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“M nomt gwumby,” said Marinette.
Zoé frowned. “One more time? Maybe without the pins.”
Marinette spat the pins she’d been holding between her lips into her hand. “I said I’m not grumpy. Hold still.”
Zoé straightened her arm, letting Marinette pin her sleeve in place. “If you’re sure,” she said. “Because you look—”
Claude, the director, rapped on the doorframe. “Everyone decent?”
Zoé double checked the neckline of her dress. “Decent enough for the 16th century, I think,” she decided. “Come on in!”
Claude took a seat on the end of Marinette’s workbench and paged through his heavily-annotated copy of the script. “I thought we could run through our notes on this scene during the rest of your fitting. Annette’s big coronation is finally here. How are you playing it?”
Zoé felt her cheeks reddening. Her acting process was very personal, and while it was easy enough to discuss it with a longtime friend like Claude, Marinette was here. She was convinced that Claude had assigned Marinette to her on purpose. He had to know how Zoé felt. What if Zoé rambled too much about her character and Marinette thought she sounded stuck-up?
She took a very deep breath, careful not to dislodge any of Marinette’s carefully placed pins. Refusing would definitely make her look weird. There was nothing for it. “Annette’s thinking about her mother and the coronation she never got,” said Zoé. “As much as she hated her, part of her feels proud to be… to be restoring a family legacy, I guess. And part of her feels like a traitor to Felipe for even thinking that.”
Claude leaned forward, beaming. “I love your insights. And when Felipe bursts in through the stained glass window? We’ll have a piece of glass cut your forehead right here.” He tapped his own forehead demonstratively.
Zoé felt herself slipping into character. She pulled herself back, unwilling to humiliate herself in front of Marinette. “That’s easy,” she said. “For me, not for Annette. I think it’s the hardest decision she’s had to make in her life.”
“Lift your chin for me,” Marinette cut in. She frowned at the neckline of Zoé’s dress. “I’m going to try something different with the bodice.”
Zoé met Claude’s eyes. He was smirking. She wished her prop dagger was real so she could stab him.
“And then,” Zoé continued valiantly, doing her best to speak as though there was no beautiful woman touching her chest, “denying him in front of the whole court feels like she’s being torn in two. With what I’ve seen of the Season Three outline, I really want to emphasize how empty she feels when the coronation is over. Like she’s closed a door she can’t reopen.”
“How’s the movement in the shoulders?” Marinette asked, stepping back. “I know we want it to look more restrictive than the other dresses, but that’s no excuse to make you wear an uncomfortable costume.”
Zoé made a few experimental arm movements. “Good,” she said. “I think it’s perfect.”
Another smirk from Claude. “Marinette really is a treasure, isn’t she?” he asked. “Best costume designer we’ve ever had.”
“She is,” Zoé managed.
Marinette was still studying Zoé’s chest. Her bodice. Marinette was paying attention to how the bodice of Zoé’s dress moved for her job. It was no one’s fault that Zoé’s chest was inside the dress.
“I think I have everything I need from you, Zoé,” said Marinette, jotting down a note on one of the million pieces of scrap paper that drifted after her wherever she went.
For someone who could do such amazing, precise things with fabric, Marinette was impressively disorganized. It was one of the reasons Zoé had… why she felt…
“Thanks,” said Zoé.
Marinette shooed Claude out of the room with a rolled-up scrap of fabric. “You can have your actress back once I’ve helped her change,” she said.
Claude obediently left the room, but not without waggling his eyebrows at Zoé one last time. She groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Marinette asked as she carefully undid the row of buttons on the back of the dress.
Zoé did her best not to shiver as Marinette’s soft, gentle hands touched her back. “Nothing,” she said. “He always teases me, that’s all.” She remembered Marinette’s earlier grumpiness. She had been strange all morning. “But we were talking about you. What’s wrong?”
Marinette sighed. It was one of her particularly demonstrative sighs. Over their months of working together, filming on location in this drafty castle, Zoé had grown intimately familiar with them. This one was wistful, almost sad. “It’s nothing. There was something I meant to do and put off, and now it’s too late to do it. That’s all.”
Zoé stepped out of the dress. Marinette whisked it away to her workbench, avoiding Zoé’s eyes. As she pulled on her clothes and shoes, Zoé tried to remember who Marinette’s other fittings today had been with. It was possible that no one else on the cast and crew was involved with whatever was upsetting her, but it seemed unlikely. Filming in such an isolated location tended to bring people together in strange ways.
In the end, Zoé sought out Marc, who headed up the show’s writer’s room. The studio had flown him out to consult, and she knew he and Marinette had struck up a friendship.
“She’s upset,” Zoé explained when she cornered Marc in the craft services line. “I thought we got along pretty well, but she won’t talk to me about it.”
Marc sighed. “Sebastian gave you a bouquet this morning, didn’t he?”
Zoé sighed. Sebastian, one of the caterers, was another problem. He had an extremely obvious crush on her, and she hadn’t figured out how to let him down easily. “He did,” she said. “I know I need to ask him to stop, but—” She stopped. “Did Marinette see me take it?”
Marinette had meant to do something, but now she thought it was too late. Zoé’s mind raced. Did that mean what she thought it meant?
Marc winced. “She did,” he said. “Look, can I give you some advice?”
Zoé shifted from foot to foot. Every molecule in her body demanded that she find Marinette right now so that she could tell her just how mutual their feelings were. “Sure,” she said.
“You don’t need to know exactly what you want right now,” said Marc. “Just… ask yourself if the possibility of success is worth the risk of failure.”
“Thank you. I will.” Zoé handed him her plate. “Can you hold onto this for me? Thanks.”
Ducking out of line and weaving between crewmates, Zoé started to run. Marinette was waiting, and maybe, with a little luck and the right words, Zoé could make her smile again.