Chapter Text
I.
Sir Fretful Plagiary and the river Thames had their tongues wrapped so far round each other, that it seemed impossible that either should be able to breathe. Eventually, they couldn't and had to pull apart, gasping, groaning, and returning to feather together hot and wet.
Kenny, lately Thames, thought it was the most delightful way yet invented for disposing of makeup. Sweat, friction, and spit did a fine job of loosening its grip. A rub with a handkerchief would be enough to wipe away the final blue traces of his odd little role, just an opportunity for a joke, really, and not a very good one. Daniel had a far more substantial part, though rather less makeup. Most what was on his friend's face hadn't been there when they started.
"Are you done with me, dove?"
Kenny stopped staring, and bent close again. "Christ, not yet."
The very smell of lamp-black and face white was arousing, and he had begun to love the acrid taste, bitter like gunpowder. He licked along a sandpaper jaw, removing the dark smudges he'd left earlier. Then he licked higher, was lured into the trap, and caught.
Heart and lungs raced, and he began to throb with the desire to thrust, to seize and suck and consume. The urge for battle thrummed in his veins, and with it, the familiar creep of terror. The camouflage of paint was nearly gone, and it was time to stop before he was completely unmasked.
"I want to... I want." Half a mumble, half a moan, tumbled out of him.
"Hush. Just another minute."
They had tried more, once. Even very drunk, he had started to shake when Daniel undid his breech buttons and they stopped. Instead, as often as not, after a performance they did this. Fetched up in a spare corner to press and kiss, while they hardened and burned until one or the other couldn't bear it any longer, and broke off with a last flick of tongues. Then, to find a boy or a girl, each according to preference, to quench the fire again.
"Dan-" The pounding in his chest was starting to constrict. A dizzy fog threatened, and he clutched the man's shoulders, anxious and scalded. The harsh nip of teeth wrung out a strangled cry.
"Shh, shh, dove. All right, I'll stop, you tempting nymph." A few last kisses, softer, warm, before his friend pulled away with a little grumble. "Drive a man insane, you will, Kenny." But Daniel grinned, straightened disarranged clothes, rubbed the sweat off, and the last smears of makeup, then walked back toward the green room with a satisfied swagger.
Kenny slumped on a stack of old props and tried to catch his breath.
When he found a girl right after, when he didn't stall, and wait, and catch Daniel in the back hall, it wasn't the same. He didn't dwell, didn't question. There were no answers there that could make him happy. Being with Daniel turned his belly into a knot of desperation, as if his balls might tighten into stone, and leave him permanently wanting. It made the whole world sharper, more satisfying, not just the woman.
Why didn't matter, just that he craved it, and that lips and tongue alone were enough. They never touched each other, never went farther. He thought Daniel no longer wanted to. Content to play about, to turn him into a quivering nerve with the deft talent of greater experience. The man had boys and girls alike standing in line for his kisses, let alone more.
Was it vanity, or pity, that made the man meet him here night after night, that drove Daniel to ravish his mouth, until he begged, then leave to find more amenable sport? It was another thing Kenny didn't let himself question.
"If it wouldn't be an inconvenience, could I impose on you to inquire if Miss Eleanor is receiving callers?"
Kenneth Alexander's hackles rose immediately at the crisp, prissy, aristocratic tone. It took him a while to spot the speaker, lurking deep in the shadows just inside the stage door. He flushed, wondering how long the man had been standing there, but firmly reminded himself that it didn't matter. He was Thames. No one cared who a river kissed. Or an actor.
"And if it is an inconvenience, sir?" He remembered at the last moment to add the honorific. Kenny had been planning to pay a call on Ellie himself, as soon as his body had calmed enough to let him walk. They'd tumbled together in the past and she was a fun girl. Giving, mischievous, and clever in several different ways. He shifted down from the boxes as his cock reminded him rather painfully of at least one of those ways.
The man stepped forward as well. A tall, rangy fellow, not many years older than Kenny. Very still, upright posture. Even the man's blond hair, curly by nature he thought, had been strangled and slicked into a straight, short queue. Narrow, haughty features, but Kenny was shamefully relieved that the eyes which scanned him thoroughly from head to toe-with a slight pause amidships-were a mossy brown.
Finishing the inspection, the man's expression tightened, as if catching whiff of a bad smell. "Then I shall have to hope for better luck with Miss Eleanor, and wait."
Kenny thought for a few long seconds about interfering, but the man looked like money. Excellent tailoring, new boots, brightly polished, a gold watch chain. It would be unfair not to give Eleanor the chance, and cruel to make her choose between them. She would have to turn Kenny down. When it was a choice between a bit of fun and food for the next week, he couldn't blame her.
"I congratulate you on your taste, sir, Ellie is worth waiting for." Though he had already decided to do what the man asked, Kenny couldn't resist running his hand over the hard heat in his groin, squeezing himself through the wool of his pants and watching the blond man's features stiffen with shock at the rudeness.
"I'll just be off to fetch her then." He could feel the man staring at him as he turned and walked away.
He told Ellie about her rich visitor with a grin that hid his regret. But he did seize the girl for a long caress before he let her leave. She went to the fop very prettily flushed, and tasting like him.
He asked her about the man later, curious. Frederick was the fellow's name. Generous apparently, and shy, once the dressing room door closed. Brisk enough once the matter had begun, but slow to get there, waiting to watch her wash, watch her undress. Stiff like a poker up his arse, she said, liked to give orders. But handsome. Kenny had noticed that himself.
That night was only the first time he saw Frederick (never Freddie, or Fred). Either the fop had a passion for Sheridan's "The Critic" or the man liked Ellie very well. But on the alert now, he caught Frederick standing in the shadows more than once, watching him and Daniel. Kenny couldn't help wondering if there was something else Frederick had a passion for.