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Anthony will swear up and down that he's the one responsible for the cuddle pile, but that's because Anthony is a lying liar who lies. If memory serves, and it does, Anthony was not the first, not even the second, but the third person in the cuddle pile. There are witnesses.
"I don't think you can be the first person in a cuddle pile," Anthony says during one of their many debates on the subject. Well, debates might be a strong word. Oak definitely heard Renée refer to it as bickering once, and Renée is not to be gainsaid.
"I initiated the cuddle pile, though," says Oak.
"Yes, but I was the reason you did. If not for me, no cuddle pile."
"If not for lots of things no cuddle pile, like Lin writing the show, or our parents banging."
Anthony gives him a betrayed look. "Ugh, crossing a line, man."
"Or Lin's parents banging, I guess," says Oak, but he's kind of grossing himself out, so he relents. "I'm just saying, that's not a valid argument. I'm the one who took the initiative for the cuddle pile, thus, the cuddle pile owes its existence to me."
"But I was the direct inspiration! That's different than just all the pieces lining up to put us in this time and place or whatever."
"Fine," says Oak. "I will be the architect of the cuddle pile, and you can be the muse. Happy?"
Anthony grins. "I'm adding it to my resume right now."
The thing is, Anthony's not completely wrong. The cuddle pile started early on, rehearsing at the Public, back in the days when they were all getting their feet under them and Anthony was capital-P-Pining after one Jasmine Cephas Jones.
It was a miracle that she hadn't caught on, if indeed she hadn't, given how much he talked about it. Oak didn't find it as annoying as some of the rest of the cast apparently did. Maybe it was because he genuinely liked Anthony, or maybe because he wasn't so far from his own last episode of capital-P-Pining, but either way he didn't mind lending an ear. It was kind of entertaining.
Somehow, this gave Anthony the idea that Oak would be the perfect person to subtly interrogate Jasmine about her interest.
"You know, I'm not really a spy, I just play one on stage," Oak told him, and got elbowed in the ribs for his trouble.
"Just, like, float the idea, it's not that hard."
"I don't get why you can't talk to her yourself."
"Don't be an idiot," said Anthony, which didn't actually answer the question, but that was Anthony for you.
Oak figured he'd just see if she had a minute after rehearsal, but he got distracted by a headache that crept up on him in the last hour or two, and he really just wanted to go home and sleep. The next day he'd managed to forget about it. In his defense, it was one of those days where every inconsequential thing that could go wrong did, and the headache was back on top of it. When they ended up with an extended break because of something going on with one of the lights- Oak didn't catch whether it wasn't doing something it should or was doing something it shouldn't, but either way they were banned from the stage until someone could ensure that it wasn't about to fall on their heads- he just found a corner of the house and closed his eyes for a minute, resting his head on his drawn-up knees.
A good portion of the cast emptied out for coffee or early lunch, once they got the okay. Oak drifted a little to the murmuring of everyone else, the occasional clank of whatever they were doing to the rigging, and when he heard footsteps approaching he assumed it was time to go again.
It was just Jasmine, frowning at him.
"You okay?"
He shrugged. "Headache. Well, headache and a crappy day."
"Can't have that. Did you take anything?"
"I...no."
She shook her head, plopping down next to him and rummaging through her bag. "I have aspirin, acetaminophen, or naproxen sodium."
"Uh," said Oak. Jasmine snorted and produced two little blue pills. He dry swallowed them, since it seemed like less effort than getting his water bottle from all the way across the room.
"I could get you some water," said Jasmine belatedly, laughter in her voice.
"I'm good." He leaned his head back against the wall, swallowing against the lump the pills had left in his throat.
"If you say so." She patted him on the knee. "You need anything else?"
Oak was about to say no when he remembered that he was supposed to be playing Cyrano for Anthony. Never let it be said that he didn't know how to think on his feet. Or, you know, on his ass on the floor of the Public Theater. Whatever.
"Snuggles, maybe?" he asked, lifting an arm, and Jasmine tucked herself under it.
"I have heard that snuggling is a good cure for headaches," she said, shifting to lean her head on his chest.
"Yeah, pretty sure there was a research study on that somewhere."
They sat quietly for a little while, watching the stage where the lights had been lowered to chest height and subjected to inspection. Ulterior motive or not, it was definitely comfortable to have Jasmine tucked up against him.
"Okay," said Oak after a bit, "marry fuck kill: Tommy, Lac, and Andy."
Jasmine snorted.
"Your brain is a strange place. Uh. Fuck Andy, I guess, he's really bendy."
"Oh, good point."
"And...aaah, that's hard. Marry Lac and kill Tommy, I guess? "
"Fair enough."
"I feel bad, don't tell Tommy I said that."
"Of course not."
Jasmine shifted around a little bit and settled against his side.
"Hmm. Daveed, Lin, and Anthony," she said, which is just about as well as step one of this plan could have possibly gone. Score one for Oak, master detective.
"Fuck Daveed," he said, immediately enough that she laughed at him. "What? I have eyes. And marry Anthony, I guess." Anthony would probably drive him up the wall after a while, but at least he could sort of imagine it. He couldn't even fathom being married to Lin; the guy had absolutely no off-switch and about six million things competing for his attention at any given time, half of them from his own brain and all of them cooler than Oak. And anyway, he wasn't sure he could handle the kind of open marriage thing Lin and Vanessa had going.
"Oh god," he said "that means I'm killing Lin, I'm a terrible person. How could anyone kill Lin?"
"It's the rules of the game," said Jasmine. "The truth is harsh."
"Same three to you, then," Oak said, mentally high-fiving himself. Not that he hadn't said he'd fuck or marry plenty of people that he wasn't actually interested in dating, but it wasn't bad for an on-the-fly intelligence mission.
Jasmine considered her choices for a minute and then made a pained sound.
"I'm killing Lin too, there's no way out of it. We're horrible. The entire musical theater establishment is going to come for us in our sleep."
"They'll have to climb over Daveed and Anthony to get to us, apparently," said Oak.
"What?"
"You know, if they're killing us in our sleep, in the fictional world where we pushed Lin off a cliff we're presumably in bed with our husbands and/or sex partners. I've never really been clear on that, actually, do you assume that you get to fuck the person you marry or is the fucking reserved for only the fuck person?"
"Fucking's gotta be reserved for the fuck person, otherwise it doesn't have any advantage over marriage. The game's not fuck once, fuck a bunch of times, kill, that's just stupid."
"That is a thing about marriages, though, generally," Oak pointed out. "You get to fuck multiple times."
Jasmine shrugged, with the shoulder not currently trapped against his side. "I didn't make the rules."
"All right, fine. Now that we've damned ourselves by killing Lin, who are you fucking and you are you marrying chastely?"
"Marrying Daveed, I think," she said. "He seems like the kind of guy who would still bring you breakfast in bed like twenty years down the road. And like, sure, he's pretty, but so is Anthony, and- I don't know why I get this impression, it's not like I've talked to him about it, but for some reason I have the feeling that Anthony would be up for anything, y'know?"
"What am I up for?" asked Anthony, making his way down the aisle toward them with a coffee cup in hand. Oak had been anticipating this- given downtime, Anthony was always going to gravitate over toward them eventually- but he couldn't have gotten the timing so perfect even if he'd had someone calling cues. He gave himself another mental high five.
"Snuggles," said Jasmine, without missing a beat or looking even the tiniest bit guilty. "Oak's having a bad day."
Anthony raised his eyebrows. Oak winked at him over Jasmine's head, because why not- it hadn't been a declaration of love, exactly, but admitting that she'd imagined what Anthony was like in bed was probably a pretty good sign.
"No pressure," added Jasmine, as if Anthony was ever going to say no to her. Sure enough, he settled right in under Oak's other arm. It really was pretty comfortable.
"Sorry you're having a bad day," said Anthony. Oak squeezed him around the shoulders.
"It's looking up," he said.
They played a couple more rounds of marry fuck kill, which included Anthony killing him off in favor of fucking Hercules Mulligan and marrying James Madison of all people- "He was president of the United States! He could keep me in comfort for all of my days"- because Anthony was a brat. Oak figured that he'd fake a need for the bathroom in a minute or two; extracting himself and leaving them cuddling and murmuring to each other was about as far as he could go toward getting Anthony to actually say something.
Just as he was about to get up, Thayne wandered by and cocked his head at them.
"Is this an exclusive snuggle, or open to anyone?" he asked. Jasmine and Anthony both looked to Oak, who shrugged. There went that plan. Oh, well.
"Sure, join us," he said. After some shifting they ended up with Thayne taking Jasmine's place and Jasmine curling up on his lap instead.
"You sure I'm not squishing you?" she asked.
"Positive. I'm very cozy and well-snuggled." He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
He followed their conversation for a while, but at some point he must have drifted off, because the next thing he knew Tommy was on the god mic informing them all that the lighting problem had been fixed. Oak blinked and looked around. Their numbers had grown while he was sleeping; Ariana was using Thayne as a backrest and Pippa was sprawled across the aisle with her head in Anthony's lap. Anthony and Jasmine appeared to be holding hands. Cyrano and Hercules Mulligan could both move aside, Oak thought, grinning to himself.
"We're backing up to the top of act two," said Tommy from on high. "And that includes the cuddle pile in the corner."
The six of them laughed and started to peel themselves away and upright, stretching and reaching for their things. Oak, at the bottom, waited for everyone else to let him free.
"You're very comfy," Jasmine told him, climbing carefully off his lap.
"I agree," said Thayne. "We should do this again sometime."
"Just say the word," said Oak, and went to see if he had enough time to heckle Anthony about the whole thing before they started rehearsal again.
Wonder of wonders, his head didn't even hurt anymore.