Work Text:
June, 2022
Chris lets out a long, low whistle when he steps into the bathroom doorway. “Holy shit,” he says, looking his wife up and down, “you look fucking amazing.”
She runs her palms over the deep emerald green chiffon of her cocktail dress and looks down at herself. “Yeah?” She asks when she looks back up at him, her eyebrows raised. He only nods and takes a couple steps into the room. “I don’t look like I’m trying too hard to pull a Blake Lively?” She’s referring to the amethyst jewelry she’s wearing and the purple ribbon serving as a headband around her artfully messy updo, the color combination a Buzz Lightyear homage that she hopes isn’t too over-the-top.
Either Chris doesn’t see the connection between her fashion choices and his character’s, or he’s unaware that Blake often matches her clothing and accessory choices to her husband’s films when they attend his premieres. “I have no idea what that means,” he says, splaying his hands wide and shaking his head, “so I’m gonna go with no.”
She chuckles and rolls her eyes a little. “Don’t worry about it, just a little self-deprecating humor.”
“Ahhh,” Chris says, letting his head fall back a little. “Now that I understand.” He watches her turn toward the vanity and reach for the bracelet laid out there, dark purple stones set in gold. Stepping forward to close the gap between them, he reaches out and gently pulls the bracelet from her hands. “However, it’s totally uncalled for coming from you right now.” She holds her left arm out so he can clasp the bracelet around her wrist. “Because seriously, you look gorgeous. I don’t know what you have to … deprecate.”
The silly phrasing makes her giggle. She shakes her arm a little when he lets go of the bracelet, then she drops her hands to her hips. Her eyes roll up and her eyebrows lift toward her hairline while she tilts her head to one side and lifts that shoulder. “Why thank you,” she says in a tone slightly higher than her normal. Chris just grins and winks at her.
“So,” he drawls, then reaches to pull her hands from her hips and drape them over his own shoulders, replacing them with his own once she links her fingers behind his neck, “you ready to do this?”
She draws in a long, deep breath, then drops her forehead to his collarbone as she blows it out her mouth. “As I’ll ever be, I suppose.”
“Hey, come on now.” He squeezes her hips until she tilts her head back just enough to peer up at him through her lashes. “We got this. You and me, we’re a team, right?”
Groaning, she slides her hands to his chest and pushes away from him. “But I’m supposed to be like, the benchwarmer who just sits there and cheers you on and gets excited when you make the big shots. Nobody actually wants me on the court.”
“Oh hell no. No ma’am. You’re starting lineup, all the way.” He holds her a little tighter when she tries to back away. “Hey,” he says gently as he pulls her closer, “are you really not okay with this?”
“No, I am. I will be. I’m just nervous. In case you haven’t noticed, I can be a little awkward at times, and I don’t want to embarrass you.”
He finally puts some space between them then, holding her hips as he takes a step back. He draws his eyebrows down and together and tilts his head a little to one side. “Sweetheart. Do you realize how many of these things I’ve shown up to drunk or stoned? Or both?”
She does, actually. And not only because they’ve talked about it before, but also because it’s pretty obvious in some of his red carpet interviews that he’s under the influence of something. It was a form of self-medicating for his anxiety, she knows, a way to loosen himself up enough that he could be the bubbly, effusive person people expect him to be rather than withdrawing under the weight of the voice in his head telling him it’s all going to go wrong. What she doesn’t know is why he’s bringing that up now. “Yes, but I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help me at the moment. Unless …” she trails off and slides her hands down the front of his body, tucking her fingertips into his pants pockets, “you’ve got something in here that you’re offering to share with me?”
“Oh sweetheart,” he gives her a downright wicked smirk, “I’ve always got something in there that I’m more than happy to share with you.”
“Dammit.” She sighs. “I walked right into that one.”
Chris just laughs. “My point is, you can’t possibly do any more damage than I’ve already done, probably a few times over. And besides,” he squeezes her hips, “what you call awkward, I call adorable. You’re gonna charm everyone’s socks off, I promise.”
She’s still not convinced, but like she said at the beginning, she’s as ready as she’ll ever be. It’s not like she would not go. This is the first real event she’s attending with him, and however active her nerves might be (and they’re really active), she wouldn’t miss it for the world. Their relationship had been far too new when Knives Out premiered for them to even consider her going along, and by the time they were in a place when they might have considered making their first public appearance as a couple, well, the world was in the middle of a pandemic. Now they’re six months into marriage and aside from a few wedding pictures that they shared and a random candid grocery store or dog park picture here and there, she still has yet to be introduced to the world as his partner. She loves the relative privacy and anonymity that affords her, but she also wants to be his partner in all aspects of his life, not just within the walls of their home or the city limits of Concord. And for that to be the case, she has to be willing to put on the fancy dress and walk the red carpet now and then. (And if that sounds like she’s making it out to be a chore, well, she’s not, exactly, but there is definitely a certain amount of apprehension that comes along with taking such a big step.)
“I don’t want anyone’s socks,” she tells him, “I just don’t want to make a fool of myself.”
“You’re beautiful, kind, funny, well-spoken, and quick on your feet. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
She hums. “Well, I hope you’re right, but just in case you’re not, maybe we both avoid social media for the next few days?”
Chuckling, Chris pulls her close again and wraps his arms around her waist. “Honestly, that’s never a bad idea.” He bends to kiss the top of her head, careful of her hair. “You ready to go get your shoes on, Shorty, or do you still have something you need to do in here?”
“Hey!” She smacks his shoulder blade where she’s hooked her arms up under his. “I’m not short.”
“Shorter than me.”
“Yeah, and I’m also a girl.”
He steps back then looks her up and down again before jerking his eyebrows upward. “Yeah you are.”
“Okay mister,” she rolls her eyes, “yes, I’m done in here, let’s go.” She turns and moves toward the door, hitting the lightswitch then reaching behind her with both hands for him. Chris sets his hands in hers and follows her through the bedroom and down the hall toward the front of the house, where his family waits. And honestly, that - the fact that the whole family is coming along - is a huge plus in her book. She’s really glad that this, a premiere for an animated family film, is her first big outing. It’s far less formal than an awards show, and Chris’s entire family, along with those of many of the other actors as well, is coming along. Both of those factors take a lot of pressure off of her, at least in her own mind. For one thing, she feels like there will be less attention paid to what she’s wearing and how she looks. And for another, they’d already decided that if she gets too overwhelmed being at Chris’s side, she can take a step back and go join the family instead. It’s an out she hopes she doesn’t have to take, but one that she’s really glad exists.
***
“You hanging in there?” Chris asks right into her ear, his arm looped around her waist and his nose pressed to her hair. She presses her hand a little more firmly against the center of his back and turns to smile up at him. A camera flashes right as she does, and once the stars clear from her vision she winks. He moves to kiss her forehead and several more cameras flash. “That’s my girl,” he whispers against her skin before turning them to continue walking along the red carpet.
They make it only a few steps before Chris’s publicist is tapping him on the shoulder and pointing just a few yards down the carpet. He nods and uses the hand on Her hip to steer them in that direction. She’s confused, at first, because she doesn’t see a reporter in the vicinity of where they’re headed. Then she realizes she’s just been looking in the wrong place. As they approach the edge of the red carpet and the ropes separating those walking on it from the fans on the other side, she sees a little girl just inside the rope, a cameraman standing behind her just outside of it. The girl looks to be about 10 and is wearing a dark blue flight suit, complete with patches and insignia to match those in the movie. She even has her dark hair braided into rows on the top of her head.
Chris stops them just in front of the young reporter. “Hi there,” he greets her, grinning.
“Hello Mr. Evans,” the young girl says, holding her microphone out and up toward him.
“That’s me! And what’s your name?”
She brings the microphone back to herself to speak into it. “My name is Kahlia.”
“You know, Kahlia,” Chris says, his voice going low and conspiratorial and one eyebrow lifting, “you look a lot like my friend Izzy.”
The little girl’s dark skin flushes a deep shade of pink and she giggles. “Thank you.” She takes a deep breath then and draws her shoulders back and down before she says, “Now, Mr. Evans, may I please ask you some questions?”
“Absolutely!” Chris says with a nod, and he squeezes Her hip as he does. “I’m all yours, ask away.”
“Well, you have been in a lot of real-life action movies, including many movies as Captain America. What made you want to be in an animated movie now?”
“Oooh, that’s a good question.” Chris tilts his head back until he’s staring up at the sky and even scrubs a hand over his beard. She watches him, always charmed by his way with people, but children especially. He has a way of making anyone feel like they are the only person in the room, and he speaks to children not only like they are adults, but like he’s the one awed by talking to them. It’s sweet, and adorable, and incredibly attractive. “Well, you know,” he finally says, looking back down at Kahlia and speaking into the microphone, “I’ve always loved animated films. When I was a kid, I watched every Disney movie over and over again. I just loved the characters, and the larger-than-life stories, and the bold, bright colors and designs. Then when I was a few years older, the first Toy Story movie came out, and that was the beginning of Pixar, and that was just a whole new world of animation. It was just so cool, and exciting, and fun. So honestly,” he shrugs, “when they said they were interested in having me work on this one, it was really a dream come true to be a part of something I’ve always loved so much.”
“Was this easier than being Captain America?”
He laughs. “In a lot of ways, yes. I didn’t get nearly so beat up on and nobody cared if I showed up to work in my pajamas with my hair a mess.” He wiggles his eyebrows at the little girl and she covers her mouth with her free hand as she snickers. “But I did miss actually being on set with my co-stars and being able to really interact with them. It’s a little weird to kind of be in a bubble while you read your lines, without being in the same room as the other people in the scene, or actually acting it out. Although,” he holds his hand up to block one side of his mouth and looks around them as if he’s about to say something top secret, “sometimes I acted them out anyway.”
It’s Her who laughs then, because she knows him well enough to know exactly how true that confession probably is, and she can picture him in the recording booth, grunting and gasping into the microphone as he kicks and karate chops at invisible enemies. He smirks over at Her, probably knowing full well what she’s thinking. Kahlia looks at her then as well, and she gives the little girl a smile that she hopes is warm and inviting.
Kahlia seems to study her for a second, then she asks, “Is he your husband?”
Startled, She turns to look quickly at Chris, who just slides his hand from her hip to the small of her back and nudges her forward with a smile. “Um, yes,” she nods, “yes he is.”
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
She turns to Chris again, and he lifts one shoulder as if to say Whatever you want. She takes a deep breath and widens her smile a little before turning back to Kahlia. “Yes, sure. Go for it.”
The little girl pauses for a moment, like she didn’t actually have any questions ready for the wife of the movie’s star (which makes perfect sense, of course), then she seems to come to an agreement with herself because she nods slightly and brings the microphone back to her mouth. “Do you get sad when he goes away for a long time to make movies?”
“I do, yeah.” She nods at Kahlia then turns to look at Chris. He’s smiling at her softly and his hand runs up and down her spine. She scrunches her nose at him, quickly and playfully, then turns her attention back to their young interviewer. “But he really loves it and it makes him happy, so that makes me happy.”
Kahlia nods slowly, like she’s really letting this information sink in, then she says, drawing each word out, “So, why don’t you just go with him? Are you not allowed?”
She feels Chris huff out a silent laugh next to her. Coming from almost anyone else, the question would feel intrusive, rude, even. But from this pint-sized reporter, with her open expression and inquisitive eyes, it’s just cute. “I’m sure I would be,” She tells the girl, nodding slowly, “but I also love what I do, so I stay at home and do my work, just like he goes away to do his.”
“You have a job? Even though he’s a movie star?” Kahlia has lowered the microphone to her side so that it’s not so much an interview anymore as it is a conversation.
“Sure I do,” She says, and after looking around and thinking about it for a second, she lowers herself into a squat to be closer to the girl’s height, careful to tuck the flowy skirt of her dress around her legs and into the creases at the backs of her knees. Resting her forearms on her knees, she leans in as she says, “I’m a teacher.”
Kahlia’s face lights up. “What do you teach?”
“I teach English at a high school.”
Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Kahlia exclaims, “That’s my favorite subject!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmhmm. I really like reading. And writing stories. I got to come here because I won an essay contest.”
Chris watches his wife interact with the little girl, talking to the young reporter about their shared love of books and words, promising her that growing up and getting married, even to a movie star, doesn’t mean that you just have to sit at home all the time. And honestly? Fuck the movie, he’d stay right here, just like this, all night if he could. He knows she was nervous before they left the house, and he gets it. This is a whole new experience for her, and that’s not even accounting for the fact that the internet is a bitch and he doesn’t even want to think about what kinds of things will be said about them by tomorrow. But at this very moment, she looks as in her element as any one of the Hollywood regulars around them. That has nothing to do with the movie, or the lights, or the red carpet, of course, but it has everything to do with her being who she is.
He jumps when his publicist touches his elbow. He’d totally zoned out, blocking out everything that wasn’t the woman and the little girl in front of him. She lets him know that it’s time for them to move on, that other interviewers are waiting for their time with him and that there’s a line forming behind him. He curls a hand over his wife’s shoulder, and he gestures as subtly as possible with his head when she looks up.
“Well sweetheart,” She says to the girl, “I would just love to stay here and talk to you all night, but I think there are a lot more people waiting to talk to you too, so I think we need to move on and give them their turn.”
“Oh. Right.” Kahlia nods and stands up a little straighter and lifts her microphone again. “I have a job to do.”
“You do,” She agrees. “And you’re quite good at it. I think you just might have a future in journalism if that’s what you want to do.”
“Thank you!”
Kahlia beams at Her and she lays her hand over the girl’s forearm before standing. Chris waves at the young girl with one hand and slips the other into his wife’s to lead her down the carpet again.
***
She’s washing her face, her hair undone and pushed back with an actual headband, when Chris comes into the bathroom and leans into the counter next to her. She smiles at him through the mirror. “Did everyone get settled?” She asks as she runs a cloth under warm water to wipe the foam from her face. Shanna is staying with Scott and Steve at their place on the other side of town, but Lisa, Carly and her husband, and the kids are spread throughout the many guestrooms in Chris’s L.A. house.
“Yep. Carly’s across the hall and Ma and the kids are on the other end of the house.”
She nods and accepts the towel he holds out for her. “Did the kids have a good time?” Chris had been so excited that he was headlining a movie that was not only appropriate for his niece and nephews, but actually geared directly toward them. (Well, okay, in many ways it’s actually geared toward people their age, simply because of the nostalgia of it all, but it’s still a family movie.) They’ve watched his Marvel movies, of course, and even attended the Endgame premiere, but that’s still not quite the same as the movie truly being made for them.
“God,” he chuckles, “are you kidding? I think all three of them fell asleep trying to talk over each other because I made the mistake of asking what the best part of the day was.”
“They’re so sweet,” she says as she tosses the towel onto the vanity counter and turns so that her back is to the sink. “I’m really glad everybody was able to come.”
Chris nods as he moves to stand in front of her. “Yeah, it was really nice to be able to make it a family event.” He curls his hands around her waist, and when she blinks up at him, he juts his chin forward. It earns him an eyeroll, but it’s playful and fond and immediately followed by her hopping up onto the counter. “What about you, did you have a good time?” He steps forward, fitting himself between her legs, and she hooks her feet behind his knees.
“I did. I was nervous at first, but I calmed down as it went on. I just kept telling myself that you were the one everyone was really interested in, and as long as I was supporting you, I was good.”
“Well,” he leans forward, kissing her then pulling back again quickly, “you did do a very good job at that, but I wouldn’t say that no one was interested in you.” She tilts her head like a confused puppy and it’s the cutest fucking thing. So cute, in fact, that he has to kiss her again. And after he’s done that, he reaches into the pocket of his sweats as he tells her, “Okay, I know we agreed to no social media, but -”
“Chris!” She shoves at his chest and while he often plays along when she does stuff like that, he stands his ground this time and refuses to budge even an inch, smirking at her when she huffs.
“But,” he goes on, “that rule didn’t extend to Scott, and he sent me some pictures. I think you might like to see them.” She looks at him skeptically, but she doesn’t say no, so he pulls his phone from his pocket and opens the text thread from his brother. The first picture he opens is pretty standard red carpet fare - he’s grinning, one hand high in the air mid-wave, as he answers a question from a reporter with one organization or another. His other hand is curled securely around her hip, holding her close as he talks, and she’s smiling kindly back at the interviewer. She doesn’t say anything about that one, just kind of hums in the back of her throat. “The next one’s better,” he tells her.
The next picture is more about her than him, if he’s being honest. She’s kneeling in front of the little girl who’d been conducting interviews, Her arms resting across her knees and her eyes wide and full of joy as she, from the looks of it, listens to the little girl talk. He’s just behind her, both hands tucked into his pockets, smiling down at her.
“Oh,” She says quietly, “I like that. She was precious.”
Chris hums. “And you made her day.”
“Whatever,” she shakes her head, dismissing him. “She was at a Pixar premiere surrounded by movie stars.”
“Yeah, and you were the one she was looking up to. I mean it,” he tells her when she looks away, “the look on her face when you told her you were a teacher? That was pure admiration. And then when you told her she could be a journalist? She certainly didn’t look at me that way, all starry-eyed.”
She shrugs. “I was just trying to relate to her, like I do with my kids. And she was doing a really good job.”
“And I think hearing that from a teacher really meant a lot to her.”
She doesn’t want to admit it, because it almost feels conceited or something, but his words make her feel really good. She likes connecting with people, making them feel important and proud of themselves; it’s one of the main reasons she loves being a teacher and one of the things that makes her think she might actually be pretty good at it. She certainly hadn’t been expecting that to come into play at his movie premiere, but she can’t say she’s not grateful. She’d been getting by, up to that point, smiling for the cameras, nodding when appropriate, repeating her line about how proud she is of her husband and how ‘exciting’ it was to be on a red carpet for the first time, how happy she was to be sharing that experience with him. But it had been talking to Kahlia that made her feel like she actually had her footing, like she was holding her own. She didn’t change much, outwardly, as they moved forward from that point, but on the inside she felt so much calmer, more at ease. She felt like she actually could support Chris, the way she wanted to. The last thing she’d wanted was for him to be worrying about her, especially when she knows these things are already stressful enough for him as it is.
Chris’s voice breaks into her reverie when he says, “But this one is my favorite.” The last picture he opens was taken a few stops down from the previous one, from the looks of it. It’s not even really a picture of them. The focal point of the picture is Taika being, well, Taika, but they happen to be in the background. They’re waiting for the next interviewer to be ready to speak with them and he’s turned to look down at her while she adjusts his collar where one corner of it has turned up, her eyes focused on his face from under her lashes and her bottom lip between her teeth while she smiles. He’s got one arm around her waist and the other hand in his pocket and even he can see that he’s looking at her like she hung the moon and the stars shine from her smile. He was just so happy to have her there, and to be openly out in public with her, and god, he was so proud of her. She could have been a nervous, anxious mess, walking along at his side, smiling stiffly and never saying a word more than she had to, and he would absolutely have understood. He would have felt terrible that she was uncomfortable, but he would have gotten it, and he certainly wouldn’t have been upset with her. But she didn’t do any of those things. And not only that, but by the end, she was checking in on him, asking how he was doing, if he was tired, finding small, subtle ways to touch him when he started to fidget or stammer. He didn’t want her to feel like it was her responsibility to take care of him, but he knows his wife, and he knows that she actually thrives on being a caregiver, and if she was focused on caring for him, and making sure his anxiety was being kept at bay, then that means she wasn’t being overwhelmed by her own. That’s what had the warm feeling spreading through his chest.
It’s been a while and she hasn’t said anything about the picture, so he lets his eyes drift from the phone to her face, and she looks a little like she might cry. “Hey now,” he chides, but he chuckles as he does it, because he knows those are happy tears resting just along the bottom rims of her eyes.
“Sorry,” she says with a watery giggle. “It’s a really good picture.”
“It is,” he agrees, “but you know that’s how I look at you like, all the time, right?” She shrugs and he scoffs and puts the phone on the counter. “Stop. You know.”
“Maybe. But you only ever do it when I’m not looking.”
He laughs, letting his head fall forward until his forehead lands on her shoulder. Her hands slip over his shoulders, one sliding down his spine as her arm just kind of hangs and the other slipping up into his hair. He breathes into the feeling of her fingers tracing patterns over his scalp. One day, he thinks to himself often, he’s going to have her put paint on her fingertips when she’s doing this to his back, or his chest, or his thigh, so that he can go get the design tattooed into his skin. After a while, when his neck has started to ache and her movements have all but stopped, he turns to press a kiss to the side of her neck then stands up straight again. “You amaze me,” he tells her. “Constantly.”
“Chris -”
“Seriously. You let me disrupt your entire life. You packed up your whole world to come be part of mine. You deal with my … my circus without complaining. I know this isn’t the life you saw for yourself, and I’m sure there are parts of it that you’d be more than happy to do without, and I swear, someday, I will make it up to you. But until then, please just know how much I appreciate you and the fact that you’re willing to put up with all of it, because I really, really don’t want to go back to a life without you in it.”
She curls her hands around the sides of his neck, her thumbs tracing his jawline, and leans in to kiss him. When she parts her lips, he slips his tongue past them and pulls her against him, so that she’s barely perched on the edge of the vanity. She kisses him with more fervor, more urgency, and lifts her legs until her thighs sit at his hips then wraps them tightly around his waist. When he pulls away to kiss along her jawline, she lets him get as far as her ear then she pulls him back, holding his face in her hands.
“It doesn’t matter what I saw for myself, the life I see, the only life I want, has you, right at the center of it. I have loved you since … god, I don’t even know. Probably since you took me to spend a whole day with your family and told me to be myself because no one there was going to judge me. I mean, I couldn’t say it then, that was way too fucking soon,” they both laugh, “and I don’t think I really even knew it yet, but looking back? Yeah, I think it was about then. You didn’t disrupt my life, I didn’t pack up my world to be part of yours, that’s just where our paths met and converged and now, it’s just one path. It’s our circus now,” she smirks and jerks her eyebrows upward. “And just wait ‘til we start making babies. Man, it’s really going to be a juggling act then, with however many little clowns added into the mix.” Her grin widens. “It’s going to be fantastic.”
Butterflies spring to life in Chris’s stomach at the mention of babies. He loves where they are right now, loves being newlyweds, loves having her mostly all to himself, but he really, really can’t wait to have kids with her. He just knows she’s going to be the best mom, and they always talk about being partners, a team, and he can’t imagine anything better to take on together.
So maybe his life is a circus, and maybe hers isn’t anything like what she thought it would be, but whatever it is, it’s theirs now.