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The trouble is, Hugh thinks, is that there's usually no one else to blame. In a way, he wishes there was some camera problem, or something gone wrong with the set, or something that could let them all sit around waiting for an hour or two. The only thing wrong is them.
He's been saying the same words over and over, until they've lost whatever sense they had in the first place. It's the most ridiculous thing - the author unable to deliver his own words, the most ridiculous, sieve-brained, idiotic thing - he can't even trust himself to remember a sketch he wrote in the first place.
As it happens, he's not even sure that he even wrote this thing anymore. The words feel disconnected from him, rhythm lurching gracelessly around in his brain, and they don't feel like him and they don't feel like Stephen either. It's just two tall men in a room, shouting at each other.
He wishes he could at least get some sort of signal from Stephen, some sense of where they are, what they're doing. He trusts Stephen's brain better than his own, most of the time. Stephen even at his most quixotic has a sense of just what to say, what sounds right, able to find meaning in the most convoluted sentences, or at least to imply meaning. Hugh's never stopped admiring the way Stephen can say absolutely anything.
Except now Stephen's just as lost as he is, which is why they've been here for two fucking hours trying to get one ten minute sketch on film. It's been an agonizingly long time since he heard a laugh. Somewhere among the thousand pairs of eyes in the audience, Rowan and Sunetra are watching them unprofessionally arsing about. Rowan's probably wondering why he ever worked with either of them.
He keeps looking at Stephen, trying to gauge where they are, hoping against hope, but he can't see anything in Stephen's eyes, any kind of reaction to what's happening. Stephen stops listening when things go wrong, plowing on alone, lost in his own head, and there's no distracting him. Hugh keeps trying to catch his eye, to say, Stephen, I've got no fucking guide, but he can't get a reaction. He might as well not even be there, for all the attention Stephen's giving him.
Desperate to keep from turning into the invisible man, he keeps trying various combinations of words, like mashing puzzle pieces together, but nothing sounds right. He's not Stephen. He's never as sure of what he's saying as Stephen is.
He wants to go home.
They stop tape - again - and one of the crew says tentatively, taking two steps forward until his toes barely graze the side of the set, "Do you suppose that we should take fifteen minutes?"
It's obviously been passed down from on high, and it frustrates him even more, because no one can ever just come out and say what they're thinking. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, avoiding answering.
Stephen says, "You mean, can we perform reparative neural surgery on ourselves in the span of no less than fifteen minutes?"
It's a quick-change act; two hours of stumbling and not listening and generally looking like idiots, and the minute the cameras are off, Stephen's instantly silver-tongued again. Instantly impressive and funny and charming, giving all his attention to whoever's speaking. Hugh wants to throttle him.
"Twenty minutes, then," comes from somewhere behind the camera.
"We'll be here all night," Stephen says softly.
"We've already been here all night," Hugh says. He takes a step off the set.
"Hugh," Stephen says. Hugh thinks, Don't, please.
"Don't look that way." Stephen is insinuating, ingratiating. "That dolorous, compunctious look. Is it really worth it?"
"This is utter shit, Stephen," Hugh says.
Stephen puts a hand on his shoulder, like he's quieting an unruly child. "It's never as bad -"
"Oh, fuck off," he spits, shoving Stephen's hand off his shoulder. "You're so bloody patronizing. Go show off to someone else."
Stephen's eyes darken. Hugh turns around and walks off the set, ignoring the crew's startled faces and keeping his back to the audience. He propels himself down the hallways back to the tiny dressing room. He slams the door behind him; it makes a tinny, hollow sound.
The room turns airlessly silent when the door shuts. Almost instantly, the fight goes out of him; all that's left is bone-weariness and a thin, flat feeling at the back of his head. He doesn't know what he came back here to do, or even why he's here at all. Isn't this the way it always goes, he thinks, always, always, always.
He lights a cigarette and sits down. The more he thinks, the more ridiculous he feels - snapping and storming off the set, the worst kind of spoiled prima donna behavior. He'd thought it was something he'd grow out of, that if he just worked long enough and hard enough, he'd be more professional and make life easier for everyone around him. But he's just spent six weeks shooting in Wodehousian Devon and now five straight days trying to finish this series, and he isn't any better and he doesn't know how to get better.
He stubs the cigarette out and lights another, breathing in smoke and feeling his vocal cords crackle. He should skulk back to work, apologize for unforgivable behavior, apologize to Stephen, and try to just get the goddamned fucking scene right.
At the moment, shame is winning out over duty. He rolls his aching shoulders and tries to think of appropriate rousing slogans.
When the cigarette burns down to the filter, he stands up, thinking of Rudyard Kipling and waving the lingering smoke away. He opens the door. Stephen is out in the hall.
"Hello," Hugh says, too startled for anything else.
"Hello," Stephen says. He's slouched against the opposite wall, all ungainly hands and legs, looking for all the world like he's expecting Hugh to call him on the carpet.
"I'm so sorry," Hugh says. "I acted like - Stephen, you haven't been here for long, have you?"
Stephen says, "I was - You see, I couldn't - I can't -" There's a half-choked sound at the end. It's Stephen choking back his words; Stephen always has so much that he needs to say.
"Stephen," Hugh says. "Stephen."
He puts a hand on Stephen's shoulder, slow and English-awkward. He forgets these things, he forgets how easily Stephen bruises, and he hates that it's so easy for him. Stephen keeps trying to talk and strangling on the words.
Hugh puts both arms around him and does the talking for him. He doesn't really know what he's saying; he's murmuring apologies and endearments in the same breath and rubbing Stephen's back.
"It's just always got to be fucking wrong," Stephen finally says into Hugh's shoulder, voice muffled with cotton. "I just always manage to cock it all up, it's like some traveling entropic mass."
"No, no, no," Hugh says. He holds Stephen up with both hands. "Stephen, I'm a fool, that's all. Come on now. Poor little animal. It's all right."
He keeps talking nonsense, holding on tightly, and then he's kissing Stephen's forehead and his eyes and the top of his head, and finally his mouth is pressed to Stephen's, or maybe it's the other way around. They knock against the wall's sticky paint, Hugh's left arm pinned below Stephen's right. Hugh's knuckles brush against paint flakes. He doesn't know what to do with his fingers.
"Someone - someone will see," Stephen says breathlessly. "Hugh -"
Hugh makes an inarticulate noise around Stephen's bottom lip, wrapping a protective arm around Stephen's hip and stumbling sideways back into the dressing room. He kicks the door shut with his foot.
They fall back against the couch in a tangle of legs; he holds onto Stephen's wrist while Stephen, schoolboy-clumsy, holds onto his thigh. Stephen finally gasps, "'M out of breath," and Hugh lets him go. His mouth feels swollen, his heart is hammering.
"Bit of cardiovascular work," he says, hoping Stephen will laugh.
Stephen slides off the couch, kneeling on the floor with his head and shoulders sprawling heavily across Hugh's knees. Hugh puts a hand on the back of his neck.
"Do we have to go back?"
"I don't care. I don't care."
"Lying," Hugh says. "You always care."
Stephen says nothing for a moment. "I suppose I was rather beastly."
"Stop," Hugh says.
"And I shouted at one of the crew. When you left, they asked me something or they ventured an opinion, and I -"
"You'd been rather goaded into it by me."
Stephen sighs. Stephen is always ready to take the blame.
"Don't," Hugh says. "Don't do that." He holds onto Stephen's shoulder.
"I hate this fucking sketch," Stephen mumbles. He takes a breath, his muscles easing under Hugh's hand.
"What I don't understand," Hugh says, "is why you don't just give me a good walloping when I act this way. One good hit, boom, it's over."
"Because I don't think it would benefit us in the long run, tender heart."
"Yes, it would."
He feels Stephen start to smile. "And then you'd go into a weeklong sulk and we'd never get anything done."
"You wound me."
"Always unintentionally," Stephen says. "Always."
For a minute, he rests his fingertips against Stephen's face. Stephen rubs his knee.
"Shall I prepare the young master's sackcloth and ashes before we go?" Stephen asks finally.
"I think so," Hugh says, waiting for Stephen to move first. "The formal ones, if you please."