Hey, You / Asleep / Parenting Skillz (3 Ficlets in the Coffee Fix 'verse)
Title: Hey, You / Asleep / Parenting Skillz
Author: therumjournals
Fandom: Star Trek RPF
Pairing: Chris/Zach
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,870
Description: Maybe they saw it coming. Scenes from the Coffee Fix ‘verse.
Warning: only a little angst this time
Hey, You
“Just dinner. That’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s all you were asking fourteen years ago, and I think we both know how that turned out.”
Zach stepped out of the bathroom in his trailer, lost in thought, and spent five minutes answering texts on his cell phone before he realized that Chris was standing in the doorway, watching him.
“Hey, stalker.”
Chris blushed and toed the ground. “Look, I...I wanted to apologize about last night. I was really drunk, and I think I might have been a little...overenthusiastic.”
“What’s that mean?” Zach asked, opening the mini-fridge and grabbing a couple bottles of water to toss into his gym bag. “You saying you didn’t actually mean it when you threw your arms around my neck and said you’d go anywhere with me, even, and I quote, ‘to Gaytown’?”
Chris winced. “I said that?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Sorry. Wow. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Drinking, you know. It lowers the inhibitions.” Zach shut the fridge door with his hip and leaned against it. “Makes people say what they’ve been thinking.” He looked at Chris with an eyebrow raised and Chris reddened a little under his scrutiny.
“Um. I wasn’t...it’s not like I’ve been...thinking that. About you. Or anything.”
“Right. So, you wanna go, or what?”
“Go where?”
“To Gaytown.” Zach said, smirking.
Chris laughed despite himself. “You’re taking my drunken declarations pretty seriously here, Quinto.”
“Yeah, you know, now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure I’m not the first guy you’ve said that to. Not sure it’s always accompanied by the sloppy humping though.” He straightened up, slung his bag over his shoulder. “But anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
Chris bit his lip, and Zach wondered if maybe he should have assumed.
“Or, we could just go to dinner.”
“What, like a date?”
Zach shrugged. “If you want. Or just dinner.”
“We have dinner all the time.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“So it’s different this time?”
Zach smiled. “If you want it to be.”
*
“Thanks, man,” Chris said when they pulled up in front of his place. He put a hand on the door handle.
Zach raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not usually how I end my dates, Chris.”
Chris looked back at him, swallowed nervously. “Oh. Uh...you wanna come inside? Play some Wii?”
“Play some Wii?” Now the eyebrow was accompanied by a smile twitching at Zach’s lips.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, okay, Chris. Let’s go inside. Let’s play some Wii.”
Chris felt relief wash over him, but it was immediately supplanted by a nervous fluttering in his stomach. He opened the car door.
Inside the apartment, Chris focused his sights on the Wii console next to the TV, made himself walk across the room. He stood in front of it for a second, listening as Zach took a few more steps and came to a stop behind him.
“What do you want to play?” he asked, painfully aware that his voice was shaking.
“Chris.” Zach’s voice was soft and magnetic and Chris turned toward him, and they moved to close the space between them, lips and bodies crashing against each other. Their eyes were closed and they clutched at each others’ shirts as they kissed, hot and messy and awkward, and Chris wondered why Zach was smiling, because it felt like this was the most serious thing that he had ever done in his life.
But Zach pulled back and he was cupping Chris’s face in his hands and kissing the corners of his lips and saying “God, Chris, thank god.”
Chris furrowed his brows and said, “Thank god what?” and Zach smiled and said “Thank god you’re kissing me right now.”
They went into the bedroom then, kissing unceasing little kisses across cheeks and necks and shoulders. And they were laughing, and later that’s what they would remember most, the giddy laughter, as Zach tripped Chris onto the bed, as Chris relaxed underneath him when Zach ran a palm across his stomach, tight with nerves. Chris lay back and let Zach lick deep into his mouth, and he moaned and touched Zach blindly, and he couldn’t help but clutch and squeeze at his arms and shoulders and around the back of his neck like he’d never been able to before. He felt Zach move, opened his eyes to see him sliding down, a hand working at his fly, and Zach licked his lips and smiled. Chris felt a flood of nerves again, heard himself say “Zach, I don’t know…” Zach pressed a kiss to his hipbone and looked up at him and said, “Hey. Hey, relax,” and his voice was soothing, and Chris took a deep breath.
“Hey, Zach?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this how you usually end your dates?”
Zach scrambled up over him and looked at him, and now he was serious as he kissed Chris, softly, for a long time, and when he pulled away it was only to whisper in his ear, “I don’t want this one to end.”
Asleep
Zach shut the door quietly behind him as he walked into the house. He followed the sound of the TV into the living room and paused in the doorway, a smile playing on his lips. Chris was sprawled across the length of the couch, fast asleep, with Gavin curled on top of him, as the credits of Land Before Time scrawled across the TV. Jesse was tangled in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor, asleep with his hand in the half-empty bowl of popcorn next to him. Zach’s heart swelled a little with love at the sight, and he stepped inside, leaning over the couch to pick up the remote and switch off the TV.
His eyes darted up to Chris’s face, lingered there for a long moment until a wave of heartache crashed over him. For a second he’d almost been able to imagine that when Chris woke up, everything would stay like this - peaceful and calm and perfect. But he could already see the arguments spinning out before them, full of passive aggressive comments and snarled jabs and things that he didn’t want to say, that he regretted saying the moment they left his mouth and one hundred times more when he saw in Chris’s face that they had worked. But he still said them, and he’d say them again and he’d let Chris’s words get to him, and he’d let Chris’s silence and his pointed looks get to him, and he could see the set of his jaw and the accusing blue gaze even in Chris’s sleeping face, and he tore his eyes away.
Zach knelt to lift Jesse from his nest of blankets, trying not to wake him. Jesse grumbled and wrapped his arms around Zach’s neck, then he was asleep again, his chin digging into Zach’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Zach whispered, nudging at Chris’s arm with his knee. “I’m home. Wake up.”
Chris made an “mmff” sound and squinted up at him. “Hi.”
Zach shifted Jesse in his arms and nodded at Gavin, where he lay curled against Chris’s chest. “Let’s get these monkeys to bed.”
Chris nodded and sat up, taking Gavin in his arms, and together they headed up the stairs and down the hall to the boys’ room.
*
Chris was already in bed when Zach came back into the bedroom from brushing his teeth. Zach slipped under the covers on his stomach, reached over to turn out the light, and propped himself up on his elbows. He looked at Chris in the darkness.
“What?” Chris asked, not moving his head from the pillow.
Zach held his gaze for a second longer and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. “Night,” he said, turning away.
Chris closed his eyes against the sight of Zach’s back and the space between them. “Night.”
Parenting Skillz
“So, were you aware that Jesse has some sort of misguided idea that we’re going to let him audition for something this year?” Chris had an amused look on his face as he posed the question to Zach.
“That explains a lot,” Zach said, rolling his eyes.
“What?”
“I caught him yesterday with my phone, calling Rosalind. I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he said that he, and I quote, ‘needed representation’.”
Chris laughed. “Oh god. What are we going to do with him?”
“Well, we could let him-“
“Hell no. No, Zach. Are you kidding me? No.”
“So…that’s a no then?” Zach asked, his eyes twinkling. He put his hands on Chris’s hips and gave him a long kiss on the lips.
“What did you say to him, or should I be afraid to ask?” Chris grumbled, but he turned his head to the side to let Zach press kisses along his jaw and bite softly at his neck.
“No worries,” Zach said into his skin, smiling. “I just told him to ask you.”
“Oh, thanks a lot. Jerk.” He turned to meet Zach’s lips, opened his mouth to slide their tongues together and the kiss was calm and lazy and perfect. “I had an idea,” Chris said, pulling away.
“Brilliant,” Zach murmured, chasing Chris’s lips again.
“I haven’t even told you what it is yet,” Chris said, laughing and turning his head, so that Zach’s lips brushed against his cheek instead.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s brilliant.” Zach kissed him on the temple, kept his lips pressed there as Chris spoke.
“Why don’t you take Jess to the Ender’s Game premiere next week? Maybe we can use it as bribery so he gets some college applications done.”
“Mmmm,” Zach mused into Chris’s hair. “That actually is brilliant.” He pulled back a little so he could look at Chris. “You don’t want to go with me?”
“I mean, yeah, I would, you know I would, but I think he’d really enjoy it. You guys could have special bonding time or whatever. I’ll do something with Gavin, it’ll be nice.”
“JJ will miss you. He’ll make that face at me.”
“He’ll make that face at you because the appearance of Zachary Quinto and his devastatingly handsome son on the red carpet will take everyone’s attention off his little movie,” Chris said with a wink.
“Very true. Alright, well, I think it’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”
“Just…don’t let him make out with any starlets, okay? And no parties - I don’t need my son inheriting his father’s taste for cosmos.”
Zach rolled his eyes and shut Chris up with a kiss, hands creeping up to cup his face. The front door slammed open, and they heard Jesse say, “Ew, you guys. Not in front of the kids.”
Chris pulled away and looked at him with a smirk. “Aww, Jess, I thought you wanted us to kiss more!”
“But not TOO, too much,” Zach added, grinning.
“Oh my god, are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Nope!” Chris said cheerfully, as Zach chuckled behind him.
“I have residual childhood trauma from that, I’ll have you know,” Jesse said, flouncing out of the room.
“Good,” Zach called at his back, “You can channel it into your portrayal of tragic characters!”
“Did our son just flounce?” Chris asked, shaking his head.
Zach laughed and pulled Chris in for a hug. “Maybe he will be inheriting my taste in cosmos after all.”
(Continued...)
Author: therumjournals
Fandom: Star Trek RPF
Pairing: Chris/Zach
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,870
Description: Maybe they saw it coming. Scenes from the Coffee Fix ‘verse.
Warning: only a little angst this time
Hey, You
“Just dinner. That’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s all you were asking fourteen years ago, and I think we both know how that turned out.”
Zach stepped out of the bathroom in his trailer, lost in thought, and spent five minutes answering texts on his cell phone before he realized that Chris was standing in the doorway, watching him.
“Hey, stalker.”
Chris blushed and toed the ground. “Look, I...I wanted to apologize about last night. I was really drunk, and I think I might have been a little...overenthusiastic.”
“What’s that mean?” Zach asked, opening the mini-fridge and grabbing a couple bottles of water to toss into his gym bag. “You saying you didn’t actually mean it when you threw your arms around my neck and said you’d go anywhere with me, even, and I quote, ‘to Gaytown’?”
Chris winced. “I said that?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Sorry. Wow. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Drinking, you know. It lowers the inhibitions.” Zach shut the fridge door with his hip and leaned against it. “Makes people say what they’ve been thinking.” He looked at Chris with an eyebrow raised and Chris reddened a little under his scrutiny.
“Um. I wasn’t...it’s not like I’ve been...thinking that. About you. Or anything.”
“Right. So, you wanna go, or what?”
“Go where?”
“To Gaytown.” Zach said, smirking.
Chris laughed despite himself. “You’re taking my drunken declarations pretty seriously here, Quinto.”
“Yeah, you know, now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure I’m not the first guy you’ve said that to. Not sure it’s always accompanied by the sloppy humping though.” He straightened up, slung his bag over his shoulder. “But anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
Chris bit his lip, and Zach wondered if maybe he should have assumed.
“Or, we could just go to dinner.”
“What, like a date?”
Zach shrugged. “If you want. Or just dinner.”
“We have dinner all the time.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“So it’s different this time?”
Zach smiled. “If you want it to be.”
*
“Thanks, man,” Chris said when they pulled up in front of his place. He put a hand on the door handle.
Zach raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not usually how I end my dates, Chris.”
Chris looked back at him, swallowed nervously. “Oh. Uh...you wanna come inside? Play some Wii?”
“Play some Wii?” Now the eyebrow was accompanied by a smile twitching at Zach’s lips.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, okay, Chris. Let’s go inside. Let’s play some Wii.”
Chris felt relief wash over him, but it was immediately supplanted by a nervous fluttering in his stomach. He opened the car door.
Inside the apartment, Chris focused his sights on the Wii console next to the TV, made himself walk across the room. He stood in front of it for a second, listening as Zach took a few more steps and came to a stop behind him.
“What do you want to play?” he asked, painfully aware that his voice was shaking.
“Chris.” Zach’s voice was soft and magnetic and Chris turned toward him, and they moved to close the space between them, lips and bodies crashing against each other. Their eyes were closed and they clutched at each others’ shirts as they kissed, hot and messy and awkward, and Chris wondered why Zach was smiling, because it felt like this was the most serious thing that he had ever done in his life.
But Zach pulled back and he was cupping Chris’s face in his hands and kissing the corners of his lips and saying “God, Chris, thank god.”
Chris furrowed his brows and said, “Thank god what?” and Zach smiled and said “Thank god you’re kissing me right now.”
They went into the bedroom then, kissing unceasing little kisses across cheeks and necks and shoulders. And they were laughing, and later that’s what they would remember most, the giddy laughter, as Zach tripped Chris onto the bed, as Chris relaxed underneath him when Zach ran a palm across his stomach, tight with nerves. Chris lay back and let Zach lick deep into his mouth, and he moaned and touched Zach blindly, and he couldn’t help but clutch and squeeze at his arms and shoulders and around the back of his neck like he’d never been able to before. He felt Zach move, opened his eyes to see him sliding down, a hand working at his fly, and Zach licked his lips and smiled. Chris felt a flood of nerves again, heard himself say “Zach, I don’t know…” Zach pressed a kiss to his hipbone and looked up at him and said, “Hey. Hey, relax,” and his voice was soothing, and Chris took a deep breath.
“Hey, Zach?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this how you usually end your dates?”
Zach scrambled up over him and looked at him, and now he was serious as he kissed Chris, softly, for a long time, and when he pulled away it was only to whisper in his ear, “I don’t want this one to end.”
Asleep
Zach shut the door quietly behind him as he walked into the house. He followed the sound of the TV into the living room and paused in the doorway, a smile playing on his lips. Chris was sprawled across the length of the couch, fast asleep, with Gavin curled on top of him, as the credits of Land Before Time scrawled across the TV. Jesse was tangled in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor, asleep with his hand in the half-empty bowl of popcorn next to him. Zach’s heart swelled a little with love at the sight, and he stepped inside, leaning over the couch to pick up the remote and switch off the TV.
His eyes darted up to Chris’s face, lingered there for a long moment until a wave of heartache crashed over him. For a second he’d almost been able to imagine that when Chris woke up, everything would stay like this - peaceful and calm and perfect. But he could already see the arguments spinning out before them, full of passive aggressive comments and snarled jabs and things that he didn’t want to say, that he regretted saying the moment they left his mouth and one hundred times more when he saw in Chris’s face that they had worked. But he still said them, and he’d say them again and he’d let Chris’s words get to him, and he’d let Chris’s silence and his pointed looks get to him, and he could see the set of his jaw and the accusing blue gaze even in Chris’s sleeping face, and he tore his eyes away.
Zach knelt to lift Jesse from his nest of blankets, trying not to wake him. Jesse grumbled and wrapped his arms around Zach’s neck, then he was asleep again, his chin digging into Zach’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Zach whispered, nudging at Chris’s arm with his knee. “I’m home. Wake up.”
Chris made an “mmff” sound and squinted up at him. “Hi.”
Zach shifted Jesse in his arms and nodded at Gavin, where he lay curled against Chris’s chest. “Let’s get these monkeys to bed.”
Chris nodded and sat up, taking Gavin in his arms, and together they headed up the stairs and down the hall to the boys’ room.
*
Chris was already in bed when Zach came back into the bedroom from brushing his teeth. Zach slipped under the covers on his stomach, reached over to turn out the light, and propped himself up on his elbows. He looked at Chris in the darkness.
“What?” Chris asked, not moving his head from the pillow.
Zach held his gaze for a second longer and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. “Night,” he said, turning away.
Chris closed his eyes against the sight of Zach’s back and the space between them. “Night.”
Parenting Skillz
“So, were you aware that Jesse has some sort of misguided idea that we’re going to let him audition for something this year?” Chris had an amused look on his face as he posed the question to Zach.
“That explains a lot,” Zach said, rolling his eyes.
“What?”
“I caught him yesterday with my phone, calling Rosalind. I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he said that he, and I quote, ‘needed representation’.”
Chris laughed. “Oh god. What are we going to do with him?”
“Well, we could let him-“
“Hell no. No, Zach. Are you kidding me? No.”
“So…that’s a no then?” Zach asked, his eyes twinkling. He put his hands on Chris’s hips and gave him a long kiss on the lips.
“What did you say to him, or should I be afraid to ask?” Chris grumbled, but he turned his head to the side to let Zach press kisses along his jaw and bite softly at his neck.
“No worries,” Zach said into his skin, smiling. “I just told him to ask you.”
“Oh, thanks a lot. Jerk.” He turned to meet Zach’s lips, opened his mouth to slide their tongues together and the kiss was calm and lazy and perfect. “I had an idea,” Chris said, pulling away.
“Brilliant,” Zach murmured, chasing Chris’s lips again.
“I haven’t even told you what it is yet,” Chris said, laughing and turning his head, so that Zach’s lips brushed against his cheek instead.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s brilliant.” Zach kissed him on the temple, kept his lips pressed there as Chris spoke.
“Why don’t you take Jess to the Ender’s Game premiere next week? Maybe we can use it as bribery so he gets some college applications done.”
“Mmmm,” Zach mused into Chris’s hair. “That actually is brilliant.” He pulled back a little so he could look at Chris. “You don’t want to go with me?”
“I mean, yeah, I would, you know I would, but I think he’d really enjoy it. You guys could have special bonding time or whatever. I’ll do something with Gavin, it’ll be nice.”
“JJ will miss you. He’ll make that face at me.”
“He’ll make that face at you because the appearance of Zachary Quinto and his devastatingly handsome son on the red carpet will take everyone’s attention off his little movie,” Chris said with a wink.
“Very true. Alright, well, I think it’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”
“Just…don’t let him make out with any starlets, okay? And no parties - I don’t need my son inheriting his father’s taste for cosmos.”
Zach rolled his eyes and shut Chris up with a kiss, hands creeping up to cup his face. The front door slammed open, and they heard Jesse say, “Ew, you guys. Not in front of the kids.”
Chris pulled away and looked at him with a smirk. “Aww, Jess, I thought you wanted us to kiss more!”
“But not TOO, too much,” Zach added, grinning.
“Oh my god, are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Nope!” Chris said cheerfully, as Zach chuckled behind him.
“I have residual childhood trauma from that, I’ll have you know,” Jesse said, flouncing out of the room.
“Good,” Zach called at his back, “You can channel it into your portrayal of tragic characters!”
“Did our son just flounce?” Chris asked, shaking his head.
Zach laughed and pulled Chris in for a hug. “Maybe he will be inheriting my taste in cosmos after all.”
(Continued...)