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Tom wants to know, is it an official agreement or something.
"What do you mean, official?” Joe asks. He's doing something on his laptop, clicking around a screen in a program Tom doesn't recognize. Video editing, maybe. Final Pro Cut or one of those things. Tom thinks maybe he's watched dailies off screens like this.
"I mean, you and Ms. Deschanel, have you had that talk where she agrees to be seen with you, where," Tom says, twitching his foot, slamming it down so he can pull his rolling chair closer to Joe's computer desk, push it away again. It's dark in the Rec Room, always is, like some Aladdin's Cave but with guitar bodies and drums and microphone stands throwing off little shards of light instead of rubies and gold and pearls.
"Zo and I are friends," Joe says, turning his head away from the screen. He's too pale, working too much on the Sundance business these days. Joe is crap at holidays.
"Yeah, but like -- as a friend," Tom tries again, and scratches his chin. He really must remember to shave tomorrow.
"What are you, asking if we have some sort of history?" Joe asks, amused and a little bit serious too.
"No, god," Tom says. "Wait, do you?"
"No," says Joe, laughing a little. He reaches out a hand and gives Tom's earlobe a tug. "No, nothing like that."
"The one that got away," Tom guesses, tilting his head into Joe's fingers, but they're already gone, darting around the keyboard, tapping lightning fast. "Is that it?"
"Ha, you sound like a celebrity blogger," Joe says, drifting back into his work.
"One could read something into it," Tom says, feeling himself come over all British, unable to stop it. He sits up tall and clears his throat. "The way you are with her. The way you look at her. I just -- I wondered if it was strategic or subconscious."
"It's, ah," Joe says, and clicks something, and a little window pops up with a blue status bar creeping slowly left to right, "oh you motherfucker, seven minutes remaining? This computer was new last year."
Tom sighs.
"Sorry," Joe says, and turns around, "sorry, you were – being jealous, I think? Go on."
"Don't be a brat," Tom warns him, but he can't help but smile when Joe gives him that look, that cheeky dimpled look.
"Zooey is a friend," Joe says again. "I was into her when we met, but she never returned – it wasn't mutual – and it was years ago, seriously." He reaches out and grabs Tom by the fingers, and it's only when his fist closes around Tom's that Tom realizes he'd been cracking his knuckles nervously. "Anything else I need to cover, here?"
Tom arches an eyebrow. "Do you think she's prettier than me?"
Joe laughs delightedly and pulls his chair in close, close enough that their knees are bumping and Tom has to tuck his feet under his own seat to avoid having his toes crushed.
"Go on, say it," Tom urges.
"You're the prettiest."
"Mm, try it with a little more conviction," Tom orders, dropping his shoulders, leaning in a little like he might be thinking about closing his teeth around Joe's lower lip.
"You're the prettiest," Joe says again, smiling, tilting his head in silent encouragement. "The prettiest and the sexiest and if you could carry a tune in a fucking bucket I'd sing with you over her any day of the year."
"Hey now," Tom says, and frowns. "You were doing so well."
“She’s not my fucking beard,” Joe says, smiling but serious. “Tom, I’d talk to you about that first, even if it were”—
“Okay,” says Tom, and leans in, catches Joe’s lip between his teeth, pinches it. Joe tries to talk, the idiot, and though Tom can’t make any sense of it, it’s probably the usual nonsense about Tom having some oral fixation or cannibalistic tendencies or maybe just using his mouth someplace better if he’s going to go around biting Joe anyway.
The computer pings that it’s done whatever it was doing, some minutes later. Joe reaches up from where’s he’s sprawled on the floor of the Rec Room, topless and bitten and breathing hard, slaps his hand around the desk until the laptop slams shut.
“I could learn the ukulele,” Tom offers, opening his mouth so that the elastic of Joe’s briefs snaps back into place.
“How about,” Joe counters, skimming his thumb over Tom’s two-day beard, frowning a little in the adorable way Joe does when he’s trying to think while hard, “how about you meet my parents, instead?”
Tom leans his cheek into the palm of Joe’s hand, and this time Joe presses back. “Just me?” he pretends to check.
“I think you’ll like them,” Joe says, not bothering to rise to the bait. “I know they’ll like you.”
“That’s because I’m the prettiest,” Tom says smugly, and he’s still smiling even as Joe’s hand moves and pushes Tom’s head down a little roughly, because Zooey might get the besotted on-camera smiles but Tom gets this: Tom gets Joe.