Fifteen Frames Past Applause

Then he kissed him.

It was careful at first. A meeting, not a taking. Tobin felt the slight scrape of Eliam’s stubble, the cool damp left by the rain, the pause Eliam gave him before he pressed closer.

Tobin caught the front of Eliam’s shirt and pulled him in.

Eliam kissed him again.

The second kiss had less caution in it. Tobin opened his mouth under Eliam’s, and Eliam made a small sound that went through him with frightening precision. Tobin’s back met the stacked cases. Eliam stopped at once.

“Still yes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Eliam’s mouth returned to his. Tobin let himself have it: the pressure, the heat, the hand at his jaw holding him with care rather than control. For a few seconds, there was no camera, no radio booth, no room full of people waiting to make a story from them.

The fire door opened.

“Five minutes, Vale,” the stage manager called. He stopped when he saw them. “Sorry. Five minutes.”

Eliam stepped back.

Tobin kept hold of his shirt for one beat longer before letting go.

Eliam looked at him, mouth flushed, rain still dark at his collar.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“Go sing your song.”

Eliam smiled once. “I’ll see you after.”

Tobin watched him leave through the fire door, then raised his camera toward the empty freight elevator.

He did not take the picture.

He did not take the picture.

Two nights later, Nikhil found Tobin beneath the Milwaukee arena stands, changing batteries at a folding table beside the loading dock.

He placed his phone among the chargers.

“Tell me this is not trouble,” Tobin said.

“That depends how attached you are to being anonymous.”

The screen showed a nineteen-second video from Eliam’s official account. Black tape on concrete. A freight door lifting. Three empty stools beneath stage light. Tobin’s photographs cut in time with three shutter clicks and the opening guitar pattern from the radio appearance.

The caption read: FIFTEEN FRAMES PAST APPLAUSE. FRIDAY.

Comments moved faster than Tobin could read them.

Those are Tobin Reyes’s shots.

He did the Northbound series too.

Who is the photographer and why does Eliam sound different now?

Tobin handed the phone back.

“You cleared these?”

“You approved the twelve selects in Minneapolis,” Nikhil said. “No dressing rooms, no hotels, no private images. I kept the list.”

“I remember the list.”

“Fans have very sharp eyes.”

“They always have.”

Nikhil slipped the phone into his jacket. “They know your name. They do not know anything else.”

The wording sat badly with Tobin, though Nikhil had meant it as reassurance.

“The label is pleased,” Nikhil continued. “That should concern us all.”

“Why?”

“Because pleased people ask for more.” He looked toward the loading bay. “Eliam has already asked.”

Tobin found him an hour later in the rehearsal room.

The room had been cleared except for an upright piano, a folding chair, and Eliam’s guitar stand. Black curtains covered the mirrors. Work lights made every scuff in the floor visible.

Eliam stood near the piano in a washed-out gray shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

“You saw the teaser,” he said.

“Nikhil showed me.”

“Are you angry?”

“I have not decided.”

“That feels fair.”

Tobin set his camera bag on the floor. “What did you ask Nikhil for?”

“A cover portrait.”

Tobin looked at him.

“From you,” Eliam added.

“The campaign already has images.”

“It has fragments. I want one photograph.”

“Of you.”

“Sadly.”

“Why me?”

Eliam considered the question instead of reaching for an answer that sounded rehearsed.

“Because you made me look like a person before you made me look famous.”

Tobin looked down at the camera bag.

“We already had that argument,” he said.

“I know.”

“You called it invasive.”

“I was wrong.”

“You were frightened.”

“That too.”

The room went quiet except for the low vibration of the building around them. Forklifts moved somewhere beyond the wall. A drum case rolled over concrete.

Eliam pointed toward the chair. “Will you do it?”

Tobin took out the camera.

“Sit down,” he said.

Eliam sat.

“No guitar.”

He set it aside.

“No stage face.”

“That is less specific.”

“Then do not perform for me.”

Eliam gave a brief laugh. “You ask difficult things.”

“I am being hired for difficult things.”

Tobin lifted the camera.

The first frames were wrong. Eliam sat too straight, hands placed with care, chin angled toward a light that did not flatter him. The photographs looked expensive and empty.

“Stop,” Tobin said.

Eliam lowered his hands. “That bad?”

“You look like you are waiting for a magazine editor.”

“I have done that.”

“I know.”

Tobin adjusted the chair so it faced the closed door rather than the lights. Eliam watched him work.

“Look wherever you want,” Tobin said. “Just not at me.”

Eliam looked toward the door.

This changed him. His shoulders fell. One hand rested against his thigh. There was tiredness in his face, and irritation, and something steadier beneath both.

Tobin took six frames.

“Show me,” Eliam said.

Tobin crossed the room and held out the camera.

Eliam studied the screen.

“He looks like he is about to leave,” he said.

“Maybe he is.”

“I do that often.”

“Yes.”

Eliam handed the camera back, then did not release it.

“Can I?” he asked.

Tobin understood after a second. “Take it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Eliam eased the strap from Tobin’s neck. His knuckles touched the collar of Tobin’s shirt, light and deliberate. He carried the camera to the piano and set it down beside the closed lid.

“That is expensive equipment,” Tobin said.

“I know. I have treated it with more respect than most people treat me.”

“That was almost a good line.”

“I will work on it.”

He came back slowly.

Tobin stayed where he was.

“I keep wanting to do this in places where we have no time,” Eliam said.

“Do what?”

“Put the camera down. Kiss you. Ask you to come upstairs somewhere.”

Tobin’s mouth went dry.

Eliam stopped an arm’s length away. “I am not asking now.”

“You want to.”

“Yes.”

The directness was harder than seduction would have been.

Tobin looked at the black curtains, the work lights, the door that could open at any moment. Then he looked back at Eliam.

“I do not want this to start because we have learned how to steal minutes.”

Eliam’s face changed, not with anger.

“No,” he said. “Neither do I.”

“And I do not want privacy to become a prettier word for hiding.”

“It will not.”

“You cannot know that yet.”

“I can decide it.”

“Can you decide it when the label calls? When people start asking whether I made your song into a scandal?”

Eliam took that in.

“No,” he said at last. “I cannot decide what they do.”

“But you can decide what you do.”

“Yes.”

Tobin looked toward his camera on the piano.

“Then we wait until the tour ends,” he said. “No hotel rooms between cities. No five-minute warnings. No pretending work gave us permission.”

Eliam gave one short nod.

“After the final show,” he said.

“After the final show.”

“I hate that answer.”

“So do I.”

Eliam stepped closer, then stopped again. His hand lifted, resting near Tobin’s left wrist without covering the scar.

“I can wait,” he said.

Tobin met his eyes. “You will have to.”

For a moment, neither man moved.

Then Eliam let his hand fall.

“All right,” he said. “We still need a cover.”

Tobin went back to the piano and picked up his camera.

Eliam returned to the chair. This time he did not arrange himself. He sat facing the door, one sleeve slipping toward his wrist, his face turned slightly toward the sound of the arena preparing for him.

Tobin raised the camera.

“Look at me,” he said.

Eliam did.

Tobin took the photograph.

By the penultimate night, the cover portrait had been released.

Tobin’s credit sat beneath Eliam’s name in small type. Fans had found it anyway. They discussed the photograph, the song, the fact that Eliam looked as if someone had interrupted a thought rather than arranged him for sale.

At four, a barricade failure near the public entrance sent the crew through the loading yard instead. Salt filmed the pavement. Freight doors stood open behind rows of cases. The cold had worked into the metal rails.

Tobin came out with his camera bag over one shoulder.

Eliam followed three steps later.

The first shout came from beyond the chain-link fence.

“Vale.”

Tobin turned.

Three cameras rose at once. Then more.

“Is that Reyes?”

“Eliam, are you together?”

“Who is he to you?”

The shutter noise came quick and hard. Tobin saw the image before anyone filed it: Eliam beside him under the service light, his hand closing around Tobin’s elbow as a truck backed toward the curb. Nothing obscene. Nothing invented.

Enough.

Security moved them toward the van. Eliam let go as soon as they were clear of the truck, but the cameras had already seen it.