Tim almost stopped himself as he unclasped his hands, then almost stopped himself again when he placed one hand over Harvey’s.

Yes, this blocking did make the difficult choices easier. If Quentin put them face to face tomorrow, he would have to turn away.

A chill crawled through his guts as Harvey slowly pulled his hand out from under Tim’s. That was inevitable. Tim sat up to give him some space, but Harvey’s fingers twisted tightly into his damp hair before he could stand. With his free hand, Harvey made a finger-gun, pointing it right at his bare chest. The fingertips against his chest might as well have been a real gun because suddenly Tim felt like he was in trouble. Shit, he’d made it weird. He shouldn’t have touched his hand like that, it was too much.

“I’m bigger than you,” Harvey stated. Tim wanted to find it funny, but it wasn’t.

“I know that.” Tim felt like a wet noodle next to Harvey Keitel. Intellectually, he knew Harvey wanted to intimidate him as a tactic. Maybe the discussion had come too easily for the actor’s liking. Maybe he wanted a little more tension, more debate. Tim understood Harvey’s method, why he was trying to disarm him, but it didn’t make uneasy feeling any less real.

“I may not have a loaded gun, but I could hurt you if I wanted to.” He gave Tim’s hair a short tug, making him blink with a start. “Very easily.”

“I – I know,” Tim stammered. “I get it.” For the first time since they’d started working together, Tim tried to pull away, genuinely.

But he couldn’t. So he sat there on the edge of the cot with his pulse racing beneath the man’s fingertips.

“I’m under the impression that you’re not taking this seriously.”

“Yes I am!” This was probably the biggest job he’d ever had, and he knew it. “Christ. I told you, I get it, will you let me get dressed already?” Tim wasn’t sure if he was trying to get angry, but his voice came out thin and uncertain.

“You and I may have a comfortable working relationship, but we are two very different people. Don’t get too comfortable.”

Tim just nodded. Harvey was making a point about their characters. It was his own goddamn fault for calling Harvey by his character name. It was very generous, what the man was giving him now, but it wasn’t easy to know what to do with it. Without anything left to offer, he said it again: “I’m sorry.”

I’m a cop. I’m so sorry, Larry.

Tim watched the scene play out in his head. He was so deep inside his own mind in that moment that he didn’t realize it at first when Harvey’s ‘hand’-gun dissolved, and his fingers moved around his arm instead. Tim sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth when Harvey tugged a handful of his hair, but his instinct was to ask for more – not to stop it.

Of course. There it was.

“Okay, okay,” Tim sighed, his neck straining against the grip in his wet hair. “You win.” Fucking method actors.

Harvey pulled him closer. “What do I win?”

Tim swallowed hard, wondering when Harvey was going to drop the act. The man’s grip only tightened, their eyes locked together so hard that Tim had to close his before... he wasn’t even sure what. Before something bad happened. Before he saw something he couldn’t handle.

“Why are you doing this,” Tim managed to ask, just above a whisper.

Harvey didn’t respond right away. “Because now I know that you want me to.”

Tim gasped loudly in utter surprise, pulling away reflexively when he felt lips brush his throat.

“Whoa.” Tim tensed up all over, the little hairs on his arms standing on end. He blinked his eyes open... then immediately relaxed into what could have been considered an embrace to the untrained eye, despite nearly a foot of space between them. Harvey’s hands at his thigh and in his hair were steady, but hungry.

“I’m just messing with you,” Harvey spoke quietly, his voice a little rough. “You know that, right?”

Tim shook his head. Then nodded. He didn’t know what he knew anymore, but he knew that this wasn’t normal. Even for actors.

“I lost my senses back there,” Tim confessed, unable to place the vague familiarity of his own words. “But I’m fine now. I get it, all of it, don’t worry. I’m just... stressed. But I’m not confused.”

Harvey pushed Tim’s damp hair back from his forehead again, just helping himself. It was that shameless confidence that drew Tim in even deeper. But then the hand cupped his face and froze, as though Harvey was catching himself.

“You’ve got to tell me to back off.” Harvey, as usual, was pretending to be less generous than he really was. He was giving Tim the opportunity to put an abrupt end to this behaviour without feeling he was letting anyone down. He could obey the verbal cue or he could obey the physical cue. It was Tim’s choice and Harvey wasn’t giving him space to be wrong. “Just say the words. Tell me to stop.”

Tim shook his head. They couldn’t stop now.

Harvey’s hand was around the back of his neck suddenly, pulling him in, pressing their mouths together. It was eager, natural and hungry. Tim couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed a man but he knew it had never felt this good or right. Tim dipped his head away for a moment, catching the breath that had rushed out of him, but even as little as the tip of Harvey’s nose touching his cheek pulled him back into the kiss, deeper and wetter.

Tim felt he should say something responsible, or slow down at the very least. Harvey had a lady, although that was as good as over, from what little Tim knew. He wanted to say that this would make working together difficult, but he knew they could deal with it. They had already established a certain level of intimacy, so what was a few more nudges?

Once his hand found Harvey’s firm chest and felt his heart slamming against his palm, that was it. No questions. No answers. Just the two of them.

He tore at Harvey’s shirt, hardly willing to break away from his lips long enough to peel the fabric over his head. He wanted to touch him and see him. Their bodies were so complimentary.

“You’re really built,” Tim murmured, running his fingers over the man’s firm, smooth chest once he had stripped him of his t-shirt. The first time he saw Taxi Driver, it was impossible not to imagine how Jodi Foster must have felt with those big, solid arms wrapped around her. It was a novel thought, but he was far from star-struck, despite the fact that this person had given one of the performances that made him want to become an actor. That was years ago. Here and now, this was just Harvey... the generous, warm, hardworking guy he was doing a gig with. Surely it didn’t matter that his heart was about to explode from his chest under the tender, needy caress of his hands and lips. They were having some fun. No big deal.

“I like the way you’re built,” Harvey told him with a genuine admiration.

“Ah fuck, Harvey... I must be outta my mind,” Tim stammered, straddling Harvey’s lap as the man guided his thighs and peeled his towel away. Tim was loosely aware that he’d lost his American accent again but he didn’t bother trying to find it.

“You and me both,” said Harvey. His mouth was all over Tim’s chest, tonguing his nipples, arms sliding around his back. “You’re so sexy...”

“Shut up.” Tim turned his face away when he felt it redden with annoyance, his hair falling into his eyes.

“I know you don’t know it. It’s true.” Harvey’s hand came up to his cheek to bring him down nose to nose again. “Remember that night after your non-audition? You wouldn’t read the scene so Quentin started getting you drunk...”

Tim laughed, spreading his fingers across Harvey’s shoulders. “Yeah. You got pissed off and left.”

Harvey shook his head with an amused grin forming at the corner of his mouth. “I had to get out of there. You get pretty damn friendly when you drink and I just...” Any airy laugh burst out of him. “I had to leave.”

Tim felt his smile fade a little, but the muscle in his chest only pounded away at his ribs even harder. It was strange. Finding himself naked in Harvey’s lap had come on somewhat spontaneously for him. Perhaps it put them on level ground though. Harvey had wanted him since they met, if he understood correctly, but Tim had been admiring the other man on screen for over ten years, with absolutely no real fantasy of knowing him personally.

Tim quieted his mind and moved his fingers to the belt at Harvey’s jeans.

“What makes you feel good?” Harvey asked. He was so focused on Tim that he barely seemed to notice when his belt and fly were open, making no attempt to help Tim slide them off.

“This. You.” Tim leaned in to press a kiss beneath Harvey’s jaw.

“Mm.” Harvey laced his fingers through Tim’s hair, encouraging more of the attention he was getting from the lips and tongue at his neck. “What else? Tell me what you’re into, I’ll make it happen.”

“I... I’m up for anything.” If he was too indifferent Harvey would see through him, so he decided to be honest. “I don’t do this very often. What do you want?”

“I wanna fuck you till you scream,” Harvey groaned, seeming completely unbothered by Tim’s lack of experience with this kind of situation. His hands trailed down to squeeze Tim’s ass.

Tim drew in a deep, shaky breath, almost painfully hard now, leaking all over the man’s rough jeans.

“Shit, Harvey. I think there’s people around...” As soon as he said it he hoped it was taken at face value and not a rejection to the idea as a whole. Harvey’s words made him feel weak and crazy and he wanted it so bad. He wasn’t sure how he felt about doing it in his trailer though, at work.

“We’re all alone,” Harvey assured him, running his hands up and down Tim’s thighs. “We can take this elsewhere but you do realize you’re really gonna come to your senses as soon as you get some fresh air.”

“This isn’t an illusion,” Tim said, more to himself than to Harvey. “I really want you. Just not... here.” They were both going to have to make their way back home after anyway so why not do this comfortably? He leaned in and tasted Harvey’s mouth again, just for a moment. “Anyway, I don’t... have anything... in my trailer.”

When Harvey wrapped his arms around him and deepened the kiss once more, Tim knew that they could finish themselves off in under two minutes right then and there without much fuss, but he wanted more. He really did. And maybe one or both of them really would come to their senses somewhere along the way between the set and home but it was worth risking that for real privacy and a real bed. It was worth knowing if this was a choice that Tim and Harvey were making, or if it was only their characters and exhaustion eating away at their judgement.

Tim pressed his forehead to Harvey’s, zipped up the man’s pants and buckled his belt for him again. His fingers were craving the warm, hard flesh he hadn’t had a chance to experience yet. It wasn’t easy to walk away from this, even temporarily. Not just from Harvey, but from the intimacy he hadn’t had off-camera in a long time.

“You get dressed,” Harvey suggested as Tim crawled off his lap. “I’ll get a taxi.”