Yarrow trying to snoop with Isandro, Revel teaching Arden about coffee, Beau cold-shouldering Revel, Arden finding a comfy pile of dirt to sleep on, and Isandro micro-aggressing the errand boy while the cook cries
6/25/21; (I)Sean; contains somnophilia, polyamory, AFAB Sato
He wishes he wasn’t such a light sleeper. Wishes his partners weren’t such deep sleepers.
Well, Sato smirks as they carefully slip out of the bed, not completely.
It’s not like this was their first option. He’d tried subtly shifting back against Dean, tried gently shaking them awake, tried speaking. And there was no point turning over to Isa; if Dean can’t be roused, then hell must freeze over to allow Isa to wake.
Can’t be mad when Dean gets me pregnant first, then.
And as much as they wish they could’ve gotten dean to wake up, to at least wake enough to slip a hand between warm, wet thighs and fuck a few fingers into him, or even better grip a hip and slip that gorgeous cock inside them, never knowing if they’ll be pounded into oblivion or told to keep them warm and themselves relaxed until the blond’s ready to wake-
As much as they love that, those two being such deep sleepers still has its benefits.
How else would he be able to have Dean so pliable beneath him? And to be able to get them ready so quickly, with no interruptions, fuck-
It’s a wonder he’s able to pull himself away, cunt aching as the ravenette pops off, lips flushed and shiny. Another time, they decide, briefly debating on whether to continue the blowjob and simply fuck himself with his favorite toy before opting to just follow through on the original plan. Lube already in their reach, it’s not long before everything is fully prepped.
The only thing left to do-
“Ohh…” The breathy sigh escapes as the thick head pops through, a drawn out, “fuck-“ escaping as he descends further, the ring of muscle yielding to the familiar intrusion.
And, with hands braced beside tan thighs and clit positively throbbing, he starts to rock with the same motions he has every other time; slow, smooth, and steady.
They’ll pick up the pace when he’s ready to try to wake Dean again.
DISCLAIMER: this is a cross-post of one of my old original fics, the first chapter of which - ‘Skype’ - was one of the first posts I ever made on this blog. I never posted the rest of the chapters though, for whatever reason, and because I’ve been drawing and thinking about these OCs again lately, I thought: what the hell. there can never be too much hayfever pr0n on this blog. on the snzblr it goes!
the OCs in question are Isandro (writer, director, Extra af) and Yvonne (director’s assistant, no shame whatsoever)
on to the fic! ( in which I pretend to know fuck all about movie industry stuff )
“You sound absolutely wretched, if you don't mind me saying?”
He does mind. She knows this perfectly well, and takes great pleasure in pointing it out anyway. She also knows he would have preferred to conduct this conversation over email. That's why she insisted on a Skype call. She would have insisted on using webcams, too, but even she has to recognize there is such a thing as 'too keen'. No matter. She'll simply have to imagine what he looks like in this moment. String together a picture, using the clues in his voice.
“It would seem something in the LA air doesn't quite agree with me.”
Sardonic understatement, check.
“You don't say?” She stretches out on the hotel bed, laptop resting on her breasts. “Well, you'll just have to battle through it, won't you? How did the pitch meeting go?”
He heaves a sigh, and for a second his voice sounds slightly muffled, as though he's speaking from behind his hands.
“Milchan seemed quite enthusiastic, and by the end of the day he's the only one we really need to persuade. If we can get him to bite, the rest of them will follow. I'm lunching with the New Regency lot tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.”
“Oh, just crank up that thousand watt charm of yours and it'll be fine. It's a strong premise. And let's face it, your profile has virtually skyrocketed these past six months. We're going to make this movie happen.”
“Of course we are. No need to tell me that.” And there he goes, somehow managing to sound both infinitely arrogant and endearingly nervous in the same breath.
Speaking of breaths, his seem to be growing slightly erratic. As he continues to give her a summary of his weekend adventures in Tinseltown, the strain on his voice becomes increasingly more noticeable, until the part of her brain responsible for interpreting human speech begins to zone out, turning his words into a blurred stream of background noise. Her focus inevitably shifts from what he says to the way he says it. And the way he says it is... distracting. To say the least.
She can almost hear him dripping. Every consonant is dulled beyond recognition, vowels thick and scratchy, threatening to break. His voice, already deep to begin with, seems to have descended from baritone to bass. He is sniffling almost incessantly. Normally she'd tell him to blow his nose. She knows he finds that rather humiliating and she's never had any qualms about bringing him down a couple of notches - quite the contrary - but this time she is curious. How long can he bear it?
Less than five seconds pass and he sniffles again, the thin, watery sound cut in half as he pinches his nostrils together in that combined wipe-and-rub gesture of his that she must have witnessed at least a hundred times by now, the image safely burned into her retina. Thinking about the gesture unsurprisingly makes her think about his nose, and as always it would seem she is quite incapable of thinking about that nose without the muscles in her loins contracting. The strong, masculine shape of it; the generously arched curve of his nostrils; the softly tapered tip; the long, straight bridge with its tendency to crinkle with emotion, be it laughter or irritation. It's a remarkably expressive nose. He has probably rubbed it raw by now, she imagines. He can't help it. He gets so infernally itchy...
“...financing might still prove tricky, given the subject matter, but with big names like that attached I don't... hh... I don't think it's-hhuh... h-hang on a sec-”
...reddened and inflamed, leaking and quivering. That glazed, distracted look in his eyes as he presses a knuckle to his septum to buy himself time, trying to pass it off as a casual gesture and maybe fooling some people, but never her. She can always tell. Having known him for nearly seven years, she has learned to read the signs.
“Ugh. What was I saying? Oh, right, I don't think we need to... t-to-ohh... huhh...! Hah'T- “
Abrupt silence. He's turned off his microphone. Of course he has. She stares up at the ceiling, her mouth hanging open with surprised disappointment. She can feel every cell in her body buzzing, her senses almost painfully heightened and her heartbeat suddenly deafeningly loud in her ears. And then she has to laugh, out loud, at her own frustration.
Serves me right, I guess.
Gnawing on her bottom lip, she counts the seconds ticking by on the laptop screen as Skype keeps track of the call duration. Ten seconds... fifteen... twenty... a minute goes by while she imagines him there, in some moderately fancy hotel room on the other side of the Atlantic, doubled over in his chair, broad shoulders shaking as sneeze after sneeze detonates into his loosely cupped hands.
Eventually she has to ask: “You still alive over there, man?”
A rustling sound and a low groan as the microphone is unmuted.
“Barely.” He sounds both all out of breath, and all out of patience. “Sorry about that. God, this is driving me crazy.” More rustling, the sound of skin scrubbing against skin, and three deep, utterly liquid sniffles. “And before you ask: yes, I did take something for it, but so far it's done fuck all to relieve my symptoms. Maybe it's the wrong brand. Or maybe god just hates me.”
“As long as you don't accidentally sneeze in any heavyweight producer's face, I think you're good.”
“Always ready with a word of s-sympathy, aren't y-you... hhH!-EESCHh!”
She can hear him scrabble to mute the mic again, but either he's too blinded with allergic swelling and tears to locate the right button, or he simply doesn't have time before the next sneeze – the next flurry of sneezes – knocks him off course.
“ESCHhuh! - A'TSHh! - AESHh! - hh...hh'ASCHhah!”
The angry creaking of a chair. The sound of tissues being pulled from a box before - “Hm'PHFFsh! Heh... h'HMph!-mTSHh!-'TSCh! Ughh, I can't believe this...”
Neither can she.
Toes curling and heartbeat picking up speed, she adjusts her headphones and turns the volume up to the veritable storm of sneezes that has flared up in her hayfever-stricken employer's hotel room.
“H'mpsh! AeSCHuh! Goddammit...!”
...
No. God -bless- you.
--------------------------------------------
Two weeks later the studio gives them their green light, and the pre-production carousel spins into motion in a whirl of casting calls, crew hiring, location scouting, set construction, financial arrangements and schedule juggling. She relishes this controlled chaos, always has. It keeps her on her toes, and the stress is easily outweighed by the excitement of finally seeing their long-in-the-making brain baby take its first wobbly steps.
He's terrified, of course. He always is, at the early stages of things. Terrified and inspired and (it has to be said) constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Regrettably he isn't too great at disguising the latter, but his drive and energy, while of the nervous kind, is contagious. He gets shit done, his people get shit done, and while it might not be the most harmonious, laid-back work environment, she couldn't bear being anywhere else. Except, maybe, for when he calls her at nope-o'clock in the morning to rant about his script with the same caffeinated fervor she remembers from when they were both still at SADA. And just like back then, these calls tend to become more and more frequent as the deadline crawls closer. He's an excellent writer, fast too, but he's downright rubbish when it comes to making cuts and trim the finished story down to something filmable. By all his moaning and cursing, you'd think he was being forced to part with one of his vital organs rather than cut a scene from a screenplay.
When he calls her this particular grey, drizzly afternoon, however, it isn't to lament his artistic woes. As it turns out, her employer has a proposal.
"What do you say about being my plus one at the Nightjar premiere on Friday?"
"Okay, Iso, first of all", she says, nearly dropping her phone as she struggles to open the door to her office with her elbow whilst balancing a brimming mug of tea in her other hand, "I can't help but notice you're calling me and it's not, in fact, four o'clock in the morning. Just how jetlagged are you?"
"Very amusing. I'll ask again: will you accompany me to the premiere?"
"What about Ida?"
"She's working this weekend. Not that she'd have wanted to come along anyway. You know how she is with red carpets."
His precious little white mouse. Yes, she knows how Ida is with red carpets. The girl is a sweetheart, but timid and introverted to a fault. You couldn't find a starker contrast to Isandro's loud, colourful personality if you tried. It's the old cliché about opposites attracting, and on a bad day she can sometimes feel a tiny pinprick of jealousy towards the director's wife. For as long as she has known him, her feelings for Iso have been nothing but platonic – a flirty kind of platonic, admittedly – but she'd never pretend she doesn't have a type, nor deny that her employer happens to fit that type to a T. Minus his being her buddy and boss, naturally. That doesn't mean she can't, and won't, appreciate the sight of his streamlined figure in a nice three-piece, when the opportunity presents itself.
"Nightjar, huh? Would I have to actually watch it, too?"
"I'm afraid so." He sounds about as enthusiastic as she feels at the prospect. "I need to rub some industry shoulders at the after-party. Your job will be to keep me company and prevent me from going insane in the process."
"My job?"
"Alright, your privilege." The joke is punctuated by a thick sniffle. Oh. Well, in that case. He has no idea just how much of a privilege it's going to be.
"Better than free champagne, I'm sure," she grins.
"What's th -"
"It's a date, then!" she says, cheerfully cutting him off. "See you Friday!"
* * *
She'll always be impressed by the level of self-control he demonstrates at these type of events, especially given how little of that self-control seems to remain the moment the cameras stop rolling. No matter how miserable he is – and after a hot, dry, windy day like this, how can he not be? - he doesn't let it show for the entire length of the red carpet, with its forest of microphones and lightning storms of camera flashes. Other than the occasional, discreet sniffle or throat-clearing, you'd never guess anything was amiss. It was the same when he was still doing stage work in Stockholm (before he realized both he and everyone around him would be far better off with him behind the scenes rather than in them), and she remembers asking him about it at one point, how come he never had to cancel a show or interrupted a performance because of his allergies. After all, they weren't exactly your ordinary, lasting-for-two-weeks, manageable-with-Claritin type of affairs. They still aren't. Yet, as far as she's aware, he has never so much as had to stifle a sneeze while on stage or in front of a camera. So how does he manage? As she recalls, he called it "character placebo" or something similar. Apparently playing a character who doesn't want to rip their head off during allergy season is actually helpful? Frankly that sounds like some right method acting bullshit to her, but if it works for him... fine. Her personal theory is that his pride is stronger than his need to succumb. Up to a point, of course. He is still her Type with a capital T, after all.
With the red carpet and the screening over and behind them, they make their way to the warmly lit theatre lobby where the after-party is being held. Free champagne. Loosened bow ties. A live band on a small stage, smooth jazz wafting over the mingling crowd.
"Oh yes, this is my jam," she hums, swaying her shoulders from side to side and playfully bumping her hip against his leg.
"Good for you", he mutters darkly, stretching his considerable neck to scan the room, clearly on the lookout for someone. "Ah. There they are. Let's get this over with."
"You get networking, you social butterfly you. I'll get us some refreshments," she says, patting his arm before steering her steps towards the bar, silently cursing her four inch heels which, while making her legs look like a million dollars, also make her feel like a poser. A poser on stilts.
By the time she returns to his side – being a 6'5'' redhead, he's fairly easy to spot – he has already surrounded himself with a small court of prominent industry people. Animated, passionate, the centre of their attention. The success of 'Astrid' certainly put him on the radar, and now here he is, leading the latest push in the Scandinavian invasion of Hollywood. She feels a stir of pride at the sight. Then his hand goes to his nose – sniff, rub, wipe – and that stir spins into something else entirely.
Oh well. I'm going to hell anyway.
"Here you are," handing him his glass of Moët. He takes one, long sip of the gold-coloured liquid and then immediately scrunches up his nose against the tickle of champagne bubbles. Blinks. Draws a breath and holds it -
Whoops. You would think he'd have the sense to stay away from wines, especially the sparkling kind, given the circumstances. If he doesn't, well... that's not really her problem, is it? Nope. It's his. His problem. His rapidly mounting problem, by the looks of things.
I really am the worst friend imaginable, she thinks, not without glee.
"Shall I... take that for you, again?" she offers, gesturing toward the champagne glass in his raised hand. "Just to be safe?"
"Yeh-yeah, that's probably best," he manages, passing the glass back to her just in time to turn away from the group and muffle what must be a desperately unsatisfying sneeze into his steepled hands.
"-'hd'shh!"
Cue a chorus of "bless you!"s, but he doesn't straighten just yet. She watches the long plane of his back rise and fall as his breath hitches to a taut pitch, catching sharply at the back of his throat before being squelched into another pathetic "h'dsh!" between his fingers. A joke of a sneeze. Boo.
"Excuse me," he croaks, finally turning back to face the witnesses to his downfall. Because that's what that was. Cracks appearing in the floodgate. There's no way he's getting away with just two. Iso sneezing twice during the height of pollen season is the equivalent of someone trying to put out a forest fire using a pipette.
Yup, and there's the knuckle now, firmly in place beneath his nostrils. Dark blue eyes slightly narrowed, jaw set, voice growing progressively thicker as he valiantly tries to resume the conversation.
Abandon all shame, ye who enter here! She taps him on the shoulder and holds the glass of disastrous bubbly out to him once more.
Fluttering her eyelashes innocently: "More champagne?"
-------------------------------------
“I better not,” he declines, his tone perfectly polite, whilst shooting her a look like he's plotting her demise. “I can't seem to hold my liquor tonight. Quite literally.”
This earns him a bout of appreciative laughter from the group, and for the next minute or two it seems like he's managed to regain some control, both of his rebellious nose and the social situation. More introductions are made. She gets to shake a couple of hands of her own (and be mistaken for Iso's partner more than once before she can introduce herself as his director's assistant), but as much as she enjoys talking shop with the crème de la crème of her profession, she constantly finds her attention drifting back to the man at her side. To the inexperienced Isandro-observer it might appear as if he's recovered from his earlier mishap - he's all smiles, chatting away and emitting charisma like radiation - but for a... connoisseur such as herself, he's a picture of a losing battle.
“...the project is now way underway... yes, yes, it's terribly exciting...”
'Terribly exciting', in-fucking-deed.
He is losing his n's and m's. In the space of half a minute, his sniffles go from soft to damp to utterly ineffective, his full sinuses sealing themselves shut against the invasion of microscopic irritants. Too little, too late. Now unable to sniffle, he must resort to squeezing his leaky nose dry between forefinger and thumb, and every time he does it sends a small shiver like a low-grade electric pulse through her lower body. At this point she can't imagine either of them being particularly good conversational company anymore, occupied as they both are by what is essentially the same source of distraction. The nature of their respective responses to said distraction is of course vastly different from each other, but the result is the same: she has exactly zero clue what the woman in front of her is saying, and Isandro has likewise reverted to a nodding silence (as glaring an evidence as any that he is at the end of his tether).
Finally, while the group's attention is briefly focused on a new arrival, he leans toward her and hisses out of the corner of his mouth:
“Find me an excuse.”
“On it, captain.”
He gives her a pained, twisted parody of a smile, and then presses a balled-up fist to the underside of his nose, pushing up hard against it as if trying to physically crush the tickle into submission. She can see his pinkened nostrils flex spasmodically in protest and allows herself a silent, inward, figurative “fuck me” before getting to work on the task at hand: getting him out of there with his dignity intact.
Right at that moment, the live band very conveniently ups the tempo and starts playing Benny Goodman's 'Sing Sing Sing'. She sees the opportunity and she takes it.
“Listen, darling, they're playing our song!” she chirps, and tugs at his elbow while firing off an impish smile around the gathering. “Sorry to steal him away, but I'm having this dance. Come on, Iso.”
“There's no refusing the lady, I'm afraid. You'll have to excuse me. Pleasure meeting you all!” And he lets himself be dragged by the hand off into the crowd.
Once they're out of immediate eye-shot of the Industry Somebodies Club he pulls free of her grasp, veers away from the dance floor and heads for the men's restroom located in the hallway at the back of the lobby. She follows him, taking half-hearted Charleston dance steps as she goes, disappointment suddenly blooming in her belly.
Don't go and be miserable where I can't follow, she thinks, like the selfish little shit that she is.
She needn't worry, though. As they get closer they discover a queue outside the restroom door. It would seem the power of free champagne has favoured her once again. Dismayed, Iso stops in his tracks, mutters something that sounds like “men för i helvete...” - oh for fuck's sake... - and turns around, heavy-lidded, watering eyes gazing toward the main entrance on the opposite side of the room. A hesitant pause. Then, without warning, an expression of almost aggressive need distorts his features, his head rears back with a wild gasp and he folds in on himself with a shivering, lung-emptying quadruple, coming so fast on top of each other it's hard to tell where one sneeze ends and the next starts.
“Aeshh'eeshh'tshh'cktshh-!”
It's one of his held-off-for-too-long fits, which can sometimes be triggered by excessive stifling as well. Strangely quiet, the fit still succeeds in knocking most of the air out of him, leaving him panting and visibly unsteady on his feet. As she watches him recover (in the limited sense the word 'recover' applies to Iso at the beginning of a hayfever attack), she can feel her blossoming disappointment from earlier go up in a white-hot flame of anticipation.
“Oh, brilliant. Here we go,” he groans, long fingers back around his nose and working it back and forth, desperate for a respite from the ever-present, maddening itch clawing about his swollen passages. Squinting through a fresh upwelling of tears, he looks from the entrance to the occupied restroom and back again, but in the choice between bathroom acoustics in front of a small audience and the pollen-infused night air outside, he ends up choosing neither. Instead he opts for retreating behind a pillar beneath the staircase to the auditorium. As luck would have it the spot is empty of party guests at the moment, thus offering him a place to fall apart in semi-private.
And when he finally does, it's quite something to behold.
“hih - hhih – hhhih - “, breath scissoring in his throat, mouth slackening open, hands tented in front of his face in preparation to catch the first - “hah'EESCHh!”, torso dipping forward violently, then snapping right back up again, “AEESHHghh!”, and again, “EESCHHah!”, yet his face still remains a grimacing mask of allergic frenzy and he is so very far from done.
The last sneeze caused his glasses to slide down his nose, and now they are balanced dangerously at the very tip of it, ready to be catapulted to the marble floor by his next, fast approaching outburst.
Now that would be a shame. She has always thought his glasses make him look a bit like a hipster accountant, but in the end it's better than having him walking into doors, so...
“hhH -!”
Uh-oh.
“Hold on, Iso, let me just...” She dashes forward and (rather elegantly if she may say so herself) is able to pluck the spectacles off the end his nose just before his head lurches down into his waiting hands for the fourth time.
“ESCHxghuh!”
Four inch heels. Momentum. Right.
And so she gets to feel elegant for exactly 1.5 seconds, after which she trips over her own feet and, propelled forward by her reaching motion, proceeds to fall against her boss like a dolled-up sack of potatoes.
He catches her. No, scratch that: he tango dips her. Dancer's reflexes kicking in: bam. Just like that. Even in the throes of pollen hell he somehow manages to be the smoothest bastard in the room, and for a moment she just gapes up at him in disbelief while he blinks down at her like: “What?”
Then, his nostrils give a violent twitch.
“Oh no, don't you dare -”
And, miraculously, he doesn't actually drop her. In one frantic motion she gets lifted to her feet, but she doesn't quite have time to regain her balance before he sneezes again, not on her exactly (he turns his head to the side) but definitely against her, his towering frame convulsing with three viciously ticklish: “ngTSCHHh!-nGSHH!-TSHh!”
She has never felt more disgruntled over the fact that she's not allowed to have sex with him.
“Oh fugh, I'b... I'b sorry, Y.” He practically jumps a step back, palm clamped over his mouth and blood-shot, streaming eyes widened in chagrin. “Did you get caught id the crossfire there? Ugh, this is so gross...”
“Gross, yeah. Absolutely disgusting. You have scarred me for life. You can expect to hear from my solicitors.” She sticks out her tongue at him, leaning her hand against the nearby pillar lest her legs give way beneath her. She feels like her kneecaps have been replaced with jelly.
Wiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands, he gives another useless, wetly squeaking sniffle and slumps back against the wall, looking generally furious with the universe. And also, still, not done.
“Do you need anything?” she asks, trying for 'concerned' and hoping she doesn't sound too... breathless.
A joyless chuckle:
“My dignity back?”
“I'm all out, I'm afraid. Sorry. I have got these, though.” She reaches two fingers down the cleavage of her dress and fishes out a small travel packet of tissues from its resting place inside her bra. With all the mock-solemnity she can muster, she holds the packet out to him.
“Here. Bury yourself in the warmth of my bosom and feel better.”
He arches an eyebrow at her but accepts the tissues, his eyes already going misty and an irritated crease forming between his brows. By the time he gets the packet open, his breath has started hitching again. As if determined to nip the oncoming fit in the bud, he presses his nose into the the tissue and blows, blows, blows, long and deep and hard, producing a sound that would most likely be described as 'gross' by most people.
She isn't most people.
The delicate thing to do would be to leave him to tend to his nose in private.
She is about as prone to delicacy as she is to finding nose blowing gross.
“Better?” she asks him, as he finally looks up with his third spent tissue still folded over his nose, his fingers massaging the bridge with small, jerky movements. He grumbles something unintelligible.
“Still itchy?”
His grumbling turns into a groan.
“I'm pretty sure my brain is itching at this point.” With a frustrated wince: “When we get out of here, will you do me a favour and decapitate me?”
“Maybe once the script is done,” she deadpans. “After that, I think we can manage without you.”
He's not listening. He's busy blowing his nose again, but this time he is interrupted before he sounds even halfway...emptied.
600 word drabble inspired by [this scenario], only here it’s the director who’s having trouble, not the actor. Or rather: they’re both struggling, but each for very different reasons. What can I say? I only have one (1) OC with hayfever and he happens to be a movie director, so this is what I have to work with. D:
————————————-
There’s ‘difficult’, and then there’s ‘trying to audition for a role while your potential director is suffering a sneezing fit’.
On the plus side, Mr Edéll is probably as distracted as he is being distracting, and with any luck he will be too busy fighting the next importunate flurry of sneezes to notice her suddenly blushing ears, dry mouth and sweaty palms. On the downside, he probably won’t notice much of her performance at all if, against all odds, she actually manages to deliver something half-decent.
Either way, the situation isn’t exactly what you’d call ideal.
She can hear her carefully (bordering on maniacally) memorized lines coming out of her mouth, but they sound muffled and distant, as though she is overhearing someone else speaking in a nearby room. Even as her eyes remain fixed on his colleague, the casting director, she can’t block out what is happening at the edge of her peripheral vision; the tall, bespectacled man to her left behind the desk, one long hand pressed to his nose, occasionally scrubbing irritably at the affected organ with a curled indexfinger but mostly just holding the hand in place like some kind of breakwater. Every twenty seconds or so, two or three stifled sneezes will force themselves through his defenses with a near-silent but pronounced full-body shudder, followed by a soft but distinctly congested exhale that could make her forget her own name, never mind half a page of emotionally complex dialogue.
She is a young Astrid... turning down her old editor’s hand in marriage, even as his child is kicking in her womb... she will be an unmarried mother, in the 1920′s, disgraced, alone, but she’s never going back to that man, she’d rather be dead, she... she -
He sniffles, a thin, damply ticklish sound, and removes his hand to instead squeeze his nose between the folds of a tissue and, oh god, her Smalandian accent is slipping, isn’t it?
“Goodbye, Reinhold”, she says, with the finest mixture of dignity and vulnerability she can convey, and with this she’s finally reached the end of the scene but that doesn’t mean she can now stop acting.
Next, she has to act neutral as the director interrupts himself in the middle of his standard “thank you, we’ll let you know” speech with a harsh gasp and three even harsher sneezes, itchy desperation in every tightly clenched syllable:
“aegshh! ah’esch! aehngxhhah!”
Then, she has to act as though blessing him doesn’t make her feel like she’s having some sort of out-of-body experience.
Finally, she has to act politely concerned as she asks him if he’s alright, and then give a downright award-worthy interpretation of a Normal Person when the casting director gives her half-amused, half-sympathetic explanation:
“No, no, he isn’t, and he probably won’t be for another month or so, will you, Iso? Pollen season.”
He rolls his eyes, still sniffling behind his tissue.
“Don’t remind me. The birches are out to get me, I’m afraid. I do apologize, but I have to say you did very well, even with m-mehh... heh’nxgh! Ugh. Sorry. Even with me interrupting you.”
“Thank you,” she squeaks, her Normal Person smile still plastered across her face. “It was nice meeting you both. Bye!”
Wobbly legs, out the door, walking quickly through the studio lobby she’s 99 percent convinced she’s just given a career-worst performance and can kiss Astrid goodbye. The remaining, foolish 1 percent hopes they won’t be doing any shooting in spring because there’s ‘difficult’, and then there’s ‘trying to do your childhood hero justice while your director is being... distracting’.
One call-back and eleven months later, she’ll learn to deal with it.
