fic - accidentally - star trek rps
Title: Accidentally
Pairing: Chris/Zach (ST:XI RPS)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: c.7,100 (wtf)
Disclaimer: This is a completely fictional story written about fictional constructs of real people. I make no profit; I do not know these people; and I intend no disrespect whatsoever.
Notes: I apologize in advance, for lo! and for woe!, I'm a dirty, wretched Chris Pine apologist. Also, a giant sap. This is kind of the disappointment of a lovechild of D: and Inhabiting, with a dominant Scrabble gene. Its parents are much better than it, and you should read them.
He is not gay for Zach, least of all married-with-pets-serving-as-kid-proxies gay for Zach.'>
"Hey," Chris says, gesturing for Alex to enter the makeup trailer ahead of him. Thus begins his customary bleary-eyed monosyllabic exchange with the man he knows almost nothing about, except that he wields eyelash curlers with alarming ferocity and was once heard arguing over the difference between Lady Bug and Lady Danger lipstick shades. This is enough to keep Chris on the windy side of Alex's law. Cultivating allies in makeup departments has never done Chris a disservice.
"Chris, hey. How're you?"
"Good, good. You?" he asks reflexively. His eyes immediately go to where Zach is sitting in a director's chair, eyes shut and earbuds in. He looks exhausted.
As Chris makes to go over, Alex frowns and stops him with a hand on his shoulder. "Uh." He pauses. "Is that for Zach?" He eyes the Coffee and a Jelly Donut "Signature Beverage" (topped with vanilla bean-infused whipped cream) dubiously. "Just. He's going to bite your head off if it's not black, no frills," he says apologetically.
This, Chris concedes, is ordinarily true. Zach can be kind of a pretentious minimalist sometimes, and he's worst in the early mornings. Chris considers it his civic duty to prevent him from throwing important things away willy-nilly before 11am, and from doing things like, as he did on one particularly memorable occasion, buying an oil painting of a purple square from a sketchy art website for $1600. But Zach's been really stressed lately, and if the conversation during their talk-until-one-of-us-falls-asleep thing last night is any indicator, today is one of the days that Zach will accept cupcake coffee without excess bitchery. Somewhere deep, deep down inside, he will probably even be grateful. At least until the sugar crash, but by then Chris will be long gone and therefore safe.
"I got it," he reassures, and Alex holds up his hands and says, "Your funeral, man."
If so, at least he can hope the eulogy mentions that he died trying to do something nice for a friend. Filming this movie -- playing this role -- has been hell on Zach, emotionally and psychologically. It surprised Chris at first on some level that anything could get to Zach, but then he stuck around set for a few days, and now he kind of wonders what possessed Zach to take this role and still keep working as Sylar. The character is like that dude from Pleasantville, the one who did things because people told him to and wouldn't stop doing something until someone told him to do something else.
Zach says it's making him think about determinism and Western society (Chris deserves a fucking medal for listening to a forty-minute spiel on Hobbes -- not the tiger, unfortunately -- three nights ago.) But it's also making him twitchy and broody and even sad, which is just not on. For all his intellectualism, Zach is usually fairly upbeat.
Chris walks over unimpeded this time and tries to guess whether today's a day for Tantric chanting or for Radiohead. Probably Radiohead -- yes: head-bobbing, no: stretchy pants. To double check, he steals an earbud, and yep, Pablo Honey it is.
"Zach, Zach," Chris says, reaching to pull the other earbud out and hopping up on the makeup counter (and point proven: Alex only rolls his eyes, instead of frog-marching Chris out of the trailer). "So thoroughly predictable."
Finally Zach opens his eyes. "I like predictability," he grumps, then sneezes. That reminds Chris to pick up some orange juice next time he heads to the store; Zach could probably use the immune system boost. "S'comfortable."
"I know you do," Chris says, affectionate. "Here." He holds out the Coffee and a Jelly Donut as Zach burrows down further in his chair. "The gods of all times before noon present you with a sacred gift."
"If you're implying that bringing me coffee is an act worthy of apotheosis, sorry, no."
Chris knows what apotheosis is, he really does, but Zach scoops a bit of whipped cream onto his straw and adds, bitchily, "Which means, in Chris-sized words, you're not a god, just a morning person."
"Which means I have the power to get you to drink Starbucks and like it."
"Please," Zach snorts. "I have standards even when I'm not operating at optimal levels of coherence."
"Nope!" Chris says cheerfully. "You don't. About, oh, three weeks ago, I poured Starbucks -- and not even fair trade -- into a Lamill cup. You still latched on like barnacle to substrate."
Clearly scandalized and traumatized, Zach snaps his head up. He has a little bit of whipped cream on the tip of his nose. "You did not," he says.
"Did so. Was bored."
"I don't believe you," Zach insists.
"That's okay, I know the truth." He kicks a leg out to nudge Zach's foot. "Anyway, I gotta go. Don't forget book night tonight." He laughs.
Zach waves him on impatiently, too busy drinking to talk.
As he walks out, he sees Alex giving him a speculative look out of the corner of his eye and wonders what's up with the dude -- probably just considering which shade of eyeshadow suits his skin tone or something -- but he really does have to get going.
They host book night, their own two-man club, at Zach's place this time. Chris brings Kesey. He expects Zach to pull out Camus or something, so as they're settling in armchairs and he notices what Zach's reading, he does a double-take.
"What's this? Dude. Are you reading a Texas history book?"
"Mm," Zach says and looks up. "It's actually about the Alamo, and several of the myths surrounding the battle. The book was a gift, but I'm finding it unexpectedly worthwhile."
"Unexpectedly worthwhile," Chris mouths silently. Out loud he says, "Learning which animal pelts clash with a coonskin cap?" Davy Crockett is the only thing he knows about Texas history, and he's pretty sure that's only because he watched an ancient animated movie about him once.
Zach rolls his eyes. "I like small histories, people histories, history where the 'story' part of the word is key." he explains. "Right now I'm reading about William Barrett Travis. There's a rather apocryphal story that tells of him drawing a line in the sand with his sword and, knowing that anyone who stayed would likely die because they numbered approximately 200 men to Santa Anna's several thousand, telling all the men that if they were willing to stay and fight with him, die with him, they should cross the line.
"It's now widely believed to be a myth invented after the fact, but it's likely that the myth perpetuated use of the phrase 'draw a line in the sand.' The most ultimate ultimatum." He says with quiet satisfaction.
"Never give an inch," Chris says, holding up Sometimes a Great Notion. "Hold to your stronghold. Were there men who didn't cross?"
Zach turns the page, then looks up. "Yeah. Purportedly Moses Rose, a French soldier."
"Kind of a cowardly thing to do, don't you think?"
"I suppose," Zach says thoughtfully. "Understandable, though."
"Really." His nose crinkles up.
"Well, they faced certain death. It doesn't get a great deal more exemption-worthy than that."
"Sure, okay. But what kind of person just abandons like that? Sayonara, suckers, have fun dying a besieged death?"
"But if he was French, he probably had no loyalty to the men or the cause," Zach argues, sitting up straighter. "There's no sense in dying for something utterly irrelevant to you."
"It's the principle of the thing," Chris insists. "Comradeship and brotherhood -- you stick together, you fight together. That's what gives people heroes."
"An admirable sentiment and an interesting definition of a hero, but Rose put love of his family before love of his compatriots."
"Whatever, man. Flimsy excuse."
"He made no attempt to obfuscate the circumstances of his flight--"
"Like that makes it okay?"
Zach shakes his head and they're off, debating cowardice and heroism and what of recorded history is to be believed.
It's 2am before they come back down, and Chris is too punchy to drive. He's still feebly arguing his side -- though moderately uncertain he remembers what his side is, exactly -- as Zach goes to dig up a pillow and some blankets for him.
Stretching out on the couch and closing his eyes, Chris stops mid-sentence and says, "Whatever, I win," through a yawn. He hears Zach scoff and feels him settle a warm blanket over Chris's body -- he thinks someone kisses him on the forehead, too, but later decides it was probably part of a dream.
"What's this one?" Zach asks, nodding his head in the direction of a script scooted off to the side of the coffee table and deftly chopsticking up a mouthful of tofu fried rice. It takes Chris a second to reply because he's busy envying the ability to scoop up tofu, veggie, and rice all in one bite on the first try, without a fork.
"Oh," he says absently, fumbling with his own chopsticks. "Something based off Marquez? A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, I think. Except I guess it'd be more like A Man in His Very Late Twenties With Enormous Wings, so extremely loosely based. Gigi called it 'quirky,'" he says, using his chopsticks to imitate his agent's characteristic air quotes. "Translation: 'you'll accept a part in this over my dead body.'"
Zach lifts his sock-clad foot onto the table and uses it to drag the script close enough to scoop it up without getting up from the couch. Chris eyes him as he scans it even while taking neat, intermittent bites, the take-out box balanced on his stomach, and wonders if he should just give in and get a fork.
"This looks quite promising, actually," Zach says. "Surreal but not wholly inaccessible. Probably a difficult role because it requires balancing development of nuance with refusal to sacrifice clarity, but nothing you couldn't handle." Chris feels abruptly warm. "Between Carriers and Unstoppable -- and before you get needlessly upset, I know it has Denzel Washington in it -- you should look for balance. Demonstrate that your range extends beyond thrillers and ac -- oh my god," he cuts himself off. "Please stop abusing those poor, blameless chopsticks."
Immediately Chris stops trying to stab the tofu clean through. "I'd hardly call them blameless," he defends. "If they weren't so slippery and -- and tineless, I could actually use them!"
Zach mutters, "Boor," under his smirky breath as he gets up from the couch and rounds the table, sitting down on its edge.
"Whatever, man. I save my manual dexterity for the things that really count," Chris says, leering, and then stares in fascination as Zach blushes. It's very...pink.
Before Chris can ask, Sylvester-the-cat style, if Zach is embawwassed, aww, Zach recovers and huffs, "Yes, I suppose manual dexterity would be vital if your own hands are your only recourse." He grabs one such hand and picks up a chopstick while Chris gapes, mortally offended. "But let's see if we can't manage to take a little of the plebe out of your plebeian anyway."
Then Zach launches into how-to mode, which is entertaining enough that Chris decides his revenge can wait. "Now, first you need to settle the bottom chopstick here, so it extends approximately an inch past your grip."
Zach spreads Chris's fingers with his own so that they're loosely curled, and then, with his own thumb, rubs the bit of webbing between Chris's thumb and forefinger before settling the chopstick there. Chris swallows. "Okay, good. Now balance the other end on your ring finger. You're going to grip the chopstick with the bottom joint of your thumb, because you want the bottom chopstick not to move at all, and because you need the top joint free to maneuver the top chopstick." He bends Chris's thumb around the chopstick, and Chris settles it there securely.
"Good, good. Separate out your fore- and middle fingers," he continues, and then does it for Chris, tugging them free from his cramped and tangled grip. He places the top chopstick in between the tips of those fingers. "Now brace it with your thumb," he murmurs, "and slide it down a little so it lines up with the other one."
"That's it. Start with just some tofu," Zach says, guiding Chris's hand into the take-out box. He positions his fingers so they overlap Chris's, and then taps Chris's fore and middle fingers with his own. "Move these," so Chris does, "and brace the tofu against this." He moves his thumb back and forth over Chris's.
After a couple tries with Zach as training wheels, Chris feels prepared to chopstick solo.
His throat is weirdly dry, though, so he goes up to get a glass of water first.
The next morning Chris calls Gigi and tells her that after prolonged thought and several pro-and-con lists, he's decided to do Reverence, the Enormous Wings adaptation. It's not really a lie -- ten minutes is too prolonged thought, and Zach is 60% water, 40% pragmatism, so.
On Saturday night, Chris hosts Scrabble night.
Zach opens with QUARTZY and tries so hard to look nonchalant that if he tried any harder he'd actually be examining his fingernails.
"Quartzy? That's--"
"126 points," he says, conspicuously not smug. Well, Zach may think showing smugness is graceless and childish, but Chris has no such compunctions when it comes to showing petulant outrage.
He sputters, at a momentary loss, then points an accusatory finger. "You studied! I bet you googled 'highest scoring opening Scrabble gambits,'" he says, affronted.
"I did no such thing," Zach says loftily, but his eyes dart to the side, and oh, he so did.
When Chris just stares at him, he says, "It's legal!"
Chris shakes his head and resolves to beat the pants off Zach in retaliation. "I bet you know the highest possible score you could get on a single word, too."
"Under the right circumstances, oxyphenbutazone," he says, contemplating his tiles. "1778 points."
Chris laughs, delighted. "You are such a dork."
Zach rolls his eyes, obviously thinking, "well, duh, so are you," and yeah. That's what Chris loves about being with Zach. Although he can end up feeling like his intelligence has been threatened, he never feels stupid, or alienated, and he usually learns something, too.
They keep playing, and seriously, Chris has a theory that watching how people approach Scrabble tells you more about their personality than a solid five hours of conversation would. Zach, for instance, tends to go for long words, vocabulary words. They're the words that make up Zach's every day vernacular. They show perfectly Zach's distaste for shortcuts, his love for the old-fashioned and complicated, his passion for learning and for reading. They tell you that Zach uses proper punctuation, spelling, and grammar in his text messages, and that he gets a little line between his eyebrows when his correspondents don't do the same.
Chris, on the other hand, goes for two things - the shortest (and most infuriating to an opponent) way to the highest score, and the hilarity factor.
"Sexed, for 49 points?" Zach looks pained.
"Gonads?"
"Puke?"
"You're not an emetophobe, chill." Chris digs in the bag for new tiles, rolling his eyes upward and sticking his tongue out to the side in a parody of effort.
Instead of laughing, or even replying, Zach exhales heavily through his nostrils.
And this right here demonstrates perfectly a personality clash via Scrabble. Panache meets crudity. Lucky for panache over there, Chris has hidden depths. To keep Zach placated, he does ENAMELED after Zach's FORWENT.
"It frustrates me," Zach says quietly, eyes fixed on the board, "when you deliberately hide your intelligence. Even when it's just in front of me, it reminds me of when you do it publicly."
Running his thumb along a blank tile in his hand, Chris shifts uncomfortably. They've had this conversation a couple times. The way Chris figures it, it's more profitable to give people what they expect, which is frequently in line with what they want, or at least with what they'll be satisfied to get. Hollywood deals in stereotypes and single-line captions, the more sordid the better; it's easy to roll with that. And it's not like he goes out of his way to look brainless, but maybe he plays up the generic dudebro thing a bit. People like people they can project onto, and for some perverse reason probably having to do with society's conditioning of women and the Disney-perpetuated Beauty and the Beast complex, being a dick makes him more appealing to a large demographic.
"My innate archetypal figure is an obnoxious fratboy?" he tries. "I can't help it, man, I'm a hapless victim of the collective unconscious."
A tiny smile twitches onto Zach's face. Whether that's because of Chris's butchering Jung or the NEFARIOUS that Zach just tucked vertically in between the horizontal ENAMELED and BINDS, Chris isn't totally sure, but he takes Zach-smiles where he can get them. And Chris has apparently dodged yet another discussion of his self-esteem and self-concept, score. (This is a little relieving, like playing a rousing game of beer pong after acknowledging that he knows what "chakras" are.)
When Chris does WIN and then WON in consecutive turns, Zach says, "Unlikely," and smirks like he can't help himself.
Oh, but Zach has underestimated him. "Ha! Triple word score. Suck it," Chris says, grinning and tucking his hands behind his head so that his elbows stick out. It's always struck him as a particularly self-satisfied position, and did he mention he has nothing against smugness? Especially well-earned smugness.
Zach sits up out of his slouch and says, "What?" in an outraged tone.
"Thought your victory was in the bag, didn't you? Yo, for 18 points."
"Yo," Zach says flatly. "Yo. That cannot be permitted." The contractions have fled the building, so Chris probably should too, but he's enjoying his triumph too much for that.
Instead he helpfully points out where YO is listed under the heading "Two-Letter Words" in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (Fourth Edition), and Zach takes a deep breath like he's trying not to remember the location of all the sharp pointy objects in Chris's house. It's pretty funny how murderous he looks. Dude is serious about his Scrabble.
Interested in how much he can poke before his decapitation becomes imminent, he affects carelessness and says, "It's just a game, Zach."
"You do not get to do that!" Zach says, and ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved vehemence. "You may be able to twist the rules to suit your purposes as a--a cheating cheatery cheater, but recanting is not allowed, okay. You cannot say prior to playing the game that Scrabble competitions are modern-day natural selection in action and then after playing the game say it's just a game."
Chris tries really hard not to grin. "I got you to make up a word!" he crows. It's kind of irrational, but-- "This is, like, what people mean when they talk about peak experiences. Dear diary, today I got Zach to use a word that doesn't exist! I feel that if I died this self-same day, God would take that into consideration, don't you think? Love, The Almighty Omnipotent Chris."
"I. What--"
"Cheatery," Chris sing-songs. "Cheatery cheatery cheeeatery."
But Zach actually looks genuinely crestfallen, so Chris sits down next to him and puts an arm around his shoulders. Gently and only mocking a little, he says, "Hey, man. It happens to the best of us. Hitler surely malapropism'd a time or two, and do you really think FDR got through all those fireside chats without bullshitting here and there?"
Laughing wryly, Zach ducks his head. Chris burrows closer on the couch, getting Zach to turn into him a little. "Baby's first psuedoword," he murmurs in Zach's ear. "I'm so proud," and when Zach shivers, Chris makes a mental note to turn up the thermostat.
Zach's circulation is pretty bad.
There's voicemail and a picture message waiting for him when he gets home, both from his agent -- not a good sign. Gigi almost never leaves messages, probably because having no stammering nor any possibility of tears from the other end of the line takes all the fun out of yelling. Chris does eeny meeny miny moe between the icons for each type of message to decide which he'll open first. Then, warily, he dials in his passcode and presses pound, holding the phone up to his ear and cringing preemptively.
"Pine, you colossal dumbass," it starts.
"I thought you wanted out of pansy-ass romantic comedies! I let you be a goddamn thespian and I let you frolic in the goddamn daisies for however long you needed to get it out of your system, but even I have limits! Jesus Christ, kid, I thought your thing for machismo was, y'know, a thing for machismo. Not--"
Chris quickly holds the phone away from his ear as his agent makes a noise like a constipated rhino. Then her voice turns dangerous. "Now let me tell you what you are going to do to fix this. You are going to take a recognizable chick--that's female, woman, girl, vagina already included, mmkay?--out to dinner--and the more obvious from outer space her rack, the better--and by golly gee willikers you are going to like it."
There's a pause while she catches her breath, and then: "Oh, and Waters called. He's good, even brilliant, but it's certainly not going to help matters." Another pause, desperately, "A really big rack, okay?" and then a click.
For a minute, Chris stares at his phone, nonplussed. Maybe the photograph will provide some explanation. He opens it up, unsure what to expect, but if he was expecting anything, it wasn't a picture of him at a local bookstore. They've had discussions about his book-buying habits, after photographs surfaced of him buying Robin McKinley's Sunshine and Catherine Murdock's Dairy Queen, leading to Internet speculation that he was really a teenage girl in elaborate disguise. Despite Chris's insistence that the books were for Kat, okay, the discussions culminated in an agreement that Chris would never, ever again go near a genre fiction shelf.
And he hasn't reneged on the agreement. The photo shows him standing in front of the Military History section, and there's no chance that he just ducked in there at the sight of paps either, because he's got a book open and everything. He's pointing at a particular passage with one hand and touching Zach's forearm with the other while Zach holds the book for him. He's not even wearing a cardigan.
He doesn't get what Gigi's problem is, but whatever. Blondes with tits always get his vote.
The bewildering phone calls just keep coming.
"Chris," his mother says. "Are you bringing your...friend over for Thanksgiving?"
"Um?" He has more than one friend.
"It's okay, honey," she says gently. "I only ask because your father wants to make sure there's enough cranberry sauce to go around."
For a second Chris considers telling her that, no, Mom, it's true, he really does have more than one friend these days; but he shuts his mouth because there's something weird about this conversation, and it's not that his dad starts looking for new cranberry sauce recipes every year in freaking September.
"Which friend are we talking about again?"
There's a pause, and then his mom says, "Zach," like this should be obvious to him.
"You...want me to bring Zach over for Thanksgiving dinner?" he guesses.
"Kiddo." Mom sighs. "I thought you would want him there, and I wanted you to know that we're okay with that. I think it's fantastic that you have a friend like him, I really do. And hearing so much about him -- it would be lovely to finally meet him, you know?"
There's something really weird about this conversation.
"I have to go now, okay? But you remember--" her voice gets fierce "--this changes nothing. We still love you, all right? So much. Take care, honey."
"What?" Chris says to the dial tone.
When they finally have two coinciding days off, Chris drags Zach hiking. He's sick of the inside of a gym, and at least for today he can get his exercise in without using anything requiring electricity. At first Zach kvetches that he'd rather be sleeping and reading on the beach, but Chris is an expert wheedler. Most younger siblings are.
For the most part it's a thoroughly awesome day -- Chris enjoys the gorgeous weather, rests in the shade, learns that Zach eats Luna bars, dies laughing.
The only weird part happens when Chris brings up his mom's phone call and invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Zach stares at him oddly, like Chris is a pot and Zach really wants the water to boil now.
"What? Do I have something on my face?" Energy bars are not the finger food you think they are. He wipes thumbs against either side of his mouth.
"No," Zach says, shaking his head as if to clear it. "No. Sorry."
But he never answers Chris's mom's question, and it makes things awkward for an hour, until Chris dares Zach to race him down the rocky, tree-lined, uneven hill they just climbed. Zach does, but he says that if he ends up with a cracked skull and/or in a vegetative state, Chris must foot the hospital bill and feed him carrot mush.
Chris isn't sure how he's going to explain to his mom that her concept of "friend" is a little skewed. Maybe it's different for women?
A few hours later, sweaty and exhausted, Chris commandeers Zach's shower.
Exiting the bathroom, Chris towels water off his hair with one hand and holds the ends of another, modesty-preserving towel together with the other. He opens his mouth to ask Zach where he buys his soap--it smells really good, kind of cypress-y--and then shuts it when he sees that Zach's not in the room.
Just before he notices the phone off the hook, he hears tinny voices.
So he picks the phone up off the bedside table to eavesdrop. This is maybe a dick move. Oops.
In his defense, he expects to hear Zach discussing grocery delivery or making plans with a friend--something inane, anyway--and then to see how long it takes Zach to realize the obnoxious, serial-killer mouth-breathing over the line is coming from Chris. It's not his fault that the conversation ends up intriguing him and he abandons the it's coming from inside the house routine.
"--not his Domestic Barbie, Zach--" The voice is exasperated, female, and somehow familiar.
Zach laughs, but not really like he finds anything about what she's said to be funny. A self-deprecating, bitter sort of laugh. Chris frowns.
"I'm serious," the disembodied female says, and now she sounds genuinely angry -- which sparks recognition for Chris. It's that blonde chick Zach works with on Heroes, the former plucky girl detective with the reverse Oedipal complex. "You need to tell him to stop dicking you around like that." Chris is beginning to feel incipient anger himself, as well as some confusion. Anger strictly because if Zach is seeing someone, that someone had better be treating him like a fucking king; confusion because hey, he thought Zach knew and trusted him enough not to keep the homosexual lovin' on the down low.
He hangs up, not bothering to set the receiver down quietly.
That night, Chris goes out on his "image-enhancing" date. He doesn't expect much considering it's basically a dog and pony show for the press, but it turns out she's fucking hot and pretty damned smart, too. The unadulterated sweetness is a little hard to get used to, because she's smart enough that she should be more assertive; but it's not like fucking her would be a hardship, so he turns the charm up.
Which is why it's so weird that at the end of the night, she kisses him while the cameras flash, and then whispers, "G'night. Say hi to your guy for me," in his ear.
Wait, shit.
What just happened?
The next morning, Chris is still working on puzzling that one out.
He also working on choosing between the brown leather sectional and the nubby wool 1960s-style sofa. For a while he enjoys just bouncing back and forth between them, since they're both super comfy. But -- they're both super comfy. So he consults an expert -- he texts Zach the furniture store's address in a playful 911 message.
Zach sends, I think you're capable of deciding things on your own in reply.
And that just adds another puzzle to the stack. Chris frowns. Zach usually loves giving advice.
That evening is the last night before Zach leaves town for a week, so it's strange that it's also the first night when they're both free that they haven't hung out in weeks. Months? But Zach is brusque and disinterested when Chris calls to check in, and Chris is...
He doesn't know. He'd say he's hurt and confused, if it didn't sound like a terrible lyric or a Dear Abby letter sign-off.
Maybe it's a good thing Zach'll be away for a while.
John calls him three days into Zach's absence, and Chris is not relieved. Three hours later, he is, however, drunk.
"So where're you two lovebirds registering?" Karl says.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Chris feels his inquiry is valid -- lovebirds? registration? He didn't think Zoe and Keith were that serious.
"It's tough to suss out, because Zach has class and you don't, but I'm thinking--" John cocks his head to one side like some really fucking condescending species of bird "--I'm thinking compromise. Integral to every successful relationship, right?"
"Mm," Karl says, tipping his glass in John's direction.
"Walmart would do for you, I think--" John says contemplatively.
"Lovely selection of plaid they've got," Karl adds.
"And maybe Barneys for Zach. They've got men's shoes at Barneys, right?" He turns inquisitively to Karl.
"Imagine so. Choice scarves as well, likely enough. Probably no kitchen appliances, though, eh."
"Not a problem. Don't think Zach is the domestic one in the relationship," John says with a smirk.
"I reiterate: what the fuck are you talking about? Besides that I don't have the chops to match the pedigree, which, screw you."
"Oh, sweetie," Zoe says, and pats his hand.
In the course of this five-minute discussion, Chris has been referred to as a "lovebird," implied to be "the domestic one" in a contest between him and Zach (who has books on interior decorating), and pityingly called "sweetie" -- and not even by one of those girls who call everyone patronizing pet names.
Chris Pine is not insecure in his masculinity, not in the slightest, but maybe -- just maybe -- there are grounds for investigation.
Lay on, Macduff, Chris thinks. He has flaws, yeah, but surely none of them are tragic?
Contrary to what his friends seem to think, Chris can engage in higher thinking processes like inference and analysis. In fact, he's ace at them. The prof who oversaw his independent study junior year (for advanced undergraduates, thanks) nearly cried tears of sweet, sweet joy over his paper on Moby Dick.
He is not gay for Zach, least of all married-with-pets-serving-as-kid-proxies gay for Zach.
Just to prove it, he examines the source text.
So he cooks breakfast (and lunch. ...okay, and dinner) for Zach on a relatively regular basis. No big deal -- he cooks for Zoe, too, if only because he fears that she might ingest toxic levels of MSG and high fructose corn syrup if left to subsist only on her usual diet of take-out and nutritionally unsound cereals.
So he brings coffee to Zach's workplace at least once a week, if he's not in New York. This is a perfectly acceptable thing for friends to do for one another. Craft services coffee universally tastes like ass, and it's not like he boards a jet to bring Zach his Lamill or anything.
So he spends Friday and Saturday nights at home with Zach, playing board games and discussing literature. Chris can potentially see the gayness here, but geek is chic. Vocabulary-building exercises will totally get him the ladies.
So, yeah, he misses Zach when either one of them is away, and tries to get Zach to pick out his furniture for him, and asks him what he thinks about scripts, and sometimes lets Zach dress him, and goes to informal parties with him, and inadvertently has begun to use first-person plural pronouns a lot.
...Chris is perhaps willing to concede that "gay" is an acceptable hypothesis based on the preliminary data.
Chris is also perhaps willing to concede that, of the higher thinking processes, introspection is not his strength.
(And, okay. His early fascination with Melville may or may not have been entirely innocuous.)
"It's called repression," Bruce says patiently, chewing an In-and-Out french fry with relish -- though whether because of the fry or because of Chris's apparent idiocy is a matter for debate. Probably it's both.
It's a pleasant day, so they're eating in Bruce's car (he's double-bagged the upholstery and warned that if he finds ketchup anywhere, he knows who to blame and maim) outside the restaurant, hoping it makes them less, rather than more, conspicuous.
"It's not--" he flounders, and then finishes weakly, "like that." He uses the straw to poke disconsolately at his milkshake, which, he realized only after he took the first sip, is chocolate when he really prefers vanilla. Chocolate is Zach's favorite.
Oh, god. Bruce is into schadenfreude and Chris is into masochism. This would be deeply funny, except for how it's also Chris's life.
"Not like what? Not like you'd like to screw Quinto silly, or not like you didn't know you'd like to screw Quinto silly."
"Either! Both! I don't know," Chris moans.
"Well," Bruce says and claps his hands together, then rubs them briskly. "If it's the first, stop acting like you do. If it's the second, you may knock John Mayer out of the running for Hollywood's Douchebag of the Year. If it's both, I suggest you look up 'oxymoron,' emphasis on the moron.
"If it's 'I don't know,' figure it out. I can recommend some books and supplies for experimentation purposes," he says with a shark-like grin and an eyebrow waggle. Chris's jaw unhinges itself.
He gives up on the milkshake and tries to stop the words books and supplies from forever becoming dirty words by association. They are words that he uses a lot, so it's kind of important.
Before he can say anything, Bruce adds, "Or," and he's either being sympathetic or laughing his ass off on the inside; it's sometimes hard to tell with him, "for improving your prowess." Here he slants Chris a meaningful look.
Chris covers his face with his hands and demands, muffled, "Drive. Drive me to a bar. Now."
Bruce says, "Come now, whisky dick won't solve anything." He laughs obnoxiously and swipes Chris's milkshake while he's still in hiding.
But despite the humiliation of the conversation, Chris is later grateful for (most of) the succinct advice. It's definitely 'I don't know," and he's working on figuring it out. Googling "sticking a finger up your ass" is definitely not his brightest idea, though seeing that there is a Yahoo! Answers question that reads, "Can your organs fall out if you finger your bum?" reassures him that there are people out there stupider than him. He then goes for lots of runs, carefully screens Zach's calls, and gives the thinking thing a fair trial, which works much better.
It's complicated because he doesn't want to screw this up, not now that he's pretty sure all he's done thus far is screw up.
Screw up, and fall in love.
First Chris tries to put himself in Zach's shoes. Get inside his head.
He wants to know what Zach is thinking without...exposing himself further to his friends, both as someone who sometimes needs his hand metaphorically held and as someone who is fixated, just slightly. Probably they already know both, but there's something to be said for plausible deniability. Even so, Chris finally cracks a few days later, while watching Project Runway with Zoe. Well, it's not so much watching Project Runway as watching Zoe watch Project Runway. It involves a lot of profanity and a lot of "medicinal chocolate."
"There's one thing I still don't get," he says, feeling like Dr. Watson waiting for Holmes to finally recount his brilliance instead of just going on being mysteriously brilliant. "Why didn't he say anything?"
Zoe sighs softly and pauses the DVR playback. "Hon," she says after a minute, "if your cable company accidentally gives you premium channels when you're only paying for basic, do you call and complain?"
Metaphor -- this is good. Chris can handle metaphor. It's the overt shit that confuses him. "So I'm like HBO? And Zach is--"
"Addicted to your programming, so to speak," Zoe says.
Wait. Math is not Chris's thing, but something is not adding up. He injects healthy skepticism into his voice, because over the last few days he's realized exactly how unappealing the alternative -- belief -- is. If it is how Zoe says it is, then that makes Chris the biggest, douchiest tool on the planet. Forget the gay epiphany; what kind of person is he to have done something like that to his best friend? To Zach.
"Zach's not really the pine-and-retire-to-read-Lisa-Kleypas-with-a-pint-of-Cherry-Garcia-at-hand type. Ha, Pine," he says, because, well, pun.
Zoe raises an eyebrow. "Kleypas?"
"It was for a popular fiction class!" he insists, not defensive in the slightest. "And I'll have you know that Secrets of a Summer Night was a masterful and compelling read. Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review, okay?"
Zoe grins at him and he remembers, right. Not defensive.
She sobers a little and hedges, "No, Zach isn't one to dwell on things he can't change." (Ouch, Chris thinks.) Then her eyes sparkle mischievously. "There are other channels besides HBO out there, you know."
...So Zach is turning to FOX for his dirty sex needs, and maybe to ABC or NBC for whatever romance he may want. There are no less than twelve things wrong with this, and only a third of them -- half, at most -- directly relate to Chris's jealousy.
As it turns out, the jealousy is Chris's linchpin. He's always been the sort of person who understood cognitively, but not personally, Western society's thing for monogamy. The only other time in his life he can remember feeling jealous -- plus, not incidentally, heartbroken -- was when Ree, the girl who'd been Chris's best friend since they were kindergartners, went to prom with Ashley, telling him he was sweet and she loved him, but -- but.
He thinks that if right now someone else took Zach to hypothetical prom, he might punch them in the hypothetical face. Zach would probably forgive him if his boutonniere was awesome enough.
But he does wonder if Zach can forgive him this possibly subconsciously deliberate obliviousness.
Holmes found the obliviousness charming, Chris reminds himself, but it doesn't reassure him very much.
Chris discards a few of the cheesier "whoopsie daisy, sorry for not noticing we've become kind of domesticated" ideas (whatever Karl says, though, the romantic Scrabble board idea was genius, and John shouldn't have vetoed the reenactment of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman's balcony kissing scene) and decides to man up (man down, whatever) and just go for it.
He has a perfect opening when Zach asks him, over Chris's fantastic pasta primavera, what he missed while he was gone.
What comes out in lieu of anything suave is, "Well, our friends mauled me with a cluebat," and Zach freezes with a forkful halfway to his mouth. After a second he moves again, like someone depressed the play button and he's hoping no one notices pause was ever pushed.
"Did they," he says carefully.
"So you have a thing for me," he blurts. Zach sets down his fork, and wow is this ever not going the way Chris planned. "And I," he adds, "have...a thing for you?"
"Is that a question?" Zach asks acidly.
"No! No. It's a, a statement. We're sort of-- I'm sort of-- I'm sorry," he says helplessly. He scrubs a hand over his face. "I was really going for a different vibe."
Zach is staring at him, the same way he did when they went hiking, and oh god, this is epically terrible. He's such an idiot. "I can do this. It's like a puzzle, you know, where start working on it before you see the cover of the box -- or, or, let me just--"
"Chris," Zach says, enunciating a lot more than is flattering. He takes a sip of wine. "You're my friend, god knows why, and you have," he pauses, "selective observational skills. These are facts I've accustomed myself to--"
"We're sort of a foregone conclusion," Chris interjects.
Zach pinches the bridge of his nose and then covers his face with that hand. "You're not allowed to say things like that," he says finally.
This is the time for a deep inhale. "What if I want to be allowed to," he says to his pasta, and listens, maybe a little hopelessly gone, as Zach laughs into his hand. "Please?" It's an afterthought, but a sincere one.
Picking his head up, Zach catches his eyes and says, "Really," like he wants to have it proven for him.
"Really. I really am sorry, and I really do want to. Want--" Chris clears his throat "--you."
After several agonizing moments of silence for which Zach will later need to repay him in sexual favors, Zach says, "C'mere," and Chris does, pushing the plate of pasta back toward the center of the table so he can sit at the edge, facing Zach.
"Closer," Zach says, finally smiling, and hooks his legs around Chris's, pulling him until he tumbles forward into Zach's lap and kisses him, new and not-new.
"Hi," he says, when they break apart.
"Hi," Zach says, laughing into Chris's mouth.
Chris kisses him again.
They have a lot to make up for.
Pairing: Chris/Zach (ST:XI RPS)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: c.7,100 (wtf)
Disclaimer: This is a completely fictional story written about fictional constructs of real people. I make no profit; I do not know these people; and I intend no disrespect whatsoever.
Notes: I apologize in advance, for lo! and for woe!, I'm a dirty, wretched Chris Pine apologist. Also, a giant sap. This is kind of the disappointment of a lovechild of D: and Inhabiting, with a dominant Scrabble gene. Its parents are much better than it, and you should read them.
He is not gay for Zach, least of all married-with-pets-serving-as-kid-proxies gay for Zach.'>
"Hey," Chris says, gesturing for Alex to enter the makeup trailer ahead of him. Thus begins his customary bleary-eyed monosyllabic exchange with the man he knows almost nothing about, except that he wields eyelash curlers with alarming ferocity and was once heard arguing over the difference between Lady Bug and Lady Danger lipstick shades. This is enough to keep Chris on the windy side of Alex's law. Cultivating allies in makeup departments has never done Chris a disservice.
"Chris, hey. How're you?"
"Good, good. You?" he asks reflexively. His eyes immediately go to where Zach is sitting in a director's chair, eyes shut and earbuds in. He looks exhausted.
As Chris makes to go over, Alex frowns and stops him with a hand on his shoulder. "Uh." He pauses. "Is that for Zach?" He eyes the Coffee and a Jelly Donut "Signature Beverage" (topped with vanilla bean-infused whipped cream) dubiously. "Just. He's going to bite your head off if it's not black, no frills," he says apologetically.
This, Chris concedes, is ordinarily true. Zach can be kind of a pretentious minimalist sometimes, and he's worst in the early mornings. Chris considers it his civic duty to prevent him from throwing important things away willy-nilly before 11am, and from doing things like, as he did on one particularly memorable occasion, buying an oil painting of a purple square from a sketchy art website for $1600. But Zach's been really stressed lately, and if the conversation during their talk-until-one-of-us-falls-asleep thing last night is any indicator, today is one of the days that Zach will accept cupcake coffee without excess bitchery. Somewhere deep, deep down inside, he will probably even be grateful. At least until the sugar crash, but by then Chris will be long gone and therefore safe.
"I got it," he reassures, and Alex holds up his hands and says, "Your funeral, man."
If so, at least he can hope the eulogy mentions that he died trying to do something nice for a friend. Filming this movie -- playing this role -- has been hell on Zach, emotionally and psychologically. It surprised Chris at first on some level that anything could get to Zach, but then he stuck around set for a few days, and now he kind of wonders what possessed Zach to take this role and still keep working as Sylar. The character is like that dude from Pleasantville, the one who did things because people told him to and wouldn't stop doing something until someone told him to do something else.
Zach says it's making him think about determinism and Western society (Chris deserves a fucking medal for listening to a forty-minute spiel on Hobbes -- not the tiger, unfortunately -- three nights ago.) But it's also making him twitchy and broody and even sad, which is just not on. For all his intellectualism, Zach is usually fairly upbeat.
Chris walks over unimpeded this time and tries to guess whether today's a day for Tantric chanting or for Radiohead. Probably Radiohead -- yes: head-bobbing, no: stretchy pants. To double check, he steals an earbud, and yep, Pablo Honey it is.
"Zach, Zach," Chris says, reaching to pull the other earbud out and hopping up on the makeup counter (and point proven: Alex only rolls his eyes, instead of frog-marching Chris out of the trailer). "So thoroughly predictable."
Finally Zach opens his eyes. "I like predictability," he grumps, then sneezes. That reminds Chris to pick up some orange juice next time he heads to the store; Zach could probably use the immune system boost. "S'comfortable."
"I know you do," Chris says, affectionate. "Here." He holds out the Coffee and a Jelly Donut as Zach burrows down further in his chair. "The gods of all times before noon present you with a sacred gift."
"If you're implying that bringing me coffee is an act worthy of apotheosis, sorry, no."
Chris knows what apotheosis is, he really does, but Zach scoops a bit of whipped cream onto his straw and adds, bitchily, "Which means, in Chris-sized words, you're not a god, just a morning person."
"Which means I have the power to get you to drink Starbucks and like it."
"Please," Zach snorts. "I have standards even when I'm not operating at optimal levels of coherence."
"Nope!" Chris says cheerfully. "You don't. About, oh, three weeks ago, I poured Starbucks -- and not even fair trade -- into a Lamill cup. You still latched on like barnacle to substrate."
Clearly scandalized and traumatized, Zach snaps his head up. He has a little bit of whipped cream on the tip of his nose. "You did not," he says.
"Did so. Was bored."
"I don't believe you," Zach insists.
"That's okay, I know the truth." He kicks a leg out to nudge Zach's foot. "Anyway, I gotta go. Don't forget book night tonight." He laughs.
Zach waves him on impatiently, too busy drinking to talk.
As he walks out, he sees Alex giving him a speculative look out of the corner of his eye and wonders what's up with the dude -- probably just considering which shade of eyeshadow suits his skin tone or something -- but he really does have to get going.
They host book night, their own two-man club, at Zach's place this time. Chris brings Kesey. He expects Zach to pull out Camus or something, so as they're settling in armchairs and he notices what Zach's reading, he does a double-take.
"What's this? Dude. Are you reading a Texas history book?"
"Mm," Zach says and looks up. "It's actually about the Alamo, and several of the myths surrounding the battle. The book was a gift, but I'm finding it unexpectedly worthwhile."
"Unexpectedly worthwhile," Chris mouths silently. Out loud he says, "Learning which animal pelts clash with a coonskin cap?" Davy Crockett is the only thing he knows about Texas history, and he's pretty sure that's only because he watched an ancient animated movie about him once.
Zach rolls his eyes. "I like small histories, people histories, history where the 'story' part of the word is key." he explains. "Right now I'm reading about William Barrett Travis. There's a rather apocryphal story that tells of him drawing a line in the sand with his sword and, knowing that anyone who stayed would likely die because they numbered approximately 200 men to Santa Anna's several thousand, telling all the men that if they were willing to stay and fight with him, die with him, they should cross the line.
"It's now widely believed to be a myth invented after the fact, but it's likely that the myth perpetuated use of the phrase 'draw a line in the sand.' The most ultimate ultimatum." He says with quiet satisfaction.
"Never give an inch," Chris says, holding up Sometimes a Great Notion. "Hold to your stronghold. Were there men who didn't cross?"
Zach turns the page, then looks up. "Yeah. Purportedly Moses Rose, a French soldier."
"Kind of a cowardly thing to do, don't you think?"
"I suppose," Zach says thoughtfully. "Understandable, though."
"Really." His nose crinkles up.
"Well, they faced certain death. It doesn't get a great deal more exemption-worthy than that."
"Sure, okay. But what kind of person just abandons like that? Sayonara, suckers, have fun dying a besieged death?"
"But if he was French, he probably had no loyalty to the men or the cause," Zach argues, sitting up straighter. "There's no sense in dying for something utterly irrelevant to you."
"It's the principle of the thing," Chris insists. "Comradeship and brotherhood -- you stick together, you fight together. That's what gives people heroes."
"An admirable sentiment and an interesting definition of a hero, but Rose put love of his family before love of his compatriots."
"Whatever, man. Flimsy excuse."
"He made no attempt to obfuscate the circumstances of his flight--"
"Like that makes it okay?"
Zach shakes his head and they're off, debating cowardice and heroism and what of recorded history is to be believed.
It's 2am before they come back down, and Chris is too punchy to drive. He's still feebly arguing his side -- though moderately uncertain he remembers what his side is, exactly -- as Zach goes to dig up a pillow and some blankets for him.
Stretching out on the couch and closing his eyes, Chris stops mid-sentence and says, "Whatever, I win," through a yawn. He hears Zach scoff and feels him settle a warm blanket over Chris's body -- he thinks someone kisses him on the forehead, too, but later decides it was probably part of a dream.
"What's this one?" Zach asks, nodding his head in the direction of a script scooted off to the side of the coffee table and deftly chopsticking up a mouthful of tofu fried rice. It takes Chris a second to reply because he's busy envying the ability to scoop up tofu, veggie, and rice all in one bite on the first try, without a fork.
"Oh," he says absently, fumbling with his own chopsticks. "Something based off Marquez? A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, I think. Except I guess it'd be more like A Man in His Very Late Twenties With Enormous Wings, so extremely loosely based. Gigi called it 'quirky,'" he says, using his chopsticks to imitate his agent's characteristic air quotes. "Translation: 'you'll accept a part in this over my dead body.'"
Zach lifts his sock-clad foot onto the table and uses it to drag the script close enough to scoop it up without getting up from the couch. Chris eyes him as he scans it even while taking neat, intermittent bites, the take-out box balanced on his stomach, and wonders if he should just give in and get a fork.
"This looks quite promising, actually," Zach says. "Surreal but not wholly inaccessible. Probably a difficult role because it requires balancing development of nuance with refusal to sacrifice clarity, but nothing you couldn't handle." Chris feels abruptly warm. "Between Carriers and Unstoppable -- and before you get needlessly upset, I know it has Denzel Washington in it -- you should look for balance. Demonstrate that your range extends beyond thrillers and ac -- oh my god," he cuts himself off. "Please stop abusing those poor, blameless chopsticks."
Immediately Chris stops trying to stab the tofu clean through. "I'd hardly call them blameless," he defends. "If they weren't so slippery and -- and tineless, I could actually use them!"
Zach mutters, "Boor," under his smirky breath as he gets up from the couch and rounds the table, sitting down on its edge.
"Whatever, man. I save my manual dexterity for the things that really count," Chris says, leering, and then stares in fascination as Zach blushes. It's very...pink.
Before Chris can ask, Sylvester-the-cat style, if Zach is embawwassed, aww, Zach recovers and huffs, "Yes, I suppose manual dexterity would be vital if your own hands are your only recourse." He grabs one such hand and picks up a chopstick while Chris gapes, mortally offended. "But let's see if we can't manage to take a little of the plebe out of your plebeian anyway."
Then Zach launches into how-to mode, which is entertaining enough that Chris decides his revenge can wait. "Now, first you need to settle the bottom chopstick here, so it extends approximately an inch past your grip."
Zach spreads Chris's fingers with his own so that they're loosely curled, and then, with his own thumb, rubs the bit of webbing between Chris's thumb and forefinger before settling the chopstick there. Chris swallows. "Okay, good. Now balance the other end on your ring finger. You're going to grip the chopstick with the bottom joint of your thumb, because you want the bottom chopstick not to move at all, and because you need the top joint free to maneuver the top chopstick." He bends Chris's thumb around the chopstick, and Chris settles it there securely.
"Good, good. Separate out your fore- and middle fingers," he continues, and then does it for Chris, tugging them free from his cramped and tangled grip. He places the top chopstick in between the tips of those fingers. "Now brace it with your thumb," he murmurs, "and slide it down a little so it lines up with the other one."
"That's it. Start with just some tofu," Zach says, guiding Chris's hand into the take-out box. He positions his fingers so they overlap Chris's, and then taps Chris's fore and middle fingers with his own. "Move these," so Chris does, "and brace the tofu against this." He moves his thumb back and forth over Chris's.
After a couple tries with Zach as training wheels, Chris feels prepared to chopstick solo.
His throat is weirdly dry, though, so he goes up to get a glass of water first.
The next morning Chris calls Gigi and tells her that after prolonged thought and several pro-and-con lists, he's decided to do Reverence, the Enormous Wings adaptation. It's not really a lie -- ten minutes is too prolonged thought, and Zach is 60% water, 40% pragmatism, so.
On Saturday night, Chris hosts Scrabble night.
Zach opens with QUARTZY and tries so hard to look nonchalant that if he tried any harder he'd actually be examining his fingernails.
"Quartzy? That's--"
"126 points," he says, conspicuously not smug. Well, Zach may think showing smugness is graceless and childish, but Chris has no such compunctions when it comes to showing petulant outrage.
He sputters, at a momentary loss, then points an accusatory finger. "You studied! I bet you googled 'highest scoring opening Scrabble gambits,'" he says, affronted.
"I did no such thing," Zach says loftily, but his eyes dart to the side, and oh, he so did.
When Chris just stares at him, he says, "It's legal!"
Chris shakes his head and resolves to beat the pants off Zach in retaliation. "I bet you know the highest possible score you could get on a single word, too."
"Under the right circumstances, oxyphenbutazone," he says, contemplating his tiles. "1778 points."
Chris laughs, delighted. "You are such a dork."
Zach rolls his eyes, obviously thinking, "well, duh, so are you," and yeah. That's what Chris loves about being with Zach. Although he can end up feeling like his intelligence has been threatened, he never feels stupid, or alienated, and he usually learns something, too.
They keep playing, and seriously, Chris has a theory that watching how people approach Scrabble tells you more about their personality than a solid five hours of conversation would. Zach, for instance, tends to go for long words, vocabulary words. They're the words that make up Zach's every day vernacular. They show perfectly Zach's distaste for shortcuts, his love for the old-fashioned and complicated, his passion for learning and for reading. They tell you that Zach uses proper punctuation, spelling, and grammar in his text messages, and that he gets a little line between his eyebrows when his correspondents don't do the same.
Chris, on the other hand, goes for two things - the shortest (and most infuriating to an opponent) way to the highest score, and the hilarity factor.
"Sexed, for 49 points?" Zach looks pained.
"Gonads?"
"Puke?"
"You're not an emetophobe, chill." Chris digs in the bag for new tiles, rolling his eyes upward and sticking his tongue out to the side in a parody of effort.
Instead of laughing, or even replying, Zach exhales heavily through his nostrils.
And this right here demonstrates perfectly a personality clash via Scrabble. Panache meets crudity. Lucky for panache over there, Chris has hidden depths. To keep Zach placated, he does ENAMELED after Zach's FORWENT.
"It frustrates me," Zach says quietly, eyes fixed on the board, "when you deliberately hide your intelligence. Even when it's just in front of me, it reminds me of when you do it publicly."
Running his thumb along a blank tile in his hand, Chris shifts uncomfortably. They've had this conversation a couple times. The way Chris figures it, it's more profitable to give people what they expect, which is frequently in line with what they want, or at least with what they'll be satisfied to get. Hollywood deals in stereotypes and single-line captions, the more sordid the better; it's easy to roll with that. And it's not like he goes out of his way to look brainless, but maybe he plays up the generic dudebro thing a bit. People like people they can project onto, and for some perverse reason probably having to do with society's conditioning of women and the Disney-perpetuated Beauty and the Beast complex, being a dick makes him more appealing to a large demographic.
"My innate archetypal figure is an obnoxious fratboy?" he tries. "I can't help it, man, I'm a hapless victim of the collective unconscious."
A tiny smile twitches onto Zach's face. Whether that's because of Chris's butchering Jung or the NEFARIOUS that Zach just tucked vertically in between the horizontal ENAMELED and BINDS, Chris isn't totally sure, but he takes Zach-smiles where he can get them. And Chris has apparently dodged yet another discussion of his self-esteem and self-concept, score. (This is a little relieving, like playing a rousing game of beer pong after acknowledging that he knows what "chakras" are.)
When Chris does WIN and then WON in consecutive turns, Zach says, "Unlikely," and smirks like he can't help himself.
Oh, but Zach has underestimated him. "Ha! Triple word score. Suck it," Chris says, grinning and tucking his hands behind his head so that his elbows stick out. It's always struck him as a particularly self-satisfied position, and did he mention he has nothing against smugness? Especially well-earned smugness.
Zach sits up out of his slouch and says, "What?" in an outraged tone.
"Thought your victory was in the bag, didn't you? Yo, for 18 points."
"Yo," Zach says flatly. "Yo. That cannot be permitted." The contractions have fled the building, so Chris probably should too, but he's enjoying his triumph too much for that.
Instead he helpfully points out where YO is listed under the heading "Two-Letter Words" in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (Fourth Edition), and Zach takes a deep breath like he's trying not to remember the location of all the sharp pointy objects in Chris's house. It's pretty funny how murderous he looks. Dude is serious about his Scrabble.
Interested in how much he can poke before his decapitation becomes imminent, he affects carelessness and says, "It's just a game, Zach."
"You do not get to do that!" Zach says, and ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved vehemence. "You may be able to twist the rules to suit your purposes as a--a cheating cheatery cheater, but recanting is not allowed, okay. You cannot say prior to playing the game that Scrabble competitions are modern-day natural selection in action and then after playing the game say it's just a game."
Chris tries really hard not to grin. "I got you to make up a word!" he crows. It's kind of irrational, but-- "This is, like, what people mean when they talk about peak experiences. Dear diary, today I got Zach to use a word that doesn't exist! I feel that if I died this self-same day, God would take that into consideration, don't you think? Love, The Almighty Omnipotent Chris."
"I. What--"
"Cheatery," Chris sing-songs. "Cheatery cheatery cheeeatery."
But Zach actually looks genuinely crestfallen, so Chris sits down next to him and puts an arm around his shoulders. Gently and only mocking a little, he says, "Hey, man. It happens to the best of us. Hitler surely malapropism'd a time or two, and do you really think FDR got through all those fireside chats without bullshitting here and there?"
Laughing wryly, Zach ducks his head. Chris burrows closer on the couch, getting Zach to turn into him a little. "Baby's first psuedoword," he murmurs in Zach's ear. "I'm so proud," and when Zach shivers, Chris makes a mental note to turn up the thermostat.
Zach's circulation is pretty bad.
There's voicemail and a picture message waiting for him when he gets home, both from his agent -- not a good sign. Gigi almost never leaves messages, probably because having no stammering nor any possibility of tears from the other end of the line takes all the fun out of yelling. Chris does eeny meeny miny moe between the icons for each type of message to decide which he'll open first. Then, warily, he dials in his passcode and presses pound, holding the phone up to his ear and cringing preemptively.
"Pine, you colossal dumbass," it starts.
"I thought you wanted out of pansy-ass romantic comedies! I let you be a goddamn thespian and I let you frolic in the goddamn daisies for however long you needed to get it out of your system, but even I have limits! Jesus Christ, kid, I thought your thing for machismo was, y'know, a thing for machismo. Not--"
Chris quickly holds the phone away from his ear as his agent makes a noise like a constipated rhino. Then her voice turns dangerous. "Now let me tell you what you are going to do to fix this. You are going to take a recognizable chick--that's female, woman, girl, vagina already included, mmkay?--out to dinner--and the more obvious from outer space her rack, the better--and by golly gee willikers you are going to like it."
There's a pause while she catches her breath, and then: "Oh, and Waters called. He's good, even brilliant, but it's certainly not going to help matters." Another pause, desperately, "A really big rack, okay?" and then a click.
For a minute, Chris stares at his phone, nonplussed. Maybe the photograph will provide some explanation. He opens it up, unsure what to expect, but if he was expecting anything, it wasn't a picture of him at a local bookstore. They've had discussions about his book-buying habits, after photographs surfaced of him buying Robin McKinley's Sunshine and Catherine Murdock's Dairy Queen, leading to Internet speculation that he was really a teenage girl in elaborate disguise. Despite Chris's insistence that the books were for Kat, okay, the discussions culminated in an agreement that Chris would never, ever again go near a genre fiction shelf.
And he hasn't reneged on the agreement. The photo shows him standing in front of the Military History section, and there's no chance that he just ducked in there at the sight of paps either, because he's got a book open and everything. He's pointing at a particular passage with one hand and touching Zach's forearm with the other while Zach holds the book for him. He's not even wearing a cardigan.
He doesn't get what Gigi's problem is, but whatever. Blondes with tits always get his vote.
The bewildering phone calls just keep coming.
"Chris," his mother says. "Are you bringing your...friend over for Thanksgiving?"
"Um?" He has more than one friend.
"It's okay, honey," she says gently. "I only ask because your father wants to make sure there's enough cranberry sauce to go around."
For a second Chris considers telling her that, no, Mom, it's true, he really does have more than one friend these days; but he shuts his mouth because there's something weird about this conversation, and it's not that his dad starts looking for new cranberry sauce recipes every year in freaking September.
"Which friend are we talking about again?"
There's a pause, and then his mom says, "Zach," like this should be obvious to him.
"You...want me to bring Zach over for Thanksgiving dinner?" he guesses.
"Kiddo." Mom sighs. "I thought you would want him there, and I wanted you to know that we're okay with that. I think it's fantastic that you have a friend like him, I really do. And hearing so much about him -- it would be lovely to finally meet him, you know?"
There's something really weird about this conversation.
"I have to go now, okay? But you remember--" her voice gets fierce "--this changes nothing. We still love you, all right? So much. Take care, honey."
"What?" Chris says to the dial tone.
When they finally have two coinciding days off, Chris drags Zach hiking. He's sick of the inside of a gym, and at least for today he can get his exercise in without using anything requiring electricity. At first Zach kvetches that he'd rather be sleeping and reading on the beach, but Chris is an expert wheedler. Most younger siblings are.
For the most part it's a thoroughly awesome day -- Chris enjoys the gorgeous weather, rests in the shade, learns that Zach eats Luna bars, dies laughing.
The only weird part happens when Chris brings up his mom's phone call and invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Zach stares at him oddly, like Chris is a pot and Zach really wants the water to boil now.
"What? Do I have something on my face?" Energy bars are not the finger food you think they are. He wipes thumbs against either side of his mouth.
"No," Zach says, shaking his head as if to clear it. "No. Sorry."
But he never answers Chris's mom's question, and it makes things awkward for an hour, until Chris dares Zach to race him down the rocky, tree-lined, uneven hill they just climbed. Zach does, but he says that if he ends up with a cracked skull and/or in a vegetative state, Chris must foot the hospital bill and feed him carrot mush.
Chris isn't sure how he's going to explain to his mom that her concept of "friend" is a little skewed. Maybe it's different for women?
A few hours later, sweaty and exhausted, Chris commandeers Zach's shower.
Exiting the bathroom, Chris towels water off his hair with one hand and holds the ends of another, modesty-preserving towel together with the other. He opens his mouth to ask Zach where he buys his soap--it smells really good, kind of cypress-y--and then shuts it when he sees that Zach's not in the room.
Just before he notices the phone off the hook, he hears tinny voices.
So he picks the phone up off the bedside table to eavesdrop. This is maybe a dick move. Oops.
In his defense, he expects to hear Zach discussing grocery delivery or making plans with a friend--something inane, anyway--and then to see how long it takes Zach to realize the obnoxious, serial-killer mouth-breathing over the line is coming from Chris. It's not his fault that the conversation ends up intriguing him and he abandons the it's coming from inside the house routine.
"--not his Domestic Barbie, Zach--" The voice is exasperated, female, and somehow familiar.
Zach laughs, but not really like he finds anything about what she's said to be funny. A self-deprecating, bitter sort of laugh. Chris frowns.
"I'm serious," the disembodied female says, and now she sounds genuinely angry -- which sparks recognition for Chris. It's that blonde chick Zach works with on Heroes, the former plucky girl detective with the reverse Oedipal complex. "You need to tell him to stop dicking you around like that." Chris is beginning to feel incipient anger himself, as well as some confusion. Anger strictly because if Zach is seeing someone, that someone had better be treating him like a fucking king; confusion because hey, he thought Zach knew and trusted him enough not to keep the homosexual lovin' on the down low.
He hangs up, not bothering to set the receiver down quietly.
That night, Chris goes out on his "image-enhancing" date. He doesn't expect much considering it's basically a dog and pony show for the press, but it turns out she's fucking hot and pretty damned smart, too. The unadulterated sweetness is a little hard to get used to, because she's smart enough that she should be more assertive; but it's not like fucking her would be a hardship, so he turns the charm up.
Which is why it's so weird that at the end of the night, she kisses him while the cameras flash, and then whispers, "G'night. Say hi to your guy for me," in his ear.
Wait, shit.
What just happened?
The next morning, Chris is still working on puzzling that one out.
He also working on choosing between the brown leather sectional and the nubby wool 1960s-style sofa. For a while he enjoys just bouncing back and forth between them, since they're both super comfy. But -- they're both super comfy. So he consults an expert -- he texts Zach the furniture store's address in a playful 911 message.
Zach sends, I think you're capable of deciding things on your own in reply.
And that just adds another puzzle to the stack. Chris frowns. Zach usually loves giving advice.
That evening is the last night before Zach leaves town for a week, so it's strange that it's also the first night when they're both free that they haven't hung out in weeks. Months? But Zach is brusque and disinterested when Chris calls to check in, and Chris is...
He doesn't know. He'd say he's hurt and confused, if it didn't sound like a terrible lyric or a Dear Abby letter sign-off.
Maybe it's a good thing Zach'll be away for a while.
John calls him three days into Zach's absence, and Chris is not relieved. Three hours later, he is, however, drunk.
"So where're you two lovebirds registering?" Karl says.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Chris feels his inquiry is valid -- lovebirds? registration? He didn't think Zoe and Keith were that serious.
"It's tough to suss out, because Zach has class and you don't, but I'm thinking--" John cocks his head to one side like some really fucking condescending species of bird "--I'm thinking compromise. Integral to every successful relationship, right?"
"Mm," Karl says, tipping his glass in John's direction.
"Walmart would do for you, I think--" John says contemplatively.
"Lovely selection of plaid they've got," Karl adds.
"And maybe Barneys for Zach. They've got men's shoes at Barneys, right?" He turns inquisitively to Karl.
"Imagine so. Choice scarves as well, likely enough. Probably no kitchen appliances, though, eh."
"Not a problem. Don't think Zach is the domestic one in the relationship," John says with a smirk.
"I reiterate: what the fuck are you talking about? Besides that I don't have the chops to match the pedigree, which, screw you."
"Oh, sweetie," Zoe says, and pats his hand.
In the course of this five-minute discussion, Chris has been referred to as a "lovebird," implied to be "the domestic one" in a contest between him and Zach (who has books on interior decorating), and pityingly called "sweetie" -- and not even by one of those girls who call everyone patronizing pet names.
Chris Pine is not insecure in his masculinity, not in the slightest, but maybe -- just maybe -- there are grounds for investigation.
Lay on, Macduff, Chris thinks. He has flaws, yeah, but surely none of them are tragic?
Contrary to what his friends seem to think, Chris can engage in higher thinking processes like inference and analysis. In fact, he's ace at them. The prof who oversaw his independent study junior year (for advanced undergraduates, thanks) nearly cried tears of sweet, sweet joy over his paper on Moby Dick.
He is not gay for Zach, least of all married-with-pets-serving-as-kid-proxies gay for Zach.
Just to prove it, he examines the source text.
So he cooks breakfast (and lunch. ...okay, and dinner) for Zach on a relatively regular basis. No big deal -- he cooks for Zoe, too, if only because he fears that she might ingest toxic levels of MSG and high fructose corn syrup if left to subsist only on her usual diet of take-out and nutritionally unsound cereals.
So he brings coffee to Zach's workplace at least once a week, if he's not in New York. This is a perfectly acceptable thing for friends to do for one another. Craft services coffee universally tastes like ass, and it's not like he boards a jet to bring Zach his Lamill or anything.
So he spends Friday and Saturday nights at home with Zach, playing board games and discussing literature. Chris can potentially see the gayness here, but geek is chic. Vocabulary-building exercises will totally get him the ladies.
So, yeah, he misses Zach when either one of them is away, and tries to get Zach to pick out his furniture for him, and asks him what he thinks about scripts, and sometimes lets Zach dress him, and goes to informal parties with him, and inadvertently has begun to use first-person plural pronouns a lot.
...Chris is perhaps willing to concede that "gay" is an acceptable hypothesis based on the preliminary data.
Chris is also perhaps willing to concede that, of the higher thinking processes, introspection is not his strength.
(And, okay. His early fascination with Melville may or may not have been entirely innocuous.)
"It's called repression," Bruce says patiently, chewing an In-and-Out french fry with relish -- though whether because of the fry or because of Chris's apparent idiocy is a matter for debate. Probably it's both.
It's a pleasant day, so they're eating in Bruce's car (he's double-bagged the upholstery and warned that if he finds ketchup anywhere, he knows who to blame and maim) outside the restaurant, hoping it makes them less, rather than more, conspicuous.
"It's not--" he flounders, and then finishes weakly, "like that." He uses the straw to poke disconsolately at his milkshake, which, he realized only after he took the first sip, is chocolate when he really prefers vanilla. Chocolate is Zach's favorite.
Oh, god. Bruce is into schadenfreude and Chris is into masochism. This would be deeply funny, except for how it's also Chris's life.
"Not like what? Not like you'd like to screw Quinto silly, or not like you didn't know you'd like to screw Quinto silly."
"Either! Both! I don't know," Chris moans.
"Well," Bruce says and claps his hands together, then rubs them briskly. "If it's the first, stop acting like you do. If it's the second, you may knock John Mayer out of the running for Hollywood's Douchebag of the Year. If it's both, I suggest you look up 'oxymoron,' emphasis on the moron.
"If it's 'I don't know,' figure it out. I can recommend some books and supplies for experimentation purposes," he says with a shark-like grin and an eyebrow waggle. Chris's jaw unhinges itself.
He gives up on the milkshake and tries to stop the words books and supplies from forever becoming dirty words by association. They are words that he uses a lot, so it's kind of important.
Before he can say anything, Bruce adds, "Or," and he's either being sympathetic or laughing his ass off on the inside; it's sometimes hard to tell with him, "for improving your prowess." Here he slants Chris a meaningful look.
Chris covers his face with his hands and demands, muffled, "Drive. Drive me to a bar. Now."
Bruce says, "Come now, whisky dick won't solve anything." He laughs obnoxiously and swipes Chris's milkshake while he's still in hiding.
But despite the humiliation of the conversation, Chris is later grateful for (most of) the succinct advice. It's definitely 'I don't know," and he's working on figuring it out. Googling "sticking a finger up your ass" is definitely not his brightest idea, though seeing that there is a Yahoo! Answers question that reads, "Can your organs fall out if you finger your bum?" reassures him that there are people out there stupider than him. He then goes for lots of runs, carefully screens Zach's calls, and gives the thinking thing a fair trial, which works much better.
It's complicated because he doesn't want to screw this up, not now that he's pretty sure all he's done thus far is screw up.
Screw up, and fall in love.
First Chris tries to put himself in Zach's shoes. Get inside his head.
He wants to know what Zach is thinking without...exposing himself further to his friends, both as someone who sometimes needs his hand metaphorically held and as someone who is fixated, just slightly. Probably they already know both, but there's something to be said for plausible deniability. Even so, Chris finally cracks a few days later, while watching Project Runway with Zoe. Well, it's not so much watching Project Runway as watching Zoe watch Project Runway. It involves a lot of profanity and a lot of "medicinal chocolate."
"There's one thing I still don't get," he says, feeling like Dr. Watson waiting for Holmes to finally recount his brilliance instead of just going on being mysteriously brilliant. "Why didn't he say anything?"
Zoe sighs softly and pauses the DVR playback. "Hon," she says after a minute, "if your cable company accidentally gives you premium channels when you're only paying for basic, do you call and complain?"
Metaphor -- this is good. Chris can handle metaphor. It's the overt shit that confuses him. "So I'm like HBO? And Zach is--"
"Addicted to your programming, so to speak," Zoe says.
Wait. Math is not Chris's thing, but something is not adding up. He injects healthy skepticism into his voice, because over the last few days he's realized exactly how unappealing the alternative -- belief -- is. If it is how Zoe says it is, then that makes Chris the biggest, douchiest tool on the planet. Forget the gay epiphany; what kind of person is he to have done something like that to his best friend? To Zach.
"Zach's not really the pine-and-retire-to-read-Lisa-Kleypas-with-a-pint-of-Cherry-Garcia-at-hand type. Ha, Pine," he says, because, well, pun.
Zoe raises an eyebrow. "Kleypas?"
"It was for a popular fiction class!" he insists, not defensive in the slightest. "And I'll have you know that Secrets of a Summer Night was a masterful and compelling read. Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review, okay?"
Zoe grins at him and he remembers, right. Not defensive.
She sobers a little and hedges, "No, Zach isn't one to dwell on things he can't change." (Ouch, Chris thinks.) Then her eyes sparkle mischievously. "There are other channels besides HBO out there, you know."
...So Zach is turning to FOX for his dirty sex needs, and maybe to ABC or NBC for whatever romance he may want. There are no less than twelve things wrong with this, and only a third of them -- half, at most -- directly relate to Chris's jealousy.
As it turns out, the jealousy is Chris's linchpin. He's always been the sort of person who understood cognitively, but not personally, Western society's thing for monogamy. The only other time in his life he can remember feeling jealous -- plus, not incidentally, heartbroken -- was when Ree, the girl who'd been Chris's best friend since they were kindergartners, went to prom with Ashley, telling him he was sweet and she loved him, but -- but.
He thinks that if right now someone else took Zach to hypothetical prom, he might punch them in the hypothetical face. Zach would probably forgive him if his boutonniere was awesome enough.
But he does wonder if Zach can forgive him this possibly subconsciously deliberate obliviousness.
Holmes found the obliviousness charming, Chris reminds himself, but it doesn't reassure him very much.
Chris discards a few of the cheesier "whoopsie daisy, sorry for not noticing we've become kind of domesticated" ideas (whatever Karl says, though, the romantic Scrabble board idea was genius, and John shouldn't have vetoed the reenactment of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman's balcony kissing scene) and decides to man up (man down, whatever) and just go for it.
He has a perfect opening when Zach asks him, over Chris's fantastic pasta primavera, what he missed while he was gone.
What comes out in lieu of anything suave is, "Well, our friends mauled me with a cluebat," and Zach freezes with a forkful halfway to his mouth. After a second he moves again, like someone depressed the play button and he's hoping no one notices pause was ever pushed.
"Did they," he says carefully.
"So you have a thing for me," he blurts. Zach sets down his fork, and wow is this ever not going the way Chris planned. "And I," he adds, "have...a thing for you?"
"Is that a question?" Zach asks acidly.
"No! No. It's a, a statement. We're sort of-- I'm sort of-- I'm sorry," he says helplessly. He scrubs a hand over his face. "I was really going for a different vibe."
Zach is staring at him, the same way he did when they went hiking, and oh god, this is epically terrible. He's such an idiot. "I can do this. It's like a puzzle, you know, where start working on it before you see the cover of the box -- or, or, let me just--"
"Chris," Zach says, enunciating a lot more than is flattering. He takes a sip of wine. "You're my friend, god knows why, and you have," he pauses, "selective observational skills. These are facts I've accustomed myself to--"
"We're sort of a foregone conclusion," Chris interjects.
Zach pinches the bridge of his nose and then covers his face with that hand. "You're not allowed to say things like that," he says finally.
This is the time for a deep inhale. "What if I want to be allowed to," he says to his pasta, and listens, maybe a little hopelessly gone, as Zach laughs into his hand. "Please?" It's an afterthought, but a sincere one.
Picking his head up, Zach catches his eyes and says, "Really," like he wants to have it proven for him.
"Really. I really am sorry, and I really do want to. Want--" Chris clears his throat "--you."
After several agonizing moments of silence for which Zach will later need to repay him in sexual favors, Zach says, "C'mere," and Chris does, pushing the plate of pasta back toward the center of the table so he can sit at the edge, facing Zach.
"Closer," Zach says, finally smiling, and hooks his legs around Chris's, pulling him until he tumbles forward into Zach's lap and kisses him, new and not-new.
"Hi," he says, when they break apart.
"Hi," Zach says, laughing into Chris's mouth.
Chris kisses him again.
They have a lot to make up for.