Chapter 3: The Lunch
The booth was a deep, crimson cave at the back of the restaurant, shielded from the main room by a partial wall of stained oak. Candlelight guttered in a small glass holder, painting shifting patterns on the polished wood. Matthew arrived first, ordering a sparkling water and trying to still the jumpy feeling in his knees. He told himself this was a casting meeting. Nothing more. He’d done this a hundred times.
Then Cooper walked in.
He moved differently than at the Oscars party. There was less swagger, more contained purpose. He wore a simple, dark green sweater that made his eyes look impossibly vivid, jeans, boots. The boyish charm was dialed down, replaced by a focused seriousness. He spotted Matthew, and a smile broke—not the dazzling, camera-ready one, but something smaller, more genuine, edged with nerves.
“Matthew,” he said, sliding into the booth opposite. “Thanks for this. Really.”
“Thanks for making the time.” Matthew gestured to the menu. “They do a good lamb ragù.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Cooper didn’t open the menu. He just looked at Matthew, his attention absolute. It was unnerving. “I read the sides last night. Three times. Louis is… he’s incredible. That monologue about the silence in the lamp room? It’s like you reached into my head and pulled out stuff I didn’t even know I was thinking.”
The server came. They ordered, the ritual of food a brief distraction. When they were alone again, the quiet settled. It wasn’t awkward. It was thick, expectant.
“So, Lost in Time,” Matthew said, aiming for professional, conversational.
Cooper’s smile turned wry. He played with the stem of his water glass. “Yeah. A cash machine with very loud bells on it. It pays for my mom’s medical bills. It lets me say no to other terrible things. But it’s not… it’s not a home, you know? It’s a hotel room. A really gaudy one.”
“Michelle said you were the only good thing in it.”
“Michelle’s a generous liar.” He looked up, his gaze sharpening. “I saw Night Walker last week. At a little theater in Westwood, by myself. The scene where Anya is in the police station, and she realizes the cop isn’t going to help her, he’s just another client… you just hold on her face. You don’t cut away. The entire world is in her eyes. I walked out of there and I wanted to… I don’t know. Burn something. Burn my own face off and start again.”
The heat in his words was startling. It wasn’t flattery. It was envy, yearning, a kind of artistic lust. Matthew felt it like a physical touch.
“That’s the job,” Matthew said, his voice quieter than he intended. “Finding those moments and not being afraid to live in them.”
“People are afraid, though. Most directors are terrified of real silence, of real ugliness. They cover it with music or a quip. You don’t.” Cooper leaned forward, the candlelight carving shadows under his cheekbones. “My dad was a mechanic in Dayton. Big, hard hands. He thought acting was for ‘fairies and liars.’ When I got into Yale, he didn’t speak to me for a year. Now he brags at the VFW hall about his son the TV star. But if I showed him The Gray Dawn, he’d change the channel. If I showed him my Hamlet, he’d ask how much they paid me. He doesn’t want the thing I actually am. He wants the logo.”
The confession was offered without self-pity, just as a blunt fact. Matthew recognized it—the fundamental dislocation, the performance of a self for a world that only wants the poster. It was Louis, sitting across from him in a green sweater.
Their food arrived. They ate, and the conversation spiraled inward, away from the script and into the wiring of their lives. Cooper talked about the stifling safety of the show, the fear of being trapped in that handsome, empty shell forever. Matthew found himself talking about the pressure after the Oscar, the expectation to become a brand instead of just a guy who tells stories. He didn’t mention James. James felt like a photograph from a different life, left in the other room.
“Evan says you’re a genius,” Cooper said, pushing his plate aside. “He also says you’re the most ruthless person he knows, when it comes to the work. That you’d cut your own mother out of a film if she gave a false performance.”
Matthew laughed, surprised. “Evan said that?”
“He worships you. It’s kinda brutal to watch, sometimes.” Cooper held his gaze. “He also told me to be careful. That you’d see right through any bullshit.”
“And are you? Giving me bullshit?”
“No.” The answer was instantaneous, unflinching. “I can’t. I think you’d know.”
The check came and was dismissed. The restaurant’s lunch crowd thinned, leaving them in a bubble of quiet murmurs and clinking glass. Matthew reached into his bag and pulled out fresh, bound pages. Not just the sides, but the full, chaotic second act.
“Do you want to read?” Matthew asked. “Here? There’s a scene I can’t get right. Louis’s first real breakdown. The storm is outside, but the storm is inside him. I need to hear it.”
Cooper’s eyes dropped to the pages. He nodded slowly, then looked around the near-empty restaurant. “Here?”
“Why not?”
A slight, nervous smile. Cooper took the pages. His fingers traced the words for a moment, his lips moving silently as he absorbed them. He took a slow breath, closed his eyes, and opened them again. He wasn’t Cooper anymore.
His posture collapsed inward. His shoulders hunched, as if against a gale only he could feel. He looked down at the table, but he wasn’t seeing the wood. He was seeing a remembered horror. When he spoke, his voice was a dry, rasping thing, stripped of all its melodic charm.
“‘The light turns,’” he began, barely above a whisper. “‘It cuts the fog. It always cuts the fog. And I think, for the thousandth time, that it’s a lie.’” He swallowed, a painful-looking click in his throat. “‘It promises a path. It says, Here, follow me, I will keep you from the rocks. But the rocks are still there. The light just makes you see them coming a second before you hit.’” He looked up, and his green eyes were hollow, shipwrecked. They focused on a point just past Matthew’s shoulder, seeing the phantom beam. “‘You spend your life tending a lie. You wear your hands raw polishing the glass for a lie. And the worst part… the worst part is you start to love the lie. Because the truth is the dark between the turns. The truth is the silence when the gear clicks off. And that silence… it has a weight. It presses.’” His hand, resting on the table, trembled faintly. “‘It presses until you think your skull will crack.’”
He stopped. The silence he’d conjured now flooded the booth. It was profound, awful, and utterly believable. Matthew had stopped breathing. He’d written those words, but he’d never heard them. Not like that. Cooper had found a music in them, a terrible, specific pain. He’d made Louis human, not just a metaphor.
Cooper blinked, slowly, the ghost of Louis receding. A faint blush crept up his neck. He looked suddenly young, vulnerable, as if he’d been caught naked. “I might have gone too big,” he muttered, looking down at the pages.
“No.” The word came out cracked. Matthew cleared his throat. “No. That was… perfect. That’s exactly it.”
The relief on Cooper’s face was heartbreaking. He placed the pages carefully back on the table, aligning the edges. His hand remained there, palm down, fingers splayed. The silence between them was different now. Charged, fertile, buzzing with a shared secret.
Matthew looked at that hand. He saw the faint calluses on the palm—from gym weights, maybe, or from stage combat. He saw the simple silver ring on his thumb. He saw the delicate tracery of veins under the skin.
Without thinking, driven by a compulsion he would later dissect for hours, Matthew reached out. He covered Cooper’s hand with his own. It was a director’s gesture, a mentor’s affirmation. Good job. You got there. But the moment his skin made contact, a jolt went through him. Cooper’s hand was warm, solid. He felt Cooper’s fingers tense, then slowly relax under his. Not pulling away. Yielding.
The contact lasted three seconds. Four. It was an eternity. Matthew felt the heat of it travel up his arm, spread across his chest. He saw Cooper’s gaze drop to their joined hands, then lift to meet his own. The green eyes were wide, questioning, utterly open.
Matthew pulled his hand back as if burned. The air-conditioning chilled the sweat on his palm. “You have the part,” he said, the words coming out in a rushed, businesslike tumble. “If you want it. I’ll have the formal offer sent to your agent today. There’ll be a test for the studio, but that’s a formality after that.”
Cooper just stared at him, still caught in the aftershock of the touch, the sudden shift. He nodded, swallowing hard. “I want it. More than anything.”
“Good.” Matthew stood up, needing to break the containment of the booth. He threw too much cash on the table. “We start rehearsals in three weeks. I’ll email the schedule.”
Cooper stood as well, fluidly, collecting himself. The mask of the polite, ambitious actor slipped back into place, but it was frayed at the edges. His eyes still held a dazed, luminous shock. “Thank you, Matthew. For seeing me. I won’t let you down.”
Outside, the Los Angeles sun was a brutal, indifferent hammer. They shook hands on the sidewalk, a formal, perfunctory grip that screamed over the memory of the touch in the booth. Cooper’s driver pulled up in a black SUV. He gave Matthew one last, unreadable look before ducking inside.
Matthew walked to his Porsche, his body humming. He could still feel the exact pressure of Cooper’s knuckles under his palm. He started the engine, the roar a welcome violence. As he pulled into traffic, his phone buzzed. A text from James: How did the reading go with the Netflix Adonis?
He stared at the screen. He typed, He’s not an Adonis. He’s Louis. And he’s brilliant. Offering him the part.
He waited. The three pulsing dots appeared.
James: I trust you. Send the tape when you can. Can’t wait to come home tomorrow. Miss you.
Matthew dropped the phone onto the passenger seat as if it were hot. He drove toward the hills, but instead of going home to the empty glass house, he took a turn, heading nowhere, just moving. The ghost was in the car with him now. It had a voice that could crack with pain, a hand that fit under his, and it had just been invited into the heart of his work. The line, so solid in his mind at Michelle’s, was already smudged, blurred by a touch that had said everything words could not.
He was already lying to James. Not about the part, but about the seismic shift in the room when he’d heard Cooper read. About the cold, delicious fear snaking through his gut. This wasn’t just casting. This was an infection, and he’d just willingly, eagerly, let it in.
This was an infection, and he’d just willingly, eagerly, let it in.
The call from Evan came just as Matthew was driving home. “Matthew Walker, Oscar-winning philanthropist,” Evan’s voice chirped through the car speakers, tinny and warm. “I just heard. Seriously, man. Thank you.”
“For what?” Matthew asked, taking the canyon curves a little too fast. “He’s the right actor.”
“For seeing him. For giving him a shot at something real.” Evan’s tone shifted, the warmth cooling into something more pragmatic. “Listen, I need to say this. He’s… impressionable. In a good way. He’s like a sponge. But don’t forget he’s also human, okay? He told me after the Oscars you were the most intense person he’s ever met. Just… take it easy on him. Don’t break him to get your performance.”
The words, so clearly a loving boyfriend’s concern, landed like shrapnel. Matthew’s gut tightened. He saw his own hand covering Cooper’s in the booth, felt the electric yield of it all over again. The fantasy that had flickered in Michelle’s apartment—of touching that jawline, of directing all that focused energy somewhere entirely unprofessional—flared, bright and shameful.
“My job isn’t to break actors, Evan,” Matthew said, his voice tighter than he wanted. “It’s to build characters with them.”
“I know, I know. Just… be his director. Not a fucking deity.” Evan laughed, but it was strained. “He already thinks you walk on water. Don’t let him drown trying to reach you.”
The call ended. Matthew finished the drive in a corrosive silence, Evan’s request twisting into an accusation in his mind. Be his director. Not a fucking deity. He poured the whisky down the sink.
The official announcement hit Variety two days later. Matthew read the email from his publicist with a dull thrum of finality. The news exploded across the trades within minutes: “OSCAR WINNER MATTHEW WALKER TAPS ‘LOST IN TIME’ HEARTTHROB COOPER SEALY FOR NEXT PROJECT.”
He made the mistake of scrolling through the comments on a Deadline post. The reaction was a nauseating split.
Neon Studios was thrilled. His agent relayed their giddy praise: “This is exactly the kind of exciting pairing we need! Cooper brings a built-in audience.” Matthew pictured those viewers clearly: fans of the smutty romance series, hungry for more of Cooper’s shirtless scenes. They would be betrayed by To the Lighthouse, a film about the deafening silence inside a man.
The online film forums were savage. Casting a Netflix himbo in a Walker film? Sellout. Neon probably demanded it for the box office. RIP artistic integrity. Can he even read the script or just look pretty at it?
He closed the browser. The noise evaporated, leaving the memory of Cooper’s voice in the restaurant booth, the raw, devastating truth of it. He opened his contacts and stared at Cooper’s number. He didn’t call. He texted his agent instead: Tell Neon the test is unnecessary. My decision is final. He’s our Louis.
His phone rang almost immediately. Not James, not his agent. Philip.
“So,” his brother began, no hello. The background noise sounded like the vineyard warehouse, forklifts beeping. “The internet is having a field day. You casting the pretty young thing from the time-travel soap.”
“He’s a Yale-trained stage actor,” Matthew corrected, walking to the window. “The show is just a job.”
“I’m sure.” Philip’s tone was dry, knowing. “And James is thrilled, I bet. Gets a hot new star to parade around at parties, maybe get close to. Adds some fresh… scenery to your productions.”
Matthew’s jaw clenched. “Don’t. Don’t start with that.”
“Start with what? He’s twenty years older than you, Matt. He’s a producer. He likes beautiful things. It’s not a leap.”
“James has never been unfaithful. Not a single moment.” The defense was automatic, hot with a loyalty that suddenly felt like a poorly fitted suit. “This is my casting choice. Mine. He was skeptical, actually.”
“Was he?” Philip let the question hang. “Or was he just playing the concerned producer until you convinced yourself it was your idea? He’s good at that. Getting you what he thinks you should want.”
The accusation was so close to the bone it stole Matthew’s breath. It was entirely the wrong accusation. James thought this was a potential favor to Evan, or a smart business gamble. He had no inkling of the magnetic pull, of the touch in the booth. The guilt was a sour tide in Matthew’s throat. He was defending James’s fidelity while his own mind kept returning to the specific heat of another man’s skin.
“You don’t know him. You’ve never wanted to know him,” Matthew snapped, his fingers white on the phone. “This is about the work. Cooper understands Louis in a way no one else does. That’s the beginning and end of the story.”
“Okay, kiddo.” Philip’s sigh was weary, resigned. “I hope you’re right. For your sake.”
The line went dead. Matthew stood there, the city lights blurring below him. He had defended his marriage with fervor, weaponizing a truth—James’s faithfulness—to shield a lie—his own spiraling obsession. The hypocrisy was a cold stone in his chest.
He looked at his phone again, the screen darkening to reflect his own haunted face. Then it lit up, a notification sliding into view. A new text. Not from James.
It was from Cooper. Just saw the Variety piece. I know what the comments will say. I won’t let that noise in. I promise. Thank you for this. For seeing me.
Matthew stared at the words. For seeing me. He thought of Cooper’s father, who only saw the logo. He thought of the fans, who only saw the shirtless duke. He thought of James, who saw a business decision, and Philip, who saw a potential plaything.
He alone was supposed to see the artist. The man. That was the justification, the pure, artistic core of this.
But as he stood in the dark, silent house, he knew with a terrifying clarity that he wanted to see everything. He wanted to map the territory behind those green eyes, to learn the grammar of that body, to discover if the trembling he’d felt under his hand was merely Louis’s despair or something else, something for him. The infection had a bloodstream now. It was circling his heart.
He typed a reply, deleted it, typed again. He settled on three words. Ignore the noise.
He sent it. He waited. The three pulsing dots appeared immediately, then vanished. No follow-up text came.
The silence felt like a conversation. It stretched through the next two days, a taut wire thrumming between Matthew’s last text and the imminent chaos of rehearsals. He buried himself in location scouts and production meetings, his energy a frantic, scattered thing. When his phone chimed with James’s flight details, the ping was a lifeline back to solid ground.
The key turned in the front door lock just after seven. Matthew was pacing near the kitchen, his skin humming with a strange, misplaced current. James stepped in, dropping his carry-on with a tired sigh, his grey hair slightly mussed from the travel. “The things I do for independent cinema,” he grumbled, but he was smiling.
Matthew didn’t let him finish the sentence. He crossed the room in three strides, grabbed James’s face, and crushed their mouths together. The kiss was hungry, all teeth and searching tongue, a claim staked. James stiffened for a half-second in pure surprise before melting into it, his hands coming up to grip Matthew’s hips.
“Well, hello,” James chuckled when they broke apart, breathless. His eyes, warm and crinkled at the corners, searched Matthew’s face. “What do I owe this royal welcome to? Did the script finally crack?”
“No,” Matthew murmured, his voice rough. He didn’t want to talk about the script. He kissed him again, sucking on James’s lower lip, his fingers already working the buttons of the crisp dress shirt. “Just missed you. Needed you.”
“I can see that,” James said, his amusement giving way to a low, appreciative groan as Matthew pushed the shirt from his shoulders. The fabric pooled on the floor. Matthew guided him backward toward the large sectional, his hands mapping the familiar, welcoming terrain of his husband’s body.
He loved James’s chest. The thick, silvering hair that covered it, the solid, reliable strength of his torso, the slight softness over hard muscle earned at their shared gym. It was home. Matthew pressed him down onto the soft leather, following him, covering him. He mouthed along his collarbone, inhaling the scent of airport and James’s familiar cologne.
“You feel so good,” Matthew whispered, the words a hot breath against skin. He took a nipple into his mouth, lapping at it before grazing it gently with his teeth. James’s back arched off the couch with a sharp, ragged moan. “Always so fucking responsive right here.”
He worshiped the other nipple with the same devoted attention, swirling his tongue, biting just enough to make James gasp and fist a hand in his hair. Matthew’s own need was a blunt, driving force. He needed to drown the phantom green eyes, the memory of a different trembling hand, in this physical reality. He kissed down the trail of hair, over the clenched abdomen, his fingers popping the button of James’s trousers, dragging the zipper down.
“Matt,” James breathed, his head thrown back.
Matthew yanked the pants and briefs down over his hips, freeing his husband’s cock. It was half-hard, thickening swiftly in his grip. He didn’t tease. He took the length into his mouth in one slow, deep slide, his tongue pressing hard along the vein underneath. James cried out, his hips jerking.
“Oh, Christ, yes.”
Matthew worked him with a singular, desperate focus. He hollowed his cheeks, sucking hard, his hand pumping the base in a tight, wet rhythm. He used every trick he knew James loved—the firm pressure of his tongue on the frenulum, the gentle scrape of teeth along the shaft, swallowing him deep until he hit the back of his throat. He wanted to consume him, to erase every other thought.
“Fuck, I’m gonna… baby, I’m close,” James warned, his voice strained, his fingers tight in Matthew’s hair.
Matthew just hummed in affirmation, the vibration making James shout. He increased his pace, his own arousal a painful ache in his jeans. He wanted James to come, needed to taste it, to have that proof of his possession. James’s body went rigid, his thighs clamping around Matthew’s head as he erupted, hot and bitter pulses flooding Matthew’s mouth. Matthew swallowed it all, milking him through the shudders until James collapsed back, spent and panting.
Before James could recover, he was pushing Matthew onto his back, frantically undoing his jeans. “My turn,” he growled, his voice shot. He shoved the denim down, taking Matthew’s aching cock into his mouth with a practiced, eager hunger.
It was overwhelming. The slick heat, the sight of his dignified husband servicing him with such frantic need, the residual salt of James’s come on his own tongue. The coil in his gut tightened impossibly fast. He thrust up into that wet, welcoming mouth, his fingers tangling in the grey hair. “Right there, yes, just like that,” he rasped.
James sucked him with a desperate intensity, bobbing his head, his hand working in tandem. The image that flashed behind Matthew’s eyelids wasn’t James. It was tousled brown hair, green eyes looking up from under long lashes. The illicit, gut-punch fantasy shoved him over the edge. He came with a choked-off cry, his hips stuttering off the couch as he spilled into James’s throat.
For a long time, they just lay there tangled together on the couch, skin cooling in the evening air. James traced idle patterns on Matthew’s chest. “So,” he said finally, his voice soft and post-coitally rough. “You want to tell me what that was really about? That felt like pre-movie anxiety sex. The big, scary follow-up to the Oscar. You get like this.”
Matthew stiffened slightly. He turned his head, kissing James’s temple. “It wasn’t that. I told you. I missed you.” He insisted it, forcing conviction into his tone. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted right here.”
James smiled, a slow, loving thing, and kissed him deeply. “Good.” He patted Matthew’s thigh and then extracted himself, standing up with a soft grunt. Matthew watched him move through the dim room. He admired the masculine, solid form—the broad shoulders, the confident set of his hips as he stepped into his jeans and pulled them up over his bare ass.
James walked to the kitchen shirtless, opening the fridge, the light painting his torso in a pale gold rectangle. Matthew’s eyes traced the familiar lines. He had all he ever wanted. A brilliant career, a partner who was his champion, a beautiful home. The thing coiling in his gut was just a silly infatuation, a spark from a new actor’s talent. It could be dismissed. It would be.
He believed that completely, lying naked on the couch, until his phone, buried in the cushions, vibrated. He didn’t reach for it. He just watched James pour two glasses of water, the casual, domestic grace of the movement, and felt the distance between his certainty and the truth widen into a silent, screaming chasm.