(no subject)

Jan 12, 2009 20:08

Title: What Have I Become, My Sweetest Friend
Author: emotionalwench
Series: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report
Pairings: Jon/Stephen
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: angst, swearing, self-injury, mansex, hurt/comfort
Summary: When Stephen receives some traumatic family news, he returns to a harmful coping mechanism that he thought he had left behind. Jon is there to help him through it.
Author's Notes: This might be possibly triggering for anyone who has ever struggled with self-injury, so please be aware of that before you read. Also, this is wifeless AU.

Thanks to the lovely shoebox_addict for looking over the first part of this for me and giving me reassurance.

Cross-posted to tds_rps.

Disclaimer: Any similarity between the fictional version of the person portrayed here and the actual persons is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction. This is not an attempt to defame the character of said person on the basis of libel, as the work is FICTIONAL (and NOT an intently false statement created with the express purpose of misleading others about the actual character of said person).

Any mention of 'The Daily Show', 'The Colbert Report', 'Viacom', any associated entites, or any copyrighted material pertaining therein is reasonably protected by the Fair Use Rule of the United States Copyright Act of 1976 and is not intended to infringe upon any copyrighted material.



“Jon,” Stephen said out of nowhere one night while they were lying in bed watching TV, “I have to show you something. Something I should have shown you earlier.”

“What…what is it?” Jon said with a nervous hesitance in his voice. From the way Stephen spoke, Jon could tell that what his boyfriend was about to show him was nothing good. He reached for the remote and pressed the mute button, cutting off Anderson Cooper’s voice.

Stephen drew in a deep breath, casting an ashamed sidewise glance at Jon.

“Please promise me that you won’t get too angry when I show you,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry this happened, but I just couldn’t take it if you were mad at me on top everything.”

What Jon felt at those words was like an icy hand wrapping its sharp-clawed fingers tightly around his heart. “Stephen,” he breathed, trying to sound calm, “just tell me.”

Stephen inhaled deeply again, and he held out his left arm and slowly pulled up the long sleeve of his shirt. Etched into the pale flesh of his inner forearm was a row of five or six deep cuts, small and thin and perfectly straight. They were an angry, weeping shade of red - some of the clotted blood was still visible - and it was obvious that they had been made quite recently.

Jon gasped and put a hand to his mouth. His head swimming, he stared at the cuts and then stared into Stephen’s eyes, a look of absolute horror on his face. Stephen gulped and tried to hold Jon’s gaze.

“Who…who did this to you?” Jon asked at last in a trembling voice. But he already knew the answer - and it was the worst of all possibilities.

Stephen was shaking his head. “No one did it to me. I did it to myself, Jon.”

Jon broke Stephen’s gaze and stared straight ahead towards the wall, his hand clutching his heart. “Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God, oh my God.” He ran a hand frantically though his graying hair, and his breaths started coming out very short and fast; Stephen realized that Jon was starting to hyperventilate. Oh shit, he thought with alarm, hating himself. I’m giving him an asthma attack. I’m such an asshole.

“Jon, breathe!” Stephen said, reaching out and holding Jon close against his chest. “God, I’m so sorry - fuck, this is why I didn’t want to tell you--”

“I’m all right,” Jon said, taking deeper breaths and regaining his composure just a bit. “I’m all right. It’s you who’s not. Stephen…baby…” Jon looked up again, and Stephen saw that his eyes were red. The thought of having made Jon cry made him feel worse than anything. “Why?” Jon said in a choked voice. He reached out and gently touched Stephen’s injured arm. “Why - how? Why would you do this to yourself?”

Stephen hung his head, silently ordering himself to just go ahead and be honest with the man he loved. Be honest - that was what he’d decided to do tonight, but now he was finding it just as difficult as he feared he would. He didn’t want to hurt Jon. But he knew that hiding this from him might hurt him more.

“I did it last night, with a razor from the bathroom,” Stephen said. “I just…I couldn’t take it anymore, Jon. It’s so hard. I needed a way to cope and I felt like I was out of options.”

“A way to cope? Does this have anything to do with your mom?”

Stephen nodded, and his face began crumpling up. A couple of weeks ago his mother had had a mild heart attack while one of Stephen’s sisters was visiting her at her South Carolina home. Stephen’s sister had immediately called all eight of the remaining Colbert siblings to let them know what had happened to their mother, and Jon had been there when Stephen received that phone call in the kitchen of their New York City apartment. He’d never seen Stephen that scared and upset before and he’d hoped he never would again; Stephen had stalked around the apartment and the Colbert Report studio like a zombie, his face rigid but seeming ready to break at any moment.

When the news came that Mom Colbert was recovering in the hospital and would be all right, Stephen finally let his guard down and sobbed on Jon’s shoulder - heavy, blubbering, choking sobs. Jon stroked his hair, whispered soft words of comfort into his good ear, and did all he could to be there for the love of his life. But even after it was clear that the worst was not going to happen, even after Mom Colbert was talking to Stephen on the phone and sounding like her old self, Jon could tell that Stephen had not recovered from the shock of the incident. A distraught sadness could still be seen in his coffee-colored eyes, even when he was laughing and seemed to be otherwise back to normal. Jon understood perfectly why Stephen was so upset, but he’d never imagined that Stephen would do this. He could deal with Stephen’s stoniness, with Stephen’s tears; being sweet and comforting was something that Jon was good at. But this scared him shitless; this he did not know how to handle.

“But…” Jon sighed and rubbed his tear-stained eyes, struggling to find the best words to express what he wanted to say. “Babe, I’m not trying to downplay what you went through when your mom had that heart attack. I would never do that. But why would it make you cut yourself? I just…I don’t understand.”

“There’s something I’ve never told you,” Stephen said in a very small voice, trying to swallow down the lump that was forming his throat. He really didn’t want to cry. It was bad enough that he’d had to admit to Jon that he’d cut himself, but crying on top of everything seemed to make things worse. God, I’m so weak, he cursed himself. “I’ve never told anyone this before,” he added, knowing that he would have to reassure Jon that he was not keeping things from him that he’d shared with other people. “But…after my dad and my two brothers died, I started cutting myself. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it wasn’t too long after the funeral. It was just one of the things I did to try to deal with their deaths - like when I stopped caring about my grades in school and I started escaping into The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons and all that.”

“Dammit, cutting your arm up is not the same as playing Dungeons & Dragons!” Jon cried. The unexpected forcefulness of his tone made Stephen jump, and it even surprised Jon a little as well. So far Jon had tried his best to remain calm, but he suddenly found he couldn’t hold it in anymore. The tears continued streaming down his face as he went on wildly, “I just don’t understand. Baby…you’re hurting yourself. Why would you do that? Stephen, I love you more than anyone else on earth and I would never hurt you. If you loved yourself as much as I love you, you wouldn’t do this to yourself.”

“Jon, I love you too,” Stephen said, his boyfriend’s loving and sincere words almost causing him to lose control and just weep. “But this has nothing to do with how much I love myself. It never did. When I was a teenager, it was all about finding a way to release those emotions, to - to try to make the pain I was feeling inside visible on the outside somehow. It’s easier for me to deal with physical pain than emotional pain - you could even say it was a distraction. It wasn’t a form of…of self-punishment, or anything.”

“Bullshit,” Jon sniffled, wiping his running nose with his hand like a child. “If you truly respected yourself, you wouldn’t ever do this. You would find some other way of releasing those emotions other than fucking cutting yourself up. Goddamnit, Stephen. I don’t want to make you feel worse but…I wish you had told me the moment you even thought about doing this. I can’t imagine what you must have been going through last night to do this to yourself, but you didn’t even tell me! I had no fucking idea you were even upset. You acted like everything was fine.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I feel like shit about that,” Stephen said, wincing a little bit at the woundedness he heard in Jon’s voice. “You’re right, I should have told you. I just…I felt so desperate that I wasn’t even thinking. It was like…” He took another deep, shaky breath. “It was like I was twelve years old again, and I was back in that same place I was in after Dad and Paul and Peter died. That’s how I felt when Mom had her heart attack. I couldn’t deal with the thought of losing Mom and becoming an actual orphan, I just couldn’t. I always knew that she - that she wouldn’t be around forever…” His whole body trembled; it still sent sharp jabs of pain into his heart to even think about that. “But that came out of nowhere.”

“I know. Baby, I know,” Jon said softly, and he leaned in closer to Stephen on the bed and took him in his arms. Stephen wrapped his arms around Jon in kind and closed his eyes, resting his chin in the crook of Jon’s neck; taking in his smell and the soft feel of their bodies pressed close against each other.

“See, baby. You see this?” Jon whispered, snuggling closer. “This is better than hurting yourself. This is what I’m here for. This is what you should have done last night instead.”

“I know,” Stephen sighed. “I wish I had. Believe me, Jon, I hate that I did that again. One of the reasons why I never told you about it is because I literally hadn’t done it in almost thirty years.”

“When…when did you stop?” Jon asked gently. He wanted to show Stephen that he was willing to listen - that even if he would never understand why his boyfriend had ever self-injured, he was still there for him.

“When I was about fifteen. I never did it that often, but it was an on-and-off thing that lasted a few years. God, it’s like I haven’t changed at all since then. I thought I’d left it all behind,” and Stephen’s tone took on a sudden hardness and anger directed at himself. “I’m supposed to be better than that now. I wasn’t supposed to ever be that, you know? I met other people who did it and I could never really relate to them. They always seemed so fucked up and I felt so sane in comparison. But I am like them because we do the same thing. I’m a fucking cutter. God, I hate even saying that. It makes me sound so…emo. Like I’m a teenage goth kid who does it because he hates his parents or something.”

“Awww, c’mon,” Jon said, trying to resist the urge to laugh at Stephen’s remark. “You’re not an emo person. You know that. If you start wearing eyeliner and listening to The Cure, then I’ll be worried.” Stephen chuckled a bit and Jon’s heart swelled, glad to hear the other man laughing again. “Seriously, Stephen. You’re a very optimistic person and I don’t think you need me telling you that you have a fucking fantastic sense of humor. But you’ve had to deal with a lot. What you went through with your dad and brothers…a lot of people would have done something a lot more desperate than even cutting themselves, you know? - Not that I ever want you to do that again,” he added, his voice firm. “Please promise me you’ll never hurt yourself again.”

Stephen grimaced, wishing he could just give Jon the answer he wanted. But he couldn’t. He’d sworn to be honest. “I…don’t know if I can promise you that, Jon.”

“What?” Jon pulled back from their embrace, looking into Stephen’s eyes with his mouth agape. His face suddenly looked very pale. “What the hell do you mean? Stephen, you’re not going to do that again.”

“I don’t want to. I really, really don’t. And I wish I could promise you, but - I promised myself almost thirty years ago that I would never do it again, and look what happened last night. I’m starting to wonder…how much I can control it.” He gulped; he hated saying these words to Jon almost as much as he hated admitting them to himself. “I’m starting to wonder if you can ever truly be an ex-cutter, like how alcoholics are always alcoholics even years after they’ve been clean. That maybe it’s a part of who I am, and if I ever feel that desperate again, I might fall back on it again - even though I really don’t want to.”

“Stephen, no. No. Please, please don’t say that.” There were fresh tears in Jon’s eyes again. “You do have control - you don’t ever have to do that again. At least…at least promise me you’ll get rid of all the razors in our bathroom and start using an electric shaver. I’ll do the same, okay?” He cupped Stephen’s face gently in his hands, trying to show him that he was willing to help him. He was Stephen’s partner in all other things; now he would be his partner in helping him fight this. “I don’t want you to look around our bathroom and even be tempted to use the razors again to cut yourself.”

“I already threw all of mine away,” Stephen admitted. “I told you, I want last night to have been the last time. I just don’t know if I can promise you that that’ll be the case. It would just make things feel even shittier if I ever relapsed again.” He paused and then let out a wry laugh. “You know what’s kind of funny, Jon?”

“What?” Jon frowned, not sure how anything about this situation could ever be funny.

“I started using a razor to cut myself when I was a kid because I was pissed off that my dad would never be able to teach me how to shave. I’d watched him teach all my older brothers to shave for years, and I couldn’t wait to grow facial hair just so he could finally teach me. I wanted us to put shaving cream on our faces and stand in front of the bathroom mirror shirtless together and just bond that way. But I never got to do it with him.”

“Oh, Stephen.” It was funny - but in an odd way, not in a “ha ha” way - that this was the one thing Stephen had said that night that made Jon’s heart ache more than anything else. Jon clasped Stephen’s body close to his again. For a moment they just sat holding one another in the glow of the lamp beside their bed, their feet brushing against each other underneath the warm flannel sheets. Jon kept his gaze focused on Stephen’s soft cheek pressed next to his own and tried not to look down at Stephen’s left arm; every time he saw those red cuts in the other man’s skin he felt a tightness in his chest and found himself ready to start hyperventilating again. And he didn’t want that. This wasn’t supposed to be about Stephen comforting him; he was supposed to be comforting Stephen.

“I’m sorry,” Jon murmured. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you enough.”

“What are you talking about?” Stephen cried, drawing back and stroking the long grey tuft of hair that was falling in Jon’s eyes. “You’re always there for me, you know that.”

“Am I really? How can that possibly be true when you still have to cut yourself?” Jon said hoarsely. “I…I feel like you must be missing something from our relationship if you have to do that.”

“Jon. Jon, listen to me. There is nothing missing from this relationship. Don’t you fucking say that,” Stephen said sternly. “That stupid mistake I made last night” - he grasped his injured left arm angrily and waved it in front of Jon, who cringed - “it has nothing to do with you. Don’t think for a second that you can blame yourself for this, because I’m not gonna let you. I’m the one responsible. This never had anything to do with anyone but me.”

“No. I don’t buy it,” Jon said, shaking his head vehemently. “I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. People who are happy in their relationships do not cut themselves.”

“Sometimes they do,” Stephen said bluntly. “I get why that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I don’t know if we’re going to agree on this tonight, and I don’t know how else to explain this so you’ll understand. But babe - just please try to believe me when I say that it is not your fault. You are better for me than anyone else in the world could ever be.”

“Okay. I’ll try. I’ll try to believe that. As long as you at least try not to cut yourself ever again. Can you promise me that, at least?”

Stephen nodded. “Yes. That I can do.”

It wasn’t the promise Jon wanted, but it would do for now. He sighed deeply and rested his head on Stephen’s shoulder. Glancing quickly at the clock on their nightstand, he saw that it was nearly one a.m. - too late for them to be up anyway. Not that he wouldn’t gladly stay up until sunrise talking this over with Stephen if it helped him, but he was starting to get tired and he had a feeling that they’d discussed it as much as they could for that night. He cupped Stephen’s face in his hands again and kissed him softly.

“We should go to sleep, babe,” he said, smiling at the dark-haired man and trying to put on his brave face. “We both have our shows to do tomorrow.”

Stephen looked down bashfully at his lap. “Not yet,” he muttered. “I don’t want to go to sleep just yet.”

“Do you still need to talk?”

“No, I…” Stephen faltered, searching for words that wouldn’t weird Jon out too much. But oh, hell. He’d done a good job of being honest tonight; he might as well continue that trend. Deciding to forgo words for a more direct approach, he reached down underneath the covers and found the spot between Jon’s legs, and gently squeezed.

Jon gasped. “Stephen, Stephen - no. I don’t think…” he said slowly. He removed his boyfriend’s hand from his crotch and entwined their fingers together tightly instead, trying to be empathetic but also trying to mask how suddenly awkward he felt. “I don’t think that’s the best idea right now.”

“Why not?”

“This isn’t exactly the most…appropriate time, don’t you think? You’ve been very vulnerable, and honestly I just don’t think you’re in the right state of mind for sex.”

“Actually my state of mind is just fine, considering. If you’re not in the mood I understand that and I won’t push you. But…this is what I need right now. Dammit, I don’t know how to explain what I mean.” Stephen wrung his hands. “Last night I was concentrating so hard on hurting my body,” he said, trying to weigh his words carefully, “and right now the only thing that can make me feel truly okay again is you, Jon, touching me and - and making me feel good in the way that only you can. You told me that I should have come to you instead of hurting myself and now I’m doing that. Please, Jon.”

Jon puffed out his cheeks and let the air out slowly, still feeling torn as to how he should respond. He wanted more than anything to make Stephen feel better, and if this was what he wanted, then how could he deny him? But he was still troubled about Stephen’s state of mind and his motives - and he had to give voice to those concerns.

“You don’t…you don’t want me to be rough with you, do you?” he said, biting his lip with worry. “This isn’t just another way of hurting yourself…?”

To his relief, Stephen was immediately shaking his head. “No! No, babe, this isn’t like that. I don’t want you to be rough. Quite the opposite, actually.” He leaned forward and softly put his lips against Jon’s neck, just below his earlobe. He kissed and sucked gently on the flesh there, feeling great satisfaction when Jon squirmed a bit and let out the quietest of moans.

“Please,” Stephen murmured again, in a voice so innocently pleading and sweet and sad that Jon absolutely ached.

“Okay. Okay, Stephen,” Jon relented, his words coming out in shuddering breaths. He was still a bit tired, but he thought he could at least give Stephen this one thing. “Lie down on your back. Get comfortable. I want you to be as relaxed as possible.”

Stephen nodded and lay back down obligingly, resting his head on the soft, cushiony pillows. Jon pulled off his own tee-shirt and boxers that he usually wore to bed, and set to work on removing Stephen’s clothing. First Jon peeled off the long-sleeved shirt that had been hiding Stephen’s cuts all day long, and then slowly, oh so slowly - Jon wanted to show Stephen that this was going to be a deliberated act of love and respect, not a rushed act of self-gratification on his own part - he hooked his fingers into the waistband of Stephen’s boxers and pulled them down his hair-covered legs. His breath hitched in his throat at the sight of his lover’s naked body sprawled out before him on their bed.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Jon whispered, his awe and appreciation completely genuine. “No one should ever want to hurt anything this beautiful. I want to make you see that.”

“Oh, Jonathan,” Stephen sighed, too moved to say much else. “C’mon, get on top of me already.”

Jon did just that, taking extra care not to put too much pressure on Stephen’s body with his weight - not that he had to worry, being the smaller man. Their bellies and chests touched, and the sensation was so warm and soft and comforting that both men immediately let out long sighs.

Jon pressed his lips against Stephen’s and curled his fingers into the other man’s soft dark hair. Realizing that Stephen’s glasses were going to get in the way, he leisurely removed them and set them down on the nightstand by their bed. He then went back to kissing him, very tenderly slipping his tongue in - and after a couple minutes of that, he felt it was okay to take it a bit further. He reached down and took Stephen’s cock in his hand, surprised to find that it was already half-erect. As distraught as he’d been, Stephen had certainly been serious about wanting to make love.

“How’s that feel?” Jon whispered, stroking Stephen softly and lingeringly. Stephen whimpered into Jon’s mouth and said,

“It’s wonderful. Oh God, Jon. You’re gonna make me come, I just know it.”

“Good. I want to.” Stephen’s declaration turned Jon on way more than he wanted to admit, but he steeled himself, determined to comfort his lover and not even think about scratching his own itch. “I wanna make you feel good,” he murmured, continuing to forge a path of loving kisses down Stephen’s face, neck, and chest. “I want to show you just how much better you can feel.”

When Jon entered him, Stephen thought of that first moment when the razor met the delicate skin on his arm, and the cold, lonely relief that he’d felt last night when he was able to momentarily forget the heavy ache in his chest for a different kind of pain. But now he wanted to replace the feeling of the sharp metal pressing against his flesh with this, with the feeling of Jon inside him and Jon’s skin caressing his and Jon’s heavy breathing tickling the tiny invisible hairs in his ear. He wanted to feel wrapped up in Jon forever and never go back to the harm he’d inflicted upon himself. And when he came and he finally allowed the tears to streak down his cheeks, and Jon was bending down to whisper to him - Ssh, Stephen, it’s okay, you’ll be okay, I love you, I’m right here with you - he knew that the sting he’d felt from his mother’s brush with death wasn’t gone. He would still have to carry on through it in the coming days and even weeks. No coping mechanism, no matter how healthy, could make it go away completely.

But if salvation was anywhere, he would find it sooner at the edge of his lover’s skin, at the curve of Jon’s smile, before he ever found it at the edge of a blade. And that he would never again forget that was all that he could hope for.

FIN.

series: the daily show, pairing: jon/stephen, author: emotionalwench, series: the colbert report, rating: nc-17

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