Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The kitchen lights came on all at once. Mister and Mrs. Denton were there, beaming. Donny's friends were there, Susie and Jenny and Freddy and Augie and the rest. So were their trolls, in sweater vests and gingham dresses like they were being taken to church. And of course Stubby's favorite person in the world: Donny Denton himself. There was a cake on the table, a cake with twelve candles burning down.

"Happy birthday, Stubby!"

Today had been a horrible day. Everything had gone wrong. He'd been locked out of the house, he'd fallen out of a tree, he'd been sprayed with a hose and lots more things than usual had been dropped on his head. The whole day had been a montage of horrible vignettes, but now--everything was okay! They'd remembered! They'd remembered after all! He put both hands to his face, his mouth a perfect O.

Donny picked him up and held him, feet swinging, to reach the high table. He blew out all twelve candles while everyone cheered and the trolls bounced on their toes, clapping their hands like children.

Donny set him down. "What did you wish for, Stubby?" he asked brightly.

Stubby poked a claw into this mouth to think about it.

"I wish for tomorrow to be just like today!" He grinned.

Everyone laughed. Everyone kept laughing. Everyone laughed for a long time, enough to give the production crew enough footage to fade to black for the credit roll and commercial break. Even after four seasons of thirty-nine episodes apiece, it still felt like chewing foil. Fifteen seconds was a very long time to laugh at something that wasn't funny.

"CUT!"

And that was that. That was it. Humans went left, to wardrobe, and trolls went right, to the wranglers. He peeled off his sweater and handed it to someone, because someone had decided that if he wore it off-set he'd ruin it. They'd have to wash it after this episode what with the coffee and the dirt and the flour anyway. For all he knew they'd just make a new one. There was probably a factory somewhere that made nothing else, all day: oversized red turtleneck sweaters with STUBBY in white letters on the front. One for him, and thousands for the humans whose trolls got to wear his name across their chests. He got to keep his pants. That was something, at least.

His minder handed him a bottle of soda with a straw in it. He flicked it out. Straws were cute and straws were for kids, which he hadn't been since season one. There were two guys in wrangler's union jackets who went down the extras line collecting sweater vests and gingham dresses. The other handed out ponchos. Someone somewhere had decided naked trolls were a workplace hazard, something about an attractive nuisance like a fire pit or a set of stairs without rails. They filed out the back. His minder poked another straw into the bottle. "Tch," she said.

He set the bottle down and folded his arms over his knees to watch the extras go. Bright, *bright* sun plowed through the door--it was enough to make his eyes water even on the other side of the studio. Poor bastards. Maybe he'd see them again next time there was an episode with a crowd scene, but most of them had looked like rustbloods. Directors loved them because they followed directions, didn't complain, and rented by the dozen. Two years in the business and it was all over but the shelter ads with sad old trolls in windows. He thanked whatever ridiculous luck had given him the weird human blood he had instead of rust or mustard, and felt like a complete jerk for being glad about that. The door swung shut behind the last one. It was dark again.

They'd have a long weekend before shooting started for the second half of the season. Of course he'd be spending it doing promo stuff, because his contract didn't stipulate vacation time. Hell, his contract wasn't even technically with him. For the purposes of paperwork he was a product of Stubby Entertainment Inc. Somebody had explained the legal stuff to him, about how people could be people and companies could be people, and how somebody who wasn't legally a person--like him--could still be a person as a company. So Stubby could be an actual person, and wasn't that neat?

He'd agreed it was, and then somebody else had signed all the paperwork for him. "Vantas" hadn't even been on it.

"Hey," he asked his minder. "Can I go talk to the extras?"

She looked over from the conversation she was having with one of the stagehands, something with a lot of mutual fingering of hair and shifting of feet. "The extras?" she asked. "Why?"

He shrugged. "I liked them," he said. "I just wanted a chance to say bye before they left, I guess." Harmless bullshit on the face of it, but the face was Stubby's. Stubby's face was made of harmless bullshit.

She smiled, a warm indulgent smile--a little flushed in the cheeks--and gave him a pat on the head. "Go have fun," she told him, and turned back to the other woman.

It was twice as bright outside as he'd thought. He stumbled blind toward the sound of troll voices, skin prickling across his shoulders where the sun beat down strongest. He nearly walked into the van before he saw it. One of the wranglers gave his cigarette a long enough rest to laugh at him and thump on the side panel with a palm. A cluster of troll faces piled up at the still-open back door, yellow eyes staring out of the hoods of their ponchos like a half-dozen owls.

"Look alive kids," the wrangler chuckled. "Contract up, Stubbs? Lookin' for work?"

"I came out to say g'bye," he said. He was fucking adorable.

"Aww," drawled the wrangler, predictably charmed. He elbowed the other one in the ribs and pointed, as though to say: would you fuckin' look at that. "G'wan in, little guy. Got a few minutes left on break."

He climbed up the tailgate, and troll faces surrounded him. "Hey," he said, gathering his nerve. "I wanted to ask you guys something."

Six pairs of eyes blinked.

"Is this how you want to live?"

There was a long silence before the troll who'd been playing Susie's troll Kitten--she looked old, with the stage makeup wiped off--broke it with "Nah, we want to live like you do." They all laughed.

He laughed too, wincing a little. This had gone a little better when he'd rehearsed it in his mind.

"I mean like people," he said, once they'd stopped. "Do you want to live like people?"

They didn't laugh at that. Without a word one of them got up and shut the back door; the solid THUNK of it seemed weirdly foreboding. It was dim and hot and smelled of exhaust over cheap laundry soap.

"Watch it," said Kitten, nearly at a whisper. "If you screw up this job for us it's dumpsters."

"I'm sorry," he said, keeping his voice low. "I just wanted to tell you, um, it doesn't have to be like this-"

"Like what?" That was Augie's troll, JJ. "Casserole instead of kibble?"

"I mean if we work together it doesn't have to be casserole or kibble, it can be whatever we want-"

JJ started to ask something else. Kitten shushed him.

"There's thousands of trolls just in this city, that's more than we need to show people how things really are. There's a lot of people, a lot of humans who'd understand if we could just talk to them." Nobody tried to interrupt, and he felt the warmth of confidence returning. This was more like it. "I've been doing everything I can on the show to show them they can trust us, you know? That they don't need to be afraid of us or keep us under control. If we had a bunch of real trolls on the show, not as characters, and we all told everyone watching the show how important it is for trolls to be people..."

This was how it was supposed to go. He was in fine form, too: a deep thoughtful breath, a palm over his heart, and he went on according to the script in his head. "That's millions of minds we could change. But I can't do it alone. I need you to tell all the trolls you know about this, tell them what I said. We can wor-"

A wrangler hauled the door open.

"-king together, I'm glad I got to meet you all!"

"Us too," said Kitten, a little dryly.

"C'mon out Stubbs, break's over. Time to get this show on the road." The wrangler held out a hand to help him hop down. He took it, and popped out of the van with childlike preciousness. He turned to wave before the wrangler shut the door again.

"Can you tell them?" he called. "Tell them all I said hi?"

"You got it," said JJ, and then the door shut to hide him and the other five from his view entirely. The van drove off. He walked back inside, and his minder gave him his soda back. He'd done the right thing. It was the first step and a little one, but that's what you needed to do! A little bit at a time. Mountains built out of pebbles!  He sucked a mouthful of soda up through the straw and felt good.

This was going to be the most important thing he'd ever done.

Chapter Text

The weekend went quickly. A couple of variety show spots and one promo shoot for Snappi-Awn Troll Shorties and it was back to the set. He was looking forward to hearing what the other trolls working for the agency had said about his message. They'd be filming an after-school scene and a clubhouse scene with the whole group on Wednesday: he could barely sleep Tuesday night. He rushed through breakfast, chattered happily on the way from the hotel to the studio, and bounced onto the set for the clubhouse scene with an enthusiasm he hadn't felt since filming his very first episode.

"Hi!" He'd never said hi so sincerely in his life.

"Ew," said Susie. "No boys allowed in the clubhouse. Tell him, Kitten."

"No boys allowed in the clubhouse," repeated Kitten, and his face fell. It wasn't an act. Kitten had a different voice, and Kitten's forehead wasn't creased under the makeup. Her horns were exactly the same, though--short and narrow, with a little bump on the end like a giraffe's. He could see the file marks.

"Awwww," he groaned, his disappointment cartoonish for the camera. "I didn't know this was the girrrrl clubhouse."

"Aw, Stubby," Susie cooed. "Don't be sad. You can stay...if you're a girl."  Kitten giggled.

The director cut the scene there, and the rest of the day was a mess of costume changes (pinafore and bows, torn pinafore and one bow, overalls, sweater) and bits of dialogue with Susie and Donny and the rest of the crew. He never got a chance to ask about Kitten, and he never even saw JJ. He hadn't even been paying enough attention to the others the first time to notice if these were the same trolls. Shit.

After the day wrapped, he watched the usual extras procedure: clothes off, ponchos on, and with a hasty excuse to his minder he followed them out to their van.

"You guys are sure getting along," said the wrangler with a smirk. "Got yourself a girlfriend, Stubbs?"

He looked down and did the thing with his feet that meant he was nervous. "Maybe. Hee."

"Cute as hell. Guess I can give you guys a coupla minutes. Just a couple. In you go." This time, it was the wrangler who shut the door behind him. He looked for familiar faces inside, and saw none.

"Hi." No answer. A couple of the ones in front made nervous little laughs.

"Do any of you know, uh, Kitten?" He realized that was a stupid question as soon as he'd asked it, but the rust in back with the giraffe horns had just put up her hand.

"I'm Kitten," she said helpfully. "I just-"

"Not you," he snapped back. "The other Kitten. The one before you, the older one with the same horns as you. The one whose real name I forgot to ask about because I'm a fucking tool."

They looked scared when he said that, and he hated them a little for it. Stubby's stupid face saying 'fucking tool' couldn't be that big a deal. No troll could possibly believe the act enough to think he was that milktoast in real life. "Did anyone tell you I said something? Kitten--real Kitten--or JJ? Something about changing things, about coming on the show and making people take us seriously?"
 
Their heads shook, and their eyes were wide. All of them looked very, very young suddenly.

"Sorry," whispered Kitten. Other Kitten. "I don't-"

THUMP. THUMP. "Y'all decent in there?"

"...yeah," he said. "We're decent. Can I maybe-"

The door opened, and his minder was there to gush about how she'd been looking everywhere for him and how he couldn't run off like that, what awful things could happen but wasn't it so sweet to hear he'd found a nice lady friend? Why hadn't he said?

He climbed out, and by the time he'd finished telling her that he'd thought she was someone else, the van had started up and grumbled away in a cloud of diesel fumes.

"Well," she beamed, crouching down to ruffle his hair over his horns. "Maybe we should find you one!"

"Shucks," he said.

Nothing really came of that, as it turned out. His schedule was too busy, he supposed, or there was something about liability. He tried a few more times to get in touch with Kitten--hell, either Kitten, neither of whose real names he'd ever learned--but there weren't nearly as many troll group scenes this season, and somebody somewhere had decided that Stubby Inc. was spending a little too much time in dark vans with strange trolls for his own good.

Fuck, he wanted a lady friend. It hadn't been so bad in his first season or even his second but he was a healthy troll and it had been four, no almost five, years since he'd been closer to another troll of any gender than a stage hug. Stage hugs were becoming increasingly awkward.

His minder had a little bag of ice for such occasions. Little bags of ice were also becoming increasingly awkward.

It was just...it was harder to focus these days. Humans still needed to understand, of fucking course they did, but he needed to eat too and he needed to keep scripts from blurring together into one inane mess of awws and thumbs-ups and he needed an increasing number of private moments in the bathroom.  He felt like a swampy mess, all frustration and pablum and dreams of war that he woke up from in sticky shorts. Stubby, of course, was corny and affable as ever because he had a job to do and he damn well did it. Cute. Nonthreatening. Trustworthy. Stubby sweaters sold like hotcakes. People were naming their dogs and trolls after him and painting their kids' rooms "Stubby Red". There was a gelatin mold of his face and special grey jello just for that. They'd had one at a cast party, once, and brought him in to see it. There were photos of him scooping out his own gelatin eye with a spoon.

He deserved all this. Every fucking second of it.

Millions more trolls adopted every year since the show started. Millions. There were troll parlors in every major city in the country that would give a long-horned troll Stubby's tiny horns with a saw and a goddamned pneumatic grinder, and that was his fault too. Every single short-horned troll churning out grubs in a suburban basement could blame him personally. The show had been renewed for another season; that was at least another million trolls who had just earned the right to shit in his hair.

But without him, who would those millions of trolls see on TV? Who would show them how a troll could work and learn and not hurt anyone? Nobody. They'd see humans and goddamned showtrolls. They didn't even let the showtrolls talk. He had to do this. He could still help.

That's what he was doing today. Just a regular fluff interview, that's all he was there for, nothing personal and nothing serious. He'd already had his makeup done and he was in his red sweater and shorts. The whole thing was as entirely routine. He had a bowl of cantaloupe balls to munch before the shoot, which was in about three minutes. There was a television in the green room.

Soulful violin started up and he chewed irritably. He knew what this was, it was those damn Troll Rescue people. He hated these things.

"It's not too late," affirmed a soothing female voice over equally soothing, affirming chamber music. "You love your troll, but sometimes-" The sound of a baby's cry. "-you can't give all the love they need. The National Troll Rescue Society rehabilitates thousands of abandoned trolls every year, and it can't run on love alone." Then the address to mail donations, free calendar for donations of five dollars and up, et cetera, all over lingering shots of sad old trolls in boxes and piles of trash. He HATED these things. The shelters were slaughterhouses anyway.

Violin swelled again. The last troll, her forehead creased deeply with worry and despair behind a chain-link fence, had...giraffe horns. "You can help," said the television.  He felt nauseous, and his bulge was trying to shove out of its sheath.

"Two minutes," came the tap at the door. He bolted for the bathroom.

Chapter Text

"Wasn't that something, ladies and gentlemen? What a talented little guy! You'll be teaming up with the Mills Brothers next, won't you? Aha-ha. Yes, indeed. So you can dance, you can obviously sing--never heard Twinkle Twinkle sound so sweet, have you?--what can't you do, Stubby?"

"I cannot tell a lie," he simpered, folding his hands behind his back and rocking on his heels. His bulge ached, and his mouth tasted like death.

"Of course not. What a charmer, folks. Now, Stubby--" here, the host leaned over to ruffle his hair and grin at him with a face puttied up orange for the camera. "I hear there's some big news for the Denton family in the new season!"

He hadn't been told much about what they were planning, but something was clearly afoot here. He shifted on his feet and put his hands up to his mouth, preciously concerned.

"What kind of plans, sir?" He was a professional. This was clearly a prompt, and he'd run with it.

"Oh, Stubby!" crowed the host. "Nobody told you?" He winked at the camera.

"No, sir. Is it something good?"

"I'll say it is, Stubby. I've just heard that we're going to be meeting someone entirely new. I think you'll like her!"

Please, please let it be a lady friend, he thought. A lady. A friend. A little bag of ice. Anything.

"A little Denton, a new little sister!" Canned laughter, and a baby-crying sound effect. "How's it going to feel, not being the youngest anymore?"

...they were bringing in a baby?

Holy fuck. He knew what that meant; he was being replaced. Maybe they'd tried to find another troll first. It didn't matter. Babies and trolls didn't mix, everyone knew that. Everyone knew that even if the whole thing was made up and the baby was being paid and the troll had been spending the last five years proving that trolls were safe as fucking cupcakes.

What he wanted to do was sink his teeth into the host's face and feel his teeth grate through the thin muscle to scrape against the bone. He forced a smile, toothy enough to be a grin, as his nails cut his palms and his bulge squirmed.

The host was also a professional. He only looked startled for a moment. "Excited, Stubby?"

"Oh nooooooo..." He put both hands to his face, his mouth a perfect O. The o drew out long past where Stubby would have drawn it, whole enormous seconds too long for comedy. A longer pause after that; even the camera crew started fidgetting. And then: "A GIRL!"

Everyone laughed.

He laughed too, of course. And he made up his mind.

"Now now, Stubby," chuckled the host, wiping at his eyes, "I'm sure you'll get along just fine. Now why don't you tell us about a little something that helps little Dentons and little kids all over the country grow up big and strong?"

Another prompt. The script, at this point, called for him to remind kids about the health-giving properties of some milk drink he'd never tasted because trolls didn't digest it well, and which he knew they'd be digesting anyway because Stubby shilled for it. He was supposed to turn to the camera, beam, and say "Oh, you mean Supermalt?" So he turned and he beamed. And he was fucking finished.

"Let me tell you something," he said instead.

The camera's red light shone on. The broadcast was live. If anyone noticed he was working off-script, they'd just given up the last chance they had to do something about it. He took a deep breath, smiled wider, and told the viewing audience something.

"Fuck. You," he said, enunciation perfect. "Fuck you right in your stupid shitmouthed faces."

He gave the camera Stubby's signature thumbs-up and wink. "Given the chance," he added, "I wouldn't hesitate to piss on your toast. Hell, why stop with toast? Let's--"

He elaborated on that on for thirty-eight seconds, which on television is a very, very long time. He detailed the ways and means by which the entire viewing audience could be fucked, and could fuck themselves, and should endeavor to do so as soon and as often as possible. He told them that he, personally, was certain they fucked their mothers and that Stubby would fuck all their mothers individually if he could, which he could not, because Stubby didn't fucking exist. He told them his name was Vantas and that their trolls hated them almost as much as he did. He told them to shit down a rope into a fire that was also made of shit.  

It took that long for someone to remember to turn the camera off.

It was a blur after that. Everyone started yelling at once and the lights on the entire set shut off for a few seconds. He stood there, arms folded over his chest, as his minder yelled something and waved her arms and someone threw a blanket over him from behind. He didn't struggle as someone else picked him up and hauled him off; there was no point. He fully expected to be dragged behind the studio and either euthanized humanely or just kicked to death.

Neither of those happened. He was tossed onto something that tipped over under him and when he shook the blanket off he recognized the green room. Someone was jamming a chair under the door handle from the outside.

He paced. He picked at the fruit tray on the table. The melon balls were warm and flabby and smelled vaguely of human armpits. He ate them anyway. Then he stood up, shucked off the stupid STUBBY sweater and the stupid shorts and pissed on everything he could reach, which was everything up to about six feet off the ground; it didn't even take all that long, including the time it took to empty every water pitcher in the room for more ammunition. After everything was as ruined as he could make it he stood there, with his bladder aching and his eyes stinging and the stupid fucking jingle for Snappi-Awn playing over and over in his head.

"Snappi-Awn, Snappi-Awn! Five short seconds and your worry's gone!"

His cheeks burned. He should have thought harder about this. Snappi-Awn was going to make a killing with their fucking diapers if anyone so much as hinted about what he'd just done. Every troll in the country was going to be wearing crinkly plastic panties and it was going to be his fault. It was his fault they belonged to humans who bought adult trolls diapers in the first place. Fuck him, he'd done what he could. He'd tried. He'd played along until he got his chance and he'd taken it and things would be better now. He'd changed everything. Things would be better from now on.

When the door opened he was under a table sobbing into his knees.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck was that?” His minder’s peach leather pumps with the gold buckles--he knew those shoes--stood behind a pair of khaki slacks in the doorway. The slacks were the one yelling at him, naturally. If he’d met the guy before, it was briefly enough that he had absolutely no clue who the voice belonged to. His minder’s boss? Someone at the station? The personified outrage of the American public? He couldn’t see much above the speaker’s knees, and didn’t feel much like bothering to look higher.

He wished he had a little piss left. He clutched his legs to his chest.

“Get him out of there. This is your fucking job, Margot. This is MY fucking job. We’re taking it up the ass for this, do you realize that? Jesus. Get him out.”

The peach pumps clicked closer. She made a pay-attention cluck at him, two fast snaps of the tongue he’d been trained to for years. It was reflex at this point to look up; her face was directly in front of him as she crouched down to peer under the table. It looked red and blotchy, as though she had been angry or crying or both. The sweet, nonthreatening smile currently on it instead of whatever it had been doing to make it that color looked convincing despite the clear and self-evident fact that everyone was taking it up the ass for this, because she was a professional. Everybody he’d ever fucking known was a professional. He dug his head back into the dark, acrid space between his chest and his knees: the thick stink of musty bulge and ammoniac piss stung his eyes and his nose. He knew she could smell it too. Everyone probably could.

“Stubby?” she cooed.

“Vantas,” he said, muffled.

“The important thing is that you come out from under the table, sweetie.” Her voice was just a little rough. Just a little tight. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. I won't let them."

“Fuck you,” he whined, like the pathetic jackhole he was. A crowd of human legs started to cluster around. None too close, and all in slacks.

“You can’t stay under that table forever and you know it,” she cozened at him. He did know it, much as he’d like to live under this table, naked and reeking, for the two or three hours he probably had to live at this point. “It's not nice under there and everybody needs to clean up. Come out and I’ll take you home. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t all right at all. He made a sound that embarrassed him, a weird snarling sob that turned into a hiss, then a wheeze.

“Shhh,” said Margot, reaching out a careful hand to cup his cheek and oh, nothing had ever felt like sweeter mercy than that one gentle touch, not even a bag of ice when his bulge misbehaved. He’d had his cheeks stroked and pinched any number of times but he’d been younger, he’d been working. This was different. The tight pulse in his neck slowed and the painful heat stuffing everything in his head to bursting began to drain, like pus from a lanced boil. He tipped into it, chafing his face across the suddenly exquisite surface of her palm. It was so cool. So reasonable. It was smooth. It smelled of flowers and chemicals and absolutely nothing else, the way she always smelled and the opposite of the way he smelled now. He was a wretched and unworthy piece of shit and he needed this more than he could remember needing anything. That touch pulled him out of the hollow under the table and into the sensible poly-knit heaven of her lap, where the rougher hand tugging up a fold of skin at the back of his neck was nothing so long as she was still touching his face. He leaned into it greedily, limbs going limp and pliant.

“Oh, sweetie,” she sighed, petting so gently he thought he might let another sob out. She wasn’t looking at him, but up at someone else. Her voice was soft; her face was not. None of it seemed very important. His eyes were closing. “You’re being so good right now. Are you going to keep being good for me?”

“So good,” he murmured. Her thighs shifted under his ribs. The grip on his nape tightened. “Promise?” she asked.

“So good,” he repeated, stifling a yawn.

Half a second later he was in a rough canvas bag, and his stupid blunt teeth and stupid blunt claws couldn’t do a damn thing about it no matter how much he thrashed. He should have fucking known.

After he’d tired himself out, and it didn’t take long considering, there didn’t seem much point to thrashing or kicking or much of anything really. For all that he was ashamed of sulking like an adolescent human who’d just been told to do his homework, why not? What else could happen? He was tipped out of his bag into the back of a van and poked with a stick to keep him back from bolting for the door. Wranglers. Same jackets. He bit at the stick, but...god, why, why was he even doing that? Like a shitty, stupid animal. Like it would change something.

He was a shitty stupid animal. Look at him. Naked. Filthy. But he collected himself enough to stand up and and stop snarling anyway, and walked unsteadily under his own power to the back corner of the van away from the stick. He sat cross-legged in a totally reasonable human way, ass on cold metal, and told the wranglers to leave him the fuck alone.

“Just doing our jobs, Stubbs.” That guy. He knew that guy. The stick pulled back, and he glared at it and him.

“Vantas,” he snapped. “Fuck you.”

“Could say the same, buddy. Probably gonna be looking for work tomorrow.” The door slammed.

Fuck Margot. Fuck the show host. Fuck the writers. Fuck that asshole wrangler. Fuck all of them and fuck him for trusting them. He paced the van as it drove, which meant going end over end more than once as it took corners with careless speed. He wondered who was driving--the asshole wrangler, maybe. He’d run out of piss back at the studio and that gesture had well and truly played itself out, but even so when his forehead lost a patch of skin on the grooved floor during an especially aggressive turn, he managed just that tiny little bit more on principle. He scrubbed human-red blood off the wound and swore at the sting of ammonia and who knew what from the inside of the bag.

Why hadn’t they killed him? Trolls got put down every day. Feral ones that filched trash and got caught, house ones that got weird with the other pets, cold-blooded ones that had the rotten luck to outlive their owners, seriously, every day. Trolls had died by the thousands for things that made what he’d just done look like a fart at the dinner table. He wasn’t exactly planning to throw himself into traffic, but if he’d been human he’d definitely have had him put to sleep.

Maybe that was where he was going. Maybe they just hadn’t had the equipment at the studio. God, of course, why would they have that on hand? When he’d walked in there he’d been the most-loved troll in the country. That had been all of...what, two hours ago? Three at the most. It seemed a lot longer than that. He’d had a career and a plan to save the world back then, back in those distant reaches of unknowable time. He’d also had clothes.

Now he had metal floor imprinted on his butt and a little wad of gooey scab on his head to pick. It melted on his tongue, tasting of salt and diesel. 

The drive was a long one. The little windows on either side of the wall let in light, but they weren’t clear enough or clean enough for him to see much of where they were. They were on a road. A freeway, probably. Then after a while, a few turns, on something that sounded like a smaller freeway. Fewer cars, still driving fast. The blurry shapes of low hills became higher ones, with things that might have been trees or buildings. The air working its way through the vents was marginally fresher, he supposed, so trees.

He’d been coasting on jittery energy since his lecture, jittery energy punctuated by spikes of fear. He was hungry, thirsty, tired, and the scent of him in the closed space had not improved. Only one of those things was something he could deal with, and if he was going to be put down at their destination he could damn well be less miserable in the meantime. He wedged himself into a corner against the possibility of being rolled again, and curled at tight as he could for warmth. Almost of its own accord, his hand tucked up to pat at his cheek, and it was as though a thin blanket of reassurance and safety had been draped over him. Not as nice as when his minder had done it, but a reprieve nonetheless. God, why hadn’t he tried that before? He drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Text

There wasn’t much light coming in the little windows in the van’s walls when he woke up. It was night maybe, evening at least, and while the unmarked period of shut-eye had refreshed him, it had done precious little to clarify his situation.

He looked around, in case anything had changed while he was unaware of it. It hadn’t. The van was a van, he still stank abominably, and the sound of fast-moving cars passing them on the left was still a thing, if intermittent. The driver--that asshole-- was crooning a tune, some sad, slow, quaver-voiced song about a dead romance. He’d heard dozens of songs in his time. Most of them were happy, fast ones even if some of them were about not having a romance at all, but he hadn’t heard one like the driver was singing. There wasn’t much else to consider, at this point, so he leaned back against the wall of the van behind the driver’s seat so he could hear better.

The song droned on, too long to be a single song, with starts and stops and repetitions as the driver paid momentary attention to something else, and sometimes dropping away from words entirely into nothing but a distracted hum of melody. He could feel the low notes through the metal at his back, just a little.

God, he stank.

He picked at the base of his horn again, wincing as a patch of soft scab came free and a new tickle of human-red blood started to worm its way down his scalp. He scratched at the tickle of it and his fingers came away tipped with blood. There was nothing to wipe them on, nothing that was cleaner than him, so he scrubbed some of it off across the folds of his stomach and watched with no particular interest over the next few minutes as the thin red film dried to a proper normal rust color.

The stink wasn’t just him, he realized. Lots of it, yes, but he hadn’t shit himself. He smelled shit. Not fresh. It was thick in the air the van was driving through now, even if not much else had changed. He tipped gently to the side as the van slowed and took a long, looping turn, and then stopped. Was this it? Was this where whatever was going to happen was going to happen? He’d resigned himself to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to be put down, because there was no need to drive this far to find a vet. As for what was going to happen instead...he wasn’t hopeful. He wasn’t dreading it. He felt a bizarre and almost pleasant sense of utter indifference to whatever would happen when the door opened.

It didn’t. After a few moments the van rolled forward and took another corner, and that odd vaporous serenity was jostled out of him by a short series of more stops, more goes, and on none of them did the driver spare the chance to try to roll him around. He crouched low and loathed the man.

It was properly dark by the time the road turned bumpy and loud and rocks clanked off the metal of the undercarriage. He could see very well in the dark, but there was nothing to see; the inside of the van remained the inside of the van, the window remained dirty, and the rolling landscape outside told him nothing about where they were other than well and truly outside of the city. Nothing was lit, out there. The van’s headlights cast a reflected glow over a steady beat of fence posts next to the road, barbed wire between them, and long weeds. He thought he saw a cow some distance off, but it could have been any large animal. It could have been a haybale, or a rock.

Haybales. He drifted back to a slouch against the wall, because what was there to pay attention to but stupid self-inflicted questions? Haybales. Where did they even come from? There had been a few episodes where Stubby and the kids visited Uncle Jimmy on the farm, or played cowboys and Indians, or did some other thing for some other reason that  required a rectangle of dry grass. It made no sense to do that to grass. It was for cows, or something, but why would a cow need a rectangle of grass any more than a troll would?

It wasn’t the kind of grass anything would eat, even a cow. Hard, dry, nothing there any living thing would want. Did the cows stand on them? Did they just...like them? The way people liked fruit bowls? Why did people like fruit bowls?

“Still with us, Stubbs?” The back door opened, then, and he realized that the van had been stopped. The wrangler’s thick arm propped the door open, a solid muscular bar dissuading an attempt at escape.

“Fu-” he began, before the wrangler climbed bodily into the van. It creaked and heaved at the new weight, and when he scuttled to the back the handler followed without haste.

“C’mon fucker,” the wrangler said, bowed over, one arm out, blocking everything.

He dug at the wall, scrambled, flailed, did nothing useful at all, and in short order his scruff was clamped in one impossibly strong hand and he was being dragged backward out of the van as though he weighed no more than a napkin.

“Monty,” said the wrangler, swinging him to face front. “Ey. You got the call? Brought ya.”

There was a man. He was old. There was a house in the dark behind him with yellow lit windows giving a little illumination to the environment. He looked like Uncle Jimmy, except Uncle Jimmy had worn overalls and a bandana, and this man was wearing an unremarkable white shirt and pants of no particular color. There was no bandana. It had been a season, at least, since the last Uncle Jimmy episode. Maybe he was remembering wrong.

“Surely did,” said Uncle Jimmy. Or Monty. Or whatever. “Took you a while to get here, yeah? Bad traffic these days. Put im on down.”

He dropped unceremoniously, and landed awkwardly. Rocks stung into his knees, and the scent of his own sour, musky ass and groin rose on a plume of body-warmed air and assailed him afresh. He felt ashamed, and ashamed of his shame, and kneeled naked there in the dirt, in the dark, before this old man and his house.

“Dolly’ll be glad to see him, won’t she.” That was Uncle Jimmy.

“Guess that’s the plan.” The wrangler, that.

“Thanks for comin’ out so late then,” said Uncle Jimmy, and circled around him to shake hands with the wrangler. A few moments of routine whatevers later, and the van’s headlights swung across the house’s front, then away. It was entirely gone not long after in a rattle of gravel and diesel.

He hadn’t gotten up from the driveway by the time Uncle Jimmy came around again, and gave him a gentle smack on the flank. The old man started walking toward the house, then, and there seemed nothing else to do but follow him.

The front door opened to warm yellow light. A house, with wood things. It smelled old, a litlle rancid. Brown. There was a back door and stairs up off to one side, and a hall with doors; from out of one of them came the oldest troll he had ever seen. Older than Kitten.

“Dolly,” said Uncle Jimmy. “Come see. New friend.” He collected another smack across the flank, not hard or painful, but the intent was clear. Dolly stood in the hallway, a tiny little thing, wearing a short-sleeved cotton dress with such a simple shape that it might well have once been a bag; she wore it with grace. One dark arm lifted up, thin-skinned little hand tipped down for a kiss.

Still naked, he padded over the threshhold and the wooden planks of the floor to collect it. The rocks in the skin of his knees made him wince as he knelt to press a dry kiss to the back of her hand. It was veined with something cool and greenish, the little cords standing out between papery grey flesh and tendons beneath.

“Dolly...Bean?” He looked up, searching her face for something recognizable. He knew Dolly Bean. Everybody knew Dolly Bean, or everyone who did television. She’d been a sweet trilling voice on the radio before there was television. Adelaide and Dolly Bean. Later, a few bits and pieces as a coddled, snooty house-troll in a tiara in one of the earliest shows. She was old then; one of the first popular trolls in entertainment anywhere. She must be absolutely ancient...but if she were jade, or greenish-blue, then she could have lived that long.

And here she was. Even kneeling, he was almost as tall as she was now. Uncle Jimmy stood behind them in the doorway, making some gentle noise with the lock.

“Oh you,” said Dolly Bean. Her lips pursed into a cheeky moue, and her chin tipped to one side. His heart swam in his chest. “Say Maryam, won’t you.”

“Maryam,” he said. He stayed on his knees. Let the rocks dig. “I’m.”

She looked down at him, huge jade eyes knowing and opalescent with a rheumy film. Her chin tipped the other way. She recollected her hand. “Oh do,” she said, folding arms over her bag-dressed chest.

“Vantas,” he said, mouth dry.

“Get along you two,” said Uncle Jimmy, his steps solid on the floorboards as he passed the two of them down the hallway. He disappeared into the last door to the left, and there was the soft whoosh and clink of a refrigerator and a glass.

“Vantas,” she said.

He nodded.

“Well,” she said, turning to follow the old man down the hallway. “This is here, isn’t it. Come on. There’s juice. Welcome home.”

Naked, barely sure his feet would carry him, he rose and followed.