For Miss D.C!
Jun. 15th, 2009 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laliandraIf you don't know what I'm talking about when I say North By Northwestern fic, then please, move right along and be about your business.
A fic for our Jenn of D.C, who is keeping a country safe from pandemics and looking stylin' while doing it, written with much, much love, and given with apologies for lateness. I swear, the boys got into my head and wouldn't get out.
You wanted adorable bb, I have provided! Also, at the end, there is a multimedia experience to go with! I hope you like it, darrrrling.
Many thanks, as ever, to Mlle C for stellar editing and making me smile with all the 'asdgvfsjyg's in the margins, as it were.
Warnings: SWEARING, Jokes of a Dubious Nature, Bed Sharing, Sweetness Bordering on Sugar Shock!
Before and After
It’s not that Stephen misses Jon. It’s just that he’s used to company, or so he tells Rahm when he calls him; used to sharing a room, or so he tells his mother as she frowns at his willingness to be put back in with his brother; used to sharing a bed, which he very definitely does not tell anyone.
Rahm says that he is a shit liar and that he should reconsider this whole acting as a career idea, knucklefuck. Mom smiles and says she’s glad he’s made good friends. He says to himself that sharing a bed isn’t so great anyway. He always ends up squashed against the wall, nose pressed into board that smells like used socks, on a good day. Then he has to manoeuvre himself over to face Jon who is usually fast asleep, unsquished and unaware of Stephen’s suffering, curls wild and dark against the pillows and body warm against Stephen’s, and what’s so great about that?
He doesn’t even sound convincing to himself, and he curses Rahm for being insufferably right and glares at his bed for being like it was before - fine, but nothing to make him smile of a morning. Things are different now, like two lives -before the storm and after it- and now he feels stuck in Before, stuck far too far away and stuck not knowing when he’ll see Jon again and he doesn’t like it all that much.
He doesn’t mention this to anyone. Certainly not to Keith who calls to complain that it’s unfair that drama students get to go home a week early because they have less exams while he’s stuck there with “Cooper stealing his story about the possible chemicals in the lake and Barack breaking things by playing with a football indoors.”
He then proceeds to give Stephen a comprehensive breakdown of why the varsity baseball team are losing every match and why the CEOs of the companies who may be dumping chemicals are “the worst people in the world” until he finally pauses for breath and Stephen manages to ask “How’s Rachel?”
He almost has to run the words together just to get them in, still kind of reeling from the onslaught of information.
“She’s great. Did I tell you she might be getting a slot on a radio show?” The pride smoothes out the sharp edges of Keith’s voice until it becomes almost soft, which makes Stephen smile.
“She’s too good for you”, he says and isn’t all that surprised when Keith agrees.
“Feel better now?” he asks, because he knows that Keith has to vent all his liberal outrage somewhere, and he suspects the others are too busy to listen right now, or too stressed out to take it.
“I guess you might have been some help.” Keith says reluctantly and then adds, moving from defence to offence, “I still have to put up with Jon slouching around with a face like a wet weekend.”
“Oh?” Stephen says, slightly concerned, intrigued, and pleased all at once.
“Anyone would think he’s pining. Bye for now, Colbert.”
“Pining?” Stephen asks but all he gets is the dial tone.
He glares at the phone and his brother says that he should really stop glaring at inanimate objects. Stephen considers throwing the phone at him, but just for a second. A split second. Really.
As it turns out, he doesn’t need to mention it to Paul and Amy. They come to visit for the day because they’re bored and they miss him terribly after five days apart, of course. The rest of the Colberts make a lot of jokes about having three drama students all vying to be the centre of attention, but Stephen is just pleased to have them there, loud and ridiculous and dear.
Amy charms his mom by helping with dinner and bringing flowers and smiling constantly, all sunny curls and innocence. She charms his big brothers by getting excited about cars and smiling a very different kind of smile, that one that seems to suggest she’s seconds away from making a very dirty joke. She and Paul are almost nauseating in their togetherness, communicating in grins and half sentences that they don’t have to finish because they know each other so well. They tease each other mercilessly until one of them cracks and says something small but unbearably fond about the other. Amy always acts as if she’s heard it all before, but drops a quick kiss onto Paul’s shoulder, fast and familiar. Paul isn’t so easy when Amy says something nice, looking away, laughing and making a joke at his own expense.
“You’re just like Jon,” Stephen says with a laugh, “totally useless at taking a complement.”
He doesn’t understand the look that they flash at other and then at him, and gives them Quizzical Expression No. 3 (eyebrow half raised, head tilted to the left).
“Oh honey, you’ve got it bad,” Amy says, shaking her head. Stephen suspects that she will still be acting like he’s just a kid when they’re in their forties, calling him and Paul her boys and patting his head.
“Got what bad?” he asks. Women are weird and inexplicable, he decides, and looks to Paul for sympathy, but he is also smiling like he’s in on it and Stephen despairs against this conspiracy of the coupled-up.
Amy pats his head and Stephen smiles at his own prescience, then remembers that he’s supposed to be annoyed at her for acting like his big sister.
“So pretty, so shiny-haired, so slow…” she sighs.
“That’s like the 10th time you’ve mentioned Jon in this conversation,” Paul explains, mouth all gleeful smile, eyes warm and knowing, “it’s kind of massively obvious you’re missing him. Man up and admit it already.”
Stephen considers pointing out what he considers to be some quite contradictory elements to that last point, but even thinking about it makes him feel very, very tired all of a sudden. He could deny it, but it’s undeniable. Plus apparently massively obvious.
He ends up just saying, “He’s my best friend.”
“Besides us, of course.” Amy says with a grin and Stephen nods because somehow, it’s true. They are the star trio of their drama group, inseparable in rehearsals and class, to the extent that when Paul was away for a few days people would call out “StephenAmyand… Where’s Paul?” as if they were one entity missing a limb.
He’s never explicitly told them that he and Jon are… whatever he and Jon are. It’s not like they hide it, exactly, but Jon is horrible with public displays of affection, and they’ve never really discussed this… whatever this is. Things aren’t really that different than they were Before. Which is probably an indication that they were never much good at just being friends. Still, Amy and Paul have seen them together, now, After.
Seen them get drunk and have make a whispered decision to leave the bar early or Cause a Scene and a Scandal. Seen the way Stephen absent-mindedly steals Jon’s pens, dinner, drinks or shirts. Seen the way that Jon puts his hand in the small of Stephen’s back, only for a second, so natural that he doesn’t know he’s doing it, so natural that sometimes Stephen doesn’t notice. He’ll be doing something else entirely, minutes later and the moment will replay in his head all of a sudden and make him start, like he’s got an electric shock. He can feel himself light up when Jon comes into the room, comes to meet him from practice, can see Jon’s smile brighten when the three of them bound into the kitchen with tales of skits and costumes, there’s no way they can’t have noticed it, it would be like trying to ignore someone turning the spotlight on full in the middle of a scene.
So he’s always been fairly sure they know, and now he’s definitely sure. It’s in their expressions, half amused and half sympathetic, and he raises his hands in something like defeat.
“You’re here. I’m used to having him…” Undeniable, he thinks suddenly, oh god, it’s undeniable. “I’m used to having him,” he finishes and tries very hard not to freak the fuck out.
“Dude, way too much information,” Paul says and Amy hits him on the arm and says “That’s not what he meant,” and then looks at Stephen with genuine sympathy, “It can’t be easy.”
“It’s nice to be here with my family, really, it is.” Stephen protests, because it’s great to see everyone and catch up on the news and just be together, be family. But still.
“Of course it is. Doesn’t mean you can’t miss your… Miss other people.” Amy says.
She gives him a pointed look, making sure he has caught her being tactful and daring him to fill in the gap. Stephen gives her an even look back, trying to convey that he is not rising to that particular bait, thank you.
“Any answer I give to that will either make you make the puppy face at me or laugh and mock for the rest of our natural lives,” he says, pulling a face “and that is worse than a rock or a hard place.”
To his surprise Paul puts his hand out and says, “We shall make a pact never to speak of it again.” He is always surprised when Paul is serious; it comes on so suddenly, like an inverted thunderstorm, gales of laughter to still sincerity.
They sit for a second, the three of them round his kitchen table, clock ticking and everything is domestic and good and in the end it’s easier than he thought to say, “Sometimes, it’s painfully obvious something is missing, like when you lose a tooth. But most of the time it’s like. You know when you have a bag and you carry it all the time…”
“You mean your handbag?” Paul grins, leaning quickly away from Amy before she can swat at him again.
“I mean my bookbag. Jeez. Well, most of the time it’s like when you stop wearing it. Just an indefinable sense of something not being quite right.”
There is another silence. He recognises shades of it from classrooms and church halls, tinged with sympathy for his loss. He knew he recognised the feeling, he just hadn’t realised where from.
Amy smiles, a real smile this time and says in her best valley girl voice “So call him, girlfriend.” It breaks the tightness in his chest and he smiles back.
He doesn’t need to call Jon, in the end, but he does wonder if he needs to mention it. Amy and Paul have almost literally just got out of the door when the phone rings and a voice on the other end says “Hello. Could I speak to Stephen Colbert please?”
“Yup, that’s me,” Stephen says, “Is that you, Jonathan Leibowitz?”
“Yes.” Jon sounds part exasperated and part fond and that combination is so familiar, always accompanied by one corner of his mouth curving up helplessly.
“I didn’t recognise you. Must be the politeness, threw me off,” Stephen says, carefully making each word very casual, as if it hasn’t been nearly a week since they last spoke, “Finally work out where the payphone on campus is then?”
“Finally saved up enough change to say more than ‘Hi Stephen, how are…’” Jon says, and Stephen feels a little guilty, but mostly enormously relieved.
“I see. How are you, then? Apart from changeless.”
“Oh fine. Busy. Revision, soccer practice, keeping Rahm from killing everyone, the usual.”
“The usual, everyday task of preventing mass slaughter. It is possible that our lives are not entirely normal, you know that?”
Jon laughs. “Normality is highly over-rated. How’s home?”
“It’s good. Fine. We had everyone up for a few days, which was fun. Hectic. And everyone teased me about having lost my accent. Then Paul and Amy came down and we were the life and soul of the party. Also, having proper meals cooked for you is the best thing ever. Remember that time we tried to make lasagne?” Stephen says.
“We swore to never speak of that again,” Jon replies, sounding perilously close to a giggle.
Stephen decides he’s very glad that Jon can’t see how much he’s smiling right now. He doesn’t mind the mocking, it’s kind of their thing, but he’s fairly sure that he would sicken himself right now. He expects his brother to come in any moment and tell him to stop smiling like a lunatic at inanimate objects.
“True. I must now face a cruel and unusual punishment. Did we ever decide what that actually was? Aside from having to eat that lasagne.”
“Hmm, I shall have to give it some thought…” Jon says, slow and considering.
Stephen pictures him, leaning against the wall, one hand fiddling with the cord of the phone. Jon fiddles with everything, shuffles papers, spins pens, turning and sliding them through his fingers until Stephen is forced to kiss him, swallowing Jon’s huff of surprise and feeling the start of a smile slide against his lips as he links their fingers.
“I miss you,” he blurts out before he can think, feeling like he is watching the words tumble out and half wanting to catch them and pull them back before they reach the phone.
There is nothing but the faint hiss and crackle of the line, like the wind through dry leaves, until Stephen hears Jon inhale sharply and he realises that Jon is surprised. Not surprised that Stephen has just said something without thinking - they’ve had several ‘conversations’ about that - but that Stephen thought it at all.
“Honestly?” he says, because he can’t believe Jon wouldn’t have realised, have known that Stephen was missing him, when Stephen had never really doubted that Jon missed Stephen. He is his best friend, just like he told Amy. The tiny voice at the back of his mind shouts ‘undeniable’ at him again, but he’s got pretty good at ignoring it over the last couple of days. He remains unsure as to what that says about his brain.
He might not have wanted to say it aloud but he had assumed that Jon knew what he was thinking, the way he always did, the way he could see through all the twists and tangles of his thought processes and find the truth.
“Yes,” Jon says, and he sounds awkward and Stephen hates that, hates that he can’t stop Jon thinking like that, sounding like that. “Figured you might be glad to be rid of me and my crippling self doubt for a few days. Plus I thought you were looking forward to having a bed to yourself.”
Stephen thinks about making a joke about Jon being domineering in bed, but he figures this may not exactly be the moment, and also Mom could pass by the door at any minute. He congratulates himself on his restraint and says, “That was a joke and you know it. Now say it back.”
“Say what back?” Jon asks, probably trying his best look of blank innocence.
“Jon Leibowitz, it is mean to tease.” He is being a hypocrite, he knows, but it’s not like he has ever carried on after Jon asked him to stop. Apart from that one time. With the banana. Jon had glared at him the whole time and everyone else in the kitchen had gone speechless with laughter. It had been totally worth it.
“Well of course I miss you. You’re rather a presence, always on the go, you’re like a puppy on speed, and you’re always talking and stealing my stuff and you’re too damn tall not to miss.” Only Jon could make telling someone they were missed into an opportunity for insults.
“Well then,” Stephen says, hearing the way his voice goes warm and not caring, “Now that we’ve established that.”
“Indeed.” Jon says, and neither of them are saying anything really because this? This is not about what’s being said right now.
“Want to know something weird?” Jon asks after a moment that Stephen, possibly ridiculously, imagines Jon spent smiling at the phone like a lunatic.
“Always.”
“According to Andy, polar bears walk too quietly for the sound to be heard by the long distance camera. So for nature documentaries they add the sound in later with polystyrene.”
“That is weird. Cool, but weird. How does he even know this? Why does he even know this?” Stephen says, very carefully not thinking about silent, deadly ninja polar bears.
“Research into the possible erosion of the polar ice caps. Who the hell knows where he found the information that polar bears are a bit ninja,” Jon replies, making Stephen grin yet again.
“That boy spends far too much time with his head halfway round the world.”
“He has some issues to work through,” Jon says with more than a hint of understanding in his voice, because Jon and Andy are two very serious peas in a pod sometimes, caring far too much about things they can’t change, too removed and abstract for their own good.
“Oh sure, poor little rich kid,” he snorts, but he knows Jon knows he’s only (mostly) joking. The three of them have enough collective Daddy Issues to keep an army of psychologists employed for years. He chooses not to deal with it by taking every damn disaster of the world as a personal injustice. He’s more like Rahm. They pick their own immediate battles and then they fight them, step by step, tooth and nail and single minded.
“Oh whatever, Stephen,” Jon says, giggling, “at least you don’t have to put up with his latest feud with Keith. The two of them are a great source of amusement to me.”
“So the others are keeping you occupied then?”
“Mostly. That and lots of training.”
“Are you training for a particular match, or is the soccer coach just a sadist?” Stephen asks, though he’s not discounting the idea that both those options are possible.
“Yeah, game’s tomorrow. Lots of protein to be eaten, sleep to be had, you know the drill,” Jon says, and Stephen is about to point out the massive opportunities for innuendo in that statement when something in Jon’s tone make him stop, a crack in the usual smooth veneer of his voice.
“Is everything alright?” he asks, and thinks that if anyone has tried anything again he’d… He doesn’t like to think about how angry he’d been, with Jon for hiding things, with Joey for not saying anything, but mostly with those idiot frat boys for putting bruises on skin and shadows in eyes that he was too fond of.
“Yeah, sure. Nothing bad.” Jon knows Stephen well enough to add, “Nothing like before, don’t worry.”
“What then?”
“It’s just the game. It’s play-offs, it’s important and I’m just being a big girl and getting nervous.”
Stephen usually makes Jon coffee on the morning of match days. He usually makes Jon go to sleep early and then hangs around pitch-side and makes Jon argue and joke with him so that he forgets to be nervous. And Jon came to his end of year performance and sat right where Stephen could see him from the wings, could see the confidence and pride on Jon’s face.
He should be there.
“And you didn’t mention this before because?” Stephen asks, already knowing what the gist of the answer will be.
“I didn’t think it would matter. It’s only one game, I’m being silly. You should be having fun with your family, not having to talk me through pre-match nerves.”
“Maybe.” Stephen says absently.
“Um. I have to go now, okay?” Jon’s voice is still not quite right, still shaded with vulnerability, as much as he tries to make it light.
“I guess. Don’t be nervous. You cut too much of a fine figure in those shorts to be nervous,” Stephen says, and tries to leer down the phone. It’s not so easy.
“Oh. Sure. Bye,” Jon says, sounding pleased in spite of himself.
“Bye.”
Stephen hangs up and just stares at the wall for a second, then strides out into the garden to find his mother, who is cutting roses, their scent sweet and heavy in the late afternoon sun.
“Mom, I need to borrow the other car, right now,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound too mad.
“How long for?” she asks evenly, smiling at his surprise, “I can tell it’s not for mischief, if it was you’d have worked out a clever spiel, not just be standing there all lost looking.”
“A few days? I need it to drive to Northwestern,” he says and sees something like understanding cross Mom’s face.
“Do you need flowers?” she says, holding out a red rose.
“Um, no. I haven’t been breaking any hearts, don’t worry. There’s some… somewhere I have to be.” He’s not ready to explain this to himself yet, let alone his mom.
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” she says slowly and Stephen loves her a little more for that.
He picks up a rose from the bunch on the ground and presents it to her with a flourish and a kiss, saying “Thanks, Mom,” voice scratched by a thousand unsaid things.
The scent of roses seems to cling to him as he walks back to the house, throws a few things into a bag and raids the kitchen for snacks, focussing on small, easy tasks.
The car is old and tiny and has had to survive abuse from many a Colbert using it as a run-around. It smells of cigarettes and the seats are no longer any recognisable colour; ick with patches of light ew, possibly. But the radio works, just about, and Stephen whiles away 4 hours or so singing along very loudly to power rock songs and eating an obscene amount of processed sugar, until the coffee flavoured Revels wake his craving up and he has to stop. He buys gas and two huge mugs of sweet, strong, perfect coffee, and halfway through the second all the caffeine and the sugar conspires to making him feel all jittery. He decides he needs moral support and calls Amy from the pay phone in the corner, sighing with relief when she says “Hello?”
“I’m on the road, driving to Northwestern.”
“Hello to you too, Stephen,” Amy laughs, “should I ask why?”
“I don’t know. I’m in a roadside diner on the middle of nowhere, or possibly Tennessee, and I’ve just spent a small fortune on gas and Reese’s Pieces and I don’t know how or why.”
“For Jon, then,” Amy says, proving once again that Stephen should stop making friends with annoyingly smart and blunt people, “Don’t be idiotic, Stephen, just admit it and we can move on with the conversation.”
“I’m not being idiotic, I’m being circumspect. Did you not hear the whole ‘small town in Mid-America’ part?”
“I suppose you getting lynched would be a little counter-productive, “Amy says, with a giggle Stephen doesn’t think he’s meant to hear.
“It’s the soccer play offs tomorrow.” He can admit that much.
“I see. Wait, you’re going to drive to Chicago by tomorrow? Isn’t that, like, impossible?”
“It’s a thousand miles give or take. I should be able to be there in about 14 hours, if I don’t really stop for too long.”
“Fuck…” Amy murmurs.
“Yeah,” Stephen says, caught between embarrassment and pride.
“The things we do for love,” Amy laughs and then the phone starts to beep angrily at them.
“Bye, darling, good luck!” she says, and then hangs up.
Stephen thinks that this is turning into a pattern, and also that this is a surreal and terrible time to have an epiphany, under strip lighting in a dusty diner, cradling a half a cup of luke-warm coffee. It’s happened though. There’s no denying it, no other reason to be here, and the voice at the back of his mind is triumphant as he runs the words over in his head –I’m doing this for love.
He drinks the rest of the coffee, which helps a little, then drifts back to the car and ponders the steering wheel for a few long minutes. This, he should definitely mention to Jon.
Then he shakes his head at himself and gets back on the road.
The light fades and the songs on the radio slow in tempo, the highway is nearly deserted, the towns he passes becoming islands of light in an increasing sea of darkness. Stephen recites lines to himself to keep awake. Eventually, though, the road starts to waver in front of his eyes and the voices on the radio retreat down a tunnel, so he pulls into a truck stop.
The whole place looks washed out under the harsh, bright lights. There is one waitress, sallow and bored, and a trucker staring despondently into his drink and it’s all a bit ‘Nighthawks’esque for Stephen’s liking. The coffee is weak and unsatisfactory, not able to shift the fog of exhaustion that seems to have enveloped his brain, and the only thought that is getting through is “What the hell am I doing?”
He could give up right now. Give up and sleep and go home. No one at Northwestern knows he is coming, his mum wouldn’t question his return, his brothers wouldn’t even know he’d left. He could just go home and not have to deal with what this means.
Amy might kill him, though.
Stephen thinks of her and Paul smiling at each other across his kitchen table, which stirs a memory of his parents doing the exact same thing, as if the simple act of breakfast was made better by being together. He thinks of his mother standing holding the rose, absent and wistful, of her hugging him as she left him standing with a pile of boxes in his dorm room and whispering fiercely in his ear “Seize the day, remember.” Jon had offered her a tissue, made a joke, made her laugh. She’d liked Jon. Stephen thinks about the warmth of Jon’s breath on the back of his neck, the first thing he feels as he wakes up.
It’s only eight more hours.
He asks the waitress to wake him up in a couple of hours, and then curls up on the back seat of the car. It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes later when there is someone tapping on the window. Stephen is charming and effusive in his thanks and the waitress breaks into a genuine smile rather than the ghost of a thing she was wearing before.
His coffee comes with a grin and a pile of pancakes “on the house.”
“You are a wonderful, wonderful woman,” Stephen declares, and means every word of it.
Although he feels considerably more human after sleeping, Stephen is still wobbly and has to focus hard on driving. He misses the sunrise completely, which is annoying because he’d been looking forward to that, by the time he notices, it’s daylight and fields glowing golden in the morning sun surround him. It’s the perfect moment to turn the radio off and launch into “Oh What A Beautiful Morning!”, rich voice filling the tiny car. He works through all the hymns he knows with ‘morning’ in them, the words comforting as always. In between songs Stephen can hear that the car has developed a slightly concerning new array of noises, but he just sings louder and hopes for the best.
After stopping (for more coffee, more gas and more chocolate than is probably wise) the day has got so warm that Stephen winds the windows down, breathing in the smell of the North. Jon had laughed at him when he had said that the air smelt different on this side of the country and it had turned into an argument, serious and silly all at once and Stephen had realised how much fun it could be to try and outwit Jon. Northwestern suddenly seems very far away. He bites his lip and re-focuses on the road, determined not to stop until the state border.
Stephen has never been so glad to see the words “Welcome to Illinois” in all his life. He’s feeling light headed from lack of sleep, running on sugar and possibility.
The Chicago skyline materialises over the horizon and a thousand butterflies metamorphose in Stephen’s stomach. He knows he should stop and try and kill some of them off by eating, but he can’t stop now, kickoff is only an hour away. Single- mindedness has kept him going this long, after all.
He realises that he doesn’t really have a plan. But then, when does he ever have a plan? All he needs to do is get there and see Jon, and he can work something out from there.
It must be fate, Stephen thinks, as Springsteen comes on the radio and swings into a saxophone solo just as he swings the car onto the road to campus. He can’t stop smiling and he’s sure the guard at the gate thinks he’s on something, but he lets Stephen through anyway and he navigates his way to the playing fields, more by luck than by judgement.
After he parks the car he takes a proper look at himself in the mirror. He looks terrible, almost grey, and glassy-eyed, though by some minor miracle his hair has remained pristine.
“Ours is not to reason why,” he tells himself and stumbles out of the car and towards the pitch on legs that are still half asleep.
Anderson comes round the corner and lets out a yelp of surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, then peers closer, “And why do you look like the walking dead?”
“Long story,” Stephen says, with a slight shrug, “are you here to cheer Jon?”
“But of course,” Andy smiles, “Rahm and Barack are here too, I was about to go meet them. Keith is covering the game for his paper,” he adds, mouth twisting as if the words have a bitter aftertaste.
Stephen thinks he really must look particularly awful because Andy, usually too awkward for physical contact, slings an arm around his shoulder and walks him to where Rahm and Barack are sitting. Rahm takes one look at him and says “So, you found South Carolina so lacking in company, despite being one of fuck knows how many little Colberts, that you decided to what, walk all the way back? You look like shit.”
“It’s lovely to see you too,” Stephen says, trying to look dignified but ruining it by having to lean on Andy a little. “And no, I drove here, but thank you for your concern.”
“You drove all the way here? By yourself?” Barack asks, neatly elbowing Rahm in the ribs when he opens his mouth to add something, no doubt charming.
“Yes. Yes I did. I am a maverick like that,” Stephen says, and winks at Barack.
And then he sees Jon, shorts and numbered shirt and rueful smile. Andy must have spotted him as well because he yells “Hey, Jon, over here!” and Jon comes jogging over, grinning at Andy and then does an honest-to-god double take at Stephen.
“What?” he says, looking utterly stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“I cannot resist the lure of men in horribly coloured shorts,” Stephen says, and he knows that he’s not even sounding that convincingly casual, but see if he cares. “Besides, I heard this was an important game.”
“It’s only a match” Jon says, “You didn’t have to – you must have travelled all night.”
There’s an unspoken question in the lilt of his voice and the curve of his mouth “you did this for me?” because it seems Jon still doesn’t really quite understand.
“I did.” Stephen says, watching Jon trying to hide the grin, trying to hide the happiness, but it’s no use at all, it’s like trying to hide the sun.
“You look terrible,” Jon says, eventually, and of course he wasn’t going to say anything ridiculous and sentimental, not Jon, not here on the soccer pitch full of men being manly.
“So I’m told,” Stephen replies, very calm now, somehow. Keith starts to hum something under his breath and there is a ripple effect as his friends work out what it is, Andy spluttering and Rahm grinning like a devil and Barack having to sit down because he’s laughing too much. Stephen just turns to Jon and asks, “Well, is that alright?”
Jon raises his eyebrows and walks away.
“You are a bastard of the highest order, Keith,”
“Oh come on, like you weren’t thinking it? He drove all night…”
“Keith, be quiet and watch the game, okay?”
The game seems to go on forever and even the frankly excellent sight of Jon tearing down the pitch, muscles at full stretch, can’t take Stephen’s mind off the massively uncomfortable chair and the tiredness that seems to have set in at bone level. It end a draw, which confuses him quite a lot.
“I thought this was the play-off? For the varsity championships?” he asks Keith, who is taking down names and scribbling vicious notes beside them.
“Sure. The first leg of them. We’ll play them at home in a couple of weeks, so whoever wins there gets to go through.”
“So, not a completely vital match, then?”
“Um, no,” Jon says sheepishly as he comes up behind them, “I did say…”
Keith smiles at them both, his big, honest smile and says “Take him home, Leibowitz. I’m taking the others for a drink, but the pair of you look in need of a sit down.”
“I retract my earlier support of the statement about your bastardry,” Stephen tells him solemnly, and Keith grins and walks back towards the rest of their friends.
“I would not think you any less of a man should you need to lean on me, just a little bit,” Jon says, standing close to Stephen’s side.
“Oh thank crap for that,” Stephen says with relief, letting Jon guide him back towards their dorms.
“Thank you, for coming,” Jon says, and his smile is a perfect, shy thing, “like I said, it wasn’t that important, I was being melodramatic.”
“Trust me, I know melodramatic, I am melodramatic. That was not it. But you’re welcome.” You’re worth it, he thinks, but that’s possibly a little much to share.
They’re nearly back now, and Stephen leans on a wall for a second, to give Jon a break from supporting his idiotic wobbly body. Jon stands next to him and then rests his head on Stephen’s shoulder, hair brushing his neck and chin and making Stephen shiver, despite the warm sunshine.
“This is not very subtle,” Stephen warns, not wanting to move away but not wanting to let Jon forget himself, here on a path where anyone could come round the corner.
“I’ll have you know I’m very subtle. I am a master of subtlety and tact,” Jon tells him, even as he turns his head to let his breath ghost over bare skin just above Stephen’s collar.
“This from the man who send me a “sorry we killed Jesus” card for Easter,” Stephen replies, feeling very pleased with himself at managing to get out a witty comeback when half his brain is wanting a nap and the other half is just wanting.
“It is my duty as your token Jewish friend,” Jon says, “And will you hurry up please?”
“What if I like it here?” Stephen says, shutting his eyes.
“Then you don’t get to take advantage of my post match adrenaline high,” Jon says, and Stephen’s eyes snap open just in time to catch the end of a fantastic smile, a world of wicked promise.
He should really, really mention it. Jon looks at him, noticing the sudden stillness and says, “Stephen? Are you okay?”
And Stephen suddenly knows exactly how to tell him.
It had been early on in their friendship, when Jon had just been his sort of cute room-mate, and they had been trying to study poetry together and failing miserably.
He’d said, “How are you even supposed to define love? How would you even start?” and Jon had looked at him absently and said, “I think it’s scary. Because it’s admitting part of your happiness is dependant on someone else.” And then he had gone back to glaring at his book without any idea of how brilliant he’d just been. Or wouldn’t have had any idea if Stephen hadn’t told him, and then everyone else, repeatedly. It had been the day Stephen discovered he had a slight blush kink.
“I’m fine. Just a little scared. You see, now I have to admit that part of my happiness depends on you,” he says to Jon, who stares back at him for so long it starts to become unnerving.
“Oh good,” Jon says, finally, and then kisses Stephen, pressing him into sun-warmed brick. He tastes of salt-sweat and the tang of half-time oranges and Stephen leans back into the kiss, trying to pull Jon closer somehow, feeling Jon’s hand in the small of his back, the scrape of teeth over his bottom lip.
“You did miss me,” he says, as he catches his breath, and it’s not so scary after all, here in Afterwards.
The song Keith is humming is this 'I Drove All Night" by Roy Orbison ( the link goes to the cheese-tastic video, btw), which has been stuck in head ever since I nearly wrote the line "you drove all night?" and then died laughing...
And Nighthawks is a picture by Edward Hopper...
A fic for our Jenn of D.C, who is keeping a country safe from pandemics and looking stylin' while doing it, written with much, much love, and given with apologies for lateness. I swear, the boys got into my head and wouldn't get out.
You wanted adorable bb, I have provided! Also, at the end, there is a multimedia experience to go with! I hope you like it, darrrrling.
Many thanks, as ever, to Mlle C for stellar editing and making me smile with all the 'asdgvfsjyg's in the margins, as it were.
Warnings: SWEARING, Jokes of a Dubious Nature, Bed Sharing, Sweetness Bordering on Sugar Shock!
Before and After
It’s not that Stephen misses Jon. It’s just that he’s used to company, or so he tells Rahm when he calls him; used to sharing a room, or so he tells his mother as she frowns at his willingness to be put back in with his brother; used to sharing a bed, which he very definitely does not tell anyone.
Rahm says that he is a shit liar and that he should reconsider this whole acting as a career idea, knucklefuck. Mom smiles and says she’s glad he’s made good friends. He says to himself that sharing a bed isn’t so great anyway. He always ends up squashed against the wall, nose pressed into board that smells like used socks, on a good day. Then he has to manoeuvre himself over to face Jon who is usually fast asleep, unsquished and unaware of Stephen’s suffering, curls wild and dark against the pillows and body warm against Stephen’s, and what’s so great about that?
He doesn’t even sound convincing to himself, and he curses Rahm for being insufferably right and glares at his bed for being like it was before - fine, but nothing to make him smile of a morning. Things are different now, like two lives -before the storm and after it- and now he feels stuck in Before, stuck far too far away and stuck not knowing when he’ll see Jon again and he doesn’t like it all that much.
He doesn’t mention this to anyone. Certainly not to Keith who calls to complain that it’s unfair that drama students get to go home a week early because they have less exams while he’s stuck there with “Cooper stealing his story about the possible chemicals in the lake and Barack breaking things by playing with a football indoors.”
He then proceeds to give Stephen a comprehensive breakdown of why the varsity baseball team are losing every match and why the CEOs of the companies who may be dumping chemicals are “the worst people in the world” until he finally pauses for breath and Stephen manages to ask “How’s Rachel?”
He almost has to run the words together just to get them in, still kind of reeling from the onslaught of information.
“She’s great. Did I tell you she might be getting a slot on a radio show?” The pride smoothes out the sharp edges of Keith’s voice until it becomes almost soft, which makes Stephen smile.
“She’s too good for you”, he says and isn’t all that surprised when Keith agrees.
“Feel better now?” he asks, because he knows that Keith has to vent all his liberal outrage somewhere, and he suspects the others are too busy to listen right now, or too stressed out to take it.
“I guess you might have been some help.” Keith says reluctantly and then adds, moving from defence to offence, “I still have to put up with Jon slouching around with a face like a wet weekend.”
“Oh?” Stephen says, slightly concerned, intrigued, and pleased all at once.
“Anyone would think he’s pining. Bye for now, Colbert.”
“Pining?” Stephen asks but all he gets is the dial tone.
He glares at the phone and his brother says that he should really stop glaring at inanimate objects. Stephen considers throwing the phone at him, but just for a second. A split second. Really.
As it turns out, he doesn’t need to mention it to Paul and Amy. They come to visit for the day because they’re bored and they miss him terribly after five days apart, of course. The rest of the Colberts make a lot of jokes about having three drama students all vying to be the centre of attention, but Stephen is just pleased to have them there, loud and ridiculous and dear.
Amy charms his mom by helping with dinner and bringing flowers and smiling constantly, all sunny curls and innocence. She charms his big brothers by getting excited about cars and smiling a very different kind of smile, that one that seems to suggest she’s seconds away from making a very dirty joke. She and Paul are almost nauseating in their togetherness, communicating in grins and half sentences that they don’t have to finish because they know each other so well. They tease each other mercilessly until one of them cracks and says something small but unbearably fond about the other. Amy always acts as if she’s heard it all before, but drops a quick kiss onto Paul’s shoulder, fast and familiar. Paul isn’t so easy when Amy says something nice, looking away, laughing and making a joke at his own expense.
“You’re just like Jon,” Stephen says with a laugh, “totally useless at taking a complement.”
He doesn’t understand the look that they flash at other and then at him, and gives them Quizzical Expression No. 3 (eyebrow half raised, head tilted to the left).
“Oh honey, you’ve got it bad,” Amy says, shaking her head. Stephen suspects that she will still be acting like he’s just a kid when they’re in their forties, calling him and Paul her boys and patting his head.
“Got what bad?” he asks. Women are weird and inexplicable, he decides, and looks to Paul for sympathy, but he is also smiling like he’s in on it and Stephen despairs against this conspiracy of the coupled-up.
Amy pats his head and Stephen smiles at his own prescience, then remembers that he’s supposed to be annoyed at her for acting like his big sister.
“So pretty, so shiny-haired, so slow…” she sighs.
“That’s like the 10th time you’ve mentioned Jon in this conversation,” Paul explains, mouth all gleeful smile, eyes warm and knowing, “it’s kind of massively obvious you’re missing him. Man up and admit it already.”
Stephen considers pointing out what he considers to be some quite contradictory elements to that last point, but even thinking about it makes him feel very, very tired all of a sudden. He could deny it, but it’s undeniable. Plus apparently massively obvious.
He ends up just saying, “He’s my best friend.”
“Besides us, of course.” Amy says with a grin and Stephen nods because somehow, it’s true. They are the star trio of their drama group, inseparable in rehearsals and class, to the extent that when Paul was away for a few days people would call out “StephenAmyand… Where’s Paul?” as if they were one entity missing a limb.
He’s never explicitly told them that he and Jon are… whatever he and Jon are. It’s not like they hide it, exactly, but Jon is horrible with public displays of affection, and they’ve never really discussed this… whatever this is. Things aren’t really that different than they were Before. Which is probably an indication that they were never much good at just being friends. Still, Amy and Paul have seen them together, now, After.
Seen them get drunk and have make a whispered decision to leave the bar early or Cause a Scene and a Scandal. Seen the way Stephen absent-mindedly steals Jon’s pens, dinner, drinks or shirts. Seen the way that Jon puts his hand in the small of Stephen’s back, only for a second, so natural that he doesn’t know he’s doing it, so natural that sometimes Stephen doesn’t notice. He’ll be doing something else entirely, minutes later and the moment will replay in his head all of a sudden and make him start, like he’s got an electric shock. He can feel himself light up when Jon comes into the room, comes to meet him from practice, can see Jon’s smile brighten when the three of them bound into the kitchen with tales of skits and costumes, there’s no way they can’t have noticed it, it would be like trying to ignore someone turning the spotlight on full in the middle of a scene.
So he’s always been fairly sure they know, and now he’s definitely sure. It’s in their expressions, half amused and half sympathetic, and he raises his hands in something like defeat.
“You’re here. I’m used to having him…” Undeniable, he thinks suddenly, oh god, it’s undeniable. “I’m used to having him,” he finishes and tries very hard not to freak the fuck out.
“Dude, way too much information,” Paul says and Amy hits him on the arm and says “That’s not what he meant,” and then looks at Stephen with genuine sympathy, “It can’t be easy.”
“It’s nice to be here with my family, really, it is.” Stephen protests, because it’s great to see everyone and catch up on the news and just be together, be family. But still.
“Of course it is. Doesn’t mean you can’t miss your… Miss other people.” Amy says.
She gives him a pointed look, making sure he has caught her being tactful and daring him to fill in the gap. Stephen gives her an even look back, trying to convey that he is not rising to that particular bait, thank you.
“Any answer I give to that will either make you make the puppy face at me or laugh and mock for the rest of our natural lives,” he says, pulling a face “and that is worse than a rock or a hard place.”
To his surprise Paul puts his hand out and says, “We shall make a pact never to speak of it again.” He is always surprised when Paul is serious; it comes on so suddenly, like an inverted thunderstorm, gales of laughter to still sincerity.
They sit for a second, the three of them round his kitchen table, clock ticking and everything is domestic and good and in the end it’s easier than he thought to say, “Sometimes, it’s painfully obvious something is missing, like when you lose a tooth. But most of the time it’s like. You know when you have a bag and you carry it all the time…”
“You mean your handbag?” Paul grins, leaning quickly away from Amy before she can swat at him again.
“I mean my bookbag. Jeez. Well, most of the time it’s like when you stop wearing it. Just an indefinable sense of something not being quite right.”
There is another silence. He recognises shades of it from classrooms and church halls, tinged with sympathy for his loss. He knew he recognised the feeling, he just hadn’t realised where from.
Amy smiles, a real smile this time and says in her best valley girl voice “So call him, girlfriend.” It breaks the tightness in his chest and he smiles back.
He doesn’t need to call Jon, in the end, but he does wonder if he needs to mention it. Amy and Paul have almost literally just got out of the door when the phone rings and a voice on the other end says “Hello. Could I speak to Stephen Colbert please?”
“Yup, that’s me,” Stephen says, “Is that you, Jonathan Leibowitz?”
“Yes.” Jon sounds part exasperated and part fond and that combination is so familiar, always accompanied by one corner of his mouth curving up helplessly.
“I didn’t recognise you. Must be the politeness, threw me off,” Stephen says, carefully making each word very casual, as if it hasn’t been nearly a week since they last spoke, “Finally work out where the payphone on campus is then?”
“Finally saved up enough change to say more than ‘Hi Stephen, how are…’” Jon says, and Stephen feels a little guilty, but mostly enormously relieved.
“I see. How are you, then? Apart from changeless.”
“Oh fine. Busy. Revision, soccer practice, keeping Rahm from killing everyone, the usual.”
“The usual, everyday task of preventing mass slaughter. It is possible that our lives are not entirely normal, you know that?”
Jon laughs. “Normality is highly over-rated. How’s home?”
“It’s good. Fine. We had everyone up for a few days, which was fun. Hectic. And everyone teased me about having lost my accent. Then Paul and Amy came down and we were the life and soul of the party. Also, having proper meals cooked for you is the best thing ever. Remember that time we tried to make lasagne?” Stephen says.
“We swore to never speak of that again,” Jon replies, sounding perilously close to a giggle.
Stephen decides he’s very glad that Jon can’t see how much he’s smiling right now. He doesn’t mind the mocking, it’s kind of their thing, but he’s fairly sure that he would sicken himself right now. He expects his brother to come in any moment and tell him to stop smiling like a lunatic at inanimate objects.
“True. I must now face a cruel and unusual punishment. Did we ever decide what that actually was? Aside from having to eat that lasagne.”
“Hmm, I shall have to give it some thought…” Jon says, slow and considering.
Stephen pictures him, leaning against the wall, one hand fiddling with the cord of the phone. Jon fiddles with everything, shuffles papers, spins pens, turning and sliding them through his fingers until Stephen is forced to kiss him, swallowing Jon’s huff of surprise and feeling the start of a smile slide against his lips as he links their fingers.
“I miss you,” he blurts out before he can think, feeling like he is watching the words tumble out and half wanting to catch them and pull them back before they reach the phone.
There is nothing but the faint hiss and crackle of the line, like the wind through dry leaves, until Stephen hears Jon inhale sharply and he realises that Jon is surprised. Not surprised that Stephen has just said something without thinking - they’ve had several ‘conversations’ about that - but that Stephen thought it at all.
“Honestly?” he says, because he can’t believe Jon wouldn’t have realised, have known that Stephen was missing him, when Stephen had never really doubted that Jon missed Stephen. He is his best friend, just like he told Amy. The tiny voice at the back of his mind shouts ‘undeniable’ at him again, but he’s got pretty good at ignoring it over the last couple of days. He remains unsure as to what that says about his brain.
He might not have wanted to say it aloud but he had assumed that Jon knew what he was thinking, the way he always did, the way he could see through all the twists and tangles of his thought processes and find the truth.
“Yes,” Jon says, and he sounds awkward and Stephen hates that, hates that he can’t stop Jon thinking like that, sounding like that. “Figured you might be glad to be rid of me and my crippling self doubt for a few days. Plus I thought you were looking forward to having a bed to yourself.”
Stephen thinks about making a joke about Jon being domineering in bed, but he figures this may not exactly be the moment, and also Mom could pass by the door at any minute. He congratulates himself on his restraint and says, “That was a joke and you know it. Now say it back.”
“Say what back?” Jon asks, probably trying his best look of blank innocence.
“Jon Leibowitz, it is mean to tease.” He is being a hypocrite, he knows, but it’s not like he has ever carried on after Jon asked him to stop. Apart from that one time. With the banana. Jon had glared at him the whole time and everyone else in the kitchen had gone speechless with laughter. It had been totally worth it.
“Well of course I miss you. You’re rather a presence, always on the go, you’re like a puppy on speed, and you’re always talking and stealing my stuff and you’re too damn tall not to miss.” Only Jon could make telling someone they were missed into an opportunity for insults.
“Well then,” Stephen says, hearing the way his voice goes warm and not caring, “Now that we’ve established that.”
“Indeed.” Jon says, and neither of them are saying anything really because this? This is not about what’s being said right now.
“Want to know something weird?” Jon asks after a moment that Stephen, possibly ridiculously, imagines Jon spent smiling at the phone like a lunatic.
“Always.”
“According to Andy, polar bears walk too quietly for the sound to be heard by the long distance camera. So for nature documentaries they add the sound in later with polystyrene.”
“That is weird. Cool, but weird. How does he even know this? Why does he even know this?” Stephen says, very carefully not thinking about silent, deadly ninja polar bears.
“Research into the possible erosion of the polar ice caps. Who the hell knows where he found the information that polar bears are a bit ninja,” Jon replies, making Stephen grin yet again.
“That boy spends far too much time with his head halfway round the world.”
“He has some issues to work through,” Jon says with more than a hint of understanding in his voice, because Jon and Andy are two very serious peas in a pod sometimes, caring far too much about things they can’t change, too removed and abstract for their own good.
“Oh sure, poor little rich kid,” he snorts, but he knows Jon knows he’s only (mostly) joking. The three of them have enough collective Daddy Issues to keep an army of psychologists employed for years. He chooses not to deal with it by taking every damn disaster of the world as a personal injustice. He’s more like Rahm. They pick their own immediate battles and then they fight them, step by step, tooth and nail and single minded.
“Oh whatever, Stephen,” Jon says, giggling, “at least you don’t have to put up with his latest feud with Keith. The two of them are a great source of amusement to me.”
“So the others are keeping you occupied then?”
“Mostly. That and lots of training.”
“Are you training for a particular match, or is the soccer coach just a sadist?” Stephen asks, though he’s not discounting the idea that both those options are possible.
“Yeah, game’s tomorrow. Lots of protein to be eaten, sleep to be had, you know the drill,” Jon says, and Stephen is about to point out the massive opportunities for innuendo in that statement when something in Jon’s tone make him stop, a crack in the usual smooth veneer of his voice.
“Is everything alright?” he asks, and thinks that if anyone has tried anything again he’d… He doesn’t like to think about how angry he’d been, with Jon for hiding things, with Joey for not saying anything, but mostly with those idiot frat boys for putting bruises on skin and shadows in eyes that he was too fond of.
“Yeah, sure. Nothing bad.” Jon knows Stephen well enough to add, “Nothing like before, don’t worry.”
“What then?”
“It’s just the game. It’s play-offs, it’s important and I’m just being a big girl and getting nervous.”
Stephen usually makes Jon coffee on the morning of match days. He usually makes Jon go to sleep early and then hangs around pitch-side and makes Jon argue and joke with him so that he forgets to be nervous. And Jon came to his end of year performance and sat right where Stephen could see him from the wings, could see the confidence and pride on Jon’s face.
He should be there.
“And you didn’t mention this before because?” Stephen asks, already knowing what the gist of the answer will be.
“I didn’t think it would matter. It’s only one game, I’m being silly. You should be having fun with your family, not having to talk me through pre-match nerves.”
“Maybe.” Stephen says absently.
“Um. I have to go now, okay?” Jon’s voice is still not quite right, still shaded with vulnerability, as much as he tries to make it light.
“I guess. Don’t be nervous. You cut too much of a fine figure in those shorts to be nervous,” Stephen says, and tries to leer down the phone. It’s not so easy.
“Oh. Sure. Bye,” Jon says, sounding pleased in spite of himself.
“Bye.”
Stephen hangs up and just stares at the wall for a second, then strides out into the garden to find his mother, who is cutting roses, their scent sweet and heavy in the late afternoon sun.
“Mom, I need to borrow the other car, right now,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound too mad.
“How long for?” she asks evenly, smiling at his surprise, “I can tell it’s not for mischief, if it was you’d have worked out a clever spiel, not just be standing there all lost looking.”
“A few days? I need it to drive to Northwestern,” he says and sees something like understanding cross Mom’s face.
“Do you need flowers?” she says, holding out a red rose.
“Um, no. I haven’t been breaking any hearts, don’t worry. There’s some… somewhere I have to be.” He’s not ready to explain this to himself yet, let alone his mom.
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” she says slowly and Stephen loves her a little more for that.
He picks up a rose from the bunch on the ground and presents it to her with a flourish and a kiss, saying “Thanks, Mom,” voice scratched by a thousand unsaid things.
The scent of roses seems to cling to him as he walks back to the house, throws a few things into a bag and raids the kitchen for snacks, focussing on small, easy tasks.
The car is old and tiny and has had to survive abuse from many a Colbert using it as a run-around. It smells of cigarettes and the seats are no longer any recognisable colour; ick with patches of light ew, possibly. But the radio works, just about, and Stephen whiles away 4 hours or so singing along very loudly to power rock songs and eating an obscene amount of processed sugar, until the coffee flavoured Revels wake his craving up and he has to stop. He buys gas and two huge mugs of sweet, strong, perfect coffee, and halfway through the second all the caffeine and the sugar conspires to making him feel all jittery. He decides he needs moral support and calls Amy from the pay phone in the corner, sighing with relief when she says “Hello?”
“I’m on the road, driving to Northwestern.”
“Hello to you too, Stephen,” Amy laughs, “should I ask why?”
“I don’t know. I’m in a roadside diner on the middle of nowhere, or possibly Tennessee, and I’ve just spent a small fortune on gas and Reese’s Pieces and I don’t know how or why.”
“For Jon, then,” Amy says, proving once again that Stephen should stop making friends with annoyingly smart and blunt people, “Don’t be idiotic, Stephen, just admit it and we can move on with the conversation.”
“I’m not being idiotic, I’m being circumspect. Did you not hear the whole ‘small town in Mid-America’ part?”
“I suppose you getting lynched would be a little counter-productive, “Amy says, with a giggle Stephen doesn’t think he’s meant to hear.
“It’s the soccer play offs tomorrow.” He can admit that much.
“I see. Wait, you’re going to drive to Chicago by tomorrow? Isn’t that, like, impossible?”
“It’s a thousand miles give or take. I should be able to be there in about 14 hours, if I don’t really stop for too long.”
“Fuck…” Amy murmurs.
“Yeah,” Stephen says, caught between embarrassment and pride.
“The things we do for love,” Amy laughs and then the phone starts to beep angrily at them.
“Bye, darling, good luck!” she says, and then hangs up.
Stephen thinks that this is turning into a pattern, and also that this is a surreal and terrible time to have an epiphany, under strip lighting in a dusty diner, cradling a half a cup of luke-warm coffee. It’s happened though. There’s no denying it, no other reason to be here, and the voice at the back of his mind is triumphant as he runs the words over in his head –I’m doing this for love.
He drinks the rest of the coffee, which helps a little, then drifts back to the car and ponders the steering wheel for a few long minutes. This, he should definitely mention to Jon.
Then he shakes his head at himself and gets back on the road.
The light fades and the songs on the radio slow in tempo, the highway is nearly deserted, the towns he passes becoming islands of light in an increasing sea of darkness. Stephen recites lines to himself to keep awake. Eventually, though, the road starts to waver in front of his eyes and the voices on the radio retreat down a tunnel, so he pulls into a truck stop.
The whole place looks washed out under the harsh, bright lights. There is one waitress, sallow and bored, and a trucker staring despondently into his drink and it’s all a bit ‘Nighthawks’esque for Stephen’s liking. The coffee is weak and unsatisfactory, not able to shift the fog of exhaustion that seems to have enveloped his brain, and the only thought that is getting through is “What the hell am I doing?”
He could give up right now. Give up and sleep and go home. No one at Northwestern knows he is coming, his mum wouldn’t question his return, his brothers wouldn’t even know he’d left. He could just go home and not have to deal with what this means.
Amy might kill him, though.
Stephen thinks of her and Paul smiling at each other across his kitchen table, which stirs a memory of his parents doing the exact same thing, as if the simple act of breakfast was made better by being together. He thinks of his mother standing holding the rose, absent and wistful, of her hugging him as she left him standing with a pile of boxes in his dorm room and whispering fiercely in his ear “Seize the day, remember.” Jon had offered her a tissue, made a joke, made her laugh. She’d liked Jon. Stephen thinks about the warmth of Jon’s breath on the back of his neck, the first thing he feels as he wakes up.
It’s only eight more hours.
He asks the waitress to wake him up in a couple of hours, and then curls up on the back seat of the car. It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes later when there is someone tapping on the window. Stephen is charming and effusive in his thanks and the waitress breaks into a genuine smile rather than the ghost of a thing she was wearing before.
His coffee comes with a grin and a pile of pancakes “on the house.”
“You are a wonderful, wonderful woman,” Stephen declares, and means every word of it.
Although he feels considerably more human after sleeping, Stephen is still wobbly and has to focus hard on driving. He misses the sunrise completely, which is annoying because he’d been looking forward to that, by the time he notices, it’s daylight and fields glowing golden in the morning sun surround him. It’s the perfect moment to turn the radio off and launch into “Oh What A Beautiful Morning!”, rich voice filling the tiny car. He works through all the hymns he knows with ‘morning’ in them, the words comforting as always. In between songs Stephen can hear that the car has developed a slightly concerning new array of noises, but he just sings louder and hopes for the best.
After stopping (for more coffee, more gas and more chocolate than is probably wise) the day has got so warm that Stephen winds the windows down, breathing in the smell of the North. Jon had laughed at him when he had said that the air smelt different on this side of the country and it had turned into an argument, serious and silly all at once and Stephen had realised how much fun it could be to try and outwit Jon. Northwestern suddenly seems very far away. He bites his lip and re-focuses on the road, determined not to stop until the state border.
Stephen has never been so glad to see the words “Welcome to Illinois” in all his life. He’s feeling light headed from lack of sleep, running on sugar and possibility.
The Chicago skyline materialises over the horizon and a thousand butterflies metamorphose in Stephen’s stomach. He knows he should stop and try and kill some of them off by eating, but he can’t stop now, kickoff is only an hour away. Single- mindedness has kept him going this long, after all.
He realises that he doesn’t really have a plan. But then, when does he ever have a plan? All he needs to do is get there and see Jon, and he can work something out from there.
It must be fate, Stephen thinks, as Springsteen comes on the radio and swings into a saxophone solo just as he swings the car onto the road to campus. He can’t stop smiling and he’s sure the guard at the gate thinks he’s on something, but he lets Stephen through anyway and he navigates his way to the playing fields, more by luck than by judgement.
After he parks the car he takes a proper look at himself in the mirror. He looks terrible, almost grey, and glassy-eyed, though by some minor miracle his hair has remained pristine.
“Ours is not to reason why,” he tells himself and stumbles out of the car and towards the pitch on legs that are still half asleep.
Anderson comes round the corner and lets out a yelp of surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, then peers closer, “And why do you look like the walking dead?”
“Long story,” Stephen says, with a slight shrug, “are you here to cheer Jon?”
“But of course,” Andy smiles, “Rahm and Barack are here too, I was about to go meet them. Keith is covering the game for his paper,” he adds, mouth twisting as if the words have a bitter aftertaste.
Stephen thinks he really must look particularly awful because Andy, usually too awkward for physical contact, slings an arm around his shoulder and walks him to where Rahm and Barack are sitting. Rahm takes one look at him and says “So, you found South Carolina so lacking in company, despite being one of fuck knows how many little Colberts, that you decided to what, walk all the way back? You look like shit.”
“It’s lovely to see you too,” Stephen says, trying to look dignified but ruining it by having to lean on Andy a little. “And no, I drove here, but thank you for your concern.”
“You drove all the way here? By yourself?” Barack asks, neatly elbowing Rahm in the ribs when he opens his mouth to add something, no doubt charming.
“Yes. Yes I did. I am a maverick like that,” Stephen says, and winks at Barack.
And then he sees Jon, shorts and numbered shirt and rueful smile. Andy must have spotted him as well because he yells “Hey, Jon, over here!” and Jon comes jogging over, grinning at Andy and then does an honest-to-god double take at Stephen.
“What?” he says, looking utterly stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“I cannot resist the lure of men in horribly coloured shorts,” Stephen says, and he knows that he’s not even sounding that convincingly casual, but see if he cares. “Besides, I heard this was an important game.”
“It’s only a match” Jon says, “You didn’t have to – you must have travelled all night.”
There’s an unspoken question in the lilt of his voice and the curve of his mouth “you did this for me?” because it seems Jon still doesn’t really quite understand.
“I did.” Stephen says, watching Jon trying to hide the grin, trying to hide the happiness, but it’s no use at all, it’s like trying to hide the sun.
“You look terrible,” Jon says, eventually, and of course he wasn’t going to say anything ridiculous and sentimental, not Jon, not here on the soccer pitch full of men being manly.
“So I’m told,” Stephen replies, very calm now, somehow. Keith starts to hum something under his breath and there is a ripple effect as his friends work out what it is, Andy spluttering and Rahm grinning like a devil and Barack having to sit down because he’s laughing too much. Stephen just turns to Jon and asks, “Well, is that alright?”
Jon raises his eyebrows and walks away.
“You are a bastard of the highest order, Keith,”
“Oh come on, like you weren’t thinking it? He drove all night…”
“Keith, be quiet and watch the game, okay?”
The game seems to go on forever and even the frankly excellent sight of Jon tearing down the pitch, muscles at full stretch, can’t take Stephen’s mind off the massively uncomfortable chair and the tiredness that seems to have set in at bone level. It end a draw, which confuses him quite a lot.
“I thought this was the play-off? For the varsity championships?” he asks Keith, who is taking down names and scribbling vicious notes beside them.
“Sure. The first leg of them. We’ll play them at home in a couple of weeks, so whoever wins there gets to go through.”
“So, not a completely vital match, then?”
“Um, no,” Jon says sheepishly as he comes up behind them, “I did say…”
Keith smiles at them both, his big, honest smile and says “Take him home, Leibowitz. I’m taking the others for a drink, but the pair of you look in need of a sit down.”
“I retract my earlier support of the statement about your bastardry,” Stephen tells him solemnly, and Keith grins and walks back towards the rest of their friends.
“I would not think you any less of a man should you need to lean on me, just a little bit,” Jon says, standing close to Stephen’s side.
“Oh thank crap for that,” Stephen says with relief, letting Jon guide him back towards their dorms.
“Thank you, for coming,” Jon says, and his smile is a perfect, shy thing, “like I said, it wasn’t that important, I was being melodramatic.”
“Trust me, I know melodramatic, I am melodramatic. That was not it. But you’re welcome.” You’re worth it, he thinks, but that’s possibly a little much to share.
They’re nearly back now, and Stephen leans on a wall for a second, to give Jon a break from supporting his idiotic wobbly body. Jon stands next to him and then rests his head on Stephen’s shoulder, hair brushing his neck and chin and making Stephen shiver, despite the warm sunshine.
“This is not very subtle,” Stephen warns, not wanting to move away but not wanting to let Jon forget himself, here on a path where anyone could come round the corner.
“I’ll have you know I’m very subtle. I am a master of subtlety and tact,” Jon tells him, even as he turns his head to let his breath ghost over bare skin just above Stephen’s collar.
“This from the man who send me a “sorry we killed Jesus” card for Easter,” Stephen replies, feeling very pleased with himself at managing to get out a witty comeback when half his brain is wanting a nap and the other half is just wanting.
“It is my duty as your token Jewish friend,” Jon says, “And will you hurry up please?”
“What if I like it here?” Stephen says, shutting his eyes.
“Then you don’t get to take advantage of my post match adrenaline high,” Jon says, and Stephen’s eyes snap open just in time to catch the end of a fantastic smile, a world of wicked promise.
He should really, really mention it. Jon looks at him, noticing the sudden stillness and says, “Stephen? Are you okay?”
And Stephen suddenly knows exactly how to tell him.
It had been early on in their friendship, when Jon had just been his sort of cute room-mate, and they had been trying to study poetry together and failing miserably.
He’d said, “How are you even supposed to define love? How would you even start?” and Jon had looked at him absently and said, “I think it’s scary. Because it’s admitting part of your happiness is dependant on someone else.” And then he had gone back to glaring at his book without any idea of how brilliant he’d just been. Or wouldn’t have had any idea if Stephen hadn’t told him, and then everyone else, repeatedly. It had been the day Stephen discovered he had a slight blush kink.
“I’m fine. Just a little scared. You see, now I have to admit that part of my happiness depends on you,” he says to Jon, who stares back at him for so long it starts to become unnerving.
“Oh good,” Jon says, finally, and then kisses Stephen, pressing him into sun-warmed brick. He tastes of salt-sweat and the tang of half-time oranges and Stephen leans back into the kiss, trying to pull Jon closer somehow, feeling Jon’s hand in the small of his back, the scrape of teeth over his bottom lip.
“You did miss me,” he says, as he catches his breath, and it’s not so scary after all, here in Afterwards.
The song Keith is humming is this 'I Drove All Night" by Roy Orbison ( the link goes to the cheese-tastic video, btw), which has been stuck in head ever since I nearly wrote the line "you drove all night?" and then died laughing...
And Nighthawks is a picture by Edward Hopper...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I AM STILL STUCK ON THE POLAR BEAR NINJAS
Date: 2009-06-15 07:00 pm (UTC)SPOILER ALERT: I LOVED IT AND IT WAS FANTASTIC. OH MY GOD. The way you wove in the ensemble scenes in between the overarching-ness of Stephen and Jon's not quite called by the name relationship! IT BEARS REPEATING, you have such a delicate hand in writing interactions, be it between the terrible trio of AmyStephenPaul (Paul as an inverted storm, I LOVE IT), Stephen and his mother (ROSESSSSSSS ACH) and of course, the entire uni crew. READING THIS FELT LIKE WATCHING A MOVIE, I loved how the momentum seemed to build, Stephen's decision to go on the drive up, the pit-stops with the little touches of humanity (the waitress! Awww) AND THEN THE CLIMAX and Jon's reaction and the fact that it actually wasn't the finale match at all, but STEPHEN WON THE GOAL OF JON'S HEART ANYWAYS (AND MINE FOREVERRRRRRRRRR)-- that was such a delightful touch of 'lol whoops' :D
BITS I ALSO LIKED, FLUNG OUT AGAIN IN WORD BITS:
-"SORRY WE KILLED JESUS" bwaaaaaaaha does such a card actually exist??
-THE BANANA REFERENCE FFFFFFFFFF GLORIOUS
-HALF-TIME ORANGE TASTE, WHILE WE ARE ON THE SUBJECT OF FRUIT. I WAS EATING DINNER WHILST READING SO I TOTALLY FIXATED ON THE FOOD. NOT THAT I DON'T NORMALLY DO THIS, nooo.
-ANDY ANDY ANDY <33 and Jon and Stephen and their Daddy Issues!
-RAHM BEING ~CHARMING~ and getting elbowed by Barack, ALSO WHO PLAYED FOOTBALL INDOORS hmm hmm hmm I think I knew which WH pics you were looking at for inspiration, eh? ;DD
SO YEAH I BET JENN WILL JUST ABOUT FLIP HER SHIT FOR THIS BECAUSE IT IS TRULY A PIECE OF BEAUTIFUL WRITING. HAAAAAAAAAAAAACH ♥
AREN'T WE ALL?!
Date: 2009-06-15 07:28 pm (UTC)Originally that wasn't how it was going to end, but I hate the whole "and then they won the match" cliché and also, then I could make Jon embarrassed *is totally not projecting her blush!kink onto her character nonono*. Plus, that is usually how playoffs work!
you have such a delicate hand in writing interactions *snuggles this comment*
-"SORRY WE KILLED JESUS" bwaaaaaaaha does such a card actually exist?? IT SHOULD. My kind of jewish bf sent me that as a text on Easter Sunday.
Oh you would pick up on the food bits! I am sorry that there aren't more for you. The bit about the oranges was what started this whole thing off. 6000 words later...
I <3 those pictures of him playing with the ball so much, I couldn't resist! So cute.
Rahm shows his love through snarky comments.
&hearts
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Date: 2009-06-15 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 08:06 pm (UTC)This is SO SWEET. So sweet I'm kind of bewildered (not to mention sniffling) and I really have no idea how to communicate my appreciation. You're brilliant at characterization. And feelings.
You do realize that the silent polar bear ninjas are now going to populate the imaginations of your whole flist, do you?
I love drawing polar bears! NINJA polar bears!Anyway, thank you for not locking it. My crappy day got better:)
/incoherent post is incoherent (and also eaten by livejournal, twice:|)
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Date: 2009-06-15 09:03 pm (UTC)You're brilliant at characterization. And feelings.
Thank you so much, what a lovely thing to say! I am so pleased it all worked for you.
I am sorry you had a crappy day.
If you drew ninja polar bears I would love you forever. Not that I wouldn't anyway, but...
Thank you, I am delighted by this comment, incoherent or not!
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Date: 2009-06-15 09:16 pm (UTC)It worked like a charm, even despite the fact that I am not that familiar with the universe. They are all so multidimensional, even the ones we see for a line or two...
*hugs*
I think I would! *is needy* ;) But not now! I have a book to typeset tonight, and a horribly complicated drawing I keep redoing few times a day in the hopes that I finally see what am I doing wrong, and a dozen pictures for my sister's girl scouts (is it girls scouts in English? sounds wrong) camp (leaving this Saturday)... Ninja bears have to wait patiently for their time. :(
Is it true, by the way? Bizarre. :)
&hearts
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Date: 2009-06-15 09:36 pm (UTC)Thank you, again! Multidimensional is my new favourite word.
Do not worry, I will still love you should you not draw the bears! (we have girl guides, though you can have Scouts that are girls.) I can wait...
It is true, apparently! Very odd.
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Date: 2009-06-15 08:25 pm (UTC)1. IS THAT POLAR BEAR THING TRUE?? I MEAN, I KNOW YOU WROTE THIS BUT THAT IS SO SOMETHING ANDERSON WOULD BE ALL OBSESSIVE ABOUT. SHIT. ANDERSON AND SOME POLAR BEARS. WIN.
2. Rahm takes one look at him and says “So, you found South Carolina so lacking in company, despite being one of fuck knows how many little Colberts, that you decided to what, walk all the way back? You look like shit.”
THIS IS SO EFFING PERFECT.
THE WHOLE ENTIRE THING IS. I LOVE IT.
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Date: 2009-06-15 09:07 pm (UTC)2. RAHM EMANUEL IS NOT FOOLED BY YOUR CLAIMS OF WANTING COMPANY.
ALSO HE EXPRESSES HIS LOVE THROUGH INSULTS.
THANK YOU! I AM VERY PLEASED!
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Date: 2009-06-15 11:17 pm (UTC)And yeah, I know that I am still not really in on the "North by Northwestern" thing, but anything by you is always worth reading, so I ignored your little prelude and dropped in anyway. And then nearly died from romance and hilarity and nonstop awesomeness. THANKS A LOT.
I would be more specific and list everything fantastic, but it seems many other people have already done that, so I hope you'll forgive me if I just go "ditto" in regards to everyone else's posts instead.
My first day back in the U.S. just got about ten times more amazing.
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Date: 2009-06-15 11:37 pm (UTC)I am most, most charmed that you liked it! Saying ditto is fine, though, of course, I am always delighted to hear what you liked. Thank you so much for reading and commenting and being so very lovely *blushes*
Home! And now, you must buy all the books I have been forcing on you XD
xx
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Date: 2009-06-15 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 12:07 am (UTC)WG is best bought from the publishers, because they don't charge a fortune for shipping. They are called Blind Eye Books.
Um, the recs are mostly in my Mission101 posts, or ones tagged booksbooksbooks.
The Thief by Meghan Whalen Turner is very, very good and a small cheap paperback. And anything by Lois MacMaster Bujold is usually very cheap on Amazon, I got my copy of The Waarrior's Apprentice for like £3...
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Date: 2009-06-15 11:55 pm (UTC)curls wild and dark against the pillows and body warm against Stephen’s, and what’s so great about that? GOD, STEPHEN, THAT'S ONLY LIKE HOW I WANT TO SPEND MY LIFE.
Jon fiddles with everything, shuffles papers, spins pens, turning and sliding them through his fingers until Stephen is forced to kiss him, swallowing Jon’s huff of surprise and feeling the start of a smile slide against his lips as he links their fingers. Aghgghghghghhhhh <3
“Well of course I miss you. You’re rather a presence, always on the go, you’re like a puppy on speed, and you’re always talking and stealing my stuff and you’re too damn tall not to miss.” Only Jon could make telling someone they were missed into an opportunity for insults. UM, YES. THIS.
shadows in eyes that he was too fond of. GOD, MY HEART.
“Thanks, Mom,” voice scratched by a thousand unsaid things.
Andy, usually too awkward for physical contact It's so true it hurts.
watching Jon trying to hide the grin, trying to hide the happiness, but it’s no use at all, it’s like trying to hide the sun.
“This from the man who send me a “sorry we killed Jesus” card for Easter,” OF COURSE HE DID.
“I’m fine. Just a little scared. You see, now I have to admit that part of my happiness depends on you,” ....This is me actually crying a little right now.
GOD, WHY ARE YOU SO PERFECT <3
Your icon is LOVE <3
Date: 2009-06-16 12:20 am (UTC)Thank you so much! I have no idea how, but I am beyond happy that you liked it! And I am sorry for making you cry. Though, you know, pleased in an writerly way. Sorry!
I AM SO IN LOVE WITH YOU PICKING BITS TO QUOTE! *beams at you*
I get all sighy thinking of Jon asleep and bed-head-y...
You and Colline had exactly the same reaction to that kiss. Clearly it brings out the agh! in a person!
My
obsessive youtubeingresearch has led to believe that about our Andy, it's sad but true...THANK YOU! *squishes you and adds more things to your post*
no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 11:28 pm (UTC)HOW DID YOU KNOW. HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS SO GODDAMN FUCKING PERFECT, I ASK YOU.
ANDYPANTS' AWKWARDNESS. RAHM'S KILLER SHARK SMILE. KEITH'S KNOWLEDGE OF OBSCURE ROY ORBISON TUNES. JON IN SOCCER SHORTS
UNF UNF UNF.THERE WILL PROBABLY BE A MORE COHERENT COMMENT POSTING TO BE MADE IN THE NEAR FUTURE, BUT FOR NOW, KNOW THIS - YOU MADE ME CRY. LIKE A LOT. I THINK THIS IS WONDERFUL AND BRILLIANT AND I WANT TO PRINT IT OUT AND FRAME IT ON MY WALL OKAY. I MISS YOU GUYS SO FUCKING MUCH AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE TIME TO COMMENT ON THINGS LIKE I SHOULD (LIKE THE BILLIONS OF COMMENTS YOU GUYS LEAVE ME EVERY DAY AND IN THE SPAM THREAD) AND THEN YOU GO AND DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND AND AND JUST ;________________________;
ILU SCUMBAG. HOWEVER, I DON'T THINK 'ILU' IS ENOUGH. I CAN'T HANDLE THE AMOUNT OF AWESOME YOU ARE. JUST. A;DLFKJADL;FKJ. ♥♥♥♥♥
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Date: 2009-06-17 12:12 am (UTC)JENN I AM SO DELIGHTED THAT YOU LIKE IT! IT IS YOURS AND YOU MAY PUT IT ON YOUR WALL IF YOU SO DESIRE! IF IT IS OK WITH YOU, I MIGHT POST IT PLACES(FNFF and RBR, perhaps)?
I DEFY ANYONE TO NOT GO "UNF" AT THE THOUGHT OF JON IN THOSE SHORTS. SERIOUSLY.
I'M SORRY FOR THE CRYING, AND OH! WHAT LOVELY THINGS YOU SAID. I AM TOUCHED BY EVERY WORD. YOU MAY COMMENT AS INCOHERENTLY OR COHERENTLY AS YOU LIKE, I DO NOT CARE!
YOU STAY CLASSY. ILU!
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Date: 2009-06-20 12:57 am (UTC)Admittedly, I mean, I don't even know what to say - I love North By Northwestern in the first place, but your Stephen and Jon for it just about kill me dead. I swear - my heart kept clenching up all the way through this in a totally unhealthy way.
Stephen and Stephen's Mom and the bit with waitress and driving all night and Jon, oh, Jon and Amy&Paul and Andy with his facts and Keith with his humming. Yes. Me = killed by the awesome.
♥♥♥♥
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Date: 2009-06-21 03:12 pm (UTC)I am extremely sorry for the killing! *revives frantically*
I am so pleased that you like it. Jon, oh, Jon is pretty much the reaction I have when he does anything at all...
Stephen's mom always struck me as probably awesome. I want to put her in everything now!
(the waitress totally knew Stephen was driving to see his other half)
Thank you so much! *beams at you*