Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2007-07-10 02:36 am
ptahrrific) wrote2007-07-10 02:36 am
Entry tags:
Fake News: Expecting, Chapter 3
Title: Expecting, Chapter 3: Don't Panic
Series: The Colbert Report
Rating: PG for this part
Warnings: Discussion of various naughty bits.
Words: ~2500
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Notes: Except for the original Wørd "Expecting" (which was shifted a few weeks earlier for the sake of continuity), all of the segments referred to actually occur on the given date. When Wørd or an interview is made up for story purposes, the material surrounding it and leading into it hasn't been changed.
Clips referenced: Jon's ringtone; Stephen's number; the final Colbert County segment.
For the full table of contents to this story, click here.
Chapter 3
Don't Panic
Yesterday
The waiting room was full of pamphlets aimed at the father-to-be. Jon had read and reread them all in the days and hours before Nate was born. With Maggie he had been a bit more relaxed; he had merely reread everything once, just to make sure nothing major had changed.
Now he tore through them restlessly, not because they were at all useful but because he had come in such a rush that he hadn't brought anything else to do.
Where were the doctors, anyway? Of course he wanted them all to be in with Stephen; but couldn't just one of them come out and tell him what was going on in there? Unless Stephen was in so much trouble that he needed all of them — but in that case he wanted even more badly to know what was going on.
There weren't even any other worried partners around to be anxious with. It was just him in the quiet, empty room.
When his cell phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦
November 14, 2006
6 Weeks
The first panicked phone call came on a Tuesday morning, in the middle of a writers' meeting. They were batting around punny titles for John Oliver's segment on the President's suddenly softened rhetoric towards the Democratic majority, when the melodic tune of "It's Raining Men" cut them off.
"That's me," said Jon, quite unnecessarily. "Excuse me." He ducked outside, checked the number (212-BIG-GUNS), and flipped the phone open. "Stephen, can it wait?"
"Jon, you need to come over here right away."
He sounded genuinely frightened. Of course, that was how he had sounded the last five times he'd insisted on Jon's presence, and after each one Jon had told himself that he wouldn't fall for that trick again. But then, Stephen hadn't been pregnant the last time he'd called.
"What is it? Are you okay? Did you call your doctor?"
"I don't need the doctor. I need you. It's an emergency, Jon."
Sigh. "I'll be right over." He snapped the phone closed and stuck his head back into the room. "I'm going out for a minute. Ben, you're in charge."
Ben nodded. "Sure. What's going on?"
"Stephen." Jon held up the phone.
The others exchanged knowing looks that he did not like in the least.
"He's pregnant," he insisted, sounding more defensive than he wanted to. "It's not just about him."
"Yes," said Sam, "but pregnant or not, that man has you wrapped around his little finger."
Laugh it off. "Yeah, that too," he replied, looking appropriately sheepish. "Next I'll be running to the 7-11 at midnight to get him pickles and ice cream. See you guys later. Don't wait up."
He kept on the nonchalant grin until the door was closed. Halfway down the hall, he broke into a run.
♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦
"I've got breasts, Jon!" wailed Stephen.
Under any other circumstances, being shut in an office with a shirtless Stephen would have set off all kind of alarm bells in Jon's head. Right now, though, the pundit was clearly far too distraught by his new shape to think of anything else.
"You don't look that different," said Jon reassuringly. It was true: at just under four weeks from conception, the most obvious change to Stephen's torso was the scar from the transplant. As he looked more closely, though, Jon realized that Stephen's stomach was a little softer than it had been the last time he'd bared it on-air.
And, as the man prodded his chest, Jon had to admit that it was swelling a bit.
"They were only supposed to put in a uterus!" cried Stephen. "A duderus! I didn't sign up for dude udders, or whatever it is that makes milk. What would you even call those? Dudders?"
"It's probably just the hormones," Jon reasoned. "Your body goes through all kinds of changes when you're pregnant — well, I mean, a woman's does, but you're being shot with the same sort of hormones, right? What does it say in your reading about side effects?"
"Give me a break, Jon. You know I don't read."
Oh. That explained a lot. "There's important information in there," he began carefully, "that you'll need to know to make this work out..."
"I know, I know," said Stephen quickly. "Lorraine's been reading them for me. At least, I had her read the first few. Then she stopped for some reason."
"Has she been...handling this well?"
"Fine! Perfectly fine!" replied Stephen, a little too airily. "I mean, we're in counseling—" (he said 'counseling' in the tone that he usually reserved for 'liberal media attacks on the President') "—but it's going very well. When we started, she was all 'How could you get pregnant without telling me?' but that's all behind us now. Besides, it's not like she warned me before she decided to get pregnant."
"I thought you two didn't use birth control...."
"That's beside the point, Jon!"
Jon rather thought it wasn't. But if the Colberts were paying someone to sort out their marital issues, he didn't want to cut in on the therapist's livelihood. Better to focus on the more immediate problem. "Do you have any of the information with you?"
"Here." Stephen reached into his desk and retrieved a large binder, full of paper separated by colored dividers. There was no index, so Jon flipped through the pages until he came to a promising-looking section.
After half an hour of such haphazard research, punctuated by many an "Oh, so that's why I'm feeling that!" from Stephen, the two had spread papers all across the desk and cobbled together a general impression of what Dr. Moreau's team expected to happen to Stephen over the next few weeks. (Breast development, it seemed, was a common effect of certain hormone treatments, and in most known cases reversed itself after the treatment stopped.) At last Jon checked his watch. "I should get back. They'll be wanting me back in the writing room."
"Oh yeah! Writing!" Stephen slapped his forehead. "I forgot all about that!"
Jon raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to admit that in front of your producer?"
"No, no, it's cool." The pundit began cramming things back into the binder. "I'll take this down to the writers. I bet I can get a Wørd out of it."
"Right." Jon stood up. "You should probably put your shirt on first. I promise, nobody will notice your man-boobs."
Stephen fixed him with that intent look of his, the gaze so serious that it always made Jon feel a little uncomfortable. "Do you promise, Jon?"
It was so childlike, this need for reassurance, that Jon couldn't help replying as earnestly as he had when he was a kid and these words signified the most solemn of promises. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
"Don't do that," laughed Stephen, and the spell was broken. "If you died, who would be my Jewish friend? I don't know any other nice Jews. All the rest of them seem kind of scheming."
♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦
"And, speaking of offspring," said Stephen, making the transition smoothly from a segment about adopted eagle son Stephen Junior, "the press and the blogosphere are all abuzz about my other son — the one I'm carrying myself. Not that I love my adopted son any less, or would admit it on air if I did.
"There's a lot to talk about, which is why I've already been on Letterman, Larry King, Good Morning America, The View, and Oprah, and why next week you can catch me on 60 Minutes, and you'll have to skip one of my reruns to see me on Anderson Cooper 360. But there's still plenty more to say, so it's also the subject of tonight's Wørd."
The graphics spun in to wild applause, and when the furor had calmed Stephen and the bullet chorused, "I'm Pregnant!"
"Last month," the host began, adjusting his glasses as he spoke, "a team of expert professionals cut me open and inserted the very first duderus." (Dude-erus © 2006 Stephen Colbert, the bullet noted.) "And in about eight more months they'll cut me open again and pull out a bouncing baby boy.
"Now, we know it's going to be a boy, because the embryo was tested for a whole bunch of things before implantation, and one of them was gender. The duderus is far too manly an environment to support a daughter." He paused. "Also, I'm told that the hormones necessary to develop a daughter would effectively castrate me."
Getting Head Start On Electra Complex, the bullet commented.
"Speaking of hormones — I'm taking some on a regular basis, as well as a bunch of other drugs. My doctor has me popping all kinds of pills."
Almost Makes Up For The OxyContin Withdrawl, snarked the bullet.
"The first pill is the hormones that a lady uterus, or the ovaries or the cervix or whichever bit of the plumbing handles that sort of thing, would produce on its own. There's also a round of antirejection drugs to keep my body from realizing that the duderus isn't supposed to be there. And even though I'm eating a balanced diet—" (One Burger In Each Hand Is Balanced, Right?) "—there's also a multivitamin specially tailored to our needs.
"In particular, it has all the nutrients that a developing baby needs but a male body produces less than a female. Things like beta-carotine—" (for Balls, Colbertine) "—and vitamin C for strong bones—" (And Strong Balls) "—and zinc for, well, I don't actually know what zinc does." (But It's Probably Good For The Balls.)
Throughout this recitation, Stephen had been pulling out bottles of pills and placing them on the desk; he nudged them into a straight line as he continued. "I go in once a week for a checkup, to make sure everything's going smoothly and see if we need to change the prescription at all. And my wife wants me to ask if they have something for mood swings."
His hand twitched. "I don't know what she's talking about, quite frankly. Mood swings? What's that supposed to mean? Okay, sure, I snapped at her last week when she got up early to make sauswiches with extra syrup, but she should have known the smell would make me sick. And maybe I yelled at my younger daughter the other day when she broke one of the frames of my portrait collection — but I did tell her up front that they were extremely precious self-portraits, and if she couldn't be careful she couldn't help clean them! The point is that all of these incidents were totally justifiable and not because I'm having mood swings!"
At this last, his hand jerked so violently that the row of bottles was sent crashing to the floor. The sound got his attention; he checked himself, and for a moment all was silent. Even the bullet point went blank.
"Shake it off, Col-bert," he murmured. To which the bullet added, Save Mood Swings For After Show.
"Anyway," he continued, voice regaining some of its strength, if not its former bluster, "they really ought to cut me some slack. You too, Nation. All of you. After all..." He pointed to the right half of the screen.
I'm Pregnant, supplied the bullet helpfully.
"And that's the Wørd. We'll be right back."
♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦ ⋅ ◊ ⋅ ♦
November 30, 2006
7 Weeks
It was far too late — or too early, depending on your perspective — for any normal visitor to show up at Tad's apartment. But it was also too early for him to think very hard about it. Besides, he was well conditioned to hop into action at the sight of the figure on the other side of the door.
"Morning, Tad!" said Stephen brightly, sweeping in with a heavy suitcase in tow. "The wife just kicked me out, so I'm going to crash here for a while."
If Tad usually felt like an awkward, gangly dork in the presence of his boss, it was even worse when he was wearing nothing but a ratty T-shirt, plaid boxers, and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. Stephen was in his usual pressed suit and designer tie. Tad wondered if the man even owned a T-shirt.
"I really believe," he said nervously, "that it would not be advisable for you to..."
"Tad," said Stephen evenly, "the third part of your Colbert County report is airing tomorrow. You tell me: did it end well?"
It hadn't. The vast Colbert Museum project had been run out of business by a vaster, flashier, and better staffed Joe Scarborough museum, leaving Tad with nothing but a pile of unused brochures and the stolen pump which now sat in the corner of his living room.
He didn't have to say this; they both knew it. "Therefore," continued Stephen, "you owe me one. Don't worry; it'll only be for a few days, until she takes me back. We can even drive in to work together. If you pay for gas, I'll let you make breakfast."
"This is not a very good time for me, Stephen," tried Tad again. It was true, too, or he would have rolled over the instant the man arrived. "You see, I have someone over...."
"Tad, you dog!" exclaimed the boss, clapping his manager on the back in an overly enthusiastic manner. "Congratulations! No need to worry on my account, though — I'll crash on your couch and be extra quiet. She won't even notice."
While Tad was still working out another way to explain that this still wouldn't work, Stephen left his shoes in the front closet, stripped down to boxers and an undershirt, and curled up under a flag-patterned blanket on Tad's old couch.
And really, if he could be honest with himself, Tad didn't have the heart to kick his boss out.
(Besides, lying on that couch with eyes closed and lips parted, his hair disheveled so that a few locks drifted onto his forehead, his skin slightly pale in the moonlight, the man looked almost harmless.)
So Tad waited until Stephen's breathing had been even for a few minutes, and then he slipped back into his own room and gave the lump in his bed a light shake.
"Mmph," came a voice from under the covers.
"I'm really, really, really, really sorry, but you need to go home."
"Hmm? Why?"
"Stephen's here."
Bobby sat bolt upright. "Stephen's what!?"
Series: The Colbert Report
Rating: PG for this part
Warnings: Discussion of various naughty bits.
Words: ~2500
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Notes: Except for the original Wørd "Expecting" (which was shifted a few weeks earlier for the sake of continuity), all of the segments referred to actually occur on the given date. When Wørd or an interview is made up for story purposes, the material surrounding it and leading into it hasn't been changed.
Clips referenced: Jon's ringtone; Stephen's number; the final Colbert County segment.
For the full table of contents to this story, click here.
Chapter 3
Don't Panic
Yesterday
The waiting room was full of pamphlets aimed at the father-to-be. Jon had read and reread them all in the days and hours before Nate was born. With Maggie he had been a bit more relaxed; he had merely reread everything once, just to make sure nothing major had changed.
Now he tore through them restlessly, not because they were at all useful but because he had come in such a rush that he hadn't brought anything else to do.
Where were the doctors, anyway? Of course he wanted them all to be in with Stephen; but couldn't just one of them come out and tell him what was going on in there? Unless Stephen was in so much trouble that he needed all of them — but in that case he wanted even more badly to know what was going on.
There weren't even any other worried partners around to be anxious with. It was just him in the quiet, empty room.
When his cell phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
November 14, 2006
6 Weeks
The first panicked phone call came on a Tuesday morning, in the middle of a writers' meeting. They were batting around punny titles for John Oliver's segment on the President's suddenly softened rhetoric towards the Democratic majority, when the melodic tune of "It's Raining Men" cut them off.
"That's me," said Jon, quite unnecessarily. "Excuse me." He ducked outside, checked the number (212-BIG-GUNS), and flipped the phone open. "Stephen, can it wait?"
"Jon, you need to come over here right away."
He sounded genuinely frightened. Of course, that was how he had sounded the last five times he'd insisted on Jon's presence, and after each one Jon had told himself that he wouldn't fall for that trick again. But then, Stephen hadn't been pregnant the last time he'd called.
"What is it? Are you okay? Did you call your doctor?"
"I don't need the doctor. I need you. It's an emergency, Jon."
Sigh. "I'll be right over." He snapped the phone closed and stuck his head back into the room. "I'm going out for a minute. Ben, you're in charge."
Ben nodded. "Sure. What's going on?"
"Stephen." Jon held up the phone.
The others exchanged knowing looks that he did not like in the least.
"He's pregnant," he insisted, sounding more defensive than he wanted to. "It's not just about him."
"Yes," said Sam, "but pregnant or not, that man has you wrapped around his little finger."
Laugh it off. "Yeah, that too," he replied, looking appropriately sheepish. "Next I'll be running to the 7-11 at midnight to get him pickles and ice cream. See you guys later. Don't wait up."
He kept on the nonchalant grin until the door was closed. Halfway down the hall, he broke into a run.
"I've got breasts, Jon!" wailed Stephen.
Under any other circumstances, being shut in an office with a shirtless Stephen would have set off all kind of alarm bells in Jon's head. Right now, though, the pundit was clearly far too distraught by his new shape to think of anything else.
"You don't look that different," said Jon reassuringly. It was true: at just under four weeks from conception, the most obvious change to Stephen's torso was the scar from the transplant. As he looked more closely, though, Jon realized that Stephen's stomach was a little softer than it had been the last time he'd bared it on-air.
And, as the man prodded his chest, Jon had to admit that it was swelling a bit.
"They were only supposed to put in a uterus!" cried Stephen. "A duderus! I didn't sign up for dude udders, or whatever it is that makes milk. What would you even call those? Dudders?"
"It's probably just the hormones," Jon reasoned. "Your body goes through all kinds of changes when you're pregnant — well, I mean, a woman's does, but you're being shot with the same sort of hormones, right? What does it say in your reading about side effects?"
"Give me a break, Jon. You know I don't read."
Oh. That explained a lot. "There's important information in there," he began carefully, "that you'll need to know to make this work out..."
"I know, I know," said Stephen quickly. "Lorraine's been reading them for me. At least, I had her read the first few. Then she stopped for some reason."
"Has she been...handling this well?"
"Fine! Perfectly fine!" replied Stephen, a little too airily. "I mean, we're in counseling—" (he said 'counseling' in the tone that he usually reserved for 'liberal media attacks on the President') "—but it's going very well. When we started, she was all 'How could you get pregnant without telling me?' but that's all behind us now. Besides, it's not like she warned me before she decided to get pregnant."
"I thought you two didn't use birth control...."
"That's beside the point, Jon!"
Jon rather thought it wasn't. But if the Colberts were paying someone to sort out their marital issues, he didn't want to cut in on the therapist's livelihood. Better to focus on the more immediate problem. "Do you have any of the information with you?"
"Here." Stephen reached into his desk and retrieved a large binder, full of paper separated by colored dividers. There was no index, so Jon flipped through the pages until he came to a promising-looking section.
After half an hour of such haphazard research, punctuated by many an "Oh, so that's why I'm feeling that!" from Stephen, the two had spread papers all across the desk and cobbled together a general impression of what Dr. Moreau's team expected to happen to Stephen over the next few weeks. (Breast development, it seemed, was a common effect of certain hormone treatments, and in most known cases reversed itself after the treatment stopped.) At last Jon checked his watch. "I should get back. They'll be wanting me back in the writing room."
"Oh yeah! Writing!" Stephen slapped his forehead. "I forgot all about that!"
Jon raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to admit that in front of your producer?"
"No, no, it's cool." The pundit began cramming things back into the binder. "I'll take this down to the writers. I bet I can get a Wørd out of it."
"Right." Jon stood up. "You should probably put your shirt on first. I promise, nobody will notice your man-boobs."
Stephen fixed him with that intent look of his, the gaze so serious that it always made Jon feel a little uncomfortable. "Do you promise, Jon?"
It was so childlike, this need for reassurance, that Jon couldn't help replying as earnestly as he had when he was a kid and these words signified the most solemn of promises. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
"Don't do that," laughed Stephen, and the spell was broken. "If you died, who would be my Jewish friend? I don't know any other nice Jews. All the rest of them seem kind of scheming."
"And, speaking of offspring," said Stephen, making the transition smoothly from a segment about adopted eagle son Stephen Junior, "the press and the blogosphere are all abuzz about my other son — the one I'm carrying myself. Not that I love my adopted son any less, or would admit it on air if I did.
"There's a lot to talk about, which is why I've already been on Letterman, Larry King, Good Morning America, The View, and Oprah, and why next week you can catch me on 60 Minutes, and you'll have to skip one of my reruns to see me on Anderson Cooper 360. But there's still plenty more to say, so it's also the subject of tonight's Wørd."
The graphics spun in to wild applause, and when the furor had calmed Stephen and the bullet chorused, "I'm Pregnant!"
"Last month," the host began, adjusting his glasses as he spoke, "a team of expert professionals cut me open and inserted the very first duderus." (Dude-erus © 2006 Stephen Colbert, the bullet noted.) "And in about eight more months they'll cut me open again and pull out a bouncing baby boy.
"Now, we know it's going to be a boy, because the embryo was tested for a whole bunch of things before implantation, and one of them was gender. The duderus is far too manly an environment to support a daughter." He paused. "Also, I'm told that the hormones necessary to develop a daughter would effectively castrate me."
Getting Head Start On Electra Complex, the bullet commented.
"Speaking of hormones — I'm taking some on a regular basis, as well as a bunch of other drugs. My doctor has me popping all kinds of pills."
Almost Makes Up For The OxyContin Withdrawl, snarked the bullet.
"The first pill is the hormones that a lady uterus, or the ovaries or the cervix or whichever bit of the plumbing handles that sort of thing, would produce on its own. There's also a round of antirejection drugs to keep my body from realizing that the duderus isn't supposed to be there. And even though I'm eating a balanced diet—" (One Burger In Each Hand Is Balanced, Right?) "—there's also a multivitamin specially tailored to our needs.
"In particular, it has all the nutrients that a developing baby needs but a male body produces less than a female. Things like beta-carotine—" (for Balls, Colbertine) "—and vitamin C for strong bones—" (And Strong Balls) "—and zinc for, well, I don't actually know what zinc does." (But It's Probably Good For The Balls.)
Throughout this recitation, Stephen had been pulling out bottles of pills and placing them on the desk; he nudged them into a straight line as he continued. "I go in once a week for a checkup, to make sure everything's going smoothly and see if we need to change the prescription at all. And my wife wants me to ask if they have something for mood swings."
His hand twitched. "I don't know what she's talking about, quite frankly. Mood swings? What's that supposed to mean? Okay, sure, I snapped at her last week when she got up early to make sauswiches with extra syrup, but she should have known the smell would make me sick. And maybe I yelled at my younger daughter the other day when she broke one of the frames of my portrait collection — but I did tell her up front that they were extremely precious self-portraits, and if she couldn't be careful she couldn't help clean them! The point is that all of these incidents were totally justifiable and not because I'm having mood swings!"
At this last, his hand jerked so violently that the row of bottles was sent crashing to the floor. The sound got his attention; he checked himself, and for a moment all was silent. Even the bullet point went blank.
"Shake it off, Col-bert," he murmured. To which the bullet added, Save Mood Swings For After Show.
"Anyway," he continued, voice regaining some of its strength, if not its former bluster, "they really ought to cut me some slack. You too, Nation. All of you. After all..." He pointed to the right half of the screen.
I'm Pregnant, supplied the bullet helpfully.
"And that's the Wørd. We'll be right back."
November 30, 2006
7 Weeks
It was far too late — or too early, depending on your perspective — for any normal visitor to show up at Tad's apartment. But it was also too early for him to think very hard about it. Besides, he was well conditioned to hop into action at the sight of the figure on the other side of the door.
"Morning, Tad!" said Stephen brightly, sweeping in with a heavy suitcase in tow. "The wife just kicked me out, so I'm going to crash here for a while."
If Tad usually felt like an awkward, gangly dork in the presence of his boss, it was even worse when he was wearing nothing but a ratty T-shirt, plaid boxers, and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. Stephen was in his usual pressed suit and designer tie. Tad wondered if the man even owned a T-shirt.
"I really believe," he said nervously, "that it would not be advisable for you to..."
"Tad," said Stephen evenly, "the third part of your Colbert County report is airing tomorrow. You tell me: did it end well?"
It hadn't. The vast Colbert Museum project had been run out of business by a vaster, flashier, and better staffed Joe Scarborough museum, leaving Tad with nothing but a pile of unused brochures and the stolen pump which now sat in the corner of his living room.
He didn't have to say this; they both knew it. "Therefore," continued Stephen, "you owe me one. Don't worry; it'll only be for a few days, until she takes me back. We can even drive in to work together. If you pay for gas, I'll let you make breakfast."
"This is not a very good time for me, Stephen," tried Tad again. It was true, too, or he would have rolled over the instant the man arrived. "You see, I have someone over...."
"Tad, you dog!" exclaimed the boss, clapping his manager on the back in an overly enthusiastic manner. "Congratulations! No need to worry on my account, though — I'll crash on your couch and be extra quiet. She won't even notice."
While Tad was still working out another way to explain that this still wouldn't work, Stephen left his shoes in the front closet, stripped down to boxers and an undershirt, and curled up under a flag-patterned blanket on Tad's old couch.
And really, if he could be honest with himself, Tad didn't have the heart to kick his boss out.
(Besides, lying on that couch with eyes closed and lips parted, his hair disheveled so that a few locks drifted onto his forehead, his skin slightly pale in the moonlight, the man looked almost harmless.)
So Tad waited until Stephen's breathing had been even for a few minutes, and then he slipped back into his own room and gave the lump in his bed a light shake.
"Mmph," came a voice from under the covers.
"I'm really, really, really, really sorry, but you need to go home."
"Hmm? Why?"
"Stephen's here."
Bobby sat bolt upright. "Stephen's what!?"
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Antirejection drugs would definitely be necessary with the transplant, though; every article I've read mentions them. Think of the danger as one of the hurdles to womb transplants that has been overcome in the TCRverse to make them possible. (After all, in real life there's never been a pregnancy from a transplanted uterus even in a woman, so the science is very strained already.)
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I hope anything is possible. I mean, come on, I'm writing mpreg.
And thanks for reading!
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Jon's emotional development is almost as fun to write as Stephen's =)
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The Word = Perfect
Bobby/Tad = Perfect-er
My coherent-ness =/= Anything even resembling perfect
ILU so much for this, bb. :D
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Lack of coherency is fine by me. Thank you!
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I Adore this! The entire man boobs exchange had me gasping for breath. And the pictures rock, The shirtless Stepehen one in particualr had my brother back out of the room quietly, followed my my cries of "It's PG! I swear!"
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(Except for, you know, the rest of the story.)
Your brother gets worried on seeing bare chests? Either he's a little paranoid, or you have a history of rarely looking at just chests...
And thank you!
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*piles love on this story*...*with a shovel*
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*basks in the glow*
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That was awesome.
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Thanks!
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This story is so cracktastic, and I adore it.
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Thank you!
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And just wow, this is great ! You inserted the real events so well in the story it's believable, god 8D
Also, the nice drawings and..I'm just loving this awesome crack.
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Thanks!
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Really, though, I cannot find the sufficient words to truly describe how much I love this story. All attempts just come up with rampant squeeing.
(Also, isn't it OxyContin? Unless it's a word play I'm not really getting, having just looked up Oxytocin.)
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I have no objection to rampant squeeing =D
Thank you!
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And my favorite Words are when it comes back to the same Word at the end as the beginning. Good move.
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Agreed about Words. (They all used to be like that, as I remember. So I consider it part of the challenge of writing them.) Especially if the word at the end has a different meaning or nuance from the one at the beginning.
Thanks for reading!
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Love this, BTW...
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Glad you're enjoying it!
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As is the rest of it, of course!
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Thanks!
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I digress, this chapter had me in unrelenting hysterics from:
"I've got breasts, Jon!" wailed Stephen.
This just keeps getting better.
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Glad you're enjoying it, and I hope I can keep it up!
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I'm more Stephen/Bobby, but Bobby/Tad makes me rather happy as well.
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But I'm glad you are reading it, at least =)
I could be "Stephen"/Bobby if I weren't so very Jon/"Stephen". So I tried out Bobby/Tad here, and it worked out surprisingly well.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. I like Stephen/Jon, but off to the side, for me, there's plenty of room for Stephen/Bobby or Stephen/Tad or even Stephen/Tad/Bobby :P
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*wheels start turning*
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I am actually quite desperate for some, haha.
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The whole thing regarding the phone-calls was perfect - Jon's ringtone, Stephen's number, the way everyone in the writers' meeting knew Jon was wrapped around Stephen's little finger - and that here they don't worry at all about exchanging knowing looks, contrasted with the incident later in the fic (you know the one) - and I was amused by the fact that it's Sam, the one of them that's probably exploited her husband mercilessly for ice-cream and pickles during her pregnancy, that gets to say something.
"I don't need the doctor. I need you. It's an emergency, Jon." was spectacularly slashy.
And to open the next segment with Stephen's chest? Poor, resolutely heterosexual, monogamous Jon ;)
Dudders FTW.
Characterisation-wise: Jon raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to admit that in front of your producer?" is a subtle reminder of their various positions, and gives Jon authority (I do like that your Jon isn't a pushover even when he's clearly, you know, a pushover. Er. If you know what I mean. I like that he can be both authorative and flexible in this, and that even when he's wrapped around Stephen's little finger, little bits of his natural - presence, come through. And you have no idea how many times I had to rewrite that sentence to make it seem like I wasn't at all discussing D/s).
"Stephen"-wise: Stephen's need for re-assurance - is that the first explicit bit we see? Hmm, I think it is - builds on the moment in the first chapter where he lifts his chin in The Word - and that's wonderfully grafted from the Report-verse :) - ...and breaks the spell of how endearing "Stephen" can be with a subtle (for Stephen) bit of prejudice. Nice.
The Word was great, as ever, and I loved the introduction of the subplot :)
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Also, this is character!Sam, who is not known for her tact =)
Stephen is spectacularly slashy with Jon on a regular basis. At this point, Jon thinks of being alone in an office with a half-naked employee as dangerous mostly because of the "harassment suit waiting to happen" factor. He's self-aware enough to know that he (this version, at least) is bi, but the idea of polyamory hasn't crossed his mind. Nor has the idea that Stephen would love to jump him.
Jon has this very interesting balance between being a pushover and not. We don't see him exercising his authority much, but it's there. There's a great line from the time when Stephen tried to do a toss at the end of TCR (and poor Jon just wanted to go home): Stephen's being his loud and overbearing self, and Jon's being fidgety and bowled-over, but then Jon says "I toss to you, Stephen. You don't toss to me. That's not how this works."
For all Stephen's bluster, for all the ways in which Jon bends over backwards to accomodate him, at the end of the day it's Jon who tosses to Stephen. (For the record, I think that would hold true in a D/s situation too ^_~)
Yes, this is the first instance of openly needy Stephen. It's also the first time Stephen and Jon are alone together. Coincidence? (Hint: No.)
Subplots are another thing that's largely missing from the next story. Sigh. (But Tad and Bobby won't be left out entirely.)
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*snickers* I very much doubted that it was.
The balance between authorative/pushover Jon is fascinating. It doesn't correlate so easily as authorative=real Jon/pushover=comedy life Jon; it's all shaded in, and there are moments here where each one comes to the fore - I noticed that you set up again the tension between what Jon wants to do - run down the hall, go to Stephen - against what he thinks/feels he should do, or rather, what is appropriate. I like that it's not necessary to have it made explicit - that Laugh it off is an imperative to himself but not necessarily outlined as a thought (note, lack of italics/a verb to say so, do tell me if I'm misreading here). The contrast is made concrete in the last line of that segment - He kept on the nonchalant grin until the door was closed. Halfway down the hall, he broke into a run. Could have come across as heavy-handed but the grounding for it was already there, so it works.
And whilst I said up there that they don't worry about the knowing looks - it's the rest of the staff that don't worry, and continue to not worry, until Jon's reaction changes. The others exchanged knowing looks that he did not like in the least. - here, again, we're shown a sense of restraint - moves into the imperative of "Laugh it off" and then moves to that last line. Nice progression :)
I was aware of Jon's ringtone but not Stephen's number, and I have to say I'm impressed by the level of detail that made it into the fic. Intended to say so at one point and might as well do so here.
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And, in the same vein, it's with "Stephen" that the tension between what he wants to do and what he thinks he's supposed to do is really pronounced. But it happens with Jon too, in a more subtle way.
It's funny you should mention that now, right as I'm in the middle of writing a round of Formidable Opponent on that exact topic.
"That's no excuse," snapped Stephen. "I have plenty of experience denying myself things I want. What were all those years of marriage for?"
"I didn't do so well then either, did I? How many times did I go to a different city for a field piece and end up with some stranger in a bar? A lot, that's how many."
Aaaanyway.
I'm reading Madame Bovary for French right now, and apparently it was Flaubert in that novel who pioneered the technique of writing thoughts and subjective opinions ("Laugh it off", but also "Jon was so gullible") as if they're part of the objective narrative. There's your useless literary trivia for the day =)
I'm a geek. I know tons of details about these shows. May as well use them. (Every once in a while, I lean on Colbert University too.)
Oh, and, on subplots: When you mentioned that they don't have to be continuations, I realized that yes, there's a subplot. The threads are very tangled together; the central plot is Stephen-versus-himself (with Jon trying to figure out what the conflict is, which side he's supposed to be on, and how to resolve it), and that leads directly to the Stephen-versus-Tracey, which in turn starts inciting Tracey-versus-Jon. But you could probably separate out the stuff with Charlene and call that a distinct subplot.
One thing I can say with certainty: if you like your fics complicated, you won't be disappointed.
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YAY for subplots! And yay for useless literary trivia!
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