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@greatnessthrusted
greatnessthrusted
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Sideblog to @neverhangd • 18+ only, 21+ preferred • RPF if that bothers you • open to crossovers, multi-ship, multi-thread
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ABOUT || BALDUR’S GATE 3/DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (coming soon!)
Will fights back a sigh as he forced into the position of placating a stranger’s ego. There’s no immediate benefit in quieting Tryck’s racing questions, as there might have been with the host or an invited guest—the actor wouldn’t have run if he’d been invited, knowing no scandal could touch him through the shield of social expectation such an invitation would have carried—but he can’t very well have followed him here without expecting he would have to do as much. Hoping ever not to, but prepared to play nice all the same.
“If I sought a second act, why come without an audience? The curtains,” Will says, indicating the door, “are closed. You do more to insult me in private than you thought to among guests.”
Still, he doesn’t leave. Will helps himself to a seat upon the floor opposite the actor, leaning back against the bookshelf and stretching his legs out to cross them at the ankles. In terms of scandal, he’s certain Lady Adelaide will be all but forgotten when he makes his own announcement—though perhaps now he should wait for some other party, one without competition for remarkability.
“I only give chase to that which captures my interest. Pray tell, from whence came thy pretense? Neither guest nor lady, but here presented as both. To what end?”
"I am a lady... sometimes..." Tryck gave with a bit of a huff, though really he didn't have it in him to argue nor explain himself with that. So few understood it, he rarely spoke of it out loud. Perhaps that was why Viola had been on of Tryck's favorite roles to play, allowing him to play with gender so open and freely...
He was actually quite shocked that the Bard got down on the floor, down at Tryck's level to sit there at talk with him. Certainly, Will had more important places to be than sitting here with a weepy actor.
"And my end was to... impress you." Tryck said after a moment of trying to answer without looking like a complete fool. But he's sure he already looked plenty the part in the state he was in his crumpled dress and messy black hair. "In which I am quite certain I failed..."
Will doesn’t feign understanding, but let the matter drop gracelessly through the floor. No, no, he wouldn’t compete for remarkability tonight. Let Lady Adelaide compete on her own now, for better or for worse. His reassuring smile is as quick as his touch is warm and comforting, squeezing the actor’s shoulder as if to reassure…them?…about their assessment of the situation.
“Oh! In that regard, sometimes-lady Adelaide, allow me to assure you that you are correct—and not alone, in that regard. My eyes are blinded by their blessings, and slow to pick out any gem unpolished, however rare or beautiful they may yet proof to be.” He speaks without stopping, but something in the flippant, distracted nature of his delivery sharpens to a point that must be driven home, indicated as such when his hand slips from their shoulder to their hand. He clasps it for a moment. “It’s better…we forget the second performance of the night and concentrate on the first.
“Say all had continued as planned: what then? Was your plan truly to sneak in, deliver a monologue, and flee immediately? Were we, or even I, ever meant to discover the truth? Such lengths are seldom taken without greater aim than mere impression. ‘Lest it is only my alleged ‘elusiveness’ which barred you from entry to the Globe? I fear I am much over-valued in your esteem.”
It all happens entirely too quickly to react to, a great crashing together of natures and circumstances that no witty exchange on the stage could possibly do justice to: the delight of her bawdy response, the horror that rose in the audience for it, the loss of the lady in his lap and the introduction of a lord in her place, the swift exit—Will was quite blindsided by it all, truthfully. Wonderfully, delightfully blindsided, even if the feeling turned somewhat bittersweet for the loss of his company.
Apparently nobody told poor Lady Adelaide that when they called William Shakespeare a man of the people, they were explicitly referring to the general lower class. He chose high society only for hiding, when circumstances demanded as much, his current predicament included. Though far from hot on the heels of Lady Adelaide (what else was there to call his companion?), Will is able to follow the few scattered clues to her. When he arrives it is with wig in hand, the glass jewels still scattered wherever they had fallen.
A library. Will wasn’t aware the party’s host knew how to read, given how poor his attempts at writing are. Will doesn’t catch the entirety of what this evening’s Viola had to say, but he catches more than enough to know a cue when he hears one. Perhaps he did write this evening’s dialogue, after all….
“Oh, I detest being called that, you know.” But only to his face. When he has slipped among the crowds, he has so enjoyed realizing what he’s being called, seen as, behind his back. He has the favour of no less than the King of England himself, and the favour of his Queen Aunt before him. He’s sure there a note of disingenuousness in his voice, should one care to look for it. “As for impressions, I would have to agree: ‘tis a pity only that we did not meet sooner.”
Will closes the door to the library to afford them some privacy, in no rush to fill the silence between them. He meanders over—and can’t help a critical eye, it seems, unimpressed by the titles as he spies walking over—and offers not a hand up, but the wig.
“Damned expensive-looking. And feeling, I might add. Is that human hair?”
Tryck feels his heart shoot right up to his throat when that voice invades his self-deprecating thoughts, and he snaps his head up with shock and... not fear, but anxiousness? nervousness?... as he sees Will standing there with the wig in hand.
Apparently this time around, it is neither fight nor flight, but rather freeze as the playwright speaks and closes the door, wandering over with the hair in hand.
The actor tries his best to save face, swallowing the lump in his throat but feeling the flush of embarrassment filling his cheeks again as he grabs the wig and settles it in his skirted lap, looking down as he speaks.
"Horse hair, actually," Tryck says with a little bit of a sigh and a chuckle, shaking his head. "Though you'd think it were from a mule, with the ass I've made of myself this evening..."
He looks up then at Will again, not feeling himself fit to stand in the presence of what he considers to be such greatness of a man. So he remains with skirt crumpled around him as he looks up, mascara undoubtedly running in kohl streaks from both tears and sweat.
In truth, he thinks himself an absolute fool for running off as he did, but in the moment of it all, he didn't know what else to do. The last thing he had ever expected, though, was for Will to follow after him.
"Why give chase? Come to watch the second act of my embarrassment? I can only imagine the critique from the other guests..."
Will fights back a sigh as he forced into the position of placating a stranger’s ego. There’s no immediate benefit in quieting Tryck’s racing questions, as there might have been with the host or an invited guest—the actor wouldn’t have run if he’d been invited, knowing no scandal could touch him through the shield of social expectation such an invitation would have carried—but he can’t very well have followed him here without expecting he would have to do as much. Hoping ever not to, but prepared to play nice all the same.
“If I sought a second act, why come without an audience? The curtains,” Will says, indicating the door, “are closed. You do more to insult me in private than you thought to among guests.”
Still, he doesn’t leave. Will helps himself to a seat upon the floor opposite the actor, leaning back against the bookshelf and stretching his legs out to cross them at the ankles. In terms of scandal, he’s certain Lady Adelaide will be all but forgotten when he makes his own announcement—though perhaps now he should wait for some other party, one without competition for remarkability.
“I only give chase to that which captures my interest. Pray tell, from whence came thy pretense? Neither guest nor lady, but here presented as both. To what end?”
Will’s rages are an infamous secret guarded jealously at the heart of the world—that is to say, the Globe. Brilliance comes with equal shadow, and Will and his shadow self are quite well acquainted. Perhaps a more placid man would be capable of reigning in such darkness, but Will is cursed to be born a passionate man, and an artist no less. As with any other tempest, Will’s storm must be weathered; its cost can be assessed only after it has passed. Lightning will crash and the dramatist will thunder. He gave forth a warning already in the shape of an order. There is nothing now but to let rapier wit and cutting tongue alike do their wont—cost to be assessed later.
“Playful? Poxy would be more the like. Or perhaps plagued, given how easily you spread your legs. Not every great actor needs be a whore, though it seems every whore thinks themselves a great actor.”
Tryck is no stranger to the temperament of a playwright stuck in his words, unable to put pen to paper, though the actor himself has no clue as to that being the literal cause of Will's despair and rage. He believes it to just be a case of writer's block, as what often plagued his own father, a failed playwright himself.
Indeed, Tryck remembers many a night of his father's drunken rage at not being able to sell even twenty pages for a pence. The cutting words now from the Bard towards Tryck were not dissimilar to his father's own drink-stained rantings at his mother and even himself, and it nearly makes him shrink back.
Instead, he bunches his fist to gather strength to stand firm, feeling his nails digging into his palm as he does so. Will's actual words cut him less than the intent of them. He's made no illusions about himself being a fast and loose lover, and he's never felt an ounce of shame in being so. But here, in his sharp voice, Will intends the words to cut deep shame into him, at least as Tryck sees it, and that is what truly stings.
"I ne'er once proclaimed myself to be a great actor, Master Shakespeare," Tryck says firmly but softly, because if he spoke as loudly as he wanted now, he'd not be able to stay steady and calm. "Though if I am to be proclaimed a whore, then you owe me coin. I will leave these rooms of yours once I am paid."
Will barks out a harsh, spiteful laugh.
“By all means, yes! Let us pay the whore! What would be a fair rate? Fifty pounds, a hundred?” He pivots on his heel and throws open his writing chest, rifling through it for the coin purse he keeps there.
He had sought blindly for a soft spot and he had found it: he noticed the way Tryck locked up, the tight control, holding on by a thread to the last of his composure. Even with blood having clearly been drawn, Will remains dissatisfied, discontent, determined to lash out until one of them was gone from these chambers. Will opened the purse and threw the money in it at the ground between them.
“If it be worth stooping for,” he sneers, unconsciously quoting a figure from his dreams, “there it lies in your eye.”
@unrely looks in need of a little bardic inspiration.
Forever drawn to precisely the right time and place due to his curse disease condition, Will doesn’t seek explanation for where he has been drawn next. He only knows that every so often a tugging in his gut forces him to follow it until he finds the person or place he needs to be near for history to make its next mark. Being its unwilling quill is a cross Will had learned to bear over the years.
Consequently, Will didn’t think twice of boarding a small dinghy and sailing out into the middle of Caribbean waters. He brought with him his possessions, a scant few trunks packed mostly with clothes and keepsakes, and books, but few supplies for survival. Early the next morning, he spied a ship on the horizon and knew where he was being drawn. By midmorning he pulled quite close, calling up onto the deck.
“Well! Good morrow, good sirs! Well and timely met.“
Oh!, how his lady keeps him now on pins and needles! She pulls and pushes like the moon herself, moving the tides of his affections in phases. He goes to move his hand back upon the lady’s back when she says his name with such breathless delight—there can hardly be more scandal than the lady already being in his lap, what harm in holding her?—but her worser nature bats his hand back away with little more than a word.
Well. More act than word: she returns to melodramatics better suited to dear Kit’s work than his own (in his humble opinion, of course), and Will’s hand returns to its perch upon the armrest. He doesn’t mind a duel of wits—far from it!—but he has not the conscience to encourage bad acting.
“I fear the wine has slowed your wits, Viola, or else you put too much stock into a poor dramatist’s prophecies. Have we not agreed that conversations cannot be written beforehand? How can I guess which words should tumble out next from your mouth, unless they be words I have given life to first upon my desk? Rest assured, fairest lady, that even Will Shakespeare cannot script the world to his whim.”
"Perhaps you would know which words would tumble from my mouth if you had me upon thy desk." The words tumble from Tryck's lips before she really has any sort of chance to think about what it is she is saying, snapped in defense of Will's biting wit. It's the sort of humor that might be gotten away with in the lowbrow, poorer theaters that Tryck is most used to working, but here? In the middle of a party of high society, whilst perched boldly and lewdly in William Shakespeare's lap?
Almost as soon as the words slip free, before the gasps and scandalous shock of their now more than modestly sized audience reaches Tryck's ears or eyes, she herself is looking wide-eyed at the Bard. Unbelieving of her own words, she snaps her mouth shut and feels a flush of embarrassment fill her cheeks.
Shame at her own audacity causes a panic in her chest, and her fight or flight instincts kick in to tell her to flee at once.
Awkwardly slipping herself off Will's lap, she bows forward a little to keep herself from falling backwards. Unfortunately, the movement causes the raven wig to slip forward off of Tryck's head, revealing the truth of him far sooner than he would've liked.
"I, ah..." Tryck speaks, voice cracking and dropping lower as the facade has been dropped. "Time to exit stage left, I suppose..."
And before anyone can stop him, Tryck is hiking up his skirts and making a run for it. He's not sure where he's going, he's not sure how long he's run for, but eventually he finds a quiet place in the party venue to sink down with his back against the wall, panting as he tries to catch his breath and his thoughts. A small room with bookshelves and cases, the noise of the party far off so he's certain he has the time to collect himself before continuing his grand escape.
He hadn't even noticed he's been crying, bringing up a thumb to brush the tears away from his eyes as he looks down at the crumpled skirt of his dress. A few of the cheap glass gems have popped off, and he knows he'll owe for the wig, because there is no chance he'll try to recover that.
"Well, Tryck, if you were looking to make an impression with the Bard himself, I am sure you made an unforgettable one." He chides himself aloud with a sigh, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the wall.
It all happens entirely too quickly to react to, a great crashing together of natures and circumstances that no witty exchange on the stage could possibly do justice to: the delight of her bawdy response, the horror that rose in the audience for it, the loss of the lady in his lap and the introduction of a lord in her place, the swift exit—Will was quite blindsided by it all, truthfully. Wonderfully, delightfully blindsided, even if the feeling turned somewhat bittersweet for the loss of his company.
Apparently nobody told poor Lady Adelaide that when they called William Shakespeare a man of the people, they were explicitly referring to the general lower class. He chose high society only for hiding, when circumstances demanded as much, his current predicament included. Though far from hot on the heels of Lady Adelaide (what else was there to call his companion?), Will is able to follow the few scattered clues to her. When he arrives it is with wig in hand, the glass jewels still scattered wherever they had fallen.
A library. Will wasn’t aware the party’s host knew how to read, given how poor his attempts at writing are. Will doesn’t catch the entirety of what this evening’s Viola had to say, but he catches more than enough to know a cue when he hears one. Perhaps he did write this evening’s dialogue, after all….
“Oh, I detest being called that, you know.” But only to his face. When he has slipped among the crowds, he has so enjoyed realizing what he’s being called, seen as, behind his back. He has the favour of no less than the King of England himself, and the favour of his Queen Aunt before him. He’s sure there a note of disingenuousness in his voice, should one care to look for it. “As for impressions, I would have to agree: ‘tis a pity only that we did not meet sooner.”
Will closes the door to the library to afford them some privacy, in no rush to fill the silence between them. He meanders over—and can’t help a critical eye, it seems, unimpressed by the titles as he spies walking over—and offers not a hand up, but the wig.
“Damned expensive-looking. And feeling, I might add. Is that human hair?”
@rhapsodyandwoe actually had a hand in creating the Bard. Sort of.
Will’s more than a little drunk—on the wine, on the moment, on the attention—and he can’t stop staring. Something about the man on the other side of the table makes his heard pound, but whether pleasantly or otherwise, he isn’t wise enough to discern. Only that he likes the racing of his blood in his ears every time their eyes meet. He flashes a smile. Hides a lewd suggestion in a clever phrase and laughs when someone at the table parses through it. His eyes never stray far and never for long from the other man.
Cazador Szarr. A name the tongue hisses rather than forms. Like a noise one might make pricking their finger on a rose thorn. Will isn’t shy about meeting his deep red eyes, about smiling and fluttering his lashes the way the actors at the Globe sometimes do when they need a favour. Will isn’t shy about much at all, frankly.
They’re well into the night and deep into the wine now: Will is flushed, the colour high in his cheeks and across his chest where his shirt has been left mostly untied. The crowd at the table has thinned out, and Will’s decided he’s either leaving with the mysterious Master Szarr or with no one at all.
“The hour grows late, saer: it won’t be long ere dawn should be closer in hour than dusk. We must call you a carriage, and see you safely home, surely!”
William Shakespeare. A notable name. A notable man, and one that Cazador has had eyes and ears on for quite some time. What a delightful little addition to his collection Will would make. The more events they just 'happened' to meet at, the more soirees they were both conveniently invited to, the more he's certain he's gotten under the playwright's skin.
This night only proves it to him as Will approaches him once most of the other guests have left or retired into guest rooms. Cazador, of course, will make his way back to his Palace, though he has already determined that he will not be leaving alone tonight.
"Ah, Master Shakespeare... your concern for my well being is most appreciated." He says, standing tall and regal, mostly with the attempt to impress, but also perhaps a little predatorially, a smile of the same on his lips. "I do have my own carriage awaiting to take me back to my Palace. I would be remiss if I were to not offer you a ride to wherever it is you will retire for the approaching dawn..."
Will knows this game intimately well, and on both sides of it no less. He recognises the spinning of the board, Master Szarr demanding to lead the game. Will has no objections to this, and finds himself so flattered by the interest returned that his fear diminishes. He chuckles and lifts the the glass, leaning a bit across the table to flirt more openly. How far is too far from here?
“Some inn should lighten my purse if I should retire at all, my lord. Baldur’s Gate has its charms, but my home is not among them.” It’s quite a clear-cut path from here, isn’t it? First an invitation to his carriage, then his home, then his bed…. Unless Will’s misread the subtext of the evening, and every evening before now, the ending of the night is clear. The only question left is what the coming dawn will bring, something he will only be able to tell when dawn and he himself has come.
Tryck and Will (you know this was coming)
Send me a ship and i'll rate it
vomit / don’t ship / ok / cute / adorable / sexy / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell
Comments: This is a ship I have such mixed feelings about. 😭 Tryck feels so genuinely star struck and lovey and Will is…just kind of an opportunistic asshole. He’s capable of love I think but romantically it’s so very rare for him. He falls in platonic love a lot and in lust so fucking often, but romantic…hasn’t happened yet, I think. This could be a good ship if I was better at being Will or if we plot more, but at present this is it!
“No—!”
But his protestation is too little, too late: the page is snatched from his grasp by an impetuous, ignorant actor and the very moment the words are gone from his sight, so too are they gone from his memory. He is caught in an agony between anger and despair, but only one feels proper to vent. Will stands and rips the page from Tryck’s grasp with a snarl, throwing it and his quill to the floor.
“This! Here! This is why I did not wish to invite you into my rooms! You have fractured my focus, pierced peace with your incessant prattling—and now my work, gone! Go now yourself, never to return to these chambers without due cause!”
Tryck is absolutely flabbergasted by the outburst, having never seen the Bard in such a state. He can't do anything but look a bit stunned, flinch a little when he snatches the parchment from his hands and throws it and his quill down like discarded refuse.
"I... I don't understand, the page... it is blank, Will, how in the Heavens can I ruin your work when is a blank page?" Tryck asks, bewilderment in his eye, feeling as though he's injured in his heart. He hadn't meant to upset Will, but it seems that he has, though he doesn't make for the door just yet, wanting to at least apologize for whatever he did that upset the other man.
"I am sorry Will, truly. I didn't... I was only trying to jest and be playful..."
Will’s rages are an infamous secret guarded jealously at the heart of the world—that is to say, the Globe. Brilliance comes with equal shadow, and Will and his shadow self are quite well acquainted. Perhaps a more placid man would be capable of reigning in such darkness, but Will is cursed to be born a passionate man, and an artist no less. As with any other tempest, Will’s storm must be weathered; its cost can be assessed only after it has passed. Lightning will crash and the dramatist will thunder. He gave forth a warning already in the shape of an order. There is nothing now but to let rapier wit and cutting tongue alike do their wont—cost to be assessed later.
“Playful? Poxy would be more the like. Or perhaps plagued, given how easily you spread your legs. Not every great actor needs be a whore, though it seems every whore thinks themselves a great actor.”
Send me a ship and i'll rate it
vomit / don’t ship / ok / cute / adorable / sexy / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying /i will ship them in hell
There’s an uneasy tension at the chattering table now, nervous giggles and naked stares quieting the space around them. Will is used to being surrounded by fawning onlookers and has been since his school days: admirable wit and a surplus of charisma will do that for most people. While he hasn’t guarded his identity in public, there are many who know his name but not his face. The crowd here gathered can only in-part be because they have deduced the same thing Lady Adelaide has. All the rest have been drawn in by the lady herself, and by his own silvered words. They watch the unfolding drama for the thrill of the immediate scandal, never guessing what widespread repercussions might seed from this moment.
It’s a rather fun game for Will, winding people up and watching the fallout. He’s only meant to vex Lady Adelaide some, and no doubt he has; she vexed him some, after all, having shoved aside his first attempt to wind her with the news of his imminent retirement. Now he’s also wound a crowd of important strangers with the same key.
“Your arrival, of course. You’re an actress, no? I believed your fall, really I did, but the pouting after—even you can’t deny that was forced.” Will takes a sip of wine and holds one finger up to signal he isn’t yet done. “But the performance after: that was truth. Ironic that you find more honesty for yourself in my words than in your own. Such a shame you can’t script conversations ahead of time!”
Will grins at her with all the bright force of the sun: her is warm and dazzling, effortlessly so. Something in the corner of Will’s smile seems to imply that it’s just for her, that they’re sharing a joke the audience around them will never understand. It’s in the twinkle in his eye, too, a mischievous thing on its own.
Tryck's more annoyed than truly vexed, and she's about to make a comment towards his about her unbelievable pouting, but he's raising a finger to keep her silenced -- which absolutely annoys her further. But she's not about to do anything that might eject her from the Bard's lap, even if his words sting her ego and pride just a little...
Then he's giving her a compliment that makes her heart flutter, he did enjoy her performance, then? But it's immediately followed up with another veiled, teasing insult and she almost feels whiplashed.
And then she remembers that she is, after all, sitting in the lap of the great wordsmith himself. She looks at him for what seems like an eternity but is only a few breaths, lost in the dazzling brightness of his smile and his eyes, catching that flash of a shared joke in his gaze. It's an unspoken language only those in the theater know.
He's trying to rile her up, as well as their growing audience. It's a game. And he's letting her in on the playful improvisation.
Suddenly, her demeanor changes, just a bit, just enough that he'd notice but the others around probably wouldn't. Her tongue may not be as sharp as Will's but that doesn't mean she'll back down from the invitation and challenge.
"Is that why your words are so eloquent wherever you go, Will?" There's a playful emphasis on his name as her bright emerald eyes flash with something bordering on nervous glee. How many of the theater scene in London can boast such an opportunity?
"Do you write everything you say ahead of time? I wouldn't know about writing scripts, you see, I am just an actress, after all..." she grins with brightness as she makes sure to punctuate every word with the same melodramatics he'd accused her of before.
Oh!, how his lady keeps him now on pins and needles! She pulls and pushes like the moon herself, moving the tides of his affections in phases. He goes to move his hand back upon the lady’s back when she says his name with such breathless delight—there can hardly be more scandal than the lady already being in his lap, what harm in holding her?—but her worser nature bats his hand back away with little more than a word.
Well. More act than word: she returns to melodramatics better suited to dear Kit’s work than his own (in his humble opinion, of course), and Will’s hand returns to its perch upon the armrest. He doesn’t mind a duel of wits—far from it!—but he has not the conscience to encourage bad acting.
“I fear the wine has slowed your wits, Viola, or else you put too much stock into a poor dramatist’s prophecies. Have we not agreed that conversations cannot be written beforehand? How can I guess which words should tumble out next from your mouth, unless they be words I have given life to first upon my desk? Rest assured, fairest lady, that even Will Shakespeare cannot script the world to his whim.”
There’s already a reply flying to Will’s lips when Tryck occupies them with better work. He groans into the kiss, taking command of Tryck’s hips with a squeeze; his is not a difficult nature to stir, least of all when presented with such unparalleled beauty. He pulls the actor away from the wall, closer to him, where the first flutterings of excitement have begun to rouse idle appendages from their sleep. Tryck’s very lucky to still be wearing trousers, else they would have to stop and see if the constraints of Will’s condition keep from leaving marks upon the skin as well: surely even if it is so, bruises in the shape of Will’s thumbs will arise.
A clattering tray from the other room forces Will apart with a gasp where he had no intention of leaving again unless begged. The kiss was long enough even so to leave them both winded and tingling from the loss. There is a pressing need for privacy here, born not of concerns for decency or of exhibitionism, but of the new need for secrecy, even in his dalliances.
Will prises a hand from Tryck’s hip, lifting it to push the hair back from the other man’s face.
“Perhaps we are not yet private enough for you to remember that urgent word of yours. We should make use of my rooms—you remember the way?”
He hungrily replies to every touch, kiss, press and squeeze with wandering hands of his own, the best he can in the cramped space Will has them tucked away into. Tryck slips his hands from Will's face to wander down his neck, his shoulders and his back, finally coming to rest on Will's firm behind. As the playwright tugs him closer by the hips, a moan slips from his own lips against Will's and the firmness of that touch alone has him shivering and craving for more.
When the tray clatters, Tryck finds him rudely awakened from the blissful bubble he'd lost himself in, his breath coming in short and gentle panting as he feels his heart beat like a rabbit's foot. He's looking at Will, though, as the Bard's hand brushes his hair back and he finds himself lost for a moment in that gaze.
Will's question snaps the actor back to focus, and he gives his lips a lick before a short nod, his impatience to return to intimate pawing and petting perhaps a bit too obvious on his face.
"Yes, I remember," he also remembers his last visit there not being the most pleasant he's had with Will since their short and quick friendship began, but perhaps now, in this moment, he can make some far better memories there. "Privacy would certainly be fitting for the urgent and long word I wish to share with you... but please, lead the way."
Well. He had been planning to send Tryck up alone, to throw coin at his drinking tab and see it closed before his temporary companions take it upon themselves to run him a small fortune in drink…but perhaps matters of filthy lucre are best suited to waiting for morning hours, anyway. Will pulls Tryck for another quick kiss, far from chaste, before leading the way back to his rooms.
There are two in total that he’s rented, as is his wont. One is a wreck at the moment, with parchment and spilled ink upon every surface of the room. Roughly half the papers are written upon, with the blanks ones usually being crumpled and ripped, discards and refuse from artistic fury. This is NOT the room Will guided Tryck into. The other room, far neater, is also far more lived in; the bed is made haphazardly, the open armoire offering a glimpse into Will’s wardrobe. His trunks line the walls of this room, save one, each unlocked but closed, silent sentries all. Will has taken but one other visitor into his work room; all others have only the acquaintance of this bedchamber.
Tryck would be forgiven for paying the chamber no mind, especially in Will’s rush to fall upon him once more. Will pulls him in for another dizzying kiss, pushing him up against the wall beside the doorframe, which he pulls shut with a distracted hand. Success is made all the sweeter with celebration, and celebration all the sweeter when the other celebrants understand the occasion. The drunkards below need be kept in the dark to ensure Will’s continued prosperity; neither Anne nor their children can know of his whereabouts, having put him some ways beneath the soft earth now; that leaves only Tryck as a confidant in this matter.
Will kisses him with a bruising force, heart hammering against his chest. Hah!, a beating heart! A sign of life once more! And there are other, more encouraging signs that death has not been the end of him, as the shrinking space in his small clothes is so quick to remind him. He thrusts a thigh between Tryck’s own and rolls against him, as unashamed in his rutting as in the obscene way he plies his tongue in Tryck’s mouth. He pulls away only to attach himself to the side of the actor’s neck, there to suck and teeth a brand into him.
“—how now, o principal player? Has your word yet returned to you?”
slowly admitting to myself that this blog is Just Will
grabbed all of the ebook versions of the folger shakespeare library's annotated versions of shakespeare's plays (+sonnets and poems) and put them all in one place in case anyone is interested
@ofhistory continued from here
“Alas—I am only capable of supplying the one,” Will laments in a suspiciously even tone. He hooks a distracted hand around his own wine, offering it to Tryck without shifting his focus for even a moment. The ink is not yet dry upon the page and yet Will reads and rereads it, over and over, devouring the contents as he crams them into his memory. There may be hope that he needn’t retire yet! If it wouldn’t have meant tearing his away from the page for even a moment, Will might have stood to evict Tryck from his lap: for the time being, he settles for shifting impatiently, the full of his attention on the three lines on the page. They are skilled, artful, memorable—dialogue plucked from the air of an illusory conversation of great importance, the seedling from which to grow a story. The hard part comes next.
Tryck has been trying to get the Bard's attention for the good past half hour or so, wondering why he keeps on staring so intently at that page and not at the handsome actor practically throwing himself at the playwright. When Will hands him the glass of wine in a dismissive manner, Tryck takes it gracelessly with a hmph before removing himself from the Bard's lap.
He watches him, frustration etching his delicate features as he downs the wine in one swift gulp, then sets the glass down on the desk. Perhaps he'll have to try another tactic...
"What has you so fixated that you'd deny such a beauty as I, a kiss?" Tryck lets his dramatics show, and in a swift movement reaches to snatch the page away to see just what has Will's attention so heavily invested.
But Tryck raises a brow as he looks over the page, front to back, before looking up to the playright with a head tilt of confusion.
"Will... are you playing a prank? There's nothing here!"
“No—!”
But his protestation is too little, too late: the page is snatched from his grasp by an impetuous, ignorant actor and the very moment the words are gone from his sight, so too are they gone from his memory. He is caught in an agony between anger and despair, but only one feels proper to vent. Will stands and rips the page from Tryck’s grasp with a snarl, throwing it and his quill to the floor.
“This! Here! This is why I did not wish to invite you into my rooms! You have fractured my focus, pierced peace with your incessant prattling—and now my work, gone! Go now yourself, never to return to these chambers without due cause!”
Tim Curry as William Shakespeare in the ABC mini-series Will Shakespeare, 1978.
Beautiful.
