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Entry tags:
this is just shameless friendship fluff ok i don’t have a title for it
rating: g
word count: 1100
fandom: oc-centric girl genius
summary: don’t let munch fool you with the annoying asshole routine, he is actually the best big brother. set some time into the gg timeskip.
originally posted 11/16/15
======================
vaska’s friends and squadmates have pretty much accepted thomas’s continuing presence in their midst, she thinks. which is good, because the last thing thomas wants is to end up in continued close proximity with her mother, who has been, as far as thomas knows, playing assistant quartermaster to the civilian contingent ever since she tracked thomas down and got “stuck” here too.
it’s also nice because vaska is warm as hell and it’s getting cold lately, which makes the caverns seem damp and draftier than before.
vaska is out right now, though, on patrol or a food raid or something, and probably not due back until sometime tomorrow, which leaves thomas with the entire nest-bed to herself but no heater to cuddle up to, so there’s not really much point to going to bed. if she can just get these power levels to stabilize, then she can finally set up a testing session for the laser core (she can’t set it off inside, of course, but there had been a big commotion about it the last time she’d gone out for testing – and alright, maybe a localized forest fire would give some of their location away a teeny bit, but honestly! it’s for an important cause!). this would all be easier if she had access to any reference materials at all instead of having to make everything up from scratch, but the one other spark in the refugees is some sort of namby artist and has absolutely nothing relevant in his few books.
“hoy,” munch’s loud, slightly grating voice cuts into thomas’s concentration. “iz breakfast time, madgorl, hyu schtill alive?”
thomas blinks at the array of wires and focusing lenses in her hands, totally losing the thread of what she was doing.
“what?” she asks, suddenly feeling entirely stupid with lack of sleep.
munch ambles into the room to survey thomas’s commandeered worktable with a critical yellow eye and hands on his hips.
“vell, hy guess hyu iz, dead gorls dun make dot much mess,” he teases.
“are you trying to make a point about not sleeping?” thomas asks. her fingers are burned, she realizes belatedly, and there’s a dull ache of tension under her scalp and down the back of her neck. she reaches up to take her hair down and gets the tie caught somewhere in the tangles of however she’d haphazardly redone it up during her fugue. it rips a few hairs when she tugs it free anyway, and thomas gives the rest up for a bad job.
munch is grinning at her; thomas glares at him suspiciously. munch is always grinning, even more so than a lot of jӓgers, so she can’t be quite sure what this particular iteration of the expression means.
“iz verra qviet vitout hyu und vaska chitterink et each odder half de night,” munch says, and then, after what thomas is pretty sure is a critical once-over, “come on, den, hy get hyu cleaned op for breakfast und den hyu ken nap or vateffer.”
“i’m twenty-two,” thomas says vaguely, not quite a protest but not entirely uninsulted either.
“ho, yah, sure,” munch says, blandly affable. thomas squints at him.
“fuck you,” she says, just to be sure.
“hyu iz chust de cutest ting,” munch says.
then he picks her up and puts her over his shoulder in a dizzying whirl, which means that thomas has been taking too long with the repartee and not keeping up with munch’s agenda, and she curses herself out a little as they bump down the hall. munch whistles cheerfully over her.
it’s really very impressive, thomas thinks, whistling with teeth like that.
their destination turns out to be their barracks-room, and munch puts thomas back on her feet in another heels-over-head flip that leaves her staggering while he rummages through thomas and vaska's stuff. after four months with them, thomas has accepted the jӓger’s casual disregard for matters of personal privacy in regards to anything less sacred than someone’s weapons.
“ah-ha,” munch says, “here ve go. sit down, sveethot, befur hyu fallz down.”
“what are you even doing,” thomas asks, but she does sit. she hadn’t quite realized that her feet and legs were so tired until she was off them.
“brushink out hyu hair, iz a rats nezt,” munch says. he catches his claws in it gently. “mebbe a couple rats neztz.”
“i’m not sure i want you anywhere near my hair with a brush,” thomas says, reclaiming her hair and shuffling away from munch, a little belatedly alarmed.
“hy iz verra goot vit de brushink, hy haff hyu know!” munch says. he catches thomas easily around the waist with one arm and tugs her back over to where he’s sitting in a tangle of blankets. munch is almost as big as vaska, if not built on quite the same lines of bulk, and thomas submits to being treated like a recalcitrant kitten with the bad grace of a lot of recent experience in this. “hy use to do vaska’s vhen she had et long. hyu iz eazy, hyu haz like half de hair she did, und a lot less tviggy tings.”
thomas is a bit hung up on trying to imagine vaska with hair long enough to call thomas’s waist-length tangles “half” of that. she wonders how fast it grows. she wonders if she can convince vaska to grow it out again. just a bit. just long enough that thomas can see. and then she could cut it off again.
a slight tugging at the back of her head alerts thomas that munch is, in fact, brushing her hair. thomas is not quite sure what to make of this. he’s slow and careful at first, starting at the very tips like someone who does actually know what they’re doing with a hairbrush. he picks up speed into a nice businesslike combing when thomas does not protest a little tugging, until he’s just running the brush smoothly through the length of it over and over, interspersed with his claws sifting over her skull, and thomas is lulled into a sort of unthinking torpor.
“hokay,” munch says all at once, tugging at a handful of hair like a little boy pulling pigtails. thomas twists to throw him a dirty look, which earns her an unrepentant grin and another tug. “hyu iz preety enuff now, if ve hurry dey schtill haff enuff to feed os.”
“ugh,” thomas says in response, reclaiming her hair with both hands from munch’s pulling. “okay, fine, i’m starving.”
“does dot mean hy dun haff to carry hyu dere?”
“i’m twenty-two,” thomas repeats her earlier point, “i don’t need a keeper!”
“yah, sure,” munch says in exactly the same tone he’d used the last time she cited her age, too.
thomas takes his offered hand and lets him pull her to her feet anyway.
she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t more than a little charmed by vaska’s friends trying to take care of her, after all.
.
word count: 1100
fandom: oc-centric girl genius
summary: don’t let munch fool you with the annoying asshole routine, he is actually the best big brother. set some time into the gg timeskip.
originally posted 11/16/15
======================
vaska’s friends and squadmates have pretty much accepted thomas’s continuing presence in their midst, she thinks. which is good, because the last thing thomas wants is to end up in continued close proximity with her mother, who has been, as far as thomas knows, playing assistant quartermaster to the civilian contingent ever since she tracked thomas down and got “stuck” here too.
it’s also nice because vaska is warm as hell and it’s getting cold lately, which makes the caverns seem damp and draftier than before.
vaska is out right now, though, on patrol or a food raid or something, and probably not due back until sometime tomorrow, which leaves thomas with the entire nest-bed to herself but no heater to cuddle up to, so there’s not really much point to going to bed. if she can just get these power levels to stabilize, then she can finally set up a testing session for the laser core (she can’t set it off inside, of course, but there had been a big commotion about it the last time she’d gone out for testing – and alright, maybe a localized forest fire would give some of their location away a teeny bit, but honestly! it’s for an important cause!). this would all be easier if she had access to any reference materials at all instead of having to make everything up from scratch, but the one other spark in the refugees is some sort of namby artist and has absolutely nothing relevant in his few books.
“hoy,” munch’s loud, slightly grating voice cuts into thomas’s concentration. “iz breakfast time, madgorl, hyu schtill alive?”
thomas blinks at the array of wires and focusing lenses in her hands, totally losing the thread of what she was doing.
“what?” she asks, suddenly feeling entirely stupid with lack of sleep.
munch ambles into the room to survey thomas’s commandeered worktable with a critical yellow eye and hands on his hips.
“vell, hy guess hyu iz, dead gorls dun make dot much mess,” he teases.
“are you trying to make a point about not sleeping?” thomas asks. her fingers are burned, she realizes belatedly, and there’s a dull ache of tension under her scalp and down the back of her neck. she reaches up to take her hair down and gets the tie caught somewhere in the tangles of however she’d haphazardly redone it up during her fugue. it rips a few hairs when she tugs it free anyway, and thomas gives the rest up for a bad job.
munch is grinning at her; thomas glares at him suspiciously. munch is always grinning, even more so than a lot of jӓgers, so she can’t be quite sure what this particular iteration of the expression means.
“iz verra qviet vitout hyu und vaska chitterink et each odder half de night,” munch says, and then, after what thomas is pretty sure is a critical once-over, “come on, den, hy get hyu cleaned op for breakfast und den hyu ken nap or vateffer.”
“i’m twenty-two,” thomas says vaguely, not quite a protest but not entirely uninsulted either.
“ho, yah, sure,” munch says, blandly affable. thomas squints at him.
“fuck you,” she says, just to be sure.
“hyu iz chust de cutest ting,” munch says.
then he picks her up and puts her over his shoulder in a dizzying whirl, which means that thomas has been taking too long with the repartee and not keeping up with munch’s agenda, and she curses herself out a little as they bump down the hall. munch whistles cheerfully over her.
it’s really very impressive, thomas thinks, whistling with teeth like that.
their destination turns out to be their barracks-room, and munch puts thomas back on her feet in another heels-over-head flip that leaves her staggering while he rummages through thomas and vaska's stuff. after four months with them, thomas has accepted the jӓger’s casual disregard for matters of personal privacy in regards to anything less sacred than someone’s weapons.
“ah-ha,” munch says, “here ve go. sit down, sveethot, befur hyu fallz down.”
“what are you even doing,” thomas asks, but she does sit. she hadn’t quite realized that her feet and legs were so tired until she was off them.
“brushink out hyu hair, iz a rats nezt,” munch says. he catches his claws in it gently. “mebbe a couple rats neztz.”
“i’m not sure i want you anywhere near my hair with a brush,” thomas says, reclaiming her hair and shuffling away from munch, a little belatedly alarmed.
“hy iz verra goot vit de brushink, hy haff hyu know!” munch says. he catches thomas easily around the waist with one arm and tugs her back over to where he’s sitting in a tangle of blankets. munch is almost as big as vaska, if not built on quite the same lines of bulk, and thomas submits to being treated like a recalcitrant kitten with the bad grace of a lot of recent experience in this. “hy use to do vaska’s vhen she had et long. hyu iz eazy, hyu haz like half de hair she did, und a lot less tviggy tings.”
thomas is a bit hung up on trying to imagine vaska with hair long enough to call thomas’s waist-length tangles “half” of that. she wonders how fast it grows. she wonders if she can convince vaska to grow it out again. just a bit. just long enough that thomas can see. and then she could cut it off again.
a slight tugging at the back of her head alerts thomas that munch is, in fact, brushing her hair. thomas is not quite sure what to make of this. he’s slow and careful at first, starting at the very tips like someone who does actually know what they’re doing with a hairbrush. he picks up speed into a nice businesslike combing when thomas does not protest a little tugging, until he’s just running the brush smoothly through the length of it over and over, interspersed with his claws sifting over her skull, and thomas is lulled into a sort of unthinking torpor.
“hokay,” munch says all at once, tugging at a handful of hair like a little boy pulling pigtails. thomas twists to throw him a dirty look, which earns her an unrepentant grin and another tug. “hyu iz preety enuff now, if ve hurry dey schtill haff enuff to feed os.”
“ugh,” thomas says in response, reclaiming her hair with both hands from munch’s pulling. “okay, fine, i’m starving.”
“does dot mean hy dun haff to carry hyu dere?”
“i’m twenty-two,” thomas repeats her earlier point, “i don’t need a keeper!”
“yah, sure,” munch says in exactly the same tone he’d used the last time she cited her age, too.
thomas takes his offered hand and lets him pull her to her feet anyway.
she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t more than a little charmed by vaska’s friends trying to take care of her, after all.
.