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starship-squidlet · 4 years

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Twelfth Night: Chapter Eleven, Pipers Piping

Summary: Back to work after Christmas! Things are a little tense, but everyone is just ready for the show to end...

Word count: 1,722

Disclaimer: Twelfth Night Preface

Tag list: @the-cowbi @prettyinlimegreenboots @fifty-for-the-racer @aggressive-bucky-barnes-stan (ask to be added/removed!)

A/N: Second to last chapter! This story has flown by so fast... I’m going to post the preface to the next story (The Green Fields of France, which will start posting 1/14 probably) I’m working on either tonight or tomorrow, so if you’re interested in being tagged in that please let me know!!! The sequel to Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will becoming at some point towards the end of February/early March, so keep an eye out for that as well!!! (Also coming soon: Space Pirates AU, and the New Music spinoff #2 and sequel!) Feel free to reach out and chat if you’re interested in knowing more about any of those, or if you want to be tagged when they’re posted!!!

Anyways, I hope this chapter isn’t too boring! It’s a lot of exposition and internal monologue because... at this point in a show... that’s about all you feel like doing 😂

Joke of the Day: What’s black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white? A penguin rolling down a hil!!!

Previous chapter: Lords A-Leaping

Next chapter: Drummers Drumming

No-one wanted to go to work on the twenty-sixth. Since Christmas Day had been so drowsy, they’d all had a hard time sleeping that night, so dragging themselves out of bed to get ready for work had been challenging. There was no lack of envy for Will, Alden, and Alan, who didn’t have to be in until two hours later than the others, although they still got up at the same time in a show of solidarity. Jack, Crutchie, and Elaine had to drag themselves down the block to the parking lot, almost completely silent save for the odd yawn or wordless grumble that escaped as they drove to the theatre. Inside, everyone else was just as still and quiet as they were—a “Christmas hangover”, as Race put it.

Jack moved through his pre-show preparations like he was moving through soup. Everything seemed more difficult than it should be, even simple things like rolling the cart-mounted carousel horses across the wagon house or rigging the carnival games. Elaine trudged through the wagon house, dragging the z-rack full of freshly-pressed dress shirts and scowling as the first performers began to arrive and fill the wagon house with their chatter—although even they weren’t as loud as normal. Not that anyone on the crew was complaining about that.

The only group that had even close to its normal level of energy was the child and teenage performers, who burst through the door in small packs, each one its own explosion of noise and color and force. Behind one of the little groups—the one containing one Leslie Jacobs—Jack had to hide a grin at the sight of an utterly exhausted-looking Davey Jacobs. When Davey caught sight of Jack, he perked up and smiled, giving the other man a small wave, before vanishing into the stairwell. A few minutes later, he was back, and sat down next to Jack on the bench by the stage right door with a sigh.

“How was your break?” Jack laughed.

“Well, we kind of crammed everything about Hanukkah—besides the candles; we did those during Hanukkah, but didn’t have time for anything else between working and finals and everything—into the past three days, and spent a lot of time on video chat with our parents. They wanted to come home, but decided it was probably best to just wait until the show closed because a lot of the time a second round of sick goes through in the last week just because everyone’s exhausted.”

“Great,” Jack groaned.

They watched Albert and Elaine walk past and pointedly ignore each other. Both of them arched their eyebrows at the odd interaction—or, rather, lack thereof—and watched the two head their separate directions.

“That was weird,” Davey observed.

“Yeah… I’m not really sure what it’s about. They were fine earlier.” Jack looked around and waved JoJo over. “Hey, what’s up with Albert and Elaine.”

JoJo shrugged. “Who knows. We’re all exhausted. They always fight when they’re tired. It’s probably nothing.”

Before the break, Jack had thought that the final Sunday’s show had been the slowest of the run. He had been wrong. The first show back was the slowest one—literally and figuratively; not only did it feel like it was dragging on, but, upon checking the time on his phone (repeatedly) he realized that was actually taking longer than normal to get through the show.

“Does the music sound slower to you?” he asked Race and Albert at one point as they moved the stage right house into place for a scene.

“Definitely,” Race grumbled.

“Even the band is out of patience with the show,” said Albert.

The second act, despite the high-energy start with the dancing and singing elves, things seemed to get even slower. From Race’s headset, Jack could hear the stage manager complaining about the lack of energy and speed—very loudly—and had to laugh. There was nothing to be done about it, after all.

The second show wasn’t much better, although the tempo picked up a little bit. They were still a few minutes longer than their normal run time, but had halved the amount of time that the day’s first show ran over.

For the rest of the week, things slowly moved closer and closer to normal. Everyone was still quiet and a bit lackluster, but the onstage energy picked up considerably the more shows they did—and the closer to closing they got. No-one ever figured out why Elaine and Albert were mad at each other, and Jack had a sneaking suspicion even the two of them wouldn’t have been able to answer if asked, but they were back to their normal scheming selves in a few days. Jack and Race decided to thank Mike, Ike, and JoJo for that, as another snowball war had been started—although this one was a stealth version that involved sneaking up on people before, after, and between shows; during intermissions; and even during lulls in the shows themselves and snipe-shotting one’s opponent with one of the little stuffed snowballs. Elaine always had a snow-puff in one of her apron pockets, and Albert kept at least one in the cargo pockets of his pants at all times. Jack guessed that Mike, Ike, JoJo, and Romeo—who was drawn into the war a little later—kept them on their persons most of the time as well. He never quite got used to the sight of fist-sized balls of fluff flying past his face in the middle of carrying props across the wagon house, usually followed by a startled yelp.

To everyone’s surprise, Elaine was the best participant in the war, and, when they were scolded by Weisel and called the competition off, she was declared MVP. Despite self-professed bad aim and poor depth perception—which the others could confirm, as other accuracy-based games that were played amongst the crew had illustrated her poor performance in these categories over the past months—she was scarily accurate with the light snow-puffs. It became common for her opponents to be in the middle of a conversation only to have a small ball of fiberfill and faux fur hit them in the back or head and to see a giggling, grinning Elaine dart around a corner or into a stairwell on the far side of the wagon house.

As they counted down to their final show, it was almost like everyone’s breath was held at the same time. The shows started to get faster now, and the protests by the stage manager over headset became pleas to slow down rather than speed up. Even the dancers commented on the increase in tempo, coming off from the tap number and elf sections breathless, sweaty, and laughing. A new energy seemed to be building up amongst both cast and crew, and Jack felt himself getting caught up in it without even noticing, the sort of energy that came with a storm on the horizon, with a wave about to crest in the ocean—with any sort of impending change.

Yet, with that nervous energy came an odd undercurrent of sorrow. As awful as so many of the parts of the show and its run had felt, as draining as the experience had been, as much as Jack wanted to be able to take a few days and just sleep—even though he knew that half of January was packed full of concerts and tours so he wouldn’t be able to do so for long—he was sad to see the show ending. Les Mis hadn’t felt like this, at least not that he could remember. He had felt ambivalent to tear that set apart after the final show, and happy to run his track for the final time. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had spent more time and energy working on the Christmas build, or just because he had grown so much more attached to the people he worked (and lived) with during this run, but he was truly sorry to see it go.

December 29th, 2019 was the second-to-last night of shows. Most of the performers spent more time than usual in the dressing rooms after the show, collecting personal belongings to take home with them. Many of them would be leaving the city or even state the next day, after the final show, heading for jobs at other theatres, as most of them weren’t permanent residents—the exceptions being two of the male singers, along with Alan, Alden, Will, and the show captain—of Santa Fe. One of the kid casts had had their final show the day before and had said tearful goodbyes to the adult cast members, each other, and even some of the crew. Some of them had returned tonight to see some of their friends on the other cast, and another round of tears went through the wagon house. Tonight’s kids cast had laid out their show t-shirts on the wagon house carpet and asked everyone to sign them. To his surprise, even Jack had been asked to sign several, and had reluctantly given in and done so.

Another reason that the ending of the show was particularly bittersweet, for Jack and his roommates, was that Will had told them, a few weeks earlier, that he would be moving back home to London in January, after accepting a job there. Despite jokes about having more space in the apartment and one less person to share the bathroom with, everyone was sad to see him leave, even Jack and Crutchie, despite only having known him for a few months. As the penultimate show drew to a close, Jack couldn’t help but notice Alan, Alden, and Elaine’s misty eyes as they prepared to say goodbye to their long-time friend and partner. He swallowed a lump in his own throat. It would certainly be strange to not hear Will’s accent somehow always discernible through the chatter of the entire cast, or run into him heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night at home. He’d be around for another week before leaving—it wasn’t like he was flying out after the last show, like most of the others, but quite suddenly it felt very much like he was going to be gone before they knew it. Maybe, Jack thought, that the show they had almost felt would go on forever was finally coming to an end…

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