Meddling

Takes place some nebulous time after Masks. Totally not what I intended to write when I sat down to tackle this one, as evidenced by a couple of fragments still in my drafts file, but that seems to happen often enough that I've learned to just run with it. XD

(In the original file, flagged as "poor put-upon parents who just want their idiot children to be happy".)

"You can't be serious." Armand just looks at him, though, and Jean huffs out a breath. "You are. Good god, why?"

"If they continue the way they're going, there won't be a film. Someone will walk out first."

It's an eminently reasonable answer, and yet he knows Armand better than that. Thirty years of working together, of working their way up from the bottom in this cutthroat industry, means he's well accustomed to the nuances of the other's manners, and yet this is something he hasn't seen before, something a little unfamiliar and baffling. Jean's eyes narrow as he studies the man opposite him. Is that …?

"You can't be serious!"

"You just said that." The reply is placid, unruffled by his outburst. Armand sets his drink down and steeples his fingers, looking out at the lights twinkling below as he thinks, and impatient as he is, Jean waits. He wants to know now, wants to understand, but he knows how Armand's thought processes work (can't not, when they've been partners for this long, not when he's so accustomed to translating those words into image and scenes that it feels like second nature) and he knows the other man will need time to frame his explanation properly.

And so he waits, mulling over his own thoughts. It's been almost six years since Olivier and Anne's disastrous – and thankfully private – breakup; six years since he'd all but locked the young stars in his office and told them that they had two options: to make their differences public and potentially ruin either or both of their careers, or to keep private things private and be the professionals he knew they were capable of being. And they'd spat fire at each other in there, but by the end of the conversation the course had been clear. Until this most recent film, he's had no reason for complaints. But now …

Now those sparks are back in the worst way possible, and if he wasn't so desperate to salvage this, he'd laugh Armand out of his hotel room. But they're in Lithuania, in the second week of shooting, and he's less worried about the press and more worried that one of his stars is going to murder the other – or at least throw a fit and storm out. He is, it seems, just desperate enough to give whatever insane plan his writer has a shot.

"Your solution was only ever going to be a temporary one," Armand says finally. "They care too much; there can be no middle ground, with feelings that intense. If you want them working together, then they have to sort things out. And where they stand right now, that's not going to happen."

"So we – what?" He's not sure how to proceed, though he's fairly certain Armand has a plan in mind – and sure enough, the other man looks over at him, and the corners of his mouth have quirked up in the barest hint of a smirk.

"Here's how we start."

- x -

He'll give credit where it's due; when Armand wants something, he doesn't go about it by half-measures. Almost before Jean can blink the plan is in action, and he watches with bemused wonder as Armand deploys his erstwhile troops, sets Aramis after Olivier and Constance on Anne – watches actor and costumer bend their heads together and conspire when no one is looking at them, watches them watch Olivier and Anne in turn and tries to see his stars as these youngsters do, as they were before, all passion and possibility.

It doesn't work quite as well as Armand would like – that much is plain in his grimaces – but it's more effective than Jean had ever imagined it could be, and he's amazed to see the change. The wire-taut tension eases, settles into a strange, almost companionable enmity as the days pass, and if things are still barbed and sharp-edged then at least they're limiting those jabs to each other and when the cameras aren't going. The shooting resumes, and as he sits one evening looking over his timetable Jean dares to hope that they might finish on schedule, or at least only a little behind.

It doesn't work – and yet it does, because he's used to working with these two, knows them better than anyone except Armand, and it means he sees past character to the people beneath. And as they gentle he can see, beneath the bruised dignity and wounded pride, the love he'd watched bloom on his set eight years before. The attraction has always been undeniably present, part of why their ruse has worked for so long, but what's unfolding before him makes it plain that it's not just physical, even after everything that's happened.

It works more than not, in the end, and he watches the two leads run lines, watches their bodies curve towards each other unconsciously, and wonders what may come of this and how long it will last, and if perhaps this is some of what healing looks like.

But, "It's not enough," Armand says as he pours them both drinks on that same balcony two weeks later.

Jean shrugs slightly, because he'll take what he can get and this is worlds better than he'd imagined. For all that he hopes (for this movie, yes, but also for these two people that he's come to know and care about over the years), he's still not convinced that this is any more permanent a measure than his long-ago lecture. "It's enough for now."

(He hopes against hope that it lasts.)