Checking In

Tom knocked on the hotel door a third time. He crossed his arms impatiently and waited for the sound of footsteps. When none came he fished his phone from his back pocket and typed out a text. On the other side of the door, a different phone chimed muffledly. So Jake was in the room. Why was he not answering the door, Tom wondered to himself. Quickly, he fired off three more expletives to his temporary roommate. He balanced from one foot to the other and watched for any sign that Jake had read the messages. The screen didn't change though. Frustrated, he decided to head back to the hotel lobby. Maybe the bellhop would give him a spare key to replace the one he'd lost at the bar.

Just as he turned to leave, the door finally swung open. Without bothering to meet Jake's eyes, Tom began sluing out a tirade of insults, his London slang popping through. "It's about bloody time. You do realize I've been standing out here for fifteen minutes, probably looking like a git to every person who's walked by. Did you ever think --" He stopped suddenly, finally looking at Jake, who stood in the open doorway wearing only a thin hotel towel.

"I was in the shower," Jake stated matter-of-factly, apparently unphased by the short-lived rant.

Tom stepped past Jake and collapsed face-first onto the bed, groaning dramatically. "Could have answered anyway."

"You have a key. Wait, don't tell me. You lost it again."

Tom rolled over and glared at Jake. "I didn't lose it."

Jake snatched something off of the bedside table and held it up for Tom to see. It was his keycard. "Actually, you did. Luckily, I found it."

"And you didn't bother giving it to me?" Tom asked.

"I'm giving it to you now, aren't I?" He replaced the card back on the stand. "Anyway, I didn't get to finish. My hair is just a mess of hairspray."

Tom smiled. He didn't think his costar's hair was a mess. In truth, he thought Jake's hair was really nice, enviable even. The way it always seemed to stay exactly as he wanted it, not a single strand out of place. Meanwhile, Tom struggled just to keep his curls under control.

Jake disappeared into the bathroom then. With nothing else to do to pass the time -- social media was bland recently and, besides, he didn't want to see any gossip about the night's events -- Tom clicked on the television. The flat-screen came to life on a wildlife channel. On-screen, a monkey silently picked at a younger one's head, eating whatever it was it was finding within the fur. Tom found the program boring and began surfing through the other available channels. There were quite a few of them too. By the time he had flipped through four-hundred, the clock on the satellite box announced that five minutes had passed.

"There's never anything good on these American channels," Tom complained aloud.

Finally, he reached a point in the channels when the numbers jumped dramatically. The titles seemed to as well. They weren't what one would normally see on publicly broadcasted networks. Tom selected the first one. He immediately regretted it as soon as the television began moaning quite dramatically at him.

"Shit, shit, shit," he cursed, clicking out of the channel. It took a moment for the whole ordeal, which had lasted less than fifteen seconds, to register with Tom. The channel had been a porn channel and not just any porn channel. It was gay porn. Though Tom hadn't ever done so, he had heard about the option to charge such channels to your credit card. He knew he hadn't but who had?

Tom glanced in the direction of the bathroom. Through the paper-thin walls, he could still make out the sound of the shower running and Jake's offkey singing. He figured he had another ten minutes at least. Maybe Jake had purchased the channel by accident? Or maybe it had been leftover from the room's last guest. Either way, Tom was curious.