The shriek echoed across the lake, sending a flock of birds erupting from the taller grass by the water’s edge. It was loud enough that Red distinctly heard his partner over the upbeat song playing on the small, antiquated radio he’d brought from the kitchen to sit near the deck railing while he worked in his garden. He hadn’t seen what happened, nor had Tommy, who’d been far too captivated by the older man’s bare upper body sweating under the summer sun.
Jason thought he might have caught it from his periphery as he helped unload heavy bags of potting soil and mulch, vaguely registering that something long and green tumbled through the air then seemingly vanished. In the moment, he’d dismissed it as a figment of his imagination, possibly a leaf or other vegetation from the bank of trees near the side of their yard.
Until Drakkon unleashed his horrified and profane scream.
Red’s shaggy head whipped in the direction where the tyrant stood with his entire body locked up in a bizarre, contorted position beneath the expanse of leafy branches. Drakkon had been enjoying the shade, the closest anyone was going to get to having him participate in the great outdoors and the tenets of landscaping. As far as he was concerned, you could pay someone else to dig about in the dirt, sweat their balls off, and arrange an assortment of green growing things.
‘Why the fuck would I willingly do any of that shit?’ he’d argued petulantly, making Tommy shake his head in disgust.
And utter embarrassment.
Now, the White Ranger glared over at his Coinless counterpart, irritated that the motherfucker interrupted his wanton ogling of Red’s chiseled, lean muscle.
“What the hell is wrong with you, dude!” he snapped, slow-walking over as Red and Jason darted across the lawn, probably all over something ridiculously dumb. “I don’t think they heard you all the way over at Promethea…”
Knowing Drakkon as intimately as Tommy, Red was also aware that whatever was caught in the former dictator’s craw was most likely not a 5 alarm emergency, but rather the dramatic bitch fit of a teenage prom queen. Jason’s expression was clueless, yet determined…as if gearing up for a throw-down.
“What happened?” the Omega yelled. “Is it Zedd?”
Drakkon was alternately swatting at something on his upper arm and recoiling before his hand made contact, striking everywhere but the fleshy, green appendage attached to his person, obvious to them now that he was dancing about as if having an episode.
“Get this beast off me!”
Red reached him first, skidding to a stop before nearly catching an errant smack to the face. He tried to grab Drakkon and force him to stand still long enough to assess the calamity.
The tyrant continued jerking, spinning, and spewing a torrent of obscenity.
“Goddammit, asshole! There’s other people outside doing shit in their yards. Shut the fuck up before they call the police!” Tommy demanded, roughly grabbing him and kicking his legs out from under him.
The stricken man hit the ground on his ass, wide eyes still focused on the smooth, elongated animal that slowly curled and bobbed about as it jutted from his arm, making odd clicking sounds.
“I don’t give a FUCK!” Drakkon roared. “I’d rather deal with that frigid cunt, Grace, than this fucking abomination!”
He was about to grab the squishy thing and hurl it out into the lake when Red’s voice cut through the hysteria.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Jason peered closer.
“Is that…”
“It’s a stupid caterpillar! Are you fucking serious right now?” Tommy bellowed. “Of all the dumb shit…”
Red caught Drakkon’s hand on the down swing.
“You’ve already threatened it and pissed it off,” he advised. “Now it's warning you. When the clicking doesn’t work, it will regurgitate the contents of its stomach…and that fluid is really nasty.”
Drakkon froze so suddenly that he easily could have been under one of Zedd’s spells.
“What!” he hissed in abject horror.
“That is a Polyphemus moth caterpillar, Antheraea polyphemus, a giant silk moth,” the former pet explained, leaning closer to the neon green creature. It was studded with bright yellow spots and several fine hair-like projections.
The bulbous brown head thrashed about, tiny mandibles clicking rapidly.
“Does it bite or sting?” Jason asked, not understanding what the hell Drakkon was flipping shit about. The caterpillar was gross with its bunchy, fat body, blocky face, and large, round ‘feet’. But if it was harmless…
Red chuckled.
“No, but if you go and try to yank it off, those prolegs have adhesions and crochets to keep it anchored. So they can have more structural integrity than the body…”
“What the hell does that mean?” Drakkon snapped, not in the mood for a nature lesson, now or ever.
“It means if you grab it and pull too hard, it could tear…”
“Jesus Christ, this just gets better and better!” the tyrant lamented.
Tommy could only shake his head, arms crossed over his chest as he witnessed the tragedy unfolding.
“Really, dickhead? Is this caterpillar going to give you another psychiatric diagnosis?” he snarked.
“Fuck you, you little shit…”
Red plucked one of the leaves and gently prodded at the smaller outraged monster until it began to trundle over the back of his hand. Drakkon remained rooted to the spot, as still as if he were undergoing surgery, sure that the cursed thing would vomit or somehow ‘pop’ like a water balloon in transit.
“There you are,” the grey-haired man cooed softly. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
The ominous clicking had ceased and the upper body no longer undulated in chaotic spasms.
“Well, it looks like you’ll live,” the Omega teased, nudging Drakkon playfully.
But he was having none of it.
“Just for that your ass might not…”
Red studied the fleshy beast as it crept further up his arm, the tiny upper legs inspecting the surface of his skin.
“This looks like a 5th instar, maybe,” he mused.”It has to get nice and fat because once it becomes a moth, the mouth parts are vestigial. He can’t eat. So he’ll fly about and reproduce before he dies…usually in about seven to ten days.”
Jason, Tommy, and Drakkon stared owlishly at Red as he gave them an impromptu lecture.
“It's called a Polyphemus after the Greek giant with large eyes because they look like they have two of them on their wings.”
The tyrant’s upper lip curled and he shivered in disgust.
“I don’t care if that nasty thing could give a blow job that could snatch your soul…I don’t want it in my presence.”
But Red wasn’t listening.
Instead he was striding off into the trees to deposit the caterpillar safely out of Drakkon’s reach. The prickly grouch would most likely avoid coming this way in the future, sure that more caterpillars were plotting to descend on him in some blitz attack.
“I can’t believe you nearly had a coronary over that,” Tommy grumbled. “Wait…yes I can…”
Drakkon smoothed his half-head of tresses with what little dignity remained as he pulled himself off his ass.
“Yeah, I don’t know who thrashed more,” Jason sighed. “You or the caterpillar.”
The tyrant gave both of them the finger.
At that moment, the neighbor lady from across the street, Jane something, approached from the side yard, a corner of her mouth twitching as if she’d seen the whole debacle unfold.
“You alright sonny? Or you fixin’ to wake the dead?” she drawled, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice.
Her gaze moved to Red, who was returning from his mission, a large grin on his face. For someone as socially awkward and timid as the former pet, he’d taken a shine to this Jane, the owner of the general store at the campground they’d been at when Jason and Tommy discovered them.
“Oh, he’s fine. He’s more of an indoor person,” he teased, his eyes mischievous.
Golden swathes of sunlight streamed through the large panes of glass in the shop’s front windows, highlighting minute motes of dust drifting in the air above the old wooden floorboards. Shelves lined the walls, some of them filled end to end with old books in various conditions, others held decorative glass figurines, statues, and domes that housed small, preserved animals, butterflies, and birds. Artwork of different styles filled the gaps between, displayed floor to ceiling.
The planks creaked in protest under Drakkon’s heavy frame as he carefully followed his partners down aisles that were entirely too tight for a man built like a grizzly bear. It also didn’t help that he was loathe to touch anything in here, his upper lip curled in disgust at the smell of mothballs, decaying paper, and…age. He kept his arms stiffly against his sides, turning one way than the other to avoid brushing up against something covered in unknown filth.
Tommy glanced back at him and rolled his eyes in annoyance.
‘So fucking dramatic…Jesus Christ! Would I have turned out this prissy too?’
The White Ranger slowed his gait, letting Jason and Red continue ahead of them, the former pet captivated by so many mysterious treasures waiting to be discovered and the Omega staring at his doppelganger in confusion…not a new occurrence as he tried to reconcile their differences.
“What’s got your ass chapped?” Tommy whispered at Drakkon over his shoulder. “You look constipated.”
The tyrant slicked his tongue over his teeth as though struggling to comprehend how his younger self was dense.
“You might be all loosey-goosey with touching shit that’s been through fuck knows what and full of disease and dead skin…and hair…and maybe contaminated with shit or cum…”
Tommy stopped abruptly, causing Drakkon to run into his back.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, dude? Did you or did you not get covered in blood and gore on the daily? And you’re spazzing over a vintage thrift shop?”
“Those were vastly different times, Thomas,” the older man chastised. “And I knew the origin of what I was painted in… Who the hell knows what kind of individuals had these items or what they did with them?”
The White Ranger glanced back in the direction that Red and Jason had wandered off to, catching sight of them in one of the vendor stalls, looking up at something on a high shelf.
“Look, asshole. This is the first time that Red’s ventured out anywhere since the bullshit that went down at IKEA! So don’t ruin this! You still get to pick out the big furniture items, but I want him to fill at home in the cabin too…”
And it was true.
Red had been far too upset, embarrassed, and ashamed after setting on his partners in the middle of such a sprawling store on a bright sunny afternoon and with several horrified witnesses. He’d fretted about sinking his teeth into Drakkon’s shoulder, screaming obscenities, scaring so many innocent people, and surely kicking the shit out of Jason and Tommy as they tried to corral him out the emergency exit and into their vehicle.
“I could have seriously hurt someone…” he’d wept brokenly, once they finally made it back home sans new furniture. “Or killed them…all because I lost my goddamned mind over…fucking nothing!”
Drakkon had patted his back tenderly while Jason held his face against the crook of his neck and Tommy smoothed his shaggy hair.
“No worries, sweeting. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I EVER set foot in that devil’s maze again. I was close to coming unglued myself,” the tyrant soothed. “Besides, I have lots of experience with you and your fangs. You wouldn’t have gotten close to anyone else.”
Still, Red had adamantly refused to go on the trip to a smaller, closer furniture store, insisting that the trio go and leave him behind since he really didn’t care what the style or color of their couch would look like. This jaunt into the old thrift store was his first in months.
Tommy gestured towards where the gray-haired man stood, holding a vividly colored vase and leaning close to Jason to murmur something in his ear.
“See how engaged he is here? Red loves repurposing and recycling and…and…and…”
“And old shit,” Drakkon finished. “Yes I’m aware…I’ve known him far longer than you have.”
The White Ranger gave him a cold look.
“Did you really though?”
Then he was moving off towards the other two to see what was so interesting. The tyrant stood there in the aisle, momentarily stunned by the truth of what Tommy had just dared throw in his face. He wanted to fire off a nasty retort or insult, but the sting of the accusation nettled his brain and made finding the requisite scathing words impossible.
There was much he actually hadn’t known ‘back then’, facts that Red had kept from him under the innocent assumption that he’d be distracting his master with stupidity or that the things he was doing were permissible because there was no rule governing them.
‘But I wouldn’t have thought to make any rules about creating art, painting, reading books, planting seeds…’ he scolded himself. “Because I never considered he’d want to do any of that stuff.’
And honestly, looking back from this newer perspective, if he had thought about it or discovered what Red had been amusing himself with in his absence, it would not have been a good thing. He realized now that he’d been selfish and arrogant and controlling…
‘What harm would have been caused by him painting a bird?’
As soon as that thought crossed his mind, the answer swiftly came in its stead.
‘Because a pet wouldn’t know how and Red would have started to question his identity.’
It was a moot point really. The whole thing was destined to come to a head before the end of their lives. There was just no way, Red’s mind could have continued the charade until his death, regardless of his hobbies. All that would have come from Red asking him to be allowed paints was a thorough and vicious ass beating.
He gnawed at his cheek, looking at his partner’s lithe physique clad in black cotton, his back hunched over some painted vase like it was the most interesting thing in the world. Drakkon weaved and bobbed his way around display cases and clothing racks to join the other three.
“What did you say this was again?” Jason was asking, his brow raised.
Red chuckled kindly and held the lovely bluish-green vase higher so that the sun highlighted the curious piece.
“This is a Mary Gregory glass vase, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They often depicted white enamel-painted children in romantic or playful scenes. If you look closely, you can see the air bubbles and internal flow lines of hand-blown glass. Its lightweight rather than heavy, which lends to it not being a molded piece.”
He continued with the Omega staring at him owlishly, Tommy looking rather…aroused…at Red’s bookish side, and Drakkon watching thoughtfully, the White Ranger’s damning indictment echoing in his ears.
“The bottom shows wear…See the scuffs? And this teal color was popular and sometimes called ‘peacock glass’.”
“How did you learn all that?” Jason breathed, tilting his head. “I mean… back in the palace…”
Drakkon was quiet, catching Tommy’s side-eyed glance in his direction. Red had long ago screamed his truth during that night in the rain while they’d sat hiding out in a public restroom from the police who were looking for two brawling drunks. Then he’d admitted a little more once they’d made it back to the hotel and he’d calmed down somewhat.
But there were still tiny details that surfaced, catching the one time dictator off-guard.
“Books,” Red laughed, “I liked to read about things that I came across while painting or when I helped Garrett on the farm. I read a lot about so many different topics. Usually, Finster-5 pointed to the right place in the library until I figured out how to search for myself.”
At that, Drakkon gapped.
“That slimy little fuck was in on all that! He didn’t stop you? Because he sure as hell didn’t say a word to me about anything you’d gotten up to!”
Tommy’s eyes narrowed and Jason subtly inched in front of Red, but the former pet put a reassuring hand on the Omega’s shoulder.
“He was like all the others, love. He gave the abomination what it wanted so it would fuck off and go away,” he answered, his smile tinged with sadness. “It wasn’t that they thought they’d help me remember or plan some grand escape attempt. Besides Finster, they had no idea who I once was. They were just afraid of me.”
Something tightened in Drakkon’s chest at hearing his darling put it so baldly. It wasn’t Finster and the servants trying to undermine his authority… They just didn’t want to deal with having Red around.
Tommy’s arms moved to envelop the older man’s svelte waist, hugging him against his chest.
“Well, they couldn’t see how amazing you are,” he whispered.
Red chuckled softly.
“I’m sure it was a little hard to do with all my infamy and strangeness…”
Drakkon gently took the Mary Gregory vase in his hands, surprising them all.
“And I’m certain with all your ‘strangeness’ and varied interests, you would be a great asset in decorating our new home. Find more treasures, darling… I’ll survive…”
Red grinned.
“What about all the bugs and cooties? You said something about a plague once…”
Tommy scoffed.
“He just didn’t want any competition…”
Jason sucked in a shocked breath, Red tried to fight his laughter, and Drakkon gave the White Ranger the finger.
“I’m going to go sit in the car, you little shit. Let him buy whatever his heart desires….just keep it away from me until its properly cleaned and disinfected….”
Hi everyone!!! Me and a few of my friends made a fan life series, called Constellation Life! It's the sequel to the one we made last year, Quad Life!!!
The first video is releasing today on the YouTube channel Q_Nova!! His prologue is already out so go watch that IMMEDIATELY!!!!
Also I would recommend watching Quad Life too, a lot of the context for the season relies heavily on it 👅 you can watch quad life on the previously mentioned channel or at k_attso 🥹
PLEASE PLEAE PLEASE PLEASE MY PROLOGUE IS COMING OUT SOON TOO 🙏🙏🙏🙏
