by Ember
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Summary: What happens when a seemingly unstoppable golem, an uninvited and otherworldly familiar, and drunken love confessions gt added to the mix? For one thing: the show goes on. It always does. Lee/Tony multichap
Disclaimer: These boys aren't mine. Excepting Shiikha, the minor little blips like Stephanie, and the bad guys, charas belong to Tanya Huff
A/N: Urban dictionary entry number twelve: kiddie-Wiccans. My personal urban dictionary defines kiddie-Wiccans as anyone from the ages fourteen to nineteen who more-or-less "worships" the Wiccan goddess as an excuse to burn black candles and call oneself a witch in an act of concious or sub-concious rebellion. Most of these people can also be classified as 'emo-Wiccans,' meaning they sit around and talk about how hard it is to be a witch when no one understands them and their religious beliefs. Exaggerated coughing.
Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of perfectly nice, genuine Wiccans. It's just... there are so MANY kiddie-Wiccans. Is it fair to pollute a perfectly nice religion for the sake of your own personal rebellion? I don't know, I'm agnostic and I don't really care if you call yourself godless for attention. But anyway, if you're reading this (first of all, you get an A/N reader cookie) and you're feeling offended or accused, I might want to suggest you not read any further into this fic. Thanks! :D
--
The walk from his usual parking place to the front door of the studio seemed longer than normal. Tony took it in stride but it bothered him, the dust seemed abnormally thick for an autumn day in Canada and it was almost hot, the smothering heat of someone buried under a pile of blankets more for security than anything else. That had been how he'd been sleeping, after all, these past few nights, sometimes with the covers pulled on over his head. Not that it would stop a determined ghost- or any other kind of ghost, actually. It was stupid of him but it made him feel better, which was stupid in and of itself.
It had been four nights since he'd been trapped in the Caulfield mansion, and this was only his second day of work. The first two he'd called in sick. No one had questioned it. No one had been on set to ask questions. The third day he'd made it, but he was one of the only ones. Mason, Lee, Mouse, Kate... everyone who had heard the baby from the beginning had called in sick, and so had a couple more of the weak-stomached. The people who hadn't been on set the day they'd been locked in were clearly confused, but no one had gone out of their way to explain it. There was too much in the tabloids already- 'Another Group Hallucination Raises Drug Suspicions' among the most prominent. Maybe some of them even started to pretend it was a hallucination. Tony didn't know.
Today, maybe it would be better. Maybe Tony wouldn't spend all day wondering if Lee was okay, or alive, or in shock, or hating him...
Why would he hate you? He came onto you, if you don't remember.
He finally reached the set door and reached out, grabbing the too-warm metal of the handle in his right hand. Christ, how did it get this hot in Canada, ever? At least it would be cooler in the studio. He didn't think he'd been the only car in the parking lot, but the lights were off inside so he flicked them on.
Lee was waiting for him. Just not in the way he'd expected.
Green eyes wide and panicked, he stared listlessly ahead, mouth open, the tip of his tongue protruding from his paled lips. His whole face was flushed violet-red, his neck twisted nastily at the line of a thick rope around his throat, the other end stretching up into nothing.
Dead. Hanging there, dead, dead, dead, and there was nothing Tony could do. He stood, staring, for a long and breathless second, before he started to scream.
And then, synchronizing with his own voice, came the short and forceful buzzes of his alarm clock.
--
"So it's been four months, and I'm still having nightmares." Tony closed his eyes tightly, counted to five, then opened them again, slowly sliding the door to CB studios open with the hand that wasn't holding the MdDonald's cardboard cupholder filled with six paper cups of coffee. No bodies hanging from the roof just inside the door. Not that, by now, he hadn't gotten used to nightmares so he hadn't expected there to be.
Behind him, Amy shrugged and juggled her own cupholder, holding the second half-dozen cups, into her right hand so she could hold the door open with her left as she walked in behind him. Tony flicked on the lights so they could see their way to her desk, and, shoving the haphazardous mess of papers aside, put their burden down on the edge. "So what?" Amy asked after their cargo had safely landed. "So've I. So's pretty much everyone else."
"I should be used to this by now."
Amy said nothing in response, just snorted and shoved a lock of yellow-streaked scarlet-colored hair behind her ear. Tony wondered vaguely if she felt the whole Caulfield thing was just the last thing she needed to ascend another level of weird. She'd never dyed her hair, not only bichromatic, but with two primary colors at once, before that.
The door opened behind them and they tensed, but it wasn't another actor or set personell who by now thought half this studio was insane, it was Adam, and Adam was a part of their communial insanity. He waved half-heartedly to the two of them then beelined for the coffee, draining half of the cup black before regarding, thoughtfully, the sugar-packets and plastic tubs of cream.
Only after that fundamental need had been satisfied did he look over Amy, then Tony, his eyes narrowing slightly in concern as he considered the smaller man. "Have you been eating?"
"No," Tony replied honestly, continuing into his own coffee. Technically, he'd eaten in these past four months, but no more than a snack of something every day, and only when he actually got hungry to the point where he was more sick for not eating than thinking about any and all of the various deaths he had played witness to in the course of twelve hours. He hadn't opened his own refrigerator in four months- the first two because he was genuinely disinterested in the contents, the second two, because he was scared of what he might find after two months of neglect.
Food had the tendency to come back to life if neglected.
Adam seemed to digest his answer, then shrugged. "Good enough," he said, half a grunt, as if he hadn't really expected anything else and couldn't rightlyfully ask for a better answer. Adam had been the primary speaker at Tom's funeral, given that the reclusive techie hadn't really had that many friends or much in the way of intimate family. Lee had, at the request of a couple of friends, spoken at Brenda's; Tony hadn't gone and no one seemed to expect him to, although he had gotten an invitation for some majorly unknown reason. No one on set was asked to speak at Hartley's funeral, which was perhaps for the best, because their last memory of the boom operator wasn't really that flattering.
He was a crazy drunk who stabbed our wardrobe department before choking on his own vomit- but it wasn't his fault and we'll dearly miss him.
Amy was shuffling through some papers and finally pulled out a light pink calender with dates marked in variously colored pen. Today, Tony could see over her shoulder, seemed to be sky blue, and, unless it was just the odd lighting, glitter-ink. "Hey, guess what," the goth-punk said happily, swiveling her chair- the studio'd gotten some new things, after the mansion incident, and the Goodwill swivel-chair had been Amy's personal present- around to look at them.
"What?" Adam asked, draining his cup and tossing it into the wicker trash basket beside the secretary's desk.
"We're wrapping up Season One today," Amy reported proudly, pointing to a series of letters that Tony could barely make out against the white paper, but now that he knew what to look for he could definitely say looked like, "epi 25, end sn 1."
Adam frowned. "We've been working on episode twenty-five for the past three days; why didn't Peter tell us it was the season finale?"
"He did." Multicolored nails drummed impatiently on the binding of her calender as Amy finished running through everything they had to get through today. "A little more than two weeks ago, I think; I'm pretty sure he expected you all to remember these things."
"What does a new season matter anyway?" Of course, for Karen of craft services, walking impatiently into the studio and grabbing a cup of coffee for herself, it wouldn't matter; no part of the actual shooting really concerned her as long as she got her intructions put flat and simple and she kept track of what the actors and workers were and were not allowed to eat.
"For one thing," Amy said, poking at a lavender marking for tomorrow that seemed to consist of nothing more than a series of exclamation points- though further examination did reveal that the dots were actually minature and stylized skulls, "tomorrow, another fan club's visiting the set, to celebrate the end of the season."
All gathered winced, but in Karen's case, it was more sudden-severe-stomach-cramp than a wince. Tony could sympathize; he didn't really have to deal with the show's squealing, shouting, whining, and, above all, touching, fans, but he could see why someone who not only had to make sure they were fed- or wandering fingers might render the rest of them without their own lunches- but also had to make sure they got around the set in one peice, one group, and without the extra little bits that were in fact parts of the set, might develop unexplained ulcers at the announcement.
"And," Amy continued with a good deal more cheer, which Karen didn't seem particularly glad to allow her, "with one season done with Peter can be a little more lax about the little things." Halfway through the sentence the door opened and, seeing who it was, Amy's voice lilted higher. "Because we all know what a huge dick he is, and now he can finally pull out that giant fucking stick up his ass."
Their director didn't seem particularly thrilled to be dragging himself into the studio at a quarter past seven in the morning, with nothing to look forward to but Karen- already starting to snipe about the hoardes of fans coming in tomorrow and complain that she hadn't been warned earlier- Tony- who was trying, for the record, to be invisible right now- Adam- who was still pissed because their headsets seemed completely fried after the duration of the whole ghost-house thing and CB had been too cheap to do anything about it beside show the manager how the roll up a peice of paper into a pretend megaphone- and Amy, who was usually less annoying when she was pissed off but who was, at the moment, happily swiveling. "Good morning to you, too," he snapped waspishly at her, actually growling- a real-life, animal growl- when offered cheap fast-food coffee.
"I take it that the Herpes treatments are going badly, then," she said sarcastically, shifting her head slightly as if she had seen the wristband coming in from a mile away and an hour ago. After almost seven years in CB studios, Amy knew how far she could push it- and also knew that, somehow, how far she could push it was further than anyone, except Lee and Mason, could have if they tried. It was, Tony decided, the colored hair- and, of course, the unanimous and unspoken agreement that no one who had lived through the ordeal in the Caulfeild Mansion was going to get fired, at least not by Peter. Not even Tony. He didn't want to seem too surprised, but, honestly, he thought the second they got away from that house he was gonna be looking for a new job, and, frankly, them going on like nothing had happened put him on odd footing.
Well, perhaps they didn't act entirely like nothing had happened. He couldn't use his wizardry for special effects, not yet, but they made his job around the studio a hell of a lot easier. 'Tony, get me today's scripts.' And bang, they were in his hand. They were always on Amy's desk, so it wasn't like the writers or anyone else who didn't know he was a wizard even saw them; the spell moved too fast, now, for anyone to see them traveling through the air. Soon, it would be like teleportation, just be in one place one second and another in the next, nothing intermediate.
Of course, tomorrow, he would have to be running around like a good little PA, without any of this wizardry nonesense. And Henry had told him, beyond a shadow of doubt, that not everyone would take his metaphysical skills with the same blas� as the rest of the set had, not even a fan club without even the brain cells it took to be too smart for Raymond Dark: Vampire Detective.
By seven-thirty, only Everett was late, which was somewhat expected considering that even after all this time he was still recovering. Tina helped him into wardrobe, and he thanked her and waited, preparing his make-up and hair gel for the actors' arrivals.
Mason had a photo shoot and wouldn't show up until ten, but Lee and Stephanie Byars, current role Enya Rosewood, James Taylor Grant's love-interest and the victim du jour, showed up together just before eight-thirty, her throwing dark curls over her shoulder and batting thick eyelashes at him, and him smiling down at her with the same polite interest he showed the press and the fan clubs. Tony immediately turned all his attention to what was under his hands- something Amy had written up and wanted taken to Peter but it didn't really matter because it was something to stare at- and didn't look up as Stephanie's shrill laugh echoed in the small room.
"Hey, Tony," Lee said with every evidence of easy friendship.
"Hey, Lee," he answered in the exact same tone. He glanced up just to see the polite wave Stephanie obviously was bothering with only to humor Lee and gave the actors- particularly the male actor- a strained smile. Somewhere in the Caulfeild Mansion, Tony and Lee had indeed developed a friendship, but it was anything but easygoing and it wasn't anything but a friendship. Despite everything that had happened, despite everything- Lee had just never brought up anything more. And hell, if it didn't matter to Lee, Tony wasn't going to be the one to start whining about sex and love.
Another shriek of laugher, and Tony winced uncharitably. Who was he to ruin Lee's fun, anyway?
"Um, Tony?" Amy leaned over her arms folded on her desk and regarded him curiously under heavily-mascara-ed eyelids, tapping black-painted fingernails on the papers he was close to crumpling. "Those are notes for today's shootings, just so you know, not-" the phone suddenly started ringing and her sentence flowed effortlessly into "CB productions, Amy speaking."
Right, notes. Tony straightened them out, tried to smooth out the creases, and shot Amy one last death-glare in response to her knowing grin, then took off for the set, where Peter was doing a lot of shouting and waving and Mouse was trying to set up his duct-taped camera on a black tripod. He'd wanted a new one- one that the viewfinder hadn't been torn off of- but once again, cameras, like headsets, were expensive and CB hadn't yet been able to find one for cheap enough to warrent replacing a perfectly well-working peice of equipment. The tripod, however, was new, bought for thirty-five cents at the same time as Amy's new chair. New, of course, being a relative term.
"Amy told me to give these to you," he said, offering the papers. Peter took them, looked at the heavy creases, then at the scribblings across the top, all in the shorthand that seemed to be the universal language of secretaries. He sifted through them, somehow managing to crumple them even more in sudden frustration, then shoved them back into Tony's hands.
"Can you go ask her what the fuck all that's supposed to mean?" he asked, his obvious growing frustration suddenly magnified by having more stuff to worry about. "And while you're at it, ask her why she can't write in black ink like the rest of us. And someone get me a coffee."
The latter request was the fastest dealt with. Tony muttered the familiar seven words and caught the cardboard cup out of midair, a clean call that hadn't spilled a drop of the still-hot liquid and a smooth catch that only bounced a little out of the sides to scorch the PA's hand.
Peter stopped in mid-turn and raised a single dark eyebrow at the wizard. "Nice," he complimented, off-handedly.
Tony grinned. "I've been getting better."
The set was currently being made up into James Taylor Grant's apartment, complete with leather couch- another Goodwill find, re-upholstered with fake suede- coffee table and single lamp. The setting was early evening, so the main lights weren't on; instead, two more not-quite-antique lamps were being set up, off-stage, and covered with red filter-paper so they wouldn't glare on-camera. The result was a faint red-orange glow around the center lamp, which managed to look like the only source of light even with the multicolor effects. End product, startlingly convincing even off-camera.
And what exactly was James going to be doing in the room? Stephanie hadn't been coming in until recently so while the investigation into Enya Rosewood's death had already been filmed, her life and death had not yet been explored. But the last time they had used this set was when James was beating himself up about her death being his fault, right before he got the phonecall that told him while he was brooding, Raymond Dark had gone missing and leaving the season on a cliffhanger.
Enya herself, of course, was one of the head priestesses in a witch's coven, the very coven that was responsible for her death and Raymond's mysterious disappearance. Amy had stepped in to watch the shooting once and they'd had to help her back to her desk, she was laughing that hard. "That's not witchcraft," she'd told Peter when she had collected herself properly.
He'd rolled his eyes. "Flashing lights make for better television than anything real."
She'd smirked. "Sublty just doesn't go with the show."
And it didn't, Tony thought, as he turned with the notes in hand and saw Lee and Stephanie walking through the door. Lee's jacket was hanging open and he wasn't wearing a shirt under it- fangirl shot, he supposed- but he managed to look away from the lines of the other man's chest to the woman walking beside him. Enya was every inch the witch, from her heavily mascara-ed, ice-blue eyes to the curls of dark hair that tumbled out of the wild bun the rest was tied into down the pale curves of her face. Her black dress, lacey and low-cut, was skin-tight and more than a little revealing. Her black nails were the only thing that reminded Tony of Amy, who remained the only real witch he had ever met.
Peter caught him looking at the actors and, to judge from the expression on his face, mistook which actor he was staring at. "Tony. Go talk to Amy now, please."
Amy was sitting at her desk, head resting on her hands, feet crossed at the ankles in a position that said 'annoyed' as easily from behind as in front. The reason for her annoyance became obvious as Tony came closer- a tall girl, demanding in a high voice to be allowed on set, for reasons that could be summed up in the simple phrase, "Or else I'll hex you." She couldn't have looked more like she was dressed up as Enya Rosewood if she was at a SciFi convention for Canadian daytime television, if one substituted skintight black pants for Enya's lacey skirt and a tied-up pile of orange-streaked curls in place of the dark waves. Her friend, a smaller, slighter girl with pale blonde hair but the exact same dress and make-up, shifted nervously from one foot to the other, looking embarrassed as Amy's exaggerated scoff cut the first girl off in mid-sentence.
"You two will have to come back tomorrow, with the tour group." One thin, tweesed eyebrow rose in response to the girl's rolling eyeballs. "Like everyone else."
"Don't talk down to us!" the first one, with the highlighted hair, yelled out, stamping one heavy boot hard on the floor in something very like a tantrum. "I get sick of people acting like fucking bitches because we're Wiccan!"
Amy leaned back in her chair, glaring down sarcastically at the two girls. "Yeah, that's my problem. You figured it out; I just can't stand anyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their lives. Try opening your hearts to him and he'll show you where the fucking door is."
"It's over here, my lambs," Mason said, grinning as he closed the door behind himself. The two girls whirled around and stared at him in absolute awe- Mason's favorite expression to see on anyone's face while they were looking at him.
"Are you Mason Reed?" the blonde mumbled, blue eyes wide, her grip around the other girl's wrist tightening significantly.
The actor gave his best fan-melting smile and replied, "In the flesh" with that perfect accent on the last word that made it fall just short of innuendo. "I, however, have to work," and he looked properly sympathetic, too, "so please come back turing the tour tomorrow and I'll be sure to catch you two and give you autographs." He pushed past them, heading for the stage.
For a second, the fans looked dumbfounded, in the presense of the star of a syndicated sci-fi television show, then the more talkative one lunged forward and grabbed Mason's shoulder. He yelped and rubbed the back of his head. "Hey! That was my hair!"
Looking abashed, the girl shoved her hands into her pockets and stared at the ground; her companion was looking at her in shocked admiration. "I just wanted... to know... where to find you, tomorrow," the first girl muttered, grinding the toe of her boot into the floor.
Mason rolled his eyes, apparently having made the transition between basking in attention and getting annoyed. "Just be here, I'll find you in the tour." No one who actually knew the actor would have believed him, but luckily, the girls didn't.
"Alright," the louder one said, and, grabbing her quieter companion by the arm, half-ran out of the studio.
Mason rolled his eyes and rubbed his fingers through his hair a couple more times, looking irritated. "Foster. Where's Jennifer?"
It was another little spell Tony'd perfected in the months since the Caulfield mansion. He looked down while he muttered the words, picturing the actor's personal assistant in his mind, feeling a little sense inside of him swivel like the needle in a compass. It took a little while to get used to the inarticulate directions his insides gave him, but he had learned to translate the feelings into a definite direction and a likely location, and so far, he'd been dead on nine out of ten times.
"She's in Wardrobe," he decided aloud after he'd finished, pointing uselessly in the direction the pull indicated. Mason turned and left without thanking him, hurrying to get ready to finish his scenes.
He gave Amy the notes and, after she heard about Peter's complaints, she rolled her eyes and started typing them out, muttering under her breath about asshole Nazis.
"What was that about?" he asked after a second of listening to her quiet curses, nodding towards the closed door when she looked up at him in confusion. "The girls, Mason's fans; what did they want?" He didn't think Amy was really the type to prejudice against Wiccans since she was an acclaimed witch, but she hadn't seemed overly fond of those two.
"They wanted to meet Mason Reed, of course," Amy growled, punching the 'Enter' key a little harder than strictly necessary and ending up half a page lower than she'd intended. "Or, at least according to Sophie- that's the loud one- the blonde wanted to meet Mason Reed; Sophie's a lesbian." She smirked, and, barely audible over the tapping of the computer keys, muttered, "Of course you are, sweetie."
Given the way Sophie had been staring at Mason, and his own experience with the infidelity of teenage feelings, Tony was inclined to agree. "It's just that," he tried again, watching black nails flying over the computer keys, "you seemed a little..."
"Annoyed?" She stopped typing and swivveled towards him, her mouth twisted into an expression that made 'irritated' seem too mild. "Those, Tony, were kiddie-Wiccans, and they're very easy to get annoyed at." She rolled her eyes and shot an accusing glance at the door. "They're kids, teenagers, who decide they want to be Wiccan so they can hex their friends and piss off their parents and get lots of attention when they curse to 'Goddess' instead of 'God'. They don't actually know anything about the religion itself, or the values, or what's expected of them, but they know exactly who to talk about earth-religion to to piss off the most, and they have their own little covens so they can sit around in black robes and talk about Pagan enpowerment."
"Oh," Tony replied.
She sighed, sensing him not understanding, and swivveled back to her computer. Tony knew it was bad when swivveling in the new office chair didn't cheer Amy up. "Just go back and tell Peter that Mason's shown up, will you? And only half an hour behind scheduale, that ought to cheer him up."
It sure as hell would not, and Amy well knew it.
--
After running into wardrobe to make sure Mason was getting ready and not- any of the number of things Mason could have been doing- Tony jogged for the set, already feeling that one cup of coffee wearing down. The lights were on for silence, so he stopped outside, then, very quietly, opened the doors, slipping inside and closing them silently.
Mason stood filming, Kate right behind him. Sorge sat off to the side, and Adam and Peter stood next to each other, watching the stage intently. Under the ambient light that painted the set red, Lee had Stephanie pinned against the wall, their mouths pressed together, her hands exporing the planes of his bare chest. Tony felt like the floor under his feet and every bone in his body had suddenly dissolved and he found it suddenly very hard to just stand there, watching. Lee's hands were crawling up her arms, and knocked the right strap of her dress off, exposing one white shoulder and the hint of her breast.
"And, cut." Peter's voice shocked the entire set back into real life; at least, it shocked Tony, and every else seemed considerably less riveted. It's not like he's actually making out with her, he belatedly scolded the envious stirrings in his chest. That wasn't Lee and Stephanie, that was Enya Rosewood and James Taylor Grant giving their relationship depth before Enya's death and stirring jealous fanboys and girls. And what would he do even if it had been Lee and Stephanie putting the life into the kiss? It wasn't like he and Lee had done anything that hadn't been influenced by evil possession, so he couldn't really pretend Lee was cheating on him or anything. He forced himself to look away from the curved lights and darks of the actor's chest and walked over to Peter to tell him Mason had arrived, trying desperately not to sound very emotional.
"You're doing it again," Peter told him calmly, though the exasperated irritation at the star's predictably late arrival remained in his slightly white-tinged knuckles, gripping a clipboard that held today's scheduale.
"Doing what?"
Peter grinned for half a second and shook his head. "It shows up on your face. You know that they're just acting, don't you?" He pointed towards the stage, where Stephanie was perching on the edge of James's bed and Lee was standing in front of it, arms crossed over his still-shirtless chest, busily arguing his side in their fight over who kissed better, the usual argument that lessened the discomfort when two actors had to make out.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Of course I do." And for the rest of the day, throughout scenes that had just a little more chemistry than Tony was strictly comfortable with, he pretended to believe it. They were just acting, and there was no reason to act stuid and jealous, because after all, he didn't even have a pretend relationship to lay claim to.
For the record, though, Lee didn't seem entirely comfortable once he figured out Tony was watching him play tonsil tennis with Stephanie, which seemed odd when one considered how often everyone on the set had been forced to watch him and Brenda choke on each other's tongues. He seemed unable to recreate the chemistry of the first scene, which eventually resulted in a harried Peter sending Tony outside the set to talk to Amy or check on something or do something else PA-like while the actors acted.
And they still hadn't finished by the time the day had finished. Or by the time they had put in an extra two hours, and every member of the set was demanding to be released and threatening every member of Peter's immediate family if he kept them longer- except, of course, Tony, who was still a little worried about being taken too seriously in a situation like that.
"Everyone come an hour early tomorrow," Peter was saying as they filed out the door, half-listening to him at best. "I want to try and take out this episode before the fan club comes in, because while they're walking around you know we won't get a damned thing done...."
"Why is he so desperate to finish this one episode?" Mason complained regally to no one in particular, sliding his keys out of his pocket.
"It's the season finale," Lee replied off-handedly as he buckled his motorcycle helmet under his chin.
"No shit?"
Tony slid into his car and stuck the keys into the ignition, not turning them until he had let out one long breath and stared at the sky through his windsheild for a long second. Another very long day, and he'd started to live life one day at a time.
<end chapter one>