my commentfic
I've been hanging around comment_fic lately, and felt I should share my endeavors.
I don't think I've repeated a fandom yet (although there are some from repeat fandoms that I have been planning to write). Most are some degree of humorous - because I honestly cannot conceive of actually being serious.
Thursday September 03: Getting Dirty
For morlockiness
Nita winced, as she stepped off of the concrete ledge and into three inches of squelching mud. “I hope there’s a spell to get rid of all of this mud,” she murmured to herself. “Or my mom is going to kill me for ruining these clothes.”
She had just been shopping for new clothing last week. She had been growing lately, and new clothes had only been one of the changes. Still, there was no help for it - Kit was already several yards ahead of her, and picking his way through the muddy landscape of the riverbank, and besides, Errantry couldn’t be put on hold for such silly sensibilities as dirty clothes. She waved a goodbye to a forlorn Ponch - tethered by his leash, and barking like mad - and started off after Kit.
“I just hope it doesn’t get the manual dirty,” Kit said, holding the book in his hand well above the mud with a dubious frown.
“I don’t think it can get dirty,” Nita said abstractedly. “I mean, I think the dirt just slides off. It’s not like it’s really a book, anyways. I mean, it’s a book in physicality, but in actuality it could be anything. It’s all dependant on our preconceived notions, or something - at least that’s what I read.”
Kit turned around, and raised his eyebrow. “In the manual?” he asked, a little dubiously.
Nita nodded, and then shrugged a little, as if to say, ‘well, that’s what it said.’
The young Hispanic boy gave a bit of a confused grin. “I guess the manual is capable of meta-consciousness,” he said, looking at the utterly normal book.
Nita grinned. “I’m sure it’s capable of much more than that,” she said, with a shrug. The manual was still too complicated to really understand. “C’mon, though - I just know my parents are going to wonder why Dairine can take a trip to Jupiter and still be back on time for dinner, while I’m coming in late and muddy from three miles away.”
Kit nodded. “Right,” he said, and he turned back to picking his way across the muddy riverbank, Nita right behind him. She was focused on not tripping and falling, and didn’t notice the noisy barking getting louder, until--
“Oh, boy, mud! Mudmudmudmud! Wheeee!”
A black and white and very muddy blur hit the back of her knees, causing Nita to topple and catch herself with her elbow. The blur rocketed past Nita and Kit, and then whirled around, and jumped up onto Kit’s chest. The momentum bowled him over, right over the top of Nita.
For a moment, the three of them were a tangled mess of very muddy bodies, limbs, and one tail. Then Nita wrenched her arm free from underneath Kit, Kit shoved Ponch off of him, and Ponch bounded happily away to roll in the mud. In a few seconds, the large black-and-white mutt had made an utter mess of whatever had been clean on them.
After a moment of shock, the two of them scrambled for their manuals - the pages were pristine - and then they met each other’s eyes with relief.
Kit half-laughed. “I swear, he gets smarter every day,” he said, indicating the furry dog busily turning himself brown, and the half of the leash still attached to him.
Ponch stopped rolling suddenly, and looked at Kit with solemn brown eyes. He looked extremely sorry.
“I just wanted to come with you,” he said, as innocently as possible.
Kit sighed. “Well, just this once,” he said to Ponch. “But don’t go scaring off any of the birds - we kind of need to find them.”
Ponch nodded his head - a very human gesture that left Nita a little baffled - and then resumed his rolling and playing.
Kit’s eyes met Nita’s once more. He expression echoed Ponch’s apologetic one, at least a little bit.
“I really hope there’s a spell for getting out mud,” she said, with a laugh.
Kit grinned at her.
Monday September 07: Country & Western Songs
For tigriswolf
“You don’t realize how absolutely insane this is. I mean, we’re already a bunch of kids fighting off an alien invasion against impossible odds, but I don’t see how we can do this mission.”
Marco, member of the Animorphs, played with a piece of hay between his fingers, surveying his other - much crazier, in his opinion - animal-morphing, alien-fighting friends. Jake. Cassie. Rachel. Tobias, a sharp-eyed hawk in the rafters.
“We don’t have much choice, Marco,” Jake, the de-facto leader said.
Marco sighed. “I mean, how are we even going to get in there? There’s nothing around but farmland - are you saying we morph cows and just stroll up? A cow isn’t going to do us much good when they have dracon beams and Hork-Bajir and who knows what else up there. I hate to tell you this, but cows can’t exactly pack an Uzi.”
Cassie’s large brown eyes stared right into his. Marco felt suddenly uncomfortable - like she was weighing his morals and found him lacking. “We can’t just let this chance slip by. Besides, what they’re doing out there-”
“Oh, yes, our personal quest to save the rainforest, make everyone a vegan, and care for every single hurt animal that comes our way,” Marco said sarcastically. “We should have our own theme song - ‘We will fight for bovine freedom and hold our large heads high. We will run free with the buffalo, or die!’”
Cassie shot Marco a dirty look for his sarcasm. He grinned at her.
Rachel shrugged, and pushed back her long, near-perfect blonde hair. “I say we should do it. It’s a good chance to do some real damage - we don’t get many chances like this very often.”
She did have a point, Marco reflected. Still, he wasn’t going to give up so easily.
“OK, Xena, tell me this - when we’re sitting there surrounded, and they’re ready to make us into tomorrow’s happy meals, who is going to come save us? Chickens in choppers?”
Jake grinned. “Exactly,” he said.
Marco didn’t want to know if he was joking or not.
Tuesday September 08: Forbidden Fruit
For measuringlife
When Iruka found him, Kakashi was deep inside Konoha’s hidden vaults. Dust from old manuscripts hung in the air like a kind of shroud. Thousands of scrolls worth of paper muffled sounds, so that they seemed eerie.
Kakashi was staring at a scroll in his hands.
His one black eye darted from the paper, to Iruka, and back again. Scared. Defensive. For a moment, the two men stared at each other, each understanding.
Only a few feet from each other, but so much distance.
Iruka did not have to ask to know what the scroll was. He knew. Kinjutsu - a forbidden technique. What Kakashi had been searching for, silently, never saying a word. Officially, Konoha should have destroyed that scroll. Officially.
Iruka knew his country. He knew that, for a shinobi village, Konoha was heavy on idealism. He also knew that they were ruthlessly practical.
“I could do it,” Kakashi said, and his voice was calm even as his hands shook. “I could take out a large portion of Akatsuki. I could…”
He was silent.
“And what price would you pay, Kakashi?”
Iruka’s eyes roamed the face of the masked ninja. So hard to tell what he was thinking, feeling, with that cloth covering everything but the expressions in one eye.
“I might die,” Kakashi said. “But I’m a soldier. Dying is what we do.”
He knew that his words would hurt. Iruka, knowing this, was still stung by how caustic they were.
“You’d lose your soul, Kakashi,” he said.
Kakashi said nothing.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Iruka said. A startling moment of weakness - to Shinobi, such bonds are weak. But Kakashi understood, and Kakashi would never scorn him for it.
Kakashi was the perfect soldier. The man who could follow any order. He would kill and die for his country, and hide any emotion, any moral objection, and all of his human self behind that impenetrable mask.
Iruka crossed the few feet of space between them, and Kakashi set down the scroll. He let Iruka draw the cloth down his face, let the Chuunin’s fingers brush gently over his lips.
For a moment, he let the soldier rest.
-
For angel_gidget
They were attending a professional dinner held for a hospital in Pennsylvania. Food had already been served, speeches had already been given. They were in the middle of the cleared ballroom floor - dancing, along with other couples, though nobody could match the graceful movements of the couple's foxtrot.
Esme was dressed in a periwinkle blue cocktail dress. The very height of fashion, that her adopted daughter had picked out for her. Carlisle wore a custom-tailored, dashing black tuxedo.
They stepped lightly across the dance floor, like they were barely touching it with their feet. One of his hands curled around her waist, only a light touch.
For some reason, it set her on fire. It had been some time, really, and she was missing his touch. And he had looked so handsome, when he gave his thank-you speech for the donations to the hospital.
She wanted to be adventurous.
She drew closer to him, close enough to whisper so that only he could hear.
“I want you.”
Her attuned senses caught the minute changes in expression, and she was almost amused. He was surprised, yes, but she could also tell that he was thinking about it, and…
“Now?” he whispered. Only she could see how he fought to keep his voice even - nobody without vampire senses could have even have had a chance of hearing his words.
Esme’s grin told him all he needed to know.
Carlisle’s warm, amber eyes darted around the room. If he could have blushed, he might have, though Esme. “But… my colleagues,” he said. “It’s so… unprofessional.”
Esme grinned at him. “I don’t think we’ll be caught, do you?” she asked.
She could see the muscles in her husband’s jaw working. He was thinking it over.
Calculatingly, Esme lowered her eyelashes. She brushed her fingers up from their place on his shoulder, and over and across his jaw. And then, with one last sultry look, she stepped out of Carlisle’s embrace.
“If you want to, you know where to find me,” she said, her voice warm, but still too low to be heard by anyone other than a fellow vampire. Then she turned and quietly disappeared.
One shocked moment later, Carlisle followed.
Monday September 14: Crack
For measuringlife
“Are you on crack?”
The intern standing in front of Dr. Gregory House’s desk resisted the urge to whimper. This was like facing down a cougar - show weakness, and he will pounce on you. Except, when you face down a cougar, you are usually dead within a few minutes. With House, it can take a couple of painful, agonizing days.
At least, that was what the intern had heard.
“No, sir,” the intern said, hoping he sounded self-assured but probably just coming off as whiny. “I’m not on drugs of any kind.”
House raised one eyebrow. “Oh, really?” he asked. “Because I could have sworn that you said your patients spontaneously changed gender.”
Oh, God, I will never do anything bad ever, ever again. I’ll go to church more often. I’ll donate to the homeless. I’ll even tell my brother about the porn I stole from him in the seventh grade. Just let me live through this.
“Yes, sir, that is exactly what I said,” the intern said, feeling sillier by the minute just standing under Dr. House’s stare. What had seemed a somewhat straightforward procedure minutes ago had somehow become so ridiculous.
“And you’re sure your patients didn’t have a sex change in the last, oh… week or so since you saw her?”
The intern nodded frantically. Oh, how he wished House would just give him an answer on this so that the intern could just go curl up in a corner somewhere.
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘everybody lies’?”
“They were telling the truth!”
The intern regretted the explosion as soon as it was out of his mouth. He swallowed - hard - and mentally cursed Dr. Cuddy for sending him to personally tell House about this new patient. Clearly, the woman had a sadistic streak. He should have known. A successful doctor that attractive would not be single if there wasn’t something terribly wrong with her personality.
“B-besides, why would the… gender-swap occur at exactly the same time? The doctors… and I… believe that there is some kind of infectious disease involved.” The intern was feeling a sudden, overwhelming desire to justify himself.
“A spontaneous gender-swapping disease. Do you realize how absurd that idea is?”
Oh, yes, the intern thought. I realize it. He said nothing, however, for fear that the moment he opened his mouth he would pee his pants. He nodded - very slowly.
“Alright, tell them I’ll take it,” House said.
The intern was so surprised by this change of tack that he blurted out -- “You will?” He felt himself turning bright red. “I mean, even though it’s totally crazy?”
House shrugged. “It’s interesting,” he said, as though that alone should explain everything. “Besides, if you’re wrong, then I can justifiably call you and whoever you work with insane.”
The intern stared, shocked. House looked at the papers on his desk, and then back up at the intern.
“You’re still here?” he asked, incredulously. “Don’t you have floors to clean or something?”
The intern fled.
'Dad was right. I should have gone into the military. It would have been safer."
-
For morlockiness
This was the Enterprise’s third maiden voyage. Of course, nobody was calling it that besides the ship’s intrepid captain. Still, it was the very first mission that entailed the Enterprise doing what it had been originally designed to do - that being, “to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before” - so it was a little bit special.
They had thus far only succeeded in finding a docile planet full of fluffy pink sheep-like creatures that could fly. These were quite entertaining but deemed pretty much useless.
The scanners had finally picked up on life readings. The atmosphere aboard the Enterprise was rather laid-back as the party that would go planet-side - led by First Officer Spock - got ready to beam down to the planet.
“What’ll you find this time, d’you think? Blue cows?”
Intrepid Captain James T. Kirk tried to hold back a snicker at that thought. He was the Captain, and supposed to be officious and all those things, especially when exploring an alien planet. Still, in his defense, it was pretty funny.
He - and the rest of the crew - waited for the beams to energize and take the small crew down to the planet.
“Communications are working Captain,” came the even voice of Spock. “There is a dense fog. I believe that we may have beamed into some kind of swamp.”
“Alright, well be careful, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “Don’t fall in any quicksand.”
“Believe me, Captain, I will be very careful of quicksand.”
“Was that sarcasm, Mr. Spock?”
Mr. Spock, apparently, didn’t want to answer.
“That was so sarcasm,” Kirk said, with a grin that said ‘I am so right’.
The ship waited patiently for more reports from the planet-side team. As the time wore on, the crew went from excited to impatient to downright worried. Finally, Kirk decided that it had been a little too long.
“Mr. Spock, what do you see down there?”
There was no response.
“Mr. Spock?!”
“Mr. Spock is a little busy at the moment.” The voice was that of helmsman Hikaru Sulu. “It seems he and Lieutenant Uhura are having a… personal moment.”
Kirk made a great show of heaving a sigh of annoyance. In his head, he was gleefully cheering. He had wanted to say this for a very long time. “Spock, stop making out with your girlfriend and get to the job at hand!”
It took a moment for Spock to answer. “I’m sorry, Captain,” the half-Vulcan said. “It seems this planet is having… peculiar effects on my physiology.”
“You’re saying that this planet makes you horny?” Kirk’s tone was a little bit incredulous.
“The human idiom is crude, but I suppose correct.”
Kirk could hear Uhura’s giggle in the background.
“I should say,” Lieutenant Sulu said, out of the blue, “that this is a preeettty awesome planet you sent us to. I’m happy as a clam down here.”
“Happy as a clam?” Uhura asked him. “Wouldn’t it be happy as a… person experiencing strangely euphoric feelings and… euphoria? Or something.”
Kirk, by now, realized that there was something going on. “Mr. Scott, what do the sensors say about that planet’s atmosphere?”
“Well,” Scotty said, “there’s a large percent nitrogen, a good percent that is oxygen, and a few other gasses mixed in between. It’s funny, though - there’s a pretty good amount of tetrahydrocannabinol in the atmosphere.”
“… Say that again.”
“Well, Captain, there’s a large percent nitrogen-”
“No, no, that last one. Say it again, slowly.”
“There’s some tetrahydrocannabinol in the atmosphere.”
Kirk resisted the urge to put his face in his palm. “Does that name of that molecule have ‘cannabi’ in it?” he asked.
The helpful voice of Leonard McCoy from the medical bay told him, “It’s also called THC. It’s the main psychoactive in cannabis. Of course, how it’s going to interact with artifical-g, I have no idea…”
“I have faith in you, Bones,” Kirk said. “Even if we did just send a crew down to a planet laced with marijuana.”
“You know of this substance, Captain?” Spock asked. He sounded, Kirk thought, a little woozy.
“I’m guessing you Vulcans never experimented in college.”
There was no answer.
“Mr. Scott, beam them back up.”
I don't think I've repeated a fandom yet (although there are some from repeat fandoms that I have been planning to write). Most are some degree of humorous - because I honestly cannot conceive of actually being serious.
Thursday September 03: Getting Dirty
For morlockiness
Nita winced, as she stepped off of the concrete ledge and into three inches of squelching mud. “I hope there’s a spell to get rid of all of this mud,” she murmured to herself. “Or my mom is going to kill me for ruining these clothes.”
She had just been shopping for new clothing last week. She had been growing lately, and new clothes had only been one of the changes. Still, there was no help for it - Kit was already several yards ahead of her, and picking his way through the muddy landscape of the riverbank, and besides, Errantry couldn’t be put on hold for such silly sensibilities as dirty clothes. She waved a goodbye to a forlorn Ponch - tethered by his leash, and barking like mad - and started off after Kit.
“I just hope it doesn’t get the manual dirty,” Kit said, holding the book in his hand well above the mud with a dubious frown.
“I don’t think it can get dirty,” Nita said abstractedly. “I mean, I think the dirt just slides off. It’s not like it’s really a book, anyways. I mean, it’s a book in physicality, but in actuality it could be anything. It’s all dependant on our preconceived notions, or something - at least that’s what I read.”
Kit turned around, and raised his eyebrow. “In the manual?” he asked, a little dubiously.
Nita nodded, and then shrugged a little, as if to say, ‘well, that’s what it said.’
The young Hispanic boy gave a bit of a confused grin. “I guess the manual is capable of meta-consciousness,” he said, looking at the utterly normal book.
Nita grinned. “I’m sure it’s capable of much more than that,” she said, with a shrug. The manual was still too complicated to really understand. “C’mon, though - I just know my parents are going to wonder why Dairine can take a trip to Jupiter and still be back on time for dinner, while I’m coming in late and muddy from three miles away.”
Kit nodded. “Right,” he said, and he turned back to picking his way across the muddy riverbank, Nita right behind him. She was focused on not tripping and falling, and didn’t notice the noisy barking getting louder, until--
“Oh, boy, mud! Mudmudmudmud! Wheeee!”
A black and white and very muddy blur hit the back of her knees, causing Nita to topple and catch herself with her elbow. The blur rocketed past Nita and Kit, and then whirled around, and jumped up onto Kit’s chest. The momentum bowled him over, right over the top of Nita.
For a moment, the three of them were a tangled mess of very muddy bodies, limbs, and one tail. Then Nita wrenched her arm free from underneath Kit, Kit shoved Ponch off of him, and Ponch bounded happily away to roll in the mud. In a few seconds, the large black-and-white mutt had made an utter mess of whatever had been clean on them.
After a moment of shock, the two of them scrambled for their manuals - the pages were pristine - and then they met each other’s eyes with relief.
Kit half-laughed. “I swear, he gets smarter every day,” he said, indicating the furry dog busily turning himself brown, and the half of the leash still attached to him.
Ponch stopped rolling suddenly, and looked at Kit with solemn brown eyes. He looked extremely sorry.
“I just wanted to come with you,” he said, as innocently as possible.
Kit sighed. “Well, just this once,” he said to Ponch. “But don’t go scaring off any of the birds - we kind of need to find them.”
Ponch nodded his head - a very human gesture that left Nita a little baffled - and then resumed his rolling and playing.
Kit’s eyes met Nita’s once more. He expression echoed Ponch’s apologetic one, at least a little bit.
“I really hope there’s a spell for getting out mud,” she said, with a laugh.
Kit grinned at her.
Monday September 07: Country & Western Songs
For tigriswolf
“You don’t realize how absolutely insane this is. I mean, we’re already a bunch of kids fighting off an alien invasion against impossible odds, but I don’t see how we can do this mission.”
Marco, member of the Animorphs, played with a piece of hay between his fingers, surveying his other - much crazier, in his opinion - animal-morphing, alien-fighting friends. Jake. Cassie. Rachel. Tobias, a sharp-eyed hawk in the rafters.
“We don’t have much choice, Marco,” Jake, the de-facto leader said.
Marco sighed. “I mean, how are we even going to get in there? There’s nothing around but farmland - are you saying we morph cows and just stroll up? A cow isn’t going to do us much good when they have dracon beams and Hork-Bajir and who knows what else up there. I hate to tell you this, but cows can’t exactly pack an Uzi.”
Cassie’s large brown eyes stared right into his. Marco felt suddenly uncomfortable - like she was weighing his morals and found him lacking. “We can’t just let this chance slip by. Besides, what they’re doing out there-”
“Oh, yes, our personal quest to save the rainforest, make everyone a vegan, and care for every single hurt animal that comes our way,” Marco said sarcastically. “We should have our own theme song - ‘We will fight for bovine freedom and hold our large heads high. We will run free with the buffalo, or die!’”
Cassie shot Marco a dirty look for his sarcasm. He grinned at her.
Rachel shrugged, and pushed back her long, near-perfect blonde hair. “I say we should do it. It’s a good chance to do some real damage - we don’t get many chances like this very often.”
She did have a point, Marco reflected. Still, he wasn’t going to give up so easily.
“OK, Xena, tell me this - when we’re sitting there surrounded, and they’re ready to make us into tomorrow’s happy meals, who is going to come save us? Chickens in choppers?”
Jake grinned. “Exactly,” he said.
Marco didn’t want to know if he was joking or not.
Tuesday September 08: Forbidden Fruit
For measuringlife
When Iruka found him, Kakashi was deep inside Konoha’s hidden vaults. Dust from old manuscripts hung in the air like a kind of shroud. Thousands of scrolls worth of paper muffled sounds, so that they seemed eerie.
Kakashi was staring at a scroll in his hands.
His one black eye darted from the paper, to Iruka, and back again. Scared. Defensive. For a moment, the two men stared at each other, each understanding.
Only a few feet from each other, but so much distance.
Iruka did not have to ask to know what the scroll was. He knew. Kinjutsu - a forbidden technique. What Kakashi had been searching for, silently, never saying a word. Officially, Konoha should have destroyed that scroll. Officially.
Iruka knew his country. He knew that, for a shinobi village, Konoha was heavy on idealism. He also knew that they were ruthlessly practical.
“I could do it,” Kakashi said, and his voice was calm even as his hands shook. “I could take out a large portion of Akatsuki. I could…”
He was silent.
“And what price would you pay, Kakashi?”
Iruka’s eyes roamed the face of the masked ninja. So hard to tell what he was thinking, feeling, with that cloth covering everything but the expressions in one eye.
“I might die,” Kakashi said. “But I’m a soldier. Dying is what we do.”
He knew that his words would hurt. Iruka, knowing this, was still stung by how caustic they were.
“You’d lose your soul, Kakashi,” he said.
Kakashi said nothing.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Iruka said. A startling moment of weakness - to Shinobi, such bonds are weak. But Kakashi understood, and Kakashi would never scorn him for it.
Kakashi was the perfect soldier. The man who could follow any order. He would kill and die for his country, and hide any emotion, any moral objection, and all of his human self behind that impenetrable mask.
Iruka crossed the few feet of space between them, and Kakashi set down the scroll. He let Iruka draw the cloth down his face, let the Chuunin’s fingers brush gently over his lips.
For a moment, he let the soldier rest.
-
For angel_gidget
They were attending a professional dinner held for a hospital in Pennsylvania. Food had already been served, speeches had already been given. They were in the middle of the cleared ballroom floor - dancing, along with other couples, though nobody could match the graceful movements of the couple's foxtrot.
Esme was dressed in a periwinkle blue cocktail dress. The very height of fashion, that her adopted daughter had picked out for her. Carlisle wore a custom-tailored, dashing black tuxedo.
They stepped lightly across the dance floor, like they were barely touching it with their feet. One of his hands curled around her waist, only a light touch.
For some reason, it set her on fire. It had been some time, really, and she was missing his touch. And he had looked so handsome, when he gave his thank-you speech for the donations to the hospital.
She wanted to be adventurous.
She drew closer to him, close enough to whisper so that only he could hear.
“I want you.”
Her attuned senses caught the minute changes in expression, and she was almost amused. He was surprised, yes, but she could also tell that he was thinking about it, and…
“Now?” he whispered. Only she could see how he fought to keep his voice even - nobody without vampire senses could have even have had a chance of hearing his words.
Esme’s grin told him all he needed to know.
Carlisle’s warm, amber eyes darted around the room. If he could have blushed, he might have, though Esme. “But… my colleagues,” he said. “It’s so… unprofessional.”
Esme grinned at him. “I don’t think we’ll be caught, do you?” she asked.
She could see the muscles in her husband’s jaw working. He was thinking it over.
Calculatingly, Esme lowered her eyelashes. She brushed her fingers up from their place on his shoulder, and over and across his jaw. And then, with one last sultry look, she stepped out of Carlisle’s embrace.
“If you want to, you know where to find me,” she said, her voice warm, but still too low to be heard by anyone other than a fellow vampire. Then she turned and quietly disappeared.
One shocked moment later, Carlisle followed.
Monday September 14: Crack
For measuringlife
“Are you on crack?”
The intern standing in front of Dr. Gregory House’s desk resisted the urge to whimper. This was like facing down a cougar - show weakness, and he will pounce on you. Except, when you face down a cougar, you are usually dead within a few minutes. With House, it can take a couple of painful, agonizing days.
At least, that was what the intern had heard.
“No, sir,” the intern said, hoping he sounded self-assured but probably just coming off as whiny. “I’m not on drugs of any kind.”
House raised one eyebrow. “Oh, really?” he asked. “Because I could have sworn that you said your patients spontaneously changed gender.”
Oh, God, I will never do anything bad ever, ever again. I’ll go to church more often. I’ll donate to the homeless. I’ll even tell my brother about the porn I stole from him in the seventh grade. Just let me live through this.
“Yes, sir, that is exactly what I said,” the intern said, feeling sillier by the minute just standing under Dr. House’s stare. What had seemed a somewhat straightforward procedure minutes ago had somehow become so ridiculous.
“And you’re sure your patients didn’t have a sex change in the last, oh… week or so since you saw her?”
The intern nodded frantically. Oh, how he wished House would just give him an answer on this so that the intern could just go curl up in a corner somewhere.
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘everybody lies’?”
“They were telling the truth!”
The intern regretted the explosion as soon as it was out of his mouth. He swallowed - hard - and mentally cursed Dr. Cuddy for sending him to personally tell House about this new patient. Clearly, the woman had a sadistic streak. He should have known. A successful doctor that attractive would not be single if there wasn’t something terribly wrong with her personality.
“B-besides, why would the… gender-swap occur at exactly the same time? The doctors… and I… believe that there is some kind of infectious disease involved.” The intern was feeling a sudden, overwhelming desire to justify himself.
“A spontaneous gender-swapping disease. Do you realize how absurd that idea is?”
Oh, yes, the intern thought. I realize it. He said nothing, however, for fear that the moment he opened his mouth he would pee his pants. He nodded - very slowly.
“Alright, tell them I’ll take it,” House said.
The intern was so surprised by this change of tack that he blurted out -- “You will?” He felt himself turning bright red. “I mean, even though it’s totally crazy?”
House shrugged. “It’s interesting,” he said, as though that alone should explain everything. “Besides, if you’re wrong, then I can justifiably call you and whoever you work with insane.”
The intern stared, shocked. House looked at the papers on his desk, and then back up at the intern.
“You’re still here?” he asked, incredulously. “Don’t you have floors to clean or something?”
The intern fled.
'Dad was right. I should have gone into the military. It would have been safer."
-
For morlockiness
This was the Enterprise’s third maiden voyage. Of course, nobody was calling it that besides the ship’s intrepid captain. Still, it was the very first mission that entailed the Enterprise doing what it had been originally designed to do - that being, “to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before” - so it was a little bit special.
They had thus far only succeeded in finding a docile planet full of fluffy pink sheep-like creatures that could fly. These were quite entertaining but deemed pretty much useless.
The scanners had finally picked up on life readings. The atmosphere aboard the Enterprise was rather laid-back as the party that would go planet-side - led by First Officer Spock - got ready to beam down to the planet.
“What’ll you find this time, d’you think? Blue cows?”
Intrepid Captain James T. Kirk tried to hold back a snicker at that thought. He was the Captain, and supposed to be officious and all those things, especially when exploring an alien planet. Still, in his defense, it was pretty funny.
He - and the rest of the crew - waited for the beams to energize and take the small crew down to the planet.
“Communications are working Captain,” came the even voice of Spock. “There is a dense fog. I believe that we may have beamed into some kind of swamp.”
“Alright, well be careful, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “Don’t fall in any quicksand.”
“Believe me, Captain, I will be very careful of quicksand.”
“Was that sarcasm, Mr. Spock?”
Mr. Spock, apparently, didn’t want to answer.
“That was so sarcasm,” Kirk said, with a grin that said ‘I am so right’.
The ship waited patiently for more reports from the planet-side team. As the time wore on, the crew went from excited to impatient to downright worried. Finally, Kirk decided that it had been a little too long.
“Mr. Spock, what do you see down there?”
There was no response.
“Mr. Spock?!”
“Mr. Spock is a little busy at the moment.” The voice was that of helmsman Hikaru Sulu. “It seems he and Lieutenant Uhura are having a… personal moment.”
Kirk made a great show of heaving a sigh of annoyance. In his head, he was gleefully cheering. He had wanted to say this for a very long time. “Spock, stop making out with your girlfriend and get to the job at hand!”
It took a moment for Spock to answer. “I’m sorry, Captain,” the half-Vulcan said. “It seems this planet is having… peculiar effects on my physiology.”
“You’re saying that this planet makes you horny?” Kirk’s tone was a little bit incredulous.
“The human idiom is crude, but I suppose correct.”
Kirk could hear Uhura’s giggle in the background.
“I should say,” Lieutenant Sulu said, out of the blue, “that this is a preeettty awesome planet you sent us to. I’m happy as a clam down here.”
“Happy as a clam?” Uhura asked him. “Wouldn’t it be happy as a… person experiencing strangely euphoric feelings and… euphoria? Or something.”
Kirk, by now, realized that there was something going on. “Mr. Scott, what do the sensors say about that planet’s atmosphere?”
“Well,” Scotty said, “there’s a large percent nitrogen, a good percent that is oxygen, and a few other gasses mixed in between. It’s funny, though - there’s a pretty good amount of tetrahydrocannabinol in the atmosphere.”
“… Say that again.”
“Well, Captain, there’s a large percent nitrogen-”
“No, no, that last one. Say it again, slowly.”
“There’s some tetrahydrocannabinol in the atmosphere.”
Kirk resisted the urge to put his face in his palm. “Does that name of that molecule have ‘cannabi’ in it?” he asked.
The helpful voice of Leonard McCoy from the medical bay told him, “It’s also called THC. It’s the main psychoactive in cannabis. Of course, how it’s going to interact with artifical-g, I have no idea…”
“I have faith in you, Bones,” Kirk said. “Even if we did just send a crew down to a planet laced with marijuana.”
“You know of this substance, Captain?” Spock asked. He sounded, Kirk thought, a little woozy.
“I’m guessing you Vulcans never experimented in college.”
There was no answer.
“Mr. Scott, beam them back up.”