Author's Notes: Turtle!fic written for Zabira. Entirely possibly not at all what she was expecting when she requested it.

Story Notes: F/K UST.

First there is the large-bright-box, and it has others in it. The food is always the same and sometimes never quite enough. Turtle (for turtles do not see the need for names for themselves. They know who they are, and that is enough) is not precisely content.

Second is the smaller box. It isn't as bright, so Turtle can see out of the hard-clear-cold walls, and sees that the small-bright-box is inside a much-larger-dim-box, and in this box lives Stompy.

Stompy makes the floor (in both his box and the bright-box) judder and vibrate. After a month or so, Turtle realises that the vibrations reveal a lot about Stompy. Most of the time, Stompy is loud, irregular and accompanied by noise from one of the many strange things that he has inside his box (Turtle has his rock and his piece of not-tree and that is more than enough) and Turtle learns that this is anger, vibrant and distracting.

Sometimes Stompy moves around the strange things in his box, shoving them back against the walls. Then the vibrations are rhythmic and measured and they start out fast and still angry, but will always slow down and melt away into something approaching forgetfulness.

Sometimes (scary times), Stompy will make no vibrations in the ground at all. He will sit on his not-rock, drink his not-water, and stare at nothing much at all.

One day, not long after the no-vibration days begin to outnumber everything else (even the frequency with which both Turtle and Stompy have food), a strange person comes into the much-larger-dim-box. This man is quiet and steady and his movements speaks to something deep, deep, deep in Turtle's insides so that he hides under his not-tree and watches this new man with caution.

After that first visit, Quiet begins to visit more often, to spend more and more time with Stompy. Turtle is almost used to the presence of Quiet. Then he turns up one day with Furry Monster.

Furry Monster is loud, self involved, obsessed with food (and Turtle is still not entirely sure that he is not counted in this category), and insists on referring to Turtle as a mobile rock.

Turtle really does not like Furry Monster.

Quiet (and Furry Monster, unfortunately) very quickly become like the strange things that Stompy feels compelled to fill his box with: they are almost always there, almost always in the same places. Turtle also suspects that it's the influence of Quiet that has made Stompy start talking to him.

It starts off innocuously enough, with a mocking honey, I'm home! whenever Stompy clatters into his box without the company of Quiet, but it quickly devolves into something that fills the silence where the angry-vibrations and the not-vibrations used to be. Stompy starts talking at Turtle whenever he's had a few bottles of his not-water and the magic-box is on. He says things like how is it possible for the Blackhawks to suck this much? and this isn't hockey, it's fucking kindergarten!

Turtle takes to hiding under his not-tree at the merest flicker from the magic-box.

One evening Stompy pushes his strange things around and starts with the bounce-shuffle-slide that signals a bout of rhythmic vibrations and Turtle is prepared to ignore him in favour of the possibly-tomato in his food bowl. Except that, right in the middle of the first round of bounce-bounce-jump-jab, Stompy says he drives me up the freaking wall sometimes. Turning around on the slippery-sliding gravel of his box with the air of one who has had many months to become accustomed to the vagrancies of Stompy and his vibrations, Turtle fixes Stompy with a myopic look.

I mean, as if that uniform wasn't a target enough, he just stands there and acts like people with machetes are rational. (jab, jab, spin, kick)

Or he'll use electrical cable to Batman it down the side of a building in time to intercept some junked up kid who's just robbed her granny and he'll be utterly convinced that, hey, she's just having a bad day and she's a good kid really. (stamp, stamp, jab, kick, spin)

And the thing is? The thing is that somehow, when he does that, they are and then he tries to explain it away be telling me some story about migratory geese. (kick, slide, kick)

It fucking drives me up the wall. (jab, kick, kick, stamp)

I mean, who wouldn't go crazy around him? (jab, turn, slide)

He talks to his wolf. (stamp, turn, slide)

He's a freak. (turn, slide, turn)

A total freak. (glide, glide, shuffle, turn)

I must be mad. (stillness)

Furry Monster is getting drool and smeared paw prints all over the outside of Turtle's box. Turtle is not impressed. As a result of this excruciating display of poor manners, Turtle has retreated as completely into his shell as he can (the culinary offerings in Stompy's box have improved greatly since the advent of Quiet) and is pretending to be a stone.

Furry Monster does not seem to be getting the hint and insists on warbling on about packs and mating and how indescribably brilliant he is.

Turtle pokes his nose out far enough to give Furry Monster a jaundiced look and breathes a sigh of relief when he disappears off to harass some of Stompy's strange things.

A few days after this, Turtle is distracted from his almost-certainly-lettuce by a strange new set of vibrations, low and even and steady. Outside his small-bright-box, in the space that Stompy has only ever made rhythm alone, he and Quiet are making vibrations together.