Procrastinators on Stage (Chris Kendall/crabstickz fanfic) *unedited*

Part 21- I Don't Like Working Weekends

The weather outside the theatre was dull and grey, which only dampened my mood further. Rain fell against my skin in cool shards which the hood of my coat couldn’t deflect away from me. My boots clomped through the puddles on the pavement and I watched them do so as I tried to dodge the flurry of people around me. It was taking a large sum of my concentration for me to notice my footfalls, let alone the blurs of everyone around me.

I was staying in London, I still had my job. But that didn’t mean I was happy about the consequences I’d managed to obtain.

*

Not twenty minutes ago, back in my workroom, my mind had started to talk gibberish to me as I’d attempted to stay calm and collected whilst Max surveyed my desk space. Hey, Max, maybe you could just not fire me? It’s not like you now hate me for destroying part of the set or just because you now realise I have anger issues, or anything. Haha, let’s laugh over it and then you’ll offer me a promotion where I’m Elphaba! What are the chances?!

Max hadn’t really said anything remotely negative to me, but then again, she hadn’t said anything at all when she first saw me in the desperate position I was hunched in over my work. She’d almost said something, it seemed, but I’d stopped her.

“I’m sorry. I get angry sometimes, and stuff was building up, and I’ll pay for everything,” I’d blurted, surprising even myself. With what money would I be paying for this all, I wonder?

“Really?”

“I could do extra work. Work weekends?” I couldn’t exactly flat out say that I’d noticed how much of a mess the theatre was recently due to Tony’s renovation plans and the complete redecoration of the place. I’d even offer to do cleaning in order for me to keep my backstage job. Maybe being backstage would be as close as I could get to the stage, so I had to stay. “I’ll do cleaning, even.”

“Are you sure about that?” Max had asked me sceptically. “You’ve been working here all week and you’re kind of overqualified to just be a cleaner…”

“What about tea and coffee errands? I could do that, maybe?”

She frowned at me, which made me flinch. I should have just kept my mouth shut. “You’re sounding a little desperate here, kid,” she’d smirked to me.

I’d shrugged but refused to look away from Max. “I might just be verging on desperate.”

Max chuckled at me and moved to pick up the scraps of my work that remained on my desk. “I’ll see what I can do for you. You’re more entertaining than the other hands back here, I’ll give you that, Jamie.”

“Entertaining?” I couldn’t help but scoff as she examined the pitiful repairs I’d attempted to conduct on my work.

Max looked up at me, catching my eye in a piercing gaze. “You’re more…varied. More spirited, even. Never in my years of work has a worker offered, nay pleaded, to do extra work or pay for mistakes that they’ve made. Not one.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh’ indeed,” Max mused, now carrying the two semi-fixed cogs in her hands. “You could stick those scraps from the other cogs onto future ones you make to add texture or something.”

I raised my eyebrows at her as I clambered to my feet when she made a beeline for the door. “I can keep my job?” I practically yelped at her.

Max stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me, her face the epitome of sympathy. “Jamie, dear, previous workers have done a lot worse and offered up a lot less as reparations for their actions to boot. I remember supervising this one boy not that long ago and he made a complete mess of almost everything he did. Once, I asked him to change the light bulbs in the theatre lobby from atop a step ladder. He ended up electrocuting himself multiple times because he didn’t turn the electrics off, and then also knocking the entire box of bulbs to the floor from the top of the ladder he was using. He spilled hot drinks on people, turned up to work drenched to the skin because cars kept running through puddles when they passed him by, and he couldn’t make it to work most days. He was a funny lad; always apologising about his clumsiness but never doing anything about it…”