Chapter Text
Walkie-talkies beeped. People shouted. Everything smelled like stale bagels and cheap coffee. Everyone was struggling, trying to remember why they took this thankless, exhausting fucking job.
The life of backstage theatre. This is it, New York City behind the curtains.
"Aliena," said a gruff man, swinging around an official-looking clipboard. "Ali, I need to talk to you about something." Oh, that sounded just fabulous, didn't it?
The young intern turned rigidly. Her boss was caffeine-fueled, an unstoppable force, a sleepless man with eyes that showed it. Before she could get a word in edgewise, Mr. Hannigan started tapping furiously at a wrinkled copy of what she gathered to be her job application.
"So," he began impatiently- there were props to set up, after all, and they weren't going to set up themselves, and he really shouldn't have to be dealing with this right now.
"Yes, Mr. Hannigan?"
"So,” he repeated. “We've got a problem."
Aliena's heart sank. It was the middle of the busiest season at Rowdy Raven Productions. The last thing that anyone wanted to hear was the word 'problem', along with 'issue', 'grievance', and the wrenching phrase: 'that actor broke their leg and we can't find the understudy'.
She glanced at where Mr. Hannigan was aggressively tapping on the paper. Emergency Contacts. And she recognized her own scribbled writing below it. She’d gone over that application three times, scanning tiredly for errors before anxiously submitting it. What could possibly be wrong with my-
Her eyes went wide, a month-long memory slamming into her like a speeding taxi cab.
Oh… darn.
"The thing is,” he was saying. “The thing is, your Emergency Contacts aren’t working.”
Tap, tap, tap, taptaptaptap. She really wanted to put a hand on his to make him stop, but she knew he would probably just keep tapping anyway.
"What's the problem? Eneas is my- is my good friend, and Damien, he’s my, my- er- he's my-"
Eneas was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Damien was her next door neighbor.
"You wrote 'Father' on the application for both of them.”
The urge to chuckle started tickling her throat. Instead, she tried to maintain eye contact. It was like looking into the sun.
“We tried calling both these numbers,” Mr. Hannigan said. “This one, the line was busy and wouldn’t let us leave a message. And this one rerouted to the Chinese takeout place down the street."
"Um, yeah, he really likes their crab rangoon.”
Mr. Hannigan gave her a look.
A month ago, when Aliena had applied to this theatre internship in NYC, the application asked for two emergency contacts. Now, she hadn’t had a problem with the resume or the cover letter, and she could run circles around writing samples. But references… contacts… Not everyone is fortunate enough to have those things.
She couldn’t list her actual father. He'd probably get the call that she'd had a heart attack or something, say "good", and then hang up. Petros would have been perfect, save for the minor issue of being dead. She had stared blankly at the paper, and only two names had occurred to her. She had wrote them down, pulled some phone numbers off of the Yellow Pages, and sent it in. And she hadn’t thought about it since.
She hadn’t asked, per say, if she could use their names. But she trusted them and they were reliable (at least, that was her impression of them) and those are the only qualifications an emergency contact should really need.
"I’m sure E-Eneas was just busy. And Damien doesn't actually have a, um, a phone," she admitted to a rapidly-blinking Mr. Hannigan. "But he's always told me that if I need him, he'll come, so-"
"What? How the fuck am I supposed to call someone who doesn't fucking have a phone, Aliena?"
Red-cheeked, he jabbed at the air as if dialing an invisible payphone. "Yes, hello, fucking Heaven? It's Dave speaking, I need to speak with some guy named Damien Salazar?” As he spoke to an absent God, Aliena was disappearing farther and farther into her turtleneck sweater. “I know he doesn't have a cell phone, maybe my intern should have thought of that before she fucking put him down as an Emergency Fucking Contact!"
The tech crew was starting to stare, and oh god, was she acutely aware of it. She backed up and Mr. Hannigan pointed a sausagy finger at her. All the caffeine and traffic jams and frustrations of the week had culminated into his beet-red face, his tight jaw and huffing, and she wished to God someone would do something.
And then, there was a popping sound.
It wasn’t unlike a gum-bubble bursting, only much louder. Two people walked forward, toward Mr. Hannigan and Aliena, which was quite an impressive thing considering they'd just appeared from absolutely nothing.
"Hello," said a refined voice.
"Yoo-hoo!" said a not-so refined voice.
Mr. Hannigan gasped like a man who'd seen a ghost, and Aliena gasped with sheer, unadulterated joy.
The Heaven which Mr. Hannigan had been mocking moments ago must have heard her.