02 - Clash of the Divas
Story index at the bottom
By dreadnaught3200 Thanks to [mention]Larzade[/mention] for finding and posting this gem
Clash of the Divas
Applause from the audience roared in the packed house. One by one, the cast took their bows. The second Matinee performance of Les Miserables was a success.
As the lead characters began to take to the stage for their bows, the audience began to stand. Cosette and Marius were met with a round of "awwws" from the audience as they walked to the end of the stage hand in hand. Fantine emerged and bowed.
Next was Eponine, who elicited a larger roar from the audience than anyone else.
Following her, the judicious Javert and behind him the geriatric Jean Valjean, the star of the whole sad episode. The four leads stood at the center of the stage, soaking up the two minutes of glory that made the hours and hours of rehearsal in the previous months worth it.
After standing in the blaring spotlights for two or so minutes, the cast two a step back and the curtain closed. The show was over.
Once the curtain was closed the cast lost all professionalism and began screaming and hugging. The grade nine to twelve students were still high on performance adrenaline and were eager to congratulate themselves for a job well done.
Jean Valjean stood at the center of the crowd and put his head down. Exhausted from being on stage nearly uninterruptedly for the past two and a half hours. After a moment, Javert stepped over to him and lightly punched him on the shoulder.
"Nice job man." He said.
"Thanks, you too." Valjean replied tiredly.
"You look wiped."
"That's cause I am."
"And imagine, you get to do it all over again in four hours!"
The two laughed, when you're that tired anything is funny.
As the rest of the cast ran about, the two male leads headed back to the change rooms, eager to start the process of removing the makeup that had aged them sixty years, as well as drinking a few desperately needed cokes. By the time they had accomplished this, they were the last guys out of the men's change room and the audience and most of the cast had dispersed. It had been almost half an hour since the show had ended.
Jean Valjean's real name was Alex (Though most people called him Xander), he was 17 and about six feet tall, with short brown hair, green eyes and an average build. He was clad in blue jeans a red polo shirt.
Javert's real name was Justin, who was also 17 and about five foot eight. His hair was a dark blonde, and slightly longer then Xander's. He had blue eyes and a more athletic build. He was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans.
The two looked around the deserted auditorium, finding that it was almost empty. The only human sounds they could hear were from the girls change room down the hallway.
"I guess everybody's gone for dinner." Justin said.
"Yeah I guess." Xander replied. "We should probably do the same."
"I'm not all that hungry."
"Yeah Neither am I."
"Though I'm still pretty thirsty."
"Ok."
The two headed through the cluttered green room of the auditorium and out the back doors. Their auditorium was a separate building, built on their school campus, but it was at the far end of the property so people rarely ever went there unless they really needed to.
These two however needed two more bottles of coke, and were willing to trek all the way to the main buildings and back.
After the walk, which took them a good fifteen minutes, they returned to the green room with a bottle in each of their hands, lively talking about the various slip ups they'd made during the performance. They also couldn't help but make a few cracks about Marius's pitch.
When they got inside, they noticed Fantine and Eponine sitting on a couple of boxes in the cluttered room, talking about much the same thing. They both waved when they saw the two boys.
Fantine's real name was Sarah. She was about five foot six with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a dancer's body. She was clad in simple tan pants, a white shirt and a light blue hoodie.
Eponine's real name was Rebecca (Usually shortened to Becca). Slightly shorter than Sarah at five foot five or four, she had shoulder length brunette hair which she'd dyed reddish, and brown eyes. She was dressed in jeans, her favorite gold necklace and a purple shirt with white sparkly lettering on the front that said "Blondes may have more fun, but Brunettes can read." They all loved that shirt, oddly enough, including Sarah.
Sarah and Becca were sitting on a couple of the many boxes that cluttered the room. The room was full to the brim with all sorts of substantial sized pieces junk that were used to build the barricade on stage. There were boxes, tables, chairs, chests, barrels, and all kinds of other things.
"Hey guys!" Sarah yelled.
"Hey." Justin answered.
"Where is everybody?" Xander asked.
"Everybody's out getting dinner, were the only ones left in the building." Becca answered.
"Oh ok."
"You two planning on running out and getting something?" Justin asked.
"We thought we'd order a pizza a bit later on." Sarah replied.
"Maybe we'll get one too then." Xander decided.
The four nodded in agreement and the two guys pulled up a box and a table of their own and sat down.
While Xander and Justin were already good friends before the play started, the four didn't really hang out together before the play started. They were all friendly with each other at school, but working in such close proximity with each other for so long during rehearsals had made them into a pretty tight nit group. Though it wasn't without its problems.
Sarah fancied herself to be the best singer of the bunch, but Becca robbed her of that title most of the time and she knew it. So while Xander and Justin had a friendly competition at worst, Sarah and Becca were quite serious about it many times. Though when they weren't singing they got along quite well. Most of the time.
After they sat down, all four of them discussed the performance and all it's various misadventures.
"Oh yeah, I heard that note too." Becca mentioned to Sarah.
"Which one?"
"The one in I Dreamed a Dream, you kinda flatted out on that one."
"I didn't flat out in that song."
"Yes you did."
Sarah thought about it for a minute.
"Ok I guess I did, it still wasn't as bad as On my Own!" She retaliated, getting slightly defensive.
The two started bickering, though they both tried to make it sound friendly it started to get more and more vicious.
Justin leaned over to Xander "Should I tell them that they were both off pitch in One Day More?"
Xander shook his head.
"Didn't think so." Justin whispered.
The bickering continued.
"Ok you two that's enough!" Xander yelled.
The two divas stopped arguing and just stared angrily for a minute. A smile began to cross Becca's face.
"Bitch!" She said jokingly.
All four laughed. Though as Sarah laughed, she picked up a pen that had been dropped on the ground nearby. Pulling off the cap, the attacked Becca's arm with it, drawing a long pen mark down it.
"Hey!" Becca yelled.
Sarah stuck out her tongue, and lunged again, getting more pen on the other arm. A bit of a fist fight emerged as Becca tried to claw the pen away from Sarah, but Sarah managed to take the pen and make her escape from her friend's clutches.
"Don't you dare do that again, or you are going to regret it!" She yelled menacingly, holding her hands up to defend herself.
Sarah took this as a challenge and lunged at her again, managing to get a bit of Becca's palm before she snatched the pen and threw it across the room.
Sarah sat back laughing.
The four started chatting happily again not long after, though Becca had a playfully evil look on her face. After a few minutes of talking Sarah excused herself to go to the washroom.
The three remaining friends were quiet for a minute. Becca seemed to have a look of quiet determination on her face as she brewed up a plan to take revenge on Sarah.
"So, how you gonna make good on that threat?" Justin asked.
"I'm thinking." Becca replied. "You two wanna give me a hand?"
"Sure, why not." Xander said.
Justin apparently hadn't been so eager to get involved, but seeing his friend take a side, he agreed as well.
Becca kept thinking.
"We could always just tie her up and throw in the costume loft for a while." Xander suggested off handedly.
Becca raised her eyebrows.
"There's an idea." She said.
Xander was a bit surprised.
"That was a totally random suggestion." He said, laughing.
"But it would be really funny." Justin affirmed.
Becca thought about it for another minute.
"Let's do it!" She declared.
The three quickly threw together a plan and sprung into action. They rushed out the other door of the green room from which they entered, and headed to the storage room. The storage room was filled to the brim with all kinds of electronics equipment and other odds and ends.
The three looked around and grabbed a role of black tape as well as few large zip ties.
"There's some rope up in the loft." Justin recalled.
"You sure?" Becca asked him.
"Yeah we cut some off to use on me a few days ago."
Justin was lightly tied up every performance due to his role, though it was always loosely around the wrists and completely escapable.
The three left the storage room and ran back through the green room and over to the hallway with the change rooms. Between the two change room doors, a ladder extended up to a loft on top of the two change rooms, that were build with a lower ceiling that was only about half the height of the ceiling.
There they waited, Justin and Xander on the ladder and Becca on the floor.
After a few minutes they heard Sarah walking out and engaged their plan. Justin and Xander started climbing with Becca starting to get on. This was the first thing Sarah saw when she came out.
"Oh hey, come on." Becca said.
"What?" She asked.
"Justin wants to show us something." She replied.
Sarah followed her three friends, not suspecting a thing.
The four climbed onto the messy costume loft. It was filled with rack upon rack of used costumes from shows gone by, as well as old props, set pieces and probably a few skeletons.
"Now where is it?" Justin asked, using his acting skills.
Sarah followed him absent mindedly, while Xander slipped away from the three and made his way over to one of the many prop shelves where he found a few pieces of old fashioned looking brown rope.
Staying behind the costume racks he made his way around the group, to where Justin was leading Sarah, strait towards a pole that ran from the ceiling to the floor.
When they got close to it, he started looking around the floor for the mystery item and Sarah just stood and waited. Becca quietly pushed her way in between and leaned against the pole for a moment, making sure Xander had concealed himself.
She discreetly got up from the pole, and bingo. Sarah decided leaning on the pole was a good idea and walked up to it.
Xander sprang into action, reaching around the pole and grabbing both of Sarah's arms, pulling them together and rapidly began tying them together.
"What!?!" She yelled, completely surprised. "What are you doing!?!"
Becca smirked cruelly.
"Just helping me out with a little payback." She said.
"He what?... Not fair!" She stammered.
"Who said life is fair?"
Sarah glared at Becca. Justin couldn't help but laugh at the cattyness.
Xander meanwhile was taking one of the pieces of rope and wrapped it around Sarah's wrists (Palms inward) about eight times. Pulling it tight, he used the rest of the piece to loop around vertically, cinching the bonds. He took the very end of the rope and looped it around her left upper wrist and knotted it off.
"You wanna do the rest?" He asked Becca.
"Absolutely." She replied.
Sarah continued to glare.
Xander gave Becca all the rope he had found, which amounted to two more fairly long pieces.
"You might wanna sit down." She advised her captive.
Scowling, Sarah obeyed.
Becca took the rope and wrapped it around Becca's waist and looped it around the pole several times, and knotted it off at the front, away from her hands. It held her firmly to the pole but gave her upper body some space to move. Taking the last piece of rope, she moved down to Sarah's ankles and set to work.
She tied them much the same way Xander had done her wrists, tying her feet together horizontally many times and then looping around vertically to cinch the tie.
With her captive bound, Becca stood back up and folded her arms in triumph. Sarah was still glaring with fire in her eyes, though she'd also taken a turn glaring at both of the guys who had helped Becca with her horrible plan.
"I think our work here is done gentlemen." Becca concluded while turning to leave.
Xander and Justin nodded and turned to leave with her.
"Wait your kidding right?" Sarah said.
"About what?" Becca said without turning.
"You can't just leave me here!"
"Why not?"
"Because Come back here! You can't leave me up here alone!"
"You know what boys? I think she talks too much." Becca declared.
Sarah's eyes widened.
"You wouldn't!"
Becca headed back over to her captive and walked right past her into the corner of the loft behind the pole. Sarah turned her head as far as she could to see what the dragon lady was doing, but she couldn't.
Suddenly, she saw Becca's hands reaching down to her face with a strip of black tape on them. The tape was quickly slammed down over her lips.
Becca emerged, with the role in her hand. Smirking, she pulled two more pieces, each successively longer then the last off the role and put them over the tape that already gagged Sarah.
"Now were done." She said and headed for the ladder.
The boys followed her, leaving Sarah alone in the costume loft, tied to a pole, gagged, and furious.
Quickly and quietly the crawled back down the ladder and ran back into the green room.
"Did you see her face!?" Justin exclaimed, trying to contain his laughter.
"Oh yeah! That was harsh but it was so worth it!" Becca agreed.
The three sat down on a few of the boxes and tried to keep their laughter as quiet as possible. As to not make Sarah any angrier than she already was.
"So, how long are we going to keep her up there? Were gonna have to let her go eventually." Xander asked.
"What time is it?"
"Four Thirty" Justin answered.
"Well, probably nobody will be getting back until around six, so we can probably leave her for about half an hour or so." Becca decided.
"Ok." Xander agreed.
Leaving the subject of their captive friend behind, Becca, Justin and Xander kept talking and giggling like the silly teenagers they were.
Meanwhile Sarah sat alone in the costume loft, fuming with rage.
"How could they do this to me?!?" She screamed in her head. "What if somebody comes up here and see's me like this!?! That would be so embarrassing!"
From the second she'd lost sight of her friends she started struggling against the ropes that bound her to the pole. Because her upper body was mostly free, she tried leaning far forward and simply pushing the ropes that bound her wrists, but that yielded no success.
"What do I do now?" She thought to herself.
She tried shifting her waist around, hoping to loosen the ropes at her hips, but again, met with no success.
She let out a groan through the tape. She considered giving up and resigning herself to her fate. But no! She couldn't do that, she couldn't let Becca win! She had to get revenge. Even if she couldn't out-sing Becca, she could at least play a counter prank.
Determined she began pulling and struggling as hard as she could, twisting as much as she could to try and loosen the ropes.
As she worked, an infuriating sound drifted up to the loft, the guys started singing "O Sole Mio". She hated that song.
"Don't worry boys, I'm going to get you guys too." She brooded. "It was Xander who started tying me up in the first place anyway!"
But that presented a problem, if she managed to escape, how could she get any of them back? Becca she could overpower, but Xander and especially Justin were too strong for her to compete with, and they would be protecting Becca. She'd have to separate the three of them somehow.
She began devising complex plans After a few minutes they got to the point where they might actually work. She became so excited for her revenge that for a minute she almost forgot she was unable to carry it out.
She leaned back against the pole and took a minute to breathe. But as she sat there, she realized, she managed to pull the loop around her wrists closer to her fingers. She reached her right hand over to the rope on her left and began to tug.
Working furiously she found what felt like the knot holding the tie together, and started pulling it apart. It took a few minutes of work with her fingernails, but it finally gave way.
She pulled against the vertical loops and pulled, one by one they unraveled until finally they disappeared and she pulled her hands out of the now loosened horizontal loops.
After taking a minute to massage her wrists, she undid the knot at her waist and pulled the ropes off herself. Being free of the pole she quickly reached down to her feet and quickly freed them. Finally she reached up to her mouth and slowly pulled the tape off. It didn't hurt as much as she'd expected it to.
"Now." She said quietly.
She looked around the costume loft to see what resources were available to her. Checking behind the pole where Xander had dropped everything, she only found a few zip ties and unfortunately no tape.
She headed over to the shelves where the props were kept. She assumed that's where the rope had come from in the first place.
After combing through the eclectic collection of props on the shelves, she came across the coil of rope that the other pieces had originally come from. Though it was incredibly long.
After combing through the props for a little while longer, she came across a pair of scissors. With these she was able to cut off a fourth piece of rope from the coil.
"Might come in handy" She thought to herself.
As she continued combing the loft, she came across two potentially useful items. The first was a strait backed, wooden armchair. The second was a fifteen-foot long chain. The chain had originally been one of the props for Le Mis, but the convicts found it so hard to move with, they decided to scrap it, and threw it up there.
She noticed there were still a couple of metal carabineers attached the chain, making it usable.
She also pulled a white scarf from one of the many costume racks.
With these resources she was able to put her plan into action.
She walked to the railing and listened below her, the only voices she could hear were Becca, Xander and Justin.
Taking a step back, she cleared her throat and yelled: "Becca! I hate you!"
She waited, listening closely:
"Sounds like she got the tape off." Xander said, laughing.
"I'll go fix it." Becca volunteered.
"Bingo!" Sarah thought.
She immediately backed away from the railing and hid amongst the costume racks.
Becca's footsteps echoed on the hallway below as she approached, and playing right into Sarah's hands, she climbed the ladder.
Becca reached the top and walked forward a few steps, and just as she realized that Sarah wasn't where she was supposed to be, she sprung out of her hiding place, taking Becca by surprise, wrapping her right arm around her torso and using her left to handgag her.
Becca was stunned.
"Unless you want me to tell Justin that you like him, I wouldn't make a sound!" Sarah whispered viciously into her friend's ear.
Taking a few seconds to recover from the shock, Becca reluctantly nodded her head.
Sarah wasted no time and pushed her captive over to the chair, which she'd dragged to the pole and pushed her into it.
Grabbing one of the pieces of rope that she'd left on the floor, she forced Becca's right arm onto the right arm of the chair and began looping it over. She did this until she was almost out of rope and then took both ends and knotted them off tightly, on the underside of the chair arm.
She repeated the process on Becca's left arm and then got to work on her right ankle, attaching it to the right chair leg.
"You suck." Becca finally managed to spit out.
"Takes one to know one." Sarah spat back.
After securing both of her ankles, Sarah reached for the nastiest part of her plan, the chain.
"What?!" Becca exclaimed when she saw it.
Sarah just smirked and started wrapping it around Becca's torso and the pole. After going around four times, she took the two ends and pulled them to tighten the chain somewhat and she attached the two closest links together with one of the carabineers.
With the job finished, Sarah walked back around to face her captive and gloat for a minute. Becca didn't say anything, and tried to look stoical. Sarah could see the look on her face that said: "This sucks, but I kinda deserve it."
"Oh! How could I forget!" Sarah exclaimed.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the white scarf.
Becca's eyes barely had time to widen before Sarah yanked it between her teeth and tied it off into a cleave gag.
"Now I'm done!" She said triumphantly.
Becca glared, Sarah stared right back.
"Ok, now what do I do? The guys are going to come find out what happened to her any minute." The captor thought to herself.
"Well what happened here?" Xander asked.
Sarah turned to the ladder.
"That was a lot faster then I expected."
Justin appeared over the top and stood next to Xander, laughing at Becca's reversal of fortune.
"You got out." Justin nodded to Sarah. "Good job."
Sarah nodded in return and smiled courteously while she furiously tried to gauge what the guys were thinking, and by the devious smiles that were creeping over their faces it couldn't be good for her.
"Look, you guys played a prank on me and sided with her. I got out, I got her back for all three of you. You don't need to" She stammered.
Xander and Justin turned to each other and smirked.
"But what would be the fun in that?" Justin asked.
"There wouldn't be!" Sarah insisted.
"Sure there would For us!" Xander declared.
Justin ran and grabbed Sarah, who seemed to accept it with grim inevitability.
"Find something!" Justin said.
Xander ran past (the much pleased) Becca, behind the pole. There he saw the zip ties that he'd dropped earlier.
"Ha! I knew we'd need these!" He said.
He darted back to Sarah and grabbed her arms, and pulled her palms together. He put the flat end of the tie into the clip on the other side and made it into a loop and then slid it over Sarah's wrists and tightened it over the end of her sleeves. Then he dropped to the floor and secured the other zip tie around her ankles.
Xander stood back up.
"Do you want to sit down?" Justin asked his captive.
"Better then falling I suppose." She replied dryly.
Justin took her arms and lowered her to the floor, though he couldn't help but notice as his hands passed under her arms she flinched, though it seemed she tried to minimize it.
"Ticklish are we?" He asked.
"No!" She replied, almost took quickly.
"Lying is a sin you know." Xander said.
She said nothing.
Justin lightly brushed his fingers on her underarms and she began to squirm and after a few seconds burst out into fits of laughter.
"We'll take that as a yes." Justin said as he stood back up.
At this point both Justin and Xander turned to Becca, who was wearing a look of glee under her cleave gag.
"You know if I didn't know better, I'd say she's expecting us to untie her." Justin said.
Xander chuckled; Her smile vanished.
After chuckling, he walked over to the pole, curious as to how Sarah had secured the chain.
"Wow, this is pretty good." Xander commented.
"Thank you." Sarah said.
Xander thought to himself for a moment.
"I'm curious." He said.
Because Becca's wrists were tied near the far end of the chair arms, and her back was held straight up against the chair back, this made a nice little space for Xander to reached her underarms and tickle them. Becca squirmed uncontrollably.
"Well this is interesting." He commented.
He tried to restrain himself from tickling her anymore, but his restraint didn't last very long.
Becca squirmed and squealed, all the while Sarah watching and laughing at her friend's misfortune. Justin noticed this however and started giving her the same treatment.
After they all took a moment to breathe, Justin looked at his watch.
"It's getting pretty close to five thirty."
Xander nodded.
"Ok."
Xander went back behind the pole and unclipped the metal carabineer holding the chain in place. The two ends drop giving it slack and he pulled on one end until Becca was completely free of it, then he started working on her arms.
Justin searched for something he could use to cut the zip ties, and Sarah pointed him to the pair of scissors she'd found earlier, freeing her in a matter of seconds.
One Xander had untied Becca's right arm, she used it to undo her gag. She was completely free before long.
"Now Shake hands." Justin told the Diva's.
Grudgingly they walked up to each other. Sarah raised her right hand, Becca took it, and the two just stared at each other for a moment before breaking out into laughter.
"You know I actually kinda enjoyed that." Becca commented.
"I sorta did too." Sarah agreed.
"We might have to give these two a taste!"
The boys both smiled.
The four performers put everything back where they had found it and descended back into the auditorium and back into reality. Sarah and Becca went strait into the change room to run water over what little rope burn they both had, and Sarah scrubbed the tape residue off her face. They also discussed revenge on the boys.
The guys began the arduous of putting their makeup back on, and talked about how much they enjoyed that little game.
At one point Xander couldn't help but ask
"So, do you have a thing for Becca?"
Justin didn't answer. Xander's eyes widened.
"Sorry, If I'd known I would've let you tickle her." He said chuckling.
"That's ok."
"You going to ask her out?"
"I don't know."
Within a few minutes, the rest of the cast and crew began returning from dinner, and before long, the evening performance arrived.
It went far better then the matinee.
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dreadnaught3200 's stories
- 01 - Ghost Stories (m/f, mm/fff)
- 02 - Clash of the Divas (mmf/f, f/f, mm/f)
- 03 - Tough Love (mf/mf, m/m, mf/f)
- 04 - Up at the lake (ff/m, m/f, mm/fff)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section