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they/it 🪰 adult 🪳 cringe fanfic writer & insectoid extraordinaire

[presidentbungus]

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[presidentbungus]

im SO CLOSE to this dead god please edmund let tcain be easy

[presidentbungus]

Something soft suddenly brushes at Dell's arm; he looks over and sees a fluffy little cat standing on the table, a little brown-black smear of matted fur--no collar or anything, and he can't fathom where it came from. He holds back from pulling away, since he can still feel Demo's eye crawling across him; as he turns his hand over it bumps his palm, passes silently under his fingers, purring.

Something about it is a little sweet, even though the pit in his stomach just keeps gettin' deeper. 

He slowly steps away and just to make sure things stay looking cordial he starts to ask who's this little fella, but Demo interrupts him. "Oh, that's Bonnie," he says, leaning forward; he snaps his fingers and she shoots over to him, leaping into his lap. Then in a practiced motion he wraps his arms around her, pulling at the fur around her neck, and Dell can hear her purring all the way across the room. "Isn't she handsome?"

Dell leans back against his bench and grimaces when he feels dust under his elbows. "They don't come down on y’all for havin' pets?”

"Nah. Case you haven't figured it out from... everything... company disnae give one fuck, long as we can trot to work well enough when the sun comes up." Bonnie smashes her head against his chin, over and over. Dell feels just a little uncomfortable, and he's sure that has something to do with it. 

The voice that comes out of Demo next isn't remotely befitting of... anything he's seen come out of him so far, a thoroughly horrifying, screechy falsetto aimed at the critter in his lap: "Isn't that right, lovely? Our little stowaway?"

Dell coughs a laugh into his fist and looks away.

Demo's voice thankfully drops back down two octaves for his next question, into the more comfortable-sounding rumbling baritone Dell's been growing acquainted with. "You don't like cats?"

"I don't like pets," he corrects, simply. "More trouble than they're worth." The kitty just sits there and stares at him with two massive, shining eyes the size of dinner plates, accusatory, like she knows what he's saying, even as Demo rubs his face all over hers. "Take up all your time, get everything dirty, and it's just plain bad habit to get attached to things like that, anyway."

"What do you mean by that?"

He tries not to wonder why Demo looks so suspicious, and why it's making him feel so hot. "It's just impractical, that's all."

"I bet," he drawls, slowly, "ye think you're very pragmatic."

Dell tilts his head, stretching a perplexed smile across his face. "Why yes, I do."

"I can tell."

He doesn't dignify this with a response--he's not really sure how to, so he just turns away, still feeling two different glares on the back of his head, finally pulling open the toolbox he brought and imagining how exactly to unload it.

[presidentbungus]

engie on my mind

[presidentbungus]

second semester of music school officially accomplished😋

[vetchtibbles]

oh hey man so is your living weapon single or

[presidentbungus]

it’s happening 😈

[racmune]

[racmune]

this pauling was pretty good tho

[presidentbungus]

interesting phenomenon I've noticed in my horror movie binge cycle is that for some reason in 80% of paranormal horror movies with a female protagonist the majority of the movie consists of just the protagonist telling people about the clearly existing phenomena and people belittling her and calling her crazy. "I'm a woman and a ghost is haunting me or whatever and everybody I talk to calls me insane immediately and leaves" horror is basically its own subgenre now. I really could write a dissertation on this

[scary-mushrroom]

"Scout, look at me."

He does, with an unbelievably stupid grin on his face, so Pauling glares at him until he gets the point and pipes down a little. "What?"

"You can never tell anybody this happened, ever."

"I won't, I won't."

She keeps eye contact with him as she scrambles out of the bed, pulling her old clothes off of the shitty motel carpet, wincing at the amount of plainly visible stains there are in the shag. "No, Scout, I'm serious. I will actually kill you. Don't tell Sniper, don't tell Demo, especially don't tell Engie, don't tell your mom, don't tell your friends, nobody. This did not happen."

"I don't get why this is such a big deal. We're both hot people, hot people have awesome sex, it happens--"

"Scout." She finally finds her pistol in its holster buried under the limp fabric puddle of her skirt and pulls it out, gesturing loosely with it and hoping that gets the point across well enough. "I'm not fucking kidding."

Scout laughs at that, which seems like the wrong reaction, until she realizes he's looking up at the mirror above the bed and she can’t believe it, why did she just do it with Scout in a shitty fucking motel room with a mirror above the bed? 

"Yeah, Miss Pauling. I won't tell anybody. Jeez."

—

Scout gives up and taps him on the shoulder. "Snipes, brother. You'll never guess what happened last night."

"I probably won't," Sniper mumbles. He's got his nose shoved in the paper. There's a joke Scout can make here, about Sniper’s jars and tiny dogs pissing on newspaper, but that's not as important right now.

"Let's just say--she should probably change her name to Hit Pauling."

Wait for a second--cross his arms a little--Sniper just glares at him. Why was he expecting him to get that?

"Instead of Miss, y'know."

"What?"

"'Cause I--'cause I hit that last night."

That gets a little raise of the eyebrows, not exactly what he was hoping for. "You punched our boss?"

"Snipes I had awesome sex with Miss Pauling last night, are you stupid?"

"Just like that time you backflipped out of a moving car?"

"I keep telling you, that happened, and it was awesome, and I'm serious. We totally banged. All over the place. In a motel room with a mirror above the bed. Can you believe it?"

"Not particularly."

"Okay, can you eat my ass? Seriously? I'm not kidding."

[presidentbungus]

“Mind passing me a cigarette, Frenchie?”

Spy, lips pursed into a thin line, digs through his pockets a little longer than necessary to retrieve a metal case—one of those fancy ones, and Engie’s fingers brush an unnecessary velvet-lined interior as he tugs out a cig. It’s probably Spy’s intention to play to the stereotype, but he still finds it funny.

“Asking me for a favor, Laborer? You must have given up.”

“Hardy har.” He feels Spy’s gaze cutting into him as he flips open his lighter. Spy’s making an exaggerated show of digging through his pockets, absolutely conscious Engie’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye (there was a time they tried to hide that they were looking at each other—imagine that). He almost chokes as the smoke that floods into his mouth turns out to be flavored—clove or something. Probably really should’ve expected that. Spy’s stupid grin vanishes as soon as he tilts his head a little more.

“Lookin’ for something, Slim?”

“I seem to have misplaced my lighter.”

He’s probably lying. Engie starts getting the beginnings of a really, really stupid idea.

He lets himself smile, just a little. “Oh no. What are you gonna do now?”

“Well, seeing as you now possess a debt…”

Engie stares at him and waits until he puts the cig back between his back molars—and then grabs him by the collar, feels soft silk and crumples it just a little for good measure, and pulls him way too close until the tips of their cigarettes touch. Spy makes some kinda noise—something between a gasp and a laugh. They stay there, probably a bit longer than necessary, and then pull away, and they get back to sitting there and pretending they’re not looking at each other.

“… That seemed unnecessary.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Of course they both know what it meant, and of course the blush that tears its way across Spy’s face makes him blush a little, too. And it’s not like either of them are oblivious to the fact it hasn’t really been a professional relationship for a while.

“That’s it?”

Spy opts to let out a stupid little hum, instead of any kind of proper response.

And while Engie wouldn’t necessarily mind more, he ain’t gonna stretch out his neck to get to that (he thinks something about the French and guillotines)—the way he sees it, if Spy really agrees with him he’ll get over himself and cross that bridge on his own. (And Engie’s pretty confident he’s given him plenty of bridges.) For the time being he’s really fine with the way things are; brings a little excitement into his life, or something. Don’t need more. He just tries not to think about the way his heart’s pounding in his throat.

[presidentbungus]

engyspy just has so much sexual tension in every single interaction. they know they both have a thing for each other 9000 years before they actually get together, they just choose to acknowledge that information by flustering each other in hopes theyll let something slip instead of just kissing like normal people.

im talking, like... engy pulls spy's collar down to talk to him every time they speak. spy is an endless supply of prissy cigarettes, all of which he lights with his own (still trapped between his back teeth) if engy chooses to accept, which he always does. they both memorize everything they can about the other person: their habits, backstories, feelings on anything and everything, and then they let it slip in regular conversation without breaking a sweat--i know more about you than you'd like, and i know you do, too. a mutual silent acknowledgement of i know you aren't what you say you are.

they do talk, sometimes. bare their souls to each other in confusing, cryptic ways. and anything they don't know can be helped by relentless background checking and record-searching; men like them know how to hide things, but men like them also know how to access what is hidden. there's a mutual acknowledgement of i could metaphorically kill you whenever I wanted, release everything you've ever hidden, use those dangerous secrets against you in all the ways that would hurt the most, but I know you could just turn around and do that to me in exchange and it would be fair. a tenuous balance, or a scorpion and a frog, crossing the river together. neither of them will ever attempt anything resembling that, maybe because of the fear of losing everything they've cultivated so carefully over decades, or maybe because they know that has a higher chance to pull things to an end than they'd prefer

[presidentbungus]

Scout rolls over and smacks his alarm clock across the top—the ringing doesn’t stop, so he hits it again, and it tumbles off of his nightstand and in the almost pitch-black of his room he’s barely able to make out the phone almost vibrating off the hook, barely illuminated by the digital clock on its display. It’s still an hour behind—he never figured out how to fix that—but it would be two-something AM. Jeez.

He picks it up, mourning the loss of heat as he sits up out of the covers, yawning into the receiver. A feminine voice says something incomprehensible, so he says: “Huh?”

“Scout, listen,” Pauling curtly replies—something bangs in the background, maybe a gun. Is she still working? “What kind of, um, citrus… helps you dissolve corpses?”

His brain feels like wet goop, pooling out of his ears. He clumsily cradles the phone between his head and shoulder so he can rub the crust out of his eyes. “I don’t… Ms. P, it’s like, two…”

“Quicklime. It’s quicklime. Haha.”

“… Slow down, dude.” He yawns again, makes sure to make this one a little extra obnoxious. “What?”

“It’s a joke. Because it’s like—lime. Like a fruit but, um, also like quicklime. Oh fuck,” and then what Scout imagines to be a little kitten heel driving itself through someone’s eye, as another scream rings out, alongside a sickening squelch. “You know? Heh.”

He slides the rest of the way back under the covers and sighs. “… Oh.”

“Was it funny?”

“I think—“

“Be honest. Constructive criticism, stuff I can really use. Hit me.”

Scout’s sinuses feel like they’re full of cement. “Is this all you called me for?”

“No. Yes. Please just answer the question. And do you think it’d play to an audience?”

Scout thinks about Demo saying something along the lines of ‘if anyone breaks that poor lass’ heart by telling her that none of her jokes make any sense I’m personally gonna destroy everything you hold dear or whatever’. He opts for the reasonable copout: “I liked it.”

“Honestly.”

Shit. “Okay, jeez.“ Scout yawns again, mostly to stall for time. “… You could workshop it a little, kinda. Maybe.”

The line goes dead, immediately. Scout clatters the phone back on the hook and rolls back into the covers, groaning, and then the phone rings again, and he quickly picks it back up and doesn’t bother to open his eyes this time. “Hey, Ms. Pauling.”

“I’m sorry. I got upset.”

“I know.”

"I'll… take it into account."

"Okay." When Pauling doesn't say anything back, he adds: "You're gettin’ there."

"… Thanks, Scout."

He considers saying 'call me at seven next time', like he always considers, but like usual he just feels some part of that would be kind of cruel. “Goodnight, Ms. Pauling.”

"Um, sweet dreams." About half of a shrill shriek somewhere around her gets cut off by her hanging up. Whatever.

He sets the phone back on his nightstand, and then thinks better of it and slots it back into the dock, and then buries his head in his hands and shakes his head until he feels like he's able to sit still enough to go back to bed.

[presidentbungus]

“He’s my son,” Marcel says, and Dell’s incredulous look out of the corner of his eye almost makes him give away his amusement. “Of course women want nothing to do with him.”

It takes just a moment to pierce those goggles—and then a hollering laugh that fills the room, a bit of unnecessary table-banging, and Marcel doesn’t get his handkerchief to his face in time to properly hide the grin that splits his face.

Then, almost eerily, in the same fashion Marcel’s seen over and over through the past few days, Dell snaps back to neutral form like on command—and he looks over, still smiling, and chuckles: “A joke at your own expense?” He slaps his shoulder with the gloved hand, and it stings more than it should. “You’ve changed.”

“I imagine I deserve some sort of peace prize, yes.”

He’s back to staring straight forward, hands templed, watching Scout stumble through yet another brain-melting pickup line to the poor woman at the front desk. “Ah, there it is.”

“I wouldn’t dream of depriving you.”

[presidentbungus]

Demo’s room generally doubles as his workshop, more or less, since for some reason Engie and Medic tend to get priority in taking over the big flex rooms in the abandoned factories and half-demolished military stations they get shoved into for every new battle-site. Which is not ideal, but fine, and it saves him the walk, which is helpful when it’s nighttime and he’s getting a little too in his own head and his hands are buzzing and if he doesn’t do something right now he might just explode himself… and it’s just a short crawl out of bed, to the big antique worktable he makes a grand effort of carting from base-to-base, usually propped up against the wall farthest from anything he doesn’t want to cover in ash and various other highly combustible powders. On this desk is about thirty abandoned projects, two or three barely-not-abandoned ones, and a helpful dosage of semi-useless garbage; lucky trinkets, bottles, half-burnt volumes on chemistry and physics he borrowed from Engie and doesn’t have the guts to return, bottles, bottles. There’s a relatively clear half-moon around the bench, size varying based on the room, and then the rest of the room closes in.

It doesn’t matter how big it is; Demo has the rare talent make any space feel like a labyrinth if he has access to enough thrift-store antiques, which if he drives far enough, he will. Ash-covered tables, assorted suits of armor, grandfather clocks and couches cluster around what could barely be described as exceedingly narrow corridors of space, every flat surface in the room covered in bizarre statues, presumably haunted amulets and snowglobes, seashells and nerd shit action figures, a tiny useless trinket borrowed from everywhere he’s ever visited; ancient jade figurines, vials of mysterious powder, fantasy playing cards. All painstakingly arranged in a way only remotely decipherable to himself, of course; delicately balanced so a spare gust of wind could send just about everything in the room careening at once to the floors, but that’s alright, he seems to manage. The walls are covered in thrift-store paintings and weapon racks, the favorites of his swords hung proudly above the chaos, the rest shoved haphazardly in a golf bag under the singing fish. A grand bookshelf sits off to one side, more expensive-looking than anything else and painstakingly taken to every location the mercs visit, filled with ancient history volumes, spellbooks, and exceedingly dense fantasy novels.

It’s unnavigable to anyone besides esoteric, overwhelmingly sentimental Tavish DeGroot. It’s built-in defense against intruders until Scout tumbles in with begrudging permission and accidentally sets free about six vengeful ancestral spirits from various shattered vases and amulets with an unfortunately placed sweep of the arm. It’s probably not representative of a healthy mental state. He makes it work

[presidentbungus]

Marcel has a way of getting things done, no matter what anyone else really wants to do about it. Tavish isn’t all too sure how he ended up here, one of two seated on a luxury private jet, chugging a steady stream of cocktails he’s already forgetting the prissy names of, using up vacation days he hasn’t had since the lawsuit, but every time he looks up at Marcel sitting across from him and slowly poring through a pile of travel magazines it just makes sense.

And well he knew what he was getting himself into in the first place—you can’t really trust a man with a watch collection, who fancies sunglasses indoors as a slick and appropriate fashion choice, to not want to spring a trip to somewhere stiff and wealthy at nowhere, equator at every feasible opportunity.

What he lacks in natural cuteness the man makes up for in the strange ability to make anything and everything sound like the most important, life-changing thing you’ve ever considered doing. Not to mention all the well I’ll just go on my own, Tavish, another lonely soul adrift in the whirlpool of solitude, Tavish, and you can stay here and keep working since I know that’s more important to you than anything else, anything at all. And so, curse his natural susceptibility to guilt, Tavish found himself here about an hour later, since all his things were conveniently already arranged in a suitcase on his bed. What a surprise.

Something about dating the French. Marcel looks up at him, and slowly outstretches one expertly fitted leather glove across the aisle, sets it down on his hand, and says: "Tavish, mon beau. Look at this."

And then an awkward shuffling-around of the magazine he's holding with only one hand, until Tavish can see a limp page advertising--well, he assumes it's advertising some sort of spa getaway, using a lot of words he doesn't really recognize, and a completely unrelated picture underneath of dolphins turning in the waves. "The Pacific Pearl package," another pertinent tap at a flowery subsection, "one of the highest-reviewed couple's massage experiences on the continent."

'Highest reviewed'. Tavish knows he's talking it up but on the off-chance he's not he decides it's not worth the risk of breaking his poor wee heart. "Mmm. Wow," sucking down something green out of a cocktail glass. Tastes like watermelon. "That sounds great."

And here Marcel's eyebrows pitch just a little bit and oh, here it comes. "Of course, we would have to give up bungee-jumping if we wanted to slot this into the schedule--"

"Nope. Good try." There it is. "Bungee-jumping is non-bloody-negotiable." Tavish sets his glass down on the table so he can point accusingly, since Marcel's still rubbing treacherous circles into his other hand. "You gave me two… experiences to plan," god he hates that word, "and by god, we're stickin' by 'em. And that also goes for--"

"Scuba diving. I'm aware." Marcel wilts, just a little. "With the sharks. And the jellyfish. And the--"

"Anemone, killer minnows, flesh-eating sandskippers, vicious brain-melting amoebas, I know, Marce."

"You need to relax, mon coeur. Not… get your adrenaline pumping out in the wild. That's all I'm getting at."

Tavish sighs. "I can relax and have a little fun repeatedly jumping off cliffs, those two things aren't mutually bloody exclusive. And you," he says, triumphantly, "you gotta live a little. I can't be the only fun one in this relationship. It's stiflin' me growth as a person."

"I'm fun." Marcel rears back, maybe genuinely offended, though of course you can never tell with him. "I'm very fun."

"Well let's prove it, then."

Marcel opens his mouth, and then it flops shut and he leans back against the seat, pulling his hand back and crossing his arms.

It might be a bad time, but Tavish quietly adds: "Thoughts on parasailing?"

"You're on thin ice."

"Understood."