What a week. I'll tell you, between prosthetic feet, soggy costumes, and bad cafeteria food, I just might give in and seek out the masseuse that they've hired for the cast.

Alright. Fine. And then there's the other half of the tension. Other Half of the Tension's name starts with a "B" and ends with an "illy" and if that doesn't tell you right there what's going on, you haven't been paying attention.

Wanting to throw him down and rip his clothes off every five seconds just might interfere with our friendship a tad. To that end, I haven't tried it, and have no plans to. But, fuck, it's hard.

Haven't had such a great friendship with a bloke in a long time. Love having him to go mad on the weekends with. Love being totally cracked between shooting scenes and causing mayhem.

When we first got here, I was worried that I wouldn't get close to anyone. Didn't even think they'd want to get chummy with me, seeing as how they're all so much more experienced actors and the like.

And then Pete introduced me to Pippin, and, well—there it was. My Pip.

Handsome, older, insane, excited Billy. What a guy. Really fantastic that we're Merry and Pippin, wouldn't you say? Oh, absolutely. It's brilliant. It's just...fecking perfect...and good Lord he's got a pretty mouth.

Eh? Well. That's how it went, sort of. Took a bit longer than that, I think.

Didn't take much longer than that, though, to fix the idea permanently in my head and drape it with neon lights and jingling bells. Stupid bloody attraction.

So a shower seems like a good way to wind down. Empty the damned hot water tank, and why not? It's on their bill. I set up my stereo on the marble sink top, throw in whatever CD is within reach, strip off my clothes, and dive under the spray.

Late afternoon sunlight is coming in through the window at a funny angle; it stripes the shower through the glass doors so that some parts of me are bright with the light and others aren't touched by it. The light makes the water brilliant with extra winking colors and mingles with the steam coming off my skin and the water in an odd, pleasing way.

And then the music starts. It's a kind of tinkling at first, idealized and playful, and then the slow thudding roll of a drum, quite lazy and almost as if it's come in late. I close my eyes, the staccato trill of the water on the tile and the glass doors and my shoulders wrapping with the music.

Then lyrics begin, a pleasant half-spoken kind of way of singing, and suddenly I realize what song it is. Nights in White Satin. Moody Blues. Yeah? Yeah, that's it.

"Nights in white satin, never reaching the end... Letters I've written, never meaning to send... Beauty I'd always missed, with these eyes before... Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore..."

Guitar, lazy drum passes. A mournful whine of violin, low and harsh. And suddenly the music picks up strength, the violins and another string instrument I can't recognize excited by the lyrics.

"'Cause I love you..." Getting stronger. "Yes I love you..." Even louder, crying out sort of now, kind of desperate.

A wailing, acid-washed chorus of voices sound in the background. Fills your ears, borderline annoying, which makes it very good.

"Oh, how I love you..."

Beating it out now. The chorus goes on wailing. I can see the lead vocalist's throat clench with the sound as he forces it out. I can see his back arched, his eyes filling with tears, maybe. I can feel his hurt. Fuck, that's good.

It comes down again and by now I'm totally wrapped up in it and the coming down almost chafes. No, sing the chorus again, man, the bloody chorus, that's where it is.

"Gazing at people, some hand in hand... Just what I'm going through, they can't understand... Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend... Just what you want to be, you will be in the end..."

Rolling woodwind and the guitar and the drum steady again through the second verse.

I can feel the chorus coming again and I open my eyes and the sun catches directly in my gaze. I move my face a little away from the glare, feeling the low guitar and drum flirt with the riff of the violin and the eerie, otherworldly sound of the warped background voices. It's as if I'm up high somewhere getting tossed by the wind.

The volume on the stereo is so loud that I can feel the music coming through the marble, pulsing like blood through the tile's veins right up through my feet and back. The noise of the water layers over it, adding a dimension of connection between the song and me.

And the lyrics make me think about Billy. Billy sharing the wind-tossed eerie mood of the song with me. And it's kind of arousing, the thrum of the drums and the sweeping, almost too-loud background voices. Billy sharing the song and the arousal with me.

Before I realize it, I'm touching myself, squeezing my fingers over my chest and up my neck and against my face and back again. Touching the places I'd like him to touch. Getting hard really slowly—the kind that feels good, because you're egging it on, and you've theoretically got all the time in the world to let it happen.

God, Billy. Where the fuck are you?

The chorus comes, finally, the voices and the violin and the being-up-high feeling reaching a peak that makes me want to writhe. No wonder they tripped on acid to this shite.

"And I love you, yes I love you... Oh, how I love you, oh, how I love you..."

Oh, and that last "you" is held for so long; so sad, the singer's voice, so desperate. Pleading. Pleading; please, please love me, too. Let me touch you. Let me take you into this and fill you up with rhythm.

Billy...

My chest rises and falls as I skim my fingers across my stomach and up again, lightly pressing my nipples between my fingertips. My knees feel weak.

And then there's the slightest change in the room; the glass doors that would normally be very loud making just enough noise below the music to let me know that they've been moved.

"Nights in white satin, never reaching the end... Letters I've written, never meaning to send... Beauty I'd always missed, with these eyes before... Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore..."

And I open my eyes. A little worried, but not really, because the song still has me trapped and I want the shivering, painful chorus to go on forever.

Billy stands there in a shadow, towel around his waist, and the music rises up behind him and brings my eyes down over his body in a way that I might never allow were the music not working its way through the folds of my sloppy mind.

"'Cause I love you... Yes I love you... Oh, how I love you, oh, how I love you..."

He gives me a sort of questioning, pleading look. He does this funny thing with his eyes; kind of skirting them around the shower and then letting them pass over me. They glitter in the most serious, important way. Can I...? Oh, God, yes. Oh God.

The wailing voices and violin tear through me again.

"'Cause I love you... Yes I love you... Oh, how I love you, oh, how I love you..."

I realize I've stood up straight and put my hand on the glass doors. And as the song winds down to instruments a wriggling flute solo takes over and then gets squashed by rising drum—just as I bring him into the shower and squash him to me.

"Billy," I breathe. And he just sort of nods, because he can't hear me over the music, but that's fine, because the music and the lyrics are speaking for me anyway.

And then he's inside the song, too, the light doing wonderful things across the span of his shoulders, the water soaking his hair. I can't feel anything but his body and the humming vibration of the music as it works its way up through the both of us. I couldn't hear him if he tried to say something.

The instruments give a sort of climax. And he's been down on his knees for the full last two minutes of the song, and I can feel nothing but his mouth and his tongue as he makes my body soar more than even the music can. And then the instruments die all at once.

My hands are in his hair when it finally washes over me, hitching to explosion just as the music stops; the combination of the light, water, music, and him all making it ten times what it might have been. I think I might cry for how good it is.

The last part of the song is a spoken poem that rises melodically in the wake of sharp silence. And as he crawls back up my body and I kiss him hard and deep and desperate, the lines of that poem surface like bobbing things on water:

"Impassioned lovers wrestle as one..."

"Dom," he sighs into my mouth, and I wrap my hands around his backside, and pull him between my thighs.

"Lonely man cries for love and has none..."

I bite his shoulder and prop one foot up on the far ledge of the tub, guiding him higher. He shudders and kisses me messily again.

"And we decide which is right... And which is an illusion?"

It's quick and sharp, his suddenly being inside me and then moments later falling apart. The whole thing is strange and flighty, just like the song, as the poem finishes and the wind instruments drag the music sharply off screen. A gong noise trills the end of the song and the rapid wobbling note of it goes on into forever.

But when I open my eyes, his clear ones are hovering in front of me and we both smile.

The water is still running warm, but the sun dips farther behind the trees and the bathroom is suddenly dim. And the song is over and the silence pounds off the walls louder than any spoken word or piece of music.

His fingers are possessively on my cheeks.

"Was that song for me?" he asks, and I can hear his voice clearly for the first time since he walked into the bathroom. And I push my fingers through his hair and cover his mouth with mine—pushing the doubt away like the flailing desperation of the song.

And still I don't answer. Because the song has indeed spoken for me.