Work Text:
"Okay, okay, it's my turn. Mm. Never have I ever been arrested." Conan smirked as he waved his half empty cup around, making some of the absinthe spill onto the floor. The room's smell was already so strong it burned. On Elric's old laptop, an autoplay playlist was providing the background music. Now they were on Mangahead.
"Not fair, man. You only ask questions you know I have to drink for!" Elric rolled his eyes as he bent his head to take a deep sip. He was sure he'd be entering this game sober and exiting sober, but he was constantly bombarded with questions that to a normal person would be completely obscene, but to him, were common. He'd have his shitty family to thank for not teaching him temperance and common sense.
"Well, it's not my fault you did stupid things." Conan kept grinning as he too took a sip. Elric looked like a cat desperately trying to stay awake, with his head falling a few times.
"Conan, the goal is not to ask questions that you yourself are guilty for." Jirel slurred as she emptied her own cup. Conan refilled all of their cups. Apparently, it has been his goal.
"Okay, my turn." Jirel hiccupped as she thought of her next question "Never have I ever... hmm... been a TV star."
"Well, now, Jirel. It's not about asking about things we're sure we've never done, either." Conan leaned his bronze-tinted face on his hand. He swung his cup, making the liquid inside dance.
"No, for you the point is to get wasted..." Jirel eyed him, her yellow eyes still finding the soberity to flash him some of her usual anger.
"Well, that's the fun part." Conan rolled his eyes.
"And learning all the crazy stuff we did isn't? I saw a real ghost in the military that tried to force himself on me. And you almost became a pirate and had coffee with Roy Thomas and made him sign you a very rare comic book issue." she continued.
"Ah, yes. That was a blast." Conan looked up, reminiscing. Ah, youth. The good days.
Both of them were too busy with their argument to notice Elric taking another swig from his cup. They paused, in disbelief.
"Wait, you weren’t really… I was just joking." Jirel sputtered, almost laughing.
"I was, unfortunately. You're lucky I'm honest." Elric sighed. He was so close to being completely wasted. Perhaps his thoughts were not entirely sober at the moment, but it was too late to deny anything. And he wasn't the type to lie.
"And you never told us?" Conan added, intrigued.
"It's not exactly a topic for casual conversation. It's quite specific." Elric simply said, shrugging. Indeed, how does one actually bring this up in a conversation?
"Yeah, he'll tell us more about what he's talking about in his sleep than what jobs he's been doing." Conan muttered under his breath, annoyed. How much about Elric is there to know?
"Which series?" Jirel leaned forward, her lush lips curved into a curious smile.
Elric paused, unsure.
"Elric?" Jirel pressed.
"It's not something I like to talk about... I didn't even stay for a whole season before I quit. And I didn't act anywhere else after that. Music career was more in my wavelength, as you can see." Elric tried to drag the topic astray, but Conan and Jirel were having none of it.
"Come on, man! You have to tell us! What series?" Jirel leaned closer to him.
"Yeah, wizard! Just spit it out. We're not gonna laugh at you." Conan remained seated, but even he was giving his best not to sound too eager.
"We promise!" Jirel seconded.
Elric knew they would, but he figured it was too late, and it'd hurt less to just get it over with. But he still hesitated to start.
"I can only say that the series became heavily controversial a few years ago."
"Elric, that does not narrow it down." Jirel quirked an irritated eyebrow.
"Wait a minute." Conan interjected "Isn't that the crappy series that aired until a year ago? What was the name again... The one that got canceled after all of the actors started coming out and sharing their horrible experiences about it? Ah, I remember! Cerebus, was it?"
Elric's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"You’ve seen it?" he felt panic pile in his gut. Was he indeed ready to talk about this?
"Yeah. Sonja and I found it by accident. We barely made it through like five episodes. The guy who made that series doesn't seem like he has all his marbles. Sonja was really annoyed with how they treated women."
Conan then laughed an ironic laugh, more directed at himself. "To hear now that my roommate of 3 years was one of the stars of that program... And I thought nothing could surprise me anymore."
Jirel was slightly more suspicious of all this still "Wait a second. Don't you have a degree in philosophy? When did you become an actor?"
"That's one of the advantages of having a father as important as yours. You could say you've been to the moon without even looking out the window, and they’ll find a way to make it happen. Crazy."
The reactions of his companions amused him. He sometimes liked to talk about his family life to make people gape at him like that. He didn't even know why he found it funny to scare people.
"Don't look so surprised. Why do you think I ran away from home? Stubborn, conceited, over-the-top pumpkin-heads who pull strings behind the scenes all the time, and call their sponsors to fix everything for them. Few of them are actually smart, it’s all corruption. I wanted nothing more to do with that business."
When he saw that Conan and Jirel had nothing to add to that, he sighed "But back to the topic. I told my father once, jokingly, that acting seemed like a good career path, and the very next week he was making calls, and two weeks later, he told me to go to drama school to get my degree. I was so embarrassed. All the kids looked at me like I was the bottom of the bottom, just a nepo-kid my dad had arranged everything for. Which I guess I was, considering I could have refused. But I didn't. It seemed like that was my father’s plan, too, because within the next six months I had a couple of not-so-small roles in theater that were also arranged, of course."
"I dread to even ask if things went well." Jirel cackled, finding her words back.
"Well, not to toot my own horn, but I can say that I was more than able to make up for this deception, because they actually told me that I was a good actor. At least for the theater, where I didn't have to worry about the wider world seeing my embarrassment."
"So your dad suddenly started to love you enough to the point that he arranged for you to become an actor within six months?" Conan asked, skeptically.
"I don't know what was going through my father's mind at the time. He was already an old goat, so maybe his strings were already tangled. Or maybe he just wanted to keep me out of the house. Or it was an elaborate plan to humiliate me. Who knows. I certainly can't ask him now." Elric didn't go to his father's funeral when his cousins had managed to somehow find his number to let him know.
"What kind of roles had they offered you? You don't seem like someone who could play those really demanding roles."
"Well, I'm not a stuntman, of course. But since it was a theater, the longest performance usually lasted up to three and a half hours. They took in account my health issues, as well. And the pay was solid. I can comfortably say I was earning my own money, and didn’t have to rely on my father or the company. It was probably around that time I bought my first flat with…"
He paused, clearing his throat. Jirel wasn't in with the loop yet, so Conan immediately swooped in to help Elric's stumble out.
"And what roles did you do? Were you a background character? A prop on stage? The main character?" he asked, with some humour to it.
"Close. I mostly played villains. Usually the undead ones. I figure I was making it easy with the makeup preps." Elric answered with equal amount of humour.
"Well, you certainly have the potential for a villain, that’s true." Jirel added. Elric almost looked indignant.
"It's not my fault that my genetics are such a pain in the ass and make me look like a ghost. But I was lucky enough to be the deuteragonist in an experimental play. We tried to bring sword and sorcery to the stage, and I played an antihero wizard who teams up with a barbarian to stop the wizard's evil ancestor from rising from the dead."
"So something like you two?" Jirel pointed her index finger between Conan and Elric with some private irony, who both needed a second to react to this.
Conan reacted first, bending over with laughter, but it was more of a dismissive laughter. Even Elric had to cover his mouth to hide his amusement, though even he considered that rather silly.
"I'm glad I never saw that play. The idea of being a barbarian and putting up with you blabbering and philosophizing would drive me to my grave." Conan straightened up, wiping a tear that emerged from all that laughter. He was glad it didn't cause him to choke. Dying of laughter wasn't on his to do list for the week.
"The play was a miraculous success, much to all of our surprises." Elric continued "So much so that a director was present at one of the premieres. And after the performance, he offered me a drink, a pill, and a role in Cerebus, which was already in production."
"You didn’t count on getting that famous then?" Jirel mocked. Elric seemed not to have paid attention to it.
"I had no idea what the show was about, but when he told me he wanted me to essentially play the character I was in the play, it didn't seem like a bad decision. He was still paying me more than the theater per episode." he paused as he prepared himself mentally to speak on
"You can imagine how pissed I was when I actually saw what was in my script. The bastard turned my role into a fucking parody." his eyebrows were furrowed, though his pouting was undeniably ridiculous.
"Oh, did he now?" Conan barked out a laugh, slamming his fist onto the table, making his cup he left there shake.
"He made me talk nonstop, and I sounded like that abominable rooster Foghorn Leghorn from Looney Toons."
He stopped talking as it registered to him that his two friends were laughing at him for real now.
"What's so funny?" he asked, completely serious, which only spurred the two to laugh more.
"Oh, wait I think I actually saw one episode with you in it!" Conan barely managed to speak "That one episode where you and Cerebus went to that castle in the desert, and you showed up with those rackets on your feet, singing that song with that stupid smile on your face. It was hysterical! It was just like you!"
Elric did not appreciate that.
"What's wrong with you? I don't talk like that!"
"I don’t talk, I say, I don't talk like that!" Conan said it with an accent, and Jirel clapped her hands in amusement. Elric huffed, indignant.
"I'll continue when you're done."
He let them get it out of their system, which took too long for his liking. After like 10 minutes of irritating voices and references, Jirel took a deep breath, finally done with her laughing fit.
"And what made you quit?" she asked, still out of breath.
"The better question is what didn’t." Elric's brow darkened. This part was always painful to think about "The staff was awful, especially towards women. The director in particular was a disgusting pig. He would call girls my age to come to his office, and make them dress quite skimpily so he could openly gawk at them."
Conan and Jirel's amusement died out the more Elric went on. And done he was not.
"Keep in mind that I was a teenager at the time. Few of us were actually of legal age. He was a sick bastard. And the actor who played Cerebus wasn't any better. He was constantly drinking on the job and yelling at everyone. We were all advised to tread lightly, and barely even speak to him if not on set. Though that certainly didn't help much. He punched me in the face with a glass bottle once when we were filming because I was 'too irritating', as if I was in control of what my character's lines would be." he laughed bitterly at his own pain.
"We had to pause filming that episode because I was swollen for almost five days. And of course, I was deemed at fault for the delay. My father wouldn't even listen when I told him about all this. He just pointed out to me that 'I shouldn't have taken the role', or that I should 'quit if I wasn't ready for how the real world would treat me.'"
Jirel was horrified at these statements "These were serious matters. Like, life threatening. Didn't anyone report anything? You just let them continue to treat you and the other actresses like this?"
Elric gripped his pale arms tightly "I did protest once, and the director told me that if that's how I felt, I could wear thongs in place of the women I spoke up for, since I'm such a cunt of a man." he pressed his nails into his arms to the point he almost drew blood. Conan had to lean forward and lightly squeeze Elric's arm, making the albino let go.
"And to make matters worse, that gave him the 'hilarious' idea to introduce my character as a transgender whore out of nowhere in the next episode. I was lucky enough to be allowed to voice my opinion in what outfit I was to appear. It was so humiliating. Most of my male costars were extremely rude to me during and after the shooting of that episode." he glanced away, a glimmer shining in his eye. He blinked to wash it away.
"After that, I said 'enough'. I quit without a second thought. There was no money to make me sell my soul and integrity to those sadistic shits."
Jirel fell silent. She had nothing else to say to this. She knew all to well how badly women were treated in most workspaces, but to make a man suffer like this just because he dared to speak up to other men? It was sick. The urge to break some necks was bubbling inside her.
"One silver lining in all this was that my departure was the pebble that started the avalanche, and after that, more people started coming forward and resigning. The series collapsed within half a year and they had to stop filming. It was never finished." Elric finished, that final sentence bringing some calm to him.
For a long while Elric just sat, cross legged, head bent, and his eyes closed in introspection. The only sound was the music still on autoplay, now reaching back to British space rock, his favorite genre. He shook his head, making his huge, stylized hair bounce. He opened his eyes, any trace of his melancholy gone, as if with a snap of finger.
"So, that's the story of my short acting career." he said, sardonically. The other two were still quiet. Still processing all this.
"I almost don't believe you. This is all too weird to be true." Conan said at last, his head cocked to the side, unsure.
"Honestly, I wouldn't mind if you didn’t. I don't want to believe all this happened to me either." Elric sighed, relieved this story was at least over.
"Okay, guys, back to our game! We need more things to laugh about!" Jirel shouted out, pointing her hand around "Conan, bring over that absinthe, pour some, we've gone none left! Right! Never have I ever had my song used in a film!"
Elric took another swig. Conan palmed his forehead. Jirel actually choked this time.
Epilogue:
Elric inspected the answering machine, the bright red light indicating someone had called and been unsuccessful in reaching them. He played the recorded message.
You have one new message.
Beep*
Hey, hello, is this Elric Silverson? I'm calling from Aardvark Productions. I'm sure you've heard, but in case you haven't, we finally have gotten the approval to continue filming Cerebus! I've been told to contact all the actors who starred, and I need to see if you're willing to do a reprise of Elrod for the 10th anniversary special? Please get back to me as soon as possible if you're up for it. The number to call back is-
“How did you get my number, you piece of shit?” Elric swore under his breath, as he pressed another button.
Message deleted.