Oneshots and Other Things

Dress Rehearsal (M)

Taking a rare trip out from under my repressed rock to write something mature again...

There's not a whole lot of plot but it's surprisingly a bit angsty (or maybe not, given that I wrote it XD ). Sort of links back to Three Nights but not in any meaningful way.

Anyway, before I can back out from ever publishing it... it's Dec/Stephen so run away if you don't want to read that :p

(*~*)

It happened, this time, due to a series of coincidences. A Friday dress rehearsal that overran well beyond the usual, reasonable time. Ant in a rush to get home, leaving before Dec was ready because he knew the older man could just share a lift with Stephen. Most other people in a hurry to have an evening at home before the usual chaos of the weekend.

So, it was quiet at the studio by the time Dec had shed his suit and packed his backpack. Stephen had been finalising the last details of Ant vs. Dec, giving him more time to faff around, as Ant liked to call it, zipping and unzipping his bag every time he discovered another belonging that he'd somehow missed in his last five sweeps of the small dressing room.

By now though, everything 100%, definitely packed (probably), Dec was bored. He'd heard Stephen's dressing room door close a couple of minutes earlier and while he knew it would be hypocritical to go and pester the other man so that they could leave quicker, he also knew he was about to knock on the door and do just that.

The corridor was eerily quiet compared to the frenetic energy of a Saturday evening; quieter still than the rushed, chaotic dress rehearsal of an hour earlier. Normally, the walkway became an impromptu storage cupboard for props, large set pieces wheeled around as people called out for everyone to get out of the way. To look at it from the outside, Dec imagined everything looked unplanned and disorganised. Really, it was just the reality. No matter how much preparation they did, there was always that moment half an hour before the show when it looked like it was all falling apart.

It was maybe a little masochistic that he liked things to be that way. He thrived on the adrenaline rush of things teetering on the edge, relished the buzz of a successful show when all of those moving parts came together.

Stephen answered the door with a brightness in his eyes that suggested he felt the same - even after the trying rehearsal they'd had and however many last-minute arrangements he and the crew had been making since. He still looked like he would have stayed longer – would do it again over and over.

"Am I keeping you waiting?" he asked amusedly. Dec rolled his eyes, still in performance mode and used to responding to most of what Stephen said with mild derision. He ducked into the room without invitation because they'd known each other long enough for those formalities to have fallen by the wayside and collapsed dramatically onto the sofa, letting out a satisfied sigh as Stephen continued to smirk at him.

"It's a bit late," Dec pointed out with an innocent smile.

"Thing is, I've got these two bosses who like everything to run smoothly," Stephen replied teasingly, "So I had to make sure my whole section is actually going to work tomorrow."

"Those guys sound awful," Dec said dryly before dropping the act. "You only ever admit we're in charge when we're in private."

"Got to respect your elders," Stephen retorted easily. Dec chuckled, hand reaching for his phone automatically before he registered that Stephen wasn't currently in his own clothes. He'd started to shrug out of the suit jacket by the time he caught Dec looking, hooking it around a hanger as he explained. "Wardrobe wanted me to make sure it fit before I left."