The Maker: Hollywood

The massive flat-screen television in the Bel Air living room was currently playing a rough cut of a figure skating routine for the fourth time in a row.

Margot sat cross-legged on the plush rug, her laptop balanced precariously on her knees. She was aggressively tapping the spacebar to pause the footage, her eyes narrowing at the screen. As the lead producer on I, Tonya, the first official project under Miller Studios’ new subsidiary banner, Margot was currently living in a state of perpetual, high-functioning stress. Principal photography was finally wrapping up this week, and the production was already bleeding into the chaotic early stages of post-production and final pickup shots.

Florence was lying flat on her back on the sofa, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables resting heavily over her left knee. Months of intense physical training and shooting the grueling ice rink sequences had taken a massive toll on her. Even with the stunt doubles handling the complex jumps, the basic choreography and the sheer amount of time spent on the cold ice had left her absolutely battered.

”The color grade in the background is completely washed out,” Margot muttered, scribbling a note on a legal pad next to her laptop. ”The ice looks grey. It’s supposed to be the Olympics, not a frozen pond in Minnesota.”

”Tell the colorist to fix it,” Florence groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes to block out the light from the television. ”And please, for the love of god, turn it off. If I have to hear that classical music intro one more time, I’m going to throw myself off the balcony. I dream in ice skates now.”

”We wrap the final rink sequence tomorrow, Flo. You just have to survive one more day,” Margot promised, finally clicking the video closed. She rubbed her eyes, looking completely exhausted in an oversized college sweatshirt and leggings. ”Then I have to lock the edit by the end of the month. The VFX vendors are dragging their feet on the crowd replication.”

Daniel walked into the living room, listening to the end of the exchange.

He was wearing a perfectly tailored, dark navy Tom Ford suit. Because of David Goggins’ relentless, brutal training regimen over the last few months, the suit fit him completely differently than his clothes used to. It pulled tight across his chest and shoulders, the wool stretching over his thick biceps, giving him a massive, highly imposing silhouette that completely contrasted with the relaxed, messy vibe of the living room.

Margot looked up from her laptop. She blinked, her tired eyes scanning over the suit.

”Why are you wearing a suit?” Margot asked, frowning slightly. ”It’s Friday night. I thought you were in Burbank locking the sound mix with Benny.”

”I was,” Daniel said, keeping his voice perfectly casual. He adjusted his watch strap. ”But I had to step out for a dinner meeting with Jonah Gantry and a few Warner Bros executives. And actually, I need your help with something related to that.”

Margot put her pencil down, her producer instincts immediately cutting through her exhaustion. ”Jonah Gantry? Why on earth are you having dinner with Jonah? I thought the two of you actively hated each other.”

She wasn’t wrong. The history between Daniel and the CEO of Warner Bros was famously complicated. For years, Daniel had been a massive thorn in Jonah’s side. Miller Studios had grown into an undeniable, self-funded giant that dwarfed the legacy studios, and Jonah had pulled every dirty industry trick in the book to try and slow Daniel down. None of it worked. Eventually, the WB slate had looked so dire that Jonah had actually caved, swallowing his massive pride to practically beg Daniel to direct a DC movie to save their sinking ship.

Daniel had agreed, but on his own terms. He directed, produced, and acted in Joker, completely reinventing the IP, winning awards, and bailing Jonah out. Now, their relationship was a strange mix of mutual resentment and forced respect. Jonah hated that he needed Daniel, and Daniel simply didn’t need Jonah at all.

”I don’t hate him, he just mildly resents my existence,” Daniel corrected smoothly, leaning against the back of an armchair. He had been planning this specific conversation for three weeks. ”But I pulled a favor with him at dinner. I know you’ve been stressing about the VFX renders for the final crowd replication scenes. Our primary screening bays in Burbank are completely gridlocked with Spider-Man right now, and you need to review the contrast before the vendor locks the file.”

Margot let out a frustrated sigh, running a hand through her hair. ”I know. I’ve been trying to find an open bay all day.”

”Well, Jonah is letting us use one of the premium projection bays over at the WB lot tonight,” Daniel said. ”But the lot manager is an old-school guy, and he wants us in and out before he shuts the grid down for the weekend. The file is already loaded.”

Margot looked down at her sweatpants, completely unenthused. ”Tonight? Dan, I am dead on my feet. Can’t they just send me a secure link? I can watch it on my laptop.”

”You just complained about the color grade looking grey,” Daniel pushed gently. ”You can’t check true color contrast on a thirteen-inch laptop monitor. You need to see it on a calibrated theater screen. It’ll take twenty minutes. We go in, you look at the footage, you give the notes, and I’ll buy you whatever you want for dinner on the way back.”

Margot hesitated. She looked at the laptop, then looked up at Daniel. She hated leaving things unfinished, and securing that screening room would solve a massive headache for her production timeline.

”Fine,” Margot surrendered, pushing her laptop off her lap and standing up. ”Let me go put a jacket on. Flo, don’t touch my notes while I’m gone.”

”I literally cannot feel my legs, Margot,” Florence muttered from under her arm. ”Your notes are completely safe.”

Margot disappeared up the stairs to grab her things.

Daniel waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut. He looked down at Florence.

Florence slowly moved her arm away from her face. She looked at him, a massive, brilliant smile breaking across her exhausted features. She gave Daniel a subtle, deeply excited thumbs-up. She had been playing her part perfectly all week, keeping Margot distracted and bogged down in the I, Tonya shoot so she wouldn’t suspect a single thing.

Daniel tapped his suit jacket pocket, feeling the solid, reassuring weight of the vintage wooden ring box hidden inside the lining.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the Range Rover, driving over the Hollywood Hills toward Burbank.

Margot was sitting in the passenger seat, wearing a pair of dark jeans and a vintage leather jacket, typing furiously on her phone. She was completely trapped in producer mode, firing off emails to the costume department regarding the final pickup shots.

Daniel kept his eyes on the road. The streetlights flashed rhythmically across the windshield. His heart was beating a heavy, steady rhythm against his ribs, the adrenaline starting to slowly flood his system.

He wasn’t taking her to a screening room. He was taking her to the exact soundstage on the Warner Bros lot where they had filmed Joker. Stage 23. It was the place where they had spent countless late nights arguing over character motivations, the place where the professional boundary had finally shattered, and where they had first truly fallen for each other amidst the chaotic, gritty production.

They pulled up to the main security gate at Warner Bros.

The guard recognized Daniel immediately. He didn’t even ask for ID. He just checked a clipboard, gave a sharp nod of respect to the guy who essentially owned the town, and waved the SUV through without a word. Daniel navigated the familiar, winding streets of the historic studio lot, bypassing the massive post-production facilities and pulling up next to the large, corrugated metal building with the number 23 painted on the side.

He parked the car and killed the engine. The sudden silence in the cabin was loud.

”Alright,” Margot sighed, slipping her phone into her jacket pocket. ”Let’s go look at these renders so I can go to sleep.”

They got out of the car. The night air was cool, smelling faintly of hot asphalt and the dry California hills.

Daniel walked up to the heavy, red soundproof door of the stage. He gripped the thick metal handle, hauled the heavy door open, and stepped back to let Margot walk in first.

She stepped over the threshold, expecting to see a small, highly technical screening room with a mixing console and a projector screen.

Instead, the breath completely caught in her throat.

The stage wasn’t a screening room. It was a massive, cavernous soundstage, and Dante Ferretti’s team had completely transformed the space.

It wasn’t flashy or overly produced. It was intimate, haunting, and incredibly specific to them.

The center of the pitch-black room was softly illuminated by dozens of vintage, freestanding floor lamps—the exact same warm, practical lamps they had used to light Joker’s grimy apartment set in Joker. The lamps created a tight, glowing circle in the middle of the empty space.

The concrete floor inside that circle was covered in a thick, sprawling blanket of dark red rose petals.

And echoing softly through the incredible acoustics of the soundproof stage was a slow, melancholic jazz track playing from a vintage record player resting on a small table. It was the exact song that had been playing in the background the night they officially wrapped the movie, the night everything had permanently changed between them.

Margot stood frozen just inside the heavy doors. Her hands slowly slipped out of her jacket pockets.

She stared at the lamps, the petals, and the empty space. She recognized the aesthetic instantly. It wasn’t just a romantic setup; it was a highly detailed, physical recreation of the atmosphere where they had fallen in love.

”Dan?” Margot whispered, her voice trembling instantly. She turned around to look at him, her eyes already wide and pooling with tears. ”Where is the screening room?”

Daniel let the heavy metal door click shut behind them, sealing them inside the quiet, golden bubble.

He walked up to her, taking both of her hands in his. They were trembling slightly.

”There is no screening room,” Daniel said softly, his voice carrying clearly in the quiet room.

Margot looked at him, searching his face, the realization crashing over her in real-time. A tear spilled over her lower lash line, tracking quickly down her cheek.

”You lied to me,” she whispered, a watery, overwhelming smile fighting its way onto her face.

”I did,” Daniel nodded, squeezing her hands gently.

He guided her forward, walking her slowly into the center of the glowing circle of vintage lamps, surrounded by the sea of red petals. The jazz music wrapped around them, familiar and warm.

Daniel stopped. He looked at her. He didn’t have a rehearsed, poetic script in his head. He just wanted to tell her the absolute truth.

”When the world found out about us,” Daniel started, his voice incredibly steady, locking his eyes onto hers. ”When the pictures leaked, and the magazines printed all that garbage... I hated it. I hated every single second of it.”

Margot shook her head slightly, her thumb brushing across his knuckles. ”Dan, we got through that. We survived the tabloids. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

”It matters to me,” Daniel said quietly. ”You didn’t deserve that introduction to the world. You didn’t deserve to be a headline, or a scandal, or a debate on some morning talk show. You deserved the romance. You deserved the quiet, beautiful start that Florence and I got to have before the cameras found us.”

He took a step closer, erasing the distance between them, bathed in the golden light of the lamps.

”I brought you here, to the exact spot where we figured out what this was, because I want to replace that memory,” Daniel told her, his voice dropping an octave, filled with absolute, unwavering sincerity. ”I want to be perfectly clear, Margot. You were never an addition to this family. You were never a footnote, and you were never a secret we had to manage. You are the absolute core of my life. You are the fire that keeps me going, and you are the reason I survived this last year without losing my mind.”

Margot let out a broken, wet sob, pulling one of her hands free to press it over her mouth. She was completely overwhelmed, her shoulders shaking as she cried, staring at the man who had completely derailed her entire life in the best possible way.

Daniel took a half-step back. He reached into the inside pocket of his tailored suit jacket and pulled out the polished wooden box.

He didn’t break eye contact as he slowly dropped down onto one knee, the rose petals shifting softly under his weight.

He opened the box. The light from the vintage lamps caught the long, elegant facets of the flawless emerald-cut diamond. The platinum, 1920s Art Deco setting gleamed quietly in the dim room, looking timeless and sharp.

”I don’t want to just be your partner anymore, Margot,” Daniel said, looking up at her, his own vision blurring slightly with the emotion of the moment. ”I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?”

Margot stood there for two agonizingly long seconds, staring down at him, her chest heaving as she cried. She looked at the ring, the stage, and the man kneeling in front of her.

”Yes,” Margot gasped out, her voice cracking completely. She dropped her hand from her face, nodding frantically. ”Yes. God, yes, Dan.”

Daniel let out a massive, shuddering breath of pure relief. He stood up, pulled the vintage ring from the velvet slot, and gently slid it onto her trembling left ring finger. It slid on effortlessly.

The second the ring was on her hand, Margot threw her arms around his neck, burying her face into his shoulder, holding onto him so tightly he could barely breathe. Daniel wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her slightly off the ground, burying his face in her hair.

”I love you,” Margot sobbed against his neck. ”I love you so much.”

”I love you too,” Daniel whispered back, setting her down gently.

From the deep shadows near the back of the soundstage, the sudden sound of slow, loud clapping echoed through the room.

Margot jumped slightly, pulling back from Daniel and wiping her eyes in surprise.

Florence stepped out of the shadows. She wasn’t wearing sweatpants anymore. She was wearing a stunning, elegant black slip dress, wiping her own tears away with the back of her hand, holding two crystal flutes of champagne.

She walked toward them, her heels clicking softly against the concrete beneath the rose petals. She looked at Margot, a fiercely proud, glowing smile on her face.

”It’s about damn time,” Florence laughed, her voice thick with emotion as she held the glasses out.

Margot let out a watery, beautiful laugh. She didn’t even take the champagne. She stepped forward and threw her arms around Florence, pulling her into a massive, tight hug. Florence hugged her back immediately, burying her face in Margot’s shoulder, laughing and crying at the same time.

”You knew,” Margot mumbled into Florence’s shoulder. ”You faked being miserable on the couch so I wouldn’t suspect anything.”

”I didn’t fake being miserable, the ice is actually trying to kill me,” Florence laughed, pulling back and looking at the ring on Margot’s hand. She gasped softly. ”Oh, it looks even better on you. It’s perfect.”

Daniel stood there under the golden lights, watching the two women he loved holding each other, entirely unaffected by the noise, the paparazzi, or the rules of the world outside the heavy metal doors.

He walked over, wrapping his massive arms around both of them, pulling them into a tight embrace. They stood there in the center of the Warner Bros soundstage, entirely unbroken, completely united, and exactly where they were always meant to be.

------

A/N: Read ahead on Patreon: AmaanS