The dummy's plush eye twitches. He's never been so furious at being created into existence. Why couldn't he have been born? Why couldn't he be human?
He shakes his head at himself, and attempts to pull his eyes away from what he's witnessing. He knows that it's intrusive and wrong, but Lil Cal is a very selfish toy.
He wants to watch, since he knows he can never possess what he's seeing.
"Lil cal?" Lemonsnout rasps behind him, her voice hoarse with sleep. She shifts from her position near Charles Duttle, and squints her eyes to see in the dim lighting. "What's going on? Is something wrong?"
Lil Cal shakes his head and gently closes the toy box lid. "No, nothing's wrong. Go back to sleep, Lemonsnout."
She eyes him suspiciously, but a yawn escapes her maw despite herself. "Well… alright. G'night, Lil Cal."
The ventriloquist doll shifts uncomfortably as the platinum blonde returns to slumber. He brings his legs up to his chest and rests his chin on his knees. Lil Cal sighs and closes his eyes; he's trying to keep himself from peeking again.
But as soon as he hears another small, muffled moan, he can't help himself. He stands up on uneven ground and quietly slips out of the pony-painted toy box altogether.
He makes not a sound on the hardwood floor as he weaves around dirty laundry and scattered objects; the usual, considering that this is a teenage boy's room.
Dirk is sixteen; an expert rapper in a futuristic dystopia, and coming into his own. And that includes puberty and hormones and all that it implies.
Sickly fascinated, Lil Cal sneaks up to the foot of Dirk's bed, secretly praying for two things: one, that Dirk doesn't notice him, and two, that Charles Duttle and the others don't wake and find their leader missing.
"Nhh," Dirk murmurs, caught between a sigh and another groan. He's laying on his side, curled in on himself, one hand desperately clutching his pillow beneath his head, and the other moving slowly beneath the sheets. Half of the teen's bottom lip is nestled between his teeth, and his eyes are squeezed shut. And, best of all, there is a dusting of rose blossoming on his freckled cheeks.
Admittedly, Lil Cal has never seen anything more beautiful.
Not a sunrise nor sunset, not a dancing campfire, not a brutal murder; not even uu's artwork.
Only Dirk. His second owner (Lil cal once belonged to uu, given as a gift in exchange for illustrated porn to the Strider), but in Lil Cal's glassy eyes, his one true owner. He's never loved anything or anyone as much as he loves Dirk. Nothing can compare to his feelings for this boy.
It began small; a feeling of being a possession, then a feeling of needing to protect, a loyal feeling, and then a dutiful, blind love sort of feeling. And now…
All Lil Cal wishes in the world is to be Dirk's equal. Someone to cradle the boy at night, someone to cheer the boy up when he's down, someone to kiss the boy to remind him that he's special, and someone to love the boy unconditionally. Forever.
It aches, not having these things. It aches like a chunk of missing stuffing inside the puppet's very being, his very soul. It hurts him to know that all he can do is watch Dirk pleasure himself, knowing that he can never give Dirk the same pleasure with human hands.
Lil Cal closes his eyes and sits still. He can feel the teen's feet thrashing gently beneath the covers, and he can hear the platinum blonde's harsh breathing.
Opening his eyes, Lil Cal dares to inch closer. He's done this before: while Dirk slept, Lil Cal would sneak out of the toy box and touch the boy's face, soft and warm; or he would plant a small kiss on the boy's forehead, chaste and tender. Anything he could do in order to feel closer to his beloved owner.
The puppet is much closer now. The proximity sends electric shivers throughout the surfaces of Lil Cal's vinyl. He brings a hand up to his grinning mouth to silence any noise, and he's careful not to get too close or within sight, in case Dirk opens his eyes.
Dirk rolls over onto his back, panting. His face relaxes for a short moment before his mouth falls open in a silent cry, and his hand ceases movement. He lays still, dizzy and breathless, and his pale lashes flutter open. Lil Cal ducks to lay flat under a wrinkle of bed sheet. Dirk doesn't see him.
Without warning, Dirk gets up and leaves for the bathroom, most likely to clean himself. Lil cal is left alone in Dirk's bed, but the bed is still warm from body heat and friction, and it smells like how Lil Cal imagines bliss should smell: warming, salty like sweat, and of the sea; sunshine and burning buildings and green grass edged with freshly-spilled blood.
Before he misses his chance to do so, the puppet crawls into the center of where Dirk had lain. He wraps his arms around himself and absorbs as much of Dirk's essence as he can: the boy's warmth, the boy's crotchal scent. And when Lil Cal opens his eyes, there is soft rustling outside of Dirk's door.
But there's no time to get back to the toy box.
In a panic, Lil Cal leaps up and runs to the edge of the bed. Except…
Suddenly, he's tripping on a wrinkle of blanket, and falling onto the floor with a loud thud, followed not shortly after by the soft thud of his sneakers.
Hoo hoo, shit, Lil Cal growls mentally, swearing only a recent, silent habit he's been doing due to Dirk's own experimentation with swears. (Even the best of children develop this rotten habit as teenagers, it seems.)
Dirk jumps, startled. "I-is someone there?" he stutters, nervous. "Gcat?" He adds as a last-second thought, wondering if the sound had come from the elusive feline.
But no, it's nothing of the sort. As Dirk closes his door and flicks on the light in one flash just to see what might be out of place, he spots his favourite puppet lying on the floor at the foot of his bed.
Frowning, the boy paces over to the doll and picks it up. He stares into richly azure eyes, painted on, but more soulful-looking than some real people's. "Sup, dude," Dirk says with a wayward smirk. He turns off his light and returns to his bed, Lil Cal in hand. Somehow, it feels good to have the soft plush weighted by vinyl in his hands again. "How'd you get out of the toy box? Did Sawtooth leave you on my bed or something, as a joke?"
Lil Cal inwardly fights to keep his "dumb-doll" composure. He wants so badly to say something, or move a muscle, if only to tell the truth or at least smile a bit wider.
Dirk reclines back on his bed, his spine leaning against the cool wall. He pretends like he hadn't just been touching himself inappropriately moments ago. One of his fingers slides down the smooth length of Lil cal's face. "You know," Dirk admits shyly, "My friends used to tease me. They said that I had a crush on you, since I never did anything without you by my side." He laughs lowly, meekly. "…Maybe they were right."
He carefully sets the toy next to him on the bed. He sighs, and sinks and slides until his head is once again resting on his pillow. The darkness is lifted only by the light of a battle drone leaking in through Dirk's open window. Outside the air is cool and still, and smelling of alien holocaust.
The teen draws up his sheets and glances over at his plush friend. "I'm too tired to put you away tonight, sorry. Hope you don't mind hanging with me again. It's been a while, huh?"
And for a second, the boy thinks he sees Lil Cal nodding slightly. Blinking, the boy looks away. His imagination always did get the best of him at night…
Clearing his throat, Dirk voices some of his thoughts to the doll. He knows that Lil Cal can't (in actuality: won't) answer him, but he feels the need to get some things off his chest. "I think there's something wrong with me, Lil Cal. I… I don't like trolls. I pretend to, for my own sake, but I really don't like them the way I'm supposed to. I don't know, I just find the concept of being with a troll's body… well, disgusting. And at my age, that's not very normal." He snorts. "Hell, some carapaces my age have already had sex! But me? I'm terrified of the idea. I don't want it, and not with some troll." He shudders, and luckily doesn't see the way Lil Cal's gentle smile evolves into a wicked smirk. Dirk sighs. "It's weird, Lil Cal. Puberty and teenagehood and all of it is just plain weird. I wish I could go back to the simplicity of raising myself from infancy."
Lil Cal understands. He truly does. And half of the time, he wishes Dirk could go back, too, if only for the boy to spend more time with the puppet. But Lil Cal also knows that if that happened, his love for Dirk wouldn't be as justified any longer, because at least at age sixteen, the boy is partially grown and Lil Cal doesn't feel half as guilty about his feelings.
Dirk closes his shimmering titian orbs, only to open them back up again seconds later with an outburst of weak laughter. "Actually," he mutters under his breath, "I wish that you were a real person so that I didn't feel insane for speaking to an inanimate object." And he wants to laugh more at the silliness of it all.
Except Dirk's giddy, sleep-deprived feelings are soon shaken off. Because as soon as he speaks those words, a flash of light nearly blinds him in the darkness.
[There are two rules to being a juju: one, that magic is used to bring you to life, and that magic will go out after four hundred and thirteen years, or if you are destroyed. And the second rule… if your owner truly, deeply wishes in their heart for you to be human, that same magic will be spent to transform you. After this point, you will have fifty years to live, no matter how old you were previously.]
The teenager shields his eyes, chilling fear coursing through his veins much like how iced orange soda flows through a straw and bursts in one's mouth. He emits a small cry of surprise, and once he sees the light dim to nothing through his eyelids, he slowly blinks open his bleary eyes.
"What the –" Dirk sputters, feeling a sudden weight next to him in his bed, and body heat against his leg coming from…
Lil Cal blinks rapidly once or twice. He stares down at his hands, takes in a shaky breath with new lungs, and touches a hand to his chest to feel a beating heart. He gasps, and rubs his crystal blue eyes to make sure he isn't dreaming. But no, his larger, more solid form is real, and all of his memories are in tact. "– I'm… human?" he breathes.
Dirk is on the brink of screaming. He bolts out of bed and rushes to the nearest light source: his dresser-top Geromy lamp. "Wh-who…" But he cuts himself off. The person, in the light, is dressed identically to his beloved puppet bro, and is sitting in the same pose in the same place the puppet had been milliseconds ago. "N-no… impossible…" Dirk whispers, shock draining his face of color.
Meanwhile, the puppet himself is also trying to grasp how this is possible. His mind reeling, he can think of only one word: majykk. He blinks and finally turns his sky-hued eyes on Dirk's. "Dirk," his says, and something electric jolts down the teen's spine. The way his voice had just been spoken… it carried too heavy of emotions in it. Love, longing, loneliness, bloodlust. Too much…
Dirk stumbles back against his closet door, staring wide-eyed at the young man in his bed. Very young, surprisingly young; perhaps in his late teens or earliest of twenties, at the most.
The imaginative boy wonders if this is actually happening. But he knows that he hadn't gone to sleep yet, and sometimes, real life is stranger than make-believe.
The platinum blond swallows, attempting to wet his dry throat and mouth. His lips open slowly, and he utters one word, one question: "Lil Cal?"
Startled out of his shock, Lil Cal's mouth falls into an easy smile and his eyelids fall at half-mast. "Yes. It's me, hoo hee." As proof, he draws his right sneaker out from under the covers and crosses it over his other foot, the name DIRK in faded, childish lettering.
Dirk is about to burst with emotion. He begins shaking, and his hands form into fists at his sides to prevent his fingers from quaking. "It's… really you," he says, his facial expression soft. The prickle of tears stings the backs of his eyes, but he resists them. (Damn his unbalanced hormones; boys shouldn't cry!)
Lil Cal stands and slips his hands into his jean pockets. His hat slumps forward to block the view of his eyes as he says brokenly, "You've… grown, Dirk. Before tonight, you seemed to not need any of us any longer." And he jerks one thumb in the toy box's direction.
Everything clicks in Dirk's mind. His puppets know his life. They look after him, even more than he looks after them. They care about him. And things are about to change drastically.
"That's not true," Dirk says between clenched teeth. He glances down at his bare feet, trying not to reveal his conflicting emotions. It just wouldn't be right. "I'll always need you. All of you. But… especially you, Lil Cal." He dares to steal a glance at the has-been puppet. The taller blonde is stun-faced, crimson-cheeked, and gleeful-eyed. The platinum blond returns his gaze to his feet.
Lil cal smiles brightly. He takes a couple steps forward and embraces the younger boy. "I don't know how long this will last," he says, referring to being a carbon-based life form at last, "But no matter what, I'll always be here for you, Dirk. I love you. Hee hoo."
The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them, but Lil Cal doesn't regret them in the least. It's the truth, and he's overjoyed that he can finally say it out loud.
Without hesitation, Dirk pulls away just enough to look up into Lil Cal's face. His golden eyes searching, he reaches up and pushes Lil Cal's hat off of his head, his fingers running through sandy-colored hair. Then, slowly, his eyes shut as his face comes closer, his hand at the back of Lil Cal's head, pulling Lil cal's face down to his level. Their lips meet, and somehow, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to the young teen.
And even more natural: the feeling of skin against skin as shirts fall away and bodies press closer, caressing and believe in the realness of it all in between little licks and kisses that should have never been, and yet are.