A Catalogue of Incorrect Greens

"What is that?" Julian asked. His voice was dangerously quiet. He was pointing at the potted fern, the one meant to be the centrepiece for Act Two. It was no longer the subtle, sickly, yellow-green he had painstakingly mixed and named 'Eau de Despair'. It was... cheerful.

Noah turned from where he'd been practising a flourish with a prop sword. He beamed, a thousand-watt smile that Julian was certain he used to get out of speeding tickets. "Fixed it for you! It looked a bit sad, so I brightened it up. It's got more life now, you know? More presence."

"Presence," Julian repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "You've given a symbol of quiet suburban decay 'presence'. You've painted it the colour of a lime-flavoured ice lolly."

"It's chartreuse!" Noah said defensively, propping the sword against a flat. "I found the pot labelled 'chartreuse'."

"That was 'Chartreuse Gloom', a custom mix! This," Julian gestured at the offending plant with a trembling hand, "This is 'Chartreuse Blast'. This is the colour of toxic waste in a children's cartoon. This is not the colour of existential dread, Noah. This is the colour of a key-lime pie having a seizure."

Noah had the audacity to chuckle. "Jules, mate, I honestly don't think the audience in the back row is going to be analysing the specific emotional undertones of the prop fern's colour palette."

The use of the nickname 'Jules' was like a match on petrol. "Don't call me that. And of course they won't, not consciously! That's the entire point of scenography! It is a subliminal language of colour and form. It is the foundation upon which the entire emotional architecture of the performance is built! You have taken my carefully constructed foundation of quiet desperation and you have... you have slapped a smiley-face sticker on it."

He was pacing now, running a hand through his already chaotic hair. Paint smudges, he noted with a grim satisfaction, were already on his forehead. They might as well be ashes of mourning for his dead art.

"Right," Noah said, holding his hands up in surrender, though the grin hadn't quite left his eyes. "Okay. Melodrama level ten. My mistake. I was just trying to help."

"You helping is like an arsonist helping the fire brigade," Julian snapped, snatching a wet paintbrush from a jar of water. "You see a problem and you make it bigger and brighter."

"It's just a bit of paint! We can paint over it!" Noah took a step closer, his expression softening from amused to concerned. "Hey, seriously, calm down. It's not the end of the world."

"It's the end of my world! My world is this stage for the next three days, and you have vandalised it with your... your aggressive optimism!"

A Hostile Application of Pigment

In a fit of pique Julian couldn't entirely control, he flicked the wet brush in Noah's direction. A small arc of watery beige flew through the air and landed squarely on Noah's black t-shirt. It was a pathetic gesture, but it was a gesture nonetheless.

Noah looked down at the splotch. Then he looked up at Julian. The grin was back, but this time it was different. It was challenging.

"Oh, that's how we're doing this now, is it?" he said, his eyes glinting in the dim light.

Before Julian could react, Noah had dipped his own finger into the pot of offending chartreuse and lunged.

Julian yelped and scrambled backward as Noah swiped a vivid green stripe across his cheek. It felt cold against his skin. "You absolute child!" Julian yelled, but he was already dipping his own brush back into the 'Chartreuse Gloom' and retaliating.

What followed was a short, vicious, and utterly silent skirmish. They dodged and weaved around stacks of flats and costume racks, using brushes as their weapons. A flick of beige here, a smear of green there. Julian managed to get a good dollop of brown on Noah's forearm; Noah retaliated by decorating Julian's jeans with a handprint of lurid green. It was, Julian thought in a distant, analytical part of his brain, the most unprofessional thing he had ever done in his life.

He was also, to his immense horror, sort of enjoying it.

The war ended when Noah cornered Julian against a large, gilt-framed mirror intended for the duchess's boudoir scene. He had Julian's wrists pinned, ever so gently, against the wall on either side of his head. His face was inches away, his breathing a little ragged. They were both streaked with a chaotic mix of greens, beiges, and browns. Julian could see a smear of 'Chartreuse Gloom' in Noah's dark hair.

"Truce?" Noah murmured, his voice low.

Julian's heart was hammering. He could smell the paint, and underneath it, Noah's own scent, something clean and warm. He was about to say something, something biting and witty, when the door to the props room slammed open.

"What in God's name is going on in here?" Brenda, the stage manager, stood silhouetted in the doorway, her arms crossed.

They froze. They were caught. Utterly, completely, caught. Pinned against a mirror, looking like they'd wrestled a packet of Skittles and lost, with the lead actor holding the set designer captive.

Slowly, as one, they both turned their heads to look at their reflection in the mirror.

And the sight that greeted them was so profoundly, cosmically stupid that it broke them. Julian saw himself, hair wild, a stripe of neon green across his face like war paint, his glasses askew. He saw Noah, looking equally ridiculous, with a solemn dab of beige on his nose. The sheer gravity of their argument about a colour, juxtaposed with the Jackson Pollock disaster they had become, was too much.

A choked snort escaped Julian. Noah saw it and his composure cracked. A deep laugh erupted from his chest. And then Julian was gone, sliding down the wall, howling with laughter. It was the frantic, slightly hysterical laughter of someone who had been wound far too tight and had finally snapped in the most glorious way.

Noah sank to the floor beside him, tears of mirth streaming down his own paint-stained cheeks. Brenda just stared, sighed, and quietly shut the door, leaving them to their madness.

"My... my emotional architecture..." Julian gasped, clutching his sides.

"Your... your smiley-face sticker..." Noah wheezed, falling sideways to rest his head on Julian's shoulder.

They sat there for a long time, shoulders shaking, surrounded by the evidence of their ridiculous battle, the smell of wet paint filling the small room. When the laughter finally died down, a comfortable quiet settled between them.

"I'll help you repaint it," Noah said, his voice soft. "Properly, this time. Your colour. I'll even memorise its pretentious name."

Julian leaned his head against Noah's. "'Eau de Despair'."

"'Eau de Despair'," Noah repeated, like a vow. "Got it."