1-3
504 Words
AT DINNER LIAM IS SIGNIFICANTLY more awake, dressed, and, once he eats some food, even manages to scold Ali for her language earlier. He doesn’t seem to particularly care about her assessment of his life skills.
He does, however, ask curiously about Alex’s diet and what his plans are long-term for his body when Alex avoids the potatoes (too starchy), the carrots (too sugary), and the salad dressing (too everything). From anyone else, Alex would be annoyed, but Liam lacks filters and is interested in the process rather than policing Alex’s habits. But Alex still isn’t quite sure how to answer him, especially when he really wants potatoes and carrots and salad dressing. It’s just not an option while he needs the physique of a Viking warrior.
Alex had bulked up a lot for this role before he’d even left L.A., but now, here, with a grueling workout routine and a grueling filming schedule, his body has changed even more. He feels out of proportion to the rest of the world and his necessary food choices are misery-making. He would rather turn his attention to convincing Claudia that mashed peas, which he also can’t eat, are actually super delicious.
He reconsiders when she flings a spoonful of them into his now shoulder-length hair.
“Dealing with a baby as a Viking is the least glamorous thing I have ever done.” Alex reaches across Paul for more napkins.
Carly snorts. “Yeah, keep saying that, big-time movie star.”
“Can we not?” Alex says.
“Look, I know you’re not mainlining Variety out here on the side of a glacier,” Carly says. “But you have buzz and Chris Brecker, all-American hunk, as your co-star.”
Alex swipes ineffectually at the peas in his hair with a napkin. “Yeah, and there’s been buzz for every other movie I’ve been in too, and that’s amounted to cutting room floor, great reviews but no one saw it, and wow at least Icarus Project didn’t tank as hard as Jupiter Ascending.”
“Or, you know, Icarus himself,” Paul notes.
“You’re going to be an action hero heartthrob!” Carly says, pitching her voice up into the register of the younger fans Alex has always been most unsettled by.
“Not counting on it,” he says. “Gleefully not counting on it.”
“I’m counting on it,” Paul interjects.
“Every time I get him on video chat hashtag-SushiGuy here has been talking about the press junket as apparently some sort of frenzy even worse than when I started on Fourth,” Alex says. #SushiGuy had been the internet’s label for Paul back when they first started dating and no one knew who Paul was. Now Paul has devoted fans of his own.
“He’s not wrong,” Liam says as he tears off another hunk of the dark Icelandic rye bread Alex is proud of himself for making without burning the house down.
“Not you, too.”
“What? I was stuck with you all day, every day when you were trying to cope with being everybody’s favorite mystery gay. Welcome to round two. This time if you punch a photographer they might even notice.”
“I never punched a photographer.”
Liam tears off another hunk of bread. “Yeah, but you wanted to.”
“Can we talk about Scism instead?” Alex pleads. Hearing about Liam’s new development project based on one of Victor’s old show ideas again is way better than talking about Alex’s new-and-unlikely-to-be-improved levels of fame.
***
- Writer
