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

Chapter 5: chocolate ice-cream for breakfast

two years, minus two weeks, ago: Chris

Chris stays the whole night. And the night after. And somehow the night becomes one week. Two.

He wants to stay forever. More: he wants Sebastian to believe that he wants to stay forever. The two of them, here in this one-bedroom apartment full of books and piano-music and startlingly black morning coffee and honeyed tea. Here together.

The first night, he holds Sebastian for hours. Some part of his heart's marveling that he can. Another part's fretting persistently over details: will Sebastian want to file a police report? How soon should he call a doctor? Sebastian said not yet, asked to be held; but with what sounds like a concussion and...the other things...he needs to be checked out by someone. Somehow. Somewhere.

Sebastian's crying again, soundless, tears damp over Chris's shirt. "Shh," Chris breathes, and then, belatedly, "I don't mean you can't cry—cry if you want, absolutely, sorry, sorry—just breathe, too, okay? I'm here. I've got you."

"I know..." Long eyelashes sweep down, up; Sebastian scrubs an impatient hand over his face, sitting up. "I don't know why I'm—I feel okay, I swear—oh, rahat, not okay, but you know." A shrug, or what might've been a shrug without the interruption of a wince. "I just can't...it won't shut off."

This is delivered plaintively enough to be an attempt at humor; Chris, courage for courage, reaches over and collects one shining drop of diamond with his thumb. Sebastian blinks, and a few more diamond-dust shards twinkle but don't fall. "Oh...thank you."

"Hey, I told you, I don't care if you cry all over me. I've done it to you." He's not moved the hand. His thumb's memorizing the softness of golden skin, wan and salt-tracked but perfect regardless. Sebastian miraculously doesn't flinch from the touch. Chris wants to believe that's because it's him touching. He knows it might simply be shock.

"Not quite the same. I couldn't...I wasn't there...I wanted to be. For you."

"You were." He takes a breath. "You were. If you feel up to it...not a hospital, but..."

Sebastian nods, eyes uncertain but trusting. Chris flips through mental options. The wind murmurs wistfully out in the night. And the air tastes like tea. Like hope.

"...I've got an idea."

"Oh, by all means." Sebastian watches interestedly, tucked back under his blanket, vulnerable and valiant under stripes of woolly brown and black and grey. "I approve of you having ideas. Like the time you decided we should replace Hugo's Red Skull costume with his Priscilla, Queen of the Desert feathers. I was very impressed."

"You helped sneak the feathers in, you remember. And then got away with it by looking innocent and blaming me. Which, hey, really not fair, you'll have to teach me that sometime. Hang on." He's calling Robert. Because Robert will know someone, or at least know who else to call. It's the best inspiration he's got.

Robert, to his everlasting credit, doesn't demand explanations or details. Only asks whether there's anything he can do, promises to explain to Joss where his Captain America's gone, and suggests two names who might make discreet but professional house calls at one am in New York City.

"Give them my name. And mention the elephant. Anything else?"

"No...thanks." Elephant, Chris files in a mental corner. Not the time to ask. Later. Definitely later.

"Any time," Robert says, "whatever you need, I can make it happen, I can do anything, seriously, I mean that," and hangs up. Chris glances from phone to Sebastian, and panics all over again. "Wake up!"