Physical comedy
"ACME All-Purpose Piano Dropper"
Fry/Laurie; a tragicomedy in six parts.
For its_maybe_baby, who wanted present-day first time Fry/Laurie for Christmas.
Train approaching
Whistle squealing
Pause!
Avoid that
Rundown feeling!
1.
He's sitting in his apartment, on the bed, in the middle of the afternoon. Alone, and quiet, his dinner sitting microwaved and untouched on the kitchen table. He's sitting, and not-quite-moping, and thinking that it's odd how his accent seems off to him now, like maybe he's losing his Englishness entirely. He's thinking that it's odd how, out of all his family and friends, it's Stephen he misses the most.
And the dreams, yeah, they're odd too.
2.
"D'you miss England?" Stephen asks, and maybe that means do you miss me?
"More than I should, I think," Hugh says.
3.
He's sitting on a Perspex chair, fingers wrapped around a nervous cigarette, remembering all the muscle-movements for a self-deprecating smile. His intervewier is so blonde and so American - so Californian - and wearing such vast quantities of tweed that he doesn't know whether he should laugh or sob.
"You seem so effortless on-screen; does acting come easy to you?"
It's an easy question, one he's got a dozen answers for, and a dozen self-deprecating smiles (all those facial muscles, already sore from making words in American shapes, and maybe one day it'll stick like that).
"It's like in all those old Loony Tunes cartoons, the ones with Wile E. Coyote and the road runner, and the road runner paints a tunnel on the side of a cliff and runs through it - you know, cartoon physics - but the tunnel won't work for Wile E. Coyote, he tries to chase after the road runner and smashes into the wall. It's like that with acting sometimes, especially the accent. Just - running into painted tunnels."
4.
The dreams, they're not that odd.
It's just frustration, that's all. It's just being alone every night, just sweating under the California sun and coming back to an empty apartment, every night. And it's just all these things in his mind, all the foreign words and mannerisms, the to-do lists, everything cluttering up his brain and that's why he can't even concentrate enough to jerk off in the shower.
Being Hugh Laurie, International Television Star, it's damned difficult to buy bread and eggs at the local supermarket, let alone porn. When he finally wrings out the courage to order a DVD or four off the internet, he spends the days until they arrive in the mail filled with terror of being found out - maybe they're not in plain wrapping, maybe the mailman will know instantly that Hugh Laurie, International Television Star And Married Man, has bought porn off the internet. He pictures the headline: Is Dr. House looking for sexual healing? Maybe there'd be a gynecology joke.
But they come, and everything's completely discreet - unless the mailman steamed open the packaging - and he shoves the DVD into his player with the air of getting a job done. Getting this over with. Getting a decent night's sleep.
So this is where he is now, though he doesn't remember how: sitting on his expensive leather couch, slowly unzipping his expensive pre-stressed jeans, sliding a disinterested hand over his cock as he watches blonde Californian girls with fake tits soaping up Italian cars. Brilliant.
After half an hour and only the most half-hearted of erections, he sighs and changes the disc, and settles back to watch blonde Californian boys with puka shell necklaces draping themselves over each other. He loses track of who's who, who's on top, who's come first, and then he loses track of his sexual interest and that's when he gives up entirely.
He washes up, zips up, slumps down on the couch. The opposite of porn, he'd like to watch the opposite of porn, and he puts on the tape of QI that he asked Stephen to send him. Ten minutes in, he's digging his fingers into the (expensive leather) cushions, staring up at the ceiling, resolutely ignoring his hard-on.
Just a delayed reaction.
"Just bad timing," he growls out aloud.
He spends five minutes vomiting his dinner somewhere in the vincinity of the toilet, and a minute cleaning up, and ten minutes staring at a photograph of himself, and his family.
That night, he books plane tickets to England over the internet and packs all of his things into two bags. To see his wife, to see his children, his friends, and England. To see Stephen. But it's not -
It's not like he -
It's not like he wants him.
5.
Sometimes he's just waiting for the piano to fall from the sky.
Standing in front of the door, his hand hovering an inch over the doorbell, he thinks: I'm Hugh Laurie. I'm an international television star. I'm critically acclaimed. I'm an intelligent, interesting, and reasonably attractive individual.
He stands there like that for another minute; the wind starts to pick up.
"I'm a witless, charmless, chinless ass," he says loudly, and slams his hand down on the doorbell.
Stephen's the only one home, thankfully - he had no plans for dealing with boyfriends - and after the surprise and the how-are-you's and handshakes, they settle in almost as if no one had ever left. They're in the kitchen, and Stephen's cooking something with onions - which Hugh's always loved because you could just put half an onion in a pan and suddenly it smells like you're the best chef in the world - and almost without realizing what he's doing, he slides his arms around Stephen's waist and clings, his face smushed into Stephen's back.
"Hugh."
He mumbles something that's lost in Stephen's shirt, and presses closer. He stays there.
"Hugh, what are you doing?"
Hugh pulls back just long enough to say, "I'm playing a rousing game of tennis." He leans in, tightens his grip, scrunches his eyes closed. There's nothing else here, he thinks, there's nothing else here but them.
"There's so little affection in this world, really," Stephen murmurs, and puts down his expensive wooden spoon on the counter , slowly turns around and wraps his arms around Hugh.
Later, they sit easily with drinks in hand, in companionable silence - or Stephen sits easily, impossibly relaxed, and Hugh thinks again of how confident he looks now, how happy. Like he's really finally found himself, now that Hugh's gone.
"Did you," he starts, and then tenses. Christ, what was he thinking, trying to do this?
"Yes, Hugh?"
"Did you ever - all the time we were working together, pretending to be - pretending to be, you know, flirting - did you ever think about it maybe being real?"
And his voice cracks ridiculously on the word 'real', and could this possibly get any worse? He tosses the rest of his whiskey down his throat; he starts choking and coughing and spluttering miserably, and Stephen's flailing in surprise and he'd laugh, really, if he could breathe.
He smiles weakly, his eyes watering, his throat raw. "I'm fine, thanks, thank you, I'm okay," he says, but he doesn't do anything to stop Stephen from rubbing his back. Maybe his hands are lingering, or maybe he's just being nice: maybe it's just comfort given by an old friend, maybe it's flirting, maybe Stephen's counting down the minutes til Hugh leaves, maybe they're about to have sex.
He thinks of the pick-up lines he could conceivably use:
Hey, I might need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Nice shoes, wanna fuck?
My dignity would look great on your floor.
Stephen's hand slows, then stops, then withdraws entirely.
It's useless, really. He's useless. He wishes for the fourth time that he hadn't spit his drink out onto the coffee table. Maybe he could just sort of lean over and subtly lick it up -
"Hugh."
"I know, it's stupid, let's just pretend I never said anything."
"Hugh, dearest, couldn't you have just not said it at all?"
And then they watch a movie, and they laugh, and they pretend that they never said anything at all.
6.
Halfway through LA Tool and Die, the doorbell rings.
"Just a mo," Hugh yells. He pulls his hand out of his jeans, runs it under cold water in the bathroom sink, zips up as he stumbles for the door.
It's Stephen, somehow. He looks terrible, really: sweaty and angry and mussed, his hair going everywhere. Hugh quickly hides his hands behind his back.
"Your problem is that you're always saying things," he says hoarsely, and somehow that makes sense to Hugh. He motions for Stephen to come in, and he smiles, and he says: "What brings you to California?"
"How dare you?" Stephen pushes Hugh against the wall, hands digging into shoulders. "How fucking dare you do this to me?" There's a split-second of quiet, just Stephen's harsh breathing and Hugh's blood pounding in his ears, then Stephen's kissing him like he means it to hurt.
When he thought about it - when he let himself think about it - it wasn't like this. Not at all. He never pictured Stephen shoving him aside and flouncing down on his couch, staring blankly at Richard Locke getting his dick sucked on the television screen.
He never pictured Stephen looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and saying, "All that time at Cambridge, and on the shows we did... All the time I was fucking celibate because I hated the idea of myself, because you never gave me a second look - where the fuck was all this then, Hugh? Where was your gay porn? Why in the name of everything you have ever held dear are you doing this now?"
All Hugh can think of to say is "how could you be 'fucking celibate'?" He doesn't say it.
Stephen grabs his hand and yanks him down, bites down on Hugh's lower lip. Maybe this was more how he thought of it being: tossing Stephen's glasses onto the coffee table, sliding off Stephen's sport coat, fumbling with Stephen's belt - Stephen Stephen Stephen - he doesn't have time to wonder about the sort of person he's become by doing this.
"How dare you?" Stephen growls again as he shoves a hand beneath Hugh's waistband.
"I'm sorry," Hugh says. "I'm so sorry." Except it comes out as a mumble, as "Uhmsry," stupidly and incoherently, and then there's nothing but Stephen's hand rough on his dick and that orgasm he's been trying to scratch out for the past month is finally scrabbling itself free. He comes quickly, and Stephen doesn't come at all, and they give each other this look like Isn't this sort of funny, when you think about it?
Hugh scrunches his eyes shut as he gives Stephen what's probably the worst hand-job he's ever had, and then wipes his palm on his own jeans.
This has absolutely no right to feel so satisfying. This should feel awful, he should feel like he's ruining his life, because he is. He shouldn't be settling his hand gently on Stephen's thigh like he belongs there, because he doesn't.
"We're a mess."
"I know."
"I don't hate you, Hugh."
"I know."
"But this can't possibly work."
"I kn-... Of course."
But neither of them stand up, and when Stephen kisses him again a few minutes later, there's no anger in it, and when Hugh falls asleep with his head on Stephen's lap, it's the best sleep he's had in months. He wakes up to early morning sun (which somehow doesn't feel as harsh as it always does) and Stephen softly running a hand through his hair, watching cartoons.
He closes his eyes again and listens to the television: rockets launching, TNT exploding, cliffs collapsing, those road runner beeps. He imagines the sign he'd hold up if he were hovering where the ground used to be: Hugh Laurie's Relationship Lessons. He sighs, and tries to go back to sleep.
Opening italicized text is a Burma-Shave slogan, and the cut text is the title of a Roadrunner cartoon. Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner are so obviously not owned by me, and all this clearly did not happen. Th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks.