#shamelessly

His one solace in all this mess was his co-star on some teeny-bop rom-com who had played his quirky best friend, Robin Buckley. She had been come all that and more in real life.

It was her parents who had given him a soft place to land after rehab, who had gotten him into rehab in the first place.

It had been years of therapy, off-Broadway plays, and literal blood, sweat, and tears to get to the place where he felt comfortable in front of a camera again.

Which is good, because Dustin Henderson who wrote the book and the screen play for “Dancing in the Dark” Robin’s directorial debut had written the character Sean with him in mind. Sean Maitland was a closeted bi-sexual who was charming, popular, on three sports teams, and a known ladies man but was secretly dating head freak, metalhead, D&D playing, fantasy loving nerd, Evan Harcourt.

The problem?

The actor they had hired to play Evan.

Eddie Munson was a former teenaged scream king. Having stared in several horror films from his mid-teens on. He had managed to slide neatly into adult acting due to the sheer force of will by his uncle Wayne. His uncle had taken him to a talent agency looking to get him signed for his music when former scream queen turned director, Joyce Byers had seen him waiting in the waiting room. She had him signed to her movie by the end of the week, he had been that good.

The rest, as they say, was history.

He had gotten away from horror movies, and “Dancing in the Dark” was to be his comeback into the genre as a thirty year old veteran. But now he was sitting in the middle of the table read absolutely seething with barely contained rage.

Because sitting across from him playing his love interest and co-serial killer was Steve Harrington. Even worse when he found out he had gotten the job sight unseen because his best friend was the director and the writer had ‘written the part for him’.

If he hadn’t had an air tight contract, he would have quit right there on the spot. But he had to grin and bare it and it fucking galled.

Steve as Sean, “Come on, Evan, you know that I want to spend time with you, but I do have a basketball game that night or you know I’d be there.”

Eddie bit on his lip as Robin read the action parts and then with barely contained rage as Evan, “That’s bullshit and you know it. Look, I get you aren’t out yet, but you aren’t even starting this year thanks to your concussion, you could totally skip it and no one would bat an eye!”

“Ooh...” Robin said, clapping her hands excitedly. “I’m loving the energy, Eddie! Keep it up.”

Steve gave him a dopey grin when he glanced over there. That just made his insides boil even further. How dare he think that Eddie was being supportive?

The rest of the table read went forward without a hitch, but afterward everyone one was buzzing about how much chemistry Eddie and Steve had.

~

“Chemistry! Chemistry I tell you!” he ranted to his best friend, Jeff that night. “I couldn’t believe it. That was the opposite of what I was trying to go for!”

“Well oil and water is technically chemistry,” Jeff pointed out. “Just the very explosive kind.”

Eddie snorted. “Well, you’ve got that right. It should have gone to you or hell I’d even take Billy Hargrove over Steve Harrington. Like what even has he been in in the last ten years?”

Jeff pulled out his phone and began scrolling through Steve’s IMDb page. “Most theater work according to this. Some guest spots on police procedurals. He was in a very short lived TV series for Netflix, but it got canceled after one season.”

“Him and literally everyone else on the planet,” Eddie huffed, sitting up to look over Jeff’s shoulder. “What was the TV series about?”

Jeff clicked on the link and began to skim through the summary. “It’s a magical school shenanigans... Oh interesting. He actually plays one of the teachers instead of one of the students, which surprised me considering how young he looks in this.”

Eddie frowned. He did look super young. “When was this?”

Jeff went back up to the top of the page for the release date. “Last year, actually.”

Eddie and Jeff looked at each other for a moment.

“You’re not going to watch it, are you?” Jeff asked with a heavy sigh.

“Nope!” Eddie replied with a grin.

Jeff set down his phone and then ran his hands over his face. “I really think you should. It’s his most recent shit. You’ll get a better idea of what you’re dealing with other than his kid and teenage shit.”

“If he wants to show me what kind of actor he is,” Eddie growled, “then he better bring it on set next week.”

“Eddie...”

“No, Jeff. Come on. You know he only got the job because of who he knows and not because of how good he is.” Eddie got up and walked to his fridge. He pulled out two beers and padded back to the sofa.

“Or and here’s an actual fucking though instead of an assumption,” Jeff snapped, “he’s actually damn good, he just needs someone who’s willing to put him in something. Like Robert Downey Jr. after his arrest and rehab.”

Eddie glared at him.

“Just don’t been too hard on him before you get to know him okay?”

“No promises!” Eddie replied, sing-song.

“Eddie...”

~

“Well, that could have gone worse,” Robin huffed, topping up Steve’s wine glass as they curled up on her sofa.

Steve took a sip of his drink and then snorted. “It also could have gone better. If looks could kill you’d have resurrect me to finish the movie. Then I’d turn into a zombie, eat everyone’s brains and you’d have to shoot me in the head.”

Robin smacked his knee. “And people call me melodramatic!”

“I’m an actor,” Steve huffed rolling his eyes. “Melodrama is what I do!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said and took sip of her wine. “I picked Eddie Munson because he had the perfect dark tone for Evan but what I didn’t expect was the latent hostility about your casting.”

“He probably thinks I’m some nepo baby wannabe washed up hack,” Steve grumbled sinking further into the sofa and his dark mood.

“You can’t be a nepo baby,” Robin said rolling her eyes. “You’re parents aren’t in the industry at all.” She pointed at herself. “I’m the nepo baby. Like both of my parents are such famous actors everyone clocks me as their kid in two seconds. Mom because of how much I look like her and Dad because of my last name.”

He kicked her thigh. “You know what I mean. My parents were rich and could put me in all the best acting schools, hire the best vocal coaches, and get into to all the auditions.”

“Yeah,” Robin agreed. “But you paid too high a price for it.”

She set his wine glass down along with hers and pulled him into a hug. “You deserve to be on that set as much as he does. You are a Tony award nominee! And the only reason you lost is because you went up against Lin Manuel-Miranda in his own fucking show!”

“I liked being Sir Percival Blakeney, baronet!” Steve said with a shy smile. “I got to be the first super hero! How amazing was that?”

“I still get chills listening to your version of ‘Into the Fire’,” Robin said. “And your chemistry with both Tammy Thompson and Billy Hargrove as Marguerite and Chauvelin respectively was off the charts.”

He snorted. “There was a reason they called me the show bike.”

She smacked his arm. “You were not! That’s a gross exaggeration.”

“Maybe,” Steve admitted with a shrug. “But you can’t deny that there were rumors I was sleeping with everyone on the cast. Like the only person I wasn’t paired with was the girl who played the girl in the prison scene.”

Robin winced. Yeah okay. He had a point there. Some of them were even people in committed relationships, but the press didn’t care. As long as Steve was part of the show, he was sleeping around.

“Well,” she said after a moment. “We can only hope he does his research and realizes how amazing you are in the week before we start filming.”

“Maybe.”

~

Robin wanted to bury her head in her hands. Either Eddie hadn’t done his research or it just made him more antagonistic, either way, she was going to murder her lead actor.

“Look Princess,” Eddie sneered. “Maybe if you hadn’t gotten in my light, I wouldn’t have had to call for second take, now would I have?”

“It’s not your light asshole,” Steve snapped back. “The stage directions literally say that I cross your bedroom in front of you.”

“And that right there is the problem!” Eddie said snapping his fingers. “You still think you’re on Broadway, but this is film. We do close ups here!”

“Are you saying I look too old to be playing a high school student?” Steve growled. “That’s really rich! You’re older than I am and they have you on an all chicken diet to keep slim enough to look like a student!”

“If the shoe fits,” Eddie snipped back, “then you best run home Cinderella!”

“That’s not how the fairy tale works, asshole!” Steve yelled. He rubbed his eyes with heels of his palms. “That’s it, if I’m needed for, you know, actually doing my job, I’ll be in my trailer!”

He turned on his heel and marched off in the direction of the trailers.

Robin turned around and slowly let out a sigh. “Eddie, maybe you should take a break too and then come back with a cooler head, yeah?”

“Whatever,” Eddie huffed and stormed off too.

Robin called out to the crew. “Take a break! Fifteen minutes!”

The crowd dispersed and Dustin came trotting up to her. “This has been one hell of a first day. Is it always like this?”

She rubbed her temples. “No. This is like Joan Crawford/Bette Davis levels of drama, man.”

Dustin’s jaw dropped. “Well, shit. This isn’t going to turn into ‘Whatever Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ is it?”

Robin looked in the direction they had gone. “God I hope not.”

Dustin snapped his fingers. “I know! Film it in order! That way all the tension between them will be up front and with any luck, Eddie will see how good of an actor Steve is and by the end it’ll be a different kind of heat.”

Robin blinked at him for a moment and then turned to her cinematographer, Jonathan Byers. “Hey, Jon! What would you say to filming it order?”

Jonathan walked over to them. “Is this about that very...expressive display just now?”

She nodded. “Dustin suggested it in hopes that there would less fighting by the end.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I mean it would be easier to film all the bedroom scenes together. But I even I think trying to film the scene where Sean comes to Evan after accidentally killing Jasper right now is not going to work.”

“So we go back to the beginning,” Dustin said. “We start at the school. We’ve got three months of filming in while it’s out for the summer, anyway, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Robin licked her lips and frowned. “Okay, I’ll talk to the owners of the house we’re using for Sean’s house and see if they’ll let us use it for longer.”

“They might ask for more money,” Jonathan pointed out cocking his head to the side with a grimace.

She winced. That would be a problem. They were are already stretching the limits of her meager $40 million budget on this thing. Nepotism could get her in the door but it didn’t open coffers for an untested director.

“Well,” she huffed out. “We’ll just have see if we can’t make other arrangements with them and keep our fingers and toes crossed and hope this doesn’t blow up in my face.”

The two men agreed.

~

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Epilogue

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