Work Text:
Yech
“What is it?”
“Something's just skittered over my neck.”
“One of Hatch’s last prisoners, perhaps?”
“Don’t be ridiculous – there’s no getting around the law of conservation of mass.”
“That’s where you take issue with his plan – the conservation of mass?”
“Clearly – a human being must be at least two-thousand times more massive than even a large insect. Now, if he’d said his serum would transform us into three-thousand-odd cockroaches, possibly I would be concerned.”
“What about one giant cockroach a piece?”
“I confess that thought hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Mmm. I wish it hadn’t come to me either. Yuck”
“Are you, ah, feeling anything, yet?”
“A bit stiff, but I suppose that’s to be expected. You?”
“No, nothing… You don’t think the serum will actually work, do you?”
“Ha, of course not. Really…”
“I didn’t say I thought it would. I’m sure Hatch is just trying to frighten us – get us to crack.”
“Or he’s utterly mad.”
“Fair point. Too much Kafka.”
“Pfff, if he’s read Kafka, which I doubt, he’s misunderstood him completely. It’s not meant to be literal – Samsa’s condition is merely an embodied externalization of his alienation – a symbol of a social transformation that has already taken place.”
“Well, you know that, and I know that, but I’ve never known Thrush to advance their mad scientists on the strengths of their literary analysis skills.”
“Perhaps it would serve them well to do so – he’s not much of a scientist at any rate.”
“You say that now, partner, but just wait until you feel the antennae coming in.”
“So, what would you do?”
“What would I do, what?”
“If you thought you actually were going to become an enormous bug by the morning?”
“You mean, if I wasn’t already spending the night chained to the floor in an abandoned quarry, waiting for either the back-up team to finally triangulate our location or for an entomologically-obsessed maniac to return and dispose of us?”
“Right, imagine that for one night the world is your oyster, but you know the next day you’re going to wake up as a big old beetle or something.”
“Which one? John, Paul, George, or Ringo?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, if I recall correctly, poor Gregor had to live on rotting table scraps, so I suppose I’d want to have a really good meal before the night was through.”
“No different from any other day then. It’s not a bad idea though – we’ll (I imagine we’ll want to stick together, of course) –”
“Naturally.”
“—we’ll start at Delmonico’s, and then have a night on the town, dressed to the nines -- I don’t imagine they can tailor a dinner jacket for an insect.”
“The wings would present something of a challenge.”
“And then we’ll go back home, and undress, and love every part of each other. Your skin on mine, one last time before our exoskeletons grow up over everything. That way, I’ll always remember your touch.”
“Very romantic, but knowing you, you’ll figure out something to keep us occupied after, carapaces and all. Some insects have very interesting sexual behaviors, you know. Male cockroaches produce a ‘nuptial gift’ for their mates to lap up off of their bodies.”
“Yuck.”
"What is that American saying? 'Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.'"
"If we're both wrong and the serum does work... you've got yourself a deal."