Chapter Text
“Hey, you ever wonder why we’re here?”
Grif stirred underneath the sand at the question, then wriggled himself out just enough to look up at Simmons. His friend was sitting in the very center of his nerdy, geometrically perfect web, and looking over Bug Gulch wistfully, his mandibles idly kneading the air - a tic he had had for as long as Grif knew him. It was 1 pm, the height of heat and sunlight, and the Blues wouldn’t be budging for hours; that was always the time for asking horribly stupid questions in the Reds’ book. It was basically a tradition.
The question itself wasn’t stupid - the entire notion that either of them would fully understand what was being asked was. They were aware of a there (many theres, even, as they all came to here from there that none of them shared) somewhere beyond the edges of here, and they could assume here was where they currently were - with some sand, and leaves, and the fruit flies they were all sick to death of, and the odd, thin, crinkly white-and-red thing they couldn’t make sense of but that was definitely theirs, dibs, and a point of pride for Sarge nonetheless, and the sun that came up and down - but the why of it seemed an odd question to ask, because where would they be if not where they were? How can one be somewhere where they’re not?
Grif pondered this, idly throwing some sand over his head, more out of habit than to hide himself. He had a vague feeling that there was some sort of reward at the end of this track of thought, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to grasp it. He had already halfway forgotten the question, his thoughts ambling away from him like a caterpillar - mmm, catterpillars, been a while since he had one of those--
“I mean, here, as in, in sunlight,” Simmons clarified. “In the middle of a clearing. I molt my ass every time a bird flies over me, and I swear I’m about to catch fire up here.” He glanced down, his legs curling up a little in disdain. “At least your fat ass can hide in the sand from the heat. It’s not like anything worth catching will be out before nightfall, and the Blues sure as hell won’t nab anything.”
“Oh,”, Grif said with relief, and forcefully forgot about his existential crisis. Poof, gone. He had experience.
“I mean, I know we’re here because Sarge is absolutely sure the Blues will start growing wings any second now just to get a drop on us, and wants us to keep watch over the entire base-”
“Wait, shit, will they? Are they gonna be cocooning it up? I don’t know shit about those guys.”
“No. I mean, I’m pretty sure they… They do the larvae thing, right? They don’t change as much once they’re done with the baby fat. Fuck if I know. But I’m just wondering, why bother defending this craphole?”
“You know of any other craphole we could be defending instead? Because as far as I know, there is the Blue base-” Grif pointed with one of his back legs blindly, and already burying himself back with his front legs. He was getting fed up with questions in the middle of the goddamn day, of all times.The rest of his griping came muffled through his blanket. “- is the only other goddamn place in here. There is nothing else to the left, to the right, and most definitely not to the back. And if you figure out how to walk through the walls, well, I wanna be the first to know.”
Simmons finally shut up at that, curling in on himself further, looking thoroughly soured. None of them liked remembering that Bug Gulch was truly, honestly all they had - for a lot of reasons. Food anxiety. Little water. Cramped quarters. No mates. Pesticides, maybe, though it was typical Donut bullshit, if you asked Grif. Good old ennui. Grif could swear he saw Lopez lose a leg and shrug it off, once, but he was afraid to mention it to anyone. Everyone in here was an asshole.
For all of those, Grif had a tried and tested method. At least, worked wonders up until getting venom and insults spit at him every evening at six PM sharp, but by then he was usually too busy running laps and trying to rub off Sarge’s projectiles off of him to think about how shitty life’s been.
Anyway.
He nuzzled himself cozier, spreading his legs around and rubbing them into the sand, and was asleep within moments, a very vague and unformed thought flickering through his head before he was out: that it was good to have a brain small enough to embrace denial. He’d have hated to be a mammal.
