Commentary to part 1 of 40 Days and 40 Nights
For c_quinn
Title: 40 Days and 40 Nights Pt. 1
Rating: PG this chapter
Pairing: Steve (The Second Coming)/Sam (Reaper)
Summary: A crossover that I felt appropriate given the characters's circumstances. The whole fic is finished. Set after the Reaper season 1 finale. Sam encounters a mysterious stranger on the road.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
I don't know if I can manage commenting this whole fic, but it's a start as Claude said. Wait, wrong fandom. And that's the other thing. For some reason I had to remind myself constantly that this wasn't Plaude. I don't know how many times I thought the name "Peter" instead of "Sam".
“Dude, I think he’s dead.”
Whispers, shadows, flitting, flickering, la la laing in his head and everything’s so cheery bright.
“No, he’s not. He’s just sleeping.”
“More like passed out. But why is he smiling?”
“He’s dreaming of the three sweet hookers he met in Vegas. Which is where we should be, by the way. Not still hanging around this dumpy, old forest.”
“Do you think we should help him? He might be homeless.”
One of my very, very few three way dialogues to date. And without mentioning who's saying what, on top of that. I was depending on the particular tone of the charater voices to help me with that. Hopefully it worked.
He likes this voice. It’s a joyful voice, sodden in worry and merciless doubt at the moment, but Steve can taste the warm comfort cocooned inside.
“Okay, this is what we’ll do. We’ll leave him a couple of bucks and half my sandwich and then we’ll hit the road. How about that? That works, right?”
“Sock.”
“What? Since when do you have such an interest in helping hobos, anyway?”
“I just don’t think we should leave him here like this. He could get attacked by some animal. And don’t you think there’s something odd about his smile?”
“Yeah, it’s like too happy. Almost beatific.”
“Beau-what?”
“Beatific. You know, blissful.”
“Where the hell did you learn that fancy word?”
“Uh, high school.”
Some petty name calling ensued, but Steve couldn’t be bothered to pay attention when the boy with the pretty voice crouched down beside him, a hand hovering over his shoulder and Steve knew his face before he opened his eyes. Startled sapphire gaped at him in wonder and trepidation, the latter sending a flash of dismay through Steve, who already trusted the lad even as the horrid truth coalesced and screamed in his head like falling jigsaw pieces twisting themselves into a lurid image, but that wasn’t him, not this boy, not this fresh soul, never mind where the flesh and bone came from. He looked up at him and smiled.
Sam.
I wen back and forth a bit over how to depict Steve's knowledge acquiring process. In the end I decided to simply let it flow out and not worry overmuch.
||||
Something was off about this man. Not wrong exactly, just.... off. Bizarre. He didn’t seem stable. Smiling all the time, eating his food so slowly even though he claimed to be starving, sneaking glances at Sam that made him feel like a moth was tickling at his insides. All alone in the woods, 5 miles from the closest town, an Englishman with no passport and no money except for a single dollar, 3 pounds and 42 cents. Pence.
Penny singular; pence plural. I used to wonder when I was a kid why the American coin had two names, then realized (duh) that it's the same as with pesos (dollars) and pesetas (quarters) in PR.
And a gum wrapper from a company he’d never heard of before. British, obviously. No jacket even though it still got cold at night and it was barely past 9 in the morning now, which meant that he spent the night outside, trudging through the forest or sleeping or whatever. Nothing more than a light, blue shirt and jeans covered his slim frame, and even the jeans were torn at his left knee, letting in a considerable draft. Why didn’t he have warmer clothes? How did he get here? Why was he in the middle of nowhere Washington State to begin with?
Yet he kept on smiling. And not like a constant, frozen politician’s smile, either, just a warm, “all’s right with the world, it’s going to be okay” goofy grin.
Hee. I love CE's goofy grins so much.
It was freaking him out. The stranger, Steve, munched on a double cheeseburger, dabbing with a napkin at the ketchup catching on his bottom lip, grabbing the occasional fry and all through that he just kept on smiling as if oxygen were about to run out and only the person who smiled the longest would get a bigger share of the dregs. Once Sam thought he saw him wink at him. but no. He couldn’t have winked. Why would he wink? He had absolutely no reason to wink. Maybe it was a twitch. A nervous tick or a bug in his eye or a hallucination or maybe Sam was just loosing his marbles.
Oh God, what if it was a soul? Or a demon? Oh shit, it was a demon. A soul wouldn’t go after him, it worked the other way around. but a demon... The remnants of the new rebellion against the Devil were after him, plotting to kill him and they blended right in with humans. You couldn’t tell the difference until it was too late. Horns. There must be horns somewhere on his smooth and completely normal looking forehead. Ah, but of course it looks normal. It’s all makeup and smokes and mirrors and creepy demon powers masking the wicked darkness from hapless innocents like him until it was too late and he became demon dinner. But then, why wasn’t he already demon dinner? Why not kill them in the forest where it would have been so easy and witness-free? Was he waiting for backup? More demon buddies to arrive and share the spoils and... gulp... meat?
Poor paranoid Sam. But justifiably so.
“So how did you get out here all the way from Seattle?” Ben asked, startling Sam out of a garish nightmare of small town massacres and flying body parts. “You must have had a car at some point, right?”
“I got a ride.”
“From who?” Sock this time and Sam honed his nonexistent lie detecting skills to sniff out Steve’s nefarious ploy.
“Some random driver.” Steve shrugged, stuffing another fry into his mouth.
“You hitchhiked?” Sam frowned, instantly alert.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?”
“Maybe. A month ago I might have been worried, but now it doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Curious. Very curious. Almost too curious. The kind of curious that always accompanied something malignant springing out of the shadows and attacking the clueless bystanders, possibly with very sharp, scary teeth.
“Besides,” Steve continued, “I’m sitting here with you, aren’t I? Perfect strangers. Faraway place. And you’re not going to drag me out back and slit my throat, right?”
The three of them erupted in a chorus of “no”s and “of course not”s, yet Sam was quietly searching for his pocket knife and secretly thinking, “maybe yes.”
“I can’t guarantee that one of those fancy coins won’t disappear, though,” Sock said and Sam glared at him (“don’t put him on his guard!”), but Steve just grinned (of course), seeming genuinely amused by Sock’s tactless manner.
“You can have one if you want.”
“No,” Sam shook his head. “We don’t want to take your money.”
That’s devil money. It was probably smothered in curses that would make their tongues swell in their mouths and their skin itch until they bled or perhaps even make their eyeballs explode. But Steve had already put down his burger and was reaching inside his jeans pocket.
“It’s fine. A thank you for the meal. It’s not like I can use it here, anyway.”
“But when you get back home you’ll need it.”
“It’s just a pound.”
The thick, golden coin thumped on the table between them. It landed back-face up so that a griffin smirked up at them, wings stretched out ready to take flight, long and webbed like a demon’s forked tongue reaching out to grab some innocent victim and rip him apart into tiny, screaming Reaper pieces.
Pounds come with so many designs on them. Once a long time ago, I considered collecting them all, but soon realized that it was too much money. I had one of these on my desk when I wrote this scene and thought it was perfect for it.
Sam gripped his pocket knife, waiting for the tell tale flare of crimson red in Steve’s eyes, but his eyes were blue, not blue-white flames of hellfire blue, not cold, serial killer blue, just warm, sunny sky blue, comforting and pleasing. Sam’s heart squeezed in his chest, growing light as every drop of tension and ill will drained from his body, and he felt peace. Pure, loving peace swelled in his soul, sweeping away all fear, doubt and anger. He floated through a crystal cloud, the universe stretching out to infinity around him, light and heat rushing in a burst of cosmic energy and he understood that there was nothing evil about the man sitting in front of him. The opposite, in fact. Just the exact opposite.
Then he crashed, smashing back into his common body, gasping, and bit the corner of his mouth to hide the gulping breaths straining in his throat before Sock and Ben noticed, but he couldn’t stop gaping at Steve. Divine. An angel? Another angel named Steve? He had to be. But could angels share names? They must be able to, because this obviously wasn’t the same Steve with a new appearance and a renewed love of messing with his mind by sending him cryptic messages on wall stains. Not enough flamboyance.
Oh, Steve. And the other Steve. Oddly, I didn-t notice when I started brainstroming this that there are two Steves, yet now it amuses me to no end.
So who was this? And why was he helping Sam? If he was helping Sam. There was no telling yet what he was doing apart from eating through $5.54 worth of junk food, and did angels need to eat anyway? Maybe they just liked it. But a crappy roadside cheeseburger?
When they finished their meal, he asked Steve to come with them, ignoring the bewildered looks of his friends, knowing full well that he’d better come up with some plausible explanation fast that didn’t involve traveling through the reaches of space and time in an existential trance. But Steve accepted, which was the important thing, and this time it was Sam who smiled.
Why I wrote this: Sam is the son of the Devil. Steve is the son of God. It had to happen. It just had to. It's that simple.
Title: 40 Days and 40 Nights Pt. 1
Rating: PG this chapter
Pairing: Steve (The Second Coming)/Sam (Reaper)
Summary: A crossover that I felt appropriate given the characters's circumstances. The whole fic is finished. Set after the Reaper season 1 finale. Sam encounters a mysterious stranger on the road.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
I don't know if I can manage commenting this whole fic, but it's a start as Claude said. Wait, wrong fandom. And that's the other thing. For some reason I had to remind myself constantly that this wasn't Plaude. I don't know how many times I thought the name "Peter" instead of "Sam".
“Dude, I think he’s dead.”
Whispers, shadows, flitting, flickering, la la laing in his head and everything’s so cheery bright.
“No, he’s not. He’s just sleeping.”
“More like passed out. But why is he smiling?”
“He’s dreaming of the three sweet hookers he met in Vegas. Which is where we should be, by the way. Not still hanging around this dumpy, old forest.”
“Do you think we should help him? He might be homeless.”
One of my very, very few three way dialogues to date. And without mentioning who's saying what, on top of that. I was depending on the particular tone of the charater voices to help me with that. Hopefully it worked.
He likes this voice. It’s a joyful voice, sodden in worry and merciless doubt at the moment, but Steve can taste the warm comfort cocooned inside.
“Okay, this is what we’ll do. We’ll leave him a couple of bucks and half my sandwich and then we’ll hit the road. How about that? That works, right?”
“Sock.”
“What? Since when do you have such an interest in helping hobos, anyway?”
“I just don’t think we should leave him here like this. He could get attacked by some animal. And don’t you think there’s something odd about his smile?”
“Yeah, it’s like too happy. Almost beatific.”
“Beau-what?”
“Beatific. You know, blissful.”
“Where the hell did you learn that fancy word?”
“Uh, high school.”
Some petty name calling ensued, but Steve couldn’t be bothered to pay attention when the boy with the pretty voice crouched down beside him, a hand hovering over his shoulder and Steve knew his face before he opened his eyes. Startled sapphire gaped at him in wonder and trepidation, the latter sending a flash of dismay through Steve, who already trusted the lad even as the horrid truth coalesced and screamed in his head like falling jigsaw pieces twisting themselves into a lurid image, but that wasn’t him, not this boy, not this fresh soul, never mind where the flesh and bone came from. He looked up at him and smiled.
Sam.
I wen back and forth a bit over how to depict Steve's knowledge acquiring process. In the end I decided to simply let it flow out and not worry overmuch.
||||
Something was off about this man. Not wrong exactly, just.... off. Bizarre. He didn’t seem stable. Smiling all the time, eating his food so slowly even though he claimed to be starving, sneaking glances at Sam that made him feel like a moth was tickling at his insides. All alone in the woods, 5 miles from the closest town, an Englishman with no passport and no money except for a single dollar, 3 pounds and 42 cents. Pence.
Penny singular; pence plural. I used to wonder when I was a kid why the American coin had two names, then realized (duh) that it's the same as with pesos (dollars) and pesetas (quarters) in PR.
And a gum wrapper from a company he’d never heard of before. British, obviously. No jacket even though it still got cold at night and it was barely past 9 in the morning now, which meant that he spent the night outside, trudging through the forest or sleeping or whatever. Nothing more than a light, blue shirt and jeans covered his slim frame, and even the jeans were torn at his left knee, letting in a considerable draft. Why didn’t he have warmer clothes? How did he get here? Why was he in the middle of nowhere Washington State to begin with?
Yet he kept on smiling. And not like a constant, frozen politician’s smile, either, just a warm, “all’s right with the world, it’s going to be okay” goofy grin.
Hee. I love CE's goofy grins so much.
It was freaking him out. The stranger, Steve, munched on a double cheeseburger, dabbing with a napkin at the ketchup catching on his bottom lip, grabbing the occasional fry and all through that he just kept on smiling as if oxygen were about to run out and only the person who smiled the longest would get a bigger share of the dregs. Once Sam thought he saw him wink at him. but no. He couldn’t have winked. Why would he wink? He had absolutely no reason to wink. Maybe it was a twitch. A nervous tick or a bug in his eye or a hallucination or maybe Sam was just loosing his marbles.
Oh God, what if it was a soul? Or a demon? Oh shit, it was a demon. A soul wouldn’t go after him, it worked the other way around. but a demon... The remnants of the new rebellion against the Devil were after him, plotting to kill him and they blended right in with humans. You couldn’t tell the difference until it was too late. Horns. There must be horns somewhere on his smooth and completely normal looking forehead. Ah, but of course it looks normal. It’s all makeup and smokes and mirrors and creepy demon powers masking the wicked darkness from hapless innocents like him until it was too late and he became demon dinner. But then, why wasn’t he already demon dinner? Why not kill them in the forest where it would have been so easy and witness-free? Was he waiting for backup? More demon buddies to arrive and share the spoils and... gulp... meat?
Poor paranoid Sam. But justifiably so.
“So how did you get out here all the way from Seattle?” Ben asked, startling Sam out of a garish nightmare of small town massacres and flying body parts. “You must have had a car at some point, right?”
“I got a ride.”
“From who?” Sock this time and Sam honed his nonexistent lie detecting skills to sniff out Steve’s nefarious ploy.
“Some random driver.” Steve shrugged, stuffing another fry into his mouth.
“You hitchhiked?” Sam frowned, instantly alert.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?”
“Maybe. A month ago I might have been worried, but now it doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Curious. Very curious. Almost too curious. The kind of curious that always accompanied something malignant springing out of the shadows and attacking the clueless bystanders, possibly with very sharp, scary teeth.
“Besides,” Steve continued, “I’m sitting here with you, aren’t I? Perfect strangers. Faraway place. And you’re not going to drag me out back and slit my throat, right?”
The three of them erupted in a chorus of “no”s and “of course not”s, yet Sam was quietly searching for his pocket knife and secretly thinking, “maybe yes.”
“I can’t guarantee that one of those fancy coins won’t disappear, though,” Sock said and Sam glared at him (“don’t put him on his guard!”), but Steve just grinned (of course), seeming genuinely amused by Sock’s tactless manner.
“You can have one if you want.”
“No,” Sam shook his head. “We don’t want to take your money.”
That’s devil money. It was probably smothered in curses that would make their tongues swell in their mouths and their skin itch until they bled or perhaps even make their eyeballs explode. But Steve had already put down his burger and was reaching inside his jeans pocket.
“It’s fine. A thank you for the meal. It’s not like I can use it here, anyway.”
“But when you get back home you’ll need it.”
“It’s just a pound.”
The thick, golden coin thumped on the table between them. It landed back-face up so that a griffin smirked up at them, wings stretched out ready to take flight, long and webbed like a demon’s forked tongue reaching out to grab some innocent victim and rip him apart into tiny, screaming Reaper pieces.
Pounds come with so many designs on them. Once a long time ago, I considered collecting them all, but soon realized that it was too much money. I had one of these on my desk when I wrote this scene and thought it was perfect for it.
Sam gripped his pocket knife, waiting for the tell tale flare of crimson red in Steve’s eyes, but his eyes were blue, not blue-white flames of hellfire blue, not cold, serial killer blue, just warm, sunny sky blue, comforting and pleasing. Sam’s heart squeezed in his chest, growing light as every drop of tension and ill will drained from his body, and he felt peace. Pure, loving peace swelled in his soul, sweeping away all fear, doubt and anger. He floated through a crystal cloud, the universe stretching out to infinity around him, light and heat rushing in a burst of cosmic energy and he understood that there was nothing evil about the man sitting in front of him. The opposite, in fact. Just the exact opposite.
Then he crashed, smashing back into his common body, gasping, and bit the corner of his mouth to hide the gulping breaths straining in his throat before Sock and Ben noticed, but he couldn’t stop gaping at Steve. Divine. An angel? Another angel named Steve? He had to be. But could angels share names? They must be able to, because this obviously wasn’t the same Steve with a new appearance and a renewed love of messing with his mind by sending him cryptic messages on wall stains. Not enough flamboyance.
Oh, Steve. And the other Steve. Oddly, I didn-t notice when I started brainstroming this that there are two Steves, yet now it amuses me to no end.
So who was this? And why was he helping Sam? If he was helping Sam. There was no telling yet what he was doing apart from eating through $5.54 worth of junk food, and did angels need to eat anyway? Maybe they just liked it. But a crappy roadside cheeseburger?
When they finished their meal, he asked Steve to come with them, ignoring the bewildered looks of his friends, knowing full well that he’d better come up with some plausible explanation fast that didn’t involve traveling through the reaches of space and time in an existential trance. But Steve accepted, which was the important thing, and this time it was Sam who smiled.
Why I wrote this: Sam is the son of the Devil. Steve is the son of God. It had to happen. It just had to. It's that simple.