Burn down a desk, it’s kind of funny. Burn down half the state, you’re kind of a dick.

[cottoncandypink]

Wilford rarely took vacations, and never for as long as a month. Even when he’d been shot, he went back to work as soon as possible. He still wasn’t sure this was the right choice. Nobody from the network seemed to have anything to say, which was a surprise — pleasant, but still a surprise.

The biggest surprise of all was getting up in the morning. That had not been a problem since… ever? There must have been a time when sleep wasn’t such an issue for him, but he couldn’t recall it if it ever existed. He never had to get up because that required being asleep in the first place. Which had become a thing since the surgery. A thing nobody had mentioned once, until after the fact. But apparently not being able to breathe right meant your body didn’t like staying asleep for very long. Getting to sleep was still a hassle, but once he got there, he tended to stay that way.

And suddenly getting up at 6am to hit the gym, find some breakfast, and get to the studio by 10am was a bigger challenge than it had ever been in his life. By his second cup of coffee as he watched the neighbours engage in their morning battle to the death, Wilford decided to skip the gym. And driving out to the good restaurants in Little Seoul for breakfast. He’d get a cinnamon bun from Bean Machine on his way into town.

He didn’t think he looked any different in the mirror. His teeth seemed straighter, where he still had them, even though they hadn’t done anything with his teeth (except for the ones they took out). Maybe they just looked straighter because his jaw wasn’t sideways. That was probably it. He showered, decided a clean shave was in order for his first day back, spent entirely too long fiddling with all the new equipment in his mouth, took extra care in getting his moustache to look just right, since a month off from doing anything with it made the whole thing completely unwilling to cooperate, and even took a shot at styling his hair. His hair was a lost cause. He gave up.

With Buster fed and the dog door open for him to come and go as he pleased, Wilford picked up Bailey and hauled her down to the car so she could spend the day being watched.

---

The studio hadn’t changed at all. There was a new stain on the carpet inside the door that looked suspiciously like blood, but it also looked old so Wilford pretended he didn’t see it and headed to his dressing room. He’d barely had time to set Bailey down beside the desk and boot up his computer before Billy walked in with a stack of folders.

“You haven’t burnt the place down yet,” Wilford said as Billy sat down on the other side of the desk. He dropped the folders down in front of Wilford.

“No, but Kevin shot the pizza guy,” Billy said.

Wilford stopped still to run that through his head again. “Why?”

Billy shrugged. “Someone said he wouldn’t.”

Wilford wasn’t exactly going to go out of his way to solve the mystery of the blood in the foyer, but it seemed he already had his answer. And it wasn’t one he wanted. He sighed, pretended he hadn’t heard any of it, and picked up the top folder. It took longer to get through all of them than usual, since he had weeks of catching up to do. He read through the correspondents’ notes, as well as Mandy’s as he’d filled the role over the last month. Wilford scribbled out a few and replaced them with his own ideas, but found it rather difficult to argue with most of what had been done. The shows that had aired in his absence had been about on the same level of quality as usual, and Mandy had done a decent job of showing his work in all the notes.

While he went through the notes, Billy sat by quietly, checking his messages on his phone and helping himself to what was left of Wilford’s breakfast.

“Make room for this,” Wilford said once he was done with the stack of folders. He dropped his own on top of the stack and pushed the whole lot back toward Billy.

“Ooh. You’re not supposed to work on your vacation,” Billy said, picking up the folder to thumb through it. He was silent at first, only to break it with a harsh chuckle. “This cannot be for real.”

“Friday. Make room,” Wilford said.

Billy laughed and got up, grabbing the massive stack of folders to take with him. “You got it, pal.”

He left to go re-distribute the cases to their owners, leaving Wilford to attack his mountain of ignored emails. It took a long time to scroll through and select all of them, but it was so worth it to hit that delete key and watch the list disappear one email at a time. Yep. It felt good to be back at work. With no more emails to go through, he got up to go find Mandy, who was probably in by that point. Wilford expected him to come in late, and couldn’t really blame him, but now they had to catch up on how the month had gone in Wilford’s absence. He found Mandy at his desk in the bullpen, screwing around on some message board. Wilford grabbed a chair from the next desk and slid it over, deliberately knocking Mandy’s mouse out of his hand.

“Here we go,” Mandy said, spinning around in his chair to face Wilford.

“The fuck was that last week?” Wilford asked.

Mandy rolled his eyes. “Like you’d have done better.”

Wilford wouldn’t have done any better for even a second, but that wasn’t the point. “We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you.” He watched Mandy, curious to see how he’d handle himself. Mandy just shrugged.

“Guest was a jackass. That’s why we invited him.”

Wilford nodded. It was an acceptable answer. With that out of the way, they discuss the actual experience of Mandy helming a show for a month. Nichola had given him almost complete control, stepping in only when ratings were going to suffer. But it didn’t sound like she needed to step in much. Mandy had been with the team almost since the beginning. He’d seen how Wilford ran things, and while he obviously hadn’t intended to copy Wilford’s style, he’d figured out what to do in a leadership position.

While they discussed what Mandy should try differently in the future, Nichola quickly walked up to them, bending down to Wilford’s level. “Do you have a half hour to spare?” she asked quietly.

Wilford looked at her, already not liking where this was going. “Depends. What awful thing do you have planned?”

“Next door is having a crisis, and they’ve asked you to fill a seat,” she said.

“Next door’s a morning show,” Wilford said, certain he’d seen their vapid, protein-shake-shilling airheads lost in the corridors many times.

“Morning show moved out. It’s late night now,” Nichola said.

That would not be as awful. Not great, but not awful. “When?” he asked.

“Now.”

Slightly more awful. “I’m not even dressed,” Wilford said. It was hot enough outside that the tar on the roads was melting, and Wilford had been dressing appropriately all month. But appropriate for the weather was not appropriate to appear on national television.

Nichola spared a moment to look at the ugly Hawaiian shirt he was wearing. “No, that’s perfect, actually. They need you right now. Thank you.”

With that, she was gone. Wilford sighed at Mandy and got up. Or tried to get up. At some point, he’d managed to roll his chair over one of his sandals. He was about to wear sandals on national television. Good god.

“She’s fired,” he grumbled as he righted himself and got to his feet.

Mandy laughed. “Good luck with that one.”

This was going to suck, but he knew it was just a matter of time before he was punished for taking such a long break. He left the bullpen and headed down the hall, crossing over the taped box on the floor representing the No Man’s Land between the two studios. He stopped halfway through the box at the vending machine and grabbed a package of chips, suddenly remembered he couldn’t eat those anymore, and grabbed a pack of mints as well. He stuffed both into his inventory and headed over to the set next door. He’d never actually been on this side of the building before, but its layout was an exact mirrored copy of his side. Only where he had a bullpen, they had props. Where he had conference rooms, they had more dressing rooms. Finding the green room wasn’t going to be a challenge, but he didn’t even get that far before one of their showrunners ran up to meet him.

“Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said, shoving a mic pack down the back of his shirt before he could even protest. Wilford managed to catch the pack and clip it onto his shorts, while the frantic showrunner moved the microphone around and clipped it to his shirt.

“Jesus, she wasn’t kidding about a crisis,” Wilford said as he was quickly moved in the direction of the stage doors.

“Most people aren’t coked up enough to leave after the pre-show talk,” the showrunner said.

Wilford couldn’t help but laugh. That was definitely a crisis all right. “I didn’t know you could do that much coke.” He’d have to try it some time.

As the showrunner stepped behind him to make sure his mic pack was on, Wilford could hear the show coming back from commercial. The audience erupted into applause as the host — whoever he was — said something that could barely be heard over the noise. That was Wilford’s cue to start acting like a professional. Mic was hot, so he pointed at the curtain and mouthed ‘where?’ at the showrunner. The showrunner pointed to Wilford’s left, and then held up one finger. Wilford checked his watch. He was the second guest, assuming they’d started filming on the hour. Maybe he could get out of there quickly, then. He got a quick pat on the back, and the curtain was thrown open just enough for him to step through. The noise from the audience was deafening. His show filmed with an audience for some segments, but this was an entirely new level of crowd energy that he’d never experienced before. He tried not to be staggered by it as he walked over to the seat and greeted the host. Wilford recognised him. Some young guy named Jackson something. He’d been getting a lot of press lately for bringing Late Night back to Los Santos.

“Holy hell,” Wilford said as he shook the kid’s hand. They both looked out at the crowd, which was finally starting to quiet down.

“I know, right?” Jackson agreed, inviting Wilford to take the hotseat. “Do you get anything like this next door?”

“No,” Wilford said. “I’m jealous.” He kind of was, too.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” a voice on his other side asked. Wilford looked over, and recognised this guy too. He was an actor. Mark something or other. Mick? Matt? Something like that.

“Have you been outside?” Wilford asked. “It’s two hundred degrees out there. I had to dig my car out of the drive way this morning.”

“Are you wearing flip flops?” Mark asked.

Wilford leaned over to look at his feet, and then settled comfortably in his chair. “Yes. It’s hot.”

“You have to admit, he’s got a point,” Jackson cut in. “I don’t think anyone’s used to seeing you dressed like this.”

Wilford returned his attention back to the host. “You’ve got Santa Claus on your tie in August,” he pointed out. Across the set, he could see the camera zoom in close on Jackson’s tie, giving everyone a high-def view of the skiing Santas he’d chosen to wear. Jackson covered his tie with his hand, turning red even underneath the layers of makeup he was wearing.

“You weren’t—nobody was supposed to see that,” he said.

“There’s some nerd ripping this in 4K for the entire internet to see,” Mark said. “Everybody’s going to see it.”

Jackson turned even more red as he was ganged up on. “I don’t think that’s how that works,” he said, finally taking his hand down now that the cameras had switched back to a wide shot. “But enough about what we’re wearing. We’re not that kind of show. You’ve actually been off the air all month, haven’t you? When we asked if you could come over, we were told today was your first day back. What was that all about?”

“I paid some surgeon way too much money to knock out a bunch of my teeth,” Wilford said.

Jackson seemed genuinely surprised. Apparently moving into the building didn’t come with any information about what his neighbours got up to. “Seriously?” he asked.

Wilford shrugged. “When I was a kid, I pissed off someone a grade above me, and he decided to use my face as a trampoline.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson said, hamming up his horror just a little bit.

“Oh, it was awful, and never got fixed right. But my dentist a few months ago referred me to a guy who specialises in that kind of thing. They had to tear everything up, and break my jaw in about three places to rebuild it. I lost these teeth in the process.” He pointed toward the missing teeth in front, prompting Jackson to lean forward to see.

“Did they put them back?” he asked.

Wilford considered his answer for a few moments, decided he had no shame whatsoever, and opened his mouth to pop the denture out. Jackson recoiled in what seemed like genuine disgust, while on the other side, Mark made a similar noise. The camera zoomed in again, and Wilford gave it a good shot of the fake teeth in his hand before popping it back into place.

“I would not have known,” Mark said. “You want to give me this guy’s number in case I need him?”

“Yeah, sure.” Wilford pulled out his wallet, and dug through it for a business card. He found it buried amongst coffee shop punch cards, and handed it over.

Behind his desk, Jackson laughed and shook his head. “What’d you do to piss this kid off so much?” he asked.

“Stole his car and drove it into the river,” Wilford said plainly. “I probably deserved it.”

“Oh, yeah. I would have curbstomped you too,” Mark agreed. “Absolutely.”

Jackson laughed awkwardly. Wilford could tell he’d already lost control of the interview, but it was a fun novelty to be on this side of the questions, and Wilford had no intention of helping him bring it back around.

“I’ve done it to other people since. You don’t mess with a man’s vehicle,” he said.

“Says the guy who got his face smashed for messing with someone’s vehicle,” Mark pointed out.

Wilford shrugged. “I said I probably deserved it.”

“Definitely,” Mark corrected.

“I’ve heard a rumour that that’s not the worst thing you’ve done,” Jackson said.

Wilford shook his head. “Oh, no.”

Jackson gave him a second to elaborate, but Wilford chose not to take it.

“Is it true you started a fire?” Jackson asked.

Wilford thought about this. He’d started a lot of fires. “When?” he asked.

Jackson made a startled little noise. “The one I heard about involved a teacher.”

“Oh, that fire!” Beside him, Mark barked with laughter. “I’d ask how you people dig this shit up, but that’s what I do for a living. I was, eleven? Twelve? The teacher made me sit in front of the class next to his desk, which meant he couldn’t see me while he was teaching. I had some matches and threw a lit one into his desk.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson exclaimed.

“I slashed a teacher’s tires once,” Mark added helpfully.

“Oh, I did that too. Same guy,” Wilford said. Then he thought about it for a second. “Same day.”

“Oh my god!” Jackson repeated. “And you were allowed to go back to school after that?”

Wilford shook his head. “Not the same school. I was on probation until I was eighteen.”

“I’m not surprised!”

Wilford shrugged. He still didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.

“You haven’t started any fires recently, have you?” Jackson asked.

“Not since I moved out here. Burn down a desk, it’s kind of funny. Burn down half the state, you’re kind of a dick.”

“Kind of?” Mark asked.

“Could burn down the whole state,” Wilford pointed out.

“Yeah, you’re right. That’s a lot of state to burn down. Start with an attainable target and move up from there,” Mark said, sounding like he was talking about weight loss goals or something.

“Oh my god,” Jackson repeated. He laughed and shook his head while someone next to the number 2 camera threw up a hand signal. “Let’s take a little break and try to get this madhouse under control, shall we? We’ll be right back!”

The audience erupted into applause again as Jackson relaxed against his desk, still laughing at the situation before him. “Do you have to go?” he asked Wilford.

Wilford shook his head. He was enjoying this. “I can stay. Unless I’m being kicked out.”

“No. Stay. You’re great,” Jackson said.

Wilford nodded and pulled his snacks out of his inventory. Once again, he’d forgotten he couldn’t eat the chips until a moment before he opened it.

“Chips?” he asked, offering Mark the bag.

“Oh, sure.” Mark took the bag and tore it open. “Get the wrong kind?”

“Forgot I can’t eat them,” Wilford explained. He pointed at the side of his mouth. “Got loads of equipment in there still. Chips are a no-go until it comes out.” He popped a mint into his mouth, knowing full well it would sound awful on the microphone and not caring.

“Again, I could not tell. This guy sounds like a wizard,” Mark said.

“One who takes teeth in payment,” Wilford said.

“Hey, you brought snacks and didn’t bring enough for everyone?” Jackson asked, suddenly realising what was going on while he’d been busy confabbing with a producer.

Wilford looked at his roll of mints, and spotting hand signals down by the camera again, slowly pulled one out. He waited until the camera man signalled ‘live’ to hand a mint over. Jackson completely missed his cue as he looked incredulously down at his mint. “Thanks,” he said. He laughed and finally looked up at the camera to welcome the show back.

Apparently he was done with Wilford, which wasn’t a terrible surprise after he’d asked if Wilford was leaving. Instead, some teenage pop idol was introduced to the stage with her band. The curtains flew open, the audience roared, and somewhere underneath all the noise, music was happening. With their mics off, Wilford and Mark were free to enjoy their snacks and the show, until the pop idol was invited over to the hotseat. Mark and Wilford both got up to shuffle down a seat to make room.

“I heard there were snacks,” she said to Wilford as soon as she sat down.

Wilford handed her the rest of his mints, if only to see Jackson ham up a jealous reaction.

“I only got one!” he said.

She shrugged. “He likes me more.”

More hammed up jealousy from Jackson, before he finally got on with it and asked her about album releases and tour dates, and then suddenly the show was all out of time. The audience erupted again as Jackson signed off and the band played the theme tune, and that was that. Wilford got up to be helped out of his mic pack so he could get back to his own show, while Mark lingered.

“Hey, we should get together some time,” he said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “I’ve got this thing happening on Saturday. Stop by. I’ll leave my info with your girl out front.”

Wilford untangled himself from the long wire and handed the pack off to the stagehand. “Yeah, maybe I will,” he said, almost surprised at the offer. He hadn’t moved to Vinewood to mingle, but he never was one to turn down a party either. They shook hands and parted ways. The appearance took longer than Wilford had wanted it to, but it wasn’t awful. He ducked out through the set doors into the hall, eager to get back to his own show.