Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2009-03-30 05:11 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2009-03-30 05:11 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News/Strangers With Candy: Why Should I Care?, part 7
Title: Why Should I Care? (7/12?)
Series: Strangers With Candy
Pairings: Seamus/OMC; Chuck/Geoffrey (implied); Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: PG
Contents: Tension.
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stellar_dust
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use.
Summary: Seamus meets Jon and Stephen. (And the dog.)
Remember that this story is Twenty Minutes Into The Future: all phones are cellular, all cars are electric, and there's public transportation everywhere. Here, Seamus refers to the built-within-his-lifetime New Jersey metro, serving everywhere from New York to Philadelphia.
Previous chapters here.
Why Should I Care?
Part Seven
The houses in George's neighborhood had the longest driveways Seamus had ever seen.
There was something remarkably unfair about this. The trip already felt like it had stretched on forever, but adding another five hundred feet of gravel after he found the address? That was just cruel.
Of course Seamus had rented a car. Taking the metro would have required someone to pick him up at the station, and there was no way his first meeting with one of George's parents was going to be as the deadbeat who needed a lift.
Why should I care what they think, anyway?—no, that was BS and he knew it. Not only was he worried, he had spent the whole day wallowing in it.
At last he found the mailbox with the right number and turned up the driveway. It had to be the right house—the box even had the little American flag he had been told to look for—but he was still increasingly anxious as he scanned the vast stretch of scenery leading up to the house itself. In all this space, there was no sign of George.
When he switched off the engine, though, he heard barking. As he stepped out onto the front path, a long-legged dog trotted around the corner of the house and loped towards him.
"Phoebe!" And there was George, shoes crunching on fallen leaves as he followed in the dog's wake. "Down, girl! Hi, Seamus. Phoebe, sit!"
Phoebe came to a reluctant stop a few paces from Seamus, sniffing furiously before turning to whine at George.
"Sit!" he repeated, and this time the order was obeyed. George dropped to a crouch next to the dog and massaged the furry shoulders. "Easy, girl!" he cooed, voice jumping an octave as he addressed her. "You can't jump on Seamus, he's all dressed up. Come pet her, Seamus; she likes meeting people."
Seamus wasn't that dressed up. He was wearing nice slacks and a collared shirt, yeah, but he had decided at the last minute to forego the tie. It was just a casual dinner, after all.
"Phoebe, this is Seamus," announced George, as Seamus knelt by the dog and held out a hand to be sniffed. "Seamus, Phoebe. She's an Irish Setter mix." Seamus twitched a little as the dog headbutted the offered hand. "Go on, pet her!"
"All right, already," grumbled Seamus, scratching her behind the ears. Phoebe's tongue lolled out happily, red brush of a tail thumping back and forth.
"She likes you," confided George.
"Yeah, I got that."
He skritched a little longer before George got to his feet. "C'mon, let's go in." One finger was hooked under Phoebe's collar, just in case; but she trotted obediently after him, not even feinting a pounce in Seamus' direction.
So far, so good.
§
The house looked just as big inside as out, a staircase leading up to a balcony that overlooked the huge and elegant front hall. It was the kind of space that made Seamus want to whisper, so nobody would notice him and realize that it had been a mistake to let him in.
He tried not even to let his coat rustle as he slipped it off.
George, of course, had no such inhibitions. "DAD!" he hollered at the labyrinth of rooms beyond, tossing his own jacket haphazardly onto a hook. "SEAMUS'S HERE!"
And out of the depths, from somewhere off to the left, came a reply: "GREAT! SEND HIM IN!"
Ignoring this exchange entirely, Phoebe trotted off to the right, towards a doorway that revealed a sliver of blue-and-white kitchen tile. "Lemme just check to make sure she has water," said George, following her. "Go ahead. I'll be there in a second."
Before he knew it, Seamus was on his own in the vast hall.
Well, there was nothing for it. Squaring his shoulders, he walked in the direction of the new voice (though there was something familiar about it, something he couldn't put his finger on). The first open door he came to revealed a cozy-looking room with dark wood paneling; across this threshold he stepped.
And found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
"So," said a cheerful voice, "you're the man who thinks he's good enough for my son?"
§
Seamus was still rooted to the spot when George came up behind him.
"Oh, good, I see you've met—Dad! Put that away!"
"Nothing to worry about," said the man with the gun. "I was just cleaning Sweetness here. It's not like I had any reason to fire her." He raised an eyebrow at Seamus. "Isn't that right?"
"He's bluffing," said George quickly. "Don't worry, Seamus, it hasn't been loaded since 2012."
Loaded or not, it wasn't the firearm that had left Seamus mute.
He had been forewarned (after asking uncertainly whether there were any "ethnic things" he should be prepared for) that George's parents were white. (Well, white and Jewish.) But George had neglected to mention that one of them looked exactly like Dad.
So much so that, for a split second, Seamus' mind had started reorganizing itself around the notion that his father had been keeping up a secret life for decades.
But the longer he stared, the more the differences added up. George's father was older, his hair salt-and-pepper with more emphasis on the salt, a multitude of laugh lines around his mouth and eyes; and fitter, too, a little bit doughy but not completely gone to seed. You might mistake one for the other if you passed him on the street and didn't know him well, but side by side anyone could have told the difference.
And when this one looked at George, it wouldn't have mattered if they had been identical twins, because his face softened into a thoroughly un-Dad-like expression of tender adoration.
"So this is Seamus!" broke in a new voice, jolting Seamus out of his trance enough to look up. Another figure was approaching from a side door, walking with the slow, deliberate gait of someone whose joints are too stiff to be graceful at higher speeds. His silver hair was thinned nearly to nothing on top, but his eyes sparkled as alertly as a man in his prime. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Jon Stewart. Call me Jon."
Seamus' throat belatedly decided to start working. "H-hi," he croaked.
"And you can call me Sir," added the Dad-lookalike.
"Stephen," said Jon reproachfully.
"Oh, fine." Huffing a sigh, Stephen set the handgun on the coffee table and held out a hand. "Stephen Colbert. Yes, the Stephen Colbert. Call me Stephen."
"Yes, sir," stammered Seamus automatically as they shook hands.
Stephen looked gratified at that.
"Sorry," he continued, "but, uh, should I know you?"
The hand around his clasped just a little more firmly. "You couldn't have worn a tie?"
§
Dinner was Indian: an array of multicolored sauce-type dishes over rice, full of lumps that Seamus sure hoped were familiar vegetables and chunks of respectable meat. Jon, Stephen, and George all seemed to know exactly which colors they liked; Seamus took a little bit of everything, in hopes that even if he hated one of them, he would be able to finish off the few bites on his plate.
As it turned out, all of them were delicious, though he did need to reach for the yogurt(-y-type-thing) after tasting a couple of the spicier ones.
Phoebe wandered in every once in a while, having a nibble out of her bowl and then casting sidelong looks at the table, trying to look like she wasn't hoping the newcomer would inadvertently drop something. Seamus had never had a pet (the goldfish he had managed to hide for a week, before it was discovered and flushed, hardly counted), but he at least had the sense not to oblige.
At least the dog was easy to read. Stephen seemed much less intimidating as he and Jon slipped into a pattern of easy banter, with George effortlessly joining in; but when he turned to Seamus, he adopted an expression of such intensity that it was hard not to cower like a six-year-old.
"So, Seamus!" exclaimed Stephen at last, with a too-bright smile. "What do you do?"
"...do?"
"Work," clarified Stephen. "You do have a job."
"Of course!" said Seamus indignantly. Maybe it wasn't the most glamorous occupation in the world, but he was respectably employed. "I'm, um, a busboy."
"Hey, that's interesting," said Jon. "You know, I was a busboy for a while when I was younger."
"I knew," said Stephen. "That's why you used it as the name of your personal production company. The one that produced, among other things, my award-winning TV show."
"Da-ad!" protested George. "Stop showing off. Seamus is doing fine where he is."
"I'm working on my degree, too," added Seamus quickly. "It's not like I'm gonna do this forever."
"That's great!" said Jon. "What are you studying?"
"I'm...focusing on foundation courses right now." That at least sounded marginally better than "I'm taking whatever lets me study under this crazy lady who lived with me when I was six." Did he have anything to say that sounded impressive, or was his only hope in changing the subject? "So, uh, you were on TV? Were you an actor?"
"A pundit. We did the news. Well, not so much the news as my opinions about the news."
Stephen's face had softened, the way Dad's did with his dolls. So he could be distracted after all.
"You might have seen it, actually—it went off the air in '14." He fixed Seamus with a deceptively casual look. "How old were you then?"
"Fifteen," said Seamus without thinking.
"I see!" Stephen's eyes narrowed. "And do you normally date boys eight years younger than you?"
Damn.
Seamus glanced at Jon for help, but he only raised his eyebrows expectantly. Great. Stephen wasn't going to be shaken off, and Jon actually thought this was a reasonable line of interrogation.
"Normally," he said, feeling his hackles rise, "I don't date at all. Normally, I have one-night stands, a few of which don't even make it out of the men's room, although they generally get as far as motels—never my home, because up until last year I was living with my mother. Look, your suspicions are right, okay? I'm not good enough for your son. Are you happy now?"
Silence. George, whose mouth was full, paused mid-chew.
It was Jon who spoke first. "No one," he said mildly, putting a steadying hand on Stephen's arm, "is good enough for our son. Sometimes even we don't make the cut. So you're in good company."
§
After that, it got easier.
George finally induced his parents to start talking about themselves, and it turned out that Jon could go on for hours about the special education schools he had founded. ("Co-founded," he amended hastily, before going back to how it was the students doing all the impressive stuff, really.) He was pleased to find that Seamus' father was a teacher, though Seamus decided to spare him the details.
Stephen, for his part, worked with support groups for families with children that had been adopted while they were no more than embryos—what he called "snowflake children." Seamus had a few things to say about "adopting" clumps of cells when there were real kids out there who needed homes, but he held them back. For one thing, he was glad George was around.
For another, a horrible thought had just struck him. "Please tell me you know who your real—I mean, biological—parents are."
"Sure," said George. "They live up in Oregon. I've got a couple of bio-siblings there, too. I don't know them very well, but we do keep track of this stuff in case I need, like, a bone marrow transplant or something. Why?"
"Nothing." Seamus felt his heart rate returning to normal. "For a second I thought—see, I know this person who's donated a bunch of eggs, so I was afraid you might be related."
"Not unless she's been living on the west coast for the last six years," said Jon. "You gotta admit, the odds would be pretty low."
"Well, yeah." About as low as Stephen being a dead ringer for Dad. Oh, God, are they related? Is George my cousin or something? Even as an adopted one, that would be creepy.
Better related to me than Jerri, though.
Then he remembered something else. "Hey, George? You remember, like, the second time we met, when I called you a special snowflake...?"
George grinned. "Bet you never thought it was literal."
§
It was pitch-black outside when Seamus pulled on his jacket and shook hands with Jon and Stephen. "It was good to meet you two."
"We should do it again some time," said Jon, smiling warmly.
Stephen made a noncommittal sort of noise that could have been anything from agreement to derision. "You just make sure you treat him right. —Hey, where are you going?"
George paused with one arm in the sleeve of his own jacket. "I figured Seamus could drop me off. Since he's nearby, and all."
"But...you always take the metro back," protested Stephen. "I thought we were going to have the whole evening with you...."
"Thanksgiving break's coming up, and Christmas is right after it. And anyway, I have this psych test to study for."
Jon touched Seamus' sleeve. "Can you give us a minute?"
"Oh—sure." Seamus took a step towards the door.
Before he could leave, George caught his wrist and leaned up to give him a peck on the lips. "I'll be right out."
Seamus squeezed his hand gratefully and slipped away, careful to avoid Stephen's face as he went.
Series: Strangers With Candy
Pairings: Seamus/OMC; Chuck/Geoffrey (implied); Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: PG
Contents: Tension.
Beta:
stellar_dustDisclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use.
Summary: Seamus meets Jon and Stephen. (And the dog.)
Remember that this story is Twenty Minutes Into The Future: all phones are cellular, all cars are electric, and there's public transportation everywhere. Here, Seamus refers to the built-within-his-lifetime New Jersey metro, serving everywhere from New York to Philadelphia.
Previous chapters here.
Why Should I Care?
Part Seven
The houses in George's neighborhood had the longest driveways Seamus had ever seen.
There was something remarkably unfair about this. The trip already felt like it had stretched on forever, but adding another five hundred feet of gravel after he found the address? That was just cruel.
Of course Seamus had rented a car. Taking the metro would have required someone to pick him up at the station, and there was no way his first meeting with one of George's parents was going to be as the deadbeat who needed a lift.
Why should I care what they think, anyway?—no, that was BS and he knew it. Not only was he worried, he had spent the whole day wallowing in it.
At last he found the mailbox with the right number and turned up the driveway. It had to be the right house—the box even had the little American flag he had been told to look for—but he was still increasingly anxious as he scanned the vast stretch of scenery leading up to the house itself. In all this space, there was no sign of George.
When he switched off the engine, though, he heard barking. As he stepped out onto the front path, a long-legged dog trotted around the corner of the house and loped towards him.
"Phoebe!" And there was George, shoes crunching on fallen leaves as he followed in the dog's wake. "Down, girl! Hi, Seamus. Phoebe, sit!"
Phoebe came to a reluctant stop a few paces from Seamus, sniffing furiously before turning to whine at George.
"Sit!" he repeated, and this time the order was obeyed. George dropped to a crouch next to the dog and massaged the furry shoulders. "Easy, girl!" he cooed, voice jumping an octave as he addressed her. "You can't jump on Seamus, he's all dressed up. Come pet her, Seamus; she likes meeting people."
Seamus wasn't that dressed up. He was wearing nice slacks and a collared shirt, yeah, but he had decided at the last minute to forego the tie. It was just a casual dinner, after all.
"Phoebe, this is Seamus," announced George, as Seamus knelt by the dog and held out a hand to be sniffed. "Seamus, Phoebe. She's an Irish Setter mix." Seamus twitched a little as the dog headbutted the offered hand. "Go on, pet her!"
"All right, already," grumbled Seamus, scratching her behind the ears. Phoebe's tongue lolled out happily, red brush of a tail thumping back and forth.
"She likes you," confided George.
"Yeah, I got that."
He skritched a little longer before George got to his feet. "C'mon, let's go in." One finger was hooked under Phoebe's collar, just in case; but she trotted obediently after him, not even feinting a pounce in Seamus' direction.
So far, so good.
The house looked just as big inside as out, a staircase leading up to a balcony that overlooked the huge and elegant front hall. It was the kind of space that made Seamus want to whisper, so nobody would notice him and realize that it had been a mistake to let him in.
He tried not even to let his coat rustle as he slipped it off.
George, of course, had no such inhibitions. "DAD!" he hollered at the labyrinth of rooms beyond, tossing his own jacket haphazardly onto a hook. "SEAMUS'S HERE!"
And out of the depths, from somewhere off to the left, came a reply: "GREAT! SEND HIM IN!"
Ignoring this exchange entirely, Phoebe trotted off to the right, towards a doorway that revealed a sliver of blue-and-white kitchen tile. "Lemme just check to make sure she has water," said George, following her. "Go ahead. I'll be there in a second."
Before he knew it, Seamus was on his own in the vast hall.
Well, there was nothing for it. Squaring his shoulders, he walked in the direction of the new voice (though there was something familiar about it, something he couldn't put his finger on). The first open door he came to revealed a cozy-looking room with dark wood paneling; across this threshold he stepped.
And found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
"So," said a cheerful voice, "you're the man who thinks he's good enough for my son?"
Seamus was still rooted to the spot when George came up behind him.
"Oh, good, I see you've met—Dad! Put that away!"
"Nothing to worry about," said the man with the gun. "I was just cleaning Sweetness here. It's not like I had any reason to fire her." He raised an eyebrow at Seamus. "Isn't that right?"
"He's bluffing," said George quickly. "Don't worry, Seamus, it hasn't been loaded since 2012."
Loaded or not, it wasn't the firearm that had left Seamus mute.
He had been forewarned (after asking uncertainly whether there were any "ethnic things" he should be prepared for) that George's parents were white. (Well, white and Jewish.) But George had neglected to mention that one of them looked exactly like Dad.
So much so that, for a split second, Seamus' mind had started reorganizing itself around the notion that his father had been keeping up a secret life for decades.
But the longer he stared, the more the differences added up. George's father was older, his hair salt-and-pepper with more emphasis on the salt, a multitude of laugh lines around his mouth and eyes; and fitter, too, a little bit doughy but not completely gone to seed. You might mistake one for the other if you passed him on the street and didn't know him well, but side by side anyone could have told the difference.
And when this one looked at George, it wouldn't have mattered if they had been identical twins, because his face softened into a thoroughly un-Dad-like expression of tender adoration.
"So this is Seamus!" broke in a new voice, jolting Seamus out of his trance enough to look up. Another figure was approaching from a side door, walking with the slow, deliberate gait of someone whose joints are too stiff to be graceful at higher speeds. His silver hair was thinned nearly to nothing on top, but his eyes sparkled as alertly as a man in his prime. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Jon Stewart. Call me Jon."
Seamus' throat belatedly decided to start working. "H-hi," he croaked.
"And you can call me Sir," added the Dad-lookalike.
"Stephen," said Jon reproachfully.
"Oh, fine." Huffing a sigh, Stephen set the handgun on the coffee table and held out a hand. "Stephen Colbert. Yes, the Stephen Colbert. Call me Stephen."
"Yes, sir," stammered Seamus automatically as they shook hands.
Stephen looked gratified at that.
"Sorry," he continued, "but, uh, should I know you?"
The hand around his clasped just a little more firmly. "You couldn't have worn a tie?"
Dinner was Indian: an array of multicolored sauce-type dishes over rice, full of lumps that Seamus sure hoped were familiar vegetables and chunks of respectable meat. Jon, Stephen, and George all seemed to know exactly which colors they liked; Seamus took a little bit of everything, in hopes that even if he hated one of them, he would be able to finish off the few bites on his plate.
As it turned out, all of them were delicious, though he did need to reach for the yogurt(-y-type-thing) after tasting a couple of the spicier ones.
Phoebe wandered in every once in a while, having a nibble out of her bowl and then casting sidelong looks at the table, trying to look like she wasn't hoping the newcomer would inadvertently drop something. Seamus had never had a pet (the goldfish he had managed to hide for a week, before it was discovered and flushed, hardly counted), but he at least had the sense not to oblige.
At least the dog was easy to read. Stephen seemed much less intimidating as he and Jon slipped into a pattern of easy banter, with George effortlessly joining in; but when he turned to Seamus, he adopted an expression of such intensity that it was hard not to cower like a six-year-old.
"So, Seamus!" exclaimed Stephen at last, with a too-bright smile. "What do you do?"
"...do?"
"Work," clarified Stephen. "You do have a job."
"Of course!" said Seamus indignantly. Maybe it wasn't the most glamorous occupation in the world, but he was respectably employed. "I'm, um, a busboy."
"Hey, that's interesting," said Jon. "You know, I was a busboy for a while when I was younger."
"I knew," said Stephen. "That's why you used it as the name of your personal production company. The one that produced, among other things, my award-winning TV show."
"Da-ad!" protested George. "Stop showing off. Seamus is doing fine where he is."
"I'm working on my degree, too," added Seamus quickly. "It's not like I'm gonna do this forever."
"That's great!" said Jon. "What are you studying?"
"I'm...focusing on foundation courses right now." That at least sounded marginally better than "I'm taking whatever lets me study under this crazy lady who lived with me when I was six." Did he have anything to say that sounded impressive, or was his only hope in changing the subject? "So, uh, you were on TV? Were you an actor?"
"A pundit. We did the news. Well, not so much the news as my opinions about the news."
Stephen's face had softened, the way Dad's did with his dolls. So he could be distracted after all.
"You might have seen it, actually—it went off the air in '14." He fixed Seamus with a deceptively casual look. "How old were you then?"
"Fifteen," said Seamus without thinking.
"I see!" Stephen's eyes narrowed. "And do you normally date boys eight years younger than you?"
Damn.
Seamus glanced at Jon for help, but he only raised his eyebrows expectantly. Great. Stephen wasn't going to be shaken off, and Jon actually thought this was a reasonable line of interrogation.
"Normally," he said, feeling his hackles rise, "I don't date at all. Normally, I have one-night stands, a few of which don't even make it out of the men's room, although they generally get as far as motels—never my home, because up until last year I was living with my mother. Look, your suspicions are right, okay? I'm not good enough for your son. Are you happy now?"
Silence. George, whose mouth was full, paused mid-chew.
It was Jon who spoke first. "No one," he said mildly, putting a steadying hand on Stephen's arm, "is good enough for our son. Sometimes even we don't make the cut. So you're in good company."
After that, it got easier.
George finally induced his parents to start talking about themselves, and it turned out that Jon could go on for hours about the special education schools he had founded. ("Co-founded," he amended hastily, before going back to how it was the students doing all the impressive stuff, really.) He was pleased to find that Seamus' father was a teacher, though Seamus decided to spare him the details.
Stephen, for his part, worked with support groups for families with children that had been adopted while they were no more than embryos—what he called "snowflake children." Seamus had a few things to say about "adopting" clumps of cells when there were real kids out there who needed homes, but he held them back. For one thing, he was glad George was around.
For another, a horrible thought had just struck him. "Please tell me you know who your real—I mean, biological—parents are."
"Sure," said George. "They live up in Oregon. I've got a couple of bio-siblings there, too. I don't know them very well, but we do keep track of this stuff in case I need, like, a bone marrow transplant or something. Why?"
"Nothing." Seamus felt his heart rate returning to normal. "For a second I thought—see, I know this person who's donated a bunch of eggs, so I was afraid you might be related."
"Not unless she's been living on the west coast for the last six years," said Jon. "You gotta admit, the odds would be pretty low."
"Well, yeah." About as low as Stephen being a dead ringer for Dad. Oh, God, are they related? Is George my cousin or something? Even as an adopted one, that would be creepy.
Better related to me than Jerri, though.
Then he remembered something else. "Hey, George? You remember, like, the second time we met, when I called you a special snowflake...?"
George grinned. "Bet you never thought it was literal."
It was pitch-black outside when Seamus pulled on his jacket and shook hands with Jon and Stephen. "It was good to meet you two."
"We should do it again some time," said Jon, smiling warmly.
Stephen made a noncommittal sort of noise that could have been anything from agreement to derision. "You just make sure you treat him right. —Hey, where are you going?"
George paused with one arm in the sleeve of his own jacket. "I figured Seamus could drop me off. Since he's nearby, and all."
"But...you always take the metro back," protested Stephen. "I thought we were going to have the whole evening with you...."
"Thanksgiving break's coming up, and Christmas is right after it. And anyway, I have this psych test to study for."
Jon touched Seamus' sleeve. "Can you give us a minute?"
"Oh—sure." Seamus took a step towards the door.
Before he could leave, George caught his wrist and leaned up to give him a peck on the lips. "I'll be right out."
Seamus squeezed his hand gratefully and slipped away, careful to avoid Stephen's face as he went.
no subject
Question - Seamus seems to act like an only child. Has he not grown up treating Nate and Maggie and even Tyrone and Mary and Sally and John Paul as his half and step siblings?
Phoebe the doctor-dog!
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There was always distance between George and Stephen's older children. For one thing, there's physical distance - they spent very little time with Stephen after the divorce, even as he started to clean up his act. But also, he's clearly his father's favorite, and he was the final straw that broke up Stephen's first marriage, so the older kids had no small amount of resentment. It's only as they've gotten older that they've started to develop healthy relationships with him.
When it comes to Jon's kids, they grew up as a strange hybrid of "step-siblings" and "the kids next door". (They all moved when George was about five, to a pair of houses with a shared back yard. From that point on the parents did a lot of back-and-forth, but the kids' permanent bedrooms were in different houses.) In the present day they're both long gone - Maggie's in college in another time zone and Nate's already graduated - and neither of them come back home nearly as often as George, whose college is only a couple of hours away.
So that's why George has an only-child mindset in a lot of ways, and why none of the semi-siblings have explicitly come up in the story yet. Are there ways you'd still expect their influence to show through?
Phoebe also has a long backstory, but I think I'll save that for later =P
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Oh, hush, you.
I would have thought George would have more of a younger brother vibe to him. 0 to 5 is fairly formative for that imprinting, and I wouldn't have thought Jon would let George become more of a son than Nate (or Maggie). To me the pair of houses gives off a very large, extended or joint family feel.
And I would have felt that Stephen's kids would have been more like George's cousins, whom he worked at being family with as he got older. His friendly personality seems the kind who would want to pull people closer together, and the youngest child often does that, being the centre of everyone's attention, and enjoying that.
But I can only map the family dynamics I am familiar onto them, and things in India are very different from the US.
Phoebe's backstory! ::grabby hands::
(also, did you get my email with the outline?)
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It isn't that George is closer to Jon than Jon's kids are - more like the opposite. Not that Jon loves George any less, but George's primary parent is clearly Stephen. (Jon is much more likely to refer to George as "Stephen's son" or "my godson" than "my son".)
Would it seem more natural in India to have a household with four equal parents? The US mindset is very stuck on the nuclear family, so in a lot of ways this setup works like a pair of nuclear families that have gotten stuck together at points, but not totally melded.
And George probably ended up as less of "the baby of the family" than he might have been, given that he's so close in age to Maggie. Plus there's the fact that his father spent much of the first year of his life having a nervous breakdown, which sucked up a lot of the extra attention in the household.
I'm working (slowly) on getting more details of George's upbringing together; Phoebe's backstory will be included =D
(Got it! Will probably mostly sit on the sidelines, munching popcorn and cheering you two on. But I'll help out where I can.)
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"Meeting" Jon and Stephen was great though. And I squeed too loud when I found out that Stephen still owned Sweetness. And Jon's too big a sweetheart, as usual.
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Stephen wouldn't ever leave his special lady ^_^ And it's good to have a Jon.
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Phoebe! You act exactly like my puppy. <3
Aw, poor Stephen...his little boy is growing up and would rather live his life and hang out with his boyfriend than spend time with his father... : (
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(His backstory will come out eventually. Slowly.)
Fortunately, Stephen understands that his animosity towards Seamus is mostly his own "you're taking my son away!" issues, rather than problems within Seamus. So now all Stephen has to do is come to terms with that....
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I liked all the little comparisons and differences between Stephen and Chuck; it provided some neat insights.
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And, oh, that was a fun section to write :D
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"I'm taking whatever lets me study under this crazy lady who lived with me when I was six." LOVE. and the part about being quiet so people don't notice him and realize he was someone they shouldn't let in.
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Thanks :3
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Keep up the great work!
Also... I know its a chapter back, but I really liked the picture of George in his dress. Absolutly adorable!
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2012 was when Stephen came home from the shooting range and, instead of storing Sweetness properly right away, left her on a table while he ran to the bathroom.
So in comes five-year-old George, in the middle of a game of Tek Jansen, and spots an awesome prop for a laser pistol. He's been told not to play with Daddy's gun, but it's just sitting there....
Stephen's washing his hands when he hears the gunshot. He tears down the steps three at a time to find a smoking hole in the wall and a terrified - and slightly deafened - George on the floor.
Once he sorts out that George hasn't been shot, Stephen pretty much goes postal. George has never seen his father so mad, before or since. He's learned his lesson. Not that it makes much difference, as Stephen can't even take Sweetness out of her safe for years afterwards.
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Also, thanks, and glad you liked the dress!
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Tell me someone smacked him.
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I think he beat himself up over it more than anyone else could have.
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Oh, Stephen. Don't kill your son's boyfriend, you will break his heart.
Also, I love the contrast of George's happy home life and consequent stability and healthy attitude towards basically everything (but most notably, sexuality.) It's a good bit of characterization.
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Stephen won't kill Seamus...unless of course he really, really deserves it.
And thanks ^_^ It's been an uphill fight for Stephen, but he's managed to raise George well.
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Overprotective!Stephen is my favorite ever.
I love this story. George and Seamus are too cute.
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♥!
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He fixed Seamus with a deceptively casual look. "How old were you then?"
"Fifteen," said Seamus without thinking.
"I see!" Stephen's eyes narrowed. "And do you normally date boys eight years younger than you?"
Damn.
XD Oh, snap.
I'd like to hear more about the dog.
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There will be more about the dog in The Backstory, never fear :3