Going Nowhere • •

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

There was nothing that would make Hale give up her life now; not right now anyway. She didn’t want to risk all she’d accomplished in the last ten years for one more job. Even if it would set her up for life and she would never have to work again on her cut alone. She’d already done enough jobs to set herself up for two lifetimes, plus any children she may or may not have in the coming years; though honestly kids weren’t even a thought in Hale’s artsy mind. “Oh?” Hale asked, grinning. “So you’re really a very mean man pretending to be nice and sweet and humble? You really are an excellent actor.” Hale knew there were people out there who’d had a hard life, grew up in broken families or with no families at all. She knew just how lucky she was. But at the same time, she also knew exactly what some of those kids were into just to survive. She did the same things on a much bigger scale. It wasn’t really to survive the day to day, there was no problems there. They were a rich family, only because there were generations of thieves and conmen that made them that way. And as far as Hale could tell, she was so far the only one in quite a few generations to cut themselves off from the family business. But she could see JP wanted the subject dropped so she did just that, even though it killed her not to ask questions. Knowing everything about everyone was part of the life she had yet to give up. Knowledge was power and though she would hardly use any knowledge of JP on him, she still wanted to know.

Hale only had her experiences to go by. She couldn’t say what was good for this person or what was bad for another. As far as Hale was concerned, she really had absolutely no right to say a damn thing about or against another person; not with all she’d done in the first eighteen years of her life. Twenty if she really wanted to add the pickpocketing she did while she was in school just to keep life interesting during those duller months with stupid subjects. Thankfully she had friends who kept her going and didn’t have her pausing to think about this or that. “Those are some of my favourite words.” Hale said, chuckling. Her apartment appealed to her for more reasons than the exceptional view from the penthouse. It boasted plenty of things Hale loved about it but there was also a room built in for the previous owners for their wine collection. And Hale took advantage of that happily. “It’s not a joke if it’s true. You’re going to be here late because you’re a perfectionist and I’m going to be here late because I still have those bigger pieces to finish up for you and Graham asked me to do up a little something for his little monster.” Hale said smiling fondly. Graham’s little boy was too much like his father with his smiles and easy nature. Hale just adored when she had to drop some set piece off and the five year old was around looking bored. Laughing and joking, she kidnapped him from time to time and sent dear old dad a text so he wouldn’t call in the FBI. “So, tomorrow?” she asked again with a bigger grin.

“Ecstatic but damn I forgot to take my phone out.” Hale said, laughing as she took the steps down to JP’s side. “Love Guys and Dolls, by the way.” She added, patting his shoulder lightly. “Pizza guy should be here. I’ll be right back.” She said, sauntering up the aisle at her own pace. She may have blended in seamlessly but that didn’t mean she couldn’t stand out and her saunter had saved her ass more than once in the past. She kept the saunter up as she reached the main doors to the theatre and saw the delivery guy looking around like he didn’t know where he was supposed to go. Smiling, Hale pulled the cost plus tip from her pocket as the kid who looked like he might just be old enough to drive set the food on a table set out of the way. When he left she expertly stacked everything and carried it all back into the theatre. For once, outside a job, her practiced skill at being a waitress came in handy. Especially considering that had to have been the worst part of that particular job she’d ever had to do. And that said something when everything she’d ever done for a job came into question. “If I could have ordered a bottle of wine, I would have.” Hale said like it was so sort of apology for the sodas in the bag. There weren’t many things she did that were overly French in nature but wine with dinner, no matter what it was, was one of them.

Tag || JP! <3
Words || 840
Clothes || Priceless
Music || Defying Gravity -- Wicked
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

There wasn’t a thing in the world that could take JP back to Maine. As far as he was concerned that part of his life was well and truly over and the person he had been there was nothing more than a shadow. He didn’t think there was much in life that could take him out of New York either. When it came to acting he preferred the stage to studios and cameras and while he had taken a few guest roles on some long running TV shows, JP felt more at home on the stage. And, when it came to the stage, New York had Broadway. Those bright lights and names plastered on posters and programmes brought a thrill the drama professor couldn’t even begin to put into words. Even if it wasn’t a Broadway performance, there were endless theatre opportunities and JP hadn’t really gone more than a month without work since he had graduated college. He had been lucky with his talent and had befriended the right people, worked with loyal directors and proved himself to be a trustworthy professional. It made it much more likely to get a call back after an audition. “Yes. Truthfully, I am bitter and twisted to the core. If I had a front porch, I’d yell at kids from it.”

[/color] JP couldn’t really do that from an eighth floor balcony with the same effect as the image he was trying to conjure up. The slightly depressing thought was that if JP hadn’t found acting then he might very well have ended up exactly like that. Taking on different roles and characters allowed him to vent in a much more private way. He could channel his emotions into a performance rather than talking candidly about them or bottling them up until he felt ready to explode. He didn’t have a pleasant past, he didn’t come from pleasant people and it was hardly a pleasant conversation to have with friends. JP didn’t want sympathy or pity about his past; he just wanted to have hope for a different future.

Chuckling softly, JP shook his head, pushing his unruly hair back from his face. He needed to get a haircut, but he was just too busy with this show at the moment. JP never planned those sort of things, he just made the decision and went and dealt with them. “I can do without the hangover, thank you.”[/color] His hangovers were rarely unbearable, but there was still no fun in waking up in the morning with a mild headache and that sensation of being off balance. “I’m only a perfectionist because I’m not putting my name to something sloppy. It’s different directing something than it is acting it.”[/color] At least with acting you were only accountable for yourself most of the time and how you handle any problems. When you were directing there was more pressure on things being perfect and little mistakes were often dragged back to and then blamed on the man behind the curtain. JP had been performing enough to have his name recognised and he wasn’t about to bring his reputation crashing down with some summer theatre project performance. It was why he pushed all of his students to be exceptional, to embrace their roles and to really challenge themselves with the script. The rest he would shoulder with the help of some other backstage crew, but JP was usually the one there until long after sundown. He just rolled his eyes at Hale and shook his head on a quiet laugh.

Laughing again, JP jogged down the aisle. “I was Nathan Detroit in my freshman year of college.”[/color] He stated proudly, remembering that production as clear and as vividly as he remembered all the rest. He couldn’t help himself. While Hale went for the pizza, JP moved back to adjust something else on the stage, moving the tape markings along with it. If he hadn’t done it in that moment then it would have continued to bug him throughout the pizza break. Pulling a face, JP shook his head and moved to take a seat. “I’d pass on the wine, thanks. The stuff always takes terrible to me.”[/color] He was a beer or whiskey kind of man and nothing seemed to change that. People had given him glasses of wine before and each and every one of them had been “forgotten” on a side counter somewhere.
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• • •

TAGGED! Hale <3
WORDS! 780!
OUTFIT! STAGE STYLE!
LYRICS! Fool With Dreams - - - Framing Hanley
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Coty Adelaide Cosette Hale]

Paris was Hale’s home and nothing would change that. But at the same time, it held so much of her past that she couldn’t go back without someone trying to pull her in, even though they all knew she wouldn’t ever again. At least not until she was well and through finished teaching. It was funny sometimes, how she got this overwhelming feeling of wanting to go back just so she could put more works of art on museum walls with her name on them. There were plenty of museums all over the world that had her replicas on their walls for a time. Some figured it out and reported the pieces missing to no avail and others still hadn’t figured it out after all these years. While most people wanted to see the most romantic city in the world with their partners, Hale knew she would be trying her hardest to talk the man of her dreams out of visiting the city of lights because her family would try something. “A front porch is kind of rare in New York, don’t you think?” She asked, teasing him lightly.

At one point in her life, everything was planned down to the second. If they were even a second off on a couple of their plans, the whole thing went to hell extremely quickly and they were left royally screwed; which meant going back to the drawing board and coming at the job from a whole new angle. So after all those years of everything being planned, including the hair cut she had, the makeup she wore or the street she was on at exactly noon, it was nice to not have every single minute planned out. She didn’t go to this exact salon at this time on this day to get that haircut so it would frame her face in a way that made her look more mature or more childlike. For the first little while, Hale went without a major haircut, only getting a light trim so she wouldn’t develop split ends. “We don’t need to drink enough for a hangover, just enough that I have to tuck you into bed before letting myself out.” She teased lightly though she did mean the first part of what she said. Unless she had no choice, she only usually had a glass of anything, maybe two if it were a particularly rough day she was putting behind her. “Aside from the directing thing, I know exactly what you mean.” She may not have been doing the work when it came from her students, but she had taught them all she knew and that was putting her name with theirs. If they screwed up and whatever it was, was sent out without her viewing it, it was her name and her reputation being criticised just as much as her student’s work. And she was not about to let that happen. Which was why she was working late, fixing what a couple of her students messed up.

“That is fantastic!” Hale exclaimed excitedly. “I’m learning so much tonight.” She added, teasing. While she was out in the hall, she wondered if she would walk back in to see JP relaxing or if he would be pushing or pulling things around the stage. He was a workaholic but even Hale could admit that he was good at what he did. "Forgive me. I'm French, remember? It’s wine all the time!" Hale said, laughing. She was quite possibly the only one of her friends that could sit around with a bottle of wine and it not be considered alcoholism. Of course, she didn’t do that in the first place but still. She’d been drinking wine for as long as she could remember. By the time she was eighteen, she could hold her liquor better than anyone she knew; outside the family of course. Like picking pockets and everything else she knew, drinking was taught and expected. They had to keep their heads about them in any situation and there were times when it just wasn’t possible to fake a drink. When it was, it was the obvious to go but Hale had been on a couple jobs at least that she had needed to drink to get out of it. Thankfully, she was a top student of the family “school”.

Tag || JP! <3
Words || 725
Clothes || Priceless
Music || Defying Gravity -- Wicked
Notes || <3

[John-Paul Calloway]

JP’s only desire was the theatre. He would happily spend the rest of his life on the stage in New York. It wasn’t even the idea of fame and his name in lights that drew him to it. JP just wanted to be happy and the only place he had ever truly felt that was when he was up there in front of an audience, putting on a show. Everything else in his life had only ever brought him temporary happiness and had eventually left him hurting and feeling pretty low again. The stage had always been his sanctuary, his place where nothing could let him down. Grinning, he nodded in slow agreement. “For a good reason. The city if full of enough bitter and twisted people without giving them all porches to shout from.”

[/color] He said, acting as though it really was the reason why front porches were often left out of New York architecture.

He had lived such a chaotic and unorganised childhood that much of that had followed him into adulthood. He was organised only when it came to performances and a cleaning lady helped keep his apartment looking less like a bomb site than it would do if JP was left to himself. The rest of the time and JP often just took the days as they came. He didn’t plan exactly what he would do on this day or that and if his to-do list wasn’t wiped clean by the time he passed out that night then it wasn’t the end of the world either. There had been too much and yet too little in his life for him to worry about every little thing and fuss over the smallest of problems. If he did then he would probably have not only given up long ago, but he probably also would have made himself rather ill from the stress of it all. “I pass out on the couch when I’ve been drinking.”[/color] There were also several other times when JP ended up on the couch with Roxy pawing at him rather than in the comfy bed just a hallway away. Hale didn’t need to know about those times though. No one did.

Laughing, JP pushed his hair back again and then arched his eyebrow, dark eyes following Hale. “So is that the real reason why you’re sticking around tonight? To try and find out some deep dark secret of the drama professor’s? Well, hate to break it to you but I have none.”[/color] He had his entire past, in a way, which he kept a deep secret. That would take more than a bottle of fine whiskey to discover though and no one, not even his ex-girlfriend, had been able to break through more than just the vague details of his youth. With another laugh, JP shook his head and shot Hale a look. “What an excuse.”[/color] He said with a shake of his head. Settling down, and forcing himself to turn his back on the set for a little bit, JP focused instead on the food, popping open the boxes and clearing some room on the table that sort of served as his desk during rehearsals.
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• • •

TAGGED! Hale <3
WORDS! 574!
OUTFIT! STAGE STYLE!
LYRICS! Fool With Dreams - - - Framing Hanley
NOTES! <3 <3 <3