Quiet Backstage: A Series of Lippa Oneshots

I Had A Stomach Bug

Heavily inspired by Fosse/Verdon, spoilers for that

Lin's eyes watered and itched as he lit a cigarette and perched it between his teeth.

His shirt remained unbuttoned, and his bowtie laid untied against his collarbones. Pippa had sent him right up to bed when he had gotten very hot, very quickly, and had suffered a violent dizzy spell during the after party for the opening night of Hamilton.

Pippa waved off Kail as their small talk conversation had trailed away. Pippa turned, keeping her flute of champagne steady in her fingertips as she searched the room for her husband.

She saw him across the room, slumped against the doorframe. He looked awful, even from afar.

"Lin, is everything alright?" She asked softly, not to draw attention to the situation.

His forehead and hair was creased with sweat, and his fingers were shaking as he reached for a drink off of a server's tray, though Pippa swat his hand away.

"Lin, the doctors said you can't be drinking."

"Phillipa, I--" Lin started speaking, but immediately went silent as his eyes rolled back slightly and he gripped onto the doorframe, almost falling over.

"C'mon, Lin, we have to get you upstairs."

Pippa snuck Lin up the staircase of their home, thanking the Lord that she had mentioned during the invite to the after-after party that upstairs was off limits. She really only created that rule on the grounds that she wouldn't want to have to clean up two whole floors of her home.

"C'mere, let's get you more comfortable." Pippa worked to untie his bowtie and unbutton Lin's shirt. His chest and abdomen were just as sheeted in sweat as his forehead and neck were. "Lay here. I'll be right back."

"Pippa!" Lin rasped, grabbing his wife's arm. "Tell them I have a stomach bug...if anyone saw."

Pippa nodded slowly, leaving the room for a split second to grab him a glass of water and a cold washcloth.

"What did you tell them?" Lin asked in a dry voice, his breaths sounding laboured, as Pippa returned to the room.

"You shouldn't be smoking, Lin." Pippa plucked the cigarette from Lin's mouth and put it out in a bedside ashtray.

"What did you tell them?" Lin asked again, this time more harshly. "Did you tell them I had a stomach bug?"

"Lin, you need to lay back down." Pippa warned.

Lin didn't lay back down. "They're going to think my career is over! Imagine the news, the headlines!"

"They're not going to think anything." Pippa mumbled, her mind instantly flashing back to when Lin had said those exact words, only then it was in the hospital.

Pippa's head was pounding, and she knew that she could ask any of these doctors for Advil, and that she would receive it from them, but she didn't have the energy to.

Pippa rubbed Lin's hand, she couldn't believe that this was the position that they were in.

Lin had literally had a heart attack. He had to have surgery and doctors were rushing in and out of his hospital room all last night.

Pippa couldn't believe that he had worked himself to quite-literal death like this. The doctors had said they lost him on the operating table for a moment during the procedure, and Pippa responded quickly with the notion that she could've gone the rest of her life without knowing that.

Lin had been working tirelessly on Hamilton alongside the In The Heights film adaptation. Pippa had warned him when he started getting sick that he should hang up this smoking habit, but he didn't even make an attempt.

Pippa couldn't even tell the last time that Lin had gone to bed bedside her. She was just incredibly worried about Lin. She just couldn't believe that they had really ended up here.

"Pippa?" Lin choked out, making Pippa perk up. Lin had finally woken up, and it was a good sign that he was talking.

"Yes, Love?" Pippa asked softly, not knowing how he felt, what if his head hurt just as badly as hers was?

"Does the press know?" He asked. "Who knows? The cast? If this gets out, my career will be over."

"No, no, Lin, it's okay. This is between us. You can't be worrying right now, please, we need you as calm as possible while you recover."

Coming back to reality, Pippa was now sitting over Lin, one knee on either side of Lin's bent knees. She had her weight shifted against Lin's folded knees. Her fingers delicately removed his bowtie from around his neck and started helping him out of his unbuttoned, yet still heavy, dress shirt.

"You need to take better care of yourself, Lin. That's how your career will end." Pippa spoke, her lips pressing softly to Lin's as she finished her sentence.

"Give me the phone." Lin asked, his throat now dry. "I gotta call Anthony, I need to talk to him about--"

"No, you need to go to bed, and that's final! I have no problem calling Diane on you." Pippa threatened to call Lin's doctor, who was serious about Lin resting and quitting his smoking habit. "And I'll tell you how much you've been smoking."

This shut Lin up immediately. He didn't want to get into that argument.

Pippa remained in silence as she gently laid the cold cloth over Lin's forehead and dabbed his sweat slicked skin with a subsequent cloth.

"Lin," Her voice broke. Through the silence of the room, they could hear that the party had started to die down. "They lost you on that operating table. For a split second. I was terrified."

Lin's breath caught in his throat. He was out of it, honestly, but he could tell how hurt Pippa was.

"You're...you're too wrapped up in your work, and this isn't healthy. Obviously, you had a freaking heart attack, Lin." A few tears fell onto Pippa's cheeks that she didn't bother to wipe away.

Lin's eyes started slipping shut, his eyelids getting heavy with exhaustion and illness. "Hey?" He spoke, still somewhat awake, though it was obvious that he was getting hazy. "I love you."

Lin's eyes shut as he fell asleep, and that was when Pippa let her tears fall freely. She squeezed his clammy hand gently. "I love you too."