Title: Collaboration
Fandom: Shakespeare in Love (stage show)
Word Count: 1850
Content notes: Kit Marlowe/Will Shakespeare. It's not even much of a stretch within the canon of the show.
Summary: Will Shakespeare is a human car crash, Kit Marlowe has a lot of emotions about him. Unfortunately neither of them are as good at talking about themselves as they are at writing.
Badges: Yulegoat, Brave New Fandoms



Some nights, Kit asked himself why he drank with Will at all. It wasn’t that Will was difficult – goodness knew Kit himself didn’t exactly have the world’s easiest personality.

It wasn’t that he thought they should be natural enemies. There was competition between the playwrights and their companies, of course, but as much as they were rivals, they had all, at one time or another, taken leaves out of another man’s books. Imagination, after all, belonged to everyone, and Will, as much as any other, gave away in equal measure what he took from other men’s wits. Kit had come to enjoy the man’s conversation, and if he thought sometimes, in his heart of hearts, that Will had a comely mouth as well as a lucid mind, then that was that.

On the matter of Will’s mind, he seemed determined to lose it tonight by any means necessary. He was drinking more than usual and making eyes at every bit of skirt that came within an arm’s length of their table. Ned Alleyn was making his usual jests, but Will wasn’t laughing. Kit caught Ned’s eye at some point in the proceedings and Ned left shortly thereafter.

Rumour had it that Will’s muse, whoever she might be this month, had forsaken him; that much Kit knew. From the drunken conversation, he gathered that other things were amiss as well. It was an open secret that all was not well between Will and Anne; and no surprise, but it was as much an unwritten law that these things were not talked about. Kit dearly would have liked to inquire what the matter was, but spending time in Will’s company had taught him that it didn’t do to drive the knife in deeper and risk doing more damage than good.

Most of the time, things were fine between them. What made matters difficult at times like this was Will’s stubborn refusal to speak, to have his pains eased in a less temporary fashion than the taverns and bawdy-houses of Bankside could accomplish.

This made it impossible for Kit to offer any form of comfort – a foolish thing to do when he wasn’t certain of its reception. Instead, he’d learned to carry the certainty of Will’s misery in his heart; a solid presence so familiar by now that it escaped his notice.

So he watched, and drank, and did not reciprocate the flirtatious looks he garnered from both men and women. Success, he was coming to learn, had its definite drawbacks. But someone would have to get Will home tonight, and while Kit was resentful that this task would fall to him, he was also unable to deny that this was, after all, the sort of service friends did for one another, and that there was a certain poetic honour to it all.

So much for the theory, at any rate. In practice, it turned out rather a lot less romantic than all that.
When they finally emerged from the tavern onto the dark streets, Will was in a worse state than Kit had seen him in quite some time. He was slumped against Kit and Kit against the tavern wall as they tried to make their way to Will’s lodgings.

Or at least, Kit tried.

“The sooner you move, Will, the sooner you’ll be home, the sooner I’ll leave you alone.”

Will looked up at him out of unfocused eyes and Kit only had time to step to arm’s length before Will doubled over and what had been his dinner ended up all over the cobblestones. Kit rested his hand on the back of Will’s neck gingerly – a measure of comfort he was able to give while keeping his doublet clean – and waited for the fit to be over.

Finally, Will uncurled himself and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. Kit jammed an arm underneath Will’s armpit and searched his eyes.

“Better?”

Will nodded. “I’m so sorry.”

Kit held him upright as he threatened to slide down the wall.

“Don’t be. Let’s just get you home.”
Will tried to fling his arm around Kit in a clumsy effort. Kit caught Will’s hand and with his other arm gripped Will around the waist and steadied them.

Kit swore inwardly that he had ever wished to be this close to Will. Not that he believed in a god, per se, but if there was some higher power, the joke was definitely on him.

The walk wasn’t far, but it stretched itself out nearly twice as long as it should have taken under ordinary circumstances as they stumbled between the wall and the gutter, Will threatening to fall over his own feet every few yards and clinging to Kit in an increasingly uncomfortable position.

Kit managed to wrestle Will out of his boots when they got to his bedchamber and decided to give the rest of Will’s clothes up as a bad job. Will mumbled a word of thanks before he passed out, flat on his face, and Kit could stand the sight of the misery no longer. Slamming the door behind him with more force than was perhaps strictly necessary, he bounded down the stairs and out on the way to his own bed.

The adoring looks he’d garnered in the tavern floated back into his memory, and not for the first time he thought that spending the rest of the night in the company of a pleasant stranger might have been preferable over this.

***

In the cold light of day, there was nothing for it except staying away from Will outside their mutual business for a while. Kit had grown to accept that his feelings would not be returned; that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the pain that it caused him to see someone that he loved so dearly destroy himself with such intention.

Although he gave the Bankside taverns a wider berth than usual for a while, the old adage that misery sought company proved true in the end, and Kit found himself face to face with Will over a mug of ale. Kit was in high spirits that night, but seeing Will’s face in the crowd put a damper on things. Nevertheless, he raised his glass and clinked.

Will tilted his head. “I had a mind to write to you and inquire after your health,” he said. There was no reproach in his tone, which surprised Kit not a little.

“I was pre-occupied,” he replied and lifted his mug for a slow sip which would allow him to think about what to say next. It was not a lie – he truly had had a busy time – but staying away without sending word was a grey area.

“As, I trust, have you, by the looks of it. You appear in better spirits than when I was you last.”
It was Will’s turn to search the bottom of his mug for hidden wisdom.

“I behaved shamefully, my friend. You would be right not to seek my company.”

It was then that it occurred to Kit that Will might have misconstrued his absence as a reaction to that night. In a gesture of reassurance, he laid a hand upon Will’s, which was flat on the table.

“I did not mean to chide you.”

Will drew his hand away. “What other sense, then, was I to make of it?”

“None other than that it pains me to see friends suffer, and that being as I am unable to offer the comfort they require, I see no other course of action than to leave them to their own devices until such time as they regain a healthier state, either through some other intervention or else in and of themselves.”

Will gave an almost imperceptible nod as he appeared to consider this.

“You would do well to share such pain,” he said at last. Kit raised an eyebrow.

“And how should such a thing be done? Shall I speak to my friend and say, I can see your suffering but know not how to ease it; therefore speak to me no more until you regain yourself? What friendship should this be?”

“Such speech must needs be harsh,” said Will softly, “but I should think it a sign of your affection to a friend, to feel his griefs so keenly.”

He had reached out to Kit again, but Kit did not take his hand just yet.

“My friend is dear to me as my own soul, but his silence engenders mine.”

“Should not friends understand without the need for words?”

There was a wetness to Will’s tone that made something in Kit’s chest knot. He emptied his mug and set it down on the table with feeling.

“Life is not a play, Will.”

“What form, then, might such comfort take as you say you might be able to give, were I to speak?”

There was nothing about this situation that was fair, but Kit knew he had brought it on himself by arguing with Will in this way. He’d picked his weapon of choice, but Will and him were equally matched in a duel of words.

“Such as you would require. No more. No less.”

He said it as earnestly as he could manage, being certain that the feelings behind the words would shine through no matter what. For a second, time stopped as he focussed his attention entirely on Will’s face and tried to discern any reaction.

Will was looking at Kit just as intently, his tongue held in the corner of his mouth as was his way when he was concentrating.

“Is that so.”

Kit nodded, feeling the colour rise in his cheeks. Between the ale, the stuffiness of the room, and the heat that came from other sources entirely, things were suddenly unbearable.

“Forgive me, I need to step outside.”

He leaned against the wall outside and took a deep breath of cool night air. The knot in his chest surprised him more than it should have. As long as he’d been certain that Will wanted friendship and nothing else, it had been easy to carry the pain of the rejection implicit in this state of affairs. It was a familiar ache, part and parcel of who they were.

The new uncertainty as to which way Will’s affections tended made it bite with renewed vigour.

He contemplated simply leaving again, but that was too harsh a thing to seriously consider now. Just as he was readying himself to return to Will at the table, the door opened and cast another shadowy figure out into the darkness.

“Would you accompany me home?” Will said. “I think I might be a more amenable walking companion tonight.”
If they walked in the shadows, and if their hands touched more than could be explained by accident, and if Will finally reached out and pulled him down for a kiss, then that was that.

There was nothing about them that could be resolved this easily, but it was enough for that moment.