Fic: Soaps R Us, Chapter 3 (CSI/CSI NY/CSI Miami, Eric / Ryan, Nick / Greg)
Title: Soaps R Us, Chapter 3
Pairing: Nick Stokes / Greg Sanders,
Ryan Wolfe / Eric Delko
Rating: PG
Genre: AU
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
Feedback: Always Welcome
Summery: Daytime soap Lights of Vegas has a new head writer. Life and fiction don’t always mix nicely, and the line between the two can be very narrow.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
CSI Las Vegas Main List CSI Miami Main List CSI New York Main List
Eric marched into the hallway and slammed the door shut. He was too worked up to notice the woman carrying moving boxes till they almost ran into each other.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“I can’t watch where I’m going.” As if to emphasise Sara’s words, two boxes fell down from the pile. “Can you get that?”
“Sure, I’m everyone’s whipping boy today anyway.” Eric complained and lifted the boxes back on top of the stack. “One more day with that Little Mister Ice Princess and I’ll strangle him.”
“He’s been here for three days, and you’ve been whining the whole time. I should be handling the wardrobe and I’m dragging the Sanders’s stuff to storage. If anyone has a right to nag, it’s me.”
“He’s after me.” Eric followed her down the corridor. “I think he’s trying to pressure me out of the show and after today-”
“Delko, have I given you any signs that I’m interested?”
“Well, you didn’t see that show the shedding Wolfman put up just now. Game over for Willows.”
“They’re kicking her out?”
“No, but she just lost her title as the biggest bitch of the whole show.”
“Too bad. Door.”
“What?”
“Open it.”
Eric pulled the door open and followed Sara into the storage room. Sara dropped the boxes on the floor and stretched her back.
“Anyway, he’s not going to go away, so just try to make peace with him.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard he’s Sanders’s old buddy. He started as a production assistant and worked his way up in his old show. Sanders left and Wolfe went with him like a package deal.”
“So what do I do? Give up and bend over?”
“Literally?”
“No.” Eric groaned. “You know what I mean….” His eyes wandered down to the boxes. “What kinda stuff did you say you had in those?”
“I didn’t say. I think that one has old script notes, and old still shots and that kinda stuff.”
Eric crouched down and pulled open the nearest cardboard box.
“Stop that! If they notice they’ve been ransacked I get the blame.”
“I’ll tape them shut again.” Eric pulled a stack of stills from the box. “Boring, boring, boring…. Okay, next box.”
“No.”
“Come on, you know you wanna…..”
“Fine.” She sighed. “You take the big one, I’ll take that one.” She grabbed the nearest one and pulled it open.
“Anything good?”
“No…. Wow.”
“What? Porn, devil worshipping, guys doing funny things with chimps-”
“I meant “wow” as in: Wow, the guy has changed his hairstyle often.”
“Sanders?” Eric leaned closer to look at the photos over her shoulder.
“Yeah, spikes, curls, black, blond-”
“Wait a minute. Show me that last one.”
“This one?” Sara flipped back the previous photo. Sanders and Wolfe were posing for the camera with several other guys, and Sanders was holding a large trophy. Wolfe looked younger and his hair was longer, but he was easy to recognise.
“I’ve seen that before.”
“The picture?”
“No, Wolfboy.” Eric tapped the photo with his finger. “I don’t remember where it was, but I’ve definitely seen him before. It had to be in that same event, I remember that hideous orange shirt and that bad haircut. He`s changed a lot.”
“So you were both at the same party, big deal.”
“It is a big deal if he keeps treating me like a harebrained himbo. How far back do the PR people keep pics from events and that kinda stuff?”
“They’re probably all in electrical form by now. Why?”
“I have this recollection I wore a green silk shirt with a beige jacket.”
“Eric, can I be frank?”
“Can you be anything else?”
“Women remember events based on what they were wearing. When you do it, it’s creepy.”
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“What is this?!” Catherine stormed into Greg’s office with a panicking assistant in her wake.
“I’m sorry, Mr Sanders, I tried to tell her-”
“It’s okay, just give us a minute.” Greg assured and the girl left them alone. “Nice to see you’re training your dramatic skills, Ms. Willows.”
“Cut the crap. What is this?” She waved a stack of papers in her hand.
“Your contract’s about to expire. That’s the new contract.”
“I know that! Recurring actress! The viewers will never forgive you for this!”
“Listen, Catherine…. You don’t mind if I call you Catherine?”
“I do mind.”
“Okie, dokie. Listen, Cath. You have been on the show for what? Three hundred years?”
“Don’t try that. Any other soap would be thrilled to have me.”
“I’ve been going through the history of the show, so don’t fool yourself. You’ve left four times and you always came back crawling.”
“They came begging me to come back.”
“Right….” Greg tried to stifle a laughter. “And what remarkable achievements did you achieve while you were away? In the late seventies there was that one-off guest role in Starsky and Hutch and that porny little Italian movie.”
“It was an art film!”
“And when you left in the mid-eighties you did a miniseries for the history channel playing a nameless woman who got decapitated during the French revolution. And you’re two exits in the nineties-”
“Just stop that.” Catherine interrupted. “It was a serious role, I had the period costume and everything!”
“Let’s move on, shall we? Do you know what your biggest target group is?”
“Everyone.” She blinked, looking like the entire question was ridiculous. “I`m the frigging matriarch of the whole show!”
“Your fans are mostly fifty something guys, who are currently serving life sentences for homicides. You’re their very own pin-up girl, but the rest of the viewers want you gone.”
“That’s not true. When we’re having fan meetings they practically accost me.”
“Those are not fans, they are reporters who want to write about your latest facial enhancements. They’re just looking for the scars.”
“I’m natural!”
“Right, and you take two weeks off twice a year to go on a meditation retreat and come back with an immobile face.”
“My face is not immobile!”
“That claim would be so much more effective if you could move your brow.” Greg lifted his lifted feet to his desk and picked up a new folder from the pile. “Talk about this with your agent, but I think we all know what you options are. And one more thing.”
“What?!” She exclaimd and tore a row of scripts down from a shelf. The dramatic gesture would have made more of an impact if the pages had been stapled together. Instead the pages just fluttered silently onto the floor.
“I’ve hear how your negotiations usually go, so if you have to throw something at your agent again, please don’t use studio equipment this time.”
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“Happy birthday!” Speed exclaimed as soon as Nick opened the door. He shoved the beautifully wrapped packed over to Nick and walked into the apartment.
“It’s not my birthday.”
“And I didn’t give you a gift. It was on the floor in front of your door. You got anything to eat?”
“Leftovers.” Nick pulled the wrapping paper off to reveal a large cardboard box.
“Is this Chinese or Thai?” Speed buried his head into the fridge and pulled out a take-away carton. “Or…. An alien life form seeding and getting ready to erase the human kind….”
“I don’t know, it’s been there for weeks, I didn’t want to touch it without gloves.”
“Never mind.” He dumped the carton into the trashcan. “What’s in it?”
“Wait a sec….” Nick pulled the box open and froze.
“Stalker mail?”
“I don’t think so….”
“Body parts?”
“No.” He pulled the content out so Speed could see them.
“Who the hell would sends you a pair of cowboy boots and a jockstrap?”
“I think I know.” Nick smirked. “There’s a card in here too.”
“What does it say?”
“Couldn`t work these into the script yet, but keep practising.”
Chapter 4