Chapter Text
favored nations (n): an industry term which means that you are getting equal contractual treatment to others on the project
OVERTURE
There is a charlatan coming to burgle him.
Someone is banging on the door and yelling words his hungover brain can’t quite understand, but what he does understand is that this person is one clever lock pick away from Indiana Jones-ing their way into his home.
Somehow, even deep in his REM cycle with a strong Ambien assist, David knows that the looter coming to take hold of all of his personal possessions is a woman.
“David! Open the goddamn door!”
Naturally, this woman is Stevie. And though she absolutely is a charlatan, anything she’s deemed worth taking from his apartment has definitely already been stolen.
He sluggishly blinks his eyes open and frowns at the darkness surrounding him. He knows from a wealth of experience that Stevie is just as adverse to mornings as he is, so what in the fresh hell is she doing here at so unholy an hour? But then he recognizes the feel of plastic across the bridge of his nose for what it is. Once again, he is both grateful and impressed that stoned him decided to fall asleep with his sunglasses on, considering he forgot to pull the blackout curtains in his bedroom shut the night before.
“I do have a key, you know!” Stevie yells, and he’s never been more grateful to live in the penthouse than he is in this moment, because right now, Stevie’s voice could probably wake half of Soho. His apartment literally has multiple floors; given his levels of dehydration, he’s entirely too impressed with how far her voice is carrying. Then again, she did sing Defying Gravity at Marie’s Crisis last week just as a ‘fuck you’ to the latest Fiyero who dumped David for a flying monkey.
He groans as he rolls over, remembering yet again that he’s wearing sunglasses as they dig into his cheekbones. He’s unable to recall, however, exactly why he’s in this horrible state of inebriated-fun-turned-hangover-hellscape.
Distantly, the front door opens and then slams shut and he braces himself for impact.
It doesn’t take long.
“What the fuck is this?” she clips as she gets to his loft. He can’t even muster up a noise of disdain in response. “Seriously? This is what I’m left with? Get up.”
“No.”
“Oh good. You’re breathing.”
Then he makes a startled yelp of indignant surprise when she grabs hold of his ankles and yanks him unceremoniously from the bed to the floor.
“What the fuck?” he gasps, but she has no sympathy as she plucks the sunglasses from his face like the demon spawn she is. “Ah!” he whines, blocking the sun dramatically like he’s a day player in Interview with the Vampire.
“I know for a fact that your skin cream is SPF 45. I think you’re fine.” She tosses the sunglasses on his dresser without nearly the amount of care they require. His whine becomes another gasp, which she mockingly mirrors as she points at the state of his hair.
“Don’t,” he hisses.
“I should take pictures,” she replies, and there’s a challenge there because no one is allowed to be talking about pictures right now; not when Sebastien’s latest exhibition just got rave reviews and David’s latest show… did not.
His latest three shows have not.
Hence the inebriation.
Sluggishly grabbing his phone from the confines of the bed, he swipes it open to find a text from his father. Reading it is his first mistake. One of many he’ll inevitably make today.
[Dad]
You’ll get ‘em next time, son.
And then, because Johnny Rose hasn’t met a guilt trip he hasn’t tried to take around the world, he’s followed it up with a text that David needs a compass to navigate:
[Dad]
Remember, I’m here for whatever you need. Or not need. I’m here, regardless. In any way. Fatherly or financially. For anything.
“Oh my God,” David mutters, thumbing through to the next one. The message from Alexis, ever-charming sister that she is, is just the link from Variety accompanied by:
[Alexis]
Oooh burn, David.
The headline makes it quite clear that David doesn’t need to read the review further. He honestly didn’t think a genderbent production of The Crucible was that ridiculous or even that groundbreaking (he’s certainly dabbled in more outlandish themes), but apparently the critics decided otherwise. Bastards.
Stevie plucks the phone out of his hand next and tosses it next to his sunglasses, starting to hoard his belongings like a chipmunk with good taste. “We decided after the last one that you got exactly 12 hours of wallowing. It is currently 11:37 in the morning and you bailed on the opening night party at roughly 11:32 so your 12 hours are up. I was generous and gave you an extra five minutes because the Times was particularly scathing in its critique.”
“When are they not,” he snaps, regretting his decibel choice when his head throbs. The reviews hit online before the cast had even taken their bows. At least in the olden days of print, you got to enjoy an open bar before you woke up to a closing notice. He closes his eyes and leans his head back on the mattress, wondering if he shouldn’t hop a plane to St. Bart’s for a while and hope everyone forgets what he looks like in the intervening months.
“You’re not running away,” Stevie says because she knows him entirely too well.
“You could come,” he tries to entice, but she shakes her head.
“You promised me a show. In fact, you promised me this show,” she says, picking up the battered copy of the Arden Hamlet sitting by his bedside. “You know, the show you wouldn’t shut up about for the last two years of college.” She tosses the book at his head and he has just enough control of his faculties to duck in the nick of time. “I’ve come to collect.”
“Stevie.” He sighs, feeling heavy and tired, weighed down by the condemnation of past potential. The wasted hope of misguided youth. “Now is not the time.”
“Now is exactly the time,” she says, kicking the bottom of his socked foot with her sneaker hard enough to hurt. “Because if you somehow convinced me at 2am while slumped over the bar at Josie’s that a musicalized production of Hamlet - ”
“Mm - ” he holds up a finger, “Hamlet with music. Not a musical Hamlet. Two very different things.”
“- that a production of Hamlet with music is not just a good idea but a necessary one, then obviously it is,” she states, like her drunken blessing over a decade ago is somehow the equivalent of a Frank Rich rave. “Anyone should jump at the chance to make it with you.”
He glares at her. “That’s the thing, Stevie. No one is jumping at the chance to make anything with me. I’m a fucking one hit wonder. I’m The Knack.”
“Who?”
“Exactly!”
She rolls her eyes and starts poking at the detritus on his dresser, likely looking for loose change or a spare joint, like some kind of raven-haired raccoon. “Your self-pity is unbecoming and, frankly, it’s making me kind of nauseous - ”
“That’s the hangover - ”
“Though it could be the hangover.” She pauses in her foraging to kick his foot again.
“Ow! Stop that!”
She does but only so she can grab his hands and yank him to standing, prompting an undignified grunt to slip from his mouth as he trips over his bedding and steadies himself on the dresser she was just looting. Unfortunately, the mirror is hanging just above.
“Oh fuck,” he mutters, getting a good look at himself for the first time since he slipped from the back of the theatre to hyperventilate in the bathroom.
“C’mon. Breakfast. Bloody Marys. Not necessarily in that order,” she says, gripping his biceps and shoving him towards the stairs.
“I don’t appreciate this manhandling,” he grumbles but he allows her to steer him down to the first floor anyway, because Stevie Budd is the only person in his life he’s not blood-related to that’s still here. That didn’t leave when the shine on his various accolades faded to something duller than a lost penny.
The rise and fall of David Rose was swifter and more vicious than Icarus and his wings. But instead of the sun, David had only his vanity and his own poor judgment to blame.
Stevie forces him onto a stool at his chef’s island and starts rooting through the bag on the counter that David finally realizes is from Russ and Daughters. He groans indecently as she pulls out what looks like wrapped bagels and lox and nudges a to-go coffee cup across the granite to his already outstretched, grabby hands.
“You’re the best.”
“I know,” she replies, completely deadpan, before taking an entirely too large bite and smearing cream cheese all over her face.
“You’re also disgusting.”
“Please, I watched you pull a cupcake out of your garbage last Tuesday.”
“You know I stress eat when I’m opening a show!”
She smirks and swallows, wiping the schmear from her cheek with the back of her hand, like an ill-mannered Dickensian orphan.
“I also know that if you don’t dive into something new as soon as said show is open, you’ll put Edge of Reason Bridget Jones to shame with your spiral.” She tosses the beaten copy of Hamlet on the counter and he blinks down at the coffee-stained cover with its curling corners. He never even noticed her grab it on the way out of the bedroom.
He stares at it for a long moment, trying to recall how it made him feel the first time he read it.
“You said it was necessary,” he murmurs, frowning at her word choice. It was particular. And peculiar.
“Yes,” she says succinctly, but he shakes his head.
“Hamlet isn’t necessary. Everyone’s done Hamlet.”
“Not like this.” She taps on the worn cover again. “And not with the care you’d show.”
He scoffs, but the sound gets lodged in his throat, because he does care. He cares entirely too much.
He’d hated Shakespeare when forced to read him in high school, but during a particularly intense, anxiety-ridden depressive episode in college, he was tasked with directing an excerpt from an Elizabeth/Jacobean play of his choosing for a scene study class. Somehow, he found himself plucking Hamlet off the shelf at The Strand. At the time, he chose it purely for aesthetic reasons; there was something haunting and eerily beautiful about the cover of the Arden Edition, showing the body of a woman in water but not her face, flowers draped over her white nightgown. He rediscovered Hamlet in the coffee shop around the corner, approaching it not as a petulant teen but as an artist; one who wanted to be taken seriously, who saw something of himself in the cracks of the Dane’s mental state: grief, depression, the burden of high expectation. David could relate. Perhaps not to Hamlet’s more murderous tendencies, but he empathized with the feeling of never being good enough, a fear that was only proven years later when he discovered his father had been keeping what was supposed to be the follow-up success to his first hit production afloat almost-single-handedly by buying out the house and handing out the tickets for free.
The book sits on the counter taunting him, making him wonder where exactly it all went wrong.
You know where.
There’s a revised edition but the smoky suit of armor depicted on the front has nothing on the flowers held loosely in drowned Ophelia’s hands.
“David,” Stevie murmurs entirely too seriously, and he wonders just how long he’s been silent, staring at the ghosts of his past. “I’m sorry about The Crucible. It was good.”
He scoffs again, and it doesn’t get stuck in his throat this time. This time, he’s just filled with a white-hot rage because it was fucking good. But no matter what he does, it’s just… not enough. Sometimes, he feels like he’ll never stop atoning for the sins of his fucked-up youth. “Then why are we closing?”
“That hasn’t been announced yet.”
“It will be.”
Stevie sighs and places a firm hand on his shoulder, fingers digging into his trapezius, solely so he can’t squirm away when she bluntly says, “Because you did make bad shows. A lot of them. For a long time.”
“Stevie - ”
“But you got your head out of your ass and your dick out of Sebastien’s mouth and you started making theatre just for you again. This last show?” she says, poking him hard in the shoulder. “This was for you. And no one else. But people suck. They love nothing more than to watch someone who was once at the top of the world fail because people are garbage. Yes, you were born with a trust fund you blew through by the time you were 23, but you worked your ass off to become one of the youngest Tony Award winners in history. You directed a show that was so fucking special and so fucking good and they’ve hated you ever since.”
She’s brutal. But she’s not wrong.
“This might shock you,” he starts, clearing his throat and taking a fortifying sip of his coffee, “but I don’t actually want to make theatre for me. I want to make it for people who will appreciate it. Who will be… changed by it.”
“Then they weren’t ready for that one,” she quietly replies. “Maybe they’ll be ready for the next one.” She nods at the book again in a way that is anything but subtle.
“Stevie, no one will be my lead producer. Shockingly, you need money to develop and sustain a multimillion dollar show.”
“Your dad - ”
“No.”
“Okay,” she says, holding her hands up. She knows the story. He doesn’t need to say more. Frankly, he wishes no worked on more of the people that populate his life. “Then you’ll just have to pitch more. Find a composer and write some demos.”
“Composers are more sensitive than actors.”
“Then get some actors and do a workshop.”
“I hate actors.”
She glares. “I’m an actor.”
“My point.”
She smacks him upside the head, but then her expression turns thoughtful. And a thoughtful Stevie Budd has never ended well for anyone. “What if you branched out beyond actors?”
“Beyond actors? To whom? Puppets? This isn’t fucking Sesame Street.”
“You want to do a Hamlet with music. Original music.”
“Yes, and?”
She shrugs. “And maybe you should hire a musician.”
“What did I just say about composers - ”
“I didn’t say ‘composer.’ I said ‘musician.”
“Stevie.”
“Someone who writes his own music.”
Isn’t that a fucking composer? “Yes, I’m aware of what a musician does - ”
“Patrick Brewer."
And he can’t help it, he laughs. “Yeah, okay.” But Stevie doesn’t join in. “You mean Patrick Brewer who headlined Coachella last year? Patrick Brewer who just won at the VMAs two Sundays ago? That Patrick Brewer?”
David stares at her. And then stares some more.
Because Stevie can’t know that there’s a vinyl of Patrick’s first album hidden behind the turntable that Sebastien made him buy because ‘the music preferred it.’ And Stevie can’t know that after Sebastien left him, David listened to that album over and over until he thought he was going to wear down the needle.
“You mean the Patrick Brewer you’ve been pining after from afar for the last three years?” she challenges knowingly. “Yeah. That one.”
Okay. Maybe she can.
He takes a deep breath, letting it out on a wave of anxiety and disbelief and definitely not hope because there’s really only one thing left to say:
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
🎭 🎭 🎭
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Well, at least David’s agent agrees with him.
In fact, Ronnie is blinking at him like David just announced he wants to take tap lessons so he can headline a revival of 42nd Street.
“Patrick Brewer,” she drawls, eyebrow raised in what might be respect. Incredulity, but respect. “David, when I said you needed a name to get your next project off the ground, I didn’t expect you to point to the cover of People Magazine and say, ‘ah yes, him.”
“Excuse you, it was Vanity Fair.”
“The man looks like a thumb.”
And David has no idea why a fierce defense worthy of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men rises within him, but he bites it back so Ronnie doesn’t drop him like she’s been threatening to do for years.
“And why are you here?” Ronnie addresses Stevie, seated in the chair next to David’s across from Ronnie’s desk like they’re two students who’ve been sent to the principal’s office.
“Moral support,” she replies at the exact same time David says, “Extortion.” They glance at each other and look away.
“You rep me, too, you know,” Stevie grumbles, and Ronnie shifts in her seat.
“Don’t remind me.” She folds the glasses she had yanked off when David first made his pitch and taps them against her lips. “David, seriously. What is this?”
He glances at Stevie and she gives him a sarcastic look that seems to say, well, go ahead.
“You said I needed a name. Patrick Brewer is a name. In fact, I believe your exact words were, ‘You need a name because David Rose isn’t enough anymore,” he says pointedly. It may be the truth, but it still stings. And Ronnie knows this.
“You pay me because I don’t pull punches.”
“I pay you to punch other people for me! Verbally,” he amends. “Contractually.” David sighs and leans forward. “Look, the show is closing - ”
“Tomorrow,” Ronnie interrupts, and David’s brain goes blank for a moment.
“Tomorrow? I know the reviews were bad, but I thought they’d give us a week at least!” He leans back heavily against the chair. “Jesus, the actors will barely have time to clean out their dressing rooms! Jasper just put up fucking wallpaper. It’s horrifying.”
Ronnie has the decency to look half-way apologetic. “Tom and Hal called me this morning.”
“Well, why aren’t they calling me?” he asks petulantly. “They’re my producers!”
“And you scare the shit out of them, so they tell me bad news and I relay it to you.”
“And you scare the shit out of me!”
Ronnie arches an eyebrow. “Yes, that’s my job.”
Thankfully, Stevie remains silent throughout the entire exchange because even she knows when David needs her to keep her flippant comments to herself.
He leans forward again and rests his forearms on Ronnie’s desk, looking at her seriously. “This could, just possibly, be the redemption arc you’ve been trying to engineer for me for years. My own RDJ as Iron Man, Britney’s Vegas residency comeback story.”
“If you don’t fuck it up,” Stevie offers, deeming her sympathetic silence apparently over.
“Yes, thank you,” he snaps, turning to Ronnie once more. “You know I can do this.” And he does. Ronnie’s had faith in him even when his own family didn’t, ever since she saw his production of Yasmina Reza’s Art in an NYU basement blackbox [redacted] years ago.
Heaving out a weary sigh like David just asked her to help him move into a fourth floor walk-up, Ronnie slides her glasses back on and peers at her computer, tapping away at her keyboard. “I think Brewer’s repped by us. If so, his agent will either be upstairs or in the LA office.” She clicks through the database and hums. “Yep, Ray Butani. Based here.”
“So you’ll reach out?” He hates how desperate he sounds, but now that Stevie has stoked the flame, he wants to do this. Badly. He feels twenty-years-old all over again.
Trust Ronnie to bring him back down to earth as she leans her elbows on the desk and levels her gaze at him, eyes sharp over her glasses. “And say what exactly?”
“Just - ask if he’d take a meeting! A discussion. See if this is something he’d even be remotely interested in, you know, when he's not winning Grammys and selling out stadiums.”
“To what? Compose the music?”
“And star in it,” David says, before he even means to. He had a pitch planned; an attack worthy of a Michael Bay film, and this is not it. “I’d want him to star in it.” He can’t explain it, but ever since Stevie said his name, David knows that Patrick Brewer is capable of this.
Ronnie raises her ever-present skeptical eyebrow. “Does he even do that? Can he do that?”
Beside him, Stevie pulls out her phone because they prepped for this. When he had screeched at her mid-hangover at his chef’s island yesterday, she showed him the very same Rolling Stone article she’s passing over to Ronnie now, highlighting a quote about midway down the page. Even across the desk, David can see the photo that accompanies it, of Patrick sitting at a piano, head thrown back in a carefree laugh:
“Yeah, I’m interested in branching out,” Brewer says, fidgeting at the piano bench like he’s already envisioning the possibilities. “I did a lot of acting as a kid and in school. Especially Shakespeare: Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer. And I miss that. I think I’ve been at the mercy of the labels for so long, it would be nice to do something different. Unexpected. I want to create my own thing.”
Ronnie looks up after she finishes reading. “And you think this pull-quote translates into him wanting to do a Broadway show?”
David stares out the window, listening to honking horns and distant music floating down from Madison Square Park. This city has burned him so many times, but not unlike so many of his exes, he just can’t stop coming back for more.
“I don’t know what it translates to,” he says after a careful moment. A considered one. “But we won’t know until we ask.”
Ronnie looks at him for a long time; the kind of look that makes him feel like he’s being x-rayed. He half expects her to put up a film of his internal organs and start pointing out the fact that his heart is hard and his liver is damaged, but instead, she just groans and leans back in her chair, crossing her arms across her chest.
“Hamlet? Really? You can’t direct the next Hamilton or something?”
“Hey, if he can steal American history, I can steal Shakespeare. Look at all of the jukebox musicals at the top of the box office grosses!”
“Well, we all know how well that musical using the Robyn catalogue went,” Stevie interjects, and David gasps in betrayal.
“Excuse you, that musical was highly underrated. Did I do my best work? No, but it was also performed in a Hell’s Kitchen porn studio-turned-thrust-stage so fuck right off thank you very much.”
“What even is it?” Ronnie asks, steering them back on track. “Musical? Straight play?”
“Nothing about this is straight,” Stevie mutters, and David elbows her.
“It’s a play with music,” he snaps.
“And what would that mean for the Tonys?”
“Um, it means nothing because it doesn’t exist yet! Oh my God!”
“David! It’s my job to ask these questions,” Ronnie counters. “Despite what you might think, I don’t delight in the press dragging your name harder than RuPaul.”
“Hamlet means a lot to him,” Stevie blurts and he kicks her under the table.
“There’s a part for her,” he snipes. “She’s invested.”
Stevie glares at him in response, and he feels only slightly bad at taking her momentary lapse into sentiment and hiding from it in a bunker made of snark and spite.
“What about your mom?” Ronnie asks, ignoring their childish shenanigans.
“What about her?”
“She doesn’t want a role? Because if she does, you know we need to put in a Moira Clause,” she warns. Every Moira Rose project requires a Moira Clause.
But David shakes his head. “She wouldn’t take a part even if I offered it. Which I’m not, to be very clear. I believe her exact words were ‘Will and I have had a tumultuous association.’ Meaning she got panned as Desdemona when she was 20 and never recovered.”
“Didn’t she do Lady Macbeth?” Ronnie asks, and David shakes his head.
“Cruise ships don’t count.”
Ronnie hums and clicks a few more things on her computer. David grunts as Stevie kicks him under the desk again.
“So you’ll call his agent?” he asks because hope is a fickle bitch.
Ronnie purses her lips, folding her glasses again like a hand of cards, and David knows he has her.
He can’t help but think he should have played his own closer to the vest, though.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Reading the dismissal for what it is, David and Stevie stand and make their way through WME’s glass and concrete lobby, ignoring the casual looks of recognition they get as they reach the elevator bank. They’re hardly the most famous people to grace these halls. They’re probably not even the most famous people currently in the building.
“Well, that went well,” Stevie says dryly as the doors slide open, but they both know that an I’ll see what I can do from Ronnie is basically an I’ll make it happen whether you want me to or not.
It doesn’t mean that David doesn’t spend the hour after he leaves Ronnie’s office stress-eating Shake Shack in the middle of Madison Square Park, though.
And sure enough, just as he’s about to dip a french fry into his black and white shake while arguing with Stevie about why hiring Jake as his set designer would be a truly disastrous idea despite his talent, a text comes through on his phone, vibrating it across the table:
[Ronnie]
Tomorrow. 2pm. Crosby Street Hotel. Ask for M. Hall.
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David blinks up at the hotel’s austere facade, thoroughly ignoring the paps loitering across the street, hoping to get a glimpse of a celebrity coming or going from the lobby. Someone infinitely more notable than David Rose, who’s always half cropped out of every photo of him that ends up on Getty.
Maybe the paps are even waiting for Patrick himself, if word has gotten out.
Feeling vaguely nauseated, David pulls the door open and squints in the still-bright light, grateful for the high windows as they allow him to keep his sunglasses on as he passes a large sculpture of a human head on his way to the check-in counter. Sometimes they’re the only shield he has. After all, it’s not exactly his directing career that he’s famous for.
“Good afternoon, sir, how can I help?” a cheerful young woman greets, and David wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. He hasn’t felt this nervous since he found out Michelle Obama had ordered a pair of house seats to his show and the secret service would need to do a security sweep.
“Um, M. Hall?”
Her face gives away nothing, but she doesn’t even need to enter the pseudonym into the computer. She clearly knows who M. Hall is. “Suite 1013.”
“Thanks,” he manages, looking around for an elevator. He has been here before, but he wasn’t exactly… coherent, at the time.
“Just over there,” the woman directs with a kind smile, and he flashes her a tight but grateful grin.
He hits the button and waits for the elevator to arrive, second-guessing whether he should have brought anything with him. He doesn’t have any notes or scripts; just the mood board that’s existed in his mind for the past fifteen years. He steps in and counts the passing floors, but ten still arrives entirely before he’s ready for it to.
He steps off and catches sight of his reflection in a passing mirror, realizing he’s still wearing his sunglasses like an asshole. He takes them off to hook them into the collar of his Rick Owens sweatshirt, ticking off the odd numbers on the right side of the hall until he gets to 13. His stomach feels like he’s parasailing with Anderson all over again as he raises his hand to knock, knuckles rapping quickly but firmly against the wood. He hears footsteps on the other side of the door before it swings back and there he is.
Patrick Brewer.
The man whose face shouldn’t radiate kindness given the industry he’s in and whose voice shouldn’t make David’s knees want to give out.
“David Rose,” Patrick greets, bright smile in place as he thrusts out a hand. “Really nice to meet you.”
“Patrick,” he says, taking it, “I mean David. Yes, you’re Patrick. I’m David.” What the fuck.
Patrick laughs like he’s somehow charmed by David’s verbal massacre and steps back, welcoming him into his ridiculous suite. “Come on in. Can I get you anything?"
“Um,” David is too distracted by the color of the walls, which aren’t quite pink but definitely aren’t red. His eyes dance from the floral curtains to the striped couch to the patterned throw pillows, and it’s a combination that shouldn’t work, but shockingly, it does. David knows a room is busy when the food spread laid out on the coffee table is the last thing he notices. “Wow. I feel like Meg Ryan walking into Fox Books for the first time.”
But Patrick just looks at him blankly.
“You’ve Got Mail?”
“Never seen it.”
“Oh my God,” he blurts. That will need to be remedied post-haste whether they become creative partners or not.
“Well, lack of movie knowledge aside,” Patrick starts sheepishly, “I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten lunch or what you’d want, so I kind of just got everything.”
Yes, he did. There’s every sandwich under the sun on offer. “I did eat lunch, but I’m also always hungry, so.”
“Good to know,” Patrick laughs, leading him over to the sitting area. David appreciates that he’s set up here rather than at the formal dining room table on the other side of the room. The casualness of it is already helping to settle his nerves.
“Thanks for making time. I know how busy you are.” And he does. SNL just announced Patrick as the musical guest for next Saturday’s episode that very morning. David may or may not have taken a screenshot of the Instagram post with Patrick’s name written out in black sharpie on a neon index card. He honestly didn’t think this meeting would happen for weeks, if at all.
But Patrick just shrugs and takes a seat in one of the armchairs, grabbing a plate and passing it to David before taking one for himself.
“Well it’s not every day that David Rose reaches out to me and wants a meeting.”
David’s body stills even as his heart gallops. “I honestly didn’t think you even knew who David Rose was.”
“Oh yeah. Big Little Bit Alexis fan.”
David’s eyes narrow. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Yes, yes, I am.” He looks so damn pleased with himself. And annoyingly, David is pleased for him. No fucking wonder the man sells enough albums to keep him at the top of the Billboard charts for months at a time.
Patrick never does say how he knows him, and David is too distracted by the V of skin exposed by Patrick’s navy henley to circle back. He’s dressed in a shirt that probably comes in a three-pack and a pair of jeans that are nondescript but do wonders for his ass. Then again, Patrick’s style isn’t exactly what has people flocking to his shows.
David finally remembers how to be a functioning human being and takes a sandwich half from the tray. “I don’t know what your agent told you…” he starts, hoping Patrick will fill in the blanks.
“Ray said you had a project you wanted to talk about. A theatre project. But your agent was vague on the details, which was probably a safe call. Ray is loquacious at best and downright fantastical if left to his own devices. He’ll have you directing a musicless one-man Music Man in the round before you know it.”
David laughs as a sudden fondness for his salty agent swells within him. “Ronnie’s very protective. I know experimental plays and deconstructed classics are my niche but I’d like to think I’m not that pretentious.”
Patrick smiles. “Just pretentious enough.” He softens his tease by passing David a bottle of water, which he gratefully takes.
“So why M. Hall?” David asks. It’s been bugging him ever since he received Ronnie’s text.
“Ah.” Patrick grins. “Massey Hall was the first big gig I played. I use places that mean a lot to me. The street I grew up on, local bars, favorite baseball stadiums.”
“What, like Y. Stadium?” It’s the only one he can think of. Sports are decidedly not in David’s wheelhouse.
“Not quite. C. Wrigley. B. Fenway. The usual.”
“The usual,” David parrots mockingly, and Patrick laughs again, head tossed back just like in the photo from Rolling Stone. His neck is even more impressive in person.
“I’m just giving away all of my secret identities,” he says. “You’ll have to promise not to stalk me.”
“No guarantees,” David blurts, feeling his cheeks heat when his brain catches up with what his traitorous tongue has done. He clears his throat and takes a large gulp of water, placing the plate with the half-eaten sandwich on the table, refusing to meet Patrick’s gaze. The weight of it on him is pressure enough.
“So what are you thinking here?” Patrick asks, giving him an out while getting them back to the topic at hand.
And this, at least, is familiar territory. David conjures up his mood board and slides forward on the sofa.
“I have an adaptation of Hamlet that I’ve been editing over and over for the better part of a decade. I want to… add music to it, original music, and use that to help convey his mental state. His depression, his grief, his… struggle.” Because it is a struggle. “And I want you to compose and star in it.” He holds his breath, keeping his eyes trained on the floral arrangement in the center of the table. He can’t bear to look at Patrick and potentially see rejection on his face.
“You read the Rolling Stone article,” Patrick finally says softly. David doesn’t deny it.
“It’s not a musical. I don’t think much of it would be sung through, actually. Probably only the soliloquies. And it would have stylized movement, but not full-blown choreography. Think Once, not Kiss Me, Kate. We’re not talking about Hamlet with eleven o’clock numbers.”
Patrick chuckles. “Fair enough.”
“Anyway, I thought you might like to try,” he says, giving in to the desire to look at him.
Patrick sits back in the chair and stares at David like he’s not quite sure he’s real. Like he’s not sure David won’t rescind the offer at any moment.
“I think I might,” he eventually whispers. “Like to try.” Their food lies abandoned on the table in between them. “Do you have a genre in mind? Obviously, you’re coming to me, so something about what I do must fit your concept.” Then he grins. “Though I am adaptable.”
David returns it, but he can’t tell Patrick that the feeling he wants people to get from this Hamlet is the same feeling David gets when he listens to Patrick’s music. He doesn’t have the words.
“Well, we’re not doing Elizabethan collars and breeches. It’ll be contemporary, but not today. Does that make sense?” Patrick doesn’t look like it does, so David elaborates. “I mean - I know you’re influenced a lot by the singer-songwriters of the ‘70s,” he pauses and gives Patrick a moment to nod. “When I first got the idea, I honestly didn’t know when I wanted to set it. And trust me, the 70s would not be my first choice.” Like - no. “But then I saw the 2017 Fall Prada line, which was designed by Miuccia Prada, a self-proclaimed ‘leftist feminist’ and former Communist party member and mime artist.”
“Fascinating,” Patrick says.
“Right? Well, she created this kind of hybrid of contemporary and classical looks. It seemed to have all of the edge and none of the kitsch. Backstage after her show in Milan, she said, ‘I didn’t want to do the 1970s. But it just came out, naturally. It was an important moment for protest, for humanity. Which is now very necessary.” David shrugs, the words he’d memorized long ago now indelibly carved in his mind. “And that struck something, I guess.” He chances another glance at Patrick to find him utterly rapt. “I’m not time-stamping it and saying, ‘Yes it takes place at this exact moment’ - I want to keep it nebulous. But that time period is… growing on me.”
Patrick smiles like David just paid him a personal compliment. And he may have.
“Also I swear my costume designer, Twyla Sands, was at Woodstock in another life, so it works out well in our favor.”
Our.
Already.
Patrick seems onboard with everyone David described, excited even, and then he goes and says, “Except Woodstock was technically the 60s.”
And David has regrets. “O-kay - ”
“Do you want me to read something?” Patrick asks, looking all earnest and doe-eyed, his previous teasing grin dissipating.
David frowns. “Read something?”
“Yeah, like part of the script. You clearly know my music, but you said you wanted me to star - ”
“We don’t have a reader for you,” he interrupts, not quite sure he understands what Patrick’s offering. Or at least not quite believing it.
“A reader?”
“A scene partner. Someone who reads with you during an audition.” Is he… auditioning?
Patrick scratches the back of his neck with an endearingly shy but cheeky smile on his face. “Well, it’s Shakespeare. Pretty sure he’s got a monologue or two in there. If not, I might be able to remember something from my university production of Macbeth, but it was over a decade ago, so go easy.”
David stares at him. He’s had actors without a credit larger than a series regular on SVU claim to be offer-only.
“You have a Grammy,” he says dumbly. Patrick Brewer has multiple Grammys.
“And you have a Tony.”
“That I won when I was 26 before anyone knew any better.” There’s no way this multi-hyphenate is offering to audition for him. No fucking way.
“A Grammy doesn’t mean that I know how to do Shakespeare, David.”
“You did Shakespeare in college!” But David knows people who went to fucking Juilliard who can’t do Shakespeare, so like, Patrick’s not wrong.
“Do it well, then,” Patrick amends. “Do it justice.”
And fuck if that’s not everything a director wants to hear.
“Going into business with me doesn’t usually go well for people,” he says, because he’s an idiot, and Patrick huffs out an incredulous laugh.
“Do you always start pitch meetings like this?”
“I’ve honestly never had a pitch meeting like this so I’m kind of freaking out.”
Patrick smiles and leans forward, clasping his hands together. “David, I know this is a big deal for you. It’s a big deal for me, too. And I also know that you’ve never seen me do something like this.”
“And you just - happen to have a Hamlet soliloquy memorized. Prepared.”
“No, but it doesn’t mean I can’t look it up and do it on the fly.”
Wow. “Okay,” David laughs, “You’re either very impatient or extremely sure of yourself.”
Patrick grins. David sways. “Threw you a bit of a changeup there.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Tell you what,” Patrick says, and David can’t help but watch the flex of his forearms. “How about you give me a couple of days and then let me play some stuff I’ve mocked up for you. I’ll read whatever you want. And we can take it from there.”
Take it from there, David mouths, still wondering how he ended up in this hotel suite with a half-eaten sandwich and one of People’s Sexiest Men Alive offering to read a role for David’s show. For David’s show that he’s been dreaming about since he was twenty and in a depression so severe, the only comfort he had was knowing that someone four-hundred-years prior might have felt the same way.
“Okay,” he finally breathes.
“Okay,” Patrick repeats. Then he picks his sandwich back up like he didn’t just upend David’s axial tilt. “Now tell me about You’ve Got Mail.”
🎭 🎭 🎭
David is still in a daze as he heads over to the subway stop at Broadway-Lafayette, deigning to take the D train since traffic at this hour is a hellscape even on the best of days. He transfers to the A and gets off at 42nd St., grateful that he has just enough time to get a cocktail at Bea before his 7pm curtain.
His final curtain.
It’s not his first flop, but it is the first one to hurt in a long while. Stevie wasn’t wrong; he made a lot of bad shows and the thing is, he didn’t even care. He didn’t care about much during that period of his life.
The hurt of closing early is eased by the memory of the afternoon meeting, the hope of it carrying him down 43rd Street until he reaches 9th Avenue, when it fades as he catches sight of the marquee flag hanging outside The Westside Theater, The Crucible slashed across it in tasteful but foreboding font. It never even had a chance.
Not with David Rose on the title page.
He pulls the door to Bea open and smiles wanly at Matteo who nods towards his usual table in the corner. David’s presence at the bar is as predictable here as the movies they project onto the white brick walls. Tonight’s offering is The Breakfast Club, a solid choice.
Frankly, he’d rather be curled up in his bed, but he’d be a piss poor captain if he didn’t go down with his ship. He owes it to his company, his designers, his crew. To the hundreds of people who worked their asses off on something David couldn’t deliver for them. Matteo has already offered the back patio room for everyone to drown their sorrows in post-show.
He orders a Fall From Graceland from the inventive cocktail menu because he’s feeling particularly pitiful and rests his cheek on his hand as he watches Molly Ringwald give Ally Sheedy a makeover. Someone flicks his ear and he yelps as Stevie drops into the seat across from him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t think I’d make you do this alone, did you?”
“Wench.”
“Yes.” She grins at Kiaya who comes around from the bar and slides Stevie’s usual Maracuya Mama in front of her. “Thanks,” she offers before pinning David with an expectant look. “So? How’d it go?”
“How’d what go? Ow!” he grunts as she kicks him under the table. “Fine! It went fine!” He rubs his shin and can’t help but smile. “Great, actually. He... offered to audition.”
Stevie looks (rightfully) floored. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he breathes because he still can’t quite believe it either. “He’s going to write some music and do a scene. I said I’d send him some sides by the weekend.” It’s Thursday and there’s already an edit of the script sitting in Final Draft on his computer. It won’t take David long to pick what he wants and needs to hear.
Stevie leans forward conspiratorially, and given what he already witnessed of Patrick’s penchant for teasing, David knows introducing them will undoubtedly be the biggest mistake of his life. “Should we take him to Marie’s Crisis? Think he’ll duet with me?”
“I regret this.”
“Maybe we can do some Benny and the Jets.”
“Absolutely not.”
She continues to suggest more and more outlandish song ideas, and while Marie’s specializes in showtunes (which is why he only allows himself to be dragged there after a significant drink and substance minimum), he’s sure they’d make an exception for Patrick Brewer.
Still, he cuts her off after she suggests My Sharona because his imagination can only handle so much torture. Turns out Stevie does know who The Knack is.
She gets the bill and puts her card down, continuing their age-old tradition where the person whose show isn’t closing buys the booze. David glances back just in time to watch Judd Nelson fistpump into the sky, before smiling slightly and heading out into the balmy September night.
The theatre is just next door, and he offers a grim smile to Roger in the box office as he picks up his comps. Normally, he just loiters in the back of the house, taking notes during previews or pacing during press nights, but the heartbreaker about the Westside is that the stairs are midway up the sides of the audience so any entrance or exit is obnoxiously conspicuous. It’s a nice theatre, though not David’s first choice. But the rest of the major Off-Broadway venues were booked and Broadway wouldn’t have him, so here they are.
He’s heartened and a little touched to see Ronnie standing across the lobby; she never said she was planning on coming. She catches his eye and gives him a nod, but then keeps talking to the man at her side who David doesn’t recognize. It’s moments like these that he truly appreciates her lack of sentimentality. No meaningless platitudes or faux sympathy. She just does her job and does it well.
Stevie appears at his side with what looks like a vodka soda in each hand, and David desperately hopes one is for him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s double-dipped in preparation for a show she really doesn’t want to see, but thankfully, David knows that’s not the case here. Sure enough, she passes one of the cups over and he grimaces out his thanks.
“You ready for this?”
He rolls his eyes in a practiced move and his tone is bored when he says, “It’s not the first show I’ve closed early,” but David is sure his sadness would be clear if anyone bothered to look hard enough.
Stevie hums and takes the tickets, not looking because she’s never had to. “Doesn’t mean you have to like it.”
And he doesn’t. He fucking hates it.
David keeps his head down as they take their seats. It’s a sold-out house which is fucking ironic now that they’re closing. He sees his costume designer sitting with his lighting designer towards the front and he resolves to thank them for their work at Bea afterwards. He’d happily work with Twyla again, but Bob had a breakdown mid-tech and even after countless pep-talks, David still isn’t sure who the fuck ‘Gwen’ is.
The lights dim and he inhales, ready to say a final hello and goodbye to something he’ll never experience again. Because that’s what live theatre is - a flash of lightning you cannot bottle; a feeling so indescribable, it can never be replicated. Not when the work that sparked it will never be seen again.
His cast is on fire; being furious with the hand they’ve been dealt while also very good at their jobs works in their favor, at least in this show, and before David is ready for it, they’re taking tearful bows and blowing kisses to a standing, grateful audience. David gets to his feet and just watches, forcing himself to remember this moment. His fucking producers didn’t even bother to get bouquets.
He and Stevie linger until the bottleneck down the steps dissipates before making their way back to the lobby. He should plan to say something to everyone, offer some words of commiseration, but before he can even contemplate what speech he wants to trip over, he feels a tap on his shoulder and he spins around fast enough to feel the extra shot Stevie slipped into his drink like the good friend she is.
It’s the man who’d been talking to Ronnie earlier, wearing a too-big sport coat and an over-eager smile that has David taking a step back and feeling like he wants to say just looking, thanks.
“David?”
“Yes?” he replies warily. Though if Ronnie didn’t immediately run him off, clearly he must be tolerable. Ronnie loves running people off. “I’m Ray Butani, Patrick Brewer’s agent.” David barely has enough time to absorb that fact before Ray (apparently) is holding out a folded piece of paper. David vaguely notices it’s the Playbill insert, warning people to turn off their cell phones. “Patrick is sorry he couldn’t stay and chat. He’s on The Today Show tomorrow so it’s an early night for him,” Ray gushes with a clap and a smile.
“Um… what?” What?
But Ray only turns around with a carefree, “Ciao!” still looking far too jovial for a closing performance of fucking Arthur Miller. David unfolds the paper and reads over the words hastily scrawled on the back of the insert once. Then twice.
Then thrice.
You made something special here.
Maybe we can do it again.
416-555-9763
-M. Hall