Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
themistoklis) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
qomedy_continuum2009-10-30 01:04 pm
themistoklis) wrote in qomedy_continuum2009-10-30 01:04 pm
Dreaming of Q - Chapter Three
Title: Dreaming of Q
Fandom: Fake News, U.S. politics
Summary: Rahm isn't fitting very well into this place. Things seem off somehow. And Q ("Stephen" Colbert) is finding that this game isn't all he'd expected.
Character/Pairing: "Stephen"/Jon, Rahm Emanuel, Mona Sutphen, David Axelrod, Peter Orszag, Chuck
Rating: PG-13, language
Length: ~3800 words
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Notes: Co-written with the ever excellentdoctorv. Thanks endlessly much to the lovely sirdrakesheir for intense betaing, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sailorptah for proofreading. Star Trek crossover of a sort.
Chapter One | Chapter Two
Chapter 3
Striding through the halls of the West Wing, Rahm felt a distinct drop in the electricity levels. The day before, they'd made his head pound, but today it seemed like whenever he got to the doorway of a room the prickling of the television sets would disappear. By lunchtime he'd started darting in random rooms just to witness the noise of the TV vanish or change when people saw his face.
A thing like that could make a man paranoid.
"Mona," he said, latching onto his Deputy's sleeve in the hallway. They didn't move from the center of the hall, but let traffic split around them. Mona gave him an even look and Rahm jerked his head towards the nearest office. "Why do people keep changing the channel or turning off their TVs when I come in the room?"
"Perhaps you have horrible timing," she said, smiling at him.
Alarm bells went off in his head -- his deputies did not often go around grinning at him. He tightened his grip on Mona's sleeve. "What's going on?"
She took a small breath. "No," she said, and held her hand up before he could respond. "Look, I have very distinct directions about blood pressure. Trust me when I say that there is no major catastrophe, no Republican fuck-up that you need to be paying attention to, no horrifying Democratic misstep that requires your tender love and care."
Rahm scowled. "My blood pressure is fine."
"The same does not hold for everyone around you, Rahm," she said.
"I am going to have a problem if someone doesn't tell me what the hell's going on."
A long moment of silence stretched between them and Rahm put his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket back slightly. A look darted through his Deputy's eyes and she tilted her chin up. He would've been more impressed if she had actually been shorter than him instead of just his height (in heels), so she was staring across her nose at him.
And Rahm Emanuel did not lose staring contests.
"You're going to be late for your meeting," Mona blurted.
Before he could react, she darted around an intern pushing a mail cart and turned down a hall. He stayed in place for another minute, rocking back and forth on his heels until he spotted Axe at the other end of the hallway. Axe's eyes jumped right to Rahm's and Rahm spun on his heel, sprinting through a room of cubicles (there were a few TV screens that flickered when he appeared, but he didn't have time to think about that right then) and down the most roundabout route possible to reach the Oval.
Last night had barely been better than the night before. If he really looked at it, it had probably been worse. No dreams this time -- at least none he could remember -- but he'd tossed and turned enough that he could still feel his leg twitching. Around three, Amy had nudged him and he'd gone to lie down in a guest room.
Pounding down the hall, he ran a hand through his hair. The last things he needed right then were Mona skirting around issues and Axe asking him why he was drinking so much coffee. It would take an extra minute, but he could absolutely get to the Oval if he went around this corner --
Which he did, nearly tripping over his own shoes. Axe's hand shot out and latched onto his elbow, righting him before his face met the carpet.
"Fucking mind reader," Rahm muttered, jerking back.
Axe blinked at him. "What?"
"Nothing," he snapped.
Axe raised his eyebrows and started to speak, but Rahm wasn't about to stand there and be lectured to. He sidestepped the man and turned towards his original course. A sigh from behind him made him grit his teeth. Nobody needed to look after him, nobody needed to make sure he was okay, nobody needed to head him off on runs to the Oval to talk to him without anyone overhearing.
Nobody especially needed to be standing in his way when he tried to get past damn psychic senior advisors.
"Orszag!" he snapped.
He threw his hands out just in time to not trip over the lanky man's feet. Peter blinked wide eyes at him from behind his glasses and made a squeaky, strangled sound as Rahm's hands closed around his sleeves. For one bright moment Rahm held onto him, jaw slack, and Peter's eyes swam. Part of his brain noticed that the man had snapped to attention at the mention of his name, and was still standing at attention, spine straight and shoulders braced.
The rest of his brain was too preoccupied with the fact that Peter was here, under his hands, to make much of the new posture. He grinned and grinned wider when Peter bit his lip.
"You," he said, tightening his grip. "You were at Colbert's yesterday."
The dreams were hard to remember: shapeless and shadowless but most definitely not soundless. There had been color (red, white, and blue) and sound. Loud music and lots of shouting, insistent shouting that almost seemed to be trying to drown itself out.
"I was…" Peter narrowed his eyes, his shoulders slackening slightly. "I was at The Daily Show studio. Jon said to say hi, by the way."
"The Daily Show's studio is Colbert's," Rahm said. "He and Stewart are close -- are you telling me he didn't pop up the entire time you were there? You were gone for the whole day. Missed the morning meeting and everything."
Peter's eyes darted up, above Rahm's face, and back down to meet his eyes. "Ah, sir," he said, swallowing. "Actually it was a very good interview. If you watched -- okay you didn't, that's fine, I thought it was good anyway. I think you should watch it, I think I made an impression on the crowd, they really seemed to respond to me--"
"Peter."
His hands felt strange. Tingling. And the West Wing, which had been too loud all day, too loud yesterday, was suddenly silent compared to… compared to the noise in the back of his head? There was so much electricity here but it was all static and uneven and unpolished. The computers and cell phones and pagers everyone carried buzzed but didn't work, not really, not as well as they could. His hands felt strange, spasms going through his palms.
Wetting his lips, Peter tried to push on. "Jon is really interested in all of this. He wants to know how, well, what we're doing. He wants to know how all of this works. I think it'd be a good idea if more of us went on the show."
They should have an intercom system. Something that went through the whole building, something voice-activated, so they wouldn't have to beat a path through half the building just to find incompetent idiot interns struggling with the fax machine. But how would that work? There were so many voices -- maybe they could have something portable, a single device each of them would carry to connect them to the network…
"I think it'd be good public exposure," Peter said, his voice trailing off.
A hand settled on Rahm's shoulder and he froze, the colors of the hallway suddenly sharpening. He inhaled and relaxed his hands, finger by finger, until a soft murmur from somewhere above his head suggested that Peter take a step back. Peter eased backwards a few inches and rubbed his palm over his jacket, smoothing out the wrinkles Rahm had left in the fabric.
Rahm swallowed. "Talk to Mona. About getting more people on the show. Stewart is … Stewart is good. But not that knucklefuck Col -- not the one after him. I'll get Robert to get me the tape of your interview."
"It's … online," Peter started, cutting off abruptly at a cool look Rahm could just feel shooting over his shoulder.
Even if it was online, there had to be an actual tape. A physical tape. Probably more than one, maybe even DVDs, because otherwise why would everyone be keeping him away from the TV? He swallowed and rested his hand, four and a half fingers, on his hip. An interview with Jon fucking Stewart, that was no reason to keep him away from the TV. Unless they'd set the tape to record for the entire eleven o'clock hour, and then, well, maybe Mona did have a reason to be worried about blood pressure.
"Go on to the meeting and tell them we'll be there in a minute," Axe said.
His voice was soft enough they shouldn't have been able to hear it. But Peter nodded, shoulders at attention again, before he slumped back to his normal posture and spun on his heel, nearly skipping down the hallway. As soon as he was out of sight, Axe's hand moved to Rahm's back and he gave a gentle push, turning him around.
Rahm rubbed a hand over his face. "Fuck this shit," he muttered.
"You've been a little out of it all day," Axe said, squeezing his arm before letting his hand drop to his side. "Maybe we can take another loop around the communications pen before going into the Oval."
"I just haven't been sleeping."
"You sleep?"
"Ha. Ha."
Axe smiled, slowly, and stuck his hands in his pockets. This was the slowest Rahm had ever walked down a hallway, at least not without one of his kids in tow. The slow, swooping pace seemed perfectly suited to Axe's legs, though, his shoes settled entirely into the steps.
After a while, when there was no one else in the hallway: "I woke Amy last night."
Rahm's hands felt strange.
---
"Tell me your secret, Stewart!"
The door of Jon's office swung open before him and Stephen stormed through, flicking his wrist to slam it closed behind him again. Jon didn't even look up from his desk. He had a newspaper open and was chewing on the end of a pen, gray eyes focused on the crossword.
Stephen stomped over and slammed his palms down on the desk hard enough to make Jon's pencils and pens rattle in his cup. The man didn't so much as glance at him and Stephen dragged in a breath, looking quickly over the rows and columns Jon's careful capital letters had half-filled out.
Getting the handwriting right had been a particularly nice touch, Stephen thought.
"The answer is wormhole," he said, plucking the pen from Jon's fingers.
Jon finally raised his eyes and smiled, slowly, while Stephen scribbled in the answer to ten down without bothering to spin the paper at all. But Jon must've been too distracted with Stephen to notice. He didn't even move when Stephen tossed the pen down and stood up, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I wasn't on that one yet," Jon said, after a beat. "But thanks."
"I saw your interview."
Though saw wasn't exactly the right word. Unfortunately there wasn't a good verb in twenty-first century English to combine raged, frothed, cursed, and briefly rearranged the structure of the Atlantic ocean so that Fox was now reporting a surge in sudden Bermuda Triangle cases. So he went with saw. Jon would understand saw, anyway.
The look on his face sure seemed to say so, at least. Wide eyes and a puzzled little smile. "I thought I managed to not make a complete idiot out of myself," he said.
"What's your secret?" Stephen demanded.
Jon grinned. "A lot of pre-show studying, my friend."
Ignoring him, Stephen continued, "How do you get all the people I want to come on your second-rate, hack news show?"
"Well I--"
"It's some kind of Jew voodoo, isn't it?"
Rolling his eyes, Jon smiled with indulgent amusement. "Yes, Stephen," he said ironically, resting his chin on his hand. "I'm brainwashing Cabinet members."
"I knew it!" Stephen paused then, peering at the man suspiciously. "Wait, was that sarcasm?"
"I've been taking lessons from Scarborough."
Huffing indignantly, Stephen dropped into the chair in front of Jon's desk. "The worst part is that you don't even take advantage of it! You're always so nice to your guests. You're too friendly. You never nail 'em!" He emphasized his last sentence by smacking a fist into his palm.
"Hey now, what I get up to in the Green Room with my guests isn't anyone's business," Jon said with mock sternness, a grin tugging at his mouth. "I do not kiss and tell, sir."
Horrified jealousy flooded through Stephen before he realized the stupid, pale, insignificant shadow of a man pretending to be his closest friend and confidant was joking. "You know what I mean, Jon!" he snapped. "Is it part of your secret liberal agenda to toss softball questions at your Democrat cohorts?!"
"Secret lib--Softball?" The expression on Jon's face was frankly confused. "I grilled Orszag on the budget! I asked John to shorten a segment on a Congressional food fight over Freedom Fries in the House of Representatives cafeteria so we'd have more time to talk economics!"
"So you admit you gave him preferential treatment!"
"I care about this stuff!" Jon protested. "Stephen, I get these guests because I'm willing to have a polite discussion with them instead of shouting them down whenever they say something I don't like. Or putting them On Notice. Yeah I saw that, Stephen. Somehow I don't think Peter will be beating down your door for an interview after that segment."
"Oh, so it's 'Peter' now."
"Did you hear anything I just said? Stephen, you compared the man unfavorably to the Third Reich. If you want Rahm to come on your show you're going to have to back off a bit."
"I--" Stephen froze, mouth hanging open, then shoved himself to his feet, spinning around and stalking a away before spinning back and pointing at Jon. "I didn't say anything about Rahm Emanuel! We were talking about Commander Orszag!"
"Director."
"If I want to call him Grand Czar of Doody-heads, that's my right as an American, dammit! Don't try to impose your elitist ideas of official titles on me, Stewart!"
Raising his hands in surrender, Jon dryly replied, "I wouldn't dream of it, Sir Dr. Colbert."
Stephen sniffed with mollified dignity and ran a hand through his hair, then smoothed a hand down his front, putting himself to rights again. "That's better."
There was a long stretch of silence and that made Stephen uncomfortable. He didn't like silence. Without the comforting brush of the mind of a fellow Q, the silence made him feel alone. Like when he had regained awareness after being injured during the Q War and found one of his senses depleted, muffled....
A soft chuckle startled him from his remembrances and he glanced up to see Jon shaking his head. The man met his eyes and smiled. "Never stop being yourself, Stephen."
"Who else could compare?" Stephen asked, looking bewildered. This human version of Q was just ridiculous sometimes, though there were times when he made about as much sense as the real thing.
"No one, Stephen. No one."
---
The truth was, Jon had been getting all the guests Stephen wanted. Not just OMB Director Peter Orszag, but HHS Secretary Katherine Sebelius, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and some lower level government drone who Stephen couldn't be bothered to remember but who he damn well could have done a better job of interviewing.
Even creating caverns under his desk -- what the hell had humans been thinking when they'd gotten rid of Starbucks? -- couldn't keep him from … sulking. This world, this place, this was his. He'd organized it all, down to the last atom, fit the pieces together in just the right ways.
Now Jon -- this worthless assembly of protons, this shadow given shape, this pathetic imitation of one of the greatest Q he knew (besides himself, of course) -- was strutting around like he owned the place!
The TV on the shelf above the couch was flickering, replaying the worst offenders. When Stephen had decided to watch them again he hadn't bothered turning on the overhead lights, so now he was washed in the glow of The Daily Show's enthusiastic graphics department and Jon's brilliant smile. It … It really had been a brilliant move on his part, getting it that close to Q's. The laugh was his best accomplishment, though. Or maybe it was the eyes…
Stephen pressed a thumb between his lips, touching his nail to his teeth. The couch in his office was grand, though the one in Jon's was comfy in its own way. And the longer this whole thing dragged on, the more he needed to stretch out this body, settle down with shoulders below knees and whatever else it took to pop the knots and kinks out of these muscles and bones.
On the screen, Jon paused mid-sentence, both hands on his desk, to listen to something Sebelius was saying to him. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth and Stephen slid deeper into the couch, pulling his knees up. He didn't care that his shoes were getting dirt on the cushions. Waving his fingers in the air, he watched the screen switch over to Salazar's interview.
How did anyone stand living in a body like this? Crammed in between bones, coiled in flesh. He'd thought the crash of sound and heat during the War had been bad -- and the deafening quiet, the dullness that had followed even worse -- but this. This … isolation. How could they bear to be so isolated from each other?
A cowboy hat. Really. A sour taste crept up the back of his throat and he rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face in the arm of the couch. And the man said he was "fair" with his guests. Last time he checked, Stephen couldn't remember accepting bribes and donning them to the roaring of an overenthusiastic audience included anywhere in the definition of "fair." And Jon had no right to smirk at the camera like that, to wink at the camera like that. Stephen didn't remember fitting so much snark into his plans.
At least after he'd been injured, Q…
He didn't bother raising his head to watch the train wreck that had been the interview with the actor-turned-White-House-liaison. The only good thing about that interview had been how short Jon had cut it. Originally it was supposed to have taken two segments, but at the last minute, before his own taping, Stephen had gotten a call that they were going to do a Toss.
He let the Toss play and shifted onto his back. Something had to be done about this. It wasn't just Jon, he thought, draping an arm across his eyes. With every subsequent cabinet member to appear on The Daily Show, another name made it onto Stephen's On Notice board.
Clearly, that wasn't working.
On the screen, Jon greeted the on-screen Stephen with his usual enthusiasm (and who wouldn't be thrilled to see him?), which swiftly turned to apprehension in the face of Stephen's icy fury.
"How are you, my friend?"
Ignoring the concerned tone and furrowed brow, Stephen coldly replied, "Fine, Jon, fine. Except for this knife in my back!"
Sitting up, Stephen frowned at the screen. He had been too busy being righteously and justifiably furious at the time to notice, but...had Jon gone pale at his words? Usually Q didn't let what Stephen said get to him. Maybe the copy was malfunctioning.
"Kn-Knife, Stephen?" Jon asked, voice squeaking slightly.
"The one you stabbed me with!"
Jon slumped a little. "But otherwise you're okay," he said.
"If by 'okay' you mean betrayed."
Grinning, the traitor replied, "Sure, Stephen, that's exactly what I meant."
"I know it was you, Stewart!" Stephen shouted suddenly, shaking a fist. "You broke my heart!"
The simulacrum had the audacity to giggle. "We'll see you soon, Stephen." As the camera cut to just Jon, the man beamed and said, "That's our show! Now here it is, your Moment of Zen!"
Alone in his office, Stephen frowned at the image on the screen of Anderson Cooper and his dog talking to the Pet Psychic, not bothering to flip to another episode. Had that been relief on Jon's face? Relief that Stephen had let him off so easy?
Stephen shook his head and a thought set the television to replaying one of the acts of betrayal that were Jon's interviews. Definitely malfunctioning, as were his stupid human eyes. His vision was going blurry, even though he was still wearing his glasses, and his eyes stung.
Reaching under his glasses to wipe at his eyes Stephen found the cause of the blurring was that his eyes were leaking. Humans were so full of design flaws, he was constantly discovering new ones.
How had such an inefficient species ever managed to become the dominant one on their planet?
---
"The … the Dead to Me board?"
From the booth above the studio, Chuck rubbed his hand over his face. How had he been the one chosen to do this? Jon was just sitting down at his desk, scribbling on the script while the crew moved into place. The audience was still outside, standing under awnings and probably hoping that it wouldn't rain in the next twenty minutes. Unless it had already started raining (Chuck wouldn't know, the control room didn't have a window).
"Yes, sir," he said. The microphone crackled just a bit.
On stage, Jon frowned. "I don't… Who the hell did he put on it?"
Chuck twisted a few knobs, adjusting the feedback on their microphones. Jon winced and he apologized, spinning them a bit more. Though he'd never admit it, Chuck had no idea which control was wired to Jon's earpiece: he couldn't even remember them giving Jon a real earpiece. But sometimes it still acted up on them. He fiddled with the lights, too, easing them back when it made Jon squint.
"Chuck," he said, raising his eyebrows at the booth. "You wouldn't have brought it up if you weren't going to tell me. Did you draw the short straw again?"
Sighing, Chuck brought up the show's logo for a moment. "Yes, sir."
Jon folded his hands on the desk and smiled slowly. "Go on…"
"The first was Mr. Emanuel, sir."
The man looked back down at his script and made a careful mark across it. If Chuck hadn't had the sound turned up, he might not have caught the sigh. "Naturally."
"…The second was Mr. Obama."
"What?"
Chuck shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. Why did he always have to get the short straw?
Staring down at his script, Jon tapped his fingers against the desk before picking up his pen and writing something in the margin. Looking up, he smiled wryly. "I can't wait to see how Rahm takes that."
Chapter Four
Fandom: Fake News, U.S. politics
Summary: Rahm isn't fitting very well into this place. Things seem off somehow. And Q ("Stephen" Colbert) is finding that this game isn't all he'd expected.
Character/Pairing: "Stephen"/Jon, Rahm Emanuel, Mona Sutphen, David Axelrod, Peter Orszag, Chuck
Rating: PG-13, language
Length: ~3800 words
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Notes: Co-written with the ever excellent
doctorv. Thanks endlessly much to the lovely sirdrakesheir for intense betaing, and sailorptah for proofreading. Star Trek crossover of a sort.Chapter One | Chapter Two
Chapter 3
Striding through the halls of the West Wing, Rahm felt a distinct drop in the electricity levels. The day before, they'd made his head pound, but today it seemed like whenever he got to the doorway of a room the prickling of the television sets would disappear. By lunchtime he'd started darting in random rooms just to witness the noise of the TV vanish or change when people saw his face.
A thing like that could make a man paranoid.
"Mona," he said, latching onto his Deputy's sleeve in the hallway. They didn't move from the center of the hall, but let traffic split around them. Mona gave him an even look and Rahm jerked his head towards the nearest office. "Why do people keep changing the channel or turning off their TVs when I come in the room?"
"Perhaps you have horrible timing," she said, smiling at him.
Alarm bells went off in his head -- his deputies did not often go around grinning at him. He tightened his grip on Mona's sleeve. "What's going on?"
She took a small breath. "No," she said, and held her hand up before he could respond. "Look, I have very distinct directions about blood pressure. Trust me when I say that there is no major catastrophe, no Republican fuck-up that you need to be paying attention to, no horrifying Democratic misstep that requires your tender love and care."
Rahm scowled. "My blood pressure is fine."
"The same does not hold for everyone around you, Rahm," she said.
"I am going to have a problem if someone doesn't tell me what the hell's going on."
A long moment of silence stretched between them and Rahm put his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket back slightly. A look darted through his Deputy's eyes and she tilted her chin up. He would've been more impressed if she had actually been shorter than him instead of just his height (in heels), so she was staring across her nose at him.
And Rahm Emanuel did not lose staring contests.
"You're going to be late for your meeting," Mona blurted.
Before he could react, she darted around an intern pushing a mail cart and turned down a hall. He stayed in place for another minute, rocking back and forth on his heels until he spotted Axe at the other end of the hallway. Axe's eyes jumped right to Rahm's and Rahm spun on his heel, sprinting through a room of cubicles (there were a few TV screens that flickered when he appeared, but he didn't have time to think about that right then) and down the most roundabout route possible to reach the Oval.
Last night had barely been better than the night before. If he really looked at it, it had probably been worse. No dreams this time -- at least none he could remember -- but he'd tossed and turned enough that he could still feel his leg twitching. Around three, Amy had nudged him and he'd gone to lie down in a guest room.
Pounding down the hall, he ran a hand through his hair. The last things he needed right then were Mona skirting around issues and Axe asking him why he was drinking so much coffee. It would take an extra minute, but he could absolutely get to the Oval if he went around this corner --
Which he did, nearly tripping over his own shoes. Axe's hand shot out and latched onto his elbow, righting him before his face met the carpet.
"Fucking mind reader," Rahm muttered, jerking back.
Axe blinked at him. "What?"
"Nothing," he snapped.
Axe raised his eyebrows and started to speak, but Rahm wasn't about to stand there and be lectured to. He sidestepped the man and turned towards his original course. A sigh from behind him made him grit his teeth. Nobody needed to look after him, nobody needed to make sure he was okay, nobody needed to head him off on runs to the Oval to talk to him without anyone overhearing.
Nobody especially needed to be standing in his way when he tried to get past damn psychic senior advisors.
"Orszag!" he snapped.
He threw his hands out just in time to not trip over the lanky man's feet. Peter blinked wide eyes at him from behind his glasses and made a squeaky, strangled sound as Rahm's hands closed around his sleeves. For one bright moment Rahm held onto him, jaw slack, and Peter's eyes swam. Part of his brain noticed that the man had snapped to attention at the mention of his name, and was still standing at attention, spine straight and shoulders braced.
The rest of his brain was too preoccupied with the fact that Peter was here, under his hands, to make much of the new posture. He grinned and grinned wider when Peter bit his lip.
"You," he said, tightening his grip. "You were at Colbert's yesterday."
The dreams were hard to remember: shapeless and shadowless but most definitely not soundless. There had been color (red, white, and blue) and sound. Loud music and lots of shouting, insistent shouting that almost seemed to be trying to drown itself out.
"I was…" Peter narrowed his eyes, his shoulders slackening slightly. "I was at The Daily Show studio. Jon said to say hi, by the way."
"The Daily Show's studio is Colbert's," Rahm said. "He and Stewart are close -- are you telling me he didn't pop up the entire time you were there? You were gone for the whole day. Missed the morning meeting and everything."
Peter's eyes darted up, above Rahm's face, and back down to meet his eyes. "Ah, sir," he said, swallowing. "Actually it was a very good interview. If you watched -- okay you didn't, that's fine, I thought it was good anyway. I think you should watch it, I think I made an impression on the crowd, they really seemed to respond to me--"
"Peter."
His hands felt strange. Tingling. And the West Wing, which had been too loud all day, too loud yesterday, was suddenly silent compared to… compared to the noise in the back of his head? There was so much electricity here but it was all static and uneven and unpolished. The computers and cell phones and pagers everyone carried buzzed but didn't work, not really, not as well as they could. His hands felt strange, spasms going through his palms.
Wetting his lips, Peter tried to push on. "Jon is really interested in all of this. He wants to know how, well, what we're doing. He wants to know how all of this works. I think it'd be a good idea if more of us went on the show."
They should have an intercom system. Something that went through the whole building, something voice-activated, so they wouldn't have to beat a path through half the building just to find incompetent idiot interns struggling with the fax machine. But how would that work? There were so many voices -- maybe they could have something portable, a single device each of them would carry to connect them to the network…
"I think it'd be good public exposure," Peter said, his voice trailing off.
A hand settled on Rahm's shoulder and he froze, the colors of the hallway suddenly sharpening. He inhaled and relaxed his hands, finger by finger, until a soft murmur from somewhere above his head suggested that Peter take a step back. Peter eased backwards a few inches and rubbed his palm over his jacket, smoothing out the wrinkles Rahm had left in the fabric.
Rahm swallowed. "Talk to Mona. About getting more people on the show. Stewart is … Stewart is good. But not that knucklefuck Col -- not the one after him. I'll get Robert to get me the tape of your interview."
"It's … online," Peter started, cutting off abruptly at a cool look Rahm could just feel shooting over his shoulder.
Even if it was online, there had to be an actual tape. A physical tape. Probably more than one, maybe even DVDs, because otherwise why would everyone be keeping him away from the TV? He swallowed and rested his hand, four and a half fingers, on his hip. An interview with Jon fucking Stewart, that was no reason to keep him away from the TV. Unless they'd set the tape to record for the entire eleven o'clock hour, and then, well, maybe Mona did have a reason to be worried about blood pressure.
"Go on to the meeting and tell them we'll be there in a minute," Axe said.
His voice was soft enough they shouldn't have been able to hear it. But Peter nodded, shoulders at attention again, before he slumped back to his normal posture and spun on his heel, nearly skipping down the hallway. As soon as he was out of sight, Axe's hand moved to Rahm's back and he gave a gentle push, turning him around.
Rahm rubbed a hand over his face. "Fuck this shit," he muttered.
"You've been a little out of it all day," Axe said, squeezing his arm before letting his hand drop to his side. "Maybe we can take another loop around the communications pen before going into the Oval."
"I just haven't been sleeping."
"You sleep?"
"Ha. Ha."
Axe smiled, slowly, and stuck his hands in his pockets. This was the slowest Rahm had ever walked down a hallway, at least not without one of his kids in tow. The slow, swooping pace seemed perfectly suited to Axe's legs, though, his shoes settled entirely into the steps.
After a while, when there was no one else in the hallway: "I woke Amy last night."
Rahm's hands felt strange.
---
"Tell me your secret, Stewart!"
The door of Jon's office swung open before him and Stephen stormed through, flicking his wrist to slam it closed behind him again. Jon didn't even look up from his desk. He had a newspaper open and was chewing on the end of a pen, gray eyes focused on the crossword.
Stephen stomped over and slammed his palms down on the desk hard enough to make Jon's pencils and pens rattle in his cup. The man didn't so much as glance at him and Stephen dragged in a breath, looking quickly over the rows and columns Jon's careful capital letters had half-filled out.
Getting the handwriting right had been a particularly nice touch, Stephen thought.
"The answer is wormhole," he said, plucking the pen from Jon's fingers.
Jon finally raised his eyes and smiled, slowly, while Stephen scribbled in the answer to ten down without bothering to spin the paper at all. But Jon must've been too distracted with Stephen to notice. He didn't even move when Stephen tossed the pen down and stood up, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I wasn't on that one yet," Jon said, after a beat. "But thanks."
"I saw your interview."
Though saw wasn't exactly the right word. Unfortunately there wasn't a good verb in twenty-first century English to combine raged, frothed, cursed, and briefly rearranged the structure of the Atlantic ocean so that Fox was now reporting a surge in sudden Bermuda Triangle cases. So he went with saw. Jon would understand saw, anyway.
The look on his face sure seemed to say so, at least. Wide eyes and a puzzled little smile. "I thought I managed to not make a complete idiot out of myself," he said.
"What's your secret?" Stephen demanded.
Jon grinned. "A lot of pre-show studying, my friend."
Ignoring him, Stephen continued, "How do you get all the people I want to come on your second-rate, hack news show?"
"Well I--"
"It's some kind of Jew voodoo, isn't it?"
Rolling his eyes, Jon smiled with indulgent amusement. "Yes, Stephen," he said ironically, resting his chin on his hand. "I'm brainwashing Cabinet members."
"I knew it!" Stephen paused then, peering at the man suspiciously. "Wait, was that sarcasm?"
"I've been taking lessons from Scarborough."
Huffing indignantly, Stephen dropped into the chair in front of Jon's desk. "The worst part is that you don't even take advantage of it! You're always so nice to your guests. You're too friendly. You never nail 'em!" He emphasized his last sentence by smacking a fist into his palm.
"Hey now, what I get up to in the Green Room with my guests isn't anyone's business," Jon said with mock sternness, a grin tugging at his mouth. "I do not kiss and tell, sir."
Horrified jealousy flooded through Stephen before he realized the stupid, pale, insignificant shadow of a man pretending to be his closest friend and confidant was joking. "You know what I mean, Jon!" he snapped. "Is it part of your secret liberal agenda to toss softball questions at your Democrat cohorts?!"
"Secret lib--Softball?" The expression on Jon's face was frankly confused. "I grilled Orszag on the budget! I asked John to shorten a segment on a Congressional food fight over Freedom Fries in the House of Representatives cafeteria so we'd have more time to talk economics!"
"So you admit you gave him preferential treatment!"
"I care about this stuff!" Jon protested. "Stephen, I get these guests because I'm willing to have a polite discussion with them instead of shouting them down whenever they say something I don't like. Or putting them On Notice. Yeah I saw that, Stephen. Somehow I don't think Peter will be beating down your door for an interview after that segment."
"Oh, so it's 'Peter' now."
"Did you hear anything I just said? Stephen, you compared the man unfavorably to the Third Reich. If you want Rahm to come on your show you're going to have to back off a bit."
"I--" Stephen froze, mouth hanging open, then shoved himself to his feet, spinning around and stalking a away before spinning back and pointing at Jon. "I didn't say anything about Rahm Emanuel! We were talking about Commander Orszag!"
"Director."
"If I want to call him Grand Czar of Doody-heads, that's my right as an American, dammit! Don't try to impose your elitist ideas of official titles on me, Stewart!"
Raising his hands in surrender, Jon dryly replied, "I wouldn't dream of it, Sir Dr. Colbert."
Stephen sniffed with mollified dignity and ran a hand through his hair, then smoothed a hand down his front, putting himself to rights again. "That's better."
There was a long stretch of silence and that made Stephen uncomfortable. He didn't like silence. Without the comforting brush of the mind of a fellow Q, the silence made him feel alone. Like when he had regained awareness after being injured during the Q War and found one of his senses depleted, muffled....
A soft chuckle startled him from his remembrances and he glanced up to see Jon shaking his head. The man met his eyes and smiled. "Never stop being yourself, Stephen."
"Who else could compare?" Stephen asked, looking bewildered. This human version of Q was just ridiculous sometimes, though there were times when he made about as much sense as the real thing.
"No one, Stephen. No one."
---
The truth was, Jon had been getting all the guests Stephen wanted. Not just OMB Director Peter Orszag, but HHS Secretary Katherine Sebelius, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and some lower level government drone who Stephen couldn't be bothered to remember but who he damn well could have done a better job of interviewing.
Even creating caverns under his desk -- what the hell had humans been thinking when they'd gotten rid of Starbucks? -- couldn't keep him from … sulking. This world, this place, this was his. He'd organized it all, down to the last atom, fit the pieces together in just the right ways.
Now Jon -- this worthless assembly of protons, this shadow given shape, this pathetic imitation of one of the greatest Q he knew (besides himself, of course) -- was strutting around like he owned the place!
The TV on the shelf above the couch was flickering, replaying the worst offenders. When Stephen had decided to watch them again he hadn't bothered turning on the overhead lights, so now he was washed in the glow of The Daily Show's enthusiastic graphics department and Jon's brilliant smile. It … It really had been a brilliant move on his part, getting it that close to Q's. The laugh was his best accomplishment, though. Or maybe it was the eyes…
Stephen pressed a thumb between his lips, touching his nail to his teeth. The couch in his office was grand, though the one in Jon's was comfy in its own way. And the longer this whole thing dragged on, the more he needed to stretch out this body, settle down with shoulders below knees and whatever else it took to pop the knots and kinks out of these muscles and bones.
On the screen, Jon paused mid-sentence, both hands on his desk, to listen to something Sebelius was saying to him. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth and Stephen slid deeper into the couch, pulling his knees up. He didn't care that his shoes were getting dirt on the cushions. Waving his fingers in the air, he watched the screen switch over to Salazar's interview.
How did anyone stand living in a body like this? Crammed in between bones, coiled in flesh. He'd thought the crash of sound and heat during the War had been bad -- and the deafening quiet, the dullness that had followed even worse -- but this. This … isolation. How could they bear to be so isolated from each other?
A cowboy hat. Really. A sour taste crept up the back of his throat and he rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face in the arm of the couch. And the man said he was "fair" with his guests. Last time he checked, Stephen couldn't remember accepting bribes and donning them to the roaring of an overenthusiastic audience included anywhere in the definition of "fair." And Jon had no right to smirk at the camera like that, to wink at the camera like that. Stephen didn't remember fitting so much snark into his plans.
At least after he'd been injured, Q…
He didn't bother raising his head to watch the train wreck that had been the interview with the actor-turned-White-House-liaison. The only good thing about that interview had been how short Jon had cut it. Originally it was supposed to have taken two segments, but at the last minute, before his own taping, Stephen had gotten a call that they were going to do a Toss.
He let the Toss play and shifted onto his back. Something had to be done about this. It wasn't just Jon, he thought, draping an arm across his eyes. With every subsequent cabinet member to appear on The Daily Show, another name made it onto Stephen's On Notice board.
Clearly, that wasn't working.
On the screen, Jon greeted the on-screen Stephen with his usual enthusiasm (and who wouldn't be thrilled to see him?), which swiftly turned to apprehension in the face of Stephen's icy fury.
"How are you, my friend?"
Ignoring the concerned tone and furrowed brow, Stephen coldly replied, "Fine, Jon, fine. Except for this knife in my back!"
Sitting up, Stephen frowned at the screen. He had been too busy being righteously and justifiably furious at the time to notice, but...had Jon gone pale at his words? Usually Q didn't let what Stephen said get to him. Maybe the copy was malfunctioning.
"Kn-Knife, Stephen?" Jon asked, voice squeaking slightly.
"The one you stabbed me with!"
Jon slumped a little. "But otherwise you're okay," he said.
"If by 'okay' you mean betrayed."
Grinning, the traitor replied, "Sure, Stephen, that's exactly what I meant."
"I know it was you, Stewart!" Stephen shouted suddenly, shaking a fist. "You broke my heart!"
The simulacrum had the audacity to giggle. "We'll see you soon, Stephen." As the camera cut to just Jon, the man beamed and said, "That's our show! Now here it is, your Moment of Zen!"
Alone in his office, Stephen frowned at the image on the screen of Anderson Cooper and his dog talking to the Pet Psychic, not bothering to flip to another episode. Had that been relief on Jon's face? Relief that Stephen had let him off so easy?
Stephen shook his head and a thought set the television to replaying one of the acts of betrayal that were Jon's interviews. Definitely malfunctioning, as were his stupid human eyes. His vision was going blurry, even though he was still wearing his glasses, and his eyes stung.
Reaching under his glasses to wipe at his eyes Stephen found the cause of the blurring was that his eyes were leaking. Humans were so full of design flaws, he was constantly discovering new ones.
How had such an inefficient species ever managed to become the dominant one on their planet?
---
"The … the Dead to Me board?"
From the booth above the studio, Chuck rubbed his hand over his face. How had he been the one chosen to do this? Jon was just sitting down at his desk, scribbling on the script while the crew moved into place. The audience was still outside, standing under awnings and probably hoping that it wouldn't rain in the next twenty minutes. Unless it had already started raining (Chuck wouldn't know, the control room didn't have a window).
"Yes, sir," he said. The microphone crackled just a bit.
On stage, Jon frowned. "I don't… Who the hell did he put on it?"
Chuck twisted a few knobs, adjusting the feedback on their microphones. Jon winced and he apologized, spinning them a bit more. Though he'd never admit it, Chuck had no idea which control was wired to Jon's earpiece: he couldn't even remember them giving Jon a real earpiece. But sometimes it still acted up on them. He fiddled with the lights, too, easing them back when it made Jon squint.
"Chuck," he said, raising his eyebrows at the booth. "You wouldn't have brought it up if you weren't going to tell me. Did you draw the short straw again?"
Sighing, Chuck brought up the show's logo for a moment. "Yes, sir."
Jon folded his hands on the desk and smiled slowly. "Go on…"
"The first was Mr. Emanuel, sir."
The man looked back down at his script and made a careful mark across it. If Chuck hadn't had the sound turned up, he might not have caught the sigh. "Naturally."
"…The second was Mr. Obama."
"What?"
Chuck shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. Why did he always have to get the short straw?
Staring down at his script, Jon tapped his fingers against the desk before picking up his pen and writing something in the margin. Looking up, he smiled wryly. "I can't wait to see how Rahm takes that."
Chapter Four