Bargin bin of sci-fi slash
I think it's funny my non-anime slash is predominantly in bizarre romance. Comics are a whole other field of crazy, but a lot of the time I end up watching something animated and quirky and my brain gets these crack ideas for crack couplings. So I'm throwing some on here to free up space. It's like those discount bins in toy stores that have Wesley Crusher figures that you only buy so you can send him "where no man has gone before." If don't get the reference I suggest not reading these. If you do...
Geek.
Megas XLR. Gorrath/Coop. I like this show in passing, but the two-parter of "Rearview Mirror, Mirror" was just filled with interesting rivalslash.
Warmaster Gorrath of the Glorft Armada hated the Earther named Coop more than anything else in the universe. Hate hated, loathed and detested that fat monkey of fur and skin more than his previous capacity of rage (which was vast and all consuming, destroying worlds, yadda yadda…) had led him to believe. There was nothing more precious in his mind than the goal of beating that idiot to a pulp with his own giant robotic hand and then burning the ashes, and then doing a little dance on the smear that was left. Nothing else could compare.
Then that stupid fool sent them off into another dimension and he met someone he hated worse than that largesse imbecile: the skinnier, world-conquering, arrogant sunofabitch alternate version of him. It was the technically “evil” version of him, which was stupid because both versions had that disgusting patch of fur where handsome suckers and tentacles should be, but that was supposed to be a mark of evil in alternate dimensions, or so his culture scouts told him.
Gorrath liked being evil. It was a profession he wanted to go into ever since he was a wee larvae and beating up the younger Glorft. He liked crushing pathetic “heroes” that prided themselves on warrior conduct and then doing the trademarked villain laugh while breaking their spirits.
The Coop he knew and had a familiar, bitter rivalry with was sort of a hero. However, much too stupid to fit the definition of that charismatic paragon he defeated before and liked breaking into thousands of little pieces. Coop was more like a mold that just wouldn’t go away and ended up making penicillin through accidental snorting.
The Coop of the dimension his buffoon Coop threw them into was not even a sort of hero. He was just an asshole. An asshole whom, having already defeated his Glorft fleet, tried to do his job of conquering the galaxy as he lost a few of those pounds to make him even more ugly.
So of course Gorrath’s sociopath streak was delighted in finding someone to hate even more than his previous breached capacity of rage. Although he didn’t get to fight the other version and just that stupid female knockoff (funny how that bloodlust gets in the way of other priorities, like how he should have been cursing teaming up with the original simian dunderhead out of necessity instead of saving him) he gleaned a measure of satisfaction knowing that the ugly, skinny ape felt horrible that the fatter, dumber, slightly less grotesque ape had trounced him with his help.
It was only out of that euphoric bloodied high that he even thought twice about maybe not slaughtering and enslaving the human race. Really, he was just the smell of napalm in the morning (despite being the usual Jersey atmosphere) that left him emotionally unstable enough to extend a hand in friendship to the idiot that was responsible for his current warped mind state.
Then Coop went and destroyed his army and all was right in the world again. Because with no alternate version of Coop’s stupidity he was free and clear to refocus all his attention on despising the remaining one with every cell of his being.
Two weeks later…
“I can’t believe you sent us into another dimension again you stupid, wretched Earther!!” Gorrath raged and pounded on the display of his war robot. He had long since ran out of the clever and graphic ways of cursing Coop, and the monkey was too retarded to be properly offended so he just gave up and started screaming again.
“Hey,” Coop said, his dullard human face flickering on the screen, already tuning out Gorrath’s ravings. “It looks like this world’s free and clear of psycho tyrants. So no we just pop back, no problem.” He sniffed. “Yeah, but the air’s too clean for Jersey.”
“I swear, if I didn’t need your suit to bring me back so I could rend you limb from limb I’d-!”
Gorrath stopped in mid-spittle rant. His tentacle jaws trembling in a mixture of horror and angry as his eyes went saucer-wide.
“Dude, what’s your problem-Oh,” Coop echoed, choosing to be dumbstruck at the discovery. It was a natural thing for him.
There, erected in the center square of the city that could have served as a duplicate for Coop’s beloved Jersey was a monument of steel and alabaster depicting the mighty tyrant Gorrath and the still pudgy Coop embracing arms. Gorrath wondered what expression of insanity was on his depiction, and then he realized he was supposed to be smiling at the prospect of hugging that...that...
Coop toggled his remote to zoom in on the inscription and read it aloud. “’Dedicated to the intergalactic alliance of Gorrath and Coop, the heroes who began the first step in joining Glorft and Earthers in a lasting bond of brotherhood and love.’”
There was silence between them. Coop’s slow process trying to figure out exactly what was going on and Gorrath desperately wishing he could go back to the time where only one existed for him to hate unequivocally. Especially since right now he wanted to curl up into a ball and wish an alternate version of himself would come and put him out of this misery.
“So...” Coop laughed nervously, “I guess in this universe I didn’t trip, huh?”
Jumba/Pleakley. There is a sick sense of pride in slashing Disney characters, but it's because they are soooooooooo canon.
“I am not understanding why you are taking this to extremes.”
At first glance, the massive form of ex-mad scientist, Jumba Jookiba, would make people cringe in fear.
Those that knew him by reputation wouldn’t cower at him personally, but at his mind. The creator of 626 monsters unleashed on a defenseless galaxy, each one more terrifying than the last. Well, except for the sandwich making experiment, but evil geniuses need to eat too.
Those that knew him best did not tremble in the slightest. Indeed, despite his best “mad scientist” attempts he was now stuck in the position of the cuddly eccentric uncle. In his new family, this o’hana, they knew what was worth fearing. Not the mercenary alien himself, but fearing what Jumba feared.
“Extreme?!” the whiny soprano of Pleakley was much more intimidating than the diminutive figure. Intimidating in the buzzing, nagging, incessant way. “You see here, this house will be spic and span when Nani gets home because she left me in charge. And when I’m in charge you’ll do what?”
Jumba sighed, and it looked as if a mountain was collapsing under his broad shoulders. “I will be taking care of little girl and 626 while you do...things.”
He couldn’t call it work. Work was creating and destroying things-universes, nations, monuments, cellular structures. Not dancing around a living room with a feather duster to old ABBA records. That was something else entirely and Jumba was sure in all of his days of mad science he could not construct something as insane as the spectacle Pleakley called up.
“That’s right!” Pleakley beamed, as if Jumba had just given him an entire world conquered and gift-wrapped at his feet. Except Pleakley did not want a universe, he just wanted a clean house and Jumba’s promise not to create weapons of mass destruction while he went to the marketplace for pineapples.
Jumba was scared that these grocery list requests was all he wanted.
Jumba was more scared that what he wanted was easily, if not painfully, achieved. And oh, did his back ache from trying to catch both Lilo and Stitch when they were determined to play “Super Robot Calvin Ball Hopscotch and Cowboys.” But Pleakley’s utter ineptitude of handling the two left the job to him, while Pleakley cleaned house and cooked. And mad scientists simply do not cook. After all, he devoted an entire experiment to making sandwiches for him.
Jumba was glad at least that Pleakley’s cooking was better than his ex-wife’s. But then, Pleakley was less scary than his ex-wife and it is easier to eat when you are not afraid of being poisoned. Still scary, the way Pleakley’s one eye would stare at him, as if expecting something more. Where Jumba would sigh and throw up his massive hands and without any prompting word just give in and beg for Pleakley to tell him what was bothering him if he would not pout or stare in the one-giant-eye-that-is-like-a-puppy-no-not-you-Stitch way.
He was afraid that he would stop wanting things, that they would stop talking, that Pleakley would stop cooking (little one too proper for poison), and Jumba would be left being afraid of a tiny one-eyed yellow being because of nothing. Of a lack of things.
“The things I am to be doing for o’hana,” Jumba grumbled and picked up a broom, realizing with a sour afterthought that this was just like being married.
Except a little more scary.
My Futurama OT3. Takes place after "The Route of All Evil."
Bender had made the act of being unhelpful into a fine art. He didn’t consider it a compliment since, in his opinion, artists were just whiny slackers who couldn’t do a days worth of conning to save their poor sensitive souls. However, whenever he made such opinions public, Leela would usually stick a decorative magnet on his head and have him singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” until she thought he had enough. Either that, or Fry mistakenly would take it off and then put up a grocery list under it before returning it back to his head.
In the former case he would exact bloody retribution by pawning off all belongings of the offender, the latter being he would pick up Fry’s bread and eggs before pawning off everything he owned. So ha.
But it wasn’t a lingering grudge that left Bender flipping through channels as his roommate trudged in, looking for the entire world like a kicked puppy. Besides, Bender was known to kick a puppy in his time. No, this was just the kind of self-centered preoccupation with his schedule of doing nothing. Doing nothing had a strict rule that in order to count as doing nothing you’d have to have an absence of something to do. Or someone bothering your act of nothing by just being there.
And Fry was sighing. The really annoying and despondent kind.
“Whatever it is, you can cure it with alcohol,” Bender stated and flipped onto the 24-hour “When Rabid Fungus Attacks” channel.
Fry, imperfect human that he was, thought it was an offer to let out his problems like dirty laundry. “Leela shot me down again.”
Bender turned to look for bullet holes, then he remembered Leela only liked physical hands on violence. Unfortunately, the direct eye contact cinched the fact that Fry would talk to him now.
“What can I do to make her like me, Bender?”
“Drinky, drinky and you no thinky,” the robot replied glibly.
“Maybe it’s just a pipedream, maybe she’ll never see me as anything more than a friend-”
“On those days she likes you,” interrupted, figuring as long as he was ignoring the coda of doing nothing he might as well get some alcohol.
He went into Fry’s fridge and pulled out two beers, popping the caps off with an expert hand. Fry slumped more, but a small grin tugged at his face as he reached for a beer only to watch as Bender guzzled both within a second. Bender, for his part, wasn’t intentionally trying to crush Fry’s spirits. He only did that on Tuesdays and never about precious, precious beer.
The delivery boy shrugged it off and went back to his moping. “I don’t get it. We all hang out in our jobs, go on adventures together, grow as people...and robots growing stuff...well, the point is she really only hangs out with us and since you’re a robot she should find me moderately attractive when she’s desperate enough!”
“Or drunk enough,” Bender continued. He was on an alcohol binge right now, it helped to clear his head and hydraulics but it left him with a one-track process drive.
Fry didn’t know why, but he was suddenly struck by a craving for beer. “Hey Bender, can you pass me a bottle?”
The former bending unit tossed the two empty bottles into the trash processing unit. “Got here late Fry, those were the last in the fridge.”
“Oh,” he murmured, the urge to replace the hollow feeling inside with something else still driving him on. Something artificial and horrible for his health that would leave him sprawled out on the floor with shakes, feeling sick to his stomach. “How about ice cream?”
“Leela took a gallon of it and was busy sobbing about some little problem. I think it was because of her desperation and the deep seated belief that she’ll end up alone in life or something.” Bender said and wondered why he had to keep dealing with his co-worker’s mortality/emotional/flesh issues. Apparently breaking them of their spirits wasn’t enough to keep them from coming back to him.
“Leela’s here?!” Fry squeaked in utter horror.
“Not here exactly,” Bender said, “More like on the other side of that paper-thin titanium wall, oh wait, she’s here.”
And with the given announcement Fry spun to face his captain. His haphazard stand of attention matched Leela’s appearance, with her one eye puffy from excessive crying and her mouth covered in the excess of triple mocha choco-cream.
“Fry...” It sounded more like the verb than his name, and that worried him.
He gulped. “Are you enjoying the ice cream?”
“I’m not in the mood for weak comfort food,” Turanga Leela muttered, her cyclopean eye taking careful measure of her two shipmates. “And from your conversation-”
“I meant that in a way a desperate man says things,” Fry chirped. “But not desperate enough for a death wish.”
“-I think I want to get hammered.”
“Finally,” Bender crowed, “Someone listens to me!”
“But you just said you were out,” Fry protested.
“Bah, of the fridge. You think I don’t plan ahead for my massive binges of alcohol, smoking and shoplifting in advance?”
With that the robot opened the compartment in his body, rummaging around for a bit as he tossed out blueprints for liquor stores, some old historical artifacts, and the cloned brain of Walt Disney. After a minute without finding his goal he closed the door and then proceeded to reach from the rear compartment. It seemed more efficiently, as he quickly produced a half-dozen bottles of Benderbrau, the liquor they had brewed together in one of their saner plans. Saner being a relative term, and the worse of their escapades involved destroying planetary civilizations.
“You still have these?” Leela asked as she accepted a bottle and then began to take large swigs.
Fry gently cradled his own, “They didn’t sell well, if I remember.”
“Yeah, well, when it got out it was brewed out of my ass some of the pickier clients stopped buying.”
“I don’t know why,” Fry said, “McMom’s stuff has been publicly telling people the same thing for centuries...”
“Ass elitists,” Bender groused. “Wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit them in the-”
“Maybe it’s the strong aftertaste,” Leela interrupted, giving her bottle a curious glance that was somehow lost in the fact she could not raise one eyebrow in disbelief without looking shocked. “Do you think we put too much yeast in here?”
Fry licked his lips. “Come to think of it, there is this interesting acid flavor. It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and someone spiked the punch. Only...there’s already alcohol there. Wait...”
Leela was used to Fry’s lack of eloquence, but even when he was stinking drunk she didn’t think he’d be as incoherent as now. Or that there would be flying pigs in tuxedoes singing “That’s Amore” at the top of their lungs, which she could see pulsating above the cummerbund.
“Bender, did you put anything else in this?”
“No!” the robot scoffed, “Well, maybe.”
“What? Was it those mushrooms from Zoidberg?” There was an edge to her voice now, her face was already red from anger, or maybe it was just flushed. She didn’t know why but suddenly she felt very hot.
Fry also felt that Leela was suddenly very hot, at least more than his normal hormones told him. A hiccupped sprang in his throat and pink shaped heart bubbles came out. The last time that happened was in high school when Dexter Emerson decided to give him a swirly with bubble bath soap. He decided this feeling was much nicer.
“Naw, not at all,” Bender said in that relaxed voice that meant things were very wrong. “I just tried to sell some as hair growth formula so I put some afro-desiac herbal remedies in it.”
Fry had a strange urge to say “Groovy” at the prospect, but cupids were holding him hostage with pointed arrows so he decided to remain quiet.
“An aphrodisiac?” Leela retorted. She was handling this surprisingly well. It could have been that she had just gotten so used to Fry and Bender screwing up that she had grown to accept it, or it could be that her ponytail had come undone and Fry thought she looked more relax with her hair tumbling about her shoulders. “You laced this beer with aphrodisiacs?!”
“It said ‘Afro’ with an ‘f’ on the label,” Bender said defensively.
“Hey, is it that robot thing you can do to figure out words that sound the same but aren’t?” Fry muttered, and stumbled into Leela. “’Cause I think that’s pretty neat.”
Leela shoved him back a bit, but not enough to actually have him leave. In fact, she seemed to be leaning against him instead of shoving. “Professor Farnsworth still insists on using the Middle English version of pronouncing ‘f’ with the ‘th’ sound. He couldn’t spell worth beans.”
“Yeah,” Fry continued to hiccup. “He’s also bald!”
“What’s the matter with a crome dome?” Bender said. It was remarkable that he still continued to talk to them as if they weren’t completely drugged out of their minds, but he was a robot and to him humans were always unreasonable and crazy. “I’m thirty percent crome!”
“That was steel,” Leela pointed out. “Heh. Steal. Steel.”
Fry giggled along with her, like it was the funniest thing he heard all day (given the poor quality of this story he’d be correct). “And Dolomite. Do-lo-mite.”
He obviously didn’t get the hang of it yet.
If Bender had eyebrows he would have cocked one in slight bemusement. “Guys, I know I’m irresistible but you don’t need to go into every little thing they put in me.”
Leela snickered more, her hair falling across Fry’s jaw. “He said ‘put in.’”
“Putting!” Fry rejoined. “Golf pants!” Oh, he really didn’t get it.
And there was another snicker, joined with Fry’s half-hearted guffaws. Laughter which lead to trying to regulate their breathing again, and then to kissing. It’s not really important about that large illogical leap of how breathing, an everyday occurrence, came to something else that was usually considered special and like fireworks going off in ones mind. The point is both involved mouths and that was the only connection they needed when they had flying pigs and mafia cupids pushing them over the edge.
Two hours later Fry woke up with the taste of copper and lilac in his mouth. His mouth was sore from the silly grin of bliss that was plastered on his face, and probably other things that his mind was too fuzzy to think about.
He had just made passionate sex with Turanga Leela and this time it wasn’t an alternate reality, dream, possible future, or something involving male doppelgangers. Things were perfect, things were great, things were...strangely hard and metallic.
“Hey snookums,” Bender said while blowing smoke from two cigars and looking double pleased with himself.
“Bender!” Fry squeaked, finally noticing that it wasn’t that Leela was really buff in the hard as steel way, but actually on the other side of the cylindrical body.
The cry of alarm was enough to wake up the captain, and Leela shifted, squirmed, and realized she would have a crick in her neck the size of Australia when she finally properly woke up. So he only half woke up and slurred, “Fry, don’t talk so loud.”
“But, but, but-!” Fry tried to point that Bender was there, with two cigars and stone cold sober, but the robot had hold of his hand. Besides, Fry was really bad with speaking even when he wasn’t hung over. “How the hell...?”
He wasn’t going to ask the why, or the where, or even what was used. Somehow he knew those questions were just to be taken as at face value and that was all for the sake of sanity. But the fact that Bender was okay with it, and Leela was okay with it, and the times when he had absolutely no idea what was going on but he just followed them being okay with it...
Well, okay.
Bender, for a second, looked like he was going to pat Fry’s cheek. “Alcohol.”
“But why are you here?” Fry asked.
“Money,” Bender said.
“...You’re not really listening to me and just repeating words you like.”
“Yeah,” Fry smirked and took another long, slow drag.
Fry sighed and looked over him to where Leela lay. “Leela, how did Fry end up here?”
“Hey, I was here before! I’m just waiting for you to get my waffles and the awkward silences that happen when co-workers get drunk and busy.”
“But how?”
Leela rolled her one eye. “Jeez, Fry, you act like we all had sex.”
“Um...” Fry didn’t know what to say. “Didn’t we?”
Bender put out his cigars into a conveniently placed fish tank. “Well, depends on if you have a Clinton definition or a robot one or the kinky one.”
“Is it kinky to have sex with a one-eyed alien and a robot while drunk?”
Leela yawned and blinked one eye sleepily. “On hair growth, yes.”
“So we didn’t...”
“None of us did,” Leela said, “Except for the robot explanation.”
Bender patted Fry on his shoulder in something almost conciliatory. “Look, buddy, sex is all about putting stuff you made inside you into someone else who made stuff inside all while you guys are naked.”
So because Fry and Leela drank some beer they all made together and got a little grope happy that constituted as...something. Surprisingly, it was much better than the explanations Fry got in public school.
“Wait, so doesn’t that mean that the case you sent to the Harlem Globetrotters…?” Leela asked.
“Pfft, as if they weren’t already begging for it.”
Fry shifted uncomfortably. “What about those bottle you gave Professor Farnsworth and Hermes? And the bums in the alley?”
“...speak of it again and I’ll kill you,” was all Bender said before wrapping his cold robotic arms over Fry and Leela, a small click announcing he had entered sleep mode.
Fry sighed before settling in against the hard cold metal of Bender’s side. As it was, Leela’s hair had draped over to tickle his nose and he could feel her hand on his, vibrating in time against the motors that kept Bender functioning. He yawned, uncomfortable positions and overall weirdness aside, this was pretty nice.
Geek.
Megas XLR. Gorrath/Coop. I like this show in passing, but the two-parter of "Rearview Mirror, Mirror" was just filled with interesting rivalslash.
Warmaster Gorrath of the Glorft Armada hated the Earther named Coop more than anything else in the universe. Hate hated, loathed and detested that fat monkey of fur and skin more than his previous capacity of rage (which was vast and all consuming, destroying worlds, yadda yadda…) had led him to believe. There was nothing more precious in his mind than the goal of beating that idiot to a pulp with his own giant robotic hand and then burning the ashes, and then doing a little dance on the smear that was left. Nothing else could compare.
Then that stupid fool sent them off into another dimension and he met someone he hated worse than that largesse imbecile: the skinnier, world-conquering, arrogant sunofabitch alternate version of him. It was the technically “evil” version of him, which was stupid because both versions had that disgusting patch of fur where handsome suckers and tentacles should be, but that was supposed to be a mark of evil in alternate dimensions, or so his culture scouts told him.
Gorrath liked being evil. It was a profession he wanted to go into ever since he was a wee larvae and beating up the younger Glorft. He liked crushing pathetic “heroes” that prided themselves on warrior conduct and then doing the trademarked villain laugh while breaking their spirits.
The Coop he knew and had a familiar, bitter rivalry with was sort of a hero. However, much too stupid to fit the definition of that charismatic paragon he defeated before and liked breaking into thousands of little pieces. Coop was more like a mold that just wouldn’t go away and ended up making penicillin through accidental snorting.
The Coop of the dimension his buffoon Coop threw them into was not even a sort of hero. He was just an asshole. An asshole whom, having already defeated his Glorft fleet, tried to do his job of conquering the galaxy as he lost a few of those pounds to make him even more ugly.
So of course Gorrath’s sociopath streak was delighted in finding someone to hate even more than his previous breached capacity of rage. Although he didn’t get to fight the other version and just that stupid female knockoff (funny how that bloodlust gets in the way of other priorities, like how he should have been cursing teaming up with the original simian dunderhead out of necessity instead of saving him) he gleaned a measure of satisfaction knowing that the ugly, skinny ape felt horrible that the fatter, dumber, slightly less grotesque ape had trounced him with his help.
It was only out of that euphoric bloodied high that he even thought twice about maybe not slaughtering and enslaving the human race. Really, he was just the smell of napalm in the morning (despite being the usual Jersey atmosphere) that left him emotionally unstable enough to extend a hand in friendship to the idiot that was responsible for his current warped mind state.
Then Coop went and destroyed his army and all was right in the world again. Because with no alternate version of Coop’s stupidity he was free and clear to refocus all his attention on despising the remaining one with every cell of his being.
Two weeks later…
“I can’t believe you sent us into another dimension again you stupid, wretched Earther!!” Gorrath raged and pounded on the display of his war robot. He had long since ran out of the clever and graphic ways of cursing Coop, and the monkey was too retarded to be properly offended so he just gave up and started screaming again.
“Hey,” Coop said, his dullard human face flickering on the screen, already tuning out Gorrath’s ravings. “It looks like this world’s free and clear of psycho tyrants. So no we just pop back, no problem.” He sniffed. “Yeah, but the air’s too clean for Jersey.”
“I swear, if I didn’t need your suit to bring me back so I could rend you limb from limb I’d-!”
Gorrath stopped in mid-spittle rant. His tentacle jaws trembling in a mixture of horror and angry as his eyes went saucer-wide.
“Dude, what’s your problem-Oh,” Coop echoed, choosing to be dumbstruck at the discovery. It was a natural thing for him.
There, erected in the center square of the city that could have served as a duplicate for Coop’s beloved Jersey was a monument of steel and alabaster depicting the mighty tyrant Gorrath and the still pudgy Coop embracing arms. Gorrath wondered what expression of insanity was on his depiction, and then he realized he was supposed to be smiling at the prospect of hugging that...that...
Coop toggled his remote to zoom in on the inscription and read it aloud. “’Dedicated to the intergalactic alliance of Gorrath and Coop, the heroes who began the first step in joining Glorft and Earthers in a lasting bond of brotherhood and love.’”
There was silence between them. Coop’s slow process trying to figure out exactly what was going on and Gorrath desperately wishing he could go back to the time where only one existed for him to hate unequivocally. Especially since right now he wanted to curl up into a ball and wish an alternate version of himself would come and put him out of this misery.
“So...” Coop laughed nervously, “I guess in this universe I didn’t trip, huh?”
Jumba/Pleakley. There is a sick sense of pride in slashing Disney characters, but it's because they are soooooooooo canon.
“I am not understanding why you are taking this to extremes.”
At first glance, the massive form of ex-mad scientist, Jumba Jookiba, would make people cringe in fear.
Those that knew him by reputation wouldn’t cower at him personally, but at his mind. The creator of 626 monsters unleashed on a defenseless galaxy, each one more terrifying than the last. Well, except for the sandwich making experiment, but evil geniuses need to eat too.
Those that knew him best did not tremble in the slightest. Indeed, despite his best “mad scientist” attempts he was now stuck in the position of the cuddly eccentric uncle. In his new family, this o’hana, they knew what was worth fearing. Not the mercenary alien himself, but fearing what Jumba feared.
“Extreme?!” the whiny soprano of Pleakley was much more intimidating than the diminutive figure. Intimidating in the buzzing, nagging, incessant way. “You see here, this house will be spic and span when Nani gets home because she left me in charge. And when I’m in charge you’ll do what?”
Jumba sighed, and it looked as if a mountain was collapsing under his broad shoulders. “I will be taking care of little girl and 626 while you do...things.”
He couldn’t call it work. Work was creating and destroying things-universes, nations, monuments, cellular structures. Not dancing around a living room with a feather duster to old ABBA records. That was something else entirely and Jumba was sure in all of his days of mad science he could not construct something as insane as the spectacle Pleakley called up.
“That’s right!” Pleakley beamed, as if Jumba had just given him an entire world conquered and gift-wrapped at his feet. Except Pleakley did not want a universe, he just wanted a clean house and Jumba’s promise not to create weapons of mass destruction while he went to the marketplace for pineapples.
Jumba was scared that these grocery list requests was all he wanted.
Jumba was more scared that what he wanted was easily, if not painfully, achieved. And oh, did his back ache from trying to catch both Lilo and Stitch when they were determined to play “Super Robot Calvin Ball Hopscotch and Cowboys.” But Pleakley’s utter ineptitude of handling the two left the job to him, while Pleakley cleaned house and cooked. And mad scientists simply do not cook. After all, he devoted an entire experiment to making sandwiches for him.
Jumba was glad at least that Pleakley’s cooking was better than his ex-wife’s. But then, Pleakley was less scary than his ex-wife and it is easier to eat when you are not afraid of being poisoned. Still scary, the way Pleakley’s one eye would stare at him, as if expecting something more. Where Jumba would sigh and throw up his massive hands and without any prompting word just give in and beg for Pleakley to tell him what was bothering him if he would not pout or stare in the one-giant-eye-that-is-like-a-puppy-no-not-you-Stitch way.
He was afraid that he would stop wanting things, that they would stop talking, that Pleakley would stop cooking (little one too proper for poison), and Jumba would be left being afraid of a tiny one-eyed yellow being because of nothing. Of a lack of things.
“The things I am to be doing for o’hana,” Jumba grumbled and picked up a broom, realizing with a sour afterthought that this was just like being married.
Except a little more scary.
My Futurama OT3. Takes place after "The Route of All Evil."
Bender had made the act of being unhelpful into a fine art. He didn’t consider it a compliment since, in his opinion, artists were just whiny slackers who couldn’t do a days worth of conning to save their poor sensitive souls. However, whenever he made such opinions public, Leela would usually stick a decorative magnet on his head and have him singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” until she thought he had enough. Either that, or Fry mistakenly would take it off and then put up a grocery list under it before returning it back to his head.
In the former case he would exact bloody retribution by pawning off all belongings of the offender, the latter being he would pick up Fry’s bread and eggs before pawning off everything he owned. So ha.
But it wasn’t a lingering grudge that left Bender flipping through channels as his roommate trudged in, looking for the entire world like a kicked puppy. Besides, Bender was known to kick a puppy in his time. No, this was just the kind of self-centered preoccupation with his schedule of doing nothing. Doing nothing had a strict rule that in order to count as doing nothing you’d have to have an absence of something to do. Or someone bothering your act of nothing by just being there.
And Fry was sighing. The really annoying and despondent kind.
“Whatever it is, you can cure it with alcohol,” Bender stated and flipped onto the 24-hour “When Rabid Fungus Attacks” channel.
Fry, imperfect human that he was, thought it was an offer to let out his problems like dirty laundry. “Leela shot me down again.”
Bender turned to look for bullet holes, then he remembered Leela only liked physical hands on violence. Unfortunately, the direct eye contact cinched the fact that Fry would talk to him now.
“What can I do to make her like me, Bender?”
“Drinky, drinky and you no thinky,” the robot replied glibly.
“Maybe it’s just a pipedream, maybe she’ll never see me as anything more than a friend-”
“On those days she likes you,” interrupted, figuring as long as he was ignoring the coda of doing nothing he might as well get some alcohol.
He went into Fry’s fridge and pulled out two beers, popping the caps off with an expert hand. Fry slumped more, but a small grin tugged at his face as he reached for a beer only to watch as Bender guzzled both within a second. Bender, for his part, wasn’t intentionally trying to crush Fry’s spirits. He only did that on Tuesdays and never about precious, precious beer.
The delivery boy shrugged it off and went back to his moping. “I don’t get it. We all hang out in our jobs, go on adventures together, grow as people...and robots growing stuff...well, the point is she really only hangs out with us and since you’re a robot she should find me moderately attractive when she’s desperate enough!”
“Or drunk enough,” Bender continued. He was on an alcohol binge right now, it helped to clear his head and hydraulics but it left him with a one-track process drive.
Fry didn’t know why, but he was suddenly struck by a craving for beer. “Hey Bender, can you pass me a bottle?”
The former bending unit tossed the two empty bottles into the trash processing unit. “Got here late Fry, those were the last in the fridge.”
“Oh,” he murmured, the urge to replace the hollow feeling inside with something else still driving him on. Something artificial and horrible for his health that would leave him sprawled out on the floor with shakes, feeling sick to his stomach. “How about ice cream?”
“Leela took a gallon of it and was busy sobbing about some little problem. I think it was because of her desperation and the deep seated belief that she’ll end up alone in life or something.” Bender said and wondered why he had to keep dealing with his co-worker’s mortality/emotional/flesh issues. Apparently breaking them of their spirits wasn’t enough to keep them from coming back to him.
“Leela’s here?!” Fry squeaked in utter horror.
“Not here exactly,” Bender said, “More like on the other side of that paper-thin titanium wall, oh wait, she’s here.”
And with the given announcement Fry spun to face his captain. His haphazard stand of attention matched Leela’s appearance, with her one eye puffy from excessive crying and her mouth covered in the excess of triple mocha choco-cream.
“Fry...” It sounded more like the verb than his name, and that worried him.
He gulped. “Are you enjoying the ice cream?”
“I’m not in the mood for weak comfort food,” Turanga Leela muttered, her cyclopean eye taking careful measure of her two shipmates. “And from your conversation-”
“I meant that in a way a desperate man says things,” Fry chirped. “But not desperate enough for a death wish.”
“-I think I want to get hammered.”
“Finally,” Bender crowed, “Someone listens to me!”
“But you just said you were out,” Fry protested.
“Bah, of the fridge. You think I don’t plan ahead for my massive binges of alcohol, smoking and shoplifting in advance?”
With that the robot opened the compartment in his body, rummaging around for a bit as he tossed out blueprints for liquor stores, some old historical artifacts, and the cloned brain of Walt Disney. After a minute without finding his goal he closed the door and then proceeded to reach from the rear compartment. It seemed more efficiently, as he quickly produced a half-dozen bottles of Benderbrau, the liquor they had brewed together in one of their saner plans. Saner being a relative term, and the worse of their escapades involved destroying planetary civilizations.
“You still have these?” Leela asked as she accepted a bottle and then began to take large swigs.
Fry gently cradled his own, “They didn’t sell well, if I remember.”
“Yeah, well, when it got out it was brewed out of my ass some of the pickier clients stopped buying.”
“I don’t know why,” Fry said, “McMom’s stuff has been publicly telling people the same thing for centuries...”
“Ass elitists,” Bender groused. “Wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit them in the-”
“Maybe it’s the strong aftertaste,” Leela interrupted, giving her bottle a curious glance that was somehow lost in the fact she could not raise one eyebrow in disbelief without looking shocked. “Do you think we put too much yeast in here?”
Fry licked his lips. “Come to think of it, there is this interesting acid flavor. It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and someone spiked the punch. Only...there’s already alcohol there. Wait...”
Leela was used to Fry’s lack of eloquence, but even when he was stinking drunk she didn’t think he’d be as incoherent as now. Or that there would be flying pigs in tuxedoes singing “That’s Amore” at the top of their lungs, which she could see pulsating above the cummerbund.
“Bender, did you put anything else in this?”
“No!” the robot scoffed, “Well, maybe.”
“What? Was it those mushrooms from Zoidberg?” There was an edge to her voice now, her face was already red from anger, or maybe it was just flushed. She didn’t know why but suddenly she felt very hot.
Fry also felt that Leela was suddenly very hot, at least more than his normal hormones told him. A hiccupped sprang in his throat and pink shaped heart bubbles came out. The last time that happened was in high school when Dexter Emerson decided to give him a swirly with bubble bath soap. He decided this feeling was much nicer.
“Naw, not at all,” Bender said in that relaxed voice that meant things were very wrong. “I just tried to sell some as hair growth formula so I put some afro-desiac herbal remedies in it.”
Fry had a strange urge to say “Groovy” at the prospect, but cupids were holding him hostage with pointed arrows so he decided to remain quiet.
“An aphrodisiac?” Leela retorted. She was handling this surprisingly well. It could have been that she had just gotten so used to Fry and Bender screwing up that she had grown to accept it, or it could be that her ponytail had come undone and Fry thought she looked more relax with her hair tumbling about her shoulders. “You laced this beer with aphrodisiacs?!”
“It said ‘Afro’ with an ‘f’ on the label,” Bender said defensively.
“Hey, is it that robot thing you can do to figure out words that sound the same but aren’t?” Fry muttered, and stumbled into Leela. “’Cause I think that’s pretty neat.”
Leela shoved him back a bit, but not enough to actually have him leave. In fact, she seemed to be leaning against him instead of shoving. “Professor Farnsworth still insists on using the Middle English version of pronouncing ‘f’ with the ‘th’ sound. He couldn’t spell worth beans.”
“Yeah,” Fry continued to hiccup. “He’s also bald!”
“What’s the matter with a crome dome?” Bender said. It was remarkable that he still continued to talk to them as if they weren’t completely drugged out of their minds, but he was a robot and to him humans were always unreasonable and crazy. “I’m thirty percent crome!”
“That was steel,” Leela pointed out. “Heh. Steal. Steel.”
Fry giggled along with her, like it was the funniest thing he heard all day (given the poor quality of this story he’d be correct). “And Dolomite. Do-lo-mite.”
He obviously didn’t get the hang of it yet.
If Bender had eyebrows he would have cocked one in slight bemusement. “Guys, I know I’m irresistible but you don’t need to go into every little thing they put in me.”
Leela snickered more, her hair falling across Fry’s jaw. “He said ‘put in.’”
“Putting!” Fry rejoined. “Golf pants!” Oh, he really didn’t get it.
And there was another snicker, joined with Fry’s half-hearted guffaws. Laughter which lead to trying to regulate their breathing again, and then to kissing. It’s not really important about that large illogical leap of how breathing, an everyday occurrence, came to something else that was usually considered special and like fireworks going off in ones mind. The point is both involved mouths and that was the only connection they needed when they had flying pigs and mafia cupids pushing them over the edge.
Two hours later Fry woke up with the taste of copper and lilac in his mouth. His mouth was sore from the silly grin of bliss that was plastered on his face, and probably other things that his mind was too fuzzy to think about.
He had just made passionate sex with Turanga Leela and this time it wasn’t an alternate reality, dream, possible future, or something involving male doppelgangers. Things were perfect, things were great, things were...strangely hard and metallic.
“Hey snookums,” Bender said while blowing smoke from two cigars and looking double pleased with himself.
“Bender!” Fry squeaked, finally noticing that it wasn’t that Leela was really buff in the hard as steel way, but actually on the other side of the cylindrical body.
The cry of alarm was enough to wake up the captain, and Leela shifted, squirmed, and realized she would have a crick in her neck the size of Australia when she finally properly woke up. So he only half woke up and slurred, “Fry, don’t talk so loud.”
“But, but, but-!” Fry tried to point that Bender was there, with two cigars and stone cold sober, but the robot had hold of his hand. Besides, Fry was really bad with speaking even when he wasn’t hung over. “How the hell...?”
He wasn’t going to ask the why, or the where, or even what was used. Somehow he knew those questions were just to be taken as at face value and that was all for the sake of sanity. But the fact that Bender was okay with it, and Leela was okay with it, and the times when he had absolutely no idea what was going on but he just followed them being okay with it...
Well, okay.
Bender, for a second, looked like he was going to pat Fry’s cheek. “Alcohol.”
“But why are you here?” Fry asked.
“Money,” Bender said.
“...You’re not really listening to me and just repeating words you like.”
“Yeah,” Fry smirked and took another long, slow drag.
Fry sighed and looked over him to where Leela lay. “Leela, how did Fry end up here?”
“Hey, I was here before! I’m just waiting for you to get my waffles and the awkward silences that happen when co-workers get drunk and busy.”
“But how?”
Leela rolled her one eye. “Jeez, Fry, you act like we all had sex.”
“Um...” Fry didn’t know what to say. “Didn’t we?”
Bender put out his cigars into a conveniently placed fish tank. “Well, depends on if you have a Clinton definition or a robot one or the kinky one.”
“Is it kinky to have sex with a one-eyed alien and a robot while drunk?”
Leela yawned and blinked one eye sleepily. “On hair growth, yes.”
“So we didn’t...”
“None of us did,” Leela said, “Except for the robot explanation.”
Bender patted Fry on his shoulder in something almost conciliatory. “Look, buddy, sex is all about putting stuff you made inside you into someone else who made stuff inside all while you guys are naked.”
So because Fry and Leela drank some beer they all made together and got a little grope happy that constituted as...something. Surprisingly, it was much better than the explanations Fry got in public school.
“Wait, so doesn’t that mean that the case you sent to the Harlem Globetrotters…?” Leela asked.
“Pfft, as if they weren’t already begging for it.”
Fry shifted uncomfortably. “What about those bottle you gave Professor Farnsworth and Hermes? And the bums in the alley?”
“...speak of it again and I’ll kill you,” was all Bender said before wrapping his cold robotic arms over Fry and Leela, a small click announcing he had entered sleep mode.
Fry sighed before settling in against the hard cold metal of Bender’s side. As it was, Leela’s hair had draped over to tickle his nose and he could feel her hand on his, vibrating in time against the motors that kept Bender functioning. He yawned, uncomfortable positions and overall weirdness aside, this was pretty nice.