Artie: Pornography Addiction
Aug. 2nd, 2012 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonshadows((Second, when a child is referenced, it was a toddler who was found inside Schrödinger's Box, an artifact that presented one of two possible outcomes to whoever looked through the viewing window in the lid and whoever opened the box made the choice. One of the toddler's parents saw the boy dead, the other saw him alive. Artie made the choice to embrace his gift because if he didn't, he could very well be murdering a baby through inaction if someone without the ability to consciously choose one of the outcomes opened the box.))
((Third, I have a headcanon that Artie doesn't drink. At all. Two pieces of evidence support this: in the pilot, when he offers Pete milk or juice for cookies, Pete implies he'd like something harder by asking, 'You know what I'd really like?' and Artie answers, 'I do indeed, but falling off the wagon...may not be the best option at this point.' This sounds to me like he knows all too well what it's like to not be able to drink. Then, in 'Implosion' when he meets Carol at the bar, he's got a glass of clear liquid with a slice of lime in it in front of him. There's no ice and no bubbles, which makes it unlikely that it's anything but simple water. So I extrapolated a brush with an artifact that would turn him off of drinking for a quarter of a century. In his first year, he carelessly grabbed the Rod of Dionysus - without gloves - while attempting to snag it. The Rod made him perpetually drunk and also attractive to women, but it was also a bifurcated artifact. The Regents ordered James to abandon his compromised partner. It took James a few months to track down the other half of the artifact, a goblet, and get Regent permission to both snag the Rod and save his partner. Artie woke up in detox, so close to having died that James didn't even say 'I told you so', and probably hasn't touched a drop since.))
((Oh, and warnings for descriptions of injury to sensitive bits.))
“You’re joking.”
James gave him that understated, skeptical look that said not only was he not joking, but that Artie should have known better.
“That’s just a-a-a joke, a…something the religious crackpots say to try to control the masses.”
“Do remember where you work,” he said calmly.
Artie scowled. He was remembering, he was just having trouble taking this seriously. “Still. A pornography addiction?”
“Unpaid bills,” his partner read off the file. “Regular and repeated orders to every establishment that delivers to his home, emptying his bank account. His lady friend reports that before she left, he showed no interest in anything else, and none of his friends have been able to budge him for a month and a half. He won’t even answer the phone. The neighbors are complaining about unpleasant odors, and the homeowner’s association are screaming for his head over the state of his lawn.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he scoffed.
James didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Luckily, the lady friend was able to identify the artifact: an old VHS tape worn down to static. With luck, this will be a simple retrieval.”
“Don’t say that,” groaned Artie. “You’ll jinx it.”
“Again with your superstitions, partner!”
“Remember where we work,” he shot back, grinning.
James inclined his head, acknowledging the point.
The first sign that they’d found the right place was a remarkably unkempt lawn in a row of picture-perfect condos. Artie parked at the curb – for a faster getaway, just in case – and they both grimaced at the smell that wafted over them.
“This isn’t going to be pleasant, partner,” James sighed.
Artie retrieved his black carpet bag from the trunk, handed James the canister of neutralizer, and turned to face the door. “That’s an understatement.”
On the porch, they pulled on purple gloves. There was no answer when James knocked, nor when he called out for the resident to open the door. When he tried it knob, it was unlocked. Shrugging, he pushed it open and immediately gagged on the indescribably rancid stench that roiled out. The analytical portion of Artie’s brain catalogued mustiness, rotten food, body odor, and a dank sort of smell he couldn’t quite identify and didn’t want to. James covered his nose and mouth with one sleeve, squared his shoulders, and stepped inside. Artie followed his lead and glanced towards the back, which appeared to be a living room or den; James nodded and indicated with a jerk of his head that he would investigate upstairs.
The den was empty; on a hunch, Artie located the phone as James’s footsteps reached the top of the stairs and a door opened. Then those footsteps dashed back down and James braced himself on the porch railing to vomit into the overgrown bushes on one side. The gas mask carried a side effect of tamping down empathy for the pain and suffering of others, which Artie didn’t really see as a downside at all in this situation. He pulled it from his bag and settled it over his head, breathing a sigh of relief when it removed the stench from the air. James would have had a fit to see him use it, but the taller man was otherwise occupied at the moment and his partner wasted no time climbing the stairs.
The room wasn’t hard to find; a hissing crackle and the unmistakable sounds of male masturbation emanated from an open doorway and Artie peered cautiously into that room. Piles and piles of take-out containers, some half-empty, filled the corners. Dirty laundry was heaped up along the walls and the occupant had clearly given up on clothes entirely. Aside from being visibly undernourished and dehydrated, his eyes were bloodshot, his long hair was lank and greasy, and he displayed an overall state of cleanliness that would repulse both the homeless of Philly and the downtrodden of Moscow. One hand – nails obscenely long and broken jaggedly – scrabbled at an empty tissue box as the man let out a hoarse, pained cry and ejaculated onto the floor in front of the couch he probably hadn’t left, or had left only briefly, in a month. The carpet was all but hidden beneath a layer of crumpled, used tissues, and there was an disturbingly large damp patch that a single human ejaculation couldn’t account for.
How many times has he…? The thought flashed through Artie’s mind and he glanced at the man’s abused genitals as his hand fell away in momentary relief. Thus it was that he saw the full extent of damage that had been done, and felt like joining James at the railing. To say the man had rubbed himself raw would be a criminal understatement. At least half the skin had been rubbed clean away, leaving gaping sores. Infection and semen, whispered the corner of his brain still trying to identify the last elements of the stench that was strong enough, here, to filter slightly through the mask. The man’s hand had fared slightly better, but there were still patches of bleeding or missing skin. As Artie watched in horror, the hand went back into place and the man moaned as he began stroking himself again. Artie tore his eyes away and looked desperately for the VCR. He caught one glimpse of the screen – half his brain registering only static and snow, the other insisting it was the hottest example of filmed erotica he’d ever witnessed, just like that one thing but a hundred times better – and averted his eyes before the artifact could do more than make him uncomfortably aroused. Luckily, the revolting odors seeping through the mask were solving that problem rather quickly. A moment later, he spotted the eject button and lunged for it.
James had left the neutralizer by the doorway. The video cassette sent up a fountain of sparks as it was submerged, and when the lid was bolted shut, the man on the couch began to scream in pain Artie didn’t want to imagine, but unfortunately was imagining anyway. He rattled down the stairs, bag in one hand, canister in the other, and hurried to the phone. With one hand, he dialed 9-1-1. With the other, he pulled off the gas mask and shoved it into his bag – but not before taking a deep breath.
“There’s a man here who needs a hospital,” he blurted when the operator picked up. Then he dropped the receiver and bolted for the door, holding the remainder of his breath and trusting that the call would be traced because he was not staying there a single second longer than he absolutely had to.
“Did you get it?” James asked weakly as the door shut behind Artie.
Absently, he pulled a clean handkerchief out of his bag and offered it to his partner. “I got it; we can leave. I also called 9-1-1, so we should leave before they arrive and start asking questions.”
James wiped his mouth and folded the handkerchief into a small bundle. “Then let’s. If you don’t mind, could we stop somewhere-”
“-so you can rinse that out of your mouth? Of course. You were right,” he said as he stowed bag, latex gloves, and canister in the trunk. “This was a simple retrieval.”
“And you were right,” his partner admitted with something that would have been reluctance if he were less miserable as they climbed into the car. “I did jinx it.” He waited until they’d pulled away from the curb before asking, “Arthur, how did you stomach that wretched stench?”
“Oh, you know, I…”
“Arthur.”
Artie sighed. “The gas mask. The downside was a benefit in this situation!”
The taller man massaged his temples. “I’d argue that with you, but I wish I’d had it. The memory of that stench will wash away in the shower, but I’ll need a stiff drink to blur the sight of that poor man.”
Maybe another man would have let the subject drop; Artie sensed a chance for victory and pounced. “See? Sometimes, artifacts can be used safely to benefit others.”
Sadly, James wasn’t giving up without a fight. “What if the downside had destroyed your empathy to the point of thinking that putting that man down was a good idea?”
“Oh, come on, James! We use more dangerous objects every day. I’m using one right now!”
“Yes, but you’re controlling it. You have hands, you have eyes, you can see how to use it and you’re trained to use it safely.”
“Exactly!”
Silence. Artie pulled into the parking lot of a diner and glanced at his partner, who was giving him a thoughtful look.
“Really, Arthur? You can control it?” It was an honest question, rather than a skeptical one.
Artie resisted the urge to laugh as he parked. “I didn’t save that child by accident, James. I’ve got…I don’t know, hands or something. I can listen to an artifact, feel it out. It’s like the unique frequency that an artifact resonates with is…is…a code, a cypher, and I can read that cypher, and decrypt it, and it tells me what the artifact is. What created it, and why, and what it does. L-Look, a microwave has a downside, right? It could burn your food, or cause a fire.”
“Only if you use it improperly,” protested James.
“Yes! If you don’t read the manual, if you just push buttons blindly. Don’t you see? That’s why artifacts are inherently dangerous – most people don’t have whatever it is I have that lets me hear or if they do, then they don’t know how to use it, like I didn’t until a few years ago. James, James, saving that child – it was like I grew another pair of hands, hands that could grasp the controls, push the buttons. The gas mask – without those hands, I would have been smacking the microwave at random, setting it to cook for five minutes when all I wanted was to heat my scone, and I could have thought that killing that poor man was the best option for him. But all I needed was thirty seconds on half power, just enough to keep my breakfast down and maybe avert some nightmares, and my gift, whatever it is, let me dial that in so that’s all the mask gave me!”
He’d won; he could see it in James’s eyes, and James knew from his expression that he’d seen it. The change of subject was a concession and truce all in one.
“Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?” he asked Artie with genuine concern. “I know you can’t drink to dull the memory, and I doubt comfort food is going to do anything for it.”
The reminder that a moment’s carelessness had locked him into a lifetime of sobriety knocked an idea loose. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
We’ll see, all right, he thought as he followed his partner into the diner. We’ll see if Stalin’s sleep mask can be reasoned with. If there was a cypher that could be cracked, a code, and he had the means to interact with that code and tell it this instead of that, then there had to be a way to alter that code…right? Artie grinned as James ordered and then excused himself to the restroom. Only one way to find out.
The next morning, James slid a cup of tea and a warm scone over to Artie as he sat down, the lift of his eyebrows asking how he’d slept, if at all.
“You used Stalin’s sleep mask on me,” Artie said. He didn’t have to say when I nearly died to the Rod of Dionysus, and it wasn’t a question.
James looked a bit startled. “Yes, how did you know?”
“Because the downside has changed.” Artie sipped his tea and sighed. “It doesn’t induce drunkenness anymore, although it did leave me wanting vodka for about thirty seconds when I took it off.”
“Fascinating,” murmured James, sipping his own tea. “But how did you…?”
“Because the resonance changed. You used it on me enough while I was drunk that it canceled out that portion of the resonance.” Excited, he pushed scone and tea out of the way to spread both hands on the table. “James, James, don’t you see what this means?”
The taller man leaned forward, infected by his partner’s enthusiasm. “What, Arthur?”
“I can- I mean, if I can just- depending on the artifact, I might be able to…rehabilitate some that have useful effects but nasty downsides.”
“Arthur, that’s incredibly dangerous – especially for you!”
“No, no, don’t you see? I’m the only one who can! I mean, yes, I’ll be extremely careful, but James-! How useful would it be to be able to use that glassblowing tube without getting scorched lungs? O-or- well, maybe not the cornucopia, but…”
“You know the Regents would never allow it,” James said darkly. “Even if you made the damned cornucopia safe to use, they’d never authorize using it, even to solve world hunger.”
“James…”
“I’m just frustrated, partner.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I know, artifacts like that video tape ought to never see the light of day, and if the Regents ever caught wind of…” Your bag hung unsaid between them. “…well, we’ve discussed that at length. But they frown equally on using safe artifacts in the field and using dangerous ones for nefarious purposes. They’re afraid, and they’re tying our hands because of it.”
“I know,” Artie said quietly, taking James’s hand in his across the table. “We’ll just have to be amazing enough that they’ll be forced to admit they were wrong.”
James gave him a wry smile that said he thought his partner was being naively idealistic, but squeezed his hand in thanks. “I know, old friend. Now drink your tea before it gets cold.”