Chapter Text
The kitchen lights came on all at once. Mister and Mrs. Denton were there, beaming. Donny's friends were there, Susie and Jenny and Freddy and Augie and the rest. So were their trolls, in sweater vests and gingham dresses like they were being taken to church. And of course Stubby's favorite person in the world: Donny Denton himself. There was a cake on the table, a cake with twelve candles burning down.
"Happy birthday, Stubby!"
Today had been a horrible day. Everything had gone wrong. He'd been locked out of the house, he'd fallen out of a tree, he'd been sprayed with a hose and lots more things than usual had been dropped on his head. The whole day had been a montage of horrible vignettes, but now--everything was okay! They'd remembered! They'd remembered after all! He put both hands to his face, his mouth a perfect O.
Donny picked him up and held him, feet swinging, to reach the high table. He blew out all twelve candles while everyone cheered and the trolls bounced on their toes, clapping their hands like children.
Donny set him down. "What did you wish for, Stubby?" he asked brightly.
Stubby poked a claw into this mouth to think about it.
"I wish for tomorrow to be just like today!" He grinned.
Everyone laughed. Everyone kept laughing. Everyone laughed for a long time, enough to give the production crew enough footage to fade to black for the credit roll and commercial break. Even after four seasons of thirty-nine episodes apiece, it still felt like chewing foil. Fifteen seconds was a very long time to laugh at something that wasn't funny.
"CUT!"
And that was that. That was it. Humans went left, to wardrobe, and trolls went right, to the wranglers. He peeled off his sweater and handed it to someone, because someone had decided that if he wore it off-set he'd ruin it. They'd have to wash it after this episode what with the coffee and the dirt and the flour anyway. For all he knew they'd just make a new one. There was probably a factory somewhere that made nothing else, all day: oversized red turtleneck sweaters with STUBBY in white letters on the front. One for him, and thousands for the humans whose trolls got to wear his name across their chests. He got to keep his pants. That was something, at least.
His minder handed him a bottle of soda with a straw in it. He flicked it out. Straws were cute and straws were for kids, which he hadn't been since season one. There were two guys in wrangler's union jackets who went down the extras line collecting sweater vests and gingham dresses. The other handed out ponchos. Someone somewhere had decided naked trolls were a workplace hazard, something about an attractive nuisance like a fire pit or a set of stairs without rails. They filed out the back. His minder poked another straw into the bottle. "Tch," she said.
He set the bottle down and folded his arms over his knees to watch the extras go. Bright, *bright* sun plowed through the door--it was enough to make his eyes water even on the other side of the studio. Poor bastards. Maybe he'd see them again next time there was an episode with a crowd scene, but most of them had looked like rustbloods. Directors loved them because they followed directions, didn't complain, and rented by the dozen. Two years in the business and it was all over but the shelter ads with sad old trolls in windows. He thanked whatever ridiculous luck had given him the weird human blood he had instead of rust or mustard, and felt like a complete jerk for being glad about that. The door swung shut behind the last one. It was dark again.
They'd have a long weekend before shooting started for the second half of the season. Of course he'd be spending it doing promo stuff, because his contract didn't stipulate vacation time. Hell, his contract wasn't even technically with him. For the purposes of paperwork he was a product of Stubby Entertainment Inc. Somebody had explained the legal stuff to him, about how people could be people and companies could be people, and how somebody who wasn't legally a person--like him--could still be a person as a company. So Stubby could be an actual person, and wasn't that neat?
He'd agreed it was, and then somebody else had signed all the paperwork for him. "Vantas" hadn't even been on it.
"Hey," he asked his minder. "Can I go talk to the extras?"
She looked over from the conversation she was having with one of the stagehands, something with a lot of mutual fingering of hair and shifting of feet. "The extras?" she asked. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I liked them," he said. "I just wanted a chance to say bye before they left, I guess." Harmless bullshit on the face of it, but the face was Stubby's. Stubby's face was made of harmless bullshit.
She smiled, a warm indulgent smile--a little flushed in the cheeks--and gave him a pat on the head. "Go have fun," she told him, and turned back to the other woman.
It was twice as bright outside as he'd thought. He stumbled blind toward the sound of troll voices, skin prickling across his shoulders where the sun beat down strongest. He nearly walked into the van before he saw it. One of the wranglers gave his cigarette a long enough rest to laugh at him and thump on the side panel with a palm. A cluster of troll faces piled up at the still-open back door, yellow eyes staring out of the hoods of their ponchos like a half-dozen owls.
"Look alive kids," the wrangler chuckled. "Contract up, Stubbs? Lookin' for work?"
"I came out to say g'bye," he said. He was fucking adorable.
"Aww," drawled the wrangler, predictably charmed. He elbowed the other one in the ribs and pointed, as though to say: would you fuckin' look at that. "G'wan in, little guy. Got a few minutes left on break."
He climbed up the tailgate, and troll faces surrounded him. "Hey," he said, gathering his nerve. "I wanted to ask you guys something."
Six pairs of eyes blinked.
"Is this how you want to live?"
There was a long silence before the troll who'd been playing Susie's troll Kitten--she looked old, with the stage makeup wiped off--broke it with "Nah, we want to live like you do." They all laughed.
He laughed too, wincing a little. This had gone a little better when he'd rehearsed it in his mind.
"I mean like people," he said, once they'd stopped. "Do you want to live like people?"
They didn't laugh at that. Without a word one of them got up and shut the back door; the solid THUNK of it seemed weirdly foreboding. It was dim and hot and smelled of exhaust over cheap laundry soap.
"Watch it," said Kitten, nearly at a whisper. "If you screw up this job for us it's dumpsters."
"I'm sorry," he said, keeping his voice low. "I just wanted to tell you, um, it doesn't have to be like this-"
"Like what?" That was Augie's troll, JJ. "Casserole instead of kibble?"
"I mean if we work together it doesn't have to be casserole or kibble, it can be whatever we want-"
JJ started to ask something else. Kitten shushed him.
"There's thousands of trolls just in this city, that's more than we need to show people how things really are. There's a lot of people, a lot of humans who'd understand if we could just talk to them." Nobody tried to interrupt, and he felt the warmth of confidence returning. This was more like it. "I've been doing everything I can on the show to show them they can trust us, you know? That they don't need to be afraid of us or keep us under control. If we had a bunch of real trolls on the show, not as characters, and we all told everyone watching the show how important it is for trolls to be people..."
This was how it was supposed to go. He was in fine form, too: a deep thoughtful breath, a palm over his heart, and he went on according to the script in his head. "That's millions of minds we could change. But I can't do it alone. I need you to tell all the trolls you know about this, tell them what I said. We can wor-"
A wrangler hauled the door open.
"-king together, I'm glad I got to meet you all!"
"Us too," said Kitten, a little dryly.
"C'mon out Stubbs, break's over. Time to get this show on the road." The wrangler held out a hand to help him hop down. He took it, and popped out of the van with childlike preciousness. He turned to wave before the wrangler shut the door again.
"Can you tell them?" he called. "Tell them all I said hi?"
"You got it," said JJ, and then the door shut to hide him and the other five from his view entirely. The van drove off. He walked back inside, and his minder gave him his soda back. He'd done the right thing. It was the first step and a little one, but that's what you needed to do! A little bit at a time. Mountains built out of pebbles! He sucked a mouthful of soda up through the straw and felt good.
This was going to be the most important thing he'd ever done.