Undiscovered Country, by Chris
For brynwulf.
Title: Undiscovered Country
Author: Chris
Fandom and Pairing: Last Night/Slings and Arrows, Craig Zwiller/Geoffrey Tennant
Rating: R
Word Count: 1900
Notes: Many, many thanks to my lovely betas, izzybeth and rhythmsextion, who save me from all sorts of idiocies.
To be perfectly honest - and really, there was no need to be anything else these days; all the million and one reasons for lying seemed pretty pathetic when you thought that in a few hours 6 billion people, including yourself, were going to become six billion clouds of dust floating in space where the earth used to be - he'd been lying. To Patrick. Sort of. Mostly. Because, sure, clouds of dust, whatever, but that didn't mean propositioning people had gotten any less awkward.
The internet, now. That made it less awkward. Well, at least until you got whoever it was into your living room and realised you couldn't introduce yourself to someone who already knew your name, not to mention your top five sexual fantasies.
So, yeah. He'd said he'd never, and there were a lot of things he hadn't done with a guy (as in, nearly everything), but when you came down to it, it was still a lie.
The first time Craig ever thought about maybe wanting to do a guy - apart from locker-room stuff, keyed up after a game and thinking 'Hey, I wonder if... nah', and all teenagers did that, right? - was in a crappy small-town sports bar, the sort that called itself The Puck Stops Here or something dumb like that and thought it was the cleverest thing ever. Small-town sports bars weren't exactly his favourite thing, but, you know, your sister moves to a new town, you help, especially if you own a truck. A 1972 GMC, to be exact, but she'd been careful of the paint job, wouldn't be a Zwiller if she wasn't. So they'd gotten Jenny set up in her shoebox apartment, then she'd looked at her watch, sworn, apologised, kissed him and blown out the door - still tying back her hair - to schmooze with her new boss. So he'd headed back to the motel room he'd rented (just around the corner, and even cheap motel beds were better than a two-seater couch. He'd grown out of two-seater couches when he was ten) and tried to watch the game, but Flames versus Oilers demanded some sort of alcohol, so. Crappy sports bar, here he came.
The bar was pretty empty, even for a Monday night. Apart from a few guys around a table down the back, it was just Craig and the bartender, who was either not the talkative type or actually interested in the game, so Craig hooked his legs around a bar stool and settled into the rhythm. Pretzel, beer, power play, pretzel, beer, fight, pretzel, beer, hey, Flames scored...
The stool next to him scraunched along the sticky floor.
'So. How about them Flames,' said its occupant, deliberately.
And that, right then, that was the first time Craig Zwiller thought about doing a guy. He was never sure why then; okay, the guy was good-looking, all implausibly attractive messy dark hair - huh, wonder what he uses on it? - and square jaw, but he'd seen better. Couldn't remember when, but he had. Must have. Anyway, one moment he was looking up for the 'Yeah, how about 'em' that was the only possible reply, and the next he was wondering if the guy's skin was that pale all over, not to mention if it was as soft as it looked.
Huh.
He was still trying to fit his head around that - one beer, one, it shouldn't be that difficult - when the guy followed up with 'Good game?', so, like a dope, he said yeah, not bad, and next thing he knew they were buying each other beers.
The guy, Tennant, turned out to be an actor at some local theatre, and a few Molsons later, he lost interest in the game and started talking about Hamlet. Which was okay; English Lit hadn't been Craig's best subject in high school, Mr Dalton being about as different from Madame Carlton as you could get, but the game was turning into a no-scoring mess and Craig was supposed to be a Leafs fan anyway. Plus it was kind of cool seeing Tennant get so enthusiastic about it.
'Hamlet's fucking life, you know? Doubt, and good intentions - you can have as much love and good intentions as you like, but you fuck everything up anyway. And we've got it, we're going to get it right tomorrow. Really right. It's... God, I can't even explain. It's just... It's what we're here for. We all want Romeo, Hamlet, and Lear - and most of us are lucky to get Romeo. But this show - it's mine.'
'So... shouldn't you be at dress rehearsal or something?'
'Had that this afternoon,' he said, digging a fingernail under the label. 'And the director's insane. I had to get away, or he'd be bloody talking to me and wanting to give me his take on the character, and believe me, Oliver is no Hamlet. He's Feeble. Polonius, maybe. Iago, on a good day. Not Hamlet. And my-' He stopped, and took another swig. 'My Ophelia's always impossible the night before a show. Nerves. Better for everyone if I take a night off. Anyway...' And he was off again, complete with hand-waving and hair-pulling. And huh, the hair must be natural, the way he was treating it.
So yeah, Tennant versus Hamlet was fun to watch, definitely more fun than Flames versus Oilers, and he'd drunk enough by now not to blink when his next thought was that it was also kind of hot.
He was still a little surprised when it seemed like a good idea to invite Tennant back to his motel room to point and laugh at Mel Gibson on the Movie Network, but not enough not to do it.
The TV never even got turned on, of course; the closest they came was knocking the remote control off the night stand when Tennant kissed him, sloppily, several times and proceeded to blow his brains out the top of his head.
After which Craig passed out, then a few minutes later woke up just enough to notice Tennant patting his shoulder and laughing before he left.
Well, it was late. And he shouldn't even have been able to get it up in his condition.
At least Tennant hadn't seemed to mind.
The second time he thought about it barely counted; he was in Ottawa for his stepmother's birthday, saw a familiar profile walking along Sussex Drive and had a sudden impulse to call out - he could offer the guy a drink, ask about Hamlet, and maybe they could have the sort of sex that included Craig getting to do more than come and fall asleep.
Though he'd kind of got the impression Tennant had a... girlfriend? Boyfriend? Was involved, anyway, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be that guy. Well, not more than once.
And right about then Tennant stopped long enough for Craig to see that he wasn't - the jaw was tougher, the hair was neater and the posture under the leather jacket said 'cop', or maybe 'military'. Definitely not 'scruffy actor', and Craig fought irrational disappointment as a tall blond guy came out of the US embassy and slung a proprietary arm around not-Tennant's shoulders.
The next time wasn't long after the announcement; they'd stopped playing trailers at the movies, but the movies were still open, along with the government and most of the stores. Actually, the movies were almost the last thing to go; enough employees were film nuts that even when everything else shut down, they just... stayed. Mostly they played what they felt like seeing, so there was better stuff on than there had ever been, and Craig ended up spending a lot of time there. Classes had been cancelled, of course - though some of the faculty were still there, apparently wanting to spend their last few months in the miraculously student-free libraries - and the Canada Place guys seemed to have the right idea about movies, namely that they'd stopped getting better some time around 1970. A lot like cars.
Plus movie theatres were a good place to get out of the goddamn light that never stopped beating down, like the Territories on that summer fishing trip but worse, brighter and colder and unearthly as all hell. Which, for all he knew, was exactly, literally true.
Everyone was doing okay so far - numb, probably, because something like the end of the world took a while to sink in. No one was exactly happy except the crazy guys downtown whose apocalyptic placards were finally getting vindicated, but it wasn't the kind of chaos he'd half expected when he'd turned on the TV that night to see Jean Chrétien's dome of a forehead all serious and wrinkled instead of the Buffy repeat. Still, it had to sink in some time, and as the credits rolled on The Great Escape, it suddenly hit him, all at once - the Headstones were really never going to have a new album, Jenny was never going to have the kids she wanted, the few inches of Laphroaig in the back of the pantry were most likely the last he'd ever see, it was ending.
His first thought was: Better go home and drink it.
His second was: But I never got to...
That thought ended a lot of ways, but, to tell the truth, it wasn't that much of a surprise that never getting to blow Geoffrey Tennant's mind was at the top of the list. (And wow, could there be a worse time to try on a new sexual orientation?)
His next thought, a couple of inches into the Laphroaig, was that it was all about speed. Distance, yeah, but if you had the speed and the momentum, you could cover the same distance with less time to do it in. He'd started college again when he turned thirty and realised that he didn't really have a career beyond occasionally selling a car that he'd fixed up and realised he didn't like enough to keep after all, and he'd had the speed then - credited the few classes he'd taken the first time round, did summer school and finished in three years, then started med school in time to have figured out it was exactly what he wanted when it all shut down. This was the same thing; maybe there was stuff he hadn't done, and maybe there wasn't much time to do something about it, but if there was one thing Craig knew, it was speed.
There was a lot he hadn't done, too, and not just with guys. There was a lot of stuff he hadn't done with girls. Not that there'd been any particular shortage of girls, but Craig had always been a man for the classics. So yeah. There was this and that, and hey, while we're here, why not go to town?
It hadn't worked out quite the way he wanted - realising you wanted to do guys didn't mean you necessarily wanted to do any guy, and didn't mean the ones you wanted would say yes - but the last time he thought about it, with about half an hour to go, it was buried half-articulated in a rush of memories that he felt as wind on his face, and he barely had time to notice it before it was swept up in more joy and regret than he'd thought it was possible to feel and the world was caught in a blaze of light, ending in beauty.
Title: Undiscovered Country
Author: Chris
Fandom and Pairing: Last Night/Slings and Arrows, Craig Zwiller/Geoffrey Tennant
Rating: R
Word Count: 1900
Notes: Many, many thanks to my lovely betas, izzybeth and rhythmsextion, who save me from all sorts of idiocies.
To be perfectly honest - and really, there was no need to be anything else these days; all the million and one reasons for lying seemed pretty pathetic when you thought that in a few hours 6 billion people, including yourself, were going to become six billion clouds of dust floating in space where the earth used to be - he'd been lying. To Patrick. Sort of. Mostly. Because, sure, clouds of dust, whatever, but that didn't mean propositioning people had gotten any less awkward.
The internet, now. That made it less awkward. Well, at least until you got whoever it was into your living room and realised you couldn't introduce yourself to someone who already knew your name, not to mention your top five sexual fantasies.
So, yeah. He'd said he'd never, and there were a lot of things he hadn't done with a guy (as in, nearly everything), but when you came down to it, it was still a lie.
The first time Craig ever thought about maybe wanting to do a guy - apart from locker-room stuff, keyed up after a game and thinking 'Hey, I wonder if... nah', and all teenagers did that, right? - was in a crappy small-town sports bar, the sort that called itself The Puck Stops Here or something dumb like that and thought it was the cleverest thing ever. Small-town sports bars weren't exactly his favourite thing, but, you know, your sister moves to a new town, you help, especially if you own a truck. A 1972 GMC, to be exact, but she'd been careful of the paint job, wouldn't be a Zwiller if she wasn't. So they'd gotten Jenny set up in her shoebox apartment, then she'd looked at her watch, sworn, apologised, kissed him and blown out the door - still tying back her hair - to schmooze with her new boss. So he'd headed back to the motel room he'd rented (just around the corner, and even cheap motel beds were better than a two-seater couch. He'd grown out of two-seater couches when he was ten) and tried to watch the game, but Flames versus Oilers demanded some sort of alcohol, so. Crappy sports bar, here he came.
The bar was pretty empty, even for a Monday night. Apart from a few guys around a table down the back, it was just Craig and the bartender, who was either not the talkative type or actually interested in the game, so Craig hooked his legs around a bar stool and settled into the rhythm. Pretzel, beer, power play, pretzel, beer, fight, pretzel, beer, hey, Flames scored...
The stool next to him scraunched along the sticky floor.
'So. How about them Flames,' said its occupant, deliberately.
And that, right then, that was the first time Craig Zwiller thought about doing a guy. He was never sure why then; okay, the guy was good-looking, all implausibly attractive messy dark hair - huh, wonder what he uses on it? - and square jaw, but he'd seen better. Couldn't remember when, but he had. Must have. Anyway, one moment he was looking up for the 'Yeah, how about 'em' that was the only possible reply, and the next he was wondering if the guy's skin was that pale all over, not to mention if it was as soft as it looked.
Huh.
He was still trying to fit his head around that - one beer, one, it shouldn't be that difficult - when the guy followed up with 'Good game?', so, like a dope, he said yeah, not bad, and next thing he knew they were buying each other beers.
The guy, Tennant, turned out to be an actor at some local theatre, and a few Molsons later, he lost interest in the game and started talking about Hamlet. Which was okay; English Lit hadn't been Craig's best subject in high school, Mr Dalton being about as different from Madame Carlton as you could get, but the game was turning into a no-scoring mess and Craig was supposed to be a Leafs fan anyway. Plus it was kind of cool seeing Tennant get so enthusiastic about it.
'Hamlet's fucking life, you know? Doubt, and good intentions - you can have as much love and good intentions as you like, but you fuck everything up anyway. And we've got it, we're going to get it right tomorrow. Really right. It's... God, I can't even explain. It's just... It's what we're here for. We all want Romeo, Hamlet, and Lear - and most of us are lucky to get Romeo. But this show - it's mine.'
'So... shouldn't you be at dress rehearsal or something?'
'Had that this afternoon,' he said, digging a fingernail under the label. 'And the director's insane. I had to get away, or he'd be bloody talking to me and wanting to give me his take on the character, and believe me, Oliver is no Hamlet. He's Feeble. Polonius, maybe. Iago, on a good day. Not Hamlet. And my-' He stopped, and took another swig. 'My Ophelia's always impossible the night before a show. Nerves. Better for everyone if I take a night off. Anyway...' And he was off again, complete with hand-waving and hair-pulling. And huh, the hair must be natural, the way he was treating it.
So yeah, Tennant versus Hamlet was fun to watch, definitely more fun than Flames versus Oilers, and he'd drunk enough by now not to blink when his next thought was that it was also kind of hot.
He was still a little surprised when it seemed like a good idea to invite Tennant back to his motel room to point and laugh at Mel Gibson on the Movie Network, but not enough not to do it.
The TV never even got turned on, of course; the closest they came was knocking the remote control off the night stand when Tennant kissed him, sloppily, several times and proceeded to blow his brains out the top of his head.
After which Craig passed out, then a few minutes later woke up just enough to notice Tennant patting his shoulder and laughing before he left.
Well, it was late. And he shouldn't even have been able to get it up in his condition.
At least Tennant hadn't seemed to mind.
The second time he thought about it barely counted; he was in Ottawa for his stepmother's birthday, saw a familiar profile walking along Sussex Drive and had a sudden impulse to call out - he could offer the guy a drink, ask about Hamlet, and maybe they could have the sort of sex that included Craig getting to do more than come and fall asleep.
Though he'd kind of got the impression Tennant had a... girlfriend? Boyfriend? Was involved, anyway, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be that guy. Well, not more than once.
And right about then Tennant stopped long enough for Craig to see that he wasn't - the jaw was tougher, the hair was neater and the posture under the leather jacket said 'cop', or maybe 'military'. Definitely not 'scruffy actor', and Craig fought irrational disappointment as a tall blond guy came out of the US embassy and slung a proprietary arm around not-Tennant's shoulders.
The next time wasn't long after the announcement; they'd stopped playing trailers at the movies, but the movies were still open, along with the government and most of the stores. Actually, the movies were almost the last thing to go; enough employees were film nuts that even when everything else shut down, they just... stayed. Mostly they played what they felt like seeing, so there was better stuff on than there had ever been, and Craig ended up spending a lot of time there. Classes had been cancelled, of course - though some of the faculty were still there, apparently wanting to spend their last few months in the miraculously student-free libraries - and the Canada Place guys seemed to have the right idea about movies, namely that they'd stopped getting better some time around 1970. A lot like cars.
Plus movie theatres were a good place to get out of the goddamn light that never stopped beating down, like the Territories on that summer fishing trip but worse, brighter and colder and unearthly as all hell. Which, for all he knew, was exactly, literally true.
Everyone was doing okay so far - numb, probably, because something like the end of the world took a while to sink in. No one was exactly happy except the crazy guys downtown whose apocalyptic placards were finally getting vindicated, but it wasn't the kind of chaos he'd half expected when he'd turned on the TV that night to see Jean Chrétien's dome of a forehead all serious and wrinkled instead of the Buffy repeat. Still, it had to sink in some time, and as the credits rolled on The Great Escape, it suddenly hit him, all at once - the Headstones were really never going to have a new album, Jenny was never going to have the kids she wanted, the few inches of Laphroaig in the back of the pantry were most likely the last he'd ever see, it was ending.
His first thought was: Better go home and drink it.
His second was: But I never got to...
That thought ended a lot of ways, but, to tell the truth, it wasn't that much of a surprise that never getting to blow Geoffrey Tennant's mind was at the top of the list. (And wow, could there be a worse time to try on a new sexual orientation?)
His next thought, a couple of inches into the Laphroaig, was that it was all about speed. Distance, yeah, but if you had the speed and the momentum, you could cover the same distance with less time to do it in. He'd started college again when he turned thirty and realised that he didn't really have a career beyond occasionally selling a car that he'd fixed up and realised he didn't like enough to keep after all, and he'd had the speed then - credited the few classes he'd taken the first time round, did summer school and finished in three years, then started med school in time to have figured out it was exactly what he wanted when it all shut down. This was the same thing; maybe there was stuff he hadn't done, and maybe there wasn't much time to do something about it, but if there was one thing Craig knew, it was speed.
There was a lot he hadn't done, too, and not just with guys. There was a lot of stuff he hadn't done with girls. Not that there'd been any particular shortage of girls, but Craig had always been a man for the classics. So yeah. There was this and that, and hey, while we're here, why not go to town?
It hadn't worked out quite the way he wanted - realising you wanted to do guys didn't mean you necessarily wanted to do any guy, and didn't mean the ones you wanted would say yes - but the last time he thought about it, with about half an hour to go, it was buried half-articulated in a rush of memories that he felt as wind on his face, and he barely had time to notice it before it was swept up in more joy and regret than he'd thought it was possible to feel and the world was caught in a blaze of light, ending in beauty.