Stranger Than Fan Fiction
Two Years Ago
Charlie
I gestured to let my new housekeeper lead the way out of the dining room. Not just out of a sense of chivalry, but because I didn’t trust her behind my back.
“The kitchen is right through here,” I explained.
The older woman’s sensible trainers hardly made a sound on the worn hall carpeting. The better for sneaking around …
Agata had been so quiet since she arrived. Normally, I relished silence, but this felt like a form of torture. Did she have misgivings about my scandalous past? Or was she simply wondering how I’d managed this long alone?
Based on how she eyed the stack of dishes near the sink, I suspected the latter.
It had been years since I had people working for me, and as it turned out, I still found the whole experience of managing people when I couldn’t manage myself incredibly uncomfortable, if not hypocritical.
If Emma hadn’t insisted that I hire someone to keep the ancient estate from crumbling, I might have just gone on alone forever.
After all, the whole point of disappearing from a life of celebrity and into the English countryside was to avoid uncomfortable interactions at all costs.
“No dishwasher?” She sniffed, looking down her nose even though she barely reached my chest.
Did she scare me? Absolutely. I didn’t like it, but dammit, I respected it.
An inoffensive light lemon smell clung to her gray frock. Her blond hair was tight in a low bun, and she had a tiny, pinched mouth.
“I plan on doing some renovations and additions over time. But for now, it’s a bit rustic,” I said.
I glanced away when she scrutinized me. The thing with sobriety was, as fast as everything goes to shite, it takes a hell of a lot longer to work back up to any sense of normalcy. I had intended on updating the Vicarage ages ago, but some days simply existing was chore enough.
She nodded; hands clasped in front of her. “Okay,” she settled on.
The small reassurance unclenched my jaw.
“The Vicarage is a bit of a drive from the nearest town. But you can have groceries delivered. I’m assuming the agency told you about …” I scratched the back of my neck.
“No booze,” she said in her soft Polish accent.
“Right. Except in your cottage, of course. I just ask not in the main house.”
She nodded firmly. “I don’t drink. It’s no problem.”
Straight to the point and no nonsense, Agata was beginning to grow on me. Emma likely had these traits in mind when she set up this appointment with the agency’s recommendation.
“I guess that’s everything. Do you have any questions?” I asked.
She looked me up and down. “What you want for lunch?”
“You just got here. You don’t have to—”
A hand snaked out and pinched my abdomen sharply. “Too skinny.”
I flinched. That’s something I’d never been accused of. “I just—”
“You don’t pick. You have sausage soup.” Her mouth hardly moved when she spoke, but the words felt as threatening as a yell.
Feeling more than a little frightened, I acquiesced. “Ah, that’s good. Thank you.”
She turned her back to me and got to moving in the small kitchen.
I looked around, feeling useless. I’d already brought her single worn suitcase to the small guest house. I knocked once on the counter. “Welp, I’ll let you get settled. It’s been nice meeting you. Welcome to the Vicarage, Agata.”
I moved to walk away.
“It smells like boy feets in here,” she said as she set a large pot on the hob.
“Ah. Right.” Honesty was an admirable quality in a homemaker. “I suppose you got here in the nick of time.”
She sniffed again. “My children watched you when they grow up. That space show.” She looked me up and down. “You were chubby funny one.”
Her kids must be grown now too. Probably close to my age.
That space show she referred to was TerraFormative, part of a multi-billion-dollar franchise based on the science fiction books written by G.S.
Sedar. The series followed three children through adolescence upon a spaceship adrift in space, looking for a new Earth.
Eight solid years of my adolescence I was Freddy Finks, chubby comic relief of the Intrepid Trio.
My real-life best friends Emma Flynn and Harrison Evans played my two closest comrades in trouble, Lucy Lennon and Adam Abbott, respectively.
Almost twenty years ago, over in the blink of an eye to most, and yet the thing that would always define me. I was used to these types of conversations. I kept my face blank.
“Freddy.” I dropped my arm before I could scratch the back of my neck again. “Yep. That was me.”
“Skinny Charlie is not so funny. You eat more. You be funny. Funny man gets wife. Or husband,” she added. “I’m modern woman. I understand.”
“Good. Right. I’ll keep that in mind.” I was hardly skinny. As I’d aged, my notable baby fat had melted off my face, but I would always be described as sturdily built—now with defined cheekbones.
Her gaze narrowed on me. “Soup will be ready in one hour. Come back. Have bread too.”
“I try not to eat carbs—”
“You eat the bread.”
I swallowed before I nodded, afraid to do anything but agree.
“Well, I better get back to my office to …”
To pretend to work. I finished in my head.
She paused from taking inventory of my cabinets to give me another sharp nod.
I slunk off to my unused office. I didn’t really work.
Hadn’t really needed to in the ten years since the show wrapped.
I’d been sober three of those years thanks to therapy and rehab.
My only job now was to ensure I stayed on track and didn’t put the people who cared about me at risk for bystander humiliation.
Each day, I spent about an hour responding to fan mail, but even that had dwindled down considerably over the years.
That, reading, and working out occupied most of my time.
Maybe it wasn’t an exciting existence, but it was a safe one.
It was Emma who insisted I bring in help now that I had gotten most of my life back in order.
Emma was all about goals and motivations and life purpose.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that simply making it day to day took so much emotional toll, there wasn’t much room for anything else.
I would get back there eventually, but right now, I lived tucked away safely at my home in Devon.
After rehab, I moved away from the temptations of London and bought a former vicarage.
The plan was to eventually modernize the estate, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
AA didn’t recommend too many major life changes once sober, so I’d been waiting until I felt secure.
Sobriety had taken more focus than I had anticipated.
Employing Agata felt like a step in the right direction, another level of accountability.
It was almost time for my monthly meeting with Emma and Harrison. Their schedules were far more packed than mine, but we at least tried to arrange monthly video chats. I had dubbed those first few meetings as “proof of life,” but I think seeing my face reassured Emma as much as it did me.
It was five minutes until our appointed time when they both texted to say they couldn’t make the call today.
Emma had got caught up in the details of arranging clean water for a town in a developing country and Harrison was working on a film bound to land him another Oscar nod.
And here I was, doing absolutely nothing except getting bullied by my new homemaker.
I let out a long sigh. They weren’t my keepers; they had busy lives, but this wasn’t the first time I felt stuck in limbo because of my actions as the world blurred by.
I opened a tab on the internet when a wave of something crashed over me.
Boredom? Listlessness? Loneliness? I fought hard to keep the indescribable emotion from pulling me under.
One thing about sobriety that I wasn’t prepared for was how both crucial and yet mind-numbingly boring routine would be in my life.
It was better than the alternative: waking up without knowing whose bed I was in …
or what country, for that matter. This was a slow and tedious process to feel secure in myself, but how many months of monotony stretched ahead? Every day safe, but uneventful?
Agata hit the mark when she made the comment about my getting a wife.
At least, she recognized my restlessness.
I was lonely, but that was a whole other aspect of moderation I wasn’t ready to tackle yet.
Without my two best friends, who I was lucky to still have, I didn’t really have anybody else to talk to.
I could call my sponsor, but I didn’t want a drink.
I just wanted … I didn’t know, someone to talk to.
God, how pathetic.
Poor rich child star, all alone in his big country house with all his money.
I sighed again loudly and did the thing I told myself I wouldn’t do any more. One of the things. Because what else does a retired child star do when amid a pity party? They googled themselves.
The articles about me had slowed down in the years since rehab.
My publicity team had done a great job of keeping press to a minimum.
The top results were old articles about England’s biggest “glow up,” whatever that meant.
All the links led to “articles” that included countless GIFs and JPEGs of shirtless photos taken in the past few years, side by side with chubby Freddy bulging out of his TerraFormative flight suit.
I rested my chin in my palm as I lazily scrolled. Bored. This was pathetic. I should just close out the browser to go workout or something.
A clickbait article at the bottom of the screen caught my eye. “Top Ten Freddy Fanfics—Can’t get enough of the UK’s hottest former child star Charles Downing? Check out these Freddy fan favorites that take this heavenly body out of this world.”
“Oh lord,” I said out loud to the pun-tastic title even as I clicked the link.
I’d heard about all the fanfic that TerraFormative had manifested over the years.
Emma, Harrison, and I had been paired in every possible combination.
It was an unavoidable product of being part of one of the world’s largest franchises.
I’d always stayed away, feeling a new level of skeezy hearing about the various scenarios people had placed my character in.
Especially with Harrison and Emma. We’d grown up together and were closer than siblings. Anything romantic was … icky.
The headline took me to a website called FanFavz.
The interface was not terribly user-friendly, but after clicking around a bit, I got the gist. You could search by franchise, author, story popularity, etc.
I sorted by author popularity within the TerraFormative world since I’d already committed to spending time in the gutter.
The very first result was the story that had been mentioned in the article.
In fact, the author had a few dozen “fics” under their name.
The article dubbed this particular story, “Fresh Stars,” “the top Freddy post-grad fantasy.” It had been favorited an astounding forty thousand times, and comments were a never-ending gushfest, consisting mostly of emojis and lines of repeated vowels.
Post-grad referred to the time after the show ended, when Freddy had graduated from the flight academy.
“Bloody hell,” I mumbled. So many people out there reading a version of myself far more interesting than the one that existed. The top author on each list was someone called FreddyStan4Life.
“Regrettable username.” My face contorted, leaning closer to the screen. “Who the bloody hell is Stan?”
I read the first sentence.
Then the next.
Then several chapters. The story focused on my—er, Freddy’s post-flight academy life, as he worked up the ranks to become a captain of his own vessel and featured a particularly strong romance with a cyborg named Nix, who had been in the show but only briefly in season four.
I’d loved that subplot when it had debuted in the show.
I had approached the writers about stretching out their love story over a few more episodes but had been shot down.
The writers had reminded me that Freddy’s character only existed to relieve the tension when things got too heavy.
But this “Fresh Stars” I read now was … good. Really good.
I also couldn’t help but notice that FreddyStan4Life’s description of Freddy resembled me as I looked now, instead of the child I was in the series. Interesting.
It felt like only a minute had passed when a loud rap on the closed door caused me to jump in my seat.
“You come eat, Mr. Downing.” Agata’s soft voice was a deceptive ruse, like calling the shake of a rattlesnake as soothing as a child’s rattle.
“You can call me Charlie,” I shouted through the door.
“Mister Charlie, come eat.”
“Can you bring me a bowl in here?” I asked.
“No. Break from computer better for your eyes.” Her footsteps retreated back to the kitchen.
I sighed loudly but pushed away from my desk.
At the kitchen island, Agata shoved two warm crusty rolls on my plate and wouldn’t stop staring at me until I ate them along with the soup.
The whole meal was delicious, but she side-eyed me as I shoveled bites into my mouth. I couldn’t focus on anything but getting back to my computer.
“Thank you. It was fantastic,” I said.
She nodded knowingly as I rushed out of the room.
I thought I knew what fan fiction was—admittedly, I thought it was primarily an excuse to make characters have sex—but this was unlike anything I expected.
The writing was compelling and thought-provoking from the first line.
The world was as familiar as sliding into a worn jumper, but the new scenarios were intriguing and the additional settings captivating.
It felt so familiar and yet unlike anything I’d ever read.
My eyes couldn’t read fast enough. My heart raced, desperate to get back to it.
I missed feeling … excited. About anything.
I would just read a few more chapters, just to see what happened next, and then I’d stop.
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