Title: Day To A Page 1980
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Length: 561
Characters: Darren Nichols; A Journalist
Rating: PG-13
Content notes: some misogynistic language
Author note: thanks to owl_by_night for encouragement. This one is for theicescholar and 2ndskin.
Summary: Yes, Darren Nichols kept a diary at eighteen; who doesn’t? And no, he does not wish now to be confronted with the clove-cigarette-fuelled maunderings of his adolescence.



“Where the hell did you get that?”

Darren stares in outrage at the hideously familiar maroon volume with Day To A Page 1980 stamped on the cover in gold. Yes, Darren Nichols kept a diary at eighteen; who doesn’t? And no, he does not wish now to be confronted with the clove-cigarette-fuelled maunderings of his adolescence. Such things should be buried in decent oblivion.

The junior reporter from the Star (honestly, had they no-one more suitable to send than this… moppet?) beams at him. “My grandma told your mom I was interviewing you about the Festival and your mom said I could read your diary.”

Darren winces: he might have known he couldn’t trust his mother with anything private. He should never have left his college things with her when he went to Europe after graduation. To do the old witch justice, he doesn’t think there’s any malice in it. She simply doesn’t understand. Doesn’t care enough to understand. Never did.

“It is, as they say, a small world.” He gives the moppet his best basilisk glare, the one that makes the actors and technicians of three continents quail.

The moppet does not quail. “They were in school together,” she says. “Grandma and your mom.”

“Moving swiftly on,” Darren says with a shudder, “what precisely is the relevance of my diary to this interview?”

He braces himself for the demand to justify some mortifyingly callow pronouncement about the relative importance of Beckett and Pinter, or a misguided youthful enthusiasm for the more obvious and crowd-pleasing works of Jean-Paul Sartre.

“Geoffrey Tennant,” the moppet says perkily.

Darren grits his teeth. Must every interview insist on reverting to that tedious ancient grudge?

“Who the fuck does Geoffrey Tennant think he is?” says the moppet, and oh Christ, she’s quoting.

“Geoffrey Tennant is a fucking idiot who doesn’t understand the first fucking thing about theatre,” the moppet continues. “Geoffrey Tennant can take the purity of the text and shove it up his – there’s a couple of words crossed out here I can’t read but the next word is definitely ass.”

Darren goes hot, then cold. Unfairly distracting would be one all too plausible conjecture; admittedly delectable another. He can’t now remember what he actually wrote. He hopes to god he never finds out.

“See, this one is three days before you duelled in the quadrangle,” the moppet says, saucer-eyed. “It just says Oh fuck, Geoffrey Tennant.”

“Yes, thank you Ms… um,” Darren says, trying to call a halt to this appalling litany, but the moppet ploughs on regardless.

“This one is my favourite though, right before the duel.”

She points at the entry, a single line on the page: Fucking Geoffrey Tennant

The question in her eyes says Expletive, participle or gerund?, though he doubts she’s capable of that formulation. In any case, it’s none of her fucking business.

Darren removes the diary rather firmly from her grasp and pockets it.

“My mother may have given you permission, but I do not,” he says. “And if you quote one single word of this in your article, I will sue you and your editor for infringement of copyright. Is that clear?”

The moppet nods sulkily. “Yes, Mr Nichols.”

“Good,” says Darren, and eats one of Oliver’s horrible After Eights to calm his nerves. “Now, do you have any actual questions about the Festival’s new season?”