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Ryan downed his fourth espresso shot of the morning and shook himself, trying desperately to stay awake. Working on his side project into the early hours the morning they started filming might have been a dumb decision in retrospect, but he’d been too deep into his creative headspace to stop. He was gonna pay for it today. Hopefully the others wouldn’t notice. Or at least not give him too much shit for it if they did.
When he got to his trailer, Oliver was already sitting on a folding chair outside, frowning down at his script in his lap. Which wasn’t all that weird. Last half of the previous season they’d all been pulling faces at their scripts. That, or in Ryan’s case, flipping through it to see if he had any lines of f-cking substance. (Maybe, in the finale, like one? Two? It was ok, even if he couldn’t speak, there were always facial expressions.)
But Ryan’d really been hoping this season would be fun. He knew he had scenes with Gavin, which was always a blast. And Tim was back, so that meant more “buddie scenes”, which meant more working with Oliver. He’d been excited for that. So what was the problem?
“Y’ok, man?”
Oliver startled and looked up at him. “Sorry, what?”
Ryan took another sip of his drink and burned his tongue.
“Ow, f-ck. What’s with the face? Somethin’ wrong?” he gestured at the pages of the script with his cup, barely avoiding spilling a few drops on Oliver’s jeans.
“Oh! Actually, yeah.” Oliver frowned again. “There’s something in this one scene that just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Ryan took a seat on the trailer steps next to him, their knees pressing together. Neither of them shifted away.
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Ok,” Oliver extended the script toward him, “So, you know the scene with the couple shagging in the hot tub?”
Ryan nodded, taking another sip of his drink. It sounded like there was gonna be some awkward comedy, but then Eddie would get a chance to show how he’d grown as a character and what he’d learned from therapy, which was a cool piece of character development, he’d thought.
“Yeah, so,” Oliver continued, “It’s at the end of the scene, where the 118 are leaving with the patient, right? And don’t you think the line Buck says to Eddie was really weird? It didn’t really make sense, did it?”
Ryan squinted at him for a moment. “Uh….sure…”
Oliver huffed a laugh. “You haven’t even read it, have you?”
“C’mon babe, you know I never read ahead.” Oops. Well, it was out there, and he wasn’t taking it back.
Oliver turned pink and smiled a little, before frowning again.
“Ok, well anyway, have a read of it now. See? Right here.” He passed his script over, Buck’s lines helpfully and neatly highlighted in blue.
Ryan ran his eyes over it once, murmuring the words aloud to himself. He paused, read the lines again, scoffed involuntarily. Felt his eyebrows shoot up. He looked at Oliver.
“Yo, what is this? ‘Turning her off’?”
“Right!?” Oliver exclaimed triumphantly. “That’s just not right. I mean, that’s just not how they work, is it?”
Ryan snorted. “You mean vaginas? Yeah, not in my experience. Nice and loose is what you’re aiming for. Except for right before-Like, when she’s cumming, and it gets all…like throbbing and squeezing-”
“Yeah, yeah, alright, we know-I know,” Oliver said, cutting him off.
Ryan looked at the script again. “Yeah, we know, but looks like whoever wrote this doesn’t.” He snickered. “F-ck man, I feel bad for their girlfriends.”
“Oh shit, you think-” Oliver looked a mixture of concerned and delighted.
“Oh yeah,” Ryan grinned, starting to get into it, “Imagine this guy’s like, ‘Yeah, so Eddie calms her down and relaxes her, gets her all nice and loose so she can get free, and then Buck can make a joke about how Eddie turned her off’ and everyone at the table’s just looking at him like ‘What’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, ‘cause you know how women are all dry and tensed up when they’re turned on, you know?’”
Oliver giggled and joined in. “And nobody at the table says anything because they just feel so bad for this bloke, like it’ll just shatter him if they tell him-”
“He’ll be questioning his whole existence,” Ryan added, laughing.
“So, what do we do?” Oliver asked, taking the script back.
“What do you mean? We say the lines, man. Do our job,” Ryan shrugged. He’d had to work with some truly dumbass scripts in his time, and he knew Oliver would have as well. This was barely a blip on the radar. Probably nobody would even notice.
Oliver frowned again. “I mean, it makes Buck look like he doesn’t know anything about women-”
“Well, we knew that. I already covered that in an interview, remember?” Ryan interjected, smirking. Oliver smiled back at him as if he couldn't help it.
“But then it also looks like Eddie agrees that he’s good at turning women off!”
“Eh, that’s not how I read it,” Ryan said thoughtfully, “I thought he was just bein’ sarcastic. You know, like banter.”
Oliver still looked a bit dissatisfied. He was so cute, Ryan thought to himself. It was good to be back on set again with everyone. And they were going to get to hang out even more over the next weeks and months of filming. He was looking forward to it.
“Hey,” Ryan nudged him. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, focus on the positives.”
Oliver looked at him and smiled a little.
“Yeah? Such as?”
Ryan leaned in close, letting their shoulders press together.
“Gonna get a lotta buddie scenes this season, I hear.”
Oliver’s smile broadened.
“Yes, I knew that. But I thought you didn’t read ahead?”
Ryan took a risk, darted in for a quick kiss. Quick, but firm, a promise of more later. When he pulled back, Oliver moved as if he wanted to follow.
“I don’t. ‘s just what I heard. From a reliable source.” He grinned.
“From Tim?” Oliver sighed. “I swear, that man’s crush on you-”
“The point is,” Ryan interrupted, “I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun this season, babe.”
Oliver's cheeks turned pink again as he smiled. It was a good look on him.