âYeah, heâs pretty relaxed as far as directors go, I guess.â Nothing like Julian Santiago, whose temper tantrums â if tantrum was really the right word â were legendary on stage and behind the scenes alike. Though maybe Mr. DeLuca wasnât really so chilled; the only thing Juno had to go on was that he hadnât paid much attention to his lead passing out on set.Â
âOh, ouch.â Juno cringed just thinking about it, suddenly glad he hadnât been awake to hear the bones in his leg shatter. Once heâd been able to stay awake for more than a handful of hours at a time, the doctors had shown him the x-rays, gone through everything that had happened: tibia and fibula both compounded, a knee that was barely an approximation of a joint anymore, four fractures in his femur and a damaged hip. Still, there had to be something particularly awful about seeing it happen.
Derekâs sudden generosity caught Juno off-guard â points were life and death, far more than he would ever deserve.âI â thanks, but you definitely donât have to. I promise it wonât get to that, Iâm trying, itâs just ââ There wasnât really a way to explain, a way to begin to justify what he was doing without letting slip how bad it really was. Internally, the logic of desperate survival made it easy to take the first role offered to him, to dance on his fucked-up leg until he couldnât walk on it, to collapse twice and still let that worry drive him to keep pushing. And collapse again. âI never seem to have any time, thatâs all.â
âHey, itâs safe with me.â Juno always had the time to listen to other people, particularly about sexuality issues. Growing up in Alabama, he knew what it was like to have to hide who you were â but doing it in Hollywood, doing it in front of millions of people wasnât something heâd had the strength to keep going with. âI know Iâm not the best role model ââ Coming out via a messy, nightclub video then totalling his car wasnât exactly exemplary. âBut you donât always have to listen to your manager, especially with things like this. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.â
Still, things like that werenât easy, especially when complications like needing to protect a friend arose. âI know, itâs hard â but hey, youâre doing better than me!â There was one thing that worried Juno, though: âDoes Eila know that â does she think youâre actually into her?â
"... I get that," Derek said, relunctantly, as if admitting Juno had a point would mean that he signed off on his behavior wholesale. "But none of us have any time, dude. I've seen a lot of people get Cancelled, Juno, and more often than not they're talented, bright people. They just bite off more than they can chew and it comes back to bite them." Derek frowned, trying not to think about his own sleepless nights and sore muscles. Honestly, it wasn't hard for Derek to see why most of his peers had either never resigned or been Cancelled. If it hadn't been for his family, the way they all worked as a unit, Derek never would have made it past that stumble. That would have been it for him.
There were a lot of shitty parents in Hollywood, Derek had learned. More than that, though, there were a lot of ignorant ones, who didn't know enough to help, and whole lot more just plain absent ones. The whole industry was a numbers game, and while most actors disparaged 'civilians', Derek was pretty damn sure they were the biggest key to lasting more than a handful of years in this town.
Derek couldn't give Juno that kind of support, but he could at least let him know that he had someone in his corner.
"Like I said, I'm not here to nag at you, but... I'm here if you need me, bro. I've got strings we could pull or whatever."
"Shut up, you're great. There's not exactly a lot of people I can talk about this with-- Not even if I were out. It's... It fucking sucks, man. I can't even tell if I'm scared to come out anymore, or if I'm just scared of, like... what it means to be gay without Leo. Which--" Derek laughed, but there was no real humor in it. "Sounds fucking ridiculous, right? It should be exactly the same, but it's not for some reason, and I just can't figure it out."
"I mean, I didn't even really know I was gay until I met Leo, you know? Before Jacksonville, I knew I wasn't exactly crazy about girls, but I guess I just... blocked romance out of my head completely. But then I met him, and everything finally made sense, but even then... Coming out wasn't about being gay with Leo, you know? Like, it was supposed to be about us. That we were together, that we were in love. The same bullshit press releases I put out with Eila. But now he's gone, and I'm still gay because Schroedinger's cat doesn't resurrect after you've opened the bag, and it's all scarier now."
JT licked at Derek's hand, and he smiled down at the dog, soft. "Sorry, I didn't mean to get that weird on you. Um, no, Eila doesn't... Eila knows. About me and Leo and-- Everything, really. She's my best friend." It was just so hard to talk to her, especially lately. Her own problems stacked up, bigger and more destructive than Derek could possibly imagine. How could he talk to her about this shit when she was dealing with people like Olivier? "I wouldn't do that to her. Or anyone, but especially Eila."
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