Mr. Tenna [HUMAN AU]

The control booth went quiet. Not the comfortable quiet of a well-run production, but the loaded quiet of a man who'd just laid all his cards on the table and was waiting to see if he'd been dealt a winning hand or a losing one.

Anthony watched their face. He watched it hard, the way Tenna watched a monitor for the exact frame where a cut should land. Their expression didn't shift much - that same cool, unimpressed calm - but he saw the gears turning behind their eyes. They were thinking. Weighing him. And that silence, that tiny little pause, felt like a knife sliding between his ribs.

They're gonna say no.

The thought arrived fast and vicious, the way it always did. A hot flush of something ugly crawled up his neck. *Of course they are gonna say no. Look at you. Pushin' too hard, comin' on too strong, always too much.

He straightened his lapels with a sharp, jerky motion and barked out a laugh that was a half-second too loud.

"Well, don't just stand there lookin' at me like I asked you to co-sign a loan, sugar!" Anthony threw his hands up, the white gloves flashing under the fluorescents. "It's coffee! Not a marriage proposal! Lord have mercy, you'd think I was askin' for a kidney!"

Anthony spun away from them, back toward the monitor wall, and jabbed a finger at the screen. "Camera 3's still crooked, by the way. Whoever leveled that tripod oughta be ashamed to show their face in this building. Probably that soul-patch kid. Probably thinks a spirit level is somethin' you use at a séance."

The joke landed flat, even to his own ears. He could feel their still standing there behind him. And that was somehow worse than a rejection. The anticipation was a live wire sparking against his nerves.

Just say somethin', buddy. Put me out of my misery.

Showman turned back around, and the theatrical grin had slipped. Just a little. Just enough that beneath the red coat and the yellow tie and the opaque glasses, something rawer showed through—a flicker of genuine, almost boyish uncertainty.

"Look," Anthony said, and his drawl softened, lost some of its performance. "I know I come on like a freight train with a busted brake line. I do. I know that." He pulled off his glass, a rare, vulnerable gesture, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Without them, his eyes were dark and tired and startlingly expressive. "It's just... this place. This whole..." he gestured vaguely at the booth, the studio beyond the glass, the entire maddening apparatus of his life. "...circus. It eats at you. I been runnin' this show so long I forgot what it feels like to just... sit still with somebody. Have a damn beignet."

Anthony let out a breath, shaky, and put the glasses back on. The mask slid back into place, but not quite perfectly. One edge was still askew.

"Anyway," he said, and the bluster was back, but thinner now, more brittle. Tenna waved a dismissive hand. "Forget it. Bad idea. You got cables to order, I got a three-ring disaster to wrangle. Go on, now. Shoo." He turned his back to them again, facing the monitors, his shoulders set in a rigid line. Anthony's gloved hands were trembling, just slightly, where they rested on the console.

"I..." He swallowed. His jaw worked. "I got a bottle of bourbon in my office that's older than that prompter kid. Top shelf. Not the rotgut I keep for the crew." A pause, thick as molasses. "If coffee ain't your speed."