#crassly implied Troyreen

[mauserfrau]

Rough Excerpt of Sampaguita, Chapter 3 - Bordertober

I had someone who clearly needed a full, tagged scene with OC Catter, so here you be!

Here is the story so far.  LSS: Tyreen and Troy have a brief stint as mercs not that long after arriving on Pandora.  NOTE THE TAGS.  Black comedy.  On slow mode for Reasons.  Tyreen PoV.

This excerpt contains Tyreen being gross, a lot of food, drinking, snot, Troy torment and, a really crass joke about the Troyreen in this ‘verse.

Also Catter.  I stinking love Catter.

...I’m not sorry.

Troy sat under a smokey overhang by the kitchen trailer.  Three other people had planted their asses there first, all bumming cigarettes off of each other and sneezing a lot— Biscuits (his biscuitiness accented by lop-mouthed smoking stance), Vincent (tall, dark, handsome and gesturing ashes all over with his silver cigarette holder) and somebody who went by Lotty (more of a human pony bead and spray tan accident).

There was beef jerky.  Sort of.  Not enough of it to justify more than a page of the Exceptional Exotics’ employment contracts.  

Lotty was saying, holding a tin stickered with a happy cowboy up to Troy, “Now, the correct way to eat beef snuff…”

 “Also known as machaca, if you’re feeling fancy,” Vincent interrupted.  

And Troy nodded. 

This pattern repeated: “Is to, well, snuff it.  You put a little on your finger.”

“The middle, if you’re feeling fancy.”

Though Troy’s nod came on the tentative side that time.  Wrinkles showed in the corners of his eyes as he pondered whether he was fancy or not.  

Biscuits leaned in, pressing an encouraging hand to Troy’s back, Troy being too lost in thought to protest more than leaning maybe an inch to the side.  “It’s not like doing cocaine at all.  And you really have to really suck it in…” A wet snort accompanied this assertion. “… from deeeeep in your chest.”

“The trick’s in where you put the back of your tongue.” Lotty said, their voice tilting towards some sort of conclusion.

This being stolen from them by Vincent, “But oh, the joy of meat sinuses.”

“You would say that.”

“You know you love me.”

“I love you like the parched earth loves spilled beer.”

“So, not at all today.  Boo.”

It was at this point Tyreen tossed up the hood of her jacket and stamped across the puddles pissing down through the leaky rain shield.  “Troy!”

Troy having meanwhile swept his middle finger through the shredded jerky and right up to his nostrils.  Deftly, he pressed his thumb to the left side.  The shredded meat disappeared.

Tyreen was too late.  Troy doubled over, sneeze-coughing goopy, brown snot.  “I can taste that in my ears,” he wheezed.

“Really?” remarked Lotty.  “That’s a new one. Are you sure, ‘cause I mean, if you really wanna taste with your ears…” This sentiment unfinished, they lifted both of their hands, beckoning to Vincent and Biscuits.  The two men had already grumblingly taken out actual paper cash, what with the ECHONet still being toast.

And Troy, still hacking.  

Tyreen shooed off Biscuits and beat Troy about the back until he showed some semblance of sense— namely, horking with purpose until he was king of breathing again.  

“If you’re going to squeal to the boss,” Vincent said, sucking on his cigarette, “Get us some more jerky while you’re in there? I don’t want what he sneezed on.”

“On no planet was that a sneeze.  You don’t get it, man!” Troy protested.

“That’s a lie.  Lotty got him twice,” said Biscuits.

Well, that had to be embarrassing for somebody.

Unlike her brother, Tyreen did not stop to ponder and definitely not anything about snorting beef jerky.  “He brought this on himself.  That’s plenty for me.  C’mon.  They opened the beer taps.” One more thwack and she turned her hand around, grabbing Troy by the back of his jacket and hauling.

He pinwheeled half a step in front of her.  “I don’t even like beer and neither do you,” he muttered, then discharged more snot into his hand.

Besides, there was a line for said beer.  Someone had written on the tarp overhanging the taps: Welcome! No names though, just like nobody announced that food was served in some way that didn’t involve anybody’s noses.  At a certain point, Colonel Admusik stepped out of her trailer and made her way to a ktichen trailer window where a plate of something greasy, steaming and flickering oversized bones appeared.  She took her pick of seats at one of the rickety picnic tables, tucked a cloth napkin into her collar and sat down.  Two of the face-tattooed howitzer operators dived to offer her their beers before fighting their way back into line.

Tyreen wouldn’t have said she’d wanted announced, but the company seemed like a place that announced people.  Besides, an excuse to shoot something else would have wrung more laughter out of this crowd, maybe gotten her offered a beer.  Not that she could have drunk said beer.  Anyway, she got the angle now.  There were two ranks here: the colonel and all the other mercs.

So, apparently she and Troy were other mercs now.  Tyreen had not been aware that mercs served short ribs for food.   She was also unclear on exactly what a ‘short rib’ might entail.  Which ribs counted as short? Why not eat the long ribs first since they must contain more delicious meat? Was it absolutely necessary to stop an entire company of mercs in the middle of a downpour to set up a kitchen trailer and make a welcome dinner which was now doomed to get damp while the people who ate it veered into a risk of missing… something.  Whatever the hell job this “gentleperson’s operation” was on or headed for or somewhat towards.  

Tyreen didn’t know about that either.  She also hadn’t bothered to ask.  Closer to the urge worked for her.  She swung up to the window ahead of Troy.  “I heard something about rum rations.”

“Rum and short ribs?” The cookie gave her a squint, but shrugged and ponied up a quarter split with an orange slice and some soda machine ice.  “How many?”

“Ah, yeah, pass on that.  I don’t do bones.” Casting her hand up briefly, she removed herself from the window before facing anymore of an argument.  This dinner was going to suck hard enough without a plate of dead thing under her nose, teasing her with it’s infernal pre-deadedness.  Tyreen’s belly had already started to do the gurgling, twisty thing where the part of her that ate gathered there and tried to peek out of her navel.  At least she had rum and the urge to distract her until nightfall and the Skågåsbord that would bring.  They were still out there.  She could sense them flickering about the hills.

Then of course her brother had to go and acquire an overflowing plate of bones, his mashed potatoes relegated to a mug which he carried balanced on his elbow.  Tyreen got to the table first, cracking open her rum and slugging it right out of the bottle.  Sweet stuff, super dark.  Probably wouldn’t make her retch.  Her orange slice went on her brother’s potatoes once he’d gotten everything onto the table without incident.  He shrugged and ate it anyway, greasy garlic butter and skin and all, smiling at her with the rind pressed over his teeth.

Tyreen glowered at him.  She then flicked his nose and slid back to her drink, twisting it over and over as he chewed and more people got food and the shields leaked and the beer line got loud.  

Idly, she wondered what anybody would do if she gnawed on a bone.  Not that she was going to.  Bones made a fine justification for not eating this thing or that other thing, so no way she would.  She had that urge of her own though, sometimes after sunset and skimming on her tongue.

And Colonel Admusik only carried picnic tables that seated three to a side.  The far one of their table? Still empty when Hypothetical Third Person planted her ass beside Troy.  She made a chirp when she did, as though she had a squeaker in her ass.  

Tyreen peered around Troy.

And the person waved, fork on her lips.  She was smallish, fairish, made-up-ish, wearing a Dahl army coat three sizes too big for her.  Peroxide blond hair dragged in her eyes, themselves the color of moss.  The Terran kind that never accidentally made teeth like the stuff on Nekrotafeyo.

Troy managed to pull himself away from his plate long enough to tilt his head her way and jostle his occupied shoulder at her.  Like— hello, I am eating, other person who had at least ten other places to sit.

This one craned over her own plate and she stared out at him through his magazine cover kind of smile.  Finally, she gestured with one gloved hand, flicking her finger close enough to Troy’s left eye that she got a jolt out of him.  “So, who does your work?” she asked, words somersaulting over each other.  

Troy’s fork froze in mid-air.  “This? Oh, uum a few people.” Rather than look her quite in the face,  or stop eating, he wiggled his hand and dripped gravy.  “They didn’t come out so great the first time.”

“It wasn’t Miss Moju on Rigil 7, was it? ‘cause she’s getting hella sued and if you want in on that, I got the contact stuff for the lawyer on my ECHO.”

“Oh.  No, not her.  I didn’t even think about her.” Troy ended that on half a snort.

One Tyreen could have joined him for.

Except this person acted like she thought he’d laughed.  She tittered back.

And she totally cut Tyreen off, but that was another story.  With titters.

“Really? You must be pretty hardcore.” She held her hand out, slower than she’d talked, her hips wiggling in her seat.  Tyreen could hear her boots swishing under the table besides.  “I didn’t think about her either.  I’m Catter.  Colonel said you were Troy?”

Troy nodded.  He dipped his fork into his potatoes, leaving it there.  He had to twist his whole self sideways to offer her his wrong hand, but his joints were hyperflexible garbage and he only had the one hand to offer anybody, so he managed OK, tilted his head up too, not that he exactly made eye-contact.  “Yes.  It’s nice to meet you.  This is…”

Catter’s head, then her shoulders, tipped to the side.  She looked like she was trying to shed some part of herself, and in fact she kind of did.  The sleeve of her too-big coat nonetheless rode up about an inch on her left wrist.

Glinting geometric swirls poked out.

”Oopsie,” she said, holding her other hand almost to her mouth.

Tyreen made a face.  To cover that, she also stuck her rum in said face.  Smacking off of her bottle, she added, “You did that on purpose.  Just say you’re a fangirl next time, shit.  You think we care?” Anyway, she’d heard whispers in the alleys of the ECHONet, about how “pirate AU fanfiction isn’t valid, you weirdos” and also “my sister’s Siren fangirl for cosplays and it’s kind of fucked up”.

Well, Tyreen knew what fangirl and cosplay (an associated term) meant in the same way she knew what short ribs meant.  The terms raised more questions than answers.  But there was Catter.  Quod erat demonstrandum.  Also, no way this person was a Siren.  She smelled like some kind of plant and not a primeval space magic at all.  

“I thought we were having fun,” said Catter, finally breaking the shake with Troy and pressing a finger to her infernally perfect dimple.  “Is she always so grumpy?”

Troy’s back tensed as he answered, despite the evenness of his tone.  “Are you always so effervescent?”

One of those words earned him a confused blink, and another titter.  “ I…  What? Hee! I should have known you were different.  A guy with Siren ink.  That’s just so… I’m sorry.  I’ve never actually seen one! Or a Siren.  But I’m gonna fix that.” Catter turned a look of determination, first to the sky, and then to Troy.

“Ah, me neither.  And now you have.”

“So! So! I drew mine myself and I got a whole set, see?” Her coat went onto the table.  Two other mercs steered away, off to less occupied shores.  Underneath, she wore a sleeveless collar top and no bra.  Tyreen wasn’t wearing a bra either, so whatever on that, but the loopy tattoo business liberally slathered onto Catter’s person proved to be the single most gruesome shade of magenta that Tyreen had ever seen.  Like exploded printer magenta.

“And I see you like pink,” Troy offered, congenially.

Catter wiggled and drew closer once more.  She still did not touch, but her eyes traced over Troy’s own markings with a precision.  “Did you draw yours too? I know some places that’s a thing, but some other places you let your artist do…”

“I drew them,” said Tyreen.

A sound of distress followed.  “You didn’t give him a whole set?”

“Like you said.  He’s a guy.  Maybe he doesn’t get a whole set.  Maybe he has to earn them.”

“Wow, you two have like LORE worked out? Are you on SirenSona.net?”

“We like to keep it to ourselves.  It’s, umm our stuff,” Troy said, attempting to turn away, hand in his hair this time.

“Oh, am I intruding?  I’m sorry it’s just I love your eye mark and she…” Catter’s hand once more intruded, but this time she at least had the sense to apply to to her fork after she thought better.  It was with her off-hand that she gestured between her table mates.  “Actually, what are you two?”

Tyreen snorted.

And Troy said: “Oh, we’re cousins.” His grin flashed even in the corner of his silhouette.  He tried just that hard.  

So no wonder Tyreen had to fish him the rest of the way out of the proverbial ditch.  “And we’re married.” 

“What?” Catter’s eyes were now the size of SAT-V hubcaps.  “Really? That’s wild.” 

“Cousins are made for cousins, that’s what they said back at the old commune,” Troy laughed.  Wow, he almost sounded convincing.  

To Catter, anyway.  “So you like grew up together?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you do it?”

“Yes, Catter,” snergled Tyreen.  “That’s part of being married.  Do you wanna come mop up our bed tonight when we get done doing it?” She layered on the sincerity, as if plying for her personal dinner.  This had gotten old about five absurdities ago.

“Nooo.” As for how much no, Catter pressed one (still-gloved) finger to her lips.  “But anytime you wanna fanperson, we can do that.  Like you’re part of the team now and I want you to feel welcome and I’ve got that limited edition gravure with the Lilith buttshot.  The one where.  You know.  You can see.”

Tyreen and her brother both nodded, though Tyreen could only imagine what was on display.  If she’d had a human appetite, this might have been detrimental to it.

[Catter actually exists as an explanation for why the twins were managed to run around without covering their markings for APPARENT YEARS.  She is not a criticism of any Siren OC.  I love and feed Siren OCs ficlets.]