fic: the LA chapter of the ex-boyfriends of zachary quinto club
The LA Chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club (9022 words) by 
screamlet
Fandom: Star Trek RPF, Actor RPF
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Characters: Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Cho, Elizabeth Banks, Jonathan Groff
Summary: The founding of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club comes at a strange moment for all of them in that they’re between jobs, really financially comfortable, a little desperate for friendly companionship, and finally have the time to check out all those restaurants they had heard about in LA. Mostly, though, they thought Zach was kind of an asshole.
Notes: Set in late March/early April of 2011 and a few months on.
Notes 2: Auuuugh waldorph where would I be without you NOWHERE THAT'S WHERE.
"So!" Elizabeth says brightly.
Chris already spends two hours a day at the gym. Clearly, if this is happening, he should up the ante.
"So," Jesse agrees.
Six hours, maybe. That’s... healthy. He could finally start that lower body and leg training routine he’d been meaning to start for the past year or so. With sequel filming so (relatively) close, he would ask J.J. before making big changes to his appearance, but J.J. is still stringing them along so fuck it. Time to triple his time at the gym and get some real legs like a real boy.
Man, J.J. would throw a fit -- he’d wanted everyone in Starfleet to fit into Zach’s size 0.000007 pants, but Chris still had to look good shirtless and be able to hoist himself up over shit all the fucking time. And J.J. just liked him more when he was bulky up top.
In general, J.J. has a lot of feelings.
"Mmhmm," Jesse's boyfriend adds.
"God, what is this," Chris moans, because he’s still in a Chili’s with his co-star, and Zach’s singing-dancing-gaying ex-boyfriend, and said ex’s current boyfriend, who looks a little too much like Zach. He's a big, tan Zach who had smiled with all his teeth at least 19 times since Elizabeth had led Chris inside and shrieked with glee at finding Jesse and the boyfriend there, just hanging out like they did, apparently.
"Looks like the inaugural meeting of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club," Elizabeth notes. "With a couple of honorary members."
"And a dozen bleached and tanned gym rat fucks not in attendance," Jesse says, and he quickly turns to his boyfriend to add, "Don't worry, I was tested. A lot."
"Wow," Chris says as he stares a little.
Jesse turns back and snaps, "What?"
"Nope, nothing, nothing at all," Chris replies. He sits up and holds his hand in the air, hoping to summon a waiter and a drink, or a homicidal stalker who’s thoughtfully appeared in order to end the awkwardness now.
*
A pitcher and a half of margaritas and the trade of Jesse's boyfriend for John Cho later, they were all best friends.
Well... Chris licks the salt off his rim and thinks about the last time he had called someone his best friend. Like, to their face. He refers to absent Zach as “his best friend,” but it has to have been years since he’s gone out and formally/drunkenly I love you, man’ed his way into a best friendship.
"So, wait, are you all -- not working right now?" Jesse asks as he swats John's hand away and grabs the last chip in the basket.
"That's why we're here," Elizabeth replies as she grabs Chris's forearm. "Our movie just finished and we thought we'd come here and get wasted before the wrap party, then say we were sick and get out of the wrap party."
"That's pretty awful, even for you," Jesse notes.
"I just wanna go home and read," Chris says as he mouths at his straw.
"Jesus, you're a mess," John says as Chris sucks his glass dry. He shakes his head and says to Jesse, "I'm auditioning for stuff. You? How’s the show going?"
"It's almost done for the season," he explains. "Then I'm going to New York for a while. "
"Wait a second," Chris interrupts. He looks to John and asks, "Why are you here?"
"You texted me," John says. "Seriously, how many margaritas is this?"
"I had beers, too," Chris says defensively. "Like, a lot."
Chris thinks he sees Elizabeth hold up one finger behind his back, so he holds up his middle finger in return. John laughs and she rolls her eyes as she waves down their waiter again for more chips and more booze.
"But why are you here?" Chris asks. "This is the inaugural meeting of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club."
"LA chapter," Jesse clarifies.
John snorts hard enough to slam his knee into the table and then recoils back into his chair hard enough to tip over in his chair -- almost. Chris holds onto him as John wheezes, "Stop, I can't -- oh my God, what?"
"It's true," Elizabeth says. "I'm an honorary member 'cause I've had to hear about the butthurt from at least three fronts now. Three, Cho. I don't get what these homos see in Zach."
Chris puts his elbows up on the table and looks around at everyone -- do they know what he’s thinking? Does he know what he’s thinking? Shit, he’s drunk. Point is -- Zach makes him gay now? Everyone has slept with Zach or been totally smitten with him. Using that as a marker of sexuality is like writing YES into the SEX? box on a medical form. It’s just a given that everyone’s bad parts are going to tingle when Zach is around.
Another bowl of chips arrives and Chris shoves a handful into his mouth to keep himself from saying all that.
"I totally get it, guys," John assures them. "Zach and I -- well. I think we had a moment in Berlin on the press tour."
"You're shitting me," Chris laughs as he leans back in his chair, ignoring the couple of crumbs that fall out of his mouth and onto his shirt. He’s lucky he’s hot or this would be gross. "Whatever, John, we were totally fucking then and he --"
"Well, maybe he wanted to make sure that you were genuinely into him and it wasn't his magic powers of conversion or something," John shrugs. "But it was that night you were trying to clean up Karl after Zoe did those body shots off him, and Zach and I were just outside my room."
"Cho, if you fucked my boyfriend --"
Wait, Chris thinks, did he just think of Zach as his boyfriend?
"What, you'll go back in time and chop off my dick?" John asks. "Please, like my wife wouldn't have beat you to it." John takes a drink as he gives Chris the side eye and continues. "No, man, it was like -- he was doing that thing where he -- kind of agrees with everything you say, but says it in a low voice and doesn't stop staring at your mouth?" John considers the memory for a moment and adds, "Yeah, I think I would have done him. You know, if it wasn't for you shrieking about Karl being eaten to death by ants behind a door just five feet away."
"Shots are sticky," Elizabeth agrees. "Ew."
"No, it's more Chris's voice -- it's kind of grating when he's like that," John says.
"Like what?" Chris asks.
"Like that," everyone replies.
"I need a bathroom," Chris says a little sadly. He gets up and tries not to look too drunk as he avoids stumbling into the restroom nearby.
(Once he's gone, eyebrows are raised at John -- at least, John thinks Jesse is raising his eyebrows, but who can tell? -- and the question remains.
"No, I didn't fuck him," John replies. "But I did think about it! And I did have to hear him and Chris through our shared wall the next morning."
"That sounds like junior membership material right there," Jesse laughs dryly.
"It's cool," John says with a little wave. "I already have a full membership to the Matt Bomer Took My Gay Virginity at an Embarrassing Age Club, so I'm --"
Elizabeth spits her mouthful of drink back into her glass and Jesse's eyes glaze over a little as he says, "I think I'd trade my SAG card for that.")
*
The founding of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club comes at a strange moment for all of them in that they’re between jobs, really financially comfortable, a little desperate for friendly companionship, and finally have the time to check out all those restaurants they had heard about in LA.
Mostly, though, they thought Zach was kind of an asshole. Or ridiculous. The consensus was pretty evenly split with Jesse and Elizabeth on the side of Asshole, and Chris and John on the Ridiculous side -- and was that surprising in the slightest?
"It's like," Jesse says at their next meet-up, "My boyfriend now is so amazing that I'm looking back on Zach and I don't know what I was thinking."
"Uh, you wanted to get laid?" Chris asks, and then he starts ticking thoughts off on his fingers. "And he was hot, and you were both kind of bored, and you were kind of lazy so you didn't want to go out and find someone else, and it was just convenient because he’s right there."
Listing it like that, though, Chris reflects, doesn’t capture the want, and going out of his way to make all that possible.
"Also, you shared a trailer," John adds. "With a couch that I'm hoping was burned as part of the wrap party ritual."
"Anton tried, but he's so bad at lighters, I don't know how he chain smokes," Chris laughs. He looks around the table at Elizabeth and Jesse and clears his throat a little. "But yeah, Zach. Asshole." He picks up his beer and repeats the word, "Asshole," but even he can hear that his heart isn't quite in it.
"And you still have to work with him," Elizabeth says sympathetically. "Which should be so much fun."
"Should be something," Chris agrees a little sullenly. He takes a second to think back to the last time he was genuinely upset at Zach and finds he doesn’t have to think very hard. "You know he just left LA last year? I called him to do something and he just said, sorry man, I can't, I'm going to New York tomorrow. Indefinitely. Who does that?"
"He's either completely clueless or worse, he doesn't care," Jesse replies.
"He's a little daft," John notes, and Chris appreciates how he’s clawing desperately to stay Cool John Cho and Zach’s friend. "Wouldn't say he's… okay, clueless is good, unless you have four legs and fur and then he's totally in tune with your every need."
"You have the least complaints about Zach," Jesse says happily to Chris, "So I guess you were his bitch!"
Chris laughs and clinks his beer against Jesse's glass, since the alternative is punching him in his bleached and capped Brawny man smile, and it's a little early in the day for that.
*
It's interesting, Chris thinks, the whole making new friends thing.
All right, John was already a friend, and he's known Elizabeth for years from one thing and the other, so it's just Jesse he has to win over. It's just Jesse who has to win him over, and as Chris glances at Jesse across their high top table next to a bar, he honestly isn't sure how that's going to happen.
"So, Chris," Jesse says to shake Chris out of his introspection. "Did you think Zach was a snorer when you met him? I so didn't, and then -- shit. I almost got some of those Bose noise-canceling things for when I slept over at his place in the city."
"It's not that bad," Chris laughs. "I've definitely heard way louder. Shaking the house snores. Why didn't you make me yell as hard as you snore kind of bad. Zach's like a kitten in comparison"
"I'm spoiled now," Jesse sighs. "Sometimes I think my boyfriend's dead, he's so quiet when he sleeps."
"Hon, that's creepy," Elizabeth says.
"Tell me about it!"
"My wife's the same way," John replies, "And then she says I'm creepy when I watch her at night to make sure she's still alive. Give me a sign, woman, or I'll resort to drastic measures like… poking."
"I hate that word," Jesse muses. "A lot. I think Facebook legitimized its awfulness. Not legitimized, but it let everyone know what was wrong with the word to begin with. Just man up and demand your middle of the night sex, you know?" He looks to Chris and says, "You can back me up on this -- Zach. Always up for it at night, right?"
Chris gulps from his beer and ignores the laughs around him as he refuses to answer -- frankly, he's glad they're laughing so he doesn't have to glare Jesse down. It's not a possessive thing as much as it's a personal thing -- he genuinely, really, truly at the bottom of that thing people might call a soul, doesn't want to talk about his fucking people with non-involved parties.
It's a revelation that he didn't think he needed to have, and one that makes it perfectly clear he's fallen in with the wrongest combination of people ever imagined. If only he was better at lying -- he's gotten better at being an glib, grinning idiot for interviews, but this is the big leagues and he has to turn off his distaste if he's going to fit in.
"I mean," Jesse continues, "Guys usually are, right, Chris? Into the random middle-of-the-night sex?"
"Uh," Chris begins as he tries to index the guys he’s fucked enough times to remember what they sound like when they sleep and whether they liked to wake up in the middle of the night for some sex (surprise, it’s not enough for a legitimate study or even for an interesting conclusion.) "Depends on the guy?"
"Really? I guess I've only gone after nightfiends or something," Jesse laughs.
Chris shrugs and then he notices that everyone goes quiet.
"You also sleep really soundly," John comments after a few moments.
"Not gonna ask how you know that, I'll just accept that you do," Chris replies.
"Hey," Jesse begins, and he puts a hand gently on Elizabeth's arm. "We haven't talked about Jonathan."
"OH MY GOD," she says loudly as she slams her hands on the table. "I will murder Zach if he hurts our baby."
"Do you mean the guy he was seeing?" Chris asks. "Because I think he ended that a while ago."
"What?" Elizabeth and Jesse ask simultaneously.
"I don't know," Chris replies. "I just asked him if he was seeing someone and he said he had broken things off with some guy."
"Why'd you ask that?" John asks only Chris.
"I don't know," Chris says a little defensively. "It's a thing you ask your friends when --"
There's a collective "oh, honey," around the table, and they disperse a little after that -- Chris heads to a bar with some of his gym buddies and everyone else to their respective spouses, and Chris tries not to think about the afternoon too much.
*
"Chris, we think you need a Zachtervention," Elizabeth says at their next lunch date.
Chris raises his eyebrows and looks around the table at Jesse's pitying expression and… John drinking a lemonade and generally not giving a fuck.
John seems to notice that he's being watched, though, and says around his straw, "Yeah, you need an intervention." He puts his glass down and says, "Let's do this! I'm pumped. I always carry my list of Chris-related grievances on me."
Chris laughs and turns back to Elizabeth, who's raising her eyebrows and waves her hands to banish their skepticism.
"Just some basic questions anyone who's over someone should be able to answer!" she says. "Like, is he still a contact in your phone?"
"I have a smartphone," Chris replies. "I don't really delete people off it. I still have my ex-girlfriend on there -- the one I was with for four years? And haven’t been with in two years?"
"That's what makes it extra cathartic!" Jesse says. "If you delete them off your phone, everything goes with it -- Facebook link, Twitter link, their e-mail address, home address, phone number -- they literally don't exist anymore."
"Well, yes and no," Chris replies. "She kind of grew up in my neighborhood -- her parents know my parents -- she's a friend of mine --"
"You're being so difficult," Elizabeth sighs. "What's the last text you sent Zach?"
Chris takes out his BlackBerry and pulls up the thread with Zach, and can't help but laugh. "Um, he's coming back to LA and I was telling him everything that's changed in our neighborhood, like his favorite pimp has moved from --"
"What the fuck," John laughs.
"It's a long story," Chris says to Elizabeth and Jesse. "This guy we used to see all the time when we went running --" He can see that they don't actually care, and frankly neither does John, so he stops talking and shrugs, and puts his phone away. "Yeah, Zach and I text each other stupid shit sometimes, it happens."
"That's so cool of you," Jesse says. "Amicable breakups are hard."
"Helps that we never really… said we were dating? It was just… something we did."
"We all knew, though," John says.
"Well, yeah," Chris says. "It wasn't really a secret, but it also wasn't -- we didn't stand around and declare, and now you are my boyfriend!"
"So you were friends with benefits," Elizabeth says. "It wasn't like, a real relationship."
Chris gnaws a little on the inside of his lower lip as he looks around the table and genuinely can't think of anything to say.
"Whatever, Chris, don't take it so seriously," Elizabeth adds.
Suddenly, Chris thinks that the cheap drinks he's been plowing through with them have their own cost on his sanity and how he thinks of Zach, when he thinks of Zach.
*
Once Jesse makes arrangements for visiting Florida and New York with his boyfriend, the almost-daily meetings of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club are numbered. One afternoon, John is off at a play date with his kid and Elizabeth is taking care of family stuff, so it's just Chris and Jesse at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue place near their street because traditions form strangely and rapidly when people have little else to do.
Oh, and it's "their street" because Chris has had his apartment on that street for like, three years now, and Jesse just bought a house on the same street but a few blocks over, and Zach never felt the need to inform them that maybe they would be neighbors and maybe they would like spending time with each other.
Except Chris also wonders if maybe that was on purpose because he enjoys Jesse less and less the more they hang out, and maybe Zach knows them both that well -- knows Chris that well.
"Now it's a real meeting of the Ex-Boyfriends of... yeah, everything," Jesse declares as he tears a biscuit apart with no real intention of eating it. Chris stares and wonders briefly what the fuck they're doing here, but he can't be bothered to leave because everything's too weird, or that just because they're both vaguely angry at Zach doesn't mean they should be friends, or that Chris doesn't think he should be thinking about this shit as much as he has been for the past week they've been drinking in restaurants together.
"So what are you doing in New York?" Chris asks eventually.
"Don't know yet," Jesse sighs. "I mean, I know a little -- know I'll do a couple of shows with people because, well, what else do you do in New York but perform with your friends the minute you get in, right? And --"
Chris stares, tilting his head to the side, and Jesse mimics him for a moment before something clearly clicks with him and he nods.
"Right, not everyone is me."
"Yeah," Chris says slowly, and he can feel Jesse judging him -- he can see Jesse judging him, but he stares right back until Jesse looks back down to the biscuit he tore up and considers it.
"Well, what do you do in New York?" Jesse asks. "We didn't get a chance to hang out a lot last year -- I was working all the time and you -- well, what were you doing?"
"Last year?" Chris asks as he scratches at his jaw and thinks. "Last spring when Zach moved out there? Uh. Saw a lot of movies. Auditioned for a few things. Spent time with friends in town."
"You flew three thousand miles for that?" Jesse asks.
Chris clears his throat and says, "I can afford it. It's the kind of thing we can do now. Just get on a plane and go hang out in a distant city for a week or two, sometimes for no reason."
Jesse doesn't believe him, and why should he? Elizabeth's little joke about the ex-boyfriend club is only funny because it's absolutely true and they're all a little in love/lust/desirous of hatesex with Zach, but that doesn't mean Chris owes anyone but himself an explanation.
"You're not mad at him," Jesse says. Rather than tear another biscuit apart, Jesse traces shapes and patterns on the condensation outside his glass and doesn't look at Chris.
Truth be told, Chris is a little bored and thinks this isn't as fun without Elizabeth and John -- it isn't as fun when Jesse actually cares so damn much about Zach, considering there's that boyfriend at home and all.
"Sorry, but you're -- I've never had the chance to talk about Zach to someone who knows him as well as I did," Jesse says suddenly. "Like, you went through the same thing I did, right? First you meet and hit it off right away --"
"Yeah," Zach said to J.J. as he put his arm around Chris's waist and officially welcomed him into the reboot family. "Actually, we've known each other for a few years! We met at our trainer's house and really hit it off." Zach turned so he faced Chris and pressed his front against Chris, and clasped his hands at the small of Chris's back. It was too intimate, too close, too goofy to be his Spock, too happy to be the guy who talked to Chris about Ted Hughes while spotting him at the gym, but too infectious to resist.
"And then you see each other all the time and get really close --"
"Chris!"
Chris twirled his keys on his finger and turned on his heel -- there was Zach, and Noah leading him quickly, the sound of Noah's hushed barks and Zach's flip flops the only sounds on the street at night.
"Hey, buddy," Chris said as he crouched down to run his fingers through Noah's fur. "I guess you're cool, too," he added with a smirk up towards Zach.
"Watch it, he'll turn on you like… oh, who am I kidding, he's in love with you," Zach sighed loudly.
"You guys always walk this late?" Chris asked.
"Usually," Zach replied. "Pre-bedtime outing -- and you? Early call tomorrow."
"Yeah, I needed to get out of my place for a while," Chris laughed. "Go like, four hours without hearing the K-word."
Zach mouthed a few words to himself before he slowly said, "Kardashian…?"
"Klingon, you idiot."
"Right, that would make sense… with our jobs and all… look, I've been up since 5 AM, cut me some slack."
"Who told you to have eyebrows that thick?"
"Excuse you and those tufts of fur covering your brow ridge as we speak, okay?"
Chris stood up with a final scratch behind Noah's ears and tucked his keys back into his pocket. "Mind if I walk with you guys for a little? My place is just over there…ish."
"Yeah, let's go," Zach said, and Noah led the way like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"And you're really into each other but it never matches up -- either you're with other people, or it's just not going to work, or for whatever reason, you can't get your act together."
"Yup," Chris said as he nodded and stared at his coffee. "Beau and I are gonna give it another shot. It… I don't know, everything feels wrong without her." Chris glanced up and Zach was staring at him, and a quick look to his coffee hinted that he had stopped drinking it when Chris started talking.
If letting his coffee go cold was too subtle, Zach pursed his lips and leaned in quickly to clear the matter up perfectly: "Good," he whispered. "Good luck with that, really, I mean it. But I have to go now, and you -- you should call me if it doesn't work out, okay? Or just call me.” He looked away, flustered, and shut his eyes tightly as he added, “I didn’t mean it like -- that’s such a dick thing to say, but I just remembered something and I've gotta go." He stood up and walked out quickly, and Chris watched him through the window as he fumbled when untying Noah's leash from the railing outside. Zach looked up for a moment and met Chris's eyes, then looked back down and practically sprinted down the street with Noah in tow.
"Then you finally do, and it's everything you want for roughly 15 seconds --"
Chris woke to the sound of curtains snapping open. He stretched a leg and an arm out, then curled up again.
"Oh my God, you are my cat," Zach said, and Chris finally opened his eyes to a far too bright room. There was Zach standing over his bed, naked except for a tanktop Chris was pretty sure his sister had owned in high school. "Come on, get up, let's go for a run."
"Since when do you run?" Chris asked.
"Since the crazy hot jock I fucked last night made me swear, on my mother's honor, that we'd get up for a run before interview hell started this afternoon," Zach replied.
"Explains the tanktop, but were you planning on pants or a sarong or anything?"
"Well," Zach sighed. "That guy I brought home last night? I was hoping he would bone me one last time, you know, for old time's sake. For last night's sake. But he seems so tired this morning."
Chris closed his eyes for a moment, took a big, dramatic breath, and then opened his arms. He cracked an eyelid open and saw Zach's eyebrow rise. Chris reached out quickly and pulled him into bed by the tanktop. Zach laughed and shrieked something about his chest hair being ripped out, but they shut up soon enough as Chris kissed him and pinned Zach to the bed, pausing only to rip the tanktop off over Zach's head and throw it in a corner where it might never resurface.
If it eventually did, well, fine, there were more important things he could concern himself with -- getting Zach's knees as close to his shoulders as humanly possible, making him moan loud enough for the front desk to call and mention they had received noise complaints, getting Karl to hint that he had taken to sleeping in John's room because the people next to him were incorrigible --
Basically, fucking Zach and being fucked by Zach, and waking up to Zach's soft snores with a different city's skyline as a new backdrop every few days until they got back to LA and Zach's immaculate bedroom was exactly where he wanted to be.
"And then it's over and you're waiting for your spare rib sandwich and biscuits with his other ex-boyfriend." Jesse looks at Chris tentatively through his faint eyelashes and Chris tightens his mouth -- he hates being unsure of how to react to people, and hates not knowing what to say, but more and more he finds himself at a loss as he spends time with these people who don't mesh with him at all. People who take this Sex and the City romcom they're the one! bullshit way too seriously and harbor all this resentment against Zach because -- because he's Zach.
And they harbor all this pity for Chris because he hasn't "moved on", whatever that means. Jesse's "moved on" according to their little group's standards, but apparently "moved on" means becoming a moody, sullen mess whenever Zach's name is mentioned, and what the fuck is Jesse going to do, exactly, when Zach shows up in a week and stays in LA for ten minutes or 18 months? When they have to share a zip code and a gym and five coffee shops and a Whole Foods?
What’s Chris going to do?
*
Elizabeth disappears off the face of the earth and Chris hates himself for not doing the same. When Elizabeth isn’t with them, Jesse’s an unstoppable mess, and this one time is also the day Jesse is able to coerce Jonathan, Zach’s latest reject, into having lunch with him, Chris, and John.
Chris watches Jon over his beer and marvels at how expressive he is, how he does and says what he’s feeling when he’s feeling it. If he has a filter, Chris can’t see it -- that moment on every person’s face when they think of what they want to say and then beat it into something socially acceptable. On most people it passes quickly, while it takes Chris himself a tangible moment or so to do it -- Jonathan’s is instantaneous, like he’s incapable of a non-happy, non-sweet, non-considerate thought, which has to be total crap but the shell is impenetrable. He can understand why Zach would bail after a month of happy families and fond, loving smiles.
“The LA Chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club,” Jon repeats to himself once Jesse informs him. “I like it! I really do! Does the chapter depend on where we first had sex or met or something?”
“That’s a lot of places for a lot of us,” Jesse laughs, “So let’s stick to where we are right now and call that our chapter.”
“I’m game!” Jon says happily. Jon’s lighter than light beer arrives and Chris watches him take a quick sip before he looks around the table and says, “Guys, seriously, it’s been a month, I know, but -- I still miss him a little.”
“What happened, anyway?” John asks. “One minute I hear that Zach has a boyfriend plucked straight out of middle school --”
“I’m not that young,” Jon protests, and taps the neck of his beer as some kind of proof. John scoffs and goes on.
“And then the next minute, Chris tells us it’s over so -- yeah, I guess I kind of missed everything in between.”
“It was my fault,” Jon says, but the roll of his eyes and a little exasperated puff that escapes from the corner of his mouth hints that it totally wasn’t. “I get back from London after months of doing a play there, seeing Zach for holidays and once or twice, and he invites me to stay with him until Sundance, and then we go to Sundance together --”
“Oh, right, the Wall Street movie,” John remembers.
Yeah, Chris remembers it, too, and how he thinks he had never seen Zach as happy as when he was in New York filming that -- his project getting off the ground with such huge names, being so gleefully stupid about Jesse, gearing up for Kushner, and living all of that in New York, which Zach had wanted his whole fucking life. Chris feels the genuine smile on his face as he thinks about the hours they spent that summer talking about all of it and how everything was falling so beautifully into place.
“Right, and he introduces me to people as his boyfriend, and then we get back to New York and... it was pretty much over. So.” Jon sighs again and shrugs, then looks around the table. Chris looks around, too -- John is clearly considering the whole thing carefully, while Jesse looks sympathetic and sad.
Chris is skeptical, but then again, when isn’t he?
“Well, Chris,” Jesse begins, “You know Zach best -- known him the longest, anyway. What do you think?”
Chris swallows and he can’t say the first ten things to pop into his head:
- Yeah, sorry, three cross-continental fucks in six months do not a stable, long-term relationship make;
- By your holiday logic, I’m married to the entire Trek cast and Anne Hathaway;
- Jesse, weren’t you still with Zach at that point and wouldn’t that be like, a problem for you;
- Holy shit, who wants to be alone in Utah in January;
- You were just so there;
- Well, you’re hot;
- You’re hot, and Zach likes attractive people -- what makes you different? You sing? Uh, okay;
- How does “spend a week in my house fucking me” equate “I love you never leave me”;
- I can’t see Zach volunteering to call you his boyfriend;
- I can’t see Zach volunteering to call anyone his boyfriend.
“Um, did you -- talk about it?” Chris asks slowly.
“You know Zach,” Jon replies. “Of course he doesn’t talk about these things, even when I pressed him -- so it’s like one day he loves you, and one day he doesn’t.”
A feeling Chris knows, except apparently he’s the only one who waits around until Zach comes back -- another thing he can’t say, so he purses his lips and looks sorry. Jesse sighs loudly and waves a waitress over so they can order some food. Jonathan asks that they talk about other things, non-Zach things, and Chris is the first to agree wholeheartedly with him.
Since it's the last time most of them will be available and in LA for a while, the group lingers in the parking lot, embracing and promising to follow up on this and that as if… Chris sighs, because an apt metaphor for how effusive the group is about something as common as so busy -- see you in two weeks! totally escapes his realm of experience.
"And remind me," Jesse says as he holds Jon in his arms tightly and sways with him, like the movement will jog his memory. "Remind me remind me --"
"My show," Jon says happily as he clings to Jesse. "Somehow those big movie bosses said okay to letting me do a cabaret thing with some friends to promote that movie -- will you be here? Come on, please, you have to be here for it!"
"Uh, yeah, we're going to make a night out of it and it's going to be amazing."
"I have the perfect fuck you, Quinto song ready," Jon says with a light in his face that makes Chris raise his eyebrows because Zach hadn't mentioned that someone had introduced swearing to horse-and-buggy Pennsylbumblefuck.
"Tell me tell me tell me," Jesse says as he bounces on the balls of his feet.
"Okay, it's a little old because when it came out, everything was great and I didn’t think much about it except that it was catchy, but now I've been howling Adele all over my place --"
"I know this song!" Jesse shrieks. "Rolling in the Deep! Oh my God, don't even ask how many mornings I sing that in the shower, okay, just don't. I'm making myself a reminder," Jesse says as he keeps one arm around Jon and pulls out his phone. "I'm going to send you this bonus track -- same album, and it's my Zach song. They're so cathartic.”
"You guys should record an album," Chris chimes in. It seems to remind Jesse and Jon that he's there when they step out of each other's orbit for a moment -- they laugh a little awkwardly, like he clearly wasn't meant to hear all that, and then go back to ignoring Chris and hugging fiercely.
"So I'll send you that," Jesse finishes, and he tightens his arms around Jonathan again as he thinks aloud. "Right! Justin's friend! His law school friend! Get ready -- I'm about to activate my yenta powers."
"Oh no," Jon laughs as he hides his face in Jesse's shoulder. "Come on, not you too!"
"But he's so hot and come on, it's been what, a month? You're so ready. Come on. One date. One call. One email. One text. He is so sweet! I have such a good feeling about this!" Jesse hugs him tightly and then steps back from him, keeping his hands firmly on Jon's shoulders. "You're only twenty-six, you can't shrivel away and give up now, okay? You can do so much better."
"I can't say no to you!" Jon says, still so amused and looking at Jesse playfully, even if Chris isn't fooled by the mock hesitating -- he wants whatever Jesse is offering, wants it so badly he's practically salivating on the asphalt. "Okay, give him my email -- I'm so busy with stuff, an email's gonna have to do for now!"
"Guys," John calls out, finally, and Chris realizes he would have stood there watching the proceedings like a zoo exhibit if John hadn't brought him out of it. "I've gotta head out, but it was good seeing you again."
Quicker than he thought possible, John is engulfed into the swarm of pasty curls and excitement that is Jesse and Jonathan, but he smoothly extricates himself and takes a few steps back to his car. He meets Chris's eyes and widens them a little in mock-panic as he moves away and Jesse and Jon fall back into their conversation.
"Can I get a ride?" Chris asks suddenly. "Looks like rain and you're going by my place anyway, right?"
"Who told you to jog here, asshole," John laughs. "Yeah, of course."
"Oh, Chris, you're going, too?" Jesse asks. "If I don't see you soon -- it's been so much fun, these past couple of weeks. I'm so glad we got to hang out as much as we did."
"Same here," Chris says as he swallows whatever's in his throat. "And hey, Jon, good to meet you finally."
"You're not getting away without a hug," Jon warns him as he walks over and throws his arms around Chris, who rests his hands lightly on his ribs and gives him the customary two pats on the back.
Except Jon takes the moment to hiss in his ear, "Cho already texted me your number, so if you're in town for a little bit -- maybe we can get a drink, okay? Just the two of us?"
Chris makes a hmm-totally-considering-that noise in his chest and tries to stop his eyes from shooting out of their sockets as Jon lets him go and smirks at him slyly. He steps away, winks, and turns back to Jesse, falling easily into conversation again as Chris sticks his hands in his pockets and wonders how dirty, exactly, he should be feeling, because his gut reaction is really really a lot.
"That kid totally hit on me," Chris says when he climbs into the passenger seat of John's car. "Now give me your iPhone so I can hear this Adele person."
"It's in the dock, genius -- get the whole album from the music store, Kerri’s been bugging me to listen to her stuff," John says as they leave the parking lot. "And of course he hit on you -- he's needy, you're there, isn't that your m.o.?"
"Thanks, pal."
"It's your baby blues -- something about them cries I'll never break your heart, which makes it doubly heartbreaking when you inevitably do."
"Don't hold back, John, tell me what you really think," Chris says as he watches the album download and puts the phone back in the dock. "Also, I'm so grateful this is the last one of these we're doing for a while."
"Aw, seriously?" John asks. "I had fun. It was a lot of fun."
"Are you kidding?" Chris asks. "I -- where do I begin in listing what a clusterfuck --"
"Clusterfuck? Nope. Annoying to you, maybe. Uncomfortable, sure! Deeply probing and too personal at points, okay, I'll give you that. Not a clusterfuck, though -- or if it is, well done, because your idea of a clusterfuck is a series of awkward lunch dates with people you don't see eye to eye with."
"And you do?"
"I'm not saying me and Kerri are going to start going on couples' retreats or take up pottery or some shit, but it wasn't all bad." Chris glances over and John meets his eyes for a moment before looking back to the road. "Lifestyle-wise, yeah, whatever works for you -- bi or straight, fucking everything or nothing in sight, monogamous or not -- it doesn't mean the rest of us are crazy because this cute, coupley bullshit -- that we know is bullshit, Chris, because we're not idiots -- is fun sometimes."
"I never said you were."
"Not with your giant mouth, no," John replies. "And if you think Zach's the only person who gets that about you, then you're more like us than you thought. Just so you know."
Chris sulks and when Adele starts to play, yeah, it's a little gross how perfect it fits into the shape of everything at that moment. And it is really catchy.
*
A few days later, Chris opens the front door of his building, slips on his sunglasses, and stops in the doorway because Zach and Noah are standing just a few feet away.
"Hey, stranger," Chris calls out.
"Noah felt like visiting," Zach explains. "I told him: Noah, seriously, Chris is busy, but because you want to, we'll stand here for a few minutes and see if he pops out. Maybe we'll even call him." He holds out his phone as proof. "See? Was about to press the Chris button."
"Noah's timing is perfect, actually," Chris notes. "This is about the time when I walk over to your friend's bungalow and say hi to Noah through the fence on my way to coffee."
"You do fucking not," Zach laughs. "Even your vagina, voluminous as it is, wouldn't be that fucking sappy."
"Man, do you know how much LA missed you?" Chris asks. He finally takes a step out of his doorway and crosses the couple of feet to Zach and Noah, kneeling down to let Noah nuzzle his jacket and get reacquainted after a year of fence greetings (he wishes he was lying about that, but he wasn't about to get a dog when his friend had one that already liked him.)
"How much did LA miss me?" Zach asks.
"LA missed you so much that a couple of fags, a hag, and John Cho got together and made a We Miss Zach So We're Going to Drink and Eat Cheap Appetizers and Laugh about Him Club, and we even went to a Chili's once."
"Yeah, I got a text like that from our Choster," Zach replies. "Something like J.J. needs to summon us to his lens flare batcave soon or I'm going to start a meth lab in this godforsaken Chili's."
"My liver missed you, too," Chris says, his attention still focused on Noah, who is starting to get annoyed at how much Chris is running his fingers through his fur. "It's been hammered like, every afternoon for the past two weeks, when rumors of your return started to circulate."
"I would have come sooner," Zach says as he kneels down, too, and scratches at Noah's sides, like he hadn't done that for an hour when he first got back (at least, that was Chris's wager.) "But I haven't got much here anymore, except the pets and Trek. I'm actually thinking of flying them back, seeing what it'd be like to all live in the city, you know?"
"You haven't got much here anymore?" Chris asks as he drops his hands off Noah. Sure enough, Noah nudges him for more headscratches and Chris automatically complies, just so he keeps his hands from punching Zach in the face or something similarly deserved. "Look, Zach, sorry to remind you, but you're not East Coast anymore." He looks up at Zach, who's raised his eyebrows and furrows them when Chris nods emphatically.
"It's true," Chris adds. "You're West Coast through and through. It's just a way of life and you can't just move and forget it. You drive to the supermarket four blocks away but walk two miles to your fucking yoga studio; your personal food pyramid is separated into avocados and everything else; and do I even have to mention flip flops? Like, what are you going to do living in a place where you can only wear them about twelve weeks a year?"
"It sucked," Zach replies, and Chris watches his adam's apple move in his throat, so fucking there and teasing him he can't stand it. "I had to walk home in a blizzard in January. And I slid down some steps in the subway at one point? Because of snow."
"Snow, Zach," Chris says sadly. "You want to move back for snow? All it wants to do is hurt you and make you cold -- and snow and flip flops don't get along. At all."
"We're still talking about literal snow, right?"
"Whatever," Chris says as he stands up. "Wanna come upstairs? Do you want to fuck or grab some coffee or lunch or anything?"
"Fuck, then lunch, then coffee?" Zach asks. "Also, I'm going back to New York like, next week, and you should come. New York in the spring -- it's fucking gorgeous. Not flip flop weather, though."
"When have I ever worn flip flops? Ever?"
"I miss them so much," Zach whines as he leans against Chris and they walk back to the front door. "That little prong stabbing between my big toe and the next toe? I miss it. I miss the sound they make."
Chris holds the door open for Zach and Noah as they rush through the entrance to the staircase, and tries not to let that feeling that people might call "fondness" or "love" or "affection" choke him as it rises up in his throat.
*
He almost thinks it's New Zealand again, when he wakes up post-coital and ready to take on the world but it's still broad daylight out. Chris looks to his left and blinks slowly, absorbing the sight of Zach sleeping on his stomach, head facing away from Chris, the wide plane of his back mocking Chris as it moves slowly with Zach's breathing. Chris turns on his side and rests a hand between Zach's shoulder blades, tracing the curve of his spine once before his hand travels back and just stays at the top of his back.
"Are you petting me?" Zach asks into the fold of his arms. "Like a cat?"
"You need to get your back waxed soon," Chris notes. "You've practically got Wonder Years bangs growing off your shoulders."
"'s why I loved New York," Zach replies. "Everyone worshipped me."
"Only because they don't know you like I do."
Zach turns on his side and slides across the bed until his back is against Chris's front and Chris can wrap an arm around him and pull him close.
"You'll come to New York with me?" Zach asks, and Chris knows him too well, knows the fake-sleepy voice Zach uses when he drops a serious question he can't admit is serious.
"Why not," Chris says. "There are worse ways to spend hiatus."
"Oh my God," Zach realizes. "And you can meet my co-star from that play of mine you never saw. Christian is -- he's pure venom. You're going to love him. We should tag team him. When he goes for guys, you're totally his type. I'm too -- I don't know, gay?"
"Man, doesn't anyone get you?" Chris sighs as he rests his mouth against Zach's totally-not-too-hairy shoulder. "You're too gay for some, not gay enough for others -- I think you're amazing just the way you are."
"Shut up, you already got me into bed."
"Just saying," Chris adds. "Thought you needed to be reminded."
"Wait, was that a song lyric? I'm leaving if you just quoted a pop song at me in a deceptively adorable moment."
"That would require you to admit you listen to pop music, and you could never do that," Chris reminds him.
"Fuck," Zach sighs. "Guess I'll have to let it slide."
"Guess so," Chris laughs as he shuts his eyes and presses his face against Zach’s shoulder, hoping they can get away with not leaving for just a little while longer.
*
There's some insane disco party and the last LCD Soundsystem concert on earth (yeah, right) and a whole metric ton of crap besides, so they don't get out to New York together until it's real spring -- warm weather and colorful plant life and none of the crushing oppressive disgusting heat that will take over within a few weeks, maybe a month if they're lucky. Zach packs flip flops, but doesn't wear them all the time because fucking Jesus do they hurt.
("Also, you're like, old now," Chris points out. "Get some goddamn respectable shoes. Who gives a shit about your toe cleavage?"
"Just for that? Wearing them everywhere. Spite blisters for me! So worth it."
One excursion outside of indeterminate length later: “Why do you let me do this to myself?!”
“Because it’s time you admit that sometimes there are things more important than proving me wrong.”
“Never.”)
Zach had sublet his house in the city to a friend who doesn't mind if they take over the guest room for a weekend, and if Chris can't pass the Bowery Hotel without a tug to his heartstrings like he's betraying an old friend -- well, fuck it, he's got better things/people to do.
Christian Borle is, in fact, a tiny, sweaty cobra of a man who falls instantly in love when he meets Chris, possibly the only person in the city who gives less of a fuck about anything and everything than Christian himself does. Zach sighs, asks out loud what he was thinking in introducing them, and points out that Christian will be in LA filming some knock off Glee bullshit for the fall, so they should get to know and like each other under penalty of death.
The Chrises raise their eyebrows and wave Zach off, falling back into an analysis of how theater's great and all, but they all need to sell out and fast.
"Oh hell no," Zach says, trying to pronounce it in the Internet-accepted transliteration aw hale naw, but it's too late -- his years of training to speak in a crisp, educated, non-regional dialect make it impossible. "I did my sitcom, I've done my time. Bring on the Joe Wright-directed Oscar-winning period pieces with Keira Knightley, please."
"Can you imagine Zach in period garb?" Chris asks Christian.
"I don't have to -- if you had come seen our play, you could have seen him wear the dregs of the 80s we bought from Goodwill," Christian replies.
(If Chris squeezes Zach's forearm just under the table as a way of apologizing for missing him in a role that meant so much to him -- if Zach's foot slips out of its flip flop and his toe nudges Chris's ugly brown loafer -- then that's that, isn't it?)
They steal a few more days and tack them onto their busy city weekend, and one of those days they run into Jesse and his boyfriend on the way to brunch or lunch or whatever that meal is with the complementary booze in the shade of a tiny eatery in Brooklyn.
"Hey guys!" Jesse coos in his way (and John now greets Chris in the same tone, too -- it's so fucking distinctive and saccharine, they couldn't help but adopt it for their own after the lunch date club with the huge name disbanded.) "Zach, I thought I saw on Twitter that you were in the city -- didn't know you'd brought Chris with you! What a small world!"
"Oh. Oh," Zach says and he turns to Chris to explain, "I tweet that picture I took of those shoes. Seriously, why are shoes so important right now?"
"Because it's not a real New York experience unless we've walked six miles a day?"
"It takes a lot of getting used to!" Jesse chimes in, and Chris and Zach slowly turn their heads to remember why they weren't walking just at that moment. "Anyway, hey. We're all here outside this place that serves brunch -- let's all get a table, okay?"
"Oh," Zach says again. He looks to Chris, who stares back at him, and Chris thinks he can't decipher Zach's face expression through all that hesitation -- oh. Chris scrunches his nose up a little and inclines his head just an inch towards the rest of the street.
"I think we're good," Zach says finally after he bursts out laughing at Chris's attempts towards subtlety. "But we'll see you around, huh?"
"Yeah, I'll text you," Jesse says after the seemingly tiniest of emotional punches landed on his Brawny man chin. "And you, too, Chris!"
"Totally," Chris agrees, and they walk around Jesse and his boyfriend and head down the street, leaning close to each other to whisper:
"Fuck, now where are we going to eat? If you say that gutted IKEA-decorated garage with the three-hour wait in Greenpoint, we're done."
"Okay, we've gone to so many places in Greenpoint but why do you only remember that one -- baby, don't ever say I don't take you nice places, you just refuse to remember them! Anyway, we're walking another mile to brunch."
"This is cruelty," Chris whines. "I'll eat a hotdog if we don't stop at the next place, I swear to fucking Trader Joe's I will eat a fucking hotdog."
"Well, Chris, we can't ditch Jesse and his chia pet and then duck into the next fucking place right down the --"
"Yes we can, because we're assholes now, and we do what we want."
"Not sure I like that," Zach says as Chris leads him into a brunch place half a block down that's completely identical in every uniquely quirky way to every other tiny brunch place in Brooklyn, but it still makes Zach go, "Never mind, this place is totally adorable -- new favorite!"
"You are hysterically gay; Christian was so right about you. Don’t know how I didn’t see it before."
"Mistake mistake mistake," Zach chants under his breath until someone comes by and he emits a gentle little, "Two please," with a smile.
"Inside or outside?" the hostess asks.
Chris shrugs and nudges Zach in the shoulder, then supplies a quick, "Outside," and motions out through the glass back doors.
screamlet
Fandom: Star Trek RPF, Actor RPF
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Characters: Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Cho, Elizabeth Banks, Jonathan Groff
Summary: The founding of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club comes at a strange moment for all of them in that they’re between jobs, really financially comfortable, a little desperate for friendly companionship, and finally have the time to check out all those restaurants they had heard about in LA. Mostly, though, they thought Zach was kind of an asshole.
Notes: Set in late March/early April of 2011 and a few months on.
Notes 2: Auuuugh waldorph where would I be without you NOWHERE THAT'S WHERE.
"So!" Elizabeth says brightly.
Chris already spends two hours a day at the gym. Clearly, if this is happening, he should up the ante.
"So," Jesse agrees.
Six hours, maybe. That’s... healthy. He could finally start that lower body and leg training routine he’d been meaning to start for the past year or so. With sequel filming so (relatively) close, he would ask J.J. before making big changes to his appearance, but J.J. is still stringing them along so fuck it. Time to triple his time at the gym and get some real legs like a real boy.
Man, J.J. would throw a fit -- he’d wanted everyone in Starfleet to fit into Zach’s size 0.000007 pants, but Chris still had to look good shirtless and be able to hoist himself up over shit all the fucking time. And J.J. just liked him more when he was bulky up top.
In general, J.J. has a lot of feelings.
"Mmhmm," Jesse's boyfriend adds.
"God, what is this," Chris moans, because he’s still in a Chili’s with his co-star, and Zach’s singing-dancing-gaying ex-boyfriend, and said ex’s current boyfriend, who looks a little too much like Zach. He's a big, tan Zach who had smiled with all his teeth at least 19 times since Elizabeth had led Chris inside and shrieked with glee at finding Jesse and the boyfriend there, just hanging out like they did, apparently.
"Looks like the inaugural meeting of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club," Elizabeth notes. "With a couple of honorary members."
"And a dozen bleached and tanned gym rat fucks not in attendance," Jesse says, and he quickly turns to his boyfriend to add, "Don't worry, I was tested. A lot."
"Wow," Chris says as he stares a little.
Jesse turns back and snaps, "What?"
"Nope, nothing, nothing at all," Chris replies. He sits up and holds his hand in the air, hoping to summon a waiter and a drink, or a homicidal stalker who’s thoughtfully appeared in order to end the awkwardness now.
*
A pitcher and a half of margaritas and the trade of Jesse's boyfriend for John Cho later, they were all best friends.
Well... Chris licks the salt off his rim and thinks about the last time he had called someone his best friend. Like, to their face. He refers to absent Zach as “his best friend,” but it has to have been years since he’s gone out and formally/drunkenly I love you, man’ed his way into a best friendship.
"So, wait, are you all -- not working right now?" Jesse asks as he swats John's hand away and grabs the last chip in the basket.
"That's why we're here," Elizabeth replies as she grabs Chris's forearm. "Our movie just finished and we thought we'd come here and get wasted before the wrap party, then say we were sick and get out of the wrap party."
"That's pretty awful, even for you," Jesse notes.
"I just wanna go home and read," Chris says as he mouths at his straw.
"Jesus, you're a mess," John says as Chris sucks his glass dry. He shakes his head and says to Jesse, "I'm auditioning for stuff. You? How’s the show going?"
"It's almost done for the season," he explains. "Then I'm going to New York for a while. "
"Wait a second," Chris interrupts. He looks to John and asks, "Why are you here?"
"You texted me," John says. "Seriously, how many margaritas is this?"
"I had beers, too," Chris says defensively. "Like, a lot."
Chris thinks he sees Elizabeth hold up one finger behind his back, so he holds up his middle finger in return. John laughs and she rolls her eyes as she waves down their waiter again for more chips and more booze.
"But why are you here?" Chris asks. "This is the inaugural meeting of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club."
"LA chapter," Jesse clarifies.
John snorts hard enough to slam his knee into the table and then recoils back into his chair hard enough to tip over in his chair -- almost. Chris holds onto him as John wheezes, "Stop, I can't -- oh my God, what?"
"It's true," Elizabeth says. "I'm an honorary member 'cause I've had to hear about the butthurt from at least three fronts now. Three, Cho. I don't get what these homos see in Zach."
Chris puts his elbows up on the table and looks around at everyone -- do they know what he’s thinking? Does he know what he’s thinking? Shit, he’s drunk. Point is -- Zach makes him gay now? Everyone has slept with Zach or been totally smitten with him. Using that as a marker of sexuality is like writing YES into the SEX? box on a medical form. It’s just a given that everyone’s bad parts are going to tingle when Zach is around.
Another bowl of chips arrives and Chris shoves a handful into his mouth to keep himself from saying all that.
"I totally get it, guys," John assures them. "Zach and I -- well. I think we had a moment in Berlin on the press tour."
"You're shitting me," Chris laughs as he leans back in his chair, ignoring the couple of crumbs that fall out of his mouth and onto his shirt. He’s lucky he’s hot or this would be gross. "Whatever, John, we were totally fucking then and he --"
"Well, maybe he wanted to make sure that you were genuinely into him and it wasn't his magic powers of conversion or something," John shrugs. "But it was that night you were trying to clean up Karl after Zoe did those body shots off him, and Zach and I were just outside my room."
"Cho, if you fucked my boyfriend --"
Wait, Chris thinks, did he just think of Zach as his boyfriend?
"What, you'll go back in time and chop off my dick?" John asks. "Please, like my wife wouldn't have beat you to it." John takes a drink as he gives Chris the side eye and continues. "No, man, it was like -- he was doing that thing where he -- kind of agrees with everything you say, but says it in a low voice and doesn't stop staring at your mouth?" John considers the memory for a moment and adds, "Yeah, I think I would have done him. You know, if it wasn't for you shrieking about Karl being eaten to death by ants behind a door just five feet away."
"Shots are sticky," Elizabeth agrees. "Ew."
"No, it's more Chris's voice -- it's kind of grating when he's like that," John says.
"Like what?" Chris asks.
"Like that," everyone replies.
"I need a bathroom," Chris says a little sadly. He gets up and tries not to look too drunk as he avoids stumbling into the restroom nearby.
(Once he's gone, eyebrows are raised at John -- at least, John thinks Jesse is raising his eyebrows, but who can tell? -- and the question remains.
"No, I didn't fuck him," John replies. "But I did think about it! And I did have to hear him and Chris through our shared wall the next morning."
"That sounds like junior membership material right there," Jesse laughs dryly.
"It's cool," John says with a little wave. "I already have a full membership to the Matt Bomer Took My Gay Virginity at an Embarrassing Age Club, so I'm --"
Elizabeth spits her mouthful of drink back into her glass and Jesse's eyes glaze over a little as he says, "I think I'd trade my SAG card for that.")
*
The founding of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club comes at a strange moment for all of them in that they’re between jobs, really financially comfortable, a little desperate for friendly companionship, and finally have the time to check out all those restaurants they had heard about in LA.
Mostly, though, they thought Zach was kind of an asshole. Or ridiculous. The consensus was pretty evenly split with Jesse and Elizabeth on the side of Asshole, and Chris and John on the Ridiculous side -- and was that surprising in the slightest?
"It's like," Jesse says at their next meet-up, "My boyfriend now is so amazing that I'm looking back on Zach and I don't know what I was thinking."
"Uh, you wanted to get laid?" Chris asks, and then he starts ticking thoughts off on his fingers. "And he was hot, and you were both kind of bored, and you were kind of lazy so you didn't want to go out and find someone else, and it was just convenient because he’s right there."
Listing it like that, though, Chris reflects, doesn’t capture the want, and going out of his way to make all that possible.
"Also, you shared a trailer," John adds. "With a couch that I'm hoping was burned as part of the wrap party ritual."
"Anton tried, but he's so bad at lighters, I don't know how he chain smokes," Chris laughs. He looks around the table at Elizabeth and Jesse and clears his throat a little. "But yeah, Zach. Asshole." He picks up his beer and repeats the word, "Asshole," but even he can hear that his heart isn't quite in it.
"And you still have to work with him," Elizabeth says sympathetically. "Which should be so much fun."
"Should be something," Chris agrees a little sullenly. He takes a second to think back to the last time he was genuinely upset at Zach and finds he doesn’t have to think very hard. "You know he just left LA last year? I called him to do something and he just said, sorry man, I can't, I'm going to New York tomorrow. Indefinitely. Who does that?"
"He's either completely clueless or worse, he doesn't care," Jesse replies.
"He's a little daft," John notes, and Chris appreciates how he’s clawing desperately to stay Cool John Cho and Zach’s friend. "Wouldn't say he's… okay, clueless is good, unless you have four legs and fur and then he's totally in tune with your every need."
"You have the least complaints about Zach," Jesse says happily to Chris, "So I guess you were his bitch!"
Chris laughs and clinks his beer against Jesse's glass, since the alternative is punching him in his bleached and capped Brawny man smile, and it's a little early in the day for that.
*
It's interesting, Chris thinks, the whole making new friends thing.
All right, John was already a friend, and he's known Elizabeth for years from one thing and the other, so it's just Jesse he has to win over. It's just Jesse who has to win him over, and as Chris glances at Jesse across their high top table next to a bar, he honestly isn't sure how that's going to happen.
"So, Chris," Jesse says to shake Chris out of his introspection. "Did you think Zach was a snorer when you met him? I so didn't, and then -- shit. I almost got some of those Bose noise-canceling things for when I slept over at his place in the city."
"It's not that bad," Chris laughs. "I've definitely heard way louder. Shaking the house snores. Why didn't you make me yell as hard as you snore kind of bad. Zach's like a kitten in comparison"
"I'm spoiled now," Jesse sighs. "Sometimes I think my boyfriend's dead, he's so quiet when he sleeps."
"Hon, that's creepy," Elizabeth says.
"Tell me about it!"
"My wife's the same way," John replies, "And then she says I'm creepy when I watch her at night to make sure she's still alive. Give me a sign, woman, or I'll resort to drastic measures like… poking."
"I hate that word," Jesse muses. "A lot. I think Facebook legitimized its awfulness. Not legitimized, but it let everyone know what was wrong with the word to begin with. Just man up and demand your middle of the night sex, you know?" He looks to Chris and says, "You can back me up on this -- Zach. Always up for it at night, right?"
Chris gulps from his beer and ignores the laughs around him as he refuses to answer -- frankly, he's glad they're laughing so he doesn't have to glare Jesse down. It's not a possessive thing as much as it's a personal thing -- he genuinely, really, truly at the bottom of that thing people might call a soul, doesn't want to talk about his fucking people with non-involved parties.
It's a revelation that he didn't think he needed to have, and one that makes it perfectly clear he's fallen in with the wrongest combination of people ever imagined. If only he was better at lying -- he's gotten better at being an glib, grinning idiot for interviews, but this is the big leagues and he has to turn off his distaste if he's going to fit in.
"I mean," Jesse continues, "Guys usually are, right, Chris? Into the random middle-of-the-night sex?"
"Uh," Chris begins as he tries to index the guys he’s fucked enough times to remember what they sound like when they sleep and whether they liked to wake up in the middle of the night for some sex (surprise, it’s not enough for a legitimate study or even for an interesting conclusion.) "Depends on the guy?"
"Really? I guess I've only gone after nightfiends or something," Jesse laughs.
Chris shrugs and then he notices that everyone goes quiet.
"You also sleep really soundly," John comments after a few moments.
"Not gonna ask how you know that, I'll just accept that you do," Chris replies.
"Hey," Jesse begins, and he puts a hand gently on Elizabeth's arm. "We haven't talked about Jonathan."
"OH MY GOD," she says loudly as she slams her hands on the table. "I will murder Zach if he hurts our baby."
"Do you mean the guy he was seeing?" Chris asks. "Because I think he ended that a while ago."
"What?" Elizabeth and Jesse ask simultaneously.
"I don't know," Chris replies. "I just asked him if he was seeing someone and he said he had broken things off with some guy."
"Why'd you ask that?" John asks only Chris.
"I don't know," Chris says a little defensively. "It's a thing you ask your friends when --"
There's a collective "oh, honey," around the table, and they disperse a little after that -- Chris heads to a bar with some of his gym buddies and everyone else to their respective spouses, and Chris tries not to think about the afternoon too much.
*
"Chris, we think you need a Zachtervention," Elizabeth says at their next lunch date.
Chris raises his eyebrows and looks around the table at Jesse's pitying expression and… John drinking a lemonade and generally not giving a fuck.
John seems to notice that he's being watched, though, and says around his straw, "Yeah, you need an intervention." He puts his glass down and says, "Let's do this! I'm pumped. I always carry my list of Chris-related grievances on me."
Chris laughs and turns back to Elizabeth, who's raising her eyebrows and waves her hands to banish their skepticism.
"Just some basic questions anyone who's over someone should be able to answer!" she says. "Like, is he still a contact in your phone?"
"I have a smartphone," Chris replies. "I don't really delete people off it. I still have my ex-girlfriend on there -- the one I was with for four years? And haven’t been with in two years?"
"That's what makes it extra cathartic!" Jesse says. "If you delete them off your phone, everything goes with it -- Facebook link, Twitter link, their e-mail address, home address, phone number -- they literally don't exist anymore."
"Well, yes and no," Chris replies. "She kind of grew up in my neighborhood -- her parents know my parents -- she's a friend of mine --"
"You're being so difficult," Elizabeth sighs. "What's the last text you sent Zach?"
Chris takes out his BlackBerry and pulls up the thread with Zach, and can't help but laugh. "Um, he's coming back to LA and I was telling him everything that's changed in our neighborhood, like his favorite pimp has moved from --"
"What the fuck," John laughs.
"It's a long story," Chris says to Elizabeth and Jesse. "This guy we used to see all the time when we went running --" He can see that they don't actually care, and frankly neither does John, so he stops talking and shrugs, and puts his phone away. "Yeah, Zach and I text each other stupid shit sometimes, it happens."
"That's so cool of you," Jesse says. "Amicable breakups are hard."
"Helps that we never really… said we were dating? It was just… something we did."
"We all knew, though," John says.
"Well, yeah," Chris says. "It wasn't really a secret, but it also wasn't -- we didn't stand around and declare, and now you are my boyfriend!"
"So you were friends with benefits," Elizabeth says. "It wasn't like, a real relationship."
Chris gnaws a little on the inside of his lower lip as he looks around the table and genuinely can't think of anything to say.
"Whatever, Chris, don't take it so seriously," Elizabeth adds.
Suddenly, Chris thinks that the cheap drinks he's been plowing through with them have their own cost on his sanity and how he thinks of Zach, when he thinks of Zach.
*
Once Jesse makes arrangements for visiting Florida and New York with his boyfriend, the almost-daily meetings of the LA chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club are numbered. One afternoon, John is off at a play date with his kid and Elizabeth is taking care of family stuff, so it's just Chris and Jesse at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue place near their street because traditions form strangely and rapidly when people have little else to do.
Oh, and it's "their street" because Chris has had his apartment on that street for like, three years now, and Jesse just bought a house on the same street but a few blocks over, and Zach never felt the need to inform them that maybe they would be neighbors and maybe they would like spending time with each other.
Except Chris also wonders if maybe that was on purpose because he enjoys Jesse less and less the more they hang out, and maybe Zach knows them both that well -- knows Chris that well.
"Now it's a real meeting of the Ex-Boyfriends of... yeah, everything," Jesse declares as he tears a biscuit apart with no real intention of eating it. Chris stares and wonders briefly what the fuck they're doing here, but he can't be bothered to leave because everything's too weird, or that just because they're both vaguely angry at Zach doesn't mean they should be friends, or that Chris doesn't think he should be thinking about this shit as much as he has been for the past week they've been drinking in restaurants together.
"So what are you doing in New York?" Chris asks eventually.
"Don't know yet," Jesse sighs. "I mean, I know a little -- know I'll do a couple of shows with people because, well, what else do you do in New York but perform with your friends the minute you get in, right? And --"
Chris stares, tilting his head to the side, and Jesse mimics him for a moment before something clearly clicks with him and he nods.
"Right, not everyone is me."
"Yeah," Chris says slowly, and he can feel Jesse judging him -- he can see Jesse judging him, but he stares right back until Jesse looks back down to the biscuit he tore up and considers it.
"Well, what do you do in New York?" Jesse asks. "We didn't get a chance to hang out a lot last year -- I was working all the time and you -- well, what were you doing?"
"Last year?" Chris asks as he scratches at his jaw and thinks. "Last spring when Zach moved out there? Uh. Saw a lot of movies. Auditioned for a few things. Spent time with friends in town."
"You flew three thousand miles for that?" Jesse asks.
Chris clears his throat and says, "I can afford it. It's the kind of thing we can do now. Just get on a plane and go hang out in a distant city for a week or two, sometimes for no reason."
Jesse doesn't believe him, and why should he? Elizabeth's little joke about the ex-boyfriend club is only funny because it's absolutely true and they're all a little in love/lust/desirous of hatesex with Zach, but that doesn't mean Chris owes anyone but himself an explanation.
"You're not mad at him," Jesse says. Rather than tear another biscuit apart, Jesse traces shapes and patterns on the condensation outside his glass and doesn't look at Chris.
Truth be told, Chris is a little bored and thinks this isn't as fun without Elizabeth and John -- it isn't as fun when Jesse actually cares so damn much about Zach, considering there's that boyfriend at home and all.
"Sorry, but you're -- I've never had the chance to talk about Zach to someone who knows him as well as I did," Jesse says suddenly. "Like, you went through the same thing I did, right? First you meet and hit it off right away --"
"Yeah," Zach said to J.J. as he put his arm around Chris's waist and officially welcomed him into the reboot family. "Actually, we've known each other for a few years! We met at our trainer's house and really hit it off." Zach turned so he faced Chris and pressed his front against Chris, and clasped his hands at the small of Chris's back. It was too intimate, too close, too goofy to be his Spock, too happy to be the guy who talked to Chris about Ted Hughes while spotting him at the gym, but too infectious to resist.
"And then you see each other all the time and get really close --"
"Chris!"
Chris twirled his keys on his finger and turned on his heel -- there was Zach, and Noah leading him quickly, the sound of Noah's hushed barks and Zach's flip flops the only sounds on the street at night.
"Hey, buddy," Chris said as he crouched down to run his fingers through Noah's fur. "I guess you're cool, too," he added with a smirk up towards Zach.
"Watch it, he'll turn on you like… oh, who am I kidding, he's in love with you," Zach sighed loudly.
"You guys always walk this late?" Chris asked.
"Usually," Zach replied. "Pre-bedtime outing -- and you? Early call tomorrow."
"Yeah, I needed to get out of my place for a while," Chris laughed. "Go like, four hours without hearing the K-word."
Zach mouthed a few words to himself before he slowly said, "Kardashian…?"
"Klingon, you idiot."
"Right, that would make sense… with our jobs and all… look, I've been up since 5 AM, cut me some slack."
"Who told you to have eyebrows that thick?"
"Excuse you and those tufts of fur covering your brow ridge as we speak, okay?"
Chris stood up with a final scratch behind Noah's ears and tucked his keys back into his pocket. "Mind if I walk with you guys for a little? My place is just over there…ish."
"Yeah, let's go," Zach said, and Noah led the way like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"And you're really into each other but it never matches up -- either you're with other people, or it's just not going to work, or for whatever reason, you can't get your act together."
"Yup," Chris said as he nodded and stared at his coffee. "Beau and I are gonna give it another shot. It… I don't know, everything feels wrong without her." Chris glanced up and Zach was staring at him, and a quick look to his coffee hinted that he had stopped drinking it when Chris started talking.
If letting his coffee go cold was too subtle, Zach pursed his lips and leaned in quickly to clear the matter up perfectly: "Good," he whispered. "Good luck with that, really, I mean it. But I have to go now, and you -- you should call me if it doesn't work out, okay? Or just call me.” He looked away, flustered, and shut his eyes tightly as he added, “I didn’t mean it like -- that’s such a dick thing to say, but I just remembered something and I've gotta go." He stood up and walked out quickly, and Chris watched him through the window as he fumbled when untying Noah's leash from the railing outside. Zach looked up for a moment and met Chris's eyes, then looked back down and practically sprinted down the street with Noah in tow.
"Then you finally do, and it's everything you want for roughly 15 seconds --"
Chris woke to the sound of curtains snapping open. He stretched a leg and an arm out, then curled up again.
"Oh my God, you are my cat," Zach said, and Chris finally opened his eyes to a far too bright room. There was Zach standing over his bed, naked except for a tanktop Chris was pretty sure his sister had owned in high school. "Come on, get up, let's go for a run."
"Since when do you run?" Chris asked.
"Since the crazy hot jock I fucked last night made me swear, on my mother's honor, that we'd get up for a run before interview hell started this afternoon," Zach replied.
"Explains the tanktop, but were you planning on pants or a sarong or anything?"
"Well," Zach sighed. "That guy I brought home last night? I was hoping he would bone me one last time, you know, for old time's sake. For last night's sake. But he seems so tired this morning."
Chris closed his eyes for a moment, took a big, dramatic breath, and then opened his arms. He cracked an eyelid open and saw Zach's eyebrow rise. Chris reached out quickly and pulled him into bed by the tanktop. Zach laughed and shrieked something about his chest hair being ripped out, but they shut up soon enough as Chris kissed him and pinned Zach to the bed, pausing only to rip the tanktop off over Zach's head and throw it in a corner where it might never resurface.
If it eventually did, well, fine, there were more important things he could concern himself with -- getting Zach's knees as close to his shoulders as humanly possible, making him moan loud enough for the front desk to call and mention they had received noise complaints, getting Karl to hint that he had taken to sleeping in John's room because the people next to him were incorrigible --
Basically, fucking Zach and being fucked by Zach, and waking up to Zach's soft snores with a different city's skyline as a new backdrop every few days until they got back to LA and Zach's immaculate bedroom was exactly where he wanted to be.
"And then it's over and you're waiting for your spare rib sandwich and biscuits with his other ex-boyfriend." Jesse looks at Chris tentatively through his faint eyelashes and Chris tightens his mouth -- he hates being unsure of how to react to people, and hates not knowing what to say, but more and more he finds himself at a loss as he spends time with these people who don't mesh with him at all. People who take this Sex and the City romcom they're the one! bullshit way too seriously and harbor all this resentment against Zach because -- because he's Zach.
And they harbor all this pity for Chris because he hasn't "moved on", whatever that means. Jesse's "moved on" according to their little group's standards, but apparently "moved on" means becoming a moody, sullen mess whenever Zach's name is mentioned, and what the fuck is Jesse going to do, exactly, when Zach shows up in a week and stays in LA for ten minutes or 18 months? When they have to share a zip code and a gym and five coffee shops and a Whole Foods?
What’s Chris going to do?
*
Elizabeth disappears off the face of the earth and Chris hates himself for not doing the same. When Elizabeth isn’t with them, Jesse’s an unstoppable mess, and this one time is also the day Jesse is able to coerce Jonathan, Zach’s latest reject, into having lunch with him, Chris, and John.
Chris watches Jon over his beer and marvels at how expressive he is, how he does and says what he’s feeling when he’s feeling it. If he has a filter, Chris can’t see it -- that moment on every person’s face when they think of what they want to say and then beat it into something socially acceptable. On most people it passes quickly, while it takes Chris himself a tangible moment or so to do it -- Jonathan’s is instantaneous, like he’s incapable of a non-happy, non-sweet, non-considerate thought, which has to be total crap but the shell is impenetrable. He can understand why Zach would bail after a month of happy families and fond, loving smiles.
“The LA Chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club,” Jon repeats to himself once Jesse informs him. “I like it! I really do! Does the chapter depend on where we first had sex or met or something?”
“That’s a lot of places for a lot of us,” Jesse laughs, “So let’s stick to where we are right now and call that our chapter.”
“I’m game!” Jon says happily. Jon’s lighter than light beer arrives and Chris watches him take a quick sip before he looks around the table and says, “Guys, seriously, it’s been a month, I know, but -- I still miss him a little.”
“What happened, anyway?” John asks. “One minute I hear that Zach has a boyfriend plucked straight out of middle school --”
“I’m not that young,” Jon protests, and taps the neck of his beer as some kind of proof. John scoffs and goes on.
“And then the next minute, Chris tells us it’s over so -- yeah, I guess I kind of missed everything in between.”
“It was my fault,” Jon says, but the roll of his eyes and a little exasperated puff that escapes from the corner of his mouth hints that it totally wasn’t. “I get back from London after months of doing a play there, seeing Zach for holidays and once or twice, and he invites me to stay with him until Sundance, and then we go to Sundance together --”
“Oh, right, the Wall Street movie,” John remembers.
Yeah, Chris remembers it, too, and how he thinks he had never seen Zach as happy as when he was in New York filming that -- his project getting off the ground with such huge names, being so gleefully stupid about Jesse, gearing up for Kushner, and living all of that in New York, which Zach had wanted his whole fucking life. Chris feels the genuine smile on his face as he thinks about the hours they spent that summer talking about all of it and how everything was falling so beautifully into place.
“Right, and he introduces me to people as his boyfriend, and then we get back to New York and... it was pretty much over. So.” Jon sighs again and shrugs, then looks around the table. Chris looks around, too -- John is clearly considering the whole thing carefully, while Jesse looks sympathetic and sad.
Chris is skeptical, but then again, when isn’t he?
“Well, Chris,” Jesse begins, “You know Zach best -- known him the longest, anyway. What do you think?”
Chris swallows and he can’t say the first ten things to pop into his head:
- Yeah, sorry, three cross-continental fucks in six months do not a stable, long-term relationship make;
- By your holiday logic, I’m married to the entire Trek cast and Anne Hathaway;
- Jesse, weren’t you still with Zach at that point and wouldn’t that be like, a problem for you;
- Holy shit, who wants to be alone in Utah in January;
- You were just so there;
- Well, you’re hot;
- You’re hot, and Zach likes attractive people -- what makes you different? You sing? Uh, okay;
- How does “spend a week in my house fucking me” equate “I love you never leave me”;
- I can’t see Zach volunteering to call you his boyfriend;
- I can’t see Zach volunteering to call anyone his boyfriend.
“Um, did you -- talk about it?” Chris asks slowly.
“You know Zach,” Jon replies. “Of course he doesn’t talk about these things, even when I pressed him -- so it’s like one day he loves you, and one day he doesn’t.”
A feeling Chris knows, except apparently he’s the only one who waits around until Zach comes back -- another thing he can’t say, so he purses his lips and looks sorry. Jesse sighs loudly and waves a waitress over so they can order some food. Jonathan asks that they talk about other things, non-Zach things, and Chris is the first to agree wholeheartedly with him.
Since it's the last time most of them will be available and in LA for a while, the group lingers in the parking lot, embracing and promising to follow up on this and that as if… Chris sighs, because an apt metaphor for how effusive the group is about something as common as so busy -- see you in two weeks! totally escapes his realm of experience.
"And remind me," Jesse says as he holds Jon in his arms tightly and sways with him, like the movement will jog his memory. "Remind me remind me --"
"My show," Jon says happily as he clings to Jesse. "Somehow those big movie bosses said okay to letting me do a cabaret thing with some friends to promote that movie -- will you be here? Come on, please, you have to be here for it!"
"Uh, yeah, we're going to make a night out of it and it's going to be amazing."
"I have the perfect fuck you, Quinto song ready," Jon says with a light in his face that makes Chris raise his eyebrows because Zach hadn't mentioned that someone had introduced swearing to horse-and-buggy Pennsylbumblefuck.
"Tell me tell me tell me," Jesse says as he bounces on the balls of his feet.
"Okay, it's a little old because when it came out, everything was great and I didn’t think much about it except that it was catchy, but now I've been howling Adele all over my place --"
"I know this song!" Jesse shrieks. "Rolling in the Deep! Oh my God, don't even ask how many mornings I sing that in the shower, okay, just don't. I'm making myself a reminder," Jesse says as he keeps one arm around Jon and pulls out his phone. "I'm going to send you this bonus track -- same album, and it's my Zach song. They're so cathartic.”
"You guys should record an album," Chris chimes in. It seems to remind Jesse and Jon that he's there when they step out of each other's orbit for a moment -- they laugh a little awkwardly, like he clearly wasn't meant to hear all that, and then go back to ignoring Chris and hugging fiercely.
"So I'll send you that," Jesse finishes, and he tightens his arms around Jonathan again as he thinks aloud. "Right! Justin's friend! His law school friend! Get ready -- I'm about to activate my yenta powers."
"Oh no," Jon laughs as he hides his face in Jesse's shoulder. "Come on, not you too!"
"But he's so hot and come on, it's been what, a month? You're so ready. Come on. One date. One call. One email. One text. He is so sweet! I have such a good feeling about this!" Jesse hugs him tightly and then steps back from him, keeping his hands firmly on Jon's shoulders. "You're only twenty-six, you can't shrivel away and give up now, okay? You can do so much better."
"I can't say no to you!" Jon says, still so amused and looking at Jesse playfully, even if Chris isn't fooled by the mock hesitating -- he wants whatever Jesse is offering, wants it so badly he's practically salivating on the asphalt. "Okay, give him my email -- I'm so busy with stuff, an email's gonna have to do for now!"
"Guys," John calls out, finally, and Chris realizes he would have stood there watching the proceedings like a zoo exhibit if John hadn't brought him out of it. "I've gotta head out, but it was good seeing you again."
Quicker than he thought possible, John is engulfed into the swarm of pasty curls and excitement that is Jesse and Jonathan, but he smoothly extricates himself and takes a few steps back to his car. He meets Chris's eyes and widens them a little in mock-panic as he moves away and Jesse and Jon fall back into their conversation.
"Can I get a ride?" Chris asks suddenly. "Looks like rain and you're going by my place anyway, right?"
"Who told you to jog here, asshole," John laughs. "Yeah, of course."
"Oh, Chris, you're going, too?" Jesse asks. "If I don't see you soon -- it's been so much fun, these past couple of weeks. I'm so glad we got to hang out as much as we did."
"Same here," Chris says as he swallows whatever's in his throat. "And hey, Jon, good to meet you finally."
"You're not getting away without a hug," Jon warns him as he walks over and throws his arms around Chris, who rests his hands lightly on his ribs and gives him the customary two pats on the back.
Except Jon takes the moment to hiss in his ear, "Cho already texted me your number, so if you're in town for a little bit -- maybe we can get a drink, okay? Just the two of us?"
Chris makes a hmm-totally-considering-that noise in his chest and tries to stop his eyes from shooting out of their sockets as Jon lets him go and smirks at him slyly. He steps away, winks, and turns back to Jesse, falling easily into conversation again as Chris sticks his hands in his pockets and wonders how dirty, exactly, he should be feeling, because his gut reaction is really really a lot.
"That kid totally hit on me," Chris says when he climbs into the passenger seat of John's car. "Now give me your iPhone so I can hear this Adele person."
"It's in the dock, genius -- get the whole album from the music store, Kerri’s been bugging me to listen to her stuff," John says as they leave the parking lot. "And of course he hit on you -- he's needy, you're there, isn't that your m.o.?"
"Thanks, pal."
"It's your baby blues -- something about them cries I'll never break your heart, which makes it doubly heartbreaking when you inevitably do."
"Don't hold back, John, tell me what you really think," Chris says as he watches the album download and puts the phone back in the dock. "Also, I'm so grateful this is the last one of these we're doing for a while."
"Aw, seriously?" John asks. "I had fun. It was a lot of fun."
"Are you kidding?" Chris asks. "I -- where do I begin in listing what a clusterfuck --"
"Clusterfuck? Nope. Annoying to you, maybe. Uncomfortable, sure! Deeply probing and too personal at points, okay, I'll give you that. Not a clusterfuck, though -- or if it is, well done, because your idea of a clusterfuck is a series of awkward lunch dates with people you don't see eye to eye with."
"And you do?"
"I'm not saying me and Kerri are going to start going on couples' retreats or take up pottery or some shit, but it wasn't all bad." Chris glances over and John meets his eyes for a moment before looking back to the road. "Lifestyle-wise, yeah, whatever works for you -- bi or straight, fucking everything or nothing in sight, monogamous or not -- it doesn't mean the rest of us are crazy because this cute, coupley bullshit -- that we know is bullshit, Chris, because we're not idiots -- is fun sometimes."
"I never said you were."
"Not with your giant mouth, no," John replies. "And if you think Zach's the only person who gets that about you, then you're more like us than you thought. Just so you know."
Chris sulks and when Adele starts to play, yeah, it's a little gross how perfect it fits into the shape of everything at that moment. And it is really catchy.
*
A few days later, Chris opens the front door of his building, slips on his sunglasses, and stops in the doorway because Zach and Noah are standing just a few feet away.
"Hey, stranger," Chris calls out.
"Noah felt like visiting," Zach explains. "I told him: Noah, seriously, Chris is busy, but because you want to, we'll stand here for a few minutes and see if he pops out. Maybe we'll even call him." He holds out his phone as proof. "See? Was about to press the Chris button."
"Noah's timing is perfect, actually," Chris notes. "This is about the time when I walk over to your friend's bungalow and say hi to Noah through the fence on my way to coffee."
"You do fucking not," Zach laughs. "Even your vagina, voluminous as it is, wouldn't be that fucking sappy."
"Man, do you know how much LA missed you?" Chris asks. He finally takes a step out of his doorway and crosses the couple of feet to Zach and Noah, kneeling down to let Noah nuzzle his jacket and get reacquainted after a year of fence greetings (he wishes he was lying about that, but he wasn't about to get a dog when his friend had one that already liked him.)
"How much did LA miss me?" Zach asks.
"LA missed you so much that a couple of fags, a hag, and John Cho got together and made a We Miss Zach So We're Going to Drink and Eat Cheap Appetizers and Laugh about Him Club, and we even went to a Chili's once."
"Yeah, I got a text like that from our Choster," Zach replies. "Something like J.J. needs to summon us to his lens flare batcave soon or I'm going to start a meth lab in this godforsaken Chili's."
"My liver missed you, too," Chris says, his attention still focused on Noah, who is starting to get annoyed at how much Chris is running his fingers through his fur. "It's been hammered like, every afternoon for the past two weeks, when rumors of your return started to circulate."
"I would have come sooner," Zach says as he kneels down, too, and scratches at Noah's sides, like he hadn't done that for an hour when he first got back (at least, that was Chris's wager.) "But I haven't got much here anymore, except the pets and Trek. I'm actually thinking of flying them back, seeing what it'd be like to all live in the city, you know?"
"You haven't got much here anymore?" Chris asks as he drops his hands off Noah. Sure enough, Noah nudges him for more headscratches and Chris automatically complies, just so he keeps his hands from punching Zach in the face or something similarly deserved. "Look, Zach, sorry to remind you, but you're not East Coast anymore." He looks up at Zach, who's raised his eyebrows and furrows them when Chris nods emphatically.
"It's true," Chris adds. "You're West Coast through and through. It's just a way of life and you can't just move and forget it. You drive to the supermarket four blocks away but walk two miles to your fucking yoga studio; your personal food pyramid is separated into avocados and everything else; and do I even have to mention flip flops? Like, what are you going to do living in a place where you can only wear them about twelve weeks a year?"
"It sucked," Zach replies, and Chris watches his adam's apple move in his throat, so fucking there and teasing him he can't stand it. "I had to walk home in a blizzard in January. And I slid down some steps in the subway at one point? Because of snow."
"Snow, Zach," Chris says sadly. "You want to move back for snow? All it wants to do is hurt you and make you cold -- and snow and flip flops don't get along. At all."
"We're still talking about literal snow, right?"
"Whatever," Chris says as he stands up. "Wanna come upstairs? Do you want to fuck or grab some coffee or lunch or anything?"
"Fuck, then lunch, then coffee?" Zach asks. "Also, I'm going back to New York like, next week, and you should come. New York in the spring -- it's fucking gorgeous. Not flip flop weather, though."
"When have I ever worn flip flops? Ever?"
"I miss them so much," Zach whines as he leans against Chris and they walk back to the front door. "That little prong stabbing between my big toe and the next toe? I miss it. I miss the sound they make."
Chris holds the door open for Zach and Noah as they rush through the entrance to the staircase, and tries not to let that feeling that people might call "fondness" or "love" or "affection" choke him as it rises up in his throat.
*
He almost thinks it's New Zealand again, when he wakes up post-coital and ready to take on the world but it's still broad daylight out. Chris looks to his left and blinks slowly, absorbing the sight of Zach sleeping on his stomach, head facing away from Chris, the wide plane of his back mocking Chris as it moves slowly with Zach's breathing. Chris turns on his side and rests a hand between Zach's shoulder blades, tracing the curve of his spine once before his hand travels back and just stays at the top of his back.
"Are you petting me?" Zach asks into the fold of his arms. "Like a cat?"
"You need to get your back waxed soon," Chris notes. "You've practically got Wonder Years bangs growing off your shoulders."
"'s why I loved New York," Zach replies. "Everyone worshipped me."
"Only because they don't know you like I do."
Zach turns on his side and slides across the bed until his back is against Chris's front and Chris can wrap an arm around him and pull him close.
"You'll come to New York with me?" Zach asks, and Chris knows him too well, knows the fake-sleepy voice Zach uses when he drops a serious question he can't admit is serious.
"Why not," Chris says. "There are worse ways to spend hiatus."
"Oh my God," Zach realizes. "And you can meet my co-star from that play of mine you never saw. Christian is -- he's pure venom. You're going to love him. We should tag team him. When he goes for guys, you're totally his type. I'm too -- I don't know, gay?"
"Man, doesn't anyone get you?" Chris sighs as he rests his mouth against Zach's totally-not-too-hairy shoulder. "You're too gay for some, not gay enough for others -- I think you're amazing just the way you are."
"Shut up, you already got me into bed."
"Just saying," Chris adds. "Thought you needed to be reminded."
"Wait, was that a song lyric? I'm leaving if you just quoted a pop song at me in a deceptively adorable moment."
"That would require you to admit you listen to pop music, and you could never do that," Chris reminds him.
"Fuck," Zach sighs. "Guess I'll have to let it slide."
"Guess so," Chris laughs as he shuts his eyes and presses his face against Zach’s shoulder, hoping they can get away with not leaving for just a little while longer.
*
There's some insane disco party and the last LCD Soundsystem concert on earth (yeah, right) and a whole metric ton of crap besides, so they don't get out to New York together until it's real spring -- warm weather and colorful plant life and none of the crushing oppressive disgusting heat that will take over within a few weeks, maybe a month if they're lucky. Zach packs flip flops, but doesn't wear them all the time because fucking Jesus do they hurt.
("Also, you're like, old now," Chris points out. "Get some goddamn respectable shoes. Who gives a shit about your toe cleavage?"
"Just for that? Wearing them everywhere. Spite blisters for me! So worth it."
One excursion outside of indeterminate length later: “Why do you let me do this to myself?!”
“Because it’s time you admit that sometimes there are things more important than proving me wrong.”
“Never.”)
Zach had sublet his house in the city to a friend who doesn't mind if they take over the guest room for a weekend, and if Chris can't pass the Bowery Hotel without a tug to his heartstrings like he's betraying an old friend -- well, fuck it, he's got better things/people to do.
Christian Borle is, in fact, a tiny, sweaty cobra of a man who falls instantly in love when he meets Chris, possibly the only person in the city who gives less of a fuck about anything and everything than Christian himself does. Zach sighs, asks out loud what he was thinking in introducing them, and points out that Christian will be in LA filming some knock off Glee bullshit for the fall, so they should get to know and like each other under penalty of death.
The Chrises raise their eyebrows and wave Zach off, falling back into an analysis of how theater's great and all, but they all need to sell out and fast.
"Oh hell no," Zach says, trying to pronounce it in the Internet-accepted transliteration aw hale naw, but it's too late -- his years of training to speak in a crisp, educated, non-regional dialect make it impossible. "I did my sitcom, I've done my time. Bring on the Joe Wright-directed Oscar-winning period pieces with Keira Knightley, please."
"Can you imagine Zach in period garb?" Chris asks Christian.
"I don't have to -- if you had come seen our play, you could have seen him wear the dregs of the 80s we bought from Goodwill," Christian replies.
(If Chris squeezes Zach's forearm just under the table as a way of apologizing for missing him in a role that meant so much to him -- if Zach's foot slips out of its flip flop and his toe nudges Chris's ugly brown loafer -- then that's that, isn't it?)
They steal a few more days and tack them onto their busy city weekend, and one of those days they run into Jesse and his boyfriend on the way to brunch or lunch or whatever that meal is with the complementary booze in the shade of a tiny eatery in Brooklyn.
"Hey guys!" Jesse coos in his way (and John now greets Chris in the same tone, too -- it's so fucking distinctive and saccharine, they couldn't help but adopt it for their own after the lunch date club with the huge name disbanded.) "Zach, I thought I saw on Twitter that you were in the city -- didn't know you'd brought Chris with you! What a small world!"
"Oh. Oh," Zach says and he turns to Chris to explain, "I tweet that picture I took of those shoes. Seriously, why are shoes so important right now?"
"Because it's not a real New York experience unless we've walked six miles a day?"
"It takes a lot of getting used to!" Jesse chimes in, and Chris and Zach slowly turn their heads to remember why they weren't walking just at that moment. "Anyway, hey. We're all here outside this place that serves brunch -- let's all get a table, okay?"
"Oh," Zach says again. He looks to Chris, who stares back at him, and Chris thinks he can't decipher Zach's face expression through all that hesitation -- oh. Chris scrunches his nose up a little and inclines his head just an inch towards the rest of the street.
"I think we're good," Zach says finally after he bursts out laughing at Chris's attempts towards subtlety. "But we'll see you around, huh?"
"Yeah, I'll text you," Jesse says after the seemingly tiniest of emotional punches landed on his Brawny man chin. "And you, too, Chris!"
"Totally," Chris agrees, and they walk around Jesse and his boyfriend and head down the street, leaning close to each other to whisper:
"Fuck, now where are we going to eat? If you say that gutted IKEA-decorated garage with the three-hour wait in Greenpoint, we're done."
"Okay, we've gone to so many places in Greenpoint but why do you only remember that one -- baby, don't ever say I don't take you nice places, you just refuse to remember them! Anyway, we're walking another mile to brunch."
"This is cruelty," Chris whines. "I'll eat a hotdog if we don't stop at the next place, I swear to fucking Trader Joe's I will eat a fucking hotdog."
"Well, Chris, we can't ditch Jesse and his chia pet and then duck into the next fucking place right down the --"
"Yes we can, because we're assholes now, and we do what we want."
"Not sure I like that," Zach says as Chris leads him into a brunch place half a block down that's completely identical in every uniquely quirky way to every other tiny brunch place in Brooklyn, but it still makes Zach go, "Never mind, this place is totally adorable -- new favorite!"
"You are hysterically gay; Christian was so right about you. Don’t know how I didn’t see it before."
"Mistake mistake mistake," Zach chants under his breath until someone comes by and he emits a gentle little, "Two please," with a smile.
"Inside or outside?" the hostess asks.
Chris shrugs and nudges Zach in the shoulder, then supplies a quick, "Outside," and motions out through the glass back doors.