In which you spend an evening with Steven's books until their exhausted owner returns to you.
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Tags: 18+; Steven Grant x Reader; No use of Y/N; One-Shot; Steven is autistic; Established relationship; Vague hurt, lots of comfort; Reader's gender is not stated. The poem is Loin du Monde; its Eng. trans. is by Peter Shor. Very casual, zero-stakes fluff.
Word Count: 2,565.
Warnings: N/A; this is self-indulgent info-dumping. A bit of Steven angst, but it's open-ended.
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Graciously, Steven had given you a key to his flat a couple weeks ago for convenience's sake, since you spent so much time with one another anyway. You like to think of it as a sort of gift to celebrate being with one another for a little over ten months. (Marc didn't get you anything.)
You'd quickly taken advantage of that key today, using Steven's shower after getting soaked head-to-toe on your commute back from work.
So now, after properly drying off, you get to flip to the next page, comfortable and dry and warm. Smelling like Steven's shampoo. Wearing one of his tees and a pair of his boxers. It's awfully domestic.
Ironic, since he's not even here to enjoy this with you. Poor sap is working late tonight. You'll just have to wait up for him, reading all his books, using up his water bill.
Trusting you with the key to his flat meant trusting you with the stewardship of his books. Not owning them, of course, but tending to them when he's not around. Really, he just invited you to read them, but you take it a little more seriously than that. Because they're glimpses into his mind. Which you want to take very, very good care of.
(Some of his books are so old that you wouldn't dare touch them without, at the very least, a pair of gloves. Steven had scoffed at that and swiftly corrected that wearing gloves can actually be worse for wear on their frail pages.)
(You still don't touch those particular volumes.)
Today's book of choice is a thin little paperback with one of the corners creased from being folded backward for too long.
Rolling onto your back, pressing up against the flattening couch cushions, you hold it above your face. Orange lamplight catches there, illuminating its contents.
The title of the collection is in its native French, which is Greek to you. But the author's portrait transcends language. A sad-eyed poetess gazing upward, pink fingertips pressed against her temples. Beneath reads her name: Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.
And though you don't understand what she wrote in her own language, you read Marceline's poems over and over again. Wondering if any of her original meaning or sentiment had been lost in translation. How she felt when she wrote them. Why Steven felt so connected with these poems that he bought a copy for himself to covet and keep.
You bask the book's margins, fingertips brushing against old, penned-in ink. Craning your neck and lowering the book to your face, you spot the fibers in the paper, noticing how the edges of dried ink spread out like tiny black stars.
'Dans vos flots ramenés quand mon coeur se replonge / Ô mes amours d’enfance ! ô mes jeunes amours !
Je vous revois couler comme l’eau dans un songe / Ô vous, dont les miroirs se ressemblent toujours !'
Those hasty ink scratches are in Steven's handwriting. A flourishing thing, denouncing that its writer thinks quicker than he annotates. Each letter connects to the last, overlapping in places, and the sentences tend to flow upward.
Unfortunately, you can't decipher it. Not because his handwriting is necessarily indecipherable, but because it's in French, too. You've grown to expect that kind of thing from Steven, and to appreciate it. How layered his mind is. How many wheels and cogs are whirring at the same time, formulating, piecing together fragments. Making sense of the mundane and esoteric alike with the love of a scholar and practitioner.
There's too much of Steven Grant to keep confined to just one language or experience.
On the next page, beside the original French, a translated version of the same poem lies on the page. You read it aloud, to yourself and the goldfish, adding to the ambient noise of Steven's flat. Mostly the bubbling of the fishtank, the quiet hum of a poorly kept heater, incoherent shouting outside voices, and impatient honks of distant drivers.
"You return in a flood when my heart dives back in," you recite quietly, liking the way it flows off your tongue. "O, my childhood loves! O, the loves of my youth! Once more, I see you rising like water in a dream…" you pause to sit up, balancing the book in your lap. "And once more, your rippling mirrors all look alike."
Admittedly, you like the way poetry reads, but it's another thing entirely to know what it really means. That's Steven's forte, not yours. So you enjoy the words for what they are, and let the curtains be blue just because they happen to be thus.
You flip to the next poem.
It's not there.
The words have been blacked out, marked across, scribbled over in countless layers of darkness. It's entirely unable to be read. Even the title is gone. Gently, you brush your thumb across one part of the would-be poem where the assailant's pen tore straight through the page in their efforts to hide its contents.
There are some things you don't ask Steven about. Things you can't help but wonder about when he subconciously fiddles with the small Star of David charm on his necklace, gazing into space with that murky, faraway look in his eyes.
Perhaps this is one of those things. In his reader's heart, he has rejected the poet's words, marred their very existance. Not erased, nor simply covered, but utterly tarnished and stained. It leaves a somber feeling in your heart, heavy and gray.
You close the book, holding it a little gentler now. It takes a second to pull your mind from it and back to your surroundings, but when you do, there's a slight difference in perspective as you glance around the flat. A new depth.
Mind your business, you think sensibly. You've been together ten months, not ten years.
You step around the couch and to a bookshelf acting as a sort of dividing wall between the Sleep Area and Living Area, as you understand it, and carefully tuck the poetry book back where it belongs. In his tank, Gus circles a little decorative statue of Anubis, the dog-faced god that gives you the creeps.
"Wake me up when you dad gets here," you tell him, and bypass the shelf to fall in a heap onto Steven's bed. You're not tired, but you don't want to go home without seeing Steven. It would feel weird to visit the flat without its owner, after all.
The cat-clock says Steven will be back in about half an hour.
Easy naptime opportunity. Or, at the very least, you can relax without distractions until then, pinned to the mattress by the immense weight of Steven's pressure therapy blankets.
You pull a blanket over your shoulder with more than a little effort, and bury your face into the sheets. That blacked-out page meets you in the corners of your mind.
In what feels like no time at all—you hadn't realized you'd actually fallen asleep—you awake with a start, body jolting. Steven is leaning over you, his hands raised as if he's equally as surprised by the sudden appearance of a home intruder.
"Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to wake you," he says, just as you say, "Oh, I didn't mean to scare you."
He laughs at this, an awkward, half-hearted sound, and sits on the bed next to you.
The mattress dips in an uncomfortable sort of way, and you have to scoot over to make ample room for him. Brushing the sleep from your eyes, you sit up and get a good look at him.
And oh, he's so tired. Back bent, heavy shoulders rolled forward in a slouch. He pulls his legs onto the bed as if they're objects. When he turns to face you properly, those dark eyes you've fallen in love with are red-rimmed, strained. It's like he's been desaturated, drained of something essential. There's no fight in him this evening.
Along the bridge of his nose, there's a thin strip of white bandage.
It sends your heartbeat spiking into your ears while you sit up, reaching a hand to place on his knee. Entreating him.
"Hey," you say. "You okay?"
"Oh yeah, yeah," he says breezily. "Real chuffed. Great day. The best. Day."
Ah. So he was working late, but not at the Museum.
You sigh at that, his listlessness, and pull him back to lay with you. He doesn't resist.
Steven lays next to you with several points of contact, as though you're both assuring that the other person is entirely present. Your knees rest against one another, and his hand finds its way to rest on your waist. You cup the side of his jaw, stubble pricking the pads of your palm. He closes his eyes and leans into it, and there's just something in his expression, the sheer heaviness of him.
"You wanna talk about it, or do you want me to distract you?" You ask, stroking the edge of his cheekbone with your thumb.
He gives a one-shouldered shrug, eyes still closed. "You ought to go back to sleep. I didn't mean to wake you."
You let go of him for a moment, allowing him to get comfortable laying on his back instead, and then fold yourself into his side like a spoon next to a butter knife. You hook your leg with his and fling an arm over his broad chest, hand cradling the side of his ribcage.
Though he's not overtly the cuddling type, Steven's body relaxes, releasing all the tension he's been holding for goodness knows how long.
You physically feel the difference—the cadance of his breath, the slight twitch of his eyebrow. That crooked frown finally evens out. You study his side profile as to commit it to memory, to drink it all in. The slope of his nose and the hastily put-together bandage, stained with something dark in the center. The permanent circles beneath dark eyelashes.
The two of you rest there in tandem, and let the shadows of the flat grow taller.
It's a good move, on your part, you think. To just let him sleep it off, whatever is bothering him. Issues at work? Probably. Not his day work. That wouldn't leave him beat-up and bruised. This—the exhaustion, the quietude—comes from the job with his less-than-agreeable immortal employer.
Again, you think of the poetry book. Of that sad, bone-deep grief in the gentle eyes of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.
"I changed my mind," Steven interjects your thoughts, and there's that thinning tone there. "Distraction sounds good, yeah?"
When you open your eyes, you feel that Steven is glancing down at you, and it's so clear that he's trying to hold on to something that you simply have to provide it.
"I was reading about Oedipus," you say automatically. "Last time I came over. And I was thinking about the Sphinx's riddle."
He doesn't respond verbally, but prompts you with a slight nudge of the chin that brushes the side of your head.
"What walks with four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?" You quote. Honestly, you're just filling the silence, letting your train of thought flow. "And it got me thinking, because you had mentioned that Khonshu, back in the old days, used to be represented with different ages, too."
"Quite symbolic, really," Steven replies softly. "Just like the moon, that one. Waxing and waning, and all."
"Why is that?" you ask, and stifle a yawn against his shirt. Please, talk to me. Let me be here for you, however I can be.
Steven hums in thought. "Lots of overlap wiff these things. Thebes—a different one than Oedipus', this being in Egypt; it's, ah, called Luxor now—was said to be a seat of power for Khonshu. Not that he needs any more power or ego than he already has, I think," he adds bitterly.
"I'm so used to viewing the moon as a feminine force," you confess. "With the phases representing the menstrual cycle."
"Oh, it isn't all that different. When I said Khonshu was a youth during the day, that was tied to fertility." He pauses for a moment, and raises a hand from beneath the blankets to gesture a wide, spread-out hand to the ceiling. "Think of the Greek Ouranos. Remember him?"
"Primordial sky god," you recall. "What about it?"
"Well, he fertilized the Earth from the sky."
"With the rain," you say.
"With his semen," Steven agrees candidly. You follow his hand mimicing little droplets of rain until it lands palm-down on his chest, near your arm.
Hesitating, you ask, "Then, did Khonshu ever…?"
You can practically feel Steven grimace. "It was more a general thing, I think. Sky gods, and that. He was associated with healing, er, verility."
"Such a nice guy," you say with a sort of half-sneer. "Hard to imagine Khonshu healing someone."
"Well, he keeps me fresh in a fight."
Ever so slightly, you tilt your head upward, as to see his face properly. Testing the waters. Gently prodding. "And did you…get into a fight today?"
"A bit," he says. "A bit." He's looking at the ceiling, directly overhead.
So you've narrowed it down to this: Steven is upset with or about Khonshu. There is a reason that he is upset that he doesn't want to share with you, but he does want to share a conversation. Or, at the very least, companionship.
You can work with that.
Gingerly, you lean up on your hands, so that you can look down on him instead of the other way around. He meets your gaze, and there's something deeper there, and there's nothing you can say about it that can make it any easier.
So, instead, you scrunch your body so that your thighs are beneath your stomach, and you're able to slide more or less on top of Steven.
He lets you straddle him, chest-to-chest. His hands find their way to your waist, your shoulderblades, the small of your back. Warmth spreads from his touch all the way to your heart, your belly. You lean into it, pressing your body on top of his, wanting to physically force his nervous system to ackowledge that he's safe, he's safe, he's safe.
"Not giving you much to work with, today, am I?" Steven asks, a smile turning up at the end of his words.
"Plenty enough," you say, and you mean it.
And, admittedly, you are acutely aware that you're straddling your boyfriend in his bed, wearing his clothes, and he's looking at you with those dark, heavy-lidded eyes, and it burns a pool of desire deep inside you.
But that's not what he needs right now. Not that kind of love.
So you lay on top of him and think of anything else to talk about. To take his mind off of whatever has troubled him today. To let him rest.
There will be opportunities for you to ask, or for him to tell. For you to learn about that blacked-out poem, and any others destroyed for any amount of reasons. And more physical, present hurts, too. The bruises. The scars, fresh and old.
Right now, you're more than content with just being here.
And when Steven exhales again, and wraps both of his strong arms around you, you know you've made the right decision.
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A/N: I hope you don't mind this one being simple! I drove between three states for five hours today (standstill traffic is my worst enemy), so my brain is pretty fried. Thx for reading!! <3
Tag list: @wspia @julisvessel @loki-lov @lunacreepy6 @draggolblackthorn
I love women with weird hobbies that talk passionately about them.
Not even just as a "infodumping is hot" thing, hearing any of you talk with love and enthusiasm about something you like fills me with such an indescribable joy.
if anyone who also likes South Park or even just knows what it is wants to talk about any of the boys with me please DM me because I feel really bad for spamming my friends who don’t understand/care and I genuinely have no one to talk to about it so uh uh yeah internet do your thing ig. Um um I don’t really have any I dislike at all but my. My top three are Butters Kenny Eric in that order. I love all of them an indescribable amount though. Uh. Um. Um. PLEASE SOMEONE TALK TO ME I FEEL SO BAD FOR SPAMMING MY FRIENDS I FEEL LIKE IM BEING REALLY ANNOYING I NEED SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS AND WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THIS DUMBASS SHOW
you literally could just be a casual fan who doesn’t know much but wants to learn or even someone who knows nothing about South Park but genuinely wants to hear me yap because I will JOYOUSLY educate you and bestow my knowledge upon you and explain all context needed just god please anyone
Dahlia Hawthorne's name was based on the short story "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, about a young woman who was poisoned by her own family and became poisonous herself as a result. I finally got my hands on the book, so I wanted to read it through the lens of "what does this story say about Dahlia?"
Thoughts:
- Beatrice Rappaccini is a beautiful young woman, the daughter of an affluent scientist and the member of a noble family that has fallen into ruin. She has spent her entire life in an idyllic garden of flowers, which was once prosperous and thriving, but has fallen into decay and disrepair as the years have passed. This reflects how Kurain Village was once prosperous, but the village and Fey Family's reputation has crumbled since DL-6.
-It's clear from her dialogue that Beatrice knows nothing of life outside the garden. She is incredibly sheltered, having never left the garden before and knowing nothing of worldly things outside of her small bubble. Similarly, most spirit mediums in Kurain (Pearl and Iris in particular) have never left Kurain Village, growing up sheltered.
-Beatrice is beautiful, delicate, and virtuous, but anything she touches, whether plant, animal, or human, will decay and die by poison. She doesn't *want* to be this way, but her nature cannot be changed. Even when she attempts to take an antidote to her poisonous breath, it fails.
-The author goes out of his way to depict Beatrice not as a monster but as a product of her environment. Beatrice does not *want* to be dangerous, but she was *made* this way by her father, who kept her confined to his garden and used her as a pawn for his own schemes. Her father Giacomo Rappaccini raised her not as a daughter but as a tool, a pawn, a weapon for his own plans and experiments, and turned her into who she is today. Cough cough Morgan Fey
-There is a beautiful purple flower in the garden that Beatrice considers her "sister”. The two have an almost symbiotic relationship, with the protagonist noting that Beatrice and her “sister” seem as if they could be two sides of the same coin. Sounds like Irissss
-The protagonist of the story, Giovanni Guasconti, is a young man who falls in love with Beatrice despite her lethal nature. Through it all, he is desperate to believe in her, hoping against hope that the relationship can work out and that Beatrice is truly good despite the deaths he’s seen her cause. Hmm, a man who wants desperately to believe in people even at the cost of his own life….Feenie?
-Giovanni’s mentor, Baglioni, holds a longstanding grudge against the senior Rappaccini, and Beatrice by extension. He fears for Giovanni’s safety if he keeps seeing Beatrice, but his main priority is seeing Rappaccini fall for the sake of his own revenge. He's a good person, an intellectual with years of experience in the field of science. But his anger consumes him and leads him to harm both Beatrice and Giovanni, seeing them as tools in his plan rather than anything else. Godot?
-When Beatrice asks her father why he made her poisonous, he responds that the poison can function as a defense mechanism. If Beatrice is poisonous, than nobody can hurt her. It's better to be dangerous yourself than to be vulnerable to danger. It’s just like Dahlia!
-This whole exchange:
“”Wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy child?”
“Miserable! What mean you, foolish girl? Dost though deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts, against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy?” Reminds me of how Morgan and the Feys saw spirit channeling as a gift, but Dahlia and Iris seem to see it as a curse
