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60 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

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Nutcracker Tech Call Sheet

Hey Folx~

Welcome to tech crew for this year's production of The Nutcracker! 

For those of you I haven’t met– I’m Deb, I’ll be the Stage Manager and your general point of reference for the next couple months. I’m a Senior on the SM track, so if you have any questions just lmk~ I’ve pretty much done Every Single Techie thing you can think of at this point lmao.

Hopefully on the first day I can everyone’s phone # and we can make a group chat, but for now feel free to email me here or text me. (I’ll leave my # below along with the Director and Mrs. Joanne’s emails if you have any questions/concerns)

Our first scheduled meeting is going to be this next Wednesday (10/18) at 6:45 PM in the West Hall theatre. Just go to the auditorium, I’ll find you. 

BTW: If you’ve never been there, it’s the brick-front theatre right by that dining hall that doesn’t serve anything but cereal and shitty rice bowls. (So~ I’d prepare yourselves to pack food if you want something edible on breaks lmao.)

Linked below is a Google Calendar, right now we’ve just got our set rehearsal days and tech week/performance, but keep an eye on it. They’ve already been rehearsing for a month atp, so things usually change pretty quick as it all starts to pick up. 

Looking forward to working with you guys!

Deb ~ she/they

Attachments - 3

Contact Sheet   Google Calendar   Teching a ballet 101 cheat sheet :-p

---

Stephanie Lauter’s mother used to love ballet.

She’d danced as a kid, started small, and then quit right after high school. (Not for any tragic reasons; she wasn’t, like, about to go pro or to got into Julliard, and then marriage or a surprise pregnancy got in the way. 

She’d just stopped. Went to school for something more practical.)

She’d really tried to get Steph into it as a kid, but she’d just never taken to it the way her mom had. She took one class when she was, like, four, and then it got thrown away in her childhood rotation of abandoned hobbies. Ballet, Soccer, Softball, Gymnastics, Swimming, Cheer. 

Honestly, Steph just found the whole thing boring. The music, the dancing, the rules you had to follow if you were the one doing it. Just. Bleh.

She’d only ever actually seen two ballets in her entire fucking life, and she doesn’t remember shit from either of them. 

When she was eight her parents had dragged her to a fancy New York City Ballet production of… Giselle or some shit while on vacation, because it was her mom’s favorite. Steph had drifted off into her Dad’s suit jacket sleeve before intermission.

And then, in high school, she’d weaseled her way into an arts department field trip to the Grand Rapids Ballet’s version of some Shakespeare adaptation, that the theatre department was also putting on as a play later in the year. She’d just gone to get out of class, so she hadn’t even tried to stay awake for that one. 

All in all, none of that shit really bode well for her next three months of required Ballet Tech-ing. 

It wasn’t even something she was supposed to have to do, but, well, random ass credits are sort of just par for the course when you only declare your major by your Junior Year. 

Honestly, she’s just glad her Admin had been able to work something out (and less glad about the suitable contribution from her dad’s wallet that it took to get her to work it out). Apparently, a ‘practical production’ credit was something the Media Studies degree required before the end of Sophomore year, for some stupid fucking reason. 

Steph still doesn’t get why shit like that needs a timeline shorter than four years. (Though… maybe she shouldn’t be one to talk on timelines. She’s the bitch who remained undeclared until it was literally a threat to her enrollment.)

So, Steph’s only options had been ‘pick a different major’ or ‘tech a physical production during the fall/winter semester’. 

And, well, fuck her but she wasn’t about to waste the week of research it’d taken to find the easiest major available that didn’t make her want to blow her brains out from it’s very concept.

So. The Nutcracker it was.

Ugh, Bleh, Etc…

She double checks her email as she walks to the west side of campus, weirdly nervous in a way new things don’t usually make her. 

If she had to guess, she’d assume it was how fucking little she knows about what she’s walking into. It’s not like Steph has ever been a theatre kid.  

She barely knows what teching even is past, like, a baseline Google search before she signed up, and then a secondary Reddit search when she realized she didn’t really trust Google to be honest about how much this was gonna suck.

Maybe it’s not nerves. Maybe she’s just sort of waiting for an e-mail from her advisor telling her ‘actually, no, I misread the major requirements, you don’t need to work on this stupid ballet’.   (It’s not coming. She’s already tried too hard to find a way out of it for her to really hold out any hope, but still, just, like, imagine? That’d fucking rule.)

At least the stage manager, Deb, seems cool. She’d stalked her on Instagram last night, and if she’s gonna be stuck wasting her nights painting sets or whatever, she’s glad there’s going to be one confirmed person there that she’d be willing to get stoned with afterwards.

Steph shoulders open the door to the theatre. There’s a couple on campus, she’s pretty sure, but she’s only been to the biggest one where they hosted bands and speakers and shit. This one is smaller. 

She wonders if that’s a dance thing, smaller venues for, like, artistic reasons, or they just got shafted because no one cares about ballet anymore. If she cared even at all she thinks she’d get all righteous angry about it, just as a distraction; but she doesn’t, so she can’t.

There are already people on stage when she drags herself into the auditorium. 

(Which… actually sort of surprises her, for some reason.

She knows Deb mentioned that the dance side of shit had been rehearsing for a while already in her initial email, but still. When Steph had been picturing this this whole thing, the idea of actually, like, interacting with fucking ballerinas hadn’t been part of it. At least, not immediately.

She’s pretty sure something somewhere had mentioned a ‘during performances’ part of her involvement when she was signing up, but she’d just assumed before then everything would be generally separate.

Maybe that was stupid, and really, it doesn’t fucking matter, but she still feels thrown off.)

(And half glad that she’s figuring it out now, instead of looking like a fucking dumbass in front of actual people.)

She sinks into one of the seats all the way in the back row, pulling her phone out. It’s not like she’s early; the actual tech shit should start soon. So, until then, she’s going to waste as much time as she possibly can scrolling on Twitter.

Or, she’s planning to. She’s almost immediately distracted.

It’s kind of weird, she thinks, half still staring down at her phone as she pretends to not be watching the stage. Seeing a ballet before it’s all put together.

Even in her incredibly limited experience, everything just sort of blends together in a kind of fuzzy, glazed over couple of hours of pretty. If they’d ended up actually being anything else, she’d fallen asleep by then.

This isn’t like that. She has no fucking clue what part of the show it is, obviously. Even if they’d been full out performing, Steph still doesn’t know jackshit about The Nutcracker, but the music, coming sort of staticky out of a speaker, is all bright and non-descriptly bouncy. 

None of the dancers are in costumes, just a crowd of slicked back buns and muted colored leotards. Plus one lanky guy in the middle, breaking the pattern in a white t-shirt and black tights. Like, only tights. Which is… wild. 

Everyone on stage looks way more like actually, real college students, and, okay, she probably should stop saying ‘weird’ but it’s the only word that fits. It’s weird, even though she doesn't know why, exactly.

They restart a section of the dance. The director, a white haired dude in a turtleneck (which, actually, is the one part of this whole thing that is exactly how she pictured it) stands at the first row of seats, behind a table, slamming the beat into the face of it. BANG-BANG-BANG.

Steph is… genuinely sort of impressed at how well the dancers seem to be ignoring it. She doesn’t think she’d be nearly as focused leaping into the fucking air with a grown man BANG-BANG-BANG-ing at her.

It’s just, like, straight up remarkable. Even if this isn’t her thing she can admit it. Especially the guy, though, he might just be drawing focus because he’s one million feet tall.

Well, that and the fact that he keeps jumping way too high and then immediately scooping up and entire person to do a lift or some shit.

About halfway through-- Steph’s assuming, she doesn’t fucking know-- the slamming stops. BANG-BANG-silence.

“Spankoffski!” The director-- Hidgens, she suddenly clicks together from Deb’s email, snaps sharply enough that Steph actually, blatantly, looks up from her phone to pay attention.

The music keeps going just a second too long, as everyone freezes. And then, abruptly, it stops.

The guy in the middle steps forward a little.

“Tell me, Spankoffski. Are you happy to be dancing with beautiful women or do you want to kill them? Because I can’t tell!” He throws his hands up, with a scoff that is… an absurdly blatant threat for something coming from the mouth of an administrator, “I honestly can’t!”

Lanky guy-- Spankoffski, presumably (which, Jesus, that’s unfortunate), nods, mouth pressed flat.

“Well?” Hidgens seethes, with a false grin that’s… actually kind of terrifying, and she watches as realization shudders across Spankoffski’s face. A resigned level of annoyance, and discomfort at this, apparently, not being over, yet, “Do you want to murder them? Is that what you're going for? Is it a character choice?” 

He swallows, visibly, “No.”

“No, what?”

“No… sir?” He says, sounding completely unsure of himself.

“NO!” Hidgens slams his hands flat on the table in front of him, “No, you aren’t trying to murder them?”

“No. I’m, um,” Spankoffski laughs a little, painfully nervous sounding, “I’m not trying to… murder them.”

“Then act like it for once. God!”

“Right. Thank you. For the note.” 

The poor fuck nods with each word, hands twisted in the hem of his t-shirt like he’s physically trying to force this to end. She doesn’t blame him even a little bit. This is brutal.

“And for the love of Tchaicovsky,” Hidgens says, somehow getting louder, even as he leans to the side a little to pinch the bridge of his nose, “Extend your upstage arm fully during your cabrioles!”

He nods again, “Okay.”

“Alright. Alright!” The director claps, the sound cupped between his hands and echoing throughout the theatre. Spankoffski shrinks into his own shirt, “Lets go again, take it from the top!”

The music starts again just as soon as someone taps on her shoulder. She startles so hard that her backpack slides off her knees with a thud.

(None of the dancers react, but Hidgens whirls around to glare at her. Steph decides, through her embarrassment, that after what she just watched, she really doesn’t fucking want that man to be mad at her. Or, like, know she exists, really.)

Schooling her expression into something suitably chill, she shifts around, and presumably-Deb-if-Steph-stalked-the-right-Instagram Deb smirks at her, squatting behind her seat.

“Sorry, dude,” She snort-whispers, flicking a little two finger salute in her direction, “Steph, right?”

Steph salutes back, “Yeah, hey.”

She nods, approvingly, “You’re the only one who actually listened to my email. All the freshmen are just pacing a hole in the lobby.”

“I’m not a freshman,” Steph corrects, probably too intensely. 

“Yeah, I know,” Deb rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling so Steph swallows back her immediate defensiveness, “Ready to go?”

And, no. She’s not. Because Steph does not fucking want to be doing this in the first place. But she also wants to get kicked out of school even less. (Well… that’s debatable, actually.)

But, either way, she just nods, scooping up her backpack as quietly as she can.

“Sick,” Deb grins, and despite herself, Steph grins back, “Lets’go.”

–--

All things considered, Steph doesn’t actually think tech crew is going to be that miserable.

Only sort of. The way shit you don’t want to do always is.

It’d been a quick meeting; just a run through of stuff that’d been covered in the email with more detail and a couple of ice breaker games that the freshman took way too seriously.

Because, well, apparently Steph is the only goddamn person on the run crew other than Deb who isn’t, like, eighteen.  

It feels both weirdly humiliating and kind of reassuring at the same time. She doesn’t really have to give a shit, because this is the last pick show for tech crew majors. The one all the poor freshmen get stuck with because it runs over into Christmas break. 

Steph’s not really an optimist. It’s almost always more fun to complain about shit than just accept it as it is, but even she can admit that it’s all, honestly, way better than she was expecting.

Plus, she was right. Deb is cool.

She half-follows the tightly-knit gaggle of freshmen out of their meeting room. Two of them, arms locked together, whisper frantically back and forth in what, when one of them whirls back to face her with a nervous smile, Steph retroactively clocks as an argument. 

“Hey, Steph!” The one that turned says. 

She waits a moment, for the second half a sentence, but it doesn’t come. She scrounges around the back of her head for their name, but nothing comes up, so she just echoes back, “Hey.”

“We-- we were gonna go to that… that one bar right off campus that doesn’t card tonight. You know…?” They trail off, almost endearingly nervous-sounding, glancing back to their friend. Steph kind of wants to pat their head or some shit.

“I do know the one. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” They grin, “So, if, like, you wanted to come. You totally could.”

“Thanks,” Steph tries to make her voice sound as non-shitty as she can, but she literally can't think of anything she wants to do less than going to a dive bar crawling with first years right now, “But I’m all good.”

“Okay! Well… see you later!” They say, way too fast, whipping back around to their friend. The two of them turn the corner just as too-fast, giggling.

She rolls her eyes, feeling sort of like she’s in fucking high school again. That automatic, vaguely cringe feeling of knowing people are talking about you, but also, like, not in a way that actually matters.  

She can’t really blame them, it was sort of what she was expecting when she signed up for a thing she’s not involved in literally at all.

She takes a second, drifting deeper backstage to actually look at shit. She’s never been in the back of a theatre before, except for one time in high school when she’d been skipping her English class and hid up to smoke on the catwalk with her friends. And, back then she hadn’t really been paying attention to her surroundings.

It’s not particularly interesting, mostly just painted black brickwork and exposed strips of wiring. But scattered up the walls, in white and silver and gold Sharpie, are a bunch of signatures and dates. Scribbled big and small and loopy and spikey. 

KRAYONDER CLASS OF 2011 FTW, JACK B ‘14.  A.P-Z WAS HERE tiger fucker!!! , Candy <3 S.T.-2012.

She traces a neatly drawn dick underneath a scribbly ‘schwoopsie!’ that… she thinks is supposed to be a name. Maybe. There’s no date next to it.

“They’re old tech seniors,” Someone says behind her.

“What?” She swivels around. She hadn’t seen anyone back here-- and she immediately realizes why.

Stretched out in a full fucking split on the floor, turned to face her with chest completely flat over his extend front leg, is the guy from before. Spankoffski or some shit. 

He’s got a coffee thermos resting to the side of his foot, and he’s wearing sweatpants over his tights, alongside a quarter zip fleece over a zip up hoodie, like he’s fucking freezing in the stale heat of backstage somehow. 

(He’s also got glasses now, she clocks in the back of her head. A part of her wonders if he just dances, like, blind. Most of her doesn’t really care enough to ask.)

“The signatures? It’s a techie tradition. They all sign it after their last show senior year,” he explains, and then his eyes go a little big and he ducks his head, “Which, you probably already know. Because you’re… Sorry. You just seemed confused, but--”

“No, you’re fine,” She shrugs, turning to lean against the wall. Her back covering ‘schwoopsie’ and their, presumably, dick completely, “I was wondering.”

“Oh,” He nods into his own knee, which is… really weird to watch actually, “Good.”

He leans forward a little, hands coming to wrap around his foot, before he sits up, grabbing his thermos before walking his hands around so he’s completely facing her, legs out on either side. It’s kind of unsettling in a way that an infuriatingly annoying part of her finds slightly attractive. 

“So…” She hums, crossing her arms “The director is a total dickhead, huh?”

“Mmm?” He hinges forward, resting his chin on top of his cup, so he’s still looking up at her.

“He was being an asshole to you earlier for, like, no reason,” She elaborates, when he doesn’t stop looking confused, “You were incredible.”

“Oh,” He laughs, “Well… thank you. But, no. He’s right, I’m shitty at emoting when I dance. It’s a whole thing.”

She tilts her head, staring down at him. His eyes look weird and tiny behind his glasses. A snort bursts out of her before she can think about it, “Sorry, dude, but I have no clue what the fuck that means.”

“Right,” His ears go pink, like he’s embarrassed about something, though Steph isn’t all that clear on what, “Like… the actual performance aspect? I’m technically really solid, but I’m bad at acting? I guess?”

“Ah, got it,” She nods a little, letting her head rock back into the wall, “Well, I didn’t notice. So, still a dickhead.”

He laughs, a loud, surprised sound that bursts out of him like a trumpet. He collapses forward, folding his arms flat on the floor and burying his face into the cross of his elbows.

“Thank you,” He snorts, tilting his head half-up, “Again.”

“No problem,” She huffs, “... Spank… offski, right?”

He laughs again, shoving himself back so he’s sitting again, and sticking his hand up to her, correcting, “Pete.”

“Right,” That… makes way fucking more sense. She grabs his hand, kind of wanting to laugh at the weird formality of a fucking handshake with a dude in a full split, “Steph.”

---

bitches (non-derogatory)

You

survived day 1 of ballet hell  💀

stacy 💝

OMG ur literally so brave 🤩💕😽

brenda 💙

We should get fucked up in my dorm to celebrate

brenda 💙

Quick drive 11 hours to my school NOW

You

do not fuckin tempt wme w a good time rn

Kyle

STAY STRONG 😤😤😤😤

Jason

Wait r u fucking dancing in a ballet now??? Wtf??

You

dude no

brenda 💙

Omfg she has to be on the tech crew for class we’ve literally been OVER THIS

Kyle

DUDE this is why u cant ignore our FACETIMES 😤

Jason

Sorry??? Im BUSY??

You

wow jay just say u hate us and go alredddy

stacy 💝

Okayyyy but how was it!!!!!!!! 🙀

You

fine lmao

You

everyown else is fuckinfreshamne tho

You

so like kill me

stacy 💝

EW

brenda 💙

how much u wanna bet stephy is about to be a bunch of theatre bbs sexuality crisises

Jason

Theyre 100% gonna ask u to buy them beer LMAO

You

no STRAIGH UP they literally just invited me 2 a bar

brenda 💙

STEPH THEYRE GONNA TRY AND FUCK U

brenda 💙

DO NOT GIVE IN BITCH

You

ye i DONT think thatll be a problem

54 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

Steph yawns, knocking her head gently into the side of the lockers all the way in the back of the Theatre building. 

She’s not actually all that tired, just foggy-headed and bored and half listening. She hadn’t gone to her classes this morning (knowing she’d be staying late for tech was shaping up to just be way too good of an excuse-- not that she needs one), and staying in her dorm all day starting Twitter fights for the hell of it always leaves her feeling perpetually half-awake. 

It’s not a feeling she likes that much, it gets frustrating when she actually has shit to do.

(Not like that'll get her to stop doing it, or anything. It’s just, like, a fact. Rotting in bed makes her brain mushy.)

Over the heads of the way more attentive freshman, she absently watches as Deb squats down to unlock a padlock of what looks like an indoor garage door. She’s sure she explained what the fuck it was before, but Steph hadn’t cared enough to listen, and so she’s not really going to care enough to worry about it.

With a flourish that’s a little too genuine to be anything but bizarrely cool-looking, Deb rolls the door up, the metal slamming into place along the ceiling. (Okay. Cool. Fully just a fucking garage door, then.)

“Alright, folks,” She steps back, letting them actually get a look into space. A big, open room lined with precariously stacked boxes and tarp covered sets,“Welcome to the Chop.”

One of the freshmen, Matt, Steph thinks, because he referred to himself in the third person one time while waxing poetic about his high school tech-crew based epiphany, immediately shoots a hand into the air.

“Yeah?”

“I thought the Chop Shop was in the real--” He bites down on his lip, correcting himself, “Just, like, in the big theatre.”

“Nice catch,” Deb snorts, relaxing back against the now open doorway. For, not the first time in like… literally three days, Steph can’t help but admire how fucking chill she is, no matter how obnoxious the baby techies are. 

(Which is less than they could be, as far as freshmen go, but still more than Steph would have the patience for.)

Deb dips her head towards probably-Matt, “But, yeah, sort of. The Chop Shop is in the main theatre. This one’s just the Chop, ‘cause it’s smaller.”

“Oh,” He blinks, and then smiles, “That makes sense. That’s funny.”

“I know, right?” She smirks, gesturing for them to shuffle inside, “C’mon.”

Steph crosses her arms loosely, pretending she also knows why that’s funny as she pushes off the locker to follow everyone in. 

(It’s something kind of unexpectedly embarrassing about this shit; at least the freshmen are actual theatre tech majors who know what they’re doing, or, like, what they’re supposed to be doing. 

Steph knows why. It’s not like anyone actually expects the last minute, Credit-grabbing Media Studies major to know what she’s doing here, and if anyone was a dick about it she’d tell them just as fucking much, but still. She feels way too old, like, in comparison, to be this out of her depth.)

“Okay,” Deb claps, loud and crisp sounding in the contained space, before lazily pointing her thumbs back to one side of the room, “Nutcracker is a little different than other productions, ‘cause we do it every year, so it’s all pretty tracked. We just gotta get it out.”

All the freshmen nod, so Steph nods, too.

“So, leave sets alone, for right now,” She pauses after that, pointedly staring down the whole line, like it’s a sentence with a story behind it. If it is, she doesn’t give one, just sweeps deeper into the half of the room she’d pointed out a second ago, “We’re just grabbing boxes, today. Anything on this side with red spike tape on the side is good to go. Just grab and stack shit in the workroom, and we’ll go from there. Got it?”

“Got it,” Everyone echoes back, out of sync. Well, everyone except Steph. She takes too long to process that they’re all saying it, and by that point she’d just sound stupid if she tried.

There are… a lot of boxes. 

Steph tries, really she does, to actively to search them out for a little bit, but it becomes clear real fucking quick that all she’s doing is getting in the way. 

Everyone else is way too goddamn efficient, snatching up clear-sided bins without even looking at the tape on top like they know what's already supposed to be inside, and pushing full stacks of boxes with all their body weight into the hallway.

She self-assigns herself the role of pack mule pretty easily; just grabs bins as people bring them out and walks them over to the room. Back and forth and back and forth. Tedious and easy and boring. Shit she can do with her head all cotton-y and unfocused.

It’s sort of funny, honestly, the way everyone keeps thanking her and smiling, like she’s literally not stealing the job that takes the least amount of brain power on purpose. 

Back-and-forth. 

Back-and-forth. 

Back-and-forth.

Her phone buzzes in her back pocket as someone hands her a crate full of what look like sparkly styrofoam balls stuck on pipe cleaners, and she awkwardly maneuvers it into one arm so she can pull it out. 

It’s nothing, a Snapchat notification from a group chat she usually ignores, but for some reason it snaps her out of her busy-work fog to see it. And suddenly, if she does not take a break and hit her vape in the next five seconds she’s going to just straight up go home.

She slams the bin onto the floor of the work room, hand automatically sneaking up to her pocket.

And then, for some reason, she hesitates.

She side-eyes Deb, whose hunched over across the room, stacking up crates full of fake Christmas tree branches that would probably make more sense if Steph knew shit about The Nutcracker.  

And, okay, like, Steph’s fully fucking aware that Deb smokes (she would have been even if she hadn’t seen her socials, just fucking look at her) but still. There’s this weird middle place when it comes to asking if she can take a smoke break from someone technically in charge of her. 

Not that she’s not going to, for some reason she’s not totally sure of.

“Hey, can I--?” She inches her pen halfway out of her flannel pocket, tilting her head to finish the question.

“Oh, yeah,” Deb says, barely looking up at her, “Just not in here.”

“Cool,” She leans back on her heels, wondering, awkwardly, if she has to ask or if that was just blanket permission. 

Normally she’d just go, if she even bothered to ask in the first place, but it feels… dickhead-ish. Maybe it’s just that this whole thing feels way less like class requirement bullshit then she expected, so bailing when she’s supposed to be helping is less a fuck you to the educational system and more a fuck you to… like Deb, and Matt, and the rest of the freshmen whose names she doesn’t remember. (Alex is… one of them, she’s pretty sure, though she can’t remember which, and she heard someone call someone Erin in the Chop earlier. Whatever. She’ll figure it out later.)

Deb tilts her head up, with a clearly amused smile that should make Steph more embarrassed than it actually does, “Don’t take forever, dude.”

“Yeah, thanks,” She breathes out a sort-of laugh, “Be right back.”

“Yup.”

Which, like, that’s as much permission as she thinks she’s possibly getting, so she slips out into the hallway before an overeager freshman can figure out what's going on and try to join her.

As she steps into the hall, already pinning her pen in between her teeth, a tiny, well pushed down part of her brain reminds her that if she wasn’t supposed to vape in the room, she’s probably not supposed to vape in the theatre in general, but literally whatever.

It’s cold, and she’s not going outside unless the empty fucking hallway yells at her.

Oh. She blows down, trying to keep it semi hidden in the flap of her open flannel. Not empty, actually.

Pete, again, is on the floor, up against the wall with knees curled up against his chest. He’s got a to-go coffee cup pinned between them, his chin resting on the lid, eyes flicked down to an open laptop propped up sideways against his ankles. 

He’s typing faster than Steph’s literally fucking seen anyone type. Like he’s trying to punch a bunch of finger-sized holes through his fucking keyboard.

(Steph, absently, wonders if this dude just always sits like a freak. And then she wonders if thinking that makes her a bitch.) 

(She decides probably, but certainly less of one than if she said it out loud.)

“Hey,” She calls, tilting her vape towards him in an almost-wave.

Peter startles, laptop toppling backwards off his shins and closing top down on the floor with a clack. He blinks up at her like twelve times, just as fast as he’d been typing a second ago, “Hi?”

“Shit, man,” She huffs a laugh, but it comes out sounding guiltier than she means it to, “Sorry.”

“No, no, you’re good,” He waves an absent hand in her direction, but the casual-cool-guy vibe is kind of ruined by the way he scrambles for the laptop, snapping it open to check the screen. 

She tilts her head back against the wall, hoping she’s either being subtle enough, or he’s distracted enough for it not to be noticeable, trying to check too.

The screen is fine. Thank fuck. She’s really not sure what she’d do if she scared someone into breaking their entire laptop.

“Hey, you care if I--?” Steph dips her pen back in his direction.

“No, it’s… you’re okay,” He says like he doesn’t really mean it, but a yes is a yes. She’d done her part by asking, it’s not her fault if he’s a fucking liar. 

Steph takes a hit, blowing down the side of the hall away from him, like a probably still-pretty-shitty consolation. 

When she turns back, he’s staring at her.

“... yeah?”

He looks away immediately, grabbing his cup and taking a sip that, based on the way his entire face pinches into a grimace, is definitely way too fucking hot. 

She huffs a little, tapping her thumbnail against the bump of the pen’s charging port. Before she can think too hard about it, she offers it down to him, “Wanna hit?”

“Oh.” His head whips around, flicking down at it and then back up to her like she’d offered him a fucking knife, “No. Thanks.”

She nods, smiling around the mouthpiece as she inhales. It’d fully been the answer she was expecting, so she really doesn’t know why she bothered asking. It’d felt rude not to, she guesses, or, maybe it was just funnier to offer anyway. One of the two.

“I thought it was, like, in the ballerina code of conduct to smoke,” She teases, before she’s actually finished blowing out. It makes a hazy little cloud up from her mouth that dissipates almost immediately, but she flaps her hand through it anyway.

He rolls his eyes, “No, that’s actually a common misconception. Cocaine is way more efficient.”

A laugh startles out of her, unexpected and fast, “Oh, yeah? You doing a lot of cocaine these days, Pete?”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” He grins up at her, spreading the arm not holding his coffee out presentationally, “As you can see, I’m a perfect specimen--” He breaks a little, snorting, “Of a dancer.”

“Ah, right,” She nods, very seriously, doing a bad job of swallowing another laugh, “You don’t need it. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” He tilts his cheek down into the dip of his knees, so his smile gets smushed to the side and his glasses push out of place. 

Her stomach does a bizarre little backflip. 

“I should… probably get back,” She tucks her hair over her shoulder, absently tracing down her ear to make sure all her earrings are still there. (It’s a long standing habit, the kind she only picked up, like, one hundred lost earrings too late.)

“Okay,” Pete sits up, resettling his computer up against his legs. He tilts his head, eyebrows creeping together like he’s really thinking about something, before tacking on, “Have… fun?”

“Barely,” She scoffs, and then feels a tiny bit bad about it, for some fucking reason, “I mean, I’ll try. But no promises.”

“Good. Right. Well…” He lifts his cup towards her, like he’s giving a toast, and turns back forward. He sets it on the ground next to him this time. 

Steph gives him a close-lipped smile, even though she knows he’s not looking, and turns back into the theatre before she can bother being embarrassed about it. The rapid-fire clacking of his keyboard starts up again before she can even close the door behind her.

49 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

deb

deb

heyyyyy can i run smth by u?

You

shoot

deb

sick OK feel free to tell me to fuck off if im wrong BUT u dont… actually give a shit about tech right? its just a degree requirement 4 u?

You

this feels like a trap???

You

((but also i really dont literally no offense))

deb

figured + not a trap dw

deb

OK so were atp in the process where not everyone is needed to do everyTHING yk?

deb

sooo im assigning roles and i kinda wanna prioritize the freshies who wanna do this fr BUT i also trust u way more to do shit unsupervised

You

tracks sofar also thatsa wild amonut of unearned trust dude

deb

i can def 10000% put u on a reg track OR if u want~ i can throw u the like… easy but tedious shit 4 u to do on ur own while listening to music or whatever

deb

it wont be like everythinggg especially once we get closer to dec. ill need u for group stuff again BUT rn were in liminal tech land 4 the next week or 2 and it feels v best of both worlds solution

deb

hannah montana is all up in this bitch

You

actually that sounds fuckin inrceible lmaooooo

You

….like what tho

deb

like coiling wires/hunting down costume pieces/steaming/fixing random props

deb

so.,., boring but easy~~

You

did u kno i fucking love u??

deb

that a yes?

You

YES??

48 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

It’s late when Steph finishes her first ‘easy, boring shit, I don’t feel the need to supervise’ tech job from Deb. Like, really fucking late. 

Which, in fairness, is definitely more on her than the job itself. If Steph had been focused up, she’d probably have gotten it done in an hour or two. The actual task was easy as shit, just digging through bins full of costume pieces and sorting them out based on a pre-provided list. 

She just… took a break between every other weird fascinator hat and shiny packs of ribbon belts, and kept getting distracted by the video essay on all of Lindsay Lohan’s controversies that she’d been playing on her Laptop across the room.

Deb did say she could do it on her own time. She’s just also pretty sure Deb was severely overestimating Steph’s competence. 

Well, no. Fuck that. Steph did it. She just took four million years, and is leaving feeling weirdly defensive over it. Like, someone is actually accusing her of slacking off who isn’t actually here.

It’s always weird being in school buildings when they’re empty, all the auto-sensor lights having gone out and the echo-y there-ness of her own footsteps. It makes her feel fifteen again and rebellious in, like, the lamest way possible. Sneaking around somewhere she’s technically allowed to be, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

She slings her backpack over her shoulder, making her way around the back to leave, when something distracts her. (Again. She’s a fucking space case, today, jesus christ.)

Music. Bouncy and orchestral and, vaguely, familiar, leaks down the hallway. She rechecks the time on her phone, like somehow she misread it.

Nope. Still really goddamn late.

It’s probably hypocritical, she thinks, to wonder what the fuck someone is doing here, considering… She's also here, doing something, but still. Who the fuck is here?

She backtracks, following the muffled, rhythmic instrumentals into the auditorium. It’s not until she’s sneaking inside that she thinks, with a not insignificant level of dread, that it might be Hidgens. 

It’s not.

Pete’s up on the stage, his phone propped up against a little bluetooth speaker. He doesn’t seem to notice her when she comes in, too preoccupied with lifting an invisible partner and springboarding off the fucking stage like a bird taking flight or some shit.

‘It’s always this fucking guy, isn’t it?’ She thinks, less annoyed, or weirded out than she should be. The thought is almost fond, in a bizarre way. A soft edged, gentle kind of exasperation that the situation really hasn’t earned.

She should probably leave. She doesn’t. 

It’s a little hypnotizing, watching Pete dance. She’d sort of realized that the first day, when she’d caught half a second of their rehearsal, but it’s even more obvious now that he’s alone. 

It’s just so… perfect. Which, she thinks, should be boring. That’s what usually bothers her about ballet, how polished shiny and flawless it all is. But, Pete’s not dancing like he’s trying to look pretty, he’s dancing like he was built for it. Literally, like, mechanically, or something. And, it’s fucking fascinating.

All his motions are precise, and connected, and sharp. Like one of those watches where you can see all the pieces inside, turning together and clicking things into place, or those semi-horrifying videos, that always come up on her TikTok For You page at like two in the morning, of animatronics before they’ve covered up the machinery inside. 

Steph doesn’t know jackshit about dance, just that it’s an artform, and artforms are usually pretty goddamn subjective, but it feels like Pete’s somehow doing it correctly.

The music swells, and he sticks one of his mile long legs to the side, bringing it back behind him like he’s bracing himself. His whole body kicks into a turn, just as ramrod controlled as everything else he’s done. His arms, circled out in front of him, break apart, drifting up and then out in a thousand tiny, planned out micro-motions; their own mini-dance sequence inside of a bigger one. 

His leg sweeps down, gently stepping out of the spin. 

And then, he stands up, slouches inward to bury his face into his palms, and screams.

“FUCK!”

It’s so startlingly abrupt that Steph’s brain lags a second, before she realizes that can’t possibly be part of the dance. 

Pete drags his hands down his face, letting the music keep going on it’s own as he preps for another turn the same way he had before, leg to the side, to the back, and then whipping tightly around. He doesn’t even bother stepping out of it all pretty and slow this time, just jolts himself to a stop so fast he stumbles.

Steph moves forward half a step, like if he fell she could somehow catch him from the back of the room.

“Jesus christ,” He grits out. He’s got his back to the audience, head curled forward to his chest. His hands pushing down on the back of his neck like he’s trying to snap it off, “I’m never gonna get it.”  

Without even seeming to prep himself, he straightens, wobbling into another spin. Clumsier this time. Arms curled into his chest, and his heel bobbing visibly when he goes up onto his toes. 

He laughs, manic and desperate sounding, half-twirling into another rotation as he stops himself, “Holy shit, I’m literally never getting this!”

“Looked good to me,” She calls, not entirely sure of why. Just to say it, she guesses, because they had, even the ones he hadn’t been trying for. Her voice echoes weirdly across the auditorium. Like, it’s not supposed to be here. Like, it knows she’s clearly intruding just as much as she does.

Pete startles so hard she almost feels sort of bad.

“Fuck, oh my god,” Pete whirls around, before hunching down with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. She feels even closer to sort of bad. 

He tilts his head up, aiming a clearly forced, and painfully bewildered smile at her, “Hi? What?”

“That turn?” She shrugs, striding down the aisle so they’re not shouting, “I dunno, it looked pretty impressive to me.”

“It wasn’t,” he scoffs, straightening a little, “It was the completely wrong thing.”

“What’d’you mean?”

She folds her arms up onto the lip of the stage, resting her chin on top of them to look up at him. He stares at her for a long second, before plopping down into a criss-cross sitting position, gracelessly. All his poise or whatever, apparently, reserved for when he’s dancing.

He slaps around next to him for a second, smashing down a button on the side of his speaker so it stops playing.

“It’s the wrong type of pirouette,” He explains, annoyance barely contained, “I keep fucking up and doing the kind in my act one number in my act two.”

“There are multiple types of pirouette?” She asks, sounding too skeptical for a person who doesn’t know anything about what they’re talking about.

“Yeah!” Pete brightens, just the tiniest bit, “A couple, actually! It depends on which way you’re turning, and leg placement, and… you. Don’t actually care about that. Sorry.”

She doesn’t, but she also doesn’t like the way his whole body deflates into itself, so she tilts her hand out of the curl of her arms and knocks it into his knee, “Nah, I’m curious now. Which one can’t you do?”

“I can do them all!” He insists, defensively, “But I’ve just, so, okay, I’ve been doing the Toy Soldier routine literally since my Freshman year--” 

“Damn.”

“Yeah. But that one incorporates jazz pirouettes, instead of standard ballet ones. Which is… fine. It’s fine, it looks cool,” He starts picking at the elastic band of his ballet shoe, snapping it up and then back against his foot.

Steph nods, like any of that makes literally any sense to her.

“But now, I’m also in Hot Chocolate and… and that’s great! It’s one of my favorite sequences in the show, actually,” He blinks hard in time with another snap of his shoe band, like he’s physically resetting himself back on track, “But there are actual pirouettes, and I keep fucking them up, because I correlate this whole score with the jazz ones now.”

“Right,” She tilts her head into her shoulder a little, “I guess… is there really that big a difference? Because, like I said, that looked pretty fucking great to me.”

Pete huffs something that’s almost a laugh, “Thanks, but… no? It’s pretty distinctive, like, with foot placement. I mean, when I’m dancing alone it’s not that bad, but in a group it’d be more noticeable--”

“Show me.”

“What?”

She shoves her arms out, awkwardly worming up onto the stage next to him. He blinks down at her like she’s fucking insane. 

She smirks, “Show me the difference, Spankoffski. I’m a visual learner.”

“Oh… okay?” His cheeks go slightly red, and he smiles at her, crooked and blatantly nervous, “I mean. Like. With you? Or…”

“Sure,” Stephs snorts, deciding, apparently, that it’s too late in the night for actually thinking things through. 

“Okay. You gotta--” he nods down at her boots, “You gotta take those off, though. No street shoes on the marley.”

“Ugh, seriously?” She groans, mostly teasing, but Pete nods, evidently entirely serious.

“Yeah.”

“That’s so annoying, dude,” She kicks her feet up into the air, knocking the sides of the soles together with a thud, “It’s gonna take way too long.”

“They’ve got zippers on the sides,” He scoffs, “I think you’ll be okay.”

She laughs, loud and surprised and as mock-offended as she can make it, “Wow.”

“They do!” He grins, scooting back and watching, his knees bent up by his chest, as Steph tugs her shoes off.

“Happy?” She lifts them up to him presentationally, before tossing them off the edge of the stage and not bothering to look for which direction they bounce.

Pete just rolls his eyes, pushing himself standing so fast she barely realizes he’s doing it. 

He sticks a hand down to her, and a part of her considers not taking it, just to be an asshole. 

For some reason, though, she doesn’t think she wants this kid thinking she’s an asshole. So, she grabs his hand and lets him pull her standing.

“I’m gonna suck,” She warns.

“It’s ballet,” He deadpans, “It’d be crazy if you didn’t.”

“Fair.”

“Can I--?” He gestures stiffly down at her legs. Permission, in the vaugest sense, even though she’d already pretty much given it to him by asking. 

It’s cute.

“Go for it.”

“Okay,” he shoots another cautious smile her way, before kneeling down to adjust her footing, “Though, technically this is more kinesthetic learning.”

“What?”  

“Kinesthetic? It’s another learning type where you have to physically do the activity to learn it.”

“Yeah, okay,” She snorts, “Are we ballet-ing or what, dude?”

“Right,” He ducks his head, with a squeezed-tiny laugh, “Yes. Okay, a Jazz Pirouette is to the side, so, like…”

Pete’s hand steadies itself warm and flat against her hip, as he gently guides her ankle up until the side of her foot is against the side of her leg, knee forward. 

“Cool,” She wobbles, even with her other foot flat on the floor, “So, this is what you aren’t supposed to be doing?”

It’s awkward, not Pete guiding her, even though that should be too. Just the position. Her hips keep trying to tilt her knee out into a more comfortable position. She tries to picture spinning like this, and the only thing that comes to mind is when she was twelve and sprained her wrist bailing off her Penny Board. Yeah. Fuck that.

“Well, not in Chocolate.” 

He lets go, and her leg automatically folds out of position; swinging out like it’s wanted to, before she brings it back down to the floor.

“Yeah, I still don’t know what the fuck that means.”

He glances up at her, clarifying unhelpfully, “Like, the number?”

“I literally don’t know shit about The Nutcracker. That… the act two one, right?”

“Huh.” His expression twists almost shocked, like he’d never considered that was a possibility before. Someone not knowing The Nutcracker, “Yes, though. It’s in act two.”

He looks, for a second, like he’s about to launch into a complex explanation of the entire plot and themes of The Nutcracker ballet, so Steph, gently, kicks a socked foot against his shin. It’s way too late for that.

“What's the other one?”

“Right,” He blinks out of something, really solidifying her confidence that she just narrowly escaped a lecture, “So, with a regular pirouette, you kind of want your foot to start to curve under your knee, in passe. But not overcross.”

He looks up at her, questioning, before he actually reaches for her leg again. Silent confirmation. She nods, half wanting to tease him for being too careful, and half finding it way sweeter than she’d actually admit literally ever.

He guides her foot up to her kneecap, pushing her already out-facing knee back slightly. 

“Oh my god.”

She’s not sure why, but she’d thought it’d be more comfortable than the first way. Maybe because it’s where her leg had naturally wanted to fall, but it’s not. It’s, like, so fucking not. That sucks.

“Feel the difference?”

“Uh, no shit?”

He laughs, letting go of her leg, and standing up. She drops sloppily back to both feet. Steady and standing.

“You’re also supposed to be up in relevé, technically. For both of them,” He says, absently rocking himself up on his toes and back down again, “But that’s only when you’re actually turning.”

“Also don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“Oh. Right,” He raises up again, more on-purpose seeming this time, because he stays up there, “Like, tip-toes.”

“Wow. Nightmare.”

And she means it. That had been hard enough to balance, she can’t even fucking imagine doing it less steadily. Let alone turning.

But, because she’s stupid, and maybe a little curious, but mostly stupid, she brings her foot up again, pressing it to the side of her leg, lower than Pete had placed it, practically against her ankle, and tries. 

It immediately goes to shit. 

Her standing leg awkwardly buckles a little at the knee, like it’s trying to compensate for the way her weight shifts forward, whole body canting to the side before she can actually think it through enough to put her fucking foot down.

Her sock slips under the ball of her foot, and she mentally prepares herself to slam into the stage, arms stubborn and stupid at her sides as she panics over whether to try and catch herself or protect her head--

And then she stops falling.

Pete stares down at her, wide eyed and slightly-pink-cheeked, one arm curled firmly around her waist, as the two of them bend together in the world’s least elegant dip. His other hand sits awkwardly on her shoulder, nervously twisted in the neck of her hoodie.

“Holy shit.”  

“Are you okay?” He asks, voice tilted into a high enough pitch it almost squeaks. 

“Yeah, I-- yes.”

Suddenly, she registers in the back of her head quite how fucking sturdy Pete’s arm is around her. He’s supporting, like, 90% of her weight right now, and he’s not even wobbling. 

Strong and solid and entirely unexpected. 

An insane part of her brain considers asking him to take his shirt off. For, like, curiosity’s sake, or whatever. Totally.

“Thanks,” She chokes out, instead.

Pete laughs a little, raising his eyebrows in a way more shithead-y way than she thinks she would have expected, “Wanna try an actual turn next?”

“No!?” She snaps sounding, she’s completely aware, way too fucking panicked for the actual situation. But fuck that.

He snorts, pulling them both up standing, too smooth, too fast, keeping his hand on her shoulder to make sure she’s steady before he lets go. Steph thinks she can hear her own fucking heartbeat.

“Okay, but now I’m, like, double convinced that it doesn’t matter which way your foot goes,” She teases shakily, trying her best to sound normal about any of that, sinking all her weight down on one hip, “That’s so fucking hard, jesus christ.”

Pete grins at her, “I’ll count on you saying that at my funeral, after Hidgens kills me over it.”

“Deal.”

“We should… probably be done with the ballet lessons for tonight though,” He says, very diplomatically, considering. (She realizes, a little belatedly, that his face is still flushed as pink as when he caught her.)

 Steph snorts, “You think?”

He flops back onto the floor, grabbing his duffle bag by the handle and dragging it next to him, rooting inside without looking. After a second, he victoriously pulls out a water bottle.

“What are you still doing here anyway?” He asks, half sitting up to uncap it, which is a fair question.

She shrugs, squatting down across from him, “Sorting costume shit.”

“Yeesh,” He grimaces, taking a frantic, crushed up sip of water, sort of looking like a hamster drinking from one of those bottles on the sides of their cages. Which… cannot be more comfortable than just sitting up.

She thinks really hard about making fun of him for it, but the words don’t actually happen. She’s not sure why. 

He swallows, before asking, “This late?”

“I procrastinated,” Steph explains, half-laughing at herself (and hopefully managing to make it sound only slightly forced).

“Ah,” he nods, taking another insane looking sip.

And that's it. 

She’s not sure what she was expecting. Teasing maybe, or judgement, but it doesn’t come. 

It leaves her a little off kilter, all edgy and defensive over nothing. Not that she’d wanted him to be a dick about it but still. It’d probably be easier to deal with.

“How about you? Just pirouette practice?” 

“Honestly, pretty much. I never have time during the day, so it’s just easier to run shit after rehearsals are over,” He gestures widely around the stage with his water bottle, “Built in practice room.”

“That sounds fucking miserable, dude.”

She tries to picture herself doing something like that. Going to dance class, and then coming here to dance and get yelled at, only to stick around and dance some more on top of it. No wonder he’s ripped, the fucker is working out more in a day than she thinks most college students do in a semester.

“Oh, it super is,” He laughs, sounding so tired that Steph wants to yawn about it, “But, I think I’m pretty spent for tonight, at least.”

“Fucking good.”

“Could I… um, I mean,” Pete pulls himself into an actual seated position, but he pointedly glances out to the seats, avoiding eye contact, “Do you want me to walk you to your dorm? Since it’s so late?”

And it’s very sweet, and he seems deeply embarrassed to even be asking, so when she laughs she tries to make it sound as non-judgy as possible, “I can take care of myself, thanks.”

“Oh my god, no,” his head whips to actually look at her, panic badly hidden, “I didn’t mean, like--”

“I know,” She snorts, feeling kind of bad again. Pete seems to be good at that. Being just earnest enough that she doesn’t want to be a jerk to him, even if she’s only teasing.

Honestly, it’s not even that he offered, she just doesn’t, actually, live in a dorm. Her and her friends snagged one of the student housing flats on the other side of the literal world, and she’s got her car on campus to drive herself over.

She’s a little disappointed, though, she realizes, at the thought of just going home. 

But… well… she’d parked pretty close to the main housing section of campus earlier; since it’s the only student parking that security never checks well enough to tell that her parking pass is expired.  The odds are pretty high they’ll be heading in the same direction anyway, right?

“But, I could walk you to yours? If you wanted,” She offers, cocking an eyebrow. Half-daring him to take it. (It makes it seem less like she’s genuinely asking because she wants to. Safer, somehow.)

“Yeah, okay,” Pete smiles, tiny and nice to look at, ducking his head, “I’d like that.” 

---

There’s a level of awkwardness to Pete, that Steph’s only really starting to realize as they walk. 

It’s not that it hadn’t been there before, it had. But, somehow, she hadn’t noticed it nearly as much in the theatre.

Something about how he existed on his home turf, or whatever, just gave off a vibe that he was comfortable there. Or, at least familiar. 

It’s a context thing, she thinks. Like, seeing a teacher at a grocery store. She’s just subconsciously, generally assumed Pete’s too-fast talking and perpetually wide eyes were standard for the dance world, and, now, that he’s been put on a fucking sidewalk, it’s clear it’s just Pete.

Awkward, obviously nervous Pete.

When she’d asked for his phone number, right as they left, she’d thought he was gonna shit himself.

He twists the strap of his dance bag between both hands, glancing over in her direction with an uncomfortable little smile as they walk. She waits, half a second, to see if he is going to say something, and Pete’s mouth twitches, like he is too. But he doesn’t.

“Freshman year, huh?” She says, suddenly. Mostly out of pity but also somewhat due to how deeply fucking unbearable the silence is starting to get.

“Sorry, what?” 

“You said you’d done the same dance since Freshman year. The jazzy soldier one?”

“Ah,” He snorts, ducking his chin against his chest for just a second, “I wouldn’t classify it as jazzy. Particularly.”

“What the fuck!” She laughs, trying to sound accusatory, “Literally the only context you’ve given me is the jazz pirouette thing!”

“That’s fair,” He concedes, “It’s more of an aesthetic thing, though.”

“Mmm, care to fuckin’ elaborate?”

“Well, okay,” He yanks the bag strap across his chest, like he’s using it to propel himself forward, and Steph gets the feeling she just signed herself up for a much longer explanation than she’d prepared for. For some reason, she doesn’t mind, right now, “So, the variation, like, in a diegetic sense, is danced by a mechanical automaton. So, it’s been choreographed stylistically to look less natural and more robotic. Hence the jazz pirouettes, because they look more awkward when in the context of a ballet. If that… makes sense.”

“Y’know, it actually kind of does,” she nods, knocking her shoulder into his. At any rate, it made about as much sense as it was going to, where she can assume shit based on the words she actually understands.

“Nice,” He pumps his fist, and then looks instantly humiliated at having done it.

“That’s kind of cool, actually. I feel like in my head ballet is just supposed to look as pretty as possible.”

“Eh, it depends on the ballet,” he shrugs, “But, yeah, it’s interesting. It would probably be more fun if it wasn’t just Hidgens being a dickhead, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

“Okay, you lost me again, immediately.”

“Right. Yeah, so it’s my solo at this point, but that’s mostly because it’s Hidgens’ idea of a joke. Because, I don’t emote while I dance and it’s an ‘emotionless robot’.”

“Woah, that’s fucked up!”

“It’s pretty standard in terms of dance teachers, honestly.”

“Oh my god? Quit?” She says, mostly kidding, which is why she’s a little thrown off when Pete looks over at her with genuine, fucking longing in his eyes.

“God, I fucking wish I could.”

“Literally why can’t you?”

“I mean,” he turns his head around to face her, just a little, so his glasses glint yellow off a street light, “Technically, I could, but then I lose my scholarship.”

“Pete. Everything you’ve told me in the past five minutes has sounded so fucking concerning.”

He laughs, “Sorry?”

He doesn’t seem particularly sorry, but Steph’s not planning on calling him on it. 

“What kind of fuckass scholarship requires you to do The Nutcracker?” She asks, with way more audacity than she’s entirely sure it deserves.

Steph genuinely doesn’t know anything about how scholarships work. She hadn’t needed to. It'd been the one part of her dad’s nine-million-strings-attached help she’d never fought against.

She knows some kids with wealthy parents who are determined to pay their own way, for some bullshit independence reasons, but Steph thinks that’s stupid.  

Yeah, sure, she doesn’t want to be tied down, dependent on her dad forever. She doesn’t like owing him, but, like… her dad is a dick, and in turn, he pays several hundred thousand for her tuition. It really just seems like a fair fucking trade.

(Though, that kind of thinking is exactly what got her stuck on tech crew in the first place, so maybe she should be less fucking cocky about that.)

“The ‘Alexander Kozlov Memorial Scholarship Fund’ kind,” Pete recites so specifically, voice dropped low and pretentious, that Steph is certain he’s mimicking someone.

“Woah, shit, man. That’s my favorite one.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Pete grins at her, “Everyone loves when a broke male ballet dancer gets a full ride. It’s really one of those heartwarming stories the whole family can enjoy.”

“A full fucking ride?”

“I know.”

“Holy shit.”

“Henry Hidgens has nothing on avoiding student loan debt,” He sweeps his arms dramatically out in front of him, before instantly folding up back around his bag strap. His whole demeanor shifting so fast back to casual that Steph gets mental whiplash, “Plus, the scholarship covers my other major too, so, sticking with dance is really the only option that makes sense.”

“Your what?” The mental whiplash worsens. Like, she’d stepped off one roller coaster right onto another. 

“I’m double majoring,” He nods, like it’s no big deal. Like that’s a normal thing to say.

“What the fuck? What’s your other major?”

He smiles, brighter than Steph thinks she’s seen from him ever in their, admittedly pretty limited interactions, “Physics.”

Yeah, okay. Okay, no, nothing to do with anything about Pete is just a dancer thing, she decides then and there. Pete is just certifiably insane.

“Holy shit, dude. Do you sleep?”

“Yeah, no,” He huffs, “Not even at all.”

“Jesus,” Steph stops walking for a second, trying to let the information sink in. Two majors. And one of them is dance. And the other is fucking physics? What the fuck? It’s like he’s the main couple of some vaguely misogynistic early 2000’s chick-flick about opposites attracting, all in one fucking person. 

Pete pauses, glancing behind him, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” She scoffs, kicking forward off the concrete to catch back up, “Just, now I get why you’re drinking coffee twenty four fuckin’ seven.”

His eyebrows scrunch together, mouth rounding around a silently confused ‘coffee?’, before his eyes widen in understanding. Steph can physically see as the pieces click together in his head, “Oh. No. That’s almost always hot chocolate.”

“What the fuck, dude?” She laughs. She can’t fucking help it. Every single thing she learns about Peter Spankoffski seems to be a complete one-eighty on the previous one. It’s crazy. She feels like her brain is melting.

He laughs back, but there’s something a little nervous to it suddenly, “It’s a… I have really low blood sugar, and, honestly coffee is just… gross, so--”

“So, what, man? Are you, like, hyperdosing Adderall or some shit? Because, I’m barely doing one fucking major and I’m still too tired to make it to half my classes.”

Pete snorts, actually real this time, “Yeah, that one’s a no.”

“Yeah, see I just, like. Don’t believe you,” She teases, jostling her shoulder back into his, half on purpose and half pretending otherwise, “Stimulants or coffee are the only two explanations I’ve got for how you haven’t exploded yet.”

He rolls his eyes, just a halfway flick up to the sky, before cutting her a grin. He’s got a nice smile, she thinks. Kind of crooked, but… pretty. Almost. She sort of gets why Hidgens is such a bitch about him not using it

“See, but like,” He readjusts his duffle bag up on his shoulder, bumping it against her arm on the way that she’s almost positive was intentional too, even if she can’t be sure enough to accuse him of it, “I’m pretty sure I, specifically, as a person, would be way more conspicuous about it if I was, I dunno, constantly taking someone else’s ADHD medication.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re mysterious as fuck, dude.”

“Am I?” He huffs, sounding a little pleased.

“Yeah,” She crosses her arms, squinting over at him, “You are.”

To her surprise as she looks at him, weird and, not entirely bad feeling, Pete’s already staring at her. But, when their eyes meet, he snaps his head away. 

Even in the weird street lamp light, she can see his cheeks have gone all flushed. 

“Huh.”

They walk in quiet for a little bit. It’s not necessarily as uncomfortable as it’d felt at first, even though it should be. Steph’s not good with quiet. She needs to fill it with bullshit, or music, or something, or else she gets twitchy. 

But this is okay. Kind of.

“So… you… like coffee, then?” Pete breaks the silence, almost apologetically. Like it’s not a valid question after the conversation they’d actively just been having.

“Eh, it’s alright. I’m more a matcha girl,” She shrugs, “But I can fuck up an iced latte if the vibe is right.”

“Oh, cool,” He nods, “That’s like… a healthier caffeine substitute, right? My roommate likes it, but, honestly I just think that’s ‘cause it’s from the continent of Asia, so…” He trails off, nodding again. As though that’s a cohesive ass way to end a fucking sentence.

“I think so?” Steph snorts, “I dunno, I just think it tastes good. If I need caffeine I’m going straight to the source.”

Pete pauses next to her for a long second, before letting out a baffled noise that isn’t quite a laugh, but it’s also… not quite not, “Hey, am I supposed to know what the fuck that means? Because that sounds way more like you’re doing hard drugs than whatever I said earlier.”

And Steph can’t help the laugh that rockets out of her mouth, burying her face in her hands. This stupid ballerina boy is just way funnier than he should be. Or, well, maybe that’s not fair.

He’s at least funnier than she fucking expected.

“Energy drinks, dude!”

“Oh.” He swallows his laughter, like he’s inhaling his own understanding, before tilting his head towards her. Smiling all stupid and crooked and… admittedly still pretty, “Those are awful for you.”

“Aw, suck my dick about it,” She scoffs, rolling her eyes so hard she can feel it in her temples,“Who are you, my dad?”

“No!” He insists, sort of frantic, and sort of like he finds this all way too funny to actually worry about being misunderstood. (She prefers that second sort-of. Less needlessly sorry.) 

His smile slips, very suddenly, into a smirk, “That’s just a wild way to fuck up your cardiovascular system if it’s not even, apparently, getting you to class on time.”

“Wow,” She crows, with the most offended expression she can possibly muster. It still probably looks too much like a smile to really sell it, “Fuck you?”

“I’m just saying!”

“Yeah, okay, call me the next time you get a full night's sleep, Spankoffski.”

“Touché.”

He rocks to a stop as they reach the place where the sidewalk splits into two stairways, nodding towards the one that leads up to a dorm Steph’s definitely been black out in.

“This one’s me,” He says, actually sounding a little sorry about it. Steph is too, in the same confusing, vague way she’d been back in the auditorium, but she ignores it. Too busy being vindicated that Pete’s dorm is near where she parked earlier.

(Something inside of her suddenly relaxes, in a way she hadn’t realized she wasn’t already. Like, subconsciously, she’d been more convinced that she was lying over how convenient walking Pete out here was going to be, and is glad she doesn’t have to be embarrassed.) 

(Even though Pete literally never would of known so she doesn’t know who the fuck she’s going to be embarrassed in front of. Herself. Maybe.)

“Cool,” She sinks back on her heels, “Thanks for the wildest walk of my fucking life, dude.”

His hands ball together on his duffle, so it pulls up by his chest. Nervous again. Like, he doesn’t know if she’s making fun of him or not, “You’re… welcome?” 

“That’s a good thing,” She reassures him.

“Oh. Okay,” He blinks, cracking half a smile, “Get back safe.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” She calls, turning to start down the stairs to her car. She hears Pete laugh behind her, another burst out, loud sound.

She gets a couple steps down before stopping. She doesn’t know why. It’s late and she’s tired and she either wants to go to bed, or go get fucked up with her roommates. Whichever gets offered to her first.

But she stops, turning around and leaning her hip against the cool metal of the railing, watching Pete’s back retreat up the stairs to his dorm. 

There’s this… grace to how he walks, when she’s really paying attention to it. Sort of like how he dances, visibly in control of his whole body, and everything smoother than it should be. Almost as though he’s going step by step to a silent 1-2-3 beat.

Or, maybe she’s just making that up. Probably, she’s just making that up. And, definitely she’s at least being creepy by staring at him this long trying to figure it out.

When he reaches the door, Pete freezes, glancing over his shoulder. Fuck. Caught.

Before she can freak out, and probably embarrass herself more by spinning right around to try and pretend she hadn’t been looking at all, he lifts a hesitant hand and waves.

Without thinking about it, she waves back. And he’s far enough away she can’t be sure, but she thinks he smiles, before ducking through the door.

Steph’s stomach twists weirdly, and stays like that, even as she turns back around and walks to her semi-illegally parked car.

Huh.

Chapter Text

47 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

ballet boy

You

i went to all my classes today ur sucha bad influence dude

ballet boy

Woah, incredible!

ballet boy

I was going to say ‘good job’ but that felt condescending. 

You

good call wouldve been lmaoo

You

but yes ty ty please clap and cheer when u see me next

ballet boy

Absolutely, LOL. How was it?

You

it fuckin SUCKED dude idk how u do that evryday???

ballet boy

It’s not that bad! But I also, genuinely, like at least one of my majors. And, that feels like it would make a big difference?

You

nah i think its just the worlds worst thing

ballet boy

Your classes, or, college in general?

You

BOTH PETE

ballet boy

Well, I apologize, but I’m proud of you.

ballet boy

Wait, that also sounded condescending, sorry!!

You

noooo pride is good

You

i litrally almost died i deserve itt

ballet boy

Okay, then. Proud of you!

You

YESSS THANK UUUUUUU

---

Steph glares, probably too accusatorily, down at her laptop screen. 

Her laptop screen, in response, glares back. Less accusatorily, because it’s a fucking laptop, but not completely innocent either. Because she’s pretty sure it’s only showing her what it’s showing her to piss her off specifically.

Today was supposed to be stupid easy. Deb has sent her a text asking if she could get the show posters printed, and she’d said yes. Obviously. That’s, like, an ideal Steph Lauter task. She literally just has to push a button and wait.

She doesn’t even have to pay a copying fee, or go to a store off campus. The theatre has its own fucking copier.  

It was perfect. Until, Deb had emailed her the file and fucked her whole easy, ideal, perfect task all the way up.

She literally cannot print this poster! She’s morally opposed to putting something this ugly on real, physical walls for real, physical people to look at.

The image itself is blurry as hell; a grainy, old photo of a guy mid-leap against a void of black, grinning widely in a way that doesn’t fit with the elegant sweep of his arms. It’s actually… sort of creepy. Too wide.

He’s dressed in all white, just wearing tights in a way that feels like he’s trying to brag about something, and his top is too sparkly, so it glints way too visibly under the stage lights for the shit camera quality.

It’s just… weird. Steph’s seen like fourteen seconds of this ballet outside of, specifically, Pete practicing his parts, and even she knows the show is about a Nutcracker or a girl named Clara. Either way, this dude being the only thing on there feels misleading. 

Just, as a poster, objectively, it’s not functional either. The text is some pretentious-fancy, mega thin script that’s barely fucking legible.

She brackets her elbows down on the table, so she can glare at it even closer. 

Steph’s honestly not sure how she’s never seen one of these before. They must have been hung up around campus before, it looks like someone's drunk mom designed it in 1978 and they haven’t changed it since.

Maybe her brain just blocked it out, as like, a trauma response.

A knock breaks her out of her staring competition. 

Pete waves at her from the doorway, both hands occupied with to-go coffee cups. Or. No. Hot chocolate cups. 

She goes to make a joke about double fisting, but it doesn’t really manage its way out before she actually registers what she’s looking at.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” She says, before she can really catch how bitchy it sounds and stop herself. But also. What the fuck is he wearing?

In fairness, Steph’s literally not seen this dude dress normal once, either just tights or so many layers she’s half concerned he’s going to get heat stroke during a Michigan autumn. But that’s at least, like, thematically appropriate, based on what she’s seen some of the other dancers wearing. 

No one on any college campus in the world has worn a matching suspender and bowtie set, alongside pressed fucking khakis, since, maybe, 1981. She’s half expecting him to move one of his arms to reveal that he’s got a pocket protector or some shit.

(Pete Spankoffski just keeps being full of fucking suprises, doesn’t he?)

Pete glances down, looking too confused for a man actively staring at his bowtie, “My… clothes?”

“I have never seen you wear those clothes,” She crosses her arms, pressing her knee against the table’s edge so her chair tilts back. She’s probably being a little too confident for someone who's really just met this guy, but she thinks she would have remembered suspenders and a bowtie.

Something almost like a realization dawns on his face.

“Oh. Right,” He laughs a little, “I don’t think you’ve ever seen me outside of my dance gear before, have you?”

“This cannot be how you dress normally.”

“Yeah?” He says, half like an apology, “I usually change before I get here, but I’m coming right from class today.”

“Insane.”

Pete rolls his eyes, suddenly less sorry looking, which she’s glad about. She really doesn’t want to feel guilty about her completely correct reaction to whatever the fuck is going on here.

“Here,” He steps more into the room, sticking out one of the cups over the table in her direction, “I figured, since I was already stopping and you actually went to class today, you deserve it.”

Steph stares at the cup for a second, the front legs of her chair clunking back onto the floor, just slightly too taken aback to grab it. Something about it, the idea of Pete thinking of her outside of the theatre, and then doing something about it, surprises her. 

But, it must look a hell of a lot more like hesitance, because Pete’s arm recoils back in by his chest a little bit, “It’s matcha! If that helps? I’m sorry if it’s weird, just… you know. I was already there.”

“Thanks,” She curves over her open laptop, reaching out and prying it from his hands before he can fold himself in fucking half, which is, more or less, the way it looked like he was heading, “Seriously.”

“Yeah, I… of course.”

The matcha presses warm through the cardboard and into her fingers. She brings both hands to cup around the sides, even though she’s not particularly cold; the warmth is still nice. And, she guesses, the idea of being thought of is too, even if that one makes her just slightly more uncomfortable.

Pete smiles at her, looking just as uncomfortable. (Maybe it’s contagious-- though, she’s not really sure who would have caught it from who, in this situation.)

“You aren’t trying to fuckin’... do that dog thing to me are you?” She asks suspiciously into the mouth of the cup. She takes a sip of it either way, which probably fucks with the intensity of her accusation, but whatever.

Holy shit, he’d even gotten it with oat milk and everything, and she hadn’t even mentioned her preference. She’s not sure she likes being so thoroughly read like that.

“The what?” Pete laughs, wide eyed.

“The dog thing!” She repeats, trying to scrounge up the name of it. They’d talked about it in her Intro to Psych class that she’d taken last semester after someone told her it was an easy A, “With the… the bell, I think?”

“Fucking Pavlov?” He sputters, as though Stephanie has just said something crazy, and not an impressively accurate physiological analogy.

“Yeah. That. You trying to Pavlov me to go to my classes with matcha, Spankoffski?” She teases, as aggressively as she can manage.

“Geez, what’ta pull.”

She cocks an eyebrow, “You’re avoiding the question.”

“It wasn’t an active thought in my mind, no.”

“Sure it wasn’t.”

He snorts, pinning her with an amused, tiny smile as he drifts back to the doorway, steps just as even-tempo-ed and controlled looking as she’d thought they were last night. She’s still half convinced she’s imagining it. 

“Well, enjoy,” He switches his own cup into his other hand, pulling up his duffle bag higher on his shoulder, “I gotta go get changed.”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I’m being bullied!” Pete laughs, lined with a level of fake shock that almost looks cartoonish, “I buy her a seven dollar matcha, and she bullies me!”

“Aw, poor baby,” She teases, lifting her cup to hide her mouth so her smile doesn’t totally ruin the effect, “Want me to Venmo you?”

“No, you're fine,” He scoffs, but it comes out more sincere than she’d anticipated. She takes a long, steady sip instead of thinking about it too hard.

“See you later?” She asks, pointedly. She’d parked by his dorm again, for no particular reason, so she doesn’t really mind waiting around for him if he wants to walk back together. She’s got posters to avoid printing..

“I mean, I’ll be here, so probably,” He snorts, flatly. Steph can practically feel the implication behind her question whizzing past his head.

It’d be frustrating if she genuinely thought he was playing coy on purpose, but she’s pretty goddamn sure he’s not. And then, it’s sort of endearing, actually. 

Which is, then, sort of frustrating in a different way. A confusing, wrong shaped way she doesn’t know how to deal with.

“Yeah, okay.”

He nods, smile close-lipped and slightly awkward, like he’s not sure of whether or not he’s supposed to say anything else, before he turns out the door and down the hall.

She laughs a little into the mouth of her cup, before taking another sip, looking back down her laptop. The fuckass, manic grin of the vintage ballet bitch beams back at her. Fucking ew.

“Was that Peter Spankoffski?”

Steph startles, looking back up so fast her neck cracks. Deb’s popped her head around the doorway where Pete had just left, whole expression twisted completely baffled. It’s the most emotion she thinks she’s ever seen on her face past chill or casually amused.

“... yes?”

“Woah,” she says, sounding genuinely impressed.

“Why? Is that a problem?” It comes out more defensively than Steph means for it to, or, really was expecting. 

“Nah,” Deb tilts her head against the doorway, unphased enough by Steph’s shift in demeanor that she feels a little embarrassed by it, “I’ve just been teching ballets since that kid’s freshman year and I don’t think I’ve… ever seen him talk to literally anyone. Like, ever.”

“On tech?”

“I mean, yeah, but also just in general,” She shrugs, “You guys know each other from a class or something?”

“No?”

She hums, “Huh. Interesting.”

‘Huh.’ Steph thinks, ‘Interesting.’

Deb pins her with a little smile that Steph thinks is pleased. Or, maybe she’s just choosing to read it as pleased because anything else pisses her off for some reason she refuses to think too much about it. 

Then, Deb shakes her head hard a couple times, like she’s physically trying to bounce the thought out of her mind, as she reorients herself with a finger gun aimed in Steph’s direction, “You get started on those posters?”

Steph is suddenly thrown back into awareness of the bullshit sitting right in front of her; just behind the black curtain of her screen’s sleep timer. She takes a long, slow sip of matcha to keep from visibly seething.

“Deb, I fucking can’t.”

“Shit, the printer break down again?”

“No. No, like, holy shit, this is so bad,” She stabs a finger against her trackpad to wake it up, whirling her laptop around to point, probably-too-aggressively, in the general direction of the unreadable, blurry, badly formatted garbage. Which is, to be fair, literally the whole thing, so it’s not particularly hard, “Like morally I can’t print this shit.”

Deb huffs a quick, confused chuckle, pushing herself off the wall and into the room. She squats down to look at Steph’s screen, as though she’s never fucking seen it before. 

“Yeah, it blows. But, hey…” She shrugs, dismissively.

“You literally can’t make me print these.”

“I mean, yeah. You’re right, I cannot do that.”

“I could do better than this, like, jesus fuck.”

At that, Deb tilts her head, staring down Steph with an eye way too fucking discerning to do anything but make her squirm in her seat.

“Do you want to?”

“What?”

“Do you wanna do better?” She gestures generally towards what is either Steph, her laptop, or the both of them, “Like, it would have to be on your own time, and we’d need ‘em by the end of the week, either way, but you can feel free to give it a go.”

“Really? You won’t like… get in trouble for changing it?”

“Oh, no way. We literally just use these posters ‘cause they’re designed already,” She smirks, confirming Steph’s suspicions, “I just have way too much shit to do to ever bother finding a design student I trust to not sneak in a bunch of dicks or something.” 

Steph snorts, “Well, now that you’ve put the idea in my head…”

Deb rolls her eyes, barely committing to a frustrated, put upon groan, “Just be subtle with it, Lauter.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Cool,” She smiles at her, straightening up from her crouch against the front of the table, “Just let me know if it doesn’t look like you’re gonna get them done. I’ll print the old ones.”

She leaves Steph alone then, stuck staring at the stickers on the back of her MacBook case and wondering a little helplessly when the fuck she ended up agreeing to actually try.

Her matcha sits next to her elbow on the desk. Watching her. It looks like it’s very proud of her for volunteering to participate in something she doesn’t have to under threat of expulsion.

She flips it off.

---

Stephanie, maybe, underestimated how intensely she could get sucked into a project like poster design.

(Honestly, she’d kind of just thought she was fucking around until Pete swung into the back room and asked if she wanted to hang out in the auditorium with him now that everyone else was gone.
Which is, about, when she realized, it’s been five hours and she’s made, like, six posters.

It happens sometimes. Hyperfocusing on shit and losing track of time. She just hadn’t thought it would happen for this.)

It makes sense, objectively. She’s been carefully curating Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards since she was twelve. Stephanie is nothing if not a walking series of planned aesthetics, and it translates better than she’d expected it to.

She kind of thinks they look good. Sort of. She’s at least having fun with it, trolling aesthetic blogs for advice posts and point blank copying video tutorials, when she doesn’t remember that she’s technically, really, really tangentially, doing this for class credit.

Even now, she’s half editing them. Less feverishly, at this point, she’s too aware that she’s ‘doing work’ to actually get lost in it anymore. 

Instead, she sprawls across three different auditorium seats and rotates distractedly between scrolling through the photo archives Deb had sent her from past productions, and fixing her formatting, and not subtly watching Pete dance over the top of her laptop.

He’s practicing some shit for a class today that she doesn’t recognize. Obviously. Sweeping and grand and gorgeous.  

There’s something more powerful behind the music here, than the chintzy, bubbly Nutcracker backing, and it’s, Steph is not too proud to admit, objectively hot. The intense focus she literally can hear Hidgens yelling at him about through the fucking walls everyday works better with it. Every move is just as strictly controlled and each jump powerful enough that Steph feels like she should physically see the shift in the air as he takes off.

(For the second time, in too short a time frame, a fucking certifiably insane part of Steph is desperate to ask him to take his shirt off. Just to, like, fucking see.)

As he whips out of a turn, he catches her eye and she sees as his focus-drilled, serious expression physically cracks into a smile. The same tiny, crooked shy one from last night.

Her stomach twists the same way it did last night, too.

Pete stumbles a little off-step before zoning back in and bounding into another soaring leap. 

Steph snaps her eyes back down to the photo archive still up on her screen, ignoring the way her face has gone kinda warm. She clicks down on a random photo, a group shot of what, artistically, seems like dancing snowflakes, zooming in on each of their faces until Pete’s song winds to a stop.

To her vague confusion, he doesn’t start it again, or wind back to a section and slow it down the way he has been. It just stays silent.

She glances back up just in time to watch him easily hop off the stage and start up the aisle towards her.

“Done already?” She calls, sarcastically.

“Absolutely not,” He calls back, coming into the row behind her. She side-eye watches him, probably being less subtle than she’s trying for, as he hooks one of his too-long legs over the back of the seat next to her and slots himself down into it. Folded up in a tiny ball of ballet dancer.

He digs around on the floor by her feet where he left his bag, extracting his water bottle, wiggling it at her, “Just a break.”

“Wow,” She smirks, slouching even lower in her own chair like she’s trying to make up for the lack of space he’s occupying, “I didn’t think you took those.”

Pete huffs a conceding little laugh into the mouth of the bottle, “It’s a rare but repeating occurrence.”

“I’m honored to be experiencing it.”

“Yeah, well,” He hums.

He looks over at her computer, and she registers a second too late that she’d, at some point, absently switched over from the archive back to the actual editing program.
“Woah,” He curls slightly over his knees, so his face is closer to her screen, “Are those posters for the show?”

She restrains the instinct to slam her computer shut, long hammered in after two decades in her dad’s house. 

“Yup,” She turns the laptop a tiny bit on her knees, actually letting him look through all six, “The old one was dogshit, so…”

It feels embarrassing in a way she doesn’t really understand. And that just makes it feel even more embarrassing. All flayed open and vulnerable and uncomfortable.

“Wait,” His eyes go a little wide, “Did you design these?”

“Yeah? Less boring than winding cords,” She shrugs, not entirely sure of why she’s lying. It’s not like she hadn’t also been winding cords. (In her current tech crew experience, she thinks about three fourths of it is exclusively fucking cord winding.)

For some reason, the idea of him knowing she’d spent her free time editing more poster than she had to for some dumb ballet she hadn’t even wanted to help on is a little too humiliating for her to consider it.

“Steph!” He whips his head around to her, grinning in a way that makes her whole chest warm, “That’s incredible!”

“It’s really not,” Steph huffs, glancing back down for a second, half expecting something way cooler and a thousand times more interesting to be waiting for her, just based on the look Pete’s still giving her. 

There isn’t. Just Canva, and standard Playfair Display SC font reading out information people actually need to read, and stupid, fancy cursive for shit they don’t, “They’re just posters.”

Pete squints at her like she’s insane, “They’re really good posters! People might actually look at these.”

“I mean, I think that’s the point of… most posters, Pete.”

“I think you’re severely underestimating how much the old ones sucked.”

“Oh, no I’m fucking not,” She scoffs, “They were terrible.”

“I’m honestly shocked Hidgens let you replace them.”

“This might be even more shocking,” She says, sarcastically, “But I didn’t fucking ask him.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” He nods, tilting his head lazily against her shoulder, “You know it’s him in college, right?”

She snaps her head around, jostling him off her arm so fast his chin rocks into his own knees. She’d apologize if she wasn’t so incredibly otherwise preoccupied, “What?”

“The original poster,” Pete laughs, clearly at her, “It’s Hidgens from when he danced the nutcracker prince in college. He’s gonna be pissed you changed it.”

“Pete, you just made spending five fucking hours on these feel worth it.”

He rolls his eyes, looking back down to her screen with a grin. Steph feels uncomfortably observed as his eyes flick across the poster, reaching out to click through all of them again. 

“It should feel worth it, because they’re great.”

And he says it like he really means it. Like he actually thinks Steph is wildly impressive for putting some pictures together under readable text. 

It makes her feel stupid and mushy, even if she doesn’t necessarily believe him. 

“I think you should probably raise your standards,” she huffs, teasing. Completely, obviously fucking teasing.

But, Pete looks over to her, expression all big eyed and confused, “And, I think you need to be less hard on yourself. I’m not kidding, Steph. These are genuinely impressive.”

He glances back to the one up on the screen; the one she’d put through a filter and overlaid with a fuzzier paper texture to make it look like a vintage movie poster. She’d found a step by step tutorial on YouTube; it hadn’t been hard, “Especially for five fucking hours--”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I was kidding,” she laughs, but it comes out strained and just as fake sounding as it is. 

She’s not sure why it makes her feel so… weird.. He’s complimenting shit she genuinely does think looks good, she should be glad. Christ, she should be proud that she didn’t actually have to try that hard and someone is impressed. Like she’d gotten away with something.

“Wait,” he cocks his head, clicking back to the previous image, voice distracted. Which, like. Thank fucking god, “Is this me?”

Oh. Fuck. Yeah, okay, exactly Steph’s luck that he’s managed to find the one distraction more embarrassing than the previous one. Fuck her.

“Yeah, so?” She snatches her laptop closer to her in a way that’s way more fucking conspicuous than if she hadn’t, “You said you’d been dancing the same shit since freshman year. I figured I might as well advertise something they’ll actually get to see if I can.”

It’s probably the poster that took her the shortest amount of time to design. She’d just cut around a picture of Pete mid-lunge and placed text around it on a bright red background. Stupid simple.

(He looks… ridiculous, objectively, in his toy soldier costume. Little red circles on his cheeks and hair slicked back under a fuck ass hat, but she’s ridiculously endeared by it-- and… okay, his fucking legs look insanely ripped under his blue costume tights, but that’s not the point.

Her excuse about advertising had been fucking bullshit. She just hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the picture until she did something with it.)

“I mean, I’m honored,” he says, with such a level of sincerity that she can’t tell if it’s supposed to be serious or making fun of her, “But the whole show is pretty identical year to year. It’s just different people.”

“Shut up and go dance, jackass,” she huffs, and it manages to sound slightly less forced-through-her-teeth, as she swats at him, “I wanna get back home before my 8 AM tomorrow.”

She’s in no fucking way going to her 8 AM tomorrow. She actually isn’t sure she’s even still enrolled in it, she’s maybe been twice, and she’s really just banking on coasting through the final and passing with the lowest-percentage, mercy pass D- that she can. 

But still. 

It feels less rude than being honest and saying ‘you’ve complimented me too much and I think I might go die about it, and also if you don’t go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour tonight you might die. Like. Literally.’

“You are free to leave if you need to,” he says, smiling, but she can tell he doesn’t actually mean it.

She just rolls her eyes, “Go.”

“Fine,” he unfolds out of his seat, pausing to glance between her and the exit, like he was worried she’s actually impatient even at all to get out of here, “Just a little longer, okay?”

She just flaps her hand dismissively in his direction, turning back to her Canva. The year-younger, costumed Pete is still up on the screen. Lunging at her above Performances DEC 16-17 and 22-24, 2023.

She switches back to the first one she made. Clara raising the nutcracker presentationally over her head. Pretty and fluffy and objectively not Pete.

“They’re really good,” Real, now, in-sweatpants Pete turns back over his shoulder as he shuffles down the row of seats back to the stage, “Seriously.”

“… thanks, Pete.”

He throws an absurdly awkward thumbs up over his head, and Steph feels just stupidly, ridiculously touched enough that she doesn’t make fun of him for it.

45 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

ballet boy

You

ok i literally cant stop thinking about how insane it is u do dance and fuckinning phsics dude like i went to ONE (1) normal class today and i feel like im 45 secs from kms

You

like am i missing context or some shit for why tf u r running BOTH

You

how???

ballet boy

Okay, so, I know you aren’t going to believe me, but they’re actually really similar.

You

ye ur right i dont beleive u?? bullshit??

ballet boy

No, seriously! They are! I’m actually writing a paper on it right now.

ballet boy

Ballet is essentially all about momentum, balance, and different levels of force and control. So, even something like a spin is a practical example of physics in motion! It’s why, oftentimes, with turns you’ll have more pulled legs/arms (ex. the pirouettes I showed you) because being more compact reduces your moment of inertia and allows more speed.

ballet boy

Fouettes are actually a perfect example because you are both extending your leg and pulling it in to control your speed as you turn!

You

cool okay dont know what those are

ballet boy

Right, one second.

ballet boy

LINK

ballet boy

Honestly, the person doing the fouettes in that video is really bad, but it gets the point across.

You

mhm ok

ballet boy

Does any of that make sense? I have some really good articles I could send you if you were curious about it!

You

only sort of kind of

You

basically its all like,,, math for how to have control of shit like sppeed and how high ur jumping and shit right?

ballet boy

Essentially, yes.

You

wild

You

thats like even fucking crazier than i thought btw i think ur even more insane now

ballet boy

That’s probably fair.

33 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

Stephanie’s roommate, Vanessa, has a boyfriend. Which is… fine. It’s completely fine.

His name is Rick, they’ve been together since Freshman year of fucking high school, and he goes to school an hour away at Baker, which means, he’s almost always fucking here, but not enough always that Vanessa and him aren’t gross about it when they get to see each other.

She’s gotten good at ignoring them, though. Headphones on, taking up an entire communal couch in their living room so they don’t try to sit next to her, ignore stupid, sappy couple questions like ‘Steph, don’t you think we just look so cute in our matching shirts’.  

It’s what's the most healthy. Both for her sanity, and for them, because if she has to spend too much time tolerating them, she’ll end up saying some shit about how there’s no fucking way a high school relationship this long term is going to end well at all, and then either one, or both of them, will probably cry.

She’s actively coexisting and ignoring the two of them, curled up sharing a single armchair, when her other roommate, Tiffany, bursts into the house. 

“Oh, good, you’re all here!” She freezes, just for a second in the doorway to do a suitably dramatic entrance pose, before slamming the door shut being her, “We are going to go to Tabby’s tonight and get so fucking slammed that we don’t remember our house number in the morning!”

Vanessa and Rick make that kind of eye contact only couples who have been together way too fucking long make, and then she nods for both of them, “Yeah, alright.”

“Ugh, I wish I could,” Steph groans, mentally running through her schedule, “I’ll try to meet up with you guys after, but--”

Tiffany buries her face into her palm, “Don’t say it.”

“I’ve got tech.”

“You can’t do this to me!” She snaps her head up, eyes wide and way too pleading, just, like for the situation, “Then I’ll be only one blacking out” 

Which is true. Vanessa, and, by extension, her boyfriend, don’t drink drink. They share a beer, like total freaks, or have a mixed drink or two each. If Tiff wants a be-messy buddy, Steph is her only immediate option.

“I do!”  

She actually does. They’ve started having full group meetings again, laying out spike tape angles for where the set goes, or planning out run orders. And then, after whatever the main group is doing, Steph usually gets to break off and do her own Deb assigned bullshit. It could be worse.

And, well, it’s not that she’s not disappointed to be doing that instead of getting hammered, but she’s less than she would have been literally last month. It’s at least a notable enough difference that it throws her a little.

“Well, we shall miss you tonight, Stephanie.”

“Thanks, Rick.”

(She really could meet up with them after. She’d probably barely miss anything if she left right after tech instead of waiting with Pete to walk him back to his dorm the way she has been most nights, but that almost… feels worse than missing out on partying. Which is so disorienting she immediately forces herself to stop thinking about it.)

“You know what, no! No, I have to say something.”

“Tiff--” Vanessa says, like a warning, clearly knowing exactly what this is about. Which means Rick also does. Dread and annoyance at being left out of the loop start to build inside of Steph at the same time.

Tiffany ignores her completely, coming around the couch to sit on the same exact cushion Steph is.

“Stephanie. Baby girl. Babe,” She reaches out to take both her hands, “We need to talk.”

“Mmm?”

“You’re being boring,” she tells her, very seriously, very matter-of-fact, “I’m, like, super worried.”

She snorts, “I know, but I’m fine. I swear. It’s just this fuckin’ show--”

“Uh, no,” her hands squeeze around Steph’s, “It’s worse than that, Steph. You’re going to class.”

“Omg, Tiff. That isn’t a bad thing,” Vanessa rolls her eyes, tossing a throw pillow at her. It just barely misses, whacking Steph’s knees instead. Her face scrunches up, and she mouths ‘sorry’.

“Nah, it sucks, she’s right.”       

Tiffany beams, whirling around to stick her tongue out at both people behind her on the couch. Rick looks genuinely sort of hurt by it.

“Honestly, I’m really only going ‘cause some dude buys me matcha if I do.”

That’s not, entirely, true and she knows it. It’s been like… two weeks, and Pete’s gotten her exactly four. One of them wasn’t even class-based, he just fucking did it and then looked really pleased when she’d told him she’d gone to her two-o’clock lecture that day. It just feels like the least embarrassing excuse.

“What?!” Vanessa and Tiffany say in the kind of unison that only people who’ve been best friends way too long can. (Which is almost identical to the long-time-relationship mind meld Vanessa has with Rick, just significantly more piercing.)

“Oh my god,” She realizes her mistake a second too late. Fuck. This is not going to go the way she wants it to, “Not like that.”

“Oh,” Vanessa grins, “So, it’s totally like that.”

“No, it’s not.”  

“I dunno, Stephanie. In my limited scope of understanding surrounding the situation, it does indeed sound like that.”

“Literally shut the fuck up, Rick.”

“You should bring him out with us!” Tiff gasps, like it’s the best idea anyone has ever had and not completely insane.

“He absolutely wouldn’t come,” She scoffs, completely aware that she’s making this worse the more she talks. 

“Well ask!”

Steph tries to picture Peter Spankoffski in a dive bar. She just comes up with a sort of fuzzy, LED lit vision of extra sweet daiquiris, probably, and a drunk Pete inexplicably doing pirouettes on a pool table. Jazz ones, not classic ballet. For some reason, it’s so ridiculous that she just feels fucking fond.

“He’s just my friend!” 

Well, fuck. She said the thing. The thing you dont say when you’re actually just friends with a guy. She’s done.  

She buries her face in her hands, sinking as far into the couch as she possibly can, but Tiffany just grabs her wrists and pries them away, their noses inches apart.

“Holy crap. Have you fucked yet?”

“No?!”

“I think it’s sweet!” Vanessa cuts in, earnestly. It’s not helpful.

“Okay, see?” She wrestles her hands back so she can hide in her arms, “This is why I don’t go out with you guys anymore!”

They are not listening to her anymore.

“Do you have a picture?!”

She does. She has a literal folder in the archive of former Nutcracker show photos full of Pete doing the most ballet-y ballet shit in the world. Which is, Steph’s well aware, not going to help her case. In fact, it might just get her endlessly made fun of on top of the general roommate harassment.

But Tiffany is practically sitting on her, eyes a little crazy like if Steph tries to lie, then she’ll just steal her laptop and start searching herself.

It’s really her own fault, she thinks, regretfully, if she didn’t want them to freak out, she never should have mentioned it, literally ever until she died.

“Yeah, one fucking sec.”

---

stephanies hot girl squadd

tiff

FYI stephie totes has a nu BF!

vanessa

OMG TIFF dont b mean! 

vanessa

But! she def haz a crush!!!

You

wow ok i was gonna say thx V but actually fuck u??

brenda 💙

WHAT???

brenda 💙

fucking SPILL?????

stacy 💝

You didnt TELL us 🥺💔

You

theres nothing to TELL

tiff

BTW he duz ballet so u KNO hes flexible AF ;)

You have Disliked new message from tiff

brenda 💙

WAIT IS HE FROM UR TECH THING??

vanessa

Def from tech thing

stacy 💝

😱😱😱😱

You

i literally regret introducing u all so fukcking bad

30 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

“Spankoffski!” She hears Hidgens call, voice echoing weird as it travels from the auditorium to the backstage.

She pauses, backtracking to lean into the wings until Pete’s back is in view. He’s doing the soldier number she thinks, because she doesn’t recognize the music nearly as well. 

(When she waits after with him, he’s usually running Hot Chocolate, or something for class.)

“You’re dragging on the menâge section!” Hidgens snaps, “Each leap should be a period! Not an ellipses!”

“Right. Got it,” Pete says, quickly, and for the first time Steph clocks a tinge of annoyance behind his stilted nervousness. She muffles a laugh into her hand, feeling weirdly proud of him for it.

Pete drifts back on the stage, rolling out his ankles as another dance in the scene begins he’s clearly not a part of. Before she can get back to pretending to do shit, and pretending she wasn’t fucking snooping, he catches her eye. 

He tilts his head, looking happily confused.

‘What the fuck did that even mean?’ She mouths, since she can, jamming her thumb back in Hidgens’ general direction.

Pete just snorts, and shrugs, ‘No fucking clue.’

‘See you later?’

She doesn’t need to ask at this point, they’ve been walking back together most days she’s got tech at this point.

Either way, she’s still glad when he nods yes.

28 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

ballet boy

You

soo i KNOW ur here and also if i dont leave this building ill kill someone wanna go get dinner

ballet boy

I’d love to, but I’ve got a lot of homework. :-(

You

have u eaten

ballet boy

Bold of you to assume I’m not on a round the clock protein bar system so my body doesn’t shut itself down.

ballet boy

Which, in case that wasn’t clear, means yes.

You

wow thats

You

thats so deeply deprssing dude u literallymade me depressd

ballet boy

I’d apologize, but it’s not, actually. So, you might want to check that diagnosis out with your doctor.

You

i just did her name is dr. comegetfoodwme says the only cure is u coming to get food with me

ballet boy

Mmm, I’m sensing a secret bias there. I don’t know where it’s coming from, just a sixth sense. Maybe it’s in the wind.

You

pete idk wtf ur talking aboutthe woman has her doctorate

You

we can go to the shit dining hall by the theatre so it wont take that lonnngnggg

You

plssssslslsssslslls

ballet boy

Fine. But, I really can’t take a break for long. 

You

YES YES YES

---

Steph picks at her chicken and rice bowl, half considering standing up again to douse it in more condiments. It won’t do much for the actual saraha-dry texture of the chicken and the mushy-and-crunchy confusion of the rice, she’s well aware. But if she adds enough ketchup, it might just sort of hide everything. Like a wet, badly-combined-flavor-profile blanket.

She’s already added enough hot sauce that it’s sort of just tasteless ow in her mouth, though, so she stays put. For the moment, at least.

Across from her, Pete happily shovels a huge spoonful of dry Captain Crunch into his mouth. 

She’d be more envious of his forethought to get something premade and un-fuck-up-able if he didn’t look a little bit like he was going to actually pass out while he’s eating it.

“Did you fucking sleep last night?” She asks, well aware it comes out ruder than she means it to but not really doing much to change it.

Pete snorts, which feels like its own answer, before countering with, “Did you go to class today?” 

“Okay, but, like, I’ve been thinking about this. This show is essentially a class stand-in for me, so that absolutely should count.”

“So… no?” He glances up from his bowl, smirking.

“I went to one.”

“Hey! That’s something.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

He huffs a laugh, leaning forward a little to rest his cheek on the heel of his hand, “What were you doing today that you had to get away from so bad, anyway?”

“Steaming,” She drops her forehead down to the semi-sticky dining hall tabletop with a groan. 

“Ah,” Pete all but swallows the word, inhale full of understanding, “Yeah, that makes sense. Dress parade is at the end of the week.”

She turns, just enough so her cheek takes her forehead’s place and she can look at him, “Dress parade?”

“Dress parade,” he repeats, as though saying it with more emphasis means she’ll suddenly know what the hell that means, “Basically, everyone tries on their costumes to make sure we don’t need any alterations and everything is where it should be. It’s on the calendar.”

Steph has literally not checked the calendar since this shit started. Her phone just sends her a notification a half an hour before she has to show up, and she listens to it, like, seventy five percent of the time.

“That makes sense.”

She sort of remembers Deb mentioning them needing the costumes soon, anyway. A ‘dress parade’ tracks, based on the sheer number of identical, sparkly dresses and fancy almost-identical, sparkly shirts she hung and steamed tonight.

“Is this different from the other shows you’ve teched?” Pete asks, around a spoonful of cereal.

“What?”

“Like, are ballets particularly different from plays? I’ve been curious.”

“I dunno,” She shrugs, shoving herself up back to sitting, “This is my first one.”

“Wait, really?” He says, sounding genuinely surprised. 

Which is just sort of strange, because she… must have mentioned this before, right? 

But, when Steph tries to think back through their conversations nothing sticks out. It’s not like Pete hasn’t asked her questions about herself, she’s just not really told him enough for any of those questions to be particularly relevant.

It’s mostly, honestly, been her demanding explanations on all the weird shit that comes out of Pete’s mouth, up until now. Which, in her defense, does not feel like her fault. If he didn’t want her to keep asking questions, he should stop saying such insane shit.

“Yeah. I’m not, like, a tech major or anything.”

She takes a bite from her rice bowl. Shit, that’s gross.

She must make a face, because Pete laughs as he asks, “What’s… what is your major then?”

“Media Studies. It’s boring as shit but I get to write a final paper on Glee, so…”

“You needed to tech a ballet for media studies?”

“Oh, no, it’s ‘cause I declared my major so late. I was supposed to take some class Sophomore year that I missed, and this was the alternative since I didn’t give a shit about not going home for Christmas.”

“Huh,” He blinks once, and then again, before saying, in clearly carefully thought out words, “Sorry if this is rude, but I didn’t know you could go this long without declaring a major.”

“Oh, you aren’t supposed to. But, technically, the cut off is end of Sophomore year.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, halfway point.”

“That’s… crazy.”

She just shrugs.

“So, why Media Studies?” He asks, like he’s actually curious. 

There’s nothing judgemental to it, but Steph still feels like there should be. Something defensive curling in the pit of her belly that she has to cross her arms over tightly to keep it pressed down.

“I already told you,” She raises her eyebrows, pretending to be more joking than she is, almost daring him to be a dick about it, “Glee paper.”

He snorts, “That’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

He’s obviously confused by her, even if he’s too polite to bring it up. She can imagine why. Pete’s the fucker whose double majoring the most complicated science shit Steph can imagine and also complicated, athletic artistry. Someone like Steph, lazy and pointless and unmotivated by anything that isn’t based exclusively on instant gratification, must be completely baffling.

“I would have dropped out,” She explains, mostly so he doesn’t have to feel bad about asking, if he even would, “But my dad threatened to cut me off, so…”

It sounds obnoxious even as she says it. Not only is Steph totally useless, she’s also just some rich kid trying to coast on daddy’s money. She immediately wants to defend herself, but she thinks it’d just come out even more pathetic if she tried.

“Ah, okay,” Pete nods.

“Yeah,” She nods back. 

It hits her kind of all at once, the understanding that she was more vulnerable than she normally would have been… than she’s comfortable being. She shouldn’t have told him. She doesn’t know why she told him. 

Steph’s weird, fucked up dad shit is her own, no one else needs to be out there making fucking assumptions about her based one tiny piece of information. She feels completely baseless annoyance start to rile itself up in the back of her head at the idea.

Pete leaving this dining hall thinking she’s some ungrateful, waste-of-space rich kid pisses her off, even though he wouldn’t be wrong. He just wouldn’t know it in the right way.

But Pete doesn’t scoff at her, or call her unthankful, or roll his eyes. Instead, Pete grins, lifting his bowl a little, like he’s making a toast, “Hey! So, we both financially sold our souls!” 

“What?” She asks, around a punched-out-giggle that’s mostly just relief. Pure and awkward and completely confused.

“I sold my soul to our dance program, you sold it to your dad,” he elaborates, somehow managing to make it sound ridiculously logical in his clipped, straight forward smart-person delivery.

She actually laughs then, the full out kind that knocks her head back, “God, how fucking ominous.”

“Yeah, well,” he laughs back, with a shrug. He dips the bowl in his hand back in her direction, so she lifts hers up to meet it.

“To selling out for college tuition?” She teases, and he nods, solemn and doing a bad job of hiding his smile.

“To selling out for college tuition.”

The glass of the cereal bowl manages a dull thunk against the thick, disposable cardboard of her rice bowl as they cheers them together.

“Oh, shit. Actually, before I forget--” she asks, suddenly, plopping her dinner gracelessly back down to the table, “Where’d you go to high school?”

Pete lets out a completely bemused snort, which is probably fair, “... why?”

“My roommates wanted me to ask. Apparently you look like some dude they used to know,” She rolls her eyes, as pointedly she can, “But literally neither of them could remember his name.”

“Yeah, that sounds… about right for me in high school,” He mutters, tucking his tongue into the pocket of his cheek, “I grew up, like, twenty minutes outside of Lansing. Bath High School?”

“Oh shit, you’re from Michigan?” 

“Yup.”

“Hell yeah, me too!” 

She reaches across the table for a fist bump. 

Pete stares at her hand for a full three seconds, before pathetically raising his own fist and tapping it against hers. (As though a fist bump is a thousand times more confusing than a bad dining hall food bowl toast. He hadn’t seemed to be thrown off by that.)

“Really?” He asks, looking up from their hands, his eyebrows crunched together in the middle, “Huh.”

“What?” Steph crosses her arms, leaning easily back in her chair. She ignores the tiny, completely stupid wave of self consciousness that brushes over her.

He shrugs, “I just figured you’d be from somewhere cooler.”

She snorts, “Like where?”  

“I don’t know? Like, New York or California or something. Based on my experience, you’re not nearly lame enough for Michigan.”

“Wow,” She fake-gasps, grin way realer than she means it to be, “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, Pete.”

Like, actually. She’s fucking honored. 

“So,” he grins back, tapping his spoon against the bottom of his bowl, “Do I know your roommates?”

“Oh, yeah,” She'd actually forgotten why she’d asked already, “No, they’re both from Jersey.”

His nose wrinkles, “Wow. Somehow worse.”

“I know, right?” She laughs, a tiny bit, but she’s well aware it sounds just as distracted as she is.

Okay. Cool. Pete isn’t some random ‘limp dick weirdo’ who’d Vanessa really unsuccessfully hooked up with during her senior year. For some reason, Steph is weirdly relieved. 

“You probably gotta get… back to studying, huh?”

“Shit, yeah, I…” Pete glances down at his watch regretfully, before his expression shifts. It’s almost conspiratorial, as he looks up at her, mouth in a pinched small, close-lipped smile and eyebrows raised, “But, I mean, I still have some cereal left.”

Steph feels the smile, just as scheming and stupid, split across her own face, “I mean, you can’t just leave it. That’d be wasteful.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I can probably… I can probably afford to put it off a little, right?”

He’s joking, obviously, but there's an undercurrent to it. Subtle and semi-desperate. Asking for permission.

“I mean, at least until you finish your Captain Crunch, dude. For the environment, or something.”

He snorts, “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Oh yeah. You gotta.”

“For the environment.”

“Or something.” 

He grins at her, but something in his face seems grateful. A deeply unearned thank you, for Steph letting him slack off the tiniest amount anyone has ever slacked off ever. She just grins back, and then, when she eventually stands up to make her dinner objectively worse with ketchup, she brings back an extra cupful of cereal.

Pete doesn’t stop her when she dumps it in his bowl. Just shrugs, and pretends not to check his watch.

(She doesn’t call him on it. Not that time, or the six other times he does it before his bowl is finally empty and they walk back to the theatre together.)

(Baby steps.)

Chapter Text

25 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

Stephanie Lauter’s first finals week with an actual major is around a week away. Which means the show is almost exactly two.

At first, that had been a timeline that was actually pretty comforting. Sure, okay, she’s probably going to be literally dying and miserable and fail half her finals and completely fuck up her chance of actually graduating on time, but, at least afterwards her fuck ass tech-credit will be over with.

And, like, okay, yeah, that’s all still true, but for some reason it feels… disappointing now.

Like, she wishes one ending didn’t mean the other had to.

Which is ridiculous, because it’s not like Steph’s found some secret love of being a techie through this show. It’s fine, mostly boring or easy enough, she likes the people enough, but she won’t be signing up to help put together another ballet any time soon. And it certainly isn’t the classes she’ll miss.

She swings the theatre door open with her hip, yanking her pen out of her flannel pocket before it fully closes behind her this time. She’s caught Deb twice now doing the same thing, so she’s not too worried about it. Not that she was much before either, to be fair.

“Hi,” Pete stares up at her from the ground, not exactly smiling, but not unhappy looking either. Just somewhere in the middle of boredom and asleep. 

Steph just nods down at him, blowing the smoke down the opposite end of the hall. 

(She’s gotten pretty good at telling whether he’s going to be out here or not based on the music leaking in from the theatre anyways. He hasn’t been able to startle her in weeks.)

“‘Sup?” She says, eventually, squatting down against the door. It’s probably stupid, if someone tries to open it she’ll get knocked the fuck down easy, but there’s not much room next to Pete.

He’s laying flat on his back, legs spread in practically a full split up against the wall. She has to keep her eyes trained hard at the carpet so she doesn’t stare like a weirdo at the way the stretch makes his hips curve out under his sweatpants.

It’s a little mesmerizing in a way she’s refusing to examine.

He tucks the textbook he’d had held up above his head (like a fucking freak) against his chest, “How was class today?”

“Boring,” She rolls her eyes. She’d gone, though, and she feels better about it than she wants to, “How did you sleep last night?”

“Bad,” he groans, letting his textbook rest on his collar bone so he can drag his hands up under his glasses, “I think I may… actually be dying.”

He sure as hell sounds like he’s dying. And, looks it, honestly. 

He’d seemed a sort of perpetual kind of college-student exhausted from the day they’d met, but recently the dark circles under his eyes look like they’re trying to swallow the whole upper half of his face.

“Mmm, that sucks,” She hums, sounding as unsympathetic as possible. It doesn’t super work; Pete is kind of upsettingly easy to feel bad for, “You should try only doing one major like a normal person next time.”

He manages a squished-down laugh into his palms, “Wow. Thanks, Steph. I’ll jot that down.”

“No problem, bud,” She smirks, shoving herself standing, “You staying after tonight?”

His hands slide off his face, and he levels her with the dead-est eyed stare she’s ever fucking seen in her life, “I will be staying after literally every night until finals are over.”

“Shit, man,” She says, like a person who hasn’t immediately, subconsciously just decided that that means she will be too, “Want me to just, like, shoot you, instead?”

“Please,” He says, so fast she thinks he must have been thinking about it somehow before she even offered. 

She glances over at his backpack, sat up ramrod straight due to the sheer number of textbooks crammed inside, propped against his dance bag, and decides she cannot fucking blame him for it.

“Yeah, okay,” She snorts, taking one last hit before patting him sympathetically on the ankle, “I’ll see what I can do.”

(In the back of her head, as she heads back inside, she thinks that, maybe, this is what she’s going to miss. This casual conversations without pressure, walking home together, friendship-through-mutual-interaction kind of thing her and Peter Spankoffski have somehow managed to figure out.)

(She immediately decides to ignore it. 

It’s a week until finals, she’s got to free up the brain space, anyway. Or something else just as completely bullshit that she could still justify if someone called her on it. Or whatever.)

17 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

“Ugh, are you really not coming home for Christmas?”

“Nope,” She rolls her eyes. It’s the fortieth time she’s had to clarify since she signed up for this shit. No one, not even the dancers and other techies in the show, can seem to comprehend that, somehow, Steph couldn’t give less of a shit about not going back to Assfuck Nowhere, Michigan for a stilted Christmas Eve dinner she couldn’t give less of a shit about and presents she’d open on her own that her dad didn’t buy.

(Well… her dad had seemed to understand it. The only clarification he’d needed was on a technical level for scheduling, and that got sent through Miss Tessburger.)

“That’s so fucking lame,” Brenda whines, rocking back in her desk chair so her head bumps against her closet door, “I wanted to see your stupid face in person.”

“I’m still coming home. I’ll be there for New Years.”

“Okay, but, like, still.”

Stacy pops her head over into her own FaceTime square, whole face scrunched into a pout, “Yeah, Steph, you’re gonna miss like, all the good parties.”

“I’m coming home for New Years!”   She repeats, laughing exasperatedly into the coil of wires she’s been wrapping for the past hour. It’s fucking infuriatingly tedious, but no one gives a shit if she’s on her phone for it, so whatever. 

“Well,” Stacy sniffs, with an annoyed little shake of her pony tail that Steph knows from experience is on purpose, “You’re gonna miss our cookie day.”

“Does it help that that is the only thing that made me hesitate about signing up?”

It’s true. Honestly. Steph doesn’t give a shit about the holidays, but she’s a little disappointed about missing out on her and her friend’s long standing traditions. Cookie day at Stacy’s, and ice skating at the Hatchetfield rink’s Disco Skate night, and getting fucking hammered in Brenda’s pool house to ‘stay warm’ while they heckled shitty Hallmark movies playing on a laptop.

But, if she get a full few days to herself on a quiet campus where she can rot in bed roommate free without being judged, as opposed to driving six hours across Michigan to spend Christmas with her fucking Dad, she’s gonna fucking take it.

“I mean, I guess,” Brenda sighs, smushing her cheek dramatically into her hand, “I mean, that’s kinda a given, though. We’re a delight.”

“Sure.” Steph scoffs.

“Wow, okay,” Brenda scoffs back, and neither of them mean it, “Fuck you?” 

“How’s your guy’s finals weeks going? Because I’m fucking dying,” Steph says, instead of acknowledging her. 

“Stephie--” Stacy whines, off camera again, “Why would you say that? I’m trying not to think about it!”

“Sorry, Babe, I need someone else to share in my suffering,” She shrugs, unapologetically, “... that bad, huh?”

Stacy pops up, apparently having sat on the floor while they were talking, because she only manages to shove herself into frame from the nose up, “It sucks.”

“Brenda?”

“Oh my god. Don’t. Ask. At least it’s almost over.”

Steph lets her head thunk onto the table in front of her, “Jealous.”

Both Stacy and Brenda’s school’s started a couple weeks before Steph’s, so they’re finals weeks are both overlapping and ending soon.

It doesn’t really matter for her, it’s not like she’d be going home any earlier, but still, Steph’s always preferred to be on the tail end of something she was dreading. Right at the beginning it’s too easy to get overwhelmed with how much shit is going to suck.

“Yeah, well--” Brenda starts, voice slippery in a way that means she’s about to be a bitch, but someone raps carefully on the doorframe behind Steph and she stops paying attention. 

Turning to find who she hopes -- she realizes a second late, once she actually sees him-- is Pete. 

It is. 

(All her deep seeded hopes she’s absolutely ignoring are fulfilled. She’s ignoring that too.)

“Hey,” He says brightly from behind her, holding out a to-go cup. His eyes flick over her shoulder, catching sight of her phone, “Oh, shoot, sorry, I didn’t realize you were--”

“No, don’t worry about it, they’re assholes anyway,” She grins, calling the last part loud enough to make sure her friends hear it. She reaches up to snatch the cup to her chest.

“Fuck off!” Brenda says loudly back. Stacy just audibly pouts.

“Cool, okay,” Pete manages a supremely awkward little laugh, “You go to class today?”

“I dunno, you go to bed last night?”

“None of your business,” He smiles. Which means no.

“Then none of yours either,” She shoots back, which also means no. 

It’s a lie, technically. She went to her Cinema in the Age of the Internet class this afternoon, and mostly just paid attention when the teacher played video clips and rolled her eyes. But it’s still a class. 

For some reason, after a second of even considering that he might be disappointed with her, she amends herself to, “One, though. For the record”

“Nice!” Pete’s smile splits into a grin, “Better than me. Like, on the sleep front. I went to class.”

“Obviously,” Steph smirks, with an eye roll that’s way fonder than the ones she was shooting off during Cin-Age.  

“Well,” He bounces up and down on his toes, once, then again, before nodding down the hall, “I’ll see you later?”

“Yup. If wrapping chords doesn't kill me first.”

He tilts his head in semi-sympathy, flicking a lame little salute in her direction, “Godspeed.”

She snorts, saluting him back with her matcha as he pushes off the wall and down the hallway, before turning back to her phone.

Both her friends stare up at her. Stacy even sat down at her desk.

“What?” She laughs.

“What the fuck was that?” Brenda explodes, like she’d literally been holding it back in her mouth.

“Who was that?” Stacy adds, less explosive, but much, much squeakier.

“Oh my god, this is a crazy energy you’re hitting me with right now--” Steph manages, deflecting only slightly on purpose.

“Buh-buh-buh--” Brenda cuts her off, waving both arms wide across the camera, “No, fuck that. What literally was that? Like. Random dude just shows up and brings you coffee--”

“Matcha,” Steph corrects, taking a sip for emphasis, or whatever.

“Whatever. And then he, like, polices your attendance? What the fuck?”

Stacy nods, aggressively.

“Oh, no, that’s just a bit we do, it’s fine,” She says, catching up. She guesses, from an outside perspective, a man asking if she’s been going to her College Level Classes probably does seem weird as fuck. If anyone else tried it, she’d probably punch them.

“Yeah, okay, but still--” Brenda hisses.

“Wait,” Stacy’s eyes go huge, “Was that the guy? The one Tiffany was talking about?”

“What guy? There’s no guy.” Steph scoffs, faster than she means to. She probably sounded way more defensive than she is.

Brenda’s eyes flick back and forth, presumably between her and Stacy’s squares, a fucking sinsister ass grin growing across her face, “Oh my god. That’s totally him, isn’t it? That was ballet guy?”

“There’s no ballet guy, he’s just… he’s just a guy who happens to do ballet. There’s a difference!”

“Is the difference that you want to fuck him?”

“What?” She splutters around the mouth of her cup lid, spitting green onto her shirt collar, “No!”

“Sure,” Brenda crosses her arms, “Like that wasn’t a fucking walking Stephanie Lauter Nerdy Boy-Toy Red Alert.”

“What the actual fuck are you talking about?”

“Stacy was that or was that not a walking Stephanie Lauter Nerdy Boy-Toy Red Alert?”

“Oh, totally,” She nods, beaming, “He even has glasses and everything.”

“See!”

“That isn’t a thing! That has never been a thing!”

“Oh my god, babe, please. That has always been a thing. You're into complete losers, there’s no shame in it.”

“He’s not a loser,” Steph says, too fast again. Defensive without meaning to be.

Both her friends start to laugh so hard the audio over the call warps.

“Shut the fuck up. I’m hanging up. You’re the worst.”

“Wait, no!” Stacy shouts, probably too loud for a person in a dorm room, “Come on! What’s his name?”

“Ooh, yeah. Details. Literally all the details.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Named…?” Brenda pushes, folding completely onto her arms so her face is closer to the camera. Stephanie feels suddenly way too observed for her liking.

“Peter.”

“Woah, that’s like… the perfect nerd name,” Stacy gasps, like that means anything, “Is he gay, or something?”

“What the fuck?”

“No, that’s a good question,” Brenda cuts in before she can answer, “Is that why you're being so weird about him?”

“No, he’s not gay. I don’t… think?” They haven’t necessarily discussed it, but he mentioned having a crush on Tasha Yar (who is… apparently a character from Star Trek, and very much a girl) in passing one time, and it’d stuck out for some reason. So, he definitely likes girls a little, probably, “Why? Just ‘cause he does ballet? That’s, like, so many levels of problematic.”

“I mean, kind of,” Brenda shrugs, “But also I don’t understand why you havent hit that if he’s not literally a homosexual.”

“You’re insane.”

“And right!” Stacy insists, slamming both fists down against her desk top so hard one of her blind box Hello Kitty figurines topples into frame.

“Okay, goodbye,” She rolls her eyes, reaching over the cables to grab her phone, talking over her friend’s protests, “Gotta get back to work now, bye!”

“Stephanie!”  

Steph hangs up. 

She takes a sip of matcha. 

‘Stephanie Lauter Nerdy Boy-Toy Red Alert’ sing-songs insistently in the back of her head. 

Goddamnit.

15 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

ballet boy

ballet boy

Before you ask later, no. I didn't sleep last night. Please kill me the next time you see me in person.

You

aw thats ok i did NOT go to class

You

well thats a lie i went to hhalf of one but i straight up slept thru the other two

ballet boy

Oh, good. Glad to hear it.

You

u coping king?

ballet boy

Absolutely not. I think half my literal, physical brain matter has been replaced with multivariable calculus at this point.

ballet boy

I didn’t even have time to get a hot chocolate today :-(

You

oh fuck r u gonna be like

You

.,,.,,. good?

You

blood sugar wise and shit

ballet boy

Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have grape juice. 

ballet boy

It’s just not as good :-(

You

this is so fucking tragic

ballet boy

I know, right?

---

Steph’s pretty sure she’s supposed to already be with the rest of the tech crew, but she doesn’t really care, and she’s pretty sure Deb won’t either. If she did, she’d have gotten a text telling her to get her ass in the auditorium.

She’s gonna join them. Just, like, once Pete shows up and she can force him to take the hot chocolate she made for him.

(It’d felt like a good idea half an hour ago, dumping it into a sealable travel mug on her way out the door, but now that she’s waiting with it, it almost feels stupid. Embarrassing. Like she’s showing her hand by trying too hard, even if she’s not entirely sure of what her hand even is in this specific situation.)

Either way, she still calls for him, when she sees him come down the hallway, walking past her with his head down, like he’s operating completely on auto pilot in an attempt to keep himself standing.

“Hey, Pete, wait up!” She jogs to catch up with him, and he pauses.

His half-asleep, dead eyed expression brightens when he sees her; which is something she doesn’t know what the fuck to do with, so she ignores it.

“Here,” She shoves the thermos in his hand, “I know you mentioned you didn’t have time to stop for one.”

It’s kind of a lame thing to say, pretending she casually, half remembered something he’d mentioned to her when he’d literally texted her about it, like, an hour ago. But if Pete thinks so, it doesn’t show.

In fact, nothing really shows. Pete is just staring down at the travel mug like he’s never seen anything like it before in his literal life.

“It’s probably shit, ‘cause I just stole one of my roommates packets, but I figured, like, a thermos would be a safer bet than a to-go cup,” She says, probably totally unnecessarily, to fill the silence, “‘Cause I dunno when you’re gonna fuckin’ find the time to actually drink it.”

“You… you made me a hot chocolate?” He blinks up from the cup, smiling at her, slightly open mouthed with surprise that she’s not sure if she should be offended by or not. Like her doing a nice thing for him was so unbelievable.

“Yeah, dude,” She shrugs, deciding not to be, “Figured it was about time I returned the favor anyway.”

“You didn’t have to,” his eyes widen slightly, “I mean, I wasn’t, like, expecting it or anything--”

“Yeah, I know,” She rolls her eyes.

“Thanks,” He says, so sincerely that Steph doesn’t know what to do to it.

Instead of figuring it out, she just reaches out and gently shoves him back around, “Go dance.”

“Okay, okay. Just…” He laughs, half turning back anyway. His smile widens into a genuine grin, “Thanks.”

“You already said that.”

“I… yeah. I know,” he laughs, sounding nervous, for some reason, “I’ll. I’m gonna go get changed.”

Steph snorts, “Yeah, you go do that.”

He looks back twice at her before he turns the corner, just to fucking smile at her. Steph’s so ridiculously glad she didn’t talk herself out of it that the idea that she ever was, for any reason, almost feels stupid.

---

She was right, Deb hadn’t cared about her being late. She’d just given her a pointed look that Steph literally refuses to read into and welcomed her to the program folding party like she was welcoming her to a funeral.

She hadn’t been acting nearly as dramatic as Steph assumed.

She doesn’t think she’d been aware that one could even print this many programs. It feels like overkill to the nth degree and then some.

But, like, it’s easy and Steph’s not ever going to complain about being given an excuse to waste time doing something that takes exactly zero effort.

Almost all of the tech crew, past the kids who’ve snagged ‘important jobs’ like lights and shit, are sprawled out in the back of the auditorium, folding programs. Folding just… so many programs, and talking over each other, and half listening to some song a group of ballerinas are playing quietly on a bluetooth speaker. It clashes badly with the classical music booming on top of everything and Hidgens’ shouting.

Some of the dancers, younger ones who know some of the tech freshman and aren’t needed for a bit, have climbed over to help them. 

It was a pretty solid vibe, one Steph was more than happy to let herself get lost in until music she recognized started up.

She thinks someone says something to her when she sits up a little, hooking her chin over one of the seats in the very back rows to watch, but she just sort of hums noncommittally, absently creasing the same program along the same middle line as she watches.

There’s something… different about this run of Hot Chocolate. She can’t place it, exactly. Just a hyper present, and completely vague different. It’s not bad, not by a long shot, just… shifted, slightly.

They’ve started rehearsing in mock-costumes, the girls in long, twirly skirts and hats and hair pieces, and the boys, occasionally, in, like, cool pants or puff sleeved jackets. So, maybe that’s it. But she doesn’t think so.

(It could, very, very possibly be something one of the other ballerinas in the number was doing. Steph just literally never fucking watches them. Not even on purpose, Pete just pulls her focus, the same he did on the first night.)

She watches Pete easily loft one of the girls in the air, that constant, present tug of something being different pulling at her chest, when one of the freshmen calls her name.

“Tell them I’m right, Stephanie? I mean, like, I’m right!”

“There’s no fuckin’ way--”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right…” She half tunes back into what they’re saying, not entirely sure of what she’s agreeing to and not caring nearly as much as she should.

“See, I told you--!”

And then it hits her. What was so different about the number this time.

This time, the whole time he danced, Pete was smiling.

Not like the twenty-something, manic grin of Hidgens on the old show poster, or the forced, corners pulled up smirk he sometimes manages when he’s just been lectured about it. A real smile, a Pete smile. Genuine, and close lipped, and tilted crooked across his face.

It makes something violently proud and aggressively warm unfurl in her chest, as the song comes to it’s brightly gentle stop.

“Spankoffski,” Hidgens calls, sharply.

It’s kind of funny. It pisses her the fuck off when Hidgens is a dick, but she also doesn’t mind being there when it happens. It’s always satisfying to have a ton of valid, lived-experience reasons to fucking hate someone.

Pete steps forward from the group, tugging nervously on his practice costume jacket.

There's a long moment of silence as Hidgens stares up at him. Long enough Steph is actually kind of worried that he’s going to take out a knife and throw it at him or something else fucking batshit and situationally inappropriate.

And then, the unbelievable happens.

“Nice work. I almost believed you were having a good time up there,” He says. It’s stilted and reluctant, but he says it, “If you could dance like that every time, we might have a fucking show.”

Pete looks more like a person hit by a throwing knife than one that received a fucking compliment, gaping wordlessly for a second, before managing to squeak out a frantic, “I… um. Thanks.”

Hidgens doesn’t acknowledge it. Just moves onto one of the girls next to Pete to ream her for her ‘disgusting, abhorrently sickled feet’.

Pete stumbles back to where he’d been before, ignoring the congratulatory clap on the shoulder one of his fellow dancers gives him. 

His eyes search her out in the back of the auditorium, huge and unbelieving. With a soundless (she assumes, even though she’d be too far back to hear it anyway) laugh, he mouths, ‘What the fuck?!’

‘I don’t know, man,’ Steph mouths back, grinning. She sticks out her tongue and gives him a thumbs up.

Pete beams.

14 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

First Day Of Finals

ballet boy

ballet boy

Your first final is today, right? 

You

ugughghhggh yessss

ballet boy

Good luck! You got this!

You

i 100% dont but thx

13 Days Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

ballet boy

You

how many finals u got tday

ballet boy

F o u r.

You

jesus CHRIST?/??

ballet boy

I know. How about you?

You

just 1

You

wanna grab lunch btween urs? if thats physcially possible

ballet boy

Yeah, I’d like that. Can we go to a less objectively horrible dining hall this time?

You

IM NOT GOING IF WE DONT

11 Days Until First Performance The Nutcracker

ballet boy

ballet boy

How’d it go?

You

so bad i fucking died

You

but at least its DONE FOREVER

ballet boy

At least it’s done forever!!

9 Days Until First Performance The Nutcracker

ballet boy

ballet boy

My last dance final for the semester is done! Now, I just have to survive Contemporary Optics and Astronomy/Astrophysics and I’m home free!

You

WOOHOOO FUCK YEAHHH

You

i still litrally cant beleive u have finals for ballet lmaooo

You

like i kno its 1 of ur majors but that feels Insane

You

how tf do u even get GRADED isnt art fucking subjective or somthing

ballet boy

Yeah, you would fucking think, wouldn’t you?

7 Days Until First Performance The Nutcracker

ballet boy

You

I JUST GOTTA TAKE MY SCRIPT ANALYSIS FINAL AND ILL OFFICALLY HAVE TAKEN ALL MY FINALS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN MY COLLEGE CAREER

ballet boy

Hell yeah!

ballet boy

When is it?

You

2

ballet boy

Good luck!!

---

mayoral bitch

mayoral bitch

Stephanie. There has been a change in schedule and your presence will now be expected for Christmas dinner.

You

wtf no??

You

im not coming home until like nye

mayoral bitch

Yes, that was the original plan. However, we have some very important people coming over for Christmas dinner and your presence is now mandatory.

You

fuck that i literally have to help on the show the day before

You

id have to leave at like six in the morning

mayoral bitch

Then plan to leave at six in the morning, Stephanie. This isn’t optional, and it’s not our fault if the consequences of your academic delinquency make things ‘inconvenient’ for you.

You

if my dad wants me home for christmas so bad he can ask me himself

mayoral bitch

Don’t be a child, Stephanie. This has nothing to do with wanting you home. It’s a bad look if our guests arrive and the Lauter family is not spending Christmas as a family. People will talk.

mayoral bitch

We’ll be expecting you around noon.

mayoral bitch

Once again, this is not a request.

You

fuck you

---

deb

deb

hey dude r u on ur way? we started twnty min ago

You

cant come sick

You

ill be there tmrrw

deb

u fucking better its start of hell week

You

i literally said i will be

deb

yeah ok

deb

feel better

You

thx

---

Steph doesn’t know why it’s getting to her so bad.

It shouldn’t. It really fucking shouldn’t and it’s not like she’s surprised.

This is exactly her dad’s fucking MO, letting her think she could make her own decision on something only to change the game in the last minute. Decide his stupid fucking politcal party crap was more important than what she wanted.

And, okay. It’s not even the biggest deal. She knows that. She knows that if she really wanted to she could leave right after the last show on Christmas Eve and get back home late, or roll out early to get there day of, but that isn’t the fucking point.

She’d been looking forward to a chill Christmas, to hanging around by herself and eating like total crap and heading back on her own schedule. She’d been looking forward to not having to play the happy family game that both her and her dad knows is bullshit. 

And now that’s all fucked because last minute someone got worried that people might talk and it could effect some .oo5% poll numbers months down the line when it’s time for reelection.

He hadn’t even had the fucking decency to tell her about it himself. 

(Another not surprise. Tessburger has been running communication to Steph since she was thirteen. But it still pisses her off.)

She slams her way into the theatre, well after she’s supposed to have left by at least an hour. It’s the closest thing to precaution she’s willing to put effort into tonight, when, honestly, she doesn’t really give a shit about being caught in her lie by some techie who stayed late. She’s almost positive Deb didn’t actually fucking believe her anyway.

She’s angry and she needs a distraction before she ruins something.

She hadn’t even texted Pete to see if he’d be here after rehearsal but she knows he fucking will be. Dumbass doesn’t know when to quit, even after his dance finals are done. He’s still been sticking around to run shit for the actual show.

(It’s normally something that she finds eye-rolling-ly endearing, but right now it just annoys her too. Which isn’t fair, she knows, but it does. Fucker can’t just take a fucking break, can he?)

The idea that he might not be occurs to her for the literal first time as she steps in, and it hits her harder than it should-- but, luckily, it doesn’t get a chance to actually settle.

Pete’s not dancing when she comes in, which is new, but he is there, and there is really all Steph needs right now. 

Something inside her anger cracks in half at the sight of him. Not all the way gone but shifted, more manageable. More… exhausted and frustrated, than actually livid.

And Steph doesn’t know what the fuck she’s supposed to do with that. 

Pete doesn’t look up at her when she lets the door swing shut behind her. She’s not even entirely sure he’s awake, really. He’s lying prone center stage with his legs curled up to his chest, as some familiar enough classical piece floats over from his speaker. Not the backing from either of his numbers, but something else from The Nutcracker, for sure, if Steph knows it.

(She wonders, not for the first time, if he doesn’t get sick of the music. Hearing it year after year, day after day for three months straight. If he does, he’s never said anything, and Pete, generally, really likes complaining.)

She’s suddenly certain she should leave. That all her confusing, immature, pissed-off-ed-ness is going to fuck up something here, and she needs to get the fuck out and go fume elsewhere.

Instead, she makes her way down the aisle and pushes herself up onto the stage. After half a second of consideration on how much she actually gives a shit, she kicks off her boots before actually stepping on it.

Pete doesn’t actually move until she drops flat on her back next to him, turning his head just slightly to stare at her.

Not asleep, then. Or, at least, not anymore if he was.

“Jesus christ, you look tired.” 

It’s not exactly what she’d planned to say. She hadn’t, really, planned something to say, but if she had it wouldn’t have been that. He absolutely knows he looks tired already, considering he’s looked tired since they fucking met. 

But also, he does, and it’s just another thing piling up in her chest of shit that makes her mad.

“Yeah,” He agrees, lazily. His voice slipped somewhere gravelly in the back of his throat; a thing Steph notices in the most normal way humanly possible, “I’m considering being put under a medically induced coma until next semester.”

“Hey, I mean, at least we’re pretty much out of finals, though?” She tries, unconvincingly. 

“Ha,” He scoffs, “I’d take a thousand finals to a Hidgens tech week.” 

“That bad?”

He looks totally at her, expression just flat enough to be its own answer.

“Cool, I might join you in that coma then.”

Pete raises his eyebrows, “Think we can get a Groupon?”

She laughs, genuinely, actually laughs, for what she knows is at least the first time today since she got that fucking text, “Come on. Let's get out of here.”

“What?” 

“I wanna do something.”

She sits up, tugging on the cuff of his sweater sleeve until he gets the hint to sit up too. 

He does, reluctantly, face twisting into a pre apology she’s already planning to ignore, “I, just, I really gotta run this--”

“No, you don’t.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t need to run shit. She thinks he could dance this literal entire ballet in his sleep-- and, honestly, she wishes he would. He needs the fucking rest.

“Steph,” He says, just an ounce pleading. An unspoken ‘just drop it, okay?’ trailing right off at the end.

“Pete,” She says back, entirely pleading and half wondering when she learned so much about Peter goddamn Spankoffski she became able to mind read the silent implications at the ends of his fucking sentences.

He seems to clock something in hers too, though, because his expression shifts. The significantly less subtle ‘if you don’t give me a distraction I’ll fucking kill myself’ she’s all but shaking with, maybe. So, if she’s learned that much about him, at least he’s returning the favor.

His concern tilts gently towards teasing, “You go to class today?”

“I had a fucking final, Pete. Yeah. I did.” 

And at that, he definitely clocks more than something. Which doesn’t take any mind reading. She hadn’t been trying to be fucking subtle.

(Though… she’d been trying to be more subtle than that. It just snapped out of her. Leftover rage-bitch Steph rearing her head without her permission.)

He stares at her for a long second, like he’s trying to figure something out before shrugging, “Well, I didn’t sleep at all last night. So you win.” 

“Yeah. I do,” She tries to match his tone, forced-casual and slightly-joking, but it just comes out pouty.

He just smiles at her, pushing himself standing in one swooping motion, and sticking a hand down to help her up, “Let's go, then.”

---

“Yeah, no, I would if I wasn’t genuinely concerned he would cut my fucking head off,” Pete insists, for the third time, pouring the 7/11 instant cocoa powder into one of the paper to-go cups. 

“Please,” Steph rolls her eyes, from her perch up on the hot drinks counter. She’s definitely at least half sitting in spilled black coffee, but she’s already committed to it, so she just shifts a little to the left.

“No, seriously, Steph, he might,” Pete says, eyes wide, “There’s a rumor he did it to a guy his first year teaching-- shit.”

He yanks his hand off the hot water button on the dispenser, cup overflowing on the sides. He semi-frantically grabs a handful of napkins and just sort of sets them on top of it. 

She’s about to make fun of him for it, when he pulls the now boiling water saturated paper off with a wince, and dumps it wetly into the garbage hole.

“Dude, what the fuck?” She snorts.

“Oh, I was--” He flicks a clearly embaressed smile in her direction, before scooping his cup up and showing it to her, “Just. Fixing it.”

She leans closer to it then she needs to, mostly to be a dick, but in his defense, the cup is now, suddenly, filled a reasonable amount. The sides are all wet and hot chocolate powder is stained unevenly along the rim, but it’s no longer overflowing, at least.

“Huh. That was way more effective than I feel like it should have been.”

“Yeah,” he huffs, awkwardly, “Capillary action in motion.”

“Fucking what?”

“Capillary--” He starts, and then clearly thinks better of himself, “It’s essentially just absorption.”

“Clever,” She nods, refusing to consider how ready she just was to sit through a Peter Spankoffski Length Dissertation on water levels or some shit.

He splutters something completely indiscernible at that, quickly sweeping a coffee stirrer through the remaining hot chocolate to mix it in and pushing on a cap.

“You all good?” She asks, hopping off the counter and not waiting for an answer as she walks over to the drinks fridge. Pete trails after her, staring with badly restrained judgement at her beautifully selected pink can of Monster Energy, “Fuck off, I took my last final today. I’m celebrating.”

“I didn’t say anything!” He sticks both hands up defensively.

“Yeah, but you were thinking it,” She knocks the can lightly into the underside of his chin, before brushing past him to get into one of the aisles, “Grab whatever you want, my dad’s credit card is paying.”

“You sure?”

She turns just enough to make the most pointed eye contact she can, “Pete. Clear out the fucking shelves.”

If her dad wants to be a fucking jackass, he can buy them as many snacks as they can fucking eat.

“Yeah,” He nods, with, clearly incredibly vague, understanding, “Okay.”

She grins, tucking a party sized bag of Sour Patch Watermelon under her arm, “Wait, okay go back though. What the fuck do you mean Hidgens killed a kid and then still got to keep teaching here?”

“Oh, right,” He laughs, very, very carefully selecting a normal sized Reeses, and then, at her intense stare, putting it back to grab the king sized next to it, “Well, it’s just a rumor, but--”

“No shit.” She doesn’t think known student murderers usually continue having students after the fact.

Pete rolls his eyes, “Okay, but look at the guy. You think he’s not capable of fucking offing someone because they under-rotated their attitude turns?”

“Don’t fucking know what those are, but no, that’s actually completely fair.”

“I know it is,” he says, a little too cockily, “But, okay. So, he started teaching here in, like, the late eighties, early nineties, after his professional ballet career didn’t really take off--”

“Ha!” Steph laughs, loud and probably rude. Pete cocks an eyebrow at her, half-smiling (or, trying to. The other side keeps flicking it up into a full smile before he catches himself), “What? He’s a fucking dickhead. I like the idea of him failing, it’s, like, fucking karma or some shit. Pre-karma for what a fuck he was going to turn into.”

He lets his mouth settle on the full smile, “Wouldn’t pre-karma just be… the actual reason for someone's actions?”

“Pete. Tell me about the kid he murdered,” She whines, throwing a mini bag of Doritos at him, “Allegedly.”

“Allegedly,” Pete agrees, bending down to scoop the bag up off the ground and hand it back to her. She slides it under her arm next to the Sour Patch, “He really hated the senior who was dancing the Cavelier that year--” 

How much she can’t fucking remember what role the Cavelier is must show on her face, because he elaborates, “That’s who Tommy R. is playing this year. Tall guy? Like, the whitest blond hair you’ve ever seen…?” 

“Ah. Yeah, okay.”

She knows him, sort of. She’s pretty sure he’s a senior, but he’s decently recognizable from the fucking hair alone, Pete hadn’t been kidding.

“Yeah. So, he openly hated this guy, and apparently was really open about thinking he didn’t deserve the role, but it was too late to recast,” He carefully pulls two bags of gummy bears off the shelf, “And then, like, two days before opening, the guy drops out.”

“Of the show?”

“Of school.”

“What?” She laughs, squatting down to examine the row of Combos, before deciding to just grab one of each flavor, because if one of them sucks, it’ll just feel like a bonus fuck you to her dad to throw them away.

“Yeah! Like, he apparently had a ‘family emergency’ and fucking left. Which was weird because he literally didn’t tell anyone, he just left a note for his roommate.”

“Suspect as hell-- wait, here, hold these, I don’t have hands.”

Pete easily takes the three remaining Combos she can’t carry, cradling them in the crook of his elbow, “I know.”

“And, like, eighties, so no cell phones.”

“Exactly. No one could get in contact with him, and the school just said he’d dropped out, like, he’d submitted the paperwork and everything, so no one really looked into it.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I know, it’s actually really concerning. But, like I said, it was, like, two days before opening night, and he was dancing one of the leads. So guess who stepped up to dance the role?”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes! Yes fucking way!”

“Jesus christ.”

“Oh, yeah. It was apparently really obvious he’d been practicing it too, because Hidgens had his part, like down.”

“Wait, so did he kill him because he did a bad job, or just to dance the role he wanted?”

“Both, probably? It’s unclear-- hey, would it be insane to get a whole fucking box of Cosmic Brownies?”

“Pete. Get two.”

“I’m just getting one.”

“Lame,” she groans, blowing a raspberry at him.

“I can’t hold two!” He laughs, jutting his very full arms at her in example and then looking entirely panicked when one of his gummy bears almost falls.

After really careful maneuvering to grab his box, they head to the register, mostly out of necessity more than anything else.  

“Did they find a head or some shit?” Steph asks, dumping her shit onto the counter, half-hoping the poor graveyard shift cashier enjoys listening in on what is probably a semi batshit conversation without context. It’s a pretty batshit one with it, “Why is the fear specifically decapitation ?”

“Oh,” Pete rests his chin on his cup lid for a second, looking a little like he’s never considered that before, “I don’t think they found a head, no. I’m pretty sure that’s just for color.”

“That’s boring,” She says, genuinely a little disappointed.

“Yeah,” Pete sighs.

“Do you need a bag?” The cashier asks. Either thoroughly unamused by them or good at hiding it.

They both say yes at the same time. 

Steph grabs the overly full plastic bag before Pete can, sliding out her Monster as she hip checks the door open, “There’s literally no way that’s fucking true.”

“I mean, it’s highly unlikely,” He concedes, stepping out past her, “But, I also don’t doubt it for a second.”

“Wild.”

“Where are we going?” Pete asks, rocking up and down on his toes. 

She shrugs, cracking open the can and immediately forcing herself to pretend that she doesn’t regret not having a warm drink to hold, “Wherever the wind takes us. Or whatever.”

“Whimsical.” Pete wrinkles his nose, like he means it as an insult. 

She rolls her eyes, hooking her arm around his and dragging him down the sidewalk opposite the way they came. 

It’s cold out, the sharp, wind-off-the-lakes, biting kind of freezing that comes with the territory of a Michigan December. At some point two weeks back they’d gotten their first substantial snowfall, so the sidewalks aren’t too slippy. Just kind of salt-grit-under-your-shoes gross.

It started snowing when they were in the 7/11. Not hard, just the same kind of flurries that happen most nights it drops cold enough. As they walk, she switches between absently watching Pete and absently watching as the flakes drop and immediately melt across the sleeve of her North Face.

“Excited for the show?” she asks, sort of kidding. 

“Excited for it to be over, mostly,” He shrugs, before adding a little too fast, “It’s not that I don’t like performing, or anything, I’m just ready for it to be done.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” She says, instead of telling him he doesn’t need to defend himself to her. She’s pretty sure that’ll just lead to more defending in the long run, “Is your family coming?”

(She regrets the question as soon as she asks it. This is her distraction hang out, the last fucking thing she wants to bring into it is the opening for someone to ask about her fucking family and get her all pissed off again. But, it’s too late. The question is already out in the biting, whippy wind for Pete to consider.)

“Oh, my parents probably won’t,” he says, and then at her questioning look, he adds, “They live in Florida, so they usually only come up for the Spring show. I think my mom wants to do both, but my dad is sick of seeing me in Nutcrackers.”

“Florida? I thought you said you were from here?” Though, based on literally everything fucking else she’s ever learned about Peter Spankoffski, it probably wouldn’t be the most surprising twist of events. It’s no fucking physics and ballet, “If that was a lie, Pete, and you’re from fucking Florida, I’m going to go apeshit.”

“I am from here,” he laughs, “Don’t worry. They just moved down there after I graduated.”

“That was fucking quick.”

She kind of thought retiring to the Keys or some shit was supposed to be a, like, once you're married and have given them grandchildren kind of parent-life-change move. Not… you turned into a legal adult and they promptly went to the opposite end of the coast.

“Not really, they’re old as shit,” Pete explains, taking a sip of his hot chocolate and keeping the cup tucked up by his chest, “My brother is eighteen years older than me.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

She stares at him for a little bit, as they walk. The wind catches the pieces of his hair that have fallen out of the little bun he’s got twisted back of his neck, tossing them up above his head.

“Are you going to see them for break?” A fuzzy, probably-not-realistic plan starts forming in her head exclusively on the basis of ‘having to drop a friend off at the airport might be a valid enough excuse for her Dad to be able to give his fancy friends on why she’s missing dinner, so she doesn’t need to go back’.

“Nope. My brother still lives in Michigan, so I just stay with him.”

“Oh, cool. Back in… Lansing, or wherever?”

“No, he lives in this, like, miniscule island town in the middle of literally nowhere. It’s called Hatchetfield?”

She jolts to a stop, which, in turn, jolts the Peter Spankoffski she’s got her arm locked with to a stop too, “No fucking way.”

“What?”

“You’re kidding. There’s no shot-- you’ve gotta be fucking kidding, dude.”

“What?” He huffs, weaseling his arm away from her, and bringing the now free hand up to cup the other side of his drink.

“I’m from Hatchetfield.”

His mouth drops open slightly, “Wait, really?”

“Yeah!”  

“Holy cow, what are the chances--”

She gesticulates sort of pointlessly with her Monster, just for general emphasis, “My dad is the literal mayor, how did you not figure that out?”

“How the fuck was I supposed to figure that out?!”

She redirects the can to punch him, lightly, on the arm, “He has my last name!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Pete laughs, sarcastically, “I don’t know the fucking name of the Mayor of my brother’s town?”

She buries her own laughter into her sleeve, the plastic 7/11 bag knocking into her chest from where it’s dangling off her wrist, “That’s so fucking fair, dude.”

“Yes, I know.”

She surfaces, grinning. He keeps up the fakest looking pout Steph’s ever seen for literally less than a second before grinning back.

“How are you getting there?” She asks, a secondary, less get-out-of-jail-free card, but still slightly more bearable plan, slotting into place.

“My brother usually comes to the Christmas Eve Matinee and then we just drive back after.”

Never fucking mind then, fuck that plan too, “Ah, okay. That tracks.”

“Why?”

“I was gonna offer you a ride.”

He tilts his head, looking, for all the world, like a confused puppy, eyes squinty and considering, like he’s trying to figure something out before he asks,  “I thought you weren’t going back for Christmas?”

Her annoyance resurfaces, hot and unwanted. She shoves it down, gritting out a forced-pleasant, “Change of plans.”

Pete clearly doesn’t buy it, but he’s at least nice enough to not say anything. He un-tilts his head, mostly, before saying, “I mean, I’ll take the ride. If you’re already driving back.”

“Nah, man. I don’t wanna fuck up your whole thing with your brother--”

“Oh, no. Don’t worry about that. He’ll be thrilled if he doesn’t have to come see the show.”

Something weird settles in Steph’s stomach, next to the bottled up anger at her dad and the insane urge to press Pete’s wind-reddened cheeks between her hands until they warm up. Almost… sad, at the idea of no one coming to see him dance, even if he doesn’t seem to mind it.

“No, really. I was just offering. You don’t have to, like--”

“Steph,” he interrupts, awkwardly shifting dance bag around to his front and yanking his phone out of the front pocket, “I’m being so honest, here. Just wait one second.”

He types something way too fucking fast for something Steph knows has proper punctuation, before turning he’s screen to her.

Ted

You

Hey, Ted. Do you want an excuse to not come pick me up from school, meaning you also don’t need to come guilt-watch the Nutcracker for the millionth time?

She snorts, “Guilt watch?”

“Oh, yeah. I genuinely don’t give a shit if he comes to see it, but, it’s like peak baby brother privileges to make him feel bad if he doesn’t anyway”

“Insane.”

Though, Steph’s never had a sibling, so can’t really tell him he’s wrong. Pete goes to tuck his phone back into his back, but before he can, it vibrates with a response.

He cocks an eyebrow at her, “Told you.”

“You don’t even know what it fucking says, dickwad.”

He rolls his eyes, not even stopping to read it, before unlocking his phone and turning it back to her.

Ted

…

Ted

YES

Ted

Yea yes yes please absolutley

Ted

For real???

“Told you,” He repeats, smugly. Steph headbutts his shoulder as a rebuttal, and then keeps her head there, leaning a little into his arm and watching as he types.

You

Yup.

Once again, this time before he can even switch to a different screen, his screen lights up with another text.

Ted

Wait ur not gonna like kill urself are you

Steph has to hide a frantic laugh in the arm of Pete’s jacket as he splutters wordlessly.

You

NO?! What the fuck is wrong with you??

Ted

Idk man that felt like it could be one of those tortured academic black swan pushed over the edge kind of messages before you grande jatay off a bridge or something 

Ted

I would come see u be that fuck ass soldier if it meant you weren’t killing yourself

You

Wow. Thanks.

You

**grand jeté BTW

You

I just got another ride. Jackass.

Ted

Sick then absolutely yes take the ride

“Jesus christ,” He mutters, shoving his phone away before, presumably, his brother can say something else.

“So that’s a yes, on the ride?” Steph snorts, pushing off his side and taking a loud sip from her Monster, completely ignoring the way the fingers on the hand holding it have gone slightly numb.

Pete lets his head fall back, blowing a steady stream of air through his nose, “Yup. That’s, in fact, a resounding yes on the ride.”

When he looks up, a scatter of snowflakes have already melted across his glasses. Tiny water drops that drip in uneven lines down the lenses.

“Sick.”

And, for just that very second, having to go home doesn’t bother her at all.

---

Eventually, it’d started to snow harder. Hard enough they’d both, pretty silently, made the mutual New Englander decision that they had to get the fuck inside somewhere before they stopped being able to see eachother.

Pete had navigated them easily into a clearly empty science building, dragging her down the hallways with enough of a purpose that Steph was half expecting him to sit her down in a lab and explain fucking… whatever the napkin absorbing shit he did earlier with actual equiptment.

(Which, she hates to admit, would have been infuriatingly cute, if he had. Lame as shit. But cute.)

Instead, he’d lead her into a little offshoot hall with a line of benches against one wall, facing the other one made up entirely of windows.

“It’s a good hiding spot,” he shrugs, like he’d needed an excuse to bring them somewhere when Steph had so clearly been just dead set on getting them lost.

She doesn’t mention that it absolutely would not be a good hiding spot if it wasn’t almost one in the morning, post finals. It’s too sweet for that, and she doesn’t really want to fuck up whatever it actually is.

He sits the same way he’d been laying on the stage, legs bent up so his knees are right under his chin. Like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible.

Steph makes up for it by sprawling across pretty much the rest of the bench, her elbow bent low on the bench, practically next to his hip.

They sit in quiet for a little bit, watching the snow pile up against the lower glass panels, and handing snacks back and forth from the 7/11 bag.

It’s nice. Peaceful, in a way Steph doesn’t always like to let herself get.

“Are you okay?” Pete asks, eventually, his clearly pointedly trying-to-be-quiet voice practically echoing in the silence of the hallway, “You seemed… upset earlier.”

She swallows hard. She had been okay, before he fucking asked, and now it’s starting to bubble back up her throat, the annoyance, her fucking dad, Tessburger, all of it.

“I’m… fine.”

“Yeah, okay, I’m not particularly good at this, but even I can tell that wasn’t true.”

“Good at what?” She scoffs, and it comes out a little sharper than she means it to.

Pete just shrugs, “I dunno, like, feelings and stuff,” He turns his head towards her, smirking, “I mean, just ask Hidgens.”

“Shut the fuck up, you’re fine.”

And that definitely comes out sharper than she means it to. She can’t help it. The distraction isn’t working any more and somehow some possible-dancer-murderer, asshole professor’s tendency to be a dick to Pete is just part of her shit now. It bothers her.

“I was kidding.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She tugs the zipper down on her jacket, even though it’s still sort of cold in here, sitting up more.

“Okay,” Pete mumbles down into his certainly empty, if not, at least cold, cocoa, “Just. If you wanna talk about it. We can.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay.”

He stares steadily back ahead at the windows. 

“It’s just… it’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid.”

So then why the fuck are you bringing it up, Stephanie? God, something about this ridiculous fucking ballet boy, and his ridiculous, earnest fucking offers. He just does something to her and she’s not sure she likes it.

“Probably not.”

“What?”

“It’s probably not stupid,” Pete says, plainly, still looking ahead. The light off the snow reflects white on his glasses, “If it’s upsetting you so much.”

“Jesus christ,” She laughs, hard and bitter, into her hands, “It’s just that my dad’s a fucking asshole.”

She waits for Pete to say something, he doesn’t, just inclines his head towards her a little so she knows that he’s listening. 

“He’s a fucking asshole, and I know he wouldn’t give a shit about me coming home for Christmas if he had something to brag about, you know? Like, if I was too busy, like, studying abroad to cure brain cancer, or building, fucking, homes for orphaned baby elephants or some shit, he’d be fine with that because it’d make him look good. But, because I’m such a fuck up, the closest he can get is just… me standing there, so it looks like we don’t hate each other's guts, and people can at least say he’s a loving father.”

“Huh.” Pete breathes.

“I told you it was stupid.”

Her face feels hot, even in the cool stillness of the hallway. 

She said too much. She showed too much of her hand, and now Pete’s going to realize what a whiny fucking loser she actually is, and have to text his brother that he actually does need a ride home because there’s no way he’s getting in a car for six hours with a dumbass whose dad doesn’t even love her.

“No, just. If your dad’s baseline is curing cancer or saving elephants, then he’s setting himself up for disappointment.”

“What?” She laughs, turning to the window too, trying to cover up the sharp burn of embarrassment the word ‘disappointment’ leaves thudding in her chest.

He shrugs a little, “Like, sure, those things are great and all, I’m not denying that, but it’s an unrealistic expectation--”

“I was just making shit up to be dramatic. He’s never actually--”

She’s defending him. She doesn’t know why. He’s a dickhead, and she doesn’t want Pete thinking otherwise, but still. Why is she defending him?

“No, I know. But, still. If he can’t see how freaking amazing you are, because he’s waiting for you to win a Nobel fucking Peace Prize, then he’s an idiot.”

“Yeah, pretty fucking amazing,” Steph scoffs.

“Yeah. You are.” He says, firmly enough she actually turns to look at him. At some point he’d looked away from the window, and he meets her eye, for just a second before his flit away, “I couldn’t even do half the stuff you do.”

“Oh, come on, Pete. Mr. Double Major can’t do what, that I can? Fail a fucking class?”

“Jesus, Steph, seriously? Do you genuinely not realize how impressive you are?”

“You know, for a genius, you sound pretty fucking stupid right now,” She pushes off the wall to stand, to go, to do something that isn’t sit here and listen to Pete Spankoffski lie to make her feel better.

He reaches out to catch the edge of her jacket, “I’m serious. You fucking… you decide you want to design posters, and you make a shit ton of the coolest posters I’ve literally ever seen--”

She rolls her eyes as hard as she can, well aware she’s being a total bitch, but not really caring enough to stop it. The fucking posters. Yeah, Steph’s a fucking superhero because she put words over pictures.

If Pete notices the eyeroll, he ignores it, “You decide on a new major junior year and then you do it. You join the tech crew, and suddenly literally everyone wants to be your friend--”

She crosses her arms, “Shitty posters and freshman having crushes on someone who can buy them beer isn’t a fucking skill. ”

She doesn’t even mention whatever bullcrap he was trying to imply about her major. Like that’s not anything but further proof to her point that Steph’s useless.

“Okay, but it is. Do you know how fucking impressive being able to just… do shit like that is?”

“Once again, you don’t get to talk! You’re so good at--”

“Two things! Literally exactly two things that I’ve been doing since I was four! If it isn’t ballet or science, I can’t do shit!”

“At least they’re two things that matter!”

“Says who?” He scoffs, high and desperate, “If you ask any random person on the street if they’d rather hang out with a cool person who knows how to hold a conversation or a ballet dancer who knows what theoretical physics means, they’re picking the cool person every fucking time.”

“Yeah, maybe to fuck or buy a drink at a bar. Not to hire for some fancy job--”

“Do you know how important versatility and confidence is in literally any hiring scenario? There are studies--”

That shocks an actual laugh out of her, how insanely earnest he’s being, presenting her with fucking statistics to back up his argument on why Steph isn’t a fucking dumbass. It breaks her out of her anger again, more sudden than before. A instant, disorienting spotlight on how fucking ridiculous this conversation is.

“Hey. Hey, Pete.”

He stops talking, cutting himself off in the middle of what seemed to be, if she was actually paying attention, a very passionate tirade. He blinks, looking completely thrown off, “... what?”

She feels a smile split across her face without meaning to, “What the fuck are we arguing about?”

“You… you being mean to yourself?” He says, without literally any confidence whatsoever.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s how it started,” She flaps her hand at him, “But at some point I think we just ended up angrily complementing each other.”

“Yeah, we did, huh?” Pete squints, like he’s thinking back on it, and then snorts.

And then they’re both laughing. She tilts her forehead against his shoulder, and he knocks his head back into the wall and they just fucking lose it.

“Sorry,” Pete huffs, looking down at her, still badly suppressing his amusement, “Your dad’s a dickhead probably would have been a better answer. Like I said, I’m bad at this.” 

“Nah,” She hums, still grinning into his sleeve, “I think you did okay.”

“Patently false!”

She tilts her head up, to actually look at him, elbowing him a little until he looks down, “Just so you know? I’d want to be friends with the ballet dancer who knew physics theories or whatever you said.”

He seems genuinely touched, something soft and cracked open shuffling across his face, before he settles it under something more neutral, “Thanks. I’m sticking with cool person who knows how to talk to people.”

“Well,” She snorts, “Then, it’s a good fuckin’ thing we became friends.”

“Yeah. What are the odds?”

He slouches a little, offering her the open end of one of the bags of gummy bears. She grabs a red one off the top and bites its head off. He tilts a handful into his palm and tosses all of them into his mouth at once. 

Outside, the snow keeps falling.

“My mom really liked ballet.” She says. She doesn’t know why.

“Yeah?” He hums, after the second of quiet that usually comes when she drops her mom into a conversation using past tense.

“Yeah. She’d probably be way too excited that I was involved in one, even though I, like, barely qualify.”

“Hey! Don’t undermine tech. Without you guys we don’t have a show,” Pete says, both very sincerely, and also like he’s quoting someone. 

She just sort of sticks her tongue out in his general direction and hopes he notices.

“Did she have a favorite one?” Pete asks, carefully.

“Yeah,” She nods, a little, swallowing back the weird lump in throat that shouldn’t be there. That isn’t usually there, at this point, when she talks about her mom, “Like, Giselle, I think? Is that a ballet or did I just pull something out of my ass?”

Pete laughs, soft, snowfall-adjacent, “Yeah, it is. She’s got good taste. Sad taste, but solid.”

“That sums her up pretty good,” She smirks. Her mom had been cool and fun and incredible and, more and more as Steph looks back on it, incredibly depressing. Not because of anything she ever did directly, but she’d just had that vibe of, like, some fucking Jane Austen character Steph would be forced to analyze in her English Gen-Ed, who spent the whole book wistfully staring off into the sea or some shit. If that makes any sense. She doesn’t think it does, so she doesn’t say it out loud.

(Steph isn’t sure if it was from marrying her dad, the whole melancholy bullshit her Mom had going on. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Christine Lauter had always just been like that. 

She just thinks it’s pretty goddamn likely that, either way, her dad made it worse. He was really good at that. Making things worse.)

It hits her, probably a little too late, that she thinks this is the first time she’s ever told someone about her mom and they didn’t immediately say ‘I’m sorry’.

The snow keeps falling.

Pete tilts his head against hers, and after a long bit of silence, the gummy bears slump off the bench and she realizes he’s fallen asleep.

Something warm and new and entirely fucking terrifying unfurls inside her.

‘Stephanie Lauter Nerdy Boy-Toy Red Alert,’ someone whispers in the back of her head, self satisfied and sounding, somehow all at once, like, her home friends, her roommates, and (morbidly hilariously) a little bit her mom.

Oh.

Pete shifts slightly in his sleep, leaning even closer.

Oh no.

1 Day Until First Performance of The Nutcracker

Final Dress

“Hey, little soldier boy!” Steph sing-songs down the hallway, in a shit excuse for a back-stage whisper.

Pete spins around on his heel, face flat and annoyed under a truly ridiculous level of stage makeup, “I hate you, you know that right?”

She jogs a little to meet up with him, “Yeah, no you don’t.”

“No. I don’t,” He rolls his eyes, either not bothering or doing a shit job of hiding the way his expression slips fond, “You’re almost free, huh?”

“Just gotta get through performances and I have escaped your hell dance world forever.”

“Wow,” he gasps, exaggerated, around a snort, “How’s it feel? Exciting?”

“I dunno,” She shrugs, reaching out to straighten the stupid, gold epaulets on his costume jacket,  “I might end up missing it.”

(And she’s joking, but something in the back of her head pings desperate off her skull with one single, sudden, obnoxious realization. Fuck. She wants to kiss him.)

“Well, you could always tech another one.”

“Oh, fuck no,” She says, so fast he doesn’t even get the end of his sentence out, “But, who knows, maybe I’ll come see a ballet or two. In the audience. Really decide if I’m nostalgic or some shit about it.”

Pete grins. (Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She wants to kiss him.)

“Hey, I know it’s early, ‘cause I’m still driving you and shit, and there's that week in between, but we should hang out over break.”

“Yeah!” Pete says, so fast and high his voice cracks, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

(No. Actually, she has to kiss him.)

“We could go ice skating,” She offers, instead, “I’m missing when all my friends are going right now.”

“Oh,” He looks a little crestfallen, and then, quickly, stiffly worried and completely serious, “I cannot do that.”

“Dude. It’s ice skating, falling on your ass is like half the fun--”

“No. No, like, I signed a contract when I enrolled that I can’t. Ice skating is like, number one on the ‘big no’s for the dance program’.”

“That’s… holy shit,” She breathes out a, now familar, Peter Spankoffski specific, ‘ what the fuck’ kind of laugh, “did you actually sell your fucking soul, dude?”

“Nope, just my ankles,” He clicks his heels together, ballet shoes pivoting easily on the hallways floor tiles.

“Got it,” She snorts, “No ice skating.”

“Yeah, no. Ice skating, hiking, or… um, I don’t think I can do trampoline parks? A lot of them are really specific, actually.”

“Okay, I think I can work with that.”

“But, um,” He looks up at her, and then immediately snaps his eyes down to his hands, tugging at the pointless, fabric belt sewn onto his costume, “Do you guys meet during that week between shows?”

“Yeah,” She blinks, trying to process the sudden transition, “Deb was saying it, like, depends on if the first two shows are a train wreck, but at least just the last couple days beforehand.”

“Oh, cool,” He flicks his eyes up to hers again, and then back to the belt, and then back up to her, “‘Cause, like, we fully are going to have rehearsal every day, but it’s usually earlier since there are no classes. So. I’ll have more time at night, if you wanted to go get dinner… or something? Before we’re in Hatchetfield.”

She needs to kiss this boy. She needs to. 

“And, like. After this show, I’ll have way more time,” he continues, too fast, when she doesn’t give him an immediate answer.

“Yeah?”

“I mean, I have to do a show credit in spring semester, but there’s a pretty solid break between that one and this one, and, like, the general rumor going around is that we’re doing Coppélia, and everyone knows that’s just ‘cause Hidgens wants to dance Coppélius--”

“Pete?”

He barrels on, “... and theres no fucking way he’s giving me Franz, so I’ll probably just have a bit part. And that’s going to give me an insane amount of free time, like, comparably--”

“Hey. Pete?”

“Yeah?”

She smirks, “I don’t know what any of that means.”

His expression cracks in a smile, tiny and crooked and nice, “Right.” 

“Hey, Pete?” She says again.

He bites down on his lip and then immediately lets go, probably once he remembers that he’s wearing lipstick, “Yeah?”

She leans in a little, “Are you asking me on a date?”

His eyes blow wide, before he laughs a tiny bit, nervous and strained, “That entirely depends on what your answer would be.”

Jesus christ. This asshole.

“Can I fucking kiss you?”

“Oh,” If possible, his eyes get even wider, “Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She snorts, “Okay.”

And then she does. And for some reason, she’s painfully, entirely relieved when he kisses back.

“Was that a yes?” He whispers, sounding a little shell shocked, once they pull apart, “To the date?”

“I don’t think you actually asked, dude,” She teases, feeling a little shell shocked. It’s a new feeling. She doesn’t think a kiss has ever done that to her before.

“Right. Um,” he reaches up to adjust his hat, lowers his arm, and then reaches up to do it again, before looking at her and asking in a surprisingly clear voice, “Steph, do you wanna go on a date after this, maybe?”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

He grins, face so red that the little round stickers on his cheeks almost blend in, “Good. Okay.”

And, like, Steph’s not too fucking good to grin back. So she does, “Yeah.”

They stand like that, grinning at eachother like total dumbasses for a couple seconds, before Pete totally collapses in on himself, laughing in a frantic kind of relief, “... holy shit. I gotta go sit in a box for like forty five minutes, now.”

She just keeps fucking smiling, she can’t help it, “Keep it in your pants, Spankoffski.”

“Wow, okay, yeah,” he rolls his eyes, “I take it back. No date. I revoke my date request--”

She pulls him into another kiss before he can actually finish the sentence. This one ends quicker. Mostly because they get physically pulled apart.

“Hey,” Deb snorts, shoving Steph’s shoulder as she physically slots herself between then, “Kiss on your own time. We gotta show to put on,” She squints over at Pete,“Fuckin’... one second call, Spankoffski.”

“Thank you, One?” Pete squeaks, somehow getting even redder before he turns back around and speedwalks backstage. 

Right before he reaches the door, he glances over and smiles at her.

And then he ducks in and he’s gone. Holy shit.

Deb sidles up to her, slinging an arm over her shoulder, “A showmance your first ever fucking show? That’s pretty goddamn impressive.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” She says, lying. Face probably a much closer red to Pete’s than she’d ever admit. Deb, at least, has the decency not to mention it.

“Sure you don’t,” She snorts, turning away to call down the hall, “Places, people! Let's go!”

2 Hours After Last Performance of The Nutcracker

(At least, for this year.)

Steph leans her hip against the side of her open trunk, watching as Pete very neatly sets down his backpack and duffle bag, before swinging her own loosely on top.

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he nods, “Fair warning, though, I might sleep for, like, ninety eight percent of the drive.”

“Hey, Pete?” She snorts, grabbing the front of his vest and pulling him into a kiss.

When they pull apart the tips of his ears are pink, like they haven’t been doing that for the past week. She has to physically restrain herself from pulling him back down to do it again. 

“... Yes?” he squeaks.

“You fucking better.”

He throws his head back and laughs, having to force it around a yawn that clearly hits him unexpectedly.

She steps back, and he slams down the trunk for her, leaning against the closed door for just a second to smile at her, “Merry Christmas Eve, Steph.”

She rolls her eyes, tilting up to kiss him again. Because, fuck it. He’s her boyfriend. She’s allowed to.

“Merry Christmas Eve, Pete.”