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Rich Brook enjoys filming for The Storyteller. He honestly does. It may not be the role of a lifetime, but he could do worse than to spend the day reading fairy tales to kids.

He's always liked fairy tales.

Still, when Milliways pops up during a break in filming, he doesn't turn it down. He glances back over his shoulder first; then, when no one else seems to see anything amiss, he goes in.

At the Bar, he asks for a club soda with lime. He could have something stronger if he liked - with time stopped at home, no one would be the wiser - but it seems wrong for the Storyteller to drink while he's technically on duty.

[OOC: For clarity, Jim is in character as Rich, and will be making a much stronger effort to remain in character than he usually does in Milliways. And yes, he really is coming in from filming. DVDs don't make themselves.]

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"Somebody's got to do it," Martin says. It's the same line he's been telling himself for a few years, now.

"And the hours are flexible. So, that's nice."

It's a good thing, too. Because Carolyn's hours are anything but flexible.

"Exactly," he says. "You get the real work done."

Any actor with any real respect for the craft knows where he'd be without his stagehands: fucking nowhere.

"Do you work for someone, or are you on your own?"

"Uh... Self. I'm self-employed."

He says it just awkwardly enough that even Rich should be able to work out the meaning in that.

"Oh."

Rich takes the next few seconds to draw some conclusions.

"Well - whatever it is - I mean, you're not, you know, going to get arrested for anything here if you don't do it here, so, uh - I mean, I'm not prying, I'm just saying, it wouldn't a big deal if you felt like, uh. Saying it."

He's only good at this kind of thing when he has a script.

"What?" Martin asks, suddenly very confused.

And then it clicks.

"Oh! No! no, no. No. No."

And then, just for good measure: "No."

(He just can't help himself.)

". . . . no?" Rich echoes, earnest and embarrassed and without a trace of mockery to be found.

"Um. Okay. No."

"No."

Just for emphasis.

He's gone a bit red, which, let's face it. It's not a good look for him.

Rich hasn't noticed, mostly because he's reddened up a little himself.

"No, right, sorry, of course not, I just thought, you obviously lug things around, you've got, you know the muscles for lugging - things - and I thought, sometimes people don't want people to know about the things they lug because they might be, you know, illegal things, but obviously I didn't get that right and oh my god that's not what you thought I meant, was it?"

He is never saying words that weren't written by someone else for the rest of his life.

"No. No, it—No."

Well, this just got awkward in a hurry.

Martin tries to cover by drinking some of his pop. If he was trying to chat up Rich before, he's given it up as a bad job now. Even if Martin wasn't convinced Rich is straight, it would be a bit too much like dating Arthur.

And... no.

"I am so sorry," Rich says, with all the depth of sincerity he possesses. Which, being as he's a not-untalented actor, is a considerable amount. "I am really sorry. I, uh - tell you what, how about I buy you a drink and we just start again with introductions and it's like the last five minutes never happened."

Please?

"OK," Martin says.

He very rarely turns down an offer of free anything, and is also very good at not seeming the sort who rarely turns down such offers.

"So, uhm... What do you, uh, do when you're not acting?"

Awkward, awkward, awkward.

. . . and he said something about Martin's muscles just then, didn't he? No, that's fine, because it was observational, and actors observe things. It's part of the job.

He is not even going to try to explain it now, though. He's just going to hope it's obvious that, even if he weren't completely ~~in denial~~ straight, he's far too embarrassed to try and pull someone he's just accidentally implied might be a prostitute. Even actors have some shame.

"Whatever he wants next on my tab, Bar, okay?" he says.

(This is perfectly okay with Bar, and if she happens to give the phrase 'whatever he wants next' an extremely generous and longterm interpretation, well. Jim never bothers checking the balance on his tab. He won't notice. And frankly he deserves it.)

"Um, whatever's going, you know? I drive a cab sometimes, or, uh, sometimes I really live the cliché and wait tables. I do have this sort of longterm - performance art thing, but it's between engagements right now."

Martin just sticks with pop for now. He doesn't like to seem greedy when something's offered to him, because while he may be on just this side of starving, he does have a hell of a lot of pride.

"Performance art?" he asks, sounding genuinely interested, and not in just the polite way people can ask because they think it might get them somewhere later. "Like, street stuff? That's always what I think when I hear that phrase."

Rich brightens, visibly relaxing. The last of the embarrassed flush fades from his face. An actor who claims genuine interest from others isn't what he lives for is lying.

"Well, sort of," he says. "It's been, uh, for a very specific audience so far, but we're going to be expanding it on the next go-round. It's going to be very challenging. I've had plenty of time to get to know the character, though, so that should be all right."

There are other aspects of it he's less excited about, but he read the contract before he signed it. He knew what he was getting into.

If only the moral center of his brain would stop trying to remind him that Dr Watson didn't have that same advantage, he'd feel much better about it all.

Martin has no idea about Dr Watson or the moral problems of this job, so he only really hears half of what's being said.

"Sounds like fun, though. A lot more fun than moving boxes around, anyway." Again, he sounds like he means it. He's just glad to have someone to talk to who seems to more or less be at the same level as he is, which makes it easier to just be himself and not worry too much about presentation.

Rich grins the grin of a man who gets to do what he loves for a living.

"It really is," he says. "Fun, I mean. Completely worth it."

Martin knows that grin all too well. And even if he's not exactly doing what he loves for a living, he does still get to do what he loves as a nearly full-time hobby.

"Have you been acting for long, then?"

As long as he keeps the conversation on Rich, he doesn't have to admit all the embarrassing things about himself.

If Rich notices the deflection tactic, he doesn't say anything about it.

(He doesn't notice. But Jim does.)

"All my life," he says. "I mean, literally, I was the baby Jesus in the nativity play. Mum insists to this day that I was the first one in years who didn't start screaming at the worst possible moment, but I think mums have to say things like that."

And if that sounds like an anecdote he's told a few hundred times - that's because it is. It's exactly the kind of pithy little story people like, and it does happen to be true.

"I was a sheep in my nativity," Martin says. "My dad filmed every bit of it, including me being sick on the Virgin Mary."

This is not a story he's told a few hundred times, and while he sounds a bit rueful, he's not really all that embarrassed by it. As far as he's concerned, it's just a thing that happened when he was five.

"After that, I was always made to be a bush at the back of the stage."

If Martin did seem embarrassed, Rich would make more of an effort not to laugh, especially considering the unpleasantness of a few minutes ago. As it is, he doesn't see the harm, though he does say,

"I think every church has a half-dozen stories like that. Not everyone is cut out for a life on stage."

Martin's beginning to get a bit more comfortable with this whole situation, becoming mostly convinced that Rich isn't about to launch into any sudden bursts of sarcastic teasing.

"Just as well," Martin says. "I was never very good at that sort of thing anyway. When I was ten, the class was so big we wound up with pirates and ninjas at the birth of Jesus. I don't remember that from Sunday School."

Sarcasm tends not to be among Rich's specialties in casual conversation. Martin is safe for now.

"My school outlawed giraffes after an incident with a really tall costume and the lighting one year," Rich says. "Or so I heard anyway, it was probably one of those stories that's been passed down since the invention of giraffes."

Martin nods. "No, I think I heard that one too. It was always a few years ago, before I'd started at that school, so no-one ever actually remembered it happening."

Funny, the sorts of urban myths a bunch of students can spread around.

"But everyone always swore it was true," Rich agrees. "And there was always some perfectly good reason why the school denied it and there was no point even asking."

But somehow, there were never any giraffes.

Thinking about it, Martin can't remember any giraffes either. How odd.

"Maybe even the staff thought the rumours were true?" ventures Martin. "They did seem to go back years and years."

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