Chapter Text
September
Daemon doesn’t know what he’s looking for.
Someone once told him this is the worst kind of pain, the pain of missing something without knowing what’s missing or where to start looking. He shrugged it off, because that’s what he does. Drifts past life’s pains on skids greased with charm and luck and even a little talent.
But lately, it feels like his luck is dry and he’s not charming anyone. Least of all himself.
At night, when only the streetlights paint a pattern across his bed, Mysaria reassures him that it’s absolutely untrue. He shouldn’t think like that, she simpers, reminds him of his awards, his accolades, the calls and scripts he has the privilege to turn down. She builds him up with her mouth full of empty words and empty pleasure, and for a little while, while it's dark, lets him think she’s right.
It doesn’t stop him from feeling like a fraud in the light of morning, but after nearly two decades in the business, he knows that something is always better than nothing. It’s how they both got here, after all. Taking all the somethings they can.
Early September in London is warmer than he remembered. It’s still blazing summer in LA, and he’s spent the better part of seventeen years griping about the lack of traditional seasons. Instead, there's mild, hot, hotter, wildfire, and smog. He was looking forward to the necessity of a light sweater and a jacket this time of year. His returns back to the motherland have been June to August, an escape from the Hollywood heat and the welcome trade of 14-hour set days for the comparative leisure of working off-West End. But the heat has followed him home, even as autumn approaches.
It’s been 73 days since Corlys Velaryon – darling of both Broadway and the West End, and Daemon’s long-ago theatre professor – kicked open the door to his trailer on the set of Enzo during the long-running serial drama’s final shoot.
June
He hadn’t taken any of the calls that flooded in to nail him to a new project as Enzo’s terminus approached. Not even from Corlys. He wasn’t looking to work right away. Eight seasons was a long time to devote to one job, after all. Six good seasons wasn’t a bad run, but the last two had taken all the wind from his sails. Even being an executive producer for the last three seasons wasn’t enough to save him or his character from the humiliation of the writers’ meddling and the network’s insistence on a ‘shocking twist.’
It took a great deal from all of the cast, really. Filming was done by noon, but much of the cast and crew hung around. He found many of them with their arms around one another. He got on well enough with them, professional to the bone, but no one dared weep into his shirt or tearfully promise that they’d always be family. They wouldn’t, and he was content with that, but it was an oddly lonely day just the same.
The last shoot felt more like a funeral where no one was really sure if they were mourning the dead or if they were just secretly relieved that the suffering was at an end.
He needed a few months to let Enzo go. Relax. He had money, lots of it, and a name that was all his own to trade on when he wanted to take something again. The days of scraping for parts were behind him, for now. A good-looking man in his mid-thirties with a hit show and a long resume behind him could afford to rest on his laurels, if only temporarily. You’re only ever as good as your latest part, he knew he’d been Mega Millions Jackpot lucky to have nine years on a sustained hot streak. But it was time to rest.
Corlys had other ideas.
The man clutched a thick script to his chest like it was his favourite child, buzzing enthusiasm stirring beneath annoyance at Daemon’s apparent inability to be contacted any other way.
“Not interested,” he said flatly, picking a thread on the ornate robe he’d thrown over the 4,917th plain white Oxford shirt they’d ruined with fake blood on this set over the years.
But Corlys slammed a copy on his table anyway, upending the plate he’d made himself of the least-stale things from craft services and sending grapes scattering like skittles across the floor. He had to seize Caraxes’ collar to keep the ridgeback from grabbing the food. Dogs can’t have grapes, the chart on his fridge reminded him.
“That was my lunch.”
“Opportunity doesn’t come knocking every day, Blackfyre.”
“You must not have brought me an opportunity, then, seeing as you didn’t knock at all. What if I’d been nude?” Daemon taunted.
“This is my masterwork,” he’d heard that before, and they all have been, in their way, “all you have to do is say yes and the lead role is yours.”
“Call your backup then.”
“I have no backup.”
“That's presumptuous, especially considering I haven’t a clue what the role is. What if I want to relax with my Golden Globe and my Emmys, and spend the rest of my days living off residuals and cavorting with a French model?”
“Daemon, you and I both know that if you go one week without work, you’ll plummet into catatonic depression, living off frozen pizza and talking only to your dog.”
So the old man knew him better than he thought. “Fair,” he conceded.
“Just read it, you ungrateful shite, and text me when you’re ready for greatness.” He saw himself out of the trailer with a two-fingered salute, which Daemon returned with interest and a grin despite the dour mood of the day.
It took a surprisingly short 36 hours for him to cave and read the script, and even less to finish it, despite its heft.
"Corlys, you crazy bastard," he muttered, sitting in bed at 3:30AM, Mysaria sleeping soundly next to him, eye mask pulled down to block out the light from his continued reading.
He expected something bizarre – Corlys is known for surreal, bold, and lurid choices, be they film or stage productions – but this is… beyond. Out of all the things he might have guessed, ‘modern rock opera adaptation of the Tolkien epic ‘Beren and Lúthien’’ would never in his wildest, most substance-addled dreams have been one of them.
It was fucking bonkers and he fucking loved it. For the first time since he fought for his life to get the part of Enzo, he felt a spark. His restless soul itched the way it had done when he sold the last of his possessions, quit walking the brother-shaped path set for him into the family business, and moved to Los Angeles on dreams alone, like thousands before and thousands since.
Three hours later, his pride at last defeated, he ate his humble pie and texted the older man.
(6:43AM): Stop looking. I’ll do it.
He flew to London the next day, told Corlys again he could do it, would do it, he must have the role of Beren, with more fire than he’d breathed in years. Corlys looked at him long and hard, like he was assessing Daemon’s suitability to hold his newborn son, like it meant everything to him. And then he nodded, throwing his arms wide to embrace his protege.
“Welcome back to London, son.”
September
It’s been an acid-tinged, musical Middle Earth whirlwind since. Revising, tweaking the script, filling in smaller roles, vocal training. A good distraction from his vestige melancholia over the way Enzo ended.
In many ways, he was Enzo. Falling into the role had been easy from the first. It was convincing the casting director and showrunners to take a chance on him – relatively unknown outside a few indie films, some Off Broadway and West End work, and a few television guest spots back then – that had been the challenge. But his great secret in embodying the broody anti-hero was simple: he didn’t have to work very hard at it. Cynical, snarky, charming but unknowable. Alienated, utterly dedicated to his craft. Enzo was him.
Except Enzo’s craft was solving murders by day and committing them as a vigilante by night; full-time family man and part-time psychopath, dwelling comfortably in two realities, two personalities, two identities. Daemon’s was just bringing him to life, and no one needed know he dwelt a little too comfortably in his character’s head sometimes.
Noble, romantic Beren with his chest-pounding anthems and unwavering bravery in the face of impossible odds is as far from Enzo as it’s possible to be. Maybe that’s why he wants to play the role so badly. The challenge, the complete revolution from one character and medium to another. The chance to slough off both Enzo and Daemon Blackfyre for a while, and try being something good for a change.
A new year is just around the corner from autumn, whenever that decides to show up. Maybe London will have something new for him, too.
By far the greatest annoyance has been casting his leading co-star. The prospects have been dull and similar so far. Lúthien is necessarily hard to nail down. Who has the innocence of a maiden, the wisdom of a centuries-old being, the beauty of an elven princess, and a three-octave range? Who has all that, and is low-profile enough to commit to an Off West End production, knowing they may well be supplanted by a bigger name if the show gets off the ground? Corlys might as well have asked for the moon to be roped from the sky and made human.
His reflection looks at him dispiritedly from a panel of mirrors in his makeshift dressing room on the set at the Almeida Theatre. He needs the salon, pale roots starting to show beneath the dark brown dye he’s been wearing as a second skin for seventeen years.
Daemon’s just tired. He’s been reading with potential Lúthiens for weeks now. No. Longer. A month? More? Time started whizzing by fast and he's never been good at tracking it once it's started slipping through his fingers. He gets absorbed in his work and days melt into each other, then into the months, and years. He’s not sure how many similar faces he’s read with. Like the days, they all run together, a blur of the same scene and the same filled lips and the same blank expressions. And he’s having more trouble than he’d like to admit finding a genuine voice for Beren, with no Lúthien to play off.
Frustration crawls through his veins and his morale sinks a notch lower when Corlys announces he only has two readings for the day and might as well go home early once they’re done. He doesn’t expect the next round to be any more promising, why should Daemon?
No. He must not fall into that attitude. He wants this. His Lúthien is out there. He reminds himself of those things repeatedly by the time the first Lúthien arrives, 15 minutes late with takeaway coffee in hand.
Rhea Royce is a serviceable actress, allegedly. She’s done a few middling BBC detective dramas, the kind where the producers seemingly spin a wheel of the same two dozen actors to cast and the plot can be filled in like a Mad Lib. Within minutes, he knows that’s where she belongs.
Corlys has them run the first scene cold, her reading from her script, him from memory of the countless other times he’s run the scene, and Corlys filling in for the role of Dairon when needed. By the time Lúthien sings for the first time in the forest, Daemon is imagining Beren finding a large rock and bludgeoning her with it.
(Perhaps if she’s cast, he can convince Corlys of those creative changes, and the show would have a happy ending after all.)
He’s got barely time enough to gulp half a travel cup of cold, honey-sweetened tea to help reset his voice before his second and final Lúthien of the day arrives.
“Daemon, position,” calls Meredyth, Corlys’s assistant director. A relative unknown, but she was the only one crazy enough to take the job after hearing Velaryon’s pitch. She's a little haphazard, but Daemon likes her take-charge attitude and the ruthlessness with which she's judged the women he's read with.
“You’re reading with,” she squints at her clipboard, “Nye-ruh... Aaron.”
Good. Not a name he knows. He’s tacitly relieved. One, he’s not in the kind of mood to make nice or socialize with an old acquaintance (or god forbid a former lover), and two, he doesn’t know anyone good enough for Lúthien, so an unfamiliar name holds at least a slim chance of hope.
He smiles mechanically as a young woman sidles up, her hands clasped behind her back.
His first impression is that she’s just pretty enough. Maybe not Hollywood’s A-list, but then, Hollywood’s always put more emphasis on a specific look than a specific talent.
Nyra is new. Nice to look at. Many of them have been. Young. Maybe too young? Can’t be older than 20. She's petite, top of her head reaching just about the top of his sternum. But her quirky, upturned mouth and moderate lips, her short, upturned nose, the makeup she obviously did herself, the messy crop of her silver hair? She makes a certain impression of spunk and authenticity. Most of his other Lúthiens have been beautiful, in the curiously empty way of Instagram Face attractiveness. A few he’d call English roses – attractive in a lovely, venerable sort of way that approaches untouchable. This one is...
Cute, his brain supplies. A word he typically reserves only for Caraxes. But she is. Not necessarily inhumanly-beautiful elven princess, but there’s something there. She’s real, is his second try at describing it, and he thinks it’s more suitable.
And then she smiles at him, nervously it’s true, her eyes cast down and hidden in peculiar eyelashes, dark at the tips and almost white at their base. But it’s a genuine smile, and just like that she metamorphosizes from just pretty enough to stunning. Some kind of secret weapon, and a powerful one. Lull a man into a false sense of security by being merely cute, then blind them with one enigmatic shift in expression.
“Hi, Nyra,” he says, imitating Meredyth’s pronunciation, rhymes with Tyra. He’s trying to turn the charm up to a full blast, but maybe it lands closer to fucking corny.
She mutters a quick hi back, and he drops her hand like a burning coal, realizing he’s held onto it longer than the introduction warranted. She hasn’t looked at him once. She’s shy. Fascinating little thing. Daemon snorts with amusement and watches her as she looks at her script, pushing choppy layers of silver hair out of her face only for them to fall right back in front of her eyes.
Corlys strides between them as if he’s Moses parting the Red Sea, arms akimbo, and jams a script into Daemon’s hand too.
“Don’t need it,” he sniffs out shortly, but self-consciously adjusts his shirt collar just the same, “some day I might forget my own name, but I’ll never forget every last word of this cursed scene.”
“That’s why you need the script, you prick,” Corlys growls, tossing his dreadlocks over his shoulder. “Scene’s jinxed, and I’d like to find you a Lúthien some time before your brain starts to go.
“From the top of Act I, Scene III! I’ll read Dairon, and do excuse my refusal to sing, because I don’t wish to be kicked out of this space.”
Dimly, he’s aware that Corlys and Meredyth are watching intently from the sidelines, and that another party – Corlys’s wife, Rhaenys – has joined them at some point, leaning against a door frame with one hand on her hip, assessing him in a way that unaccountably always makes him feel like a schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework properly. But none of them really matter to him.
Daemon can’t help but start at how close Nyra is when he peers over his shoulder, inches away from Lúthien as their disparate parts of the song weave together and they each revolve closer, ever closer, the way they’ve been doing the length of the number, drawing together from separate ends of the stage. He’s not even conscious of having done it.
He inhales in a half-second’s pause before his final sustained note, meant to harmonize with hers, taking in a breath and finding a hint of scent with it.
Is this what she smells like? He’s gotten used to the same few celebrity influencer fragrances all the rising divas buy. This is something more subtle; black tea and cinnamon and honeysuckle. In another context, it could be distracting, but all it does is pull him deeper into Beren as their number ends and the piano fades out.
Her singing voice is pleasant, if a bit plain, but it’s only a first run with the barest of piano accompaniment, and she wasn’t properly warmed up. Daemon thinks it might be like her – pretty enough becomes something much, much more in the right light, once you draw it out. It has power behind it, more power than he’d suspect from a little thing like her, and she has good control over it. It weaves well with his in this first shared number, and their timing is natural, a shared breath almost.
There’s potential. Not just a spark. A pilot light.
They’re closer still, and turn at last to one another. Beren’s gaze meets Lúthien’s, and Daemon gets to see those eyes at last.
There you are.
Incomparable, yet intimately familiar. Valyrian violet flecked with gold and green, right there under those curious eyelashes the whole time, a kaleidoscope mirror of his own, the same elements he possesses rearranged into something wholly unique in her. And Daemon realizes he’s wrong again. She’s not pretty enough, and she’s not even stunning.
She’s extraordinary.
“End scene!”
They look up simultaneously, surprised by the sudden punctuation on the scene. It’s as if someone just snapped their fingers in front of his face, but he feels good. Certainly not something he’s felt with any of the other women he’s read with. He’s never even finished the first duet with any of the rest, and he lets a small smile play across his mouth. She leans away, a mess of nerves again, and clasps her hands behind her back as she watches the rest of the team whisper furiously.
Rhaenys takes the helm.
“Can you run Act II, Scene IV?”
Mostly dialogue. Must want to see how they interact without the piano pacing them. Daemon moves back into position, thumbing through his script.
“Three… two… one…”
He starts, slipping into Beren more naturally than he’s done yet, and soon they’re volleying off one another. The awkwardness of reading a less familiar scene off a script seems to melt into nothing, and soon they’re more engaged with each other than the scripts, stopping only to check a line here and there. She’s sharp. He can tell she’s not a veteran of the profession, but she has a good instinct for how far ahead she can read, to minimize interruption and make a scene flow organically.
There’s something off about her accent. A subtle lilt on certain words that he waits for, almost loses his place when it’s Beren’s line because he’s waiting for more from Lúthien to try and catch whatever it is. He’s pursuing her through an imaginary hemlock grove and she throws him a dare over her shoulder, like she’s onto him and reluctantly amused by his game.
“Speak up, Blackfyre, project!” Corlys grumps. Daemon scowls but runs his last line over, not realizing his voice had dropped an octave and softened as they bantered over a playful argument about immortality. Violet eyes sparkle at him across the center of the stage, barely concealed challenge, so pleased with herself for not getting called out. Notes to project better aside, that look makes him feel like he’s gotten Beren just right. At last.
His final line peters out.
“Excellent!” Corlys beams, though he has eyes mainly for the girl with the punky haircut and red-raw fingers, whom an hour ago he clearly had less than no hope for, whom he now looks at as if all his dreams for Lúthien have come true at once.
Same, old man.
“Okay, thank you, beautiful people!” Rhaenys announces, chivying them off the center of the stage and into a haphazard collection of folding chairs around a card table piled with scripts, files, and drinks. Seeing her hesitate, Daemon snickers, flinging himself into a chair so the girl knows she can sit down.
Drawn into herself again, Nyra twists her skinny ankles together and perches on the smallest amount of chair possible, like she still doesn’t know if she has permission to sit. Daemon sips his cold, honeyed tea and watches her some more, wonders what she’s thinking.
Did she feel the air fizz the same way he did? Does she understand how remarkable it is, this rapport that’s sprung to life so effortlessly between the two of them? Does she know that she’s just experienced a rare celestial event in the world of theatre?
Does she know that she is the rare celestial event?
Corlys, Rhaenys, and Meredyth abandon them, and Daemon loosens the cap on a bottled iced coffee, hedging his bets on the slim selection between them on the folding table, and pushes it towards the girl.
“Thanks,” she says, cautiously, and he hears more than a hint of that lilt he’d gotten distracted by earlier. She watches the exit the crew went through, blinking only occasionally, though he hears a gentle, shaky sigh escape her when she draws on the coffee.
It’d be unprofessional to tell her that this is a good sign, their continued absence. If it was bad, she’d be long gone, would never have even gotten to reading a dialogue-heavy scene. But he tells himself and it buoys his already unusually good mood, which has done a full revolution from that of earlier this morning.
He snatches his gaze away from her, like he’s just remembered to not look directly at the eclipse, and redirects it to Corlys’s return, head bowed together with his wife, talking animatedly over a clipboard. Corlys always had a shit poker face; Daemon can tell by the way he nods too much and anxiously clicks his pen. He’s excited. Even Rhaenys is impressed.
So they can see it too, can’t they? They must.
They call the actress over and she obeys, looking down at her feet again so she misses his feeble attempt at an encouraging smile. It’s just as well, he thinks; it probably came out as a creepy leer anyhow. He’s not used to giving such an expression to anybody. Corlys hands her some papers and Daemon’s pretty sure he gives her the usual line.
Thanks for coming out, we’ll update you in a day or two.
He sees rather than hears her lips part and take shape of a petal-soft thank you in return.
Before he has time to think about it, Daemon finds himself walking towards her, stumbling over something to say in his head. Checking her phone and swiping away a message wistfully, she's only just gathered her purse when he catches up.
“Hey,” he winces at the note of forced would-be coolness in his voice, and the fact that he’s a veteran actor overthinking the word hey. He needs to get a grip. Show some professionalism, detach from the situation.
This is so unlike him.
She almost drops her phone in her haste to respond. “Hey,” she echoes, and slips the device into her back pocket.
“You were great,” he says. And where is this new earnestness coming from? It’s an honest opinion. That doesn’t usually happen with him and his costars.
She’s not even his costar. (Yet.) She’s not even on a callback list. (Yet.) But for all his efforts, decades trying to repress this most human of impulses, he finds himself optimistic.
It’s still in him to hope.
“Thanks, you made it easy to get into Lúthien. You’re great as Beren,” she tells him in a rush, and he’s inordinately pleased with this praise, “I was a little nervous but once we started it just…”
“Vanished?” he supplies, because it did for him too. He thinks a little nervous is an understatement, but bluntness won’t do any good, not when she read so well in spite of the nerves. Imagine what she’ll be like next time, with a bit of confidence. (There will be a next time, he’s sure of it.)
“Exactly. And then it was fun,” she acknowledges, a hint of that gorgeous smile.
“Yeah, it was fun.” He barrels on recklessly, wanting to keep her talking now that she’s saying more than single-word answers. “Where are you from?”
Surprise mingles with shame, like she’s worried she’s given herself away too quickly. “Here,” she mutters. “I mean, I was born here, in Reading, but I grew up in Sydney. Guess I haven’t gotten rid of the accent completely.”
Ah, it’s an Australian accent she’s trying so hard to bury? That’s it? Lúthien doesn’t even need an English accent (as far as he’s concerned, elves can have whatever accent they want) and she’s so self-conscious about it.
Fucking adorable.
“We’re practically neighbors,” impulsively, he reaches out and shakes her hand, engulfing it with his almost completely, “I’m from Henley-on-Thames.”
Peripherally, he’s aware of Corlys watching him with curious gaze, but Nyra is oblivious to anything except him, and usually that’s annoying, but he can’t even lie to himself and say he’s not absurdly pleased by her attention, riding on a high. What's the matter with him? Seventeen years doing this in one form or another, and he's basking in the awkward and flustered attentions of some random girl, who has to be at least fifteen years his junior, just because they clicked on a first read? Snap out of it, man.
“Really? I never knew.” Her pale skin turns beet red with her accidental slip, as if it’s some kind of dreadful grievance she’s committed, “I mean…”
Her hand drops with her gaze, eyes shaded once again by those lashes that grow in light, the same way his do. She sighs heavily.
“I’m a fan,” the confession comes tumbling out as if she’s been holding onto this most terrible of secrets for fifty years. “Like I’m not a stalker or anything, I didn’t know you’d be here or come looking or-” she rambles.
“Relax, Nyra. I don’t think you’re a stalker, and hardly anyone knows I’ve been roped into Corlys’s insanity,” he chortles darkly, giving her an out, “and I’m always happy to meet a fan.”
It’s not strictly the truth. He appreciates being appreciated – who doesn’t? - but being accosted and begged for autographs at 5AM when he’s hung over at the airport, or having the The Daily Mail run an earth-shattering hitpiece about him dropping his phone on the sidewalk and scowling about it, he could do without.
“My dad and I used to watch Enzo every week,” she admits. The past tense doesn’t escape him, nor does the note of despondency. An estrangement? A loss? Or perhaps they just spared themselves and stopped watching after the sixth season, jumped from an obviously sinking ship. “It was kind of our thing, he didn’t have a lot of time but it was the one show we could agree on.”
“What better way to bond than over a show about serial killers?” Daemon can’t help but tease her, look for her light again, and he gets his reward, that signature smile, sunshine and pearls transforming her instantly.
“Could I…” her blush deepens, staining her cheeks and creeping up to her forehead, “could I get an autograph? I’m sorry, I know that’s so annoying. I mean I can imagine, not that anyone’s ever asked me, I’m not saying I can relate or anything-”
“It’s no trouble at all,” better to cut off her babbling before she passes out. He rummages through his jacket pocket for a pen and she produces a shopping list from her purse, still crimson in her cheeks. “How do you spell your name?”
“It’s Nyra, N-Y-R-A."
And it’s his turn to be embarrassed, because damnit, he’s been saying her name wrong all morning. Rhymes with Kira, not with Tyra. He should’ve cared more than to mindlessly copy Meredyth’s pronunciation. He’s about to apologize, offer her some advice to always make people say her name correctly because she’s owed at least that. If you don't control your name, you don't control anything in this business. He's about to write it when she interrupts.
“But? God this is so stupid, he’s been gone for months, but… could you make it out to my dad?”
“Of course,” he tries to inject some understanding and sympathy into his voice. It’s far from the first time he’s signed an autograph for the departed, too late for them to enjoy it, but some sort of comfort to the ones left behind, he assumes.
“It’s for Viserys. V-I-S-E-R-”
She doesn’t get through spelling it before the pen clatters to the floor and rolls away.