Chapter Text
In hindsight, Kyle never expected to actually get the job.
It was just an ugly bright red flyer with bold impact text and some extremely poor graphic design choices tacked to almost every single common room, student union and general advertisement board around campus. Seeing ‘WE NEED YOU!’ on every corner after an eight-hour shift (that had ended in Kyle’s prediction he was likely going to be fired soon) really made a man feel wanted.
The first time he’d seen it on a board outside his lecture hall he’d briefly scanned it and laughed. He’d met plenty of film students in his three hellish years at the University of Leeds and not one had the funding to actually pay their entire crew outside of Domino’s pizza and rounds of beer, but this flyer promised otherwise, however elusively.
Later in the morning, when Kyle had dared to take the shortcut through the most Conservative party-populated accommodation village, he’d seen it glaringly tacked to the doors of at least three different buildings. And again when he’d ventured into one of the libraries and skirted past a corkboard of flyers and infographics.
It haunted every aspect of his University life for two weeks before the aforementioned eight-hour shift, whereupon seeing a copy of it strewn on the crappy dinner table of his house share when he finally got home made him wonder if he had been hallucinating them the entire time.
He’d had a shit day.
Classes had ended a week prior, which meant that Kyle had officially reached real adulthood. Graduation was a step away and while he was excited to have physical, undeniable evidence that he’d obtained an actual degree, he was less excited about the prospect of packing everything up and taking that final leap into the real world.
Months before finals and thesis’ and the general anxious buzz around campus, Kyle had decided to allow himself six weeks of freedom after graduation. Yet, despite the fact he was mere steps away from those six weeks, he hadn’t decided how or where he was going to spend it. Getting closer and closer to the deadline, his inability to decide was starting to look an awful lot like continuing to work at the job he hated and desperately trying to find a place to stay all the while.
Or, admitting defeat completely and moving back to London six weeks early.
Except, that was until he’d made some minor mistakes and one of his managers had been a little less subtle than usual that his position was in no way sound and that they could easily replace him if he didn’t shape up his overworked and underpaid attitude. A very nice chat to have after eight hours of labour before a thirty-five-minute walk in the torrential summer rain. He’d had a shit day and that obnoxious red flyer was starting to make him feel an awful lot like a bull.
“Wow, you look like shit. How was work?” Kyle glared in Charlie’s direction, lacking the willpower to even threaten his favourite flatmate with full grandeur. The other man looked passively content, sitting on a counter eating a bowl of cereal at 9:00 pm on a Thursday.
Shedding layers of rain-soaked clothing, Kyle dropped his waterlogged bag onto the table and snatched up the eyesore of an advertisement. “I’m considering triple-homicide or large-scale arson. What is this doing here?”
Placing his bowl in the sink, Charlie hopped down off the counter and padded in his warm, dry clothes to where Kyle stood. “I’d say triple homicide, it has more of a kick to it.” He remarked, smiling. Kyle waved the flyer around with a level of hysteria. “Read it, I thought you might be interested.”
‘WE NEED YOU!’ stared mockingly at Kyle, whose hair had started to cement itself to his forehead. “Mate, I’ve seen it just about everywhere for the last two weeks. I think I could recite it at this point.”
“You’re so grumpy when you’re wet, like a cat.” Kyle levelled Charlie with a stare that only made him laugh harder. “Before you start considering quadruple homicide, look at the website. Whoever made the poster is proper shit but they have an actual company and a decent portfolio online. Didn’t you say you had nothing to do for your golden six weeks? Besides prison time, obviously.”
Admittedly, it did intrigue Kyle. There was extremely little detail outlining the actual positions they were searching for, nor the project they were orchestrating, but the premise of spending his six weeks making crap money with a crew of people his age didn’t sound entirely unappealing. Even if it was a horror film.
Charlie let him change into dry clothes, towel off his hair and grab his laptop before they continued their discussion, the rest of their house seemingly empty for a Thursday night. When Kyle returned to the kitchen, Charlie was sat at one of the chairs with two beers in front of him. “What?” He remarked, seeing his roommate's questioning stare. “I’m kind of interested too.”
An actual company in Charlie’s eyes meant a professional-looking website that wasn’t housed on Wix or Squarespace and a self-declared notion of being a production company by the name of Bad Steel. Despite the fact that to anyone else it might seem legit, Kyle had immersed himself within music and film spaces for all of his twenty-four years alive, and he was well versed in people tacking the words ‘production company’ onto the end of anything and calling it a day.
There was a page filled with images from their portfolio, which was the first genuinely surprising thing about any of it. There weren’t any videos, but each capture looked borderline professional. Some were merely of people amongst natural landscapes, framed and shot well but largely bland, while others depicted behind-the-scenes sets that looked complicated and entirely handmade.
They ventured onto the page detailing the film they were calling crew members for, which had four separate blocks of text, an application button and contact details. There was a vague detailing about the short film using words with far too many syllables for Kyle to properly read followed by a decently long list of positions they were looking for. Strangely, Kyle felt relieved reading that they did in fact need an editor. They were also looking for sound crew, which meant that if Charlie hadn’t been lying about being interested just to make sure he actually looked then he could rope him into it too.
“A producer and a writer co-directing seems like an odd choice.” Charlie commented, sipping at his beer. “Oh. It’s three weeks in Scotland.”
Kyle’s eyes skipped over the sentence he was reading to skim the last paragraph, a little shocked at the unveiled fact. They weren’t exactly far away, but the people behind the project must’ve had a pretty strict idea of how they wanted it to look if they’d picked a location with a border. Assuming they were actually Leeds residents rather than Scots who’d chosen to advertise their short film in random universities across England.
The more he thought about it, the more appealing it seemed. “Well, our lease is up soon anyway right? I’d just be going back to London.”
Charlie wrinkled his nose, arms crossed over his chest. “You don’t need to keep reminding me that I have another year stuck in this place. Can’t you just take me with you?” Kyle laughed at the remark, but it did make his chest squeeze a little.
Being a year younger than himself, Charlie’s plans to follow him to London were over twelve months away. Despite only knowing each other for two years and only living together for one, the two had become somewhat codependent losers. Kyle had never really had a best mate before, just friends he went to school with, sometimes drank with and didn’t completely hate.
Charlie had been different from the first time they’d met at a gig in town, the two of them unnecessarily ripping the shit out of the band and declaring they could do much better. It turned out that Charlie hadn’t been lying, he was fairly brilliant at every instrument Kyle had ever seen him play.
“If you pay for my laundry every day until September I’ll consider it.”
“No fucking way, they’re already robbing me blind,”
Kyle pretended to consider it for half a second before letting his face fall blank. “No deal then. But I will drive you to Scotland for a lovely holiday chaperoned by your most handsome of mates before I fuck off forever. In your car, obviously.”
“You’re inviting Tom?” Charlie just narrowly dodged a swift smack to the shoulder by tilting his body, laughing all the while in that theatrically grand way he did. “I didn’t even know you could drive!” Another smack, this time delivered quicker and not as easily avoided. Kyle smiled despite it, Charlie still laughing.
He didn’t really like thinking about being all the way back down in London without Charlie for too long because it made his chest seize uncomfortably. It was getting harder to avoid the topic, however, and Kyle’s mental list of pros and cons about the film positions were starting to become far more weighted towards the former. Pro: a few weeks of holiday with Charlie and a bit of film work on the side.
Con: having to leave after that would likely be a lot more difficult.
“I think we should do it.” Kyle said, realising the room had fallen into relative silence. Charlie glanced over at him, a smile cracking its way onto his face. “How do we apply?”
—
Graduation was a bit of a nightmare.
It was a lot of stress for an extremely short period of time ceremoniously recounting about three years of work that had wrecked almost everyone's mental health to a shred, followed by family meals if you were those type of people, followed by one of the busiest nights outside of holidays and freshers.
Despite everything, Kyle really didn’t feel all that relieved. He didn’t feel the modicum of dread he’d expected to either. Instead, it was much more like a weighted blanket of exhaustion that settled over him the moment the festivities were over and it was just him in boxers and a t-shirt staring at the ceiling in his house share that had a mere week and a half left on the lease.
Charlie cried at the ceremony which was maybe the funniest moment of the entire day. He’d also joined Kyle for his post-graduation family meal with his mum and his sister because he was that type of person. The four of them had gotten spectacularly drunk on Prosecco before the boys joined their peers to celebrate at their drinking establishment of choices, merry until the early hours of the morning.
Back in his own room, Kyle didn’t really know how to feel. He was far too drunk to be trusted with any true assessment of his feelings, but something was keeping him awake. If he had to use any word to describe himself, he wasn’t sure he could use anything except obtuse. Both literarily and angularly. Rolling onto his side to avoid containing to stare at the ceiling and spiral, Kyle scrabbled for his phone and winced at the bright screen. 05:57 am.
Shifting to lie on his front, he paged through random social media until his brain felt numb, liking assorted graduation posts despite the ever-growing lump of obtuseness in his stomach. When he got bored of doom scrolling he decided to file through his emails. His breath stopped short seeing BAD STEEL third in his inbox.
Head spinning, Kyle opened the email and slowly assessed the words. He skimmed over some phrases that waged war in the objectivity of acceptance or rejection, such as ‘loved your portfolio’ and ‘very interested in your work’. Impatient and still largely pissed, he skipped to the bottom of the email.
‘I would love to speak to you personally over the phone to discuss your work, though I am certain you are the most perfect fit for this project. Please leave your contact details below along with times you are available to talk. I hope to speak to you soon.
D.Smith,
BAD STEEL’
Fuck.
Kyle didn’t bother putting on trousers before stumbling out of his own room and into Charlie’s, crouching beside the younger man and shaking his shoulder a lot less gently than he’d intended to. “Charlo,” he whispered if a little hysterically. “wake the fuck up.”
Watching his flatmate frown, eyes still firmly shut, wriggle around for a few seconds, eventually open his eyes and then jump half a foot backwards was very entertaining to a drunk Kyle. “Fucking hell, Kyle! I thought you were a demon! What the actual hell, mate?”
Kyle, who was still crouched on the floor even though Charlie had created a wide berth on the mattress at that point, shook his head at the theatrics and held up his phone screen. “I got it, check your email right now or I will start guessing your password.” In the dark, it visibly took his friend's eyes a few moments to adjust to the screen, before his jaw quite literally dropped.
Mirroring Kyle’s own initial reaction, Charlie kickstarted into action after a few seconds of stunned silence and started digging underneath his pillows to find his phone, unlock it and navigate his way to the email app. “Oh my god.” He breathed, turning the screen to Kyle. “‘We would be delighted to have you on board for this project’. Fuck! It sounds so professional!”
“We’re going to Scotland. To make a film.” Kyle laughed, his hysteria showing all over again. “That’s fucking mental.”
“I would totally celebrate right now if I didn’t feel like I already need to throw up.” Charlie grimaced like nausea had hit him all at once.
Kyle grinned. “Wake and bake?”