Chapter Text
Friday
Three go-arounds, the “storm of the century” and very little other option in Tauranga slams them down on the tarmac at a nearby provincial airport instead, with what feels like the ass of the plane hitting first, before the tiny, 50-seater aircraft shudders to a halt in front of a terminal building, several of the other passengers clapping before it seems like everyone else joins in.
The plane reeks of fear, planes usually do, but it’s especially strong in this moment, and only when the beta flight attendant - even her expression cracking at the edges - pushes the door open, cool outside air flooding in, does he find a way to focus.
Chris uncurls his shaking fingers from the aging blue leather of the seat in front of him - he’s not really a bad flyer, but even so - and drags his sorry corpse from the plane, stumbling out into - surprisingly - a genuinely nice morning, unlike the rest of the country; grass sprinkled with dampening frost, no clouds in the sky.
“Yeah, I’m actually fine, boys.” Chip slurs, and then, immediately paling, stumbles three steps off the runway and throws up onto the grass.
“Regional.” Arthur says, looking around with a bit of a disdainful eye, which is almost funny, considering where they’re both from, “apocalypse-coded,” and proceeds to tell them all about Gander, Alaska, after 9/11, as Isaac and Reev grab Chip by the arms and haul him towards the terminal.
“38 planes landed.” Arthur chatters, seemingly unshook by the flight experience for maybe the first time in his life, as Chris’ temples pound through his skull, and everything fucking reeks too much of alpha-pilot-post-a-job-”well”-done. “They wrote a musical about it.”
They and the rest of the passengers pass several other grounded baby planes, as well as a slightly bigger turboprop and a handful of tiny two-seaters, before Chris slips and nearly ends up on the floor of what a nearby sign proclaims as, ‘New Zealand’s most sustainable airport,’ shoes slick on the muddied linoleum.
Inside, the two Air New Zealand staff behind the counter seem entirely unprepared for the swath of incoming passengers, and Reev uses his height over most of the crowd to fight his way through the front of the queue to figure out what’s going on as Chris drags Chip by the sleeve over to a set of free chairs and pushes his hand onto the back of the other man’s sweaty forehead, heat spiralling beneath his fingertips. Chip moans, again, and drops his head between his knees.
“Arthur. Isaac. One of you get Josh a ginger beer or something, yeah?” Not really the done thing to speak to an alpha like that, but Isaac doesn’t care enough about designations to be a dick about it, so he happily trots over to the nearby Darton Field Cafe booth, while Arthur sits down into the chair next to Chip and absently pats him on the back, haphazardly, like he’s not entirely sure how to do it.
“You’re very fine about all this.” Chris says, and pulls a big soft cube seat thing over in front of Chip as he does. The other man still looks pretty bad, and he’s got a fairly good eye for these things.
“Mmm well I thought about if we did crash at least it would be in a really beautiful bit of the world and we’d definitely get on the Wikipedia page for it so that was sort of comforting.” Arthur chatters, “And last time I flew home it was worse so I wasn’t too scared. Were you?”
“Been better.” Arthur, the bastard, at least couldn’t taste the horror in the air, with his stupid scent-minimal thing. On the contrary, next time he flies, Chris decides on the spot, he’s sticking a full tub of Vicks up his nose.
Arthur sits there, as Isaac brings back three ginger beers, brightening entirely as he sits down next to him and distributes them out, and-
Well. The pack bond’s really fucking obvious there, isn’t it? It’s so thick Chris can almost see it.
He sits on his ass in the middle of regional New Zealand, convinces Chip to down a third of the ginger beer, and definitely doesn’t glare at Arthur and Isaac as they chatter happily, seemingly unconcerned by the state of things, arms brushing along each other, happy as anything.
He doesn’t want to hate it.
(Hates it anyway.)
The thing with Friends From Work is that they had genuinely asked him. More than once, actually. Arthur and George cornering him at the dinner table after he’d come home from multiple shoots, Isaac’s surprisingly gentle eyes across the sticky table in the pub, the other Arthur pushier than he’d expected…
And he’d said no every time.
He knows how group channels work. The Eboys, XO, the Chaos Crew - fucking all of them always fall apart, usually leaving careers in the dust after the fact (often for good reasons), and he- doesn’t need that.
Work-life balance, he doesn’t know her, that’s not what it is, but if he thinks too hard about even the possibility of losing any of them it freezes him in his tracks, heart in his throat and-
All of it is too much.
So, enforced distance. He’s better on his own, anyway, with people coming in to spend time with him, and then stepping carefully away.
Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier when George and Arthur come home from shoots, comfortable in their pack bond, bleeding of happy, contented scent, and he feels like an outlier. Most people wouldn’t be so aware of it, but he’s always been scent-maximal, and the intimacy… stings.
“So, news.” Reev says, slumping down next to Chris on the big soft cube chair thing, faint clean alpha scent washing across him, only slightly calming his nerves. “Do you want the bad news or the annoying news?”
“Yes, keep us all in suspense.” Isaac says, from where he’s propped against Arthur. “That’s helpful.”
“Bad news. Storm of the century, they say. No flights out until at least Easter Monday. They’ll email us.”
Cool. It’s Good Friday today. They’re due up in Auckland tomorrow to meet the crew and fly to Melbourne for the second half of the filming schedule. Chris’ head throbs even more. “Can we drive?”
“That’s the annoying bit. Middle of nowhere, here, and recent rain blocked the gorges north and south. We literally can’t get out of here until we can fly.”
So that’s-
Even better.
The airline, with vast swaths of apologies, puts them up in a motel along the city’s expansive main beach. It’s not all that much to look at, a king single and a double in one room, two king singles in the other, a living room full of chintzy artwork and a booklet full of local deals that Chris is fairly sure haven’t been updated since the 80s, with a sign outside that boasts ‘free wifi’, as though that’s a rarity.
The bed, at least, is comfortable, under the strange gold and blue threaded quilt.
The company, however, is not.
Yeah, it made logical sense to give Arthur and Isaac the double, but Chris wishes he’d fought a little harder and made Chip swap in instead for the other bed. At least Reev wouldn’t have smelled like the tang of well-used muscles and happiness; and at least he wouldn’t be all touchy, like Arthur and Isaac are, the casual intimacy tonguing at his raw nerve.
He moves his Australian flights to Thursday, with the rest of them, and buys a three day pass to Jetts, swapping his nice shoes for his trainers, pulling his underwashed hoodie and shorts from his laundry bag, and heads out the door, politely rebuffing any offers of company.
Outside, the day tips into dusk, golden hour making merry on the city’s landscape. He jogs past what was clearly a railway station, once, and across a river, sunset glinting off the reeds and paradise ducks, before passing a food truck with signs advertising ‘birria tacos’ and ‘pāua pies’, that he considers stopping off at on the way back. Google Maps leads him through the dead city centre - he suspects it’s fairly dead even not on a public holiday, a giant yellow supermarket, a BK, a KFC, and finally to the gym.
Half an hour on an exercise bike nearly makes things feel almost bearable, his spine unfurling from the day of travel as he rides. He’s not jealous. He’s not. He refuses to be jealous that Arthur and Arthur and Isaac and George have apparently found what they need as a foursome, that they’ve solved the pack problem, that they’re all happy now.
Whatever.
He’s not jealous.
Across the empty gym, a muscular, shirtless alpha drips with sweat and pre-heat, lifting himself up and down on the pull-up bar, gaze lingering on him. Dark, complicated knots of tattooing cover his tan skin from knees to waist, and Chris can’t seem to draw his eyes away as sweat runs down across his abs.
The alpha raises his eyebrows at him, a seeming you keen? clear in his gaze and…
He’s… not not keen.
He slips off the exercise bike, stumbling across the gym floor, and follows the alpha towards the gym bathrooms. Sometimes it’s easier to just let things happen. Sometimes it’s easier not to fight it.
Sometimes it’s easier not to think.
After, he wipes a bead of cum off his chin, and notices the alpha looking at him, eyebrows quirked in almost-recognition. “Chuuur, I was wondering this entire time, cuz. You’re ChrisMD, aren’t you?”
Fuck. The throb in his temples returns with a vengeance. “Who’s that?” He croaks, and hopes the off-Australian accent he reaches for is enough to cover him.
Somehow, he thinks it isn’t.
Reev just raises an eyebrow at him when he returns, the vague muskiness of arousal clearly shimmering across his skin, but doesn’t say anything. As he distributes tacos, pāua pies and various salady items, Chip clearly has no qualms, and says, “So you go and find a glory hole or something, bro?”
Chris chokes on air. Fucking hell.