#chrisnessa

[they didn't skive often, but i picture them as students who do well in class because it's expected, however they're not stand-outs by any means really.]

[if we want to get super into it, we could also say that the classes they ditched were the ones where their teachers had no concrete facts about their home lives, but could colour in the picture enough to not say anything when they needed to get air]

i think that vanessa was the first to open up about her parents and her mother especially and her older half-brother

not immediately spouting off about them, but little, carefully crafted comments dropped here and there until she could get a gauge on what chris thought

i think they bonded over overbearing and critical mothers and rather absentee fathers

it was slightly different for vanessa because her mother had been married thrice, and as a result she had an older brother

i think their gap in age is at least six or eight years. enough to really notice a difference in their upbringing

chris didn't speak often about his mother but when vanessa would rant about something and her words hit close to home, there was a certain set to his jaw that she learned to pick up on

i think eventually there was a parents' day and chris and vanessa accidentally bumped into each other again, but their mothers were present

and before they could hide that they knew each other, they were accidentally too familiar with their body language to have just been two teenagers who met on the street

celia immediately was on the defence against vanessa, thinking that she was going to usurp her place as the number one woman in chris' life

that feeling was quickly assuaged by kathryn wilcock-wynn-carroway's presence, which eclipsed vanessa's

celia found her kindred spirit

(of course, this didn't mean that the two women weren't jealous of each other's lives or didn't gossip about them to their friends)

(they were very frenemy coded with a kind of false nicety that would set your teeth on edge)

[they're the worst mothers in the world i love them so much]

as chris and vanessa got older, their interests and life paths shifted

chris ended up moving to cornley to join the polytechnic's drama program

vanessa moved to london to work on a communications and public relations degree at university of east london

(we know how their stories go from here, chris with cpds and the murder at haversham manor. vanessa gets an internship with the bbc where she's required to work as a receptionist once a month over the eight or nine months it is. she is able to get a spot in their fellowship program* and continue to work at the bbc whilst studying)

*i have no idea if the bbc has a fellowship program, but it sure does sound nice eh?

the two of them fell out of touch for the most part, occasionally sending emails and letters around birthdays and holidays

and then a christmas carol happened

chris isn't stupid

he knew that vanessa knew who he was and what he was planning on doing

she grew up with him

and he grew up with her.

he knew that her observational skills were much, much better than what she showed to the rest of the cast

there's no way that she didn't see them sneaking into the studios again, that she didn't see the fire alarm get pulled

especially not with their costumes and the two cameras they were toting with them

the next week he emails her

begs her to join the little acting troupe he's in

partially because he knows her mother would hate it

partially because he knows his parents would find it irritating

but mostly because he misses his friend

sandra has usurped the role of best friend in his life

but vanessa was there first

saw him when he was still figuring out who he was, what he wanted, and maybe most importantly, what he didn't want

and he knows that she didn't want to be behind that desk for the rest of her life

he wasn't sure if she'd like being on stage, but trevor's a good stage manager. she'd do well backstage, too

he just…

he just wants to see his best friend again

He's talking about Shakespeare, he's talking about Wilde, he's looking at off-Broadway and off-West End up-and-coming shows

He's looking at what's promising (u&c shows), what's timeless (older, well-known shows), and what he appreciates about them or what he thinks is outdated or sucked in execution (all).

Once a month, he'll perform a scene from a play he wrote himself.

There are several plays he's penned from which he chooses each month, performing scenes that are disjointed, so his ideas cannot be potentially stolen.

He does have a Patreon, the patrons dubbed “The Screen Beans.”

One of the things he does every other week is a live Q&A while he does mundane things like cleaning his office or making a meal or holds yarn for someone off-screen.

There are fancams in the #ScreenBeans tags across social media of his lives due to Chris' much more laid-back personality.

(Laid-back is a relative term here. He is still very conscious of what he says and does, however he wears his glasses or forgets to shave a few days before the lives or is wearing cosy-looking handmade jumpers.)

His Instagram account is active, and he posts at least thrice a week. Each post is something specific for the day, like #HoratioMondays, #WednesdayViewings, and #SaturdayShots.

Horatio is a beloved feature of his channel. A nearly completely black cat with white spots on the end of his tail, over one eye, and on one paw, the little guy is missing half of one of his ears. He has brilliant green eyes, though, that look like emeralds when the light hits him right.

Chris had, in his late-teens one night walking to his flat, stumbled across Horatio as a small, weak, and thin kitten. He instantly picked him up and took him back to his flat. Though there were two other roommates there, Chris was positive that they would be fine with it.

(This was in part due to having seen Kevin's family cat in the family pictures around the flat, and also knowing the Patels since he and Kev were in Primary. Their other roommate was a friend of a friend named Max Bennett, and he was surprisingly easy-going and adored animals.)

Horatio Mondays are of the now almost twelve-year-old cat going about his life.

Sometimes they're videos of him staring at a bug on the window or of him dropping one of his toys into his mini water fountain and then releasing the most pitiful and cooked yowl for Chris to rescue it.

Other times they're pictures of him curled up on the little bed Chris has for him in his office, slightly messy selfies of the two of them together, or pictures of Horatio dressed up for whatever holiday or event is approaching.

Wednesday Viewings are sneak peaks into what his video on Friday will be about. Sometimes it's a shot of the title card of the movie or TV show. Others it's an artfully done picture of a book of a play open with several pens and sticky notes scattered in and around it.

Saturday Shots are just pictures of anything particularly interesting Chris did during the week, or pictures and videos taken during a stroll in the park near his flat, or pictures with his friends at cafés or theatres.

Many people are surprised by who Chris is friends with, not expecting to see the Sandra Wilkinson, the Robert Grove, and the Vanessa Wilcock-Wynn-Carroway with him.

Well, okay, Sandra and Robert make sense given that both of them are well-known acting vloggers, too. But it always throws new viewers off to find out that Chris and Vanessa are engaged.

The two of them are very good at keeping their accounts separate and compartmentalized.

Once they announce their engagement on both of their channels, however, the divide they had slowly erodes away and Vanessa can be seen occasionally in his lives, sometimes even joining in for a few minutes. She also starts to feature more heavily on his Instagram page, along with her cat Othello.

(Screen Beans are shook to find out that Chris had been hiding an entire whole ass cat from them for years. Especially one as fluffy as Othello. When asked about it in a live Q&A that he did on Instagram after his engagement announcement video went up, he chalked the lack of Othello up to the fact that he can close his office door while he films. And that Othello likes to sleep most of the time on his and Vanessa's bed or hang out with her while she works on a new pattern or design or challenge.)