Den of Inquity and Fanfic

drumboogie @ 2005-04-10T20:28:00

2005-04-11T00:30:22Z

This is an oldie-but-goodie -- a songfic inspired by The Feelies, a punk band from New Jersey. Since Dean looks like he could be a Feelie, and the song "The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness" could be about him, I wrote...

Title: "The Boy Next Door"
Pairing?: Triana/Dean
Rating/Warnings: PG for panty shot at the end
Description: After a long day at school, Triana listens to the radio and Dean emerges from the box.

The blinking LED clock behind the steering wheel read 3:26. School had let out for the day about an hour ago, and a few kids remained on the bus. An overweight boy with black hair like a toilet brush sat in the front row, pushing his plastic aviator-frame glasses up the bridge of his nose. A few guys from the basketball team sat in the middle, their polyester uniforms sticking to their sweaty, flushed skin. Towards the back, a purple-haired girl sat with closed eyes, her face leaning against the windowpane.

The rear axle had come loose and rattled against the dirt road, jolting Triana out of her catnap. She gazed over the rim of the green leather seat. No sign of Kim or Lisa, thank God, just the same group of people that rode the bus at this hour.

Triana yanked her headphones on. She could never quite guess where the transmitter for the college radio station would pick up – it came in loud and clear at (ugh) the compound, but the hilly terrain out here made listening to the station something of a challenge. Absently, she flipped the radio on. A reggae band continued beating the life from the loping stoner groove they’d played for the hour since she’d gotten out of school. She rolled her eyes and gazed out the window. Harsh light streamed through the weather-beaten windowpane, blurring the silhouettes of the trees outside.

Finally, the Jah-Love Reggae Train had arrived at its final destination in a wash of static. The punk and new wave show, Images of Yourself, was supposed to start, but the line had gone dead. Well, not dead exactly – she could hear bits of audio from neighboring stations bleeding in to the silence.

A few clicks that sounded like Morse code broke the silence. She didn’t know if they were drums or more echoes from other stations. Just as she’d placed her thumb on the tuning knob, a guitar chimed in. It sounded like it was echoing from someplace miles away. She froze.

There's a kid I know but not too well
He doesn't have a lot to say
Well this boy lives right next door and he
Never has nothin' to say

On some days, Dean found his “lessons” to resemble sleeping. Not today. The box had grown hot and itchy, and his brain was saturated with stupid, stupid information. Why his father expected him to not only learn but ret- reta- hold on to all of these facts, he would never understand. His eyes rolled back in his head. The plexiglass shield that kept him inside lifted with a zooming noise.

Penguins have an organ above their eyes that convert seawater to freshwater. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second. Phoenix Bird Oolong Tea was grown in the mountains of Guangadong province in tribute to the Emperor of China. Long Island is a terminal moraine, comprised of the earth deposited by a receding glacier.

He eased himself into a sitting position, rising up on his elbows. Dad wanted him to remember some strange piece of information. He said Dean would learn something today that could help him fight Baron von Underbheit should it come to that. For the love of God and all that was holy, though…Dean could not remember it.

He looked over at Hank, floating in the puddle of knowledge. His eyes remained open, but his pupils darted from left to right and his lips moved silently. Not ready to come up yet, Dean suspected.

He’d written down the stuff his father wanted him to pay attention to in the back of the Giant Boy Detective novel on his bedside. He turned too quickly to his night table, and a small stack of brick-sized books fell on the floor, their yellow bindings falling into a pile. Great, Dean thought.

As he bent over to rifle through the books, a blaze of yellow reflected through the blinds in his room. He peered through the window. A school bus was passing the compound. His brain slowly put the equation together. Yeah, it would make sense that Triana was arriving home, since the shadows had grown long, and – Triana! The lavendar-haired light of his life, his one true love…he should say hello to her when she got home. Yes. That is exactly what he would do.

It doesn't seem like he does anything
He never helps out in the yard
He lets his mother carry in groceries
Cause he doesn't plan to work too hard

The vocals kicked in around a minute into the song, and Triana was disappointed to hear that the singer didn’t have a British accent. Nor did he mope around with any sort of gravity; he just kind of sang these lyrics in a clipped voice.

The entire song went by in that kind of blur. Drums were tapped instead of pounded, with little use for the cymbal. The guitars fell into a melody with this strumming that was both passive-aggressive and urgent. They seemed to need to play the song, but they didn’t need to tell you that. She guessed it was punk rock. But really, she didn’t tune in to Images of You not to hear this weird American stuff. If she wanted to listen to They Might Be Giants, she could turn on the commercial station –

Her face hit the green leather seat in front of her, and in the distance she heard the brakes squeal. One headphone remained in her ear, while the other beat time into her neck. “HEY! LITTLE LADY!” the bus driver yelled. “You gettin’ off here or ain’tcha?”

Everyone stared at her as she rose from her seat and walked down the center aisle, rubbing her ear. The driver looked at her from beneath his wooly eyebrows. “Damn kids and their walk-men,” he grumbled as she got to the door. She turned, met his gaze with the Look of Death, and stuck two fingers in his face in a claw-like manner. Her Anglophilia finally paid off – at long last she could make an obscene gesture without landing in the principal’s office.

She hopped off the bus and onto the curb. Everything looked familiar. Why, there was Brock, washing his ’67 Dodge Charger. As he rinsed the soap off his car, he looked up to see Triana disembarking the bus. She nodded at him swiftly and pulled her schoolbooks closer to her chest.

This being a Compound which houses Scientastic Super-Scientists, Rusty didn’t make keys for Triana and her dad. Nope, security codes all the way. A pane of glass where residents were supposed to place their hands had been broken for a while, and everyone secretly doubted that HELPeR would ever get around to fixing it. She punched in the code 7825425, careful not to transpose the last three numbers – perilously close to one of her friends’ telephone numbers.

Well he's not like the boys we used to have
Not like them at all - oh no
Those ones made their parents proud
This one beats 'em all

Dean glanced in the mirror and ripped the checkered kerchief from around his neck. It just looked…wrong somehow. Fringed and ugly – the red and yellow clashed horribly. This shirt used to make him feel so confident. Cowboys were so cool and brave, and the shirt fit him so well.
Lots of things seemed wrong after he met Triana. He looked at the clown lamp that sat on the end table. He and Hank had the lamp for as long as he could remember, and in the early days of traveling to superscientastic places he’d insist on bringing it with them. From where he stood he could see seams in the plastic and the small clown, which looked so sad now. Triana wouldn’t have a lamp like that, not even as –

The front door to the compound opened with a groan, and a pair of footsteps echoed through the hall. Dean lunged for the doorknob, one ear perked to the door to listen to the approaching footsteps. Catching his reflection, he stuck his fingertip in his mouth and quickly groomed his eyebrows.

The boy next door is into better things
As far as I can see --

Triana eyed the wall hangings inside the compound with some skepticism. They started innocently enough, with subway posters from the World’s Fairs that advertised the latest inventions from Venture Industries. Blueprints followed, beginning with the most benign inventions and slowly easing into what might have been. She thought about those times she’d seen Dr Venture’s famously thin skin in action. Why would anyone want to have framed blueprints of failed inventions? Why anyone would want to hang some of these blueprints confused her at all. Some of these had to be classified…right? Then again, who outside of the residents of the compound would see these. On the other other hand, though, how did Dr Venture know her and her dad were on their side? They could have very easily infiltrated the ranks to get some of the secrets on these walls.

The first time Triana invited Kim to her old house, Kim couldn’t get over how funny the baby photos of her were. At least Kim learned that Triana came by her hair color honestly without anything embarrassing happening, but still. Hey, wait a minute…where were the baby pictures of the Dean and Hank? She had to see those. God, those must be even funnier than hers –

The boy next door is into bigger things
The boy next door is me

Something that felt like a metallic fist hit Triana in the stomach. Her purse hit her in the side, all cold aluminum cutting her and sliding off. She could see a flurry of papers kick up and fall over, red Fs and Ds falling from the cover of her textbooks. She heard her heavy English book hit the ground next to her. Who the hell would do this? She looked up.

Dean looked down, his grin extending from ear to ear. If he was smiling with his mouth, his eyes betrayed a more ambivalent expression – some mix of satisfaction that he was face to face with the object of his affection and utter embarrassment from smashing his doorknob into her soft, soft flesh.

She looked up at Dean as if she could kill him by sending rays through her retinae. Instinctively she lowered one knee to the floor. Dean probably didn’t know that today was Wednesday, and she would rather he not figure this out by looking at some cursive writing across her crotch.

“H-hey, Triana.”

The boy next door is ME, yeah!

In case you wanted a frame of reference for this fic, I put the song online. Enjoy!

New fic!

2005-04-04T11:24:00Z

"Girl Drink Drunk"
Incredibles/Venture Brothers crossover
PG/PG-13-ish for drinking and vague innuendo; spoilers for both fandoms
Dr. Girlfriend and Mirage meet in a bar.

“Oh dear. Please don’t cry,” the lady begged. “Those appletinis are expensive.”

Dr. Girlfriend sat at the end of the bar, blubbering into her appletini. Under most circumstances she might feel the slightest twinge of shame, but at the moment she could care less. Maybe it was the alcohol talking…or maybe it was all the other stuff leading up to the alcohol. She couldn’t let Phantom Limb see her crying, that was for certain. Nothing shamed an archvillainess more than having her leg humped by a limbless torso in a unitard.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a patron glide up to the bar. She straightened up and grabbed a stack of napkins from the lazy Susan on its edge. The bartender slid to the other end of the bar, coming out of his engrossment in the curling championships.

As she dabbed the streaks of eyeliner from her face, she looked at her new companion. The lady idly folded and draped a well-sewn trenchcoat on the barstool and whispered into the bartender’s ear. He spring to attention, splashing rum and squeezing limes into a short glass in a blur. The lady watched him intently, her golden skin glistening in the low light of the bar. Looking away from her leggy companion, she instinctively draped her coat over her thighs – all the better to hide the unsightly cottage cheese-flesh. That sweater alone must have cost about the same as the maintenance cost of the Monarch’s lair, she thought.

The lady hooked one Cuban heel on the lower rung of the barstool. A galaxy of movie stars danced in Dr. Girlfriend’s head, all emanating the kind of incandescence that only late-night TV viewings can provide. The need for companionship outweighed her latent jealousy, and she turned back.

“Excuse me,” Dr. Girlfriend intoned, her voice cracking. She suddenly felt self-conscious about her guttural Bronx bellow. The lady looked up, her eyebrows raised. A curl of white-blonde hair fell across her right eye. Dr. Girlfriend took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her head was swimming. She started again. “Has anyone ever told you…you look like…a movie star?”

The bartender placed her drink in front of the lady, his eyes darting back and forth as if he was watching a ping-pong game. He quickly turned away. The lady picked up her drink. “Thank you,” she replied. A note of flattery curled through her voice, but her teeth gritted behind her smile. She took a sip from her drink. Embarrassed, Dr. Girlfriend turned to face the bar.

“I like your boots,” the lady said after a moment.

Brightening, Dr. Girlfriend turned away from the bar. “Do you?” She pointed her toe to better show them off, but her leg got caught on the stool between them. “They’re fake Manolos,” she stage-whispered. “I got them on the Lower East Side."

“These are real Manolos.” The lady lifted the hem of her jeans to show off her boots. Dr. Girlfriend’s face fell, listening to the vowelish purr around the N in the word “Manolo.” The lady winked. “And I had to pick up quite a few doubles to afford them, too.”

Dr. Girlfriend smiled at this. As she took another sip of her drink, she could feel the lady taking a closer look at her costume. From this close proximity, the lady could probably see all the uneven stitches and flaws in the design.

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but…what do you do?”

“I arch.” Dr. Girlfriend placed her drink back on the bar, her hand shaking. Where to begin? Her lip began to tremble as she thought of her work as Lady Au Pair and Queen Etherea, and all this business with the Monarch’s trial. Despite her best efforts to control herself, she lapsed into tears.

“Oh dear. Please don’t cry,” the lady begged. “Those appletinis are expensive.”

At least this will make it last longer,” Dr. Girlfriend spat.

“There’s nothing worse than a salty appletini, sweets,” the lady muttered into her purse. After pushing around some high-tech accoutrements, she produced a small, wilted packet of facial tissues.

Dr. Girlfriend honked into a tissue as the lady placed her purse back on the bar. “I should have known it was a loaded question."

“It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

“No, I mean from personal experience.”

“You arch?”

Running her finger around the top of the glass, she looked away. “Let’s just say that I’m looking for new employment.”

“What happened?”

She sighed. “For a while I was working for this startup villain off the coast of South America. He had these great ideas for new gadgets in villainy, but they came at a big expense.” Her eyes began to mist up, but she breathed in deeply and straightened her posture. “And it’s one thing when you’re dealing with individuals, but he wanted to off his last…nemesis…who was married and had young kids.”

Dr. Girlfriend immediately thought of the Ventures. At least Hank and Dean were of reasonable age, and of indeterminate origin. And…she didn’t want to think about that. “What did you do?”

Here the lady turned back to face Dr. Girlfriend. She smiled slyly. “Remember how I said he was into gadgets?” After pausing for dramatic effect, she said, “I gave them a rocket and helped them escape.”

“Why, aren’t you a little Oskar Schindler.”

“With better hair, I hope.”

The two women laughed, Dr. Girlfriend straight from her diaphragm. It seemed like the first time she’d laughed in…gosh, weeks. The lady motioned to the bartender for a refill on Dr. Girlfriend’s appletini.” “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Dr. Girlfriend.”

“You can call me Mirage.” The lady held out her hand for Dr. Girlfriend to shake. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Annoying roommate,” she shrugged. She straightened her posture and relaxed her shoulders, tilting her head at what she believed was a sassy angle. “You know, I really admire your attitude.”

“Well, I have to laugh.” Mirage leaned against the bar. “Do you know how much I would cry if I didn’t?”

The bartender placed Dr. Girlfriend’s appletini on the bar next to her. “I think this calls for a toast,” she said picking the glass up by the stem.

“Cheers, darling,” Mirage purred as their glasses clinked.

“You know,” Dr. Girlfriend said, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

xposted: the_incredibles, venturebrothers, venture_fanfics, & my journal. thx to fredericks & icecreamqueen for beta-ing.