“Okay, listen, I’ve got to go,” Skyler finally says. “I know. Bye.” He hangs up and then smiles at Trevor. “Sorry about that. It was my manager.”
“No worries. You need to take care of business.”
Skyler’s nose crinkles in displeasure. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
“What do you mean?” Trevor asks, as they each unroll a bag and start removing cartons and Styrofoam boxes of food, spreading everything out on the countertop.
“He wants me to make a public appearance.”
“Don’t you do that all the time?”
“Exactly. Which is why it’s so ridiculous that I suddenlyhaveto now. I just finished touring, and as much as I love it, you know how totally exhausting that is. I should be able to get a little break for a while, but instead, I’m going to do an acoustic set for this station that records live video performances.”
“That sounds like it could be fun,” Trevor says, trying to appease him and not entirely understanding the problem here, other than that he agrees the man deserves to take some time off to rest.
Skyler gets a couple large plates and hands one to him. “Yeah, I love doing stuff like that, so it’s fine. But there was this article online about me, and my label called my manager to discuss what to do. I hate when people make decisions about me without me even being in the room.”
“I know you do.”
“But this whole thing’s my fault anyway, isn’t it?” Skyler goes on. “I made the decision to come out without telling them, without giving them the chance to put a plan in place.”
“Hey.” Trevor grips his forearm, stopping him in the middle of reaching for an eggroll. “That’s not your career. That’s yourlife. You’re not obligated to consult anyone on decisions like that.”
Skyler gives him a small smile when he lets go. “Thanks. But something like this isn’t entirely separate from my career, is it? And I’m lucky they weren’t too mad about it. They just wished I’d prepared them so they were ready to use it as momentum.” He smiles again at Trevor’s noise of disgust. “Anyway, this article accused me of hiding after I came out, which might be a tiny bit true. And according to Kieran, that’s not allowed.”
“I think I saw the article,” Trevor admits.
“Do you have a Google alert set for me?” Skyler asks with a smirk.
He rolls his eyes. “No, you ass. But the internet’s pretty much always talking about you, you know. It’s hard to miss.” Truthfully, hehasbeen searching for anything about Skyler since he came out, to make sure the reactions were mostly positive. Which they appear to be. “It was something inane like ‘Skyler’s gay and now what,’ right?”
Skyler bites his lip. “You didn’t read the comments, did you?”
“No, I think we both learned a long time ago never to do that” He might be imagining it, but he’s pretty sure Skyler looks relieved when he says this.
“Right, so that’s the article, and I know I shouldn’t let it bother me,” Skyler says. “I mean, it said a whole lot of nothing, basically. But the part about how I could be this generation’s gay icon…”
“Yeah… ?”
“That’s a lot of pressure, don’t you think?”
Trevor drops a couple crab rangoons onto Skyler’s plate before taking some for himself. “It is. I can understand how hearing that would be overwhelming.But I think… Well, I think you were already a gay icon, whether or not people knew it.”
It’s a tiny bit awkward talking about how famous Skyler’s become, but the shy smile he receives for his words makes Trevor glad he said it.
“It’s weird to think of myself that way though,” Skyler says quietly.
“Oh, stop. You’re a musical icon, and you know it. And you’ve always been gay, so yeah. That’s how it works. You don’t have to worry about doing anything differently now.”
He knows he’s oversimplifying what isn’t exactly an easy situation to navigate, but he can’t stand to see Skyler looking worried or nervous or upset or anything that isn’t radiantly happy. Because he deserves to be happy all the time, and Trevor wishes he could beat the world into submission to make sure that’s the case. It should surprise him how he still feels so protective of Skyler after all this time, but it doesn’t.
Which makes the fact thathe’sthe one who ended up hurting Skyler the most even worse. If he could physically beat himself up for it, he would. Since he can’t, he’ll just continue to do so mentally.
“Thanks,” Skyler says. Then he laughs, shaking his head at all the takeout containers still full of food after the two of them have totally loaded up their plates. “So did you mistakenly think I’d invited like five other people over?”
“Hush. I wanted you to have options.”
“I appreciate that. And I’ll probably have leftover options for the next week.”
