Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

one

Don't you know that I'm okay with this uptown part I get to play
'Cause I got what I need and I don't want to take the ride
I don't need to see the other side
So go and do like you do
I'm good to do like me
Ain't in a cage, so I don't need to take the key
Oh, damn, can't you see I'm doing fine
I don't need to see the other side

~ The Other Side, The Greatest Showman

May 26, 2024

‘Mr. Ancunín?’ The way she says my name—so sweet, so innocent—is nearly obscene after how she’d come screaming it not 10 minutes ago.
‘Hmm?’ I try to keep to sounds, not words. It wouldn’t want to lie.

‘Sir,’ she says, and the sound of deference causes me to stir anew.
Not with this one, of course. This one needs to go now.

‘Sir, did you want to hear the monologue I prepared?’

Granted, being several hundred years old does come with a unique degrees of wisdom and shall we say, streetsmarts, however, even among mortals this one is dumber than a box of hair.

‘No, darling,’ I say, unable to avoid words. ‘That won’t be necessary, today.’
That she actually brightens at that is only further proof of a sheltered modern youth and inadequate education system.
I escort her to the door, one hand on her ass, and the other carrying her panties, which I helpfully tuck into her coat pocket when we reach the door. 

‘We’ll let you know,’ I say, and close the door and throw the bolt before I have to endure any more of that.

‘Fuuuck,’ I exclaim into the high ceilings of my midtown apartment. ‘It’s hardly worth the condom!’ Which, I admit, is unkind, but who’s to complain? I live in the one and only apartment on the 13th floor of this building, as I’ve done for the past century.

‘You’re a fucking degenerate,’ a voice from the corner of my den startles me, seeing as I live alone, and have done for over a decade. The voice is familiar and I’m bored before I even lay eyes on my guest. 

‘Oh, you again?’ I go to the kitchen and crouch to inspect the contents of the wine fridge. ‘I’m afraid you’ve already taken all the passable Chardonnays,’ I call in to the visitor. ‘Will a Sancerre suffice?’

It’s only 3pm, but that is already deep into happy hour for my downstairs neighbour and sometimes home invader, Shadowheart.

Yes, I know that’s not a name, but it’s the only one she’s given me. When a drunk woman with face scars and the ability to pick an increasingly complex set of apartment door locks gives a name that is not a name, I, for one, choose not to argue.
I have no idea where she came from, or why she keeps showing up. I discovered her late one evening, dozing in my armchair. When I asked what she thought she was doing, she told me that she’d come for wine with such simplicity and conviction that I was temporarily stunned.

I said something stupid like, ‘oh, ok then’, and went to bed, which unfortunately became a kind of implicit consent, I’m afraid.

I’ve learned over time and a handful of visitors that its best to just hand her a bottle of white, and hope the conversation goes quickly.

‘Why do you do this?’ she asks.

‘Why do you do this?’ I counter, having no idea what we’re talking about.

When I hand her the bottle of Domaine Hippolyte Reverdy, she crosses her arms and looks expectantly at me. I sigh, understanding that this is not going to be the quick transaction I am hoping for. I cross the light parquet floor, and open a drawer in the teakwood buffet that spans the width of the dining room. I obligingly pull the cork for my “guest”, and hand it to her again.
This time she accepts it with a tight, insincere smile.

Shadowheart takes a long pull from the neck of the $85 bottle of wine before continuing her lecture. ‘Why keep running the ads, and maintaining the website? Why do you keep putting up casting calls in Backstage? You haven’t had a show in twelve years. Why keep up this ruse?’

‘For the cunt, obviously.’ 

I pluck the bottle from her grip to take a swig of my own. Shadowheart seems as sharp as a banana, too. Stupid comes in all ages, I suppose.

‘Sooner or later you will have fucked your way through the Equity’s entire stable of bimbos.’ 

I grin at her. I enjoy a good holier than thou attitude. ‘Well, dear neighbour,’ I begin, ‘There are roughly 50,000 members paying dues at any given time, and only about 6,ooo are reporting “actor” as their occupation on their tax returns.’
I know this because I had a similar concern late one night, and googled it. 

‘Which is to say, the supply far exceeds the demand.’

‘They must know that a tumble on Astarion Ancunín’s casting couch won’t get them anything—except perhaps a prescription for antibiotics.’ She gives a derisive sort of snort that withers any partial that had been lingering.

‘Don’t you miss it?’

‘Miss what?’ My patience is beginning to wane. I just want a shower and a nap.

The bottle dangles insecurely from her fingertips as she paces in front of my book case. So help me gods if she drops that on the antique Hereke rug, I’ll be cleaning blood out of the silk weave in addition to wine.
‘Don’t you miss actually being somebody?’ she asks, and I grind my teeth at the grubby little fingerprints she’s leaving on the polished surfaces. ‘Being in it.’

‘Look around you, love,’ I say with far more warmth than I possess, ‘I live in a penthouse in Midtown Manhattan. My wine fridge, as you are aware, is well stocked, these post-fucking pants are worth more than the barrista downstairs will make in a month, and—’ I gesture vaguely to myself, ‘I look like this.’

She pokes at the line of statuettes in the display and gives each coin a tap to set it spinning. I tense when her finger hovers an extra second over the gap at the end of the row that stands out like a missing tooth.
I snap the bolt open on the door and hold it open for her.
‘I am somebody, fuck you very much.’

Shadowheart sways slightly on her way to the door.
‘If you say so.’

She stands in the hallway and looks at me, slightly unfocused, but still with a disdain that makes me want to slap her. That idea does somewhat restore the semi. ‘It just seem odd, that with all that going for you, you still go to this much effort just for a shtup. Don’t you think?’

I shut the door in her face and relock it—this time adding the chain.
She hasn’t figured out how to beat the chain.

Yet.

I return to the kitchen, and choose a bottle for myself from the back of the fridge. I consider heating my lunch, but instead put the mug away and pull down a stemless wineglass instead. I down the first glass in a few loud gulps, then pour a second of the dark red, viscous liquid before wandering into my bedroom.

While the steam shower comes to temperature I strip and stand before the full length mirror opposite the bed. First up close; I check for wrinkles, blemishes, errant nose hairs, and the whiteness of my teeth. I find no issues, of course. Stepping back, I turn slowly, appreciating my shoulders; muscled, broad, and the perfect ratio to my narrow hips. I trace the taut muscles that run in two distinct hemispheres down my torso. Looking over my shoulder I clench each cheek, one at a time to ensure nothing sags. Finally, I lift my flaccid cock, and test it’s weight in my hand. Even my balls hang at a pleasing drop. It all looks very good.

Look at my ass, look at my thighs. I'm catnip to the guys
They chase my tail, they drool and pant. Wanna touch this, but they can't¹

I’d fuck me.

Steam curls from under the bathroom door, reminding me that my shower is ready. I pick up my glass and pop into my custom spa to do precisely that.

I sniff at a couple different vials lined up on the bench inside the steam shower. I choose a lemongrass/rosemary scent and add it to the diffusion chamber, hoping I don’t come out smelling like a roast dinner. I was upsold on the chromatherapy lights and the stereo as well, so I might as well get my money’s worth. I fiddle with the controls until the chamber is bathed in a dark teal glow, by which time the steam has turned my skin care back into an unctuous sheen on the surface of my skin. I choose a playlist and set my phone on the counter. 

Who exactly did this Shadowheart think she was, anyhow, and why should it matter to her how I find my gash?
She implied I was some kind of predator.
Everyone knows what they’re getting—we’re all adults. They come willingly, with their headshots and their prepared monologues. And they leave satisfied, having been perceived, and validated, which is exactly what brought them to this voracious maw of a city in the first place.
They can say they read for Astarion Ancunín. 

I push her from my mind, and lean back, letting my hand wander over my thigh as I think.

Sure, it’s been a few years since I had a show of my own. The last one closed under unfortunate circumstances. Circumstances that snowballed from an event beyond my control, and for which I will not be held responsible. 

I was the victim, despite what the Reddit threads might suggest…or the youTube video.
That I haven’t picked up a new project is unrelated. I don’t need the money, my caricature still hangs on the wall at Sardi’s, and dropping my name will still get me opening night tickets.
I assume.

I did my bit. I had my moment, and it’s time now to reap the rewards of decades in the business. Why should I want the hassle of a job?

I shift a little, bending one knee and letting it fall open against the wall. 

I do miss the first steps, sometimes.
Those early days, when there is nothing but an idea, then two, then twenty. Then it’s 4am and you’re lying with your legs up the wall, clutching a bottle of cheap merlot by the neck and it hits you. You’ve found the hook.
_{And buried in your bones, there's an ache that you can't ignore}²

My hand closes loosely around my cock, and I tug at it a little, nudging it back to life.

You rush to the piano, tripping over take-out cartons. You shake awake your collaborator, asleep where she fell at the kitchen table, to help nurse the spark into a flame, to confirm that you’re not insane, that this is an idea. That it is brilliant, inspired,....marketable.

I drizzle a bit of oil over myself and watch the paths it takes as it trickles down my shaft.

Rarely did it ever start with the overture. You don’t get to choose where the muse drops you off, and the best stories don’t start at the beginning anyhow.
It is potential. Raw, pulsing, promise. By 5am the hook becomes eight bars. Then a verse. Add in a bridge. Play with some lyrics.
She was always better with the lyrics.
Before long you have a complete tune—usually something second act, and supporting character—but a start! 

You begin to understand your show, the characters, their motivations. You can see it, but only if you soften your vision. Look too hard for too long, and it slips away again. 

My thumb nudges the ridge of my glans on every upstroke, and my hand works faster as the memories flood in.

She likened it once to hatching a bird. You can encourage, and hope, and cheer the little fucker along, but even pulling a small piece of shell away— you mean to help but you risk weakening it.
It has to emerge on its own to be strong enough to survive what follows.
My hips cant upwards into my fist, and my other hand massages my sack, kneading and tugging in a gentle rhythm. I modulate the tone of a gutteral groan to harmonize with the music.

From there the ideas snowball. Overtures, Patters, In Comment numbers—should the ballad be a duet? Does this need a villain?
And the next thing you know its 10pm, and you haven’t slept since yesterday morning—or was that two days? Your clothes are wrinkled, you smell bad, and your wiring is fried from ingesting nothing by coffee and liquor.

I’m humming on the downstroke, and find a pleasing counterpoint rhythm between the slapping of wet skin and my breaths. I tighten my grip, and arch my back off the bench.

But you’re ecstatic and giddy. Half-mad with fatigue, half-mad with knowing that it’s only just started. Next comes the hunt for backers, and actors, and a venue. You write, and rewrite, and block the scenes, and pray that the lead gets his shit together and doesn’t fuck this up for you. You find a venue, you book opening night. You endure tech-week with its missed lighting cues, lost props, and torn costumes.

White hot pleasure shoots up through my centre, and I’m about to rip my godsdamned cock off I’m pulling so hard. The music ceases to make sense, and it’s all just noise.

You feel so godsdamned alive you’re drunk with it. The orchestra tunes, and the audience takes their seats, and it's too late to do anything else. All you can do is watch while everything you’ve poured your entire soul into for months comes to a head.
Finally the lights go down, and the curtains part.

I snarl and clench my jaw closed tight when my nerves finally snap. Eyes screwed shut, and hips off the bench, I come hard. My spend painting halfway up my chest.

Three hours later, when the crowd jumps to their feet and applause roars through the theatre, you exhale the breath you’ve been holding for months—sometimes years.

_{How can you get so far off thе track?
Why don't you turn around and go back?}³

And then it’s done. It’s all over. And you just want to cry.

My phone chirps the three note tone reserved for the front desk. 

I answer, and the high nasally voice of the weekend doorman comes through.
‘Mr. Ancunín, your 8:30 appointment is here for his audition.’
I hesitate.
I can’t even recall the face or name of this young actor. He is an amalgam of every young actor. Every hopeful, innocent, bright, and naive face that thinks that their shot is just around the corner. That ambitious and hungry overacheiver who will tell you, head high, that they’re prepared to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get their shot as though it were a point of pride.

I catch my reflection once again in the bedroom mirror.
Still beautiful. Still talented. Still somebody.
That hopeful man downstairs is proof of it.

_{I'm gonna live forever
Baby, remember my name}⁴

‘Send him up.’

Aug 1, 2011

She absently traced the shadows that fell across my chest, and I wriggled and twitched at the light touch.

‘You’re going to get your fingers bitten if you keep that up,’ I warned.
She laughed, but it was still a nervous sound. Hours later and still nearly every sound from her was either a nervous giggle or a sob, and completely unpredictable as to which it would be.

She buried her face in my shoulder, and made one of the two noises, though I couldn’t tell which that was, and I pulled her in tight against my side.

‘Shh-shh-shh,’ I whispered. ‘You’re ok.’

She nodded without looking up, but I felt hot tears running into my armpit, and I rubbed her back and smiled at the ceiling. The champagne we’d celebrated with on the day we finalized opening night had opened so violently the cork cracked the century old plaster. I considered having it repaired, but decided I quite liked  memento living on above our heads.

‘How are you so calm?’ she asked. 

‘I’ve done this before,’ I reminded her. ‘You’re the virgin, not me, darling.’

She laughed, and wiped her eyes on the pillowcase. I reached to the nightstand and offered her the tissues instead. 

‘They stood,’ she said, her voice thickening again. 

I kissed her on the forehead. ‘They sure did!’
‘I’m just so…..ugh…I don’t know. I feel like I’m going to crack open.’ She propped up on an elbow to look at me in the dark. ‘Do you get that?’
‘Every time. Writing is letting us be vulnerable, putting our souls out there. Like saying "this is my heart, you can now do whatever you want with it." I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it and yet I can't stop doing it.’⁵
‘They liked it.’ She whispered like the reality was a fragile thing that would break if she spoke of it too loudly.
‘They liked you,’ I clarified.
‘We did it,’ she said through a yawn. She was tired. No shit—so was I. It was a tough 20 months to get the show up, and while I didn’t mention it then, the work had barely begun. I didn’t have the heart to tell her this was only day one. I’d break that news in the morning. 

Besides, she knew. 

Tonight what mattered was that Pros & Cons was now officially a show on Broadway. The audience had gotten to their feet and applauded until long after the curtain closed.
I craned my head to look at her, now finally nodding off. Her breath warmed my neck, and though she still had the comforter twisted mercilessly in her fists, she slept with a smile on her lips. 

She’d had a taste of it now. From this night, and for the rest of her life she would crave the sweet agony of this feeling. 

Just as I do.
My eyes won’t stay closed, so I pluck my phone off the charger to check the time.
3:12am - Someone once told me that nobody can lie to themselves at 3am.
I stare at the ceiling, my eyes tracing up and down the crack that ran through the molding around the ceiling light.
Well, shit.

I unlock my phone, and text a number I haven’t tried in years.

1. Bend and Snap, Legally Blonde. return to text

2. The Greatest Show, The Greatest Showman. return to text

3. Merrily We Roll Along, Merrily We Roll Along. return to text

4. I'm Gonna Live Forever, Fame. return to text

5. Wisdom from poet, beautiful soul, and friend NoCryptographer (check out her writing!!) return to text

Chapter Text

two

Left hand, side pocket
Right arm, akimbo and relaxed
Head up, gaze steady-
Now you're ready so you
Stroll in, survey them-
Your world, they're all invited guests.
Feel out how to play them
And remember this-
You're giving them what they want,
~ Give them What They Want, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

May 27, 2024

I was surprised to get this invitation. It arrived in the middle of the night. in ALL CAPS, with two requests for confirmation 1 and 2 hours later, so yeah—I’d find that totally bizarre, except that after all this time, nothing Astarion Ancunín does surprises me. While tone and facial expression will differ on a case by case basis, every interaction is some variety of what the fuck?

It sounded urgent. Most texts at 3:22am do, which is why I responded while I did my peloton ride around 5:30, agreeing to see him for a lunch meeting today. It’s a level of urgency I don’t associate with the guy, but on the other hand, it fits perfectly with his main-character syndrome.

He’s already 20 minutes late, (also entirely in character), and I’ve started picking at the edges of my lunch, lost in thought. I have clients this afternoon, and if he doesn’t turn up soon, I’ll be mowing into this double corned beef and swiss on rye in double time, and powerwalking back to Chelsea in my Jimmy Choos. It’s only when I register a woman cover the eyes of her young son, that I realize I’m distractedly sucking on the kosher dill while I think.

Astarion saunters in, letting the door shut on the couple behind him, and all heads turn to follow the stunning man as he crosses to my table.
‘Karlach,’ he croons at me. ‘How’s my favourite producer?’ His broad smile allows a glimmer of pristine white fang to show at an angle he’s no doubt practiced in the mirror. It is objectively sexy as fuck.

I stand, and I hug him, which he defends against with a rigid spine and a stony expression. I’m not prepared to call him my friend. He’d slit my throat, or drain it, in a second if he thought there was something in it for him, but we’ve known each other and worked together for nearly three decades. We’ve got history, and I’m still kind of fond of the pointy little menace.

He takes an absurd amount of time removing and folding his overcoat, then arranging it just so over the back of the hoop-back deli chairs.
Fuck it, I’m eating without him.
He tosses the end of his silk scarf over one shoulder and readies himself for a closeup before finally turning to address me.
‘It’s good to see you, Karlach,’ he says. ‘You’re looking extra red these days. Done something different with your horns?’
‘Goo to shee you, toom, ‘starin.’ I say, through a mouthful.

‘Haven’t heard from you in years,’ I observe. ‘Where ye been? What you been doing?’
‘Oh, this and that.’ He dismisses me with a vague wave of his hand that could mean anything from working the deli counter to solving world hunger. Fine by me. I already know the answer to both those questions. They are hiding, and nothing.

I take another large bite of my sandwich, hoping to communicate that I don’t intend to carry this conversation. He asked to see me.
Astarion looks lazily around the restaurant, then he picks at a bit of thread at the edge of his scarf.
The cageyness is worrying. Despite his irrelevance in my professional circle, he is still perfectly capable—skilled, even—at damaging a reputation. I look around the deli, scanning for familiar faces. If I’m spotted lunching with Astarion, there better’d be a good reason for it.
‘What do you want, Astarion?’ With only 25 minutes until an important meeting, and a 20 minute walk ahead of me to get there, I need to move this along.

‘I want a show,’ Astarion blurts.

‘Oh, hey! That’s easy,’ I exhale, relieved at the simplicity of the request. I tip my head at him, further evaluating his appearance. If he was down on hard times, it might benefit him to stop spending $800 on shoes, but I don’t say that outloud.

‘What do you want to see? MJ is getting great reviews, but Chess has a more classic fe—’ I stop, as Astarion starts batting at the air.

_{Go see a musical, a musical
A puppy piece, releasing all your bluesicals ¹}

‘What?’

‘I don’t mean I want to see a show.’ His pointy little ears turn pink at the tips, and I try to recall if I’ve ever seen Astarion exhibit the least bit of self-awareness before this moment. ‘I want to put up a show.’

‘Oh.’

That’s a much harder ask. When his last show Pros and Cons closed, it became a bit of a punchline how no one intended to ever work with him again. My personal favourite goes like this
- Have you heard the newest Broadway superstition? If you say Astarion Ancunín three times in a dark theatre, your entire cast quits. -

Its been years since The Incident but just the other week I overheard an intern referring to a paperjam as the copy machine ‘doing an Ancunín’. I’m certain they weren’t old enough to know the reference, only the meaning.
I admit, I laughed.

‘Do you have a script?’ I ask cautiously.
‘No.’
‘A score?’
‘Well, no.’ Astarion begins to shift in his seat.
‘Money?’
‘If you’re just going to be difficult about the whole thing, I might as well leave,’ he snaps.

‘Calm down, Fangs,’ I say, feeling oddly sympathetic to the poor little guy. ‘What do you have?’

Astarion pulls my soda toward himself and nurses on the straw while he thinks.
‘I mean,’ he starts, and his hands come up to start gesturing—always a solid sign of shit, if you ask me.
‘I mean, if they can make a musical out of that Heathers movie, then really, doesn’t anything go?’

I nod, thoughtfully. ‘Ok,’ I say evenly, ‘give me an idea. Any idea.’

There are many many people in this city who would like to be in my position right now. Sitting here, watching Astarion prostrate himself, completely humbled, flustered, and essentially begging for help.

I’m not one of them.

‘Walk me back to my office, and let’s brainstorm, hey?’

Astarion talks a mile a minute and takes three steps to each pair of mine down 9th Ave.

‘...and the patter sort of goes like,

‘It starts off easy, innocent, slow,
The squares, Js and sticks all fall in a flow,
The music speeds up and the towers they grow,
And the L, gods! The L-piece has nowhere to go

In desperation, you’ve started to bet
With no rhyme or reason, what you think you’ll get
The pieces keep coming, you only can sweat
You promised yourself you would not hit reset

Your parents assumed it was only a phase
But you’re humming the tune to the end of your days
Everyone knows it, coz everyone plays
A global phenomenon, vidya game craze

And now you’ve forgotten what’s left and what’s right,
And the shapes are no longer fitting in tight
You’re beating this level if it takes all night.
And the music goes round in your head like a—

‘Stop. ‘ I put up a hand. ‘What?’

‘Tetris. You know, the video game—’

I stop him again. ‘I know it. You’re pitching me a musical based on Tetris?’

_{Give 'em act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give 'em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather 'em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?²}

‘It’s quite addictive, darling.’ Astarion levels me with a serious gaze. ‘Surely, that can only work in our favour.’
He clocks my skeptical squint, and sighs.
‘There is lit-er-al-ly—’ he sounds out every syllable, trying to stay calm, ‘—a Beetlejuice musical that ran for 700 shows, Karlach. The bar has gotten very low.’

‘Oh, I know it—but I still think it’s higher than Tetris. Got anything else?’

‘Marie Curie - the Musical? I’d call it GLOW. The whole show would be staged under black light’

_{Step One! We find the worst play ever written
Step Two! We hire the worst director in town
Step Three! I raise two million dollars³}

I don’t even dignify that one with a response.

‘Third time’s a charm?’ I say hopefully. I can see my office building at the end of the block, and I have no intention of bringing this conversation upstairs.

‘Sure,’ he says, voice dripping with sarcasm and impatience. ‘Let’s cobble up a bunch of trailer park women, throw in a knocked up teenager, a stripper on the run, and a botched execution.’

I laugh, spraying soda into a fine mist that Astarion dives out of the way of. ‘You just described The Great American Trailer Park Musical — Off-Broadway, mind you, but still pretty good.’

‘Hells, Karlach—that just proves that there must be a show out there for me.’

He puts a hand on my arm, and we stop in the middle of the sidewalk. People continue around us as though we don’t exist, returning from their own lunchtime dramas. He forces himself to look me in the eye. ‘Help me, Karlach.’

_{Our days are tied to curtains
They rise and they fall
We're born every night
At half-hour call!⁴}

I look down at him and am struck by the naked desperation on his face. I know better—being mentioned in the same breath as Astarion is career suicide in this industry.

‘Tell you what?’ I say, finally. ‘Let me make some calls. None of this goes anywhere if we can’t find you some money, and no one is going to fund you on reputation alone anymore. You need to have something solid.’
Hope lights his ruby eyes, and already I regret the words coming out of my mouth. ‘In the meantime, you go find actual source material. Start with something that you actually care about, Astarion. This needs to be the best godsdamned show of your entire life!—that’s the only way you’ll be able to make anything of it. You know how to do this—you’ve got seven Tonys—’

‘Eight,’ he corrects.

‘—eight Tonys, and decades of experience.’ I take his hands and look down at him. ‘You fucked up, buddy, and I don’t know if you can fix that, but the problem isn’t your talent. It was never your talent.’

I pull him into a hug, and to my astonishment, he hugs back. ‘You go do your magic, and let me try mine, yeah?’

‘Ill be damned,’ I think as I watch him fold himself gracefully into a taxi and drive away, ‘I guess I do consider him a friend.’

It’s nearly a month later when I hear from Astarion again.

Sept 5, 2011

I plucked a second glass of champagne from a passing server, and turned to survey the ballroom. I knew most of the people here, and those I didn’t were certainly just PAs or PRs or just PITAs.

I downed that drink and looked around for a third. I needed it after enduring that last conversation. I won’t say whom it was with, just that his name rhymes with Lew Hackman.

‘Karlach!’ I closed my eyes and counted to ten, as my therapist had trained me to do, before turning around to endure another industry blowhard.
I was pleased to find an entirely different kind of blowhard. This one was at least honest about being an insufferable pain in the ass!

‘If it isn’t the sweethearts of the evening!’ I said. I went for a hug—I’m a hugger—before recalling that he is most certainly not. Instead I extended my hand to one-half of the newest power-duo on the Avenue.
‘Astarion Ancunín, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight!’
I hadn’t yet met the woman standing at his elbow, and turned my smile on her. ‘Ms. Wyld, I presume?’ I extended my hand to the nervous looking woman, and she launched forward and violently shook my hand.
‘Mauria,’ she corrected.
I looked over her shoulder at Astarion, who was beaming at the fawning elf with a mix of fondness and amusement that immediately told me everything I had been wondering about the rumours that were circulating.
‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Ms. Cliffgate,’ she said. ‘Astarion has told me so much about you. Not that he needed to—you are a legend.’ She looked frustrated for a moment I realized it was with herself. ‘Of course you already know that, seeing as you’re you. Ah, fuck,’ she looked toward Astarion. ‘Help me?’ she mouthed.
I laughed. I liked her immediately—it was a refreshing change from the polished, affected aires that most people adopted when I met them. This woman was…different.
Finding someone still sporting their natural personality in this business was as rare as finding one with their original tits, and one look at this odd duck told me she retained both.

_{Tits and ass
Had the bingo-bongos done
Suddenly I'm getting national tours
Tits and ass won't get you jobs unless they're yours⁵}

Astarion stepped up, and put a protective arm around her waist.

‘Just Karlach is fine I said, pulling back my hand. I understand congratulations are in order. I read the reviews after opening night, and see that you’re sold out well into the new year. Very impressive.’

‘Thank you, darling. You’ve done your homework.’ Astarion crooned. ‘I assume your flowers just got lost in delivery.’

‘They let the press into this thing,’ I said, ignoring the jab. ‘You two must be inundated tonight.’

Beside him, Mauria snorted. ‘Not him—he’s made me take all the requests.’
Astarion grinned his fangy grin and nipped at her neck, sending my eyebrows into my hairline.
‘She needs to learn, if she’s going to be a big-dog,’ he joked. ‘This show is all her, anyhow. I’m just arm-candy.’
‘The fuck you are,’ Mauria objected, then looked at me quickly.

Astarion laughed loudly. ‘My darling—Karlach here is perhaps the only person I know who is more fond of blue language than you. No need to dial it back on her account.’

My darling?
Huh.
I’d known Astarion for a very long time. I’d produced more than a couple of his shows, attended scores of events, traveled, presented, workshopped, panelled together. I couldn’t recall in all that time ever seeing him show actual affection to anyone.
Plenty of sweet young things on his arm, but not one I’d ever witnessed him actually enjoying being with.

He looked…happy.

‘None at all,’ I confirmed.
‘Come with me.’ I took Mauria by the arm, and led her away from her co-writer. ‘If you’re going to be a big-dog, I’d better introduce you to the pack.’

1. A Musical, Something Rotten. back

2. Razzle Dazzle, Chicago. back

3. We Can Do It, The Producers. back

4. Show People, Curtains. back

5. Dance: Ten, Looks: Three, A Chorus Line. back

Chapter Text

three

Got a little motto
Always sees me through
When you're good to Mama
Mama's good to you
There's a lot of favors
I'm prepared to do
You do one for Mama
She'll do one for you
They say that life is tit for tat And that's the way I live
So I deserve a lot of tat For what I've got to give
~ When You’re Good To Mama, Chicago

---

June 19, 2024


‘Focus, Astarion!’

Expensively manicured fingers snap in front of my face. 

‘Uhhhgh,....what??? No! No, no no no no nooooooo,’ I say reasonably. ‘Gale Dickarios? Why would you even ask him?
Karlach could have said anyone else.
Satan and Elon Musk want to fund my project? Fantastic, let’s do lunch! But, not Gale!
I slump down in the leather office chair. Karlach is still talking, but I can’t imagine why I’d care.

‘You should be grateful that Gale DEKarios will even discuss it. He’s the only one!’

‘Well, great. Just wonderful!’ I stand and grab my coat from the back of my chair to leave. ‘Thanks for all the help, love.’

‘Astarion Ancunín! Sit the fuck down!’
Karlach’s expression, which a moment ago was that of sympathetic regret, has changed rather a lot. She rises from her seat, and even with both hands planted firmly on her desk, I have to look up into her angry face.
Fury and disgust in a Balenciaga blouse. It’s pretty fucking hot.

‘No!’ she says, pointing a stern finger at me, and I realize that last bit was out loud.
‘Sit!’ she repeats, and I do, but also make a mental note examine my interesting response to pet commands.

‘I’ve never been hung up on, laughed at, or asked if I was insane so much in my entire career as I have been in the past few weeks, and I did it for you, so stuff your ego, and shut your mouth.’

It’s not that I don’t appreciate her help, even if she is doing a poor job of it.
‘Not Gale,’ I say evenly. ‘You should know that.’

‘Then I’m afraid that I’m out of options.’ She sighs, ‘At least we found out before you—’

‘I bought all the rights.’ I say, cutting off what she no doubt sees as a silver lining. I truly hate being a bad news bearer. 

‘You did what?’!’
I’m impressed by her ability to redden yet further—hotblooded thing that she is.
‘You mean you bought the option,’ she clarifies.

‘Well, no. I bought licensing on The Princess Bride.’

‘Licensing?! Why would you do that?!’ Karlach exclaims. ‘You have no backers. No score. No libretto!’
The shrieking is a bit of a turn off.
‘Movie or book?’ she asks.

‘Both.’

She grips her horns tightly, and I wonder if she’s planning to tear her own head off. Based on those biceps, I bet she—’
‘FOCUS, ASTARION!’ Black lacquered claws snap in my face again.
She’s just sitting with one hand over her mouth, blinking at me. She’s either thinking very hard—which I appreciate in those who work for me, or someone has unplugged her from the matrix, which is obviously less useful to me.

I take my phone out of my pocket, and flick through.







Are you fucking joking, Astarion? Do I dare ask what that cost?’ she says slowly.

‘I wouldn’t, darling,’ I respond, not looking up from my phone.
‘Did you know that the black and white ruffled lemurs are the world’s largest pollinators?’ I hold it up, showing her a photo.

She growls. Actually growls. For someone who claims not to be into it, she sure drops a lot of cues.

‘There is no one else, Astarion. We try for Gale, or this all stops now.’

The problem with people who are successful is that they are used to having their opinion matter. She can’t really be blamed. Karlach is only doing what decades of professional respect has trained her to do, so while I appreciate the sentiment, this kind of defeatist attitude will not get us anywhere.

‘I’ll fund it myself.’
Admittedly, this would have been easier if I hadn’t just dropped over $400k on licensing, but here we are.
‘Thank you for your trouble, Karlach. I’ll take it from here.’

_{Nobody but me is going to change my story!}¹

‘Astarion, stop—’

I slam her door, politely.

As I cannot put the chain on my door while I’m out of the apartment, I return to find one owl eyed, and half-lumpy neighbour dozing on my sofa.

I drop my keys noisily in the glass dish at the door, and she startles awake with a half-snore.

‘Godsdamn!’ Shadowheart says peevishly. ‘Must you be so loud?’

‘In my own home, in the middle of the day, darling?’ I consider arguing, but stop myself. It would be the very definition of insanity.

‘Project not going well?’ she asks.

I cannot deal with her today.
‘Just grab a bottle and run along, darling, to whatever hole you crawled out of.’

‘Rude,’ she says, and sits up to pour another glass from the bottle that already sits opened in front of her. She swirls the wine in the glass, and regards me curiously.
‘That didn’t go as well as you hoped.’

I consider for a moment how satisfying it would be to remove her from my apartment by the braid. It’s all theoretical—I’m actually quite peaceful. I abhor physical violence and consider it a sign of weakness. If you ask me, violence identifies those who haven’t the emotional elasticity to cope with their world.
Still, it’s a nice fantasy.

‘No,’ I say, resigning myself to this conversation. ‘It did not. Did I tell you where I was going?’ I don’t recall telling her.
I flop down onto the other sofa, draping my knees over the arm. ‘Karlach, wanted me to—’ I pause, ‘Karlach is a producer friend of mine. Anyhow, she wants to fund my project with perhaps the only person in this city I would not take money from.’

‘What’s wrong with Gale’s money?’ she asked, sipping at the chardonnay.

‘It’s a long story,’ I groan.
She gazes into her wine, and looks entirely disinterested anyway.
‘It goes back a lot of years. I had a writing partner, and a show…Why am I even telling you this?’ I ask, feeling a little vulnerable in front of this stranger.

Shadowheart makes a three-syllable vocalization that is universally accepted as I don’t know, and pours more wine.

‘Anyhow, darling. It all started about 14 years ago….’

Karlach slips into my audition studio with the subtlety you’d expect from a 7-foot tall flaming red tiefling.
She gives me an awkward smile/face scrunch that I take to mean; I am witnessing your shame and I’m sympathetic, but let’s not acknowledge it all the same, m’kay soldier?
She skirts the perimeter of the room, drawing an anxious gaze from everyone here, and pulls a folding chair over. I cringe as the screeching noise of metal legs on vinyl flooring seems to drag on interminably. Karlach could give a shit. She sits next to me at the small desk at one end of the room and hands me a coffee. Bringing it to my lips I can already smell the brandy, and I’m marginally cheered.

‘Not much of a turnout,’ she says.

‘Nope,’ I say, passively. It’s frankly humiliating, but I’ve already grappled with the other 6 stages of grief before she arrived. I’m at acceptance now.
Four rows of ten chairs were set out by the studio for today’s audition, and not even spacing everyone out would make this room look occupied.

Anxious young actors sit twitching in their seats. Some fidget with their headshots, some with their sheet music, one keeps going between his pocket and his mouth with something.
I used to cast a couple dozen actors a year, on average. And whether as collaborator, advisor, festival committee, or workshop lead, I’ve seen my share of auditions. If this was then, I’d pick all nine of these people out of the group, make them stand, give their resumes in front of the group, then dismiss them as an example to the rest of them of how not to be cast.

‘There were more,’ I tell Karlach between sips, ‘.but they left when I came in.’

‘Ah,’ she nods sagely. ‘I see why you listed TBD under every position on the advert. Thanks for leaving my name off it, by the way.’

‘Rude,’ I mutter.

‘You got this far, though,’ she brightens, ‘you must have something.’

I make a non-committal noise, and wince at the scalding coffee I just poured down my throat.

I check my phone. 9:40am.
No one who wanted the gig would dare be late, so I might as well get this over with.

‘Good morning,’ I say, standing up, and coming around the desk. ‘My name is Astarion Ancunín—’ At that, a chiseled looking half-elfish man gets up, and avoids eye contact as he grabs his pack and slips from the room.
A pity. He was the only one in this room who wouldn’t crack a mirror.

‘We’ll begin with the material you’ve prepared, and then I have a scene that I will distribute. Those of you still here at that point will learn and perform 16-bars of something I have prepared. Understood?’

I go to the piano, and call the first one up.

The auditions treated me to a nervous farter, a man who couldn’t go two lines without clearing his throat, and one who thought singing ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s version of Alexander Hamilton was a quote: “brave choice”. It also included a young woman who brought sheet music in a key she couldn’t attain, and another who brought the wrong sheet music entirely. The morning can be succinctly summed up as Fuck my life.

I dismiss all but 3 after their performances. Karlach watches from the corner, but hasn’t had anything to say yet. She just types away on her phone, judging me silently, I’m sure.
After the scene, no one is left to attempt my song.

‘That’s too bad,’ Karlach says, ‘I was looking forward to hearing what you’ve got so far.’

‘Well, darling. .It’s your luck that I’m feeling like an old boot just now. Promise to say something nice and I’ll give you a couple lines.’ She nods and lowers her phone. It feels good to have an audience, even if it’s just of one.

‘The lyrics are pulled almost directly from the text, but the music is original’, I tell her. Lyrics were never my strongest suit.

There is no room in my body for anything but you.
My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection.
My mind begs you for a question I can answer.

Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days?
I will do that. Do you want me to crawl?
I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you,

Anything there is that I can do for you,
I will do for you;
anything there is that I cannot do,
I will learn to do.
For you.²

I finish singing and Karlach looks thoughtful. ‘Well get this made, Astarion. This is only the beginning—you remember how many turds you have to polish before you find the diamond, yeah?’
My chest is strangely tight, and I blame her disgusting metaphor for the strangled noise that comes out where the laugh should have gone.

‘I’m not wrong, am I?’ I ask, spinning away from the piano, and from her scrutiny. ‘They were bad, right?’

‘They were awful,’ Karlach agrees, enthusiastically.

‘You sound far too cheerful about that.’
I know what she’s thinking, and if I have any kind of mind control powers, she will not say it.

‘Are you ready to discuss Gale?’

Shit. It was worth a shot.
‘No.’

‘Even if it means this show doesn’t get made?’ She looks skeptical, and the twin quirks of her lip and brow tell me that she heard it.

'No.'
Dammit.
She heard how much I want this and it’s put her into a position of advantage that I am loath to grant people.
I set my jaw in a petulant pout.

‘C’mon, Fangs. Let me buy you lunch,’ she said.

Karlach is too trusting by half. It never even occurs to her that my long lifespan means that a 50year prison sentence for throttling her to death in the picture window of Cafe Fiorello is not that much of a deterrent. Not to this kind of bullshit stunt.
Already waiting for us when the hostess seats us is none other than Gale Dickarios.

He stands to greet us and gives Karlach a brief hug, before extending his hand to me.

‘Astarion—’ he smiles placidly at me, ‘it’s been a few years.’
I look at his hand like he’s offering me a dead fish. ‘Yes! I didn’t realize quite how many until I laid eyes on you, though, hmm?’ I scan his coat, shoes, watch. ‘The secret is to moisturize,’ I whisper, and tsk quietly before sitting down.

He clears his throat, and retracts his limp carp. ‘Yes, well. It’s good to see you again.’

‘Thanks for meeting with us Gale.’ Karlach is far too cheerful for someone who, in my mind, is already carved into tiny pieces and is being fed to the central park pigeons. ‘Astarion is very grateful—’

I scoff.

‘Karlach, darling, perhaps we can allow Gale’s leg to go unhumped until after lunch? A little something to round out the coffee and tiramisu, maybe?’

Under the table I receive a kick to the shin hard enough to make my eyes water.

‘Karlach and I discussed your little project the other day, and I was intrigued, but when she sent me the video of the—’

‘Video?’ I exclaim loudly enough to draw some scowls from the adjacent tables. ‘You fucking recorded me this morning?’

Karlach’s smile is tight.

‘—I see the vision. A lot of potential there.’ Gale acts as though there is nothing at all odd about this conversation.

‘Potential?’ I shriek, and mouth a quick fuck you to the lady at the next table who is making a point of her disapproving scowl. ‘It’s a godsdamned epic!’

Gale laughs, and it’s the genuine tone that grates on my spine far more than sarcasm or scorn could.
‘Leave it to you to toot your own horn, Astarion. I think we can certainly get it to epic with a little elbow grease.’

I’m formulating my retort when his words permeate.

‘We? So, you’re in?’

‘Yes,’ Gale nods sagely, ‘I think this is something I can lend my support to. I like a good narrative.’

I tense.
‘Gale, choose your words carefully, pal,’ Karlach warns Gale.
Karlach has embedded her claws in my thigh. It’s as though she thinks I’m about to sail over the table, pull Gale’s windpipe out with my teeth, and show it to him.
She’s always been remarkably perceptive.

Gale is still nodding away, oblivious to everything past his giant nose. ‘However—’

Ah. There it is.

‘I think I’d feel better if you had some assistance with this.’ The thoughtful gaze that a moment ago drifted leisurely around the restaurant now lands on me with sniper precision.

‘An assistant?’ I ask, hopeful, but also not at all hopeful.

Karlach’s grip tightens. Joke’s on her when she looks down into my lap, and recoils.

_{My unfortunate protuberance
Seems to have its own exuberance³}

‘No, no—nothing like that. I was thinking about adding another angle. A fresh pair of eyes, so to speak.’ He pauses for a sip of water, and I swear to the gods it’s to cover a smirk. ‘A partner.’

‘No.’

‘Astarion, I’m afraid I insist—’

‘Who?’ My jaw is aching and I’m struggling to follow this conversation through the ringing in my ears.

‘You know who, Astarion,’ he says calmly.

I begin to rise from my chair to object when a perky little waitress—Candy? Cindy? Mindy?—interrupts to tell us about the lunch specials. Gale and I stare at each other like cowboys with our hands twitching over our holsters, just waiting for the old church bell to chime so we can draw.

‘No,’ I rush to speak first, the moment Missy leaves. ‘Someone else. ANYONE else.’
I hate the begging tone in my voice. I hate Gale for putting it there, and I hate Karlach for hearing it.

_{Grovel, grovel, cringe, bow, stoop, fall
Worship, worship, beg, kneel, sponge, crawl⁴}

Gale’s jovial expression finally falls away. ‘Take it or leave it.’

‘.Does she know you’re asking?’

Gale looks uncomfortable for the first time. ‘Err, no. I haven’t discussed this with her yet. I’ll leave that to you. She and I haven’t really spoken since the—well, it’s been a while.’

Well, that makes two of us, I don’t say.

He’s using a show as a way to lure her back into his life, I realize with a rush of adrenaline. He’s making himself the irresistible cheese, which I guess makes me the mousetrap?
That son of a bitch.
Why didn’t I think of this?

‘She’ll never agree,’ I tell him.

‘No,’ Gale says quietly, ‘she probably won’t, but don’t you want to try?’

Transcript of BroadwayOutThere Podcast - S05E14
Recorded Monday, October 24th, 2011

I: Hello, hello, it’s Irene Legault here, back with your Monday edition of the OutThere podcast. The theaters may be dark today, but I’ve got all the light you’re going to need courtesy of this morning’s guests. Bright and shining stars on the rise. I’m joined today by Broadway’s newest power-duo, the creators of Pros and Cons, composer Astarion Ancunin, and new to the block, lyricist Mauria Wyld. Welcome, you two!

M: Thanks for having us.

I: Let’s start with the headline. Pros and Cons is a huge hit! It’s run less than 100 shows and already critics are talking about it in the same breath as some pretty spectacular Broadway classics. Wicked, Into the Woods, and Legally Blonde are the ones that come quickly to mind. And didn’t Seth Rudetsky call it quote “better than Hamilton”? Congratulations.

M: Thank you. Wow, there was a lot in there, so… PnC will have it’s one-hundredth show on Sunday matinee.

A: But who’s counting, hmm?

M: And that Hamilton quote is a little out of context, but yes, it has been received very well. It’s been great to see the fans respond to my story this way.

I: Yes! The fans are rabid for this. You’re all over every message board out there. I hear that there is even an online challenge associated with your show? The Wet and Sloppy challenge? Is that right?

A: Which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds, darling. Apparently there are leaderboards and betting available for how long into the show you can go before you start to cry. It’s…something.

I: Amazing! How are you handling the success?

M: It’s overwhelming for sure, but it’s been great. I’m learning some new thing every day—most of them good. It’s just been—a lot. I’m very fortunate that this is not Astarion’s first rodeo. He’s been my rock in all of this, and without him I’d be drowning for sure.

A: Wait, love. Am I a cowboy, a rock, or a floatation device in this metaphor? I am a man of many talents, but where does it end?!

I: I was told about you two. You’ve been lighting up the media with your obvious chemistry. This charming banter—is this what working sessions are like? Is this where the protagonists got their delightful dialogue?

M: Actually, most of the dialogue was written before I met Astarion.

I: Oh, that’s right! Pros and Cons was the winner of the 2010 Fred Ebb Award for Emerging Writers, isn’t that right? Tell me about that.

M: It was a great honour, and a huge surprise. I submitted the show on a dare, really. My good friend suggested it one night over too much wine, and next thing you know I was formatting it for submission and…the rest, as they say…
I never expected to win.

I: And that’s how you first met Astarion?

M: Yup. Part of the award was an intensive writers residency and workshop. I was given a mentorship, and Astarion was that mentor. Together we turned my janky little stage play into, well, what ever it’s become now.

A: Janky little stage play—hardly! The truth is that this show was destined for greatness, with or without me. I’m just lucky enough that she decided to keep me.

I: Mauria, you made a face. You don’t agree? Astarion seems rather committed to giving you the spotlight here.

M: I couldn’t have done any of this without all his talent, skill, and knowledge—and that’s just the show proper. I wouldn’t have had the guts to get this onstage, and seen by thousands without his support.

A: That sounded very much like an acceptance speech, love. Be careful, theatre people are quite superstitious about these things.

M: He’s just wearing his mentor’s hat when he bumps me up like this. He likes applause as much as the rest of us, and he deserves at least half of it.

I: Tell me about that. What is it like collaborating with the legendary Astarion Ancunín?

M: Oh. Well, it’s exhilerating. He’s got a very musically technical brain. I know those don’t sound like they belong together, but he’s like that Beautiful Mind math guy, but for melodies, harmonies, tempos, and tone. I’m very lucky every day to witness this genius in action.

I: Astarion, you’re laughing?

M: Mmhmm, I’ll be forced to relive calling him a genius for the rest of the night, at least.

A: I was thinking more like make you write it down, sign it, and post it on the fridge.

I: Ah, that brings me to my next question. You two are also romantically involved, correct? Do you think that improves the writing process, or is it a challenge you’ve had to manage?

A: Oh, no. Never a challenge. Even when we disagree, we find a way to gain from it. We challenge each other, but in a good way. Mauria makes me a better writer, a better lyricist, a better musician. Hells, she makes me a better everything, really.

I: Uh, oh. I think you made her cry.

A: And it’s not even noon yet. Quelle surprise!

I: Mauria, I assume you feel the same? Working with your romantic partner has been a positive thing?

M: Oh, yes. We trust each other in a way that’s…more. That can only help, right?

A: I agree. Trust is what’s allowed us to do so much, so fast. Without it, well—

M: Without trust, this would all fall apart.

1. Naughty, Matilda back
2. The Princess Bride, William Goldman (edited slightly) back
3. My Unfortunate Erection (Chip's Lament), 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee back
4. Grovel, Grovel, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat back

Chapter Text

four

I could stay home every night
Wait around for Mr. Right
Take cold showers everyday
And throw my life away
On a dream that won't come true
~There are worse things I could do, Grease

June 27, 2024

“Again,” I coach. ‘This time, really let your jaw loose.’

“Memories, all alone in the moonlight,”

I grin. The old ladies always choose this song. Just like the 50-somes are five to one for picking ‘On My Own, from Les Misérables’. Each age group has their favourites, tied with muscle and sinew to where and when they first fell in love with the sound. For me it’s ‘Out Tonight’ from RENT. But I don’t pass judgement, I just pull up the sheet music for whatever they want, and use that to teach from. You have to like what you’re singing, or it will suck no matter how skilled or experienced you might be.

_{Who can live without it
I ask in all honesty
What would life be
Without a song or a dance what are we?¹}

“Much better, Mrs. Roseport. Can you feel the difference?” I turn back to the piano. ‘Let’s do the whole thing. Start from the beginning.’

She’s my last student of the day, and I pour a large glass of Baco Noir, leaving it to breathe on the counter while I wash my face, and take out my contact lenses. I audibly exhale when the bra comes off, then I trade vintage jeans and a fitted wrap blouse for a washworn tee, and flannel pants covered in an owlbear print.

I grab my wine from the kitchen along with a box of Triscuits and a handful of blueberries, my phone, and my laptop and kind of duckwalk it all to the sofa, pinching my phone, laptop, and crackers under my chin, and both elbows, respectively.

I glance at the clock—it’s 7:12pm. I consider what other single women my age are doing right now.

“They wish they were me,” I mumble, tipping back my head and letting the blueberries roll into my mouth.

_{She′s imperfect but she tries
She is good but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won't ask for help
She is messy but she′s kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up
And baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone but she used to be mine ²}

Outside my window, the Williamsburg bridge is pretty. It’s dark early at this time of year, and the lights of the commuters whiz past. Further across the river is Manhattan. While it’s no longer home, its comforting to be able to keep an eye on it.

When I look at my phone, I’m surprised to find i missed a call before remembering that unrecognized numbers don’t ring through.
‘Not tonight, scammers,’ I say and fire up my laptop to read another chapter of an especially depraved Elphaba and Fiero fanfic online.
The same number calls again, then again, and after the third call in 90 minutes I give in to curiosity and answer.

“Hello?”

I’m met with silence, and I sigh, feeling gullible for having just let curiosity lead me into the phone-scammers trap. I guess I’d better prepared for all the calls now. I’m about to hang up—

“Mauria?”

My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. I’m frozen in place, except for my eyes which are squeezed tightly closed against some invisible, phantom pain.

“Mauria, are you there?”

“Wh-Who’s this?” I ask, needlessly. I hastily brush cracker crumbs off my shirt.

“It’s Astarion, darling.”

I interrogate every phoneme for a clue to his motivation and mood and get nothing. Even if I knew what to say, all the moisture is suddenly gone from my mouth.

“I, uh, I am calling to—uh, sorry, it’s been so long—”
He pauses, and if he’s looking for me to fill it with reassurance, he’s shit out of luck.
“—but I wanted to talk to you about a project.”

_{Now you try! Just stand up tall, tilt your head to the sky,
and list off all the bad things in your life!
Hasa diga eebowai³}

My voice returned, and it does so with a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Imagine, if you will, a Canada goose. A startled one.

“Yes, well,” he chuckles softly at my reaction. “That’s quite what I thought you’d say.”

Oh, don’t you fucking dare be charming, I think, angry to find the city lights turning to blurry starbursts before my eyes.

“Listen, love,” his voice is so breezy and casual, and I’m struck by the contrast to the last thing he said to me. No…He screamed it at me.
—You don’t deserve me—

“...and so the condition of the funding is that you’re on the project.”

I was mostly listening. Maybe not every detail but enough to know that I’m hearing from Astarion because Astarion needs something for Astarion. Quelle surprise!

“No,” I say, entirely without emotion. I’m proud of myself. It’s almost as if I act, and teach voice control as a profession.

“.Love,…please.”

“No.”

“Don’t you miss—” for a second I think he’s going to say me. Don't you miss me?

“— it?”

My stomach drops into my toes. Of course that’s not what he was going to say.
“It could be fun,” he says, trying an encouraging and conspiratorial tone. “And you and me, together again, the project is sure to be a hit.”

“No.” That’s it, Mauria. Good girl. One word. Don’t give. He’ll take. Hang up. HANG UP!

I hear the huff, and can picture him perfectly in this moment; he’s rubbing the space between his eyes, his mouth has gone tight, and scrunched up at the corners in a very unattractive way.
“You’re being unnecessarily petulant.”

I almost laugh. Me?! I’m being petulant? And even if I am, it’s entirely earned.

My cheeks burn, and I stand quickly, rattling my wine glass on the coffee table. I plant my feet, lock my knees and square my chest, wanting to shove him, to bite, scratch—anything but sit quietly and let Astarion dump more blame on me.
“Astarion, I—” my whole body vibrates as though I’m suddenly all coffee and no sleep. “Astarion, I don’t deserve you.”

I jab my finger at the EndCall, then toss my phone across the couch like it bit me.

I stare at it, scarcely breathing for several long minutes.
When it doesn’t ring again, I start to cry.

_{And he showed me things
Many beautiful things
That I hadn't thought to explore
They were off my path
So I never had dared
I had been so careful
I never had cared
And he made me feel excited—
Well, excited and scared ⁴}

I don’t believe in fate. I believe that you get what you work for, what you plant and nurture—what you deserve, so I attribute absolutely no meaning to that random call.
I blink up at the smooth ceiling of my apartment, then sit up and punch down my pillow for the tenth or maybe fiftieth time. I wish the call had been duct cleaners, someone about my car’s extended warranty, or even a Nigerian Prince! Those all seem like great alternatives to him.

I spent too long exorcising Astarion Ancunín from my life to let one phone call unravel my mind. All those late nights of peanut butter Häagen-Dazs straight from the carton, angsty singer-songwriter ballads sung at top volume in a shower hot enough to blister skin, the dozens of hours of online therapy where I’d finally learned to say his name without tasting bile—they were all steps toward where I am now. I will not reopen that wound.

I moved to Brooklyn so I could walk down the street without having to avert my eyes from every romantic bistro in Midtown. I work in a second-tier theatre so I never have to grit my teeth at the glow of theatre marquees that no longer read Pros and Cons. I fucked any dark and hairy brute that didn’t stink of instant regret, trying to drive the scent of bergamot, and the feel of porcelain skin and silver curls out from under my skin, and in one two minute phone call I’d contaminated my new, hard won world - with Astarion.
I flip over again, grunting. This is insane. It was one meaningless call against a decade old breakup. Twelve years in fact. If our past was a person it would be an emotional pre-teen; awkward, self-absorbed, and desperately in need of a wash.

I pick up my phone, just to turn it face down so the unlit screen will stop mocking me. I pause halfway and send a silent prayer of apology up to @TheHolisticPhychologist_14, wherever they may be.

I stare into the blue light in my hand. It seems to get brighter and brighter the longer I look at it. I look away and I can still see the words in negative, burned in and floating in my vision.

I flick on the lamp, and open the bottom drawer of the nightstand from which I pull out a book I haven’t laid a hand on in nearly a decade.

Dec 1, 2011

At the top of the subway stairs on the sidewalk at Lexington and 77th, he slipped a blindfold from his coat pocket and held it out.

‘What? No!’ was my first reaction, laughing nervously at the strange request.

Predictably, he pulled out the puppy dog eyes, then combined it with the cat-like grin. A menagerie of manipulation, but I was a goner! The whole trip to the restaurant, a ten minute walk, I could hear people commenting and giggling about the bizarre sight of this silver haired man steering a blindfolded woman through sidewalk traffic.

I was a mix of excited and mortified, and just kept calling out, ‘Don’t mind us, my boyfriend is mad!’ or ‘Not being abducted, thanks for asking.’

When we stopped walking, he removed the blindfold, and we stood outside Chez Fifi. I stared at the sign for a moment, then screamed and burst into giggles.

It was an ongoing joke that we found the most pretentious restaurants on the island for special occasions.

‘You win,’ I said through gasps. ‘I will never be able to top Chez Fifi.’
Astarion beamed, and tongued at a fang, so pleased with himself.

He gave me my birthday gift over dessert.
It was a book.
My favourite book.
We ate pistachio souffle with thick warm cream.
The wrapping paper was dark blue.
It matched my dress.
He wore a green jacket.
It was snowing when we walked home.
A busker was playing Locked out of Heaven on an acoustic guitar.
Standing under the lamppost in the snowfall, he looked surreal.
He looked at me as though I was as well.

I remember every fucking moment of that night. My finger traces the recessed engraving on the cover, remembering the pattern by feel. I twist a faint smile back into a scowl. I used to read something from it every day. This was my favourite story. A love story—but not a delicate, starry-eyed tale—one with blisters and callouses. One that endures misunderstandings, loss and separation, pride and ego.
I haven’t picked it up now for years, and am about to put it into the drawer when a surge of anger makes my eyes sting and my throat burn. I glare at the cover accusingly a moment before I flip it open.

I pick my phone back up, and the faint taste of bile hits the back of my tongue.

1. Thank You For The Music, Mamma Mia back
2. She Used To Be Mine, Waitress back
3. Hasa diga eebowai, Book of Mormon back
4. I know things now, Into the Woods back

Chapter Text

five

One song
One last refrain
Glory
From the pretty boy front man
Who wasted opportunity
One song
He had the world at his feet
Glory
In the eyes of a young girl

~One Song Glory, Rent

July 1, 2024

“All these long years, and I’ve never stopped needing you.”
I dip my chin and look up from under long dark lashes. Dropping my voice further I let a soft smile pull at the corner of my mouth. “But I couldn’t find the words. Until now.”
The boyish smile reveals a hint of fang. Subtle, unless you know. “I think you need me, too—”

“Wow. Oh, wow. Stop. Please. No wonder you’re out of work—that’s a terrible line. Cliché, lacking in sincerity, underdeliv—”

“Shadowheart,” I say, my affect going instantly flaccid. “I must have missed your knock.”

She slinks through the doorway, and I evaluate her from the reflection in my full length mirror. Her hair is mussed, as is her robe—a long pale blue satiny thing, trimmed at the collar and cuffs with what might have once been ostrich feathers, but now looks more like a pigeon that the street cleaners swept into the gutter. Her makeup looks professional on the half of her face that isn’t smudged and smeared. I can’t decide if she’d look more at home draped seductively over a velvet chaise with a silver cigarette holder between her fingers, or sleeping in the vestibule of the 24hour ATM.

She ignores me and circles around from the doorway to pick up my notebook from the foot of my bed, where she sits down, flipping noisily through the pages.

“You wrote this?” Her voice holds an inscrutable note. “It’s good.”

“Like I give a shit about what you—Ugh!—could you not?!—” I say, too late to stop Shadowheart laying back against my pillows. She just ignores me harder.
She’s the first person who has laid eyes on my ideas, and my heart does a sharp double-beat that pisses me off.

“No, it’s not my approval you’re looking for, is it?” I don’t look back, but I don’t need to—I can hear the knowing smirk on her face.

“Darling, I am a man of exceptional patience, but truly, if you don’t get your grubby hands off my notes—” I pinch the bridge of my nose and I exhale a long breath so to finish calmly, “—I will fucking kill you. Darling.’

“You’re being unnecessarily petulant.” I turn sharply to face her and her eyes drop, reminding me that I’m naked. “I’m here to help you,” she calls after me as I stomp into my closet.

“Help me?” My voice is higher pitched than I’d like. I take a deep and private breath letting the scent of clean laundry, leather, and my cologne restore my calm. I dither over a neat row of heavy watches, and choose one with a buff leather band and exposed movements. I emerge dressed in well fitted, light grey, linen blend pants, and a light cotton shirt, the colour of cotton candy. The buttons are open to my breast bone and a teardrop shaped ruby pendant peeks out. “What makes you think I want—never mind, need—your help?”

I roll my cuffs to my elbows, then dab some of my signature scent in the crooks of my arms, and check my reflection. I slip into shoes and admire the healthy amount of sinewy ankle that shows above blue canvas boatshoes. “If that’s the speech you’re thinking of giving her,” Shadowheart lifts her eyes, “I’m here just in time to save you from yourself.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know that you shouldn’t apologize unless you mean it.”

“.I—I wasn’t planning on it.” Not exactly a lie. I’ve been trying not to think about that. I don’t know if I’m better to be conciliatory, or cold. Should I evoke or evade?

_{It won't be easy, you'll think it strange
When I try to explain how I feel¹}

“Wasn’t planning to apologize, or wasn’t planning to do it falsely?” Shadowheart’s shot follows me out of my bedroom and into the living room. She leans in the doorway, smirking as I rummage through my bag.

“Where’s my fucking wallet?!” I have no time for crazy people in my apartment this morning. I planned to meet Mauria at her work just before lunch.

“— and don’t diminish her again.”

“Don’t what? How … I don’t take advice from people in their pajamas. Thanks anyhow, sweetheart.”

I send a plume of mail off the console table by the door and still no wallet. Mauria works in Brooklyn, and if I’m going to get there in Monday traffic I need to leave now.

I’m startled when suddenly Shadowheart is right behind me. “Astarion, here,” she holds out my keys and wallet, and looks up into my eyes with a steady sort of reassurance that is more off-putting than the snark.

“— and don’t fuck this up.”

I haven’t been in The Harvey theatre in years, and crossing the threshold, I’m charmed all over again. It has this decaying aesthetic that lends an importance to the event. Even with the house lights up it gives the reassuring sense that, at the end of all things, there will still be theatre.

_{There is no life, I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free ²}

I think I like it because it embodies the idea that enjoying a show is more than what’s onstage. Done properly, it’s a comprehensive, full-body experience. Unfortunately, in NYC, theatre is wielded as a symbol of position and rank, and like most things used purely for status, the whole point is to minimize it’s importance. Like the billionaires who burn $1000 bills just to flex over how meaningless it is.

I find that frequent theatre-goers are often insufferable in their acquired blindness toward the spectacle.
Those who’ve become desensitized to it, whether through sheer repetition or some other irredeemable quality, will complain about the congestion of the lobby, while the still-wonderous marvel at it’s opulence. They take in the architecture, and are often a tripping hazard and given to sudden stops as they gaze up into the ornate ceilings wearing a look of awe.

Once seated, you can tell the difference between them by how they pass the time before curtain. Are they checking their watches and scrolling their phones, or are they excitedly pointing out props, taking selfies, and pouring over the playbill?

My friend Patti—extraordinary woman—once had a most delightful meltdown on stage. Someone in the audience took a picture mid-song, and she stopped. Just stopped singing! She refused to continue until they were removed. Then again, there was the time Patti snatched the phone away from a woman who couldn’t be arsed to look up from texting during the performance. Most certainly they were both from the former, not the latter category of theatre goers. I may be a snob about some things, some might say many things, but everyone should have access to theatre.

I slip into a seat in row M to wait for a break in the action.
Onstage, two actors crouch at the edge, speaking to their music director who is gesticulating wildly. With a script rolled up in one hand, she looks like she’s about to smack them on the nose for messing on the floor, and knowing this particular music director, it could happen.

She’d need a stepladder to meet the actors’ height and yet the two men give her their undivided and timid attention. Mauria waves them back downstage and returns to her seat in the third row, next to the director. She kicks her red converse up on the seat in front. ‘From right after That’s Alright', she calls up and rehearsal resumes.
The director leans toward her and presumably points out my presence, for a moment later Mauria twists in her seat and we lock eyes. I raise my hand high enough to be considered a greeting, and she turns away quickly.
It’s another 45 minutes before they break for lunch.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, not turning to speak to me as I come down the aisle.

“You didn’t respond to my text.”

Her chest twitches once, a laugh borne of nothing remotely resembling humour.
“I did, I assure you,” she says, but waves her hand, clearing the comment from the air as I go to check my phone. “Never mind. Why are you here?”

“I believe I asked you a question, darling.” I’m trying to remain pleasant. Karlach insisted that I remain pleasant, but she’s doing that irritating thing where she makes me say what I’m thinking. “I’m here to see about your answer.”

She scoffs. “My answer? I said No! Three times in fact. Do you want to hear it again?”

_{Those who don’t try never look foolish³}

“Ah, but all of those were all before I told you what the project was,” I say, grinning my best boyish grin. A grin that she herself once told me should have to be registered with the state and permitted as a dangerous weapon. Her expression doesn’t move.

“Stuff the charm, Astarion. You think me knowing the project helped your case?”

I tip my head side to side, considering. “I think that it made your decision easier.” I search her face for some kind of clue, but find nothing there.

“Please,” I sigh. “Just hear me out.”

She crosses her arms and shrugs.

“Oh! Not here!”
I am not about to launch into it as I stand here with my proverbial hat in my hand. “No, no, no. A conversation of this gravity requires a proper setting. Something with wine and oysters, perhaps?”

She doesn’t budge. She doesn’t even blink, and I wonder if she’s grown immune to my charm, though she never was charmed by such things.

“Can I buy you a beer?”

I bring our drinks to the table where Mauria is checking her phone. She doesn’t look up when I set her pint in front of her, just mumbles a vague thanks, and keeps typing.
I feel a creeping dread, like ice water trickling down my spine. The impassiveness that Mauria has for me is unsettling. I’ve never seen her cold before, I realize. She hated me the last time we spoke as well, but there was still life in it then.
Rage, despair, grief—all hot emotions.
This is just… nothing.

“You look—“

She shakes her head. “Nope. Don’t.” Finally she looks at me. “I don’t care to hear how you think I look. I don’t know what you can convince me with, but it’s not idle flattery.”

“I assure you, it’s far from idle,” I say, and give her a fangy grin.

“Last warning.” She checks her watch, and I bristle but gather my thoughts.

“Mauria,” I begin, carefully planning my route through this minefield, “Karlach told me to find something meaningful to me—”

“And you chose my favourite book?”

“It’s the first thing that came to mind.”

“Hmph.” She downs an inch off the top of her beer. “And of course you acted on it instantly. How very... you.”

“It will make a good show. You always said you wanted to—”

“That I wanted to adapt it? Yes. I did! And don’t pretend you didn’t remember that when you pitched the idea to Karlach.” She tips the glass to her lips again, and her eyes squeeze shut in what looks like pain for just a moment.

“I bought the rights. This is happening. Be part of it.”

“The fuck you did!” she croaks. “Astarion, no.”

She looks like I slapped her. Hells, I feel like I slapped her, and my chest burns as I watch the implications of this cross her face. The only way she gets to make her show now is through me. One fat tear runs down her face, and Mauria slaps it sharply away. “You’re a bastard.”

She’s not wrong. She’s not the least bit wrong. “This wasn’t meant to have anything to do with you at all.”

“Bullshit! How could it not? Out of all the stories in the world, you choose mine? You’re either trying to punish me or you’re trying to trap me. But it very much does involve me.”

“This was all Gale’s doing,” I growl, lowering my volume when I become aware that we are beginning to draw the attention of the surrounding tables.

“Don’t think I’m not fucking livid with him, too. You’re both using me. Thirteen years and neither of you tried once to talk to me—to apologize—to see if there was anything salvageable—you just cut me loose—and now you blindside me, dangling the only bait that you know I couldn’t resist.”

I don’t miss the bit about her not being able to resist, and I bite my tongue to keep from leaping on it immediately. Under the table I drive my nails into my thigh. It’s what Karlach would do if she were here, and though my manicure is less effective than hers the effect is still grounding. “I’m sorry.” I say instead. I think I even mean it.

The quiet between us stretches out for what seems like hours, but is probably less than a minute.

_{I stand on a precipice
I struggle to keep my balance
I open myself
I open myself one stitch at a time ⁴}

“I want this show, Mauria,” I spin my glass on the paper coaster, unable to look into her tear-streaked face. “And Gale is a dick, but he’s not wrong—the show will be better with you on it—with us together on it. You know that. Whatever else we were, we were fucking magic.“

Mauria wiped her face on her sleeve and came up nodding. “I want this show, too,” she said, each word sounding like it was forced through mud. “But let me be clear. Astarion Ancunín, I do not want you.”
Mauria, evidently done with this conversation, got up and left.

Thank the gods for small mercies, I suppose. If I wasn’t already dead, that might have done the job.

Dec 25, 2011

“Astarion Ancunín, this was your godsdamned idea! Get off the fucking piano and help me!”

I laughed, loving how Mauria got so extra mouthy when she got drunk!

It was my idea. Mauria had not wanted to host Christmas, asking instead to be whisked away to a spa resort upstate to hide out for the three whole days we had off.
I loved that idea. I really did, and I would have loved to give my girl what she wanted, but our schedule would not allow it. “Three days off” was misleading. The show was dark for three days, yes, but Mauria and I had never been busier, and she knew it. When she wished for her couple’s massage and sugar scrub she’d known perfectly well that we couldn’t swing it.

As for the apartment full of friends we were entertaining that snowy Christmas day, she could holler at me all she wanted, she was absolutely loving it.
People came and went all afternoon, bringing with them cartons of takeout and bottles of liquor.

“It’s going to take us a decade to drink all this wine!” she commented, hiding a particularly pricey sancerre behind some breakfast cereal to keep it safe from the guests.

I spent most of the day at the piano. There was the half hour where Mauria insisted she needed me to ‘look at something’ with her in our bedroom and I fucked her slow against the wall while, 5 inches of wood and plaster away, our friends sang Christmas carols about baby Jesus.

But otherwise, I was installed at the keys, providing accompaniment to an increasingly chaotic sing-a-long.

_{Drink with me, to days gone by.
To the life that used to be.
At the shrine of friendship, never say die.
Let the wine of friendship never run dry.
Here's to you and here's to me. ⁵}

‘I’ll go help her,” Karlach offered, responding to Mauria’s bellowing, “though, I can’t cook either.”

“Cook?!” I exclaimed. “Don’t fall for her theatrics, darling, Mauria is pulling lids off the sushi trays—she’s not in there dressing quails.”
Karlach gave me a mock salute, and tottered slightly to the kitchen to help.

Afternoon had stretched into evening, and only Gale and Karlach remained as the crowd scattered to other obligations.
“You live a charmed life, my friend.” Gale refilled his wine and sunk deep into a toffee leather Eames chair.

“I’m aware,” I told him and I looked subvertively into the other room. Mauria and Karlach both sat on the kitchen counter, engaged in deep, drunken, and certainly philosophical, conversation. I shoved Gale’s feet from the matching ottoman to sit opposite him—knee to knee.
I withdrew a small moss-green velvet box from my pocket and popped it open, grinning expectantly at Gale.

“Astarion,” he gasped, pressing his hand to his heart, “this is so unexpected!” He took the box from me, examining the ring within it.

“Very nice,” Gale murmured, holding up the ring and observing the way the Christmas fairy lights sparkled in the facets. The large hexagon shaped ruby was set in platinum. A narrow band twisted around the stone like vines, each sprouted with three tiny leaves in delicate, nearly white metal.

I grabbed his wrist and lowered the hand that waved my secret treasure around.

“Unique and understated—” he said.

“—and stunning,” I finished, “just like its intended wearer.”

“Is this happening tonight?” He snapped the box shut and tossed it back to me. “Exciting!

“Well, it was, but,” I looked over my shoulder again, checking for small elves or large tieflings, “But earlier, people were talking about Tony—”

Gale nodded, “Yes, I was listening—sounds like Pros and Cons is a real contender.”

“Right. So, I wondered if that might be a better time?”

I half hoped he’d say no. The ring had already been burning a hole in my pocket for two months. I wasn’t sure I’d survive another four.

“As your friend, I’d counsel you to lock her in before she can come to her senses,” he smirked into his wineglass. “As your business partner, your story as a writing duo is more compelling as mentor/protegée than as affianced.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not concerned with an image.”

Gale shrugged. “No, but the committee likes a feel-good story. You may be well advised not to give them any reason to find someone else’s narrative more interesting.”

“Only you could use the work affianced unironically,” I smirked, returning the ring to my pocket when I heard Mauria approaching.

She put her arms around me from behind, and nuzzled into my neck.
“Astarion, I need your help with something for a minute please.” There was a very slight slur to her words. “It’s just in the bedroom.”

“You already sang that number, Mo—and by the way, you guys fuck to the exact tempo of ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’,” Karlach teased.

Mauria gasped and slapped her friend’s arm, then swung around to sit across my lap.

“Love you,” she whispered against my mouth. Her lips tasted sugary, and her words felt cool and peppermint, and her warm little frame fit perfectly against every curve and hollow of my lap.

She was made to be mine.
She put her head down on my shoulder, and the ring in my pocket suddenly weighed twenty pounds.

“Love you more,” I murmured back, and kissed her forehead. Gods, I was lost for this woman.

Gale rolled his eyes, and shuffled out past us.
“Charmed,” he repeated, warmly. “I hope you know it.”

I did.

My name hung in lights over the biggest rising hit on Broadway. I had an apartment, full of friends, overlooking the park in the greatest city in the world. And I had this brilliant little thing perched on my lap, who looked at me like I hung the moon.
I had absolutely everything.

I was a fool to think it would last.

1. Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, Evita back
2. Pure Imagination, Wonka back
3. Dancing Through Life, Wicked back
4. Goodbye Until Tomorrow, The Last 5 Years back
5. Drink With Me, Les Misérables back

Chapter Text

six

"Write what you know"
So they say, all I know is I don't know what to write
Or the right way to write it
This is big, lady, don't screw it up
This is not some little vaudeville I'm reviewing

~Watch What Happens, Newsies

February 5, 2012

“Could I have your autograph?”

I didn’t even turn around at first—those were not words that my ears were attuned to. Astarion had that kind of following—some of it bordering on creepy, in my opinion, but he loved being loved, and who could resist him?
I looked up to see his fangy grin looking over my shoulder. He motioned with his chin and I turned around to find three women behind me. Girls, really, they couldn’t have been me more than sixteen or seventeen—the same age I was when I got to the city.

_{You wait little girl on an empty stage
For fate to turn the light on
Your life little girl is an empty page
That men will want to write on.} ¹

They huddled together so tightly they resembled a single creature, in their matching puffy jackets. They clutched and clung to each others’ arms against the bite of cold, or perhaps of the city, for they were most definitely tourists.
“Ms Wyld?” the center hydra-head spoke for all of them, and the other two giggled into her shoulders.
I looked at Astarion for an assist. I couldn’t place these kids, but they seemed to know me.

“Fans, darling,” he said, understanding my confusion. He turned me toward them, and snaked a supportive hand around my waist while I signed my first autograph with a sparkly silver marker on a menu they’d probably stolen from Ellen’s Stardust diner.
“We recognized you from your interview with Starkid.”

I chatted with them for a few minutes about their visit to the city, what shows they were seeing, and their favourite performers. They opened up a canvas bag printed with the Wicked logo to show me more treasures they’d stolen from various landmarks. Astarion stepped into a doorway and leaned on the bricks.

I gestured him over, but he gave me a watery sort of smile and a headshake. The girls talked on top of each other in their excitement, but above all of it I heard Astarion sighing through his nose. I glanced over when he cleared his throat for the third time, but found him fixed to his phone. When Astarion eventually stepped back in to pry me loose he was all smiles and apologetic dips of his head. “I’m afraid I must steal her back—” He gave the girls a regretful smile. “—my lovely Ms. Wyld does have a rather busy day. Come, love. The masses won’t dazzle themselves.”

“I thought maybe you meant to invite them back to ours to watch My Fair Lady, darling,” he teased, nudging me along the pavement with a hand on my back, “or maybe to start yourself a little fan club?”

_{The dog you really got to dread
Is the one that howls inside your head
It’s him whose howling drives men mad
And a mind to it’s undoing} ²

“I’ve never had that happen before,” I said, still shellshocked.
Astarion squeezed my hand and gave me a tight-lipped smile.
“Enjoy it, superstar—you’ve become quite the treat of the week.”

Only later did I audiate what I’d missed in the moment—what I couldn’t hear over the din of fledgling fame. It was the first notes of the coda; the beginning to the end of our song.

July 8, 2024

I should have argued.
I should have kicked and scratched and made a scene.
But that’s not my style. That role already went to someone else.

Instead, I toe at the kickplate of the doorman’s desk, smudging arcs across the polished brass. I drum my fingers on the counter while the young man behind the desk looks apologetic, and the old fashioned phone receiver at his ear rings for the fourth or perhaps tenth time.

Gale suggested using Astarion’s apartment—my old apartment—as the base of our writing operations. I should have immediately refused, of course. I really couldn’t give two shits how much money it saved the project—it was wildly unprofessional and inappropriate under any circumstances, and especially cruel given my particular history. I was so shocked, and frankly hurt, that Gale would compound my misery with such a request that I didn’t object.

_{Lady Peaceful, Lady Happy
That’s what I long to be} ³

And apparently Astarion will agree to anything to get Gale’s backing, so here we are.
Refusing to working in Astarion’s apartment would have meant opening the door on a host of personal feelings that I didn’t feel up to defending to Gale, to Astarion, to…

“Mr. Ancunín says to let you know you’re early?”

“The fuck he did—”
I look at my phone. 8:54am.
The doorman takes a small step backwards. Like I’m the problem here.

“Nothing to do then but wait, I suppose.” I can feel my shoulders creeping up on my ears.

Seriously, Gale?

Silence, COMPLETE silence for a week, and he messages me now?

Before I can put my phone away, it buzzes again.


Four letter words are my specialty, and I stab every one of them into my phone, muttering as I do. I am intensely aware of the anxious look the doorman is giving the crazy woman in his lobby, but this is New York City—if he hasn’t seen worse, then he needs some toughening up.

Rudeness is weakness.

*buzz*

But this fucking guy—

I hold my breath until the edges of my vision blur, then slowly backspace one curse word at a time. What’s left doesn’t qualify as a sentence so I slip the phone back into my pocket.

At 9:15 I’m sitting on the marble lobby floor behind my satchell and guitar case, placed like ramparts around me. The doorman glares at the silent phone on his desk, and each time we make accidental eye contact I feel more humiliated than the last.

“Perhaps you could call up and remind Mr. Ancunín that this meeting was his idea.”

The man looks like I asked him if he’d mind stepping into a lion’s pen and retrieving a pork roast, so I wave the request away. It’s not his fault the resident in the penthouse is an asshole. In fact, he probably already knows that the resident in the penthouse is an asshole.

At 9:21 the call comes down from on high. His majesty the Lord Astarion Ancunín has finished flexing and is prepared to grant an audience.

_{Prepare ye, the way of the Lord
Prepare ye, the way of the Lord}⁴

The door is off the latch when I reach the thirteenth floor, which is part relief, part just the kind of passive aggressive bullshit I’d expect from Astarion, but I push it open anyhow, and regret it immediately.

The scent—something sweet, something green—hits my memory like a freight train and makes my knees buckle.

Lazy Sunday mornings in bed - late nights working at the piano - arm in arm and dressed to the nines at opening nights - slumped, nearly asleep against Astarion’s chest on the cab ride home.
The memories in turn hit like stomach punches and threaten to send my breakfast smoothie back out the escape hatch. I’m tossed back in time to my newly acquired studio apartment, kneeling in front of an open and unpacked suitcase. It was more than a month before I could bring myself to unpack it, as though by refusing to lay clothes in the dresser I could somehow deny the events that led me there. The night I opened the suitcase and noticed the distinct absence of his scent—

I can’t breathe

Gale can sue me—I’m leaving while I still can.

“Come through to the living room,” a mellifluous voice calls.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Astarion,” I stroll into the living room, shoulders back, and set my satchel on the table. “good morning.”
I’d deliberately practiced his name—in the shower, on the train, in the lobby. Too clipped and I would sound churlish. Too expanded would sound like longing. This one comes out well, I think. Friendly, professional, mildly disengaged. My shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

“Good morning, Mauria.”

Astarion rises from his chair in a single fluid motion that seems to engage none of his muscles, and nearly floats on bare feet strung with prominent tendons, and—

For the love of everything holy, STOP looking at him!

Astarion extends his hand, which I shake with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Whoa, girl.

“Should we just say something passive-agressive now? To get it out of the way, I mean?”

“Oh! If I’d known, I’d have prepared something while I waited downstairs for twenty-five minutes.”

“Touché.”

I shrug and do this thing I read once about relaxing your tongue in your mouth. It doesn’t work for shit.

“.I’m glad you’re here.”

Astarion raps his knuckles on the piano top twice and turns away. “And by ‘here’ I mean ‘giving the project a chance’.”

“Uh-huh.”

Despite decades of voice work, Astarion has never been able to train away one troublesome quirk of his speech; a little half-breath that precedes anything that makes him feel vulnerable.

I hate that I know that.

It should sound like victory, instead it just stirs up the smoothie again.

I hate that I heard it.

“Coffee?” Astarion scowls down at some papers. Even in quarter profile, I can see that he hates that I heard it, too.

“You’ve made peace with the espresso machine? Huh! I’d have lost that bet.”

Astarion had an unhealthy rivalry with the appliance since the moment I brought it into our lives. He swore upside-down and sideways that it hated him, and only answered to me. Astarion has always been a manipulative bastard—it had just been charming back then.

“It’s more of a tense armistice. In fact, it’s probably better if you go in there.”

“You want me to make coffee?” The laugh is genuine and surprises me when it bubbles out. “In your apartment?”

“It knows no other master.”

Astarion Ancunín, you are something else entirely.

As far as I know, Astarion is a singular and unique talent when it comes to spinning rudeness into charm.

_{Well, really, that's no way to behave on your first day out. But, uhm, since you're such an exceptional beauty, I'm prepared to forgive you.} ⁵

“Happy to.” It’s not a lie. I could use a moment to catch my breath.

Nothing has changed in this kitchen. I open and close a few cabinets and find everything just where I expect to. I snoop in the fridge and find… not much, really. Some white wine, a takeout container, enough cosmetics to open a Sephora, and milk. Astarion doesn’t drink milk—it upsets his little vampiric tummy, so I immediately start wondering who’s been leaving things in his apartment, and why. Whether I like it or not—and I do not—I’m suddenly hyperaware of my surroundings, and looking for more clues about the life of a man I haven’t had to think about in a decade.

And you don’t have to think about him now, either, Mo.

By the time the coffees are made, I’m calm.
Relatively calm.
Calm enough to leave the kitchen anyhow, and I set our cups down, realizing far too late that I didn’t even ask what he wanted.
I made the coffee that I always made for him. The way he’d tell me I did better than anyone else. Extra-strong, double espresso with enough brown sugar to bake a cake.

Stupid girl. Naive girl.

I clear a patch of dining room table. Notebook, headphones, a small microphone—I busy myself with arranging my essentials. A leather pouch of coloured pencils, a worn paperback thesaurus, and an oatmeal cookie wrapped in cellophane—I am doing everything I can not to watch Astarion sample his coffee.

You do not care what he thinks of your coffee.

Astarion stretches like a cat, arching his back off the chair before reaching for the cup. The lip of the cup stops an inch from him mouth, and a hint of a smile curls his lip. He looks up before I can look away.

Shit.

Astarion returns the coffee to the table, unsampled.

So it’s going to be like that, huh?

The smirk drops and I follow his eyes to the novel I’ve just pulled from the satchel.
“You still have it.”

“I assumed we’d need it. For reference. I have the movie in… here… … too…”

Astarion’s face has gone blank in a way that makes me profoundly sad. Is it his expression, or that I used to read this man’s mind, and now—sitting five feet away from him in broad daylight, I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s thinking?
And I can’t ask.

“Perhaps you should brief me on the current project status, and outline your expectations of my contribution.” I push my belongings to the side, and put my cookie back in my bag. “Then we can begin.”

Real cool, girl.

Astarion paces between his piano and the window. The window and his armchair. The chair and the sofa. Twenty minutes ago he hesitantly handed over a folder of papers and notes and he’s been hovering ever since.
I take my time, flipping carefully between pages of his notebook. He sits down, rising right back to his feet when I skip back a couple pages to refer to something.

“Well?”

“Could I trouble you for a drink of water?”

Astarion makes a strangled sort of moan, but returns with a glass.

“Are you enjoying this, darling?” Astarion sniffs, looking like a put-out kitten. “The mind game? This little power trip of withholding feedback.”

I am not, actually. It’s making me ill, but he started it.
“How’s your coffee?” I ask evenly and turn over another page.

_{Words fall through me and always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out} ⁶

Leaning back in the sofa, he stretches one arm along the back, and rests his ankle on his knee like he hasn’t a care in the world. It lasts under a minute. But before he can work up a full froth I reach the last page and close the notebook.

Godsdamnit.

This is complicated.
I am supposed to feel hostile.
And I do… I suppose. Don’t I?

How do I respond when all the words that spring to my mind are allowed out of my mouth over my dead body?

You need to say something.

Beautiful? Absolutely fucking not.
Exciting. Inspired. Captivating. In your dreams, Ancunín.

Say something, now!

“If you think it’s shit, darling, just say it.”

I shake my head, hoping to dislodge the lump in my throat.
“Not shit.”

“You were hoping though, weren’t you?” There is no snarl in that, no challenge, which is so much worse.

My attempt to force a laugh fails spectacularly, dying in my throat. “Little bit, yeah.”

I don’t look at him. I can’t, so I reopen the notebook—not that either of us thinks I’m reading.

To my utter astonishment, he doesn’t demand that I expand on my thoughts or praise him.

“.I know.” Astarion gathers up the notes, and squares the pages up into the folder. His voice is quiet. “Then let’s get to work, hmm?”

There’s a lot going on in Astarion’s rough drafts, and I have no shortage of questions and ideas. Every single word uttered is in service of a lyric or line, and far from being awkward, it’s liberating. Work and purpose fills the spaces I was reserving for hurt and hostility. When a stray silence slinks in, Astarion soothes it with piano, playing a patchwork of the measures and melodies from still transient tunes that yet lack a title, let alone a plot or place. I can see the shape this will become, though it’s more like fingerpainting than photography at this stage.

By 5:30pm I’m slumped in a molded plastic seat, on my way home.
This is the first opportunity I’ve had all day to check my phone, and I’m reminded that I left Gale on read since this morning. I pull up his messages.

Sorry, Gale. I don’t have the energy left for your tryhard texts today.

July 15, 2024

Each day, my arrival is met with a shorter and shorter ‘time-out’ in the lobby before the doorman gets the nod to let me in. By day five, I am buzzed in on arrival - no phone call at all! The doorman seems relieved to no longer be caught in our crossfire.

“You’re making coffee?” Astarion calls in to me from the living room.

It’s a stupid question.

“Yes, I’ll just be a moment.”

It’s stupid because I start every day the same way.

He says something else but I fire up the bean grinder and the high pitched whizzing covers the sound.

The quiet afterwards feels fuller than silence should.

“Since you’re in there anyhow—” I drown out his words in the hiss of the steam wand churning milk into microfoam.

“Hmm?” I ask, sitting down with my latte and straightening my notes. “What were you saying?”

Astarion shakes his head, waving away the question.

The next morning I find my latte mug set out and alongside it, Astarion’s fussy little demitasse.
And for reasons I don’t wish to discuss, when I heap in the brown sugar, I do so with a faint smile on my face.

July 22, 2024

“Astarion,” I say slowly leafing through the loose pages, “Where did half the dialogue go?”

It’s become necessary to compare the draft I leave behind at 5pm against the one I arrive to in the morning. It seems that much like the story of the cobbler, the elves here also work through the night. These are the opening scene pages—or what is left of them.

_{While I celebrate their creative freedom
A little part of me just wants to punch those motherfuckers in the teeth} ⁷

“Hmm? Half what dialogue?” Astarion barely glances up from his work, which might as well be a written confession of guilt.

“There were five ‘As You Wish’ moments—” I continue to flip pages in disbelief.

“It was dragging. I thought we ought to keep things moving.”

“Moving? Dragging?!” I feel the colour rising in my cheeks. “The repetition is key, Astarion. Each time it means something different.”

“It means I love you,” Astarion says, waving off my concern. “And by the third one, the audience gets the bit. No need to flog the dead horse.”

“The audience gets the bit? It’s not a bit, Astarion! It’s… it’s everything!”

He drops his pen and looks up at last.

“Wonderful, we’ll leave all five ‘As You Wish’es and then drop the curtain. Done. That will be two hundred dollars, plus service fee. Thank you. Goodnight.”

I know when I’m being baited, and I put the pages, and my irritation, aside for now. I open my novel, and skim to find a passage about a universe of beaches for a new song, but I still feel Astarion’s smug aspect boring into me. Sure enough, he’s pushed back from the table and propped one ankle on his knee, waiting comfortably in anticipation of my response. Well, fuck him twice, I’m not playing this dumb game.

At last he sits forward, and slaps his thighs. “Four. That’s my final offer.”

Motherfucker. He thinks this is a joke.

“No!” The hardcover book hits the table just right and the loud cracking noise makes Astarion blink once before he recovers and flutters innocent lashes at me around huge wet cow eyes.

“I don’t care what you think the audience knows. Buttercup doesn’t! She doesn’t know it. Westley says ‘As you wish’, and Buttercup hears the deference of a servant, then hears ‘as you wish’ as the defiance of an inferior.”

I’m standing now, my hands braced on the table as I ground myself for battle.

“Even when it becomes a comfort and a ritual she doesn’t hear it for what it is—not really! Not until it’s slipped through her fingers and Westley is gone!!”

Astarion’s smirk remains, but the challenging arch in his eyebrows has dropped. The pull under his eyes that says ‘go on—entertain me’ has softened, and he adjusts his posture, dropping his arms and sitting up. I hear my rough breathing and the high pitched sound of my throat closing around anger I swore I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing.

I will not.

He leans forward, reaching I think, to cover my hands with his. I pull my hands back, clattering my chair noisily as i do, then stepping behind it to add to the barriers that stand between us. The smirk doesn’t hold through my rejection of his— What even is this?! Regret? Apology?

“You really are attached to this, aren’t you?”
Astarion pauses, then nods. “Alright. Five. We’ll keep all five.”

I set my jaw. “Fuck you, now I want six.”

My ears burn. I’ve been having nightmares about this moment for weeks, but here I am on the other side of our first real confrontation, victorious. “I’m going to make another coffee.” I declare, far more imperiously than coffee merits. I stomp away, and pretend not to hear him chuckle under his breath.

“Good girl.”

I stare at the words, feeling them fall heavily into the void in my chest. Before I can respond another text comes in.

A big, fucking Gale-shaped void.

August 12, 2024

On the end table, my phone buzzes for the fourth time that hour.

“Tsk,” Astarion’s gaze slides up from his laptop. “So popular.”

This is supposed to be our focused work time. Normally I’d have my phone off and put away, but I’m waiting to hear where Karlach will meet me for lunch. Two of the texts have been from students rebooking their lessons, and the third was a courtesy reminder of a dentist appointment, but that’s really none of his fucking business so, I don’t bother correcting him. Instead, I pick it up and immediately make my own annoyed sound.

“Gale?” Astarion raises his eyes from his laptop.

“Who else?” I read off the text with zero inflection; “How’s my dream team? Do you need anything? Pencils? Sandwiches? A rhyme for Inconceivable?”

“I hate him,” Astarion says, blandly. “We’ve met every single benchmark! He needs to get off my ass.”

The phone buzzes in my hand again.
“Oh no,” I hold it up to show Astarion the banana dancing on my screen. “He’s sending gifs now.”

“No. You’re fu— Give me that,” Astarion lunges at me grabbing my wrist, and plucking my phone from my hand..

“Don’t start a fight. He’s trying to help. I think.”

Astarion grins, showing off the pointy bits of his smile, even as his eyes focus on the screen.

“Astarion.” I’m using my disapproving voice, but if he was looking he’d see that my expression doesn’t match.

“Me? I would never.” He types something out quickly then locks my phone and tosses it back. “There. That should shut him up for a while.”

I begin to laugh, then snap my mouth shut around the sound. “You’re awful!” Still, the chuckle makes my chest twitch. “He’s going to call, you know.”

“There’s no way.”

When the phone begins to ring in my hand we can’t answer. We’re laughing too hard.

August 26, 2024

_{My stomach just went off. It's suppertime, and Charlie Brown has forgotten to feed me.
Here I lie, a withering hollow shell of a dog and there sits my supper
dish ... EMPTY!}⁸

What is a standard, middle-of-the-day ritual in every other workplace does not exist inside this apartment. Astarion doesn’t eat. He can, he just doesn’t need to, and so doesn’t stop for lunch. There is no “let’s grab a bite”, or “I’m starving, how ‘bout you?” There is only me and my fragile, mortal need for regular sustenance. The first and only time I tried to eat lunch like a normal person, I lasted just shy of a minute.

A painful minute. The longest minute of my life.

Possibly the loudest minute, too.

The crinkle of the cellophane peeling open.
Astarion looked up in passive interest, then back to his notes.

The sound of chewing.
It wasn’t as though I had a mouthful of potato chips, or even carrot sticks—it was a motherfucking sandwich!

Chew
It was so godsdamned loud.

Chew
“Peanut butter?” Astarion asked politely.

Chew
“And strawberry jam.”

I then promptly remembered an important phone call I needed to make, and scurried out into the hall to finish my shameful act of nutrition in secret.
It was a nightmare and ever since, I find reasons to leave the apartment around noon hour.

“Gotta make a phone call”
“Stretch my legs”
“Errand”
“Need some air”

Humiliating, but still nothing compared to staying. Astarion rarely comments, usually just nodding vaguely when I leave, but sometimes I look back and find he’s watching me go with a faint sort of amusement on his face.

“Enjoy your walk, darling.” He waves his fingertips at me.

Astarion knows damn well that I hate walks.

Usually around 11:42, I begin anxiously scripting my very reasonable excuse for ducking out for a few minutes, but I’m distracted when Astarion pulls out his phone and pokes around a bit. I watch from the corner of my eye, both because it’s unusual that he should break the “focus hours” understanding, and just on base nosiness. I don’t like admitting it, but I’m curious about who he texts with during the day. I think if it were Karlach or Gale he’d say so. I return my eyes to the page in front of me before he can catch me watching, and he tucks the phone away without comment.

A quarter of an hour later his phone buzzes again, and he excuses himself from the apartment.
When the door closes behind him and I’m sitting in an empty apartment, my first thought is whether I have time to stuff a ham and swiss croissant, a handful of grapes and a drinkable yogurt down my gullet.
I’m about to risk it when Astarion reopens his apartment door, and I freeze, like I’ve been caught rummaging through his nightstand instead of pulling a flower-print lunchbag out of my backpack.

“Lunch.”

Astarion plunks a large paper bag on the table between us, then busies himself restacking papers, and corralling pencils to make space while I sit frozen, uncertain how to proceed.

“Lunch.” He repeats the word like it’s the most normal part of the day, instead of 25 daily minutes of misery.

He pulls a paper-wrapped bundle from the bag, checks the mark scribbled onto it and sets it in front of himself. He puts the otherone in front of me. “It’s just Central Valley Deli,” he says, “nothing special.”

I unwrap the black and white checked paper and when the scent of jalapenos and caramelized onions hits me, my eyes roll back a little.

A Wicked panini. This was my favourite, but I haven’t had one of these in… its been a while since I had one. I peel the top off to peek inside, and strings of melted mozzarella bind the bread to the fillings.

Double jalapenos, mayo only on one side.

Astarion never failed to comment on my sandwich peculiarities, and would tease me, insisting that no sane person cared whether their lettuce was put on before or after grilling. He’d warn that someday my over-complicated sandwich order would get us banned from the deli, and then it would be nothing but warm lettuce for the rest of my life.
I drop the lid of the sandwich quickly when Astarion sets down a strawberry lemonade as well.

“I hope you don’t mind, I just ordered whatever—” he says, still rummaging in the bag. “.Is it alright?”

I take a bite quickly to avoid having to talk. The bread is yeasty and crisped around the edges, the roast beef is heavily peppered, and the onions are sweet and greasy.
My tongue feels thick in my mouth, and I need a beat before I can get words out.

“Yeah,” I say, around a mouthful of hot peppers and cold lettuce, “yeah—its perfect.”

September 11, 2024

“There are no bad ideas between one and five”

Astarion likes routine, and afternoon creative brainstorming was something we did for years. He slaps his hands together, satisfied with his pronouncement that it will be reinstated.

“You remember ‘Anything Goes Afternoons’, don’t you?”

I nearly do a spittake, and my hand goes to my mouth to ensure the water stays in. I’m familiar with Anything Goes Afternoons.

“What?” Astarion stares back at me, deciphering my reaction.

“I do, but…”

I’m not sure how to phrase this. He’s remembering wrong. The term didn’t refer to work. Not by a long shot. My eyes slide traitorously to the dining table, the piano top, the windowsill, and I can nearly hear the heat radiating off my face, but he’s still staring.

“I don’t think that’s how we used that term, Astarion.”

“Oh.” he says, at last. I watch the colour rise up his neck to the tips of his ears like mercury in a thermometer. It’s a rare occasion to see Astarion so pink, and I’d quite like to burst into flames and die when his eyes slide to the windowsill as well.

“OH!”

For a moment, it looks like he’s rebooting—his eyes dart quickly side to side, scanning a mental emergency manual for the location of the self-destruct button. Or maybe contemplating how much a fall from a 13th floor window would hurt.

With a look of desperation, his hand plunges into his pocket and comes out with his phone.

“Hello?” Astarion puts the phone to his ear and turns away from me.

The phone screen is black. I can see it from here. He has to know this.
Doesn’t he?

“Uh huh, no, it’s fine - I can talk now.”

He’s really committing to this bit, and my mortification is temporary paused in favour of disbelief.

“Right, well. You have my notes - it’s all in there.”

For a man who works in theatre, his acting is terrible. I can’t even believe what I’m watching, and I’m not sure if my mouth hangs open in horror or glee.

He paces and nods, throwing in the occasional, “That makes sense,” or “Right.” His gaze is fixed to a spot on the wall, like he’s trying to manifest a portal he can escape through.

“I can look into that—” Astarion makes the mistake of turning back, and we lock eyes again. That’s when I lose it. He squeezes his mouth tightly shut and turns away quickly. I think I see his shoulders bouncing.

“That should be no problem.” His voice is constricted and he’s looking skyward, perhaps hoping to be smote. I’d happily take a smiting too, come to think.

I snort, and tighten my hands over my face, and there’s this horrible glugging sound from my chest where the laugh is trapped. My eyes and throat burn.

“Ok, darling, well thanks for calling.”

When he drops his phone into his pocket I’m howling with laughter. Tears stream down my face. I’m gasping for breath.
Astarion nods sharply, ready to resume our work. He pauses for a moment, mouth open, no sound.
“No,” Astarion turns sharply away again, avoiding my eye. “I’m still going to need a minute.”

Tears are making Astarion’s eyes sparkle too, and he wipes at them with the collar of his shirt. “Oh, shit,” he wheezes, “I’m sorry.”

Astarion sobers slowly. His brow creases and crumples in a parade of emotions that cycle through too quickly to name. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

I’m grateful my eyes are already wet.

Yeah, me too.

If this was Astarion, I’d wonder if he was withholding deliberately as an act of dominance. Not so, Gale. I chew my lip, typing and backspacing.
Typing.
Backspacing.
Do I care what Gale thinks?
Sighing.
Yes. I do.

For reasons I can’t explain I’m personally offended by this.

My outloud laugh dies on a sad note. Thirteen years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated—I’d have been out the door already, sprinting for the bus that I would debark one stop too early so I could stop at Campagnola for a box of the best cannoli in the city.

Gods, I miss my friend.

I send him the link, and login details for my streaming account.

That answer is so ‘Gale’.

I watch the three dots appear, disappear, appear. I’ve been pretty prickly with Gale. No, I’ve been pretty fucking horrid to Gale for weeks. I wouldn’t blame him if he told me to keep it professional.

I only realize I am holding my breath when it suddenly escapes in a slightly maniacal laugh. The screen blurs, and I wipe it clear again.

I click my phone off, and for a long time, I just sit in the dark, staring out, across the river at Manhattan.

I click my phone back on, and bring up my food delivery app. I’m smiling to myself as I order a box of cannoli, putting in an address I know by heart, and hoping Gale hasn’t moved.

For the first time in months I feel… lighter, like I finally swallowed the lump in my throat.
One anyway.

One to go.

1. Sixteen Going On Seventeen, The Sound of Music back
2. Wait For Me (Reprise), Hadestown back
3. Maybe This Time, Cabaret back
4. Prepare Ye, Godspell back
5. Rocky Horror Picture Show back
6. Falling Slowly, Once back
7. Die, Vampire, Die, [title of show] back
8. Suppertime, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown back

Chapter Text

seven

There was a time I could stop on a dime
Forbearance was one of my talents
But since you've been around I can't hold my ground
I'm consistently losing my balance
I'm an accident waiting to happen
I'm a mishap about to ensue
I'm the toy on the stair
The three legged chair
The hem that's been caught by a shoe

~Accident Waiting to Happen, The Drowsy Chaperone

September 22, 2024

“Heya! Sorry I’m late. Construction has half the bloody sidewalk closed off north of 48th Street. It’s no longer a commute—it’s just five blocks of dry-humping my fellow New Yorkers. ‘Nother half block and I’dda—”

Gale puts his finger to his lips to indicate that there is work in progress, and I pull out the chair next to him at Astarion’s dining set.

A little way across the room, Astarion sits at the piano, fingers resting silently on the keys, scowling at Mauria.

“You’re doing it again.”

“I’m doing what again?”

“That thing where you combine the condescending smile with the sigh to demonstrate how very patient you’re being with me. Our Lady of Eternal Suffering.”

“I am not.” She looks up, smiling to acknowledge my arrival. She also rolls her eyes and inclines her head toward Astarion, and I kind of see his point.

“Fine,” she says, “what if we didn’t resolve that chord? Come up short on the final cadence?”

Astarion replays the phrase, leaving the penultimate note to ring, unsatisfying through the apartment.

“I like that,” Gale says, glancing up from his laptop. “It feels like a held breath.”

“Exactly! And if we cut to intermission after this number, we make them hold their breath for 15 minutes!” Mauria comes around the piano, and leans in to mark up the score. “So, make this the cut, and move—”

Astarion’s hand shoots up, and he easily disarms Mauria, sending her pencil clattering across the floor like some kind of kung-fu move. “No.”

“Have they been like this all morning?” I pick up the pencil when it comes to rest against my boot, and turn my back to the pair, trying to sequester our conversation. They’re not listening to me, they’re too absorbed in shooting metaphorical daggers at each other.

“Not all morning. Probably.”

I wrinkle my nose, taking on Astarion’s scowl.

“Don’t judge them by this. Everything is fine.” Gale looks almost fondly at the pair, bickering over the piano and I wonder by what metric Gale is measuring success. No broken skin?

“Do they have the overture yet?”

“Ah. No.”

I open my mouth to speak—to remind him that we have a lot riding on regular results, to ask what the hold up is, to suggest that maybe it’s time to intervene—but Gale puts his hand over mine to belay my rant.

“They’re ok, Karlach, just give them a little more time.”

I raise my eyebrow, hoping to invite details. There are notes strewn end to end on this table. If productivity can be measured in reams of paper, then this place is a godsdamned factory. Just not one capable of churning out an overture, apparently.

“Reassure me, Gale.”

“Always with the technicalities!!” Astarion growls, and we both look over. When Mauria smirks at him, and waves away the outburst like a buzzing insect, we turn our attention back to our conversation.

“—because I’m not feeling particularly good about what I’m seeing here.”

“It’s just their process. They challenge each other—”

This time our attention is drawn by Mauria’s outraged squawk.

“—they bicker sure, and then they buckle down and write brilliant songs. Trust, Karlach. You put your reputation on the line for this.”

“I am very fucking aware of that, mate!” I throw my hands up in frustration.

“No, I mean, you were willing to put your reputation out there for him. You believed it was a good bet, so trust. Trust your own instincts.”

I pick up a pencil and Not one. Not many producers can make that claim—even the best of us bets on the wrong horse eventually—it’s an accepted risk. Gale misunderstands my concern. I’m not concerned about my show tanking—

“How are… they?” I ask again, not yet getting the answer to my real question.

“They’re doing good work. It’s getting easier.”

“She’s confiding in you, again?”

“A little.” Even in the warm morning light, I think Gale is blushing. “You know Mo, she’s too openhearted to hold on to old grudges very tightly.”

I do know Mo. She’s the best kind of person; remembers birthdays, sends flowers, would show up at a personal crisis at 2am with wine and a willingness to help dispose of a body.
If it were a question of who I wanted in my life, there’d be no contest.

But this isn’t personal, it’s business, and Astarion Ancunín is a fucking genius.

I watch them a little longer. They’re bent over the piano top, collaborating over a notebook. When they’re cooking they’re a hell of a team, but I’ve considered what will happen if they can’t pull it together. If I have to choose just one of them to see the project through to the end, it will be Astarion.
I made that decision long ago. Gale wanted Mauria on this for reasons that are his own—

“Gale, let me ask you a hypothetical question—”

“Mauria.”

His answer is immediate and stone serious. The affable softness that Gale wears like a signature scent is evapourated, and I’m left talking to business Gale now—the man who will put millions of dollars into this before we are through.

He holds my eye with a steady intensity. It’s not confrontational or hostile, but neither is it inviting any further discussion of my hypothetical question.

“Huh. Noted.”

“Indeed.”

My attention is drawn back to bickering over the piano.

“Keep your bloody pencil off my notes! I swear to the gods, woman—”

“Pbllt!” Mauria fires back a wet noise.

“You didn’t just—! Very mature, Mauria!”

Let’s hope we don’t have to find out which of us actually holds the power in this enterprise. He may look mild, but I don’t relish a dick-swinging contest with Gale Dekarios.

“Where do you want to go?” I turn sideways to slip between two men who can only be investment bankers based on their two day old haircuts and dead eyes.

“I saw an Instagram post about a new bakery at the next corner.”

Step, step, dodge, step, roll, slide. Navigating sidewalk traffic is a godsdamned folk dance in New York, and even after a decade out of the city, Mauria’s still got the rhythm.

“I’m in the mood for a donut.”

“For lunch?”

“Sure,—” Mauria slows to look at me. “No?”

“Fuck, yeah. Lead the way,” I say, cheerfully.

When we arrive at the bakery, the line is out the door and we queue up.

“How are things?” We shuffle forward a half step at a time.

“Things?” She smirks at me. “Things are just fine. Everything is coming along well.”

At the threshold of the restaurant the scent of warm yeast and sugar hits me and my mouth begins to water. I’ll go back to kale salad tomorrow.

“How’s the overture coming?” I hope that sounds casual.

“Next, please.”

Mauria pulls her eyes from the menu board above the counter, and they widen almost cartoonishly when they land on the man taking the orders.

“Oh—”

With his pecan coloured hair braided off his face on one side, and warm blue/gold eyes, he’s definitely attractive. Even I can agree to that. What is more striking though is his sheer size. I look the man in the eye, evenly from our nearly equal, nearly seven-foot heights.

“—hello,” Mauria finishes. I hear the charisma turn on like someone throwing those old timey circuit breakers.

Thunk-crackle-buzzzz

His smile is warm and slow, and he leans in when he asks, “What can I get you?”

_{Everything you bring me
Got me dripping like a honeycomb
If you've got some sugar for me
Sugar daddy, bring it home} ¹

Mauria stands frozen with an open-mouthed smile until I elbow her in the ribs. She reboots, gliding into conversation like she didn’t just go offline for a moment.

“What do you recommend?” Mauria looks the poor man over with shameless, naked hunger

“Do you like sweet? Spicy, hot, sticky? I’m sure I have something you’ll like.”

The man behind the counter—Halsin, according to his name badge—seems completely genuine. He’s earnestly asking about pastry, which makes this exchange all the more hilarious to watch.

“Sweet,” Mauria breathes the word, eyes fixed on his forearms, tanned and tattooed, revealed by his bunched up shirtsleeves. “Y’know what? Just surprise me,” she adds, and I roll my eyes so hard I’m not sure they don’t make a sound.

Halsin laughs, a low, pleasant rumble. “Will do.” He looks at me.

“I’ll have whatever she’s having, thanks.”

I tap my wrist on the paypad and am handed a little sign indicating our order number, to put on our table.

“He’s perfect.” We find a table, and Mauria cranes around to look at him, eventually scooting her chair over next to mine, to watch him head-on.

“Well, he’s handsome, but he thinks you’re a crazy person now.” The hungry look she’s giving him makes me wonder how long this woman’s dry-spell has been. “I’m not sure I’d call him perfect.”

“No, you’re wrong. He’s exactly what I need.”

There’s no point talking to my writer. She’s off in la-la-land staring at the baker behind the counter, and I’m actually a bit relieved. I had misgivings about putting her and Astarion in the same room together again, but with this kind of response—

_{A girl alone, all on her own
must try to have a heart of stone
So I try not to make it known my yearning} ²

“Ladies—”

Halsin sets a tray on the edge of the table to unload it.

Our sweet, bakery-fresh lunch looks amazing. Thick slices of grilled brioche is layered with slices of banana, shiny with glaze. It’s topped with caramel, whipped cream, and what might be candied nuts. I mentally cancel my rest days, and replace them with HIIT circuits.

The chair across from me slides away from the table. Mauria has shoved it away with her foot. “I wonder if you have a minute, Halsin.”

Direct, I’ll give her that.

“I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

What is she doing?

Halsin looks bewildered, but curious, and glancing over his shoulder at the order counter, takes a seat.

“What can I help you with?”

“Halsin, I’m writing a musical, and I think you should be in it.”

His eyebrows go way up, and his mouth makes a very round O. I more or less mirror his response.

“A musical? That’s very interesting. What’s it about?” His confused aspect hasn’t dropped, but he’s calmly curious to hear more. I’m less calm, but just as curious.

“Hmm, just your everyday things. Romance, sword fights, giants—”

Oh. I see.

“Giants?” Halsin says, chuckling that soft rumble again. “Sounds exciting.”

“Mmhm. In fact, the moment I saw you, I said to Karlach—” she pauses, and puts her hand on my arm. “This is Karlach. She’s the producer.” Halsin nods at me. “My name is Mauria. I’m the writer.”

“Yes, you said.” He’s grinning broadly now, amused by the nutbar to my left.

“Right. Well, I said to Karlach the moment that I saw you that you were—” she turns back to me, and I just shake my head in resignation.

“Perfect—” I realize now, she wasn’t attracted to him. Well, maybe she was, but not romantically, or even physically—not in that way. “She said you were perfect.”

Halsin’s eyes sparkle with humour, and he tips his head, appreciative of the assessment.

“Right. Perfect. Halsin, have you ever done any acting?”

His ginger eyebrows dip together, and he looks at me to confirm this isn’t a joke. I just shrug.

“Oh! N-no. No acting.”

“Not even a school play?”

I give up. I dig into my lunch and moan a little when warm, butter-crisp bread and sweet bananas hits my tongue. It’s worth every box jump I’ll do.

“Could you lift… say, Karlach here?”

“Easily.”

“Can you look intimidating?”

Halsin laughs. He keeps doing that with such ease that I’m being charmed against my will.

“I don’t know—I’ve never tried.”

Mauria gasps. “Perfect.”

Ok. Time for some reality. “He would need to audition, Mo.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Mauria nods soberly at me, and stuffs a bite of toast into her mouth. Her eyes crinkle at the corners, and she smiles around a mouthful of sugar as she shakes her head reassuringly at Halsin as if I can’t see her.

They talk for another few minutes, making plans to meet up in a few days to discuss this more, until the hostile noises from the long line at the order counter catch Halsin’s attention and he excuses himself to hurry back there.

“I hope he’s a better actor than he is a server.”

Mauria makes a cheerful, unworried noise, and stuffs a forkful of banana into her mouth.

“Oh, good, you’re already back!” Mauria declares the moment we reenter the apartment. “I found our Fezzik!”

Astarion does not look up from his papers. “I thought you were getting lunch.”

Based on Gale’s asthenic aspect, the two of them aren’t back. They’re still where we left them, never having moved.

“I should have reminded you,” Mauria laughs, clocking Gale’s sour puss, “Astarion doesn’t break for lunch unless forced.” She plops a paper bag on top of the piano and fishes out the take-out carton containing the remains of her lunch. “Here.”

“He’s great, Astarion! I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

Astarion looks up now. “You just happened to find a giant actor on your way to lunch?”

“No! Actually, he’s the counter-guy at the bakery where we ate lunch.”

“An actor who claims he’s a waiter? How refreshing. It usually goes the other way, doesn’t it?”

“He’s not an actor at all.”

Astarion looks up in earnest now. “Not… an actor?” Astarion looks for a fleeting second like he bit into a lemon, then recovers a smirk.
“Then, I assume he’s stunning.”

“No!” Mauria objects. “Ok, yes, but that’s not the point—he’ll be great for Fezzik. He’s big and powerful, yes, but there’s a gentleness to him. You can see it in his eyes. And his laugh sounds like a big cat purring. Come meet him with me—the day after tomorrow.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, darling. I trust you.”

Gale’s grouchy expression, which had softened with each bite of room temperature toast, crumples back into concern. “Ah, I think perhaps a slightly more rigorous casting process might be called for.”

“Then you go with her to meet with the muscles, but I can tell you—if Mauria decided to hire Mr. Giant Purring Kitten then he’s as good as hired. Can we get back to work now?”

I settle back in at the dining table, next to Gale.

“Sure. What have you been working on?” Mauria asks.

Astarion flips the cover on the notebook in front of him, and shoves it across the table. “I don’t know. This. That. Blah blah.” He rubs his temples, looking miserable.

“This, that, blah, blah?” Mauria smirks. “I don’t charge by the word. Care to elaborate?”

“Transitions. Connective phrases. Boring shit, darling.”

I roll my eyes alongside Mauria. How very Astarion. Highlights only. Attention span of a goldfish, sometimes. “Boring” is a four-letter word to him—and not the good kind.

_{Blah blah blah, poison apple
Boring boring, evil queen
Filler filler, been there, read that!
Seven shorties on the scene.
Skip ahead, skip ahead.} ³

“You can’t just skim over the boring stuff,” Mauria sighs. She takes the notebook from him, flipping back to where he stopped. “Astarion. It all matters—it’s how you get…”

She stops talking abruptly. Astarion knocks on the table, trying to reclaim her attention. “Hellooooo?”

“Shhhh!” Mauria puts her hands over her ears, blocking him out before she loses what she is thinking about. “I have it.”

“Have what?”

Mauria grabs her guitar, stepping onto the bench to climb atop the piano. I make a mental note for no more sugar at lunchtime.

“The show opens with a single guitar.”

“Pbllt…” Astarion blows a raspberry at the suggestion, and I muffle my laugh behind my wrist.

“Shut up and listen.”

Beside me, Gale snorts quietly.

Mauria begins playing a meandering melody. The script balances on her other knee and she reads from it.

“Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin.”

She continues to fingerpick a simple pattern, humming the chords as she does.

“B minor. A add9”

The sound changes with the addition of a third chord.

“G. We’ve been thinking about this all wrong. We don’t lead with the overture, Astarion.”

Mauria’s face screws up as she tries to sort her racing thoughts. “The story doesn’t start at the beginning, why would we?”

“It’s a lovely tune, but—” Astarion taps his fingertips together, considering his words, “it’s not very exciting.”

“Good, I don’t want exciting.” Mauria gets down to wander. She always claimed to think better in motion. “The Farm Scenes are not very exciting. You said so yourself when you tried to cut out like ten ‘As You Wish’es.”

“I heard about that.” Gale leans in, mid chew, hand over his mouth. “Astarion rewrote—”

I shush him gently, and point to the fragile creative bubble forming before us.

“Two, darling.” Astarion smirks. “I tried to cut two of them. And if you agree it’s boring why would we open with it?”

“Because it matters. It all matters. If we don’t understand this slow build, the quiet romance—If we don’t see Westley slip away, then the -coming back to her- doesn’t mean anything!”

I can see in Astarion’s expression that he doesn’t get it.

I do, though, and Mauria’s right. Westley is just a bloke in a mask, unless we know—no, unless we care—about ‘the boring bits’.

But Astarion isn’t dismissing it, I realize. His shoulders are back, chin forward. His whole body strains in her direction—he’s waiting for her to sell it.

“We have this whole scene to set, right? A romantic backstory, and— Star, go to about the middle of page five in the movie script and tell me what you see.”

Mauria paces away, still picking out her repeating pattern.

“Do you see it?”

Astarion does as he’s asked and skims the script, eyes following his finger, tracing the text, line after line, until he stops suddenly. The way his palm presses to the page is protective—possessive, even. He sees it.

“We’d have to move the line back, wouldn’t we?”

“Mmhm,” Mauria agrees, “to the end of the Farm scenes, but no one will care.”

“So, we have Buttercup and Westley, being boring—” Astarion grins when she laughs at that.

“Yes…”

My attention flicks between the two of them. I don’t know why, but I catch myself holding my breath

“and it’s slow, sparse, and melodic, untillll—” Astarion drags out the consonant, teasing her with the anticipation. He’s got it, but he’s making her wait for it.

_{I mean, with the price of meat, what it is
When you get it, if you get it (ah!)
Good, you got it} ⁴

A ripple like static electricity scatters across my skin, up my neck, and I rack my brain for the line, trying to get to the answer first.

“—the kid says,” Astarion picks the script up again, and clears his throat. “‘When does it get good?’”

“YES!” I jump when Mauria squeals. She bounces on her toes and swings the guitar around to her back. “Then BAM—that’s when we hit them with the overture.”

Beside me, I hear Gale’s soft “mmphm?”

Astarion leans in, half risen from his seat. “Keep going.”

“Hohhhhhhkay,” She takes a deep breath. “So, standard overture stuff. Dirty brass, cymbals, high woodwinds—“ Her arms swing in wide arcs with each word like they’re being written in the air above her. “—and LOUD. So much volume. The Iocane number and the ROUS bit share the same hook, so we can do something with that—get the earworm planted early.”

Astarion is on his feet now. “Yes, darling!” Astarion lunges for the score on top of the piano, and his eyes race across each line, devouring and searching the notes, scanning for slivers that will make up the overture. He comes up next to Mauria, trying to put the score in her hands. Astarion can’t stand close enough to show her, and he tugs at the strap of her guitar, fumbling to get it over her head. Soft grunts of frustration rumble in his throat when it gets caught under her arm.

Gale and I share a perfectly synchronized “What in the nine hells is happening right now?” look, swiveling back to the pair at the piano with razor-sharp comedic timing, but we might as well be on the moon for all the notice either writer takes of us.

Astarion snaps the score in front of his partner. He’s pressed to her side, anchoring her tight to his hip with a hand on her waist. Mauria doesn’t seem to register this—her eyes are fixed on his other hand. She holds the bundle of sheet music while Astarion thumbs page over page. His fingers flit lightly across each line, down the page before stroking over to the next. He’s looking for something.

“That’s it. Mmhmm. Right there.”

Sweet hells! He practically moans the words.

Mauria snatches the score and drops to her knees fanning the pages wide across the floor, then reaches back for Astarion’s hand, dragging him down next to her.

“Are you seeing this?” I whisper to Gale.

“Unfortunately,” he whispers back, but glancing over I can see he’s riveted.

A quarter of an hour passes with Astarion scribbling madly as sounds pass between them like code. A bit of humming gets a delighted “yes!” Something scrawled pulls a hitched breath. They vocalize back and forth like birdsong. A call and answer that is pleasing to the ear, but completely incomprehensible outside the species. They whisper, trill, shout, mumble, sing—their voices rise and fall as they toss ideas out with the blind certainty the other will catch them. Their hands drum against the floor—excited, emphatic, energetically tapping out rhythms. Mauria props up on her palms, rocking back and forth. She whimpers with impatience at the pace of Astarion’s notes across the page. He pauses, chewing on the pencil as he works something out.

“Astarion,” Mauria whines. She's frantic when she threads her fingers into the curls at his neck and plucks the pencil from between his teeth. She drops to her forearms, her hip nudging him out of the way to make a space for her in front of the sea of scattered papers.

“Ohhhh, yes. Mauria, yes.” Astarion gasps, and his eyes widen at whatever she’s written, and if she had a tail she just wagged it with pleasure.
Ideas build, coming faster than they can write them and they grapple over the pencil twice more, frustrated by the limitations of corporeal speed until, at last Astarion jots the final note of the overture with a flourish and a bark of elation, and the room goes silent.

“Holy shit,” Astarion breathes. He sits up on his knees, and Mauria mirrors the posture.

“Yeah, holy shit,” Mauria sighs.

_{When will the blood begin to race?
The sleeping bud burst into bloom?
When will the flames at last consume us?} ⁵

They’re beaming, panting, sweating even, maybe—and for one long moment they stay just like that, only inches apart—the energy between them palpable and effervescent like champagne bubbles on a tongue.

Gale clears his throat, and both turn. They couldn’t look more startled to see us sitting there if we were headlights and they, a pair of deer.

“Fuck!” Astarion throws his head back in a laugh that shakes his whole body. Mauria scuttles back, and buries her face in her hands, but there’s no mistaking the bounce of her shoulders or the day-glo pink of her ears.

Next to me, Gale shifts awkwardly in his seat. He lets out a slow breath. His eyes are wide and his blinks slow as he processes what we just watched. “Well then,” he chuckles, “hopefully they can keep up this energy.”

“That was incredible!!” Astarion blows out a long breath and sprawls on his back, giggling madly. “Fuck!”

“I don’t know,” I say slowly, looking from Gale back to the scene before me. “If they keep this energy up, we may have a completely different set of problems.”

Mar 10, 2012

He flopped down in the leather club chair beside me, and picked up my $32 scotch, draining it in a single gulp.

“Tough day?”

Astarion draped his arms over the sides of the chair, and slid lower, legs splayed out. I glanced around the club, looking to see if this tantrum was drawing any attention, but the after-work crowd was all too focused on their own troubles to concern themselves with mine.

“Karlach, do you remember when the job was simply to put up a great show?”

I laughed humourlessly. I knew exactly what he meant—modern Broadway had become a machine. Buy IP, produce IP, market the shit out of IP until every slightly edgy teen can rattle off the prattle, comparing their videos online in the latest “challenge”. I also knew that he had something—or someone—very specific in mind.

“I hear ya, pal.” I waited.

“When did it become about panels, interviews, podcasts—photos? Why does anyone need a fucking photo of the writer? How many people could pick Alain Boublil out of a lineup? None. That’s how many.”

I gestured to the server for another couple drinks. Astarion opened his eyes at the sound of fresh ice and whiskey.

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s great at it—naturally good with people, she’s the perfect little mascot. And she gets them eating from her hand. Obviously, I understand why they’d want to photograph her. Obviously.”

A smile tugged at his mouth, but he looked tired. More tired than I recalled ever seeing him.

“But?”

“We’re over two-hundred shows in, and I don’t know—when people need shit done, they call my name. When they want someone to praise and celebrate, they call hers.”

Astarion’s phone buzzed, and the screen lit up with Mauria’s name. He hit ignore and flipped it face down.

“Everyone wants to talk about her first show, and her overnight success. No one cares to discuss what it takes to keep that show standing, eight shows a week. What it takes to make a Broadway hit out of her rinky-dink community playhouse experiment.”

“And that’s you?”

Astarion rolled his head toward me, and glared. I glared back. The idea that he might be trying to out-glare me was hilarious, but I decided to let it go. He didn’t need grief from me—he was making his own.

“I didn’t expect… this.”

_{She makes directors wait all day
One line per hour is all she'll say
And still, she thinks we're gonna pay
She needs a talking to.} ⁶

I gave him a reassuring smack to the thigh, hard enough that he yelped and sat up straight.

“How could you ever have anticipated this?”

Astarion wasn’t much for sarcasm that he wasn’t handing out personally, and so he just nodded and a miserable sort of bleat issued from him, like a depressed concertina. Either genuinely or willfully he was oblivious that all his misery was his own doing. It was Astarion’s suggestion to make Mauria the ‘face’ of the show. He’d patted himself on the back long and hard over what a generous mentor it made him, glossing over how relieved he was to offload his least preferred bit of the job—shmoozing—to his apprentice.

“Astarion, I have to go pal—I’m meeting someone.”
He looked up at me with wounded puppy eyes.
“Pull your shit together, then go home and have this conversation with Mo, eh?”

I stood, pausing for one more bit of advice.

“And, Astarion?—I’m going to assume you didn’t mean to use the words mascot and rinky-dink to describe the person who brought you your single greatest production on a silver platter—the person who loves you despite, and maybe a little because, you’re an enormous pain in the ass. I’m going to forget you used those words, and I suggest you do the same.”

1. Sugar Daddy, Hedwig and the Angry Inch back
2. Bring On The Men, Jekyll and Hyde back
3. I Know It’s today, Shrek back
4. A Little Priest, Sweeney Todd back
5. Past the Point of No Return, Phantom of the Opera back
6. Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking, Smash back

Chapter Text

eight

People everywhere
A sense of expectation hanging in the air
Giving out a spark
Across the room, your eyes are glowing in the dark
And here we go again
We know the start, we know the end
Masters of the scene
We've done it all before
And now we're back to get some more
You know what I mean

~Voulez Vous, Mamma Mia

October 1, 2024

“Am I the asshole? Is it me?”

Before me, two actors stand on a sad plywood riser that is doing its tepid-best to impersonate a stage. They gape at me, then at each other torn between the emphatic Yes! that they’re surely thinking, and the knowledge that I’m paying them in cash. After the afternoon we’ve had they’d be right, too. But that’s the job.
I’m the asshole who makes them restart the scene, even though we’ve restarted the scene three times already.

“Because it’s that, or I’m missing something big, here.”

I press my palms to my eyes until starbursts appear in the blackness and thank a generic deity that these are not my actors.

“I realize this is a workshop, but I still need a little acting, if that’s not too much trouble.”

I cross the medium-sized rented studio in only a few paces, passing Astarion on the way. He chuckles at my misery, but doesn’t look up from the script he’s studying in the hopes of finding the tone for the 11 o’clock number. He’s surrounded by so many books, binders, and loose paper that my rats nest of a workspace looks like a friggin’ Pottery Barn by comparison.

“Have you even seen this movie? Read this book?”

The question was meant to be rhetorical—after all, what self-respecting actor would turn up for a workshop—even just a blocking lab—without familiarizing themselves with the source material at least a little.

“Not everyone is like you, darling,” Astarion says quietly, and I grind my teeth and try to ignore him. “Your standards can be quite—”

“It’s a motherfucking love story, for godssake!”

“Charming.”

This time I do shoot Astarion a look. I hope the look says ‘help me or shut up’, but I’d settle for only the last half.

“—and as a love story, I’d like to feel the slightest bit of, oh, I don’t know—human emotion in it!”

I snatch the script to a yelp of irritation from my co-writer and flip through until I find the scene.

“Right here! Look!” I point at the passage until the two actors step tentatively to the edge of the stage and stoop to my level.

“He was the love of her life—and she his. He was lost to her. She thought he was dead for godssake!” They continue staring at me blankly, letting their eyes flick to Astarion for help, but he’s looking intently at his papers, gleefully soaking up every ounce of my misery. “And now, after allllll this time, she discovers there is a second chance for them. Buttercup goes from the depths of despair to the heights of elation in the span of three little words—” I pause for effect, “‘AS YOU WISH’. It’s all she needed to hear to heal five years of sorrow!”

When I finish my rant, the room is silent and still, but for Astarion. He helpfully fills the space with a smug little humming noise and I swear to the gods no jury would convict me if I—

_{He had it coming, he had it coming
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there, if you'd have heard it
I betcha you would have done the same} ¹

I glare at him, until he looks at me, and when he does he just puts his hands up, the picture of innocence.

“So, this scene, you see, is pure joy, relief, elation. I swear to the gods, pick an emotion, any emotion, and we’ll use it as a jumping off point.”

I drag a chair to the center of the room and fall into it.

“Go again,’ I say. “Go!!.”

“Can you move at all?”

“Move? I can fly!’”

“Stop!” I yell, “You have a script in your hands and you still manage to get the words wrong!”
I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“I’ll show you. Stand there.” I summon the actor to his mark, shooing away the woman reading Buttercup.

“Here?”

“That’s where I’m pointing.”

“...A…am I still Westley?”

I take a bracing breath, and look over at Astarion. He’s chewing cheerfully on the end of his pencil.

“Astarion!” He jumps a little at the sound of his name. “Help me with this, yeah?”
His eyebrows go up into his hairline, but he stands, the apprehension in his stance is very similar to the hapless actor in front of me.

“HELP me,” I say impatiently, waving a script at the actor’s mark.

Gracefully, he hops onto the stage, bypassing the steps.

I pass his script back.

“No need, darling. I know my lines.”

“Fine.” I drop to my knees to start the scene and after a beat, Astarion does the same.

Astarion regards me, and while I can’t name his expression, I can see his tongue working at a fang behind his lips.

If he’s thinking I’ve put us in a bit of an awkward situation, he’s not wrong. I didn’t think this all the way through, but I’m professional, and more importantly, it’s too fucking late because we’re both here, on our knees, and face to face and we’re fucking doing this because to say anything now would be akin to admitting that something is awkward, which it is not, and why should it be? We’re just two writers blocking a scene. I’m not about to— there’s nothing- it’s just—

“Can you move at all?”

He starts the scene without me. No way out now, but through.

“Move? You’re alive—”

Every movement is in extra-sharp definition, like the frame rate of Astarion prowling on hands and knees toward me has been cranked to 120fps. He closes the gap between us, his face posed in such a mask of intense concentration that I nearly forget to finish my line.

“—if you want, I can fly.”

Before I can properly repel him, Astarion is at my side. He brushes my hair back from my forehead, his hands ardently exploring the face of a ‘beloved’ after years apart.

“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

In a whole host of tiny ways, Astarion is nearly impossible to tolerate. He has an obnoxious need to be the center of attention, speaking first, loudest, and longest. He will shamelessly check his reflection in your eyeglasses while doing a poor impression of someone who is listening to you speak. He absorbs praise like a sponge—wicking it from you whether you mean to give it or not. Where a situation calls for a gentle touch, he’ll instead toss in his two cents like a live grenade, then look wounded and bewildered when it lands poorly.

But, when it matters, the motherfucker is steady as a rock. Correction, when it matters to him.

Work mattered to Astarion, which is why people put up with the rest. The same man who turned up unapologetically—and deliberately—late to every social function kept his production schedule with the precision of an atomic clock. He’d leave my texts unread for hours but in a crisis he’d snap-to and have it half solved, details sorted, and plan in place before anyone else had a chance to unpack the issue.

It’s his inconsistencies that make him so fascinating. Made him so fascinating.

I don’t know what he’s up to here, but I assume he’s as fed up with the ‘talent’ of the 29-hour contract actors as I am and looking to make a point. Or he’s fucking with me. They’re equally likely.

He says his line and pulls me in with a hand on the small of my back. Gods help me, I gasp when he does. Not loudly, but one of the side effects of vampiric hearing is that very little gets past his notice.

_{Look at 'em—you'd never guess they can't stand one another.} ²

Shit, what’s my line?

No, not a line. A kiss.

Astarion is going to kiss me.

How could I forget that this scene ends with a kiss?

He’ll definitely stop.

This must be what people describe when they say their life flashes before their eyes at the moment of their near death.

He wouldn’t dare.
Would he?
What am I thinking? Of course he would.
Would I?
No.
I wouldn’t!
But what if—

“Heyo!”

The greeting from the doorway startles both of us. Astarion stops inches from my lips, and I spend another stupid moment suspended in stasis before I recognize that Karlach is standing in the studio doorway.

“T-take five,” I tell the actors, and get to my feet, pretending I don’t notice Astarion’s offered hand.

She’s looking stunning, as always. Today she’s dressed in a slim cut pantsuit in a soft kitten grey. The blazer is fitted and boned at a corsetted waist, the dozen tiny hook closures leaving enough of a gap that umber skin peeks through. The notched collar plunges all the way down, daring you both to look, and to not look, in equal measure.
I look down at myself briefly. I’m in black capri leggings, a black tank and a hooded cardigan. Standard Mauria wardrobe.

“Damn, girl!” I say, hopping down from the stage. “What runway did you just stomp off of?”

I trade a couple of posh air kisses with our producer.

“What brings you to our humble establishment, darling?” Astarion asks, trading for his own posh set, then stepping back next to me.

He’s near enough that I can smell his cologne.

“I brought you something,” Karlach says, fangs on full display in a wide grin.

“Well, don’t edge me darling,” Astarion croons, “We like gifts don’t we?”
He turns to include me in that statement, and runs his hand down the back of my arm.

I narrow my eyes and lean away, and godsdamned if he doesn’t wink.

“What’s up, Karlach?” I pull my phone from my pocket and check the time as I take a large step back from the silver-haired menace to my right.

“Well, as you both know, I’ve been talking you up…”
It takes several minutes for Karlach to say that the show is beginning to generate a buzz, and there’s someone she’d like us to meet.

“Ah, ah, ah—” Astarion’s tone is playful, but his eyes are sharp. He’s thinking the same thing I am; Don’t let the producer steer the cast. “—we agreed, Karlach.”

“Just meet him.”

Karlach looks like the cat that ate the canary, so I put my hand on Astarion’s forearm, trying to decelerate his objection. Given how excited she clearly is, I’m intrigued. Astarion puts his hand over mine, and I pull it back quickly.

“Oi!” Karlach bellows back out through the door. “C’mon in!”

Suddenly, sauntering through the door of this little rented-by-the-hour studio, isn’t it Wyll fucking Ravengard.

Wyll Ravengard; host of last year’s Tony Awards.
Wyll Ravengard; just off the premiere and press-tour for the movie adaptation of his breakout show.
Wyll Ravengard; the current sweetheart of Broadway.

I don’t tear my eyes from Wyll as he swaggers toward us, but grasp in the air until I find Karlach’s arm.

“No shit?” I breathe.

“No shit,” she confirms, laughing.

“Mauria, close your mouth, sweetheart,” Astarion says quietly, then steps past me to shake Wyll Ravengard’s famous and high profile hand.

Astarion dismisses the actors, and twenty minutes later we’re around a tall table at a cute little cocktail bar that Wyll owns with a few friends from Julliard.
Quite the Renaissance man, this Ravengard.

“Tell me about your show.” Wyll leans in to chat over the moderate hum of the room.

I let Astarion take the lead—this is his show, after all. His hands gesture wildly, sketching out scenes and effects in the air. At one point Astarion breaks into a verse from the Swordfight number. I lunge to rescue Wyll’s pintglass and a carafe of wine from Astarion’s riposte. We’ve drawn the attention of the entire bar, but most especially Wyll, who hangs on Astarion’s every word.

There is a warmth blooming under my ribs. I can’t tear my eyes from his smile.

Wyll’s.
Wyll’s smile.

“What’s your interest in our little project, Wyll?” As I try to steer the conversation nearer the point, Karlach returns with another round of drinks and answers for him.

“I was telling Wyllyam all about my projects, and the moment your names came up, it’s all he wanted to hear about.”

Wyll laughs in a charming, boyish sort of way that I have no doubt he’s practiced hundreds of times in front of a well lighted mirror. I sip my amaretto and OJ through a tiny plastic straw, and decide I like him anyhow.

“I’m always on the lookout for new frontiers, so when I heard the power duo of Ancunín and Wyld was back at it, I asked Karlach for an introduction.”
I don’t need to turn my head to know there is a blazing pair of irises glowing in my direction.

“I actually wrote my 4th-year paper on Pros and Cons.”

I feel the smile harden on my face, but Wyll doesn’t seem to notice. He seems eager to show off his knowledge on the production, rise, and success of the show, so I endure the guided tour through my own history. He’s done his research, but has the good manners to leave off how it ended.

“Now, having met you, I hope I’m not too forward saying that I’d very much like to be part of the project.” His brows lift hopefully as he lobs the unspecific request back in our court.

Having Wyll’s star-power backing the show would be the support and frankly the credibility we’ve been missing. Every marquee that bears his name sparkles with success, there’s no disputing his talent and reputation.

I look at Astarion, willing there to still be a thread of ESP left between us after a more than a decade. Astarion looks steadily back at me for a moment. I nod—the tiniest dip of my chin, and his tongue slips quickly over to lick his fang.

_{In any great adventure,
if you don't want to lose,
victory depends upon the poeple that you choose.} ³

Our extensive non-verbal conversation concluded, Astarion exhales slowly through pursed lips.

“Wyll, tell me, have you ever done any sword fighting?” Astarion can’t hold his professional cool, and his grin spreads wide and sharp and he extends his hand toward Wyll. “Because, I think you’d make a stellar Dread Pirate. Hmm?”

A pause that is surely no more than a couple seconds feels like an eternity and I am so focused with anticipation on the cusp of Wyll’s answer that it takes a beat to notice Astarion’s left hand is off the table, and the back of his fingers rest against mine. My back straightens and reflexively I pull away, but Astarion persists, chasing my hand and loosely hooking his pinky with my first finger.

When Wyll accepts his hand, time resumes. Astarion pulls away to lift his glass, raising it in a cheerful toast, while my traitorous fingers stretch at the loss.

I glance to my right and find Astarion looking at me; bright, open, happy. I match it without thinking. How could I not?
When he slips his hand into mine again, I don’t fight it. I lace our fingers together and hold on.

This is happening. We have a show. A real fucking show.

_{"To us and our good fortune
Be happy, be healthy, long life!
And if our good fortune never comes
Here's to whatever comes
Drink l'chaim to life} ⁴

“Well, alright!” Wyll slaps his hands together and rubs them with eager excitement. “Let’s get us a Tony.”

With a sharp, reflexive jerk, we immediately drop hands, each recoiling as though we’d just touched something sharp and dangerous.
Because, of course, we had.

March 22/12

“Astarion, why did I just run into a crying cast member in the foyer?”

I came down the centre aisle and found Astarion with his feet up on the seat ahead of him. He chewed his pencil, and looked at me blandly, meanwhile I could feel the vein on my forehead swelling from the stress.

_{I'm calm, I'm calm
I'm perfectly calm
I'm utterly under control
I haven't a worry
Where others would hurry
I stroll} ⁵

I walked into the row ahead of him, and stood between him and the stage. When he leaned to look around me, disbelief stole my breath for a moment.

“Astarion!” I turned around to address the half-dozen actors on stage as cheerfully as I could manage. “Take five, everyone.”

The moment I turned back I replaced my cheerful lilt with a tight, anxious hiss.

“You can’t just fire the cast, Astarion. Not without talking to me. Jess is wrecked—not to mention she has a contract.”

“Late, unprepared,” Astarion named the offences, ticking them off on his fingers as he went, “argumentative. I’m sure that was her I heard crack twice at Saturday’s matinee. What am I meant to do with that level of effort?”

“You’re supposed to talk to me, and we’ll deal with it together. We’ll let the director handle her. We’ll give her a warning to come in better prepared—I can keep going. What you don’t do, is you don’t make a unilateral decision to fire an actor hours before a performance.”

Astarion pinched the bridge of his nose, drawing deep for patience—with me. “You weren’t here,” he spoke each word carefully, like I needed the pace slowed in order to keep up. “While you were off—what were you doing—interview? Networking?—” He drops his voice on that last word to a low, smooth tone that sits uncomfortably in my spine. “—I’ve been here trying to hold this shit together.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and as much as I wanted to act on the red-hot anger, I was stayed by my icy dread. I stood frozen with my mouth stupidly open, trying to make sense out of what the fuck was happening, until eventually I startled when he shouted past me over my shoulder.

“She said ‘take five!’” I turned to see that the actors I dismissed were still rooted to their spots in scandalized silence. “That means get the fuck out of here!”

“Astarion!” My pulse pounded to my fingertips, and my ears began to ring. This was no time to fall apart. “What is going on with you lately? Talk to me!”

“Not a thing, darling.” Astarion said, and in any normal situation his breezy, casual tone would have been reassuring. He leaned back in his seat, and opening his phone, proceeded to casually scroll something. “Which one is Jess?” he asked, eyes flicking briefly up to meet mine.

“Long black hair, blue eyes, big tits. You know—wait, what?”

Fear sluiced through my system. The edges of my vision blurred as my skin went hot, and my blood turned to slush in my veins.

“What do you mean ‘which one’? Did you fire more than one actor?”

Astarion made made a non-committal noise, and I reached out and snatched the script from his hands. “HOW MANY ACTORS DID YOU FIRE TODAY, ASTARION?”

“Just the two—”

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

_{Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated—
Panic now, because ya got trouble, my friend} ⁶

1. Cell Block Tango, Chicago back
2. Annie Get Your Gun back
3. You Won’t Succeed On Broadway, Spamalot back
4. To Life, Fiddler on the Roofback
5. I’m Calm, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum back
6. Ya Got Trouble, The Music Man back

Chapter Text

nine

I've been very hopeful, so far.
Now for the first time, I think we're going wrong.
Hurry up and tell me,
This is just a dream.
Oh could we start again please?

~Could We Start Again Please, Jesus Christ Superstar

Oct 15, 2024

“Ok, so—the tempo changes back and forth.” Mauria balls herself up at her corner of the sofa, crouched and gathered in on herself. I know this pose.

“Vizzini, he’s all 8th notes, right? Pitter patter pitter patter.” She taps out the tempo on the back of the notebook clenched in her hands.

This is wound-up-Mauria. Grand ideas, big feelings, important decisions all spring from this pose, and this idea she’s excited about.
I nod along. If there’s one thing you don’t do when Mauria is crafting it’s interrupt—but who would want to? It’s delightful watching the chaotic thoughts coalesce and clump together.
“Then, Inigo— Bah-bah-dun-dun— quarters!” She takes a breath—noisy, gasping. I have to agree—breathing is such a bore compared to this! “And on the—” she stops. “What?”

I realize I’m grinning at her, and I rearrange my features into sober concentration. “Nothing — go on.” I gesture her forth.

“Ok, so at every intersection they share a word—though they’re talking about two very different things, and neither is listening to the other AT ALL. Hmm,” she opens her notebook and scribbles frantically “Girl—Sail—Land—Fight—Lead— Ok, stop it, you're making that face again!!”

Mauria scrunches her nose to keep her mouth in a frown and glares at me across the expanse of amber-coloured velvet that separates us.

I put my notes down and shake my head. “I’m sorry—you know how you get. I’m entertained”

_{The moments of happiness
We had the experience but missed the meaning} ¹

She rolls her eyes and flaps a hand at me, dismissing my observation. “But, do you like it?!” She reddens as she clarifies, “The song. Do you like the song?”

The lines of her face are so familiar, even after all this time. She’s wide-eyed with anticipation and in just a moment the muscle in her right cheek will twitch. Next the line under her lower lip will tighten, as impatience pushes through. I feel a sad little satisfaction when a moment later it does just that.

“Yes,” I answer as evenly as I can. “It’s wonderful.”

“Ok—shut up—it’s not.” She laughs and falls into a crosslegged pose, “but it could be, yeah? I just—” Mauria chews on her pencil. “I don’t know where to go from there.”

She takes her glasses off and rubs at her eyes. Sometime between Rodents of Unusual Size and the Finale it’s gotten dark.

I lean forward, putting down my notes and picking up my phone.
8:56pm.
Oops. This is not the first time we’ve gone over, but this is definitely the longest we’ve gone over accidentally.

Was it accidentally?

As though in answer, I hear a grumble—her stomach. I don’t need to eat, but she does. She had to have noticed she was hungry, at which point she would have noticed the time, and since she didn’t say anything—

“Is it late?” she asks, too casually. Oh, she knew.

“Yes, quite.” I show her the time on my phone and she whistles low.

“And I was just getting somewhere.”

“We can keep going. I have a bottle of wine open. Or, maybe not, but I can open one.”

“Uh—thanks—I’ve got a 45 minute train ride home.”

When she stands from her end of the sofa, I stand from mine and we meet in the middle. Close.

So close I could—

She always could read my mind, and I pinpoint the exact moment it happens. A little straightening of her spine. A flick of her eyes to find her escape route. Escape—

—from me.

I back up too late.

“It’s just a glass of wine, Mauria.”

Why do I feel like I’ve committed a crime?

“It’s not a good idea—” She blushes and begins to gather up her work. “—I shouldn’t.”

“I thought today was good. That we were working well together—why?—”

_{Yeah, something next to normal, that's the thing I'd like to try
Close enough to normal to get by} ²

“Mmhm, today was good.” She’s avoiding my eye, and her voice has gone all sing-songy, as she unnecessarily rearranges the things in her bag. “And we are working well together, so I’d rather not risk— let’s just leave it here, ok?”

“Gods, Mauria!” I say it more sharply than I intend, and instantly feel my ears grow warm. “What kind of fucking game are you playing?”

The part of me that is calling me a self-destructive asshole doesn’t stand a chance against the part that is looking to draw blood. Whether hers or mine is not clear.

“I’m not playing games, Astarion. I’m treating you like a coworker. That was the agreement—not wine, not… anything. Just co-writers.”

Instead, I lean in.

“That’s not what it felt like five minutes ago. Don’t pretend you weren’t there. It was good. We were— easy. Familiar.”

_{Tell me what you need
What you want, you don't need to plead
'Cause I feel the chemistry
Like I get you and you get me} ³

“Five minutes ago it was good! Let it just be good. Leave it there, Astarion.”

“It’s just a glass of wine! When are you going to be done punishing me?”

Mauria looks up sharply, pale eyes glowing in the darkened room. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight, but I’m not about to back down now, no matter how terrifying the look on her face is.
Her lips move silently around words as she censors and edits while she decides how much to let out. When she speaks, it’s low-pitched. Raspy and tight with barely contained violence, like a cat just before the hiss.

“I’m not punishing you, I’m protecting me. It’s not just a glass of wine, and you know it.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, darling.”
I am historically a speak-first, think-second kind of elf. It rarely works out well.

“Do you have any idea what it takes for me to be here? Do you know the work I had to put in just to be able to sit in the same room with you without wanting—wanting to claw my skin off?”

“Gods, you’re dramatic.”

I hate myself for this.

“Grow up.”

It doesn’t mean I stop.

“Fuck you.”

I step back to avoid being hit by her bag as she heaves it across her body.

“I’m not undoing all of that because you thought things felt easy and familiar for a minute.”

“I offered one godsdamned glass of wine!”

“Go be easy and familiar with someone else. I hear you’re not short on options.”

Fuck.

There goes my last hope that she didn’t know I’ve spent the last several years putting my dick in everything south of Washington Heights.

“Jealous?”

I want to go back to before I ever heard of Mauria Wyld. I want to go back to five minutes ago—when she was still smiling at me.

_{We starve
Look at one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats} ⁴

“Astarion.”
Her voice softens again, and I wheel around to find her stopped in the threshold, her hand on the doorknob. I offer a shaky smile, but she’s staring at her feet.
“I’ll be in late tomorrow. I’m meeting Gale for breakfast.”

She doesn’t slam the door, and somehow the soft controlled *click* feels infinitely more final.

“One fucking glass of wine was too much to ask?”
The silence of my empty apartment feels like snickering shielded behind a hand.

I snatch the $80 bottle of Baco Noir off the sideboard. Too sweet for my tastes, but still I stab the corkscrew in and pull harder than is necessary, sloshing wine onto the rug.

Fuck. I give you your show, funded and produced on a silver platter, and you can’t drink one rotten glass of wine with me? But fucking Dickarios gets breakfast?!

“Godsdamned right, I’m not short on options, daaaarling—”

What did she think? That I was trying to seduce her?

_{All of this time I planned
I’d be patient and
You would love me again} ⁵

I drain half the glass while I compose my text.
This is better.
Easy. Familiar.

The response comes back. I have twenty minutes, so I take my wine into the bathroom and turn on the steam.

The hot water pummels the back of my neck, but I can’t get the energy up to actually shower, so I just stand there, head hung until my phone chirps a familiar three notes.

Shit, the front desk.

Water pools on the screen when I stab at the answer button. “I need a few minutes - I’ll call down when I’m ready,” I tell the doorman, hanging up before he can respond.

Toweling off as quickly as I can, I stalk through to my bedroom, and open my dresser drawer for a tshirt.

Why bother? This isn’t a date.

“You self-destructive asshole.” I'm not at all surprised to hear her voice. She's right on cue.

I close my eyes, waiting for a moment. Maybe when I open them she won’t—

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” Shadowheart shoves a pile of my laundry off the chair by the door, and tucks her foot up under herself as she settles in to mock me. “She turns down one glass of wine and you respond by falling apart!”

“Don’t you ever knock?”

“Would you let me in if I did?” The knowing smirk in her voice is like nails on a chalkboard. She swirls a glass of what is certain to be my very expensive baco and gives me that judgemental look she’s so good at. Nose up, eyes half-lidded, lips tight.

“Just fucking say it, then go.”

“Say what?” Her eyelashes flutter, and she rests her fingertips to her breastbone. Demure. Innocent. “That you’re a prick? That this is unhealthy?”

“I’m simply cutting my losses and moving on. How is that unhealthy?”

“You're using a stranger to staunch the bleeding on a self-inflicted wound. I think that can be agreed on as objectively unhealthy.”

“She doesn’t want me—“

“I can’t fathom why not.” Shadowheart reaches down and comes back with the bottle to refill her glass. “Still—“

“Still?” I pull on a pair of pajama pants, slamming the drawer afterwards. “What’s ‘still’? What am I meant to do with ‘still’?”

“Oh, now you want my advice?” Her laugh has to be one of the more irritating noises on this or any planet. A high pitched titter that holds exactly zero warmth, and just as much humour.

“Was it just wine?”

“Jesus! Do you just linger in the hallways with a glass pressed to my wall?”

“Ok, keep avoiding the question, Astarion. That’s sure to help.”

“Yes! Yes, it was just wine”

“And you just happened to have a bottle of her preferred grape? One you don’t even like?”

“Ok, stalker.”

“Let me ask you—” She stands and crosses the five steps to my bed, throwing back the comforter, “—are your sheets fresh?”

I watch in horror as she bends over and sniffs my fucking pillows, gliding the hand not clutching the wineglass in a wide, smoothing arc over the crisp, clean bedlinens. When she stands back up she’s wearing that smug fucking smirk that I hate so much.

“It proves nothing.”

In my hand, my phone vibrates as the three chirp tone sounds again. I press ignore, and set my phone down on the dresser.

A beat passes. Then another, while Shadowheart sips my wine. She has all the time in the world, apparently, to sit here until I crack.

“Alright, it crossed my mind.”

“So, she was right—it wasn’t just a glass of wine. How dare she see right through you?!”

I pull a tshirt over my head, and flop onto my bed, laying starfish-style, one arm across my eyes. “What do you think she meant by ‘what it takes’ for her to be here?

“Ha! You’re going to try and do empathy? Now?” She drains the last of the bottle into her glass, then sits forward with interest. “This should be entertaining—go on, then.”

“Does she think I didn’t suffer too, after what happened?”

Shadowheart checks the time on her bare wrist. “That was good. Progress. Almost three full seconds before it started being about you again.”

“Fuck you.”

As if mocking me from the dresser, the phone chirps again, and I grind my teeth at the noise. Shadowheart looks over at it.

“Alas, you already have someone lined up for that. Raincheck?”

I groan and grope for a pillow to pull over my face.

_{And in case you forgot, I'll tell you who you really are
You're the guy who fucked it up
You really fucked it up} ⁶

“I know you're enjoying the sulk, but while you're busy wallowing you’re missing one very important detail here, Astarion.”

“Mmphm?” I peek out from under the pillow, momentarily disoriented to not find my crazy neighbour perched at my bedside. Instead, Shadowheart is silhouetted in the doorframe, on her way out. “What detail?”

“She said she shouldn’t, that it was a bad idea, that it was a risk, that it was painful. But she never once said no.”

I sit up, trying to make sense of Shadowheart’s meaning.

“You and Mauria are aligned on this. You didn’t register it because it wasn’t the words you wanted to hear, but she agreed with you.”

“We are? She did?”

“Mmhm. It’s not just a glass of wine.”

March 30, 2012

She bent down to unzip her boots, and I knew.

I knew that no matter what she told me it was going to be pure shit. Not once in the years that Mauria lived here did she unzip her boots. I’d had the wall painted thrice because of her. Because of how she liked to come in, and kick—KICK—her boots off. They’d hit the wall, scuff the paint, land in a pile for someone else to pick up or trip on.

It didn’t matter if it was snowing, muddy, or 3 am, she kicked. Except tonight. Tonight she crouched, carefully setting her bag on the floor with unnerving slowness, and unzipped each tall boot. She stepped out of them quietly, and had the fucking nerve to line them up against the wall.

On sock feet, Mauria crept into the living room and sunk carefully onto the sofa. Her phone tinged quietly, and she snatched it off the table, and silenced it.

Moonlight cut through the window, illuminating half her face. Her eyes closed, she rested her head on the back of the sofa, rolling and stretching her neck from side to side. Next to her hip, a sliver of glow of persistent chatter sneaked from under her phone, face down on the cushion.

“Have a good night?”

“Sweet suffering fuck!” Mauria grasped at her chest, and her head began to swivel, trying to locate me in the dark. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I live here.”

_{And the sun flicks my eyes
It was all a pack of lies
I’m awake in a lonely room} ⁷

“You know what I meant,” Mauria pocketed her phone and padded over to me. “The show was fantastic! Everyone was asking where you were tonight—” She bent for a kiss, and reached out to touch my face. “—I told them you were sorry to miss it, but had a meeting.”

I intercepted her hand, grasping her wrist. “I’m certain you managed just fine without me—until nearly 3 am, in fact! There must have been an encore?” Mauria sighed and withdrew from me.

“Don’t be like this, Astarion. You know damn well that none of our work is worth shit if we can’t get the right people behind us.”

I followed her to our bedroom and watched quietly while she moved like a shadow puppet in and out of the beam that slashed across the rug from the harsh closet light. “And sometimes getting the right people behind us means that you say yes when Barry Weissler wants to buy everyone drinks.”

“Sounds awful,” I drawled, “I’m sure you hated every minute of the attention.”
_{Who told you you're allowed to rain on my parade?} ⁸

“Why do I have to hate it? Why can’t I be pleased when one of the kings of fucking Broadway wants to talk about my projects?”

“Your projects—yes, that pushup bra is doing a really great job highlighting your projects.” Her shadow froze with her hands behind her neck, removing her jewelry. When she resumed after a beat, her movements were deliberate and controlled.

Mauria emerged dressed for bed. She picked up her pillow, and the sapphire blue cashmere throw from the footrail, and held them to her body. She paused just for a beat before she left the bedroom.
“Good night, Astarion,” she whispered to the hallway. The five words that followed ricocheted off my spite, and it wasn’t until later that I longed to clarify.

“I’m sorry I love you.”

Was that two thoughts—or one?

1. Moments Of Happiness, Cats back
2. Maybe, Next to Normal back
3. All You Wanna Do, Six back
4. The Flesh Failures, Hairback
5. So Much Better, Legally Blonde back
6. Jeff Sums it Up, Tootsie back
7. Lonely Room, Oklahoma back
8. Rain on my parade, Funny Girl back

Chapter Text

ten

I don't need more reminders of all that's been broken
I don't need you to fix what I'd rather forget
Clear the slate and start over
Try to quiet the noises in your head
We can't compete with all that

So what if it's us
What if it's us
And only us
And what came before won't count anymore or matter
Can we try that?
~ Only Us, Dear Evan Hansen

Oct 16, 2024
I’m soaked. Godsdamned soaked, and not in a caught in a light drizzle kind of way. More like stood under a downspout in a deluge; rat pulled from a bucket; clown in a dunktank-way. After how I left here yesterday, humiliation seems only fitting. I should soak in it.

I spent the train home last night typing out and deleting an explanation. Not an apology, but I laid everything bare—I let go all the things I was pretending weren’t wearing me down for months—
I hit send just as the train went underground.
Then I stared in horror at {message sent}.  I stared at it, inside out at the thought of what was happening at the other end.

Astarion picks up his phone and rolls his eyes, seeing it was a text from me. He sighs profoundly, then locks the screen. Reconsidering, he opens the phone and sets me to “mute”.

I held my breath as we sped beneath the east river, waiting for three dots to appear and put me out of my misery.

Astarion lunges for the phone when it buzzes on the counter. His hand comes to his mouth. His eyes go wide, and he sinks slowly into a chair as he takes in my words—realization and understanding dawning across his visage as he reads. He wipes a single tear—

Fucks’ sake.

My knee bounced, and only when a mother took her two small children by the hands and moved to the other end of the train car did I become aware that I was also vocalizing.

Astarion rolls off the warm body beneath him and finds his phone under some hastily discarded underwear. He shows the message to the well-fucked person next to him in his bed, and they laugh and laugh.

I’m not religious, but last night I was delivered from ruin by a benevolent and unseen hand. The train emerged out of the subterranean sodium glow and back into moonlight, and the status changed immediately to { ! Failed ! Tap to Retry }
My relieved cackling led that same mother to hustle her kids quickly off at the next stop.

“Good morning, Jeff” It takes every muscle in my jaw, working over capacity, to create the smile I flash at the slack-faced doorman.

_{Straighten the spine, smile for the neighbors
Everything’s fine, everything’s cool} ¹

He stares for a moment too long while his eyes roam to my hair, plastered to my forehead, my shirt, clinging to my chest—then perhaps to the cartoon steam that I’m sure billows from my ears.

“Let me in.” The words leave in clipped, sharp syllables that warn against chitchat. He nods quickly, and buzzes open the elevator to the penthouse.

I leave the elevator and stand outside the apartment door. It’s off the latch, as usual, but I can’t force my legs forward.

Jesus, Mauria, you’re being dramatic.

I stand there and replay the conversation. Astarion was angry.

He was hurt.

Perhaps he’s still so angry that he becomes perfectly pleasant.

Hurt.

I don’t think I can withstand perfectly pleasant today.

You’re a coward, Mauria Wyld.

It’s not his anger that keeps me out in the hallway. Nor is it what kept me awake until dawn, what chewed my nails down to bloody nubs, or what churns in my gut like the questionable corn dog before the tilt-a-whirl. No, it was that godsdamed hopeful smile just before I closed the door on him. It’s seared into my retinas, a vivid after-image of disappointment each time I close my eyes.

I slip into the apartment, moving with the deliberate slowness of ordinance disposal, and toeing off my boots as quietly as I can manage. I call out “good morning” and am feeling pretty satisfied that it sounded casual when I hear Astarion’s snort of amusement, and freeze.

“Raining, is it?” he asks. I turn slowly and find him surveying me, arms crossed, tonguing at a fang. “—or did you swim here?”

“I left my coat,” I explain. Both of us glance at where my green hooded raincoat hangs behind the door—forgotten in my haste to leave. “It wasn’t this bad when I left my place.”

_{Paper says the rain should pass by
A quick summer storm
Maybe there’ll be a rainbow
This is an omen, we need to cancel the whole thing!} ²

I don’t appreciate his barely suppressed glee as he takes in my bedraggled entrance, but let Astarion lash out with acerbic deflection if he likes. At least we’re not talking about last night.

“Mmhmm,” Astarion says, turning out of the hall. “Towels and are in the bathroom closet—we’ll put your clothes in the dryer.”

Shit.

I’d given myself a list of lines I wouldn’t cross when working with Astarion again. An actual list, on paper. It’s in my bag at this very moment—
On this list were things like no nicknames, no talking about who we were currently or had been previously dating, no dinners with only the two of us… Taking my clothes off in his apartment was not on the list simply because it seemed so obvious as to transcend the list entirely.

It’s never too late to amend the list, but one look down at the sad, soggy messenger bag on the mat, and I realize that it’s probably pulp.

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” I call after him.

I crouch and pull notebooks out before the water can soak through those too. I’m too late, and their edges stain and ripple with dampness.

“Fuck,” I mutter, both to the water damage, and to Astarion’s bare feet coming back into view.

“Fine? You’re fine like this, are you?”

“I’ll dry.” I am suddenly aware of the weight of my sodden clothing. I wince when my socks squelch when I straighten back up, and I ruffle my hand through my short hair, sending off a sprinkling of water and disgrace.

Astarion cocks a silver brow at me and looks pointedly down to where a puddle forms, darkening the hallway rug.

“Have it your own way—” He sighs and leaves again. “Stay off the furniture.”

“Stay off the furniture,” I mock back under my breath. “Like I’m a fucking dog.”

Around the room are lamps lit against the dark, dreary weather. It should be inviting and cozy, but only makes me feel worse somehow. I drop my notebooks on the dining table and pull out a chair.

“I wasn’t joking.”

Astarion doesn’t look at me, just slides a cardstock folder under my soggy books. “Stay off my furniture.”

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.”

“I said no.”

“Why are you being—? It’s fucking leather! Cows stand out in the rain all the time.”

He stares at me for a long moment, just blinking and letting the silence stretch on, uncomfortably. “You didn’t— That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say!”

“You’re serious?” I glare across the table at him. “I’m supposed to just stand here?”

Astarion’s lips work in small, tight movements.

“You’re enjoying this!”

“I have no idea what you mean.” Astarion pulls out a leather chair, and melts down into it, wiggling his ass a little when it lands in the seat. “So, where did we leave off?”

I pick up my notebook, and balance it on my forearm. Immediately the ink begins to bleed as I soak through the page. “This is absurd!” I slap the notebook onto the table.

Astarion hums agreement. He moves my notebook back to quarantine with the tip of his pencil, but doesn’t look up from his notes. “I’d like to revisit the bridge in the reunion song.”

Gods help me, this man makes me crazy. Getting dry is not taking my clothes off in Astarion’s apartment. This situation is completely different. For one, this is not even remotely in service of a good time.

“Fine.”

“Fine? You agree the bridge needs work? Good, because I—”

“Not—” I say loudly, interrupting his false misunderstanding, “—what I meant.”

Astarion props his head in his hands. Though I don’t hear a sound, I just know he’s laughing.

Prick.

“I’ll find you something to put on.”

Astarion lays clothes out in the guest bathroom and directs me to the towels in the closet before going back to his laptop. I have to walk past his bedroom to get there and I can’t help peeking in the open door as I pass. I took a low shot at Astarion last night. I’d take it back, except it would mean reopening the conversation.
I don’t know what I expect—a condom dispenser on the wall? A video camera on a tripod? A gallon drum of lube at the foot of the bed?—whatever my imagination anticipated I am relieved to see nothing but a normal—if compulsively tidy—bedroom.

Gooseflesh rises on my skin once my wet clothes are off, and I towel dry more aggressively than is strictly necessary, trying to distract from the jittery feeling that churns my belly. I end up dry, but with raw tingling skin. I am still nauseous.

When I told Astarion, last night, that I was protecting myself, I believed it. When I said it, down the elevator, and most of the way through the lobby, I was certain that’s what I was doing.

I open and close a few drawers, trying to distract from the thought of going back out there. I find nothing interesting. No second toothbrush, no tampons, no hair ties.

If I’m honest, protecting myself would have meant refusing to work in his apartment. Protecting myself would be picking up my latte at the cafe on the corner instead of this ridiculous ritual I've crafted where, every morning, I trade caffeine for a one-dimpled smile. Protecting myself should have meant deleting and blocking his number the first night I heard from him.

I open the cabinet over the sink. Nothing weird in there either. Just extras. Extra toothpaste, extra fancy soaps with their kraft paper wrapping and wax seals— Something catches my eye, I take down a small bottle and pull its cap off, giving it a tentative sniff. It’s familiar. Very familiar, in fact, since it’s my perfume—or what I used to wear, except this bottle is new.

Godsdamn you, Astarion.

I perch on the edge of the tub and carefully unfold what he’s left me to wear. I slip into the pants, then the matching sweater, turning once in the full length mirror. I cinch the drawstring and still have to roll the waist a half-dozen times before I’m confident the pants will stay on. Gods, it’s soft. It’s that buttery knit that Astarion favours so much at home. I hug my arms around my body, immediately recognizing my mistake.

There’s something too familiar about the feel of Astarion’s clothes on my skin.

_{What the fuck?
What’s the deal?
Can I ever just feel what I feel?} ³

This most definitely counts as taking my clothes off in Astarion’s apartment, but that realization comes too late. I slip back to the edge of the tub, then to the floor, and pull my knees to my chest. Despite my every instinct and scrap of sense screaming for me not to, I twist the overlong sleeves into my fists and press them to my nose, breathing deeply—

There’s something too intimate about this.
It feels so wrong.

No. It doesn’t.

—then press them to my mouth, to muffle the sobs.

_{Stand back everyone,
nothing here to see
Just imminent danger,
In the middle of it, me} ⁴

The click of the door sounds like a gunshot, and Astarion looks up sharply from the piano. He chews at the inside of his cheek while he considers me.

“Thanks.” I hold up my hands, letting sleeves flop over. “A little big, but dry.” I pair this with a goofy smile, choosing self-deprecation.
Astarion studies me with… what? Probably pity.

“I’m fine, Astarion.”

He stands and takes a tentative step toward me.

“I’m fine,” I repeat, and my arm clamps across my waist—holding me in, keeping him out.

Another step forward. “Uh-huh.”

“Astarion. I’m ok.”

“I know.” Another step.

He tips his head a little and his chest hitches with a not-quite laugh. “You look twelve.”

My throat burns, and behind my ribs there’s a pressure like I swallowed a shoe sideways.

Astarion reaches out, his fingers barely brushing the back of my arm.

“C’mere.”

A curl of his fingers gathers me in, and I fall against him, pressing my forehead into the hollow of his shoulder. My fists come up hiding my face, as though that might create plausible deniability.

I don’t recall the sobbing, only the quiet that comes after I’m all cried out. The rocking pulls at my insides—like the pleasant tug of a strong current in deep water. I allow myself to be buffeted gently back and forth, weightless. Waves crash far in the distance—shh, shh, shh,—the repetition is even and soft—shh,shh, shh,—and I find myself being lulled deeper into the undertow by a familiar voice. It murmurs words that I don’t make out, and yet the tone is distinctly comforting.

The myths of the sirens don’t seem so far-fetched, now. I could drown in this with a smile on my lips.

The hushing comes on a breeze that ruffles the hair at my temple, and carries the scent of mint. Mint and pennies.

Salt itches on my neck, drying along the path of rivulets and runnels carved down my face—it’s annoying, and disturbing my otherwise tranquil meditation. I’d rub at it if my arms weren’t so water logged. Water logged and heavy.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

My cheek rests against a chest that rises and falls like the swell of the waves, and more salt on my lips makes each shaky, hiccuping breath taste like the ocean. The ocean with the bitter aftertaste of moisturizer.

I come back to myself by degrees, like coming to the surface of the lake and having everything get brighter and louder, and warmer until I finally breach the surface.

_{Holding to the ground as
The ground keeps shifting.
Trying to keep sane as
The rules keep changing
Keeping up my head as
My heart falls out of sight.} ⁵

“Shit.” I clock how I am gripping his triceps and the wet spot on his shirt.
“Sorry, sorry.”

Rather than release me, he simply loosens, letting his chin rest on the crown of my head and his arms fall around my shoulders.

“You’re fine.”

My heart flutters and I’m immediately in peril of weeping all over again.

“—You said so yourself. Repeatedly.”

I spent three years like this— Astarion draped over my shoulders like a most beautiful and demanding ermine stole. It was the casualness of the gesture that made it so intimate. In his most distracted, unguarded moments, his unconscious mind would seek me out.

He’d find me in the most benign of situations; queuing at the deli, waiting for the kettle to boil, listening to friends tell long-winded stories. It was without performance or intention—he didn’t think about wanting me near, he just…did.

I should step back now.

I never told him this, of course. Despite any good intentions, the moment the gesture was mindfully and consciously given, something would have been lost.

“This sucks,” I mutter.

“Does it?”

I put my arms around his waist, then drop them again almost immediately.

“No.” The word comes out like peanut butter scooped from the jar—thick and heavy. “It doesn’t—”

When he steps back its sudden, and I’m left jittery for a moment at the loss of his proximity.

“Well, this clearly isn’t going to happen.”

I feel a cold adrenaline rush flood my veins. “What—what isn’t?”

“Work. I don’t want to work today.”

My eyes flick to the black sky. I can barely see the tree canopy of the park, only a block away, through the teeming rain. I didn’t think my mood could get much lower, but the last thing I want to do is go back out there.

Astarion seems to follow my thoughts.
“Oh, no. No, no, no. You stay here. .I want you here.”

He considers his words, and I wait—patiently, if only on the outside. Inside my thoughts are swirling as fast as the emotions crossing Astarion’s brow.

“You’re upset—”

Understatement.

“I’m… upset, too. I think. I mean—I know I am, but I’m sure I’m too emotionally constipated to delve in much deeper than that.”
He sighs, and it sounds so fucking defeated— “I just don’t think I’m up to working today.”

I’m not sure what I’m meant to say, but Astarion doesn’t let the silence sit for long.

“Let’s blame the rain, hmm?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You don’t?”

Astarion’s words come out as a rough whisper, that he— gods below, he might as well have asked me to part my knees. Why did that sound so hot?
I don’t think it was intentional—he looks as startled as I am. His spine straightens and he sucks his lip in.

I feel suddenly and mortifyingly flushed all over.

“Darling?” Astarion is open mouthed and wide eyed. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Giddy laughter pounds at the inside of my breastbone, wanting freedom.

He’s tonguing at a fang and his eyes have gone heavy-lidded.

“Nothing?” He considers that a moment then drops his voice into bedroom register again. “Are you certain? You’ve gone all pink.”
He turns pink into a two-syllable word with a soft release of breath.

“Oh my gods, Astarion!” I pull the collar of his shirt up to hide my face. “Knock it off!”

He chuckles, soft and warm, then gives me a gentle shove as he breezes past.

“Sit. I’ll make the coffee.”

“For what it’s worth—” I turn the coffee in my hands, scrying the surface for the answers of the universe, “—I’m not trying to punish you.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

I laugh, and the burst of air sends microfoam over the side of the mug. “You literally said I was.”

“Oh. Right.”

I set down my mug, and pull my feet up under me, hugging across my body. Even in this cozy, lamp-lit room, the chill of the rain and my frayed nerves still leaves me cold and hollowed out.

Astarion stands and returns a moment later with a jewel-blue cashmere throw from the bedroom. He drops it unceremoniously on my head, but his smile is soft when he returns to his end of the sofa.

I take my time arranging the throw about my shoulders. 
“I don’t know what—”

“Hmm.” Astarion waves my words away. “We don’t have to decide that today.”

“We should t—“

Astarion makes a disgusted noise and makes a show of turning away from me.

“If you’re going to ruin my stolen little snuggle with feeelings, darling—“ Astarion stands and crosses to the cabinet under the window where he crouches and a moment later returns with a bottle. “—I’m going to need something stronger than coffee.”

“It’s barely 11am.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugs and turns to tip a generous pour of bourbon into his espresso.

He leans back again, one casual arm slung over the back of the sofa. His eyes scan the air above my head, reading some invisible prompt, before resettling his calm gaze on me.

“You and I run the very real risk of falling in love again.”

He takes a sip of his coffee like he didn’t just—

“Astarion!” His name bubbles out on something half-laugh, half-horrified shriek.
“What the fuck?!”

“I’m sorry,” He doesn’t look the least bit sorry though. In fact, if I had to name it, I’d say he looks hostile. “Did you not just say we should talk? I’m talking.”

I stare.
I wait for his eyes to crinkle, or for his brow to furrow. I wait for the punchline, but none is forthcoming.

My fingertips throb with each pound of my pulse as around me the room tilts and narrows. My whole brain feels like the departure lounge at the airport—signs for everywhere, loud voices, languages I don’t speak, unfamiliar scents, and too many strangers.

I hold my mug out toward him, and he nods, already uncorking the bottle.

“More,” I croak when the measure he adds to my latte seems woefully insufficient to fuel this conversation. I drink down half the mug in one go, wincing as the scalding liquid peels a layer of cells off my esophagus.

“Talking is a two-way street, Mauria. I will kindly ask that you respond. It’s only polite.”

“You— you can’t just maraud everything we built over the last four months. Not like that!”

I’m stalling.
How do I?—
Why the?—
What even was that?
It sounded like a cold, clinical statement of fact.

It sounded inevitable.
Final.

“It seems I can.” Astarion gazes across the piano and out the window, though there is little to see but rain lashing on glass.

“I’ve got a show to think about.”

“I know. So do I.”

“We open in roughly 13 weeks.”

“I’m aware.”

“Astarion!!”
I don’t know what he wants from me. I’m going to throw up. “I can’t— The show— It’s too much—“

“I can wait.”

“You can—you can wait?” The laugh is a sharp, hysterical bark that I hear ring back off the walls. “Since when?!”

“Mauria, please do better than that.”

With his head turned in profile I see the tiny muscle jumping below his ear. I’d bet the jaws of life couldn’t pry his teeth apart right now.

“Why? Why would you say—?”

His Adam’s apple rockets up then back down into place, and his foot bounces slightly where it rests on his knee, but otherwise, Astarion is a picture of serenity.

The Astarion I lived with for three years didn’t have this kind of self-control. Tantrums were to be done outside the body, put on display for all to behold and experience.

I don’t know what’s happening—

“Say something, Mauria.”

—but I don’t take lightly what he just did.

_{Now I stand at a crossroad
And I stare at a question
If prayer were the answer,
I’d fall on my knees
Bur forward is calling
And I cannot stay here} ⁶

Fuck it.

“Yes, Astarion. I think we do, too.”

April 17, 2012

“Are you blind, as well as stupid?”

I heard Astarion shouting again, and looked apologetically at the propsmaster with whom I was engaged in an inventory review.

“I need to—“ I offered lamely, pointing toward the stage. I needn’t have offered an explanation, anyone in the theatre for more than a few days was likely witness to Astarion having a meltdown.

He gave me a sympathetic smile, and assured me that he could finish up without me.
Gods, I hated those sympathetic looks.

“Hey babe,” I said cheerfully, trotting down the steps from the stage level to the theatre floor. I slipped my arms around Astarion’s waist, and tried to act like he wasn’t being a fucking maniac. “What seems to be the problem?”

He proceeded to unload the details of his latest grievance, while I nodded along. I chanced a look at the actress onstage, and gave a small tilt of my head, indicating that she should go. She returned a grateful half-smile.
Gods, I hated those grateful looks.

He ranted at me until he ran out of steam, at which point he came back to himself and hugged me back. This was becoming my new full-time role; Astarion-handler.
Astarion had a reputation for being difficult that pre-dated me by decades. People still lined up to work with him. From stage crew all the way up to producers, people seemed to feel that it was just the cost of working with him, and that it was an acceptable price for the return.

‘This is over the top, even by Astarion standards,’ Karlach brought up to me one night over drinks.
“He’s under a lot of stress,” I said, not looking to over-villify his behaviour.

“He’s been under stress before,” Karlach countered, “this isn’t his first rodeo.”

“I’m handling it,” I told her, and she gave me a doubtful little squint.
Gods, I hated those doubtful looks.

“Mauria, he fired the scene shop manager, the lighting designer, and two production assistants—in the last three weeks! What the fuck is going on?!”

I felt so disloyal airing our dirty laundry in this way. I put my face in my drink, uncertain if I should voice my suspicions, or if I was merely letting paranoia and ego take the wheel.
“I think—“ I paused, considering how to best phrase it. Astarion was my co-writer, my mentor, my inspiration—not to mention my partner of nearly three years. I owed him better than this.

“I think he’s jealous.”

“Of you?”

I immediately heard how ridiculous it sounded, and though I wanted to take it back, I was profoundly relieved.

Karlach’s face screwed up into deep concern, and she flagged down a server to order us each two more drinks, before returning to our conversation.
“I wasn’t sure if you saw it,” she said, and my heart dropped.

In addition to those two drinks, we needed a third to get through all the details. She related her first concerns rising after witnessing Astarion announce, in a meeting with the lighting, dance, and casting directors, that the critics liked me so much because my “lucky success let people know that anyone could write a Broadway hit.”

I was winded by that. Not just that he’d said it, but also that he’d said it publicly, and behind my back. I told Karlach about Astarion getting markedly shittier after I’d done an interview, or a fan asked for a photo or autograph.
“I got back today to find him yelling at the leads. When I tried to deescalate, he told me to go tweet a selfie, and leave the real work to him.”

Karlach gasped mid-sip and started to cough.
“In front of everyone?”
I nodded. “He found me and apologized almost immediately. I don’t think he meant it—not really.”

Karlach looked impassive. “You’re too forgiving. I’d have kicked his ass right there in the orchestra pit.”

I huffed a humourless noise. “Tempting, but I have a show to think about.”

“We need to snap him out of this before something truly disastrous happens.” Karlach sighed, and jumped slightly before lifting her phone, vibrating on silent, from her jacket pocket. Holding up a finger that she then stuck in her ear, she stepped away to take the call in the quieter lobby.

My mind wandered while I waited for her. Outside, it had begun to rain, and the drops on the leaded-glass windows blurred all the city lights into starbursts. Even distorted, the ads and marquees for the dozens of Broadway shows were recognizable by their shapes and colours. Mine was one of them.
Mine and Astarion’s.
Ours.
I blew out a long breath. Gods, that man owed me a half-dozen spa weekends when this was all settled.
My shoulders dropped and I smiled and sipped at my wine, then unlocked my phone to send Astarion a quick text letting him know I’d be home soon.

Karlach returned moments later, rolling her eyes dramatically. She slipped onto her stool, and opened her mouth to speak, then taking a better look at me, froze.

“What?”

I pushed my phone toward her, the screen glaringly bright in the moody lounge.

“Who’s this?” Karlach asked, slowly scrolling and reading down the wall of text I was showing her.

“Julie,” I said flatly.

“Julie,” Karlach repeated. “Your Julie? Your lead actress Julie?”
The needle on my fear was already well into the red, but the tone of Karlach’s voice cemented it. Her head snapped up as she finished reading.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, Mo—” She pushed back my phone, and pulled back my hand. “Fuck.”

“Not anymore,” I felt the room tilt, my chest squeeze, my legs vibrate with adrenaline, primed to run but with nowhere to go.

“She just quit.”

_{Like, Times-Square-at-5 a.m. calm
Like, totally-freak-me-out calm
Like, I'm-gonna-slowly-go-crazy-and-throw-myself-off-of-the-balcony calm
Damn it} ⁷

1. Breathe, In the Heights back
2. Only Tea, The Great Gatsby back
3. What the Fuck, If/Then back
4. A Man's Gotta Do, Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog back
5. Holding to the Ground, Falsettos back
6. Bare, Bare back
7. Calm, Ordinary Daysback

Chapter Text

I can't really explain it,
I haven't got the words
It's a feeling that you can't control
I suppose it's like forgetting, losing who you are
And at the same time something makes you whole

~ Electricity, Billy Elliot

Oct 30/24

I am, by inclination and long habit, something of an optimist. I believe that we are architects of our own destiny, provided, of course, that one has the good sense to draft proper blueprints. While my role in this operation is officially limited to the fiscal accountabilities of the project, I am unofficially often called upon to be the voice of reason, as well. I can handle contracts, insurance, and union dues with one hand tied behind my proverbial back, but if you’ve never tried to impress upon “creative-types” that $8 is too much to spend on coffee—well, locking in the securities is really the easy part.

Not that I lack creativity. I have ideas. Yessiree! I have an entire moleskin notebook full of suggestions. I carry it with me and if ever someone should ask my opinion—which, admittedly has not happened yet—I’ll be ready. I enter balancing a paper bakery bag on top of a cardboard tray holding three coffees. This is bodega coffee, $1.25 a cup, and just as good as the expensive stuff.

_{It tastes the same.
If you close your eyes.} ¹

The studio space costs $63 an hour, and we’ve booked several hours at Karlach’s request, though she was cagey as to why. I hear Mauria before I see her. She’s pacing the second floor landing, outside the studios, with a phone to one ear and a finger in the other so I clear my throat, lest it be a private conversation. I can’t read her expression, but the wild gesturing for me to come over and then more gesturing telling me I should wait makes me uneasy.

She finishes her call and takes a deep breath before addressing me. “You will not believe this!” When she grabs one of the coffees from the corner of the tray, I have to act fast to correct the toppling tower of treats.

“Try me.”

Instead of telling me, Mauria tugs my sleeve and drags me toward the studio. At the door, Astarion is of similar humour—and annoying, a similar disregard for a carefully balanced snack-bearer. I’d object to his grabby hands, except that he punctuates his greeting with an effusive and loud, smacky kiss on my cheek.

After that, I’m too surprised to say much of anything.

“You’ll never believe this!”

I wonder if they rehearsed this greeting in advance. This feels like patter. And I wait for the punchline, with a vague, stupid smile on my face.

_{It's what you wear from ear to ear
And not from head to toe That matters} ²

Astarion ushers me into the studio as though he were unveiling a Picasso or a Fevras, though all that lies beyond his sweeping gesture is a very modest rental studio.

I scan the plain white walls, track lighting, exposed electrical conduits strapped to the baseboards, and sluggish ceiling fan, giving them a perfunctory nod. This room hasn’t been renovated since the second revival of Cabaret, and I’m reassured that the $63 an hour doesn’t include one single bell or whistle. One wall holds a window, the other a mirror half-obscured behind a heavy velvet curtain. Between them sits a battered and sun faded piano.

“You’re quite right! As long as no one tells me what it is, I’m not going to believe it.”

Then I see it. Or more accurately, I see her.

Perched on a stool next to the piano, a woman sits wearing a flowy black tunic that billows about her like fog. Both wrists, and neck are adorned in ropes of colourful wooden and glass beads, as though a Maker’s Market jumped her in a dark alley.

In the starkness of the room she stands out like a parrot among pigeons.

I can’t see her face. She sits straight—not stiff—but as though perfect posture were as non-negotiable vital as air, or music, or grace. Her long hair is worn in twists, and strands of silver sparkle like spiders’ silk under the harsh lighting. Even before I see her face, her identity is telegraphed beyond any doubt.

My eyes widen, and beside me Mauria hums.

“Mmhm,” she says, “exactly our reaction, too.”

“ —5,6,7,8—”

“With intention!”

The woman at the piano thumps a chest tall staff on the floor, and in front of her two dancers begin to move.

thud . thud . thud

“In and out and out and back.”

thud . thud . thud . thud

She barks commands and the dancers respond without hesitation, moving fluidly together, around, and past each other. The female dancer takes a step away, only to be caught around the waist and pulled back. She collapses, draping over his arm like a willow branch and is dragged gracefully back several paces.

“Is that?—” I ask, though Astarion and Mauria are already both nodding. “What in the heavens is she doing here?”

She’s a legend in theatre, a genius of contemporary dance. Billy Joel once wrote an entire libretto simply so she could choreograph it.

“I thought she was retired,” I whisper.

“This would be the work of the Magical Ms. Cliffgate,” Astarion says, his eyes also locked on the dancers.

“We had no idea. She was waiting when we arrived.”

“First Wyll Ravengard, now this? I’m a little concerned all of this has an infernal pact at the heart of it,” Mauria jokes.

I think she’s joking.

I’m not actually sure she’s joking.

“Jaheira,” Astarion calls out, interrupting the dancers, “come meet the man holding the money.”

Jaheira, to my knowledge, has no last name. She falls into a category of excellence or fame that supports her mononymous moniker, keeping good company with Socrates, Caligula, and Shakira.

We’ve attended various common functions, but I’ve never been introduced, and I think how she’s older than I expected. Her hair isn’t falsely platinum, but an unabashed silver stranded grey. The lines around her eyes and mouth are beauty enhancing, making her look stern and regal. She would not look out of place framed and hung in a regency ballroom or world-class gallery.

“You’re staring, Gale,” Mauria murmurs at my shoulder. “Say hello.”

Jaheira extends her hand to shake, and I lift it to my lips.

“Enchanté, Madame.”

I sense Mauria and Astarion rolling their eyes in my periphery, but while I am often prone to awkwardness, I am seldom burdened with embarrassment. Jaheira looks temporarily taken aback, then acknowledges my greeting with a small nod and smile. I wiggle the last coffee out of the cardboard tray and extend it to her, with a shallow bow. “This is for you.”

Astarion and Mo both break into giggles, and I give them both a paternal glare that does nothing but toss fuel on their mirth. I notice the ease with which Mauria’s hand rests on Astarion’s bicep. When Mauria whispers something next to his ear, Astarion closes his eyes. I catalogue both for later investigation.

“Jaheira will be handling not only the dance choreography, but the fight choreography as well.”

I look sharply at Astarion, then back at the graceful swan before me. I scan my internal lexicon for this knowledge, but come up short.
“A combat choreographer as well?”

“I know my way around a blade.”

“I had no idea. Fascinating.”

“Not many do.” Jaheira’s smile is sly.
“If it interests you, perhaps we will find an opportunity for some sparring, eh?”

Something about the glint in her golden hawk-like eyes makes my mouth go dry.

“G–great!” I stammer a bit before recovering my wits. “Fantastic news!”

“Isn’t it just the tits?!”

Enter Karlach’s Cliffgate, her warm voice booming from the doorway.
“I see you’ve met Jaheira.”

Karlach struts in and kisses the air next to each of our cheeks.

“This is amazing K!! How did you even?—”

I’ve known Karlach for years and seen her orchestrate some truly inspired collaborations. But two! In one show! She’s pulling out all the stops for this one.

“They don’t call her the best in the business for nothing,” Wyll says, struggling through the doorway with a large cardboard box.
“She’s very persuasive.”

Jaheira snorts, and I can only imagine the tactics Karlach employed to get her here. She tolerates only another minute or two of excited adoration before turning our attentions toward Wyllyam.
“I presume you have some work to do?” she gestures to the box, which I can now see is full of identical thin binders.

“Just the resumés you asked for.” Karlach answers the unasked question. “I had the casting agent in my office put some promising options together—”

"You asked for resumés?” Astarion turns to Mauria, scowling. “We agreed on auditions.”

“Yeah, I—Karlach told me how your last set of auditions went.” Mauria examines the toe of her Chucks.
“I thought you might prefer this.”

“Hire who you want, Fangs—but before you get all pale and pointy about me bringing you talent, let’s take a look at my track record, yeah?”

From the corner, a small clearing of a throat—Wyll leans on the wall, his arms crossed, and looking like the cat that ate the canary.

“Keep your pants on, Ravengard—I’m getting there!” Karlach scolds affably.
She waves a dismissive hand at Wyll, but she’s looking pretty smug about something too.
“I have some more news you might like.”

“Understatement.” Wyll pushes off the wall and joins us.

“Alright, hold on to your asses.”

“Whatever this is, darling, be mindful of overselling it. I hate being left wanting.”

“Oh, I’m not overselling it at all.” Karlach takes a leisurely moment to settle into a molded plastic chair. She then inspects her $200 manicure, entirely unconcerned with the handful of expectant looks pointed her way.
“Tell me what you know about Octavia Fallguard.”

The name sounds familiar to me, but I can’t immediately place it. Not like Astarion, Mauria, and Jaheira seem to. The three of them stare back at Karlach with jaws hung open.

“No—” Mauria’s voice is a reverent whisper. “No!—” she repeats, apparently having forgotten all her other words.

Astarion’s crimson eyes are as big and round as silver dollars.
“Octavia Fallguard the movie actress?”

“Octavia Fallguard the crossover actress,” Karlach corrects. “According to her agent, she’s looking to hyphenate, and she’s got her eye on Broadway. So, one meeting led to another, annnnd…”

Suddenly I can place her. “Oh! The… uh… The Art of Night actress!” I snap my fingers.

Karlach nods.

“Isn’t she old?” Three irritated elven faces turn my way. Wyll quietly chuckles down at his leather sneakers.

“Excuse you, and your brief human existence, but she couldn't be more than what?—”

“Two-hundred,” Mauria says, glancing up from her Google search. “She’s essentially your age, Gale.”

Wyll looks sympathetic and pats me on the back. “If it makes you feel any better, that’s the first thing I asked, too.”

Mauria sighs, patronizing and patient of us poor sub-centurians.

I realize Astarion has gone very still.

"Octavia Fallguard is interested in my show?” His voice is thick and rough.
“Octavia Fallguard knows my name?"
"Octavia— What did she say about me? Tell me everything.”

Mauria hides behind a casual scratch of her nose, and we share a wide-eyed smirk.

Karlach doesn’t even try to quiet her laugh. “Astarion, you’re fangirling, mate.”

“Holy shit! Look at him!” Mauria shrieks. “He’s blushing.”

“I am absolutely not blushing!” Astarion covers his face with both hands. ‘Answer the question!!"

“He is! We found his weakness.”

“Ahhh! I want a picture!” Mauria fumbles at her phone.

“Don’t you dare!!” Astarion peeks out from between his fingers, scowling.
“You’d better not be fucking with me, Red.”

“See for yourself,” Karlach pulls an envelope from her bag, and hands it to Astarion. “She wrote you two a little note.”

Astarion practically lunges for Karlach, snatching the envelope from her hand, and scurrying away like a pup that stole a turkey leg from the table.

I’m still chuckling as Wyll hands me a binder of resumes.

“Even her handwriting is elegant!” Astarion’s squeal echoes in from the hallway.

“Let’s assume that our Princess Buttercup casting gap has just been filled—” Mauria says, grinning over her shoulder.
We can’t see Astarion out in the hallway but chirps of delight keep peppering the air.
“—we still need…roughly twelve to round out the cast. Maybe eighteen, but that’s dependant on the arrangement of the *Never Again* and *My Father* numbers.”

“Let’s take a look.”

When Astarion returns to the studio, we’re still reviewing the resumes.

“So…bit of a crush on the eminent Ms. Fallguard?” Mauria teases. “Who knew?!”

She’s perched on the windowsill and drums her fingers against the binder on her lap.

Astarion looks at the notecard clutched in his hand, then back at Mauria. She challenges his stare, chewing her bottom lip, and openly gleeful at Astarion’s enthusiasm.

Slipping the notecard into his pocket, he draws himself up to full height. Astarion puffs his chest in a way that brings to mind a particularly self-assured peacock and locks eyes with Mauria.

The grin drops from Mauria’s face immediately.
“Shit.”

“How cute,” Astarion purrs in a teasing murmur. “You’re jealous!”

Mauria clutches the binder to her chest and rolls her eyes.
“Pshh—I am no such thing.”

“One little note from a sexy… talented… award winning…”
he takes a step toward her with every word, and Mauria looks a combination of horrified and highly amused.

“...tall…”

That one makes her snort.

“…actress and you’ve gone all jealous.”
Astarion tips his head and works his tongue over his teeth in such a way that frankly makes me go a little weak. He taps her lightly on the nose.
“You’re blushing.”

“I am not!”

“No, no, no—don’t stop—jealousy becomes you. You look fantastic in green, darling.”

I clear my throat. “Fascinating as this… blatant tussle for dominance is, may I suggest we get some work done?”

Mauria shoots me a grateful look, and hops down, ducking past Astarion in his brief distraction.

“Can I hear what you’re working on at the moment?” Wyll asks. He extends a hand, and offers a reassuring pat on his way to the piano. I appreciate the gesture—a quiet fraternity of the mere humans or some such.

_{Your lifelong membership is free
Keep a-givin' each brother all you can
Oh, aren't you proud to be
In that fraternity
The great big brotherhood of man?}³

I’m relieved after all the shenanigans of the past hour that my two writers light up at the opportunity to show off—their ardor still being greater for the project than for each other.

Astarion rolls up his cuffs theatrically, and takes a seat at the piano. His hands hover a moment over the keys, wordlessly commanding silence before fluttering up the ivories in a glissando that would feel quite at home in a concert hall, weren’t that he punctuates the top note with a sharp, shouted “Ha!”

“Ok,” he begins, settling his hands on the keys, “you have to imagine this as a klezmer sound.”
His fingers pick out a repeating ostinato. He repeats the ‘oom-pah’ cadence even as he explains.
“Imagine this! The Miracle Max character is—”

“I’ve seen the movie!” I realize after I blurt it that probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone as much as it does me.

“Wonderful for you—” Astarion chuckles, “So you won’t have to imagine very hard, darling.”
He changes the interval he plays and keeps explaining.
“Clarinets, violins, and perhaps a guitar. Think of the whole Miracle Max number as a little Yiddish dance break.”

Mauria takes the spot beside him on the piano bench, facing out at all of us.
“It’s called Mostly Dead,” she whispers, eyes wide—then Astarion begins to sing.

Mostly dead’s not a technical term
I coined it for corpses that still got some squirm

Only two lines in, and I know this is going to be the showstopper.

If a tough case of ‘not-living’ attacks
Remember me – Miracle Max

Astarion grumbles the next bit in a spoken voice. “On second thought, forget you ever heard of me. Just leave me alone,”

It’s a terrible impression, both of a New York Jew, and of a comedian, but the charm is undeniable.

“While Max sings his patter,” Mauria adds, “the chorus has a whispered chant beneath it. Urgent triplets."

Humperdink, Humperdink, Humperdink, Humperdink

She’s bouncing on her toes now and talking a mile a minute.
“They don’t move in volume like at all, until they crescendo to drown Max out in the final 8 bars.”

When they reach the end of the song, a perfect four minutes later, the two of them wait, wide eyed and open mouthed for our feedback.

In the stretch of silence that precedes the applause and cheering from the small gathering it comes to me with sharp clarity—I see their vision, their aesthetic, their blueprint. I look around the tiny rehearsal space.

Jaheira. Karlach. Wyll. Mauria. Astarion.
We have it.
We have the talent, the artistry, the experience, the starpower, the influence—all in one place.

_{“Starting here, starting now
Honey, everything’s coming up roses”}⁴

I blow out a shaky breath, puffing my cheeks.

After a wordless moment I reach over and pluck the coffee cup from Mauria’s hand. I also snatch up the one that Astarion perched on top of the piano.

"What are you doing?" Astarion asks.

"I’m going to get us some proper coffees," I say, feeling lighter than I have in a dozen years.
"Some proper $8 coffees!"

May 10, 2012

“There has to be something—wait, no. Is there someone else…?”

I ducked back into the theatre to gather my bag and umbrella before setting off home. Hearing Mauria on the phone I stepped lightly down the aisle, giving a small wave and a quiet nod goodbye, but when Mauria saw me she shook her head frantically, and held up a hand to pin me in place.

“I understand—” she pleaded into the phone, “—but its not— Ok, but— You have to understand—”

Her wild eyes held mine, widening in horror as the colour drained from her face.
“Then who do I talk to?”

Whatever the argument was, she was losing.

“Fine! Thanks—”
She jabbed impotently at the call-end button, and screamed—screamed—at the dead handset.
“Thanks for exactly nothing!!”

“Mo?” I approached warily. “What seems to be the trouble?”

She was shaking. No, she was vibrating. The resonance frequency of anxiety rolling off her body rattled my fillings.

She flung her phone toward me, and I scrambled to intercept it. While the phone was locked, the notification preview gave away enough information to spike my pulse.

–This is Renée, from the Broadway League. We need to conf-

The Broadway League?

Oh?

My first instinct was delight. Everyone wants to hear from the League in the weeks leading up to Tonys. It almost certainly meant they were gathering information, preparing to shortlist Pros and Cons for nomination.

“Shit, Gale, shit!!”

This was not the reaction of a woman learning that her debut show was being considered for the ultimate industry recognition. I took her hands—surprised at how hot her skin felt—and led her to the piano bench.

“He’s not an owner!”

Every word came ripped from her throat, clear as a bell, but that didn’t give me any more insight into what had her so upset.

“Who isn’t? Owner of what?"

“Astarion. He doesn’t own the show.”

“Of course he does—his name is on the marq—”

“No. Not on paper. Not legally. Not— oh, gods, Gale, oh fuck.”

“Slow down.” I crouched beside her, gritting my teeth as my knees popped on the way down. “Tell me everything.”

“He’s not— Astarion’s not recognized as— It’s my show!—”

“No, that can’t be right. We had those papers drawn up over two years ago.” I couldn’t force the reassurance into my tone that I’d hoped for.
“You remember, we visited the lawyer and—”

“I didn’t sign them.”

“You forgot?”

Mauria froze. Even the sobs and sniffles silenced abruptly, and I realized she was deciding whether to lie to me.

“No.”

“Then why?”

“It was my show. I wrote it. I won the residency, I won the Ebb award.”

I still her fist before she can slam it against her chest for a fifth time.

“I didn’t know then.”

“Know what?”

“That he loved me.” Mauria slid from the bench, landing in a pathetic puddle on the stage.
“That I loved him.”

“You couldn’t have known. You were protecting yourself.”

“Gale! He’s… oh, gods—”

She looked at me—eyes wide, skin pale, breathing shallow. The naked desperation was terrifying.

“We’ll get the lawyer to fix it,” I said reasonably. “Not to worry, Mo.”

She shook her head so fiercely that tears flew off her cheeks.

“If we do, they’ll drop P&C from the shortlist.”

"What? Why?" I was beginning to appreciate her preference for the floor.

“Committee says— it’s too late— would need resubmission—” She only managed a couple words at a time between great gulps of air. She was going into literal shock.

Of course, if she was going to panic, then clearly the most helpful thing would have been for me to be calm, but I was terrified, too-for the show, for my investment, for my friends (not in that order). The sight of the woman now on all-fours, sobbing and running with snot and tears was fairly horrifying as well.

“I can let it go, or…withdraw, they said.”

“Now, now,” I said, using my rational voice on her—the one I reserve for lectures and meetings. I knelt down next to Mauria and hugged her, best I could until my knees could take no more, then slumped to one hip.
“We’ll tell Astarion. He’ll know what—”

“Nooooooooo!” she wailed, even louder.
“Have you tried talking to him lately?”

I had, actually.  I’d watched, quietly supportive, but ultimately helpless, while Mauria navigated a dangerous minefield for the prior several weeks.

“He’ll understand, Mauria.”

“He’ll think I did this on purpose.”

She threw her arms around my neck and clung on like she risked sinking if she let go. We sat there, on the stage, not speaking for nearly half an hour. Even once the bulk of the sobbing was over, the tears still ran freely, and my collar was soaked.

“Withdraw, or let it ride, hmm?” I broke the silence.
“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t want to withdraw,” she sniffed.

_{I am standing here with poison in my pocket
One eye on the target, one eye on the clock-}⁵

“Alright then,” I said, slapping my thighs. “You know, it probably helped that you were alone on that show. As feel-good stories go, it’s tough to beat yours.”

She shot me a sideways glare.

“Not helping.”

“What more compelling tale than a young upstart writer getting a nomination on her first show?”
I bumped her shoulder with mine. “A better headline, certainly, than Cranky Veteran Gets Eighth Tony Nomination - to no one’s surprise.”

“Not helping.”

“Besides, you’ve been the face of the show—the one doing the interviews, the ones the fans are making memes about.”

_{'Cause getting your dreams
It's strange, but it seems
A little — well — complicated.
There's a kind of a sort of: cost.
There's a couple of things get: lost...}⁶

“Oh, gods—” she whimpered. She looked like she was going to be sick.

“Oh, not to worry,” I encouraged. There is value in a good narrative. I was already rephrasing the facts into a sellable narrative.
“It will be fine. You’ll see.”

1. La Vie Boheme back
2. You’re Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile, Annie back
3. Brotherhood of Man, How to Succeed in Business back
4. Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Gypsy back
5. -Poison in my Pocket, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murderback
6. Thank Goodness, Wicked back