Probably one of the most satisfying things ever in theatre is, after completing the run of a show without any serious mishaps, standing on the empty stage and tearing down the set. It's a bittersweet thing, yes, because the play has been so much a part of one's life for months, but it's satisfying.

Especially when the actors have gone home and the only things remaining to do is repaint the stage to its basic black--painting the stage colours to match the set is a common thing--and the techies are left alone with their work.

All right, it's a little frustrating when someone's left to do it all by himself, but it's still satisfying.

Yes. Dave is painting the stage. He's just about finished, too, rolling the black paint out on the boards with one of those handy paint rollers on long sticks. It's just like mopping, or something.

He's dressed in the black shirt and jeans that he always wears for performances with a pair of black sneakers, and there's sawdust all over the knees of his jeans. He's humming a tune from the musical that just finished its run.

Wick had let himself into the theater. It wasn't hard. Someone always leaves a window open, or a door ajar - plenty of space for a seven-inch-tall faery to get through. He had on his usual patchwork clothes, in shades of brown and faded black - not that anyone would notice, seeing as he was invisible at the moment. He was carrying a small bag that contained an oreo, some clothes, and various tiny little objects that had some degree of sentimental value to him. He was really leaving this time, but he needed a rest before he kept going on his way to - well, he didn't know where he was going. Far away, he assumed. The theater would be nothing but a short rest stop.

Wick found his way to the stage, by having heard someone humming. He clambered up onto the stage - he ignored Dave for the time being, in favor of finding a quiet spot to settle down in. But then his hazel eyes caught on the paint for a moment. He could have some fun with that.

He grimaced, wondering whether he should waste his energy or not... Well, he was going to take a short break soon, anyway, he might as well use up a little energy. A series of mulitcolored blotches began spreading across the black, appearing out of nowhere. They were followed by spiralling sprays of orange.

"Holy shit!"

Dave dropped the paint roller and stared incredulously at the colours spreading out over the uniform black. That wasn't right; this was the same brand as always, it shouldn't be changing colours...

"What the hell is going on here?"

And he can't even walk out to examine to see if the paint is doing something strange as it dries, because it isn't, and he doesn't want to get paint all over himself.

Scowl.

Wick giggled, retreating to a corner between the curtain and the wall to continue the game. The new colors stopped appearing. In fact, they faded away to black again. Then the paint appeared to dry, flaking and curling up and peeling off in large strips. Now for the fun part. Footprints started forming on the apparently dried paint, as if burned there. One by one by one, they soundlessly approached Dave.
He giggled again - the sound echoed a bit, making it seem louder than the tiny sound it should have been. He recognized this guy; this was Violet's boyfriend. Well, she'd never said Wick wasn't allowed to play tricks on him - and, he reminded himself, even if she had, there was no reason he had to do as she'd said.

"I'm seeing things again," Dave muttered, watching the paint appear to flake off and curl away and ruin all his work. What the hell was going on? He couldn't seem to do anything, either, whether it be to cross the room and examine the stuff that was happening, or leave.

Wick's giggling caught his ear, and he frowned further. "And hearing things." Except not; maybe this was just a damn convincing trick.

"All right, come out whoever you are! This isn't funny!"

It wasn't the ghost again, was it...?

The faery stifled his giggles by clamping a hand over his mouth. Instantly, the paint went back to normal, with no trace of weird colours or peeling or footprints. That didn't last long, however. In large, orange spraypaint letters (Wick rather liked the look of orange spraypaint) the word 'BOO' was traced, with lots of flourishes.
Dave thought it wasn't funny?
Well, that was too bad - Wick thought it was hilarious. He couldn't keep himself from laughing, but he soon had to stop, because it hurt his ribs. Still, it was funny. He took one or two steps beyond the curtain, onto the still-wet paint. He'd never much minded getting dirty.

Blank look. Now, that looks familiar. (Dave remembers quite clearly the horrible sight of his bike covered in swirls of orange spraypaint. It isn't something one forgets, especially when the spraypaint disappeared a moment later...)

"Holy shit."

Dave doesn't have a variety of exclamations of surprise, does he?

If he'd glance near the curtain, he just might see the tiny footprints of Wick. But he hasn't looked over there yet, as his eyes are fixed on the orange spraypaint decorating the stage.

A snigger escaped the small faery and he leaned back against the curtain - the heavy material proved adequate for holding him up. It wrinkled a little, but he wasn't about to fall through. He began idly covering the black paint with orange swirls, just to amuse himself. Dave's lack of variety in exclamations didn't deter him. It was just as fun.

It was nice to be so easily amused. It meant that he was rarely bored. And, pardon him, this was the most fun he'd had in at least two or three weeks, so he was going to make the best of it.

Now that Dave had made the connection, he wasn't quite as annoyed. (Also? With the bike, he would have had to scrub it off, a process that could conceivably take hours upon hours. With the stage, he could just paint over it again...)

At that point, he saw the curtain and the footprints. Aha.

"Shi-it..." He was still glaring at the paint. "Now I have to do this all over again." He's picked up a few things from the actors with whom he spends most of his time, hasn't he...

He picked up the bucket of paint and the paint roller again and headed to the front of the stage, as if to redo his job.

He's so gullible, this guy! Wick thought gleefully, stifling a giggle. He was grinning ear-to-ear. Annoying people was endlessly entertaining. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched, amused, as Dave walked away. If he thought he could cover over the orange, he was wrong... Wick was just going to keep marking it up until Dave gave up. At which point Wick was going to remove all the illusionary orange paint, and have himself a good laugh.

Oh, Dave is annoyed, but he's not gullible. He doesn't know quite what's going on, but he knows that whatever is responsable for this is leaning on that curtain and making little footprints on his drying paint. That's what's annoying him.

Scowl. He dipped the paintroller in the paint and started 'trying to cover up the orange.' He was also working his way in Wick's direction. (It wouldn't be too hard to explain why there was a bit of paint on the curtain, would it...?)

Wick sat down to wait, making the spirals of orange (and now neon yellow and green) fade right back into view once Dave had gone over them. He knew that by sitting down he was getting paint on himself, but he didn't care. It was just paint, and Wick didn't have anyone he had to impress. He might have tried to stay clean if he did.
He began to hum very quietly, waiting for Dave to notice that his painting job wasn't doing the least bit of good.

Dave muttered something very obscene and jabbed the paint roller over a spiral that he had just covered and which had popped back into existence. He was about five feet from the curtain now...

And five feet was enough.

This is the part where he jabs the paint roller at the base of the curtain with the hope of at least hitting whatever it was that was making this mess, and maybe even of stopping it.

Wick giggled when Dave swore again. But the grin the faery had on was wiped right off his face as the paint roller came at him. If he'd been expecting it, he might have dodged it. As it was, he only had time to turn sideways and hide his face before he was hit. With a yelp, he rolled behind the curtain. He was smeared with paint all up his left side, and his hair was full of it as well.

The swirls of neon green, yellow, and orange paint evaporated.
"Watch what you're doing, you bloody idiot!" Wick yelled angrily, forgetting that now wasn't the time to draw attention to himself.

"Ha!"

Pounce!

Maybe he couldn't see all of the tiny person. But Wick's left side and his hair was quite enough to make the little guy visible enough to try to catch.

Suddenly Dave didn't care that he was going to get paint on his clothes. They were black anyway, and he could wash his skin.

He just wanted to catch the little bugger.

Déja vu, anyone?

"Hey! Don't-"

Wick's eyes widened - well, one of them did, anyway. He'd closed the other one to keep paint from dripping off his hair and getting into it. He tried to scramble away from Dave, but he was a little disoriented by the suddenness of the attack. Plus, he was only seeing out of one eye. He couldn't see where he was going and keep an eye out for Dave if he only had one eye open.

"Leave me alone! I'm warning you!" he threatened, his voice shaking a little.

"Not a chance, you little bastard," answered Dave, rather more good naturedly than his cursing earlier would have indicated. It's a little thing about half a foot tall and it talks! How cool is this?

He'll go back into denial later. Right now, he's trying to catch the faery.

(He's going to be covered in paint when he's through, you know...)

He aimed a snatch at the disoriented little guy, trying to catch him and bring him close enough to examine more fully.

"Don't you even try i- ii- hey!" Wick yelped, frantically stumbling away from Dave. It bothered him that the human's eyes were following him - he couldn't think of how that was possible. He hadn't realized that the paint was making it easy for him to be followed.
He gasped as Dave's hand closed on him, and he went totally still. If he struggled, the human would be more likely to squeeze him, and that would hurt. He'd avoid getting hurt any more, if he could help it.
"Let go!" he protested plaintively.

Well, he caught it. Now what was he going to do with it...?

He sat up, still holding the little thing in his hand--rather carefully, since he didn't want to break it--and peered at it curiously.

"What the hell are you, anyway?"

He stood and looked at the marks he'd made on the paint job. Oh well. He could fix those later; it wouldn't matter so much if he let it be for a few minutes while he dealt with this little whatever-it-was.

"...I'm a faery," Wick said softly, biting his lip to stop it from trembling. He didn't like being picked up, at the best of times. It was worse when it was someone he didn't know. Even worse than that, this time the human appeared to have quite the temper.

He suddenly realized why he'd been caught - it was that damn paint that he'd gotten on him. That was it. That meant the human hadn't seen him, yet, so... well, he hated to go to this as his first option, but he could try it... Wick removed the glamour that made him invisible and looked mournfully at Dave, putting on a sad-puppy look that was somewhat diminished by the fact that he was all smeared over with black paint, and only one of his eyes was open.
"Put me down...please?" he pleaded.

Yes, Dave has a temper. It usually involves his bike or 'his' theatre--or his pride--but it isn't anywhere near as nasty as that of certain relatives of his that I could name. Anyway, he's not a bully, and he doesn't stay mad.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he told the faery in his hand--wait, faery? Faeries aren't real. They're just stories--creasing his forehead and looking down at Wick in curiosity. "If you'd really screwed with my stage... or my bike... I might've, but you didn't, so I'm not."

He was heading towards the scene shop as he spoke, still holding the faery carefully enough that he wouldn't hurt it, but not so gently that it could get away.

Wick tried to make himself look and sound even more pitiful - it seemed to be working to his advantage, and, sadly, it wasn't a difficult act to put on at the moment because part of it wasn't acting. He swallowed hard, still biting his lip.

"Since I didn't really mess anything up... can't you let me go...?" he asked timidly.

"Why, you got somewhere to be?" Ah, scene shop. Where there was a sink for washing brushes when they were full of paint, and not-so-incidentally, for washing hands and people when they were covered in paint.

"'Sides, you look like you need a bath or something."

So did Dave, as he was covered almost equally in paint, but who needed to dwell upon that, hm?

And if he could get the little faery to wash... There were some good sized jars around, the kind with big mouths. He didn't want to lose this proof of his sanity. (Or his insanity? Who knows?)

"Wouldn't need a bath 'f you hadn't hit me with that painting thing..." Wick pouted, still trying to conserve the 'small and helpless' façade. He rubbed at his face with the back of his hand. His hair had dripped the paint onto his face and he didn't dare open the eye for fear some of the stuff might get in it. Some of the paint came off, but not enough.

"...Yeh,..." he said grudgingly, "..Guess I could stand to get some of this stuff offa me..."
Paint was like water, except it could dry, and get crackly and itchy and stuff. Plus it was far harder to get off.

Dave reached over and turned on the water, not too terribly high, but high enough that it would do to get some of the paint off. And then he set the faery down in the sink, which was one of those utility sinks with the two foot sides.

Only something with wings could get out of that, at Wick's size. That, of course, was Dave's intention.

He turned around and started looking for something in which to put this little creature.

(See? Look! I'm not going insane; this is something I can touch and that isn't going to just disappear on me!)

Wick backed away and pressed himself to the side of the sink, not liking this one bit. Most kids, when they're small and don't understand that it's impossible, are afraid of getting sucked down the drain of the bathtub. Wick was far too old to be a child, though he looked kind of like one - but he could get swept down a drain, quite easily.
"You aren't going to leave me in here?!" he asked, his voice shrill with anxiety.

"Huh?" He peered over the side of the sink and frowned. "Whatsa matter, the drain? Don't worry; it's got some kinda grating or whatever to keep the brushes from going down if we drop 'em. You're not going to get stuck in the pipe or anything."

He's not stupid.

"'Sides, I've gotta do something about the mess we made out there." He left footprints in the paint. Also body prints, when he dived to capture the elusive little faery.

"You'll be fine."

He started to leave again.

"Well... okay, if you say so..." the faery said hesitantly. He gulped, but forced himself to go over and see if it was really safe. Not that he'd intended to fall in it or anything, but accidents happen. He peered into the drain... it seemed safe enough. That would have to do.

He sighed and took off his overshirt, and let sit on the floor of the sink to soak. After splashing around a bit, he managed to get the sticky, smelly paint out of his hair, and off his face and hands. Beyond that, he didn't care. Having decided his shirt had soaked long enough, he squeezed out the excess water (which came out tinged with grey from the paint) and put it back on. It was damp and paintstained, but he could live with that.

He ruffled his hair with his fingers to dry it off a bit, but that didn't help much and it just made him cold. He wrapped his arms around himself and retreated once again to the side of the sink. This wasn't how he'd pictured his day going at all.
And what was the human - Dave, Wick thought his name was - going to do with him...?

It didn't take Dave long to do the touch up over the place that he'd scuffed up in his pursuit of Wick, and it took even less time for him to locate an unused Mason jar--the theatre used them for brushes, and had a few empty ones lying around, for some reason--and bring both the paintroller and the jar back to the sink.

"Clean enough, little guy?" he asked, setting the now-lidded paint bucket with the rest of the buckets and taking the head off of the paintroller, preparatory to rinsing it out and putting it away.

He blinked up at Dave hopefully.
"Uh-huh. Clean as I'm gonna get," he said, nodding, "So can I get outta here now? Please?"
Please? He put on the sad-puppy look once more, hoping it would nudge Dave into letting him go.

"I'm sorry I messed with your stuff,... but no harm done, right? 'N I won't do it again..."

Dave has perhaps one or two things in common with his distant cousin. One of them is, unfortunately, that the absolute adorableness of Wick did not move him to mercy. (Then again, he wasn't quite as harsh as his cousin, so perhaps mercy is not exactly the right word.)

"You really are in a hurry to get out of here, arencha? Why, you think I'm going to squash you or something?"

He reached into the sink and scooped up Wick, shaking his head in disbelief. "You really are real..."

And then he put him in the jar.

Wick was rather stunned for a moment as he realized what was happening. Well, he was in a jar, for one thing. Jars were not good. Jars were where bratty children kept frogs and insects and things.
And, apparently, where adults kept small faeries.

"Hey! Hey!! Let me out of here!" he yelled, his voice sounding tinny in his ears because of the glass surrounding him. He threw himself against the glass, once, but it jolted his broken arm, so he didn't repeat the experiment. Instead he kicked the glass, though he knew he couldn't break it. "Let me the hell out of here! Right now!"

"No way. Then you'll disappear and I'm going to think I'm going nuts again. You're staying right there, where I can prove that you're real." With which, he went about his business of cleaning of the paintroller and all that sort of thing.

Yes, Dave is planning to take Wick home with him. He figures that he can stick the jar in the compartment in his motorcycle and set it around with padding so that it doesn't break. It's not like the thing is airtight, after all...

He didn't argue. Dave was right - given the chance, Wick would disappear the first chance he got. He tried a few more times to knock the jar over, but that didn't work. Besides, if it fell, and broke...? That wouldn't be too pleasant. He didn't try to climb out, knowing already that it would be useless. It wasn't like he'd never been stuck in a glass jar before, pathetic as that was.

Finally, after a good five minutes trying to escape, he sat down, hard, and pulled his knees to his chest. He hid his head in his his arms, tightly closing his eyes and pressing his face against his knees. How long was the human planning on keeping him? ...What was going to be done with him in the meantime?
Wick shivered, partly from cold and partly from fear. He should have known better than to get himself caught again.

In those five minutes, Dave had cleaned the paint from the roller and put it away, as well as the rest of the things that he needed to put away, and grabbed his jacket. A small frown.

"You're soaked," he observed. "Hold on a sec." He was gone for a moment, then he dropped some kind of square of terrycloth into the jar. "Wrap up in that."

At least he's a humane captor...

Wick tugged the fabric over himself so that he looked like nothing more than a terrycloth-covered heap. If Dave listened closely, he might hear him sniffling. You just wait 'til I tell Violet... she'll hate you, he thought, then felt a little worse as he realized, But what if she doesn't find out? What if he never lets me out?... And... I'm supposed to be going away anyway, I can't just expect her to pull me out of this...
The faery shut his eyes tighter, biting his lip so he wouldn't cry. He'd have to get out of this mess by himself,... somehow.

Look on the bright side, Wick, Dave is bound to be better than Alexander. At least Dave is only curious and determined to prove to himself that he's not going crazy, instead of determined to punish you for something really rather minor...

"Hey, you got a name, little guy? I'm Dave."

This as he's shrugging into his jacket and patting the pockets to make certain that he's got his keys with him. He's going to lock up the theatre, you see, and take Wick home with him.

"Mmf," he muttered, his voice muffled.

After a moment, he decided to talk coherently, rather than mumble. "'Course I've got a name. But I'm not telling it to you," he said sulkily,"...jerk..."

"Great. Now the figment of my imagination is insulting me." He didn't seem to take offense, though--maybe because he still wasn't entirely certain that Wick was indeed real--and cocked his head, looking thoughtful.

"Well, I can't just call you 'little guy' forever. But the only fairy I've can remember ever hearing a name for is Tinkerbell. What d'you think of that one?"

This as he's picking up the jar and turning off the lights in the scene shop and on the stage, and heading out the back door. (He doesn't want to get paint on the floors if he can help it.)

"If you call me that, when I get outta here I'm gonna turn your motorcycle hot pink. With flowers and ribbons and all that junk. And you'll never be able to get it off, ever," Wick threatened miserably, his voice sounding dull through the fabric and glass.

He sighed. "...My name's Wick," he said grudgingly. "Not Tinkerbell, not 'short stuff', not 'shrimp', not 'little guy'. Wick."