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shadow_vectorTitle: Figment
Fandoms: House/Transformers
Characters: Dr. Eric Foreman, Bonecrusher
Rating: R for language
Note: For the 'ficathon walks into a bar' challenge on Dreamwidth, prompt: Bonecrusher walks into a bar and meets Eric Foreman. o_O Yeah. My first time writing for the House fandom and I'm probably...counter to fanon there, too. Why break precedent, right?
Dr Foreman looked up from his fifth whiskey at the strange clank-rumble from the door of the shadowy bar. He’d come in here—the rattiest, ugliest place he knew—because he figured it was the last place Remy would look to find him. He just had to get…away. Just for a little bit. Just to get things straight in his own head.
Remy’d joke about this place, with its heavy cloud of smoke and the raspy blues croaking from the jukebox in the corner with only half the neon working, as a Sausage Circus. Except the bartender, but she was, Foreman thought, dourly, the exception that proved the rule. This place was reeking with testosterone and other less flattering male essences. And right now it was exactly what he wanted. To be around men who did not question him, did not even notice him, did not look at him as though he were a lower-albedo’d version of House. House Light. House…dark-skinned.
The noise from the door got louder, the floor beginning to vibrate. Construction? At 1 in the morning? Forema n watched the surface of his whiskey dance, round ripples slamming into each other. Geometric, and chaotic at the same time. At one point, he knew, he’d’ve known the physics to calculate the effect. He could probably still remember it—a few whiskeys ago and a little less over-tired. Right now, all he wanted was the damn noise to stop. The damn rumbling under his fingers, his ass, to stop. Everything, to just…STOP until he sorted it out.
A shadow fell over him—a shadow among shadows in the poorly-lit bar. He looked up. What the…hell?
“You.” A deep voice barreled out of the…whatever the hell that was that made Foreman decided that five was his limit, and maybe even four, just to be safe. It was enormous—almost scraping the decorated tin ceiling—and the eye-hurting color of a schoolbus. And it was…talking. “Human female of irrelevant designation.” The bartender turned from where she had been pretending to wipe down glasses with a towel so dirty it was probably a crime scene, her dreadlocks skimming her shoulders.
“Whatchoo want?” Thick native Philadelphia accent, practically oozing cheesesteak grease. The kind of accent Foreman had spent his life tempering out of his voice as low-class, no-good, do-nothin’ nigger voice. The accent Marcus still had.
“Highest level of ethanol you have,” the monstrosity said. Two things, like enormous hands, clomped down on the battered nickel bar surface.
“Etha—what now?”
“Alcohol,” Foreman said. “He wants the highest proof alcohol you have.” God knows why he was helping. God knows why he was sticking his head into this one. No, not God: he knew. He just couldn’t stand another black person’s ignorance. Had to show his difference. I’m not you. Despite the fact we’re both…here. His mouth tightened at her confused look—she stared at the rack of premium bottles blankly. “Try the tequila,” he added, irritated at himself for his pettishness.
She looked at the yellow thing, ducking down to try to see its face from under the overhang of the glass-rack. “Good enough?”
The thing rumbled, almost like a growl. She took it as assent and slopped some in a glass, straight up, and slapped the coaster down with professional skill, plopping the glass on top of it with a plummet that almost spilled some over the edges. She waited. The yellow thing ducked lower, glaring at her—Foreman could see in profile one thing that looked like a giant red stage light.
“Thanks,” Foreman muttered, yanking a five from his pocket and slapping it on the counter. What the hell. Buying a figment of his drunken imagination a drink wouldn’t be the worst regret he’d ever had in his life. The bartender snatched up the bill. Probably wouldn’t even bring him change, Foreman thought. Typical.
The thing looked at the glass, quizzically, the head tilting in a way that was eerily human. This, Foreman told himself, is how you know it’s a delusion: giant robotic monsters that look like shredded schoolbuses probably wouldn’t have human body language. “This portion size,” the thing said, “is unacceptably inadequate.”
“Pretty powerful stuff,” Foreman replied. “Try it before you decide.”
The face turned toward him, and he could see the red lights—definitely like eyes—in the middle of a squashy looking face. “I don’t take orders from you.”
Yeah, no one does, Foreman thought, bleakly. And when they do, my orders are always less than the almighty House’s. “I paid for that drink.”
“Fine.”
Foreman watched as the huge hands came together, managing to lift the glass to where a mouth would be—if it were a complete drunken figment made up by a guy who was never known for his imagination. Like Foreman.
The thing gurgled. “Well, that was vile. You humans like this?” The red optics on Foreman again.
“You don’t drink it for the taste.”
“Is that swill any better than this swill?” One digit, the yellow paint worn away to reveal a graphite bare metal underneath, pointed at Foreman’s half-full whiskey.
“You tell me.” He pushed the glass over. Vaguely amusing to watch his hallucination drink his alcohol. Kind of Alice in Wonderland-ish.
A strange hissing sound, like the hydraulics of a kneeling bus. “Guess not.”
Foreman’s face split into a not-entirely-voluntary smile. Then curiosity got the better of him—let’s test the limits of his inebriated imagination. Why not? “So, why do you need ethanol?”
The optics narrowed as though he were stupid. “Fuel. Why do you need ethanol.”
“Humans don’t. Technically, it’s poison to our systems.”
The yellow robot’s head swiveled to take in the lumped shapes of the other bar patrons. “Fantastically inefficient.”
Another half-smile. “We’re not an efficient species.”
The thing grunted. Foreman was still vaguely amused, though a little worried that this thing hadn’t disappeared. By now, the hallucination should have passed right? Sure, it wasn’t a pink elephant, but…times had changed. Why not a schoolbus yellow robot? “You have a name?”
“You have a security clearance?” the thing retorted. “Fine,” he said, as if giving in. “Designation is Bonecrusher.”
Foreman had to choke down a laugh. Yeah, this was a product of too much whiskey on an empty stomach, and nothing more. Who know that his childhood love of lucha libre would pop up now? Now that he thought about it, the thing’s face did bear a startling resembance to a luchador’s mask. “So, whose bones do you crush?”
The optics narrowed. “Very funny. How about you: Designation.”
“Foreman.” Screw the other stuff. Didn’t matter right now. He’d feel ridiculous diming his Columbia degree, his top-notch M.D. in his own delusion.
“That’s like an overseer , right? Who do you oversee?”
“Right now? Just me.” Maybe not even that. He didn’t feel very smart right now anyway, damn the degrees. Smarted his way out of two jobs and the best relationship he’d ever had. Trying to game the system. Trying to claw his way up, by hook or by crook. Still ghetto. Still hustlin’. After all he’d done to try to distance himself.
Bonecrusher grunted. “Good enough, that. Sometimes it’s better to only have to worry about yourself. Others just slag you over anyway.”
“Not their fault,” Foreman replied. Making excuses and he knew it. “Everyone’s got to get to the top.”
“Huh. Do they? View any better up there when you get to look down on all the ruin you’ve caused on your way up?”
Whoa. His imagination could not have pulled that dark zen shit out of anywhere. Foreman tilted his head back, studying the thing with new eyes. If it wasn’t his imagination, what was it? Still, he wasn’t giving in. “Better than trying to be all nice and make ‘friends’ who turn on you the moment they see an opportunity.”
“Dead to rights there, human.” The yellow thing—Bonecrusher, he reminded himself—looked wistfully at his empty glass. Foreman rolled his eyes, signalling for the bartender to bring another round. “’Friend’ is just another name for mechs you let slip into range to stab you in the back.”
“So, what? I let this go? I do some sort of mysterious enigma shit? Fuck everyone and fuck my own ambition and just…head down and through?”
“Not sure about your sexual intercourse with everyone—that seems a bit extreme and pointless,” Bonecrusher retorted. Foreman blinked. Oh, the idiom. “Just sayin’. You rise above the crowd, little human, first thing that happens is they’ll try to drag you back down or throw enough slag on you you fall down under your own weight. It’s how it works. No point snivelling about the game, since the only option other than playing it is to invent an actually efficient poison.” The red optics fell eagerly on the glasses the bartender slapped down in front of them.
Foreman slapped a twenty on the nickel bar. “Change, this time,”he muttered to the bartender. He turned back to the robot, his hands curling around the glass. “You going to share your wisdom about what makes life worth living?” he said, wryly.
“Huh,” Bonecrusher said, concentrating his attention on both of his hands as he pinched the glass between them, “Only thing that makes it worth it is proving the bastards wrong.”
Foreman sat back, lifting his whiskey to his lips. He wondered, idly, what Bonecrusher’s advice would be about Remy.
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Date: 2010-03-25 12:37 pm (UTC):)
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Date: 2010-03-25 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 03:55 pm (UTC)I would desperately fear the day that House and Ratchet get into an argument over... hell, anything. That might call for Foreman to go meet Bonecrusher for more drinks to make sense of the world again.
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Date: 2010-03-25 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 06:25 pm (UTC)However, yeah, I could totally see Bonecrusher being Foreman's drinking buddy. :P
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Date: 2010-03-27 12:28 am (UTC)