Being a theater technician was hard, much harder than Kevin had expected. Honestly, he'd once thought theater kids were all a bunch of wimps; that was before he had to spend hours in the blazing hot sun trying to drag twenty pounds of wood to the gymnasium before being told no, we need 4x4s, not 2x4s, go back. What made it worse was he normally wouldn't have been in that situation, but somehow his boyfriend had suckered him into helping out with their high school's production of The Music Man.

"While I may have a preference for the more scientific disciplines, it's important to be well-rounded," Double D had said. Upon seeing Kevin's unimpressed face, Double D had sighed. "And I'm sure they'll let you use a power saw." That had been enough to convince Kevin that maybe working with the drama nerds wouldn't be so bad. Sounded pretty hard core, actually. After he signed up and was told all electronic tools had to be operated by a legal adult, Kevin was tempted to quit right then, but one look from Double D had him crumbling. He'd made a promise, damn it, so he said nothing when instead of a saw he was handed a screwdriver held together by tape and the sheer power of hope.

Kevin soon found his weekends completely taken over by theater work. Rolf had been surprisingly understanding when Kevin had to cancel their weekly football conditioning, though not understanding enough to refrain from throwing around jibes about Kevin becoming a "shooting star diva, yes?"

Despite how busy it kept him, Kevin didn't think tech was too bad. There was something calming about assembling set pieces. Seeing a house or a piano finally come together after hours of backbreaking work was pretty awesome; it was almost as rewarding as working on his bike. Kevin even went in early once or twice on a Saturday to get a head start on a particularly nasty piece of construction.

There were only so many things that needed screwing together, though, and eventually Kevin was put on art duty–the one job he had tried his hardest to escape. He and Double D were stationed outside of the gym with a piece of plywood and three different shades of grey paint; somehow they were supposed to turn that into a chimney. Double D first busied himself with organizing the supplies and laying out a clear tarp to ensure their surroundings didn't get too messy. Then he sketched out a complicated plan of action involving some fancy-ass geometry. The word tessellation might have been thrown out there; Kevin wasn't paying a whole lot of attention at that point, to be honest. Instead he decided Double D was taking too long and chose to start slapping some paint down right away.

"Kevin! That looks awful! No self-respecting mason would ever build a chimney with that appearance!" Double D agitatedly tried to blot some of the paint with a paper towel. "The structural integrity of such a piece would be compromised!"

"Harsh, Double Dweeb. It's just a painting." Kevin groaned and flopped down next to the plywood. He winced as his back came into contact with a loose layer of gravel. Shit. Theater was turning out to be a lot more painful than sports ever were. The afternoon sun beat down on his chest and turned his t-shirt dark with sweat. He could feel moisture pooling underneath his hat, so he took it off and ran a hand through his closely cropped hair. It came up wet.

"Help me up, dude," he said, holding up that same hand to Double D, who just gave him a look that asked are you kidding me? Kevin snickered. "C'mon, a little sweat never hurt anybody."

Double D stood up and marched away all pissy, his elbows level with his ears. Kevin considered flicking a wad of paint after him but he really did not want to deal with the aftermath. Double D didn't take kindly to people messing with his clothes, even if the person doing the messing in question was his boyfriend.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" he called after Double D.

"I'm going to ask Eddy if he knows where the triangle sponges are," came the peeved response.

"Ha! Good luck with that," Kevin said, but by that time Double D had already rounded the corner of the building.

Eddy had been cast as Harold Hill, a pesky schemer who went out of his way to try to hit on the River City's super hot librarian. Kevin and Double D had spent a few good minutes giggling over the perfection of that decision. What made it even funnier was that the dumbass didn't seem to get the joke. All amusement quickly faded, however, when it turned out that being the lead seriously went to Eddy's head. He refused to do any work at all during tech days and instead delegated his tasks to freshmen chumps. The odds of him knowing where triangle sponges could be found, let alone what triangle sponges even were, were zilch.

Sure enough, when Double D came back he was empty handed.

"Lemme guess. He was too busy sitting on his ass to help you out."

"He told me to try using your chin as a stamp for the bricks."

"It's not that big," Kevin said, peering down his nose as if that would let him see the bottom half of his face. "Right?"

"It's not small," Double D said with a straight face.

"Yeah, well, you're one to talk," Kevin grumbled. He closed his eyes, annoyed, then jumped when he felt a hand on his arm. He cracked an eyelid open just a bit to see Double D crouching over him.

"I didn't mean to offend you," Double D said earnestly.

Kevin sighed and sat up. "Y'know, someday we're gonna sit down and have a talk about how relationships work. You're allowed to tease me, man."

"Then it would be okay if I pointed out that the overlong hair poking out of your cap puts one in mind of a horse?" Double D asked, his eyes twinkling. Kevin swiped at at his shoulder halfheartedly. Double D surprised him by swooping in and giving him a brief peck on the cheek. He wasn't allowed an attempt at reciprocating, though, because Double D stood up and clapped his hands together.

"There will be time for flirtation later. Now we paint."


"I'm beat," Kevin said, slouching back onto his elbows.

"I must say, painting is much more exhausting than I had anticipated," Double D admitted, mirroring Kevin's pose.

"And this is only going to be used for, like, one scene. And nobody is gonna look at it because they'll be too busy staring at Nazz singing about a star."

"Poor Marian."

"Yeah. I feel kinda bad for her. Nobody deserves a guy like Harold. Or Eddy."

Double D laughed. "I admit I feel some affinity for her because we share a name. More precisely, my middle name is her first."

"Marian? Seriously?

"It's not spelled the same way," Double D hastened to add. "The character has the more traditionally feminine version of the name, whereas mine ends in the masculinized '-on.'"

Kevin considered this. "I dunno. Still sounds pretty girly to me."

"Perhaps." Double D scooched into an upright sitting position. He balanced his weight on his hands. "I would take the time to construct a coherent argument, but I find myself too tired to even attempt." Kevin made a noise of agreement.

A few minutes passed in comfortable silence. The sound of a familiar song started to trail out of the gymnasium; some of the dancers were probably rehearsing a number. Kevin concentrated a little to figure out what song was being played; a smile passed over his face when he recognized it.

"Maaarian," Kevin sang along in a low tone. He shifted up onto his knees and started shuffling over to where Double D sat.

"What are you doing?"

Kevin said nothing and continued shuffling.

"Maaarian," he sang again when he stopped right in front of Double D's toes.

"Kevin, stop," Double D protested. He shoved a hand over Kevin's mouth, making sure to cup his fingers in such a way as to allow Kevin to breathe.

"Mmmfm mmffmnnn," Kevin mumbled. He paused to lick Double D's hand in one broad stripe from bottom to top. Double D reeled back, his eyes wide, and began to furiously wipe his palm on his shorts.

"What can I do, my dear?" Kevin crooned and leaned into Double D's personal space.

Double D stopped wiping his hand and scooted backwards, Kevin following him the whole way. The buttons on his shorts made an irritating scratching noise as they scraped over the concrete. His back hit the outside wall of the gymnasium, and he reached out to sling one hand over Kevin's shoulders; Kevin wasted no time straddling his narrow hips. The stone underneath Kevin's knees hurt but he ignored the pain in favor of trailing his mouth up Double D's neck. He loved how he could feel every minute tremble underneath his lips.

"To catch your ear," he murmured, biting down lightly on Double D's earlobe. He could hear a light gasp from under him so he bit down a little harder, then released. His mouth ghosted across Double D's cheek and over to his mouth in a light kiss.

"I love you madly, madly-" He tried to go on with the song but was cut off by Double D surging upwards and slotting their lips together. Kevin readjusted the angle of his head and gentled the kiss, sucking on Double D's lower lip softly. He didn't want them to get too carried away, seeing as how they were outside and all. Anybody could walk by. Double D got the memo and slowed down, loosening his grip on the back of Kevin's shirt. Kevin pulled away with a small noise of regret.

The two of them took a moment to calm their breathing down.

"How was my singing?" Kevin asked, finally.

"I don't think the human ear has evolved enough to describe what you just did as 'singing.'"

"Fuck off, dude. I sounded rad."

"The only rad thing about it was the fact that you managed to create an entirely new key."

Eddy poking his head around the door was the only thing that stopped their argument from escalating.

"Hey, lovebirds, Jimmy needs that chimney pronto." He looked at Kevin and Double D's reddened faces. "Okay, what'd I miss?"