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kindkitAh, today is the first of two glorious days off in a row! (My days off are frequently not consecutive.)
Besides sleeping, I've also written about 1000 words in a fandom that has, at most, two people in it. And I'm contemplating a fill at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tintin_kinkmeme, where to my surprise there are several good stories and a number of prompts that make me want to write instead of tear my hair out.
Also, I have decided that today is Dead WIP Amnesty Day for me. So I'm going to post some fragments that are unfinished and will never be finished, but are not so terrible or so fragmentary that I want to consign them to hard-drive oblivion. These are first drafts, so read at your own risks of typos and other infelicities.
1. Unfinished Sanctuary story (Henry/Big Guy, teen, 5100 words, nothing sexually explicit). I started this during the mid-S3 hiatus, then it got jossed, then S4 of Sanctuary alienated me so much that I stopped watching and may not resume. Which is a shame, because I like how this one was going.
Dr. Helen gives him food three times every day, as much as he wants to eat.
She gives him clothes that are warmer than his old ones, even if they scratch. She gives him a bed to sleep in. She gives him toys--a cube of colored squares that move, which he likes, and a plush dog, which he pretends to like. At least it's better than real dogs--it doesn't bark at him or show its teeth.
She gives him a name, Henry Foss. The first part is hard to say, but he practices until he gets it right. He had a different name once, he thinks, but he doesn't remember it.
She gives him so much that he doesn't mind when she takes him far away to a city called London. In London, Dr. Helen and her friend Dr. James give him medicines that make him sleepy, and they attach wires to his forehead and his chest. Sometimes they stick needles into his arms and take his blood, but it doesn't hurt much. He doesn't mind the blood as much as the questions. Stupid questions. He's never seen anyone turn into an animal!
After twenty-one days--Henry likes to count, and he doesn’t know why Dr. Helen is so surprised--he says goodbye to Dr. James, and he goes with Dr. Helen into a big machine called an aeroplane. They're inside the aeroplane for almost ten hours. It's boring, but he plays with his cube while Dr. Helen writes things down in her notebook. That's her favorite game. Later he gets to see the inside of the cockpit and a man explains a lot about how aeroplanes work. He even gets to pull on a lever that makes the aeroplane fly higher.
Then he falls asleep for a while, and when he wakes up he's in a motorcar and Dr. Helen is telling him to put on his coat. When they get out of the motorcar, they're at the biggest house Henry has ever seen. A tall man lets them in the door. He's all covered with hair and he's got a funny face.
"Welcome to the Sanctuary, Henry," says Dr. Helen. "This is your new home."
That sounds all right. The house is warm inside, and there's probably lots of food, and Dr. Helen and the tall man can keep him safe from dogs and any other bad things.
"Would you like that?" Dr. Helen asks while he's thinking about it.
"Yes," Henry says. "Are you my new mummy, Dr. Helen?"
Dr. Helen looks sad and she turns her face away for a few seconds. "No, Henry. I'm afraid your mummy is gone. But I'll always be your friend."
He thinks he would have liked a new mummy. He can't remember much about his first mummy, but he likes how he feels when he thinks about her. Why is she gone?
He's crying, which is bad, it's too much noise. Dr. Helen pats his shoulder, but the tall man squats down and and puts his big hands softly on Henry's arms. It feels so nice that Henry runs up against him with a thump and holds on tight. The tall man hugs him in his long hairy arms. He's warm and it's much better than the stupid pretend dog. "I like how you smell," Henry says.
"Henry!" He knows from Dr. Helen's voice that he's said a bad thing. But the tall man doesn't push him away.
"It's all right," the tall man says. "I like how you smell, too, Henry." Then he and Dr. Helen start talking about smells, only they're using doctor words and Henry can't understand most of it.
"What's your name?" Henry asks the tall man. "Are you a doctor too?"
Instead of keeping on talking, the way Dr. Helen and Dr. James sometimes did when he asked questions, the tall man stops and answers him. "No, I'm not a doctor. And I can't tell you my name."
"Why not? Didn't Dr. Helen give you one?"
The tall man makes a funny sound. Henry's scared for a second, but the tall man ruffles his hair and Henry decides he must be laughing. "My name is a secret," he says. "But I have a friend who calls me the Big Guy."
"Really?" Dr. Helen says, and the Big Guy laughs again.
"He got tired of saying 'hey, you.'" He stands up and holds out a hand. Henry takes it. "Come on, Henry. I'll show you your room."
***
Erica doesn't want to be here in the clinic. She doesn't want to be here in Oldham, come to that. Yesterday she bought a copy of Time Out and spent more than an hour reading it, circling listings for everything in London--exhibits, plays, concerts, tours, lectures, restaurants--that sounded interesting. Almost all of it sounded interesting. She bought an A-Z, too, and in a spare moment this morning she looked up the train timetable online. She could be there already.
But she's the only one who knows the passwords for the clinic's recent files and the locations of the old, paper ones. She might have refused Declan McRae--although he looks the sort who'd lecture about responsibility, like poor auntie in a different key--but Henry assumed she'd help, and she didn't want to disappoint him. If he'd asked, she could have explained that her home's become a nightmare, a trap that smells to her imagination of old blood and tears. For him, it's a mystery and a revelation. He didn't ask.
So here she is, in a badly lighted cellar full of papers that are slowly succumbing to damp. Henry keeps sneezing and rubbing at his eyes, and he said something about dust being bad for his computers, but he stays here at the next desk. It almost makes up for being here at all.
In the sleepy midafternoon, when Erica's beginning to wonder if she can convince Henry to stop work at a reasonable hour so they can have a whole evening out together, she finds it. Or rather, she almost doesn't find it, doesn't notice it. It's just more genealogical charts, half-finished with a lot of question marks, but stapled to them is a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline Moorside Family Vanishes. It's from July 18, 1980. Police, it says, are "seriously concerned" about the disappearance of Brian Calvert, his wife Sheila, and their four-year-old son Steven. In the margins are notes in her aunt's clear handwriting: "prob. lycan, cf. GCM114 and GC," and "collectors? Cf. TR1978-2LC." The genealogical charts show Sheila's descent from a known lycan family and Brian's from a probable one. TR, Erica knows, is the Threat Report code; lycans have been endangered by outsiders as well as by--her aunt thought--their own natures. Brian and Sheila may well have ended up in a rich man's private menagerie. And the boy, well . . .
"Henry," she says. "You may want to see this."
He reads it--Erica can't help watching him, watching even his eyes as they track the words--and then reads it again. In a small voice, like the terrified little boy whom Erica sees in her mind, he says, "Oh, God."
She puts an arm around him, but he doesn't seem to notice.
"It was August," Henry says. "When the doc found me. August 11, 1980. She thought I was four or five. We . . . we always celebrated my birthday on August 11."
"You could find out your real birthday." Erica feels a fool for saying that, but somehow it brings Henry back to her. He shudders and hugs her tightly.
"I should remember them. But I . . . I think I can remember being hungry and scared. And really cold. But it's not . . . I could just be remembering a nightmare, I don't know."
"It's awful." Erica rubs his back. "All of it. I'm so sorry, Henry. But . . . at least now you can know something. You can know who you really are."
***
A sigh, a scrape of chair legs under a fidgeting body, a sound of turning pages as Henry counts how many are left, another sigh. A distracted part of Helen's mind starts a countdown, and she's only reached twenty-two when Henry says, "This is boring."
"It's not boring," Helen answers without looking up from the manual that purports to explain how transferring the Sanctuary accounts to the computer will make them much easier to manage. "It's Shakespeare."
"It's boring. Everybody talks funny. And if they're going to kill Caesar they should hurry up and do it."
"Be grateful I'm not making you read Caesar's own writing in the original Latin. I had to, when - "
"When I was your age," Henry finishes, mimicking her accent--his own is almost pure American now. "You're boring too."
Helen has made a good deal of accommodation for Henry's needs. She's scaled back her fieldwork and given over several hours a day of her own time, not to mention several of her assistant's, to teaching. She's tried to be modern, as well, giving the boy liberties that would have been unimaginable in her own childhood. But there are things she's not prepared to tolerate. "Manners, young man," she says. "I believe you owe me an apology."
Henry folds his arms over his chest, a little parody of adult decisiveness, and says, "No."
"Then you shall go to your room and stay there until suppertime. With your Shakespeare," she adds, quelling the smile Henry was trying to hide. "I'll expect a one-page report on acts four and five and a correct recitation of Mark Antony's funeral speech."
"You said I could help the Big Guy get the new phone lines set up. You promised!"
"That was before you decided to be rude."
"You promised! Liar!" Henry jumps up from his chair, knocking it over, and sweeps his books off the table. "You never let me do anything!"
"Henry!"
"I hate you!" The boy kicks a table leg, hard. If it hurts his foot--and it must, surely?-- he doesn't seem to notice. He kicks it again, and shoves at the table, which luckily is too heavy for him to overturn. "I hate your stupid books and I hate this place and I hate you!"
Is there a hint of growl in his voice? It's impossible to be sure. That's the trouble. It's impossible to know, and if they find out by chance, it may be too late. "Henry, go to your room." Helen fights to keep her own voice calm and authoritative, as she would with any aggressive creature. "Right now."
There's a knife-edge moment when she thinks he might not obey. But after all, he's still only a child, raised with affection and discipline. Henry lowers his eyes and goes. He even takes the book.
At dinner, his recitation is letter-perfect and his report is . . . well, he tried. "I'm sorry, Dr. Helen," he says.
"Apology accepted." Helen pats his shoulder, then gives in to an impulse and ruffles his hair. Children are supposed to be hugged and petted; all the modern psychology books agree on that. "But Henry, you must learn to control your temper. You know why."
Henry averts his face as he always does when his HAP status is mentioned. "I'm sorry."
"I know."
"May I be excused?"
He hasn't finished his sprouts, but this probably isn't the time to insist. "Yes. You may play on the Atari for an hour."
"Thanks."
"Henry," says her associate--she can't call him the Big Guy as Henry does--as the boy turns to leave. "Wait until I'm done in the kitchen. I'll play Pac-Man with you."
All Henry says is "okay," but his whole posture loosens with delight. Helen remembers something she tries to forget, because she's got no solution: Henry's not just a rare HAP and not just a sharp mind that needs training. He's a little boy who lives in a huge lonely house with people who aren't his parents and who never meets other children.
"That was kind of you," she says, when Henry has gone.
Her associate huffs impatiently. "No. Henry's a good player."
She looks at his face, which ought to be strange and has become so dearly familiar, and finally says out loud what she's been trying not to think. "I'm worried."
"Yes." He pours her a cup of tea, which she knows, as a doctor, she probably shouldn't be drinking.
"We can't know how he'll react." Helen catches herself laying a hand against her still-flat belly, and is embarrassed by her own melodrama. "Even fully human children can display aggression towards new siblings, and Henry - " Henry won't even be a blood relation.
Her associate says nothing, but Helen thinks he doesn't like where this is going.
"I think we have to start medicating him. The dose won't be high, and there's every reason to believe that it will keep his polymorphic abnormality in check."
The irritable huff she gets in response makes Helen brace herself for another quarrel about the meaning of normal, but the moment passes, and her associate says only, "How will Henry learn control if you don't give him the chance?"
"The chance to what? In any case, I'm not at all certain he wants to control his polymorphism. That would mean acknowledging that he's an abnormal. You've seen how he reacts whenever it's mentioned. Properly medicated, he may never have to face something he clearly finds painful."
"We've made him afraid of himself."
Helen sets aside her half-empty teacup. "That's a bit pat, isn't it? We've no way of knowing how damaged he already was when I found him. He was half-dead of cold and hunger, and terrified of people. Whatever brought him to that, it can't have been good."
Silence, again. Well. Helen would never have got anywhere in life if she hadn't learnt to carry on in the face of disapproval. "It's for everyone's safety," she says, hoping she sounds properly decisive. "When he's older, he can decide for himself if he wants to continue the medication. But there's too much at stake to risk it on the judgment and self-control of an eight-year-old."
Her associate sighs. "You're the boss," he says, and stands up to begin clearing away the dinner things.
***
Will comes back from the bar with two pints in his hands and a wistful grin on his face. "I think I'm going to miss this."
"Pretty sure you can buy beer even in old city."
"J.W. Lees Brewer's Dark?"
"Point. Maybe you could talk Declan into sending some at Christmas."
"Or Erica," Will says, with a different kind of grin.
As a question, it's pretty transparent. Henry wonders sometimes if Will is actually a really bad psychiatrist, or if he just pretends to be bad in order to get you off your guard. "I woudn't count on that. She can hardly wait to get out of Oldham. I guess she's been kind of cooped up here--she says she's never been farther away than Manchester."
"How long are you two going to be in London?"
"A week." Henry's sure he already told Will that, plus he e-mailed the doc to tell her what flight he'll be on once the week is up. "I'm gonna have history and culture coming out of my ears. But at least I talked her out of the Jack the Ripper walking tour."
"Henry, if you complain about having a week in London with a nice girl, I will have to pour this beer over your head. Which would be a sad waste of beer."
"Hey, no complaints here. Erica's great. I'm glad I met her."
Will takes a couple of slow, thoughtful drinks of beer. He looks . . . not exactly shifty, but like he's working up to something. Henry tries not to feel like he's waiting for Dr. Freud to pronounce. Will can't stop being a psychiatrist in his off-time, any more than Henry can stop being a computer geek. Or a HAP. "This is probably going to sound crazy - "
"Because our lives are completely normal in every way."
"Yeah, okay, but I don't mean that kind of stuff. It's, well. I kinda thought you and the Big Guy . . . "
"Oh, yeah. We are. I thought you knew." They don't exactly announce it, true, but they've never hidden it. Not even when it first started and the doc was less than thrilled. And Will was right there after the first time Henry transformed, when the Big Guy wrapped him up in a blanket and carried him to his room. Henry's mind wasn't exactly all there, but he remembers putting his arms around the Big Guy's neck and holding on tight, and how even though the fog of exhaustion and shame there was a little bit of happiness. He can half recall what the Big Guy said to him on the way, too, and some of it was kind of private even though Will was trailing along asking questions and worrying.
"I didn't. I mean, I wondered, but . . . wow." Will looks more embarrassed than Henry's seen him since a clip of his Kali dance turned up on YouTube. "That's - "
"A lot less weird than most of the other things in my life?" Or Will's life--he's not the newbie anymore, freaking out like it's his profession. The Sanctuary's grabbed him in its big, all-over, tentatcle-monster embrace.
Will laughs like he's had the same thought. "I was gonna say complicated, but, yeah. None of our love lives is straight out of Leave it to Beaver."
If they were a little more drunk Henry might ask whether he ever did the wild thing with [Sophie?] while she was invisible, and if they were a little more drunk than that, Will might even answer. If they were totally blasted, he might say a couple of the beaver jokes that have just occurred to him out loud.
While Henry's thinking about it, Will adds, "Does Erika know?" Because Will doesn't need even one drink to ask things.
Henry shakes his head. At first he didn't tell her because it wasn't anything she needed to know. Now . . . now maybe she should know, but the best time to tell her has already gone by, somehow. She'll think he lied, which isn't exactly the case, and he doesn't want to hurt her. "Nah. It's . . . I'll be going home pretty soon anyway."
Will's got his poker face on. It might not be a million-dollar-prize winning poker face, but it'd do pretty well at a friendly game. "Erika likes you a lot," he says.
I like her a lot, Henry thinks, but this has already turned into a conversation he doesn't especially want to have. "I told the Big Guy," he says instead. "I'm not, like, asking you to lie for me or not mention her or anything."
Maybe he overestimated Will's poker face. It's not hard to see the total war happening between curiosity and manners. Curiosity wins. Probably it always does; that's how Will ended up in the Sanctuary. "So he's okay with it?"
"Yeah. It's no big deal. Sometimes I meet a girl, or a guy." Not that Henry's Casanova, or even Jack Harkness, but, well, stuff happens. They hadn't been together long when Henry went away to college, and even computer geeks get lucky sometimes. Somehow the arrangement happened, too, without them ever exactly talking about it. Henry doesn't mess around as much these days, especially not with guys, because even though Biggie doesn't say anything, Henry has the feeling that it does bug him a little when Henry hooks up with another guy. Erika's the first time in a couple of years, actually. "We're good, me and him."
"What about the Big Guy? Does he . . . ?"
Henry catches himself laughing. The thought of the Big Guy with someone else is just . . . ridiculous. "No. I mean, he could, I guess, but he doesn't." That's not how it works. How it works is that Henry fools around a little, sometimes, and then he comes home and his life goes on like always. It's like going on vacation--fun, but not real.
"But if - "
"Hey!" Henry says. "It's my round. Same again, or did you want to try the Supernova this time?"
"Supernova, I guess. Might as well try everything," Will says, with a meaningful grin that Henry ignores. All this talking has spun his head round and made simple things seem complicated. But it'll all sort itself out next week when he goes home.
***
Helen Magnus is a lot prettier than he'd have imagined from her phone manner. The suit's a little mannish, or the jacket is anyway, but the tight straight skirt shows off long slim legs in black nylons, and she's not the type who thinks heels are an affront to women's lib.
He stands, and she doesn't take umbrage at that either. Maybe this'll go better than he imagined. "Mrs. Magnus, it's a pleasure to meet you. Bill Dupre." Half the parents he meets manage to forget his name between the phone call and the meeting, which explains a lot about why their kids screw up.
"Dr. Magnus, thank you, Mr. Dupre." She takes his offered hand and shakes it in a grip like a man's. Bill's hopes are dissipating. He doesn't offer her coffee, even though the percolator's just finished brewing a fresh pot.
"Okay, Dr. Magnus. Well, let's talk about the problems Henry's been having."
"Actually, Mr. Dupre, I'd prefer to talk about why you and this school are allowing Henry to be bullied."
"Now, let's not exag- "
"Faggot," Dr. Magnus says coolly.
"What?"
She produces a list from her purse. "'Faggot' is the name some boys called him. Not to mention 'fairy,' 'freak,' 'lameass,' 'nerd,' 'shit-for-brains,' 'weirdo,' and 'whiner.' And 'girl,' although I dislike treating that as a term of abuse." Neatly, she folds the list and puts it away. "Mr. Dupre, would you allow your colleagues to speak to you like that?"
"Dr. Magnus, you have to understand that boys - "
"I don't think you would allow it, Mr. Dupre. I think you'd report the matter to your superiors and you'd expect them to intervene. Which is exactly what Henry did. He's asked his teachers for help more than once, and nothing's been done."
"You can't expect us to police every word out of our students' mouths!"
"Yesterday Henry came home with a black eye. It wasn't the first time he'd been injured, merely the first time he couldn't hide it from me."
"Dr. Magnus, I'm sorry that this is happening." Her posture--back stiff, knees together, head up like she's queen of the universe or Nancy goddamn Reagan or somebody--doesn't change, but at least she shuts up. "Henry was homeschool until this year, is that right?"
"Yes. I'd have preferred to keep doing so, but I don't have the necessary expertise in engineering or computers. I thought this school would suit him, with its reputation in science."
Most parents are less subtle when they threaten to pull their brats out. Bill could almost admire the bitch. "Well, you certainly did a great job with his education. He's one of the most brilliant students we've ever had." It's true, but he'd say it anyway, because Helen Magnus needs to be buttered up until she shines. A lot of the students come from wealthy families, but Magnus could donate a whole new campus if she wanted to. "But he's . . . underdeveloped, socially." Bill can do subtle too.
Amazingly, Magnus nods. "He hasn't had a lot of exposure to other children. I don't doubt that he's a bit awkward."
Bill thinks of the kid, who can name all the presidents of the United States and all the monarchs of England (in order, with dates), who talks about Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA like he was there (and who insisted to his biology teacher that some lab assistant named Rosalind Franklin deserved most of the credit), who's somehow taught himself a bucketload of C++, but who's never watched a football game. Who ate nothing but chocolate chip cookies his first week at school because he'd never had them before. Who, when Miss Salazar quoted a Shakespeare sonnet to demonstrate metaphor, told her that she shouldn't say Shakespeare was comparing his girlfriend to a summer's day because everyone knew Shakespeare had written that poem about a man. Bill thinks about telling Helen Magnus this story, but if she doesn't know yet that the kid's a pansy, he doesn't want to break the news. "It'll all get better once he learns to fit in."
Oops. Something in Magnus's face gets . . . Bill thinks dangerous, but that doesn't even make any sense. "Mr. Dupre, I acknowledge that Henry needs to refine his social skills. But that doesn't excuse the bullying."
"Mrs. Magnus, you're - " He stops himself before he says overreacting. "Understandably concerned. But I think you're misunderstanding normal boyish behavior. Boys are a little rough, a little aggressive. It's what they're like. I can see how it might seem pretty bad to a woman."
"I take a somewhat less cheerful view of male aggression."
Great, now it's back to feminism. "Dr. Magnus, I notice that you're the only guardian listed in Henry's file."
She nods and crosses her ankles. Bill specifically chose the visitor chairs in his office to be a little uncomfortable, but she sits like somehow who enjoys a high back and a wooden seat.
"Well, the lack of a male role model may be holding Henry back a little. Nothing that he can't recover from, of course, but it's important for him to spend some time in a more balanced environment."
There's a twitch in her face that Bill could swear was a suppressed smile, although not a very nice one. "Yes, your teaching staff is almost 80% male, and 72% of your students are male. That's remarkably balanced."
Bill leans forward and manages a glance at the clock on the corner of his desk. He's got another meeting in ten minutes, thank God.
"In any case," Magnus continues, "Henry has a 'male role model,' if we must use such a phrase. Someone who teaches him that there's nothing manly about cruelty and violence."
Bill lets himself wonder who she means. A boyfriend she's managed to snag for a while before he figures out that she's a ball-buster? No, more likely some fag friend of hers. Women like her always have a few. "Dr. Magnus, I'm glad we've had this talk."
She laughs, and it actually makes her beautiful again for a minute. "Are you? Well, since you're clearly eager for it to be over, let's move swiftly to the conclusion. This bullying of Henry will stop, Mr. Dupre. It will stop immediately, or I'll ensure that every parent who has a child in this school, or is considering placing a child here, knows that the staff is unable to control students' behavior. Then, once the school's reputation has collapsed, I'll hire away the more qualified staff to tutor Henry privately."
She stands up--like a soldier, Bill thinks--and walks out, the small slit in the back of her skirt offering a glimpse of thigh that Bill's unable to enjoy. He picks up the phone to his secretary. "Emergency faculty meeting this afternoon," he says. "Mandatory attendance. Make sure they all know that."
It's not going to be a good day.
***
When Henry arrives, which will be soon, he's bound to be tired and hungry. Airplanes are an awful way to travel. The Big Guy knows the scientific reasons--low humidity, insufficient oxygen, overcrowding, air recirculation that maximizes exposure to bacteria and viruses. There are other reasons too, unprovable but that he knows in his bones to be true. Humans are earth creatures, like his own people, and it's not good to be so far away from their place.
If one of the Big Guy's people traveled, which wasn't very often, when she came home she'd dig earthworms and eat them, and then sleep at the center of the camp with all the people around her. That would hold her together, like mud cementing a twig wall, and call home any stray bits of her spirit that had gotten lost along the way. Those aren't human customs, of course, but the Big Guy has a meal planned for Henry, grounding sorts of food (no fish, no birds) with herbs from the Sanctuary's tiny garden. He's dusted Henry's bedroom and transplanted some lupines into a pot on the dresser; he'll put them back in the sun after a couple of days, once they've done their work.
The scientific part of his mind thinks that nutrition and rest certainly won't do Henry any harm.
Once everything's ready, the Big Guy works on the medical inventory. Impatience doesn't make the thing you want come any faster. His mother used to take him fishing at the wrong time of day, on purpose, to teach him that. He can't deny, though, that he's a little distracted, and he sets the checklist aside the second Henry's car comes through the gates, even though there are only four items left on it and he could easily have finished.
"Hey, man," Henry says when the Big Guy meets him in the entry hall. The Big Guy doesn't bother with words, just pulls him--bags and all--into a long hug. That's as close as he can get to the sniffing and grooming of a proper greeting without making even Henry a little uncomfortable. Henry smells of coffee (lots of it), beer, corn chips, breath mints, sweat, a new hair gel, the gasoline and plastic and stale air of travel, and, faintly, of a flowery perfume that must be Erika's. After a few seconds Henry pulls away and stands grinning awkwardly. "I totally reek, sorry."
Henry knows better than that. "Come and eat."
"Soon as I put my stuff away. And take a shower."
Maybe he doesn't want to bother the others. Will and Kate grew up in an entirely human world, and now that they live here, things are a little different than they used to be.
Twenty minutes later Henry turns up in the kitchen, wet-haired and wearing clean clothes. He's put on fresh deodorant, too. The Big Guy wishes he'd remembered to ask him not to. "Pork chops!" Henry says, sniffing the air. "You're awesome, you know that? They hardly fed us on the plane. Flying commercial probably breaks a bunch of Geneva conventions. And I'm gonna tell the doc so the next time she gets all regulationy about personal trips and the cost of jet fuel."
And that's all there is. Here's where it was going: there was going to be a growing estrangement between Henry and the Big Guy, fuelled partly by Henry's unadmitted desire for a "normal" life and the world outside the Sanctuary and partly by Henry's guilt at not having told Erica about his relationship with the Big Guy. (This was my explanation for the episode where the Big Guy gets shot and when he wakes up, Henry's not there, he's Skyping with Erica instead.) When Henry gets back after the Hollow Earth trip, the Big Guy is gone, leaving a note saying he doesn't want to get in the way of what Henry really. Whereupon Henry realizes what he really wants is the Big Guy and their life at the Sanctuary. So he tracks down the Big Guy to the Pacific Northwest forests, they have a big argument and are reconciled and live happily ever after. This would have been interspersed with flashback scenes about Henry's teenage years and discovery of his own sexuality, the start of his relationship with the Big Guy, and how the relationship survived Henry going away to college. The whole fic would have been about the desire to leave and conquer the world vs. the desire to be and stay at home, and the not entirely non-emotionally-incestuous ways the Big Guy represents home for Henry.
2. James May/Paul McDermott RPS (with implied unrequited James/Richard and previous Paul/Tim Ferguson), 1200 words, nothing sexually explicit. Top Gear is another fandom I think I'm done with, although I do have the urge sometimes to write about James May with non-TG men (e.g. Sim Oakley, Oz Clarke, or in this case Paul McDermott, formerly of DAAS fame).
"I don't know why you bother," Clarkson says as James pulls out the folder of material that Good News Week sent him.
"Because I thought it might be useful to know something about the show we're taping tomorrow."
"What's there to know? It's Australian. They'll all be seven feet tall, sunburnt, and named Bruce."
James looks over to where the local crew, very few of whom are named Bruce, are setting up the day's last shot: their triumphant arrival at Bondi Beach. They actually got to Sydney yesterday, but they missed the light. "Is there anything you know about Australia that didn't come from old Monty Python episodes?"
"I'll bet you a million pounds that I'm right."
James opens the folder and squints against the glare. "Luckily for you, I'm too kind to take you up on that. The host is, in fact, named Paul. Paul McDermott." The photo shows a sweet-faced man, like an aging cherub. He doesn't look sunburnt.
"McDermott?"
"Mmm."
"That's . . . I know that name from somewhere." Jeremy's face scrunches up. "Damn. It's gone. I'll probably remember in the middle of the night. Like a song title."
"Don't ring and tell me, will you?" Past the crew, Richard is walking along the edge of the surf. He's barefoot, with his trousers rolled up so they won't get wet and ruin continuity. Richard's not sunburnt either, but lightly tanned, with the ends of his hair going blond; in this perfect afternoon light he's all variegated gold. James looks away. "It's probably someone else, anyway."
"What's your bumf say, then?" Jeremy asks, with the insouciant curiosity of someone who's lost his own copy. "Is Bruce going to ask us about cars?"
"Shouldn't think so. Says here it's a news quiz."
"Australian news? All rugger and lager, I expect. And the price of sheep."
"Price of a sheep for what?" Richard asks, having come up while James wasn't looking at him.
Luckily, the cameras are ready, and Andy's calling them over before Jeremy can answer.
***
That night, insomniac at a quarter past one in the morning, James googles Paul McDermott. The man used to be a comedian, it seems. Quite a well-known one locally. There are links to YouTube videos.
A few minutes later, James watches in stifled laughter and not-quite-stifled horror as the same sweet-faced man, younger and slighter, short and unwashed-looking, sings a catchy song about . . . fucking dogs. There's a guitarist, and another man who sings along, excellent harmonies and even a little dance that just about mimes the act of buggering a dachshund. McDermott's voice is a lovely, flexible tenor; the song wouldn't be half so funny, or shocking, if he didn't sound like the devil's own choirboy.
James tries to imagine this man as the host of a televion programme, and fails. This although he's become used to the idea of Jeremy Clarkson in the same role.
What the hell has Wilman got them into this time?
***
The Good News Week green room is positively sybaritic compared to Top Gear's. It has deep carpet that no one's walked on in muddy wellies, unscuffed furniture with plump cushions, a selection of up-to-date magazines, three kinds of coffee (espresso, percolator, and cafetière) and an excellent selection of teas, plus a whole supermarket's worth of biscuits, including those malty Australian ones James finds it increasingly hard to resist. Working in commercial television, even antipodean commercial television, is clearly another world. If Fifth Gear ever comes knocking, James thinks he might be tempted for at least half an hour.
The green room also, inexplicably, has a piano, a handsome Yamaha grand. James glances over at Jeremy, who's pecking away at his laptop and occasionally muttering to himself. Of course Jeremy isn't nervous; he's a veteran of QI and a million other panel shows, while James has never learnt to be comfortable on television unless he's got a script to rely on, or at least editors he can trust not to want to make him look a fool. A sickly flutter in his stomach tells James he should have refused, like Richard did. Richard's on an aeroplane right now, going home, and James could have been there with him if he'd just held firm when Wilman said that Channel Ten was insisting on at least two Top Gear presenters. Going home would be nice. Spending a long flight with Richard, sitting and talking or swopping mp3 players to mock each other's musical taste or just dozing off in the strange, half-comfortable proximity that aeroplanes enforce . . . that would be nice too.
James sits hesitantly on the piano bench and opens the lid. It's a well-kept instrument, free of dust. He touches a few keys, hears a warm true tone that's the musical equivalent of a come-hither look, and (after another glance at Jeremy, oblivious in a writer's daze) loosens his fingers up with a bit of [?]. Then one of Satie's Gymnopédies, but it's too spare for his anxious mood and he's forgotten bits of it, so he slips into Debussy and manages to lose himself for a while.
When he stops, there's a man standing by the piano. Short, middle-aged, a little plump, in a flattering suit and what James assumes is a stylish haircut, and although he's twenty years older he's got the same sweet face as the filthy anarchist who sang about dog abuse. "You're very good," he says, and smiles.
James slaps the piano lid closed, nearly catching a finger. "I'm not, actually. I hardly ever practise, I just muck about."
"Well, you're a lot better than me. If I'd known we could've had you play one of the musical clues or something."
"Christ, no. I-" James has played on television before, but not seriously, not as though he's an actual musician. "Er, I'm James May. Hullo."
"Paul McDermott. Are - "
"My God," Jeremy bellows from the sofa; James had half forgotten he was there. "I thought your name sounded familiar." He lurches to his feet, awkward the way he is when his back's hurting, and thrusts out a hand. "The Doug Anthony All Stars! I saw you in Edinburgh, must have been, hell, 1990 or so. You were absolutely raving mad." He's been shaking McDermott's hand throughout this speech, and finally lets it go with a squeeze that looks painful to James. "And brilliant. I'd no idea you were - "
"Still around?" McDermott suggests. "Yeah, we're still clinging on to celebrity like overfed leeches. Richard's doing radio now, and Tim . . . " There's a hesitation, and before McDermott can find words, the door opens and the green room is suddenly full of people and loud with multiple introductions at once. James meets team captains Mikey and Claire and his fellow guests, a dark-haired woman of about his own age called Fiona and a camp blond boy whose name James doesn't catch. They both seem perfectly comfortable, chatting away with the hosts as though they're all old friends. Australia, James remembers, has only about a third of the UK's population; Australian television must be quite a small world.
Where it was going: Paul and James bond via their mutual interest in music. After the show, James learns Paul doesn't drive and offers to teach him; Paul accepts. The next day there's a driving lesson way out in the middle of nowhere, and lots of talk, and revelations about their mutual bisexuality and mutual love for men they can't have. They go back to Sydney and James spends the night with Paul. (The story doesn't ignore Paul's real-life relationship and child, just assumes he and his partner aren't monogamous and that Paul has a pied-à-terre for painting and liaisons.) The next day they say goodbye, both feeling that they might have loved each other if things were different, but things aren't different and at least they've had a nice time.
More dead WIPs coming in a second post. This one can't get any longer if I'm to crosspost it to LJ successfully.
Besides sleeping, I've also written about 1000 words in a fandom that has, at most, two people in it. And I'm contemplating a fill at
tintin_kinkmeme, where to my surprise there are several good stories and a number of prompts that make me want to write instead of tear my hair out.Also, I have decided that today is Dead WIP Amnesty Day for me. So I'm going to post some fragments that are unfinished and will never be finished, but are not so terrible or so fragmentary that I want to consign them to hard-drive oblivion. These are first drafts, so read at your own risks of typos and other infelicities.
1. Unfinished Sanctuary story (Henry/Big Guy, teen, 5100 words, nothing sexually explicit). I started this during the mid-S3 hiatus, then it got jossed, then S4 of Sanctuary alienated me so much that I stopped watching and may not resume. Which is a shame, because I like how this one was going.
Dr. Helen gives him food three times every day, as much as he wants to eat.
She gives him clothes that are warmer than his old ones, even if they scratch. She gives him a bed to sleep in. She gives him toys--a cube of colored squares that move, which he likes, and a plush dog, which he pretends to like. At least it's better than real dogs--it doesn't bark at him or show its teeth.
She gives him a name, Henry Foss. The first part is hard to say, but he practices until he gets it right. He had a different name once, he thinks, but he doesn't remember it.
She gives him so much that he doesn't mind when she takes him far away to a city called London. In London, Dr. Helen and her friend Dr. James give him medicines that make him sleepy, and they attach wires to his forehead and his chest. Sometimes they stick needles into his arms and take his blood, but it doesn't hurt much. He doesn't mind the blood as much as the questions. Stupid questions. He's never seen anyone turn into an animal!
After twenty-one days--Henry likes to count, and he doesn’t know why Dr. Helen is so surprised--he says goodbye to Dr. James, and he goes with Dr. Helen into a big machine called an aeroplane. They're inside the aeroplane for almost ten hours. It's boring, but he plays with his cube while Dr. Helen writes things down in her notebook. That's her favorite game. Later he gets to see the inside of the cockpit and a man explains a lot about how aeroplanes work. He even gets to pull on a lever that makes the aeroplane fly higher.
Then he falls asleep for a while, and when he wakes up he's in a motorcar and Dr. Helen is telling him to put on his coat. When they get out of the motorcar, they're at the biggest house Henry has ever seen. A tall man lets them in the door. He's all covered with hair and he's got a funny face.
"Welcome to the Sanctuary, Henry," says Dr. Helen. "This is your new home."
That sounds all right. The house is warm inside, and there's probably lots of food, and Dr. Helen and the tall man can keep him safe from dogs and any other bad things.
"Would you like that?" Dr. Helen asks while he's thinking about it.
"Yes," Henry says. "Are you my new mummy, Dr. Helen?"
Dr. Helen looks sad and she turns her face away for a few seconds. "No, Henry. I'm afraid your mummy is gone. But I'll always be your friend."
He thinks he would have liked a new mummy. He can't remember much about his first mummy, but he likes how he feels when he thinks about her. Why is she gone?
He's crying, which is bad, it's too much noise. Dr. Helen pats his shoulder, but the tall man squats down and and puts his big hands softly on Henry's arms. It feels so nice that Henry runs up against him with a thump and holds on tight. The tall man hugs him in his long hairy arms. He's warm and it's much better than the stupid pretend dog. "I like how you smell," Henry says.
"Henry!" He knows from Dr. Helen's voice that he's said a bad thing. But the tall man doesn't push him away.
"It's all right," the tall man says. "I like how you smell, too, Henry." Then he and Dr. Helen start talking about smells, only they're using doctor words and Henry can't understand most of it.
"What's your name?" Henry asks the tall man. "Are you a doctor too?"
Instead of keeping on talking, the way Dr. Helen and Dr. James sometimes did when he asked questions, the tall man stops and answers him. "No, I'm not a doctor. And I can't tell you my name."
"Why not? Didn't Dr. Helen give you one?"
The tall man makes a funny sound. Henry's scared for a second, but the tall man ruffles his hair and Henry decides he must be laughing. "My name is a secret," he says. "But I have a friend who calls me the Big Guy."
"Really?" Dr. Helen says, and the Big Guy laughs again.
"He got tired of saying 'hey, you.'" He stands up and holds out a hand. Henry takes it. "Come on, Henry. I'll show you your room."
Erica doesn't want to be here in the clinic. She doesn't want to be here in Oldham, come to that. Yesterday she bought a copy of Time Out and spent more than an hour reading it, circling listings for everything in London--exhibits, plays, concerts, tours, lectures, restaurants--that sounded interesting. Almost all of it sounded interesting. She bought an A-Z, too, and in a spare moment this morning she looked up the train timetable online. She could be there already.
But she's the only one who knows the passwords for the clinic's recent files and the locations of the old, paper ones. She might have refused Declan McRae--although he looks the sort who'd lecture about responsibility, like poor auntie in a different key--but Henry assumed she'd help, and she didn't want to disappoint him. If he'd asked, she could have explained that her home's become a nightmare, a trap that smells to her imagination of old blood and tears. For him, it's a mystery and a revelation. He didn't ask.
So here she is, in a badly lighted cellar full of papers that are slowly succumbing to damp. Henry keeps sneezing and rubbing at his eyes, and he said something about dust being bad for his computers, but he stays here at the next desk. It almost makes up for being here at all.
In the sleepy midafternoon, when Erica's beginning to wonder if she can convince Henry to stop work at a reasonable hour so they can have a whole evening out together, she finds it. Or rather, she almost doesn't find it, doesn't notice it. It's just more genealogical charts, half-finished with a lot of question marks, but stapled to them is a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline Moorside Family Vanishes. It's from July 18, 1980. Police, it says, are "seriously concerned" about the disappearance of Brian Calvert, his wife Sheila, and their four-year-old son Steven. In the margins are notes in her aunt's clear handwriting: "prob. lycan, cf. GCM114 and GC," and "collectors? Cf. TR1978-2LC." The genealogical charts show Sheila's descent from a known lycan family and Brian's from a probable one. TR, Erica knows, is the Threat Report code; lycans have been endangered by outsiders as well as by--her aunt thought--their own natures. Brian and Sheila may well have ended up in a rich man's private menagerie. And the boy, well . . .
"Henry," she says. "You may want to see this."
He reads it--Erica can't help watching him, watching even his eyes as they track the words--and then reads it again. In a small voice, like the terrified little boy whom Erica sees in her mind, he says, "Oh, God."
She puts an arm around him, but he doesn't seem to notice.
"It was August," Henry says. "When the doc found me. August 11, 1980. She thought I was four or five. We . . . we always celebrated my birthday on August 11."
"You could find out your real birthday." Erica feels a fool for saying that, but somehow it brings Henry back to her. He shudders and hugs her tightly.
"I should remember them. But I . . . I think I can remember being hungry and scared. And really cold. But it's not . . . I could just be remembering a nightmare, I don't know."
"It's awful." Erica rubs his back. "All of it. I'm so sorry, Henry. But . . . at least now you can know something. You can know who you really are."
A sigh, a scrape of chair legs under a fidgeting body, a sound of turning pages as Henry counts how many are left, another sigh. A distracted part of Helen's mind starts a countdown, and she's only reached twenty-two when Henry says, "This is boring."
"It's not boring," Helen answers without looking up from the manual that purports to explain how transferring the Sanctuary accounts to the computer will make them much easier to manage. "It's Shakespeare."
"It's boring. Everybody talks funny. And if they're going to kill Caesar they should hurry up and do it."
"Be grateful I'm not making you read Caesar's own writing in the original Latin. I had to, when - "
"When I was your age," Henry finishes, mimicking her accent--his own is almost pure American now. "You're boring too."
Helen has made a good deal of accommodation for Henry's needs. She's scaled back her fieldwork and given over several hours a day of her own time, not to mention several of her assistant's, to teaching. She's tried to be modern, as well, giving the boy liberties that would have been unimaginable in her own childhood. But there are things she's not prepared to tolerate. "Manners, young man," she says. "I believe you owe me an apology."
Henry folds his arms over his chest, a little parody of adult decisiveness, and says, "No."
"Then you shall go to your room and stay there until suppertime. With your Shakespeare," she adds, quelling the smile Henry was trying to hide. "I'll expect a one-page report on acts four and five and a correct recitation of Mark Antony's funeral speech."
"You said I could help the Big Guy get the new phone lines set up. You promised!"
"That was before you decided to be rude."
"You promised! Liar!" Henry jumps up from his chair, knocking it over, and sweeps his books off the table. "You never let me do anything!"
"Henry!"
"I hate you!" The boy kicks a table leg, hard. If it hurts his foot--and it must, surely?-- he doesn't seem to notice. He kicks it again, and shoves at the table, which luckily is too heavy for him to overturn. "I hate your stupid books and I hate this place and I hate you!"
Is there a hint of growl in his voice? It's impossible to be sure. That's the trouble. It's impossible to know, and if they find out by chance, it may be too late. "Henry, go to your room." Helen fights to keep her own voice calm and authoritative, as she would with any aggressive creature. "Right now."
There's a knife-edge moment when she thinks he might not obey. But after all, he's still only a child, raised with affection and discipline. Henry lowers his eyes and goes. He even takes the book.
At dinner, his recitation is letter-perfect and his report is . . . well, he tried. "I'm sorry, Dr. Helen," he says.
"Apology accepted." Helen pats his shoulder, then gives in to an impulse and ruffles his hair. Children are supposed to be hugged and petted; all the modern psychology books agree on that. "But Henry, you must learn to control your temper. You know why."
Henry averts his face as he always does when his HAP status is mentioned. "I'm sorry."
"I know."
"May I be excused?"
He hasn't finished his sprouts, but this probably isn't the time to insist. "Yes. You may play on the Atari for an hour."
"Thanks."
"Henry," says her associate--she can't call him the Big Guy as Henry does--as the boy turns to leave. "Wait until I'm done in the kitchen. I'll play Pac-Man with you."
All Henry says is "okay," but his whole posture loosens with delight. Helen remembers something she tries to forget, because she's got no solution: Henry's not just a rare HAP and not just a sharp mind that needs training. He's a little boy who lives in a huge lonely house with people who aren't his parents and who never meets other children.
"That was kind of you," she says, when Henry has gone.
Her associate huffs impatiently. "No. Henry's a good player."
She looks at his face, which ought to be strange and has become so dearly familiar, and finally says out loud what she's been trying not to think. "I'm worried."
"Yes." He pours her a cup of tea, which she knows, as a doctor, she probably shouldn't be drinking.
"We can't know how he'll react." Helen catches herself laying a hand against her still-flat belly, and is embarrassed by her own melodrama. "Even fully human children can display aggression towards new siblings, and Henry - " Henry won't even be a blood relation.
Her associate says nothing, but Helen thinks he doesn't like where this is going.
"I think we have to start medicating him. The dose won't be high, and there's every reason to believe that it will keep his polymorphic abnormality in check."
The irritable huff she gets in response makes Helen brace herself for another quarrel about the meaning of normal, but the moment passes, and her associate says only, "How will Henry learn control if you don't give him the chance?"
"The chance to what? In any case, I'm not at all certain he wants to control his polymorphism. That would mean acknowledging that he's an abnormal. You've seen how he reacts whenever it's mentioned. Properly medicated, he may never have to face something he clearly finds painful."
"We've made him afraid of himself."
Helen sets aside her half-empty teacup. "That's a bit pat, isn't it? We've no way of knowing how damaged he already was when I found him. He was half-dead of cold and hunger, and terrified of people. Whatever brought him to that, it can't have been good."
Silence, again. Well. Helen would never have got anywhere in life if she hadn't learnt to carry on in the face of disapproval. "It's for everyone's safety," she says, hoping she sounds properly decisive. "When he's older, he can decide for himself if he wants to continue the medication. But there's too much at stake to risk it on the judgment and self-control of an eight-year-old."
Her associate sighs. "You're the boss," he says, and stands up to begin clearing away the dinner things.
Will comes back from the bar with two pints in his hands and a wistful grin on his face. "I think I'm going to miss this."
"Pretty sure you can buy beer even in old city."
"J.W. Lees Brewer's Dark?"
"Point. Maybe you could talk Declan into sending some at Christmas."
"Or Erica," Will says, with a different kind of grin.
As a question, it's pretty transparent. Henry wonders sometimes if Will is actually a really bad psychiatrist, or if he just pretends to be bad in order to get you off your guard. "I woudn't count on that. She can hardly wait to get out of Oldham. I guess she's been kind of cooped up here--she says she's never been farther away than Manchester."
"How long are you two going to be in London?"
"A week." Henry's sure he already told Will that, plus he e-mailed the doc to tell her what flight he'll be on once the week is up. "I'm gonna have history and culture coming out of my ears. But at least I talked her out of the Jack the Ripper walking tour."
"Henry, if you complain about having a week in London with a nice girl, I will have to pour this beer over your head. Which would be a sad waste of beer."
"Hey, no complaints here. Erica's great. I'm glad I met her."
Will takes a couple of slow, thoughtful drinks of beer. He looks . . . not exactly shifty, but like he's working up to something. Henry tries not to feel like he's waiting for Dr. Freud to pronounce. Will can't stop being a psychiatrist in his off-time, any more than Henry can stop being a computer geek. Or a HAP. "This is probably going to sound crazy - "
"Because our lives are completely normal in every way."
"Yeah, okay, but I don't mean that kind of stuff. It's, well. I kinda thought you and the Big Guy . . . "
"Oh, yeah. We are. I thought you knew." They don't exactly announce it, true, but they've never hidden it. Not even when it first started and the doc was less than thrilled. And Will was right there after the first time Henry transformed, when the Big Guy wrapped him up in a blanket and carried him to his room. Henry's mind wasn't exactly all there, but he remembers putting his arms around the Big Guy's neck and holding on tight, and how even though the fog of exhaustion and shame there was a little bit of happiness. He can half recall what the Big Guy said to him on the way, too, and some of it was kind of private even though Will was trailing along asking questions and worrying.
"I didn't. I mean, I wondered, but . . . wow." Will looks more embarrassed than Henry's seen him since a clip of his Kali dance turned up on YouTube. "That's - "
"A lot less weird than most of the other things in my life?" Or Will's life--he's not the newbie anymore, freaking out like it's his profession. The Sanctuary's grabbed him in its big, all-over, tentatcle-monster embrace.
Will laughs like he's had the same thought. "I was gonna say complicated, but, yeah. None of our love lives is straight out of Leave it to Beaver."
If they were a little more drunk Henry might ask whether he ever did the wild thing with [Sophie?] while she was invisible, and if they were a little more drunk than that, Will might even answer. If they were totally blasted, he might say a couple of the beaver jokes that have just occurred to him out loud.
While Henry's thinking about it, Will adds, "Does Erika know?" Because Will doesn't need even one drink to ask things.
Henry shakes his head. At first he didn't tell her because it wasn't anything she needed to know. Now . . . now maybe she should know, but the best time to tell her has already gone by, somehow. She'll think he lied, which isn't exactly the case, and he doesn't want to hurt her. "Nah. It's . . . I'll be going home pretty soon anyway."
Will's got his poker face on. It might not be a million-dollar-prize winning poker face, but it'd do pretty well at a friendly game. "Erika likes you a lot," he says.
I like her a lot, Henry thinks, but this has already turned into a conversation he doesn't especially want to have. "I told the Big Guy," he says instead. "I'm not, like, asking you to lie for me or not mention her or anything."
Maybe he overestimated Will's poker face. It's not hard to see the total war happening between curiosity and manners. Curiosity wins. Probably it always does; that's how Will ended up in the Sanctuary. "So he's okay with it?"
"Yeah. It's no big deal. Sometimes I meet a girl, or a guy." Not that Henry's Casanova, or even Jack Harkness, but, well, stuff happens. They hadn't been together long when Henry went away to college, and even computer geeks get lucky sometimes. Somehow the arrangement happened, too, without them ever exactly talking about it. Henry doesn't mess around as much these days, especially not with guys, because even though Biggie doesn't say anything, Henry has the feeling that it does bug him a little when Henry hooks up with another guy. Erika's the first time in a couple of years, actually. "We're good, me and him."
"What about the Big Guy? Does he . . . ?"
Henry catches himself laughing. The thought of the Big Guy with someone else is just . . . ridiculous. "No. I mean, he could, I guess, but he doesn't." That's not how it works. How it works is that Henry fools around a little, sometimes, and then he comes home and his life goes on like always. It's like going on vacation--fun, but not real.
"But if - "
"Hey!" Henry says. "It's my round. Same again, or did you want to try the Supernova this time?"
"Supernova, I guess. Might as well try everything," Will says, with a meaningful grin that Henry ignores. All this talking has spun his head round and made simple things seem complicated. But it'll all sort itself out next week when he goes home.
Helen Magnus is a lot prettier than he'd have imagined from her phone manner. The suit's a little mannish, or the jacket is anyway, but the tight straight skirt shows off long slim legs in black nylons, and she's not the type who thinks heels are an affront to women's lib.
He stands, and she doesn't take umbrage at that either. Maybe this'll go better than he imagined. "Mrs. Magnus, it's a pleasure to meet you. Bill Dupre." Half the parents he meets manage to forget his name between the phone call and the meeting, which explains a lot about why their kids screw up.
"Dr. Magnus, thank you, Mr. Dupre." She takes his offered hand and shakes it in a grip like a man's. Bill's hopes are dissipating. He doesn't offer her coffee, even though the percolator's just finished brewing a fresh pot.
"Okay, Dr. Magnus. Well, let's talk about the problems Henry's been having."
"Actually, Mr. Dupre, I'd prefer to talk about why you and this school are allowing Henry to be bullied."
"Now, let's not exag- "
"Faggot," Dr. Magnus says coolly.
"What?"
She produces a list from her purse. "'Faggot' is the name some boys called him. Not to mention 'fairy,' 'freak,' 'lameass,' 'nerd,' 'shit-for-brains,' 'weirdo,' and 'whiner.' And 'girl,' although I dislike treating that as a term of abuse." Neatly, she folds the list and puts it away. "Mr. Dupre, would you allow your colleagues to speak to you like that?"
"Dr. Magnus, you have to understand that boys - "
"I don't think you would allow it, Mr. Dupre. I think you'd report the matter to your superiors and you'd expect them to intervene. Which is exactly what Henry did. He's asked his teachers for help more than once, and nothing's been done."
"You can't expect us to police every word out of our students' mouths!"
"Yesterday Henry came home with a black eye. It wasn't the first time he'd been injured, merely the first time he couldn't hide it from me."
"Dr. Magnus, I'm sorry that this is happening." Her posture--back stiff, knees together, head up like she's queen of the universe or Nancy goddamn Reagan or somebody--doesn't change, but at least she shuts up. "Henry was homeschool until this year, is that right?"
"Yes. I'd have preferred to keep doing so, but I don't have the necessary expertise in engineering or computers. I thought this school would suit him, with its reputation in science."
Most parents are less subtle when they threaten to pull their brats out. Bill could almost admire the bitch. "Well, you certainly did a great job with his education. He's one of the most brilliant students we've ever had." It's true, but he'd say it anyway, because Helen Magnus needs to be buttered up until she shines. A lot of the students come from wealthy families, but Magnus could donate a whole new campus if she wanted to. "But he's . . . underdeveloped, socially." Bill can do subtle too.
Amazingly, Magnus nods. "He hasn't had a lot of exposure to other children. I don't doubt that he's a bit awkward."
Bill thinks of the kid, who can name all the presidents of the United States and all the monarchs of England (in order, with dates), who talks about Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA like he was there (and who insisted to his biology teacher that some lab assistant named Rosalind Franklin deserved most of the credit), who's somehow taught himself a bucketload of C++, but who's never watched a football game. Who ate nothing but chocolate chip cookies his first week at school because he'd never had them before. Who, when Miss Salazar quoted a Shakespeare sonnet to demonstrate metaphor, told her that she shouldn't say Shakespeare was comparing his girlfriend to a summer's day because everyone knew Shakespeare had written that poem about a man. Bill thinks about telling Helen Magnus this story, but if she doesn't know yet that the kid's a pansy, he doesn't want to break the news. "It'll all get better once he learns to fit in."
Oops. Something in Magnus's face gets . . . Bill thinks dangerous, but that doesn't even make any sense. "Mr. Dupre, I acknowledge that Henry needs to refine his social skills. But that doesn't excuse the bullying."
"Mrs. Magnus, you're - " He stops himself before he says overreacting. "Understandably concerned. But I think you're misunderstanding normal boyish behavior. Boys are a little rough, a little aggressive. It's what they're like. I can see how it might seem pretty bad to a woman."
"I take a somewhat less cheerful view of male aggression."
Great, now it's back to feminism. "Dr. Magnus, I notice that you're the only guardian listed in Henry's file."
She nods and crosses her ankles. Bill specifically chose the visitor chairs in his office to be a little uncomfortable, but she sits like somehow who enjoys a high back and a wooden seat.
"Well, the lack of a male role model may be holding Henry back a little. Nothing that he can't recover from, of course, but it's important for him to spend some time in a more balanced environment."
There's a twitch in her face that Bill could swear was a suppressed smile, although not a very nice one. "Yes, your teaching staff is almost 80% male, and 72% of your students are male. That's remarkably balanced."
Bill leans forward and manages a glance at the clock on the corner of his desk. He's got another meeting in ten minutes, thank God.
"In any case," Magnus continues, "Henry has a 'male role model,' if we must use such a phrase. Someone who teaches him that there's nothing manly about cruelty and violence."
Bill lets himself wonder who she means. A boyfriend she's managed to snag for a while before he figures out that she's a ball-buster? No, more likely some fag friend of hers. Women like her always have a few. "Dr. Magnus, I'm glad we've had this talk."
She laughs, and it actually makes her beautiful again for a minute. "Are you? Well, since you're clearly eager for it to be over, let's move swiftly to the conclusion. This bullying of Henry will stop, Mr. Dupre. It will stop immediately, or I'll ensure that every parent who has a child in this school, or is considering placing a child here, knows that the staff is unable to control students' behavior. Then, once the school's reputation has collapsed, I'll hire away the more qualified staff to tutor Henry privately."
She stands up--like a soldier, Bill thinks--and walks out, the small slit in the back of her skirt offering a glimpse of thigh that Bill's unable to enjoy. He picks up the phone to his secretary. "Emergency faculty meeting this afternoon," he says. "Mandatory attendance. Make sure they all know that."
It's not going to be a good day.
When Henry arrives, which will be soon, he's bound to be tired and hungry. Airplanes are an awful way to travel. The Big Guy knows the scientific reasons--low humidity, insufficient oxygen, overcrowding, air recirculation that maximizes exposure to bacteria and viruses. There are other reasons too, unprovable but that he knows in his bones to be true. Humans are earth creatures, like his own people, and it's not good to be so far away from their place.
If one of the Big Guy's people traveled, which wasn't very often, when she came home she'd dig earthworms and eat them, and then sleep at the center of the camp with all the people around her. That would hold her together, like mud cementing a twig wall, and call home any stray bits of her spirit that had gotten lost along the way. Those aren't human customs, of course, but the Big Guy has a meal planned for Henry, grounding sorts of food (no fish, no birds) with herbs from the Sanctuary's tiny garden. He's dusted Henry's bedroom and transplanted some lupines into a pot on the dresser; he'll put them back in the sun after a couple of days, once they've done their work.
The scientific part of his mind thinks that nutrition and rest certainly won't do Henry any harm.
Once everything's ready, the Big Guy works on the medical inventory. Impatience doesn't make the thing you want come any faster. His mother used to take him fishing at the wrong time of day, on purpose, to teach him that. He can't deny, though, that he's a little distracted, and he sets the checklist aside the second Henry's car comes through the gates, even though there are only four items left on it and he could easily have finished.
"Hey, man," Henry says when the Big Guy meets him in the entry hall. The Big Guy doesn't bother with words, just pulls him--bags and all--into a long hug. That's as close as he can get to the sniffing and grooming of a proper greeting without making even Henry a little uncomfortable. Henry smells of coffee (lots of it), beer, corn chips, breath mints, sweat, a new hair gel, the gasoline and plastic and stale air of travel, and, faintly, of a flowery perfume that must be Erika's. After a few seconds Henry pulls away and stands grinning awkwardly. "I totally reek, sorry."
Henry knows better than that. "Come and eat."
"Soon as I put my stuff away. And take a shower."
Maybe he doesn't want to bother the others. Will and Kate grew up in an entirely human world, and now that they live here, things are a little different than they used to be.
Twenty minutes later Henry turns up in the kitchen, wet-haired and wearing clean clothes. He's put on fresh deodorant, too. The Big Guy wishes he'd remembered to ask him not to. "Pork chops!" Henry says, sniffing the air. "You're awesome, you know that? They hardly fed us on the plane. Flying commercial probably breaks a bunch of Geneva conventions. And I'm gonna tell the doc so the next time she gets all regulationy about personal trips and the cost of jet fuel."
And that's all there is. Here's where it was going: there was going to be a growing estrangement between Henry and the Big Guy, fuelled partly by Henry's unadmitted desire for a "normal" life and the world outside the Sanctuary and partly by Henry's guilt at not having told Erica about his relationship with the Big Guy. (This was my explanation for the episode where the Big Guy gets shot and when he wakes up, Henry's not there, he's Skyping with Erica instead.) When Henry gets back after the Hollow Earth trip, the Big Guy is gone, leaving a note saying he doesn't want to get in the way of what Henry really. Whereupon Henry realizes what he really wants is the Big Guy and their life at the Sanctuary. So he tracks down the Big Guy to the Pacific Northwest forests, they have a big argument and are reconciled and live happily ever after. This would have been interspersed with flashback scenes about Henry's teenage years and discovery of his own sexuality, the start of his relationship with the Big Guy, and how the relationship survived Henry going away to college. The whole fic would have been about the desire to leave and conquer the world vs. the desire to be and stay at home, and the not entirely non-emotionally-incestuous ways the Big Guy represents home for Henry.
2. James May/Paul McDermott RPS (with implied unrequited James/Richard and previous Paul/Tim Ferguson), 1200 words, nothing sexually explicit. Top Gear is another fandom I think I'm done with, although I do have the urge sometimes to write about James May with non-TG men (e.g. Sim Oakley, Oz Clarke, or in this case Paul McDermott, formerly of DAAS fame).
"I don't know why you bother," Clarkson says as James pulls out the folder of material that Good News Week sent him.
"Because I thought it might be useful to know something about the show we're taping tomorrow."
"What's there to know? It's Australian. They'll all be seven feet tall, sunburnt, and named Bruce."
James looks over to where the local crew, very few of whom are named Bruce, are setting up the day's last shot: their triumphant arrival at Bondi Beach. They actually got to Sydney yesterday, but they missed the light. "Is there anything you know about Australia that didn't come from old Monty Python episodes?"
"I'll bet you a million pounds that I'm right."
James opens the folder and squints against the glare. "Luckily for you, I'm too kind to take you up on that. The host is, in fact, named Paul. Paul McDermott." The photo shows a sweet-faced man, like an aging cherub. He doesn't look sunburnt.
"McDermott?"
"Mmm."
"That's . . . I know that name from somewhere." Jeremy's face scrunches up. "Damn. It's gone. I'll probably remember in the middle of the night. Like a song title."
"Don't ring and tell me, will you?" Past the crew, Richard is walking along the edge of the surf. He's barefoot, with his trousers rolled up so they won't get wet and ruin continuity. Richard's not sunburnt either, but lightly tanned, with the ends of his hair going blond; in this perfect afternoon light he's all variegated gold. James looks away. "It's probably someone else, anyway."
"What's your bumf say, then?" Jeremy asks, with the insouciant curiosity of someone who's lost his own copy. "Is Bruce going to ask us about cars?"
"Shouldn't think so. Says here it's a news quiz."
"Australian news? All rugger and lager, I expect. And the price of sheep."
"Price of a sheep for what?" Richard asks, having come up while James wasn't looking at him.
Luckily, the cameras are ready, and Andy's calling them over before Jeremy can answer.
That night, insomniac at a quarter past one in the morning, James googles Paul McDermott. The man used to be a comedian, it seems. Quite a well-known one locally. There are links to YouTube videos.
A few minutes later, James watches in stifled laughter and not-quite-stifled horror as the same sweet-faced man, younger and slighter, short and unwashed-looking, sings a catchy song about . . . fucking dogs. There's a guitarist, and another man who sings along, excellent harmonies and even a little dance that just about mimes the act of buggering a dachshund. McDermott's voice is a lovely, flexible tenor; the song wouldn't be half so funny, or shocking, if he didn't sound like the devil's own choirboy.
James tries to imagine this man as the host of a televion programme, and fails. This although he's become used to the idea of Jeremy Clarkson in the same role.
What the hell has Wilman got them into this time?
The Good News Week green room is positively sybaritic compared to Top Gear's. It has deep carpet that no one's walked on in muddy wellies, unscuffed furniture with plump cushions, a selection of up-to-date magazines, three kinds of coffee (espresso, percolator, and cafetière) and an excellent selection of teas, plus a whole supermarket's worth of biscuits, including those malty Australian ones James finds it increasingly hard to resist. Working in commercial television, even antipodean commercial television, is clearly another world. If Fifth Gear ever comes knocking, James thinks he might be tempted for at least half an hour.
The green room also, inexplicably, has a piano, a handsome Yamaha grand. James glances over at Jeremy, who's pecking away at his laptop and occasionally muttering to himself. Of course Jeremy isn't nervous; he's a veteran of QI and a million other panel shows, while James has never learnt to be comfortable on television unless he's got a script to rely on, or at least editors he can trust not to want to make him look a fool. A sickly flutter in his stomach tells James he should have refused, like Richard did. Richard's on an aeroplane right now, going home, and James could have been there with him if he'd just held firm when Wilman said that Channel Ten was insisting on at least two Top Gear presenters. Going home would be nice. Spending a long flight with Richard, sitting and talking or swopping mp3 players to mock each other's musical taste or just dozing off in the strange, half-comfortable proximity that aeroplanes enforce . . . that would be nice too.
James sits hesitantly on the piano bench and opens the lid. It's a well-kept instrument, free of dust. He touches a few keys, hears a warm true tone that's the musical equivalent of a come-hither look, and (after another glance at Jeremy, oblivious in a writer's daze) loosens his fingers up with a bit of [?]. Then one of Satie's Gymnopédies, but it's too spare for his anxious mood and he's forgotten bits of it, so he slips into Debussy and manages to lose himself for a while.
When he stops, there's a man standing by the piano. Short, middle-aged, a little plump, in a flattering suit and what James assumes is a stylish haircut, and although he's twenty years older he's got the same sweet face as the filthy anarchist who sang about dog abuse. "You're very good," he says, and smiles.
James slaps the piano lid closed, nearly catching a finger. "I'm not, actually. I hardly ever practise, I just muck about."
"Well, you're a lot better than me. If I'd known we could've had you play one of the musical clues or something."
"Christ, no. I-" James has played on television before, but not seriously, not as though he's an actual musician. "Er, I'm James May. Hullo."
"Paul McDermott. Are - "
"My God," Jeremy bellows from the sofa; James had half forgotten he was there. "I thought your name sounded familiar." He lurches to his feet, awkward the way he is when his back's hurting, and thrusts out a hand. "The Doug Anthony All Stars! I saw you in Edinburgh, must have been, hell, 1990 or so. You were absolutely raving mad." He's been shaking McDermott's hand throughout this speech, and finally lets it go with a squeeze that looks painful to James. "And brilliant. I'd no idea you were - "
"Still around?" McDermott suggests. "Yeah, we're still clinging on to celebrity like overfed leeches. Richard's doing radio now, and Tim . . . " There's a hesitation, and before McDermott can find words, the door opens and the green room is suddenly full of people and loud with multiple introductions at once. James meets team captains Mikey and Claire and his fellow guests, a dark-haired woman of about his own age called Fiona and a camp blond boy whose name James doesn't catch. They both seem perfectly comfortable, chatting away with the hosts as though they're all old friends. Australia, James remembers, has only about a third of the UK's population; Australian television must be quite a small world.
Where it was going: Paul and James bond via their mutual interest in music. After the show, James learns Paul doesn't drive and offers to teach him; Paul accepts. The next day there's a driving lesson way out in the middle of nowhere, and lots of talk, and revelations about their mutual bisexuality and mutual love for men they can't have. They go back to Sydney and James spends the night with Paul. (The story doesn't ignore Paul's real-life relationship and child, just assumes he and his partner aren't monogamous and that Paul has a pied-à-terre for painting and liaisons.) The next day they say goodbye, both feeling that they might have loved each other if things were different, but things aren't different and at least they've had a nice time.
More dead WIPs coming in a second post. This one can't get any longer if I'm to crosspost it to LJ successfully.
