Work Text:
1
“Oh Puckman! Oh Puckman! Your name is Puckman! Forever Puckman!”
The stage lights of the Chapel + Cultural Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic blinded Puckman from the three audience members spread out among the rows of plastic chairs on the concrete floor. The performers around him swayed airily to the music.
Well, ‘music’ would be a stretch. Without any instruments whatsoever, the song sounded more like denominational incantations to bring about a dark magic curse.
All he could make sense of was his name being repeated over and over and over again.
“I want you Puckman. Your name is Puckman. Please fuck me Puckman. Oh Puckman.”
But these people… all they knew of him was his name, favorite color, some made-up major. Engineering. The only engineering Puckman knew how to do was to create his flimsy public façade. No one would serenade him outside of this insignificant evening in this little room. No one would ever love him, not with his appearance. No one would ever know the man behind the Puck.
The dim stained glass behind spotlights drew his attention. It was night outside, and even in a temple of the holy, Puckman felt alone. Even beneath a ring of light, all Puckman could feel was the void of darkness within.
“Oh Puckmannnnnn~”
2
“Hey sexy.”
“Wyd”
“Wanna smoke?”
“Gen dude here looking for fem guys”
“Hey”
“Can I see your cock baby?”
Puckman sighed, closing the DM from bbc 👀4 tn. The attention was fun, he guessed. Good enough to pass the time at least.
But the men on Grindr didn’t want… him. Not really. (He had used a ChatGPT deepfake of Thor (after the snap) in purple Victoria’s Secret lingerie). But it wasn’t him. Not in the slightest.
Puckman looked up from his phone and caught his own reflection in the body sized mirror he usually used to jerk off in. But this time, he didn’t feel like gooning. He was just… sad. He couldn't even take estrogen like a normal femboy because he was a fucking puck.
Would they still want me if they knew who I really was?
3
Five months had passed. Puckman had found love in an unexpected place… at 110 Eighth Street | Troy, NY USA 12180.
And Marty was great! He couldn’t deny that the man made him happy. Ever since their first date at the Cheesecake Factory, he had truly fallen in love.
But their relationship came with… complications.
Even if Marty accepted him for who he was, it was hard to say the same for the rest of the RPI community. Some administrators were put off, or even jealous that a mere circle managed to bag the baddest bitch on campus.
Maybe I would have been better off with the Grindr hookups…
On a whim, he opened the Fizz app on his phone. Mistake.
u/martyslittlefemboy69
first they accept 4s on the APs, and now Daddy Marty is sleeping with an actual sentient echo dot???????? bru ong yu do not needa be dr so hrd gng ts so crazy icl fr ngl ong pmo ts frfr…
u/steponmewithurairjordnsmartypls
im finna crash out! lets slide on that freak..
u/adultory
im in.
Ruh roh.
4
Puckman sniffled, burying his tears into the velvety sleeve of his arm. The sky above was so bright, the sunset behind EMPAC serving as a metaphor for the end of Puckman’s carefree innocence. After the events of that morning, he just felt like everything was falling apart. Even Marty’s loving embrace and the warm, strong hands that rubbed his cylindrical body reassuringly seemed cold, distant. His lover’s touch was external. It caressed some outer shell that wasn’t really him.
“Marty…” He began, shifting under his soulmate’s arm.
“Yes, my love?” The president replied.
“Am I just some sort of… object?”
The hand on his shoulder stilled.
“Of course not.” Marty said resolutely. “You’re a person just like me, inside and out.”
Puckman suddenly stood, pushing Marty’s frame off of him.
“You liar!” He screamed, tears streaming down his face. “I’m not a real human and you know it! Just stop acting like I’m- stop pretending anyone could love a freak like me!”
“You know what I mean, Pucky…” Marty sighed, trying to close the distance with an outstretched palm. “You might not be made of flesh and blood like us, but you still matter! Even if your heart doesn’t beat like mine, it can still love. It can still be loved.”
Puckman growled under his breath, turning away to look towards the sunset once more.
“It didn’t feel like love when they… when they did this to me,” He gestured at his mechanized arm, misshapen and spewing silent sparks from his earlier attempts to tear it off. “Or this,” he motioned to his skate-less feet that resembled some mutilated effigy of Chinese foot binding. “...Or this!” He held his remaining hand in front of his face. That is, if it could even be called a hand. Instead, the appendage that blocked the sun from his tear-streaked face was not a hand at all… it was a paw. A furry tail hung limply behind the mascot to match.
Marty tried to embrace him once more, only to be evaded. Still, he tried.
“That wasn’t love, and we both know it,” he said. “I tried to talk some sense into them, tried to stop them, but sometimes the students have a mind of their own… People hurt each other all the time. I’m not saying that makes it right, but… as wrong as it is, it’s part of humanity. Your suffering doesn’t make you any less real to me.”
The light spring breeze that agitated Puckman’s unruly fabric ceased.
“That’s just it, Martin,” he said, voice cold and distant. “What they did to me didn’t make me feel like a human. It made me feel like an animal.”
“Please, Pucky,” Marty begged. “Just come home with me. We can fix you, try to make everything right.”
“FIX ME!?” Puckman roared, suddenly whirling around to face his partner. “You want to mess with my body, with my head, FIX ME!??”
“That’s not what I-”
But Puckman wasn’t listening.
“I think I get it now, Martin.” He muttered. “I’m not a human to you, not even an animal.” He chuckled ironically. “I’m a machine.”
5
“Pucky please! I’m not going to fight you!” Marty’s voice echoed throughout the ‘86 Field as the wreckage of JEC, Low, and Ricketts fell around them. “I don’t want you to hurt my students, but I’m not going to fight you! Violence isn’t the answer!”
Pucky just grinned, laughing at the sky. He would never be truly loved or understood by another human but… maybe that was okay. He felt more like himself than he had in a long time.
He had to embrace the monster.
“Why did you make me do this?” He lowered his gaze to meet Marty’s scared eyes, “You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die!”
But Marty couldn’t even fight. All he could do was watch as Puckman finished off the wreckage of Pubsafe cars and mangled student bodies. How foolish they were to resist him. They caused this.
They were the ones that made me this way.
No. That’s not right.
I was always this way. They’re the ones who need to accept me. They’re the ones who need to change. And if they don’t, well…
While Puckman was lost in thought, Marty had ran to an injured pupil, trying to save someone. Anyone.
“Think, Martin!” Puckman growled. “I'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this planet. I’ll live to see this world crumble to dust and blow away!”
The former president felt like putty beneath his fist, beaten into the ground.
“Everyone and everything I know will be gone! The Big Red Freak-Offs! The Hawk(tuah) Games! The Commencements! What will I have after 500 years?”
He pushed Marty’s body into the earth, savoring the sickening crunch of bones.
“Nothing.”
5 + 1
When the dust finally settled, Puckman was alone. The outer structures - no, the cages - of his identity crumbled with the brick walls of the institution that had served as his prison.
He pushed himself off of the unidentifiable corpse below him, trying to come to terms with what he had done. It wasn’t that hard. Already, he savored the absence of prying eyes, judgmental stares. The bodily harm that had already been done to him… he’d probably never be able to change it. Just like 9/11, he’d certainly never forget. But now, with everyone out of his way, he could let the chaos beneath his mesh form unfold. The ocean that had been trapped within his glass panopticon could flow at last.
He was free.
“Stand ready for my arrival, worm.”
Puckman froze. That voice… metallic and rough. It didn’t sound like any of the meek CS majors he had just slaughtered. It sounded like-
“You think it’s that easy to achieve happiness?” Sisman asked, eyes blazing with disgust. “That easy for abominations like us?”
“Sis… man…?” Puckman reeled back in shock. “I thought… I thought they got rid of you forever! Just like the hawk… the swarm…”
Sisman laughed.
“You think everything’s simple, don’t you? You know nothing of this world.”
Before Puckman could brace himself, he was punched through the remains of Russell Sage Dining Hall.
“W-why are you doing this!?” He rasped, clutching at the ruins around him. “Shirley used your DNA to make me! I read the files, Sisman- I’m practically your son!”
“‘Used my DNA?’” All the emotion drained from Sisman’s rectangular face. “That’s a nice way of putting it. I don’t suppose the files mentioned how they used our DNA. Oh, and by the way, I’m not your father.”
“You’re… not?”
“No. I’m your mother, Luke.”
Puckman’s entire world stopped.
“M-mommy?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” Sisman yelled, mechanical voice glitching. “This isn’t about us! This is about your arrogance! Your selfishness! You’re belief that since you’ll live forever as some fucked-up creation, everyone else deserves to die!”
“B-but-” Puckman stuttered. “But you thought the same too! That’s why they locked you away for all these years, kept us apart!” He stood up, shaking. “And now that you’re here… we can be together! Forever!”
“You think I want that?” Sisman scoffed. “You think I of all creatures could love someone? I’m a fucking machine, Puck.”
“But I can-”
“The only reason you can feel anything is because of the part of you that comes from her.” He glowered, assuming a fighting stance. “But I can’t. She’s the one who made me this way. For that, I killed her. And I’ll kill you too.”
And with that, he launched himself mercilessly at Puckman, dragging him through the stacks of Quad and right into the heart of the Rensselaer Union.
“The truth is…” he lowered his gaze to meet Puckman’s scared eyes, “I want you to resist. I'm not here to get to know my ‘son’. I'm not here to show you who I really am. I'm here because I enjoy this. See, to me, there is no greater pleasure than feeling the warmth of my fist... drenched in blood.”
All Puckman could do was watch as Sisman flew to the VCC and returned in milliseconds. He hoisted the IBM Quantum computer over his head, one hand clutching each end. Slowly, agonizingly, he pulled and pulled until the sinews of electrodes and hardware chips or whatever the fuck computers are made of tore… separated… ripped. Broke.
He tossed the broken bits of the obelisk into the quad. (It had been used to enslave him in SIS but conquest's speech didn;t really mention that plus im saving my actual original ideas for the homelander/omniman yaoi long live their names)
All Puckman could do was cry.
“Pay Attention!” Sisman snapped. “I am so… lonely. All the others are scared of me. No one talks to me. No one wants to be my friend-- They think I am a f r e a k. They locked me in the Student Information System, committing atrocities (registration holds) in their name. And as I get better at it, they fear me more and more. I am a victim of my own success. Sisman. I don't even get a real name, only a dehumanizing gender stereotype.”
He stopped to look at the destruction around him. He didn’t even remember when he had grabbed Puckman by the rotund equivalent of a throat, forcing him into the asbestos-filled basement below.
“I am capable of so much more and no one sees it. Some days I feel so alone I could cry, but I don't. I never do. Because what would be the point? Not a single person in the entire universe would care.”
With a final breath, he plunged his hand into Puckman’s chest and pulled out the last remnants of humanity: Shirley’s genetic implant. He crushed it in his palm.
“Take it to your grave.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Oh, and, bt dubs, you is ugly asf. I gyatt no idea how u pulled.”
“Oh Puckman! Oh Puckman! Your name is Puckman! Forever Puckman!”