Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2011-03-27 10:02 am
ptahrrific) wrote2011-03-27 10:02 am
Entry tags:
Fake News: State of Grace: the Despair That Slumber'd remix (2/4)
Title: State of Grace: the Despair That Slumber'd remix (2/4)
Fandom: The Colbert Report/His Dark Materials
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: Same as on State of Grace.
More scenes from the Expectingverse-with-daemons. This part skips ahead a bit, to the stage when Charlene and Jon each know important pieces of Stephen (and company)'s mental state, but the biggest revelations are yet to come.
One |Two | Three | Four&.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"Stevie," echoed Jon. "Stevie Col-bert?"
The man beside him, cringing, tearful, nodded. His limbs were pulled close with the slightly floppy awkwardness of a small child, and Jon had the fleeting thought that his eyes looked larger than ever, the lines of his face less sharp.
"Jon!" hissed Avivah urgently. As always, Honeypie was curled up between her paws, but Jon's heart stuttered when he saw the kinkajou's expression. Her body lay limp, not with her usual sleepy lethargy, but with eyes wide open and staring blankly into the distance. Jon had never thought about what would happen if daemons didn't vanish when their humans died, but if he had tried, he would have come up with something like this....
"Bring her here, quick," he ordered. Avi caught up the slender brown form in her jaws and carried it to the couch, nearly touching Stephen's body herself in her eagerness to deposit Honeypie in his lap—
—and the man cried out, shying away, hands flying up to avoid contact with either.
"Okay, forget that!" cried Jon. While Avi retrieved Honeypie, frantically nuzzling and licking at the limp form, he breathed, "She's not yours."
Stephen—Stevie—shook his head. "'Msorry," he sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve.
"It's okay," soothed Jon quickly, grabbing for a tissue. "Where's Stephen? Where's your daemon?"
Another sniffle. "Stephen's down inside. He'd be real mad if he knew I was out."
And that was definitely a child's inflection in his voice...along with a distinct Southern accent. How old had Stephen been when he dropped the T from his last name, corralled his down-home drawl into the clipped newsman's tones? More to the point, had those changes come before or after he picked up the alias Tyrone Hunnibi?
"An' Shasta...." Tears welled up in his eyes. "I don't know where she is. I lost her. I don't know."
All Jon's other questions fell away. There was no way in the world he could ease that pain, and nothing more important than to try. "Oh, Stevie, sweetheart. Can I hug you?"
Sniffling, Stevie crawled into his arms, dropping the crumpled tissue along the way.
Jon's lap was not designed to seat someone this large, but he did his level best. "Shh," he murmured, draping his arms lightly around Stevie's awkward, gangly body. "Are you ever listening when Stephen's...out? Do you know who I am?"
"'Course I know you," said Stevie, in a choked voice that bore none of Stephen's finely honed condescension. He was stating a fact, nothing more. "You're Jon Stewart. You don't shout, an' you won't let Stephen shout either. And you keep us safe."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
When Stevie finished the drawing and fumbled with the paper to show it to him, Jon held up a hand. "Just a second, Stevie. Can you scoot over a little? You can be right here," he patted the cushion beside him, "and you can leave your legs where they are. It's not you!" he added quickly, as Stevie's lip (Stephen's lip) wobbled. "My leg is falling asleep, that's all."
The explanation seemed to reassure the other man. Well, boy, really; he sounded for all the world like an eight-year-old. "That happens to me," he informed Jon, a rush of pins and needles descending on Jon's thigh as the weight moved off of it. "'Cause of the shelf. See?"
He pushed the drawing toward Jon's face; Jon caught his wrists and gently inched them backwards until the scene came into focus.
It was the Report set.
But not exactly, Jon realized. The blocky scene had the same basic layout as the main stage, a bespectacled stick figure labeled Stephen sitting behind the C-shaped desk at its heart, while an unlabeled Honeypie watched him from over by the wall. The doorway behind her, though, with a suggestion of a hallway beyond: that was new. (An arrow labeled Tyrone pointed down the passage, cast in shadow by a mass of ballpoint crosshatching.) And the shelf....
The bookshelf was toppled over, scribbly books spilling across the floor around it, a daemonless figure labeled Stevie C. tucked underneath.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"Don't you dare!" shouted Stephen. "Don't you touch him!"
"And why not?" Tyrone gave his strategically mussed hair a pleased once-over in the bathroom mirror, trying to ignore the fact that, to his eyes, the reflected face was all but snarling at him. "He wants a piece of this. Even your obnoxious flaggy pajamas don't turn him off."
Black wings spread behind Stephen's shoulder, beady eyes glittering in a black-feathered face. He shouldn't get one. He doesn't deserve anything from Stephen's body.
"You say that about everyone," sniffed Honeypie, scampering up onto the towel bar, where she could just reach far enough to slide open the mirrored cabinet door. With her counterpart's image no longer visible, she swung down to rifle through one of the drawers, tossing Tyrone the lube and stuffing the little bottle of pills as far back in the corner as it would go. "Deserving has nothing to do with it. He's available, ready, and willing, and he even keeps himself clean. Yahtzee!"
"He's willing when it's me!" snapped Stephen. "I know you don't care who's grinding you into the wall, but Jon won't do it with just anybody!"
No wonder Stephen thought he was in love: Stewart reinforced the idea that he himself was deserving, heaping adoration on him whenever asked and taking his rages in stride. The kid was even easier to win over; with his own daemon missing (and what better proof that what you deserved had nothing to do with what you got?), he was starved for whatever scraps of attention Stewart gave him.
"So I'll make like you," said Tyrone. "Pretend to be unsure, dial down the kink, snap at him over something stupid and petty, and say 'Jon' every other sentence. It's even easier for Honeypie; all she has to do is flop around and look sleepy." His daemon rolled over on the counter; he laughed and rubbed her belly, just the way she liked it. "The man won't notice a thing."
"I won't let you lie to him!"
"Oh, get over it. You do want to sleep with him, don't you?"
"...I...I do, but...."
"So it won't be a lie." Tyrone scooped Honeypie into his arms, nuzzling her forehead and stroking her fur. "It'll be the gospel truthiness."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Stephen stayed present all the way to the car, where he fastened George into his carseat with meticulous care and handed the baby the floppy cow to chew on. Avi squeezed in as best she could behind the driver's seat; the grasshopper-formed daemon hopped from George's head to the crook of his neck, and shifted into a lightly-downed baby rabbit.
"I'm going to get really quiet," warned Stephen, belting himself in. Honeypie was still hoisting her body into the car; Stephen held open the door, but made no move to pick her up. "And I might not answer right away if you talk to me. But I don't want you to worry, okay?"
"I'll try," said Jon.
"Thanks."
Jon buckled his own seatbelt and switched on the ignition. "Is it okay if I put on the news?"
No answer. Glancing over his shoulder, Jon found Stephen staring straight ahead, alert but unaware, like a man lost in a daydream. Honeypie had managed to curl up in his lap; her eyes were closed, so Jon was spared the terrifying dead-look, but somehow it still felt as if no force on earth would wake her up.
"Turn it on," said Avi softly. "Please."
Jon was only too glad to switch on NPR. He wasn't sure how much of Stephen's silence he could take.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Although he had never put much stock in irritations like 'complexities' or 'shades of grey', Stephen had always prided himself on being able to see both points of view of every issue: the right one, and the wrong one. Every televised round of Formidable Opponent proved that, when he appeared to debate both sides at once. (It wasn't exactly him arguing the wrong side, but of course the audience had no way of knowing that.)
Now, as he sank into the replica of the set he had constructed within his mind, he had the eerie sensation of being enmeshed in half a dozen different views, every one complex and sprawling, overlapping but distinct.
Are non-split people like this all the time? Having conflicting ideas about the same thing? How do they manage?
"I dunno," said Stevie. "But I think they do. I think it happens all the time."
"And how would you know?" demanded Stephen.
"I learn," said the boy apologetically.
Biting back a chastisement, Stephen turned to the rafters behind him, the blackness where the artificial light of the set abruptly ended. "Are you coming down?"
Out of the gloom emerged, first a pair of eyes that burned like live coals, and then a form that seemed to be carved from the darkness itself. Even when she broke out into the brightness and flapped down to perch on the edge of the desk, her shape resisted description: sometimes like a large eagle and sometimes like a miniature Balrog, the edges always sliding away from the eye.
It didn't mean she hadn't Settled. He wasn't a child. She was just...different.
Once his arm was safely around her shoulders, Stephen turned back to the little boy. Had he ever seen him this clearly before? The child looked so small....
"You know learning makes you sad, right?" he asked, doing his best to sound marginally less confrontational than usual.
The boy cringed anyway, ducking even farther under the bookshelf collapsed around him. "Uh-huh."
"Then why do you do it?"
"So you don't have to."
Stephen considered this, then braced the heels of his hands on the top of the desk and hefted himself up to sit on the edge. "Come here," he said gruffly, patting the lucite beside him. "I, ah, promise I won't shout."
After a moment during which the air fairly vibrated with hesitation, Stevie scrambled out from under the shelf and trotted over. He made it to the raised platform that supported the desk before wavering. "I — I can't climb that high," he stammered, eyes filling with tears. "I'll get my dirty feet on everything...."
"Oh, stop whining," snapped Stephen. "You hereby have my permission to climb. Feet and all."
Watching him every second, as if preparing to dodge a slap, Stevie braced first one foot and then the other on the silver bars that ringed the base of the desk, hauling himself onto the C-shaped surface. At last he plonked obediently down and seemed to be relaxing, only to tense up and let out a stifled shriek when Stephen tried to put an arm around him.
"What's wrong now?" demanded Stephen. "Are Jon's hugs good enough for you, but not mine?"
"B-but — you never—" choked Stevie, then evidently decided he didn't have the fight for it. "S-sorry, sir. Go ahead."
"That's better." Okay, it felt awkward and unnatural, but Stephen kept his free arm around the boy's tiny shoulders. Then, since if he was going to do a thing there was no point in doing it halfway, he added, "You too."
One beady eye bored into him in astonishment, but the dark head snaked forward and gave a soft nudge to the daemonless child's fist.
Stevie went dead still.
"Go on," said Stephen gruffly, giving the child's frozen shoulder a squeeze.
With ragged breaths Stevie unclenched his hand and put it to the crown of Sweetness' head. When she didn't move, he brushed his fingertips along the raven feathers; with preternatural slowness she sank down to rest against his knee, letting Stevie stroke her all the while.
"Taking advantage of the kid's loss, Colbert?" demanded Tyrone, sauntering out of his room with Honeypie wriggling in his arms. "That's low."
Stephen gritted his teeth. "I'm trying to be nice! Dr. Moreau said we should learn to cooperate. And that it's the only way we can stop hurting Jon."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Though theoretically leading Jon, Tyrone kept a few leaps ahead of him, as if he what he really wanted to do was break away and run. Honeypie was at his heels, rolling gait faster than it had any right to be—
—and then Charlene came through a door with an armload of folded shirts, making Tyrone swerve to avoid her and Jon and Avi skid to a stop.
Charlene took a startled step back. "Is everything all—"
"Charlie!" interrupted Tyrone, face splitting into a bright grin. As Charlene and Jon both gaped, he held up a hand. "Up top!"
The laundry spilled to the floor as Charlene returned the high-five; Renoir fluttered up from the ruins of his comfy perch, only to have Honeypie snatch him out of the air. Then both humans launched with practiced ease into the densest secret handshake Jon had ever seen, hands flashing in mirror images as they matched each other move for move, while Honeypie rolled over and over with the hummingbird chirping joyfully in her paws.
Jon's jaw hit the floor.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"The pills can probably wait until we get back," Charlene was saying. "It's not too late. Although it's not supposed to be a big deal if you skip one dose, either."
"Thanks," muttered Stephen. "For being on top of that. Tyrone doesn't bother with them."
Honeypie, whom he had ended up lugging ungracefully under his arm, snorted. "Tyrone's not the one who needs them."
They stepped outside into the cool open air. Jon had called two cars; Stephen hoped they would show up soon. The night felt far too big, dark and open, with a disquieting lack of red-and-blue columns or copies of his name carved in gold.
"Well, do you need them?" asked Tracey. "I mean, are they helping?"
"Dunno." Stephen swallowed. He should have been able to properly fume at the Academy's snub, should have soldered closed the gaping cracks of despair in a single blast of white-hot rage. Had the meds cut him off from that? If so, how was that helping? Winning things and getting angry—it was what he did. Instead he had lost the time to Tyrone (and Caesar, now that was a trip, standing outside his own body and suddenly getting what felt like a sharply targeted case of double vision), followed by someone he couldn't even see, followed by....
"Because if there's any chance you'll start hissing at my kids," continued Tracey, "I want you on the best drugs money can buy."
Stephen's heart skipped a beat. "She's not supposed to do that. She's just excitable, that's all."
"Who is she, Stephen?" asked Jon softly.
"She's...her name's Sweetness."
Tracey and Jon both flinched, as did their daemons. "The gun," gasped Tracey. "Honey, if he snaps like this when he has access to the gun—"
"He won't," said Renoir.
When every head, including Stephen's (now suppressing a shriek of indignation from within: settle down, it'll be fine, these people are our friends), turned to Charlene's shoulder, she and the hummingbird both ducked their heads. "Whoever's been writing us notes," explained Charlene, "they gave us the combination to the safe, asking me to change it. So we did."
Avi breathed a sigh of relief. "Stevie."
"I still don't like it," muttered Tracey's daemon. "We can lock up all the physical guns we want, but if he thinks he's got a gun in his head...."
"She's not a gun!" yelled Honeypie. "Can't you understand anything? She's his daemon!"
Even Jon and Avi looked gobsmacked. Charlene went pale; Tracey rounded on Stephen. "What have you been telling her? It's bad enough putting on the act in front of other people, but disowning your own daemon—!"
"She won't believe it," said Stephen to the kinkajou. "She's never going to believe it unless we show her—"
Honeypie writhed in his grip. "Then let's show her!"
"Fine!" cried Stephen, and let her fall.
Honeypie rolled on the cement, scrambled to her feet, and started off down the sidewalk that followed the curved front of the hotel. Stephen paused only long enough to hand Jon his jacket and push his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, then turned on his heel and did the same.
In the opposite direction.
The distance between them opened up at a steady, deliberate rate. He ignored the gasps from behind him.
Twenty feet.
Stephen could feel the stretch, but only as a distant ache, like the throb of a bone broken and healed decades earlier.
Forty.
It didn't hurt, wasn't like actively trying to sear his soul in two, wasn't even as bad as the empty space Stevie still carried around.
Sixty.
The only real pain was that his Sweetness had retreated to the Colbunker. And he had gotten used to that long ago.
Eighty....
"Stop!" Charlene had broken first. "We believe you, please, stop!"
At the corner of the building Stephen stopped. Turned. Began the walk back, still at the same calm, unhurried pace. Honeypie's wobbly, rolling gait had turned into a scamper, not to reach him, but to keep a closer eye on Charlene while they waited for him to finish retracing his steps.
Up close he could see Tracey squeezing her daemon in her arms like she had forgotten that he might want to breathe. Charlene's was all but invisible between her cupped hands, eyes glinting in a gap between her fingers. Jon had dropped to his knees, the better to embrace his for all he was worth.
As the first taxi swung into the narrow arc of pavement that curved up to the hotel entrance, Stephen came to a halt: near Honeypie, but with more than an arm's length still dividing them.
It was the kinkajou who spoke; Stephen's throat was too tight. "There. You've seen it," she said stiffly. "At least now if you cut us loose, it'll be for the truth."
Jon gave Avivah a final squeeze and got to his feet, where he pulled Stephen into a hug.
It was a proper, manly hug, all in the shoulders, with a bit of back-slapping thrown in; but his lips ghosted on the skin below Stephen's good ear before he said, "We're still on for next weekend. And we can find time for lunch during the week. I'll see you then."
Fandom: The Colbert Report/His Dark Materials
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: Same as on State of Grace.
More scenes from the Expectingverse-with-daemons. This part skips ahead a bit, to the stage when Charlene and Jon each know important pieces of Stephen (and company)'s mental state, but the biggest revelations are yet to come.
One |
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
(19: The Traumatized Inner Child)
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"Stevie," echoed Jon. "Stevie Col-bert?"
The man beside him, cringing, tearful, nodded. His limbs were pulled close with the slightly floppy awkwardness of a small child, and Jon had the fleeting thought that his eyes looked larger than ever, the lines of his face less sharp.
"Jon!" hissed Avivah urgently. As always, Honeypie was curled up between her paws, but Jon's heart stuttered when he saw the kinkajou's expression. Her body lay limp, not with her usual sleepy lethargy, but with eyes wide open and staring blankly into the distance. Jon had never thought about what would happen if daemons didn't vanish when their humans died, but if he had tried, he would have come up with something like this....
"Bring her here, quick," he ordered. Avi caught up the slender brown form in her jaws and carried it to the couch, nearly touching Stephen's body herself in her eagerness to deposit Honeypie in his lap—
—and the man cried out, shying away, hands flying up to avoid contact with either.
"Okay, forget that!" cried Jon. While Avi retrieved Honeypie, frantically nuzzling and licking at the limp form, he breathed, "She's not yours."
Stephen—Stevie—shook his head. "'Msorry," he sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve.
"It's okay," soothed Jon quickly, grabbing for a tissue. "Where's Stephen? Where's your daemon?"
Another sniffle. "Stephen's down inside. He'd be real mad if he knew I was out."
And that was definitely a child's inflection in his voice...along with a distinct Southern accent. How old had Stephen been when he dropped the T from his last name, corralled his down-home drawl into the clipped newsman's tones? More to the point, had those changes come before or after he picked up the alias Tyrone Hunnibi?
"An' Shasta...." Tears welled up in his eyes. "I don't know where she is. I lost her. I don't know."
All Jon's other questions fell away. There was no way in the world he could ease that pain, and nothing more important than to try. "Oh, Stevie, sweetheart. Can I hug you?"
Sniffling, Stevie crawled into his arms, dropping the crumpled tissue along the way.
Jon's lap was not designed to seat someone this large, but he did his level best. "Shh," he murmured, draping his arms lightly around Stevie's awkward, gangly body. "Are you ever listening when Stephen's...out? Do you know who I am?"
"'Course I know you," said Stevie, in a choked voice that bore none of Stephen's finely honed condescension. He was stating a fact, nothing more. "You're Jon Stewart. You don't shout, an' you won't let Stephen shout either. And you keep us safe."
When Stevie finished the drawing and fumbled with the paper to show it to him, Jon held up a hand. "Just a second, Stevie. Can you scoot over a little? You can be right here," he patted the cushion beside him, "and you can leave your legs where they are. It's not you!" he added quickly, as Stevie's lip (Stephen's lip) wobbled. "My leg is falling asleep, that's all."
The explanation seemed to reassure the other man. Well, boy, really; he sounded for all the world like an eight-year-old. "That happens to me," he informed Jon, a rush of pins and needles descending on Jon's thigh as the weight moved off of it. "'Cause of the shelf. See?"
He pushed the drawing toward Jon's face; Jon caught his wrists and gently inched them backwards until the scene came into focus.
It was the Report set.
But not exactly, Jon realized. The blocky scene had the same basic layout as the main stage, a bespectacled stick figure labeled Stephen sitting behind the C-shaped desk at its heart, while an unlabeled Honeypie watched him from over by the wall. The doorway behind her, though, with a suggestion of a hallway beyond: that was new. (An arrow labeled Tyrone pointed down the passage, cast in shadow by a mass of ballpoint crosshatching.) And the shelf....
The bookshelf was toppled over, scribbly books spilling across the floor around it, a daemonless figure labeled Stevie C. tucked underneath.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
(21: Thy Daft Rebel Correspondent)
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"Don't you dare!" shouted Stephen. "Don't you touch him!"
"And why not?" Tyrone gave his strategically mussed hair a pleased once-over in the bathroom mirror, trying to ignore the fact that, to his eyes, the reflected face was all but snarling at him. "He wants a piece of this. Even your obnoxious flaggy pajamas don't turn him off."
Black wings spread behind Stephen's shoulder, beady eyes glittering in a black-feathered face. He shouldn't get one. He doesn't deserve anything from Stephen's body.
"You say that about everyone," sniffed Honeypie, scampering up onto the towel bar, where she could just reach far enough to slide open the mirrored cabinet door. With her counterpart's image no longer visible, she swung down to rifle through one of the drawers, tossing Tyrone the lube and stuffing the little bottle of pills as far back in the corner as it would go. "Deserving has nothing to do with it. He's available, ready, and willing, and he even keeps himself clean. Yahtzee!"
"He's willing when it's me!" snapped Stephen. "I know you don't care who's grinding you into the wall, but Jon won't do it with just anybody!"
No wonder Stephen thought he was in love: Stewart reinforced the idea that he himself was deserving, heaping adoration on him whenever asked and taking his rages in stride. The kid was even easier to win over; with his own daemon missing (and what better proof that what you deserved had nothing to do with what you got?), he was starved for whatever scraps of attention Stewart gave him.
"So I'll make like you," said Tyrone. "Pretend to be unsure, dial down the kink, snap at him over something stupid and petty, and say 'Jon' every other sentence. It's even easier for Honeypie; all she has to do is flop around and look sleepy." His daemon rolled over on the counter; he laughed and rubbed her belly, just the way she liked it. "The man won't notice a thing."
"I won't let you lie to him!"
"Oh, get over it. You do want to sleep with him, don't you?"
"...I...I do, but...."
"So it won't be a lie." Tyrone scooped Honeypie into his arms, nuzzling her forehead and stroking her fur. "It'll be the gospel truthiness."
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
(23: A Shot at Diplomacy)
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
Stephen stayed present all the way to the car, where he fastened George into his carseat with meticulous care and handed the baby the floppy cow to chew on. Avi squeezed in as best she could behind the driver's seat; the grasshopper-formed daemon hopped from George's head to the crook of his neck, and shifted into a lightly-downed baby rabbit.
"I'm going to get really quiet," warned Stephen, belting himself in. Honeypie was still hoisting her body into the car; Stephen held open the door, but made no move to pick her up. "And I might not answer right away if you talk to me. But I don't want you to worry, okay?"
"I'll try," said Jon.
"Thanks."
Jon buckled his own seatbelt and switched on the ignition. "Is it okay if I put on the news?"
No answer. Glancing over his shoulder, Jon found Stephen staring straight ahead, alert but unaware, like a man lost in a daydream. Honeypie had managed to curl up in his lap; her eyes were closed, so Jon was spared the terrifying dead-look, but somehow it still felt as if no force on earth would wake her up.
"Turn it on," said Avi softly. "Please."
Jon was only too glad to switch on NPR. He wasn't sure how much of Stephen's silence he could take.
Although he had never put much stock in irritations like 'complexities' or 'shades of grey', Stephen had always prided himself on being able to see both points of view of every issue: the right one, and the wrong one. Every televised round of Formidable Opponent proved that, when he appeared to debate both sides at once. (It wasn't exactly him arguing the wrong side, but of course the audience had no way of knowing that.)
Now, as he sank into the replica of the set he had constructed within his mind, he had the eerie sensation of being enmeshed in half a dozen different views, every one complex and sprawling, overlapping but distinct.
Are non-split people like this all the time? Having conflicting ideas about the same thing? How do they manage?
"I dunno," said Stevie. "But I think they do. I think it happens all the time."
"And how would you know?" demanded Stephen.
"I learn," said the boy apologetically.
Biting back a chastisement, Stephen turned to the rafters behind him, the blackness where the artificial light of the set abruptly ended. "Are you coming down?"
Out of the gloom emerged, first a pair of eyes that burned like live coals, and then a form that seemed to be carved from the darkness itself. Even when she broke out into the brightness and flapped down to perch on the edge of the desk, her shape resisted description: sometimes like a large eagle and sometimes like a miniature Balrog, the edges always sliding away from the eye.
It didn't mean she hadn't Settled. He wasn't a child. She was just...different.
Once his arm was safely around her shoulders, Stephen turned back to the little boy. Had he ever seen him this clearly before? The child looked so small....
"You know learning makes you sad, right?" he asked, doing his best to sound marginally less confrontational than usual.
The boy cringed anyway, ducking even farther under the bookshelf collapsed around him. "Uh-huh."
"Then why do you do it?"
"So you don't have to."
Stephen considered this, then braced the heels of his hands on the top of the desk and hefted himself up to sit on the edge. "Come here," he said gruffly, patting the lucite beside him. "I, ah, promise I won't shout."
After a moment during which the air fairly vibrated with hesitation, Stevie scrambled out from under the shelf and trotted over. He made it to the raised platform that supported the desk before wavering. "I — I can't climb that high," he stammered, eyes filling with tears. "I'll get my dirty feet on everything...."
"Oh, stop whining," snapped Stephen. "You hereby have my permission to climb. Feet and all."
Watching him every second, as if preparing to dodge a slap, Stevie braced first one foot and then the other on the silver bars that ringed the base of the desk, hauling himself onto the C-shaped surface. At last he plonked obediently down and seemed to be relaxing, only to tense up and let out a stifled shriek when Stephen tried to put an arm around him.
"What's wrong now?" demanded Stephen. "Are Jon's hugs good enough for you, but not mine?"
"B-but — you never—" choked Stevie, then evidently decided he didn't have the fight for it. "S-sorry, sir. Go ahead."
"That's better." Okay, it felt awkward and unnatural, but Stephen kept his free arm around the boy's tiny shoulders. Then, since if he was going to do a thing there was no point in doing it halfway, he added, "You too."
One beady eye bored into him in astonishment, but the dark head snaked forward and gave a soft nudge to the daemonless child's fist.
Stevie went dead still.
"Go on," said Stephen gruffly, giving the child's frozen shoulder a squeeze.
With ragged breaths Stevie unclenched his hand and put it to the crown of Sweetness' head. When she didn't move, he brushed his fingertips along the raven feathers; with preternatural slowness she sank down to rest against his knee, letting Stevie stroke her all the while.
"Taking advantage of the kid's loss, Colbert?" demanded Tyrone, sauntering out of his room with Honeypie wriggling in his arms. "That's low."
Stephen gritted his teeth. "I'm trying to be nice! Dr. Moreau said we should learn to cooperate. And that it's the only way we can stop hurting Jon."
Though theoretically leading Jon, Tyrone kept a few leaps ahead of him, as if he what he really wanted to do was break away and run. Honeypie was at his heels, rolling gait faster than it had any right to be—
—and then Charlene came through a door with an armload of folded shirts, making Tyrone swerve to avoid her and Jon and Avi skid to a stop.
Charlene took a startled step back. "Is everything all—"
"Charlie!" interrupted Tyrone, face splitting into a bright grin. As Charlene and Jon both gaped, he held up a hand. "Up top!"
The laundry spilled to the floor as Charlene returned the high-five; Renoir fluttered up from the ruins of his comfy perch, only to have Honeypie snatch him out of the air. Then both humans launched with practiced ease into the densest secret handshake Jon had ever seen, hands flashing in mirror images as they matched each other move for move, while Honeypie rolled over and over with the hummingbird chirping joyfully in her paws.
Jon's jaw hit the floor.
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
(26: Chekhov's Daemon)
◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊
"The pills can probably wait until we get back," Charlene was saying. "It's not too late. Although it's not supposed to be a big deal if you skip one dose, either."
"Thanks," muttered Stephen. "For being on top of that. Tyrone doesn't bother with them."
Honeypie, whom he had ended up lugging ungracefully under his arm, snorted. "Tyrone's not the one who needs them."
They stepped outside into the cool open air. Jon had called two cars; Stephen hoped they would show up soon. The night felt far too big, dark and open, with a disquieting lack of red-and-blue columns or copies of his name carved in gold.
"Well, do you need them?" asked Tracey. "I mean, are they helping?"
"Dunno." Stephen swallowed. He should have been able to properly fume at the Academy's snub, should have soldered closed the gaping cracks of despair in a single blast of white-hot rage. Had the meds cut him off from that? If so, how was that helping? Winning things and getting angry—it was what he did. Instead he had lost the time to Tyrone (and Caesar, now that was a trip, standing outside his own body and suddenly getting what felt like a sharply targeted case of double vision), followed by someone he couldn't even see, followed by....
"Because if there's any chance you'll start hissing at my kids," continued Tracey, "I want you on the best drugs money can buy."
Stephen's heart skipped a beat. "She's not supposed to do that. She's just excitable, that's all."
"Who is she, Stephen?" asked Jon softly.
"She's...her name's Sweetness."
Tracey and Jon both flinched, as did their daemons. "The gun," gasped Tracey. "Honey, if he snaps like this when he has access to the gun—"
"He won't," said Renoir.
When every head, including Stephen's (now suppressing a shriek of indignation from within: settle down, it'll be fine, these people are our friends), turned to Charlene's shoulder, she and the hummingbird both ducked their heads. "Whoever's been writing us notes," explained Charlene, "they gave us the combination to the safe, asking me to change it. So we did."
Avi breathed a sigh of relief. "Stevie."
"I still don't like it," muttered Tracey's daemon. "We can lock up all the physical guns we want, but if he thinks he's got a gun in his head...."
"She's not a gun!" yelled Honeypie. "Can't you understand anything? She's his daemon!"
Even Jon and Avi looked gobsmacked. Charlene went pale; Tracey rounded on Stephen. "What have you been telling her? It's bad enough putting on the act in front of other people, but disowning your own daemon—!"
"She won't believe it," said Stephen to the kinkajou. "She's never going to believe it unless we show her—"
Honeypie writhed in his grip. "Then let's show her!"
"Fine!" cried Stephen, and let her fall.
Honeypie rolled on the cement, scrambled to her feet, and started off down the sidewalk that followed the curved front of the hotel. Stephen paused only long enough to hand Jon his jacket and push his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, then turned on his heel and did the same.
In the opposite direction.
The distance between them opened up at a steady, deliberate rate. He ignored the gasps from behind him.
Twenty feet.
Stephen could feel the stretch, but only as a distant ache, like the throb of a bone broken and healed decades earlier.
Forty.
It didn't hurt, wasn't like actively trying to sear his soul in two, wasn't even as bad as the empty space Stevie still carried around.
Sixty.
The only real pain was that his Sweetness had retreated to the Colbunker. And he had gotten used to that long ago.
Eighty....
"Stop!" Charlene had broken first. "We believe you, please, stop!"
At the corner of the building Stephen stopped. Turned. Began the walk back, still at the same calm, unhurried pace. Honeypie's wobbly, rolling gait had turned into a scamper, not to reach him, but to keep a closer eye on Charlene while they waited for him to finish retracing his steps.
Up close he could see Tracey squeezing her daemon in her arms like she had forgotten that he might want to breathe. Charlene's was all but invisible between her cupped hands, eyes glinting in a gap between her fingers. Jon had dropped to his knees, the better to embrace his for all he was worth.
As the first taxi swung into the narrow arc of pavement that curved up to the hotel entrance, Stephen came to a halt: near Honeypie, but with more than an arm's length still dividing them.
It was the kinkajou who spoke; Stephen's throat was too tight. "There. You've seen it," she said stiffly. "At least now if you cut us loose, it'll be for the truth."
Jon gave Avivah a final squeeze and got to his feet, where he pulled Stephen into a hug.
It was a proper, manly hug, all in the shoulders, with a bit of back-slapping thrown in; but his lips ghosted on the skin below Stephen's good ear before he said, "We're still on for next weekend. And we can find time for lunch during the week. I'll see you then."
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Oh man, that hurt. :c Poor thing.
This is really interesting! I can't wait to see how everything ends up. You do such a fantastic job with world-building.
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More is on the way, and thank you :D