Title: Human Contact
Characters/Pairings: George and Shaun Mason
Summary: It's not as though Westermarck is infallible
Notes: Adult for smut; written for Porn Battle XV. Adoptive siblings who love each other an awful lot. Pre-canon. 1260 words. Many, many thanks to Finch over on Dreamwidth for the beta-reading.

Human Contact

They say that people in war zones band together so that they'll have a better chance of surviving, that the presence of a common threat can force people to forget petty differences. I don't know whether I buy that—it sounds good. Too good to be true, and I've found that the cliché generally holds up. Nothing that's sounded that good to me ever seems to bear out in the long run. Empirical evidence suggests that humanity is living in a war zone, us versus the infected, and I don't think humanity is markedly more unified than it was Pre-Rising. More the opposite, in some senses. People can talk about how we forge our connections through the internet, and we do, but how much of that is sheer desperation for social contact from people who refuse to leave their houses?

And how much solidarity can a common enemy make when anyone can turn out to be a sleeper agent at any time?

This is why I get annoyed at those people who keep arguing that the Kellis-Amberlee is a sign that humanity needs to transcend itself. Saying that just ignores the fact that humanity is made up of people, and that people are all too often petty, vicious, and self-serving. You can never go wrong by overestimating the human capacity for viciousness. And Mencken didn't even have a world where you might need to put a bullet in someone else's brain at a split-second's notice to contend with.

Grand threats don't bring people together. Human contact, person to person, does. It takes time and effort and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

—From Images May Disturb You,
the blog of Georgia Mason, May 1, 2038.

[From the comments: Going through life as a cynic is no way to live, George.]

[From the comments: Says who?]

Got another set of proposals today, complete with visual aids. Wow, ladies, I'm flattered, really I am, but there's a difference between going for a Golden Steve-O and a Darwin Award. Besides, isn't that a little drafty? I'd think you'd get a chill or something, if the zombies didn't get you first.

—From Hail to the King,
the blog of Shaun Mason, July 28, 2038

Some days I despair of humanity, I really do.

—Georgia Mason

The thing is, she wants to project this tough as nails exterior, Murrow meets Pyle meets Hunter S. Thompson, and maybe she's got the world convinced. Hell, maybe she's got herself convinced, I don't know. But I do know this: it's exterior. Whatever George says to the contrary, the truth is, she wants to believe. Maybe in people, God knows she's got this way of turning all that focus of hers on someone that pushes them into stepping up in ways you have to see to believe. Definitely in the truth. The truth is an article of faith, far as George is concerned.

It's funny that as dedicated as she is to uncovering the truth, it took her so long to catch on to the fact that the Masons adopted us as a publicity stunt. Ratings über alles and all that.

I don't know that she's ever really gotten over that. Maybe that's why she goes for the cynical approach, to make sure no one else ever disappoints her like that.

I reckon I can work with that.

Email, to : You seen Buffy's latest?

Email, to : You know better than that. Why?

Email, to : Someone ought to tell her about the Westermarck Effect, is the thing.

Email, to : And spoil all her fun? Don't be mean, George. If she wants to write about pretty boys finding comfort in their brothers' arms, who are we to tell her no? Didn't she say the m/m readers are one of her biggest audiences?

Email, to : In all defiance of reason and probability, yes.

Email, to : So there you go. Besides, it's not like Westermarck is infallible.

Email, to : True.

I don't know if our so-called parents have ever wondered about why Shaun and I have insisted we keep our adjoining bedrooms. It makes sense given our blogging work. Maybe that's good enough for the Masons, who ought to know about subordinating everything to the pursuit of ratings and revenue. Shaun and I need to be able to talk and work side-by-side in order to get ahead. Our progress on that front benefits them, too. Reflects well on their efforts as parents: behold the chips off the old blocks.

I expect that's what keeps them from saying anything else or using any suspicions they might have for a cheap ratings grab. It would be cheap, would be sensationalistic, Z-grade journalism at its worst, and they have too much pride for that. Have invested too much time and energy into the image of the picture-perfect Post-Rising family to explode it now.

I don't know if I really care what they know or what they suspect, anyway. Shaun's room connects to mine and that's the important part. Sometimes, late at night, after we've put the site to bed and all's quiet on the electronic front, we take advantage of that fact.

Retinal-KA isn't a joke and isn't really something to envy someone, but there's one thing I've always kind of thought was useful about it—the low-light vision. It's a pain in the ass most of the time, what with the sunglasses and the headaches and the asshole babysitters and all, but sometimes, when the conditions are just right, I think it must be handy.

George has seen a lot more of me than I have of her.

I mean, think about it: she's at the advantage when it's late and the lights are off. I'm pretty sure she's never stubbed her toe going to the bathroom at night, for example, and I know she can read people's faces in the dark. I've seen her do it.

Sometimes she reads me like an open book. Since it's George, I don't mind her having the advantage. I trust her not to abuse it.

There are other ways of reading a person, anyway, and I guess I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what George's skin and body are saying. That's a language only I speak, which suits the both of us. So if George knows what my face looks like when I've lost track of everything outside myself, but I can't even tell whether she's kissing me with her eyes shut or not, I know every inch of her skin, from the slope of her breasts to the silky skin at the crease of her hips, and what each ripple of her muscles means. It evens out in the end.

For all the advantages and opportunities we had, I wouldn't recommend growing up the way we did, if you can help it. It leaves a mark on a person to grow up in a war zone and turns them into something ordinary people don't always know what to do with. On the other hand, Shaun and I are good at what we do, and without the Masons, we likely wouldn't have each other.

You have to take the good with the bad. And when the good is what we've got, the bad doesn't seem too bad at all.

—From Images May Disturb You,
the blog of Georgia Mason, May 1, 2038.

end

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