Some Love was Made for the Lights

1 : Casting Call

A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you, all you precious wallabies, for your incredible patience over the past million months as I sloooowly got this story planned and started in my head. Let's do this.

P.S. Let's just pretend all my mistakes related to TV production are reality rather than lack of research and go with it. 

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There are apparently a lot of things they don't tell you when you somehow magically* convince Hollywood to let you write your own TV show, Ellie Barnes was learning, except one unhelpfully vague but imperative rule: don't fuck it up. (*Magic, in this case, felt suspiciously like a whole lot of hard work and a healthy splash of luck.)

This led to a lot of surprises. Take, for example, surprise #1: Living out your dream was both exhilarating and insane, but it didn't come with the automatic boost of confidence Ellie had always assumed it would. It reminded her, weirdly, of losing her virginity—none of the so-called big moments really made her feel any different once she'd reached them. She hadn't woken up a totally new, confident person then, either. She was writing her own TV show! She should be walking on clouds and kicking down doors and flipping off assholes in the street, shouldn't she? And yet, fake it til you make it was suddenly even more of a thing than she had ever imagined it could be. 

"Okay, but is this really what we're looking for for Miles?" Ellie asked, examining a headshot and frowning right back at the actor brooding out of the photo at her in black and white. Netflix had greenlit the pilot of her show twentysomethings to be filmed, and casting was underway. 

"Don't say 'we'. Why do girls always say 'we'?" Ellie's showrunner and mentor, Caroline Roux, didn't even glance up from the stack of headshots in front of her. "I want to know who you're looking for for that role. Say 'I'."

"Right." Ellie said. "This isn't what I'm looking for for Miles." Ellie dropped the photo onto the no pile in what she hoped was a decisive way. 

"Great. Why not?" Caroline tucked her pen behind her ear, rested her chin on her hand, and looked over at Ellie. Caroline had "intimidating stare" down pat.  

"He's too....beefy cover model for a Harlequin novel. Miles is good looking, but he's more pretentious-guy-in-your-MFA-program than rugged-quarterback-turned-lonesome-cowboy."

Caroline snorted. "All right, I'll move the Chris Hemsworth types to the bottom of the pile." 

Ellie continued to carefully sort through the headshots in front of her, placing them into yes, maybe and no piles. The yes pile was a disappointingly small stack; the no pile was positively mountainous. The on-screen version of Ellie's on-again off-again university ex-boyfriend was proving difficult to find, even if his particular species of jerk seemed to be despairingly ubiquitous in real life. 

She stopped on a headshot featuring a vaguely familiar face. She'd seen that smirk before. Ellie tilted her head, like the change of angle would somehow help place him. "Where do I know you from?" she asked.

"Hmmm?" Caroline glanced over. "Oh my god," she laughed. "Oh come on, you know who that is! No cheating," Caroline said, pressing the photo down onto the tabletop so that Ellie couldn't turn it over to read the bio.

Ellie frowned. "I mean, I definitely know that smirk..."

"Subtract at least 8 years, add some downright awful early oughties fashion choices..."

Ellie frowned down at the face partially hidden under Caroline's perfectly manicured nails. The guy's hazel eyes looked very familiar, too... "Ugh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Give me a clue. Should I be thinking of like a Cole and Dylan Sprouse, annoying kid on a sitcom?"