Fan Service

Chapter One

Present day

Devin Ashwood wished he could say this was the first time he’d woken up butt naked in his backyard with no memory of the night before.

At least last time he’d been in his twenties. Call it a perk or a dangerous downside, but any former child star could tell you the consequences of mixing booze and benzos on an empty stomach.

Opening first one eye and then the other, he squinted up at the sky, trying to gauge the time based on the angle of the sun. Midday? Maybe? His parents never let him join the Boy Scouts.

Devin lifted his pounding head gingerly off the ground, wiping at dirt embedded in the surface of his scruffy cheek. His stomach rolled as he sat up. That combined with his sour tongue confirmed his suspicions: hangover.

Every muscle in his body ached. Was all this from working out? His personal trainer, Claude, had him on some new resistance-training program designed to keep his forty-two-year-old body from looking forty-two. It involved a lot of bungee cords.

Holy shit. Speaking of overworked glutes, he was ass to the wind out here. Thank god he slept on his stomach or he’d probably have second-degree burns on his junk right now.

What in the world had he gotten up to last night?

He remembered most of yesterday. After hitting the gym in the morning, he’d called his agent, gotten her voice mail, and left a rude message.

Jade had been dodging him for weeks now. As if he didn’t pay her to take his calls. Which, okay, yeah, Devin hadn’t booked anything to write home about lately, but how was he supposed to if he couldn’t get his own representation on the phone?

After hanging up, he Googled himself in a fit of self-loathing, got predictably depressed by what he found, and then fucked around playing Call of Duty until sunset. At that point he’d been desperate enough to speak to someone, anyone, other than the fourteen-year-olds on the other side of his headset who kept threatening to “pwn” him.

He broke down and asked his publicist to find him a party.

That was how he ended up all the way out in the Palisades for some cologne launch that was a total bust. If Devin wanted to smell like a lemon fucking a pine tree, he would— Well, he didn’t was the point. The only thing that made the evening halfway worth putting on dress pants was the bacon-wrapped scallops they had going around on little trays.

Devin only managed to snag one of those before some alleged former gaffer from the first season of The Arcane Files started chatting his ear off. At first, the guy, Mitchell or Michael, seemed decent. He told Devin his favorite episode was the one told through the POV of Colby’s beloved motorcycle, which did, objectively, rule. But then he asked what Devin was up to now, and when he explained he was actually trying to get the studio on board for an Arcane Files reboot, the asshole laughed.

“Wait, seriously?”

Devin got pretty drunk after that. By midnight, he was slipping the bartender a couple hundred bucks to hand him a bottle of Blanton’s and wandering off into the woods at the edge of the property.

But after that? The rest of the night wasn’t just hazy. It was missing.

Damn. It wasn’t cute to black out at forty-two. He was fucking middle-aged.

Devin got to his feet. He was filthy, his bare torso and legs covered in streaks of dried mud and scattered scrapes and shaded marks that promised to turn into full-on bruises. Running a hand through his hair, he pulled out a twig. What in the Bear Grylls bullshit . . . ?

Hobbling across his landscaper’s “vision” of a “tranquil rock oasis,” he let himself in the back door and went to put on boxer briefs. The question of whether or not he’d lost his phone in last night’s mystery exploits was answered when it rang just as he managed to hike on a pair of sweats. Unearthing the thing from a potted plant next to his front door, Devin fumbled for the accept call button.

“Jade,” he said, having seen her name on the home screen. “What the hell? I must’ve left you twenty messages. Next time you decide to go radio silent for a month, at least shoot me an email so I know you didn’t get sucked into a sex cult.”

His agent murmured some soothing excuses for her absence, something about a wellness retreat in Fiji, then suggested they meet for sushi later tonight.

Immediately, Devin’s hackles rose. Jade hated sushi.

“Whatever I heard, it’s good,” she defended, when he said as much. “I’ll order chicken teriyaki or something.”

Bullshit, he wanted to say but didn’t, too much of a coward to call her out twice in one phone call. He’d known Jade for almost twenty years; she sure as hell didn’t make a habit out of compromise.

She must have bad news. Oh fuck. What if she was quitting the business? Or pregnant?

Between the state of his hangover and delays from construction on the freeway, Devin barely managed to shower and make himself presentable before he had to haul ass to Venice Beach. An investigation into what the fuck he’d done last night would have to wait until tomorrow. It was probably fine. His publicist would have called by now if he’d done something truly heinous.

At the sushi spot, Devin’s pounding headache intensified despite the Advil he’d swallowed dry before handing his keys over to the valet.

He’d been in LA a long time. Fuck—he grimaced as he did the math—thirty-five years. Long enough to know that there were basically two kinds of places in this neighborhood: highly exclusive ones where you needed your name on a list to see and be seen, and ones crowded enough with tourists that you could count on getting hustled out in an hour so the waitstaff could turn over the table.

This place fell squarely into the latter bucket.

By the time he was escorted to the table, Jade was already there, pounding away at her phone with a steaming mug of something aggressively herbal at her elbow.

Jade wasn’t his first agent, but she was the first one Devin hired himself, a couple of years before he landed The Arcane Files. Thanks to what a judge called his parents’ “questionable investment” with his paychecks, Devin was slumming it as a cater waiter in Pasadena between auditions, barely making enough to cover rent on a shitty studio. In those dark, lean months after Sands of Time had gone off air, casting directors kept telling him he had a pretty mouth, then declining to actually book him.

At some benefit out on the water, Devin thought Jade—sleek and professional in her shiny black skirt suit—was a guest. It was only years later when they were sharing a joint in the back of a black car after the third-season wrap party that she admitted she’d snuck in a side door that night, just as hungry as he was.

“You an actor by any chance?” she asked him.

“How’d you know?” Devin had grown his hair out, paranoid about someone recognizing him working an industry event.

Looking back, that had been goofy. No one attending those galas fell into the demographic religiously watching daytime soaps.

Jade pointed to the headshot rolled up in the back pocket of his rented tux.

For some reason, she’d found that charming.

A few days later at her office—a single room rented in some warehouse out in Burbank—she offered him a contract.

“There’s one thing you should know before you sign,” she said, her pretty face guarded. “I’m a lesbian and it’s not something I’m willing to hide.”

“Oh. Cool.” Devin didn’t actually know any lesbians, but Ellen DeGeneres seemed nice. “You got a pen?”

“You’re late,” Jade said now, standing as they exchanged pleasantries and air-kisses (god, sometimes he hated what LA had turned him into). “And you look like shit.”

He supposed twenty-odd years of working together bred this kind of informality.

“Thanks.” Devin took his seat and ordered a hot sake, hoping to take the edge off. Even the dim lighting in here made his eyes threaten to bleed.

Jade had the decency to let him order a shumai appetizer before she tucked her severe blond bob behind her ears and folded her hands in front of her.

Oh shit. Here it comes. His gut sank. Devin didn’t want to hear whatever it was she wanted to tell him.

“I think we should pitch the reboot again,” he spit out before she could break her bad news.

Jade’s placid expression slipped, a flicker of irritation flaring around her mouth. “Devin, we’ve talked about this.”

That was true. Jade had made her thoughts about reviving The Arcane Files clear. Her last words on the subject were something along the lines of “the dead should stay buried.” Which, now that he thought about it, sounded like something Colby might say after stumbling upon a freshly disturbed grave. Dun dun. Fade to black. Cut to commercial.

Jade thought his starring role, the one that had made him if not a household name then at least someone regularly invited to the Teen Choice Awards, had grown stale. Come to think of it, had Jade ever liked Colby? Even after they’d renegotiated his contract between the third and fourth seasons and he’d started making good money? Was that the year she’d called his character “a maladjusted Hardy Boy with a tail”?

Devin didn’t get it. Colby was smart and tough and cool. After thirteen years wearing his skin, Devin hadn’t even had to think about how his character would react to a situation. It had become instinct, as natural as breathing.

“Come on, Jade.” He gave her his most charming smile, the one Seventeen magazine had dedicated a whole column to before it went under. “Reboots are cool now. Kids today are obsessed with shit from the nineties and early aughts.” He wasn’t a hundo percent confident he’d pronounced that last word correctly, but Jade hadn’t flinched, so probably “aughts” did rhyme with “tots.”

Jade took a sip of her tea. “How do you know what kids are obsessed with?”

“I’m on the Internet,” he said, defensive.

“Right.” She put down her earthenware mug. “Listen.”

Oh man. Devin hated that “listen.” That was Jade’s patented “let you down easy” listen. The one he’d heard her use on Chad Michael Murray at Jingle Ball in 2009.

“It’s been almost seven years since The Arcane Files went off air. Even if I could get the network interested in a revival, we’d never get the right people. Gus Rochester is in movies now. He just did that big World War II epic where he cries beautifully for like thirty minutes straight. And you know they gave Brian Dempsey that series on HBO where they let him show full frontal. He’s happier than a pig in mud.”

It was true. The Arcane Files’ former showrunner kept giving interviews where he talked about how his talent had finally been “unleashed” on the premium channel’s streaming platform.

Devin must have done something pathetic with his face, because Jade’s tone softened.

“TAF had a good run. Thirteen seasons. That’s the second-longest fantasy series on cable. But it’s over now,” she said. “Everyone’s moved on.”

Everyone—the rest of the sentence hung in the air alongside the sweet smoke of incense—except him.

How had he let this happen?

When the show went off air in 2018, Devin had been excited to see what was next. He’d bulked up for the superhero auditions that never panned out. After months of practicing with a dialect coach to nail a British accent for consideration in a period piece, he’d been told he “didn’t look believable in a cravat.” Whatever the fuck that meant.

Then COVID hit and everything dried up. Suddenly he was stuck in his big stupid house, alone. His ex-wife checked in once through an Instagram DM. Her profile picture was her and two ginger children.

As the months passed, he realized the only people he talked to regularly were on his payroll.

Devin had spent thirteen years on The Arcane Files seeing the same faces five days a week during filming months. The cast and crew had shared meals. Worked through long nights and holidays. He’d thought that had been, almost, like a family. But nobody hung around once he stopped being Colby. It had taken a global pandemic to make Devin realize how completely unlovable he was as himself.

“Jade, please, I need you to try.”

His agent sighed.

She probably thought Devin meant from a financial perspective. That he had an online gambling problem or something. He didn’t. She’d gotten him the fat paychecks all those years ago, and outside of his stupid car and the house, he’d barely touched them. Devin just felt useless—used up—as himself.

He needed to be Colby again: someone smart and good and brave. His character wasn’t perfect. You could fill an ocean with his daddy issues, and his love interests had a tendency to end up dead on his watch. But Colby had a partner and a purpose.

“Please,” he said again, hating himself even more for begging.

“Devin, I’m not just advising you as your agent. I’m telling you this as someone who’s known you a long time and who genuinely cares about you.” Jade’s voice was firm, but her eyes were gentle. “I’m not gonna indulge this anymore. You gotta find something else that makes you feel good.”

Pots and pans banging in the kitchen fifty feet away suddenly felt like they were colliding right inside his skull.

“Jade.” What could he say to convince her? “Come on. Don’t do this.”

“Fuck.” She reached for his hand across the tabletop, a gesture that was likely supposed to be comforting but missed the mark when she ended up nailing him in the knuckles with her rings. “I’m sorry, but I’m also serious. If we can’t agree on this, I think it’s best if we call this business relationship and go our separate ways.”

“You’re firing me?” Devin couldn’t believe it. For the first decade they’d worked together, they used to watch the Super Bowl together every year. Jade would come over—she was from Texas and her family was big into football—and Devin would make dips. Taco dip. Buffalo chicken dip. Spinach and artichoke in a hollowed-out loaf of sourdough. Didn’t that mean anything to her?

“I know this is difficult,” Jade said carefully, all business. “But the timing is right for a new beginning. Did you see the moon last night?”