Who: Sebastian and Mak Where: The High School Auditorium When: Late afternoon, Friday, Nov 10 Status: Complete
As the last bell rang dismissing them from school, Sebastian hurriedly made his way to his locker to grab his books before making his way over to the auditorium. He didn’t want to be the first one there, and definitely didn’t want to audition first, but he also didn’t want to be last. The later he got home, the more likely his mother would notice and call him on it and the last thing he wanted right now was for his grounding to be extended longer than it already was. Which was still a mystery to him. He should probably ask, but that would mean talking to them about it, which he’d been happily avoiding so far. It was stress he was determined to put out of his mind for the next hour at least, otherwise he wasn’t all that sure how he was going to manage his lines.
Sebastian had memorized a monologue and rehearsed it in his room till he felt good about it, but it was something entirely different to walk into the auditorium and realize he was going to do it up on stage, in front of other people. He wanted to do it, and yet these were butterflies of a different sort, an adrenaline rush he wasn’t quite as familiar with. On the football field, he knew he was good. Not perfect, but not laughable. On the stage, he wasn’t near as confident. As people filed in to sign up, he stood back for a moment, gathering up the courage to put his name on the list. The people around him weren’t exactly his crowd, names and faces he knew, but weren’t close to. He stood out in a way he wasn’t used to, the lone jock in his letter jacket, and he hoped he wasn’t about to make an epic fool of himself when he marched down front and added his name to the list.
Mak had never really been brave enough to try theater. She knew for sure that musicals weren’t her bag -- she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. She liked reading plays though, and always kind of enjoyed Shakespeare when they did it in English class, and it was her senior year, dammit. It was time to be bold and Do Things that she’d always wanted to do. Just to try it. Mak didn’t expect to be part of the main cast or anything -- maybe she could get a bit part and help paint sets or something fun like that to boot. She also needed something else to focus on besides the weirdness that was lingering around her brain from Halloween.
But that meant signing up, so after the last bell, she traded out some stuff at her locker and then headed toward the auditorium. Mak had been rehearsing the monologue she picked to herself for the past few days, and she was pretty sure she had it down. She’d wanted to do something from The Vagina Monologues at first, but her mother had cautioned her against it, so she’d just found one she liked online. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but Mak wasn’t concerned. Every other girl was probably going to be doing Romeo and Juliet or something, so she wanted to let them hear something different.
Mak walked into the auditorium and headed for the line, then stopped short as she spotted Sebastian. He looked a little awkward, so of course that meant she should bother him. She strolled over, thumbs hooked into her bag strap and gave him a smile. “Hey!” she greeted. “You put your name down yet?”
“Hey!” Sebastian smiled, relaxing a little at the sight of a friend. It would be nice to have someone to sit and talk to, to wait with while the people before them auditioned. Plus, it had been a while since he caught up with Mak. “I was just about to do that. Didn’t really want to be the very first person on the list. You trying out too?” He hoped so. It would be nice to have a friend in the cast. And if Hunter signed up to work backstage, they could all hang out. He realized that was likely to draw attention to them, but he was starting to think maybe that was a good start to moving the direction he actually wanted things. He had to start somewhere.
She was admittedly kind of surprised to see Sebastian there. Mak happened to know he wasn’t exactly the guy he seemed to be on the outside, but she still hadn’t expected him to get into drama when he never had before. She guessed she didn’t have much room to assume -- she’d never been in any of the plays either. Maybe senior year was a good time to start experimenting for a lot of people. “Yeah, I was gonna toss my hat in the ring, see how it goes,” she told him with a smile. It was definitely going to be easier with someone she knew in the audience or on the production or whatever. There was no way they wouldn’t cast Sebastian McCarthy if he wanted to be in it. That just wasn't’ how high school worked. “You after something in particular? Or just seeing what they can give you?”
While Sebastian would have been happy with anything, he knew if he didn’t go for the part he wanted, they wouldn’t give it to him. He would end up with one of the lovers, Lysander or Demetrius, or possibly the Duke or someone from the group of players. Unless he went for it, they wouldn’t cast a football player as a fairy. “Um… I’m hoping for Puck, but I know that’s ambitious and I’ll be happy with anything,” he smiled. “What about you?” He tried to imagine Mak as one of the female heroines, but he wasn’t all that sure that was her thing. She could pull it off if she wanted to though, which made him curious. What was it that drew people to certain parts? Did everyone want the chance to be something so different from themselves?
Mak had read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it had been a couple of years. Puck was pretty impossible to forget though, and she grinned at Sebastian for that choice. “Ohmygod, you’d be a fantastic Puck,” she told him genuinely. Mak had to stop herself from reaching up to ruffle his hair. He just looked the part, mischievous woodland fairy, yes. She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno, I’ve forgotten half the play. I didn’t have anything big in mind, just thought it might be fun to give it a shot.” Mak turned and slipped her arm through Sebastian’s to start walking him down the aisle toward the sign up table. “C’mon, let’s get our names down.”
“Thanks,” Sebastian beamed, glad to have some kind of affirmation that maybe he could pull it off. He could in his head, but it was sometimes different in reality. The thing about drama was that he had the chance to try and make them one in the same. He just had to convince them to give him a chance. “Same though. I think it’ll be fun no matter what. And Hunter’s talking about working backstage or something,” he added, in case she didn’t know. He had the feeling his boyfriend was only doing it because of him, but that was an okay reason by both of them. Happily hooking his arm in hers, he walked with her towards the sign up table. “Ladies first,” he grinned, offering her the chance to sign up first.
Hunter hadn’t mentioned that to Mak, but then again they hadn’t gotten to spend a whole lot of time together lately. That was something she needed to fix. She needed her bestie, especially considering the lingering weirdness she was feeling from Halloween. Mak didn’t want to broach all that with Sebastian though, so she just grinned at him and teasingly rolled her eyes. “Okay okay, if you’re too scared to go first,” she joked, giving him a nudge before she unhooked her arm and bent down to sign up. “I’ll just make you look good, like a mediocre opening act.” She scribbled her name down and then made room for Bash to do the same. There were some nerves in her stomach, but they would’ve been worse if she was flying solo, she was pretty sure.
“Terrified,” Sebastian snickered. It wasn’t completely untrue. He had nerves bouncing around like nothing else. “I’m sure you’ll be great. I have to convince ‘em that a football player can be a fairy,” he said, rolling his eyes. It wasn’t that hard for him to imagine, but he knew things they didn’t. He just needed to stand out and… not be himself. Or at least not the person they knew. Sebastian added his name to the list beneath Mak’s then took a step back, looking around. “I guess we have a seat and wait till they call our names?” Which made sense. As he started moving towards a row of empty seats, he looked around again. Some people had gone all out, wearing homemade costumes to get them into the part. While he doubted that was necessary, it did make them think to slip off his letter jacket before collapsing in a chair. “So, what’ve you been up to?”
Mak thought it was probably pretty impossible to get up on stage without nerves, especially if you’d never done it before. She bit her tongue on making any gay fairy jokes out loud; she wasn’t sure how Sebastian would take it, nor did she want to even hint at outing him by accident. So she just went and flopped next to him in the row of seats, setting her bag aside and pulling out her monologue to look over it a couple more times before their names were called. “Oh y’know ... the usual,” Mak answered with some dark amusement, shooting Bash a glance. “School, Sabrina, work sometimes ... Halloween was ... weird.” She didn’t want to get into a bunch of gritty details, since Mak still wasn’t sure how to feel about it all, but at least Bash wasn’t clueless about everything. “You?”
“You got caught up in that?” Sebastian asked, thinking of Halloween with a little cringe. He’d been lucky that he hadn’t gone out, just opted to stay in and watch horror movies with Greg. Even then, things had been weird, with a murder happening just across the street. It was unnerving to think how close that had come to his own house. “Things aren’t great at home. I did something that kind of...blew up. I’m still trying to fix it.” He wasn’t sure he was capable, but he also wasn’t sure what the issue was. There’d been no clarification from his parents about the ‘curse’ they were under or if something was truly hunting them. He wanted to believe Reagan, that it was all a big misunderstanding, but it's out more information he just didn’t know.
“Yeah,” Mak answered the first question, drawing out the word with reluctance. She really wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it, or even how to talk about it. So it was much easier to focus on what Sebastian said about himself. “Uh oh,” she said, her brows lifting. She worried for a second that his parents had found out about him being gay, but he probably would’ve been explicit about that. And if parents were being homophobic and upset, there wasn’t really much he could do to ‘fix’ that. “Sorry to hear ... Anything you wanna talk about?”
Sebastian pursed his lips and bobbed his head from side to side for a second. He could tell Mak about it all, he wouldn’t mind her knowing, but he had a hard time getting into it without it affecting his mood. “Maybe later,” he said with an apologetic smile. “When there’s less people around and I can be broody,” he added with a little laugh. “It’s complicated and witchy and I could really do with something like a school play, you know?” She might not be able to relate to his problem, but she could probably get needing a distraction. He hadn’t missed the way she’d provided no details on her own weirdness, so that might make two of them.
Seemed like neither one of them really wanted to get into their Issues, and maybe that was for the best while they were sitting around waiting their turn to audition. Something that was already on-the-spot and stressful. “Yeah, I’m right there with you,” Mak admitted with a chuckle. She slouched down low in the auditorium seat, resting her head against the back of it and letting her gaze scan over her printed monologue again. “What are you reciting?” she asked, looking over at Sebastian again. “Do you feel ready?” Maybe they could do a quick run-through for one another, quietly, to see how it felt.
While Sebastian was pretty confident he had the lines memorized, he’d only recited them to an empty room so far. Saying them up on that stage, in front of the director and the other people auditioning, was going to be something else. He’d thought a little bit about his delivery as well, how to really sell it, and that part almost made him more nervous. An idea was forming in his head, something extra he could do, but he wasn’t sure if he could go through with it. But what if that’s what the director was looking for? Full commitment to the part? “I dunno if ready’s the right word,” he said with a nervous little laugh. “I’m using Puck’s final monologue. It’s not super long, but I thought it was a good choice if I want the character. What about you?”
It was kind of adorable that he was nervous, but Mak supposed that said more about her and her assumptions than anything else. She would’ve thought a star football player and popular kid would have all the confidence in the world about anything and everything ... but Sebastian had definitely proven himself to be more than that stereotype. He was here auditioning for Puck, of all roles, after all. “Hey good call,” she said with a little grin. “I probably should’ve picked something Shakespeare, but I just found this one online and liked it. It’s from some play I’ve never heard of. I wanted to do a Vagina Monologue, but mom said that probably wasn’t a great idea. ... that’s a play too, I dunno if you’ve heard of it,” she added with a little titter.
“I’ve heard the name, but it didn’t seem like my kinda thing,” Sebastian grinned. He knew it was probably wrong, but his interest in vaginas was in the negative arena, so he’d never really found out what it was about. “But, I mean, I’m basing it on the name alone. Totally judging that book by it’s cover, if that makes sense. I tend to know more musicals than plays, except when it comes to Shakespeare.” Which was generally a secret, but Mak seemed good with those and it wasn’t like she was going to guess he was gay based on it-- she already knew. “I don’t think you have to do Shakespeare, though. I think you just have prove you can sell the part. That whatever you’re going for, you’re all in.”
Mak gave a little snicker at the first part, shaking her head a bit. “They’re not all about literal vaginas,” she said, even though Sebastian was probably mostly joking. “Just ... women’s experiences and shit.” Though she supposed he didn’t have much reason to be very interested in all that either. Except for having a sister and all. It was such an adorably stereotypical Gay thing, liking musicals, but she fit into her own stereotypes, so Mak wasn’t going to judge. Musicals could be amazing. “That’s what I’m going for,” she agreed about their monologues, waving her paper a bit. Mak scanned through the lines again, then glanced back at Sebastian. “Do you wanna run through it before you get up there?” she offered.
“I mean, they could be,” Sebastian snickered. “If guys can wax poetic about their dicks, I figured girls could do the same. But women’s experiences seem a lot more interesting, at least to me.” He might not be into girls, but he liked a good number of them, so he tried his best to understand them. When she waved around her lines, he nodded, thinking that going over them one more time would be a good idea. He had his own little piece of paper, folded and worn in his jacket pocket and he pulled it out and glanced over it. “Sure. You want to start? Or do you want me to?” He didn’t mind going first with Mak. It was being up on that stage that made him nervous.
“I’m going first up there, you go first here,” she decided, nodding her head toward the stage. That was only fair, right? He couldn’t be too nervous to recite it to her, and Mak got to postpone her own read through. She shifted around to face him bettering, sitting a bit sideways in the seat and looking expectantly at Sebastian. She was already imagining he would be a great Puck, but maybe he just straight up sucked at the language or timing or something. Not that she was some great actress, but Mak consumed enough types of performance to know what sounded wrong.
“Okay,” Sebastian said and handed over the little sheet of paper that had his lines typed out on them. He took a deep breath, then mussed up his hair and jumped up on the chair, perched on his toes. He leaned in a touch, his smile turning playful, a look that only his exes and Hunter would be familiar with. “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended,” he started, letting himself fall into character. He was a wood sprite, the reason for all the chaos of the play, and was asking the audience to forgive him if he had offended them, asking them not to hiss, but to clap. Sebastian knew the role required a bit more flare than he had in daily life, but he could put it on like any other part he played. There was no room for nerves in the moment, just focus and determination that masqueraded as confidence. He looked at no one else but Mak as he spoke, and was finishing up before he knew it. “Give me your hands if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends,” he said, waited a beat, then relaxed.
Mak looked surprised and delighted when Sebastian hopped up on the chair, and she watched and listened avidly, a grin spreading across his face. Some other people were looking at them, but Mak hardly saw them, and only glanced down at the lines in her hand once or twice. Sebastian was much more interesting to look at, and if he flubbed a word or anything, Mak didn’t notice. When he was done, she started clapping -- and immediately had to quiet herself down, because other people were practicing too. She giggled and soft-whistled for him, grinning. “Okay, nothing against anybody else in here, but you got this shiz in the bag,” she informed him.
Sebastian laughed as his face turned red, embarrassed only because other people were watching and his performance was really pushing the boundaries of his comfort zone. But he wanted it that way. He honestly enjoyed being in character and had been hoping it would feel as right to an observer as it did to him. That seemed to be the case from Mak’s response and he was glad that he had a chance to run through it with someone else before he did it on stage. “Thanks,” he grinned, sliding his feet back off the chair. “I really hope so. I think he’d be a lot of fun to play.” Now all he had to do was nail the audition. “Wanna give yours a go?”
Mak gave a little laugh and glanced around them. Most people had stopped looking, but there were still a few, and she suddenly felt shy. She wouldn’t have been cast as Puck anyway, most likely, so it wasn’t like she and Bash were in competition, but she was pretty sure her little monologue wouldn’t come close to what he’d just done. She was suddenly glad he’d made her put her name down first. “Naw,” she said, drawing the word out like she wasn’t sure. She snickered and squinted one eye a bit. “Think I’m all right.” She was about to do it on stage, but that seemed almost easier at the moment.
If they’d been closer friends, Sebastian might’ve teasingly called her a name, but he didn’t want to offend her, so instead he just made a little face and gave her a playful nudge. “I’ll see it soon enough, I guess,” he smiled, quieting a little as the director walked down to the front and retrieved the list. It looked like they were about to get started, which meant they should probably quiet down. He didn’t want to draw negative attention to himself before he even had a chance to audition. “I guess it’s time,” he said softly. “Ready?”
Nerves fluttered more in Mak’s stomach, but she smiled at Sebastian anyway. He would see it soon enough, and so would everybody else in the room. Ugh, maybe she wasn’t cut out for acting. But she would never know if she didn’t try new stuff, right? So here she was, trying a new thing. Sebastian was too, so even though he was probably a better performer than her, at least she wasn’t the only newb in the room. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Mak murmured back, huffing a tiny laugh. She turned her attention to the front and the stage as the director called out the first name to come up.