“To thegym?” Simon doesn’t recoil but it’s close. “On purpose?”
Charlie appraises him, a skeptical once over, as if he doesn’t already know exactly what Simon looks like.
“I swim,” Simon explains, speaking slowly and calmly, because Charlie is laboring under a great deal of mental stress if he thinks Simon deliberately breaks a sweat. “I don’t lift weights. Sometimes Jamie makes me do Pilates,” he adds, aggrieved.
“Great news. If this is like most hotel gyms, there will be no weights to lift. Four treadmills and an elliptical, maybe a rowing machine.”
Charlie’s wringing his hands, and it hits Simon that Charlie doesn’t want to go to the gym alone. Or maybe he just needs some kind of validation that going to the gym isn’t a bad idea. Well, it’s not like Simon has anything better to do.
“Okay, fine.” Simon brought exercise clothes, mainly because Jamie helped him pack and Jamie has a lot more faith in Simon’s interest in cardiovascular health than he has any reason to.
In the gym, Simon sets a treadmill to a speed slightly slower than he might use to walk Edie and tries to remain unaware of Charlie, three machines over, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that isn’t even a real garment. He texts Jamie, telling him that he’s on a treadmill.
Jamie:gonna need a picture of you with today’s newspaper
Simon:ha ha, it gets worse
Simon:I think I’m here, on an actual treadmill, to give Charlie Blake emotional support
Jamie:wow
Jamie:everything ok?
Simon:Yes, stop worrying and send me pictures of my dog
As Simon looks at two dozen pictures of an untraumatized and unbothered Edie, he realizes that what he told Jamie was the truth. Today has been... okay. Maybe better than okay. His anxiety is at a low ebb, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but he’d expected it to be through the roof. Usually Charlie annoys him—or,maybe, unsettles him. And that makes him cranky, which makes it more likely that something will set his anxiety off. But none of that’s happened today.
Simon:Remember when you sprained your ankle at Coachella? And I wasn’t a total wreck about it?
Jamie’s then-boyfriend hadn’t wanted to leave the festival, so Simon drove out to pick Jamie up, collected Jamie’s belongings, told off Jamie’s asshole boyfriend, drove Jamie to the emergency room, and brought him home. Usually, any one of those events would be enough to crank his anxiety all the way up to ten. But somehow, the fact that it was all for someone else changed things.
Right now, he’s trusting that Jamie will be able to connect the dots without Simon needing to actually type “Charlie’s pretty fucked up right now,” because that seems like a breach of privacy.
Jamie:first of all, you’re never a total wreck. But, yeah, you’ve always been more patient with friends than you are with yourself.
Simon wrinkles his nose. That isn’t the point he was trying to make at all. Nobody has ever called Simon patient. And implying that Charlie is his friend is objectively deranged.
This is all obvious to Simon, but he has a feeling that if he types it out, Jamie will call him and list all the ways he’s being ridiculous.
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From anOut Therefan Discord
SpacePope:The other day we were talking about favorite episodes versus best episodes but I have one that isn’t my favorite and it definitely isn’t the best, but I guess it’s the episode I think about the most often? It’s Antidote from the second season.
DeathStarJacuzzi:Fandom’s least favorite episode!
SpacePope:Exactly. I watched it with my dad when he was in hospice, and at that point we weren’t really doing anything but watching television. We worked our way through all the shows we watched together when I was a kid—Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate. And we watched Out There every Thursday when it came out. So, in this episode, Luke’s been dosed with space toxins or whatever, and Jonathan has to convince some shady aliens to get him the antidote. It’s all about him negotiating with gangsters, buttering up diplomats, making promises he can’t keep—all these bad choices to keep Luke safe.
GalactoseIntolerance:Right, this is the episode that people always complain about because everything Jonathan does is out of character. He’s supposed to be this rigid rule follower, and here he is selling ammunition to arms traffickers. All the other million times Jonathan saves Luke’s life, he’s ethical about it.
SpacePope: But I’d have negotiated with space terrorists if that’s what it took to get my dad healthy. When people complain about thatepisode, it’s like: oh, so you’re telling me you’ve never watched a loved one die. Anyway—not the best episode, but it lives in my brain rent free.
GalactoseIntolerance:oh honey
HowlsMovingSpaceship:I feel like “I don’t know if it’s good, but I watched it with my dad” is a recurring theme here. I mean, in my case it’s my mom, but same difference.
SpacePope:dad (gender neutral)
