seriousfic

Title: Ten Things I Hate About Darkseid 3/?
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Kon/Knockout, Scott/Barda
Word Count: 1,706
Summary: Alright, so they found Barda a boyfriend. Now they just have to get them together. How hard can that be?

Kon was sitting on the shoreline of the Deader Sea (which was so much deader than the Dead Sea that it made Kon appreciate how alive Earth-water was), sharing a bag of fish and chips with Knockout. She was, in her extremely aggressive and bloodthirsty manner, rubbing against the side of his body. Having her lean on him had the effect of making Kon brace himself against the ground to stay seated.

“So, Scott Free?” Kon said. “Let me guess, he escapes a lot.”

“A lot. Never succeeds, though. He always just gets captured and tortured… I don’t know why he bothers.” She looked at Kon for a moment before stealing one of his chips. “Okay, maybe…”

Kon half-smiled. “Why’d they even name him Scott Free? That’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, ain’t it?”

“Why’d they call me Knockout and try to induce me into the Pleasure Corps?”

Kon looked at her with a friendly twitch in his eyebrow. “You, a harem girl?”

Knockout planted a hand on her hip. “Some men find me quite attractive, you know.”

Kon grabbed her hand off her hip and pulled it up and around so that she was draped over him. They fell to the ground, Knockout on top. Kon popped a chip into her mouth.

“Maybe it’s a passive aggression thing. Reverse psychology. You know, like when Bugs Bunny kisses Elmer Fudd?”

“Like this?” Knockout asked, demonstrably.

“…yeah, a little like that. Stop making me find Looney Tunes shorts erotic.”

“Mmmm…” Knockout rubbed at his body. “What’s up, Kon?”

“Stop that! Okay, okay, so where is this Scott Free anyway…” Kon took Knockout’s pawing as an answer. “No, I doubt he’s in my pants.”

“Maybe he’s short.”

***

As it turned out, Scott hung out with the Lowlies, the Hunger Dogs. Apparently he did odd jobs for them when he wasn’t training. By some miracle of finagling, he’d gotten himself assigned to that sector as an Enforcer, only to adopt a very laissez-faire attitude toward getting the work done. As it turned out, the Lowlies met their quota easily when their morale was high and they weren’t being tortured all the time.

In fact, he was so beloved that the Lowlies gave Knockout the runaround trying to get to him, and it wasn’t until Kon started asking very nicely that they got the hint to his location. He was on the roof of one of the buildings where, miraculously, a ray of sunlight had broken through the omnipresent haze of pollution that had turned Apokolips to eternal night.

Scott was leaning back against the roof’s parapet, a homemade brick and mortar job that Scott and his people had added to the Soviet-ugly gray concrete. There was a sheet of paper pressed to his knee by the pen he was wielding as he wrote animatedly, occasionally stopping to scribble in something on what he’d already written.

“Let me handle this,” Kon told Knockout confidently, then he raised a hand in cool greeting. “Sup!”

Scott leapt to attention, brushing the piece of paper out into open space. It fluttered around like a leaf on the wind.

“What’d I say?” Kon asked, but Knockout had already walked past him.

She plucked the paper out of the air. Scott, who’d been rigidly at attention, kept his eyes staring straight ahead. But his quivering betrayed him. Mischievously pacing in front of him, like an older sister torturing a younger brother, Knockout’s eyes scanned the paper. With the speed of a striking cobra, she suddenly held the paper in front of Scott’s eyes. They bulged.

“What’s the meaning of this?!”

“Hey, hey, chill,” Kon said, patting Knockout’s shoulders. He turned it into a rub-down, which seemed to sooth her a little bit, but stopped himself before his hands could sample any more of her smooth skin. Whatever her green tunic was made out of, it felt thinner than any negligee... “Like this: ‘What is the meaning of this?’ See, no exclamation point at the end. Makes all the difference.”

“This!” Knockout said to Kon, waving the sheet of paper at him. “Is a love poem.”

Scott raised a trembling hand to correct her. “It’s about our lord and master, Darkseid.”

Kon read from the paper. “My fingers thrill in the softness of your hair… Darkseid’s bald.”

“Not everywhere.”

All three of them winced.

“Look, we know you’re in love with Barda, man.” Kon folded the paper up and tucked it into Scott’s shirt. “Stop disgusting us and just ‘fess up.”

“Barda? No, uh, ewww,” Scott said unconvincingly, flushing a couple different shades of red and occasionally even sticking out his tongue as if to vomit. “Why would I be in love with her? Her personality is just so cruel. I would much rather have a woman with no personality, and ridiculous breasts, and ankles that couldn’t possibly support her weight and no internal organs.”

“You’re sweating,” Kon pointed out.

Scott broke down, falling on his knees in a uniquely Fourth World paroxysm of angst. “Darkseid’s armpit, it’s true, it’s true! I can’t get her out of my head! My love for her is like this thing growing inside me, sapping my strength and always getting bigger!”

“A parasite?” Kon suggested.

Knockout finger-flicked him hard enough to cast him sideways before he corrected himself like the twitch of a metronome.

“She’s just so… strong,” Scott said admiringly, now pacing franticly. He hopped up onto the parapets, he jumped back down, he did everything short of turning cartwheels. “And yet, at the same time, she’s got this… this sadness in her eyes. Have you ever noticed that?”

“No,” Kon and Knockout said at the same time.

“On the inside, she’s miserable! I want to take her in my arms and comfort her, but at the same time the reason that I’m so attracted to her is 99% of the time she doesn’t need anyone!” He grabbed Kon and shook him. “If I didn’t know how absolutely miserable she was, I would be content with no more than seeing her when our paths cross. Even that… that infinitesimal contact is ecstasy enough for me. She’s that lovely. But then I see this hateful planet wearing on her… oh, did I mention she’s the only person other than me for lightyears that sees this place as the hell that it is, don’t deny it, I hear her crying some nights through the walls… and I would do anything to relieve her agony, just the slightest bit. But I don’t know how, so I write these letters on the tiny chance that I might get through to her and get to prove how much I love her.”

“You can stop shaking me now,” Kon said.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Cheer up, emo Aero-Trooper!” Kon slapped Scott on the back, grinning broadly. “As it so happens, Granny Goodness has said that I can’t date Knockout until Barda is dating… whoever. You, sir, you could be that whoever!”

Scott frowned. “Isn’t that the plot of The Taming of The Shrew?”

“Taming of the whatnow?”

“Taming of the Shrew. It’s a famous work of literature on your planet.”

“No, no, it’s completely different. Taming of the Shrew is about a guy who sees his father’s ghost and has to kill his uncle.”

“I thought that was The Lion King,” Knockout said.

“Look!” Kon said, shouting to be heard over the discussion. “It doesn’t matter, because this time the play isn’t going to end with everyone committing suicide.”

Scott frowned harder. “That was—“

“Zip it, Punky Brewster, we’re trying to get you laid here!” Kon whirled on Knockout. “KO, you’re a woman. What would Scott have to do to get in your pants?”

Knockout looked Scott up and down. “Very little.”

“Hey!”

Scott backed off, shaking his head and waving his hands like a stuffed man who’d just been offered another slice of cake. “Nononononope. If it were just me, maybe, but like I said, I need to make Barda happy. If it weren’t for that, I would content myself with this for the rest of my life.” He held up his right hand.

Kon looked at it. “A furry, twelve-eyed, insectile hell-beast dripping pus?”

Scott screamed, running about and shaking his hand until Knockout grabbed him and pulled the bug off his hand. She spiked it to the ground, then stomped on it, relishing having the chance to finally kill something after two chapters of dialogue and thwarted sexual tension.

“Mosquitoes are getting bigger every year,” Knockout noted as she wiped the green gore off on the ground. “Scott, have you tried being yourself?”

“Actually, yeah…”

“See, there’s your problem. Women don’t want ‘nice guys’ who ‘write love poetry’ and ‘perform cunnilingus’.” Kon pumped his fist in triumph behind Knockout’s back. “Women want aggressive alpha males who are confident and hairy.”

“…I’m hairy,” Scott said, morosely feeling his eyebrows. “When I don’t shave, I mean.”

“Pah. You’re fluffy at best. What you need to do is what happened with Kon and I. Be the man. Just march up to her, tell her how it’s gonna be, strip naked, and start touching in a way that is inappropriate in polite society.”

A memory fluttered to the top of Kon’s mind, blaring insistently. “Wait, that’s what you did to me.”

“Did I ask for your opinion?”

“No, dear.”

“So, what you’re saying…” Scott crossed his arms and paced, now more sedately as if lost in thought. “Is that I have to be dominant.”

“Yes!”

“Posturing.”

“Yes!”

“Arrogant and positively dripping with machismo!”

“YES!”

Scott clapped his hands. “Alright! I’m gonna go find Barda right now and tell her how I feel about her! Thanks, guys, you’re okay in my book!”

“Happy to help,” Kon said, waving him goodbye as he took off on aero-disks. “Oh, hey, weren’t we supposed to use sex pollen?”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine without it.”

***

Scott got back late that night, limping, bruised, and miming a request for water with mute hands. When he got a glass, he poured it over his head. The next, he drank. Then he passed out.

Kon and Knockout looked at him, then at each other.

“So, did he get lucky or not?”