fic: odds are [2/5]
Title: Odds Are (We’re Gonna Be All Right Tonight) [2/5]
Word Count: 6,525 for this chapter
Rating: R, eventually
Warnings: for Chris having an anxiety attack prior to meeting Sebastian
Summary: In which Chris Evans reads a book, Sebastian Stan holds Chris’s hand, stories matter, and Martians are important.
In this chapter: Chris Evans meets Sebastian Stan.
Notes: many thanks to ilovetakahana for looking this over (I mean the whole fic), when I panicked about plot development and pacing! Title from the Barenaked Ladies song "Odds Are."
two: you can fall in love by the end of this song
The morning’s damp and sticky and grey, thick with the promise of more rain. The heavens haven’t opened up yet, though. Chris bounces out of bed with superhero-related eagerness. He trips over his sleeping bag, because his sleeping bag clearly hates excitement, but that doesn’t matter. He’s got a plan. He’s going to go buy books. He’s going to get to live in that world some more.
He throws on extra flannel layers and boots, humming “Kiss the Girl” for no reason at all. He’s happy and he’s always loved The Little Mermaid. His tent’s not judging. The world’s sunny despite the preponderance of grey. More books, more well-written wonderful books. Yes.
He leaves most of his stuff set up at the campsite-he’ll be back later-and grabs some waterproof gear, a poncho and so on, and heads off to find the trail.
Okay, maybe he runs a little. Or a lot. But: books. Books by Sebastian Stan.
The trail’s not a difficult one; he’d wanted isolation, but not someplace from which he couldn’t readily return. He thinks fleetingly about that tattoo, about Matt’s name over his ribs. Matt, and an off-roading accident, and a body, years ago; he’d not been on that particular trip, and he’ll never know whether that might’ve made a difference. He does know that he wants to check in with his mother and siblings every few days, and he wants to get out easily if someone needs him back home.
The rain meanders back in, sidling up like a wary cat and testing its welcome. Chris has never minded the wet. Pieces of the universe, and he gets to be there too, in some small way. They can share.
Mud is also a piece of the universe. He sighs, and tries to shake splashes off his jeans, and fails thoroughly. The rain scampers alongside in the trees, frivolous as a puppy.
By the time he gets to the unremarkable rest stop-not even enough to be a town, mostly a gas station and a convenience store and some odds-and-ends places for campers headed out to the wilderness-he’s damp from rain and sticky with perspiration under the flannel, but that’s just fine. The walk’s stretched his muscles and cleared his head, nothing but water and earth and sky and anticipation. His bones hum, content.
The same guy’s working the convenience-store register as before; his name-tag says Hello My Name Is Jeremy! in tidy printing, though he’s wearing it upside down. Chris bites his cheek to hide the grin, wondering whether the guy knows, and goes off to poke at the paperback rack.
Ah. There, right there. That name, in silvery lettering. Vivid pulp-fiction pop-culture paperbacks. Volumes two and three of the trilogy. Chris exhales. Touches the letters. Sebastian Stan’s name.
He brings them up to the front, plus some beef jerky and water and the best postcard he can find to send to his brother, which in this case means it’s got a picture of a beaver next to a giant log, which in turn means Scott will fall off his chair laughing because Scott has that sense of humor. My Name Is Jeremy scans this bounty with the same mellow disinterest as before, until he gets to the paperbacks, where he stops. Chris cringes. “Um, I just-I read the first one, is all, I just wanted to finish the story-”
“Dude,” Jeremy announces, whole face lighting up. “The second one’s so awesome, like, I cried, man, the part where-oh, shit, no spoilers, sorry-”
“You’ve read them?”
“Everyone’s read them, come on-!” Jeremy fishes for something that jangles, attached to his waist. Holds up a snarled bunch of keys proudly. “Got a Winter Soldier keychain. Totally gonna camp out for opening night when the first film’s out, too. Me and all my friends.”
“I think I love Bucky,” Chris says, giving in. “And Steve. Both of them. Together. Until the end-”
“-of the line, fuck yeah.” Jeremy beams at him. Fan recognizing fan. “And that author. I mean, wow.”
“Sebastian Stan,” Chris says, which is a usefully noncommittal statement and hopefully consequently encouraging. Maybe Jeremy knows information he doesn’t.
“Sebastian fucking Stan. That’s, like, a whole other story, someone should write his autobiography or somethin’, seriously. From Communist Romania to Shakespeare to New York City. And he’s so damn nice.”
“You’ve met him?” Envy. Instant and snarling. In his chest.
“Me, nah. But he leaves, like, comments on his fans’ Instagram accounts, and posts thank you messages when people give him gifts and shit, and he was giving out hugs to everybody at that one convention even when security told him not to, y’know? Just adorable.”
Chris nods, because he can’t think of anything to say. That is adorable, and Sebastian Stan’s evidently kind to fans on top of being a genius writer and devastatingly attractive, and Chris’s heart’s doing a strange tango of lurching wistfulness and want.
“Plus,” Jeremy observes, “completely hot. Ten out of ten. Would bang on a writing desk. And I’m not even gay. He’s bi, though, maybe it could happen. I’d be in. He’s single, I’m single, I’m just sayin’.”
This time Chris has nothing to say because his brain’s shorted out. Sebastian Stan. On a writing desk. Bisexual, which seems to be common fan knowledge. Single. With that smile, and those eyes, and language like skillful witchcraft at his command.
Jeremy now looks mildly shamefaced. “Um. Sorry. I was just kinda kidding. Wouldn’t happen. I do know about fantasy and reality, okay.”
“No,” Chris’s mouth says, continuing to be on autopilot, “I got that, it’s fine, we’re cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Your nametag’s upside down.”
“Huh,” Jeremy says, looking down at himself. “Guess so. It likes being that way.”
Fair enough, Chris thinks, and says so. Jeremy nods and bags up his purchases, taking time to wrap the paperbacks against the rain, and Chris is nearly out the door when he hears, “Mountain Man Stan Fan! Wait!”
“Mountain Man,” Chris grumbles, pausing in the doorway, “really?”
“The beard. The flannel. Yes, really. So you already know about the book signing, right? This afternoon? In town? By which I mean actual town, because this dump doesn’t count, yeah?”
“Book signing.”
“The one and only Sebastian Stan.”
“…what?”
“He’s doing a book tour. Because they’re putting out some special collector’s edition, all three volumes, plus there’s the news about the film, so he’s out shaking hands and reading chapters to people. And he’s going across the country, like, by train, I have no clue why, but that means he stops in, like, the most random places, so. Today. At five pm. Here-ish. Down the road. I have to work.”
“Oh fuck,” Chris says, or thinks he says. His lips move, anyway.
“There’s probably already a line outside the shop,” Jeremy suggests helpfully, “but you could totally hike over there in time for the reading, I have faith in your muscles, Mountain Man.”
“Stop that…where, again?”
“Here.” Jeremy pulls up a conversation on his smartphone, scrolls, waves the screen at Chris. “He’s not really advertising much because most of the tour stops fill up way in advance, but my friend Scarlett works at the bookshop, so she told me, and the thing is, we’re not that big a place, so he’ll probably sign stuff for everybody. She’s gonna get a collector’s edition signed for me. You should go.”
“I might.” He already knows he will. Stupid and impulsive and obsessive, half in love with a man he’s never met; but it’s not just that. It’s admiration and envy and gratitude: Sebastian Stan’s made him fall head over heels for a book again, for the art of storytelling, and Chris wants to say thank you. Anything more, any sense of connection, exists mostly in his own head; he understands that. He doesn’t know Sebastian Stan and likely never will.
But he does want to say thank you. As someone who needed those books, that hope, right now.
“It’s only a couple miles,” Jeremy nudges. “You can go now and then get back to scaring Bigfoot after.”
“Are we friends now,” Chris says, “is that what we’re doing, ’cause I was gonna offer to come tell you about it after…”
“You so are,” Jeremy agrees, “and I’ll save you extra beef jerky and stupid beaver postcards. Go.”
“Your nametag’s still upside down,” Chris fires back, and takes his books and goes while Jeremy’s laughing.
Outside, he lurks under the scant shelter of the roof’s overhang and glances left to right. Left will take him back to the campsite. To his place, encircling tent-walls and familiar lantern-gleam and the blanket of solitude around his shoulders, no pressure from strangers or literary agents or curious eyes. And the rain’s picking up tempo.
Right will, on the other hand, take him properly into town. Where there’s a bookshop and a line and a couple of ephemeral hours with Sebastian Stan, who will do a reading and sign copies and smile politely and no doubt never be able to pick Chris out of a crowd. The walk back will be dark and cold and soggy and treacherous; not a tricky path, but by the time the event’s over night’ll be encroaching. And Chris will have muddy jeans and a scribbled signature and the memory of Sebastian Stan’s voice to take home.
He looks left again, back at his undemanding private oasis in the woods.
And then he turns right, and splashes through puddles toward the main road, singing Disney tunes under his breath, opening volume two to read along the way.
The line’s indeed long. Stretches around the corner of the shop, which sits peaceably amid local sandwich shops and a shabby-tranquil post office and a ubiquitous Starbucks, proof that certain coffee-related desires can stretch into the most rural corners of New England. The bookshop’s got posters in the window, book covers and Sebastian Stan’s smiling face and promotional material for the upcoming film. Chris, intimidated by the muscular five-foot cardboard cut-out of Steve Rogers: Captain America!, shuffles meekly into a spot at the line’s tail. The girl in front of him gives him a rather sympathetic look, but also puts a bit more space between them.
Chris looks down. At his boots. His muddy boots. And flannel shirt, rained-on jeans, and convenience-store bag of books.
He tries to scrape some of the mud away on the sidewalk’s curb. The rain’s let up but not vanished, shimmering into a ghostly diamond-studded fog. This does not help.
He doesn’t have a watch, but his phone’s in his pocket and durable enough for the weather. He checks. Perfect timing. Four fifty-nine. And despite the mud and the occasional raindrop in his hair and the unnerving fact that there’s a whole bookshop’s worth of people here for the exact same reason-
His heart skips a beat. Sebastian Stan. Now.
And the doors open. Movement at the front of the line.
Chris ventures in with the rest of the adoring horde. They just barely fit. Chairs up against the walls, chairs in aisles. Probably breaking fire code. Probably nobody cares. The shelves of science-fiction and biographies and histories and romance hold papery breath and lean in too. Chris finds a seat at the edge of one row, shoulder to shoulder with some ironic Jonathan Swift, and reminds himself to exhale.
He also eyes his feet. Nope, not magically-disappearing mud. Damn.
Noise at the front, which is in fact the back, of the shop. Laughter. A door swinging wide to admit the chatter of voices and a pool of damp black streetgleam. The scent of coffee. Chris’s palms’re sweaty.
Sebastian Stan takes a sip from the Starbucks cup in his hand, turns toward the throng, smiles. He’s wearing a grey scarf and a ridiculously fashionable newsboy cap and clinging jeans. He’s wearing a grin that unfurls like sunshine and rain: like tropical showers, bright and vibrant and sensual and skin-shivering, goosebumps under shooting stars.
He’s taller than Chris might’ve guessed from the author bio, though the height’s mostly legs, like a baby egret peeking out of its nest at the big wide world. He looks a little older-well, of course, Chris mocks his own foolishness; Sebastian’d have to be superhuman himself to’ve not aged since the first novel-and a little thinner, puppyish softness replaced by lean muscle; he’s beautiful either way, the kind of unthinking loveliness that can make a room full of people catch simultaneous breaths, and he’s…
…tired, Chris thinks, and then in the next second isn’t sure why. Something around the eyes. In the way he’s leaning a hip against the table, terribly casual. In the unremarked fleeting blink of eyelashes as he sips his brand-name caffeine, under the avid shine of overhead lights.
But that tiredness-if it is tiredness, if Chris’s anxious brain isn’t simply projecting-vanishes in the next heartbeat, the instant a pretty blonde woman comes up and touches Sebastian’s shoulder. She says something too quiet to hear, intimate, head bent; Sebastian turns the smile up and turns it on her, magically dazzling and genuine at once. It’s real affection, true as gold; Chris would bet his life on that, and his poor overworked heart whimpers sadly, having not yet learned that sappy romantic bookshop meet-ups don’t come true. But it’s also a performance, in the way that actors on a stage perform: heart and soul thrown into a play.
The petite pretty blonde sighs. Shakes her head at her writer, scolding and familiar. Sebastian laughs softly, salutes her with the coffee-cup, shakes his head right back and says something inaudible. They look happy, Chris decides, even if they’re currently mildly disagreeing.
And then Sebastian stops leaning on the table and gets upright and turns toward the assembled fans. The blonde girl vanishes with fairylike quickness. And Chris realizes that Sebastian’s performance earlier was a dress rehearsal: this is the real thing, stops pulled out, utter delight on display in eyes and mouth and sudden energy. The room cheers. Sound reverberates off the shelves. Chris can’t cheer, because he’s trapped in the airless amber shock of dreams come to life.
“You guys,” Sebastian declares, standing in front of his signing table in skinny jeans and striped sweater and carelessly looped scarf and well-concealed weary courage, “are the fucking best fans anyone could ask for, coming out in the rain like this, thank you so much!” and the cheers redouble.
Sebastian’s voice is as extraordinary as the rest of him. Woodsmoke and velvet. New York layered over mountainous wilder country, cities of vampires and princes and revolutions. Hints of mystical lands in curling r’s and l’s and liquid vowels, appearing and disappearing like stray ripples in a pond. Chris wants to write him into a story, an epic, a saga. Heroic. Full of enchanted warriors and gods and goddesses falling in love.
Sebastian also apparently happily swears in front of fans. Chris, as an aficionado of four-letter words, admires this trait.
“Right,” Sebastian goes on, circling around his table. It’s an old table, likely dragged over from the café next door: oaken and scuffed and beaten by time, thrown in here for a hastily-arranged encounter with the emperor of bestseller lists. Sebastian runs a hand over it absentmindedly, and the wood perks up like it’s new-hewn again, resolved to be the best table it can possibly be.
“I’m going to actually sit down,” Sebastian says, doing just that, “sorry, I’m feeling a little jetlagged-can I say jetlagged? I wasn’t even on a plane, I came in on the train, um, fuck, sorry, what was I trying to say?” The adorably confused face he makes could launch a thousand ships, all of them carrying warm blankets and hot beverages and therapeutic supplies. Wars’d be fought over who got to cuddle him. Chris can see it.
He shoves these bizarre speculations down and stacks mental furniture atop them. Sebastian’s talking. “-and I got a little bit sick last week-I’m fine, it’s okay, don’t worry-but my manager thinks that getting off my feet’s important, so we’ve got a microphone and a table and-well, she’s over there, and she’s fantastic, Margarita, say hi!”
The blonde girl, sitting neatly atop one of the sales desks with demurely crossed legs, rolls her eyes. Waves. Complains, “As your manager I object to you being out of bed and having caffeine and generally ignoring my very good advice,” but she’s smiling when she says it.
Manager. Chris’s heart relearns how to swing on trapezes. Sebastian is single, or so My Name Is Jeremy’d said.
Another very pertinent tidbit of information nags at his emotions. He’d been right after all. Sebastian’s tired and ill, and that momentary leaning on a bookshop table hadn’t been casual in the least. Chris’s writer’s eye for incongruities had caught that much, and God he wishes he’d been wrong. Sebastian, he thinks, as if the beautiful jewel-eyed man with the treasure-box smile can hear him: Sebastian, please be safe.
Sebastian offers to read whatever chapter the crowd desires-“I love all my words, you can’t pick something I don’t like!”-and by overwhelming demand ends up with a certain scene from the middle volume of the trilogy. Chris knows precisely which one, and he’s not surprised the fans’ve voted for it. So many emotions, so much passion and pain and love. Captain America and the Winter Soldier on a helicarrier, the fate of the world at stake. A beloved. A mission. Broken cheekbones and bullets through the gut and words torn from pulverized hearts: finish it, ’cause I’m with you-
Chris had wept, then. Standing frozen under feather-curl grey mists, surrounded by the damp green scents of soggy trees and wet asphalt, knowing he had ten minutes to get to the bookshop for the night’s event, he’d wept.
His eyes get prickly now, as Sebastian reads. No shame. Half the audience’s crying or mouthing the scene along with the author, or both at once. He’s glad he’d at least managed to get through volume two: he’s not getting this kick to the heart for the very first time, so it’s marginally easier to weather, and also he’s caught up as far as plot, so far.
Marginally easier to weather. Sebastian’s-not merely a good reader. Sebastian’s brilliant.
Sebastian reads like romance and tragedy, like the entirety of human existence, hearts and souls and anguish and glory, has been distilled down into these simple lines on a page. The bookshop walls fall away in the visceral crack of bone, of voice, of metal, of desperate unadulterated love. And the scene comes alive.
Sebastian does love his characters. Emblazoned across every word, every inflection.
Sebastian finishes on a down-beat, on a simple line, an image: the glint of water and sunshine on metal, a hand reaching beneath a surface, finding hope.
The audience remains voiceless for a heartbeat or two: suspended.
And then they sag a little and breathe out, and cry or sniffle or hug a neighbor; and the murky green waters of the Potomac shiver back into book-lined walls and uncomfortable wooden chairs, and Sebastian Stan’s fingers’re lying still and affectionate across the closed cover of the story.
Sebastian says to the crowd, or maybe only to the book, or to both: “Thank you.” He’s smiling very faintly, almost to himself; but there’s that tiredness again, a kind of transcendent worn-thin joy after elation, falling to the rougher rocks of earth. He even coughs once, muffling it in his sleeve; his face is pale. His unobtrusively competent pretty manager’s right beside him with a covered cup of what Chris hopes is herbal tea.
The applause swells once everyone comes back down and remembers how. The noise is long, and sincere, and full of adoration. Chris nearly forgets to join in. He’s watching Sebastian’s eyes close in pleasure at the kindness of that hot beverage as it slides down his throat. Sebastian looks up, after, and glances out at the hero-worshipping crowd right as Chris belatedly slams palms together too loudly; winter-ocean eyes flick his direction, then blink as if surprised or unsure, but Chris is staring and being creepy, of course Sebastian’s unsure-
He ducks his head, flush blooming along the back of his neck. When he looks up again, Sebastian’s talking to, best guess, the bookshop owner, or at least the woman who seems to be directing the event. She may or may not be the eponymous Hayley of Hayley’s Book Nest, but she’s got lots of people doing exactly what she says, and at the moment this involves getting Sebastian set up for the signing line. Sebastian smiles and settles in behind the table, assorted pens at the ready; volunteer assistants come around and shoo everyone out of chairs and into some semblance of a line, crooked and fat and anticipatory. Chris clutches his bag of paperbacks. Loses track of blue eyes.
He ends up about halfway through the line, next to a rack of romantically-inclined novels with flagrantly lustful covers. They have titles about seduction and sin and dark desires. Chris feels his face get hotter. He’s not opposed, of course-he’s got fantasies like anyone else, he’s looked some things up, he’s got a diabolical younger brother who once bought him a year’s subscription to a sex-toy-of-the-month club. It’s just that the line’s kind of slow, nowhere else to politely look, and the handcuffs on that cover’re leering at him.
The line to meet Sebastian Stan. Handcuffs. Dark desires. Sebastian Stan’s expressive wrists and shining eyes. Chris slams the lid on that daydream before it can do more than hint at materialization. Now is not the time. Good God, Chris.
Maybe later. In his tent. Which won’t tell anyone.
And now he’s got a different worry. The line’s moving a bit faster, Sebastian getting into a rhythm up at the front, the bookshop volunteers sorting out an efficient system of moving bodies along. Chris hopes they’ve got ice for his signing hand and a comfortable chair; he’s been on the other end of this industrial system, though never-he eyes the distant tail of admirers-for quite so many. He’d never been great at it: too loud, over-eager, fumbling through expressions of honest gratitude to his readers. He’s got immeasurable sympathy for those readers, always has: he knows the agonizing struggle to say something clever, significant-something at all, when looked at with expectation-
Oh fuck.
He’s going to have to say something to Sebastian Stan.
This horrified realization keeps him from noticing as the line moves. He moves with it, mechanically. It’s not that long a line; Jeremy’d been right about the small town and lack of advertising and semi-secret events. Won’t be much more time to prepare.
Some fans’ve brought gifts. Art of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Hand-made bracelets. A tiny bag of blueberry-vanilla ground coffee. Chris looks at his own empty hands. He could’ve made a sketch. He knows how to draw, or he thinks he does, on good days. He hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought.
He knows what he wants to say. Thank you. You made me smile and cry and feel; you made me remember how much I love the art of storytelling and the sheer acrobatic tapdance fun of what we do; you gave me a story when I needed that, and I know I’m not a real fan, I’m not even done reading the books, I just wanted to say…
How can he possibly say all of that? How can he say anything? He can’t, he’ll never have the words for what this has meant, those cool delighted eyes’ll look at him with pity and compassion and Chris’s hands’re getting cold and his skin feels clammy-
“Only one item,” chirps the closest perky volunteer, breaking into his panic, “Sebastian’s kind of not feeling well, so we’re just doing one per guest, plus one of the collected special editions if you bought one today, okay?”
Chris croaks, “…what?”
“One item,” she repeats. “You’ll want to get it out, you’re almost up, and if you could write down the name, if you want it personalized, that’d be great?”
Chris can’t breathe.
Chris can’t breathe and the walls’re looming and his heart’s battering itself to pieces against his ribs and people are looking now, looking and judging, while he can’t even get words out and he can’t be a writer and Sebastian Stan doesn’t need his thanks and he’s wobbling on his feet because, hey, the floor’s gone uneven, helpful of it, and there’re dazzling sparkles joining the party in his vision-
“Chris,” a voice interjects between the sparkles. An extremely recognizable voice. Chris is in love with that voice, some sort of hopeless impossible daydream love, and it’d be wonderful if he could answer the voice or get his feet to move and run away in shame.
A hand takes his sweaty plastic book-bag away. Another hand, long-fingered and sure and concerned, catches his elbow, eases him down to sit on the floor next to the signing table. The closest table-leg’s oaken and solid and unperturbed by the ravages of time. Chris tries to focus on that, but the scratches skid wildly before his eyes. His chest hurts. Too tight.
“Chris,” Sebastian says again. One hand on Chris’s left shoulder. An anchor: no demands, only a simple point of contact. “Can you hear me?”
Yes, Chris thinks, and tries to nod. The panic doesn’t want to let him.
“All right. Good. You’re here, I’m here, we’re fine. I want you to do something, if you can.” Sebastian’s voice shows no hint of the disgust or disgruntlement he must be feeling. As if fans pass out at his feet every day of the week. Maybe they do. Maybe this is normal. Chris hates himself but clings to the calm of that voice anyway, shamelessly.
“I want you,” Sebastian says, “to breathe with me, okay? Along with me, I’ll be right here with you, da?” That calm fractures briefly at the end. Language-slips. Worry sneaking out, revealed. Chris squeezes both eyes shut, risks opening them. The floor’s cold underneath his ass. Sebastian’s a kitten-pile of warmth and long legs beside him.
“Breathe in,” Sebastian tells him, “with me.” He holds out his other hand; Chris grabs it. Too tightly, but Sebastian doesn’t flinch. “Ready? In. Out. Good. One more. And one more, and this time we’re going to hold it, all right? I’ll count.” He waits. Chris nods again. Sebastian says, “In,” and then starts counting backwards, counting down. Ten. Nine. Eight. Down to one. Evenly paced, diminishing numbers, forward progress. Again.
The thumping of Chris’s heart slows. Grey twinkles backing off around his vision. He finds he’s counting along with Sebastian in his head.
“Good.” Sebastian’s eyes, now that Chris can focus better, are very close, and very concerned, and very sympathetic. No other emotions present. Up close the blue’s even more startling: some kind of rare elusive flower-shade, shimmering between turquoise and water-topaz and the sky before rain, like nothing Chris’s ever seen. He holds onto that shade. A lifeline.
They breathe together, himself and Sebastian Stan. Sitting on a bookshop floor, half under a table, in a tiny town in the middle of New England forests.
One of the myriad assistants must’ve brought a bottle of water; Chris doesn’t recall that, but Sebastian holds it up, opens it, tilts it his way: yes, no, not yet? Chris opens his mouth and ends up giving a kind of helpless head-wobble in reply.
“Here.” Sebastian takes Chris’s other hand. Presses an object into it. “Hold this for me. Don’t think about anything else, for a minute. Just sit here with me, and-think about being here, da? About this pen. My hand. Touch. Please.” His voice shivers again: tremors along normally-sweet piano keys. Chris doesn’t want to hear earthquakes in that voice.
He looks at the object Sebastian’s handed him, as if acceptance’ll be some magically-comprehended token of appreciation. It is indeed a pen: one of Sebastian’s signing-pens, sleek and slim and silver, vaguely futuristic in a nineteen-fifties spaceship way. Like it might leap from his palm into the stars. Starting a voyage.
It’s heavy, and steel-silk to the touch, and cleanly defined. It’s an object. He can feel the weight. Can name the color and move his fingers and know how it fits in his hand.
It’s real. He’s here.
Suddenly exhausted everywhere-coming back to ground after an anxiety attack’ll do that, he’s found-and aware enough to be mortified, he shuts his eyes. Closes his hand around the pen. Tips his head against the table-leg, with the resultant thunk being more or less exactly how he feels.
Sebastian Stan’s on the floor with him, talking him through an anxiety attack. Sebastian, who’s not well himself, who doesn’t need this-
Without moving, he confesses, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Sebastian inches closer. Chris can feel him, millimeters away. Chris’s entire body can feel him. “I’ve got the water if you’d like it now. Or not. No hurry.”
Chris gives up on any tattered shreds of dignity and opens his eyes. “Yeah, okay…”
Sebastian’s fingers are chilly and considerate when they brush his, handing the bottle over. “Not a bad view, down here. I believe that’s Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, on that bottom shelf.”
“Is it?” Why not. Surreal conversations, stories involving miniaturized people, full-body anguish, the discomfort of drying sweat, the distressed susurrations of the crowd above. “You like Asimov?”
“I do. I like most classic science fiction.” Sebastian tips that head, grins at him. The fashionable newsboy cap’s gone, doubtless lost in the dive to Chris’s side, and his scarf’s askew. He’s smiling like there’s no place he’d rather be. “I always wanted to be an astronaut. Other planets, far-off places, worlds we can’t even begin to imagine. Any better?”
“Yeah, I-” The answer’s a reflex, the way he answers when well-meaning acquaintances try to help; and then it’s not a reflex, because, he realizes, it’s true. “Yeah. That-thank you. I mean. Thank you.”
Sebastian’s smile grows even more, though he ducks his head to hide it: a surprisingly shy gesture from the man who’d so competently brought Chris out from the whitewater rapids.
“Wait,” Chris says this time. “You-she said you weren’t feeling-I mean, shit, are you-”
At this narratively abysmal moment Sebastian’s sylphlike manager turns up from no visible place and rests a proprietary hand on her charge’s shoulder. “Sebastian-”
“I’m fine,” Sebastian says to her, and then says it again to Chris. “I’m only-I sort of had pneumonia, a little bit, last week, and-”
“You can’t have pneumonia a little bit!” Chris flusters, horrified all over again, though for a brand-new reason.
“You woke me up trying to get the cap off the bottle of painkillers because you had a headache so bad you couldn’t open it, this morning,” Margarita says.
“In my defense, that cap was literally broken,” Sebastian says, “and if anyone hears you and assumes, again, that I’m sleeping with my manager, when we’re only sharing a hotel room for expenses-”
“Headache?” Chris asks.
“I’m just tired!”
Chris finds himself trading a glance with Margarita, somehow. Himself and Sebastian’s manager: apparently the two-thirds of the under-the-signing-table party with any sense. Which in fact makes zero sense, but nothing much in his life does right now.
“Sebastian,” Margarita says-practically an order this time, and Chris kind of wants to snap back at her tone on Sebastian’s behalf, but she’s also right-“get up off the floor, it’s filthy, we’ll get you back to the hotel and you can rest, your fan is fine, see, he’s telling you to go-”
“Wait-” Sebastian looks conflicted. “Chris-don’t leave? Please? I have a few more people to sign for, but after that-”
“After that you’re going to bed,” Margarita states. Inscribed in stone. Granite. “I know I’m going to lose the signing argument, we did this in New York already, I know, okay? Look, I’ll make sure he-Chris, was it?-gets one of the pre-signed collector’s editions for free and gets home safe, and I’ll let you stay if you don’t argue.”
“Chris,” Sebastian starts, but more bookshop employees’re popping out of the woodwork to check on him, and the very strong owner nicely but firmly gets Chris on his feet and then into a chair in the back office even while he tries to simultaneously say he’s fine and also keep an eye on Sebastian, two endeavors doomed to failure by external good intentions. Another minion brings him more water; a second runs back with both Chris’s paperbacks in their rain-spotted bag and a signed collector’s set of the Captain America trilogy: gilt-edged paper, leather covers, expensively ostentatiously new.
Chris can’t bring himself to touch the leather. Gilt, and guilt: so much inconvenience, for all for them, from Sebastian to Margarita to Hayley and her bookshop employees…
He still has Sebastian’s pen. Clutched in his left hand. Not being missed, apparently. Must be more of them lying around.
He looks down at it. And he looks out through the half-shut manager’s office door, at the rows of tidy shelves and the corner of a signing-table and the glimpse of Sebastian Stan’s arm in motion: leaning forward to talk to someone, to smile at another fan, to write out a meaningful personalized message in a book that isn’t Chris’s last-minute rest-stop purchase.
He’d known from the words on every page, wielded with such love, that the writer had to be kind.
Sebastian’s laughing at whatever joke this fan’s made. The sound floats all the way back to Chris’s isolated spot in the office, bumping up against lonely filing cabinets and a desktop lamp and an incurious paperwork tray.
Sebastian’d asked him not to leave. Margarita’d offered to call him a cab. Sebastian’s recovering from a serious illness, and is a truly generous man with a good heart, and will stay to sign books for every person who’s come. For all those persons who can say the words: who’re actually capable of telling him how much this means.
Chris gets up. He’s shaky for a step or two, but he’s fine, he’s able to put one foot in front of the other, and it’s a manageable hike back to his campsite even in the dark.
He knows no one’ll notice him leaving.
He takes all the books, even the shiny new impersonal consolation prize. He can’t bear not to. He puts Sebastian’s pen in his pocket and doesn’t look back.
He makes it back along the trail and through the woods and to the welcome folds of his refuge without incident beyond a few scattered raindrops and one or two stumbles over tree-roots. He’s good at seeing in the dark, always has been, and the dark’s safer right now. The shadows hide the drops that might not be rain, when he walks into his clearing and stops for a split second and closes his eyes.
Bootless and feeling hollowed-out, scraped dry as desert bone, he ends up lying on his back staring blankly up at the blue canvas dome overhead. So much blue, he thinks; and then he has to laugh, and then he has to press a hand over his mouth to not cry. The bag with the books in it plops over onto its side, possibly out of shared misery.
He drinks more water, rehydrating. He eats some jellybeans because sugar’ll help with the crash, and flops an arm-a useless mountain man flannel-clad arm, versus Sebastian Stan’s skinny-scarf-and-trendy-boots style; God, how can he even pretend to have fantasies, he can’t be anything Sebastian’d want-across his eyes.
As he’s wallowing for just another minute or two in the glory that is his personal tragedy, two questions pop up and hit him over the head like the heaviest blunt-object cliché. He literally feels his mouth drop open, as they rattle around his skull and blithely rearrange his world.
First: why does Sebastian Stan know actual therapy-advised coping techniques?
And Sebastian does, that’s inarguable: the counting-down of breaths, the careful avoidance of any demands in touch or tone, the makeshift solid object as an anchor. Chris sticks a hand in his pocket. Sets Sebastian’s pen on the pillow, where he can regard it when he rolls his head that way. It winks back in slim space-grey and offers no information, protecting its person. Chris would do the same.
Second: why does Sebastian Stan know Chris’s name?
He flips through the memories, too fascinated and astonished to mind the embarrassment now. He’d never managed to get it out before panicking. He’s sure he didn’t. But Sebastian’d known. Had put a hand on his shoulder and sat on the bookshop floor at his side and called him by name.
That means…
What does that mean?
Chris has no clue what that means. The pen perches on his pillow, smug as only an inanimate line of ink and steel can be.
He turns both thoughts over and around and over again, examining the questions from all possible angles. The two conclusions that keep coming up-partial, unresolved, curiosity-snagging-seem incredible. Implausible, at the very least. Less than likely. Possible. Maybe.
To the second: Sebastian knows who Chris is, and…somehow…unbelievably…recognized him. Despite the beard. And the flannel. And the mud.
To the first: Sebastian knows about pain. Chris had thought as much once before, reading those books, buoyed by the depth of compassion woven through every word. Sebastian knows about drowning and a hand outflung in a last grasp at a life-preserver; about sleepless nights and the bravery of accepting help when that life-preserver’s thrown his way. Chris knows without knowing why or when or what; but he knows: Sebastian’s been knocked around by vicious waves too, somewhere in the past, and Chris’s heart aches even though there’s nothing he can do in the present.
And Sebastian knows his name.
He still doesn’t know what that means. But the night and the tent and the whole rain-drenched universe feel a little less lonely at the idea.
He’ll likely never see Sebastian again. He wishes he could. He wishes he could have one more chance. He wishes he could know whether Sebastian’s safe and well and tucked up someplace warm and full of pillows. He knows he’ll never know. He doesn’t mean anything to Sebastian Stan, of course.
And if he doesn’t, well-he’s got the memory. The kindness. The tantalizing unsolved mystery. One of those ephemeral enchanted stories, glowing like a campfire, warming him from inside for days to come.
He sits up, and picks up the third and final volume of the Captain America trilogy, and finds himself smiling at the image of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes on the cover, under the author’s name.
Word Count: 6,525 for this chapter
Rating: R, eventually
Warnings: for Chris having an anxiety attack prior to meeting Sebastian
Summary: In which Chris Evans reads a book, Sebastian Stan holds Chris’s hand, stories matter, and Martians are important.
In this chapter: Chris Evans meets Sebastian Stan.
Notes: many thanks to ilovetakahana for looking this over (I mean the whole fic), when I panicked about plot development and pacing! Title from the Barenaked Ladies song "Odds Are."
two: you can fall in love by the end of this song
The morning’s damp and sticky and grey, thick with the promise of more rain. The heavens haven’t opened up yet, though. Chris bounces out of bed with superhero-related eagerness. He trips over his sleeping bag, because his sleeping bag clearly hates excitement, but that doesn’t matter. He’s got a plan. He’s going to go buy books. He’s going to get to live in that world some more.
He throws on extra flannel layers and boots, humming “Kiss the Girl” for no reason at all. He’s happy and he’s always loved The Little Mermaid. His tent’s not judging. The world’s sunny despite the preponderance of grey. More books, more well-written wonderful books. Yes.
He leaves most of his stuff set up at the campsite-he’ll be back later-and grabs some waterproof gear, a poncho and so on, and heads off to find the trail.
Okay, maybe he runs a little. Or a lot. But: books. Books by Sebastian Stan.
The trail’s not a difficult one; he’d wanted isolation, but not someplace from which he couldn’t readily return. He thinks fleetingly about that tattoo, about Matt’s name over his ribs. Matt, and an off-roading accident, and a body, years ago; he’d not been on that particular trip, and he’ll never know whether that might’ve made a difference. He does know that he wants to check in with his mother and siblings every few days, and he wants to get out easily if someone needs him back home.
The rain meanders back in, sidling up like a wary cat and testing its welcome. Chris has never minded the wet. Pieces of the universe, and he gets to be there too, in some small way. They can share.
Mud is also a piece of the universe. He sighs, and tries to shake splashes off his jeans, and fails thoroughly. The rain scampers alongside in the trees, frivolous as a puppy.
By the time he gets to the unremarkable rest stop-not even enough to be a town, mostly a gas station and a convenience store and some odds-and-ends places for campers headed out to the wilderness-he’s damp from rain and sticky with perspiration under the flannel, but that’s just fine. The walk’s stretched his muscles and cleared his head, nothing but water and earth and sky and anticipation. His bones hum, content.
The same guy’s working the convenience-store register as before; his name-tag says Hello My Name Is Jeremy! in tidy printing, though he’s wearing it upside down. Chris bites his cheek to hide the grin, wondering whether the guy knows, and goes off to poke at the paperback rack.
Ah. There, right there. That name, in silvery lettering. Vivid pulp-fiction pop-culture paperbacks. Volumes two and three of the trilogy. Chris exhales. Touches the letters. Sebastian Stan’s name.
He brings them up to the front, plus some beef jerky and water and the best postcard he can find to send to his brother, which in this case means it’s got a picture of a beaver next to a giant log, which in turn means Scott will fall off his chair laughing because Scott has that sense of humor. My Name Is Jeremy scans this bounty with the same mellow disinterest as before, until he gets to the paperbacks, where he stops. Chris cringes. “Um, I just-I read the first one, is all, I just wanted to finish the story-”
“Dude,” Jeremy announces, whole face lighting up. “The second one’s so awesome, like, I cried, man, the part where-oh, shit, no spoilers, sorry-”
“You’ve read them?”
“Everyone’s read them, come on-!” Jeremy fishes for something that jangles, attached to his waist. Holds up a snarled bunch of keys proudly. “Got a Winter Soldier keychain. Totally gonna camp out for opening night when the first film’s out, too. Me and all my friends.”
“I think I love Bucky,” Chris says, giving in. “And Steve. Both of them. Together. Until the end-”
“-of the line, fuck yeah.” Jeremy beams at him. Fan recognizing fan. “And that author. I mean, wow.”
“Sebastian Stan,” Chris says, which is a usefully noncommittal statement and hopefully consequently encouraging. Maybe Jeremy knows information he doesn’t.
“Sebastian fucking Stan. That’s, like, a whole other story, someone should write his autobiography or somethin’, seriously. From Communist Romania to Shakespeare to New York City. And he’s so damn nice.”
“You’ve met him?” Envy. Instant and snarling. In his chest.
“Me, nah. But he leaves, like, comments on his fans’ Instagram accounts, and posts thank you messages when people give him gifts and shit, and he was giving out hugs to everybody at that one convention even when security told him not to, y’know? Just adorable.”
Chris nods, because he can’t think of anything to say. That is adorable, and Sebastian Stan’s evidently kind to fans on top of being a genius writer and devastatingly attractive, and Chris’s heart’s doing a strange tango of lurching wistfulness and want.
“Plus,” Jeremy observes, “completely hot. Ten out of ten. Would bang on a writing desk. And I’m not even gay. He’s bi, though, maybe it could happen. I’d be in. He’s single, I’m single, I’m just sayin’.”
This time Chris has nothing to say because his brain’s shorted out. Sebastian Stan. On a writing desk. Bisexual, which seems to be common fan knowledge. Single. With that smile, and those eyes, and language like skillful witchcraft at his command.
Jeremy now looks mildly shamefaced. “Um. Sorry. I was just kinda kidding. Wouldn’t happen. I do know about fantasy and reality, okay.”
“No,” Chris’s mouth says, continuing to be on autopilot, “I got that, it’s fine, we’re cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Your nametag’s upside down.”
“Huh,” Jeremy says, looking down at himself. “Guess so. It likes being that way.”
Fair enough, Chris thinks, and says so. Jeremy nods and bags up his purchases, taking time to wrap the paperbacks against the rain, and Chris is nearly out the door when he hears, “Mountain Man Stan Fan! Wait!”
“Mountain Man,” Chris grumbles, pausing in the doorway, “really?”
“The beard. The flannel. Yes, really. So you already know about the book signing, right? This afternoon? In town? By which I mean actual town, because this dump doesn’t count, yeah?”
“Book signing.”
“The one and only Sebastian Stan.”
“…what?”
“He’s doing a book tour. Because they’re putting out some special collector’s edition, all three volumes, plus there’s the news about the film, so he’s out shaking hands and reading chapters to people. And he’s going across the country, like, by train, I have no clue why, but that means he stops in, like, the most random places, so. Today. At five pm. Here-ish. Down the road. I have to work.”
“Oh fuck,” Chris says, or thinks he says. His lips move, anyway.
“There’s probably already a line outside the shop,” Jeremy suggests helpfully, “but you could totally hike over there in time for the reading, I have faith in your muscles, Mountain Man.”
“Stop that…where, again?”
“Here.” Jeremy pulls up a conversation on his smartphone, scrolls, waves the screen at Chris. “He’s not really advertising much because most of the tour stops fill up way in advance, but my friend Scarlett works at the bookshop, so she told me, and the thing is, we’re not that big a place, so he’ll probably sign stuff for everybody. She’s gonna get a collector’s edition signed for me. You should go.”
“I might.” He already knows he will. Stupid and impulsive and obsessive, half in love with a man he’s never met; but it’s not just that. It’s admiration and envy and gratitude: Sebastian Stan’s made him fall head over heels for a book again, for the art of storytelling, and Chris wants to say thank you. Anything more, any sense of connection, exists mostly in his own head; he understands that. He doesn’t know Sebastian Stan and likely never will.
But he does want to say thank you. As someone who needed those books, that hope, right now.
“It’s only a couple miles,” Jeremy nudges. “You can go now and then get back to scaring Bigfoot after.”
“Are we friends now,” Chris says, “is that what we’re doing, ’cause I was gonna offer to come tell you about it after…”
“You so are,” Jeremy agrees, “and I’ll save you extra beef jerky and stupid beaver postcards. Go.”
“Your nametag’s still upside down,” Chris fires back, and takes his books and goes while Jeremy’s laughing.
Outside, he lurks under the scant shelter of the roof’s overhang and glances left to right. Left will take him back to the campsite. To his place, encircling tent-walls and familiar lantern-gleam and the blanket of solitude around his shoulders, no pressure from strangers or literary agents or curious eyes. And the rain’s picking up tempo.
Right will, on the other hand, take him properly into town. Where there’s a bookshop and a line and a couple of ephemeral hours with Sebastian Stan, who will do a reading and sign copies and smile politely and no doubt never be able to pick Chris out of a crowd. The walk back will be dark and cold and soggy and treacherous; not a tricky path, but by the time the event’s over night’ll be encroaching. And Chris will have muddy jeans and a scribbled signature and the memory of Sebastian Stan’s voice to take home.
He looks left again, back at his undemanding private oasis in the woods.
And then he turns right, and splashes through puddles toward the main road, singing Disney tunes under his breath, opening volume two to read along the way.
The line’s indeed long. Stretches around the corner of the shop, which sits peaceably amid local sandwich shops and a shabby-tranquil post office and a ubiquitous Starbucks, proof that certain coffee-related desires can stretch into the most rural corners of New England. The bookshop’s got posters in the window, book covers and Sebastian Stan’s smiling face and promotional material for the upcoming film. Chris, intimidated by the muscular five-foot cardboard cut-out of Steve Rogers: Captain America!, shuffles meekly into a spot at the line’s tail. The girl in front of him gives him a rather sympathetic look, but also puts a bit more space between them.
Chris looks down. At his boots. His muddy boots. And flannel shirt, rained-on jeans, and convenience-store bag of books.
He tries to scrape some of the mud away on the sidewalk’s curb. The rain’s let up but not vanished, shimmering into a ghostly diamond-studded fog. This does not help.
He doesn’t have a watch, but his phone’s in his pocket and durable enough for the weather. He checks. Perfect timing. Four fifty-nine. And despite the mud and the occasional raindrop in his hair and the unnerving fact that there’s a whole bookshop’s worth of people here for the exact same reason-
His heart skips a beat. Sebastian Stan. Now.
And the doors open. Movement at the front of the line.
Chris ventures in with the rest of the adoring horde. They just barely fit. Chairs up against the walls, chairs in aisles. Probably breaking fire code. Probably nobody cares. The shelves of science-fiction and biographies and histories and romance hold papery breath and lean in too. Chris finds a seat at the edge of one row, shoulder to shoulder with some ironic Jonathan Swift, and reminds himself to exhale.
He also eyes his feet. Nope, not magically-disappearing mud. Damn.
Noise at the front, which is in fact the back, of the shop. Laughter. A door swinging wide to admit the chatter of voices and a pool of damp black streetgleam. The scent of coffee. Chris’s palms’re sweaty.
Sebastian Stan takes a sip from the Starbucks cup in his hand, turns toward the throng, smiles. He’s wearing a grey scarf and a ridiculously fashionable newsboy cap and clinging jeans. He’s wearing a grin that unfurls like sunshine and rain: like tropical showers, bright and vibrant and sensual and skin-shivering, goosebumps under shooting stars.
He’s taller than Chris might’ve guessed from the author bio, though the height’s mostly legs, like a baby egret peeking out of its nest at the big wide world. He looks a little older-well, of course, Chris mocks his own foolishness; Sebastian’d have to be superhuman himself to’ve not aged since the first novel-and a little thinner, puppyish softness replaced by lean muscle; he’s beautiful either way, the kind of unthinking loveliness that can make a room full of people catch simultaneous breaths, and he’s…
…tired, Chris thinks, and then in the next second isn’t sure why. Something around the eyes. In the way he’s leaning a hip against the table, terribly casual. In the unremarked fleeting blink of eyelashes as he sips his brand-name caffeine, under the avid shine of overhead lights.
But that tiredness-if it is tiredness, if Chris’s anxious brain isn’t simply projecting-vanishes in the next heartbeat, the instant a pretty blonde woman comes up and touches Sebastian’s shoulder. She says something too quiet to hear, intimate, head bent; Sebastian turns the smile up and turns it on her, magically dazzling and genuine at once. It’s real affection, true as gold; Chris would bet his life on that, and his poor overworked heart whimpers sadly, having not yet learned that sappy romantic bookshop meet-ups don’t come true. But it’s also a performance, in the way that actors on a stage perform: heart and soul thrown into a play.
The petite pretty blonde sighs. Shakes her head at her writer, scolding and familiar. Sebastian laughs softly, salutes her with the coffee-cup, shakes his head right back and says something inaudible. They look happy, Chris decides, even if they’re currently mildly disagreeing.
And then Sebastian stops leaning on the table and gets upright and turns toward the assembled fans. The blonde girl vanishes with fairylike quickness. And Chris realizes that Sebastian’s performance earlier was a dress rehearsal: this is the real thing, stops pulled out, utter delight on display in eyes and mouth and sudden energy. The room cheers. Sound reverberates off the shelves. Chris can’t cheer, because he’s trapped in the airless amber shock of dreams come to life.
“You guys,” Sebastian declares, standing in front of his signing table in skinny jeans and striped sweater and carelessly looped scarf and well-concealed weary courage, “are the fucking best fans anyone could ask for, coming out in the rain like this, thank you so much!” and the cheers redouble.
Sebastian’s voice is as extraordinary as the rest of him. Woodsmoke and velvet. New York layered over mountainous wilder country, cities of vampires and princes and revolutions. Hints of mystical lands in curling r’s and l’s and liquid vowels, appearing and disappearing like stray ripples in a pond. Chris wants to write him into a story, an epic, a saga. Heroic. Full of enchanted warriors and gods and goddesses falling in love.
Sebastian also apparently happily swears in front of fans. Chris, as an aficionado of four-letter words, admires this trait.
“Right,” Sebastian goes on, circling around his table. It’s an old table, likely dragged over from the café next door: oaken and scuffed and beaten by time, thrown in here for a hastily-arranged encounter with the emperor of bestseller lists. Sebastian runs a hand over it absentmindedly, and the wood perks up like it’s new-hewn again, resolved to be the best table it can possibly be.
“I’m going to actually sit down,” Sebastian says, doing just that, “sorry, I’m feeling a little jetlagged-can I say jetlagged? I wasn’t even on a plane, I came in on the train, um, fuck, sorry, what was I trying to say?” The adorably confused face he makes could launch a thousand ships, all of them carrying warm blankets and hot beverages and therapeutic supplies. Wars’d be fought over who got to cuddle him. Chris can see it.
He shoves these bizarre speculations down and stacks mental furniture atop them. Sebastian’s talking. “-and I got a little bit sick last week-I’m fine, it’s okay, don’t worry-but my manager thinks that getting off my feet’s important, so we’ve got a microphone and a table and-well, she’s over there, and she’s fantastic, Margarita, say hi!”
The blonde girl, sitting neatly atop one of the sales desks with demurely crossed legs, rolls her eyes. Waves. Complains, “As your manager I object to you being out of bed and having caffeine and generally ignoring my very good advice,” but she’s smiling when she says it.
Manager. Chris’s heart relearns how to swing on trapezes. Sebastian is single, or so My Name Is Jeremy’d said.
Another very pertinent tidbit of information nags at his emotions. He’d been right after all. Sebastian’s tired and ill, and that momentary leaning on a bookshop table hadn’t been casual in the least. Chris’s writer’s eye for incongruities had caught that much, and God he wishes he’d been wrong. Sebastian, he thinks, as if the beautiful jewel-eyed man with the treasure-box smile can hear him: Sebastian, please be safe.
Sebastian offers to read whatever chapter the crowd desires-“I love all my words, you can’t pick something I don’t like!”-and by overwhelming demand ends up with a certain scene from the middle volume of the trilogy. Chris knows precisely which one, and he’s not surprised the fans’ve voted for it. So many emotions, so much passion and pain and love. Captain America and the Winter Soldier on a helicarrier, the fate of the world at stake. A beloved. A mission. Broken cheekbones and bullets through the gut and words torn from pulverized hearts: finish it, ’cause I’m with you-
Chris had wept, then. Standing frozen under feather-curl grey mists, surrounded by the damp green scents of soggy trees and wet asphalt, knowing he had ten minutes to get to the bookshop for the night’s event, he’d wept.
His eyes get prickly now, as Sebastian reads. No shame. Half the audience’s crying or mouthing the scene along with the author, or both at once. He’s glad he’d at least managed to get through volume two: he’s not getting this kick to the heart for the very first time, so it’s marginally easier to weather, and also he’s caught up as far as plot, so far.
Marginally easier to weather. Sebastian’s-not merely a good reader. Sebastian’s brilliant.
Sebastian reads like romance and tragedy, like the entirety of human existence, hearts and souls and anguish and glory, has been distilled down into these simple lines on a page. The bookshop walls fall away in the visceral crack of bone, of voice, of metal, of desperate unadulterated love. And the scene comes alive.
Sebastian does love his characters. Emblazoned across every word, every inflection.
Sebastian finishes on a down-beat, on a simple line, an image: the glint of water and sunshine on metal, a hand reaching beneath a surface, finding hope.
The audience remains voiceless for a heartbeat or two: suspended.
And then they sag a little and breathe out, and cry or sniffle or hug a neighbor; and the murky green waters of the Potomac shiver back into book-lined walls and uncomfortable wooden chairs, and Sebastian Stan’s fingers’re lying still and affectionate across the closed cover of the story.
Sebastian says to the crowd, or maybe only to the book, or to both: “Thank you.” He’s smiling very faintly, almost to himself; but there’s that tiredness again, a kind of transcendent worn-thin joy after elation, falling to the rougher rocks of earth. He even coughs once, muffling it in his sleeve; his face is pale. His unobtrusively competent pretty manager’s right beside him with a covered cup of what Chris hopes is herbal tea.
The applause swells once everyone comes back down and remembers how. The noise is long, and sincere, and full of adoration. Chris nearly forgets to join in. He’s watching Sebastian’s eyes close in pleasure at the kindness of that hot beverage as it slides down his throat. Sebastian looks up, after, and glances out at the hero-worshipping crowd right as Chris belatedly slams palms together too loudly; winter-ocean eyes flick his direction, then blink as if surprised or unsure, but Chris is staring and being creepy, of course Sebastian’s unsure-
He ducks his head, flush blooming along the back of his neck. When he looks up again, Sebastian’s talking to, best guess, the bookshop owner, or at least the woman who seems to be directing the event. She may or may not be the eponymous Hayley of Hayley’s Book Nest, but she’s got lots of people doing exactly what she says, and at the moment this involves getting Sebastian set up for the signing line. Sebastian smiles and settles in behind the table, assorted pens at the ready; volunteer assistants come around and shoo everyone out of chairs and into some semblance of a line, crooked and fat and anticipatory. Chris clutches his bag of paperbacks. Loses track of blue eyes.
He ends up about halfway through the line, next to a rack of romantically-inclined novels with flagrantly lustful covers. They have titles about seduction and sin and dark desires. Chris feels his face get hotter. He’s not opposed, of course-he’s got fantasies like anyone else, he’s looked some things up, he’s got a diabolical younger brother who once bought him a year’s subscription to a sex-toy-of-the-month club. It’s just that the line’s kind of slow, nowhere else to politely look, and the handcuffs on that cover’re leering at him.
The line to meet Sebastian Stan. Handcuffs. Dark desires. Sebastian Stan’s expressive wrists and shining eyes. Chris slams the lid on that daydream before it can do more than hint at materialization. Now is not the time. Good God, Chris.
Maybe later. In his tent. Which won’t tell anyone.
And now he’s got a different worry. The line’s moving a bit faster, Sebastian getting into a rhythm up at the front, the bookshop volunteers sorting out an efficient system of moving bodies along. Chris hopes they’ve got ice for his signing hand and a comfortable chair; he’s been on the other end of this industrial system, though never-he eyes the distant tail of admirers-for quite so many. He’d never been great at it: too loud, over-eager, fumbling through expressions of honest gratitude to his readers. He’s got immeasurable sympathy for those readers, always has: he knows the agonizing struggle to say something clever, significant-something at all, when looked at with expectation-
Oh fuck.
He’s going to have to say something to Sebastian Stan.
This horrified realization keeps him from noticing as the line moves. He moves with it, mechanically. It’s not that long a line; Jeremy’d been right about the small town and lack of advertising and semi-secret events. Won’t be much more time to prepare.
Some fans’ve brought gifts. Art of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Hand-made bracelets. A tiny bag of blueberry-vanilla ground coffee. Chris looks at his own empty hands. He could’ve made a sketch. He knows how to draw, or he thinks he does, on good days. He hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought.
He knows what he wants to say. Thank you. You made me smile and cry and feel; you made me remember how much I love the art of storytelling and the sheer acrobatic tapdance fun of what we do; you gave me a story when I needed that, and I know I’m not a real fan, I’m not even done reading the books, I just wanted to say…
How can he possibly say all of that? How can he say anything? He can’t, he’ll never have the words for what this has meant, those cool delighted eyes’ll look at him with pity and compassion and Chris’s hands’re getting cold and his skin feels clammy-
“Only one item,” chirps the closest perky volunteer, breaking into his panic, “Sebastian’s kind of not feeling well, so we’re just doing one per guest, plus one of the collected special editions if you bought one today, okay?”
Chris croaks, “…what?”
“One item,” she repeats. “You’ll want to get it out, you’re almost up, and if you could write down the name, if you want it personalized, that’d be great?”
Chris can’t breathe.
Chris can’t breathe and the walls’re looming and his heart’s battering itself to pieces against his ribs and people are looking now, looking and judging, while he can’t even get words out and he can’t be a writer and Sebastian Stan doesn’t need his thanks and he’s wobbling on his feet because, hey, the floor’s gone uneven, helpful of it, and there’re dazzling sparkles joining the party in his vision-
“Chris,” a voice interjects between the sparkles. An extremely recognizable voice. Chris is in love with that voice, some sort of hopeless impossible daydream love, and it’d be wonderful if he could answer the voice or get his feet to move and run away in shame.
A hand takes his sweaty plastic book-bag away. Another hand, long-fingered and sure and concerned, catches his elbow, eases him down to sit on the floor next to the signing table. The closest table-leg’s oaken and solid and unperturbed by the ravages of time. Chris tries to focus on that, but the scratches skid wildly before his eyes. His chest hurts. Too tight.
“Chris,” Sebastian says again. One hand on Chris’s left shoulder. An anchor: no demands, only a simple point of contact. “Can you hear me?”
Yes, Chris thinks, and tries to nod. The panic doesn’t want to let him.
“All right. Good. You’re here, I’m here, we’re fine. I want you to do something, if you can.” Sebastian’s voice shows no hint of the disgust or disgruntlement he must be feeling. As if fans pass out at his feet every day of the week. Maybe they do. Maybe this is normal. Chris hates himself but clings to the calm of that voice anyway, shamelessly.
“I want you,” Sebastian says, “to breathe with me, okay? Along with me, I’ll be right here with you, da?” That calm fractures briefly at the end. Language-slips. Worry sneaking out, revealed. Chris squeezes both eyes shut, risks opening them. The floor’s cold underneath his ass. Sebastian’s a kitten-pile of warmth and long legs beside him.
“Breathe in,” Sebastian tells him, “with me.” He holds out his other hand; Chris grabs it. Too tightly, but Sebastian doesn’t flinch. “Ready? In. Out. Good. One more. And one more, and this time we’re going to hold it, all right? I’ll count.” He waits. Chris nods again. Sebastian says, “In,” and then starts counting backwards, counting down. Ten. Nine. Eight. Down to one. Evenly paced, diminishing numbers, forward progress. Again.
The thumping of Chris’s heart slows. Grey twinkles backing off around his vision. He finds he’s counting along with Sebastian in his head.
“Good.” Sebastian’s eyes, now that Chris can focus better, are very close, and very concerned, and very sympathetic. No other emotions present. Up close the blue’s even more startling: some kind of rare elusive flower-shade, shimmering between turquoise and water-topaz and the sky before rain, like nothing Chris’s ever seen. He holds onto that shade. A lifeline.
They breathe together, himself and Sebastian Stan. Sitting on a bookshop floor, half under a table, in a tiny town in the middle of New England forests.
One of the myriad assistants must’ve brought a bottle of water; Chris doesn’t recall that, but Sebastian holds it up, opens it, tilts it his way: yes, no, not yet? Chris opens his mouth and ends up giving a kind of helpless head-wobble in reply.
“Here.” Sebastian takes Chris’s other hand. Presses an object into it. “Hold this for me. Don’t think about anything else, for a minute. Just sit here with me, and-think about being here, da? About this pen. My hand. Touch. Please.” His voice shivers again: tremors along normally-sweet piano keys. Chris doesn’t want to hear earthquakes in that voice.
He looks at the object Sebastian’s handed him, as if acceptance’ll be some magically-comprehended token of appreciation. It is indeed a pen: one of Sebastian’s signing-pens, sleek and slim and silver, vaguely futuristic in a nineteen-fifties spaceship way. Like it might leap from his palm into the stars. Starting a voyage.
It’s heavy, and steel-silk to the touch, and cleanly defined. It’s an object. He can feel the weight. Can name the color and move his fingers and know how it fits in his hand.
It’s real. He’s here.
Suddenly exhausted everywhere-coming back to ground after an anxiety attack’ll do that, he’s found-and aware enough to be mortified, he shuts his eyes. Closes his hand around the pen. Tips his head against the table-leg, with the resultant thunk being more or less exactly how he feels.
Sebastian Stan’s on the floor with him, talking him through an anxiety attack. Sebastian, who’s not well himself, who doesn’t need this-
Without moving, he confesses, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Sebastian inches closer. Chris can feel him, millimeters away. Chris’s entire body can feel him. “I’ve got the water if you’d like it now. Or not. No hurry.”
Chris gives up on any tattered shreds of dignity and opens his eyes. “Yeah, okay…”
Sebastian’s fingers are chilly and considerate when they brush his, handing the bottle over. “Not a bad view, down here. I believe that’s Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, on that bottom shelf.”
“Is it?” Why not. Surreal conversations, stories involving miniaturized people, full-body anguish, the discomfort of drying sweat, the distressed susurrations of the crowd above. “You like Asimov?”
“I do. I like most classic science fiction.” Sebastian tips that head, grins at him. The fashionable newsboy cap’s gone, doubtless lost in the dive to Chris’s side, and his scarf’s askew. He’s smiling like there’s no place he’d rather be. “I always wanted to be an astronaut. Other planets, far-off places, worlds we can’t even begin to imagine. Any better?”
“Yeah, I-” The answer’s a reflex, the way he answers when well-meaning acquaintances try to help; and then it’s not a reflex, because, he realizes, it’s true. “Yeah. That-thank you. I mean. Thank you.”
Sebastian’s smile grows even more, though he ducks his head to hide it: a surprisingly shy gesture from the man who’d so competently brought Chris out from the whitewater rapids.
“Wait,” Chris says this time. “You-she said you weren’t feeling-I mean, shit, are you-”
At this narratively abysmal moment Sebastian’s sylphlike manager turns up from no visible place and rests a proprietary hand on her charge’s shoulder. “Sebastian-”
“I’m fine,” Sebastian says to her, and then says it again to Chris. “I’m only-I sort of had pneumonia, a little bit, last week, and-”
“You can’t have pneumonia a little bit!” Chris flusters, horrified all over again, though for a brand-new reason.
“You woke me up trying to get the cap off the bottle of painkillers because you had a headache so bad you couldn’t open it, this morning,” Margarita says.
“In my defense, that cap was literally broken,” Sebastian says, “and if anyone hears you and assumes, again, that I’m sleeping with my manager, when we’re only sharing a hotel room for expenses-”
“Headache?” Chris asks.
“I’m just tired!”
Chris finds himself trading a glance with Margarita, somehow. Himself and Sebastian’s manager: apparently the two-thirds of the under-the-signing-table party with any sense. Which in fact makes zero sense, but nothing much in his life does right now.
“Sebastian,” Margarita says-practically an order this time, and Chris kind of wants to snap back at her tone on Sebastian’s behalf, but she’s also right-“get up off the floor, it’s filthy, we’ll get you back to the hotel and you can rest, your fan is fine, see, he’s telling you to go-”
“Wait-” Sebastian looks conflicted. “Chris-don’t leave? Please? I have a few more people to sign for, but after that-”
“After that you’re going to bed,” Margarita states. Inscribed in stone. Granite. “I know I’m going to lose the signing argument, we did this in New York already, I know, okay? Look, I’ll make sure he-Chris, was it?-gets one of the pre-signed collector’s editions for free and gets home safe, and I’ll let you stay if you don’t argue.”
“Chris,” Sebastian starts, but more bookshop employees’re popping out of the woodwork to check on him, and the very strong owner nicely but firmly gets Chris on his feet and then into a chair in the back office even while he tries to simultaneously say he’s fine and also keep an eye on Sebastian, two endeavors doomed to failure by external good intentions. Another minion brings him more water; a second runs back with both Chris’s paperbacks in their rain-spotted bag and a signed collector’s set of the Captain America trilogy: gilt-edged paper, leather covers, expensively ostentatiously new.
Chris can’t bring himself to touch the leather. Gilt, and guilt: so much inconvenience, for all for them, from Sebastian to Margarita to Hayley and her bookshop employees…
He still has Sebastian’s pen. Clutched in his left hand. Not being missed, apparently. Must be more of them lying around.
He looks down at it. And he looks out through the half-shut manager’s office door, at the rows of tidy shelves and the corner of a signing-table and the glimpse of Sebastian Stan’s arm in motion: leaning forward to talk to someone, to smile at another fan, to write out a meaningful personalized message in a book that isn’t Chris’s last-minute rest-stop purchase.
He’d known from the words on every page, wielded with such love, that the writer had to be kind.
Sebastian’s laughing at whatever joke this fan’s made. The sound floats all the way back to Chris’s isolated spot in the office, bumping up against lonely filing cabinets and a desktop lamp and an incurious paperwork tray.
Sebastian’d asked him not to leave. Margarita’d offered to call him a cab. Sebastian’s recovering from a serious illness, and is a truly generous man with a good heart, and will stay to sign books for every person who’s come. For all those persons who can say the words: who’re actually capable of telling him how much this means.
Chris gets up. He’s shaky for a step or two, but he’s fine, he’s able to put one foot in front of the other, and it’s a manageable hike back to his campsite even in the dark.
He knows no one’ll notice him leaving.
He takes all the books, even the shiny new impersonal consolation prize. He can’t bear not to. He puts Sebastian’s pen in his pocket and doesn’t look back.
He makes it back along the trail and through the woods and to the welcome folds of his refuge without incident beyond a few scattered raindrops and one or two stumbles over tree-roots. He’s good at seeing in the dark, always has been, and the dark’s safer right now. The shadows hide the drops that might not be rain, when he walks into his clearing and stops for a split second and closes his eyes.
Bootless and feeling hollowed-out, scraped dry as desert bone, he ends up lying on his back staring blankly up at the blue canvas dome overhead. So much blue, he thinks; and then he has to laugh, and then he has to press a hand over his mouth to not cry. The bag with the books in it plops over onto its side, possibly out of shared misery.
He drinks more water, rehydrating. He eats some jellybeans because sugar’ll help with the crash, and flops an arm-a useless mountain man flannel-clad arm, versus Sebastian Stan’s skinny-scarf-and-trendy-boots style; God, how can he even pretend to have fantasies, he can’t be anything Sebastian’d want-across his eyes.
As he’s wallowing for just another minute or two in the glory that is his personal tragedy, two questions pop up and hit him over the head like the heaviest blunt-object cliché. He literally feels his mouth drop open, as they rattle around his skull and blithely rearrange his world.
First: why does Sebastian Stan know actual therapy-advised coping techniques?
And Sebastian does, that’s inarguable: the counting-down of breaths, the careful avoidance of any demands in touch or tone, the makeshift solid object as an anchor. Chris sticks a hand in his pocket. Sets Sebastian’s pen on the pillow, where he can regard it when he rolls his head that way. It winks back in slim space-grey and offers no information, protecting its person. Chris would do the same.
Second: why does Sebastian Stan know Chris’s name?
He flips through the memories, too fascinated and astonished to mind the embarrassment now. He’d never managed to get it out before panicking. He’s sure he didn’t. But Sebastian’d known. Had put a hand on his shoulder and sat on the bookshop floor at his side and called him by name.
That means…
What does that mean?
Chris has no clue what that means. The pen perches on his pillow, smug as only an inanimate line of ink and steel can be.
He turns both thoughts over and around and over again, examining the questions from all possible angles. The two conclusions that keep coming up-partial, unresolved, curiosity-snagging-seem incredible. Implausible, at the very least. Less than likely. Possible. Maybe.
To the second: Sebastian knows who Chris is, and…somehow…unbelievably…recognized him. Despite the beard. And the flannel. And the mud.
To the first: Sebastian knows about pain. Chris had thought as much once before, reading those books, buoyed by the depth of compassion woven through every word. Sebastian knows about drowning and a hand outflung in a last grasp at a life-preserver; about sleepless nights and the bravery of accepting help when that life-preserver’s thrown his way. Chris knows without knowing why or when or what; but he knows: Sebastian’s been knocked around by vicious waves too, somewhere in the past, and Chris’s heart aches even though there’s nothing he can do in the present.
And Sebastian knows his name.
He still doesn’t know what that means. But the night and the tent and the whole rain-drenched universe feel a little less lonely at the idea.
He’ll likely never see Sebastian again. He wishes he could. He wishes he could have one more chance. He wishes he could know whether Sebastian’s safe and well and tucked up someplace warm and full of pillows. He knows he’ll never know. He doesn’t mean anything to Sebastian Stan, of course.
And if he doesn’t, well-he’s got the memory. The kindness. The tantalizing unsolved mystery. One of those ephemeral enchanted stories, glowing like a campfire, warming him from inside for days to come.
He sits up, and picks up the third and final volume of the Captain America trilogy, and finds himself smiling at the image of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes on the cover, under the author’s name.