Entry tags:

story: castle down

Title: Castle Down (3/6)
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Jon/c!Stephen, Aasif, John Hodgman, Larry/John-O
Warnings: Past slavery, inadvertent abuse; sexy goings-on; possible impending doom.
Disclaimer: Two.

For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. (Alas.)

And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.

In which Stephen is confused but pliant, Jon is in the dark but protective, and there are linguistic misunderstandings, steamy cuddlings, and more magic jewelry.

Decorative capitals continue to be from Daily Drop Cap. List of chapters here.




♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢

tephen woke up warm, alone, and wrapped in the softest blanket he had ever felt.

He took those in reverse order. The soft blanket was the one from the master bedroom; sure enough, when he opened his eyes, he saw not the sheets and pillows of the spare room that had become his assigned place, but the rich curtains of Jon's bed. Which Jon utterly failed to be in. But Stephen felt warm and cozy anyway, because...

...because why? They hadn't done anything.

Well, okay, they had kissed. There had been quite a lot of kissing, if you wanted to be technical about it. And not all on the mouth, either; Stephen could feel the residual tingling on the curve of his jaw, in the hollow of his throat, all down the slope of his neck. To say nothing of the touching, the memories of handprints still caressing him from head to hips.

But that had been all.

Stephen couldn't make sense of it. He had been so ready, too! Not that he wasn't always ready, of course. There had been plenty of times when he was stressed or worn out, but Papa Bear wanted him, so to Papa Bear he had gone. That was his job. That was what pets were for. But this time he had been extra-ready.

It didn't hurt that Jon was so...kind. He didn't lack for authority; Stephen had kept a close eye on him when they went out, seen the way people jumped to do things for him, even while they smiled and conversed with him like equals. And yet, he was almost ridiculously indulgent. Asking which foods Stephen liked (to which Stephen had given the proper answer, "Whatever you think I should eat, sir," and then marveled at how Jon still figured out to bring home extra bacon), fixing his sight (Stephen had seen glasses before, but always held the vague notion that they were just a decoration worn by important people to make themselves look more imposing), dressing him in all-new clothing, giving him more time to relax than he had ever imagined...the list went on.

And Jon hadn't demanded anything during the trip here, so maybe he had been paying attention, maybe he would deliberately avoid giving orders when Stephen was too exhausted to fulfill them....

But of course it was stupid to count on fantasies like that. Much more sensible to pick a time when you were on top of your game, and make the first move. And Stephen had been on the top of his game ever since he recovered from the journey; had to take advantage of that while it lasted.

All that planning, all that calculation, undone by the fact that Jon had adamantly refused to do anything more than heavy petting.

Stephen's whirling thoughts were interrupted as the curtains parted, revealing Jon's full lips and a curious blue-grey eye.

"Ah, good, you don't sleep now," he smiled. "Get dressed. After breakfast, visitors come."

Obediently Stephen scrambled for his clothing. It all made sense now. Last night had been a warm-up: a preliminary attempt to get a feel, literally, for what he had to offer. Today was the main event.

At least he was still ready.


♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢

octor Aasif Mandvi, who according to some stories had emerged from the womb a fully qualified surgeon, did the first examination.

The doctor's Vulpin was smoother than Jon's, so he kept Stephen apprised of each new stage, while Jon tried to commit to memory the words for various diseases and body parts. As usual, Stephen stayed docile so long as Jon was touching him, submitting to all manner of poking and prodding without objection. Even at the most invasive tests, his only sign of discomfort was a tightening of his grip, nails leaving half-moon marks in the skin of Jon's palm.

"There's a tooth-care spell in your shower, right? Make sure he knows where it is," directed Mandvi at last, repeating a similar instruction for Stephen. "And buy more fresh fruit; he needs the vitamins. He's deaf in the right ear — looks like either a birth defect or a childhood injury, no big deal, the other one's fine. And his right wrist is stiff. That one looks like it was broken sometime in the recent past and didn't get set properly. You're going to have to come down to my offices if you want it reset."

"We'll talk about it," said Jon, aware that Stephen was looking anxiously to him. "So, no current injuries? No lingering diseases?"

"Nothing that I can pick up." Mandvi looked meaningfully at the bracelet ringing the damaged wrist. "Whatever you're protecting him from, it hasn't gotten him yet."


♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢

rasping Stephen's hand in his own, Jon said softly, "Can you tell me how this happens?"

"The bracelet?" asked Stephen nervously. It was for him, wasn't it? Was Jon going to take it away? "Is a gift," he continued, because Jon always liked it when he tried to speak the local language. "Is magic. Me does not know how magic."


Jon only gave him the faintest smile before continuing, solemn as ever. "No, your wrist. It's hurt. Does somebody hurt you, before?"

"No!" exclaimed Stephen. Hadn't Papa Bear given Jon his history? Maybe he hadn't been a gift or a proper sale; maybe he was too damaged to be anything but a castoff. He's got no papers, but if you want to take these gems or this land or these unicorns off my hands, I'll throw him in to sweeten the deal. "Is me. Me is wrong, is...." Breaking up, he fell back into Vulpin. "It was an accident. It was all my fault. I can still work just as well, though. See?" He flexed, made a fist, set into a gesture Jon would surely recognize.

"All right, all right!" Jon clasped the hand between his own, then brushed a tender kiss across the knuckles, so quick that Stephen nearly missed it. "Easy, Stephen. I'm just trying to make sure you're safe — and that the Castle isn't in danger from you being here. You've been doing your jobs very well. I'm glad you're here."


♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢

esident expert John Hodgman was known for studying all those areas that more conventional physicians typically feared to investigate. Since Wilmore and Oliver had pronounced Stephen free of any ongoing magical side effects, aside from the ability to inspire abject terror in decks of cards, Jon figured this was the one stone left to turn.

After yet another thorough going-over, which involved not only technical scans but several physical exercises and a battery of questions asked in clipped, precise Vulpin, Hodgman turned to Jon and said, in his disconcerting monotone, "He bears none of the characteristic marks of one who has been a guest of the mole-men."

Jon waited for the rest of it. When Hodgman remained silent, he prompted, "And...?"

The expert bliked owlishly at him. "Was there something else you wanted?"


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urious," pronounced Oliver, leaning over the delicate construction with puzzled intensity. "Very curious indeed. I can feel the sense in the arch of the walls, but what's the prophetic significance of the turrets?"

Wilmore didn't look up from the smoky rose quartz he was tuning. "Uh, John? That's just a house of cards. I had been tuning crystals for two hours, and needed to give my eyes a rest."

"...I knew that," insisted Oliver.

"Mmhmm." Wilmore stretched the dubious hum as far as it would go, like thread being drawn over a loom. Then, in a tone that was, if not quite tender, significantly less dry than usual, he added: "You should go back to bed. These messed-up crystals are taking a lot out of you."

"Oi!" protested Oliver. "You're working just as hard as I am! Don't start acting like you need to protect me just because I'm the pretty one."

"Of course not," deadpanned Wilmore. "How could I ever think you were a delicate flower? Just because you want to go by the name Featherwick."

Oliver shook a finger at him. "Featherwick is a name with a proud wizarding tradition. Besides, it's not the name itself; it's what you do with it that counts. Just walking around with a moniker like Riggle McClintock doesn't automatically make you a leather-clad wilderness-wrangler."

One of Wilmore's eyebrows creaked upwards an eighth of an inch. "Note to self," he said, in a mock undertone. "Buy leather."

An appreciative smirk fought to break across Oliver's face; he fought to keep his upper lip appropriately stiff. "You may think you're quite clever, Mr. Wilmore, but I assure you...Larry? Are you all right?"

Wilmore stood up so abruptly that the wind from his cape sent the house of prophetic cards fluttering to pieces. "John? Help me pick up all the topaz we have in stock. And we'll need some lapis lazuli. And cinnamon. Where did you leave the cinnamon...?"

"Up here." Oliver swept over to a bank of bronze-plated cabinets that stretched nearly to the roof of the cavern. "You want to do a name spell?" he guessed from halfway up the attached ladder. "What are we renaming?"

"We're not renaming anything," declared Larry, pulling the velvet covering from a row of tuning forks and appraising them with care before selecting one. "This thing someone's doing — this thing that, likely as not, they did a trial run of on Stephen — the reason we can't pin it down isn't because it's so evil that good things dare not speak its name. It's because it's so rare that nobody's ever done it. Which means nobody's ever bothered to give it a name in the first place."

"Oh, goodie," sighed Oliver. "When I said I always dreamed of having a magical phenomenon named after me, this is exactly what I had in mind."


♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢

oaning softly, Stephen arched beneath Jon, only the thinnest layers of cotton separating their heated skin.

Jon relished all of it: the little noises, the way Stephen's lashes fluttered, every inch of the contact. At this age, his more delicate parts had their on nights and their off nights, and it felt as though tonight was going to be another off night — not that he was sure Stephen was ready for an on night anyway.

(Asking about that was going to be a challenge. An early query about the limits of Stephen's vocabulary had revealed that, in addition to "hello", "goodbye", "cat", "dog", and the numbers one through six, Stephen knew quite a few of his language's words for bedding men and maidens fair. Whether he understood what actions those terms technically referred to was another question entirely.)

But for the moment Stephen seemed more than content to keep to Jon's pace. And anyway, the preliminaries were a treasure all their own.

He was exploring the contours of that pointed ear with his tongue when Stephen half-shuddered, half-breathed, "Yours. I'm yours."

"Mines," agreed Jon. When the tiniest snort escaped from Stephen's throat, he figured he had said it wrong, and gave up trying to be endearing in Vulpin. "Mine. My Stephen."

Stephen wound delightedly against him, pressing his smiling face against the crook of Jon's neck. "I'm so glad," he whispered, "that Papa Bear gave me to you."

It took a few seconds for Jon to pull apart the unfamiliar grammar. When he rearranged the words in his mind, he jerked away. Stephen fell promptly back onto the pillow, the candlelight casting faint glints in his dark eyes as he looked up at Jon for further cues.

"Stephen," stammered Jon, "nobody gives...gave you to me. I don't even know Papa Bear. You're not a slave here. You understand?"

For a moment it seemed that the sparks in Stephen's eyes winked out, leaving pools of unreadable blackness.

Then the room was flooded with blue-white brilliance, the sapphire in the ring on Jon's bureau glowing bright as a star just as Stephen's knee drove hard and fast into Jon's sternum.

In the blinding light instinct took over—but for all Jon's training, Stephen was faster—a few swift blows plus a thundering rush of anger and all at once he was pinned, fingers digging into his throat, the stunning whiteness going blotchy behind his eyes until it was blotted out entirely.