Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2010-09-18 11:03 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2010-09-18 11:03 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News: State of Grace, chapter 1
OMG STORY.
Welcome to the shiny new version of State of Grace: not a whole different story, just a thorough and much-needed revision. Featuring: better continuity! More characterization! Consistent symptoms! A writer who knows where the plot is going from the beginning! Basically, it's the Windows 7 of fanfiction.
Illustrations from the original have been left in when they're canon-compliant; they have their flaws, but not so much that I feel compelled to redraw them. The drawings that have been retconned into oblivion won't necessarily be replaced, but there will be a few new ones, complete with less-WTF-worthy proportions.
Chapters are going to have a baseline rating of R, sometimes jumping to NC-17, and not because of hot healthy sex scenes. Check the table of contents for the (long and wordy) full list of warnings.
Endless candy-coated thanks tostellar_dust for being an invaluable beta throughout.
ONWARD.
Title: State of Grace, Chapter 1: You'll Never Be Alone Again
Fandom: The Colbert Report
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: See the table of contents.
As before, this picks up shortly after the final chapter of Expecting. Charlene's middle name is Ophelia, after the literary woman pursued obsessively (but under false pretenses) by a very troubled man. It also gives her punny initials.
Clips referenced: "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)"; googley-eyed clams.
You'll Never Be Alone Again
July 21, 2007
Saturday
Jon, of course, was best man.
One of Charlene's friends flew in on a red-eye from Italy to be maid of honor; she spoke enough English to make friendly conversation, but not enough to follow any of Jon's stupid puns.
Nate got to be ringbearer, after he solemnly promised his father that he would walk straight down the aisle and hold the pillow very carefully and not be scared and not trip (and after his father solemnly promised Stephen to take immediate action if he started using the phrase "my precious").
Charlene's dress was a custom job, sent as a gift by some French designer. Jon knew nothing about fashion, but when Tracey heard the name she had to sit down very quickly.
The bride wore an old family pair of earrings, the stunning new dress, a pair of shoes borrowed from Tracey, and, in keeping with the color scheme of rest of the wedding, a red, white, and blue corsage.
No one in Stephen's immediate family attended except for the two-week-old George William Colbert, who, looking ridiculously adorable in the smallest three-piece suit Jon had ever seen, spent most of the ceremony sleeping in a bassinet at Tracey's side.
In total, only about two dozen people were physically present. On the other hand, the whole thing was broadcast via webcam. As far as Stephen was concerned, the eyes of the entire Nation were upon him.
The best bits were uploaded to YouTube within a few hours, just in case.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
The reception was much, much bigger. On top of the cast and staff of two television shows, every friend of the Report was invited. Despite the short notice, most of them even managed to show up.
Stephen wanted the first dance to be to "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)", but at this Charlene put her foot down, and Jon backed her up. In the end they looked through Manilow's discography, and settled on "Keep Each Other Warm."
There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd as they circled the floor. Which was fortunate, as it meant nobody noticed the way Stephen couldn't help but smirk in Jon's general direction every time the line "and we'll stand tall" came around.
When the tempo shifted, the happy couple split up and took turns with the other guests. Charlene turned out to be as excellent a dancer as Stephen; she indulged Stone Phillips, Julian Bond, Robert Wexler, Jason Jones, Aasif Mandvi, and Joe Scarborough before taking a break, at which point she ended up conversing in animated Spanish with one of the women who had accompanied Esteban Colberto.
Jon, well aware that dancing wasn't his strong suit, kept to the side for the most part. Tracey finally dragged him onto the floor during one of the slow songs, pointing out that all he had to do was rock back and forth to the rhythm and not step on her feet. That, at least, he managed.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Jon was on his way out of the men's room when he passed Stephen on the way in.
The groom clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, glanced around to make sure they were the only ones there, then spun Jon against the wall and kissed him thoroughly.
He wanted to say: "Stephen, no. Not here. Not yet. It's too public; it's too crowded; someone could walk in at any minute."
He said: "Mmph—ngh—oh-h-h—ah."
Stephen pulled away, smirked triumphantly, and tucked a dislodged lock of Jon's hair back into place before disappearing without a word into one of the stalls.
When Jon got back to the reception hall, trying to act casual, Tracey caught him immediately and began to straighten his collar. "Bit early for that, don't you think?" she murmured, low enough that only they could hear.
"Your lipstick's smeared," replied Jon.
She jumped. "Where?"
Jon grinned. "Not really. But now I know it could have been."
"Why you—!" Tracey whacked him lightly on the shoulder with her purse, then laughed. "All right, you caught me. But you, dear, need to learn to make use of mirrors."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
When they were gathered around the table with the cake in the center, someone called for a toast, and the call was echoed up and down the seats.
"Why is everyone looking at me?" murmured Jon after a minute.
"Tradition says the best man gets the first toast," his wife reminded him. "Go on, honey, take a shot at it."
When the guests began to chant his name, Jon knew there was no getting out of it. He stood, to general cheering; Stephen, the expert in mob control, waved the crowd gently into silence.
"I, ah, don't have anything prepared," Jon began. "So if you're expecting me to be funny, you're out of luck. I don't have any jokes about weddings, anyway. In fact, I'm pretty much blanking on all my jokes except one. All you need to know is that it involves a piñata, and isn't appropriate for mixed company."
That got a round of chuckles. Some of them had obviously heard the joke.
"So all I've got is my, uh, I guess my hopes and dreams and feelings for this couple, and I'll try to express them as honestly as I can."
A respectful silence settled.
"We're here to celebrate the wedding of Stephen Tyrone Colbert and Charlene Ophelia Colbert. They have a long and complicated history, and how they ever got to this point is an incredibly, incredibly circuitous tale, so I'm not going to go into detail now.
"Suffice to say that they've both been through rough times. Charlene's got a million stories; she could fill a book with nothing but times when she ended up stranded in some remote countryside. And Stephen, well, Stephen's been pregnant. It doesn't get much rougher than that—am I right, ladies?"
There was a murmur of approval from the mothers in the audience, and a few fathers who were sharp enough to know they would win points for agreeing.
"But they've made it through everything to end up here today, and I couldn't be happier." He turned to the couple, who were leaning close together but both facing him, and let his gaze settle on Stephen's eyes. "They've each found someone who loves them, and accepts them, and will take care of them. Someone who will help them through whatever they face in the future. Someone who will make sure they'll never be alone again.
"All I want for these two people is for them to be happy. And I believe they will be."
He raised his glass. "L'Chaim."
The guests raised their own glasses and, in variants of Hebrew ranging from pitch-perfect to hopelessly mangled, echoed the toast.
"That was beautiful, Jon," said Charlene.
"Yes, beautiful," agreed Stephen. "Now who wants cake?"
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Eleanor Holmes Norton caught the bouquet.
After Charlene had thrown it, Stephen tossed his corsage in the same manner. There was a general leap from all the single men, resulting in a tangled pile of limbs that could have been either a football tackle or a fully clothed orgy. Bobby and Tad, whose wedding was scheduled for December, watched with detached amusement from the sidelines.
When the dust cleared, Keith Olbermann held the prize triumphantly aloft.
"Did I invite him?" asked Stephen in an undertone.
Beside him, Jon shrugged. "I think he's Anderson Cooper's 'plus one'."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
They had decided against a full-fledged honeymoon. Charlene had been to all the classic places anyway, and Stephen had a show to host on Monday.
Instead, they opted to spend their first two nights as a married couple in a ridiculously expensive hotel suite. George stared around at the lavish décor with what his father declared to be a clear appreciation of platinum-level tastes, until he started whimpering. Stephen grabbed a spare diaper and hauled him off to the bathroom without comment.
The baby was still fussy after being changed and wiped down, so Stephen carried him from room to room, rocking him gently and pointing out the various expensive materials used in the furniture.
He was finally starting to doze when Stephen strolled through one of the doors (mahogany-paneled, with designs in gold leaf) and found Charlene curled up by a window, still as a statue, looking out across the city skyline.
"Out there are the businesses," explained Stephen in a whisper. "That's where people like Jon's big brother make all the money. You've got two big brothers of your own, you know. Maybe you'll get to meet them soon." He stroked George's feathery hairline, then looked up at his cousin. "It's a great view, isn't it?"
"I must be crazy," murmured Charlene.
Stephen frowned. "Because you don't like the view?"
"I'm married," continued Charlene, only half-sounding like she was listening. "I could have just moved in. You could have let the rumors work on their own. There are six different clips on YouTube of you giving me a horrible awkward kiss. What am I doing?"
Stephen thought it had been a fine kiss, and almost said so—but something in him recognized that this might not be the time.
Instead, he sat down on one of the (leather and brass) armchairs near the window and said, "Remember that time Uncle Mark undercooked the turkey at the Fourth of July cookout?"
A beat later, Charlene replied, "What, the one when everyone got food poisoning except Laura, because she had decided at college that she was going to be a vegetarian?"
"And us," corrected Stephen, adjusting George to settle more comfortably in the crook of his arm.
"And us, right." She paused. "Wait, why us?"
"You twisted your ankle, remember? Out by the stream."
At last Charlene turned to look at him. She had changed out of the wedding dress hours ago in favor of a set of lavender pajamas; her hands were folded over the slightly worn knees. "And I told you to go get my parents, but you wouldn't leave?"
"I sent Shasta to find them!" protested Stephen. "I wasn't about to leave you alone. There might have been bears out there!"
Charlene smirked, not unfondly. "I remember your dog, all right. She couldn't have found a stick in the forest." She twisted a dark curl between her fingers. "So you're saying I owe you for saving me from bears?"
"And food poisoning! And you never paid me back for either."
"I did so! Remember when I brought all those shells back from the beach, and taught you how to make googley-eyed clams?"
"Whooziwhatnow?"
"Googley-eyed clams," repeated Charlene, gesturing in the air. "You take a clam shell, and you glue two little googly eyes on it, and maybe draw a smile, or...what are you looking so blank for? You made dozens of them! Hung around the elementary school playground, tried to sell them to the little kids."
"I—I did not," insisted Stephen, somewhat uneasily. She sounded awfully certain, but he didn't remember it at all. And anyway, it sure didn't sound like him. Googley-eyed clams? Honestly.
"Well, I'm sure I can think of something else," declared Charlene, relaxing back against the windowframe with a nostalgic smile. "Oh, I know! Remember the Christmas pageant in seventh grade...?"
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
The moon was low in the sky long before they ran out of memories, but George woke up hungry and Charlene drifted off while Stephen was feeding him.
George passed out again soon after his bottle. Stephen tiptoed out of the living room and laid the baby down in his crib (not a standard in these suites, but the hotel didn't make money by being unable to adapt to unusual situations). It was right beside the master bedroom, close enough to hear if anything went wrong; whispering a quick prayer, just in case, he let his fingertips linger on the tiny cheek for a moment before propping the door open and stepping through.
They couldn't exactly ask for two beds in a honeymoon suite, so Stephen had promised to sleep on one of the (velvet) couches, and had even been planning to go through with it. But now that Charlene herself had crashed in one of the other rooms, he felt no guilt in shrugging off the remnants of his tuxedo and sprawling, clad only in undershirt and boxers, across the (red satin) sheets.
Closing his eyes, the better to revel in the liquid fabric against his skin, he thought about Jon.
It wasn't the first time that night that Jon had come to mind, but until then Stephen had pushed the images away. No point in dwelling on the fantasy when there was no way to sneak the reality in, or get Stephen out to him, with inexcusable risk. Besides, he had other things to deal with.
But now the baby was asleep, and he was alone, and these sheets felt sinfully good.
He thought of Jon's toast at the wedding. Sweet and self-deprecating and incredibly Jewy and ultimately impossible to be unaffected by, and it had taken all of Stephen's willpower not to pounce on him right then.
He thought of Jon's smile. Jon's laugh. Jon's eyes on his.
He thought of the last time they had kissed, Jon in shirtsleeves and himself in hospital green and the whole thing smelling of old sweat and antiseptics, when he had been exhausted, full of stitches, and still a little loopy on painkillers....
Well, it had felt romantic at the time, but surely he could come up with a better fantasy now.
One of Stephen's hands slid languidly down his stomach as he imagined Jon next to him on the bed, furry chest bared, eyes smouldering.
His own eyes fluttered half-open as imaginary-Jon bent over him—
—for a second he saw himself, as if suspended in the air to watch his own body writhe on the mattress—
—and then all at once he wasn't there any more.
The sensations came all at once, tumbling over each other but not crowding each other out, not a single one dulled by the sheer volume of company it had.
A cold linoleum floor under his knees. Rug burns on his back as he was thrust against the carpeted floor, once, twice, again, again, again. Slippery, sudsy tiles against his cheek as warm water poured over his back. Hands, so many hands, grasping, shoving, stroking, pushing, smacking; and fingers, rough, slick, on him, in him; and then—
Where was he?
He was wrapped up in a cocoon of some sort. Thin fabric. And he was lying on something soft but firm.
Sheets. He was tangled in a ball of sheets.
Was it his apartment? A hotel on the road? His house?
No; even his house didn't have sheets this nice. Anyway, the rest of the bed was empty. Unless of course Lorraine had left again.
But that wasn't right either. Those days were long gone too.
Stephen opened his eyes. It took him a few moments to recognize the room, strangely illuminated as it was by strips of moonlight, but when he did it all fell into place. The wedding. The reception. The hotel. George in the crib. Charlene on the couch.
Jon in his thoughts.
And then—and then—but none of that was real—at least, it isn't real now—
Still clutching the sheets around him like armor, he dared to look up. His reflection, pale in the dim light, peered back at him from the mirror on the ceiling.
Half-expecting the face in the mirror to wink at him, if not start spinning its head at unnatural angles, Stephen grabbed his satin cloak and fairly threw himself out of the bed. Quaking from head to foot, he made his unsteady way to the next room.
George was still sleeping peacefully. Stephen reached down to brush a trail of drool away from the corner of the baby's mouth with his thumb; the hand stopped trembling as it touched his son's cheek. For another minute he stood there, willing the rest of his body to steady itself, as he watched the little chest rise and fall.
Then, feeling as drained as if he had just run a marathon, he collapsed onto the unused couch beside it and, until a cranky wail woke him a few hours later, slept without dreaming.
Welcome to the shiny new version of State of Grace: not a whole different story, just a thorough and much-needed revision. Featuring: better continuity! More characterization! Consistent symptoms! A writer who knows where the plot is going from the beginning! Basically, it's the Windows 7 of fanfiction.
Illustrations from the original have been left in when they're canon-compliant; they have their flaws, but not so much that I feel compelled to redraw them. The drawings that have been retconned into oblivion won't necessarily be replaced, but there will be a few new ones, complete with less-WTF-worthy proportions.
Chapters are going to have a baseline rating of R, sometimes jumping to NC-17, and not because of hot healthy sex scenes. Check the table of contents for the (long and wordy) full list of warnings.
Endless candy-coated thanks to
stellar_dust for being an invaluable beta throughout.ONWARD.
Title: State of Grace, Chapter 1: You'll Never Be Alone Again
Fandom: The Colbert Report
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: See the table of contents.
As before, this picks up shortly after the final chapter of Expecting. Charlene's middle name is Ophelia, after the literary woman pursued obsessively (but under false pretenses) by a very troubled man. It also gives her punny initials.
Clips referenced: "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)"; googley-eyed clams.
You'll Never Be Alone Again
July 21, 2007
Saturday
Jon, of course, was best man.
One of Charlene's friends flew in on a red-eye from Italy to be maid of honor; she spoke enough English to make friendly conversation, but not enough to follow any of Jon's stupid puns.
Nate got to be ringbearer, after he solemnly promised his father that he would walk straight down the aisle and hold the pillow very carefully and not be scared and not trip (and after his father solemnly promised Stephen to take immediate action if he started using the phrase "my precious").
Charlene's dress was a custom job, sent as a gift by some French designer. Jon knew nothing about fashion, but when Tracey heard the name she had to sit down very quickly.
The bride wore an old family pair of earrings, the stunning new dress, a pair of shoes borrowed from Tracey, and, in keeping with the color scheme of rest of the wedding, a red, white, and blue corsage.
No one in Stephen's immediate family attended except for the two-week-old George William Colbert, who, looking ridiculously adorable in the smallest three-piece suit Jon had ever seen, spent most of the ceremony sleeping in a bassinet at Tracey's side.
In total, only about two dozen people were physically present. On the other hand, the whole thing was broadcast via webcam. As far as Stephen was concerned, the eyes of the entire Nation were upon him.
The best bits were uploaded to YouTube within a few hours, just in case.
The reception was much, much bigger. On top of the cast and staff of two television shows, every friend of the Report was invited. Despite the short notice, most of them even managed to show up.
Stephen wanted the first dance to be to "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)", but at this Charlene put her foot down, and Jon backed her up. In the end they looked through Manilow's discography, and settled on "Keep Each Other Warm."
There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd as they circled the floor. Which was fortunate, as it meant nobody noticed the way Stephen couldn't help but smirk in Jon's general direction every time the line "and we'll stand tall" came around.
When the tempo shifted, the happy couple split up and took turns with the other guests. Charlene turned out to be as excellent a dancer as Stephen; she indulged Stone Phillips, Julian Bond, Robert Wexler, Jason Jones, Aasif Mandvi, and Joe Scarborough before taking a break, at which point she ended up conversing in animated Spanish with one of the women who had accompanied Esteban Colberto.
Jon, well aware that dancing wasn't his strong suit, kept to the side for the most part. Tracey finally dragged him onto the floor during one of the slow songs, pointing out that all he had to do was rock back and forth to the rhythm and not step on her feet. That, at least, he managed.
Jon was on his way out of the men's room when he passed Stephen on the way in.
The groom clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, glanced around to make sure they were the only ones there, then spun Jon against the wall and kissed him thoroughly.
He wanted to say: "Stephen, no. Not here. Not yet. It's too public; it's too crowded; someone could walk in at any minute."
He said: "Mmph—ngh—oh-h-h—ah."
Stephen pulled away, smirked triumphantly, and tucked a dislodged lock of Jon's hair back into place before disappearing without a word into one of the stalls.
When Jon got back to the reception hall, trying to act casual, Tracey caught him immediately and began to straighten his collar. "Bit early for that, don't you think?" she murmured, low enough that only they could hear.
"Your lipstick's smeared," replied Jon.
She jumped. "Where?"
Jon grinned. "Not really. But now I know it could have been."
"Why you—!" Tracey whacked him lightly on the shoulder with her purse, then laughed. "All right, you caught me. But you, dear, need to learn to make use of mirrors."
When they were gathered around the table with the cake in the center, someone called for a toast, and the call was echoed up and down the seats.
"Why is everyone looking at me?" murmured Jon after a minute.
"Tradition says the best man gets the first toast," his wife reminded him. "Go on, honey, take a shot at it."
When the guests began to chant his name, Jon knew there was no getting out of it. He stood, to general cheering; Stephen, the expert in mob control, waved the crowd gently into silence.
"I, ah, don't have anything prepared," Jon began. "So if you're expecting me to be funny, you're out of luck. I don't have any jokes about weddings, anyway. In fact, I'm pretty much blanking on all my jokes except one. All you need to know is that it involves a piñata, and isn't appropriate for mixed company."
That got a round of chuckles. Some of them had obviously heard the joke.
"So all I've got is my, uh, I guess my hopes and dreams and feelings for this couple, and I'll try to express them as honestly as I can."
A respectful silence settled.
"We're here to celebrate the wedding of Stephen Tyrone Colbert and Charlene Ophelia Colbert. They have a long and complicated history, and how they ever got to this point is an incredibly, incredibly circuitous tale, so I'm not going to go into detail now.
"Suffice to say that they've both been through rough times. Charlene's got a million stories; she could fill a book with nothing but times when she ended up stranded in some remote countryside. And Stephen, well, Stephen's been pregnant. It doesn't get much rougher than that—am I right, ladies?"
There was a murmur of approval from the mothers in the audience, and a few fathers who were sharp enough to know they would win points for agreeing.
"But they've made it through everything to end up here today, and I couldn't be happier." He turned to the couple, who were leaning close together but both facing him, and let his gaze settle on Stephen's eyes. "They've each found someone who loves them, and accepts them, and will take care of them. Someone who will help them through whatever they face in the future. Someone who will make sure they'll never be alone again.
"All I want for these two people is for them to be happy. And I believe they will be."
He raised his glass. "L'Chaim."
The guests raised their own glasses and, in variants of Hebrew ranging from pitch-perfect to hopelessly mangled, echoed the toast.
"That was beautiful, Jon," said Charlene.
"Yes, beautiful," agreed Stephen. "Now who wants cake?"
Eleanor Holmes Norton caught the bouquet.
After Charlene had thrown it, Stephen tossed his corsage in the same manner. There was a general leap from all the single men, resulting in a tangled pile of limbs that could have been either a football tackle or a fully clothed orgy. Bobby and Tad, whose wedding was scheduled for December, watched with detached amusement from the sidelines.
When the dust cleared, Keith Olbermann held the prize triumphantly aloft.
"Did I invite him?" asked Stephen in an undertone.
Beside him, Jon shrugged. "I think he's Anderson Cooper's 'plus one'."
They had decided against a full-fledged honeymoon. Charlene had been to all the classic places anyway, and Stephen had a show to host on Monday.
Instead, they opted to spend their first two nights as a married couple in a ridiculously expensive hotel suite. George stared around at the lavish décor with what his father declared to be a clear appreciation of platinum-level tastes, until he started whimpering. Stephen grabbed a spare diaper and hauled him off to the bathroom without comment.
The baby was still fussy after being changed and wiped down, so Stephen carried him from room to room, rocking him gently and pointing out the various expensive materials used in the furniture.
He was finally starting to doze when Stephen strolled through one of the doors (mahogany-paneled, with designs in gold leaf) and found Charlene curled up by a window, still as a statue, looking out across the city skyline.
"Out there are the businesses," explained Stephen in a whisper. "That's where people like Jon's big brother make all the money. You've got two big brothers of your own, you know. Maybe you'll get to meet them soon." He stroked George's feathery hairline, then looked up at his cousin. "It's a great view, isn't it?"
"I must be crazy," murmured Charlene.
Stephen frowned. "Because you don't like the view?"
"I'm married," continued Charlene, only half-sounding like she was listening. "I could have just moved in. You could have let the rumors work on their own. There are six different clips on YouTube of you giving me a horrible awkward kiss. What am I doing?"
Stephen thought it had been a fine kiss, and almost said so—but something in him recognized that this might not be the time.
Instead, he sat down on one of the (leather and brass) armchairs near the window and said, "Remember that time Uncle Mark undercooked the turkey at the Fourth of July cookout?"
A beat later, Charlene replied, "What, the one when everyone got food poisoning except Laura, because she had decided at college that she was going to be a vegetarian?"
"And us," corrected Stephen, adjusting George to settle more comfortably in the crook of his arm.
"And us, right." She paused. "Wait, why us?"
"You twisted your ankle, remember? Out by the stream."
At last Charlene turned to look at him. She had changed out of the wedding dress hours ago in favor of a set of lavender pajamas; her hands were folded over the slightly worn knees. "And I told you to go get my parents, but you wouldn't leave?"
"I sent Shasta to find them!" protested Stephen. "I wasn't about to leave you alone. There might have been bears out there!"
Charlene smirked, not unfondly. "I remember your dog, all right. She couldn't have found a stick in the forest." She twisted a dark curl between her fingers. "So you're saying I owe you for saving me from bears?"
"And food poisoning! And you never paid me back for either."
"I did so! Remember when I brought all those shells back from the beach, and taught you how to make googley-eyed clams?"
"Whooziwhatnow?"
"Googley-eyed clams," repeated Charlene, gesturing in the air. "You take a clam shell, and you glue two little googly eyes on it, and maybe draw a smile, or...what are you looking so blank for? You made dozens of them! Hung around the elementary school playground, tried to sell them to the little kids."
"I—I did not," insisted Stephen, somewhat uneasily. She sounded awfully certain, but he didn't remember it at all. And anyway, it sure didn't sound like him. Googley-eyed clams? Honestly.
"Well, I'm sure I can think of something else," declared Charlene, relaxing back against the windowframe with a nostalgic smile. "Oh, I know! Remember the Christmas pageant in seventh grade...?"
The moon was low in the sky long before they ran out of memories, but George woke up hungry and Charlene drifted off while Stephen was feeding him.
George passed out again soon after his bottle. Stephen tiptoed out of the living room and laid the baby down in his crib (not a standard in these suites, but the hotel didn't make money by being unable to adapt to unusual situations). It was right beside the master bedroom, close enough to hear if anything went wrong; whispering a quick prayer, just in case, he let his fingertips linger on the tiny cheek for a moment before propping the door open and stepping through.
They couldn't exactly ask for two beds in a honeymoon suite, so Stephen had promised to sleep on one of the (velvet) couches, and had even been planning to go through with it. But now that Charlene herself had crashed in one of the other rooms, he felt no guilt in shrugging off the remnants of his tuxedo and sprawling, clad only in undershirt and boxers, across the (red satin) sheets.
Closing his eyes, the better to revel in the liquid fabric against his skin, he thought about Jon.
It wasn't the first time that night that Jon had come to mind, but until then Stephen had pushed the images away. No point in dwelling on the fantasy when there was no way to sneak the reality in, or get Stephen out to him, with inexcusable risk. Besides, he had other things to deal with.
But now the baby was asleep, and he was alone, and these sheets felt sinfully good.
He thought of Jon's toast at the wedding. Sweet and self-deprecating and incredibly Jewy and ultimately impossible to be unaffected by, and it had taken all of Stephen's willpower not to pounce on him right then.
He thought of Jon's smile. Jon's laugh. Jon's eyes on his.
He thought of the last time they had kissed, Jon in shirtsleeves and himself in hospital green and the whole thing smelling of old sweat and antiseptics, when he had been exhausted, full of stitches, and still a little loopy on painkillers....
Well, it had felt romantic at the time, but surely he could come up with a better fantasy now.
One of Stephen's hands slid languidly down his stomach as he imagined Jon next to him on the bed, furry chest bared, eyes smouldering.
His own eyes fluttered half-open as imaginary-Jon bent over him—
—for a second he saw himself, as if suspended in the air to watch his own body writhe on the mattress—
—and then all at once he wasn't there any more.
The sensations came all at once, tumbling over each other but not crowding each other out, not a single one dulled by the sheer volume of company it had.
A cold linoleum floor under his knees. Rug burns on his back as he was thrust against the carpeted floor, once, twice, again, again, again. Slippery, sudsy tiles against his cheek as warm water poured over his back. Hands, so many hands, grasping, shoving, stroking, pushing, smacking; and fingers, rough, slick, on him, in him; and then—
Where was he?
He was wrapped up in a cocoon of some sort. Thin fabric. And he was lying on something soft but firm.
Sheets. He was tangled in a ball of sheets.
Was it his apartment? A hotel on the road? His house?
No; even his house didn't have sheets this nice. Anyway, the rest of the bed was empty. Unless of course Lorraine had left again.
But that wasn't right either. Those days were long gone too.
Stephen opened his eyes. It took him a few moments to recognize the room, strangely illuminated as it was by strips of moonlight, but when he did it all fell into place. The wedding. The reception. The hotel. George in the crib. Charlene on the couch.
Jon in his thoughts.
And then—and then—but none of that was real—at least, it isn't real now—
Still clutching the sheets around him like armor, he dared to look up. His reflection, pale in the dim light, peered back at him from the mirror on the ceiling.
Half-expecting the face in the mirror to wink at him, if not start spinning its head at unnatural angles, Stephen grabbed his satin cloak and fairly threw himself out of the bed. Quaking from head to foot, he made his unsteady way to the next room.
George was still sleeping peacefully. Stephen reached down to brush a trail of drool away from the corner of the baby's mouth with his thumb; the hand stopped trembling as it touched his son's cheek. For another minute he stood there, willing the rest of his body to steady itself, as he watched the little chest rise and fall.
Then, feeling as drained as if he had just run a marathon, he collapsed onto the unused couch beside it and, until a cranky wail woke him a few hours later, slept without dreaming.
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I know it's not the point, but I'll be seeing if I can spot the differences to the first version in the next chapters.
*rubs hands in evil glee*
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The differences will be mostly subtle in the beginning, but eventually they'll start to add up, until we reach the "whole chapters full of new material" stage...
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Lovely pic of Charlene sitting by the window, one of the new ones? Also, are you going to keep the old version up/archived, or will this completely replace it?
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Yes, that's one of the new ones. (You can tell because of the lack of Giant Shoulders For Everybody.) As it's shaken out, the first third of so of the story is going to be mostly old illustrations, the final third mostly new ones. My plan is to keep the old version up, if only for the sake of being a picky completionist ^_^;