Method Acting – Where you live in the role you're playing
A/N: This story starts near the end of Season Two. FYI: RIB is Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, and Brad Falchuk, the Producer/Writer team of Glee
Is it better to be attracted to the package and then have to discover if you like its soul or to be attracted to a soul and hope you like the package? I like your soul and I like the package it's wrapped in…
Chapter 1 Before the Sunrise
As he woke, his breath caught in his throat and an involuntary moan escaped. Oh god… no. He locked up all his muscles, waking to find he was balancing right on the edge of an orgasm. Involuntarily, his memory went back to the dream that had left him gasping and recalling the feel of his hips against the heaving body beneath him. ohhhh… The desperate control he was trying to hold loosened and with another moan, he lost it. As he came, the scent and the slick of the body he was thrusting into faded away and he was left alone in his bedroom with the gradual slowing of his heartbeat, his breath heaving, and a cooling sticky mess in his bed.
"Damn it", he growled in exasperation, his mouth creasing in distaste at the slippery mess in his bed.
The sun hadn't even come up yet but the light in the window had that thin pearly glow that meant it soon would. His clock said 5:18 am. Great. That meant he had gotten barely 5 hours of sleep…again. He felt drained and exhausted, which is not the best way to start another twelve or fourteen hour work day.
He could see the pale silvery light drifting across the beach with the mist rising from the water, through the drapes he'd left open to the sea breezes to let the room cool off overnight. The day's heat left in the sealed-up house the night before had made him forgo the boxers he usually wore to bed. He hated the mechanical hum of the air conditioning and seldom needed it here on the coast. Since he didn't have the option of pulling the covers up and staying in bed, he might as well collect his shattered equilibrium and clean up. He stripped the bed of the silver grey sheets and wiped down his hip and leg. The washer could run while he showered and then the sheets would dry while he drove into the city.
He wasn't due at the studio for another two hours, but it was going to be a full day, one of his last Dalton days. An unwilling smile turned up the corner of his expressive face as he realized that his early morning wake-up call meant that the day would have less pressure now than it might have.
As he brushed his teeth and shaved he was thinking about the reasons why his relationship with Darren was slowly evolving into something different. He had made it his personal rule that he not get involved romantically with the people he worked with. Unfortunately, that resulted in no romance at all, since his work days tended to be 12 or 14 hours or more. Personal appearances, meetings, commuting and chores took up whatever was left over.
Working with the playful and talented Dalton Warbler guys had been, on the one hand, fun and entertaining. They were great guys and he would miss them now that his character was returning to McKinley. On the other hand, they were always very physical, poking and fist bumping, and walking around with their arms over each other's shoulders while they practiced dance steps and sang snatches of songs with quite the 'bromance' going with each other. He wasn't sure if it was because he was the highly paid talent or because he was gay but they seemed to treat him with a little more distance. Darren bridged both worlds easily, everybody's best buddy. Even so, all that testosterone surrounding him tended to make his libido spike, especially around him.
Darren had been introduced to Glee and the world as Kurt's love interest and boyfriend Blaine, and he was a genuinely warm and sensitive human being with an intensity that permeated everything he did. They got along together well, with none of the weirdness that a straight guy playing a gay role might have generated. Darren had told him he had been raised in San Francisco, the gay capital of the States and that he was happy to portray a proud gay teen.
He also said he had worked with lots of gay actors and had always enjoyed working with them... as long as everybody stayed professional. Ok… message received, he's not personally interested in gay guys. Chris thought it wouldn't be a problem, since neither were the rest of the guys in the cast and they were all his buddies. He hadn't taken into consideration that Darren's role as Blaine put him in a totally different situation.
As time went by and Blaine's role developed from mentor, to flirt, to prospective boyfriend, he found himself increasingly attracted to Darren. They worked together more and more as the story arc with Kurt and Blaine progressed, especially when Kurt transferred to Dalton. Then they did the photo shoot for EW together and spent the whole day in teasing proximity, touching and holding each other in character as gay boyfriends Kurt and Blaine. It was exquisite torture. By the end of that day he could barely keep from launching himself at Darren.
On another day, he had fallen asleep in his trailer at lunch time and Darren came by to find out why Chris was keeping the 20 or so cast and crew waiting at about $5000.00 an hour, squatting down with his hand on his shoulder to wake him. Chris made a seamless transition from dreaming about kissing Darren to having his smiling face about 6 inches from his. He was leaning forward to make his dream a reality when Darren laughingly said, "Move your ass, sleeping beauty. Everybody is waiting for you", and then punctuated it with a slap on his butt!
The day they shot the kiss scene he had built up such anticipation he damned near passed out when they finally did kiss. He had prepared himself for a sweet and innocent first kiss and sure as hell wasn't expecting the lip burner he got from Darren. Holy hell! The director actually asked Darren to dial it down for a couple takes, but Ryan loved the first one because he looked so…ravished. His tell-tale complexion turned bright red, never allowing him to hide his reactions. Darren was a little smug about being able to make Chris' whole body light up, no matter how he tried to be cool.
The camera crew teased him mercilessly about disappearing for half an hour at lunch break and at the end of the sixteen takes to the privacy of his trailer. He had no reasonable defense since he was doing exactly what they thought he was. Since that day, just being too close to Darren caused the same effect as half a day of kissing had.
It was Hollywood tradition, so they said, to fall in love with your co-star, but he really hoped he was just attracted to him and not falling in love with his straight friend. They shared the same cynical sense of humour and consuming interest in theater and music of all kinds. They could talk for days and never run out of stuff to talk about… as long as he sat more than a couple feet away from him. With so much in common he was finding it more and more difficult to maintain an emotional distance while having to act like he was in love with Darren most of the time that they spent together.
But Chris knew very well whose hips he had been holding in that dream. You could police your conscious thoughts but not your dreams. He had to admit he was in lust, if not in love with Darren. But Chris was a far better actor than many people gave him credit for. He would die before he let anyone know how he really felt about him.
After his shower he dried his hair and realized it was getting too long again; time for a trim. He dressed for work in his usual comfort clothes, jeans, a snug gray tee shirt and a blue plaid button-down shirt over that, and hoped the day would go smoothly. He crammed the freshly washed sheets into the dryer and started it, grabbed a bottle of orange juice and toasted a bagel. He put some schmear on the bagel and grabbed his keys, phones and wallet and he was ready to drive back into the haze rising over the city.
He connected his IPhone to the car stereo and his blue Camaro cruised down the coastal highway into the city and toward the television studio that had changed his life so radically almost two years ago.