Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Our predatory producer needs a convincing reason to overextend himself and draw on those shady accounts,” Sophie told the team. “Once we nail him there, we’ll be able to destroy him financially and, as a bonus, completely ruin his reputation so he’ll never be able to make a movie, or take advantage of naive young creatives, ever again.”

Everyone nodded, and Harry waited just a beat before asking his standard question.

“And how do we do that?”

"Well,” Sophie began, “Hollywood is all about the revivals and remakes right now." 

"Exactly,” Breanna interjected, “there's no new movies making it to the screen 'cause heaven forbid the old guard give way to Black people and queer people and literally anyone who grew up outside their little bubble of privilege."

Breanna swiped her touchpad and dozens of posters for originals and their sequels or remakes took over the presentation screen. 

Parker's hand shot up. "If all of the new-old–" aer eyes crossed, "Old-new? Movies are actually getting made and being successful, how do we make sure our bait doesn't end up working?"

Sophie grinned, a plan coming together as she replied. "We convince Gilman to revive a movie that never existed! There's hundreds– no, thousands – of scripts that get submitted and never sold. Footage that gets stored and never used."

Harry frowned. "But isn't the point to have people invested in it? If it never existed, how do we get fans for it?"

"Oh!" Breanna jumped half out of her seat, fingers flying across her keyboard. "I've got the perfect thing. A movie that doesn't exist and a fandom just waiting to support it."

The next several minutes were spent in relative silence and Breanna quietly swore at her computer and continued to type. Harry gave up trying to make sense of her mumbled curses, as he just didn't understand what 'tumbler' and 'damn janky-ass broken search' and 'tag does not exist my ass' had to do with each other.

When Breanna ended her muttered rant by pulling up a picture of a boot, the others stared at the screen. 

“Breanna, what is this?” Sophie asked, gesturing towards the boot with its string of near-nonsense words printed on the tag. 

“This is Goncharov,” Breanna said proudly. “I need a few hours, but soon, it’s gonna be a cult classic with a fanbase begging for a sequel.”

Sophie threw up her hands, clearly at a loss, and Eliot grumbled about internet nonsense, but no one knew enough to say no, so Breanna pumped her fist into the air. "Let's go steal a sequel!"

Harry blinked, taken aback by Sophie’s graying hair and crow's feet. Her fur wrap spoke of Old Hollywood glamor, but the ragged edges suggested a tight budget. 

Sophie raised an eyebrow imperiously, sweeping forward towards the studio doors. “What?”

“I’m just—surprised.” Harry said, gesturing at his own face, even as he rushed to keep pace with her. “The ah-aging. I know we’re talking about a film from the seventies, I just didn’t think you’d want to do the whole…aged starlet thing.”

“Harry,” Sophie rolled her eyes and stopped abruptly, waiting for him to open the door. “I’m an actress. We live the role.”

Harry conceded with a bow of his head, and opened the door, waving her in. He pitched his voice up to carry. “Now, Madame Chaban, I’ve got a draft contract with me and I’ve included your requirements as far as screen time and so on. We have not discussed anything about—”

They chattered their way past the distracted secretary and set themselves up in the boardroom where their crooked producer’s assistant would be expecting a pitch meeting to begin shortly.

The hopeful writers whose meeting they’d usurped at the last minute would be fine, Breanna had assured them. Their script was better off with their new production house anyways.

When Gilman’s young assistant came in to greet them, Harry and Sophie turned on her with the full weight of their respective persona’s charm and grandeur and she was quickly overwhelmed. When Gilman himself arrived, Madam Chaban was ready.

"Scorsese, he says 'no one will remember this! No one will care!'" Sophie was still weaving her tale for the producer and his staff an hour later. "'But this is a masterpiece!' I tell him, 'the betrayal, the clocks!'"

Harry knew he was just as taken in as their mark. 

"'Have it then!' he tells me." Sophie jerked her hand violently, narrowly missing Harry's nose. Then she brought it back to her chest, her fist clutched tight around thin air. "So I take it. It is my movie. Now, it can be our movie. It is time now. The people are ready. They need to know how I overcome Katya's betrayal." 

"The score was really an excellent touch, Breanna." Sophie set her hand on Breanna's shoulder as she passed by, and Breanna jerked up from the desk where she'd been half asleep.

"Score?" She said, yawning. "Oh the uh, the music? That wasn't me."

Sophie paused momentarily, but then nodded. "Oh, still, to be able to describe the story well enough for someone to compose those themes–the work really does speak to what we planned out–"

"Nah, Sophie, like–" Breanna waved towards the presentation screens, where the Goncharov poster was surrounded by analyses and critiques, and stills of Robert De Niro and Cybill Shepherd. "All this? I made the poster and a couple of the film trivia things. The rest of it is all Tumblr."

Sophie's forehead creased. "The rest of it? What do you mean tumbler ?"

"It's a social media site that allows for far more anonymity than all the other popular ones." Breanna explained. "People use it for fandom–creating content…."

She trailed off at the look on Sophie's face and summarized instead. "Random people I don't know saw the poster I made and created an entire lore and all of this other art around the idea of Goncharov ."

Sophie tilted her head as she took in this idea.

"Should we be worried about this…Tumblr?"

"Oh, always."

Hardison shook his head at the growing collection of Goncharov content. It was impressive and there were certainly plenty of useful pieces—the critiques and scores in particular were very convincing—but he was concerned. Most of the bloggers had taken to disclaiming their posts with an 'unreality tag'. Probably a good thing, on the whole, but problematic if Gilman's team noticed.

He spent a few minutes building a filter so Gilman and his people wouldn’t catch the posts and tags that might give the thing away. Breanna’s method may have launched a fanbase in record time, but it was risky and Hardison wanted a little extra insurance for his team. He dug around in some film school archives and spliced together some footage for a trailer and a few clips that he could bury on YouTube. Breanna’s film lore relied heavily on symbolism and lingering shots of well-known locations in Italy and before he knew it, Hardison had half a film and was tempted to just finish the thing.

It wasn't like he didn't trust Breanna, but it wouldn't hurt to have a backup. Just in case. 

"And he's out," Breanna crowed, scrolling through news coverage of their mark's fall from favor. Buying the sequel rights for an original that had never been made hadn't impressed his peers and had impressed his financers even less, especially when he’d already lost a fair bit of their money on an Italian film crew, which, much like the original film, didn’t actually exist.

The general public was confused, mostly, but Breanna assured the team that Tumblr was losing its collective mind.

"Like, a hive mind? Is Tumblr the host for the Collective?" Parker asked.

Breanna opened and closed her mouth a few times and then shrugged. "Yeah. That's…the Borg make as much sense as anything."

"Oh, Parker," Sophie said as she passed by, "your Italian accent is quite good now."

Parker grinned and tossed aer hair. “I know.

"I'm off to Harry's for our film night, anyone want to join?" Sophie asked. "Seems like a particularly relevant wrap up to this job."

"Oh, you know," Breanna waved her off, "It's really become a date night thing for you. We couldn't possibly intrude."

Parker made a sound of agreement as ae made a quick exit, and Eliot produced a charcuterie board wrapped to travel. 

"I only made enough for two anyways," he told her. He gave her a winning smile, hoping this would get them all out of another film viewing.

Sophie just shrugged and accepted the food with good grace.

"You know after all this talk about the film, I really expected to get it on the first viewing, but I just did not understand the thing at all,” Harry said. “The broader themes, yes. And, you know, I really did pick up on the queer subtext you’d mentioned, but some of the other stuff, the clocks, the bridge scene…that stuff just went over my head."

Breanna glanced up from her laptop with an uncertain grin. 

"Uh, are we doing a bit right now? Because I have to tell you, I'm getting a little tired of the Goncharov stuff."

"No, I really didn't understand. I didn't want to bring it up with Sophie—you know how she is about her art house films—but-"

"Harry," Breanna interrupted him, "I don't know how to explain meme culture to you, but Goncharov isn't real."

"Then what the hell did Sophie make me watch last night?"

Breanna stared at Harry for one, two slow blinks. 

"Are you messing with me?"

"Are you messing with me?"

"No really, are you messing with me? Harry, there is no movie. I. Made. It. Up."

Harry thought back to the very long two and a half hours he spent in front of the TV the night before. There had definitely been the boat scene with Katya and Sofia, and the bridge too. And the clocks. 

"Uh Breanna, are you…sure?"

Two years later

Eliot had point blank refused to attend the screening, despite Breanna's scoffing.

"We did the fake movie thing before. It didn't work." Eliot insisted. "I'm not putting myself through that."

"Don't be a wuss, it's not just a fake movie, Sophie's posing as Madam Chaban who really was in the fake original and now gets to be in the real sequel. She was totally in con mode."

"It's cute you think that'll save you."

Parker was around somewhere, but ae'd taken off at the whiff of chocolate, so it was just Harry and Breanna trailing behind Sophie on the short red carpet as she lifted her arm to acknowledge the small but excited group of fans outside the theater. 

"I can't believe they actually made the sequel."

"Well your paperwork was legit and people wanted to see it, so the little indie studio I found got a sweet deal on the rights and they made it happen."

"And Sophie got her cameo," Harry noted, watching as the once again aged-up Sophie signed a Goncharov poster for one of the fans. 

Breanna pulled out her phone and snapped a selfie in front of the Goncharov: Return to Moscow poster. She grinned.

“Man, I love the internet.”