Character Bleed Book 1: Seaworthy

Chapter 1: Day 1, Morning-1

Chapter 1: Day 1, MorningDay one. Los Angeles, fifteen minutes before six in the morning. The Raven Studios lot, and a makeup chair. The first makeup chair, on the first official day, not a test or an exploration.

Jason patiently closed eyes for an airbrush, a sharpened eyeliner pencil, gentle blending. Opened them and regarded himself in the mirror.

Another person looked back, a strange hybrid self. Captain Stephen Lanyon’s slightly longer hair, courtesy of extensions, enough to pull into a gentlemanly queue. Lighter in places than Jason’s own dark brown: still brown, yeah, but kissed by the sun, by salt, by shipboard naval life. The airbrush had sun-kissed his skin as well; he was tempted to touch it but knew better. Cherry Khan’s hands danced around him, working her spells; he’d liked her calmness ever since the first trial run. They got along; he was glad to have met her, part of Jillian Poe’s crew.

He met his own gaze, through mirror-gleam and makeup. Still his eyes. Still his clothes, at least for the moment: jeans and a casual red shirt, simple and uncomplicated.

He liked thinking of himself as uncomplicated. He was: an action hero, big and justifiably proud of muscles, generally goodhearted, appreciative of his family and his grandmother’s marinara sauce.

He didn’t feel uncomplicated right now. This role, this chance, this future: he wanted to grab onto it with both hands and cling. To prove that he could be that other self. Someone who could do more than kick and punch and shout angrily at evildoers.

He wanted to tell stories. To tell this story, history-drenched and rich as velvet and deeply textured with the lives of two men loving each other, as men had throughout the past.

He wanted to do this story justice. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to impress Colby Kent and apologize to Colby Kent. They’d not spent any real time together—a table read or two, a few emails from Colby wearing the producer hat and checking on a detail or two of Jason’s contract—and Jason had been gnawed half to death by guilt.

He wasn’t really a d**k. He hadn’t meant to hurt Colby. He’d been having a rough day, chased in circles by desperation and inadequacy, and he’d said stupid words in the hallway, and Colby had heard him and then not been able to look at him, and—

And Colby and Jillian had cast him anyway. That was the part Jason couldn’t figure out.

He’d stopped by the studio early—the day before, in fact—and wandered, staying out of the way but drinking in preparations, set design, blocking, the layout of spaces and equipment. Hadn’t been purposeless. At least three purposes, instead. Showing willingness. Soaking up everything he could. He’d started out in the realm of stunt performances, after all. He liked being able to evaluate potential risks, set-ups, challenges.

All that meant even more these days. Jason thought about water again, about an improbable spy thriller and a broken breathing apparatus and an underwater tangled disaster. Years ago, and if he shut his eyes he could see it. Could taste chlorine and horror.

Everyone in the business knew those risks. Sometimes things went wrong. Sometimes someone never made it to the surface.

Jason had dropped by from the next-door studio lot to say hi and meet up for lunch—not working on the same production, having made the leap into headlining an admittedly low-budget thriller of his own, and oh Charlie had laughed at him for that ambition too, cheerfully scornful, the teasing of a contented friend—and had consequently been right there, and not there in time, even though he’d seen the panicked knot of bodies and run that way.

That tank, that water, hovered in memory. That merciless overhead lighting. That body, heavy and slack in the way of lifeless shapes.

He suppressed a shiver, in the present.

He knew he should’ve mentioned the whole water-related anxiety to someone on this production, especially given the amount of time Captain Lanyon spent on boats or diving in to save a shipmate, in the script.

He hadn’t said anything. He couldn’t. He wanted this role. He needed this role. And he could handle it, anyway. He was a trained professional. He knew how to put fears aside, and that wasn’t even a real fear anyway, right? Just a memory. Not a serious trauma. Not one involving his own life. Shouldn’t be an issue, two years and several films in the past.

He’d always previously been fine in water. He knew how to swim, and even liked to; he knew about water safety; nothing this historical period piece demanded would be more complicated than a dive and a grabbing of a fellow cast member.

He knew all that. He knew.

He pushed those thoughts aside. A problem for another day. Not today. No water in sight other than the drinkable kind.

He needed to be good at this. He needed to show Jillian Poe, his award-winning director, and Colby Kent, his co-star, that he could be good at this.

He’d already jumped in on the wrong metaphorical foot. Insulting Colby. Clumsy and frustrated. Stupid. Colby had seemed to brush it off, and obviously Jason was here, so it couldn’t’ve been that bad, could it? He clung to hope.

“A bit more brightness, I think,” Cherry murmured, and one thin finger dabbed a mystery potion under his eyes. “Don’t fret so much. Is it first-day jitters, then? Or something else? A girl? Maybe…a boy?” She lifted eyebrows at him; Jason laughed. “Tell me all about it if it is. All the details.”

“Sort of a boy,” Jason agreed obligingly. True, for a given interpretation. “It’s not like that, though. Just that I said something dumb and I haven’t been able to apologize. He’s probably not even thinking about it or me anymore—” Also likely true. Colby must have much more interesting thoughts to occupy his time. Fabulous parties in that luxurious apartment. New ways to spend that A-list income. Guys flinging themselves his direction. Everyone adoring him.

“—it’s just, y’know, it bothers me,” he finished. “But at least I look great, Cher, thanks.”

“You’re lovely, dear.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m sure if you apologize he’ll forgive you. Especially with those big pretty eyes. I’d forgive you.”

“Thanks more?”

“I could think of a few more things to do with you, if I was at all interested in the eggplant crowd.” Cherry patted him again. Her partner Diana was a chef, Jason knew; they’d chatted about the proper layering of lasagna and Jason’s family’s recipe early on. “I’m sure your boy could, too.”

“He’s not my anything. It’s not…” He sighed. “It’s not like that.”

“Of course it’s not,” Cherry said, “you’re only obsessing over something dumb you said and whether or not he’s thinking of you,” and poked a pencil at his eyebrow.

It wasn’t like that. It’d never be. Colby might’ve agreed to work with him, the in-role chemistry might be fantastic, but Colby couldn’t look at him. Found other people to talk to after table reads. Sent proper businesslike emails that always sounded vaguely British in tone and phrasing, as if some childhood training remained inescapable.

But Jason remembered the way that hand felt in his. He’d seen those glorious eyes upturned and gazing into his. He’d seen Colby Kent flinch, an ephemeral specter of genuine vulnerability. He’d wanted to help then; he wanted to now.

He didn’t even know why. They weren’t friends. Colby couldn’t need him.

But some tiny wistful part of his heart hoped Colby had someone, among that sea of admirers. Someone who’d see him. Someone who’d be there for him.

Jason’s heart wished it could help. Not even because Colby Kent was gorgeous and talented and a daydream come to life. Simply because it did not like the idea of someone being unhappy, and particularly that someone being Colby, who would choose a co-star based on what’d be best for the film, regardless of personal discomfort.

Jason, eyeing himself and his newly shaped eyebrows, knew he should be thinking of his own role. Slipping into Stephen’s skin. Preparing for a soundstage and a ship’s deck, the movie-magic half-built version. Conversations with Leo Whyte, playing his loyal lieutenant. Later, that afternoon, one conversation with Colby. A moment in which William Crawford, Viscount Easterly, had dared ill health and parental anger to slip onto Stephen’s ship and say farewell. They would not touch, not even kiss, in a space filled with crew and pre-departure bustle; but they would take each other’s hands, briefly, and they would know.

Jason, who’d taken Colby’s hand once, understood. Intimacy stolen out of public view. A commitment made sweeter by the ache of restraint. By the brush of skin to skin, laid bare.

Colby had chosen. Had put his hand into Jason’s, given the invitation.

And Jason needed to stop remembering, imagining, wondering. For one thing, he didn’t have the right. For another, those imaginings were starting to cause certain effects in his jeans, sensation simultaneously pleasurable and potentially embarrassing and startling. He knew what he liked, as far as sweetness and surrender actively forthrightly given; he could not remember a time when he’d gone achingly hard from the memory of a touch of a hand.

Dammit. He had to stop thinking about Colby Kent. About wide blue eyes with their unusual darker outer ring of color, about the sparkle in them when saying Captain like a dare, like a tease—

“Good morning!” Cherry chirped to someone behind his shoulder. “What’re you doing in this early, sugar, you’re not on set until this afternoon!”

“I can’t come by to say hello to my favorite artistic genius?” That voice. Oh God, that voice. Amusement in ancient castles. Sunlight over stones. Arthurian mythology by way of Southern California. Jason sat frozen, thanking various theater-related deities and also Cherry for concealer that’d hide flushed cheeks.

Colby went on, “I’ve also bought pastries for everyone. There’s more on the cart outside, but I thought I’d bring this box over. I know they’re nothing as good as Di’s, but perhaps still good enough to begin the first day with? And—oh, Jason! Good morning. Would you like some sort of apple tart? Or a cinnamon…well, I don’t know what that is, it’s a very mythological shape, but it’s definitely got cinnamon in.”

“Um,” Jason managed.

“I’ll just leave these and get out of your way.”

“No, you won’t,” Cherry scolded, picking up something round and chocolate-dipped. “Colby, darling, tell us exactly everything from Maureen Hart’s engagement party last month. Did she really invite all her exes? And did Skylar Mason really get drunk and fall into the pool, because the tabloids are saying so, but I know someone who worked on all five seasons of Vampire High with him and said he was the shyest nicest boy—”

Colby, who of course had been invited—Mo Hart’s engagement party invite list had comprised most of A-list Hollywood, several billionaires, and a prince or two, and decidedly not Jason—perched on the edge of a second chair and said willingly, “No, as far as I know he only tripped over someone, there was hardly any room to breathe even up on that rooftop patio, and I’m very sorry but I didn’t properly count the number of exes, though I did see Brett Claremont gazing longingly at Lindsay Miller, and she seemed to be looking back?” and they disappeared into a discussion of glamorous film-star hook-ups and break-ups and whether Lindsay should take Brett back, for a good twenty minutes.

They seemed to forget that Jason existed. That was fine. Jason was busy regaining air. Forcing blood into other parts of his body.

Colby, he noticed, tended not to lead a conversation. Answering questions, smiling, responding to whatever gossip Cherry wanted to know and apologizing for not knowing some answers, but definitely reacting instead of directing. Being exactly what she wanted from him.

Jason did not know what to do with this information.

He watched Colby Kent some more. Colby, even dressed casually, came in layers. Comfortable-looking but stylish pants, not jeans. A blue cardigan over a button-down shirt, even at six in the morning. The cardigan was buttoned also. Jason thought about that for a minute, too.