Okay so--I have an unbelievable amount of propaganda, but I'm going to TRY to be concise lmao.
It's just peak enemies to lovers. Except really it's enemies to enemies to enemies to begrudgingly working together to complicated situationship lmao.
In my mind they meet before wkm and the fall guy, for a queer romance action movie in which Tom and Mark are the co-stars, and man--they would hate each other's guts. And unlike Tom and Colt's relationship, they're not going to be working together long term, so Colt has much less of an obligation to play nice when Mark is being a prick.
There's going to be a lot of bickering. Made so much worse when you throw Tom into the mix too. Like Colt will stay out of it to an extent, but this is his younger self on his rise to glory, not the version we meet in the movie, so, yeah. Colt is so done with both of them, and not afraid to express it!
But see, although Tom and Mark are similar to each other in a lot of ways (part of the reason Mark doesn't like Tom--it's like looking in a mirror at all his worst parts), but there are some key differences. Mainly, Mark is very genuinely passionate about his job, and he puts all of his effort into it, regardless of how much he likes the role. Colt can admire that much. And Mark does slowly start to appreciate that at least Colt is a LOT easier to work with than Tom. A very grudging respect begins to form.
And see where it goes beyond that, I'm definitely taking some liberties with the pre-wkm Mark. Basically he couldn't have always been a complete asshole if he was genuinely good friends with Wilford, Damien, and Celine. Been yapping with my moot, and basically we decided he very much is a good friend but he's bitching about it the whole time. Like if you ask him to get you water, he will get that and a pillow and medicine in case you have a headache from not drinking enough--but he's complaining the ENTIRE time. And Colt veeeeerrry slowly starts to see that. Mark (before the murder at least lol) is not a terrible person, in my mind he definitely has a lot of insecurities and he just projects HARD. If you pretend you're doing great the whole time eventually it'll be true right?
So that's pretty much the beginning of said complicated situationship. The way I view them, the wouldn't necessarily be a couple that would last forever, but they definitely change each other both for the better. Something something Mark sees more genuine affection from Colt (and learns he's gay but I can't even get into it--) and something something Colt learns to not judge a book by its cover or whatever.
I definitely have more of you want it lmao, but this is already getting waaaaay too long so I think that's enough propaganda for now.
(Also @ohhelloimsotired anything super critical I missed lol? <- super cool person who developed this whole au with me hehe)
