The heavy oak door of The Crown & Anchor squeaked loudly as Daniel pushed it open, letting a gust of damp, freezing Oxfordshire wind sweep into the small room.
The pub smelled exactly like every other village pub in the English countryside: a thick, permanent mixture of stale ale, malt vinegar, damp wool, and whatever meat was currently crackling in the fryer in the back kitchen. It was incredibly warm, heated by a massive stone fireplace tucked into the far wall and the combined body heat of about twenty locals packed into the tiny space.
It was a Sunday afternoon.
Daniel pulled his wet coat off, shaking the rain from the collar. Florence slipped past him, making a beeline for a small, slightly sticky wooden table tucked into a quiet corner booth. She was wearing a massive, oversized grey beanie pulled down low over her forehead and a thick, chunky knit sweater that completely swallowed her frame. Margot followed right behind her, shivering aggressively as she unwrapped a heavy tartan scarf from her neck.
Nobody in the pub looked up. The locals were entirely focused on the small, boxy television mounted above the bar, where Arsenal was currently tied with Manchester United. A collective groan echoed through the room as a striker missed a wide-open shot.
It was always a wonder how some places could take you back in time by just being there.
Daniel walked up to the bar. The bartender, an older guy with a thick grey beard and a stained apron, wiped a glass with a rag.
"Three pints of whatever you've got on tap," Daniel ordered, pulling a crumpled twenty-pound note from his pocket. "And three orders of fish and chips, please."
"Right you are, mate," the bartender grunted, grabbing three thick glass pint mugs and pulling the tap handle.
Daniel carried the drinks back to the corner booth, setting them down on the scratched, heavily varnished wood. He slid into the curved leather bench next to Florence. Margot was sitting across from them, staring down at a laminated, beer-stained menu with a look of profound, deeply suspicious confusion.
"What the fuck is black pudding?" Margot asked, tapping a perfectly manicured fingernail against the menu. "Why is it black? Is it just a giant scab? The guy at the grocery store tried to sell me some yesterday and I literally walked away from him."
"It's pig's blood, oats, and fat, stuffed into a casing and boiled," Florence explained entirely casually, taking a sip of her pint. "It's brilliant. You fry it up with some eggs and beans."
Margot stared at her, her eyes wide. "You people are actual barbarians. You conquered half the planet looking for spices and you decided to boil pig blood for breakfast."
"Keeps the cold out," Florence grinned, bumping her shoulder against Daniel's. "Isn't that right, Dan?"
"I'm staying entirely out of this," Daniel laughed, wrapping both hands around his pint glass to steal some of the warmth. "I ordered fish and chips. Safe, neutral territory."
"You smell like fake smoke," Florence noted, leaning in close and sniffing his collar. "You've got that weird, sweet studio fog juice smell soaked right into your shirts. I can smell Leavesden on you from across the room."
"I spent twelve hours in Hangar C yesterday," Daniel said, rubbing the back of his neck. "They had the fog machines cranked to maximum. I think my lungs are permanently coated in it."
"You need a shower," Margot advised, taking a long drink of her beer and wincing slightly at the bitter taste. "A long, boiling hot shower with actual soap. Not that weird organic lavender crap they stocked the manor bathrooms with. I want you smelling like chemicals and clean laundry."
"I'll boil myself tonight, I promise," Daniel smiled.
The bartender walked over, dropping three massive plates wrapped in grease-spotted newspaper onto the table. The smell of fried batter and salt instantly overpowered the stale beer.
"Cheers," Margot said, immediately stealing the largest chip off Daniel's plate before he could even pick up a fork.
They settled into the booth, eating the incredibly heavy, greasy food. The noise of the pub washed over them. A group of older farmers at the next table were arguing loudly about a tractor transmission. The television crackled with the sounds of the football match. Rain lashed against the small, foggy windowpanes.
It was perfect.
Daniel leaned back against the worn leather of the booth, watching Florence casually steal another chip off his plate. He let her take it. He watched Margot dip a piece of fried cod into a massive puddle of tartar sauce, complaining about the weather with her mouth half-full.
This was the anchor. The massive, sprawling Hollywood empire, the billions of dollars, the relentless shooting schedules, the constant noise of the crew—all of it faded into absolute irrelevance inside this tiny, sticky booth. Out here, hidden in the grey mist of Oxfordshire, they were just three young people hiding from the rain.
Daniel's phone buzzed aggressively in his front pocket, vibrating against his thigh.
He pulled it out. Marcus Blackwood had sent a text message.
It was just a direct hyperlink. No context, no text, just a URL.
Daniel clicked the link. The screen transitioned to a TikTok video.
"What is it?" Margot asked, leaning over the table to look at the screen.
"I have no idea," Daniel said, turning the volume up slightly so they could hear it over the pub noise.
The video playing on the screen showed two teenagers standing in the middle of a brightly lit Tesco grocery aisle. One kid was wearing a cheap, oversized white blazer he had clearly bought from a thrift store. The other kid was wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt over a white tee.
The heavy, pulsing synth bass of the Vice City soundtrack was playing loudly over the video audio.
The kid in the white blazer grabbed a long stalk of celery from the produce rack, pressing the leafy end against his shoulder like the stock of an assault rifle. He pointed the celery stick directly at his friend.
"Sorry, Tommy," the kid lip-synced perfectly to the audio track of Jamie Foxx's slick, desperate voice. "This is Vice City. This is business."
The camera whipped over to the kid in the Hawaiian shirt. He grabbed a long, crusty French baguette off a nearby bakery shelf. He held it down by his hip like a pump-action shotgun. He stared dead into the phone camera, letting his eyes go completely blank and empty, mimicking Al Pacino's exact sociopathic stare from the movie's climax.
He aggressively racked the baguette backward, simulating a shotgun pump.
The video cut perfectly on the beat drop of the synth music.
Daniel stared at the screen. He scrolled down.
The next video was three college kids in a dorm room. One was wearing a pastel suit, wiping powdered sugar off his nose in a frantic, sweaty panic, completely nailing Steve Buscemi's greasy lawyer character.
Daniel scrolled again.
A girl in a nightclub VIP booth, wearing a sleek backless dress, staring dead-eyed at the camera while she dragged on a vape pen, matching Sharon Stone's exact aloof, lethal energy from the trailer.
"Let me see," Florence laughed, pulling the phone out of his hand.
Margot slid out of her side of the booth and squeezed in next to Daniel, pressing against his right shoulder to look at the screen with Florence.
They watched a compilation video of at least twenty different groups of people recreating the Lance Vance betrayal scene. People were using broomsticks, rolled-up posters, and umbrellas as shotguns. They were wearing cheap neon shirts. The hashtag #ViceCityBetrayal had three hundred million views stamped right at the bottom of the screen.
Margot threw her head back and laughed out loud, the sound completely swallowed by the pub noise.
"Look at your life, Dan," Margot grinned, pointing a greasy chip at him. "Look at exactly where you are right now."
Daniel looked around the pub. The old men in flat caps, the sticky table, the damp smell of the rain.
"You're sitting in a damp, freezing pub in the middle of nowhere," Margot pointed out, her eyes crinkling with amusement. "You're eating soggy potatoes wrapped in yesterday's news. And meanwhile, halfway across the globe, an entire generation of teenagers is running around grocery stores pretending to shoot each other in the chest with French bread because of a movie you made. The absolute absurdity of it."
"It's a very good movie," Florence defended him, handing the phone back. She bumped her shoulder against his. "They have excellent taste in cinema."
"It's a viral trend," Daniel smiled, locking the phone screen and sliding it back into his pocket. "It'll pass in a month. Next week they'll be dancing to some new song."
"Maybe," Margot allowed, taking another bite of her fish. "But the bread shotgun is objectively hilarious. You should cast that kid in the next one."
They spent another hour in the pub, ordering a second round of drinks and splitting a sticky toffee pudding that Margot completely obliterated. When the football match ended and the pub started to clear out, Daniel paid the tab, and they walked back out into the freezing Oxfordshire rain.
The quiet, grounded normalcy of the pub completely shattered the second Daniel stepped onto the lot at Leavesden on Monday morning.
Hangar D was a massive, echoing cavern, and today, it was entirely blinding.
The entire interior of the hangar—all four walls and the floor—had been draped in massive, seamless screens of bright, chroma-key blue. Dozens of heavy industrial lights were rigged to the ceiling scaffolding, blasting the blue fabric with intense, even illumination to ensure the visual effects team would have a perfectly clean matte to work with later.
In the center of the massive blue room sat a heavy, industrial hydraulic rig. It looked like the base of a mechanical bull, complete with thick pneumatic pistons and exposed wiring. Bolted to the top of the rig was a meticulously carved wooden prop broom.
Pacing around the camera monitors, holding a light meter and muttering aggressively under his breath, was Bob Elswit.
Bob wore a faded baseball cap, a heavy fleece jacket, and a permanent expression of deep, technical frustration. He was staring at the hydraulic rig, then looking up at the lighting grids, rubbing his jaw.
Daniel walked over, stepping carefully across the blue foam matting taped to the floor.
"Talk to me, Bob," Daniel said, stopping next to the monitors.
"It's the bounce, Dan," Bob pointed his light meter at the blue floor. "The blue fabric is highly reflective. The massive lights we have to use to expose the screens are hitting the floor and bouncing blue light right up into the undercarriage of the rig. It's spilling onto the actor's face."
Bob pointed to the secondary monitor, which showed a test frame of a stand-in sitting on the broom. The underside of the stand-in's jaw had a distinct, sickly blue hue to it.
"We are supposed to be shooting an outdoor daytime scene," Bob continued, frustrated. "They are flying a hundred feet in the air. The sunlight needs to look like it's coming from above, harsh and bright. I can't have them looking like they're hovering over a glowing blue radioactive puddle."
"Flag it," Daniel suggested, looking up at the grid.
"I am flagging it," Bob said, waving a hand toward a group of grips up on the scaffolding. "I'm having the boys hang massive black solids underneath the camera lens to kill the bounce. But it's a geometry nightmare. The hydraulic rig moves. When the rig pitches forward, the kid dips out of the shadow of the flag and catches the blue spill again."
"Adjust the key light," Daniel said, tracking the angles with his eyes. "Punch a 20K directly from the top left, mimic the sun. Overpower the bounce with sheer wattage. The VFX guys can rotoscope the slight color spill later if they have to, but I want the hard shadows on his face to look like actual sunlight."
Bob stared at the rig for a second, doing the lighting math in his head.
"Alright," Bob grunted, turning to his gaffer. "Bring the 20K down from the grid. Angle it at forty-five degrees, spot it straight onto the saddle. Kill the ambient fill on the left side."
The lighting crew scrambled to execute the orders.
Ten minutes later, Colin Morgan walked onto the set.
He was wearing his Gryffindor Quidditch robes—heavy crimson and gold fabric, leather arm guards, and knee pads. He looked incredibly small walking into the massive, blindingly bright blue hangar.
The stunt riggers guided him up a small set of rolling stairs and helped him straddle the wooden broom. They strapped his feet into hidden stirrups and hooked a heavy safety wire to a harness hidden under his robes.
"Comfortable, Colin?" Daniel called out through his microphone.
"Yeah, I'm alright," Colin called back. His voice echoed slightly in the large room. He shifted on the hard wooden seat, looking down at the massive hydraulic pistons underneath him.
"Alright, let's fire up the rig," Daniel ordered. "Level one. Just a gentle hover to get the movement down."
The rig operator pushed a lever on his control board.
The pneumatic pistons hissed loudly. The broom lifted an inch, then started to slowly pitch back and forth, simulating the gentle, floating movement of hovering in mid-air.
Colin sat perfectly upright. He gripped the wooden handle with both hands. He stared straight ahead at the blank blue wall in front of him.
He looked incredibly stiff. He was bouncing around on the wooden stick, but he looked exactly like a kid sitting on a coin-operated ride outside a supermarket. He felt ridiculous, and it translated directly through the camera lens.
"Okay, let's take it to level three," Daniel said, watching the monitor closely. "This is the dive, Colin. You're chasing the Snitch. The wind is in your face. You're dropping fast."
The rig operator pushed the lever forward.
The hydraulic arm jerked violently, pitching the broom nose-down at a steep angle and shaking rapidly to simulate turbulence. Massive industrial fans, set up just off-camera, roared to life, blasting Colin with heavy wind, flattening his robes against his body.
Colin squeezed his eyes shut for a second against the wind. He held on tight, his knuckles turning white. He leaned forward slightly, but his back was still rigid. He looked terrified of falling off the rig, completely focused on holding onto the wood rather than acting like a skilled flyer.
Daniel watched the monitor. The lighting looked fantastic—Bob's hard top-light was carving harsh, realistic shadows across Colin's face—but the physical performance was dead.
"Cut," Daniel said, setting his headset down on the console. "Kill the fans."
The massive fans spun down. The hydraulic rig leveled out and hissed to a stop.
Daniel walked directly onto the blue mat, stepping up to the side of the rig.
"Unstrap him for a second," Daniel told the two stunt riggers.
They quickly unhooked the safety wires and pulled Colin's feet out of the stirrups. Colin slid off the broom, rubbing his thighs, looking embarrassed.
"I look daft, don't I?" Colin muttered, looking at his boots. "It's just a wall. I'm just looking at a blue wall."
"It's completely unnatural," Daniel agreed easily. "You're sitting in a freezing hangar on a piece of machinery. Your brain knows you aren't flying. We have to trick it."
Daniel grabbed the edge of the rolling stairs and stepped up onto the rig. He threw his leg over the wooden broom, straddling the seat.
"Strap my feet in," Daniel told the riggers.
The crew quickly secured Daniel's boots into the stirrups. Daniel grabbed the wooden handle. He looked over at the rig operator.
"Hit level three," Daniel ordered. "Give me the fans."
The pistons hissed loudly. The rig pitched violently forward, the nose of the broom dipping into a steep, aggressive dive. The massive fans roared to life, blasting Daniel with heavy, rushing air.
Daniel didn't sit upright. The second the rig pitched forward, Daniel threw his entire upper body weight into the dive. He flattened his chest tightly against the wooden handle. He pulled his elbows in tight against his ribs, making himself as aerodynamic as possible.
He whipped his head to the left, his eyes tracking an invisible, fast-moving object across the blue screen. He gritted his teeth, his jaw tight, leaning his whole body heavily into the simulated turns, letting his weight fight the hydraulic shaking of the machine.
He looked incredibly fast. Even sitting in a blue room in his street clothes, the physical commitment to the movement sold the absolute illusion of speed and gravity.
Daniel raised a hand, signaling the operator.
The fans cut out. The rig leveled off.
Daniel unstrapped his feet and hopped off the rig, landing lightly on the blue mat. He looked at Colin.
"You see the elbows?" Daniel asked, breathing slightly heavier from the physical exertion. "If you keep your arms out wide, the wind catches you. You look like a parachute. Tuck them in tight. Push your chest down against the wood. You have to fight the machine, Colin. Don't let it just bounce you around. You drive it."
Colin nodded slowly, visualizing the movement. The embarrassment was completely gone. Seeing the director physically commit to the ridiculousness of the rig broke the tension entirely.
"I've got it," Colin said, stepping back up onto the stairs.
He straddled the broom. The riggers strapped his feet in and hooked up the heavy safety harness.
Colin grabbed the wooden handle. He immediately tucked his elbows in tight against his ribs, lowering his center of gravity.
Daniel walked back to the monitors, slipping his headset on. "Roll cameras. Fans to full. Level three."
The fans roared. The rig pitched forward violently.
Colin didn't stiffen up this time. He threw his weight forward, pressing his chest into the wood. He whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto a spot on the blue wall, tracking it fiercely. The fans blasted his hair back. He leaned hard into the shaking hydraulic arm, using his legs to grip the saddle, making the massive machine look like an extension of his own body.
He looked like a Seeker.
"Hold that eyeline!" Daniel called out over the roar of the fans. "You're gaining on it! Reach for it!"
Colin pulled his right hand off the broom handle. He leaned precariously far off the side of the rig, stretching his arm out toward the empty air, his face twisted in absolute, fierce determination.
"Cut!" Daniel yelled. "That is a beautiful print! Fantastic job, Colin!"
The fans died down. Colin slumped back against the saddle, letting out a loud, exhilarated breath, a massive grin breaking across his face.
The blue screen shoot lasted for another grueling five hours. They ran through dozens of angles, specific lighting shifts, and complex hydraulic programming to capture every necessary beat of the Quidditch match.
By the time the AD called wrap for the day, the hangar was echoing with the sounds of heavy equipment powering down.
Daniel walked over to the craft services table set up near the massive hangar doors.
Rupert, Emma, and Colin were standing around the folding table, absolutely ravaging a tray of chocolate digestives and individual bags of prawn cocktail crisps.
"My legs are dead," Rupert complained loudly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He had spent an hour on the rig shooting his own reaction shots in the stands. "The saddle on that thing is made of actual concrete. I'm going to have bruises the size of dinner plates on my thighs."
"You only sat on it for an hour," Emma laughed, tearing open a bag of crisps. "Colin was up there half the day. You're just soft."
"I am not soft," Rupert argued indignantly, tossing a biscuit at her. "I've got sensitive skin."
Colin was leaning against the table, chewing on a biscuit, his hair still completely wild and windblown from the industrial fans. He wasn't complaining. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were bright.
"It was brilliant, though," Colin said, wiping a crumb off his chin. "When the fans are going and you lean right into it... actually feels like you're moving. Bloody brilliant."
"Wait until they put you on the rig that spins upside down," Rupert teased, grinning wickedly. "The rig guys told me about it. They strap you in by the ankles and flip you."
Colin's eyes went slightly wide. "They don't, do they?"
"They absolutely do," Rupert lied smoothly, stealing another biscuit.
Emma rolled her eyes, shoving Rupert's shoulder. "He's lying, Colin. Don't listen to him."
Daniel stood a few feet away, holding a bottle of water, watching them interact.
They were so innocent. They weren't talking about box office projections or character motivations. They were complaining about bruises, stealing each other's snacks, and talking nonsense. The chemistry wasn't forced; it was forged in the absolute, shared ridiculousness of sitting on mechanical brooms in a freezing blue room. They were bonding exactly the way kids were supposed to bond.
Daniel took a sip of his water, looking at the three of them.
He knew exactly what was coming. He knew the absolute tidal wave of global fame that was going to crash down on their heads the second this movie hit theaters. They were going to lose their anonymity entirely. They were going to be chased by cameras, analyzed by fans, and thrown into a machine that had historically crushed child actors to dust.
Daniel tightened his grip on the plastic water bottle.
He built this machine, and he owned it completely. He watched Emma laugh at something Rupert said, Colin joining in with a quiet chuckle.
Daniel promised himself, right there in the damp, freezing hangar, that he would build a wall around them so thick that the Hollywood machine would break its teeth trying to get through it. He would let them do the heavy lifting on the screen, but he would carry the weight of the empire entirely on his own shoulders.
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A/N: Read ahead on Patreon: AmaanS