Title: The Belkovsky Exercise
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Length: 250
Rating: PG
Content notes: choose not to warn
Characters: Darren Nichols, mentions of others
Author note: reflections on that scene in s2 ep6; also a fill for the Naked square on my bingo card
Summary: Darren is used to suppressing bodily hunger, of one sort or another.



Darren is used to suppressing bodily hunger, of one sort or another. His desire for physical intimacy is expressed only under strictly controlled conditions. Berlin affords many opportunities of this kind, New Burbage none. No sex clubs; no bars, even. (The theatre bar, for obvious reasons, is out of the question.)

The conditions of the Belkovsky exercise – nakedness, darkness, no words, absurd music, anonymous glow-paint handprints on his skin – come closer to satisfying this hunger than anything else has for months. This isn’t a surprise; it’s also not the point. The exercise is a mark of his desperation, of how badly awry his vision of Romeo and Juliet has gone, how little time there is to dismantle the monstrosity he’s spent all these weeks creating and build something new in its place.

There’s another hunger here, too, one that takes him by surprise. He prides himself on a thorough familiarity with the workings of his psyche, post-Berlin, and yet…

This is why he wanted to go into theatre in the first place. A room full of people happy because of him, laughing and calling out for more.

The banality of that desire is something he might let himself be ashamed of, in other circumstances. Right now, with his head still spinning from that extraordinary interview with Geoffrey, with the terror of opening night tomorrow clutching at his insides, and the actors, flushed and dishevelled, clamouring “Again! Again!”, he gives in to it, cuts the lights and switches on the music.