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ptahrrificTitle: Shout*For, Intermission, chapter 3/4: Local Hero
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", family, Anthony, Killer, others
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Jon's in Jersey, it's summer, and there are traditions that must be followed. Fame or no fame, he's getting in at least one trip to the boardwalk. And if people start recognizing him, well, he'll sign that bridge when he comes to it.
(New bonus art: boy band AU Jon and "Stephen" meet canon Jon and "Stephen".)
New Jersey, at the start of Jon's night out.
A box of fudge and a round of smoothies on Jon's dime went a good way toward cooling tempers with Larry and his girlfriend (whose name Jon really should've written down or something).
The midway was its usual dense grid of booths with bright lights and loudly rattling games, every gimmick framed by displays of those most timeless prizes: massive plush Spongebobs, Stewie Griffins, Tweety Birds, and Hello Kitties. As a kid Jon had never been allowed to play enough rounds to win that kind of jackpot (not that he'd had the aim for it), and he still couldn't shake the feeling that it would be an unconscionable waste of money to go all-out now. Maybe Larry felt the same way, because he only went through two rounds of darts before giving it up, winnings-free.
Anthony took a spin on one of the wheels of chance, and won a light-up yo-yo. Then he took the offer to take another spin, to go double or nothing...and lost it again.
The girlfriend played Frog Bog until she won something, turned down the offer to double her prize, and walked away with a cheap plastic toy plane.
Killer kept himself squarely on one side of Jon, and made sure there was always somebody stationed on the other. Jon didn't even bother asking to play any games. He'd save his mojo for the arcades.
Then, at one of the water-cannon booths (aim consistently into a clown's mouth to fill a balloon until it pops — first one to finish wins!), he spotted, between hanging clutches of Angry Birds and Rastafarian bananas, a whole school of Finding Nemo fish.
Stephen would adore one of those. And, by extension, would adore Jon for bringing him one.
"Hey, Killer, can I ask you a gigantic favor...?"
~*~
"Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe that might be a record!" enthused the booth attendant. "This a big hobby of yours, sir?" (Killer gave her a short shake of the head.) "A professional, then? Incredible! Planning to go again? Double your points, double your winnings?"
It would take at least one more win to earn a really super-sized Dory. "Yes," said Jon under his breath to Anthony.
"Go for it!" yelled Anthony. As payment for his help, he relieved Jon of the strawberry smoothie and took a sip. "Didn't know you were such a hardcore Finding Nemo fan."
Jon shrugged. "You don't know that. Maybe I just really, really love Ellen."
"Who has the courage to try their luck against the professional?" cheered the booth attendant, trying to drum up interest in manning the last two water cannons. So far only a suburban-dad type had stepped up to the plate. A couple of preteen boys in baseball jerseys were begging their grandmother for the money to go again, to no avail; an olive-skinned teenage girl who had done pretty well in the last round was moving on entirely, apparently recognizing that the odds were not in her favor.
In a voice so low Jon almost didn't realize she was talking to him at first, Larry's girlfriend said, "Have you ever, you know...met Ellen?"
"I wouldn't say 'met'," hedged Jon.
It didn't slow her down. "What's she really like? Is she nice? I know it's dumb to get your hopes up about celebrities, but I don't think I could take it if Ellen wasn't nice."
"Listen, all I know is, while she was backstage before winning Teen Choice Comedian, she said hi to us, and we said hi back," said Jon. "Olivia talked to her for like ten minutes, because Olivia's a gigantic fangirl of hers, so, you know, apparently she was nice to Olivia. That's all I know, I swear."
A couple of laughing young women in tank tops and flip-flops shouldered their way past the group to get to the water cannons. "Hey, watch it!" said Larry.
"Sorry!" said the woman, half-turning to throw the word over her shoulder, ponytail whipping back and forth with the head motion before she stopped in front of a cannon.
Then she turned back just long enough to give them a once-over.
Her friend, whose hair was cut short and held back with a woven headband, was digging through a purse for change. Ponytail whispered something in her ear. Headband turned to look at them too.
Jon made a point of stomping on Larry's foot before turning to Anthony and saying, "So, back to Dory...great fish, or greatest fish?"
The putative conversation didn't stop Headband from interrupting them. "Excuse me — aren't you —?"
"Not the droid you're looking for," said Jon. He even made a short pass with his hand, just in case.
It worked about as well as you'd expect. "You're funny," cooed Headband, grinning like Jon had invented the idea of Star Wars jokes on the spot. "Can you just — I have a pen around here somewhere —"
Jon waved her back toward the booth. "Listen, go play the game, okay? I'll still be right here when you're done."
No sooner had he said the words than Killer was looming over them. He'd walked away from the next game after all, wielding a stuffed Dory that was (only) about the size of a large dinner plate. Keeping between Jon and the booth attendant's line of sight, he nodded for them to go.
"Or not," said Jon.
~*~
After some anxious cajoling of Killer, Headband and Ponytail tailed the group as the bodyguard hustled them away, cutting through a corner pizza place where even the air seemed slightly greasy. At the side exit, one that opened onto a dark cross-street rather than back onto the boardwalk, he let them pause long enough to get a photo. Jon obligingly rested one arm over each woman's shoulders, aimed a closedmouthed smile at the camera Anthony was holding, and tried not to worry about what kind of tabloid headlines this would spawn. (Jon Stewart's Two Secret Girlfriends?)
"Do me a favor," he said, scrawling his signature as high up the neckline of Ponytail's tank top as it went, "don't Instagram that or anything for a couple hours, okay?"
"Of course not!" said Headband reassuringly. "Private tweets to friends, and that's it. Scout's honor!"
Jon signed across her T-shirt's shoulder blades, waved goodbye, and traded the sharpie in to Killer for a mini-bottle of hand sanitizer as they scooted out the door. Under his breath, he added, "So, uh, private tweets, are those really private?"
"Totally invisible to anyone but the sender," said Anthony. "You have nothing to worry about."
"Are we leaving already?" said Larry's girlfriend as they emerged out the side of the building and took a ramp down to ground level. The cross-street was much quieter; you got spillover light from the sides of the pizza place and the arcade across from it, and could just see the last fading violet of the sunset over the boardwalk itself, but it was pretty dark, too.
"Just making sure we're not being followed, I think," said Jon. They wove between a couple of parked cars and started moving north on the next street over.
Larry, who had been stuck holding the plush fish while Killer did Serious Bodyguard Things, shoved it into Jon's hands. "Because we have to flee the terrible threat of attractive women wanting to take photos with you?" (The girlfriend cleared her throat.) "Not that I have anything to be jealous of!"
Okay, Jon was annoyed. There was no reason his brother shouldn't be able to imagine how two enthusiastic fans could snowball into a twenty-person terrifying mob. "Oh, were they attractive?" he said, with false lightness. "I wasn't really looking."
He'd scored a point, he could tell.
"I guess objectively, they were," added Anthony, backing Jon up. "Hard for me to judge, though, because all I can see when I look at women is that they're not as stunning and glamorous as Huma."
"You are so full of it," growled Larry.
"Yeah, obviously he is," said the girlfriend. "But I'm sure his lady friend still appreciates when he makes the effort."
Jon exchanged a high-five with his BFF. Two hits in a row. Double the points, double the winnings.
"Oh, hey, see, Killer thinks we're cool now," he added, as the bodyguard turned on the next cross-street and led them back toward the lights and the clamor. "No big deal. Unless you were really desperate to see one of the places on that block specifically."
~*~
Anthony gestured with the remains of the strawberry smoothie (now mostly water) toward the big open front of a T-shirt place. "Shout*For album cover, black shirt, top left. And on the blue, on the right, second column from the end...that's a lyric from one of the new singles, right?"
"No, that's a lyric from A Whole New World, which I'm pretty sure people were into before this spring," said Jon. Scanning the stall, though, he caught sight of a shirt with an unambiguous silhouette of the four of them, and another one silkscreened with Olivia's grinning face and the big LM logo that marked half her merchandise. If they'd stopped to look closely, he probably could have found more.
It was followed by a stand that offered fresh-squeezed lemonade and funnel cakes smothered in indecent amounts of sugar. Then a souvenir-and-sparkly-kitsch place that made Jon's heart twinge a little, knowing it probably had a million things Stephen would have adored, and a layout too cramped for Jon to safely go look at any of them.
"I don't see any Shout*For tattoo designs," added Anthony as they passed the next place. "Bet we'd find one if we went in, though."
Jon made a face. "I'm not sure I want to know."
"Well, I do! You guys go ahead and hit the arcade. I'm gonna check." He doubled back, tossing the empty cup into a freestanding trash can along the way.
The arcade they'd been aiming for was next, and the rest of them veered into it, entering the (nice and open) aisles weaving around the games that filled its carpeted floor. A cacophony of blinks, boops, chimes, clangs, and tinny video game intros swallowed them up as soon as they crossed the threshold.
Larry stopped at a couple of claw games near the entrance, one full of generic stuffed animals and the next one packed with Pokémon. To his girlfriend he said hopefully, "Want me to get you one of these?"
"Hmm." She eyed the heap of non-name-brand critters. "Can you grab one of the turtles?"
It wasn't crowded at all in here, so Jon felt safe enough to move a little farther in, until he spotted the one thing he'd been looking forward to almost as much as skeeball: the quarter-pusher. Behind a pane of something clear and heavily reinforced, a couple of mechanical shelves were piled high with coins, cantilevered past the shelves' edges to architecturally improbable lengths. Drop a single new quarter at the back of the pile, and it looked like the next push couldn't help but shove the whole setup over the edge and send coins raining down into the dispensary slot. Jon had never been allowed to waste any money trying.
With Killer always at his back he detoured to a coin machine at the edge of the arcade, withdrew five rolls of quarters, and started systematically feeding them to the quarter-pusher.
~*~
"They have this fantastic big design of Stephen Col-bert's face, which they offered to tattoo on my arm," reported Anthony.
Jon winced, without looking away from the machine. "Please tell me you passed it up."
"Only after great internal struggle."
Another quarter clinked its way down through the slots of the machine.
"They didn't have anything of you. I also turned down the option of working together with them to design an image of your face that's worthy of being plastered all over on my torso."
"Well, geez, Anthony," said Jon automatically, "all you had to do was ask."
His BFF didn't miss a beat. "Jon, while my heart belongs to Huma, and more generally to the fairer sex, I will absolutely not hold it against you that you suggested that."
Yet another quarter landed with a soft plink on the moving top shelf.
"Hey, ah...how long have you been doing this?"
Jon inventoried his remaining quarters. "Uh...for about one and a half rolls."
"And have you ever seen one of these things pay out?"
"Never in my life," said Jon, dropping another quarter in.
"Jon," said Anthony seriously, "you have gone mad with power."
"I know," said Jon with a dizzy grin. "You have no idea how much fun this is."
"Oh, for the love of...Cut that out and come play DDR with me."
"How fast can I burn through money on DDR?"
"Depends. How bad are you at dancing?"
~*~
Jon flatly refused to play through any of Shout*For's songs on the Dance Dance Revolution machine. ("I'd keep trying to do the actual dance steps, you'd have an unfair advantage.") They settled on one of Bill O'Reilly's top-40 tunes instead.
Jon lost anyway. He could move fine when he'd practiced, but it was different trying to follow steps on the fly, and on a game he'd never practiced but Anthony clearly had.
"I concede the DDR," he said, as the game announced PERFECT! of Anthony's steps and a dismal GOOD for Jon's. "Still gonna whip your ass at skeeball, though."
A quick look confirmed that Larry and his girlfriend were still at the claw machines, so Jon and Anthony crossed the arcade and squared off at two adjacent skeeball games, Killer standing sentry behind them. "Best three out of five?" suggested Anthony.
"No way. Too easy for one off game to screw up the whole thing. Five games, highest total score wins," countered Jon, perching Dory on the arm of the free machine next to his. "Killer, can you keep track of the scores?"
Killer stopped scanning the room to look darkly at him.
"Right. On duty. Never mind. We'll just compare piles of tickets at the end."
He and Anthony put their quarters in the slots at the same time. Twin rows of the heavy, palm-fitting balls were released, rolling down for the taking. Jon weighed the first in his hand, feeling it click against his purity ring (he was contractually obligated to wear the thing in public), and took aim.
They both had plenty of summers' worth of practice. Anthony was clearly through any awkward period he'd had of not knowing his own strength; he never sent a shot crashing too high above the center target, or rolled it up so slowly that it disappeared into the lowest slot. But somewhere along the line Jon had been trained to a keen edge in hand-eye coordination, and he was first surprised, then smug, to find himself sinking the tiny corner pockets more often than not.
His in-the-zone streak lasted until the moment he rocked back on his heels from a perfect corner shot, pumping his fist in victory, and almost crashed into someone.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed, hopping out of the way of what turned out to be a woman somewhere around his mom's age. And she had one hand on the bar of a hefty stroller, too. Definitely didn't need random guys knocking into her. "My bad."
"Jon Stewart?" said the woman. "Can I get a photo? Just really quick? I don't want to interrupt you."
"Um," said Jon. She'd be interrupting him either way, but he had kinda started it. "Sure, go ahead."
"You are so sweet! I knew you would be." She fished a smartphone out of one pocket of the monstrous stroller, then lifted its passenger, a toddler of no more than two, out of the seat...and handed the latter to Jon. "Here. Support the head, yes, that's right, you've got it!"
"A bloo bloo?" gurgled the toddler. It was a fair-haired, snub-nosed little creature of indeterminate gender, wearing a black shirt captioned SOMEBODY'S CRABBY! over a cartoon crab. The second it realized it was in some stranger's arms instead of Mommy's, it lived up to the label, face scrunching up and going red while its eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, come on, sweetpea, smile!" cooed the poor baby's mother, fiddling with her phone. To Anthony, she added, "Excuse me, would you mind?"
"Not at all," said Anthony with his most genial grin, the one Jon knew was going to kill in politics some day.
The woman handed him the phone and leaned against Jon's side, beaming. Jon struggled to support the wriggly little toddler without, like, damaging it or anything, thankful his one-way shades would keep him from looking too obviously panicked. The toddler bawled as the flash went off. Just like any average family getting a shot of their boardwalk outing for the photo album.
There were going to be headlines of Jon Stewart's Secret Baby slapped on this one, he just knew it.
"You're so good with him," the toddler's mom enthused, ignoring the child's glaringly-obvious signals that Jon was Not Acceptable. "I bet you're great with your little brothers."
Jon tensed. He did, if you wanted to be technical, have two younger half-brothers. He'd never met either of them. Not that it was anybody else's business. "I'm pretty sure he wants to be back with you now."
Mercifully, the fan took her sobbing son off Jon's hands. "Do you think you'll ever want kids of your own?"
No way in hell, thought Jon, but was cautious enough not to say so.
"Right now," said Anthony, stepping in to save him once again, "we're just focusing on living it up while we're young. Speaking of which...my friend here has a skeeball tournament to finish."
Even after the wailing toddler was carted away, though, Jon was no longer In The Zone. He finished up the game he was on by sinking a bunch of tens in a row. As the next set of balls was rolling down the aisle, a fresh set of flashes went off: a real camera, wielded by a guy this time, in the collared shirt and nametag of an arcade employee. "Don't mind me!" he said, when Jon looked up with a start. "Just keep right on playing. Skeeball fan, huh?"
"Well, yeah," said Jon, before remembering that he wasn't allowed to do free endorsements. Shouldn't be too big a deal, though, right? It wasn't like he'd promoted the specific arcade. "Listen, if you could avoid putting that on Tumblr or anything until we're gone, that would be great."
"No problem! When we do put it on Tumblr, would you reblog it?"
"Probably not," said Jon honestly. "I mostly just use mine to follow Stephen's."
Once again he tried to get back into the game. The slot was spitting out a truly anemic pile of tickets at this point.
Under his breath, Anthony said, "We can stop and count tickets now, if you want."
Jon compared their aisles. His friend's was distinctly ballsier. "You're three shots behind me. Wouldn't be fair."
"Fame handicap? You've had three people distracting you. Seems fair to me."
"Don't need your special treatment, Weiner," said Jon, setting his jaw. "You just brace yourself for my comeback."
~*~
Five games behind them, and with each set of tickets folded into a neat zigzag, Jon's pile was unmistakably shorter than Anthony's.
"You think we have enough yet for a decent prize if we put them together?" asked Anthony, trying to eyeball the combined mass of points. "Or should we keep playing for a while?"
Jon almost would have preferred it if Anthony had lorded the win over him. At least that would've been normal. "I guess...."
"Dad! Look, Dad, look! It's Jon Stewart!"
For once the excited voice sounded like it might be in Shout*For's target demographic. Jon followed the sound to a row of racing games and pinball machines, where a round-limbed girl of maybe twelve was tugging urgently on the shirt of a man with stubble and sunglasses pushed back up over his head.
"Who?"
"Jon Stewart!" repeated the girl in a hushed, awed voice. "From the band!"
"Don't be stupid, Kaylee," said the dad, not looking up from the pinball game. "Why would one of your band boys be all the way out here?"
"Yeah, Kaylee, don't be stupid," added a grade-school boy with the same light brown hair as the other two, running back and forth on the carpet waving a plastic Godzilla. "That's not your stupid TV boyfriend!"
"They're not stupid!" wailed Kaylee.
Anthony nudged Jon. "Dude, you gonna go defend your lady's honor, or what?"
Jon exchanged a look with Killer, got a nod of reserved approval, and shoved the tickets and Dory into his friend's hands. "Hold my fish."
"Well, sweetie, they're nothing special, either," the dad was saying. "Just a couple of pretty faces and a whole lot of autotune."
Kaylee probably wasn't listening. With Jon actually walking over to her, she'd gone perfectly still, eyes huge.
"Hi," said Jon with a little wave. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear...."
"Hm?" said the dad. "Oh, sorry, don't mind my daughter. She's got it in her head that you're in this pretty-boy group she's obsessed with."
That snapped Kaylee briefly out of her trance. "I am not obsessed!"
"Of course not," said Jon reassuringly. "Just a fan, am I right? Shout*For has plenty of fans. You have any favorites?"
"S-Stephen," stammered the girl.
Jon had been asking about songs. Probably should have specified. "Totally understandable," he said, rolling with it (and ignoring the way Anthony was cracking up behind him). "Can I tell you something? Stephen's my favorite too. How about the music? Got any favorite songs?"
"Favorite gay songs," opined the little brother, making Godzilla gnaw on Jon's leg.
"Scintillating analysis," said Jon. "I can see you have a promising future career as a music critic. So, about those favorites...?"
The song Kaylee named was Shout*For's second single and first chart-topper, a one-note piece of sugary fluff about being hopelessly in love ("with you, girl"). Not one of Jon's favorites. It was, however, one he got really into playing: the lyrics might be simplistic, but the harmonies were no cakewalk, and when faced with that kind of challenge Jon was kind of compulsive about getting it exactly right.
"Well, you're in luck," he said, "because I know that's one of the ones on the DDR machine. You play DDR at all?" When she nodded rapidly, Jon looked to the dad and said, "Is it okay if I borrow her for a game? I'll cover the cost."
~*~
Turned out Jon did better, not worse, with a Shout*For song selected. It was easier than expected to disconnect his brain from the official dance steps — they only danced about half the time, after all, and played on their own instruments the other half — and he knew the rhythm down to his bones, making it child's play to bring his feet down exactly when the beat demanded.
Kaylee still got the higher score. "I take it you've practiced?" said Jon.
"All the time!" exclaimed the girl. The music seemed to have broken the ice with her self-consciousness. Good. It had broken some tension with Jon too, being able to spread a little joy in a way he had some control over, and in a way that fit into the flow of his evening rather than interrupting it. "Well, I don't have my own DDR stuff, but my friend Amanda does, and she has all your songs, and we know all the lyrics, and —"
"I know all the lyrics too!" broke in a new voice.
And that was when Jon realized he'd drawn a crowd.
About eight new people were crowded around the DDR machine, filling the aisle completely. Anthony, along with Kaylee's dad and little brother, had managed not to get pushed aside only because Killer was an unmoving anchor. Most were female, but not all; it was a guy, fedora on his head and sweatshirt tied around his waist, who was addressing Jon now. "Can I play you next? Do they have All I Ever Wanted on that machine?"
"No, me next!" yelled a woman in a UPenn shirt. "I love you, Jon!"
"Uh, sorry, I'm all DDR'd out for the night," said Jon. "I can sign stuff real quick, though...." A flash went off somewhere to his left. "...Or do pictures. That works too."
Fedora was unsatisfied. Rounding on Kaylee, he demanded, "How did you get him to play with you?"
Immediately Killer was standing between Fedora and the girl, looming over him with even more intimidation than usual.
"...although I concede that it is none of my business, and am very happy for her!" squeaked Fedora, backing off.
"You should probably take off now," Jon told the rattled Kaylee. "But listen, it was great meeting you."
"You too!" stammered the girl, and jumped off the platform to run over to her family. "Dad! Dad, you got pictures, right? Right?"
"Got a couple," said her father. To Jon, who had come down off the same side of the machine to stick close to Killer, he added, "You really are one of those band boys, huh?"
"I really am one of the pretty-boys with the autotune," confirmed Jon. If he'd been a little gutsier, he would've added, And your kid's not stupid. But that would invite more drama than he was prepared to handle. "Listen, do yourselves a favor: if any of this shows up on YouTube, don't read the comments."
~*~
Killer kept the line of autograph-seekers and photo-takers orderly and fast-moving, and inched Jon towards the front of the arcade as he worked through the group. Anthony had been able to creep off uncontested to let Larry and the girlfriend know their departure was imminent. Jon churned out signatures and smiles as rapidly as he could, and fielded questions from "what's your favorite pizza topping?" to "why are you ashamed of your Jewish heritage?"
(Okay, he didn't field that last one himself, just referred it to Killer, who glared at the woman until she suddenly remembered she had an urgent appointment harassing other Jews somewhere else.)
"So, um, bad news," said Anthony, ushered by Killer to the center of the crowd. "They're gone."
Jon finished signing a T-shirt with the band's faces on it (apparently bought minutes ago at a nearby T-shirt stand for exactly this purpose) and handed it back to its new owner. "What do you mean, gone?"
"Not at the claw game. Not anywhere else in the arcade. Didn't answer when I went outside and yelled for them a couple of times."
"Great," said Jon darkly. "Can you call them while I finish this up?"
While Anthony dialed, Jon posed for the last photo of the group...with a woman who kissed him on the cheek right as the flash went off. (Headline: Jon Stewart Has At Least Two Secret Girlfriends And Is Cheating On Both Of Them!) "Hey, it's Anthony. Where are you guys?"
Best-case scenario, his brother and/or the girlfriend had needed to duck out and find a bathroom. Worst-case, they'd decided to abandon the group and find some quiet corner to make out. Not that Jon didn't sympathize — he knew he'd rather make out with Stephen than be forced to follow Larry around for a night. But then, he and Stephen didn't have the luxury of being able to kiss wherever they wanted, with no risk of losing millions or getting chewed over by every tabloid and gossip site in the English language, so all things considered, Jon still figured himself the more tragic figure here.
"...What do you mean, funnel cake?"
Killer herded them the last few feet up to the wide-open entrance. As soon as they stepped around the last display case of prizes between Jon and the open air, somebody shrieked Jon's name, and half a dozen flashes went off. The whole stretch of boardwalk beside the arcade was packed, mostly with teenagers and young adults, the ones in the front now spilling towards him.
Jon was not stopping to give autographs to every single one of these people.
"Of course it got crowded!" snapped Anthony into the phone. "Who do you think they're all here for?"
Killer plucked the phone out of Anthony's hands and held it to his own ear. In a deep-ish but matter-of-fact voice, he said, "Go find the car. Get inside. Call this number back once you're in."
As if to punctuate the whole overwhelming night, the last sound Jon heard while still on the carpeted floor of the arcade was a deafening metallic ringing: the sound of a whole lot of coins raining down onto hard plastic. Someone — possibly the first person who had tried it after Jon left — had won at the quarter-pusher.
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", family, Anthony, Killer, others
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Jon's in Jersey, it's summer, and there are traditions that must be followed. Fame or no fame, he's getting in at least one trip to the boardwalk. And if people start recognizing him, well, he'll sign that bridge when he comes to it.
(New bonus art: boy band AU Jon and "Stephen" meet canon Jon and "Stephen".)
A box of fudge and a round of smoothies on Jon's dime went a good way toward cooling tempers with Larry and his girlfriend (whose name Jon really should've written down or something).
The midway was its usual dense grid of booths with bright lights and loudly rattling games, every gimmick framed by displays of those most timeless prizes: massive plush Spongebobs, Stewie Griffins, Tweety Birds, and Hello Kitties. As a kid Jon had never been allowed to play enough rounds to win that kind of jackpot (not that he'd had the aim for it), and he still couldn't shake the feeling that it would be an unconscionable waste of money to go all-out now. Maybe Larry felt the same way, because he only went through two rounds of darts before giving it up, winnings-free.
Anthony took a spin on one of the wheels of chance, and won a light-up yo-yo. Then he took the offer to take another spin, to go double or nothing...and lost it again.
The girlfriend played Frog Bog until she won something, turned down the offer to double her prize, and walked away with a cheap plastic toy plane.
Killer kept himself squarely on one side of Jon, and made sure there was always somebody stationed on the other. Jon didn't even bother asking to play any games. He'd save his mojo for the arcades.
Then, at one of the water-cannon booths (aim consistently into a clown's mouth to fill a balloon until it pops — first one to finish wins!), he spotted, between hanging clutches of Angry Birds and Rastafarian bananas, a whole school of Finding Nemo fish.
Stephen would adore one of those. And, by extension, would adore Jon for bringing him one.
"Hey, Killer, can I ask you a gigantic favor...?"
~*~
"Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe that might be a record!" enthused the booth attendant. "This a big hobby of yours, sir?" (Killer gave her a short shake of the head.) "A professional, then? Incredible! Planning to go again? Double your points, double your winnings?"
It would take at least one more win to earn a really super-sized Dory. "Yes," said Jon under his breath to Anthony.
"Go for it!" yelled Anthony. As payment for his help, he relieved Jon of the strawberry smoothie and took a sip. "Didn't know you were such a hardcore Finding Nemo fan."
Jon shrugged. "You don't know that. Maybe I just really, really love Ellen."
"Who has the courage to try their luck against the professional?" cheered the booth attendant, trying to drum up interest in manning the last two water cannons. So far only a suburban-dad type had stepped up to the plate. A couple of preteen boys in baseball jerseys were begging their grandmother for the money to go again, to no avail; an olive-skinned teenage girl who had done pretty well in the last round was moving on entirely, apparently recognizing that the odds were not in her favor.
In a voice so low Jon almost didn't realize she was talking to him at first, Larry's girlfriend said, "Have you ever, you know...met Ellen?"
"I wouldn't say 'met'," hedged Jon.
It didn't slow her down. "What's she really like? Is she nice? I know it's dumb to get your hopes up about celebrities, but I don't think I could take it if Ellen wasn't nice."
"Listen, all I know is, while she was backstage before winning Teen Choice Comedian, she said hi to us, and we said hi back," said Jon. "Olivia talked to her for like ten minutes, because Olivia's a gigantic fangirl of hers, so, you know, apparently she was nice to Olivia. That's all I know, I swear."
A couple of laughing young women in tank tops and flip-flops shouldered their way past the group to get to the water cannons. "Hey, watch it!" said Larry.
"Sorry!" said the woman, half-turning to throw the word over her shoulder, ponytail whipping back and forth with the head motion before she stopped in front of a cannon.
Then she turned back just long enough to give them a once-over.
Her friend, whose hair was cut short and held back with a woven headband, was digging through a purse for change. Ponytail whispered something in her ear. Headband turned to look at them too.
Jon made a point of stomping on Larry's foot before turning to Anthony and saying, "So, back to Dory...great fish, or greatest fish?"
The putative conversation didn't stop Headband from interrupting them. "Excuse me — aren't you —?"
"Not the droid you're looking for," said Jon. He even made a short pass with his hand, just in case.
It worked about as well as you'd expect. "You're funny," cooed Headband, grinning like Jon had invented the idea of Star Wars jokes on the spot. "Can you just — I have a pen around here somewhere —"
Jon waved her back toward the booth. "Listen, go play the game, okay? I'll still be right here when you're done."
No sooner had he said the words than Killer was looming over them. He'd walked away from the next game after all, wielding a stuffed Dory that was (only) about the size of a large dinner plate. Keeping between Jon and the booth attendant's line of sight, he nodded for them to go.
"Or not," said Jon.
~*~
After some anxious cajoling of Killer, Headband and Ponytail tailed the group as the bodyguard hustled them away, cutting through a corner pizza place where even the air seemed slightly greasy. At the side exit, one that opened onto a dark cross-street rather than back onto the boardwalk, he let them pause long enough to get a photo. Jon obligingly rested one arm over each woman's shoulders, aimed a closedmouthed smile at the camera Anthony was holding, and tried not to worry about what kind of tabloid headlines this would spawn. (Jon Stewart's Two Secret Girlfriends?)
"Do me a favor," he said, scrawling his signature as high up the neckline of Ponytail's tank top as it went, "don't Instagram that or anything for a couple hours, okay?"
"Of course not!" said Headband reassuringly. "Private tweets to friends, and that's it. Scout's honor!"
Jon signed across her T-shirt's shoulder blades, waved goodbye, and traded the sharpie in to Killer for a mini-bottle of hand sanitizer as they scooted out the door. Under his breath, he added, "So, uh, private tweets, are those really private?"
"Totally invisible to anyone but the sender," said Anthony. "You have nothing to worry about."
"Are we leaving already?" said Larry's girlfriend as they emerged out the side of the building and took a ramp down to ground level. The cross-street was much quieter; you got spillover light from the sides of the pizza place and the arcade across from it, and could just see the last fading violet of the sunset over the boardwalk itself, but it was pretty dark, too.
"Just making sure we're not being followed, I think," said Jon. They wove between a couple of parked cars and started moving north on the next street over.
Larry, who had been stuck holding the plush fish while Killer did Serious Bodyguard Things, shoved it into Jon's hands. "Because we have to flee the terrible threat of attractive women wanting to take photos with you?" (The girlfriend cleared her throat.) "Not that I have anything to be jealous of!"
Okay, Jon was annoyed. There was no reason his brother shouldn't be able to imagine how two enthusiastic fans could snowball into a twenty-person terrifying mob. "Oh, were they attractive?" he said, with false lightness. "I wasn't really looking."
He'd scored a point, he could tell.
"I guess objectively, they were," added Anthony, backing Jon up. "Hard for me to judge, though, because all I can see when I look at women is that they're not as stunning and glamorous as Huma."
"You are so full of it," growled Larry.
"Yeah, obviously he is," said the girlfriend. "But I'm sure his lady friend still appreciates when he makes the effort."
Jon exchanged a high-five with his BFF. Two hits in a row. Double the points, double the winnings.
"Oh, hey, see, Killer thinks we're cool now," he added, as the bodyguard turned on the next cross-street and led them back toward the lights and the clamor. "No big deal. Unless you were really desperate to see one of the places on that block specifically."
~*~
Anthony gestured with the remains of the strawberry smoothie (now mostly water) toward the big open front of a T-shirt place. "Shout*For album cover, black shirt, top left. And on the blue, on the right, second column from the end...that's a lyric from one of the new singles, right?"
"No, that's a lyric from A Whole New World, which I'm pretty sure people were into before this spring," said Jon. Scanning the stall, though, he caught sight of a shirt with an unambiguous silhouette of the four of them, and another one silkscreened with Olivia's grinning face and the big LM logo that marked half her merchandise. If they'd stopped to look closely, he probably could have found more.
It was followed by a stand that offered fresh-squeezed lemonade and funnel cakes smothered in indecent amounts of sugar. Then a souvenir-and-sparkly-kitsch place that made Jon's heart twinge a little, knowing it probably had a million things Stephen would have adored, and a layout too cramped for Jon to safely go look at any of them.
"I don't see any Shout*For tattoo designs," added Anthony as they passed the next place. "Bet we'd find one if we went in, though."
Jon made a face. "I'm not sure I want to know."
"Well, I do! You guys go ahead and hit the arcade. I'm gonna check." He doubled back, tossing the empty cup into a freestanding trash can along the way.
The arcade they'd been aiming for was next, and the rest of them veered into it, entering the (nice and open) aisles weaving around the games that filled its carpeted floor. A cacophony of blinks, boops, chimes, clangs, and tinny video game intros swallowed them up as soon as they crossed the threshold.
Larry stopped at a couple of claw games near the entrance, one full of generic stuffed animals and the next one packed with Pokémon. To his girlfriend he said hopefully, "Want me to get you one of these?"
"Hmm." She eyed the heap of non-name-brand critters. "Can you grab one of the turtles?"
It wasn't crowded at all in here, so Jon felt safe enough to move a little farther in, until he spotted the one thing he'd been looking forward to almost as much as skeeball: the quarter-pusher. Behind a pane of something clear and heavily reinforced, a couple of mechanical shelves were piled high with coins, cantilevered past the shelves' edges to architecturally improbable lengths. Drop a single new quarter at the back of the pile, and it looked like the next push couldn't help but shove the whole setup over the edge and send coins raining down into the dispensary slot. Jon had never been allowed to waste any money trying.
With Killer always at his back he detoured to a coin machine at the edge of the arcade, withdrew five rolls of quarters, and started systematically feeding them to the quarter-pusher.
~*~
"They have this fantastic big design of Stephen Col-bert's face, which they offered to tattoo on my arm," reported Anthony.
Jon winced, without looking away from the machine. "Please tell me you passed it up."
"Only after great internal struggle."
Another quarter clinked its way down through the slots of the machine.
"They didn't have anything of you. I also turned down the option of working together with them to design an image of your face that's worthy of being plastered all over on my torso."
"Well, geez, Anthony," said Jon automatically, "all you had to do was ask."
His BFF didn't miss a beat. "Jon, while my heart belongs to Huma, and more generally to the fairer sex, I will absolutely not hold it against you that you suggested that."
Yet another quarter landed with a soft plink on the moving top shelf.
"Hey, ah...how long have you been doing this?"
Jon inventoried his remaining quarters. "Uh...for about one and a half rolls."
"And have you ever seen one of these things pay out?"
"Never in my life," said Jon, dropping another quarter in.
"Jon," said Anthony seriously, "you have gone mad with power."
"I know," said Jon with a dizzy grin. "You have no idea how much fun this is."
"Oh, for the love of...Cut that out and come play DDR with me."
"How fast can I burn through money on DDR?"
"Depends. How bad are you at dancing?"
~*~
Jon flatly refused to play through any of Shout*For's songs on the Dance Dance Revolution machine. ("I'd keep trying to do the actual dance steps, you'd have an unfair advantage.") They settled on one of Bill O'Reilly's top-40 tunes instead.
Jon lost anyway. He could move fine when he'd practiced, but it was different trying to follow steps on the fly, and on a game he'd never practiced but Anthony clearly had.
"I concede the DDR," he said, as the game announced PERFECT! of Anthony's steps and a dismal GOOD for Jon's. "Still gonna whip your ass at skeeball, though."
A quick look confirmed that Larry and his girlfriend were still at the claw machines, so Jon and Anthony crossed the arcade and squared off at two adjacent skeeball games, Killer standing sentry behind them. "Best three out of five?" suggested Anthony.
"No way. Too easy for one off game to screw up the whole thing. Five games, highest total score wins," countered Jon, perching Dory on the arm of the free machine next to his. "Killer, can you keep track of the scores?"
Killer stopped scanning the room to look darkly at him.
"Right. On duty. Never mind. We'll just compare piles of tickets at the end."
He and Anthony put their quarters in the slots at the same time. Twin rows of the heavy, palm-fitting balls were released, rolling down for the taking. Jon weighed the first in his hand, feeling it click against his purity ring (he was contractually obligated to wear the thing in public), and took aim.
They both had plenty of summers' worth of practice. Anthony was clearly through any awkward period he'd had of not knowing his own strength; he never sent a shot crashing too high above the center target, or rolled it up so slowly that it disappeared into the lowest slot. But somewhere along the line Jon had been trained to a keen edge in hand-eye coordination, and he was first surprised, then smug, to find himself sinking the tiny corner pockets more often than not.
His in-the-zone streak lasted until the moment he rocked back on his heels from a perfect corner shot, pumping his fist in victory, and almost crashed into someone.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed, hopping out of the way of what turned out to be a woman somewhere around his mom's age. And she had one hand on the bar of a hefty stroller, too. Definitely didn't need random guys knocking into her. "My bad."
"Jon Stewart?" said the woman. "Can I get a photo? Just really quick? I don't want to interrupt you."
"Um," said Jon. She'd be interrupting him either way, but he had kinda started it. "Sure, go ahead."
"You are so sweet! I knew you would be." She fished a smartphone out of one pocket of the monstrous stroller, then lifted its passenger, a toddler of no more than two, out of the seat...and handed the latter to Jon. "Here. Support the head, yes, that's right, you've got it!"
"A bloo bloo?" gurgled the toddler. It was a fair-haired, snub-nosed little creature of indeterminate gender, wearing a black shirt captioned SOMEBODY'S CRABBY! over a cartoon crab. The second it realized it was in some stranger's arms instead of Mommy's, it lived up to the label, face scrunching up and going red while its eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, come on, sweetpea, smile!" cooed the poor baby's mother, fiddling with her phone. To Anthony, she added, "Excuse me, would you mind?"
"Not at all," said Anthony with his most genial grin, the one Jon knew was going to kill in politics some day.
The woman handed him the phone and leaned against Jon's side, beaming. Jon struggled to support the wriggly little toddler without, like, damaging it or anything, thankful his one-way shades would keep him from looking too obviously panicked. The toddler bawled as the flash went off. Just like any average family getting a shot of their boardwalk outing for the photo album.
There were going to be headlines of Jon Stewart's Secret Baby slapped on this one, he just knew it.
"You're so good with him," the toddler's mom enthused, ignoring the child's glaringly-obvious signals that Jon was Not Acceptable. "I bet you're great with your little brothers."
Jon tensed. He did, if you wanted to be technical, have two younger half-brothers. He'd never met either of them. Not that it was anybody else's business. "I'm pretty sure he wants to be back with you now."
Mercifully, the fan took her sobbing son off Jon's hands. "Do you think you'll ever want kids of your own?"
No way in hell, thought Jon, but was cautious enough not to say so.
"Right now," said Anthony, stepping in to save him once again, "we're just focusing on living it up while we're young. Speaking of which...my friend here has a skeeball tournament to finish."
Even after the wailing toddler was carted away, though, Jon was no longer In The Zone. He finished up the game he was on by sinking a bunch of tens in a row. As the next set of balls was rolling down the aisle, a fresh set of flashes went off: a real camera, wielded by a guy this time, in the collared shirt and nametag of an arcade employee. "Don't mind me!" he said, when Jon looked up with a start. "Just keep right on playing. Skeeball fan, huh?"
"Well, yeah," said Jon, before remembering that he wasn't allowed to do free endorsements. Shouldn't be too big a deal, though, right? It wasn't like he'd promoted the specific arcade. "Listen, if you could avoid putting that on Tumblr or anything until we're gone, that would be great."
"No problem! When we do put it on Tumblr, would you reblog it?"
"Probably not," said Jon honestly. "I mostly just use mine to follow Stephen's."
Once again he tried to get back into the game. The slot was spitting out a truly anemic pile of tickets at this point.
Under his breath, Anthony said, "We can stop and count tickets now, if you want."
Jon compared their aisles. His friend's was distinctly ballsier. "You're three shots behind me. Wouldn't be fair."
"Fame handicap? You've had three people distracting you. Seems fair to me."
"Don't need your special treatment, Weiner," said Jon, setting his jaw. "You just brace yourself for my comeback."
~*~
Five games behind them, and with each set of tickets folded into a neat zigzag, Jon's pile was unmistakably shorter than Anthony's.
"You think we have enough yet for a decent prize if we put them together?" asked Anthony, trying to eyeball the combined mass of points. "Or should we keep playing for a while?"
Jon almost would have preferred it if Anthony had lorded the win over him. At least that would've been normal. "I guess...."
"Dad! Look, Dad, look! It's Jon Stewart!"
For once the excited voice sounded like it might be in Shout*For's target demographic. Jon followed the sound to a row of racing games and pinball machines, where a round-limbed girl of maybe twelve was tugging urgently on the shirt of a man with stubble and sunglasses pushed back up over his head.
"Who?"
"Jon Stewart!" repeated the girl in a hushed, awed voice. "From the band!"
"Don't be stupid, Kaylee," said the dad, not looking up from the pinball game. "Why would one of your band boys be all the way out here?"
"Yeah, Kaylee, don't be stupid," added a grade-school boy with the same light brown hair as the other two, running back and forth on the carpet waving a plastic Godzilla. "That's not your stupid TV boyfriend!"
"They're not stupid!" wailed Kaylee.
Anthony nudged Jon. "Dude, you gonna go defend your lady's honor, or what?"
Jon exchanged a look with Killer, got a nod of reserved approval, and shoved the tickets and Dory into his friend's hands. "Hold my fish."
"Well, sweetie, they're nothing special, either," the dad was saying. "Just a couple of pretty faces and a whole lot of autotune."
Kaylee probably wasn't listening. With Jon actually walking over to her, she'd gone perfectly still, eyes huge.
"Hi," said Jon with a little wave. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear...."
"Hm?" said the dad. "Oh, sorry, don't mind my daughter. She's got it in her head that you're in this pretty-boy group she's obsessed with."
That snapped Kaylee briefly out of her trance. "I am not obsessed!"
"Of course not," said Jon reassuringly. "Just a fan, am I right? Shout*For has plenty of fans. You have any favorites?"
"S-Stephen," stammered the girl.
Jon had been asking about songs. Probably should have specified. "Totally understandable," he said, rolling with it (and ignoring the way Anthony was cracking up behind him). "Can I tell you something? Stephen's my favorite too. How about the music? Got any favorite songs?"
"Favorite gay songs," opined the little brother, making Godzilla gnaw on Jon's leg.
"Scintillating analysis," said Jon. "I can see you have a promising future career as a music critic. So, about those favorites...?"
The song Kaylee named was Shout*For's second single and first chart-topper, a one-note piece of sugary fluff about being hopelessly in love ("with you, girl"). Not one of Jon's favorites. It was, however, one he got really into playing: the lyrics might be simplistic, but the harmonies were no cakewalk, and when faced with that kind of challenge Jon was kind of compulsive about getting it exactly right.
"Well, you're in luck," he said, "because I know that's one of the ones on the DDR machine. You play DDR at all?" When she nodded rapidly, Jon looked to the dad and said, "Is it okay if I borrow her for a game? I'll cover the cost."
~*~
Turned out Jon did better, not worse, with a Shout*For song selected. It was easier than expected to disconnect his brain from the official dance steps — they only danced about half the time, after all, and played on their own instruments the other half — and he knew the rhythm down to his bones, making it child's play to bring his feet down exactly when the beat demanded.
Kaylee still got the higher score. "I take it you've practiced?" said Jon.
"All the time!" exclaimed the girl. The music seemed to have broken the ice with her self-consciousness. Good. It had broken some tension with Jon too, being able to spread a little joy in a way he had some control over, and in a way that fit into the flow of his evening rather than interrupting it. "Well, I don't have my own DDR stuff, but my friend Amanda does, and she has all your songs, and we know all the lyrics, and —"
"I know all the lyrics too!" broke in a new voice.
And that was when Jon realized he'd drawn a crowd.
About eight new people were crowded around the DDR machine, filling the aisle completely. Anthony, along with Kaylee's dad and little brother, had managed not to get pushed aside only because Killer was an unmoving anchor. Most were female, but not all; it was a guy, fedora on his head and sweatshirt tied around his waist, who was addressing Jon now. "Can I play you next? Do they have All I Ever Wanted on that machine?"
"No, me next!" yelled a woman in a UPenn shirt. "I love you, Jon!"
"Uh, sorry, I'm all DDR'd out for the night," said Jon. "I can sign stuff real quick, though...." A flash went off somewhere to his left. "...Or do pictures. That works too."
Fedora was unsatisfied. Rounding on Kaylee, he demanded, "How did you get him to play with you?"
Immediately Killer was standing between Fedora and the girl, looming over him with even more intimidation than usual.
"...although I concede that it is none of my business, and am very happy for her!" squeaked Fedora, backing off.
"You should probably take off now," Jon told the rattled Kaylee. "But listen, it was great meeting you."
"You too!" stammered the girl, and jumped off the platform to run over to her family. "Dad! Dad, you got pictures, right? Right?"
"Got a couple," said her father. To Jon, who had come down off the same side of the machine to stick close to Killer, he added, "You really are one of those band boys, huh?"
"I really am one of the pretty-boys with the autotune," confirmed Jon. If he'd been a little gutsier, he would've added, And your kid's not stupid. But that would invite more drama than he was prepared to handle. "Listen, do yourselves a favor: if any of this shows up on YouTube, don't read the comments."
~*~
Killer kept the line of autograph-seekers and photo-takers orderly and fast-moving, and inched Jon towards the front of the arcade as he worked through the group. Anthony had been able to creep off uncontested to let Larry and the girlfriend know their departure was imminent. Jon churned out signatures and smiles as rapidly as he could, and fielded questions from "what's your favorite pizza topping?" to "why are you ashamed of your Jewish heritage?"
(Okay, he didn't field that last one himself, just referred it to Killer, who glared at the woman until she suddenly remembered she had an urgent appointment harassing other Jews somewhere else.)
"So, um, bad news," said Anthony, ushered by Killer to the center of the crowd. "They're gone."
Jon finished signing a T-shirt with the band's faces on it (apparently bought minutes ago at a nearby T-shirt stand for exactly this purpose) and handed it back to its new owner. "What do you mean, gone?"
"Not at the claw game. Not anywhere else in the arcade. Didn't answer when I went outside and yelled for them a couple of times."
"Great," said Jon darkly. "Can you call them while I finish this up?"
While Anthony dialed, Jon posed for the last photo of the group...with a woman who kissed him on the cheek right as the flash went off. (Headline: Jon Stewart Has At Least Two Secret Girlfriends And Is Cheating On Both Of Them!) "Hey, it's Anthony. Where are you guys?"
Best-case scenario, his brother and/or the girlfriend had needed to duck out and find a bathroom. Worst-case, they'd decided to abandon the group and find some quiet corner to make out. Not that Jon didn't sympathize — he knew he'd rather make out with Stephen than be forced to follow Larry around for a night. But then, he and Stephen didn't have the luxury of being able to kiss wherever they wanted, with no risk of losing millions or getting chewed over by every tabloid and gossip site in the English language, so all things considered, Jon still figured himself the more tragic figure here.
"...What do you mean, funnel cake?"
Killer herded them the last few feet up to the wide-open entrance. As soon as they stepped around the last display case of prizes between Jon and the open air, somebody shrieked Jon's name, and half a dozen flashes went off. The whole stretch of boardwalk beside the arcade was packed, mostly with teenagers and young adults, the ones in the front now spilling towards him.
Jon was not stopping to give autographs to every single one of these people.
"Of course it got crowded!" snapped Anthony into the phone. "Who do you think they're all here for?"
Killer plucked the phone out of Anthony's hands and held it to his own ear. In a deep-ish but matter-of-fact voice, he said, "Go find the car. Get inside. Call this number back once you're in."
As if to punctuate the whole overwhelming night, the last sound Jon heard while still on the carpeted floor of the arcade was a deafening metallic ringing: the sound of a whole lot of coins raining down onto hard plastic. Someone — possibly the first person who had tried it after Jon left — had won at the quarter-pusher.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-27 05:51 pm (UTC)Social media and smart phones is a time bomb waiting to happen. Soon we'll all be under surveillance, and I can't imagine how awful it must be for someone who is famous.
Okay, I hated Killer up until now but he sure is useful. And of course target practice would lead to awesome squirt gun skills. Also I wonder if this is foreshadowing of him shooting someone later in the series. Maybe Neil?
"What's she really like? Is she nice? I know it's dumb to get your hopes up about celebrities, but I don't think I could take it if Ellen wasn't nice."
Awesome that you worked this quote in. ^^
And Anthony's twitter ineptitude. :D Though he is growing on me on this chapter.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-28 04:00 am (UTC)I have similar worries about everything being filmed.
Killer's a good guy! He's just very stern, and that's his job. Along with having great aim.
Anthony knows in theory how Twitter works...it's putting it into practice that's the problem. I'm glad he's growing on you! He's a genuine friend to Jon, issues and all.