Work Text:
Of course things could have been different, Oliver thought. Like the pondering of a playwright, thoughts on his ink dripping page.
“Is that the essay for tomorrow?” James asked, his head on the pillow, his hand lingering on the spine of a plain brown book. “Because I would appreciate it if you would close the lights right now, Oliver. It’s what— two in the morning?”
“I just need to revise it.”
“You come most carefully upon your hour.”
The glow of the lamp wavered as Oliver blinked. “…tis now struck twelve,” he muttered, squinting at his copy of Hamlet through a myriad of notes, trying to decipher its lines beneath.
“Then get thee to bed, good sir.”
“For this relief much thanks, tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.”
“Tush tush.” Oliver turned to James, his entire figure melting in the shadow; a perfect exposition of any tragedy. “You see,” James said, laughing. “You have got it. Your essay is perfect.”
Oliver flickered the lights off. “Sorry about that,” Oliver said. “I like to stay up late for revision.”
From the other side, James hummed. In the dark, the voice was particularly soothing. “It’s new for everyone,” he said kindly.
Oliver stretched. “How was yours?”
“Shylock. Didn’t want to go for Hamlet again; I got enough of him in high school.”
Oliver was reminded of Romeo debate he was forced to listen in his. What does Romeo and Juliet enact in their first meeting? Love or Lust? “It wasn’t exactly intellectually stimulating,” Oliver conceded.
James gasped. “Shakespeare?”
“High school.”
“I think it’s easier to write something novel. Hard to do when it’s on Shakespeare.”
“It’s easier to write,” Oliver argued, then realizing the hour, lowered his voice. “Sorry. I just think that it’s much easier to write on the inevitability of tragedy when it’s actually a tragedy.”
“What, problem plays aren’t attractive enough for you?”
“That’s not what I mean—” Oliver replied, prompted by his readiness to agree. He stopped. “Wait, ‘attractive’? What does that even—"
In the dark, James’ laughter stayed muffled. Oliver imagined him hiding in his comforter, his smile stretched wild on his face. “Go to sleep, Oliver.”
Oliver would have complied. He would have gone to sleep without a word, and like all self-conscious people, lay awake thinking about his essay all night long. Something made him utter instead, “It won’t soothe away all our worries,” and listened to the laughter fade away softly, closed his eyes, and fell asleep to the half-heard reply: “It relieves the weary laborer and heals hurt mind…”
Dellecher was an odd place, Oliver thought. Odd in a beautiful way. Roof and its golden fires. Odd. What was odder was he was in it.
“Oliver,” James whispered. They were walking to the cafeteria, heads quite empty. A girl was standing in front of them. “She’s asking you a question.”
“Oh,” Oliver said, startled. “Sorry.”
“She’s lives right next to our dorm, Oliver.”
“Oh,” Oliver repeated.
The girl just laughed, flickering her hair at him. “A little slow is fine,” she said. “I like slow ones.”
That girl, it turned out, was Meredith. Beside her was Filippa, her hand in the middle of a book to serve as a bookmark. Richard and Wren were met later. Oliver promptly forgot how and why they had become friends with Alexander. Perhaps, like a Shakespearean clown, Alexander had entered their circle to deliver some jokes and managed to live cynically yet significantly better than anyone else. Or perhaps it wasn’t about Shakespeare at all.
There was the talk about the point where tragedies become inevitable. James said it was from the very first, Filippa nodding along, either approving or bored. Meredith talked about a breakpoint— narratively speaking, she said. Wren whispered something about devices and Macbeth. Alexander handed his essay and said that he did not write on tragedy. And together they discussed and became friends, and so school had given Oliver strange bedfellows.
Richard slammed his fist on the cafeteria table and whined about the upcoming play.
“They said they wouldn’t do tragedy until our fourth year,” Richard grumbled.
James picked at his eggs. Oliver gracefully let him take his; it had become tradition. “Problem plays are not tragedies,” James said.
“Aw,” Alexander said. “Will this gear ne'er be mended?”
“I speak no more than truth.”
“Thou dost not speak so much.”
James shot him a look; Alexander put up his hands. “Alright, alright,” he relented. “But it will great practice for you, won’t it? Maybe you will get Troilus instead of Achilles…”
James crossed his arms. “And you? Priam or Diomedes?”
Alexander waved a finger around like a bad-rendition of century-old politician. “Bet my entire life savings on Wren and Cressida.”
James ate the eggs in silence. There wasn’t much in arguing with him; their characters were an open secret at this point, done even before the teachers tried to type-cast them. Because it was so obvious who James was; who any of them were.
“Achilles,” Oliver said when he was asked about his bet on James’ casting. Because it was so obvious. Half-human, half-god, Achilles will strike everything down before he himself knew.
“I hope you got a lot of savings,” James said, after seeing the list. “Because you need to pay up.”
Alexander was cast as Agamemnon, much to the disconcertion of Richard, who got the villain role instead. But that wasn’t what the bet was.
“I wish we bet on yours,” Alexander said. “That said, I am penniless, so too bad for you. You can make those pouting faces to Oliver during rehearsal.”
Wren wasn’t cast as Cressida. That made Alexander lose. But that wasn’t what was important— for Oliver, anyway. James looked at Oliver with a loop-sided smile. His gray eyes were crinkling.
“Well,” James said. “It seems that the teachers weren’t all old tedious fools, are they.”
“Cressida is more my role,” Meredith commented.
James adjusted his uniform, pulling at its threads. “Heaven made thee free of it,” he said. “Now I am stuck with her.”
Meredith reassured James that he will be a great Cressida. “I don’t mind being Achilles,” Meredith said. “My Patroclus is quite handsome indeed.” And she nudged her elbow at Filippa, who stared at the cast list with a blank eye.
“Cool,” she said.
Richard muttered something under his breath that Oliver couldn’t quite catch but understood. The casting had been odd. Too odd that it could hardly be considered beautiful. It was just plain weird.
“Why,” Oliver managed to say under his breath, right after James and company ushered away with grunts and giggles. “Why am I Troilus?”
Needless to say (yet still, somehow, worth mentioning), the rehearsal wasn’t going well.
James was serious, dedicated, and all the good things that come with being James. But whenever James says Will you walk in, my lord?, with his eyes lowered (appropriately, the teacher praised), Oliver would forget his line and they would start anew. The seventh time it happened they called a break. To clear your head, James said pointedly and promptly went to get some water.
Their teacher went to talk to him, of course, and Oliver sensed the hair on his neck stand up when she gave him a disapproving stare.
“I know you’re not used to getting these kinds of roles, Mr. Marks,” she began, already making it worse. “But I have never seen you like this. Is there something on your mind?”
Oliver jittered in his seat. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She frowned when silence ensued. James came back, looking just as weary as she looked. “Ms. Dardenne and Ms. Kosta are coming soon for their slot time,” she said. “I recommend you two to be ready next time I see you.”
“Yes,” Oliver said. She waved a hand.
“The cast list is decided by the school board,” she said. “I understand if you’re uncomfortable with it, Mr. Marks, but being an actor—a Shakespearean actor—demands a level of competence. The school is to help you form that competency; do you understand?”
“Yes,” Oliver said. James muttered under his breath something about slanders, and something about a satirical rogue.
So they were talking, sort of. They were sorting it out, sort of. James sips his juice and together they sat down on the outskirts of school, the grass tickling their ankles.
“Sorry about today,” Oliver began. “I guess I didn’t learn my lines properly.”
James produced an uh-huh from the back of his throat and took another sip. “Not even a single line before you turn into a babbling fool, I see.”
“Sorry.”
James laid on the glass, his black hair curling against the soft greens. He had closed his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said. “Do better next time, I guess.”
“I will learn my lines,” Oliver promised.
James seemed so peaceful that he might as well be sleeping. They stayed like that for a while. The juice box flew away in a swept of wind.
“I can talk to Meredith about it.”
Oliver blinked his eye open. He looked down at James, who still got his eyes closed. “What? Why?”
James cracked an eye at him. “You like her, don’t you?”
“What?”
“It’s a question.”
Unused to friends being quite so blunt, Oliver just stuttered a few nonsensical words before James resumed with a sigh.
“Achilles is more my role,” James said, propping one arm up the ground. He stretched, looking up the sky. “I’m sure if I ask nicely, she will let us switch—”
“No,” Oliver said.
James didn’t immediately look at him, but he did, eventually, level his gaze to Oliver. He shifted. “No?” he asked softly. The wind shifted in turn.
“There’s no need to,” Oliver said. “I don’t want to trouble you—”
“It’s no trouble,” James said, looking at the ground, now, his fingers brushing against blades of grass. “I don’t mind it.”
Oliver shook his head. “I swear, it’s okay. I was just— just stressed, that’s all.”
James shrugged. “Alright,” he said. His hair was in a disarray; Oliver helped him adjust it. “So I presume we can get to the kiss scene next time without breaking you a sweat, Mr. Marks.”
Oliver’s hand faltered and slipped. He wondered if he paled; James looked concerned. “A—kiss scene?”
James stood up; Oliver stumbled to follow him. “Well yes,” James said. “Did you not hear what she said today?”
Oliver did not, and now he was afraid of what other things he did not hear. “I thought it would be cut—since we are—”
“Ghosts of boy players will cry if you finish that sentence,” James replied mildly.
Oliver hid his face in his hands. “This school is going to kill me before I graduate.”
James laughed. “Okay, now I am suspicious if you really learnt your lines. You would know about it, seeing that we play lovers and all. It’s inevitable.”
“Why are you so—”
“So calm about it?” James asked. “It’s work, Oliver. It’s just one scene; it won’t hurt.”
Oliver knew which scene he was talking about, of course he knew. He had finished reading the Complete Works in high school and memorized half of them. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence, Troilus will say, and the stage direction reads, in small italics, Kisses her. Oliver looked at James.
Kisses him.
“Besides,” James added. “You seem very much against the idea. We won’t want unnecessary emotions get in our way, now.”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s not that.”
James laughed. “What, you want to kiss me?”
Oliver watched James’ fingers pulling the threads of his uniform, the quick blinking, and blurted out, “Was that a question or an inherent invitation?”
James blinked, a still smile on his face like a picture, seemingly unaware of it. “Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss,” he said.
Oliver spoke before thinking, He seemed to do that a lot around James. “What offends you, lady?”
James clasped his back. They walked back to their dorm.
“So you know your lines!” James said, and Oliver, feeling the warmth of James’ hand on his spine, the pressure there, and forgot again to answer.
Maybe he had a memory issue.
It was not a memory issue.
“It went well,” James said, a little incredulous. The dorm was silent. They were whispering between the gaping space of their beds. “The rehearsal went very well.”
“That sounds just slightly insulting to my person.”
“Oh, slander, sir.”
In the dark, Oliver can see his silhouette, not unlike the first time they met. He wondered if James was secretly laughing at him.
“I remembered my lines,” Oliver whispered.
James whispered back, “You kissed me.”
“Well—yes.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I kind of did. Have to, I mean.”
“You cannot shun yourself.”
“That’s my line.”
“Let me go and try.”
“I did not want to make you think that it was your fault,” Oliver said when their laughter faded as he shifted in his bed. “Because it wasn’t.”
“Problem plays,” James said, “have their charms.”
Oliver couldn’t help it. He flickered the light open. James was tucked in his bed, his eyes gleaming under the light; they were almost blue.
“If we played in a tragedy, it would be different,” James continued. “Hamlet, for example. If you and I were Ophelia and Hamlet—”
“Branding yourself as a tragic hero?” Oliver said, teasing, but there was an intensity between them now, shared between those that confounded art with reality, and reality with life. “I would see you as the one going mad, actually.”
“Mad in craft,” James corrected. He smiled at Oliver, sitting up, his duvet serving as a cocoon. “I don’t see you indulge in madness. In grief, maybe. Out of all of us, you would be Horatio.”
Oliver didn’t think he can survive without this. He also didn’t know what he meant by this; maybe this dorm, this life shrouded in art and velum, away from the world; maybe he meant James. “Tragedies are inevitable,” Oliver said. He probably read this somewhere in the editor’s note. “Besides, I am not suited for Shakespearean tragedies. Hardly anyone is.”
James hummed. “There are actions that a man can play,” he said, then shook his head. “Go to sleep, Oliver.”
But Oliver wanted to know. “What do you mean?”
James laid his head on his knees. “It meant what it’s late and it’s time to get your beauty sleep. Not everything is a metaphor.”
“No—” Oliver said. “That quote.”
James chuckled. “Oh, Horatio,” he said. “The readiness is all.”
Oliver felt like this conversation was important; he felt it was best if he dropped it. For a long time, they didn’t speak.
James closed his eyes, his hands twisting the sheet. Oliver was falling asleep when James said, “Things can be different.” He paused. “Even in a tragedy.”
And Oliver, or the child inside him stumbling upon Shakespeare for the first time, hands feeling the thick leather on the spine of Complete Works, asked, “How?”
And when James beckoned him over with words of a poet, it was Oliver that felt it first; the strange foreboding of our state, Oliver thought as they kissed, and strange eruption that cannot, and will not, come to good.