(a/n: thanks so much to the sole reviewer of the first chapter, and to the folks who have favorited and set story alerts.)
Brittany woke up with a full brain. She'd had a series of dreams that were already slipping away from her but they'd left her feeling invigorated and interested to see what the day would bring. There had been Lord Tubbington, resting in splendor in a cat-sized easy chair, thumbing (well, pawing, really) his way through a math book. The little table next to his little chair held a stack of books, an open Cat Fancy magazine, and a tablet, browser open to the I Can Has Cheezburger site. There was also a little crystal dish, on a little white doily, brimming with fresh tuna. (One of Brittany's many theories was that her dreams were sometimes invaded by Lord Tubbington's dreams. This certainly sounded like one of his. She could only hope that this apparent dream conduit was a one-way street.) Behind Lord Tubbs was a very white space which had slowly morphed into a snowstorm. Given that it was winter and she lived in Boston, this wasn't much of a surprise, but she was slightly aggrieved that it had been snowing even in her dreams. Geez. But then things got really interesting because multicolored lines started to form, planar geometry giving way to ... Fatou sets?
The dream was already slipping away. Time to get up.
Padding into the kitchen, Brittany found her roommates in a deep, silent staredown, with Mercedes putting all of her considerable attitude into the look and Lord Tubbington giving it right back.
In lieu of a good morning, Brittany said, "you two should kiss and make up."
"EW! No!" It was Mercedes who said this, but Lord Tubbington looked equally outraged by the idea.
"Mercedes, come on. You talk like that, you'll hurt his feelings..."
"He took my TOT! Then he tried to come back for seconds!"
"You can build on that!" Brittany encouraged them both, "you have stuff in common!"
Mercedes rolled her eyes, but at least the staredown was over, for now. "Brittany, he jumped on the tabl-"
"Exactly! Consider how much effort it takes for him to do that."
"Yeah, well, he shouldn't have," Mercedes said flatly. "When I shooed him away from my tots, he lifted a leg and started cleaning his butt. It was rude."
Brittany sighed. "It's just ... he feels that you don't understand the concept of sharing. Lord Tubbington has a limited vocal apparatus, so he uses body language to show you how upset he was," Brittany explained calmly.
"Oh, he showed me all right." Lord Tubbington, apparently having heard enough, waddled from the room with great dignity. He'd managed to snare a couple slices of bacon from Mercedes' plate while she'd been conversing with his human. He felt it would be best for him to quit the room now and retire to his bedroom (that he allowed Brittany to share). Anyway, it was time for his postprandial grooming, followed by his first nap of the day. He was nearly in the room when he heard a bellow of outrage from the direction of the kitchen.
Once Mercedes had calmed down, their breakfast conversation then turned to the weather. Both girls had grown up in Southern California and though they loved Boston, it had been a bitter shock to realize the full potential of a New England winter. It's one of the things that don't get mentioned much when you take that lovely springtime campus tour when everything is mild and gorgeous.
Since there had only been a moderate snowfall of something less than a foot the night before, classes at the Berklee College of Music, where Mercedes was enrolled in her final year, and at Emerson, where Brittany was studying creative writing, were still on, which meant they needed to leave soon. As they left the Back Bay apartment they shared, neither was aware that the day would eventually bring big changes to both women. And to Lord Tubbington as well.
ii.
In a nondescript office building in Culver City, California, a group of industry executives gathered for a quasi-audition for a new, groudbreaking show that was already amassing a fair amount of carefully cultivated early buzz. Aleska Janson sat quietly at the end of the table, looking at her iPad and making the occasional note. A couple of the assistant casting directors were running around trying to look busy while their (utterly terrifying) boss, Susan Schwartz, sat next to Aleska and wracked her brains for a good opening remark that would, hopefully, lead to a great friendship and, most importantly, more jobs for Susan Schwartz. Life is hard in the industry. Next to Susan sat the great and fabulous Dinky Littelmann and next to him sat the other, lesser executives of his production company. They were all there to bring Joy! from its initial concept phase to pre-production, with the first step being to meet, interview, audition and mildly terrorize the talent, namely Kurt Hummel and Santana Lopez, and judge whether they were right for Joy! and finally to judge if they had that elusive thing called chemistry.
In the outer room, Kurt and Santana waited patiently, both playing with their phones while trying to stave off any outbreak of nerves. Santana was an old hand at this, since she'd been performing pretty much her whole life, but for Kurt, this was a new thing and he wasn't even sure why he was there.
He cleared his throat tentatively, "may I just say, red is such a fantastic color on you."
Santana shot him a considering look: okay, well, he definitely wasn't hitting on her. "Thanks," she said, sounding bored, "every color looks good on me."
Kurt sat up straighter in his seat, clutched his phone to his chest, and looked distinctly ruffled. "Um, yes, I'm sure that's true. It's equally true that you really know how to accept a compliment."
"Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there," Santana started, and would have said quite a bit more, but fortunately at that moment the door opened and a frazzled assistant casting director invited them in. Santana and Kurt exchanged a quick, shared, commiserating glance, their previous animosity completely forgotten. It was showtime.
Aleska was already sitting up straight when the talent entered the room, but internally she sat up straighter still, looking at the two of them closely. They looked good together. Santana was pretty and had that shiny, luscious long dark hair and light brown skin, her outsize personality too big for her petite form. And Kurt was so pale and had such pretty blue eyes and an elfin grin covering what Aleska suspected was a high level of intelligence. Aleska let slip a slight smirk, since "intelligence" and "acting" didn't go hand in hand all that often, really. But it was clear that there was real talent here, and that both of them were hungry for success. They would be perfect for Joy!
Now she – and they - just had to convince that idiot Dinky Littelmann.
DL wasn't making things easy for them. The first thing he said to Santana was "how much plastic surgery have you had, anyway?" and the first thing he said to Kurt was "I'm sure you're utterly delicious," he paused to smack his lips in a slightly perverted fashion, "but you look like a porcelain figurine come to life, dear boy." But after this inauspicious start, Aleska stepped in and brought the meeting back on track, and after they'd read their lines several times, becoming, in a weird dichotomy, both more relaxed and more excited as they realized that they played well off of each other and that their characters had real potential. After the first hour, when they took a break, Kurt and Santana exchanged friendly, happy grins. It was going well and Aleska would have also smiled, if she hadn't had a reputation for stoicism to maintain. She stood up, the quick movement startling Susan Schwartz no small amount (she still hadn't been able to think of a single scintillating thing to say to get the great and mighty Aleska to acknowledge her existence: dammit) and made her way over to where the talent was seated in isolation against the far wall.
"You guys are doing great," she assured them both, "and they've already seen some demos of your singing, you won't have to sing today." Both looked relieved at this, since they'd come to the meeting completely blind, having been told specifically to not prepare. DL had told Aleska he wanted them completely fresh, but Aleska suspected he really wanted them to be off balance so he'd have the upper hand. He was petty that way.
Aleska had a reputation for being tough and ruthless, and casting directors (generally known in the industry as "seedies") were widely perceived to be inhumane monsters possessing neither empathy nor compassion. And of course, DL's reputation had preceded him too. Everybody knew he was a genius and a terrible human being and he'd certainly shown them the truth of that second item. Curiously though, neither Kurt nor Santana felt any antagonism from Aleska, and both wondered why this was so. In point of fact, Aleska knew quite a bit about both of them. She knew that Kurt was an exciting young talent and just needed the right material in order to shine. And she knew that Santana wasn't quite the bad girl gossip sites would have you believe she was. Aleska wanted to give both of them their chance, even if it meant making a pact with the devil, which was pretty much how she viewed having to work alongside DL.
Santana Lopez had been born working, since her mother Maribel had actually gone into labor while onstage singing, with Santana not wasting any time, being born offstage left shortly after. This was a story Maribel never got tired of telling, and she would follow it up with "Bobby and I just knew from the start that she was special and was going to be a star." Santana doubted very much that her father, Dr Bobby Lopez, plastic surgeon to the stars (but mostly plastic surgeon to his wife, Santana was pretty much convinced that her mother had married him to cut down on medical bills), had thought any such thing. And even Maribel would have preferred to be the star of the family, but her brief career had long since been all-but-extinguished and she was forced to put all of her hopes and dreams onto the small shoulders of her only child. So Santana had worked and worked. And worked some more. She had honed her craft. If she herself had never really had the chance to choose this life, it was her life and she was going to do the best she could with it. The result? Until that day, the result had been mostly secondary roles that a seedy would refer to as "ethnic best friend" or "slutty cheerleader" and a certain amount of malicious, mostly untrue gossip about her offscreen behavior. It wasn't easy in the industry to be a young woman, still less easy to be a person of color, and least easy of all to be an out lesbian. Aleska knew all this and more about Santana. And Aleska believed in her and in her considerable talent.
Joy! was going to happen.