Author's note: This is a bit of an experiment in form, playing with tension, pace, and narrative. More of an abstract flashing of memory across your mind than anything. &, I'll forever love exploring the electricity between artists. Hope it turns you on.
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It was a play that brought them together. A big play, in a small historic theater near a river, in a make or break you city. Each at different points in their striving -- you know the life of artists, full of stops and starts. Successes, lulls, stumbles. The crest of luck that pushed them together was set in motion by them both nabbing lead parts.
On the stage is a bed, another dragging rehearsal winding down.
"How are you feeling? Just checking in." He pulls his shoes back on.
She flashes him a telling look, they were both struggling to achieve the author's specific vision in this, a critical scene.
"Processing."
In the wings they can hear the murmur of conversation. The tone matches the frustration she feels. The director playwright commanded -- "reach for him this way." So she did. "It doesn't ring true," he would critique. "That can't be the case!" -- she would shout in her head.
She looks back at him. The charge between them is undeniable. It wasn't for their characters they were touching, exploring, kissing, breathing each other in -- but they lent it to them, gave them the real through the lens of imitation, under the guise of each not knowing.
"Seeing as we're done for the day, want some company to process with?"
She takes a deep breath and tilts her head up, slowly exhaling, telling herself it's a bad idea. She turns to look at him and holds his gaze -- "Yes."
The door of her walkup is lit softly by a light above, the only sound is that of a cricket, hidden from discovery and so unwaveringly playing its song. The shuffle of their feet ends at the small, square landing of her stoop, and like gravity -- constant, inevitable -- he draws her into him without a word.
Her fingers press gently to halt his lips. "Promise me, this doesn't distract from the work. Promise."
He holds her face and nods, sincerely. If anything -- he thinks -- this is what's making them so mechanical, restrained. The fear of this release before an audience. It's too much shared honesty to put on display, it would slide into the absurd. There's a fire in his chest, he leans in for what he's tasted under pretense -- he's nervous. In the depths of their kiss his hips lean against hers, pressing her back into the door. The tender caress of her tongue against his knocks out his knees.
