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unpack-my-heart · 5 years

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Unpack My Heart With Words – Updated

Chapter 5 of my Hamlet/Theatre Reddie AU. The chapter is called When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

You can read it on AO3 HERE or I’ve pasted it under the cut.

Preview:

“Heh. I suppose,” Eddie responds. “I remember reading King Lear when I was at RADA, when I was convinced that I’d be the one reciting the lines, rather than instructing people how to read the lines. My Lear is based on someone from my past.”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Tag List:

@constantreaderfool @xandertheundead @violetreddie

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a forgettable cul-de-sac. He’d moved there with Sandy, as soon as he got the email confirming that he’d ‘read Hamlet’. It hadn’t lasted. They’d broken up less than a year after they’d bought the house. She’d accused him of cheating on her, and he hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t cheated on her, of course, but it had given him a very convenient way of avoiding having a conversation he’d been putting off for several months prior. I’m still in love with the boy (man?) that broke my heart over a decade ago doesn’t roll off the tongue particularly well, nor is it all that believable. So they’d split. Richie had taken on sole tenancy of the small townhouse they rented, and Sandy had left him and moved back in with her parents in Bath, leaving him in Stratford-Upon-Avon on his own.

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a perfectly pleasant and quiet area of a perfectly pleasant and quiet town. That’s why, when Richie was stumbling down the street pissed out of his mind at 3am after trying (and failing) to drink Ben under the table, and singing (or howling) along to Prowlin’ from Grease 2, a large number of people peered around their curtains and glared at him. He paid them no mind. He fumbled with his keys, dropping them six times, before his uncooperative fingers finally managed to shove the key into the lock and turn it. The stuffy, gaping black maw of his hallway stared back at him. Scoffing, and swearing at everything and anything, Richie managed to turn on all the lights in his living room and kitchen, and flop onto the sofa, without breaking anything – limbs and extremities included.

Richie smacked his lips. His mouth tasted like someone had been using his tongue as an ash tray for the last four hours, before telling him to gargle with white spirit. In short, it tasted like ass. Not that Richie remembered what ass tasted like. It had been far too long. His laptop sat, screen open and inviting, sat on the coffee table. Richie tugged it towards him, before lifting it over to his lap by the screen. He almost missed Sandy shrieking ‘if you lift it like that, the screen will come off in your hands and you’ll be fucked’. Almost.

The machine booted up, whirs and purrs breaking the silence. Richie’s fingers worked on autopilot, his alcohol-hazed brain taking several seconds to catch up.

Google: Edsss kaspbrK

Did you mean: Eds Kaspbrak?

Did you mean: Edward Kaspbrak?

Yes. Yes he did mean Edward Kaspbrak. Richie supposed he wasn’t allowed to call Eddie Eds anymore.

Edward Kaspbrak, 486,972 results in 0.0003 seconds

Richie’s eyes lazily scanned the first few lines of results. The first page was Eddie’s staff page on the RSC website. The second was Eddie’s twitter. The third was an article from the Edinburgh College of Dramatic Arts student newspaper. Richie clicked on it.

“The ECDA is super stoked to announce that the opening night of the student production of the Phantom of the Opera, directed by our very own Eddie K, …. Blah blah blah blah Eddie blah blah blah successful blah blah blah” Richie mumbled out loud to himself, heart tightening in his chest.

Backspacing out of the page, Richie clicked on the next article. This one was from four years ago, and was a review of a production of King Lear that Eddie had directed. Richie skimmed the article, before clicking on the embedded video interview at the bottom of the page. Eddie’s face fills the screen. He looks younger than the Eddie Richie had seen earlier that day. His face is smoother, and his mouth isn’t set in a harsh line. His eyes are soft. He looks happy. Richie feels sick.

“So,” the interviewer begins, “Tell me about this production. Your Lear is particularly arrogant and unlikable, and unlike other productions that I’ve seen, I actually don’t feel like your Lear had any redeeming features at all. He’s just … consistently unlikable. That’s a pretty bold move for someone’s debut RSC directorial job, right?”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Eddie leaves the frame, and Richie doesn’t listen to the interviewers cursory wrap up. His ears are ringing too loudly.

Richie backspaces, before blindly clicking on one last link. It takes him to the announcement of Eddie’s appointment as Artistic Director in the newsletter of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Richie can feel bile swelling in his throat.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is privileged and pleased to announce that Edward Frank Kaspbrak has accepted the position of Artistic Director. Edward replaces Claire Van de Camp, who wishes her successor success. Edward joins us at a particularly exciting time, and his first production will the semi-centenary celebration of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a milestone marked with a production of Hamlet. We wish Edward a long and happy tenure with us, and we all look forward to working with him for years to come

A few words from Edward himself: “I’m delighted to join the RSC as Artistic Director to celebrate the momentous semi-centenary anniversary of the company. I am a man of few words, so I’ll leave you with the words of a wordsmith more skilled than I. And so, all yours. I am all yours, RSC, and I will serve you as long as you’ll have me.”

The last words force the bile that had been bubbling in Richie’s throat to surge up his oesophagus. He scrambles to his feet, laptop falling gracelessly to the floor, and scrambles to his bedroom. He pulls an inconspicuous wooden box from under the bed, upending it so white envelopes come tumbling out. He spreads them all out on the carpet, before he grabs the one marked 15th April 2019. He opens the envelope. Two pieces of paper fall out, and he stuffs one back in without looking at it. He unfolds the other piece of paper.

15th April 2019

And so, all yours

The paper is fragile – It had been recklessly torn in half, before it has been painstakingly sellotaped back together. Richie couldn’t count how many times he’d stared at those four words.

– X –

When Richie had first started receiving the letters from Eddie, he had become almost incensed with anger. He’d vented to Stan, ugly, venomous ranting.

“I fucking hate him, Stan”

“No you don’t”

“Yes I fucking do. He abandons me to chase some stupid fucking selfish dream in Scotland, and then has the audacity – the fucking NERVE – to write to me, to plead with me to forgive him?”

“That’s not what the letter says, Richie”

“Wow. Fucking Wow. I thought you were supposed to be on my side? You know, your best friends side?”

“You haven’t spoken to me for three months, Rich. I thought you forgot who I was”

“You’re being fucking ridiculous”

“Richard? Can I have a word, s’il vous plaît?"

“Uh, sure, Jacques”

Stan disappeared down the corridor, without so much as glancing over his shoulder. Jacques was stood behind Richie, holding the door to his office open with a gracious arm. Richie walked inside.

“What’s all this ruckus, Richard?”

“Nothing, Jacques. Just – just personal stuff, s’all.”

“Are you arguing with master Stanley about Edward?”

Richie felt himself stiffen.

“How did you know?”

Jacques sits back on his chair, and folds his arms across his chest. His scarf flutters slightly in the breeze coming from the oscillating fan on his desk.

“Did you know that I told Edward to apply for the Edinburgh school?”

“No.”

“Did you know that I convinced him to go when he was reticent to leave you?”

“No.”

“Well, I did. Send some of that rage my way, if you must, but please do leave master Stanley out of it, he really isn’t at fault here”

“He’s been writing to me. I want to burn them.” Richie blurts out, without really meaning to.

“Spoken like a true dramatist”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you’re being melodramatic”

“With all due respect, Jacques, you have no idea what you’re talking about” Richie snaps, in a tone that he’d probably regret later when he’s being disciplined for being mouthy to a member of staff.

“Perhaps. But perhaps you also have no idea what you’re talking about”

“Now you’re just not making sense”

“You’re nineteen, Richard. Things have a way of working out. Don’t burn the letters. Don’t send your memories of him up in flames. You’ll regret it.”

“Can I go now?”

“But of course”

As soon as he wakes up, Richie decides that he’s not going to rehearsal. This is partly because he’s hungover, but the hangover was nothing worse than he’d ever experienced after getting pissed after the opening night of every other production he’s ever done. It was mostly because he couldn’t bear to look at Eddie’s face. Or, perhaps more accurately, he couldn’t take nearly twelve hours of Eddie refusing to look at him with anything other than scorn. Not today.

He contemplates ringing to tell Eddie that he’s ill, but he doesn’t have Eddie’s number. He thumbs over the ‘Eds <3’ contact in his phone. Eddie’s old number, of course. Richie had a new number, too, in fact, he’d had several new numbers in the fifteen years since he’d last text Eddie. He had, however, copied the ‘Eds <3’ contact into every new phone he’d has since 2019. He assumed that Eddie had probably also had several new numbers since they’d last talked, but that didn’t deter him.

Now, though, the sight of ‘Eds <3’ in his phone turns his stomach more than the whiskey in the tumbler on his nightstand does.

He decides not to ring anyone.

Instead, he clicks on the YouTube app, and types in ‘Edward II’.

He watches other people say the lines that he’d whispered to Eddie until he falls asleep, tear tracks marking his cheeks.

Richie wakes up several hours later. His phone is buzzing furiously on his bedside table like an angry hornet. When he picks it up, the screen reads ‘Unknown Number’. He throws the phone on the floor.

The buzzing stops, but almost immediately starts up again.

He doesn’t answer.

The unknown number calls back again.

He doesn’t pick up.

His phone buzzes again, but this time its three short buzzes.

A Text.

He grabs his phone off the stained carpet.

From: Unknown Number:

Where the fuck are you?

From: Unknown Number:

Today was a fucking disaster. Where are you?

From: Unknown Number:

How dare you make me worry about you.

Richie stares at the last text, shrouded in the dark comfort of his room, for what feels like hours.

#reddie #unpack my heart #unpack my heart with words #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #richie tozier x eddie kaspbrak #hamlet AU #theatre AU #ao3 #thefutureisbright

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