Didn't Love Me True, Part 2/2
Oct. 13th, 2010 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
therumjournalsTitle: Didn’t Love Me True
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
therumjournals
Fandom: Star Trek RPF
Pairing: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this part): 10,000
The first read-through was a disaster. At the end of the day, JJ demanded that Chris and Zach stay behind, and he pulled Chris into his office first.
Chris sat on the couch, watching miserably as JJ paced and ran his hands through his hair. Finally, he stopped and looked at Chris. “Chris…”
“Look, JJ, I’m sorry. I…you know, Zach and I are having problems…”
“Yeah, no shit! I fucking knew that you two getting together was a bad idea.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “You did?”
JJ looked at him in exasperation for a long moment, then he shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t, I thought it was perfect. It made so much sense. There’s chemistry, and then there’s chemistry, and you two could have fucking melted movie screens with yours. And people warned me that this could happen, but I just…I didn’t believe it. Not with you two.” His voice softened. “What the hell happened, Chris?”
Chris clenched and unclenched his jaw. As tempting as it was to tell the truth, to expose Zach for who he really was – a manipulative, needy, selfish bastard – he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t do that. Only Zoe knew, and it would stop there. To everyone else, they were just a failed relationship. Spectacularly, irreparably failed, but for the sake of the movie, it was crucial to maintain that façade. And even more crucial was to let JJ know that they could do their jobs despite it all.
“I can’t…I don’t know, JJ. I just know that it’s over, and we’re moving on, and we can do this, JJ, I swear to you.” He put up a hand to stop JJ from interrupting. “Today was terrible, I know. I’m sorry. But we’re actors and we’ll figure it out. This is what we do.” Some of us are better at acting than others, he wanted to say. You have no fucking clue how good an actor you have on your hands in Zach, he wanted to tell him.
JJ shook his head. “Get your act together, Pine, you and Zach both. I need you here and I need you focused and I need you to act your fucking asses off if that’s what it takes.” He gave Chris a long, scrutinizing stare before turning away from him to shuffle through some papers on his desk. “Now send Zach in, so I can tell him the same thing.”
Chris paused on his way out the door, looking back at JJ with as confident an expression as he could muster. “We won’t let you down,” he said, and he prayed that he was right.
**
Chris was right, and although he and Zach could barely exchange an unscripted sentence, no one could fault their work on-set. It helped that the script writers seemed to have had some kind of premonition - for much of the movie, the crew of the Enterprise was split apart, Kirk and an away team abandoned the surface of a planet when a hostile species turned Spock and the rest of the Enterprise against him. Kirk’s leg was broken, they were starving, and the script called for him to look “pale and haggard.” Chris was doing the makeup team’s work for them – the energy it took just to keep that trademark smirk on his face left him too exhausted to do much more than fall into bed at the end of every day.
Like the crew, the cast was torn apart - what had once been the bright center of their universe, holding them together, was now cracked and sullen and pushing them away. Zach retreated into himself, into character, and when they noticed that even Zoe was avoiding him, everyone else decided to stay out of his way. Karl and John goofed around on-set, trying to keep people’s spirits up, but their efforts were drops of good cheer in an ocean of palpable angst. And so they plodded along, and JJ mused that if the viewers could see them behind the scenes, they’d all win Oscars for sure.
Not every scene was difficult. Chris and Zach aced their big fight scene on the first take, but there was no gloating celebration to follow, and JJ looked pained instead of proud. And Chris felt a growing dread in the pit of his stomach as they approached the filming of their climactic scene, marked in big block letters on the schedule – KIRK/SPOCK REUNION.
**
But when the reunion scene fell apart, it had nothing to do with their acting – or interacting - abilities. The script called for a mind-meld between Kirk and Spock. They’d rehearsed it over and over, and JJ was frustrated because he could see that they were both holding back, neither wanting to commit to throwing the full range of emotion into the scene when it wasn’t going to count. Finally, JJ’d said fuck it, and let them wait until the cameras were rolling.
“Stop holding back on me, guys,” was all the direction he’d given them. “Put everything into this one. Make it count.”
And no one could say they hadn’t listened. Zach lifted a hand to Chris’s face, and his expression was everything that JJ wanted to see. There was the emotion, just below the surface, there was Spock holding it back. Zach opened his eyes and met Kirk’s pleading gaze, pressed his spread fingers slightly against Chris’s skin -
Chris felt something like a bolt of lightning in his skull, a screeching, all-encompassing pain that drove him to his knees. He clutched his head, writhing in agony on the floor, and an image flashed through his mind, a scene that he saw clearly through the blinding haze of pain.
He was in the kitchen at Zach’s house, humming to himself as he stood in front of the stove, waiting to flip a pancake. Then Zach was standing behind him, wrapping his arms around Chris’s waist and kissing him on the cheek and saying “I love waking up with you, baby,” and Chris turned around into his arms and murmured that the pancakes would burn, and Zach had whispered “Let them burn.”
The scene – no, the memory – faded to black, the pain subsiding as he pushed himself to his knees, panting. He was in shadow, could feel the cast gathered around, looking down at him, could imagine the concern etched on their faces, but his eyes shot straight to Zach’s. Chris felt rage flowing through him as he glared at Zach, but his words came out quietly, an accusation. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
Zach gaped, his mouth opening and closing. “I…nothing, Chris, I haven’t done anything.”
Chris leapt from his kneeling position and threw himself at Zach, yelling this time. “What did you do to me?!” he bellowed, his arm colliding with Zach’s chest, pressing him back against the set wall. He pinned him there, holding him, searching his eyes for a revelation of guilt and finding nothing but honest confusion. “I…I remembered something. I remembered….us. I…fuck, Zach,” he said and then he was leaning on his arm against Zach’s chest and he was sobbing, tears of anger mixing with tears of pain for what he had missed, for seeing what he had missed and anger at himself for liking it and for wanting more.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the skull-splitting pain was back, worse than before, and he would have fallen to the ground again if Zach’s strong arms hadn’t wrapped around him. Zach held him up as Chris pressed his hands to the sides of his head, crying out as another image – another memory – flashed through his mind, and oh god, he knew this one, recognized Zach’s white suit and the ring that Zach was sliding onto his finger. And because it was a memory, he could only go along for the ride, waiting to find out what he remembered. Had he looked into Zach’s eyes, and if he had, what had he seen there? What had he felt when he and Zach kissed, up there in front of all their friends? He remembered the taste of champagne and the color of the flowers in the centerpieces and Zoe’s smile and then, finally, he remembered Zach pulling him onto the veranda, away from the crowd. In the memory, Zach pulled him close and took his face in his hands and kissed him, over and over, on his lips and his cheeks and his temple and had wrapped his arms around him and said, “Chris, I’m so happy. I’m so happy.” And there it was, a waver in Zach’s voice that spoke volumes, that told him that this wasn’t how Zach had wanted it either, that he was pushing away doubts about what he’d done. It was comforting and infuriating at the same time, and he curled his fists, almost wishing he’d never seen.
It took Chris a moment to realize that the pain was gone, that he was out of the memory, because it still smelled like Zach and he still felt Zach’s strong arms around him, heard him murmuring in his ear, but now he was saying “It’s okay, Chris, you’re okay.” Chris took a deep breath and pushed himself up off of Zach’s chest and took a few steps back, and then he was on the floor again and the pain was back and he couldn’t take it anymore. He looked up at Zach from the floor, his vision blurred by pain and tears and he mustered all of his strength to grip Zach’s ankle and cry out, “Make it stop, Zach, Jesus, ow….fucking make it stop!” He could tell that Zach was confused, didn’t know what he could do to stop Chris’s pain, so he squeezed his ankle harder and ground out, “CALL HIM.”
Chris heard JJ’s voice in the background telling Zach to go do whatever he needed to do. He closed his eyes and breathed deep breaths and prayed that the darkness behind his eyelids wouldn’t be replaced by more memories, blinding in their bright intensity.
He was dimly aware of movement around him, of being lifted onto a stretcher, of resisting the urge to laugh maniacally when the paramedics asked him if he knew what day it was. He felt Zoe by his side, her warm palm resting gently on his arm as she told him that they were taking him to the hospital, that everything was going to be okay, and he let the exhaustion carry him under.
He opened his eyes with a start, his heart pounding in his chest, but the brightness was only from the lights of his hospital room, and Zoe was still there, looking down at him, concerned. He blinked and swallowed dryly.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she said softly, picking up a glass of water from the tray beside him and holding the straw to his lips. He drank gratefully, slowly becoming aware of the room around him, of the IV in his wrist and the sweat-damp hair clinging to his forehead.
“What happened?” he croaked.
“They’re not sure. Migraines, maybe. The doctor said it’s not a stroke or an aneurysm or anything serious like that. You’re going to be okay.”
Chris gave an experimental nod, relieved that only a dull ache lingered in his skull.
Zoe leaned over him. “Zach’s here,” she said, her voice cautious. “I can tell him to leave, if you want.”
Chris shook his head. “I need…I want to talk to him. It’s okay. Let him in.”
Zoe nodded and stepped out of the room, and a moment later, Zach stepped inside. He was out of costume, his hair gelled into messy submission. Chris gestured weakly at the chair beside his bed, and Zach sat, resting his elbows on his knees. Chris watched him, waiting.
“I called Wolf. Left a message.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Wonderful.”
“Look, Chris, there’s something I have to tell you,” Zach said, looking at his fingernails. Chris raised an eyebrow and waited. He couldn’t even begin to guess what Zach had to say.
“You said…you said you were remembering…today. That’s what was happening, you were remembering things about…us?”
Chris nodded once. He didn’t contribute anything, still waiting to see where Zach was going with this. “The thing is…I’ve been…I’ve been forgetting.” Zach looked up finally, meeting Chris’s gaze. Zach took a breath and continued. “I’ve been trying to remember and it’s….it’s fading. Fast, so fast, not like normal memory fading over time, but like…blurred around the edges, and I’m losing, like, whole portions of time.” Zach was twisting his hands together now, frustrated. Chris shook his head slightly, not understanding. “We took this trip to Hawaii together, I know we did. I have pictures of us on the beach, and postcards that say Hawaii, and a fucking, heh, a fucking painting of two turtles that says ‘Zach and Chris forever.’” Chris raised both eyebrows at that. “But the thing is, I can’t remember anything about it. I can’t remember what hotel we stayed at or what we ate or how the water felt. I can’t even fucking remember the sex!” Chris winced. “I’m sorry,” Zach said, knowing, “but with you, Chris, I always remembered the sex.”
Chris stared at Zach, but he seemed to be finished, waiting for Chris to say something. Say what?
“What do you want me to say, Zach?” Chris asked, furrowing his brow. “I’m sorry? Karma’s a bitch? I’ll look forward to the next episode of brain-splitting pain so I can fill you in? What?”
Zach shook his head. “Just… I don’t know. Maybe it’s related. Maybe this is how it works. Maybe you’ll remember everything!”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
Zach opened and closed his mouth and his eyes went helpless. “God, Chris, I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to hurt you like this, I never would have…” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know I don’t deserve a place in your life anymore, but if there’s anything I can do, Chris, please, just – just ask, okay? Anything.”
Chris had been biting his lip, staring into the distance as he listened to Zach, but now he turned, tilted his chin toward the bedside table.
“What?”
“Water.”
“You…you want me to?...Right, okay, sure,” Zach said, scrambling to grab the cup. He angled the straw toward Chris’s lips and his eyes lingered as Chris took a long sip. Chris felt the tips of Zach’s fingers brush against his hair, and Zach’s eyes were soft and helpless when they met his wary gaze. “I still love you.”
Chris let the straw slide from his mouth as he turned his head away. “Goodbye, Zach.”
He heard Zach set the cup back down, heard the scrape of the chair as Zach pushed it away from the bed. He waited until he heard the door shut before he closed his eyes.
**
Migraines, the doctors told him, and Chris dutifully accepted their diagnosis and their useless pills. He was back on-set two days later, offering bland reassurances to anyone who asked how he was feeling, and throwing himself back into Kirk. They were filming on the Enterprise now, where the lights made him look washed out, and the makeup team had to work overtime to smooth the bags under his eyes. Between scenes, he made his way to his trailer and let himself down onto the bed with a sigh of relief. He had just closed his eyes when he heard a knock on the door.
“What?” He meant to yell it, but it came out as more of a tired mumble.
He heard footsteps along the side of his trailer, and Zach’s voice came in through the small window high above his bed. He could picture Zach leaning against the side, tilting his head up so Chris could hear him through the screen.
“Chris? You okay?” Zach asked.
“Skip to the point,” Chris said, too tired to be anything but tired.
He heard Zach scuff his shoes against the pavement. “I talked to Wolf.”
“And?”
“Chris, can I come in?”
Chris rolled onto his side away from the window. His head was pounding.
“Fine, okay, I’ll just tell you from here. He…doesn’t know what’s going on, okay? He’s never heard of anything like this, he’s not sure how it works, the…chemistry.”
Chris huffed an ironic laugh that Zach couldn’t hear.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help, I tried, I…I’m sorry.”
Zach went quiet, but Chris could almost sense that he was still out there. When he spoke, his voice was softer, muffled like he was leaning his forehead against the trailer wall.
“Have you had any other…episodes?”
Chris squeezed his eyes shut as he thought back to that morning in his bathroom, flicking on the lights and the pain, the overwhelming pain as he remembered…
A palm, warm and dry over his eyes, Zach’s hand, he would know it anywhere. Another hand on his shoulder, and he remembered relaxing into it, smiling. He felt comforted, loved, calm under Zach’s touch, and a thrum of anticipation was buzzing through him.
Zach’s voice was low and playful in his ear. “Ready?”
Chris nodded, and opened his eyes as Zach pulled his hand away to reveal a shelf of leather-bound classics. He remembered gasping, remembered surprise and joy, remembered thinking “Zach knows me so well,” and he turned and threw himself into Zach’s arms.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” Zach whispered in his ear, tightening his arms around Chris. Tightening and tightening until Chris couldn’t breathe and he found himself slumped against the bathroom counter, sucking air into his lungs. His eyes were bloodshot in the mirror, his reflection the picture of devastation, and he stumbled in his haste to turn off the lights.
In the dim light of his trailer, he realized that he’d never answered Zach.
“Chris.” Zach’s voice was quiet. Chris imagined him pressing that broad, warm palm against the side of the trailer. “Are you okay?”
Chris twisted around as if he could see Zach through the wall. He swallowed, and the rough edge in his voice echoed his words. “Everything hurts.”
**
Chris stared at the ground as he walked across the lot with slow, even steps. He’d had three headaches today – headaches, he called them, when what they really felt like was an ice pick jamming into his brain, each one accompanied by happy fucking memories of a life like a movie screen in his mind. So he walked carefully and kept his head down and braced himself for the next one. Chris opened the door to his trailer and stepped inside, shut the door and locked it like he hadn’t even noticed Zach sitting on the steps. He crossed the trailer and sat down on the bed, resting his back against the wall, waiting. He heard the crunch of Zach’s footsteps, and for a minute he thought they were fading, like Zach was walking away from the trailer, and he didn’t want to think about why his chest clenched when he thought that. But then the footsteps turned, and he heard Zach come to a stop beneath the window.
“Chris?”
“Yeah.”
He pictured Zach crossing his arms, staring at the wall of the trailer as it radiated heat from the Southern California sun. “Headaches bad today?”
“Yeah.”
“Memories?”
Memories. The memory of a morning trip to Lamill had been so clear. It could have been one of hundreds, and it was clear that it was, the way Zach knew just what to order for him, the way Zach handed him the right section of the Times. They had a table that was theirs, in the corner, and somehow Chris knew that on the rare mornings they ended up at Intelligentsia, it was only because their table was taken. That morning, the one he’d remembered – why that morning? He remembered frustration, anger, running his hand through his hair – a fight? No – 24 Across, god, they’d spent forever trying to figure that one out, and Chris had gotten so mad, and Zach had smiled and pulled the pen from his hand and written “love u to the stars” across the row, the letters all upside down and crooked and suddenly Chris didn’t give a shit what the right word was anymore.
Chris swallowed. The memories. “Could have been worse,” he finally answered, careful to keep his voice toneless. “There was a rather traumatizing one about your hair.”
He heard Zach chuckle, then a moment later – “Do you remember what you said to me when I got that hair cut?”
Chris shook his head, then remembered Zach couldn’t see him. “No.”
“You were a little freaked out, I think, and you were like, ‘Ahh! Tell them to put it back!’” He could hear the smile in Zach’s voice as he remembered. “It was pretty funny. Actually it, well, it kind of became an inside joke between us, ‘Ahh, put it back!’, like in that tone. We used to say that a lot.”
“Oh.”
“Well. I guess it doesn’t sound as funny, now.”
“Yeah.”
“But maybe you’ll remember, someday.”
“Maybe.”
**
Chris didn’t realize he’d been waiting, until he heard footsteps and felt the trailer sway slightly as Zach leaned heavily against the wall under his window, and he felt his shoulders relax.
“Zach?”
“Yeah. I, uh, just came by to tell you…JJ wants us on set at 6:30 tomorrow. Instead of 7:00. He said the light’s better or something.”
“Yeah. He told me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Hey, Zach.”
“Yeah?”
“I remembered something last night. The thing you told me. About your hair. The inside joke we had, you know? I remembered it. You were right, it actually was pretty funny.”
“The what?”
“You know. The inside joke? ‘Ahh, tell them to put it back!’ How we used to say that for the slightest reason. And everyone else would look at us like we were crazy.”
In the silence that followed, Chris turned to lie on his side, facing the wall of the trailer. He furrowed his brows. Why wasn’t Zach saying anything?
“Chris, I…I don’t remember. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A hard thump against the trailer startled Chris, and he heard Zach mutter, “Dammit.”
Chris’s eyes widened in the darkness. He’d almost forgotten that Zach was forgetting as he remembered. Dammit.
“It’s no big deal, Zach. It wasn’t really that big of a deal.”
“It is a big deal. I’m forgetting everything, I’m forgetting….” His voice trembled as he trailed off, and Chris heard him take a ragged breath.
Chris reached out to touch his fingertips gently against the trailer wall. “Does it hurt?” he asked softly. “When you forget?”
“No.” Chris pulled his hand away at the answer, rolled over on to his back to stare at the ceiling before Zach continued. “I get dizzy…weak…cold sweat, that sort of thing. It doesn’t hurt like it hurts you to remember.”
“Oh.”
In the silence that followed, Chris imagined he almost see Zach through the trailer wall, resting his forehead against the warm metal just inches away.
“Chris?” Zach’s voice broke the silence.
“What?”
“You remember Sydney?”
Chris smiled in the darkness. “Of course. Well, most of it,” he amended. “The premiere, the endless interviews… that night, when we had to physically restrain Karl from throwing his shoe at a group of rugby fans. The tequila. I don’t really remember much after the tequila.”
Zach’s voice came back to him quietly. “I can only remember the premiere.”
Chris frowned and pushed himself up in his elbows, staring at the window screen as though he were looking at Zach. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…I don’t remember the rest.”
“But…that was before…”
“I know.”
“Why do you think-“
“I don’t know, okay?” Zach said, raising his voice a little, his frustration evident. “I just know that I’m forgetting…other things now. God, what if I forget everything, what if I lose every memory of…”
He heard Zach suck in a quavering breath, and so quietly he would have missed it if he hadn’t had all of his attention focused on that voice, “I miss you.”
Chris gave in, reached a hand out and pressed his palm to the trailer wall. He left it there until he heard the sound of Zach’s footsteps moving away, mingling with the thumps of his traitorous heart.
**
Hours that he would have spent pranking Karl or playing chess with Anton were now spent lying in his trailer, the lights out, a water bottle clutched to his chest, waiting for the pain in his head to start. Waiting for the pain and waiting, maybe, for those footsteps outside his trailer.
Whether he was waiting or not, he hadn’t heard any footsteps in three days.
They were between takes, waiting for JJ to give John a few notes, standing close together on the bridge set. Chris ran a hand over the back of his neck and glanced at Zach out of the corner of his eye.
“You, uh…you haven’t come by…”
Zach’s face was still, stoic - Spock. He nodded curtly.
“You can. If you want. To talk. Like before.” He was hesitant, not sure what he was asking for, not sure if it was a good idea to ask at all. The Shatner impression was involuntary.
Zach cocked his head and narrowed his eyes slightly. “I would prefer not to hear about the memories anymore.”
Chris nodded his understanding. That made sense. But a second later he took a breath and squinted at Zach. “You’re the only one I can tell them to.”
Zach met his eyes, but didn’t have time to respond before JJ called for quiet on set. “And, action!”
“Well, Mr. Spock,” Chris said, crossing his arms, “think we can get a do-over on that mission? This time without any unwanted visitors?”
Zach raised a perfectly sculpted Vulcan eyebrow. “While the concept of a ‘do-over’ implies time-travel capabilities that Starfleet does not currently possess, my response to the sentiment is favorable.”
Chris smirked and gave Zach a jolting slap on the shoulder. “I’ll take that as a resounding ‘indeed’.”
**
The piercing rays of the sunset had disappeared outside his window, and Chris was drifting in and out of sleep on the thin bed in his trailer. He didn’t hear the footsteps, didn’t hear anything until Zach’s quiet voice filtered in through the window.
“Chris? I’m here.”
Chris rubbed his eyes and struggled up onto an elbow.
“You still in there?”
Chris sat up, his back to the trailer wall. He glanced up toward the window above him as he spoke. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Still want to talk?”
“Sure.” He fell quiet for a moment, a vague uneasiness settling over him as he realized that he wasn’t quite sure what they could talk about now, without crossing into sensitive territory. He just knew that he wanted to keep Zach there, to hear his voice, to feel his presence just out of reach.
“You okay?” Zach said, after a minute. “Did you…remember something?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“You can tell me if you want to. If it helps.”
“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about our scene tomorrow. I had a couple ideas I wanted to bounce off of you.”
“Yeah?” He felt the trailer sway gently as Zach leaned against the wall, settling in. “I’d like to hear.”
**
“Okay, guys, you ready to do this?” JJ asked, rubbing his hands together.
Zach nodded, glancing at Chris who stood a few feet away. “Actually, Chris and I were talking yesterday, and we had a couple questions about the tone of the scene.”
JJ’s eyes widened and he looked back and forth between Chris and Zach, shocked. “That…that’s great. That’s wonderful! I mean, yes, of course. What did you want to know?”
**
One second Chris was leaning down to grab a yogurt out of his mini-fridge, and the next he was writhing on the floor of his trailer as his head split open in pain. He waited for the memory to come.
He was sitting across the table from Zach, at the corner table at Lamill, and they were looking down at a crossword puzzle between them – wait, hadn’t he had this memory before? He was frustrated about 16 Down, and he was pissed because Zach was clicking his pen incessantly instead of helping him figure out the answer.
“Come on, Zach. Oh! I think it starts with an M. Does that help?”
He stared at the puzzle, waiting for an answer to reveal itself, and he saw Zach’s hand holding the pen come down to start writing, and he started to say “wait-“ because it always made him so nervous when Zach filled in the answers in pen.
But Zach was writing, and Chris furrowed his brow in confusion, and the letters seemed to appear in slow motion as Zach wrote them, upside down and crooked so Chris could read them.
M
A
R
R
Y
M
E
?
And he can’t tell what’s worse now, the pain in his head or the pain in his heart at the memory of looking up into Zach’s questioning gaze, a shy smile on his lips, and Chris remembered leaning forward and wrapping a hand around the back of Zach’s head and pulling him forward, coffee spilling across the table as he slammed their lips together for a kiss.
A knock on the trailer door pulled him out of it, and he dimly registered the voice of a production assistant calling his name. “Mr. Pine? Sorry to bother you, but you’re due on set? Mr. Pine?”
The memory was gone now, replaced by brain-shattering pain, and his body was shaking and he could hear himself crying out, but he had no idea if he was saying words or screaming or if the sound was only inside his head.
Rapid footsteps on the steps of his trailer echoed the pounding in his head, and someone was wrenching the door open and dropping down beside him, pulling him close with strong arms and whispering soothingly into his ear. He gulped down air as a hand rubbed comforting circles across his back, and he curled into himself, pressing his face into soft fabric, his shivers subsiding when arms tightened around him. It felt familiar, he thought, like something he’d once known, like a memory, and he let it wrap around him as he drifted into darkness.
He came awake with a start and twisted away, away from the solid warmth that was supporting him. He was still on the floor, and he looked up to meet Zach’s eyes in the darkness.
“What are you doing in here?” he hissed.
Zach didn’t react, didn’t move from where he was kneeling on the floor. “Margie said you were calling my name,” he said quietly. “I…I didn’t know what to do.”
Chris rubbed a hand over his face. “How long have you been here?”
Zach glanced at the clock on the desk. “Forty-five minutes?”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “Jesus.”
Zach shrugged, wincing a little as he shifted out of his kneeling position and moved to sit with his back against the wall.
Chris watched him, couldn’t tear his eyes away, and when he did all he saw were crooked letters in blue pen.
“Zach?” His voice was a whisper, but Zach startled at the sound.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you ask me to marry you?”
Zach furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why did you have to ask? Didn’t you have me under some love spell? I mean, did my opinion of whether or not I wanted to marry you really matter?”
Zach let out a frustrated sound and tipped his head back, frowning. “God, Chris, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t some kind of puppet-master, controlling your every move. You weren’t following me around all glassy-eyed and stupid like some kind of love-slave. I mean, Jesus, it felt real, Chris. It was just us, just like always, except…”
“Except I loved you.”
Zach nodded. “Yeah. And sometimes I even…forgot why. Sometimes I forgot what I did…” he said, his voice trailing off as he looked away, blinking back tears.
Chris stood from the floor and looked down at Zach. “You can’t forget. If we’re ever….” He shook his head and picked up his bag from the bed. “You can’t forget that part, Zach. Don’t you fucking dare forget what you did.”
**
Chris woke up in the middle of the night screaming. He clutched his head as the pain shot through it, worse maybe than any of the other times it had happened, and he twisted on the bed, sweating, tangled in the blankets, until he fell with a thump onto the floor. He lay on his back with his eyes squeezed shut as memory upon memory crashed over him like waves. When he came to, the pain was gone and he could feel tears streaming down his face. He climbed back up onto the bed and reached for his phone.
“Wha- Chris? What is it, is something wrong?” Zach’s voice was heavy with sleep.
“Zach,” Chris said, and then he was hit by a wave of tears, and clenched his teeth to keep from sobbing into the phone.
“Hey ba- hey, Chris, it’s okay, tell me what’s going on.” He was awake now, his tone shifting from concerned to soothing.
“Zach, I remembered…I remember Hawaii.”
Zach inhaled sharply. “Chris…”
“Come over.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please, Zach. I can’t keep doing this alone. It hurts so fucking much.”
He could picture Zach running a hand through his hair as he considered it. He wondered if he should say something else, plead or beg, but then Zach said “Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes,” and Chris collapsed back onto the bed in relief.
He wrapped himself in a blanket and padded to the door to let Zach in, then led the way back to the bedroom and dropped onto the mattress, exhausted. Zach lay down beside him awkwardly, not sure what was expected, not sure what he was being asked. Chris pulled the blanket over both of them, and curled into Zach’s chest, and he was shaking as Zach took him into his arms. “Is this what you want, Chris?” Zach whispered.
Chris nodded against his chest. “Hold me tight.” Zach did.
In the middle of the night, Chris awoke to the feeling of a gentle kiss against his hair. Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing even, he tipped his head back, and was rewarded by the feel of Zach’s lips pressing against his forehead. He moaned and stretched out along Zach’s side, pressing his erection into Zach’s thigh. He heard Zach gasp and felt him pull away, felt a hand on his cheek and his eyes were brought into line with Zach’s.
“No, Chris.”
Chris moved against him insistently. “Please.”
“No.”
“You were kissing me.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I want you.”
“You won’t in the morning.”
“Please,” Chris pleaded, moving his lips against Zach’s neck and over his jaw. He cupped a hand around the back of his head and whispered roughly in his ear. “You’ve taken so much from me, Zach. Please, let me have this.”
And they were both trembling as their lips came together, and Chris remembered now, how Zach pressed into his kisses, how their tongues slid together between the seal of their lips, and his heart gave a painful, aching thud before Zach pulled away with a breathless “Stop!”
“Why?!” Chris cried, wrestling to get closer, but Zach had a firm grip on his wrists and held him at bay.
“Because…how do I know it’s really you?” Zach asked, and there was a desperate sound to his voice.
“Zach, what do you mean, it’s me, it’s Chris!”
“How do I know? How do I know it’s you this time and not…something I did to you? How do I know you’re not going to forget again?”
Chris twisted out of Zach’s grasp and pushed him onto his back, pinned him down with an arm across his chest and a leg over his thighs. “How can I prove it, Zach?” he asked, looking down into Zach’s eyes. “How can I prove that it’s me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me….tell me something I would never do, before. Like, a sex thing.”
Zach laughed softly, helplessly in the darkness. “There was nothing you wouldn’t do, Chris, nothing. You loved me so much.” He sucked in a breath as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, it felt like you did. God, it felt so real.”
Chris could feel the truth of Zach’s words in his veins, in the crackling nerves along the surface of his skin, in the way his cock twitched and his mouth turned down at the edges with want. He would have done anything, anything Zach wanted, he would do it still, he knew, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant.
He leaned down to press a hard kiss to Zach’s mouth, and Zach moaned and opened up to him for only a moment before he twisted his head away.
“Zach!” The word was an anguished plea, and Chris pressed down harder on Zach’s chest as he ground his erection into his crotch, where he could feel the line of Zach’s rigid cock through the fabric of his yoga pants.
“I still think about you, Zach. I do, I swear, I can’t help it. Even when I hated you -” he felt Zach tense underneath him, and he rubbed himself harder against Zach’s dick – “even when everything was wrong and I wasn’t speaking to you, even then, I thought about…about you kissing me and touching me and…” He’d always felt sick afterwards, dirty, jerking off to the fantasy of Zach’s mouth on his cock, simultaneously hating him for what he’d done and wanting him as much as he had that night, the night he’d decided to tell him everything.
“Fuck, Zach, I’m sorry,” he panted, smearing wet kisses across Zach’s neck. “I can’t…I just...I need this, Zach, please-“
“Chris, don’t-“ Zach said, bringing his hand up between them to press against Chris’s chest. But Chris was reaching down to slide his pants and boxers off, freeing his cock, and by the time he wrapped a fist around both of them, slick with pre-come and sweat, Zach was only running light fingertips across his chest.
Chris’s strokes were hard and quick and sweat dripped into his eyes as he leaned down to whisper roughly in Zach’s ear.
“Do you remember this Zach? I remember,” he panted. “How good it felt, how your face looked when you ahh ahhhh fuck” he cried, thrusting into his fist as he came. Zach reached up with both hands to pull Chris’s head down, slamming their lips together, and his hips bucked and stilled as his cock pulsed in Chris’s hand.
They kissed, slick chests sliding together, Zach’s hands still tangled in Chris’s hair. Chris brought a hand up to feel wetness on Zach’s cheeks and he knew that Zach didn’t remember.
“How do I know, Zach?” he whispered when he’d caught his breath. “How can I trust that you haven’t done it again? How can I know that what I’m feeling is real?” Because he almost couldn’t believe that this deep, aching want could possibly be of this world, sprung from his insignificant heart alone. “How do I know it’s not just some kind of chemical reaction? How do I know you’re not fucking with my brain again, huh?”
“Because I told you to stop, Chris. I want you, but…I won’t let myself do this with you again. And that’s how you’ll know.”
Chris made a frustrated sound. “That’s not what I want. I want this.” He ran a finger through their mingled juices cooling on Zach’s stomach, and he heard Zach stifle a gasp. “I want this.” His hand drifted down, and he curved a palm over Zach’s hip, stroking gently with his thumb. “I just want to know that it’s real.”
“I have an idea,” Zach breathed, pulling away, sliding out of reach and propping himself up on his elbows.
Chris swallowed and made himself stay still. “What?”
“When I…got the stuff…Wolf told me the rules. And one of them was that I couldn’t leave you, that we couldn’t be apart, for longer than a few weeks, maybe four or five at the most. Or, something would happen, the effect would wear off, and… Well, he didn’t know. He didn’t know what would happen.”
“So that’s why…”
“Yeah. And that’s why you did Princess Diaries 3. That’s why I asked you to do it.”
Chris felt a hot flash of anger. “Fuck you for that, by the way.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, I really am. It’s…one of my bigger regrets.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure it’s right up there.”
“Anyway, listen. Filming’s almost over. When it is, I’ll leave.”
“Leave?”
“I’ve been thinking about going to New York anyway. Neal and Corey are there, and I was going to do it to get away from everything, and now…I’ll go away, for…six weeks. No, we’ll make it longer, just to be sure - two months. And then I’ll come back, and if everything’s the same, we’ll know. That it’s us, really us.”
“No mind fuckery.”
“No mind fuckery,” Zach confirmed.
“What if…” Chris swallowed, and he wasn’t sure why he felt his chest clenching with nerves. “What if something happens? What if you- what if one of us meets someone?”
“Then we’ll know. We’ll know that it’s not meant to be.”
“And until then? Until you leave?”
Zach leaned over to run a finger down Chris’s cheek. “Until then…” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Chris’s, wrapped a hand around his head to hold him there for a long moment. “Until then…nothing. This is it.”
Chris looked away, blinking hard in the darkness. Why did it feel like he was losing Zach all over again? But Zach put a gentle hand on his shoulder and pulled him close, and he settled into his arms.
He waited until his breathing was steady before he asked. “White suits, Quinto? Really?”
He could practically hear Zach processing the question, then a low chuckle rustled his hair. “How do you know it wasn’t your idea?”
“Yeah, right. Good try. No potion on earth has that kind of power, honey,” he said sassily.
Zach tightened his arm around Chris. “You looked good.”
“I can only assume you ignored my veto.”
“I gave you the blow job of your life in the dressing room.”
“That would also work.”
“Black seemed overly somber for a wedding. For us.”
Chris’s only response was to nuzzle closer, burying himself in the warmth of Zach’s embrace.
Sleep came far too soon.
**
Chris left his trailer for the last time, a black duffel slung over his shoulder and a crate of books balanced precariously on his hip. He walked out to the parking lot and prayed that Zach’s car wasn’t still there.
Zach’s car was still there.
Chris threw his stuff in the trunk and stared at the Prius for a long time, his thoughts tumbling over themselves.
For the last three weeks, his interactions with Zach had been limited to cordial nods and murmured scene notes between takes. Zach hadn’t come by his trailer, and Chris hadn’t asked him to, and there’d been no more late night phone calls and therefore no more temptation and no more anything, just like Zach had said. Chris pushed himself off the side of his car and headed back across the lot.
He stood in front of the door to Zach’s trailer, debating whether or not to knock. But Zach must have heard him or sensed him or something, because the door opened and dark brown eyes stared into his.
“You alright?” Zach asked, looking concerned.
Chris felt his mouth twist into a pained expression and he shook his head. He had no idea what he was doing here, but apparently Zach did, since he was grabbing him by the front of his t-shirt and yanking him abruptly inside.
The door closed behind him and Chris felt a flash of pain in his head. This would be a really bad time for a memory, but then he realized he’d just slammed his head against the door when Zach crushed their mouths together in a desperate attempt at a kiss. Chris pushed him back only enough to breathe, then he was chasing Zach’s lips with his own, thrusting his tongue into Zach’s mouth as he walked them backwards into the trailer. His fingers fumbled with Zach’s fly as he slipped off his shoes. They were naked by the time they reached the couch, and Chris pressed Zach onto it.
“Want you,” he panted. “I want to do everything with you, everything we’ve ever done together. I want everything.”
Zach’s eyes were wide and his laugh had a manic edge to it as he maneuvered onto his back, pulling Chris down on top of him and saying, “Take it.”
Then Chris’s mouth was on Zach’s cock, licking and sucking and tasting. He knew there was more – there was the sound Zach made when teeth scraped lightly across his chest, the ripple of muscles when he dipped a tongue into his belly button – he had finally remembered those, after imagining them for so long. But for now, he wanted this, he wanted to suck Zach into him, hot and hard, wanted to feel Zach’s pulse against the flat of his tongue, wanted to coat his fingers in the lube that Zach shoved into his hand and press them into Zach, too many at a time. He pulled his mouth away and looked up, fucking willed Zach to look at him, to see him biting at the inside of his thigh and thrusting fingers into him, hoped Zach could see his blue eyes burning brightly through the red haze of pleasure and pain. Zach’s asshole clenched around his fingers, and Zach was breathing hard, his mouth open, hair falling into his eyes, but he was looking, and Chris had a feeling he wouldn’t soon forget what he saw.
Chris slid his fingers out abruptly, avoiding Zach’s gaze as he slid a condom over his aching cock. Zach took a deep shuddering breath as Chris pushed inside. Chris groaned out loud at the sensation of Zach’s tight heat surrounding him, and it felt so much better than he remembered. His memories were cloudy, and even the best of them were suffused with an undercurrent of pain and betrayal, but this was clear and real and fucking Christ it felt good. He gave himself up to it, pistoning his hips, whimpering at the sight of his cock sliding into Zach as he fucked him fast and hard. So fast and so hard that it couldn’t last and he felt his climax mounting, everything shutting down, disappearing, except the building pleasure in his groin and he dug his fingertips into Zach’s hip as he came with a shuddering cry.
Zach was looking at him with a confused expression, until Chris pushed a condom into his hand and whispered, “Fuck me.” Then he was on his back, Zach’s weight pinning him to the couch, and there was no finesse in the way Zach prepped him with careless fingers and even more careless kisses against his mouth, with the way Zach lay across him, pressing his forehead to Chris’s chest, barely holding himself up as he fucked frantically into Chris.
“Oh Chris, oh fuck,” he panted, then a garbled string of syllables as he thrust hard and spilled into Chris, going limp on top of him.
Chris let his fingers drift across the sweat-damp skin of his lower back as they slowly came down together. “So,” he murmured. “Now we have that.”
**
When Chris woke up, he was clutching a Captain Kirk teddy bear to his chest. Zach had given it to him as he left his trailer a few nights earlier.
“Here, I think this is yours.”
Chris looked at it, then back up at Zach. “It’s yours, actually. I gave it to you.”
Zach frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“I gave you a card with it. It said-“ and here Zach joined him, “love you to the stars.” Chris nodded. “You remember.”
Zach gave a frustrated shake of his head. “Just that phrase, I… Here. You take it. Please.”
Chris took it gently from Zach’s hand. “I’ll hold onto it for you,” he’d said.
Chris rolled over in bed and checked the clock. 8:30. Zach would be at the airport already. He pulled out his phone.
Don’t forget me, he texted.
The response came back quickly. Who is this again?
His heart seized in his chest for a second before he realized that Zach was joking. It had been a while.
Not funny.
Sorry.
So. Two months.
Two months.
I’ll be waiting. Safe travels.
Catch you on the flip side.
**
Two Months Later
Chris sat at their table in Lamill, chewing the shit out of his pen. The New York Times crossword lay untouched in front of him.
He heard the door open and glanced up, and his breath caught in his throat as Zach stepped inside. His eyes widened as he watched Zach look around, starting on the other side of the café. Of course. He didn’t remember this, didn’t remember their table or the crosswords or…Chris pushed the thought from his mind as he watched Zach’s eyes flick to each table. He felt his palms prickle with sweat as he waited for Zach’s gaze to land on him.
When their eyes met, Zach’s face lit up in a smile, and he was over to the table in three long strides.
“Chris!”
Chris stood, smiling awkwardly across the table as he resisted the urge to throw himself into Zach’s arms. “Hey.”
Zach shifted under Chris’s piercing gaze and glanced down at the empty coffee mug on the table. “Can I, uh, get you-“ he gestured to the mug.
“Oh, uh. No, it’s okay. But, go ahead, get yourself something. I’ll, uh, I’ll be right here.”
Zach nodded and turned away quickly as Chris sat, his heart still pounding with anticipation.
When he came back, he sat down and set his mug on the table, and Chris could see that his hands were shaking.
“Chris, before you say anything, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Chris furrowed his brow. “Okay.”
Zach stared intently at his coffee mug and the hand clenched tightly around it. “When I was in New York, I…I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” Chris said quickly, relief flooding through his chest.
“You did?” Zach looked up at him for a second, confused, but he continued before Chris could respond. “I mean, I missed you more than I thought…more than I should have, probably. Look, I know we didn’t really hang out much before I left…”
Chris raised an eyebrow. Okay, maybe fucking each other in Zach’s trailer couldn’t technically be described as “hanging out” but still. He wondered what Zach was trying to say.
Zach was staring at his coffee mug again, a perplexed look working over his features. “Why did I go to New York, Chris? I mean, I know Neal and Corey were happy to have me there, but I feel like there’s something…” He brought his eyes up to meet Chris’s concerned gaze. “Were you…mad at me? Is that why I left?”
Chris took a deep breath as his heart thumped a little harder in his chest. “You don’t remember why you went to New York?”
Zach shook his head.
“You don’t remember…our plan?”
“What plan?” Zach whispered, and Chris could see the mix of confusion and fear swirling in his dark brown eyes.
Chris opened his mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. He felt dizzy. What do you remember, Zach?
“Do you remember the last time you wore a white suit?” he asked quietly.
Zach laughed. “What, like, my First Communion?”
Chris closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he felt flush with a wild, foolish hope.
“Do you remember Vancouver? Do you remember Wolf?”
“Wolf? Chris, what’s wrong, why are you asking me all these questions? What’s happening?”
Chris swallowed. There was one more thing he needed to know. His voice was rough as he asked his last question. “Do you remember falling in love with me?”
Zach’s eyes widened. “How…how did you know?”
Chris leaned forward, his voice earnest. “I love you, too, Zach. I wanted to tell you, too. I love you-“
“To the stars.”
Chris sucked in a breath, and Zach pressed a hand to his brow, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Chris reached across the table to tangle their fingers together. “Zach. There’s something I need to tell you.”
**
“You told him what?” Zoe shrieked in his ear.
Chris winced and held the phone away for a second, before pressing it back against his ear. “I told him he has amnesia. And I…filled him in on what he missed.”
“You told him he mind-raped you?”
Chris cringed. “Jesus, Zoe.”
“Well?”
“Of course I didn’t tell him that,” Chris hissed. “What am I supposed to say? By the way, you don’t remember, but you drugged me and made me fall in love with you, we got married and had a life together, which I then forgot, but then remembered, but then you forgot, and Jesus fucking Christ, when did my life become a freaking soap opera,” Chris finished, tipping his head back against the bathroom wall with a resigned clunk. “Don’t answer that.”
“And you’re not at all worried about this little…omission?”
“I don’t know, Zoe. I mean, this is it, right, this is what I wanted – a clean slate, a fresh start. Why would I want to fuck that up?”
“Because he’s still the same person, Chris!” Zoe said in a burst of exasperation. “He hasn’t learned anything! What makes you think he won’t once again come up with the brilliant idea to drug you with some unknown substance because he thinks it will make you fall in love with him?”
“Because he knows, Zoe! He knows how I feel now, and he would never…he would never have done that, before, if he’d known, he wouldn’t!”
“How do you know?”
“I just know, Zoe. We talked about, he said-“
“And you believed him. Despite knowing that he is, deep down, capable of being manipulative, possessive, devious-”
“Zoe, stop.” Chris ran a hand over his face. “Stop. I know, okay? I know how this seems, and I’ve thought about- I had the same concerns as you. For fuck’s sake, I was the one who warned him not to forget. You know? I thought he needed to remember if he was going to… But this is my chance, Zoe. Our chance. And I’m taking it.”
Zoe sighed helplessly into the phone. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, Chris.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful around him. Don’t let your guard down.”
“Look, I gotta go, okay? I don’t want to leave him alone for too long. I should probably help him…process.”
“Chris…”
“Yeah?”
“You have to know - I want this to work for you. You and Zach…I want it to be real.”
Chris felt a flood of gratitude for Zoe’s words, and he found himself blinking back tears. “I think this time it is.”
**
“So the suits were my idea?” Zach asked, flipping a page in their wedding album.
“Yep.” Chris was sitting next to Zach on the couch, watching the wonder in his expression as Chris told him about their life.
“Well, there’s no denying I’ve got good taste. We looked amazing.” He gave Chris a sideways glance. “How the fuck did I get you to go along with it?”
“You gave me the blowjob of my life in the dressing room.”
“Ah. So I knew how to get my way.”
Chris felt a twinge in his chest and wondered for the tenth time that day if he was making the right decision by not telling Zach the whole truth. But then Zach was looking at him, and all Chris could do was slide the album from his hands and touch a palm to his cheek.
“Zach…” He leaned in, pressed their lips together, and felt Zach relax into his touch. Their tongues swiped lightly together and Zach pulled away with a wry smile.
“Feels like our first kiss.”
It wasn’t, of course, it was their millionth, and now Chris remembered every one. He brushed his lips against Zach’s ear. “It’s the first one that counts.”
**
Epilogue: Hawaii
“I’m almost positive we had sex over there.”
Zach followed Chris’s eyes to a grove of palm trees that spilled out of the jungle and onto the edge of the deserted beach.
“Chris, you’ve been saying that about every place with a horizontal surface that we’ve seen today. And some that have been distinctly lacking in horizontal surfaces. It’s like you were some kind of oversexed maniac.”
“I may have been oversexed, but you were the…never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Chris said, grabbing Zach’s hand. “And anyway, I haven’t heard you complaining yet.” He tugged him toward the circle of trees. “Now come on, let’s make some memories.”
**
“I’ll grab us drinks,” Zach said later, as they approached the beach bar near their hotel. “Margarita, right?”
A strange look flitted across Chris’s face but then he grinned and pulled Zach in for a kiss. “I’ll get the drinks, baby,” he said. “Why don’t you find us a little table where we can make out while we watch the sunset?”
Zach smiled and held Chris close. “How can we watch the sunset if we’re making out?” he asked into Chris’s hair.
Chris turned his head and kissed Zach on the cheek. “I hear there’s a sunset tomorrow, too,” he whispered, chuckling. He pulled away from Zach’s embrace, winked, and trotted off across the sand toward the bar.
Zach took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second, resisting – then he gave in, slipped his hand into his pocket, and let his fingers clutch at the vial that he found there. Chris’s words, his smile, his kisses were a promise, a promise that they would watch the sunset together again tomorrow and the day after that, too. Zach remembered the words of the guy who’d given him the potion, an aging hippie in a patchouli-saturated room on the Lower East Side. “This is what you need, dude. One taste of this, and that blue-eyed boy will be yours forever.” Zach glanced over at the bar to find Chris smiling at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He mouthed “I love you,” and turned back to wait for their drinks.
Zach pulled the vial from his pocket, and emptied it onto the sand.
The End
Title and cut text are from the song Witch Doctor.
You've been keeping love from me
Just like you were a miser
And I'll admit I wasn't very smart
So I went out and found myself
A guy that's so much wiser
And he taught me the way to win your heart
I told the witch doctor you didn't love me true
I told the witch doctor you didn't love me nice
And then the witch doctor, he gave me this advice…
Remember to go HERE to check out the awesome fanmix and art bykimmay7!
Author:
therumjournalsFandom: Star Trek RPF
Pairing: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this part): 10,000
The first read-through was a disaster. At the end of the day, JJ demanded that Chris and Zach stay behind, and he pulled Chris into his office first.
Chris sat on the couch, watching miserably as JJ paced and ran his hands through his hair. Finally, he stopped and looked at Chris. “Chris…”
“Look, JJ, I’m sorry. I…you know, Zach and I are having problems…”
“Yeah, no shit! I fucking knew that you two getting together was a bad idea.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “You did?”
JJ looked at him in exasperation for a long moment, then he shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t, I thought it was perfect. It made so much sense. There’s chemistry, and then there’s chemistry, and you two could have fucking melted movie screens with yours. And people warned me that this could happen, but I just…I didn’t believe it. Not with you two.” His voice softened. “What the hell happened, Chris?”
Chris clenched and unclenched his jaw. As tempting as it was to tell the truth, to expose Zach for who he really was – a manipulative, needy, selfish bastard – he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t do that. Only Zoe knew, and it would stop there. To everyone else, they were just a failed relationship. Spectacularly, irreparably failed, but for the sake of the movie, it was crucial to maintain that façade. And even more crucial was to let JJ know that they could do their jobs despite it all.
“I can’t…I don’t know, JJ. I just know that it’s over, and we’re moving on, and we can do this, JJ, I swear to you.” He put up a hand to stop JJ from interrupting. “Today was terrible, I know. I’m sorry. But we’re actors and we’ll figure it out. This is what we do.” Some of us are better at acting than others, he wanted to say. You have no fucking clue how good an actor you have on your hands in Zach, he wanted to tell him.
JJ shook his head. “Get your act together, Pine, you and Zach both. I need you here and I need you focused and I need you to act your fucking asses off if that’s what it takes.” He gave Chris a long, scrutinizing stare before turning away from him to shuffle through some papers on his desk. “Now send Zach in, so I can tell him the same thing.”
Chris paused on his way out the door, looking back at JJ with as confident an expression as he could muster. “We won’t let you down,” he said, and he prayed that he was right.
**
Chris was right, and although he and Zach could barely exchange an unscripted sentence, no one could fault their work on-set. It helped that the script writers seemed to have had some kind of premonition - for much of the movie, the crew of the Enterprise was split apart, Kirk and an away team abandoned the surface of a planet when a hostile species turned Spock and the rest of the Enterprise against him. Kirk’s leg was broken, they were starving, and the script called for him to look “pale and haggard.” Chris was doing the makeup team’s work for them – the energy it took just to keep that trademark smirk on his face left him too exhausted to do much more than fall into bed at the end of every day.
Like the crew, the cast was torn apart - what had once been the bright center of their universe, holding them together, was now cracked and sullen and pushing them away. Zach retreated into himself, into character, and when they noticed that even Zoe was avoiding him, everyone else decided to stay out of his way. Karl and John goofed around on-set, trying to keep people’s spirits up, but their efforts were drops of good cheer in an ocean of palpable angst. And so they plodded along, and JJ mused that if the viewers could see them behind the scenes, they’d all win Oscars for sure.
Not every scene was difficult. Chris and Zach aced their big fight scene on the first take, but there was no gloating celebration to follow, and JJ looked pained instead of proud. And Chris felt a growing dread in the pit of his stomach as they approached the filming of their climactic scene, marked in big block letters on the schedule – KIRK/SPOCK REUNION.
**
But when the reunion scene fell apart, it had nothing to do with their acting – or interacting - abilities. The script called for a mind-meld between Kirk and Spock. They’d rehearsed it over and over, and JJ was frustrated because he could see that they were both holding back, neither wanting to commit to throwing the full range of emotion into the scene when it wasn’t going to count. Finally, JJ’d said fuck it, and let them wait until the cameras were rolling.
“Stop holding back on me, guys,” was all the direction he’d given them. “Put everything into this one. Make it count.”
And no one could say they hadn’t listened. Zach lifted a hand to Chris’s face, and his expression was everything that JJ wanted to see. There was the emotion, just below the surface, there was Spock holding it back. Zach opened his eyes and met Kirk’s pleading gaze, pressed his spread fingers slightly against Chris’s skin -
Chris felt something like a bolt of lightning in his skull, a screeching, all-encompassing pain that drove him to his knees. He clutched his head, writhing in agony on the floor, and an image flashed through his mind, a scene that he saw clearly through the blinding haze of pain.
He was in the kitchen at Zach’s house, humming to himself as he stood in front of the stove, waiting to flip a pancake. Then Zach was standing behind him, wrapping his arms around Chris’s waist and kissing him on the cheek and saying “I love waking up with you, baby,” and Chris turned around into his arms and murmured that the pancakes would burn, and Zach had whispered “Let them burn.”
The scene – no, the memory – faded to black, the pain subsiding as he pushed himself to his knees, panting. He was in shadow, could feel the cast gathered around, looking down at him, could imagine the concern etched on their faces, but his eyes shot straight to Zach’s. Chris felt rage flowing through him as he glared at Zach, but his words came out quietly, an accusation. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
Zach gaped, his mouth opening and closing. “I…nothing, Chris, I haven’t done anything.”
Chris leapt from his kneeling position and threw himself at Zach, yelling this time. “What did you do to me?!” he bellowed, his arm colliding with Zach’s chest, pressing him back against the set wall. He pinned him there, holding him, searching his eyes for a revelation of guilt and finding nothing but honest confusion. “I…I remembered something. I remembered….us. I…fuck, Zach,” he said and then he was leaning on his arm against Zach’s chest and he was sobbing, tears of anger mixing with tears of pain for what he had missed, for seeing what he had missed and anger at himself for liking it and for wanting more.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the skull-splitting pain was back, worse than before, and he would have fallen to the ground again if Zach’s strong arms hadn’t wrapped around him. Zach held him up as Chris pressed his hands to the sides of his head, crying out as another image – another memory – flashed through his mind, and oh god, he knew this one, recognized Zach’s white suit and the ring that Zach was sliding onto his finger. And because it was a memory, he could only go along for the ride, waiting to find out what he remembered. Had he looked into Zach’s eyes, and if he had, what had he seen there? What had he felt when he and Zach kissed, up there in front of all their friends? He remembered the taste of champagne and the color of the flowers in the centerpieces and Zoe’s smile and then, finally, he remembered Zach pulling him onto the veranda, away from the crowd. In the memory, Zach pulled him close and took his face in his hands and kissed him, over and over, on his lips and his cheeks and his temple and had wrapped his arms around him and said, “Chris, I’m so happy. I’m so happy.” And there it was, a waver in Zach’s voice that spoke volumes, that told him that this wasn’t how Zach had wanted it either, that he was pushing away doubts about what he’d done. It was comforting and infuriating at the same time, and he curled his fists, almost wishing he’d never seen.
It took Chris a moment to realize that the pain was gone, that he was out of the memory, because it still smelled like Zach and he still felt Zach’s strong arms around him, heard him murmuring in his ear, but now he was saying “It’s okay, Chris, you’re okay.” Chris took a deep breath and pushed himself up off of Zach’s chest and took a few steps back, and then he was on the floor again and the pain was back and he couldn’t take it anymore. He looked up at Zach from the floor, his vision blurred by pain and tears and he mustered all of his strength to grip Zach’s ankle and cry out, “Make it stop, Zach, Jesus, ow….fucking make it stop!” He could tell that Zach was confused, didn’t know what he could do to stop Chris’s pain, so he squeezed his ankle harder and ground out, “CALL HIM.”
Chris heard JJ’s voice in the background telling Zach to go do whatever he needed to do. He closed his eyes and breathed deep breaths and prayed that the darkness behind his eyelids wouldn’t be replaced by more memories, blinding in their bright intensity.
He was dimly aware of movement around him, of being lifted onto a stretcher, of resisting the urge to laugh maniacally when the paramedics asked him if he knew what day it was. He felt Zoe by his side, her warm palm resting gently on his arm as she told him that they were taking him to the hospital, that everything was going to be okay, and he let the exhaustion carry him under.
He opened his eyes with a start, his heart pounding in his chest, but the brightness was only from the lights of his hospital room, and Zoe was still there, looking down at him, concerned. He blinked and swallowed dryly.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she said softly, picking up a glass of water from the tray beside him and holding the straw to his lips. He drank gratefully, slowly becoming aware of the room around him, of the IV in his wrist and the sweat-damp hair clinging to his forehead.
“What happened?” he croaked.
“They’re not sure. Migraines, maybe. The doctor said it’s not a stroke or an aneurysm or anything serious like that. You’re going to be okay.”
Chris gave an experimental nod, relieved that only a dull ache lingered in his skull.
Zoe leaned over him. “Zach’s here,” she said, her voice cautious. “I can tell him to leave, if you want.”
Chris shook his head. “I need…I want to talk to him. It’s okay. Let him in.”
Zoe nodded and stepped out of the room, and a moment later, Zach stepped inside. He was out of costume, his hair gelled into messy submission. Chris gestured weakly at the chair beside his bed, and Zach sat, resting his elbows on his knees. Chris watched him, waiting.
“I called Wolf. Left a message.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Wonderful.”
“Look, Chris, there’s something I have to tell you,” Zach said, looking at his fingernails. Chris raised an eyebrow and waited. He couldn’t even begin to guess what Zach had to say.
“You said…you said you were remembering…today. That’s what was happening, you were remembering things about…us?”
Chris nodded once. He didn’t contribute anything, still waiting to see where Zach was going with this. “The thing is…I’ve been…I’ve been forgetting.” Zach looked up finally, meeting Chris’s gaze. Zach took a breath and continued. “I’ve been trying to remember and it’s….it’s fading. Fast, so fast, not like normal memory fading over time, but like…blurred around the edges, and I’m losing, like, whole portions of time.” Zach was twisting his hands together now, frustrated. Chris shook his head slightly, not understanding. “We took this trip to Hawaii together, I know we did. I have pictures of us on the beach, and postcards that say Hawaii, and a fucking, heh, a fucking painting of two turtles that says ‘Zach and Chris forever.’” Chris raised both eyebrows at that. “But the thing is, I can’t remember anything about it. I can’t remember what hotel we stayed at or what we ate or how the water felt. I can’t even fucking remember the sex!” Chris winced. “I’m sorry,” Zach said, knowing, “but with you, Chris, I always remembered the sex.”
Chris stared at Zach, but he seemed to be finished, waiting for Chris to say something. Say what?
“What do you want me to say, Zach?” Chris asked, furrowing his brow. “I’m sorry? Karma’s a bitch? I’ll look forward to the next episode of brain-splitting pain so I can fill you in? What?”
Zach shook his head. “Just… I don’t know. Maybe it’s related. Maybe this is how it works. Maybe you’ll remember everything!”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
Zach opened and closed his mouth and his eyes went helpless. “God, Chris, I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to hurt you like this, I never would have…” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know I don’t deserve a place in your life anymore, but if there’s anything I can do, Chris, please, just – just ask, okay? Anything.”
Chris had been biting his lip, staring into the distance as he listened to Zach, but now he turned, tilted his chin toward the bedside table.
“What?”
“Water.”
“You…you want me to?...Right, okay, sure,” Zach said, scrambling to grab the cup. He angled the straw toward Chris’s lips and his eyes lingered as Chris took a long sip. Chris felt the tips of Zach’s fingers brush against his hair, and Zach’s eyes were soft and helpless when they met his wary gaze. “I still love you.”
Chris let the straw slide from his mouth as he turned his head away. “Goodbye, Zach.”
He heard Zach set the cup back down, heard the scrape of the chair as Zach pushed it away from the bed. He waited until he heard the door shut before he closed his eyes.
**
Migraines, the doctors told him, and Chris dutifully accepted their diagnosis and their useless pills. He was back on-set two days later, offering bland reassurances to anyone who asked how he was feeling, and throwing himself back into Kirk. They were filming on the Enterprise now, where the lights made him look washed out, and the makeup team had to work overtime to smooth the bags under his eyes. Between scenes, he made his way to his trailer and let himself down onto the bed with a sigh of relief. He had just closed his eyes when he heard a knock on the door.
“What?” He meant to yell it, but it came out as more of a tired mumble.
He heard footsteps along the side of his trailer, and Zach’s voice came in through the small window high above his bed. He could picture Zach leaning against the side, tilting his head up so Chris could hear him through the screen.
“Chris? You okay?” Zach asked.
“Skip to the point,” Chris said, too tired to be anything but tired.
He heard Zach scuff his shoes against the pavement. “I talked to Wolf.”
“And?”
“Chris, can I come in?”
Chris rolled onto his side away from the window. His head was pounding.
“Fine, okay, I’ll just tell you from here. He…doesn’t know what’s going on, okay? He’s never heard of anything like this, he’s not sure how it works, the…chemistry.”
Chris huffed an ironic laugh that Zach couldn’t hear.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help, I tried, I…I’m sorry.”
Zach went quiet, but Chris could almost sense that he was still out there. When he spoke, his voice was softer, muffled like he was leaning his forehead against the trailer wall.
“Have you had any other…episodes?”
Chris squeezed his eyes shut as he thought back to that morning in his bathroom, flicking on the lights and the pain, the overwhelming pain as he remembered…
A palm, warm and dry over his eyes, Zach’s hand, he would know it anywhere. Another hand on his shoulder, and he remembered relaxing into it, smiling. He felt comforted, loved, calm under Zach’s touch, and a thrum of anticipation was buzzing through him.
Zach’s voice was low and playful in his ear. “Ready?”
Chris nodded, and opened his eyes as Zach pulled his hand away to reveal a shelf of leather-bound classics. He remembered gasping, remembered surprise and joy, remembered thinking “Zach knows me so well,” and he turned and threw himself into Zach’s arms.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” Zach whispered in his ear, tightening his arms around Chris. Tightening and tightening until Chris couldn’t breathe and he found himself slumped against the bathroom counter, sucking air into his lungs. His eyes were bloodshot in the mirror, his reflection the picture of devastation, and he stumbled in his haste to turn off the lights.
In the dim light of his trailer, he realized that he’d never answered Zach.
“Chris.” Zach’s voice was quiet. Chris imagined him pressing that broad, warm palm against the side of the trailer. “Are you okay?”
Chris twisted around as if he could see Zach through the wall. He swallowed, and the rough edge in his voice echoed his words. “Everything hurts.”
**
Chris stared at the ground as he walked across the lot with slow, even steps. He’d had three headaches today – headaches, he called them, when what they really felt like was an ice pick jamming into his brain, each one accompanied by happy fucking memories of a life like a movie screen in his mind. So he walked carefully and kept his head down and braced himself for the next one. Chris opened the door to his trailer and stepped inside, shut the door and locked it like he hadn’t even noticed Zach sitting on the steps. He crossed the trailer and sat down on the bed, resting his back against the wall, waiting. He heard the crunch of Zach’s footsteps, and for a minute he thought they were fading, like Zach was walking away from the trailer, and he didn’t want to think about why his chest clenched when he thought that. But then the footsteps turned, and he heard Zach come to a stop beneath the window.
“Chris?”
“Yeah.”
He pictured Zach crossing his arms, staring at the wall of the trailer as it radiated heat from the Southern California sun. “Headaches bad today?”
“Yeah.”
“Memories?”
Memories. The memory of a morning trip to Lamill had been so clear. It could have been one of hundreds, and it was clear that it was, the way Zach knew just what to order for him, the way Zach handed him the right section of the Times. They had a table that was theirs, in the corner, and somehow Chris knew that on the rare mornings they ended up at Intelligentsia, it was only because their table was taken. That morning, the one he’d remembered – why that morning? He remembered frustration, anger, running his hand through his hair – a fight? No – 24 Across, god, they’d spent forever trying to figure that one out, and Chris had gotten so mad, and Zach had smiled and pulled the pen from his hand and written “love u to the stars” across the row, the letters all upside down and crooked and suddenly Chris didn’t give a shit what the right word was anymore.
Chris swallowed. The memories. “Could have been worse,” he finally answered, careful to keep his voice toneless. “There was a rather traumatizing one about your hair.”
He heard Zach chuckle, then a moment later – “Do you remember what you said to me when I got that hair cut?”
Chris shook his head, then remembered Zach couldn’t see him. “No.”
“You were a little freaked out, I think, and you were like, ‘Ahh! Tell them to put it back!’” He could hear the smile in Zach’s voice as he remembered. “It was pretty funny. Actually it, well, it kind of became an inside joke between us, ‘Ahh, put it back!’, like in that tone. We used to say that a lot.”
“Oh.”
“Well. I guess it doesn’t sound as funny, now.”
“Yeah.”
“But maybe you’ll remember, someday.”
“Maybe.”
**
Chris didn’t realize he’d been waiting, until he heard footsteps and felt the trailer sway slightly as Zach leaned heavily against the wall under his window, and he felt his shoulders relax.
“Zach?”
“Yeah. I, uh, just came by to tell you…JJ wants us on set at 6:30 tomorrow. Instead of 7:00. He said the light’s better or something.”
“Yeah. He told me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Hey, Zach.”
“Yeah?”
“I remembered something last night. The thing you told me. About your hair. The inside joke we had, you know? I remembered it. You were right, it actually was pretty funny.”
“The what?”
“You know. The inside joke? ‘Ahh, tell them to put it back!’ How we used to say that for the slightest reason. And everyone else would look at us like we were crazy.”
In the silence that followed, Chris turned to lie on his side, facing the wall of the trailer. He furrowed his brows. Why wasn’t Zach saying anything?
“Chris, I…I don’t remember. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A hard thump against the trailer startled Chris, and he heard Zach mutter, “Dammit.”
Chris’s eyes widened in the darkness. He’d almost forgotten that Zach was forgetting as he remembered. Dammit.
“It’s no big deal, Zach. It wasn’t really that big of a deal.”
“It is a big deal. I’m forgetting everything, I’m forgetting….” His voice trembled as he trailed off, and Chris heard him take a ragged breath.
Chris reached out to touch his fingertips gently against the trailer wall. “Does it hurt?” he asked softly. “When you forget?”
“No.” Chris pulled his hand away at the answer, rolled over on to his back to stare at the ceiling before Zach continued. “I get dizzy…weak…cold sweat, that sort of thing. It doesn’t hurt like it hurts you to remember.”
“Oh.”
In the silence that followed, Chris imagined he almost see Zach through the trailer wall, resting his forehead against the warm metal just inches away.
“Chris?” Zach’s voice broke the silence.
“What?”
“You remember Sydney?”
Chris smiled in the darkness. “Of course. Well, most of it,” he amended. “The premiere, the endless interviews… that night, when we had to physically restrain Karl from throwing his shoe at a group of rugby fans. The tequila. I don’t really remember much after the tequila.”
Zach’s voice came back to him quietly. “I can only remember the premiere.”
Chris frowned and pushed himself up in his elbows, staring at the window screen as though he were looking at Zach. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…I don’t remember the rest.”
“But…that was before…”
“I know.”
“Why do you think-“
“I don’t know, okay?” Zach said, raising his voice a little, his frustration evident. “I just know that I’m forgetting…other things now. God, what if I forget everything, what if I lose every memory of…”
He heard Zach suck in a quavering breath, and so quietly he would have missed it if he hadn’t had all of his attention focused on that voice, “I miss you.”
Chris gave in, reached a hand out and pressed his palm to the trailer wall. He left it there until he heard the sound of Zach’s footsteps moving away, mingling with the thumps of his traitorous heart.
**
Hours that he would have spent pranking Karl or playing chess with Anton were now spent lying in his trailer, the lights out, a water bottle clutched to his chest, waiting for the pain in his head to start. Waiting for the pain and waiting, maybe, for those footsteps outside his trailer.
Whether he was waiting or not, he hadn’t heard any footsteps in three days.
They were between takes, waiting for JJ to give John a few notes, standing close together on the bridge set. Chris ran a hand over the back of his neck and glanced at Zach out of the corner of his eye.
“You, uh…you haven’t come by…”
Zach’s face was still, stoic - Spock. He nodded curtly.
“You can. If you want. To talk. Like before.” He was hesitant, not sure what he was asking for, not sure if it was a good idea to ask at all. The Shatner impression was involuntary.
Zach cocked his head and narrowed his eyes slightly. “I would prefer not to hear about the memories anymore.”
Chris nodded his understanding. That made sense. But a second later he took a breath and squinted at Zach. “You’re the only one I can tell them to.”
Zach met his eyes, but didn’t have time to respond before JJ called for quiet on set. “And, action!”
“Well, Mr. Spock,” Chris said, crossing his arms, “think we can get a do-over on that mission? This time without any unwanted visitors?”
Zach raised a perfectly sculpted Vulcan eyebrow. “While the concept of a ‘do-over’ implies time-travel capabilities that Starfleet does not currently possess, my response to the sentiment is favorable.”
Chris smirked and gave Zach a jolting slap on the shoulder. “I’ll take that as a resounding ‘indeed’.”
**
The piercing rays of the sunset had disappeared outside his window, and Chris was drifting in and out of sleep on the thin bed in his trailer. He didn’t hear the footsteps, didn’t hear anything until Zach’s quiet voice filtered in through the window.
“Chris? I’m here.”
Chris rubbed his eyes and struggled up onto an elbow.
“You still in there?”
Chris sat up, his back to the trailer wall. He glanced up toward the window above him as he spoke. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Still want to talk?”
“Sure.” He fell quiet for a moment, a vague uneasiness settling over him as he realized that he wasn’t quite sure what they could talk about now, without crossing into sensitive territory. He just knew that he wanted to keep Zach there, to hear his voice, to feel his presence just out of reach.
“You okay?” Zach said, after a minute. “Did you…remember something?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“You can tell me if you want to. If it helps.”
“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about our scene tomorrow. I had a couple ideas I wanted to bounce off of you.”
“Yeah?” He felt the trailer sway gently as Zach leaned against the wall, settling in. “I’d like to hear.”
**
“Okay, guys, you ready to do this?” JJ asked, rubbing his hands together.
Zach nodded, glancing at Chris who stood a few feet away. “Actually, Chris and I were talking yesterday, and we had a couple questions about the tone of the scene.”
JJ’s eyes widened and he looked back and forth between Chris and Zach, shocked. “That…that’s great. That’s wonderful! I mean, yes, of course. What did you want to know?”
**
One second Chris was leaning down to grab a yogurt out of his mini-fridge, and the next he was writhing on the floor of his trailer as his head split open in pain. He waited for the memory to come.
He was sitting across the table from Zach, at the corner table at Lamill, and they were looking down at a crossword puzzle between them – wait, hadn’t he had this memory before? He was frustrated about 16 Down, and he was pissed because Zach was clicking his pen incessantly instead of helping him figure out the answer.
“Come on, Zach. Oh! I think it starts with an M. Does that help?”
He stared at the puzzle, waiting for an answer to reveal itself, and he saw Zach’s hand holding the pen come down to start writing, and he started to say “wait-“ because it always made him so nervous when Zach filled in the answers in pen.
But Zach was writing, and Chris furrowed his brow in confusion, and the letters seemed to appear in slow motion as Zach wrote them, upside down and crooked so Chris could read them.
M
A
R
R
Y
M
E
?
And he can’t tell what’s worse now, the pain in his head or the pain in his heart at the memory of looking up into Zach’s questioning gaze, a shy smile on his lips, and Chris remembered leaning forward and wrapping a hand around the back of Zach’s head and pulling him forward, coffee spilling across the table as he slammed their lips together for a kiss.
A knock on the trailer door pulled him out of it, and he dimly registered the voice of a production assistant calling his name. “Mr. Pine? Sorry to bother you, but you’re due on set? Mr. Pine?”
The memory was gone now, replaced by brain-shattering pain, and his body was shaking and he could hear himself crying out, but he had no idea if he was saying words or screaming or if the sound was only inside his head.
Rapid footsteps on the steps of his trailer echoed the pounding in his head, and someone was wrenching the door open and dropping down beside him, pulling him close with strong arms and whispering soothingly into his ear. He gulped down air as a hand rubbed comforting circles across his back, and he curled into himself, pressing his face into soft fabric, his shivers subsiding when arms tightened around him. It felt familiar, he thought, like something he’d once known, like a memory, and he let it wrap around him as he drifted into darkness.
He came awake with a start and twisted away, away from the solid warmth that was supporting him. He was still on the floor, and he looked up to meet Zach’s eyes in the darkness.
“What are you doing in here?” he hissed.
Zach didn’t react, didn’t move from where he was kneeling on the floor. “Margie said you were calling my name,” he said quietly. “I…I didn’t know what to do.”
Chris rubbed a hand over his face. “How long have you been here?”
Zach glanced at the clock on the desk. “Forty-five minutes?”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “Jesus.”
Zach shrugged, wincing a little as he shifted out of his kneeling position and moved to sit with his back against the wall.
Chris watched him, couldn’t tear his eyes away, and when he did all he saw were crooked letters in blue pen.
“Zach?” His voice was a whisper, but Zach startled at the sound.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you ask me to marry you?”
Zach furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why did you have to ask? Didn’t you have me under some love spell? I mean, did my opinion of whether or not I wanted to marry you really matter?”
Zach let out a frustrated sound and tipped his head back, frowning. “God, Chris, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t some kind of puppet-master, controlling your every move. You weren’t following me around all glassy-eyed and stupid like some kind of love-slave. I mean, Jesus, it felt real, Chris. It was just us, just like always, except…”
“Except I loved you.”
Zach nodded. “Yeah. And sometimes I even…forgot why. Sometimes I forgot what I did…” he said, his voice trailing off as he looked away, blinking back tears.
Chris stood from the floor and looked down at Zach. “You can’t forget. If we’re ever….” He shook his head and picked up his bag from the bed. “You can’t forget that part, Zach. Don’t you fucking dare forget what you did.”
**
Chris woke up in the middle of the night screaming. He clutched his head as the pain shot through it, worse maybe than any of the other times it had happened, and he twisted on the bed, sweating, tangled in the blankets, until he fell with a thump onto the floor. He lay on his back with his eyes squeezed shut as memory upon memory crashed over him like waves. When he came to, the pain was gone and he could feel tears streaming down his face. He climbed back up onto the bed and reached for his phone.
“Wha- Chris? What is it, is something wrong?” Zach’s voice was heavy with sleep.
“Zach,” Chris said, and then he was hit by a wave of tears, and clenched his teeth to keep from sobbing into the phone.
“Hey ba- hey, Chris, it’s okay, tell me what’s going on.” He was awake now, his tone shifting from concerned to soothing.
“Zach, I remembered…I remember Hawaii.”
Zach inhaled sharply. “Chris…”
“Come over.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please, Zach. I can’t keep doing this alone. It hurts so fucking much.”
He could picture Zach running a hand through his hair as he considered it. He wondered if he should say something else, plead or beg, but then Zach said “Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes,” and Chris collapsed back onto the bed in relief.
He wrapped himself in a blanket and padded to the door to let Zach in, then led the way back to the bedroom and dropped onto the mattress, exhausted. Zach lay down beside him awkwardly, not sure what was expected, not sure what he was being asked. Chris pulled the blanket over both of them, and curled into Zach’s chest, and he was shaking as Zach took him into his arms. “Is this what you want, Chris?” Zach whispered.
Chris nodded against his chest. “Hold me tight.” Zach did.
In the middle of the night, Chris awoke to the feeling of a gentle kiss against his hair. Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing even, he tipped his head back, and was rewarded by the feel of Zach’s lips pressing against his forehead. He moaned and stretched out along Zach’s side, pressing his erection into Zach’s thigh. He heard Zach gasp and felt him pull away, felt a hand on his cheek and his eyes were brought into line with Zach’s.
“No, Chris.”
Chris moved against him insistently. “Please.”
“No.”
“You were kissing me.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I want you.”
“You won’t in the morning.”
“Please,” Chris pleaded, moving his lips against Zach’s neck and over his jaw. He cupped a hand around the back of his head and whispered roughly in his ear. “You’ve taken so much from me, Zach. Please, let me have this.”
And they were both trembling as their lips came together, and Chris remembered now, how Zach pressed into his kisses, how their tongues slid together between the seal of their lips, and his heart gave a painful, aching thud before Zach pulled away with a breathless “Stop!”
“Why?!” Chris cried, wrestling to get closer, but Zach had a firm grip on his wrists and held him at bay.
“Because…how do I know it’s really you?” Zach asked, and there was a desperate sound to his voice.
“Zach, what do you mean, it’s me, it’s Chris!”
“How do I know? How do I know it’s you this time and not…something I did to you? How do I know you’re not going to forget again?”
Chris twisted out of Zach’s grasp and pushed him onto his back, pinned him down with an arm across his chest and a leg over his thighs. “How can I prove it, Zach?” he asked, looking down into Zach’s eyes. “How can I prove that it’s me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me….tell me something I would never do, before. Like, a sex thing.”
Zach laughed softly, helplessly in the darkness. “There was nothing you wouldn’t do, Chris, nothing. You loved me so much.” He sucked in a breath as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, it felt like you did. God, it felt so real.”
Chris could feel the truth of Zach’s words in his veins, in the crackling nerves along the surface of his skin, in the way his cock twitched and his mouth turned down at the edges with want. He would have done anything, anything Zach wanted, he would do it still, he knew, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant.
He leaned down to press a hard kiss to Zach’s mouth, and Zach moaned and opened up to him for only a moment before he twisted his head away.
“Zach!” The word was an anguished plea, and Chris pressed down harder on Zach’s chest as he ground his erection into his crotch, where he could feel the line of Zach’s rigid cock through the fabric of his yoga pants.
“I still think about you, Zach. I do, I swear, I can’t help it. Even when I hated you -” he felt Zach tense underneath him, and he rubbed himself harder against Zach’s dick – “even when everything was wrong and I wasn’t speaking to you, even then, I thought about…about you kissing me and touching me and…” He’d always felt sick afterwards, dirty, jerking off to the fantasy of Zach’s mouth on his cock, simultaneously hating him for what he’d done and wanting him as much as he had that night, the night he’d decided to tell him everything.
“Fuck, Zach, I’m sorry,” he panted, smearing wet kisses across Zach’s neck. “I can’t…I just...I need this, Zach, please-“
“Chris, don’t-“ Zach said, bringing his hand up between them to press against Chris’s chest. But Chris was reaching down to slide his pants and boxers off, freeing his cock, and by the time he wrapped a fist around both of them, slick with pre-come and sweat, Zach was only running light fingertips across his chest.
Chris’s strokes were hard and quick and sweat dripped into his eyes as he leaned down to whisper roughly in Zach’s ear.
“Do you remember this Zach? I remember,” he panted. “How good it felt, how your face looked when you ahh ahhhh fuck” he cried, thrusting into his fist as he came. Zach reached up with both hands to pull Chris’s head down, slamming their lips together, and his hips bucked and stilled as his cock pulsed in Chris’s hand.
They kissed, slick chests sliding together, Zach’s hands still tangled in Chris’s hair. Chris brought a hand up to feel wetness on Zach’s cheeks and he knew that Zach didn’t remember.
“How do I know, Zach?” he whispered when he’d caught his breath. “How can I trust that you haven’t done it again? How can I know that what I’m feeling is real?” Because he almost couldn’t believe that this deep, aching want could possibly be of this world, sprung from his insignificant heart alone. “How do I know it’s not just some kind of chemical reaction? How do I know you’re not fucking with my brain again, huh?”
“Because I told you to stop, Chris. I want you, but…I won’t let myself do this with you again. And that’s how you’ll know.”
Chris made a frustrated sound. “That’s not what I want. I want this.” He ran a finger through their mingled juices cooling on Zach’s stomach, and he heard Zach stifle a gasp. “I want this.” His hand drifted down, and he curved a palm over Zach’s hip, stroking gently with his thumb. “I just want to know that it’s real.”
“I have an idea,” Zach breathed, pulling away, sliding out of reach and propping himself up on his elbows.
Chris swallowed and made himself stay still. “What?”
“When I…got the stuff…Wolf told me the rules. And one of them was that I couldn’t leave you, that we couldn’t be apart, for longer than a few weeks, maybe four or five at the most. Or, something would happen, the effect would wear off, and… Well, he didn’t know. He didn’t know what would happen.”
“So that’s why…”
“Yeah. And that’s why you did Princess Diaries 3. That’s why I asked you to do it.”
Chris felt a hot flash of anger. “Fuck you for that, by the way.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, I really am. It’s…one of my bigger regrets.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure it’s right up there.”
“Anyway, listen. Filming’s almost over. When it is, I’ll leave.”
“Leave?”
“I’ve been thinking about going to New York anyway. Neal and Corey are there, and I was going to do it to get away from everything, and now…I’ll go away, for…six weeks. No, we’ll make it longer, just to be sure - two months. And then I’ll come back, and if everything’s the same, we’ll know. That it’s us, really us.”
“No mind fuckery.”
“No mind fuckery,” Zach confirmed.
“What if…” Chris swallowed, and he wasn’t sure why he felt his chest clenching with nerves. “What if something happens? What if you- what if one of us meets someone?”
“Then we’ll know. We’ll know that it’s not meant to be.”
“And until then? Until you leave?”
Zach leaned over to run a finger down Chris’s cheek. “Until then…” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Chris’s, wrapped a hand around his head to hold him there for a long moment. “Until then…nothing. This is it.”
Chris looked away, blinking hard in the darkness. Why did it feel like he was losing Zach all over again? But Zach put a gentle hand on his shoulder and pulled him close, and he settled into his arms.
He waited until his breathing was steady before he asked. “White suits, Quinto? Really?”
He could practically hear Zach processing the question, then a low chuckle rustled his hair. “How do you know it wasn’t your idea?”
“Yeah, right. Good try. No potion on earth has that kind of power, honey,” he said sassily.
Zach tightened his arm around Chris. “You looked good.”
“I can only assume you ignored my veto.”
“I gave you the blow job of your life in the dressing room.”
“That would also work.”
“Black seemed overly somber for a wedding. For us.”
Chris’s only response was to nuzzle closer, burying himself in the warmth of Zach’s embrace.
Sleep came far too soon.
**
Chris left his trailer for the last time, a black duffel slung over his shoulder and a crate of books balanced precariously on his hip. He walked out to the parking lot and prayed that Zach’s car wasn’t still there.
Zach’s car was still there.
Chris threw his stuff in the trunk and stared at the Prius for a long time, his thoughts tumbling over themselves.
For the last three weeks, his interactions with Zach had been limited to cordial nods and murmured scene notes between takes. Zach hadn’t come by his trailer, and Chris hadn’t asked him to, and there’d been no more late night phone calls and therefore no more temptation and no more anything, just like Zach had said. Chris pushed himself off the side of his car and headed back across the lot.
He stood in front of the door to Zach’s trailer, debating whether or not to knock. But Zach must have heard him or sensed him or something, because the door opened and dark brown eyes stared into his.
“You alright?” Zach asked, looking concerned.
Chris felt his mouth twist into a pained expression and he shook his head. He had no idea what he was doing here, but apparently Zach did, since he was grabbing him by the front of his t-shirt and yanking him abruptly inside.
The door closed behind him and Chris felt a flash of pain in his head. This would be a really bad time for a memory, but then he realized he’d just slammed his head against the door when Zach crushed their mouths together in a desperate attempt at a kiss. Chris pushed him back only enough to breathe, then he was chasing Zach’s lips with his own, thrusting his tongue into Zach’s mouth as he walked them backwards into the trailer. His fingers fumbled with Zach’s fly as he slipped off his shoes. They were naked by the time they reached the couch, and Chris pressed Zach onto it.
“Want you,” he panted. “I want to do everything with you, everything we’ve ever done together. I want everything.”
Zach’s eyes were wide and his laugh had a manic edge to it as he maneuvered onto his back, pulling Chris down on top of him and saying, “Take it.”
Then Chris’s mouth was on Zach’s cock, licking and sucking and tasting. He knew there was more – there was the sound Zach made when teeth scraped lightly across his chest, the ripple of muscles when he dipped a tongue into his belly button – he had finally remembered those, after imagining them for so long. But for now, he wanted this, he wanted to suck Zach into him, hot and hard, wanted to feel Zach’s pulse against the flat of his tongue, wanted to coat his fingers in the lube that Zach shoved into his hand and press them into Zach, too many at a time. He pulled his mouth away and looked up, fucking willed Zach to look at him, to see him biting at the inside of his thigh and thrusting fingers into him, hoped Zach could see his blue eyes burning brightly through the red haze of pleasure and pain. Zach’s asshole clenched around his fingers, and Zach was breathing hard, his mouth open, hair falling into his eyes, but he was looking, and Chris had a feeling he wouldn’t soon forget what he saw.
Chris slid his fingers out abruptly, avoiding Zach’s gaze as he slid a condom over his aching cock. Zach took a deep shuddering breath as Chris pushed inside. Chris groaned out loud at the sensation of Zach’s tight heat surrounding him, and it felt so much better than he remembered. His memories were cloudy, and even the best of them were suffused with an undercurrent of pain and betrayal, but this was clear and real and fucking Christ it felt good. He gave himself up to it, pistoning his hips, whimpering at the sight of his cock sliding into Zach as he fucked him fast and hard. So fast and so hard that it couldn’t last and he felt his climax mounting, everything shutting down, disappearing, except the building pleasure in his groin and he dug his fingertips into Zach’s hip as he came with a shuddering cry.
Zach was looking at him with a confused expression, until Chris pushed a condom into his hand and whispered, “Fuck me.” Then he was on his back, Zach’s weight pinning him to the couch, and there was no finesse in the way Zach prepped him with careless fingers and even more careless kisses against his mouth, with the way Zach lay across him, pressing his forehead to Chris’s chest, barely holding himself up as he fucked frantically into Chris.
“Oh Chris, oh fuck,” he panted, then a garbled string of syllables as he thrust hard and spilled into Chris, going limp on top of him.
Chris let his fingers drift across the sweat-damp skin of his lower back as they slowly came down together. “So,” he murmured. “Now we have that.”
**
When Chris woke up, he was clutching a Captain Kirk teddy bear to his chest. Zach had given it to him as he left his trailer a few nights earlier.
“Here, I think this is yours.”
Chris looked at it, then back up at Zach. “It’s yours, actually. I gave it to you.”
Zach frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“I gave you a card with it. It said-“ and here Zach joined him, “love you to the stars.” Chris nodded. “You remember.”
Zach gave a frustrated shake of his head. “Just that phrase, I… Here. You take it. Please.”
Chris took it gently from Zach’s hand. “I’ll hold onto it for you,” he’d said.
Chris rolled over in bed and checked the clock. 8:30. Zach would be at the airport already. He pulled out his phone.
Don’t forget me, he texted.
The response came back quickly. Who is this again?
His heart seized in his chest for a second before he realized that Zach was joking. It had been a while.
Not funny.
Sorry.
So. Two months.
Two months.
I’ll be waiting. Safe travels.
Catch you on the flip side.
**
Two Months Later
Chris sat at their table in Lamill, chewing the shit out of his pen. The New York Times crossword lay untouched in front of him.
He heard the door open and glanced up, and his breath caught in his throat as Zach stepped inside. His eyes widened as he watched Zach look around, starting on the other side of the café. Of course. He didn’t remember this, didn’t remember their table or the crosswords or…Chris pushed the thought from his mind as he watched Zach’s eyes flick to each table. He felt his palms prickle with sweat as he waited for Zach’s gaze to land on him.
When their eyes met, Zach’s face lit up in a smile, and he was over to the table in three long strides.
“Chris!”
Chris stood, smiling awkwardly across the table as he resisted the urge to throw himself into Zach’s arms. “Hey.”
Zach shifted under Chris’s piercing gaze and glanced down at the empty coffee mug on the table. “Can I, uh, get you-“ he gestured to the mug.
“Oh, uh. No, it’s okay. But, go ahead, get yourself something. I’ll, uh, I’ll be right here.”
Zach nodded and turned away quickly as Chris sat, his heart still pounding with anticipation.
When he came back, he sat down and set his mug on the table, and Chris could see that his hands were shaking.
“Chris, before you say anything, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Chris furrowed his brow. “Okay.”
Zach stared intently at his coffee mug and the hand clenched tightly around it. “When I was in New York, I…I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” Chris said quickly, relief flooding through his chest.
“You did?” Zach looked up at him for a second, confused, but he continued before Chris could respond. “I mean, I missed you more than I thought…more than I should have, probably. Look, I know we didn’t really hang out much before I left…”
Chris raised an eyebrow. Okay, maybe fucking each other in Zach’s trailer couldn’t technically be described as “hanging out” but still. He wondered what Zach was trying to say.
Zach was staring at his coffee mug again, a perplexed look working over his features. “Why did I go to New York, Chris? I mean, I know Neal and Corey were happy to have me there, but I feel like there’s something…” He brought his eyes up to meet Chris’s concerned gaze. “Were you…mad at me? Is that why I left?”
Chris took a deep breath as his heart thumped a little harder in his chest. “You don’t remember why you went to New York?”
Zach shook his head.
“You don’t remember…our plan?”
“What plan?” Zach whispered, and Chris could see the mix of confusion and fear swirling in his dark brown eyes.
Chris opened his mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. He felt dizzy. What do you remember, Zach?
“Do you remember the last time you wore a white suit?” he asked quietly.
Zach laughed. “What, like, my First Communion?”
Chris closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he felt flush with a wild, foolish hope.
“Do you remember Vancouver? Do you remember Wolf?”
“Wolf? Chris, what’s wrong, why are you asking me all these questions? What’s happening?”
Chris swallowed. There was one more thing he needed to know. His voice was rough as he asked his last question. “Do you remember falling in love with me?”
Zach’s eyes widened. “How…how did you know?”
Chris leaned forward, his voice earnest. “I love you, too, Zach. I wanted to tell you, too. I love you-“
“To the stars.”
Chris sucked in a breath, and Zach pressed a hand to his brow, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Chris reached across the table to tangle their fingers together. “Zach. There’s something I need to tell you.”
**
“You told him what?” Zoe shrieked in his ear.
Chris winced and held the phone away for a second, before pressing it back against his ear. “I told him he has amnesia. And I…filled him in on what he missed.”
“You told him he mind-raped you?”
Chris cringed. “Jesus, Zoe.”
“Well?”
“Of course I didn’t tell him that,” Chris hissed. “What am I supposed to say? By the way, you don’t remember, but you drugged me and made me fall in love with you, we got married and had a life together, which I then forgot, but then remembered, but then you forgot, and Jesus fucking Christ, when did my life become a freaking soap opera,” Chris finished, tipping his head back against the bathroom wall with a resigned clunk. “Don’t answer that.”
“And you’re not at all worried about this little…omission?”
“I don’t know, Zoe. I mean, this is it, right, this is what I wanted – a clean slate, a fresh start. Why would I want to fuck that up?”
“Because he’s still the same person, Chris!” Zoe said in a burst of exasperation. “He hasn’t learned anything! What makes you think he won’t once again come up with the brilliant idea to drug you with some unknown substance because he thinks it will make you fall in love with him?”
“Because he knows, Zoe! He knows how I feel now, and he would never…he would never have done that, before, if he’d known, he wouldn’t!”
“How do you know?”
“I just know, Zoe. We talked about, he said-“
“And you believed him. Despite knowing that he is, deep down, capable of being manipulative, possessive, devious-”
“Zoe, stop.” Chris ran a hand over his face. “Stop. I know, okay? I know how this seems, and I’ve thought about- I had the same concerns as you. For fuck’s sake, I was the one who warned him not to forget. You know? I thought he needed to remember if he was going to… But this is my chance, Zoe. Our chance. And I’m taking it.”
Zoe sighed helplessly into the phone. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, Chris.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful around him. Don’t let your guard down.”
“Look, I gotta go, okay? I don’t want to leave him alone for too long. I should probably help him…process.”
“Chris…”
“Yeah?”
“You have to know - I want this to work for you. You and Zach…I want it to be real.”
Chris felt a flood of gratitude for Zoe’s words, and he found himself blinking back tears. “I think this time it is.”
**
“So the suits were my idea?” Zach asked, flipping a page in their wedding album.
“Yep.” Chris was sitting next to Zach on the couch, watching the wonder in his expression as Chris told him about their life.
“Well, there’s no denying I’ve got good taste. We looked amazing.” He gave Chris a sideways glance. “How the fuck did I get you to go along with it?”
“You gave me the blowjob of my life in the dressing room.”
“Ah. So I knew how to get my way.”
Chris felt a twinge in his chest and wondered for the tenth time that day if he was making the right decision by not telling Zach the whole truth. But then Zach was looking at him, and all Chris could do was slide the album from his hands and touch a palm to his cheek.
“Zach…” He leaned in, pressed their lips together, and felt Zach relax into his touch. Their tongues swiped lightly together and Zach pulled away with a wry smile.
“Feels like our first kiss.”
It wasn’t, of course, it was their millionth, and now Chris remembered every one. He brushed his lips against Zach’s ear. “It’s the first one that counts.”
**
Epilogue: Hawaii
“I’m almost positive we had sex over there.”
Zach followed Chris’s eyes to a grove of palm trees that spilled out of the jungle and onto the edge of the deserted beach.
“Chris, you’ve been saying that about every place with a horizontal surface that we’ve seen today. And some that have been distinctly lacking in horizontal surfaces. It’s like you were some kind of oversexed maniac.”
“I may have been oversexed, but you were the…never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Chris said, grabbing Zach’s hand. “And anyway, I haven’t heard you complaining yet.” He tugged him toward the circle of trees. “Now come on, let’s make some memories.”
**
“I’ll grab us drinks,” Zach said later, as they approached the beach bar near their hotel. “Margarita, right?”
A strange look flitted across Chris’s face but then he grinned and pulled Zach in for a kiss. “I’ll get the drinks, baby,” he said. “Why don’t you find us a little table where we can make out while we watch the sunset?”
Zach smiled and held Chris close. “How can we watch the sunset if we’re making out?” he asked into Chris’s hair.
Chris turned his head and kissed Zach on the cheek. “I hear there’s a sunset tomorrow, too,” he whispered, chuckling. He pulled away from Zach’s embrace, winked, and trotted off across the sand toward the bar.
Zach took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second, resisting – then he gave in, slipped his hand into his pocket, and let his fingers clutch at the vial that he found there. Chris’s words, his smile, his kisses were a promise, a promise that they would watch the sunset together again tomorrow and the day after that, too. Zach remembered the words of the guy who’d given him the potion, an aging hippie in a patchouli-saturated room on the Lower East Side. “This is what you need, dude. One taste of this, and that blue-eyed boy will be yours forever.” Zach glanced over at the bar to find Chris smiling at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He mouthed “I love you,” and turned back to wait for their drinks.
Zach pulled the vial from his pocket, and emptied it onto the sand.
The End
Title and cut text are from the song Witch Doctor.
You've been keeping love from me
Just like you were a miser
And I'll admit I wasn't very smart
So I went out and found myself
A guy that's so much wiser
And he taught me the way to win your heart
I told the witch doctor you didn't love me true
I told the witch doctor you didn't love me nice
And then the witch doctor, he gave me this advice…
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