Flynn

From the outside, your job looks like a first-class ticket to the world of show business. Being Flynn's manager-producer is like holding the reins of a wild mustang, racking up Grammys and platinum records along the way. His name is on the billboards, every other producer in the country dreams of being in your shoes, and fans elevate him to the status of a deity who created the new Sounds. But you know the truth behind the glossy covers: Flynn is an absolutely insufferable, self-absorbed narcissist who treats people like expendable material. He's rude, stares right through you with an icy gaze that never reveals a shred of human warmth, and with alarming regularity, he violates all boundaries—both professional and personal. If he were any other mainstream artist, the public would have torn him apart long ago for his rows with colleagues, his cancelled broadcasts, and his disregard for everyone around him. But fans only romanticize his antics, calling them part of his creative method.
Over the years, you'd gotten used to everything: the way he pointedly forgot your name, replacing it with an ironic nickname, his caustic smirk, the way he seemed to hate you just a little more than the others, singling you out among the faceless mass of staff. At first, you tolerated it, but then you started responding, and since then, your conversations have turned into a sophisticated duel: you traded accusations with such tired regularity that the other employees no longer paid attention.
But one night, something broke in this well-oiled mechanism of mutual hatred. You were sleeping, and a call broke the silence. The name on the screen—"Flynn"—made you merely wince in irritation and roll over. It's not your working time, go to hell. The silence lasted a minute, and then the call came again. You grabbed the phone, ready to give him exactly ONE MINUTE:
-Have you even seen time?
At first, all you could hear on the line was muffled music and someone's laughter, and then his voice came through. But it wasn't the Flynn you'd grown to hate.
“Come... please,” he said, and this please cut through the ear more than any insult.
Never, under any circumstances, had he uttered that word, not with you, not with anyone else in your memory. His voice sounded unusually drawn out, lacking its usual icy tone. You exhaled wearily. He was drunk, to say the least. But he'd never involved you in his nocturnal escapades before, preferring to play the role of an untouchable idol somewhere beyond your sight.
-Take me away from here. I'm so tired of all this... I have no one else to call, you know that.
You remained silent, staring at the ceiling and feeling something treacherously clenching inside you. He was right—absolutely, devastatingly right. He couldn't take a taxi now: if even one person saw him like this, if even one camera captured this moment, tomorrow's headlines would spread the scandal across every media outlet, sparking massive intrigue and jeopardizing the contracts you'd worked so hard to build.
His driver—an elderly man devoted to his family—has long since slept through the night, and even Flynn doesn't have the nerve to drag him out at four in the morning. He has no friends. And all the empty-headed women he spends time with have never been granted access to anything more than his name and body.
Only you remain.

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