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The town didn’t have a theatre, so plays happened once or twice a year on a make-shift stage by the beach. Some Shakespeare, a couple locally-written stage plays, and two years ago, an attempt at Into the Woods. It turned out tough to hear the pre-recorded orchestral tracks over the wind, and the witch’s wig blew off across the beach halfway through act one. They went back to Shakespeare after that. 

This year, for some reason, it was Troilus and Cressida. Someone got tired of the Macbeth-Hamlet-Much-Ado-Midsummer repeat cycle, he guessed, and wanted to go for an odd one. James sat in one the plastic folding chairs set up by the stage and watched Troilus tell Pandarus he was mad for sweet Cressid’s love. They were running act three, scene three next, so he’d be up there soon, but for now he sat a couple seats over from the director and watched. There weren’t many people on the beach today, so it was just the skeleton rehearsal stage, the rocky, wind-swept shore, and the bunch of them pretending to be ancient Greeks and Trojans. The town was nestled a short walk away from the beach with its neat little shopfronts and old women reading on verandas. 

He hadn’t let himself audition until Oliver was free. Once or twice a year, he’d sit at the back of the crowd, watching Beatrice swap jibes with Benedick or the Baker’s Wife warble her way through Into the Woods over the wind. He missed Shakespeare deeply. After everything, he still wanted to be a part of it again. He wanted to sink into the rhythm of it, the da-dum, da-dum heartbeat of the metre, and the words which he still found heartbreaking and beautiful. He really, really missed Shakespeare. 

But it wasn’t until he knew Oliver was out of prison that he let himself audition. It wasn’t fair, he reasoned, that Oliver should be deprived of acting while James was out in the world, enjoying it. He’d counted down to the very last day of Oliver’s sentence, and then when auditions for Troilus and Cressida opened two months later, he’d gone down to read a monologue for them. 

He auditioned for Ulysses and they gave it to him. When he accepted the role, he felt a familiar, sour guilt in his stomach. Oliver might have been free to act again, but Richard wasn’t, so why should James let himself? It had been so long, why ever start back up again? Why not finally let it all go? 

He missed Shakespeare too much, that was why. He wasn’t strong enough to hold out. He took the role and felt freer and better than he had in years when he was delivering those lines. Richard was dead, Oliver was free, and James, for better or worse, was alive. He might as well do a fucking monologue or two. 

“Alex, you’re up,” the director, Susie, told him. James zipped up his sweater against the autumn day and made his way up to the stage. They were just running the Achilles and Ulysses dialogue for now, no costumes or props, no Ajax or Agamemnon or Nestor. James pulled into position opposite the actor playing Achilles—Ben. 

They traded lines. “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,” James declared. “Wherein he puts alms for oblivion / A great-sized monster of ingratitudes. / Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured / As fast as they are made, forgot as soon / As done. Perseverance, dear my lord...” 

This was probably James’ favourite scene in the show. Troilus and Cressida, as its own prologue announced, was not the world’s most cohesive play, somersaulting between Pandarus’ comedy of errors and Achilles’ tragedy of war. But here was a speech as good as any Shakespeare wrote. He felt it deep down in his chest every time he read or recited it. “For beauty, wit, / High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, / Love, friendship, charity are subjects all / To envious and calumniating Time.” He liked the play, but he liked Ulysses’ lines best of all. 

When it was done, the director didn’t really have any notes for them. She just told Ben to stand a bit closer to the edge of the stage and cheat out more. James wondered how his old teachers would have torn his performance apart—surely he was rusty. Surely the words didn’t sound as sweet or as rhythmic in his voice ten years down the line, and he’d lost some of the energy he might have put into Brutus or Romeo. Gwendolyn would have found a way to push him to be better, make him find the energy and the rhythm again like he had before. Oh, well. Probably it was best that Ulysses came off a little time-worn, a little cautious. 

“Great work, Alex,” Susie told him as he gathered his script and pencils to head home. They wouldn’t run any more of his scenes that evening, so he was free to go. He thanked her, confirmed that he’d be back the next day for the full act three run—the show opened in two weeks—and then began the short trek back to his apartment. 

James walked along the beach side, feeling the sea wind soak into him. Del Norte was a nice place, especially since there was a little bit of theatre each year. It was small and upbeat and he kept to himself, told them his name was Alex, and that he’d help out with Troilus and Cressida however he could. He was officially not only Ulysses but run crew and backup usher. Before that, he’d worked at the library. He didn’t have a cell phone, didn’t drink very often anymore, and spent a lot of time reading. He gave charmingly evasive answers to anybody who asked about his life and didn’t keep up with how all his old friends were doing. None of them knew he was alive, and he kept himself from looking them up at the library computers. Let them move on, live their lives. 

Let Oliver do that, too. 

James couldn’t help but laugh at himself when he thought about this. The Pericles monologue? The empty Xanax, the empty car, the frigid lake, the single letter with Oliver scrawled on top? It was all a bit too much. What, was he expecting Oliver to figure it out in an instant and come running back into his life? Was that even what he wanted? Of course it was, God, but it wasn’t what he deserved. Oliver’d had four years to ponder that monologue, and several months now to act on it. Nothing had come of it yet, and he couldn’t expect anything to. It had been a selfish idea. Now all he could do was focus on his life here, which really wasn’t half bad. He appreciated the open-air Shakespeare. He liked the beach. He didn’t mind the wind. Whether Oliver was going to pop out around the next corner or not, it was a perfectly nice place to stay. 

After tea, leftover noodles, and an evening of reading Shakespeare and the Classics, he went to bed. 

He dreamed he was doing Troilus and Cressida with his old friends, the seven of them back in the day. He dreamed they were in the library, running scenes punctuated by jokes and Alex’s smoke breaks. James was sitting between Oliver and Pip on the couch; Pip’s arm was draped around his shoulders and he could feel his knee pressing against Oliver’s leg. It was warm, nearing midnight, and he was having his fill of happiness. 

The dream, of course, got worse from there. Richard was gone, and everybody else all turned to look at him, flat and dead-eyed... 

He woke up, annoyed, before it could reach its usual conclusion (drowning). God, at first they had been terrifying, but now they just made him exhausted and angry. His mind still fished up these dreams several times a year, whenever he was doing something that reminded him of his old life—say, starting to act again. They made him sweat buckets under his duvet and feel off-kilter for half the morning. 

He got up, went the bathroom, drank water, and then lay back down in bed, because it was only four in the morning. Mercifully, he managed to get back to sleep around six. And without any dreams he could remember at all. 

———————

They were set to open in two days, so they did their first full run through on the beachside. The weather was not being accommodating; the sky was marbled with clouds that drizzled on and off. The actors weren’t working with mics because of the weather, but Susie had insisted they push on through with the run. It was chilly even by California standards, the winds were roughening up their hair, and the Pacific looked choppy. It was a bit of a thrill, cajoling Achilles about Time and Fortune while the ocean hammered away at the rocks. 

A few people walked or jogged by, sometimes pausing briefly to watch the action. Sometimes they even sat down in the plastic folding chairs for a couple minutes, catching a prayer by Cassandra or a skirmish in front of the Trojan walls (gray curtains). Then the clouds would start to drizzle again and drive the observer off. 

It unsettled James how good it all felt. To be part of the mechanism of a performance again, like a cog turning in time with all the other bits and pieces of a watch face. That was what it felt like to be in a play. Every cog had to fit together, and then out came—a moving clock-hand; a scene that made someone cry or laugh. It felt too nostalgic, too easy to settle into. 

He’d decided many times that he needed to stop living in the past. It was over, and there was no more use losing his mind over it. It should have felt closed by now. But it still felt half-open, unexplained and unresolved. Like fucking Troilus and Cressida, which had maybe the most mystifying ending of any Shakespeare play. The story puttered out like an engine on an empty gas tank and left the audience with Troilus wandering off alone and Pandarus confused. 

The ugliest part of him, of course, answered that if he stopped living in the past, he wouldn’t be able to find anything else to live for. He mostly did a good job of ignoring that part of him. He’d decided properly to ignore it the day he drove his car out to the lake and left it there. 

Onstage, Patroclus was kissing Cressida. James stepped forward.  

ULYSSES: O deadly gall and theme of all our scorns, / For which we lose our heads to gild his horns! 

PATROCLUS: The first was Menelaus’ kiss, this mine. 

The scene pattered on; Menelaus and Cressida fired off their repartées, and then it was James’ turn again. 

CRESSIDA: No, I’ll be sworn. 

ULYSSES: It were no match, your nail against his horn. / May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you? 

CRESSIDA: You may. 

ULYSSES: I do desire it. 

CRESSIDA: Why, beg two. 

ULYSSES: Why, then, for Venus’ sake, give me a kiss / When Helen is a maid again and his. 

Rejecting Cressida’s offer, James turned and spoke away from her, out to the plastic folding chairs. 

Oliver was watching from the back. 

James did a double take. Saw Oliver again. Blinked, took a deep breath. Still Oliver. 

He’d done this before. Most often with Richard, but sometimes with Oliver, or maybe Meredith—for God’s sake, he’d once thought he recognized Gwendolyn in a California grocery store. It had just been a middle-aged lady with a scarf. But every time, it felt like missing a step at the top of a staircase, that swoop of motion-sick panic in his stomach. The feeling that he’d been caught out; the guilt and the distant relief. 

Then he’d blink again, and it would just be some lady in a scarf. And his heartbeat would slowly come down. 

So, he’d blink again and there’d be some guy in his early thirties sitting there in jeans and dark green jacket. Someone strolling on the beach who’d stopped to passively imbibe some Shakespeare. Except that it was Oliver. It was the shape of his nose, his hair, his eyes, his lips. He wasn’t passively absorbing the Shakespeare. He was staring straight at James, slack-jawed with shock. 

It was Oliver. 

Oliver—Oliver—God, he looked so much like the last time James had seen him. Better, actually. Here he was free, with the wind ruffling his hair and his hands in his jacket pockets, which were not the dull orange James had seen him in last. 

There was the riot of emotions in expected order: shock, panic, relief, and guilt. They all flitted around in him like too many birds trapped in the same cage. And he was standing in the middle of a stage surrounded by other actors in the production’s modern-dress camo pants. 

“Alex?” Susie shouted, waving at him from the audience. “It’s your line.” 

And he couldn’t for the life of him think of it. What had Cressida just said? How long had Oliver been sitting there? 

“Um,” he said, dragging a hand across his face, trying to pull himself together. “Shit. Line?” 

Susie made an annoyed sound. “We open in two days. Come on. Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you.” 

“Right. Um, sorry. Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you,” he told Sarah—Cressida—who was looking at him with a mix of impatience and concern. 

Diomedes took Cressida aside, and then James had a short speech, which he began to stumble through. He couldn’t think straight. He was a coward, and he wanted to flee, just run straight off the stage—either toward Oliver or away from him. He just needed to get away from everybody else. There were specific things he’d planned to say or do, or feel, if Oliver ever found him again, and he was forgetting all of them. 

Somehow, he made it to the end of the speech (“Set them down / For sluttish spoils of opportunity / And daughters of the game”), but he was doing a bad job, and he knew it, and they all knew it. Susie was looking at him like he was crazy, and he didn’t know what to do. This scene was pages and pages long, and then he was in the next one too, and the one after that. God, he’d have to make it to act five, scene five before he could leave. 

He couldn’t do it. He was blanking on words he’d read or spoken a thousand times; he was tripping on the meter; he needed to get his head together. He was acutely, embarrassingly aware that he didn’t want to put out a bad performance in front of Oliver, who was seeing him for the first time in four years. I went to jail so you could stumble over your lines in a beach-side production of Troilus and Cressida? 

“I’m sorry,” he called out. “Look, I’m, I think I’m getting a migraine. I need to sit out for a little bit. Continue the run without me, sorry, I just—” 

“No, no, sit down if you need to,” Susie said hastily. “Do you think you’ll be out for the rest of the day?” 

“I don’t know,” James said. He’d already lied to them all about his name and every other aspect of his past and personal life, what was one more lie? “Maybe. Sorry, please go on.” 

“Have a seat, at least,” Susie encouraged him. She was a nice person, really. She’d asked him to play Troilus before offering him Ulysses, and he’d said no. 

He thanked her and slipped off the stage, down in front of the folding chairs. 

Right. What now? 

There were only a couple rows of chairs because it was not a formal performance. Oliver was sitting at the back, eyes still fixed on him. Aware that everybody else was watching him too, James picked his way over and sat down exactly one row in front of Oliver. His heartbeat got louder until he could hear it like a hammer against his ribcage. His breaths felt ragged. 

From the front, Susie waved for the actors to keep going. The Trojans shuffled hesitantly onstage and started speaking their lines: “Hail, all the state of Greece! What shall be done / To him that victory commands?” 

He could feel Oliver lean in closer behind him. “James,” he murmured softly, his voice almost breaking. 

It made James shiver. He hadn’t heard his name in four years. 

“You’re here,” he whispered, which was pointing out the obvious. 

He heard a sharp exhale behind him. “You’re alive, you bastard.” 

James had to resist every urge to turn back to him, speak aloud and to his face. He kept his voice to a tight whisper and his head turned to the stage. “I’m so sorry, Oliver, I just—God, I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t imagine—” he had no idea what he was trying to say. “I can’t believe you’re here.” 

“You’re alive,” was all Oliver repeated, voice low and fraught. 

“Please,” James said. “I need to explain myself. I need to—I need to give you a hug. Follow me.” 

Making as little noise as he possibly could, hoping Susie wouldn’t turn her head and his castmates would stay focused on whatever the Trojans were saying, he got up and stepped out of the seating area. He could explain it with a migraine later—what, again, was one more lie? 

The beach was combed as flat as it could be for the optimal tourist experience. There was nowhere to hide, no trees or outcroppings. It was all wide open and windy. Finally he saw the little boathouse on the other side of the beach, where people could ride out their canoes on nicer days. He’d never wanted to be anywhere near it. Boathouses, docks, and boathooks as a general rule he tried to stay away from. But there it was, in all its pitiful irony; the only place nearby that gave him the shelter to speak to Oliver alone. 

After a small delay he heard Oliver pick up after him. Maybe his castmates noticed and thought it was odd, but James was suddenly past the point of caring. He trudged along the beach wishing he hadn’t forgotten his coat backstage. When he finally hiked up to the boathouse—it was much bigger and neater-looking than the rustic one Richard had pushed him into at Dellecher—he didn’t go inside. He walked around to the other side of it, leaning against the cool wood and breathing heavy with emotion more than exertion. His heartbeat hadn’t receded. 

Half a minute later, Oliver rounded the corner after him. Up-close there was no mistaking it: Oliver’s hair was all tousled and damp, but it was him, and he was free. 

There was no delay. He reached out and brought James into a hug, arms wrapping firmly around him. James sunk into it and wanted to cry. Oliver was so solid and so close for the first time in a decade, breathing down the nape of James’ neck. James could feel the shape of his shoulder under his jacket. He realized it had been a long time since he’d had a proper hug, which was kind of pathetic, but oh, well. 

“I missed you,” James said unevenly. 

Oliver let out a short, strained laugh. “Did you?” He asked. “You didn’t make yourself easy to find. I wasn’t sure you wanted me to.” 

James drew back until they were an arms’ length apart and already missed the warmth. Oliver searched his face almost desperately, as though ensuring it was him. “I’m so sorry,” he began. 

Oliver shook his head. “You’re alive, you’re—” 

“I regretted it, Oliver, I realized after—” 

“You were a bastard for leaving nothing but that note, but you’re alive.” 

“I know I was. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I felt like I was losing my mind, like I couldn’t breathe. I had to leave. But after I’d done it, I just saw how selfish I’d been. To leave you some obscure note to figure out, instead of just letting you get on with your life—” 

“Get on with my life?” Oliver gave that strained, breathless laugh again. 

“Yes.” James said firmly. “After everything, you deserved a clean break. But I just, I couldn’t help leaving you something. Because I did want—I did want to see you again.” And there was a release in admitting it, a lightening of weight alongside the guilt of facing up to his own selfishness. “But I didn’t go about that well, either. I’m sorry. I should have been clearer, or—or more honest, or else just left off.” The words poured out of him with no plan. 

“Fuck’s sake, I’m glad you didn’t,” Oliver told him plainly. He shuffled around in the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a piece of paper. The paper. The single block of James’ chicken scrawl handwriting confronted him as Oliver shook the letter in front of him—James had been in the car at the lakeside, with the Xanax taken already, when he’d decided to write the note, and his hands had been shaking like crazy. “I nearly lost my mind over this speech,” Oliver informed him. “I thought I was making things up just because I wanted them to be true. I read Pericles through, like at least three times. And the articles about your death at least ten. But I just couldn’t make myself give it up. I couldn’t. I told Pip and my sister and everybody that I was going to California to get some sun, or something made-up like that, and took a chance on my gut instinct. Christ. I can’t believe I was right.” 

The words pray you see me buried stared James in the face. He had no idea what to say. 

“I’m sorry,” he ended up insisting, like a broken toy that kept repeating its catchphrase. Instead of repeating it again, he said the first thing from Shakespeare that came to his mind. “O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last / And careful hours with Time’s deformed hand / Have written strange defeatures in my face.” 

Oliver shook his head vehemently. “No,” he said. “You look exactly like when you left. Better, actually. Much better.” 

This, somehow, finally got James’ eyes to sting again. He tried to take a long, steady breath. “I missed you.” He’d said that already too, he was pretty sure. 

Oliver pulled James back into an embrace, still clutching the paper in one hand. James could feel the wind blowing it against his back. He let his head drop onto Oliver’s shoulder, hating how his breaths stuttered and his eyes were wet. He could feel the rise, fall, rise, fall of Oliver’s chest against him. It felt so good to hug him. Better than clicking into the machinery of the play and feeling the rhythm of Shakespeare again. Better, lighter, than he’d felt in a long time. 

“I’m glad you sent me the note,” Oliver spoke into his hair, muffled. “But also fuck you, that was scary.” 

James let out a weak laugh. “You know, I had all these things I was going to say to explain myself. But none of them are enough. I’m trying to find the right words, and they’re just not coming.” He was talking into Oliver’s shoulder. “Like a dull actor now / I have forgot my part, and I am out, / Even to a full disgrace.” 

Oliver finished the dialogue. “Whilst with no softer cushion than the flint / I kneel before thee and unproperly / Show duty.” 

There was a long moment where neither of them said or did anything. They just held on and felt each other's breaths come and go. 

James drew away again and palmed his eyes, willing them to spontaneously dry up. “Richard would have made a superb Coriolanus,” he said out of nowhere. 

Oliver nodded. “Oh, he would have been terrifying. A very dog to the Commonality. But you would have made a superb Aufidius.” 

“Pip would have been Volumnia.” 

“And I’m sure I would have ended up as Menenius, or something terrible like that.” James realized that Oliver’s eyes were also wet. 

James couldn’t help but smile. It was true; the teachers had always underestimated Oliver. And if James had been Aufidius, Gwendolyn probably would have made him and Richard kiss in act four. Thank God they never did Coriolanus. Same themes of populism and Roman civil war as Caesar, but this time with Richard and James’ typecasts erotically flirting their way through act four. 

It started drizzling again. Oliver stepped in beside James, under the eaves of the squat little boathouse. 

“Um, how long were you watching the rehearsal?” James nodded his head in the direction of the stage on the other side of the boathouse. 

“Hm, three or four minutes before you noticed me.” 

“Oh.” 

“It took me that long to persuade myself I wasn’t seeing things. When I heard this town had a Shakespeare-on-the-beach company, I made a beeline for it. But when you walked out, I thought—I’m just seeing what I want to see. It wasn’t until you started properly speaking that I knew it was real. I remember the way Shakespeare sits in your voice, in your mannerisms. It’s so beautiful to watch. It was such a thrill seeing it again—and that’s when I knew I wasn’t just seeing things.” He nudged James. “I’m glad you had a chance to keep acting over the past decade.” 

James didn’t have the heart to tell him that Troilus and Cressida was his first play in years. “You deserved that, too.” 

Oliver shrugged, and when he spoke it was faux-casual. “I’d pass up a chance to play Menenius or Nestor or whoever to keep you playing Aufidius or Ulysses.” 

James shook his head. “I’m so sorry.” 

“You keep saying that,” Oliver pointed out. 

“Well, I’ve got a good deal to apologize for, don’t I?” 

“Like using Alex’s name?” 

“Among other things.” 

Oliver took an unsteady breath. “Well, I don’t need any more apologies from you. You’re alive, so... so that’s good. That’s all I needed.” 

And hearing it filled something up inside him, closed a door that had been hanging open on its hinges. You’re alive, so that’s good. That’s all I needed. 

“I mean,” Oliver continued, “that hurt, leaving me to think you were dead for so long—” 

“I never wanted to hurt you—” 

“But I don’t need to hear any more apologies for it. I’m just, I’m done with all that. You’re alive, you’re here, I can—” he touched James’ shoulder. “I can feel you. I can talk to you and see you, and not in some prison room with my hands cuffed. Not through a phone and a sheet of plexiglass.” He made an odd sound between a laugh and a sob. “We’re standing on a beach, I can feel the wind and the rain, and I can feel your shoulder. I don’t need or want you to apologize any more. Maybe there’s shit to apologize for, I don’t care. I’m just happy you’re here.” He looked at James as though daring him to disagree. 

It was overwhelming, after everything James had done, to be offered such straightforward forgiveness. It felt like a breath of clean air after ten years of breathing in smoke. He didn’t know how to say thank you, and didn’t feel it was his place. 

The wind picked up. The sea beat harder against the rocky shore, spitting out spume, and the drizzling became rain. James wondered if across the beach Susie was finally giving in and packing up all the costumes and curtains. The rain didn’t hit them while they were huddling under the eaves of the boathouse, but they could hear it banging against the tiles. 

“It’s usually a lot nicer than this,” James told him. 

“Yeah, when I arrived yesterday it was lovely.” 

James wondered if at any point in the last twenty-four hours he’d come close to running into Oliver on the street. 

“Listen, how long are you staying?” He asked Oliver. “I want to—I want to talk to you more. If you have time.” 

Oliver smiled. “I mean, I’ve got a bed and breakfast I can’t really afford. But I’ve got nothing else keeping me busy right now. Pip and Alex and my sister all think I’ve maybe lost my mind, gallivanting off to California for some sun or whatever I told them.” He looked up at the clouds, which thoroughly smothered any traces of sun or warmth. “Now is the winter of my discontent / Made glorious summer,” he intoned. 

“Did they try to stop you?” 

“Pip tried to talk me into staying with her a bit longer, and Leah even suggested coming with me for a bit. I told them I just wanted to travel and enjoy freedom now that I have it, and, you know, they weren’t going to argue with that. But they both worry. Especially Pip, especially after you died.” 

James sucked in a breath. “Please don’t tell me she blames herself for not seeing it coming or something.” 

Oliver clearly considered his words carefully before answering. “I don’t think she blames herself for your death. But I think she considers it at least partly her responsibility to make sure that I’m still alive.” He once again tried to inflect the words with more levity than they deserved. “Ah, speaking of, I should call her. Let her know I’m enjoying the—California sun.” 

James watched the rain patter over the rocks. It was already starting to get dark out. “I wish I hadn’t hurt her,” he said quietly. “Or anybody. Obviously.” 

“Me too.” 

“I wasn’t thinking clearly when I did it.” 

“So you’ve said.” 

“I was thinking, I can’t look any of them in the eyes again. They all know I’m guilty. That was all I was thinking.” 

“I know.” 

James closed his eyes, thought of the paper Oliver had at some point balled back up and put into his pocket. “A man thronged up with cold. My veins are chill / And have no more of life. That’s all I was thinking about, over and over. I just wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

“You know, I’ve read that speech enough times, I don’t think I ever want to hear it again.” 

James had to concede that. “Fair.” 

Oliver touched him lightly on the arm. “I missed you too, if that wasn’t clear.” 

After a moment where he struggled to think of what to say, how to adequately give form to what he felt, he answered with Coriolanus again: “That I see thee here, / Though noble thing, more dances my rapt heart.” 

Oliver’s face broke out into a proper grin. 

“Um,” James said eventually, “When the rain slows down, do you want to catch up over dinner?” It felt odd to talk of catching up over dinner like they were any old acquaintances. 

“Yes,” Oliver answered. 

“I should check back up on the production. I feel bad telling them I have a migraine and then just running off. But after that...” 

Oliver nodded. “I’d like that.” He cleared his throat. “Ulysses, huh?” 

“It’s the part I wanted.” 

“You could be Troilus. I’m pretty sure you could out-Troilus their Troilus.” 

“Our Troilus is pretty good. And I asked for Ulysses; I like him, I like his speech in act three. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back...” 

“Wherein he puts alms for oblivion. I want to see you deliver that speech.” 

“I want to see you act again, too.” 

When he looked at Oliver, it made him feel light and guilty and grateful all at once. That hair, that jaw, those eyes—they were so familiar to him, they felt out-of-place in the little life he’d carved out for himself here. His old world collapsing in with his new. It was terrifying and exhilarating. 

“I want to act again, too,” Oliver admitted. “Or just. See more theatre. I missed hearing Shakespeare out loud.” 

James paused, wondering whether or not to suggest it, and then went ahead. “You know, Susie’s looking for a Menelaus right now...” 

——————— 

They’d had a few actors drop out over scheduling conflicts, so some were pulling double-duty. Diomedes was also Deiphobus, Hecuba had also ended up as Nestor, and a few days ago Menelaus had dropped out because his mother was sick in another state. Antenor had been hastily handed the role, because he was the only one left with the time off-stage to do it. Such was the lot of the regional amateur theatre director. 

The company had given up on the full run when it started to properly rain. The rest of the cast had been sent home, but Susie and the tech crew were still working on getting everything covered and stored for the night. James came back, finally retrieved his jacket, and apologized to Susie for the whole migraine thing. He promised to be ready and fully-committed at the final dress tomorrow. He also told her that he had a friend in town visiting, who could pick up the part of Menelaus if she wanted to relieve Antenor of the repeated costume changes and last-minute lines. 

“He’s a trained actor,” James told her. They were standing under the curtained-off backstage with rain pattering down on the tarp stretched overhead. 

“Frankly, I wouldn’t care if he was a trained electrician. At this point, I’ll take whoever volunteers.” Susie looked Oliver up and down. “I don’t think there’s time to get his name in the program, though. SM went off to print them already.” 

“That’s fine,” Oliver chimed in. 

Menelaus spoke like ten words in the whole show anyway; it was a sorry waste of talent. But if Oliver had missed live Shakespeare, here he could be in the middle of it for almost two weeks. He and Susie shook hands, and then James and Oliver were briskly dismissed and told to get out of the tech people’s way. 

They walked back from the stage in gradually lightening rain. The beach was eerie at night, empty and dark save for the hot, artificial stage lights that hummed from under their rain coverings and silhouetted the tech crew’s movements. 

The production itself was a bit of a mess, James reflected. They didn’t have the budget for high-quality period dress, so they were all wearing camo pants and dark green t-shirts. Their set was mostly curtains, and their guns had bright orange tips so the audience would know they were fake. The actors, most of whom had other jobs, sometimes dropped out at a moment’s notice and left the director scrabbling to hold the cast together. 

But still, the thrill. The feeling of Shakespeare at work, on a windy beach in northern California with the director loudly chewing gum and wearing a baseball hat that said Visit Del Norte CA in an unconscionable font. The rhythm, elegance, and intensity of the words. Achilles tearing his hair out over Patroclus’ dead body; Troilus bitter and confused; Ulysses bemoaning envious and calumniating Time. Agamemnon’s fury and Cassandra’s terror. The gray curtains and plastic, orange-tipped guns faded away and the words were what he sunk into. 

It was about a ten-minute walk from the beachside back to the town, and the path back was lined with streetlamps. Both of them were thoroughly dampened and their hair stuck to their foreheads. 

James cleared his throat. “So. Where exactly are you staying?” 

“’M staying at Florence and Freddie’s Five-Star Bed and Breakfast.” 

James had stayed there, the first few weeks he’d been in town. It was run by a lovely if terrifically nosy older couple who had about three spare rooms and a tidy garden. 

“How long have you booked with them?” 

“Only three days. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to find you here. But I’ll find a way to extend.” 

Eighty bucks a night, for their ten-day run, was at least another eight hundred dollars. “Or you could stay with me,” James said, trying to keep his voice light and even. 

Oliver’s head turned toward him in the dim light. “What?” 

“I mean, it would save you an extra eighty bucks a night, wouldn’t it?” 

“But—do you have room?” 

“Honestly, I’ve got a little basement apartment without much natural light. Definitely a step down from Florence and Freddie’s. But it’s got a couch and a bed, and I promise not to charge you eighty a night.” 

“You’re sure? That would be—great.” 

“Please, Oliver, it’s not as though I haven’t shown up at your door before with less notice.” There were those few days in the awkward in-between, Richard dead but both James and Oliver innocent in their friends’ eyes. James still remembered waking up on Oliver’s shoulder with his sisters giggling at them from the doorway. “We’ve been roommates before. And I’m pretty sure I owe you a favour.” 

After a pause, Oliver said “No, you don’t.” 

James couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of that. “Pardon me, but how the hell could I not?” 

Oliver stopped walking. “Because you just don’t, alright? I did what I did, you never made me do anything. I don’t want you to owe me anything. I don’t want that to be the reason you invite me to stay, or the reason you’re okay with me finding you in the first place. I just—I want it all done with. Please don’t say you owe me anything.” They were under a streetlamp, so his face was lit up. He was staring resolutely ahead, hands shoved into his pockets. 

The grim humour faded and James felt guilty. “I meant—of course that’s, that’s not why I’m inviting you stay. That wasn’t what I meant.” 

“Good.” Oliver waited, still standing in the middle of the road. As though he expected James to clarify why he had asked him to stay, then. Probably James should have said something else but didn’t know what. 

“More welcome are you to my fortunes / Than my fortunes are to me,” he ended up offering. “Pitiful fortunes though they are. I cannot stress enough that my apartment’s kind of shit. It’s got like one window and the bedroom is triangular, for some reason. But please. I’d be happy to be your roommate again.” He nudged Oliver in what he hoped was a friendly and conciliatory gesture. 

He could just make out Oliver’s nod. “Alright then,” he conceded. “I can get my stuff from the bed and breakfast and pay them for last night, but not for the next three.” They started walking again. “Thanks,” he added. 

“Of course,” James said. “A hundred thousand welcomes.” He managed to sound casual. 

Of course he wanted Oliver to stay with him. He sometimes caught himself daydreaming of the halcyon days living in the Tower at Dellecher. But another part of him was still terrified. His whole world was being upended, all the peace and privacy he’d chipped out for himself in the anonymous rockface of northern California. He’d run from the past and then selfishly left it instructions to catch up with him. And Oliver was being so kind, offering so much. James couldn’t help but think it was more than he deserved. 

Of course he was in love with Oliver. He’d known it for years, though it had still taken him too long to realize it. And now all the undeniable wanting that he’d managed to shut up tight within him was bursting out without a stopper, wanting more than he had any right to, and making him afraid. 

“How far is your place from the bed and breakfast?” Oliver asked. 

“Uh, just about fifteen minutes,” James said. “I can help you bring your stuff, if you want to stay over tonight.” 

———————

James waited outside while Oliver gathered his things and thanked Florence and Freddie for their hospitality. When Oliver appeared again, it was with a single satchel and a suitcase. He explained he’d also quickly phoned Pip and his sister Leah to tell them he was fine and enjoying the California coast. 

“You travel light,” James commented. 

“I don’t have much to lug around aside from clothes and a few books. Everybody’s got laptops and cell phones with them now that I can’t be bothered to figure out.” 

They dropped Oliver’s things off at James’ apartment but didn’t stay there. James flipped on the lights to show Oliver around the three-room suite: James’ bedroom filled with books, his living room with a couch and more books and something approximating a kitchen, and then the bathroom. He changed into a less damp pair of pants and a better coat. Then they left. James had realized he was out of leftover pasta, and it would have made a pretty sorry reunion dinner anyways. 

So they ended up at Barcelona, a Catalan restaurant not far from his apartment. There weren’t really any other patrons—the town’s population was pretty aged. Most dinners seemed to happen at 5:30pm rather than 8:30pm. The server there, Alva, greeted him by name (Alex) and seemed surprised that he was with someone, which was a little bit embarrassing. 

After they ordered, Oliver asked him: 

“How long have you lived here?” 

“Four years,” James answered honestly. 

“The whole time?” Oliver seemed surprised. “Why here? Is there a livelier theatre scene than I thought?” 

“No,” James smiled. “There isn’t even a theatre. And I didn’t want to act for a while. I just wanted somewhere small and private, and sunny I guess. And—and I wanted you to be able to find me.” 

After the silence stretched for a couple seconds, Oliver said, “James.” 

“Alex,” James corrected. 

Oliver snorted. “Okay. Alex.” He met James’ eyes directly and spoke as plainly as possible, as though daring James again to disagree. “Lose me; only give me leave, / Unworthy as I am, to follow you.” 

James felt an odd flutter in his chest. He answered with another of Helena’s lines: “The story shall be changed. / The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind / Makes speed to catch the tiger.” 

Oliver thought about that for a moment. “I’m not completely sure how to parse that in the context of this conversation,” he said. 

“Me neither, I suppose,” James shrugged. 

Their patatas bravas arrived. 

James couldn’t decide whether he wanted to know, but he forced himself to ask: “Have you spoken to all the others? How are they?” 

“Not all of them,” Oliver said, spearing the appetizer with a fork. “I’m not sure Wren will ever want to see me again. Though I don’t think she believes I did it either. Alex I’ve seen—he and Colin are happy together—and Pip. She’s doing well overall. But, she does miss you.” 

“God. I shouldn’t—” He didn’t know what he was going to say. “I wish I hadn’t hurt her.” 

Oliver gave him a flat look. “I’m not sure that was really avoidable.” He let out a short breath. “Anyway, she’s made a good life for herself at Dellecher with Milo. And I have to call her once a week to catch up. Pip’s orders.” 

James could see her moving on, living her life. Teaching and taking walks around the lake and calling Oliver to catch up. He could picture her and Meredith and Wren and Alex all moving on in a way he’d long struggled to picture himself. 

He didn’t push ahead, didn’t dare to, but Oliver did of his own accord. “And Meredith. I stayed with her in New York, briefly. She’s making fine money in TV. She—we—we didn’t get along like we used to. I don’t think she’s forgiven me. And I guess I haven’t forgiven her, either.” 

“What would she have to forgive you for?” James asked. He heard the bitterness that crept into his voice and tried to squash it. 

They were keeping to a murmur, because the restaurant was empty except for Alva tapping away at her cell phone all the way by the entrance. Probably she couldn’t hear them, but it was worth speaking quietly anyways. 

“For choosing you,” Oliver answered simply. James’ breath caught. “When I—” he glanced around. “Well. You know. She took it as a once-and-for-all declaration that I was choosing you over her. She never really forgave me, and I can’t blame her for that.” 

This time, James didn’t ask the question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. 

Oliver let the silence pass. “Anyway, when I finally got your note I was staying with her. One of us admitted to the other that it wasn’t working, and I left. Read Pericles a few times. Came here.” 

James’ mind caught on something he’d said. “Wait—what do you mean, when you finally got my note?” 

“I didn’t get it until a little while after I was out.” 

James suddenly felt sick. “So you just—” 

Suddenly their meals were arriving, hot and fragrant and for the moment inedible to him. He waited to speak until Alva was back at her post by the door, tapping away at her phone. It was an agonizing wait, and in retrospect, they probably should have just eaten at his apartment. He could have put something together. 

“So you thought I was dead for four years? No note, just...” 

Oliver shook his head vigorously. “No. They chose not to tell me. I guess they were afraid how I’d react, still being stuck in there without it being for anybody. They told me almost as soon as I got out, and then I got the note a little while after that. But for four years, nobody mentioned your name to me. I thought of the last time we saw each other—the way you, you kissed my hand, and the last things you said to me—and I thought, I guess that was goodbye. Because you didn’t want to see me while I was stuck there. But I didn’t think you were dead. When Pip told me...” he cleared his throat and shook his head. “But you’re not, so it doesn’t matter.” He decisively pulled his plate in front of him and started to eat. 

James’ food remained untouched. It was embarrassing, but he was trying not to cry. For a long time he’d tried not to imagine how Oliver or Pip or anybody felt when they heard he’d drowned himself. There was too much guilt there, and he was already suffocating with it. It had hurt, whenever the idea of Oliver puzzling over Pericles for four years crossed his mind, or Pip left with nothing to puzzle over at all. But he’d decided they would be fine. They’d miss him for a bit, at least the ones who still wanted anything to do with him, and then they’d get over it and go on with their lives. 

Now he could see it plain as day. He could see Oliver spending weeks thinking he was dead, just plain dead, no note, no final word, no thank you, no sorry, no I was in love with you. And Pip, telling Oliver to call her every week. Trying to make sure he didn’t end up killing himself too. 

James, like a coward, wanted to run from the room. He wanted to ask again for forgiveness. Or he just wanted to go on a long, long walk. Somehow his mind caught on the fact that it wouldn’t be fair to leave Oliver the bill, after everything. 

He stayed put. He ate his potatoes. He wanted to try and explain himself some more, but Oliver had so decisively set it aside. He held off. 

——————— 

“I am not putting you out of your own bed,” Oliver declared, hands on hips. 

They were both staring at James’ ugly brown couch, just big enough to lie down on, and the pillow with two blankets he’d heaped on top of it. 

“Yes, you are,” James insisted. 

“When you came to my house, we just slept in the same bed.” 

“Yes, but you had a queen bed, and my stupid triangular bedroom here only fits a twin. If you want to try fitting two grown men onto a twin, by all means.” 

Oliver wandered back over to look at James’ bedroom. Through the door frame, James saw him flop down onto the mattress, extend his arms over the sides. It really wasn’t a very big bed. 

James walked over to the bed, shrugging an I told you so. Oliver took his forearm and pulled him down. James let himself be pulled; he tried to find the space to lie down next to Oliver, but it was too uncomfortable a fit. One of them would practically be dangling off the bed. James could feel Oliver’s arm warm under his back, and the place where their hips brushed each other. 

“You’re right,” Oliver admitted. “Someone has to sleep on the coach.” 

“Might as well be me,” James said, sitting back up. “If not for me, you’d be sleeping in a nice, soft bed at Florence and Freddie’s tonight, and you’d wake up to the smell of pancakes.” 

“If not for you, I’d be an extra eighty bucks in the hole,” Oliver amended. “Per night.” 

In the end, James got him to agree to take the bed. James had fallen asleep plenty of times on his couch after a late night reading, anyway. 

James changed into shorts and an old t-shirt to sleep in, brushed his teeth next to Oliver. It all felt so achingly familiar. A routine he slipped back into easily, even with a decade wedged in the middle. If he pretended hard enough it was like they were roommates back at Dellecher again. They even ran some lines before going to bed, Oliver annotating his new copy of the script and repeating Menelaus’ very few cues until they were certain. 

After a while Oliver called it a night. James was sitting on the couch with Shakespeare and the Classics propped up on his knees. 

Oliver stood up, stretched, turned to James, and clearly took a moment to decide whether he was going to say something. In the end he committed. “I’m really glad you’re alive.” 

James looked up at him. “I’m really glad you’re free.” 

Oliver gave him a tired smile. “I shall say goodnight ’til it be morrow.” 

“Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.” 

———————

James was awake by about 5am and not getting back to sleep. He tried again and again to reposition himself against the arm of the couch, and still couldn’t seem to relax. The only evidence that he hadn’t completely dreamed up the previous evening was that he was on the couch and his bedroom door was closed. And, when he got up to get a drink of water, he could just make out Oliver’s script for Troilus and Cressida on the table. 

He still remembered clear as day that break from school after Richard’s death, when he’d woken up in the middle of the night, realized he was in Oliver’s arms, and not moved until he went back to sleep. Oliver’s arms around him had been so warm and certain, the rising and falling of his chest in the dark so steady. Then waking up in the morning and joking about Meredith with Oliver’s sisters and pretending Richard wasn’t even dead. 

Well, there was no going back to sleep now. He lay in the dark for a little while longer even though he knew it was a lost cause and then got up and buttered a piece of toast. He cautiously turned on the small lamp by the couch and began to read—not Shakespeare and the Classics, but Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, because he was trying to branch out from the seventeenth century. 

At about 6:30am the bedroom door opened, and Oliver stepped blearily out. 

“Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” James asked, bookmarking Hardy. 

“No, I’ve been awake for a bit.” Oliver rubbed his eyes. “Saw the light under the door and figured I might as well get up.” 

“I’ll make tea,” James suggested. He left Oliver to settle down on the couch with a sigh and started rifling through his cupboard. He still remembered how Oliver liked his tea. “Green?” 

“Thanks.” 

While the kettle slowly started to simmer he sat back down on the couch. With only the reading light on, everything in the apartment was dim and faintly orange. 

“I love you,” Oliver said. 

The kettle simmered. Outside the little kitchen window, a car rolled past. James’ heartbeat stuttered. 

“What?” He asked. 

Oliver pressed his knuckles against his eyes. “Maybe I should have held off on saying it. But it just felt wrong, waiting ten years to tell you and then holding off. So there, it’s off both our chests now. I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been for a long time. I know it’s like, no shit, Sherlock, and also it’s not seven in the morning yet, but I had to say it.” 

James’ mouth hung open. He probably looked like a deer caught in headlights. 

Oliver ran his hand through his hair. “That’s all. I know no ways / To mince it in love, but directly to say ‘I love you.’” 

It wasn’t that James was surprised. He’d known Oliver loved him since the tender, un-brotherly kiss at the end of King Lear, and of course since everything that had happened after. But it was a thing he hadn’t let himself touch. He sectioned it off: Oliver was in love with James as he’d once been, when they were young and stumbling around Dellecher. After so much time and distance, so much wrongness, it wasn’t a thing James let himself touch. 

A good few heartbeats had passed in complete silence. Acting on a fit of impulse, James took Oliver’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said fervently, feeling the warm skin under his lips. “Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for coming to find me. Thank you for saying it aloud.” He pressed his lips again to the back of Oliver’s hand, like he had four years ago. Then he kissed his way up Oliver’s arm, up his neck, and his hand found the curve of Oliver’s jaw. Oliver met James’ eyes with unmasked relief. 

James practically had to climb on top of him to kiss him on the lips. Oliver helped him, taking his face with both hands and drawing him in. There was no hesitation; all the fraughtness of missing each other for ten years finally loosened and Oliver bit his lip. James leaned deeper into it giddily, holding him as though they were about to be split apart again. 

The kettle started whistling. James startled back, swiveling around to look at the offending appliance. 

“Tea’s boiled,” Oliver noted, still inches from his face. 

James laughed, happiness bubbling up inside him like steam over his kitchen counter. He disentangled himself from how he’d ended up on top of Oliver and rose to his feet. 

He poured their tea—mint for him, green for Oliver—and handed over the steaming cup. His lip stung where Oliver had bitten it. 

“I kiss thee with a most constant heart,” James said. 

Oliver’s brow furrowed. “Oh god, I know this. I’m sure I know this. It’s Falstaff? I’m sure I know—Oh! I am old, I am old.” 

“I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young / Boy of them all.” 

Oliver sipped his tea. “Show-off,” he murmured. 

James smiled and nudged the Hardy book off the couch so he could properly settle in next to Oliver. 

“Thank you,” James said again, quietly. 

In the weak orange light Oliver laid a hand on James’ forearm. “I sat there, unable to fall back asleep, and thought—no use in ignoring the obvious. Out with it.” 

He was braver than James, who’d been refusing to even think about the subject very hard. But he’d always been braver than James. 

“Do you think it would have changed anything?” James ventured to ask. “If we’d—known before. Figured ourselves out, I mean.” 

Oliver let out a long breath, looked up and out the dark kitchen window for a while. “No.” He finally answered, unconvincingly. “God, maybe. But no.” 

James grimaced. “It really fucking hurts to think that maybe it would have.” 

Oliver shook his head more firmly this time. “No. Richard hated you anyways. He was so jealous. I think he would have found a way to get himself killed whether we were sleeping with the girls or, or with each other or whoever. He’d already decided we were queer, remember? He’d decided before I think either of us did. It wasn’t just me and Meredith together that sent him off into the woods that night. It’s that he thought we were all against him, which we were, and he was so damn jealous of you on top of it. There’s the rub; There’s the respect / That makes calamity of so long life.” 

“‘Got himself killed’ is a charitable way of putting it,” James muttered into his mint tea. 

Oliver gave him a long, flat stare. “True,” he said quietly. “We were all there at the dock. We all could have done something different. You were the only one who tried.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Yes, I do,” Oliver acknowledged. 

A silence stretched. 

“I spent a long time thinking about what we all should, or could, have done differently,” Oliver suddenly started again. “I would lie there at night and think, well if I hadn’t done this, or Richard hadn’t done that... What if we’d let you fish him out of the lake when he was lying there, dying? My guess is that he still wouldn’t have survived, but how could I know? Or—what if it had all gone even worse? What if he’d drowned you in the lake, or beaten Meredith to death for sleeping with me like he threatened? The mad days I have spent! I kept torturing myself trying to think how he or you or anybody could have been saved, but obviously it made no difference. The ending was the ending.” He ran a hand through his hair, looked squarely away from James. “After a while I had to face the blindingly obvious fact that there was no answer to be found, ever. The sparrow had fallen, and I had to let be. There was nothing else to do. Except to see you again and tell you, in no uncertain terms, that I love you, and to live my life as a free man.” 

There was an ache in James’ chest that spiraled and tightened. He wanted so desperately to go back to the start and do it over; a childish, embarrassingly futile want that seemed some days to drown him. But Oliver was right. The sparrow had fallen. 

James set his tea down on the floor by the couch, because he had no coffee table. Then he lay his hand on Oliver’s shoulder, leaned forward, and kissed him again. When he pulled back, he managed to say, “I love you. In no uncertain terms.” 

Oliver smiled at him, eyes wet, and some tension that had been stuck inside James’ chest for ten years or longer loosened. 

——————— 

After a quick breakfast of an orange and more toast, they ended up walking out to the beach to watch the sunrise, which was a cliché but worth it. Oliver had asked him about life in Del Norte and if he enjoyed it. James, openly skirting the second half of the question, had answered that the theatre scene was flimsy but the sea and sky were beautiful. And Oliver mentioned taking any opportunity he could now to take a long walk in the open air. So they stepped out of the apartment at a little past seven in the morning, when the streets were mostly empty and the coffee shops were dark. 

It would be a warmer, clearer day than yesterday, but so early in the morning the air still had a cold bite. The light was aqueous and gray; the sun was just beginning to slink up above the horizon. They made the short walk to the beach together mostly in comfortable silence. They passed a few cars and quite a few more pigeons and seagulls, eyeing them for crumbs. 

It was at most fifteen minutes from James’ apartment to the beach. As they approached the shore, they could see the bare bones of their Shakespeare-on-the-beach stage in the far distance, mostly covered against last night’s drizzle. 

Oliver gestured at it. “What do you think of the production of Troilus and Cressida?” he asked. 

James smiled. “Susie’s doing what she can with what she’s got. Which is a pretty low budget and a very windy stage.” He gave the question a little more thought. “But it’s nice to break away into an odder one; there’ve been plenty of Hamlets and Much Ados here in recent years. And I think she really gets how messed up the tone of Troilus is. The way it can’t decide if the ending should be happy or sad, so it just ends up going for violent. I like how she plays that off. This isn’t a play that sticks to its genre, or even knows what its genre is, and she keeps the audience guessing too.” 

They arrived at the shoreline. It really was striking to look at; the sky was a dark gray streaked with the early pinks of sunrise, and the water reflected blindingly the hints of light. It foamed at the rocks a few feet away from them. Everything was so painfully wide-open and bare; Oliver seemed to love it. He closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of seaweed and the cold wind. 

“Mhm, I’ve got a soft spot for Troilus and Cressida,” Oliver said, eyes still closed. “I’m glad to see it being done here. I mean, when you strip back the Pandarus of it all, it’s Shakespeare’s Iliad. It was thrilling to watch you as Ulysses in the moments before you noticed me. Not just because I was overwhelmed seeing you alive, but because I was overwhelmed seeing you on stage, speaking in iambic pentameter again. Like for a moment, everything was just as it used to be. It was almost like I could expect Alex or Pip to walk on right after you.” 

They had to take a step back to avoid the stray droplets flung out by the water pushing against the rocks. “I should tell them I’m alive,” James said, looking out. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. 

Oliver looked at him, startled. “The others? Everyone?” 

“I don’t know. Pip.” 

“I mean—will you?” 

“I’m not sure,” James admitted. “Of course I know I should. But I just remember the way everybody looked at me—with Pip especially, there was so much pity there. And they all knew I’d done it. It was perfectly obvious, and I felt like I was going crazy.” He looked away from Oliver, out at the searingly bright place where the sun was beginning to rise above the water. “I want to tell them, I want to see them again, I want—God, I want so badly to just have a drink and talk about Shakespeare or something. I do want it,” he said, with a kind of desperation to prove himself that he didn’t really understand. “I miss them.” 

There was a but accompanying the sentence, but he couldn’t find the words to speak it aloud. He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept looking at the water, roughened up into little waves by the wind. 

“Of course,” Oliver said softly. 

A gull screeched so loudly nearby that James almost jumped, lost as he’d been in thought. It swooped by above their heads and then dove for a perch a little ways away to pick at some bug or fallen French fry. 

Oliver reached down and picked up a particularly flat rock, blew the sand off and inspected it against the light. Then he tried to send it spinning out across the waves. It hit at the wrong angle with an anticlimactic splish and sank straight down. 

“Worth a try,” Oliver shrugged. 

“Water’s probably too rough today,” James informed him, but he picked up a smaller if lumpier rock and flicked it out himself. It mustered a single sort-of skip and then also sunk down. 

The sky lightened by the minute. “I think I could stay here for a while,” Oliver said, scuffing around his feet for another appropriately flat rock. 

“Yeah?” James asked, surprising even himself with how happy that made him. “Maybe I—maybe I rearrange my apartment a bit and invest in a bigger bed.” 

“My sister will think I’ve gone mad, staying in a random town in northern California where there’s barely any theatre.” 

“But there’s some, at least.” 

“Yes. Troilus and Cressida on the beach is good enough for me.” Finally having found another rock that met approval, Oliver tried to throw it, and it also sunk immediately. 

 “And to be clear, I’d come with you if you wanted to live somewhere else,” James told him. There was a weight lifted in being so honest, in no longer disguising that he wanted to be where Oliver was. “I’m not that attached to Del Norte.” 

“Someday.” Further scuffing around the ground revealed no more viable rocks. “But I could use a little bit of time in California, away from everything else. And the beach here is lovely.” 

“Especially when it’s warmer.” 

Oliver gave a short laugh. “We just have to be careful not to let anybody steal our clothes.”