I noticed doc spending too much time rumbling to himself, unmuting cuz his perimeter hole is enormous. I secretly wish for some other hermit runs into his record session(cub did once I believe
Pairing: Gem/Grian (RPF)
Prompt from: Me!
Words: 2747
Read on AO3
Note: Challenges can be submitted via ask or AO3 comment and will become their own chapter if chosen
All things considered, the time everyone gives for the donations to trickle in is pretty tame. Conversation is casual, goofy even. They recount highlights from the stream events, they pass phones open to delivery menus around, they enjoy each other in ways they hadn't been able to when they had their sponsor over their shoulder.
The jester's hat looks oddly innocent where it sits lopsided in the very corner of the camera's view. Every so often, an arm can be seen dropping a folded piece of paper into it, and just as often, people lean towards it hoping for a sneak peek of what's to come, only to be shooed away.
"Pretty sizable lot now," Dot says, and Pearl takes the hat when it's handed over, near overflowing.
"Great!" Scar nods towards the wheel, propped awkwardly on the back of the couch, "Want to do the honors, Joe?"
"Gladly, Scar." Joe hooks his finger around the highest peg on the leftmost side.
"On go," Cub starts, and everyone counts down, eager to see the first victim.
"Three, two, one, go...!"
The loud ticking of pegs against the wheel's stopper rings out. All eyes follow the path, some people clenching in anticipation, only sighing in relief when their name is passed by, while others seem disappointed when the wheel slows too much to land on them this go around.
"Ooohohoo," Skizz sing-songs as the wheel finally stops, "Time to take your lumps, Gemmy!"
From where Gem is sitting, she can't read the wheel, hadn't even bothered looking up at it until Skizz calls her out. As soon as she does, she regrets it. "I'm first?"
"I don't think there are any other Gems here," False comments, and only smiles when Gem narrows her eyes.
Gem sighs. She gives herself a couple of seconds to feel sorry for her own bad luck, before rolling her shoulders back and lifting her chin. "You know what, this works for me," She gets to her feet, walking to Pearl's side, "I'll get my task out of the way, and I'll have the rest of the stream to enjoy you guys going through worse."
"That's the spirit," Pearl says, holding the hat open on either side.
Gem peers in. The challenges are well-folded, no ink visible from the outside, no indication of how agreeable or terrible the task inside may be. She sighs again, "Okay, here goes nothing."
As well as she can without making the tasks spill over the hat's edges, Gem dredges the very bottom. The tasks her friends came up with are mostly there, she figures, much more willing to chance something thought up by them than by the crowd. When she unfolds it, Kirsty's handwriting stares back at her, and she grimaces.
"'Put on the shock collar'- did we keep those?!" Her voice pitches up in disbelief.
"They were ours to take," Martyn points out, "Expensed 'em out and everything."
"Oh, lord," Gem glances back into the hat and wonders how many more of the tasks involve painful props, "Okay. 'The remote will be given to a mystery player. Retrieve the remote from that player by any means necessary, or-" Gem pauses, nose wrinkling, "'...endure a max-level shock.'"
Gem's task garners some intrigued noises. "So wait," Cub begins, "You won't know who has the remote, how are you supposed to figure it out?"
"The remote isn't that small," Impulse notes, "It'd probably be hard to hide if she just told everybody to stand up and show their hands."
"Then it'd be too easy," Tango crosses his arms, tilting his head back as he thinks.
"We could do what we did with the carrots in Permitmaster?" Jimmy suggests. Grian turns in Jimmy's direction, lungful at the ready, and Jimmy quickly amends, "Say nothing of eating it!"
"How to do it is a Gem problem, to be fair," Ren points out, "But she's smart. She'll have that remote in her pocket in no time."
Gem could only hope that was true.
~
In one of the back bedrooms, Gem paces irritably.
It shouldn't take that long for them to figure out who's going to hold the remote, and yet it feels like she's been in here for ages. A precaution, so she couldn't see or hear anything of relevance, though that didn't stop her from pressing her ear to the inside of the door and straining for any hints. Nothing came of it but a stiff neck.
The anticipation is the worst. Every so often, she'll feel the shock collar vibrate, wrapped nearly twice around her bicep to keep it from slipping, but never does it truly shock her. It just makes her jump, every single goddamn time, and she can't wait to rip the thing off and maybe bean whoever's doing it to her in the head with the remote.
Just when Gem considers leaving the room to complain about how long they're making her wait, there's a knock.
"We're decent," calls Skizz, and Gem tries not to look too relieved when she opens the door.
"Not a day in your life," She sasses, shouldering past a giggling Skizz just in time for the first real shock she's gotten since fixing the collar. It doesn't hurt much, but it startles a sound out of her regardless, and she whirls back around. "Skizz!"
"What?!" Skizz grins, unrepentant, but offers his hands, palms out and notably empty. "You think they'd send the guy with the remote to get you?"
Gem looks him up and down, then continues towards the living room. "No, that'd be way too obvious of a plot twist," She mumbles, and Skizz follows with a cackle.
They rejoin the others in the living room to a round of giggles and shushes, not an innocent face in the bunch. Most of them are feigning varying degrees of nonchalance, while others look moments from cracking, shifting in their seats and biting their lips to make their amusement a little less obvious. It reminds Gem of classrooms, students waiting in anticipation for a teacher to stumble upon the prank they'd pulled.
Slowly Gem circles the couch, meeting as many gazes as possible. She gets shocked again while she's behind it, only slightly stronger than the one she'd felt in the hallway, tensing up as it comes and goes. Interesting, very interesting. She takes notes of the heads that turned to follow her versus the ones that didn't. Whoever's manning the remote probably wanted to see her reaction, or maybe they wanted to throw off suspicion by remaining aloof.
When she finishes her circuit, Gem is standing in front of the couch, hands on her hips. With things as they are, she has frustratingly little to go off of. "Okay, here's how this is gonna work," She says in a tone that doesn't invite argument, though a few look prepared to give it anyway, "I'm gonna ask questions, and you're gonna answer it. I won't just ask who has it, 'cause that's no fun, but whatever I do ask, you've gotta be honest. Sound fair?"
"So we're going at it Guess Who style?" Tango asks.
"Exactly." Now it just comes down to the questions.
~
It only takes three, in the end.
"It's one of the boys, isn't it." Less a question, but she's given an answer nonetheless. No Pearl. No False.
"Did they get shocked during the event?" Asked out of spite, mostly. Whoever has the remote has been shocking her at her most susceptible moments, in the middle of words, in the middle of breaths. Not Joe. Not Scar. Not Cub.
She wants it to be someone who knows what it feels like. She hopes that, when they felt it, it hurt. It probably did, considering who was manning the remote during the event.
And then it hits her. The liberal, comedically-timed shocks make more sense. No hesitation, no sympathy. She's already seen Skizz's hands.
"Did they already know how to use the remote?"
The room is split hilariously between excitement and resignation, and Gem can infer the answer from that alone, standing in front of the remote-bearer. "I already know you're not gonna make this easy for me," She says, crossing her arms, "but what's it gonna take for you to hand that remote over?"
Grian grins.
~
The bedroom door shuts behind them, the lock clicking with finality. The path of Gem's earlier pacing is still obvious in the carpet. If Grian notices, he doesn't say anything, simply lingering halfway between the door and the bed until Gem points at the foot of it. "Sit."
"Yes ma'am," Grian answers. It might have gone to Gem's head if it wasn't for the way Grian said it, flippant, like this was something he was allowing and not something he was straining for.
Gem rolls her eyes and ever-so graciously doesn't acknowledge his tone. Instead she nudges his legs apart with her knees, standing between them. "I should've known it was you," She says flatly, "Who else would get off on the power trip of shocking people when they don't know it?"
Grian's face pinkens unevenly, Gem notices. Splotches of color betray his embarrassment, even as he keeps his voice nonchalant. "Lots of people, probably," Unable to close his legs, he leans back on his palms instead. The extra room it provides his hips doesn't make it any less obvious that Gem's callout had been warranted.
It's kind of fascinating. Grian at half mast in his jeans and getting harder. This bulge has a cult following, Gem has seen the pictures. The real thing has to be worth the attention it draws.
But she never said Grian wouldn't have to work for it. "Well?" She says, and her eyes follow his Adam's apple through a thick swallow, "Open your pants."
Grian giggles- outright giggles- and Gem remembers her earlier resolution, to smack whoever had the remote in the head with it for torturing her. "You're awfully demanding for somebody who needs something from me."
"And you're awfully bratty for someone who agreed to my terms," She shoots back. Not that she's surprised, actually. This is a man who pokes and prods, finds the edges of what he can get away with and enjoys the thrill of toeing ever closer to that line.
His hands are moving. Fidgeting, more like, slowly popping the button of his jeans and flicking the tab of his zipper in such a way that the teeth part one agonizing row at a time. Grian isn't looking at her, isn't looking anywhere really, a distracted stare shot into nebulous middle distance, and realization dawns. No way.
Grian's breath catches as Gem takes his face in her hands, angling his head up to look at her. She can see it better now, in the way his eyes widen, in the way sweat is starting to shine at his hairline. He tries to lean away, and Gem doesn't allow it.
"You're nervous, aren't you!" She beams, squishing his cheeks with her thumbs. This isn't like him, at least, not the him that Gem knows. That Grian is mischievous and determined, following through on even his worst ideas if there's a bit to be made, "God, that's adorable."
"Well I'm not now," Grian laughs, startled and delighted, one hand moving to cradle Gem's against his cheek, "I don't think I've been called adorable since my primary days."
"Yeah? You should be told it more often," Gem teases, and Grian rolls his eyes. There's fondness in the creases of his smile, pressed against her palm, and this, Gem thinks, is her Grian. "We don't have to, y'know. It's just a game."
It's the wrong thing to say, she knows immediately. "Right. A game," Gem can feel the way Grian's expression wavers, like he's trying not to grimace at the reminder. The hand holding hers pulls away, reaching to pull the remote out of his back pocket. He brandishes it like he's making a point. "This is what you want."
Oh.
"That's how I win," Gem clarifies. And she wants to win, as much as something like this can be won, but- "I want what we agreed to."
So does he, if the way his flush creeps further down his face is any indication. Gem thought she'd made it very clear, when she'd trapped him on the couch, arms framing him where they held her weight on either side of the backboard. 'Promise me the remote after,' She'd whispered, 'And I'll make sure you and my mouth are very well acquainted.'
There's no cameras here now, no viewers to rile. There is no game when nobody is watching, only the two of them and the decision of how to end the narrative once they leave the room. There's only one way Gem can think to make it any clearer that it isn't the game motivating her right now.
"Give me the remote." Firm and sharp, Grian looks taken aback for a moment, holding out what she asks for. It's simple, when Gem looks at it- it sort of reminds her of a massage chair remote. A screen with an arrow button on either side reads the intensity of the shock, still set to seven.
"Gem," Grian says with caution. Gem flips the intensity as high as it'll go- oh god, it reaches sixteen?- then turns the remote so Grian can read it. "What are you doing? Gem-!"
Grian makes a grab for the remote, but it's too late to keep Gem from hitting the shock button. Her scream is first startled, then pained, enough to make her knees buckle. Grian catches her weight before she can spill across the floor, and she breathes in lungfuls as the feeling disperses.
"Why would you do that?" Grian frets, easing Gem down and pulling up her sleeve. It feels better as soon as the band is off of her arm, and she groans softly. God, she'd braced herself, and it was still terrible!
But Grian has a different look in his eye, now. Something like awe, instead of the hesitation that had been there prior. Terrible, but worth it, Gem thinks.
Grian rubs gently at the marks left behind by the shock collar, and Gem grins when she looks up at him. "Guess I lost," She says simply.
His thumb pauses on her arm. "Y- what?"
"That's max-level," Gem reminds, "I endured a max-level shock. So, game's over. I lost," She adjusts to stand on her knees, stabilizing herself with a hand on his thigh, and she doesn't miss the way his legs inch apart to accommodate her, "But there's still this really cute guy on my bed, and between you and me, I've wanted to know what he tastes like for ages."
The bewilderment in Grian's eyes makes Gem want to giggle. She only manages not to by catching her lip between her teeth, but she can't help it when Grian's eyes follow the motion, a giddiness bubbling up as it becomes clearer and clearer that Grian understands now.
No bit, no game.
He leans down, and in a low voice that makes Gem shiver says, "I think that can be arranged."
~
They really should have kept track of time in there. Gem only knows it's been a while because, when they finally rejoin the others, they enter to a round of cheers.
"We were just about to send a search party," Martyn says, and Gem doesn't dare ask how long they'd been gone. The stream looks like it got along just fine without them, anyway.
"So does Gem pass?" Ren asks, "We heard a scream that sounded very, ehh..."
"High-voltage?" Impulse provides.
Gem's just about to tell them, when Grian plants a hand on her shoulder. "Gem got it. Can I tell you...!" He steps around her, navigating to an empty space beside Skizz behind the couch, "Can I tell you, chat, she- Gem gets the remote from me, right. She looks at it, goes, 'Well if Impulse and Tango could handle it', and bzzt! Shocks herself at sixteen. Dumbest, bravest thing I've ever seen."
There's another brief celebration, pats on the back, congratulations, commiserating over how much the shock collars suck. Gem smiles and laughs through it, letting herself be ushered onto the couch. If she tilts her head back, Grian is standing just left of her.
Liar, she mouths at him, beaming in a way that brightens her eyes, and Grian winks in reply.
