Hi, everyone. This is my first Smash fic, but since I saw the first episode a week ago, I've become obsessed. I've become enamoured with the character of Ivy; she seems to have much more depth and intensity than her opponent, Karen. I also like, in case you don't notice from the fic, Julia and Tom. Frank and Leo? Not so much.
This will focus heavily on a developing friendship between Julia and Ivy, with Michael/Julia. Not Derek/Ivy, though. I think he's using her for sex; it's been obvious since the first episodes.
Anyway. Hope you enjoy it!
Having just heard some pretty awful, career altering news, Ivy thought that surely, she was allowed a little tipple of alcohol. It hardly takes an alcoholic to want a drink after being rejected, she thought, clutching a small, translucent bottle. Drinking after being passed over for the role of a lifetime was something anyone would do, and so with something akin to determination, Ivy wrapped her hands around the bottle, lifting it to her mouth.
She knew this was dangerous; Karen's opening night, no. Bombshell's opening night depended slightly on her. She was up on that stage, after all, and if she stumbled, the production would be ruined for the night. Ivy guessed that was the difference; if the star, Karen, stumbled, the whole show may be in ruins. If she, a mere chorus girl, fell or missed a note, she would be fired, another nameless girl taking her place. The audience wouldn't even notice. Ivy wanted that pressure; she thrived in it. She had been born into the role of shadow-star, the girl never quite managing to step into the starlight. First with her mother, and now Karen-freaking-Cartwright.
She allowed herself, for relaxation's sake, to get drunk.
"Ensemble to the stage". Four fucking words chronicled her life now, that of a chorus girl.
She took one more solitary swig of vodka, and stood up slowly. She would have to be careful not to let anyone know; she'd have to be extra perfunctory. No stumbles, no swayed steps, no slurred words.
She hurried to her spot in the clear box, gluing her feet to the floor. She felt like swaying; the stage was lulling her into a false perception wherein she could see herself standing where Karen was now; in the spotlight, straight and unearthly talented. Her torso moved slightly to the left, in a kind of half-sway, but she could see Jessica looking straight at her through half-lidded eyes. She stood up straight as the curtain liften, raising her chin in defiance.
"Nobody loves you."
...
Ivy Lynn sat in the uncomfortable chair, feeling ill at ease in her own skin. The skin of her chest felt hot; as if there was some kind of heavy compress fitting itself into the crook of her neck. Her lips twitched in derision, and her hands moved on auto-pilot, looking in her heavy bag for something to stop the anxiety. Her fingers landed on a brown bottle on their own, and Ivy paused, feeling the heady weight of the bottle. She hesitantly lifted it out of the bag, marvelling in the fact that she'd managed to keep the pills a secret.
After what happened at Heaven on Earth, she'd uttered many platitudes, even allowing Tom and Sam to do a police-search of her apartment for anything resembling pills or alcohol. That particular evening reached boiling point when Sam attempted to sneak cough syrup out of it's cupboard in the bathroom, and Ivy finally kicked them out. What business is it of theirs, anyway, when Tom's loyalty left the damn state when he agreed to let Karen be Marilyn.
A therapist had once told her that when she felt this anxiety, she should imagine herself surrounded by love in a safe place. The only problem was, she'd lost that safe place when she'd lost the only part that had mattered to her in a long, long time. She had grown to think of the stage as home, and now it felt as if she was being evicted.
She had always been Marilyn. That was the point. Derek had obviously seen something in Karen, but the reality of it was that Ivy was Marilyn. Maybe he'd picked Karen because she had more innocence than Ivy, but Marilyn had more gumption to her; more danger, more intensity than Karen could ever hope to have. The physical ineptitude of Karen was just the icing on the cake - how the hell did they expect to pass off a skinny rake as Marilyn Monroe? Wasn't Marilyn renowned for her curves?
After deliberating for minutes, or possibly hours, Ivy decided that enough was enough. She couldn't think about Marilyn Monroe anymore. She wouldn't think of Derek again, or Karen, or what could have happened. In that one second, Ivy had made a final decision; she wouldn't stick around to see Derek and Karen inevitably get together, Karen becoming a Tony-winning star.
She lifted the bottle to herr lips, slowly unscrewing the white cap, filling her palm with pills.
...
Julia was having quite a spectacular evening. That was the only way to describe it, really. It was neither positive nor negative, but spectacular. Her and Tom's musical was going to be a Smash, she could see it now. She'd made some steps to defining both her relationship with her husband and her affair, and her son was responding to her work for the first time in, well, a long time.
There was a minor glitch in the evening, though. Julia had never really been close to Ivy. Though Ivy had been friends with Tom for years, Julia had always been too wrapped up in her family to really have time for socialising. She thought she saw something earlier this evening, though. Maybe it was because she'd been in a bad place herself recently, that she was more able to recognize melancholy in others. It wasn't any fault of Tom's; he was finally quite happy for the first time in a while.
But as they'd told Ivy that she wasn't going to be a star, she recognized that look. The one that said that she was in trouble.
Julia moved away from the stage, where the entire company was congratulating, circling Karen like vultures in love, and headed towards the dressing rooms. She guessed that Ivy wouldn't want to stick around, and surely she had to be there.
As she opened the door, she was shocked into silence. Ivy was at her table, and it looked as if she were asleep. Her blonde hair created a curtain around her face, one arm resting beneath her head, the other gallantly swaying at her side. She was mumbling incoherently; to Julia, it sounded as if she was complaining that her stomach hurt.
Julia moved closer, grabbing a tuft of blonde hair, moving it away from a pale, sweaty face. Concern grew in spades as Ivy lifted her head, and Julia was faced with eyes as red as the dress Ivy was wearing earlier that evening. She stroked the blonde strands of hair with one hand, the other reaching into her pocket to find her cellphone.
The call for an ambulance was perhaps the most difficult call she had ever had to make; it surpassed any call she'd recieved about Leo or Frank, as Ivy's life was, at the moment, chronicling hers in the melancholy she felt, and as Ivy was obviously falling deeply into Marilyn's abyss of depression and addiction, she could feel herself remembering the addiction of Michael.
Julia heard the paramedics trying to open the back door to the dressing rooms - to avoid creating chaos, she had instructed them to do so - and she waved them in quietly, still unable to speak.
Next chapter tomorrow.