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Simply put, the campus of Bar Harbor Light Opera is gorgeous. The main building was a pre-Depression era seaside resort that had since been converted into production offices, rehearsal spaces, and a cafeteria, all crept over in flowering vines and hidden away from the road to town by thickly planted trees. In the early hours before the musicians wake, birdsong can be heard chattering in the woods, underscored by the crickets who nest in the cattails that bow at the edge of a gem green pond. All around the rehearsal hall and between the cabins where the company was housed there are little dirt footpaths instead of sidewalks. They might be better suited to hiking boots, but most members of BHLO’s vocal company stubbornly wear their character shoes and jazz flats when they have to cross campus, and Richie is no exception. He’s got dance rehearsal on either end of his vocal coaching appointment, after all.
He is seriously looking forward to it. He’s not enough of a dance junkie to get his rocks off in the ensemble of a Fosse show, so he is dying to get on with the next round of auditions. The sooner they get Cabaret up, the sooner he can dig into something with more lines and less leotard. That’s the good thing about overlapping shows in repertory theatre- between the show you’re performing at night and the one you’re rehearsing in the day, you don’t stay bored for long. As they said at BHLO, Show in a week, baby!
Still, the charming sound of the piano in Cabin 4 noodling around to one of the lovers’ duets makes him a little sorry to close Pirates of Penzance tonight. He’s got a banging role that he loves playing, even if the director's kind of an assache. Richie times his opening of the cabin door for maximum drama and busts into the little rehearsal space behind the associate conductor’s back, putting his own spin on the libretto.
“He loves beef, he is feared, by all the cows, fa la la la!”
Eddie jars the piano keys as he laughs in surprise. He twists and throws a leg over the bench to face Richie with a grave look. “W.S. Gilbert is shaking in his fucking boots.”
Richie takes a showy bow, really going for it with the wrist flourish. “Thank you, thank you. Always an honor to dunk on that crusty Victorian bitch.”
“I keep hoping one of these nights you’ll slip up on stage and blurt out your rendition of ‘I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Homosexual’,” Eddie admits. “No power on earth could keep Stan from jumping out of the wings to throttle you, but it’d be worth it.”
The vision of their stage manager, dressed in head to toe black like a ninja, barreling onto their rainbow circus of a stage with murderous intent is an intriguing one. Richie chuckles. “It’s closing night, man, don’t tempt me.”
“If the two of you fall into the pit and break my fucking piano while Stan’s trying to kill you, I’ll finish the job, though,” Eddie warns. He turns back to his piano and holds up a pinching hand to take Richie’s sheet music. “Right, so! Last round of auditions, what have you got here?”
He flips through Richie’s notes, humming in agreement and nodding. It’s completely expected that Richie will be gunning for Ko-Ko in The Mikado, especially after having snagged almost every other G&S patter role in his three years at BHLO. Those middle-ranged, park and bark sorts of comedic roles always suited him, since he was more of a clown than a dancer or a heartthrob. Together, they go through the usual highlights; ‘I’ve Got a Little List’, ‘Dull Dark Dock’, 'The Criminal Cried' and such, polishing up his diction where needed and selecting the bars that best demonstrate his handle on the music.
“That sounds fantastic, Richie. Don’t gargle glass or anything between now and auditions tonight and I think-” Eddie shrugs. He can’t say, because he’s only an associate conductor, not one of the people who get the vote at casting time, but he makes a hopeful noise.
“I don’t like to make promises I can’t keep, but for you, Eddie...”
That was the thing. Richie would do anything for Eddie, up to and including drinking glass. Ever since their first summer at BHLO, when Eddie had been but a lowly accompanist tinkling along to Richie’s very first audition for the company, he’d been smitten. He’d been so nervous, his palms sweating, knees knocking- but Eddie took one mischievous look at his sheet music for ‘My Unfortunate Erection’ from Spelling Bee and said Finally, something fucking fun.
Eddie gives him that same, wicked smile again. “You’d better get it. I’ll kick your ass if I have to listen to fucking Patrick mealmouth his way through another patter role tens times a day.”
Richie scoffs indignantly. The Gondoliers was the one BHLO audition where he had really pooched it. “That was my first summer! I blew myself out on Chauvelin that week, I’d never done a rock lead before!”
“Excuses, excuses...” Eddie flips to the back page of Richie’s sheet music and stares at the blank like he’s expecting more. “What about Brigadoon?”
“I wasn’t gonna sing for it since I’ve got so much for Mikado. I’ll just read for Jeff and what happens happens, dude,” Richie shrugs.
Eddie turns and glares at him. “Jeff?! One of the only two guys who gets to wear pants? What’re you afraid of wearing a kilt?”
“No way.” Richie plants his hands on his hips and swivels them around like he’s using a spatula on the last of a peanut butter jar. “I’m just concerned for the animal effect these gams will have on all the little old ladies of Bar Harbor. I can’t have them flashing me their saggy tits at me, I might lose an eye.”
“Well, what about Tommy?”
Richie groans. Everyone is singing for Tommy, and he is zero percent interested in a role where every ticket holder will be unfavorably comparing him to Gene Kelly the whole time. “I’m not a strong enough dancer for Tommy. Not enough to carry a whole fucking show.”
Eddie starts leafing through his own copies of the score. “You move better than you think,” he says offhandedly.
“C’mon, be serious Eds. We’ve been here three summers. Have they ever cast me in a straight role?” Leads, sure, but comedic, eccentric leads. Not heroic, romantic leads like Tommy.
“I think you’d be good in a romantic role...”
That knocks Richie sideways.
“...For real?”
“Just try wearing a fucking tie to your audition instead of a bowling shirt for once!” Eddie snorts. He finds the music for ‘Come To Me, Bend To Me’ and puts it at the top of the rack. “You should sing for Charlie,” he says decisively. That’s a supporting lead with much less stage time than Tommy, but two solos, Richie knows. “The only other person I’ve coached for Charlie is Henry and he...”
“Oh fuck that, I’m hotter shit than Henry.”
“Yeah, man!”
Richie quickly skims the music over Eddie’s shoulder. “Isn’t it a little too high for me? I don’t think fucking Brigadoon is the show I’d chop my balls off for. Jesus Christ Superstar or bust-”
“Just-”
“hhhwHyYYYYYY should I die?! ” Richie screeches that infamous top note in a piercing falsetto.
Eddie winces and rubs his ear. “You sure you’re not a countertenor? You’re fucking annoying as one.”
“I only want to say, if there is a way, take this cup away from meee, ” Richie pleads, fists clenched in Messianic agony.
“Fuck off already!” Eddie whacks him with the thick Mikado libretto.
Richie dissolves into giggles. “That’s no way to treat Our Lord!”
“I’ll need to seriously fucking reconsider everything I learned in Sunday school if you ever landed Jesus,” Eddie smirks. He plays a dour chord on the piano, emphatically. “But you can do Charlie, no sweat. Put it in G major. He sings two great songs and then jerks off backstage the rest of the show.”
Richie sighs. Now that Eddie has given him the hard sell and picked a flattering key for him and everything, he is powerless. He cranes over Eddie’s shoulder to get a better look at the music, since he hadn’t prepared to sing for it at all. “Okay, okay. Where do the the good 32 bars start?”
“Come dearie near me.” Eddie sounds the opening note for him.
“You got it Maestro.”
-
Come, dearie, near me so ye can hear me, I've got to whisper this softly
For though I'm burnin' to shout my yearnin', the words come tiptoein' off me
Oh, come to me, bend to me, kiss me good day!
Darlin' my darlin', 'tis all I can say
Jus' come to me, bend to me, kiss me good day!
Give me your lips an' don't take them away
-
Richie leaves Cabin 4 in a hurry. Like a, eyes dead ahead, do not look back on pain of death, if you stop looking at the Departures sign, your plane might change gates and you’ll be fucking stranded in a blizzard, hurry.
Eddie had liked his singing. That’s- that’s really nice. You sound good. Really, uh. Nice. Nice. A very pretty tone. Then Eddie had started shuffling his sheet music, but he kept winding up with the same page at the top of his stack as he started out with. Then Richie realized where his hands had been this. Whole. Fucking. Time. He pulled back as lightly as he could, agreed that it was better to go harder on the rhotic R and then dial it back later, then muttered something about picking up sandwiches since it was spaghetti day, and bolted.
They always get sandwiches together at the general store on spaghetti day; Eddie can’t eat tomato and Chef Nicole never remembers to put some aside without sauce. On days when Eddie can’t get off campus, like on audition day when he’s coaching all through lunch hour, Richie always goes and brings him back lunch. What he does not always do, though- is he does not always touch Eddie or any other pianist tenderly on the shoulders while singing a fucking love song, holy fucking shit, Richie!
“At least the song wasn’t your fucking idea, you fucking creep,” he tries to console himself, stomping back toward the main building.
Something careless like this was bound to happen. Such close quarters all summer long. People pouring their emotive little hearts out for a living. It was just a matter of time. Richie already knew he liked Eddie too much, of course. How could he not? He likes the irony that the person with the next most gleefully unbridled foul mouth after himself that he’s ever met is such a worrywort cleanfreak. He likes that Eddie is so passionate about people not tracking their beach feet through his room and subsequently getting sand in his bed that he keeps baby powder and wet wipes just inside the front door of his cabin, and how he always smells like starch from his tux. He likes that Eddie reminds him to lock his car even though they’re parked in the middle of the fucking woods in a town with ‘a crime rate 44% lower than the national average’, and that they keep in touch outside of the summer, and that of the dozens of BHLO alumns who live in Boston area, it was his couch Eddie asked to crash on when he was shopping for graduate programs. So of course, Richie knows he likes Eddie too much, enough to make a sloppy mistake. He’s here, after all, when he should have moved on to Williamstown or Ohio Light Opera or even fucking Santa Fe. He’s a big fish in BHLO’s little pond, designed to train up college aged performers and release them into the professional industry. He should be out in the sea by now, fighting with middle aged trout for crappy understudy roles that at least fucking pay, but he likes Eddie and Eddie is here.
Eddie, who thinks of him- oh god it’s so corny, as capable of romance. Making him sing for fucking Charlie Dalrymple, the in situ sweetheart. Fuck. Is that reading too much into things?
The thing is, Richie has never had gotten the impression before that Eddie might like him back. He clearly thinks Richie is an entertaining performer, of course. And he happily jokes around with him in a way that isn’t all that professional, especially now that Eddie was technically a senior staff member... but he’d never before caught Eddie fucking stammering because he sang a romantic piece of music. It’s not exactly like catching the guy drawing hearts around Richie’s name, but who knows? Never underestimate the wildcard power of a ballad. Richie once heard Jodie Travers sing “Losing My Mind” so beautifully he briefly thought he wanted to bone down until he realized he just wished they'd cross-cast for Follies.
When Richie gets to the patio that wraps the southern side of the main building, the double doors to the costume shop are already open, so he marches straight in. Beverly, the costume shop manager, is standing there at the ironing board, where the cooler outdoor air makes using steam in the summer remotely bearable. The fabric draping off the table is plaid for kilts, of course.
“Fucking Brigadoon!”
“Um, hi?” Bev says, glancing up at his constipated expression, then back down to her ironing.
“Can you put me to work on something?” Richie begs, tangling a nervous hand into his hair. When did it get so sweaty? Was it this sweaty when he was singing for Eddie? Oh please, no. “Please? Make me pair up some socks. Ooo- or pin name tags into undies, even, I’ve got an hour before I’m back in rehearsal and I am a nuisance to myself right now.”
“And me!” laughs Bev. “But uhh, I got a bunch of sporrans that need to be put on belts?”
“What the fuck is a sporran?”
“Those pouch things?” Bev steps back from ironing board so he can see her flapping her hand at her crotch.
“Scottish dick bags!” Richie recognizes. He fans himself with his sheet music, relieved. “Yes. I will do that.”
Bev sighs at Richie and motions for him to follow her into the depths of the costume shop, where one wall is covered in cubbies and hooks for small costume pieces like belts and hats. She kicks a laundry basket full of sporrans across the hardwood floor, buckled by decades of humidity and no A/C.
“See, they’ve got these little loops? Use the black and brown belts, and then you can dole ‘em out to people’s ditty bags. You know the drill,” Bev says. “You can take first pick of course, unless you’re auditioning for one of the two modern dudes?”
“Not likely.” And not getting into it with Bev right now, either. As a customer who spends all her time expressing characters through clothes, she’s a terrific judge of casting, but vocal coaching had done enough damage to Richie’s psyche for one day.
She waves her hand at another two laundry basket full of those flat caps with pom poms, shirts, and frilly neckwear. “If you have time, you can look at this chart of neck sizes and pick shirts to put behind each actor’s name on the rack.”
Richie rubs his hands together fiendishly. He loves to be trusted by Bev. She’s let him assign breeches to pirates and bandanas to a chorus of cowboys and stuff like that before, and it's always a blast. “Can I give Patrick the worst shirt?” That’ll soothe him.
“Yeah, what the hell!” Bev laughs.
He digs into the baskets for the better part of an hour, painstakingly matching the coloring of the belts to the pouches and assigning correct measurement shirts to himself and his fellow male ensemble. It’s good to occupy himself in some busy work while his brain catches up. It calms him down. While he’s hanging shirts up on the show rack, Bev comes over to check on him.
“I wish I had ten Richies,” she says, patting his head like a dog. “You headed back to rehearsal, or do you wanna be a big strong strapping man and come help me haul petticoats down from the attic?”
Richie makes a muscle for her, jutting his lip half way down his neck like Stallone. Bev pats it gamely.
“As much as I like an opportunity to show how fucking ripped I am, I gotta jet," he apologizes. "But if you want someone to grab lunch at the general store with, yours truly could make room for you on his dance card.”
“Okay. Is that when yours truly going to tell me why he flew in here sweating and begging to sniff underpants?” Beverly raises an intuitive eyebrow at him.
He could use a little intuition right now. “Yeah, all right.” Richie shoots her fingerguns and scurries back out through the door from the costume shop to the green room.
Unfortunately, since Eddie is handling coaching, Greta is playing accompanist when he gets back to dance rehearsal. She’s not as fluid as taking cues from the choreographer, so it’s a very stop and start exercise, exacerbated by everyone’s nerves over the upcoming auditions. At one point he gets caught in a split when Greta asks for a hold, and he’s sure she did it on purpose.
While they’re paused, Mike comes over and hooks under his armpits to pull him back up. “That’s gotta hurt,” he hisses.
“Fucking shit show,” Richie squeaks. He shakes out his legs and does some lunges while Greta and the choreographer squabble.
“I hope you don’t have a dance call-back later,” says Mike, still wincing.
“I doubt it. What about you?”
“I’m going all in for Tommy, so hopefully.”
Richie actually gasps. “Oh, that’s choice, dude.” He hasn’t been scene partners with Mike since Guys and Dolls, but he was such a warm stage presence, and so easy for even a jackass like him to chemistry with it’s a fucking no brainer to make him the leading lover. You could even cast Greta opposite him and the attraction would be palpable.
The piano strikes back up and they dance their little Kit Kat Klub butts off until lunchtime.
-
“We’ve gotta stop at the ice cream place,” says Bev, on their walk to pick up lunch. It’s a few doors closer than the general store, which is about a fourth of the way down the road that leads to town, where the actual theatre building is. “There’s some hot townies I want to invite to the beach tonight.”
“I’m off dairy until after auditions,” Richie notes. And broken glass, of course. “I’ve got to protect these golden pipes. And! We’re putting on Cabaret in three days and I don’t want to look bloated in my hot pants.”
Bev snorts. “Yeah, good- say more stuff like that so the townies at the ice cream place know you’re definitely not my boyfriend.”
“Why, Miss Beverly Marsh! Yah break mah heart!” Richie sniffs. “Ah thought we had somethin’ special!”
Bev puts a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be tied down by just one man, Richie!”
“Fuck. If you can’t, I’d love that,” Richie sighs. “I mean, TMI! But I picked my bunk bed for it’s sturdy frame.”
“I hope that’s not where your silk scarves from Kismet disappeared to...”
Kismet strike got rained out by the dregs of a hurricane, truth be told. The van from the rehearsal hall was late due to flooding, and in the mayhem everyone with a car grabbed a garment bag or a box of props and made a run for it. Richie still had glitter in the crevices of his backseat.
He holds up a hand in oath. “I gave everything on my body directly to Patty, I swear. Now if I were you, I’d look in Stan’s trunk. That’s a freaky techie couple that looks like they’re into breathplay with stolen scarves.”
Bev shouts and covers her ears. “Hey! I already share a wall and a bathroom with them, I don’t need more details.”
“The bathroom? Do they do it in the fucking bathroom!?” Richie gags. “At least do it in the outdoor showers where the rain runs off your juice, dude! I’m never visiting the techie cabin again.”
“You sound like Eddie,” Bev snorts.
Richie can’t believe his ears. Not that he should sound like Eddie, they spent a lot of down time together and had the same sense of humor- that made sense- but that Eddie would ever step foot in the techie cabin. They’re animals over there, and they don’t even have a piano! Eddie hangs out with the other staff, sure, but mostly this happens in the cafeteria after hours, where its clean and well lit and anyone is welcome to come by. On the rare occasion Richie didn’t give Eddie a ride home from the theater, that’s always where he looks to find him after a show.
“What’s he doing in the tech cabin?” Richie asks. Please don’t say trying to hook up with the set designer, please don’t say say trying to hook up with the set designer... “I’ve never seen him in the tech cabin...”
“Looking for you!” say Bev, a look of comprehension lighting her already clever face. “Oh, that’s cute. I get it now. The sandwiches. You and him.”
“Haha, what? Fuck you.” Luckily, they’ve just come up on the ice cream parlor, so Richie changes the subject. “I’m still not buying an ice cream to ingratiate you with the townies.”
Bev’s too smart for that. “I see how it is. You’ll buy Eddie a sandwich to get into his pants, but you won’t buy an ice cream to get some hometown hunks into mine! Some friend you are!” Bev sticks her tongue out at him.
“I’m! Not in his pants! That’s the fucking problem!” Richie swings the door open with one hand and ushers her in, bird flipped, with the other. “I’ll buy the ice cream but I won’t eat it,” he bites.
“You’re an actor, act like you’re eating it,” says Bev, gliding through. “Better yet, pretend you’re on vocal rest!”
When Bev wants to turn it on, she does it as well as any of the divas at BHLO. She bounces up to the shiny glass counter of the shop with a perky, approachable smile fixed on her pretty little face. Richie stands back to appreciate the artist in her studio.
“Hi guys,” she beams, and leans into the counter with expert poise. Behind the trough of ice cream, the two boys stop what they’re doing and stand at attention. One is floppy haired in a way that makes you want to touch, with a name tag that says Bill, and the other, Ben, is sturdily built, with dark pretty eyes that are either green or brown and draw you in closer to check.
Oh, okay, Bev.
“B-Beverly,” smiles Bill. Already on a first name basis. Thirsty.
Ben lifts his scoop, at the ready to serve this goddess of game. “What can we get for you?”
“Oh, it’s so hard to decide between my two favorites,” Bev pouts. “I like chocolate ripple, but I like cookie dough, too!”
Richie rolls his eyes.
“They’d go well together, how about a scoop of each?” Ben asks, so so earnestly. Bless him.
“I think you’re so right,” Bev grins. She glances over her shoulder at Richie and winks.
Bill follows her gaze and finally notices Richie. “What would y-you like?” he asks, friendly enough, but not as excited as he had been to say Beverly’s name.
“I’m here against my will,” Richie answers, stepping up beside Bev. “And I like dick.”
Bev blinks rapidly, but she’s too smooth an operator not to recover from a little turbulence. “He’ll have the orange sorbet.”
Bill serves him up a little cup of the stuff, which manages to keep Richie quiet while Bev finishes working her magic. By the time they walk out, both ice cream slinging studs have promised to make an appearance at the beach later tonight.
With her mission accomplished, Bev slots her arm into Richie’s as they continue on to the general store. “You’re a dick, you know that?”
“And speaking of upright organs-” Richie sighs. “There’s a piano player I really fucking need to make a move on already. You’ve inspired me.”
Bev lifts her chin proudly. “I shouldn’t help you after your scene in front of the townies, but...”
“But I assigned all those shirts!” Richie bargains. “And I actually gave Patrick a pretty sweet dick bag!”
“Keep talking...” says Bev, fishing for a better offer.
“And! I’ll be strike captain for the men’s dressing room tonight. I will touch one hundred sweaty jockstraps if you will help me get a read on the Eddie situation.” Richie would much rather sort laundry and track down pirate eye patches than be handed a power drill and expected to dismantle the set, anyway. “I bow to your wisdom, oh Beverley the Bodacious.”
Bev jostles him by the arm affectionately. “I’m on it. Let me think for a bit.”
They get some grub at the general store. Turkey and swiss for Bev and Eddie, and an Italian sub with all the fixings for Richie. He wolfs half of it while they’re still walking back to campus, he’s so famished from both the morning’s panic and dance rehearsal.
“You’ll eat hot peppers before an audition, but not ice cream,” Bev says in wonder. “What’re you going up for anyway?”
“Ko-Ko.“
Bev nods. “Natch.”
“-and Charlie in Brigadoon.”
“Huh,” Bev half misses a step as she walks.
See, It’s not just Richie’s imagination that people don’t peg him for these sorts of roles! “-That was Eddie’s idea,” he explains.
Bev screws up her face at him and swings her bag from the general store as she considers this prospect. “I mean, you could play a romantic lead. You’re not hideous looking.”
“Please, I’m blushing," Richie grumbles.
“You’re cute in a ‘He looks like he’s a fun boyfriend’ kind of way!”
“What the fuck, Bev!”
In apology, she pulls two sprigs of hydrangea off of a nearby bush and tucks one bloom behind each of their left ears. Richie forgets about it while making love to the rest of his sandwich, and isn’t reminded until he delivers Eddie’s turkey and swiss to the music office.
“You decide to skip Charlie and audition for Bonnie Jean instead?” Eddie asks, mirroring the flower with his hand at his own ear.
Richie stares blankly for a moment. Should he, like, give Eddie the flower and ask him to come to the techie beach party? That’s flirty and fun, right? Had the flower been Bev’s subtle help?
“Oh, that. Uhm.” Richie pulls the hydrangea out of his hair and fumbles it on the floor. As he stoops down to pick it up he accidentally chins himself on Eddie’s skull as he bends to do the same.
Eddie rubs the back of his head. “Agh!”
“My lip!”
Richie tastes blood, and the next thing he knows, Eddie’s hand is flying up to his face. He is definitely seeing stars, full on Looney Tunes style- he’s just not precisely sure why.
“Shit. Did you break the skin? I’m sorry. Shit, Richie...” Eddie turns back to his desk and rummages under a stack of scores for a kleenex box and wads some up at Richie’s bleeding mouth. He looks horrified.
“Iffs offay!” It’s okay, because the one of Eddie’s hands that’s not dabbing the tissue is wrapped gently around Richie’s arm, keeping him close.
Eddie frowns. “Richie, you’ve got an audition.”
“Noff ffor a ffew hourff.” Could they just stand like this until then? He’s sure he’d feel fine. But no, right? That’d be weird?
Eddie peeks at the tissue to see what’s going on, frowns even harder, then goes to grab a new wad. He tuts at Richie some more, and himself, apologizing profusely. He runs down a list of maladies, fretting about chipped teeth and bruising. “You’re not lightheaded or anything?”
Well, YEAH, Richie thinks, still soaking in Eddie’s touch. He manages to shake his head no.
“Look,” Eddie sighs. “I’ve got more coaching to run to in a minute. I’m so fucking sorry, man. Will you go to the kitchen and get yourself some ice, please?”
“Yeff,” says Richie, covering Eddie’s hand with his own to take over the tissue. It makes him smile dopily behind the mass of kleenex. He backs out of the music office, still grinning like an idiot. “Enffoy youff ffandwiff!”
He doesn’t realize that he completely forgot to ask about the beach until he’s standing on the footpath by the pond so he can get a little quiet to review his extremely wordy Ko-Ko material. The ice from the kitchen has fully melted.
“Ah, fuck,” he sighs, to no one in particular.
At least his lip is back down to size, though it’s still sore. Miserably he thinks that now, even if invites Eddie to the beach and manages to kiss him by bonfire light, he won’t even be able to enjoy it before it's already over. That 's why Richie has never pushed himself to start something with Eddie while they were here. Summerstock relationships are usually super temporary. He doesn’t want some meaningless, forgettable fling that only lasts the week of the show. When Richie finally gets this show on the road, he wants to mark off the whole calendar and make Eddie a permanent fixture on the marquee.
Richie plops himself down on a log at the pond’s edge and rolls his sheet music into a tube he can trumpet his frustration through.
He should have done something when Eddie came to Boston. The rules are different in the real world. If you kiss a guy in an apartment you pay rent for, that’s like, deductible on your taxes or some shit. It doesn’t get brushed off like an inconsequential showmance. He should have taken Eddie out to dinner in the North End or something indisputably date-like, but instead they just hung around in Richie’s kitchen restaging Annie Get Your Dick On Straight, the meta-theatrical reenactment of the hands-down worst tech rehearsal they’d ever had at BHLO. Stan had nearly decked the director (an absolute asshat named Penn Wiseman) who demanded the use of three water filled bathtubs on stage, for the benefit of just one musical number and the cost of having three watery boobytraps sitting in the dark amidst thousands of dollars of electrics. It was fucking lunacy. By the third accidental dousing of a chorus member, the producers had had to step in. “There are already little kids working with guns in that show, and this motherfucker wants to throw in the threat of electrocution !?” Eddie wheezed, sitting on his counter top between the window and the sink. They laughed so hard they cried, and Richie hadn’t been able to do his dishes without thinking about Eddie ever since.
At some point during Richie’s pity party by the pond, Mike comes along, having had the same idea to take some quiet time with his audition materials. He flags Richie down and sits next to him on the log.
“Ohhh, you’re in trou-ble,” he grins.
Richie clenches his roll of sheet music. “Oh fuck, what’d I do now?”
Mike laughs. “Patty wrote your name on the Shit List. You better get your ass to the costume shop, pronto.”
Richie goes as white as the dry-erase board in the green room, where the costume shop puts up the names of people they need for a fitting. The Shit List is in the corner, with a skull and crossbones sticker, and is meant to shame those who fail to make an appearance within 24 hours. A high crime when there’s only a week to put on a show to begin with. Seeing as Richie was in the costume shop just this morning and up to date on his fittings- this must be a signal from Bev.
“Oh snap.” Richie jumps to his feet. “Thanks Mikey!”
He dashes back around the pond, up the path to the patio and into the double doors by the ironing board again.
“Bev! I split my lip and I forgot to ask about the beach,” Richie tries to explain.
She spins around from where she’s standing at a cutting table and shushes him. “Eddie came by while I was ironing yardage and I told him to come back to press his tux shirt in like, two minutes!”
“What!?”
“Get into the fitting room and pull the curtain, you turkey,” Bev says, pushing him in that direction.
Richie stumbles into the concealed little nook and slides down the mirrored wall to sit on the floor. He waits, plucking at his sore lip. He's already wounded. If he’s being pranked, he’s not sure he deserves it.
Before long, he hears the burst of music as the door between the costume shop and green room opens. The shop girls giggle and a few moments later, from underneath the curtain, he can see the familiar sight of Eddie’s Nantucket Red top-siders stepping up to the ironing board. There’s a hiss of a spray can and that now-beloved smell of starch, and despite the rabbiting of his heart, Richie goes still.
“Hey Eddie,” Bev calls across the costume shop. “You’re friends with Richie, right?”
“Yeah?”
“I bet you’re gonna see him before I do-” she says in that same, easy way she spoke to the ice cream boys. “I’ve gotta head over to the theatre in a sec. If you see him- well! I totally forgot to tell him there’s a techie beach party tonight.”
Eddie’s feet shuffle as he shifts his weight. “Oh. I could tell him.”
“You should come with him, obviously!” Bev adds. “I mean, I’m bringing a date...”
“Thanks,” Eddie says tonelessly. He starts walking away. “See you later,” he says, and then the green room door opens again, and he’s gone.
Richie thunks his head back against the mirror as Beverly pulls the curtain of the fitting room open again.
“Well. Thanks for whatever that was I guess.” Whole lot of nothing.
Bev looks down at him, her eyes wild. “He is totally bugging,” she declares.
Was Bev not in the same room, just now? Richie squints at her and pushes himself back up to his feet. “He didn’t say anything!”
“Sure, but he sprayed his shirt and then completely forgot to iron it,” Bev laughs.
“Holy shit.” Richie gulps. “Can I borrow a tie?”
In a daze, he goes back out into the woods and sings his stupid little overjoyed heart out until it’s time to go in for his audition.
-
“Hold please, Richie,” says the director, skimming some notes. She sits with the two producers of BHLO, the Maestro, and Stan at a long table far across the choral practice room.
It’s just Richie, standing around trying to look like a leading man, and Eddie sitting at the piano over here. He gets Richie's attention by knocking a piano key and mouths to Richie- You sounded fucking great.
Richie just about melts.
“Stan, can you get the dialogue for scene number five?” The director asks. More papers shuffle across the room and the producers mutter to each other.
“You hear about the beach, tonight?” Eddie whispers. “After strike.”
Richie nods. Let’s go, he mouths back.
Across the room, Stan finds his paperwork. “All right, Richie, can you take it from Ko-Ko’s line, ‘Pooh-Bah, it seems that the festivities-’?”
Richie lifts his script. “Pooh-Bah, it seems that the festivities in connection with my approaching marriage must last a week!”
-
As the women’s auditions run through the dinner hour, Richie doesn’t catch sight of Eddie again until he’s on stage for Act I of Pirates, having just completed his song. It’s only the flash of grinning teeth by the little reading light over his piano, but it’s enough to send a thrill up his spine so powerful, it’s a wonder his hat doesn’t pop off his head.
After curtain call, Richie races to the dressing room. Bev is already there with a stack of empty laundry baskets and a dry erase marker. STRIKE CAPTAIN: RICHIE she writes on his mirror, so people will know who to check in with.
“Laundry whites, colored hose, accessories, boots... And everything else leave on the hanger for dry cleaning,” she explains as she separates the baskets. “Got that?”
“Yep. Throw it all into the sea. Got it.”
“Smartass,” Bev snipes. She pats him on the back. “I’ll be in the girls’ room if you need me.”
The next half hour is a tornado of bodies, stripping off costumes as quickly as they can and shouting at Richie, asking where they can throw their stinking, sweaty things. He ducks under the rack from one side of the dressing room to the other, snatching up delinquent boots and cramming them in a box. There are still a few costume props that he hasn’t seen, hats and sword belts that he thinks are still backstage, so he deputizes Mike to go on a recon mission.
The orchestra staff aren’t required to help with loading shows in or out, so it surprises Richie when the next person to tap him on the shoulder with a question is none other than Eddie, still bow-tied, with his tux jacket folded over his arm. Fuck, he’s cute, and it is too fucking chaotic in here to appreciate the way he looks and smells and smiles at Richie like he’s not dripping in sweat, with three British Bobby police helmets stacked on his head.
“Any of this ready to go down to the van?” He motions at the heap of sorted costumes.
“You don’t have to...”
Eddie lights up. “I want to! It’ll go faster.”
Faster, Eddie says, like he’s just as eager to get back to campus and go to the beach. Richie jams his hands into his pockets to find his car keys, because he locks his car because Eddie says to. “You can put your shit in my car if you want?”
“Thanks,” says Eddie, taking the keys. He grabs a nearby basket and heads out the dressing room door, calling back- “You’re still wearing your Major General moustache by the way, you moron.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Richie already packed up the spirit gum remover somewhere in the accessory bucket. He tips the hats off his head and into a basket of other headgear and sifts through the bottom for it. The remover stings his lip a little, but he’s so jazzed right now, he doesn’t give a shit.
Bev swings into the door, holding a hoopskirt over one shoulder like the strap of a purse. “Looking good up here. Once you’ve got all this into the van, we could use some help with the girl’s stuff.”
“Yes Ma’am,” says Richie, frantically scrubbing adhesive off his face with one hand and grabbing hangers with the other.
“Eddie ever find you?”
Richie simply grins at Bev, red faced and maniacal.
“Nice.” After a thought, her eyebrows lift. “I’m counting the scarves tonight, dude.”
As actors and costume crew and Eddie cycle back in, Richie hands off things to bring to the van, then turns all the chairs upside down and sweeps the floor. They help the women’s dressing room do the same, and then check in with Stan to be released for the night.
“Casting’s up, if you want to check before you go,” he tells Richie, his face unreadable.
“Did I-?” Richie glances at Eddie, who just shrugs. Although he’s in the room for auditions, final decisions on casting are made during the show, without him.
Whoops and clapping drift to the from the green room, where people are already discovering their new parts.
Eddie grabs his arm. “Come on already!”
As ever, anywhere Eddie wants Richie to go- to an allergen free lunch, to an audition, to the kitchen to get some ice- Richie must go. He lets Eddie pull him along to the green room and through the excited horde of the vocal company, all clawing to get a look at the bulletin. When they get close enough for Richie to read, he circles behind him and pushes him ahead to get a look, his hands lingering on Richie’s shoulders.
He scans the closer posting for Mikado first, listing characters by appearance. Chorus, chorus, chorus, Pish-Tush, Nanki-Poo, and- “Ko-Ko, The Lord High Executioner! ” Richie fist pumps. "Fucking YES."
Eddie squeezes his shoulders. “And?”
And what? Did Mike get Tommy? Richie budges around a tiny, bouncing soprano named Sylvia who squeaks “Fiona! I got Fiona!”
His eyes immediately fall on CHARLIE DALRYMPLE - RICHARD TOZIER. His stomach erupts in little plaid winged butterflies.
“I fucking told you so!” Eddie cheers. His hands slip from Richie’s shoulders to his waist as he turns on the spot to face him. The people still waiting to get a look at the bulletin jostle Richie away from the wall and into Eddie’s arms as they pull each other into a celebratory hug.
When Richie pulls his face away from Eddie’s shoulder, he stutters. “Y-you, uhm. Thanks?”
Eddie takes his chin between finger and thumb, a worried crinkle in his brow now that he’s getting such a close, focused look at Richie. “Hey, how’s your lip? You’re all red.”
“Its-” Richie starts to say it’s fine, it’s just from the spirit gum, but then he remembers, first rule of storytelling- show don’t tell. He leans in and kisses Eddie, right there in the green room. It hurts a little, but maybe- maybe that makes it more memorable.
Someone wolf whistles, but really, their sudden lip lock is not the most attention pulling thing happening. Mike comes into the green room and everyone jumps to congratulate him, the shrill Sylvia especially.
“Richie,” Eddie breathes. “I-” But musicians are a sort of storyteller, too. He winds his arms around Richie’s neck and kisses him back.
“Ow!” Not so hard, but then. It’s perfect.
The crowd bumps them around, and Eddie lets go of him. He chews his bottom lip like he’s still thinking about kissing Richie, and might not stop until both of them are bloodied. “Let’s get the fuck outta here, right?”
“Vamoose.” Richie turns Eddie around bodily to lead the way and hitches their fingers together like the cars of a train.
-
They walk back from the beach that night, shoes in hand. The moon lights the way back to the cabins as Eddie scouts for sharp debris in the road and Richie hums he loves beef, he is feared.
Eddie swerves in his tracks and grabs Richie’s hand to steer him. “It’s- that’s a shell or some shit, watch out.”
“You’re a fucking nightmare,” Richie laughs under his breath. Nightmare/dream, its all semantics. “Is there a broken bottle somewhere in Bar Harbor, Eddie? Do you need me to carry you to safety?”
“I don’t think I’d call the BHLO campus ‘safety’,” Eddie says dubiously. He skirts closer to Richie’s side and doesn’t let go of his hand. “You’ve seen the poison ivy.”
Richie sighs. That’s the Eddie he- he thinks he loves, actually. “Can I tell you something serious that won’t make sense?”
“You hardly ever make sense.”
He’ll take that as a yes.
“I like you so much-” says Richie “-I’d let you get sand in my bed.”
Without missing a beat, Eddie smirks at him from the side. “I like you so much, I’m going to drag you to the outdoor shower first so you fucking don’t.”
And really, Richie couldn’t be happier than to slow down to take the time.
