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It’s been so long. Too long. Perhaps the longest they’ve ever gone without seeing each other. Certainly the longest they’ve gone without talking.
He feels like he’s been cut off, and it seems like, at least informally, he has been.
To have it follow directly on the heels of the third season - The filming, the wrap parties, the press tour, the conventions. Until it all petered out. Until Flag was fully replaced by new projects, new crews, new locations. -
Hurt.
More than he’d expected. (And he knew it was going to be bad.) Hurt more than he could have imagined.
He threw himself into work more than ever. Saying “yes” to everything, like always, terrified the opportunities would dry up and he'd have to spend even a moment alone with his thoughts. Commercials. Cartoons. Audiobooks. Sure.
He found himself seeking out more gigs, more jobs, more funding. He wrote a play. He designed a gown. He got a whole exhibit in Te Papa.
No one said “no” to him after Flag.
No one except Stede.
They’d been out of touch maybe six months. Ed had pitched an actual documentary to the History channel. Why not? Something new. He could do it; he could do anything.
He needed a narrator.
He wanted Stede.
He wanted him to take a few months. Travel with him. Help him write the narration. He wanted to be in the studio, watching his friend through the window.
(In his imagination he was jealous of the microphone’s proximity to his lips, the headphones nestled in the softness of his hair.)
He could keep it together. He could be good. Just friends. Coworkers. Like normal. Like the entire (torturous) third season.
He asked Stede. He offered him so much money. He suggested a compromise right from the start. (He could stay in LA. They could record close to home. He didn’t have to travel. He didn’t have to write. Please, just sign on. In any capacity. Please, yours is the only yes I care about.)
He’d emailed him directly. A calculated mix of professional and casual. (Couldn’t stand the thought of going through Mary. Couldn’t cope with her saying no and then wondering forever whether she actually even asked Stede.)
But the no came, nonetheless.
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Kind without warmth. “Focusing on my own stuff right now.” Minimal explanation. “Maybe see what Darrier is up to?” As if the role didn’t obviously make more sense for Favid.
But that’s not what Ed wanted . (Not who Ed wanted.)
He didn’t even reply. Scrapped the program entirely. Fuck the History channel.
Ed had other things to focus on, too.
Now here he was, two years later, buying tickets online, as if he couldn’t just walk in to any venue in the US or NZ, for a show in neither one of those countries.
~*~
He was waiting on line outside the club, wondering to himself if he had actually waited on a line like this, well, ever. It was drizzling. His knee was killing him. His Covid mask was suffocating. At least it was obscuring half his face. He took another step towards the bouncer scanning tickets and schooled his face into the most boring expression he could muster. He hoped they weren’t checking IDs.
He made it in without an issue and was pleased to see there were plenty of chairs in the shadowy corners. He took a seat and fidgeted with his phone for a minute. Almost immediately, he decided to go use the bathroom and get a drink. There should be plenty of time before the show started and he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself once it began.
The line for the toilets was longer than he expected, and by the time he made his way to the bar, he knew he’d have to hustle to get a decently obscured seat.
Ten minutes before the show was to start, he carried two shitty rum and colas back into the theater, only to find that all those perfectly discrete chairs from earlier had been taken. His choices were now limited to the rows in the very back of the room (safer, but he’d barely be able to see him) and the very front (stupid, but maybe it was worth trying his luck to chance a better view).
It had been so long and he’d come all this way.
He sat down in the second row, three seats in from the edge, next to a nondescript couple that couldn’t be arsed to scoot in so he would have an easy escape, should he need it. Rude.
He took off his mask, slouched low in his chair, and stared at the empty stage as he sipped his first watery cocktail.
This was reckless. This was stupid. What if Mary was here? The kids were practically adults. (Alma has just turned 21 - he saw it on Instagram. First post of Stede’s he publically “liked” in a while. Told himself he didn’t click that little heart because it was the only way to get his name to pop up on his friend’s phone for an instant. It was in support of Alma, that’s all.) Surely they could stay home a few days while mom and dad went on a business trip.
A moment later, the lights dropped and some young femme in a pants suit walked onto the stage. Ed had no idea why she was talking like a grown up in a Charlie Brown cartoon until her voice rang out clear as a bell: “the Gentleman Comic himself, Steeeede Bonnetttt!”
Ed thought he was gonna pass out.
He sat up straight.
Then he remembered to slouch down again.
His beating heart threatened to spill the half-empty glass resting on his chest.
Stede stepped onto the stage right in front of him. Ed watched his back as he walked to the center.
Maybe he should get up now, leave before Stede turned around and saw him - before his presence here could somehow fuck things up even further.
He was moving to get out of his seat when his best friend turned around. He hadn’t seen him yet, but it was only a matter of time.
It didn’t matter.
Now that Ed had seen Stede’s face, a mere 10 meters away from him, he knew he would forever lack the fortitude to run away, even when he probably should. And wasn’t that sort of how they ended up here anyway?
He watched as his buddy of 25 years jumped around the stage, screwing up his face in ridiculous expressions, his blond hair flopping across his eyes. God, he was so beautiful when he was in the flow. But isn’t that what caught Ed’s attention initially, two-and-a-half decades ago? And isn’t that what drew his eye again, much later?
It dawned on him suddenly that he hadn’t heard a word of the performance, just the cadence of his lover’s sing-song voice.
It didn’t matter.
It’s not that he didn’t care about the comedy. Of course he cared about the comedy. That’s why he had watched everything in Stede’s catalog so many times in the past few years. That’s how he knew he’d watch this special over and over, too. The comedy. No one could accuse him of not caring about comedy.
And that’s why he didn’t have to hear the jokes right now. Plenty of chances to hear the jokes later.
What he cared about was being in the same room as Stede right now. No chance of that happening again in the foreseeable future. Especially if Stede noticed Ed was there.
He slinked down in his seat again, crunching the last of the ice from his cup and grabbing the refill from between his feet.
He felt the pause like a premonition and before he looked back up at the stage he already knew it had happened.
Slowly, he lifted his head, savoring this final moment before he’d have to contend with the reality of what he had done.
He met Stede’s eyes and his heart stopped. The other man’s mouth was moving, but there was no sound, only the unmistakable look of joy in his eyes. For the first time in a long time, Ed smiled.
Ed sipped his drink without looking at it and when he placed the empty cup on the floor, his eyes stayed locked on the performer.
Stede’s eyes kept drifting back to his, connecting, then darting away. Ed kept his attention fixed on him resolutely, afraid to miss even a single moment of connection with his (former?) friend.
At the conclusion of the final joke, Stede’s eyes found his again, and with a subtle jerk of his head, he invited him backstage.
~*~
“I take it you didn’t want to be recognized,” he said, hands gesturing to the nondescript blue jeans, beanie, and oversized hoodie.
“Too late,” Ed muttered, somehow no longer able to meet his eyes.
A beat.
“By me??” Stede shrieksed, immediately dropping to a whisper. “Edward, was it your intention to come all the way here, just to slip out after without so much as a ‘hello’?”
Ed looked up. He was caught. “Maybe.”
Ed watched as Stede’s brow knit in confusion before his eyes dropped down from guilt. When he lifted them again to meet Ed’s eyes, they were once again full of mirth.
“Maybe you shouldn’t’ve been staring at me then.” The twinkle was back in his eyes.
The pain threatened to rise from his belly to his heart but Ed tamped it down with all his mental force.
“Fuck off. Two thousand people were staring at you. I paid for the privilege.”
Stede laughed and Ed once again felt overwhelmed. He just heard the man laugh a dozen times. But this one was his, for his ears only, and he was having feelings about that.
All at once, he stepped in and hugged him.
Stede hugged him back. Then froze. Ed did not release him. Finally, Stede relaxed into it.
“I missed you,” Ed said, lips moving in his hair.
“I missed you, too.” Stede replied, face buried against his shoulder.
“I miss you,” Ed whispered. And he meant I love you.
“I know,” Stede whispered back. And only God herself knew what he meant.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to ask a million questions. He wanted to confess things. He wanted to demand things.
He’d replayed every minute of their affair over in his mind on loop for months and he still couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong. He couldn’t figure out who made the final choice. Somehow it seemed it would be easier for them both, if he knew.
If it was his fault, he could atone. Make promises. Make it right. Then it could go back to how it had been. Closure.
If it was Stede’s fault, he could interrogate him. Push him, just a little. Help him see what he really wanted. Move forward, together.
But it was an exercise in futility because, try as he might, he simply could not suss it out. And that left them in this terminally liminal space. The space between breaths, the space between choices. The space between them an ever growing chasm.
Stede hugged him back. Until he didn’t. Until he dropped his arms and shifted and Ed’s arms fell in response and the gap between them manifested once again in a physical form.
They both had tears on their cheeks and neither one was going to acknowledge them.
What had he come here for? What could he do, now that he was in the same room?
Nothing. This was it. See the show. Get a hug. Cry and pretend they didn’t. It was honestly more than he expected.
“Great show,” he said.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
And that was it. Without another word, he slipped past his former friend and out the door.