Work Text:
Connor waits a few hours first.
He lets the sudden quiet after the Zoom call swallow the air in his bedroom. The silence feels earned and dangerous in that way it always does when he knows he's probably getting his hopes up too high but he can't help it. He sits in it for an hour, definitely not imagining what they might be saying about him. Leaves his phone face-down on his desk for a bit for good measure, as if distance alone might prove something about his character. It doesn't last.
Then he has his one-on-one with the team. Keeps his voice level as they run through the line up—observations analytical, but enthusiastic enough that he’s not overstating the importance of his opinion. He speaks in positives, says things like “strong showing,” and “good physicality,” expands carefully on vaguer comments about “good adjustments” that certain candidates made and doesn’t hand out critiques unless prompted. Mostly, he sits there delivering feedback like a professional, like he isn’t replaying the way the last candidate's mouth curved when he smiled back at him through the screen.
Which of course, only makes it so he's a hyper aware of how high his own voice gets when he finally admits, almost accidentally, “Yeah, the other guy was good—there’s something about Hudson that just felt very easy, though.”
The whole team laughs at that, which must be a good thing, though Connor feels a little like there might be a joke he's missing. Even Jacob gives more than a polite chuckle, visible despite his muted mic. Connor catches a full glimpse of his smile. The knowing tilt of it.
After that, he FaceTimes his mom. Lets her talk. Does what he can to keep her excitement at bay when he says something maybe a touch too positive about how the read went. She tells him that optimism is her part time job, then politely changes the subject by asking him if he's eating enough. When she puts him on pause to send an email, he doesn’t even pretend not to reach for his laptop.
It’s 10 PM when he finally decides he's allowed to send the message—post debrief with Bailey. Obviously. He's not that crazy...
...He calls her just to make sure though, even though she literally just left his apartment to the point that he can hear her voice echoing in the stairwell.
"I'm not crazy, right?"
She sighs at him. "Of course not, you're just a person who knows what he wants."
Connor thanks her and parrots another quick okloveyoubye before he hangs up. Privately, he thinks it might be more likely that it’s the opposite. Wouldn’t real awareness bring restraint, and wouldn't restraint mean not sending anything at all, or at least waiting longer to do so? Wouldn’t that mean letting it go? Connor thinks the truth is simpler: he coached himself out of publicly demonstrating shame years ago. Once you decide embarrassment is optional, most doors start to look unlocked.
He thinks about how Hudson's eyes had widened, just slightly, when Connor asked for his Instagram.
Then he types:
< Nice job today, hope to see you next round :) lmk if you ever find yourself in LA
He stares at it for a full minute before hitting send. Watches it appear in the chat like something fragile he’s just thrown across a room.
Connor expects at least a day’s buffer. It's only polite. Time to pretend he forgot he sent it.
Instead, the “delivered” tag switches to “read” almost immediately.
“Fuck,” he whispers to himself when the typing indicator appears.
He swipes out of the chat instantly. Absolutely not. He refuses to be the guy sitting there watching someone type. Still, just a few seconds later: the reply is split into two messages. Both short enough to fit entirely in the preview banner at the top of his screen.
now - hudsonwilliamsofffff
< yeah ofc man
< same if you ever find yourself in vancouver :)
That’s it. Casual. Friendly.
Never mind that Connor is already scrolling through Hudson’s Instagram when the notification slides down. Seventh time today.
He let himself do it the first time while “meditating” after the Zoom. Phone face-up on his thigh, eyes closed just long enough to pretend he's somewhat disciplined. Then he’d opened it again in another tab during the team call, staring at that strong nose and sharper jaw while discussion tipped toward the less-interesting candidates. When his mom put him on pause, he backtracked through the grid again. By the time Bailey arrived, he had posts bookmarked, ready to present like evidence.
He knows too much now.
There’s a cat—recurring cameo in stories, draped across window sills, the back of the couch, occasionally Hudson’s chest. There’s a girlfriend, too. A consistent silhouette, pretty smile appearing in the background of photo dumps. Not always centered, but always present. Connor noted the wardrobe evolution across the grid, too. Looks like someone with taste intervened. Likely her.
There’s also a tattoo. Then another. And some more. He zooms in on one photo longer than he probably needs to. Nice chest. Defined but not overly showy. All the gym photos are aggressively heterosexual in their framing in Connor's opinion—angled to show off but never outright posing.
“Straight-boy modesty,” he’d said to Bailey, flashing the last photo Hudson posted to his story—mirror selfie. Chunky headphones resting at his neck, a dark trail of sweat soaking through his singlet, marking the dip between his pecs.
She’d responded with a solemn shake of her head. “This is deeply bisexual—just modestly slutty.”
Oxymoron aside, aesthetically, Hudson looks clean. Regular. The kind of guy who captions things with inside jokes no one else can decode. His music choices aren’t bad, not terribly basic. There’s a birthday post for his mom with a soft, earnest caption; a sun-stained childhood photo of him upside down in a handstand while a woman holds his feet, their smiles matching. Then clip after clip of festivals—music and film, behind the scenes of student sets, camera monitors glowing in dark rooms, friends with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, a steady stream of costume makeup and half-finished transformations.
Connor has built an entire profile for this guy out of inference and projection. He knows there’s a community around him, a passion, a body he’s…careful with.
Okay, Connor knows the guy is hot. Objectively. Perhaps rather irritatingly. Home-grown hot.
What he doesn’t really know is how he’s supposed to play this. For all the pinching and zooming in, he doesn’t actually know anything about the guy—and yet he feels this sharp urgency to change that. He just doesn’t know how to do it without looking… unhinged. Desperate. Or, worse, overtly horny—which he isn't!
He can already picture Bailey’s raised eyebrows angled at him.
Connor stares at the preview in his direct messages, thumb hovering over the little blue notification as he tries to calculate how close to his chest he should hold the next card—if he should hold it at all.
He enters the chat and types:
< If I find myself in Vancouver?
He hits send before he can think better of it.
The banner flips to read almost immediately, again. Which means no window to edit, no grace period for regret. He registers, a beat too late, that his response sounds kinda… really bitchy. Defensive, maybe? Connor worries he's already fucked it up by challenging the premise instead of just playing along.
He’s never been to Vancouver, but he’s heard good things. Google Images gave him a sunlit skyline pressed against the ocean, green islands scattered offshore, marinas and glass towers and a high cost of living. That one guy he met at post-show drinks comes back to him—the chronic name-dropper who claimed he worked on Fifty Shades of Grey and wouldn’t shut up about what a nightmare the leads were—that was filmed in Vancouver, wasn’t it? “Hollywood North.”
It’s not impossible that Connor could end up there. Projects shoot everywhere now, and Canada is cheap. Though as far as he can tell, Hudson is actually from there. His IMDb is brief—short list of titles Connor doesn’t recognize, banners blank, headshot slightly outdated.
Hudson taking longer to respond gives him ample time to overthink it. Connor's insulted him now, hasn't he. He thinks about double texting. Thinks about softening it with a joke, or maybe pretending it was playful all along. But he leaves it. Maybe if he doesn’t acknowledge being an asshole, Hudson won’t clock it. Or maybe he’s already fumbled it—maybe if they both make it to the next round of callbacks, whatever natural magic sparked on Zoom will have evaporated under the weight of Connor’s ego.
Finally:
< haha guess it’s less likely for you to find a cool project out here than me down there
A laugh slips out of Connor, and he instinctively tries to contain it like someone might hear—even though he’s alone in his bedroom. Not like this guy can see him flush through a screen. Not unless Connor decides to let him.
Connor recognizes the touché. Cooler projects in LA, but Hudson's the one more likely to book. It’s a smoother recup than he expected of him. Cockier, too.
Hudson had seemed so sweet. Almost shy. Sure, there was that wide, full-charmer smile—straight white teeth, the boyish tilt of his head—but on the call he’d been careful, always waiting for people to finish speaking before using the raised-hand feature, like they were in an online class or something.
And then he started reading as Shane, and the shift in his demeanour—how he'd softened and steeled at the same time. You feel it too, don’t you, delivered like a fact rather than a question mark like the script said. Hudson’s voice a sturdy structure with hairline fractures running through it, a hard shell threatening to split under the weight of an almost-love confession.
Connor finds himself imagining the blocking all over again, mapping out the slow approach across a cramped hotel room in his mind. He wonders how that close to pleading look on Hudson's face would look on set, perched on the edge of the mattress. Wonders if he'll be the one to act across from Hudson (because Hudson will book this. Connor is sure of it.)
Connor's phone buzzes in his hand twice in quick succession. He counts to sixty before lifting the screen to his face.
1 min ago - hudsonwilliamsofffff
< i'm glad you actually msged btw you were really good
< i probably shouldn't say buuut you were my favourite haha