michael gasped. His eyes locked with Jamie’s. Dropping the camera on his bunk, Jamie spread his hands in a mortified ‘whoops’ gesture and then turned away to hide his burning cheeks. He was going crazy. There was no other explanation. He’d completely lost it.

But even as he scolded himself, the one thing that dominated his mind was the day when this film would be developed and he would be holding the picture of naked Michael in his hand.

His left hand.