Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-08-16 10:58 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-08-16 10:58 am
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Closing the Circle (If We Were Villains, Oliver/James, Oliver/everyone)
I haven't written fanfiction for a novel in about five years. Trying to match the narrative style of If We Were Villains was an interesting challenge!
This is the second fandom I've been in that's required a bunch of Shakespeare research. The first, unsurprisingly, was Macbeth.
You know, posting my In Stars and Time fic nine days ago was a milestone for me: I'd finally completed and posted fanfiction for fandoms beginning with every letter of the alphabet. And now I'm posting an If We Were Villains fic. You spend decades waiting to get into a fandom beginning with 'I', and then two come along at once.
Title: Closing the Circle
Fandom: If We Were Villains
Rating: 14
Pairing: Oliver/James, Oliver/everyone
Wordcount: 3,300
Summary: I sleep with Alexander, or with Meredith, or, on one occasion, with Filippa. But not with James. Not with James. Never with James.
As a student of Shakespeare, I’m all too aware of the structure of a tragedy. And it’s a tragedy we’re living in; Richard’s death makes that clear enough. Nobody gets their head broken open in Much Ado.
It feels like we must be nearing the end of the play. The loose narrative threads are being tied up; I’m aware, now, of how Richard died and why. I’m constantly waiting for the catastrophe, the dénouement, the moment the curtain falls and smothers us all.
But none of us have seen the detectives since King Lear, as far as I can tell.
Perhaps there’s no end coming for us. Perhaps we’ve escaped consequences – legal consequences, at least – and all that’s left for us to do is to live.
It frightens me, more than I would have expected. On some level, I’d assumed I would never have to do anything about my feelings for James. Sooner or later, everything would come crashing down on us; one or both of us would be in prison, or dead, somehow, murdered by Richard’s vengeful ghost. Nothing could ever happen between us, and why obsess over the impossible?
Now that it looks like we might get away with it, I’ve started to torture myself, imagining that we could actually have a future together. But – ridiculously, humiliatingly – I can’t actually bring myself to approach James. It feels too large a step, somehow. I want it too much; it’s dizzying.
In the end, longing and frustrated, all I can do is seek out some sort of outlet.
-
“It’s open,” Alexander calls, when I knock on his door.
I push it open and enter. Alexander is lounging catlike on his sofa, a battered copy of Othello dangling from his hand.
“You know,” I say, “if I had a room full of drug paraphernalia, I’d probably lock the door.”
“And you’d have to stand up when someone knocked,” Alexander says, “and which of us would be laughing then?” He digs an unlit spliff out from the sofa cushions, waves it between his fingers at me. I want to destroy it, his overdose still too fresh in my mind, although he’d have a hell of a time trying to overdose on cannabis. “Speaking of drug paraphernalia, are you here to get fucked?”
I brace myself. “I suppose so. But I’m not here for drugs.”
“Oh?” he asks, a small smile breaking onto his face.
I just stand there, feeling exposed and thrilled and terrified.
Alexander watches me for a long moment. “I’ll only ask once if you mean it, you know.”
I breathe in, as slow and steadying as I can manage. “I mean it.”
“Well.” He climbs to his feet, in a tangle of long limbs that somehow manages to look more elegant than comical. “I think we both know I’m not one to turn down an opportunity.”
That’s why he’s the one I asked. In theory, I could have approached any boy in the school, with the exception of the obvious. But I trust Alexander – enough to let him touch me, at least – and I knew he wouldn’t reject me.
-
I rarely spend nights in the bedroom that James and I share, these days. It’s a torment to wake in the night and know he’s there, when I manage to sleep at all; when I’m not just lying awake for hours, fantasising about crossing the room and climbing into his bed.
So I find other places to be. I sleep with Alexander, or with Meredith, or, on one occasion, with Filippa: a strange, ill-judged evening that ends with the two of us laughing and promising each other it will never happen again.
But not with James. Not with James. Never with James.
I can’t put it into words, what I’m afraid of. So, as I always do when my own words seem inadequate, I turn to the Bard.
Speak low, if you speak love, I find myself thinking. But there’s a difference between speaking low and speaking not at all, and something in me compels me to keep my silence. As if I could outlast these feelings somehow, keep them boxed up in my lungs until they starve.
I think sometimes – often – of that kiss on the stage of King Lear. In my memory, James pulled me down to meet him; it seems that that should be some kind of encouragement, some guide to what to do now. But memory is a fickle thing, and – with a knife to my throat, with a boat hook to my skull – I couldn’t say with confidence whether James kissed me, or I kissed James, or that moment under the lights was just a dream.
-
“Did you ever manage to talk James into bed?” I ask, as Alexander hands my shirt back to me.
Alexander laughs. “Jealous?”
The question terrifies me, absurdly. As if Alexander, of all people, would judge me for taking interest in a man. As if I thought I’d managed to maintain a veneer of heterosexuality while he was fucking me against the wall.
“I didn’t, no,” Alexander says. “Or I suppose I should say I haven’t managed it yet. If you gave in, anything’s possible.”
I thought, when I’d asked the question, that I wanted him to say no. But I realise now that I want Alexander to have slept with James. I’ve shared a bed with Alexander and Filippa and Meredith; Meredith used to be in a relationship with Richard. James, as much as I try not to think of it, has likely slept with Wren. If Alexander had sex with James, that would be a final link in the chain; that would bind the seven of us together in some way I can’t articulate.
The seven of us are bound already, of course: six murderers and their victim. I suppose that’s the connection that will always define us, no matter who ends up in whose bed.
-
Meredith opens her door to me. She looks me over, quick, sceptical. “Alexander’s busy, I suppose.”
I freeze in the act of entering the room. “What?”
“Tuesday,” she says, with a nod to the calendar on her wall. “I thought you slept with Alexander on Tuesdays.”
I close the door behind me, quickly, as if to prevent the words from escaping into the world.
Do I sleep with Alexander on Tuesdays? I hadn’t realised there was a consistent pattern. But, now that I think of it, I’ve been practising stage combat with James on Tuesdays. A lot of close proximity, a lot of frustration. It’s easier to close my eyes and pretend with Alexander.
“You know about Alexander?” I ask.
“Of course I know about Alexander,” Meredith says. “You’re not our best actor, you know.”
It stings. It’s true, unquestionably; if you asked for the strongest actor amongst us, any of us would point without hesitation at James, with the possible exceptions of Richard and James himself. But it stings nonetheless. “I’m sorry.”
Meredith shrugs. “I don’t care. It’s not like we’re in a relationship, really; we’re just... well, whatever we are. But I don’t think I’d care either way.”
“You... don’t care?” I hadn’t prepared myself for this response. I’m not sure I’d prepared myself for any response.
“I don’t think it’s cheating, exactly,” Meredith says. “Not among the seven of us. The six of us, I mean. Sex with one of us might as well be sex with any of the others.”
It sticks in my mind, for more than one reason. “Have you slept with any of the others?”
She looks at me for a long moment. “I’ll leave you to wonder, I think.”
I’m already wondering, uncontrollably. I know of Richard, of course. She’s not Alexander’s preferred gender, but Alexander is remarkably unfussy; he’s said himself that he considers his sexuality more of a guideline than a rule. One of the girls, perhaps? Filippa, probably, in that case; it’s hard to picture of Wren.
Or maybe James.
The thought drives me across the room to her. I push her against the wall – she lets out a short breath, half amusement and half surprise – and I kiss her like I’m trying to taste James in her throat.
-
“You know,” Meredith says afterwards, conversationally, “if you’re going to fuck other people, you could at least have enough respect for me to sleep with the person you actually want to sleep with.”
I’m afraid of seeing her expression. I stay where I am: lying on my back in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. My arms crossed over my chest, palms flat against my shoulders, like a stage corpse in a coffin.
“I almost turned James in, you know,” she says. “I only decided against it for your sake.”
It casts light on something I’ve wondered about. Detective Colborne was at our performance of King Lear: the performance of King Lear, the only one I still have room for in my memory. I was so sure, for a moment, that everything was over. I doubt James would have kissed me if we hadn’t both thought that this was the end.
But, in the end, the detective had simply left, looking frustrated and unsatisfied. Perhaps Meredith promised him information and ended up withdrawing the offer.
There are a lot of things I could say in response. I could protest that I don’t feel that way about James. I could thank her for changing her mind. I could ask how it felt, the moment she realised he was the one who killed her boyfriend. Or the one who killed him before we all killed him together, at least.
“Turned him in for what?” I ask.
She laughs at that. “Not bad. If the police come back, keep that up, and maybe we’ll actually get away with this.”
-
Perhaps it’s the idea of completing some sort of chain that leads me to approach Wren. Perhaps it’s the fact that I know she and James have been intimate, and with Meredith it’s nothing but shadowy speculation. Perhaps it’s simply the fact of finding myself alone with her in the library, and that my obsession with James has left me hungry to be touched by anyone.
Perhaps I’m in love with all of them, on some level. I’ve given up trying to understand my own feelings.
She won’t sleep with me, I know. Not Wren, not as we stand now. I’d need to court her; I’d need to seduce her somehow. The idea feels unpleasantly scheming, Iago-esque.
Better to be honest with her, and to ask no more than she might be willing to grant.
“I have a request,” I tell her.
She looks up from her book, wary but curious.
“I promise I’m not trying to hit on you,” I say. There’s no good way to ask this. “But I want to kiss you. I’d like to, I mean. If you’d let me.”
It startles a laugh out of her. “But... you’re not trying to hit on me?”
“I don’t want a relationship, I mean,” I say. “And I’m not asking for anything else. Literally just a kiss. I just need...”
The words get stuck in my throat. I carve them out of myself. It’s the only way she’ll understand.
“I’m in love with James,” I say, desperate and pathetic, “and I know you’ve... been with him, and I just – I need to touch him somehow, I just need—”
Wren is frowning, a reaction I don’t imagine anyone would blame her for. “He turned you down?”
I’m taken aback by her tone. She sounds sympathetic, perhaps a little confused. But confused that James would turn me down. She seems entirely unsurprised that I might want him, and I hadn’t realised I was that transparent even to Wren. “I haven’t asked.”
“I think you should probably ask him before you ask me,” she says.
It sounds like she wouldn’t mind if I asked him, some stupid hopeful part of myself whispers in my ear, some part that keeps dreaming I could actually be with James one day.
I shake my head. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“When?” she asks.
I don’t have an answer to that.
Wren runs her hands over and through her hair for a moment. Gathers it together, like she’s about to tie it up, then lets it fall loose again.
“I can’t kiss you,” she says at last. “Not as Wren. But I still want to help you.”
“Not as Wren?” I echo.
“We’re actors, aren’t we?” she asks, with a small smile. “I know it hasn’t been that long since we did Romeo and Juliet. But would you like to practise the Capulets’ ball scene with me?”
The thought feels so bright in my mind that it almost blinds me. The ball scene, the scene in which James and Wren kissed, the scene that forced me to confront my own feelings. It frightens me, and, at the same time, it’s perfect. I don’t want to kiss Wren. I want to be James’s Romeo, kissing her Juliet.
“That sounds great,” I say, my mouth suddenly dry.
She laughs, a little selfconsciously, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Okay. Act one, scene five.”
-
I find James down at the lake, staring into the water. I’m not sure why I was looking for James in the first place, really. But some part of me is always searching for him; it’s the first thing I register when I enter a room. Is James here? If so, or if not, where is he?
It’s hard to say how long I’ve had that habit. Everything crept up on me so quietly.
I stand next to him on the dock, without speaking, and follow his gaze to the lake. No corpses. It shouldn’t be a surprise; the vast majority of times I’ve seen this lake, there hasn’t been a corpse in it. And yet some part of me still expects Richard to be here, every time.
“Do you ever miss Richard?” James asks, after a long silence between us.
I’ve wondered the same thing. Do I miss Richard? Before we became his enemies, before we became his murderers, we were his friends.
It feels like something’s missing, without Richard. I sometimes picture him still alive. But a different version of him, a version with the sharp edges filed away, a version we wouldn’t have to fear. It feels like a betrayal of the true living person, to fantasise about replacing him with a softer shadow of himself.
Not that that’s the worst way I’ve betrayed Richard, of course.
“A question not to be asked,” I say.
“And yet here I am,” James says, “asking.”
I take in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I actually want him to still be alive or just wish we hadn’t been the ones to kill him.”
“Don’t say we,” James says. “I’m the one who killed him. The rest of you just got dragged along.”
I shake my head. “We were all here on the dock. Say that I killed him; it’s just as true. More true. I told you to leave him there.”
James gives me a sidelong look. “Do you really believe that?”
Of course I don’t believe it. The idea that I’m just as culpable as James is laughable. It puts the two of us on the same level, and I could never presume to be on the same level as James.
My role in Richard’s death was an extension of every other role I’d played on the stage at Dellecher. The sidekick, bathed in the reflected light of those with more significant parts. Through his actions, James had elevated me to the position of murderer. It was something I would never have been able to achieve alone.
Richard was a danger to us all, by the end. But, it turns out, not as much of a danger as we were to him.
I wonder if he was conscious enough, when we left him to die, to realise what we were doing.
-
I dream of myself and Richard, but distantly, from outside my own body, a spectator in the seats. Richard and I are kissing, fiercely, tearing at hair and clothes, fighting for dominance.
It ends when I slam him against a wall, breaking his head open, and I wake with an erection and sheets soaked in sweat.
It’s my own bedroom, it’s the bedroom I share with James. I stare at the ceiling, knowing he’s all too close, knowing I can’t—
But I can.
The realisation hits me in an instant. I can. That barrier, that not yet: it’s gone.
Meredith. Alexander. Filippa. Wren. Richard, in my dream. Now that I’ve touched all the others, my feelings for James no longer feel like something to be resisted; they feel like the logical next step, a way to close the circle. It would be stranger not to approach him, now.
Screw your courage to the sticking-place, I tell myself, and I’m forced to stifle an out-of-place laugh. Of course it would be Macbeth that came to my mind. Love and murder have become so tied together for me that, by this point, I’m not sure I know the difference any more.
I climb out of my bed and pad towards James’s. He jerks awake as I approach, snapping up into a sitting position; I stop in my tracks, startled.
“Jesus,” he mutters. He scrubs a hand across his face. “You’re never in here any more. I thought someone had broken in.”
“I’m here,” I say, idiotically.
He leans over and switches on the lamp next to his bed. It’s a low light, but the sudden brightness still makes me wince.
“Did you need something?” he asks, looking up at me, his hair tousled in a way that destroys my insides.
“I need,” I say, realising what I’m saying only as the words are leaving my mouth, “you.”
I’m horrified by my own declaration. It’s melodramatic; it’s embarrassing. But the benefit of being a theatre student surrounded by theatre students is that a little melodrama will always be forgiven.
James stares at me for a moment, then reaches out a hand. He wants me to come closer, I realise, and all I can do is obey.
The moment I’m close enough, he seizes a fistful of my pyjamas and pulls me down to kiss him.
I want to say something, when we break apart. A question, or a declaration of love, or a Shakespeare quote: something. But my mind has gone blank, and all I can manage is an indistinct noise.
“You idiot,” James mutters. He kisses me again. “You fool. You didn’t have to keep me waiting.”
“You could have said something,” I protest.
James holds me away from him with a hand on my chest, staring at me. “I kissed you. You remember that I kissed you, don’t you? When you didn’t follow it up, I assumed you didn’t want this.”
Not a dream after all, it seems.
“I’m a fool,” I concede.
He drags me back and kisses me until I feel like I’m drowning, like lake water is filling my lungs.
There’s no escape to be found from Richard, it seems, not even here. Perhaps especially not here. On some level, the six of us are always thinking of him; being this close only amplifies it. I can hear Meredith’s voice in my mind: Sex with one of us might as well be sex with any of the others.
Richard’s in bed with us, inevitably, the ghost at the feast. But so are the other four. Nobody plays Hamlet as their first role; being with each of them was a part I needed to play before I was ready to step onto this stage.
Filippa strokes my hair. Wren kisses my cheek. Meredith bites my shoulder. Alexander breathes against my spine. Richard’s fingers dig into my hips, hard enough to bruise, and I sink into James’s arms at last.
This is the second fandom I've been in that's required a bunch of Shakespeare research. The first, unsurprisingly, was Macbeth.
You know, posting my In Stars and Time fic nine days ago was a milestone for me: I'd finally completed and posted fanfiction for fandoms beginning with every letter of the alphabet. And now I'm posting an If We Were Villains fic. You spend decades waiting to get into a fandom beginning with 'I', and then two come along at once.
Title: Closing the Circle
Fandom: If We Were Villains
Rating: 14
Pairing: Oliver/James, Oliver/everyone
Wordcount: 3,300
Summary: I sleep with Alexander, or with Meredith, or, on one occasion, with Filippa. But not with James. Not with James. Never with James.
As a student of Shakespeare, I’m all too aware of the structure of a tragedy. And it’s a tragedy we’re living in; Richard’s death makes that clear enough. Nobody gets their head broken open in Much Ado.
It feels like we must be nearing the end of the play. The loose narrative threads are being tied up; I’m aware, now, of how Richard died and why. I’m constantly waiting for the catastrophe, the dénouement, the moment the curtain falls and smothers us all.
But none of us have seen the detectives since King Lear, as far as I can tell.
Perhaps there’s no end coming for us. Perhaps we’ve escaped consequences – legal consequences, at least – and all that’s left for us to do is to live.
It frightens me, more than I would have expected. On some level, I’d assumed I would never have to do anything about my feelings for James. Sooner or later, everything would come crashing down on us; one or both of us would be in prison, or dead, somehow, murdered by Richard’s vengeful ghost. Nothing could ever happen between us, and why obsess over the impossible?
Now that it looks like we might get away with it, I’ve started to torture myself, imagining that we could actually have a future together. But – ridiculously, humiliatingly – I can’t actually bring myself to approach James. It feels too large a step, somehow. I want it too much; it’s dizzying.
In the end, longing and frustrated, all I can do is seek out some sort of outlet.
“It’s open,” Alexander calls, when I knock on his door.
I push it open and enter. Alexander is lounging catlike on his sofa, a battered copy of Othello dangling from his hand.
“You know,” I say, “if I had a room full of drug paraphernalia, I’d probably lock the door.”
“And you’d have to stand up when someone knocked,” Alexander says, “and which of us would be laughing then?” He digs an unlit spliff out from the sofa cushions, waves it between his fingers at me. I want to destroy it, his overdose still too fresh in my mind, although he’d have a hell of a time trying to overdose on cannabis. “Speaking of drug paraphernalia, are you here to get fucked?”
I brace myself. “I suppose so. But I’m not here for drugs.”
“Oh?” he asks, a small smile breaking onto his face.
I just stand there, feeling exposed and thrilled and terrified.
Alexander watches me for a long moment. “I’ll only ask once if you mean it, you know.”
I breathe in, as slow and steadying as I can manage. “I mean it.”
“Well.” He climbs to his feet, in a tangle of long limbs that somehow manages to look more elegant than comical. “I think we both know I’m not one to turn down an opportunity.”
That’s why he’s the one I asked. In theory, I could have approached any boy in the school, with the exception of the obvious. But I trust Alexander – enough to let him touch me, at least – and I knew he wouldn’t reject me.
I rarely spend nights in the bedroom that James and I share, these days. It’s a torment to wake in the night and know he’s there, when I manage to sleep at all; when I’m not just lying awake for hours, fantasising about crossing the room and climbing into his bed.
So I find other places to be. I sleep with Alexander, or with Meredith, or, on one occasion, with Filippa: a strange, ill-judged evening that ends with the two of us laughing and promising each other it will never happen again.
But not with James. Not with James. Never with James.
I can’t put it into words, what I’m afraid of. So, as I always do when my own words seem inadequate, I turn to the Bard.
Speak low, if you speak love, I find myself thinking. But there’s a difference between speaking low and speaking not at all, and something in me compels me to keep my silence. As if I could outlast these feelings somehow, keep them boxed up in my lungs until they starve.
I think sometimes – often – of that kiss on the stage of King Lear. In my memory, James pulled me down to meet him; it seems that that should be some kind of encouragement, some guide to what to do now. But memory is a fickle thing, and – with a knife to my throat, with a boat hook to my skull – I couldn’t say with confidence whether James kissed me, or I kissed James, or that moment under the lights was just a dream.
“Did you ever manage to talk James into bed?” I ask, as Alexander hands my shirt back to me.
Alexander laughs. “Jealous?”
The question terrifies me, absurdly. As if Alexander, of all people, would judge me for taking interest in a man. As if I thought I’d managed to maintain a veneer of heterosexuality while he was fucking me against the wall.
“I didn’t, no,” Alexander says. “Or I suppose I should say I haven’t managed it yet. If you gave in, anything’s possible.”
I thought, when I’d asked the question, that I wanted him to say no. But I realise now that I want Alexander to have slept with James. I’ve shared a bed with Alexander and Filippa and Meredith; Meredith used to be in a relationship with Richard. James, as much as I try not to think of it, has likely slept with Wren. If Alexander had sex with James, that would be a final link in the chain; that would bind the seven of us together in some way I can’t articulate.
The seven of us are bound already, of course: six murderers and their victim. I suppose that’s the connection that will always define us, no matter who ends up in whose bed.
Meredith opens her door to me. She looks me over, quick, sceptical. “Alexander’s busy, I suppose.”
I freeze in the act of entering the room. “What?”
“Tuesday,” she says, with a nod to the calendar on her wall. “I thought you slept with Alexander on Tuesdays.”
I close the door behind me, quickly, as if to prevent the words from escaping into the world.
Do I sleep with Alexander on Tuesdays? I hadn’t realised there was a consistent pattern. But, now that I think of it, I’ve been practising stage combat with James on Tuesdays. A lot of close proximity, a lot of frustration. It’s easier to close my eyes and pretend with Alexander.
“You know about Alexander?” I ask.
“Of course I know about Alexander,” Meredith says. “You’re not our best actor, you know.”
It stings. It’s true, unquestionably; if you asked for the strongest actor amongst us, any of us would point without hesitation at James, with the possible exceptions of Richard and James himself. But it stings nonetheless. “I’m sorry.”
Meredith shrugs. “I don’t care. It’s not like we’re in a relationship, really; we’re just... well, whatever we are. But I don’t think I’d care either way.”
“You... don’t care?” I hadn’t prepared myself for this response. I’m not sure I’d prepared myself for any response.
“I don’t think it’s cheating, exactly,” Meredith says. “Not among the seven of us. The six of us, I mean. Sex with one of us might as well be sex with any of the others.”
It sticks in my mind, for more than one reason. “Have you slept with any of the others?”
She looks at me for a long moment. “I’ll leave you to wonder, I think.”
I’m already wondering, uncontrollably. I know of Richard, of course. She’s not Alexander’s preferred gender, but Alexander is remarkably unfussy; he’s said himself that he considers his sexuality more of a guideline than a rule. One of the girls, perhaps? Filippa, probably, in that case; it’s hard to picture of Wren.
Or maybe James.
The thought drives me across the room to her. I push her against the wall – she lets out a short breath, half amusement and half surprise – and I kiss her like I’m trying to taste James in her throat.
“You know,” Meredith says afterwards, conversationally, “if you’re going to fuck other people, you could at least have enough respect for me to sleep with the person you actually want to sleep with.”
I’m afraid of seeing her expression. I stay where I am: lying on my back in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. My arms crossed over my chest, palms flat against my shoulders, like a stage corpse in a coffin.
“I almost turned James in, you know,” she says. “I only decided against it for your sake.”
It casts light on something I’ve wondered about. Detective Colborne was at our performance of King Lear: the performance of King Lear, the only one I still have room for in my memory. I was so sure, for a moment, that everything was over. I doubt James would have kissed me if we hadn’t both thought that this was the end.
But, in the end, the detective had simply left, looking frustrated and unsatisfied. Perhaps Meredith promised him information and ended up withdrawing the offer.
There are a lot of things I could say in response. I could protest that I don’t feel that way about James. I could thank her for changing her mind. I could ask how it felt, the moment she realised he was the one who killed her boyfriend. Or the one who killed him before we all killed him together, at least.
“Turned him in for what?” I ask.
She laughs at that. “Not bad. If the police come back, keep that up, and maybe we’ll actually get away with this.”
Perhaps it’s the idea of completing some sort of chain that leads me to approach Wren. Perhaps it’s the fact that I know she and James have been intimate, and with Meredith it’s nothing but shadowy speculation. Perhaps it’s simply the fact of finding myself alone with her in the library, and that my obsession with James has left me hungry to be touched by anyone.
Perhaps I’m in love with all of them, on some level. I’ve given up trying to understand my own feelings.
She won’t sleep with me, I know. Not Wren, not as we stand now. I’d need to court her; I’d need to seduce her somehow. The idea feels unpleasantly scheming, Iago-esque.
Better to be honest with her, and to ask no more than she might be willing to grant.
“I have a request,” I tell her.
She looks up from her book, wary but curious.
“I promise I’m not trying to hit on you,” I say. There’s no good way to ask this. “But I want to kiss you. I’d like to, I mean. If you’d let me.”
It startles a laugh out of her. “But... you’re not trying to hit on me?”
“I don’t want a relationship, I mean,” I say. “And I’m not asking for anything else. Literally just a kiss. I just need...”
The words get stuck in my throat. I carve them out of myself. It’s the only way she’ll understand.
“I’m in love with James,” I say, desperate and pathetic, “and I know you’ve... been with him, and I just – I need to touch him somehow, I just need—”
Wren is frowning, a reaction I don’t imagine anyone would blame her for. “He turned you down?”
I’m taken aback by her tone. She sounds sympathetic, perhaps a little confused. But confused that James would turn me down. She seems entirely unsurprised that I might want him, and I hadn’t realised I was that transparent even to Wren. “I haven’t asked.”
“I think you should probably ask him before you ask me,” she says.
It sounds like she wouldn’t mind if I asked him, some stupid hopeful part of myself whispers in my ear, some part that keeps dreaming I could actually be with James one day.
I shake my head. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“When?” she asks.
I don’t have an answer to that.
Wren runs her hands over and through her hair for a moment. Gathers it together, like she’s about to tie it up, then lets it fall loose again.
“I can’t kiss you,” she says at last. “Not as Wren. But I still want to help you.”
“Not as Wren?” I echo.
“We’re actors, aren’t we?” she asks, with a small smile. “I know it hasn’t been that long since we did Romeo and Juliet. But would you like to practise the Capulets’ ball scene with me?”
The thought feels so bright in my mind that it almost blinds me. The ball scene, the scene in which James and Wren kissed, the scene that forced me to confront my own feelings. It frightens me, and, at the same time, it’s perfect. I don’t want to kiss Wren. I want to be James’s Romeo, kissing her Juliet.
“That sounds great,” I say, my mouth suddenly dry.
She laughs, a little selfconsciously, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Okay. Act one, scene five.”
I find James down at the lake, staring into the water. I’m not sure why I was looking for James in the first place, really. But some part of me is always searching for him; it’s the first thing I register when I enter a room. Is James here? If so, or if not, where is he?
It’s hard to say how long I’ve had that habit. Everything crept up on me so quietly.
I stand next to him on the dock, without speaking, and follow his gaze to the lake. No corpses. It shouldn’t be a surprise; the vast majority of times I’ve seen this lake, there hasn’t been a corpse in it. And yet some part of me still expects Richard to be here, every time.
“Do you ever miss Richard?” James asks, after a long silence between us.
I’ve wondered the same thing. Do I miss Richard? Before we became his enemies, before we became his murderers, we were his friends.
It feels like something’s missing, without Richard. I sometimes picture him still alive. But a different version of him, a version with the sharp edges filed away, a version we wouldn’t have to fear. It feels like a betrayal of the true living person, to fantasise about replacing him with a softer shadow of himself.
Not that that’s the worst way I’ve betrayed Richard, of course.
“A question not to be asked,” I say.
“And yet here I am,” James says, “asking.”
I take in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I actually want him to still be alive or just wish we hadn’t been the ones to kill him.”
“Don’t say we,” James says. “I’m the one who killed him. The rest of you just got dragged along.”
I shake my head. “We were all here on the dock. Say that I killed him; it’s just as true. More true. I told you to leave him there.”
James gives me a sidelong look. “Do you really believe that?”
Of course I don’t believe it. The idea that I’m just as culpable as James is laughable. It puts the two of us on the same level, and I could never presume to be on the same level as James.
My role in Richard’s death was an extension of every other role I’d played on the stage at Dellecher. The sidekick, bathed in the reflected light of those with more significant parts. Through his actions, James had elevated me to the position of murderer. It was something I would never have been able to achieve alone.
Richard was a danger to us all, by the end. But, it turns out, not as much of a danger as we were to him.
I wonder if he was conscious enough, when we left him to die, to realise what we were doing.
I dream of myself and Richard, but distantly, from outside my own body, a spectator in the seats. Richard and I are kissing, fiercely, tearing at hair and clothes, fighting for dominance.
It ends when I slam him against a wall, breaking his head open, and I wake with an erection and sheets soaked in sweat.
It’s my own bedroom, it’s the bedroom I share with James. I stare at the ceiling, knowing he’s all too close, knowing I can’t—
But I can.
The realisation hits me in an instant. I can. That barrier, that not yet: it’s gone.
Meredith. Alexander. Filippa. Wren. Richard, in my dream. Now that I’ve touched all the others, my feelings for James no longer feel like something to be resisted; they feel like the logical next step, a way to close the circle. It would be stranger not to approach him, now.
Screw your courage to the sticking-place, I tell myself, and I’m forced to stifle an out-of-place laugh. Of course it would be Macbeth that came to my mind. Love and murder have become so tied together for me that, by this point, I’m not sure I know the difference any more.
I climb out of my bed and pad towards James’s. He jerks awake as I approach, snapping up into a sitting position; I stop in my tracks, startled.
“Jesus,” he mutters. He scrubs a hand across his face. “You’re never in here any more. I thought someone had broken in.”
“I’m here,” I say, idiotically.
He leans over and switches on the lamp next to his bed. It’s a low light, but the sudden brightness still makes me wince.
“Did you need something?” he asks, looking up at me, his hair tousled in a way that destroys my insides.
“I need,” I say, realising what I’m saying only as the words are leaving my mouth, “you.”
I’m horrified by my own declaration. It’s melodramatic; it’s embarrassing. But the benefit of being a theatre student surrounded by theatre students is that a little melodrama will always be forgiven.
James stares at me for a moment, then reaches out a hand. He wants me to come closer, I realise, and all I can do is obey.
The moment I’m close enough, he seizes a fistful of my pyjamas and pulls me down to kiss him.
I want to say something, when we break apart. A question, or a declaration of love, or a Shakespeare quote: something. But my mind has gone blank, and all I can manage is an indistinct noise.
“You idiot,” James mutters. He kisses me again. “You fool. You didn’t have to keep me waiting.”
“You could have said something,” I protest.
James holds me away from him with a hand on my chest, staring at me. “I kissed you. You remember that I kissed you, don’t you? When you didn’t follow it up, I assumed you didn’t want this.”
Not a dream after all, it seems.
“I’m a fool,” I concede.
He drags me back and kisses me until I feel like I’m drowning, like lake water is filling my lungs.
There’s no escape to be found from Richard, it seems, not even here. Perhaps especially not here. On some level, the six of us are always thinking of him; being this close only amplifies it. I can hear Meredith’s voice in my mind: Sex with one of us might as well be sex with any of the others.
Richard’s in bed with us, inevitably, the ghost at the feast. But so are the other four. Nobody plays Hamlet as their first role; being with each of them was a part I needed to play before I was ready to step onto this stage.
Filippa strokes my hair. Wren kisses my cheek. Meredith bites my shoulder. Alexander breathes against my spine. Richard’s fingers dig into my hips, hard enough to bruise, and I sink into James’s arms at last.
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