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tourdefierceThe sun is rising, strong and illuminating. Light slowly floods the room around them as the sun creeps up the Auckland horizon line. Birds are waking outside, the first fluttering signs of life in the early light of the morning, but the couple on the couch hasn't moved.
They're curled around each other, their grip tight in a desperate sort of way that feels heartbreaking and is completely sobering against what feels like a new morning. They both look tired, dark circles under their eyes, but there are no signs of tears, just defeat. Their faces seem pale, even though the skin of both people is deeply tan. If it was any other moment, they might glow together in the simple beauty they have pooled between them. As it is, it is clear that this end was not the one planned nor dreamed.
"I'm sorry," the man says, his face pressed into the woman's hair. His voice is rough but his tone is sincere.
"So am I," she replies. She reaches up and intertwines their bare fingers, devoid of rings or promises. Silence stretches between them as morning encroaches on whatever space they've carved out in the night.
"Wanna have hot, goodbye-divorce sex?" He doesn't move when he poses his question. The woman laughs, a choked sort of glee that feels more bitter than sweet.
"Not really, love."
"Yeah," he says, holding her tighter. "Me, neither."
They lay in the stillness, cocooned in the moment as if someone had broken a glass, the shards scattering across the floor and the two of them stuck in time between the splintering of the fragile material and the movement to sweep it up. They are frozen, not ready to begin again in forward motion but unable to look back at the destruction behind them.
The morning rises into being around them as they cling together, floating in a limbo that leaves no room for absolution.
The day he meets Zach, he's hurrying to an audition. There is coffee in a travel container his mother sent him but he's never used it before and it seems to refuse closing. It's sloshy coffee all over the sidewalk as he shuffles and runs to his car. He's struggling to get his keys attached to his pants before he loses them in his constant fluster when he runs into solid objects and promptly dumps the rest of his coffee onto them.
"Oh fuck," he says with his hands outstretched as if he could somehow push them away before the coffee gives in to gravity. That second before the dice is cast and a single breath could determine fate, or something equally ridiculous and spellbinding.
The man just gasps in response.
Chris thinks the coffee must burn on his bare arms.
The man's dog barks happily and looks at Chris like it's play time. He wonders briefly if this is what all people think before they get attacked by strange dogs.
"I'm so fucking sorry," Chris stutters out but the back of his mind is screaming about the time and his agent is vibrating in his back pocket. "Listen, listen—I'm so late it's obscene. Here's my card, call me and I'll pay for everything. I'm so sorry."
And then he's going, stepping around the man in the purple beanie and striped tee and running down the street, his travel mug abandoned on the road. And the incident fading into the background as he thinks that maybe, maybe this is the start of the rest of his life.
He's tucked into a corner of his favorite used book store. The towering book cases are pressed so tightly together he can barely get through them as he juggles a dozen books to the counter.
He's thinking about cigarettes and coffee.
He's thinking about the shit job his reading was, a mess of nerves and sterile smiles that could not have said what Chris wanted them to say. He's stuffed his phone in his back pocket and is refusing to answer calls, silently praying his weight will crush the screen and obliterate his addiction to his Blackberry and cut the umbilical cord between him and his agent.
She's a bitch anyway. The bearer of bad news and simultaneously the only person in the world with the ability to get his hopes up so high—Chris thinks she likes to make see them crushed.
He's thinking about having a cigarette and a cup of the darkest, bitterest, most angst-ridden coffee he can find when he remembers tall-dark-and-handsome with his dog.
The old man who runs the bookstore doesn't speak to Chris. It's strange, he thinks as he takes his receipt and the paper rubs silky smooth over his hand, that he could see this old man practically every day for years and still not remember his name.
The California sun is brow-beating its way under his skin and he ducks for shade in a near by coffee house but ends up sitting outside anyway, underneath the awning. The smoke from his cigarette disappears without fanfare into the light and he thinks about the handsome man he spilled coffee all over on the way to a waste of time. If Chris closes his eyes, he can imagine the shadow of day-old beard on his face, the veins that ran the length of his arm, or the way Chris saw himself in the reflection of the stranger's sunglasses.
The dog too, Chris thinks. The dog too.
He wastes the rest of the day sipping coffee and reading the books he's already read once or twice before. His Blackberry vibrates incessantly and Chris pretends he's not a B-list actor with hopes and dreams—with places to go and people to please. He composes an email to his mother in his head before he calls her instead, her voice crinkled and fluttering like a dodging butterfly over the line.
He thinks about fairytales. He's not thinking about tomorrow, but the next day.
"You got another reading," his insane agent says over the line. Her voice is surprised.
That fact pisses him off more than it should.
"Yeah?" Trying to sound casual and failing.
"Yep. Tomorrow at ten."
She hangs up without saying goodbye and Chris wonders when the rest of his life started hanging on decisions he didn't get to make.
He spends the rest of the day watching an old TV show with terrible effects and sometimes even worse acting. But he calls it research, secretly watching the way they lean into each other in the best chemistry he's seen in a long time. He thinks of his father, another washed up actor living the California dream.
He thinks about princesses and dragons. He thinks that love always wakes the dragon, as he falls asleep.
"Hello, coffee guy," tall-dark-and-handsome says.
Chris knows you think he's the dragon because that would be so like him. But he's not the dragon. He doesn't think he's the princess, either.
"I'm so sorry," Chris says. "About all the coffee and Christ, your shit that I ruined."
"Yes," the guy says with a smile so sharp it could deftly cut Chris' heart out.
Oh good, he thinks.
"So," beautiful and dangerous guy says, with his playful eyebrows and broad hands that make Chris' mouth water. "Are you reading today?"
"Yeah."
Chris wants to say something more but suddenly he realizes he's not sitting in a doctor's office waiting room. This is not little league. This is not a guaranteed happily ever after. He needs to get his shit together. He wants to say, "Can we talk later?" But instead he stutters out something incomprehensible as J.J. Abrams walks out.
Chris turns to say something, anything to the guy next to him, but he's already up and out of his chair, talking to J.J. Abrams like they're old friends. Chris tries not to stare because he knows he's not supposed to ogle people because it's rude but also because Mr. Abrams probably doesn't rate leering at the top of his list of acting qualities.
He doesn't stare but he manages to catch the wink tall-dark-and-dangerous gives him before he disappears with J.J. Abrams.
Don't worry, Chris sinks the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, he swallows the glass, but that comes later.
He's getting to it.
He locks himself in the bathroom after his reading.
Cool water shocks his face and it's so red that he's almost embarrassed, except... he got the part. There's that knot in his stomach that says: yesyesyes. But the rest of him is still reeling from the feeling of stone-cold Vulcan coming out of eyes so passionate they were ready to light him on fire with lust but for something else that's unnameable and nagging at the forefront of his mind.
"Chris?"
He turns the water off and dries off his face with rough paper towels. Recycled paper just isn't what it used to be.
He swings the door open to find smiling eyes and a face with a grin sliding across it. Chris can't help but smile back, the nerves ebbing away to reveal a fleeting little joy.
"Hi," he says with a stupid smile and a little wave.
"I'm Zachary Quinto," tall-dark-and-probably-oh-god-please-be-his-co-star says.
"I know."
Chris watches with overattentive eyes as Zach leans against the door frame with grace that's practically feline. He shivers.
This is so inconvenient.
"Wanna get some coffee?"
He thinks of coffee and cigarettes as he follows Zach out of the studio. Tripping over his feet and thinking that maybe he was wrong. Maybe he is the princess after all.
There is no spark the first time they kiss. It fizzles out into something low and boring that makes Chris kind of want to run away in shame because somehow this feels like his fault. If he hadn't let himself believe that it was love at first sight, if he hadn't been like a school boy crushing on his baby sitter or if he hadn't spent the afternoons climbing the castle walls... maybe if he hadn't been so Christopher Pine, then this would have worked out.
Zach blinks slowly. Chris can practically see his own thoughts flash across his face in a way that most people find endearing, he knows, but feels ugly and embarrassing now.
"That was a shit kiss," Zach says with his head tilted slightly and still very close to Chris. And then he smiles, confident and lovely and something in Chris breaks.
"It really was."
Zach's hand reaches up and caresses Chris' face. His hands are strong and smooth, the tops hairy and bony. Chris can't help himself, leaning into the touch and wishing he could take everything back. He was riding a lot on this. He had anticipated life-changing moments with multitudes of sex. So he leans into the touch and wishes these names in his life wouldn't get crossed out.
"Oh, Christopher," Zach says with fondness that cradles Chris in a weirdly profound way. He wants to cringe when Zach leans in, he wants to try again and again until it feels right but that's selfish and silly and being a Hollywood dreamer really isn't what it's cracked up to be.
This isn't a Jane Austen novel. There is no one here to save.
Instead, Zach presses his lips, soft and comforting, to Chris' forehead and stays there. Their embrace would look awkward, Chris thinks, from the outside. But inside, inside is exactly where he wants to be.
"I do adore you," Zach whispers. His lips are still pressed against Chris' forehead and he hates them, the two of them and their wretched habit of falling for people they don't love. "But that is going down as the worst kiss to have ever been had between co-stars."
They laugh together and it feels brittle. They fall down on the sofa, their limbs tangled and pressed together as if they are still trying to be nearer to each other in the awkward bubble of intimacy as the last moment of their romantic encounter fades away.
"Original series or Princess Diaries 2?"
Chris snorts. "Star Trek, please."
They watch Anne Hathaway and Chris Pine act some truly horrific scenes together and laugh, clutching their stomachs and making comments to make up for a love that was lost or maybe never truly found but Chris hates the way his life turns to stone sometimes, all his hopes dashed and asterisked with comments: "You're just not right for the part," "You just don't fit the type," "You're not what we're looking for right now..."
Zach holds his hand and they fall asleep together. Chris is sure they are both princesses now, although this fairy tale doesn't seem as bright anymore.
Chris has a sneaky suspicion that Kafka got ahold of this fairytale and had his way with it.
Some days, Chris shuts all the doors and windows so he can pull the curtains tight over the glass and not be seen by any California light. Those days, those days Chris thinks that being a mythical creature would be easier than this word monger—this lord of pressed paper and fickle crosswords. He thinks that maybe being a vampire would be easier and that he'd lurk in the frozen section of grocery stores because the people who shop there would be the tastiest. He wouldn't eat Zach because Zach orders tofu dishes and goes to yoga; Zach would taste like trail mix and herbal tea leaves. If Chris was a vampire, he'd lurk where the bacon-flavored people frequented because it is essentially the small pleasures in life that would sharpen his fangs.
Chris thinks about living a stranger's life when Zach's stuck in meetings and his agent is frantic because he's going to be a star. He imagines how werewolves dream of being everyone's favorite teen movie or how vampires probably wish they sparkled in real life. There is despair in these characters. There is life in characterization but he's not sure they are breathing anymore.
He dreams about ordinary life, paging through college tomes that he's almost embarrassed to have kept in his bedside drawer. Zach would surely make fun of him and his thirst for reading through the notes he made when he was young, when Ginsberg held the key to just about everything and Proust was the tortured queer that Christopher longed to be.
On those days, when Chris blocks out the sun and dreams daydreams that look like nightmares, he wonders if fairytales are really any place for Hollywood stars and California dreamers.
“The first reading is on Sunday,” Zach says over the phone with a little grunt. Chris smiles into his beloved phone and looks at the peaches, feeling for the perfect firmness.
“Have you heard any rumors?”
Zach snorts. “Oh, plenty. Apparently, Kirk is being played by a handsome young actor.”
“And who might that be?” Chris murmurs as he bags three peaches that he won't eat. They will look delicate in his fridge, a homage to normalcy amidst the condiment frenzy.
“Zac Efron,” Zach deadpans over the phone. “I'm swooning over the epic bromance me and Efron will acquire. I'm almost certain that he will be a better kisser than you.”
Chris stares into the bright lights of the produce section and laughs. He lingers there as long as he can, mingling with other people who pretend to love unripened fruit and don't want to get eaten by mythical creatures loitering in the frozen isle.
If tomorrow never comes, Chris might not cry.
Chris tries not to be young. He really does, but when he's staring into the faces of so many talented people it's hard as excitement runs quick and nimble through his veins. He's going to be Captain Kirk to J.J. Abrams' hand-picked crew. The weight on his shoulders feels monstrous but light because beautiful people do that.
He pulls himself away from Zach's arm, embarrassed by his clutching fingernails that are quick-bitten and terrified. J.J. is lovely as usual, his excitement palpable in the room and it makes Chris feel better at being an excited puppy tripping over his overgrown feet. They all make their introductions around the long table; Zoe is laughing and gorgeous, her relaxed smile flickering from Zach to the rest of the room, and manages to ignite a flare of jealousy in Chris, who always wants to be friends with beautiful women like Zoe but he just ends up breaking hearts instead of making lasting friendships—it isn't fair; Anton is beside her without a trace of nervousness and with wit that is sharp as his cheekbones, layered with a youthful confidence that Chris has long lost in the stacks of Berkley's library; John is aloof, he waves to the table and crakes a joke about being glad to be in something not marketed to stoned teens; Bruce just nods to everyone as he types out on his iPhone, his smile is kind and reaches his eyes; next to him is an empty chair before the seats are being filed with J.J. and other important production people that Chris knows will play a big role in the picture but won't want to get to know him. It's strange how movies are like that—actors all paling around in a desperate attempt to know anybody, to connect to anyone like they did in high school. Now, he lives in a world where technical directors and various behind-the-scenes people seem tired with Hollywood darlings and stay huddled together until post-production begins, as if they are all waiting to finally get rid of pesky actors who do nothing but get in the way of real movie making.
Not that Chris has had much experience but he was a nosy child who asked a lot of questions. And his father? Well, Mr. Pine was verbose.
“I'm glad everyone could make it,” J.J. says with a smile. “We're only missing one essential cast member, but I imagine he'll be along.”
“Who's that?” Zoe says brightly, leaning forward and scrunching up her nose in excitement. It's beyond attractive and Chris wills the world to behave for his idle wishes of normalcy.
“Not essential to your character development, Zoe. But he's the 'Bones' of our story,” J.J. jokes with wild hand gestures that don't make any sensical connection to his words. Chris frowns because he can't seem to remember who else they are missing.
The meeting starts with J.J.'s storyboard and just murmurs of scripts (locked in some sort of magical vault and only to be read at J.J.'s house, which Chris is infinitely excited about) but they are all drawn toward J.J.'s particular flare for the dramatic and Chris manages to forget that they were waiting on one more person to join their group. It's only when the door opens, interrupting J.J.'s rant about destiny and bromances, that Chris finally pieces together the missing member to be cast as Leonard McCoy.
Karl Urban is taller in real life, Chris thinks as he strolls into the room with a small suitcase trailing behind him, his tall frame adorned with an old Henley t-shirt and thoroughly worn jeans. His feet, Chris notices with a dry mouth, are clad in leather flip-flops. His face is scruffy but his eyes are warm and lit up with obvious delight. Chris is drawn to the bow of his arm, stretching slightly back to keep his suit case from bumping his heels. The strips of muscle are tan and strong, causing Chris to have a brief hallucination about what they might feel like wrapped around him.
Chris would be lying if he describes Karl as anything but gorgeous, warm, and mouth-watering.
Zach leans over and startles Chris out of staring. Karl is sitting down across the table and smiling at everyone, God, his mouth, and giving Chris a look to convey his puzzlement as to why Chris is practically leering at him.
“Shit,” Chris says under his breath as he shifts in his seat, adjusting his pants and blushing under Zach's teasing smile. He looks away from Karl, who is clapping Bruce on the back and smiling so fucking widely that Chris afraid of being swallowed whole and not minding one damn bit.
“You,” Zach says as they turn back to J.J.'s scribbled storyboard. “You are so fucking gay”
Chris closes his eyes briefly, adjusting his underwear again and then blinking the storyboard into focus as Karl's laughs fills the room for a few harmonious seconds.
“I know.”
Chris smiles brightly and plays the part of charming blonde as best as he can manage while he gathers as much information on Karl Urban as possible. It is possible that after spending the evening intimately acquainting himself with Google he can be categorized as a stalker, but Chris is nothing if not painfully aware of his own oddities.
If not, Zach reminds him. (Actually, Zach says with concern, love is larger than the usual romantic love... For you, it's religion. It's terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you, Pine.)
But there is something so kind about Karl Urban, with his wide hands and his easy laughter. With Zach, Chris feels constantly rewarded with laughter because Zach laughs so rarely for free. Chris is convinced that this condition is directly connected to Zach's level of pretentious bastard and queenly faggotness, however, he has no proof. But with Karl, it seems as if laughter is a gift, it's Karl's gift to anyone who gets to spend time around him. Chris watches Karl as subtly as he can after the meeting, when everyone is talking and carefree and living the dream of major motion pictures. He's in a room full of beautiful people and he can't take his eyes off the Kiwi star. But Karl catches his attenion because he's not classically beautiful, reminding Chris of his own scars that cause make-up crews to bristle and photography directors to scowl. Karl is different because he's rough around the edges, stubble leaning more toward beard territory that sends Chris aching for the feel of Karl's cheek on the sensitive skin of his inner thighs.
Chris aches for beard burn but maybe that has nothing to do with Karl. Maybe that has everything to do with sleeping with vampires and their lack of facial hair.
Karl's hands aren't as expressive as J.J.'s but then again, no one's are. Instead, Chris watches as Karl palms people's shoulder blades, sliding down their backs before returning to his pockets. Chris watches as Karl cups Anton's neck when the kid blushes and looks down at his shoes, Karl laughing all the while. Chris catalogs the seemingly infinite reasons Karl finds to touch people. It's tactile, hot as hell to imagine those hands on Chris, and just fucking kind.
Everything about Karl makes Chris flushed, fidgety and achey in his chest in a different way than when he met Zach. He doesn't understand the difference between this yearning and that. But Zach arches his eyes from his place talking to Zoe and promises to mock Chris incessantly when they are alone and it's enough for Chris to try and be more careful in his Karl-ogling.
But there is something there, Chris can feel it. He knows that he wants to know this man, and it scares him how quickly this has settled in the pit of his stomach.
Chris pretends to listen to John Cho while he spies on Karl, who is speaking with someone from production like they are old friends. Chris watches his hands as he speaks, as they slip in and out of his pockets with ease. Chris looks for a wedding ring but doesn't see any glint to his hands other than the broad way they slip in and out of his denim to play with the frayed ends.
Chris wonders if there is a language there that is more expressive than Chris' scribbled mess in the margins of life.
He chocks it up to romantic idealism, his own lesbian urge to merge that runs along the path to loneliness, and turns away from Karl Urban to focus on John Cho and his never-aging face. It's obvious that he's the jester, put in the story to create laugh-lines to tell children about in fifty years time but Chris finds some sort of kin here, in the length of John's laugh and his unapologetic youth. There is something here in this web of ease that makes Chris stumble and clutch at John's arms when he quakes with quiet, wheezing laughter.
Chris stares at his laptop, Dorris, and thinks that maybe his Google-fu is warped to his own fantasies.
“What do you know about Karl and Viggo?” Chris blurts out when Zach answers the phone.
“I worry about you,” Zach says in response. There's a sigh in there too but Chris is ignoring it. “How long have you been Googling Karl?”
“There are some pretty well-written stories about Karl and Viggo doing the nasty.”
“Chris-”
“In their Lord of the Rings costumes, which is totally unrealistic because you don't think they got to keep them, do you? And man, have you ever met a costume crew that wasn't out for your balls?”
Chris scrolls down Google Images and wonders how emotionally tarnished he has become if he grows attached to people through fictionally composed stories and press photos. And if he really has become that person, who is to blame?
“Is this a phase?”
Chris sighs and closes Dorris with a click. His place feels empty and his fingers itch to return to the drawer by his bedside and the dull safety of other people's obsessions.
“I hope so,” he murmurs and closes his eyes. He really should wear his glasses when he plans to stare at the screen for so long. “Do you think this is normal?”
“Your man-love crushes that develop out of nowhere and so suddenly that I worry you might be a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“Yes.”
“I think you are so desperate for intimacy that you create it wherever your imagination lets you,” Zach says, in a monotone voice that Chris recognizes as Zach's standard tone for 'telling Chris things that he needs to hear so quick, pull off the bandaid before he starts to cry'. “Also, Karl does have lovely hands, and you need to get laid by something that can't be purchased.”
“I've noticed,” Chris groans out.
“Go to bed.”
“Yeah.”
You lie in bed with pages of fastidiously typed poetry but it feels as if you are reading someone else's diary. There are words you don't recognize but you know that they can be yours if you learn to take instead of give. If you learn to steal then maybe you won't have to chew off your own arm to escape.
You can see where you could have loved them more. You could have loved them better. You could have made it worthy of the pain that is written between obsession and anguish. You could have made them a Faulkner character; every David to Goliath to twist effortlessly with Agamemnon’s tragic justice.
There is peace here, you just can't find it. There is love here, but you can't outrun it. There is a version of you hidden that matters and it is growing but like all carnivorous plants, it needs sunlight and more than just flies to make it work.
When did carnivorous turn into cannibalism?
You smear your finger across the penciled margins until the oils distort the lead and sleep takes more possession of your person than you've ever had the guts to claim. You're twenty minutes away from the dirtiest thing you know.
You're the princess who is decomposing inside the belly of the dragon. Congratulations.
Chris is mostly over his bone-crushing fancying of Karl Urban, who is married to someone lovely named Natalie. Chris learns that there are many people in the world who are just as delusional as he is, which should be comforting but is actually just scary.
He's buying the original Star Trek in Best Buy when his Blackberry makes him aware that he hasn't gotten a phone call from anyone since Zach went on a meditation retreat and that the only text message he's received other than the one currently marked as unread were from his mother, who wants to know his waist size and if he's taken up smoking again.
Text from: Unknown Number
It's Karl Urban from Trek. I was wondering if you wanted to talk characterization sometime this week before we read the script. Let me know, I'm in LA for another four days.
Chris wants to be ashamed of how fast he responds, his mother's voice ringing about giving it up too fast before the boys can smell the honey, but it doesn't stop him from also texting Zach.
Text to: Zach/Noah
Fuck meditation. Karl fucking Urban just fucking texted me.
He's in his car and driving particularly recklessly with endorphins running desperately through his veins. He doesn't look at this phone until he's home, box set tumbling onto the sofa and a pinched expression on his face.
Text from: Unknown Number
I'm up in a hotel. Can we chat at yours?
Text from: Zach/Noah
Your vocabulary startles me.
Chris is too busy texting Karl Urban to care about what Zach's meditating on now.
It's clear within the first ten minutes of their meeting that Karl has an addiction to sci-fi that rivals Chris' addiction to poetry from distressed queers. It is also clear that for some bizarre reason, Chris finds this attractive.
“J.J. said the script will focus more on Bones' and Jim's relationship in contrast to the relationship that develops between him and Spock,” Karl says with his feet curled beneath him on Chris' couch. “Which I really enjoy because dead horse and all that.”
Chris nods but no, he has no idea why Spock and Kirk's relationship is connected with dead anything but it sounds lovely coming out of Karl Urban's fantastically perfect lips. Seriously though, they look as if they are made to suck dick or press wet, pillow-soft kisses all over Chris' skin. That thought, once materialized in Chris' mind, will not go away, no matter how many times he reminds himself that this is not gay pulp fiction.
Chris is surprised at how well he manages to follow along in the end and how animated Karl's hands get in a lazy motion when he gets excited. He's also infinitely amazed at how well he's containing his growing obsession with Karl's eyes, murky and green with enough shades of grey to dismantle any hope Chris has for remembering that Karl is married which probably means straight. Although imagining Karl as a twisted queer trapped in a loveless marriage is such a demented turn on.
“I've been working on dissecting DeForrest's characterization and I think I'm going to go a different direction,” Karl says, leaning forward. Chris nods.
“I feel the same away about the Shat,” Chris says, and they both laugh. Karl's laugh isn't different from the first time Chris heard it even though Chris wants it to be. He wants there to be a private laugh that Karl gives out in between sheets and cool colored wallpaper walls.
Chris is beginning to understand that his delusions are a special brand of crazy.
When Karl doesn't leave until close to the three in the morning, Chris wants to ask him to stay on the couch or the pullout in his writing studio but he doesn't. Karl's smile is small and tired but Chris still wonders what it would feel like against his mouth.
“This was good,” Karl says on Chris' doorstep. LA's night is still but warm and Chris likes the way his porch light plays on Karl's tan skin.
“Yeah,” Chris says back, and rubs the back of his neck. He feels younger than his years, as if Berkeley has somehow reclaimed him as a lost boy looking for love. It doesn't feel far from him now.
“We should do it again after we see the script.”
“When do you leave?”
“Tuesday,” Karl says with a frown. Chris wants to rub it out with the pad of his thumb. “But I'll be back for good in a few weeks.”
“For good?”
Chris leans against the jam of the door and tries not to look eager. He wants to freeze the frame in front of him; Karl looks sleepy but relaxed in the flood of light from Chris' porch. He also looks gorgeous and tangible. His shoulders are broad and strong and Chris wants to run his hands over them, he wants to press them until Karl falls to his knees, he wants to scratch them with his head thrown back and he wants to press his face against them in sleep. Karl's frown lines, the dimples in his cheeks, and the softness in his eyes all look as if Karl is searching for a home. All Chris sees is the home Karl could be.
It makes Chris' chest ache.
“I'm moving to LA,” Karl says, with a sad smile that Chris wants to dissect.
“Oh?”
Karl nods, shifting on his feet when he adjusts his foot's hold on his flip-flop and Chris tracks the movement of his Adam's apple. There are so many languages in this man that Chris wants to learn, he thinks. He wants to dig beneath the layers and spell out the translations on bed sheets.
“I think it's time.”
Karl nods with finality and Chris watches him disappear into the dark toward a cab. Chris doesn't wait to text him; he just crawls into bed and opens the nearest book before he pulls out his phone and types out a hasty message.
Text to: Karl Urban
If you need help finding a place, give me a call.
Chris is crazy enough to feed the delusions, because sometimes he feels like destiny might exist in the fantasies of ordinary men.
When Chris helps Karl move in, he manages to forget how much he wants to touch this man. Instead, it's a pleasant day spent drinking cold beer and trying to read the terrible handwriting on all the boxes Karl sent over from Auckland. He manages to forget wanting to curl around Karl's body and give permission for Karl to do the same and on repeat for days on end. He manages to press the clear and present want for intimacy, the one that Zach says is crippling Chris into an emotional retard, out of the way so it doesn't ruin the time Chris allows himself with Karl. They move in and laugh at boxes of worthless stuff that Karl can't remember packing. They spend a few hours talking about Trek and characterization until Chris falls asleep on the couch with a smile on his face and without a single trace of poetry matted to his cheek or etched onto his heart.
He wakes up once to find Karl staring at him but before he can properly wake up and understand anything, Karl is tucking a sheet over him and murmuring his goodnights.
Chris dreams of dungeons but sees no dragons in the shadows—only the gentle hiss of shackles.
He's eating dinner with whoever his agent insisted on earlier in the week. She's blonde and pretty but feels awkward on his arm because the height difference is all wrong and he can't stop puttering on about poetry when she clearly is being paid to be his date. There are enough cameras for his agent to coo to him over email in the morning, he's sure, but he finds them annoying and every flash has him feeling a tender curl of shame in his gut.
She's nice and she lets him kiss her on the cheek, turning her head to present her smooth and unblemished skin for him as if she knew that was all he could give. Knowing his agent, Chris is sure that she's been fully briefed on his misguided affinity for cock.
His mind is cloudy and his mouth tastes like garlic when he crawls into bed fully clothed with all the lights off.
Text from: Zach/Noah
Your girlfriend is fucking ugly.
You spend the day looking in between Proust's carefully crafted sentences.
There is no forgiveness here.
“Coward.”
Chris feels bone tired but snarls back just as feral. “Oh please, I'm sorry I can't walk around in homoerotic hats and suck off Tyler's cock in public, Zach. Fuck off kindly.”
“Jesus, listen to yourself.”
Zach sounds genuinely angry and Chris wonders why he feels nothing for this subject, why he feels quiet in the rush of Zach's storm. Chris wonders why he has read stacks of books on the dangers of heteronormativity but when the disease creeps in, he feels nothing but slight of hand and oh so tired.
“I'm tired of listening to myself,” Chris says instead. “Why does it matter, Zach? Does anyone really give a fuck except you, you self-righteous son-of-a-bitch?”
He doesn't sound violent or involved and it makes Zach stutter in oblivion.
“Call me when you've pulled your head out of your ass,” Zach finally says, with such conviction that it makes Chris want to care. “This is about you, Chris. This is your life, so don't try and invite anyone into your poetry reading pity party.”
“Zach--”
“It's your fucking closet,” Zach whispers, and it's the venom that seeps into Chris' skin. “Shame isn't a very good color for you. Makes you look dull and washed out.”
Chris doesn't hang up the phone, although he wants to. He wants to hurl his Blackberry across the room and watch it shatter in a very dramatic fashion that would make his mother proud. Instead, he listens to Zach's snarled breaths, listens to the way they hitch across the line and then go flat when he hangs up.
He listens to Zach's words as they claw inside of him, rip at the tender parts of his flesh and make him bleed. If Zach's the dragon, he's done a good job hiding but if this makes Chris one, he's not sure where the path is supposed to lead next. What good is a wounded dragon? How is he supposed to slay the knights and kidnap the Princesses if he's too busy bleeding, the taste of copper on his tongue and apologies that only go skin deep?
Love, love, or whatever. Take a fucking number.
Text from: Karl Urban
Movie night?
Chris goes even though he shouldn't.
There's a rawness that he sees in the rearview mirror but can't seem to get rid of. He knows that Karl will notice and maybe comment but Chris isn't worried about what Karl will say. Chris is worried about what will pour of his own mouth like an eager orphan. Will he spill about the boring dates he goes on with pretty smiles and delicately curved breasts? Will he tell Karl about how Zach hasn't spoken to him in a week and he's not even at a meditation camp? Will he bite a bitter smile around his words and tell Karl about how he's a lonely gay boy with more than one delusional dream about castles and endless moats that separate Chris from paparazzi flashes and an increasingly shiny future that promises lies and false smiles? Will he tell Karl about how much he wishes he didn't have the same wants and desires at the heart of every bright-eyed Hollywood star?
Will he tell Karl that he's noticed the absence of a ring on his finger, and that the traitorous thoughts it has inspired are seeping into his writing?
This. This is when Chris sinks the boat of love. Congratulations, he's made it this far and it's vampires, werewolves and his mother that will splinter him open on the floor of the grocer and make him beg for mercy between the frozen section and the butcher.
He doesn't have to say anything in the end.
The door swings open and Karl is smiling in open abandon but it slides off his face. Christopher feels embarrassed enough to try and rearrange his facial features to hide the ache that slips and slides through his insides and spills out onto the stupidly pretty canvas of his face.
“You look like shit, mate,” Karl says before he pulls Chris into the living room. Chris can feel the press of Karl's fingertips into his skin and he remembers now why Zach said white t-shirts weren't thick enough armor for what Chris had in store for himself.
“Karl—”
But Karl's got it covered, pulling Chris in and wrapping his arms around him, forcing Chris' face into the soft material of Karl's flannel t-shirt. He smells good but indistinct. He smells like soap and cedar but Chris inhales deeply anyway. His throat feels tight as if he's going to cry but the tears don't come. Instead, Karl just holds him without a word passing between them. There is peace in the fortress that Karl builds with muscled arms and the rise and fall of his chest against Chris' face. Chris is reminded, almost transplanted back in time, to when he first saw Karl and wondered how Karl's arms would feel around him. The reality overwhelms the fantasy.
This is the stillness that will engulf Chris. This was the stillness that captured Cesar and tainted Brutus in the final moments of friendship. The history books don't write about it but Chris can feel it between the pages as a vivid reminder of humanism.
When Karl pulls away, he keeps his hands on Chris' shoulders and Chris stares at Karl's mouth instead of looking him in the eye. He's still too raw, even if this is more of a confession than he could have ever made.
“Princess Diaries it is,” Karl says with a smile, but he doesn't let Chris move away and Chris spends the rest of the night wondering if this is worse than sitting home alone. There is an intimacy in closeness but all Chris feels is out of body, as if the world is making decisions without him and his body, his body has been snatched up to feed the hungry masses who consider emotionally irreparable boys to be their own tasty food group.
He has a funny feeling bubbling up. He suspects that Karl's the castle and Chris wonders what it takes to will himself to be the stone.
Filming is fast and neck-breaking.
Chris gets lost in laughter and thick days full of shooting and make-up. It's Hollywood, his mind reminds him. He doesn't have trouble sleeping because he practically falls asleep anywhere that is horizontal in the moments that they trick him into thinking are free time.
The tension between him and Zach doesn't disappear but it works for them, rather than against them, so Chris doesn't bother to try and resolve it. Zach continues to ignore his text messages and keeps Zoe as a barrier between them when the conversation strays into enemy territory. Zach spends most of his time looking sad, as if Chris has gone past disappointment and moved into the borderlands where Zach remembers his first blowjobs and all the times he's fucked without a condom. Chris is just a memory now and his failures are just faint and fleeting indentions in Zach's too cool world of heteronormative causalities. Chris wonders where his name ranks on the list of missing in action in this constant war. Chris wonders when he even enlisted.
Chris spends his free time sleeping and thinks, not for the first time, if this is some sort of test that he's failing. Karl smiles private smiles and Chris aches to go back in time when all he did was wish for those smiles instead of experiencing them, because he has no idea what they mean. There isn't any room inside of him to figure Karl out. He feels brittle but resilient. He dreams of stable boys and knights gathering around the table for a gangbang.
J.J. loves his method acting.
Karl takes to holding his hand when they are alone and Chris has absolutely no idea what it means because Karl takes phone calls with all sorts of faces but with the same hushed tones. His accent gets thicker and he excuses himself from Chris. Christopher tries not to eavesdrop, not to press his ear near Karl's voice and read into every inflection of his tone but he honestly feels like he's missing something that everybody already understands. Language is tricky and uneventful but speaks volumes Chris can't hear.
He's losing track of all the mythical monsters in his life, but he's pretty sure even the produce section won't keep him safe now.
It's another date with another nice but mindless girl. She smiles in all the right places and when he walks out to the car, she trips a little for the camera and Chris catches her. There's a flash in his face and all he sees is red. This is what his mother warned him about, chatting on the phone when another pissed off photo of him emerged from a trashy magazine. This is dictation. This is giving in and loving it.
He yells himself hoarse, hands moving from expressively pissed to violent, and when they are finally inside of his car, he tries not to bark at every noise she makes but it's difficult because it feels like she's still playing a part that he's reserved for someone else. He doesn't walk her to the door and he knows she'll be making a call to his agent but hopefully not one to the papers.
He takes the back way home, driving around aimlessly until he can hear himself think again.
Text to: Zach/Noah
i'm angry.
The reply is immediate and strangely soothing.
Text from: Zach/Noah
Good.
Karl calls him twice but Chris has locked himself in his writing studio. Dorris powers up with reluctance, as if she anticipates the work she will be doing—the exorcism that will be taking place.
Filming is in three hours but Chris is too fed up with being the Princess in the tower that his anger carries him to the morning, when Zach walks into his apartment with coffee and a smile that could slay dragons in purity.
Chris blinks blearily up from his computer, fingers aching, and takes the coffee.
“No need for you to be driving,” Zach says as a way of explanation, the slim line of his hips sticking out from the too-tight denim that Chris suddenly wants to bury his face against.
This anger does have a name but takes root inside Christopher as if it has a home. He thinks of them all, clutching their bellies and rolling on the floor:
It should mean laughter. When he imagines it, it should mean laughter... not poison.
Much to Chris' surprise, filming is almost at a wrap.
It feels so fleeting, as if yesterday he was ruining Zach's clothes and giving the worst reading of his life. His life feels like a series of random choices all tossed into the world's largest Scrabble bag. When he tells Zach this, Zach laughs and kisses him on the forehead.
“Don't fool yourself,” he says after swallowing his mouthful of bagel. “You're the Scheherazade here and life is full of seven letter words.”
Chris doesn't notice that he's holding Karl's hand, or even remember when Karl showed up into the trailer, but he feels the world tilt further into perspective. The bright morning light is shining through the slats in Zach's blinds and Chris wonders how long he's been living in shadows.
Karl's finger is making sweeping motions across the top of Chris' hand. When did that happen? Chris can't seem to remember anything but filming and sleeping in the last few months but he's always been accused of being a tunnel-vision actor. But how does romance and consistency infiltrate someone who isn't even there?
“Alright?”
Chris blinks into the sunlight. Karl has caught him staring but he doesn't look too upset. In fact, he's got a smile on his face that Chris would swear is fond, and he's in a need of a shave.
“I think so,” Chris says softly. Zach laughs from across the table when Karl nods and kisses Chris' cheek before exiting the trailer.
The shock must show on his face because Zach laughs, belly full and exuberant. The trailer feels wider when Zach laughs, as if he could fill up the entire space with the joy that he feels locked inside these moments together.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” Zach says as he stuffs the rest of the bagel in his mouth and smiles, sharp and knowing around the sustenance.
It turns out that after filming has wrapped, they have all developed a habit of each other. Chris has never really texted Anton or called John before now but every other communication becomes from someone from Trek and Chris misses them in ways he can't comprehend. On the Tuesday after filming has wrapped, Chris leaves his phone wedged underneath the couch and breaks into Zach's house.
“Zach?” Chris calls out from where he's rooting around in Zach's fridge: just as he suspected, yoga inspired food and wine.
He's halfway to making an omelet when Zach stumbles out of his bedroom in only his briefs, looking tousled and really fucking attractive. Chris tilts his head, taking in the plane of Zach's chest and his carefully defined abs. Once more, Chris wishes that their first kiss hadn't been as disastrous as it was. He wishes for the umpteenth time that he could have loved Zach the way he wanted to, because Zach is nothing short of dangerously gorgeous.
Chris wants to objectify him.
Instead he stirs and salts the scramble of eggs in the pan. Afterwards he points at Zach's crotch with the spatula.
“You gonna take care of that?”
Zach, who has stopped to take in the scene in front of him, blinks his bleary eyes and then looks down at his barely concealed erection. Chris puts pepper on his omelet.
“Because,” Chris says, “I'm not sure if I can hold a conversation with you about my pathetic life when you have a hard-on. I'm desperate and alone but that's pushing it.”
Zach looks back at Chris, then down at his brief-covered cock and then back at Chris. The sleep has not rubbed off of Zach's face and his voice is rough, smoke-tinged and soaked with the smell of vodka cranberry (two limes, please) flavored regret.
“Want me to blow you?” Chris asks with an arch of an eyebrow. He's pretty good at it. Probably not as good as Zach, but they can't all be professional dick eaters and Chris hasn't had any complaints. Plus, he kind of misses the weight of someone in his mouth. The whole playing straight thing has really put a damper on his misguided but well earned hook-ups. He ignores the thought of Karl, fleeting but omnipotent as always.
“No,” Zach says with a shake of his head. He palms his cock and Chris adds a little more salt to his eggs. “There is a man in my bed, whose name escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure he'll be more than willing to perform this service for me.”
Chris nods.
“I'm gonna eat my eggs,” Chris says, watching Zach palm his cock almost absentmindedly. His own pants are a little tight but it really doesn't have anything to do with Zach; it's just the proximity of gay and horny men that causes Chris' neglected cock to pay attention.
“Okay, well, I'm going to go back to bed,” Zach says. “I'll be done in thirty.”
Chris settles at the table.
Zach's feral and dangerously sharp grin saunters onto his face. “If you beat off to the sound of me having sex, make sure you clean up after yourself. I don't want your dried semen just lying around.”
“Hey,” Chris yells at Zach's retreating back. “I'm nothing if not a considerate pervert.”
Please take me to Part Two.
