Dante's Shakespeare Standoff; PG-13

[http://users.livejournal.com/epithet_/]

epithet_
Ry waited until it was dark before he ventured outside. It was the first time that he had moved outside since getting the secondary rejection notice. He had been 'this close' to contacting Renee and cancelling the whole thing. Even know, he didn't feel up to being around a crowd of what was likely to be just a lot of people.

But then he had everything prepared. And he could only hide out in his dank little room, hearing his father yelling out at his mother who only gave back in vacant silence for so long before he himself turned utterly nutty. This was good, he told himself stubbonly, rugged up against the cold of the night. It was good that this was something that forced himself out of himself and his house.

Anything that pulled him out of his house was good. And then again, the despair slammed into him. What was he supposed to do now? There was no way that he was going to be able to get up the money needed to pay bond on top of everything else he would need on moving in with Renee and Deirdre. What had seemed like such a hopeful plan now escaped like nothing more than a smoke filled dream. Nothing could come of it now, that was almost certain. He was 17, dropped out of school, and never going to get out of the house his parents lived in.

If you could call that living. But he was better than this. He knew that! If only he could somehow reach out of himself enough for somebody else to finally see it.

Sighing vehemently, Ry noticed as the puff blew out from his lips and dissipated into the air. He had walked his way to just outside of Dante's already. Even from where he stood outside, he could see the open fire already roaring out heat. And this time, he was actually going to go in.

"Hi there. A double shot of courage," he murmured to the bartender, slumping on the bar. He was early, and the alcohol couldn't hurt. Besides, he was older than he looked, so the attaining of it was never going to be all that difficult.

seminalsemiotic
At just after 6:30, Renee, Pierre and Deirdre entered Dante's. The open fire was roaring powerfully, and quite a crowd had gathered for the event. Renee smiled and waved at a few familiar faces, but the place was too packed to make any serious attempt at approaching them. Still, being one of the stars of the evening, she was able to shoulder her way over to the bar without too much hassle and place her order.

"Usual for you, sweet'eart?" Lou asked.

"Not yet," she smiled. "I'm going to need some semblance of sobriety for this. I'll just have a glass of the house red for now, and a latte for Deirdre. Pierre?"

"Beer for me please."

Renee smiled and nodded that this was acceptable, as she was paying.

"Comin' right up," Lou smiled.

Once their drinks were in the hands, Renee turned to take a closer look at the composition of the crowd. It was a good mix of old timers - mostly burnt-out poets and artists - and young up-and-comers who were bucking all the latest trends in favour of postmodern chic that the "in vogue" art community would probably catch up to in about five years time. Absently, she stroked the shimmering silk of her red kimono... it was a crowd-pleaser, tight and sensual, but long enough to still leave some mystery surrounding her figure.

Across the room, she finally noticed Ry, sitting alone at a table, his expression as always one of disgruntlement. She made her way over and sat by room, Deirdre following close behind. Pierre had gotten lost somewhere along the way, and was now probably chatting up some girl.

"Are you alright, Ry? You look like someone just burned your Complete Works of Shakespeare."

epithet_
Starting at the sudden voice directed at him, Ry realised he had been too deep in his own world to realise there was a whole other one occurring just outside that. So he wasn't the only one early.

"Let's just get this over with," he murmured, turning himself around on the bar stool, and nodding courteously to the redhead and other man who stood on either side of Renee. As an afterthought, he reached out for the last of the alcohol that had been sitting in ice and shot in back. Then he stood and waited for the others.

seminalsemiotic
"Ry," she said, reaching out and touching his shoulder. "We can talk later if you need to. I didn't think... Something is really wrong, isn't it?"


Not really needing or expecting an answer, she reached down and gently squeezed his hand, then made her way over to the stage.

"If nobody minds," she spoke into the microphone, the conversation dying down, "we're going to start a little early." There were a few cheers from around the room, and some enthusiastic clapping. Somewhere in the crowd, Pierre wolf-whistled.

Renee smiled and patiently waited for the applause to die down. In the silence, she cast her eyes down, her gaze hidden by her long lashes. After a few moments, she looked up again, and her eyes had... changed. They were glazed, haunted, almost inhuman, burning deep into the souls of all they tocuhed. She began her first soliloquy.

"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits..."

She raised her hands into the air, her eyes rolling back in her head, madness seeming to take her.

"...That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it!"

Her eyes returned to the audience, causing a few members to gasp audibly. The fire in her gaze had only increased.

"Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'"

For a moment, there was naught but silence. Then, one person's hesitant clapping began a chain reaction that ended in rapturous applause. The audience were ready now, warmed up and eager for Ry's performance. The applause continued as Renee stepped off the stage, the audience awaiting Ry's entrance. She gave him an encouraging smile as she caught his eye, hoping he would be alright.

epithet_
Shaking her off almost unconsciously at her concern, Ry's head lifted as she took to the microphone and informed that they were about to start. She was good. As good as she was any other night, or better. But he had expected that. This was something to take his mind off the rest of the world after all, wasn't it?

He thought of his own opening monologue, and knew that the audience would lap up the change of pace eagerly. That was how to keep them most interested, after all. How well the two of them had chosen to go against one another, quite unconsciously.

As she headed to him from the stage and caught his eye, Ry turned her a self deprecting roll of the eyes and headed for his own spotlight. He glanced around for a moment upon standing there, almost as though he had lost something, or was looking for something.

"This can be no trick," he began in a voice that quietly projected through the whole of Dante's. "The conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of this from Hero; they seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent."

Now Ry's eyes lifted to take in his audience. They were silent, as they had been for Renee's performance, awaiting.

"Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud."

Here, he paused in his seeming introspective, going from the outward pensiveness he portrayed to a moment of overdramatised pride that by his own words, he would not seem.

"Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair-- 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous-- 'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me-- by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her." Ry stepped forward from the stage and stared mockingly deep into Renee's eyes, as though she were the Beatrice he spoke of. This drew a murmur of laughter from the croud. Then quickly spinning away from her, he continued with, "I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age."

There was a significant, and perhaps lewd pause there, before Ry continued with a slight lift to his lips as he played with the audience still further.

"Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice." Again, he glanced at Renee, reaching out to her with one arm. As he stepped off the stage completely as though he would go to her, he stayed in character with the closing words of his first monologue. "By this day, she's a fair lady! I do spy some marks of love in her."

It was well timed. He reached the table to sit and drape his arm around her just as his last words faded out. The crowd laughed and clapped, delighted by this ending, waiting for yet more.

firehaunted
Jude walked in through the door to Dante's quietly as Ry was on stage. She overheard his last lines as she snuck through the back of the crowded bar and loitered near the bar. Benedict. She smiled. Didn't seem to quite suit Ry, but Jude loved it. She sat down on a bar stool and ordered herself an orange juice. She could stay in the darkness and not be seen, she hoped, and then make her way back home before her father even knew she was gone. Hurruh for badly thought of plans.

juniper_berries
Archers and sprite was a cool and refreshing drink. Nothing too heavy, and it didn't tend to go straight to her head overly quick. That was still a habit she had stayed with after going out of a night with Pierre and Renee. They had drunk anything and everything they could afford, while Kait had stayed the level headed one, always making sure they could get back to home of the end of a night.

She looked up as a brunette sat down on the bar stool next to her and ordered an orange juice. From the way she glanced towards the man... Ry, just finishing up on the stage, she hazarded a guess that she too was here for the Shakespeare readings that Renee had organised to be here, for this night.

"He didn't do so badly," Kait murmured idly. "Do you know him, or are you here for Renee?"

firehaunted
Jude looked up. "Pardon? Oh, I'm here for Ry." It was mostly true, she supposed. "And the poetry," she added and took a sip of her drink, feeling a little self conscious.

juniper_berries
"Fair enough," Kait shrugged. It was clear the other girl didn't much wish to talk. She shook her hair out of her eyes as Renee had to stand up to make her next monologue soon. She saw Deirdre sitting at the table with Pierre and Ry. It would have been so simple to just go over there and join them. It would have been so hard.

Instead, she just drank more of her drink and continued to watch.

slinkster_ghoul
Stephie felt herself steaming, again, but at least this time it wasn't at her family, and there was Ry's show down with Renee to go to and she needed that as much as she needed caffine, right now. She left her brooding thoughts at the door and pushed her way through the crowd till she spotted one of the (many) people she knew gathered here. Ry was gorging himself on the audiences attention and she tried to catch his eye and wink encouragement at him, but he was too engrossed in the performance to notice.

seminalsemiotic
Renee grinned and raised an eyebrow at Ry as the boy slid his arm around her. Leaning over, she kissed his cheek, eliciting a few "Oooh"s from the audience, even though most of them knew about Renee and Deirdre by now. They were just getting into the performance, like any good audience should.

She climbed up onto the stage once more, directing her gaze at Ry as she spoke her opening lines.

"O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"

The audience chuckled at her little mockery.

"The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mold of form,
Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!"

As her eyes roamed across the audience, they alighted on Kait. Renee gasped, her sharp intake of breath audible to the attentive crowd. For a moment she was frozen, eyes locked with Kait's. Then she managed to tear her gaze away and continue, allowing the shock and emotion filling her to bleed into her words.

"And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his musicked vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh,
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

She stepped off the stage quickly, making her way back to the table with Pierre, Ry and Deirdre. It wasn't that Kait's presence here wasn't welcome - she appreciated the support she had shown in coming down here tonight - but it was just such a shock to have her and Deirdre in the same room together. To have Deirdre sitting right here next to her, whispering how proud she was of her, and know that just a few steps away, Kait sat at the bar, hopefully with similar thoughts running through her head. She felt so torn, even though she shouldn't have.

Would this be how Kait would feel when she and Scarlett finally met?

epithet_
As he stood to make his way to the stage for second time, Ry found himself gladdened that he had decided against making one of Hamlet's soliloquies. That Renee had already chosen something out of Macbeth and he was now about to do the same was no problem. It had been evenly spaced out between then and now what he was about to say.

This time it was Ry who let the depths of darkness and the edge of madness take him as he opened into his monologue. For truly, what other themes were rated so highly in Macbeth? "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow."

For a moment, Ry lost himself in the monologue, in the words he related, in how they related to real life. Even all these centuries later, they still struck true. Must be why they studied them still in high schools.

"Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."

He took a deep breath and tried not to have it that it was his father he was thinking about, his home life, his own life.

"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."

Coming back to himself, he realised that he had already completed most of this monologue without even thinking about it. It was one he knew well, one of his favorites, and he knew he had done it justice. Still, he noticed that Renee was staring at him with worry in her eye. He noticed too that Slink was sitting and trying to catch his eye.

For them then, he forced himself to pull himself back together and give his audience and indeed the whole of Dantes, the end to this part of the performance that they all desired.

"It is a tale
Told by an idiot,"
His voice spat that word out with his disdain, and watched as the crowd lapped it up,
"full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

And then, he would reward himself with a drink. Strongly alcoholic, preferably.

slinkster_ghoul
Stephie grinned back up at Ry, successful in her winking attempt, and turned round to find someone else she recognised. Jude was there, looking all tall and thin and vivacious like usual. Stephie snuck up behind her and grabbed her round the waist. "Hullo!"

firehaunted
Jude jumped at the suddenly grabbing and almost shoved an elbow into Slink's face before realising it was her. Then she breathed and pulled herself a little bit loose, uncomfortable with the contact. "Hey."

slinkster_ghoul
Stephie let her go and grinned sheepishly. "Looks like they're possessed, doesn't it? Any bets on a winner?"

firehaunted
Jude sipped her drink and smirked into it. "Not Ry." She thought they were both rather good- she wondered how well she'd do up there- but she wanted Renee to kick Ry's arse.

epithet_
"Gee thanks," Ry murmured just over Jude's shoulder, reaching the bar just in time to hear her last words. "Double shot of the same," Ry said, looking up at the bartender who was looking at him with the girls with interest. "Better make that with ice this time though."

Then he faced Slink and Jude again. "Surprised to see you here. Not so surprised to see you rooting for the other team now that you're here." He shrugged.

firehaunted
"The other team?" She raised an eyebrow. "You sound like you actually think this is a seriously contest." Then she shrugged. "You both sound pretty equally matched anyways."

slinkster_ghoul
"Who's judging this, anyway?" Stephie asked, looking around for anyone who looked like they were trying to lord over the rest of the bar. But it seemed that tonight, everyone was trying to lord over everyone else, so she had no idea.

juniper_berries
With a slightly uncertain smile that she was fairly sure none of the other three noticed once they all started talking, Kait faded away from the bar. She'd long finished her drink now anyway. Standing apart, Kait remained to watch as Renee finished her final soliloquy before planning to slip out of the bar and back to her own place.

She was glad she had decided to come out to see this tonight.

epithet_
"I think Lou, in theory, will be judging by..." Ry paused. He glanced critically at Jude. "I don't think I'll tell you. However, thanks for what I think is the closest I've ever gotten to a compliment from you."

firehaunted
Jude gave him nothing but a shrug and went back to her drink.

slinkster_ghoul
"Wow, you can feel the warm fuzzies in this bar tonight." Stephie rolled her eyes.

seminalsemiotic
Renee had been a little distracted as Ry performed his Macbeth soliloquy. It was one of the most beautiful and heartfelt renditions she had ever witnessed, but she just couldn't prevent her eyes from constantly sliding over to the bar. Ry and Steph had joined Jude, blocking Kait from view. When she looked back now, Kait had disappeared from the bar altogether. Had she left...?

No... she was there, doing her best to fade into the background. Poor girl. Renee didn't want her to feel as though she had to do that... but then, what else was there really to do?

She put on a brave face, her composure more or less returned to her now, and stepped up to the stage for the third and final time.

She had meant to end with The Taming of the Shrew, but as she collected her strength, another thought struck her. There was another soliloquy that she knew well, that being here in this room, watched by Kait... she needed to perform it. Needed to say those very particular words...

"Ay me!" she sighed, turning her gaze to imagined stars in the ceiling.

"O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet."

For two lines, she dared lower her eyes to Kait's, addressing her directly.

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any another word would smell as sweet."

Her gaze shifted to Deirdre now, her lips smiling the romance to her.

"So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself."

The audience loved it. There were many who found Renee and Deirdre adorable, even unparalleled as a couple, and as far as they were concerned, the whole soliloquy had been for Deirdre. Only Renee and Kait knew that it wasn't really Deirdre in her thoughts this time...

She stepped off the stage, relinquishing the area for Ry's final soliloquy. The crowd were on the edge of their seats awaiting him. He had worked them well, and their excitement said much of his skill. Renee smiled as Ry made his way forward...

epithet_
Ry glanced at Slink and Jude before stepping up towards the stage one last time. He had the perfect ending note to go with, but suddenly, his heart was not as much in it. Still, hiding behind his rendition of Robin Goodfellow, Ry began to speak.

"If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear, and this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream."

Upon Renee, his eyes fell instinctively, but unlike the first time, they did not linger there. Slowly, his eyes swept upon Deirdre and he wondered what the redhead would be like to live with. He had known Renee for more than half a year now, but knew her girlfriend not at all.

His gaze then turned in the direction Renee's own eyes had wandered.

"Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. Else the Puck a liar call." Ry had no idea why it was this girl Renee's eyes had fallen upon. He vaguely recognised that the girl had been nearby when he had first wandered towards the bar. Perhaps it was another poetry buff?

Last of all, his eyes turned to Jude... and Slink.

"And so good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends."

There was a moment of silence and appreciation. It was the third and final one; six soliloquies dramatised in total. Then someone stood up to clap. And another. Soon the whole bar seemed to be clapping, and Ry caught Renee's eye to silently order her to his side. This was the two of them. They had done this.

It had actually been fun.

seminalsemiotic
Renee grinned and quickly stepped up to the stage, spontaneously pulling Ry into a hug. He wasn't the most physical of boys, but in that moment, there really wasn't much he could do to stop it. She kissed him on the cheek, then linked arms with him as they stepped forward to bow.

epithet_
Ry rolled his eyes as he was forced to submit himself to the end of performance hug. The cheer and noise about them was almost intoxicating. But not as intoxicated as he wished to be.

"We need to drink more after this," Ry murmured to Renee as a side that nobody outside the two of them on the stage would have heard. He grinned down at her. Standing like this, he realised again how short she was. It was refreshing, so used to standing next to Jude had he become.