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Phil spends the morning up on the catwalk, switching out lighting gel sheets while the piano music tinkles quietly below him. Phil likes it up here, twenty feet above the stage, nearly hidden in the various crisscrossing black riggings. He is not the most skilled at climbing the narrow black ladder up, but he does have the longest arms of the stage crew, and for this he is often sent up for more fiddly tasks like this. He tries to be quiet as he moves back and forth across the metal platform, though, cognizant of the ballet class on the stage below him.
This is unusual in and of itself; Phil generally works theater productions, where aside from mic checks the actors generally drift about backstage until their marks, out of the way. Ballerinas, however, were everywhere and constantly underfoot. Phil had taken to walking with his eyes to the ground, terrified he was going to bowl over some of the smaller ones in the darkened backstage areas. From his position above the stage he has a birds-eye view of the class, and he occasionally pauses in his work to watch.
They’re in groups now, the short yet surprisingly loud artistic director standing at the front of the stage, arms crossed, as a group of five girls spin like tops in the stage below, their bun-laden heads staying in place and then suddenly snapping around every turn, almost too fast for Phil to follow. He turns back to his work, sliding the blue cover off the nearest light to replace it with a soft yellow from the bag slung around his wrist.
“Alright, boys next!” says the director, who Phil has surmised is called Miss Jenna, in a carrying voice. “Fouettes, thirty-two counts, let’s go.”
Phil watches as the group of girls split off to either side, their pointe shoes clacking slightly against the stage as they jog. He sees the rest of the girls, probably around twenty or twenty-five in all, scoot back to the edges of the stage as a group of three boys come forward into the center. Two are clearly in their early teens — they have a gangly, deer-like awkwardness in the way they move that Phil remembers all too well from his various growth spurts.
But the last one — he looks to be maybe twenty or twenty-one, just a few years younger than Phil. He’s tall, Phil can’t quite tell how tall from up near the ceiling but he clearly towers over the rest of the class. He’s wearing blue sweatpants, one leg rolled up past the knee and the other dangling down toward his feet, which are adorned in white ballet slippers with the elastics hanging loose. He’s wearing a loose white T-shirt that hangs off one shoulder and — Phil can definitely see under it from here but he blinks and looks away, blushing slightly despite himself. And then the music starts, and Phil can’t help but look back.
Phil doesn’t know the first thing about ballet. He’s never taken a dance class. He trips over his own feet while walking down the sidewalk. The rare occasions that his uni friends dragged him to a club he stood in the corner and bounced up and down, not even really in time with the music. But Phil doesn’t need to know anything about ballet at all to see that this guy is fantastic.
The way he moves looks effortless to Phil, first preparing by bending his front knee with his back foot extended behind him, then spinning three full times with his foot against his knee, then extending his leg out to the side — and his legs seem to go on infinitely, perfectly straight ending in a pointed foot — and then spinning without slowing, bending his knee in time with the music in order to give him enough momentum to continue the next rotation. Phil actually stands still and watches for the entirety of the thirty-two counts, watching as the dancer pulls in his foot at the last moment, spinning another three times and then landing smoothly on one knee, arms extended outward.
The moment the piano music ends it’s like a spell has been broken, and he stands up casually, shaking out his arm, and running one hand through his hair.
“Excellent,” Miss Jenna says, “but Daniel, please do something about your hair, it’s looking ridiculous and I don’t know how you expect to spot accurately with it flying around your face.”
There’s a chuckle through the class and one of the girls hands the dancer — Daniel — a hair tie from around her wrist. Daniel takes it, pulling his fringe up to a tiny knot on the top of his head and securing it with the hair tie. He then stretches his arms above his head and tips backward, making eye contact with Phil who has been leaning over the edge of the catwalk to watch.
Phil pulls his head back immediately, heart thumping, and turns back to the bag of gel sheets around his wrist. He hears Miss Jenna dismiss the class, and then all at once the group of dancers begin talking and laughing, an immediate contrast from the quiet focus of the class. Phil’s headset crackles to life in his ear.
“You gonna finish with those this year?” says the voice of Ari.
“Yeah, sorry, got distracted,” Phil says quietly, pushing the button at the side of his headset to speak.
“Well, please don’t distract yourself any further while up there unless you want to fall,” she says, “and when you’re done could you mop the floor? They want to start rehearsal in an hour and the floor’s gotta be dry before they need to start warming up.”
“No problem,” Phil says, and gets through the rest of the task much quicker now that he is keeping his eyes above the railings.
When he returns to ground level, hands gripping the rungs of the ladder and eyes firmly trained upwards, he finds that not all of the dancers have cleared out. There’s a group of girls who look around thirteen in the back corner of the stage, and right in the middle, lying on his back with headphone cords trailing out of his ears, is Daniel. He’s stretching, pulling his right knee across towards the opposite shoulder, and his eyes are closed.
Phil drags the mop bucket out from the hallway behind the stage, and decides to start as far upstage as he can, away from Daniel still stretching on the floor. He begins to push the soapy water across the floor, and the group of girls in the back corner grab their water bottles and clear out, giggling to one another. Phil manages to get almost all the way across the stage without incident, but then Daniel is in his line of sight.
He has half a mind to just mop a wide berth around Daniel and call it a day, but Ari and the rest of the crew are sure to notice the wide dusty streak in the middle of the stage, and he doesn’t want to have to delay rehearsal while mopping again. He tries to walk as loudly as possible, clunking his boots against the stage, but Daniel is still lying with his eyes closed, seemingly in his own world.
Phil pushes the mop slowly across the stage, the mop bucket alongside him, and decides the best course of action is to just sort of nudge Daniel’s bare foot with his own. He does this, and Daniel jumps, rolls sideways, and knocks over Phil’s bucket entirely. A puddle of soapy water goes sloshing across the floor and Daniel jumps to his feet, looking horrified.
“Oh my god,” he says, “I’m so sorry mate, I didn’t see you.”
Phil clutches at the mop handle, face heating up.
“No, it’s my fault, I’m sorry —“
“Um, is there anything I can do…?” Daniel asks, looking around at the water, now spreading rapidly.
“No,” he says, “no it’s okay, I have to do the whole thing anyways.”
“Okay,” Daniel says, “I’ll get out of your hair, sorry again.” Phil nods as Daniel hurries up, and there’s a crackling of laughter over his headset.
“Oh my god,” Ari says, “your face just now.”
Phil looks out to the audience and flips off where he know Ari is standing at the back of the house.
Phil spends the next hour setting the cues for lighting with PJ. Most of the other stagehands are large and bearded and called things like Steve or Mike, but PJ is alright. They work side-by-side, mostly in silence, until PJ nudges his shoulder around noon.
Phil turns. They’re backstage right, checking off the labels on various switches and behind him is Daniel. He’s wearing shoes now, thick boots pulled over his sweatpants, and a black hoodie over his white t-shirt. There’s one headphone snaking from his right ear, and he’s got two cups of coffee in his hands.
“Mop guy,” he says, holding one out. “Thought I’d say sorry again.”
“Thanks,” Phil says. “It’s really no problem. Phil.”
Behind him, PJ wanders off towards the back door leading to the hallway.
“Uh, my name’s Dan.”
“Oh, yeah I — I know. My name’s Phil.”
“You know?” Dan asks, smiling slightly. “Well, nice to meet you Phil.”
“I saw your class this morning, Phil says. I was, um, well, you’re really good.” This comes out without him meaning to say it. Dan’s smile deepens, Phil notices a deep dimple creasing in his cheek.
“Thanks,” Dan says softly, like he still isn’t really used to hearing it, which surprises Phil as this is not the attitude he has come to expect from the stars of shows he works on. “You’d think I wouldn’t be clumsy, given all this,” he gestures over his shoulder at the stage, “but clearly I still have no regard for anything in my path.”
Just as Dan shifts, Phil hears a snatch of the melody coming from the loose headphone dangling around his collarbone, and is surprised to recognize it.
“Um, are you listening to Muse?”
Dan’s face cracks into an incredulous grin.
“Yeah?” he says. “What, are you actually psychic?”
“No, I just heard it,” Phil says, pointing at the earbud and laughing. “I listen to them too.”
“You must be a big fan, to recognize it from that, Dan says, pulling the earbud out of his ear and looking at it.
“You have no idea,” Phil says, “in case you can’t tell from my hair I had kind of a hardcore emo phase.”
“Yeah no shit,” Dan says, brushing his own fringe down across his forehead. “Miss J hates it, she’s always making me put it up but I’m like hey it’s fucking .. emo discrimination that’s what it is.”
“Messed up,” Phil says, shaking his head. “As if us emos haven’t gone through enough, you know? First MCR breaking up, and now this.”
Dan opens his mouth to reply, but is interrupted by the door to backstage opening, and a very pretty girl with shiny black hair running out, dressed in a blue hoodie overtop a shimmering lavender tutu.
“Dan, there you are! Miss J’s going ballistic, we’re starting in ten and you need to be in costume.”
Dan rolls his eyes.
“Hi, Asuka. I’m not on till the battle scene, I don’t see what the rush is. Guaranteed that’s not going to be for at least another hour.”
“And I’m not even in the first act,” Asuka says, “but they want to do photos and all that.”
“Fine, tell her I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Okay,” she says, turning and disappearing through the double doors again.
“Sorry,” Dan says, turning back to Phil, “Can’t disobey a direct command from the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
“Guess not,” Phil says.
“Well, sorry again — and hope you enjoy the coffee, I’m not sure what you like so I got some horrific caramel thing that the barista said was good.”
“That actually sounds great,” Phil says, “I have a huge sweet tooth.”
“Thought you might,” Dan replies, smiles again and then heads back towards the door, leaving Phil standing with his coffee between the wings.
After about ten seconds Phil blinks himself back to reality and takes a sip of the coffee. It is quite good, sugar and all. After about a minute PJ sidles back up to him, and Phil suddenly remembers that he is at work.
“Did you know him?” PJ asks, jerking his head at the coffee.
“No, we just met — he spilled the mop bucket everywhere earlier.”
“Funny,” PJ says, “I’ve never seen you talk like that to a stranger before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you usually, you know, clam up. I don’t think I heard you speak for the whole first month we worked together.”
Phil doesn’t quite know what to say to this, so he just shrugs, possibly proving PJ’s point further.
“You better take your break now before Steve catches you drinking that back here,” PJ adds, and so Phil scoots across the stage, down the steps to the side and spends the next ten minutes sitting at the back of the house with the lighting designer Ari, nodding occasionally as she describes her plans for the various scenes and sipping coffee, a curious lightness floating through his head all the while.
Tech rehearsal begins, predictably, with three missed cues and the dancer playing one of the wind-up dolls falling very dramatically when attempting a cartwheel during the party scene. Phil spends most of the first half of act one running around stage left, attempting to locate props that have been left in the most random of places by the thirteen-year-olds of the cast, and trying to figure out just what the plot of the Nutcracker is. He knew that a doll is somehow involved, and thought he had heard something about different kinds of candies, but all that has come up so far is just a bunch of people in Victorian dress and a few of the smaller girls running around backstage in what appear to be mouse costumes.
Phil is so busy running around trying to write down the correct music and lighting cues for later that night that he fully misses Dan’s entrance in the battle scene, which Phil has gleaned consists of an army of little girls wearing mouse costumes fighting an army of little girls wearing toy soldier costumes set to very loud music.
Out of the corner of his eye Dan is leaping around the stage, adorned in a giant, boxy, nutcracker head, fighting with a large sword. There’s another missed cue, and Ari is hissing in his ear that the lights were supposed to be up by now, it’s almost the transition scene and then all of a sudden the evil mouse king has been stabbed by the nutcracker’s sword, and the nutcracker, wounded, limps offstage as Phil pulls down the lights to a simple spot. Standing in stage right, he suddenly feels arms on his back and turns to see the dark outline of Dan.
“Quick,” he hisses, “the hat, get the hat off.”
Phil reaches up, grabs the top of the nutcracker head and Dan backs up, yanking the hat off his head. Phil barely glances at Dan — cheeks red and hair mussed up, before he turns, running a hand through his hair as he runs back onstage. Phil places the head on the props table, and then watches from the wings as Dan, the nutcracker prince turned back into a human, spins and lifts Clara, and he is close enough to see the sweat still sticking the edges of Dan’s fringe to his forehead.
The partnered dance comes to a close as Dan takes Clara’s hand, leading her off the stage as Phil pulls up the icy blue lights of the snow scene. The wings are now crowded with a gaggle of teenage girls in long, white fluffy costumes, stretching their arms and bouncing up and down before running one at a time on tiptoe onto the stage.
Phil is kept busy keeping track of the whirling dancers, and double checking that the sleigh and snow machine are set to whirl right at the end of the song. He kneels down on stage left, ready to start pushing the large wooden sleigh out to the stage, Dan and Kimmie, the girl playing Clara, sitting on the wooden bench.
“Alright, sleigh on my mark,” says the voice of Steven in his ear. Phil braces his shoulder against the wooden runner.
“Go for sleigh,” Steve says. Phil pushes, the sleigh sliding out on concealed wheels, just to the edge the curtain where he can still be hidden. He watches as a machine whirs to life above him, dispensing a torrent of soap bubbles from the ceiling that from the audience surely look like snow. They are sticking on the arms of the dancers still onstage, patterning onto the black stage, sticking right onto Dan’s hair, covering the whole scene in beautiful, swirling white.
The sleigh moves slowly across the stage, as Steve dims the lights and PJ pulls the ropes to shut the curtain, which sweeps softly across the front of the stage and throws everyone into darkness. A moment later, flourescent lights pop on, and there is a loud jumble of voices. Dan is stepping out of the sleigh, shaking his head, which is still adorned in a myriad of tiny soap bubbles. To Phil’s surprise, Dan jogs over to the wing where Phil is still crouching and holds out a hand.
“Thanks again,” he says, pulling Phil to his feet. “Hey, you guys get a dinner break, right?”
“Yeah,” Phil says, “around 5.”
“Me too,” Dan says, “I gotta go change for act two, but after rehearsal would you want to go grab some food? There’s a good Chinese place just around the corner.”
“Okay, then,” Phil says, a smile creeping on his face as Dan turns and hurries off towards the double doors to backstage.
The second act passes so quickly that Phil thinks they may have skipped a few scenes. He is tasked mostly between running through the dark hallway from stage left to stage right in order to make sure the lighting cues are happening at the correct times, but at least the lighting is only really changing once per scene, and though the scenes are short they are all distinct enough that Phil can keep them straight in his head. There’s a slight mishap with the fog machine, which spills a huge puddle of water through the back of stage right, and Phil has only just finished cleaning it up to watch Dan’s big part.
It’s called the pas de deux, which Ari informs him over the crackling headset, and then tasks Phil to watch and pay careful attention so that they can know which moves come right before the cues for lighting changes. This Phil does easily, he watches Dan, now dressed in an embroidered white and gold tunic and white tights which make his legs strech seemingly infinitely, and Asuka, who has ditched the blue hoodie, spring and turn around the stage with seemingly no effort. In one stunning moment, Asuka runs from the corner of the stage towards Dan who, with one hand, catches the base of her stomach and lifts her straight above his head, revolving slowly as Asuka extends her arms and legs like a graceful butterfly.
Phil is sure that he is supposed to be watching the girl, but he watches Dan instead in this moment, who is standing tall, eyebrows furrowed, staring upward at Asuka with a look of intense concentration. Phil can see the muscles in his shoulder flexing, and though he is so slender the way he lifts Asuka makes it look as if she hardly weighs anything at all. Through all this, his other arm is extended downward, and Phil is sure that if he was seeing this from farther away, Dan would look relaxed. And then, with a slight bending of his elbow, Dan suddenly tosses Asuka upward, she tucks her arms and legs together and spins in the air, causing Phil to actually gasp out loud before Dan catches her, swooping her downward towards the floor until they stop, Asuka’s outstretched arm inches from the stage, one pointed foot extended upward beyond Dan’s head. Phil remembers his cue a moment later and quickly dims the lights as the music fades, and there is a scattering of applause from both of the wings.
Dan and Asuka run offstage, and Phil sees both of them collapse onto the floor next to him, breathing hard. After a few moments they stand back up, Dan pulling Asuka to her feet and then they high-five.
“Not bad,” Dan says in a carrying whisper.
“Yeah,” Asuka says, “I think it was okay, sorry for stepping on your toe.”
“No problem,” Dan says, “just try not to do that tonight.”
“I’ll do my best,” she says.
After rehearsal Dan finds Phil backstage, clad once again in his sweatshirt and sweatpants, though still with an odd, sweaty layer of foundation over his face. He motions to Phil, who pulls on his coat and lets Dan lead him down the hallway out of the stage door. The blast of cold, windy air hits him in the face.
“Don’t you need a coat?” He asks Dan.
“Feels good,” Dan says, “besides, we’re just going right there.”
The Chinese restaurant around the corner turns out to be literally thirty feet away, so Dan and Phil sprint across the parking lot of the theater, giggling, until they push open the door to the restaurant, the warm air rich with the scent of fried rice and egg rolls wafting into Phil’s nose.
They sit across from each other at a small table, knees bumping together underneath.
“They really don’t make these things for tall people,” Dan says, laughing slightly as he pulls off his sweatshirt and hangs it over the back of the chair.
“No kidding,” Phil says, “I think these tables were made by the people that invented airplane seats.”
“Don’t even get me started on those,” Dan says, “I actually have to sit with my knees, like, under my chin.”
They split an obscenely large order of fried rice and kung-pow chicken.
“So,” Dan says, mouth half full of rice, “d’you have a boyfriend?”
Phil blushes and sputters a little at this, but thankfully stops himself from doing a full spit-take. He shakes his head.
“How –“ he asks but Dan just grins.
“I’m a guy who does ballet, my gaydar is amazing. Besides, most of the stage crew guys spend the entire time trying to avoid looking at my ass when I’m in tights.”
Phil thinks his face might actually be the color of a tomato.
“That’s probably a perk of the job,” Phil manages to say. “Are most of the guys gay?”
Dan shrugs.
“Probably like three-quarters of them.” He pushes some rice around on the table with his fork. “That was the hard bit about keeping on with this, you know. My dad didn’t want me to do it at all cause I guess he thought too many people thought I was gay already.”
Phil frowns at this.
“My dad had a bit of a hard time as well,” he says. “Kept buying me power tools. He came around to it when I was in uni, though.”
“Well, I guess the power tools did come in handy, with doing stage crew, right?”
Phil laughs at this.
“I’m technically the assistant lighting director,” he says. “I just do other odd jobs cause our crew is really small right now. The actual set builders don’t let me near the power tools, I think I’d actually like, burn the whole theater down.”
“That’s fair,” Dan says. “I’m bad enough with the sword I have to use with this thing, god forbid you give me something that’s actually sharp.”
“But you’re so .. coordinated,” Phil says.
Dan shrugs.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It just makes sense to me. I’ve been dancing since I was pretty little, my nan used to take me to lessons, said I would be the next Baryshnikov. It was the only way I got out of my hometown.”
“Where’s that?”
“Winnersh,” Dan says, the word seeming to curl a frown into his mouth. “It’s like, three carparks and a sheep field. I’m like ninety percent sure I was the only gay person for like, twenty miles. But I came out to Manchester when I was fifteen to train here – I nearly dropped out of sixth form, I’m kind of hopeless at that stuff.”
“That stuff like, school?”
“I guess, yeah. I don’t know, dancing was a way that I could meet other guys who were, you know, like me, but they were also cool and respected. And I love being onstage. I can’t help it, it’s weird like I feel like I’m a pretty introverted person but there’s something about stepping out onto the stage in front of people – it’s like I can be anything I want, give them anything, and I don’t even have to sacrifice who I really am.”
Phil takes a drink of his soda and Dan blinks a few times, looking surprised.
“Wow,” he says. “Sorry for dumping my entire life story on you. I don’t normally do that.”
“That’s okay,” Phil says. “Maybe I just have one of those faces.”
“Yeah, maybe you do,” Dan says. “So what’s your story?”
Phil spends the rest of the dinner chatting back and forth about his uni days, different bars in Manchester, a few funny stories about things going horribly wrong on past sets, until Dan’s phone dings a few times and he looks at it in alarm.
“Shit,” he says, “we gotta get back, Miss J’s gonna kill me if I’m late again.”
They bundle back in their coats and take the parking lot, now dark and even colder, at a run. They crack open the stage door and Dan turns to Phil, opening his mouth maybe to say goodbye.
“Break a leg,” Phil says.
Dan leans forward, and suddenly presses his cold lips to Phil’s. It’s a quick, fleeting kiss, and before Phil can even react Dan is hurrying down the hallway towards the dressing rooms.
The crowd assembles on the other side of the curtained stage, grumbling like some many-headed beast. Seemingly still not immune to opening-night jitters, Phil runs back and forth, speaking quietly into his headset as the Chinese food rolls uncomfortably in his stomach. On his brief forays to the backstage area he finds it a sea of nervous and excited preteens, all half-dressed in outlandish costumes and bright stage makeup. He sees Dan a few times, once in a chair with a woman applying strangely dark eyeliner, once with Asuka motioning through their steps, but never with enough time for either of them to talk.
And then, so quickly that Phil once again suspects some kind of time slippage, the house lights are dimming and he is pulling the rope to sweep the red curtains gently open, and the opening notes of the Nutcracker suite are echoing through the theater.
The opening scenes go off wihtout a hitch. Phil’s copious note-taking during the dress rehearsal seem to have paid off, as the lights come on and go off at the same time, never leaving a dancer awkwardly spinning in darkness. This time Phil is ready for when Dan comes barreling offstage, and helps pull the large head off. Dan reaches out to grasp a sweaty hand in Phil’s every so briefly before rushing back onstage.
Intermission for Phil is spent setting the backdrop for the Kingdom of Suites, and for Dan it is being photographed holding Asuka by a tall woman with a large and fancy-looking camera. The second act begins, the fog machine still spilling water but now with a clutch of towels underneath it to stem the flow, and then the parade of various sweets begins.
Phil mans the lighting changes for the various dances of the Kingdom of Sweets – vibrant red and orange for Spanish chocolate, light yellow for Chinese tea, dim and blue-tinged for Arabian coffee and so on. In fact, by the time of the pas de deux he is relaxed enough to sit on a folding chair to watch Dan and Asuka dance.
It happens quickly, right near the end. Dan stumbles slightly to the side, then rights himself immediately, but Phil, who has been watching intently, notices this. He notices the way Dan’s right ankle bent, and the way that during the lifts for the rest of the dance Dan stays squarly on his left leg, his right slightly pushed out to the side, not bearing much of the weight. Phil stands, feeling suddenly nervous in his stomach. Dan is not smiling onstage, and there’s not much left now, just the giant lift and then the lights will drop and the final scene of the ballet will start. With his hands hovering over the control for the lights, Phil waits with bated breath as Asuka runs towards Dan, but then instead of the large lift she springs into the air, twirling around Dan while holding onto the tip of his finger, he reaches to grab her waist and spins her around five or six times in quick succession, and then they end with Asuka pointing her leg behind her to the sky, Dan still balancing on his left foot. Phil drops the lights to thuderous applause.
In the dark, Dan stumbles into Phil’s arms and they are both suddenly tangled in the fabric of the wings. He’s breathing hard, and cleches Phil’s wrist tightly. Asuka is just behind him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you okay?” she hisses, “come on, back here, we have about three minutes.” She tugs at Dan’s other arm, and due to Dan’s grip on his wrist, Phil is pulled along too, back through the double doors and into a small and bright dressing room, cluttered with bottles of makeup and piles of clothing and smelling strongly of hairspray. Dan and Phil plunk down onto an overstuffed brown couch as Asuka, sweat beading around her forehead and still breathing hard, dashes back out of the room.
“Do you want me to get someone?” Phil asks tentatively. Dan’s eyes are closed shut, and he’s holding his right foot slightly off the ground.
“No, just – sorry, can you just stay?”
“Yeah, of course,” Phil says, putting his other hand over Dan’s. Dan loosens the grip on his wrist and grips his hand instead. Somehow, this feels familiar.
Asuka returns with an icepack, and Miss J hurries in behind her with a roll of ace bandages. They descend on Dan’s right ankle in a flurry, pulling up his tights and poking the areas that are beginning to swell and then banadaging.
“I think it’s just a sprain,” Miss J says, “as you can still walk on it, there’s just the final scene left, do you think you’re up for it?”
“Yeah,” Dan says, gripping Phil’s hand tighter but not looking at him, “yeah I think so.”
“Okay,” Miss J says, “why don’t you and Asuka and – who are you?” She asks, suddenly noticing Phil sitting on the couch next to Dan. Phil jumps. He begins to say “I’m no one –“ just as Dan says “he’s helping.”
Miss J waves one hand, “alright, well all three of you back, now. We’re almost done and then we’ll look at it again.”
Dan nods, as he stands, testing his weight on the ankle and wincing slightly. Asuka takes Dan’s other hand and the three of them walk backstage in tandem. Onstage, the groups of girls dressed as candies have taken back to the stage in a final procession. Dan gives Phil’s hand one final squeeze before stepping out to join them.
After the show has ended, and Phil has pulled the final curtain shut to a standing ovation, after Dan and Asuka, holding bouqets of flowers, have broken from their circle of admirers, Phil finds Dan back in his dressing room, dressed again in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, right ankle thrown up over a chair and covered in an ice pack.
“Hey,” he says, as Phil comes in the room.
“You know,” Phil says, “when I said to break a leg, I didn’t actually mean it.”
“Come off it,” Dan says, but he’s grinning.
“You’re okay, then?”
“I think so,” Dan says. “Miss J’s making the understudy go on tomorrow, but I should be good for next weekend if I stay off it.” He grimaces at the thought.
“Good to hear,” Phil says. “I just thought I’d check in, I guess I will see you next week then!”
“What, you’re leaving?”
“Should I not?”
Dan’s tilted his head slightly sideways, and grins at Phil with a dimpled smile.
“There’s a nice pub just around the corner.”
“I thought you were supposed to stay off your ankle.”
“You can piggyback me,” Dan says. “Come on, then.”
In the end, Phil does really piggyback Dan. They crash through the backstage hallway and burst out into the frigid night air. Outside, the sky is clear and twinkling with stars, and Phil’s breath fogs out of his mouth as he begins to walk up and around the corner, following shouted directions from Dan.
“You know, I once broke my hand doing this,” he says.
“What? That’s a terrible thing to say while you’re piggybacking me!”
“No, it’s okay, I was the one being piggybacked at the time.”
“Well what happened?”
Phil grins and begins to launch into the story. They continue down the block, passing under blocky orange streetlights and across cobbled streets, Dan’s arms wrapped warm around his chest and laughter close to his ears.