Let Go (Details) Part 4
Title: Let Go (Details)
Fandom: RPF
Pairing: Pinto
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, just love 'em
Warnings: long-term angst, OFC, mild het
Summary: Part 4 of 11. Zach has a crush on Chris but Chris really doesn't want to know. A lot of angst, UST and crappy decision making follows and eventually, Zach has to make a choice.
Follows the songs from Frou Frou's album, Details - which is my favourite album of all time, just to be melodramatic. The song's aren't in order, I sorted them as needed for the story arc. Normally I don't do songfics but this story just flowed out of the album for me, so I went for it.
Let Go is track 1 on the album and the lyrics for all the songs on Details can be found here. If you haven't heard it and you can get your hands (electronic or otherwise) on the album, I thoroughly recommend it.
Download Let Go
A/N: For those of you who have been following, I had a little trouble with this chapter, which is kind of annoying since Let Go is my favourite song on the album. This chapter is also ultra angsty at times but it needed to be in order to make the next chapter believable. Bear with me kids, the next chapter will be much lighter but ultimately shorter, I think.
I was going to get this up last night, local time but with our State Election yesterday I was kind of distracted. (Woo! Greens!)
Right. So here it is and there may be errors or un-American colloquialisms that I've missed. Let me know if you spot a naughty mistake (or just an ordinary one) but please, be gentle with me...
Zach woke to the sound of birds twittering outside his heavily curtained window. Bastards. In his opinion, there was nothing to be chirpy about this morning. Rolling over, he groaned as the whole world seemed to roll with him. The cream sheets of his bed were twisted all around him and he seemed to be fully clothed - he even had his shoes still on, laces tied tight. Shuddering up onto one elbow, Zach blearily tried to focus on the light-dimmed room surrounding him. Everything looked as it had the night before, when he had decided to drown his feelings in what now felt like a sea of alcohol. But... something else had happened last night. He hadn’t just been trashed; he’d decided to... do something. Something that even the persistent throb in his head couldn’t quite mask.
Groaning, Zach managed to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and move into a sitting position. He immediately decided that this had been a bad idea and stuck his head between his legs before his stomach could hula-hoop its way up his throat and out of his mouth. Bad idea, bad, bad idea... just like last night, when he’d gone walking somewhere. It had been very dark and he’d been outside. Slumped against a fence? Wherever he had gone, it can’t have been very far away. In the state he’d been in it was lucky that he’d managed to find his own front door.
A shiver of what felt like foreboding skittered down Zach’s spine. The only person close enough to be walking distance from his place was Chris. And with Zach’s feelings towards him, drink and a midnight meeting were not good bedfellows. Perhaps Chris had told him to piss off and that had been the end of it? But Zach’s mind kept picking over the blanks in his memory as he dragged himself into the bathroom and managed to position himself under the shower. One clean Zachary Quinto later, he was still trying to unravel his movements from the night before. His head was a little clearer after the cool rain of the water and his memory was beginning to sharpen.
Breakfast was out of the question as Zach sat at the kitchen table, so instead he sipped at a glass of alka-seltzer-in-water. He had gone to see Chris last night and... oh my God, he’d kissed him. Right on the lips. Why was he remembering blueberries? Then after the kiss... Zach cringed as he remembered declaring his undying love to Chris, before Chris had freaked out and made him go home. Zach tried to remember how they’d left things, the glass of water frozen in motion against his lips. Chris had walked him home, both of them at a loss as to what to say.
Zach sighed and put the glass none too gently on the table. They were on new ground now. This place was at once different to their friendship and to the weird in-between-space of his unrequited, unexpressed feelings for Chris. Everything was out in the open now and so any pretence to simplicity was pointless. Finding his darkest pair of glasses, Zach grabbed Noah’s leash and opened his front door, braving the light outside. Even through his shades, the light was migraine inducing but Noah was in full walk-mode now and Zach didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. As he began to let Noah walk him up the street, he realised that he didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. Perhaps an aimless walk around the neighbourhood to help clear his head and then back home to a nice dark room and a handful of aspirin. He clung to this mantra of ‘walk, home, sleep; walk, home, sleep,’ so hard that he didn’t see the jogger coming in the other direction until they were nearly on top of him. Noah was nearly was nearly overwhelmed by the force of the collision but he seemed to recover well, considering. His tail was wagging as if it owned the dog and his excited barks were so high they were barely discernible to the human ear.
“Sorry man didn’t see you,” mumbled Zach, “I was in my own little...”
“Oh, that’s f... Oh. Zach.”
Zach desperately wanted to keep his head down and his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses but it would have been a pointless manoeuvre, not to mention a slightly stupid one, since he’d already been recognised.
They hadn’t met on a corner but close to the middle of what was a reasonably long stretch of straight road. It took Zach’s fuzzy brain a little longer that usual but eventually he realised that this meant he couldn’t have been the only one lost in his own head. For both of them to overlook each other until physics made that impossible, meant that he wasn’t entirely at fault.
By the time Zach had straightened, most of the confusion had left Chris’ face but it was clear to Zach that he’d just been snapped out of his own little world too, one earphone dangling free against his chest. It was a little strange, Zach though as they both stood there in the awkward silence of two people who find themselves in the unknown, that Chris had been jogging at all, this time of day. He was normally an irritatingly early riser - always chirpy and on time for early calls - and his jogs were normally in the six, six-thirty area. It was well past nine now.
An awful thought crossed Zach’s mind but he tried to quash it.
“I thought you normally jogged earlier,” Zach commented, trying to sound casual.
Chris turned his head to watch a car pass; his hand paused in mid-sweep through his sweat-drenched hair. He was dressed in light-grey slacks and a black tank top that matched the shining dark of his sunglasses perfectly. He looked out of breath and gorgeous - facts that Zach was desperately trying to ignore.
“Yeah. Normally. I um, slept in this morning.”
‘To avoid me?’ Zach thought.
“Fine,” he remarked.
Did that sound slightly bitter?
Chris bristled slightly and Zach decided that yes, it had sounded slightly bitter.
“You know how it is, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Zach had the good grace to blush.
“Sorry, I mean... I just thought... Sorry.”
“S’fine,” Chris replied, mollified slightly. “How’re you feeling?”
“Ugh!” Zach grimaced in reply, removing his shades to reveal the bloodshot evidence and Chris grinned in reply taking his own sunglasses off in a show of solidarity.
“Thought as much. How much did you manage to put away last night, anyway?”
Impersonal facts, Zach could do those.
“Not sure exactly, I haven’t counted all the bottles yet.”
Chris whistled, impressed.
“I do know that I had a bottle and a half of Jack on top of the kitchen cabinets yesterday morning and it’s not there anymore. Not to mention that six pack of beer in the fridge.”
“You were busy!” Chris smiled as Noah wound his way around his ankles, sniffing him intently.
Then his smile faded and the two men found themselves standing once more in awkward silence.
It was then that Noah decided it was time to get down to business and proceeded to do one of the three things that dogs do best.
It took a little while for Zach and Chris to notice Noah’s undertaking but once they had, Zach found it difficult to keep a straight face - the absurdity of the situation was almost overwhelming. Standing in the street, trying to make small talk with the man he loved, while his dog took a dump in between them, as unconcerned as if it was his own backyard.
Stifling his hiccup of laughter, he glanced at Chris only to see that he had the strangest expression on his face. It looked, Zach thought, as if he were having a seizure. A tick of the eye, followed by a quirk of the jaw - Zach truly believed that with that Pine stubbornness he could have made it through if wasn’t for the fact that at that moment, their looks connected and Chris exploded into laughter, tears making their shining way down his cheeks. It was because of this, that Zach took no responsibility for his own subsequent loss of control - Chris had started it and my God, if there was any kind of laughter in this world that was contagious it was Chris Pine’s. The more they tried to contain it, the more hysterical the situation seemed until they were both sprawled on the pavement, giggling madly while Noah dashed between them, frantically excited at this new game they were playing.
Finally, the laughter grew more manageable and Chris tried to wipe away some of the wetness from his face.
“Ah, what are we doing?” he chuckled ruefully. “You’re Zach, I’m Chris - that never changed did it?”
Zach smiled like sunlight across water.
“No, it never did.”
“Then what are we doing? What have we been doing these last few months? It all seems so...”
“Stupid? Unbelievable?” Zach replied. “Totally understandable, in the circumstances?”
“We’ve both been a bit mad, haven’t we?”
“Mmmhrfmph...” Zach remarked, non-committaly.
“Oh, nice dodge,” Chris drawled. “Don’t think you’ve avoided your share of the shit.”
“Maybe we should just agree that we both handled it in a spectacularly dreadful way?”
“Deal.”
They both smiled and something shifted into place on this new ground - pieces that hadn’t fitted before finding places to settle.
“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?” Chris half-stated. “What ever we work out with your... feelings. We’re going to be okay.”
The sun was fully clear of the trees lining the street now and its strength hit the two men sitting side-by-side, lighting Chris’ hair into spikes of gold-coloured toffee, even as it melted Zach’s into swirls of dark chocolate.
“Yeah. We are.”
---------------------------------------------------
Things were good, Zach thought as he sat stirring his latte with a metal spoon. Of course, it was hard to feel crappy when you were sitting in the sun, surrounded by the quiet murmur of other people’s conversations and the luscious green foliage of a well maintained garden - albeit a trendy outdoor Cafe garden.
“It’s a little trendy, don’t you think?”
Zach smiled like a cat and twisted around in his wrought-iron chair.
“You’re late. And yes it is a little on the pretentious side but it has lots of green. I like green.”
“Uhuh,” Chris replied distractedly, as he swept his gaze across the sprawl of tables and chairs before sweeping around Zach and sitting down opposite him.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Zach managed to catch the eye of the rather hunky waiter and reclined in his seat.
“Can I get you anything, gentlemen?”
Zach shook his head but gestured towards Chris.
“Er, I’ll have a soy latte thanks, two sugars.”
Zach raised an eyebrow at the level of sugar but said nothing, watching Chris instead as he shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable.
“That guy was giving you the eye, you should get his number,” Chris muttered as he tried to fish his wallet out of his jeans.
“Already have,” Zach fired back, grinning smugly.
“Oh, that’s good... where the hell?...”
“Try standing up, dude - you look like you’re scratching your ass.”
“That’s just because you’re obsessed with my ass,” he retorted, finally making eye contact with Zach.
It had been part of their ‘agreement’ for lack of a better word, that Zach keep his options open and try to date when he could, while Chris would learn to accept how Zach felt and try not to freak out when he caught Zach staring at his butt. The jokes had helped a lot in that department. They had started going for coffee again as they had once done months ago, although from what Zach could pry from Chris, Michelle wasn’t too happy with the arrangement. And while this pattern of coffee and conversation had been repeating nicely over the last few months, Zach couldn’t help feeling that today, something had happened to upset their little routine as Chris finally found his wallet and sat down in a huff.
“What’s eating you?”
Chris ripped open a sachet of sugar and dumped its contents onto the tabletop. Zach watched in fascination as Chris violently stabbed at the grains with his middle finger, making the table shudder with each collision.
“Okay, forget I asked.”
“Huh?” Chris asked, his head jerking up from his examination of the sugar.
“You just seem... distracted.”
Chris’ hands balled into fists and he startled as the waiter returned with his coffee.
Zach had given up on Chris even answering him when he suddenly shuddered and a torrent of pent up emotion came pouring out of him.
“It’s Michelle, she’s... I dunno what she is. Everything was fine and then suddenly, nothing I do is right. It’s like she looking for a reason to...” Chris shook his head and ran his tongue over his lips.
Zach had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going but he didn’t dare voice his opinion.
“”How long has she been... unhappy?”
Chris exhaled in frustration and threw himself against the back of his chair.
“I’m not really sure. I didn’t really begin to notice how bad things were until a few weeks ago but she says... she says she’s been unhappy for months. What if she leaves me, Zach?”
It was moments like these that made Zach question the wisdom of their choice to stay so close. How could he be a true friend to Chris when his own view of things was so skewed? Still, he owed it to his friend to try.
“Chris, don’t let it get that far. Talk to her, figure out why she’s so unhappy. Something must have changed in the last few months to make her so...”
‘Bitchy,’ he thought.
“...upset with you.”
“Well, she says I spend too much time with my friends - she’s not a fan of yours, Zach for a start.”
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Zach reflected.
“In fact,” Chris continued, his face creased in thought, “she’s said that it’s not healthy for our relationship - hers and mine - when I’m seen socialising with other people all the time. But I think...” The shadow of a thought crossed Chris’ face. “Oh, I think she actually means,”
“Me.” Zach completed sombrely.
He could have put money on this outcome. Michelle was always ‘out’ whenever Zach came over and whenever they did inadvertently met, she was no longer territorial as she had once been at the party but outright hostile - as long as Chris wasn’t looking.
Chris on the other hand, seemed almost shell shocked by the revelation.
“You told her about me? About how I felt,” Zach stated.
“Yeah,” Chris replied slowly. “Before, when I was trying work out what was happening between us. I told her that I thought you wanted more from me. And then I told her when we worked things out a couple of months back. We talked about it for awhile actually.”
“And what did she think of it all?” asked Zach.
Chris grimaced.
“Well, she wasn’t all that keen on the idea that you had a crush on me. She seemed to view you as a bit of a,”
“Threat?”
Chris rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Stop finishing my sentences, Quinto. Much as you’d like it, you’re not actually psychic.”
Zach pouted and crossed his arms.
“S’not fair.”
Chris snorted into his latte and the mood was lightened considerably. Finishing their drinks in companionable silence, they paid the bill and rose from their table. The flash of Paparazzi as they left the Cafe was nothing new - they had already said goodbye behind the privacy of the screened garden and Zach’s shades hid his eyes from the world as he headed to his car.
A week later and Zach was staring at the front of a magazine as it leaned unconcernedly against its rack - uncaring as to its shocking cover.
Zach re-read the neon orange letters again and willed them to rearrange themselves into a more benign meaning but it was no use.
‘Pine and Haurik Call It Quits?’ Then beneath in smaller lettering, ‘Blonde bombshell, Michelle, says the Trek star is cheating on her.’
Zach forgot what he had stopped to buy and grabbed a copy of the mag instead, not bothering to wait for his change.
The front page stared at him from the passenger seat of his car as he made his way home, taunting him with its allegations. He pulled up sharply in his driveway and headed for his front door, throwing his keys carelessly onto the side table as he entered and moving into the living room before sitting down on the couch.
The magazine was rolled up in his hand and Zach could feel the slickness of the paper warm against his skin. He unrolled it and opened it to page six, where the full article was laid out in all its double-paged glory:
‘Chris Pine and Michelle Haurik seem to be in rough waters as the runway model accuses her boyfriend of nine months of cheating on her with an unknown friend.
“He’s always meeting with someone else and being really secretive,” a source close to the couple says. “He’s treated her really badly and I think she’s just had enough of it.”
Chris Pine burst onto the scene earlier this year, starring as Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie, reported...’
Zach threw the magazine away from him in disgust. This had Michelle’s fingerprints all over it. Not one to give up without a fight, she was used to getting her way and this was as good a way as any to warn Zach off.
Chris, bless him probably wouldn’t see it for the manipulation it was - he would just be hurt by it, without knowing who was hurting him.
The sound of ripping fabric caught Zach’s attention and he realised that his fingers had dug so hard into the couch that his manicured nails had pierced the thin upholstery.
‘Take a deep breath,’ he told himself. ‘And another, and another,” until he was calm enough to come to the conclusion that anything he did now would only play into Michelle’s plan - whatever it was. He would have to wait for the dust to settle before he could hope to talk it through with Chris. Would he even know that it was Zach that the article was referring to? All he could do was keep silent and hope that this didn’t destroy the fragile web of trust that was finally beginning to form between Chris and himself.
So Zach went about his daily routine. He went to work, he went home. Out to dinner with friends and then takeaways at home with Noah and Harold. Days passed and the knot in his stomach only got tighter as nothing seemed to happen.
Finally, one night as Zach was channel surfing, TMZ flashed across the screen in all its putrefying glory. Zach kept his finger pressed to the remote but as the channel flicked over he caught Chris’ name and for the first time in his life, he flicked back desperately to see what the paps were saying.
“Yeah. So, we caught Michelle Haurik coming out of the car park this morning and her arms were just... nearly falling off from all those designer bags she was carrying.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Yeah, surprisingly, yeah she did.”
Here the show switched to footage of Michelle high heeling it over the concrete pavement, followed by her retinue as the TMZ ‘reporter’ asked her what was going on with her relationship.
“Are you still seeing Chris or are things over between the two of you?”
It was hard to see behind her shades but Michelle seemed very confident as she was converged upon by the best that entertainment media had to offer.
“Yeah, um my agent will be putting out a statement later but yeah, Chris and I are pretty much done.”
“Was it because he was cheating on you?”
Was it Zach’s imagination or did she stumble a little there?
“I can’t really comment on that, like I said, my agent will give you all a statement later, okay?”
And with that, she walked off and the show returned to the TMZ office.
Zach quietly switched the TV off and sat in the dim light emanating from his kitchen.
When had things become so complicated? And how was he going to deal with Chris after this? Whatever Zach had thought of Michelle, Chris had truly loved her, hell they’d been dating for nearly a year. This was going to shatter him and Zach had the terrible suspicion that if he went anywhere near him, he was going to get cut by the falling pieces.
The next day the break up was official and all over the tabloids and E.T. But Zach couldn’t ring Chris, not when he’d played such a pivotal, if unknowing role in the relationship’s demise. He knew that John and Karl would call to commiserate with Chris, probably swing by and drink him into a blind stupor - do all the normal things that you do post-break up. Perhaps then, when the dust had settled, Zach could try to contact him. Right now though, he was the last person Chris would want to see.
Zach clung to this fact as the weeks crawled by at an agonisingly slow pace.
It was well past three in the morning when the phone rang. Zach startled awake on the couch where he had fallen asleep and wiped the drool from his cheek. Where was the damn phone? The persistent ringing echoed around the room but gave no indication as to its location. By the time Zach realised he was sitting on it, it had rung off and all he could do was stare at the missed call information as it glowed on the screen. He knew the number but his sleep-addled brain just couldn’t connect it with a name.
Two minutes later, it rang again - the same number and Zach still couldn’t remember whose it was. And a little voice in his head said, ‘just let it ring. Nothing good can come of this. Just let it ring off. You don’t want to hear what’s waiting to be said on the other end of that phone.’
So Zach let it ring on as the unknown number morphed into Chris’ and allowed himself the illusion that nothing had changed. Tomorrow, he and Chris would go for coffee as usual and Chris would harbour no resentment towards Zach. As long as he didn’t give Chris the chance, he could pretend, just a little longer perhaps.
The phone fell silent and the house reverberated with its absence.
The batteries came out of the phone and Zach laid it to rest on the coffee table before switching off the kitchen light and going to bed, stumbling to find his way in the dark.
The next morning Zach padded out of his bedroom to see Noah growling at the front door, his tail flicking back and forth occasionally as he whuffled at the base of the frame, where a shaft of morning light was spearing its way into the room.
“Noah, what’re you doing? Leave it!”
Noah stared at Zach balefully and slunk away but he kept his gaze fixed on the front door as he settled by the kitchen counter.
Zach tried to make breakfast but Noah’s persistent low-grade growl was really beginning to irritate him.
“For crying out loud, Noah shut up! Look, there’s nothing there!”
With that, he strode over to the front door and flung it open, proving to Noah that there was... a Chris Pine on his doorstep.
He was sat on the steps, his knees together and his hands laced around them. Wide-awake and staring with an unnerving calm into the middle distance.
“Chris?”
“Zach.”
“How long have you been there?”
“What time is it?”
Zach glanced at his watch.
“About ten.”
“Then... six hours, give or take a couple of minutes.”
“What?! Are you crazy?” Cried Zach before he could help himself.
Chris smile wasn’t pretty.
“Possibly. Maybe you can help me find out.”
Chris stood up and stalked into Zach’s house, heading for the lounge room. Zach followed more slowly, unsure of his ground faced with this ultra-calm Chris.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” said Chris. “Well, I’ve had the time the last few weeks haven’t I?”
Zach didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, so he stood there with his hands in his pockets.
“And I’ve come to a conclusion,” Chris continued, his mask of calm slipping a little. “That it’s time’s like these that you find out who your real friends are and who’s in it just for the good times or for when they need help and reassurance.”
“Chris...” Zach began but Chris cut him off brokenly.
“No! You don’t get to interrupt me. I spent six fucking hours waiting on your doorstep after you ignored all my calls, so that you’d have to talk to me if you wanted to leave your house.
“So here’s how it goes,” Chris continued. “My girlfriend fucking leaves me, the woman that I thought I loved, that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. And all of my friends ring to see how I’m doing. They offer to get shit-faced with me, to spend some time watching some pointless late night TV with me, the usual. Karl rings and John comes over with a six-pack. Zoe even finds time to take me out to dinner and tell me how stupid Michelle was for letting me go. And all thought this, I find myself thinking, this is so unbelievably painful but it’s ok, Zach’ll ring soon - tell me I’m a prat but a prat with a nice ass and we’ll go for a drink or something somewhere. It’ll all be fine soon because my best fucking friend in the whole fucking world won’t just abandon me because things get tough - he knows how fucking painful love can be - he’ll be there for me, he’ll fucking listen!”
Chris had backed Zach up against the wall and Noah had run out of the room, terrified by the anger in Chris’ voice.
“I couldn’t...” Zach tried but Chris hadn’t finished.
“So days pass. And then weeks. Now I start wondering why he hasn’t called or visited. What could possibly be stopping him? And do you know what I came up with?”
Zach shook his head.
“Nothing. Abso-fucking-loutely nothing. So excuse me if you’re too busy writing your own tragedy to bother about mine but I needed you, Zach,” he pleaded as his voice cracked. “My whole world fell apart and you weren’t there.”
Zach could see Chris’ whole body shaking, his hands flexing open and closed at his sides as he let himself slump against the wall and slide down to the floor.
“I lost her, Zach,” Chris whispered as he broke down completely, silent sobs shaking his bent frame.
Zach realised in that moment that he had miscalculated horribly and the full weight of what he’d left Chris to deal with hit him hard enough to make his stomach turn. ‘Oh, Chris,’ he thought, ‘you’ve no idea what you’re like, do you? You’ve no idea what you do to me.’
“Oh Chris, I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
He slid down the wall and came to rest by Chris’ side, putting an arm around him and resting his chin on top of Chris’ head.
“I never thought it through. I thought you’d hate me.”
Chris’ sobs were becoming audible now and Noah crept back into the room, settling himself at his feet, his head pressed mournfully against Chris’ sneakers.
“It’s all right, Chris. Just let go, let it all go. I’m here now; I promise I’m not going anywhere.”
Zach kept his arms tight around Chris as he cried himself into exhaustion. He held on tight and made sure that his own guilty tears stayed silent.
All that Zach could do was hold on.
----------------------------------------
It was nearly twelve in the afternoon before Chris finally awoke, sprawled against Zach’s living room wall with Noah’s head resting on his thigh. His head felt lighter than it probably should have and he had to steady himself as he stood, dislodging Noah in the process.
The tinkle of metal on ceramics and Zach padded into view holding two mugs of what smelled like really good coffee. Gesturing to the couch both men sat down and Zach carefully handed Chris his mug.
“Wasn’t sure if I should let you sleep,” said Zach.
Chris sipped carefully at his drink, the burn deliciously painful against his lips.
“I’m still running on adrenaline I think,” he replied. “I could only manage to doze for a bit.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Chris sighed, wrapping his hands around his coffee.
“I just want to feel something other than this. When that article first came out, I just dismissed it, you know? I though Michelle would too. But she kept pointing out all the arguments that they had for me cheating on her, as if she actually believed that I was having sex with another woman. Then like, a week later she starts giving me all these ultimatums - do this or I’ll leave, do that or I’ll leave. I was going to try and compromise but then she demanded that I stop seeing you. Completely. That it was her love or your friendship and I had to choose.”
Chris’ eyebrow quirked, letting a little of the real Chris Pine shine through.
“I don’t think she was expecting that one.”
“Expecting what one?” asked Zach.
“Expecting me to say no. That I would refuse to choose. She looked so astonished, like she’d just assumed I would choose her over everyone else in my life.”
Zach tried to ignore the thought that it wasn’t all of his friends that she had a problem with, just him.
“And then she followed through on her threat. She packed her stuff and just... left. I thought she was just testing me at first but the next day her agent contacted mine to arrange for the release of a statement.” Chris chuckled humourlessly. “It was about then that I realised it was all over.”
Chris rubbed at his eyes tiredly and Zach tentatively patted him on the back.
“I’m so sick of feeling like crap, Zach. She made me feel like crap and I want to be so angry with her. I think I am a little bit but it’s not enough. Anger I could deal with, I could do something with anger.”
He turned to Zach, a look of intense feeling on his face.
“What do I do with this?”
Part Five
Fandom: RPF
Pairing: Pinto
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, just love 'em
Warnings: long-term angst, OFC, mild het
Summary: Part 4 of 11. Zach has a crush on Chris but Chris really doesn't want to know. A lot of angst, UST and crappy decision making follows and eventually, Zach has to make a choice.
Follows the songs from Frou Frou's album, Details - which is my favourite album of all time, just to be melodramatic. The song's aren't in order, I sorted them as needed for the story arc. Normally I don't do songfics but this story just flowed out of the album for me, so I went for it.
Let Go is track 1 on the album and the lyrics for all the songs on Details can be found here. If you haven't heard it and you can get your hands (electronic or otherwise) on the album, I thoroughly recommend it.
Download Let Go
A/N: For those of you who have been following, I had a little trouble with this chapter, which is kind of annoying since Let Go is my favourite song on the album. This chapter is also ultra angsty at times but it needed to be in order to make the next chapter believable. Bear with me kids, the next chapter will be much lighter but ultimately shorter, I think.
I was going to get this up last night, local time but with our State Election yesterday I was kind of distracted. (Woo! Greens!)
Right. So here it is and there may be errors or un-American colloquialisms that I've missed. Let me know if you spot a naughty mistake (or just an ordinary one) but please, be gentle with me...
Zach woke to the sound of birds twittering outside his heavily curtained window. Bastards. In his opinion, there was nothing to be chirpy about this morning. Rolling over, he groaned as the whole world seemed to roll with him. The cream sheets of his bed were twisted all around him and he seemed to be fully clothed - he even had his shoes still on, laces tied tight. Shuddering up onto one elbow, Zach blearily tried to focus on the light-dimmed room surrounding him. Everything looked as it had the night before, when he had decided to drown his feelings in what now felt like a sea of alcohol. But... something else had happened last night. He hadn’t just been trashed; he’d decided to... do something. Something that even the persistent throb in his head couldn’t quite mask.
Groaning, Zach managed to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and move into a sitting position. He immediately decided that this had been a bad idea and stuck his head between his legs before his stomach could hula-hoop its way up his throat and out of his mouth. Bad idea, bad, bad idea... just like last night, when he’d gone walking somewhere. It had been very dark and he’d been outside. Slumped against a fence? Wherever he had gone, it can’t have been very far away. In the state he’d been in it was lucky that he’d managed to find his own front door.
A shiver of what felt like foreboding skittered down Zach’s spine. The only person close enough to be walking distance from his place was Chris. And with Zach’s feelings towards him, drink and a midnight meeting were not good bedfellows. Perhaps Chris had told him to piss off and that had been the end of it? But Zach’s mind kept picking over the blanks in his memory as he dragged himself into the bathroom and managed to position himself under the shower. One clean Zachary Quinto later, he was still trying to unravel his movements from the night before. His head was a little clearer after the cool rain of the water and his memory was beginning to sharpen.
Breakfast was out of the question as Zach sat at the kitchen table, so instead he sipped at a glass of alka-seltzer-in-water. He had gone to see Chris last night and... oh my God, he’d kissed him. Right on the lips. Why was he remembering blueberries? Then after the kiss... Zach cringed as he remembered declaring his undying love to Chris, before Chris had freaked out and made him go home. Zach tried to remember how they’d left things, the glass of water frozen in motion against his lips. Chris had walked him home, both of them at a loss as to what to say.
Zach sighed and put the glass none too gently on the table. They were on new ground now. This place was at once different to their friendship and to the weird in-between-space of his unrequited, unexpressed feelings for Chris. Everything was out in the open now and so any pretence to simplicity was pointless. Finding his darkest pair of glasses, Zach grabbed Noah’s leash and opened his front door, braving the light outside. Even through his shades, the light was migraine inducing but Noah was in full walk-mode now and Zach didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. As he began to let Noah walk him up the street, he realised that he didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. Perhaps an aimless walk around the neighbourhood to help clear his head and then back home to a nice dark room and a handful of aspirin. He clung to this mantra of ‘walk, home, sleep; walk, home, sleep,’ so hard that he didn’t see the jogger coming in the other direction until they were nearly on top of him. Noah was nearly was nearly overwhelmed by the force of the collision but he seemed to recover well, considering. His tail was wagging as if it owned the dog and his excited barks were so high they were barely discernible to the human ear.
“Sorry man didn’t see you,” mumbled Zach, “I was in my own little...”
“Oh, that’s f... Oh. Zach.”
Zach desperately wanted to keep his head down and his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses but it would have been a pointless manoeuvre, not to mention a slightly stupid one, since he’d already been recognised.
They hadn’t met on a corner but close to the middle of what was a reasonably long stretch of straight road. It took Zach’s fuzzy brain a little longer that usual but eventually he realised that this meant he couldn’t have been the only one lost in his own head. For both of them to overlook each other until physics made that impossible, meant that he wasn’t entirely at fault.
By the time Zach had straightened, most of the confusion had left Chris’ face but it was clear to Zach that he’d just been snapped out of his own little world too, one earphone dangling free against his chest. It was a little strange, Zach though as they both stood there in the awkward silence of two people who find themselves in the unknown, that Chris had been jogging at all, this time of day. He was normally an irritatingly early riser - always chirpy and on time for early calls - and his jogs were normally in the six, six-thirty area. It was well past nine now.
An awful thought crossed Zach’s mind but he tried to quash it.
“I thought you normally jogged earlier,” Zach commented, trying to sound casual.
Chris turned his head to watch a car pass; his hand paused in mid-sweep through his sweat-drenched hair. He was dressed in light-grey slacks and a black tank top that matched the shining dark of his sunglasses perfectly. He looked out of breath and gorgeous - facts that Zach was desperately trying to ignore.
“Yeah. Normally. I um, slept in this morning.”
‘To avoid me?’ Zach thought.
“Fine,” he remarked.
Did that sound slightly bitter?
Chris bristled slightly and Zach decided that yes, it had sounded slightly bitter.
“You know how it is, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Zach had the good grace to blush.
“Sorry, I mean... I just thought... Sorry.”
“S’fine,” Chris replied, mollified slightly. “How’re you feeling?”
“Ugh!” Zach grimaced in reply, removing his shades to reveal the bloodshot evidence and Chris grinned in reply taking his own sunglasses off in a show of solidarity.
“Thought as much. How much did you manage to put away last night, anyway?”
Impersonal facts, Zach could do those.
“Not sure exactly, I haven’t counted all the bottles yet.”
Chris whistled, impressed.
“I do know that I had a bottle and a half of Jack on top of the kitchen cabinets yesterday morning and it’s not there anymore. Not to mention that six pack of beer in the fridge.”
“You were busy!” Chris smiled as Noah wound his way around his ankles, sniffing him intently.
Then his smile faded and the two men found themselves standing once more in awkward silence.
It was then that Noah decided it was time to get down to business and proceeded to do one of the three things that dogs do best.
It took a little while for Zach and Chris to notice Noah’s undertaking but once they had, Zach found it difficult to keep a straight face - the absurdity of the situation was almost overwhelming. Standing in the street, trying to make small talk with the man he loved, while his dog took a dump in between them, as unconcerned as if it was his own backyard.
Stifling his hiccup of laughter, he glanced at Chris only to see that he had the strangest expression on his face. It looked, Zach thought, as if he were having a seizure. A tick of the eye, followed by a quirk of the jaw - Zach truly believed that with that Pine stubbornness he could have made it through if wasn’t for the fact that at that moment, their looks connected and Chris exploded into laughter, tears making their shining way down his cheeks. It was because of this, that Zach took no responsibility for his own subsequent loss of control - Chris had started it and my God, if there was any kind of laughter in this world that was contagious it was Chris Pine’s. The more they tried to contain it, the more hysterical the situation seemed until they were both sprawled on the pavement, giggling madly while Noah dashed between them, frantically excited at this new game they were playing.
Finally, the laughter grew more manageable and Chris tried to wipe away some of the wetness from his face.
“Ah, what are we doing?” he chuckled ruefully. “You’re Zach, I’m Chris - that never changed did it?”
Zach smiled like sunlight across water.
“No, it never did.”
“Then what are we doing? What have we been doing these last few months? It all seems so...”
“Stupid? Unbelievable?” Zach replied. “Totally understandable, in the circumstances?”
“We’ve both been a bit mad, haven’t we?”
“Mmmhrfmph...” Zach remarked, non-committaly.
“Oh, nice dodge,” Chris drawled. “Don’t think you’ve avoided your share of the shit.”
“Maybe we should just agree that we both handled it in a spectacularly dreadful way?”
“Deal.”
They both smiled and something shifted into place on this new ground - pieces that hadn’t fitted before finding places to settle.
“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?” Chris half-stated. “What ever we work out with your... feelings. We’re going to be okay.”
The sun was fully clear of the trees lining the street now and its strength hit the two men sitting side-by-side, lighting Chris’ hair into spikes of gold-coloured toffee, even as it melted Zach’s into swirls of dark chocolate.
“Yeah. We are.”
---------------------------------------------------
Things were good, Zach thought as he sat stirring his latte with a metal spoon. Of course, it was hard to feel crappy when you were sitting in the sun, surrounded by the quiet murmur of other people’s conversations and the luscious green foliage of a well maintained garden - albeit a trendy outdoor Cafe garden.
“It’s a little trendy, don’t you think?”
Zach smiled like a cat and twisted around in his wrought-iron chair.
“You’re late. And yes it is a little on the pretentious side but it has lots of green. I like green.”
“Uhuh,” Chris replied distractedly, as he swept his gaze across the sprawl of tables and chairs before sweeping around Zach and sitting down opposite him.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Zach managed to catch the eye of the rather hunky waiter and reclined in his seat.
“Can I get you anything, gentlemen?”
Zach shook his head but gestured towards Chris.
“Er, I’ll have a soy latte thanks, two sugars.”
Zach raised an eyebrow at the level of sugar but said nothing, watching Chris instead as he shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable.
“That guy was giving you the eye, you should get his number,” Chris muttered as he tried to fish his wallet out of his jeans.
“Already have,” Zach fired back, grinning smugly.
“Oh, that’s good... where the hell?...”
“Try standing up, dude - you look like you’re scratching your ass.”
“That’s just because you’re obsessed with my ass,” he retorted, finally making eye contact with Zach.
It had been part of their ‘agreement’ for lack of a better word, that Zach keep his options open and try to date when he could, while Chris would learn to accept how Zach felt and try not to freak out when he caught Zach staring at his butt. The jokes had helped a lot in that department. They had started going for coffee again as they had once done months ago, although from what Zach could pry from Chris, Michelle wasn’t too happy with the arrangement. And while this pattern of coffee and conversation had been repeating nicely over the last few months, Zach couldn’t help feeling that today, something had happened to upset their little routine as Chris finally found his wallet and sat down in a huff.
“What’s eating you?”
Chris ripped open a sachet of sugar and dumped its contents onto the tabletop. Zach watched in fascination as Chris violently stabbed at the grains with his middle finger, making the table shudder with each collision.
“Okay, forget I asked.”
“Huh?” Chris asked, his head jerking up from his examination of the sugar.
“You just seem... distracted.”
Chris’ hands balled into fists and he startled as the waiter returned with his coffee.
Zach had given up on Chris even answering him when he suddenly shuddered and a torrent of pent up emotion came pouring out of him.
“It’s Michelle, she’s... I dunno what she is. Everything was fine and then suddenly, nothing I do is right. It’s like she looking for a reason to...” Chris shook his head and ran his tongue over his lips.
Zach had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going but he didn’t dare voice his opinion.
“”How long has she been... unhappy?”
Chris exhaled in frustration and threw himself against the back of his chair.
“I’m not really sure. I didn’t really begin to notice how bad things were until a few weeks ago but she says... she says she’s been unhappy for months. What if she leaves me, Zach?”
It was moments like these that made Zach question the wisdom of their choice to stay so close. How could he be a true friend to Chris when his own view of things was so skewed? Still, he owed it to his friend to try.
“Chris, don’t let it get that far. Talk to her, figure out why she’s so unhappy. Something must have changed in the last few months to make her so...”
‘Bitchy,’ he thought.
“...upset with you.”
“Well, she says I spend too much time with my friends - she’s not a fan of yours, Zach for a start.”
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Zach reflected.
“In fact,” Chris continued, his face creased in thought, “she’s said that it’s not healthy for our relationship - hers and mine - when I’m seen socialising with other people all the time. But I think...” The shadow of a thought crossed Chris’ face. “Oh, I think she actually means,”
“Me.” Zach completed sombrely.
He could have put money on this outcome. Michelle was always ‘out’ whenever Zach came over and whenever they did inadvertently met, she was no longer territorial as she had once been at the party but outright hostile - as long as Chris wasn’t looking.
Chris on the other hand, seemed almost shell shocked by the revelation.
“You told her about me? About how I felt,” Zach stated.
“Yeah,” Chris replied slowly. “Before, when I was trying work out what was happening between us. I told her that I thought you wanted more from me. And then I told her when we worked things out a couple of months back. We talked about it for awhile actually.”
“And what did she think of it all?” asked Zach.
Chris grimaced.
“Well, she wasn’t all that keen on the idea that you had a crush on me. She seemed to view you as a bit of a,”
“Threat?”
Chris rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Stop finishing my sentences, Quinto. Much as you’d like it, you’re not actually psychic.”
Zach pouted and crossed his arms.
“S’not fair.”
Chris snorted into his latte and the mood was lightened considerably. Finishing their drinks in companionable silence, they paid the bill and rose from their table. The flash of Paparazzi as they left the Cafe was nothing new - they had already said goodbye behind the privacy of the screened garden and Zach’s shades hid his eyes from the world as he headed to his car.
A week later and Zach was staring at the front of a magazine as it leaned unconcernedly against its rack - uncaring as to its shocking cover.
Zach re-read the neon orange letters again and willed them to rearrange themselves into a more benign meaning but it was no use.
‘Pine and Haurik Call It Quits?’ Then beneath in smaller lettering, ‘Blonde bombshell, Michelle, says the Trek star is cheating on her.’
Zach forgot what he had stopped to buy and grabbed a copy of the mag instead, not bothering to wait for his change.
The front page stared at him from the passenger seat of his car as he made his way home, taunting him with its allegations. He pulled up sharply in his driveway and headed for his front door, throwing his keys carelessly onto the side table as he entered and moving into the living room before sitting down on the couch.
The magazine was rolled up in his hand and Zach could feel the slickness of the paper warm against his skin. He unrolled it and opened it to page six, where the full article was laid out in all its double-paged glory:
‘Chris Pine and Michelle Haurik seem to be in rough waters as the runway model accuses her boyfriend of nine months of cheating on her with an unknown friend.
“He’s always meeting with someone else and being really secretive,” a source close to the couple says. “He’s treated her really badly and I think she’s just had enough of it.”
Chris Pine burst onto the scene earlier this year, starring as Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie, reported...’
Zach threw the magazine away from him in disgust. This had Michelle’s fingerprints all over it. Not one to give up without a fight, she was used to getting her way and this was as good a way as any to warn Zach off.
Chris, bless him probably wouldn’t see it for the manipulation it was - he would just be hurt by it, without knowing who was hurting him.
The sound of ripping fabric caught Zach’s attention and he realised that his fingers had dug so hard into the couch that his manicured nails had pierced the thin upholstery.
‘Take a deep breath,’ he told himself. ‘And another, and another,” until he was calm enough to come to the conclusion that anything he did now would only play into Michelle’s plan - whatever it was. He would have to wait for the dust to settle before he could hope to talk it through with Chris. Would he even know that it was Zach that the article was referring to? All he could do was keep silent and hope that this didn’t destroy the fragile web of trust that was finally beginning to form between Chris and himself.
So Zach went about his daily routine. He went to work, he went home. Out to dinner with friends and then takeaways at home with Noah and Harold. Days passed and the knot in his stomach only got tighter as nothing seemed to happen.
Finally, one night as Zach was channel surfing, TMZ flashed across the screen in all its putrefying glory. Zach kept his finger pressed to the remote but as the channel flicked over he caught Chris’ name and for the first time in his life, he flicked back desperately to see what the paps were saying.
“Yeah. So, we caught Michelle Haurik coming out of the car park this morning and her arms were just... nearly falling off from all those designer bags she was carrying.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Yeah, surprisingly, yeah she did.”
Here the show switched to footage of Michelle high heeling it over the concrete pavement, followed by her retinue as the TMZ ‘reporter’ asked her what was going on with her relationship.
“Are you still seeing Chris or are things over between the two of you?”
It was hard to see behind her shades but Michelle seemed very confident as she was converged upon by the best that entertainment media had to offer.
“Yeah, um my agent will be putting out a statement later but yeah, Chris and I are pretty much done.”
“Was it because he was cheating on you?”
Was it Zach’s imagination or did she stumble a little there?
“I can’t really comment on that, like I said, my agent will give you all a statement later, okay?”
And with that, she walked off and the show returned to the TMZ office.
Zach quietly switched the TV off and sat in the dim light emanating from his kitchen.
When had things become so complicated? And how was he going to deal with Chris after this? Whatever Zach had thought of Michelle, Chris had truly loved her, hell they’d been dating for nearly a year. This was going to shatter him and Zach had the terrible suspicion that if he went anywhere near him, he was going to get cut by the falling pieces.
The next day the break up was official and all over the tabloids and E.T. But Zach couldn’t ring Chris, not when he’d played such a pivotal, if unknowing role in the relationship’s demise. He knew that John and Karl would call to commiserate with Chris, probably swing by and drink him into a blind stupor - do all the normal things that you do post-break up. Perhaps then, when the dust had settled, Zach could try to contact him. Right now though, he was the last person Chris would want to see.
Zach clung to this fact as the weeks crawled by at an agonisingly slow pace.
It was well past three in the morning when the phone rang. Zach startled awake on the couch where he had fallen asleep and wiped the drool from his cheek. Where was the damn phone? The persistent ringing echoed around the room but gave no indication as to its location. By the time Zach realised he was sitting on it, it had rung off and all he could do was stare at the missed call information as it glowed on the screen. He knew the number but his sleep-addled brain just couldn’t connect it with a name.
Two minutes later, it rang again - the same number and Zach still couldn’t remember whose it was. And a little voice in his head said, ‘just let it ring. Nothing good can come of this. Just let it ring off. You don’t want to hear what’s waiting to be said on the other end of that phone.’
So Zach let it ring on as the unknown number morphed into Chris’ and allowed himself the illusion that nothing had changed. Tomorrow, he and Chris would go for coffee as usual and Chris would harbour no resentment towards Zach. As long as he didn’t give Chris the chance, he could pretend, just a little longer perhaps.
The phone fell silent and the house reverberated with its absence.
The batteries came out of the phone and Zach laid it to rest on the coffee table before switching off the kitchen light and going to bed, stumbling to find his way in the dark.
The next morning Zach padded out of his bedroom to see Noah growling at the front door, his tail flicking back and forth occasionally as he whuffled at the base of the frame, where a shaft of morning light was spearing its way into the room.
“Noah, what’re you doing? Leave it!”
Noah stared at Zach balefully and slunk away but he kept his gaze fixed on the front door as he settled by the kitchen counter.
Zach tried to make breakfast but Noah’s persistent low-grade growl was really beginning to irritate him.
“For crying out loud, Noah shut up! Look, there’s nothing there!”
With that, he strode over to the front door and flung it open, proving to Noah that there was... a Chris Pine on his doorstep.
He was sat on the steps, his knees together and his hands laced around them. Wide-awake and staring with an unnerving calm into the middle distance.
“Chris?”
“Zach.”
“How long have you been there?”
“What time is it?”
Zach glanced at his watch.
“About ten.”
“Then... six hours, give or take a couple of minutes.”
“What?! Are you crazy?” Cried Zach before he could help himself.
Chris smile wasn’t pretty.
“Possibly. Maybe you can help me find out.”
Chris stood up and stalked into Zach’s house, heading for the lounge room. Zach followed more slowly, unsure of his ground faced with this ultra-calm Chris.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” said Chris. “Well, I’ve had the time the last few weeks haven’t I?”
Zach didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, so he stood there with his hands in his pockets.
“And I’ve come to a conclusion,” Chris continued, his mask of calm slipping a little. “That it’s time’s like these that you find out who your real friends are and who’s in it just for the good times or for when they need help and reassurance.”
“Chris...” Zach began but Chris cut him off brokenly.
“No! You don’t get to interrupt me. I spent six fucking hours waiting on your doorstep after you ignored all my calls, so that you’d have to talk to me if you wanted to leave your house.
“So here’s how it goes,” Chris continued. “My girlfriend fucking leaves me, the woman that I thought I loved, that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. And all of my friends ring to see how I’m doing. They offer to get shit-faced with me, to spend some time watching some pointless late night TV with me, the usual. Karl rings and John comes over with a six-pack. Zoe even finds time to take me out to dinner and tell me how stupid Michelle was for letting me go. And all thought this, I find myself thinking, this is so unbelievably painful but it’s ok, Zach’ll ring soon - tell me I’m a prat but a prat with a nice ass and we’ll go for a drink or something somewhere. It’ll all be fine soon because my best fucking friend in the whole fucking world won’t just abandon me because things get tough - he knows how fucking painful love can be - he’ll be there for me, he’ll fucking listen!”
Chris had backed Zach up against the wall and Noah had run out of the room, terrified by the anger in Chris’ voice.
“I couldn’t...” Zach tried but Chris hadn’t finished.
“So days pass. And then weeks. Now I start wondering why he hasn’t called or visited. What could possibly be stopping him? And do you know what I came up with?”
Zach shook his head.
“Nothing. Abso-fucking-loutely nothing. So excuse me if you’re too busy writing your own tragedy to bother about mine but I needed you, Zach,” he pleaded as his voice cracked. “My whole world fell apart and you weren’t there.”
Zach could see Chris’ whole body shaking, his hands flexing open and closed at his sides as he let himself slump against the wall and slide down to the floor.
“I lost her, Zach,” Chris whispered as he broke down completely, silent sobs shaking his bent frame.
Zach realised in that moment that he had miscalculated horribly and the full weight of what he’d left Chris to deal with hit him hard enough to make his stomach turn. ‘Oh, Chris,’ he thought, ‘you’ve no idea what you’re like, do you? You’ve no idea what you do to me.’
“Oh Chris, I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
He slid down the wall and came to rest by Chris’ side, putting an arm around him and resting his chin on top of Chris’ head.
“I never thought it through. I thought you’d hate me.”
Chris’ sobs were becoming audible now and Noah crept back into the room, settling himself at his feet, his head pressed mournfully against Chris’ sneakers.
“It’s all right, Chris. Just let go, let it all go. I’m here now; I promise I’m not going anywhere.”
Zach kept his arms tight around Chris as he cried himself into exhaustion. He held on tight and made sure that his own guilty tears stayed silent.
All that Zach could do was hold on.
----------------------------------------
It was nearly twelve in the afternoon before Chris finally awoke, sprawled against Zach’s living room wall with Noah’s head resting on his thigh. His head felt lighter than it probably should have and he had to steady himself as he stood, dislodging Noah in the process.
The tinkle of metal on ceramics and Zach padded into view holding two mugs of what smelled like really good coffee. Gesturing to the couch both men sat down and Zach carefully handed Chris his mug.
“Wasn’t sure if I should let you sleep,” said Zach.
Chris sipped carefully at his drink, the burn deliciously painful against his lips.
“I’m still running on adrenaline I think,” he replied. “I could only manage to doze for a bit.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Chris sighed, wrapping his hands around his coffee.
“I just want to feel something other than this. When that article first came out, I just dismissed it, you know? I though Michelle would too. But she kept pointing out all the arguments that they had for me cheating on her, as if she actually believed that I was having sex with another woman. Then like, a week later she starts giving me all these ultimatums - do this or I’ll leave, do that or I’ll leave. I was going to try and compromise but then she demanded that I stop seeing you. Completely. That it was her love or your friendship and I had to choose.”
Chris’ eyebrow quirked, letting a little of the real Chris Pine shine through.
“I don’t think she was expecting that one.”
“Expecting what one?” asked Zach.
“Expecting me to say no. That I would refuse to choose. She looked so astonished, like she’d just assumed I would choose her over everyone else in my life.”
Zach tried to ignore the thought that it wasn’t all of his friends that she had a problem with, just him.
“And then she followed through on her threat. She packed her stuff and just... left. I thought she was just testing me at first but the next day her agent contacted mine to arrange for the release of a statement.” Chris chuckled humourlessly. “It was about then that I realised it was all over.”
Chris rubbed at his eyes tiredly and Zach tentatively patted him on the back.
“I’m so sick of feeling like crap, Zach. She made me feel like crap and I want to be so angry with her. I think I am a little bit but it’s not enough. Anger I could deal with, I could do something with anger.”
He turned to Zach, a look of intense feeling on his face.
“What do I do with this?”
Part Five