Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2010-11-13 01:16 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2010-11-13 01:16 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News: State of Grace, chapter 29
Title: State of Grace, Chapter 29: Well, Stephen's Just This Guy, You Know?
Fandom: The Colbert Report
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: See the table of contents.
Clips referenced: what happens with hammers; custom boxers; November, 1982; ThreatDown: food. The list featuring origami is in I Am America.
Well, Stephen's Just This Guy, You Know?
October 13, 2007
(Continued)
Jon and Tracey returned to the house at the same time: she with the dogs, he with groceries. "Here," offered Jon as she struggled with the leashes, "I'll get the door."
"Grocery shopping without Charlene?" teased Tracey as he held it open. "I'm surprised you remember how to do that."
Charlene herself was at the kitchen counter, kneading dough and up to her elbows in flour. Nate stood on a chair next to her, rolling a stripe of dough into a snake; Maggie, in her highchair, was sculpting something far more postmodern, in the sense of "postmodern" that meant "incomprehensible." Stephen was breadless, baby monitor at his elbow, deep in conversation: "Fourth grade?"
"Right after Penny was born," agreed Charlene. "She got some kind of respiratory infection right away, and, well, it was expensive. Hi, Jon. Did you get the parsley?"
"Well, you didn't tell me that," protested Stephen. "I never would have said your father just needed to stop slacking and get a better job if I had known about that."
"You didn't mean it, though," said Charlene, as Jon dug through the bag of groceries. "Any time I came in without lunch, you flirted with the cafeteria ladies so they would give you extra Tater Tots."
"I was a charming kid," agreed Stephen with a fond smile. "Don't remember that, but it sounds like me. Definitely not Stevie. He hoards. Doesn't that sound like me, Jon? Charming?"
"Could be," hedged Jon, retrieving the container of parsley. "Charlene, do you need me to—"
"Daddy, look what I made!" interrupted Nate, turning around so fast that his elbow banged into the tin of flour. The lid clattered to the floor, a stream of white powder pouring down in its wake.
As the dogs trotted eagerly in to see if anything interesting had spilled, Jon took a hasty step back, waving away the billowing cloud of dust. "Honey! Do you know where I left my inhaler?"
Through his watering eyes he saw Tracey appear at his side. "Pocket of your coat, dear," she said, giving him a gentle tug in the right direction. "Char, can you hand me a washcloth? Nate, come help Mommy clean this up. Then you can show me what you made, all right?"
Back in the front hall, Jon sucked down a hit of Venturil more quickly than was strictly recommended, anxious to return to the heartwarming tableau unfolding in the kitchen. At least, until he caught sight of Stephen's figure making a beeline for the backyard.
Grabbing the plush blue coat off its hook again (how he had come to own a piece of clothing with so much color, he would never know), Jon followed, shrugging it over his shoulders as he pushed open the screen door and stepped out into the crisp, cloudy afternoon.
"Tyrone?"
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"Oh, for god's sake," muttered Tyrone, flopping down on one of the wicker chairs and propping his heels against the deck. "How could you tell?"
From a safe distance (right next to the doorway, where he slouched like he was uncomfortable taking up too much space, never mind that he was already small enough that the cuffs of his chinos were pooling around his ankles), Stewart half shrugged. "You didn't take the baby monitor. Stephen would have."
"And you came here to scold me?" Tyrone tried to fold a lascivious edge into the words; they came out burnt-edged and bitter instead.
"Came to see if you were all right," corrected Stewart.
"Stephen wasn't triggered, if that's what you mean," lied Tyrone. "I just couldn't sit there anymore and listen to him take credit for things he didn't do."
"So why run off? Why not stay up there, set the record straight?"
"Why bother? So I'm not just a kinky cheating fag; I'm a kinky cheating fag who's been selling himself since he was in short pants to batty old women with hairnets. Big whoop."
"It is a big...uh, deal," protested Stewart. "You were doing it to help someone else. You're not the selfish hedonist you pretend to be."
Tyrone bristled. "When did I ever say I didn't care about Charlie? It's the rest of you I can't stand."
Stewart gave him that look, the one with the pout and the hangdog eyes, and Tyrone suppressed a shudder. What was wrong with him? This had to be some shame of Stephen's leaking through. He'd stripped for plenty of cameras, bared every inch of himself and then some, without so much as a blush; he had no excuse to start feeling naked now.
"What about Steve and Nancy?" asked Stewart. "Because they care about you, you know. All of you."
What made him think he had the right to talk about Steve and Nancy? "That's your idea of logic? Bring up the people I tried to fuck behind your back to prove how selfless I am?"
In spite of a perceptible wince, Stewart remained maddeningly unruffled. "It didn't feel great, I'll give you that. But hurting me wasn't the point, was it? It wasn't really about the sex, either. Stephen didn't win the awards he was hoping for, so you went out and got him a different kind of affirmation. Quality time with old friends."
Tyrone folded his arms, partly out of defiance, partly because, well, it was chillier out here than he had realized. "What makes you think it's all about him?" he demanded. "Maybe I'm the one being protected here. Ever think of that? Maybe he's Zaphod Beeblebrox. The idiot front who keeps us from getting taken down by the authorities, because he's been lobotomized so he can't think anything subversive."
That at least earned him a flash of Stewart's worried-puppy face, all sad blue eyes and surprisingly biteable pursed lips. "Is that true? Are you the core? The original Steve Col-bert?"
"Wouldn't that just blow your mind," smirked Tyrone, before hugging himself against the chill. Not the most convincing misdirection, but he was too busy shivering to come up with something better. (Hadn't it been late summer just the other day? Why couldn't time ever pass normally...?)
"You want a coat?"
"What?"
"You look cold," explained Stewart. He jerked his thumb towards the door. "Want me to grab you a coat?"
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Tyrone was leaning on the porch railing when Jon returned. At least, he supposed it was still Tyrone, given the way the man's pose was subtly sultry even while hunched over and shivering. He made no acknowledgment as Jon approached, so Jon moved to drape the coat over his shoulders.
"Idunowifumthul," mumbled Tyrone.
Jon was so startled that he nearly lost his grip. "Sorry, what?" he stammered, fumbling to regain it.
"Are you deaf, old man?" snapped Tyrone, grabbing the coat and hugging it around himself. "I said, I don't know if I'm the original! Don't know if I'm even the original me."
The tone was different from his usual brusqueness. In the moment it reminded Jon of nothing so much as Stephen's: trying to prod Jon into some important understanding, but cloaking it in anger and disdain and defensiveness, so that if he reacted badly he would do so at arm's length.
Come to think of it, in this light, everything about Tyrone seemed Stephenish. He had the same furiously defended pride in his achievements, the same disdain and anger, the same rigid-but-fragile emotional walls. The fact that his achievements were (homo)sexual and his condescension turned on conventional morality only made it like looking at the negative of a photo: even with the colors reversed, it was still the same picture.
"Your memories go back a long way, don't they?" asked Jon, resting his elbows on the cracked white paint. "I mean, you remember the fourth-grade lunches."
"Well, sure," said Tyrone. "But I don't know if I was there, or if I just...inherited the memory from someone. First time I remember being out as me was November '82."
"Something significant happened in 1982?" guessed Jon, trying to work out the ages in his head. He would have just turned twenty, which would make Stephen—
"That was when I started fucking the history teacher."
Jon's heart clenched painfully in his chest.
The other man threw him a forcibly nonchalant glance, rolling his eyes when he took in Jon's reaction. "All the freaky sex you know I've had, and this is the one that bothers you?"
"You think I'd blame you," murmured Jon, chilled in a way that had nothing to do with the frost in the air. "He took advantage of you. Do you understand that? It's not your fault."
"Of course it's my fault!" exclaimed Tyrone, more incredulous than anything else. "I'm the one who started it! He had given some big test, and whoever switched in to take it wasn't the one who had been studying. So after school I came out, tracked the old queen down, and made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
Jon balled his hands into fists. "Of course he could refuse. That's part of his job. Even if you were a legal adult, you were still a student, and not in great emotional shape if you were switching so much—" A thought struck him, cold and piercing. "—and were you even an adult then? Your body was eighteen, but you're younger than it is, aren't you?"
A muscle in Tyrone's cheek twitched. "Don't look so worried. I'm legal now. You're in the clear."
"But still awfully young," guessed Jon. A stray lock of hair had fallen in the other man's face; without thinking, he stretched out a hand to smooth it away. "There haven't been a lot of adults you can rely on, have there?"
Tyrone flinched. "Stop that!"
Jon pulled hastily back. "Stop what? Touching you?"
"No!" cried Tyrone in frustration. "Stop being so fucking gentle! If you would drag me out behind a dumpster and cover my mouth and have your way with me, I could deal with that! What am I supposed to do with this?"
"All the dangerous sex you've had, and you're scared of someone being nice?" countered Jon.
"That's not what I'm scared of!"
"Then what is?"
"I—!" Catching his mistake a step and a half too late, Tyrone faltered, then tossed his hair and took the plunge. "What do you think's going to happen when you've had enough, huh? When it finally hits what a trainwreck we are, and you realize you can't deal with it anymore? Stephen's already on the verge of cracking up trying to feel things he's not supposed to feel about you! Haven't you done enough damage already?"
While Jon was struggling not to reach for him again, and, moreover, not to freeze up entirely at the thought of the worst-case scenario, Tyrone clouded over and Stevie burst through. "I wanna play with the dogs, Jon. Can I play with the dogs?"
Jon's heart skipped a beat. "Hi, honey. Are you okay?"
"Uh-huh." Hands tucked close to his chest, Stevie looked anxiously out at the bull terriers tethered in the yard. "Can I, Jon? Please?"
With gentle grace Jon smoothed back his hair. "Of course."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
October 15, 2007
Tuesday
"Okay, maybe I don't know what you want," said Stephen to the mirror.
Nothing but his own disheveled reflection looked back at him. If Tyrone was listening, he wasn't letting on.
The attempt at conversation was interrupted by a squeal from the dry tub, where Stephen had stashed George for temporary safekeeping. The three-month-old hadn't figured out crawling yet, but he was starting to investigate the possibilities of rolling—and, as Stephen found when he leaned over the side, of putting things in his mouth.
"How did you get that, baby boy?" he cooed, tugging the soap out of George's hand. The baby let out a frustrated whimper; Stephen quickly replaced his treasure with a giraffe-shaped loofah, and relaxed when George set to contentedly chewing on one of the hooves. "That's better. Try not to swallow too much dried shower gel, okay? Daddy will be done in just a few minutes."
He tapped George's nose, and was still smiling over the warm bubbly baby giggles when he reclaimed his spot in front of the mirror, where he found the face in the glass watching him with guarded curiosity.
"As I was saying," he continued, turning on the faucet and splashing warm water on his face, "I don't think even you know what you want. Because you know what? I think you want people to like you."
The man in the reflection rolled his eyes. "As if there's any chance of that."
"He hasn't left. Everything you've thrown at Jon, and he hasn't left. He could accept you. You're just afraid to try. Which means you would be upset if he didn't."
"Don't be stupid. I'm not trying because my give-a-damn is in the shop."
"I used to sound like that," insisted Stephen, slathering shaving cream over his cheeks and chin. "I used to say, look, I'm a hard-working, right-thinking American conservative with old-fashioned morals, and he's a fey intellectual permissive secular mainstream media liberal, so what does it matter—"
He slapped the counter for emphasis; flecks of shaving cream flew all over the bathroom.
"...what he thinks of me," finished Stephen shakily, wiping the mirror clean with his sleeve. "But it does matter. I want to make him happy. And I think you do too."
Tyrone snorted. "As if you wouldn't kick him to the curb this afternoon if Papa Bear told you to."
Stephen gritted his teeth so hard it sent bolts of pain arcing through the sides of his skull. "I might not!" he insisted. "You never know! I could turn out to be a maverick! I'm a McCain supporter, remember?"
"You and every other conservative pundit in the world," said Tyrone bitterly. "Get back to me when you've done something that would make your father call you a disgrace if he knew."
Stephen switched on his sexy black six-bladed power razor, the one he had special-ordered eight months previously and would be throwing out just as soon as somebody came out with a seven-bladed version. For a moment he let himself get swept up in its hypnotic whirr, trying to ignore the weighty lump of disgust that had settled in the pit of his stomach.
Tyrone's disgust, not his own. It couldn't be his, because it was directed at him, and there was no way he felt that way about himself....
A splash of cold snapped Stephen back into the world, where Tyrone was rinsing off his face.
"Did you shave?" he blurted.
"Someone had to, didn't they?" said Tyrone, going for the aftershave. "It's not like Stevie and the girls know how. And I'm not letting you hold a razor near the body when you start looking at it like that. Remember what happened with the hammer."
The memory took a moment to surface, shrouded as it was in a layer of cottony numbness. Stephen's palm throbbed distantly as the images solidified.
"That was different," he muttered, trying to shake the feeling away. "Wasn't trying to hurt myself. I just wanted to feel something. Normally it would have been fine, but you're not supposed to just feel nothing when you get divorced...and it didn't work, anyway, it just...hey! You didn't finish!"
Tyrone yanked his hand away before he could go for the razor again. "Sure I did."
"You're not growing a mustache!" yelped Stephen, glaring at the reflected line of stubble along his upper lip.
"Why not?"
"It's not newsy! Unless you're Geraldo. Which we're not!"
"Well, it's my body too!" snapped Tyrone. "Maybe you get to shrug off the pain when you hurt yourself, but I always feel it for weeks, and Sweetness can't even come out without her hands getting all twisted up. Why can't you be the one to suffer a little for a change?"
Now Stephen's hands just felt like the proverbial shellfish. He wiped the sweat off on his boxers (they were made out of an Oshawa Generals jersey; they could handle it) and tried to meet his own eyes.
"I won't do it again," he stammered. "If something else happens that makes me stop feeling, I'll...I'll go play with George. Or talk to Jon or Charlene, or call Dr. Moreau, or get Bobby to distract me if I'm at the office. I have options, okay? I won't hurt my...our body. So can I please have my face today? I can't do the show in stubble. Even Geraldo couldn't make this look good."
Silence. Silence so flat and blank that it was a moment before Stephen realized he had his hands back.
The blades flowed silky-smooth along his skin, leaving him with the clean, professional reflection that had served him so well. He spent a couple of minutes inspecting it from every angle, just in case, then scooped up George and exchanged enthusiastic greetings in baby-talk.
On the way out, the mirror caught his eye once more, and he instinctively stopped to pose. Adorable as they both were, they looked even better together: George cute as a button, and Stephen himself downright beatific.
Cradling the baby, Stephen caught his own eyes and whispered, "You're gay."
The guy in the mirror nodded.
"Argl?" asked George.
Stephen shook off the early prickles of rising anger, the better to kiss his son's forehead. "I'll explain when you're older."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
October 17, 2007
Wednesday
Allison wasn't entirely sure whether her boss understood her job.
Stephen seemed to assume that a perfect script would materialize out of thin air. He normally saw it for the first time when the teleprompters lit up for rehearsal, and if they were lucky he breezed through it on autopilot. Even if he forced the control room to assimilate a round of changes before broadcast, he might still revise as much as half of it on-air (Jimmy was going prematurely grey trying to keep up), and end the night by dragging a writer or several through a round of shouting for not having come up with the final version in the first place.
So Allison was torn between pleasant surprise and gnawing suspicion when her boss showed up at the pre-rehearsal script meeting. On time, no less. It couldn't be for the party food: the celebratory cake was already down to py 2nd ersary, but he had yet to grab a slice. And she would have bet cash that he didn't realize there were WGA negotiations going on in the first place, let alone have any interest in how badly they were going.
The fact that Stephen was playing with one of the pages (shearing off one of the edges to leave a square, then folding it into progressively smaller triangles) came as something of a relief. If he had started reading the text and making suggestions, Allison probably would have had a heart attack.
"Does food have to be on the ThreatDown?" he asked suddenly.
The existing conversation, already fragile in spite of Allison's attempts to shepherd it into productivity, winked out entirely.
"It's part of the point of the segment, Stephen," she replied, crossing her fingers under the table that her heart would take the shock. "The idea is that we're doing the top five most common threats since the show began. For the anniversary. And food is the fourth most common threat, by the numbers."
"In that case, there has to be a more threatening food than pot pies," Stephen announced. "I mean, yes, they're an unholy marriage of dinner and dessert, and open the door to even more ungodly gastronomical hybrids that threaten to destroy the sanctity of mealtimes, but—well—is that really dangerous?"
The entire table gaped.
"Stop that!" barked Stephen, now creasing the paper back and forth in apparently random ways. "And close your mouths! I don't pay you to think about my questions, just answer them!"
There was the man they knew and loved, or at least tolerated. "Um," said Allison, "I would say no. Pot pies are not inherently dangerous."
"Hah!"
"But these ones had salmonella."
"Oh. Well, why didn't you say so?"
Very, very carefully, because correcting Stephen was only slightly less dangerous than walking through a minefield, Allison said, "That was in the script. If you would just unfold that...that, uh...what is that?"
The host followed her gaze, then jumped like a startled puppy. As if the slightly lopsided powder-blue crane had been snuck into his hands when he wasn't looking.
He recovered quickly, surveying the room with one eyebrow arched in the kind of geometric curve that ought to have been produced by a mad scientist's careful calculation of the equation for disdain. "It's origami," he said loftily. "Ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Very classy. And very, very difficult."
"So does that mean it's off the list?" asked one of the junior writers.
"What list?"
Allison looked sharply at the man and gave a quick shake of her head.
"Nothing," said the other writer quickly. "Never mind."
"I will not never mind," snapped Stephen. "What list?"
The writer shot a helpless glance at Allison; she only shrugged. Sorry, but you brought this on yourself.
"The list," said the poor guy shakily, "of things we're not allowed to mention because you're afraid they're trying to make you gay."
The anger drained from Stephen's face, leaving him paler than the employee he was staring down.
"Yes."
"W-what?"
"Yes," repeated Stephen, in a voice that might have been too faint to hear if the rest of the room hadn't unconsciously resolved not to so much as breathe more loudly than necessary. "Take it off the list. Take everything off the list. Scrap the list! I'm not going to keep being afraid of—of—"
He had broken out in a cold sweat, gripping the edge of the table for dear life.
Allison was on the verge of reaching out to him when Stephen pushed himself to his feet, so sharply that his chair went rolling backwards to thunk softly against the wall. "Don't you people have writing to do?" he demanded. "What do you think I'm overpaying you for? Get back to work!"
With one more change of hue, he swept out of the room looking faintly green.
Another writer broke the silence. "We're all going to get fired the second the talks fall through, aren't we?"
"The talks might still work out," said Allison, so mechanically that even she didn't buy it anymore. "Besides," she added, and to her surprise this part came out with genuine hope, "Stephen has a way of confounding expectations."
Fandom: The Colbert Report
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: See the table of contents.
Clips referenced: what happens with hammers; custom boxers; November, 1982; ThreatDown: food. The list featuring origami is in I Am America.
Well, Stephen's Just This Guy, You Know?
October 13, 2007
(Continued)
Jon and Tracey returned to the house at the same time: she with the dogs, he with groceries. "Here," offered Jon as she struggled with the leashes, "I'll get the door."
"Grocery shopping without Charlene?" teased Tracey as he held it open. "I'm surprised you remember how to do that."
Charlene herself was at the kitchen counter, kneading dough and up to her elbows in flour. Nate stood on a chair next to her, rolling a stripe of dough into a snake; Maggie, in her highchair, was sculpting something far more postmodern, in the sense of "postmodern" that meant "incomprehensible." Stephen was breadless, baby monitor at his elbow, deep in conversation: "Fourth grade?"
"Right after Penny was born," agreed Charlene. "She got some kind of respiratory infection right away, and, well, it was expensive. Hi, Jon. Did you get the parsley?"
"Well, you didn't tell me that," protested Stephen. "I never would have said your father just needed to stop slacking and get a better job if I had known about that."
"You didn't mean it, though," said Charlene, as Jon dug through the bag of groceries. "Any time I came in without lunch, you flirted with the cafeteria ladies so they would give you extra Tater Tots."
"I was a charming kid," agreed Stephen with a fond smile. "Don't remember that, but it sounds like me. Definitely not Stevie. He hoards. Doesn't that sound like me, Jon? Charming?"
"Could be," hedged Jon, retrieving the container of parsley. "Charlene, do you need me to—"
"Daddy, look what I made!" interrupted Nate, turning around so fast that his elbow banged into the tin of flour. The lid clattered to the floor, a stream of white powder pouring down in its wake.
As the dogs trotted eagerly in to see if anything interesting had spilled, Jon took a hasty step back, waving away the billowing cloud of dust. "Honey! Do you know where I left my inhaler?"
Through his watering eyes he saw Tracey appear at his side. "Pocket of your coat, dear," she said, giving him a gentle tug in the right direction. "Char, can you hand me a washcloth? Nate, come help Mommy clean this up. Then you can show me what you made, all right?"
Back in the front hall, Jon sucked down a hit of Venturil more quickly than was strictly recommended, anxious to return to the heartwarming tableau unfolding in the kitchen. At least, until he caught sight of Stephen's figure making a beeline for the backyard.
Grabbing the plush blue coat off its hook again (how he had come to own a piece of clothing with so much color, he would never know), Jon followed, shrugging it over his shoulders as he pushed open the screen door and stepped out into the crisp, cloudy afternoon.
"Tyrone?"
"Oh, for god's sake," muttered Tyrone, flopping down on one of the wicker chairs and propping his heels against the deck. "How could you tell?"
From a safe distance (right next to the doorway, where he slouched like he was uncomfortable taking up too much space, never mind that he was already small enough that the cuffs of his chinos were pooling around his ankles), Stewart half shrugged. "You didn't take the baby monitor. Stephen would have."
"And you came here to scold me?" Tyrone tried to fold a lascivious edge into the words; they came out burnt-edged and bitter instead.
"Came to see if you were all right," corrected Stewart.
"Stephen wasn't triggered, if that's what you mean," lied Tyrone. "I just couldn't sit there anymore and listen to him take credit for things he didn't do."
"So why run off? Why not stay up there, set the record straight?"
"Why bother? So I'm not just a kinky cheating fag; I'm a kinky cheating fag who's been selling himself since he was in short pants to batty old women with hairnets. Big whoop."
"It is a big...uh, deal," protested Stewart. "You were doing it to help someone else. You're not the selfish hedonist you pretend to be."
Tyrone bristled. "When did I ever say I didn't care about Charlie? It's the rest of you I can't stand."
Stewart gave him that look, the one with the pout and the hangdog eyes, and Tyrone suppressed a shudder. What was wrong with him? This had to be some shame of Stephen's leaking through. He'd stripped for plenty of cameras, bared every inch of himself and then some, without so much as a blush; he had no excuse to start feeling naked now.
"What about Steve and Nancy?" asked Stewart. "Because they care about you, you know. All of you."
What made him think he had the right to talk about Steve and Nancy? "That's your idea of logic? Bring up the people I tried to fuck behind your back to prove how selfless I am?"
In spite of a perceptible wince, Stewart remained maddeningly unruffled. "It didn't feel great, I'll give you that. But hurting me wasn't the point, was it? It wasn't really about the sex, either. Stephen didn't win the awards he was hoping for, so you went out and got him a different kind of affirmation. Quality time with old friends."
Tyrone folded his arms, partly out of defiance, partly because, well, it was chillier out here than he had realized. "What makes you think it's all about him?" he demanded. "Maybe I'm the one being protected here. Ever think of that? Maybe he's Zaphod Beeblebrox. The idiot front who keeps us from getting taken down by the authorities, because he's been lobotomized so he can't think anything subversive."
That at least earned him a flash of Stewart's worried-puppy face, all sad blue eyes and surprisingly biteable pursed lips. "Is that true? Are you the core? The original Steve Col-bert?"
"Wouldn't that just blow your mind," smirked Tyrone, before hugging himself against the chill. Not the most convincing misdirection, but he was too busy shivering to come up with something better. (Hadn't it been late summer just the other day? Why couldn't time ever pass normally...?)
"You want a coat?"
"What?"
"You look cold," explained Stewart. He jerked his thumb towards the door. "Want me to grab you a coat?"
Tyrone was leaning on the porch railing when Jon returned. At least, he supposed it was still Tyrone, given the way the man's pose was subtly sultry even while hunched over and shivering. He made no acknowledgment as Jon approached, so Jon moved to drape the coat over his shoulders.
"Idunowifumthul," mumbled Tyrone.
Jon was so startled that he nearly lost his grip. "Sorry, what?" he stammered, fumbling to regain it.
"Are you deaf, old man?" snapped Tyrone, grabbing the coat and hugging it around himself. "I said, I don't know if I'm the original! Don't know if I'm even the original me."
The tone was different from his usual brusqueness. In the moment it reminded Jon of nothing so much as Stephen's: trying to prod Jon into some important understanding, but cloaking it in anger and disdain and defensiveness, so that if he reacted badly he would do so at arm's length.
Come to think of it, in this light, everything about Tyrone seemed Stephenish. He had the same furiously defended pride in his achievements, the same disdain and anger, the same rigid-but-fragile emotional walls. The fact that his achievements were (homo)sexual and his condescension turned on conventional morality only made it like looking at the negative of a photo: even with the colors reversed, it was still the same picture.
"Your memories go back a long way, don't they?" asked Jon, resting his elbows on the cracked white paint. "I mean, you remember the fourth-grade lunches."
"Well, sure," said Tyrone. "But I don't know if I was there, or if I just...inherited the memory from someone. First time I remember being out as me was November '82."
"Something significant happened in 1982?" guessed Jon, trying to work out the ages in his head. He would have just turned twenty, which would make Stephen—
"That was when I started fucking the history teacher."
Jon's heart clenched painfully in his chest.
The other man threw him a forcibly nonchalant glance, rolling his eyes when he took in Jon's reaction. "All the freaky sex you know I've had, and this is the one that bothers you?"
"You think I'd blame you," murmured Jon, chilled in a way that had nothing to do with the frost in the air. "He took advantage of you. Do you understand that? It's not your fault."
"Of course it's my fault!" exclaimed Tyrone, more incredulous than anything else. "I'm the one who started it! He had given some big test, and whoever switched in to take it wasn't the one who had been studying. So after school I came out, tracked the old queen down, and made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
Jon balled his hands into fists. "Of course he could refuse. That's part of his job. Even if you were a legal adult, you were still a student, and not in great emotional shape if you were switching so much—" A thought struck him, cold and piercing. "—and were you even an adult then? Your body was eighteen, but you're younger than it is, aren't you?"
A muscle in Tyrone's cheek twitched. "Don't look so worried. I'm legal now. You're in the clear."
"But still awfully young," guessed Jon. A stray lock of hair had fallen in the other man's face; without thinking, he stretched out a hand to smooth it away. "There haven't been a lot of adults you can rely on, have there?"
Tyrone flinched. "Stop that!"
Jon pulled hastily back. "Stop what? Touching you?"
"No!" cried Tyrone in frustration. "Stop being so fucking gentle! If you would drag me out behind a dumpster and cover my mouth and have your way with me, I could deal with that! What am I supposed to do with this?"
"All the dangerous sex you've had, and you're scared of someone being nice?" countered Jon.
"That's not what I'm scared of!"
"Then what is?"
"I—!" Catching his mistake a step and a half too late, Tyrone faltered, then tossed his hair and took the plunge. "What do you think's going to happen when you've had enough, huh? When it finally hits what a trainwreck we are, and you realize you can't deal with it anymore? Stephen's already on the verge of cracking up trying to feel things he's not supposed to feel about you! Haven't you done enough damage already?"
While Jon was struggling not to reach for him again, and, moreover, not to freeze up entirely at the thought of the worst-case scenario, Tyrone clouded over and Stevie burst through. "I wanna play with the dogs, Jon. Can I play with the dogs?"
Jon's heart skipped a beat. "Hi, honey. Are you okay?"
"Uh-huh." Hands tucked close to his chest, Stevie looked anxiously out at the bull terriers tethered in the yard. "Can I, Jon? Please?"
With gentle grace Jon smoothed back his hair. "Of course."
October 15, 2007
Tuesday
"Okay, maybe I don't know what you want," said Stephen to the mirror.
Nothing but his own disheveled reflection looked back at him. If Tyrone was listening, he wasn't letting on.
The attempt at conversation was interrupted by a squeal from the dry tub, where Stephen had stashed George for temporary safekeeping. The three-month-old hadn't figured out crawling yet, but he was starting to investigate the possibilities of rolling—and, as Stephen found when he leaned over the side, of putting things in his mouth.
"How did you get that, baby boy?" he cooed, tugging the soap out of George's hand. The baby let out a frustrated whimper; Stephen quickly replaced his treasure with a giraffe-shaped loofah, and relaxed when George set to contentedly chewing on one of the hooves. "That's better. Try not to swallow too much dried shower gel, okay? Daddy will be done in just a few minutes."
He tapped George's nose, and was still smiling over the warm bubbly baby giggles when he reclaimed his spot in front of the mirror, where he found the face in the glass watching him with guarded curiosity.
"As I was saying," he continued, turning on the faucet and splashing warm water on his face, "I don't think even you know what you want. Because you know what? I think you want people to like you."
The man in the reflection rolled his eyes. "As if there's any chance of that."
"He hasn't left. Everything you've thrown at Jon, and he hasn't left. He could accept you. You're just afraid to try. Which means you would be upset if he didn't."
"Don't be stupid. I'm not trying because my give-a-damn is in the shop."
"I used to sound like that," insisted Stephen, slathering shaving cream over his cheeks and chin. "I used to say, look, I'm a hard-working, right-thinking American conservative with old-fashioned morals, and he's a fey intellectual permissive secular mainstream media liberal, so what does it matter—"
He slapped the counter for emphasis; flecks of shaving cream flew all over the bathroom.
"...what he thinks of me," finished Stephen shakily, wiping the mirror clean with his sleeve. "But it does matter. I want to make him happy. And I think you do too."
Tyrone snorted. "As if you wouldn't kick him to the curb this afternoon if Papa Bear told you to."
Stephen gritted his teeth so hard it sent bolts of pain arcing through the sides of his skull. "I might not!" he insisted. "You never know! I could turn out to be a maverick! I'm a McCain supporter, remember?"
"You and every other conservative pundit in the world," said Tyrone bitterly. "Get back to me when you've done something that would make your father call you a disgrace if he knew."
Stephen switched on his sexy black six-bladed power razor, the one he had special-ordered eight months previously and would be throwing out just as soon as somebody came out with a seven-bladed version. For a moment he let himself get swept up in its hypnotic whirr, trying to ignore the weighty lump of disgust that had settled in the pit of his stomach.
Tyrone's disgust, not his own. It couldn't be his, because it was directed at him, and there was no way he felt that way about himself....
A splash of cold snapped Stephen back into the world, where Tyrone was rinsing off his face.
"Did you shave?" he blurted.
"Someone had to, didn't they?" said Tyrone, going for the aftershave. "It's not like Stevie and the girls know how. And I'm not letting you hold a razor near the body when you start looking at it like that. Remember what happened with the hammer."
The memory took a moment to surface, shrouded as it was in a layer of cottony numbness. Stephen's palm throbbed distantly as the images solidified.
"That was different," he muttered, trying to shake the feeling away. "Wasn't trying to hurt myself. I just wanted to feel something. Normally it would have been fine, but you're not supposed to just feel nothing when you get divorced...and it didn't work, anyway, it just...hey! You didn't finish!"
Tyrone yanked his hand away before he could go for the razor again. "Sure I did."
"You're not growing a mustache!" yelped Stephen, glaring at the reflected line of stubble along his upper lip.
"Why not?"
"It's not newsy! Unless you're Geraldo. Which we're not!"
"Well, it's my body too!" snapped Tyrone. "Maybe you get to shrug off the pain when you hurt yourself, but I always feel it for weeks, and Sweetness can't even come out without her hands getting all twisted up. Why can't you be the one to suffer a little for a change?"
Now Stephen's hands just felt like the proverbial shellfish. He wiped the sweat off on his boxers (they were made out of an Oshawa Generals jersey; they could handle it) and tried to meet his own eyes.
"I won't do it again," he stammered. "If something else happens that makes me stop feeling, I'll...I'll go play with George. Or talk to Jon or Charlene, or call Dr. Moreau, or get Bobby to distract me if I'm at the office. I have options, okay? I won't hurt my...our body. So can I please have my face today? I can't do the show in stubble. Even Geraldo couldn't make this look good."
Silence. Silence so flat and blank that it was a moment before Stephen realized he had his hands back.
The blades flowed silky-smooth along his skin, leaving him with the clean, professional reflection that had served him so well. He spent a couple of minutes inspecting it from every angle, just in case, then scooped up George and exchanged enthusiastic greetings in baby-talk.
On the way out, the mirror caught his eye once more, and he instinctively stopped to pose. Adorable as they both were, they looked even better together: George cute as a button, and Stephen himself downright beatific.
Cradling the baby, Stephen caught his own eyes and whispered, "You're gay."
The guy in the mirror nodded.
"Argl?" asked George.
Stephen shook off the early prickles of rising anger, the better to kiss his son's forehead. "I'll explain when you're older."
October 17, 2007
Wednesday
Allison wasn't entirely sure whether her boss understood her job.
Stephen seemed to assume that a perfect script would materialize out of thin air. He normally saw it for the first time when the teleprompters lit up for rehearsal, and if they were lucky he breezed through it on autopilot. Even if he forced the control room to assimilate a round of changes before broadcast, he might still revise as much as half of it on-air (Jimmy was going prematurely grey trying to keep up), and end the night by dragging a writer or several through a round of shouting for not having come up with the final version in the first place.
So Allison was torn between pleasant surprise and gnawing suspicion when her boss showed up at the pre-rehearsal script meeting. On time, no less. It couldn't be for the party food: the celebratory cake was already down to py 2nd ersary, but he had yet to grab a slice. And she would have bet cash that he didn't realize there were WGA negotiations going on in the first place, let alone have any interest in how badly they were going.
The fact that Stephen was playing with one of the pages (shearing off one of the edges to leave a square, then folding it into progressively smaller triangles) came as something of a relief. If he had started reading the text and making suggestions, Allison probably would have had a heart attack.
"Does food have to be on the ThreatDown?" he asked suddenly.
The existing conversation, already fragile in spite of Allison's attempts to shepherd it into productivity, winked out entirely.
"It's part of the point of the segment, Stephen," she replied, crossing her fingers under the table that her heart would take the shock. "The idea is that we're doing the top five most common threats since the show began. For the anniversary. And food is the fourth most common threat, by the numbers."
"In that case, there has to be a more threatening food than pot pies," Stephen announced. "I mean, yes, they're an unholy marriage of dinner and dessert, and open the door to even more ungodly gastronomical hybrids that threaten to destroy the sanctity of mealtimes, but—well—is that really dangerous?"
The entire table gaped.
"Stop that!" barked Stephen, now creasing the paper back and forth in apparently random ways. "And close your mouths! I don't pay you to think about my questions, just answer them!"
There was the man they knew and loved, or at least tolerated. "Um," said Allison, "I would say no. Pot pies are not inherently dangerous."
"Hah!"
"But these ones had salmonella."
"Oh. Well, why didn't you say so?"
Very, very carefully, because correcting Stephen was only slightly less dangerous than walking through a minefield, Allison said, "That was in the script. If you would just unfold that...that, uh...what is that?"
The host followed her gaze, then jumped like a startled puppy. As if the slightly lopsided powder-blue crane had been snuck into his hands when he wasn't looking.
He recovered quickly, surveying the room with one eyebrow arched in the kind of geometric curve that ought to have been produced by a mad scientist's careful calculation of the equation for disdain. "It's origami," he said loftily. "Ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Very classy. And very, very difficult."
"So does that mean it's off the list?" asked one of the junior writers.
"What list?"
Allison looked sharply at the man and gave a quick shake of her head.
"Nothing," said the other writer quickly. "Never mind."
"I will not never mind," snapped Stephen. "What list?"
The writer shot a helpless glance at Allison; she only shrugged. Sorry, but you brought this on yourself.
"The list," said the poor guy shakily, "of things we're not allowed to mention because you're afraid they're trying to make you gay."
The anger drained from Stephen's face, leaving him paler than the employee he was staring down.
"Yes."
"W-what?"
"Yes," repeated Stephen, in a voice that might have been too faint to hear if the rest of the room hadn't unconsciously resolved not to so much as breathe more loudly than necessary. "Take it off the list. Take everything off the list. Scrap the list! I'm not going to keep being afraid of—of—"
He had broken out in a cold sweat, gripping the edge of the table for dear life.
Allison was on the verge of reaching out to him when Stephen pushed himself to his feet, so sharply that his chair went rolling backwards to thunk softly against the wall. "Don't you people have writing to do?" he demanded. "What do you think I'm overpaying you for? Get back to work!"
With one more change of hue, he swept out of the room looking faintly green.
Another writer broke the silence. "We're all going to get fired the second the talks fall through, aren't we?"
"The talks might still work out," said Allison, so mechanically that even she didn't buy it anymore. "Besides," she added, and to her surprise this part came out with genuine hope, "Stephen has a way of confounding expectations."
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Tyrone would probably be folding his notes into something other than hearts, If You Know What I Mean.
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idk idk i just think tyrone will be the most adorable of all once he calms down a little
not a tame tiger, but definitely a snuggly one that purrs a lot
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Au contraire Stephen. Patterson Springs says otherwise. 70s Pornstache!
Paper cranes! Also, the list of things suspected of making one gay is not so absurd when it's a list of things that Tyrone likes. :(
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Stephen would probably respond to that with another "That was then and this is now."
One of my favorite parts about messing with this canon: taking some completely random detail and working out a whole sensible backstory :D