Ezra Clark’s job is simple: be useful. As Employee #001 at the Story Bureau, he’s trained to slot into failing plots as the devoted, expendable partner who takes the bruises so the leads can live their perfect love story. He’s done it four times. He knows his lines. He knows his beats. He knows to vanish when the contract ends. Until a wet night by the river, when the world glitches and four “spares” collide on a cold rooftop—each one a mirror of a life Ezra thought he’d already signed away. Sebastian Schroeder is the golden leading man with a private lover, Miles Berg; their love should have been uncomplicated. Ezra’s role was clear: step back, hold the house together, take the blame, and disappear. But the Story Bureau’s neat rules don’t account for small rebellions, or for what happens when the “spare” decides he’s tired of being one. What begins as a professional resignation turns into a slow-burning revelation: loyalty can be repaid, fates can be rewritten, and sometimes you have to break the script to keep the people you love from being puppets. A meta, sharp, and heartfelt BL about workplace duty, industry pressure, manufactured privacy, and the quiet courage to choose yourself—set in the cutthroat world of American entertainment, where appearances are currency and the people fixing them are invisible.