Lights, Camera, Omega (Hollywood Omegas #1)

“Though we didn’t become close for a few years, I met Cosmo for the first time on my 28th birthday.” Magnus, now settled into the sofa in the conversation pit, began his tale. Sol, Julian, and I watching intently from the opposite bench of plush cushions.

“It was not long after I made my first film,” he pauses to take a drag, exhaling the smoke.

“Nightsong,” I blurt, my overeager outburst like a twitchy quiz show guest.

Magnus only smiles and nods.

“My brief love affair with New York City, my muse and the real star of that film—had already lost its shine,” he sighs with an air of melancholy.

“My mother, may she rest in peace, had insisted that I come home and visit her to celebrate my birthday. I was never very good at saying no to her, so I went.” Magnus looks out the huge windows at the ocean waves crashing just beyond.

“When I actually got to Belgium, my mother had so many activities and social gatherings lined up in our calendar that I immediately regretted coming. One of the very first things she’d insisted that we attend, was the Ipsysio Gavlana piano competition, where a young, handsome concert pianist from the states was a favorite to win.”

All three of us lean in at this. Though I’m sure that both Sol and Julian have heard parts of this story before—I get the impression that this is the first time that they’re hearing the whole thing. At least, from Magnus’ point of view.

“I don’t need to tell you all that he played beautifully.” Magnus gives us a weak smile, but his eyes are fixed far away.

“Like any other fan might, I waited by the backstage door until Cosmo appeared. He smoked back then—freshly twenty-one, sullen and beautiful.” Magnus shakes his head with a breathy laugh.

“I offered him a cigarette and we got to talking. He was talented, he’d been making some money from prizes in the competition circuit, but not enough. Traveling, agents, the expensive luxury trappings needed to move smoothly, to advance in the upper echelons of the music world, had been financed by his wealthy family—and somehow, suddenly the money was drying up,” Magnus continues his tale.

“I told him that he was a natural on the stage in all aspects. I gave him my card, and he had no idea who I was. He hadn’t seen Nightsong, in fact—the little shit had the gall to tell me that he didn’t even like movies when I tried to explain who I was,” Magnus laughs again, but I can see the tears welling in his eyes.

I look to Julian in a silent question, should we go to him?

Julian keeps his hand still atop my thigh as if to say, let’s let him finish, or at least give him another moment.

“I told him, if he ever needed a better paying line of work to give me a call.” Magnus tips his face upward in a futile attempt to keep the tears from falling.

“Almost three years later to the day—he called me. I had written Gravitation for him in a single sitting the week after we’d met at the piano competition, and I flew him out to LA to come read the screenplay. He did a few re-writes in the motel room he insisted on staying at before he agreed to make the movie with me. As part of preparations for shooting, I bought him The Studio.” Magnus blinks a few tears away.

“He’s always been a little closed and fiercely independent. I grew up in a home where my father was more of a visitor than a member of the household. I didn’t think anything of men who were simply heroically elsewhere a great deal of the time. I myself had become one such man, so how could I possibly hold him accountable through my own hypocrisy?” The tears flow steadily down his cheeks, though he does not sniffle or tremble with sobs.

Now Julian and I spring from the couch, bracketing Magnus on either side with gentle embraces and caresses.

“But things are different now,” Magnus buries his face in my hair as his body shudders silently with his captive sobs.

“Neither Cosmo nor I can afford to be this kind of man as our pack grows and becomes a family. I don’t want to be a visitor in my own home, and I don’t want Cosmo to become more and more of a stranger, trying to martyr himself in a profession he hates for no reason other than to keep me or anyone else happy.”

Sol joins us on the couch—reaching an arm around my shoulders to rub Magnus’ back comfortingly.

“I know I’ve got a lot to be sorry for, a lot of changing to do—but I want to do it.” He finally lets loose and dissolves into tears.

“Shhhh, Shhhh, everything is going to be ok,” Julian and I soothe, taking turns pressing gentle kisses to Magnus’ lips and cheeks wet with tears.

Once we’ve gotten Magnus calmed down, Sol stands from the sofa, smoothing his worn teal snap front shirt down his chest as he announces, “alright, you two take care of our packmaster, and I’m going to go have a little discussion with Mr. Lamont—see if I can’t get him to cool it and come back here so that we can re-approach this conversation with a little less macho-man hormone action and a little more of this level of sensitivity—of love.”

We wish him good luck, and send Sol on his mission—knowing full well that if there’s any man for this job? It’s Solomon Cooper.

When I get to Cosmo’s studio, he’s already shirtless and spattering huge sprays of bright vermillion paint onto a couch sized canvas, an old punk LP spins on the turntable, a cacophony that sounds more like a hive of angry bees backed by dentist drills than humans playing instruments pours through the speakers as Cosmo continues his rage fueled artistry.

I stand at a distance and watch him use a loaded brush to make large sweeping strokes before flicking excess paint across the canvas. He continues to increase his verve until he can no longer reach the remainder of red paint at the bottom of the narrow-lipped cup with his broad brush—tossing the entire cup at the canvas on the wall with an angry splat, the empty cup clatters to the ground.

Deciding he’s had enough time to get his ya-yas out with this artistic tantrum, I walk over to the record player and lift the needle from the spinning turntable—silence blankets the studio.

Cosmo whips around to face me—his eyes bright with anger.

“Go away Sol,” he growls, turning his back on me.