All that you're making of me (Evanstan fanfic)

Chapter 3: sinatra on mars

two years and six months ago: Chris

Chris is sitting on the floor of his hotel room. Panicking.

The air's cold, at almost two in the morning in New York City. Freezing, in fact. He's turned all the lights on around the opulent hotel room. Not enough. He can't feel it.

Rehearsals tomorrow. Real rehearsals. Himself in a room with Joss Whedon and Chris Hemsworth and, oh God, Robert Downey Jr, and he can feel his hands shaking, the old familiar sensation he used to get before auditions, but worse, God, so much worse.

He can't do this. He can't. Joss expects his actors to be brilliant, assumes they've all read Shakespeare and Stan Lee equally, throws out casual literary references and hilarious flip commentary like starshine, and believes they'll all keep up, because anything less would be unthinkable. Chris, who'd dropped the redesigned Captain America shield on his foot the first time he picked it up from the props department, can't breathe.

It's the Avengers. It's going to be huge. The world's watching.

The script is so good and Joss is so good and everyone else is so good and Steve Rogers is a superhero with the world's largest heart, seeing the best in people, knowing when to take action, where to take a stand.

Chris Evans is just a kid from Boston. A kid who, right now, is back to being eighteen years old and having anxiety attacks before industry meetings. He knows intellectually that he's panicking. That Joss trusts him with the role. That he's played the role, and played it well, before.

None of that matters. Unreal, at the moment.

His back's against the bed. It's solid. Heavy. Not going anywhere. Maybe he can take superhero acting lessons from a bed. Maybe he's actually going insane, if he's thinking about taking acting lessons from hotel furniture.

Oh God. He can't.

Everyone else is down in the bar, laughing, celebrating, winding up for tomorrow's release. Mark Ruffalo just arrived, an hour or so ago. Scarlett had been teasing Clark Gregg, asking him about his wife and whether they ever reenact Dirty Dancing scenes just for kicks. Clark, obligingly, had started singing the theme song out loud, not too badly despite the multiple beers.

Chris had fled. Excuses of six-in-the-morning call time. Need for sleep. Robert had called him Captain, joking, and saluted, waving him off.

And now he's here. He's here and not enough oxygen is here and he doesn't recall how he ended up on the floor. He thinks maybe he'd meant to sit on the bed.

Distantly, he considers the carpet under his bare toes. It's fluffy. Plush. Trying its inanimate best to help.

He's forgotten how to inhale. His heart's pounding like a snare drum, there's blood rushing in his ears and he's lightheaded and how could he ever imagine he could do this, why did he sign on, how can he walk out there tomorrow morning and begin to portray humanity's most earnest champion when he can't even stand up—

He's holding his phone. He wants to talk to someone. Sebastian. He wants to talk to Sebastian, to hear shy delight and sly innuendo, to listen to that extraordinary voice curl around his name. He can call Sebastian and Sebastian will never judge him, Sebastian's good at listening, so good, so good at everything, and Chris is his friend, surely Sebastian will talk to him as a friend, not like Chris is going to beg that he fall in love the way that Chris has, hopelessly, entirely—

He doesn't remember making the call, but the phone's ringing. Chris, huddled on the floor, wraps an arm around his knees. Shuts his eyes. The world trembles.

"Alo—hello, Chris, hi!" Genuine unfeigned pleasure. Familiar sensual lilt and flick of consonants. The world steadies, in that second: not completely balanced, but wobbling that way.