Justin and Gabrielle in a Bottle, Part 6
Here is the next chapter of "Justin and Gabrielle in a Bottle." In the last chapter, Callisto, Xena's arch-enemy, tried to get the bottle, but while Callisto was knocking Brian and Xena unconsious and wrecking Kinnetik, Cynthia grabbed the bottle and ran off, proving once again that cunning and a really hot executive assistant will win out over brute force every time.
This is partly based on a plot bunny from
sixpackokittens and I wrote it for the qaf_crackfic commmunity, and it's still dedicated to my beta,
gmta_nz, and to my banner goddess
roc_abs (KT), even though they have BEGGED ME to stop telling people that.
I take full legal and social and ethical and moral responsibility for this whole travesty. Really. I'm so ashamed. And yet, it's given me the opportunity to actually use the phrase "amorphous cloud" in a sentence, so I can't regret it entirely.
No sacred bonds of eternal love were broken in the writing of this fiction, and the bottle’s ok for now too, but poor sweet little Justin’s starting to break and it’s really very sad.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Justin and Gabrielle in a Bottle, Part 6
by Xie
Brian came to with a light shining in his eyes. He put up his hand to shield them, and a male voice urged him to hold still and wait for the paramedics. Next to him, Xena groaned.
The Kinnetik conference room was full of police photographing the broken furniture, walls, and windows. Xena was still unconscious, and the police officer who’d spoken to him had a firm hand on his shoulder, preventing him from getting up. Not firm enough, though, when Brian remembered Justin. It would have taken a lot more than one cop to stop him from leaping to his feet to see if the bottle was still there.
When he saw it was gone, he felt a moment of dry-mouthed terror. He heard a sound from below him, and he looked down and saw a wild-eyed Xena pushing aside the officer attempting to hold her back, struggling to get to her feet. “It’s gone,” he told her dully. Their eyes met for a moment. Then hers closed again.
Brian let himself be examined by the EMTs, but refused to be taken to the hospital. Xena let them bandage her wrist and look into her eyes, but finally stood up and stalked away from the hovering paramedics, and made eye contact with Brian. And suddenly it struck him: Where was Cynthia? He was about to ask that out loud, when Xena gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. He snapped his mouth shut and looked at the door and back at her.
“So, Brian. It looks like we meet again under interesting circumstances.”
Brian closed his eyes for just a second, then looked without expression at the man in the doorway: Police Chief Stockwell. “Jim. I heard you were back.”
The older man smiled, a bitter gleam in his eyes. “Yes, as a police officer I had previously not fully appreciated the fine work done by the dedicated criminal defense lawyers of the world, but now that the charges against me were dismissed for lack of evidence, I have a whole new outlook on the virtues of our modern criminal justice system.”
Brian snorted. “In other words, some sleazy lawyer got you off.” Stockwell’s hiring of high profile lawyer Bunny Happenshatz had been in all the papers and all over the TV news. She’d brought in a flashy LA PR firm to handle the case publicity - brilliantly, if face time on CNN and Fox News were any indication. He’d watched their guest appearance on Larry King Live only two nights before the bottle had appeared on his conference table.
Stockwell just smiled again. “I’ll leave the spin to you. The upshot of it is, after the case was thrown out, the merest threat of a massive civil lawsuit against the City of Pittsburgh and our beloved Mayor is all it took to get me reinstated as police chief.”
Stockwell looked blandly at Brian. “Any idea what they were after?” Brian’s face didn’t move, but he knew at that moment that Stockwell knew more than he was letting on. He felt Xena shift next to him; she’d been silent so far, just watching the two men spar. Now she spoke.
“I have no idea, Brian and I were just meeting here to discuss some work I’m doing for him on renovations, when a crazy woman burst in here and started wrecking the place. I think,” added the tall brunette, “she must have been on drugs.”
Stockwell shot a riveting glance at Xena, but she kept her face blank and met his eyes steadily with her blue ones.
Xena went on to explain she was Brian’s architect, and after a while, the police told them both they could go. They hesitated outside, and Brian spoke first. “They’ll follow us.” Xena nodded.
“I’ll go home, you go home, then meet me at the 24-hour diner near PIFA in an hour, do you know where I mean?” Brian agreed, and they both got into their cars and drove home.
Brian was fairly sure no one saw him leaving the loft, and when he got to the restaurant, Xena was sitting in the back. He quickly joined her.
“Cynthia. She must have taken the bottle.” The tall architect spoke with such certainty that Brian felt the first real hope he’d had since he saw the bottle was gone. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“Why hasn’t she called me?” He hadn’t tried calling her, afraid the cops would find a way to monitor his cell. Xena shook her head.
“I don’t know. But we have to find her.”
They took Xena’s car and parked several blocks from Cynthia’s, but there was no sign of anyone following them. She answered when he rang her bell, and she buzzed them up immediately. When she answered the door, she had the bottle in her hands. Brian almost grabbed it from her, but just went into her condo when she stepped aside to let them in.
They went into the living room, and Cynthia set the bottle on the coffee table. She started to say something, when the bottle began to glow and the stopper slowly worked itself out and mist began to ooze out of the top, slowly at first.
The moment Brian realized what was happening, his heart leapt into his throat. Xena stood beside him, hands clenched at her side. The mist poured out of the bottle and separated into two columns, just like before. And just like before, each amorphous cloud coalesced into the shape of a person, and then hardened into the naked figures of Justin and Gabrielle.
This time, Justin didn’t faint, but he staggered and Brian caught him in his arms. The boy looked pale and disoriented, and Brian simply picked him up and sat down heavily with him on Cynthia’s sofa, feeling him warm and real and alive against him. He pressed his forehead to the boy’s, and held on tight. Justin’s arms twined around Brian’s neck. Neither spoke.
Gabrielle recovered almost instantly from the transformation, and when she saw Xena, she took a step towards her. This time Xena met her, pulling the blonde up into a fierce embrace and kissing her passionately. Gabrielle pulled back and looked at Xena, shocked.
“You remember,” she said, breathless with wonder.
Xena bent down and pressed her forehead to the blonde’s. “I remember,” she said quietly. “I remember everything, Gabrielle.”
“Will someone, anyone,” said Cynthia piteously, “tell me what the fucking hell is going on?”
Brian lifted his head from Justin’s neck, and looked at Cynthia. “I’d tell you if I fucking knew.” He looked at Xena and Gabrielle.
Xena shook her head. “I have no idea, other than the fact that Callisto and I are old enemies, and Gabrielle and I are… old friends.”
The blonde smiled. “A little more than friends,” she almost whispered.
Xena looked down at her and her blue eyes softened. “More than friends,” she agreed.
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I get it, everyone is SO IN LOVE. Can we please figure out what’s happening here? People are coming out of bottles, a crazy blonde woman is trying to kill you, and now STOCKWELL is involved?”
Brian nodded glumly. “Our old friend Jim, back to haunt us.”
Justin flinched. “Jim? And a crazy blonde woman named Callisto?”
Brian shifted the boy on his lap and looked into his deep blue eyes. “Yes, what do you know about Stockwell…?” Then he remembered the disjointed story Justin had told him earlier, about being held captive by a man named Jim, and a crazy blonde woman who had called him “Chief.” He felt sick.
“Justin… what happened to you? How did you get into that bottle?”
The blond boy shivered in Brian’s arms, and the older man held him closer. Justin pushed his face into Brian’s neck and said, “I told you, I can hardly remember anything. I remember I was dancing, and there were lights and colors and glitter, and I felt dizzy and sick. Then I woke up and I was in a room… on a bed, in just my underpants. And this man named Jim was there, and the woman he called Callisto, and they… they… asked me stuff, how old I was and, ummm, if I was…” the boy blushed, but went on when Brian smiled encouragingly at him, “a, a virgin. And I don’t really remember too much else, except that I woke up in the bottle, without anything on, and Gabrielle,” he glared over at the blonde, “was trying to KILL ME.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was trying to defend myself.” She looked at the frail, naked blond in Brian’s arms. “I hadn’t actually gotten a good look at you yet.”
Brian felt Justin tense up in his arms, but before the boy could defend himself, he interrupted. “But Justin, how did you get in the bottle?” The boy shook his head.
“I have no idea. I just woke up there.”
Gabrielle nodded. “I’ve never remembered how I got in the bottle either. And each time I’m released, or go back, it’s the same. I feel sick to my stomach, I sort of pass out, and I wake up in the bottle or in the world. I’ve gotten more used to it, so it doesn’t hit me as hard as it did Justin. I really don’t even know how long I’ve been in there.” She turned to Xena. “How long has it been?”
Xena reflected for a moment. “Gabrielle, I think it’s been … more than two thousand years.”
The blonde sat down abruptly on the floor and looked up at Xena, stunned. “TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”
“Or more.” Brian, Cynthia, and Justin were all staring open-mouthed. Although once you’ve seen people coming out of a bottle in a cloud of mist, finding out one of them is over 2000 years old shouldn’t be a shock.
“And I have a fairly good idea,” continued the tall brunette, "what’s going on here. And it’s not good.”
“If Callisto’s involved,” said Gabrielle darkly, “that’s pretty much a given.”
Brian felt Justin shiver in his arms again. “She’s nuts,” the blond boy said bluntly. The other four nodded.
“I agree with you,” said Xena. “She’s completely and utterly insane. She had a … rough childhood.” Gabrielle snorted. But Xena went on. “But she’s made her own choices since then, and nearly all of them mean trouble, death, and suffering for anyone in her path. I’ve tried to stop her a hundred times, and she just… keeps… coming… back.”
“What does she want with Justin?” Brian had to know.
“If this bottle’s what I think it is, and Callisto’s doing what I think she is, and Stockwell is doing what I think he is, then what they need is a virgin.”
Justin lifted his head from Brian’s shoulder, and his blue eyes met the older man’s hazel ones. “Justin might not be… exactly… a virgin anymore.”
“Not a virgin? Jesus, Brian, you had him what, an hour?” It was Cynthia.
Justin blushed and buried his face in Brian’s neck again. Brian just shrugged.
More to come. Much much more. I’m mad, mad I tell you. In fact... it's here.
This is partly based on a plot bunny from
sixpackokittens and I wrote it for the qaf_crackfic commmunity, and it's still dedicated to my beta,
gmta_nz, and to my banner goddess
roc_abs (KT), even though they have BEGGED ME to stop telling people that.
I take full legal and social and ethical and moral responsibility for this whole travesty. Really. I'm so ashamed. And yet, it's given me the opportunity to actually use the phrase "amorphous cloud" in a sentence, so I can't regret it entirely.
No sacred bonds of eternal love were broken in the writing of this fiction, and the bottle’s ok for now too, but poor sweet little Justin’s starting to break and it’s really very sad.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Justin and Gabrielle in a Bottle, Part 6
by Xie
Brian came to with a light shining in his eyes. He put up his hand to shield them, and a male voice urged him to hold still and wait for the paramedics. Next to him, Xena groaned.
The Kinnetik conference room was full of police photographing the broken furniture, walls, and windows. Xena was still unconscious, and the police officer who’d spoken to him had a firm hand on his shoulder, preventing him from getting up. Not firm enough, though, when Brian remembered Justin. It would have taken a lot more than one cop to stop him from leaping to his feet to see if the bottle was still there.
When he saw it was gone, he felt a moment of dry-mouthed terror. He heard a sound from below him, and he looked down and saw a wild-eyed Xena pushing aside the officer attempting to hold her back, struggling to get to her feet. “It’s gone,” he told her dully. Their eyes met for a moment. Then hers closed again.
Brian let himself be examined by the EMTs, but refused to be taken to the hospital. Xena let them bandage her wrist and look into her eyes, but finally stood up and stalked away from the hovering paramedics, and made eye contact with Brian. And suddenly it struck him: Where was Cynthia? He was about to ask that out loud, when Xena gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. He snapped his mouth shut and looked at the door and back at her.
“So, Brian. It looks like we meet again under interesting circumstances.”
Brian closed his eyes for just a second, then looked without expression at the man in the doorway: Police Chief Stockwell. “Jim. I heard you were back.”
The older man smiled, a bitter gleam in his eyes. “Yes, as a police officer I had previously not fully appreciated the fine work done by the dedicated criminal defense lawyers of the world, but now that the charges against me were dismissed for lack of evidence, I have a whole new outlook on the virtues of our modern criminal justice system.”
Brian snorted. “In other words, some sleazy lawyer got you off.” Stockwell’s hiring of high profile lawyer Bunny Happenshatz had been in all the papers and all over the TV news. She’d brought in a flashy LA PR firm to handle the case publicity - brilliantly, if face time on CNN and Fox News were any indication. He’d watched their guest appearance on Larry King Live only two nights before the bottle had appeared on his conference table.
Stockwell just smiled again. “I’ll leave the spin to you. The upshot of it is, after the case was thrown out, the merest threat of a massive civil lawsuit against the City of Pittsburgh and our beloved Mayor is all it took to get me reinstated as police chief.”
Stockwell looked blandly at Brian. “Any idea what they were after?” Brian’s face didn’t move, but he knew at that moment that Stockwell knew more than he was letting on. He felt Xena shift next to him; she’d been silent so far, just watching the two men spar. Now she spoke.
“I have no idea, Brian and I were just meeting here to discuss some work I’m doing for him on renovations, when a crazy woman burst in here and started wrecking the place. I think,” added the tall brunette, “she must have been on drugs.”
Stockwell shot a riveting glance at Xena, but she kept her face blank and met his eyes steadily with her blue ones.
Xena went on to explain she was Brian’s architect, and after a while, the police told them both they could go. They hesitated outside, and Brian spoke first. “They’ll follow us.” Xena nodded.
“I’ll go home, you go home, then meet me at the 24-hour diner near PIFA in an hour, do you know where I mean?” Brian agreed, and they both got into their cars and drove home.
Brian was fairly sure no one saw him leaving the loft, and when he got to the restaurant, Xena was sitting in the back. He quickly joined her.
“Cynthia. She must have taken the bottle.” The tall architect spoke with such certainty that Brian felt the first real hope he’d had since he saw the bottle was gone. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“Why hasn’t she called me?” He hadn’t tried calling her, afraid the cops would find a way to monitor his cell. Xena shook her head.
“I don’t know. But we have to find her.”
They took Xena’s car and parked several blocks from Cynthia’s, but there was no sign of anyone following them. She answered when he rang her bell, and she buzzed them up immediately. When she answered the door, she had the bottle in her hands. Brian almost grabbed it from her, but just went into her condo when she stepped aside to let them in.
They went into the living room, and Cynthia set the bottle on the coffee table. She started to say something, when the bottle began to glow and the stopper slowly worked itself out and mist began to ooze out of the top, slowly at first.
The moment Brian realized what was happening, his heart leapt into his throat. Xena stood beside him, hands clenched at her side. The mist poured out of the bottle and separated into two columns, just like before. And just like before, each amorphous cloud coalesced into the shape of a person, and then hardened into the naked figures of Justin and Gabrielle.
This time, Justin didn’t faint, but he staggered and Brian caught him in his arms. The boy looked pale and disoriented, and Brian simply picked him up and sat down heavily with him on Cynthia’s sofa, feeling him warm and real and alive against him. He pressed his forehead to the boy’s, and held on tight. Justin’s arms twined around Brian’s neck. Neither spoke.
Gabrielle recovered almost instantly from the transformation, and when she saw Xena, she took a step towards her. This time Xena met her, pulling the blonde up into a fierce embrace and kissing her passionately. Gabrielle pulled back and looked at Xena, shocked.
“You remember,” she said, breathless with wonder.
Xena bent down and pressed her forehead to the blonde’s. “I remember,” she said quietly. “I remember everything, Gabrielle.”
“Will someone, anyone,” said Cynthia piteously, “tell me what the fucking hell is going on?”
Brian lifted his head from Justin’s neck, and looked at Cynthia. “I’d tell you if I fucking knew.” He looked at Xena and Gabrielle.
Xena shook her head. “I have no idea, other than the fact that Callisto and I are old enemies, and Gabrielle and I are… old friends.”
The blonde smiled. “A little more than friends,” she almost whispered.
Xena looked down at her and her blue eyes softened. “More than friends,” she agreed.
Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I get it, everyone is SO IN LOVE. Can we please figure out what’s happening here? People are coming out of bottles, a crazy blonde woman is trying to kill you, and now STOCKWELL is involved?”
Brian nodded glumly. “Our old friend Jim, back to haunt us.”
Justin flinched. “Jim? And a crazy blonde woman named Callisto?”
Brian shifted the boy on his lap and looked into his deep blue eyes. “Yes, what do you know about Stockwell…?” Then he remembered the disjointed story Justin had told him earlier, about being held captive by a man named Jim, and a crazy blonde woman who had called him “Chief.” He felt sick.
“Justin… what happened to you? How did you get into that bottle?”
The blond boy shivered in Brian’s arms, and the older man held him closer. Justin pushed his face into Brian’s neck and said, “I told you, I can hardly remember anything. I remember I was dancing, and there were lights and colors and glitter, and I felt dizzy and sick. Then I woke up and I was in a room… on a bed, in just my underpants. And this man named Jim was there, and the woman he called Callisto, and they… they… asked me stuff, how old I was and, ummm, if I was…” the boy blushed, but went on when Brian smiled encouragingly at him, “a, a virgin. And I don’t really remember too much else, except that I woke up in the bottle, without anything on, and Gabrielle,” he glared over at the blonde, “was trying to KILL ME.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was trying to defend myself.” She looked at the frail, naked blond in Brian’s arms. “I hadn’t actually gotten a good look at you yet.”
Brian felt Justin tense up in his arms, but before the boy could defend himself, he interrupted. “But Justin, how did you get in the bottle?” The boy shook his head.
“I have no idea. I just woke up there.”
Gabrielle nodded. “I’ve never remembered how I got in the bottle either. And each time I’m released, or go back, it’s the same. I feel sick to my stomach, I sort of pass out, and I wake up in the bottle or in the world. I’ve gotten more used to it, so it doesn’t hit me as hard as it did Justin. I really don’t even know how long I’ve been in there.” She turned to Xena. “How long has it been?”
Xena reflected for a moment. “Gabrielle, I think it’s been … more than two thousand years.”
The blonde sat down abruptly on the floor and looked up at Xena, stunned. “TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”
“Or more.” Brian, Cynthia, and Justin were all staring open-mouthed. Although once you’ve seen people coming out of a bottle in a cloud of mist, finding out one of them is over 2000 years old shouldn’t be a shock.
“And I have a fairly good idea,” continued the tall brunette, "what’s going on here. And it’s not good.”
“If Callisto’s involved,” said Gabrielle darkly, “that’s pretty much a given.”
Brian felt Justin shiver in his arms again. “She’s nuts,” the blond boy said bluntly. The other four nodded.
“I agree with you,” said Xena. “She’s completely and utterly insane. She had a … rough childhood.” Gabrielle snorted. But Xena went on. “But she’s made her own choices since then, and nearly all of them mean trouble, death, and suffering for anyone in her path. I’ve tried to stop her a hundred times, and she just… keeps… coming… back.”
“What does she want with Justin?” Brian had to know.
“If this bottle’s what I think it is, and Callisto’s doing what I think she is, and Stockwell is doing what I think he is, then what they need is a virgin.”
Justin lifted his head from Brian’s shoulder, and his blue eyes met the older man’s hazel ones. “Justin might not be… exactly… a virgin anymore.”
“Not a virgin? Jesus, Brian, you had him what, an hour?” It was Cynthia.
Justin blushed and buried his face in Brian’s neck again. Brian just shrugged.
More to come. Much much more. I’m mad, mad I tell you. In fact... it's here.