Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2009-06-17 04:10 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2009-06-17 04:10 pm
Entry tags:
Strangers With Candy/Fake News: Why Should I Care?, part 12
Title: Why Should I Care? (12/14)
Series: Strangers With Candy, TCR
Pairings: Seamus/OMC; Chuck/Geoffrey; Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: R
Contents: Copious swearing; violence, injuries; Chuck and Geoffrey's crushing dysfunction; "it's not a cold sore! I bumped my lip on a biscuit!"
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: Chuck meets George meets Geoffrey meets Seamus. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Previous chapters here.
Why Should I Care?
Part Twelve
After Dad haltingly introduces his "friend", Geoffrey hugs them both effusively and starts talking.
Seamus tries very hard to listen over the continuing refrain of holy shit holy shit holy shit going on in his head. From the look on Dad's face, he's thinking pretty much the same thing. Although Seamus is trying his best not to look at his father's face, because when he does his eyes keep darting to the semen in Dad's hair.
Dad fucks men. You could feed the Pope bad chili for a week and there still wouldn't be enough holy shit in the world to cover this one.
"Isn't he just the cutest thing, Chuck?" enthuses Geoffrey, fussing over George as they all sit down around the kitchen table. "Almost as cute as me! And so exotic! And—!" He gasps prettily as he lifts George's left hand. "Is this what I think it is?"
George looks to Seamus for a cue; when Seamus nods, he confirms it. "We're engaged."
"Is that my ring?" interrupts Dad.
Seamus' temper flares. "You gave it to Mom. That made it hers. Anyway, why should you care what happens to it? It's not like you're married anymore."
Dad presses his lips together in a thin, hard line.
Geoffrey seems totally oblivious. "You hear that, Chuck? They're getting married!" he flutters. "Isn't that sweet? And romantic? Hint, hint?"
There's something wrong with one of his eyes. The pupil's all clouded over. Seamus tries not to stare.
"Have you known each other long?" asks George with polite interest.
"Oh, ages," sighs Geoffrey. "Ow. You grew up to be so handsome, Seamus—ow! Chuck, why are you kicking me?"
Seamus' scattered mind jumps to attention. "You've seen me before?"
"No," snaps Dad.
"Don't be silly, Chuck!" admonishes Geoffrey. "He was in my freshman art class."
Seamus gasps. "Mr. Jellineck? The one who used to cry whenever someone made fun of his paintings?"
Geoffrey lights up. "He remembers me!"
"It was the eye that threw me," blurts Seamus, then realizes he probably shouldn't have pointed it out. "I mean, uh, not that there's anything wrong with it! Just that it was normal back at school, or I would have..." Mocked you mercilessly for it, he thinks but doesn't say. (It wouldn't have been anything personal against Jellineck. At Flatpoint, when you saw weakness, you attacked.) "...remembered it."
"Ah, yes," sighs Geoffrey. It's the first time he's looked less than delighted, although even now he seems secretly glad for the chance to share his tragic tale. "They do say the greatest art is produced by those who suffer for their love. Chuck has given me many wonderful things, of course, but the price has been high. I'm just thankful that my ability to paint hasn't been compromised by the partial loss of vision."
"Like Monet," offers George.
"Who?"
"Hang on," interrupts Seamus, looking rapidly from Geoffrey to the now-rigid Dad. There's a hunch nagging at the back of his head, a sense that something here is very, very wrong. "What STI makes you go blind?"
Geoffrey pouts a little at the derailment of his poetic monologue. "Herpes."
"But there's a cure for that," Seamus protests. It's been ages, but he still remembers the partying in the streets when the drug finally hit the market. "Why did you let it advance that far before getting treatment?"
Dad looks horrified, and even George is nudging Seamus warningly under the table.
Geoffrey just laughs uncomfortably. "Kids these days, eh?" he says. "I know this may seem awfully old-fashioned to you, Seamus, but back in my day, that cure hadn't been invented yet."
Seamus' head whips around to glare at Dad. "How long has it been?"
"It'll be our silver anniversary next year!" volunteers Geoffrey.
"Goddamnit, Geoffrey!" barks Dad, starting to rise.
Seamus is faster.
A second later Geoffrey lets out a girlish shriek as Dad topples backwards. George grabs Seamus by the shoulders and hauls him off the table. "Easy, Seamus! Easy! It's okay!"
"The fuck it is!" roars Seamus, knuckles still stinging. "You were married, you bastard!"
"Seamus!" cries Geoffrey, crouching protectively at Dad's side as he lies crumpled on the floor, clutching his cheek. "He's your father!"
"Not by choice!" Seamus fires back. "But he sure as hell chose to cheat on my mother! Did you ever admit it to her, or did you wait until she woke up with a cold sore?"
Geoffrey frowns, suddenly thoughtful. "Probably the second one. That's how I found out."
Seamus' stomach lurches with sudden revulsion. "Oh, God, and I've defended you to her," he chokes, as George's grip on his shoulders tightens. "Every time I yelled at her, she knew she didn't deserve it, but she never said a word about you fucking around on her. This whole time I thought she was being unfair, when she's been protecting you!"
The tiny room seems to be closing in on him. "Come on, George," he growls, grabbing his fiancé's hand and pulling him to the door. "Let's go."
"Seamus—!" begins Dad, voice loud but cracking with some emotion that Seamus doesn't have time to figure out.
"No!" he shouts back, whipping around and aiming an accusing finger all in one motion. His eyes are way too wide and he probably looks like a crazy man but he doesn't care. "It's over, Dad. You've made your bed, you lie in it. But we're getting the hell away from you."
§
They're down one flight of steps, George with one hand on the small of Seamus' back and Seamus with an arm around his shoulders, when Dad's voice rings down the stairwell. "Damnit, Seamus, wait!"
Quaking with rage, Seamus keeps going.
"I know I'm a terrible father!" he yells, and that brings Seamus up short, out of shock if nothing else.
He looks up. Dad is leaning over the railing, Geoffrey hovering timidly behind him.
"I'm a failure as a father," Dad continues. "And a failure as a husband, and a failure as a teacher, and a failure at everything else I've ever tried to do. The only thing in my miserable excuse for a life that I've ever managed to do right—"
He grabs Geoffrey's arm, drags him forward.
"—is make this man happy!"
Geoffrey lets out a gasp of tearful delight.
"It isn't fair!" continues Dad, voice breaking. "You don't know how easy you have it! You can walk around holding hands and nobody's allowed to give you trouble, you don't have to sneak around in parks and truck stops to meet someone, you're allowed to marry the person you love! Where do you get off judging me? What gives you the right?"
Seamus clutches at George, knees buckling. He's still too angry to see straight; but now he can feel years of pain and fear and shame pouring down on top of that, and, worst of all, he can hear echoes of his own voice in his father's words; and it's too much to handle, far too much, he doesn't want to keep running away but he's up against the white-hot core of something and unless he gets some distance he's going to crumble like so much ash.
Squeezing his eyes shut and leaning against George's shoulder, he whispers, "Get me out of here."
The younger man murmurs a reply, but Seamus can't hear it over the throbbing in his head. Keeping his eyes closed, he blocks out everything but George's touch, trusting George to lead him safely out.
§
"Where to?" asks George as he slides in behind the wheel.
"Don't care," whispers Seamus. "Just drive."
Once they get moving, he starts to feel like he can breathe again, in spite of the thoughts crashing around his head. Mom's face the last time he snapped at her, looking like she's got something to say, but holding it in, always holding it in.
"George," he says hoarsely. "Silver anniversary. How long is that?"
"Twenty-five years."
After doing some quick math in his head, Seamus curses. "They met when I was four."
Himself as a teenager, shivering at a bus stop in the middle of the night after he walked out on a thirtysomething jackass who turned out to have a thing against condoms, because he was a reckless kid but he wasn't an idiot, not like Dad apparently is.
The car hugs the curve of an entrance ramp, picking up speed as it swings out onto the highway.
A dozen earlier memories of adults coming to the house to pick up Dad for a jog or a weekend hunting trip, the faces vague enough in his mind that every single one of them might have been Jellineck....
"George, talk to me," pleads Seamus.
"What am I supposed to say?"
"I don't know. Anything. How am I supposed to deal with this?"
"Seamus, I haven't known about it any longer than you have." George's voice is strained, as though only sheer force of will is keeping him from snapping the words. "Is there someone else you can talk to? Before you met me, who got the midnight phone call when something bad happened?"
"Nobody," huffs Seamus. "I went out to a bar, found someone twice my age to pick me up, and spent the night getting fucked into a mattress. Or, if we didn't get that far, against the bathroom stall di—"
He stops cold as the image sets off another cascade of memory, oh-so-innocent pieces that he had never linked together until now.
"Seamus?" prompts George nervously. "Are you o—"
"Goddamnit, the playground." The explanation tumbles forth in a rush. "It's this place Dad always used to take me. Even when I didn't want to, or when I had homework; even when I really got to be too old for that kind of stuff. I would climb all the way up to the top of the jungle gym and try to wave to Dad, only he was never there...."
He's choking with fury, but forces the words out. "The bathroom — some of the older guys told me about it — it was a meeting spot, back in the day. Oh, God, when I scraped the whole front of my leg on the cement and Toby's mom ruined her sweater wiping up the blood, Dad was getting sucked off over a broken toilet."
He leans against the window with a groan.
(Seamus is absolutely not wondering whether he's slept with one of the men who hooked up with Dad there. He refuses. Because if he so much as considers the idea, he's going to throw up, and he has no intention of ruining the upholstery.)
"Well," says George, almost offhandedly. "He's an ass, all right."
Choked up though he is, Seamus lets out a snort. "Either tell me something useful, or shut up."
George shuts up.
Outside the window, trees and white lines flash by.
At last Seamus sucks in a breath. "I didn't mean that," he mutters.
George's reply is slow in coming. "Are you sure there's no one you can talk to?" he asks softly. "Maybe an aunt or uncle? Or a family friend?"
Both his parents were only children, and Seamus doesn't think his family ever had friends. He's about to say so when another image fills his mind: a knowing look, followed by a squint-eyed cackle.
"Jerri," he realizes. "Jerri knows."
Series: Strangers With Candy, TCR
Pairings: Seamus/OMC; Chuck/Geoffrey; Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: R
Contents: Copious swearing; violence, injuries; Chuck and Geoffrey's crushing dysfunction; "it's not a cold sore! I bumped my lip on a biscuit!"
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: Chuck meets George meets Geoffrey meets Seamus. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Previous chapters here.
Why Should I Care?
Part Twelve
After Dad haltingly introduces his "friend", Geoffrey hugs them both effusively and starts talking.
Seamus tries very hard to listen over the continuing refrain of holy shit holy shit holy shit going on in his head. From the look on Dad's face, he's thinking pretty much the same thing. Although Seamus is trying his best not to look at his father's face, because when he does his eyes keep darting to the semen in Dad's hair.
Dad fucks men. You could feed the Pope bad chili for a week and there still wouldn't be enough holy shit in the world to cover this one.
"Isn't he just the cutest thing, Chuck?" enthuses Geoffrey, fussing over George as they all sit down around the kitchen table. "Almost as cute as me! And so exotic! And—!" He gasps prettily as he lifts George's left hand. "Is this what I think it is?"
George looks to Seamus for a cue; when Seamus nods, he confirms it. "We're engaged."
"Is that my ring?" interrupts Dad.
Seamus' temper flares. "You gave it to Mom. That made it hers. Anyway, why should you care what happens to it? It's not like you're married anymore."
Dad presses his lips together in a thin, hard line.
Geoffrey seems totally oblivious. "You hear that, Chuck? They're getting married!" he flutters. "Isn't that sweet? And romantic? Hint, hint?"
There's something wrong with one of his eyes. The pupil's all clouded over. Seamus tries not to stare.
"Have you known each other long?" asks George with polite interest.
"Oh, ages," sighs Geoffrey. "Ow. You grew up to be so handsome, Seamus—ow! Chuck, why are you kicking me?"
Seamus' scattered mind jumps to attention. "You've seen me before?"
"No," snaps Dad.
"Don't be silly, Chuck!" admonishes Geoffrey. "He was in my freshman art class."
Seamus gasps. "Mr. Jellineck? The one who used to cry whenever someone made fun of his paintings?"
Geoffrey lights up. "He remembers me!"
"It was the eye that threw me," blurts Seamus, then realizes he probably shouldn't have pointed it out. "I mean, uh, not that there's anything wrong with it! Just that it was normal back at school, or I would have..." Mocked you mercilessly for it, he thinks but doesn't say. (It wouldn't have been anything personal against Jellineck. At Flatpoint, when you saw weakness, you attacked.) "...remembered it."
"Ah, yes," sighs Geoffrey. It's the first time he's looked less than delighted, although even now he seems secretly glad for the chance to share his tragic tale. "They do say the greatest art is produced by those who suffer for their love. Chuck has given me many wonderful things, of course, but the price has been high. I'm just thankful that my ability to paint hasn't been compromised by the partial loss of vision."
"Like Monet," offers George.
"Who?"
"Hang on," interrupts Seamus, looking rapidly from Geoffrey to the now-rigid Dad. There's a hunch nagging at the back of his head, a sense that something here is very, very wrong. "What STI makes you go blind?"
Geoffrey pouts a little at the derailment of his poetic monologue. "Herpes."
"But there's a cure for that," Seamus protests. It's been ages, but he still remembers the partying in the streets when the drug finally hit the market. "Why did you let it advance that far before getting treatment?"
Dad looks horrified, and even George is nudging Seamus warningly under the table.
Geoffrey just laughs uncomfortably. "Kids these days, eh?" he says. "I know this may seem awfully old-fashioned to you, Seamus, but back in my day, that cure hadn't been invented yet."
Seamus' head whips around to glare at Dad. "How long has it been?"
"It'll be our silver anniversary next year!" volunteers Geoffrey.
"Goddamnit, Geoffrey!" barks Dad, starting to rise.
Seamus is faster.
A second later Geoffrey lets out a girlish shriek as Dad topples backwards. George grabs Seamus by the shoulders and hauls him off the table. "Easy, Seamus! Easy! It's okay!"
"The fuck it is!" roars Seamus, knuckles still stinging. "You were married, you bastard!"
"Seamus!" cries Geoffrey, crouching protectively at Dad's side as he lies crumpled on the floor, clutching his cheek. "He's your father!"
"Not by choice!" Seamus fires back. "But he sure as hell chose to cheat on my mother! Did you ever admit it to her, or did you wait until she woke up with a cold sore?"
Geoffrey frowns, suddenly thoughtful. "Probably the second one. That's how I found out."
Seamus' stomach lurches with sudden revulsion. "Oh, God, and I've defended you to her," he chokes, as George's grip on his shoulders tightens. "Every time I yelled at her, she knew she didn't deserve it, but she never said a word about you fucking around on her. This whole time I thought she was being unfair, when she's been protecting you!"
The tiny room seems to be closing in on him. "Come on, George," he growls, grabbing his fiancé's hand and pulling him to the door. "Let's go."
"Seamus—!" begins Dad, voice loud but cracking with some emotion that Seamus doesn't have time to figure out.
"No!" he shouts back, whipping around and aiming an accusing finger all in one motion. His eyes are way too wide and he probably looks like a crazy man but he doesn't care. "It's over, Dad. You've made your bed, you lie in it. But we're getting the hell away from you."
They're down one flight of steps, George with one hand on the small of Seamus' back and Seamus with an arm around his shoulders, when Dad's voice rings down the stairwell. "Damnit, Seamus, wait!"
Quaking with rage, Seamus keeps going.
"I know I'm a terrible father!" he yells, and that brings Seamus up short, out of shock if nothing else.
He looks up. Dad is leaning over the railing, Geoffrey hovering timidly behind him.
"I'm a failure as a father," Dad continues. "And a failure as a husband, and a failure as a teacher, and a failure at everything else I've ever tried to do. The only thing in my miserable excuse for a life that I've ever managed to do right—"
He grabs Geoffrey's arm, drags him forward.
"—is make this man happy!"
Geoffrey lets out a gasp of tearful delight.
"It isn't fair!" continues Dad, voice breaking. "You don't know how easy you have it! You can walk around holding hands and nobody's allowed to give you trouble, you don't have to sneak around in parks and truck stops to meet someone, you're allowed to marry the person you love! Where do you get off judging me? What gives you the right?"
Seamus clutches at George, knees buckling. He's still too angry to see straight; but now he can feel years of pain and fear and shame pouring down on top of that, and, worst of all, he can hear echoes of his own voice in his father's words; and it's too much to handle, far too much, he doesn't want to keep running away but he's up against the white-hot core of something and unless he gets some distance he's going to crumble like so much ash.
Squeezing his eyes shut and leaning against George's shoulder, he whispers, "Get me out of here."
The younger man murmurs a reply, but Seamus can't hear it over the throbbing in his head. Keeping his eyes closed, he blocks out everything but George's touch, trusting George to lead him safely out.
"Where to?" asks George as he slides in behind the wheel.
"Don't care," whispers Seamus. "Just drive."
Once they get moving, he starts to feel like he can breathe again, in spite of the thoughts crashing around his head. Mom's face the last time he snapped at her, looking like she's got something to say, but holding it in, always holding it in.
"George," he says hoarsely. "Silver anniversary. How long is that?"
"Twenty-five years."
After doing some quick math in his head, Seamus curses. "They met when I was four."
Himself as a teenager, shivering at a bus stop in the middle of the night after he walked out on a thirtysomething jackass who turned out to have a thing against condoms, because he was a reckless kid but he wasn't an idiot, not like Dad apparently is.
The car hugs the curve of an entrance ramp, picking up speed as it swings out onto the highway.
A dozen earlier memories of adults coming to the house to pick up Dad for a jog or a weekend hunting trip, the faces vague enough in his mind that every single one of them might have been Jellineck....
"George, talk to me," pleads Seamus.
"What am I supposed to say?"
"I don't know. Anything. How am I supposed to deal with this?"
"Seamus, I haven't known about it any longer than you have." George's voice is strained, as though only sheer force of will is keeping him from snapping the words. "Is there someone else you can talk to? Before you met me, who got the midnight phone call when something bad happened?"
"Nobody," huffs Seamus. "I went out to a bar, found someone twice my age to pick me up, and spent the night getting fucked into a mattress. Or, if we didn't get that far, against the bathroom stall di—"
He stops cold as the image sets off another cascade of memory, oh-so-innocent pieces that he had never linked together until now.
"Seamus?" prompts George nervously. "Are you o—"
"Goddamnit, the playground." The explanation tumbles forth in a rush. "It's this place Dad always used to take me. Even when I didn't want to, or when I had homework; even when I really got to be too old for that kind of stuff. I would climb all the way up to the top of the jungle gym and try to wave to Dad, only he was never there...."
He's choking with fury, but forces the words out. "The bathroom — some of the older guys told me about it — it was a meeting spot, back in the day. Oh, God, when I scraped the whole front of my leg on the cement and Toby's mom ruined her sweater wiping up the blood, Dad was getting sucked off over a broken toilet."
He leans against the window with a groan.
(Seamus is absolutely not wondering whether he's slept with one of the men who hooked up with Dad there. He refuses. Because if he so much as considers the idea, he's going to throw up, and he has no intention of ruining the upholstery.)
"Well," says George, almost offhandedly. "He's an ass, all right."
Choked up though he is, Seamus lets out a snort. "Either tell me something useful, or shut up."
George shuts up.
Outside the window, trees and white lines flash by.
At last Seamus sucks in a breath. "I didn't mean that," he mutters.
George's reply is slow in coming. "Are you sure there's no one you can talk to?" he asks softly. "Maybe an aunt or uncle? Or a family friend?"
Both his parents were only children, and Seamus doesn't think his family ever had friends. He's about to say so when another image fills his mind: a knowing look, followed by a squint-eyed cackle.
"Jerri," he realizes. "Jerri knows."
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Stick around...
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A bit like a cockroach, in that regard.