Pre-Script for Sionnain: I swear on my Complete Works of Shakespeare that I had several thousand words of this story completed before I knew you wanted to write something that unfolded along these lines. I can only hope that this lives up to the version in your mind.

"'Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it' does not fucking mean you keep the entire cast on stage the entire time without giving them a scrim." Geoffrey shook his head. "The actors are going to quit, and you know damned well I don't have the money to offer them to keep them here."

Darren waved his hand and laughed. "It's not as though you're offering me anything in the way of special effects. Two flashbombs a night? Your age is showing; you used to manage twice that many orgasms, let alone pyrotechnics. Really, Geoffrey, how do you expect anyone to stage Hell without fire? Brimstone? I thought you'd appreciate my stripped-down design, if nothing else."

"Marlowe." Geoffrey folded his arms. "Not Sartre. And we're not talking about sex."

"Oh, please." Darren rolled his eyes. "Do you want me here, or don't you?"

"Want, not particularly; need, possibly." The former stung more than Darren would let himself express. "Your Godforsaken Phantom of the Opera got more press than anything that appalling should have. And we're not paying you a cent."

"No, I signed that contract, but I read it first." Darren knew his smile was infuriating and he used it to good effect. He could practically hear Geoffrey's blood pressure rising, and that was almost revenge enough for the "not particularly." "Good press for your little theater, good press for me: a most successful rapprochement. Perhaps we'll even make a bit of art while we're at it."

Geoffrey ran his hands through his hair, leaving it as wild as it had been the day they met, if a bit more silvered. "I would settle, at this point, for no screaming matches with your cast, no costumes in flames, and enough ticket sales to cover the cost of the salaries, scripts, and set."

Darren picked up one of the scripts from the plywood on sawhorses that served as a desk and turned it over. "Two dollars each for these."

The grand gesture Geoffrey made evoked nothing so much as a crucifixion, which was splendid imagery he would need to use as Faustus, somewhere along the line. "I didn't name the theater on a whim. If you want high quality copies, go apply for a grant somewhere. Or, what the hell, go to New Zealand on your own dime, and I'll direct the fucking play."

"That won't be necessary." Darren held up his hands in surrender; Geoffrey, so rarely mollified, relaxed only slightly. "But if I'm going to keep this under budget--"

"If you're going to eat while you're here, you mean--"

"--then I need free rein. Not to set fire to things, necessarily--" Darren sighed wistfully, as much to make Geoffrey wince as anything "--but to experiment."

Geoffrey regarded him with what passed for a steady gaze among former inmates of insane asylums and nodded, resigned. "Keep them all on stage if you can convince them to do it, but for God's sake give them an intermission, and don't come crying to me for glow paint if it all goes to shit. That will come out of your ramen budget."

"I don't know what they paid you as Artistic Director, but I have a bit more in the bank than that." Darren examined his fingernails. "Did you have anything else to discuss beyond maligning the basic concept of my production?"

Something in Geoffrey's laugh made him back toward the door, if only for a better view. "Not yet. Go tell your Mephistopheles what you're doing. Jacques is solid; he'll probably go along with it if you don't try to explain it as an experiment in critical theory."

"Positivist theater reeks of age and dust." Darren adjusted his scarf and made his exit with all the dignity he could gather over Geoffrey's laughter.

Jacques didn't like Darren's idea any more than Darren liked him as Mephistopheles. He was too sane, too much a man of the earth to be a seductive devil, but there was only so much Darren could demand without being shown the door, even for free. Theatre Sans Argent Redux was a more solid operation than its first iteration (where Darren, incognito, had wept at a production of Death of a Salesman, of all the overdone and hackneyed things, though he would never admit that to any of the people involved). In its striving to be a reasonable theater company, there was some effort to support those actors who clustered around Geoffrey like moths to a flickering, sparking flame.

The ones foolish enough to jump ship from their other obligations when Geoffrey had founded the company took an odd sort of priority, though they weren't granted precedence in casting.

Darren understood what had brought them to the dank doorstep.

Cyril or Frank or someone had said something about always wanting to do Faustus, but Darren had been at that audition, and for once, Geoffrey listened to him. After they heard out the creaking Old World monologue, Geoffrey, in some access of sanity, said comforting, supportive words about a steady job and the absolutely pressing need for someone to make some phone calls and do some filing around the place.

Lucifer was a rotund Québécois named Marcel who balanced Jacques nicely; on the average, they had enough lechery for a whole circle of Hell.

Neither of them particularly mattered to Darren in the face of his Faustus, whom he fully intended to use for all manner of delight before he was damned perpetually. But then, he expected every interaction with Geoffrey would be just the sort of battle they'd already had, possibly inclusive of rapiers if things turned sour.

Dr. Faustus was going to be a great show.

*

Going from the marble halls of the Rose to the sawdust-strewn warehouse was bracing for the first week. After a day off from rehearsals, though, Geoffrey lost his patience, more childish than he'd been even as a gangling eighteen-year-old. "I need a five year break," he said to the stage manager, and jumped off the edge into the audience. "But a break until tomorrow might, possibly, be sufficient for me not to strangle him," with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder at Darren.

It had only been a minor disagreement about the possibility of Fosse-like overtones in the introduction of the Deadly Sins, but on the whole the argument felt as much like progress as anything else. At least Geoffrey was paying attention. "Send the rest of them off for ten minutes," Darren said to the stage manager, and went to rummage through the props closet.

He learned from his mistakes, and in this instance he knew better than to pursue Geoffrey unarmed. He found one of the prop swords before he went into the drafty hallway where the poor excuse for an office was set up.

Geoffrey was leaning against the wall near the desk with the lone telephone, his head in his hands, the very picture of woe. Darren prodded him experimentally with the blunted sword and Geoffrey snapped, "Fuck off," without looking up.

Whatever had him in such a mood, it couldn't be Darren's production, which was inherently flawless. Little else could get under Geoffrey's skin in the middle of a rehearsal except possibly some romantic mishap. "Was this fair Helen, whose admired worth made Greece with ten years' war afflict poor Troy?"

Geoffrey shuddered. "Jesus, I hate it when you're right about anything. Ellen--" Geoffrey looked up with a lost expression that made him no less attractive, though Darren's care-taking instincts were few and far between. "I thought--and obviously this was foolish on my part--I thought marriage might be easier."

This outburst was so blatantly ridiculous that Darren needed to poke him in the ribs again, but when he growled, Darren put the sword down. "Clearly, you married a woman with an unpropitious name."

Geoffrey beat his head on the wall, making an awful noise against the industrial beige cinderblocks. "Don't. God, when did you get hit by a truck?"

Darren frowned at him and considered calling mental health services. "There was a bicyclist in Berlin who nearly had me shuffling off the proverbial mortal coil, but no trucks."

"Thank God." Geoffrey regarded him with a somewhat calmer and saner gaze. "If you're still alive, maybe you'll go the fuck away."

There was no chance in hell of that, but Darren would rather smile and let Geoffrey work that out over time than admit it aloud. "Please don't tell me you're sleeping in the prop room again. You don't even have a proper one here."

"Park bench." Geoffrey pushed himself off the wall, and yes, he was moving more stiffly than normal.

Darren clucked his tongue. "There are places you can go where people give you a bed for a night. They're called hotels. Or, failing that," he added, as Geoffrey scowled, "homeless shelters. Though why you let her throw you out at the drop of a line is beyond me."

"It wasn't that simple," Geoffrey protested. "She had--well. Sort of a point. Enough of a point that I couldn't talk her out of it."

"Oh?" Darren raised his eyebrows. "And here I thought you'd be a model husband."

Geoffrey pressed his lips together. "Maybe I'll push you into traffic myself. You must have other people to haunt."

There were no other theaters in the hemisphere where Darren would consent to work for free, and precious few where they'd let him in Europe, but Geoffrey must know that. "Such violence. We have a play to rehearse." Darren picked up the sword again and gestured toward the stage. "Lay the fuck on, Macduff."

"I'm not mentally equipped for Faustus at this time," Geoffrey said faintly.

Darren drew himself up to his full height and raised the sword. "I am your fucking director, Tennant. Get your ass on that stage or I won't call my fucking hotel and tell them to find me a double room for tonight."

Geoffrey's frown was perfect for Faustus contemplating his damnation. Darren made a mental note. "You're going to direct this play for free and put me up in a hotel?"

He would look as stunning on the next pillow over as center stage. "For the spectacle of it. To trap you onstage for twenty pages straight with half the company and Jacques in an uncomfortable set of horns." Darren gestured with the sword again. "But even you have to rehearse."

"O, what a world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, and omnipotence, is promis'd to the studious artizan." Geoffrey's tone made mockery of the hopeful words. "You're not spending a penny on me."

Darren raised the sword and his hands to heaven, or more properly, to the dusty ductwork under the ceiling of the makeshift theater. "I came hither of my own accord. If you won't accept charity, it's a queen-size anyway. You may as well share the damned thing, unless you get overfamiliar in your sleep."

That brought a hint of color to Geoffrey's cheeks. "With you? Unlikely." As if it had only happened once, back when; as if it had all been Darren's idea. But the past was another country, and everyone knew what had happened to the proverbial wench.

"Pity," about all of it, but specificity would risk mockery. Darren started toward the stage again, and this time, Geoffrey kept pace with him, railing still.

"I'm not your fucking charity case."

Darren sniffed, prodded him again with the sword, and lied blithely. "I'm doing this pro bono fucking publico, not pro bono you. If you're murdered in your sleep or taken in as a vagrant, you're no good to me."

Geoffrey snorted and strode past him, taking his place on the stage as if he'd never left it.

During the lunch break, the once fair Helen came to pass over the stage, her chin held high and her proud figure on full display, thanks to a pants suit that must have cost the same as a month's rent of the theater. Geoffrey's eyes followed her as she came toward the plywood excuse for a desk where they had sandwiches. "I'm sorry," he said.

Ellen glowered at Darren, but he held up his sandwich as a pitiable excuse to be in the front row for what was clearly shaping up to be a fine second act. He couldn't be more eager for it if he'd seen the first, though the climax promised in Act III, Scene: Hotel Room was more appealing yet. "Don't mind me."

She turned her rage on Geoffrey. "I am not your fucking secretary. I tore up all the applications that arrived yesterday because I couldn't figure out where to file them, and I hate you." She tossed a handful of rough-edged pastel confetti at him and he flinched. "Never, never make me do that again."

Geoffrey looked from the pieces of someone's résumé to Ellen and sighed. The moment of hope in his eyes was, again, perfect for Faustus. His damnation was right in front of him.

It was all Darren could do not to smile, but that would get Ellen's attention and ruin the moment.

"I'm sorry," Geoffrey said. "I'll talk to Frank about it. Well, I'll write him some notes. And I won't ask you to file anything."

Ellen pursed her lips, then nodded. "And don't ask me to sew."

"Never." Geoffrey stood up and held his hand out to her, tentative as a man coaxing a wolverine. "I'll need some help with the set design for that Cleopatra, though--"

She was in his arms before he finished the last word, kissing him as though she hadn't tossed him out into the cold some hours before.

Darren turned away at that; it was an unsatisfying ending on far too many levels, but he didn't have the sword to separate them effectively at this point. He took another bite of his sandwich, glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, and reflected that it might take a bucket of water.

They broke apart eventually. Just as well, as the sorry excuse for a desk couldn't support any gymnastics greater than writing on its wobbly surface. "Where's your bag?" Ellen asked breathlessly.

"Under the costume rack." Geoffrey groaned and shifted on his feet. "I don't have time to run it home now, though."

Home, indeed. But it was only the second act, and they were weeks from opening. Darren cherished a small flame of hope that Ellen could be relied upon to make the same mistake twice, just as Geoffrey would persist in being Geoffrey. "Ay, Faustus, now thou hast no hope of Heaven." Darren stood and folded the paper that once held his sandwich. "I own you for another few hours, at least."

Ellen laughed and put her arm through Geoffrey's. "The hell you do. I want to watch this misogynistic trainwreck before I go record that fucking commercial." Her new career as a radio advertiser had only decreased her patience with the world, though as far as Darren knew, it was the only income anyone in the theater had achieved since the previous season.

Geoffrey kissed her forehead. "Do me a favor and sit in the audience." The audience at present was a set of folding chairs, but they sufficed.

Darren didn't want her there, but he felt it was in his best interest to be merciful with Geoffrey for the moment. "And keep your damned mouth shut."

She sighed and rolled her eyes at him, but she managed to keep from arguing through the afternoon rehearsal, which was far more than Geoffrey ever could.

*

The last thing Darren expected was a knock at his door at an unholy even for actors hour of the night. He sat up in his uncomfortable bed and said, "What?" before he was entirely aware of where he was. The hotel, rooms by the month, was no prize, but then neither was his salary.

Before he could add, "Quoi?" he heard the piteous tones of a man so far down on his luck he would beg help of anyone. "It's me."

The only "me" who would bother to come calling at such a time without presenting proper identification was well worth finding a bathrobe for, though a nude tableau would be more to the point. Darren opened the door; in the fluorescent-lit hall, Geoffrey swayed slightly, a duffel bag on his feet. The pallor of sleeplessness that had made him seem mysterious in his youth tended toward necromantic at his age. "I don't want to talk about it," he said, and picked up his bag again.

"No?" Darren backed away from the door and waved him inside. "This makes me wonder above the rest."

Geoffrey dropped his bag inside and ground the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Not now."

Darren cleared his throat, dropped the urge to quote with some effort, and said instead, "What astonishes me most is that you continue to believe her protestations of forgiveness when she is in fact a raving bitch who is, to all appearances, less stable than you."

"I love her," Geoffrey said, and sat on the bed.

There were too many things Darren could say to that, half of them pathetic and the other half furious. "You're mad."

Geoffrey shrugged and put his head in his hands. "I've been worse. But right now, if I'm going to be any good to anyone tomorrow, I need to sleep."

Darren held his hands up to show that they were empty, falsely implying wholly innocent intentions. "I'll stay on my side of the bed." For tonight, he distinctly didn't add.

The look on Geoffrey's rather ravaged brow, lit by the streetlamp outside, made him more pitiable than desirable in any case. "I wish I'd brought a sword."

"Tomorrow, Isolde. For tonight--" Darren set the deadbolt and opened his suitcase to hunt for something resembling pajamas "--you'll just have to trust my integrity."

Geoffrey fell back on the bed, laughing as if it hurt. "Right. Because that's never a bad idea."

"Who knocked on whose door?" Darren sniffed. "You're not relying on the kindness of strangers, darling. Go to sleep." He took his sarong into the bathroom to tie it into a nightgown-like garment in hopes of preventing Geoffrey from waking in some kind of panic.

By the time he had the thing wrapped in a way that would probably maintain some form of dignity, Geoffrey was snoring, so close to his edge of the bed that he might fall off in the middle of the night. He'd only taken off his shoes.

There was enough distrust there to make Darren seriously consider waking Geoffrey up again and tossing him out the door, but it seemed less ultimately profitable than subtler methods, as well as entirely too akin to Ellen's attempts at domesticity.

*

The fair Helen was nowhere to be seen at the theater. Geoffrey dragged through every line with the hopelessness of a man who'd sold his soul for a toothpick rather than all the delights of Hell. Jacques's Mephistopheles was no help, as he seemed to have more sympathy than seduction on the best day. "Fuck this," Darren shouted at them, and they paused. "Offer him something worth having, Jacques. Offer him yourself, if you must, but don't look like you're about to dry his tears."

Jacques glowered at him. "You have no heart."

"Hearts are useless in this process." Darren gestured at Jacques. "You act as though you've never tried to talk someone out of his immortal soul in your life. Put a little verve into it, man."

"It's my fault," Geoffrey said, raising his voice to fill the space for the first time that day. "I'm hardly in the right mindset for this."

"Au contraire," Darren said, and delighted in the way his admittedly unpolished French made the townies in the audience wince. "There's a certain vulnerability that Faustus needs."

Marcel stood up from his place in the first row. "That's not fair," he said, showing a protective instinct extremely misplaced in Lucifer.

"Fair!" Darren laughed and sat on the edge of the stage, swinging his legs onto it and striding over to point at Geoffrey with the broadest gesture he could muster. "What in all of this madness is fair? He sells his soul. For what? For a woman he can barely kiss. For sins that do him no good at all. For damnation itself!"

Geoffrey shook his head and said, catching the rhythm of the verse, "Faustus' custom is not to deny the just requests of those that wish him well--" he broke off. "Let's go back to the top of the scene." He ran his hand through his hair and gave Jacques the sort of smile that held the theater together. "I'll try to be a little more receptive to seduction."

Jacques went rather more pink than Darren would've credited. "All right," he said. "And I'll, well. Work on the charisma."

Darren rolled his eyes to heaven and got out of their way. "Try it all again."

Five minutes before the lunch break, Ellen stormed onto the stage, ignoring the fact that there were people attempting to act on it. "Where the fuck were you?" she yelled at Geoffrey. Even for Ellen, this was too much, as though she'd thrown out her last vestiges of professional behavior.

Geoffrey looked as though all the words he knew had fled, and merely stammered at her, off book and at sea.

Darren weighed his options for a breath. He could have Ellen thrown out for disrupting rehearsal, but that would probably leave Geoffrey chasing after her and wasting more time and energy. Not that he cared so much about the energy, but there were the issues of time and basic rules of protocol. He cleared his throat and said from the audience, "He was with me."

She burst out laughing, then shook her head and looked at Geoffrey with a somewhat less manic expression. "No, where were you?"

Geoffrey, who had occasional moments of brilliance, backed away from her until he was out of immediate range before he coughed, waved vaguely in Darren's direction, and said, "Well, um."

In the row behind Darren, Marcel snorted and said in an undertone, "Trying out the seduction yourself, huh?"

"Bastard." Ellen started for Geoffrey, and he headed for the edge of the stage, imperfectly braced boards bowing under his feet as he ran.

Faustus wouldn't benefit from a black eye. Darren sighed and told both Marcel and Ellen, "It wasn't, in fact, like that. Adultery is beyond the scope of the play."

"Fuck the play." Ellen stalked downstage as Geoffrey paused on the edge.

"I had to go somewhere," Geoffrey said defensively. "Could we for fuck's sake not discuss this now?"

"We don't need to discuss it now or ever, as far as I'm concerned." Ellen turned on her heel and stalked back toward the door. "Don't call me. I won't be home." There were no interior doors for her to slam, but if there had been, she would have done it with great force.

Geoffrey stopped looking as though he was going to flee and looked more as though he wanted to sink into the center of the earth. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the unstable stage. "Fuck."

Darren sighed and waved his hand at the rest of the cast. "Go away until after lunch."

"After lunch?" Marcel pulled himself up to his full rotund height. "As if that will be enough!"

Geoffrey had his hands over his face, his fingers buried in his hair. He had gone ominously quiet. Darren glared at Marcel. "That will be enough to know whether there is something more to be done today." He pointed in the direction Ellen had gone. "You are dismissed. Go."

Jacques said something in French in an undertone to Marcel that was quite clearly a comment about Darren's mother that would have offended a hardened biker. Darren chose the path of monolingualism, little though it applied to him, and waited until they and the few stagehands had gone before he sat on the splintery edge next to Geoffrey, with enough distance between them that it would take sincere effort to get close enough to punch.

"Where do you keep the alcohol?" he asked.

Geoffrey scrubbed at his eyes and folded his arms tightly about himself. "What, you're not going to run out and buy me Prozac?"

"Booze is more to the point."

Geoffrey licked his lower lip and shook his head. "Enough to float a thousand ships."

Darren snorted. "A dinghy is more her speed."

"I'm going to strangle you with your scarf if you say anything else," Geoffrey said, his voice rough.

"I'll check the office for bottles," Darren said, and went to do so, trusting that Geoffrey wouldn't try to end himself with a folding chair. Among the torn bits of résumés and accounts payable in the boxes under the battered plywood desk, there were a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of scotch, but no glasses in evidence. He took the scotch back to the edge of the stage, where Geoffrey was sitting still, his hands folded together in his lap as though he were perfectly fine. Darren offered him the scotch and he drank a frightening amount before he broke off, coughing.

"We should change the show," he said, in the abstracted tones he used when he was trying not to think about anything, including what he was saying. "Replace it with Taming of the Shrew, call Ellen--" he shook his head. "She wouldn't come back."

Darren took the bottle from Geoffrey and wiped it on his sleeve in the traditional if irrational manner, drank enough to make himself wince, and gave it back. "The play is not the thing in this particular instance. You should've shown up begging me to fuck you. At least then she'd have something to yell about."

Geoffrey choked on his mouthful of scotch. Once he'd cleared his lungs, he laughed. "She'd understand that better, probably. Wouldn't think I was lying about it, anyway, which has to be part of the problem. God, I don't know." He set the considerably depleted bottle by his leg. "That's not what this is about anyway."

"Good." Darren leaned against the stage. "There are enough things she could take you to task for without bearing false witness."

"Not this time." Geoffrey raked his hand through his hair and drank again. "Fuck, I don't know."

"Don't ask me." Darren adjusted his scarf. "The intricacies of monogamous heterosexual relationships are hardly my forte."

"No shit." There was a slur in the vowel, not enough to do more than slow a soliloquy. "Or any other kind of relationship, or you'd have told me something other than 'Come right in.'"

Darren frowned at him and all his glorious, aggravating self. "Should I have left you on my doorstep and found some other theater? I'm in demand, don't doubt that. This is your problem, Geoffrey."

"Don't I know it." Geoffrey lay back on the stage, which was an excellent way to need to do laundry even more desperately than he already did. "She barely talks to me. Hasn't kissed me since you got to Montréal, other than that thing the other day." He waved a hand as though he were conducting a band on the ceiling. "And forget anything else."

Darren groaned and stole the bottle back to dull the ache of Geoffrey's recitation. It all made him angry with himself for being so fucking honorable the night before. "Your petty romantic trials bore me."

Geoffrey sighed loudly enough to echo off the back wall. "They're not boring from over here."

Darren smacked Geoffrey's leg to see what he would do. "Are you going to rip your clothes off and leap about mad?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

The truest answer was "yes." "I've been thinking of having Faustus shed clothing as his damnation progresses, actually," Darren said, inventing the staging on the spot and envisioning it with glee. "To symbolize his loss of humanity and his descent into depravity."

There was a hollow thunk as Geoffrey beat his head on the stage. "No. We're not doing the play. The play is off. The theater might even be off."

Darren stared at him, trying to reconcile this bathetic capitulation with anything else he'd ever heard Geoffrey say. After a few breaths, he asked, "Why?"

"Why!" Geoffrey sat up, grabbed the bottle out of his hand, and swigged again. "She left me."

"Again," Darren said, and shrugged. Clearly Geoffrey hadn't meant what he said. "That makes how many times, now? She's at least as inconstant as you are."

"She meant it," Geoffrey said, looking mournfully at the three fingers of scotch left in the bottle. "I can tell."

Darren rolled his eyes and regretted bringing him anything stronger than water. "Despite her myriad faults, even I must acknowledge her ability to act."

"This theater is cursed. Never meant to be in the first place." Geoffrey swirled the alcohol. "Like the first time I tried this."

"You're more cursed than it is." Darren took the bottle from him again, though Geoffrey glowered at him. "Fucking New Burbage couldn't survive you and your screaming matches with thin air. It barely made it through until you got out, and now? It's practically shambling. You know they're putting on Macbeth from your notes again already? A little bird who heard it from a little bird who wasn't supposed to tell anyone told me."

Geoffrey snorted. Some color was coming back to his cheeks. "Maybe I'll go back there. Maybe all the ghosts are really gone this time. Or--no." His shoulders hunched in, making him look like a brooding vulture with sawdust on its back. "If she goes home to her family, they're all there. If she ever talked to her family. No. I don't know what I'll do." He took the bottle back yet again and drained it.

"Put on the play. You know the clichés as well as I."

"I don't care about it."

It had to be a lie, and it was the last straw, the moment where calling the men in the white coats seemed like the best possible answer. Geoffrey fucking Tennant refusing to have the show go on was like the sun deciding today wasn't a good day to rise because the moon was having PMS. Darren considered finding the nearest phone, whether that was the one in the makeshift office or a pay phone five blocks away, and having them take him away for his own good.

It hadn't done enough good last time.

It was easier by far to put an admittedly unsteady hand on Geoffrey's somewhat tipsy shoulder and kiss him hard. Whatever Ellen had or hadn't done, there was nothing wrong there apart from the overpowering smell and burn of scotch, and whatever was going through Geoffrey's mind apart from the booze, it didn't stop him from kissing Darren as harshly as if they had to make up for the decades they'd officially spent as enemies. "You're going to do it, you know," Darren said when Geoffrey finally broke the kiss off. "You'll do it, and you'll be amazing, and everyone will want you. Just like they always do."

Geoffrey laughed on the edge of tears and leaned his forehead against Darren's. "Nobody in their right mind wants me."

"That's within the realm of possibility." Darren kissed him again with more finesse and promise that it might, possibly, happen more than twice.

This time Geoffrey turned his face away too soon and sighed. "Thing is, I don't want you."

It was more of a blow to the ego than Darren had entirely prepared for. He backed up three steps and ran into the folding chairs in the first row of the audience, then raised his chin and glared. "Fuck you, then."

"No, no, stop it." Geoffrey sighed. "I mean I want her more than you, and she's never going to forgive me if I do anything with you. I need her. You know that, you have to."

"She won't believe you're innocent even if you go to her right this second."

"She'll believe it even less if anything happens."

"She already thinks it did." Darren folded his arms. "If you don't want to because you don't want to, say that. If you don't want to because the woman who's been toying with you since she met you doesn't want you to, fuck that, Geoffrey. How many times are you going to have to find a place to stay that isn't with your lawfully fucking wedded wife because she's lunatic enough to think she can toss you aside and pick you up again?"

Geoffrey scowled and looked away from him. "Don't talk about her like that."

"Then I won't." Darren threw up his hands. "You're mad enough for each other, I'll give you that. I'm not saying you should yell after her, 'Tarry, rash wanton; am I not thy lord,' though I wouldn't put it past you. But make up your mind what it is you do want."

"It's not a terrible production," Geoffrey admitted after a silence. "Not with the intermission, and now you've decided Marcel doesn't have to wear the fishnets."

Darren pushed his glasses up his nose and did his best to believe that Geoffrey would, against all common sense and decency, go home to his wife. "Faustus will be losing clothing as the scenes progress."

Geoffrey shrugged. "It's an interesting choice. You might want to recast."

"Never," Darren said immediately. "No unbruised youth needs to sell his soul for a little fun. You, on the other hand, could benefit from the trade."

"I don't think fucking you constitutes selling my soul," Geoffrey said.

He wasn't atrocious at subtext, especially when he was drunk. "That's between you and your ragged excuse for theology."

"So we'll put on the damn play."

"The damnéd play, yes." Darren cleared his throat and didn't ask again about the other issue; it wouldn't do to seem desperate.

Geoffrey snorted and got up, brushing sawdust off his pants. "You're going to need some change. The person in charge of paying the phone bill didn't."

Darren frowned up at him. "You want to reconvene rehearsal?"

"Why the hell not?" Geoffrey spread his hands, expansive in his intoxication. "Gotta practice my striptease sometime."

"I'm sure the rest of the company is three sheets to the wind by now." It was an accusation so hyperbolic as to be nearly implausible, even of actors before noon. Most of them had less immediate access to spirits than Geoffrey did.

"Don't call them, then." Geoffrey shrugged. "Come on up here, get the fucking script, and talk me through this stupid new blocking yourself."

Darren went up the rickety stepstool that passed for stairs and found the script with the stage manager's notes. "Not much new blocking, really. Just the timing of the garment removal." He was going to make all of that up by the seat of his pants.

"Whatever. What goes first?"

"Outer scholarly robes. And then shoes, if we can get this deathtrap safe enough, and stockings, one at a time. Then--" Darren made a show of flipping through the script. "Tunic, and breeches."

"What about the goofy looking hat?"

Darren shook his head. "Leave it for last. For characterization."

Geoffrey snorted. "Okay. From the top, then."

They had made it down to the removal of the imaginary tunic, blamed squarely on Lust, before Geoffrey let go all remnants of characterization and took the script out of Darren's hand, closing it. "There are much easier ways to get into my pants." His diction had departed with his acting.

"All of them involve a preexisting condition that I am extremely happy to lack." Darren held out his hand for the script. "Let's finish this."

"Preexisting condition. You make her sound like a disease."

"'Belike he is grown into some sickness by being over-solitary,'" Darren quoted, trying to appeal to Geoffrey's sense of duty. "You're down to the breeches and the hat. Pay attention."

Geoffrey riffled the pages of the script and tossed it aside. "You kissed me," he said, waving his finger at Darren. "I remember the last time you did that."

"So do I." It had been another desperate attempt to bring him back from the brink; in that case, the brink of expanding on the statement that Darren was a brainless, pompous slut who would bend over for anyone with a part for him. Geoffrey hadn't known what he was talking about at the time, though there were three or four grains of truth in the label.

The only bright side, as Darren had told anyone who would listen for weeks, was that he hadn't stooped low enough to tell Geoffrey something foolish like "I love you."

It had taken him six months to become dishearteningly certain that that had been true, by which point Geoffrey was in some other province somewhere and Darren had too much pride to ask anyone who might have known how to get in touch with him.

There was no way in hell that Darren would say anything of the sort this time through, whether or not it was true. He was used to wanting Geoffrey's mind and body, and had long since come almost completely to terms with the fact that his heart was elsewhere.

"Thing is, you still are pretty brainless when you want to be." Geoffrey tried to tap his temple and missed. "And as for pomposity, you're at least tied with fucking Oliver, and that's fucking saying something. But."

His sentence appeared to die there.

"You'd be appalled at how few people I've managed to seduce in the intervening years, or at least I am." Darren kept his voice level.

"Ha! More than me, I'd bet you everything I own, which is probably a lot of debt right now. And maybe divorce papers." Geoffrey shook his head. "But less than, than Ellen. Probably."

"Fewer than she fucked during that Godforsaken Titus all by itself. Not that it matters."

Geoffrey scuffed his shoe on the stage. "Yeah. She's not. I'm not." He ran down again, then looked up at Darren with his head on one side. "I'm not going to apologize."

"Neither am I. That bastard Wayne wouldn't have given me a job if I hadn't blown him, and then I'd never have met Javier, and I'd have missed out completely on my directing voice." Darren shrugged again. "Faustus," he said firmly.

"You didn't even call the cast. Rehearsal is canceled for the day." Geoffrey took a step toward him. "And you're going to fire Jacques."

Darren groaned. "This is what I get for casting the director of the theater? I'm going to fire you."

Geoffrey laughed with the note of hysteria that made him most frightening and most seductive, all at once. "No, you're not. And you know why?"

"Enlighten me."

Geoffrey held up his fingers and counted. "First, because you're going to fire Jacques. Second, because he's a terrible Mephistopheles. Third, because you, my friend, are hired for the fucking part. Fourth, because otherwise I'm not doing your Godforsaken burlesque. And fifth, because we're going to your crappy hotel, and we're going to break your crappy bed, and you're going to do this whole seduction routine tomorrow for a real rehearsal. And it'll finally work."

Darren laughed with some effort and ignored the pounding of his heart. "You're obviously about to fall over and throw up, possibly not in that order, if you're drunk enough that you think putting me on your stage is a good plan."

"Maybe not that part, then." Geoffrey grinned at him and it was all Darren could do not to fall at his feet. "But the sex part, that's a good plan."

The only way to get enough distance to be safe was to be harsh. "Not if you're so close to falling down you want me to fucking act."

Geoffrey deflated significantly. "So you don't want me."

Darren took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with satisfying force and tried to talk them both out of it for the good of the company and what passed for their friendship. "You'll wake up in the morning, you'll still be married, and you'll hate me all over again."

"It was more like professional disdain. Once I got over the, the cheating."

"I'm going to go call the cast and tell them we really are rehearsing this afternoon. And we'll try the thing again, with Jacques, with the stripping." Darren backed away from him. "I'll have them bring you blankets or something for the robe."

Geoffrey stumbled forward and caught him by the shoulder. "Don't."

Darren took hold of his wrist with a great deal of willpower and moved his hand away. "You couldn't get it up anyway."

Geoffrey pulled him into a frantically strong embrace and kissed him with drunken exuberance. "Sure I could," he said, attempting to prove his point with a thrust of his hips.

"Oh, fuck it," Darren said, and kissed him back.

There was a wolf-whistle from the audience, and they broke apart to find Marcel leering up at them, looking demonic enough for twenty fallen angels. "You're damn lucky I don't like Ellen," he said.

Darren pulled the shreds of his dignity together and said, "Tell the cast that rehearsal is canceled until tomorrow," while Geoffrey spluttered.

"They're mostly not back from lunch yet." Marcel shrugged in a way that wanted to be ineffably French, but didn't make it. "Figured with one thing and another, we weren't getting anything else done tonight, and I drew the short straw to come back and check."

Geoffrey cleared his throat. "Tomorrow," he said, with tones so portentous Darren feared he was going to launch into that overplayed bit from the Scottish Play. Darren stepped on his foot.

"You got it," Marcel said. "I'll put a sign on the door, then."

"Thank you," Darren said, not looking at Geoffrey, who was swearing under his breath.

Marcel went out whistling.

"Shit!" Geoffrey said, as soon as Marcel was out of sight, though not, with the acoustics of the place, out of hearing.

Darren rolled his eyes and went to find the bottle for his own benefit. "You're going to be lucky to be able to walk as far as the hotel."

"Oh, God." Geoffrey groaned. "Up that hill. I'll just sleep here."

"Don't." Darren kissed him, meaning to make it light, and Geoffrey sighed and bearhugged him again. "We can make it."

"All right."

Geoffrey was muttering under his breath by the time they got to the hotel, something metered and rich with archaic consonant clusters. "It's more traditional to engage in karaoke," Darren said, though he was in no position to lecture anyone about normal behavior; it was just after lunchtime, and he was heading for bed.

"They never have anything I know and like." In the elevator, Geoffrey put his arm around Darren's shoulders again and kissed his temple. "I'm going to fall asleep again."

"When did you get so decrepit?"

Geoffrey laughed and hugged him more tightly. "I'm not, just drunk. And you can't tell me that's not traditional."

"Rarely this early." Darren pushed him away gently as they reached the appropriate floor. "Why they ever let you in here in the first place is beyond me."

"I told them you'd invited me. For sex." Geoffrey leaned against the wall while Darren found his key. "I wasn't lying, really."

"I did nothing of the sort." Darren opened the door and followed him in, then made sure it was locked and the "Ne pas déranger" sign was out. "Though I might have, if I thought you'd be amenable while you weren't staggering drunk."

Geoffrey sat on the bed with little of his usual grace. "I'm not staggering," he protested, and then yawned prodigiously. "And you've been flirting with me since you called and asked if there was somewhere you could work."

Darren sighed. "If you're going to fall asleep, take off your shoes and have some water first. And I'm setting an alarm."

Geoffrey looked up in the middle of kicking off his shoes. "I'm not sleeping through till morning. It's--" he glanced at the clock "--not a good time to go to sleep." This statement would have been more plausible if he hadn't yawned again.

"I would rather not have you yawn in my face in the middle of anything demanding." Darren found himself infected by the same urge. "Besides, you're not the only one foolish enough to drink in lieu of lunch." He went into the bathroom and drained a glass of water, then brought it out to Geoffrey, who was already half-dozing, still dressed and sitting upright on the edge of the bed. "Drink this."

"What? Oh. Thanks." For once, he did as he was told, then handed the glass back meekly. "Why are you being so nice, anyway?"

Darren untied his scarf, considered the challenge of undressing or convincing Geoffrey to do likewise, and gave up on the idea. Removing his shoes and glasses was hard enough. "When you wake up from this little nap, you'll have your stamina back." Mentioning the nap reminded him to set the alarm for two hours in the future.

"We really ought to rehearse," Geoffrey said, sounding morose.

"You'll be fine." Darren pulled the covers back on the empty side of the bed and lay down, pretending that he was as tired as Geoffrey sounded. Being woken up in the middle of the night was unpleasant, but it couldn't be as bad as traipsing around Montréal at all hours of the morning. "Go to sleep."

"I'll be fine," Geoffrey said, and stood just long enough to get between the sheets. "But you're--well."

Darren could imagine all too many ends to that sentence. "I'm what?"

"Being too nice. And--" Geoffrey put an arm around him and kissed his cheek. "I'm not that tired." He yawned again.

"Two hours," Darren said firmly, and turned off the light.

"Are you sure?"

The answer to that was "no," with all force, but before he was ready to say it aloud, Geoffrey's breathing had shifted and it seemed overly cruel to wake him. It was much simpler to lie there quietly, being snuggled to an inch of his life.

*

The alarm clock was one of the more unpleasant noises Darren had heard. He'd considered recording it to use for the end of intermission, but it would probably be against the Geneva Conventions.

Geoffrey woke with a start before Darren managed to turn it off. "What--oh." He gave Darren a grin that was too charming for anyone who'd been drooling on the pillow not five seconds before. "It's only three-fifteen and we have the afternoon off."

"Sometimes being irresponsible has its perqs." Darren dodged his attempt at a kiss. "I don't have an extra toothbrush, but God knows you'll be much more tolerable if you borrow mine."

"Ah." Geoffrey wrinkled his nose and got up, padding toward the bathroom. "We're doing this all out of order."

"Avant garde affairs are all the rage, darling." Darren got up and rubbed his eyes. "The advanced practitioners use 'Let's just be friends' as a pickup line."

Geoffrey gave him a horrified look and spat out a mouthful of toothpaste. "If you were anyone else on the planet, I'd know you were making that up."

Darren smiled. "I'm glad you still have faith in me."

"Not exactly." Geoffrey handed him the toothbrush. "So."

"So?"

Geoffrey shrugged. "I'm awake, I'm sober, and God, did we really come that close to humping on stage?"

It was several moments before Darren could reply, what with the tooth-brushing process. "I'm not sure where the line between 'that close' and actual humping is in your mind. Does it have more to do with intent than actual physical contact? There was some of that, though not enough."

"Not enough--you--" Geoffrey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Either I'm not awake enough for this or I'm not sober yet."

Darren patted his shoulder. "It was more than enough to get the point across then, but then you wended your way in here and fell asleep."

"Under protest, if you'll recall."

"You needed it."

Geoffrey's smile was no worse at close range. "I needed that, anyway." He kissed Darren, and it was some time before they came up for air; it took time to make up for the long walk back, the fact that he'd been snoring, and various other minor sins. "Were you waiting for this?"

Darren shrugged and tried not to think of the honest answer to the question. "I wasn't expecting it. Haven't been for years."

"Ah." Geoffrey touched Darren's cheek and kissed him again, and it was beginning to be ridiculous, getting short of breath in the bathroom where a step one direction would have them running into the tub and a step in the other would take them out of the room. "Well."

"But you--" Darren let Geoffrey go long enough to start for the bed "--showed up here. What the hell for?"

A quick shrug and one of those smiles that made it hard to think, let alone do something radical like stop kissing him. "I figured you'd let me in, even if you weren't necessarily glad to see me."

There were many possible answers, ranging from the disdainful and untrue to the uncomfortably sincere. Darren chose something more or less resembling the middle ground. "I was glad to see you."

Geoffrey kissed him again lightly before he answered. "You should never have spent all that time convincing me not to believe a word you say."

"Everyone makes mistakes. Even me." Darren tugged at Geoffrey's shirt, which was askew before he got drunk and slept in it, and had become a wreck of wrinkles. "Just how long have you been hoping for an excuse for this?"

Geoffrey hummed a meaningless answer against his mouth, as if it wasn't enough to strip if they weren't also kissing, and fumbled with his pants. When Darren bit his lip, he broke it off and said, "I miss you. Missed you, I suppose. Occasionally, in fits of nostalgia, when I thought about university."

Darren thumped his shoulder. "Don't fool yourself into casting me as your Horatio. I couldn't play that role for anyone."

"Never." Geoffrey got his hand into Darren's pants and stroked him, slowly and experimentally. "Not then, not now. But I never asked you to."

"Fuck." Darren fought for enough breath to say something effective. "I don't want you to stop, just--let me get my pants off."

"You give terrible direction," Geoffrey said against his ear, and it would have made him livid under any other circumstances. Combined with a soft nip at his earlobe and another squeeze, it was difficult to be so much as annoyed. After a moment, Geoffrey let him go and he got his pants off as quickly as he could, with the minimum requisite wriggling. "How you ever put those things on is beyond me."

Tackling him bodily would be counterproductive. Darren snapped his fingers and said, "Take yours off. And--it's all in the breathing and the mild tolerance of discomfort. Much like sodomy."

"Speaking of which--" Geoffrey tossed his trousers aside, along with whatever he'd been wearing underneath, and gave Darren an appraising look that made him feel as though he was auditioning for something. "I'd warn you that it's been a while, but it seems redundant."

"Really." Darren gave in to the urge to embrace him. Geoffrey went with it overenthusiastically and they ended up on the bed with an alarming creak. "You don't break the bonds of monogamy much, then?"

Geoffrey's laugh sounded painful. "No. Not much. More like not ever, if you wanted to get technical. But--" he ran his hand down Darren's back and sighed. "She threw me out, and I'm tired of feeling like that means no one at all cares what happens to me."

"Romantic fool." Darren kissed him to soften the words. "You must know better than that; you've read your reviews."

Geoffrey tensed and put a hand over his mouth. "Don't. Just--if we're going to do this, let's do this. But you're not my therapist."

Darren nodded and waited for him to relax a little before he said anything else. "Sodomy, then?"

This laugh sounded better. "Not yet." Geoffrey moved down the bed and ran his fingers over the faint marks on Darren's waist from his pants. "Unless you've got your heart set on something."

The only particulars on Darren's list for the moment were amply fulfilled by the way Geoffrey was looking at him, speculative and hungry, but he wasn't going to say that aloud. "No, whatever you like."

Though if he had decided to name things he'd missed, the way that Geoffrey sucked cock was on the list: sloppy as hell with every ounce of perfect timing and commitment he'd ever put into delivering a line. It didn't matter a damn that he hadn't been practicing for the last however many years. "God, you're going to kill me," Darren said, some seemingly endless time later. He'd ended up flat on his back with his fingers tangled in Geoffrey's hair, one hand over his mouth to stop himself from saying anything too ridiculous.

"Not this time." Geoffrey paused long enough to kiss his hip. "Do you really want me to stop?"

Darren waved feebly at him. "You know how stupid that question is. Why ask it?"

"You used to like making people beg." Geoffrey gave him a glistening smile. "And I didn't get my revenge nearly enough."

"I don't remember that," Darren lied. He remembered various instances much more clearly than anything else that had happened in university, but admitting that would just make this worse. "Sadist."

Geoffrey shrugged and shifted his weight, sitting up. "I can wait."

Darren covered his face with his hand. "Fuck you. Are you really doing this?"

"I can't remember the last time you were actually polite to anyone." Geoffrey stroked Darren's thigh as if that was supposed to be soothing. "Do you even remember how to ask for something nicely?"

"I should never have let you in. I should never have come to Québec." Darren groaned. "Fine. God, I hate you. Please."

Geoffrey laughed and stayed right where he was. "That's your definition of polite? Really?"

Darren sat up less gracefully than he might have liked to and kissed his slick, maddening mouth until Geoffrey sighed and Darren knew he had his attention. "This is as polite as I get, so listen carefully: I'm not sorry I did this to you then because you were--and are--completely fucking gorgeous, and it was entirely too much fun. I'm not apologizing, and I won't, because it was a lot of fun and you thought so too. If that's what you're waiting for, go home."

"That wasn't what I was waiting for at all." Geoffrey patted his cheek, still grinning. "More like, 'please, more, yes.' The classics of incoherence. You remember."

"I liked you better before you thought you were better at directing than acting." Darren lay back and folded his arms. "Please," he said, deadpan. "Don't stop."

"Since when have I ever thought that?" Geoffrey squeezed his thigh. "And really, put some emotion into it."

Darren shrugged. "Give me a reason."

The best motivation was another wet, warm kiss, not long enough to do anything but make him shiver and give him an excuse to say, "Fuck, please."

"That's better," Geoffrey said smugly.

Darren said, "I hate you--don't stop, God, how long are you going to make me do this?"

"Long enough."

He knotted his fingers in the sheets, not least to keep from grabbing Geoffrey by the hair as he so rightfully deserved. "Bastard. God, please--" It had been a long time since Darren had wanted to be able to keep talking without thinking about what he was saying, but by the second repetition of "Oh God, your mouth, don't stop," he stopped listening to himself entirely.

He said something more than incoherent begging when he was about to come, and Geoffrey let him go then. Darren made some horrible, wordless noise and reached for him, clumsy with lust. "I'm not going anywhere," Geoffrey said, and hugged him, one hand on his cock for the last few strokes until he came, swearing with the last of a breath and overwhelmed.

It took some time before he could talk again. "You haven't lost your touch."

Geoffrey grinned. "Good to know."

Darren found his extremities after some searching and kissed Geoffrey's cheek. "You're the one with the checklist. What's next?"

"I don't have a checklist, just whims. And things I've been thinking about doing for a long time."

Darren shivered and tried not to feel terribly flattered. "Such as?"

"That. Though my other favorite is the one where you start talking about something inane in the middle of rehearsal and for once it actually works to bend you over something and shut you up."

The mental image was striking. "I see. Whom have you been fucking who actually shuts up during sex?"

Geoffrey patted his shoulder and let him go. "No one. You've got condoms?"

"In my bag, somewhere." Darren made a face at the mess on his chest. "And there are tissues."

Geoffrey wiped his hands on a tuft of tissues before he got up and opened Darren's suitcase on the dresser. "You didn't unpack? You've been here for weeks."

"Not that. It seemed overly optimistic." Darren grabbed the tissue box and did some cleanup. "The inner pocket in the lid, I think."

"Along with five more transparent scarves." Geoffrey pulled one out and waved it in the air, pink and silver. "Lovely. Are they for bondage, or just for the travesty you call 'fashion'?"

"They're not strong enough for bondage." Darren cleared his throat and didn't mention that they were also hardly the extent of his collection. "Haven't you found it yet?"

Geoffrey took out the lubricant, then a strip of condoms. "What do you think, four? Five?"

Darren snorted. "I'm not twenty anymore. Get over here before I fall asleep."

"You wouldn't dare." Geoffrey kissed him again, light and teasing. "How do you want to do this?"

"Do you need an argument about something theatrical to get it up?"

Geoffrey shook his head. "Unlike you and your scarf fetish, I'm flexible."

Darren snorted. "How flexible?"

"Less than I used to be, I'll give you that." He considered a moment. "Maybe if we start with you on your knees."

It was much easier to move where Geoffrey pointed than to argue, and for once the path of least resistance seemed like the best one. Darren blamed the complacency induced by a good orgasm. "As long as you're not going to start making more demands."

"Not at the moment." Geoffrey sat next to him and slicked his fingers. "How careful do you need me to be here?"

"Very, to start with." Darren shrugged at his inquiring look. "As you've said, I've been in Montréal for weeks." That wasn't the half of it, but it was enough of an explanation for the moment.

"Are you trying to make me run screaming into the night?" Geoffrey asked, rubbing his slick fingers together.

"Not particularly."

"Good." He kissed Darren's cheek. "It wasn't going to work. Ready?"

"Yes, fine--God." Darren caught his breath at the first tentative touch. "All right, not quite that gentle."

Geoffrey kept teasing him. "No?" He was smiling; Darren could hear it in his voice.

"I'm fine. Really." Darren bit his lip. "You're not going to break me."

"I don't want to." Another soft kiss, and more of a push, enough that Darren could move his hips back and get some friction. "I'm just taking your refractory period into account."

Darren shook his head. "At this rate, by the time you get anywhere, I'll be asleep."

"It's not even dark out. We've got plenty of time."

"Fine; take it at your glacial pace, then."

Geoffrey did just that, paying close enough attention to every detail and sigh that Darren half expected him to break off in the middle and give notes.

The illusion of his detachment broke suddenly, abruptly, when Darren gave up on waiting for him and said, "Would you just fuck me already?"

"God." Geoffrey licked his lips and closed his eyes for a moment, his face flushed. "I thought you were going to say that five minutes ago. Where the hell did I put the condoms?"

They hadn't gone far, but Geoffrey's hands were shaking and slippery. "Give it to me," Darren said; it took him two tries, and he let his fingers linger. It had been entirely too long since Geoffrey trusted him enough to be this naked, physically and otherwise.

Some of the mistakes they'd both made along the way were irreversible, but they'd still managed to find space for this again. If Darren let himself spend any time thinking about how lucky that was, he would lose his composure.

"This is what you get for being an asshole," Darren said, trying to keep his voice steady and failing. "You can't even manage this without help. Twenty minutes ago, oh, fine, but now, no."

"It was worth it," Geoffrey said, and kissed him hard. "All of it."

"You're completely insane." Darren got back on his knees and tried to pretend he wasn't shivering. "Are you finally ready, then?"

"God." Geoffrey laughed. "I have been--I don't want to think about how long. You?"

"Yes, damn it."

"Good."

It wasn't just "good," but Darren didn't have the words left to say that after the first few seconds. "God," he said instead, and Geoffrey sighed.

"See, that's what I meant."

"What you meant when?" Darren asked.

"You shut up. Already." Geoffrey sounded entirely too pleased with himself.

"Not for good. Besides--" and "besides" there was nothing to say but everything to do, and it was easy to make him groan with the right movement, then do it again. "So there."

He laughed, lost his breath, and squeezed Darren's hips, pulling him back harder. "'So there'?"

Darren bit his lip and completely failed to find the ability to respond cleverly. "Mm. Yes."

"If you say so. I--I, I need to go faster. Please."

There was something about the "please" that made Darren grin. "God, do it."

From there, it was a fight between the impossibility of keeping things going indefinitely and Geoffrey's bloody-minded persistence, but most of the latter was gone by the time there was nothing left to say but "Fuck" and "Yes" and "Please."

"I can't--" Geoffrey pressed his forehead against Darren's back. "God, I can't do this much longer." He moved one hand from Darren's hip to his cock.

"Fuck, God, no one could." Darren shook his head and tried to keep breathing at all. "You, you've, I hate you."

"I know, I know." Geoffrey stroked him, his rhythm faltering. "I'm not, I won't fall asleep. Yet. Promise."

"Just--" Darren thrust back against him. "Let go, for God's sake. Come already."

Geoffrey gasped. "Oh--fuck."

Darren was willing, for the duration, not to be the sort of person who said "It's about damn time," especially not when Geoffrey let him go just long enough to pull him down into another hug, half-boneless already.

"I hate you, too," he mumbled in Darren's ear, and it sounded just as much like it meant something else as it had when Darren said it. "You--God, you feel so good." Geoffrey stroked him again, getting focus from God knew where, as if it was going to take any effort at all to get him off.

There was nothing to say to that except, "So do you," and a groan, blessedly without any begging required.

"You're a mess again," Geoffrey said after he'd caught his breath.

Darren kissed him softly and tried not to fall asleep. "We could shower. Get a pizza. Do it all again."

"Oh, God. Shower, yes, pizza, yes. I don't know about the last one."

"Your fault." Darren gave him a smile that probably ended up as five parts stoned. "If you weren't so fucking good, I'd be able to stand. Or--" he shifted slightly "--probably sit down tomorrow."

Geoffrey shook his head. "Shower, before we both pass out."

*

"I know you're in there!" yelled a horribly familiar harridan at some infernal hour of the morning. "Let me in!" She hammered on the door, which was apparently built to amplify sound.

Darren disentangled himself from Geoffrey, who slept like an extremely friendly octopus, and tripped over the pizza box while he was looking for his bathrobe. The room looked as though it had been hit by the Ghost of Assignations Past, complete with a sock draped over the lamp. There was no way to clean the place up with Ellen beating the door down, and no way to get Geoffrey anywhere near coherence without a caffeine injection.

"Just a moment, for the love of God," Darren yelled back, and shook Geoffrey's shoulder. How he could sleep through the racket she made was beyond comprehension. "Tis the lark, you idiot," he said, and shook Geoffrey again.

He groaned and put his head under the pillow. "Tell her to go away."

"That's not my job. I didn't marry her."

"Open up!" Ellen was doing an excellent presentation of grief outside. "I want to fucking apologize!"

Geoffrey whimpered. "Where're my clothes?"

"I have no idea, but it's nothing she hasn't seen before." Darren pulled the sheets up over Geoffrey's shoulders and walked over to the door, tying his bathrobe as he went. "Don't hit me," he said, and waited for her to stop pummeling the door before he opened it.

"Where the fuck is he?" Ellen asked, her earlier grief transmuted to rage that Darren had the gall to be present in his own hotel room.

"Guten morgen, Fraulein Fanshaw," Darren said in his sprightliest German.

Geoffrey said, "Don't be an asshole," from somewhere behind Darren, which was extremely helpful advice that he ought to consider taking himself.

Ellen gave Darren a look that made him want to cast her as Medusa and pushed the door open wider. To her credit, she didn't scream at the wreck of the room, merely pressed her lips together in a frown which did nothing for her. "I came to apologize, Geoffrey," she addressed him, with great aplomb considering that he was lying naked in someone else's bed. "Two wrongs definitely don't make a fucking right, and I slept with someone else last night, sorry."

Geoffrey sat up, holding the sheets around his waist. In the half-light seeping through the curtains, he looked pale as February. "I'm sorry, too."

"I'm right fucking here," Darren said, glaring at Ellen, then at Geoffrey.

"I noticed," Ellen said, and sniffed.

"Keep your lovey-dovey heterosexist assumptions the hell out of my room." Darren put his hands on his hips, remembered belatedly that he was wearing a bathrobe, and crossed his arms. "If you're going to kiss and make up, go do it somewhere else. And this time, Geoffrey, for God's sake get it in writing that she can't toss you out for no damned reason."

Ellen's eyes widened in an absolutely classic presentation of fury. "For no damned reason! You had sex, and I'm sorry, but there's nothing in the fucking vows that say that's okay." She pointed at Geoffrey. "He's been here for two fucking nights, and we have plenty of fucking places to sleep that aren't your fucking hotel room."

"You told me to leave," Geoffrey said with the quiet confidence that they would both wait to hear what he said next. "And I didn't do anything, night before last, except stagger in and sleep."

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?" Ellen turned all of her rage on Geoffrey, who was even less well armored than Darren. "We've got a fucking couch, you know. You could've stayed there. Or anywhere else that wasn't here, and I wouldn't have been so--" she swiped convincingly at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I just want you home with me."

Darren laughed at the melodrama of her performance, all the louder because he was almost entirely certain she meant it sincerely. "Oh, please. You throw the poor man out in the cold for one night, and when he doesn't come home you immediately replace him. Priceless."

"Shut the fuck up, both of you." Geoffrey got out of bed, still naked, and stood between them like a particularly striking traffic cop, holding his hands out. "You," to Darren, "have no place to talk right now, because you know perfectly well I wouldn't put up with you for more than a season, and you'd be off with God knows who before anything got that far."

Darren stood straighter, gathering all the dignity he could muster in a bathrobe. "That is completely unjust."

"Shut up," Geoffrey said again, and turned his admittedly pretty back on Darren in order to lecture Ellen. "You slept with someone else?"

"It was only sex," she said, so quickly that she must have practiced the phrase like any other line.

"Did you ever tell her we were together for a year and a half?" Darren asked, going back to the perky tone of voice he'd used to greet Ellen.

She snorted. "That's not the story I heard."

"Oh, fuck off, you're no model of fidelity."

Geoffrey raised his voice to regal levels. "Stop it!" He pointed at the rickety chair by the barely functional television. "Sit down, Ellen." Then he gestured to the bed. "Darren. Don't hit each other. I am going to put on some damned clothes, and then we're going to talk."

"If you find my pants, toss them over," Darren said, deciding that compliance was a better plan than arguing. Ellen went to her assigned perch with a frown at the things on the floor, some of which were better left unidentified.

While Geoffrey dressed, Darren considered the arguments that would be of any use. "You hit first" wasn't going to do anyone any good. "You said I could come to Montréal in the first place" was equally unimpressive. "I saw him first" was, while emotionally satisfying on a very deep level, also unlikely to be useful. The only thing he could reasonably hope for was to mitigate Ellen's oscillating affection somehow, and that was assuming that Geoffrey was willing to put up with him for more than two nights running.

"Now," Geoffrey said once he'd dressed and sat on the bed with the solemnity of Solomon holding court, "nobody's in the right here. Nobody's more in the right than anybody else, and I'm sorry everything is such a fucking mess. It's not all my fault, it's not all your fault," to Ellen, "and it's not all your fault, either," to Darren. "Can we at least agree on that?"

"Fine," Darren said, crossing his legs.

"Sorry, but where the hell are you going with this?" Ellen asked.

Geoffrey took a deep breath and let it out again with audible calm. "You're right, Ellen; it's not part of the whole marriage deal for you to come find me in bed with someone else. But it's not part of that for you to kick me out because you're upset, or because you think I might've done something, without listening to me when I defend myself."

"Damn straight," Darren said.

"Shut up, Darren. I'm sorry, Geoffrey, but sometimes I can't trust you as much as you want me to."

"Let he who is without sin," Darren murmured, but they both ignored him.

Geoffrey gave her a look that settled into Darren's memory as perfect for Faustus beseeching God for forgiveness and realizing there was none to be had. "I can't trust you, either."

"Does that make me the reliable one here?" Darren tapped his fingers on his knee. "At least you both know what to expect from me."

"Oh, fuck off," Ellen said, waving her hand at him. "What the hell do we do now, Geoff?"

Geoffrey shifted on the bed. "I think we need to rehearse."

"Rehearse what?" Her voice rose considerably. "This isn't about the fucking play."

"Well, I don't know." Geoffrey sighed. "I can't trust you, you can't trust me. Sounds like not much of a marriage. We can hire a lawyer if you want, start divorce proceedings. If the production goes well enough, we can probably afford it."

"No." Ellen leaned forward in her chair and touched his knee. "I spent too long waiting for you to come back that first time. I can't lose you again."

Darren rolled his eyes. "He wasn't lost this time, was he? Not if you knew exactly where to find him."

Geoffrey's laugh was nearly a giggle. "You're going to get tired of sharing this tiny room in about three minutes."

"I'm already tired of sharing it," Darren said, refusing to look at Ellen. "But I owe you a certain amount of consideration and hospitality as retribution for past, ah, wrongs, and in light of a certain degree of mutual affection."

"What the fuck?" Ellen stood up. "You can't stand each other."

"Well," Geoffrey said, trying to temporize as he stood, too.

Darren had had it with politeness. "It's not about personality at all. Geoffrey gives spectacular blowjobs."

"You fucking asshole." Ellen looked as though she wanted to slap him.

This time, Geoffrey was glaring just as hard, though he was also blushing. "Where'd you throw your soul?" he asked in the same tone he'd use to ask where Darren had discarded his still missing pants.

"In the same corner as your fucking self-respect." Darren folded his arms and frowned back at them. "Going running to someone you know is going to throw you out like a used condom is one thing, but doing it again and again? That's just pathetic, darling."

Ellen blew out her breath in irritation. "I'm leaving right now, and if I have to see you again, ever, you'll be fucking sorry."

She started for the door and Geoffrey stopped her, holding up his hands. "He's an asshole. But."

"But nothing!" Ellen turned back and glared at Darren. "Where do you get off talking like that?"

He stood up, trying to take some control of the situation. "My hotel room, your theoretically beloved husband, I didn't handcuff him to the fucking bed. And if you have another fight tonight, do you expect me to say, 'No, go home to Ellen, I'm sure she didn't mean it the seventeenth time she told you to fuck off and die'?" He waved a hand imperiously at Geoffrey. "If you show up here, I'll let you in as long as you don't decide to be more of an imbecile than normal."

"Thanks a lot." Geoffrey shook his head and gave Ellen the most lovelorn beseeching look Darren had ever seen on a human being. "It would help if I knew where I was sleeping tonight."

She shrugged. "I don't fucking care anymore. Where the hell do you want to be?"

It just got worse when he said, "I love you." Any moment now Darren fully expected him to turn into a dog or some sort of baby deer.

"That's not an answer." Ellen glared from him to Darren. "Come home, dammit. I don't want you to be anywhere else. Not really."

"You could have fooled me," Darren said, not bothering to keep it sotto voce. "Your problem, Ellen, is that you're not center fucking stage for this entire thing, and you can't fucking stand it because you think he'll forget you."

She punched him in the jaw, more strongly than he expected, and he fell back onto the bed. "Shit!" she said, and shook her hand. "You bastard."

Geoffrey caught her shoulder, far too late. "What the hell was that for?"

"Some people are afraid of the truth," Darren said, rubbing his jaw tentatively.

"It's not true," Ellen protested, but she wasn't using her skills. "I'm fine, Geoff. Just come home."

Geoffrey had one hand over his eyes, and it took him several deep breaths before he moved it and looked at her. "For how long? I don't want to wonder about this anymore. God. I should find myself a studio apartment somewhere."

Ellen hugged him. "Don't."

Darren poked the bruise he was certain to have by morning. "You don't have to wonder." He tugged the polyester bedspread to try to make it lie flat over wrinkled sheets. "If Ellen can keep it together for a day, you're sleeping at home. If not--" he shrugged. "I'm sure the concierge will let you up again for a sufficient bribe."

"Fuck off," Ellen said, the words half-muffled by Geoffrey's shoulder.

Geoffrey, on the other hand, looked as though the offer had reassured him. "I should find my clothes," he said, and patted Ellen's shoulder in an effort to get her to let go.

Darren sniffed and frowned at Ellen. "I desperately need a shower. Exertions, you know."

She gave him a venomous look and said, "I'll see you at home," to Geoffrey before she stormed out again.

"That went well." Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair. "God, I need a shower more than I need to find my socks."

Darren toyed with various come-ons, but his jaw hurt too much to try any. "Mind you, when I find an actual paying job, you'll be out on the street again."

Geoffrey walked into the bathroom and left the door half open. "You're not actually essential to the success of the theater."

"Not from that. From your fucking wife." Darren found the elements of a reasonable outfit and laid them out on the bed, then gathered Geoffrey's strewn clothing and piled it outside the bathroom door. "I'm going back to the Continent next, and then whose door are you going to knock on?"

"I'm sure she'll get it out of her system by then." Geoffrey closed the door on Darren's incredulous laughter.

*

"I see," Geoffrey said in the measured tones of someone whose sanity had been questionable for well over a decade. "And Jacques is working where, if he's not here?"

Marcel shrugged. "Said there was another offer for him," he said, his accent thicker than normal.

Darren caught Geoffrey's glance at him and glared over his glasses. "For the second time, no," he said. "Under no circumstances am I directing myself and you at the same time again."

Geoffrey's smile was enough to make Darren fleetingly consider throwing him into the role of Mephistopheles instead. "It'll go better this time. No one will let you make the kind of set design horror you came up with then because we have about five cents left over from not paying Jacques, and that's all you get."

"And five cents isn't enough to find someone else to do the job." Darren rolled his eyes. "Needs must, it's your damned fault again, and you're going to owe me more than just your soul by the time this is over." He picked up his battered copy of the script. "Fine." He waved Marcel toward the audience. "On one condition, however."

Geoffrey looked wary, which was reassuring. At least he hadn't entirely lost his reason again. "What?"

"You're going through with the stripping thing, and we'll spend the five cents on a space heater if we need to. We must have something for the four people in the audience to look at."

Geoffrey put his hand out and took Darren's in a grip that reminded him all too strongly of where else Geoffrey's fingers had been lately. "It's a deal. But not until we've got something resembling costumes."

Darren sighed, feigning extreme disappointment to cover the spike of his arousal. "Laziness will get you nowhere. Let's begin."

It was three weeks, right up to the only preview, before Geoffrey dragged into practice with his worldly possessions on his back and the look of a man who was homeless again. "Is that offer still open?" he asked Darren while the lighting was tested for the second time.

Darren was tempted to lie and tell him about some brilliant young thing who'd fallen for him so hard that he was willing to go to Utrecht just to be Darren's tap-dancing Troilus, but he also needed Geoffrey to get through the rehearsal without bursting into tears at an entirely inopportune moment. "You'll have to strip again."

Geoffrey threw his duffel down in the cubicle that passed for a dressing room and gave him a brittle smile. "Here?"

"Only to put your costume on." Darren had already put on his sparkly red pants, and the matching jacket would keep until Geoffrey's robes were settled properly. There weren't enough changes to make it worthwhile to pay dressers.

"That's not what you meant." Geoffrey peeled his clothes off with the disregard of the consummate professional and picked up the undergarments that were what he'd end up with last of all. "It was a long damned night, and I can't take any more demands I don't understand."

Darren took the tunic off the hanger. "You need your sleep. This system you've set up with hardly any previews will kill you if you're not careful."

Geoffrey snorted and tugged it over his head. "So you're not trying to extort some sort of promise of wild sex out of me? Why, Darren, how you've matured."

"The sex is for after opening, as you well know." Darren tossed the breeches at him. "If you end up with your lady wife then, I'll be infinitely less glad to see you afterward."

"Shit." Geoffrey pulled the breeches up with no apparent difficulty. "Take the wild sex tonight, for God's sake."

"Nothing doing, Tennant." Darren threw the first layer of the robe at him. "I know your twisted sense of romance, and you're not leaving me hanging tomorrow."

Geoffrey groaned and put it on, turning to check the drape in the cracked mirror. "I know I asked for this with Ellen, but I didn't swear anything to you."

"Nor I to you, you bastard." Darren picked up the ridiculous hat and adjusted it, frowning over it instead of screaming at him. There were apprentices too close by and a show to perform. He would have been far more willing to go through with Geoffrey's offered stripping than he was to argue in public. "Those are the terms. If you don't like them, find yourself someone else to string along."

"I'm not stringing you along; you offered."

Darren put Faustus' hat on his own head. "Is that a no, then? I'm sure I can find something else to do with my time. This production is done, and there must be someone in town who can do Mephistopheles in English."

Geoffrey's eyes widened. "You look even stupider in that thing than I do." He reached out for it and Darren put it in his hand. "How the hell will I explain your fucked-up conception of rent to her?"

"I can if you don't." Darren gave Geoffrey the final stole. "And I won't do it with some heartfelt song about fucking prostitutes, either."

The pun was worth it for Geoffrey's wince. "Can't we compromise on this?"

"Fuck no." Darren gestured at his pants, at the drafty corridor that served for changing space, and at the entirety of the production by inference. "I'm compromised enough just being here for nothing. If I put up with you and put you up for nothing, that makes me little more than a dupe. I'd rather use you for sex."

Geoffrey kissed him roughly. "You're such an asshole."

"Oh, not at all." Darren smiled at him with all the self-confidence he planned to apply to his role, amplified by the haze of lust. "It'll be mind-blowing sex."

"I'm sure," Geoffrey said with unflattering levels of sarcasm.

"Fifteen minutes!" the stage manager yelled.

Darren winced and put his ringmaster's jacket on. It was just the right blend of blinding and garish. "You'll be there, or you'll find yourself someone else to buy your fucking soul," he said, and went to make sure that the cast was en route for the stage in a reasonable time frame.

*

As predicted, Ellen was at the opening night, failing to hide in the back of the theater. There weren't enough seats for that, though all of the seats were full; she stood through the performance in a show of devotion that probably melted Geoffrey's notoriously malleable anger with her.

"I'm not feeling up to the bar tonight," Darren said as he hung his jacket up.

"I'm going," Geoffrey said firmly.

Darren raised his eyebrows and didn't cringe, even internally. "What, and risk being locked out of two places at once?"

"You're coming, too. One drink. In honor of your fucking production's successful opening. Some of those seats out there actually earned money, opening or no."

"Ten of them. And you didn't call Ellen and tell her they were sold out, you naughty thing." Darren shook his head, acknowledging that sometimes tradition trumped desire. "One drink. That's all. I'm not letting loose with your tiny little company."

Geoffrey put his arm around Darren's shoulders and kissed his cheek with an affection that was painful to believe. "You should let me go home, that's all."

"Tomorrow is more than soon enough."

Just as Darren turned to kiss him more fervently, the blanket that passed for a door swung aside and Ellen walked in. Geoffrey let Darren go immediately.

"You were wonderful," she said, all her attention on Geoffrey, her eyes wide with admiration.

It was the sort of performance that could coax forgiveness out of a stone, but Darren wasn't impressed. He pointed toward the doorway. "This may be a pathetic excuse for a dressing room, but I'm about to take my trousers off, and I'm absolutely certain you don't want to see that, so fuck off."

"Not alone," Ellen said, and offered her hand to Geoffrey.

Geoffrey sighed and put his hands behind his back like a child in a candy store. "I can't tonight." Over her incredulous "What?!" he said, "I, um. Promised Darren, um."

Ellen turned all of her considerable ire on Darren. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's worse than your fucking horses."

Behind her, Geoffrey looked conflicted, apologetic, and beautifully Faustian, doomed to argue against his best interests out of principle. "I promised." Darren could have kissed him then and there except that it would have ruined his chances of making a point without infuriating Ellen further. "And I do keep my promises."

"What about 'Till death do us part'?" Ellen asked.

Geoffrey laughed, commanding all her attention. Darren smiled in triumph, though he sounded more than half out of his mind. The tinge of madness had been there since he'd first heard Geoffrey laugh. In one of his more optimistic moments, Darren had dubbed it the utmost limit of cynicism that Geoffrey's romantic soul was capable of expressing. His words were better yet: "You've thrown me out four damned times now. I only come back because I'm a fool, which I still am. But a fool with an obligation, tonight."

"I'm not leaving you alone with that." Ellen pointed in Darren's direction.

Her dismissal evoked the image of Ellen naked, which was not particularly repulsive, but the concept of her as some sort of voyeur, let alone participant, in any sort of intercourse with him made him cringe. "You're not invited, Sycorax."

"Stop that!" Geoffrey said, loudly enough to make the thin cubicle walls shake.

Her eyes lit with the unholy glow of rage and he remembered anew why he'd accepted her as Gertrude, however fleetingly. Helena Furiosa was beautiful in a vagina dentata way. "You made this sick little bargain, not me. You want to follow through with it, fine, but not without me."

Geoffrey shook his head. "This is not a good plan."

"I know, I know," and now she was all placation, going along with whatever he wanted as long as it was what she wanted, so much that she gave Darren a weak smile. "Oil and water, that's us."

"More like a house on fire," Darren suggested. "Complete with screaming and bloodshed."

A bare second before Darren would have added, "Never mind, you can just go home," Geoffrey gave him the sort of grin that had coaxed him to Montréal in the first place. "Just how long has it been since you felt the touch of a woman?"

"Barely long enough," Darren said, and Ellen snorted. He amended, "Six years."

"There you all are!" cried a woman's voice, and Geoffrey's expression shifted to surprise.

"Anna!" he said, a moment before she embraced Geoffrey--thin, red-fading-to-silver hair, practically his type.

"I heard you shouting. The walls are so thin," she said as he patted her shoulder. "And I had to find you, anyway, and tell you how wonderful you were."

Darren cleared his throat. "Ms. Conroy."

Anna gave him a warmer smile than he expected of her. "It was a great show," she said, and seemed about to embrace him next.

Ellen headed her off with a hearty, "It's good to see you," for which Darren was silently grateful.

"You shouldn't be hiding back here," Anna said, and gave Ellen an ill-received embrace. "All your adoring fans are wondering where you went."

Geoffrey chuckled and held up his shirt. "Still changing. Give me a few minutes?"

"Oh." She went pink, as if she hadn't just hugged him in his shirtless state, and stepped toward the doorway. "I'm sorry."

"Still arguing," Ellen said, and pushed the blanket-door aside. "See you when you're decent, Geoff."

As soon as the women had gone, Darren pulled off his costume, not sparing a glance for Geoffrey doing the same lest they grow distracted. "Well?" he said as he buttoned his shirt.

"Well, what?" Geoffrey's confidence seemed to be coming back. "I'm going out for a drink with Anna, whom I haven't seen in far too long, and with Ellen, who happens to be my wife. And with you, if you're feeling polite enough for a social gathering."

"Then what?"

Geoffrey shrugged his shirt on. "That's between you and Ellen at this point."

Darren rolled his eyes. "I'd prefer to have an ocean between me and Ellen. You made me a promise."

"Under a certain amount of duress. Put your shoes on, they're waiting."

"That was hardly duress," Darren protested, though he knew full well that he was pushing too hard.

Geoffrey swept the curtain aside. "Oh, it was."

Darren followed him out and resorted to a flippant comment to cover the sinking feeling in his stomach. It was going to be a long run if he had to share a dressing space with Geoffrey every damned night without kissing him. "I should've made you sign in blood, then."

"That wouldn't have helped." Geoffrey shrugged and headed for the main entrance. "That sort of thing invalidates contracts, no questions asked."

He was accosted by another old friend before Darren could scoff at him, and while he was disentangling himself, there was a shout in the finest Berlin dialect and Darren allowed himself to be distracted by Niklas, who was spending a little time in town before he went to direct Coriolanus in New Burbage. Niklas had apparently convinced Customs to allow him to bring his all-leather wardrobe into the country, including the parts with spiked metal sticking out of them. He was not one to let go of a leitmotif easily.

"It was restrained, for you," Niklas said, and he looked disappointed. "I was expecting even more skin by the end."

"Ah, you know these prudish Canadians," Darren said, which wasn't an answer at all, and wasn't fair to Geoffrey, who had proved more than willing to bare himself for dramatic effect in the past. "And the effects, my God, they barely let me get away with the sparklers. How one is supposed to evoke a properly firey inferno without any fucking fire, I have no idea. The imagery of the High Church doom is simply lost on them."

Niklas smiled. "The smoke was almost enough. And you, I did not think you would be acting."

Darren smiled and delivered his prepared excuse. "I find that if I spend too long directing without treading the boards myself, I lose some of my perspective. Myopia is a bitch when it comes to this sort of thing." He glanced around and saw Geoffrey et al. disappearing out the door. "Come to the bar," he said to Niklas, trusting him to accept the offer of alcohol quickly.

"Oh, yes. So soon?" Niklas glanced at the members of the press, most of whom appeared to have been drinking steadily through the show.

"Hobnobbing with the ink-stained hordes is not in my contract," Darren said loudly enough for it to be a soundbite, should anyone be listening, and strode toward the door.

"But you were only going to direct," Niklas said as they made it past the crush. There were no adoring fans flinging roses at Darren's head, only a few people he recognized somewhat whom he might have talked to in other circumstances.

"I was, but you know how things are in these tiny theaters. One idiot catches a cold, and they're pushing the dresser onstage for the big speech."

Niklas laughed. "Or the director, as if you have nothing better to do with your time." He lowered his voice, though once they hit the sidewalk, there was no one nearby to overhear. "And working with Geoffrey Tennant, of all people."

There was no answer to that that could be both true and honest without also being more revelatory than Niklas merited. "He only had three nervous breakdowns during rehearsal. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"God in Heaven, and how has he not starved to death?"

"Overwhelming charisma." Darren opened the door of the bar and waved Niklas in ahead of him, disguising camouflage as courtesy.

"Oh my God!" shouted Ellen from the other side of the room, and she burst into laughter. Geoffrey already had tears on his cheeks, glinting in the dim light, and Anna had an expression that made her seem less terminally stultifying than normal. "No!"

"By the time we got everything sorted out, there were some pretty embarrassed kids in that village, that's for sure," Anna said with satisfaction.

Geoffrey wiped his eyes, still grinning. "I'd stage that in a heartbeat. Or, fuck, you--Monologues from a Revolution."

"Me?" She clapped a hand over her mouth, and Darren could barely hear her demur. "Oh, God, no. No thank you."

Niklas thumped Darren's shoulder. "Do they serve anything worth drinking here?"

"Only in the sense that alcohol is much better than its absence when dealing with this group of people."

Darren turned toward the bar just as Geoffrey said, "Anyway, you're more than welcome."

"Cosmopolitan, and fuck the umbrella," he said to the bartender, who could've repeated the order to him by this point in his residence in the city.

"And your friend?" the bartender asked, her pierced eyebrows rising.

Niklas shrugged. "Lager. No American wretchedness. Something else."

The bartender nodded and returned a few moments later with Niklas's lager and Darren's cosmo, accepted the payment with an ill grace, and went to annoy someone else. Darren glanced around the bar, ignored Marcel's glance and the stage manager's immediate ploy to pretend she hadn't seen him, and went to interrupt Geoffrey's quaint little reunion. "Niklas, Geoffrey. And Anna Conroy, whom you have no reason to recognize. And Ellen Fanshaw, who was going to be Helen."

Niklas coughed, possibly at Ellen's expression of irritation, and pulled up a chair at the next small table. "Good to meet you all."

"Charmed," Geoffrey said.

"Good to meet you," Anna said.

"Any friend of Darren's," Ellen put in, her smile brittle.

Darren toasted her ironically and sat on a stool. "Have you reconsidered our earlier discussion?"

Geoffrey went even paler than normal. "Not now."

"Oh, let's get it over with," Ellen said blithely. "The answer's no."

There was a hollow thunk as Geoffrey put his head down on the table, sticky residue of a thousand drinks notwithstanding. Darren smiled, though he didn't mean it. "Now, darling, we've talked about this. You're free to break your own contracts, but this one's Geoffrey's."

"Not now!" Geoffrey said again, as if he thought he could possibly have any face left to lose in front of anyone but Niklas. He sat up and glared at Darren.

Ellen put her arm around him possessively and murmured something in his ear. His eyes widened in something like horror for a moment, and he whispered something furiously back.

"So," Anna said in a transparent attempt to cover whatever they were saying, "what do you do, Niklas?"

"Drama," Niklas said, shifting in his seat. "With all the trimmings, if they'll let me. Reimaginings, and I'm taking on Coriolanus next."

"Oh!" Anna smiled a moment before Geoffrey slammed his hand on the table and there was a renewed fury in his whispers. Her smile went brittle. "Where?"

Niklas glanced at Geoffrey, frowned, and said, "New Burbage."

"What a coincidence."

"Fuck!" Ellen said before she lowered her voice again.

"Oh?" Niklas's expression was rather fixed.

Anna spoke a little more loudly to compensate for Geoffrey's whispers. "I used to work there. For years, really. It's funny to be with people I knew from there," with a sidelong look at Geoffrey and Ellen, "and not be there."

Darren drained the rest of his drink and made a mental note in somewhat shaky handwriting to tip the bartender better the next time he was in; its punch was nearly strong enough for him to stomach both the argument and the mention of that Godforsaken place without a qualm. "Wherever you are, you're better off," he said, and reached over to pat Niklas's hand. "The only thing I miss is the checks they'd write me for fireworks. Beautiful fucking fireworks."

"All right," Geoffrey declared, his tone enough that people at distant tables perked up, ready for some St. Crispin's Day nonsense.

Darren tossed a coaster at him like a frisbee. "No one else cares. Lower your damned voice."

"Come over here, you feckless twit," Ellen said, apparently addressing Darren and pointing imperiously to their end of the table.

Niklas coughed again. "I'm not feeling well, Darren."

Darren rolled his eyes and dragged his stool where he was summoned. "You'll be fine."

"Um, well. Good luck," Anna said, and Niklas said something else in response, but by then Darren was focused on Geoffrey's voice in his ear, fierce and soft.

"You'd better fucking appreciate this, because she got the better end of the deal: you get your way, you son of a bitch, and she's going to find some pretty thing a third her age any time I spend half a second with you offstage."

The bargain sounded like an unfair trade, somehow, but if Geoffrey was willing to go through with it, Darren didn't plan to argue in his favor. He whispered back, "So this isn't a one time offer?"

"I'll have to give her fair warning, but, no. Not just tonight."

There was a great deal of promise in Geoffrey's voice, even at that volume, and the fact that he was willing to make this sort of deal made Darren seriously consider kissing him to seal it. On the other hand, that might be too much for Ellen.

Ellen smacked Darren's shoulder. "He's lying," she said, and gestured him closer. He leaned in until he could hear her practically biting off her syllables. "You're leaving the country at the end of the run," she said.

The declaration was more than enough to make Darren reconsider his earlier position on the matter. "Not necessarily," he whispered back. "There wasn't a hell of a lot for me in this provincial backwater to begin with, but circumstances are improving."

Ellen put her hand on his knee and squeezed hard enough to hurt. "You mean you're not?"

"I haven't decided." The honest answer was sufficient to convince her to let go.

"What the hell do you want?" she asked, her voice fierce in his ear.

"Isn't that obvious?" Darren leaned back enough to leer at her.

She grabbed his shoulder. "If you hurt him, I'll cut your dick off."

"You're the one who threw him out," Darren reminded her.

She hissed between her teeth. "I still love him."

There was no way in hell or on earth that Darren could make her believe anything but the worst of him, he was sure of that, especially not in a whispered conversation in front of an audience. "As if you're the only one," he said, trusting her to know that several hundred people fell in love with Geoffrey, at least briefly, on a weekly basis.

Ellen studied his face briefly, her lips pressed together, and gave him a tight smile. "All right, then."

"What are you talking about now?" Geoffrey asked, not at a conversational level, but more loudly than Ellen.

Darren shook his head at the three of them and the picture they must present, murmuring together like witches or schoolgirls. He answered loudly enough to be heard at the table. "Whether I could possibly find paying work in this town."

"Of course you could," Geoffrey said immediately. "There's always someone willing to pay an idiot to be loud and obnoxious."

As a statement of faith, it lacked a certain internal consistency, but it was still reassuring. "Except for you," Darren said.

"Why buy the cow?"

"Fuck you," Darren said, and kissed his cheek.

Geoffrey got up quickly enough that his chair toppled over backward. "Sorry, Anna," he said, drawing himself up with a dignity that no one should be able to put on so smoothly after making such a noise. "I'm having trouble working out exactly what the protocol is when you need to bitch about your director to the other people in the cast when he's one of them."

Ellen scoffed and gave Anna a sympathetic look. "Might as well bitch to everyone else, then."

Geoffrey shook his head. "There are some things to work out--some notes, you said, Darren?"

"Some major changes to the subtext," Darren said, resolving to molest him onstage as soon as humanly possible. He stood, giving Niklas a broad wink. "Give me your number, and I'll call you for lunch."

Niklas looked thoroughly nonplussed for a moment, then scribbled a series of numbers on a napkin and passed it down the table. "Good night."

Anna was embracing Geoffrey with an affection that surprised Darren. "You take care of yourself."

"You, too," Geoffrey said fondly, and bent to kiss Ellen's cheek. "Au revoir."

Ellen had her arms folded across her chest. "Something like that. Good night."

Darren blew her a kiss that she pretended to ignore. "I'll try not to break him with too many infernal tortures this time," he promised, and waved Geoffrey ahead of him toward the door.

"How many homes have you wrecked now?" Geoffrey asked once they were on the street.

Darren grinned at him with the incomparable satisfaction of knowing that tonight he was going to get well and truly laid, and tomorrow there was good theater to put on. "It doesn't sound wrecked by that little contract unless you're going to be insufferably traditional about the definition of marriage."

Geoffrey kicked a pebble that went skittering ahead of them. He was smiling wryly. "She was probably going to do it anyway, which makes you her convenient excuse."

"For God's sake, at least you know you're not going to be out in the cold." Darren snorted. "Not that you would be, of course."

"You have no idea," Geoffrey said, but there was no venom in it.

"Not until you tell me." Darren shrugged. "I don't mind if you want to keep telling yourself we're just fucking for the hell of it. No deep, soul-baring conversations required."

"Is that what we're doing?" Geoffrey glanced at him. "What you're doing?"

"There's no shortage of sweet young things around, looking for a leg up, and most of them have their own room, or at least their own bed." Darren raised his eyebrows. "You're entirely too much work for a quick lay."

Geoffrey took his hand in a decisive gesture. His fingers were extremely warm. "Am I?"

Darren sniffed as dismissively as he could, which wasn't very under the circumstances. "You always were."

"I can't tell whether that's a compliment or an insult," Geoffrey complained, though he didn't let go of Darren's hand.

"Neither. It is, for once, the unvarnished truth."

"That I'm too hard to get into bed to be worthwhile?"

Darren didn't look at him. There was every chance that he would have too much trouble looking away once he started. "For anyone who wants a one-night stand or the like, yes. For longer term arrangements, well, I wasn't lying about the blowjobs."

Geoffrey snorted. "It's good to know why you bother taking the time."

"Also, you're a much better actor when you're not frustrated," Darren said, as further misdirection from anything that sounded like a plausible emotional explanation.

"I see." Geoffrey squeezed his fingers. "You're in it for the sake of art."

Darren laughed and decided that for the moment, that was a more than satisfactory explanation. "Always."

"For the good of the theater?"

"It will add to the sense of seduction." They'd reached the hotel, and Darren glanced down at their joined hands. "Shall we skip merrily into the lobby?"

Geoffrey shrugged and kissed his cheek in a strangely first-date way, as though their first affair hadn't started with a screaming match that ended on a desk, and as though the concierge hadn't learned to recognize him by now. "You're the one who's not famous for insanity, unfair though that seems to those of us who know you."

Darren smiled tightly and patted his cheek. "I love you, too, darling," he said, with all the acid he could layer into the phrase, and while Geoffrey was still stammering, he retrieved his key from the concierge. The best truths were those told in ways that no one would ever believe.

Except for the small matter of audience.

"No, but really, what the hell?" Geoffrey asked articulately when they had reached the relative privacy of the elevator.

"Which hell is that, precisely?"

"Jesus, Darren." The elevator dinged and the doors opened, but that was insufficient to quiet Geoffrey. "I told Ellen she could go off with whoever she wanted. I'm here. Give me something to work with."

Darren rolled his eyes and unlocked the door to his room. "I have been."

"Not enough."

Geoffrey was hovering over his shoulder, demanding attention. Darren kissed him as persuasively as he could, and after a gasp Geoffrey took hold of his shoulder and pulled him closer.

It was some time before either of them remembered to breathe.

"Well," Geoffrey said at length, "that's better. Thank you."

Darren opened the door, wondering exactly what he'd understood out of the kiss that he hadn't previously. "Is it?"

"Much." Geoffrey followed him into the room while he groped for the light switch. "Oh, and one more thing, while I'm thinking of it."

"Yes?"

"You're a terrible actor offstage. Always have been."

Darren finally found the lights, though they didn't make anything in Geoffrey's intentions clearer except his smug smile. That was the trouble with falling into bed with people who qualified as "old friends"; they had a better chance than most of hearing what you meant rather than what you said. "Really."

"You're not so bad on it." Geoffrey kissed him softly, and that was close enough to a compliment to make Darren laugh and pull him toward the bed.

[fin]

Mephistopheles:
Tut, Faustus,
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;
If thou lovest me, think no more of it.
I'll cull thee out the fairest courtezans,
And bring them every morning to thy bed:
She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have,
Be she as chaste as was Penelope,
As wise as Saba, or as beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall.