Title: First Date
Author: linaerys
Pairing: Anderson Cooper/George Clooney
Rating: R
Word Count: ~1700
Summary: bethynyc requested "Anderson and George on their first date" for her birthday, and who am I to refuse.
Disclaimer: THIS IS TOTALLY FICTIONAL

Anderson runs his thumb lightly over a mosquito bite on the back of his hand. He doesn’t remember if he got it in the Hamptons over the weekend or in Vietnam the week before. Worse luck if it’s Vietnam—he hates the bad dreams he gets from Malarone and so he never takes it. Some day he’s going to feel what the bad end of malaria is like, but if he’d caught it this time he’d be feeling the symptoms already.

He probably got it in the Hamptons, at one of those pool parties, well-catered and lit by tiki torches. He rode out there in a helicopter to avoid the traffic, and he didn’t plan on staying long. Anderson got to spend little enough time in New York that he didn’t want to spend it in some imitation of wilderness when he could be having dinner at his favorite restaurant, and assuring his family he was okay before heading back out into the real world.

He scratches the bite and looks around the restaurant. A few of the patrons have noticed him. He knows the look. First they’re surprised and try to place him, then they look away, but they might sneak looks at him all night. Usually he can ignore it, but tonight it makes him jumpy.

He did that same dance of looking and looking away when he saw George Clooney at the Hamptons party, except less suavely than this couple in the restaurant. Anderson looked at George but then forgot to look away. George saw him looking and came over.

The light from the tiki torches favored everyone that night, but no one more than George in his thin linen suit. “Look,” he said to Anderson. “I wanted to chat. I’ve been waiting until you had a free moment, but . . .” He gestured around at the party. “You looked busy, and now I have to go.”

Anderson smiled, confused, into his beer. “You wanted to talk with me?”

“Your office called for an interview,” said George. He looked just like he did in the movies. The open white collar of his shirt reminded Anderson of the outfits Danny Ocean wore and Anderson blushed thinking about it. He still wasn’t used to running in circles that brought him into contact with the same men he jerked off to when they were on HBO late at night. It made conversation difficult. Interviews were scripted, but this . . . ?

“Right.” His voice sounded very high so he deliberately pitched it a little lower. “Right. They don’t involve me until it gets a little more certain. They figured you were a long shot.”

“Well, I’m not,” said George. He wore an opaque smile. “My office will call you. Dinner or something.” His smile broadened. “Call it a pre-interview interview.”

“Sure,” said Anderson, feeling shell-shocked. He belatedly raised his beer toward George’s departing back as George walked out of sight.

Assistants called assistants and now Anderson is sitting on a bar stool in Atlantis in Chelsea, waiting for George like a nervous prom date. The bartender, John, taps his elbow lightly and slides a Stella Artois across the zinc bar to him and raises his eyebrows. Anderson nods back, but doesn’t start chatting. He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket to put a ten down on the bar when John says, “He’s here.”

Anderson doesn’t ask how John knows, and a minute later he doesn’t even remember what John said, because there is George, looking like he travels with his personal lighting team. They barely have time to shake hands (George does the politician’s two-handed shake) before the host comes to seat them. Their table is slightly obscured by one of the restaurant’s glass walls. Anderson nods his thanks to the host as George presses a tip into his hand.

“Most people serve red wine too warm,” says Anderson after theirs arrives. The wine is a light Shiraz for the warm evening. Anderson watches George nod along like Anderson has just said something important rather than something that could be garnered from any Chalmers Johnson wine manual. “But I know the chef,” says Anderson after too long a pause, staring at the chiseled perfection that is George’s chin. “They’re good about it here.”

“Oh?” says George. Anderson’s stomach sinks. This isn’t going that well; George is just nodding to be polite; maybe George has decided Anderson is much more interesting when he’s scripted just as Anderson has been deciding the opposite of George.

Then George cracks a bit of that box-office magic, white-toothed smile and puts his hand up to the back of his head. It’s a bit of a tic, Anderson’s noticed, just a momentary stroking of the short hair on the back of his neck, and then his blunt fingers are cradling the squat glass of wine again. “I’m just a guy,” George says suddenly.

“What?”

“You seem kind of nervous. Don’t be. I haven’t even done anything that special lately.”

Oh, this Anderson can handle. He’s an old hand with actors’ phony modesty. “Syriana? The Good German?”

“No one saw that.”

“I liked it,” says Anderson. “Interesting parallels, who really wins a war. Good questions to be asking now.”

“I didn’t ask you out to get buttered up about my movie career. I pay people for that.”

“Why—,” slight, unnoticeable (he hopes) hitch, “did you ask me . . . out then? You wanted to talk about what, Katrina?”

George shrugs.

“It’s what everyone wants to talk about,” Anderson continues. “It’s like having a famous ex-girlfriend.”

“I’d imagine.” George licks his lips. He never does that in the movies, and Anderson knows because he looked for it. George’s tongue. Anderson feels like a horny twelve-year-old. He can ignore George’s odd prickliness because he has a feeling that something else is going on underneath. “Everyone’s always asking me about Brad,” George says. His voice sounds falsely casual. “It’s like having a famous boyfriend.”

“Is he?” asks Anderson before he can stop himself. Maybe it’s honed interviewing instincts, but more likely it’s just that he desperately wants to know.

“No,” says George. He rolls his eyes—at himself, Anderson can tell. “No, not anymore. Not often. Not since Angie.”

“Are you okay?” asks Anderson. He tries to look sympathetic and not like he’s jumping up and down inside.

“Yeah, it’s for the best. Told me to find someone more my speed.”

Anderson tries not to picture that: golden-blond Brad, charming smile, maybe hair freshly tousled from a round of athletic sex with George, frowning a pretty frown and ending it with George . . . Anderson shifts in his seat. Was George too serious, or was Brad too straight? “Come on,” he says after a moment.

George doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “We haven’t had dinner yet.”

“I’ll have them send something up later.”

“What about our check?”

“I’m a regular, I have a tab. What good is being famous if you can’t act like a brat occasionally?”

George laughs slightly at that, quiet but genuine. “How do I know you’re not just using me?” asks George lightly as they push open the big, cloudy glass doors of the restaurant and out into the summer twilight.

“This is your speed isn’t it?” Anderson can feel the heat from George’s body close behind him, the delicious size of him, bulkier and more solid than Anderson. God, he hopes . . . he hopes that veneer of civilization is just a veneer, that the hint of hardness in George’s movie-star smile will be more than just a hint when he’s shoving Anderson up against a wall.

They walk up the stairs of to the two-floor condo Anderson has at the top of a Chelsea tenement. “Stairs?” says George. “You didn’t tell me there’d be exercise tonight?”

He can’t say the obvious; that he hopes this isn’t the end of the exercise for tonight. “In Chelsea, it’s that or a nosy doorman. Which do you prefer?” asks Anderson.

George is standing just inches behind him as Anderson puts the keys in the lock of his door. He fumbles them when George kisses the back of his neck. His lips feel hot against the cool skin there.

Once they get inside George kisses Anderson more: slow, teasing kisses, where he pulls away and makes Anderson dart his lips after George’s, and hard ones that leave Anderson panting.

It’s slower than Anderson expects, once they get into the bedroom. They stop briefly on the couch, but, well, Anderson’s bed is very nice, down comforters, a pillow-top mattress and sheets with a high enough thread-count that Anderson doesn’t know what it is, just that it’s good.

George is almost old-fashioned about this, undressing Anderson, kissing the exposed skin. Having someone so gorgeous in his bed is not that common an occurrence, so Anderson doesn’t mind going slowly either.

He’s not hesitant though, his hands are sure as they curve around Anderson’s ass when he pushes Anderson’s pants off.

It’s the little things he remembers the next morning, like the heavy thunk of George’s expensive watch on Anderson’s beside table when he takes it off, how George’s skin tastes as golden as it looks, the way George’s voice goes low when he wants something faster, harder, and the shock of pleasure Anderson feels whenever George’s grabs him with his blunt hands. Workman’s hands where the rest of him is smooth and cosmopolitan.

Afterwards Anderson orders Chinese food and promises a real dinner at Atlantis next time, feeling only the tiniest fillip of nervousness when he suggests a second time. Then he’s licking sesame oil off of George’s chin, and this time it’s fast and hard and they fall asleep afterwards, sticky and smelling of chicken chow fun.

It’s late Sunday morning when they wake up again. The first thing Anderson sees is George’s face half-hidden, nestled in the pillows, that wary look gone from his face, the line between his eyebrows smoothed out. Then George stretches and when he looks over at Anderson again the playful happiness fades from his face to be replaced with the more conscious curve of lips Anderson knows from magazine covers.

“Good morning,” said Anderson languidly before burrowing back under the covers. He wants to make that relaxed expression come back, if not this morning, then some time very soon.