Both my dear @chesthighwater and @glitteryopossum requested Fitzier on this post. So uhhhh baby's first Fitzier? I'm incapable of writing less than 500 words, so check under the cut!
Francis wasn’t a theatre person, has never been a theatre person. He was just the only person Jamie knew who built things when their technical director unexpectedly quit mid-summer one year. But even he could see this show was shit. Hell, he’d known the show was shit as they were building it. It was a John Ross design, so it was huge, over-budget, and horrible. Half the action took place on the second level of a stupid house- hut, fucking whatever -they’d had to build that only half the audience could see because it was too tall. When that stupid cardboard horse costume came out, the one that didn’t fit through any of the doorways, Francis watched Dundy place his head down on costumes’ tech table in defeat. If his shoulders shook from laughter or sobs, Francis couldn’t tell. They’d tried to get Francis to “just build a bigger doorway” to accommodate the stupid thing. When he’d told Edward about that, he’d looked like a deer in headlights. As if Francis would ever indulge a request that dumb. Mrs. Franklin should have designed a smaller horse outfit if they wanted the actor to fit through doors.
All that to say, he wasn’t the most impartial judge of good quality theatre. Often what he thought was shit was their best show of the season, whichever show he liked tended to be the worst. But he could tell from the way Jamie sat at the production tech table across the aisle that this was bad. She sat as straight as a t-square, her shoulders held back and tense, her face expressionless. She hadn’t even opened her laptop. Usually by the last day of tech, she was fully immersed in her emails or a game of solitaire. The important work of a production manager. They had their shortest production meeting ever when the torture finally ended, everybody fully settled into the acceptance phase of this shitshow, and then Jamie was gone.
Francis frowned and made his way out the backdoor of the theatre. He found Jamie around the back corner of the scene shop. She stood along the treeline, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
“Everything alright, Jamie?” He asked, approaching her like he would a skittish horse.
Jamie pulled her hands away from her face and looked at him with tears and mascara running down her cheeks. “We can’t let people see that! Oh my god, Francis! It’s so bad! The script, the music, the designs, oh god, especially the designs… Why did John approve this shit? Actually more importantly, why did that ancient ass board member give us so much money just to do this show he saw once in the fifties? One of the songs is comparing women to goddamn tomatoes! Not even normal ones, dumb tomatoes! I think seeing this show may actually kill that old fuck. It certainly makes me wish I were dead! And it’s sold out! So many people are gonna see this bullshit!"
Francis said nothing, just opened his arms. She threw herself into them and sobbed on his shoulder. He hoped he didn’t have any rogue sawdust there. It would only increase her tears. When Jamie finally calmed down, he took a step back and looked around, making sure nobody was around to see them. Once he was certain the coast was clear, he leaned up and gave her a quick peck on the lips, pressed a joint and a lighter into her hand.
Jamie smiled at him as she wiped away tears, smudging her mascara so she resembled a raccoon even more.
“You always know just what I need, my dear Francis.”
