closed RP: Stephen and Susan: how will we ever look one another in the eye again?

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

It is well into the afternoon of April 2 when Stephen finally finds Susan's note, folded together with the one he had sent to his own body, in the pocket of his coat.

The leaf sign reassures him that it is not a ploy. Quickly, he writes a reply.

Yes. Greenhouse. This afternoon. And his own approximation of a leaf, rather less than the perfectly detailed rendering that he would have liked to give any botanical specimen, but then, time is always of the essence.

Comments

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Steeling herself for what is likely to be one of the most awkward conversations of her life, Susan makes her way down to the greenhouses as soon as she receives Stephen's note. She sits down, unknowingly on the very bench where Stephen had made his confession to Shepherd Book (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/362378.html) the day before.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen is walking -- patrolling, really -- around the area of the greenhouses, waiting for a sight of Susan. He is behind another greenhouse when she does arrive, so a few minutes pass before he finds her on the bench. It is unsettling to recognize that the last time her body was on this bench, he was in it.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan experiences a moment of vertigo when she catches sight of Stephen, followed by the unmistakable sensation of a blush creeping up her face. "Stephen," she begins, and can't think of anything else to add. So she she rises to meet him, puts a hand on his shoulder, and snaps her fingers.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen understands immediately why Susan needs to touch his shoulder -- the time-stopping effect, and he is grateful for the added measure of privacy this gives them for what will no doubt be a conversation he should not like anyone to overhear -- but the contact makes him blush as well.

"I am so glad it was you, at least," he begins, and then stops, uncertain what next to say.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Er. Likewise. Very much so." That was a very interesting ladybug on the leaf over there, wasn't it? "I found out at breakfast this morning, from Rukia. Apparently she spoke to you yesterday?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"She did indeed, a very perceptive young lady. Rukia has powers she does not feel free to explain, really, and I cannot claim to be familiar with the concept of what she is -- a shinigami. She was able to determine quickly that I was not whom I appeared to be. Other persons were not so perceptive." He winces, remembering his interaction with Lupin-as-Crowley (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/361916.html?thread=17335228#t17335228).

"I suppose I had better tell you everything," he says, sitting.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan sits as well, more conscious than ever of maintaining a decorous space between Stephen and herself. "Well, nothing too terrible can have happened," she says, trying to at least sound casual. "Everything seemed in its proper place when I found myself in bed last night."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

The proximity of such an intimately familiar body bemuses Stephen, and the part of his mind that is almost always engaged in an abstract evaluation of his own reactions takes a sort of running set of notes. Thankfully, he finds no residual attraction, at least not one of a carnal inclination. He has no twin sibling, but he thinks what he feels about Susan's body now may be akin to what twins feel for one another, looking at a person that is at once self and other.

"I did my best to maintain all due propriety," he says, candidly, "but in fairness I need to say that we had something of an encounter with Professor Lupin, while he was in Professor Crowley's body." He feels it is indelicate to say that Susan's body had something of a reaction to Crowley. "Nothing too outre by the standards of this place. Your hand touched the feather of one of Crowley's wings. I am profoundly sorry to have taken such a liberty. We were not ourselves."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Are a demon's wings ... susceptible?" she asked, genuinely surprised. "I had no idea." She smiled. "Thank you for telling me -- I daresay no one's reputation is damaged, though, as it sounds like everyone involved knew what was going on. If that was the worst of what happened to me -- my body, I think I can live with that."

It was much easier to joke, really, than to try and explain her end of the body-switch to Stephen. Or to contemplate the fact that he knew what her underwear looked like. Still, she guessed Stephen for a devoted lover, so at least there wasn't that to worry about ... and while she had to admit that her new knowledge of his intimate details did shed a new and surprising light on him in her eyes, she could honestly say that she had no romantic interest -- indeed, her greatest concern had been, and continued to be, that they should remain friends.

She sighed. "I should tell you everything as well," she said.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen actually had no idea that a demon's wings might or might not be particularly sensitive, but now that Susan has mentioned it, it does explain at least part of the strange chemistry in that moment between himself and Lupin-Crowley.

"Not everyone involved knew what was going on, as you put it," he admits. "Lupin had no idea it was myself in your body. I thought it wisest not to let on that there was someone else inhabiting it, lest there be any danger to either of us; I was unsure where your soul might have gone, or my body, and we might have been susceptible to harm. The only persons who know are Rukia, Charlie Pace, and Shepherd Book." Stephen blushes again. "I felt the need to consult a man of the cloth." He does not explain why.

"I should be glad of an accounting, to know what my body may have done or seen while I was not in it, though you know I trust you implicitly. Yet I must ask you, first: you would have been with River, when you entered my body; who was animating her? We have no idea, and I am most worried."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Well. That would make things interesting whenever she finally spoke to Lupin -- she'd been putting off acting on Stephen's tip (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/337323.html), and now she wondered if perhaps she oughtn't put it off just a little longer. Still, she can't bring herself to reproach Stephen ... especially not given what she has to tell him.

"First of all, let me just tell you that I was very careful with your body, and not trusting my ability to successfully impersonate you, I was careful to avoid contact with almost everyone -- thus I only learned this morning just how extensive the chaos was. As for River..." She pinches the bridge of her nose and looks very pained. "It took me a moment to figure it out, after it happened, but ... It was Mr Teatime in her body, you see. I should have figured it out the moment he said something, but I was so flustered that it took me rather longer than it might have otherwise."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen's expression immediately shifts from blushing embarrassment to cold rage. There is any amount of damage someone as unscrupulous as Teatime can have done, given River's mental and physical abilities. "Did you let him -- her -- out of your sight?"

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan has never seen Stephen angry, and she sincerely hopes that she never does again. She's unsure if his anger is directed at her, but she meets his gaze evenly, even though her stomach is twisting in knots. "No, never!" Well, except for the sleeping part, but-- "We were together the entire time, even in the library. I can assure you that River's bodily integrity and appearance was never compromised." Not even by me -- you -- us -- as tempting as it was, but I'm not going to think about that now.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Relief washes over him. "Thank God," he breathes. "As formidable as he may be when he is himself, what he could have done in her body -- I do not like to contemplate it." He looks at Susan, seriously. "Thank you. It means more than I can say, to know that."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"You're welcome. Believe me, making sure that she was all right was just as important to me as making sure that you were." Susan sighs, glad that Stephen's anger is defused. "I think, actually, that he didn't really ... have access to all her abilities. Which is just as well," she says with some feeling, remembering some of the thoughts that passed through her head while she was in Stephen's body.

She wonders, unhappily, if she should tell Stephen about the kiss in the dark hallway. He was forthcoming about Crowley-Lupin, after all, and anyway it wasn't as if it were something that River and Stephen probably did an awful lot of anyway, but she suspects Stephen would not be terribly keen on the use of his and River's bodies for ... whatever it was that was going on between Teatime and herself.

Still, that did bring up one interesting fact she's been mulling over, and perhaps Stephen, being a man of science, would have some light to shed. "It was very curious, I must say," she said, studying another interesting insect on a different plant. "You know, of course, that Teatime's not one of my favourite people, but I found it was quite a lot easier to get along with him, when we were switched there." She hoped her tone was sufficiently neutral.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"That would seem odd, and yet I find it is not surprising," muses Stephen. "Mammals that are monogamous or serially monogamous by nature often exhibit a sort of pair-bonding behavior." River is, after all, his wife, or will be as soon as the Ministry of Magic returns the proper paperwork (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/350981.html?thread=17322501#t17322501), but they have agreed to keep this secret, and Stephen does not think it necessary for Susan to know the exact depth of that bond. (Telling her would in any event take away some of the frisson of excitement that the secrecy carries with it...)

While always circumspect in personal matters, Stephen is accustomed to quite open and graphic detail in discussion of science and medicine*, and he speculates quite freely, "I wonder to what extent the bodies' natural affection for one another would compel them, not being driven by the proper souls."

(( * There are many humorous examples of this in canon .. the one we keep remembering is when Stephen greets a colleague, a fellow spy whom he'd performed an adult circumcision on so said spy could pass as a Jew, "How is your penis?" ))

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan blushes scarlet as Stephen's words touch precisely, if entirely unintentionally, on her dithering. She buries her face in her hands, and a muffled, "oh gods..." can be heard.

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Susan's evident distress jolts Stephen out of abstract scientific musing. "Oh, dear." Quite unselfconsciously, he puts an arm around her shoulders and gives her an ineffective pat. "It cannot be so bad as all that. Unless Teatime hurt you in any way?"

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"No, no," she says, a little wildly, "not at all, no." Her hands drop to her lap, and her expression is as of someone shell-shocked. "Stephen, I kissed him. When he was her and I was you. And I wanted --" She shrugs helplessly, unable to bring herself to say the words. "But I didn't. There was only the kiss. And I am terribly, terribly sorry. Especially since you were so polite with my body."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"I see." Stephen wants to avoid giving any impression of reproach or dismay, and he is still convinced that the bodies' mutual affinity must be responsible for anything that happened -- indeed, now that he thinks of it, he is surprised Susan and Teatime were able to restrain themselves thus far, considering River's and his own usual habits. At the same time, a small part of his mind is busy being appalled at the idea that he should have kissed Teatime in any way, shape, or form -- as though he had made a habit of sleeping in a charnel house, or ... it did not bear thinking about.

He gives Susan another well-meaning but wholly ineffectual pat on the shoulder. "Well, now, and the entire school has witnessed the same thing happening many a time. There is no shame in it, my dear. I worry only for the effects on your own mind, now that you have returned to yourself again."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I shall get over it, I expect. I feel worse about it because I felt like I was getting you and River ... somehow involved in this situation I'm in with Teatime. More involved anyway. I really am very sorry about that." The blush has faded off. She smiles faintly. "Do you know, he actually asked me out to dinner while all that was going on?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"Did he, now." The idea of a romantic dinner with Teatime is, to Stephen, nothing short of surreal. "Could it be that the effects of one body continue within the interloper's soul, after it returns to his proper home?" An experiment occurs to him. "Forgive me, my dear, but I propose to take a further liberty, in the name of science."

Tentatively, he winds his other arm around Susan so that she is in something of a loose embrace; tentatively, he kisses her, and waits to see whether there is any effect on either of them.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan, astonished, accepts the kiss. It is a very pleasant kiss, and Stephen is certainly an attractive man, but ...

She blinks at him, looking a bit uncharacteristically owlish and nonplussed. "I feel like I just kissed my brother. If I had a brother, which I don't. And not entirely like a brother perhaps --" her gaze flicks towards his lap, and she blushes again "-- but. A near relation, anyway." She clears her throat. "Er. Is that what you were wondering, then?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen waits to be entirely certain of his own reaction before answering. "Yes, that is what I sought to test, precisely. I am most relieved to find we are in agreement." And he is. For one thing, River would kill them both if it were otherwise. He can only laugh. "Do you know, I had no idea whether I would ever get back to my own body again, and I wondered whether she would be willing to remain married to you."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan, equally relieved, laughs as well -- something about the kiss seems to have obliterated all the worry and awkwardness she'd felt before seeing Stephen. "Well, if Eros's day was any indication, at least we know there'd have been no legal hurdle to it." She smiled. "You know, when Rukia told me that you'd been in my body, one of the reasons I was so relieved was that at least the person subjected to the contents of my lingerie drawer was someone I trusted."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

This earns her a wry smile. "And why do you think I needed to see Book? Though I must commend you on your taste in lingerie." It was very much the kind of talk he might have shared with Jack, or with Clarissa, someone wholly familiar and wholly unthreatening, and he felt his experiment must have cleared the air for them both, risky though it seemed at first. "But tell me, now, did the occasion allow you to learn anything new of Teatime? Perhaps this invitation to dinner represents an opportunity for you, quite beyond whatever River's body may have had in mind for it."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"I hope the good Shepherd was able to clear your conscience. That being said, should you ever want a gift for River along those lines, I'd be happy to help you shop," she said with a grin.

"As for Teatime, I'm not sure how much I learned, exactly, but I think that the invitation is an opportunity. It's been suggested to me that I try being nice to him ... and though in general I don't do 'nice' particularly well, any time I can pick his brains a little without having to worry about -- well, literal brain-picking is potentially useful. Assuming it wasn't just a whim of the moment, I do plan to go through with it."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"For my conscience he did little, but he was able to suggest a possible cause for what happened: a god, or gods, or pretender to godhood. By now, of course, none of it much matters." Stephen shrugged, and gave her a self-deprecating smile in return. "I would certainly send her shopping with you, if not for the ultimate futility of buying any such thing." With ample access to their quarters and persons, Susan must have realized what sort of use the pair customarily made of sharp implements.

"Any means of information should not be dismissed out of hand, so I cannot say I disagree with your intention regarding the notion of dinner with Teatime." For perhaps the first time, Stephen's mind mapped the orthographic representation of Teatime's name against its pronunciation, and he could not suppress a snicker. "Dinner with Teatime. Jack would be in fits."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan groans good-naturedly. "'IT IS A PUN, OR A PLAY ON WORDS,' as my grandfather would say. He'd like it too." Stephen's allusion to his activities with River escapes Susan somewhat; wanting to respect their privacy, she'd not poked around in shelves or drawers any more than was absolutely necessary to get Stephen's body dressed.

Gods? Well, that figured. "You know, I was never all that fond of the gods back at home, but I think I like the ones here even less. What with Eros's little prank, and this, it's almost enough to make me think that someone has it in for me -- for both Teatime and me, specifically -- as well as a very strange sense of humour. It's starting to go beyond mere coincidence."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"It does strike me as less than coincidental that yourself and Teatime should be drawn together not once but twice by such pranks," Stephen agreed. "Perhaps Teatime himself may have some thoughts on the subject, which may be worth exploring. Whatever else one may say of the man, he is far from slow." It was a grudging compliment, of sorts, but only went so far; Stephen much preferred his enemies to be of the dull variety.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"He is that. We'll see what happens, I suppose -- and of course I'll keep you informed." Which reminds Susan of something else. "I haven't been entirely sure of how to communicate with you, not since your last letter. I don't want to cause trouble or inconvenience, of course, not for you or for River, but I'm not entirely sure of what would work best."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen nods. "The question of correspondence is not without its difficulties. It is not that she would suspect anything untoward between us -- between you and I. It is that she has a loyalty toward Mr C, and feels she therefore owes certain courtesies to Mr Teatime as his lover. I trust her with my life, but I do not trust her with yours." It pains him to say it.

He considers for a moment. "I am told by many students that Snape had been given to the practice of offering private tutorials to select pupils. Of course, the man did it to curry favor with those he felt to be worth cultivating, and I have no intention of continuing the practice in the vast majority of cases. However, it strikes me that his habits may prove useful to us in this case. Simply owl me that you wish to see me in my office, when you have something that needs saying, and that should suffice. Whether it seems to others to be something other than a potions tutorial concerns me not at all, though of course for the sake of River's -- reading -- I would need you to go through the process of making some potion or other on such an occasion."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan looks very uncomfortable. "I hate to be a cause of any dissembling between you and River -- even if it's for the best, given the messy loyalties involved here. Nor am I signed up for your potions class. However, if you think that detail could be finessed, it seems like a workable strategy. Would any of your regular students pressure you for tutorials, though, if it were thought I was benefiting from such?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen snorts. "None of my regular students are in any condition to request advanced lessons, if the last class meeting is any indication. And if they were, I would feel obliged to accommodate them regardless. As it is, I currently have a student who thinks himself quite above enrollment in the normal class, and requires independent study, as he terms it, which will be supervised by Ryuuji and myself. Oh, supervised most closely, indeed." A wicked gleam may be perceptible in Stephen's eye.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Remind me never, ever to get on your bad side, Stephen," she said with a smile. "Very well, this seems like a workable plan. Perhaps I should go ahead and sign up, for formality's sake, in any case. If it's not too late, that is."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"By all means," said Stephen, getting up from the bench and offering Susan a hand to help her up as well. "I am still permitting enrollment, so there will be no irregular appearance in that. But we have been too long away, I think, and should return now to the castle. As far as any dissembling between River and myself, believe me, it is easier to explain potions tutorials than trips out to the greenhouses." River associated the greenhouses with the person whose acquaintance had led Stephen to frequent them, Katya Ivanova, and while Katya had not been around the school much lately, River still came up with awkward questions about his reasons for meeting her there from time to time.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Very well, I'll do that, then." Susan rose and clapped Stephen on the shoulder, a casual, friendly gesture. "Thank you for looking after my body, Stephen."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"And my thanks for your doing the same -- for both myself and River." Her parting gesture touches him, something almost brotherly in the way she claps him on the shoulder -- so very like Jack -- and impulsively he gives her a quick hug before heading off toward the part of the castle where he now lives, a different direction from Ravenclaw.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan watches him go, almost forgetting to snap her fingers and start time again. She is overwhelmed with relief, really -- she'd been so worried about the effect the mix-up would have on her friendship with Stephen, that it would somehow shut them down in mutual restraint. Instead, quite the opposite seems to have happened. It's a very pleasant feeling.

With a smile on her face that is frankly rather goofy -- and enormously surprising to anyone who might catch a glimpse -- she returns to Ravenclaw.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

(( Excellent. I do so love GOB. ))