|
|
|
|
G/R One-Shot - SWANSONG -*- There was an underscore to their performance, an off-kilter rhythm that ran alongside that of Brian and Justin, playing out the same melody but in a slightly different key. On the test screens, they played out their roles perfectly, as if somehow they could tune themselves to the same song, conducted without words. But behind, beyond the cameras, their makeup collecting on spent tissues, their clothes sent back to be laundered before returning to their home in the wardrobe department, their symphony continued to be orchestrated without the guidance of a conductor. Randy was the first to admit to himself the magnetic pull he felt whenever Gale stepped into his space, sucking up all of the light and warmth around him, leaving him shivering from the intense cold. His back would stiffen, each vertebrae locking in place as Gale walked into a room, and then he would relax, easing the tension out of his lungs, telling himself the same tired old excuse: It’s only Gale. ‘It’s only Gale’ became a set of lines he rehearsed every morning as he stood in his bathroom, staring at his reflection in the rusting mirror, his eyes belying his lie as he prepared himself for the inevitable first glimpse of him that day - the way his throat squeezed shut at the sight of him, his mouth suddenly dry, his palms inexplicably clammy. He asked Peter once, during a break in filming, as they stood huddled under a large golfing umbrella on the sidewalk, waiting for the crew to get the positioning of the glaring halogen lights right. He took a swig of hot tea from the flask they were passing between them, unforgivably lacking the lacing bite of the whisky Randy knew Gale was sipping out of his from his position on the opposite sidewalk, looking altogether too bright for that time of the morning. "Do you think," Randy had asked, glancing at Peter, "that it’s possible to fall in love with someone you know will never love you back, and remain sane?" Peter had stared at him with searching, knowing eyes, and then smiled his impish smile before looking across at Gale for a moment too long. "No," he had replied, "but isn’t that part of the fun?" * Gale’s realization didn’t hit him until months later, when he appeared on set one morning, and found, with an unsettling jolt and a moment of panic, that Randy wasn’t there. He was told, by a harassed looking director, that Randy had called in an hour previous with his apologies, saying he would be late, citing car troubles or something similar that stank of the poorest kind of excuse - the type thrown out on a whim, out of obligation more than a desire to tell the truth, draped with a nonchalant shrug that it didn’t matter whether anyone believed it or not. When Randy finally arrived, his hair all over the place, his cheeks a shade of pink the cold weather could never produce, Gale bit down on the jealousy seeping from his tongue, and pushed Randy’s shoulder with the heel of his palm, a little too hard to be friendly, and a little too light to cause harm, and raised one eyebrow. "Somebody got laid last night." Randy grinned at him, in that disconcerting way of his, making you feel that despite your own declaration of a life that was content, his was just that little bit better, on account of the wattage of his smile, and skipped off to have the shine powdered from his nose, humming an altogether too cheery tune under his breath. Gale felt like throttling him. * It came to a head before either of them were ready, brought forward due to an undisclosed amount of cheap liquor passed between them as they sat huddled on Gale’s worn couch, in his tiny apartment, roughly two blocks and a five minute walk away from Randy’s. "You never told me why you wanted this role," Randy said, his head drooping precariously close to Gale’s shoulder, as he stared into the roaring hiss of the fire, embers flickering up the chimney. "Tell me now." "There was no reason, really, other than money," Gale replied, fingering the peeling label on the forgotten bottle of Jim Beam he had found hidden in the back of the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen, placed there over a year ago, for a rainy day. "That, and I suppose I wanted to piss off my parents." "A noble reason indeed." Randy laughed and glanced up at him, his eyes drawn to the furrow between Gale’s eyebrows that deepened exponentially with the amount of alcohol he consumed. "Are you glad?" Gale asked, shifting slightly, his elbow pressing into the small of Randy’s back. "That you agreed to play Justin, I mean?" "I’m mostly glad," Randy answered, cryptically. "And I will be mostly glad when it’s over." Gale nodded, as if he understood, and tapped one of his long fingers against his chin. "I think I will miss it more when it’s over, than I think I might miss it thinking about it now." Randy blinked, processing the sentence, and nodded slowly, reaching out for the bottle of liquor, which Gale reluctantly deposited in his hand. "Do you ever think," he said carefully, picking around his words and discarding those that could possibly reveal too much. "You will miss the people too?" "Some of them." Gale glanced at Randy, smiling that lopsided grin of his that broke up the perfect symmetry of his face and somehow made him more beautiful in the process. "Like me?" Randy knew he was fishing for compliments now, but he seemed unable to stop himself, the heat pooling somewhere in the region of his ribcage spurring him on, almost daring him to be bold. "Like you, for whatever crazy reasons," Gale replied, his eyes traveling down across the plains of Randy’s face to his lips. "Crazy fucking reasons." Words melted then, and vanished on the smoke traveling up through the chimney, leaving only timid, longing glances in their wake. Hands moved of their own accord, linking together across a short distance that felt like miles, and palms pressed together before breaking apart again, only to reappear at fastenings: buttons, zippers; scrabbling to pull off fabric and discard on the floor. * It ended quicker than it began, like the Big Bang - basic gases moving about each other in a universal dance until they exploded with a huge flash of bright light. When the smoke finally cleared, everything had realigned into new shapes, new forms, making it impossible to get back to the start. In a single second, and half a decade, it was over. "Five years," Randy said, snorting as he stood at the bar, a glass in his hand, the ice chinking against the sides every time he moved. "Five years," Gale confirmed with a nod, watching him through the haze of his cigarette smoke, making him appear misty, evanescent, like he could vanish with just one blink. "What are you going to do now it’s over?" Randy shrugged and placed one hand flat on the top of the bar, looking down at it before meeting Gale’s eyes. "The only thing I can do," he replied. "And what’s that?" Gale’s eyes were intense, the message in them clear for once; raw and serious without his usual sheen of pot. "Start all over again," came the reply, and Randy slipped him a folded up piece of paper, seared with his telephone number in New York, scrawled in his messy hand, before he got up and left without a backwards glance, leaving behind the faint traces of his scent lingering on his glass. |