Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Zoya was in the library, catching up on some of the readings she needed to get done for next week’s classes when she got the email.

Sent to all members of the theatre society

Good morning members!

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting impatiently to find out what our first-half musical will be this year! Fear not, this email will tell you in due time, but first a little explanation for our Freshmen who may not be as experienced as the rest of you.

Grisha University does two musical productions a year. The first has auditions in October and comes out mid February, the second has auditions in march and, due to summer finals, rehearsals continue into the summer so the production debuts in July.

Now into what you’ve all been frantically waiting for! Our first musical of the year is Mean Girls the Musical . Directed by senior Nikolai Lantsov, he aims to make this musical the best to date!

Auditions will be held this Saturday the 14th of October at 9 AM so not long! In order to audition you must prepare a song of your choice, due to the nature of the musical Nikolai has said you may do group auditions, this does not need to be for the character you want to audition for but should be from the Mean Girls discography. If you are successful in your first audition you will be recalled in the afternoon to do a read through for a few different characters.

We look forward to seeing you in the theatre on Friday!

Your President,

Tamar Kit-Bataar.

End of email

It was interesting to say the least, Zoya thought to herself, it had been a while since they had done a musical she genuinely liked, preferring to go for the regular shows and such over musicals. She turned back to her work, this reading wasn’t going to read itself and she really wanted to graduate top of the class.

INEJ

The clock hit 12:30 and Inej stood up out of her chair. It wasn’t that her psychology class wasn’t interesting, just that she had had to forgo breakfast due to her dance class and she knew that Nina would be outside the door with some five guys she’d picked up on the way there.

Sure enough as she walked out she was attacked on both sides by Nina and Jesper, who looped their arms in hers and started walking towards their designated lunch spot.

“Hello Inej, nice to see you Inej, sorry for kidnapping you Inej.” She muttered under her breath as she was basically dragged along. Nina and Jesper were both a decent amount taller than her so when they decided they wanted to be somewhere she had to half run to keep up.

“Hello darling Inej, how was your lecture.” Jesper replied with a cheeky smile.

“It was great thank you Jes, did you manage to pick up some food?” She asked hopefully.

“Of course we did babes.” Said Nina, who had been quiet until now, perking up excitedly when they got to their lunch spot. “Guess what got announced today!”

Inej racked her brains to try and figure out what would get her friend practically jumping for joy like she was doing now. “They started stocking waffles in the canteen?”

“No but good guess.” Nina and Jesper eyed each other before shouting at the same time. “FIRST-HALF MUSICAL GOT ANNOUNCED!!!”

Nina and Jesper were both drama students and had actually met in their first class Freshman year, gravitating towards each other even in a room full of other extroverts. Nina had introduced Inej, her roommate to him and, in turn, Jesper had introduced his roommate Kaz to them both. After that they had become a four.

Wylan had come along through Nina, Jesper and Kaz’s theatre connections. They had all worked in last years first-half musical. Nina and Jesper acting in fairly small roles as they were only Sophomores. Kaz was shadowing the deputy stage manager as he had done Freshman year and Wylan, new to the University, transferring due to complications with his last Uni, was helping with sound. They had been put on the same breaks and quickly convinced Wylan to eat lunch with them.

Matthias, had joined them (very grudgingly) last year, when Nina had forced him to, as a way to try and apologise for getting him expelled from his last University (the details of which neither of them had disclosed). Inej had thought it was more like a punishment to the boy, considering how much he had supposedly hated Nina. He had slowly warmed up to them over the year, to the point they could be referred to as friends come summer. Him and Nina had worked at the same summer camp over the summer and fallen in love. Inej had gotten all the details hurriedly texted to her in the hour of phone time the counsellors were allowed each day.

“That’s so cool! Which one is it?” Inej was excited for them now, Jesper had been going on and on all summer, (Nina too, just through text), about how now they were Juniors they were finally in the running for the bigger roles. From what Inej could tell there was no specific hierarchy to getting rules however the Juniors and Seniors who had more experience and looked more age-appropriate were more likely to get the leads.

“Mean Girls!” Jesper practically shouted at her and she suddenly realised why the both of them were so excited. Their ‘signature song’ was ‘Meet the plastics’, Nina was Regina, Jesper was Karen and she took Gretchen. Whether is was karaoke or just randomly while hanging out, they regularly annoyed the other three in their group by randomly breaking into song.

“Inej you need to audition with us. This is literally the perfect opportunity.”

“What’s the perfect opportunity?” Jesper and Nina both jumped at the voice behind them as Kaz and Matthias came to sit in their circle. Inej, having been facing the way they had come from had been struggling to not give it away from the moment she saw them round the corner.

“Ghezen Kaz, you’re almost as bad as Inej.” Nina shuddered, Jesper yet again distracted as Wylan sat down next to him had already forgotten the scare. “As I’m sure you’ve seen, Mean Girls is the first-half musical and ‘Meet the Plastics’ is our song”

Kaz considered it for a moment, “You think you’ll get the plastics?”

“Probably not all three of us, Genya said she was going to convince Zoya to audition, that girl is literally the type cast for Regina. But this is the best chance we’ve had so far at getting any good role.” Nina replied, in thought.

Jesper had suddenly tuned back into the discussion. “That isn’t the spirit! For all you know Zoya will get Cady Heron for her lovely and innocent personality.”

Nina fairly quickly took ‘offense’ to this, despite their differences she was always very quick to defend Zoya, even when she knew Jesper was joking.

“For what it’s worth, you’d be the best Gretchen by far. The only one who fits her character more than you would be Alina Starkov and everyone knows she’ll go for Cady. Even if there’s some really good Freshmen, Nikolai always favours casting them in the second-half musical because he knows they’ll have more time.” Kaz whispered quietly to her.

That compliment was worth more than Nina and Jesper’s badgering combined, Kaz’s compliments were always few and far between, even for her, who everyone knew he liked better than everyone else. Plus he had been shadowing the previous DSM for two years now, he knew what he was talking about.

“He’s right.” Wylan chipped in. “I don’t know the regular actors that well, but you’ve got the acting experience from Macbeth from last year, and I swear you’ve mentioned other things you did in high school.”

That just about sealed the deal, Wylan was right, it wasn’t like she had absolutely no experience, she’d done a few musicals in high school and playing in Macbeth last year had been a lot of fun.

“Okay I’ll audition.” Stopping Nina and Jesper’s bickering all at once, as they looked at her in a stunned silence. “As long as we practice loads.”

And with that Nina and Jesper pounced on her.

ZOYA

It was 6 PM, Zoya had finally caught up with next weeks reading and as she walked out of the library, planning on getting home as soon as possible she caught a familiar red-head walking towards her, determination set on her face.

“Mean Girls.” Genya wasn’t usually a woman of few words, which proved to Zoya that she wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

“Genya, I don’t do musicals.” This wasn’t strictly true, but she did prefer to act in regular shows, so not quite a lie.

“You did Legally Blonde, second-half musical Freshman year, and Wicked, first-half Sophomore year with me, don’t try that.”

“Okay but those were ensemble parts, if I got an ensemble part now, it would be so embarrassing.”

Genya swivelled around to face her, now walking backwards. “Zoya if you somehow get ensemble, I will kick Nikolai Lantsov out and direct the musical myself.” Zoya didn’t doubt that for a second.

“What’s this about me getting kicked out of directing before even getting to start?” Nikolai walked over from the direction of the library.

“Lantsov, tell Zoya that she literally has to audition for Mean Girls.” Genya said with a smile, Nikolai lived with her boyfriend David, so she knew him fairly well.

“Zoya, I would be a poor director if I didn’t tell you, you would be a perfect fit for a certain absolutely terrifying lead.” He said with that lopsided smile she saw all too often when he knew he was winning a class debate. “Or I might just be trying to encourage you so that almost as much of your time will be taken up with this as mine is and I’ll still have a chance at graduating top of the class.”

With that he walked off, leaving Zoya and Genya alone again.

“So you’ll do it? I still need to decide on my audition song. I’m not sure what to do yet.” Genya looked at her hopefully.

How could Zoya say no to her best friend looking at her like that? “Yes I’ll do it.”

Chapter Text

ZOYA

It was way, way to early for Zoya to be up right now.

Auditions started at 9 meaning by any normal persons standards she would have had to wake up at 7:30 at the earliest in order to leave at 8:40. Genya however, wasn’t normal, she had come into Zoya’s room at 6 AM stressing about what she was going to wear because: “It’s Mean Girls Zoya, I need to wear pink”. If it had been anyone else, Zoya would have blasted them into next week, even their other housemate Alina wouldn’t have dared, however Zoya’s only soft spot was Genya and she knew that.

It didn’t mean she had to be happy about it though, she was currently sat at the island in their kitchen nursing a cup of coffee that she was too nervous to drink, not that she would’ve admitted it. “What if I don’t get cast Zoya? I know ‘I’d rather be me’ is a hard song to sing, I don’t know why I even thought I would be able to sing it in the first place.”

“Because you can sing it Genya.” Zoya said firmly. “You’ve rehearsed it dozens of times and I haven’t heard you sing a wrong note once.”

Genya visibly calmed down at her words, “Ok ok, but you know all of tech is going to be there too right? That’s so many people, I actually despise Nikolai Lantsov right now.”

Zoya agreed with her slightly, however she was too tired for so many thoughts right now. “Gen it’s 8 in the morning right now and I’ve already been up for 2 hours, can we please chill for half an hour before getting nervous for auditions.”

“Yes, okay I’m calm.”

With that she put her head down on the counter and closed her eyes.

. . .

Zoya and Genya walked into the auditorium with 5 minutes to spare and joined Mal and Alina sat on the side. Despite Alina technically living with them she probably spent more time at Mal’s than at their house.

Soon enough Nikolai stood up from where he and a couple others were sitting at the front. “Alright thank you everyone for coming! This is a really great turnout and I’m super excited to here all of you sing. First things first, I’m going to go over a couple pieces of important information you all need to know.” Nikolai turned and motioned for the person sitting next to him to stand up.

“First up, for those that don’t know this is Tolya, he is our choreographer and assistant-director, so will be helping me with the casting decisions. The rest of our permanent tech team are also here and will come down to the front while y’all are auditioning.” Zoya saw him eye Mal from where they were sat and then move up to the back where Nina and a few others were sitting.

“As for while people are auditioning, please can we keep it silent, you will all get your turn, once you have done your audition piece please stay until the end unless it’s an emergency. As for auditions, we will be starting alphabetically, but I’ve decided to do it by first name, if you are in a group, it’s the first person’s name to appear.” He looked around, trying to count the amount of people in the room.

“Everyone got all that? Good, I believe that makes Adrik our first audition then, if you could all come a bit closer and tech team in the first row with me please.”

Adrik came up to the stage looking green, Zoya could understand his nervousness, she recalled Genya mentioning that despite being a junior, he had done his first show last year the same time Nadia joined, she wasn’t sure why.

He quickly spoke to Wylan, who had moved down to the little speaker system they had set up to accommodate the smaller setting.

The sparkles of ‘Where do you belong’ started playing out of the speakers, Zoya had to admit, if Nikolai knew anything about Adrik (and she suspected he did) he would know it was amazing acting for Adrik to seem this happy. He was well known for being a chronic pessimist.

He soon finished and Nikolai stood up to ask the next person to come to the stage, “Alexander Morozova.”

She felt the blood drain out of her face and Genya’s hand grab hers, stupid girl, in all the rush of thinking about the auditions she’d forgotten why she didn’t do musicals in the first place. Him. She glanced over to Genya to see a look of stone cold determination on her face, of course she had remembered, she and Alina had chosen to continue in musical theatre even after Sophomore year. Zoya wasn’t that strong.

The worst part was that he was very easily the best male actor this college had, so he got cast in any production he wanted to be in. As the music to ‘Stupid in Love (Reprise)’ started she let out a sigh of relief, this would be over in a minute and a half.

The next 4 or 5 songs went quickly, Alina sang beautifully as usual with ‘Stupid in Love’, a couple other students she didn’t recognise came through, one sang ‘Sexy’, another sang ‘Fearless’. Leoni and Fedyor, sang ‘Revenge Party’.

Then Nikolai stood, “Genya Safin.” she squeezed Genya’s hand as she stood up and made her way to Wylan. Her voice rang out clearly and beautifully, never missing a note.

Zoya zoned out after that, the stress for Genya was over, Nina, Jesper and Inej came up to sing meet the plastics, an interesting choice for Jesper considering he was singing Karen’s part, but it didn’t sound bad.

Soon it was her turn, she walked up to Wylan, “World Burn please.” and turned to face Nikolai and Tolya, keeping her eyes focused on a point just above their heads. The music started and it was quickly easy to lose herself in the part. It was soon over and she looked towards Nikolai and Tolya, Nikolai was staring with an odd look on his face, she couldn’t tell if it was positive or negative.

Tolya stepped in when it was clear Nikolai wasn’t going to speak anytime soon. “Thank you Zoya, Nikolai I believe you had something to say?”

Nikolai shook himself off and a mask came back up. “That’s it for the auditions guys! How it works is you’re off from now, 11. Within two hours, so before 1, you’ll get an email saying whether you’ve been invited back to read lines or not, this is at 2. Don’t stress about about learning any, you won’t know what you’re reading until we hand you the script. Now go get lunch!”

INEJ

Inej had Nina’s hand clutched tight in one of hers and Jesper’s in the other as they waited at the top of the stairs for Wylan and Kaz to come up, Nikolai had kept tech back a little longer at the end and it normally took Kaz a bit longer to get up all the stairs on a bad day, which she had noticed it was this morning.

“You did so well Matthias, that was amazing!” Nina was exclaiming to her boyfriend, his first audition done, he didn’t want a big part, it would’ve clashed with his football, but Nina had managed to convince him into at least trying for softball as they didn’t play as much through the winter when the show practices would’ve been picking up anyway.

Kaz and Wylan came through the doors, and they started walking towards the lunch spot, her and Kaz falling into step behind the others as usual. “It was good.” He said, “I’m not sure why Jesper decided to sing Karen’s part instead of just auditioning for himself, but you and Nina did well.”

“I think he just wanted opportunity to sing with us in front of everyone. We all know there’s no way it’s going to happen for real. I don’t think Nina even actually wants to play Regina.”

“Do you want to play Gretchen?” He asked quietly.

She pondered this for a bit, “I think so, there’s no one else I’d rather play.”

He nodded at this and they walked the rest of the way in a comfortable silence.

. . .

“So.” Jesper said, swivelling around to put his head in Wylan’s lap, they had finished lunch and it was clear he was restless with all the waiting around. “What did Nikolai Lantsov keep you back for?”

It was honestly impressive he’d managed to wait that long before asking. Inej thought to herself.

“He asked us which people he shouldn’t put together in the readings.” Kaz said.

“So we obviously told them you and Nina shouldn’t be together.” Wylan said, a cheeky grin sliding onto his face.

“What!” Jesper squawked, trying and failing to sit up out of Wylan’s lap and facing-planting the floor in his panic.

“You are so, so gullible.” Inej laughed.

“Damn you merchling.” Jesper grumbled, settling back into his place like before anyway.

“Did he actually ask that though?” Nina said, a frown on her face. “What did you say?”

“He did, we didn’t have anyone to say though.” Wylan admitted.

“People told him about Aleks though right? I swear David and Mal are both on tech if they didn’t-” Nina had a panicked look on her face, Inej didn’t know any details but Nina was close to Zoya and the other girls in a way she didn’t quite understand.

“Of course they did.” Kaz interrupted her. “Neither of them are completely clueless, and even if they hadn’t I would have even if I don’t have any reasoning I could give him.”

Nina visibly relaxed, Inej had to admit, she didn’t know what history they had but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that it was there. She would be surprised if Nikolai hadn’t automatically made sure none of them would be paired with him already.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT.” Jesper’s tone rang out, and all eyes were on him, “Check your emails bitches, please tell me you three got a call back as well.”

Three pairs of hands reached to their phones as quickly as possible. ‘12:55’ Inej noted, they had cut it fine. She looked into her emails.

Sent to Inej Ghafa and 15 others

Dear all,

On behalf of Nikolai Lantsov and Tolya Yul-Bataar I am delighted to let you know that we would like to welcome you back for call-backs. Please remember it begins at 2 PM, don’t be late!

Your president,

Tamar Kit-Bataar

End of email

She looked up, feeling the smile on her face, to see matching smiles on Nina and Jesper. Matthias, being a lot less expressive than them was slightly harder to read but it was still clear it was good news.

“This is why I’m in tech.” Wylan grumbled, a smile still evident on his face. “I’m guaranteed my place.”

“But you don’t get the euphoria of getting a part!” Nina smiled at him.

“Or the disappointment of being rejected.” Kaz chipped in.

Nina frowned at him. “Ok then Mr Optimist. We can relax for the next hour now.”

ZOYA

Zoya walked through the doors to the theatre for the 2nd time that day, Genya talking with David behind her. While she was happy her friend was in a healthy relationship, they were sickeningly cute at times and she had learnt very early on in their relationship it was better for her sanity to walk in front of them rather than behind.

She walked straight down to the second row of seats this time, predicting that David would most likely need to sit in the front row again. Sitting down behind Nikolai, Nadia and Genya struck up a conversation about Taylor Swift. This drew her attention as she listened to them talk about re-recordings, she liked Taylor Swift and enjoyed the music, but Genya was a die-hard fan compared to her.

To her surprise however, Nikolai turned around to join in. “Oh my God, ‘Slut!’ right? I’m so excited for it, insane that it’s only two weeks left now.”

The girls quickly turned to him and started talking about it but she felt stuck with shock. For some reason she’d never pegged Nikolai Lantsov as a Taylor Swift fan, it felt like something in the atmosphere had changed.

“Anyway!” Nikolai raised his voice, standing up at the same time. While she had been considering this information everyone else had come in and sat down in the theatre. “Thank you all for making it back here, how this session is going to work is I’m going to give all of you a scene each and group you up to practice for 15 minutes and then perform to us, this will repeat two or three times and then we will finish.”

“You’re staring.” Genya nudged her, she hadn’t even realised and shook herself.

“IF you aren’t reading for the character you want, this does not mean you won’t get the part you want, so please still give it your all. With that we’ll be separating you into groups to give you the parts, you’re script are colour coded so you know what parts you’re doing, no arguing please!”

He moved into the middle of the room and started shouting and pointing at corners. “Nina, Jesper and Alina; Zoya, Inej and Adrik; Genya, Matthias and Nadia; and finally Alexander, Leoni and Ruby. Please don’t worry if your name isn’t called! It doesn’t put you at a disadvantage in any way!”

There was a general chaos as people shuffled to find their groups and separate off into corners to practice, Zoya recognised someone who must have been Inej come towards her as one of the girls who was on set for Macbeth, she had seen her walking with Nina relatively often as well.

They started looking at the script, the scene was Janis and Damian meeting Cady for the first time, Zoya had been put down as Janis, Inej as Cady and Adrik as Damian, they soon got to work.

All too quickly Nikolai called the 15 minutes up and got them all to gather in the centre. “I want to reiterate to y’all that you can still read off your scripts, this isn’t testing your memorisation skills, just the acting ones. Can I get Zoya, Inej and Adrik up first?”

They took their spaces, trying their best to mimic a bathroom and started up the scene. She slipped into an easy smile and relaxed her body in a way she hoped to mimic Janis.

“Hey, you’ve been in there a very long time. You’re either doing drugs or very constipated from using drugs!” Adrik said in his best ‘fake-female’ voice.

“No I-” Inej said.

And with that Zoya started her lines and it was over quicker than it had started.

. . .

She ended up doing both of the other scenes, with different people each time, it was interesting. She was Regina for the scene with the four girls in her bedroom comparing their looks and then Karen for the Halloween scene after her solo. She didn’t like the Karen part, it felt like acting ‘too dumb’ and was oddly vulnerable for her.

“Thank you so much for coming, everyone. Parts will be up on Monday, so I hope you have a lovely Sunday and don’t need to come anywhere near my house tomorrow, I’m looking at you Genya and Nadia, it will be a warzone. Tolya you already signed up for this and Tamar and David, it’s too late for you. Goodbye!”

With that everyone slowly filed out of the theatre, she walked back with Genya and Alina proud of her performance that day.

NIKOLAI

(SUNDAY)

“I. Can’t. Do. This.” Nikolai said, each sentence punctuated with a slam of his head against the kitchen table, until Tolya had the better sense to place a hand under his head.

“Stop being so dramatic Nikolai.” Tamar said, coming in and pouring herself a bowl of cereal. “Just cast my girlfriend as every role ever.”

That made him laugh, “You don’t understand though, Harshaw isn’t a good actor, but if I don’t give him a role with at least one line he’ll go to tech and that will end up with at least one thing on fire!”

“Give Harshaw a speaking role.” David said as he walked in. “He always tries to help with lights, and I don’t want to deal with it this year.”

“See what I’m talking about!” Nikolai said, putting his head back down onto Tolya’s hand. “He literally sang ‘World Burn’ as his audition song! I don’t think he even wanted a part!”

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Zoya was feeling a lot more refreshed coming downstairs at 8 AM instead of 6 on Saturday, considering she’d slept until 9:30 on Sunday (as long as her body allowed her to sleep), the 7:30 wake up on Monday was easier than it had been in a while. Alina, it seemed hadn’t managed to avoid Genya this time.

“You alright there?” Zoya said coming down the stairs.

“mmmhhmmm” Alina groaned, head on the table.

Genya, nearly in tears was pacing around behind her. “Zoya, I’m not going to get a part, I’m not even getting ensemble, and god damn Nikolai Lantsov is going to kill me off by making me wait another 4 hours.”

“Genya if you don’t get a part, none of us will, then Nikolai Lantsov will have no one to direct and the musical either won’t go ahead, or he’ll have to play all the parts himself and we can laugh at him.”

That got a smile out of her at least and Zoya considered her work done as she moved to the coffee machine, making a black americano for herself and an iced latte for Alina, the barista training from her high school job at a café came in handy in the morning. Genya would probably benefit more without today.

Too soon it was time for them to start walking to lectures, they dropped Alina off first at education, she joined some of her friends waiting outside, promising to meet them outside the theatre, where the cast list would be put up.

Her and Genya started towards the biomed building. “How’s David?” She asked, usually the easiest way to distract Genya.

“He’s good, we didn’t get to talk much yesterday, he was avoiding Nikolai freaking out over trying to cast people. I didn’t realise Nikolai was doing law too by the way, you never mentioned it.”

“There was never a reason to.” Zoya replied. It was mostly true, they didn’t interact much in class, the most being pretty consistently fighting for top of the class, of which would have been easy this semester had she not auditioned for the musical he was directing. She liked the competition though, there was no way she would have had the marks she did without it.

Plus she didn’t mind crushing him in the occasional test, he had a big ego and could do with taking down a few pegs.

“I don’t know, I feel like I’ve mentioned him enough when talking about David that you would normally mention you knew him.”

“I don’t really know him, Gen. We fight for top of the class pretty often, but apart from that he’s kind of withdrawn thinking he’s better than everyone else or something. Not someone I would talk to if I had the option.”

“Hmm” Genya said, with the air that she didn’t quite believe her. “I don’t think you’d talk to anyone if you had the option Zoya.”

She was inclined to agree with her, but for good reason. Most people in her class were living off their parents’ money and trying to follow in their footsteps. She felt that if they knew her background she would be looked down on or pitied, much better to be disliked for reasons within her control.

They arrived at the biomed building and she watched Genya walk in, she knew it was silly to worry for her friend, especially at 9 in the morning, but they had history and it was hard not to be protective.

The Law building wasn’t too far and in a few minutes she was walking through the doors. While going to her spot near the front she saw Nikolai slumped in a seat, his head on the desk, how much had he slept over the weekend?

She got to her seat and took out her laptop as the lecturer started talking.

. . .

“One last thing before you all go, in the next coming weeks I will be assigning a group project. You will get assigned pairs and yes,” She looked almost pointedly at Zoya. “you have to work with them, no one can work on their own.”

She suppressed a groan, best case scenario she got someone who wouldn’t do any of the project, at least she’d have creative control; worst case, she’d get one of those people that thought they were always right and took all of the credit.

There was nothing she could do for now though, so she packed up her laptop and started to head up the stairs to the exit.

As she was walking up a blond head poked out at her among everyone moving towards the exit, Nikolai still had his head on the table, apparently sleeping as their lecturer looked over to him. Taking pity on him she walked over and shook his shoulder, slightly rougher than she intended but she figured she was doing a net good deed overall so it cancelled out.

“5 more minutes Tolya, I’ll be down in a second.” He muttered, attempting to slap her hand away.

“Not Tolya, Lantsov. You’re in class.”

“Shit.” His head shot up, “Sorry Nazyalensky.”

She gave out a ruthful smile as he grabbed his bag and they started walking out. “Long night?”

“Ugh you could say that.” He groaned, tilting his head up to the sky. “I don’t know why I decided to direct in the first place, no offense of course.” He grinned in her direction. “I have had a collective 4 hours of sleep in the past 2 nights, forgive me if my mouth runs away with me.”

“Are you saying the thought of me keeps you up at night Lantsov?” She joked.

“Nazyalensky, you are the source of at least half of my sleepless nights.” He grinned, getting into the swing of things. “However, no not this time. I can’t say much until the cast list is put up, but Saturday night was spent trying to figure out how to stop Harshaw from setting everything on fire.”

There was clearly a story behind that, of which she was about to inquire into when a phone ringtone pierced through the air.

“Shit sorry Nazyalensky one sec.” He picked up the call. “Hey Tamar, what’s up?” His smile slowly curved downwards as Tamar kept talking. “Fuck, yeah I’m on my way, my bad, I slept through my first lecture and it slipped my mind.”

He turned to Zoya a sheepish smile on his face. “I apparently arranged a meeting with the rest of Tech Crew to start 10 minutes ago, I’ll see you at 12 yeah?”

She nodded and he ran off. The whole interaction had confused her a little, she was used to Nikolai Lantsov being a bit above it all, he had been the opposite just then, she supposed it was the sleep deprivation talking. She shook it off and headed over to the library.

. . .

Soon enough it was 11:55, checking her phone she had at least a dozen missed calls from Genya, and possibly double that amount of texts. It was as if she was an hour late, she texted a quick ‘coming’ then packed up her stuff and started to walk towards the theatre.

Almost as soon as she walked out the door from the library, Genya was calling again.

“Get your ass over here Nazyalensky, I’m freaking out.”

“I’m on my way Genya, 5 minutes tops.”

”That’s too long bitch, I have just seen Nikolai come round the corner.” Yet another fun fact about Genya when she was stressed, Zoya got called a bitch. A lot.

Just as she was rounding the corner to the theatre a scream came out of her phone, she quickly hung up, not wanting to hear that for any longer than she had to. As she looked up again, she saw Nikolai pushing his way out of the crowd that had gathered, catching her eye.

“Good luck getting in there to see, I’m going home to bed now, if anyone asks I will be MIA for the next 24 hours.” He groaned as he walked past her.

She barely had time to register that what he said hinted that she had actually got the part when Genya collided with her. “You did it Zoya, you did it!!!”

“What?”

“Regina!” She shouted in Zoya’s face. “You got Regina!!”

Zoya had just enough time to silently celebrate before she had to ask. “And you? Alina?” Even in her happiness her friends came first.

“Alina got Cady, obviously, as if that was ever a contest.” Zoya’s sigh of relief was obvious, while she’d had no doubt in her friend, an unhappy Alina was an unhappy everyone else.

“And you?”

Genya’s eyes sparkled. “Karen! And before you ask, yes I’m really happy about it, I’m not sure I could’ve gone round badmouthing you for 4 months.”

“You would’ve been fine.” Zoya nudged her. “You did that enough in Freshman and Sophomore year.”

“You deserved it.” Genya laughed and shoved her back, Zoya was inclined to agree. “Anyway we did it! No need to worry about anything now.”

INEJ

Inej was stood at the side of the crowd with Kaz, Wylan and Matthias. She was currently pretending that she didn’t know Wylan and Kaz knew the cast list. She already knew they wouldn’t tell her, the minute they got back from the meeting, Jesper and Nina had both tried their respective ways to get them to talk, none of which had worked. Besides, she’d only be waiting for a few more minutes.

With that Nikolai Lantsov walked past them, an A4 sheet of paper clutched to his chest, starting to muscle his way through the crowd.

Soon enough a collective scream rang out from the crowd and her phone dinged with a message as Nina and Jesper came running out, bright smiles on their faces. Nina went to Matthias and started excitedly talking to him while Jesper came to her, putting his hand on her shoulder first, then when she nodded, picking her up and swinging her around.

Her appreciation for Jesper was almost unmatched, he always checked she was ok with his touch before picking her up after the first time he had tried to.

“Check the message! Check the message!” He excitedly repeated to her as she took out her phone with shaking hands.

🗡️ the crows 🗡️

oct 16th 12:01pm

Nina <3: CAST LIST BITCHES

Nina <3:

CADY HERON                          ALINA STARKOV
REGINA GEORGE                      ZOYA NAZYALENSKY
GRETCHEN WEINERS                INEJ GHAFA
KAREN SMITH                          GENYA SAFIN
JANIS SARKISAN                       NINA ZENIK
DAMIAN HUBBARD                   JESPER FAHEY
AARON SAMUELS                     ALEXANDER MOROZOVA
MR DUVALL                             MATTHIAS HELVAR
GLENN C/FRENCH TEACHER     FEDYOR
JASON W                                  HARSHAW
COACH CARR/KEVIN G             IVAN
SONJA A/CAITLYN C                MARIE
MS NORBURY/MRS GEORGE     NADIA ZHABIN
MR HERON/SHANE O               ADRIK ZHABIN
MRS HERON/DAWN S               LEONI HILLI

end of texts

Inej looked up with a wide grin on her face at Jesper who was waiting to see her reaction. “I got Gretchen?”

“Yes you did!!”

“And you got Damian?”

“Yes!”

She grabbed on to Jesper again as Nina came around the other side and held on tight too. “We did it bitches!!” Nina screamed.

“Lets go out for a celebration meal.” Said Wylan, seeming weirdly calm until she remembered he’d had this information for an hour and a half, and it also didn’t matter to him as much.

“Good idea.” Matthias agreed, “We need a bit of time to relax after the stressful weekend some of us have had.”

Matthias had been noticeably calm over the weekend and it had occurred to Inej that he obviously didn’t care as much of the rest of them and was really only doing this to keep Nina happy. He much preferred football. He at least seemed happy that he’d gotten a part.

They left the others congratulating or commiserating with each other and headed off to the crow club. The restaurant, not a casino as the name suggested, that their group chat name had been founded from back in Freshman year, when Matthias and Wylan hadn’t known them yet.

They only had to walk 5 minutes from campus before they were there, sliding into the booth they had chosen the first time the 4 of them had gone, Nina and Jesper both dragging out their respective roommates in an attempt to make new friends. In their defence it had worked.

The booth was a lot harder for them to squeeze into with the 6 of them so they settled on Nina and Matthias on one side, Wylan, Jesper and Inej squished into the other and Kaz dragged a chair over to sit at the head of the table, which suited him better anyway.

They ordered food and set to chatting about their respective weeks, as if they didn’t all live together normally. This was Inej’s favourite time, they didn’t do it too often, being broke college students and all. But there was something familial about going out to eat together, rather than just eating their respective meals at slightly different times in the kitchen of their shared house.

Their food had all arrived when a collective ping sounded from their phones, with the exception of Kaz who always had his on silent. A collection of heads turned down to start reading until Wylan subtly shoved Jesper and he started to read the email out loud.

Sent to you + 26 others

Dear Actors and Cast,

First of all, I would like to congratulate all the actors here on getting your roles. You can trust me when I say it was not an easy decision, I have never seen someone bang their head against the table as many times as I saw Nikolai do it this weekend. If I wasn’t already 95% sure he has brain damage from generally being an insane child, I would be 100% sure he has it now.

Ignoring that! We have our annual cast-tech meal tomorrow, this is to encourage both halves of our production to become friends, this is a family, not a Romeo and Juliet situation. Therefore, your attendance is required at this event, if you have a valid reason as to why you can’t come please email me as soon as possible.

The meal is at Little Palace and will be completely paid for, we are also college kids and know how much everyone likes free food! However I would like to preface that there is a $25 price limit per person, if you wish to exceed this you have to pay the difference yourself. We are not made of money!

For those that can’t get there through public transport or their own cars we have Nikolai and I (Tamar) driving, we can each fit 4 other people in our car and this will be sorted on a first-come first-served basis, so email quickly if you need a ride!

Thank you all and congratulations again.

Your President,

Tamar Kit-Bataar

End of email

Inej looked up to see Wylan and Kaz already looking at each other with no surprise on their faces. “Wow couldn’t have predicted that.” Wylan said dryly.

“No not as if they haven’t been doing that for literal years like clockwork.” Kaz replied.

“How do you get to Little Palace?” Inej asked, the production meal sounded familiar, she remembered most of them going off to one last year, her and Matthias had had a movie marathon together, she had expanded his education massively that night.

“It’s not too bad if you can drive.” Wylan piped up. “Bit of a nightmare by public transport though, and like 5 miles walk.”

“I can drive 5 of us.” Matthias replied. “Someone might have to take Lantsov up on his offer though.”

“I can see what Zoya and Genya are doing.” Nina said. “No big deal.”

“Thank Ghezen you volunteered.” Jesper said. “I was not about to volunteer to be in that car.”

Nina scowled at Jesper’s opinion of Zoya, but even she couldn’t argue with that, Zoya could be scary if you were someone like Jesper.

With that conversation over they finished their meal and continued chatting for a while. Inej pretended not to notice Wylan grab Jesper’s hand under the table.

NINA

✨hot girls who hit people ✨

oct 16 9:10 pm

Me: heyyyyy

Zoya (scary): What do you want Zenik

Me: how do you know i want something???

Genya (nice): You only say hey like that when you want something Neens

Me: i dont!!!

Me: ANYWAY

Me: how are you guys getting to little palace

Zoya: Car.

Me: whose carrrr

Genya: It’ll be Nikolai or Tamar’s, I was just about to email her to ask

Me: could you add me onto that as well pleaseee

Me: what about alina

Genya: Sure <3

Me: ty babes

Zoya: Alina is getting a lift with Mal when he goes to soccer, and no one wants to be in the same car as those two.

Zoya: Why aren’t you going with your boyfriend? Does he not have a car?

Me: my boyfriends name is matthias even though i know you haven’t forgotten

Me: and hes taking the rest of my friends so i volunteered to see what you were doing

Zoya: Oh joy.

Me: hey!!!

Genya: Tamar’s just replied, we’re going in Nikolai’s car with David.

Me: ty Gen, love uuuu

Genya: Love you too Nina, see you tomorrow!

Me: love u too zo

Zoya: Thanks.

11:27 pm

Zoya: <3

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Zoya left the house on her own to walk to the pick up point. Genya was over at David’s, having gone there once they’d finished lectures for the day, the normal Tuesday schedule. Alina was watching Mal play soccer, after which he had promised to drop her off at the restaurant.

She walked through her favourite place on campus, it was a wooden arch with wisteria growing over the top. It being October meant that there was no flowers overhead, but it was still green providing some shade. This had been her favourite place to read and study during Freshman year when she hadn’t had any friends and she just needed a place that reminded her of Lilyana’s house.

Rounding the corner she saw that Nadia, Marie and Adrik were already there waiting, Tamar must have agreed to take them in her car. Nadia and Adrik were a funny pair, they were siblings but Zoya had never understood how Adrik was so pessimistic and Nadia so optimistic. Marie and Nadia had been best friends as long as Zoya had known them, she had heard Nadia mention once that they were roommates in Freshman year and had hit it off immediately, almost the opposite of her and Genya.

She waved to them in greeting and walked over quickly. She was still getting used to the whole ‘being friends now’ thing, after two years of her being a bit of a stuck up prick, it had taken the last year for her to get used to people wanting to be nice to her. She still wasn’t quite there yet.

“Hey Zoya!” She turned around to see Nina running towards her, a smile fighting its way onto her face. “Congratulations by the way,” She said when she got closer. “I never said when the cast list came out.”

“You too, good luck pretending to hate me.” She said, she was insanely proud of Nina for managing to get such a big role as a Junior, but it would just inflate her ego to know that.

“Eh, shouldn’t be too hard. I secretly hate you anyway you know that?” Nina grinned cheekily.

Zoya tried to ignore the stab of hurt as she smiled back.

After a bit more idle chatting she saw two cars driving towards them, she assumed that the car in front was Nikolai’s it looked like it was worth more than a years rent. It was hard to not let the resentment get to her with that, but she tried to push it down.

The two cars pulled up beside them; Nikolai, David and Genya getting out the first one, Tamar and Tolya getting out the second. “I offer to do a nice thing and I end up chauffeuring these two around! Unbelievable.”

Genya came around to punch him. “Shut up Lantsov, this is pay back for all the times you had a chauffeur as a child.”

He put his hands up in defence, a grin on his face. “You going to pay me for it then Safin? Unpaid labour I hear!”

Genya rolled her eyes and came over to hug Zoya as a hello. “You won’t believe the amount of complaining we had to put up with on the way over.”

“Oh I think I can.”

“Hey!” Nikolai said, “I’ve never complained to you.”

“Eh, you give off the vibes.”

Nikolai gave a look of mock disbelief then turned to group that had gathered there. “Ok guys, so we’ve arranged for Nadia, Tolya, Marie and Adrik to travel in Tamar’s car and Zoya, Genya, David and Nina to travel in mine but swap between them if you want to we don’t care all that much. Lets get going though, I probably need to be there before anyone else just to get the room sorted out.”

And with that they moved towards their respective cars. Zoya realised all too late that David and Genya had gone to the seats they were in on the way there and Nina was already halfway round to the other side of the car. Meaning she was sat up the front with Nikolai.

This wasn’t that bad, but she had stupidly assumed that David would sit up front and she hadn’t prepared for this situation. Realising she had been standing there too long, she forced herself to walk over to the passenger door and stepped into the car.

“Okay,” Nikolai started when she’d shut the doors. “Zoya, you’re shotgun which means you’ve got the aux, I have the power to skip any song I choose to though got it?” He passed her the lead. “Good, lets get going then.”

Zoya looked through her Spotify, she had no idea what Nikolai’s music taste was, aside from the fact he liked Taylor Swift enough to willingly talk about her to Genya and Nadia. She decided to play one of her favourite playlists by Genya, with the safety of blaming her if he hated all the songs on it.

As it turned out she didn’t have to worry, he sang along to most songs and she only needed to talk once within the entire 20 minute drive when he’d asked her to pull up directions to try and work out a diversion through some road works.

They soon got there, about 10 minutes before the scheduled meet up time, as was Nikolai’s plan, he could’ve got away with turning up 10 minutes late, she thought, college students weren’t exactly known for being on time.

He went up to speak to one of the waitresses and she led them into a back room, separate from the rest of the restaurant, giving them the ability to pretty much be as loud as they wanted without disturbing any other guests. She had to commend him for the thought.

“Okay y’all settle down in here and I’ll wait outside to heard everyone in here. Tamar, would you mind getting everyone’s numbers and starting a WhatsApp group chat? I’m sure Nina can give you most of the Junior’s numbers and you can catch everyone else as they come in. Take some time to settle in guys, I’ll be back in about 20 minutes!”

Nikolai put his bag down arbitrarily on a seat in the middle of the long table as the rest of them found seats. Nina sat closer to the door, slightly further away from them, no doubt anticipating Brekker probably wouldn’t want a long walk once he’d got there. Tamar, Nadia and Tolya took one side of Nikolai’s allocated seat while Genya and David went around the other side of the table to sit opposite of them. Adrik and Marie went a little further down the table probably to make space for their other friends that would be arriving soon. She took the seat on the other side of Nikolai, leaving a seat open between her and Adrik, she couldn’t blame him for being wary of her, she hadn’t exactly been nice to Nadia the first few years they knew each other.

As Tamar went around the table collecting phone numbers, spending a lot of time at Nina, no doubt having to get 6 numbers from her, more people started to fill in. Leoni and Ruby, who both lived near arrived first, then Nina’s friends came in, making lots of noise as usual. It was nice to see her so happy though.

Soon she was dragged into a conversation as Genya, Nadia and Tamar starting debating the best Halloween movies.

“It is obviously Fear street part one!” Nadia said, looking over to Tamar. “I mean sorry babe but Maya Hawke.”

“She’s literally only in it for the first 5 minutes! You can base your favourite movies off of if Maya Hawke’s in them or not!”

“I can and I will.”

Zoya was just about to chime in with her support of Nadia’s statement when she felt someone sit down next to her and she realised that most people were here by now. A chill washed down her spine, the only two places she could see free were across from her, obviously being saved for Ivan and Fedyor, which meant the person sat next to her was-

“Zoya” Alexander said in greeting.

She froze, managing a nod in return, trying to not let him see how much he still affected her.

He let out a small scoff, as if he couldn’t believe her reaction. That was too much for her and she stood up and left the room, how dare he act as if he deserved anything more from her than indifference? After everything he put her through in those first two years, and a year later he was acting as if they should be best friends? Her feet led her into the bathroom where she splashed cold water onto her face in an effort to calm herself down. Thank the saints for waterproof mascara.

Once she had got her breathing under control she left the bathroom and headed back to everyone else, 5 minutes was short enough that hopefully people didn’t worry. She tried not to think about having to sit next to him for the next 2+ hours, that would just send her spiralling again which was no use to anyone. Better to just try ignore that he was there all together.

She walked through the doors to see that Ivan and Fedyor had gotten there in the time she had been gone, and sat there chatting happily to Marie and Ruby. Steeling herself to face him she walked back behind them to her seat to find Nikolai Lantsov sat in it.

She opened her mouth to say something but he beat her to it. “Nazyalensky, I specifically remember putting my bag down on this chair because I was going to sit in it. Honestly Tolya isn’t that scary you know, you can sit next him.”

She was about to tell him he’d put his bag on the seat next to Tolya when she realised what he was doing. “Sorry Lantsov, must’ve got confused.” She sat between him and Tolya, instantly a weight lifted itself off her chest and she caught Genya’s eye and smiled, signalling she was okay. Genya visibly relaxed and went back to her conversation with David.

Once she had sat down Nikolai stood up, “Right, thank you all for coming. This is an opportunity to meet everyone you don’t know so please mingle and talk to everyone. We have the room booked until 11 and can play whatever music we want once we’ve finished eating, I’m going to order at the bar so to make it easier, text your food and drink order to the WhatsApp group chat Tamar has set up. No alcohol this time please! It’ll be too confusing with the waiting staff having to ID people. Thank you again!”

He sat back down and turned to her. “Saints, this is hard work, want a menu Nazyalensky?”

It was as if he didn’t know what he’d just done for her by taking her seat. She supposed he didn’t, there were very few that knew and they’d all agreed to not tell anyone, there was no reason for him to have been told.

“Thanks.” She said, taking the stack of menus off of him and passing them to Tolya. Looking through the list of food and drink options she quickly decided on something she would eat and took out her phone to see Tamar had added her to the group chat.

Mean Girls The Musical

oct 17 7pm

Nina: coke and a burger with fries please!

Me: Sparkling water and a margherita pizza, thanks.

end of chat

“Sparkling water?” Nikolai turned to look at her incredulously. “That is literally the worst drink ever Nazyalensky.”

Genya leaned over towards them. “Worse still, she’s liked it since she was a kid Nikolai, psychopath behaviour.”

Nikolai nodded in agreement.

“It’s nice!” She protested, leaving out the fact that she’d only started drinking it because her favourite character from a book had been. “Plus its actually good for you, and not full of sugar.”

“Get diet coke then??” Nikolai said, she had to admit he had a point. “Whatever you say Nazyalensky, personally I’m getting full fat coke and clogging my arteries.”

Zoya faked mock outrage. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He chuckled and looked down at his phone. “21 orders, I think that’s everyone, right I’ll be off then. Don’t miss me too much everyone!”

She rolled her eyes and turned purposefully to talk to Tolya and Tamar, keeping her back to Alexander.

“So Tamar, you’re ASM? That sounds cool, I’ve only ever done some DSM stuff before.”

“Yeah.” Tamar looked past Tolya to talk to her. “I’ve done a bit of both but ASM has always been more interesting to me, running around doing things rather than talking for the entire show.”

That sounded more than fair to Zoya, she wouldn’t have been able to do it, her temper far too short, but Tamar seemed like she’d be great at it.

She felt someone sit down behind where she’d turned her back when Nikolai left and tensed up, half expecting it to be Alexander again.

“Just me Nazyalensky.” Nikolai muttered in her ear and she relaxed, turning slightly more towards him so that she was facing David opposite her again. Alina and him were discussing something engineering related, Alina looked like she was barely keeping up.

“Sorry David, can you explain that one more time to me? Possibly in slightly more common terms?” Alina asked, the look of confusion on her face becoming all the more obvious. Zoya smiled to herself, trust Alina to get into a conversation where she was so over her head and still try to understand everything that was being said.

“Ok so, you have a dam and on one side the water is a lot higher than the other. The electricity is generated by converting the potential energy to kinetic energy via a turbine.”

“Now that’s where you’ve lost me.” Alina interrupted. “It’s been too long since I finished high school David.”

“Potential energy is the energy something has from how high up it is.” Nikolai jumped in. “So if you’re standing on a table you’ll have more potential energy than if you’re on the floor because of gravity.”

Alina started nodding along slowly. “Kinetic energy?”

“How fast something’s going. If you’re in a car going 30 miles per hour you have more energy that walking, that’s why the crashes are worse.”

“Okay I think I get it, that’s really cool David, I’m glad you’ve found something you’re passionate about!” She turned to Nikolai. “You still remember high school science?”

“I like engineering.” He said somewhat sheepishly. “David gives me his textbooks when he doesn’t need them anymore.”

Zoya turned to him incredulously. “You do all that law work and read engineering books for fun? How am I still fighting you for top of the class?” That resentment started creeping back up, she studied her ass off and he was doing almost two degrees worth of work?

“I read them rather than reading fiction, and in fairness I’m still on David’s freshman year textbooks, it isn’t loads of extra content.” He looked at her with a crooked grin. “Don’t worry Nazyalensky, I still have to work my ass off to even come close to beating you.”

And with that the food and drinks came out. Zoya opted for watching her friends chat, feeling comfortable in the silence. Genya trying to get David to try some calamari, him vehemently refusing; Nina and Jesper chucking peas at each other across the table, the absolute children; Alina and Nikolai talking about her recent teaching placement. It was comfortable and aside from someone in the room casting a shadow over the atmosphere she was genuinely having a nice time.

“Not hungry?” Nikolai nudged her.

She looked down and realised she’d been sat there picking apart the crust from her first slice of pizza for the best part of 5 minutes, and Genya was looking was looking at her worriedly. “Yeah, sorry, just thinking.”

“No need to be sorry, I was just worried for your pizza crust, that a horrible form of torture you’ve got going there Nazyalensky.”

She smiled and forced herself to pick up another slice and start eating. “You happy now Lantsov? Now I’m torturing the pizza the regular way?”

“Very.” He said, turning back to start a conversation with Genya and David.

When the staff came through to pick up plates she’d managed to get through half of the pizza, she avoided Genya’s glare by asking if she could take the rest to go.

“Alright you noisy lot!” Nikolai shouted over the chatter that had slowly grown over the evening. “I might regret this later, and the theatre social budget certainly will but if you want desert I’m passing the menus back around, text the group chat like before please!”

He sat back down in his seat and passed Zoya all the menus bar 1, which she promptly handed over to Tolya. “God it’s giving me an insight into what having kids would be like. I am not here for it.”

“I pity the poor woman who’s giving birth to over 20 children.” She retorted.

“I feel as if my previous statement was quite clear that I did not want this amount of children Nazyalensky. Quit twisting my words.” He grinned at her.

“Mmm I know what I heard.” She said.

“Whatever.” He sighed and stood up again. “Has everyone who wants desert ordered? You have 30 seconds to message otherwise you aren’t getting anything!”

There was a mad scramble as Jesper and Wylan started wrestling over a phone, for what reason Zoya didn’t know, it was probably desert related.

Nikolai moved off to go and order, Genya reached her hand to meet Zoya’s across the table, checking in with her silently, she squeezed back, Genya didn’t need to be worrying about her, she should be spending the night having fun.

“So Zo, how’s Law going at the moment?” Genya asked, roping her into the conversation.

“Kinda shitty to be honest, we’ve got a pair project in a few weeks, assigned partners. I’m just hoping I don’t get put with someone like Kirigan.”

“That, is understandable.” Nikolai said as he walked back over to his seat. “Group project? I don’t remember Baghra mentioning a group project at any point.”

“It was yesterday? Oh shit you slept through that one right?”

“You slept through your lecture Nikolai?” Tamar joined in.

“In my defence Tamar I had had 4 hours of sleep the night before and literally none the night before that. You really can’t blame me.”

Tamar seemed ok with that answer, although why she was okay with Nikolai getting so little sleep Zoya wasn’t sure. She guessed she’d had to go through a similar torture.

Soon enough the deserts came out, Zoya hadn’t ordered one herself so she settled for talking to Tolya about his latest assigned reading. The topic bored the hell out of Zoya but it was better than watching everyone eat deserts.

The time passed quickly and soon enough the plates were cleared away and a link to a shared playlist had been put on the group chat as music started to filter in through the speakers, a song Zoya didn’t really know. Some others seemed to though, soon enough Leoni and Ruby got up to start dancing, Nina and Jesper quickly followed.

Then a Taylor swift song came on, possibly 'I wish you would'? She was pretty sure she had it right, instantly Genya, Nikolai and Nadia got out of their seats and moved to the floor. She found that she couldn’t take her eyes off the three of them, a mask she hadn’t really realised had been there slipped off of Nikolai and he looked so much younger. Genya caught her eye and winked, then tipped her head back laughing when Zoya sent back a look of confusion.

“Come dance with us Nazyalensky!” Nikolai shouted across to her.

“You’ll have to get me very drunk for that one Lantsov!” She yelled back over the music.

“Damn my own rules about being sober! Next time!” He grinned at her and she found herself smiling back.

. . .

The evening was coming to a close and they left in the same cars as they came in, she found that she didn’t mind sitting in the front as much on the way back. The music was quieter and once they’d dropped Nina off, her and Nikolai actually had a nice conversation, Genya and David too wrapped up in each other to pay attention.

All too quickly they stopped outside her house, her and Genya getting out and David moving to the front seat. “See you Thursday for the read through Nazyalensky! I would say the same to you Genya but I’m sure you’ll be over tomorrow to see this guy.” He nudged David. “So see y’all soon, thank you for coming this evening!”

They drove off and Zoya and Genya started walking up the stairs to their house. As they went through the door Zoya realised she’d never properly thanked Nikolai for switching seats with her.

They got to the kitchen island, Alina already home and waiting for them, not having had to go via Nina’s house. She filled up a glass of water to take up to bed with her, they had no classes on Wednesdays to make space for sport if you played it which meant Zoya would have to be up even earlier than normal to get to her climbing training, something she had been severely missing this week.

“Night bitches.” She mumbled as she left to go up the stairs.

“Night!”

“Good night!”

Alina and Genya had hockey practice at 1pm the lucky bitches, why couldn’t she have picked a sport to do that didn’t start at 8am?

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Zoya woke up sore, which was slightly embarrassing considering she’d been climbing regularly since she first came to uni. It wasn’t often anymore she hurt the day after she’d gone to a training, but she had pushed herself far yesterday in an effort to bring herself up to speed in time to hopefully qualify for a competition.

She got out of bed and went to her wardrobe, the script read through was at 4 today and she didn’t know whether she should attempt to go on theme with her character, as was customary for these things, or stick to her usual clothes, which were safe. She swallowed her pride and yelled down the stairs. “Genya!”

“Coming!” Her best friend’s voice came up from the kitchen. She waited a few minutes and then heard the tale-tell sound of Genya coming up the stairs. “Wardrobe problems?”

Zoya hated that she could just tell like that, however, this was really the only reason she ever called Genya upstairs in the morning. “Yes. On theme or usual?”

Genya, of course, was on theme with a tie-up pink cardigan, pink denim skirt and white t-shirt. She could probably provide the wardrobe for the entire cast, Zoya speculated. Genya turned around from where she was looking in Zoya’s wardrobe, an incredulous look on her face. “Are you seriously asking me that question? It’s read through day, you have to be on theme.”

“That’s what I thought.” Zoya muttered, she went to her bed and started putting any work she needed for the day into her backpack, knowing better than to interrupt Genya when she was sorting out an outfit. In another life she would have been a fashion major if she’d had the chance.

After about 10 minutes Zoya was reminded why Genya woke up so much earlier than her, if this carried on, they were both going to be late. “Okay,” Genya said, as if reading her thoughts, “I’ve got it.”

She handed over some cream trousers, a matching suit jacket and a light pink long sleeve top. Zoya appreciated the thought to the professional attire, it was hard enough being one of the only women in her class, she didn’t need anyone thinking worse of her because she chose to wear pink.

Quickly getting changed, she came downstairs, grabbed a protein bar and walked out the door with Genya, just in time.

“How was your hockey match yesterday?” She asked as they started walking towards campus.

“It was good! We won, Alina did really well in wing as well.” Genya said, a smile coming up on her face as she talked about one of her passions.

“And you in defence?” Zoya always had to prod Genya to start talking about herself.

“Good I think, it was usual you know? The other team had kind of shitty defence so I just needed to hold my own and let attack do their job.”

What Zoya got from that was Genya did very well. “Nice.”

“And you? with your climbing competition coming up?”

“It’s still a bit away Gen, they haven’t even held qualifiers for the team yet.”

“Okay okay, you’ll do amazingly anyway, you know that.”

“I do.”

Genya smiled at her and turned to walk into her building, “See you later Zoya.”

Zoya stood to watch her walk into the building and then carried on over to the law building, she had two lectures to get through before lunch and another one that ran until 3:45 before the cast reading was scheduled to start. Groaning to herself, she walked over to the lecture hall.

INEJ

“Okay ladies! That is everything for today.” Inej’s ballet teacher called out to the class.

Inej went over to the corner where everyone kept their things casually chatting to her friends there. Dance was an elective but one of the main reasons she came to Ravka university in the first place, the ballet program was one of the best in the country.

She said goodbye and made her way out of the hall, it was the prettiest building on campus, in her opinion, a tall white building reminiscent of Greek architecture. It had vines crawling up a trellis on one side of the building which was fixed securely enough that she could climb up there with relative ease, not that she’d tried (she had).

“Good lesson?” Wylan asked as she stepped out, he didn’t have any lectures on Thursday mornings, it was meant to be dedicated for individual practice, but he was always able to meet her a bit earlier, it was one of her favourite points of the week, they would talk for an hour until everyone else got out and they got caught up in the general chaos.

“Yeah it was good, nice to be able to stretch out for a bit.”

“That’s always nice, want to go sit under Big Tree?” Big Tree was, funnily enough, a big tree in the middle of a field with a very uncreative name.

They walked over in a comfortable silence, feeling the autumn sun on her face she felt calm for the first time in a while. Life at college was hectic at best and she had been having a lot of doubts about why she’d auditioned for the musical when she had such little time to socialise anyway. But the sun made her feel like everything was going to work out. Maybe she should spend more time outside.

The tree came into view and she took off running towards it, Wylan following behind laughing at her. This was the way to live she decided, carefree and happy.

“Inej! Slow down, I don’t know what you put in your breakfast but fuck why are you so fast!” She glanced behind her to see Wylan about 30 feet behind her and falling back.

She laughed as she reached the tree and scrambled up to the first branch, then the second and third. By the time Wylan had reached the foot of the tree she was up in the top branches looking down at him squinting up to see her.

“You always do this to meeee.” He complained. “I can’t even get up to the first branch dude.”

She laughed and climbed back down to the ground. “I can give you a leg up if you want?”

“Yeah sure, what the hell.” She knelt down and he stood on her knee to give himself a boost up, to be fair, it was quite a low hanging branch, if he had any sort of upper body strength it would have been easy. She wasn’t about to tell him that though.

He got himself securely sat on the branch and she pulled herself up. “You want to go any higher?” She asked him, although she was fairly sure she knew the answer.

“Absolutely no way, I am perfectly fine here thank you.” He said, gripping the trunk of the tree like his life depended on it. Despite the fact he was all of 6 feet off the ground.

She just laughed and turned to climb up a few more branches, remaining close enough they could still have a conversation.

. . .

That is where the other 4 found them one at a time, but each taking time to marvel at the fact Inej had actually got Wylan up into the tree.

Jesper came along last, “Our little merchling up a tree? You never cease to amaze me Inej.” He said with a massive grin on his face.

Inej grinned back, “It was all him Jes.”

“Got up all by himself?” Jesper’s face was the picture of astonishment.

“I’m right here you know?” Wylan grumbled. “And no Inej helped me up.”

Jesper looked a little less like he was enjoying taking the piss and a bit more pitying. “You want help down?”

Wylan had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Yes please. I think the hour up here has been plenty of time.”

Inej was sure that Wylan had been waiting for Jesper to ask him that, he may have been scared of heights but she knew he wasn’t that scared. Jesper helped Wylan down, she was sure she could see the faintest blush across his cheeks as she smirked to herself. Something was definitely happening between those two.

“So.” Nina started. “Excited for the read through this afternoon?”

Inej came down a little further to the branch Wylan had been sat on and started to eat her lunch as she listened.

“Oh. My. God. So excited.” Wylan teased, mock excitement on his face.

Nina’s smile dropped, obviously not amused by his antics. “Haha, that question wasn’t for you Wylan obviously.”

“I am.” Inej said dropping down behind Jesper.

“Inej! Stop that!” Jesper half-screamed as she giggled. “You get me every time!” She knew she did, Jesper’s reaction was the best out of everyone, so she tried to make him jump whenever she could.

“How long does the read through last though?” She asked, directing her question at Nina as she came round to sit between Jesper and Kaz.

Nina thought for a minute, staring into the distance. “It depends on the musical really, it doesn’t last as long as the actual musical will obviously, since there aren’t any songs, and Nikolai isn’t looking for perfect speech, just everyone to get a feel for how the musical runs.”

“Maybe an hour and a half?” Jesper cut in. “Run time is about 2 and a half hours, songs take up just over an hour of that.”

“Okay cool, not too long then.” Inej replied. She would still have time to go to the library after that to get some work done.

They spent lunch talking and making fun of each other until Jesper happened to look down at his watch. “Oh shit. We have about 5 minutes to get to our next classes.”

There was a flurry of movement as everyone packed their things up and Nina and Jesper took off running, their next class on the other side of campus. Kaz gave her a rare grin, she knew his next class was all of about 100 meters away, she guessed he had probably known all along and was waiting until the last possible minute to tell them. She grinned back at him and shook her head slightly, moving off to take the shortcut that would put her out right outside her next psychology class.

ZOYA

Zoya was going to be late to the read through. Her last law lecture of the day had overran by 15 minutes meaning she had been let out as the read through was meant to start, the positive to doing the same degree as the director was that he was going to be late as well.

They practically sprinted out of the lecture hall together and towards the theatre, Nikolai had a stack of paper in his hands and was reading through it as they speed-walked over. How he managed to do the two things at once without falling over his own feet, she had no idea.

They burst through the theatre hall doors, a sea of faces turning to look at them. “Sorry all, the law lecture overran, is everyone else here?” Nikolai called out as they went down the stairs to meet everyone else. Zoya could have sworn she heard someone mutter ‘Yeah because that’s believable.’ She kept her head up looking straight forward instead of acknowledging it.

“Everyone’s here.” Tolya called out, the only other person not in the cast there.

“Perfect.” Nikolai said, an easy smile on his face as he walked up onto the stage. “If everyone can join me up on the stage, I’d like to get into a horseshoe, don’t sit down quite yet. Then I’ll pass out the scripts.”

They moved up to the stage, each grabbing a chair and setting it in a horseshoe shape, Nikolai and Tolya in the gap between the lines. “So,” Genya muttered to her as they were grabbing their chairs. “Lecture overran?”

“Yes.” Zoya fixed her with a pointed glare, she didn’t need to hear any scepticism from her best friend of all people.

“Okay.” Genya said simply, that was Zoya’s favourite thing about her best friend, she was a terrible gossip but the minute Zoya said anything she would drop it immediately.

Once they were all standing awkwardly in front of chairs Nikolai started speaking again. “Okay, to make this somewhat easy I’m going to organise who you’re sitting next to. I may regret this but Nina and Jesper, I want you two together here, then Alina can you sit next to them. Zoya, Inej and Genya, in that order, next to her.”

He went through the horseshoe until everyone had sat down. “Okay we’ll start, remember we’re doing songs tomorrow, so I’ll basically just yell start and stop randomly if we accidently stumble into the songs. Remember this is just for everyone to get to grips with the script and the main storyline of the musical, don’t worry about getting you’re lines perfect! With that, Jesper, take it away.”

It took a while to get to her speaking part, but accordingly she did her best impression of Regina George and got into reading the script. Soon enough the read through was over and Nikolai stood up to speak again.

“Thank you so much everyone, that was great. Tomorrow we’ll be going through the songs, if you’re counted as ‘ensemble’ you don’t need to come but you’re welcome to if you want to. Thanks again everyone!”

With that they all filed out of the theatre. Genya and Alina joined her as they walked off in the direction of their house, idly chatting about anything that came to mind as Zoya listened, giving her input occasionally.

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Zoya woke up on Saturday morning with a book on her face, after the sing-through yesterday she had come home and practically collapsed onto her bed. It had been tiring, and completely honestly, not gone that well, it was to be expected, being most people’s first time singing the songs. But she was a perfectionist and hated how she had sung, seeing how put out she had been, on the way home Genya had suggested the two of them and Inej should get together to at least go through ‘Meet The Plastics’.

✨ The Plastics ✨

Oct 20 9:32 pm

Genya: How does 11 am our house sound to you guys?

Genya: If you need the address Inej I can send it over :)

Inej: That sounds good for me! I finish dance at 10:30 so that’s pretty much perfect.

Inej: Also don’t worry, I’ll just get Nina to give me directions, she’s already offered to walk me home afterwards!

Genya: Ah perfect, I think Zoya’s already crashed but she’ll be awake before 11 tomorrow and she doesn’t have anything written down on our joint calendar.

Inej: A joint calendar is really sweet! I should really do that for my house wow, see you tomorrow then :)

Genya: See you!

She finished reading through the messages and then looked at the clock; 8:16. That gave her plenty of time to get ready at least. She picked out a cream long-sleeve top and blue fitted trousers, then settled down at her desk to do her makeup. It wasn’t really needed considering, as Genya had guessed, she didn’t have anything properly on today, the only thing being a late-night climbing session scheduled this evening.

As she finished up there was a knock at her bedroom door. “Come in!” She called.

“Hey!” Genya walked in and sat on her bed. “You saw the messages?”

“Yeah.” Zoya turned over to her. “Gen, at least make the bed if you’re going to sit in it. I’m climbing around 8 but free until then so it’s all good.”

Genya half-heartedly smoothed over some of the covers. “Okay good, I think Nina’s going to drop in when we’ve finished as well.”

“You’ve texted Nina?” She asked, slightly taken aback. While she knew Genya and Nina were friends, it was still hard to differentiate the fact that Nina wasn’t just ‘her friend from high school’ anymore.

“Yes, Zoya, we’re friends. Or have you forgotten again?”

“Oh shut up, I’ve only been awake for…” She glanced at her clock. “Half an hour, give me a break.”

Genya’s eyes softened with something that looked like realisation. “Are you doing okay? The last time you forgot Nina and I were friends was-”

“Stop.” Zoya cut in. “I don’t want to talk about this right now Genya. I can’t.” She couldn’t start thinking about what Genya was implying right now, she’d feel off for the rest of the day.

“Okay.” Genya said, “I’ll leave you to get ready, I think Alina’s making pancakes, she’s got blueberry compote finished already.”

“She’s that stressed?” Zoya questioned, the only time Alina did ‘proper’ cooking was when she was really stressed about something.

“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s theatre related or work related though.”

“Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.” She turned back and touched up her lipstick before making her bed and coming downstairs.

Alina was just finishing the pancakes as she walked down the stairs. “Hey Zoya, you’re eating pancakes this morning, no choice.”

“I’m not complaining.” She said as she grabbed a plate, grabbing some pancakes and adding blueberry compote on top. “So what’s up?”

“Ugh.” Alina turned from putting the washing up in the sink and pulled up a chair on the other side on the island. “Everything really. Nikolai’s probably going to send out timetables for rehearsals soon, which is going to half my free time again I don’t know why I do these shows.”

Zoya had forgotten about the rehearsal timetable. How, she didn’t know but it had slipped her mind. At least Nikolai had access to all their timetables, so there weren’t too many clashes. She turned her focus back to Alina.

“And then Mal is being kind of weird. I don’t know if it’s just stress from school or soccer practices picking up but we’ve barely seen each other in the last few days and it kind of feels like he’s pulling away.”

“Woah stop there.” Zoya interrupted her, this was the main problem then. “You know Mal is crazy over you right? Maybe you need to sit down and talk. Invite Mal over this evening if you want, Inej is coming over to practice a bit and Nina’s going to come by when we’re done, I’ll just invite them to dinner and Mal can join.”

Alina visibly relaxed at the suggestion. “Yeah that sounds nice, I’ll text him now. Thanks Zoya!”

“Don’t forget the dishes!” Zoya called after her as she ran up the stairs, the one problem with Alina’s stress cooking was that she would forget to do the washing up afterwards and Zoya would end up with it. Sighing, she took out her phone to update their group chat with the new plans.

✨ The Plastics ✨

Oct 21 9:20 am

Me: Hey Inej, did you and Nina want to stay for dinner? It will probably finish about 7:30 because I’ve got climbing.

Me: Alina is also inviting her boyfriend Mal over.

9:40 am

Inej: Yeah that sounds great! I’ve texted Nina, I’ll let you know what she says after dance :)

INEJ

One of Inej’s favourite parts about dancing was the stretches afterwards. The feeling of calm washing over her, knowing she’d done her best and allowing her mind to wander instead of having to focus on what moves she was doing or schoolwork.

She finished up, putting her outside shoes on and grabbing her bag to leave. She had half an hour to find somewhere to change clothes and then get to Zoya and Genya’s house. Plenty of time. She stopped off in the girls netball changing room, they played Saturday afternoon so it was empty now, quickly changed, and then started the 15 minute walk.

It was an easy walk there and soon enough she was counting the numbers on houses, determined to not accidently ring the wrong doorbell. She walked up to number 15 and rang. “Coming!” A voice shouted from down the hall. Soon enough Genya opened the door. “Hi Inej, come in, I’ll grab Zoya from upstairs, one sec.”

Inej walked in, taking off her shoes by the door and awkwardly stood by the bottom of the stairs while Genya ran halfway up the stairs and called for Zoya. “Sorry, if you go through the hall, keep straight, the kitchen’s right ahead. Alina’s in there stress baking so help yourself to anything she’s making.”

Inej walked past the stairs and into the kitchen where Alina was stirring something on the stove. “Hey, Alina how are you doing?”

Alina whirled around suddenly. “God Inej, I didn’t hear you walk in. I’m good thanks, help yourself to the cookies on the island.”

That was what Genya meant by stress baking, she found some chocolate chip cookies on the centre island and grabbed one, taking a seat. “My bad, I’m used to creeping up on Jesper, I don’t notice when I’m not making noise.”

“All good, you guys are practicing ‘meet the plastics’ right? I’ll offer to Gen when she gets down but if you stay in the kitchen I can read out the other parts while cooking. You are staying for dinner right?”

Inej smiled, while she hadn’t talked to Alina all that much before now, the girl radiated hospitality. “Yeah I am, Nina’s coming too if that’s okay.”

“It’s needed.” Alina smiled and turned back to her pot on the stove. “Mal’s coming too, I don’t know if you’ve met him before, but we’d have way too many leftovers if you weren’t here.”

Inej hadn’t, she vaguely recalled Nina mentioning him at one point, but other than that their paths just hadn’t crossed. Suddenly, she heard two pairs of footsteps walking down the stairs.

“I have dragged the girl away from her books!” Genya announced.

“Shut up Genya, it wasn’t that hard, I just needed to finish going through the flashcards.” Zoya said, rolling her eyes and sitting at the island, grabbing a cookie. “Hi Inej, how are you?”

Inej giggled a bit as she saw Genya and Alina exchanged looks that said ‘yeah right’. “Good thanks Zoya, Alina’s been explaining the plans for the day.”

“Yeah,” Alina said turning her back to them again. “That reminds me, if you practice here I can fill Janis and Damian for you and get some timing practice for my lines in the song.”

“Sounds good.” Genya said simply. “Go grab your script babes, I’ll watch whatever it is on the stove.”

Alina turned on her foot and left, “Keep stirring it!” she called from the hall.

Within the minute Alina had returned with her script and a speaker, ready to connect to spotify from her phone.

ZOYA

They started from the bit the plastics were introduced, it didn’t make sense to do the start bit otherwise Alina would have had her work cut out for her, playing three characters all interacting with each other for a good minute and a half.

They quickly flowed into an organised structure, each of them giving notes to whoever needed them, not worrying about any choreography since Tolya hadn’t given them any yet.

Soon enough it was 6pm and they had decided it was good enough for the day, Alina went back to finishing up their dinner and chatting to Mal who had just turned up.

“So Inej.” Genya said, leaning slightly forward over the island, Zoya could sense an interrogation brewing. “How did you meet Nina, I feel like you two are really close, but we barely know anything about you.”

Inej relaxed back into her chair with a smile on her face. “Nina and I were roommates in Freshman year. She’s the reason I have any of the friends I do now really.”

“Same as Zoya and I then!” Genya said.

“You were roommates Freshman year too?”

“We were.” Zoya said with a sad smile at Genya, while she knew Genya had forgiven her 100 times over, she would always remember the 18 months of friendship they lost because of how much of a bitch she had been. “I wasn’t the nicest person in Freshman or most of Sophomore year though, so it took until the end of Sophomore for us to actually become friends.”

“You were dealing with your own shit, no one blames you.” Genya said with a gentle smile back..

“How did you meet Nina then?” Inej asked. “I got the impression you were friends before college.”

“We were.” Zoya said, the memories of Nina in high school always made her smile. “They had this weird buddy thing for the Freshman in high school when she first joined and we got paired together. She helped a lot when my aunt-” Zoya stopped quickly, she hadn’t been meaning to mention Lilyana to someone she barely knew. ”Anyway, since then I haven’t been able to shake her.”

“Shake who?” A voice from the doorway questioned.

“Speak of the devil.” Genya said, getting up to give Nina a hug.

“Talking about my amazing accomplishments I assume.” Nina asked with a smile, walking over to give Zoya a brief hug and Alina a kiss on the cheek before sitting next to Inej at the island. “How are my favourite girls then?”

“We had a productive session.” Genya said, smiling at her. “Alina’s stress baking again as well, so we’ll be eating well tonight.”

“Alina my angel.” Nina said, glancing back over her shoulder at Alina.

Zoya moved to grab plates and lay them out, anticipating that Alina looked nearly done with the cooking. Alina smiled gratefully at her as she moved to set out a bowl of roast potatoes on the table.

“So Nina,” Zoya said while migrating the food in various bowls Alina had already set on the counter over to the table. “How’s your slab of fur doing.” Realistically Zoya knew Matthias’ name, however it was so much more fun to tease Nina by pretending she still didn’t.

A shocked silence emanated from Nina as she processed what Zoya had just said. “My slab of fur?” She muttered under her breath confused, before her head shot up and she looked incredulously at Zoya. “You mean MATTHIAS???”

Genya and Inej both burst out laughing while Zoya headed back to her seat, a smile on her face.

“If that’s his name.”

“You know his name.” Nina said grumpily, lifting some of the food from a bowl onto her plate, signalling to the rest of them that it was probably fine to do the same. “Also he’s fine thanks for asking, perfectly happy with his small part, enjoying the start of softball as the football season is over.”

With that a comfortable silence settled over the six of them, as they all ate, Zoya mindful of the time and how long she had to get to climbing.

“Ooh actually.” Nina said once they’d finished eating. “Some random law student that lives down the road from Inej and I is having a halloween party next weekend, you lot want to come?”

Zoya narrowed her eyes, most law students were relatively harmless, but there were a few she couldn’t trust as far as she could throw them. “Which one?”

“I think his last name is Kirigan? He owns the annoyingly big mansion at the end of our block.” Inej put in when Nina looked unsure.

“Shit okay, I probably should be there if you guys are going.” Kirigan was one of the mostly harmless ones, but due to the size of his house, and how many people he invited his parties could tend to be a little over the top.

Nina rolled her eyes at her, Zoya knew she didn’t exactly appreciate the protective treatment she’d got over the past 6 or 7 years, but that was what she got for following Zoya around relentlessly. “Ok then stalker. Were you not invited already?”

“I was.” Zoya shrugged. “But it’s Kirigan, he’s weird at best.”

“If it helps.” Alina put into the conversation. “Mal and I were already planning to go, Genya are you free?”

“Depends if David’s free.” Genya smiled. Nina groaned in response.

“Well for that comment you two are doing the washing up.” Alina smiled sweetly at Genya and Nina.

“What about Zoya?” Nina retorted, offense prevalent in her voice.

“Climbing.” Zoya smirked. “Inej, I trust you’ll get home okay?”

“Yeah I’ll wait for Nina.” Inej said, a smile on her face at her friend’s antics.

“Alright then.” Zoya nodded and walked up the stairs to get changed.

Climbing was Zoya’s most healthy coping mechanism, it had started just before she went to uni, suggested by her therapist as a way of dealing with loss, putting her energy into something productive, and had come to something that Zoya genuinely enjoyed and a way to take her mind off of work.

Climbing had been her one constant throughout everything, she loved it more than she loved theatre, it wasn’t uncommon for her to go most nights, even outside of club trainings. She’d neglected it a bit more than usual with the musical try outs, hence why she was here on a Saturday night, while the walls were pretty much empty.

She had one earbud in, something that wasn’t technically allowed, but it meant she could focus on herself more and ignore the few climbers that were there. Plus what could she say? Renee Rapp gave her power.

She was focussing on a particularly hard dyno she hadn’t managed to stick yet, it was fine up until the last move that she could jump to get with one hand, but she had too much momentum to get her other hand on there too without slipping. She lined herself up, the footholds were easy up here meaning she had pretty much as much time as she wanted to do so.

She twisted her feet just so, took one look at the pesky hand hold she was aiming for, and jumped. Her right hand grabbed the hold as her entire body weight swung past her, she reached up with her other hand and missed, her body ending up almost horizontal as her right hand slipped off the hold. She’d had practise at this fall, and curled up a little as her body tilted back the other way without the anchor of her hand on the hold. She hit the floor rolling and put her hands by her shoulders to push herself off, executing a nice backward roll if she did say so herself.

She sighed glancing to the clock, it was almost 10 she had probably better hurry home so as not to worry Genya and Alina. Glancing down at her right hand, it was bleeding slightly, she frowned at it, as if to say you have enough calluses by now to not bleed before shaking it slightly, changing her shoes, and walking out of the gym.

Chapter Text

ZOYA

Sunday passed relatively quickly, Zoya had a morning shift at the cafe, and then spent the afternoon studying for her upcoming exam on Friday, only briefly interrupted by Genya and Alina dragging her downstairs so that they could cook dinner together.

On Monday she woke up at 7:30 as usual and read her emails while she was eating breakfast, one had come in from Tamar, no doubt about the new rehearsal schedule.

Sent to you and 20+ others

Dear beloved members of our first half musical!

I’m sure you’re very excited after our two read-throughs of our script, and I am delighted to tell you that we have our rehearsal schedule almost finalised!! We have taken a look at all your classes and rest assured, if there are clashes we have taken note and you will not be needed. If there are clashes with work schedules, etc please let us know! We can either rework some of the timings or make sure that we aren’t rehearsing anything that you need to be there for.

Here is the schedule:

Monday: 4-6pm

Tuesday: 8-9:45am

Wednesday: All day! (We will be sending out a form for what times you are available, this will not be all Wednesdays please keep an eye on the group chat.)

Thursday: 2-3pm and 5-6pm

Friday: 1-3pm

Much love,

ASM Tamar Kir-Bataar.

The schedule didn’t seem horrible to Zoya, she got lucky considering Nikolai was in all her classes meaning none of the rehearsals clashed with her classes as he also had to be there. The second Thursday session would be a problem as she had a shift from 5pm and she wouldn’t be able to make the morning of the Wednesday sessions depending on when they started. Just to be safe she sent a quick message to Tamar, getting her number from the WhatsApp group chat.

Tamar

Zoya: Hey Tamar, just letting you know I won’t be able to make the later Thursday sessions or the Wednesday ones before 11am.

Zoya: Apart from that it’s all good.

Tamar: That’s completely fine! Tbh you can make more sessions than anyone else (perks of Law ig) so it’s no problem :) thanks for letting me know!

end of messages

“You seen the email?” Alina’s voice rang out as she walked through the doorway and grabbed herself some breakfast, Genya coming in behind her.

“Yep, already sent off a message.” She said, standing up and moving to their coffee machine.

“Ah, our ever resourceful Zoya.” Genya said smiling, making grabby hands at the mug coffee Zoya placed in front of her.

Zoya made Alina’s far too sweet coffee next, putting it into a travel mug so that she could drink it on the walk. They were a funny trio, Genya would always down her coffee before they left, Alina would drink it on the walk there and she would save hers until her lecture, preferring to have the caffeine boost while she was working.

She finished her double strength latte last, pouring it into a thermos and sitting back down to wait until the others finished their breakfast.

They left the house on time, Genya and Alina’s lectures started half an hour before hers on Mondays so she walked them to their lectures and ended up at hers 15 minutes before the start, because the lecture was the first one of the day, she could pick her seat. She ended up choosing one near the back and by the end of the row, the lectures were never full and she found that by sitting a few seats from an edge, nobody would sit next to her. Just how she liked it.

She put her headphones on and opened her laptop, setting up her pre-lecture notes, it was a review session for the exam meaning she’d probably get more information from these 2 hours than she had from all the lectures beforehand.

About 5 minutes before the lecture was meant to start she felt someone sit down next to her, she took her headphones off and prepared to give them a death glare in hopes that they got the hint and moved on.

Turning to her right, she ended up face to face with Nikolai Lantsov. He looked like shit and was wearing glasses, something she’d never seen him wear before. She changed her glare into a look of confusion.

“Don’t even ask.” He sighed putting his head down. “Insomnia is actual attempting to kill me and I can’t deal with Kirigan talking all morning.”

Zoya felt another wave of surprise wash over her, she was learning a lot about Nikolai this morning. Speaking of, he was completely out, the lecturer was notoriously late so she let him sleep on, figuring he probably needed it.

When the lecturer finally turned up she discretely nudged Nikolai, while she was sure he wanted the extra sleep this class was probably more important to him.

She was proved right when he sat up, sleepily moving to get his laptop. “Thanks Nazyalensky.” He muttered.

“Here.” She said, handing over her thermos of coffee. “You probably need this more than me.”

“Zoya, you have made my week.” He said, brightening up and putting his glasses back on.

She smiled softly and looked down, his glasses made his face a lot softer and his eyes stand out more. She didn’t know why she noticed it.

They spent the rest of the review working in silence and Zoya found she didn’t mind Nikolai sat next to her, most people annoyed her, they moved around too much or breathed too loud and she would quickly get overstimulated and therefore snappy, the main reason she never had friends in lectures.

Somewhere in the 2 hours Nina texted to ask about meeting up for coffee after the lecture. Considering Nikolai had stolen her usual caffeine fix she immediately texted back agreeing. She couldn’t fault that he had needed it more than her, however.

Feeling a little lighter after the talk with Nina, Zoya walked over to the library in hopes to get some revision done before the rehearsal started at 4. If all went well she’d have 2 hours to get to grips with some of the information. She put her headphones in and her head down.

The rehearsal room they typically used was alive with chatter when she walked in, it seemed that most people had a free period before it and so had come in early. Nina, Jesper and Inej were stood in one corner, Inej literally sat on the floor in splits; Nadia, Tamar and Adrik were talking in another.

She joined Genya and Alina who were sat on the floor in the middle of the room, talking softly together. They both looked up as she walked over, smiling at her.

“Hey.” She said simply, sitting down next to them, they still had 5 minutes until rehearsals were meant to start.

“Heya hun.” Genya said. “How was the library?”

“Quiet as usual.” She replied. “Your lecture?”

“Good.”

Their exchange brief Zoya lay down, staring up at the ceiling as Genya and Alina continued discussing what they had been before, something to do with hockey. She didn’t mind the lack of conversation, it was easier to not have to think after all the cramming she’d done.

“Alright you lot!” The unmistakable voice of Nikolai Lantsov rang out across the room and she sat up, turning round to face where he’d gone to stand next to Tamar, looking considerably better rested than before. “The lay out for the next two hours is as follows: we are working on scenes 1 and 2 therefore everyone is needed. The majority of you will stay in here with me doing scene 1, Zoya, Genya and Inej you will be going next door to work with Tolya on the choreography for scene 2: Meet The Plastics. After an hour and 15 minutes or so, we’re going to meet back in here to continue with scene 2 with everyone. Sound good?”

Various sounds and nods of affirmation sounded across the room, Inej coming over to meet Genya and Zoya as they went into the next room, Tolya walking close behind. Zoya knew Tolya, mostly through Alina, but she liked him, although he had a penchant for reciting poetry randomly, a trait she tried extremely hard to be respective of.

Luckily for her there was no poetry spouting this time. Due to the majority of the scene being the actual song, Tolya first checked how they did actually singing it. Thanks to their practice on Saturday, that was quickly sorted and they moved onto the actual choreography of the scene using chairs that Tolya moved about as substitutes for Cady, Janis and Damian.

They worked on the choreography and singing for about an hour before Tolya finally called it quits.

“That’s good for today guys.” He said smiling. “You’re about as good as I can get you without using everyone else. We might as well go back into the main room, it’s only 15 minutes until they finish anyway.”

They all filed back into the main room, sitting down in a corner where everyone had chucked their bags. They had obviously gone and grabbed desks and were running through all of the classroom scenes, slightly less polished than they’d got their scene but that was expected considering scene 1 was much longer with a lot more people.

Zoya grabbed some water and watched Nikolai directing Harshaw and Adrik where to stand, Tolya giving his input now he was back in the room, Tamar was talking to Alina, Nina and Jesper walking through the makeshift desks they had set up.

“Alright, I think that’s good for right now!” Nikolai called, taking his glasses off to clean them. “5 minute break and we can move on to scene two, drink some water! Ah David there you are, I’ll speak to you after the break.”

Zoya took her eyes off of Nikolai to look over to David who had just come in, he quickly nodded in response and then walked over to their little group, most likely to talk to Genya.

“I didn’t know Nikolai Lantsov wore glasses?” Genya mentioned off hand as David came over to sit next to them.

“He usually wears contacts.” David supplied. “He only wears his glasses if it’s late at night or he properly hasn’t slept.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that.” Genya muttered.

“Yeah I gave him my coffee this morning because he looked like shit.” Zoya put in.

“You. Zoya Nazyalensky. Gave someone your coffee?” Genya stared incredulously.

“Yeah.” Zoya could feel herself going slightly pink from the attention Genya had drawn to their group. “Keep your voice down Gen it wasn’t a big deal, he just needed it more than me.”

“If you say so.” She replied.

“Everyone, breaks over! We’ll move over to scene 2 now, Tolya and Tamar will be talking you through spacing so everyone come to the centre of the room. David, you wanted to talk?” Nikolai’s clear tones rang through the room, calling the attention back to him.

They moved into the centre, and at Tolya’s instructions arranged the tables into lunch table formation. Zoya, Inej and Genya took the places they had practiced as they sorted out the choreography for the rest of the scene.

Tuesday was different, typically her first class was at 11am while Genya’s was at 10. They’d usually walk in together and Zoya would study in the library until the lecture. Today however, Nikolai had scheduled the first practice at 8am and the three girls were running late.

As a result, they ended up barrelling out of the house right as they were meant to leave, the sacrifice they made was no coffee that morning, not that Zoya would have been able to bring the coffee with her anyway. Nikolai still had her thermos, she would probably have downed a cup before she left if she could though.

Despite walking into the rehearsal room at exactly 8am the only people in there were Tamar, Tolya, Nikolai and Nadia; and by the looks of Nikolai’s car outside, they had driven to get there on time. Even so, Tamar was curled up on the floor, her head in Nadia’s lap, while the other three chatted quietly.

Nikolai looked up as they entered, smiling softly and beckoning the girls over to sit with them. as they sat down, completing the circle; Alina next to Nadia, Zoya next to Nikolai, and Genya in between; Nikolai slid her Thermos back to her, surprisingly heavy.

“It’s only instant I’m afraid.” He said, sleep still evident in his voice. “We didn’t have time to stop by a Cafe.”

She opened the lid and took a deep breath. “You are an angel Lantsov.”

Genya shot her a glance before turning to Nikolai. “You know she makes the coffee herself right Nikolai?”

“You do?” Nikolai looked to Zoya incredulously. “I assumed you’d got it from a cafe yesterday?”

“No” She took a sip, it was nice enough, a good amount of milk. “I work at a cafe though, the general skills pass over to the smaller machine we have at the house.”

“And much cheaper I expect.” Nikolai muttered.

The chatter in the room had grown since they came in, everyone slowly filing in until they were only missing a few, no doubt those that had early morning lectures.

“Hi all, nice to see you lot here this early.” Nikolai stood up and addressed the room smiling. “We’re going to continue to work on scenes 1 and 2 for the first hour, then scene three for the second. Don’t worry anyone has a 9am, if you do it’s been accounted for and you aren’t needed for scene 3. Let’s get to it!”

With that they got to work, linking up the two scenes and continuing working on the bits they found hard. It was fairly easy for Zoya, she didn’t have to do anything in the first scene so ended up filling in as a body for Harshaw who wasn’t there.

Soon enough the first hour was up and Nikolai came to address them again. “Thank you for the hard work y’all! I’ll try to get coffee and tea in for next Tuesday, I understand it was hard. For scene 3 the only people we need are Alexander and Alina so unless you’d like to stay and watch you can all leave to your various lectures or naps.”

They moved towards the edge of the room, before Nikolai cleared his voice again. “Sorry I forgot, we’re having a collaboration board game night on Thursday, so come along if you want. It will be a sober night, just to insure no underage drinking happens under our watch.”

There was a collective murmur of understanding and they went back to grabbing their bags.

Genya came up to Zoya’s side and quietly whispered in her ear. “I’ve got a lecture, you good to stay?”

Zoya nodded quickly, sitting down in one of the corners next to Nadia, and taking out her laptop to go over some flashcards.

The last 45 minutes of rehearsals went smoothly, Aleks didn’t try anything, not that Zoya would expect him to with so many people around and paying attention to him. He was more the privately manipulating type.

Once they’d obviously finished she walked to the other side of the room, crossing paths with Aleks, she held her head high, trying to ignore him but he grabbed onto her wrist. An involuntary shiver passed down her as she focussed on her breathing, praying for no memories to surface. “Still obsessed with me I see.” He muttered, then released her arm and walked out of the room quickly.

Zoya felt herself frozen in place, unable to keep moving forward towards the group. It didn’t matter how much she ignored him, he constantly found a way to make it about him.

She felt a small hand near her shoulders leading her out of the room. Her first thought was to ignore it and stay in place, it was safer, but she recognised Alina’s faint murmurings seemingly far away.

It wasn’t until they were sat in a dark classroom that her vision became less blurry and she could hear normally again. She found herself on the floor against a wall, she didn’t remember sitting down but Alina was sat cross legged opposite her so it must have happened at some point.

“You okay?” Alina asked, passing her a water bottle.

“Yeah.” Zoya confirmed. “I just want him to leave me alone. I mean you ruin my freshman and sophomore year by convincing me I wasn’t worthy of friends and then randomly dump me for some new girl. Sorry” She added, Alina being the new girl in question. “And somehow still manage to convince yourself I care about you?”

“Tell me about it.” Alina sympathised, and Zoya felt a wave of shame wash over her, obviously Alina had gone through all this and continued to do every musical theatre production anyway.

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” She muttered.

“Don’t be babes.” Alina said, reaching across and taking her hand. “Sure he fucked up my life but I had a massive support system compared to what you had, don’t blame yourself.”

Zoya smiled softly and checked her phone for the time, prompting Alina to move. “Come on I’ll walk you to your lecture.” She said softly, and Zoya felt a wave of love for her friend.

They walked to Zoya’s law class with Alina filling the air with mindless chatting about everything; her and Mal’s dates, where she thought she would get work experience next, and her upcoming hockey match.

They arrived to the lecture right on time and Alina gave her a hug before she walked in. She chose the seat she had chosen yesterday, again not wanting to talk to anyone. Before she could put her headphones on, ready to tune out most of the lecture, Nikolai Lantsov slid into the seat next to her again, pushing a takeaway cup towards her.

“It’s just herbal tea.” He said softly. “Thought you might want something and I wasn’t sure how seriously you take your caffeine intake.”

“Thank you. In this degree? I take any caffeine I can get to be honest.” She said, opening the lid to smell peppermint. “You’re probably right though.”

At that moment the lecturer decided to start, so instead of answering her, he smiled and turned to unlock his laptop.