Played!

by JL Merrow

  Suki was speaking again. “Then you’ll just have to join us again, won’t you?”

  “And how will that solve matters? I still won’t be here.”

  “Damn. I was hoping that wouldn’t occur to you.”

  “Your opinion of my intelligence is touching, my sweet.”

  “Well, if you really won’t come back to us, London’s only a short train ride away from you, and I do seem to recall there being one or two theatres there.”

  “Where I can fight tooth and nail for every part, and even if I should prove successful, take home barely more than minimum wage for my pains?”

  “Well, it’s your choice, darling. Do you want to spend your life as a highly remunerated, mediocre, depressed financier, or a poorly paid but fulfilled, excellent actor? With, I might add, the man you love by your side?”

  Tristan’s heart clenched painfully. Oh God. When she put it like that… “I don’t recall telling you I loved him,” he said at last.

  “Oh, darling. You don’t have to tell me these things.”

  There was a faint click as she hung up.

  Tristan was on his own.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Love’s Labour’s Won

  Con wasn’t too chuffed to get back to his front door and find Tristan camped out on the doorstep.

  Again.

  He sighed. “Look, I’ve had a hard day, all right? Spent all afternoon digging out ivy. I’m covered in dirt and cobwebs and probably bugs as well, and I’m knackered. Can we not do this?” Ever, he added internally.

  Tristan stood up. “I’m not going to New York. I rang Father and told him I wasn’t going to let him dictate my life. And I refuse to eat cheesecake. I’m staying in Shamwell.” He stopped and just stood there, looking small, and pale, and determined.

  Con was struggling to make sense of it all. Especially the cheesecake. Tristan wasn’t leaving? “What… What about your job?”

  “I’ll get another one. Try, anyway. I’m going to start auditioning. We’re in easy reach of London here, so there are lots of opportunities.”

  “You’re gonna stay in acting?”

  Tristan nodded.

  “What about money?” ’Cos Con was pretty sure it wasn’t just a matter of wandering along to an audition and then landing a cushy job, for most actors.

  Tristan shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I’ve a mortgage to pay. And there’s some money in trust. Not a lot, but, well, I’m still a lot better placed than most actors trying to make a go of it. If needs must, I’m sure I can talk my way into some kind of job. And I’ll be here for Dream, of course.” He sent Con a shaky smile that was miles away from his usual confident, I-own-the-world smirk.

  Con was still trying to get his head round all this. “How’d your dad take it?”

  Tristan’s smile turned into a grimace. “Remember I told you about the first time I ever acted? Well, rather like that. Only with more fireworks.” He paused. “I came here to… Well, to tell you all this, obviously, but also to say I’m sorry. Truly. I should never have treated gaining your affections like some kind of game. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been pretty thoroughly hoist by my own petard. And the friend I made the…the bet with? I don’t think we’re going to be speaking anymore.”

  “Oh.” Con knew he probably ought to say something a bit more meaningful than oh, but there was so much going on inside his head, it was bloody impossible to separate it out into words.

  Tristan’s face fell. “I realise you’ve got no reason whatsoever to even consider giving me a second chance,” he went on. “I know I don’t deserve one. I just… I just want you to know that if you ever thought you could, well, I’d do my utmost to be worthy of it.” He took a deep breath. “And just so you know, I’ll be forsaking all others in the meantime. I’ll… I’ll let you get in, now. Sorry to have disturbed.”

  He was halfway down the stairs before Con could get his scrambled thoughts together. “Wait,” he called.

  Tristan looked up at him, his expression a mix of fear and hope that caught at Con’s insides.

  “You’re not going to New York? Like, at all?” Con asked, ’cos he really, really wanted to be certain on that bit.

  “Both boats and bridges thoroughly burned.” Tristan paused, then seemed to come to a decision. “And…I realise there may be a degree of self-sabotage in telling you this, but it’s not just for you. I’d have been making a terrible mistake. Nanna Geary knew it long before I did. A high-flying financial career? I’d have crashed within months. And, well, I like England, with its history and its traditions and even its bloody awful summers. I like it here, in the village, with all the people I’ve got to know. None of whom, I imagine, are currently speaking to me after the appalling way I treated you, but there you go. One makes one’s bed, et cetera.”

  Con felt suddenly ashamed. He hadn’t given Tristan a chance to explain himself—hadn’t even given it a bit of cooling-off time, just dashed up to the pub to slag the poor bloke off to everyone. “Sorry,” he said, though it didn’t feel like nearly enough.

  Tristan stared at him. “What the bloody hell for? You haven’t done anything wrong. Anyway, I should—”

  “No,” Con cut him off, surprising himself. “Look, come in for a bit, yeah? This is all… It’s just a lot to take in. But don’t go.” He fumbled with his key to open the door, then looked back over his shoulder to make sure Tristan was still there. “Come in,” he said again.

  When the door closed behind them both, Con had a brief moment of elation—then uncertainty closed in again. Were they gonna talk? Cuddle? Shag? Right now, option number two sounded best to Con, but would that just be putting stuff off?

  Plus, well, he really was covered in crap from work. Shit. “Look, um, sorry, but I really gotta shower. You’ll wait, yeah? I won’t be long.”

  Tristan nodded. It was some comfort to find even he’d run out of words.

  Con legged it to the bathroom and showered as quickly as he could, realising too late he hadn’t taken any clean clothes in. Walking back into the living room, towel around his waist, the empty sofa hit him like a punch to the gut. Tristan hadn’t waited.

  Then he realised Tristan was in his bed. His dark hair lay tousled on the pillow, one bare shoulder was showing above the duvet, and he was fast asleep.

  Con’s heart melted. He turned off the light, dropped the towel to the floor and slipped into bed beside him. Tristan stirred but didn’t wake, even when Con wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close. He just mumbled something that didn’t even sound like English and drifted back into deep sleep again.

  Con smiled. Yeah. This was way better than talking.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Following darkness like a dream

  Tristan struggled awake from confused and vaguely horrifying dreams of his father dressed as Oberon, ordering him to give up Con, who was improbably attired in an oriental pageboy outfit several sizes too small. Relief washed over him as he opened his eyes to Con’s handsome face, the rugged jawline softened by sleep, on the pillow next to him.

  “Oh, thou, my lovely boy,” he murmured, enchanted by the view. Con snuffled in response, his stubble rasping almost inaudibly on the pillow.

  Tristan would have been quite content to feast his eyes for, oh, the foreseeable future, but then Con stirred and blinked awake, and other ideas came irresistibly to mind. He snuggled up to Con and, to forestall any possible problems with reeking breath, kissed him thoroughly on the neck.

  Con rolled over and pulled him close, his hardness pressing against Tristan’s hip. “Mm. Mornin’.”

  They frotted gently together, Con’s hands on Tristan’s arse. One of Tristan’s arms had somehow got trapped under Con’s not inconsiderable weight and was going to sleep. Con’s chest hair was tickling his nose. Tristan’s head felt muzzy and thick, and he desper
ately needed to pee.

  It was perfect. He came with a groan and flopped, boneless, as Con carried on rutting against him until he too climaxed between them, his whole body tensing with it. They lay entwined, panting, for a moment.

  But Tristan really did have to pee, and besides… “Ugh. Gross,” he muttered, looking down at the slimy mess on Con’s hirsute stomach. “Shower? Together?”

  “Uh… It’ll be a bit of squeeze.”

  “Then you’ll just have to hold me very close,” Tristan told him, getting up. His face felt funny, as if stretched into a besotted, lovesick smile, which closer inspection in the bathroom mirror revealed was, in fact, the case. It was a touch unnerving to find his face doing things like that without consulting him first, but Tristan found he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  The shower was, indeed, a tight squeeze. Tristan loved it.

  “Any plans for the day?” he asked as he towelled himself off and enjoyed the view of Con standing there naked and dripping, as they’d neglected to bring in another towel. “I was thinking straight back to bed.”

  “Um. We probably ought to call Heather at some point.”

  “Kinky. Not really my thing, but I suppose you could persuade me—” Tristan yelped as Con snatched the towel out of his hands. “I was still using that.”

  Con grinned. “You were taking too long. And I meant she might want to know her play’s still on.”

  “God, she’s going to kill me, isn’t she?”

  Con shrugged, halfway through drying his hair. The vigorous rubbing motion made things lower down jiggle distractingly. “Maybe. But I reckon you’re safe until after the final performance, at least.”

  “I can see the headlines now. Tragic epilogue to virtuoso performance; England’s most promising young actor cut down in his prime.”

  “England’s most promising? Who says?” Holding the towel in both hands, Con threw it over Tristan’s head and drew him in for a damp embrace.

  “Nanna Geary, chiefly, and I’m quite certain it’s disrespectful to be remembering her while you’re doing that.”

  Con grinned, and did it again.

  Epilogue

  All is Mended

  The Shamwell Amateur Dramatics Society production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare took place during the last weekend of September. The weather was still warm during the day, but the nights had started to turn chilly and the first leaves were beginning to fall from village trees. The performances were, over the three nights, increasingly well attended, and some of the audience were even below retirement age—in fact, Heather had exclaimed excitedly that she’d never seen so many young people come to a production.

  Tristan’s ego might have started to get a trifle inflated were it not for the gang of giggling teenage girls who’d accosted Con after the second night and asked him, blushing, to sign their programs. Con’s embarrassment hadn’t eased when Heather told him that nobody, in the entire history of the Sham-Drams, had ever been asked for an autograph before.

  Con’s performance had been a triumph. As had Tristan’s, of course, and the rest of the cast had made a creditable attempt to keep up with them. The audience had laughed, clapped, and generally declared this to be the best performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ever seen in the village. Tristan was reliably informed (by Heather) that they actually meant it as a sincere compliment, and weren’t just damning them with faint praise.

  She even gave him a hug after the last curtain call. “I knew we were right, not hacking you to pieces with a spoon and burying you on the common in an unmarked grave.”

  “I’d only have come back to haunt you.” Still high on performance adrenaline, Tristan laughed as a thought struck him. “Imagine that: you’d have been able to put on Hamlet with the late king played by a real ghost.”

  “Yeah, I think we’re gonna give Shakespeare a rest for a bit after this. Do something with a few less characters, for a start. And a lot less men.”

  “The Vagina Monologues?” Tristan suggested drily.

  “God, no. In Shamwell? They’d run me outta town. Nah, I was thinking a farce, maybe.” She grinned. “Con’d be good in a farce.”

  “Con, dear child, is going to be busy with his evening classes—remember? And don’t pull that face. From what I hear, you were the one who got him thinking about education in the first place.”

  She smirked. “Yeah, well. Sorry to ruin your sex life.”

  “Oh, please. You’re only jealous. My sex life, darling, is magnificent. My sex life—” Tristan broke off with a mummph sound as a large hand clapped over his mouth from behind.

  “—is something I’d prefer kept between the two of us, all right?” Con finished for him. Then he took his hand away and gave Tristan a proper hug. “You were brilliant tonight. Absolutely bloody brilliant.”

  Tristan felt lighter than air wrapped in his arms. “We were all brilliant. Teamwork at its finest.”

  “Oi, no feeling up the fairies!” Chris yelled out from across the stage, bursting Tristan’s bubble nicely.

  “Keep it down, you prat,” Heather snapped back at him in a stage whisper. “People are only just leaving.”

  Tristan tiptoed with comically exaggerated care to the edge of the curtain, and Chris laughed. Con, because he was far smarter than anyone gave him credit for, followed him and soon guessed why Tristan was scanning the audience as they filed out.

  “Did you think your dad might have turned up?” he asked gently, his arm around Tristan’s shoulders.

  Tristan sighed. “No, not really. But one always hopes, doesn’t one?”

  “Yeah, well, he’s probably just holding out for when you’re topping the bill at Her Majesty’s,” Con said loyally.

  Con’s friend Alf had been there the previous evening—and leaning on his arm, the former Miss Wellbeck, now known by her own request as Auntie Mary. Well, technically she was still Miss Wellbeck, but Tristan expected that to change with very little notice. He could only hope the stress of wedding bells wouldn’t prove too much for geriatric hearts. Then again, she was looking noticeably less fragile these days, probably because both Alf and Con seemed to think some kind of edible gift de rigueur every time they visited her.

  The ill-fated Patrick had turned up on crutches for closing night and stayed to have drinks with the cast after the audience had departed. Con insisted on dragging Tristan over to introduce him. “Patrick? You never met Tristan, did you?”

  Patrick held out a genial hand, but his gaze was cool as it met Tristan’s. “Nah, but I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “All good, I hope?” Tristan returned politely.

  Patrick’s expression didn’t waver. “That’d be telling, wouldn’t it? Anyway, good to meet you. Great performance,” he added, then got his crutches back into position to hobble away.

  “I don’t think he likes me,” Tristan muttered to Con.

  “Yeah…” Con rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Tristan gave him a sharp look, but Con’s expression betrayed nothing. “What? Is he worried I’m going to snatch all the best roles from now on? Perhaps someone should tell him about Electra.” Suki, bless her, had finally given up on trying to persuade Tristan back to the Players and put in a good word for him with Electra’s casting director, who was an old friend and, Tristan thought privately, ex-lover. Tristan’s role would call for him to murder a parental figure, which he expected to find nicely cathartic.

  “Nah, it’s not that.”

  “Oh? Oh. Well, I’ll be damned if I’m letting go of the best man around. I hope you’ve told him I’m here for good and that you, dear boy, are mine for even longer,” Tristan added. He looked up at Con to find him staring down with a strange expression in his eyes. “What?”

  “Just… You’re amazing, you know that?” Cupping Tristan’s face wi
th both hands, Con leaned down to kiss him thoroughly.

  Fortunately, being actors, everyone was far too superstitious to wolf whistle.

  The following day was all hands on deck for clearing up. There was scenery to be dismantled and props to be put away.

  Con’s eerie forest, clothed in moody tones pulled from the lower end of the spectrum, was now just boards. The ass’s head—or, more properly, hood—was now just a scrap of fur fabric. Even Puck’s horns seemed no more significant than any supermarket Halloween prop.

  “It’s a bit sad, this bit, innit,” Con said in Tristan’s ear when they stole a moment’s break together.

  Tristan smiled as well-muscled arms wrapped around his waist, and Con’s chin came to rest lightly upon the top of his head. “I’ve always thought so. The theatre, without the magic. Our insubstantial pageant faded, leaving not a rack behind. Funny, though—it doesn’t feel so much like an ending, this time.”

  “No?” Con’s deep voice rumbled through Tristan.

  “No. More like a beginning. I’m entering a new stage of life. No more mewling infant, nor whining schoolboy—would you like a ballad to your eyebrows? No? Ah, well. As you like it.”

  Con chuckled. “You know what your problem is?”

  “Let me guess—too many words?”

  “Well, that too. No. Your problem is, you don’t realise the effect you have on people.”

  “Intense irritation?”

  This time, Con laughed out loud. “Well, yeah. That too. Again. But what I meant is, you don’t realise how inspiring you can be. How… People are gonna remember your performance in Dream. And me, and Hev, and all the others? We’re gonna remember all that stuff you taught us about putting on the play, making it funny. Making it real. So I might not know what a rack is, but I do know it’s bollocks that you’re not leaving anything behind. You’re leaving stuff. Good stuff. So yeah, it’s a bit sad, but like you said, it’s not an ending. It’s a beginning. And it’s gonna to be great.”