Chapter Text
60 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker
Nutcracker Tech Call Sheet
Hey Folx~
Welcome to tech crew for this year's production of The Nutcracker!
For those of you I haven’t met– I’m Deb, I’ll be the Stage Manager and your general point of reference for the next couple months. I’m a Senior on the SM track, so if you have any questions just lmk~ I’ve pretty much done Every Single Techie thing you can think of at this point lmao.
Hopefully on the first day I can everyone’s phone # and we can make a group chat, but for now feel free to email me here or text me. (I’ll leave my # below along with the Director and Mrs. Joanne’s emails if you have any questions/concerns)
Our first scheduled meeting is going to be this next Wednesday (10/18) at 6:45 PM in the West Hall theatre. Just go to the auditorium, I’ll find you.
BTW: If you’ve never been there, it’s the brick-front theatre right by that dining hall that doesn’t serve anything but cereal and shitty rice bowls. (So~ I’d prepare yourselves to pack food if you want something edible on breaks lmao.)
Linked below is a Google Calendar, right now we’ve just got our set rehearsal days and tech week/performance, but keep an eye on it. They’ve already been rehearsing for a month atp, so things usually change pretty quick as it all starts to pick up.
Looking forward to working with you guys!
Deb ~ she/they
Attachments - 3
Contact Sheet Google Calendar Teching a ballet 101 cheat sheet :-p
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Stephanie Lauter’s mother used to love ballet.
She’d danced as a kid, started small, and then quit right after high school. (Not for any tragic reasons; she wasn’t, like, about to go pro or to got into Julliard, and then marriage or a surprise pregnancy got in the way.
She’d just stopped. Went to school for something more practical.)
She’d really tried to get Steph into it as a kid, but she’d just never taken to it the way her mom had. She took one class when she was, like, four, and then it got thrown away in her childhood rotation of abandoned hobbies. Ballet, Soccer, Softball, Gymnastics, Swimming, Cheer.
Honestly, Steph just found the whole thing boring. The music, the dancing, the rules you had to follow if you were the one doing it. Just. Bleh.
She’d only ever actually seen two ballets in her entire fucking life, and she doesn’t remember shit from either of them.
When she was eight her parents had dragged her to a fancy New York City Ballet production of… Giselle or some shit while on vacation, because it was her mom’s favorite. Steph had drifted off into her Dad’s suit jacket sleeve before intermission.
And then, in high school, she’d weaseled her way into an arts department field trip to the Grand Rapids Ballet’s version of some Shakespeare adaptation, that the theatre department was also putting on as a play later in the year. She’d just gone to get out of class, so she hadn’t even tried to stay awake for that one.
All in all, none of that shit really bode well for her next three months of required Ballet Tech-ing.
It wasn’t even something she was supposed to have to do, but, well, random ass credits are sort of just par for the course when you only declare your major by your Junior Year.
Honestly, she’s just glad her Admin had been able to work something out (and less glad about the suitable contribution from her dad’s wallet that it took to get her to work it out). Apparently, a ‘practical production’ credit was something the Media Studies degree required before the end of Sophomore year, for some stupid fucking reason.
Steph still doesn’t get why shit like that needs a timeline shorter than four years. (Though… maybe she shouldn’t be one to talk on timelines. She’s the bitch who remained undeclared until it was literally a threat to her enrollment.)
So, Steph’s only options had been ‘pick a different major’ or ‘tech a physical production during the fall/winter semester’.
And, well, fuck her but she wasn’t about to waste the week of research it’d taken to find the easiest major available that didn’t make her want to blow her brains out from it’s very concept.
So. The Nutcracker it was.
Ugh, Bleh, Etc…
She double checks her email as she walks to the west side of campus, weirdly nervous in a way new things don’t usually make her.
If she had to guess, she’d assume it was how fucking little she knows about what she’s walking into. It’s not like Steph has ever been a theatre kid.
She barely knows what teching even is past, like, a baseline Google search before she signed up, and then a secondary Reddit search when she realized she didn’t really trust Google to be honest about how much this was gonna suck.
Maybe it’s not nerves. Maybe she’s just sort of waiting for an e-mail from her advisor telling her ‘actually, no, I misread the major requirements, you don’t need to work on this stupid ballet’. (It’s not coming. She’s already tried too hard to find a way out of it for her to really hold out any hope, but still, just, like, imagine? That’d fucking rule.)
At least the stage manager, Deb, seems cool. She’d stalked her on Instagram last night, and if she’s gonna be stuck wasting her nights painting sets or whatever, she’s glad there’s going to be one confirmed person there that she’d be willing to get stoned with afterwards.
Steph shoulders open the door to the theatre. There’s a couple on campus, she’s pretty sure, but she’s only been to the biggest one where they hosted bands and speakers and shit. This one is smaller.
She wonders if that’s a dance thing, smaller venues for, like, artistic reasons, or they just got shafted because no one cares about ballet anymore. If she cared even at all she thinks she’d get all righteous angry about it, just as a distraction; but she doesn’t, so she can’t.
There are already people on stage when she drags herself into the auditorium.
(Which… actually sort of surprises her, for some reason.
She knows Deb mentioned that the dance side of shit had been rehearsing for a while already in her initial email, but still. When Steph had been picturing this this whole thing, the idea of actually, like, interacting with fucking ballerinas hadn’t been part of it. At least, not immediately.
She’s pretty sure something somewhere had mentioned a ‘during performances’ part of her involvement when she was signing up, but she’d just assumed before then everything would be generally separate.
Maybe that was stupid, and really, it doesn’t fucking matter, but she still feels thrown off.)
(And half glad that she’s figuring it out now, instead of looking like a fucking dumbass in front of actual people.)
She sinks into one of the seats all the way in the back row, pulling her phone out. It’s not like she’s early; the actual tech shit should start soon. So, until then, she’s going to waste as much time as she possibly can scrolling on Twitter.
Or, she’s planning to. She’s almost immediately distracted.
It’s kind of weird, she thinks, half still staring down at her phone as she pretends to not be watching the stage. Seeing a ballet before it’s all put together.
Even in her incredibly limited experience, everything just sort of blends together in a kind of fuzzy, glazed over couple of hours of pretty. If they’d ended up actually being anything else, she’d fallen asleep by then.
This isn’t like that. She has no fucking clue what part of the show it is, obviously. Even if they’d been full out performing, Steph still doesn’t know jackshit about The Nutcracker, but the music, coming sort of staticky out of a speaker, is all bright and non-descriptly bouncy.
None of the dancers are in costumes, just a crowd of slicked back buns and muted colored leotards. Plus one lanky guy in the middle, breaking the pattern in a white t-shirt and black tights. Like, only tights. Which is… wild.
Everyone on stage looks way more like actually, real college students, and, okay, she probably should stop saying ‘weird’ but it’s the only word that fits. It’s weird, even though she doesn't know why, exactly.
They restart a section of the dance. The director, a white haired dude in a turtleneck (which, actually, is the one part of this whole thing that is exactly how she pictured it) stands at the first row of seats, behind a table, slamming the beat into the face of it. BANG-BANG-BANG.
Steph is… genuinely sort of impressed at how well the dancers seem to be ignoring it. She doesn’t think she’d be nearly as focused leaping into the fucking air with a grown man BANG-BANG-BANG-ing at her.
It’s just, like, straight up remarkable. Even if this isn’t her thing she can admit it. Especially the guy, though, he might just be drawing focus because he’s one million feet tall.
Well, that and the fact that he keeps jumping way too high and then immediately scooping up and entire person to do a lift or some shit.
About halfway through-- Steph’s assuming, she doesn’t fucking know-- the slamming stops. BANG-BANG-silence.
“Spankoffski!” The director-- Hidgens, she suddenly clicks together from Deb’s email, snaps sharply enough that Steph actually, blatantly, looks up from her phone to pay attention.
The music keeps going just a second too long, as everyone freezes. And then, abruptly, it stops.
The guy in the middle steps forward a little.
“Tell me, Spankoffski. Are you happy to be dancing with beautiful women or do you want to kill them? Because I can’t tell!” He throws his hands up, with a scoff that is… an absurdly blatant threat for something coming from the mouth of an administrator, “I honestly can’t!”
Lanky guy-- Spankoffski, presumably (which, Jesus, that’s unfortunate), nods, mouth pressed flat.
“Well?” Hidgens seethes, with a false grin that’s… actually kind of terrifying, and she watches as realization shudders across Spankoffski’s face. A resigned level of annoyance, and discomfort at this, apparently, not being over, yet, “Do you want to murder them? Is that what you're going for? Is it a character choice?”
He swallows, visibly, “No.”
“No, what?”
“No… sir?” He says, sounding completely unsure of himself.
“NO!” Hidgens slams his hands flat on the table in front of him, “No, you aren’t trying to murder them?”
“No. I’m, um,” Spankoffski laughs a little, painfully nervous sounding, “I’m not trying to… murder them.”
“Then act like it for once. God!”
“Right. Thank you. For the note.”
The poor fuck nods with each word, hands twisted in the hem of his t-shirt like he’s physically trying to force this to end. She doesn’t blame him even a little bit. This is brutal.
“And for the love of Tchaicovsky,” Hidgens says, somehow getting louder, even as he leans to the side a little to pinch the bridge of his nose, “Extend your upstage arm fully during your cabrioles!”
He nods again, “Okay.”
“Alright. Alright!” The director claps, the sound cupped between his hands and echoing throughout the theatre. Spankoffski shrinks into his own shirt, “Lets go again, take it from the top!”
The music starts again just as soon as someone taps on her shoulder. She startles so hard that her backpack slides off her knees with a thud.
(None of the dancers react, but Hidgens whirls around to glare at her. Steph decides, through her embarrassment, that after what she just watched, she really doesn’t fucking want that man to be mad at her. Or, like, know she exists, really.)
Schooling her expression into something suitably chill, she shifts around, and presumably-Deb-if-Steph-stalked-the-right-Instagram Deb smirks at her, squatting behind her seat.
“Sorry, dude,” She snort-whispers, flicking a little two finger salute in her direction, “Steph, right?”
Steph salutes back, “Yeah, hey.”
She nods, approvingly, “You’re the only one who actually listened to my email. All the freshmen are just pacing a hole in the lobby.”
“I’m not a freshman,” Steph corrects, probably too intensely.
“Yeah, I know,” Deb rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling so Steph swallows back her immediate defensiveness, “Ready to go?”
And, no. She’s not. Because Steph does not fucking want to be doing this in the first place. But she also wants to get kicked out of school even less. (Well… that’s debatable, actually.)
But, either way, she just nods, scooping up her backpack as quietly as she can.
“Sick,” Deb grins, and despite herself, Steph grins back, “Lets’go.”
–--
All things considered, Steph doesn’t actually think tech crew is going to be that miserable.
Only sort of. The way shit you don’t want to do always is.
It’d been a quick meeting; just a run through of stuff that’d been covered in the email with more detail and a couple of ice breaker games that the freshman took way too seriously.
Because, well, apparently Steph is the only goddamn person on the run crew other than Deb who isn’t, like, eighteen.
It feels both weirdly humiliating and kind of reassuring at the same time. She doesn’t really have to give a shit, because this is the last pick show for tech crew majors. The one all the poor freshmen get stuck with because it runs over into Christmas break.
Steph’s not really an optimist. It’s almost always more fun to complain about shit than just accept it as it is, but even she can admit that it’s all, honestly, way better than she was expecting.
Plus, she was right. Deb is cool.
She half-follows the tightly-knit gaggle of freshmen out of their meeting room. Two of them, arms locked together, whisper frantically back and forth in what, when one of them whirls back to face her with a nervous smile, Steph retroactively clocks as an argument.
“Hey, Steph!” The one that turned says.
She waits a moment, for the second half a sentence, but it doesn’t come. She scrounges around the back of her head for their name, but nothing comes up, so she just echoes back, “Hey.”
“We-- we were gonna go to that… that one bar right off campus that doesn’t card tonight. You know…?” They trail off, almost endearingly nervous-sounding, glancing back to their friend. Steph kind of wants to pat their head or some shit.
“I do know the one. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” They grin, “So, if, like, you wanted to come. You totally could.”
“Thanks,” Steph tries to make her voice sound as non-shitty as she can, but she literally can't think of anything she wants to do less than going to a dive bar crawling with first years right now, “But I’m all good.”
“Okay! Well… see you later!” They say, way too fast, whipping back around to their friend. The two of them turn the corner just as too-fast, giggling.
She rolls her eyes, feeling sort of like she’s in fucking high school again. That automatic, vaguely cringe feeling of knowing people are talking about you, but also, like, not in a way that actually matters.
She can’t really blame them, it was sort of what she was expecting when she signed up for a thing she’s not involved in literally at all.
She takes a second, drifting deeper backstage to actually look at shit. She’s never been in the back of a theatre before, except for one time in high school when she’d been skipping her English class and hid up to smoke on the catwalk with her friends. And, back then she hadn’t really been paying attention to her surroundings.
It’s not particularly interesting, mostly just painted black brickwork and exposed strips of wiring. But scattered up the walls, in white and silver and gold Sharpie, are a bunch of signatures and dates. Scribbled big and small and loopy and spikey.
KRAYONDER CLASS OF 2011 FTW, JACK B ‘14. A.P-Z WAS HERE tiger fucker!!! , Candy <3 S.T.-2012.
She traces a neatly drawn dick underneath a scribbly ‘schwoopsie!’ that… she thinks is supposed to be a name. Maybe. There’s no date next to it.
“They’re old tech seniors,” Someone says behind her.
“What?” She swivels around. She hadn’t seen anyone back here-- and she immediately realizes why.
Stretched out in a full fucking split on the floor, turned to face her with chest completely flat over his extend front leg, is the guy from before. Spankoffski or some shit.
He’s got a coffee thermos resting to the side of his foot, and he’s wearing sweatpants over his tights, alongside a quarter zip fleece over a zip up hoodie, like he’s fucking freezing in the stale heat of backstage somehow.
(He’s also got glasses now, she clocks in the back of her head. A part of her wonders if he just dances, like, blind. Most of her doesn’t really care enough to ask.)
“The signatures? It’s a techie tradition. They all sign it after their last show senior year,” he explains, and then his eyes go a little big and he ducks his head, “Which, you probably already know. Because you’re… Sorry. You just seemed confused, but--”
“No, you’re fine,” She shrugs, turning to lean against the wall. Her back covering ‘schwoopsie’ and their, presumably, dick completely, “I was wondering.”
“Oh,” He nods into his own knee, which is… really weird to watch actually, “Good.”
He leans forward a little, hands coming to wrap around his foot, before he sits up, grabbing his thermos before walking his hands around so he’s completely facing her, legs out on either side. It’s kind of unsettling in a way that an infuriatingly annoying part of her finds slightly attractive.
“So…” She hums, crossing her arms “The director is a total dickhead, huh?”
“Mmm?” He hinges forward, resting his chin on top of his cup, so he’s still looking up at her.
“He was being an asshole to you earlier for, like, no reason,” She elaborates, when he doesn’t stop looking confused, “You were incredible.”
“Oh,” He laughs, “Well… thank you. But, no. He’s right, I’m shitty at emoting when I dance. It’s a whole thing.”
She tilts her head, staring down at him. His eyes look weird and tiny behind his glasses. A snort bursts out of her before she can think about it, “Sorry, dude, but I have no clue what the fuck that means.”
“Right,” His ears go pink, like he’s embarrassed about something, though Steph isn’t all that clear on what, “Like… the actual performance aspect? I’m technically really solid, but I’m bad at acting? I guess?”
“Ah, got it,” She nods a little, letting her head rock back into the wall, “Well, I didn’t notice. So, still a dickhead.”
He laughs, a loud, surprised sound that bursts out of him like a trumpet. He collapses forward, folding his arms flat on the floor and burying his face into the cross of his elbows.
“Thank you,” He snorts, tilting his head half-up, “Again.”
“No problem,” She huffs, “... Spank… offski, right?”
He laughs again, shoving himself back so he’s sitting again, and sticking his hand up to her, correcting, “Pete.”
“Right,” That… makes way fucking more sense. She grabs his hand, kind of wanting to laugh at the weird formality of a fucking handshake with a dude in a full split, “Steph.”
---
bitches (non-derogatory)
You
survived day 1 of ballet hell 💀
stacy 💝
OMG ur literally so brave 🤩💕😽
brenda 💙
We should get fucked up in my dorm to celebrate
brenda 💙
Quick drive 11 hours to my school NOW
You
do not fuckin tempt wme w a good time rn
Kyle
STAY STRONG 😤😤😤😤
Jason
Wait r u fucking dancing in a ballet now??? Wtf??
You
dude no
brenda 💙
Omfg she has to be on the tech crew for class we’ve literally been OVER THIS
Kyle
DUDE this is why u cant ignore our FACETIMES 😤
Jason
Sorry??? Im BUSY??
You
wow jay just say u hate us and go alredddy
stacy 💝
Okayyyy but how was it!!!!!!!! 🙀
You
fine lmao
You
everyown else is fuckinfreshamne tho
You
so like kill me
stacy 💝
EW
brenda 💙
how much u wanna bet stephy is about to be a bunch of theatre bbs sexuality crisises
Jason
Theyre 100% gonna ask u to buy them beer LMAO
You
no STRAIGH UP they literally just invited me 2 a bar
brenda 💙
STEPH THEYRE GONNA TRY AND FUCK U
brenda 💙
DO NOT GIVE IN BITCH
You
ye i DONT think thatll be a problem
54 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker
Steph yawns, knocking her head gently into the side of the lockers all the way in the back of the Theatre building.
She’s not actually all that tired, just foggy-headed and bored and half listening. She hadn’t gone to her classes this morning (knowing she’d be staying late for tech was shaping up to just be way too good of an excuse-- not that she needs one), and staying in her dorm all day starting Twitter fights for the hell of it always leaves her feeling perpetually half-awake.
It’s not a feeling she likes that much, it gets frustrating when she actually has shit to do.
(Not like that'll get her to stop doing it, or anything. It’s just, like, a fact. Rotting in bed makes her brain mushy.)
Over the heads of the way more attentive freshman, she absently watches as Deb squats down to unlock a padlock of what looks like an indoor garage door. She’s sure she explained what the fuck it was before, but Steph hadn’t cared enough to listen, and so she’s not really going to care enough to worry about it.
With a flourish that’s a little too genuine to be anything but bizarrely cool-looking, Deb rolls the door up, the metal slamming into place along the ceiling. (Okay. Cool. Fully just a fucking garage door, then.)
“Alright, folks,” She steps back, letting them actually get a look into space. A big, open room lined with precariously stacked boxes and tarp covered sets,“Welcome to the Chop.”
One of the freshmen, Matt, Steph thinks, because he referred to himself in the third person one time while waxing poetic about his high school tech-crew based epiphany, immediately shoots a hand into the air.
“Yeah?”
“I thought the Chop Shop was in the real--” He bites down on his lip, correcting himself, “Just, like, in the big theatre.”
“Nice catch,” Deb snorts, relaxing back against the now open doorway. For, not the first time in like… literally three days, Steph can’t help but admire how fucking chill she is, no matter how obnoxious the baby techies are.
(Which is less than they could be, as far as freshmen go, but still more than Steph would have the patience for.)
Deb dips her head towards probably-Matt, “But, yeah, sort of. The Chop Shop is in the main theatre. This one’s just the Chop, ‘cause it’s smaller.”
“Oh,” He blinks, and then smiles, “That makes sense. That’s funny.”
“I know, right?” She smirks, gesturing for them to shuffle inside, “C’mon.”
Steph crosses her arms loosely, pretending she also knows why that’s funny as she pushes off the locker to follow everyone in.
(It’s something kind of unexpectedly embarrassing about this shit; at least the freshmen are actual theatre tech majors who know what they’re doing, or, like, what they’re supposed to be doing.
Steph knows why. It’s not like anyone actually expects the last minute, Credit-grabbing Media Studies major to know what she’s doing here, and if anyone was a dick about it she’d tell them just as fucking much, but still. She feels way too old, like, in comparison, to be this out of her depth.)
“Okay,” Deb claps, loud and crisp sounding in the contained space, before lazily pointing her thumbs back to one side of the room, “Nutcracker is a little different than other productions, ‘cause we do it every year, so it’s all pretty tracked. We just gotta get it out.”
All the freshmen nod, so Steph nods, too.
“So, leave sets alone, for right now,” She pauses after that, pointedly staring down the whole line, like it’s a sentence with a story behind it. If it is, she doesn’t give one, just sweeps deeper into the half of the room she’d pointed out a second ago, “We’re just grabbing boxes, today. Anything on this side with red spike tape on the side is good to go. Just grab and stack shit in the workroom, and we’ll go from there. Got it?”
“Got it,” Everyone echoes back, out of sync. Well, everyone except Steph. She takes too long to process that they’re all saying it, and by that point she’d just sound stupid if she tried.
There are… a lot of boxes.
Steph tries, really she does, to actively to search them out for a little bit, but it becomes clear real fucking quick that all she’s doing is getting in the way.
Everyone else is way too goddamn efficient, snatching up clear-sided bins without even looking at the tape on top like they know what's already supposed to be inside, and pushing full stacks of boxes with all their body weight into the hallway.
She self-assigns herself the role of pack mule pretty easily; just grabs bins as people bring them out and walks them over to the room. Back and forth and back and forth. Tedious and easy and boring. Shit she can do with her head all cotton-y and unfocused.
It’s sort of funny, honestly, the way everyone keeps thanking her and smiling, like she’s literally not stealing the job that takes the least amount of brain power on purpose.
Back-and-forth.
Back-and-forth.
Back-and-forth.
Her phone buzzes in her back pocket as someone hands her a crate full of what look like sparkly styrofoam balls stuck on pipe cleaners, and she awkwardly maneuvers it into one arm so she can pull it out.
It’s nothing, a Snapchat notification from a group chat she usually ignores, but for some reason it snaps her out of her busy-work fog to see it. And suddenly, if she does not take a break and hit her vape in the next five seconds she’s going to just straight up go home.
She slams the bin onto the floor of the work room, hand automatically sneaking up to her pocket.
And then, for some reason, she hesitates.
She side-eyes Deb, whose hunched over across the room, stacking up crates full of fake Christmas tree branches that would probably make more sense if Steph knew shit about The Nutcracker.
And, okay, like, Steph’s fully fucking aware that Deb smokes (she would have been even if she hadn’t seen her socials, just fucking look at her) but still. There’s this weird middle place when it comes to asking if she can take a smoke break from someone technically in charge of her.
Not that she’s not going to, for some reason she’s not totally sure of.
“Hey, can I--?” She inches her pen halfway out of her flannel pocket, tilting her head to finish the question.
“Oh, yeah,” Deb says, barely looking up at her, “Just not in here.”
“Cool,” She leans back on her heels, wondering, awkwardly, if she has to ask or if that was just blanket permission.
Normally she’d just go, if she even bothered to ask in the first place, but it feels… dickhead-ish. Maybe it’s just that this whole thing feels way less like class requirement bullshit then she expected, so bailing when she’s supposed to be helping is less a fuck you to the educational system and more a fuck you to… like Deb, and Matt, and the rest of the freshmen whose names she doesn’t remember. (Alex is… one of them, she’s pretty sure, though she can’t remember which, and she heard someone call someone Erin in the Chop earlier. Whatever. She’ll figure it out later.)
Deb tilts her head up, with a clearly amused smile that should make Steph more embarrassed than it actually does, “Don’t take forever, dude.”
“Yeah, thanks,” She breathes out a sort-of laugh, “Be right back.”
“Yup.”
Which, like, that’s as much permission as she thinks she’s possibly getting, so she slips out into the hallway before an overeager freshman can figure out what's going on and try to join her.
As she steps into the hall, already pinning her pen in between her teeth, a tiny, well pushed down part of her brain reminds her that if she wasn’t supposed to vape in the room, she’s probably not supposed to vape in the theatre in general, but literally whatever.
It’s cold, and she’s not going outside unless the empty fucking hallway yells at her.
Oh. She blows down, trying to keep it semi hidden in the flap of her open flannel. Not empty, actually.
Pete, again, is on the floor, up against the wall with knees curled up against his chest. He’s got a to-go coffee cup pinned between them, his chin resting on the lid, eyes flicked down to an open laptop propped up sideways against his ankles.
He’s typing faster than Steph’s literally fucking seen anyone type. Like he’s trying to punch a bunch of finger-sized holes through his fucking keyboard.
(Steph, absently, wonders if this dude just always sits like a freak. And then she wonders if thinking that makes her a bitch.)
(She decides probably, but certainly less of one than if she said it out loud.)
“Hey,” She calls, tilting her vape towards him in an almost-wave.
Peter startles, laptop toppling backwards off his shins and closing top down on the floor with a clack. He blinks up at her like twelve times, just as fast as he’d been typing a second ago, “Hi?”
“Shit, man,” She huffs a laugh, but it comes out sounding guiltier than she means it to, “Sorry.”
“No, no, you’re good,” He waves an absent hand in her direction, but the casual-cool-guy vibe is kind of ruined by the way he scrambles for the laptop, snapping it open to check the screen.
She tilts her head back against the wall, hoping she’s either being subtle enough, or he’s distracted enough for it not to be noticeable, trying to check too.
The screen is fine. Thank fuck. She’s really not sure what she’d do if she scared someone into breaking their entire laptop.
“Hey, you care if I--?” Steph dips her pen back in his direction.
“No, it’s… you’re okay,” He says like he doesn’t really mean it, but a yes is a yes. She’d done her part by asking, it’s not her fault if he’s a fucking liar.
Steph takes a hit, blowing down the side of the hall away from him, like a probably still-pretty-shitty consolation.
When she turns back, he’s staring at her.
“... yeah?”
He looks away immediately, grabbing his cup and taking a sip that, based on the way his entire face pinches into a grimace, is definitely way too fucking hot.
She huffs a little, tapping her thumbnail against the bump of the pen’s charging port. Before she can think too hard about it, she offers it down to him, “Wanna hit?”
“Oh.” His head whips around, flicking down at it and then back up to her like she’d offered him a fucking knife, “No. Thanks.”
She nods, smiling around the mouthpiece as she inhales. It’d fully been the answer she was expecting, so she really doesn’t know why she bothered asking. It’d felt rude not to, she guesses, or, maybe it was just funnier to offer anyway. One of the two.
“I thought it was, like, in the ballerina code of conduct to smoke,” She teases, before she’s actually finished blowing out. It makes a hazy little cloud up from her mouth that dissipates almost immediately, but she flaps her hand through it anyway.
He rolls his eyes, “No, that’s actually a common misconception. Cocaine is way more efficient.”
A laugh startles out of her, unexpected and fast, “Oh, yeah? You doing a lot of cocaine these days, Pete?”
“Oh, no, I’m not,” He grins up at her, spreading the arm not holding his coffee out presentationally, “As you can see, I’m a perfect specimen--” He breaks a little, snorting, “Of a dancer.”
“Ah, right,” She nods, very seriously, doing a bad job of swallowing another laugh, “You don’t need it. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” He tilts his cheek down into the dip of his knees, so his smile gets smushed to the side and his glasses push out of place.
Her stomach does a bizarre little backflip.
“I should… probably get back,” She tucks her hair over her shoulder, absently tracing down her ear to make sure all her earrings are still there. (It’s a long standing habit, the kind she only picked up, like, one hundred lost earrings too late.)
“Okay,” Pete sits up, resettling his computer up against his legs. He tilts his head, eyebrows creeping together like he’s really thinking about something, before tacking on, “Have… fun?”
“Barely,” She scoffs, and then feels a tiny bit bad about it, for some fucking reason, “I mean, I’ll try. But no promises.”
“Good. Right. Well…” He lifts his cup towards her, like he’s giving a toast, and turns back forward. He sets it on the ground next to him this time.
Steph gives him a close-lipped smile, even though she knows he’s not looking, and turns back into the theatre before she can bother being embarrassed about it. The rapid-fire clacking of his keyboard starts up again before she can even close the door behind her.
49 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker
deb
deb
heyyyyy can i run smth by u?
You
shoot
deb
sick OK feel free to tell me to fuck off if im wrong BUT u dont… actually give a shit about tech right? its just a degree requirement 4 u?
You
this feels like a trap???
You
((but also i really dont literally no offense))
deb
figured + not a trap dw
deb
OK so were atp in the process where not everyone is needed to do everyTHING yk?
deb
sooo im assigning roles and i kinda wanna prioritize the freshies who wanna do this fr BUT i also trust u way more to do shit unsupervised
You
tracks sofar also thatsa wild amonut of unearned trust dude
deb
i can def 10000% put u on a reg track OR if u want~ i can throw u the like… easy but tedious shit 4 u to do on ur own while listening to music or whatever
deb
it wont be like everythinggg especially once we get closer to dec. ill need u for group stuff again BUT rn were in liminal tech land 4 the next week or 2 and it feels v best of both worlds solution
deb
hannah montana is all up in this bitch
You
actually that sounds fuckin inrceible lmaooooo
You
….like what tho
deb
like coiling wires/hunting down costume pieces/steaming/fixing random props
deb
so.,., boring but easy~~
You
did u kno i fucking love u??
deb
that a yes?
You
YES??
48 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker
It’s late when Steph finishes her first ‘easy, boring shit, I don’t feel the need to supervise’ tech job from Deb. Like, really fucking late.
Which, in fairness, is definitely more on her than the job itself. If Steph had been focused up, she’d probably have gotten it done in an hour or two. The actual task was easy as shit, just digging through bins full of costume pieces and sorting them out based on a pre-provided list.
She just… took a break between every other weird fascinator hat and shiny packs of ribbon belts, and kept getting distracted by the video essay on all of Lindsay Lohan’s controversies that she’d been playing on her Laptop across the room.
Deb did say she could do it on her own time. She’s just also pretty sure Deb was severely overestimating Steph’s competence.
Well, no. Fuck that. Steph did it. She just took four million years, and is leaving feeling weirdly defensive over it. Like, someone is actually accusing her of slacking off who isn’t actually here.
It’s always weird being in school buildings when they’re empty, all the auto-sensor lights having gone out and the echo-y there-ness of her own footsteps. It makes her feel fifteen again and rebellious in, like, the lamest way possible. Sneaking around somewhere she’s technically allowed to be, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
She slings her backpack over her shoulder, making her way around the back to leave, when something distracts her. (Again. She’s a fucking space case, today, jesus christ.)
Music. Bouncy and orchestral and, vaguely, familiar, leaks down the hallway. She rechecks the time on her phone, like somehow she misread it.
Nope. Still really goddamn late.
It’s probably hypocritical, she thinks, to wonder what the fuck someone is doing here, considering… She's also here, doing something, but still. Who the fuck is here?
She backtracks, following the muffled, rhythmic instrumentals into the auditorium. It’s not until she’s sneaking inside that she thinks, with a not insignificant level of dread, that it might be Hidgens.
It’s not.
Pete’s up on the stage, his phone propped up against a little bluetooth speaker. He doesn’t seem to notice her when she comes in, too preoccupied with lifting an invisible partner and springboarding off the fucking stage like a bird taking flight or some shit.
‘It’s always this fucking guy, isn’t it?’ She thinks, less annoyed, or weirded out than she should be. The thought is almost fond, in a bizarre way. A soft edged, gentle kind of exasperation that the situation really hasn’t earned.
She should probably leave. She doesn’t.
It’s a little hypnotizing, watching Pete dance. She’d sort of realized that the first day, when she’d caught half a second of their rehearsal, but it’s even more obvious now that he’s alone.
It’s just so… perfect. Which, she thinks, should be boring. That’s what usually bothers her about ballet, how polished shiny and flawless it all is. But, Pete’s not dancing like he’s trying to look pretty, he’s dancing like he was built for it. Literally, like, mechanically, or something. And, it’s fucking fascinating.
All his motions are precise, and connected, and sharp. Like one of those watches where you can see all the pieces inside, turning together and clicking things into place, or those semi-horrifying videos, that always come up on her TikTok For You page at like two in the morning, of animatronics before they’ve covered up the machinery inside.
Steph doesn’t know jackshit about dance, just that it’s an artform, and artforms are usually pretty goddamn subjective, but it feels like Pete’s somehow doing it correctly.
The music swells, and he sticks one of his mile long legs to the side, bringing it back behind him like he’s bracing himself. His whole body kicks into a turn, just as ramrod controlled as everything else he’s done. His arms, circled out in front of him, break apart, drifting up and then out in a thousand tiny, planned out micro-motions; their own mini-dance sequence inside of a bigger one.
His leg sweeps down, gently stepping out of the spin.
And then, he stands up, slouches inward to bury his face into his palms, and screams.
“FUCK!”
It’s so startlingly abrupt that Steph’s brain lags a second, before she realizes that can’t possibly be part of the dance.
Pete drags his hands down his face, letting the music keep going on it’s own as he preps for another turn the same way he had before, leg to the side, to the back, and then whipping tightly around. He doesn’t even bother stepping out of it all pretty and slow this time, just jolts himself to a stop so fast he stumbles.
Steph moves forward half a step, like if he fell she could somehow catch him from the back of the room.
“Jesus christ,” He grits out. He’s got his back to the audience, head curled forward to his chest. His hands pushing down on the back of his neck like he’s trying to snap it off, “I’m never gonna get it.”
Without even seeming to prep himself, he straightens, wobbling into another spin. Clumsier this time. Arms curled into his chest, and his heel bobbing visibly when he goes up onto his toes.
He laughs, manic and desperate sounding, half-twirling into another rotation as he stops himself, “Holy shit, I’m literally never getting this!”
“Looked good to me,” She calls, not entirely sure of why. Just to say it, she guesses, because they had, even the ones he hadn’t been trying for. Her voice echoes weirdly across the auditorium. Like, it’s not supposed to be here. Like, it knows she’s clearly intruding just as much as she does.
Pete startles so hard she almost feels sort of bad.
“Fuck, oh my god,” Pete whirls around, before hunching down with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. She feels even closer to sort of bad.
He tilts his head up, aiming a clearly forced, and painfully bewildered smile at her, “Hi? What?”
“That turn?” She shrugs, striding down the aisle so they’re not shouting, “I dunno, it looked pretty impressive to me.”
“It wasn’t,” he scoffs, straightening a little, “It was the completely wrong thing.”
“What’d’you mean?”
She folds her arms up onto the lip of the stage, resting her chin on top of them to look up at him. He stares at her for a long second, before plopping down into a criss-cross sitting position, gracelessly. All his poise or whatever, apparently, reserved for when he’s dancing.
He slaps around next to him for a second, smashing down a button on the side of his speaker so it stops playing.
“It’s the wrong type of pirouette,” He explains, annoyance barely contained, “I keep fucking up and doing the kind in my act one number in my act two.”
“There are multiple types of pirouette?” She asks, sounding too skeptical for a person who doesn’t know anything about what they’re talking about.
“Yeah!” Pete brightens, just the tiniest bit, “A couple, actually! It depends on which way you’re turning, and leg placement, and… you. Don’t actually care about that. Sorry.”
She doesn’t, but she also doesn’t like the way his whole body deflates into itself, so she tilts her hand out of the curl of her arms and knocks it into his knee, “Nah, I’m curious now. Which one can’t you do?”
“I can do them all!” He insists, defensively, “But I’ve just, so, okay, I’ve been doing the Toy Soldier routine literally since my Freshman year--”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. But that one incorporates jazz pirouettes, instead of standard ballet ones. Which is… fine. It’s fine, it looks cool,” He starts picking at the elastic band of his ballet shoe, snapping it up and then back against his foot.
Steph nods, like any of that makes literally any sense to her.
“But now, I’m also in Hot Chocolate and… and that’s great! It’s one of my favorite sequences in the show, actually,” He blinks hard in time with another snap of his shoe band, like he’s physically resetting himself back on track, “But there are actual pirouettes, and I keep fucking them up, because I correlate this whole score with the jazz ones now.”
“Right,” She tilts her head into her shoulder a little, “I guess… is there really that big a difference? Because, like I said, that looked pretty fucking great to me.”
Pete huffs something that’s almost a laugh, “Thanks, but… no? It’s pretty distinctive, like, with foot placement. I mean, when I’m dancing alone it’s not that bad, but in a group it’d be more noticeable--”
“Show me.”
“What?”
She shoves her arms out, awkwardly worming up onto the stage next to him. He blinks down at her like she’s fucking insane.
She smirks, “Show me the difference, Spankoffski. I’m a visual learner.”
“Oh… okay?” His cheeks go slightly red, and he smiles at her, crooked and blatantly nervous, “I mean. Like. With you? Or…”
“Sure,” Stephs snorts, deciding, apparently, that it’s too late in the night for actually thinking things through.
“Okay. You gotta--” he nods down at her boots, “You gotta take those off, though. No street shoes on the marley.”
“Ugh, seriously?” She groans, mostly teasing, but Pete nods, evidently entirely serious.
“Yeah.”
“That’s so annoying, dude,” She kicks her feet up into the air, knocking the sides of the soles together with a thud, “It’s gonna take way too long.”
“They’ve got zippers on the sides,” He scoffs, “I think you’ll be okay.”
She laughs, loud and surprised and as mock-offended as she can make it, “Wow.”
“They do!” He grins, scooting back and watching, his knees bent up by his chest, as Steph tugs her shoes off.
“Happy?” She lifts them up to him presentationally, before tossing them off the edge of the stage and not bothering to look for which direction they bounce.
Pete just rolls his eyes, pushing himself standing so fast she barely realizes he’s doing it.
He sticks a hand down to her, and a part of her considers not taking it, just to be an asshole.
For some reason, though, she doesn’t think she wants this kid thinking she’s an asshole. So, she grabs his hand and lets him pull her standing.
“I’m gonna suck,” She warns.
“It’s ballet,” He deadpans, “It’d be crazy if you didn’t.”
“Fair.”
“Can I--?” He gestures stiffly down at her legs. Permission, in the vaugest sense, even though she’d already pretty much given it to him by asking.
It’s cute.
“Go for it.”
“Okay,” he shoots another cautious smile her way, before kneeling down to adjust her footing, “Though, technically this is more kinesthetic learning.”
“What?”
“Kinesthetic? It’s another learning type where you have to physically do the activity to learn it.”
“Yeah, okay,” She snorts, “Are we ballet-ing or what, dude?”
“Right,” He ducks his head, with a squeezed-tiny laugh, “Yes. Okay, a Jazz Pirouette is to the side, so, like…”
Pete’s hand steadies itself warm and flat against her hip, as he gently guides her ankle up until the side of her foot is against the side of her leg, knee forward.
“Cool,” She wobbles, even with her other foot flat on the floor, “So, this is what you aren’t supposed to be doing?”
It’s awkward, not Pete guiding her, even though that should be too. Just the position. Her hips keep trying to tilt her knee out into a more comfortable position. She tries to picture spinning like this, and the only thing that comes to mind is when she was twelve and sprained her wrist bailing off her Penny Board. Yeah. Fuck that.
“Well, not in Chocolate.”
He lets go, and her leg automatically folds out of position; swinging out like it’s wanted to, before she brings it back down to the floor.
“Yeah, I still don’t know what the fuck that means.”
He glances up at her, clarifying unhelpfully, “Like, the number?”
“I literally don’t know shit about The Nutcracker. That… the act two one, right?”
“Huh.” His expression twists almost shocked, like he’d never considered that was a possibility before. Someone not knowing The Nutcracker, “Yes, though. It’s in act two.”
He looks, for a second, like he’s about to launch into a complex explanation of the entire plot and themes of The Nutcracker ballet, so Steph, gently, kicks a socked foot against his shin. It’s way too late for that.
“What's the other one?”
“Right,” He blinks out of something, really solidifying her confidence that she just narrowly escaped a lecture, “So, with a regular pirouette, you kind of want your foot to start to curve under your knee, in passe. But not overcross.”
He looks up at her, questioning, before he actually reaches for her leg again. Silent confirmation. She nods, half wanting to tease him for being too careful, and half finding it way sweeter than she’d actually admit literally ever.
He guides her foot up to her kneecap, pushing her already out-facing knee back slightly.
“Oh my god.”
She’s not sure why, but she’d thought it’d be more comfortable than the first way. Maybe because it’s where her leg had naturally wanted to fall, but it’s not. It’s, like, so fucking not. That sucks.
“Feel the difference?”
“Uh, no shit?”
He laughs, letting go of her leg, and standing up. She drops sloppily back to both feet. Steady and standing.
“You’re also supposed to be up in relevé, technically. For both of them,” He says, absently rocking himself up on his toes and back down again, “But that’s only when you’re actually turning.”
“Also don’t know what the fuck that means.”
“Oh. Right,” He raises up again, more on-purpose seeming this time, because he stays up there, “Like, tip-toes.”
“Wow. Nightmare.”
And she means it. That had been hard enough to balance, she can’t even fucking imagine doing it less steadily. Let alone turning.
But, because she’s stupid, and maybe a little curious, but mostly stupid, she brings her foot up again, pressing it to the side of her leg, lower than Pete had placed it, practically against her ankle, and tries.
It immediately goes to shit.
Her standing leg awkwardly buckles a little at the knee, like it’s trying to compensate for the way her weight shifts forward, whole body canting to the side before she can actually think it through enough to put her fucking foot down.
Her sock slips under the ball of her foot, and she mentally prepares herself to slam into the stage, arms stubborn and stupid at her sides as she panics over whether to try and catch herself or protect her head--
And then she stops falling.
Pete stares down at her, wide eyed and slightly-pink-cheeked, one arm curled firmly around her waist, as the two of them bend together in the world’s least elegant dip. His other hand sits awkwardly on her shoulder, nervously twisted in the neck of her hoodie.
“Holy shit.”
“Are you okay?” He asks, voice tilted into a high enough pitch it almost squeaks.
“Yeah, I-- yes.”
Suddenly, she registers in the back of her head quite how fucking sturdy Pete’s arm is around her. He’s supporting, like, 90% of her weight right now, and he’s not even wobbling.
Strong and solid and entirely unexpected.
An insane part of her brain considers asking him to take his shirt off. For, like, curiosity’s sake, or whatever. Totally.
“Thanks,” She chokes out, instead.
Pete laughs a little, raising his eyebrows in a way more shithead-y way than she thinks she would have expected, “Wanna try an actual turn next?”
“No!?” She snaps sounding, she’s completely aware, way too fucking panicked for the actual situation. But fuck that.
He snorts, pulling them both up standing, too smooth, too fast, keeping his hand on her shoulder to make sure she’s steady before he lets go. Steph thinks she can hear her own fucking heartbeat.
“Okay, but now I’m, like, double convinced that it doesn’t matter which way your foot goes,” She teases shakily, trying her best to sound normal about any of that, sinking all her weight down on one hip, “That’s so fucking hard, jesus christ.”
Pete grins at her, “I’ll count on you saying that at my funeral, after Hidgens kills me over it.”
“Deal.”
“We should… probably be done with the ballet lessons for tonight though,” He says, very diplomatically, considering. (She realizes, a little belatedly, that his face is still flushed as pink as when he caught her.)
Steph snorts, “You think?”
He flops back onto the floor, grabbing his duffle bag by the handle and dragging it next to him, rooting inside without looking. After a second, he victoriously pulls out a water bottle.
“What are you still doing here anyway?” He asks, half sitting up to uncap it, which is a fair question.
She shrugs, squatting down across from him, “Sorting costume shit.”
“Yeesh,” He grimaces, taking a frantic, crushed up sip of water, sort of looking like a hamster drinking from one of those bottles on the sides of their cages. Which… cannot be more comfortable than just sitting up.
She thinks really hard about making fun of him for it, but the words don’t actually happen. She’s not sure why.
He swallows, before asking, “This late?”
“I procrastinated,” Steph explains, half-laughing at herself (and hopefully managing to make it sound only slightly forced).
“Ah,” he nods, taking another insane looking sip.
And that's it.
She’s not sure what she was expecting. Teasing maybe, or judgement, but it doesn’t come.
It leaves her a little off kilter, all edgy and defensive over nothing. Not that she’d wanted him to be a dick about it but still. It’d probably be easier to deal with.
“How about you? Just pirouette practice?”
“Honestly, pretty much. I never have time during the day, so it’s just easier to run shit after rehearsals are over,” He gestures widely around the stage with his water bottle, “Built in practice room.”
“That sounds fucking miserable, dude.”
She tries to picture herself doing something like that. Going to dance class, and then coming here to dance and get yelled at, only to stick around and dance some more on top of it. No wonder he’s ripped, the fucker is working out more in a day than she thinks most college students do in a semester.
“Oh, it super is,” He laughs, sounding so tired that Steph wants to yawn about it, “But, I think I’m pretty spent for tonight, at least.”
“Fucking good.”
“Could I… um, I mean,” Pete pulls himself into an actual seated position, but he pointedly glances out to the seats, avoiding eye contact, “Do you want me to walk you to your dorm? Since it’s so late?”
And it’s very sweet, and he seems deeply embarrassed to even be asking, so when she laughs she tries to make it sound as non-judgy as possible, “I can take care of myself, thanks.”
“Oh my god, no,” his head whips to actually look at her, panic badly hidden, “I didn’t mean, like--”
“I know,” She snorts, feeling kind of bad again. Pete seems to be good at that. Being just earnest enough that she doesn’t want to be a jerk to him, even if she’s only teasing.
Honestly, it’s not even that he offered, she just doesn’t, actually, live in a dorm. Her and her friends snagged one of the student housing flats on the other side of the literal world, and she’s got her car on campus to drive herself over.
She’s a little disappointed, though, she realizes, at the thought of just going home.
But… well… she’d parked pretty close to the main housing section of campus earlier; since it’s the only student parking that security never checks well enough to tell that her parking pass is expired. The odds are pretty high they’ll be heading in the same direction anyway, right?
“But, I could walk you to yours? If you wanted,” She offers, cocking an eyebrow. Half-daring him to take it. (It makes it seem less like she’s genuinely asking because she wants to. Safer, somehow.)
“Yeah, okay,” Pete smiles, tiny and nice to look at, ducking his head, “I’d like that.”
---
There’s a level of awkwardness to Pete, that Steph’s only really starting to realize as they walk.
It’s not that it hadn’t been there before, it had. But, somehow, she hadn’t noticed it nearly as much in the theatre.
Something about how he existed on his home turf, or whatever, just gave off a vibe that he was comfortable there. Or, at least familiar.
It’s a context thing, she thinks. Like, seeing a teacher at a grocery store. She’s just subconsciously, generally assumed Pete’s too-fast talking and perpetually wide eyes were standard for the dance world, and, now, that he’s been put on a fucking sidewalk, it’s clear it’s just Pete.
Awkward, obviously nervous Pete.
When she’d asked for his phone number, right as they left, she’d thought he was gonna shit himself.
He twists the strap of his dance bag between both hands, glancing over in her direction with an uncomfortable little smile as they walk. She waits, half a second, to see if he is going to say something, and Pete’s mouth twitches, like he is too. But he doesn’t.
“Freshman year, huh?” She says, suddenly. Mostly out of pity but also somewhat due to how deeply fucking unbearable the silence is starting to get.
“Sorry, what?”
“You said you’d done the same dance since Freshman year. The jazzy soldier one?”
“Ah,” He snorts, ducking his chin against his chest for just a second, “I wouldn’t classify it as jazzy. Particularly.”
“What the fuck!” She laughs, trying to sound accusatory, “Literally the only context you’ve given me is the jazz pirouette thing!”
“That’s fair,” He concedes, “It’s more of an aesthetic thing, though.”
“Mmm, care to fuckin’ elaborate?”
“Well, okay,” He yanks the bag strap across his chest, like he’s using it to propel himself forward, and Steph gets the feeling she just signed herself up for a much longer explanation than she’d prepared for. For some reason, she doesn’t mind, right now, “So, the variation, like, in a diegetic sense, is danced by a mechanical automaton. So, it’s been choreographed stylistically to look less natural and more robotic. Hence the jazz pirouettes, because they look more awkward when in the context of a ballet. If that… makes sense.”
“Y’know, it actually kind of does,” she nods, knocking her shoulder into his. At any rate, it made about as much sense as it was going to, where she can assume shit based on the words she actually understands.
“Nice,” He pumps his fist, and then looks instantly humiliated at having done it.
“That’s kind of cool, actually. I feel like in my head ballet is just supposed to look as pretty as possible.”
“Eh, it depends on the ballet,” he shrugs, “But, yeah, it’s interesting. It would probably be more fun if it wasn’t just Hidgens being a dickhead, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”
“Okay, you lost me again, immediately.”
“Right. Yeah, so it’s my solo at this point, but that’s mostly because it’s Hidgens’ idea of a joke. Because, I don’t emote while I dance and it’s an ‘emotionless robot’.”
“Woah, that’s fucked up!”
“It’s pretty standard in terms of dance teachers, honestly.”
“Oh my god? Quit?” She says, mostly kidding, which is why she’s a little thrown off when Pete looks over at her with genuine, fucking longing in his eyes.
“God, I fucking wish I could.”
“Literally why can’t you?”
“I mean,” he turns his head around to face her, just a little, so his glasses glint yellow off a street light, “Technically, I could, but then I lose my scholarship.”
“Pete. Everything you’ve told me in the past five minutes has sounded so fucking concerning.”
He laughs, “Sorry?”
He doesn’t seem particularly sorry, but Steph’s not planning on calling him on it.
“What kind of fuckass scholarship requires you to do The Nutcracker?” She asks, with way more audacity than she’s entirely sure it deserves.
Steph genuinely doesn’t know anything about how scholarships work. She hadn’t needed to. It'd been the one part of her dad’s nine-million-strings-attached help she’d never fought against.
She knows some kids with wealthy parents who are determined to pay their own way, for some bullshit independence reasons, but Steph thinks that’s stupid.
Yeah, sure, she doesn’t want to be tied down, dependent on her dad forever. She doesn’t like owing him, but, like… her dad is a dick, and in turn, he pays several hundred thousand for her tuition. It really just seems like a fair fucking trade.
(Though, that kind of thinking is exactly what got her stuck on tech crew in the first place, so maybe she should be less fucking cocky about that.)
“The ‘Alexander Kozlov Memorial Scholarship Fund’ kind,” Pete recites so specifically, voice dropped low and pretentious, that Steph is certain he’s mimicking someone.
“Woah, shit, man. That’s my favorite one.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Pete grins at her, “Everyone loves when a broke male ballet dancer gets a full ride. It’s really one of those heartwarming stories the whole family can enjoy.”
“A full fucking ride?”
“I know.”
“Holy shit.”
“Henry Hidgens has nothing on avoiding student loan debt,” He sweeps his arms dramatically out in front of him, before instantly folding up back around his bag strap. His whole demeanor shifting so fast back to casual that Steph gets mental whiplash, “Plus, the scholarship covers my other major too, so, sticking with dance is really the only option that makes sense.”
“Your what?” The mental whiplash worsens. Like, she’d stepped off one roller coaster right onto another.
“I’m double majoring,” He nods, like it’s no big deal. Like that’s a normal thing to say.
“What the fuck? What’s your other major?”
He smiles, brighter than Steph thinks she’s seen from him ever in their, admittedly pretty limited interactions, “Physics.”
Yeah, okay. Okay, no, nothing to do with anything about Pete is just a dancer thing, she decides then and there. Pete is just certifiably insane.
“Holy shit, dude. Do you sleep?”
“Yeah, no,” He huffs, “Not even at all.”
“Jesus,” Steph stops walking for a second, trying to let the information sink in. Two majors. And one of them is dance. And the other is fucking physics? What the fuck? It’s like he’s the main couple of some vaguely misogynistic early 2000’s chick-flick about opposites attracting, all in one fucking person.
Pete pauses, glancing behind him, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” She scoffs, kicking forward off the concrete to catch back up, “Just, now I get why you’re drinking coffee twenty four fuckin’ seven.”
His eyebrows scrunch together, mouth rounding around a silently confused ‘coffee?’, before his eyes widen in understanding. Steph can physically see as the pieces click together in his head, “Oh. No. That’s almost always hot chocolate.”
“What the fuck, dude?” She laughs. She can’t fucking help it. Every single thing she learns about Peter Spankoffski seems to be a complete one-eighty on the previous one. It’s crazy. She feels like her brain is melting.
He laughs back, but there’s something a little nervous to it suddenly, “It’s a… I have really low blood sugar, and, honestly coffee is just… gross, so--”
“So, what, man? Are you, like, hyperdosing Adderall or some shit? Because, I’m barely doing one fucking major and I’m still too tired to make it to half my classes.”
Pete snorts, actually real this time, “Yeah, that one’s a no.”
“Yeah, see I just, like. Don’t believe you,” She teases, jostling her shoulder back into his, half on purpose and half pretending otherwise, “Stimulants or coffee are the only two explanations I’ve got for how you haven’t exploded yet.”
He rolls his eyes, just a halfway flick up to the sky, before cutting her a grin. He’s got a nice smile, she thinks. Kind of crooked, but… pretty. Almost. She sort of gets why Hidgens is such a bitch about him not using it
“See, but like,” He readjusts his duffle bag up on his shoulder, bumping it against her arm on the way that she’s almost positive was intentional too, even if she can’t be sure enough to accuse him of it, “I’m pretty sure I, specifically, as a person, would be way more conspicuous about it if I was, I dunno, constantly taking someone else’s ADHD medication.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re mysterious as fuck, dude.”
“Am I?” He huffs, sounding a little pleased.
“Yeah,” She crosses her arms, squinting over at him, “You are.”
To her surprise as she looks at him, weird and, not entirely bad feeling, Pete’s already staring at her. But, when their eyes meet, he snaps his head away.
Even in the weird street lamp light, she can see his cheeks have gone all flushed.
“Huh.”
They walk in quiet for a little bit. It’s not necessarily as uncomfortable as it’d felt at first, even though it should be. Steph’s not good with quiet. She needs to fill it with bullshit, or music, or something, or else she gets twitchy.
But this is okay. Kind of.
“So… you… like coffee, then?” Pete breaks the silence, almost apologetically. Like it’s not a valid question after the conversation they’d actively just been having.
“Eh, it’s alright. I’m more a matcha girl,” She shrugs, “But I can fuck up an iced latte if the vibe is right.”
“Oh, cool,” He nods, “That’s like… a healthier caffeine substitute, right? My roommate likes it, but, honestly I just think that’s ‘cause it’s from the continent of Asia, so…” He trails off, nodding again. As though that’s a cohesive ass way to end a fucking sentence.
“I think so?” Steph snorts, “I dunno, I just think it tastes good. If I need caffeine I’m going straight to the source.”
Pete pauses next to her for a long second, before letting out a baffled noise that isn’t quite a laugh, but it’s also… not quite not, “Hey, am I supposed to know what the fuck that means? Because that sounds way more like you’re doing hard drugs than whatever I said earlier.”
And Steph can’t help the laugh that rockets out of her mouth, burying her face in her hands. This stupid ballerina boy is just way funnier than he should be. Or, well, maybe that’s not fair.
He’s at least funnier than she fucking expected.
“Energy drinks, dude!”
“Oh.” He swallows his laughter, like he’s inhaling his own understanding, before tilting his head towards her. Smiling all stupid and crooked and… admittedly still pretty, “Those are awful for you.”
“Aw, suck my dick about it,” She scoffs, rolling her eyes so hard she can feel it in her temples,“Who are you, my dad?”
“No!” He insists, sort of frantic, and sort of like he finds this all way too funny to actually worry about being misunderstood. (She prefers that second sort-of. Less needlessly sorry.)
His smile slips, very suddenly, into a smirk, “That’s just a wild way to fuck up your cardiovascular system if it’s not even, apparently, getting you to class on time.”
“Wow,” She crows, with the most offended expression she can possibly muster. It still probably looks too much like a smile to really sell it, “Fuck you?”
“I’m just saying!”
“Yeah, okay, call me the next time you get a full night's sleep, Spankoffski.”
“Touché.”
He rocks to a stop as they reach the place where the sidewalk splits into two stairways, nodding towards the one that leads up to a dorm Steph’s definitely been black out in.
“This one’s me,” He says, actually sounding a little sorry about it. Steph is too, in the same confusing, vague way she’d been back in the auditorium, but she ignores it. Too busy being vindicated that Pete’s dorm is near where she parked earlier.
(Something inside of her suddenly relaxes, in a way she hadn’t realized she wasn’t already. Like, subconsciously, she’d been more convinced that she was lying over how convenient walking Pete out here was going to be, and is glad she doesn’t have to be embarrassed.)
(Even though Pete literally never would of known so she doesn’t know who the fuck she’s going to be embarrassed in front of. Herself. Maybe.)
“Cool,” She sinks back on her heels, “Thanks for the wildest walk of my fucking life, dude.”
His hands ball together on his duffle, so it pulls up by his chest. Nervous again. Like, he doesn’t know if she’s making fun of him or not, “You’re… welcome?”
“That’s a good thing,” She reassures him.
“Oh. Okay,” He blinks, cracking half a smile, “Get back safe.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” She calls, turning to start down the stairs to her car. She hears Pete laugh behind her, another burst out, loud sound.
She gets a couple steps down before stopping. She doesn’t know why. It’s late and she’s tired and she either wants to go to bed, or go get fucked up with her roommates. Whichever gets offered to her first.
But she stops, turning around and leaning her hip against the cool metal of the railing, watching Pete’s back retreat up the stairs to his dorm.
There’s this… grace to how he walks, when she’s really paying attention to it. Sort of like how he dances, visibly in control of his whole body, and everything smoother than it should be. Almost as though he’s going step by step to a silent 1-2-3 beat.
Or, maybe she’s just making that up. Probably, she’s just making that up. And, definitely she’s at least being creepy by staring at him this long trying to figure it out.
When he reaches the door, Pete freezes, glancing over his shoulder. Fuck. Caught.
Before she can freak out, and probably embarrass herself more by spinning right around to try and pretend she hadn’t been looking at all, he lifts a hesitant hand and waves.
Without thinking about it, she waves back. And he’s far enough away she can’t be sure, but she thinks he smiles, before ducking through the door.
Steph’s stomach twists weirdly, and stays like that, even as she turns back around and walks to her semi-illegally parked car.
Huh.