Seth
"Well, this is fucked up," Keegan says once the four of us are in the kitchen, reading off his cell phone.
"What began as targeted walkouts on several streaming and TV shows has escalated into a full production shutdown.
Studios have paused filming across all formats while negotiations continue.
" He looks up at us all before reading the final line.
"Production on all television shows has been halted. "
We stare at each other in stunned silence.
"Guess that explains why the crew aren't here," Gabe says, then he looks at me. "Does this mean we're free?"
"I guess so," I answer with a shrug.
"Awesome!" Blaine and Keegan holler at the same time.
"I'm going to visit my family in Seattle," Blaine says excitedly.
Keegan starts tapping furiously on his phone. "I'm booking in for another tat."
"What are you going to do?" Gabe asks, walking over to me.
"That depends," I say, hooking my arm over his shoulder. "What do you feel like doing?"
I did not expect Gabe to want to do this.
We're standing in an open field three hours outside of LA, along with a few hundred other people, craning our necks toward the open sky, staring at the tiny shapes breaking into formations far above us.
In freefall, the team of eight stabilizes fast, forming clean lines in the air before peeling away one by one.
"Which one is étienne?" I ask.
Gabe squints hard, raising his arm to point out his brother to me. "I think he's third from the left. Wait, no. Now maybe second on the right. Wait, shit." He drops his arm. "I'll—I'll point him out once their parachutes open."
They snap into one final formation before canopies start bursting open one by one. It's only when they're a few hundred feet from the ground that Gabe identifies his brother, and it's only once they land and start unclipping themselves from their apparatus that we discover how wrong Gabe was.
"It's too hard to tell," he says, sagging against me with a crooked smile.
My arm is around him in a flash. "You realize my cock will have to punish you tonight for lying."
He chuckles. "Consider my ass yours."
Something easy and warm settles in my chest. Okay, so this isn't how I pictured us spending our forced break due to the shutdown, but we're together, we're sharing a room since there was only one left at the motel, and I have approval to pummel Gabe mercilessly tonight.
Things have turned out alright, after all.
"Gabe! Seth!"
étienne, Gabe's younger brother, races up to us, hugging Gabe first then me. "I'm so glad you could make it."
"Don't thank us. Thank the union strike."
He laughs, and the resemblance to Gabe is uncanny. Same bright-green eyes. Same color hair, although his is slightly shorter. Same dimples but no snaggletooth.
"We're going out for drinks," he says.
"Where?" I take in the desert surrounding us.
"There's a dive bar opposite the motel we're all staying at. Will you two make it, or will you be…otherwise engaged?"
Gabe's brow spikes up. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, I'm sorry." étienne taps his chest and clears his throat. "I meant fucking. Will you two be fucking?"
Gabe snorts. "You know very well that what we're doing is just a showmance for the show."
étienne matches his older bro in the who can raise their eyebrow more impressively stakes. "Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. I gotta go. I'll see you two later… Or not."
He does in fact see us later, even if we are slightly delayed because blowjobs. Gabe's ass punishment? That'll come later tonight.
étienne introduces us to the rest of his team in a corner of the bar, but every time I try to find out more about how this competition season is shaping up for him so far, we get interrupted by a fan, either his or mine.
"I'm so excited to meet you both," Darlene from Stillwater in eastern Minnesota gushes to me and Gabe.
We've taken selfies, sent a voice note to her daughter who hasn't made up her mind yet whether she'd like to be a vet or a YouTube influencer when she grows up, and spent the past few minutes chitchatting with her about the show.
"I loooove that you two finally got together," she says, dimples almost as big as Gabe's.
"It's about damn time. I've had a feeling about you two from the very beginning. "
We both smile awkwardly. It's one thing to go along with a storyline for the show within the safety bubble of that show.
It's a little harder dealing with fans' reactions out in the real world.
They think what they're seeing is real, and to be fair, we're making them think that, so it's a morally gray area.
Thankfully, étienne swoops in and whisks us away to the bar for more shots.
"That was close," I say, throwing back something that burns all the way down to my chest and makes my eyes water.
Gabe makes a sour face and lunges for his Diet Coke to wash down his shot. "Tell me about it. I hate lying to people. Especially fans of the show."
"What are we going to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we signed up for this storyline, but we forgot to ask one very important thing."
"What's that?" he asks, slugging down some more cola.
I wait until he's done and looking me in the eye again. "How the hell is this showmance of ours supposed to end?"