Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2013-07-20 12:37 am
ptahrrific) wrote2013-07-20 12:37 am
Entry tags:
Fake News | ensemble | PG-13 | Shout*For, chapter 15
Title: Shout*For, chapter 15: All That Heaven Will Allow
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", Jimmy, Olivia+Kristen+Wyatt, Tucker, Brian, cameos, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Contents: Discussion of past non-con
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Purity rings for everyone!
The song from the title comes up a few times in-chapter.
Even Tucker, it turned out, could be a decent guy if there was a puppy involved.
They were relaxing in the group practice room during break, Jimmy and Stephen doing their usual thing at the grand piano, where Jimmy played whatever he felt like while Stephen turned pages for him and sometimes sang along. Briar Rose had been well-behaved all morning, which meant it was high time for playtime, and Tucker ended up playing tug-of-war with her using one of the toys Stephen had brought along.
Jon was on the couch with his phone, doing his habitual messing around on the Internet, though these days he wasn't so isolated about it. He was paying attention to what the other guys were up to, and would sometimes jump into the conversation, or be drawn in when Stephen yelled a question in his direction.
Jimmy's fingers on the keys had settled into a repeating loop of a thoughtful little rhythm; Stephen gave it a few measures, then jumped in. "Yet Robin Hooding isn't the solution / The powers that be must be undermined where they dwell / In a small exclusive gourmet institution / Where we overcharge the wealthy cliente~e~ele..."
"RENT," chimed in Jon. He'd added the soundtrack to his playlist, along with a dozen others, since his speedy elimination at their last musical-off.
Stephen broke off his singing to beam at Jon. "Right! Bonus round: what song was it from?"
"Uh," said Jon. He'd cut Stephen off right before the line "let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe," but he remembered it well enough. "I'm gonna say 'Santa Fe'."
"No!" crowed Stephen. "It was from the part of Finale A where they reprise the motif of Santa Fe."
"But you're getting much better!" added Jimmy encouragingly. "At least you didn't guess it was from Avenue Q this time!"
Stephen pulled the songbook they'd been working from off the piano stand. "Let's give him another. One of these," he said, presumably switching to a different book, though Jon could only see their heads from this angle.
"Ooh, good idea," said Jimmy. "Let's see. I've been working on this one...haven't started that one...."
"What about this one?"
"Hmm. Never tried it. Are you singing the melody? Because I could sight-read this if it's just the harmony."
While Jon was still trying to figure out what musical had songs Jimmy had never even tried to play (the Book of Mormon sheet music wasn't even out yet, right?), the other two settled on a page to flip to, and Jimmy's hands settled into another background tune. This one was light, gentle, and instantly familiar.
"Oh, rain and storm and dark~ skies..." began Stephen.
"Tunnel of Love," said Jon automatically. He did want to hear Stephen sing more of it...but not until after they'd established his Jedi-like mastery over all things Springsteen.
Stephen broke off, face falling. "What? No! It doesn't sound anything like Tunnel of Love. If you'd let me sing more than one line...."
"It isn't the song Tunnel of Love," interrupted Jon. "Song title was the bonus round, right? The song is All That Heaven Will Allow, from the album Tunnel of Love."
Stephen exchanged a look with Jimmy, then both of them looked back at the music. "It doesn't say the album title here," said Jimmy. "That could be it."
"And he got the song right," admitted Stephen.
Jon scoffed. "Yeah, and water is wet, and, news flash: the Pope is still Catholic."
"Tucker!" called Stephen. "Can you look it up for us?"
A beat later, Tucker looked up from brushing Briar Rose's fur. "Huh?"
One quick explanation and a google search later, Jon was vindicated and Stephen was sulking.
"You could sing more of the song, if you wanted," said Jon, trying to be encouraging.
"Why bother? You already got it!"
Mindful that they were in mixed company, Jon tried again. "I would...really like it...if you sang more."
Stephen let out a theatrical sigh. "All right, if you insist. Jimmy, hit it."
Jimmy obligingly set his fingers to the keys.
And when Stephen started singing, he was right back in the smooth, tender cant the song called for, not a pout to be heard. "Oh, rain and storm and dark~ skies / Well now they don't mean a thing," he crooned. "If you got a girl that loves you~ / And who wants to wear your ring / So c'mon mister trouble / We'll make it through you some~how / We'll fill this house with all the love / Mmm, all that heaven will allow..."
~*~
Halfway across the country, at a mid-sized arena in Oregon.
"Think I'm really falling for his smile / Get butterflies when he says~ my~ name~," chorused Olivia, throwing in one of her trademark hair-flips. "I can hardly breathe / Something's telling me, telling me~ / Maybe he could be the one!"
The audience — all kids from the contest-winning school and their guests, most of whom could probably never have afforded to get in the door of her usual concerts — went wild. The crowd was sprinkled with Lisa Munn hats, T-shirts, and, in at least a few cases, Star Girl cowls. As far as she could tell, the guys in attendance didn't have quite as much of her swag, but they weren't cheering any less.
She added a couple of winks into her routine. It was a love song (or at least, a crush song); Mac couldn't get on her case for playing it flirty.
Her voice soared through the last chorus and fell with the band's closing notes, and she struck a pose, flanked by her backup dancers, as the cheers began.
"Give it up for my dancers!" she shouted into the mic, flinging out a hand to encompass them. "And my amazing band!"
More cheers. At this point, they would have given it up for carbon dioxide emissions if she'd asked them to.
Not that she would do that. "And give it up for yourselves! The students of Flatpoint Middle School organized the recycling of over 8,000 pounds of material, saving more than 27,000 pounds of carbon dioxide! Woohoo!"
She'd had the numbers confirmed in the few hours between her plane touching down and her stage getting set up. Hey, as long as they had them by showtime.
(For the sake of her own sanity, she refused to ask anyone how many pounds of carbon dioxide were released into the air by her charter flights every year.)
"Now I'm going to turn the floor over to our lovely stage manager Don to handle the Q&A. Take it away, Don!"
There was a mic at the front of the center aisle, and Don got people to form an orderly line behind it, while one of his assistants — Maggie? The one who tripped a lot, anyway — brought Olivia a chair. She got comfortable quickly, and started fielding excited questions about what kind of makeup she liked ("you don't need makeup to look beautiful, but it just so happens I'm coming out with a line of simple, affordable products designed to let your natural beauty shine through"), how an ordinary kid like the querent could become a pop star ("work hard, go to lots of auditions, and never let anyone tell you the odds"), and what her favorite type of pie was ("all of them").
The first really tricky one came when a baby-faced young man with a football player's build said, "Lisa, I heard you have mostly guy friends. Is that true? And are you, like, just one of the guys with them?"
Well, great. Nobody had given Olivia the rundown on this particular demo. Did she have a thriving male fanbase she was supposed to nurture? And if so, how did she do that without alienating all the tween girls who loved her as a model of girliness?
An internal voice that sounded suspiciously Kristen-like added, Why should you be nurturing dudes anyway? If they like you as you are, let 'em, but don't go babying them so they'll feel better about it.
Out loud, she said, "Listen, my best friends in the world are girls. My sister, my BFF Kristen...that's Kristen Schaal, she plays Sadie on the show..." She paused for the smattering of claps and cheers. "And yeah, I have a bunch of guy friends. But why would that make me one of the guys? Why not say that they're each like just one of the girls with me?" She grinned. "Especially —"
— and bit that one off just in time, because saying especially Stephen was so not in line with their PR strategy.
But now she was leaving an awkward pause, and that wasn't good either. "Especially when we're all watching Disney princess movies and painting each other's nails," she finished, with a wink. There. Let 'em stew on that, try to guess whether she was kidding or not.
Don subtly moved the guy away, clearing space for the questions of whether she had any bad habits (after some hesitation, she admitted to pulling out her eyelashes when stressed), what her favorite song to sing was ("right now, it's one of the ones that's going to be on my next album — can't say any more yet, it's a secret, but keep an ear out for it!"), and whether she had started dating Stephen Col-bert before or after they kissed for the movie (this, she knew by rote, thanks to Mac making her memorize an entire whiteboard's worth of diagrams on the timeline of their fauxmance: "after, but," sheepishly, "I had a little crush on him already when it happened").
Then a girl with ash-blonde hair and braces said, "I just want to say that I find it really empowering that you're wearing a purity ring in public. It makes me feel like I can stand up and say I'm proud to be a Christian."
"Uh, thanks," said Olivia unconvincingly. This girl was wearing a Team Jesus T-shirt, for crying out loud, and Olivia would have bet anything she hadn't just run out and bought it two weeks ago. "Everyone deserves to feel good about who they are."
The kid broke into a starry-eyed grin — which made Olivia feel sort of bad, sensing how much this twelve-year-old's soul would be crushed if she knew how little her idol thought of her right now. "Thank you! Thank you so much! My question is, is your boyfriend also going to get one? Because saving yourself until you're sure of your one true partner in Christ isn't just for girls."
Good god (no pun intended), it was like meeting an alternate-universe fundamentalist version of Kristen. Olivia sent up a quick prayer that, if Anyone was listening, He/She would guide this child into growing out of the weird judgmental-victim thing she was projecting. "Don't worry, he's getting one. We are totally on the same page about that. And very into respecting each other's wishes — take note, boys, because that's how you get a relationship to work."
~*~
Back in LA, the next morning.
"This is the stupidest idea," said Jon, pushing the catalog back across the table.
Stephen, who had been about to point out some gold cross-embossed rings that he thought were particularly stylish, held his own catalog defensively against his chest.
(The "purity" factor only applied to sex; he didn't think kissing and touching were also ruled out. Although maybe he could convince Ned that they still counted. And either way, maybe Ned could be held off by a tangible object more effectively than by words alone....)
Brian, who had just passed the things out, took it in stride. "I realize many of them are explicitly Christian, but they have a strong selection of neutral options, as well as several with Hebrew script. We checked."
"Listen, just because the company used Google Translate on one of their slogans...." Jon shook his head. "It's not even the Christian thing. Like, if these were Christian let's-feed-the-poor rings, and then the profit went to food banks or whatever, I could be okay with that. But these things? They're so...."
"...self-righteous, and not in the way you like?" supplied Tucker.
"Jon, they don't have to mean anything that isn't already in our conscience clauses," said Jimmy, trying to be helpful. "And you've already signed that. So what else is this going to do?"
"Nobody's trying to sell conscience clauses to everyone in the country at the cost of...." Jon slid the catalog towards him again and flipped it open. "...upwards of a thousand bucks a pop."
Tucker set down his own catalog, pages folded over. "Dibs on the XR0340 design."
"Duly noted." Brian made a quick note on his tablet. "The rest of you better steer clear of that model...." He eyed the entry that popped up on his screen. "...although I can see that won't be a problem for Jon. By the way, Jon, they do have ten-dollar options."
"It's not about the price either! The whole idea is messed up!"
Stephen's gaze snapped up from even the shiniest of the rings. "You think it's messed up not to want to have sex before marriage?" he demanded.
Jon backed down in a hurry. "That's not what I said."
"Really? Because it sure sounded like it!"
Jimmy put a calming hand on Stephen's arm. "I think what Jon is trying to say is that it isn't necessarily a principle he would live by himself. Although I'm sure he would respect his partner if she did!"
"And I think he's just afraid the ring will make it harder to sneak around his conscience clause," said Tucker. "Got your eye on any girl in particular, Stewart?"
"Yes, Jon," echoed Stephen icily. "Who do you have your eye on?"
"Gentlemen, please," interrupted Brian, saving a red-faced Jon from any further interrogation. "You all deserve to be respected for your own romantic choices, and are free to make them as you wish...as soon as your contracts are up. Stephen, Jimmy, figure out what rings you want. Jon, we'll talk in a bit. Understood?"
"You know what, forget I said anything," muttered Jon, head down. He grabbed his catalog from the table, roughly enough to tear a few pages. "What page are the cheap plain ones on?"
~*~
When only Jon answered his invitation to an afternoon out on the Small Wonder, with no Stephen or Jimmy in evidence, Olivia knew right away that something was up. She shooed Kristen and Wyatt belowdecks for a bit (Wyatt tried to demur, but Kristen was very convincing), and dragged the whole story out of him.
"...and then he tried to get one of the thousand-dollar ones, just to show me," groaned Jon in conclusion, collapsing back onto his chair.
"That's rough," said Olivia sympathetically. "Should we make margaritas? You sound like you need one."
"Maybe later."
"Suit yourself. What was that ring like, anyway? I mean, was it worth the grand?"
Jon shrugged. "It was gold inlaid with diamonds, so I assume so. Jimmy talked him into some sterling silver thing instead. Listen, can you help me out here? With your...you know...." He gestured vaguely in the direction of his brain, or at least his head.
"With my...?" prompted Olivia. "Are you getting at feminine intuition or Japanese wiles, because I need to know how offended to be, here."
"What? Neither!" spluttered Jon. "I'm getting at your being smart, and understanding Stephen, occasionally about things even Jimmy misses. ...Besides, you're not even Japanese!"
Olivia shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. You basically called your boyfriend an idiot for not having sex with you. That's kinda hard to walk back."
"But that's not what I meant!" wailed Jon. "He can do what he wants! It's the stuff that comes with making it an institution...the judgment, the creepy sexism...and the idea that we have to go pandering to it anyway. Most of the country would be just fine either way. I bet you most of the Christians don't even care that much! And yeah, there are people who enshrine their own values as global moral standards and are going to shun anyone who doesn't fall in line. But those are rare, and they should be scorned, and we definitely shouldn't be egging them on because some corporations have figured out they can make a quick buck off of it!"
Okay, now it was beginning to come together. "No, I'm following you," Olivia assured him. "That's legit."
Jon ran his hands through his hair. "And if I try to explain it to Stephen like that, he'll accuse me of wanting to undermine the free market."
"Yeah, probably." Olivia thought it over. "So skip the economics and just focus on the creepiness. And you know who could really help you on this one? Kristen."
Jon grimaced.
He covered it quickly, but not quickly enough. "What's wrong with Kristen?" demanded Olivia.
"Nothing! Nothing at all. It's just. She doesn't seem very...serious."
"Maybe not in general. But about, like, sexism and all things related? She's deadly serious."
"She convinced Wyatt to go help her out belowdecks by screeching 'war on women!' at the top of her lungs."
And now Olivia was mad all over again. "She can camouflage it very well!" she snapped. "It doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's talking about when it counts! If you actually paid attention to her like I do —"
"I'm sorry, okay?" said Jon, holding up his hands in surrender. "I swear, I didn't mean to put down your...your...."
"The term you're looking for is 'BFF'," said Olivia stiffly.
"Uh-huh." Now Jon was giving her a curious, appraising look that she didn't like at all. "Well, I —"
He froze, eyes fixed on a point over her shoulder. The volume of his voice cut to almost nothing.
"Hey, I thought you said Wyatt would be downstairs."
"What?" Olivia whipped around and followed his gaze. There was a familiar shadow poking out from behind the corner of the cabin, and when she squinted she got a glimpse of dark fluff. "Wyatt!" she yelled, jumping up. "What are you...?"
The words were barely out of her mouth when she realized her mistake.
"It's cool!" she called back to Jon. "It's just the puppet."
Jon bopped his ear with the heel of his hand. "Sorry, I thought I just heard you say 'the puppet'."
The head of the real Wyatt popped out of the hatch that led to belowdecks. Now that he didn't have regular filming to keep up with, he was getting a bit of fluff along his chin to match the hair. "Was that for me?" he asked. "Can we come back up now?"
There was a yelp from behind Olivia: Jon had followed her over, and gotten his first sight of Wyatt's felt doppelganger.
"Just switching places," Olivia told Wyatt. She patted a still-shaking Jon on the arm. "Sit tight, Stewart, while I go retrieve your soon-to-be guardian angel of articulate stances on feminist issues. And then, Wyatt, you and me are making margaritas."
~*~
Shout*For didn't have to be in and out of the dressing room at the studio now that they weren't filming, which made it a handy place for Jon to get a private moment with Stephen after practice.
"This had better be because you want to apologize," said Stephen, arms crossed. "You're On Notice again, by the way."
"Duly noted," said Jon. "Can you listen a bit, though, before I get to it?"
Stephen just glared at him.
"Here's the thing." Jon ran his hands through his hair, trying to get his thoughts in order. "Imagine for a minute that we only meet when we're older. The band never happened, or maybe someone else got the break I did, but eventually I do get into show business, and then we're both in our thirties and we meet each other at a benefit. Or we get cast on the same TV show. Anything like that. And we're both single, and we hit it off, but here's the thing: I've had, y'know...partners. Because ending up a thirty-year-old virgin is really not in my life plan. Would that make you any less okay with going out with me?"
Stephen's face worked, and for a couple of heart-stopping seconds Jon thought he was going to decide that yes, that would be a dealbreaker. Instead he said, "Grown-up you still likes me the best, though, right?"
Jon blinked. "Well, yeah."
"Oh. Okay. In that case, I...I wouldn't mind."
"And if, for whatever reason, grown-up you had changed your mind about the whole sex thing since you were fifteen...."
"Sixteen," interrupted Stephen. "I'm not going to change my mind before next week, Jon."
"Sixteen, then. The point is, grown-up me couldn't care less. And it would probably come off as really creepy and possessive if I did. But these people and their rings, this whole purity culture...it's all built on the idea that you have to care. That it's an absolute moral standard, and anyone who doesn't fall in line is corrupted, is ruined, gets to be judged and shamed and looked down on. That's what's messed up. That's what really hurts people. I didn't even know, the scope of it...Kristen showed me some websites," he explained, suddenly self-conscious. "This one blogger was talking about how she...when she was a teenager, she'd been, um. Forced."
He stumbled on the non-explicit word choice, knowing full well how often innuendo went right over Stephen's head. From the way Stephen's mouth tightened, though, he'd taken Jon's meaning here.
"So she went to someone at her church, I think the youth pastor — looking for some support, some reassurance — but she started by just admitting something sexual had happened. And then when the girl managed to get out that she hadn't wanted it, this lady was relieved. Because at least she could still claim purity." For a moment, righteous indignation pushed him through his discomfort with the topic. "The fuck kind of priorities are those, huh? 'Sure, sweetheart, you got raped, and that must've been rough, but thank god you didn't have loving, consensual sex with someone you cared about!'"
The blood had drained from Stephen's face. Jon forcibly reined himself in. Righteous or not, this was a lot of heavy stuff to be throwing at someone, especially when Stephen had probably never really thought about...assault, before now.
"So that's what I was mad about," he finished.
Stephen gulped hard. "I just wanted a pretty ring," he said weakly.
Jon caught his breath. "Oh — no, Stephen, I didn't mean — babe, c'mere." He folded a shaking Stephen into a hug. "I'm not saying it makes you responsible for — listen, one boy band isn't going to make or break that mindset either way. We don't have that much influence. We really don't."
Voice muffled against Jon's shoulder, Stephen said, "You promise?"
"Hand to heart," said Jon, rubbing his back.
Stephen sniffled. "They're not gonna let us out of wearing them. PR's already put out the talking points. And my fake girlfriend's already got one, so if I don't...."
"Yeah, but Olivia's is just a generic nice ring." (She'd explained that to Jon on the Small Wonder, cracking up like it was the best joke she'd ever heard. That had been about two margaritas in.) "I bet Brian would let us get away with that. Return the rings from Madonna-Whore Complex Incorporated, or whatever that catalog was from, and get a few that are classy but secular. Tucker probably won't go for it, but the rest of us could."
If they couldn't fix the messaging part of it, they could at least change where the cash went. Hell, with all the money they got from teenage girls, the least they could do was avoid turning around and sending it to companies that were built on kicking teenage girls in the face.
"Tucker definitely won't go for it." Stephen sounded like he was beginning to recover. "The model he got has Not Ashamed Of The Gospel Of Christ engraved on it in capslock."
"Ah," said Jon. "Yeah, I can't see him trading that in."
"But Jimmy would switch if I asked in the name of our friendship. We'll have to work really hard on getting him a worthy replacement, that's all. The model he found was perfect. Had a design of piano keys." He pulled back, hands now linked over Jon's shoulders, while Jon's fell to rest on his hips. "And there are tons of rings I want anyway, so that part'll be easy. What about you? What design did you end up getting?"
"I, uh...don't even remember," admitted Jon. "I picked the cheapest plain one and didn't really look at it. Seriously, I'm not a ring person. PR can just grab any random thing off Amazon and I'll manage."
Stephen chewed on his lip for a minute. "Jon?"
"Hm?"
"Can I...." A blush rose on Stephen's cheeks. "...pick yours out?"
Jon started. Then he thought about it. That was...unexpectedly intimate. But.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, okay, you can do that."
And then:
"Wait, what do piano keys have to do with purity culture?"
~*~
The shipments must have arrived staggered, especially since Tucker's had been ordered earliest without being returned; but Brian held out on them until Friday, when he opened the morning meeting by passing them all out.
They'd found Jimmy a ring with a musical staff etched on it, not much different from his earlier choice, except without 'Sing Praises to the Lord' engraved on the inside. Stephen managed to land a double row of tiny diamonds, in a sterling silver band wide enough to count as masculine, even while being wonderfully sparkly.
Jon was still picking at the packaging after Stephen had ripped his own open and gotten the ring on, so he leaned eagerly over Jon's shoulder. "What did you pick out? Is it nice?"
(It was subtle deception like this that kept their relationship protected.)
"Settle down, I'm working on it." At last Jon lifted the little jewelry box out of the padding made up of tissue paper and the warranty information, and flipped it open.
It was a nice sturdy tungsten band, silvery and metallic, inlaid with a lightly textured strip of blue carbon. "Wow!" exclaimed Stephen. "I bet that brings out your eyes!"
"I bet it will," agreed Jon, starting to slip it on.
"Wait!"
"...huh?"
Stephen froze, on the verge of revealing that he knew more about the ring than Jon did.
"Is there an engraving on the inside?" put in Jimmy. "Stephen might want to see that."
"Oh! Right," said Jon, pulling it off again and turning it so the interior caught the light. "Yeah, um, as you can see, it says...."
The deftly etched phrase All That Heaven Will Allow glinted back at them.
"Talk about a one-track mind," muttered Tucker, leaning in to read it.
"Hey, this is very personally meaningful to me," snapped Jon, sliding it on again and studying the way it sat as he curled his fingers. "And you know what? I am going to feel happy and fulfilled about wearing it."
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", Jimmy, Olivia+Kristen+Wyatt, Tucker, Brian, cameos, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Contents: Discussion of past non-con
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Purity rings for everyone!
The song from the title comes up a few times in-chapter.
Even Tucker, it turned out, could be a decent guy if there was a puppy involved.
They were relaxing in the group practice room during break, Jimmy and Stephen doing their usual thing at the grand piano, where Jimmy played whatever he felt like while Stephen turned pages for him and sometimes sang along. Briar Rose had been well-behaved all morning, which meant it was high time for playtime, and Tucker ended up playing tug-of-war with her using one of the toys Stephen had brought along.
Jon was on the couch with his phone, doing his habitual messing around on the Internet, though these days he wasn't so isolated about it. He was paying attention to what the other guys were up to, and would sometimes jump into the conversation, or be drawn in when Stephen yelled a question in his direction.
Jimmy's fingers on the keys had settled into a repeating loop of a thoughtful little rhythm; Stephen gave it a few measures, then jumped in. "Yet Robin Hooding isn't the solution / The powers that be must be undermined where they dwell / In a small exclusive gourmet institution / Where we overcharge the wealthy cliente~e~ele..."
"RENT," chimed in Jon. He'd added the soundtrack to his playlist, along with a dozen others, since his speedy elimination at their last musical-off.
Stephen broke off his singing to beam at Jon. "Right! Bonus round: what song was it from?"
"Uh," said Jon. He'd cut Stephen off right before the line "let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe," but he remembered it well enough. "I'm gonna say 'Santa Fe'."
"No!" crowed Stephen. "It was from the part of Finale A where they reprise the motif of Santa Fe."
"But you're getting much better!" added Jimmy encouragingly. "At least you didn't guess it was from Avenue Q this time!"
Stephen pulled the songbook they'd been working from off the piano stand. "Let's give him another. One of these," he said, presumably switching to a different book, though Jon could only see their heads from this angle.
"Ooh, good idea," said Jimmy. "Let's see. I've been working on this one...haven't started that one...."
"What about this one?"
"Hmm. Never tried it. Are you singing the melody? Because I could sight-read this if it's just the harmony."
While Jon was still trying to figure out what musical had songs Jimmy had never even tried to play (the Book of Mormon sheet music wasn't even out yet, right?), the other two settled on a page to flip to, and Jimmy's hands settled into another background tune. This one was light, gentle, and instantly familiar.
"Oh, rain and storm and dark~ skies..." began Stephen.
"Tunnel of Love," said Jon automatically. He did want to hear Stephen sing more of it...but not until after they'd established his Jedi-like mastery over all things Springsteen.
Stephen broke off, face falling. "What? No! It doesn't sound anything like Tunnel of Love. If you'd let me sing more than one line...."
"It isn't the song Tunnel of Love," interrupted Jon. "Song title was the bonus round, right? The song is All That Heaven Will Allow, from the album Tunnel of Love."
Stephen exchanged a look with Jimmy, then both of them looked back at the music. "It doesn't say the album title here," said Jimmy. "That could be it."
"And he got the song right," admitted Stephen.
Jon scoffed. "Yeah, and water is wet, and, news flash: the Pope is still Catholic."
"Tucker!" called Stephen. "Can you look it up for us?"
A beat later, Tucker looked up from brushing Briar Rose's fur. "Huh?"
One quick explanation and a google search later, Jon was vindicated and Stephen was sulking.
"You could sing more of the song, if you wanted," said Jon, trying to be encouraging.
"Why bother? You already got it!"
Mindful that they were in mixed company, Jon tried again. "I would...really like it...if you sang more."
Stephen let out a theatrical sigh. "All right, if you insist. Jimmy, hit it."
Jimmy obligingly set his fingers to the keys.
And when Stephen started singing, he was right back in the smooth, tender cant the song called for, not a pout to be heard. "Oh, rain and storm and dark~ skies / Well now they don't mean a thing," he crooned. "If you got a girl that loves you~ / And who wants to wear your ring / So c'mon mister trouble / We'll make it through you some~how / We'll fill this house with all the love / Mmm, all that heaven will allow..."
~*~
"Think I'm really falling for his smile / Get butterflies when he says~ my~ name~," chorused Olivia, throwing in one of her trademark hair-flips. "I can hardly breathe / Something's telling me, telling me~ / Maybe he could be the one!"
The audience — all kids from the contest-winning school and their guests, most of whom could probably never have afforded to get in the door of her usual concerts — went wild. The crowd was sprinkled with Lisa Munn hats, T-shirts, and, in at least a few cases, Star Girl cowls. As far as she could tell, the guys in attendance didn't have quite as much of her swag, but they weren't cheering any less.
She added a couple of winks into her routine. It was a love song (or at least, a crush song); Mac couldn't get on her case for playing it flirty.
Her voice soared through the last chorus and fell with the band's closing notes, and she struck a pose, flanked by her backup dancers, as the cheers began.
"Give it up for my dancers!" she shouted into the mic, flinging out a hand to encompass them. "And my amazing band!"
More cheers. At this point, they would have given it up for carbon dioxide emissions if she'd asked them to.
Not that she would do that. "And give it up for yourselves! The students of Flatpoint Middle School organized the recycling of over 8,000 pounds of material, saving more than 27,000 pounds of carbon dioxide! Woohoo!"
She'd had the numbers confirmed in the few hours between her plane touching down and her stage getting set up. Hey, as long as they had them by showtime.
(For the sake of her own sanity, she refused to ask anyone how many pounds of carbon dioxide were released into the air by her charter flights every year.)
"Now I'm going to turn the floor over to our lovely stage manager Don to handle the Q&A. Take it away, Don!"
There was a mic at the front of the center aisle, and Don got people to form an orderly line behind it, while one of his assistants — Maggie? The one who tripped a lot, anyway — brought Olivia a chair. She got comfortable quickly, and started fielding excited questions about what kind of makeup she liked ("you don't need makeup to look beautiful, but it just so happens I'm coming out with a line of simple, affordable products designed to let your natural beauty shine through"), how an ordinary kid like the querent could become a pop star ("work hard, go to lots of auditions, and never let anyone tell you the odds"), and what her favorite type of pie was ("all of them").
The first really tricky one came when a baby-faced young man with a football player's build said, "Lisa, I heard you have mostly guy friends. Is that true? And are you, like, just one of the guys with them?"
Well, great. Nobody had given Olivia the rundown on this particular demo. Did she have a thriving male fanbase she was supposed to nurture? And if so, how did she do that without alienating all the tween girls who loved her as a model of girliness?
An internal voice that sounded suspiciously Kristen-like added, Why should you be nurturing dudes anyway? If they like you as you are, let 'em, but don't go babying them so they'll feel better about it.
Out loud, she said, "Listen, my best friends in the world are girls. My sister, my BFF Kristen...that's Kristen Schaal, she plays Sadie on the show..." She paused for the smattering of claps and cheers. "And yeah, I have a bunch of guy friends. But why would that make me one of the guys? Why not say that they're each like just one of the girls with me?" She grinned. "Especially —"
— and bit that one off just in time, because saying especially Stephen was so not in line with their PR strategy.
But now she was leaving an awkward pause, and that wasn't good either. "Especially when we're all watching Disney princess movies and painting each other's nails," she finished, with a wink. There. Let 'em stew on that, try to guess whether she was kidding or not.
Don subtly moved the guy away, clearing space for the questions of whether she had any bad habits (after some hesitation, she admitted to pulling out her eyelashes when stressed), what her favorite song to sing was ("right now, it's one of the ones that's going to be on my next album — can't say any more yet, it's a secret, but keep an ear out for it!"), and whether she had started dating Stephen Col-bert before or after they kissed for the movie (this, she knew by rote, thanks to Mac making her memorize an entire whiteboard's worth of diagrams on the timeline of their fauxmance: "after, but," sheepishly, "I had a little crush on him already when it happened").
Then a girl with ash-blonde hair and braces said, "I just want to say that I find it really empowering that you're wearing a purity ring in public. It makes me feel like I can stand up and say I'm proud to be a Christian."
"Uh, thanks," said Olivia unconvincingly. This girl was wearing a Team Jesus T-shirt, for crying out loud, and Olivia would have bet anything she hadn't just run out and bought it two weeks ago. "Everyone deserves to feel good about who they are."
The kid broke into a starry-eyed grin — which made Olivia feel sort of bad, sensing how much this twelve-year-old's soul would be crushed if she knew how little her idol thought of her right now. "Thank you! Thank you so much! My question is, is your boyfriend also going to get one? Because saving yourself until you're sure of your one true partner in Christ isn't just for girls."
Good god (no pun intended), it was like meeting an alternate-universe fundamentalist version of Kristen. Olivia sent up a quick prayer that, if Anyone was listening, He/She would guide this child into growing out of the weird judgmental-victim thing she was projecting. "Don't worry, he's getting one. We are totally on the same page about that. And very into respecting each other's wishes — take note, boys, because that's how you get a relationship to work."
~*~
"This is the stupidest idea," said Jon, pushing the catalog back across the table.
Stephen, who had been about to point out some gold cross-embossed rings that he thought were particularly stylish, held his own catalog defensively against his chest.
(The "purity" factor only applied to sex; he didn't think kissing and touching were also ruled out. Although maybe he could convince Ned that they still counted. And either way, maybe Ned could be held off by a tangible object more effectively than by words alone....)
Brian, who had just passed the things out, took it in stride. "I realize many of them are explicitly Christian, but they have a strong selection of neutral options, as well as several with Hebrew script. We checked."
"Listen, just because the company used Google Translate on one of their slogans...." Jon shook his head. "It's not even the Christian thing. Like, if these were Christian let's-feed-the-poor rings, and then the profit went to food banks or whatever, I could be okay with that. But these things? They're so...."
"...self-righteous, and not in the way you like?" supplied Tucker.
"Jon, they don't have to mean anything that isn't already in our conscience clauses," said Jimmy, trying to be helpful. "And you've already signed that. So what else is this going to do?"
"Nobody's trying to sell conscience clauses to everyone in the country at the cost of...." Jon slid the catalog towards him again and flipped it open. "...upwards of a thousand bucks a pop."
Tucker set down his own catalog, pages folded over. "Dibs on the XR0340 design."
"Duly noted." Brian made a quick note on his tablet. "The rest of you better steer clear of that model...." He eyed the entry that popped up on his screen. "...although I can see that won't be a problem for Jon. By the way, Jon, they do have ten-dollar options."
"It's not about the price either! The whole idea is messed up!"
Stephen's gaze snapped up from even the shiniest of the rings. "You think it's messed up not to want to have sex before marriage?" he demanded.
Jon backed down in a hurry. "That's not what I said."
"Really? Because it sure sounded like it!"
Jimmy put a calming hand on Stephen's arm. "I think what Jon is trying to say is that it isn't necessarily a principle he would live by himself. Although I'm sure he would respect his partner if she did!"
"And I think he's just afraid the ring will make it harder to sneak around his conscience clause," said Tucker. "Got your eye on any girl in particular, Stewart?"
"Yes, Jon," echoed Stephen icily. "Who do you have your eye on?"
"Gentlemen, please," interrupted Brian, saving a red-faced Jon from any further interrogation. "You all deserve to be respected for your own romantic choices, and are free to make them as you wish...as soon as your contracts are up. Stephen, Jimmy, figure out what rings you want. Jon, we'll talk in a bit. Understood?"
"You know what, forget I said anything," muttered Jon, head down. He grabbed his catalog from the table, roughly enough to tear a few pages. "What page are the cheap plain ones on?"
~*~
When only Jon answered his invitation to an afternoon out on the Small Wonder, with no Stephen or Jimmy in evidence, Olivia knew right away that something was up. She shooed Kristen and Wyatt belowdecks for a bit (Wyatt tried to demur, but Kristen was very convincing), and dragged the whole story out of him.
"...and then he tried to get one of the thousand-dollar ones, just to show me," groaned Jon in conclusion, collapsing back onto his chair.
"That's rough," said Olivia sympathetically. "Should we make margaritas? You sound like you need one."
"Maybe later."
"Suit yourself. What was that ring like, anyway? I mean, was it worth the grand?"
Jon shrugged. "It was gold inlaid with diamonds, so I assume so. Jimmy talked him into some sterling silver thing instead. Listen, can you help me out here? With your...you know...." He gestured vaguely in the direction of his brain, or at least his head.
"With my...?" prompted Olivia. "Are you getting at feminine intuition or Japanese wiles, because I need to know how offended to be, here."
"What? Neither!" spluttered Jon. "I'm getting at your being smart, and understanding Stephen, occasionally about things even Jimmy misses. ...Besides, you're not even Japanese!"
Olivia shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. You basically called your boyfriend an idiot for not having sex with you. That's kinda hard to walk back."
"But that's not what I meant!" wailed Jon. "He can do what he wants! It's the stuff that comes with making it an institution...the judgment, the creepy sexism...and the idea that we have to go pandering to it anyway. Most of the country would be just fine either way. I bet you most of the Christians don't even care that much! And yeah, there are people who enshrine their own values as global moral standards and are going to shun anyone who doesn't fall in line. But those are rare, and they should be scorned, and we definitely shouldn't be egging them on because some corporations have figured out they can make a quick buck off of it!"
Okay, now it was beginning to come together. "No, I'm following you," Olivia assured him. "That's legit."
Jon ran his hands through his hair. "And if I try to explain it to Stephen like that, he'll accuse me of wanting to undermine the free market."
"Yeah, probably." Olivia thought it over. "So skip the economics and just focus on the creepiness. And you know who could really help you on this one? Kristen."
Jon grimaced.
He covered it quickly, but not quickly enough. "What's wrong with Kristen?" demanded Olivia.
"Nothing! Nothing at all. It's just. She doesn't seem very...serious."
"Maybe not in general. But about, like, sexism and all things related? She's deadly serious."
"She convinced Wyatt to go help her out belowdecks by screeching 'war on women!' at the top of her lungs."
And now Olivia was mad all over again. "She can camouflage it very well!" she snapped. "It doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's talking about when it counts! If you actually paid attention to her like I do —"
"I'm sorry, okay?" said Jon, holding up his hands in surrender. "I swear, I didn't mean to put down your...your...."
"The term you're looking for is 'BFF'," said Olivia stiffly.
"Uh-huh." Now Jon was giving her a curious, appraising look that she didn't like at all. "Well, I —"
He froze, eyes fixed on a point over her shoulder. The volume of his voice cut to almost nothing.
"Hey, I thought you said Wyatt would be downstairs."
"What?" Olivia whipped around and followed his gaze. There was a familiar shadow poking out from behind the corner of the cabin, and when she squinted she got a glimpse of dark fluff. "Wyatt!" she yelled, jumping up. "What are you...?"
The words were barely out of her mouth when she realized her mistake.
"It's cool!" she called back to Jon. "It's just the puppet."
Jon bopped his ear with the heel of his hand. "Sorry, I thought I just heard you say 'the puppet'."
The head of the real Wyatt popped out of the hatch that led to belowdecks. Now that he didn't have regular filming to keep up with, he was getting a bit of fluff along his chin to match the hair. "Was that for me?" he asked. "Can we come back up now?"
There was a yelp from behind Olivia: Jon had followed her over, and gotten his first sight of Wyatt's felt doppelganger.
"Just switching places," Olivia told Wyatt. She patted a still-shaking Jon on the arm. "Sit tight, Stewart, while I go retrieve your soon-to-be guardian angel of articulate stances on feminist issues. And then, Wyatt, you and me are making margaritas."
~*~
Shout*For didn't have to be in and out of the dressing room at the studio now that they weren't filming, which made it a handy place for Jon to get a private moment with Stephen after practice.
"This had better be because you want to apologize," said Stephen, arms crossed. "You're On Notice again, by the way."
"Duly noted," said Jon. "Can you listen a bit, though, before I get to it?"
Stephen just glared at him.
"Here's the thing." Jon ran his hands through his hair, trying to get his thoughts in order. "Imagine for a minute that we only meet when we're older. The band never happened, or maybe someone else got the break I did, but eventually I do get into show business, and then we're both in our thirties and we meet each other at a benefit. Or we get cast on the same TV show. Anything like that. And we're both single, and we hit it off, but here's the thing: I've had, y'know...partners. Because ending up a thirty-year-old virgin is really not in my life plan. Would that make you any less okay with going out with me?"
Stephen's face worked, and for a couple of heart-stopping seconds Jon thought he was going to decide that yes, that would be a dealbreaker. Instead he said, "Grown-up you still likes me the best, though, right?"
Jon blinked. "Well, yeah."
"Oh. Okay. In that case, I...I wouldn't mind."
"And if, for whatever reason, grown-up you had changed your mind about the whole sex thing since you were fifteen...."
"Sixteen," interrupted Stephen. "I'm not going to change my mind before next week, Jon."
"Sixteen, then. The point is, grown-up me couldn't care less. And it would probably come off as really creepy and possessive if I did. But these people and their rings, this whole purity culture...it's all built on the idea that you have to care. That it's an absolute moral standard, and anyone who doesn't fall in line is corrupted, is ruined, gets to be judged and shamed and looked down on. That's what's messed up. That's what really hurts people. I didn't even know, the scope of it...Kristen showed me some websites," he explained, suddenly self-conscious. "This one blogger was talking about how she...when she was a teenager, she'd been, um. Forced."
He stumbled on the non-explicit word choice, knowing full well how often innuendo went right over Stephen's head. From the way Stephen's mouth tightened, though, he'd taken Jon's meaning here.
"So she went to someone at her church, I think the youth pastor — looking for some support, some reassurance — but she started by just admitting something sexual had happened. And then when the girl managed to get out that she hadn't wanted it, this lady was relieved. Because at least she could still claim purity." For a moment, righteous indignation pushed him through his discomfort with the topic. "The fuck kind of priorities are those, huh? 'Sure, sweetheart, you got raped, and that must've been rough, but thank god you didn't have loving, consensual sex with someone you cared about!'"
The blood had drained from Stephen's face. Jon forcibly reined himself in. Righteous or not, this was a lot of heavy stuff to be throwing at someone, especially when Stephen had probably never really thought about...assault, before now.
"So that's what I was mad about," he finished.
Stephen gulped hard. "I just wanted a pretty ring," he said weakly.
Jon caught his breath. "Oh — no, Stephen, I didn't mean — babe, c'mere." He folded a shaking Stephen into a hug. "I'm not saying it makes you responsible for — listen, one boy band isn't going to make or break that mindset either way. We don't have that much influence. We really don't."
Voice muffled against Jon's shoulder, Stephen said, "You promise?"
"Hand to heart," said Jon, rubbing his back.
Stephen sniffled. "They're not gonna let us out of wearing them. PR's already put out the talking points. And my fake girlfriend's already got one, so if I don't...."
"Yeah, but Olivia's is just a generic nice ring." (She'd explained that to Jon on the Small Wonder, cracking up like it was the best joke she'd ever heard. That had been about two margaritas in.) "I bet Brian would let us get away with that. Return the rings from Madonna-Whore Complex Incorporated, or whatever that catalog was from, and get a few that are classy but secular. Tucker probably won't go for it, but the rest of us could."
If they couldn't fix the messaging part of it, they could at least change where the cash went. Hell, with all the money they got from teenage girls, the least they could do was avoid turning around and sending it to companies that were built on kicking teenage girls in the face.
"Tucker definitely won't go for it." Stephen sounded like he was beginning to recover. "The model he got has Not Ashamed Of The Gospel Of Christ engraved on it in capslock."
"Ah," said Jon. "Yeah, I can't see him trading that in."
"But Jimmy would switch if I asked in the name of our friendship. We'll have to work really hard on getting him a worthy replacement, that's all. The model he found was perfect. Had a design of piano keys." He pulled back, hands now linked over Jon's shoulders, while Jon's fell to rest on his hips. "And there are tons of rings I want anyway, so that part'll be easy. What about you? What design did you end up getting?"
"I, uh...don't even remember," admitted Jon. "I picked the cheapest plain one and didn't really look at it. Seriously, I'm not a ring person. PR can just grab any random thing off Amazon and I'll manage."
Stephen chewed on his lip for a minute. "Jon?"
"Hm?"
"Can I...." A blush rose on Stephen's cheeks. "...pick yours out?"
Jon started. Then he thought about it. That was...unexpectedly intimate. But.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, okay, you can do that."
And then:
"Wait, what do piano keys have to do with purity culture?"
~*~
The shipments must have arrived staggered, especially since Tucker's had been ordered earliest without being returned; but Brian held out on them until Friday, when he opened the morning meeting by passing them all out.
They'd found Jimmy a ring with a musical staff etched on it, not much different from his earlier choice, except without 'Sing Praises to the Lord' engraved on the inside. Stephen managed to land a double row of tiny diamonds, in a sterling silver band wide enough to count as masculine, even while being wonderfully sparkly.
Jon was still picking at the packaging after Stephen had ripped his own open and gotten the ring on, so he leaned eagerly over Jon's shoulder. "What did you pick out? Is it nice?"
(It was subtle deception like this that kept their relationship protected.)
"Settle down, I'm working on it." At last Jon lifted the little jewelry box out of the padding made up of tissue paper and the warranty information, and flipped it open.
It was a nice sturdy tungsten band, silvery and metallic, inlaid with a lightly textured strip of blue carbon. "Wow!" exclaimed Stephen. "I bet that brings out your eyes!"
"I bet it will," agreed Jon, starting to slip it on.
"Wait!"
"...huh?"
Stephen froze, on the verge of revealing that he knew more about the ring than Jon did.
"Is there an engraving on the inside?" put in Jimmy. "Stephen might want to see that."
"Oh! Right," said Jon, pulling it off again and turning it so the interior caught the light. "Yeah, um, as you can see, it says...."
The deftly etched phrase All That Heaven Will Allow glinted back at them.
"Talk about a one-track mind," muttered Tucker, leaning in to read it.
"Hey, this is very personally meaningful to me," snapped Jon, sliding it on again and studying the way it sat as he curled his fingers. "And you know what? I am going to feel happy and fulfilled about wearing it."
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