fic: honesty: the very best policy (better off ted)
honesty: the very best policy
better off ted. at veridian, we pride ourselves on being truthful - as well as using said truthfulness against our enemies. ted/veronica. rated pg. 1180 words. vague spoilers through 1.06.
notes: for dollsome! her prompt was "contagious, ted/veronica." hope you enjoy!
It starts in the lab.
But then again just about anything worth mentioning at Veridian Dynamics starts in the lab.
Or the bathroom.
But that would make this a different kind of story.
-
Actually, it starts with this:
“We want to wage domestic warfare!” Veronica had said from the doorway to Ted's office. Ted had tilted his head to the left.
“Come again?”
“Domestic warfare, Ted. We here at Veridian have pioneered and championed advances and strategies in nuclear, chemical, guerilla, invisible and intergalactic warfare. We want to aim a little closer to home. We,” and she paused, “Want to get personal.”
“Oh boy.”
-
“We call it The Tourette’s Contagion!”
Phil held the vial up to the fluorescent light. Lem clasped his hands together and smiled.
“Look at how the green toxins catch the light. So beautiful, so potent.”
“‘The Tourette’s Contagion?’ Really, guys?” Ted said. “That isn’t, what, a touch politically incorrect?”
“Chemically forcing others to confess their most random and most personal and potentially most damaging and incriminating thoughts at the forefront of their mind is politically correct though?”
“You might have a point there, Phil.”
“I thought so.”
Ted had leaned back on his heels; Phil and Lem continued to beam like proud parents or Henry Higginses, or something less creepy and Eliza Doolittle-related.
“Explain how this works,” Ted said.
“It’s rather simple,” Lem began. “It must be absorbed through the skin and after that…well, whatever you’re thinking? You say it.”
Phil raised an index finger. “But wait! There’s more!”
“Yes, Phil, there is.” Lem had stepped in front of Phil; Phil still had the one finger raised. “If you come into personal bodily contact with another human organism, skin to skin only, the contagion will be transferred to that person, and so on and so forth until we have an entire planet of people audibly sharing their innermost secrets.”
“Instead of blogging about them,” Phil said. He shot Dr. Bhamba a particularly cold look.
“It’s called Twittering,” he snapped back over his microscope, then started muttering something about “tweets” and “nosy nancies.”
“So, it’s like pink eye?” Ted asked. Phil, Lem and Dr. Bhamba rolled their eyes; Ted is pretty sure that Patricia had been trying to check out his ass.
“The pink eye of the mouth, maybe,” Phil said. “The pink eye of…words.” His face had bunched up as he considered this. “That doesn’t really work, does it?”
Lem just shook his head.
-
What happens next is this:
“I like how the…green catches the light,” Veronica said.
And then what happens is this:
A chain of events begun by a certain Twitter post by a certain beleaguered scientist (who we shall call Dr. Bhamba) finally broke the straw of a certain camel’s back (who we shall call Phil) and this certain camel ran at this certain scientist with a certain fire extinguisher into a certain conference room:
Phil ran at Dr. Bhamba;
Dr. Bhamba ran at the conference room door;
Phil raised the fire extinguisher;
Dr. Bhamba fell into a large graph displaying a study pertaining to dinosaur fossils and their exposure to radioactive gelatin;
Said graph fell, catching Ted between the shoulders;
Ted fell;
Veronica fell;
The Tourette’s Contagion fell.
“Don’t touch them!” Phil shrieked. Dr. Bhamba’s mouth was opened in horror; his chin rested on a picture of a T-Rex. The fire extinguisher was forgotten.
A light green film covered the better part of Veronica’s hand.
Ted’s hand covered the better part of Veronica’s bare ankle.
This is where we are now.
-
“They’re not allowed to lock us in here,” Veronica keeps repeating. “That is not allowed. That is not allowed at all. I am an authority figure. I have always been an authority figure. I’ve got the authority. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time - ”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Ted finds himself saying. “You don’t even make sense. You with your gold hair and your fancy lady suits - ”
“Powersuits, Ted. They’re called powersuits. I wear powersuits because I am in charge and I have the authority and they’re not allowed to lock us in here like we’re lepers or old people.”
“Stop pacing. I can’t stop staring at your legs,” Ted says, and he sort of wants to throw up because he keeps talking, he just keeps talking, it’s total word vomit, and Phil and Lem really should be congratulated for this, because he is pretty sure he just told Veronica about his penis and a certain corresponding anatomical part of her own he wants to revisit.
Veronica’s eyes are very wide. With horror, is what Ted thinks, though he cannot decide if it is horror directed at their current situation or at what he just said or at the fact that her own mouth appears to be moving of its own volition and the same can be said of the words that depart this particular entrance/exit.
“I do like you, Ted,” she is saying and her eyes widen a little more. He thinks his own do too. “I like you. As a woman likes a man. Or, I guess, as some women like other women. Or some men like other men…this shouldn’t be so complicated, I like you, a lot.”
And then they’re not talking.
And there is a table.
And there are her lips - he thinks he compared them to the sweetness of Swedish Fish and somehow that has to be Rose’s fault, right? - and there are his lips - “they are thin, but I’m okay with that,” Veronica had said - and and and -
Linda opens the door.
“You motherf- ”
-
The antidote proves easy enough.
“Oh, I might like the purple even better in this light,” Lem says.
Phil nods like he agrees.
-
The next day:
“We want to wage domestic warfare!” Veronica says from the doorway to Ted’s office. Ted tilts his head to the left.
“Wow. Déjà vu,” he says. “I’m not Bill Murray and this isn’t Groundhog Day?”
Veronica waves a hand.
“I am choosing to ignore that cultural reference. We want to wage domestic warfare.”
Ted tilts his head even farther to the left.
“Yeah. We tried that one. You wound up telling me that you think my neck smells like lemons and I think I told you that your legs clad in that black skirt make my pants really tight. And then we were just about to make out on the table in the conference room, but, um, Linda. Right. Yeah, was that the brand of domestic warfare you wanted to try and wage again? Because if so…I can see if the conference room is still available.”
To his esteem, Veronica appears to consider the suggestion for all of three seconds.
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She smiles and bounces on the balls of her feet.
“We want to launch a social networking site!”
-
fin.
better off ted. at veridian, we pride ourselves on being truthful - as well as using said truthfulness against our enemies. ted/veronica. rated pg. 1180 words. vague spoilers through 1.06.
notes: for dollsome! her prompt was "contagious, ted/veronica." hope you enjoy!
It starts in the lab.
But then again just about anything worth mentioning at Veridian Dynamics starts in the lab.
Or the bathroom.
But that would make this a different kind of story.
-
Actually, it starts with this:
“We want to wage domestic warfare!” Veronica had said from the doorway to Ted's office. Ted had tilted his head to the left.
“Come again?”
“Domestic warfare, Ted. We here at Veridian have pioneered and championed advances and strategies in nuclear, chemical, guerilla, invisible and intergalactic warfare. We want to aim a little closer to home. We,” and she paused, “Want to get personal.”
“Oh boy.”
-
“We call it The Tourette’s Contagion!”
Phil held the vial up to the fluorescent light. Lem clasped his hands together and smiled.
“Look at how the green toxins catch the light. So beautiful, so potent.”
“‘The Tourette’s Contagion?’ Really, guys?” Ted said. “That isn’t, what, a touch politically incorrect?”
“Chemically forcing others to confess their most random and most personal and potentially most damaging and incriminating thoughts at the forefront of their mind is politically correct though?”
“You might have a point there, Phil.”
“I thought so.”
Ted had leaned back on his heels; Phil and Lem continued to beam like proud parents or Henry Higginses, or something less creepy and Eliza Doolittle-related.
“Explain how this works,” Ted said.
“It’s rather simple,” Lem began. “It must be absorbed through the skin and after that…well, whatever you’re thinking? You say it.”
Phil raised an index finger. “But wait! There’s more!”
“Yes, Phil, there is.” Lem had stepped in front of Phil; Phil still had the one finger raised. “If you come into personal bodily contact with another human organism, skin to skin only, the contagion will be transferred to that person, and so on and so forth until we have an entire planet of people audibly sharing their innermost secrets.”
“Instead of blogging about them,” Phil said. He shot Dr. Bhamba a particularly cold look.
“It’s called Twittering,” he snapped back over his microscope, then started muttering something about “tweets” and “nosy nancies.”
“So, it’s like pink eye?” Ted asked. Phil, Lem and Dr. Bhamba rolled their eyes; Ted is pretty sure that Patricia had been trying to check out his ass.
“The pink eye of the mouth, maybe,” Phil said. “The pink eye of…words.” His face had bunched up as he considered this. “That doesn’t really work, does it?”
Lem just shook his head.
-
What happens next is this:
“I like how the…green catches the light,” Veronica said.
And then what happens is this:
A chain of events begun by a certain Twitter post by a certain beleaguered scientist (who we shall call Dr. Bhamba) finally broke the straw of a certain camel’s back (who we shall call Phil) and this certain camel ran at this certain scientist with a certain fire extinguisher into a certain conference room:
Phil ran at Dr. Bhamba;
Dr. Bhamba ran at the conference room door;
Phil raised the fire extinguisher;
Dr. Bhamba fell into a large graph displaying a study pertaining to dinosaur fossils and their exposure to radioactive gelatin;
Said graph fell, catching Ted between the shoulders;
Ted fell;
Veronica fell;
The Tourette’s Contagion fell.
“Don’t touch them!” Phil shrieked. Dr. Bhamba’s mouth was opened in horror; his chin rested on a picture of a T-Rex. The fire extinguisher was forgotten.
A light green film covered the better part of Veronica’s hand.
Ted’s hand covered the better part of Veronica’s bare ankle.
This is where we are now.
-
“They’re not allowed to lock us in here,” Veronica keeps repeating. “That is not allowed. That is not allowed at all. I am an authority figure. I have always been an authority figure. I’ve got the authority. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time - ”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Ted finds himself saying. “You don’t even make sense. You with your gold hair and your fancy lady suits - ”
“Powersuits, Ted. They’re called powersuits. I wear powersuits because I am in charge and I have the authority and they’re not allowed to lock us in here like we’re lepers or old people.”
“Stop pacing. I can’t stop staring at your legs,” Ted says, and he sort of wants to throw up because he keeps talking, he just keeps talking, it’s total word vomit, and Phil and Lem really should be congratulated for this, because he is pretty sure he just told Veronica about his penis and a certain corresponding anatomical part of her own he wants to revisit.
Veronica’s eyes are very wide. With horror, is what Ted thinks, though he cannot decide if it is horror directed at their current situation or at what he just said or at the fact that her own mouth appears to be moving of its own volition and the same can be said of the words that depart this particular entrance/exit.
“I do like you, Ted,” she is saying and her eyes widen a little more. He thinks his own do too. “I like you. As a woman likes a man. Or, I guess, as some women like other women. Or some men like other men…this shouldn’t be so complicated, I like you, a lot.”
And then they’re not talking.
And there is a table.
And there are her lips - he thinks he compared them to the sweetness of Swedish Fish and somehow that has to be Rose’s fault, right? - and there are his lips - “they are thin, but I’m okay with that,” Veronica had said - and and and -
Linda opens the door.
“You motherf- ”
-
The antidote proves easy enough.
“Oh, I might like the purple even better in this light,” Lem says.
Phil nods like he agrees.
-
The next day:
“We want to wage domestic warfare!” Veronica says from the doorway to Ted’s office. Ted tilts his head to the left.
“Wow. Déjà vu,” he says. “I’m not Bill Murray and this isn’t Groundhog Day?”
Veronica waves a hand.
“I am choosing to ignore that cultural reference. We want to wage domestic warfare.”
Ted tilts his head even farther to the left.
“Yeah. We tried that one. You wound up telling me that you think my neck smells like lemons and I think I told you that your legs clad in that black skirt make my pants really tight. And then we were just about to make out on the table in the conference room, but, um, Linda. Right. Yeah, was that the brand of domestic warfare you wanted to try and wage again? Because if so…I can see if the conference room is still available.”
To his esteem, Veronica appears to consider the suggestion for all of three seconds.
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She smiles and bounces on the balls of her feet.
“We want to launch a social networking site!”
-
fin.