Chapter Thirty-Five
Back then
Brad flew to London to discuss Tristan’s options after series one of Better Half.
In the seven years Tristan had been on his books, Brad had never once left California for a client visit.
Brad conducted business from a Herman Miller chair in his Century City office with the blinds drawn and a protein shake sweating rings onto his desk, and if you wanted face time, you came to him.
So when Tristan opened the door of his Kensington flat to find Brad on the step with a carry-on and a suit bag slung over one shoulder, looking as though the journey from Heathrow had taken years off his life, the message landed before he’d said a word.
“You look terrible,” Tristan told him.
“I’ve been underground, Tristan. Physically underground.
There were fucking buskers in the tunnels.
” Brad pushed past him into the hallway and lowered his bag to the floor.
“I need a shower, I need a coffee, and I need you to explain to me why this country runs a subway system that smells like a gym locker in July.”
Brad looked around the flat, taking in the natural light and the view over the mews. “Nice place. Bathroom?”
Tristan pointed in its general direction and Brad disappeared.
He re-emerged twenty minutes later smelling of Tristan’s shampoo, wearing the same trousers and a fresh shirt he’d pulled from his bags, and dropped a stack of scripts onto the kitchen island.
They landed with a thud heavy enough to rattle the fruit bowl.
Tristan counted eleven, each one bound in the standard agency cover with Brad’s notes tabbed along the margins.
“These,” Brad said, pulling up a stool and jabbing a finger at the stack, “are the ones worth reading. I’ve got another thirty on the server that aren’t, but these eleven are the ones I need you to look at before you go back for series two.”
He started pulling scripts out and dealing them on the counter like playing cards.
“Period thriller, Netflix, Sebastian Lelio directing. Legal drama, limited series, Hulu, not prestige but the money’s stupid.
Indie, A24, two-hander, shooting in Ireland, will probably win a Spirit Award and get you on every list that matters.
” He tapped each one as he named it. “Ensemble piece, Searchlight, big cast, small part, but it’s the part everyone remembers.
And this one.” He slid a script to the centre of the island.
“This one, Tristan, is the one that gets you a series-regular conversation at a table where they don’t usually let the pretty boys sit. ”
Tristan picked it up and turned it over. The title page was sparse: The Kennedys, HBO, created by a name he recognised from the last three shows that had swept the Emmys.
“We’re going to use the Better Half momentum,” Brad said, cracking his knuckles.
“Every trades piece that’s run on you in the last month, every review that mentioned your name before Birrell’s.
There have been four, Tristan. I’ve counted.
All of that is capital, and capital has a shelf life.
We spend it now, while casting directors are still IMDb stalking you, or we watch it depreciate. ”
Tristan leaned on the counter and let himself enjoy it. For three years Brad had managed his expectations downward and spun rejections as “not the right fit for you anyway”. He’d flown six thousand miles to sit in Tristan’s kitchen and tell him that eleven different projects wanted him.
“And the series two contract negotiations?” Tristan asked.
Brad’s grin showed teeth. “That’s the other reason I’m here in person.
You don’t discuss numbers for a show this hot over the phone.
You need to do it in person, where they can see how relaxed you are about walking away.
” He picked up the A24 script and waved it.
“This is your leverage, kid. They know you have options now. The quote goes up.”
? ? ?
Brad got him everything he wanted.
The series two negotiations took three days, all of them in a conference room at the Charlotte Street Hotel, where Brad sat across from the BBC’s Head of Drama and two business affairs executives with the eleven scripts fanned out in front of him like a poker hand.
Tristan wasn’t in the room for any of it.
Brad’s rule was that the talent stays invisible during the money conversation, because the moment a creative walks into a negotiation and someone appeals to their passion for the project, the fee almost always drops by fifteen per cent.
The call came on Thursday afternoon while Tristan was running lines in his kitchen.
“I doubled your episode rate,” Brad said, without preamble.
“You’re welcome. I also got you back-end participation on international sales.
And, listen to this, a contractual right of consultation on any script changes to Ben’s arc.
It sounds like a nothingburger, but it means they can’t kill your character off or pivot him into a subplot without having a conversation with you first.”
“Amazing.”
“They didn’t even fight me on the consultation clause. You know what that means? It means they’re more scared of losing you than they are of setting a precedent. That’s the position you want to be in, kid. That’s the fucking position. You are fucking them now, pretty boy.”
Tristan rested his forehead on the kitchen cupboard. Double his current rate. The BBC didn’t pay like that unless the alternative was watching your lead walk off to Netflix.
“So that covers series two,” Brad said. “Now let’s talk about the gap between the series two wrap and its press tour. You have a window. About four months, depending on how the BBC stacks the publicity schedule. And I want you to use that window on The Kennedys.”
They’d debated the project twice already.
It was HBO’s limited series on the political dynasty, shooting in Sydney and regional New South Wales because the tax incentives were absurd and the showrunner was Australian.
The cast attached so far read like an awards-season fantasy: two Oscar nominees and a British theatre actor who’d just swept the Oliviers, all circling the pilot.
Brad had been pushing it since his first morning at the flat.
Tristan had read it cover to cover that same evening, sitting on his sofa with a glass of wine going warm beside him, and by the third act he’d known. The role was Bobby: idealistic, reckless, the brother who believed in the project harder than anyone and paid for it.
“You’d be spending four months in Sydney,” Brad said. “Then you’d be in London for the series two press tour with weeks to spare.”
“Go for it.”
Brad laughed. “Already done. I called their casting director from the hotel lobby after the BBC meeting. She’s sending the paperwork tonight. You’ll be on a plane to Sydney inside of six months.”
Tristan hung up and stood in his kitchen for a long time, holding his mobile and grinning up at the ceiling.
? ? ?
James arrived at Tristan’s flat after ten, slipping in through the mews entrance with his collar turned up and a baseball cap pulled low over the most recognisable face in the country.
Tristan caught him in the hallway before he’d finished hanging up his coat. He fisted James’s shirt in his hands, hauled him down, and kissed him hard enough to knock the coat from his grip.
“Good evening to you too,” James managed, between kisses. “Dare I ask what’s prompted—”
“Shut up.” Tristan steered him through the bedroom door and shoved him onto the bed, climbing on top of him before the mattress had stopped bouncing. He stripped James’s shirt over his head, went for his belt next, and had his trousers halfway down his thighs before James caught his wrist.
“Tristan.” James looked up at him, flushed. “You’re aware that foreplay exists as a concept. Come on, I need a little bit of romance.”
“Later.” Tristan worked James’s trousers the rest of the way off and tossed them in the direction of the chair that had become the designated landing zone for James’s clothes.
They missed. His own t-shirt went next, then his joggers, kicked free and forgotten before he settled his bare weight over James’s hips.
“I’m just not interested in it right now. ”
He reached over to the bedside drawer for what they needed and slicked James up, working his cock in long, firm strokes while James’s head tipped into the pillows and his fingers dug into the meat of Tristan’s thighs. Then Tristan lined himself up, sank down, and took him in one steady drop.
He set his hands flat on James’s chest and found a confident rhythm.
He’d learnt James’s body, and his own, in the months since their first time at Windsor.
Tristan rolled his hips in a tight circle that dragged James’s cock against the spot inside him that turned his own thighs to water.
He did it again, and again, until James’s breathing had gone ragged beneath him and his stomach jumped under Tristan’s palms.
“Christ, Tris.” James gripped his hips, thumbs pressing in, trying to steer the pace, but Tristan batted his hands away and pinned them flat on the mattress on either side of his head.
“My show.” He bore down and rolled forward, taking James in deep, his cock dragging wet against James’s stomach with every pass. “All I want you to do right now is lie there.”
James laughed, breathless and wrecked, so Tristan tightened around him in retaliation and watched his laughter dissolve into a groan.
Tristan got a hand around his own cock and worked himself in time with his movements. He came hard, and then his rhythm fell apart entirely. His thighs were shaking, his palm braced uselessly on James’s sternum, the commanding roll of his hips reduced to a graceless tremor.
James took the opening. He gripped Tristan’s waist, fingers digging in, and he planted both feet on the mattress and thrust up into him. Tristan cried out and folded forward onto James’s chest.
James held him where he wanted him and fucked up into the tight clutch of his body until his own rhythm broke and he buried himself to the root, spilling into Tristan. James’s heart pounded, and his fingers tangled into the damp hair at the back of Tristan’s neck.
They lay like that until their breathing settled, Tristan still on top of him, still full of him, neither of them in any rush to separate.
“So,” James said eventually, his voice rough. “Would you like to tell me what I’ve done to deserve that, so I can arrange to do it again at the earliest opportunity?”
Tristan propped himself up on one elbow, eased off James with a wince that was mostly theatrical, and pulled the duvet over both of them before settling into his chest. His fingertips found a small cut scabbing over high on James’s left cheekbone, and traced its edges.
“What’s this from?”
“Muir’s dog, Ariel.” James closed his eyes under the touch. “She jumped up at the gate this morning and caught me with a claw. It’s nothing.”
Tristan ran his thumb over the scab with a delicacy that the wound absolutely did not warrant. “Your Majesty has a blemish. The nation will be beside itself.”
“The nation will cope. Are you going to tell me what that was about, or am I to assume you’ve simply reached the gymnastic phase of your sexual development and I should brace accordingly?”
Tristan grinned into James’s collarbone. “Brad’s set me up with an amazing contract for series two of Better Half, Jams. They’ve doubled my rate. Doubled it. Brad sat in that room for three days and came out of it with every single thing I wanted.”
“That’s extraordinary, Tris. You’ve earned it.”
“And there’s more.” Tristan shifted up onto his elbow, too wired to deliver this lying down.
“There’s a project from HBO. A limited series about the Kennedys, filming in Sydney after we wrap series two.
I got Bobby Kennedy, and I’ll be third on the call sheet!
The writing is…I can’t even describe it.
Think Aaron Sorkin on The Newsroom. The cast they have attached is insane, and Brad’s already got it locked in. ”
“Sydney, huh?”
“Only for four months. Pre-production and principal photography, March to June. I’ll be home for the Better Half series two press tour with time to spare.”
“That’s a shame,” James said. “March to June are the months when Sandringham, Windsor, and Balmoral are at their best, and I had rather grand plans for a tour of all three. There’d be deer in the park.
Leeks the size of your forearm in the gardens, and a great many walks through heather-covered hills. ”
Tristan looked for the careful blankness James wore when he was absorbing a blow. It wasn’t there.
James drew close and kissed him, hauling him in tight. When James pulled away, his thumb traced along Tristan’s jaw. “But I suppose there’s always next year.”
“Yes,” Tristan said in all earnestness.