Collating
Posted my Invisible Man Ficfest fic a few weeks back on hot_donuts. Reposting here to make sure is findable with all my other stories under my "fic" tags.
Title: Everything You Need to Know About Tentacle Porn
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2410
Summary: Some things are better left unknown.
A/N: From the prompt by basingstoke: Darien & or / Bobby, Darien teaches Bobby to use the interwebs. Probably one of my sillier fics I've ever written. First I-Man fic ever written. I hope you enjoy.
Bobby woke up trapped. Long, gangly limbs had slid their way around him, twining around his arms and legs.
"It's like sleeping with a fucking octopus," he muttered to himself.
He felt lips form a smile against his neck and the soft puff of quiet laughter. "What are you saying, Bobby, you into some tentacle porn?"
"Tentacle what?"
A puff of air again tickled the hairs at the back of his neck. "Look it up on the internet."
"I don't think so. Last time you told me to just 'look it up on the internet,' my friend, I got an eyeful of people in Easter Bunny costumes doing unspeakable things to each other. And I'm told I'm crazy. That's just sick."
It was all Fawkes' fault. Hobbes never wanted to learn the "wonders" of the internet anyway. Bobby Hobbes was no stranger to technology. He was good with mechanics and computers, one had to be in order to keep up in the modern spy game. But his experience with computers was in many ways adhering to one of his favorite adages: Need to Know. He didn't know all about the inner-workings of the things in the way the Keeper did. He was up on all the latest programs that were essential to his job, and used it damned well. He was more than content with his relationship with computers.
Then Fawkes had to go and ask him about his e-mail address.
"I don't have one."
"What do you mean? Everyone has one."
"Well, Bobby Hobbes doesn't."
"Actually, I'm pretty sure you do. Eberts set everyone in the Agency up with one on the network."
"I just don't like using the internet, okay?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's unsecure. You get you get people putting up personal info willy-nilly for everyone to see. Then there's identity theft and 13 year-old snot-nosed punks hacking into the Department of Defense from their laptops. And all those guys getting their computers infected with online STDs."
"Wait...STDs?"
"Yeah those idiots who go to porn sites and wonder why their computers get crabs."
"You mean viruses."
"Yeah, viruses like crabs."
"Crabs aren't a virus, they're lice."
"How come you know so much about crabs?"
"I paid attention in Health Class. The only class I paid attention."
"People talking to people they've never seen, thinking they're setting up dates with some 23 year-old wannabe model, and it's a 40 year-old Trekkie in his mom's basement."
"Speaking from experience?"
"No! Like I said, this is why I don't use it."
"It's not just porn and all that other stuff you think it is," Fawkes tried to explain. "It's the most accessible, easy to use source of information."
"If Bobby Hobbes needs information, he has his sources."
Darien sighed, then his expression got wily, like he just had a clever thought. "You know, they're saying terrorists are starting to use social networking sites to communicate. Wouldn't it be good for you to know how too infiltrate things like that?"
Damn him. Damn him for knowing how to push his buttons. Bobby shifted his feet and tilted his head to one side, considering. That smug smile on Fawkes' face proved he already figured he won. Damn kid. "You may have a point," Hobbes said slowly, reluctant to concede.
Darien smacked him in the arm. "Great! Allow me to be your personal tour guide for the world wide web." He slung an arm around Bobby's shoulders and led him down the hall.
"What, now?"
"Yeah, Claire's hooked-up. I sure she wouldn't mind us using her computer for educational purposes."
"Yeah, but doesn't she keep her computer locked?"
"For a smart lady, she hasn't considered the possibility that someone could be standing invisibly over her shoulder while she's typing in her password."
"You're a bad man Fawkes," Bobby admonished as he watched Darien swipe his card to enter the Keeper's lab.
Darien poked his head in and called out "Claire? Claaaaaaiiire." He ended with a sing-song version. "I thinks she's gone home. Saddle up!" He pulled out the rolling chair from the desk and turned it towards Bobby."
"The Keep's computer? I just don't think we should be poking around on that-"
"Oh come on. It's not like we're going to be digging through her important or personal files. We just want to get connected. You will be the one in control of the mouse, so as long as you don't get curious, we have nothing to be afraid of." Darien held the mouse up and waved it invitingly.
Bobby hesitated, thinking of the varying ways Claire probably knew to emasculate him and his partner should she catch them. But then Darien was all excited and eager, looking like a happy, hyper puppy, and it was very hard to resist. "Okay."
Darien grinned. He settled himself in another chair and turned on the computer. While they waited for it to boot, Bobby could not stop looking over his shoulder.
"Will you relax? She is not going to show up." But after a couple of minutes of still waiting for the Operating System to kick in, Darien was getting a little edgy, too. "Come on, stupid, slow piece of-" He made to kick it, but then the log-in screen finally appeared. "Oh! Here we go." Darien typed in Claire's password, and they were in.
"Okay, lesson one: double click on that icon."
"Which icon?"
"That icon, the one I'm pointing at, the one that says 'intenet' underneath it?"
Bobby grumbled and did what he was told. Another log-in screen popped up.
"See, her homepage is her work e-mail. We're all suppose to be using it. I'm going to make Eberts tell me what your address and default password is."
"You're not getting my password!"
"I'm getting your password and making you swallow it, and forcing you to get your account activated."
"Geeze, what's with the aggressive e-mail defending here? Seems like I'm getting along fine without it."
"I just refuse to have a partner that isn't in the 21st century."
"Hey, Bobby Hobbes is in the 21st century, my friend. Just because I don't use e-mail and walk around like a brainless moron with an iPod doesn't mean I'm not in-tune with this technological age we live in."
"Whatever. Just click on the address bar."
"The what now?"
"The address bar, here, the thing I'm pointing at!"
"Don't get angry, this was your idea, remember?"
"There, now it's all blue so you can just delete that out and type in a URL."
"I know what a select-all looks like and how to use backspace, jack-ass."
"I'm sorry if I ever doubted that you had any sort of computer comprehension given how well you've done so far."
Darien's sarcasm was more biting then normal. Bobby was really regretting agreeing to this if it was just going to be Fawkes losing his patience over something Hobbes wasn't really all that interested in anyway. Not to mention, it was just one more thing to make Fawkes think he was smarter than Bobby. "Uhm, what's a URL?"
"The address. You know, all those .com and .net and .org you see on TV ads."
"Okay. But what does URL stand for then?"
Darien paused, stared at the wall for a moment then looked at him. "I don't know."
Bobby smirked. "Guess you don't know everything. Probably stands for 'Unrelated to Real Life.'"
"Just type in 'google.com.' and press enter."
Bobby did so and was presented with an unexciting white screen with multicolor letters spelling out the site's name. "Ooh, very impressive."
"This is what's called a search engine. In that little box here," Darien pointed to the rectangle in the center of the screen, "type anything you want."
"Like what?"
"Anything you want to know about."
"Like what?"
"Bobby!" Fawkes' curtness was coming back. "Just think of something you're interested in and type it in. It can be anything."
Bobby stared at the little blinking cursor. He was honestly drawing a blank. He couldn't be forced into wanting to look something up. At the moment there wasn't a damned thing he felt like he needed to know more about. "What do you normally look at?"
Darien sighed like a disappointed teacher. "Okay, why don't you just type in 'LOLcats."'
"What was that, something about cats?"
"L-O-L cats. Trust me, just type it in."
"Fine."
"Now, we're at your results pages. As you can see, there are a lot of websites and information about LOLcats."
"But what is it?"
"Click on that first link, buddy, and find out."
"...I'm looking at pictures of cats."
"Yup!" Darien was smiling now.
"With words on them...at least I think they're words. Either it's code or I just had a stroke and lost the ability to understand writing."
"It's lolspeak: a combination of Engrish, common web anagrams, and purposeful misspelling. You'll see a lot of this sort of thing online, so I thought it'd be the quickest way to introduce you to it. Plus, we can look at funny pictures of cats!"
So that was Internet 101 for Bobby Hobbes. After a while he did get the hang of those weird captions and could laugh along with Fawkes at those stupid cats. He still didn't get the whole cheeseburger thing. Since when did cats ever have interest in cheeseburgers? Has anyone actually seen a cat willfully eat one? And yet for some reason these people who had the time to just watch their cats, take photos of them, and post said photos to the web with captions seemed to think so.
The next day a very perturbed Claire asked them why her History folder was filled with websites about cats and discount hair products.
The Keeper changed her password, and even told Eberts about their non-work related internet use. So basically every computer in the agency became blocked for them. And since neither Darien nor Bobby had internet at home, they ended up at the public library. That didn't last long, either.
Darien had moved the curriculum from LOL Cats to humorous blogs. Their giggling and constant low conversation drew the attention of the librarians. A particularly frumpy librarian in a floral print blouse came over to their station and told them they would have to leave.
Simultaneously, they whipped out their badges saying, "federal agents."
She frowned and tilted her head to get a better look at their screen. "Shouldn't you have internet at your office?"
"It's down."
"Yeah, down."
"This doesn't look like a federal investigation to me."She raised an eyebrow at the one of the strange photo manips on Something Awful.
Bobby leaned close to her and spoke in low, conspiratorial tones. "Ma'am, we understand and appreciate you're doing your job. All we want to do is ours. We're working on something rather sensitive. Very hush-hush, you know." He winked at her.
The librarian, Rhoda, Bobby noticed on her name tag, crossed her arms. "You haven't been very 'hush-hush' so far. And if you're here investigating one of our patrons, I'm going have to see some kind of court order before you can expect cooperation from the staff here." She then muttered something angry under her breath that sounded like something about "Patriot Act."
"Maybe we should just go," Darien said.
"All right," Bobby conceded, never taking his eyes off Rhoda. "But we will meet again, my friend." he added as Darien pulled him away.
So, Darien finally bought a PC for himself. Wasn't like Bobby was going to get one, not at those prices. And a whole new monthly bill for the internet connection? Forget that. Besides, Hobbes wasn't entirely convinced yet that there wasn't someone watching him in the middle of the night through those internet wires...
Now all their time-wasting needs were fulfilled. Hobbes did like having something to use for quick research when someone said something he didn't understand. Like certain words the Keeper would use, or some nerdy technical thing Eberts would smugly mention, knowing full well Hobbes didn't have the first clue what he was talking about. The downside was, of course, that having all that information at his fingertips wasn't always a good thing. And it was, like most things, because of Darien.
They were just hanging out at Fawkes' one Saturday, watching cartoons. It was a Bugs Bunny one. Bugs did his usual routine of dressing up like a sexy lady and putting the moves on Elmer Fudd. Darien had sighed as Bugs planted a big kiss on Elmer's lips. "And thus, hundreds of Furries were born."
"A hundred what?"
Darien just shook his head. "I'm not going to explain it to you, man. Just look it up on the internet sometime."
He had. And wished he hadn't.
"You're my partner, and I trusted you. You betrayed that trust by not warning me before I looked that up," he said, bring himself back to the present situation of Darien's wiry limbs keeping him in a tangled grip. "That right there is exactly why I believe in Need-To-Know. I didn't need to know about people dressing up like animals and doing that. And I have a feeling I don't need to know about this 'tentacle porn' of which you speak. What I do Need-to-Know is how you know about it."
He felt Darien shrug. "Knew a guy who watched a lot of anime. So you know, pretty young girls, short skirts, evil alien monsters with tentacles..."
"Okay! Okay! I said I didn't want to know!" He finally wrested himself from Darien's arms and legs and shifted away from his partner.
"You're the one who was talking about having sex with an octopus."
"I was not!" He sat up now and glared down at Darien who was smiling at him cheekily. "I was simply using a metaphor."
"Simile. You used 'like sleeping with an octopus.' Simile."
"Whatever. Just stop talking about tentacle porn!"
Darien shut his mouth and looked up innocently and a little pleadingly. With a sigh, Bobby slid back down under the covers. Darien immediately made a grab for him with all four limbs. "Let's make our own kind of tentacle porn, then!"
Title: Everything You Need to Know About Tentacle Porn
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2410
Summary: Some things are better left unknown.
A/N: From the prompt by basingstoke: Darien & or / Bobby, Darien teaches Bobby to use the interwebs. Probably one of my sillier fics I've ever written. First I-Man fic ever written. I hope you enjoy.
Bobby woke up trapped. Long, gangly limbs had slid their way around him, twining around his arms and legs.
"It's like sleeping with a fucking octopus," he muttered to himself.
He felt lips form a smile against his neck and the soft puff of quiet laughter. "What are you saying, Bobby, you into some tentacle porn?"
"Tentacle what?"
A puff of air again tickled the hairs at the back of his neck. "Look it up on the internet."
"I don't think so. Last time you told me to just 'look it up on the internet,' my friend, I got an eyeful of people in Easter Bunny costumes doing unspeakable things to each other. And I'm told I'm crazy. That's just sick."
It was all Fawkes' fault. Hobbes never wanted to learn the "wonders" of the internet anyway. Bobby Hobbes was no stranger to technology. He was good with mechanics and computers, one had to be in order to keep up in the modern spy game. But his experience with computers was in many ways adhering to one of his favorite adages: Need to Know. He didn't know all about the inner-workings of the things in the way the Keeper did. He was up on all the latest programs that were essential to his job, and used it damned well. He was more than content with his relationship with computers.
Then Fawkes had to go and ask him about his e-mail address.
"I don't have one."
"What do you mean? Everyone has one."
"Well, Bobby Hobbes doesn't."
"Actually, I'm pretty sure you do. Eberts set everyone in the Agency up with one on the network."
"I just don't like using the internet, okay?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's unsecure. You get you get people putting up personal info willy-nilly for everyone to see. Then there's identity theft and 13 year-old snot-nosed punks hacking into the Department of Defense from their laptops. And all those guys getting their computers infected with online STDs."
"Wait...STDs?"
"Yeah those idiots who go to porn sites and wonder why their computers get crabs."
"You mean viruses."
"Yeah, viruses like crabs."
"Crabs aren't a virus, they're lice."
"How come you know so much about crabs?"
"I paid attention in Health Class. The only class I paid attention."
"People talking to people they've never seen, thinking they're setting up dates with some 23 year-old wannabe model, and it's a 40 year-old Trekkie in his mom's basement."
"Speaking from experience?"
"No! Like I said, this is why I don't use it."
"It's not just porn and all that other stuff you think it is," Fawkes tried to explain. "It's the most accessible, easy to use source of information."
"If Bobby Hobbes needs information, he has his sources."
Darien sighed, then his expression got wily, like he just had a clever thought. "You know, they're saying terrorists are starting to use social networking sites to communicate. Wouldn't it be good for you to know how too infiltrate things like that?"
Damn him. Damn him for knowing how to push his buttons. Bobby shifted his feet and tilted his head to one side, considering. That smug smile on Fawkes' face proved he already figured he won. Damn kid. "You may have a point," Hobbes said slowly, reluctant to concede.
Darien smacked him in the arm. "Great! Allow me to be your personal tour guide for the world wide web." He slung an arm around Bobby's shoulders and led him down the hall.
"What, now?"
"Yeah, Claire's hooked-up. I sure she wouldn't mind us using her computer for educational purposes."
"Yeah, but doesn't she keep her computer locked?"
"For a smart lady, she hasn't considered the possibility that someone could be standing invisibly over her shoulder while she's typing in her password."
"You're a bad man Fawkes," Bobby admonished as he watched Darien swipe his card to enter the Keeper's lab.
Darien poked his head in and called out "Claire? Claaaaaaiiire." He ended with a sing-song version. "I thinks she's gone home. Saddle up!" He pulled out the rolling chair from the desk and turned it towards Bobby."
"The Keep's computer? I just don't think we should be poking around on that-"
"Oh come on. It's not like we're going to be digging through her important or personal files. We just want to get connected. You will be the one in control of the mouse, so as long as you don't get curious, we have nothing to be afraid of." Darien held the mouse up and waved it invitingly.
Bobby hesitated, thinking of the varying ways Claire probably knew to emasculate him and his partner should she catch them. But then Darien was all excited and eager, looking like a happy, hyper puppy, and it was very hard to resist. "Okay."
Darien grinned. He settled himself in another chair and turned on the computer. While they waited for it to boot, Bobby could not stop looking over his shoulder.
"Will you relax? She is not going to show up." But after a couple of minutes of still waiting for the Operating System to kick in, Darien was getting a little edgy, too. "Come on, stupid, slow piece of-" He made to kick it, but then the log-in screen finally appeared. "Oh! Here we go." Darien typed in Claire's password, and they were in.
"Okay, lesson one: double click on that icon."
"Which icon?"
"That icon, the one I'm pointing at, the one that says 'intenet' underneath it?"
Bobby grumbled and did what he was told. Another log-in screen popped up.
"See, her homepage is her work e-mail. We're all suppose to be using it. I'm going to make Eberts tell me what your address and default password is."
"You're not getting my password!"
"I'm getting your password and making you swallow it, and forcing you to get your account activated."
"Geeze, what's with the aggressive e-mail defending here? Seems like I'm getting along fine without it."
"I just refuse to have a partner that isn't in the 21st century."
"Hey, Bobby Hobbes is in the 21st century, my friend. Just because I don't use e-mail and walk around like a brainless moron with an iPod doesn't mean I'm not in-tune with this technological age we live in."
"Whatever. Just click on the address bar."
"The what now?"
"The address bar, here, the thing I'm pointing at!"
"Don't get angry, this was your idea, remember?"
"There, now it's all blue so you can just delete that out and type in a URL."
"I know what a select-all looks like and how to use backspace, jack-ass."
"I'm sorry if I ever doubted that you had any sort of computer comprehension given how well you've done so far."
Darien's sarcasm was more biting then normal. Bobby was really regretting agreeing to this if it was just going to be Fawkes losing his patience over something Hobbes wasn't really all that interested in anyway. Not to mention, it was just one more thing to make Fawkes think he was smarter than Bobby. "Uhm, what's a URL?"
"The address. You know, all those .com and .net and .org you see on TV ads."
"Okay. But what does URL stand for then?"
Darien paused, stared at the wall for a moment then looked at him. "I don't know."
Bobby smirked. "Guess you don't know everything. Probably stands for 'Unrelated to Real Life.'"
"Just type in 'google.com.' and press enter."
Bobby did so and was presented with an unexciting white screen with multicolor letters spelling out the site's name. "Ooh, very impressive."
"This is what's called a search engine. In that little box here," Darien pointed to the rectangle in the center of the screen, "type anything you want."
"Like what?"
"Anything you want to know about."
"Like what?"
"Bobby!" Fawkes' curtness was coming back. "Just think of something you're interested in and type it in. It can be anything."
Bobby stared at the little blinking cursor. He was honestly drawing a blank. He couldn't be forced into wanting to look something up. At the moment there wasn't a damned thing he felt like he needed to know more about. "What do you normally look at?"
Darien sighed like a disappointed teacher. "Okay, why don't you just type in 'LOLcats."'
"What was that, something about cats?"
"L-O-L cats. Trust me, just type it in."
"Fine."
"Now, we're at your results pages. As you can see, there are a lot of websites and information about LOLcats."
"But what is it?"
"Click on that first link, buddy, and find out."
"...I'm looking at pictures of cats."
"Yup!" Darien was smiling now.
"With words on them...at least I think they're words. Either it's code or I just had a stroke and lost the ability to understand writing."
"It's lolspeak: a combination of Engrish, common web anagrams, and purposeful misspelling. You'll see a lot of this sort of thing online, so I thought it'd be the quickest way to introduce you to it. Plus, we can look at funny pictures of cats!"
So that was Internet 101 for Bobby Hobbes. After a while he did get the hang of those weird captions and could laugh along with Fawkes at those stupid cats. He still didn't get the whole cheeseburger thing. Since when did cats ever have interest in cheeseburgers? Has anyone actually seen a cat willfully eat one? And yet for some reason these people who had the time to just watch their cats, take photos of them, and post said photos to the web with captions seemed to think so.
The next day a very perturbed Claire asked them why her History folder was filled with websites about cats and discount hair products.
The Keeper changed her password, and even told Eberts about their non-work related internet use. So basically every computer in the agency became blocked for them. And since neither Darien nor Bobby had internet at home, they ended up at the public library. That didn't last long, either.
Darien had moved the curriculum from LOL Cats to humorous blogs. Their giggling and constant low conversation drew the attention of the librarians. A particularly frumpy librarian in a floral print blouse came over to their station and told them they would have to leave.
Simultaneously, they whipped out their badges saying, "federal agents."
She frowned and tilted her head to get a better look at their screen. "Shouldn't you have internet at your office?"
"It's down."
"Yeah, down."
"This doesn't look like a federal investigation to me."She raised an eyebrow at the one of the strange photo manips on Something Awful.
Bobby leaned close to her and spoke in low, conspiratorial tones. "Ma'am, we understand and appreciate you're doing your job. All we want to do is ours. We're working on something rather sensitive. Very hush-hush, you know." He winked at her.
The librarian, Rhoda, Bobby noticed on her name tag, crossed her arms. "You haven't been very 'hush-hush' so far. And if you're here investigating one of our patrons, I'm going have to see some kind of court order before you can expect cooperation from the staff here." She then muttered something angry under her breath that sounded like something about "Patriot Act."
"Maybe we should just go," Darien said.
"All right," Bobby conceded, never taking his eyes off Rhoda. "But we will meet again, my friend." he added as Darien pulled him away.
So, Darien finally bought a PC for himself. Wasn't like Bobby was going to get one, not at those prices. And a whole new monthly bill for the internet connection? Forget that. Besides, Hobbes wasn't entirely convinced yet that there wasn't someone watching him in the middle of the night through those internet wires...
Now all their time-wasting needs were fulfilled. Hobbes did like having something to use for quick research when someone said something he didn't understand. Like certain words the Keeper would use, or some nerdy technical thing Eberts would smugly mention, knowing full well Hobbes didn't have the first clue what he was talking about. The downside was, of course, that having all that information at his fingertips wasn't always a good thing. And it was, like most things, because of Darien.
They were just hanging out at Fawkes' one Saturday, watching cartoons. It was a Bugs Bunny one. Bugs did his usual routine of dressing up like a sexy lady and putting the moves on Elmer Fudd. Darien had sighed as Bugs planted a big kiss on Elmer's lips. "And thus, hundreds of Furries were born."
"A hundred what?"
Darien just shook his head. "I'm not going to explain it to you, man. Just look it up on the internet sometime."
He had. And wished he hadn't.
"You're my partner, and I trusted you. You betrayed that trust by not warning me before I looked that up," he said, bring himself back to the present situation of Darien's wiry limbs keeping him in a tangled grip. "That right there is exactly why I believe in Need-To-Know. I didn't need to know about people dressing up like animals and doing that. And I have a feeling I don't need to know about this 'tentacle porn' of which you speak. What I do Need-to-Know is how you know about it."
He felt Darien shrug. "Knew a guy who watched a lot of anime. So you know, pretty young girls, short skirts, evil alien monsters with tentacles..."
"Okay! Okay! I said I didn't want to know!" He finally wrested himself from Darien's arms and legs and shifted away from his partner.
"You're the one who was talking about having sex with an octopus."
"I was not!" He sat up now and glared down at Darien who was smiling at him cheekily. "I was simply using a metaphor."
"Simile. You used 'like sleeping with an octopus.' Simile."
"Whatever. Just stop talking about tentacle porn!"
Darien shut his mouth and looked up innocently and a little pleadingly. With a sigh, Bobby slid back down under the covers. Darien immediately made a grab for him with all four limbs. "Let's make our own kind of tentacle porn, then!"