Warren/Connor: Thus Spake Zarathustra
May. 18th, 2004 02:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleLate Warrenficathon entry, still chipping away at my backlog. My person dropped out but I wanted to finish this anyway. The first draft of this was longer and probably hung together a lot better but it was also seriously nasty stuff involving the Trio keeping Connor prisoner, and I ended up not being able to finish it. I'm not sure this will make sense to anyone but me...
Title: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Warren/Connor
Rating: PG
Notes: Goes wildly AU from Normal Again.
Warren steals a handful of fries from Steve's tray without asking, chews them down fast before the kid looks round. Steve just keeps staring out the window, though, hand under his chin and his Whopper Meal cooling on the table in front of him.
"Dude," Warren says. "Weirding me out, here."
"I've never seen it," he says. The snow drifts silently onto the glass. "Just on TV."
That Christmas when the freak snowstorm hit Sunnydale, Warren was stuck in bed with mono. He spent the day with half his new electronics kit spread over the covers and could've cared less about going out to see the weather like the rest of the lame kids in his school. Warren sees snow and he just thinks about the individual crystals, stellar dendrites and sixfold symmetry. Steve would get a kick out of seeing show under a microscope.
Just as he's about to take the rest of the other guy's food, Steve forgets his arctic contemplation and wolfs it down. Two bites and it's gone. He has a smear of ketchup below his lip and if he was Katrina then Warren would lean across the table and lick it away, but he's a guy, and they're in the middle of a Burger King in Vermont, and bundled up in an old coat of Tucker's Steve looks like somebody's kid brother. He says he's not sure what his real age is. Sixteen, maybe.
Warren tosses him a napkin.
**
It's a bitch to drive in snow. The heater's up, the radio off. Coming through the Midwest they listened to most of The Lord of the Rings on CD. Steve likes the movies better. Warren's thrown, because Andrew and Jonathan were Tolkien purist freaks who spent a month bitching about elves at Helm's Deep, and so it's weird to have someone agree with him, no stupid arguments.
After that, they stopped listening. Bought crappy music in gas stations, which was when he found out that Steve likes Streisand, and he called him a fag (kidding, they hadn't, whatever, done anything then - didn't matter, he didn't know what the word meant) and, extrapolating from that, that Steve has worse taste in music than Andrew.
Most of the time, they drive in silence.
Steve hardly ever says if he likes the places they go to. He doesn't ever say he wants to go some place else; Warren chooses, they go, Steve kills the demons, they get the stuff they need, and they move on. Complete the goal, advance a level. They don't run out of money for gas, or fast good, or bad CDs. A lot of the vamps and demons have hard cash, or at least something to hock. A chaos demon in Pittsburgh had a Super Nintendo and Warren spent a day and a half teaching Steve to play Mario All-Stars, remembering afternoons at the Wells's house, Andrew begging Tucker to give him a turn.
Steve's tapping on the dashboard. Could be a tune, could be Morse code. There's no pattern to it, which is just wrong, there's always a pattern.
**
TFC: too fucking cold to sleep in the van. The hotel guy makes Warren repeat it when he asks for one room, like he wasn't totally clear, like this freak in the Eagles sweatshirt's better than he is.
Steve takes first shower. He looks like the kind of guy who should get beat up in locker rooms; thin, narrow shoulders, not too tall. First time they met he was totally unembarrassed about taking his clothes off for a shower, even right in the same room with other people.
The first time they met, Steve was still whacked out from falling through the portal and almost took the three of them out, and Warren shot him full of the tranq darts meant for the glarghk guhl kashma'nik that Andrew had spectacularly failed to summon. They don't talk about that now.
The shower's too cold, not enough pressure, but it's a step up from a motel. When he gets out Steve's sprawled across the double bed looking between a road map and a Gideon Bible.
He points at the map. "Los Angeles." Reading it carefully and uncertainly.
Warren says, "It's An-gel-eez. Not An-jealous."
**
Flip through the channels. Up, down. Back up again.
Pictures of the war on CNN. Famous person making a dick of themselves. American Idol. The Weather Channel. He hovers on National Geographic. It tells him the Inuits' hundred words for snow is an urban legend. He already knew that, but he thinks it wouldn't be weird if they did have a hundred words for something that's around them all the time. God, he had way more than a hundred names for Andrew and Jonathan.
Curled into himself, lying on his side, Steve whimpers in his sleep. Jolts like he's being buzzed with a tazer (Warren knows exactly what that looks like). Asks for his dad.
Warren keeps looking for something interesting to watch.
**
At four am, he wakes up. Snaps from sleeping to not in a second, just like he always has. Like flipping a switch.
Steve's sitting by the window, hunched over, knees to his chest. "I'm not supposed to be here." His voice is jagged. Deeper than usual. The accent sounds different, more clipped. "Where is this? I have to get back to my father."
Warren sighs, rubs his forehead, trying to decide if Steve's really awake or sleepwalking again. This light, it's hard to tell. "Okay. Just - chill, Steven, okay? You just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep, you won't remember it tomorrow." He holds out his hand. "Come on. Trust me."
After a minute, he unfolds from the chair. Gets back into bed on Warren's other side and he's asleep right away. He was never awake.
**
They have breakfast in the diner beside the hotel. Steve has pancakes, lots of syrup. The waitress smiles at him and he grins back. Warren watches all this bonhomie and sips his coffee, saying nothing.
"Where are you boys from?"
"Sunnydale," Steve says, and her face falls. Warren thinks he's never going to stop getting a kick out of that at the same time as he wonders whether Steve remembers Quar'toth today, or if he really does think he's from Sunnydale.
"Oh," she says, not smiling at him any more, too interested in whatever's on her pad. "I didn't know anybody got out alive. The news said…"
"We weren't there when the earthquake hit," Warren says. Lying double, because they were there and it wasn't an earthquake, but she just looks nervously at his empty cup and goes to get him more coffee.
Underneath the table, Steve's knee bumps against his.
Warren says, "You okay?"
He shrugs. "Sure. Kind of have a headache. Like a buzzing feeling. Weird."
"Yeah," he says. "Weird."
This morning Warren dug out the remote control and turned the chip as high as it goes. It's still the most beautiful thing he's ever built. Forget April, forget the Buffy robot he made for Spike; he started with some vague scans of a chip in a vampire's head, and the cerebral dampeners his two whiny friends wanted him to destroy, and a boy from another dimension who called himself the Destroyer. And he combined them, science and magic and humanity, and he made something better.
"Steve, gimme your food," he says, just for a test, just for fun.
"Sure." Not even a blink of surprise.
Steve, he thinks, kill the waitress. But he doesn't say it. Knowing that he could, and that Steve would do it, no hesitation, no question - that's enough.
He pushes the plate back. "Nah, just kidding around."
"Where are we going today?"
"Anywhere we want to," he says. He looks out at the window, at the newly-fallen snow, cold and perfect.
For once, he admits that it's beautiful.
Title: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Warren/Connor
Rating: PG
Notes: Goes wildly AU from Normal Again.
Warren steals a handful of fries from Steve's tray without asking, chews them down fast before the kid looks round. Steve just keeps staring out the window, though, hand under his chin and his Whopper Meal cooling on the table in front of him.
"Dude," Warren says. "Weirding me out, here."
"I've never seen it," he says. The snow drifts silently onto the glass. "Just on TV."
That Christmas when the freak snowstorm hit Sunnydale, Warren was stuck in bed with mono. He spent the day with half his new electronics kit spread over the covers and could've cared less about going out to see the weather like the rest of the lame kids in his school. Warren sees snow and he just thinks about the individual crystals, stellar dendrites and sixfold symmetry. Steve would get a kick out of seeing show under a microscope.
Just as he's about to take the rest of the other guy's food, Steve forgets his arctic contemplation and wolfs it down. Two bites and it's gone. He has a smear of ketchup below his lip and if he was Katrina then Warren would lean across the table and lick it away, but he's a guy, and they're in the middle of a Burger King in Vermont, and bundled up in an old coat of Tucker's Steve looks like somebody's kid brother. He says he's not sure what his real age is. Sixteen, maybe.
Warren tosses him a napkin.
**
It's a bitch to drive in snow. The heater's up, the radio off. Coming through the Midwest they listened to most of The Lord of the Rings on CD. Steve likes the movies better. Warren's thrown, because Andrew and Jonathan were Tolkien purist freaks who spent a month bitching about elves at Helm's Deep, and so it's weird to have someone agree with him, no stupid arguments.
After that, they stopped listening. Bought crappy music in gas stations, which was when he found out that Steve likes Streisand, and he called him a fag (kidding, they hadn't, whatever, done anything then - didn't matter, he didn't know what the word meant) and, extrapolating from that, that Steve has worse taste in music than Andrew.
Most of the time, they drive in silence.
Steve hardly ever says if he likes the places they go to. He doesn't ever say he wants to go some place else; Warren chooses, they go, Steve kills the demons, they get the stuff they need, and they move on. Complete the goal, advance a level. They don't run out of money for gas, or fast good, or bad CDs. A lot of the vamps and demons have hard cash, or at least something to hock. A chaos demon in Pittsburgh had a Super Nintendo and Warren spent a day and a half teaching Steve to play Mario All-Stars, remembering afternoons at the Wells's house, Andrew begging Tucker to give him a turn.
Steve's tapping on the dashboard. Could be a tune, could be Morse code. There's no pattern to it, which is just wrong, there's always a pattern.
**
TFC: too fucking cold to sleep in the van. The hotel guy makes Warren repeat it when he asks for one room, like he wasn't totally clear, like this freak in the Eagles sweatshirt's better than he is.
Steve takes first shower. He looks like the kind of guy who should get beat up in locker rooms; thin, narrow shoulders, not too tall. First time they met he was totally unembarrassed about taking his clothes off for a shower, even right in the same room with other people.
The first time they met, Steve was still whacked out from falling through the portal and almost took the three of them out, and Warren shot him full of the tranq darts meant for the glarghk guhl kashma'nik that Andrew had spectacularly failed to summon. They don't talk about that now.
The shower's too cold, not enough pressure, but it's a step up from a motel. When he gets out Steve's sprawled across the double bed looking between a road map and a Gideon Bible.
He points at the map. "Los Angeles." Reading it carefully and uncertainly.
Warren says, "It's An-gel-eez. Not An-jealous."
**
Flip through the channels. Up, down. Back up again.
Pictures of the war on CNN. Famous person making a dick of themselves. American Idol. The Weather Channel. He hovers on National Geographic. It tells him the Inuits' hundred words for snow is an urban legend. He already knew that, but he thinks it wouldn't be weird if they did have a hundred words for something that's around them all the time. God, he had way more than a hundred names for Andrew and Jonathan.
Curled into himself, lying on his side, Steve whimpers in his sleep. Jolts like he's being buzzed with a tazer (Warren knows exactly what that looks like). Asks for his dad.
Warren keeps looking for something interesting to watch.
**
At four am, he wakes up. Snaps from sleeping to not in a second, just like he always has. Like flipping a switch.
Steve's sitting by the window, hunched over, knees to his chest. "I'm not supposed to be here." His voice is jagged. Deeper than usual. The accent sounds different, more clipped. "Where is this? I have to get back to my father."
Warren sighs, rubs his forehead, trying to decide if Steve's really awake or sleepwalking again. This light, it's hard to tell. "Okay. Just - chill, Steven, okay? You just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep, you won't remember it tomorrow." He holds out his hand. "Come on. Trust me."
After a minute, he unfolds from the chair. Gets back into bed on Warren's other side and he's asleep right away. He was never awake.
**
They have breakfast in the diner beside the hotel. Steve has pancakes, lots of syrup. The waitress smiles at him and he grins back. Warren watches all this bonhomie and sips his coffee, saying nothing.
"Where are you boys from?"
"Sunnydale," Steve says, and her face falls. Warren thinks he's never going to stop getting a kick out of that at the same time as he wonders whether Steve remembers Quar'toth today, or if he really does think he's from Sunnydale.
"Oh," she says, not smiling at him any more, too interested in whatever's on her pad. "I didn't know anybody got out alive. The news said…"
"We weren't there when the earthquake hit," Warren says. Lying double, because they were there and it wasn't an earthquake, but she just looks nervously at his empty cup and goes to get him more coffee.
Underneath the table, Steve's knee bumps against his.
Warren says, "You okay?"
He shrugs. "Sure. Kind of have a headache. Like a buzzing feeling. Weird."
"Yeah," he says. "Weird."
This morning Warren dug out the remote control and turned the chip as high as it goes. It's still the most beautiful thing he's ever built. Forget April, forget the Buffy robot he made for Spike; he started with some vague scans of a chip in a vampire's head, and the cerebral dampeners his two whiny friends wanted him to destroy, and a boy from another dimension who called himself the Destroyer. And he combined them, science and magic and humanity, and he made something better.
"Steve, gimme your food," he says, just for a test, just for fun.
"Sure." Not even a blink of surprise.
Steve, he thinks, kill the waitress. But he doesn't say it. Knowing that he could, and that Steve would do it, no hesitation, no question - that's enough.
He pushes the plate back. "Nah, just kidding around."
"Where are we going today?"
"Anywhere we want to," he says. He looks out at the window, at the newly-fallen snow, cold and perfect.
For once, he admits that it's beautiful.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-05-17 06:34 pm (UTC)I can't come up with words now. Just sounds.
I like.
no subject
on 2004-05-17 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-17 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-17 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-17 07:17 pm (UTC)*mouth drops open* Wow. This was so...twisted, but beautiful in its own right.
no subject
on 2004-05-18 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-18 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-18 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-05-19 02:44 am (UTC)Excellent work, truly. :)
no subject
on 2004-05-19 05:15 am (UTC)(via Warren ficathon)
on 2004-05-20 03:24 am (UTC)Bloody fantastic, that was. Warren...! I loved it.
no subject
on 2004-06-11 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-18 09:21 pm (UTC)Didn't know I could heart you more, but then...
individual crystals, stellar dendrites and sixfold symmetry.
I repeat: you must marry me. I *heart* Sixfold Symmetry. Yes, I do.
In a way, this story is extremely creepy. Your Warren here is...Warren. Sociopath. *shiver* Very well done.
no subject
on 2006-07-08 04:01 am (UTC)...nice. Very nice. The fic, I mean. Warren. Must. Die.