#broadway does it. shakespeare did it. its fine.

[bananonbinary]

wwdits is killing me this season because Mark Proksch is like...weirdly good at playing a child??? i know that’s an adult man’s head photoshopped onto a child’s body but somehow i never question it im like ‘yep thats an 8 year old autistic child alright”

#wwdits #this is sort of a joke #but also proves my theory that we can and should just do away with child actors #just have grown adults play 8yos its fine #broadway does it. shakespeare did it. its fine.

[marine-indie-gal]

Considering that the Broadway Musical of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of The Opera had already ended its performance last year, I've recently dug out to what happens to be (if not) the Most Obscure Phantom Adaptation ever that's more drawn to inspiration rather than an Adaptation titled, "A Monster In Paris". Why hardly known as the "Less Phantom Adaptation" ever? Well, you see, it's mainly one of those Both Original/Inspired Adaptational Story that does quite have a few of its similarities from Gaston Leroux's work (compare with Most Famous Inspirational Adaptational-Based Films like with The Lion King (Hamlet) and even Frozen (The Snow Queen)). Anyways, yes, I am one of the few people who do consider this Film as a Phantom Adaptation despite many of its Changes from the Source Material, but it still felt a bit more of a Comedic version of the Horror Story itself (much like with Rocket Pictures' Gnome version of One of the Famous Shakespeare Tragedies, "Romeo and Juliet"). Though, like with "Gnomeo and Juliet", it did flesh-out more of the Characters' Personalities and did clean out most of the Dark stuff as it does play out as a Friendly Version of My Most Favorite Gothic Horror Novel of all time. Here I drew Lucille and Francoeur together, because while if rather not if I do like this Ship or Not, I consider their own Relationship more as a Platonic version of the Death/Maiden trope (that, or because maybe I just have no idea rather or not if Francoeur is already supposed to be an Anthro, despite being an Insect). Side Note; I am Perfectly Fine with Human/Anthro pairs.

But also, Another sidenote; Did you know that this Movie was directed by one of the Few Folks that made "Shark Tale"? 🤡 Lucille and Francoeur (c) Bibo Films

#a monster in paris #monster in paris #francoeur #francoeur a monster in paris #a monster in paris francoeur #lucille #lucille a monster in paris #a monster in paris lucille #non disney

[wincore]

act iii, incomplete | ten

pairing: ten x reader

summary: it’s the same vivid dream every time — you, a feline constellation that keeps smiling at you and a boy who won’t ever forgive you. autumn, spring and everything in between come to save part of that but the truth is this: no amount of time spent at your small town theatre with your once best friend is going to speak the words for you.

alternatively, 

best friends aren’t meant to be lovers and ten, despite the millions of roles he’s played, keeps trying for the one role he won’t ever get.

genre: childhood best friends to lovers, slight theatre au, reincarnation themes, fluff, angst

warnings: alcohol consumption, mentions of injuries, mentions of death

words: 23.9k

a/n: hello i’m so glad i actually completed this !!!!! i’ve never written something like this before !!! also longest fic let’s gooo ahaha special thank you to miss cat for reading this and making it at least infinity times better i am in indebted to u <3. playlist here.

part of the almost collab by @hyucksie !! (thank you for hosting this, it was lovely to be a part!!)

ACT I: HOMESICK

act i scene i. 

For the first time in years, you hold your breath at the local theatre, the walls more and more debilitated each year. It’s the only place, perhaps, that is so vibrant in its dull shades. The key is memories. Memories keep you alive in a way death and life and sickness cannot interfere. 

A single drum beat resounds through the theatre. A second one follows before a tune from a flute sets the mood. A voice speaks out, that of a woman, and it strikes you as somewhat sad. In that moment, you believe Ten would have pointed out to you that she is meant to do that, she is meant to play the part of someone sad. The curtains stare at you as undulating as a calm sea of red and you hold your breath. 

This is a modern play and you’ve only kept up with them for the sake of watching Ten play a part in them. As for other plays, high school Shakespeare was the most formidable text you’ve ever read and you’d rather not fight for your life again.

“Has the world ever seen a woman’s love unrivalled?”

A projector displays a flower, peonies, on the curtains.

“She once fell sick, dreaming of a lover; and once sick, she grew worse. Love is not love at its fullest if one is not willing to die for it.”

You don’t think that’s quite right. The curtains are drawn right then, their velvet sheen accentuated under the bright theatre lights and two characters appear on stage. 

Your first thought is that he’s grown far too much. The second is that he hasn’t changed much. Ten stands in the character of a play you haven’t finished reading yet, in clothes that accentuate his dancer’s figure and with the look of someone that isn’t him. You had tried to read  the play earlier but you might have gotten a little too excited to complete it. 

You bounce your legs in anticipation, the music and his voice fading out—it’s not like you can focus much with the high school kids giggling and making out in the seats right behind yours. You could always make a scene but it’s not like you to steal the spotlight away from your dearest friend. Besides, you need to reiterate through the list of things you have to help him catch up on since he’s been gone. Ten wouldn’t want to miss out on some spicy gossip. You chuckle to yourself, pressing your palms to your cheeks to cool yourself. 

Ten likes overwhelming responses. You like to be overwhelming. You’re the perfect pair. 

The play ends in a way you can’t tell if it was a tragedy or a comedy. You could have if you paid more attention but this isn’t literature class. You can do whatever you want now and you’re a little preoccupied with your own thoughts. Ten. Your best friend is back from Broadway after a year of barely talking. You can’t wait to hear the stories.

You get up as soon as the lights are on but when no one else does, you sit back down. The curtains part now and the cast comes on for their final bow. You shift around to see if Ten is looking at you, the older people beside you grunting in annoyance and muttering something about the youth. He’s not but Sicheng is and when you send a wink his way, he shakes his head.

You pout at the lack of attention but it’s time to make your way backstage now. The crowd is exiting and you need to get there before Ten leaves. 

Once outside, you make a beeline to the back of the theatre building and mess up Sicheng’s hair as he leaves for home. 

“He’s inside,” he informs curtly and makes as much distance possible between the two of you.

“Oh, don’t be shy, Sicheng,” you coo to annoy him. “You performed so well. Not as good as Ten though.”

Sicheng rolls his eyes. “Were you even paying attention?”

You cross your arms and push him onto his track. He shrugs and you watch his figure disappear behind the corner before taking a deep breath. With anticipation, comes a little unrestrained droplet of anxiety. You shouldn’t be worried, you tell yourself. This is Ten, after all.

The crows sing a song to themselves under the purple evening sun and you feel annoyed at the sound. It’s a song for ghosts. You hate the sound of it. 

You rub your temples, trying to hush away the headache. You can’t wait to see Ten.

You swing the door open in an attempt to sneak up on him. However, you take a few moments to see him barefaced, the stage makeup washed off and a red undertone running through his nose and cheeks. That dark mop of hair sticks out every which way, and no attempt has been made to rectify it. It was once your job, actually. He rubs at his sleepy eyes, a yawn escaping his lips as he stuff his belongings into a worn-out satchel bag. You gave it to him when you skipped prom night. You smile. 

“Ten!” you yell at the top of your lungs. You’ve missed him so much—an old greeting should warm him up. This town started feeling more like home once you heard the news Ten’s back.

He looks at you so cold that you stop dead in your tracks. You freeze up, the words suddenly collapsing into themselves like wilting flowers. You don’t recognize Ten all of a sudden. He wears a deep frown and empty eyes, something you cannot understand no matter what angle you look from. Everything’s changed now, hasn’t it? You truly understand what that means when you meet his eyes.

“Ten,” you repeat at a more respectable volume. “Hey. I… I missed—”

“Hey,” he responds a little too quickly. Eyes less sharp than usual, he averts his gaze. “I- I need to get home early.”

Ten grabs his bag and leaves the room, his shoulder brushing against yours. You stand there for a few extra moments, breaths shallow and quiet. When you regain the sound of your heartbeat, you leave the practice room, throat dry and a frustrated sigh on your lips. Consequences, every time it’s the consequences biting back.

The crows’ song goes unheard.

act i scene ii.

“So… you want me to get Ten to talk to you?” 

Sicheng looks at you in disbelief, the ice cream in his hand starting to melt. You’ve never met anyone who enjoys ice cream in mid-autumn as much as he does. Sore throats are foreign to him.

You nod, crossing your arms. “I don’t know why he’s avoiding me.”

Sicheng scoffs, choking on the ice cream and taking a few moments to regain his composure. 

“Thanks,” he says when you rub his back in pity. “But… you really don’t know why he’s avoiding you?”

You shake your head. It’s a lie. But the only thing you can think of is the summer he left, when he confessed his feelings and you rejected him after a few seconds of contemplation. You had good reason. You just can’t tell him that. You’re still young and there’s so much to look forward to.

"You obviously have feelings for him!"

"Yeah, anger! Why would he just ignore me like that? We've been friends for, uh…"

"Stop counting, you suck at math."

You punch his shoulder and his ice cream almost falls off. He looks at you with a glare so strong, you have to take a step back.

“Sorry,” you mumble. “I thought we were like any other pair of best friends.”

Sicheng snorts. “Yeah, best friends in love with each other. Didn't you suggest getting married once?”

“As a joke,” you interject, feeling heat on your cheeks. “Actually, do you know how useful a marriage of convenience is? It's got convenience in the name. Think of all the tax benefits.”

Sicheng rolls his eyes. “The way you looked at each other wasn’t a joke—you know what? I’m not going to be the supporting act to your whole romance charade. You figure this out.”

You pout. “So you’re saying you won’t help?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. You won’t know if I did.”

You furrow your eyebrows, groaning in exasperation. This was supposed to be a happy reunion and yet, you’re here moping to a theatre kid, hoping he helps you. You expected Ten to not take it well but right now, you wish you weren’t so blunt. You could have said it nicer.

You’re joking, right? Haha, nice one. Best friends don't fall in love.

Oh, this is all your fault. You knew him better than anyone else. You should’ve known the consequences too—you could scream right now. In your defense, you thought college made him lose a few brain cells. You still have to make it right. 

“Fine. Whatever you might do, better do it soon.”

Sicheng shrugs, turning back to his ice cream and browsing lazily through one of the magazines. He’s supposed to be watching the store—he gets paid for it but he couldn’t care less about this place. Sicheng is something of a theatrical actor too, traveling around and performing with his theatre group. He never cared for Broadway as much as Ten did.

However, you’re all here now. This autumn is going to be spent with your best friends no matter the cost. You smile as you think of the time you and Ten surprised Sicheng with a whole bag of ice cream and he cried although most of it ended up melting. Sicheng raises an eyebrow at your expression but doesn't question.

“There’s a reunion party by the woods,” he announces. “Next week. Saturday. You have to make up before that. You know they’re going to be brutal.”

You shudder. Your classmates certainly won’t let go of the idea of your relationship with Ten. Teasing aside, they’re going to be making either one of you uncomfortable. All your excitement drains itself. Your shoulders slump and you think that perhaps, asking for forgiveness would be a better out. You recover quickly though. This has to work out, Ten has to be your best friend again—what choice do you have? You missed him and you’re going to let him know.

//

The first attempt begins right in the evening. Sicheng texts Ten after his shift, asking him to get some snacks. Lucky for you, you work at the local snack store, also called the convenience store. There’s nowhere better to get snacks. There’s also nowhere else to get snacks.

You stand behind the counter, fiddling with the drawstrings of your hoodie while your eyes trail to the hands of the clock on the wall. Sicheng texted him half an hour ago. Ten might not be the most punctual but you know he listens to Sicheng, even if it’s reluctantly.

Your impatience gets the better of you and you leave the counter to peer out the glass door. Unfortunately, someone pushes open the door right then and you clutch your nose, eyes watering at the painful impact. 

Ten looks petrified for a moment before turning around and leaving. You furrow your eyebrows, tears brimming from the pain in your nose and mixing into the exasperation from getting so bluntly ignored. Come on, Ten. You curse on your way back to the lonely counter. There goes the only thing you were looking forward to this evening. Sicheng walks in a while later, a sour look on his face.

“He actually gave me a mouthful,” he mutters angrily. “Can you believe that? Me. Who’s listened to all his lovesick ramblings about y—theatre.” 

You slump onto the counter further, the bright orange background of the store more headache-inducing than optimistic. 

“God, this is so much more difficult than I expected.”

“What happened between the two of you anyway? I thought you promised to call him every day.”

“I tried, okay? He wouldn’t pick up.”

Sicheng raises an eyebrow. “Woah. Haven’t heard about that one.”

He places the single pack of Lays onto the counter. You get up to pull the chocolate ice cream from the cooler.

“Don’t bother. It’s so depressing getting shut out like this.”

Sicheng mutters something under his breath you don’t quite catch. It’s his complaining voice though, so you don’t question him. 

“He’s going to be at the Bridge tomorrow,” Sicheng notifies. “Something about getting fresh early morning air. Now, there’s no way you can run into him and call it coincidence. So don’t do that.”

You cross your arms. “So what do you suggest I do?”

“I mean, if you’re accompanying Mr. Yang to the dahlia fields for flower shop business… that’s a different story.”

Your eyes brighten and you sit up. “You’re a genius!”

“I’ve been telling you guys since—”

You hug him and he chokes, almost dropping the Lays pack. The door opens and you hurriedly wave at Yangyang, who’s here for the next shift before running out the door in a hurricane of bad decisions and good intentions.

“I hate being the middleman,” Sicheng mutters to Yangyang who offers him a pitiful look. The evening returns to its pink skies and you race your feelings to your destination.

//

“Mr. Yang,” you whine. “You don’t need a single dahlia? I’m offering to help.”

The older man scratches his spotless white beard and looks at you in confusion. “I gathered a whole cartload just three days ago. There’s no way I need more. You know this place—no one buys flowers anymore.”

“I’ll buy them! A whole cartload.”

“And where will you get the money, child?”

“Uh.”

Mr. Yang shakes his head at your immaturity. “If you’re so eager, get me some chrysanthemums from Mrs. Leong’s sh—”

“No. It has to be from the other side of the Bridge,” you interject. 

Mr. Yang is further perplexed but you’re glad he doesn’t ask further. Having to explain your love and friendship troubles to a senior citizen has never been an ideal situation. You make a face at the thought.

“Alright,” he says and takes a few moments to ponder. “You want an errand to run, right? Could you get me some sunflower seeds from Goodwin Park?”

“That far?”

He sighs. “Do you want to go or not?”

You nod reluctantly, checking your phone to see the time. It’s early as fuck and the only person you’d wake up this early for doesn’t even know you’re doing all this.

“It’s to feed the birds, isn’t it?” You raise an eyebrow. 

Mr Yang nods.

“You know, you don’t have to do all that to get Mrs. Leong to notice you.” You offer him a cheeky grin.

“I’m assuming it’s also a person you’re doing all of this for,” he hums in reply.  

You drop your grin and take the errand money, heat rising in your cheeks. Exiting quickly, you check the time again. Ten better not have left early.

Shortcuts are better when there’s someone with you, you decide. You have gained around five long scratches at five different places on your body trying to best the hill beside Maple Street in order to get to the Bridge faster. If Ten were here, he'd laugh at you for being so graceless. 

The Bridge is empty when you arrive and you sigh deeply. You’re not sure if you’re early or he’s late or you’re astronomically late. The grass is still a golden green in colour, for autumn never truly comes in when you’re expecting it. The little stream below the Bridge is almost dried up but the wooden structure stays. You remember Sicheng broke his leg once, trying to catch Ten’s family cat pawing at fish in the stream when it used to be fuller.

You greet Mr. Santello at his garden and buy the sunflower seeds. Your errand is complete but the rising agitation in your chest makes you kick a rock on the way back to the Bridge. This side of the town is bleak except for the garden and the only fun you’ve had here is when a beehive dropped on Yukhei’s head (he poked at it himself with no provocation from your side whatsoever). The scenery is much prettier with someone to appreciate it. You, on the other hand, cannot wait to leave this town. You walk back with certain memories playing in your head, the smell of nostalgia rising with the sun. You’ve always hated early mornings; but you did have fun in them when you had to wake up for school trips. You hold your breath, stopping right before the beginning of the Bridge.

Ten leans against the wooden rails of the Bridge, Starmill Bridge, with eyes gently closed and white earphones plugged in. You smile to yourself. When the sunlight draws across his cheeks, he seems brighter than golden skies and softer than late afternoon clouds. You see the boy from your childhood, messy unbrushed hair and his favourite grey sweater. He’s so full of colour. You wouldn’t mind staring at him for as long as you can.

You take a step and your hoodie catches onto a stray nail, making you stumble onto the wooden floor of the Bridge. You look at your scattered boxes of sunflower seeds with horror but not before finding Ten plucking out his earphone to look at you. He’s so pretty even in a daze.

“Hi?” you offer. “I was on an errand, promise. Not stalking you and trying to get you to talk to me or anything. Hah.”

Ten shakes his head at you and quietly stares for a few more moments.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” he answers finally. “Stop trying.”

You look at him with a flickering guilt though you’re not sure why. He sighs and walks toward you, frowning. He takes out the cloth of your hoodie stuck in the nail with tentative care. Gathering the boxes of sunflower seeds scattered on the floor, he glances at you once before getting up.

You grab his hand before he can walk away again. 

“Ten,” you say, your voice coming off more pitiful than you would like. 

He turns back at you with lips pursed and a sorrowful look in his eyes. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. “I need to work some things out.”

Ten leaves you hanging for a third time in your life and you pull yourself together enough to stand up. You can’t imagine—you don’t want to imagine how much longer this’ll go on. Ten used to be an amenable boy; it shouldn’t be taking this long.

Somewhere the wind comes tumbling in, whispering the words that everything has changed and everything is still changing.

//

The third and last attempt is outside his house. Ten’s mother is bound to notice you at some point, right? Considering you’re camping out like a homeless man from the nearby gas station, that is. You hope she’s out for grocery shopping and you can just pretend you were on your way home and ‘accidentally’ bumped into her. Being the kind soul she is, she’s going to invite you to dinner since it’s late already. And where else can you spend your time while she cooks but in Ten’s room? It’s perfect and there’s no way he can avoid this.

“(name)!” Ten’s sister yells in glee. 

“Tern!” You smile at her.

“Mom’s sending me for grocery shopping. Do you wanna come help?”

You want to go inside the house but patience is quite possibly a virtue. You haven’t tried it out yet. 

“Sure.” You grin. “I’ve got time to kill.”

So, you are aware that Ten’s sister tends to shoot off at the mouth with the right person but you somehow cannot get her to talk about Ten. Apart from his life in New York, that is, which you had hoped to hear from him. 

“So… how come you’re not in our house already? No offense, it’s just you and Ten… you know.” She looks at you with an inquisitive quirk of her eyebrow. 

Ten must be a really good actor. Not like you ever doubted him but for his sister to be so blissfully unaware, he must have put on quite the show. Either that, or he really has forgotten you. You try not to feed fire to that thought.

“Uh, you know, been busy with the snack shack. We’re redecorating. Mr. Kim is going to boil me alive if I slack off.”

She giggles at your expression. “I heard it from Yangyang. He said the redecorations are ugly though.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Ten let you talk to Yangyang? A boy?”

She crosses her arms with a disbelieving laugh. “He can’t tell me how to live. Besides, he doesn’t care.”

You laugh. “Right. You have no idea how overprotective he can actually be. Older brother instincts or whatever.”

She suppresses a laugh. “And you must be facing the boyfriend instincts.”

You stammer out a response but it doesn’t make any sense. It’s alright to get laughed at, you suppose, if Tern is in fits beside you.

The rest of the conversation is about things less important. It would be rude to not engage though so you talk with enthusiasm all the way back. Part of you sees Ten in his sister. How terrible of you to see someone else in a person right beside you.

“(name)!” 

Ten’s mother looks pleasantly surprised. 

“Good evening, ma’am!” You curtsy in an exaggerated manner, and she laughs, patting your arm. 

“How come it took you so long to visit? You hardly ever came over these few years, and I’m a little upset about that by the way, but I thought for sure, you’d be in the house the day Ten came back.”

You scratch the back of your head sheepishly. “You know. Work and stuff. Mr Kim is redecorating the store.”

She exhales in annoyance. “Is that man exploiting you children again?”

“I’m—uh… I’m an adult—”

“Hush,” she instructs, voice strict and you zip your mouth immediately. Never question a mother’s statement.

“Ten’s in his room, by the way. Should I call him?” she asks, after a minute of complaining about Mr. Kim, which you would have loved to join but there are other matters at hand. She has all the gossip in town and yet, she’s somehow blissfully unaware of the silence between her son and his best friend. Are you not as important? It makes you pout but you quickly neutralize your expression.

“Ten!” she shouts when you don’t respond, a little lost in your own thoughts.

“Uh—oh no, you don’t have to do that!” you say quickly. “I’ll just go to his room.”

You hurry up the stairs, just in time for Ten to open his bedroom door and jump back in fright.

“Oh my fucking god,” he mutters, like the soul has been kicked straight out of his body. In any other situation, you would’ve loved to give him a scare.

You walk into the bedroom and lock the door behind you. 

“Ten. We need to talk.”

“I don’t wanna talk,” he says, furrowing his eyebrows. You notice the change in his features—his hair has grown out, his face is more chiseled and he has an angry quirk to his brows. “I told you I need some space. You never know how to listen, fuck.”

His voice is a low whisper, in the short space between you. You don’t move from your spot, with your back against the wall and feet nervous. You shift from foot to foot and look him in the eye before looking away. You’ve never felt this way around him. You’ve never actually pissed him off this bad. You don’t know what to do.

“Just leave. God. I can’t believe you think you can just walk in!”

You frown at his words. “Ten. I just wanted to talk to you again. We’re friends—”

“How does it matter if we are? Everything’s changed. This whole place has changed. I’ve changed.” 

“But… that doesn’t mean we have to pretend we’re strangers—”

“Leave. Please.”

His voice is so low and odd that you don’t recognize it anymore. You sigh. You can’t convince him when he’s so defensive. You open the door to his bedroom to find Ten’s mom and sister in the hallway trying very hard to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping. You offer them a sad smile and thank his mother for the dinner before taking your leave. You feel too ridiculous to cry.

How do people put in all that effort in romantic comedies? You don't even know where to start. Maybe you should follow the King's advice from Alice in Wonderland. 

Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end; then stop.

No. No, you can't be thinking of ending scenes right now. There's a much bigger problem at hand. Saturday. You better brace yourself for the unpredictability of former prom queens and class presidents, and the predictability of this small town that never changes. 

act i scene iii.

High school reunion parties here aren’t exactly mawkish affairs. There’s alcohol, people who are meant to be adults but haven’t quite grown into it yet, the looming woods, and more alcohol. There's no room for sentimentalism when your former classmates, seniors and juniors—those who could be here, at least—are back together and it feels like nothing has changed at all. However, college-age boys always pose problems. 

“Look, if Johnny can do it, so can I,” Yukhei tells you. 

Johnny smacks his shoulder encouragingly, and a few of your friends giggle at the two lanky men, looking like they’ve discovered something priceless beside the campfire light.

“This beer tastes like crap,” you mutter before returning to a regular volume. “But go ahead and try chugging two bottles in under a minute if you want.”

Your backhanded statement backfires almost immediately because he does exactly as you said. Pinching the bridge of your nose, you try not to peek at Ten, sitting beside Johnny and looking rather sleepy. It’s the bedhead, you think to yourself. It’s cute.

“Alright, who’s next?” Yukhei asks, voice booming enthusiastically. 

Yeri sighs beside you, tired from the late night and not so much from the alcohol. Speaking of which, the alcohol table is somehow still stocked and Sicheng stands beside it, looking sour from being forced into guard duty. 

“Tell him to pipe down,” Yeri mutters, pressing her forehead against your shoulder and you look at her apologetically. 

“(name) hasn’t answered anything yet!” Sooyoung pipes up and you shoot her a look she ignores. “Neither has Ten, by the way.”

A bunch of “ooh”s pass through the crowd of roughly twenty people, and you would bury your face in your hands were it not for that stubborn pride of yours. 

Truth or dare is quite possibly the worst game in the history of mankind. Ten looks somewhat flustered under the attention but he just sighs. 

“Get it over with.” He looks at Yukhei expectantly.

“Kiss (name)!”

Your heart drops and you glare at Yukhei. You should have expected it. There is no one more unimaginative than drunk boys. His cheeks are flushed when he grins at you, encouraging you with a thumbs up gesture. 

“He doesn’t have to do that.” You cross your arms. “Consent is important even in fun and games.”

The sentence is so didactic of you but you hope the seriousness in your voice makes him back off.

“But you guys are, like, in love with each other,” Yangyang blurts before covering mouth as if he said something scandalous.

A bunch of chuckles follow, though Johnny shows some concern towards Ten. You remember why you hate high school reunions now. Apart from the fact that almost everyone gets to tell their stories of big cities and big dreams they get to live in, everyone turns into a child again when at a reunion. Perhaps it’s the burst of memories or the vivid glow of old connections returning but you can’t stand childishness. Even if you’re the one to act like a child sometimes.

“I’m gonna go drink,” you say. “That’s the punishment, right? I’m not playing anymore.”

Yukhei groans. “Come on, (name). You wouldn’t be such a bore.”

“I would,” you snap and get up from your seat, Yeri muttering in annoyance before leaning onto Sooyoung’s shoulder.

Ten is glowing in the cheeks, you find when you look at him. He meets your eyes once and looks away, playing with his fingers. 

You pour yourself some beer into a cup and lift it up to show to Yukhei before striding off to a place farther than the warmth of people and the campfire. The giant log is a nice enough seat by the edge of the woods. It is cold and mossy though, and you hug yourself, sticking your hands into the pockets of your cardigan.

The sound of footsteps over dried leaves catch your attention and you look up. Ten takes a seat beside you in silence. You move the cup of beer so that it doesn’t spill from any sudden movement. It’s quiet for even longer, your pulse the only rhythm to follow.

"Ten." You smile, looking away from him and into the ceaseless stretch of woods. He hums in response, as though a habit yet to get rid of. It makes you bite down your lip to prevent the smile from turning into something sadder.

You miss him. You miss the years you spent with him. You're drawn into him, into something old, familiar and safe. 

No one can save you when you’re homesick. 

However, you do not give up easily. What is broken can be mended with enough love and care.

Ten sighs, taking the cup from you right before it touches your lips. "Don't drink that. You hate the taste and it makes you go crazy."

You pout, but can't really find something snarky enough to say. Not when he looks like that—with dry, still-red lips and tired, apologetic eyes.

“Your forehead is so oily,” you mutter.

Ten looks at you, furrowing his eyebrows. He proceeds to hesitantly wipe at his forehead with the sleeve of his sweatshirt before shaking himself out of it. Instead he just glares at you.

“It’s not oilier than your nose,” he shoots, annoyed. 

“At least my nose isn’t titan-sized.”

“My nose is perfect. Do you- do you know how many people fall in love with my perfect nose every day?”

You laugh, covering your face. His features soften and he returns his gaze to the comfort of the endless forest. It does have an end, at the fences by the railway tracks but in believing that something can be infinite, you find comfort. 

"New York treated you well. Too well. But then again, you were always a narcissist."

You smile smugly at him and he gives you an unamused look.

"I'm… I'm glad we're talking," you offer after a few moments of unacknowledged silence.

He tenses ever so slightly, running a hand through his already messy hair and looks at you. He looks away again as if in an internal debate.

“You rejected me, (name),” he says, exasperated. “How do I recover from that? Don’t answer. It was so embarrassing.”

You close your mouth. If only you could tell him the truth. You had to reject him or your sentimental boy would never leave for acting opportunities. He doesn’t have to know that. You’re fine with loving him quietly. You’re fine with loving him quietly.

But the truth is, it’s too scary to think about. You’ve been refusing to look at your feelings for a long time now. It’s only a cliche; it doesn't happen in real life. You’re too good of friends to be in love. Isn’t that right? It certainly couldn't have been you to fall in love with Ten. There were a million other people to do that in your stead. You feel shy all of a sudden.

“That was pretty embarrassing,” you mumble, pressing down your smile and he rolls his eyes.

After a few moments in silence, a sigh escapes his lips. “I’ve had enough time for closure though. I can’t believe I actually said that. Oh, the over-sentimentalism. Yikes.”

He makes a disgusted face.

You giggle. “I can’t believe it either. You do look cute blushing, by the way. You find any lover in the big, scary city? Any rebound?” 

Ten rolls his eyes. “Too busy. And are you going to tease me forever about this thing?”

You laugh. “That’s the Ten I know. You’re always working. Sometimes you should have fun.” 

“I have plenty of fun. You’re the one that used to cry at birthday parties.”

“I was six years old and it was one time, holy shit.”

The two of you break into laughter. The cold makes you draw nearer to him.

“Hey, wanna go to the mall this weekend?” you suggest.

“Wait, it’s still there? Wasn’t it supposed to get knocked down?”

“Yeah but the townsfolk didn’t want that so they delayed it. There’s, like, barely any employees though. It’s like a ghost mansion at night.”

Ten makes a face. “The afternoons there were so bright, like, there was so much sunlight, remember? I remember you always drinking my banana milk at the food plaza.”

You laugh. “I miss skipping class to go there. Now there aren’t any classes to skip.”

“Oh my god, remember when Mr. Wilson actually caught us?”

You laugh louder. “We had to pretend we weren’t his students. Which was futile acting because he knows every student.” 

Ten sighs. 

“I missed you. God, I’m so fucking sorry—I was in over my head. I thought I ruined everything.”

“Hey.” You scoot closer, wrapping your arms around him. “I missed you too. Besides, it’s not you if you’re not being a bit of a drama queen.”

Ten elbows you in the side at the comment and you yelp, moving away and glaring at him in response. 

“Just because I’m in theatre doesn’t mean I’m a drama queen.” He mocks the tone of your voice and you giggle.

“So any special Broadway stories you have in mind? I wanna hear something funny.” You rest your head on his shoulder comfortably.

"Well, one time this actress' dress caught on fire—"

"That's not funny, that's horrifying."

Ten purses his lips. “Okay. Uh… I got told to fuck off by an eighty year old man in drag after I threw raw steak at his window?”

You snort, eyes widening and Ten throws up his hands in exasperation. "How is that remotely funny?"

"I'm pretty sure that's as funny as it gets with you."

"I can't believe you're pretending I didn't carry our sense of humour on my back for all of middle school and high school."

“I missed you," you say quietly, and he flusters, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

"Really? You're not just saying that?"

You sigh, inching closer. "Yes. I did miss you, you know? I called."

"And I didn't pick up. I know. I'm sorry."

"I think you've apologized to me more times now than you have in our first twenty years of friendship."

Ten rolls his eyes. "And I mean it. It's not the 'sorry I ate your cookies' apology."

"I fucking knew you were the one eating stuff from my bag back in high school."

Ten presses his lips, making a zipping motion and you push him in exasperation. The two of you laugh, loud and clear, before Johnny's voice comes in, telling the two of you to "stop fooling around near the woods" and that it's "unhygienic".

Seasons change but people don't. You walk home with Ten for the first time in a year and suddenly, you’re in love with the idea that things can just lie in complete peace once they fall back into what was always meant to be. Perhaps it’s the writer’s utopia, but you think it’s much more meaningful this way. Ten's hoodie smells just like home.

prologue.

It was a sunlit morning when you first met Ten, but it was only a sunlit morning. There were no birds chirping or faceless adults on that sidewalk or even your friends because you don’t recall them. You recall a child with two very important teeth missing and your sudden urge to run to his side. You’d pulled his cheek with a huge grin on your face because, and you still stand by this, they were too cute and plump and red to resist.

You were three and a half years old when you met Ten and you parted when you were twenty. One year later, you're back to linking arms, joking about each other and talking about life as though it's a passing stream. 

You were six years old when you cried at Ten's birthday party because no one was talking to him. It gave you an evening's worth of attention and a huge smile on Ten's face. You still think kids are mean as hell but they care for things like they have never cared before. 

You were eleven years old when you started to lose a little bit of touch with yourself. You talked less, you looked at people more. Ten's face was still the most comforting out of all. He said he liked to listen no matter how annoying you sound. Somehow, by the time sixth grade was over, when you were almost twelve—you talked at least twice as much. 

You were fourteen years old when you dated a boy out of curiosity and left on an awkward note when he moved away. You weren't sad for some reason. The idea of life passing meaninglessly by was engraved into you, like the waves that carve the beach. Ten was distant the whole time, with a scowl and more sarcastic remarks than usual, only warming up when you showed up at his door with a homemade cake. It tasted horrible and had the texture of a mossy pebble but you laughed over it anyway. Suddenly, life wasn't meandering but a river full of vigor in spring, beside a garden of fresh crested irises. 

You were sixteen when you were pushed to audition in a play by your best friend. The play was about life and death and love, and it didn’t make sense to you the way it did to him. You had good fun backstage with the costumes and the makeup, and it was all that mattered to you. However, some part of you didn't like it, hated it even when he kissed the female lead of the play with eyes full of adoration. You looked on as Villager B and you hated every part of it.

When you were eighteen turning nineteen, you decided to save up for college. It would take time—years perhaps but you would get there. You would get an apartment with Ten in New York City or any city full of bustling, busy life and you would tend to your rooftop garden. Small town dreams, however, die and they die and they’re buried in unloved, unplanted soil. 

You finally understood what your tenth grade English teacher meant when she said everything is theatre. 

The night he left, you had a nightmare. It was a play and you were the protagonist. You couldn’t make it in time for the night of the performance, anxious and afraid as you arrived. You’d been replaced. You hated to see him on stage with someone else. You hated it. You hated it. You hated it so much. 

Of course, you knew it would be a showstopper the moment that fight broke out between you and your replacement. You were cruel in that dream—almost as if you were someone else. But you felt comfortable in that skin, like you were meant to play that part after all. As if you were the villain all along and not the sweetheart of the show. You felt comfortable and it scared you so much that you woke in cold sweat and cried for an hour straight.

It hurt how lonely you felt. It hurt without Ten and you hate that you let him go. Something took shape inside the cavity of your chest, the shape of a weed sprouting in the pulsing garden of life—you won’t make the same mistake again. You’re going to hold on with all your might, till your hands ache and till your heart has had enough. 

ACT II: YOUTH 

 act ii scene i.

“Have you ever actually shoplifted in your life?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Ten tries to suppress his smile and fails, moving so that his back covers you from view instead. A conversation about New York subways led to a conversation about anarchy which led to… this. You’ve been trying to swipe the butterfly pin from the display for the past half an hour. You weren’t actually going to steal it—you just need to prove you can.

The mall is always eerily empty. It shouldn’t be this big of a hassle. Ah yes, apart from the fact that the souvenir shop has stationed the most number of employees for some goddamn reason. You’re not even sure why it’s there; a souvenir shop for your town might as well be a forgotten relic.

“What? No,” he says quickly. “I’m not doing that. Causing trouble is your thing.”

You snort. “Right. Because everything we got into trouble for was done completely by me.”

“That’s actually true.”

You elbow him, giving him your most offended look.

“You can’t be serious about never causing trouble. You broke Mrs. Leung’s famous ruler, remember? And you always stole your mom’s Halloween cupcakes. Those were for all of the theatre crew, by the way.”

“That doesn’t sound right, darling.”

When you look up at him with eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, you find him smiling in somewhat tranquil thought. It has been rather long. 

“Yeah, I helped you way too much,” you respond, distastefully. 

The two of you straighten at the cashier’s call. Responding that everything’s fine, Ten turns to you with a pointed look.

“If you’re going to do it, better do it before she gets suspicious.”

The hint in his eyes reminds you that he is indeed the devil you know, and you quickly pocket the little butterfly hairpin. This is not ethical in any way and even so, you feel the childish exhilaration. This is to prove a point to your dear friend.

“See?” you whisper to him, exiting the shop. “I could totally pull this off.”

“Not if I start screaming ‘thief!’”

“Did you ever get to play a villain at Broadway? It’s closest to your personality,” you jab.

He sends you a sardonic smile before sticking his tongue out. You should always beware a childish man and his childish smile. You never know if he’ll take you seriously. Ten is the absolute worst and you love him all the more for it.

“Are you actually not gonna pay for it?” he asks, tilting his head. 

“And let all those proceeds go to our corrupt overlord mayor? Nuh-uh.”

Ten laughs. “We should go vandalize his campaign posters again.”

The mayor has had, you don’t know how many, little scandals accusing him of embezzlement and every time, he’s escaped easy as pie. All the things you can do with money and you decide to hoard more money; you will never understand people like him. Besides, you won’t have to worry about that any time soon.

“See? You’re the troublemaker. I can’t even vandalize good enough.”

“It’s not my fault you have zero artistic talent.”

You place your hands on your hips. “I’m sorry? I’m pretty sure I taught you how to paint.”

Ten rolls his eyes, a sneaky smile on his lips. “Yeah. You taught the whole class how to paint when you smacked Mr. Cheng with that paintbrush.”

You can’t help the laugh that comes to you, despite trying your best to hold a serious expression.

“You’re a disaster,” he adds, staring incredulously at your fit of laughter. 

You look at him and start laughing again.

“Oh my god, what’s so funny? I wasn’t even trying to be funny.”

“Okay, emo boy,” you say, finally straightening and messing his hair.

“I was going to get a haircut.”

“Don’t. You look pretty.”

Ten hums, raising an eyebrow. “But I wanna look hot.”

“That’s going to take a lot of effort.”

Ten grabs you in a chokehold, messing your hair with his hands in the most obnoxious way possible. Finally able to loosen his grip on you, you look at him with your most fearsome glare. He has to stop treating you so gracelessly.

It’s not unusual for him to behave this way; in fact, you welcome it when he’s warm and much lovelier than the usual. But something feels amiss, something dangerous like the passage of time. 

“Ten?”

“Yes?”

“I thought you’d be talking much more about New York instead of our boring old town.”

He hums, eyes scanning the vicinity of the mall’s first floor. There’s an ice cream shop opposite to the souvenir shop, unvisited due its lack of variety in flavours, and a spacious marble floor with most of the shops closed for renovation. The other two floors are closed off completely but you’re sure that with enough effort, you could sneak in. The glass ceiling at the centre allows for sunlight to wash in as gentle waves, settling on your heads like golden crowns. There are little potted plants lining the walls to make the mall space look less dilapidated but it gives off the same effect as that of something abandoned, left alone and waiting. 

“You want me to brag about it?” He addresses you with a slightly cocky grin.

You roll your eyes. “Never mind.”

The mayor wanted to turn this place into some sort of religious campus but you detest the idea of that man getting his way. He’s the very same man to reprimand little girls for their outfits and to say “dancing is not manly” so you do owe his nauseating sexism for your distaste for him. That, and he has absolutely no sense of aesthetics. You would die before you let him remove the gardens or the livelier buildings blessed with the only colours you can bear to look at. 

“Hey, (name)?”

“Yeah?”

“I think Angry Cashier is making her way towards you.”

You snap your head to the souvenir shop and the cashier is indeed eyeing you suspiciously. You reach to pat your pocket but you’re stopped by Ten.

“You are, by far, the stupidest thief I’ve ever known.”

You puff your cheeks in annoyance, crossing your arms instead. Just when you think the cashier is going to call you out, the two of you sprint over to the mall exit with a plausible enough speed.

“We didn’t have to run, you know?” Ten complains as soon as you’re out and a street or two away. 

“What’s the fun in committing a crime if we don’t get to run?”

“I don’t know, it could be a brain exercise—oh wait. You don’t have one.”

You stick your tongue out at him, walking faster to get away from him.

“Hey!”

He jogs up to you, eyebrows furrowed and ready to spit some sass at you, no doubt.

“I thought you’d be more athletic. Dancing and all.”

“Yeah, no.”

You fix the hair in front of his eyes as he leans over on his knees, a look in his eyes as though caught off guard. They’re a lovely shade of honey, his eyes. They look at you with emotions you can't quite fathom and with the innocence of a love borne between friends who have been forced to endure the mediocrity of this town together. It’s a good reason, you believe, to be friends. Friends are meant to help each other, to save each other and to be there at the lowest. You can check all the boxes. It might have been a while but you’re friends and friends that grow up together stay together. The idea is naive but you cannot possibly look into a future without Ten. There must be a reason behind everything that is given to you. Even right now, as the silence starts to nip at you, you believe you were meant to make full circle. Fate is a funny thing and you wouldn’t believe in it ever, even for a surprise twenty dollar bill vending machine miracle, but it’s comforting enough to let settle on the two of you. 

The lead actors go hand in hand.

“Are you going to keep staring at me? I know I’m tragically beautiful—”

“No, you’re beautifully tragic. Your face, that is.”

“I stopped listening after beautiful, so I believe you agreed with me there.”

You roll your eyes. 

“You and your unyielding confidence can go fuck itself. I’ve seen you cry over a cat movie.”

Ten sputters out a response. “But- but Garfield saved that dog despite every fiber of his being telling him not to. He could’ve lived a happy, peaceful life but he saved him. How is that not incredibly touching?”

“You’re weird. Garfield’s cute though.”

“Like me.”

You wrinkle your nose. “What are we, twelve?”

“I was having my rebellious punk phase then, so no. I would never have said that when I was twelve.”

You laugh. “God, you looked so funny back then.”

“I thought we agreed to not bring up stuff from our teenage years.”

You press your lips together in an attempt to stop the laugh but a tiny giggle comes out anyway. The sun is going to set in an hour. You better make use of your time.

“Ready to go vandalize some posters?” you ask, grinning.

“You know what? I have a better idea. We should go pick some flowers.”

You blink at him. “That’s not remotely punk or rebellious.”

“Shh. You like picking flowers. Remember how we used to joke you should be hired at weddings instead of the flower girls?”

You make a face. “Why on earth would I fling flowers in the air at weddings? That’s not even a respectable job.”

“It suits you.”

“We should be kinder to our arboreal friends.” You cross your arms. “I’d rather tend to a garden than pick flowers for stupid occasions.”

“Tree-hugger.”

You pull up your middle finger and he laughs, fixing his hair right back into the messy waves.

“Why do you hate weddings?” he asks all of a sudden.

“Oh, you know. Icky stuff.”

“No one’s having sex at the wedding.”

“That’s not what I meant by icky stuff. It’s that gross feeling in the air. What’s it called?”

“Love?”

“Please, there’s hardly any love at weddings. It’s all pretend.”

Ten rolls his eyes, chuckling. “You think all the brides and bridegrooms in the world are pretending at their own weddings?”

“If you say it like that…” You grumble. “I don’t believe you need to celebrate love, that’s all. It’s always there, you know?”

You look up to see Ten pressing his fist to his mouth to keep himself from laughing and scoff in disbelief.

“What’s so funny? Seriously, stop laughing—oh for fuck’s sake.”

Soon enough, Ten is crouching by the sidewalk in a fit of laughter which causes a hot flush rising over your neck. You weren’t trying to be cheesy. Now, your best friend is hellbent on making you feel embarrassed. 

“It wasn’t that cringe. Come on. Get up, asshole.”

“You were- you were just so—” He takes a moment to catch his breath, a few short laughs erupting from him nonetheless. “You looked so serious when you said that.”

Your face is hot enough for you to look away now. “Whatever,” you mumble.

“It was cute. You looked really cute,” he continues, somewhat sobered up. “And brave. You always say things with so much confidence that it’s brave. I’m glad you are the way you are.”

You look at him, slightly dazed before your cheeks puff up to prevent yourself from laughing.

“I regret saying that. You are the big, hideous regret of my life.”

“I thought I was cute?” Your snickers turn into laughter again.

“Fuck off.”

“Thanks, Ten. You’re really good to me.”

Ten shakes his head before walking away, leaving you to call after him in phrases of ‘wait up!’ and ‘when did you get so fast?’ as you try to catch up. You sometimes wonder if he likes being chased. You reach the busiest crossing in this town, with about four cars waiting at the stop sign. You’re not sure why anyone follows the traffic rules if there isn’t even any traffic.

Looking up, you gasp at the moon peeking over a still young sky. You're suddenly reminded of those afternoon naps you had in Ten’s room, the both of you fascinated by the idea of waking up and seeing the sky a whole different colour. The idea that time changes everything was still fresh in your minds then, the impact gentle if not loving. It’s quite late you found that time can steal just as much as it gives.

“Remember when we dyed your hair red?”

“I will, and I shit you not, physically assault you for saying anything about that.”

You laugh at the memory of his awkward hairdo. “No, the other time. When we were seventeen.”

“Oh yeah, I received like eight love letters for that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He did look pretty, and just in time for Valentine’s day’s theme of red roses and nauseating pink hearts.

“I have proof.” Ten leans his elbow against the street lamp, missing it completely and stumbling backwards till he regains his balance. He gives you an impish smile, running a hand through his hair and breathing out. 

You roll your eyes, ignoring his words. “I think we never took pictures of that.”

“So… what are you suggesting?”

“One good picture,” you answer, pulling out your phone and taking a picture of him off guard. Looking at it, you pout. It’s so unfair that he gets to look nice even in a hazy evening picture. 

Ten rolls his eyes, snatching your phone. “Let me show you how to take good pictures. Not whatever crap you have going on.”

You cross your arms, huffing but agree nonetheless when he forces you to pose by the street light. He blabbers on something about composition and colours that goes straight over your head but you can’t deny that the picture came out ridiculously well. You might have to change all your socials with a new profile picture.

“See? You can thank me with a kiss,” he says, a cheeky smile across his face.

You press your lips to his cheek in a swift motion, a smack sound resounding from it. It was uncalled for, you think, because Ten freezes for a few seconds in an uncharacteristic manner. He shakes his head, a scream dying in his throat before turning to you with the most scandalized look.

“Oh my god, what did you do that for?” he says, rubbing at his cheek in a teasing manner.

You wrap your arms around him, furthering his protests although he ends up smiling wide. “You asked for it, honey.”

“Nicknames are my thing. Stop trying to copy me, it’s embarrassing.”

"Okay, now let's take a picture together," you suggest pulling him closer.

He clicks his tongue and takes the phone from you, and when his hand rests upon the small of your back, you try to freeze up. His face is near yours, not unlike the usual but you feel your heartbeat hike up. It's a strange feeling.

"Now, can we go home?" Ten asks, handing you your phone. "I can't believe your background is rilakkuma."

"I'll change it," you respond, voice strangely quiet. You're only half smiling but Ten's smile is full and bright, eyes honey-pure. "To us."

Ten hums in satisfaction and offers his hand like a gentleman from another century, something you tend to exaggerate and you take it with a laugh. The two of you walk with entangled arms and playful skips over the pavement, getting the same old looks from passersby as you did as children and teenagers. The traffic lights glow a gentle hue below the mature blue evening sky, fading easily. You realize as gently as waves lapping at the shore that you missed Ten so bad it still hurts in the hole he left. 

act ii scene ii.

Any weekend in a boring little town of flowers starts with the news of parties. It used to be Johnny sending invites but now it’s mostly just Yukhei calling people for impromptu college parties. Now, you are aware that college parties are horrendous in every shape and form; you are also aware that the two hour car ride to the city college isn’t safe. But it’s easy to ignore hackneyed advice to stay away from parties and alcohol and weed when you’re young and have a ridiculously large group of friends.

The drive isn’t the worst part. At least the drive to the party isn’t; the drive back is usually too hazed to be memorable. Sicheng’s driving this time and with a lot of grumbling but he gets enough pitiful pats to the back and cheek to stop it. Ten has his feet up on the dashboard, having called shotgun before you by one fucking second. You’re stuck with Sooyoung and Johnny in the backseat, sandwiched uncomfortably at that, but you lean forward enough to nag Ten the whole time.

“(name),” Sooyoung calls in a sing-song voice. “Your overly affectionate looks for Ten are showing and it’s not even eleven yet.”

You furrow your eyebrows, stammering out a response and regretting it immediately. “You’re- You’ve been teasing me about this forever.”

“No, she’s right,” Johnny joins in. “Come on, there isn’t even alcohol involved. Yet.”

You roll your eyes, shrinking into yourself as the two of them laugh on either side of you. Sicheng says something along the lines of ‘nauseating’ and ‘idiotic’ but he gets an elbow jab from Ten.

“I’m driving,” he hisses.

“Into every sidewalk we come across?” Ten shoots back.

Another bout of laughter rings through, and this time you can smile too. It’s not that you’re particularly bothered by the teasing; it’s just uncharted territories you have no desire to chart. You always thought you’d meet Prince Charming on a balcony in a summer evening, and this is optional, but it should happen with ‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift playing in the background. It’s quite inane to assume it would be your best friend, whom you have spent countless summer evenings listening to old Taylor Swift songs with.

Before you were aware of college house parties, you thought things like these would be more of a less-people-more-booze sort of situation. Turns out, the alcohol to people ratio is nearly the same. Stumbling out of the entrance to the frat house, Yukhei greets the lot of you with a dazed smile before promptly throwing up into the bushes. Rolling your eyes, you pat his back while Sooyoung gets some water from her purse.

“How many drinks was it this time, Yukhei?” Ten teases. “Half? Three-quarters? No wait, that’s a stretch.”

“Very funny,” Yukhei mutters, somehow still upbeat despite his continuous retching. “I bet you’d be drunk after a shot of whatever the hell I had too.”

Adjusting his jacket, Ten narrows his eyes at Yukhei with an incredulous look. “Okay, you’re on. Let’s go.”

Sicheng raises his hands alarmed, but Ten has disappeared into the swarms of people before any sound can leave him.

“He was supposed to drive on the way back,” Sicheng complains. He opens his mouth in sudden realization and then turns to you. You look from him to Johnny and Sooyoung who share a look and walk briskly into the party with a thumbs-up gesture.

“Oh. Oh no,” you say.

“No, yes,” Sicheng responds.

You shake your head and laugh before sprinting inside, Sicheng’s yells of protest fading out.

Yukhei wasn’t kidding when he said his frat hosts the craziest parties. There’s far too many people here, at least far too many for Ten to have fun. You like the energy of the crowd though, all in their own zones and dancing to old party pop songs. The smell of alcohol hits you so strong at first that you have to take a breather in the little garden space they have. It’s more of an overgrown shrubbery instead of a garden but any green will do. Walking back in, you feel much more comfortable when you take a shot of vodka from a girl passed out on the couch. Laughing, you look around for familiar faces. Parties, however, are not the place to look for faces at all. You think you just spotted a fur neck warmer tied around a dude’s waist while he performs some Neanderthal variant of belly dancing.

You bump into a guy of fairly tall stature, a polite apology tumbling from his lips.

Furrowing your eyebrows, you chuckle in amusement. “You’re not a party kind of guy, are you?”

He stares at you with a placid expression, intrigued. “And how would you know?”

“First, you’re not drunk. Two, you look grossed out by those dudes on the bar table. Three, you’re making conversation with me instead of dancing.”

“So you’re saying I can’t make conversation and dance at the same time.”

“I’m sorry, Mister, but you look like you’d rather not dance at all.”

He laughs. “That’s your way of saying I have a stick up my ass, isn’t it?”

You shrug, giving him your friendliest smile. “I prefer talking to drinking too. What’s your name? I need to know the name of the only sober guy in here.”

“Doyoung,” he answers. “Something tells me you’re not going to give me the same pleasure of knowing your name.”

You smile, pressing your index finger to your lips. “Names at parties are better left unknown.”

Something about him is inherently attractive, and you find yourself drawing nearer. Perhaps you could have a more fun night this way. “It’s much more fun to guess. Now, I’m guessing your party-loving best friend dragged you in here so you could get laid.”

He sighs, smiling at you. “I’m actually part of the frat.”

You gasp, hand covering your mouth. “No way.”

“Someone sober has to oversee whatever the hell’s going on here.” He shrugs. “Now, and this isn’t a guess, but you’re not from our college.”

“Nope. I’m from that little flower town nearby.” 

“Ah, I heard there’s a lovely dahlia field there.”

You nod. “And me. Just as lovely.”

You bite your tongue. That was certainly not sexy enough flirting. Ten has been rubbing off on you with his lame comebacks. Doyoung, however, laughs really loud at that. He must have a worse sense of humour than you thought.

You turn sharply at the sound of your name. Ten seems to be waving at you from a table of beer pong, looking rather distressed. You wave back with a bothered look on your face, aggressively signaling for him to handle his shit alone. He pouts and signals more desperately for you to come. Sighing, you turn to Doyoung.

“Sorry,” you say. “My friend seems to be in a pinch. Either that or he’s attention starved again in a record time of eight minutes.”

Doyoung laughs. “I liked talking to you.”

“I liked talking to you too, plot twist.”

“Is that what you’re calling me now?” Doyoung smiles at you. "Ah, I tend to forget but someone always comes along and shows me how friendships are made."

With one last smile, you leave him and walk halfway through to Ten before realizing you forgot to ask for Doyoung’s number. It’s too late to turn back now for the crowd blocks your version and you begrudgingly make your way to Ten. So much for your fun night.

“What was so important that you had to pull me away from the only attractive dude in this party?” you say, crossing your arms.

“Who, Doyoung?” he asks. “I’m at least six times hotter. And anyway, help me win this.”

You roll your eyes. If Ten knows Doyoung, you can somehow finagle your way into getting his number.

“I suck at this game,” Ten mutters. “How the hell is it supposed to hit its mark when the cup is so far away?”

“You have shitty aim,” you say, taking the ping pong ball and throwing it right into the cup. Smirking at the dude who’s already wasted on the other side, you turn back to Ten.

“That’s how you play.”

“Maybe you just have magic hands. Kiss my balls for good luck—wait, fuck, I didn’t mean that.”

You throw your head back and laugh at the disgusted look on his face. Sometimes Ten forgets to think before he opens his mouth and it might be surprising, but he does think before most things he says. He’s always been careful in the subtlest ways.

“I hate this game,” Ten says after missing the cup again. 

“Let me teach you,” you say, moving behind him and taking his hand holding the ball. He stiffens before letting you guide the angle of projection as you throw. It lands right in despite the wobbly beginning and you grin at him.

“I’m so done with this party,” he whispers, hands on his hips and stretching much like a cat after a nap.

You giggle. “I didn’t drink enough to forget everything that’s ever hurt me though.”

“You’re hurt?” he asks, before clearing his throat. “If you wanna stay, I’ll stay too.”

“I’m not a child, you know?” you say, smiling incredulously. “I don’t need you babysitting me.”

“I don’t need you talking to any more Doyoungs. You know his body count?”

“That guy?” you ask, jaw dropping.

“It’s not that much actually,” Ten continues, smiling deviously. “More than what you expect from a guy in law though. You can shut your jaw.”

You huff. “How do you know though? Did you sleep with him?”

Ten wrinkles his nose. “I would rather eat your baking than sleep with him.”

“Hey.”

Right then, the two of you are approached by a now-sober Yukhei. He must have vomited enough alcohol out of his system by now. Johnny stays beside him with mild worry across his features. Sicheng on the other hand looks like his social battery has drained out already.

“It’s time for a drinking game!” Yukhei tells the two of you. “With the… uh… not so drunk people.”

“So just the five of us? Where’s Sooyoung?”

“Doting over Yeri,” Johnny answers.

“Ah.”

“Let’s play something if you guys actually want me to stay and not die of boredom,” Sicheng mumbles in annoyance.

"Truth or drink?" Yukhei suggests. 

"Hell no," you mutter. "I've had enough of that."

"What, no dare this time," he insists with a wide smile and arms outstretched.

You hum. "What are you curious about anyway? I know you wanna know something."

Yukhei scratches the back of his head before glancing at Ten. "Well… have you two ever… I don't know, experimented with each other? Like you're best friends, right, so no hard feelings."

Ten furrows his brows, a gaze that's somewhere between a glare and a confused look.

"Experiment…?" He asks, almost afraid to.

"In bed," says Yukhei bluntly.

Ten turns a few shades darker in the face, noticeable even under the multi-colored party lights. You, on the other hand, pray your stunned expression isn't mistaken for the embarrassment you feel. You're not sure why the feeling arises.

"(Name) wishes," Ten jokes, playing it off.

You roll your eyes. "You wish, asshole."

Yukhei pulls a face and raises a hand to interrupt. "Please don't start another lover's quarrel."

Sicheng snickers at the side, although you thought he wasn't listening. How on earth does this joke not get old to them?

"Anyway, my question is answered," Yukhei says. "Best friends who are in love with each other cannot sleep together but friends who are not… they can right?"

Sicheng hums in response, a teasing smile already on his lips. Ten groans and places his hand to the back of Sicheng's neck, almost threatening.

"What would you know about sex, Sicheng?" He bickers. "You're like virgin supreme."

You narrow your eyes. "And what would you know?"

Ten opens his mouth then closes it promptly. Sicheng and Yukhei on the other hand break into laughter, mentioning something about digging graves before taking their leave from the two of you. You really don't think either of them should be drinking—considering Yukhei's a lightweight and Sicheng is supposed to drive.

Ten smacks the back of your head and you yelp, smacking his shoulder as hard as you can.

"I was trying to help us there," he complains. "You're so unfun."

You mimic his statement and he tries to pinch you in the cheeks, which you expertly avoid.

"So tell me," you say. "Have you or have you not had sex?"

Ten sighs. "Okay, yeah fine. Guilty. Whatever."

"What happened to no flings in New York?"

"Didn't feel like telling you."

"Oh, I'm so hurt."

The two of you look at each other and burst into laughter, easy to forget the scores of people around you in the moment. 

“So you definitely had a few flings in New York,” you say, crossing your arms with a smug smile.

“Like three, yeah,” he answers, shaking his head. “What does it matter?”

Some part of you is satisfied with the way he doesn’t look too interested. It’s the ridiculous part of you. The clementine light over his features make them seem even gentler than usual and you smile, pressing the back of your hand to his cheek.

“Wha—”

“Mhm. Your cheeks are so warm.”

“Oh, so now I’m your personal heater.”

Ten places his hand over yours and your heartbeat hikes, and so easily too when he looks at you with his honey eyes.

“You know what, you’re right. This party’s getting boring.” You look around, as though pretending will help you any better. But then again if Shakespeare was onto something and all the world's a stage, then you never stop pretending, right?

Ten looks at you for a suggestion and the moment pauses, contemplation on both of your faces. 

“Let’s just get Sicheng to drive us back,” you say finally. It’s not like you can stray too far for fear of Sicheng leaving behind the two of you (he’s done that before).

Sicheng jumps at the idea of going back and all of you have to participate in dragging drunk Sooyoung into the car and away from a slightly worn out Yeri. Thanking you and fixing her disheveled hair, she walks back into her own corner to what seems to be aggressively coding on her laptop and flipping the finger to any dude who approaches her. When work calls, you simply cannot hang up.

You and Ten are forced to sit together in the backseat now for Johnny sits shotgun, massaging his forehead from whatever hellsent concoction he made for himself and his friends. The drive is mostly quiet and you lay your head on Ten’s shoulder while Sooyoung snores beside you. It’s quiet like the laps of water between ripples. It feels so secure to stay like this, like the world cannot interrupt. You’ve missed your best friend. You’ve missed him so much.

You and Ten part ways with the others at the crossing and you don’t skip over the path as you used to, with the jovial youth you contained then. No, your steps are slower and perhaps more mature but still in pace with Ten’s just as ever. A cat waits by the entrance to your door, the same calico that has won over your mother’s heart and now waits patiently for treats. In a way, you kept feeding it because you thought of Ten whenever you did.

It seems these days, the only way to get kisses from Ten is to be a cat. He pets the cat with tender strokes and presses his face to its forehead with no fear of cat-borne diseases. 

“Hey, Ten. What about me?” You pucker your lips at him and he presses his palm to your lips instead, snickering.

In these short moments, moments that barely last, do you feel the three years he’s been gone. It’s funny how people change and never realize they do. It’s funny how you’re in awe of every person he becomes.

“I missed your rooftop the most in New York,” Ten says. 

You chuckle. “You hid there when your mom was mad at you.”

“Do you know how many slippers your rooftop has saved me from? I think your rooftop is more of a best friend to me than you are.”

You place your hand over your heart in mock hurt and he shakes his head, grinning.

“Well, let’s prove I’m more worthy of the best friend title then,” you say, grabbing his hand, the skin so soft to you, and dragging him into your house in quiet tiptoes. You remember coming up here back when you pretended to be pirates, when you acted out Shakespeare and when you wanted to forget the world, the terrible, cruel world you found yourself hating often. This is your hiding spot, a safe place. Ten makes it more so. 

Lying down against the rooftop, you trace the sky from star to star. The good thing about small, dimly lit towns is the clear view of the stars. So far from troubles, it must be easy to play the audience. 

“That looks a little like Felis,” Ten says, taking your hand and tracing a particular arrangement of the stars.

“Is that a… cat?”

“Yeah. It’s not a constellation anymore,” he tells you. “But I like to think it is.”

“I wish things never end too,” you mumble. “Like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Or that new Taylor Swift song. I wish some things went on forever.”

Ten laughs airily. “I wish too.”

You turn to look at him. The curve of his nose is pretty as ever, eyelashes hanging close to the skin of his cheeks as he breathes with eyes closed. There’s a significant number of words you haven’t exchanged yet. There’s so many words you’re holding back.

“You seem tired,” you note.

He hums in response.

“Was New York that hard?”

He opens his eyes to look at you. “A little… tiring, yes.”

“Well, I’m glad you can rest now.” You smile and he returns it. 

“I’ve been running for so long and telling myself I’m still dancing,” he says, a sigh escaping afterwards. “I don’t even know where I am anymore.”

“You’re with me,” you respond. “Right here. On my rooftop.”

“Watching the stars again,” he completes, laughing aloud. “God, I wish we were kids again. All I cared about were the flavour of my cereal and how many constellations I could memorize.”

“The stars don’t give a shit about you, Ten,” you tease, repeating the line you used to tell him.

“The stars might not give a shit about us,” he agrees, “But that’s why I’d like to watch them a little longer.” 

“Me too,” you say softly.

You take a deep breath and let it out. These are the moments between the bloom of a flower and when it is picked. These moments are serene and warm and gentle, however ephemeral they may be. These are the moments between the flapping of a butterfly's wings—times when you and Ten fell asleep in detention in fifth grade for something that was very much your fault, or when he pets your head with the biggest grin after pissing you off on purpose or the proximity of the baby blue sky after your latest shopping mall mischief. But the flower will be picked someday. To live is to live in fear, and no matter how you try to buzz out the idea of it, it will come and it will prove itself.

“Sometimes I wish I were an angrier person,” you say quietly.

“What for?”

“They just seem so much more driven.”

“You’re driven enough. I think you do everything right already.”

“Working at plant nurseries, maybe. I’m not even a good enough cashier.”

“Flowers suit you.”

“You know, I could spend my life picking flowers and arranging them if I could,” you say, sitting up. “Everything moves so fast that the garden’s gone by the time I get to smell the flowers. You get me?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I wish time could stop. Sometimes it does. When I’m on stage.”

“What’s that like?”

“It’s very beautiful,” he whispers, eyes fixed on you.

It's quiet, the sounds of the night filling the space between you and him.

"You know, in dance," he starts, "the most powerful thing you can be is still. It's also the most difficult."

You hum in response. "I find it easy to be still with you though. It's like I don't have to perform anymore, you know?"

Ten laughs. "I know. I wish I could say that about my ambitions."

You place your palms against his cheeks, holding his face gently. You're not sure if it's because you're a little tipsy or Ten's lips that are driving you crazy, but you smile wide.

"You are like a flower," you begin rather wisely. "And spring hasn't arrived yet."

Ten blinks before snorting and then laughing like you just said the stupidest thing ever. 

The downside to getting along like a house on fire is that the house is still on fire and you don’t know what to do about it. Your heart is burning and you want to tell him the words you’re holding back. But if they escape your mouth, the wind might carry it away and leave you with a heavy response. You can’t say anything yet. Not until you’ve mustered enough courage to leave this town behind with him. Not until you have enough financial confidence to fall in love.

“Hey, Ten.”

“Hm? Don’t ask me something stupid and ruin the night.”

You giggle. “Will you stay with me wherever I am?”

“A little overdue but yes, until death do us part.” 

The two of you laugh, shoulders shaking and eyes brimming with an unsaid emotion. This is how you fall in love. You fall in love like flowers blossoming and withering, like you have only each other to withstand the test of time. 

“Should we dance?” Ten offers. “This time, maybe you’ll finally learn to not step on my feet.”

“That just makes me want to step on your feet more.”

It's so easy to fall in love that you fall asleep to the feeling—like the nights after you watched cartoons well past bedtime and thought that Ten was the prettiest boy you'd ever seen, after reading illicit internet horror stories in seventh grade that only made you huddle closer, after creating a pillow fort in the name of memories the night of your graduation when you couldn't say out loud that Ten really is the prettiest boy you know. The feeling slips in like you slip on your night clothes and you forget they were ever off at all. Comfort is a fleeting thing but in that moment, it felt forever.

act ii scene iii.

Halloween is undoubtedly the greatest time to spend with friends. There’s spooky stories shared, an abundance of favourite candies and if you happen to be friends with theatre kids, there’s most certainly a fun play going on. The crisp autumn air is vaguely nostalgic, brimming with memories in this town. 

Evening creeps in and once you’re done with the day’s chores, you get dressed with such speed that your mother has to convince you to slow down. It’s like you’re a kid again, and you'd like to enjoy this morsel of your childhood before you're forced to grow up.

Greeting Ten’s mother as you rush into the house, you run up the stairs and into Ten’s room, opening the door with a loud bang. Somehow, Ten’s scream is louder than that. He’s wearing a towel around his waist (only a towel), hands covering his chest with a horrified look on his face.

"Stop screaming," you say, hands on your hips. "We've seen each other naked, what's the big deal? Actually, do that pitch again, you sound like Meryl Streep from Mamma Mia."

Ten chokes, covering his mouth with his knuckles while he coughs.

"We were like four and a half! How does that count?"

You giggle, turning around. "Change. Quick."

"I mean, you can see if you like, darling," he calls, liltingly. "I know you can't resist me. Ugh. Can't stand all this pining from a friend."

You make a gagging sound and he laughs. It seems like he’s gotten over the initial shock of you barging in. The sound of the wardrobe opening and Ten shuffling through clothes follows. You are glad, however, that he can't see the look on your face. You must be looking ridiculous. You wonder if he can see how tense your shoulders and torso are. This is not the way you wanted to start the evening. Can he tell apart the distinct nervousness in your voice? It's suddenly difficult to play it cool. And isn't playing it cool something you do in front of a crush?

You catch a glimpse of his naked back and it makes you shake your head violently to get rid of the thought. How ridiculous. You can’t be lovers yet.

“Alright, you can turn around. What the fuck are you even supposed to be?”

"Say hello to the wicked witch of the West!" You exclaim, grinning ear to ear when you jump around.

"Oh, you don't have to dress up for that."

Your smile turns into a pout and you pull hard at his still-soft cheeks. He lets out a pained whine, grabbing your wrists and gently tugging them off. His skin turns red easily, however, and you're left with an image of rosy-cheeked Ten just like when you first met.

“You’re a demon spawn,” he hisses, rubbing his sore cheek. 

“No, that’s definitely your thing. Can’t borrow that,” you say, crossing your arms and smiling smugly. “Why aren’t you dressed as one? Actually, why aren’t you dressed as anything?”

Ten shrugs. “I have to wear some ridiculous ghost outfit for the play so I decided I’d rather play the part of a sexy pirate ghost.”

You snort, looking at the half-buttoned white shirt tucked neatly into black trousers. “You? A ghost? A poltergeist is the word you’re looking for.”

Ten rolls his eyes. “If I were a ghost, I’d definitely haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“Okay, ghost boy, let’s get going.” You loop your arms through his and pull him out, leaving in just as much a whirlwind as you walked in. You do walk back in though—to stuff a few of the cookies Ten’s mom baked in your mouth and walk right out with a muffled ‘thank you’ and your hand still around Ten’s wrist.

Arriving at the theatre, Ten catches his breath though he tries to not look worn out before squinting and making a show of searching for something.

“What are you looking for?” You ask, furrowing your eyebrows.

“The train you thought we were going to miss.”

You stick your tongue out and finally let go of his hand. He pulls it to himself, rubbing at his wrist with an exaggerated look of pain. 

“Oh, it’s still intact. Thought I’d have to bid farewell to my dreams of being a professional calligrapher.”

“Eat ink, Ten.”

“Ooh, it’s the rare PG-13 (name). Nice.”

A loud bang emanates from the back entrance, Sicheng looking like a rather mortified Count Dracula (which is strange because Dracula is immortal, right?) with fake blood splattered across his jaw and two little fangs poking out. Ten no wastes no time in complimenting them, making Sicheng rather flustered.

“It was bad enough having to listen to your flirting through the door,” Sicheng mutters. “Get in. Quick. Sooyoung pulled out and we need someone to fill in.”

Your eyes light up and Sicheng is about to deny your wishes when Ten intervenes.

“(name). You get to play a slightly deranged witch with a most definitely existing bloodlust. You in?”

“You bet I am! I was born ready. Except in sixth grade when I had that meh phase and I wasn’t born ready. Then I was born ready again!”

Sicheng makes a face. “Yeah sure, just get in.”

“Aren’t you glad I’m dressed for the occasion?”

“Not really, no.”

Ten whistles when he walks in. “How much fake blood did you guys get?”

“Enough to re-enact Red Wedding from Game of Thrones,” Johnny answers from a corner, in a costume which you can’t tell if it’s a werewolf or just a fursuit. You can never seem to guess when it comes to Johnny.

Ten laughs before turning to you, the sound tuning out. “I have never watched Game of Thrones.”

You pat his shoulder, laughing. In the next moment, Sicheng pushes a script towards you, expecting you to actually read.

“Sicheng, you know I’m going to improvise.”

Sicheng groans. “Shakespeare was right. Hell is empty and all the demons are here.”

Throwing a pointed glare at you when he says the word ‘demons’, he crosses his arms. It’s easy to convince him though—he’s quite amenable when he’s stressed out about details and both you and Ten know he just needs some reassurance and good, gentle shove.

You and Ten sit on either side of him on a really, really worn out couch that you’re not sure can hold the weight of the three of you.

Sicheng holds up his hands in both of your faces before you can open your mouth.

“I feel like the child of a really immature couple who is forced to grow up at a tender age because his parents are so immature.”

“Uh,” Ten starts. “That’s very specific.”

“The character I’m playing has daddy issues,” Sicheng responds casually, and a little out of it. “Actually he’s got mommy issues too. Why am I playing an eight year old?”

“Because children are crap at acting,” Ten answers and you reach your arm to smack the back of his head.

“What? Ow, that hurt.”

“Sicheng, it’s our stupid Halloween play. We do it to have fun,” you say, placing your hand 

“You going all motherly is freaking me out,” Sicheng says, wide eyes staring at you.

“You’re right,” you say, dramatically sighing. “Motherhood changed me. I can’t do evil black magic anymore. Aha! That’s a good dialogue, isn’t it?”

“Harrowing, actually, but I guess that’s what you’re going for.”

You and Ten share a fond smile, laughing to yourselves till Joohyun calls you and gives you basic stage direction. She’s almost never home except for Halloween and it makes the holiday even more exceptional.

“Ready, Wicked Witch of the West?” Ten nudges you before he has to go on stage. 

“Wait, is that actually my character?”

“No. No, it isn’t. For the love of cats—the animal, not the musical—please just keep speaking and make it worse on stage. I need a recording to laugh at.”

You roll your eyes and push him on. He looks so at peace there, the conversation from that night coursing in remembrance. It’s like everything is still, the lack of motion driving him to move. 

You never understand it yourself, however, when you’re on stage. You blabber like an idiot, as Ten says, and the audience laughs and that is it. You don’t experience what he does and it sometimes drives you a little crazy. Of course, you adding a pregnancy narrative to your witch does throw the rest of the cast for a loop but they handle it well. You just have to make sure you run as fast as you can from Joohyun after the play is done.

“Good job there,” Ten snickers after you duck behind a curtain as Joohyun passes by with furrowed brows and a frown. 

“I know right? I’m literally Oscar-worthy,” you whisper-yell and Ten shakes his head.

“Come on.” This time his hand grips your wrist. “I know the best way to sneak out of this theatre.”

Taking a flight of stairs that you were previously unaware of, you plunge into the darkness of what seems to be an attic. Ten turns on the flashlight of his phone and you yelp, the lighting not helping his already spooky makeup. He laughs before navigating through a bunch of boxes. 

“I heard they used to use this room as an execution chamber,” Ten whispers.

“They did not. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay fine. I did cry here though after reading an internet article about ill-fated lovers in ancient Asia.”

“Ugh. Truly horrifying.”

“Yeah, yeah. Emotions terrify you.”

“They do not.”

Ten stops walking.

“Oh yeah? Got any proof?”

You stop yourself before you can do something embarrassing. The first thought that came to you was to kiss the smug look off his face and it does terrify you. The bastard is right. 

“I… cried at your birthday party.”

“You were six. Everyone cries when they’re six.”

“Alright, fine. I cried after you left.”

The silence makes you look up and for once, you don’t really want Ten to be so speechless. You punch his shoulder lightly.

“I missed you a lot,” you say quietly. “Is that so surprising?”

He opens his mouth but no sound comes out. 

“Hello? Anyone inside?” You knock at his forehead before holding his face between your face. “You’re shivering. It’s pretty cold here.”

“I’m not cold,” he says quickly, the red rising in his face.

“Of course, you’re cold. Your cheeks are aflame, that’s how cold it is.”

Ten shuts off the flashlight and you scream at the abrupt darkness.

“It’s not from the cold,” he mumbles.

Now left with only Ten’s warm hand around your wrist, you let him guide through wherever the hell it is you are before emerging onto the second floor of 1075 Building. 

“What the hell?” You gasp. “Why wasn’t I aware there was a secret passage here? Is this what archaeologists feel like? ”

Ten smiles, in some sort of victory. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

You walk into the empty room, or rather wiggle in through the window—this building used to be some sort of housing apartment before being torn down halfway for renovation. Some ghost stories spooked the workers too much to continue. However, having been here long enough, you know that the only thing haunting this place is the abundance of cats. In fact, you can see a few eyeing the two of you from the other windowsills. The room is fairly well-lit and maintained so you guess the renovation will start again soon.

“You got us pizza?” you exclaim at the pizza boxes and cans of cola resting over a little picnic blanket.

“Yes, I did. Wait, crap, I forgot the candy.”

“Nah, that’s okay.” You show him the Reese’s peanut butter cups and Snickers you had pocketed from some unsuspecting children. They get way too many anyway. This is completely morally justified—you’re doing this to save them from cavities and poor health.

“I can’t believe you’d ever want to escape a theatre,” you say before humming at how good the pizza tastes. Pizza is always better when you’re having it someplace you’re not supposed to be in.

“Sometimes, it’s suffocating.” He finally bites into his pizza, an unreadable look over him. You don’t like it. Shifting closer so that your knees touch, you lean in a little.

“Oh, really? After all that talk about how beautiful it is.”

“It is. It just wears me out sometimes. Like you.”

Ten flushes red immediately. “I didn’t mean it—I, I… uh.”

“Aw, you think I’m beautiful.”

“Gah, I knew you’d say that.”

There’s a pause. 

“I got kicked out, actually,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“I had some disagreements with the writers and… and here I am.”

You look at him in stunned silence. “They did fucking what? I’m going to kill them.”

“No, (name). I was at fault. I overstepped. I guess city air made me a little greedy.”

“You were always greedy though.”

“If that’s your example of sympathy, you are horrible at it. Never try again.”

“Well.” You smile reassuringly. “You’re quite beautiful on stage. Too. Like me, as you said.”

“I’m a performer,” he says, a hint of satisfaction in his voice when he leans in. “You can’t beat me at that.” 

“Then put on a show for me, darling.” You raise an eyebrow, a cocky smile over your lips.

Ten’s cheeks colour. It’s silent for a few moments and you take notice of the lack of distance between your noses, your lips. He seems to lose touch with reality when he gently cups your cheeks and presses his lips to yours. A soft gasp escapes you, not quite ready for the contact.

Ten pulls apart immediately, a look of horror in his eyes.

“I- I’m sorry… I got caught in the—I’m sorry.”

He gets up abruptly and you still sit there in shock. When your senses are back, the room is empty and you hug yourself, feeling colder. God, you’re an idiot. For the first time in your life, you’ve come to your senses and you decide to let the only person you’ve loved walk out the door.

Your texts to him that night aren’t even left on read but you know he’s read the notifications. He always does when he’s avoiding someone. You feel the weight slithering in, pinning you down and making it hard to sleep that night. You have so many things you want to say to him and this time, you’re ready. Even if fate doesn’t let you, you will speak the lines you should have chosen much earlier.

act ii scene iv.

You don’t have anyone to show it to but the news broke you.

The idea of him keeping it all to himself, bearing burdens that are better shared makes your heart collapse its walls into itself. You’re supposed to be there. You were supposed to be there from every pitfall to the top of the world. You were supposed to be at every stage, at every afterparty and for every bout of performance high. You didn’t mean to leave the seat empty.

You were supposed to be there at every rejection and every failure, making fun of all the troubles. 

You get a text from Ten two mornings later to meet up at the new cafe everyone’s been talking about. It takes you the rest of the morning to practise what you’ll say, what you won’t and how you’ll say it. You’ve never done this much for actual plays. But you’re not acting—you just need the words to come out right.

The wall of the cafe is covered in ivy, but you cannot waste time admiring it. Your nerves have the best of you. You stop at the entrance, backtracking to say your entire speech in your head once again. The most important friendship of your life depends on this stupid monologue you came up with a night before in front of the mirror.

“(name).” 

You jump, finding Ten behind you. His nose is a little red from the cold but he looks fine apart from that. You can’t believe you’re early. This might be the first time in your life and you breathe out, slightly more confident.

“Can you… uh, not block the door?”

“Right. Sorry.”

The two of you walk in, a nervous tremble over your fingers but you clasp your hands together tight. He still remembers your favourite drink and you take a moment to try and understand why it’s surprising at all. You wish he never left.

“Ten,” you begin. “If you want to talk about that kiss—”

“Stop. I’m sorry. That was so out of line.” He lets out a distressed sigh, leaning back in the chair. 

“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,” you say quickly. That was not in the speech.

He sits up. “I… Am I taking things too seriously? You’ve been my longest friend, (name). You should tell me.”

You frown. “I didn’t mean it in a harsh way. You just think it’s bad because you kissed your best friend and—”

“No. What do you think?”

You gulp.

“See, (name)? I lied because it fucking hurts right now. I don’t want to play this part.”

“No, Ten. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you so many things but there’s the city, your job—oh. I- I don’t mean to bring it up if the wound is still fresh. Ten—”

“You don’t understand,” he cuts. “You’ve always been happy here. You’re happy wherever.  I’m not… like… that.”

There’s a pause. You pull your jacket closer, the temperature dropping despite the smell of warm baked goods and hit coffee.

“I thought you knew me,” you whisper coldly. 

Ten looks away. “I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know anything about anything.” 

You breathe sharply. “Ten, I know the city was tough but it’s all you ever wanted.”

“I don’t know what I want,” he whispers. “I don’t know where I belong and- and it just keeps getting harder.”

Your eyes soften. “At least, you were there at Broadway. You took the first step and maybe… maybe you can make a priority list, you know? Work things out.”

“(name), stop. You keep trying to cheer me up in the wrong way.” He dips his face into his palms, rubbing at it and sighing.

You purse your lips. This conversation is going nowhere and you’re holding onto the last shred of your empathy. You just want him back with you.

“You got to go out there, Ten. You went to college, you went to New York. You got to go out there and live your dreams, for whatever it was worth, while I’m stuck in this nothing town. Forever.”

“That’s… that’s not true,” he says, voice breaking. “You were saving up for college. We would live in the same city, in the same apartment with the cats and the hot pink curtains and a coffee maker—oh god, I’ve ruined it.”

It’s painful. You don’t know what to say. If this were a movie, the beautiful, romantic kind, you’d be confessing your long-kept feelings. But you don’t know. You don’t know anything about anything. It’s been a year and he’s changed in a way you don’t know and you can’t throw it onto him like this. This isn’t a movie, and you don’t have a script. Your practised words are forgotten as soon as they reach the tip of your tongue. 

People change, and you’re holding onto someone he’s already buried. He’s not in love with you; teenage love is shaky, wobbly at the foundation. He misses the years, not you. You’ve known him your whole life and yet a year’s difference makes you see things differently. You were lonely without him. You were lonely when you had to keep yourself from calling him, when you finally decided to stop sending daily texts, when you couldn’t find the same comfort in any of your other friends. You hurt him and now, you have to face it.

You pick wilting flowers at an overgrown garden. 

No, even if it isn’t you, you want him. You want him and him only, the years be damned. The past pales in comparison to what is now.

“I’m in love with you,” you blurt. “I was just shocked last night because I didn’t think you were in love with me.”

“You’re not in love with me,” he counters. “You’ve been in love with so many people but none of them were me.”

“You. It’s you—oh my god, it was always you.”

Ten glances at his untouched cup, yet undecided on what to do with his fingers when they stop tapping against the bright red plastic table abruptly.

“So what? So what if it was me? I don’t know what it’s like to play that part.”

You breathe out. There’s a silence between the two of you, one which you remember hanging stars upon. Now it's quiet in a way that has nothing to do with astronomy, or art, or music or anything, really. It’s empty. Like every other silence.

“I loved you,” you whisper in an attempt that is more delirious than for closure. “Do you really not know what that’s like?”

Ten shakes his head. “I… I don’t.”

The memories of him smiling under the sun, only memories keep your tears from brimming up. There was meant to be closure. There was meant to be an explanation. You were supposed to be closing that door you opened into each other. Ten looks at your shaking hands and for a moment, you think he might even reach out and warm them up with his sunlit ones. You press them to your face and breathe into them.

“You brought me all the way here to lie to me?”

Ten furrows his eyebrows.

“I’m not lying—I can’t care about you. You know that, right? I’ll ruin your life. Like I’ve ruined mine.”

You laugh, partly in exasperation and partly as an attempt to alleviate the pain in your chest. 

“You’re my boy. I know you better than anything else I know.”

“Don’t- Don’t do that. Don’t make me want something more.”

"Why would you kiss me?" You bite down your lip to stop yourself from crying.

Ten seems at a loss for words, looking at you with parted lips and guilty eyes. 

"I love you. I'm sorry."

With your eyes downcast, you take a shaky breath. It's now or never. Never, never, never. The word chimes like wedding bells and you think for a moment, to lie. If you pretend, if you act, you'll live it out. He cannot stay and you cannot leave. What a ridiculous pair you are.

You squeeze your eyes shut, get up and lean over the table to place a kiss against Ten's mouth. You pull away with reluctance, looking at the quiet surprise in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," you whisper. "I got… I got caught in the moment."

Ten stares at you soundlessly, mouth moving and yet no words come out. Instead, he runs his fingers through your hair before placing his hand on your cheek and leans in again. There's a red flush over his cheeks and it makes you feel at ease.

"I didn't want to hold you back," you say after parting. "Or at least, that's what I told myself. But this year without you has been so painful."

Ten doesn't say anything.

"I… I didn't know what I felt and- and I was so scared… I didn't mean to hurt you. I hate that I did."

“I was afraid,” he says, breathing out like he was holding it in. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t care if I came back.” 

Time treats everything poorly. This time, you’ll try your best to win against it. Ten breaks into a wide, relieved smile and you laugh, rubbing at the tears that collected. God, you were so afraid you wouldn't ever be able to talk to each other anymore. Every room you’ve been in without Ten has been so empty that you had stopped opening doors at all. The coffee is hot and tastes better than ever.

//

You dream of something as ridiculous as the love you feel for Ten. 

There's a cat in the sky, made of stars and with a booming, deep voice—and you, you are little and insignificant on a forgotten rooftop. It is serene, in quiet contemplation, and you are looking at it like a neglected child at its mother. You ask something without words and it responds without words. 

All of sudden, the image disappears and you find yourself in a garden, picking flowers. The clothes you wear are not yours, the face you wear is not yours. But Ten, you'd recognise him anywhere, any time, in another lifetime.

You could see the clear distinction between the two of you however. You wore robes of royalty, the auspicious gold embroidery glistening, and he, that of a performing artist in quiet sage green. The blue irises that grew around you paid no heed to your colours and you had the thought that you should be like them. Vivid, smiling and never alone.

Ten greets you with a smile first and then stretches out his arms. You run to him, with enough force to knock the two of you onto the soft, grassy ground. No one will find the two of you here, in this flower bed. You remember thinking that royalty puts on just as much a show as theatre actors.

You didn't have to remember all of it to know that the story was a tragedy, carefully crafted by divine writers and painters. It was cruel, as is every writer's hand. You see him last under a beautiful sunset before an execution, the words ‘please’ on his lips and no hint of resentment in his smile. It was unlike him. It was so unlike him. 

You hug yourself. He shouldn’t have forgiven you so easily. It takes you a few moments to come back to your senses; this is not you. That person in your dreams wasn’t you—why did you have to feel all that pain? That person in your dream watched their lover die—no, let their lover die as though discarding a messed up sketch. Cruel. It was so cruel. 

The burning idea sprouts in your mind that it was the original script. That perhaps you were cruel and he was not and it’s been that way since forever. That if you don’t do something about it, you’ll be the villain once more. It's as scary to be young as it is lively—and not for once, did you ever think that villains were children too.

ACT III: HAPPINESS 

 act iii scene i.

If the world were to end tomorrow, Ten would spend tonight dancing with you. He says it so easily that you forget to tease him about it.

“Not like that,” he instructs, eyebrows furrowed. “Do this.”

“I am doing this.” You huff, crossing your arms.

“No, you’re not—holy shit, your arms are made of lead.”

You punch him in the shoulder and he stumbles, losing his balance. He sits down on his bed, leaning back on his arms and laughs. You join him and sit down on the fuzzy rug. He gets off immediately to sit beside you.

“I mean, you’re not that bad,” he says with a shrug.

You mimic his statement, rolling your eyes and he attacks your side with an unannounced bout of tickling. The last time you did this, you were a foot shorter and no high school dating rumours were flying around. The last time you did this, you didn’t end up kissing, limbs entangled with each other. December feels like June.

Ten pulls away from you, hovering over to kiss you once again before kissing turns into giggling which turns into laughter.

“I like this," you say quietly.

"Kissing me?" He asks with a sly grin.

"It's actually a little disappointing. Thought you'd be a ten at kissing."

"Atrocious. Disgusting. Vile. Never say that to me again."

You stick your tongue out at him and he does the same, the afternoon torpor settling in heavy as you cuddle into each other. It’s nostalgic almost but at the same time, so very new. You want to talk to him for hours and hours but when the hours end, it never feels enough. An ending is what you despise. Your thoughts meander.

“I had a nightmare,” you confess suddenly.

There’s a very brief pause. Before Ten even says anything, his arms reach out, pulling you into him. It’s warm and you smile.

“Was it your own face you saw?”

“Fuck you. You ruined the moment.”

“We were having a moment?”

You elbow him in the gut and he lets out a grunt of pain, the two of you moving away from each other just to glare. Ten caves first, sliding closer to you and placing his palm against your cheek.

“Can we resume our moment?” he asks, eyes crinkling when he smiles.

You press your forehead to his, your breathing in perfect coordination. This feels easy. This feels right. You pull away and look at him, the silence encasing your moment with him.

“I saw you in it. I… I lost you in it.” You bite your lower lip, avoiding his gaze.

“Hey. It was just a bad dream. I’m right here.” Ten draws closer, his breath mingling with yours and the warmth seeps into you just enough to forget the cold night. 

“You know what would cheer me up from a nightmare?” You nudge him.

“If you say visiting the graveyard—god, fuck, you’re gonna say visiting the graveyard. My suggestion is that you see a therapist.”

“I would if I had the money,” you retort.

Ten shrugs before furrowing his eyebrows. “Are we actually going to the graveyard? You know there are like graves there.”

“That’s… why it’s called a graveyard.”

“Don’t get smart with me, you failed seventh grade English.”

“You failed sixth grade math, Ten. Sixth grade. They teach you like fractions and shit then.”

“Do I look like I need to add three-fourths and one-eighths ever in my life?”

You shake your head before getting up with a burst of energy, and pick up your jacket from his bed. 

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” You start to chant at Ten until he reluctantly gets up. The sun is quite far from setting down yet and everyone knows the perfect time to visit a grave is twilight. Maybe the stone will give your life enough perspective to ease your anxious thoughts.

//

The town cemetery is located by the bed of dahlias which have withered in the seasonal cycle of life and death. There’s a light breeze and your jacket is just enough to withstand it. The sky is orange and pink and the graveyard doesn’t seem as looming as it does in the dead of night (which you know because you’ve visited at two in the morning on a stupid bet with Johnny and somehow Ten was the one scared shitless). You’ve heard stories of the soldiers who were buried here, the women who led the first revolution and everyone else who never got to grace history books. You’ve never enjoyed history much but you can’t gainsay that it puts everything into perspective.

Nothing else matters at the wedding altar and at the grave. 

Ten makes a face at the iron gates of the cemetery. “Okay. We’ve had our adventure. Can we please go get our evening snacks?”

“I love it when you’re antsy, Ten.”

He gives you a sardonic smile. “And I like it better when we’re in my bedroom.”

You gasp dramatically, placing your hand in front of your mouth lightly. “That’s quite scandalous of you, good sir.”

He smiles, eyes crinkling. “I consider myself something of a modern man, you see?”

You skip over the steps to the gates and do a curtsy before gesturing to the entrance. He complies with a sigh of reluctance and lets you take his hand as you pull him in. 

A loud voice startles the two of you and Ten smacks his mouth before he can scream and embarrass himself.

“What business do you have here, trespassers?” The voice echoes through the graveyard.

You look around at the trees and squint at what seems to be some children wearing masks and giggling to themselves. You roll your eyes. Johnny told you some of the town kids were mucking about near the graveyard to spook passersby. 

“You really should get back home for dinner, kids,” you say, crossing your arms.

“Silence, trespasser! You will answer our questions to pass.”

Ten bites back a laugh. “Alright, kids. Shoot.”

“Are the two of you criminals married?”

Ten wrinkles his nose. “Do we look that old?”

“Okay! Next question. Did the two of you ever… do it?”

“What?” you ask, tilting your head. 

Ten groans. “You can say sex, you know? Don’t be pussies.”

You elbow him in the side and he yelps. 

“Those are kids,” you whisper.

“I think they’re old enough if they’re asking,” he whispers back.

“No,” you answer the same time he answers “Yes”.

“What?” You look at him in surprise. 

He shrugs, somewhat guilty. “New York,” he responds in a meek voice. “You know?”

You snicker before it turns to laughter. “Why do you look like that? It’s not a crime to have sex—how the fuck did you even get some though?”

“It’s called having sex appeal. Ever heard of it?”

You roll your eyes, opening your mouth to say something when one of the kids clears his throat.

“Okay! You may pass.”

You furrow your eyebrows. “You really just the wanted to ask us about sex, didn’t you?”

“Let’s go, boys!” The kid declares before stopping abruptly. “And girl.”

A group of kids emerges from behind the trees and flock to a hole in the stone wall, laughing amongst themselves as they run out.

“Wow. Kids these days, huh?” Ten says.

“When we were their age, we convinced Yukhei to poke a beehive.”

“Okay, we were asshole kids but no one ever really told us bees were deadly.”

You walk further into the graveyard, beelining towards the same graves you visit often. They’re unnamed but they died sometime in the nineteenth century. Time passes in a way that is hard to comprehend—all these people and stories are never remembered and time is the only witness. Perspective is a luxury to those who have the time to look.

“Why do you like coming here?” Ten asks quietly, eyeing the gravestones with an unreadable look in his eyes.

“For perspective,” you answer truthfully.

He hums, a somewhat understanding note in his voice.

“They only lived for twenty-four years,” you note.

“The world ends too soon sometimes.”

“Kind of sucks.”

“Really sucks.”

The wind is cold when it passes the two of you by. Ten shivers and zips his jacket before checking up on you, fixing your jacket to cover you better.

“When I leave this place, I hope I have a nice farewell,” you whisper.

Ten raises his eyebrow. “Don’t you want it to be an awful, everyone’s-crying sort of affair?”

“No,” you respond, giving him a confused look.

“I want at least one person to be crying,” he replies, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“That’s kind of—wait a minute.” You glare at him. “You don’t have to use that against me. I wasn’t crying crying.”

“I’m not! I mean it. Like, I want to mean something to someone.”

You draw near enough to link your arms, sighing at the warmth emanating.

“And you’re lying. I know you sobbed right into the pillow like a dramatic ass Disney princess.”

“You’re the one with a flair for drama.” You chuckle.

Ten makes a reluctant sound of agreement, crossing his arms. As he looks at the graves, there’s an expression on his face you can’t quite fathom. It could be mourning—but the graves are nameless, or it could be pity—but he believes that pity is not a positive emotion to feel. You want to ask but something keeps you from it. Something tells you that the answer won’t be pleasant for either of you.

“I hope I cry too,” he whispers. “When I leave and the curtain falls and the world ends.”

You look at him, pondering.

“When I leave,” he begins again, “I want it to hurt. When everything changes, I want it to hurt bad. Then I know it meant something.”

You slip your hand into his and squeeze. “If it means anything, you know I’ll cry if you leave.”

Ten laughs. “Yeah. So when you cried, was it the ugly snot cry or the silently sobbing kind of cry?”

“Fuck off.”

He opens his mouth to retort but gets a full kiss on the mouth instead, good enough to make him forget it. It’s a nice thing to get used to. If time permits, you could do everything together forever.

You return at twilight, grabbing some snacks and arguing whose Netflix account to use and the sun sets before you come to an agreement but it’s not winter anymore inside his room. In fact, it doesn’t feel like winter at all till you look outside and see the naked trees and darker skies, and you remember when you decided last year that you don’t like winter. 

Before you can have a change of heart, you turn to him with sparkling eyes.

He smiles before you even say anything, reading your face as easily as the back of his hand. “You have good news? Or, like, a gift?” Chuckling in breaks, he runs his fingers through your hair.

“I just wanted to talk about our future.”

“Hm?” He seems a little surprised.

“I’m sure we’ll work something out for the both of us. I have faith in you. And in us.”

Ten’s smile falters but he doesn’t let it fall. “I’m glad you do.”

His ringtone startles the two of you just as you lean in, Ten muttering curses at the device. Pausing for a bit when he takes out his phone, he signals you that he needs a minute and leaves you alone in his room. 

Nothing much has changed. There's his cluttered ash wood desk with sketchbooks of varying sizes and colours, shelves with small plushies and, you notice carefully, the butterfly pin you stole. Beside it is the panda soft toy you had found at the side of the road walking back from school and felt so bad, you had "adopted" it. You let out a chuckle.

“Ten?” you call, holding the little panda soft toy.

Ten paces outside his room, speaking in a hush. His features are tense, shoulders stiff and eyes focused when he talks to the caller. Noticing you, his eyes soften for a bit and he makes his way towards you.

“I’ll- I’ll talk to you later,” he speaks sharply into the phone.

“Who’s that?” you ask, walking up to him.

“Sicheng,” he replies briskly.

“Oh.” You remember the doll in your hand and pick it up to show him. “Remember how we got this?”

He smiles but something is amiss in his eyes. “Of course I remember.”

Whatever it is, it must not be important. After all, he’s your best friend and best friends tell each other everything. Morning will come and everything will be alright.

//

The night is cold and the moon is missing. The clothes you wear are not your own once again. This dream begins when the sun has just set and you can taste bitter defeat, but of what battle you don’t know yet. 

All you know is that there is a war and you are caught in the crossfire. It hurts; you can’t feel your limbs anymore and another injury won’t matter anymore. Maybe this is the only life you won in.

No one dies in a way that matters. No one dies for anything at all. It just happens and that is a truth lying within the reach of the universe. Yet then again, when you find your last breath escaping you as you hold hands with the love of your life, you think there must be some meaning to it. You’re only twenty-four and you will be buried in a nameless grave for a war that was the fault of neither of you. 

It dawns on you the moment you wake up, brushing away the tears on your cheeks. The universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, until there is nothing left to be remembered.

All you can think then is that you will miss Ten in the next life, and in the next and the next. 

act iii scene ii.

Ten has to tell you. He knows. He knows how the story ends. 

But he’s afraid. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking facing forward till he’d turned around just to find you gone. New York was fun and he made new friends but it’s difficult to be anywhere without you. You’ve been attached at the hip for so long, it’s become strange to be apart.

Ten thinks about the call. The director was very particular about his role and chances come by as rare as diamonds. Ten breathes out heavy in annoyance, covering his eyes with his forearm. He loves sunny winter mornings and this is the worst one he’s ever experienced. He can hear his mom cooking downstairs, the sound soothing and he groans, running his fingers through his hair. 

He should tell you. He knows he should tell you. But fear never walks in on stage with full gusto, it creeps in, slithers in till he feels a shadow behind him on stage and suddenly, he can’t see the lights anymore. Ten is afraid. He is afraid of losing his sense of self to the millions of people he’s played, and to your vibrant world of flowers and colours. You are always front stage centre. You are at the bottom of everything and he can’t let himself fall deep enough. He’s not enough.

Ten turns to face the collection of DVDs on his shelf, untouched since he'd left. What did he start performing for again? Was it the time you and him pretended to be pirates in his room, his bed your gallant ship, or the time he watched his first movie on a sweltering hot summer day, or the time he sang to you the first time (it was a birthday song remix, made by Ten himself). Surely, it was for something beautiful and not for something like greed. At that time, he thought that maybe if he stole enough lives and stuffed it into the gaping hole, it would sate his envy of the people around him. The bright vibrant colours, he made his own and yet still, he feels like a thief with his nimble feet and a stash of paint bottles in his arms. He's not satisfied at all.

It was a sunlit morning and Ten thought to himself, wouldn’t it be nice if he could paint with all the colours of the rainbow? You, who are so full of vibrance, couldn’t understand this epiphany of his.

"You keep getting on my nerves," he mutters in this empty room of his. "Everything you do gets on my nerves."

Ten decides that he’ll tell you this evening. After all, best friends tell each other everything. The theatre means the world to him but the whole world is out there, ready to be his stage. Eventually, this loneliness will turn into a performance and he’ll be grasping at identities trying to find familiarity. He will take his masks off over and over again, and he knows he’ll still be wearing one. He wants to greet you with his real face.

The world spins at the rate of a thousand miles an hour. It never stops, and that must mean everyone on it can’t stop either. 

//

The crows are singing a song, or talking amongst themselves. You can never know. The song is dyed red as the evening, and with a splash of purple. It’s the season to miss flowers and warm hands and the sweet taste of ice cream. You don't know why but the "let's go to the gardens" text from Ten gave you the most awful feeling, much like the morning after your nightmares.

“I have to go back to New York.”

You look up at Ten from the park bench beside the dahlia fields. The flowers are asleep, not in bloom until next autumn. 

“What?”

“I got a call… from someone I know.”

Your first reaction is to smile wide and jump up. “That’s great! You’re not jobless anymore.” You laugh.

But then the corner of your lips twitch and your smile drops. The word ‘goodbye’ hangs at the tip of your tongue and you look at him, slightly perplexed. Ten, who looks at you with so much kindness, will never understand this envy of yours.

“When… when do you come back?”

“I don’t- I don’t know. It depends on how well I do.”

You laugh despite the heavy feeling settling in your chest. “That- Let’s hope your acting is shitty then, hm?”

Ten frowns. “This isn't a joke. For once in your life, can you look at me with sincerity?”

You grit your teeth at his words. 

“I’m trying to lighten the mood, god dammit,” you murmur bitterly.

“And I’m saying you don’t have to.”

There’s something looming over the top of your heads, something eerie like a clock that never stops ticking or a clock that never ticks.

“Can I kiss you?” you ask, surrender in your voice already. 

If you kiss him where you hurt him, will everything be alright? Can you grow the flowers he likes over his scars? Flowers… flowers—which were his favourite again? Irises or daisies? It must have been the prior; you’ve glanced over a hundred times at the endless fields of sleeping blue irises in his sketchbook. And yet, you doubt. Were those flowers chrysanthemums? You’re grasping onto memories and your knuckles are starting to hurt.

Ten looks at you with a gaze that is of the past. He looks at you like he’s mourning, like he’s keeping something grave from you. So you lean in, your lips brushing against his before you can kiss him fully. You want to feel him and for him to feel you, the idea of a relationship foreign and close to you as ever. Even so, you feel like a ghost as you run your fingertips over his skin and through his hair. He knows how to kiss you, how to hold you—and he’s known you for years.

Ten pulls apart for a few moments, breaths weaving into each other. It’s only five centimeters between your lips but it’s still five centimetres. You don’t know if you were meant to be apart or if you were not. The show must go on.

You brush the hair from his face, a lingering smile on your face from the kiss and the way his features align so perfectly. It’s easier to avoid his gaze that way. 

“I’m tired,” he whispers. “I’m so tired. I feel like my skin is losing its grip on my bones. Everything’s falling apart.”

You hum, choking up at the sound of his voice. Soft and yet, so heavy.

He takes a sharp, shaky breath. “I don’t want to go.” 

Forever is the sweetest lie you’ve told each other. 

“You’re going to go,” you pronounce the words into realization. “You’re going to go away again. And I’m going to be right here.”

Your broken heart is making it much more difficult than it should be.

“Don’t go,” you whisper hoarsely. Maybe if this time you didn’t lie. Maybe you’ll be his number one, his lead finally. 

His breathing gets erratic, and he takes a step back to cover his face with his flushed hands. It’s painful to watch him this way and you want to take your words back. But you knew. You knew what the words would result in, what the words would grow into. You feel cruel.

“I… I can’t give up,” he says finally, “I can’t- I can’t. I’m sorry, oh god. Why can’t you come with me? Why do I have to go back alone?”

You swallow, your eyes downcast. 

“I’m not going to wait,” you say finally. “We should… we should stop now. It’s been long enough for us to go our own ways.”

Ten doesn’t move, at a loss for words.

“You… I'm sorry,” he says, choking on his own words. 

Your lips tremble and you wipe at your eyes. He cups your face, thumbs swiping away the tears before you can muster enough strength to push him away. You’re a complete mess, in a way you haven’t been before. Even now, he’s the only one you can face.

“We’re not,” you say, regaining some control over your tongue, “We’re not supposed to be like this. Do you think we would even be friends if we didn’t grow up here together?”

“What- What does that matter?” He furrows his eyebrows, drawing nearer.

“I’m saying that everything could just be a coincidence and maybe… maybe things should just end sometimes.”

You just want to kiss him, in the way a romantic story ends in a sweet kiss and it’s a happy ending.

“You don’t mean that,” he whispers. “But if you want distance, I’m giving you thousands of miles of it.”

You clench your jaw. “Don’t blame me for pushing you away.”

Ten throws up his arms in exasperation. “I’m not blaming—why are you so defensive all of a sudden?”

“You made me that way,” you answer, pitch low. Your throat hurts. 

Ten looks at you with disappointment in his eyes, baby pink lips in a frown you hate. "I'm sorry. I have to leave."

You nod and let the words 'see you tomorrow' slip the same time 'goodbye' slips his. He turns his back and walks forwards as he always has, and you look in from the same place as you always have. 

Eventually, you get the energy to go home. You greet your colourful room with the same look you always have before something catches your eye. The colour of your room mostly comes from the polaroids stuck to your wall—you and Ten at your high school graduation dancing to Nicki Minaj, Yukhei and you looking done holding the caricatures Ten painted of you, Sicheng and Ten and you after your first theatre performance together. There are so many smiles that you end laughing, a little crazy with the sound. Perhaps spring isn't as far as you think it is. Perhaps you will be okay.

Everything has an end. You know that. It hurts so fucking bad.

Ten was right. Because it hurts this bad, you know it meant something now. It meant the whole world to you. Winter tumbles upon you at full force even as you hold autumn dearly in your arms.

//

This time, you close your eyes to find yourself in a field of dahlias. The dream is meandering with colours and sounds so quiet that you feel like you’re stuck in time. Then a loud vibration resounds throughout the field; it is not a field at all. 

You are sitting atop a bed of stars, in the belly of something much larger than you are. There is a place in the universe for everyone but you cannot find yourself in it. 

So you sit at the places you’ve always known, at gardens and children’s parks, waiting till your hair turns grey and your skin starts to wrinkle. Time flows around you, faster with each second but you sit so still that you're not breathing anymore. You're so jealous of those who move, dance and play. Does it have to be this painful? You don't want to be all these people in your dreams. You want to paint your own mask.

The world is so busy and you are completely still. You think of sunshine in New York and how he must be loving it and for a moment, your plastered lips quirk upward. 

When you wake up, Ten is on a flight to New York with a text that reads: "I'll come back. I promise." The sunset after a farewell—even you understand the beauty of it and so, you watch him chase his dreams into the sunset.

act iii scene iii.

You know an ending scene when you see one. It’s the only scene you didn’t end up sleeping through. But this doesn’t feel like one, no matter how deep the despair runs through you. This third act love was never supposed to work out and yet, something is amiss.

Ten doesn’t come back even when the billboards proudly show his face and he’s the star of the show. In your opinion, he always has been. But people get comfortable in the present, sink their feet into it, and when they do, they forget the past. 

The world spins at a thousand miles per hour but nothing seems to move for you. Everything stops and life goes on.

epilogue.

Your youth starts to run out.

Sorrow grows into anger, then into resentment. You’re not sure what you hate so desperately but you hate it nonetheless. You’re pissed and you don’t know what to do with yourself except wake up shaking and wanting to shout and cry at the world. You were supposed to have Ten by your side even then. Even when you’re against the world, he was supposed to be there. Now you’re all alone in a world that’s crashing and burning, in a world of your own making and in a world that is no longer in the palm of your hand.

You wish you were an angrier person, you wish you could curse and scream and fight as easily as they do in movies. At least he didn't make a villain out of you when he left first. 

You don’t really have nightmares anymore though. When you have nothing to lose, you start to fear less. You tend to a little garden of your own making after Mr. Yang passes away. There’s a quiet funeral and a will written with your name on it. You did spend most of your time there after Ten left. It’s your flower shop now and you can tend to whichever flowers you want to keep alive.

Sometime in your late twenties, you get a call from an old friend. You meet Doyoung at a coffee shop near the college he went to, and he tells you he got your number from Yukhei that night you met. He says he’s glad your number hasn’t changed in all these years—he found it going through his contacts. You find it cute the way he becomes flustered when trying to explain himself. He’s a lawyer now, finished all those tough years to complete his dreams.

It makes you smile. You think that dreams shouldn’t be kept in a bottle but your shelves are full.

You go on dates at the cutest new cafes and the most ambient restaurants, sometimes to amusement parks so you can laugh at his fear of scary rides. It feels like having a friend once again and you cheer up for the better. 

But Doyoung doesn’t understand history the way you do. He doesn’t understand a lot of things—but it’s not something you expect anyway. He’s rich and he doesn’t know what small towns are like. You think you can be in love again. He proposes to you on a yacht and you nod, paralyzed from your fear of the ocean. Your parents are so happy for you that for a brief time, you feel happy too in the shadow of their joy.

You don’t visit your hometown anymore after the wedding. You don’t visit theatres at all.

Sometimes you remember the night at the rooftop after the party with Ten and smile. But it was one night, one thing you did in a lifetime of nights and things you did. It dawns on you just then that loneliness makes you fragile, fragile enough to push people away instead.

Every time you close your eyes, you’re still dancing with him on the rooftop below the stars that are yet to fade from your memory. You now pick wilting flowers at a wilted garden.

“A play?” you ask, confounded. Doyoung has never been one for theatre.

"Your mom said you liked theatre," Doyoung answers, eyes inquisitive.

"Did she now?"

He smiles. "If you've grown out of it—"

"No. No, I've always wanted to watch a show on Broadway."

"That's settled then."

You start to understand the meaning of this place to Ten. You haven't called him in years and you didn't keep in touch after the first year. Life was as busy for him as it was still for you and you understand some of it now. After all, who would ever want to leave this place?

Being a part of the audience runs a chill up your back, with certain memories drawing to the surface of your thoughts as you sink into the seat. It's a popular musical but you can't say you've ever heard of it. Time runs differently in your little bubble. 

It hurts just about as much as you expect it to. Watching Ten on stage hurts so bad you almost look away. The nostalgia scratches at your throat, filling your head with memories you shouldn't be entertaining anymore. You should've kept in touch. You should've done something. You were friends before everything else.

All you want from him now is forgiveness. You’re fine with loving him quietly. You’re fine with loving him quietly. You’re fine with—

You start to cry before you can do anything about it. Doyoung doesn’t notice beside you, dozed off already to the soft orchestral music.

You must seem delirious, mourning as though you’ve buried a loved one. With a shaky breath, you force yourself to look. It is the tombstone of your childhood love that stands on stage. You were rash. You were so, so young and rash. Your lips tremble again and you cry, chest rising and falling as you remember something so forgotten that it seems a dream, something so warm that’s now six feet under in the cold ground. You mourn.

But he seems happy—and that's all you ever really cared about. That's all you should have cared about.

The play ends on a wonderful musical note and you find yourself in better composure. Shaking Doyoung awake by the shoulder, you look at him expectantly. He seems partly embarrassed to have dozed off and partly apologetic.

"You want to meet Ten?" Doyoung asks quietly.

You blink in surprise.

"You grew up in the same town, right?"

"Yeah… Yeah, we did."

Doyoung smiles. "We went to college at the same place."

"Oh, I know. Most everyone from my town goes to college there actually."

Doyoung hums. 

"He invited me, actually," he says after a while.

"Oh."

It hurts only a little that he didn't invite you first. Did all those years mean nothing beyond a little romance? If you were years younger, you could be chiding him for it. If he were years younger, he would greet you with a Cheshire cat smile.

Backstage smells of sweat. A little perfume and powder but mostly sweat. You know that already. It's just that even the backstage here is grand. 

Ten looks as pretty as ever, even with half the makeup off his face. He looks as pretty as billboard posters, where he was meant to be, and in smiling Instagram posts and articles about how perfect his smile is. He's pretty but in a different sort of way.

Ten doesn't seem surprised. In fact, he greets the two of you with a poster smile. 

"Doyoung," he says first. "(Name). I hope, no wait. You guys better have liked that."

Doyoung laughs. "You'll bully me into liking it even if I didn't."

Ten rolls his eyes. "Law makes you so boring. Or maybe you were always boring."

Doyoung sighs, shaking his head. "Not everyone wants to be the life of the party. There's quite a bunch of wild stories about you on the internet."

Ten snorts. "I don't know why but you saying 'the internet' makes you sound thirty years older."

"There's no arguing with you, is there?"

"Learnt from the best."

You clear your throat. "If the two of you are done with your homoerotic banter…"

Doyoung chokes the same time Ten makes a gagging sound. What the two of them have in common is that they easily become flustered around you.

"I'm going to go wash my face." Doyoung excuses himself, exiting the backstage. 

In any other time or place, it would be fine being just the two of you.

"Ten," you acknowledge. "You look good."

"I always do."

You roll your eyes. "You don't have to mask everything with humour."

"Like you did?"

You fall silent.

“Does it hurt?” you ask.

“It does,” he whispers before raising his voice something more audible. “When I look at your—our old pictures, it does.”

"You've kept them?"

"Of course."

You look at your feet. The reality settles. You’re not going back to the way things were. You’re married to another man. Ten’s not in love with you anymore. If you had taken the step forward back then, if you had kissed him before he took that step back—would things have turned out differently? 

The stars will now gaze at lonely rooftops and empty flower gardens—an audience you never wished to entertain. But now, you're glad to have been part of his play, part of the play you made together.

“Are you happy these days?” he asks. There is no malice, no resentment in his voice.

“Almost,” you answer. “There’s just one thing missing.”

To ask for forgiveness does not mean erasure. You can't move on by letting it go and pretending it was never in the palm of your hand.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t me,” you say quietly, rubbing your forearm.

Ten smiles. “We were a little confused, I think. We wanted to be loved, appreciated and found the easiest way.”

You smile back. “Yeah. It was always easiest with you.”

Ten pauses, looking around with a familiar feline look in his eyes before whispering, “So, Doyoung? Really?”

You straighten, crossing your arms. “He’s really nice. And he’s always asking me how I am, what I ate, and he buys me all the soft toys I want. And he’s a better kisser, by the way.”

Ten places a hand over his heart in mock indignation. “Now, we both know that’s not true.”

You roll your eyes before a short giggle turns into chuckling into laughter, and the two of you find yourself with smiling eyes, the look of childhood on your faces and memories unkempt. 

It is better to grieve than to never have loved anyone enough to. 

It doesn’t hurt anymore but maybe it stopped hurting a long time ago. But it meant something to you, meant so much to you and that's all that makes sense now.

notes.

the words to the play at the beginning of act i scene i is taken from tang xianzu’s preface to his own play, the peony pavilion, however they are not exact quotations. the graveyard scene and the “when everything is gone, i want it to hurt” dialogue are inspired by indie game night in the woods by infinite fall studio and i love that game pls check it out if you have the time and money!!

#wayv x reader #wayv scenarios #nct x reader #nct scenarios #cznnet #neowritingsnet #nct ten x reader #wayv ten x reader #nct ten scenarios #wayv ten scenarios #nct fanfic #wayv fanfic #nct imagines #wayv imagines #nct ten imagines #wayv ten imagines #wayv fluff #wayv angst #nct fluff #nct angst #moonwrites #ok 20k+ never again gn <3 #it's so painful to write small towns bc even if im from one (almost) my brain is permanently in a busy bustling city

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Ya know, I truly hope Miss Renesmee Carlie Cullen fully dedicates herself to just....being as out there and iconic as possible

first things first- ANYTHING with the loch ness monster on it, she owns. Posters, shirts, jackets, shoes, folders, buttons, iron-ons, there is always at least 5 pieces of Nessie merch on her at all times

once she gets old enough to start high school, the cover story is her and Edward are siblings that Carlisle and Esme took in, and sometimes her classmates will ask her what her biological parents were like and she will flat out be like 'oh, they're vampires' and Edward and Bella are like. 5 feet away trying not to scream

every Halloween she'll show up to school in an elaborate Nosferatu costume

goes out of her way to photobomb people in increasingly ridiculous ways so there will Always be a photographic record of her and in like 100 years she can get a huge kick out of teens on the internet trying to make a conspiracy about her

joins as many school clubs as she can, even if she has no interest in them- she just Really wants a concrete record of herself to exist lmao

ICONIC at school theater though. One of those demon theater kids that come to rehearsal purely to cause chaos and nothing else, but her voice is incredible so she secures every lead. One time she somehow managed to star in a show while also playing in the school band for it- her classmates still have no idea how she pulled it off

Always brings blood out in public in a CLEAR THERMOS and it stresses her family out so much but everyone else thinks she's just like, weirdly into tomato juice so the Cullens can't stop her

to everyone's surprise...her biggest chaos enabler is Jasper lmao. everyone thought he'd be a logical, responsible uncle but they're just. A Problem together. He'll 100% assist her in any prank she wants to pull, he gets her fake id's when she wants to sneak into a club with friends, he bails her out of jail without telling her parents, they figured out if she gets high and he reads her feelings he'll get high too and it's. So fucking funny.

she's always carrying some random instrument around school- like for a while it's a guitar or a harmonica, fine, but then she'll start lugging a cello around, a tuba (she doesn't even play, she stole it off a guy who was annoying her) and it escalates until one day she's wheeling a piano around the building. no one's even sure how she got in in the doors of the school. She keeps running kids over in the hallway with it

You know the Catherine Tate Lauren Cooper skit with David Tennant? Where she's being a terrible student and then perfectly recites Shakespeare? 100% Nessie

when she starts getting dates Jacob keeps trying to wing man and be over supportive and give her a ton of girl advice and it's embarrassing as hell so one day when he was on a spiel about How To Woo A Lady she looks him in the eyes and goes 'oh really? did that work on my mom?' and the Cullens fucking LOSE IT. Jacob had to go live in the woods for a few days because he couldn't cope

Emmet and Jasper: arrive to school in their jeep. Rose and Alice: arrive in a convertible. Edward: arrives in his dumb volvo. Bella and Jake: arrive to school on motorcycles. Nessie: arrives to school on a unicycle while juggling

one year she ended up getting nominated for prom queen and Edward read the minds of the teachers tallying the votes so he knew she won and he and Bella were so excited!! they're like we're gonna take so many pictures of our baby looking like a princess! And then she emerges from her room, actually drenched in pigs blood. Like she just did it to herself and went to the dance and accepted her crown like that

she regularly commits crimes against fashion. If she comes out of her room and sees Alice contemplating turning herself over to the Volturi, she KNOWS she's picked a great look

somehow gets ahold of Aro's cell number and sends him selfies of her blatantly breaking vampire laws captioned 'whatcha gonna do'. he keeps blocking her but she keeps managing to get through to him somehow

she illegally sells soda out of her locker and does people's homework for cash, while also paying other people to do her homework for her. she organizes every single senior prank. she's never gotten a detention in her whole immortal life because every teacher just Adores her for some reason

had 100% used her powers for deserved evil before. Like, if someone's being a dick at school, she'll sneak into their room at night and give them nightmarea threatening them to be a better person lol

sometimes she'll show up at the hospital unannounced and ask Carlisle, in front of his coworkers, 'yo can I raid the blood bank?'

her bedroom looks like a library. every wall, floor to ceiling books.

she's been publishing trashy romance novels under a fake name for almost 40 years now and no one in her family knows

one birthday Jacob takes her on a trip to vegas and they get wasted, at some point they were laughing about how ridiculous their lives are and they're like 'wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if we had a baby'. they then black out, hangover style, and wake up like a week later with a payment on her card to a fertility clinic. Jacob's like 😱 and Ness is just like 'you get to be the one to explain this to my parents'

Their kid is absolutely hilarious, they were correct, and at some point they realized 'wait...drinks blood..doesn't sparkle...can shape shift...we've somehow created a classic pop culture vampire' lmao

Edward had to threaten them to get them to not name the kid Vladimir

Also to be clear: Nessie and Jacob have the EXACT same dynamic as Will and Grace. that's canon.

says its her goal to star in a live action all female production of mamma mia and Carlisle is like 'honey you know you can't do anything on broadway or in hollywood' and she's like, 'no, in real life. I'm gonna go to greece and attract a bunch of women with abba songs' and he's like,,,,,ah

she loves all music but she goes out of her way to Only play stuff she knows Edward hates lmao

one day she remembers she doesn't need to breathe and can see under water and just. books herself a ticket to scotland and Finds The Loch Ness Monster

she actually personally finds a lot of monsters and cryptids like her hybrid aura just attracts all kind of weird shit and she LOVES it. She stops writing trashy romance novels and starts writing autobiographies of her traveling and hanging out with paranormal beings and everyone just assumes its fiction so she becomes a best selling fantasy author lmao

100% she's very into witchy stuff and only like...half in a trendy way. She's like what if on top of everything I've got going on I can cast spells? Think I deserve that power

when she's a couple decades old she catches Edward looking grossed out one day and she asks him what's up and he's like 'I really dont need to hear what creepy teachers think about my daughter' and she's like. oh. Dad we are gonna get SO MANY pedophiles arrested shdndjdn she gets him to expose teachers and she baits them then calls the police. queen.

She finds out she can get tattoos but they fade completely out of her skin within 5 years so she's always getting crazy tats

posts selfies on social media of her just like. hanging out with mountain lions or chilling on top of the space needle. her classmates think they're all photoshopped obvi but it drives her family insane

imagine you're 15 and you're on a nice hike in the woods and you come across your one classmate half naked, sacrificing a bear in some ritual, blood dripping down her face, bigfoot chilling on the rocks behind her filming the ritual on her phone...like on one hand, what would you do, but on the other hand. you've known this girl for a bit and you aren't surprised at all

anyway. stan Nessie Cullen.

#twilight saga #renesmee cullen #nessie cullen #breaking dawn #twilight #molly mumbles

[acrobaticcatfeline]

Of Books, Brothers, and Broadway (Creativitwins College AU) Chapter Two!!!

Word Count: 3814

TW: Remus, Janus, ocean creatures, I.E. octopus, swearing, I think thats it?

Pairings: pining logince and dukeceit right now, mentioned established moxiety.

Notes: This is pages 4-11 of a current 24. I can like, literally not stop writing this it is a stream of consciousness and I haven’t felt this productive or creative in such a long time. We meet the other 5 in this finally! At this point with 24 pages I think the title should be Of Books, Brothers, Broadway, and Boys. So there’s a little hint. Listen I’m just desperate for soft.

Summary: Roman and Remus are trying to write a musical all while juggling their college courses and jobs. Remus and Roman both inadvertently end up introducing their friend group to their brother and two are pining hard for their brothers best friend. Meanwhile, Remus talks to his boss and gets some news that makes his day.

“Hiya Roman!!! Hey wait up a sec!”

Roman was walking through campus when he heard Patton trying to grab his attention over his headphones. He pulled the headset off his head and turned towards the energetic friend who was racing to catch him.

“Howdy Popstar! I missed you last period, where were you?”

Patton panted softly as he tried to catch his breath. He finally smiled up at Roman.

“Oh yeah, my boyfriend is at home sick and I lost track of time. I didn’t even think about it until his phone alarm went off for his online class, what did I miss?”

“Oh nothing much, another duet skit, lucky for you, you got paired with me!”

“Oh boy, what skit?”

“I’ll give you the packet when we get to class, but it's from midsummer nights”

“Ohhhh I love that play!!!”

Roman was just about to bring up the musical he and Remus had started, being called the magicians notebook, when JJ walked up. He gave a casual peace sign and Patton waved.

“What's up with our favorite preps today?”

“Well actually I was just about to tell Patton about this musical-”

Jay decided to jump in front of them, now walking backwards as he stared at Roman with barely restrained joy.

“Musical you say? What’s it called? Who made it? Do I know about it?”

Roman chuckled.

“It's actually one me and my brother are making”

“YOU'RE MAKING A MUSICAL!?”

Roman couldn't hold back the loud laughter at JJ’s response, he doubled over laughing, still smiling widely as JJ was bouncing on his heels and Patton stared at him in awe.

“Wow, you and your brother are making a musical?”

“Roman I don't think I have to explain to you just how mother fucking rad that is, I think you know that already, but whats it about? Do you have any songs yet? Do you have a name yet? Who's your brother? I have so many questions Roman I can't believe I wasn't the first person you told!!!”

“You were you dork! You and Patton are currently the only ones who know about it!”

“I need answers Roman!”

“Salutations Remus. I presume you got your portion of the assignment done… 2 minutes ago?”

Remus rushed to his seat as their professor started class. He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed nervously.

“Am I that obvious Shakespeare?”

Logan stared at him emotionlessly. He looked him over then leaned his head on his hand.

“You are barely on time, cluing me in that you were preoccupied with something and lost track of time, your bag is still open, likely due to you shoving your laptop in it hurriedly without double checking the zipper, and of course, you looked sheepish as you sped in, hinting that you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing slash doing something you were supposed to have done earlier last minute, instead of proud like you do when you were wasting your time on something you felt justified in taking your time on”

Remus shrunk. Logan could always read him like an open book, though it was his fault for befriending the psychology major he supposes. He felt ready to be completely humiliated as Logan smirked and pulled up his phone.

“And of course, the text I got from you an hour ago warning me that you might run late because of the assignment was a nice bonus”

Remus felt his cheeks redden as he remembered messaging him. He probably shouldn't be so surprised and attacked and yet he turned his face towards their professor with a huff as he pulled out his notebook and textbook. He was startled out of his thoughts as he heard the hall door open suddenly. He turned towards the noise and snickered as he saw Virgil clambering towards them as quietly as possible.

“Mr. Storm I would appreciate that if you are late to class you attempt to cause less of a distraction to the rest of your peers”

“Y-yes sir, I’ll keep that in mind”

Remus had to cover his mouth as Virgil squeezed past them and took the spot on the other side of him. He gave him a quick look and went back to the text. A small piece of paper slipped in front of him as Virgil unpacked that asked if he had missed anything. Remus shook his head idly. The three kept quiet until the teacher released them. As they packed up, Logan started a conversation.

“What made you late Virge?”

“Huh? Oh, I'm not feeling great, I woke up feeling like shit. I was originally going to just stay home sick, but I remembered our project so here I am I guess”

“Oh, Vee, you could've texted us, you didn't have to come if you were dying”

“Meh, I spent too much on this class to miss it. Especially since it's one of my prereqs. I’ll survive”

“Well I guess if you're gonna be here we might as well take advantage of it. I don't have any more classes today, you guys want to get some writing done?”

“I suppose that would be amenable”

“Sure, but I need some caffeine first, haven't had any at all today”

“Good god how were you able to drive here?”

“I can function without coffee if I get enough sleep. I also am simply not addicted”

“Well that is ridiculous, you must not be human. But I could go for a soda right now. Want me to take orders and meet you guys at the library?”

“Lit. you know what I want”

“Oh my god, somebody needs to take your flashcards”

“If you like having 5 fingers on each hand I would recommend you not do that”

Remus was getting annoyed with his brother. He was quietly ranting on the phone at him in the study room he had booked with Logan and Virgil.

“Roman, I literally could not give a shit if you told your friends about the musical idea, I was gonna tell mine as well. … so fucking what if its my final? None of your friends are in any of my courses, I'm not scared they're gonna plagiarize me, you trust them, I'm sure that you have half a decent taste in friends. … Listen, I can't deal with all of you right now, I have a collaborative story I'm supposed to be working on, we can deal with this when I get home. Just like, have a glass of your shitty wine and maybe you'll calm down. I gotta go, i’ll see you later”

Logan smirked at him as he hung up. He did the lean again and god Remus could throw him into the wall.

“What's this about a musical I hear? I didn't take you for a song and dance guy”

Remus sighed, brushing his hand through his hair as he sat down in front of his computer.

“I'm not, but my brother is. When we were younger he said that we should make a musical together. And as a man of my word, I've been working on a book for a musical for him. He's already got a couple of songs written up for it and we’re working with it. It's actually not half bad. He may drive me insane, but he's talented at what he does”

Remus had just started typing when his phone alarm went off. His eyes widened and he scrambled to pack up again.

“SHIT!!! I have a meeting with my boss, they're giving me an octopus to care for I can't believe I forgot I'm such an idiot oh shit I'm gonna be late and they won't-”

Logan stopped his hands. He looked him calmly in the eyes with a small smile.

“Hey, we’ll pack for you and drop your stuff off for you, just go and get that octopus Remus”

Remus smiled gratefully and after checking he had his phone and keys, he ran to get home.

“Hello Dr. sanders! Please come in!”

The doctor smiled at him as he stepped inside. He glanced around the area idly with a smile.

“With how energetic and, well, chaotic you are at work I didn't expect your home to be so immaculate!”

“Heheh, yeah I prefer a clean canvas. Sorry not everything is in place, I kinda forgot about this until just a bit ago and had to rush out of a study group. It's usually cleaner than this, well, at least most of it is, my brother is a mess, but he has a completely separate space. Oh boy I’m talking a lot”

“It's fine kid. Mind showing me where you'd be keeping her?”

Remus nodded and led the doctor into his room, and suddenly he felt a little self conscious over all the terrariums in his room. Dr. Sanders paid his full attention to the fish tank.

“This is impressive, it's a nice little ecosystem for all of them, are you sure Cephy won't disrupt them all?”

“Oh! Yes, I did a little research on her breed and none of the fish in there are food for her, nor is she food for. I know she's super friendly and all these guys have been very receptive to new members in the past, my newest one is the angel fish but she doesn't seem to be bothered by bigger creatures. I also have a back up tank for worst case scenarios, and the fish don't bother my brother!”

“Only thing I'd say is, maybe add some driftwood or floating objects for her to lay on”

He then turned to look at the other tanks. He smiled as he saw the lizards scatter a bit. Remus felt like he was about to die.

“These are pretty nice! You have a nice assortment of reptiles here, where'd you get them?”

“Oh, um, just uh, just outside. A good amount of lizard friends come to our patio, and every once in a while they'll like, crawl up to me. My family says I’m the reptile whisperer heh”

“That's intriguing. Most of these species are loner types, were they hurt?”

“Um, some of them were, got beat up by a local cat or something I think”

“Huh. that's even more fascinating. Anyways, back to the point. You know the rules with Cephy right? You aren't in charge of buying her food or medication until we decide whether or not she can be released. If she doesn't cut it, we will likely have you keep her rather than attempt to remove her from familiarity and then she will become your responsibility alone. She may have an attitude the first few days from moving around, but for the most part she will integrate well I think. If any complications arise, you have my personal number, and I think that's it! We will send her home with you tomorrow with a week's supplies. Any questions?”

“No sir! Thank you so much, you won't regret this, I swear!”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you last week! We were asked to lower our number of interns!”

“What? Wait why are you telling me this?”

“Well, due to that we had to make some changes, and i'd like to formally offer you a full time job! And of course, by full time, I don't plan on changing your hours unless it works with your school schedule. We would love to keep you as one of our marine biologists once you graduate!”

“I- sir, thank you so much, I, I am so grateful! Wait, does that mean I can get even more hands on experience with the critters? Oh thank you so much!”

“Heh, you're one of our best workers, I figure it might be helpful to have a proper wage. But on that note, I really should be going, I have an appointment in an hour and it's a 45 minute drive from here”

“Oh, yeah! Yes, of course, here, I’ll show you out!”

When Roman got home he didn't expect to have Remus tackle him.

“Whats up Remus?”

“I PASSED!!! SHE'S COMING TOMORROW!!! AND I GOT A PROMOTION!!! ROMAN I GOT A RAISE, I'M GETTING AN EXTRA 5 DOLLARS AN HOUR I CAN'T BELIEVE MY LUCK!!!”

“Holy shit man, maybe you should be paying all the bills now, you make way fuckin more than I do at the cafe!”

“Oh, wait, fuck, Logan and Virgil are coming by fuck I gotta clean”

Roman just about died laughing as Remus ran around trying to tidy the place. It was only a few minutes before there was a knock on the door. Roman got it as Remus made a pot of coffee.

“Hello!”

“Hello Remus! We came to return your bag and your soda that you left at the library”

“Logan open your eyes, that's not Remus. Remus has a mustache you fool”

Logan opened his eyes to see Remus. But not Remus, Remus was more scruffy, and he was shorter, Remus was only a little taller than him, but the not Remus in front of him towered a good several inches over him. And the biggest difference to Logan, was Remus had auburn eyes, almost red, the not Remus in front of him had bright green eyes. Logan felt his cheeks redden. He looked down sheepishly after having stared.

“My apologies, you must be Remus’ brother. My name is Logan and this is Virgil”

“Well hello there Logan and Virgil, my name is Roman. Please, come in”

“Roman STOP FLIRTING!!!”

The two stepped in and laughed as Roman shouted back.

“I LITERALLY JUST SAID HELLO AND MY NAME OH MY GOD”

Logan and Virgil wandered in, meeting Remus in the living room, greeting them with a smile and cups of coffee. The two took them graciously and sat down at Remus’ request. While Remus stayed in the kitchen as he searched for snacks in the cabinet, Roman leaned against the wall, giving the guests a quick look over. He smiled faintly as he saw the glasses clad one, Logan he reminded himself, turn red at the attention.

“Roman did you ever go to the store and get what I asked you for?”

“Of course not, you didn't give me a list and I prefer to keep our phone calls to twice a month and I was out of calls”

“You're an idiot”

“Yeah I sorta went into the least brainy major I could find. You're supposed to be the brainy one”

Remus sighed as he brought out a plate of fruits and chips and dip. He shot a glare at Roman's smirk.

“What are you smirking about now?”

“Oh nothing, just a little offended that you hid your cute friends from me”

Roman nearly sputtered after the words left his mouth as Logan turned bright red. Virgil just rolled his eyes at him and Remus looked just about ready to smash his glass of coffee over Roman's head, but he stayed resolute.

“Roman, can't you just go flirt with a random tree? Or one of my lizards! Keith would love a boyfriend!”

“I would rather make out with an octopus”

“Well duh! Octopi are great kissers!”

“God you and Jay would get along so well I really need to introduce you two”

“Yeah sure I would, with one of your theatre nerd friends”

Virgil then sat up a bit. He looked between the twins with a grin.

“Oh wait, theatre nerds? You wouldn't happen to be the Roman my boyfriend keeps telling me about?”

“Depends, who is he?”

“Patton Corwyn”

“Oh fuck yeah! He's one of my best friends!”

“Then I agree with him, you would love Jay”

Remus grumbled something into his coffee. He sent another glare towards Roman as he set down his cup.

“Roman I know you don't know anything about courtesy, but you are making my friends uncomfortable, could you go do your messy things in your room or something?”

“Wait we aren't-”

“Lucky for you I've got a shift at the cafe in a bit, I just gotta change. Nice meeting you Logan, Virgil, see you later rem”

Roman gave a finger salute before diving into his room. Logan almost felt sad at his departure. He tried to focus back on his coffee and his computer screen but Virgil nudged him and sent him a knowing smirk. He glared at his screen instead.

“Does our bookworm have a crush?”

“Oh please do not have a crush on him he’ll be so cocky and dumb!”

“I, I don't have a crush, shut up, your apartment is just really warm. Shut up!”

He angrily typed away as the other two giggled at his bright cheeks. A door opened and Logan turned to see, and he really shouldn't have turned to see. Roman was wearing black slacks, a red button up shirt and a black half apron. And who said he was allowed to be so attractive? Roman gave him a quick wink before looking over at Remus.

“Is it my night for dinner?”

“Yes”

“K, I’ll text you when my shift is done and get your order. See you later”

“Cool, k, leave! I'm trying to study!”

“Ok ok!”

Logan wasn’t free of the teasing until he finally left.

“Good afternoon! Welcome to Dream Bean! What can I get for you today?”

“Hiya Roman! Strawberry acai with extra whipped cream large please?”

“Ah, Patton, I see your taste remains a slave to the pink drink, it'll be right up!”

“Don't shame me! It's sweet and healthy!”

“And has no caffeine, but I’ll leave it be, promise”

“Oh, and a blueberry muffin!”

“Alrighty! That'll be 7 dollars!”

Roman loved his job. The dream bean coffee shop had higher prices than the local Starbucks, but they had better drinks and food in his humble opinion. The college students in the town were spoiled, they got discounts at the place and most alumni swore by the little shop. It was a staple of the town, and Roman had been coming to it for as long as he can remember. He paid no attention to the fact that both his friends had decided to nestle in a corner of the little shop far longer than they were technically supposed to. That is, until he clocked out, making himself a cafe mocha before popping over to the booth the two had stolen away to. He raised his eyebrow at them as he took a sip of his drink.

“What brings you two here?”

“Can't we just want some of the best coffee in the world?”

“Considering Patton didn't get coffee, and from the looks of it you got a hot chocolate with a shot of espresso, no, no you can't”

“Ok so we wanted to know more about your musical! Sue us!”

“Hmm, how about I tell you about it on a walk, if Patton tells me why he didn't mention that his boyfriend is friends with my brother. And why you didn't introduce me to Logan”

“Deal!”

Patton giggled as he brought his new cup of coffee to his lips. He and Virgil stood and followed Roman out the door.

“I didn't know your brother and Vee were friends! He must be Remus then right?”

“Mhmm. whole family of mythology names, my uncle's name is Romulus”

“Hmm! I haven't actually met him, Virgil doesn't bring his friends over a lot. But why are you more upset about not knowing about Logan?”

“I mean, hes hot as fuck, would’ve liked to talk t him more but I had to leave for work before I could say much more than hello or goodbye. He looks smart. Wouldn't take him for a creative writing guy”

“Oh he's a psych major, he wants to write scientific journals and studies and stuff. There wasn't a minor choice for journalism, so he figured creative writing would fulfill the same things. He's actually really talented, he writes lots of sci-fi and fantasy things, he's a huge nerd, but he's really sweet”

“He blushed at like anything I said, it was adorable. Remus almost killed me”

“Ok as much as I love hearing your tea on guys, I do not care about this near as much as I care about this musical”

Patton and Roman both devolved into a mess of laughter at JJ’s insistence about the musical. Roman pulled out his phone with a grin and gave Jay a sympathetic look.

“Ok, let me text Remus for his dinner order and then I’ll tell you all about it”

Remus just about groaned when he heard keys jingle in the door. He was sprawled across the couch, legs over the top of it and his head and arms draped on the floor. He was even more tempted as he heard more voices mix with his brothers. He shouted across the apartment when the door opened.

“YOU NEED TO STOP EXISTING, LOGAN WOULDN'T STOP THIRSTING OVER YOU THE WHOLE TIME HE WAS HERE!”

“Too bad, he's kinda cute!”

Remus fell off the couch as Roman and his friends walked in. mostly because one of them was hot as balls. He hoped beyond hope that he was the Jay Roman had mentioned from earlier. Jay had a face full of scars on one side of his face, and wore a pastel yellow shirt with a jean vest covered in pins. He also wore a deep yellow beanie. Remus couldn't look away as he stood up again.

“Oh! Uh hello! Roman’s friends!”

The other one smiled brightly, just about as bright as his pastel blue jumper and white suspenders. He held out one hand, the other filled with bags of food. Remus shook his hand.

“Hiya! I'm Patton! And you're the Remus my boyfriend keeps talking about!”

“Hello! That must mean that you are Jay?”

Jay stuttered after actually getting a good look at him. He nodded and smiled back at him.

“You can um, you can call me Janus! If, if you want that is! Um, Roman told us about the musical you two are writing and it's really cool! I uh, I know it's gonna be great!”

Remus grinned, and let out a giggle as Roman leaned on him. Janus hissed at him and swatted at Roman’s arm.

“Be careful not to corrupt this one, he's a baby”

“I AM 19 YEARS OLD YOU MOTHER FUCKER!!!”

“And a freshman. This makes you babey. Regardless, I know you are also a weirdo who loves reptiles, and my brother has a collection that i'm sure he would be delighted to show you”

“repTILES?!”

At that, Janus started bouncing and god, Roman was right, he is babey. Remus grins and nods excitedly as well.

“I can do that! I'd love to show off my babies! But dinner first, I've been begging Roman to let us have Thai food for weeks!”

Taglist: @fivebyfive-finebyfive @tacohippy56900 @analogical-mess @crookedlyoptimisticdestiny @angels-and-dreams @fandomloverangel @booklover223

Let me know if you want to be tagged in my writing!!!

Thank you for reading I will see you later ladies lords and nonbinary royalty!!!

#roman sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #ts janus #duke remus #remus sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #thomas sanders #college au #familial creativitwins #logince #dukeceit #moxiety #tw swearing #tw cursing #tw ocean #my writing #my fanfiction

[comradekatara]

actually. @znkka brings up a really interesting point, because i don’t think fire nation royalty is encouraged to study the arts. it’s shown that in fire nation schools (it’s never specified whether the school aang attends in “the headband” is public or private, but we do that there do exist private schools in the fire nation because azula, mai, and ty lee all attended one together) music is taught not as an artform, but as a way of teaching discipline. improvisation and dancing are discouraged, even considered taboo, but instruments are still widely taught. 

take music night on zuko’s ship. we know that zuko is apparently “very good at the tsungi horn,” and iroh and his crew will oft enjoy themselves singing and dancing, but zuko does not partake in such activities, considering it beneath him. but he does know how to play the tsungi horn. and he’s very good. 

while i don’t (can’t) consider the events of the search canon, i do agree with the take that ursa was found by ozai, probably in a small village, and forced to be married to him solely because she was the granddaughter of avatar roku. that is quite possibly the only reason she would have been married to ozai, considering we know that roku was very much not living amongst nobility when he died, and instead seemed to be living humbly on a small island with his family. it also does make sense that ursa took a particular interest in theater, considering we know it was she who took zuko to see the ember island players in the first place. 

ember island is definitely a place that relies on its tourist economy. lots of rich people own summer homes there, including the actual royal family, and it’s known for being a popular vacation spot, but i doubt the people who live there year-round are exactly thriving financially. ember island is where the upper classes go to enjoy recreation. they even have a resident theater troupe in the town, even though they are infamously terrible. 

everyone in the fire nation holds a certain privilege over those in the earth kingdom, even those of high social standing such as the beifong family, or the nobles of ba sing se’s upper ring, due to the fact that they are winning the war, and have been for the past century. to be winning a war means the privilege of being blissfully unaware that it is going on. yes, technically, the citizens of ba sing se are also “unaware” of the war, but this is only because they are legally forbidden from discussing it, not because it isn’t affecting their lives; we know that even in the upper ring there live refugees from the war, seeing as iroh manages to work his way up there even though he was never shy about being a refugee from the lower ring when offered a shop there. 

upon ty lee’s introduction, azula implies that ty lee is of too high social standing to be working in the circus. it is later revealed that mai’s repression is due to her high social standing; any form of outward expression would be considered a slight against her father, who cares deeply about his political image. thus, it can be inferred that aang did attend a private school, as aang identified their repression as their biggest problem. the fire nation as a whole is not necessarily repressed. they do have circuses, theater troupes, music and dancing––but these activities are relegated to the lower classes. 

the lower classes of the fire nation may be recruited for less ideal jobs, such as prison guard, or glorified prince zuko babysitter, but it is nobility that ranks highly in the military. zhao and ozai clearly go way back (they were in the same frat). chan says that his father is an admiral, and chan is clearly upper class. and zuko and azula’s ambitions lie in military glory as well. proximity to the firelord, it seems, does not indicate a better knowledge of the arts, but in fact, what would appear to be a discouragement of any kind of artistic expression in favor of rigid ideals of masculinity and militarism. 

(it is a common misconception that art, especially theatre, such as shakespeare, was considered “high-brow” at the time of its release. i can assure you that theaters (such as the globe) that held bearbaiting on the same stage as they did romeo & juliet were not intended with nobility in mind. unlike the current inflation problem of broadway that made shows like hamilton so expensive, for a long time, theatre was something designed for everyone in mind. of course, shakespeare was promoted to king james’s patronage, but i think he proved an exception in many cases. and even then, it was never like he saw any extra money for it.)

so while zuko knowing the tsungi horn is the kind of thing the son of the firelord would be expected to learn as a test of discipline, i highly doubt ozai encouraged the same in theatre, or any other artform, for that matter. no, it was ursa, who hailed from a lower class background and had always been passionate about theatre, who was likely to have introduced zuko to plays such as love amongst the dragons, not due to her own royal upbringing, but due to her lack of it. which makes sense, because zuko pretty uniformly disavowed everything ozai encouraged, and vice versa, ozai encouraging interest in the arts just seems downright weird. 

ozai’s values were those of staunch “emotionlessness” (aka, no emotions except for anger, which is fine and good, even) and traditional masculinity. he definitely did not raise his children in a household that deemed it necessary or even appropriate to educate them on the arts, no matter how fine. while it is inferred that ursa first introduced zuko to plays (which we know he both read and saw), it can also be inferred that once she ...went, if zuko wanted to continue reading plays, it likely would have been in secret. 

#analysis #i didnt want to reply on the post itself bc it wouldve gotten too long #but yeah the fire nation upper classes HATE art actually!!!!!!! #(which is what makes zuko liking it subversive. there would be no reason for him to disavow art if it was something that his father encourag #ed.)

[tcm]

Staircase by Raquel Stecher

Director Stanley Donen had the best of intentions for STAIRCASE (1969). He set out to make, in his words, a “picture about humanity” on a small scale. However, the end result was a big budget Fox studio film with two big name stars, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, and a production that inevitably lost its way from Donen’s original vision.

Based on the successful stage play by Charles Dyer, STAIRCASE tells the story of an aging gay couple living in London. The characters, Charlie Dyer and Harry C. Leeds, are named after the playwright, one as a direct reference and the other as an anagram of the name. It’s a dialogue driven story, with the two main characters’ biting repartee as the biggest draw and little actual plot. The events lead up to Charlie being summoned to court by the magistrate for propositioning a police officer and for public depravity.

The play premiered November 1966 at the Royal Shakespeare Company with Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee playing the titles roles of Charlie and Harry respectively. Across the pond, Eli Wallach and Milo O’Shea played the two roles on Broadway. Donen originally wanted Scofield to play Charlie in the film adaptation but Scofield turned him down. According to Donen biographer Stephen M. Silverman, Scofield rejected the film role because he felt the part required the energy from a live audience to do it justice. Donen’s own conclusion was that Scofield turned down the part for fear of playing a gay man in a much more public arena.

Fox producer Richard Zanuck recommended Donen reach out to Harrison and Burton. Both stars were good friends at the time and the story goes that Burton joked to Harrison, “I will, if you will.” Zanuck’s offer of $1.25 million for Burton and $1 million for Harrison was definitely the biggest draw. To maximize their dollars, Harrison insisted they film in France to avoid England’s hefty income tax. This was a boon to Burton too whose wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor was also working on a movie nearby. To recreate a “dodgy” London neighborhood, Donen and his crew filmed ten weeks of interiors in Fox’s Paris studio, five weeks exterior shooting on a replica of a London street and only one week of shooting in the actual city of London.

Harrison biographer Alexander Walker says in his book Fatal Charm, “the pressure was all the greater on Donen to produce not the small, intimate, sad film he had had in mind, but a movie whose scale responded to the salaries of its stars and the costs of its production.” Having two temperamental stars put a big wrench in the works. Harrison, a perfectionist, fussed over small details, demanded take after take to get each scene just right and worried about whether he would do the part justice and if the role would hurt his public persona. At one point he stormed off set taking refuge in his home in Portofino, Italy and only returned when Zanuck threatened him with legal action.

According to Alexander Walker, having Burton was a much-needed investment because “it was still the era when producers believed that anything which Richard Burton and/or Elizabeth Taylor touched turned to gold.” However, Burton just wasn’t as invested in his role as Harrison. He was distracted by family tragedies and his ailing wife and eventually lost interest in the picture.

STAIRCASE got mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert called it an “unpleasant exercise in bad taste.” A Variety review highlighted the “caustic wit, splendid photography and fine direction” but even all of that couldn’t save the film. A scathing New York Times review pointed out that the two stars seemed uncomfortable in their roles and the film lacked the tension and plot required to make it an interesting movie. STAIRCASE didn’t draw audiences to the theaters and was a box office flop.

While the film didn’t quite capture the magic of the stage play, it does deserve a second look. Viewed through the lens of Donen’s vision for the piece, we see the story of two individuals who become more human to an audience who might have cast them off as a bizarre curio. These are two lone wolves, outsiders in a misunderstood counterculture, who use verbal jabs as a way to not only protect themselves from the oppressive world around them but also to rebel against it. The movie homes in on Charlie and Harry who are virtually the only characters of any note except for their mothers. 

Close-ups, tight shots and visions of Charlie and Harry through both windows and mirrors, gives the audience an opportunity to see the humanity behind the conceived spectacle. In recent years, ITV release Vicious starring Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi, a Britcom about an aging British gay couple, which was clearly inspired by STAIRCASE and has just as many snaps and snarls between the two leads as the stage play did. The show benefited from being filmed in front of a live audience as well as having two gay leading men who were far more invested in their characters.

At the heart of STAIRCASE is the story of two characters who are struggling to come to terms with their circumstances. Between Charlie’s impending court case and Harry’s hair loss, which proves ironic given that he runs a barbershop called Chez Harry, they take their situations out on each other to deal with their hurt. In the end Donen claimed that an overwrought production was the real reason STAIRCASE proved a failure because the material was top notch. He went on to say, “if you have no compassion for the characters, Charlie and Harry, then I’m sorry, you are not a member of the human race.”

#Staircase #Rex Harrison #Richard Burton #Stanley Donen #gay hollywood #Raquel Stecher

[nothingbutimagines]

How to Fall in Love in 5 Steps (Tom Holland)

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Warning: Cursing

Summary: A little bit of a different fic in which Y/n falls for Tom and Tom for Y/n written as a five part how to. Just cute little shorts about the little things they love about one another.

Author: Dizzy

A/N: Just a little Tom Holland fic. So sorry I haven’t been on in like months, school has been hectic and I went through a bad break up. 

Masterlist Request Any Of These

Step 1: You enter your apartment after a long day, shed your jacket that is wet with rain, drop your umbrella down by the door and slip off your shoes with a sigh. You won’t notice the young man asleep on the other side of your couch, his soft snores drowned out by the sound of your cat’s meows and whines at your feet. You’ll sigh and take the small kitten into your arms, cuddling into her for warmth as you turn on your radio, waking the sleeping man on the couch. 

He will rub his eyes, mumble curses to himself for falling asleep as he sits up to face you. He will startle you at first, but as soon as your heart beat slows back to its normal skip, his lazy smile and eyes the color of far away landscapes will make it spring from your chest once more. He chuckles as you playfully hit him for scaring you and will argue that you shouldn’t have given him a copy of your house key if you didn’t want him to just randomly show up.

You will puff your cheeks in anger as he chuckles and you’ll try to punch his arm, your rose colored cheeks and face of anger will only make him laugh more and it will send sparks to run along the length of your veins. 

“Why are you here?” You will ask after moments of laughter and silence.

“Because I wanted to see you.” He will say simply, his tongue sliding over his bottom lip. 

You will roll your eyes as you bite your lip in an attempt to soothe your emerging nerves caused by his oh so sexy smirk. 

“Really,” You will start, “why are you here, Tom?”

The way you say his name will bring more than a smirk to his lips as he shows his white teeth to you. He will move and invite you to sit with him with a little hand gesture and you will oblige. 

“I didn’t want to spend the night alone.” He will say shyly, glancing at his shoes. “We haven’t seen one another in a while and I thought it’d be nice to hang out.”

You will arch your brow as the thunder clashes and sends you into his arms. 

“I knew you’d want some company during the bad storm.” He will admit, enveloping you in the warmth of his body as you feel a calming silence fall between you. 

The radio will play softly in the background as your heart seems to fall into a much faster and harder beat than that of the soft pop radio, but you will fall into the soft euphoria of being entangled in him and only him. 

Step 2: You will wake to the sounds of frying bacon, the smells of sweet batter and your body cold without the feeling of another up against you. You will smile to yourself and gather the blankets up with you, wrap yourself in them as your feet clash with the cold hardwood floor to the kitchen. 

He will be standing with his back to you, the contours of his shoulders and waist greeting you as you become mesmerized by them, only to have him turn around and greet you with a tired smile. He will ask you how you slept, explain that he went out to buy groceries and work out. He will apologize for not waking you, but will explain that you looked so tired after all the fear you seemed to be feeling the night before. 

You will smile, thank him for the breakfast, give him a friendly kiss upon his face and pretend that you did not see the flash of red fall upon the apple of his cheek. You will ask him what his plans are for the day, since you are his best friend after all, he tells you he’s thinking about going on a coffee date later in the evening. 

“With who?” You will ask between sips of orange juice. 

He will shrug, taking a bite of his meal before speaking. “No one important, just some girl I met the other night.”

He will see the look that will fall upon your face, he will think that it is worry rather than that of heartbreak as he continues to speak. 

“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be home later. There’s another storm coming.” He will tell you. 

You will nod and push your food around your plate for a moment as you become befuddled by your mix of emotions. 

“I hope you have fun on your date.” You will say, rising from your seat and walking out of the room to get ready for your day.

He will watch you walk away without a word, his eyes studying every detail of your soft edges as if he will never see them again. He will wonder if he should’ve brought up the date he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on.

Step 3: You will go out to a bar that night, before the storm settles itself over your city and brings rain and heavenly fire. You will wear your favorite red dress and will be ready to meet new men, since the young man you felt so dearly for was out having his own fun. You will settle yourself on a bar stool between two men and order your favorite drink. As you wait, you will talk with one of the men. 

He is beautiful, brown hair and brown eyes, a smile so sweet you think you might get a tooth ache from just looking at it. He likes long walks around the city, Broadway musicals you’ve never heard of, rainy days and books from the days of Shakespeare and crime stories. His name will sound like that of a classical composer and you will find that even though he seems perfect, he could never hold your body as close to his as that of the young man you spent the night with earlier. 

He will buy you another round and ask you about your family, about your favorite things the city has to offer. He will lean in close and ask you if he’s being too forward when he asks if you want to go back to his place. 

You will pull away from his liquor stained words and smile shyly before explaining that you have someone waiting for you at home. It will be a lie, but you will not feel bad for telling it since you have a pang of hope settled in our chest that there will be someone at home waiting for you. 

Your phone will ring as you leave the bar and the voice on the other end will make your head spin. 

“Y/n, where are you? I decided not to go on my date and you’re not home.” 

“I’m at the bar down the block from the apartment. Why didn’t you go on your date, Tom?”

“I decided not to go. It’s late Y/n, so stay where you are. I’ll come get you.”

“It’s not that far, I’ll be fine.” You will tell him as you walk towards the front of the bar.

“It’s raining, darling. You’ll get sick if you walk in the rain.” He will say softly as you watch the rain hit the windows outside. “I’m on my way. Just stay where you are.”

You’ll smile as you say okay and hang up the phone. You’ll take a seat by the door and when you see him walk up to the bar, you can’t help but smile and wave at him happily. 

He’ll shake the rain off himself as he walks in and takes you into his arms before he leads you out the door, holding the umbrella over you as you walk down the street. 

Step 4: You will wake up to soft snores in your ear, arms tucked beneath you and around your waist, the warmth of another body against yours, skin against skin,will soothe you.

He will groan softly as you relinquish yourself from his embrace, reach out to you as you turn around in nothing but his t shirt as you flash him a smile that will melt his heart until it feels as if it slipped out of his body.

You will tug at the hem of his shirt clumsily as you feel his eyes’ never-ending journey along the lines of your form, making you a little insecure about your looks. 

He will softly grab your wrist and pull you back onto the bed, sitting up as he does so. He will brush the hair from your face with a smile so soft you feel as though if you leaned into it, you’d sink farther into those undeniable feelings you have for him.

“Just stay in bed for a little while.” he will say with a voice so soft you could barely hear him over the sound of your pounding heart as you took a seat in front of him.

You will wrap yourself up in the covers as he sits before you, so close that your bent knees touch ever so slightly that a line of sparks course through your veins. You’ll wonder if he feels them too, and the look he gives you, with cheeks dusted by pink, will tell your heart he does while your mind tells you you’re just seeing things. 

In a moment of pure courage and an overdose of feeling, you will lean forward and run a hand through his hair, say something along the lines of, “You look cute with this messy bed head.” and without waiting for his response, place your lips on his in a soft kiss. 

He will feel his shoulders tense in shock for a second before he leans into your lips, kissing you back just as softly as you kissed him, his hands placing themselves onto your thighs before you pull away from him. He will feel words dance on his lips, lines of things he will struggle to say when his eyes meet yours.

“Y/n...” he will manage to say, his voice quivering ever so slightly with nerves and anxiety. 

“Tom.” you will say his name like it was something you’ve never said before. “I think I-”

He will stop you mid sentence by crashing his lips into yours, kissing you until you forget just what you wanted to previously say. He will make you feel high, the euphoria of the chemistry between you making your head spin, make you feel as though he could hold you close to his heart like a precious prayer of thanks for love. 

Step 5: He will pull away from you, a smirk tracing his lips before you open your mouth to speak once more. 

“I think I’m in love with you.” You will say so quickly, he will ask you to repeat it. “I think I’m in love with you.”

“Say that again? I didn’t quite hear you, darling.” He will say with a smile. 

“I think I’m in love with you.”

“What? Say that again?”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

“What?”

You will push him roughly as he laughs and you puff your cheeks. 

“Be serious!” You will beg, getting annoyed with all the repeating you had been doing. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but that statement begs repeating.” He will say between laughs before finding his composure. “I think I’m in love with you too. No, darling, I know I’m in love with you.”

#tom holland #tom holland fanfic #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagines #marvel imagine

[uomo-accattivante]

The troupe — a roving band of actors, musicians and directors who produce a variety of plays and entertainment — is centuries old. So why has this generation of stage, television and cinematic impresarios found new resonance in this old form of communalism?

IN “HAMLET,” WHEN the hero wants to put on a play to “catch the conscience of the king,” he engages the services of a band of itinerant actors, a motley troupe of entertainment professionals instructed by the Danish prince to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

As the Renaissance scholar Siobhan Keenan notes in her 2002 study, “Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England,” the author of “Hamlet” based that fictitious company on something “he had lived for real.” Troupes of mimes and acrobats, musicians and mummers were ubiquitous in early modern Europe. Their performances were both religious and profane, encompassing everything from passion plays to puppet shows to commedia dell’arte sketches. They cobbled together material from various sources — Shakespeare’s own compositional method — and tailored their performances to local tastes and prejudices. Tradespeople as well as artists, the troupes operated according to a flexible organizational chart. In their working relationships they were companions more than colleagues, forging quasi-familial ties (including love affairs, of course) as they wound from town to town. The whole village would come to the show, and the community onstage, with its exaggerated conflicts and beguiling harmonies, served as a mirror for the audience, binding its members, at least for an evening or two, in common troubles and delights. A few young people might run off with the troupe, further blurring the boundary between the players and their public.

For centuries, these troupes defined popular culture in much of the world. They show up now and then in modern paintings, novels and films: in Seurat’s “Circus Sideshow” and Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques”; in novels such as Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” and Barry Unsworth’s “Morality Play”; in Theo Angelopoulos’s “Travelling Players” and Fellini’s “La Strada.”

Those works evoke nostalgia for the rough magic of a bygone way of life, one that slipped away silently and suddenly, like the circus setting off for the next town at daybreak. Over time, the troupe aesthetic fell victim to the usual forces of modernity. Art, even when it depended on collective labor, became increasingly individualized in Europe after the Middle Ages, and the consumption of art followed the same fate. Culture now travels, for the most part, electronically — reaching the public through the invisible corporate workings of television networks, streaming services and movie studios. Live theater, where it still flourishes, is concentrated in commercial or philanthropically supported institutions. The scrolling credits and the fine print in the playbill record a strict division of labor. Though there is, technically, a “company,” it’s often an ad hoc confection brokered by agents, producers and other offstage dealmakers. The artists are individuals, and so are the members of the audience. The romantic idea of performing artists as a vagabond tribe, commingling with the rest of us and then moving on, has been dissolved in the medium of modern celebrity. And the corresponding ideal of the public — gathering to share in a common treasury of imagination — has withered as tastes have fragmented.

BUT THE HUNGER for that older way of doing things persists. Movie studios and television networks are soulless, monstrous entities, ravenous heads of a corporate hydra. A Broadway theater is an empty shell. There is not much we see that commands our loyalty, or inspires our solidarity. The unsatisfied, atavistic part of ourselves that harbors a dim memory of those wondrous nights in the village square experiences a special frisson, a jolt of recognition and excitement, when we witness the work of players who seem loyal to one another.

This is why we react with a special kind of excitement when we encounter what looks like the work of a genuine troupe in the crowded, highly mediated, aggressively monetized postmodern landscape where we scavenge for beauty, fun and enlightenment. What connects certain television shows, movies and stage productions to ancient folkways is a particular blend of novelty and familiarity. You see the same faces again and again in new disguises. The afternoon’s clown is the evening’s tragic hero; yesterday’s princess is tomorrow’s wicked stepmother.

To be more specific: The young actor Evan Peters, who creeped you out as a sweet-faced, homicidal teenager in the first season of “American Horror Story” on FX, returns in subsequent seasons as a falsely accused murderer, a reanimated fraternity brother, Charles Manson, Andy Warhol and Jesus. This is not an exhaustive list. In the same series — the flagship production of what we might call the Ryan Murphy Troupe — Jessica Lange has been a sinister nun, a witch and a maniacal, musical mistress of ceremonies.

To take another example: Ben Stiller, a fixture of several distinct, overlapping quasi-troupes (including his own), shows up in “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach’s 2010 romantic comedy, as the misanthropic, underachieving brother of a successful Los Angeles hotelier. He cycles back into the Baumbach universe in 2015’s “While We’re Young,” playing the somewhat less misanthropic, not as spectacularly underachieving son-in-law of a prominent documentary filmmaker. And then, a couple of years later in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” he’s the successful sibling, a financial adviser based in L.A., struggling to keep his misanthropy in check and dealing with the narcissism of his father, played by Dustin Hoffman. (Hoffman was accused late last year by several women of sexual misconduct or assault. He has apologized to one of the women and has denied other allegations through his lawyer.)

If you are a habitual visitor to Baumbach’s galaxy, you are accustomed to seeing some of the same faces in altered guises. Florence Marr, played by Greta Gerwig in “Greenberg,” is not the same person as Frances Hamilton, Gerwig’s character in “Frances Ha” (2013) or Brooke in “Mistress America” (2015). But these young women stand in relation to each other like conjugations of the quintessential millennial verb “to adult.” They are melodies played on different instruments in the same family: clarinet, oboe, bassoon.

After “Greenberg,” Baumbach and Gerwig began writing together (they also now live together). “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America” are the fruits of that partnership, a fusion of complementary, but also distinctive, styles and sensibilities. “It’s like we’re standing on the beach picking up the same kind of rocks,” Gerwig says of their collaboration. (Gerwig’s solo voice as a writer and director burst forth in “Lady Bird,” one of the defining movies of last year.)

“Part of what’s great about working with the same people is that it’s an ongoing conversation that you’re having from movie to movie,” says Baumbach, whose troupe of repeat collaborators includes crew as well as cast. “How can we continue this thing we’ve been developing? And then there’s also the thing of explaining yourself to new people, which is good too. So you want some healthy dose of both.”

Baumbach’s characters are defined by their idiosyncrasies and imperfections, by their snowballing failures of communication, planning and insight. Bringing them to life demands precisely those things in heroic measure, and an enormous amount of work: endless rewriting, numerous takes, an editing process that begins while the script is still being written.

Ryan Murphy, by contrast, likes to surprise his actors, to spring ideas, situations and scenes on them in medias res — midseason and even mid-episode. “It’s always a little hair-raising,” says Jessica Lange. “With ‘American Horror Story’ we often wouldn’t get the first pages of the episode until the day we started shooting. I think anybody who’s worked with Ryan, especially on ‘American Horror Story’ — I mean, it is kind of by the skin of your teeth.”

“He can get sort of uninterested in a story he’s telling,” Sarah Paulson said, “and then decide to take it in an entirely new way that does interest him. So you can be going along, playing a particular thing and then all of a sudden you find out, oh, you really did kill your sister, and you ate her for dinner, and you didn’t realize that because you’d been playing the whole time that you really loved your sister. But it actually adds a beautiful nuance to your work.” The result is an ever-expanding, theoretically limitless multiverse of stories, and a thorough reinvention of the possibilities of serial television. “American Horror Story” derives its coherence not from a stable set of characters and situations but from the opposite. The through line is stated in the title — horror, a property that can be found in serial killers, witches, nuns, Charles Manson and our country’s current political climate. More concretely, it flows through the faces and voices of actors like Peters, Lange and Paulson, who discover, from one chapter to the next, the thrilling and spooky dimensions of their own talent. “It’s an incredible gift that you get to work for four to five months on something very, very intensely,” Paulson says, “just like you would on a film or a play, and then it’s over.”

A TROUPE, YOU will have noticed, is not necessarily a democratic phenomenon. Someone has to be the boss, providing both vision and connective tissue for the work of fellow artists. The current golden age of television has seen the rise of showrunners like Murphy as objects of critical scrutiny and fan obsessions, much in the way that movie directors were elevated to the status of artists during the postwar blossoming of film culture. Previously they had been seen as guns for hire in an anonymous industrial system.

Theater is an older art form, with a more complicated distribution of creative authority. Supremacy is habitually granted to the writer, who is sometimes also the star, and therefore a physical presence on the scene, but who more often is dead long before the curtain goes up. The popular image of what happens backstage involves a flurry of activity involving directors and dramaturgs, producers and impresarios scrambling to boost morale, prevent disaster and keep the bills paid.

Oskar Eustis is all of those things and also something else. The artistic director of the Public Theater since 2005, he leads in the tradition of two great New York showmen: George C. Wolfe, who directed “Angels in America” (1993) on Broadway and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017) for HBO, and Joseph Papp, the Public’s founder, who grew free outdoor performances of Shakespeare into a mighty civic institution. Under Eustis’s aegis, the Public, now housed in the former Astor Library in Lower Manhattan, has incubated such future Broadway hits as “Fun Home” (2015), “Hamilton” (2015) and “Latin History for Morons” (2017). It has been a home base and R&D facility for the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Lynn Nottage and Suzan-Lori Parks. Season after season, it’s a whirring carousel of diverse, ambitious and politically urgent theater.

Eustis’s vision of the Public is of a kind of city within the city, a community open to new arrivals who settle in and stay for a long time. He likes to keep up with old friends and partners and to fold new talent into the mix. His relationships with playwrights like Tony Kushner and Nottage go back decades, predating his arrival at the Public. In the time he’s been there he has gathered in artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Oscar Isaac, John Leguizamo, the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright and actress Lisa Kron (co-creators of “Fun Home”).

These artists and others collaborate in a process that is intensive and exhaustive, a kind of rolling workshop that can continue for years. Theater, Eustis told me, “has to go through every phase of human experience, from the writer alone in their room chewing on their pencil to the conversations with the director or dramaturg as the piece is written, to the reading aloud with actors once a draft exists. So step by step until finally you have something that literally hundreds of people have been involved in putting together that’s being performed for hundreds of thousands. There is almost no example of a great work of theater that doesn’t involve many great collaborations.”

And that process has a meaning that extends beyond the theater itself. “This is such a transactional, atomized world,” Eustis said at the end of our conversation, “where everything gets a dollar value put on it. Everything is ‘I’ll give you this if you give me that’ and ‘What have you done …’ And to try and really build a counter to that, to say there’s actually a better way of people relating to each other, and while we can’t completely remake the world in our image, we can try to remake the theater in our image, and by doing that hold, as ’twere, a mirror up to nature.”

What we see on the stage and on the large and small screens are reflections of human social interaction. Every play, every film, every television show, is about a group of people — a family, a workplace, a neighborhood, a nation. The purpose of those art forms is to show us to ourselves, in glory and disgrace and at every point on the spectrum in between. The ethic of the troupe provides another, less obviously visible but no less powerful mirror. What we witness in the collective pretending is the result of individuals working together at a common task, in circumstances that, however grueling and disharmonious in the moment, are also utopian. This looks like the opposite of alienated labor, not just because it seems like fun — it’s not called “playing” for nothing — but because it transcends both the narrow individualism and the impersonal corporatism that defines so much of our working lives. The enchantment that we experience, craning forward in the audience, is not just with what we’re seeing, but with what we intuit about how it was made. Look: This is what we can do. This is who we might become.

#oscar isaac #the public theater #adam driver #lin-manuel miranda #evan peters #greta gerwig #sterling k brown #sarah paulson #angela bassett #jessica lange #oskar eustis #ryan murphy #matt bomer #noah baumbach #ben stiller #dustin hoffman #john leguizamo #kathy bates #new york times

[dangan-aesthetic]

im not sure if this counts as a request or not and you can absolutely delete it if it does but... if im not mistaken mod twogami has a fondness for broadway so... could they recommend any shows? i've been trying to get into more shows and such...!

It doesn’t count as a request! don’t worry, you’re fine! oh my gosh though I love Broadway SO MUCH I am SO HAPPY to make a list for you I LOVE talking about stuff I like! 

one warning I should maybe give is that I tend to be more into modern musical theater, so the majority of shows I really like are from after like 2000 if that’s okay with you. I’d be happy to recommend some older stuff if you’d prefer, I’m just not as knowledgable about it. another warning: I am incapable of brevity. this list is way too long… i’m so fuckin sorry… i’m really really sorry. 

comedy:

♡ the producers (2001). the show that really got me into musical theater. it also won more tony awards than any show, ever. about two broadway producers who try to create the worst musical ever, ergo hilarity ensues. maybe not the best pick if you’re uncomfortable with content that makes fun of nazis, but if it helps, the writer is jewish (and I’m jewish and don’t have a problem with it). there’s also some adorable gays, and a movie version that’s very faithful to the show, so that’s nice. you want the 2005 movie if you want songs (the 1968 movie isn’t a musical). also, if you like this, young frankenstein is a great show by the same creators with a similar sense of humor.

♡ the book of mormon (2010).two mormon missionaries go to uganda. absolutely hilarious. pretty crass though, and i’m sure problematic as hell (by the creators of south park, if that’s any indication), so be warned. but it’s just… such a fun time.

♡ a gentleman’s guide to love and murder (2014).a rare musical comedy that’s actually not that crass. about a man in edwardian england who learns he’s ninth in line to inherit an earldom, so he kills everyone in his way to the position. actually a very lighthearted comedy. bonus points for a love triangle that turns into a really cute poly triad.

♡ avenue q (2003).sesame street, but about issues faced by people in their mid-twenties: a kindergarten teacher tries to snag a boyfriend, a recent college grad tries to find his purpose, a gay republican struggles to come out of the closet, gary coleman is just kind of there. song titles include “the internet is for porn” and “everyone’s a little bit racist.” puppet sex. a good time.

♡ a funny thing happened on the way to the forum (1962).slapsticky, very clever, hilarious if you like roman history, funny even if you don’t. about a roman slave who wants to earn his freedom, his young master falling in love for the first time, pirates, soldiers, sex workers, a lot of stuff. the movie is very good. I’m also partial to the 1996 cast album because I love Nathan Lane.

drama:

♡ sweeney todd (1979).just… a masterpiece of a musical score tbh. about a barber who seeks revenge for his tortured past. people get baked into pies. if you haven’t noticed, i really like musicals that make light of murder (although i’m guessing you like funny media about murder too, since you came to a danganronpa blog to ask this?). funny, moving, dark, creepy, powerful. I’ve never actually seen the movie and don’t really recommend it from what I’ve heard, but a production of the show is on DVD with most of the original cast, and it’s definitely worth a watch. also, if you like this, i recommend p much anything stephen sondheim’s ever written. he’s a genius.

♡ spring awakening (2007).takes place in the late 19th century, but is very, very relevant to issues kids face today. covers stuff like the importance of sexual education, child abuse, the pressure placed on kids by school, and the confusion teenagers go through when discovering sexual desire. very heavy, but very beautiful (note: this is maybe the musical I know that is the most difficult to get a sense of the plot by just listening to the score, so I’d recommend maybe reading a plot summary or watching a bootleg or something. there was a cool production last year where a lot of the cast was deaf and it was bilingual in english and asl! idk if there’s a bootleg of that anywhere, but it was a good time). tw for rape, suicide, abortion, child abuse… yeah, it’s dark.

♡ next to normal (2009).about a family dealing with their mom’s mental illness, and covers stuff like how her life is affected by her illness, how fucked up the process of getting treatment is, and how mental illness affects her relationship with the people around her. I find it very realistic, very moving, and very relatable. of course tw for mental illness and suicide. i am dan goodman.

♡ natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812 (2012).just reopened on broadway! based on part of war and peace, so you’ll know the plot of war and peace and look really smart. about a woman who gets swept up in an affair while her husband is at war in 19th century russia. the plot isn’t really what’s interesting so much as the gorgeous musical score and really cool things they did with the staging / mixing the 19th century and the modern day.

stuff that’s a mix of the two genres:

♡ the frogs (2004).a comedy that gets more and more serious until it’s… not really a comedy anymore. dionysus and his slave go to the underworld to bring back george bernard shaw and make the world right again. shakespeare is there. hades is gay. was on broadway for all of like four months and is pretty damn obscure, but it’s SO GOOD, I promise.

♡ heathers: the musical (2014).another comedic musical about murder. I love comedies about murder. a girl befriends her high school’s popular clique and gets a sort of fucked up boyfriend. shit goes down. I feel like it does a very good job of representing what high school is really like (my high school experience, anyway), and is a good mix of funny and serious. heavy tw for suicide and mental illness (and briefly for eating disorders, but it’s just a couple of comments).

♡ matilda the musical (2010).based on the roald dahl book! about a little girl who is extremely intelligent, but is surrounded by neglectful parents and an abusive headmaster – so she fights back against them. what a genuinely fun, heartfelt time. great lyrics, super creative, and has a scene where someone eats a whole cake, which is always a plus and very relatable (note: im twogami, what were you expecting). tw for child abuse, but the musical is meant for kids, so it’s not very graphic.

♡ my fair lady (1957).thought maybe I should throw in some older stuff as well. early 1900s england, an upper class linguist asshole tries to turn a lower class flower seller into a “lady.” the movie is very, very good. is based on a very feminist play but was made into a slightly misogynistic romance for hollywood, so I’d recommend reading pygmalion if you’re unsatisfied with the ending (but it’s not like the movie doesn’t do its fair share of calling out higgins’s misogyny).

♡ 1776 (1969).also has a very good movie. about the founding fathers and the signing of the declaration of independence. maybe don’t watch this if you’re mad that hamilton is glorifying slave owners (note: I like hamilton, but I didn’t put it on this list because I’m kind of tired of it by now, and anyway I’m sure you know about it). a very good mix of funny and historically accurate. 

anyway I hope you enjoy this list and can forgive me for… info dumping rlly heavily on u… love u, hope ur havin a good day, thanks for letting me talk about this. tell me if you end up checking out any of these shows and liking them! - Mod Twogami

[emma-what-son]

The Vulture Batb review

From TheVulture March 2017: The New Beauty and the Beast Is a Lifeless Re-creation of the Original.

Imagine it’s the late 1980s, and you work as an animator at Walt Disney Studios. You’ve been assigned to Beauty and the Beast, a film populated by talking teapots, candlesticks, and wardrobes that’s being pitched as a Broadway-worthy musical extravaganza. You’ve been assigned to design an uppity clock named Cogsworth, and as you sit down to figure out his myriad facial expressions and physical movements, an unshakable thought runs through your head: This is fine, but I just feel so hamstrung by my medium. This guy’s never going to look like an actual clock with a human face. I’m doomed to fail. 

You’d be glad to know, then, that Walt Disney Studios has set out to remedy everything wrong with the original 1991 Beauty and the Beast by producing a “live action” remake of the film. Finally, the unfulfilled promise of the original has come to fruition, by reimagining all its fantastical elements in CGI, and keeping them more faithful to real-world physics, I guess because that seemed like it would be fun.

It’s easy to understand the lure of making the ephemeral tangible; it’s what Disney is banking on for a whole slate of planned live-action treatments of their back catalogue. It’s also the basic premise of Disneyland, and the thing that fuels countless enterprising cosplayers. But in the new Beauty and the Beast the word “tangible” is egregiously stretched. After a couple musical numbers, it occurs to you that the film you’re watching is every bit as animated as the original, but it’s somehow turned out less lifelike, despite its considerable technological advantage.

You likely know the story: A spoiled prince (Dan Stevens) is turned into a beast, and all his servants into objects, in a curse that will be lifted if he ever learns to love and be loved in return. A rebellious bookworm named Belle (Emma Watson) volunteers herself as his prisoner in place of her eccentric father (Kevin Kline) who has accidentally wandered onto beastly property. Over time, they grow fond of each other, despite or because of the lopsided power dynamic in their relationship, but they must overcome the most eligible bachelor Gaston (Luke Evans, the only person having any fun here) and a town full of fearful villagers who would rather see the beast’s head on the wall at the local tavern.

Aside from its production techniques, the film has also sought to update its story for today’s social mores. The poor, provincial town that Belle lives in is more diverse and explicitly anti–female literacy (Belle gets her books from a chapel, not a bookstore), effectively turning her defining hobby into a form of high-stakes resistance. Maurice, her father, is an artist instead of an inventor; it’s Belle who’s out there trying to engineer the world’s first washing machine with a horse and a rolling bucket. And the Beast is revealed to be a bit of a bookworm as well. The titular pair bond over Shakespeare, which softens a romance that’s always been a little hard to swallow.

But it doesn’t make up for his face: an eerie, uncanny valley blend of lifelike CGI fur and Stevens’s human eyes, which never seem to really connect with whatever’s in front of them. We see Stevens briefly as a human in an opening ball scene (which, with its powdered wigs and face paint, unquestionably situates the story in the 18th-century twilight of the French aristocracy — more of that would have been fun), but we’re hardly able to get a handle on him before he disappears into the fur. The same goes for his servants, whose features have been minimized supposedly in the name of realism, but in a way that they all end up resembling the plastered visages in Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon.

Emma Watson is the real headliner here, and physically couldn’t have been more perfectly cast. But someone really should have screen-tested her before she signed on — with an actual green screen. There are actors who can conjure up a world around them on a blank soundstage and make us believe in it just with their eyes; Watson is not one of those actors. Watching her sing to the hills during the re-creation of the iconic “Belle (Reprise)” or wander through the ominous ruins of the castle’s west wing (not that one) I found myself distracted, wondering where she thought she was walking when she filmed it, what she thought she was looking at. Her singing voice could stand to add a little oomph, but it’s the least of the problems in a performance that mostly adds up as a collection of charming poses and furrowed eyebrows. But boy, does she look the part.

If only Beauty and the Beast were just a collection of stills, like a fancy Annie Leibowitz spread for some glossy quarterly edition of Disney Adventures. Unfortunately, it’s over two hours long, and is padded out by a hugely unnecessary number of non–Ashman-Rice musical numbers and a pointless detour where Belle finds out what happened to her missing mother. At every turn, the film seems to ask itself if what the original film did was enough, and answers with a definitive “no.” But hey, at least that clock looked real.

#review

[farylslair]

Back-to-School Update: questionMark Audiobook, Project C, and DARCs

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the world’s worst writing blog.

First and foremost: yes, I did go back to school this past week. I was going to post an update about that sooner but, yeah, I couldn’t because I was too busy with school. 

How ‘bout that.

So what does this mean? It means that I will be considerably less active on here and on social media in general, although I have the Tumblr app on my phone now and it surprisingly works, so that kind of makes up for the lack of activity. Ish. 

This also means that there won’t be nearly as much time to write, so progress will be very slow. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have some REALLY big news. 

First of all, if you’ve seen my updates on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll know that the questionMark audiobook is now in production. We were fortunate enough to get the very talented Kane Prestenback to narrate it, and from what we’ve heard of it so far, he does a fantastic job. You can read a little more about him below:

Kane Prestenback is a New York actor, singer, puppeteer, movement & voice performer. Credits include New York Musical Theatre Festival, Gallery Players, Broadway's Circle in the Square (w/ Theodore Mann), The Public Theater, Westside Theatre, Symphony Space, and Old Vic New Voices. Regional credits include Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Luna Stage, Swine Palace Productions, Shakespeare & Co, & Mad Cow Theatre. Notable shows/roles: "Thrill Me” Southeastern premiere, “The Tallest Building in the World” World-Premiere, "Urinetown: The Musical" (Bobby Strong), “What the Butler Saw" (Nicholas Beckett), "Little Shop of Horrors" (Seymour), George M Cohan's "The Tavern" (The Vagabond), and "Kid-Simple" (Oliver). Kane made his London Theatrical debut at The Old Vic in the inaugural TS Eliot US/UK Exchange, in association with Kevin Spacey. Training: Circle in the Square Theatre School. Proud member of Actor's Equity. You can find him at www.kaneprestenback.com

At this point, the release date for the audiobook is up in the air, but I’ll let you know as soon as we know.

Our second order of business is a tiny update on Project C, which may not sound like a big deal to everyone else, but it’s something very exciting for me.

I finished my draft of Project C.

Now, what does this mean? If you recall my bimonthly goals post, I mention that not only would finishing this draft knock off one of the six goals I need to complete by the end of February, but it also means that it would mark the first time I wrote a novel-length manuscript all the way through, the final word count being about 56,000 words.

That’s right: I finished a novel.

Granted, it’s a rewrite of S. T. Hoover’s draft for our collab, and even though I helped outline and it was my idea in the first place, I technically didn’t make it from scratch and--don’t ruin this for me.

Progress on Project C is also good from a writeblr perspective because once it’s revealed/released, I’ll be able to do writing tags again, since doing them for short stories is very awkward, and I feel like the characters of Project C are very tag-worthy.

Finally, the DARCs. Now, in case you missed the holiday update, here’s a brief explanation of how those came about:

I’m stupid.

Therefore, I forgot to factor ARCs into the questionMark schedule (which, honestly, would have helped a lot). So, to make up for that, I’m going to start implementing them now, after the book has been out for about a month and a half. 

That’s right: delayed Advanced Review Copies.

What I worked out with Project 89 Media (questionMark’s publisher) was that I could give away 25 digital copies of questionMark intended for people to read and review, either on Amazon, their book/writing/anything else blogs, or on their social media platform of choice. I’m again going to refer you back to this post I made about how important reviews are, since, yeah, they’re pretty important and every review counts.

Now, I’m probably going to make a post on this later going more in depth about the specifics of the DARCs, but here are the bullet points:

If you’re interested in reading and reviewing questionMark, please shoot me a message on your favorite social media platform (either Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr). 

If you don’t know what questionMark is about, you can read about it on my website here, its Amazon page here, and the announcement post I made ages ago here, featuring the old cover.

Since the beta reading process didn’t go over so well, I’m going to be a little more strict with these. Please, please, pleeeeeeease only respond if you are able to read the book and write a review somewhere within the next few months. A whopping majority of the people who said they would beta read questionMark never got back to me, even to say they wouldn’t be able to do it anymore. So please, furthuhluvagod, only message me if you’re serious about getting a review copy.

On top of that, not to scare you guys, but I will be following up on people who get review copies, especially if it’s, like, May and I haven’t heard anything from you. Again, I normally wouldn’t be this strict, but I don’t want to have another huge waste of time like the beta reading process was. 

If you do what you say you’re gonna do, we’re gonna be fine. If not’ you’re better off just buying the book so you have the freedom to let it sit for ten years and not have me pester you once a month for it. Just food for thought.

Sorry that turned into kind of a rant near the end, but yeah, this needs to work. Again, I’m probably going to be making a separate post that goes more into detail about the process, but I’m opening it up a little early just in case anyone’s interested. 

And also, please don’t let the scary details bother you. There’s no hard deadline, but I’d like to see something at some point. Like, sometime in 2017, please. Again, as long as you plan to follow through, we’ll be fine, and your responses will be appreciated ten times more. 

So that’s all for now. Again, I’m sorry if the DARCs sound intimidating and I hope that doesn’t deter you from getting a copy. As far as Project C and the questionMark audiobook are concerned, as well as the other amazing things happening behind the scenes, I’ll let you know as soon as I have more news. 

Until then, thanks for sticking around, and stay tuned for more updates.

#my stuff #audiobook #horror short stories #horror audiobook #review copies #horror short story review #psychological horror #amwriting #amwriting horror #review copy

[funface2]

Best Dick Jokes Through History – Why Sexual Comedy About Men Is Important – Esquire.com

Blake Griffin landed a dick joke about Caitlyn Jenner at the Comedy Central Roast of Alex Baldwin, which aired last weekend. “Caitlyn completed her gender reassignment in 2017, finally confirming that no one in that family wants a white dick,” he said to roars of laughter. Was the joke offensive? Racist? Hilarious? All of the above? For her part, Jenner took the dick joke in stride. “Caitlyn was down for it,” one of the writers of the roast said. “She was like, ‘Well, you know, I’m gonna hit hard. I want them to hit me hard.’ And so we did.”

Dick jokes have existed throughout history in nearly every culture known to man, from the greatest literature of all time—Shakespeare and James Joyce—to ancient graffiti. “Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!” some anonymous guy scrawled on the wall of a bar in the Roman city of Pompeii around 2,000 years ago. They have been staples of comedy for millennia for a reason: They’re nearly universally appealing.

“Whether you’re rich or poor or black or white, everyone laughs at a dick joke,” says comedian Aaron Berg, who hosts a recurring show at The Stand in New York City. (Berg also hosted a somewhat controversial, entirely satirical show called White Guys Matter that addressed some aspects of white male inadequacy.)

One comedian has elevated dick jokes to poetry, launching them into the realm of high art: Jacqueline Novak, whose one-woman off-Broadway show about blow jobs, Get on Your Knees, manages to make the dick joke both hilarious and high brow. She’s not the first woman to tell a dick joke, nor will she be the last, but she is perhaps the only one to devote a show almost entirely to the penis (with a few minutes sidetracking to ghosts) and be feted by The New York Times for doing so.

Novak, who has been called a “deeply philosophical urologist,” may represent a tipping point in dick jokes, because her show is finally allowing people to see the wisdom (yes, wisdom) in penis humor.

“I don’t even think of myself as like, interested in telling penis jokes. I certainly wouldn’t sit down and go, I’d love to do a show about penises,” Novak says. “I think it’s more like an investigation of my heterosexuality. Does [being heterosexual] mean I love the penis? I’m interested in the language that I’ve been expected to use or accept as legitimate about the penis. Here’s all the reasons that that’s ridiculous.”

Novak’s show is replete with riffs on our “ridiculous” penis language, from the fact that we say the penis is “rock hard”—”No geologist would ever say, this quartz is penis hard“—to the idea that the penis penetrates a woman—”You penetrate me? Fine, but I ate you, motherfucker! I chewed you up! Spit you out, and you loved every goddamn second of it.” In some ways, Novak is the perfect teller of the 21st century dick joke, not only because she is chronicling our hangups about the penis, but also because without a penis of her own, perhaps she is able to see the dick more clearly for what it is, in all its ridiculousness and beauty.

“You penetrate me? Fine, but I ate you, motherfucker! I chewed you up!”

But for the most part, phallic culture remains incoherent. Men are pilloried for exposing their dicks, while Euphoria is celebrated for its 30-penis episode; dick pics are critiqued like Picassos or seen as a public menace; judging a man by the size of his penis is perfectly acceptable or grossly objectifying; porn covers every inch of the internet, yet Facebook won’t accept ads for dildos. Dick jokes are still looked down on as cheap—to be fair, some of them are blatantly bad—but some comics say that isn’t always fair.

“Dick jokes, if you craft something amazing out of them, could be the funniest thing someone’s ever heard. And funny in a way that like, opens your mind up even,” says comedian Sean Patton. “That’s the most important kind of comedy, where you laugh at something to the point where you’re now a little more accepting of it. And that can range from anything to other people’s sexual orientation to accepting your own mental illness.” Patton’s own extended dick joke, “Cumin” on Comedy Central’s This Is Not Happening, has been viewed over 2 million times on YouTube.

Jacqueline Novak performs at the 2019 Clusterfest in June.

Jeff KravitzGetty Images

Novak uses the blow job to critique cultural expectations of masculinity and the pressure women feel to become skilled at sexually pleasing men. “The teeth shaming starts early, of course,” she says in her show. “If you have your full set of teeth…don’t go into a room where a penis is. It’s not safe for him. Why would you put him at risk?”

Patton likens the dick joke to a “Trojan horse” of comedy. “You make them laugh hard at dick jokes, now they’re listening,” he says. “Then you can throw in something a little more meaningful, and they’re on board.”

Not that all dick jokes need to be intellectual to be taken seriously. The song “D*** in a Box” by The Lonely Island, featuring Justin Timberlake, won an Emmy. It turns out the concept wasn’t exactly new. “Decades before The Lonely Island, B.S. Pully was doing that in the ’40s and ’50s,” comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff says. “Pully would be holding a cigar box at his groin, walking down the aisle. [He would] start a show saying, ‘Cigar, would you like a cigar?’ Then he would lift up the lid, and there was a hole cut in there, and his dick was hanging out. The audience would go crazy.”

Dick jokes continue to thrive off audience reactions, according to several comedians I talked to. Bonnie McFarlane, who is best known for her appearance on Last Comic Standing and her Netflix documentary Women Aren’t Funny, began telling dick jokes when she started out in 1995. “You tell dick jokes because it’s a very male audience, so that’s what they want to hear about,” she says. “It’s been a thing since comedy started. People can really kill if they’re just doing dick jokes.” But there is a double standard, she says, when female comics are made fun of “for talking about their vaginas too much.”

That Novak, a female comic, is revolutionizing the dick joke makes sense, considering that historically, “the vanguard for so-called dick jokes and sexual material comes first and foremost from women rather than men,” Nesteroff says. He points to female comics Rusty Warren, Belle Barth, Pearl Williams, and LaWanda Page as “probably the four quote-unquote ‘dirtiest’ comedians of the ’50s and ’60s, more so than Lenny Bruce, more so than Redd Foxx.”

LaWanda Page performs for The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1978.

NBCGetty Images

He also says African Americans pushed dick jokes further than any other ethnicity. African-American comedian Page’s albums from the 1970s were rich with dick jokes, referencing “the size of the man, the endurance of the man,” Nesteroff says. As Page recites in her 1973 comedy album Pipe Layin’ Dan: “Husband, dear husband, now don’t be a fool/you’ve worked on the night shift ’til you’ve ruined your tool/you’d better go hungry the rest of your life/than to bring home a pecker so soft to your wife.”

“LaWanda [told] dick jokes for the same reasons a lot of black comics do, because they had to come up in the chitlin circuit, which is basically comedy clubs or bars or places where only black audiences mainly go,” says comedian Harris Stanton, who has toured with Tracy Morgan. “When I started comedy [in 1999] I started in the chitlin circuit,” he continues. “Urban comedy became this big explosion in the United States. A lot of the young black comics couldn’t get into a lot of mainstream clubs, so they would have to perform wherever they could, and dick jokes were welcome to those places.”

African Americans were pioneers of the dick joke, but they definitely weren’t the only ethnic group telling them. Three of the other female sex-joke pioneers Nesteroff mentioned were Jewish. Pearl Williams was known for roasting overweight men when they entered the comedy club by asking, “How long has it been since you’ve seen your dick?” Lenny Bruce, one of the most famous Jewish comedians, was arrested for saying schmuck on stage in 1962. Seven years later, another famous American Jew, Philip Roth, published Portnoy’s Complaint, which is essentially a 274-page dick joke, or so some claim.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your dick?”

“I probably owe a debt to Philip Roth that I’m not even fully aware of,” says Novak, who is Jewish. She references him directly in her show, joking, “I went off to college feeling good. It’s a Catholic-ish college. Lots of virgin boys scurrying around, scrambling for sexual experience at parties. Not me. I’m a Jew and I did the coursework in high school, so I felt like a Philip Roth figure. A Jewish pervert ready to teach.”

Jewish male comics may be drawn to dick jokes, according to Berg, who is Jewish, because, “the fact that our penises were intruded upon at a very young age probably gives us a fixation on it and makes us want to talk about it more.”

Dr. Jeremy Dauber, the Atran professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Columbia University and author of Jewish Comedy, traces Jewish dick jokes all the way back to the Bible. The earliest case of laughter in Jewish tradition is Sarah’s laughter when she’s told that her 100-year-old husband Abraham will give her a child. It is “a laughter about male impotence,” Dauber says.

But comedians aren’t just laughing at penises anymore. Novak is going in the opposite direction. “I’m trying to restore [the penis] to true dignity.” Will her intellectual blow job jokes allow the dick joke to be taken more seriously? Will future comedians have to deal with the flack that Patton still gets in his reviews?

“Even like positive reviews, sometimes they’ll still point out there’s also a lot of cock, cock cock,” he says. “Why do you have to make sure everyone knows that you thought some of the subject matter was lowbrow?” He thinks reviewers roll their eyes at his dick talk because “everyone constantly is terrified that those around them don’t think that they’re that smart.”

Comedy is one of the only art forms that allows us to talk about male genitalia so openly and democratically. Whatever form the dick joke takes, from idiotic to intellectual, from poetry to prop comedy, as long as it gets a laugh, it should be celebrated. And there’s no better way to diffuse the angst surrounding the modern-day penis than a well-crafted dick joke. The more we laugh about penises (and not just at them), the happier the world might be.

Hallie Lieberman Hallie Lieberman is a sex historian and journalist, and the author of “Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy.”  

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[newyorktheater]

As the theater awards season enters the home stretch – what’s left: Drama Desk Awards, Theatre World Awards, the Tonys – the question arises once again:How does one determine, or even define, excellence in theater?

“I’ve become increasingly convinced that as a field we do not have a cohesive definition of excellence,” Chad Bauman,  the managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater, wrote last year in American Theatre.

So he asked his colleagues across the country, and got some 50 responses – but the question he asked was about excellence in a theater as a whole (regional theaters in particular), not about individual shows. So the answers about excellence in individual shows didn’t get much more specific than “artistic quality.” All did agree that courage counts – such as not being afraid to play with form.

Five years ago, in an article titled Divining Artistic Excellence ,  theater artist and historian Lynne Connor pointed out that, while the concept of excellence can refer to something semi-tangible such as “the sophistication of a play’s dramatic arc,” more often people conflate excellence with taste, “something far less tangible and thus far less quantifiable.” And what determines taste? “Personal taste in everything from beer to Shakespeare comes about through a combination of biology, past experience, cultural norms, and individual predilections.”

She concludes: “We need to find productive ways to invite audiences of all tastes (and all economic and ethnic backgrounds) to join in the conversation about (the struggle over) meaning and value.”

Week in New York Theater Awards

Obie Awards

The 64th Annual Obie Awards, celebrating Off and Off-Off-Broadway Theater, was a New York Theatre Workshop lovefest, with Obies going to NYTW playwrights Heidi Schreck, Madeleine George, Marcus Gardley, and lighting designer Isabella Byrd, as well as a lifetime achievement Obie to NYTW’s artistic director James Nicola. It was also a tribute to the many women working in the theater in New York. But Obies like to spread the wealth, literally — Four theaters received grants.

Full list

  Terrence McNally was made an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts at New York University’s Commencement. NYU Prof (and playwright) Kristoffer Diaz read the citation:”  Terrence McNally, one of theatre’s greatest contemporary playwrights, you have created over the past half-century an eclectic and prolific body of work—literally scores of plays, musicals, opera libretti, and scripts for film and television. Your razor wit and complexities of character largely explain how you created theatre that functions as family, launched the careers of great actors, and helped audiences cope with the AIDS crisis that engulfed them. You placed your unique stamp on American drama by probing the urgent need for connection that resonates at the core of human experience. From an expansive mind and generous spirit, you have created masterful and enduring art and in the process have celebrated and uplifted humankind.”

The latest is a revival of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, which opens May 30th at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater.

  Madeline Michel from Monticello High School in Charlottesville, VA was the winner of the 2019 Excellence in Theatre Education Award from the Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon

After the white supremacist rally in their city, Michel’s students wrote and performed original theater to address racial inequality, helping to elevated the conversation for a wounded community.

Some 2019 Outer Critics Circle Award winners accept their awards at a celebratory luncheon at Sardi’s

elia Keenan-Bolger, featured actress in a play, To Kill a Mockingbird

Amber Gray, featured actress in a musical, Hadestown

Andre De Shields, featured actor in a musical, Hadestown

Benjamin Walker, featured actor in a play, All My Sons

Bryan Cranston, lead actor in a play, Network

Stephanie J. Block, lead actress in a musical, The Cher Show

Santino Fontana, lead actor in a musical, Tootsie

  The Week in New York Theater Reviews and Previews

Brian d’Arcy James (Quinn Carney) and Holley Fain (Caitlin Carney

The Ferryman on Broadway with American cast

The Ferryman, a feast of Irish storytelling in a breathtaking mix of genres, opened on Broadway seven months ago, and since then it’s gotten nine Tony nominations, best play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle, the Outer Critics Circle, AND the Drama League…and an almost entirely new cast, the original British and Irish actors replaced by Americans. Even Laura Donnelly has been replaced. She is the Belfast-born actress whose uncle’s disappearance, and the subsequent discovery years later of his murdered corpse, inspired playwright Jez Butterworth to write the play in the first place. Donnelly’s character Caitin Carney is now being portrayed by Holley Fain, an actress born in Kansas.

…Does this matter? It might in one way to those of us who saw the original cast. But to those theatergoers who have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing The Ferryman (which they have only until July 7th to do), the play is still a rich, sweeping entertainment — epic, tragic….and cinematic.

Lunch Bunch at Clubbed Thumb

n the first play of Clubbed Thumb’s 24thannual  Summerworks festival at the Wild Project – the first summer theater festival of the season — the cast faces us a la A Chorus Line, except instead of singing “I hope I get it,”they recite “Veggie enchiladas with Clementine” and “Rice, steamed kale, spiced tofu.”

It’s only after several such culinary recitations that we’re told these people are members of a lunch group, each member having agreed to make lunch for everybody else once a week.  It takes a little longer to figure out that they are lawyers in a public defender’s office, that it’s a taxing job – “Greg’s resilient,” says Tuttle (Keilly McQuail), “He never cries in the coat closet” – and that obsessing on food is what helps keep them going.

Loveville High

Two things distinguish Loveville High, a new musical that takes place on prom night in a high school in Loveville, Ohio. First: The cast of 13 is comprised of some of the most talented young theater stars in New York, several of them also currently performing on Broadway — Ali Stroker (Tony nominee for Oklahoma!), Kathryn Allison (Aladdin), Andrew Durand (Ink), Gizel Jiménez (Wicked), and Ryann Redmond (Frozen)  — and they sing the hell out of the lively, often witty songs  by David Zellnik (Yank!) and Eric Svejcar (Disney’s Peter Pan Jr.) How is it possible to be in two shows at the same time?  That’s the second aspect of this musical that’s unusual: It has no choreographer, no set designer…no stage. It’s a podcast.

Úna Clancy and Maryann Plunkett

  Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy

Sean O’Casey was 43 years old and had worked his whole life as a laborer, when he finally had a play accepted in 1922 by the founders of Dublin’s famed Abbey Theater, the dramatist Lady Gregory and the poet W.B. Yeats. That play, The Shadow of A Gunman, was set during the 1920 Irish War of Independence, and is the first play of what came to be called O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, a chronicle of Ireland’s violent struggle for independence from the British, set from 1916 to 1922.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the Irish Rep is mounting all three plays in repertory,

  The Week in New York Theater News

Goodbye, Avenue Q

Marisa Tomei will play Serafina Delle Rose in the third Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ 1951 play “The Rose Tattoo,” opening October 15, 2019 on Broadway at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater. .

Mary-Louise Parker as Bella Baird in “The Sound Inside” at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Mary-Louise Parker will star in the Broadway premiere of “The Sound Inside”, written by Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter), directed by David Cromer Opens October 17, 2019 at Studio 54 Play debuted last year at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. “A tenured professor. A talented student. A troubling favor.”

Cast announced for @Alanis ‘s @jaggedmusical, opening at Broadway’s Broadhurst Dec 5: Elizabeth Stanley, @PattenLauren, @DerekKlena, Kathryn Gallagher, @SeanAllanKrill, & @celia_gooding

“The Healys appear to be a picture-perfect suburban family — but looks can be deceiving.” pic.twitter.com/0izIBUOWd7

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 23, 2019

.@RattlestickNY has a busy and exciting June, starting with #AlumniJam June 3, in which 5 playwrights offer sneak previews of their new plays — clockwise from top left @OhYeaDiana ,Jesse Eisenberg, @HalleyFeiffer , Ren Santiago, @SamuelDHunterhttps://t.co/jHtc8ihYKn pic.twitter.com/gF1RElEOyC

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 21, 2019

Immersive powerhouse Third Rail Projects will  stage “Midsummer A Banquet,” culinary version of Shakespeare’s comedy w/ a tasting menu July 15- Sept 8, a co-production with Food of Love Productions at Cafe Fae in Union Square

Third season of #NextDooratNYTW will offer 10 plays from The Penal Colony by @miranda__haymon, adapted from Kafka short story, July 2019 to “Raisins Not Virgins” by @sharbarizohra in June 2020 Also @michiMigdalia @missmillythomas @andybragen more!https://t.co/KomdhI7hAK pic.twitter.com/XPoTLOWaMc

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 20, 2019

  The real Lunt and Fontanne

After Fosse Verdon, What’s Next?

  EXTRAS NEEDED! Do u live in Washington Heights? Do u want to be in a movie?! How about a movie MUSICAL?!!!! We are doing an open call for Extras for our #InTheHeights shooting very very soon! Check out attached flyers 4details on how to submit. @Lin_Manuel @quiarahudes pic.twitter.com/j7oFk9wYIw

— Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu) May 25, 2019

.@LPTWomen‘s 7th Annual Women Stage the World March, June 11th, Times Square The march is “designed to educate the public about the role women play in creating theatre and the gender barriers they face as men continue to outnumber women by 4 to 1.” https://t.co/56VVv938kO pic.twitter.com/wQzOEmkAHh

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) May 23, 2019

Nik Wallenda and Lijanda Wallenda, seventh generation daredevils, will walk 25 stories above street level between 1 Times Square & 2 Times Square. Time Square is not for the faint-hearted, as anybody who’s tried to navigated around the Elmos and tourists can tell you

I’m so excited to announce that I’m returning to the highwire with my sister Lijana for a never before attempted walk across New York City’s iconic Times Square! Join me LIVE Sunday, June 23 on ABC. #HighwireLIVE pic.twitter.com/yVi9hqVHB2

— Nik Wallenda (@NikWallenda) May 23, 2019

Billboard above the Empire Diner in Chelsea:

A Mount Rushmore of avant-garde art. But isn’t that a contradiction?

Excellence in Theater…or Taste? Marisa Tomei, Mary-Louise Parker Back on Broadway. Third Rail’s New Immersive Shakespeare! #Stageworthy News of the Week As the theater awards season enters the home stretch – what’s left: Drama Desk Awards, Theatre World Awards, the Tonys – the question arises once again:How does one determine, or even define, excellence in theater?

#Cast of Jagged Musical #Marisa Tomei in The Rose Tattoo on Broadway #Mary-Louise Park in The Sound Inside on Broadway #open call for In the heights movie #the Wallendas in Times Square #Third Rail Project&039;s Midsummer a Banquet #Tina Fey presents Outer Critics Circle award to Bryan Cranston

[vileart]

Fish Dramaturgy: Michael O'Halloran @ Edfringe 2017

Avenue Stage Presents

Fish Food

Long before he was President, he really liked to buy hotels.

It’s 1990 in Boston. Like the Berlin Wall, Joe Bacon’s life has been reduced to rubble. On the day of his father's long-overdue burial at sea, a bizarre interview leads to a job in the basement of the Plaza Court Hotel.  

Celebrity financier Avery Grand (bestselling author of that 1980s classic The Deal Is Everything) has promised a facelift for this faded beauty, but furniture and fine wine are disappearing at an alarming rate.  

Joe finds a ready-made dysfunctional family among his rather unhinged co-workers, who will go to extreme lengths to protect their livelihoods. But will scuttling around town with unmarked bags of cash really help him get ahead

Listings Information: FISH FOOD, by Avenue Stage

Venue: Paradise in The Vault (V29)                     

Dates:  4th – 19th Aug 2017 (not 13th)                  

Times: 11.25, 5th-19th Aug (1 hour)                     

              19.25 on 4th Aug

Tickets: £7.00/£5.00

Box Office: 0131 510 0022

Online: www.avenuestage.org

What was the inspiration for this performance?

In 1989, at the age of 19, I went to work in a hotel in Boston, receiving meat and fish and produce on the loading dock. The hotel was a well-known (if somewhat faded) local institution that had recently been sold to an out-of-town group, and longtime employees were scrambling to keep their jobs. 

In the midst of this, a dashing young financier named Donald Trump blew into town for a visit, and was feted in the Grand Ballroom. I was fascinated not only by his apparently shameless narcissism (his "people" made sure his name was emblazoned on everything, from bottles of spring water to a large whole salmon) but also by the way people deferred to it so readily.

The incident stuck with me, and a year later I made it the centerpiece of a play I wrote for a creative writing class at my local university. The play was given a reading, then promptly placed in a drawer where it lay for more than 25 years. The bizarre political rise of Mr. Trump inspired me to dust it off and see if there was anything interesting in it. Over the course of a year it became "Fish Food." The themes and characters of the current version are completely different, but the core incident -- the disastrous visit of celebrity financier Avery Grand -- remains.  

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

I have to say yes. I have a blind faith that putting more than ten people in a dark room and focusing their attention on a live performance is good for the individual and for the society. (I also think it's a good thing to sit in a church once a week.) That being said, most performances I go to do not foster a public discussion of ideas -- at best they are beautiful or amusing, at worst ineffective. I think sometimes beauty or amusement are enough.

From time to time, though, something strikes a nerve, and we see how dangerous performance can be. 

This has been the case recently with the Julius Caesar in New York, with the Trump-like figure as Caesar. I haven't seen it, but I was interested to know that in 2017 Shakespeare In The Park can cause abject rage. And while grand public discussion might be rare, more often than not the new plays I see are well worth a private discussion on the subway home. Good writing persists.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I was very quiet at school, but I discovered that I could be loud and confident on the stage. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, you had teachers and an educational system in the US that believed in the value of the arts. We got to try everything. We were taken to see an incredible variety of performances. I played the Duke of Ephesus at the age of 10, in a marvelous purple costume.

I also had an aunt that would take me to the theater. 

In those days Boston was still getting pre-Broadway previews, and I particularly remember seeing Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson in Macbeth. I think the production may have been considered a disaster, but I was fascinated. We sat near the front, and the reality of the actors sharing the space with the audience -- divided only by light -- hit home.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

The play (in this version) was conceived as a circular "year in the life" of a young man, where he ends up roughly in the same place he started (if somewhat wiser). The challenge has been to get that feeling of the passage of time between scenes without marking it with obvious exposition. To that end there has been a great deal of revision led by the actors.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

We perform in a cafe in a neighborhood where theatre-going is not the usual thing. Our audience comes for dinner and a show. Our first goal is to entertain -- to make it seem a worthwhile evening out. We have been (mostly) successful in choosing plays that hold the audience's interest enough that the themes begin to resonate. "Fish Food" certainly strives for that balance. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope that audience members will be immersed in the story, amused by the characters, and that they will find beauty in their resilience. I also want those who experienced the era (late 80s, early 90s) to have that pleasure or recognition of an earlier time of their lives.  (I love a good frisson of nostalgia.)

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We have tried to tell a very personal story in a straightforward and honest way, in the hope that it will resonate. And we tried to write good punch lines.

FISH FOOD, written by Avenue Stage co-founder Michael O’Halloran, is an eccentric ensemble comedy that chronicles a young man’s turbulent entry into the joys and sorrows of the workforce. It has delighted audiences with its quirky characters and its nostalgic look at the fashions and mores of the late eighties.  From shoulder-padded jackets to telephones with cords, FISH FOOD takes us back to an era when talk was cheap and capitalism was (almost) sexy.       

Since 2012, Avenue Stage has produced innovative theatre in a café setting in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Boston. FISH FOOD, its 6th production, sold out its initial performances in May, and will enjoy a pre-Fringe run at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in July.

www.avenuestage.org        

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#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

[funface2]

Best Dick Jokes Through History – Why Sexual Comedy About Men Is Important – Esquire

Blake Griffin landed a dick joke about Caitlyn Jenner at the Comedy Central Roast of Alex Baldwin, which aired last weekend. “Caitlyn completed her gender reassignment in 2017, finally confirming that no one in that family wants a white dick,” he said to roars of laughter. Was the joke offensive? Racist? Hilarious? All of the above? For her part, Jenner took the dick joke in stride. “Caitlyn was down for it,” one of the writers of the roast said. “She was like, ‘Well, you know, I’m gonna hit hard. I want them to hit me hard.’ And so we did.”

Dick jokes have existed throughout history in nearly every culture known to man, from the greatest literature of all time—Shakespeare and James Joyce—to ancient graffiti. “Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!” some anonymous guy scrawled on the wall of a bar in the Roman city of Pompeii around 2,000 years ago. They have been staples of comedy for millennia for a reason: They’re nearly universally appealing.

“Whether you’re rich or poor or black or white, everyone laughs at a dick joke,” says comedian Aaron Berg, who hosts a recurring show at The Stand in New York City. (Berg also hosted a somewhat controversial, entirely satirical show called White Guys Matter that addressed some aspects of white male inadequacy.)

One comedian has elevated dick jokes to poetry, launching them into the realm of high art: Jacqueline Novak, whose one-woman off-Broadway show about blow jobs, Get on Your Knees, manages to make the dick joke both hilarious and high brow. She’s not the first woman to tell a dick joke, nor will she be the last, but she is perhaps the only one to devote a show almost entirely to the penis (with a few minutes sidetracking to ghosts) and be feted by The New York Times for doing so.

Novak, who has been called a “deeply philosophical urologist,” may represent a tipping point in dick jokes, because her show is finally allowing people to see the wisdom (yes, wisdom) in penis humor.

“I don’t even think of myself as like, interested in telling penis jokes. I certainly wouldn’t sit down and go, I’d love to do a show about penises,” Novak says. “I think it’s more like an investigation of my heterosexuality. Does [being heterosexual] mean I love the penis? I’m interested in the language that I’ve been expected to use or accept as legitimate about the penis. Here’s all the reasons that that’s ridiculous.”

Novak’s show is replete with riffs on our “ridiculous” penis language, from the fact that we say the penis is “rock hard”—”No geologist would ever say, this quartz is penis hard“—to the idea that the penis penetrates a woman—”You penetrate me? Fine, but I ate you, motherfucker! I chewed you up! Spit you out, and you loved every goddamn second of it.” In some ways, Novak is the perfect teller of the 21st century dick joke, not only because she is chronicling our hangups about the penis, but also because without a penis of her own, perhaps she is able to see the dick more clearly for what it is, in all its ridiculousness and beauty.

“You penetrate me? Fine, but I ate you, motherfucker! I chewed you up!”

But for the most part, phallic culture remains incoherent. Men are pilloried for exposing their dicks, while Euphoria is celebrated for its 30-penis episode; dick pics are critiqued like Picassos or seen as a public menace; judging a man by the size of his penis is perfectly acceptable or grossly objectifying; porn covers every inch of the internet, yet Facebook won’t accept ads for dildos. Dick jokes are still looked down on as cheap—to be fair, some of them are blatantly bad—but some comics say that isn’t always fair.

“Dick jokes, if you craft something amazing out of them, could be the funniest thing someone’s ever heard. And funny in a way that like, opens your mind up even,” says comedian Sean Patton. “That’s the most important kind of comedy, where you laugh at something to the point where you’re now a little more accepting of it. And that can range from anything to other people’s sexual orientation to accepting your own mental illness.” Patton’s own extended dick joke, “Cumin” on Comedy Central’s This Is Not Happening, has been viewed over 2 million times on YouTube.

Jacqueline Novak performs at the 2019 Clusterfest in June.

Jeff KravitzGetty Images

Novak uses the blow job to critique cultural expectations of masculinity and the pressure women feel to become skilled at sexually pleasing men. “The teeth shaming starts early, of course,” she says in her show. “If you have your full set of teeth…don’t go into a room where a penis is. It’s not safe for him. Why would you put him at risk?”

Patton likens the dick joke to a “Trojan horse” of comedy. “You make them laugh hard at dick jokes, now they’re listening,” he says. “Then you can throw in something a little more meaningful, and they’re on board.”

Not that all dick jokes need to be intellectual to be taken seriously. The song “D*** in a Box” by The Lonely Island, featuring Justin Timberlake, won an Emmy. It turns out the concept wasn’t exactly new. “Decades before The Lonely Island, B.S. Pully was doing that in the ’40s and ’50s,” comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff says. “Pully would be holding a cigar box at his groin, walking down the aisle. [He would] start a show saying, ‘Cigar, would you like a cigar?’ Then he would lift up the lid, and there was a hole cut in there, and his dick was hanging out. The audience would go crazy.”

Dick jokes continue to thrive off audience reactions, according to several comedians I talked to. Bonnie McFarlane, who is best known for her appearance on Last Comic Standing and her Netflix documentary Women Aren’t Funny, began telling dick jokes when she started out in 1995. “You tell dick jokes because it’s a very male audience, so that’s what they want to hear about,” she says. “It’s been a thing since comedy started. People can really kill if they’re just doing dick jokes.” But there is a double standard, she says, when female comics are made fun of “for talking about their vaginas too much.”

That Novak, a female comic, is revolutionizing the dick joke makes sense, considering that historically, “the vanguard for so-called dick jokes and sexual material comes first and foremost from women rather than men,” Nesteroff says. He points to female comics Rusty Warren, Belle Barth, Pearl Williams, and LaWanda Page as “probably the four quote-unquote ‘dirtiest’ comedians of the ’50s and ’60s, more so than Lenny Bruce, more so than Redd Foxx.”

LaWanda Page performs for The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1978.

NBCGetty Images

He also says African Americans pushed dick jokes further than any other ethnicity. African-American comedian Page’s albums from the 1970s were rich with dick jokes, referencing “the size of the man, the endurance of the man,” Nesteroff says. As Page recites in her 1973 comedy album Pipe Layin’ Dan: “Husband, dear husband, now don’t be a fool/you’ve worked on the night shift ’til you’ve ruined your tool/you’d better go hungry the rest of your life/than to bring home a pecker so soft to your wife.”

“LaWanda [told] dick jokes for the same reasons a lot of black comics do, because they had to come up in the chitlin circuit, which is basically comedy clubs or bars or places where only black audiences mainly go,” says comedian Harris Stanton, who has toured with Tracy Morgan. “When I started comedy [in 1999] I started in the chitlin circuit,” he continues. “Urban comedy became this big explosion in the United States. A lot of the young black comics couldn’t get into a lot of mainstream clubs, so they would have to perform wherever they could, and dick jokes were welcome to those places.”

African Americans were pioneers of the dick joke, but they definitely weren’t the only ethnic group telling them. Three of the other female sex-joke pioneers Nesteroff mentioned were Jewish. Pearl Williams was known for roasting overweight men when they entered the comedy club by asking, “How long has it been since you’ve seen your dick?” Lenny Bruce, one of the most famous Jewish comedians, was arrested for saying schmuck on stage in 1962. Seven years later, another famous American Jew, Philip Roth, published Portnoy’s Complaint, which is essentially a 274-page dick joke, or so some claim.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your dick?”

“I probably owe a debt to Philip Roth that I’m not even fully aware of,” says Novak, who is Jewish. She references him directly in her show, joking, “I went off to college feeling good. It’s a Catholic-ish college. Lots of virgin boys scurrying around, scrambling for sexual experience at parties. Not me. I’m a Jew and I did the coursework in high school, so I felt like a Philip Roth figure. A Jewish pervert ready to teach.”

Jewish male comics may be drawn to dick jokes, according to Berg, who is Jewish, because, “the fact that our penises were intruded upon at a very young age probably gives us a fixation on it and makes us want to talk about it more.”

Dr. Jeremy Dauber, the Atran professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Columbia University and author of Jewish Comedy, traces Jewish dick jokes all the way back to the Bible. The earliest case of laughter in Jewish tradition is Sarah’s laughter when she’s told that her 100-year-old husband Abraham will give her a child. It is “a laughter about male impotence,” Dauber says.

But comedians aren’t just laughing at penises anymore. Novak is going in the opposite direction. “I’m trying to restore [the penis] to true dignity.” Will her intellectual blow job jokes allow the dick joke to be taken more seriously? Will future comedians have to deal with the flack that Patton still gets in his reviews?

“Even like positive reviews, sometimes they’ll still point out there’s also a lot of cock, cock cock,” he says. “Why do you have to make sure everyone knows that you thought some of the subject matter was lowbrow?” He thinks reviewers roll their eyes at his dick talk because “everyone constantly is terrified that those around them don’t think that they’re that smart.”

Comedy is one of the only art forms that allows us to talk about male genitalia so openly and democratically. Whatever form the dick joke takes, from idiotic to intellectual, from poetry to prop comedy, as long as it gets a laugh, it should be celebrated. And there’s no better way to diffuse the angst surrounding the modern-day penis than a well-crafted dick joke. The more we laugh about penises (and not just at them), the happier the world might be.

Hallie Lieberman Hallie Lieberman is a sex historian and journalist, and the author of “Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy.”  

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