Fanfiction - SHWC - Three Billy Goats Grunt
Title: Three Billy Goats Grunt
Fandom/Universe: Strangetown, Here We Come
Character(s): Jill Smith, The Grunt Boys
Rating: Teen
‘you always remember your first love, your true love and your last love.’
Ripp was the first.
Looking back, everyone has an opinion on how it all began. It was the Beakers and their scheming ways - they were terrible people and they got the end they deserved. No, it was those Curious fools and their idiotic blind hope in the alien cause - it’s stupid to put all your faith into something that can betray you. Go even further back, it was the aliens tampering with nature or maybe it was Death diddling up little old ladies and creating abominations to destroy us all or perhaps, really, it was just Strangetown itself - a town of dirt and conspiracy - nothing but a sneeze on the map.
So, yes, there are a lot of beginnings to the beginning-less tale.
But Jill Smith knows the truth.
It began with Ripp.
It began with love.
She doesn’t claim to know the whole story. If Strangetown is a sneeze on the map then Jill is nothing but the smallest particle of snotty spit. She’s not even a full person either. She’s a half-sim, but you’d never even know it - one foot in the door and one foot out. She’s conflicted, because she has no conflict. The aliens were never that interested in her anyway and the rest of the Sim population could give a shit about fucking Jill Smith.
But Ripp was the catalyst to it all, just like she knew he would be all those years ago when she was nothing more than a baby really. She was seven years old when she first got to peek into those warm blue eyes of his and she’s never really forgotten that dizzying sensation. She knew next to nothing about the world back then, but she also realized in an absolute and final sort of way that she never wanted to stop looking into those eyes of his.
She was seven years old and she had finally woken up.
Sometimes she pulls out the old journals and reads a page or two of each before slamming each one shut, horribly embarrassed. She makes a mental note to burn them all, but instead packs them back into a beaten old box and hides them in the corner of the attic until another day.
She figures that the most important thing about Ripp is that he loves more than anyone she knows. He’s slept with more girls than she can count on both hands, but that doesn’t change the fact that above everything else - Ripp is nothing but love. It’s not that Strangetown doesn’t have love in it - there’s plenty. But no one does love quite like Ripp does. In that heartbreaking way that seeps into every single move he makes. He snakes his hands around her waist sometimes without really thinking about it, before pulling away - not ashamed, but just worried that he’s crossing a line that he always forgets is there.
Ripp seeps into all the cracks and crevasses and has changed everything that could have been.
Without Ripp…
Buck and Tank would have never been able to cope with losing Buzz and Lyla. They would have lost themselves to their grief. And Buck wouldn’t have grown up as soft as he did. He wouldn’t have been Buck at all.
Ophelia would have never gone back to Olive’s house and Nervous would have died there or gone mad there, surrounded by ghosts and visions.
Johnny would have never come home. There wouldn’t have been anything to go home to anyway.
Without Ripp, Jill Smith would have never learned what it meant to love someone without restrictions or fears. She would have never known what it was to be sixteen and heartbroken. She would have married Balizarde Roseland and lived without living.
Ripp was her very first love.
And Jill does not regret.
---
Buck was her true love.
She knows this like she knows how to breathe. It is something entirely and completely engraved into her very self. It’s natural and obvious and you could ask her now, fifteen years after the fact and she would still swear it’s true. Buck was the one.
So when she finds herself shaking for no reason at all, it’s his name she curses and blesses all at once. When she wakes to find herself standing in the middle of the street during a thunderstorm it’s his imaginary hands that wrap around hers and lead her back to the warmth of her house. When she stands on the edge of the water tower and thinks about jumping it’s his voice in the back of her mind that tells her not to give up.
She misses him.
So much.
She could tell you why he was the one, but she doesn’t have enough words. Or maybe she has too many.
He just is. Or was.
Always will be.
Worst of all is waking up from the old nightmare - her arms wrapped around his blood soaked body as she begs him to stay with her. His eyes - just as blue as his brother’s, but impossibly soft - locked onto hers and telling her that whatever happens he just wants her to be happy.
He died in her arms.
Her only consolation is that he never had to find out that the baby had been stillborn.
Buck was her true love.
And she will never be the same.
---
She doesn’t know if Tank is her last love, because she is not yet dead.
There could be others, she thinks.
Maybe.
In the meantime, she lets him wrap his much too big arms around her small frame and whisper any name he wants in her ear when they make love. She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t love him for him anyway. She loves him for those same blue eyes and the way that he never really says anything at all. She loves him, because it’s like fucking a corpse and some days that’s all she wants to do.
She loves that she can pretend he’s everything he’s not.
It’s not something she looked for. It’s not something she wanted. Tank Grunt wasn’t part of the plan. Just like Jill Smith is nothing but a dusty, snotty particle of nothing floating around the skyline and sucking in too dry air. She hates the fucking desert and the town that never changes, but she tries very hard not to think about it.
Ripp set everything in motion, while Buck slowed everything down to let her experience it to the fullest, but Tank does nothing at all. Sometimes she wonders if he’s as dead as she is - as Buck is. He goes through the motions without feeling anything and Jill can understand, she thinks.
She doesn’t love Tank Grunt, not really.
But sometimes she wishes she could make him smile. Really and truly. Sometimes she wants to take his hands in hers and tell him that she’s done playing dead and that she wants to live again. Jill wants to tell him that she wants him to join her in life. She wants him to start a new life with her and she wants them both to be able to raise each other out of the ashes of horrible conspiracies and alien plots and military bullshit and just be two normal fucking people having a good fucking time and loving one another without reservations or fears - just like Ripp does, just like Buck did - and she wants them to make each other whole.
When he comes, she wants him to say her name and no one else’s.
When she comes, she wants to be looking into his eyes and seeing only him - only Tank. She wants to give up the ghosts of boys she could never have - of men who have died. She is sick of drowning in memories.
She wants to live.
But Jill says nothing at all.
Sometimes she wonders if she could have loved Balizarde Roseland.
Sometimes she dreams in colors.
Tank Grunt could be her last love.
In a different world.
a/n: WHATEVER MUSE. Apparently you do whatever the fuck you want. WELL I WANTED TO GO TO BED EARLY. YOU WHORE.
So yeah, apparently I'm doing a running theme of 'how many different ways can SHWC characters die without really being dead?'. Don used sex to fill up a hole inside of him, Tank went through his life without really living it, Jill dies on the inside when Buck dies for real.
D:
Fandom/Universe: Strangetown, Here We Come
Character(s): Jill Smith, The Grunt Boys
Rating: Teen
‘you always remember your first love, your true love and your last love.’
Ripp was the first.
Looking back, everyone has an opinion on how it all began. It was the Beakers and their scheming ways - they were terrible people and they got the end they deserved. No, it was those Curious fools and their idiotic blind hope in the alien cause - it’s stupid to put all your faith into something that can betray you. Go even further back, it was the aliens tampering with nature or maybe it was Death diddling up little old ladies and creating abominations to destroy us all or perhaps, really, it was just Strangetown itself - a town of dirt and conspiracy - nothing but a sneeze on the map.
So, yes, there are a lot of beginnings to the beginning-less tale.
But Jill Smith knows the truth.
It began with Ripp.
It began with love.
She doesn’t claim to know the whole story. If Strangetown is a sneeze on the map then Jill is nothing but the smallest particle of snotty spit. She’s not even a full person either. She’s a half-sim, but you’d never even know it - one foot in the door and one foot out. She’s conflicted, because she has no conflict. The aliens were never that interested in her anyway and the rest of the Sim population could give a shit about fucking Jill Smith.
But Ripp was the catalyst to it all, just like she knew he would be all those years ago when she was nothing more than a baby really. She was seven years old when she first got to peek into those warm blue eyes of his and she’s never really forgotten that dizzying sensation. She knew next to nothing about the world back then, but she also realized in an absolute and final sort of way that she never wanted to stop looking into those eyes of his.
She was seven years old and she had finally woken up.
Sometimes she pulls out the old journals and reads a page or two of each before slamming each one shut, horribly embarrassed. She makes a mental note to burn them all, but instead packs them back into a beaten old box and hides them in the corner of the attic until another day.
She figures that the most important thing about Ripp is that he loves more than anyone she knows. He’s slept with more girls than she can count on both hands, but that doesn’t change the fact that above everything else - Ripp is nothing but love. It’s not that Strangetown doesn’t have love in it - there’s plenty. But no one does love quite like Ripp does. In that heartbreaking way that seeps into every single move he makes. He snakes his hands around her waist sometimes without really thinking about it, before pulling away - not ashamed, but just worried that he’s crossing a line that he always forgets is there.
Ripp seeps into all the cracks and crevasses and has changed everything that could have been.
Without Ripp…
Buck and Tank would have never been able to cope with losing Buzz and Lyla. They would have lost themselves to their grief. And Buck wouldn’t have grown up as soft as he did. He wouldn’t have been Buck at all.
Ophelia would have never gone back to Olive’s house and Nervous would have died there or gone mad there, surrounded by ghosts and visions.
Johnny would have never come home. There wouldn’t have been anything to go home to anyway.
Without Ripp, Jill Smith would have never learned what it meant to love someone without restrictions or fears. She would have never known what it was to be sixteen and heartbroken. She would have married Balizarde Roseland and lived without living.
Ripp was her very first love.
And Jill does not regret.
---
Buck was her true love.
She knows this like she knows how to breathe. It is something entirely and completely engraved into her very self. It’s natural and obvious and you could ask her now, fifteen years after the fact and she would still swear it’s true. Buck was the one.
So when she finds herself shaking for no reason at all, it’s his name she curses and blesses all at once. When she wakes to find herself standing in the middle of the street during a thunderstorm it’s his imaginary hands that wrap around hers and lead her back to the warmth of her house. When she stands on the edge of the water tower and thinks about jumping it’s his voice in the back of her mind that tells her not to give up.
She misses him.
So much.
She could tell you why he was the one, but she doesn’t have enough words. Or maybe she has too many.
He just is. Or was.
Always will be.
Worst of all is waking up from the old nightmare - her arms wrapped around his blood soaked body as she begs him to stay with her. His eyes - just as blue as his brother’s, but impossibly soft - locked onto hers and telling her that whatever happens he just wants her to be happy.
He died in her arms.
Her only consolation is that he never had to find out that the baby had been stillborn.
Buck was her true love.
And she will never be the same.
---
She doesn’t know if Tank is her last love, because she is not yet dead.
There could be others, she thinks.
Maybe.
In the meantime, she lets him wrap his much too big arms around her small frame and whisper any name he wants in her ear when they make love. She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t love him for him anyway. She loves him for those same blue eyes and the way that he never really says anything at all. She loves him, because it’s like fucking a corpse and some days that’s all she wants to do.
She loves that she can pretend he’s everything he’s not.
It’s not something she looked for. It’s not something she wanted. Tank Grunt wasn’t part of the plan. Just like Jill Smith is nothing but a dusty, snotty particle of nothing floating around the skyline and sucking in too dry air. She hates the fucking desert and the town that never changes, but she tries very hard not to think about it.
Ripp set everything in motion, while Buck slowed everything down to let her experience it to the fullest, but Tank does nothing at all. Sometimes she wonders if he’s as dead as she is - as Buck is. He goes through the motions without feeling anything and Jill can understand, she thinks.
She doesn’t love Tank Grunt, not really.
But sometimes she wishes she could make him smile. Really and truly. Sometimes she wants to take his hands in hers and tell him that she’s done playing dead and that she wants to live again. Jill wants to tell him that she wants him to join her in life. She wants him to start a new life with her and she wants them both to be able to raise each other out of the ashes of horrible conspiracies and alien plots and military bullshit and just be two normal fucking people having a good fucking time and loving one another without reservations or fears - just like Ripp does, just like Buck did - and she wants them to make each other whole.
When he comes, she wants him to say her name and no one else’s.
When she comes, she wants to be looking into his eyes and seeing only him - only Tank. She wants to give up the ghosts of boys she could never have - of men who have died. She is sick of drowning in memories.
She wants to live.
But Jill says nothing at all.
Sometimes she wonders if she could have loved Balizarde Roseland.
Sometimes she dreams in colors.
Tank Grunt could be her last love.
In a different world.
a/n: WHATEVER MUSE. Apparently you do whatever the fuck you want. WELL I WANTED TO GO TO BED EARLY. YOU WHORE.
So yeah, apparently I'm doing a running theme of 'how many different ways can SHWC characters die without really being dead?'. Don used sex to fill up a hole inside of him, Tank went through his life without really living it, Jill dies on the inside when Buck dies for real.
D: