Chapter Text
The first impacts of his Colt’s newly restored career…
…Hurt.
Huh, he couldn't help but think. Little anticlimactic.
It always hurt. It was his dream career, and it was - supposedly was - what he was good at. One of few things he was good at, or at least one of few things he could be good at while also making enough money for the occasional grocery splurge. It was his dream career, and he had once thought he had it down to a science. His own bodily awareness had long since been honed into his own mental map of danger versus safe, delineated along borders of protruding bones and critical joints. Each and every motion, calculated down to wrists and twitching fingers, was a study in energy dispersion; potentiality and kinetics and how to roll and twist just right for the audience to cringe in sympathetic pain, but for him to still stagger back up for the next shot. And the shot after that.
The framework he'd built himself was as much instinct as it was studied, practiced, and endlessly reasserted; a science. It was foundational enough to his very being that even once his day-to-day life dwindled into little more than getting in and out of strangers cars, for months, he still couldn't turn off the ever-present signaling in his brain: pull from the shoulder, follow through with a bend in elbow and wrist, angle hips no more than 45° while turning, raise right leg through the quad first and plant into the heel before shifting weight - ...to get into a fucking car.
It was enough to drive a man insane. No matter how many Gail's in the world insisted "stunt work was his passion," it would still piss him off, because no faux-sympathetic words could ever state the obvious any louder than his own damn brain. You could take the man out of stunting, he supposed. Violently, over the course of 150 feet. But you couldn't take stunting out of the man. Try as he had.
And here he was again. An eighteen month journey to the same damn place. He still wasn't sure if that was a victory or a failure, but the cold disappointment in Jody's eyes upon his return surely didn't lift his spirits regarding his prodigal return. A record-breaking car roll didn't seem to miraculously shift her entire outlook on life and him as a person, either, but that was probably fair.
Here he was again. Adrenaline flooded every sense, the fire gel sat heavy and cold on his skin with only a faint tingle where heat was already burning towards oversensitive nerves, and his racing thoughts screamed the million moving parts to keep track of; run, don't breathe, just shift your shoulders, knees bent, brace for the pull but don't tense and don't breathe, don't even gasp - and for once, it was all warranted, it was all welcome. It was hardly a wild stunt. But even despite Jody's freezing gaze from the director's chair... Still, it was exactly where he wanted to be. He ran straight into the pyrotechnics and his harness flung him backward with a vicious yank, and his arms and legs flung forward from the strength of it, and in the adrenaline-slowed seconds of airtime he could look ahead to see the flames flickering away from him, and he wrenched his shoulders in a theoretically realistic simulation of a wrestle against sudden forces flinging you backwards, and he didn't breathe, and the boulder was coming, and he shifted minutely so he would contact solely against his left lat where he could then roll with the force all the way down to his quads and not, not, against his spine, not at any instant, and then there was pain.
Before he could process where it had come from, he was on the floor with a second, milder impact. And there was that trained instinct: even as all the air left his lungs in a grunt, even as he momentarily lost all sense of what he was doing for favor of the basic biological urge to address the sudden violence and the accompanying wave of pain...
Still, he didn't dare breathe.
He was good at his job.
Thankfully, the pain dulled quickly. He'd executed the stunt exactly as planned, and although his body was now begging him to breathe, he knew it had looked good. He was still on fire, and the contact against the boulder had certainly scraped some of the gel from his back, but the quickly rising feeling of hot, hot, burning was accompanied by only slightly more than his normal level of pain. No new damage accrued. And as he laid obediently facedown in the dirt, halfway sprawled in the exact position he'd bounced into, waiting for the safety crew to finally extinguish him, he thought:
Little anticlimactic.
So, the first impact hurt. Because they always, always did. Even as practiced as Colt was, no human could withstand a car roll without hurting. But it hurt in a familiar, almost satisfying way: A muscle-deep soreness indicative of a successful stunt; a job well done. It was bearable, and the past year and a half had seen Colt through more than enough unbearable pain for him to relish the difference.
The first take of the boulder shot hurt, too. It sent a warning flare down his spine, but that was to be expected. Jumping hurt his spine. Getting in and out of cars hurt his spine. Angling his body hurt. Moving hurt. Yes, getting set on fire, yanked back by a harness fully into the air to impact a literal rock at full velocity, then bounce into the dirt, all for a seconds long, quite possibly unnecessary shot in Metalstorm... Yes, that hurt his spine. And it was bearable. He sat up, raising his thumb in the same smooth motion.
The second take hurt. It was mediated by the thrill of talking to Jody, even through her incredibly thinly-veiled, incredibly public metaphors about her feelings and their history. Perhaps that context even heightened the thrill. Despite her initial rejection, here she was talking about him. To him. She was thinking about him, and she had been thinking about him and... shit, was she making a movie about him? About them?
There had been no notes on his execution; the retake was only due to the camerawork. So he ran with the same vigor, and got exploded and launched back with equally calculated flailing, and he slammed into the wall and involuntarily exclaimed and bounced into the sand all with the same breathlessness. The safety crew hurriedly extinguished him, and he shot off his signal, still solidly sprawled on the ground.
He sat up dutifully moments later, successfully disregarding the growing tingle somewhere in his lower back. It was only as Jody began to speak that an unbidden memory struck him.
He'd never fully recalled the aftermath of his accident; little more than lights and bleary sensations remained of whatever consciousness he'd supposedly had. However, Jody had recounted some of his actions to him. It was her words which abruptly occurred to him, from one of the last times they'd spoken face-to-face. (One of the last times he'd allowed her to.)
Apparently, he'd offered up a thumbs up halfway up the ramp to the ambulance, despite massive head trauma and four fractures down his spine.
In the present, Colt dumbly lowered his hand, and tuned back into Jody's explanation of Aliena's 'revenge bod'.
The third time, he spun in the air as he was launched. Had he spun the first two times? He couldn't remember. He accommodated appropriately, aiming to roll solidly against his right lat this time - all the better, his left shoulder was really starting to protest. When he hit the rock, the feeling of carefully distributing his kinetic energy may as well have been running face first into a brick wall, and for a split second, his world exploded white. He didn't hear himself scream. Had he? Perhaps not, because the safety crew approached no more frantically than usual. Were people talking to him? Were they saying anything? His ears might have been ringing.
Once his mind caught up to him, where he'd collapsed in the dirt, it faded back into bearable. His lats, both shoulders, his neck, his legs, his hips - they all ached. Job well done. Successful stuntwork.
He hesitated to inhale, unsure of whether he was fully extinguished: His back felt on fire long after the flames supposedly died.
Bearable. Not so much ignorable. His thumb had already gone up. When he made no motion to right himself, Dan leaned in to do it for him, physically urging him up while a stunt technician mirrored the action on his other side.
His hearing returned before he could fully acknowledge its absence. If his lack of contribution in propping himself up against the boulder was at all abnormal, nobody had mentioned it. Dan was looking at him consideringly, the other tech was fiddling with a water bottle, and a third was rummaging around for a towel. Mere meters away, Jody was propped haughtily in her director's chair, under what must be the blissful shade of a tarp. He gathered enough air to catch up with reality, to talk back, to greedily chug some water, and even to meet her challenges with something possibly approaching vulnerability (albeit still through the lens of space cowboy role-play), even despite the rapt audience watching them like a tennis match.
It was invigorating. It maybe felt a little bit like having a life again. It maybe felt like having something to care about.
And his back really, really hurt.
The panic over the feeling would certainly come later. The panic for what it meant for his career, that in this trial run of a potential continuation - this rush he'd almost let himself feel invested in, feel solace in - he couldn't handle four stunts. At least not without his back protesting loud enough that he feared his legs might just crumple beneath him. It would certainly be a self-hating, self-flaggelating breakdown like no other: He was again faced with an ultimatum over which life was worth pursuing. The life that felt like nothing, or the life that felt like passion, sparks, satisfaction, and like someone was systematically digging gouges down each vertebrae with a railroad spike.
But in that moment, sweating in the sun, propped up against a boulder and waving off the tech's efforts to reapply more burn gel, with no less than 80% of his mind reminding him of the pain in his body, it was all he could do to listen and respond with some coherence. His meltdown could wait. She couldn't.
"One more time?" She asserted with faux nonchalance. As if her words were a request, and not a command.
Was she...
"I'd love another chance."
She stalked backwards, eyes fixed on him with more intrigue than she'd shown him all day. He'd impressed her. And he wished she could look at him that way forever. His vision went blurry and grayish when he stood, the sensation less white-hot and more... overwhelming. Like his nervous system had simply had enough, and had lost interest in functioning quite right.
Don't fall. He could think little else. Don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall.
He watched his feet as they slowly, painstakingly came back into focus, the summer sun seeming to brighten as the pressure behind his eyes abated. He was vaguely aware of Dan's hand suddenly on his shoulder. He was leaning back fully against the boulder. He wasn't sure if he would've been able to get up without it. Dan said something. He lifted his gaze toward Jody, instead.
She was perched in her little chair once more, megaphone at her side, speaking with a camerawoman under the tarp. Crew bustled here and there, shuffling heavily costumed extras into position. To Colt, they all just looked like they were orbiting her; a brighter star than even the sun currently baking them. She was where she belonged. Was it wrong to still feel so proud of her, despite how he'd deserted her? Was he delirious? Dan was still speaking.
"...nswer me, buddy."
"Sorry, yeah, yeah. All set." Thumbs up. Dan narrowed his eyes. And a set coordinator promptly swooped in to usher Colt into place, sweeping him away in his own part of a careful dance of extras and equipment and technicians and cameramen. Dan disappeared behind him, and Colt praised God that his legs held firm without the support of the boulder that would likely rock - hah - his shit within the next 60 seconds.
By the time he was in position, he couldn't quite remember how to stand. Were his shoulders supposed to sit so far back? Should his pelvis be tilting as far forward as it was? His borderline neurotic somatic awareness seemed to have vanished in an instant, as everything in his torso was beginning to feel ever-so-slightly... wrong.
Oh, thought Colt. This is a bad idea.
"Okay, light him up!"
To any outside viewer, Scene 23A Take 4 looked no different than the prior three. They were all equally cringe-inducing stunts, featuring the type of impact that should probably crack a bone or two; the type Jody and every collaborator on her production had long since grown accustomed to. She'd watched Colt take hits and get right back up far too many times in her career for a minor shot such as this to even register as alarming.
If there were alarm bells ringing in her brain when Colt lingered progressively longer in the dirt, when he hesitated to stand, when he let himself be whisked mindlessly about by technicians with an uncharacteristic malleability... it was still nowhere near blatant enough to overrule her righteous indignation, which was now taking the form of a spiel eighteen months, eleven first dates, and thirteen minor breakdowns in the making. Highly inconspicuous and shadowed by cinematic allegory, of course. (No, everyone in earshot knew exactly what she was talking about. Neither the premise of Metalstorm nor its personal inspirations were exactly "subtle". She just wanted to watch him squirm at the public confrontation.)
The only differences between shots she could possibly explain to an onlooker were the flaws she voiced: a bump in the camera movement, a buzz on the screen... and whatever bullshit she would come up with if pressed further on the third reshoot. Reasons enough to prolong the shoot.
This was wrong of her.
If she let herself dwell on it too long, the unprofessionalism of her petty production maneuver might actually give her pause. But she wasn't dwelling on it. Unprofessionalism was hardly the sort of thing Colt would dwell on, now was it? So why should she? She'd earned more than the right to stoop to his level. This is lower than his level, objected a promptly ignored thought. He wouldn't hurt you, or anyone. Not like this.
He already had hurt her, she reminded herself, louder.
No studio would ever take her on again if they caught wind of her blatant abuse of a crew member.
Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. This isn't abuse. This is his job. It's no different from any other job.
You know that's not true.
Finally, her petty cruelty had indeed given her pause, in the shape of a sudden sinking feeling. But the shot was already called, the stuntman at the heart of her dilemma was barely visible through the assembling hoard of alien extras, and truthfully, she probably wouldn't have called it off if she'd had the time. Her mind was getting ahead of her; this was not about productions or professionalism or abuse of a crew member, this was personal. And maybe Colt should take one possibly unnecessary hit, swaddled in burn gel and protective gear, as a part of his own job that she'd never invited him to do, if it meant he might finally grasp one fraction of how badly he hurt her.
"Okay, light him up!"
The crowd had dispersed, prepared to dash forward in her carefully choreographed simulation of battle. She could see through to Colt, and even through his sunglasses, he was clearly looking directly at her.
She didn't know what he was thinking. She reminded herself that she didn't want to know, and she never needed to again. Even as flames licked up the sides of his face, he just kept looking at her.
"Action!" she shouted.
He'd handled every stunt she'd ever shot with little more than a grunt and a thumbs up.
He started running, and the pyrotechnics blew in his face.
Every stunt, except
The harness yanked him back and into the air, where he spun not once but twice, and Jody's blood went cold before he even hit the rock.
The sound of his screaming had never left her. No matter how many times she ranted and shouted and cried in her anger, no matter how many therapy sessions she derailed, no matter how many mediocre hook-ups she tolerated, no matter how much she missed him or hated him or wondered if she might have loved him, the sound of him screaming could still wake her up from the dead of sleep.
He didn't scream, but he might as well have. 23A Take 4 looked perfectly ordinary; she couldn't ascribe her horror to anything as obvious as a camera bump or a buzz or a scream. Perhaps her subconscious caught a glimpse of a contorted face before she could even register it. Perhaps she somehow caught the minute way his whole body spasmed as he crumpled to the earth.
"Cut!"
The stunt had been completed for mere seconds, but still, he hadn't raised his stupid thumb yet, why hadn't he,
The stunt techs rushed forward with the extinguisher, but for the first time Jody had ever seen, they were too late.
Colt was already coughing, hacking, and even from her distance she could hear his strangled gasps for air as he was apparently trying to breathe, and surely getting nothing but fire and smoke.
She meant to dismiss any non-critical personnel, but she was already running, and now she could see the way he convulsed as each cough wracked his body. Wracked his spine, added the evil part of her mind.
"Hey buddy, you're alright there, you're all clear," Dan assured, a hand firmly planted against Colt's thankfully extinguished shoulder, where he was still sprawled on the ground, and as Jody fell to her knees beside him she could see his hands digging into the sand, and his legs twitching erratically as he struggled to expel the fumes in his lungs. It came out in puffs of smoke.
She was still holding her megaphone. She spoke on autopilot.
"Stunts, Medical, stay on hand. Everyone else, hit the tents." She didn't wait for reactions. She dropped the megaphone and turned to see Dan's hands on both of Colt's shoulders, helping to roll him to his side. His coughing had largely abated into strained gasping, and when his face was finally angled toward her, she noticed his sunglasses sitting lopsided. His eyes were screwed shut.
Jody was far too frantic to feel any sort of rom-com electricity when they touched for the first time in so many months. She just reached out, unconsciously, with an additional supportive hand on his side as Dan heaved him upright. Colt, however, cracked open an eye at the moment of her touch and
Oh. Oh no.
It was his first fucking day back.
Jody was the worst person on the planet.
No tears had fallen - Jody feared they might have an entirely different caliber of emergency on their hands if she hurt him bad enough to break even that last wall - but his eyes were glimmering. She was staring into an expression of genuine agony, and she had caused it.
She could still hear the crunch. She had only later learned it was his spine.
What the fuck was she thinking. What was wrong with her. How could she ever have...
"C'mon man, speak up. What's going on, what do we need? Thumbs up? We've got medical ready to go, just tell me what's going on."
The answering thumbs up vanished almost as soon as it appeared, in favor of silently clutching at the boulder he'd been propped back up against. Jody knew none of them believed it for a second.
But Colt had finally stopped coughing, and being upright seemed to help him catch his breath. Belatedly, Jody realized his other hand was fisted in Dan's sleeve like a lifeline, and Jody kind of wanted to sink into the sand and disappear forever.
She should say something. She had nothing to say.
The horror of the scene had only barely eased, but every bit of it to wash away was replaced with complete and utter disgust in herself.
"Okay, good, but I'm gonna need a word or two. Can you speak?" God bless Dan for picking up her abundant slack.
"Mphhgh," Colt ground out through clenched teeth, "All good. Fuck. S-- ffffuck. Sorry." He managed to raise a visibly shaking hand, and promptly righted his sunglasses until his eyes were concealed once more.
"You're all good. What happened there? Are you injured, or did the fire just do you dirty?" It seemed slightly misleading to Jody to even offer the choice of being uninjured, while Colt's legs were still actively twitching, heels digging through the sand as if seeking traction.
"No- no- ahh, not injured. Nothing new. Just pain, just-- kkhh-- startled me."
Nothing new.
The only person dumber than Colt for coming back to work was Jody, who had somehow decided to pointedly torture the guy with a recent history of catastrophic spinal injury. Because she was pissed, and petty, and she could. Maybe the vengeful part of her thought he deserved to hurt a bit, given how badly he'd hurt her. Maybe she wanted him to feel a little betrayed and abandoned and naïve and stupid and generally like dirt for having swooned for some swaggering playboy who didn't actually give a fuck.
She hadn't ever wanted him hurt like this.
"I'm--" when she spoke, her voice came out hoarse. Colt turned toward her fast enough to send himself into what looked like a mild convulsion, wrenching Dan's sleeve forward as he barely curled in on himself with a sharp gasp. Her words left her as soon as they came.
In the silence to follow, tense and pained and fearful, Jody found herself acutely grateful for the medical team's distance. They were probably only a handful of meters away, but they had the respect to halfway hide behind the boulder, as if to allot the trio privacy to evaluate the scene.
Colt, eventually, was the first to break the silence, as he mechanically untensed his body in groups from his shoulders down, releasing his grip on Dan. It was a maneuver he probably thought looked halfway natural, and not like the calculations of an actor with altogether too much somatic awareness, doing his best to perform unharmed the way he so often performed the opposite. Jody was hit with a wave of frustration, as she knew she was witnessing the exact sort of tendencies that had torn them apart. And simultaneously, she felt so overwhelmed with the urge to comfort him, and to support him, and to tell him he was allowed to feel anything without hiding it behind a thousand walls of manufactured toughness. The whole whirlwind of emotion in her head would surely have brought her to her knees, were she not already there.
"I don't need... the med tent. I might need a couple hours until the next shoot."
'A couple hours'. She'd shoot him next, is what she'd do.
Dan looked to be considering this proposition with an expertise Jody lacked.
"If you can stand, we can try to go to your trailer. If you can't, you're going to medical."
"Fair enough."
Colt made to move, then hesitated for a touch too long. This seemed to be the final straw in Dan's professional composure.
"Fuck, Colt..." he exhaled. Colt bristled, planted one hand on the ground, another on the rock, and forced himself upright.
Before Jody could even stand to match him, he'd already nearly collapsed, barely pivoting in time to catch himself with two arms against the rockface. If the abrupt motion hurt, he didn't make a single sound to show it.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Colt righted. He stood facing them, jaw set, arms at his sides, shoulders only a touch too rigid.
When Jody spoke, her voice was tight.
"We can take my car."