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Jean's house has termites.
They are, as it happens, very polite termites. They stay scrupulously away from load-bearing beams, so that he never has to worry about his roof collapsing onto his head. He does have to replace the non-load-bearing walls occasionally -- and the porch railing, and the interior doors, and the kitchen table -- but they stay away from the bookshelves, so overall he counts it as a win.
The bedbugs are polite enough not to bite. Jean is pretty sure this should not be physiologically possible, but he's learned better than to ask too many questions. The mosquitoes do bite, but they don't bite him, and they're careful about only biting one animal so they don't spread disease.
He didn't have silverfish until he designated a bookshelf to devote entirely to a collection of really, truly terrible books. It features Fifty Shades of Gray and To Train Up A Child and Dianetics and tie-in novels for various franchises. Now he does have silverfish, but only in the one bookshelf, so that's okay.
His favorites are the bees. (The spiders are his sister's favorite, but she doesn't mind that he likes the bees best. Bees are good too.) He has hives and hives of them, and none of them ever sting him, which is good, because if they did they would die and that would be awful. They make more honey than they need, so every so often he gets to go open up one of the hives (he warns them first, politely, so none get squashed by accident) and fish out jars and jars full of honey. He has a pantry full of it, all different colors, shades of gold and brown and pale and even auburn. Sometimes he shares it with the bugs.
The bees need flowers, of course, but he has forty acres all to himself, and when the grasshoppers know to stay away and the worms know to come and thrive, that can grow a lot of plants. He gets monarch butterflies every fall when they migrate, and he stands outside counting them and crying. He doesn't love them quite as much as he loves the bees, but he still loves them, and there's fewer every year.
They miss him, when he's gone, traveling to act or to attend conferences or to do other things, and he misses them. There's bugs everywhere, but his house has so many, and such good ones. His sister sends him all sorts of strange and foreign creatures: dung beetles with carapaces that shine like jewels, long-legged spiders that weave him clothes of strange fabric, African termites that build clay statues at his command.
They're letting him be, right now, so he can focus on his work, but he can still see them moving out of the corner of his eye, and it makes him smile: small winged things darting irregular paths through the air, or heavier bugs scuttling across the floor, going about their business. He never has to be alone.
Jean clicks out of the ninth article on bee depopulation and squints at the screen, tired-eyed. increasing bee population, he googles.
Ten minutes later, after working through a fruitless page of results: getting bees to breed more
After another ten minutes: bee mating
bee sex
what do bees think is sexy
how to seduce a bee
[22:08] wastingdjinni: http://pic.ly/vd/89a301/
(It's an amateur effort, taken with a cellphone camera, one shaking, freckled hand cutting into a pinky finger, sounds of pain and lust. It's a little beautiful, because of what it is, even more because of who it's for, but other than that...)
<3
<3
<3
Somehow, he ends up spending the next few hours hunting down and watching other fan tributes.
An awful lot of videos on particular sharing sites are tagged with zlovesyou and zlovesyou.red and tribute. Some of them are from familiar names.
wastingdjinni is, as far as his channel is concerned, mostly a pair of hands and a red-freckled body. He's very prolific. It's all cellphone video of cuts and burns, getting progressively worse as the time goes on. In that most recent video, there's a leftover blister on his hand that hadn't fully healed. "Please watch."
lollixcabra is a compact latina with a fluorescent undercut, filming shaky handheld camera footage. She jumps from a rooftop and lands hard on one leg, films the unnatural jut of the bone from skin – "this is for you" – the next video is her jarring the break against a doorframe until she screams.
chimeraglo, an unremarkable brunet, has a script for the beginning of each video – "This is an offering. I give it freely and expect nothing back." and so on. He spills blood into a bowl and drinks it, strangles himself to unconsciousness.
deadleaf is pale and beauty-marked, with a round, sweet face. They cut, mostly, nude and blushing, trying their best to look into the camera, and talk about how good it is and how beautiful it makes them feel and how happy he makes them. "Thank you for loving us." "I was so sad before I found you."
There are thousands more.
Some of them are better than others.
Some are very, very good.
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: tribute
my sister doesn't like me breaking her things
![[lung]](https://d1anwqy6ci9o1i.cloudfront.net/users%2F94%2Ficons%2F8e431906-d75d-4cfe-bdd5-25a78ea1a849_4a3afd4679b0367e54528e0ee5f413bf.jpg "[lung]")
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: tribute
nobody needs to tribute
what counts as broken?
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: tribute
that's not what words mean
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: butterfly
send more of those?
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
it's true though
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: butterfly
>:(
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
then why do you call it that
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
tribute
noun
trib·ute | \ ˈtri-(ˌ)byüt , -byət\
Definition of tribute
1a: something given or contributed voluntarily as due or deserved especially : a gift or service showing respect, gratitude, or affection
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
payment made periodically by one state or ruler to another, especially as a sign of dependence
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
i guess if you're looking for a ¿͘͏q̢̡͢ù̕e̴͘e̴̶n͏?̡҉
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
I am NOT
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
what kinda ruler even am i then
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
maybe you can be a queen
but I have a hive
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
yeah i can tell
lucky hive
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
lucky me
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE
guess you can't have more than one?
you're interesting anyway
from: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
to: body@zlovesyou.red
subject: re: TRIBUTE
I don't know
maybe
I've never done this before
from: body@zlovesyou.red
to: clover.anytime@shininghour.com
subject: re: TRIBUTE (don't need to break yourself)
get one good clip? see how it feels
you're like a bug͠ bu͟zzin̨g̀ ̢a̧r̕o͜und̶ ̢in ́th̕ere but you've got the right ¿frequencies?
i bet you'll ¿know it when you see it?
He thinks about it.
He finds himself driving into town, buying a camera and tripod and lights and reflectors and diffusers.
It's a couple of days' work, learning how to do it right, how to set everything up, taking test videos of nothing in particular. But he's going to do it right.
Afterwards, he logs back into the chatroom.
[20:45] foggy: hey beefucker
[20:45] deadleaf: hi hi!
[20:46] lemontired: sup
[20:46] palais: 👋
(Z is online.)
