The Parts We Play

Stay By My Side

The strange hollow feeling Krel had experienced was quickly forgotten the next morning, in the course of a comment from Douxie: "You're practicing All I Ask Of You for the first time today; the director just texted all of us. Be sure to brush your teeth before rehearsal."

Krel stopped what he was doing and looked at Douxie. "Excuse me?"

"You don't want your breath to smell nasty when you pretend to kiss Cara," Douxie pointed out reasonably.

"My breath does not smell 'nasty'," Krel protested, even as he internally made a note to do exactly as Douxie had advised. "And that's all this is, pretending." Something in his core twinged uncomfortably at that, but Krel forcefully ignored it.

Regardless, for the sake of politeness Krel did brush his teeth, and then he, Douxie, and Jim headed to rehearsal.

He noticed as they walked in that Irene had apparently dyed her hair a deep purple tone, the tech crew was playing with a doofy-looking cardboard practice chandelier, and Cara was sitting off by herself, reviewing the script and chewing her nails as she rapidly bounced one knee.

Krel worriedly noted that she didn't usually display any external nervous tics (an Okhrana training tactic to make one's responses less predictable), and hurried over to her.

"Hey," he said quietly, crouching in front of her and slightly to her right. "Are you feeling alright? You look- what's the term... antsy."

Cara hummed in acknowledgement and turned her head to look at him, whereupon Krel rather abruptly noticed how close together his position had left them.

"I am a bit antsy," she admitted. "I've never really kissed anyone before."

"You've done the stage kiss with Gage during the end scene," Krel countered.

"Well, sure," Cara said. "But that scene's different. The kiss doesn't feel like a kiss in the context of the story and what's going on- Christine pities Phantom, but doesn't love him in spite of her attraction to him. This is..." she flushed a bit, looking down at her script and breaking eye contact, "... well... this is no pity kiss."

Krel's mouth went a bit dry and his face warmed at the implication. "You uh-" he cleared his throat, "-you're worried about pulling it off?"

Cara gave a shaky exhale and nodded. "Douxie mentioned you'd want to fake the kiss, not do a stage kiss. Which is fine, it'll work fine, but it adds a technical thing on top of the acting, and given the lighting and framing, the uh- the attention will be much more focused on us."

She almost seemed disappointed that he wanted to fake the kiss, and to his complete, mind-boggling shock... so was Krel.

He frowned a little to himself and was trying to think of something to say when the director called them out from behind the curtains to practice on their little faux stage.

Cara took another slow breath, shaking out her hands and shifting on her feet as she stood. "Alright. Okay. We can do this."

Thankfully, Cara knew her part well, and she was able to channel her nerves into portraying Christine's fear of the Phantom.

Krel found himself struggling more than he'd anticipated with the scene. He wasn't sure what to draw from, after all; romance was an entirely new world for him.

He felt stiff, awkward, like he wasn't quite treating Cara- Christine- whatever, the way the script and tone demanded. Something was missing, and it frustrated Krel.

The director was trying to help, to explain what was Missing between takes, but it was only muddling things further, and finally Krel stepped behind the curtains for water.