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I.
thou art much too fair
“Methinks we overdid it,” Kit says, groaning as the excess of drink sparks such an ache between his temples that he wishes he hadn’t woken up at all.
“I almost feel that worthy innkeeper succeeded in his wrath,” Will agrees. He is burrowed beneath the pillow next to Kit, head hidden, presumably from the cruel sun and the world, and Kit quite sympathises.
“What was it - he was going to thump both of us if we didn’t cease drinking?” Kit muses.
“No,” Will says, and Kit can see his brown hair move as he shakes his head beneath the pillow. “No, it was a threat to make us stop singing.”
“I can perhaps understand that,” Kit says. “I don’t think we were particularly entertaining for his other guests.”
“His other guests are whores and beggars,” Will says, easy amusement in his voice. “And those who aren’t—“
“Are tax collectors drinking away that day’s earnings,” Kit fills in, laughing and regretting it immediately as his head threatens to split open again. “Will,” he says plaintively, pressing a hand over his eyes. “Will, I might die from this.”
He can hear rustling as Will, presumably, emerges from underneath his downy shield.
“Shhh,” he says, and it’s unfair, his voice is beautiful even at this moment, when all the world is on fire and hurts. “Hush,” he continues and takes Kit’s hand away, replacing it with his own. “Stay silent for a little bit, I shall try and massage away your pains.”
Kit can feel Will’s fingers slip over his forehead and groans in gratitude when he rubs over his temples, slow and all-too perfect, and he can feel his worst aches give way.
“You are never allowed to stop doing that,” he says, voice naked with gratitude.
Will kisses him, then, and Kit keeps his eyes closed, feeling Will draw out his aches with every pass of his talented fingers and that oh-so-stunning mouth.
They do not make it out of bed that day.
II.
bestow it till whatsoever star that guides my moving
“You, you—” Kit exclaims, feeling Will behind him, inside, fingers strong and covered in oil, twisting like the devil’s own hands are guiding him, but he doesn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence, Will’s every touch stealing the words from his mouth.
“The famed poet is silent,” Will says, voice ripe with laughter, but no scorn, never that. The deadliest pen in London is never turned on Kit, or at least, not like that.
“You wrote me another one,” he manages. “What need I say besides that?” Will slid it under his door, as with the one before that, and Kit read it when he first emerged from bed, and, well. He came to Will’s rooms straight away, because he had to. On the strength of those words, he could do nothing else.
“I thought you would object to my naming you sweet,” Will says, and his fingers do another turn. Kit is quite lucky he is already arse-up on this bed, or that pass would have tumbled him straight there.
“I don’t mind your delusions,” he said, and gasps when Will leans over his back, fingers digging deeper and mouth seeking out Kit’s neck, his ear.
“I’m not sweet,” he says, pointed.
“Never called you that, either,” Kit says, and then breaks, because he must: “Will, you, you demon, please—“
Will obliges, because he truly is sweet, and that cockstand, that glorious rod, is finally inside Kit. He feels as though he is being split open, but there’s very little pain, because Shakespeare, as Kit has learned, is considerate even in this.
“If you,” he manages, gasping when Will gets in a particularly stunning thrust, “if you weren’t you, you’d be insufferable, oh, bastard, come on—“
Will does, and Kit is resoundingly buggered into the bed until he spends, and until Will spends inside him, which Kit has always found rather demeaning and wet before, but thrills to feel now. Will seems to like it too, if one is to judge by his careful fingers feeling over Kit’s opening.
“Are you sore?” he asks, courteous to a fault, but also, Kit thinks, like he might not mind it if Kit was a little sore.
“Only a little,” he says, and smiles into the pillow when that doesn’t make Will stop touching him.
III.
that which it fears to lose
“Must you go to Deptford?” Will’s voice is taut. Kit would liken the sound to the tension in the skin of a drum, which is also an apt simile for the way he himself feels.
“I must,” he says.
“The arrest frightened me,” Will says, honest to a fault, and Kit wonders if this scene will be in a play someday. “This frightens me more,” he says, and no, Kit doesn’t think that Will is going to write this into anything.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he says. The lie hangs upon the air like a storm about to break, oppressive and heavy. “But I really must go.”
“Kiss me first,” Will says. That, Kit can do.
IV.
that in black ink my love may still shine bright
There is a world in which Kit didn’t go to Deptford. There’s one where he did, but he left before anything untoward could happen, for once choosing the simple route. There is a world in which Kit Marlowe escaped to the continent and lived out his days in decadent happiness. There is a world where his plays surpass anything ever seen on the London stage, and Will plays all his kings.
There are many worlds, and Will writes them all, burning the pages as he goes. Because there is also only this world, where Kit went, and Kit was killed, and there is so little laughter in Will’s world now.
There is a sonnet, left in Kit’s rooms, that Will publishes with his own. He numbers it 74, and wonders if anyone will ever notice it isn’t of his own pen.
There are other plays and other speeches and other men and women in Will’s bed, eventually, but there are also lines that entwined his heart too tightly to loosen.
The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
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The worth of that is that which it contains,
And that is this, and this with thee remains.