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It’s over. It’s all over. Hermie is dead, and Herman is the one holding the smoking gun. All he ever was was a role, but Herman still finds himself staring up at the ever-shifting sky of the Goof Realm and mourning him.
All of Normal’s shy smiles and eager words and warm touches were for a man who never existed. Taylor lent their cane to the empty idea of a person whenever his scars were bothering him. Scary and Lincoln had never given him much, but they accepted the concept of Hermie.
And that was over now. Take a bow and close the curtains. Now that he’s here, he can go be disappointed by his other father, and then he’ll find a way back to Not!Earth where he’ll return to his regular life as a hero among the Chaparral student body. They’ll pat him too hard on the back and tell them that he did a good job and that’ll be kind of like having friends. It’ll be less hollow than his relationship with the Leading Cast, certainly.
For now, though, he’s safe back stage, and he can cry into the dark as long as he makes sure his mic is off. He can scrub the makeup off and remove the costume. He’s alone, and-
“Well well well, what do we have here?” A hauntingly familiar voice says, and Herman quickly wipes his eyes to look up at Scam Actually.
Briefly, he looks like both of Herman’s adoptive parents at once. Then, he looks like Jodie’s more humanoid form, then his demonic form, and then he settles into something altogether impossible to describe. Herman catches hoofed legs and a tufted tail and the color purple, but trying to make sense of the humanoid shape in front of him is fighting a losing battle.
“Um-“ Herman clears his throat. Despite everything, a part of him expects Normal or Taylor to take over. They don’t, of course. He’s alone. “I’m- hi, I think I’m your son…?”
“Of course you are!” Scam says, putting a few hands on his hips and gesturing widely with a few more. “Not just anyone could pull off a scam that heartbreaking!”
He sounds proud. Herman pushes back the tears prickling at his eyes.
“Right. Yeah- yeah! It was very impressive, all the- the heartbreak!” Herman bows with a dramatic flourish. He hopes the movement distracts from the way he wipes at his eyes.
“I’m sure!” Scam says, and he reaches out with one of his many, many hands and ruffles Herman’s hair. “And I’m so very, very proud of you! But, hm…”
He leans in, one hand on his chin, another on his hip. An unreasonable number of eyes blink into existence for the sole purpose of squinting at Herman. He fists his hands at his side and tries even harder not to start crying under the scrutiny.
Somebody is proud of you for once, don’t fuck this up, Herman. Commit to the fucking bit.
“But you don’t seem very proud of yourself!” Scam sits down in a cushioned chair that definitely wasn’t there before, and pats his lap. “Come tell Daddy what’s wrong.”
He’s a teenager, way too old to be curling up in a parents lap, much less a parent he doesn’t even know, but he wants to, almost desperately. To do so, however, would be admitting defeat, and Herman is committing to the fucking bit.
“What?” Herman says weakly, shaking his head and straightening back up. He hadn’t even realized how much he had withered under the scrutiny. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Ah-ah-ah, you can’t scam the scammer!” Scam scolds, waving a finger before he disappears from view.
Herman feels a brief flash of simultaneous regret and relief, before he’s suddenly tumbling backwards. He’s not sure how it happens, but the field around him is suddenly the interior of a suburban home, suspiciously similar to his own. He lands in a couch, and there’s suddenly a blanket around his shoulders and a warm mug in his hands. He glances down, and immediately resolves not to drink whatever this is. The heat is soothing though. Herman hadn’t realized how cold he’d gotten. He leans into the heat by his side, and it shifts to throw an arm around his shoulder. He barely resists flinching as he looks over to see his dad. Not Scam as he knows him, not quite either of his adoptive parents either, just… Dad.
“What’s the matter, Scamling? What’s bothering my beautiful baby boy?”
It still sounds like Scam. Have the past few seconds so entirely altered his perception of fatherhood that he can’t imagine Dad sounding like anything else? He was aware that he was a pathetic type of person, but this seems like a little much.
“Um… Dad…” it feels strange to call him that, but he sticks with it. He looks back down at the ever-shifting surface of his indiscriminate warm beverage. “Why did you- I mean… how did you avoid getting attached to Jodie? When you had me?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” Scam says, shifting into something a little more Scam-shaped. “I didn’t! I got very attached and now I live every day regretting the things I did to him and to you!”
“Oh.”
Herman didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. Would he end up like that too, stewing over a relationship that once was or could have been?
“So,” Scam continues in a sing-song tone, “I recommend you hurry back to kiss and make up with your will-they-won’t-they partner before you end up like me!”
Herman pulls away, face flushed, blinking incredulously at the smug face of his father.
“What- how did you- what ?”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, my son!” A halo of multicolored eyes blink in and out of existence above Scam’s head. “It’s a shame I haven’t been able to stay in touch, but somebody is a responsible driver and left their phone in the back seat of a car that got lost in the sauce, as it were!”
“Wh- you were- how did you- and y-“ Herman trails off into an incredibly embarrassing noise, and resumes his prior attempts not to cry.
“Oh, my boy…” The chipper tone of Scam’s voice gives way to something softer. “Is it really so surprising that I care about you?”
“Yeah, kind of!” Herman laughs, wiping his eyes. “I thought- after Jodie- and he said you stole me but you just- haven’t been around and I- I-“
“I’ve been around a lot more than you think,” Scam laughs sadly, wrapping Herman up into a hug with a frankly unnecessary amount of arms.
Herman bravely attempts to keep his crying quiet at first, but one of the hand starts running through his hair and scratching at the base of the horns he can no longer hide and it breaks into loud, wailing sobs rather quickly. He’s not even sure why he’s crying, whether he’s stewing in regret for the insurmountable damage he’s done to the closest thing he’s had to genuine friendship in years, or crumbling in the face of undeserved affection from a father figure he sorely lacked, or what. All he knows is that Scam holds him through it, and a hopeful part of him says he might even stick around to help him afterwards.