Dexter Grif (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whyarewehere) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2016-06-26 11:41 pm
whyarewehere) wrote in legionworld2016-06-26 11:41 pm
Entry tags:
Until Morale Improves [Closed]
Who| Grif, Rocket, Judy, Nick
What| Grif gets his ass kicked for being a jerk on the comms, Nick is on camera duty.
Where| A hallway
When| Backdated to before Total Recall plot, but after the comm post.
Warnings/Notes| idk probably nothing
Grif hadn't expected there to be any repercussions for being a jackass on the comms. So far, the space internet had been just as free and meaningless as the regular internet. It was kind of great that way.
He did feel kind of bad about upsetting Judy. Judy was an actual upstanding, decent person. Rabbit. Rabbit person. One of those members of the team that made him feel like an asshole for being here, really. Rocket was a snarly little jackass and he didn't regret riling Rocket up a bit, but despite Grif's insistence that he was proud to be the resident jerk here, he felt the tiniest pang of regret about disappointing Judy.
She'd also planned to beat him up. And that was kind of scary, because someone who was calm about that was much more likely to have a good plan than, say, Rocket and his angry rose bushes.
When Judy had come his way, Grif had bolted the other direction. Speed was great. Speed let you get away with almost anyth-
Something grabbed Grif's ankles and he yelled as he was yanked high into the air, dangling from the corridor ceiling. Thick, thorny vines had grown here in the perfect place to trap him.
Which had to mean Rocket.
"Oh shit."
What| Grif gets his ass kicked for being a jerk on the comms, Nick is on camera duty.
Where| A hallway
When| Backdated to before Total Recall plot, but after the comm post.
Warnings/Notes| idk probably nothing
Grif hadn't expected there to be any repercussions for being a jackass on the comms. So far, the space internet had been just as free and meaningless as the regular internet. It was kind of great that way.
He did feel kind of bad about upsetting Judy. Judy was an actual upstanding, decent person. Rabbit. Rabbit person. One of those members of the team that made him feel like an asshole for being here, really. Rocket was a snarly little jackass and he didn't regret riling Rocket up a bit, but despite Grif's insistence that he was proud to be the resident jerk here, he felt the tiniest pang of regret about disappointing Judy.
She'd also planned to beat him up. And that was kind of scary, because someone who was calm about that was much more likely to have a good plan than, say, Rocket and his angry rose bushes.
When Judy had come his way, Grif had bolted the other direction. Speed was great. Speed let you get away with almost anyth-
Something grabbed Grif's ankles and he yelled as he was yanked high into the air, dangling from the corridor ceiling. Thick, thorny vines had grown here in the perfect place to trap him.
Which had to mean Rocket.
"Oh shit."
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He waved a vine to creep over closer to him, curling up and letting him climb atop it to use as a perch. There, that put him at closer to eye level. Rocket kept grinning as he eyeballed Grif. "You still wanna say I'm just some friggin' florist?"
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Another vine curled around and aimed a swat at Grif's head-not hard enough to do any real damage, but enough to hurt. "Getting any respect for houseplants yet?"
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Grif hated this. He was well and truly stuck. Even though he could still get the speed going, he didn't have the range of movement to build up momentum and break free.
"Ow! Jesus!"
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"Is that what you think calling Nick shifty was? Excuse me if I don't find the prejudice he has to deal with every day funny."
It was extremely entrenched stereotype back home. One which she had, to her shame, let herself believe. And she'd do anything to prevent it taking root here. Even if it meant punching Grif in the face a few times.
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"It was a joke! It's not my fault you guys can't lighten up!"
He was holding to that to the end. They'd tried explaining it to him, tried patience and education because he was a stranger to species problems like that, but Grif still doubled down on refusing to accept their seriousness.
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"You wanna take the first swing?" he asked Judy, his tone conversational. "'Cause he made me want to kick his ass, yeah, but you, you he really got pissed off."
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"I can't wait to rewind this and watch it in slow-mo later."
Aside from recording the goings on, he was carefully watching. One or two light socks to the jaw were one thing, but if Judy or Rocket let their tempers get the best of them, he was planning on stepping in and de-escalating things.
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This was clearly unfair persecution and he did nothing wrong and also ow, ow, fuck you.
"This is cruel and unusual!"
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And then he had the nearest vine curl its end like a fist and swing towards Grif's jaw.
He glanced back towards Nick. "Got a vote? Cruel and-or unusual? I'm not seeing the cruel part here."
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Thing was, at the time that happened, Judy had turned in her badge and Nick hadn't even earned his yet. They'd menaced someone into giving them information, but they hadn't done it as cops.
Now...
Maybe he'd traded in his badge for another symbol while here, but both of them were supposed to mean something. It was easy to forget that, in another world, without his ZPD badge pinned to his chest -- but not impossible to. For a moment, his free hand went to the space where it'd been. Then his eyes flickered over to Judy and he thought about what she said the day that badge had been pinned on his chest.
We all make mistakes. Which means, hey, glass half full, we all have a lot in common. And the more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be.
There was a time he'd have been fine with this, but that time was before he'd become a cop, before he'd met someone that made him want to be better than he was. Right now, the only reason said person had even been tipped over the edge into being angry enough to do this was because she cared about him.
Nick sighed.
"Put him down. As entertaining as this is, and as much as I'm going to relish the replay, we shouldn't be doing this." A pause, as pocketed his omnicom. "Actually, no, leave him dangling, but don't hit him. I wanna say something without him running away, or turning off his comm, or laughing it off."
Judy and Rocket were action. Nick, however, he was a talker.
He walked over to Grif, just out of reach if Grif wanted to take a swing at him. Nick had no desire to take a swing at him himself. Filming it was one thing, but he didn't do fist fights. He'd learned to stuff down the kind of anger that fueled them a long, long time ago.
He'd had to. That was the whole issue here, wasn't it? And he could just laugh things off, and go along with this, and hide that what Grif did bothered him -- really bothered him -- or he could be honest and hope that maybe he could make him understand.
"Do you know why -- unlike these two -- I can't punch you in the face? Do you know why that is?"
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Just one more embarrassment for the pile.
"Because you want to make me feel like an asshole?" he replied to Nick, glaring. He was redfaced from hanging upside down, out of breath, and starting to bruise a bit. But still defiant.
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Nick shook his head at him.
"But I can't get angry at you. I can't get outraged. That's why Judy had to do it for me. Whatever part it is that mammals have that lets them be upset on their own behalf? Mine broke a long, long time ago. See, because I wasn't allowed to be angry. Ever. That's what everyone was expecting me to be. All the time. Because of what I am."
He rolled his eyes skyward.
"That and untrustworthy. 'Shifty.' Everyone loves that word."
Words were what failed him right now, when they rarely ever did. But he also was rarely ever this honest. If it'd just been him Grif had been pushing the buttons of, maybe he never would have. He probably would've just stopped talking to him and done nothing else about it, but he couldn't do nothing when Judy and Rocket were getting disrespected, too. And he couldn't do nothing if Judy was wanting to sympathy maul on his behalf.
And that meant for once -- just for once -- he felt like he was actually allowed to be honest and speak up for himself, too. Directly.
In the end, he decided to rip everything Grif had told him about talking animals in his culture to shreds.
"Grif, we're not cute, little, fuzzy talking animals in some cartoon. We're not at the beck and call of lost human girls singing soprano in the woods. And we're not here to put on a little show to teach human children valuable lessons about honesty and sharing. We're people."
He gestured with both paws to Judy. "Judy is a person who gets called 'cute' to make her feel small and weak."
He gestured to himself. "And I get called 'shifty' because my entire world thinks that's all I can ever be, someone who steals and cheats and lies."
He gestured to Rocket. "And I'm assuming from what Rocket's told me that he gets disrespected in general because otherwise he wouldn't be this pissed at you, and because he's apparently the only one of his species in a universe full of humans --" He gestured to Grif with a flick of his paw and a raise of his eyebrows "--and hey, look at what some humans apparently think is a-okay."
He held out both paws in a beseeching gesture. "So stop. Just stop. Because this isn't stupid, harmless jokes about how ugly we find each other. This is you finding buttons we've had pushed our whole lives and pushing them on purpose even after we've told you not to -- and yes, that means we're at the point where we're ready to start snapping off fingers and hooves. Are we clear?"
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Grif’s eyes rolled up. Well, not up. Floorward. “Did it occur to any of you guys to talk to me? And I mean talk to me, not whatever the hell this is.”
Because this was on another fucking level, as far as he was concerned. He was hanging from the ceiling being hit in the face. What the fuck was this?
“Talking. Just to me. Not in front of anybody else? Maybe in person, even? For like two seconds?”
That was important. It… he couldn’t just tell them why it was important because even he wasn’t sure why it was. But they couldn’t have nailed him to something serious on the comms like that. Not on a public channel. Not where people could see. Not Grif, not in a million years.
“I can’t believe you guys actually believe I think you’re not people.”
He was amazed. Amazed and… kind of hurt, actually. Grif hadn’t realized they’d thought this badly of him. He was an ass, sure. He tried. But it was different, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He’d thought they were playing too.
“Do you even pay any attention around here? I give shit to everybody. It’s what I’m for. Dexter Grif. Team asshole."
It was nothing personal.
"So fine. No more cutesy shifty bullshit. Whatever. But fuck you, and fuck your shitty self-righteous attitude, and if cornering me and beating me up is the only way you can talk to me, then Nick? You guys've got some fucking problems that I can not help you with."
Grif spat at Nick's feet.
He hadn't been mad, before. He hadn't been serious. It had all just been fun silly space internet games.
Not anymore.
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"It's not like you gave us any reason to. We asked, over and over, for you to stop. Not grovel, not apologize, but stop. And you couldn't even be bothered to do that. What guarantee did we have that you'd magically start listening if we talked in person?"
Because, as far as she'd seen, Grif acted the same way on the comms as he did anywhere else.
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He bared his teeth, and as Nick had asked, put Grif down-but having the vines lower somewhat, then suddenly let go around his ankles. It wasn't a long drop, but it was definitely meant to be one last hit.
"There, asshole. You're down. Now show off those speed powers you keep bragging about and beat it."
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But the rest. The rest clearly had him quiet and thoughtful. He pulled out his omnicom and deleted the recording. Aside from potentially getting him, Judy, and Rocket into a world of trouble, it felt wrong for it to exist.
"You--you just --"
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something else, and then his mouth snapped shut and he just waved a paw at Grif in an angry, inarticulate gesture.
"I'm not doing this."
And then he was off. He disappeared with his powers and left because he needed to. Because it was hard to deal with when anger and guilt were vying for equal attention, especially when you weren't used to feeling either so strongly.
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He could've argued with them some more. He was an argumentative sort, it was fun most of the time. But the fun had gone out of this almost immediately, and he just wanted to be left alone.
"I'm done, I've said everything I wanted to say to you guys. Bye."
And he was off and running.