Entry tags:
World of Warcraft - Hobart/Greely
Title: Dramatic Revelations
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Characters: Hobart and Greely
Word count: 2,222
Summary: Things Hobart only tells her when they're about to die.
Warnings: None to speak of (cartoon violence, maybe?)
Notes: For![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wallwalker 's prompt at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_promptly . It got slightly out of hand. Slightly.
****
It was supposed to be an ordinary internship, in theory, but it was an internship with Hobart.
It was a few months, tops, after the gnomes did whatever crazy thing they did to Gnomeregan - and really, who names their city after their race? Did humans call their city Humanville? No - that they both got irradiated by a failed prototype of the Grapplehammer Ray. The timing was exactly wrong. A few months earlier, and no one would have known about leper gnomes; a few months later, and people wouldn't be so freaked out about leper gnomes, who in the end mostly seemed to run around being green and creepy. Creepier than usual for gnomes. But they were both stuck in quarantine for a month to see if they'd turn into crazy irradiated lepers, her internship ticking away, both of them bored and getting cabin fever. Hobart would spend most of the day sketching out ideas he couldn't work on, since they weren't in a lab, and then in the evening they'd play cards - actually, they'd play Go Fish, since Hobart zoned out and forgot the rules when it came to any game more complicated, or else he'd cheat shamelessly. Eventually, he started showing her his ideas, because he was bored and talking about them was apparently the next best thing to working on them. And he surprised her by actually listening to her criticisms. Well, sometimes. Or he'd listen to them and then they'd argue - that happened a lot. But at the end of the quarantine, he offered her a permanent job once she finished her degree. She accepted, because she'd gotten pretty attached to some of the ideas they'd talked about, and as crazy bosses go, you could do worse than Hobart. At least he was a genius.
Being an assistant was significantly better than being an intern, though being out of quarantine had something to do with it too. For one thing, she stopped calling him "sir" - okay, she'd stopped that after the first week in the quarantine, but she continued to not call him "sir." In the evenings they could order Pandaren takeout while they sat around discussing the new ideas. She got to boss around her own interns, which was another nice perk.
Hobart had never thought they'd die after they got irradiated, so she didn't learn about one of his more irritating habits until later.
When the gilgoblins went on their rampage, they huddled under a lab table, trying very hard not to be shiny in any way. She clutched a chunk of metal casing from a dismantled Rabid Nut Varmint 5000, more for something to clutch than because it would make a very good bludgeon. It was really too shiny for comfort, but what could you do? "All the ways to get yourself killed in this lab, and none of them convert to weapons," she lamented under her breath.
"I don't believe in weapons," he said. She twisted around to stare at him. "Sure, explosions are nice, but why weaponize them?"
"To defend ourselves from berserk experiments? Maybe? Besides, you've worked on weapons before!"
He waved away her objections. "I worked on weapons for military use, not to wield personally. And berserk experiments shouldn't be a problem in a well-run lab."
She smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. "That is not the same as not believing in weapons!"
"Shiny?" one of the gilgoblins queried, sticking its head under the table. She clubbed it; it withdrew, and after a few moments' hesitation, she tossed the casing after it. The gilgoblin picked it up and scampered off, rubbing its head. Maybe she could club the next one with Hobart, grab him by the ankles and swing him around like a flail.
"Why can they even breathe above water?"
"I thought amphibious sapper teams would be useful..." he said.
"So would something we can use for self-defense!"
When he weaponized the gingerbread men, just before Winter Veil, his weird thing about weaponry came back to haunt them. At least they had spoons and rolling pins this time, and a skillet he'd brought along because apparently he'd never baked cookies before and didn't know how it was done. "If you don't believe in weapons, quit making things that can kill us!"
"When did I say I didn't believe in weapons?"
"The last time we nearly died. Remember? Gilgoblins?"
"I've asked you not to bring that up!" He'd been served papers three days before. In fact, he'd probably started his gingerbread army project to take his mind off it.
"You asked!" She swung the rolling pin into the advancing line of mecha-cookies. It was creepy how appetizing the carnage smelled.
"I didn't think this would actually work!" he protested, throwing a cookie sheet into the general vicinity of their candy-cane artillery.
"Wait, what?" She flinched as a candy cane whizzed by her ear. Behind her, there was a small, peppermint-scented boom as it hit the wall. "Since when have you ever started a project without saying it was going to be revolutionary and--"
"All just empty boasting!" He threw an open sack of flour. Excellent choice, Hobart, she thought. Now none of us can see. "I thought you knew that!"
"Well, I knew it! I didn't know you knew it!"
Of course, when the flour cleared and they were gathering the edible parts of the defeated cookies onto a festive platter for the marketing break room, he acted like he'd never said it. "Another brilliant idea gone down in flames because of lack of funding," he said mournfully, picking gears out of a gingerbread corpse. "If only we'd been able to run more tests, we'd be leaving Smokywood Pastures in the dust."
"This was the first test, Hobart. This was the proof-of-concept phase." She wasn't sure if she ought to point out he could keep working on it if he really wanted. Would they get worse or better with work? She popped an arm into her mouth. "Why did you decide to make the candy canes explosive? We keep losing interns."
"It was that or making them pointy. Explosives are superior, I'm sure you'll agree."
"Well, yeah."
It wasn't even surprising anymore. "I knew I should have warned security about my evil twin!" he howled in despair, when the Jumper Cable X-Treme Double Plus prototype blew up in his face and the vat of experimental Kaja'cola she'd been working on (they were hoping for a triple-idea formulation, but it was tricky) caught fire. "Hogarth always loved to sabotage my ideas!"
"Hogarth?" She was busy wrapping her arm in a lab coat. "Since when do you have an evil twin?"
"Since I was born, Miss Greely, that's how twins work."
"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!" she yelled. Maybe it was the burst of irritation that let her punch through the window glass. She didn't even notice any pain. "Why do you only mention these things when we're about to die?"
He used his cape to help clear the broken glass from the window. "Ladies first."
"Answer the question!"
"Isn't a close call the perfect opportunity for significant revelations?" He laced his hands together to act as a stepstool for her, which just enraged her further.
"Not if you're going to pretend they never happened later!"
"Greely, will you please go? This fire is getting extremely uncomfortable."
It was, but that was not the point. "This is obviously my only opportunity to learn more about Hogarth."
He gave up and scrambled through the window himself. She gave chase - maybe she could get something out of him before the firefighters arrived. She could already hear the splashing of the water elementals. "Hogarth, dammit!"
"He looks just like me, but with a goatee. And evil."
Not even surprising... "And despite the goatee, he fooled security."
"He probably shaved. He's willing to make great sacrifices to foil me."
She might have assumed he was just making it up, the way he seemed to need to do to explain his failures, but later she found a family photo on his desk - a younger Hobart, two middle-aged folks who must be his parents, and sure enough, an identical goblin at his side, with a goatee. She should have realized something was up when "Hobart" had asked how her day was going.
He seemed disheartened after the lab fire. Rather than his usual ambitious ideas, he spent most of his time tinkering with improvements to weapons systems. It was depressing; they were working as hard and as late as ever, but he was so subdued, and they never had any entertaining explosions anymore. Just little, controlled ones. Granted, she preferred the little ones to the ones that nearly killed them, but there was a happy medium Hobart seemed to have a hard time with: big enough to be exciting, small enough not to destroy the lab. It was a relief when he and Twistex launched the raptor project. He was full of ideas again, and the baby raptors were adorable, with eyes too big for their heads and heads too big for their spindly little necks. And then they started talking! Of course, Hobart still had his disasters, like the micro-mechachicken - "I always loved you, Greely!" What the hell? Of course he forgot it immediately - but that just kept things interesting, if annoying. "Always loved her" indeed. He just wanted something dramatic to yell.
And then they hit a real disaster, and Hobart, like usual, fell apart. She packed in the corners of the lab where he wasn't running around screaming, and then, when they were almost ready to go into the Town-in-a-Box, they got the word that corporate was torching HQ. Apparently, they'd noticed how much fun the lab was having and decided to get in on the action, though they claimed it had to do with insurance money. She grabbed a handful of Hobart's cape as he dashed past her, and when he turned around, slapped him. "What was that for?" he demanded.
"To calm you down! Hobart, you need to take your blood pressure medication and then we're going in the Town-in-a-Box, understand?"
"But I'm claustrophobic!"
"Since when?" Ugh, he'd be all literal again. "You never said this before!"
"We never had any plans to be confined to a Town-in-a-Box before!"
"You'll be unconscious. You won't even know you're in there."
"I'll know beforehand."
"Take your medication." She tried to think. Should she just club him unconscious? It wasn't like she had any practice at that, or knew the safe way to do it, but it might be very emotionally gratifying all the same. He actually opened the pill bottle himself, which confirmed what she'd always suspected - he just pretended he didn't know how to get her to do it for him, so he wouldn't have to take entire seconds away from his work. He washed it down with Kaja'cola. HER Kaja'cola she'd just poured over ice.
"Experiment with murloc intelligence like we did with the raptors!" he blurted.
"That'd work. They build structures and there are signs they have language, plus baby murlocs are even cuter than baby raptors!" Don't get sidetracked, Greely, she admonished herself. Letting Hobart run off with a new idea will not get him into the box.
"Do they have murlocs in Azshara?"
"I think so. We'll find out once they deploy the Town-in-a-Box." He just groaned in response. She sighed. Plan B had always been in the back of her mind. "Hobart, close your eyes."
"Why? Are you going to knock me out with a brick?"
"No, I am not going to knock you out with a brick. Or any other blunt objects. Even though it's VERY TEMPTING."
"Fine." He closed his eyes. Quickly, so she wouldn't lose her nerve, she kissed him on the lips. His eyes popped open. "What was that?"
"What do you think?" She was still holding his cape in her left fist, and it was halfway around him. She towed him along after her as she headed for the miniaturizer, and manhandled him into it. "You need a shave, Hobart."
"I'll take care of that right now!" He tried to dive off the miniaturization pad but she shoved him back in. "All right, all right. Who's going to take the box to safety? I won't go in if it's going to burn up."
"You think I would?" She pressed the squawkbox button. "Sassy? We're miniaturizing now, the box should be ready within fifteen minutes."
"Fantastic, great, I'll be right there." Sassy sounded distracted. For some strange reason.
"Close your eyes again, Hobart."
"Why? Are you going to kiss me again?"
"Do you want me to?" She was double-checking the miniaturizer settings, not looking for his reaction. "That way you don't have to watch the miniaturization kick in."
"Greely, you may frequently be worthless as an assistant..."
"Kodo-pucky, Hobart. How many times have I saved your ass?"
"I don't keep track." The settings were perfect. She looked up at him. "If you would have let me finish, I was going to add that you always come through when it counts."
She couldn't help smiling. "Well, thanks, Hobart, even though I know you'll pretend you never said it once we're safe."
****
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Characters: Hobart and Greely
Word count: 2,222
Summary: Things Hobart only tells her when they're about to die.
Warnings: None to speak of (cartoon violence, maybe?)
Notes: For
wallwalker 's prompt at fic_promptly . It got slightly out of hand. Slightly. ****
It was supposed to be an ordinary internship, in theory, but it was an internship with Hobart.
It was a few months, tops, after the gnomes did whatever crazy thing they did to Gnomeregan - and really, who names their city after their race? Did humans call their city Humanville? No - that they both got irradiated by a failed prototype of the Grapplehammer Ray. The timing was exactly wrong. A few months earlier, and no one would have known about leper gnomes; a few months later, and people wouldn't be so freaked out about leper gnomes, who in the end mostly seemed to run around being green and creepy. Creepier than usual for gnomes. But they were both stuck in quarantine for a month to see if they'd turn into crazy irradiated lepers, her internship ticking away, both of them bored and getting cabin fever. Hobart would spend most of the day sketching out ideas he couldn't work on, since they weren't in a lab, and then in the evening they'd play cards - actually, they'd play Go Fish, since Hobart zoned out and forgot the rules when it came to any game more complicated, or else he'd cheat shamelessly. Eventually, he started showing her his ideas, because he was bored and talking about them was apparently the next best thing to working on them. And he surprised her by actually listening to her criticisms. Well, sometimes. Or he'd listen to them and then they'd argue - that happened a lot. But at the end of the quarantine, he offered her a permanent job once she finished her degree. She accepted, because she'd gotten pretty attached to some of the ideas they'd talked about, and as crazy bosses go, you could do worse than Hobart. At least he was a genius.
Being an assistant was significantly better than being an intern, though being out of quarantine had something to do with it too. For one thing, she stopped calling him "sir" - okay, she'd stopped that after the first week in the quarantine, but she continued to not call him "sir." In the evenings they could order Pandaren takeout while they sat around discussing the new ideas. She got to boss around her own interns, which was another nice perk.
Hobart had never thought they'd die after they got irradiated, so she didn't learn about one of his more irritating habits until later.
When the gilgoblins went on their rampage, they huddled under a lab table, trying very hard not to be shiny in any way. She clutched a chunk of metal casing from a dismantled Rabid Nut Varmint 5000, more for something to clutch than because it would make a very good bludgeon. It was really too shiny for comfort, but what could you do? "All the ways to get yourself killed in this lab, and none of them convert to weapons," she lamented under her breath.
"I don't believe in weapons," he said. She twisted around to stare at him. "Sure, explosions are nice, but why weaponize them?"
"To defend ourselves from berserk experiments? Maybe? Besides, you've worked on weapons before!"
He waved away her objections. "I worked on weapons for military use, not to wield personally. And berserk experiments shouldn't be a problem in a well-run lab."
She smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. "That is not the same as not believing in weapons!"
"Shiny?" one of the gilgoblins queried, sticking its head under the table. She clubbed it; it withdrew, and after a few moments' hesitation, she tossed the casing after it. The gilgoblin picked it up and scampered off, rubbing its head. Maybe she could club the next one with Hobart, grab him by the ankles and swing him around like a flail.
"Why can they even breathe above water?"
"I thought amphibious sapper teams would be useful..." he said.
"So would something we can use for self-defense!"
When he weaponized the gingerbread men, just before Winter Veil, his weird thing about weaponry came back to haunt them. At least they had spoons and rolling pins this time, and a skillet he'd brought along because apparently he'd never baked cookies before and didn't know how it was done. "If you don't believe in weapons, quit making things that can kill us!"
"When did I say I didn't believe in weapons?"
"The last time we nearly died. Remember? Gilgoblins?"
"I've asked you not to bring that up!" He'd been served papers three days before. In fact, he'd probably started his gingerbread army project to take his mind off it.
"You asked!" She swung the rolling pin into the advancing line of mecha-cookies. It was creepy how appetizing the carnage smelled.
"I didn't think this would actually work!" he protested, throwing a cookie sheet into the general vicinity of their candy-cane artillery.
"Wait, what?" She flinched as a candy cane whizzed by her ear. Behind her, there was a small, peppermint-scented boom as it hit the wall. "Since when have you ever started a project without saying it was going to be revolutionary and--"
"All just empty boasting!" He threw an open sack of flour. Excellent choice, Hobart, she thought. Now none of us can see. "I thought you knew that!"
"Well, I knew it! I didn't know you knew it!"
Of course, when the flour cleared and they were gathering the edible parts of the defeated cookies onto a festive platter for the marketing break room, he acted like he'd never said it. "Another brilliant idea gone down in flames because of lack of funding," he said mournfully, picking gears out of a gingerbread corpse. "If only we'd been able to run more tests, we'd be leaving Smokywood Pastures in the dust."
"This was the first test, Hobart. This was the proof-of-concept phase." She wasn't sure if she ought to point out he could keep working on it if he really wanted. Would they get worse or better with work? She popped an arm into her mouth. "Why did you decide to make the candy canes explosive? We keep losing interns."
"It was that or making them pointy. Explosives are superior, I'm sure you'll agree."
"Well, yeah."
It wasn't even surprising anymore. "I knew I should have warned security about my evil twin!" he howled in despair, when the Jumper Cable X-Treme Double Plus prototype blew up in his face and the vat of experimental Kaja'cola she'd been working on (they were hoping for a triple-idea formulation, but it was tricky) caught fire. "Hogarth always loved to sabotage my ideas!"
"Hogarth?" She was busy wrapping her arm in a lab coat. "Since when do you have an evil twin?"
"Since I was born, Miss Greely, that's how twins work."
"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!" she yelled. Maybe it was the burst of irritation that let her punch through the window glass. She didn't even notice any pain. "Why do you only mention these things when we're about to die?"
He used his cape to help clear the broken glass from the window. "Ladies first."
"Answer the question!"
"Isn't a close call the perfect opportunity for significant revelations?" He laced his hands together to act as a stepstool for her, which just enraged her further.
"Not if you're going to pretend they never happened later!"
"Greely, will you please go? This fire is getting extremely uncomfortable."
It was, but that was not the point. "This is obviously my only opportunity to learn more about Hogarth."
He gave up and scrambled through the window himself. She gave chase - maybe she could get something out of him before the firefighters arrived. She could already hear the splashing of the water elementals. "Hogarth, dammit!"
"He looks just like me, but with a goatee. And evil."
Not even surprising... "And despite the goatee, he fooled security."
"He probably shaved. He's willing to make great sacrifices to foil me."
She might have assumed he was just making it up, the way he seemed to need to do to explain his failures, but later she found a family photo on his desk - a younger Hobart, two middle-aged folks who must be his parents, and sure enough, an identical goblin at his side, with a goatee. She should have realized something was up when "Hobart" had asked how her day was going.
He seemed disheartened after the lab fire. Rather than his usual ambitious ideas, he spent most of his time tinkering with improvements to weapons systems. It was depressing; they were working as hard and as late as ever, but he was so subdued, and they never had any entertaining explosions anymore. Just little, controlled ones. Granted, she preferred the little ones to the ones that nearly killed them, but there was a happy medium Hobart seemed to have a hard time with: big enough to be exciting, small enough not to destroy the lab. It was a relief when he and Twistex launched the raptor project. He was full of ideas again, and the baby raptors were adorable, with eyes too big for their heads and heads too big for their spindly little necks. And then they started talking! Of course, Hobart still had his disasters, like the micro-mechachicken - "I always loved you, Greely!" What the hell? Of course he forgot it immediately - but that just kept things interesting, if annoying. "Always loved her" indeed. He just wanted something dramatic to yell.
And then they hit a real disaster, and Hobart, like usual, fell apart. She packed in the corners of the lab where he wasn't running around screaming, and then, when they were almost ready to go into the Town-in-a-Box, they got the word that corporate was torching HQ. Apparently, they'd noticed how much fun the lab was having and decided to get in on the action, though they claimed it had to do with insurance money. She grabbed a handful of Hobart's cape as he dashed past her, and when he turned around, slapped him. "What was that for?" he demanded.
"To calm you down! Hobart, you need to take your blood pressure medication and then we're going in the Town-in-a-Box, understand?"
"But I'm claustrophobic!"
"Since when?" Ugh, he'd be all literal again. "You never said this before!"
"We never had any plans to be confined to a Town-in-a-Box before!"
"You'll be unconscious. You won't even know you're in there."
"I'll know beforehand."
"Take your medication." She tried to think. Should she just club him unconscious? It wasn't like she had any practice at that, or knew the safe way to do it, but it might be very emotionally gratifying all the same. He actually opened the pill bottle himself, which confirmed what she'd always suspected - he just pretended he didn't know how to get her to do it for him, so he wouldn't have to take entire seconds away from his work. He washed it down with Kaja'cola. HER Kaja'cola she'd just poured over ice.
"Experiment with murloc intelligence like we did with the raptors!" he blurted.
"That'd work. They build structures and there are signs they have language, plus baby murlocs are even cuter than baby raptors!" Don't get sidetracked, Greely, she admonished herself. Letting Hobart run off with a new idea will not get him into the box.
"Do they have murlocs in Azshara?"
"I think so. We'll find out once they deploy the Town-in-a-Box." He just groaned in response. She sighed. Plan B had always been in the back of her mind. "Hobart, close your eyes."
"Why? Are you going to knock me out with a brick?"
"No, I am not going to knock you out with a brick. Or any other blunt objects. Even though it's VERY TEMPTING."
"Fine." He closed his eyes. Quickly, so she wouldn't lose her nerve, she kissed him on the lips. His eyes popped open. "What was that?"
"What do you think?" She was still holding his cape in her left fist, and it was halfway around him. She towed him along after her as she headed for the miniaturizer, and manhandled him into it. "You need a shave, Hobart."
"I'll take care of that right now!" He tried to dive off the miniaturization pad but she shoved him back in. "All right, all right. Who's going to take the box to safety? I won't go in if it's going to burn up."
"You think I would?" She pressed the squawkbox button. "Sassy? We're miniaturizing now, the box should be ready within fifteen minutes."
"Fantastic, great, I'll be right there." Sassy sounded distracted. For some strange reason.
"Close your eyes again, Hobart."
"Why? Are you going to kiss me again?"
"Do you want me to?" She was double-checking the miniaturizer settings, not looking for his reaction. "That way you don't have to watch the miniaturization kick in."
"Greely, you may frequently be worthless as an assistant..."
"Kodo-pucky, Hobart. How many times have I saved your ass?"
"I don't keep track." The settings were perfect. She looked up at him. "If you would have let me finish, I was going to add that you always come through when it counts."
She couldn't help smiling. "Well, thanks, Hobart, even though I know you'll pretend you never said it once we're safe."
****