"I am not the pheasant plucker." Blank bounced on his heels, his hands laced behind his head, flexing his shoulders as he did his vocal warm-ups.

"I am just the pheasant plucker's mate." Zidane was standing on his hands, tail waving for balance as he handwalked in figure-eights, calling counterpoint to Blank's nonsense. "I am only plucking pheasants--"

"--because the pleasant phucker's running late." Too late, himself, Blank caught his mistake. He stretched out his arms to wiggle the kinks out of his fingers. "Aww, fuck."

Zidane laughed, flipping himself upright with a flick of his tail. "No, that's pluck," he said, with an exaggerated grin.

"I'll show you pluck," Blank's growl would have been more convincing, had he not been sniggering.

Zidane batted his eyelashes, tipping himself upside down to do another handstand. "Bla~nk! I didn't know you cared."

Blank made kissyfaces at Zidane's upside-down smile; Zidane balanced himself on one hand long enough to flip the redhead an obscene gesture.

"Back to work, boys," Marcus shrugged, sliding between the two of them with an armful of rope. "There," he said, with finality, dropping the heavy coils with a decisive bang on the stagefloor. They'd need quite a bit of it, to mimic a ship's rigging there on stage. "So what's next?" he asked, raising a speculative eyebrow. He dusted his hands on his leather breeches, hoping for a volunteer to lug more properties from the Prima Vista's hold, down below.

Blank didn't even seem to take a breath. "Don't ask a lot of the axolotl--"

"No," interrupted Zidane, from the floor, "let's do the enemy anemone one."

And they were at it again, quick as a blink. Blank had his hands at his sides, knees kicking high, in a ridiculously parody of formal burmecian dance. Zidane was doing cartwheels, but having trouble with his lines, for laughing so hard.

Marcus sighed and went to get another load of rope.

~o~

Halfway back up the flight of stairs, Marcus thought he heard voices in the starboard dressing room. Soon, however, he realized that it was Ruby was running lines, by herself with the door open. His coils of rope hanging on his shoulder, Marcus peeked in on her.

She was only halfway in costume, Cornelia's corset barely laced and the regal cape flung haphazardly over the chair by her makeup table. He noted, with some amusement, that she was wearing a pair of Blank's striped socks underneath her layers of petticoats. "Prithee, call me 'princess' no more!" she chastised her mirror, waving her hairbrush for emphasis. "Marcus, wilt thou truly cherish me, the King's only daughter?"

And Ruby certainly sounded like a king's daughter, a rich ransom in her carefully cultured stage-voice. As she spoke, it looked to Marcus as if she was polishing King Leo's crown, darning a tear in Cinna's jerkin, and fussing with her hair, all seemingly simultaneously.

He leaned against her doorframe, waiting for his cue.

"After our nuptials, shall I become no more than a puppet?" She pouted into the mirror, adjusting a pale curl even as she shone the tarnish from her father's crown. "A mindless puppet, never to laugh, never to cry? I wish to live my life under the sky. At times I shall laugh, at other times cry." A bit too sing-song, Marcus thought, meaning to bring that up with her, later. Mist help them if Avon didn't get a little happy with the unintentional rhymes.

As if she had heard his thought, she fell out of character with a slight sigh. Naturally as she would talk to Cinna over coffee, or threaten Blank for another of his escapades, she spoke earnestly to the costume piece resting in her hands. "For no life is more insincere than that lived as a masquerade."

Marcus half-smiled to himself. When Ruby wasn't acting, she was acting best of all.

"So much consideration thou hast given it," he said, his line falling easily into the silence.

With a tiny sound of surprise, Ruby dropped the crown-- but caught it before it hit the floor. "Sweet Marcus!" she simpered, in a not quite stage-voice, brandishing King Leo's coronet like a weapon. "Wherefore dost thou eavesdrop? What the hell art thou thinking?"

The easiest answers were always the ones already written. Shouldering his slippery burden, he held out his hands. "But worry not! Cast away thy trappings of royalty, and I shall swaddle thee in a gown of pure love."

She rolled her eyes, laughing till she sounded like herself again. "Right. So while you're here, darlin', will you lace me up?"

Obedient-- as they all were, of course-- he did so, swaddling her snugly into her corset. They ran the rest of the scene as he did, his sturdy fingers deft with the slender lacings, and the words coming rather smoothly but for Ruby making silly faces at him in the mirror as he stood behind her.

"Now Princess Cornelia is gonna get all dressed, loverboy," she winked at him, and laughed at his discomfiture. "That means, scoot, Marcus," and she shoved him out, closing the door this time.