Chapter Text
.x.
Don’t you wanna get away from the same old part you gotta play?
.x.
Like the actors in his plays, Phillip had grown accustomed to playing roles – the good son, the socialite, the independent bachelor, and most recently, the friend and partner of P.T. Barnum.
Like his characters, he was no stranger to sadness – they were his outlet for that turmoil, after all, which was part of the reason why people hardly ever smiled at his work. Before he began working at the circus, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced true happiness. Beneath the surface of his gilded lifestyle had been repression, fear, and a deep sense of hopelessness regarding his own future.
He had been lying when he told Anne that he didn’t have an act. Of all the members in the circus, he was probably the fakest. His entire life was a carefully constructed act, passable on the outside, but hollow on the inside.
The truth was, on the night Barnum had sought him out to join the circus, Phillip had wanted to die.
He had wanted to die for a long time – most of his life, in fact. He had tried a few times – stood on the train platform, close enough to the edge that a single step would change everything, drank until his pulse thrummed painfully and he felt sick with confusion, and held a knife to his wrist more times than he could count, always close but never quite brave enough to cut deeply enough, to risk being found too soon, to risk the scars.
Instead, he carried those mars where no one could see.
The circus – P.T. himself – had been his lifesaver. When he’d joined, he suddenly had a reason to want to be around people again. He felt needed, appreciated, even useful. The troupe was far more welcoming toward him than they’d needed to be or should have been. He was an outsider from a different world, but they took him in, listened to him, put as much trust in him as Barnum did. At first, Phillip thought that they would all treat him coldly after Barnum left for his nationwide tours with Jenny Lind, but quite the opposite happened. If anything, he became even closer to everyone – except for Anne, whom he deeply regretted having hurt. He still stayed awake at night, regretting that evening at the opera, replaying her hurt expression and their bittersweet exchange over and over.
(After she’d walked away, making it clear that she saw no future with him, he had the cruel, selfish thought to hang himself from the still-dangling rope right then and there. But he would have hurt Anne by doing so, and the circus didn’t need that sort of bad press anyway, and there was always the chance that someone would have found him before he’d fully asphyxiated. He’d stood there alone instead, feeling lost, staring at that rope until he found it in himself to return to his empty room.)
She was so brilliant, so strong and kind, and he had repaid her patience and trust with cowardice and insensitivity.
Perhaps the worst part was knowing that he’d not only lost her as a potential lover, but as a friend, as well. The trouble was, Phillip didn’t know if he could have done her justice as a lover, anyway. He hadn’t been interested in women before her, but being around her was – dynamic, breathtaking, exhilarating. He had thought that maybe, she could be the one with whom he could be happy spending the rest of his days.
But there was that other part of him that thought about Barnum constantly, far too much to be only a friend – the part of him that ached for P.T. more than the absence of a business partner should warrant.
That was also the part of him that reacted most strongly to the insults hurled by the protestors night after night, the word freak echoing hatefully in his thoughts, all the way down to the end of a bottle.
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He led a dichotomous life now more than ever, smiling and twirling on stage for the crowds, believing every promise of the circus – this is where you want to be – only to feel lethargic and hopeless at the end of each day, when he realized anew that he didn’t belong there or anywhere, that he was a waste of space that more talented, capable, and worthy people were more deserving to take.
He hated himself all the more for that deception, but it was the kind of self-loathing he’d grown accustomed to over the years, since he couldn’t recall a day in his life when he’d been fully honest with himself or anyone around him.
.x.
Barnum was a lively, entertaining, captivating presence. Without him, although Phillip was busy trying to keep the circus financially afloat and appealing to crowds, he missed the wonderful distraction of having the older ringleader around.
Without him, the immense heaviness that had followed Phillip for years was much harder to bear. He carried anger, sadness, but most detrimental of all was the guilt. It had built up from his childhood, from the time his father first shouted that he was a failure to his mother’s first slap, his father’s first caning, the beatings and the hurtful words all serving to instill in him the horrible fact that he was not pleasing, that he was no good; he only brought disappointment and he brought all of his pain upon himself.
Phillip was careful never to mention any of these feelings around the troupe. He couldn’t bear the scandal if anyone found out, not to mention how differently they would treat him, knowing that he’d been born into such wealth and privilege, only to fail to please even his parents.
He watched the interactions between family members such as the albino twins and W.D. and Anne, how they possessed such loyalty and love toward one another, despite their hardships and differences. He knew that he would never have that. He wasn’t worthy of that kind of devotion.
P.T. had almost welcomed him into his family, and Phillip had almost felt at home, but Barnum was gone now, and the warmth along with it.
Phillip still visited Charity and the girls occasionally, but it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be the same, when Phillip knew that he was the cause of her heartache, as well.
He ached for her every time she gave him one of her tired, halfhearted smiles when he asked how she was truly doing. Barnum’s absence was harder on her than anyone, not that she would ever admit it – especially given what they both had observed about him and Jenny Lind.
“I’m sorry, Charity.” Phillip uttered one night on his way out, after the girls had gone to bed after several bedtime stories tenderly read by him. He must have looked as wretched as he felt in that moment, overcome with a special kind of guilt reserved for tearing apart the relationship between this wonderful woman and her husband. “I wish that I had never introduced P.T. to that woman.” He wished, too, that he could erase his feelings for P.T., if only to make all of the Barnum’s lives easier.
Charity leaned against the doorframe, her expression soft and sad. “I wish so, too, Phillip. But it’s not your fault. All we can do is wait for him to come home.” She straightened up a bit, and in her wise eyes Phillip read determination and strength. “This is his home, after all.”
He could barely speak enough to return her bid of goodnight, crying silently on the dimly lit walk home.
His only place in Barnum’s life would be that of the visitor, the business necessity. He could never compete with Charity for his affections, nor would he want to, for they deserved one another in the best of ways.
He, on the other hand, was not even worthy of this life he led, filled with good fortune and gracious people, yet still so lonely.
.x.
He hadn’t written anything more than an advertisement or a business letter since joining the circus, but when Phillip realized that he loved Barnum – loved him differently from anyone else in his life, differently from Anne, he broke down.
In a drunken haze, he rifled for pen and paper, dipping the fine tip in ink and tapping into his long-suppressed emotions at last.
What he began was not an outline for a play, but a different kind of letter, more honest and raw than anything he’d ever had the courage to write before. His penmanship was sloppy and frantic, but the words were miraculously, horrifically clear, flowing as if he couldn’t stop them if he tried.
Dear P.T.,
I wish you were here. I wish it in the most selfish of ways, in a way only Charity should have a right to wish. I saw her and the girls this evening. They miss you so much. I miss you, too, more than I should. You made everything better. You made me better. I felt like I belonged for a while, but now I just want to die again. Maybe I will, soon. But I’m trying to be good enough for the circus until you get back.
Please come home soon. I don’t know how much longer I can—
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When he woke the next morning, he was horrified to find what he’d written, the ink half smudged with tears and drunken carelessness, yet far too legible. The words were surely a sign of weakness, of his inability to do so much as function normally to fulfil the one job Barnum had entrusted to him – the one purpose he had left in his life.
He hastily tore the paper up before rushing to prepare himself for the day ahead.
At the circus, he avoided the concerned stares of Lettie, Charles, Anne, and even W.D. They didn’t need to know how much he was struggling with his petty feelings, not when they had actual struggles and coped so much better than him. He’d be wasting their time, and they didn’t need that.
When Barnum came back, they wouldn’t need him anymore at all.