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“Are we going to talk about it?” Martyn asks.
He’s leant up against the doorframe of the dressing room, watching Ren pull his T-shirt back on. He stayed on purpose, just waiting for him - the soundscape wasn’t needed for Ren’s monologue, and everybody else had left, but Martyn wasn’t everybody else. Not to Ren - at least, not since those first rehearsals. Ren’s packed up most of the stage makeup by himself, he didn’t need to do that, Martyn thinks, it’s not his job, but he’s done it anyway and God, he is infatuated.
Ren twists around, curls framing his face, “Talk about what?” as he pulls his shirt down over his stomach. Martyn is very pointedly not distracted by this.
He sighs, then, but doesn’t move from the doorway, just watches the actor for a few more seconds. His stage-makeup is smudged - he always forgets to clean it off before he gets home, then texts Martyn a blurry picture of himself standing by his mirror with his hair all damp after washing his face, always with some stupid caption about how glitter is all over his bathroom.
Ren’s stage-makeup is smudged, sparkles framing his eyes, silver and gold, contour dripping from his cheekbones. Martyn loved what Lizzie and Etho had come up with for him. He had almost wanted to go and personally thank them after the first full dress rehearsal, but kept himself from doing it, flustered and embarrassed. Ren turns to him with a clueless, completely despicable look on his face, and Martyn loves him for it.
“I don’t believe you’re that clueless for a second, Prince Escalus,” he says, and he’s not sure if it’s a quip or an insult. Ren shoots him an almost hurt look, frowning.
“Don’t call me that,” he replies. Shoulders dropping - just that tiny bit that makes Martyn want to cross the room and kiss him until they come back up. He decides to do just that - steps forward and pushes Ren gently up against the vanity, presses love to his lips.
There’s a few seconds then, Martyn’s hands tangling in Ren’s hair, Ren falling into him, hands on waist, before he pushes him back, soft, hands cradling his face. Martyn knows immediately he’s not as clueless as he acts.
“Ren,” he says, voice hardening, “Talk to me.”
The facade drops.
Sometimes, Martyn can’t tell if Ren is acting or not.
Sometimes, he hates it, and sometimes it fascinates him even more. There is something intrinsically intriguing about Ren, something hidden in the fold of his smile and the curls of his shiny brown hair. It’s hidden in those stupid sunglasses he insists on wearing to rehearsals and the way his posture changes so naturally when he acts. Suddenly, he can hold himself like a nervous wreck, or a triumphant king. He knows exactly what to do.
Martyn hates when Ren uses that on him. He doesn’t do it often - he once confessed, after three shots, in the dark of Joel’s garden after a house party, that he was pretending to be confident, talking to him for the first time. Martyn had confessed right back that he had seen the facade slip several times - that it only made him want him more.
So, the facade drops, and Martyn’s heart sinks parallel with it. Ren runs his hand through his hair, slides it down to cup his chin, and there’s something bittersweet in his eyes. “Martyn,” he breathes, “Martyn, love, this isn’t important, okay?”
He combs his hand down to Martyn’s neck, lets it drop to his side and clasps it around Martyn’s own fingers. It strikes a chord in his mind - lights his already short fuse. “Ren,” he says.
Ren only closes his eyes, takes his bottom lip in-between his teeth like he does when he’s nervous, to bite it to the point of blood. Martyn can’t explain his anger, not really - only that it comes on suddenly, without warning, and boils up inside him without showing any sign of stopping. He wrenches himself away, sees the hurt shoot into Ren’s face.
“I’m leaving,” he says, and his voice breaks and it hurts, “until you can talk to me like a normal person.”
He turns away and walks towards the door, fully expecting to storm out and wallow in his own anger in his car for 20 minutes before he drives home, but Ren stops him in his tracks when he’s halfway out the door.
“Martyn, please.”
Martyn turns around, ready to tear into him, but Ren’s face has crumpled and his left hand holds the edge of the vanity, white knuckled, pained. “What?” he says instead, the remnants of rage still stuck in the corners of the word.
Ren breathes in, out, and his lips form words, choke around them, bite down and spit out, he finally covers his face with two hands, falling over each other like swan wings, sighing, finally parting and he’s tearful. “Something is wrong,” he says finally, when he’s exhausted every other way to say what he needs to.
“What does that mean?” Martyn asks, desperate. “Ren, what does that mean?”
“Doesn’t it feel real to you?”
It’s like the words escape Ren’s mouth without permission. He bites his tongue. Martyn doesn’t understand: “What do you mean - what feels real? Ren-”
“It’s-” Ren grits the words out like some God above is trying to stop him, “it’s the play. Ever since the first rehearsal - I feel-”
He scrunches his eyes shut. “You will think I am crazy,” he says, even, slow, measured but shaky, “but I know I’m not the only one. I see - I see Grian in the break after three-one, I see him check on Bdubs like he’s shocked he’s alive, and I see how he looks at Tango - I see. He thinks it’s real and he’s not wrong.”
Everything is falling apart in Martyn’s hands. “Ren, what - what do you mean?”
“Don’t you see, Martyn? It’s real,” Ren cries, and there’s such desperation in his tone that Martyn starts towards him. “It’s - it’s real, and I feel responsible - I’m the one who gives the speech, I - you’ve heard Xisuma explain it, I’m the turning point-”
He cuts off when Martyn’s fingers brush his forehead.
“I’m not sick,” Ren says, his voice cracks, and “I’m not sick, Martyn. I’m not crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Martyn whispers.
“You as good as did.”
“Ren…” he breathes. Ren sighs, leans his head back, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
“You don’t believe me,” he says, hollow.
“I believe you.”
Martyn isn’t lying, either - which is the strangest part of all of this. He’s quite sure that this is all some delusion Ren’s cooked up, actually, he’s probably ill or exhausted, this isn't real. It’s just not real - it doesn’t make sense.
But he finds himself telling the truth when he tells Ren he believes him.
In the end, as Ren lays his head on his shoulder and Martyn’s hands intertwine around his waist, he convinces himself that he believes him because he’s in love. That’s the only reason - there’s nothing else. Ren is ill, or crazy. Martyn only believes him because of who he is. It isn’t real. Romeo and Juliet isn’t real.
It isn’t.
Martyn doesn’t accept that.