UnevenCube2554

Hi! I like basically anything G/T related, or fanfiction/ story related. You can call me Cube, Uneven, or T! I use she/her and they/them pronouns. Whichever's fine!

[cowardsexual]

stratt and grace and the rest of the phm science team running on 4 cumulative hours of sleep at an unscheduled conference. dimitri and lokken are trying to explain a new complication in the hail mary's fueling system and the resources necessary to iron it out but they keep getting interrupted by government officials butting in until grace (who doesn't even look up from his laptop and checked out of the conversation two days ago) snaps "we raise our hands to speak"

complete silence for like 3 seconds. the french prime minister sheepishly raises his hand and stratt smiles for the first time that week (grace buries his entire face behind his laptop screen for wont of a better option, like jumping straight into the sea)

[cyncerity]

Hi Everyone!! i’m not dead, here’s an angsty Store Shifter AU comic as a thanks for being patient with me!!

(there’s not a current story lined up with this comic, but i can give context under the cut! if you don’t wanna go further in depth, here’s all you need to know: this is how Quackity and Karl found out about storing. If you want to read the comic with context, i’d suggest reading what’s under the cut first, then coming back to the art!)

(please click and scroll i’m begging you, also I typed out the text in the alt text if my handwriting is illegible)

Full context under the cut! It’s just me ranting about what led to this!!

cw: vore, borderline panic attacks with basically all parties involved, starvation mention

Ok so it’s been established that Sapnap has instincts to store people. The events of this comic happen shortly after the fiancés make their permanent home in the store, just after Sapnap is hired by Dream and still isn’t quite used to or comfortable at his human size.

Sapnap has only stored someone once: Bad, and it went so poorly that he cut contact with everyone in his life but Karl and Quackity and got so afraid of eating that he starved himself so bad he almost died. So what’s the logical thing to do? Clearly ignore that it ever happened. Also ignore the random multiple instances of amnesia from moving through the forest from the colony to the store where you went to bed with such severe stomach pain that you could barely see, blacked out, and woke up far from base with rodent fur or fish scales stuck in your teeth. There’s nothing to worry about there, obviously.

So yeah Sapnap is stupid and hasn’t put anything together: during the year that it takes the trio to find and decide to settle in the store, he’s been subconsciously going after vaguely borrower-sized prey in the forest that satisfy his instincts less, but he was still too traumatized from the incident with his father for even his instinctive self to try swallowing Quackity or Karl and risk losing them, too.

And the stress of pretending to be human pushes his instincts off a little as he’s adjusting to his job and new fake identity as a human, so by the next time they hit, it’s worse than ever. And now there’s nothing else to store. The fiancés are asleep in the break room, where Sapnap had been too exhausted to shift small after he clocked out of work the previous day. He picks up one of them, not caring which. He’s not conscious at all as he swallows him down, something his instincts have been begging for, have needed since he swallowed Bad. The body he swallows down is lanky, doesn’t move much in his sleep, but snores quietly. Karl, then. Sapnap doesn’t wake up. His newly stored prey doesn’t either. Quackity, still asleep on a table, is unaware that this is even happening.

Sapnap wakes up first in the morning and doesn’t register anything wrong. He gets ready for work and takes a moment to realize that Karl isn’t where he fell asleep, which isn’t new for him; he may have gotten up early to borrow. He’s done it before. Sapnap carefully moves Q’s sleeping form to a vent so no other employees find him and starts his shift.

Then Karl wakes up. He doesn’t know where he is: Sapnap hears him calling out, moving around, trying to feel for a way out. He’s confused, he’s scared. Sapnap is, too. He didn’t even know, how could he have done this, why would he do this?? He locks himself in a broom closet, trying not to sob, hyperventilating into his hands as silently as possible. Sapnap can hear tears well up in Karl’s voice as his pleas for Quackity and Sapnap himself get louder, can feel Karl’s hands shake as he pounds them against the inside of his body, and…and Sapnap can’t say anything. If he speaks out, if he assures Karl that he’s ok, Karl will know. He’ll know that he’s in a monster, he’ll figure out where he is, who he’s inside of. And Sapnap can’t handle losing him like this, not after losing his dad the same way.

Another thing to note for this that I haven’t touched on before is Karl’s backstory. I’ve mentioned he’s the only indoor borrower, but that he met Sap and Q when he moved outside. This is because his indoor colony was found and killed by humans when he was young, and he ran from the house into the woods where Bad’s colony found him and took care of him (he just went to a different person’s house each night, whoever had enough spare food to cook him a meal and space to let him sleep).

But they didn’t find him immediately: he wandered around the woods scared, confused, and alone for a while. He was half dead and starving when someone brought him to the colony he would eventually consider home.

So anyway, I bring that to your attention to point out that Karl is doing Not Good At All right now. He’s terrified of being alone again, and his biggest fear has come true. All he can hope is that his fiancés rescue him like the colony rescued him all those years ago, because he has no idea what else he can do.

Sapnap goes about his work day, trying (failing) to ignore Karl. His fiancé (captive) quiets down after about 2 hours, giving up on trying to get any help or free himself (don’t think about it, don’t think-) and Sapnap works. But Quackity has been long awaked by this point, and has figured out that Karl is missing. He searched by himself for hours and found nothing. So he does the next best thing: goes to Sapnap. He follows him around the store, begging that he do something to find out where Karl went. More hours go by, so many more hours. But Sapnap won’t look at him, won’t even hear him out: when he hears Q’s voice, he turns in the opposite direction and walks off. He won’t say a word. Sapnap is bigger and therefore faster than him, so it takes Q a while to find him and catch up each time he leaves. But the same happens each time. More hours go by, precious time that they’re losing when it comes to finding their third. Quackity is panicked: Karl could be hurt, kidnapped, dead, and Sapnap is ignoring him??

Sapnap meanwhile decides his best course of action is to wait until Karl falls asleep, then let him out. Hopefully he can tell when Karl falls asleep, then figure out how to get him out, then try to explain why he’s soaked, then try and think of an excuse for ignoring Quackity all day, then explain to his co-workers why he won’t respond when they try to make conversation or ask why his face is so red or why his eyes are tear stained and bloodshot-

Needless to say, this has all taken a toll on Sapnap. Dream forces him to take the break he’s been neglecting all day (Quackity knows how to get to the break room, and if he’s corned there by him, he might break. He’s never been a good liar, especially not to Quackity, who he loves like he loves no one else and who’s been able to read him like a book since they were children. He’s already lying to Karl, and he already feels like it’s killing him, carving a hole in his heart. He can’t face Quackity. He can’t afford to break), because he looks like shit and feels like shit and frankly has never been this stressed in his life. Sitting on the beanbag in the break room he’s been forced into by his boss for a second couldn’t hurt. It’s been a really, really long day. It’ll only be for a second, and he really needs to just…not think for a minute. Just for a minute…

1 hour later, Quackity finds Sapnap asleep in the break room. He’s furious, he’s upset, he’s confused. He scales the beanbag and yells, pleading for Sapnap to wake up, to help him find Karl. He moves to the front of Sapnap, banging on his chest shouting for him to hear him and wake up!

Sapnap doesn’t hear him. Luckily, though, someone else does… :)

[foralittlewile]

According to Andy Weir's Eridian biology document, Eridians are better multitaskers than humans will ever be, but the trade off is they're physically incapable of locking in. SO funny to me. Yes this species can build a diorama while simultaneously blitzing through mathematics equations and also partaking in intense gossiping, but they cannot do any of those things for longer than, like, half an hour without going crazy. Species of supercomputers cursed with the TikTok attention span.

Rocky mocks Grace when he says that Rocky is distracting him by starting complex conversations while he's Trying To Do Science. "Human brain have to stop activity just because talking question? Useless! One track mind!"

Then Grace is on hour six of his "trying to recreate skittles" hyperfocus and Rocky is like What The Fuck. Statement.

Yeah human brains can only do a single very consuming task at a time but it can do it for a very long time. The one track in our one track minds spans multiple countries. Persistence predators, babey.

[molzysketch]

nap time with the pebbles :)

[pineappical]

i've always wondered what human speech would look like visually in the POV of eridians in the same way eridian speech is written as music notes in the book and my favorite version of it i've seen in fics is when words are written as phonetics in rocky's POV :-) oh and also that one post about rocky and grace figuring out random words they can say in the other's language

[neonthewrite]

I love love love Grace by Inches so much! please keep on putting this guy in Situations, he deserves it

Thank thank thank. More Situations for the small blond man, ASAP.

[neonthewrite]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

I first try to pry it apart directly. If it’s like a thermos in that way, I’ll be able to open it. The lid doesn’t budge, though. I try to grip the two sides, helped by the lined texture, and push the lid with my left hand. Righty-tighty-lefty-loosey fails me as well, though I’m not sure if that’s because the lid doesn’t work that way or it’s simply too tight for my small form to have any effect.

I strongly consider dropping it over the side of the table to see if another impact will loosen it. But it fell ten feet from the hatch and left a scratch on the lab floor. Impact isn’t going to do much against this mystery xenon tube.

I step away from it in frustration. I keep being wrong about things, and my memory still hasn’t all come back. For all I know, Stratt did plan for this, somehow, and I’m failing a critical part of the mission. Earth doesn’t have forever for me to figure everything out.

But no. These are aliens. No one could have accounted for this. They’re trying to communicate with me, and I need to use that open mind they kept saying I have.

[neonthewrite]

Hail Mary: Grace by Inches

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a mission he doesn't remember volunteering for. Alone on a ship scaled far too large for a borrower, he has to try to figure out why he's so far from home, and what he's supposed to do. On top of that, he needs to figure out why this mission is so prepared to have a borrower on the crew--standing at only six inches tall, it's easy to think none of this was meant for him. And yet, everywhere he looks he finds evidence that whoever built this ship built it with both humans and borrowers in mind. An impossible task looms over him. A scientific mystery has somehow sent him hurtling through space, impossibly far from any other human or borrower, and it's on him to surpass an extinction-level threat that doesn't care how big someone is. It will end the world all the same if he doesn't do something about it. But, despite what he thinks, he's not alone.

Artwork by the incredible @hailed-marys! Go check them out for some artwork, or even just some fun blogging. Extremely grateful to them for this lovely work ❤️

Read the story on AO3!

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I see your “Rocky swears like a sailor but only in pitches humans can’t hear/refuses to teach Grace what those words mean” and raise you “Rocky swears like a sailor and now has to explain to Grace that ‘bad bad bad’ isn’t actually a sequence you play on your Eridian speech piano in polite company.”

Grace is both horrified and amused to realise that a more accurate translation for what Rocky’s been saying is “shit shit shit”.

[tendebill]

[part 1] [part 2]

rocky learns about the Denmark incident :]

[scarlct-vvitch]

grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)

rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it

[gronknuts]

rocky hunting grace while hes working like heh. going to pull big prank on grace. stupid human hearing so bad very bad and only 'see' with light-sense organ in one direction at a time. eridian best hunter on all erid, evolved best hunting veeeery quiet. scare grace a lot. very funny.

rocky is HORRIFIED mid stalk when grace suddenly stiffens and turns around to stare directly at him. HOW GRACE DO THAT HOW GRACE KNOW HOW GRACE KNOW

[ravmycupine]

Grace makes a shocking discovery

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Okay but imagine being the team of Eridian scientists tasked with keeping Erid's Only Human alive for as long as possible while the whole planet's environment is literally trying to kill him. And then Rocky shows up and is like:

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“WHY QUESTION???”

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

To celebrate Erid getting their sun back on track, Grace asks for some alcohol. There's a small amount left from the Hail Mary and Rocky offers to take it to the science Eridians to see if they can synthesise more.

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

“WHY QUESTION?????”

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Grace is like one of those extremely finicky tropical fish who instantly die if not kept in extremely specific conditions.

Only here the fish can talk and keeps asking you to make it vodka.

[crackshipsandregret]

Curious pebble (2/?)

Part 1

[crackshipsandregret]

Curious pebble (1/?)

Part 2