Fic: Cutting Diamonds (PG-13)
Title: Cutting Diamonds
Author: obstinatrix
Pairing: Pinto
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,519
Summary/Notes: This is, at very long last, the sequel to After My Own Heart. It took me ages and ages and ages to do because they just would not co-operate, and then Leonard went a bit mad and started doing totally random things without my consent, and just, argh. So I'm posting it as is, although I'm not necessarily completely happy with it, because otherwise I'll just never post it at all, and it's cost me too much blood, sweat and tears for that to be allowed to happen.
Short summary: After his conversation with Zach about his feelings for Chris, Leonard's impatient to know what the result will be. This is it.
Quietude is a virtue born with age. As a young man, Leonard found nothing so challenging as stillness; encountered no difficulty so great as the simple, impossible task of squandering a day on nothing at all. It wasn't that he was impatient - it had always been Bill who couldn't wait for anything, who demanded are we there yet? and aren't they done yet? and can we go? It was only that the thought of doing nothing, electively, had always been anathema to him, prompting him to stuff the gaps in his schedule with other, programmed things; photography or music or writing. Even his so-called retirement had almost entirely failed to conform to the proper definition of the word.
The fact remains, though, that he has felt himself slowing, recently; has lost the force of that fierce, coiled energy which used to drive him endlessly. These days, he can allow himself to sit, and watch, and read; he can fall asleep easily without having planned tomorrow to within an inch of its life. But the day after his dinner with Zachary is like a stitch in time. He wakes up with a knot in his stomach, and nothing he does seems capable of untying it. He sits; he wants to stand up. He paces the living room; he wants to go outside. He strides across the lawn, startling the birds, who have never seen him move so fast. He moves from one fleeting occupation to another, and none of them holds his attention for long, because all he wants to do is call Zachary, call Zachary; all he wants to do is ask him.
It's been less than twenty-four hours since they talked. He knows his impatience is ridiculous; it is the impatience of an adolescent, and he is nearly eighty. Calm down, he tells himself, abashedly, as he flips the pages of a novel with trembling fingers. He is on page 83. He picked up the book twelve minutes ago. He has no idea at all of the story. Something about Italians...?
Calm down, Nimoy, he tells himself again, more sternly. If anything's happened, he'll tell you. Let it be.
He flips through the rest of the book more slowly, at maybe twice the normal rate, and returns it to the bookshelf with the vague impression that mobsters had featured in it somewhere. Italian mobsters. Zachary's Italian, by descent. He wonders if -
"You're losing it," he mutters, under his breath, and storms off in search of his guitar. He plays I'd Love Making Love To You until his fingers hurt, and afterwards sleeps badly.
On Friday, his schedule is not entirely empty, which makes things a little easier. In the afternoon, Leonard drives downtown to a studio he's never visited before, so that Bill can interview him for Raw Nerve. Bill is open-faced and grinning, unabashedly delighted to see him, and the old, familiar catch flip-flops in Leonard's chest when they hug. It's always so easy, talking to Bill. Somehow, the fact that there's a camera turned towards them doesn't even make much of a difference. So much of his life with Bill has been, after all, played out behind a 35 mm lens. They talk about a lot of stuff: Leonard's childhood, his grandfather, his first marriage. And then the conversation circles around, as Leonard kind of expected it might, to the question of Leonard's photographic endeavours; his attempts to render the feminine Yahweh through the captured curves and softness of living womanhood. Bill has always been inclined to doubt his motives on this one.
"When it comes down to it," Bill is saying, "They're still pictures of naked ladies, aren't they?"
Leonard sighs. "That's not the point, Bill."
"Really," says Bill sceptically. "Well, in that case, let me ask you something. Would you take nude photographs of men, in similar positions?"
"No."
"Why?"
Leonard's mouth quirks. "You offering?"
Bill grins. "Well...if you'd asked me forty years ago..."
"Shame you never mentioned it, then."
Bill leans back in his chair and snorts. "You give up too easy, Leonard. I've seen the new movie. You can time travel now. That's gotta be worth something, right?"
Leonard raises an eyebrow. "You got a black hole lying around?"
"Aw, Len," says Bill dismissively, "don't confuse me with the facts. Come on: I'll give you five minutes, and then I expect a set of stylish nudes of myself at thirty."
This is such an utterly, ridiculously, typically Bill remark that Leonard gives up any attempts at logical reasoning at this point, and presses both hands to his face. He laughs through his fingers. "I swear to God, Bill, your ego - does it have edges, at all, or is it actually infinite?"
"What?" Bill protests, in a tone of voice suggesting that he knows exactly what, but is enjoying himself too much to admit it. "I was hot!" A pause. "Why the hell are you doing the Vulcan Death Grip on yourself?"
Leonard rocks forward in his chair, laughing, and lowers his hands far enough that he can look at Bill over his fingertips. "Look, Bill," he manages.
" - what?"
He sighs, and lets his hands fall to his lap. "When I discover time travel, I promise I'll let you know. Okay? Now can we drop it?"
"We-ell," says Bill, head tilted slightly to the left, considering. "I guess so. If you really promise."
"I solemnly swear," says Leonard, poker-faced, and lifts his right hand in the Vulcan salute.
*
When he steps out of the studio and into the parking lot, Leonard is surprised to find Zach waiting for him, a slim, familiar figure leaning casually against the perimeter wall. He alters course towards him without hesitation, feeling a pulse quicken in his throat. Unexpected Zachary, he reasons, could mean one of two things, and only one of them is good. If he's going to have to listen to bad news, he wants to hear it right away.
Maybe the smile on Zach's face is a good sign. Leonard reaches out, claps him on the shoulder. "Zachary! What are you doing here, kiddo? How'd you know where I was?"
"Oh, Susan told me. I called your place." Zach flashes him a grin, all straight white teeth, and straightens, rolling a little stiffness out of his shoulders. "I hope it's okay."
"Of course," Leonard reassures him, warmly. "No, of course. When I said you could call me any time, I meant it." He pauses, watching Zachary's face. He wants to know why he's here, why exactly. His need to know is so intense that he's afraid to say too much, in case he inadvertently lets slip an overly impertinent question. "Something happen?" he ventures at length, trying for casual.
The grin that splits Zachary's face is like the sun coming out in fast-forward, sudden and beautiful, glowing so brightly Leonard feels like maybe he shouldn't look into it directly. His heart skips a little beat, then lurches into an anticipatory quickstep.
"Yeah," says Zach, and reaches out to take hold of Leonard's wrist. "Leonard..."
"You talked to Chris?" Leonard puts in quickly, twisting his hand to grasp Zachary's. He finds Zach's eyes and holds them, measuring the welcome joy in their depths.
"He said yes, Leonard," says Zach. He's gripping Leonard's fingers almost hard enough to bruise, and Leonard realises slowly that Zach's whole body is coursing with fine tremors, caught up in the sort of wild excitement you felt as a kid on your birthday, desperate to know what kind of happy things had arrived under cover of darkness. Leonard looks at him, at all the violent sentiment in that expressive face. This must be the way he looked, Leonard thinks, the day he told his father he was engaged. That was in Boston, a very long time ago, in the years before Bill. He seizes Zachary by the shoulders.
"He said 'yes'?" Leonard demands, shaking him a little. "What did you do, ask him to marry you?"
Zachary grasps him back immediately, in a way that makes Leonard think he's been wanting to do this all along, but thought it polite to wait to be touched before reacting. He shakes his head; laughs a little. His laughter is casual and true, bubbling out of him easily, like it's the only thing that can even come close to expressing how he feels right now. "No, just whether he loved me." He throws Leonard a sheepish look from under his eyelashes. "I only meant to ask him out for a drink."
Leonard squeezes Zach's shoulders again. His face is beginning to ache from the pull of a grin he hadn't known he was wearing. From the feel of it, he must have been grinning for a while.
"Let this be a lesson to you," Leonard says, reaching up to touch Zach's hair, his face; that smile. He wants to feel its brightness under his fingers, as Icarus must have yearned to touch the sun. "You say what you feel, you get what you deserve.You see?"
"For better or worse," Zachary agrees. His spectacles are askew from all the smiling, and his scarf is coming undone. He looks absolutely, blissfully content.
"Thank you, Leonard," he adds, after a moment. Leonard only smiles back at him and inclines his head in acknowledgement. Zachary takes the hint, and changes the subject.
*
Zachary invites him to dinner, at Chris's place. Leonard's never been there before, and as he hovers on the doorstep, swinging a bottle of wine by the neck like a college freshman, he feels oddly adolescent, nervous. It's almost akin to that tight-wound, anticipatory feeling he remembers from his teenage years, waiting on stoops for pretty girls' fathers to decide whether or not to threaten him with the shotgun before he took out their daughters. He feels rather ridiculous, but, dear God, he feels.
"You, Nimoy," he mutters, "are too invested in this."
And you, old man, he thinks, are talking to yourself. What would Bill say?
"Oh, God."
Suddenly, his feet are bathed in a little triangle of light: the door is thrown open, a half-dressed, sandy-haired figure just visible behind it. Leonard blinks.
"I am so sorry to keep you waiting," the voice continues, a little breathlessly, "we didn't mean - this is so embarrassing - please, sir, come in; we'll be with you in a minute."
The figure flits back into the house in a blur of apologies, pulling the door fully open behind him as he goes. Leonard, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement, catches a glimpse of bare, muscled back, light, tousled hair. "All right, son," he calls after the blur, closing the door behind him. "I'll be here, whenever you're ready."
Leonard doesn't mind waiting. He takes a seat on the first appropriate surface he comes across, smiling all over his face at the memory of the nervous edge to Chris's voice, the fervent tone of his apologies. All he caught of him, as he slipped away in search of a shirt and a hairbrush and Zachary and (maybe) a final kiss or two, were impressions: fair hair, disarranged by Zach's fingers; a dark patch on his throat from Zach's mouth. He's flustered, Leonard thinks, and smiles a little more. Who wouldn't be?
"Leonard!"
Zachary. Leonard starts out of his chair at the sound of his voice; pulls Zach towards him into a hug. "Forget I was coming?" he grins, into the dark tangle of Zach's hair. Obviously the hairbrush has remained elusive. When Zachary looks up at him, he is glowing. Leonard catches the dart of his eyes in Chris's direction, and the answering, echoing acknowledgement from Chris. There is such intimacy in the exchange, such certainty, that Leonard could go home right now and know unhesitatingly that this is a couple in love.
He almost thinks they wouldn't mind if he did. And, incredibly, far from making him feel rejected, the sense that they'd obviously be just as happy abusing Chris's mattress makes him grin from ear to ear.
"I'm so sorry," Zachary is saying, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt. "Time - ran away with us - " He makes an expansive gesture, endearingly bony wrists protruding from the open cuffs of his shirtsleeves. Leonard laughs.
"Don't apologise so much, both of you," he scolds, gently. "I can see you've been busy. It's quite understandable."
They both blush furiously at that, trading a look that tells Leonard as eloquently as words that they've both been rather hoping their tracks were covered, and that Leonard's missed the implications of the missing shirt/mussy hair/suspicious delay/blatant lovebite scenario. And that just makes him laugh harder still, suffused with a rush of sudden fondness for them both.
"Come on," he says, to fill their guilty silence. "I assume you possess a table, young Mr Pine?"
*
Watching them together, Leonard thinks, is like seeing the birth of something perfect. They move together effortlessly, one breaking seamlessly into a pause in the other's sentence; the two of them clearing and resetting the table with easy, co-operative grace. As time wears on, and the level of the wine descends, they take to touching each other's hair in passing, the glances between them lengthening. Leonard remembers watching the jewellers in Boston, in the 30's, cutting diamonds, and feeling like this. Beautiful things, exquisite, forged in front of him. Things so far beyond his reach that the capacity for jealousy was deadened, leaving only a vast and aching sense of awed admiration.
Time slips away from them without his noticing, and when he moves to go, it is almost midnight. Zach offers the sofa, but Leonard only smiles, and shakes his head, saying, "I'm sure you don't really want me cramping your style, Zachary." And the blush this time is visible, but only just, lessened by hours of wine and conversation, and the breathless defiance of young men in love.
For a while, he drives around aimlessly in the darkness, feeling validated, delighted; remembering the brush of Zachary's fingers on Chris's neck; Chris's hand, gentling, at the small of Zachary's back. I did that, Leonard tries not to think. I made that happen, and it's perfect.
He doesn't want to take too much credit, he tells himself firmly, as LA slips by unnoticed in a haze of lights. After all, they fell in love all by themselves, that much is obvious. There is, nevertheless, a deep, satisfying sense of completion burning in his chest, soothing, like a warm hand on an old wound. He's not you, he tells himself. They're not you. But he likes the feeling too much to press the point, when he could simply sink down into it, and smile, and surrender.
"Thrusters on full," he murmurs, softly, ridiculously, and turns the car for home.
***
Note: I have no idea when this is set - ie, if it's present day, or during filming, or what. Either way, the Raw Nerve interview mentioned - which in many ways bears a resemblance to the one on YouTube - is either chronological fail, or a different interview that happened only in this universe. Just so you know.
the next part
(Friendslocked. Please contact me if you want to see it.)
Author: obstinatrix
Pairing: Pinto
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,519
Summary/Notes: This is, at very long last, the sequel to After My Own Heart. It took me ages and ages and ages to do because they just would not co-operate, and then Leonard went a bit mad and started doing totally random things without my consent, and just, argh. So I'm posting it as is, although I'm not necessarily completely happy with it, because otherwise I'll just never post it at all, and it's cost me too much blood, sweat and tears for that to be allowed to happen.
Short summary: After his conversation with Zach about his feelings for Chris, Leonard's impatient to know what the result will be. This is it.
Quietude is a virtue born with age. As a young man, Leonard found nothing so challenging as stillness; encountered no difficulty so great as the simple, impossible task of squandering a day on nothing at all. It wasn't that he was impatient - it had always been Bill who couldn't wait for anything, who demanded are we there yet? and aren't they done yet? and can we go? It was only that the thought of doing nothing, electively, had always been anathema to him, prompting him to stuff the gaps in his schedule with other, programmed things; photography or music or writing. Even his so-called retirement had almost entirely failed to conform to the proper definition of the word.
The fact remains, though, that he has felt himself slowing, recently; has lost the force of that fierce, coiled energy which used to drive him endlessly. These days, he can allow himself to sit, and watch, and read; he can fall asleep easily without having planned tomorrow to within an inch of its life. But the day after his dinner with Zachary is like a stitch in time. He wakes up with a knot in his stomach, and nothing he does seems capable of untying it. He sits; he wants to stand up. He paces the living room; he wants to go outside. He strides across the lawn, startling the birds, who have never seen him move so fast. He moves from one fleeting occupation to another, and none of them holds his attention for long, because all he wants to do is call Zachary, call Zachary; all he wants to do is ask him.
It's been less than twenty-four hours since they talked. He knows his impatience is ridiculous; it is the impatience of an adolescent, and he is nearly eighty. Calm down, he tells himself, abashedly, as he flips the pages of a novel with trembling fingers. He is on page 83. He picked up the book twelve minutes ago. He has no idea at all of the story. Something about Italians...?
Calm down, Nimoy, he tells himself again, more sternly. If anything's happened, he'll tell you. Let it be.
He flips through the rest of the book more slowly, at maybe twice the normal rate, and returns it to the bookshelf with the vague impression that mobsters had featured in it somewhere. Italian mobsters. Zachary's Italian, by descent. He wonders if -
"You're losing it," he mutters, under his breath, and storms off in search of his guitar. He plays I'd Love Making Love To You until his fingers hurt, and afterwards sleeps badly.
On Friday, his schedule is not entirely empty, which makes things a little easier. In the afternoon, Leonard drives downtown to a studio he's never visited before, so that Bill can interview him for Raw Nerve. Bill is open-faced and grinning, unabashedly delighted to see him, and the old, familiar catch flip-flops in Leonard's chest when they hug. It's always so easy, talking to Bill. Somehow, the fact that there's a camera turned towards them doesn't even make much of a difference. So much of his life with Bill has been, after all, played out behind a 35 mm lens. They talk about a lot of stuff: Leonard's childhood, his grandfather, his first marriage. And then the conversation circles around, as Leonard kind of expected it might, to the question of Leonard's photographic endeavours; his attempts to render the feminine Yahweh through the captured curves and softness of living womanhood. Bill has always been inclined to doubt his motives on this one.
"When it comes down to it," Bill is saying, "They're still pictures of naked ladies, aren't they?"
Leonard sighs. "That's not the point, Bill."
"Really," says Bill sceptically. "Well, in that case, let me ask you something. Would you take nude photographs of men, in similar positions?"
"No."
"Why?"
Leonard's mouth quirks. "You offering?"
Bill grins. "Well...if you'd asked me forty years ago..."
"Shame you never mentioned it, then."
Bill leans back in his chair and snorts. "You give up too easy, Leonard. I've seen the new movie. You can time travel now. That's gotta be worth something, right?"
Leonard raises an eyebrow. "You got a black hole lying around?"
"Aw, Len," says Bill dismissively, "don't confuse me with the facts. Come on: I'll give you five minutes, and then I expect a set of stylish nudes of myself at thirty."
This is such an utterly, ridiculously, typically Bill remark that Leonard gives up any attempts at logical reasoning at this point, and presses both hands to his face. He laughs through his fingers. "I swear to God, Bill, your ego - does it have edges, at all, or is it actually infinite?"
"What?" Bill protests, in a tone of voice suggesting that he knows exactly what, but is enjoying himself too much to admit it. "I was hot!" A pause. "Why the hell are you doing the Vulcan Death Grip on yourself?"
Leonard rocks forward in his chair, laughing, and lowers his hands far enough that he can look at Bill over his fingertips. "Look, Bill," he manages.
" - what?"
He sighs, and lets his hands fall to his lap. "When I discover time travel, I promise I'll let you know. Okay? Now can we drop it?"
"We-ell," says Bill, head tilted slightly to the left, considering. "I guess so. If you really promise."
"I solemnly swear," says Leonard, poker-faced, and lifts his right hand in the Vulcan salute.
*
When he steps out of the studio and into the parking lot, Leonard is surprised to find Zach waiting for him, a slim, familiar figure leaning casually against the perimeter wall. He alters course towards him without hesitation, feeling a pulse quicken in his throat. Unexpected Zachary, he reasons, could mean one of two things, and only one of them is good. If he's going to have to listen to bad news, he wants to hear it right away.
Maybe the smile on Zach's face is a good sign. Leonard reaches out, claps him on the shoulder. "Zachary! What are you doing here, kiddo? How'd you know where I was?"
"Oh, Susan told me. I called your place." Zach flashes him a grin, all straight white teeth, and straightens, rolling a little stiffness out of his shoulders. "I hope it's okay."
"Of course," Leonard reassures him, warmly. "No, of course. When I said you could call me any time, I meant it." He pauses, watching Zachary's face. He wants to know why he's here, why exactly. His need to know is so intense that he's afraid to say too much, in case he inadvertently lets slip an overly impertinent question. "Something happen?" he ventures at length, trying for casual.
The grin that splits Zachary's face is like the sun coming out in fast-forward, sudden and beautiful, glowing so brightly Leonard feels like maybe he shouldn't look into it directly. His heart skips a little beat, then lurches into an anticipatory quickstep.
"Yeah," says Zach, and reaches out to take hold of Leonard's wrist. "Leonard..."
"You talked to Chris?" Leonard puts in quickly, twisting his hand to grasp Zachary's. He finds Zach's eyes and holds them, measuring the welcome joy in their depths.
"He said yes, Leonard," says Zach. He's gripping Leonard's fingers almost hard enough to bruise, and Leonard realises slowly that Zach's whole body is coursing with fine tremors, caught up in the sort of wild excitement you felt as a kid on your birthday, desperate to know what kind of happy things had arrived under cover of darkness. Leonard looks at him, at all the violent sentiment in that expressive face. This must be the way he looked, Leonard thinks, the day he told his father he was engaged. That was in Boston, a very long time ago, in the years before Bill. He seizes Zachary by the shoulders.
"He said 'yes'?" Leonard demands, shaking him a little. "What did you do, ask him to marry you?"
Zachary grasps him back immediately, in a way that makes Leonard think he's been wanting to do this all along, but thought it polite to wait to be touched before reacting. He shakes his head; laughs a little. His laughter is casual and true, bubbling out of him easily, like it's the only thing that can even come close to expressing how he feels right now. "No, just whether he loved me." He throws Leonard a sheepish look from under his eyelashes. "I only meant to ask him out for a drink."
Leonard squeezes Zach's shoulders again. His face is beginning to ache from the pull of a grin he hadn't known he was wearing. From the feel of it, he must have been grinning for a while.
"Let this be a lesson to you," Leonard says, reaching up to touch Zach's hair, his face; that smile. He wants to feel its brightness under his fingers, as Icarus must have yearned to touch the sun. "You say what you feel, you get what you deserve.You see?"
"For better or worse," Zachary agrees. His spectacles are askew from all the smiling, and his scarf is coming undone. He looks absolutely, blissfully content.
"Thank you, Leonard," he adds, after a moment. Leonard only smiles back at him and inclines his head in acknowledgement. Zachary takes the hint, and changes the subject.
*
Zachary invites him to dinner, at Chris's place. Leonard's never been there before, and as he hovers on the doorstep, swinging a bottle of wine by the neck like a college freshman, he feels oddly adolescent, nervous. It's almost akin to that tight-wound, anticipatory feeling he remembers from his teenage years, waiting on stoops for pretty girls' fathers to decide whether or not to threaten him with the shotgun before he took out their daughters. He feels rather ridiculous, but, dear God, he feels.
"You, Nimoy," he mutters, "are too invested in this."
And you, old man, he thinks, are talking to yourself. What would Bill say?
"Oh, God."
Suddenly, his feet are bathed in a little triangle of light: the door is thrown open, a half-dressed, sandy-haired figure just visible behind it. Leonard blinks.
"I am so sorry to keep you waiting," the voice continues, a little breathlessly, "we didn't mean - this is so embarrassing - please, sir, come in; we'll be with you in a minute."
The figure flits back into the house in a blur of apologies, pulling the door fully open behind him as he goes. Leonard, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement, catches a glimpse of bare, muscled back, light, tousled hair. "All right, son," he calls after the blur, closing the door behind him. "I'll be here, whenever you're ready."
Leonard doesn't mind waiting. He takes a seat on the first appropriate surface he comes across, smiling all over his face at the memory of the nervous edge to Chris's voice, the fervent tone of his apologies. All he caught of him, as he slipped away in search of a shirt and a hairbrush and Zachary and (maybe) a final kiss or two, were impressions: fair hair, disarranged by Zach's fingers; a dark patch on his throat from Zach's mouth. He's flustered, Leonard thinks, and smiles a little more. Who wouldn't be?
"Leonard!"
Zachary. Leonard starts out of his chair at the sound of his voice; pulls Zach towards him into a hug. "Forget I was coming?" he grins, into the dark tangle of Zach's hair. Obviously the hairbrush has remained elusive. When Zachary looks up at him, he is glowing. Leonard catches the dart of his eyes in Chris's direction, and the answering, echoing acknowledgement from Chris. There is such intimacy in the exchange, such certainty, that Leonard could go home right now and know unhesitatingly that this is a couple in love.
He almost thinks they wouldn't mind if he did. And, incredibly, far from making him feel rejected, the sense that they'd obviously be just as happy abusing Chris's mattress makes him grin from ear to ear.
"I'm so sorry," Zachary is saying, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt. "Time - ran away with us - " He makes an expansive gesture, endearingly bony wrists protruding from the open cuffs of his shirtsleeves. Leonard laughs.
"Don't apologise so much, both of you," he scolds, gently. "I can see you've been busy. It's quite understandable."
They both blush furiously at that, trading a look that tells Leonard as eloquently as words that they've both been rather hoping their tracks were covered, and that Leonard's missed the implications of the missing shirt/mussy hair/suspicious delay/blatant lovebite scenario. And that just makes him laugh harder still, suffused with a rush of sudden fondness for them both.
"Come on," he says, to fill their guilty silence. "I assume you possess a table, young Mr Pine?"
*
Watching them together, Leonard thinks, is like seeing the birth of something perfect. They move together effortlessly, one breaking seamlessly into a pause in the other's sentence; the two of them clearing and resetting the table with easy, co-operative grace. As time wears on, and the level of the wine descends, they take to touching each other's hair in passing, the glances between them lengthening. Leonard remembers watching the jewellers in Boston, in the 30's, cutting diamonds, and feeling like this. Beautiful things, exquisite, forged in front of him. Things so far beyond his reach that the capacity for jealousy was deadened, leaving only a vast and aching sense of awed admiration.
Time slips away from them without his noticing, and when he moves to go, it is almost midnight. Zach offers the sofa, but Leonard only smiles, and shakes his head, saying, "I'm sure you don't really want me cramping your style, Zachary." And the blush this time is visible, but only just, lessened by hours of wine and conversation, and the breathless defiance of young men in love.
For a while, he drives around aimlessly in the darkness, feeling validated, delighted; remembering the brush of Zachary's fingers on Chris's neck; Chris's hand, gentling, at the small of Zachary's back. I did that, Leonard tries not to think. I made that happen, and it's perfect.
He doesn't want to take too much credit, he tells himself firmly, as LA slips by unnoticed in a haze of lights. After all, they fell in love all by themselves, that much is obvious. There is, nevertheless, a deep, satisfying sense of completion burning in his chest, soothing, like a warm hand on an old wound. He's not you, he tells himself. They're not you. But he likes the feeling too much to press the point, when he could simply sink down into it, and smile, and surrender.
"Thrusters on full," he murmurs, softly, ridiculously, and turns the car for home.
***
Note: I have no idea when this is set - ie, if it's present day, or during filming, or what. Either way, the Raw Nerve interview mentioned - which in many ways bears a resemblance to the one on YouTube - is either chronological fail, or a different interview that happened only in this universe. Just so you know.
the next part
(Friendslocked. Please contact me if you want to see it.)