Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2013-06-14 03:29 am
ptahrrific) wrote2013-06-14 03:29 am
Entry tags:
Fake News | ensemble | PG-13 | Shout*For, chapter 8
Title: Shout*For, chapter 8: You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Characters/Pairings: Jon+"Stephen"+Jimmy, Olivia+Kristen, cameos.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Panicky teenage sexual identity crises for everyone! Plus, Olivia and Stephen continue to wrestle with boundary issues re: the paparazzi and Stephen's manager. Oh, and our heroes end up in a couple of showtune-based showdowns along the way.
The songs, in the order they're quoted: Defying Gravity, Another Hundred People, Mon Histoire, The Song of Hope, I Don't Know How To Love Him, Jesus Must Die. (There's audio out there of the actual Stephen singing the relevant bits of Another Hundred People and Jesus Must Die.)
Partly sunny LA, the weekend after the end of shooting for "The Princess And The Pop Star".
Stephen, Olivia, and a borrowed dog were in a gorgeous, palm-lined park getting their pictures taken. Not that photographers were allowed inside the park, but they had been instructed to make a couple of passes by the roads.
It was Olivia's turn to pick a tune. "Something has changed within me~" she began.
"Wicked!" interrupted Stephen. "At least try to challenge me, here."
The dog, a mid-size mutt with curly white fur so thick you could barely see its face, bounded up to them, frisbee in mouth. Stephen dropped to his knees in the grass and retrieved the purple plastic disc (why didn't anyone make luxury frisbees? Maybe he should start a brand for it). A swing of his arm, and both it and the dog were zooming off across the bike path.
"Another hundred people just got off of the train / And came up through the ground~ / While another hundred people just got off of the bus—"
"Company. Don't you know anything that isn't Sondheim?" teased Olivia, before breaking into something decidedly non-American. "Je suis toute seule encore une fois~ / Sans une ami, sans rien à faire..."
"No fair!" protested Stephen. "You never said we could use other languages!"
Olivia grinned. "Does that mean you're giving up?"
"I didn't say that! Keep going."
"Je suis pas pressée de retrouver / Ma solitude et ma misère," chorused Olivia, while Stephen tried to recognize the words. He'd learned plenty of songs not in English, but phonetically — rendered in IPA — so he didn't have to keep the languages straight or recognize the different scripts or have any idea what they actually meant.
On the other hand, if he blocked it all out and just focused on the tune..."Les Mis!"
"Yeah, yeah." Olivia's purse chimed; she stopped to pull out her phone, and was briefly lost to typing.
The pause gave Stephen time to plan his strategy. Even the return of the dog couldn't distract him. It dropped the frisbee at his feet and whined; Olivia came to its rescue, and once it had torn off again, Stephen began: "Undulávë ilyë~ / Tier lomé..."
Still crouching from frisbee-retrieval duty, Olivia glared suspiciously up at him. "Is that a real language?"
Stephen stuck out his tongue, plopped down beside her with his legs stretching out along the grass, and continued. "Ar caita mornië~ / sindanóriello," he sang. "I falmalinnar imbë met~ / Oialë...."
"I think you're just making syllables up. Sing it again."
Stephen did, from the top, in perfect Sindarin. Oh yeah, he had this round locked.
Olivia, though, had her brow furrowed and her lips pushed out in a way that looked more thoughtful than baffled. "I bet it's some geek language," she said. "And it's too nice to be Klingon...and I know there isn't a Game of Thrones musical yet...so...ooh! There's a Lord of the Rings musical! Is that it?"
Stephen also knew the Sindarin for "go kiss an orc," and said it.
Olivia's next move was Hairspray, Stephen countered with Aida ("Okay, do you know anything that isn't Sondheim, Tolkien, or Elton John?"), Olivia nearly threw him with Brigadoon, and he came back with The Lion King (one of the songs from the stage musical that wasn't in the movie). At that point he wondered if Olivia had stopped trying, because she went with a tune from Enchanted, as if Stephen hadn't had that soundtrack memorized the week it came out.
Their shadows were getting longer: the sun was inching lower in the sky, painting it orange, totally clashing with the shade of the neatly trimmed grass. Stephen took a swig of his Prescott-brand energy drink (he'd been shipped a complimentary case of it, and had been drinking little else for days). The dog trotted up to them again and flopped down on its side next to Olivia, panting in a friendly sort of way.
"Did we ever get the dog's name?" asked Stephen.
Olivia shrugged. "I guess we'll have to look at the press release later and find out." She ruffled the dog's curly head. "So are you forfeiting?"
"No, I'm thinking," said Stephen testily.
Songs, songs, songs. Songs that didn't advertise exactly what musical they were from in the lyrics. You couldn't start singing "Into the woods, and down the dell~" or "The naming of cats is a difficult matter~" or "We're not gonna pay last year's rent~" and expect your opponent to have any doubt that they came from Into The Woods and Cats and Hippie Freeloaders That Need To Get A Job (as Stephen's father insisted on calling that last one).
Olivia was cooing to the dog. "Who's a good publicity prop? You! You are! Yes you are!"
He could probably throw her off by launching into a song from a really forgettable musical. Like The Princess and the Frog (which had featured fabulous, fabulous clothing but not a memorable song in the bunch). The trouble with that plan was, Stephen couldn't remember any of them either.
"Ooh, such a good boy. Or girl. They didn't tell us that either, did they? No they did not. No!"
This was turning out to be almost as hard as playing against Jimmy. The two of them knew all the same musicals, so they'd been locked in a never-ending stalemate for at least a year.
The phone in Olivia's purse did its little chime noise again. She pulled it out and read the text, snorted in amusement, and was giggling as she typed a reply.
Stephen wondered if it would be easier or harder to play against Jon. He wasn't even sure Jon knew any musicals, besides things like Avenue Q and Spamalot. Maybe Jon would get more into them once somebody wrote a musical out of Springsteen songs, the way they had with Billy Joel and ABBA. Maybe Stephen should challenge Jon to a Springsteen-off, instead of a normal musical-off. Except that Jon would kill at a Springsteen-off, and Stephen just wanted him to be a formidable opponent, not to actually win.
Olivia put her phone away and went back to scratching behind the dog's ears.
"I~ don't know how to take this..." trilled Stephen.
"Hm? Speak up!" said Olivia. The dog chose that moment to join in with an off-key howl. "No, not you!" she told it. "Shush now."
"...I don't see why he moves me." Stephen's voice cracked for a second — maybe this hadn't been the best choice, lyric-wise — but they were far enough in that nobody could be recording. Right? "He's a man~," he pressed on, "he's just a man / And I've had so many men before~ / In very many ways / He's just one more...."
"Whoa," said Olivia. "What kind of pornographic musicals have you been listening to?"
Stephen nearly choked. "It's not pornographic!" he spluttered, horrified. "It's Christian!"
Olivia lit up. "Is it Jesus Christ Superstar? That's the only Christian musical I've heard of."
"No fair!" cried Stephen. "You tricked me into giving you a hint. That doesn't count!"
Olivia gave him a friendly shove in the arm. "Not my fault you're so gullible," she declared, and started into a few bars of another song.
Stephen sulked, pulled his knees up to his chest...and didn't take in a note.
"Well?" demanded Olivia. "Are you even listening?"
"I wish I was straight," said Stephen quietly.
"That's a dumb wish," said Olivia, without a second of hesitation.
Stephen blinked hard. Not that he was going to cry or anything. He was just re-wetting his contact lenses, that was all. "You think?"
"Well, yeah. You don't want to be going into a musical-theater-off with me with a handicap."
The dog had trotted over and was butting its head against Stephen. He hugged it, petting and kneading its head and neck, getting curly fur all over his eighty-dollar T-shirt. "That's a good point," he allowed. "Sing that one you were just singing again? I didn't catch it the first time."
~*~
Jon didn't know when it had started. It had snuck up on him, completely unannounced. He was thinking about how to help Stephen with this whole Canada-phobia problem, and then all of a sudden he realized that no, he was just thinking about Stephen.
They were dolled up in matching outfits to do a photoshoot for a magazine ad (promoting either the jeans or the shoes, or maybe both, Jon hadn't figured it out), which involved sitting around on a lot of fake walls in front of a nice neutral backdrop and arranging their legs in dynamic, eye-catching angles. It was sure working with Stephen's. Jon kept staring at him, eyes traveling from the designer running shoes (they all had matching pairs, but palette-swapped; Stephen's had a red stripe along the sides) up the long legs in tightly fitted skinny jeans.
At last the director arranged them in a setup where Jon basically had to stare at the back of Stephen's head the whole time...and it didn't help. Since when could the slope of someone's neck be that mesmerizing? Jon had never in his life fantasized about running his tongue along somebody's shoulder blade — let alone another guy's shoulder blade — and it wasn't like he'd had any shortage of fantasies. But now, in a position where he could have easily stretched out his leg and traced Stephen's spine with his toes, he was —
— he was not thinking about anything, because he was also wearing skinny jeans, and this was Not The Time.
When they got back to the dressing room, Jon forewent his usual faff-around-at-the-sinks ritual and fled straight into the shower. A very cold shower. During which he strenuously avoided thinking about things like "how Stephen looks when sensually sliding his fingers in and out of his mouth, pseudo-Simba costume notwithstanding" and "whether Stephen would like it if I called him principessa" and "that time Stephen said I was sexy" and "why I was so horribly distracted back when I thought Stephen might have a thing for Olivia, anyway."
Especially not when Stephen was right there in the stall next to him, humming.
Jon was doing better by the time they were all out, dressed, and divvying up the fruit-and-cheese platter. Still, after helping himself to a few slices of kiwi, he spent the break hiding behind his English textbook — even after Stephen was gone.
~*~
Gloria & Jane's wasn't the same without Olivia's boundless pie-enthusiasm. (Piethusiasm?) Even Jimmy and Jon together just couldn't match it. Stephen wouldn't have gone at all, but they had come up with three custom American-apple-pie recipes, and needed him to make the final call on which would be added to their menu under his name. Once he decided, out came a photographer, and Stephen grinned for the camera while holding a fresh slice of the winner.
Then it was up to his friends to do away with the losers.
"So, ah, Stephen," said Jon, picking at the crust end of Choice #2, "I've been thinking. About this whole Canada problem. Is now a good time?"
Stephen swallowed a mouthful of apple and licked a trail of honey off his spoon. "Now is a great time! What do we do?"
Jon shrugged. He still hadn't touched the puff of whipped cream on the side of his plate. Another minute or two and Stephen was going to commandeer it. "I don't know, exactly. You'll have to make another decision first. Unless you used up all your judgment-passing powers for the day on the pie?"
Jimmy giggled. Stephen elbowed him before replying. "Jon, I always have judgment to pass. Lay it on me."
"Right," said Jon, and put down his fork in a final sort of way. (Stephen took that as his cue to scoop up the whipped cream early.) "The way I see it — hey! — oh, fine, you can have it. The way I see it, any strategy you use is going to have to come from one of a couple basic categories."
"Uh-huh."
"First option: you pretend there's something wrong with you. Say, fake that you're sick the day before. Second option: you get something actually wrong with you. Deliberately eat raw chicken or something."
Stephen made a face.
"Yeah, I know. But it'll be harder for anyone to accuse you of faking it if you're actually throwing up or whatever. Uh, of people who know you, I mean." Jon grimaced. "Of the rest of the world, either of those tactics is going to stir up people who think it's a cover-up and you're secretly in rehab. Thus the third option: make it so you can't perform, but it's not your fault. Like if you and me faked a fight, and I gave you a black eye."
"I don't like any of these options," said Stephen, looking morosely down at his whipped cream. The threat of Ned maybe-possibly using their time alone together to expand on the creepy Jafar-type touching didn't sound so bad next to the threat of Jon most-definitely punching him in the face.
"I figured you wouldn't," said Jon. "Um, the fourth option is to do — or fake, it doesn't make a difference this time — something where you can still perform, but the CW decides to back out of the deal. I'm not saying you should torch a building or anything, but that's the general category."
"Man, this all sounds so logical when you lay it out like that," said Jimmy wistfully.
"Of course it does," said Stephen with confidence. "Jon knows everything about logic. I like option four. So what does the CW not like that isn't burning down buildings?"
"Ooh, I know!" exclaimed Jimmy. In a hushed voice, he added, "We could find out if there are any handsome Italian guys living around here."
Stephen caught his breath and felt the sudden need to take a long drink of water.
"That's not really as big a deal on, uh, grown-up networks," said Jon, lowering his voice too. Stephen was glad the table was a circle, so neither of them was totally on his deaf side. "He'd probably get dropped by the Mouse, and nobody else would even care."
"I dunno," said Jimmy. "I saw some people on the Internet saying that network has a whole thing about covering up some of their stars', um, not-so-straight relationships."
"Yeah, well, that's people on the Internet," sighed Jon. "People on the Internet are insane."
"They're not that insane," said Stephen without thinking.
Jon gaped.
"Not all of them, anyway!" stammered Stephen, thinking quickly. Besides, Jon was probably thinking about "Stewson", and yeah, that was nuts. "Some of them vote for Shout*For in Your Favorite Teen Band polls, so you know those ones are cool. They get it. They're it-getters."
"Right, sure," said Jon, pulling himself together. "Anyway, before you guys keep planning, there was one more option...."
Good job, Col-bert, Stephen told himself. He had successfully avoided having to let Jimmy know that "Stimmy" existed, while also avoiding spilling to Jon that if Jimmy were a little less straight...if he'd had a different reaction back when a thirteen-year-old Stephen (just a kid, really, so different from now, when at almost sixteen he was practically an adult) had asked to kiss him....
"Stephen?" said Jimmy, waving a hand in his face. "Jon says there's another option."
Stephen snapped back to the present. "What? Yes! I am listening very closely. Say it again?"
"The fifth option," said Jon, "is to be a total diva and make the whole thing somebody else's problem. Tell Ned that you won't go, that even if someone picks you up and carries you the whole way to the Vancouver set you won't say your lines, and that he can either come up with a graceful way to get you out of it or he'll just have to put up with the embarrassment."
A shiver went through Stephen at the thought. Not at what Ned might do if he tried it, either. Ned would just lean in real close and stroke his leg and say, gentle as you please, Now, buddy, you don't want to do that. What will your father think? That would be the scary part: what Papa would say.
Jimmy voiced part of Stephen's thoughts. "That's not going to work," he explained to Jon. "Ned's too...slippery to be pushed around like that. He'd either talk Stephen out of doing it, or he'd sit back and call Stephen's bluff."
"Brian, then?" said Jon. "He's the least slippery person I've ever met. Out of Hollywood people, anyway."
"I dunno," mumbled Stephen. Brian had been a lot of help when Jon had needed it, but that hadn't involved going up against Ned. "Can I think about it?"
Jon shrugged. "I don't see why not. At least, for the next ten days or so. After that you'll either have to pick something, or suck it up and get ready to face the moose."
~*~
<3 Olivia <3
Sucks not 2 b shooting w/ u anymore.
<3 Olivia <3
Pool party 2nite?
Stephen*Colbert
you are a lovely person Olivia
Stephen*Colbert
but I have spent 3 nights this week w/you
Stephen*Colbert
incl. movie night which is a travesty and proves our PR people are soulless vultures
<3 Olivia <3
but that was fake romance time!! it doesnt count!
<3 Olivia <3
this would be real friendship time
<3 Olivia <3
Jimmy & Jon are also invited ofc
Stephen*Colbert
you are a gentlewoman and a scholar but I am afraid I must decline
Stephen*Colbert
well not really a scholar I guess
Stephen*Colbert
but the point still stands
<3 Olivia <3
hey I am doing school! on a decelerated rate but thats still more than u sir
Stephen didn't even answer that one. Olivia dropped the phone onto her unicorn duvet, fell backwards onto the bed, and pulled a pillow over her face to smother the groan.
"You have to remember not to do that while your nails are drying," chided the muffled version of Kristen from the non-pillow-covered rest of Olivia's room. She was going to apply the polish to Olivia's just as soon as the cartoon faces on her own were set.
Olivia threw the pillow off to one side and rolled over to face her friend. Kristen was spinning in one of the room's several wheeled chairs, waving her hands through the air. The fiber optic lamp on the bureau next to her swept softly through colors: blue, green, purple. "I know, I know."
"So I guess your famous friends aren't going to come hang out, huh," said Kristen.
A soft breeze clinked the chimes over a couple of Olivia's windows. Outside, two gulls got into a squawking fight. "What do you mean, 'famous' friends? You're famous. There are girls all over the country with your face on wall decals. Probably a few boys, too."
"Oh, definitely boys," purred Kristen, momentarily distracted by the opportunity to work in some innuendo. "I mean, who wouldn't want to plaster their door with stickers featuring...." She passed her hands down her body, tracing a thoroughly inaccurate hourglass shape. "...all this?"
"No kidding." Olivia swung herself up and off the bed, getting ahold of the back of Kristen's chair. Hands still unavailable, Kristen squeaked and tried to keep control over her direction with her feet, but Olivia successfully twirled the seat until it was facing the big mirror over the bureau. She leaned over Kristen's shoulder and did her best high-fashion haughty appraisal of their reflections. "And now, for Versace, coming down the Paris runway...."
Kristen tossed back her curls, catching Olivia in the face. "...and with a face that does not move, because I may secretly be a robot, you'll never know...."
"...the new queen of the catwalk!" Olivia snaked her hands under Kristen's arms and got two handfuls of her sundress. It had a belt around the waist, but mostly for decoration; the satiny red fabric was pretty loose. Until Olivia pulled it taut, anyway. "And her cleavage!"
Kristen squealed, wriggled for a second, then recovered. "Yeah, and this is without any 'little helpers', Miss Padded Bra."
"Uh-huh. You better—" began Olivia automatically, on track to finish with something like be prepared to back that up! She cut herself off just in time, because that was getting a little weird, wasn't it?
When Kristen arched her spine, the muscles in her lower back flexed under Olivia's hands. "The cougar is a force of nature that cannot be contained!" she said, punctuating it with a growl and a flash of her nails.
See, there was absolutely no reason for Olivia to fear being the weird one here. She swallowed and tried to pull herself together.
"Hey," said Kristen, more seriously, "are you okay there?"
"Yeah," breathed Olivia. It came out low and heavy, her breath hot against Kristen's skin. "Are you, uh. Are you wearing perfume or something?"
"Oh, I totally forgot to tell you!" exclaimed Kristen. "Some company sent the studio a ton of samples, so I grabbed a couple. You were already off doing the movie shooting. The box is probably still in makeup."
"Uh-huh." Olivia let her grip relax. Now her hands were just resting on Kristen's waist. She should really move them. Soon. "It smells...really good."
"...Thanks." Kristen blinked at the mirror, not posing or mugging now, just her unfiltered adorable doll-eyed self. Were her cheeks a little pinker than usual? Or was it just that Olivia's face under the freckles was extra-pale?
Stephen's voice flashed through Olivia's head: I wish I was straight.
Kristen's lips parted. "You—"
A phone chimed.
Olivia jumped. Kristen only twitched before tipping her head towards Olivia's bed. "You gonna get that?"
"Yes!" said Olivia, unwinding her hands from Kristen's body and trying to pull back without falling over. "Yeah, sorry, just a second."
Jon S.
Hey, Stephen said you wanted to hang out. We're having a belated movie night. Want to join in?
Jon S.
It involves Jasmine as a dominatrix for some reason, if that helps you decide.
"Okay, so we can still totally go ahead and work on my nails," said Olivia, "but in the name of informed consent I should tell you that we have also been invited to chill with the guys and a dominatrix Jasmine. Which either means that one episode of the Aladdin animated series, or Stephen's not-so-secret thing about wanting to be a Disney princess just took a completely unexpected turn."
"Well," said Kristen, in a tone of greatest solemnity, "I don't think I can in good conscience miss either of those."
~*~
When Jon had sent Olivia (and, by proxy, Kristen) the invitation, he had not realized it would mean turning movie night into movie-and-nail-polish night.
He and Jimmy both agreed to submit to the clear stuff; it was supposed to be healthy for your nails anyway. Stephen got his done in ruby-red glitter.
Jon kept telling himself to relax, but every time Stephen's fingers brushed a little too close he flinched all over again, heart racing. He figured he'd get a reprieve when the show came on, and it worked — but not for long. Instead of queuing up a movie-length sequence of episodes, they only watched one before getting into a multi-person musical-off.
Which Jon managed to get himself eliminated from after three turns.
Resigned to his fate, Jon pulled his beanbag chair a little ways back out of the circle and tried to enjoy the show. He heard Stephen's and Jimmy's singing voices all the time, but not usually with so much range or such interesting material; Olivia of course was a world-class talent, and Kristen, while not quite in the same league as the others, could carry a tune just fine.
He also tried to entertain the idea that he was only having all these uncomfortable feelings about Stephen because Stephen was so, well, girly sometimes. Raging teenage hormones were bound to get confused around a slender, smooth-faced guy who liked to be called princess and wear tiaras and have brilliantly-colored nails, right? Especially when their whole professional schtick at this point involved being sexy in kind of an androgynous way, because their target audience was still kind of wigged-out by capital-M Men. Perfectly understandable. No reasons here to get into some kind of unnecessary...and scary...and possibly contract-violating sexual identity crisis....
"No, wait!" exclaimed Stephen in a low voice. For a second Jon thought he was calling a halt on the game. Then he dropped lower, sliding into a bona fide baritone, to rumble, "We need a more permanent solution to our problem...."
Oh dear lord. Jon hadn't known Stephen could do that.
Jimmy was clapping, and Kristen was saying something, probably the name of the musical, and Jon was still shaking. So much for the girliness theory. Goddamn.
He was so screwed.
Characters/Pairings: Jon+"Stephen"+Jimmy, Olivia+Kristen, cameos.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Panicky teenage sexual identity crises for everyone! Plus, Olivia and Stephen continue to wrestle with boundary issues re: the paparazzi and Stephen's manager. Oh, and our heroes end up in a couple of showtune-based showdowns along the way.
The songs, in the order they're quoted: Defying Gravity, Another Hundred People, Mon Histoire, The Song of Hope, I Don't Know How To Love Him, Jesus Must Die. (There's audio out there of the actual Stephen singing the relevant bits of Another Hundred People and Jesus Must Die.)
Stephen, Olivia, and a borrowed dog were in a gorgeous, palm-lined park getting their pictures taken. Not that photographers were allowed inside the park, but they had been instructed to make a couple of passes by the roads.
It was Olivia's turn to pick a tune. "Something has changed within me~" she began.
"Wicked!" interrupted Stephen. "At least try to challenge me, here."
The dog, a mid-size mutt with curly white fur so thick you could barely see its face, bounded up to them, frisbee in mouth. Stephen dropped to his knees in the grass and retrieved the purple plastic disc (why didn't anyone make luxury frisbees? Maybe he should start a brand for it). A swing of his arm, and both it and the dog were zooming off across the bike path.
"Another hundred people just got off of the train / And came up through the ground~ / While another hundred people just got off of the bus—"
"Company. Don't you know anything that isn't Sondheim?" teased Olivia, before breaking into something decidedly non-American. "Je suis toute seule encore une fois~ / Sans une ami, sans rien à faire..."
"No fair!" protested Stephen. "You never said we could use other languages!"
Olivia grinned. "Does that mean you're giving up?"
"I didn't say that! Keep going."
"Je suis pas pressée de retrouver / Ma solitude et ma misère," chorused Olivia, while Stephen tried to recognize the words. He'd learned plenty of songs not in English, but phonetically — rendered in IPA — so he didn't have to keep the languages straight or recognize the different scripts or have any idea what they actually meant.
On the other hand, if he blocked it all out and just focused on the tune..."Les Mis!"
"Yeah, yeah." Olivia's purse chimed; she stopped to pull out her phone, and was briefly lost to typing.
The pause gave Stephen time to plan his strategy. Even the return of the dog couldn't distract him. It dropped the frisbee at his feet and whined; Olivia came to its rescue, and once it had torn off again, Stephen began: "Undulávë ilyë~ / Tier lomé..."
Still crouching from frisbee-retrieval duty, Olivia glared suspiciously up at him. "Is that a real language?"
Stephen stuck out his tongue, plopped down beside her with his legs stretching out along the grass, and continued. "Ar caita mornië~ / sindanóriello," he sang. "I falmalinnar imbë met~ / Oialë...."
"I think you're just making syllables up. Sing it again."
Stephen did, from the top, in perfect Sindarin. Oh yeah, he had this round locked.
Olivia, though, had her brow furrowed and her lips pushed out in a way that looked more thoughtful than baffled. "I bet it's some geek language," she said. "And it's too nice to be Klingon...and I know there isn't a Game of Thrones musical yet...so...ooh! There's a Lord of the Rings musical! Is that it?"
Stephen also knew the Sindarin for "go kiss an orc," and said it.
Olivia's next move was Hairspray, Stephen countered with Aida ("Okay, do you know anything that isn't Sondheim, Tolkien, or Elton John?"), Olivia nearly threw him with Brigadoon, and he came back with The Lion King (one of the songs from the stage musical that wasn't in the movie). At that point he wondered if Olivia had stopped trying, because she went with a tune from Enchanted, as if Stephen hadn't had that soundtrack memorized the week it came out.
Their shadows were getting longer: the sun was inching lower in the sky, painting it orange, totally clashing with the shade of the neatly trimmed grass. Stephen took a swig of his Prescott-brand energy drink (he'd been shipped a complimentary case of it, and had been drinking little else for days). The dog trotted up to them again and flopped down on its side next to Olivia, panting in a friendly sort of way.
"Did we ever get the dog's name?" asked Stephen.
Olivia shrugged. "I guess we'll have to look at the press release later and find out." She ruffled the dog's curly head. "So are you forfeiting?"
"No, I'm thinking," said Stephen testily.
Songs, songs, songs. Songs that didn't advertise exactly what musical they were from in the lyrics. You couldn't start singing "Into the woods, and down the dell~" or "The naming of cats is a difficult matter~" or "We're not gonna pay last year's rent~" and expect your opponent to have any doubt that they came from Into The Woods and Cats and Hippie Freeloaders That Need To Get A Job (as Stephen's father insisted on calling that last one).
Olivia was cooing to the dog. "Who's a good publicity prop? You! You are! Yes you are!"
He could probably throw her off by launching into a song from a really forgettable musical. Like The Princess and the Frog (which had featured fabulous, fabulous clothing but not a memorable song in the bunch). The trouble with that plan was, Stephen couldn't remember any of them either.
"Ooh, such a good boy. Or girl. They didn't tell us that either, did they? No they did not. No!"
This was turning out to be almost as hard as playing against Jimmy. The two of them knew all the same musicals, so they'd been locked in a never-ending stalemate for at least a year.
The phone in Olivia's purse did its little chime noise again. She pulled it out and read the text, snorted in amusement, and was giggling as she typed a reply.
Stephen wondered if it would be easier or harder to play against Jon. He wasn't even sure Jon knew any musicals, besides things like Avenue Q and Spamalot. Maybe Jon would get more into them once somebody wrote a musical out of Springsteen songs, the way they had with Billy Joel and ABBA. Maybe Stephen should challenge Jon to a Springsteen-off, instead of a normal musical-off. Except that Jon would kill at a Springsteen-off, and Stephen just wanted him to be a formidable opponent, not to actually win.
Olivia put her phone away and went back to scratching behind the dog's ears.
"I~ don't know how to take this..." trilled Stephen.
"Hm? Speak up!" said Olivia. The dog chose that moment to join in with an off-key howl. "No, not you!" she told it. "Shush now."
"...I don't see why he moves me." Stephen's voice cracked for a second — maybe this hadn't been the best choice, lyric-wise — but they were far enough in that nobody could be recording. Right? "He's a man~," he pressed on, "he's just a man / And I've had so many men before~ / In very many ways / He's just one more...."
"Whoa," said Olivia. "What kind of pornographic musicals have you been listening to?"
Stephen nearly choked. "It's not pornographic!" he spluttered, horrified. "It's Christian!"
Olivia lit up. "Is it Jesus Christ Superstar? That's the only Christian musical I've heard of."
"No fair!" cried Stephen. "You tricked me into giving you a hint. That doesn't count!"
Olivia gave him a friendly shove in the arm. "Not my fault you're so gullible," she declared, and started into a few bars of another song.
Stephen sulked, pulled his knees up to his chest...and didn't take in a note.
"Well?" demanded Olivia. "Are you even listening?"
"I wish I was straight," said Stephen quietly.
"That's a dumb wish," said Olivia, without a second of hesitation.
Stephen blinked hard. Not that he was going to cry or anything. He was just re-wetting his contact lenses, that was all. "You think?"
"Well, yeah. You don't want to be going into a musical-theater-off with me with a handicap."
The dog had trotted over and was butting its head against Stephen. He hugged it, petting and kneading its head and neck, getting curly fur all over his eighty-dollar T-shirt. "That's a good point," he allowed. "Sing that one you were just singing again? I didn't catch it the first time."
~*~
Jon didn't know when it had started. It had snuck up on him, completely unannounced. He was thinking about how to help Stephen with this whole Canada-phobia problem, and then all of a sudden he realized that no, he was just thinking about Stephen.
They were dolled up in matching outfits to do a photoshoot for a magazine ad (promoting either the jeans or the shoes, or maybe both, Jon hadn't figured it out), which involved sitting around on a lot of fake walls in front of a nice neutral backdrop and arranging their legs in dynamic, eye-catching angles. It was sure working with Stephen's. Jon kept staring at him, eyes traveling from the designer running shoes (they all had matching pairs, but palette-swapped; Stephen's had a red stripe along the sides) up the long legs in tightly fitted skinny jeans.
At last the director arranged them in a setup where Jon basically had to stare at the back of Stephen's head the whole time...and it didn't help. Since when could the slope of someone's neck be that mesmerizing? Jon had never in his life fantasized about running his tongue along somebody's shoulder blade — let alone another guy's shoulder blade — and it wasn't like he'd had any shortage of fantasies. But now, in a position where he could have easily stretched out his leg and traced Stephen's spine with his toes, he was —
— he was not thinking about anything, because he was also wearing skinny jeans, and this was Not The Time.
When they got back to the dressing room, Jon forewent his usual faff-around-at-the-sinks ritual and fled straight into the shower. A very cold shower. During which he strenuously avoided thinking about things like "how Stephen looks when sensually sliding his fingers in and out of his mouth, pseudo-Simba costume notwithstanding" and "whether Stephen would like it if I called him principessa" and "that time Stephen said I was sexy" and "why I was so horribly distracted back when I thought Stephen might have a thing for Olivia, anyway."
Especially not when Stephen was right there in the stall next to him, humming.
Jon was doing better by the time they were all out, dressed, and divvying up the fruit-and-cheese platter. Still, after helping himself to a few slices of kiwi, he spent the break hiding behind his English textbook — even after Stephen was gone.
~*~
Gloria & Jane's wasn't the same without Olivia's boundless pie-enthusiasm. (Piethusiasm?) Even Jimmy and Jon together just couldn't match it. Stephen wouldn't have gone at all, but they had come up with three custom American-apple-pie recipes, and needed him to make the final call on which would be added to their menu under his name. Once he decided, out came a photographer, and Stephen grinned for the camera while holding a fresh slice of the winner.
Then it was up to his friends to do away with the losers.
"So, ah, Stephen," said Jon, picking at the crust end of Choice #2, "I've been thinking. About this whole Canada problem. Is now a good time?"
Stephen swallowed a mouthful of apple and licked a trail of honey off his spoon. "Now is a great time! What do we do?"
Jon shrugged. He still hadn't touched the puff of whipped cream on the side of his plate. Another minute or two and Stephen was going to commandeer it. "I don't know, exactly. You'll have to make another decision first. Unless you used up all your judgment-passing powers for the day on the pie?"
Jimmy giggled. Stephen elbowed him before replying. "Jon, I always have judgment to pass. Lay it on me."
"Right," said Jon, and put down his fork in a final sort of way. (Stephen took that as his cue to scoop up the whipped cream early.) "The way I see it — hey! — oh, fine, you can have it. The way I see it, any strategy you use is going to have to come from one of a couple basic categories."
"Uh-huh."
"First option: you pretend there's something wrong with you. Say, fake that you're sick the day before. Second option: you get something actually wrong with you. Deliberately eat raw chicken or something."
Stephen made a face.
"Yeah, I know. But it'll be harder for anyone to accuse you of faking it if you're actually throwing up or whatever. Uh, of people who know you, I mean." Jon grimaced. "Of the rest of the world, either of those tactics is going to stir up people who think it's a cover-up and you're secretly in rehab. Thus the third option: make it so you can't perform, but it's not your fault. Like if you and me faked a fight, and I gave you a black eye."
"I don't like any of these options," said Stephen, looking morosely down at his whipped cream. The threat of Ned maybe-possibly using their time alone together to expand on the creepy Jafar-type touching didn't sound so bad next to the threat of Jon most-definitely punching him in the face.
"I figured you wouldn't," said Jon. "Um, the fourth option is to do — or fake, it doesn't make a difference this time — something where you can still perform, but the CW decides to back out of the deal. I'm not saying you should torch a building or anything, but that's the general category."
"Man, this all sounds so logical when you lay it out like that," said Jimmy wistfully.
"Of course it does," said Stephen with confidence. "Jon knows everything about logic. I like option four. So what does the CW not like that isn't burning down buildings?"
"Ooh, I know!" exclaimed Jimmy. In a hushed voice, he added, "We could find out if there are any handsome Italian guys living around here."
Stephen caught his breath and felt the sudden need to take a long drink of water.
"That's not really as big a deal on, uh, grown-up networks," said Jon, lowering his voice too. Stephen was glad the table was a circle, so neither of them was totally on his deaf side. "He'd probably get dropped by the Mouse, and nobody else would even care."
"I dunno," said Jimmy. "I saw some people on the Internet saying that network has a whole thing about covering up some of their stars', um, not-so-straight relationships."
"Yeah, well, that's people on the Internet," sighed Jon. "People on the Internet are insane."
"They're not that insane," said Stephen without thinking.
Jon gaped.
"Not all of them, anyway!" stammered Stephen, thinking quickly. Besides, Jon was probably thinking about "Stewson", and yeah, that was nuts. "Some of them vote for Shout*For in Your Favorite Teen Band polls, so you know those ones are cool. They get it. They're it-getters."
"Right, sure," said Jon, pulling himself together. "Anyway, before you guys keep planning, there was one more option...."
Good job, Col-bert, Stephen told himself. He had successfully avoided having to let Jimmy know that "Stimmy" existed, while also avoiding spilling to Jon that if Jimmy were a little less straight...if he'd had a different reaction back when a thirteen-year-old Stephen (just a kid, really, so different from now, when at almost sixteen he was practically an adult) had asked to kiss him....
"Stephen?" said Jimmy, waving a hand in his face. "Jon says there's another option."
Stephen snapped back to the present. "What? Yes! I am listening very closely. Say it again?"
"The fifth option," said Jon, "is to be a total diva and make the whole thing somebody else's problem. Tell Ned that you won't go, that even if someone picks you up and carries you the whole way to the Vancouver set you won't say your lines, and that he can either come up with a graceful way to get you out of it or he'll just have to put up with the embarrassment."
A shiver went through Stephen at the thought. Not at what Ned might do if he tried it, either. Ned would just lean in real close and stroke his leg and say, gentle as you please, Now, buddy, you don't want to do that. What will your father think? That would be the scary part: what Papa would say.
Jimmy voiced part of Stephen's thoughts. "That's not going to work," he explained to Jon. "Ned's too...slippery to be pushed around like that. He'd either talk Stephen out of doing it, or he'd sit back and call Stephen's bluff."
"Brian, then?" said Jon. "He's the least slippery person I've ever met. Out of Hollywood people, anyway."
"I dunno," mumbled Stephen. Brian had been a lot of help when Jon had needed it, but that hadn't involved going up against Ned. "Can I think about it?"
Jon shrugged. "I don't see why not. At least, for the next ten days or so. After that you'll either have to pick something, or suck it up and get ready to face the moose."
~*~
<3 Olivia <3
Sucks not 2 b shooting w/ u anymore.
<3 Olivia <3
Pool party 2nite?
Stephen*Colbert
you are a lovely person Olivia
Stephen*Colbert
but I have spent 3 nights this week w/you
Stephen*Colbert
incl. movie night which is a travesty and proves our PR people are soulless vultures
<3 Olivia <3
but that was fake romance time!! it doesnt count!
<3 Olivia <3
this would be real friendship time
<3 Olivia <3
Jimmy & Jon are also invited ofc
Stephen*Colbert
you are a gentlewoman and a scholar but I am afraid I must decline
Stephen*Colbert
well not really a scholar I guess
Stephen*Colbert
but the point still stands
<3 Olivia <3
hey I am doing school! on a decelerated rate but thats still more than u sir
Stephen didn't even answer that one. Olivia dropped the phone onto her unicorn duvet, fell backwards onto the bed, and pulled a pillow over her face to smother the groan.
"You have to remember not to do that while your nails are drying," chided the muffled version of Kristen from the non-pillow-covered rest of Olivia's room. She was going to apply the polish to Olivia's just as soon as the cartoon faces on her own were set.
Olivia threw the pillow off to one side and rolled over to face her friend. Kristen was spinning in one of the room's several wheeled chairs, waving her hands through the air. The fiber optic lamp on the bureau next to her swept softly through colors: blue, green, purple. "I know, I know."
"So I guess your famous friends aren't going to come hang out, huh," said Kristen.
A soft breeze clinked the chimes over a couple of Olivia's windows. Outside, two gulls got into a squawking fight. "What do you mean, 'famous' friends? You're famous. There are girls all over the country with your face on wall decals. Probably a few boys, too."
"Oh, definitely boys," purred Kristen, momentarily distracted by the opportunity to work in some innuendo. "I mean, who wouldn't want to plaster their door with stickers featuring...." She passed her hands down her body, tracing a thoroughly inaccurate hourglass shape. "...all this?"
"No kidding." Olivia swung herself up and off the bed, getting ahold of the back of Kristen's chair. Hands still unavailable, Kristen squeaked and tried to keep control over her direction with her feet, but Olivia successfully twirled the seat until it was facing the big mirror over the bureau. She leaned over Kristen's shoulder and did her best high-fashion haughty appraisal of their reflections. "And now, for Versace, coming down the Paris runway...."
Kristen tossed back her curls, catching Olivia in the face. "...and with a face that does not move, because I may secretly be a robot, you'll never know...."
"...the new queen of the catwalk!" Olivia snaked her hands under Kristen's arms and got two handfuls of her sundress. It had a belt around the waist, but mostly for decoration; the satiny red fabric was pretty loose. Until Olivia pulled it taut, anyway. "And her cleavage!"
Kristen squealed, wriggled for a second, then recovered. "Yeah, and this is without any 'little helpers', Miss Padded Bra."
"Uh-huh. You better—" began Olivia automatically, on track to finish with something like be prepared to back that up! She cut herself off just in time, because that was getting a little weird, wasn't it?
When Kristen arched her spine, the muscles in her lower back flexed under Olivia's hands. "The cougar is a force of nature that cannot be contained!" she said, punctuating it with a growl and a flash of her nails.
See, there was absolutely no reason for Olivia to fear being the weird one here. She swallowed and tried to pull herself together.
"Hey," said Kristen, more seriously, "are you okay there?"
"Yeah," breathed Olivia. It came out low and heavy, her breath hot against Kristen's skin. "Are you, uh. Are you wearing perfume or something?"
"Oh, I totally forgot to tell you!" exclaimed Kristen. "Some company sent the studio a ton of samples, so I grabbed a couple. You were already off doing the movie shooting. The box is probably still in makeup."
"Uh-huh." Olivia let her grip relax. Now her hands were just resting on Kristen's waist. She should really move them. Soon. "It smells...really good."
"...Thanks." Kristen blinked at the mirror, not posing or mugging now, just her unfiltered adorable doll-eyed self. Were her cheeks a little pinker than usual? Or was it just that Olivia's face under the freckles was extra-pale?
Stephen's voice flashed through Olivia's head: I wish I was straight.
Kristen's lips parted. "You—"
A phone chimed.
Olivia jumped. Kristen only twitched before tipping her head towards Olivia's bed. "You gonna get that?"
"Yes!" said Olivia, unwinding her hands from Kristen's body and trying to pull back without falling over. "Yeah, sorry, just a second."
Jon S.
Hey, Stephen said you wanted to hang out. We're having a belated movie night. Want to join in?
Jon S.
It involves Jasmine as a dominatrix for some reason, if that helps you decide.
"Okay, so we can still totally go ahead and work on my nails," said Olivia, "but in the name of informed consent I should tell you that we have also been invited to chill with the guys and a dominatrix Jasmine. Which either means that one episode of the Aladdin animated series, or Stephen's not-so-secret thing about wanting to be a Disney princess just took a completely unexpected turn."
"Well," said Kristen, in a tone of greatest solemnity, "I don't think I can in good conscience miss either of those."
~*~
When Jon had sent Olivia (and, by proxy, Kristen) the invitation, he had not realized it would mean turning movie night into movie-and-nail-polish night.
He and Jimmy both agreed to submit to the clear stuff; it was supposed to be healthy for your nails anyway. Stephen got his done in ruby-red glitter.
Jon kept telling himself to relax, but every time Stephen's fingers brushed a little too close he flinched all over again, heart racing. He figured he'd get a reprieve when the show came on, and it worked — but not for long. Instead of queuing up a movie-length sequence of episodes, they only watched one before getting into a multi-person musical-off.
Which Jon managed to get himself eliminated from after three turns.
Resigned to his fate, Jon pulled his beanbag chair a little ways back out of the circle and tried to enjoy the show. He heard Stephen's and Jimmy's singing voices all the time, but not usually with so much range or such interesting material; Olivia of course was a world-class talent, and Kristen, while not quite in the same league as the others, could carry a tune just fine.
He also tried to entertain the idea that he was only having all these uncomfortable feelings about Stephen because Stephen was so, well, girly sometimes. Raging teenage hormones were bound to get confused around a slender, smooth-faced guy who liked to be called princess and wear tiaras and have brilliantly-colored nails, right? Especially when their whole professional schtick at this point involved being sexy in kind of an androgynous way, because their target audience was still kind of wigged-out by capital-M Men. Perfectly understandable. No reasons here to get into some kind of unnecessary...and scary...and possibly contract-violating sexual identity crisis....
"No, wait!" exclaimed Stephen in a low voice. For a second Jon thought he was calling a halt on the game. Then he dropped lower, sliding into a bona fide baritone, to rumble, "We need a more permanent solution to our problem...."
Oh dear lord. Jon hadn't known Stephen could do that.
Jimmy was clapping, and Kristen was saying something, probably the name of the musical, and Jon was still shaking. So much for the girliness theory. Goddamn.
He was so screwed.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-06-15 12:58 am (UTC)(link)So Stephen in this continuity is not in denial?! He knows he's not straight! And Jon's being angsty. Both of those a different from usual fic portrayals, which I find intriguing... and adorable.
Point of theater nerd-ness: there is another Christian musical! It's called Godspell.
"People on the Internet are insane." Haha. True, so true.
~A. Fann
no subject
Jon's still basically the same person; he's just in the middle of his angsty teenage phase, instead of being a mature adult who's had a couple of decades to get a handle on things.
Hey, I was raised on Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Have seen the movies; have seen them on stage. Can still chant the whole list of colors from memory.
We're pretty unbalanced, all right. Olivia & co. would do well to keep their distance XD