fic: l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, Chris/Zach
title: l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
fandom/pairing: Star Trek RPS, Chris/Zach
rating: PG
wordcount: 5,149
disclaimer: In a parallel universe, maybe this is real, but in this one? Not a chance. Title from The Little Prince.
warning(s): ...Unlawful possession of physical manifestations of metaphorical constructs. Mentions of Disney.
summary: Zach can handle someone metaphorically leaving their heart in his hands; he's never had to contemplate what he would do if someone left their metaphorical heart literally in his hands.
Chris dashes into Zach's house on a Sunday morning and presses a small, wrapped parcel into his hands. "I need you to keep this," he says.
Zach just stares, because he hasn't seen Chris in about a week and while that might make him a sight for sore eyes, Zach's eyes also happen to be tired. It's eight in the morning and he isn't nearly awake enough for this. "What?"
"I need you to keep this," Chris repeats, curling Zach's fingers around the package. Zach lets Chris' hands guide his and tries to figure out if he should be trying to figure out what's going on. "Keep it safe."
"Are you okay?" Zach asks, because Chris looks like shit, worse than he did when they were filming the fight in the bar and he had fake blood running in two parallel tracks down his face. Then, at least, it was all just cleverly applied makeup; then, at least, Chris was buoyed by Kirk's indefatigable cockiness. Now, he just looks wrecked. The curve of the bags under his eyes could rewrite history; the pallor of his skin reminds Zach of certain works by Bram Stoker. His hands are trembling so quickly and minutely that they seem to be vibrating.
"I'm fine," Chris says, and the funny thing is that Zach knows when Chris is lying, can read it like an open book, and Chris isn't. He can't be telling the truth - he obviously isn't telling the truth - but he believes that he is, and who is Zach to tell him otherwise? "Now. I'm fine now."
"You need to sleep," Zach informs him definitively, because Zach knows what it looks like to flirt with the harder edge of sleep deprivation, and this isn't it. Chris has gone past flirting. This is a long, passionate romance with sleep deprivation, or maybe a rough back alley fuck, the kind where you can't even tally your bruises and bites and scratch marks in the morning. "I'm not going to let you leave until you do."
Chris laughs hoarsely, and Christ, he even sounds like it, like he's been down on his knees with a hand gripping his hair and pulling hard. "Trust me, I'm not going to argue, but I need you to promise first."
That might not be arguing, but it's definitely not capitulation. Zach thinks he'll have to deal with it. "I promise I will take the absolute best care of whatever this is." It's not a difficult promise to make; Zach would take care of most anything Chris would choose to give him. "Now will you go to sleep already?"
"Aw, you really do care," Chris coos exhaustedly - even his teasing is weak - but he's stumbling towards Zach's guest bedroom anyway, kicking off his shoes. Zach follows him in, just to make sure he doesn't sneak out the window. Not that Chris would even be able to open the window, in this state, but he might try anyway.
He doesn't have to worry, though; Chris collapses on the bed as soon as he reaches it, draped or spread-eagled or starfished across the cerulean comforter. "Chris," Zach says, and hears sleep-breathing in response, something less than snoring but heavier than waking breaths.
Not letting go of the package, he eases the blankets out from under Chris and pulls them over him, brushing a hand lightly over Chris' tired forehead. "Sleep well," he murmurs, shutting the door quietly behind him.
-
He sits in the kitchen, staring at the parcel thoughtfully but not yet daring to open it. Just as he thinks, Fuck it, and reaches for the knot - it's a very traditional package, very Sound of Music with the brown paper and the string, which Zach thinks he can appreciate - the phone rings.
Normally, this wouldn't be such a dramatic event. Normally, however, Zach isn't staring at a mysterious bundle and Chris isn't asleep in his guest room looking like he just fought six rounds with the universe and lost every single one. (It's the "six rounds" part that's unusual, of course. Chris being asleep in Zach's guest room happens all the time, as much as Zach would prefer him to move just one door over, to Zach's room.)
Zach picks up the phone. The cool plastic begins to warm against his ear, the usual feel of a phone. So far, normalcy reigns. "Hello?"
The voice on the other end of the line is cool, clipped and utterly emotionless. Zach wonders if he should get her contact information; JJ might need an extra female Vulcan. "Hello, Mr. Quinto. My name is Liv Stanade; I work in the Tenure department of Walt Disney Pictures. I was supposed to have a meeting with your friend -" she says the word so dispassionately that Zach wonders if she even knows what it means "- Christopher Pine, but he never arrived. I wondered if you might know his current whereabouts."
Zach thinks about Chris, curled up under the guest room's comforter. Blue is a good color on him. "Sorry," he tells her, looking at his caller id. Unfamiliar number, name withheld; it just figures. "Haven't heard from him."
He hears a brief sigh, just the faintest suggestion that the woman speaking to him might be able to feel just enough emotion to register annoyance. "Mr. Quinto, this is a matter of the utmost importance."
"If you want to call me a liar, just say it," Zach tells her flatly. He despises people who evade their own meanings, stringing words around until you're knotted up in implications alone. And what the hell is the Tenure department, anyway? Disney is a production company, not a college.
"I'm not suggesting that you're a liar, Mr. Quinto," Liv Stanade responds calmly. "Merely hoping for you to understand the gravity of the situation. I must ask you to call me back if you see your friend, especially if he's carrying a package you have never seen before."
"I will do what I can." That's not a lie. However, what Zach can do does not include betraying his friend, especially not to a woman who has given him absolutely no reason to trust her. Ms. Stanade isn't the only one who can twist words to suit her fancy.
"Thank you, Mr. Quinto. Goodbye."
"Goodbye," Zach echoes, to the hum of a dial tone. He hangs up the phone and sits back for a moment, scrutinizing the parcel. One quick tug undoes the knot; the brown paper falls away almost before Zach reaches for it.
Inside is a tree. A small tree, no more than a foot tall, but Zach still has to wonder if he's dreaming, because the package was small and rectangular and almost flat. Book-shaped, Zach would have said, and yet now it's always been large enough to contain a bonsai tree.
It's a beautiful tree, its branches twining around each other, with dark green leaves and blue-white flowers just beginning to unfurl. It sits in a wide, shallow earthenware pot, its roots just barely showing through the dirt.
Zach wonders if Chris wants him to water it, but he doesn't stand up to get the watering can. Instead he lays a hand on the trunk, sturdy despite its size and elegance, and breathes. He feels calm.
He takes the tree with him when he goes back into his room, and keeps one hand on it as he drifts back into sleep. In his last moment of consciousness, he can almost imagine it has a heartbeat, perfectly in time with his breathing.
-
"It's my heart," Chris says resignedly, late that afternoon. Zach has been up for a couple of hours already, but he feels like he's the one who just woke up, not Chris. This entire day has been too much like a dream, even the parts where he was talking on the phone with Zoe and making plans for later in the week. The entire time, he'd been too conscious of the miniature tree under his fingertips, and Chris sleeping soundly in the next room.
"I'm sorry?" Zach asks, hoping he's misheard, or it's some technical term, the mechanics of which Chris simply needs to explain for it to suddenly become rational.
"Disney stole it," Chris explains, scowling like this all makes sense. "Anne helped me keep it from them during Princess Diaries, but they had some sort of contract with Lindsay Lohan."
"Disney stole your heart," Zach repeats, trying to ascertain that he's grasping all this and it's not, say, some very bizarre aural hallucination. "Not your soul?"
Chris shrugs. "Apparently souls are overrated. Plus, if they've got your heart, they can decide who you go out with. Why do you think so many Disney stars date each other?"
Zach has believed a lot of things in his time, starting when he was seven and wanted to be a Tibetan monk because someone told him they could fly, but this...
"Chris, I hate to break it to you, but you're not exactly heartless." The words fall out of his mouth, somewhere between disbelief and acceptance.
Chris is starting to look uncomfortable with the questions, listing to the right and dropping his gaze onto the tree sitting between them. One flower is fully in bloom. "It's not like that. You don't get - apathetic." Zach hums in absent appreciation of his word choice. "Not totally. Your soul takes over for some of it. It's just subdued."
If there is anything that Chris is not, it is subdued. Zach raises an eyebrow, habit now that Spock has settled into his bones, like every other character he ever played well. It's Chris' cue to laugh, but he doesn't, just rubs his eyes and looks like he wants to fall back into Zach's guest bed. Ten hours of sleep brought a little color back to his complexion, but it can't work miracles.
"Can we talk about this later? I really need to go home and sleep for, like, a week," Chris says apologetically, and Zach feels like shit for interrogating him when he's in such bad shape, even if it is Chris' fault for showing up in his living room with strange foliage and then insisting that it's the physical manifestation of the essence of his emotions.
"Yeah, of course," he says, even though there's nothing he wants to do less than to let Chris go home to an empty apartment. Nobody will tuck him in, there. Zach is a big believer in the values of being tucked in. "But are you going to be okay alone? Do you want to take your tree?"
"I'll be fine," Chris says with half a smile and a sandpaper-raw rasp to his voice. "And right now, I should stay as far away from it as possible. They're going to expect me to have taken it back in already."
"Okay," Zach says, because he's not entirely sure what he can say. He can handle someone metaphorically leaving their heart in his hands; he's never had to contemplate what he would do if someone left their metaphorical heart literally in his hands.
Chris slips out the door, and if Zach's heart is a plant then it's a flower, leaning after Chris like the sun.
-
Zach remembers:
Chris had a bizarre relationship with one of the costumers during filming, one which Zach tried not to pay too much attention to because it had nothing to do with him, and in any case, it always seemed like something of a very tense in-joke.
Her name was Lucy; she was in charge of all of Kirk's costumes, and at the beginning of every day she would hand Chris whatever outfit he needed, patient-black or cadet-red or cold weather gear, casual clothes (bloodied and not bloodied) or gold command uniform, and say, "Yours for now," with a tiny smirk on her face.
"It's always mine," Chris would growl, and Zach just thought that he was connecting with his character, the way Zach sometimes sits and stares into a mirror, looking at himself with the eyebrows and the ears.
At the end of the day they would turn their costumes back in and Lucy would say, "Come on, hand it over," with the smirk in her voice and her posture, and Chris would glare at her as he passed her his folded costume.
"You don't get all of it," he snapped once, and Lucy laughed.
"You don't think that's going to last forever, do you? Honey, we've got you."
Zach didn't understand it, but he always figured Chris would explain it if it were anything important.
-
Zach is just lying on the couch reading the newspaper when all of a sudden, the tree under his fingers is no longer a tree. He doesn't feel it shift, the texture of the bark and the brush of the leaves turning into something smoother, flatter - it's more that suddenly, his hand has always been lying on a book, instead of pressed against a tree.
It feels like a book, at least, a journal with a leather cover, but when he turns away from the headlines to look at it, it's a sculpture. It's always been a sculpture, and it's not even a sculpture of a book - it's freestanding, metal, abstract, curves twisting in and around and behind each other, like Celtic knotmakers were inspired by some of the more beautiful ideas in physics.
Zach is mystified as to what kind of metal it could be made out of; it's like nothing he's ever seen, dark silver-gold with a hint of color that Zach can't place. It might not even be metal, despite the mineral shimmer. It's more resilient than rigid, not quite malleable, but just barely yielding under his fingers. It reminds him of the one time he touched a dolphin - firm but soft, like metal come to life.
The tree had a heartbeat. The sculpture feels like it's breathing.
Absently, Zach wonders if maybe Tibetan monks really can fly, after all.
-
"Oh, hey, it did that?" Chris asks, when they've worked their way up to the subject after discussing the new Mexican place a few blocks away from Zach's house. He sounds surprised, and curious, which is intriguing, if slightly worrying. What else could Chris' heart do that neither of them is expecting? "Huh. Cool."
"So what, it never did that with you?" Zach demands.
"Well, no," Chris says, as if it should be obvious. "I mean, I barely even knew about this stuff until Anne told me about it, and then when they gave it back to me for filming I just absorbed it before it could manifest."
"They gave it back to you?" One day, Zach is really going to have to sit down and get Chris to explain this from the very beginning, with details. Zach has a great deal of appreciation for details.
Chris laughs. "Turns out you kind of need to act with your entire heart. I was more valuable to them if I didn't get panned, so..."
"So they just let you have your heart back, no strings attached? They didn't think that was risky at all?" Occasionally, Zach wonders if his phone is being tapped and, if so, what the imaginary listening agents think about his conversations. He thinks they would probably be completely perplexed about this one. Even Zach is slightly bemused, and he's the one who brought the topic up.
"Not exactly," Chris says, the phone feeding his voice directly into Zach's ear. He sounds like he's fidgeting. "Look, I've got to go. Talk to you later."
"Later," Zach says, and hangs up first so he won't have to listen to the dial tone.
-
"Zach," Zoe breathes, her fingers ghosting just above the surface of the sculpture, right where one rope hides under another. "It's gorgeous."
Zach only nods. He couldn't help but display it, when Zoe came over. It would look too odd to have a sculpture perpetually under his fingers, and anyway, it's beautiful. It deserves to be admired by someone other than himself.
"Where'd you get it?" Zoe asks curiously.
"Flea market," Zach replies easily, the lie fluid on his tongue. He is an actor, after all. "You find the craziest things there."
"It's amazing what some people will give away," Zoe murmurs in agreement, and Zach thinks that maybe there are some subjects that he and Chris have been avoiding.
-
Zach remembers:
Chris was always more affectionate when the cameras were rolling. It wasn't that they would call it a day and he would immediately freeze everyone out, but it was a more reserved friendship, more like the guy Zach thought he knew before they started working together. He had to revise his prior conceptions almost on the first day of filming; he figured Chris was just shy, and that the new environment, or maybe the conversation they had about whether or not Chris should do Star Trek, had broken through the last of Chris' barriers.
In costume, Chris touched everyone. He jumped on Karl and ruffled Anton's hair and swept Zoe up into huge hugs and spent almost all his time with Zach, just sitting and talking with their shoulders and knees brushing.
After filming wrapped for the day, he never suffered a complete personality change, but most of the meaningless touches and significant glances stopped. It was hardly noticeable in his interactions with anyone except Zach, because Zach -
It had been a while since Zach connected with someone the way he did with Chris, on almost every level. They never ran out of things to say to each other, and it's not like anyone could blame Zach for maybe thinking there was a little more to it, was the potential for a little more to it. It's not like anyone could blame Zach, when anyone looking for one of them just had to find the other, when their immediate reaction to anything was to lock eyes.
And then the day would end, and with it everything that made Zach think what they had could potentially span beyond friendship. Zach wondered if there was a phrase for something more subtle than mixed signals, but more real than pure imagination.
He revised his prior assumptions. Maybe it hadn't been anything to do with shyness. Maybe it was just the costume; maybe being Kirk expanded all of Chris' actions and attentions. (He considered his own costume once, thinking it had something to do with the ears, but he showed up on set on a day when he had no scenes and thus no makeup, and Chris acted exactly like normal. If this could be construed as normal, at least.)
He couldn't complain. Chris was still one of the best friends he'd ever had. Zach just sometimes wished that he could have an and instead of an or.
-
He's sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels and debating ordering a pizza, debating calling one of his friends and seeing if they want to go out, when the heart is no longer a sculpture.
Carefully, he mutes the TV, leaving absurdly dressed people to gesticulate on the screen in silence. Under his fingers is a book, and he knows, knows in the way he knows how to use his body and face and voice to convey whatever he wants, that if he looks at it, suddenly it will no longer ever have been a book.
"Alright," he says, keeping his eyes carefully on the TV screen, which is just now fading to commercial. "Obviously there's something about this book, since this is the third time I've gotten hints about it, but there's no way I can actually figure out what it is if I don't actually get to see it."
He has no idea to whom he's speaking. He has no idea if they're listening.
Carefully, he closes his eyes, picking up Chris' heart and exploring the edges. It's definitely a book, the cover made of some soft, coriaceous material - he doesn't think this is actually leather any more than the sculpture was actually metal - the pages inside made of thick, smooth paper. He flips through absently, almost experimentally. The heart stays a book.
Someone must have been listening, because it stays a book when he opens his eyes. Zach was right about this being a journal; the words on all the pages are handwritten, even if the script is unfamiliar. Mostly unfamiliar, at least; he sees traces of Chris' hand in the crosses on the t's, the loops on the j's and y's and g's, the curves of the s's and angles of the z's.
Reading it would be an invasion of privacy of the worst sort, but Zach and Chris haven't had a chance to talk properly in days and Zach is worried, about Chris and them and this damn heart, about what the hell this all means.
Zach would let Chris see his whole heart, if Chris ever asked. Zach would write it out himself and then condense it into three words if Chris didn't want to read the entire thing.
He can't stop himself from glancing down at the page and taking in the words, rolling them around in his head and letting their meanings, definitions and connotations and denotations, fall into place one by one. And then all of a sudden, it's not reading anymore; it's something else, something entirely different that he only got the barest hints of when he was holding the tree and the sculpture.
He's seeing through Chris' eyes, but it's not formations of light and shadow coming through his pupils to be instantly translated by his brain. Instead, it's layers upon layers of impressions that lock into shapes (and smells, and textures, and sounds.)
The bowl of wonton soup in front of Chris has memories impressed into it, the wonton soups of his childhood, the other times he's eaten at this restaurant, but that's only lightly textured compared to the people sitting around him: person-shaped amalgamations of trust (knowhewon'tlietome), friendship (letmechillwithhimandhisgirlfriendwhenIwashavingabaddayeventhoughitwastheirdatenight), resentment (thatonetimelastyearwhenhedidn'ttalktomeforaweek), anxiety (onlyjustmetwhatifhethinksI'manasshole?), layers upon layers of feelings and emotions and thoughts that can't even be put into words.
Zach tears his eyes away from the notebook, gasping, and isn't terribly surprised to notice that his eyes are watering. He wonders if this is what a Vulcan mind meld feels like, like a flood of knowledge and sensation that surrounds you completely and utterly.
He remembers reading Le Petit Prince in his high school French class, and thinks, On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur, indeed.
-
He doesn't tell Chris any of this when they're on the phone two days later, just asks, "Wait, so explain that thing about filming." Chris sighs, and Zach adds, "So help me God, if you tell me you can't talk right now I'm going to drive to your place and hit you." He's pretty sure he means it, too.
"I managed to get half of it back for filming, okay? For all the time. And then I got the rest of it back for my scenes. Lucy took it back when I changed out of costume." Chris falls silent for a moment, and Zach thinks of souls acting as generators, and half-hearts doing double duty when the cameras are packed away.
He opens his mouth to say something and closes it, opens it again and closes it again just as quickly. "Okay," he says instead, eventually. "But you can use it now? It's not a problem for Farragut North or anything?"
"No, no," Chris tells him quickly. "It's different. I gave it to you. It was voluntary, so I can still use it."
There are some subjects... But Zach doesn't bring it up now, not yet, just lets Chris change the subject to Harold and Noah and doesn't ask any more questions. It's the sort of conversation, he thinks, that would be better face to face.
-
Zach remembers:
It was a night scene, and JJ had wanted just one more take for the past two hours, so that it was a relief when they were finally done and could sneak away for a little while.
They ended up on a deserted, anonymous couch, threadworn and comfortable and just relaxed enough that it pushed Chris and Zach towards each other, even though there had been a foot of space between them when they sat down.
Zach can't even remember what they talked about, just that the talking let him pretend to ignore just how close they were getting, let him find excuses for turning to sit cross-legged, facing Chris and waving his hands around and then letting them settle a bare centimeter away from Chris' arm. Chris, he thinks, might have been doing the same thing; his fist was pressed against the cushion beneath and between them, knuckles just brushing the skin of Zach's ankle.
Chris made a vociferous point that left his nose almost touching Zach's, and Zach leaned forward just slightly -
And suddenly found Chris backed up almost all the way to the arm rests. "I can't," he told Zach miserably, "not yet, it wouldn't be fair to you -"
"Chill, Chris, it's okay," was the only lie Zach had time to say before JJ was calling for them again.
"I will, though," Chris insisted, even though Zach had no real idea what he was talking about. It was too late, for both of them; they were too tired. "I just need to straighten a few things out first."
"Okay," Zach said meaninglessly, and that was that until Chris turned up on Zach's doorstep and pressed a strange brown package into his hands.
-
Chris walks into Zach's house two weeks after that bizarre Sunday, looking much healthier and not carrying anything except his sunglasses.
"Hey," he says, grinning. "Have you had lunch yet? Because -"
"Why did you give me your heart?" Zach interrupts, because he thinks maybe two weeks is the upper limit for stalling on this conversation.
Chris hesitates. "Because I didn't think it would be safe with me," he says, and Zach's always been able to read Chris' lies.
"Bullshit," he says. "They already suspected that you were here. If they'd be willing to grab it out of your chest or whatever, why wouldn't they just break into my house and steal it?"
"Because they're vampires and need to be invited in?" Chris, twirling his sunglasses between two fingers, is backlit by sunshine. Zach sighs inwardly and pulls him inside.
He really does look better, fresh and well-rested. He doesn't seem like an ICU escapee or an extra playing a cadaver in some horror film. Zach wants to reach out and touch him, run one hand along his face to memorize it, because for the last two weeks his mental image of Chris has been some combination of the way he looked when he left Zach's house and the way he felt from inside his heart.
"Chris," he says patiently. "Why did you give me your heart?"
"I can take it back if you want," Chris suggests, fidgeting and looking like he has to make an effort to meet Zach's eyes. He flashes a quick grin that Zach doesn't entirely buy. "It should be okay now; two weeks is about the limit, and anyway, half the cast of High School Musical are planning to steal their hearts back. Disney's got bigger things to worry about."
That's... actually really funny, and one day Zach is going to ask Chris to expand on it, and possibly even act sections of it out, but it didn't exactly answer his question. Oh, Chris. Petty attempts at evasion aren't going to cut it. "Why did you give me your heart, Chris?"
"Because I knew you would take care of it," Chris tries. It's better this time, more truthful, but not the entirety.
"Yeah. You know who would also take care of it? Your parents." Zach loves Chris' parents. They're wonderful people. They might even have believed Chris - after all, they do have a lot of experience with the industry. "Why did you give me your heart?"
"I - don't you know already?" Chris demands desperately, dropping his sunglasses on a table with a plastic clatter and looking one or two steps away from yanking at his hair. "I gave it to you so I wouldn't have to say it, fuck -" He grabs the book out of Zach's hands and opens it to a random page. "Fine. Read it."
"Chris -"
"Just read it, okay?" Chris sounds resigned, and Zach starts to read, slipping easily into Chris' heart-senses.
Almost every detail of his house is imbued with some sort of significance; Zach takes his time looking around, absorbing it all, until he's stalled long enough that he finally has to look at himself. If his entire house is layered, Zach is the biggest collage ever, all of it in similar shades: comfort (canalwaysletgowithyou), friendship (cantalktoyounomatterwhereIam), wanting (sometimesit'shardnottojuststareatyou), and through it all, so much love (needyouinmylife and alwayswantyou and bestthingthateverhappenedtome and you and you and you and youyouyouyouyouyoualwaysyou), shining so brightly Zach wonders if hearts can go blind.
He looks away from the journal and almost staggers at the sudden loss of sensation, letting his thoughts sink in like sunshine. "I think," he says carefully, trying not to show that his mind is still chasing the vibrant glow of Chris' heart, "that you should take this back now."
Chris steps back, his eyes wide. "Why?" he asks nervously.
"Because," Zach tells him patiently, "I can't take a journal or a sculpture or a bonsai tree everywhere I go. Just think of it as... you keeping it safe for me."
"Yeah?" Chris asks, starting to smile.
"I mean," Zach says, shrugging and trying to sound off-hand, like he falls in love with his best friend every day of the week. (Maybe he does: maybe that's what every day is, just falling in love with the same person over and over again.) "It's not like I haven't been keeping mine safe for you."
"Well in that case," Chris says, stretching out a hand and taking the journal from Zach. It doesn't suddenly disappear, or sink into his skin; it's just that one second it's there, and the next, it never has been.
Zach gives in and kicks the door closed before pulling Chris into a kiss, and it was nice feeling Chris' love for him from inside his heart, but it might be even better from this side.
Against his chest, he thinks he can feel Chris' heart beating, perfectly in time with his own.
fandom/pairing: Star Trek RPS, Chris/Zach
rating: PG
wordcount: 5,149
disclaimer: In a parallel universe, maybe this is real, but in this one? Not a chance. Title from The Little Prince.
warning(s): ...Unlawful possession of physical manifestations of metaphorical constructs. Mentions of Disney.
summary: Zach can handle someone metaphorically leaving their heart in his hands; he's never had to contemplate what he would do if someone left their metaphorical heart literally in his hands.
Chris dashes into Zach's house on a Sunday morning and presses a small, wrapped parcel into his hands. "I need you to keep this," he says.
Zach just stares, because he hasn't seen Chris in about a week and while that might make him a sight for sore eyes, Zach's eyes also happen to be tired. It's eight in the morning and he isn't nearly awake enough for this. "What?"
"I need you to keep this," Chris repeats, curling Zach's fingers around the package. Zach lets Chris' hands guide his and tries to figure out if he should be trying to figure out what's going on. "Keep it safe."
"Are you okay?" Zach asks, because Chris looks like shit, worse than he did when they were filming the fight in the bar and he had fake blood running in two parallel tracks down his face. Then, at least, it was all just cleverly applied makeup; then, at least, Chris was buoyed by Kirk's indefatigable cockiness. Now, he just looks wrecked. The curve of the bags under his eyes could rewrite history; the pallor of his skin reminds Zach of certain works by Bram Stoker. His hands are trembling so quickly and minutely that they seem to be vibrating.
"I'm fine," Chris says, and the funny thing is that Zach knows when Chris is lying, can read it like an open book, and Chris isn't. He can't be telling the truth - he obviously isn't telling the truth - but he believes that he is, and who is Zach to tell him otherwise? "Now. I'm fine now."
"You need to sleep," Zach informs him definitively, because Zach knows what it looks like to flirt with the harder edge of sleep deprivation, and this isn't it. Chris has gone past flirting. This is a long, passionate romance with sleep deprivation, or maybe a rough back alley fuck, the kind where you can't even tally your bruises and bites and scratch marks in the morning. "I'm not going to let you leave until you do."
Chris laughs hoarsely, and Christ, he even sounds like it, like he's been down on his knees with a hand gripping his hair and pulling hard. "Trust me, I'm not going to argue, but I need you to promise first."
That might not be arguing, but it's definitely not capitulation. Zach thinks he'll have to deal with it. "I promise I will take the absolute best care of whatever this is." It's not a difficult promise to make; Zach would take care of most anything Chris would choose to give him. "Now will you go to sleep already?"
"Aw, you really do care," Chris coos exhaustedly - even his teasing is weak - but he's stumbling towards Zach's guest bedroom anyway, kicking off his shoes. Zach follows him in, just to make sure he doesn't sneak out the window. Not that Chris would even be able to open the window, in this state, but he might try anyway.
He doesn't have to worry, though; Chris collapses on the bed as soon as he reaches it, draped or spread-eagled or starfished across the cerulean comforter. "Chris," Zach says, and hears sleep-breathing in response, something less than snoring but heavier than waking breaths.
Not letting go of the package, he eases the blankets out from under Chris and pulls them over him, brushing a hand lightly over Chris' tired forehead. "Sleep well," he murmurs, shutting the door quietly behind him.
-
He sits in the kitchen, staring at the parcel thoughtfully but not yet daring to open it. Just as he thinks, Fuck it, and reaches for the knot - it's a very traditional package, very Sound of Music with the brown paper and the string, which Zach thinks he can appreciate - the phone rings.
Normally, this wouldn't be such a dramatic event. Normally, however, Zach isn't staring at a mysterious bundle and Chris isn't asleep in his guest room looking like he just fought six rounds with the universe and lost every single one. (It's the "six rounds" part that's unusual, of course. Chris being asleep in Zach's guest room happens all the time, as much as Zach would prefer him to move just one door over, to Zach's room.)
Zach picks up the phone. The cool plastic begins to warm against his ear, the usual feel of a phone. So far, normalcy reigns. "Hello?"
The voice on the other end of the line is cool, clipped and utterly emotionless. Zach wonders if he should get her contact information; JJ might need an extra female Vulcan. "Hello, Mr. Quinto. My name is Liv Stanade; I work in the Tenure department of Walt Disney Pictures. I was supposed to have a meeting with your friend -" she says the word so dispassionately that Zach wonders if she even knows what it means "- Christopher Pine, but he never arrived. I wondered if you might know his current whereabouts."
Zach thinks about Chris, curled up under the guest room's comforter. Blue is a good color on him. "Sorry," he tells her, looking at his caller id. Unfamiliar number, name withheld; it just figures. "Haven't heard from him."
He hears a brief sigh, just the faintest suggestion that the woman speaking to him might be able to feel just enough emotion to register annoyance. "Mr. Quinto, this is a matter of the utmost importance."
"If you want to call me a liar, just say it," Zach tells her flatly. He despises people who evade their own meanings, stringing words around until you're knotted up in implications alone. And what the hell is the Tenure department, anyway? Disney is a production company, not a college.
"I'm not suggesting that you're a liar, Mr. Quinto," Liv Stanade responds calmly. "Merely hoping for you to understand the gravity of the situation. I must ask you to call me back if you see your friend, especially if he's carrying a package you have never seen before."
"I will do what I can." That's not a lie. However, what Zach can do does not include betraying his friend, especially not to a woman who has given him absolutely no reason to trust her. Ms. Stanade isn't the only one who can twist words to suit her fancy.
"Thank you, Mr. Quinto. Goodbye."
"Goodbye," Zach echoes, to the hum of a dial tone. He hangs up the phone and sits back for a moment, scrutinizing the parcel. One quick tug undoes the knot; the brown paper falls away almost before Zach reaches for it.
Inside is a tree. A small tree, no more than a foot tall, but Zach still has to wonder if he's dreaming, because the package was small and rectangular and almost flat. Book-shaped, Zach would have said, and yet now it's always been large enough to contain a bonsai tree.
It's a beautiful tree, its branches twining around each other, with dark green leaves and blue-white flowers just beginning to unfurl. It sits in a wide, shallow earthenware pot, its roots just barely showing through the dirt.
Zach wonders if Chris wants him to water it, but he doesn't stand up to get the watering can. Instead he lays a hand on the trunk, sturdy despite its size and elegance, and breathes. He feels calm.
He takes the tree with him when he goes back into his room, and keeps one hand on it as he drifts back into sleep. In his last moment of consciousness, he can almost imagine it has a heartbeat, perfectly in time with his breathing.
-
"It's my heart," Chris says resignedly, late that afternoon. Zach has been up for a couple of hours already, but he feels like he's the one who just woke up, not Chris. This entire day has been too much like a dream, even the parts where he was talking on the phone with Zoe and making plans for later in the week. The entire time, he'd been too conscious of the miniature tree under his fingertips, and Chris sleeping soundly in the next room.
"I'm sorry?" Zach asks, hoping he's misheard, or it's some technical term, the mechanics of which Chris simply needs to explain for it to suddenly become rational.
"Disney stole it," Chris explains, scowling like this all makes sense. "Anne helped me keep it from them during Princess Diaries, but they had some sort of contract with Lindsay Lohan."
"Disney stole your heart," Zach repeats, trying to ascertain that he's grasping all this and it's not, say, some very bizarre aural hallucination. "Not your soul?"
Chris shrugs. "Apparently souls are overrated. Plus, if they've got your heart, they can decide who you go out with. Why do you think so many Disney stars date each other?"
Zach has believed a lot of things in his time, starting when he was seven and wanted to be a Tibetan monk because someone told him they could fly, but this...
"Chris, I hate to break it to you, but you're not exactly heartless." The words fall out of his mouth, somewhere between disbelief and acceptance.
Chris is starting to look uncomfortable with the questions, listing to the right and dropping his gaze onto the tree sitting between them. One flower is fully in bloom. "It's not like that. You don't get - apathetic." Zach hums in absent appreciation of his word choice. "Not totally. Your soul takes over for some of it. It's just subdued."
If there is anything that Chris is not, it is subdued. Zach raises an eyebrow, habit now that Spock has settled into his bones, like every other character he ever played well. It's Chris' cue to laugh, but he doesn't, just rubs his eyes and looks like he wants to fall back into Zach's guest bed. Ten hours of sleep brought a little color back to his complexion, but it can't work miracles.
"Can we talk about this later? I really need to go home and sleep for, like, a week," Chris says apologetically, and Zach feels like shit for interrogating him when he's in such bad shape, even if it is Chris' fault for showing up in his living room with strange foliage and then insisting that it's the physical manifestation of the essence of his emotions.
"Yeah, of course," he says, even though there's nothing he wants to do less than to let Chris go home to an empty apartment. Nobody will tuck him in, there. Zach is a big believer in the values of being tucked in. "But are you going to be okay alone? Do you want to take your tree?"
"I'll be fine," Chris says with half a smile and a sandpaper-raw rasp to his voice. "And right now, I should stay as far away from it as possible. They're going to expect me to have taken it back in already."
"Okay," Zach says, because he's not entirely sure what he can say. He can handle someone metaphorically leaving their heart in his hands; he's never had to contemplate what he would do if someone left their metaphorical heart literally in his hands.
Chris slips out the door, and if Zach's heart is a plant then it's a flower, leaning after Chris like the sun.
-
Zach remembers:
Chris had a bizarre relationship with one of the costumers during filming, one which Zach tried not to pay too much attention to because it had nothing to do with him, and in any case, it always seemed like something of a very tense in-joke.
Her name was Lucy; she was in charge of all of Kirk's costumes, and at the beginning of every day she would hand Chris whatever outfit he needed, patient-black or cadet-red or cold weather gear, casual clothes (bloodied and not bloodied) or gold command uniform, and say, "Yours for now," with a tiny smirk on her face.
"It's always mine," Chris would growl, and Zach just thought that he was connecting with his character, the way Zach sometimes sits and stares into a mirror, looking at himself with the eyebrows and the ears.
At the end of the day they would turn their costumes back in and Lucy would say, "Come on, hand it over," with the smirk in her voice and her posture, and Chris would glare at her as he passed her his folded costume.
"You don't get all of it," he snapped once, and Lucy laughed.
"You don't think that's going to last forever, do you? Honey, we've got you."
Zach didn't understand it, but he always figured Chris would explain it if it were anything important.
-
Zach is just lying on the couch reading the newspaper when all of a sudden, the tree under his fingers is no longer a tree. He doesn't feel it shift, the texture of the bark and the brush of the leaves turning into something smoother, flatter - it's more that suddenly, his hand has always been lying on a book, instead of pressed against a tree.
It feels like a book, at least, a journal with a leather cover, but when he turns away from the headlines to look at it, it's a sculpture. It's always been a sculpture, and it's not even a sculpture of a book - it's freestanding, metal, abstract, curves twisting in and around and behind each other, like Celtic knotmakers were inspired by some of the more beautiful ideas in physics.
Zach is mystified as to what kind of metal it could be made out of; it's like nothing he's ever seen, dark silver-gold with a hint of color that Zach can't place. It might not even be metal, despite the mineral shimmer. It's more resilient than rigid, not quite malleable, but just barely yielding under his fingers. It reminds him of the one time he touched a dolphin - firm but soft, like metal come to life.
The tree had a heartbeat. The sculpture feels like it's breathing.
Absently, Zach wonders if maybe Tibetan monks really can fly, after all.
-
"Oh, hey, it did that?" Chris asks, when they've worked their way up to the subject after discussing the new Mexican place a few blocks away from Zach's house. He sounds surprised, and curious, which is intriguing, if slightly worrying. What else could Chris' heart do that neither of them is expecting? "Huh. Cool."
"So what, it never did that with you?" Zach demands.
"Well, no," Chris says, as if it should be obvious. "I mean, I barely even knew about this stuff until Anne told me about it, and then when they gave it back to me for filming I just absorbed it before it could manifest."
"They gave it back to you?" One day, Zach is really going to have to sit down and get Chris to explain this from the very beginning, with details. Zach has a great deal of appreciation for details.
Chris laughs. "Turns out you kind of need to act with your entire heart. I was more valuable to them if I didn't get panned, so..."
"So they just let you have your heart back, no strings attached? They didn't think that was risky at all?" Occasionally, Zach wonders if his phone is being tapped and, if so, what the imaginary listening agents think about his conversations. He thinks they would probably be completely perplexed about this one. Even Zach is slightly bemused, and he's the one who brought the topic up.
"Not exactly," Chris says, the phone feeding his voice directly into Zach's ear. He sounds like he's fidgeting. "Look, I've got to go. Talk to you later."
"Later," Zach says, and hangs up first so he won't have to listen to the dial tone.
-
"Zach," Zoe breathes, her fingers ghosting just above the surface of the sculpture, right where one rope hides under another. "It's gorgeous."
Zach only nods. He couldn't help but display it, when Zoe came over. It would look too odd to have a sculpture perpetually under his fingers, and anyway, it's beautiful. It deserves to be admired by someone other than himself.
"Where'd you get it?" Zoe asks curiously.
"Flea market," Zach replies easily, the lie fluid on his tongue. He is an actor, after all. "You find the craziest things there."
"It's amazing what some people will give away," Zoe murmurs in agreement, and Zach thinks that maybe there are some subjects that he and Chris have been avoiding.
-
Zach remembers:
Chris was always more affectionate when the cameras were rolling. It wasn't that they would call it a day and he would immediately freeze everyone out, but it was a more reserved friendship, more like the guy Zach thought he knew before they started working together. He had to revise his prior conceptions almost on the first day of filming; he figured Chris was just shy, and that the new environment, or maybe the conversation they had about whether or not Chris should do Star Trek, had broken through the last of Chris' barriers.
In costume, Chris touched everyone. He jumped on Karl and ruffled Anton's hair and swept Zoe up into huge hugs and spent almost all his time with Zach, just sitting and talking with their shoulders and knees brushing.
After filming wrapped for the day, he never suffered a complete personality change, but most of the meaningless touches and significant glances stopped. It was hardly noticeable in his interactions with anyone except Zach, because Zach -
It had been a while since Zach connected with someone the way he did with Chris, on almost every level. They never ran out of things to say to each other, and it's not like anyone could blame Zach for maybe thinking there was a little more to it, was the potential for a little more to it. It's not like anyone could blame Zach, when anyone looking for one of them just had to find the other, when their immediate reaction to anything was to lock eyes.
And then the day would end, and with it everything that made Zach think what they had could potentially span beyond friendship. Zach wondered if there was a phrase for something more subtle than mixed signals, but more real than pure imagination.
He revised his prior assumptions. Maybe it hadn't been anything to do with shyness. Maybe it was just the costume; maybe being Kirk expanded all of Chris' actions and attentions. (He considered his own costume once, thinking it had something to do with the ears, but he showed up on set on a day when he had no scenes and thus no makeup, and Chris acted exactly like normal. If this could be construed as normal, at least.)
He couldn't complain. Chris was still one of the best friends he'd ever had. Zach just sometimes wished that he could have an and instead of an or.
-
He's sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels and debating ordering a pizza, debating calling one of his friends and seeing if they want to go out, when the heart is no longer a sculpture.
Carefully, he mutes the TV, leaving absurdly dressed people to gesticulate on the screen in silence. Under his fingers is a book, and he knows, knows in the way he knows how to use his body and face and voice to convey whatever he wants, that if he looks at it, suddenly it will no longer ever have been a book.
"Alright," he says, keeping his eyes carefully on the TV screen, which is just now fading to commercial. "Obviously there's something about this book, since this is the third time I've gotten hints about it, but there's no way I can actually figure out what it is if I don't actually get to see it."
He has no idea to whom he's speaking. He has no idea if they're listening.
Carefully, he closes his eyes, picking up Chris' heart and exploring the edges. It's definitely a book, the cover made of some soft, coriaceous material - he doesn't think this is actually leather any more than the sculpture was actually metal - the pages inside made of thick, smooth paper. He flips through absently, almost experimentally. The heart stays a book.
Someone must have been listening, because it stays a book when he opens his eyes. Zach was right about this being a journal; the words on all the pages are handwritten, even if the script is unfamiliar. Mostly unfamiliar, at least; he sees traces of Chris' hand in the crosses on the t's, the loops on the j's and y's and g's, the curves of the s's and angles of the z's.
Reading it would be an invasion of privacy of the worst sort, but Zach and Chris haven't had a chance to talk properly in days and Zach is worried, about Chris and them and this damn heart, about what the hell this all means.
Zach would let Chris see his whole heart, if Chris ever asked. Zach would write it out himself and then condense it into three words if Chris didn't want to read the entire thing.
He can't stop himself from glancing down at the page and taking in the words, rolling them around in his head and letting their meanings, definitions and connotations and denotations, fall into place one by one. And then all of a sudden, it's not reading anymore; it's something else, something entirely different that he only got the barest hints of when he was holding the tree and the sculpture.
He's seeing through Chris' eyes, but it's not formations of light and shadow coming through his pupils to be instantly translated by his brain. Instead, it's layers upon layers of impressions that lock into shapes (and smells, and textures, and sounds.)
The bowl of wonton soup in front of Chris has memories impressed into it, the wonton soups of his childhood, the other times he's eaten at this restaurant, but that's only lightly textured compared to the people sitting around him: person-shaped amalgamations of trust (knowhewon'tlietome), friendship (letmechillwithhimandhisgirlfriendwhenIwashavingabaddayeventhoughitwastheirdatenight), resentment (thatonetimelastyearwhenhedidn'ttalktomeforaweek), anxiety (onlyjustmetwhatifhethinksI'manasshole?), layers upon layers of feelings and emotions and thoughts that can't even be put into words.
Zach tears his eyes away from the notebook, gasping, and isn't terribly surprised to notice that his eyes are watering. He wonders if this is what a Vulcan mind meld feels like, like a flood of knowledge and sensation that surrounds you completely and utterly.
He remembers reading Le Petit Prince in his high school French class, and thinks, On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur, indeed.
-
He doesn't tell Chris any of this when they're on the phone two days later, just asks, "Wait, so explain that thing about filming." Chris sighs, and Zach adds, "So help me God, if you tell me you can't talk right now I'm going to drive to your place and hit you." He's pretty sure he means it, too.
"I managed to get half of it back for filming, okay? For all the time. And then I got the rest of it back for my scenes. Lucy took it back when I changed out of costume." Chris falls silent for a moment, and Zach thinks of souls acting as generators, and half-hearts doing double duty when the cameras are packed away.
He opens his mouth to say something and closes it, opens it again and closes it again just as quickly. "Okay," he says instead, eventually. "But you can use it now? It's not a problem for Farragut North or anything?"
"No, no," Chris tells him quickly. "It's different. I gave it to you. It was voluntary, so I can still use it."
There are some subjects... But Zach doesn't bring it up now, not yet, just lets Chris change the subject to Harold and Noah and doesn't ask any more questions. It's the sort of conversation, he thinks, that would be better face to face.
-
Zach remembers:
It was a night scene, and JJ had wanted just one more take for the past two hours, so that it was a relief when they were finally done and could sneak away for a little while.
They ended up on a deserted, anonymous couch, threadworn and comfortable and just relaxed enough that it pushed Chris and Zach towards each other, even though there had been a foot of space between them when they sat down.
Zach can't even remember what they talked about, just that the talking let him pretend to ignore just how close they were getting, let him find excuses for turning to sit cross-legged, facing Chris and waving his hands around and then letting them settle a bare centimeter away from Chris' arm. Chris, he thinks, might have been doing the same thing; his fist was pressed against the cushion beneath and between them, knuckles just brushing the skin of Zach's ankle.
Chris made a vociferous point that left his nose almost touching Zach's, and Zach leaned forward just slightly -
And suddenly found Chris backed up almost all the way to the arm rests. "I can't," he told Zach miserably, "not yet, it wouldn't be fair to you -"
"Chill, Chris, it's okay," was the only lie Zach had time to say before JJ was calling for them again.
"I will, though," Chris insisted, even though Zach had no real idea what he was talking about. It was too late, for both of them; they were too tired. "I just need to straighten a few things out first."
"Okay," Zach said meaninglessly, and that was that until Chris turned up on Zach's doorstep and pressed a strange brown package into his hands.
-
Chris walks into Zach's house two weeks after that bizarre Sunday, looking much healthier and not carrying anything except his sunglasses.
"Hey," he says, grinning. "Have you had lunch yet? Because -"
"Why did you give me your heart?" Zach interrupts, because he thinks maybe two weeks is the upper limit for stalling on this conversation.
Chris hesitates. "Because I didn't think it would be safe with me," he says, and Zach's always been able to read Chris' lies.
"Bullshit," he says. "They already suspected that you were here. If they'd be willing to grab it out of your chest or whatever, why wouldn't they just break into my house and steal it?"
"Because they're vampires and need to be invited in?" Chris, twirling his sunglasses between two fingers, is backlit by sunshine. Zach sighs inwardly and pulls him inside.
He really does look better, fresh and well-rested. He doesn't seem like an ICU escapee or an extra playing a cadaver in some horror film. Zach wants to reach out and touch him, run one hand along his face to memorize it, because for the last two weeks his mental image of Chris has been some combination of the way he looked when he left Zach's house and the way he felt from inside his heart.
"Chris," he says patiently. "Why did you give me your heart?"
"I can take it back if you want," Chris suggests, fidgeting and looking like he has to make an effort to meet Zach's eyes. He flashes a quick grin that Zach doesn't entirely buy. "It should be okay now; two weeks is about the limit, and anyway, half the cast of High School Musical are planning to steal their hearts back. Disney's got bigger things to worry about."
That's... actually really funny, and one day Zach is going to ask Chris to expand on it, and possibly even act sections of it out, but it didn't exactly answer his question. Oh, Chris. Petty attempts at evasion aren't going to cut it. "Why did you give me your heart, Chris?"
"Because I knew you would take care of it," Chris tries. It's better this time, more truthful, but not the entirety.
"Yeah. You know who would also take care of it? Your parents." Zach loves Chris' parents. They're wonderful people. They might even have believed Chris - after all, they do have a lot of experience with the industry. "Why did you give me your heart?"
"I - don't you know already?" Chris demands desperately, dropping his sunglasses on a table with a plastic clatter and looking one or two steps away from yanking at his hair. "I gave it to you so I wouldn't have to say it, fuck -" He grabs the book out of Zach's hands and opens it to a random page. "Fine. Read it."
"Chris -"
"Just read it, okay?" Chris sounds resigned, and Zach starts to read, slipping easily into Chris' heart-senses.
Almost every detail of his house is imbued with some sort of significance; Zach takes his time looking around, absorbing it all, until he's stalled long enough that he finally has to look at himself. If his entire house is layered, Zach is the biggest collage ever, all of it in similar shades: comfort (canalwaysletgowithyou), friendship (cantalktoyounomatterwhereIam), wanting (sometimesit'shardnottojuststareatyou), and through it all, so much love (needyouinmylife and alwayswantyou and bestthingthateverhappenedtome and you and you and you and youyouyouyouyouyoualwaysyou), shining so brightly Zach wonders if hearts can go blind.
He looks away from the journal and almost staggers at the sudden loss of sensation, letting his thoughts sink in like sunshine. "I think," he says carefully, trying not to show that his mind is still chasing the vibrant glow of Chris' heart, "that you should take this back now."
Chris steps back, his eyes wide. "Why?" he asks nervously.
"Because," Zach tells him patiently, "I can't take a journal or a sculpture or a bonsai tree everywhere I go. Just think of it as... you keeping it safe for me."
"Yeah?" Chris asks, starting to smile.
"I mean," Zach says, shrugging and trying to sound off-hand, like he falls in love with his best friend every day of the week. (Maybe he does: maybe that's what every day is, just falling in love with the same person over and over again.) "It's not like I haven't been keeping mine safe for you."
"Well in that case," Chris says, stretching out a hand and taking the journal from Zach. It doesn't suddenly disappear, or sink into his skin; it's just that one second it's there, and the next, it never has been.
Zach gives in and kicks the door closed before pulling Chris into a kiss, and it was nice feeling Chris' love for him from inside his heart, but it might be even better from this side.
Against his chest, he thinks he can feel Chris' heart beating, perfectly in time with his own.