Summary: Brendan's a model agent with a rapidly disappearing client list. He's got months to turn it around or he's out of a job and there's little else that will fund his heavy drinking and little black book of male models. But then he faces his biggest challenge, presented with hot new talent straight off the street: Steven hay and with his latest contract banning him from so much as touching a client, how long can he resist?
A/N: Originally this was going to be another part to my AU series but the length was getting big so I thought I'd make it into chapters of a new fic. I hope you enjoy.
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Cover Boy
Brendan's eyes scroll over the email attachment and he picks up the phone. "Yeah, put me through to Foxy, will you? I ain't got all day." Brendan can see the receptionist roll her eyes from where he has the blind pulled down with his fingers. He knows Warren isn't in a meeting and is slumped in his office, in a post-lunch doze, but no doubt she'll be screening all his calls anyway.
"Putting you on hold," Louise says and he's got a right mind to wrench open the door and give her an earful – only there's a pretty dotting of potential clients (and one ugly short kid) sat outside and he's already been giving a verbal warning for swearing at Louise. She knows full well why she was hired and that featured in one of his blue tirades.
Of course, he knows exactly why he holds court at Foxy Modelling as their top agent too. Or at least, he used to know, before his bank took a solid thrashing from bar receipts and his client list had evaporated faster than you can say: blow job. He used to be at the top of his game. But now, far from being opposed to mixing work and pleasure, he finds the two make for a fun lifestyle. For a night at least. Anything more and it revolts him. Divas, princesses, vanity queens the lot of them. When pinching and biting and spanking are off the menu because they've got a cover shoot in the morning, then Brendan's the first to push them towards the exit – with or without their designer jeans.
And he doesn't even go near the women; that's just the male models.
Brendan doesn't wait for the plinky-plinky hold music, he smashes the receiver into its holder and strides out of his office and straight towards the stairs, taking them two at a time. Louise's mauve lips fall apart but she knows better than to cross him.
His palm drums the office door and he hears the chunky heave of Warren's voice telling him to come in. For someone who runs a modelling agency he's in a mess. Brendan's pretty sure yesterday's lunch has left a sticky scar on his shirt. Brendan, like always, is immaculate and trim in his suit. It only takes him a moment to realise why they're not in the opposite arrangement - him as boss. Warren's never fucked a model, never punched a photographer. He's just banged Louise and put a ring on her finger. And that's professionally acceptable. Fucking and forgetting models isn't.
"Let me guess," Warren says, minimising whatever's on his screen. "You've come about the new contract."
"You think?" Brendan says, unblinking. He shuts the door behind him and leans on his fists so he cranes over the table. "So you gotta babysit me now, is that it?"
"I've got a business to think about." Warren gestures to the swanky office block they sit in. It's the most influential northern modelling agency. Anyone loitering north of London with a beautiful face knows who they are. "It's a precaution."
"I read the fucking small print Warren," Brendan says his head tilting to the side. He knows that he scares Warren a little because he's wired differently – not just the gay thing, but he's unpredictable and Warren is anything but.
"You don't shit where you eat, Brendan. New rule." Warren stands across from Brendan, to the left, wall adorned with framed photo shoots of male models. "You want to know why you're losing me money? You're a liability. You fuck your way through the boys and you never call them. And if you do it's a proposition or a deal that says 'If you scratch my back I'll get you a billboard…'. D'you see what I'm saying?"
Brendan shakes his head and his eyes roll with it. His laugh is empty. "Bull. Shit." He may have promised a modelling job to some pretty git once but it was only because he was practically sex starved and he needed it.
"So, new contract new terms. Lay a finger on any of the latest intake and I'll make sure you never see another pay-slip again not here and not anywhere. Once your name's mud in this business no other company is going to want to touch you. So believe me when I tell you, Brendan, that if I find out you've so much as stuck your tongue down their throat then you're out."
Brendan scowls at the opposite wall, the one covered in images of women that don't even register so much as a flicker. "Give me the girls then. No danger there." He's twitchy now, some of the cockiness gone.
Warren's laughter rolls like a barrel down a hill. "Nice try Casanova but you know as well as I do that Nancy manages the girls. And, as in-touch with your feminine side as you are, Nancy's the best I've got and the girls feel safe with her."
Brendan wants to explode or walk out. He's already sick of this place and this city. He's stuck in this never ending rut and if he had friends or family in England then he'd fuck right off and start again. But he's got nothing and no one. It's how he likes it most of the time; the lone wolf; but other times it feels so suffocating, like a trap.
He leaves Warren's office in a storm, vaguely registering the reminder Warren calls out with, to explain that he's got the latest sign-ups coming in today. Brendan knows the ones in the corridor aren't his to worry about; they're for lower down the food chain – the spaghetti adverts and the chlamydia pamphlets. Later on he's got the country wide talent crop coming in.
He thought it was an urban myth at first, that idea of talent being spotted in the streets or at train stations, but then he started seeing the results. They're always the ones that look best in print, or runways or better still, spread out across his sheets. He's never cared much for the preened or pretty – the ones who walk in with sunglasses and shrunken t-shirts and shave until they look like sexless Ken dolls. Usually they're workshy and arrogant and lousy in bed. But the ones plucked by researchers, those who probably grew up in a terrace and expected to work in a garage – those he likes.
He likes to teach, for them to approach him with wide, eager eyes. Their first taste of the business in his hands. He likes inexperience and naivety. He likes tossing them to the lions and watching as they fall out of their depth, getting hurt and rejected. He likes to look after them and then, when it suits – leave them in the cold.
His mind drills over the last boring intake with their loafers and coloured chinos and scraggy beards and he thinks it over – that his lack of interest might be a help, that he won't be faced with temptation and won't be a risk to his job – when just then he collides, shoulders and heads knocking, with a lad that makes all thoughts vanish.
"Oi! Watch it, will ya?!" The lad smarts and places a hand across his forehead where they've bumped. His accent is as sharp as his frame.
Brendan can only see part of his face, the part not obscured by his hand, but it stops his determined path back to the office just to look at him. He lacks a hipster beard and as far as Brendan can make out, as the lad curses rubbing his head, he's got the cheekbones of an ice sculpture. The kind that would have girls gnawing at their cosmetic surgeon just to have a taste of. He's got a feline nose too, one that shoots up at the end like the curve of a spoon and eyes – when he gets to finally see them under a blanket of lashes – the blue of a painter's dream. He is, as bastard luck would have it, the most beautiful man he's ever seen. And even beautiful seems like a shy, pathetic compliment when he's seen thousands of faces given that title. This word to describe this lad hasn't been invented.
For Brendan, the idea that this lad has fallen into his lap comes with the crushing realisation that he's not a new recruit at all. He can't be. For starters his collar's upturned without irony and gold rings and a chain catch the light, matching the slouchy sheen of his tracksuit. He's decided straight away he's delivering a parcel or a lunch or is a sibling of one of Nancy's street selected. He must be the scabby younger brother of a girl signed up in a shopping mall.
He stands there staring for a moment, until the boy retracts his hand and is still brimming with confrontation. "You walked right into me!"
"You got eyes, ain'tcha? Shouldda seen me coming. I'm a busy man," he says, not with coldness, but a little authority. He doesn't ask the lad if he's okay, but steps into his space and brushes his fringe away to check for a mark. His skin's hot and there's a little bump where they hit. "I can get some ice for you." His voice digs low into the beginnings of a come-on. He imagines dabbing ice onto his skull, cold rivulets wetting his hair and making his skin look licked.
The lad pulls his neck away. "Nah, I got an interview."
"Flipping burgers?" The comeback comes as a surprise, a reaction to the rebuff.
He doesn't quite understand the joke and explains as if it's obvious. "Modelling."
Fucking hell, Brendan thinks and wishes he could rewind and erase the last five minutes. He lets his eyes close for a second, as if he can control time, and then asks – despite dreading the answer – "Right. Who are you here to see?"
The answer is as obvious as the question.
In an hour, the lad's sitting across from Brendan, a little purple at the temple and fidgety in the seat. Brendan is half turned away, the beginnings of a portfolio spread out on his knees. The boy's turned up in a tracksuit armed with an embarrassingly flimsy stationary wallet from a pound shop which holds the information he's been told to bring. There's a sheet of A4, lined, like it's been prized from an old school book and on it lists his groin-aching vital statistics written in his own handwriting. His name – Steven – which Brendan let's summersault over his tongue, is shadowed by big brackets and next to it the name he prefers: Ste.
Brendan removes some of the photos Steven's – he'll never call him Ste – brought with him, holding back the laughter at the bathroom mirror selfies. Still, whether in blurry light or a pouty reflection – the boy's got it. Whatever 'it' is.
"How's the head?" Brendan asks when he's spent long enough committing Steven's measurements to memory.
"I've 'ad worse." Ste looks around the office, eyes grazing across the magazine covers and the high end advertisements. His confidence shrinks slightly and Brendan takes to it like a cat and wool.
Brendan leans right back into his chair. "Where do you see yourself, then? Up there – on those covers?"
"Suppose. Not really thought about it. On the phone they just said to come and see – you know – if I'm good enough." Ste smoothes down the front of hooded top. "What do you think, then?"
Brendan smirks, he can't help himself. He eases himself out of the chair, the leather creaking as he does and moves over to Steven, his fingertips running over every surface on the desk. "Do you know how many boys I've seen this morning?"
Ste shrugs. He probably didn't notice the line of clones enter the office in straight-faced arrogance and leave with a flat expression of their dreams having been crushed.
"Fifteen. Fifteen Topman rejects, back-end of buses, posers and premium dickheads. And you…" He kicks Ste's chair so it spins in his direction. "Steven Hay." He hopes what he's giving off is an air of intimidation. The boy doesn't notice.
"Ste."
"Steven, you…" He thinks about coming over all Simon Cowell, false and sickly. "Ain't as feckless as I first thought. I think you can prove yourself."
"Serious?!" Ste sits up now, delight in his expression - his eyes shimmer from it. It's as if Brendan has already offered him a shiny cheque.
Brendan pulls back, folding his arms against his chest; he's not about to let this one run away from him in his eagerness. He needs taming, moulding. "You'll have to get some proper headshots done. We'll cover all bases: fashion, commercial and so on and so forth." He sits on the edge of the desk and if he just moves a slight inch their legs could touch. "We need to work out your fee."
Ste picks at his hands, threads of his bobbled hoodie. "Money's a bit tight right now n'that."
"We're not a loans company; I don't work pro-bono." Brendan sees he has no clue what pro-bono means and in that moment of Steven's naivety he considers that he would be willing to work free for this one except, ultimately, accepting sexual favours as payment wouldn't go down well. He can still hear Warren's warning clanging around his skull. It doesn't stop him wanting to undress Steven with his teeth.
He sees Steven ticking it over and over in his mind. Brendan knows how to push the right buttons to get what he wants. "It's a big decision, I get that. But under my management, you could make us a small fortune."
"Us?" Ste says and he colours a bit at the collar under a tacky gold chain.
"Sixty-forty," Brendan says, watching him blink listening to a reel of numbers. "Almost equal. Forty percent cut for you, sixty for me and the agency." He can see Ste studying him, taking in the designer suit, the expensive haircut and aftershave. "Forty percent is good, Ste. It's better than you'd get most places for being a beginner." Brendan looks up and sees Louise has left her desk so can't spy on him through the blinds, can't guilt him into resisting. He reaches out, holding Ste's face, examining it from side to side. He pretends to have a camera's eye, a designer's eye. He's got none of those things: he's a predator.
He hums his approval, patting Ste on the cheek and finally releasing him. His skin's marble smooth, silky warm. "This is gonna get you far," he says.
Ste sits awed and quiet, signing his life away.