The next few months were some of the toughest of David’s life, but they were also some of the best. David never knew how much he enjoyed working on TV. The only other television production he'd been on had been Lust Story and that had been an unconventional experience. Having the opportunity to work on Night Mist with this cast and crew, David thought that this might be where he wanted to stay.

It wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy working on movies and even commercials, but there was something about how tight-knit the crew was and the way that Nabila seemed to be an expert at problem solving and working around the confines of the budget, location, and timing. It made David feel like they were accomplishing so much and forming life-long friendships along the way.

Besides, the idea of television was comforting to David; as long as there was a next season, there was a potential for more work. Well, if you weren't scheduled to die in the season finale.

But all of it was worth it to have been able to meet the people he'd met here. He hoped he'd be able to stay in touch with Amelia afterwards. And Louis.

He'd been a dedicated admirer of Louis Greene for years, but meeting him, getting to see him as a person and not just a talent, had only strengthened David's regard. It was probably presumptuous, but David hoped that he could keep Louis in his life even after they parted ways. Even if he wasn't sure exactly what that would look like.

David's stomach still fluttered when he thought of that night, but aside from that, things had gone back to normal between them. The two of them had started talking again like friends, both seeming adamant to pretend that nothing happened that night in the parking lot with Louis leaning over the car door, his eyes sparkling and his mouth quirked in a soft smile before...

David flushed. Even the thought of it had him feeling more nervous than the time he'd bared it all for his first ever appearance in Lust Story.

David supposed that Louis must have meant it when he said that they could leave it all in a dream if that was what David wanted. The longer he thought about it, though, the less sure he was that he wanted to leave it at that. But the longer he waited, the less he felt like he could bring it up.

Louis didn't seem upset that David had—not rejected, but more or less ignored his advances. He felt guilty about that. Sometimes he wondered if he should bring it up. But Louis had never brought it up again, either. And, even if he did bring it up, David had no idea what he'd say.

The biggest problem was that David did want to explore something more with Louis—he just didn’t want to try something and have it ruin their friendship. Satisfying his curiosity—infatuation?—was definitely not worth a friendship that David was coming to value like few other relationships he had. David just couldn't justify it when he couldn't be sure that his interest in Louis extended as far as Louis interest in him.

How did other people know so instinctively what they wanted?

It had never come that easily to David and until Louis, he hadn't even questioned it. He'd just assumed he was straight, but now that he thought about it, he wasn't exactly sure anymore.

Did David find men attractive in the same way he thought women were beautiful?

Well, he certainly thought that some men were handsome. Beautiful, even. That didn’t mean he wanted to sleep with them, though.

Actually, he didn’t necessarily want to sleep with most women, either. In fact, David had never given much thought to sex in general....

Did he want to sleep with Louis, though?

That was an altogether easier and much harder question to answer.

He liked Louis. He really liked Louis. He wanted to be close to him and know him, to be physically affectionate, to hold him, even. David would dearly like to kiss him again, if he was being completely honest.

The rest was more complicated, though. David thought he may well want to sleep with Louis. Or if want wasn’t exactly the right word, then he thought that he’d at least like to try sleeping with Louis.

Those were dangerous thoughts, though.

Louis was a serious and sure of himself. He didn't seem like someone to experiment with. Louis knew what he wanted and bi-curious didn’t seem to fit the bill.

And that wasn’t even considering the fact that his sister was dying.

No, it made David a bit of a dick to even consider it, really. Louis should have something as steady and sure has he was, not David's general messiness.

Even if Louis had started it, a treacherous part of his mind whispered.

Louis wasn’t someone to experiment with. He repeated that like a mantra over the months until the night of the cast party was relegated to the part of his mind that was generally off-limits and best forgotten.

Their friendship had only grown stronger over the months, and that would be enough for David.

*****

“Hey, Lou,” David said, taking his rolled up script and ruffling it against Louis's hair because he knew that it always got him a glare. This time it was only greeted by that odd expression that Louis got when David called him ‘Lou.’

He didn’t know when it started happening but Louis had never actually asked him to stop calling him that, so David kept doing it. He liked the way it shortened his name into something easily managed—cutting down on the syllables by fifty percent.

Besides, no one else called him anything but Louis and David liked that it made them seem closer, like better friends than anyone else.

“What do you want?” Louis asked in that faux brusque manner he donned when he knew David was trying to be obnoxious.

David sat down in the chair opposite the couch where he was going over his lines. They were on the last week of filming and David was trying to soak it all up—and forget his nerves about what came next.

“You going to the party Friday?” he asked, fiddling with his script to distract his hands.

One of Louis's thick brows quirked at the gesture and David tried to get his hands to stop. It was a pointless endeavor. Once his hands got to doing something, there was really no intervening.

This was especially true when David's mind kept returning to the last party they had both been to. The party that they had ditched to hang out at a park until the middle of the night and then drive home amidst a quiet conversation and the lull of late-night radio. And then Louis had kissed him in the parking lot.

David crumpled the script and then smoothed it out again. Louis wasn’t someone to experiment with.

“I think I’m pretty much expected to show up to this one,” Louis said, his expression saying all it needed to about Louis opinion on get togethers. He would probably rather be home with his sister. David could understand that. He would, too, in Louis's place.

That didn't stop David from being glad that he'd be there.

“It’ll be fun,” David said, kicking Louis's leg lightly with his toe. Louis scowled at him half-heartedly.

“Parties are never fun,” Louis said. "They are loud and unproductive."

“Yeah, but you’ve only been to one of them with me; I’m always fun,” David said.

Louis's eyes caught on his with an assessing sharpness and David's heart gave an almost painful thud, smile faltering. David swallowed.

“Besides," he continued more seriously, "it’s the last chance to see the crew before the end of the season. You have plans afterwards?”

Louis hummed in the affirmative and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been invited to a wedding back in Weldstone Harbor. I’ll leave late June. And you? Do you have another job lined up?”

Since the announcement that Louis and David would be the lead roles in this season of Night Mist, David had actually gotten a couple requests for audition tapes and a whole new slew of potential commercials.

The season had yet to air on Cybervid, but the fact that Louis was in it had definitely garnered some interest. Just not quite enough to have him secure in his future prospects.

“I’ve got a couple opportunities,” David hedged.

He hadn’t been asked back for any in person auditions, but commercials were still work, so David was taking it as a win.

“You mean more commercials,” Louis said, sounding almost irritated.

David slumped down in his chair and rolled his eyes, feeling surprisingly defensive. Sometimes he thought Louis forgot that not everyone had abundant success and opportunities.

“So what if I do?” David said, his tone coming out with more bite than he'd intended. "Work is work, and I don't have the luxury of being be picky. I'm lucky to get the offers I do.”

“You’re wrong,” Louis said, leaning forward until he was close enough that David could practically feel the heat of his body invading his personal bubble. “You are good at this, David. And it’s not just a disservice to your own ability that you keep acting in fucking commercials, but a disservice to every production that’s missing you as a key component.”

Their eyes met for a moment too long, Louis entirely too close and saying things that made David's throat go dry and heat rise in his face. David looked away first and he thought he heard Louis sigh.

"David," Louis said, "you deserve better than that. Don't sell yourself short."

He said it with such solemnity that it made David's heart ache a little. It was an unfamiliar kind of belief—like he genuinely thought David had the potential to improve productions.

But even if Louis did believe it, it didn't mean it was the truth. And it didn't mean the rest of the world did.

“Work is work,” David said resolutely. "I'm not above taking what I'm offered."

“Work is work, but wasted potential is something else altogether,” Louis muttered. "You should be finding opportunities that are actually worth your time."

That stung. David let out a long breath, turning away until he could control his expression again.

“I have tried, you know,” he said after a moment, forcing himself to relax.

He hated this. Hated admitting that he was still failing, despite his efforts. Admitting to someone with that kind of faith in him that he wasn't worth it. Admitting to Louis that he wasn't good enough. That he was still a disappointment.

"My agent isn’t incompetent, it's not like I haven't been auditioning—I'm just not..." David floundered for a moment before shaking his head. "I don't get parts. That's just how it is. I’m not sure why Katherine’s stuck around as long as she has.”

There was a long pause during which David resolutely curled his script into a telescope, then unfurled it and started rolling it the other way.

“Probably because she sees your potential, too,” Louis said.

“Or because Jennifer threatened her. Or bribed her. Or both,” David said, half in jest.

Louis started to say something, then paused with a wry noise that had David glancing over at him.

“I was about to say that she wouldn’t do that," Louis said, "but, on second thought, I wouldn't put it past her. If your agent hasn’t seen your talent, though, she’s not a very good agent.”

"I have to be realistic," David said.

Louis looked like he wanted to argue, but he only said, "What do you mean?"

“For every job, there are dozens of talented actors," David said.

He could practically hear Louis's eyebrows saying, 'Yes, David, that is how auditions work.' But Louis stayed quiet.

"What I mean is, I'm not particularly talented, I'm nothing exceptional. There are plenty of other people with more experience and more skill than I have. I'm lucky to have gotten as far as I have. It's enough.” It had to be enough.

Louis studied David for a long moment, as though he was trying to decode something very complicated. “You really aren’t just fishing for compliments, are you?” Louis asked, sounding almost surprised. “You really don't believe that you are talented.”

Shame crawled over David's skin and he shrugged. “We should stop talking about this. Things are fine, stop worrying about it.”

For once, David was not enjoying Louis's insistence on cutting straight to the core of things. He didn't want to talk about this. It felt less like intimacy and more like letting someone poke around in an open wound.

“No,” Louis said, glancing around to see if they were alone. They weren’t. Just one more reason David did not want to be having this conversation right now.

Louis stood up and David let out a sigh of relief before Louis hauled him up by the arm and said, “Come on.”

“What do you want?” David demanded as Louis dragged him by the arm out of the building.

“You're finished for the day, right? I’m taking you home for dinner so we can have a chat,” he said.

“Woah, no way,” David said, stopping in his tracks. “We’re done talking about this. Agree to disagree.”

Louis stopped, giving him an irritated look, but didn't drop his hold on David's arm.

"David," he said.

"Louis," David said, exasperated.

He didn't know what his face was doing, but Louis expression softened as he looked at him and he gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. For a moment David thought that he might let him off at that, but then he started pulling him across the studio again.

“We aren’t done talking about it," he said, "It’s absurd that you have no idea how good you are. Hell, I know I’m good, and you know what Jennifer said to me that started all of this? She said that you were better than I am.”

David's stomach lurched, face heating. Only Jennifer could say something like that to Louis Greene. If it weren't for the warmth of Louis's hand on his bicep, David thought he might have curled up in shame right then and there.

Louis tugged him all the way out to the parking lot, giving David an expectant look as he opened the passenger side door of his Prius and waited for David to get in. David hesitated. He thought that if he really said no, Louis would probably respect it. Surely he wouldn't go so far as kidnapping.

But there was another part of him, maybe a slightly larger part, that didn't want to turn Louis down—didn't want to disappoint him—even if it meant allowing Louis to pick apart all of David's insecurities.

Louis seemed to see his hesitation, because he offered with a small smile, “I wasn’t sure what to think of that at first. I watched The Wake of War and I knew you had talent. Hell, I knew you weren't bad from what I'd seen of Lust Story."

Louis rolled his eyes and David's lip twitched in answering amusement. Louis leaned against the open car door, his hand on David's arm more of a friendly presence than an insistence at this point. It would only take one step to put them close enough to kiss.

"But I get it now. I see your skill and your passion every day, David."

David wished Louis would stop looking at him like that—like he was something special. It made his heart beat too fast and standing there over the damned door was making it really hard for David to keep his eyes off his lips.

"David, I know now that Jennifer was right," he said, his eyes soft but serious. "Please, get in the car."

And David did.

*****

The car ride seemed to take at least twice as long as usual. David was clearly upset, almost sullen. It was ridiculous, considering all Louis had done was insist that he was a skilled actor.

Louis didn’t understand why David couldn’t see it.

People always assumed Louis was conceited because he acknowledged his own skills, but, really, Louis just knew where his strengths and weaknesses lay.

David, it seemed, did not.

That bothered Louis more than it probably should have. David constantly accepted less than he was worth and was almost stubbornly unaware of his value.

It didn't help that David took rejection like a personal failure, either, instead of the luck of the draw that it was. Rejection was less a judgment on his acting ability than it was an artistic choice.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Though, Louis had to admit that there was room for improvement when it came to David's auditioning.

He glanced over at David as he pulled into the driveway, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. David's expression was curious but neutral. He'd brought David here on a whim, but he'd never brought a man home to his sister before. Not that David was here as a man, so to speak, and Rosemarie wasn't even going to be here, but it felt significant anyway.

Louis pulled into the garage and unbuckled his seatbelt, glancing at David again before he climbed out of the car. Rosemarie’s house was two stories and built awkwardly onto the side of a hill.

It was large and empty and Louis had always thought the architect had been a moron. On more than one occasion, he'd told Rosemarie it was silly to live in such a huge house all alone. It was one of his less tactful thoughts. He knew that she had always wanted a bit, close-knit family. But, instead, she'd only ever had Louis. And Louis had hardly ever been around.

Louis felt suddenly protective of this house—of Rosemarie's home—as he showed David inside. It wasn't that he thought David would be as judgmental as Louis, himself, was, but he didn't think he could handle David judging it without resenting him a little.

“This is your sister’s house?” David asked as they entered into the mud room.

“Yeah,” he said as he shut the door to the garage with the quiet shushing of the weather strip.

“Your sister seems to have better taste than you,” he said, grinning cheekily over at Louis.

Louis let out a huff of laughter, shoulders relaxing.

“We’ll go up to the kitchen in a moment, but you can drop your things in the closet over there,” he said pointing to a door adjacent to the garage. While David did that, Louis deposited his own things in his bedroom. It was one of four on the bottom floor, but had been his room since Rosemarie bought the house, despite Louis never having lived here until she got sick.

“Louis?” David asked, poking his head hesitantly into the doorway. Louis beckoned him in and David looked around with open curiosity. The room wasn’t much to look at. He wasn’t very big on decorating, but Rosemarie had added a few things that made it ‘more homey.’

“I’m guessing Rosemarie decorated your room,” David said, grinning. Not for the first time, Louis wondered if David had some low level psychic ability, because he always seemed to read his mind.

“Why do you say that?”

“You are the most utilitarian person I know,” David said emphatically. “I can’t imagine you putting a glass figurine of a dog on your armoire. Actually, I have a hard time picturing you purchasing an armoire, too. You seem like more of the minimalist-free-standing-clothes-rack kind of guy.”

“Point taken,” Louis said, walking up beside David and picking up the figurine. He rubbed a thumb over the sharp point of one of its ears. “She got that because it reminded her of our dog when I was a kid.”

“You had a dog?” David asked, his bad mood seemingly forgotten.

“I’m more of a cat person,” Louis said with a shrug. “But Rabbit was exceptional as far as dogs go.”

“Rabbit?”

Louis let out a breath at the inevitable ribbing. “I was three and it had huge ears. I thought it was a rabbit when Rosemarie brought it home.”

David didn't quite laugh, but the glee was apparent in his face and Louis couldn't help but smile too.

“What kind of dog?” David asked. Their fingers brushed as David took the figurine, holding it like it was something precious. David didn't seem to notice. Absurdly, Louis felt a little jealous of the figurine. He studied David’s face as David examined the dog, like it was something more than a piece of glass. Louis had never thought of it as anything precious, but maybe it was.

“She was a boarder collie,” Louis said. “Died just after Starfly ended.”

Everything had happened all at once at that time. It was like the world was telling Louis that it was time to grow up. All of the things that had sustained him through his childhood had come to a close all at once. His mother had been convicted and Rosemarie had decided to move away from Weldstone Harbor. For the first time, Louis had really felt like he was on his own.

“I’m sorry. She must have been a good dog,” David said. Louis looked over to see David watching him.

Louis offered a small smile. "She was. She knew just about every trick in the book."

“I always wanted a dog, but my parents never had time. Always wanted a sibling, too, but they didn’t have time for that, either.” David made an exaggerated sad face and Louis huffed out a laugh.

“You’re all grown up now, you can get your own dog if you want one,” Louis said, shaking his head. "A sibling might be harder to obtain at this point. But you can find family in other ways, too.”

Louis realized how that sounded a little too late. He hadn’t meant for it to sound quite so intimate. He wasn't even necessarily referring to David and himself, but he couldn’t take it back, either. Though he'd only known David for nine months, he couldn’t imagine his life without him anymore.

David put the dog down quickly and laughed it off, though the flush creeping up his neck said that he certainly knew what Louis had implied. Was it a good flush or a bad one, Louis wondered. Part of him wanted to pull David around and find out.

"I can’t even afford myself let alone a dog,” David joked, then flinched, as though realizing he had accidentally brought up the topic he had been trying to avoid.

Right. There was a reason he brought David here and it had nothing whatsoever to do with bedrooms.

Louis smiled and guided him back out the door and up the stairs to the second floor, with its open beamed ceiling and enormous windows. Rosemarie’s bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room were on this floor.

David let out a low whistle as they entered the great room, looking up at the ceiling which was so high it probably could have fit a third floor beneath it.

“I think it’s bigger on the inside,” David said. “This is a beautiful house.”

“This is a terrible house," Louis corrected with a laugh. "I think the architect was a fraud. Have you ever tried cleaning roof beams that are a hundred feet in the air?”

David shook his head, though his expression said it was more pitying of Louis's world views than in answer to the question. “Leave it to you to appreciate things for their practicality and scorn them for their beauty.”

Louis shrugged. “I don’t mind things being beautiful,” he said, unable to stop himself from eyeing David up and down, “I just like them to be practical, too. Things can have more than one function.”

“Sure,” David said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, probably to keep from fidgeting.

Louis still couldn't pin down the signals he got from David. He thought David was interested, but at the same time, he seemed to steer clear of anything that suggested they might be more than friends—or at least that they could be more than friends.

At first, he'd wondered if David was just straight, but he had seen no evidence that David had a girlfriend and the way he looked at Louis didn't seem entirely platonic, either. Besides, if he was, why hadn’t he just said that he wasn’t interested in guys when Louis kissed him? That was what most guys would have done.

Actually, most guys would have punched him for that. It had not been Louis's finest moment.

But David hadn’t punched him or told him he was straight. He hadn't said anything at all.

And so Louis couldn’t get rid of the ridiculous hope that maybe David did return some level of interest. Louis wasn’t beautiful, certainly, but he was typically considered attractive and kept himself in peak condition—a sort of necessity in this line of work. He was generally appreciated by the men he slept with.

Maybe it was just that David had never been with a guy. He could understand that sort of hesitance, but he didn’t really know how to approach the matter with David without scaring him off. So he constrained himself to flirting with him endlessly in the hopes that he might take advantage of it at some point.

“You can sit at the bar and we can chat while I cook. What do you want?”

“Anything's good,” David said, taking a seat and immediately starting to toy with the little piggy salt shakers. "Just make whatever you usually do."

Typically, that response would be incredibly unhelpful, but he had known David long enough to understand that David meant it literally. He’d never seen anything that David wouldn’t eat. The man must have at least two extra stomachs. And an incredible metabolism, too, because he was all deliciously lean muscle.

“Is your sister joining us?” David asked, his leg starting up its usual restless rhythm. Louis shook his head.

“She’s meeting with her book club and that usually goes fairly late." If David noticed the unavoidable scorn in his voice at the words book club, he didn’t comment. Louis wasn’t against book clubs on principle, but when all they read were terrible vampire romance novels, he wasn’t sure what the point was.

“Oh,” David said. Louis wondered if he was imagining the disappointment in David’s voice. “I’d like to meet her. You’ve told me so much about her, that I feel like I know her already.”

Warmth bloomed in Louis's chest at that and he gave a small smile.

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Louis said. “She wants to meet you, too. She says you make a wonderful vampire.”

David laughed. “You’re the vampire this time,” he said.

“Apparently I’m too cliche as a vampire,” he said, gesturing to his dark hair and pale skin. “She says it ruins credibility of the myth.”

“But you’ve got that predatory smile.”

Louis gave him a sharp grin and he laughed again.

“Yeah, that one.”

Louis chuckled and checked the fridge to see what they had. He decided on a vegetable stir fry sautéed in white wine. That gave the meal the special flare of romance without going overboard. He pulled out a cutting board and started chopping vegetables as David watched from the bar.

“Back to the topic at hand,” Louis said after they had sat in comfortable silence for a moment. “I wanted to talk about why you aren’t getting callbacks.”

David was silent long enough that Louis looked up from chopping an onion to make sure he hadn't left.

“And why is that?” David relented, tone weary.

The defensiveness from earlier seemed to have gone and he just looked resigned, maybe even a little hurt. Louis chest ached at that, but he continued anyway.

“It’s because you are the most inconsistent auditioner I’ve ever met,” Louis said. “Well, that and you have no name yet. But that’ll come with time.”

“Thanks,” David said almost petulantly, "because I didn’t already know that I suck at auditioning.”

“That’s my point, though,” Louis said impatiently. “You aren’t always bad at it. And when you actually start acting, you get right into it. You are bad at auditioning, not acting. There is a difference.”

“That's great and all, but the one comes before the other," David said, shaking his head. "I appreciate your... confidence in me, but I don't know how to fix the auditioning. I've never been good at it and it's not like I haven't tried to improve."

Louis wanted to see David succeed, and not just because David was his friend. It felt like a great injustice that the world didn't know his name. He wanted everyone to see the David that he’d had the pleasure of getting to know over the last few months and understand the beauty there.

"How do I fix it?" David asked, something raw and vulnerable but also... hopeful in his eyes, as though he was willing to trust Louis to help, even as he expected it to hurt. Louis swallowed, throat dry under the weight of that gaze. Beautiful.

Yes, he wanted the world to know David, but there were some parts that Louis thought he'd like to keep just for himself.

“You’re already familiar with acting with me,” Louis said clearing his throat. “What if we made a couple audition tapes with you acting across from me?”

“No!” David said, sounding almost offended. Louis raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going to use your name to get auditions, Louis. That’s... It wouldn’t be on my own merit, then.”

Ah, it was about external validation, then.

“Then what if I just filmed some of them for you? I could give you pointers on what you’re doing.”

David considered it but shook his head. “I don’t think that’ll help. Jennifer has tried doing that and they still sucked. I really just can’t do auditions. They aren’t real enough and I feel like an idiot trying to please the directors.”

That was an interesting thought. Louis always found auditions to be very much the same as acting except for you weren't in costume. But, then, David had told him on multiple occasions that his acting was based on the story. Maybe that was why he struggled with auditions when he was so brilliant as soon as it came to getting into character.

“You’ve said that when you act, it’s because you can see the final picture in your mind,” Louis thought aloud as he rolled the pan to coat it evenly in oil. “And I’ve seen you become the characters you play in a way that most actors can only aspire to. What stops you from doing that in your auditions?”

“I can see the final piece,” David said, grimacing. “But it’s not a story. It’s just a tape of me sitting there talking at the directors.”

"Why?"

"Because that's what it is!"

“But it’s not,” Louis said. “I mean, that's what it is literally,” Louis continued quickly when David gave him an incredulous look. “It’s more than that. When you receive a piece of dialogue to read, it’s part of the character as much as any of the other parts. Just like the screen test. How was that different?”

“Because you were there,” David said, his frown getting comically close to a pout.

“I was there during your first audition, too,” Louis pointed out. He didn’t usually bring that up, but today it needed to be said.

David’s cheeks colored. “That was different. I was surprised, I’d never seen you in person before. Besides, you were just reading the lines.”

That piqued Louis's interest, but he couldn’t afford to get sidetracked right now.

“You just said that my presence wouldn’t help."

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, scratching a hand through his hair in frustration. He was leaning so far over the counter at this point that he was practically standing on the rungs of the bar stool. It made Louis want to smile. “When you were there, the characters suddenly had depth they didn’t have otherwise. On my own, they were just words on paper. I didn’t know them. But when you were in character, and I could see you as Don Christoph, not Louis Greene, the man who was playing Don Christoph.”

Louis hummed in understanding as he sautéed the onions and peppers with some garlic.

“Then you need the characters to come to life,” he said. David gave him a look that said, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

“But I can’t make them come to life until I know them. And in an audition, I don’t have enough information.”

“Then make it up,” Louis said, turning from the stove to meet David’s eyes so that he knew he was serious.

“Make it up? But that’s not actually the character. How can I be the character that the director is after if I don't know who I'm supposed to be yet?"

“No one knows who the characters will turn into until production starts. Every actor brings something different to the table—no two actors play the same character. Your interpretation is just as important as the original vision.”

David shook his head but didn’t argue.

“It’s true,” Louis pushed. “They just need to see what you are capable of. It might take some luck to get the first few call backs, but you have to start somewhere. And I don't mean with commercials. It’s really starting to piss me off that you seem to think that that’s all you're capable of.”

David shrugged, but seemed to be thinking it over. Louis watched him from the corner of his eye. David's head was turned down, fingers blindly fiddling with the salt shaker. He had pretty hands, long fingers and broad palms.

“I’m not sure I can come up with a character, even if I wanted to.”

“You do that already,” Louis said incredulously. David gave him a confused frown. It might have made Louis laugh if it wasn’t so preposterous. “You do that every single time you act out a character.”

“No, I don’t, it’s written in the script,” David insisted.

"David," Louis said in the tone Rosemarie used to say his name when he was being difficult.

"What?" David huffed.

“It’s not written in the script. There’s a basic description, there are actions and dialogue, but the characters themselves, that’s your own interpretation. What are you doing if not creating a character?

"Your acting is what makes all of the dialogue and direction come together. They aren’t real people, David, they are characters, it’s you that brings them to life.”

“It’s really not,” David said, but continued before Louis could interject. “I’m not saying that it’s not worth a try, because I’ll try anything at this point. I’d rather die than go back to being Jennifer’s runner.” He gave a dramatic shudder and Louis chuckled.

“Why don’t we practice then?” Louis said, “I’ll give you a scenario and you tell me what the characters are like.”

David didn’t look convinced, but he nodded anyway.

“That man out there,” Louis said, gesturing out the window with his spatula. David spun his chair around to see where Louis was pointing.

“The golfer or the one on the sidewalk?” David asked. Louis shrugged.

“The one on the sidewalk,” he said. “What’s he doing?”

“Walking down the sidewalk,” David said, almost petulantly.

“All right,” Louis said, not rising to the bait. “Why is he walking down the sidewalk?”

“How should I know?”

Louis gave David a long-suffering look. “Why is he walking down the sidewalk?”

“Fine. Uh, he’s walking down the sidewalk . . . Because he lost his dog.”

“His dog?” Louis prompted.

“Yeah, Jason Oliver,” David said, smirking mischievously at Louis. “He was a big fan of the show as a kid, and Jason is his best friend.”

“Why?” Louis prompted again. For someone who couldn’t make up characters, David certainly got into it quickly.

“Because he lost his wife in a car accident three years ago. He’s worried that he’s going to lose Jason too. They never had kids. He and his wife, not the dog. She wanted them and he didn’t. Now he regrets that, wishing that he had something left of her,” David said. "Not that that's any reason to start a family—"

“Does he find the dog?” Louis cut in before he got side tracked. He was actually curious to hear what David came up with.

“He’s going to find Jason, but not before he’s been hit by a car,” David said.

“That’s grim,” Louis commented.

David shrugged. “He’ll be fine, but he’ll have to have surgery from a handsome vet,” David continued. “One with lovely dark eyes and a kind smile.”

“So this is a romance?”

“Maybe,” David said. “He’s not sure he wants to get into anything new.”

“Because of his wife?” Louis asked softly.

When David didn't answer, Louis flicked off the stove and turned to face him more completely.

David was chewing on his lip, expression serious and eyes watching Louis in a way that had made his heart start pounding. Louis swallowed and moved closer, only stopping when he bumped up against the counter. David was still leaning over the counter, putting them close enough that Louis could count David's eyelashes as he looked down to the salt shaker.

“He’s worried because he doesn’t know if he feels that way," David said, voice rough. He cleared his throat. "Their friendship is too important, and if things go badly, he could never bring his dog there again.” David's eyes finally moving to meet Louis's with a hint of humor and a lot of something else.

“David—” Louis started, and David's eyes flicked down to his lips. Louis leaned forward a fraction of an inch and David's met his gaze again, expression almost painfully soft.

“Lou! Are you upstairs?” Rosemarie yelled from downstairs.

Louis swore and David jumped so high that he nearly fell off the stool.

“Come help me bring bags in. And are you cooking? Something smells great!”

The two of them exchanged a guilty glance.

“I’ll be right back,” Louis said, gesturing toward the stairs.

“I’ll come, too,” David said, hopping off the stool. “I can help.”

Louis nodded. This was probably as good a time as any to introduce the two of them.

“Oh,” Rosemarie said when they reached the landing. Rosemarie’s eyes flittered nervously over David before he smiled and she seemed to relax. “I didn’t know Louis had a guest over.”

“I’m David,” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs and taking Rosemarie’s hand. “You must be Rosemarie. Louis talks about you so much that I feel like we’ve already met.”

“Does he?” she asked, laughing and looking fondly over at Louis. “I could say the same of you, though. I can see why he’s so fond of you. You’re quite charming.”

“Awe, shucks,” David said, ducking his head bashfully even as he joked.

Rosemarie giggled.

“Sorry, I would have texted, but I though you had book club tonight.”

“I was supposed to,” Rosemarie said, “but Alice was sick, so we had to postpone it until next week.”

“What have you been up to instead?” he asked warily.

“Shopping with Margret,” she said, beckoning Louis towards the car. “There are bags in the car. We went to the bookstore.”

“We don’t have any more bookshelves.”

“Then we’ll buy some more. There’s still space in the teal bedroom.”

David smiled. “I spent a summer building a full-wall bookshelf with my mother once. With those high ceilings, that upstairs wall could hold a lot of books,” he mused.

Louis grimaced. "Don't put thoughts in her head," he said as he saw Rosemarie getting that gleam in her eyes that said she was trying to figure out when they could get started.

“What do your Sundays look like, David?” she asked.

David grinned at her, looking truly pleased to be drafted into spending his one free day doing manual labor.

“Completely clear, actually!” David said, glancing at Louis as if for permission.

“I’m not doing anything with paint or sawdust,” Louis said, crossing his arms.

“He says that, but he’ll have to jump in to tell us we’re doing it wrong,” Rosemarie said conspiratorially to David.

David nodded sagely. “I would imagine so, he likes to tell me what to do all day long, too.”

“He won’t even let me carry my own bags upstairs,” she said, waving Louis towards the car again. Louis rolled his eyes but went to the trunk to take inventory.

“Tough luck,” David said, consolingly. “But why don’t you let me carry your bags up today? It’s the least I can do since Louis is making dinner.”

“You really are a charmer. You're supposed to be a guest,” Rosemarie said, though she brought him into the garage to grab some bags anyway. Louis handed him two and took the last one himself before closing the trunk.

“What are you making, Lou?”

“Veggie stir fry,” Louis said.

Rosemarie gave him a disappointed look. “Can you cook anything else?” she asked, sounding serious enough that Louis's pride bristled and he frowned at her.

“Don’t pout,” she said.

“Hey, at least I don’t burn noodles,” Louis retorted.

David raised an eyebrow at Rosemarie. “Burn noodles?”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s full of it,” she said.

“Full of what, though?” Louis asked, tapping his chin. “Wit, charm, and talent, perhaps?”

“Conceit for starters,” Rosemarie said.

David laughed.

The fact that the two of them hit it off so quickly had Louis's heart loosening from a tension he didn’t even realize he felt. He had thought that they would get along, but Rosemarie was shy and David could be a little much sometimes. It was... good that they were getting on. Probably.

“Well, I think it smells delicious!” David said.

“You’ll eat fried bologna sandwiches, so I’m not sure that that’s a commendation,” Louis couldn't help but point out.

“Are you admitting that you can't cook?” Rosemarie asked.

Louis opened his mouth to respond, but David was already cackling his way up the stairs.

“I think I like your sister more than you, Louis,” David called back.

Louis just smiled fondly after him. He looked over to see that Rosemarie was watching him with a strange expression on her face. When he raised an inquiring eyebrow at her, though, she just shook her head and took his arm as they walked upstairs.

*****

By the end of the evening, David was almost as in love with Rosemarie as he was with Louis.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, though, he had to halt it in its tracks.

Love was a very strong word. He was probably not in love with Louis. He just liked being around him, thought he was gorgeous and talented, and wanted to keep him all to himself.

It was very much like he had felt about Jennifer all those years ago, except perhaps he was a little more interested in trying things with Louis than he had been with Jennifer. Not that that was particularly surprising. Fourteen was a little young for that kind of thing, wasn’t it?

Then again, sixteen wasn’t and he’d never been interested in anyone at sixteen. Was that abnormal? David hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now he wondered what that meant about him.

On their drive back to the B&B, David kept thinking about the way their eyes met over the counter, making him fidget more than usual, fingers tapping against his thigh. He thought that Louis had been about to kiss him again. David would have let him. David would have kissed him back.

And that would have been a mistake. Louis was not someone to experiment with.

When Louis had parked the car, David made an almost rudely quick escape up to his room.

He barely slept at all that night, what-if scenarios looping in his head until well past midnight.