Author's disclaimer and notes: We don't own them, we just dream of doing so. Ask if you want us to archive it anywhere. You may link to this story if you want or to Anne-Li's main page. 4.286 words. Written in July 2009.

Warning: Here be crack.

Crossover with Tremors.

First published in the Connotations con zine 2009

Betaed by Heather Sparrows and Kadorienne - thank you!! Remaining errors are all ours.

"I'll be at the pool bar, Jamesie—be a darling and take care of the rental jeep paperwork for us, will you? If anything important comes up, I have my cell phone."

James looked wistfully at the Earl's retreating back, and sighed. He'd already taken care of the rentals, and of the hotel bookings, and of supplies. He'd even done a full expense projection for the five different scenarios they might end up with, depending on where they ended up next in their ongoing, demented chase-after-the-Major-on-a-mission. Truth was, the Earl simply wanted to keep him busy while he sunned himself by the pool, bought expensive cocktails, and flirted with the ogling crowd of backward natives of the god-forsaken, laughably-named town of Perfection, Nevada. James felt like crying: a lifetime of faithfully following the Earl, working from dawn to dusk, defying the laws of economics, and what did he have to show for it? He was tired of obeying orders, keeping his place, swallowing his tears, having to spend obscene amounts of money, and always, always ending up passed over for the first thing in trousers happening to pass by, armed and dangerous madmen included.

He stood up and threw the pile of papers in front of him in the air. Enough was enough! Was he a man or a bug? He'd show him. He'd show them all. He'd just take off, leave them there—see how they managed. Then they'd be sorry for how they treated him; but it would be too late. He'd be gone. James turned on his heels, strode out of the door through the hotel hall, and into the sun-drenched main street of the puny desert town.

El Blanco—the name he had heard the Dear One utter at his approach—hid near the Dear One's den, hoping as always to capture a glimpse of the Dear One's magnificent beauty. Often, after darkness had fallen over the desert, he would sneak up to his Dear One's den and stretch as far as he could, to look into the transparent parts of the den and watch the Dear One sleep. His Dear One was so beautiful!

More than once he had contemplated rising up through the ground into the Dear One's den to serenade him with his courting song. Surely, if he sang at a very short distance, then even the Dear One's human ears must hear the longing tones and the love that filled El Blanco's entire being? He had tried to sing his passionate song before, several times, when meeting the Dear One outside the den, but the Dear One had always been so busy trying to shoot at him or blow him up to stop to listen to the deep, humming tones of El Blanco's love. These unfortunate circumstances would have made a lesser graboid despair of ever winning the Dear One's heart, but El Blanco knew, deep in the very soul of his being, that the two of them were meant for each other.

Apart from the Dear One's apparent deafness, though, El Blanco had another problem. He had tried to study humans, to learn as much as he could about his Dear One and he had learned something very disturbing—something which now was the basis of one of El Blanco's greatest fears! Humans were kind of soggy inside and if you leaned into them or even squeezed them just a little, little bit—they went plopp! And not for anything—never, ever!—did El Blanco want to make his Dear One go plopp!

Disheartened by the very notion of making his Dear One go plopp, El Blanco sank a little deeper into the sand. When humans saw him they tended to scream and run away. But if the humans screamed and ran away, how was he ever to learn how to gently touch one of them, so that he wouldn't make his Dear One go plopp? Maybe this was even why his Dear One refused to listen to him! Was his Dear One afraid that El Blanco might hurt him? That wouldn't do! Somehow, El Blanco needed to figure out a way to make the Dear One stop and listen to him: to understand how much El Blanco loved him and to know that El Blanco would do anything to win his Dear One's love!

And! El Blanco had a plan! He really had studied the humans and he had noted that sometimes they gave each other shiny gifts—this was apparently part of their courtship ritual. So, he would find the prettiest, shiniest gift in the whole desert, and give it to his Dear One! Then surely the Dear One would know how much El Blanco loved him!

With this goal in mind, El Blanco looked longingly one final time towards his Dear One's den, and then set out towards the desert.

Oh dear. James was almost ready to admit he just might have taken a wrong turn a while back: but he gave it another 20 minutes' walk out of sheer pigheadedness. Then he turned round, and realised he couldn't see any buildings anymore. There was only desert, and the merciless sun. He considered sweating, but the thought of how much it would cost to wash his clothes held him back. Besides, heatstroke was a rather unusual way of being miserable, so he might as well enjoy it while it lasted. He looked at his watch, and smiled malevolently. Being lost was all for the best in the end. The Earl was probably already tearing his beautiful hair out, and feeling guilty over poor, lost-in-the-desert James. Poor, lost-in-the-desert, and sole proprietor of chequebook, credit card set and numbered Swiss accounts codes. He rubbed his hands together. So there.

James was still debating whether it was better to enjoy his malignant glee sitting or walking, in case he was not lost enough, when he noticed that the ground was trembling—faintly at first, but increasingly so. And there was a strange almost-noise in the air, like the humming of a large creature without lungs. Then the earth opened in front of him, and a huge, worm-like, tentacled creature sprung up!

James screamed, and ran. The creature's tentacles were holding a diamond several times the size of the Kooh-i-noor! He could not let the worm go! He ran faster, and jumped towards the shiny stone.

El Blanco was so confused that he almost grabbed the small human too hard and made it go plopp. They were supposed to scream and run away from him! As it was, the human went limp and stopped making any noise. (The noise itself had been unexpected, as it sounded almost like the lullaby El Blanco's mother used to sing him when he was a mere grub). Intrigued, El Blanco put the human down to better examine it: hopefully it wasn't too damaged, and he could learn something useful.

The human was smaller than the Dear One, and it had way more of those teeny tiny tentacles crowding human heads—so many that they covered one of its two eyes entirely. El Blanco sighed: if only humans really had one eye, as was normal! Much as he saw his Dear One as uniquely beautiful, El Blanco did occasionally find some of his features disturbing. What was a second eye for, when one could do the job perfectly well?

The human moaned, and moved feebly, which meant El Blanco didn't have a lot of time left to examine it before it woke up—he had to hurry! The human's outer tegument was different from the garish livery his Dear One displayed: this one's outer skin was a nice graboid-brown, very proper and becoming. El Blanco wondered if this actually meant the human was a female: its screech had been quite high-pitched after all. But the absence of the loose tegumentary flaps around his lower limbs, and the not-red-enough pigmentation of his mouth made him decide otherwise. And it was not a human grub or pupa either—El Blanco knew from experience how delicate those were, how impossible it was to handle them without them going plopp. This one was small but robust. And of course there was a sure way to verify if this exemplary was a male: El Blanco had often spied how his Dear One folded back his central flap to expose his reproductive organ, and have sex with the white porcelain object in the small room with water.

Heat and cold is merely a matter of discipline. All in all, though, Klaus preferred the cold discipline to the heated one. Oh, he knew how to survive in desert countries—that didn't mean he had to like it. No, give him the bone-deep chill of a true German winter any time! The silly alphabets thought themselves punished when sent to Alaska—Klaus actually found it quite refreshing and kept hoping that the change of scenery would improve on his subordinates' spirits as the cold frequently did his own.

On being forced to go to America he had been severely annoyed—who wanted to spend a lot of time among a bunch of trigger-happy, gun-toting cowboys anyway?—but when the mission dragged them all the way to Nevada, he had to curse Fatso's wiles. Surely his immediate superior had known what would come. Klaus wouldn't be one bit surprised to learn that it was Fatso who tipped off Eroica too. No doubt Fatso got some perverted jolly out of knowing that Klaus would have to put up with not just the KGB and the heat, but also that degenerate, foppish Brit.

Klaus dropped the phone back onto the receiver. He had called NATO to check if the scientists had learned anything about the strange slime on the dead KGB spy they had found at the edge of the desert. The man seemed to have died from a great pressure around his stomach, rupturing his internal organs. Possibly a KGB weapon of some sort, which had backfired? Klaus himself had once had the very unpleasant experience of having one of Lawrence's toys going up in flames and smoke when he had tried to use it. Luckily he had got away with minor burns on his hand. Perhaps the KGB spy hadn't been as lucky. The scientist didn't know anything yet, though, so far, saved that the slime appeared organic in nature.

Klaus looked out the window. No, still relentless, pounding sunshine. Reluctantly, he did not don his jacket, but took it over his arm instead. Discipline or not, sunstroke was no walk in the park. That time in the Swedish sauna had been bad enough. He glanced around the dingy motel room, to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, then stepped out into the desert heat.

The first he saw was a shamelessly nude Earl of Gloria, on a sun chair just outside the opposite building. Well, nude apart from a small handkerchief's worth of material that had to work hard to stretch to cover enough of the man so that the sight of him would not frighten the horses. The stretching material was bright red with golden lines that acted oddly hypnotic—Klaus felt his eyes drawn towards the little square quite of their own accord and he had to resolutely lift them—not that the rest of the Limey was a much better option.

Klaus was just about to yell at the man for the audacity of sunbathing near-nude where decent people could see far too much of him (for example: around the bright red, well-packed crotch-coverer Klaus could see clear evidence that the Earl was quite naturally blond!), when the Brit's surprisingly dark, near-purring voice beat him to it.

"Good afternoon, my dear Major! Say, I'm not getting too pink yet, am I? Would you be a dear and help me get some sun cream on my back? I think I'll turn over soon and it's so difficult to reach all areas there. I'll return the favour for you, if you want ..."

James became aware that he was no longer quite as hot as he had been before. He vaguely remembered burning sand and boiling sun, though other than that he felt rather confused as to exactly what had happened.

There was something in his mouth, though. Something kind of leathery and both firm, yet soft. A little slick, as if covered by a thin membrane of jelly. It pressed slightly against his tongue and ... it tasted just like the most perfect, over-ripe banana!

He moaned softly—if this was a dream, James really didn't want to wake up. It'd been so long since he'd done IT, and now here he was, as close to heaven as he'd ever been. If he kept his eyes closed he could claim he was still asleep, dreaming it was the Earl doing that to him, ohh, yes, doing IT to him—OH! And what was that? Another banana, and oh, oh, ohdear another one, anditwastouchinghimrightthere—despite himself he opened his eyes, couldn't help wanting to look at DoriAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Little One-eye was strange, El Blanco decided. First he'd seemed to enjoy being examined: indeed he'd wiggled in a most graboid-like way. And then, he'd uttered the word "rhubarb" in extremely well-enunciated Graboidspeak, and gone all floppy again. But, hey, still it was a learning experience. Now El Blanco knew much more about human orifices, and the peculiarly intense reactions their tentacular exploration could induce. There was no mistaking *that*. And who'd have thought human tegument could be drawn back to that extent without damage—at first he'd been scared he'd ruined his specimen, but then he realised it was like humans had some sort of removable body sheath! El Blanco giggled at the idea, and then poured some more water over Little One-eye. He'd seen too often how humans poured water over living things, especially when they wanted them to grow better. Next, he gently tucked Little One-eye's lower tentacles under the sand in his cave, and arranged his upper tentacles so that they were supported by sticks. El Blanco pondered where he could get some of the scented brown clods his Dear One reserved for the living things he cared for especially, behind his house. He tried to make the same sounds his Dear One made, just in case they might be a comforting or important part of human loving care: "maanjur formah tomejtos". Must be some sort of especially nutritious food. Well, all El Blanco had available was water, and the hard shiny rocks humans seemed to love, so he put some of them all around Little One-eye. That way, he could continue his explorations, and hopefully keep Little One-eye happy and healthy.

El Blanco was so happy he hummed snatches of songs, interspersed with all the new sounds he'd learned from Little One-eye. He rather thought his pronunciation was improving. He did a little sideways wiggle of joy and made the sounds again, and louder: "Letmegoyoudisgustingworm!" "OHGODYESMORELIKETHATHARDERDEEPERFASTERYESYESYESOOOOHHHH" "ohmygodiamondsgoldrichesimustbedreaming!" "Youplantedmeinthegroundlikeavegetable?" Yes, life was good. He now knew how to handle humans so that they would not go plopp, and indeed he knew how to make them quite happy. And now he was on his way to town to find some of the nutritious scented clods to feed Little One-eye properly. Maybe, after he finally crowned his dreams of loving the Dear One, they could keep Little One-eye as a pet: but he'd let the Dear One decide, in case he preferred one of the small hairy things that crawled on four tentacles and made barking sounds. He just hoped his Dear One would not want grubs: try as he might, El Blanco was not really keen on the noise human grubs made, how hard it was not to make them go plopp, and the very creepy way they crawled around all the time. Grubs were supposed to lie there, and be seen but not heard.

James woke up again. By now he was used to the situation, so he did not scream. And after all, what was there to scream about? The huge worm had not hurt him—much—so far, even if James still had no idea what it was after. But who was he to question being semi-covered in all sorts of precious stones and gold? And some of the things the Worm had done had been, well… He blushed and giggled, and wiggled his bottom. If only the Earl would do that to him he'd die a happy man!

But wait—where had the Worm gone? The cave was deserted! James got out of the hole in the soil he was half-buried in, and cautiously explored the place. Plenty of beautiful precious stones; a pool of clear water; his clothes, gathered in a corner; no Worm—and no food. James's stomach grumbled, hard. He had to find food. The Worm had only given him water. And even if his tentacles did taste delicious, they had not been food, at least until they were attached to a very big and very unpredictable Worm.

Suddenly, the solution presented itself in a blinding flash of simplicity. He'd take the precious stones and run, and go back to the Earl, who would be so relieved at James being alive, and so horrified by the retelling of his ordeal (dramatically embellished, and minus some crucial information about creative uses of tentacles), that he'd fall in love with James, and forget all others, machine maniacs included, and they'd live happily ever after doing IT a lot (maybe at which point, the knowledge about tentacles might come in handy).

Galvanised into action, James grabbed his clothes and started ripping them apart to create a suitably capacious container for all the precious precious stones. Soon, he had a mesh bag, or rather net, to hold them all, and to run away as fast as possible given that he was dragging along a netful a few times bigger than himself. But he was James, and he could do it.

Tyler lay on his bed, caressing himself with his eyes firmly closed. He didn't want to see how alone he was, but instead imagined having some company with him. His fantasy lover had no face, but an oh so clever touch, which moved rapidly over Tyler's body, pressing here and there — sometimes Tyler could swear that the man had more than two hands, for he imagined at least three areas being caressed, stroked and teased at the same time. He tried his best to imitate what played out before his eyelids with his own hands, but fell short.

His fantasy lover was humming at him, low in his throat. It wasn't any song he recognized, though it did resemble Twinkle Twinkle Little Star just a little bit.

Encouraged by an imagined pressure against his thigh, he lifted one knee, giving his fantasy lover access to the centre of his body. His lover slid into him so easily, only then he ... kind of did it one more time and even as part of his lover pumped in and out in just that perfect, hard, irresistible rhythm that Tyler's body ached for ... another part of his lover seemed to have found his prostate and was pushing, no sucking, no ... kind of swirling hard against it in a way that Tyler couldn't even come close to acting out with his reaching fingers.

Finally he gave up. He sat up quickly and wrenched open his bedside table drawer, grabbing one of his prize possessions: the dildo he had bought during his last trip to Houston. It was 13 inches long, but less than one across, and a perfect pale white in colour. His hand shook slightly as he dug around the drawer for the bottle of banana-flavoured lube, already envisioning how nice it would feel when the dildo, generously lubed, slid up into him. It still wouldn't be perfect, no, but certainly good enough to bring him to a very swift, very nice orgasm.

As he slicked up the dildo—banana scent for some reason adding to the eroticism of the act—he glanced warily up to the windows. Sometimes he felt oddly watched, but he hadn't yet decided if he was just being paranoid.

BANG!

He almost dropped the dildo. It sounded as if something had impacted hard on the corner of his house! Hastily he put back Big White and the banana lube bottle in the drawer and pulled his trousers back on, making a face when his still happily perked cock at first resisted being forced into the confining denim.

BANG!

Grabbing his gun Tyler rushed outside, looking this way and that and almost shooting a curly-haired blond man who came rushing around the corner of the house. It was obvious, though, that the man wasn't attacking — he was just running past him and — just as another man, this time with straight, black hair, came around the same corner — disappeared around the next. The black-haired man glared angrily at Tyler, but also just rushed straight past him and followed the same way as the blond had taken.

BANG!

Tyler realised that the sound must come from the door to his tomato shed! The blond must have flung it open, making it bang into the house, as he rushed in. The door was slow to close, so it probably didn't have time to fall shut before the other guy rushed in. Then they both must have jumped over the fence in order to come around again. Tyler also realised that both hunter and prey must be trampling his prized tomatoes!

He stepped out in the path they had taken and held out his arms. When the blond came around the corner again, he almost rushed straight into Tyler, but managed to avoid a full head-on collision. Instead he neatly rounded Tyler and hid behind him.

"Is that man bothering you?" Tyler had time to say, just as the pursuer came into sight. The latter also barely had time to stop, then he glared at them both with green eyes fierce like a pissed off mountain lion's.

"Why yes," said the blond. His right hand held on to Tyler's left shoulder, while his left for some reason had found its way to Tyler's right buttock — an accident, no doubt, the man probably didn't even know what he was pressing his fingers against. "I'm not sure why, though. Perhaps he intends to ravish me."

The black-haired man snarled: "You damn imbecile! I want to kill you, not ravish you!"

The blond giggled, and his hand moved soothingly over Tyler's left buttock. "Oh Klaus, just because I asked you to help me find poor Jamesie! It's not like you are making any progress with your mission, anyway, so you could just spare the time. Your misplaced aggression is, as usual, quite unwarranted!"

Klaus was going to reply—or more likely to press the trigger, and collateral damage to Tyler be damned, when a high-pitched wail interrupted them. A cloud of dust advancing at supernatural speed resolved itself in a small man in patched underwear, screeching, dragging a huge net full of diamonds, and running so fast his legs showed as an indistinct blur. The other three men exclaimed at once:

"What the heck—"

"Darling! You're safe!"

"Stingy Bug, I should shoot you on sight!"

James zeroed in on the Earl, his screech becoming a tumble of barely intelligible words: "MilordlookwhatIfoundandtherewasahugewormbutIescapedandnowwe'resorichyouwillloveme!"

Klaus covered his face with his hands, and plonked himself on a rock, oozing resigned exasperation. Tyler stared at the way the other two men ended up lip-locked; the still unnamed blond's hand now deftly fingering the huge jewels in the brown net. He had no idea what was going on, but the two looked quite hot. He was going to offer his room, in exchange for a front row seat, when he felt the first forebodings of a tremor in the ground. El Blanco!

Tyler screamed: "Get away! The graboid is coming!" then he ran for his weapons, noticing out of the corner of his eye how Klaus had jumped into battle-stance, magnum at the ready. Good, Tyler would need all the help he could get. He was back with his shotgun just as the first sounds of the fearsome graboid's screech started to rend the crystalline desert air. Damn but the beast was loud!

If asked later on to explain the exact sequence of events, Tyler would shake his head, and retreat more comfortably among El Blanco's welcoming tentacles. The hell if he could remember it all: but after El Blanco had swatted Klaus away, and grabbed Tyler, he thought he could see the blond managing to drag away the unconscious Klaus, the shrieking James, and the diamonds—maybe he did have three hands? The thought was enticing.

What had happened to them afterwards, he'd never know. He'd been too distracted by a loving, exciting graboid putting its tentacles to a very good use. Tyler's still half-interested cock, resenting the earlier interruption, had decided to override his brain screaming "shoot the scary worm!!" and impose its own "ooohmorefasterharderyestentaclesyesbananaohgodiaminheaven!"

Yes, life was good. Love was in the air, and he was ready to take it all in—pun intended. Tyler gave a final thought to the three strange men, wishing them all the best in their various pursuits, and returned his full attention to his ever-amorous El Blanco.

The End

The 2003 TV series Tremors (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327375/) actually has a small but active fanbase, which so far has produced several stories, cartoons and even a songvid! If you know nothing about Tremors you may want to watch the songvid at http://moonlettuce.livejournal.com/tag/tremors:%20vid, and read the stories at http://moonlettuce.livejournal.com/tag/tremors:%20tyler/el%20blanco.

Most Tremors fans socialise at Connotations, the UK multimedia slash con taking place every October in in Tyneside (http://www.connotations.org.uk/).

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