Our next door neighbour is learning the trumpet. So, every morning at eight am, he practices playing some squeaky tune which surely cannot count as music. It’s hardly something which counts as a serenade whilst I’m actually eating my breakfast at a reasonable hour. The only reason that I was only just eating breakfast was because I’d taken some herbal sleeping pills before I’d gone to sleep which Chris and I had bought whilst out shopping. I’d almost slept through my alarm which had sounded not thirty minutes ago.
“Is he trying to play the Wallace and Gromit theme this time?” Chris pondered as he entered the kitchen and started to pour himself some cereal.
I stopped eating to listen in on the trumpet playing. “It sounds like it… There’s too many notes, though.”
“That’s his ‘creative flair’ playing up again,” Chris said whilst the Shreddies rattled into his bowl. “You’re lucky that you weren’t here when he tried to learn the Doctor Who theme tune. That was horrific.”
I cringed as the trumpet hit a high note, the instrument screaming in protest. “Worse than this?”
My flatmate grinned at me as he slid down into the chair opposite me at the dining table and proceeded to scoop cereal into his mouth. “Duh. Will you be ready to leave for filming soon? I just need to eat this, gather up my costumes and I’ll be ready.”
“I just need to grab my bag before we leave, that’s all.”
“Good. Hey, I never asked why you were so happy when you got home yesterday. So…why were you?”
With my cereal now finished, it gave me an excuse to leave the table and avoid eye contact with Chris as I put my bowl and spoon into the dishwasher. With Jimmy being over and the exciting prospect of doing the filming today, I was embarrassed to think that I’d forgotten to tell Chris about Liss. “I’m getting some extra theatre tuition from someone who used to be Elphaba,” I said in a rush, hiding behind the divide my hair gave me between Chris and me.
“Did you really?” Chris said coyly. “That’s…lucky. Congratulations.”
I kept my eyes on the dishwasher as I closed the door on the dirty dishes. Why doesn’t he sound surprised? Surely he couldn’t have known about the news before I’d told him about it? Unless… no. No. He couldn’t have been one of the people who’d contacted Liss… could he?
“I’ll go and get my things…”
Twenty minutes later, Chris and I were finally leaving the flat to head to the YouTube Creator space. Once outside, the day turned out to be warm and pleasant enough to allow me to comfortably walk around London without a coat or jumper on. The sun on my arms felt odd but soothing, as if the air was gently hugging me or stroking my arms with delicate fingertips. Okay, that just makes it sound like the wind was attacking or flirting with me. That wasn’t what was happening.
My arms were held in rigid shapes whilst I hugged a large cardboard box to my chest, which unfortunately didn’t allow me to enjoy the sun to the fullest. I was only carrying these things because Chris had guilt tripped me into doing so when he’d shown up in the hallway of our flat with the box I was currently carrying along with two bags. Apparently Chris liked to use his own props for these shows and he was all too protective of his belongings so he brought them home at the end of each recording. He’s stupid.
I attempted to rearrange my arms around the cardboard box so that I could actually see the steps that I was attempting to descend down to reach the Underground. I peered around the box as I slowly followed a confident Chris. “Hey, wait for me!” I yelped nervously when I almost missed one of the steps.
YOU ARE READING
Procrastinators on Stage (Chris Kendall/crabstickz fanfic) *unedited*
Fanfiction(Book 3 of the Procrastinators Series, set in September 2014 -but can be read independently from the series-) "Relationships end. Relationships end in three ways: you split up, one of you dies, or you get married. There's a two out of three chance t...
