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

Chapter 4: fear and hope in new york city

two years ago: Sebastian

Sebastian doesn't do this. More accurately, hasn't done this for years. But he is tonight. Or he was. He's about to walk away.

He's hiding, and that is the word, in the men's room at the glitter-strewn club. Hiding from himself. From the man with whom he'd just been dancing, aggressive hands and razor-sharp eyes. From what he wants and doesn't want.

He doesn't know. Not anymore.

He'd thought he might, coming back to the scene. He'd wanted the release. The dizzy intoxicating high he remembers, drinks and light and sound and hands on bodies, every sense blurring into an ecstatic kaleidoscope.

He'd thought: one night. One night for this. A break, a moment snatched away between the end of filming in Vancouver and the drive up to see his family tomorrow. A plane-ride back to New York, and one moment in which he might be able to forget everything, not an actor playing a part, not a son or a stepson, not a vaguely-recognized half-celebrity.

It's years since he's done the club scene. He'd never been good at it. Never good at believing himself wanted.

That part hasn't changed. The part that has changed is that he's in love, and he's in love with his best friend, or the man he thinks of as his best friend, because he's told Chris more about himself than he's told anyone ever.

It wasn't enough. Or he wasn't enough. He's not talked to Chris for almost a month, somehow. No one's fault. Incompatible schedules. Chris diving exuberantly into the last scenes of Avengers, Sebastian running around being the Mad Hatter in a fairytale world and posing with Jennifer Morrison for publicity photos that've turned into a three-ring circus of rumors about them dating.

He'd texted Chris after that one: I think the American media has a fundamental misconception about the definition of "we're just friends." Is there some idiom I should know?

Chris hadn't answered. Sebastian had waited a day, then inquired, everything okay?

No answer to that either. All right, he'd thought. Understood.

He wishes he had some idea what he's done to fuck it up. He wishes he knew how to ask. He wishes he knew how to be the person Chris might want. He wishes he could know, just so he can know, that Chris is okay, that Chris is happy, that Chris has someone to call during anxiety attacks, someone who'll bring him coffee in the mornings, someone who'll look at the stars with him once in a while.

He wishes a great many things. For one, that he weren't standing alone in a run-down men's room in a tattered-sequin club trying, all at once, not to cry.

He runs a hand through his hair. Glances at himself in the mirror. His eyeliner's smudged, glittery and dark. His shirt's too thin. And he feels old, and tired, and unspeakably weary down to his bones.

The air's cold in the restroom, no bodies in motion; he breathes in, tasting the chill. The bass beat thumps away beyond the doors.

He looks at his reflection, and he wants to say he's sorry, though for what, and to whom, he doesn't know.

The door swings open, and shut, off to the left. Sebastian turns.

The man. That man. The one he'd been—

The man has friends. Two.

Sebastian says, "No."

"Fuckin' tease," the man says, and steps forward. "That ain't nice of you, kid."

"Please," Sebastian says this time. He knows it won't work. It doesn't.

He puts up a decent fight—months of old Bucky Barnes soldier-training paying off—but in the end it's three on one and the earlier tequila shots haven't helped. When one of them slams his head into the wall, colliding sparks flare behind his eyes, frighteningly disorienting. He stops trying to kick. Can barely breathe.