Chapter Text
As exes went, Nessa was the absolute best. They’d met before Wade’s accident when they were both in the chorus in, funnily enough, a production of Chorus Line. They had had that kind of chemistry that translates really well across thousands of seats so their respective stars had risen in unison, culminating in a tour of Evita with them both in the leads. It was the best of Wade’s life, but then the accident happened and no one wanted him on stage after that.
He didn’t want himself on stage after that.
So better to let Nessa keep rising on her own ballast and, though they never said, Wade was pretty sure that’s what had driven them apart. She rose, he plummeted. He was an eyesore on opening nights and an awkward story in interviews and so he bowed out. Better to exist entirely outside the view of the audience. After a few fits and starts, he somehow had become the guy you sent your script or your song to when it needed that extra oomph. It wasn’t glamorous, but he got to work in his boxers and have a cat so.
Nessa respected that part but she dug her heels in about letting him entirely off their interpersonal hook and so they’d settled into a sort of extra-level of friendship. Friends who didn’t sleep together, but who had all the closeness of a married couple. It was strange for both of them but, then again, also shockingly natural.
So when she turned up at his door, it wasn’t entirely unprecedented. She did still have a key.
“Neena needs you to look at this script,” she announced, dropping her coat onto the radiator that doubled as a coat rack.
“Hello, Ness,” Wade said without looking up from the notes he was writing on a ballad. “I’m fine, thanks, how are things with you?”
She ignored that and ploughed on. “Neena says the songs are on point, but the plot is a mess.” She tossed the script onto the sofa next to him. “Hi, Wade,” she added.
Bea Arthur meowed to announce that she was in the room and also infinitely more important than anything else Nessa might have going on. Nessa picked her up and started scratching behind her ears.
Wade finished the page and pushed the song to the side to take a look at Nessa’ script. “Why isn’t Neena asking me?” he asked. The title on the front read, Stryfe: The Musical, which. Yikes.
“She’s herding the playwright,” Nessa said and sat on the arm of the sofa, still holding Bea. There was nowhere for her to sit on the actual sofa unless she could find a way to fit into the recently-vacated Bea-sized space. Otherwise, it was burrito wrappers and scripts as far as the eye could see.
“Ugh, no, Ness,” Wade whined. “I don’t want to deal with one of those.” But he kept flipping through the script. It almost worked as a comedy, it was that grimdark.
“Just skip to the love song,” Ness said, depositing Bea back in her place so she could reach over Wade and flip to the song.
Wade hummed a few bars and it definitely had a melody you’d get stuck in your head. A nice lilt too. The words were somehow both sad and uplifting at the same time. It was….really, really good.
“I dunno,” he said. The title was Stryfe. Could he even save it?
Ness huffed in exasperation and plucked the the score out of the bunch of papers, leaving him with the script. She took it over to his tiny upright piano and started playing. It was more of a waltz than he’d thought. It was a little quaint, but also earnest and sweet. Exactly what you want in a love song. Then Ness started to sing the words and they were incredibly simple, which somehow made the song even prettier.
And then he looked back at the script.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, flipping back a couple pages and then back again, “is this a love song from an evil twin to his brother’s wife?”
Ness kept singing, but she nodded.
“No, Ness, no. No. No no no,” he said. “Ness, she dies in this song!”
Ness stopped singing and swung around back to face him.
“That’s what I said,” she explained. “Or, actually, what Neena said. The songs are great, but the plot’s a mess.”
Wade was still skimming, increasingly horrified. “The protagonist has the most confusing backstory in the entire world. Is he from the future or not?”
“You see the problem.”
“The problem? I see, like, twenty problems.” He pointed down at the page. “What even is his name? He’s got like six.”
“So you’re on board,” said Ness in that decisive we’ve-finished-talking-about-this tone that, while Wade’s absolute favorite back when they were knocking boots, wasn’t at all his favorite when he’d have to take on flaming trash-fire scripts.
But she was also right. You just had to refocus the book around that love song. It was such a beautiful song, it deserved to be at the absolute heart of any show it was in.
And now Wade had plans.
Nessa ate all his leftover chow mein before leaving. He didn’t notice.
* * *
It actually wasn’t that hard to change the story into a love story. It also leant itself to more comedy that way and Wade was happy to let the finished product turn into a romantic comedy. He ditched the confusing backstories---for everyone, jeez louise did this playwright love to tie his characters up into pretzels. He turned the fridged wife into the protagonist instead of the moody dude. She was plucky. He gave them a kid.
He was in the middle of trying to plot out what their kid would be like when Russell called.
“What?” he said, propping the phone against his shoulder. The fight song from the war in Act II could absolutely be changed into a petty teenager’s rebellion. He jotted a note down to remind himself.
“You gotta talk to Mom,” said Russell. “I just want the one tattoo, man, it’s, like, not even a big deal.”
“She’s not my mom,” said Wade absently. Then he frowned. “Hang on, she’s not your mom either.”
“Whatever, man--”
What came next was one of those long rambling explanations about how Russell was being “kept down” by the “Man.” Russell was being temporarily housed by one of the foster families who was once lucky enough to have also housed Wade. Even though Wade wasn’t too attached to the foster family, he’d somehow ended up accidentally almost-family to Russell. He wasn’t entirely sure how the chain of custody had worked there.
“.... and that’s why I want ‘firefist’ spelled out across my knuckles,” Russell was finishing saying when Wade tuned back in.
“Fire fist?”
“Yeah, but, like, one word.”
“Like...psoriasis?” Wade asked. “Or a rash?” He frowned. “Also, I don’t think you can make it one word when it’s separated by the fact that you have….you know, two hands.” He turned both of his own fists to face himself and, nope, no way to spell out “firefist” on one hand.
Russell seemed to consider this.
“I don’t think anyone would get it,” said Wade. “Maybe get it on some stickers? Put it on your locker?”
Russell liked that alternative. Wade would have to remember to send his former foster parents a text later about this. Mental note, he said to himself.
Actually, the evil twin from the musical seemed a lot better suited to being an angry teenager. Wade would just re-write a few lyrics, transpose a couple of scenes….it was basically already in the book.
When Russell hung up a few minutes later, Wade began to rewrite the war song from Act II to be about a teenager who wanted to tattoo “firefist” on his knuckles.
If only Russell could play this part. He’d be so perfect.
* * *
It was Tuesday the next day which meant that Piotr, the landlord and part-time dance instructor, was going to go to his rehearsals in his crop top and leggings. Wade was fresh out of inspiration for the moment (and any day could be improved by Piotr in a crop top and leggings) so he made sure he was sitting on the steps of their apartment building when it came time for Piotr to leave.
He was wearing his hoodie, hood pulled as far over his eyes at it went so that no one was really at an angle to see his face. Or his scars.
He had the duet in Act II stuck in his head and hummed it while he waited.
“доброе утро, Wade,” said Piotr. It was early Spring so everyone else on the street, including Wade, was still wearing their coats and their scarves. Not so for this blessed Russian hunk of beef.
“Wanna thank your mother for a butt like that,” said Wade. “Can I get some fries with that shake-shake booty--”
“Yes, Wade, you have sung me this song many times,” said Piotr. “You like my ass. This is old news.”
Wade feigned shock, pressing a hand to his chest. “I am maligned,” he said in a faux Southern belle accent. “My affections are being disparaged.” He grinned and dropped the accent. “I don’t ‘like’” he dropped air quotes around the word “dat ass, I would put a ring on it if I could.”
Piotr rolled his eyes. “Will you be coming to dinner? Ellie will be bringing her girlfriend.”
And while Wade could happily (and shamelessly) hit on Piotr till the cows came home, it always gave him that goose-pimply feeling when Piotr made actual overtures of friendship.
“Yeah, OK,” he said, tugging on the string of his hoodie.
Piotr nodded. “Come by early, you can tell me about this script Nessa gave you.” He shouldered his gym bag and left.
“Hate to lose you, but love to watch you leave,” shouted Wade after him.
* * *
Wade typed furiously all day and had most of Act I done by the time he had to go down to annoy Piotr while he cooked. Piotr always acted as if Wade needed an invite to Tuesday Stroganoff---which, he did, probably, since it was hard for Wade to tell when he had worn out his welcome---but Wade had been coming for months by that point. Piotr had sat with Wade after Wade and Nessa were finished, he’d got drunk with Wade when the weight of everyone staring had gotten too much, and in return, Wade had become a quasi-babysitter-slash-friend who came to Tuesday Stroganoff and occasionally threw Piotr the odd job doing to choreography what Wade did to scripts. It worked for them.
When he met them, Ellie was just reaching the age where she shaved her head and hated everyone so she and Wade got along like a house on fire from day one. So far, the house had still not actually caught fire, but it was a close thing.
So he spent the evening eating stroganoff, being wildly in favor of Ellie’s girlfriend, and talking through his new plot for Stryfe: The Musical.
“You can’t call it that anymore,” said Ellie.
“No, I guess not,” agreed Wade. He’d cut the titular character, after all, and replaced him with a thinly veiled version of Russell. “Suggestions?”
“I Am Secretly A Cinnamon Roll: The Musical?” Ellie suggested. She caught the dinner roll Wade threw at her.
“Wade,” said Piotr making Disappointed Dad face. “Do not throw food.”
“I would never,” said Wade, crossing his heart. Yukio giggled.
“Do you not worry that you have changed this man’s script so entirely?” asked Piotr. Then he nudged the salad towards Wade. “Also, you should eat more vegetables.”
It made Wade roll his eyes but he could always use some more green leafy so he gave himself another helping. It was also part of their routine: in a few minutes, Piotr would start eding the stroganoff towards him as well.
“I mean, it’s what I do, right?” he said, answering the first part. “Nobody’s ever had a problem before.”
“That you know of,” Piotr clarified.
“That I know of,” Wade agreed.
“Just be careful, Wade.” Piotr started pushing the stogranoff in his direction, right on cue.
What was there to be careful of, anyway? Wade was fixing things. Nobody ever objects to a script doctor.
* * *
A week later, Wade emailed the new book to Neena. It had been a big job, but also somehow more like uncovering the subtext than writing new text. The songs themselves had been the biggest help. Wade had just sort of….re-arranged them. But the time-travelling and the space war had all been metaphors for this already, obviously. He just moved the subtext up to the text. Hardly even a big change.
Wade had so thoroughly put the job from his mind that he was tooling around with another song, not even one for work, just something of his own. He hadn’t done that in a long time. Probably as far back as his MFA at Tisch.
And all of that was why he was so very surprised to get a knock on his door (when he hadn’t even ordered any chimichangas in, like, an hour) and even more surprised to find a short, middle-aged, incredibly buff dude on his doorstep.
“You ruined my script!” the dude said, waving a printed copy of the revised Stryfe script chockablock with a rainbow of post-it notes.
“I definitely didn’t,” said Wade. “You ruined your script. I resuciated it.”
“You changed the genre!” It was raining out so the dude was soaked through. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and glared even harder. “You changed the title.”
“Is time-travelling grimdark even a genre?” Wade waved the dude in. “You might as well come in.”
The dude wiped his feet on the welcome mat Wade had honestly completely forgotten he owned. It said, “Hope you like cats” written on it. No one had ever used it to Wade’s knowledge. He was pretty sure he himself had not bought it, actually. He was pretty sure Piotr had put welcome mats outside of all the apartments somewhere around six months previously.
Wade watched him wipe his feet, fascinated.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked because he felt like he had dropped into a Tennessee Williams play where manners suddenly mattered. If life was going to take a sharp turn into The Glass Menagerie, Wade was gonna lay claim to playing the Amanda role good and fast. Heaven forfend against having to be the Tom.
“You changed everything in my play,” the dude accused, holding the play in one hand and tapping it angrily with the other.
“You’re dripping,” said Wade.
“Stop changing the subject!”
“I could get you a towel?”
“I don’t want a towel, I want my script back!” The dude huffed angrily and made a huge squelching sound when he took a step towards the window.
“You really look like you need a towel,” said Wade.
The guy sighed and closed his eyes. Wade knew all about this. People closed their eyes and counted to ten all the time when he was around. It was a Thing. So he waited until the dude’s eyes were open again before he repeated himself.
“It’s just...you’re really wet. Like. Really wet,” he clarified. “And I have towels! Clean towels!” He leaned back so he could see into his own bathroom down the hall and qualified: “well, one clean towel.”
“....OK, give me a towel.” How did the guy manage to make that sound like he was doing Wade the favor?
“Faster than you can say, ‘Bob’s your uncle,’” said Wade. It was even true since Wade’s apartment was tiny and the bathroom was only a couple of feet down the hallway. “Voila--”
But the guy had stripped out of his artisanal scarf and his v-neck t-shirt and was wringing both out over Wade’s sink. One arm was absolutely not flesh, it was some kind of very shiny metal. It did not at all detract from the visual. If Wade was being honest, it was more of a benefit.
“Usually there are introductions before the nudity,” said Wade, as close to speechless as he ever got. “I’m Wade, the script doctor who saved your show. And you are….?”
“Nathan. I’m the playwright whose play you mutilated,” said the guy, taking the towel and rubbing it through his hair.