Chapter Text
The set of “Man of Iron” is filled with the distinct smell of gunpowder and Bath and Body Works ‘Japanese Cherry Blossom’.
Colt Seavers was extremely familiar with both scents. The former because he’s a stuntman, and there’s nothing action films love more than explosions, and the latter because he’s Tom Ryder’s co-worker, and there’s nothing that Tom loves more than women.
Colt had been working alongside the actor for just over a year— Tom was relatively new to the industry, his first film releasing just two years ago. Of course, Tom Ryder being Tom Ryder, it was a hit, and he’d quickly rose to being one of the most popular action stars on the planet.
Colt had a hand in that, which he was starting to regret. He’d been working as a stuntman for the actor, and offered up some of his connections— the names and numbers of a few different producers and casting directors he’d worked with. They all loved Tom, of course, because he was a pretentious asshole and unfortunately talented— a director's wet dream, really, and Colt had since become the man’s primary stuntman.
The pay was good, but it wasn’t quite worth the amount of time he had to spend around Tom.
Anyways, back to Colt’s point. The man had been dragging around some poor production assistant for the last week or so of filming. She was pretty, Colt could admit that, even if he had his own eyes set on a certain camera operator, but she also absolutely drenched herself in a perfume that followed her around in a thick cloud of Cherry Blossom, clinging to Tom, and as a result, the rest of the set.
The production assistant, a girl named Ardi, was sitting out on the doorstep of Tom’s trailer, typing furiously on her phone. She looked pissed.
“Hey,” Colt called out, jogging up to her, “Is Ryder in there? We need him on set.”
“You need him,” she corrects, glaring up at Colt, “I don’t need him anywhere. I don’t need him at all. Matter of fact, you can tell Tommy and his stupid fucking manager that I quit.”
She shoves her phone in her pocket and storms off, and Colt blinks, caught off guard. He hadn’t thought they’d last very long, but quitting her job over Tom felt like a bit of an overreaction. But… Tom could be a special kind of asshole.
He watches her make her way through the maze of trailers, briefly debating going after her. He ultimately decides against it, reaching up and knocking a fist on the tin door of Tom's trailer. There’s muffled noise inside: someone talking passionately. It sounds like Tom, but also… not? There’s an accent that definitely doesn’t belong to all-American Tom Ryder. It comes to an abrupt stop at Colt’s knocking.
“What?” Tom calls through the door, irritated.
“We’re running your scene now, man,” Colt leans his weight against the door, crossing his arms, “You gotta come.”
“I’m busy right now.” Whatever accent Colt thought he'd heard had vanished away.
Sighing, he tries for the door handle (unlocked, like always) and lets himself in. Tom is standing on the other side of the dimly lit trailer, and he shoots upright when he spots Colt, fumbling with the phone in his hands. He murmurs something under his breath that’s unintelligible, shoving the device deep in his pocket.
The actor is in costume, at least, and the brown wig atop his head is on mostly straight (Colt knows damn well the man isn't a natural blonde, anyway. Those roots aren't fooling anyone).
“Were you on a call?” Colt asks, looking around the sticky note covered trailer. He picks off the one closest to him. It reads “Is tuna really a fish?”
“I was… practicing my lines, dude.” Tom says, “You can’t just come in like that. A trailer is an actor’s sacred space.”
Colt looks down at the sticky note skeptically, then up to Tom, “Doesn’t look very sacred to me.”
Tom steps forward and snatches the note from his hand. “You’re just not in tune with the fucking… fuck.”
“The fucking fuck?”
“No, I—“ Tom pauses whatever he was going to say, shaking his head as he ran a hand through blonde hair, “Forget it. I’m not doing this. Let’s go.”
Colt is so confused he almost visibly reels back, watching Tom push past him to the door. Who pissed in his cereal?
“I know you might be in a mood about your…break-up with Ardi, but now’s not the time, man.“
“I’m not in a—“ Tom cuts himself off, grabbing a pair of sunglasses off a nearby prop table and jamming them onto his face, “Her and I… that’s whatever. I don’t care.”
“Right,” Colt says skeptically, before an idea comes to him, “Wait. Are you high right now?”
“No.”
“You’re not lying, right? Because there’s explosives on set and it’s a bad idea to—“
Tom turns around, a grin plastered across his face. He approaches Colt, wrapping an arm around the taller man, “No need to worry, Dad, I’m fine.”
Okay, well, screw Colt for trying to be nice, then! Something is strange about Tom today, though. He’s not sure what it is, and, honestly, he couldn’t care too much.
At the very start, when Tom was a brand new actor and Colt had more experience in the industry, he’d tried to help the younger man out— granted, he was only a few years off of Colt, but he’d gotten his start in acting much later than a lot of bigger names. Call it Colt’s ‘Older Brother Instinct’, or whatever. So Colt tried to offer help. Tom had accepted none of it. That’s fine. Not like Colt cares.
As they approach the clearing they’re using for filming today, a short woman with dirty blonde hair offers Colt a script, red scribbles all over it.
“We’re doing the escape,” she says, "Hope you’re ready to be shot at.”
The woman, Laur, is a stunt coordinator whom Colt knows of in passing— he's never worked with her before this film, but she seems… nice. She's good at her job, at least, even if she has a tendency to disappear whenever she's properly needed on set.
Colt takes the offered script with a rougish grin. “I’m always ready.”
Man of Iron was Hollywood’s latest attempt at commercializing superheroes. Or… commercializing them further than they already had been. A movie of Tony Stark’s origin story, funded by— well, Colt couldn't prove it, but he was pretty sure the billionaire had some part in getting this off the ground. Tom Ryder was playing the hero himself, and for some reason Colt couldn’t quite figure out, he was really pissed about this, and had been making it a problem for everyone else on set.
It’s what Colt can only assume to be his biggest paying role, and the script is much better than some of Ryder’s earlier films. He wasn't sure where the guy's problem was, and, honestly, at this point, he didn't care. Maybe it was the goatee? It was a hard look to pull off.
“I wanna start with the close-ups,” the director shouts over a megaphone, “Can we get makeup here?”
A man rushes over to Ryder, makeup brushes at the ready. The actor doesn't even attempt his usual routine of trying to swat away the makeup artist, claiming that he already 'looks perfect'. He just… looks annoyed and sits still. Colt narrows his eyes suspiciously.
“Do you know what’s going on with him?” Colt asks after a moment. The woman beside him snorts.
“No clue. Don’t know, don’t care. Have you tried Gail? She seems to know everything about him.”
Okay, well, Colt isn’t that worried about Tom. Whatever weird thing he has going on with his producer can stay as far away from Colt as humanely possible.
There's the crackle of a megaphone, and Colt hears the voice of the director from somewhere beside Tom, "Cameras ready, we're going from the top! We'll get Ryder suiting up, and then we're swapping to stunts for the fight sequence."
Colt is half certain the director doesn't know his name. He's just 'stunts', alongside the rest of the crew. The actors are the only ones worth remembering, after all. Colt's not bitter about that. Not at all. He's far more used to it than he should be. He turns to ask Laur a question, but the stunt coordinator has already vanished.
Awesome.
He beelines over to Jody, who's busy wiping the lens of her camera. The corner of her mouth is ticked down into a concentrated frown, and her blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She doesn't notice Colt approaching, or, if she does, she doesn't bother to look up.
"Hey," he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder lightly, "I think there's a problem with your camera."
That causes her to look up. She furrows her brow, looking between Colt and the device, "What are you talking about?"
"Well, for one, I'm not in it."
She blinks. Part of Jody looks like she wants to laugh, but a stronger part resists it. "That's horrible."
"Really?"
"Terrible. Awful pick-up line. Did you get that from Ryder?"
"You think I'm getting dating advice from Ryder?"
"With a line like that? Maybe. I'd believe it."
Colt furrows his brow, about to retaliate before he's cut off by the crackle of a megaphone. "Quiet on set, please!"
Jody shoots Colt an accusitory look, and he mimes zipping his lips shut.
Tom works through the scene with little complaint, and the stunts are nothing that Colt's not done before. They manage to wrap on time for once in their life. They even manage to finish today's scenes a miraculous three and a half minutes ahead of schedule— Colt can barely believe it. He's half-convinced he saw the director shed a tear. There's a throbbing pain in Colt's side from being thrown onto the ground six (or was it seven?) times, and he can tell he's going to be bruised tomorrow.
The crew clears off set quickly— it's the birthday of one of the sound technicians, so they've arranged a night out at a bar to celebrate. Colt doesn't know the guy too well, but he's not going to turn down a free drink (and it didn't hurt that Jody was also going) so he easily agreed.
Colt's gone off to duck into a bathroom and wash a layer of grime off his skin before he changes out of costume. The cold water is refreshing, but the dirt sticks to him in a way that's going to take at least three showers to remove completely. Well… at least it's not glitter. Colt was still finding pieces of blue glitter from filming "Failed Case" (one of the stranger action movies Colt'd done) around his apartment. He gives himself one last look over in the mirror to make sure he won't be walking around with a massive dirt stain on his cheek, and then heads out to grab his things and meet the others at the bar.
The bar they're meeting at is close by set, a locally owned place with mismatched stools and lighting with a strange green tinge to it. It looked to be a sports bar of some sort, if the massive TVs around the place were any sign, but they're all playing the news, rather than any game. There's already quite a few people from the crew there, and the bar's other patrons are all huddled in a corner where a blonde man was loudly recounting a story of him backflipping over a motorcycle— a story, might Colt add, that never actually happened.
"Ryder?" Colt grumbles under his breath, "Who the hell invited him?"
A woman from lighting snorts into her beer, side-eying Colt, "It's a party, you think he's not gonna show up?"
Which. Fair point. Colt diverts his attention from the actor, waving over the bartender to order his own drink. The atmosphere is nice and cosy, with people drifting in and out throughout the night. Ryder keeps mostly out of Colt's way, which he's very grateful for, as it means theres no annoying A-listers to get between his and Jody's conversations.
Colt takes a sip from what's probably his fourth cider of the night, watching as a man in a party hat miserably fails at throwing darts at a board. Beside him, Jody is vehemetly complaining about one of the other camera operators on set, a man who, from the input of some of the other crew members surrounding them, nobody seems to like.
It's reaching the end of the night, and everyone's starting to tire, when the woman beside Colt bravely climbs on top of a table (a challenge, considering she's in heels and looks to be deeply drunk). She flicks the side of her glass, and, when no noise is made, settles for coughing loudly.
"I'd like to propose a toast to our birthday boy! To Hans Derek!" the woman cries out, face flushed red, lifting her margarita in the air like its a holy object, "The best—"
Her speech is broke off by the noise of glass shattering. Twenty heads turn in unison towards Tom Ryder, who doesn't even seem to notice he's dropped his drink, his gaze focused entirely on one of the televisions. Colt squints up at the screen, curious.
It's still on the news channel, and the audio is too quiet to properly hear whats being reported. A reporter stands in front of a smoking building thats blocked off by dozens of police cars. The headline, in blocky red letters, reads:
AVENGERS KILL TWENTY-SIX IN LAGOS, NIGERIA.