Liar vs. Liar - 24. Are You a Bad Guy or a Bad Boy?

Chapter Twenty-Four – Are You a Bad Guy or a Bad Boy?

“Why are you getting so hung up on Jamie’s rising fame?” He directed the question at his brother while carefully sipping from his drink.

“Rising fame?” His older sibling barely looked at him as he appeared to be engrossed in the news he was reading on his phone. “I’m telling you, this dude’s career as a star is DOA.”

“You know, I can’t help but think that you’re taking all of this personally. I thought dad insisted on never getting personal.”

“Ha! I had no idea you were paying attention. It’s nothing personal, unless you think the fact that people should know their place in the world and stay there is personal.”

“Funny you should say that. Dad always tried to make us proud of our bootstrapping origins.”

His brother’s face twisted in disgust. “Well, Hearst,” he said pointedly, “dad didn’t succeed, right? He kept talking about doing things, but he never acted on his so-called plans. Why do you think he gave us these… names?”

“Ridiculous names,” he said slowly. “That was what you were about to say. But I had no idea you thought so little of our dear father. After all, he put us both through school. Although he thought you were the only one who could become a journalist.”

“Hey, it’s your fault you chose this major,” Wencel accused right away. “Are you going to work for Big Pharma, lil’ bro?”

“Maybe dad thought I should have something to fall back on.”

“Or maybe he didn’t think you’d make it.”

As usual, their conversation dove toward the deep end, and Wencel wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted, which most likely meant his younger brother’s complete and utter humiliation.

“I have to go,” he said abruptly, pushing himself up to his feet.

For a moment, he felt guilty when he noticed the troubled look in his brother’s eyes. It had crossed his mind often lately how alone Wencel seemed to be, but that wasn’t a recent thing. If he thought about it properly, that was how his brother had always seemed. Alone, locked in his own anger at the world, for reasons only he knew. Sure, their family excelled in aiming high and falling hard, but he hadn’t turned out that way. Or had he, and he didn’t know?

***

Jamie followed the guys with his eyes, trying to wrap his head around how this thing was supposed to work.

“So, you see,” the vivacious short guy who seemed to be there to guide the guy with the camera, “you need to make it snappy, Jamie. Nothing longer than fifteen seconds. Say it with me,” he made his hands into fists and balanced them left and right. It wasn’t clear if he was getting ready for a bout or intended to start a strange dance. “Of course I’m a rock star, I always get into brawls.”

Jamie grimaced. “For real? Am I supposed to talk in memes? Okay, um, sorry, I didn’t catch your name--”

“Fez,” the guy said quickly.

“Okay, Fez, I’m a bit surprised at this direction. Do you mind taking five while I talk to Angus really quick?”

“Sure,” Fez replied, although his squirrel-like face soured immediately. “Take as much time as you want.” He pushed himself back on his heels and sank his hands into his pockets. Then he turned abruptly, throwing his head to one side, as if he just couldn’t believe this newbie and his ideas.

Jamie waited as his call went unanswered. Okay, so Angus was busy, but was he really supposed to become a meme for the sake of this show? The risk of contamination was high. Also, they had jumped straight into the incident with the Mitches, instantly wanting to make him into a guy with nothing better to do but get into fights.

“You know, we’ll need to go soon,” Fez called out to him. Barely two minutes had passed since the guy had offered Jamie all the time in the world to make his call.

“Okay,” Jamie said, puffing out his cheeks. “If this is how you want it, at least let me do some thinking of my own.” He grabbed his sticks and played with them on his fingers with a dexterity that usually pleased the occasional audience. “Of course I’m a drummer, I always carry these with me.”

Fez’s face fell so hard, Jamie thought he’d need a broom to sweep it off his floor. “Lame. Do better.”

“I know,” the camera guy intervened, “what if Jamie ate with those drumsticks?” The words left his mouth like an ominous foretelling.

Jamie winced in horror, just as Fez’s good mood returned.

“Yes, yes! You should do that! You should take them in the shower and scratch your back with them!”

“What the hell?!” Jamie shook his head. “Are you guys for real? What am I? A clown?”

Fez seemed ready to reply something to the effect of a confirmation, when his phone went off. Without apologizing, he began typing while walking out of Jamie’s place. The camera guy gave Jamie a poker face look.

“Is he coming back?” Jamie asked, smiling to show that he was joking.

The camera guy shrugged. He was a heavyset young man whose facial features seemed to move only slightly when he talked and not at all otherwise.

“You’d do great in a poker tournament.”

A blank stare met his remark. Jamie shrugged and plopped himself down on the sofa, grabbing his laptop for lack of anything better to do.

“Would you like to sit down?” he asked the camera guy, without looking at him, to show at least that he was a busy man too, and that they were encroaching on his time.

“No.”

“Suit yourself,” Jamie said, mostly to himself. This production team, or whatever these guys were called, was starting to get on his nerves.

“Show us your skills!” Fez shouted, walking back in and taking Jamie by surprise.

“What do you mean?” Jamie asked, feeling wary of the bout of enthusiasm that seemed to have propelled Fez into some unusual action.

“Your drummer skills!”

“Ah, okay, but we’ll have to drive to the studio where I usually practice. I don’t have a drum kit here.”

“Show us without it!”

“What do you mean, without it?”

“You know how boxers do that thing, shadowboxing?” Fez illustrated his words by punching the air clumsily. He looked nothing like a fighter. “Do some shadowdrumming!”

Jamie thought his ears were starting to hurt from too much enthusiastic shouting that bordered on hysteria.

“We’ll add the background sound later,” Fex explained rapidly. “You only need to show us how you look when you’re lost in your music. Use headphones, listen to your favorite songs, do whatever it takes. Come on, Jamie, television is all about make-believe.”

“I thought this show was going to be different,” Jamie said cuttingly.

Fez exchanged a knowing look with the camera guy. Jamie couldn’t help thinking that he was continuing to be the newbie in this whole setup.

“It is different,” Fez explained. “It’s short, snappy, it entertains! Come on, show us for a bit, and we’ll know where and how to cut!”

“Okay,” Jamie agreed reluctantly. He put on his headphones and closed his eyes. Well, he could do that. He knew how to use his musical instrument of choice, so this shouldn’t be difficult. As long as he kept his eyes closed, he wouldn’t see the grating sight of those two assholes invading his space. Could it be that this whole thing was a bad choice? He’d have to talk to Arthur about this. Surely, these guys knew their thing, but Jamie didn’t vibe with them a bit.

“Great, that’s awesome, yes, Jamie, like that!”

Even through his headphones, he could hear Fez shouting. That guy needed to take better care of his vocal cords or one day one of them just might snap.

“Awesome, that is it!”

“Can I stop pretending to play the drums now?” Jamie asked.

“Awesome,” Fez bellowed again, “did you catch that, K?”

K had to be the camera guy.

“Yeah,” came the bored reply.

“Slash s, I can just see it,” Fez said, slapping his hands together. “We’ll have your persona down pat, Jamie. In no time,” he promised.

“Slash s?” Jamie had to ask. Hopefully, it wasn’t part of some sex-related abbreviation, although he knew who the sadist was in this case. Probably him, but if it was self-inflicted, wouldn’t he be called a masochist?

“Sarcasm, dear,” Fez explained and rolled his eyes. “Now, one question for a great answer.”

“Shoot,” Jamie said with a shrug.

“Which do you prefer to be? A bad guy or a bad boy?”

Ah, so this was about those roles Cottontail had warned him about. He shrugged. “I’m the drummer, isn’t that enough?”

Fez gave him a look that made Jamie wonder briefly if the sky was falling somewhere in their hemisphere. “Come on, Jamie,” he whined, “don’t be so boring. Angus said you were awesome, and Angus is never wrong. I mean, you’re the local boyfriend for hire, you get into fights, and this is the face you show us? Not to mention, you’re already a porn star!”

This whole reality TV thing was beginning to give him headaches. “You know,” he began, “I have a feeling that we’re not really vibing. I’ll have to talk to Angus and Arthur both before we move forward with this.”

Fez’s little face pinched hard in the middle. “We’re on a schedule, and you signed.”

“Yes, that’s true. But I’m not a piece of dough for you to turn into whatever you like,” Jamie said cuttingly.

“And what do you know about what can go viral?” Fez asked, crossing his arms and even daring to tap his loafer-clad foot.

“Going viral for the wrong reasons is not a good thing,” Jamie replied, fighting hard to keep his anger at bay. Cottontail had accused him of being too much of an innocent for these bullies, but that wasn’t true. He wouldn’t allow these assholes to do whatever they wanted. True, his bunny boy’s warning had made him wary of them beforehand, and he had to admit that everything Cottontail had told him proved to be true so far.

On the other hand, he pondered, he needed to make use of these guys if he wanted to get his name out there. Not that he had ever envisioned himself as a master manipulator, but he did need to step up his game.

He smiled pleasantly, taking Fez by surprise. Even the camera guy stared at him, his jaw slack.

“Okay, guys, I think we can work something out,” he said before the others had a chance to sneak a word in. “Why shouldn’t I be both?”

“Both what?”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders. “A bad guy and a bad boy. If that’s the image you want to sell.”

“Okay,” Fez said, his earlier enthusiasm returning. “Then give us something we can use.”

“Sure.” Jamie smiled with all his teeth. He grabbed his drumsticks and pointed at them. “How about I stick these up your butts?” He played with them, while continuing to grin. He got up and began to walk slowly toward his visitors.

The camera guy took a step back, but Fez proved to be slow on the uptake. He kept his mouth shut for a change, which was exactly what Jamie was betting on; at the same time, Fez was making desperate gestures at his partner to catch everything.

If they wanted a show, he’d give them a show to remember. Stabbing the air with his drumsticks and clear intentions, he gradually made the production team scurry toward the exit.

When he slammed the door in their faces with one last sugary smile and a pleasant ‘buh-bye’, he could tell that he was mighty pleased with himself.

***

Were they starting already? He skimmed through Jamie’s competitors fast – he didn’t care what everyone was saying about LiveFeed, it would still be about pounding the other participants into dust – to assure himself that they weren’t any good, which they weren’t, at least at this point. A ballerina with big feet and the couple into frugal living sounded great on paper, but their shorts so far had proven uninspired to say the least.

Jamie, however—

He did a double take when he saw the only short posted by the LiveFeed crew under Jamie’s profile.

And it was good. He grinned as he watched it, but as he caught the last whisper, something that most people would probably miss because they would be too busy laughing at how Jamie promptly threw those assholes out the door, his smile faded.

These scumbags were playing Jamie.

***

The loud and urgent knock on his door that evening didn’t take him by surprise. He had been hoping for it, and he waited for his late night visitor to hop inside.

“Well, did you see it?” he asked. “It looks like I’m viral already.” He flexed his muscles for show, while Cottontail gave him the evil eye. Sure, he couldn’t tell if that was true or not, but lately, he had become an expert in reading the body language of his quirky partner.

“It’s because of that I’m here now,” Cottontail said pedantically.

“Go and change,” Jamie urged his guest. “I want to see your cute face.”

“My face is not cute, and you can’t see it anyway.”

“I’ll settle for half of it, and your skinny ass,” Jamie said promptly. “Come on, it’s only my first appearance, and the crowd goes wild. See? Your training is already paying off.”

Cottontail sighed from the depths of his chest and trudged toward the bathroom. “You really don’t get it, Jamie.”

“What? That they’ll make me into the villain? You mentioned that when you listed the predetermined roles these shows work with. By the way, I don’t intend to win this thing, whatever it is. I just want people to know my name. And like me for who I am.”

“Are you sure you’re the one in charge of how the people watching LiveFeed are going to see you?”

Jamie squeezed Cottontail’s shoulders though the heavy padding, while urging him to hurry. “They wanted a completely different thing from me. I gave them what I wanted. Yes, I’d say that I’m in charge. As much as I enjoy seeing you fretting over me, I’d like to see you naked and in my lap a lot more. What do you say?”

“Okay.” Another long-suffering sigh followed. “But we’re not going to have sex. You’re in the doghouse still.”

“Woof? Why?” Jamie teased.

Cottontail shook his huge head. “I love your cocksure attitude, Jamie, but it might come back to bite you in the ass one of these days.”

“We’ll see about that. Now, hurry along. I want to play with your tail.”

“But I’m going to take off the suit,” Cottontail pointed out.

“It’s a figure of speech. We’re not going to have sex, okay, I agree, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t tease the hell out of you.”

The bunny boy needed some updates on his ground rules, and tonight, Jamie was in the mood to play. After the episode with the reality TV show, he thought that he deserved a reward. And delayed gratification could work for what he had in mind.

***

He should have seen that coming. Jamie was lying on the sofa, splayed there like a prize, completely naked. All he wore was a naughty smile, but otherwise, everything else was on display. A pang of jealousy choked him. To think that so many others had seen the same thing he was seeing now. At the beginning of all this, he had thought that he would manage to keep his cool and see Jamie for who he really was. He was seeing exactly that, but the rest of his plan had fallen through.

Jamie really had no idea how it felt to have the world coming for him. He had never experienced that. Even now, with the reality show assholes, he was playing things fast and loose. After the initial surprise at Jamie’s forward attack, caught on camera, the assholes had regained the upper hand in a jiffy. The words he had heard weren’t much but conveyed their mindset.

‘We got him’, they had said, whoever had been in Jamie’s room like he was right now. They would use Jamie’s playful anger and exploit it for some darker purpose. Sure, in the moment, Jamie had managed to play his hand well, but these were redoubtable opponents. One just didn’t go into battle using nothing but a pair of drumsticks that weren’t intended for heavy duty defense.

He had so many things to teach Jamie. Provided that the resident heartbreaker allowed him to do it. Heartbreaker. He was nothing like that. Not consciously, at least. Would Jamie even be able to tell if he was breaking someone’s heart? Just as much as he appeared to be oblivious of the myriad different ways in which the world could hurt him, he was also the aloof type when it came to how others felt about him.

That was his one and only experience, though, he thought as he moved closer to the sofa, taking in the handsome man waiting for him, his cock hard and high like a mast. He couldn’t speak for the others who had been with Jamie before. They were a faceless mass of people; if they had wanted Jamie hard enough, they could have come after him and made him love them.

They didn’t have what it took. But that didn’t mean no one had.

TBC

I hope you enjoyed the new chapter! Cottontail is pretty determined, so please, cheer him on
Until next time,
All the best,
Laura.