Title: Darren's Folly
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Length: 700
Rating: R
Pairing: Darren/Geoffrey
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author note: for lilliburlero, this is part of my Remembrances of days foregone series. Spoilers for the previous fic in the series, Geoffrey's Folly. Also a fill for the Fall square on my bingo card.
Summary: Darren reflects on the events of last fall.



Of all the things that happened on Darren’s trip to London last fall, having sex with Geoffrey Tennant again was the most improbable. The most improbable, and the most disastrous.

God knows what his analyst in Paris would make of it, after all those 8 a.m. sessions in the first floor consulting room in rue Elzévir, Darren lying on a sage green velvet couch and talking obsessively about Geoffrey. All that work he’d done with Dr Auguste to accept that what hadn’t happened with Geoffrey at eighteen was never going to happen, that a life lived in reaction and opposition to Geoffrey might have its own virtues and pleasures but was also unnecessarily limiting. It wasn’t anything as simple as getting over him – it had taken Darren years to admit that there was anything to be Over – but he’d finally got there, or so he thought.

And then he went to Follies, and there Geoffrey was.

What happens when you get what you thought you’d always wanted? When not getting what you wanted has been a central part of your identity for years, no, decades? Who are you now, without that disappointment, that lack, that unfulfilled fantasy you built yourself around? When your fantasy is not just fulfilled but surpassed by a single ruinously perfect night?

Ruinous because this wasn’t the encounter Darren had so often imagined in revenge or compensation for that long-ago rejection – a rejection supposedly mutual, but actually not, as he’d discovered at the Macbeth cast party when Geoffrey’s denial hit him like a punch to the gut. That imaginary coupling was supposed to solve everything, including any lingering questions of unrequited passion. The reality of having his way with someone he’d loved and hated for so long turned out to be a more complicated business altogether.

Because Geoffrey wanted more the morning after, and Darren wanted it too. Because Geoffrey got the Almeida job (all thanks to Darren’s excellent advice about Thersites, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted). And now he’s going to be back in London rehearsing Troilus when Darren’s doing Kiss Me Kate at ENO.

Darren isn’t sure how much of himself he can walk away with next time, if it happens again. And he wants it to happen again, even though he shouldn’t. Geoffrey wants it too, for all he’s dancing around it, throwing up a smokescreen of their old performative antagonism. Since his irritable email about the Troilus workshop, they’ve been trading insults with increasing frequency in a way that shouldn’t feel as much like foreplay as it undoubtedly does.

He’s lost count of how often he’s tossed off over the last few months, remembering that night. Geoffrey biting him. Geoffrey begging him. Geoffrey writhing against the mattress, keening as Darren held him open and pushed his tongue into him. Geoffrey the morning after, shaking and swearing, coming between Darren’s thighs. Darren thought he’d have worn those memories out by now, but they’re as sharp as ever.

Yes indeed, Darren Nichols is in trouble. In terrible, terrible trouble. Trouble with a capital T, that rhymes with G and it stands for Geoffrey. (A truly unspeakable production of The Music Man, their second year at university.)

Darren’s phone buzzes with another email notification. His pulse kicks up a beat.

From: gtennant@theatresansargent.ca
To: dnichols@postmodernworld.demon.de
Subject: London

Arriving Tuesday 12 June. For the love of God, be somewhere else.
G


For the love of God: a phrase Darren used to use himself, and hasn’t for years. He thinks of saying You’re talking to an atheist, darling, but that would be superfluous.

From: dnichols@postmodernworld.demon.de
To: gtennant@theatresansargent.ca
Subject: Re: London
I’ll be rehearsing Kate, as you very well know, Geoffrey. Suggest you avoid the area around St Martin’s Lane altogether, and particularly the Lemon Tree on Tuesday evening. I’ll be there from 6.
D


Geoffrey’s reply takes an obscenely short amount of time.

From: gtennant@theatresansargent.ca
To: dnichols@postmodernworld.demon.de
Subject: Re: Re: London

It’s a date, damn you.
G


Darren groans and buries his head in his hands. He’s giddy, and more than a little furious, and so, so fucked.