A snippet from the mystery fic I was talking about last week. @semperama should know what it’s about, since she gave me the idea (although I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s forgotten, since that was literally an age ago – I’m still waiting for my muse to come back from the war *sigh*). Anyhoo, here you go.
Sure enough, Chris was on the treadmill in
the hotel’s gym, and judging by the amount of sweat covering his loose gray t-shirt, he’d
already been there for some time.“Hey, I’ve been looking for you.”
Chris looked up, but didn’t slow his pace.
“Oh?”“I thought we could go for a morning
workout together, but clearly you beat me to it.”“Oh. Yeah… sorry.” Chris offered an
apologetic smile. “I’ve kind of got used to early starts after filming in
England.” He tapped the machine, gradually lowering the speed until it came to
a stop, and stepped off to grab his bottle of water. “Your turn.”Zach dropped his towel onto a nearby bench
and stepped onto the treadmill. “How far do I have to run to catch up with
you?”Halfway through drinking, Chris shrugged.
“A few miles maybe? I’ve been testing out all of the equipment here; the
treadmill was last on the list.”“So what are you going to do now?”
Chris shrugged again, grinning.
“Improvise.”Keeping up a quick but steady pace on the
treadmill proved fairly easy when Chris was chatting beside him in-between
push-ups and sit-ups. It felt easy… familiar.And then Chris decided to take
his shirt off.The next thing Zach knew, he was on his
ass, having stumbled and subsequently been thrown off the back of the machine.
Tag: love this
Jim has felt numb ever since he woke up (was brought back to life) from the Khan incident. Sure, he’s shown emotion, but it’s been three years since he’s had true, deep feeling. He’s forgotten what it’s even like, just going through the motions day in and day out.
And then he’s rattled, shaken to his core, as he stands at the comm console, holding tight because he realizes that if he lets go he’ll lose the Enterprise forever. He gives the order to abandon ship and the ship’s entire life flashes through his mind.
The Enterprise is one of the only things he has left from his life before Starfleet. They almost grew up together- he’d seen her from the day she started construction in Iowa, rode past her every day as she became a part of the town’s landscape, snuck into the ship’s shell more than a few nights for a quickie. Had looked up at her hull as he’d taken off into the shuttle the day he’d left for Starfleet. Had become her captain and gotten to know every inch of her more than anyone except maybe Scotty could. Had spent the happiest days of his life roaming her corridors.
And now she’s falling apart.
It isn’t until he’s staring down at her screaming, crashing saucer from the safety of his Kelvin pod that the Enterprise, the true love of his life, was the only thing in the universe capable of making him feel again.
Years of repressed emotions come rushing back at once, and he knows he has a job to do, a crew to save. But he feels alive. And he gives one last pained glance at the ship responsible for giving him all of that, sets his jaw, and gets to work.
This was inspired by a comment @ato-the-bean left on a Hell or High Water premier post about Chris doing press for three films in one week. No beta read, so any mistakes are gloriously mine.
Zach looked up from the book he had open when he heard the slam of a car door outside. It was slightly earlier than he was expecting – as far as he knew the flight wasn’t due to land for another thirty minutes – but he was happy for the sounds at the same time. He appreciated Chris letting him stay. There are. hotels, but there was always something about them that made him feel uneasy. Maybe it was that they were a place of change, that people were always coming and going. He was fine with it in other cities, but in LA, there was nothing more off putting than having to stay at a hotel. He didn’t even have to plead with Chris when they were all gathered after hearing about Anton. Chris all but begged him to stay, pleading some excuse about how it was too quiet and empty. It was an easy decision to say yes. Even easier to promise Chris he would still be here when he got back from god knows where it was currently. Austin, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. Stuffing press for three movies into one week is an insanity that even Zach wouldn’t want to attempt.
Sounds drifted into the house, muffled through the closed door, of goodbyes and suitcases being dragged across paving stones.
“Jesus–,” Chris swore, cutting off before he could finish the sentence.
There was a clatter as something dropped to the floor. From the sound of it, Zach guessed at keys. He stood up from the couch, placing the book he was reading down on Chris’ coffee table. Zach managed to make it to the door as Chris was trying again to unlock it, pulling it open and flicking the hallway light on.
“Holy fuck–, don’t do that Zach,” Chris snapped, jerking back instinctively.
Zach chuckled, smirking slightly. “Did you forget I was here?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Chris said.
Well exactly.
Pinto, unexpected reunion. <3
Chris hooks his sunglasses in the neck of his t-shirt and squints into the comparatively dim interior of the building. His stomach is already tying itself into anxious knots, and he thinks for the millionth time about how much he envies the Daniel Day Lewises and the Meryl Streeps of the world, the people whose talent is settled enough that they don’t have to go through this arduous process of auditions and call backs and reading for the same part over and over again. This is the fourth time Chris has been back here, the fourth time he has to read for this casting director. And while he knows that it’s a good sign that they keep calling him back, that does nothing to quell his anxiety. Auditions are the fucking worst.
A harried-looking assistent leads Chris to the right room without speaking to him once. She actually looks annoyed that he’s there at all, and Chris would tell her he agrees with her if he thought it would help. Instead he smooths down his hair, runs his hand across his beard, and pastes on his best smile just in time for the assistant to open the door to the audition room for him.
But a second later the smile slides right off his face.
“Zach!” Chris could hide his shock if he wanted to. “What—”
“Chris, so good to see you!” says Tina, the casting director, cutting him off. “You know Zach, of course.”
Chris shakes her hand on autopilot, his eyes not leaving Zach for a second. Zach is sitting in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs, slouching down with one foot balanced on top of the other, his knee jiggling side to side. He’s biting at his bottom lip and not-quite smiling and won’t meet Chris’s eyes straight on. Chris tries to think when the last time he saw him was. The last day of press for Star Trek Beyond, probably. More than a year ago now. There have been a few text messages in the interim, but there’s no question that they’ve been drifting apart, and with greater and greater momentum.
But now here they both are. Chris realizes he’s gaping and finally looks to Tina for an explanation.
“I know,” she says, wincing as if in sympathy. “We probably should have told you both sooner, but we wanted to make sure we were absolutely sure. We can’t cast the guys who played Kirk and Spock as love interests unless we were positive you weren’t going to come across as Kirk and Spock on screen.”
“You mean,” Chris stammers, “you mean Zach has been reading for the part of Peter?”
“Mhm,” Tina says. She circles back behind the little desk and motions for Chris to sit down. “And he’s by far our favorite. And you’re our favorite Rick. All that’s left to do is have you two read together and make sure it works.”
Chris falls into the chair next to Zach, takes a moment to compose himself, then looks over at him again. This time, Zach looks back at him and smiles a shy little smile. Chris’s heart beats against his ribcage. He almost puts a hand to his chest to try to hold it in.
“You okay with this?” he asks Zach quietly. He wishes they had a moment alone, but it would be weird to ask for that.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Zach says, and forces his smile wider.
Chris can already see it falling into place. Even though they haven’t read a single line together yet, he is suddenly filled with this bone-deep certainty that this is going to work, and it’s going to be amazing, and they are going to pull things out of each other that they’ve never experienced before. It unfolds in his mind’s eye like a premonition—late nights running lines, crashing in each other’s trailers, kissing for the cameras. This is going to be it for them. This is going to be the movie they’ve both been waiting for.
And no matter how strained things have been between them, no matter how bittersweet, Chris also realizes that it wouldn’t feel quite right to go through any of it with anyone other than Zach. It feels like he’s getting ready to jump out of a plane, and it’s going to be a long way down, but there is something fateful about it. Like every place where his path has crossed with Zach’s over the past decade was only leading them to this point.
He makes himself return Zach’s smile and gives his knee a quick pat, then reaches out to take a script off Tina’s desk.
“Alright, which scene are we reading?” he asks, rubbing the sweaty palm of one hand on his jeans.
“I thought we’d do the one where they first meet,” Tina says, already looking pleased, like she’s seen something she likes. “Go for it, whenever you’re ready.”
Chris opens the script and takes a deep breath, then turns his chair a little toward Zach, who does the same in return.
“Ready when you are,” he says. Zach holds his gaze for a beat, and then they begin.
Semper Yas.
Few Words Wednesday
The movie is tedious, half because it is only a 4 out of 10 at best and half because all Zach wants to do is lean over and press his lips to the skin behind Chris’s ear and tell him how beautiful he is. After the interlude at Zach’s place, Chris went back to his hotel to shower and change, and he swapped out his horrible cardigan for an only slightly less horrible cardigan and a way more horrible newsboy hat, but it’s still hard for Zach to look at the screen and not at him the entire time. And after it’s over, there’s the party, which Zach is very much regretting bringing up at all. Chris will still be here tomorrow, and the next day, but suddenly being here with all these other people seems like such a waste of time.
But that’s the problem, the feeling Zach is trying to avoid. His world shouldn’t stop turning for Chris. So he does the schmoozing thing; he makes the rounds and pays insincere compliments to actors he barely knows for performances that were barely worth mentioning. Sometimes Chris is right there at his side, tonguing the mouth of a bottle of beer like he wants to make Zach’s head explode, and sometimes he’s across the room, turning his blinding smile on some other poor, unsuspecting victim. After a while, the night takes on an artificial cast. The light hurts Zach’s eyes and the people look plastic and the chatter of voices starts to sound inhuman. He can usually withstand a good party like a pro, but he feels dead on his feet and desperate to be anywhere else, and to take Chris there with him.
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