Felix and Emery Make a Music Video: a Star of the Game bonus scene
In the epilogue of Star of the Game (Stick Side #6), Emery briefly mentions filming the music video for “Another Page.” You can read all about the filming of that video below! (Note: it’s pure fluff and happiness.)
SPOILERS ABOUND!
If you haven’t read Star of the Game yet, turn away! This bonus scene occurs a few months after the end of the last chapter, but before the epilogue. You will be spoiling yourself if you haven’t read the book. You’ve been warned.
This bonus short story is about 1,800 words, so it’s short and sweet. Grab a snack, sit back, and enjoy!
Felix and Emery Make a Music Video
“This isn’t working.” Elayne Becker, the director of the music video for “Another Page”—formerly “Emery’s Song”—planted both hands on her hips and frowned at Felix under the Los Angeles sunshine. “He’s too stiff. His smiles are like cardboard, his shoulders are up to his ears, and he keeps forgetting not to look at the camera.”
Pursing his lips, Felix’s gaze strayed to Emery, who stood at the shoreline on the beach that was the setting for the music video, chatting with one of the camera people. Felix and Emery had recorded the song together in late May, and now, more than a month later, they were filming the music video.
The song was about them, and it was sung by them, so the video would be a montage of scenes: Felix and Emery making dinner, taking a walk in Stanley Park in Vancouver, sightseeing in LA, touring the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
They’d paid a fortune to have the whole place to themselves after-hours, and Emery had been like a little kid in a candy store, running from one thing to another. Despite his many years in hockey, it had been his first time there, and he’d galloped from display to exhibit to display, all adorably wide-eyed. During a break in filming for the crew to scarf down a meal, Felix had recorded a video for his video series with Emery as his guest star—the first time Emery had ever appeared on one of his videos, and their fans had gobbled it up. It had almost as many views as the coming out video he’d filmed almost a decade ago.
For the most part, Emery had forgotten about the cameras whenever they’d been filming, distracted by whatever they were doing. But here? On the beach where they were supposed to be all “cute and cuddly and playful”—Elayne’s words—but naturally cute and cuddly and playful? No cooking or sightseeing as a distraction?
Emery was a professional hockey player. He’d been in front of cameras before. But not like this.
“Maybe we need to change tactics,” Elayne mused. “Do more sightseeing? He obviously needs a distraction, so we could try to get into the Academy Museum or the Griffith Observatory. Actually, I have a contact at the Warner Bros. studio. Let me see if I can get us in tonight.” She whipped her phone out, already typing before Felix had a chance to respond.
“We don’t need a change of scenery,” he said. “Leave it to me. I’ll get him loosened up.”
She raised a very skeptical eyebrow. “In the next hour? We’ll be losing daylight soon and I want shots of you both against the sunset.”
He squeezed her elbow. “Trust me. And keep the cameras rolling.”
Felix went over to Emery. His boyfriend had taken a seat in the sand, long legs extended so that the waves crashed over his bare feet. The camera person he’d been chatting with had been called away. Felix took in Emery’s prone form in a T-shirt and shorts and his heart lurched with love in his chest.
“Am I fired?” Emery asked him.
Chuckling, Felix held out a hand to help him up. “No, you’re not fired.”
“Your director hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. She just needs you to loosen up.”
Emery wiped sand off the seat of his pants. “Hard to do with cameras shoved in my face.”
“They’ve been in your face all week.”
“Yeah but in the background while we’ve been doing other things.” Emery grimaced. “Now I’m supposed to stand here and kiss you and smile at you while the camera is literally right here.” He held a hand an inch away from the side of his face.
“Come on.” Felix threaded their fingers together. “Take a walk with me while everyone else breaks for a few minutes.” He briefly caught Elayne’s eye and made a keep-the-cameras-rolling motion with his free hand. She gave him a thumbs up.
They’d blocked off a square of beach outside Felix’s home in Playa del Rey, which was as private as the beaches got in LA. There weren’t any tourists given the semi-private nature of the beach, and the residents of the other homes in Felix’s gated community stayed indoors or made themselves scarce. Most people who lived here were other celebrities or people of influence who valued their privacy, and they didn’t want to accidentally end up in the music video.
“Not going to lie,” Emery said as they started walking. “I’m so ready to be done with this music video.”
Felix kissed the back of his hand. “Last day.”
“Do they usually take this long to shoot?”
“Nah. Three days, usually. This one took longer because of all the different geographical locations.”
“After this, can we spend a few days in bed with all the takeout in the world so we don’t have to cook?” Disentangling their hands, Emery slung an arm around Felix’s shoulders. “I want to do nothing but eat and have sex and maybe take a few runs on the beach.”
Desire thrumming through his veins, Felix angled himself toward Emery and kissed his cheek. “That can be arranged.”
Emery turned to face the ocean and hugged Felix close. Felix snuggled in, conscious of the cameras nearby, but determined to keep Emery distracted. His hands went up Emery’s T-shirt, eliciting a groan from Emery that Felix felt all the way to his toes.
“I think I could’ve liked living here,” Emery eventually said.
Behind Felix, the sun was slowly setting, casting shadows all over the beach.
“You mean if you’d decided to play for LA instead of staying with Vancouver?” he asked, moving back an inch to look at Emery.
“Yeah. I don’t regret staying with Vancouver, but you’ve got to admit—the weather here is way better. Plus, there’s something about being here with you that’s…I don’t know. It’s like we’re in our own little private pocket of the world. It’s almost magical.”
Felix kissed him then, because he couldn’t not when Emery said something so lovely.
Emery chuckled into his mouth, his arms coming around Felix and holding him close. Felix wanted to crawl into him and never return.
Cameras? What cameras? Even Felix forgot about them for a second.
“Can I tell you something?” he murmured when Emery let him up for air.
Emery bent down to place a tiny kiss on his neck. “Only if it’s something good.”
“You know when you’re at the top of a rollercoaster? Right at the top of that first big hill?” Felix held an arm aloft, hand flattened. “There’s nothing but space ahead of you, and you know you’re about to get the wind knocked out of you? And you get this feeling of dread and excitement?” He brought his arm down in a swoop, mimicking a rollercoaster. “That’s how you make me feel.”
A furrow appeared between Emery’s brows. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Both,” Felix said, running a thumb over one of Emery’s eyebrows.
Emery went quiet for a moment, gaze roving Felix’s face. “I don’t like that it’s a bad thing.”
“But that comes with love, doesn’t it? The good and the bad—they go hand in hand.”
Smiling, Emery leaned down and kissed him, oh-so-sweetly, leaving Felix a puddle of goo and hormones and stupid feelings. “That should be the title of your next song,” Emery whispered against his lips. “Hand in Hand.”
“Maybe it will be.”
Another kiss, deeper and wetter and raunchier. Felix’s hands dove into Emery’s hair as he felt Emery’s cock thicken between them, and he let out a small laugh when Emery lifted him off his feet.
Except, when he set him back down, it was in the water, the tide creeping up the sand.
“Ack!” Unprepared, Felix hopped out. “Cold, cold, cold.”
Throwing his head back, Emery laughed.
Felix kicked water at him, which only made Emery laugh more, duck at the waist, and gently wedge his shoulder into Felix’s belly. Felix was lifted in the next second, thrown over Emery’s shoulder, feet kicking wildly. His laughter rang in time with Emery’s like a perfect harmony.
In the distance, Elayne gave him another thumbs up, but Felix had forgotten about being cute and cuddly and playful, too engrossed in the man he was in love with to care about anything else.
***
A week later, Emery sat on the couch in Felix’s living room in Playa del Rey. Next to him, Felix cued up the final version of the music video for “Another Page” on his laptop.
They’d spent the past week in LA doing exactly what Emery had wanted: having sex and ordering takeout. Well, to be fair, they’d spent the first few days doing that before they’d gotten cabin fever and had ventured outdoors. Kris and Rory were flying in from Toronto later today for the week before all four of them flew to Vancouver—Kris and Rory for a two-week visit, Emery and Felix to move into their new home in Surrey.
“Elayne says there’s still time to make edits to the video if we need to,” Felix said, placing the laptop on the coffee table. “But with the single releasing soon, she says they better be, and I quote, ‘goddamn necessary edits.’”
Emery snorted a laugh. “Noted.”
He’d liked working with Elayne Becker. She’d been no-nonsense and committed and clearly knew her shit. Still, it was super weird that a video featuring Emery that had nothing to do with hockey was going live soon.
“Ready?” Felix asked, cursor hovering over the Play button.
“Ready.”
The video was a montage of footage they’d shot in the week before the beach shoots. Not at all in the order they’d filmed, just clips spliced together that showed the world who they were to each other.
Checking out the totem poles at Stanley Park. Walking along the beach in LA, the cameras at their backs. Trotting off the double-decker hop-on hop-off sightseeing tour bus. Felix tossing a piece of raw broccoli at Emery while they’d cooked dinner, and Emery catching it in his mouth. A close-up of Emery’s hand at Felix’s lower back.
It was three and a half minutes of pure fluff and goodness that made Emery’s soul sing to watch. It was happiness in video form.
When it ended, they sat in silence for a moment.
Then Felix unglued himself from where he’d been snuggled into Emery and hit Play. “I want to watch it again.”
Emery caught a few more things on this second pass. Secret smiles Felix had sent him when Emery wasn’t looking. The way the lyrics complemented the footage.
This time, when it ended, Felix turned to him with a grin, so much happiness in his eyes, it was like a punch to Emery’s sternum.
“What’d you think?” Felix asked.
It was perfect.
It was them.
* * *
THE END
Copyright 2022 Amy Aislin. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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