Work Text:
Mysticism and whimsy are two uniquely different beasts trapped somewhere on Snaktooth, and in an ideal world, they would both be hammered over a spit and burnt to ash. The distant mumbling and cries on the wind are too much, too quickly, mostly after days upon days of starvation torture trying to track them. His stomach rumbles again. Somewhere, a desolate reminder, a selection of full and colorful bins with the sneezeguard permanently closed.
Buddy hauls the rippling, writhing backpack onto his shoulder harder than is outright kind. They won't register the jostling as cruelty. The others might, if they were in any position to pay attention to that sort of thing. The judgment of any other grumpus is beyond the scope of reality for the most part; what they don't know cannot hurt them, what they don't see won't scare them, and what they mistake as substantial can't be deflated just yet. The eyes of the many are better used focused on the smaller scales anyway. There are fences to be mended and glassware to be replaced that the local Buddy can't be tasked with. The local Buddy is busy finding and replacing with the accuracy of a Word document on limited hardware. For the marshalled town, there are errands to be run. For them, let the new guy do the dirty work running around in the mud. For him, let the rest of them titter with their specialties on nervous paws, uneven ground. After all, he is no stranger to discovery. The job of an investigative journalist is never done, certainly not when he works for notoriety over commission. Ten cents per namedrop.
Snakburg - Snackburg? - A rustic village in the kindest part of the valley should be a wash of calm for a tired, sore paw, aching with bramble and stick. Fat fucking chance. Every time the bag is lumped onto the shoulder a new problem comes in. A new errand takes shape around the wrought complaints of stuck up scientists. If half of these people learned to function in groups instead of gifted programs, he thinks, knowing the bungers will not detect his cruelty, then maybe they would speak for themselves and each other. Not that he would know, of course. It's hard being the younger brother when the eldest is hardly ever home.
Brotherhood is a strange concept on this island, as strange as baked bread or an edible goddamned vegetable that doesn't coo. The tatters of an expedition on the soles of a personality disorder. Whatever Liz had said to convince these people to leave their lucrative careers behind must have been equal parts enticing and exhausting, because the enticement is gone and the exhaustion is all they have to look forward to. All they know to say is what they ran from. There is no coincidence, in the mind of the local Buddy, to the people she targeted. When he can finally ask her for himself he means to ask fully about which cult leaders she gleaned that from.
"Do you think you could do me one more teeny tiny favor?"
The most loyal, the first turned, the elder. The Fiddlepie, unassailable.
There is the wash of calm. There is the rippling blue bath for a sore heel. There is nothing this little jellybean could say or ask for that wouldn't charm his best Buddy. It makes zero sense, the way they hiss at him, hackles up like he is wrong to be optimistic. Even so, you wouldn't crush the dreams of a child at space camp, the way you would not deny your improvised leader your undivided attention. Filbo is the balm for the bramble. He sidles up to his local Buddy, not so local these days, hopeful for something kind.
"Let me drop these off first," his local Buddy jostles the backpack to make its contents push at the seams.
"Sure!"
Three big teeth in the front, evenly spaced; perfect.
A fat, dripping bunger wrapped in checkered paper is dumped into the bin they use to donate not-food to the growing collection of "farm" "animals". It smells of spice and molasses and forces teeth into lip, tongue mashed into the palate to simulate a bite. There is a world beyond this, still, he reminds. Past the water and the whimsy it is out there somewhere and he will return to cornbread and dill pickles and cereal, hold the eyes. The peelbug follows suit. He can hear it rolling into the bin and scrambling to find somewhere darker to lie in wait. Beyond the monolith of questing eyes and its yard, there is a blue oasis. He knows Filbo appreciates all of this hard work. He knows, even through tearful thank yous and words of wisdom from the others, the realness of the errand falls to Filbo, grinning longer and wider the more voices he hears every day.
His errand is not as teeny tiny as he thinks it is. It never is. To call it blind optimism would be denying Filbo his agency - he can see the road ahead and he truly believes they will all survive those potholes and spike strips. To his Buddy, there lies a question, why would we keep going? To which Filbo might say, well, why ever would we stop? And then he would laugh that bubbly loud laugh, a coolant leak of a sound, and everything would be worth doing for just a little bit longer.
This is when Buddy blinks and looks around, realizing he is standing in the middle of an absolutely inscrutable kind of relationship for at least the eighth time since crash landing here. There is a lingering thought about the head trauma he definitely has suffered. How much has it changed his opinion on the world, on friendship, on whimsy? Is Filbo a figment of his bruised imagination? Is that why everyone seems so mad at him, because they're chastising their new friend for his hallucinatory outbursts? Is he really so self centered that his-
"There's, like, no excuse for that kind of behavior, dog."
Oh, right.
"I would argue there are at least two excuses. And I know you don't want to hear them, necessarily, but I- I think they count more as explanations, than anything else."
"You can't rationalize it away when it's hurting you."
"I do not do things that are irrational."
"You're not listening. All I want you to do is listen."
His eyes ache somewhere behind them. This is not a hallucination.
"Listen to what, Chandlo? To the self-care routine? It only cuts into my project time. It exposes me to the elements!"
"Out here, we got nothin' but time, man! Why are you in such a hurry? What project?"
"I can't tell you that." Snorpy sniffs. To the untrained eye, it seems like he's turning his nose up. To the begrudgingly trained Buddy, he is avoiding eye contact, probably to assuage his guilt. Most likely to feel a little more in control.
Chandlo grasps the air like he wants to choke answers out of it. God, he looks like a little lime green mirror. Buddy pulls on his own fur and heaves a big enough sigh to let them know he would like to have a turn, now.
"Guys it- maybe you could just not. Right now," he offers, helplessly, or maybe helpfully, "Maybe we could just walk away for like ten minutes and see how we feel."
"I'm not leaving this room 'till I know you're okay."
Chandlo reaches for the bandages again. The barn-workshop still stinks like burnt fur and flesh and the local, vocal Buddy feels ill at how familiar the smell has gotten over the span of a few weeks. Normal grumpuses are not on fire this much. They don't have to squeeze waxy packets of cheese sauce into their mouths for lunch either. Almost certainly, none of them shit in a hole.
"I am fine, this is nothing!"
Right. Snorpy burnt his arm.
The tongs and the offending half-hammered bracket are still scattered on the floor where they were thrown. Chandlo tries again to address the wound with some first aid and Snorpy pulls it away like it will burn a second time. There is too much pouting going on in here. Buddy wants to plug his nose but knows it would look rude. Or, would it? Do they not smell that?
"Cool, so let's just set all this aside and take a break."
"Your safety stuff is all the way across the room, what were you thinking?" Chandlo continues like his Buddy isn't there. They can and will get up to a lot of things before Chandlo has to be reminded that they're in public. This guy is horrifically comfortable with speaking his entire mind and showing his entire ass in a full crowd. That familiar discomfort wavelength stretches and snaps between Buddy and Snorpy in the same instant and they make eye contact, mortified by what is happening and the insistence of it continuing to happen. There's nothing he can do for you now, dog.
"I was thinking that I am a competent fabricator,"
"You are competent."
"Yes, and,"
"You're talented as hell."
"Right. So it would be of no consequence if I were to forego it exactly one time,"
"You're too smart to be thinking like that!"
Apparently, he isn't.
Buddy turns around to make exasperated eye contact with the empty doorway instead. Snorpy loves the pedestal he lives on and he's not going to ask to be carried down anytime soon, and Buddy can tell by the look in his eye that this is working on him. Chandlo only wants to apply another salve to the burn, but he is also going to continue to not be cool with this kind of errand, and Buddy knows there is nothing he can do to stave off the talking to. He doesn't really want to, anyway.
"Great, so. We're all good here?"
Too eager, too soon. Hunger gnaws.
Chandlo rounds on him with paws flopped out like a pissed off gibbon.
"You can't go pushing him to work faster on fixing stuff either, you know?"
Buddy lashes out for Snorpy's eyes in the dark and finds nothing. Traitor.
"I didn't push anything. I just said the suction cup wasn't working. He's the one-"
"Don't pressure him like that! Not cool, dude!"
"Whatever."
A raise of the paws. A white flag. Turning his back on the enemy.
If Filbo wasn't so sure that Buddy was the end-all be-all of solutions, the mack daddy of problem solving, the Mac Tonite of active listening, this could have been solved privately without anyone having to get caught in the crossfire. Instead of that, though, Buddy is leaving the flesh-stinking workshop with a great big chip on his shoulder and the chip is conveniently lodged under one of Chandlo's big old tusks. He tends to Snorpy like a prisoner of war in the dimly lit shop with nice salves and soft bandages and kind but firm words. Buddy goes somewhere else to roll his damn eyes about it.
Filbo is also somewhere else. It's the closest thing to a salve that anyone here would ever offer.
"Filbo," Buddy moans.
"Hey, my Buddy!" Filbo grins.
"Filbo."
"Yes?"
His big, big paws find the soft flesh of Filbo's cheeks and nudge, push, squish them around until his eyes are cheeked over. Big warm blue stress ball. He releases his humble mayor to rearrange his fur, deciding instead to pick at the fur on the back of his own neck as punishment. He does not deserve to lord over anyone today. The local Buddy folds himself in half on top of a log bench and crouches, head in hands, elbows on knees, back arched and ready to receive its lashings. The weight of bungers is gone and replaced only with the weight of a journal filled with a bunch of bullshit. There is no research here that can be used aside from the handful of photos that hardly developed. Like the unbidden bugsnax - bug snacks? bugged snacks? - There is no substance. There is a lot of conjecture about where Liz wandered off to and an awful lot of notes about everyone's mental status. Spoiler alert: POOR. Some thanks to big Buddy.
Annoying them off of their chosen salvation pathways and back into town is one way to go about it. While they're here they are doing worse. They all hate Filbo, somehow, almost as much as they hate each other. The madness spiralling down into one humble "journalist" is enough to fill a grumplympic sized pool. If only it was enough to pay off student loans. If madness was monetary, anyway. Maybe the day will come when they all decide to cook and eat each other. Unfortunately, predictably, they would all choose to eat Filbo first and he and his loving Buddy would have to make a run for it, high into the hills, or maybe underground. He would have to fight them off with a loaded backpack and that grappling hook that does not grapple anything, not really. He could poke them in the eyes with it or something. Except for Snorpy, or Floofty. He would have to find something they couldn't block with the glasses. Wambus would probably kill him before he got the chance. He would have to address that first. No, what kind of train of thought is this? They would obviously eat Gramble.
"What's wrong, big guy?"
Filbo is still here, uneaten. His smile is cautious. The local shithead can't bring himself to look at it twice.
"I'm really tired of being the emotional sounding board. I'm no good at it. I can't help these people."
"Oh, that's not true! You have done so much to help basically everyone. Things are so much better now than they were!"
"No, it all still sucks. And like," he pets himself on the shoulder, "I am actively making it worse. I don't know how to talk about this stuff."
"Sometimes it helps to just talk to someone. Whether or not they talk back."
"But that sucks! Cause I have to hear it! And then I remember it. Or they get all weird because I'm a journalist. Like I'm snooping. And sometimes I am, because I get asked to! And then I'm the one who gets yelled at!"
Filbo stares with soft boiled eyes the way a pig would look, finally, at the stars.
"It's just really hard to internalize all of everyone's... stuff. I'm not used to talking about all this out loud. I'm not used to hearing it. It's stressing me out."
Filbo's round little paw pries the thick fingers from the back of his Buddy's neck and presses into the pads.
"Maybe it's good for them to vent or whatever but I still have to hear it and worry about it. They kept the cactus. It still has a hat on it. Did you know that? She sounded worried but I don't think she's as worried as she should be." He doesn't avoid the paw and lets it press into the divots between his fingers.
"And I just know that now. Sometimes it moves. It is moved. I keep finding it in other places."
"Yeah."
"Do you see it too?"
"I do."
"Who's moving it?"
Filbo shrugs. It looks blissful. For once, it looks like it's nice to be him. He is real, standing and breathing and smiling, too good to be the product of one.
His Buddy looks appropriately chastened. He leans in for a little kiss on the top of that jellybean head.
"See?"
"Yeah. Sure. It's nice when someone listens."
It's an aborted conclusion and it isn't the one he would like to make. Now simply isn't the right time to argue the nuance of his exhaustion. He did just sit there and shout at Filbo for effectively asking too much, for piling on tasks that are beyond his paygrade. If Filbo doesn't detect that it's okay. If he does, and chooses not to say anything about it, even better. Maybe. Maybe it's indicative of the future burns.
The bonfire crackles behind them. Filbo drags those big paws forward and backward in a lazy sort of dance. His Buddy allows this, for now. There is no brotherhood. There is a cameraderie, a bond built only by the long suffering witnesses of dysfunction and garbage that forces a callous to grow.
"I can't help but look judgy, though. I make faces. I'm not like you."
"It's honest listening."
"Are you not honest?"
"No, I- I am. But your honesty just looks different. It's loud."
Filbo laughs, his pebbles down the hill sound, and his favorite Buddy would like to swallow those pebbles whole.