During Simon’s more generous moments—nine hours sleep, no skipped meals, at least twenty-four consecutive hours away from Charlie—he can admit that a lot of the bad blood between them is because they got off to a terrible start.
After college, Simon landed a minor role playing a slightly villainous elf in the adaptation of a fantasy series he’d been obsessed with as a teenager. Working onTree of the Godshad been a living nightmare, but he’d been nominated for a couple awards, even managed to win one, so he probably shouldn’t complain.
When that show ended, he’d met with Lian Zhong, who’d been in the writers’ room and was preparing to shoot a pilot about people stranded on a hostile planet after a shuttle crash.
“ThinkTwin Peaksin space,” Lian had told him. “Leaning hard into the camp.” She wanted him to read for the part of Jonathan Hale, the ship’s doctor with a mysterious past.
All the other scripts Simon had been sent were for gritty prestige dramas.Out Therelooked like the opposite, weirdly out of step with the rest of the market. It lookedfun, and Simon needed a break. Badly. He figured it would last one season, maybe two, and then he’d go back to more serious work.
“I want it to be a good experience for everyone,” Lian had said, putting enough weight behind each syllable that Simon knew she meant it wouldn’t be likeTree of the Gods. Simon trusted her to not be a fascist or a psychopath. He was right about that much, at least.
When they shot the pilot, he was mostly impressed with the rest of the cast. There’d been Alex Guttierrez, who’d just finished a stint as a villain in a superhero television series. There was Samara Jackson, who’d been on a Disney show and then a teen drama.
Then there was Charlie Blake, all of twenty years old, who’d done one season of a reality television show allegedly about restoring old cars but actually about Charlie taking off his shirt. He wasn’t bad, but it was clearly a case of his personality mapping pretty closely onto the role. Charlie was playing Luke West, a hot-tempered former juvenile delinquent sent on parole to colonize a newly terraformed planet. And, well, Charlie—with his shaved head and his DIY-looking tattoos—looked like he knew a little bit about being a juvenile delinquent.
But when the network saw the pilot, they wanted more Charlie.Presumably what they really wanted was more of Charlie’s shirt off, because that’s exactly what they got.
Simon had been livid. It wasn’t just that he didn’t have top billing or enough lines. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to share the spotlight—or not only that, at least.
The real problem—and Simon knows this makes him a snob, this isn’t news to him—was that a former reality show star brought down the tone of the show.
Halfway through the first season, when Charlie started missing call times, showing up drunk, and generally acting like he’d read a book calledHow to Crash and Burn in Hollywood,Simon was annoyed. When Charlie punched the wall of his trailer and broke his hand, Simon was more than annoyed. When Charlie dumped hot coffee on a guest director who’d—admittedly—been a complete misery to work with, Simon expected Charlie’s character to be written off the show. But Lian—for reasons Simon doesn’t understand and officially does not care about—gave him a second chance. Or, really, a fifth or sixth chance by that point.
Simon never expects people to change—at least not for the better. And he’s not sure Charlie did change, but his behavior did, at least on set. During the second season, he was professional. He apologized in person to everyone—even Simon—and basically went out of his way to be a total fucking delight and peoplefellfor it.
If Simon were a better person, maybe he’d have let it go. Maybe he’d even have been impressed that Charlie managed to turn things around for himself. But all Simon’s feelings were clouded by being stuck—with Charlie, withOut There, with a future that narrowed down and closed off before he even realized it was happening. Because the show turned out to be a hit, and Simon’s fun little break has lasted seven years.
Hell, if Simon were a better person, he’d be grateful. He has steady work on a show that’s never going to win awards but has a loyal enough following that the annual cancellation rumors never feel too realistic. He has a house he loves, a dog who tolerates being put in sweaters, and a friend he can list as his emergency contact.
But Simon is not a better person, and for the past few years, he’s become increasingly nervous that the longer he spends onOut There, the harder it will be to find work on something different. Casting directors will look at him and think: midbudget science fiction show. They won’t remember the award or the nominations; they won’t remember the Shakespeare festivals or the projects he’s managed to squeeze in when he isn’t shootingOut There. He’s tired of eleven-hour days, nine months a year, playing a role he could do half asleep. He’s especially tired of Charlie Blake, who obviously is loving every minute of it.
That sounds shitty, like Simon’s phoning it in onOut There, but he isn’t. He has too much pride to let footage exist anywhere in the world of Simon Devereaux being a bad actor. But there are only so many times you can get rescued from space prisons, participate in love triangles with space diplomats, or heroically save people’s lives from space viruses. He’s bored. It sounds so petty, but that’s what it comes down to.
And, honestly, that is kind of Charlie’s fault. The show could have been something a little... elevated, maybe? Something character driven, at least. But Lian and the rest of the writers have to work around Charlie, who’s very good at motivational speeches, heroic rescues, and a sort of constant smolder. He knows how totake big blue eyes and a six-pack and somehow make you think you’re watching something special. Simon doesn’t blame Lian for realizing she had something good on her hands and deciding to capitalize on it.
It’s just that even if the rest of Simon’s life is going to hell in a handbasket, at least he can fix his career, so that’s what he’s going to do.
Chapter Two
Simon’s in his trailer, very much minding his own business, when Alex Gutierrez, who plays the captain of their spaceship, flings herself through the door and whispers, “Is it true? Tell me you aren’t leaving.”
Somehow, Alex is immune to all the please-go-away vibes that constitute Simon’s only coping mechanism. She texts him for no reason Simon can discern, sails uninvited into his trailer, and beams at him without any provocation. At first, he worried she had somehow failed to notice exactly how gay he is and was attempting to flirt.
Simon isn’t used to his general repellence not working. He’s had decades to refine his strategy. He doesn’t say much, but his face is naturally pretty bitchy—it’s the cheekbones—so his silence gets interpreted as arrogance. He does nothing to contradict this assumption. And so instead of seeming awkward and anxious, he comes off as aloof. Bored. Kind of an asshole. People leave him alone. It’s wonderful.
He’s reasonably cordial with everyone at work. Almost everyone. He’s polite. Well, he tries to be polite and maybe gets halfway there most of the time. Fact is, television sets are loud and the lights are too bright; the costumes are unbearable and there’s alwayssomeone touching you. You’d think he’d be used to it, but maybe he’s sliding toward a cranky middle age. Crankier. In any event, the fact that Alex is here at all boggles the mind.
“I’m not discussing this,” Simon says, a little tartly and, case in point: not particularly nice.
Alex is in full makeup, green lines branching across her cheek because Captain Alvarez has been infected with some kind of space pathogen. Alex is spending the last two episodes of the season lying very still in med bay. “That’s a yes. You’re leaving.”
“Nothing’s decided.” He isn’tlying, exactly. So far, nothing’s official. His agent keeps telling him to give it time, to think about it, and Simon can’t seem to get across to him that he’s done all the thinking he needs.
He’s well aware that any other actor who hadn’t signed a new contract by this point would have their character killed off before the season ended. He’s seen it before: they’ve been mauled by giant space beetles, executed by space fascists, and devoured by space parasites. The next season, they’re replaced by new characters on this ragtag band of conventionally attractive space explorers. It’s the circle of life.
But Simon’s getting special treatment, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t flattered.
“That’s not a no,” Alex says.
