the girl behind the lens
She was the kind of girl who knew the world would fall in love with her — and still only cared if he was watching.
★ MUSE!READER who takes polaroids on set. not of herself, but of the crew, James’s coffee left on a monitor, moments between takes. she keeps them tucked in her bag like lucky charms.
★ MUSE!READER who secretly rewatches their earliest films. even the ones that never made it out of university. sometimes she mouths along to his direction. he never knew how much she listened.
★ MUSE!READER who wears rings like armor. at least one is always James’s —a wrap gift from their first indie project. she never acknowledged keeping it, and he never asked.
★ MUSE!READER who keeps the scripts James writes for her. marked with dog-eared corners, scribbled notes, and ink-smudged hearts in the margins — but she'd deny it if you asked.
★ MUSE!READER who’s a little moody before shoots. she doesn’t like talking in the makeup chair. she chews her lip while reading sides, tugs her sleeves over her knuckles, needs silence to focus. but the moment the camera rolls, it’s like something divine clicks into place.
★ MUSE!READER who doesn't wear perfume on set, but James always knows when she’s been in a room. something about the air changes. like a page being turned.
★ MUSE!READER who smells like cinnamon and old books. costume designers try to bottle it. James once wrote it into a script: “she smelled like autumn nostalgia and things he didn’t have the language for.”
★ MUSE!READER who has a thousand expressions, but James’s favorite is the one she makes when she’s pretending not to be jealous. slight tilt of the head. a fake yawn. sharp, sarcastic sweetness that covers up something bruised and tender underneath.
★ MUSE!READER who’s always cold. she keeps a rotation of oversized sweaters on set — most of them not hers. one of them still smells like the first short film they shot together, all student-brewed coffee and dusty theatre curtains.
★ MUSE!READER whose email signature is blank. but every message to James ends with “—your problem” or “—your muse (temporarily).” Sometimes she adds a little black cat emoji.
★ MUSE!READER who reads fan theories late at night, curled in bed with her phone dimmed low. she never comments. but sometimes she smiles.
★ MUSE!READER whose mom used to tell her she was made for the stage, but she always liked the camera better. on stage, you're big. on screen, you're bare.
★ the first time MUSE!READER realised she was falling for FILM DIRECTOR!JAMES, it wasn’t during a scene or a late-night edit. It was when he fixed her necklace before a take, hands shaking just a little.
masterlist // muse script
