Georg glanced up--fifth time in the last two minutes--and re-memorized the exact curve of Tom's neck where it disappeared into the collar of his t-shirt, the way his sharp shoulder jutted carelessly out of the bunched material of his hoodie. He wondered if Tom let the jacket slide off like that on purpose, if he knew how...vulnerable it made him look, buried in all that cloth, his actual frame so slight that the rare glimpses of it underneath three or four layers made him look ridiculously fragile. Part of Georg wondered how Tom couldn't know--Tom was Bill's brother, and the twins were master manipulators.

Then again, Tom looked so utterly lost in the music they were trading back and forth across two feet of space that the rest of Georg easily convinced him that, no, Tom was just Tom, and he wasn't aware of anything more at the moment than the play of his fingers over the steel strings that may as well have been extensions of his sinewy arm. Tom had no idea that the fall of his dreadlocks over his back and their slow slide down across the hollow of his throat just enthralled Georg; that the bassist had no greater desire at this instant than just to drop his bass on the couch and reach out for that narrow shoulder, pull aside the fabric there to see the pale curve of Tom's skin over the delicate bone. Just to remind himself that Tom was real, beneath the layers and the obliviousness, that he was tangible.

The part of Georg that knew Tom wasn't thinking about anything but guitar chords was infinitely glad that this was the case. Otherwise Tom surely would have noticed by now.

~*~

Tom shifted his left shoulder for the umpteenth time in the last two minutes, pushing back his encroaching dreadlocks where they tickled the side of his neck. This had the added benefit of shrugging his hoodie down a couple more inches, which Tom had always felt to be rather a good look on him. It reminded him of male models in the inside covers of glossy magazines with their carefully disheveled hair and skewed blazers.

He could never pull off the bare-chested blazer ensemble, though, not in a million years and half of that million to work on his tan...Georg could model for Calvin Klein any old day of the week, but Tom didn't feel dressed unless he could barely find his hands inside the sleeves of his jacket. He was comforted by the feel of soft cloth encasing his arms, covering the heels of his hands, protecting his shoulders. He'd borrowed a pair of Bill's jeans once--just a normal, loose-fitting pair that Bill only wore around the bus--and had felt so thoroughly naked he had actually been fighting a blush when he walked out of his hotel room. The thought of people seeing his legs just crawled over his skin like a poisonous odor. He hated not feeling safe in his own clothes.

But the shoulder-out-of-the-hoodie move was a special move he reserved only for trying to impress. And he had been doing it so long in front of Georg that he scarcely even realized he did it anymore.

He wondered, fleetingly, as he glanced quickly up to observe Georg's downturned face and the steady, determined plucking of his fingers on his bass, if Georg ever noticed how he exposed his shoulder like that. In a way, Tom couldn't help thinking with a mental sneer, it was an awfully girly move to pull--bare some "skin" just to get a guy's attention. But Tom couldn't help it; showing off around Georg and for Georg was second nature, practically first nature, at this point. He'd been doing it since long before he understood that's what he was doing.

But Georg never seemed to see it, or if he did he never got the hint, and Tom thought he was possibly being too subtle. Still, it wasn't like he could just throw down his guitar and jump across that space into Georg's lap, like that deeply-buried part of him so badly wanted to do. It was hint and nudge and wink and nothing else, and Tom decided it was just easier, for now--and less painful--to concentrate on his music, instead.