Drama Kid Drabbles

This will be a series of theatrical drabbles and one-shots, to be updated whenever I want. I wanted to do the famed "Wicked 100", but I don't think I could muster up the time or energy to do that many Wicked drabbles, so I'm just going to do stuff based on a bunch of different musicals and plays I like. I'm starting with Chicago.

Chapter 1

"Harry & Ike", A Chicago One-Shot

You can like the life you're livin', you can live the life you like

You can even marry Harry, and mess around with Ike…

And that's good, isn't it?

Sometimes Roxie Hart wondered how good it really was. She had done just that. She'd married her Harry: dumb, sweet, gullible Amos, who doted on her like a simpering little lapdog. And she'd messed around with Ike. Fred Casely. And that had just turned out marvelously, hadn't it? She'd landed herself a spot on murderess' row where she barely escaped a hanging, had all her chances at fame and stardom forever snatched away from her, and was now stuck with Little Miss Has-Been Velma Kelley trying to scrape up a meager living on the bare edges of Chicago's vaudeville scene. And all because that lout had walked out on her.

Vaudeville had lost its appeal for Roxie, anyway. It was all just noise and color to her. But Velma still dared to dream that someday they would make it big. Chicago today, New York tomorrow, she said. Hollywood. Paris. She knew Velma had once been well on her way to all those things, and was desperate to regain some of her former glory. She let Velma dream, and she did what she could to help. She danced. She sang. She flirted with bartenders. But it was all meaningless. To the audience, they were just two more pretty faces.

Except to Amos. Desperate, sniveling Amos, who still insisted on following her around. He came to all her shows, sitting in the crowd, watching her dance with an expression like a doleful basset-hound. He never tried to speak to her afterwards. He would just stare at her for a moment as the stage lights dimmed, looking not at her petite, sequin-covered body like everyone else, but at her face, longing clear in his eyes. He would then turn on his heel, a dejected look on his own face, and slink unnoticed out of the building and into the night.

She and Velma always had a good laugh about it afterwards. Poor, pathetic Amos had still not given up on her. One night, Velma even jokingly offered to follow him into a side alley and shoot him for her, saying that another homicide trial could give them another dose of the publicity they were craving, regardless of the fact that Mr. Flynn had only just managed to get them both acquitted last time. Roxie had smiled faintly at this, knowing that Velma wouldn't dare to do it anyway, but as she sat alone in her dressing room later that night, she could not deny that Velma's words had made her uneasy for some reason.

But eventually, Amos stopped coming. And to her astonishment, Roxie found that she missed him.