Hugs Gimme Hugs
Bandslash (Killjoy!verse MCR), PG-13 for violence, ~1700 words. Gen. Title from Grace Jeanette's cover of "Na Na Na."
EDIT: This fic has been podficced! Thank you, desert_neon!
Grace learns the lyrics to Queen's entire oeuvre when she's two, how to kill a drac when she's four and a half, and what a flush toilet is for when she's nine.
"You wasted that much water just to pee?" she says incredulously, peering into the long-abandoned toilet in the diner. "Are you serious? Boy, you guys used to be spoiled."
"We sure did," says Gerard. He has that look on his face, the crumpled one he always gets right before he starts apologizing for not being able to give her a better life. It annoys the crap out of Grace. She doesn't need anyone feeling sorry for her because she's never known the luxury of peeing into a bowl of water instead of onto the sand.
She's never wondered what the toilet does before. It's always been one of the many things in the diner that the world just doesn't use anymore. The bathroom has been a storage room for as long as she can remember. Sometimes Frank goes in there alone to test explosives, since it's the easiest floor to clean. Grace is pretty sure none of Frank's experiments have resulted in a bomb that would actually kill a drac, because if it would kill a drac, then the test run in the bathroom would kill Frank. She tells this to Gerard, who groans and says she should try that logic on Frank because Frank sure as hell won't listen to it from him.
(Ray tries to get them not to swear around her. It's pretty funny.)
"Wasting water wasn't that big a deal before the apocalypse," says Gerard. Mikey always rolls his eyes when Gerard talks about the apocalypse. If it were really the apocalypse, he says, they'd all be dead. This usually results in a heated argument about the term "post-apocalyptic," during which both of them reference a lot of old movies.
All movies are old movies to Grace. She's never seen one. She doesn't remind them of this, because that way lies crumple-face Gerard.
"Even if you had all the water you wanted, what's the point?" says Grace. "Why would you want to pee inside? That's gross."
Gerard wrinkles up his forehead. "I guess we just did everything inside," he says.
"Spoiled rotten," says Grace decisively.
***
Grace first shows up at the diner when she's barely a toddler. Some zonerunner brings her, it doesn't matter which one. They all get her at some point. She can't take care of herself, so they take care of her. She doesn't have any parents, just an indefinite series of babysitters. When she's old enough to make her own decisions about where she wants to be, she gravitates toward the diner. None of the Killjoys know shit about raising a kid, but they know how to raise hell, and that teaches her everything she needs to know about life in the zones.
She likes the broadcast room from the start. The microphones are shiny and the noise is never dull. Steve and Ricky talk to each other while the music plays, or they sing along. Sometimes Ricky picks her up and skates around with her, waving her around and shouting, "It's a chick! It's a model airplane! No, it's... SUPERBABY!"
Being cute is her main survival skill at first. It never works on Mikey, though. He doesn't make faces at her or toss her in the air. He interacts with her like she's an adult, and when she doesn't respond in kind, he pretty much ignores her. She hates it, but somehow he's her favorite anyway. He teaches her not to rely on cuteness to get by. He teaches her that useful people are a lot less expendable than adorable ones. He teaches her to choose her words carefully, and he teaches her a bitchface glare that could take down a charging buffalo with sheer contempt. The others never really forgive him for that.
Ricky teaches her how to skate and when to duck. Steve teaches her how to use the broadcasting equipment. Gerard teaches her to paint without worrying about the splatters. Frank teaches her how to fire a gun.
Ray teaches her how to live in the desert with hair like an exploded mattress.
"Sometimes I'm tempted to just let it dread," he says one time, when his tangles get especially bad.
Grace knows what dreads are, from Steve's Bob Marley record covers. "It's so awesome, though," she says, reaching over to help him with the knot. "It's worth it to be this awesome."
Gerard isn't there, but Ray must have told him about the conversation, because the next time he dyes his hair in the diner kitchen and Mikey stands around bitching about the waste of water, Gerard says, "It's worth it to be this awesome, Mikes."
Grace cracks up. She's in the cupboard under the sink, where she likes to hang out because people are more interesting when they don't know she's listening.
Her gigglefit gets her busted. "The fuck are you doing under there?" Gerard asks, hauling her out.
"Practicing my stealth," says Grace, squirming.
"Gonna have to work on that," Gerard tells her. "Plenty of zonerunners have been ghosted being quieter than you."
Grace scoffs at this. "I'm the one who's still alive," she points out. "I must be doing something right."
Gerard gets mad at her for disrespecting the memories of the dead. Grace doesn't get it. "You keep saying survival out here is a game," she says. "If it's a game, we're beating them. They lost. We're winning."
Gerard gets all crumply again.
***
"You keep aiming low," says Frank. "You've got to lift it higher."
"I can't. It's too heavy." Grace scowls, trying to heave up the front of the grenade launcher. "We don't have any grenades to launch, anyway."
"We will, we will. I'm almost there, just have to calibrate the magnitude so it won't blow us up too."
"Just that?" says Grace. "That's it, huh? Jeez, you're gonna kill us all."
"Thanks for your input, Gerard," Frank complains.
Grace grins. "Show me how to do pushups," she says. "I gotta make my arms stronger."
She doesn't have her own ray gun anymore, ever since she accidentally took out one of Steve's antennas. Everything else is forgivable, but not the radio. Gerard says she can have it back when Steve forgets about it, which isn't fair because Steve is never going to forget about it. She even runs the station on her own for two hours to give him a break in the middle of the day as an apology, and she doesn't break anything, and he still won't forgive her.
"Keep a patter in your feet and your ears wide open, all you dust rockets in the zones," she says into the mic between songs, like she's heard Steve doing. "Race yourself to disaster and you'll always win." She plays classic rock from the '70s and dance pop from the '00s, and it shouldn't work at all, but she spins sense into her mixes and they sound awesome.
Steve just shakes his head. "You're a pretty good DJ, kid," he says, "but you're a goddamn lousy shot."
"So let me practice," she protests, but she's still only allowed to have a gun when Frank is with her. Which is ridiculous, because he's more of a menace with firearms than she could ever aspire to be.
She bets they're all sorry when she gets kidnapped and can't defend herself.
***
Grace stares at the toilet.
She understands the concept. You sit on it, and you do your business into the water, and then it flushes. The one in the diner had a lever to press, but this one is automatic.
She's not stupid. She gets what she's supposed to do. She just doesn't want to.
She can hold it. She opens the door and goes back out into the stifling white hall. "Did you wash your hands?" asks the woman in charge of her. She peers at Grace's hands. "Go back and wash."
Grace goes back in and examines the sink. It's a lot smaller and more delicate than the giant industrial sinks in the diner kitchen. She turns the knob. Water gushes out, so much water that it can't all fit down the drain at once and the basin starts filling up. She looks around. No one is stopping her. The woman is just going to stand there outside and wait while Grace wastes gallon after gallon of good clean water.
It makes her feel awful and wrong. She turns off the faucet, dipping her hands in the puddle before it vanishes down the drain. They're not even dirty, anyway.
When Steve drags her into the van and it careens out of Battery City, and she watches out the back window as they all collapse to the ground behind her, all she can think about is how desperately she needs to pee.
***
Grace learns how to kill a drac when she's four and a half, and she learns what a ray gun blast feels like when she's twelve.
She drops behind a rock. "Fuck," she mutters to herself. Mikey taught her to save cuss words for injuries. He said swearing decreases pain. She doesn't know if it's true, but her thigh still hurts like hell while she's spitting out profanities. It's not a fatal hit, though. If he was trying to kill her, he should have aimed higher. Bastard should have done more pushups.
There were six dracs after her when the chase started. She's gotten four of them with her gun, but it's out of battery now. She's got the grenade launcher, though, and a couple grenades from Frank's last batch. She hopes he managed to calibrate that magnitude crap before he went and got himself killed.
"We are the champions," she sings under her breath, trying to distract herself from the pain. "No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions." She supports her weight on her good knee and rises up above her cover, grenade launcher balanced on her shoulder.
She fires, and the grenade explodes. The last two dracs drop. The blast doesn't quite reach her.
EDIT: This fic has been podficced! Thank you, desert_neon!
Grace learns the lyrics to Queen's entire oeuvre when she's two, how to kill a drac when she's four and a half, and what a flush toilet is for when she's nine.
"You wasted that much water just to pee?" she says incredulously, peering into the long-abandoned toilet in the diner. "Are you serious? Boy, you guys used to be spoiled."
"We sure did," says Gerard. He has that look on his face, the crumpled one he always gets right before he starts apologizing for not being able to give her a better life. It annoys the crap out of Grace. She doesn't need anyone feeling sorry for her because she's never known the luxury of peeing into a bowl of water instead of onto the sand.
She's never wondered what the toilet does before. It's always been one of the many things in the diner that the world just doesn't use anymore. The bathroom has been a storage room for as long as she can remember. Sometimes Frank goes in there alone to test explosives, since it's the easiest floor to clean. Grace is pretty sure none of Frank's experiments have resulted in a bomb that would actually kill a drac, because if it would kill a drac, then the test run in the bathroom would kill Frank. She tells this to Gerard, who groans and says she should try that logic on Frank because Frank sure as hell won't listen to it from him.
(Ray tries to get them not to swear around her. It's pretty funny.)
"Wasting water wasn't that big a deal before the apocalypse," says Gerard. Mikey always rolls his eyes when Gerard talks about the apocalypse. If it were really the apocalypse, he says, they'd all be dead. This usually results in a heated argument about the term "post-apocalyptic," during which both of them reference a lot of old movies.
All movies are old movies to Grace. She's never seen one. She doesn't remind them of this, because that way lies crumple-face Gerard.
"Even if you had all the water you wanted, what's the point?" says Grace. "Why would you want to pee inside? That's gross."
Gerard wrinkles up his forehead. "I guess we just did everything inside," he says.
"Spoiled rotten," says Grace decisively.
***
Grace first shows up at the diner when she's barely a toddler. Some zonerunner brings her, it doesn't matter which one. They all get her at some point. She can't take care of herself, so they take care of her. She doesn't have any parents, just an indefinite series of babysitters. When she's old enough to make her own decisions about where she wants to be, she gravitates toward the diner. None of the Killjoys know shit about raising a kid, but they know how to raise hell, and that teaches her everything she needs to know about life in the zones.
She likes the broadcast room from the start. The microphones are shiny and the noise is never dull. Steve and Ricky talk to each other while the music plays, or they sing along. Sometimes Ricky picks her up and skates around with her, waving her around and shouting, "It's a chick! It's a model airplane! No, it's... SUPERBABY!"
Being cute is her main survival skill at first. It never works on Mikey, though. He doesn't make faces at her or toss her in the air. He interacts with her like she's an adult, and when she doesn't respond in kind, he pretty much ignores her. She hates it, but somehow he's her favorite anyway. He teaches her not to rely on cuteness to get by. He teaches her that useful people are a lot less expendable than adorable ones. He teaches her to choose her words carefully, and he teaches her a bitchface glare that could take down a charging buffalo with sheer contempt. The others never really forgive him for that.
Ricky teaches her how to skate and when to duck. Steve teaches her how to use the broadcasting equipment. Gerard teaches her to paint without worrying about the splatters. Frank teaches her how to fire a gun.
Ray teaches her how to live in the desert with hair like an exploded mattress.
"Sometimes I'm tempted to just let it dread," he says one time, when his tangles get especially bad.
Grace knows what dreads are, from Steve's Bob Marley record covers. "It's so awesome, though," she says, reaching over to help him with the knot. "It's worth it to be this awesome."
Gerard isn't there, but Ray must have told him about the conversation, because the next time he dyes his hair in the diner kitchen and Mikey stands around bitching about the waste of water, Gerard says, "It's worth it to be this awesome, Mikes."
Grace cracks up. She's in the cupboard under the sink, where she likes to hang out because people are more interesting when they don't know she's listening.
Her gigglefit gets her busted. "The fuck are you doing under there?" Gerard asks, hauling her out.
"Practicing my stealth," says Grace, squirming.
"Gonna have to work on that," Gerard tells her. "Plenty of zonerunners have been ghosted being quieter than you."
Grace scoffs at this. "I'm the one who's still alive," she points out. "I must be doing something right."
Gerard gets mad at her for disrespecting the memories of the dead. Grace doesn't get it. "You keep saying survival out here is a game," she says. "If it's a game, we're beating them. They lost. We're winning."
Gerard gets all crumply again.
***
"You keep aiming low," says Frank. "You've got to lift it higher."
"I can't. It's too heavy." Grace scowls, trying to heave up the front of the grenade launcher. "We don't have any grenades to launch, anyway."
"We will, we will. I'm almost there, just have to calibrate the magnitude so it won't blow us up too."
"Just that?" says Grace. "That's it, huh? Jeez, you're gonna kill us all."
"Thanks for your input, Gerard," Frank complains.
Grace grins. "Show me how to do pushups," she says. "I gotta make my arms stronger."
She doesn't have her own ray gun anymore, ever since she accidentally took out one of Steve's antennas. Everything else is forgivable, but not the radio. Gerard says she can have it back when Steve forgets about it, which isn't fair because Steve is never going to forget about it. She even runs the station on her own for two hours to give him a break in the middle of the day as an apology, and she doesn't break anything, and he still won't forgive her.
"Keep a patter in your feet and your ears wide open, all you dust rockets in the zones," she says into the mic between songs, like she's heard Steve doing. "Race yourself to disaster and you'll always win." She plays classic rock from the '70s and dance pop from the '00s, and it shouldn't work at all, but she spins sense into her mixes and they sound awesome.
Steve just shakes his head. "You're a pretty good DJ, kid," he says, "but you're a goddamn lousy shot."
"So let me practice," she protests, but she's still only allowed to have a gun when Frank is with her. Which is ridiculous, because he's more of a menace with firearms than she could ever aspire to be.
She bets they're all sorry when she gets kidnapped and can't defend herself.
***
Grace stares at the toilet.
She understands the concept. You sit on it, and you do your business into the water, and then it flushes. The one in the diner had a lever to press, but this one is automatic.
She's not stupid. She gets what she's supposed to do. She just doesn't want to.
She can hold it. She opens the door and goes back out into the stifling white hall. "Did you wash your hands?" asks the woman in charge of her. She peers at Grace's hands. "Go back and wash."
Grace goes back in and examines the sink. It's a lot smaller and more delicate than the giant industrial sinks in the diner kitchen. She turns the knob. Water gushes out, so much water that it can't all fit down the drain at once and the basin starts filling up. She looks around. No one is stopping her. The woman is just going to stand there outside and wait while Grace wastes gallon after gallon of good clean water.
It makes her feel awful and wrong. She turns off the faucet, dipping her hands in the puddle before it vanishes down the drain. They're not even dirty, anyway.
When Steve drags her into the van and it careens out of Battery City, and she watches out the back window as they all collapse to the ground behind her, all she can think about is how desperately she needs to pee.
***
Grace learns how to kill a drac when she's four and a half, and she learns what a ray gun blast feels like when she's twelve.
She drops behind a rock. "Fuck," she mutters to herself. Mikey taught her to save cuss words for injuries. He said swearing decreases pain. She doesn't know if it's true, but her thigh still hurts like hell while she's spitting out profanities. It's not a fatal hit, though. If he was trying to kill her, he should have aimed higher. Bastard should have done more pushups.
There were six dracs after her when the chase started. She's gotten four of them with her gun, but it's out of battery now. She's got the grenade launcher, though, and a couple grenades from Frank's last batch. She hopes he managed to calibrate that magnitude crap before he went and got himself killed.
"We are the champions," she sings under her breath, trying to distract herself from the pain. "No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions." She supports her weight on her good knee and rises up above her cover, grenade launcher balanced on her shoulder.
She fires, and the grenade explodes. The last two dracs drop. The blast doesn't quite reach her.