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

Chapter 6: your name through my piano keys

one year ago: Sebastian

After the record-shattering opening weekend of The Avengers, Sebastian watches all the interviews. Listens to Chris talk, that earnest enthusiastic guileless voice. Chris makes everyone comfortable, a steady kind flame beside his fellow co-stars; some of them crackle and sparkle and steal spotlights, albeit not in any purposeful way, but Chris, through all the media frenzy, remains dependable and unaffected. A sip of cool clean water between intoxicating multicolored liquor shots. A hand-lit fire, glowing in a hearth in reply to the bustle of rain.

Chris talks about his dog and jokes about the weirdness of fame and gets caught on camera running over to hug a baby, a moment all the reporters and fans gush over. Sebastian smiles.

They talk at least once every day. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours. Sometimes they're both too busy for more than a quick good-night; some days, though, schedules aligned, they curl up in respective hotel beds and get Skype working properly on laptops. Chris waves. Sebastian blows a kiss at the camera. Chris mimes catching it, and they both blush.

Chris asks how he is every single day, the first three weeks they're apart. More than once a day, more often than not. Sebastian starts sending back random pictures: himself with tea and a Scott Pilgrim DVD, a chocolate-syrup-drenched sundae, a view of the stars while on a night shoot in Vancouver. Chris sends a snapshot of his laptop screen displaying The Covenant in reply to the first, a so you're happy then to the second, and a photo of himself with the copy of Red Planet, sitting in a pre-interview make-up chair, to the third.

Weeks and days and months pass. They don't miss a day. Even if it's only a text and a reply. And the fire never goes out. Excited leaping flames, every time.

Chris gets a twitter account. Sebastian opts for instagram, mostly because he's none too confident of his own ability to say anything coherent in a hundred and forty characters of English. Chris sends him a text that says not fair, they all get to see you  :- (. Sebastian, after a full ten minutes of starting and deleting replies, sends back, I save the words for you.

One specific night, knowing that Chris will be out, knowing the time, he picks up his phone, home alone in his apartment. "Hi," he says, "happy birthday, I, ah, I wanted to say that, happy birthday, and I'm sort of sending you something, that's all, goodbye," and then he does send it, and then he realizes he's forgotten to leave his name. But Chris will know. From his number. From his voice.

He doesn't call back. He does, very slowly, slide to the floor at the foot of his sofa, wrap both arms around his legs, and try to breathe. The sofa-leg props him up. He wants to tell it thank you, but he's a bit busy having after-the-fact panic, so instead he just sits there and wonders what he'll do if Chris doesn't like the gift, or if Chris simply doesn't get it, or if Chris never answers at all, or if Chris decides this is too strange and they're no longer friends. Or whatever they are. More. Other. Something.

This might not be something that friends do. He knows. He just couldn't not. Any more than he could've stopped his heart from beating.

He leans his head back against the sofa-cushions. Listens to the beginnings of the rain, watery and silken and tentative along rooftops and eaves.

Eventually, he gets himself off the floor and into bed. His sheets're cold, unless that's just his hands. Chris won't call, not tonight. Chris has talk-show tapings and afterparties and won't even listen to the message, probably. No reason to. They've already talked—he sent a party-hat-wearing yak photo earlier, and Chris replied with a voice message consisting only of himself laughing uproariously. Chris won't be expecting more.

He doesn't think he'll sleep but he does, drifting off to the unwavering silvery susurration of raindrops outside. The rhythm's soothing, lulling, and he doesn't remember closing his eyes.