Entry tags:

genre: dramedy, pairing: alt!"stephen"/jon, series: fake news, story: liberalverse

Title: Puppy Love (2/3)
Rating: PG-13
Contents: Steamy scenes, mention of mildly blasphemous sex toys, dangerously cute puppies
Characters/pairings: Jon/liberal!"Stephen", past liberal!"Stephen"/Anderson, the puppy again
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

Summary: The Liberalverse marches on. Jon insists on putting Stephen through an archaic and limiting system of courtship — or, as he calls it, "being treated like a gentleman." Stephen doesn't understand why they can't just get on to the free love, already. But for some reason he's willing to put up with all kinds of silly proprieties when Jon is involved...

There's a round of sketches here (mildly spoilery if you haven't read up to the last chapter).


Puppy Love (Part II)


"Whoozagoodboy? Who?" cooed Jon. "You are!"

The rainbow ball of fur in his arms sniffed his chin curiously. It was a tableau that Stephen could have watched all day.

"He's adorable," continued Jon, slipping back into his normal voice. "When did you get him?"

"After we had to put down Slick Willie, I started looking for a new dog," explained Stephen. "And when I saw Barry's coloring, I knew he was the one."

Jon did a double-take. "You're not telling me this is natural."

Stephen kept up the deadpan look for just long enough to make Jon worry, then grinned. "Nope. Jell-O powder. I don't think it'll last, though. He keeps trying to lick it off."

At that, Jon smiled — at Stephen, not the dog, this time! — before lowering himself onto one of Stephen's beanbag chairs, keeping his careful hold on Barry in the process. Sure enough, once they were settled in, Barry started to lick a green tuft on his left foreleg. Jon broke into a giggle and scratched behind his ears.

Stephen felt his insides going gooey with relief. He hadn't been sure this would work. Sure, the idea had been Jon's originally, from that first post-9/11 Moment of Zen (and if a puppy that ugly could cheer people up, surely a puppy as cute as Barry would be even better). But whenever Stephen brought up other things about that episode, Jon got cagey and changed the subject. He was starting to suspect that it was one of the things Jon didn't want to talk about.

When Jon started to rub Barry's fluffy, multicolored sides, the puppy considered the contact for a moment, then rolled over on his back in Jon's lap and presented his belly for further attention. He got it immediately.

Stephen tried not to be jealous.

Then, without looking up, Jon said quietly, "She got the dogs."

Stephen could think of plenty of rational replies to this (you'll save a fortune on chew toys; you can always get another dog; the ones you had would have died in a couple of years anyway), but some gut instinct balked at the lot of them.

(Of course, normally Stephen overruled his gut with relentless rationalization. But, well, this felt kind of like the impulse that had told him to stay off the dark street where he and his date had gotten mugged. So maybe sometimes his gut had something going for it.)

"You can come over and see Barry some time," he offered instead. "If you feel like it, I mean."

Scratching Barry's furry stomach, Jon mulled this over.

"Do you really want me, Stephen?" he asked at last.

"Hey!" protested Stephen. "No fair you bringing it up!"

"It's okay — I asked, so I can't exactly get mad if you answer."

Stephen huffed irritably, blowing a lock of hair out of his face. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I don't mean 'do you want to sleep with me'," amended Jon. "I mean — do you want me? Not just because you like sex and I'm a convenient warm body, but because you care about me, specifically? And not because you think you might get a bonus paycheck out of it, either."

Stephen wrinkled his nose in concentration, trying to puzzle out exactly what Jon was saying. "I think about you when I jerk off. Does that help?"

Jon flinched so hard that Barry yelped and tried to wriggle out of his grip. "Too much information, Stephen!"

"Well, you asked!" cried Stephen helplessly. "Doesn't that prove that it's not about money? Or about convenience, because it would be convenient to have anyone in my fantasies, and let's face it, Jon, Imaginary You is cute, but he's no Imaginary Denzel Washington."

For a moment Jon was too busy soothing the puppy to answer. Stephen slumped down onto his desk.

"I don't understand," he sulked into his beard. "I love you, and I want you. Why isn't that good enough?"

Skritching under Barry's purple chin, Jon sighed.

"Tell you what," he said at last. "If you can promise not to get handsy, and not to make any propositions until I give the okay, and not to talk about explicitly sexual things in public, and not to recount any intimate details on Oprah the next day...."

"That was only the one time! And it wasn't like everyone didn't know about Anderson Cooper already!"

"...then you can ask me out on a date."

"What?"

"A date," repeated Jon. "You show up at my house with flowers. We go to a restaurant, eat dinner, have some light conversation. If it goes well, you get a good-night kiss and we arrange to do it again. If not, no hard feelings."

"You realize you're perpetuating a heteronormative, Victorian system of romantic conventions," warned Stephen.

"I prefer to think of it as 'holding out for being treated like a gentleman'," said Jon. "But, listen, if you can't pull it off—"

"Fine!" interrupted Stephen. "We'll do it your way. Jon, will you have dinner with me tonight?"

"I already have plans, sorry," replied Jon. Before Stephen could object, he added, "But I am free next Saturday."




To Jon's surprised relief, the date went very well.

True, Stephen spent most of dinner explaining his plan to solve the religious conflicts in the Middle East by airdropping thousands of leaflets explaining basic yoga positions. ("They wouldn't be so angry all the time if they were more in touch with their chakra, Jon!") But then, as Stephen's schemes went, this was almost reasonable.

All too soon they were standing on the front steps of Jon's building, the summer breeze fluttering stray locks of Stephen's long hair.

"So, how about it?" blurted Stephen. "Can I kiss you yet?"

Jon smiled. "Yeah. I think you can."

"That's what I thought," grumbled Stephen. "You were planning this the whole time, weren't you? String me along, get me to pay for dinner and everything, then turn around and say whoops, sorry Stephen, I have standards and you just don't measure—"

Jon shut him up with a peck on the lips.

Stephen stared at him in bewilderment. "You mean I could have—?"

"That's what I said."

The other man's face crumpled. "And you call that a kiss?"

"You want to try it again?"

Stephen lit up for a moment, then his brows furrowed in concentration. "So...I have permission to kiss you."

"That's right."

"Which is not the same as permission to do anything else with you. Because you believe some things are...more personal than others?"

"Most people do, yeah," said Jon bemusedly.

Stephen's eyes flicked to the door. "So, for instance, I do not have carte blanche to carry you up to your room, strip you down, slather you all over with baby oil, and post the resulting photos on MySpace."

Jon made a mental note to find out just how many nude images of Stephen there were on the Internet, anyway. ("Sensitive, tasteful erotica" still counted.) "Right now, it's liplock or nothing. Take it or leave it."

An instant later, Stephen's mouth was devouring his.

Jon had never been kissed quite like this before. And it wasn't just the roughness of the beard against his jaw, or the faint taste of tobacco, with hints of other less licit compounds thrown in, mingling with the flavor of the after-dinner mints. Stephen was an expert, with hundreds if not thousands of hours of practice, and it showed.

Sweet frosted Jesus, did it show.

"Guh," said Jon cleverly, once he had been released.

Stephen looked anxiously at him.

For a moment Jon thought he was going to ask if that had been all right (which it had, it definitely had), but then Stephen opened his mouth. "Still a no on the baby oil, then?"

Rolling his eyes, Jon pushed Stephen gently away, taking the gamble that his slightly boneless legs wouldn't collapse underneath him. "Good night, Stephen."




Barry, now returned to his natural color except for some red dye crusted in the fluff behind his ears, tore across Stephen's wide back yard after the tennis ball.

Stephen stuck his head out the back door. "Are you sure you don't want me to slip a little chemical enhancement in your tea?" he asked. "Because I really think it would help you relax."

"I think I'll stick to the natural methods of stress relief," replied Jon, as Barry snuffled around in the grass for the prize.

"This is natural," protested Stephen. "It's organic and everything!"

"Does it come in a box that says 'These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA' on the side?"

"No, it comes from a box full of dirt that sits in my upstairs window. See, it's even local!"

Jon laughed. "Nothing extra in my tea, please, Stephen. Local or not."

"Well, all right," said Stephen doubtfully, disappearing into the house.

A moment later, while Jon was attempting to wrestle the slobbery ball out of the puppy's jaws, he leaned out again. "By the way, this counts as our second date, right?"

Jon considered the merits of ending the afternoon with another one of Stephen's toe-curling kisses. On top of that, he had been here twenty minutes and Stephen had resisted inviting him to look over his sex toy collection. Surely that deserved some positive reinforcement.

"Sure," he said.

"Great!" replied Stephen brightly. "Now, I want to make sure I'm prepared for the next time you come over, so when you wear Barry out, there's a shelf upstairs with some things I'd like you to rate...."




As he stepped out of the shower, Jon found himself humming.

He felt a bit self-conscious when he noticed what he was doing, but not enough to stop. After all, he was happy. He had the kids for the day and a hot date in the evening, topped off with sex that promised to be personal and meaningful, even if he did relent and let Stephen bring the glow-in-the-dark crucifix dildo into the proceedings.

And, okay, maybe Jon was just a touch smug that he had gotten Stephen "I've-had-thousands-of-sexual-partners" Colbert to sit through three consecutive dates.

On the way to his bureau, Jon heard his phone buzz. Snatching it up from the end table, he dialed his voicemail one-handed while the other rifled through the drawers for a grey T-shirt.

"Jon? Hi," said the self-conscious recorded voice. It took a moment for Jon to realize that it was Stephen. "I, uh, think it would be better for everyone if we called this whole thing off. Sorry for the late notice."

Jon spent the next ten minutes trying, unsuccessfully, to call back. He might even have driven out to see the caller that instant if his kids hadn't been waiting.