Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”

Todd closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to pretend he’s not hearing what he’s hearing.

“...in the sight of, er, the greater Seattle area…”

It’s probably fine. Dirk’s probably just talking to himself again. Todd’s going to keep on folding these dumb towels and not think too hard about it.

“...to bring together in holy matrimony…”

Todd groans, drops the towels, and stomps over to the window.

“Dirk,” he says, sticking his head out the fire escape, “what are you doing.”

Dirk gestures at the fairy lights strung through the balcony; at the sheet draped over the iron grate above; at his own velvet bow tie and the blazer he’s clearly borrowed from Farah; and, finally, at the two bushy-tailed squirrels thoroughly absorbed in the seed cakes Dirk has spread around the grate. “What does it look like?” he says. “I’m officiating a wedding.”

Todd bangs his head against the window frame. He really doesn’t want to know, but he also knows that Dirk is going to tell him anyway, so he picks one of his thousand questions at random and says, “Are you even licensed?”

“As a matter of fact, I am!” says Dirk, delighted in the way that means this is exactly what he wanted Todd to ask. “I have been ordained by the Universal Life Church and am now legally eligible to perform the solemnization of marriage. Really, it was quite simple, I should have done it years ago --”

“Dirk,” says Todd, “when, exactly, have you been called upon to ordain a wedding?”

“Well, you never know!” says Dirk. He adjusts his bow tie, which is a deep magenta, and probably the darkest color he has in his eye-watering closet. “Plus, I thought it’d come in handy for Farah and Tina, someday --”

Todd nearly falls out the window. “For -- They’re not even dating!”

Dirk gives him a look. "Aren’t they?”

“Okay,” says Todd, giving up and climbing out the window, because they’re obviously going to be there a while, “so, just to be clear, you got ordained to perform the whatever solemnity of marriage for… squirrels.”

“Their names are Lucille and Alexandra,” says Dirk, pointing at each squirrel in turn. The squirrels, to their credit, seem completely unbothered by the matrimonial disarray around them; they remain completely absorbed in the seed cakes, even when Todd slides by them just a few feet away. Todd’s been semi-successfully ignoring Dirk’s squirrel training regimen, but it seems to have gone better than most of Dirk’s random hobbies (woodworking, for example, which gave Todd a minimum of three heart attacks a day). “And they’re getting impatient,” Dirk adds, “so you’d better hurry up and sit down.”

Todd obediently takes a seat on the stairs behind Dirk, as Dirk clears his throat and unrolls, no joke, a three-page speech hand-written in the most illegible cursive Todd has ever seen. “Dearly beloved,” he starts again, “we are gathered here today to join Lucille and Alexandra in holy matrimony…”

From the rest of the speech, Todd infers that Dirk has done an enthusiastic amount of research into as many wedding traditions as he could find. He starts out with the broad outlines of a Hallmark Christian wedding, goes on for a while about friendship and the universe, pauses to toss some rice over the squirrels (along with more seeds, since the seed cakes are nearly gone), and ends with a confused attempt to make Alexandra break a glass (Alexandra has exactly zero interest in this, and shows it by bristling her tail until Dirk backs off). 

But despite all the disparate influences, Todd has to admit, it’s… not a bad speech. In classic Dirk fashion, he’s taken all these random pieces and connected them into something that somehow makes sense. By the end of it, Todd’s almost convinced these dumb squirrels are in love, and now they’re heading off to a life of matrimonial bliss.

Dirk finishes with a final line about “what we have joined here today, let no tomcat tear asunder,” and then, as if on cue, the new Mrs. Squirrels nibble the last of the seeds and scurry away off the fire escape. Dirk watches them go with a happy sigh. “Ah, young love,” he says, rolling up his speech. “Thanks for witnessing, Todd. Assistant-witnessing. Witnis-tanting?”

“How long did it take you to write that speech?” says Todd, helping Dirk gather up the sheet canopy and the scattered roses.

“Er… Since last Tuesday,” says Dirk.

Todd starts to be impressed, but then he notices the way Dirk isn’t quite meeting his eyes, and he makes himself think back to where they were last Tuesday. “Wait,” he says slowly, “last Tuesday, is that when…”

He stops halfway through the window as the full memory hits him. The previous Tuesday, they’d been breaking into someone’s attic and accidentally disturbed a nest of squirrels, and Dirk had said something about a three-generational family, and Todd had said, “Squirrels don’t get married, Dirk,” and Dirk had said --

“Dirk,” says Todd, whatever lingering goodwill he had after Dirk’s speech ekking away by the second, “are you telling me that all of this -- " He gestures at the seeds and the bowtie and Dirk’s entire officiant license -- “was to prove a point?”

“Er,” says Dirk.

“I don’t believe you,” says Todd. He trips over the windowframe like some sort of reverse karma and scowls at Dirk from where he lands on the floor. 

“Well,” says Dirk loftily, “I did prove it.”

“This does not count,” says Todd.

“I don’t see why not! It was perfectly legal! And,” Dirk adds, offering a hand to Todd to help him up, “I even bought cake.”

Todd eyes Dirk’s hand warily. “What kind of cake,” he asks.

“Chocolate,” says Dirk, “obviously.”

Todd sighs and lets Dirk pull him to his feet, because he’s a sucker for chocolate cake, and also, unfortunately, for Dirk.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Todd can keep his pathetic one-sided yearning for his best-friend-slash-manager-slash-roommate under control, and sometimes he has to go dunk his head in a bucket of cold water to snap out of it, and sometimes Dirk is being so impossibly frustrating that Todd wishes he’d never met him in the first place; and sometimes, like today, it’s all three.

They’re celebrating, of all things, the fall equinox (“The sun does not cross the celestial equator every day, Todd!”), which seems to mostly involve pie and unevenly spiked cider. Todd’s apartment looks like a bomb went off and will probably smell like burnt apples for the next month, so the three of them are eating Farah’s backup pie at the agency instead. They’re taking Amanda’s texted movie suggestion of Over the Garden Wall (Todd wanted a horror movie, but Dirk went all weird for reasons Todd was too full of pie to deal with), which she'd called “the platonic fall experience.” It looked cute. No one had objected. They'd started the first episode and settled in for the night.

This, it turns out, was a mistake.

Halfway through the first episode, Dirk had mentioned that the main character Wirt sounded a little like Todd. Halfway through the second, he’d reiterated the sentiment. Halfway through the third, he’d insisted that Todd re-enact an entire scene, noting “pronunciatory similarities” the whole way; and now, in the fourth --

Well --

Plot-wise, Wirt and his brother Greg are asking for directions to someone named Adelaide, about whom Todd has major suspicions. The villagers, predictably, aren’t listening. They want to know who Wirt is, and they’re going to sing about it, apparently. Wirt stumbles his way through the conversation (“Classic Todd,” says Dirk knowingly to Farah), and then one of the villagers says, like he’s solved the riddle, “You’re the young lover!”

Everyone in the room goes silent, and then Dirk bursts out laughing so hard that Todd misses the next lines of the show on which he is now concentrating like his life depends on it. “The young lover! ” Dirk repeats as Todd regrets everything from the invention of fermentation to the earth’s orbit around the sun. “That’s you, Todd, didn’t you hear? The young lover - Farah, can you imagine --”

It is a toss-up whether Wirt onscreen or Todd off it is having a more mortifying ordeal. Farah buries her head in her hands and mutters something about “over-spiked cider.” “Okay, whatever,” says Todd as the scene cuts away, “ha, ha, very funny --”

Dirk wipes his eyes, still chuckling, and Todd thinks it’s over; but then everything gets worse, because the focus is back on Wirt, and the tavern keeper says: 

“Hey, lover, sing us your love song!”

So here’s the thing about being needled to sing a love song by your best-friend-slash-one-sided-crush who’s dragged you from a meaningless existence to a whole new world (carpet ride recently included): It sucks. 

Todd has sung at a lot of parties, drunk and sober, and usually he would just burst into song right then and there. Usually, though, he’s not trying to sing a love song to someone he is very much in love with. Because he is. In love. With Dirk. And Dirk is not in love with him, and that’s fine, but it catapults the whole scenario continents outside Todd’s (admittedly stunted) comfort zone.

The characters onscreen have started chanting “Sing, lover, sing!” and Dirk, of course, is chanting along with them. He claps his hands and bounces up and down on the couch like he’s always dreamed of embarrassing his best friend to actual death. Farah has vacated the scene and is scooping enough cider into her cup to drown a horse. Todd sinks down on the couch and wishes he could burrow underground. Dirk never knows when to let things go, and Todd can tell he’ll keep this up for a while; Dirk keeps nudging Todd even after Wirt has sung onscreen, and nothing Todd does is going to snap Dirk out of it.

And then Todd makes the rookie mistake of catching Dirk’s eye, and Dirk gives him a wicked grin that means he knows exactly what a bastard he’s being; and as Todd's insides war between shriveling in panic or melting from the gleam in Dirk's smile, Dirk has the nerve to wink --

Which is just, Todd thinks, too far.

Todd has had ample opportunities to study his crisis response, and what he’s learned is that he’s useless in the lead-up but preternaturally clearheaded when it matters. Calm slides through him now like liquid mercury, and he says, coolly, “Okay. Let me get my guitar.”

Dirk shuts up faster than Todd can mute the TV. “Y-your guitar?” he says.

“Yeah,” says Todd, stretching off the couch. “You don’t think I’d sing my love song unaccompanied?”

“Oh my God,” says Farah to the cider.

“No, of course not,” says Dirk. His eyes dart sideways like a trapped animal, but he's made his bed, in Todd's opinion. “Al-alright, then.”

Todd ambles over to the closet where he’s been storing his acoustic. He knows exactly what he’ll sing. The Mexican Funeral was too busy railing against society to bother with sappy, but Todd had once written something bordering on a ballad (which he’d tried to pass off as the bassist’s, in order to preserve the reputation as a chill, stoic dude that he definitely possessed). He’d stumbled across the lyrics a few months ago, when Dirk had finally convinced him to get back into practicing, and he’d been polishing it up (...for no particular reason) ever since. 

He pulls the acoustic from its case and walks back at a pace he’d like to describe as a “saunter.” Dirk's ramrod-straight on the edge of the couch, tracking Todd's progress with saucer-wide eyes. Todd takes his time pulling over a desk chair, settling in, tuning the strings. Whatever game of chicken they're playing has overridden all his usual caution, and he’s more or less forgotten Farah’s existence.

Eventually he looks up and gives Dirk the grin that, when he was ten years younger and several planets cooler, sent the front row swooning into the stage. “Still want my love song?” he says, a sentence that should send him crawling for cover but, in the moment, slips out smooth as velvet (someone groans in the mini-kitchen).

Dirk stares at Todd like a deer frozen in stadium lighting, and Todd almost thinks he’s called his bluff. But then Dirk closes his eyes and visibly pulls himself together, and when he opens his eyes again, the challenge is back. “You’re the young lover, aren’t you?” he says.

Todd shrugs. “Okay, then,” he says, and starts to sing.

Todd wrote this ballad for a full band, not a solo acoustic guitar. It’s taken some tuning to cover the parts meant to be, for example, a “bangin’ drum solo” (sometimes he wants to dunk his college self in a lake). The opening’s still rough; it’s only adrenaline-fueled confidence that carries him past the first syrupy verse into the chorus. 

But when he reaches the chorus... It’s been a while since he’s sung in front of people, and his voice is a little hoarse, but he’s losing himself nonetheless. This is what he missed: when his hands switch to autopilot and he can just feel; when everything is easy, everything flows; when he and the instrument and the audience are balanced together on a melodic tightrope. The song’s about unrequited love, of course. He finds himself slipping in mediant chords, nudging everything towards bittersweet. He was aiming for a sardonic edge, but he’s sliding to sincerity instead; he’s spray-painting his heart across a banner, but he doesn't seem to care.

And Dirk’s with him. He knows, in the same way he knew when the Mexican Funeral should switch it up or lower the octane. Dirk’s absolutely, indelibly mesmerized.

He finishes and lets the last note trail into silence. The dim office feels vast as an empty stadium. In the gap between the music fading and his confidence slinking off with it, he raises his head and is pinned to his chair by the naked emotion on Dirk’s face. Dirk is never not displaying a smorgasbord of feeling; the elasticity of his features bewilders Todd, whose face is stuck at “grumpy” or “asleep.” But this one is new. It’s sympathy, he thinks, or understanding; if he didn’t know better, he’d call it… longing? He’s afraid to follow this path, but there’s a desperation in Dirk’s eyes, a tugging need, and Todd almost thinks - it almost seems --

He takes a breath to ask --

Something clangs loudly in the mini-kitchen, and the tension whooshes out like someone’s opened the airlock. Dirk jumps, and Todd’s breath turns into a choking cough. “Oops!” says Farah at top volume. “Sorry, I tripped.”

“I’d better go --!” says Dirk, leaping up at the same moment that Todd says, “Do you need --!” They stumble towards each other, laugh awkwardly, ricochet away. 

“Don’t worry about me!” says Farah, still practically shouting. “Just finishing the pie!”

“I’ll help!” says Dirk, dashing past Todd. Todd watches him go, clutching the neck of his guitar for dear life. He is red from the tips of his ears down to his toes. His insecurities have crashed back down like an anvil, and he is feeling like a complete and total idiot. What was he thinking, playing that song, of all songs? Why didn’t he just play Deadbeat Dungeon, or something else stupid and meaningless? He could have played anything , he could’ve played a freaking cover, he could’ve broken out Taylor Swift and had a totally innocent karaoke night --

Dirk brushes against his shoulder on the way back to grab their plates, and Todd jerks away like he’s been electrocuted. A second later, he realizes Dirk’s turned back. He braces for Dirk to say something, to make fun of him like he deserves. He screws up his face for the impact.

“I --” Dirk starts, his voice strangled. He swallows. “I liked your song.”

Oh.

In that case.

Todd's guitar slips from his sweaty hands. He makes a noise like “Hnergh,” which, fortunately, gets lost in the jangling strings. Dirk ducks his head and flees as Todd scrambles to save the guitar. He stumbles over to the closet to put it away, feeling somewhere between nauseous and dizzy. Dirk liked his song. Dirk liked his song. And the look on Dirk’s face - surely Todd didn’t imagine --

He closes the door and backs straight into Farah. “Sorry,” he says.

“You are impossible,” says Farah, punching Todd in the arm with typical Farah strength.

“Ow!” says Todd. “What was that for?”

“For making me listen to your stupid… serenade,” Farah says.

“A sere - it was not a serenade!” Todd splutters, casting a quick eye around for Dirk, who is running the faucet at top volume. “It was just a song!”

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Farah scowls at him, and then, uncharacteristically, she smirks. “Young lover.”

“Ugh, ” says Todd, burying his face in his hands as Farah, with a laugh that can only be described as a cackle, retreats. He deserves it, he knows; he’s just outed himself in the cheesiest possible way; but, somehow, he’s not that upset. It’s not cheesy if Dirk liked it. And Dirk, he thinks, definitely liked it.

As he goes to help them clean up the rest of the pie, he finds himself unconsciously composing lyrics to a follow-up ballad. This one, unlike the first, is a little less unrequited.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, Dirk did, in fact, have his own flat. He paid separate rent that went essentially to waste, did separate laundry that never ended up folded, and bought separate groceries that he rarely ate. His supposed lack of independence became such a running joke that he decided to plan a dinner party to prove himself. It was to be held in his flat, at his table, with the matching set of silverware that he definitely owned, and he was going to cook all the food.

“Yes, all of it,” he said tersely to Amanda, who kept asking the same clarifying questions like he hadn’t already explained this seven times. “And it will be three courses, and there will be fancy napkin rings, and I will have an entire dish only for the butter - yes, of course I own placemats, what are you talking about --” He added placemats to his long and growing grocery list -- “ and wine glasses - in fact, I own multiple wine glasses, of the white and red variety - Vegetarian? Well, I can certainly accommodate - Yes, I am aware of Todd’s allergies - Yes - Yes - Amanda, I assure you, I have everything very under control, but I really have to go. Goodbye.”

He hung up the phone and chewed his lip. He had, in fact, zero wine glasses. He had three cracked mugs, which were currently on Todd’s counter, and a set of plastic Sesame Street glasses which had been instrumental to a case. Mona could turn into one seving bowl, but he was going to need multitudes; and also, he hadn’t the faintest clue how to actually cook.

As if on cue, Todd rang. Dirk vacillated for all of half a second before answering. “Everything is fine,” he said in what he was sure was an eminently convincing tone.

“Oh-kay,” said Todd. “I’m outside with takeout, did you hear me knock?”

Dirk bolted from his bedroom, flung open the door, and then closed it halfway again so Todd couldn’t see the state of the apartment. “Shall we eat at yours?” he said.

“Actually, I was gonna ask if you needed help with anything,” said Todd, craning to see around Dirk.

“I’m perfectly fine,” said Dirk. “Better than fine, in fact. Absolutely tip-top.”

Through the gaps around Dirk, Todd surveyed the heaps of unfolded laundry, the stacks of year-old newspaper, the cardboard boxes Dirk was keeping for special occasions, and the canary food for the canaries he’d owned for all of twelve hours. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Don’t… take this the wrong way. But. Are you sure you want to have this party?”

“I’m an independent man, Todd!” said Dirk in a tone bordering on hysterical. “I’m an adult! I can host dinner parties with napkins and placements and multiple wine glasses! I can make a - a salad!”

“Okay, okay,” said Todd, “sure, alright, you can make all the salads. But, you know, if you want help with anything non-salad-related…”

“I do not,” said Dirk, and slammed the door in Todd’s face, realizing a moment too late that this left him without his best friend and his dinner.

---

Two hours later, he had scrounged up a few cleaning supplies and was regarding the living room with a morose expression generally reserved for dropped ice cream. In general, he was quite proud of his mess - first, that he was the only one who could ever find anything in it, and second, that he owned enough items to cover an entire floor - but it was proving decidedly inconvenient at the moment.

Halfheartedly he raised what looked like a cross between a duster and the missing canaries and swiped at the smidge of the coffee table that wasn’t covered by fabric patterns and snarled yarn. This accomplished, predictably, nothing. How did one clean an entire apartment? He scrunched his eyes shut and tried to think. In movies, the cleaner was generally dancing, often with a vacuum. He didn’t have a vacuum, but he did have a record player somewhere… perhaps under the stack of coded crosswords?

His hunt for the record player was interrupted by another knock at the door. “I told you,” he said, stomping across the room with the canary duster raised like a weapon, “I do not need - Oh, hello, Farah.”

“Hey. Todd said…”

Farah trailed off, her eyes going wide as she peered around Dirk. “Todd,” she continued, “underexaggerated.”

Dirk frowned and folded his arms, smearing coffee table dust down his shirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m rather in the middle of --"

To Dirk’s shock, Farah slammed the door in his face before he could even finish the sentence. “Odd,” he said to thin air, shrugged, and returned to searching for records.

He’d managed to find a scratched vinyl of Billy Holiday when a knock sounded for the third time. He almost didn’t answer, but the knocker started kicking the door instead, and he’d already been yelled at by the neighbors twice this week. “What,” he said, opening the door to what appeared to be a walking pile of buckets. “Oh,” he said, “are you a case? I’m afraid the agency is closed at the moment --”

“It’s me,” said Farah’s voice from behind her forest of brooms. “Let me in.”

Dirk did not want to let her in, but if he didn’t, he would be quailing under the Farah Voice in five seconds flat, so he stood aside and let the mop octopus shimmy into the living room. With a sigh, Farah let go of everything at once, which hardly made the room look messier. “Er… I can clean myself…” he said. “Perhaps if you left the mop…”

Farah fixed him with her strongest Farah Stare. “Dirk,” she said, “being in your apartment is making me break out into hives. If you do not allow me to organize it thoroughly, I will have nightmares for months . If, on the other hand, you stand back and let me do this, it will be one of the crowning victories of my life.” She plucked a dust pan from atop a bust of Shakespeare and held it out to him. “So?”

Dirk eyed the dust pan, the cracked bust, and the faint edge of carpet visible beneath Farah’s combat boots. He imagined what it might be like to see more of the carpet. Perhaps the entire floor. “...Fine,” he said, snatching the dust pan with a huff. “If you insist.”

---

Somewhere near dawn, Dirk was awakened from a very pleasant dream involving the Bahamas by Farah poking his shoulder with a broom handle. He jerked up from the corner of the floor where he’d fallen asleep polishing the baseboards, having been banished from most other tasks due to his habit of spilling water, knocking over piles, and folding laundry into suspiciously symbolic shapes. “N-nearly there!” he said, industriously returning to his scrubbing. “Bit of a stubborn --”

“I just woke you up to say I’m leaving,” said Farah.

“Ah - yes,” said Dirk. “Quite right. Thank you for all your help, and I’m sure that I can manage from here.”

Farah gave him an exasperated sort of look. “Dirk, I’m leaving because it’s done,” she said. “You’ve been asleep for five hours.”

“Have I?” Dirk yawned. “Hang on - done?”

He staggered to his feet and peered around Farah at the new apartment that he seemed to have teleported into in the past five hours. There was floor. There was a vacuumed rug. There were couch cushions with throw pillows stacked neatly across. “Er - Farah,” he said, tiptoing past a fully assembled shoe rack and into the kitchen, “are you sure this is still my apartment?”

“Yes,” said Farah. “And it is my finest achievement, and if I come back tonight to find you’ve un-alphabetized my spices, I will break your lease guarantee.”

Dirk gulped. “Yes, Farah,” he said meekly, hoping she hadn’t noticed that he’d already bumped half the pictures on the walls back to crooked.

Farah rubbed her eyes. “I am going to go lie down,” she said. “See you tonight? By the way, do you have any more plates? I washed all the ones I could find, most of which were... out on the windowsill, but I had to throw out a couple cracked ones."

“Ooh! Were there hummingbirds?”

“Hummingbirds don’t eat off plates, Dirk.”

“That’s what Todd said,” Dirk grumbled. “But as to your question, yes, I certainly do have plans to acquire more plates posthaste. Er - they’re probably on their way already. Along with placemats. And salad forks. And dessert forks. And… the other kind of forks.” He frowned. “Are salad forks and dessert forks the same fork? Do you wash them in between?”

“The salad fork has longer tines but a shorter handle.”

Dirk blinked at her.

“The Springs… had a lot of dinner parties,” said Farah, shifting in place. “But you’re good, right?”

“Always!” Dirk chirped. “Thank you for your excellent work - of course I could have done it all myself, but you know I always appreciate spending time with you - we’ll have to promote you to agency interior design --”

“Just don’t mess it up,” Farah said one more time, and then she left.

Dirk leaned against the door, staring around at the apartment that hadn’t been this clean since its construction, and thought, with deepening concern, about forks.

---

There were, as it turned out, more than thirty-five types of forks, along with twenty-nine spoons and at least six knives. Dirk did not own six pieces of one kind of knife. He had three spoons, five-ish knives, and a large collection of sporks, for some reason. He also had three non-cracked plates, a bowl that he might have stolen from a neighbor, and some tupperware that had, until recently, contained months-old takeout, but which now looked nearly serviceable for food service.

He set all of this out on the table and frowned at it.

Then he called Todd again.

“Dirk, it’s six in the morning,” said Todd.

“I need my mugs,” said Dirk.

“Do you need them at six in the morning?”

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have called.”

Todd grumbled something rude into the receiver and yawned more loudly than strictly necessary. “How ‘bout if I bring them down,” he said, “in two hours.”

“You’re obviously already awake,” said Dirk. “I know you have certain habits, Todd, but does it really take you two hours to roust yourself out of bed?”

“I’m not --” Todd sighed. “Look, they were all leaking so I, um, I might have thrown them out. But,” he continued over Dirk’s immediate protest, “I was gonna drive over to Amanda’s and pick up some of her old dishes instead. She has a bunch of our parents’ stuff, and I thought you could maybe use, you know, some new plates --”

“I don’t need your plates, Todd,” Dirk huffed. “I have perfectly fine plates of my own.”

“The cracked ones you were using as rat traps?”

“Hummingbird feeders -- ”

“Okay, whatever,” said Todd, “she’s just got a lot of dishes she’s not using, and I thought you could borrow them.”

“First you send over Farah,” said Dirk, “and now you try to foist off your old, cracked plates, nice try - you know, I don’t know why I called in the first place. Also, I have not forgiven you for throwing out my mugs.”

“Dirk --"

“Goodbye, Todd.”

He shut off the phone and sighed at the two water bottles currently adorning the table, one of which was covered in Parkington Elementary stickers, and the other of which was, impractically, shaped like a gorilla.

---

Dirk spent an unnecessary amount of time procrastinating over his outfit, so it was over an hour later that he finally prepared to leave the apartment for his shopping spree. He flung open the door and nearly walked straight into Amanda, who appeared to be trailed by a large number of cardboard robots.

“Er, hello!” said Dirk, eyeing the robots. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“What up, nerd!” said one of the robots.

“Todd said you needed plates,” said Amanda, pushing past Dirk and into the apartment. “Just leave ‘em anywhere, boys, there’s tons of space. Your place looks great,” she added to Dirk.

The robots, who were, of course, the Rowdy Three, loped inside. Dirk managed to bite back most of his squeak of protest as his crooked photographs immediately tumbled off the wall. “Damn, this place sparkles! ” said Cross, tracking mud across the rug.

“I can see all fifty-seven of your kitchen tiles!” said Gripps over the noise of all Dirk’s pots and pans falling over at once.

“Kay, that’s enough,” said Amanda, to Dirk’s relief. “Back to the van.”

“Aww…” said Cross, trailing out with a second, somehow even muddier set of tracks.

“Good luck with all the forks!” said Gripps.

“Forks?” said Dirk as Amanda, rolling her eyes, started re-hanging the pictures. “Amanda, you know I appreciate you, but as I told Todd very firmly not two hours ago, I am perfectly capable of supplying my own dishes.”

“Yeah, but you’re broke,” said Amanda. “According to Farah. And it’s not like we’re using fine china in the van.”

“I am not broke --”

“She says your ‘frivolity budget’ is currently at negative $83.”

Dirk crossed his arms and decided he was not going to help Amanda dab the mud off the rug, after all. “I maintain that matching propeller hats were a justified business expense.”

“Just take the plates, Dirk,” said Amanda, opening the nearest box and removing a stack of unchipped, matching, very adult-looking plates. “There’s, like, bowls and shit, too, I didn’t know what all you needed so I just brought everything.”

Dirk opened the nearest box and frowned at a large blue platter. The closest thing he owned to a platter was a frisbee, which, though also blue, was admittedly somewhat less serviceable than Amanda’s alternative. “I didn’t need anything,” he said, unconvincingly. “But. I appreciate the thought.”

Amanda set the plates on the table, clearing Dirk’s Sesame Street cups aside. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Call me later if you wanna fold napkins, Gripps has been teaching me origami.”

“Origami napkins?” said Dirk, immediately perking up.

Amanda shoved his shoulder. “You are a nerd,” she said. “Hey, by the way. Todd said you were being weird about needing stuff.”

“I’m not being weird,” Dirk huffed. “As always, I am perfectly normal, and the universe simply needs to recalibrate around me.”

“Cool,” said Amanda. “Cause there’s no need to be. We’re your friends, dude. You’re, like, supposed to ask us for stuff.”

“Yes, I know,” said Dirk. “And if I were to be in need, I would ask. It simply happens that for this situation, I am not.”

“Okay, whatever,” said Amanda, setting a box of steak knives on the table and then heading for the door. “Good luck with the salads. See ya.”

---

Dirk finished rinsing the dishes and allowed himself a half hour (...which stretched into an hour) of watching origami napkin folding videos before he set off for the grocery store, wherein he immediately became horribly distracted in the deli section. He’d made the mistake of going to the expensive organic store in the neighborhood which Amanda most kindly referred to as “hella gentrified” because buying organic seemed the Adult thing to do, but apparently another Adult thing was to have an entire section stocked with incredibly intriguing cheese, which he had been staring at for the past fifteen minutes without coming to any conclusions.

He was contemplating whether three-month-old Manchego or something called “The Drunken Goat” would go better with his still nonexistent main dish when Todd called. He fumbled to answer, then remembered he was supposed to be angry with Todd and cut his greeting into a somewhat short, “What?”

“Red or white wine?” said Todd, rushing the words as though he thought Dirk might hang up. When Dirk didn’t immediately respond, he added, “Red usually goes better with dark meat, so…”

“Yes, I know that,” said Dirk, who, for once, actually did; he’d been involved in a fascinating sommelier case in the Champagne region and retained a few choice words to sprinkle into conversation. “Er. Red or white, did you say?”

“Dirk,” said Todd, “do you know what you’re cooking?”

“Of course I do!” said Dirk, making a beeline for the meat counter. “It’s... a surprise.”

Skeptical silence on Todd’s end of the line. Dirk contemplated the frankly endless selection with something approaching panic. “On a completely unrelated note,” he said, “what is the difference between top sirloin and top round?”

“Are you at Whole Foods?” said Todd. “I told you not to go to Whole Foods without me.”

“I maintain that the only way to mix granola is to add a bit of everything.”

“A bit, Dirk. A bit. You didn’t have to dump the entire container of every option.”

“Well,” said Dirk, stepping aside as someone beside him requested an animal he’d literally never heard of, “you don’t have to worry. Granola is not on the menu tonight.”

“Okay,” said Todd, “but you still haven’t told me what is.”

“Oh, it’s a fish," said Dirk to himself as the man behind the counter beheaded several scaled filets. “Er, I mean, what? Sorry, can’t hear you. Line’s cutting out. See you tonight, bye!”

---

In the end, he frantically googled “Fancy Adult Dinner Party Meals,” selected the first article, and bought three times the required amount of everything - or tried to, until he got to the register and realized he’d have to put most of it back. He wrestled the bags home and into his fridge, which had, until that point, contained several half-filled syrup bottles and a single onion. Well, the onion might be useful. He placed it in the vague vicinity of the other onions and, after further contemplation, threw out the syrup.

He stared at the fridge, now bursting with extremely confused leafy greens, and attempted for about the fifteenth time not to panic. Everything would be fine. He had three-year-old cheese! What was more adult than aged food?

Filled with newfound confidence, he buckled on an apron Farah had found under the television and got to work. Cooking, it appeared, involved a lot of chopping. Dirk was generally banned from sharp objects, which he thought was tacitly unfair, so he took advantage of the opportunity to wail away at the carrots with wild abandon. This worked for about twenty seconds, until the carrots were splattered across the floor in a size that did not appear to be “minced.” Unfortunate. He gathered them up, rinsed them off, and restarted the chopping at a more reasonable speed.

Todd called several times during the course of the next few hours. Dirk ignored him. He had seen Todd cook; he did not need advice from someone who had never once made unburnt toast. He could do perfectly fine on his own. All one needed was to follow a few simple instructions. He could do that, couldn’t he?

The truth, which he was stubbornly refusing to admit, was that “simple instruction” and “Dirk Gently” went together about as well as the sauce that was currently catching fire; which was to say, they most certainly did not.

---

Three hours later, Dirk answered a knock at his door to discover Tina and Hobbs.

“Oh, hello!” he said, beaming and ushering them in. “What are you doing here?! It’s still early, isn’t it?”

“The real question,” said Tina after an obligatory hug, “is what are you doing?”

Dirk glanced behind him at the stovetop, which had been in some state of “on fire” for at least two hours; at the oven, which appeared to be on its way there; at the countertops, which were splattered with burnt butter and sage stems; and at the sink, which was piled so high with cutting boards and prep bowls that it appeared in danger of imminent collapse. “Cooking!” he said with a bright smile that faltered a half-second later. “I think.”

“Tina, hand me the fire extinguisher,” said Hobbs, shucking off his jacket and springing immediately into action.

“The, er, what?” said Dirk as Tina produced a fire extinguisher from absolutely nowhere.

“Now, you just stand back a second,” said Hobbs, rolling up his sleeves. “Just sit on the couch and take a break, okay?”

“I can help --” said Dirk.

“Nope,” said Tina, taking his arm and steering him over to the couch so forcibly that Dirk had no chance. “So,” she said, seating him faced away from the kitchen against the sounds of the fire extinguisher, the sizzling stove, and the clatter of pots and pans, “how’ve you been?”

“I really think --”

“Uh-uh,” said Tina. “No thinking. What’s the latest case?”

“But --”

“Dirk," said Tina, taking Dirk’s chin and swiveling it away from the noise of ferocious scrubbing, “Hobbs got me into a cooking class this summer to kill time, which obviously I thought was hella lame because, come on, cooking? Like, we just saved the entire freakin’ universe, and now you want me to roast a chicken? And I can already bake, y’know, so what’s even the difference?”

“You can certainly bake,” said Dirk, thinking of the brownies that followed Farah back from her regular trips to Bergsberg.

“But,” Tina went on, “it’s weirdly been pretty fun! I’m, like, not great, because you have to be ‘patient’ and whatever, but Hobbs is freakin’ awesome. Like, I really think he should be teaching the class at this point.”

“Not surprising,” said Dirk. “But what does this have to do with --”

“So,” said Tina, putting a hand over Dirk’s mouth, which did nothing to stop him from attempting to continue the sentence anyway, “it’s, like, the best thing for all of us if you let him cook. Him, ‘cause he gets to show off --”

“I heard that!” shouted Hobbs from the kitchen.

“-- me, ‘cause I might actually learn something; and everyone else, because they get to eat the best damn roast chicken in the world. Uh, the universe. That’s your thing, right?"

She uncovered his mouth. Dirk frowned in stubborn silence. Then he said, “I can cook, you know.”

“Uh,” said Tina, “sure.”

“I am perfectly capable of making eggs.”

“Uh-huh,” said Tina.

“I have even, once, made French toast.”

Tina laughed. “Dirk,” she said, poking him in the shoulder, “no one’s saying you can’t roast a chicken. We’re just sayin’ you don’t have to. That’s, like, the point of friends, y’know?”

“To… roast chickens?” said Dirk. 

“No, dummy,” said Tina, smacking him this time, “to help. Just because you can do it all yourself doesn't mean you always need to.”

Dirk frowned. Despite doing nothing but refusing offers of help, he’d had an awful lot of help forced upon him. But… had it been so bad? His friends certainly hadn’t seemed to respect him any less for anything he’d needed - no one was leaving the agency due to his lack of champagne flutes. Besides, he’d spent fifteen years being more independent than anyone should ever have to be. Shouldn’t he, now, allow himself to enjoy the privileges of the first friends he’d ever had?

“...Alright,” he said slowly, “fine. It’s possible you have a point.”

Tina’s face split into a grin, and she offered him what Dirk had come to learn was the very American tradition of a fist bump. “I always do, bud,” she said. “Also I’m making a pie and I call dibs on the oven, Hobbs!” she yelled, bouncing off the couch in one bound and sprinting into the kitchen.

---

Hobbs at first attempted to bar Dirk from the kitchen altogether, but Dirk made himself enough of a nuisance hovering around the kitchen threshold that Hobbs eventually allowed him to help with small tasks like measuring the spices and squeezing the lemons. Dirk thought he did both of these very well, though he did learn rather later that Tbsp and tsp were, in fact, two different sizes, and that one was apparently supposed to slice the lemon and squeeze the juice rather than simply massaging it like a stress ball (“But rolling it on the table does release the juice,” Hobbs said, after discovering Dirk had been heartily squeezing away for the past ten minutes, “so I guess you could be onto something?”). 

A mere hour later, the chicken was in the oven, and Dirk’s whole kitchen smelled heavenly. He watched Tina sprinkle flour over the counter as Hobbs reorganized Dirk’s brand new spice rack. “This is amazing,” he said for perhaps the fifteenth time. “Truly. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t have to,” said Tina, nudging him with the unfloured part of her arm. “Just promise me you won’t let all this pie go to waste.”

“Oh, I doubt that will be a problem,” said Dirk. who had already attempted three times to eat Tina’s pie batter. Tina pounded the dough down on the counter and started rolling it out. “By the way,” Dirk said, “what, exactly , prompted you to arrive fortuitously early, with sufficient supplies to cook an entire roast chicken and what appear to be multiple pies?”

“Oh.” Tina paused with the rolling pin halfway into the dough. “What do you think?”

“A particularly well-timed hunch?” Dirk suggested.

“No, you weirdo,” said Tina, “it was Todd. He called Hobbs up asking for easy meal recs - think he was fixing to cook a whole backup meal at his place. Course, Hobbs couldn’t let that stand, so…” She shrugged. “Here we are!”

It would be Todd, Dirk thought with a hint of irritation. Todd hadn’t trusted him at all, jumping in everywhere, trying to do everything for him, like he wasn’t perfectly capable --

-- but no, he thought, forcing himself to slow down, that wasn’t how it had happened at all. Todd had given him the opportunity to do the cooking himself - and the cleaning, and the dishes, and everything else. It was only after he’d seen Dirk floundering that he’d, er, offered an assist - and kept offering, even in the face of Dirk’s persistent annoyance. An unexpected warmth spread through the base of Dirk’s stomach as he thought, once again, of the miracle of friendship. “Thank you,” he said, giving Tina a quick hug and coming away covered in flour. “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time!” Tina called as Dirk hurried off to make a rather overdue phone call.

---

“Dirk? Is everything okay?” said Todd, picking up on the first ring.

“Yes, of course,” said Dirk, slightly out of breath from taking the stairs two at a time. “Better than okay, in fact. As you should know, since - well - are you at home, currently?”

“Um, yeah,” said Todd. “Why?”

“Open the door,” said Dirk.

He waited, hearing Todd’s footsteps approach from the other side, until the door swung back to reveal his rather nervous-looking assistant. “Hi?” said Todd.

Dirk flung his phone aside and his arms around his assistant. “Mmph!” said Todd, finding his face suddenly smushed into Dirk’s flour-covered jacket. “Dirk!”

“I’ve been rather unfair to you, I think,” said Dirk. “I should have thanked you several times over by now.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” said Todd, “but, Dirk, I can’t breathe --”

“Sorry for being a twat,” Dirk continued with no regard for Todd’s halfhearted struggles. “I’m rather used to being on my own, you know, and friendship is still a bit… There are things I’m still, er, getting used to.”

Todd had apparently given up trying to escape. “Like dinner parties?” he said into Dirk’s jacket.

“Like asking for help,” said Dirk. “Er. Apparently that’s. Allowed.”

“Of course it’s allowed,” said Todd.

“Yes, well,” said Dirk, “I know that now.”

“Would’ve been nice if you’d known before you woke me up at six A.M.,” Todd grumbled.

“Stop interrupting,” said Dirk, tightening his grip. “Anyway. All I’m trying to say is. Thank you. For being, er. A very good friend.”

Todd was quiet for a second. Then he said, “I thought we were best friends.”

Dirk huffed and let go enough to pull back and look at Todd’s flour-streaked face. “Yes, that’s what I meant, obviously,” he said.

“It’s not what you said.”

“Excuse me, I’ve just made you a very nice apology!” said Dirk. “And you’re getting hung up on terminology --”

Todd laughed and wiped a streak of flour off Dirk’s own cheek. “I’m kidding,” he said. “And you’re welcome. What are very good friends for, anyway?”

“Todd, you know full well --”

“C’mon, let’s go check on the pie,” said Todd, linking his arm through Dirk’s and closing the door behind them.

---

It was a wonderful party. They had a wonderful roast chicken, followed by a wonderful chocolate pie, on wonderful dishes and a wonderfully clean table. Dirk gave a wonderful, if somewhat rambling, speech, and Todd even acquiesced to play some guitar as the evening’s entertainment (given that Pictionary was no longer allowed). It was, to be frank, one of the most wonderful nights of Dirk’s life.

“So?” said Todd as they loaded the last of the dishes into the wash later that night. “Feel like a real adult?”

“Oh,” said Dirk, smiling at him over the bubbles, “I’ve decided maturity is overrated.”

“Shocking,” Todd said, flicking some bubbles at him. “What’s the next party, then?”

Dirk looked at Tina, shamelessly scooping the last of the filling from the pie plate as Farah laughed; Hobbs, explaining the Malliard Reaction to Amanda; and Todd, wearing his grandmother’s frilly apron with water streaked all down the front. “Er,” he said, attempting to tamp down his ballooning bliss enough for speech, “potluck?”

“You know you actually have to cook for potluck,” said Todd. “You can’t just get Hobbs to cook everything for you.”

“Maybe you can’t,” said Dirk. “He quite likes me.”

Todd shoved him into the sink, and Dirk retaliated by dumping half a pan of water over Todd’s head, and before long, the kitchen was enough of a mess that Farah had to come break them up. Dirk knew that his apartment would be a mess again in the morning, and his fridge would quickly be empty, and he’d be back to his ridiculous plastic mugs; but it was okay. He didn’t need to prove anything to have these friends. They were here for him, just as he was; and that was, perhaps, the greatest miracle of all.

Chapter Text

“Quick, in here!”

Todd shoved Dirk through the door of the nearest shop, slammed it closed behind them, and dragged him off out of view. “You think they saw us?” whispered Dirk, clambering practically on top of Todd to peer around him out the door.

“They will if you keep doing that,” said Todd, shoving Dirk off.

“Er - welcome,” said a voice from behind them, and Todd and Dirk whirled around to see a man in a Mariners hoodie watching them, perplexed, from a stool by the door. “Are you here for the pinball museum?”

Todd turned to see, stretching into the dim and dusty room, two long rows of pinball machines, flashing and beeping in anticipation of pure arcade joy.

“Oh, god,” he muttered, as he felt rather than saw Dirk swell up in excitement beside him.

“We most certainly are!” said Dirk, in a voice that was definitely not calculated not to draw attention. “Aren’t we, To - Harold?”

Todd bit back a comment on “Harold” for now. “How much?” he asked the man.

“Unlimited play for twenty each,” said the man, pulling out a credit card machine. Todd almost considered leaving for some other random store, or maybe the food court, but he remembered the sting of the just-missed harpoon gun and surrendered to pinball man’s highway robbery.

“I’m going to call Farah,” said Todd as the man handed them both orange wristbands and ushered them inside. “Wait here for a second, okay?”

“You’re not going to play?” said Dirk, eyeing a King Tut themed machine from the 60s.

“Dirk,” said Todd, in the absolute-end-of-his-rope voice that he had pretty much perfected since Dirk’s appearance in his life, “we are being chased by harpoon gun maniacs with a prophecy about murdering you. I don’t think it’s exactly the time for arcade games.”

“On the contrary, Todd, it is always the time for arcade games,” said Dirk. “Who knows - perhaps the key to defeating the harpoon guns is hidden inside this very machine!”

He whacked the nearest machine, which said Swing Along: 1963, and the display flickered and went out.

“...Or not,” said Dirk.

Todd considered whether it was possible to remove a pinball from any of the machines and throw it at Dirk’s head. “Don’t,” he said, “break anything.”

Dirk huffed and disappeared under the machine, probably to break it worse, as Todd hurried up the stairs to call someone sensible.

---

“Okay, she says they’re hiding in the bookstore a few blocks down, Kinokuniya?” said Todd, rushing back down the stairs a few minutes later. “So it doesn’t seem like they know where we are yet, but she says to lay low for - what are you doing?”

“Waiting for you,” said Dirk innocently, without looking up from the machine he’d parked himself at.

“I said this isn’t the time –”

“We did pay for it,” Dirk pointed out as his pinball bounced off what looked like a dragon and points racked up on the display.

“I mean,” said Todd, “that doesn’t mean we can just - we need to strategize, and - and –”

“You’ve already strategized with Farah,” said Dirk, as something dinged and the points went up again. “She said to lay low, didn’t she?”

Todd scowled at the sign atop the machine, which said, Lord of the Rings - Stern - 2003. “I don’t think she meant, play pinball,” he grumbled.

Dirk’s pinball momentarily disappeared into a hole in the back of the machine, and he stretched and turned to Todd. “Why don’t you buy us some Fritos and try a few rounds yourself? How long has it been, Todd, since you allowed yourself the simple pleasures of a game of pinball? The swish of the… flippers, the clacking of the… lever things, the little - all the little lights –”

“You’ve never played pinball before in your life, have you?” said Todd.

The machine made a noise like a booting-up computer, and Dirk’s pinball popped back out again. “Nope!” said Dirk cheerily, turning back to it.

---

Todd bought some Fritos and decided that if Dirk wasn’t going to leave his dumb game, Todd was going to eat all the chips himself. He parked himself in a corner and started thumbing through his phone for any more on the harpoon guys.

“That your friend?” said a voice about two-thirds through the bag.

Todd never had to look to know who “that” referred to. As much as he wanted to pretend otherwise, denying Dirk seemed unerringly to summon Dirk yelling Todd’s name along with some random piece of info that only a friend would know (and Todd usually hadn’t told him). “Yeah,” he said aggressively.

“I’ve been watching him,” said the man who’d sold him the Fritos. “He’s pretty good, isn’t he?”

“Is he?” said Todd.

The man jerked his head towards Dirk and the three or four teenagers loitering around him. “That’s one of our harder machines,” he said. “Think he’s getting close to the high score.”

Todd spent a second to lament his peaceful Frito days before pushing himself off the stool and shouldering his way through to Dirk.

“What,” he said, “are you doing?”

“To - Harold!” said Dirk, who apparently hadn’t forgotten that one. “Did you happen to get those chips?”

“No,” said Todd. “I thought you said you’d never played pinball before.”

Dirk’s pinball ratcheted around the top ramp, and his score racked up into the six figures. “I haven’t!” he said happily. “It’s quite fun, though! I really think you should try –”

“DING DING DING,” said the machine, “escape from Khazad-Dum!!”

“Ooh, I love this one, it drops down all these other balls, watch!” said Dirk, doubling over the flippers.

Todd rubbed his palms into his eyes as several more pinballs dropped down the ramps. The teenagers lurking in the background muttered as Dirk pinged them one after another into the center bridge. “I’ve never gotten them all in,” one muttered as the second-to-last pinball seemed to hop, at the last minute, back on track.

“Hey, buzz off,” said Todd, fixing his fiercest scowl on the kids. “Don’t you have school or something?”

“BONUS SCORE!!!” said the pinball machine as the kids slunk away, still muttering.

---

Todd retreated to the second floor for another, longer call with Farah, as well as a second bag of Fritos. After a half-hour of actual strategizing, they thought they had a way out. “Are you safe where you are?” said Farah. “Can you stay for another, um, hour max?”

Todd leaned over the balcony to check on Dirk and nearly dropped his phone. “Holy shit,” he said. “Uh, hang on.”

He put Farah on mute and tripped down the stairs. The teenagers appeared to have called in backup; Dirk was surrounded by nearly fifteen people now, all of them watching him intently. “...never seen anything like it,” one of them said as Todd elbowed his way by. “Not since Mathisson in ‘06…”

“Mathisson’s longest play was, what, ninety minutes?” said someone else. “He’s nearly beat that…”

“Dirk!” said Todd, reaching the detective at last. “What the hell!”

“Oh, are we back to real names?” said Dirk, hitting the left flipper three times in a row for no reason that Todd could see.

“We’re supposed to be avoiding attention,” Todd hissed. He gestured around at the growing crowd. “This is not avoiding anything!”

“I didn’t ask them to watch, To - Harold,” said Dirk. “They simply enjoy a good game of pinball.”

“Now open: PATH of the DEAD!!” said the machine as several lights blinked in the upper left. Todd repressed the suspicion that he was the one on the path of the dead.

“You need to stop playing,” he said. “Farah’s on her way.”

“She’s not here yet, is she?” said Dirk snidely, and hit another jackpot.

Todd half-turned in search of inspiration and met some dude’s blinking iPhone. “Hey, stop that!” he said, swatting the camera away. “No photos!”

“But he’s incredible,” said someone else.

“He didn’t consent to recording!” said Todd, which he was pretty sure was a legal thing, or at least, Farah said it sometimes.

The machine went off about something, and Dirk’s score flipped over to eight digits. “Never thought I’d see the day,” someone said.

“I swear –” Todd started, but his phone buzzed insistently in his hand, and he realized he’d left Farah on mute. “I’ll be back,” he warned the crowd, and elbowed his way back upstairs.

---

Twenty minutes later, Todd thumped back down the stairs again to find that the crowd had fully filled the museum and spilled out onto the street.

“Hey,” said the Frito man, grabbing Todd’s arm as Todd attempted to shove his way between a woman with a Seahawks cap and her pimply son. “I know you said no pictures, but could we get your name for our wall? Your friend’s blowing through all our records.”

“No!” said Todd. “For the last time, no!”

“Okay, no pressure,” said the man, releasing him and holding up his hands.

Todd pushed through the crowd, muttering to himself, until he finally reached Dirk, who was still beaming away. “Defeat the witch king,” said the machine, with ominous tinny music.

“Aw, I’ve already done that one,” said Dirk, making a face. “How do I get the other balls back, that was fun –”

“Dirk,” said Todd, “we have to go.”

“Oh, must we?” said Dirk. “There’s a Ghostbusters machine down the end that I wanted to try, if this one ever ends.”

“He’s still on his first pinball,” someone supplied helpfully.

“Farah’s outside,” said Todd.

“Oh! In that case.”

Dirk bounced the flippers one last time and then stepped back. The audience around him let out a groan. “Sorry!” said Dirk cheerfully. “Duty calls!”

“Yeah, so you can all fuck off,” said Todd, with significantly less cheer.

“Golly, it sure has gotten crowded, hasn’t it?” said Dirk as Todd maneuvered him outside. “Where did all these people come from?”

Todd came to a full halt just inside the agency door. “They came for you,” he said, wondering, as usual, how Dirk could be so smart and so clueless all at once. “They came to watch you holistically cheat at pinball.”

“I wasn’t cheating!” said Dirk in a tone of outrage. “I would never cheat!”

“Bribing physics, then,” said Todd. “I’m pretty sure it’s not normal for pinballs to literally hop up onto the ramp.”

“Hey - one second,” said the ticket man at the door, jumping up to follow them out. “Here,” he said, handing out two rumpled twenties. “I can’t charge you for that. I’ve worked here nearly ten years, and I’ve never seen anything like what you did."

Dirk gave Todd one of his smuggest looks. “Why, thank you,” he said to the man, accepting the bills with a flourish. “It was my pleasure, I assure you. If you’re ever in need of detective services, please do give me a call.”

Todd narrowly managed not to bang his head into the doorframe as Dirk handed over a business card. “I can’t take you anywhere,” he said as he finally got Dirk away from the building and around the corner to Farah’s waiting car. “I swear to god. Pinball…”

“You know what else I’ve never tried?” said Dirk as they clambered into the backseat. “Carnival games. The ones with the fish in cans and such. Do you think we could go there next?”

Todd leaned his head against the window and groaned as Dirk laughed all the way home.

Chapter Text

“Roll, Todd,” said Dirk, holding out a fistful of dice.

Todd didn’t bother to look up from the scattered action figures he was carefully rewrapping back into their box. “The game’s over, Dirk,” he said. “Besides, you don’t tell me when to roll, remember? I’m the dungeon master. We went over this –”

“Roll,” Dirk insisted.

Todd placed the last of the orcs in the box and closed the lid. “Fine,” he said, holding out a hand for Dirk to drop one D20. “What am I rolling for?”

Dirk shrugged, his normally transparent face unreadable. “Anything,” he said. “Make a wish.”

Todd rolled the die around in his palm, frowning. There was something odd in Dirk’s tone, something that wanted to be taken seriously. “Ohkay,” Todd said. “Making a wish.”

“Close your eyes,” said Dirk.

Todd obeyed. He wanted to just drop the die, but he’d known Dirk long enough to suspect that that wouldn’t do here. If Dirk said make a wish, he’d make a wish. Peace on earth, or whatever, he thought. Goodwill towards man. Um. I wish for –

“Rolling now,” he said hastily, as his real wish rushed on him like an incoming tide, and he let it go at the same time as the die, skidding across the table.

The die came to rest just in front of Dirk, too far for Todd to read. “What does it say?” he asked, craning his neck.

Dirk’s mouth quirked in a secret accidental smile that he quickly replaced with a more casual one. “Twenty,” he said, holding it up.

“No shit!” said Todd, whose suspicions were now cranked up to eleven. “Wanna tell me what I rolled for now?”

“Hm,” said Dirk, rubbing the die between his fingers. “Roll again. For, er, charisma. And…” He scratched his chin. “Athleticism.”

Todd was itching to ask but equally itching not to play into Dirk’s obvious trap. He stretched across the table to take back the die. “Here goes for charisma,” he said, rolling faster this time. The die bounced to the center of the table and landed on –

“Twenty, again!” he said, pumping his fist in the air. “Your luck’s rubbing off on me. Here, hand it back for athletics or whatever.”

He mishandled the third roll, nearly dropping the die early. When he did roll, it landed on –

“Eight.”

The word thudded onto the table like the now-unlucky die.

“Hm,” said Dirk.

Todd sighed and gathered up the die to put back with the rest of them. Whatever tension had thrummed in the air had broken with his last roll. “Too bad,” he said. “Stats win again.”

“I’ll bump you up three,” said Dirk thoughtfully, “for… effort.”

“Effort for what?” said Todd, checking under the table for any dropped markers and wincing as his back cracked on standing up again. “Are you gonna tell me what all this was?”

Dirk sized Todd up, as though Todd were an oncoming enemy, and then, without warning, he placed his hands flat on the table, leaned across it, and kissed Todd straight on the mouth.

“!!” said Todd, or Todd’s brain, or Todd’s body. All three, probably. Fortunately, the last of these acted on autopilot before Todd could quite catch up, leaning into the kiss with enough enthusiasm that all his carefully packed action figures toppled off the table. At the impact, Todd accidentally jumped back.

“Um!” he said.

“Er!” said Dirk.

They stared at each other.

“Did you –” said Todd.

“You did –” said Dirk.

They stared at each other some more.

“But how did you know?” Todd burst out. “My wish, I mean - I barely even thought it - how did you –”

Dirk indicated an upturned mug next to his place. “I rolled, too,” he said, lifting the mug to reveal another perfect 20.

“But,” Todd stammered, “you didn’t even - you didn’t check it –”

Dirk smiled at him, Todd’s favorite smile, the one that enveloped him in all the care and comfort the universe could provide. “I didn’t have to,” he said.

Todd smiled back, his chest flooding with warmth. He wanted to move around the table, take Dirk in his arms, and continue what had just been interrupted, but he also wanted to stay here forever, gazing into Dirk’s eyes. He had plenty of time for both.

One of their phones buzzed on the table, and they jumped again. Dirk went for it first. “It’s Farah,” he said. “She’s ordered pizza.”

“Oh!” said Todd. “Um, we should probably - we should - should we go?”

Dirk grinned at the edge of desperation in Todd’s voice. “We-ell,” he said, drawing the word out, “we could go. Or . Alternately. We could stay here and work on your eight.”

“My… eight?” said Todd.

The phone buzzed again. “She’s rather insistent,” said Dirk. He heaved a sigh. “I suppose that’s it, then,” he said theatrically. “The eight shall have to wait. For now.”

“What eight?” said Todd, as Dirk picked up the nearest box and headed for the exit. He’d rolled a twenty, hadn’t he? Well, he’d rolled two twenties, and then he’d rolled an eight on…

“Athleticism?” he said, nearly dropping the action figures again. “Wait, Dirk, athleticism? I’m not an - Dirk, I’m not an eight!”

“I’ll have to see for myself, shall I?” said Dirk, waggling his eyebrows from the doorway. “Keep up, the pizza will get cold…”

Todd grumbled his way out of the building, but as he passed Dirk, the detective leaned in to kiss his cheek, which, Todd thought, more or less made up for everything.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“I give up,” says Todd. “I can’t do this.”

“Me, too,” says Farah on the other end of the line. “This is impossible.”

“What were we thinking,” says Todd.

“I have no idea,” says Farah.

“This is way too much.”

“How does anyone do it.”

Todd stares in despair at the Valentine’s chocolates in front of him, six shelves high and two rows deep. “Valentine’s Day,” he says, “sucks.”

Farah sighs heavily for about the fifth time in the past ten minutes. It is both of their first non-single Valentine’s Day ever, and they are both panicking about it, for unrelated reasons. Farah is panicking because she’s always panicking, even though Todd has told her twelve times that Farah could show up on Tina’s porch with half a Snickers and Tina would probably propose. Todd is panicking because he’s a used gum wad of a human being, and he is trying not to be, and part of that involves celebrating Valentine’s Day like a thoughtful boyfriend who can do normal things like buy chocolate without wanting to set himself on fire.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” says Farah, in a tone that comes off as accusing. “Whatever you choose will turn out to be exactly what Dirk needed.”

“Your girlfriend is an empath!” says Todd. “She won’t even care about the chocolate, she’ll just get, like, love vibes –”

“Stress vibes,” Farah mutters.

Todd throws up his arm and accidentally knocks off a soccer-patterned box, setting off a domino effect with the boxes of Reese’s nearby (does Dirk like peanut butter?) (does Dirk even like chocolate?) (shouldn’t he know this?). “She’ll like anything you get her,” he says, attempting to restack the boxes, talk to Farah, and have a minor freak-out about whether Dirk has a secret peanut allergy, all at the same time. “I promise.”

“Even Valentine’s Ding-Dongs?” says Farah with deep skepticism. “Actually, never mind, she would love Valentine’s Ding-Dongs. She would think that’s hilarious. I would never hear the end of Valentine’s Ding-Dongs.”

“Then get her the Valentine’s Ding-Dongs,” says Todd, who has somehow also managed to topple a whole box of pink teddy bears.

“I can’t get her Valentine’s Ding-Dongs!” says Farah in near-hysteria.

Todd settles the last of the teddy bears back on the shelf. “This is stupid,” he says. “We’re being stupid. Tina would eat anything here.”

“So would Dirk!” says Farah.

“Maybe your store is better than mine,” says Todd, frowning at a box that says “Love ya!” in what looks like Comic Sans.

“I really, really doubt that,” says Farah.

Todd wanders past a shelf of dog-patterned boxes, a shelf of cat-patterned boxes, and a shelf of confused holiday boxes bearing everything from American flags to St. Patrick’s Day shamrocks. He could choose about seventeen things Tina would love, starting with a chocolate Ken doll and ending with the “Love Ya!” comic sans. All of them would probably kill Dirk. Farah definitely knows all of Dirk’s nut allergies, and has compiled them into binders, while Todd is out here manslaughtering his boyfriend on the most romantic day of the year. “What if,” he says, “we swap?”

“Swap stores?” says Farah.

“No, swap people. Like, you buy something for Dirk, and I’ll buy something for Tina.”

He holds his breath. She hasn’t said no yet. He is sure she would , if they weren’t both so desperate, but they passed last resorts three hours ago and are rapidly running out the overtime clock.

“It’s not,” she says slowly, “the worst idea.”

“They don’t have to know,” says Todd. “We can even get cards.”

“Oh my god, I forgot about cards,” says Farah.

Todd waits while Farah mutters to herself on the other end. He hears her moving around, presumably towards the cards aisle, and then a sharp intake of breath and an increase of muttering. He is pretty sure the cards aisle took a good fifteen years off his own life.

“Okay,” says Farah. “Fine. Let’s swap.”

---

“Todd!” says Dirk, a few hours later. “This is perfect!”

They're at Todd's apartment, because Todd's attempt to make romantic dinner reservations fell victim to an exorbitantly priced fixed menu. Todd has also failed to buy flowers, since the chocolate fiasco took so long that the florist closed, and between panicking about the flowers, panicking about the restaurant, panicking about the chocolates, and panicking about his hair, for some reason, he also forgot to write a card.

It is, in other words, a disaster. And it has every sign of getting worse.

Todd attempts to lean over the sofa and see what Farah bought (and wrapped, and labelled) without making it obvious that he has no idea what it is. He got Tina a teddy bear with heart-shaped sunglasses and a bottle of wine with the most neon label he could find. He did not wrap it. Dirk gave him a solid chocolate guitar, and also some hand cream, which he hasn’t explained.

“Um, glad you like it,” Todd says.

Dirk tosses the rest of the paper aside and starts tearing at the plastic. Farah has selected a box of truffles (assorted) that promises flavors like habanero, dragonfruit, and, confusingly, “blue.” It is perfect. Todd wishes he’d thought of it. He wonders what Dirk would have thought of his best option, a box of milk chocolates with a shark. Dirk is far within his rights to break up with anyone who romances him with a shark.

The plastic quickly follows the paper, along with the lid and its labels, of course. “Mmm,” says Dirk, surveying the options. “Which one is habanero, do you think? Cover my eyes, Todd, perhaps I’ll get lucky!”

Todd doesn’t deserve to cover Dirk’s eyes. He doesn’t deserve to be within six feet of Dirk. He is a squashed milk chocolate of a human being, and he has to come clean, so Dirk can break it off now. 

“Mmph! Banana,” says Dirk, who’s given up on Todd’s indecision. “Here, you try one! Open wide!”

Todd is wallowing in too much distress to respond to Dirk’s waggling eyebrows. He opens his mouth to come clean and is rewarded with a striped yellow chocolate. It’s habanero. Of course. “Dirk,” he says, his eyes streaming and his throat burning up. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, you should be,” says Dirk, crossing his arms in mock indignation. “I quite wanted to try that one. Come closer, perhaps I can taste the traces –”

“No, Dirk,” says Todd, pushing Dirk away. “Listen. I didn’t buy you anything.”

Dirk frowns at him. “Of course you did, you silly thing,” he says. “It’s right here.”

“No,” says Todd. He thinks his tongue is swelling up. “Farah bought it. I couldn’t decide. I didn’t know what to get you. I’m - I’m a terrible boyfriend.”

Todd’s eyes are watering too much to see what Dirk’s face is doing. It’s an accidental mercy. At least he saved Dirk, whose spice tolerance is zero, from this wretched fate.

“Are you saying,” Dirk says, “that you panicked in the store, and you couldn’t think of a thing to get me, so you recruited a friend to help you choose your boyfriend’s gift?”

It sounds worse to hear it in Dirk’s voice. “Sorry,” Todd says again.

“Todd,” says Dirk after a second, and then bursts out laughing.

Todd wipes his eyes. Dirk is rocking back and forth with laughter. Todd rescues Farah’s chocolates from sliding off the couch and tries to decide if this laughter is real or hysterical. “What?” he demands.

“I’m a terrible boyfriend,” says Dirk. “I called Amanda. That’s where the hand cream is from, I didn’t know about it till you pulled it out.”

“Is that,” says Todd slowly, “why it says ‘for your crusty-ass cuticles’ on the bottom?”

“Does it really?” says Dirk, choking on laughter. “I’m so sorry - I probably should have checked –”

Todd sinks back against the sofa. “I hate Valentine’s Day,” he says.

“Oh, darling, don’t say that,” says Dirk, snuggling up next to him. “Look, we’ve managed to be terrible boyfriends in the exact same way - that’s romantic, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” says Todd doubtfully.

Dirk leans his head on Todd’s shoulder. “My best option,” he confides, “was a box of chocolates with a black kitten on the front. It looked rather like Hammerhead. I was hoping I’d find a shark to go along, but apparently Safeway doesn’t consider that romantic.”

Todd plays back the sentence in his head. Then he lets out a groan. “Dirk,” he says, “I almost bought you shark chocolates.”

“You found them?” Dirk yelps. “Where? Do you think they’re still there?”

They are hopeless, Todd thinks. This is hopeless. But maybe they’re the right kind of hopeless together. He pulls Dirk closer to his side. “Let’s go tomorrow,” he says. “They’ll be on sale.”

“Excellent point, darling,” says Dirk, and kisses his cheek, and Todd thinks, maybe Valentine’s isn’t so bad, after all.

Chapter Text

“You have, like, books here, right?”

Myrtle, the librarian, looks up from her desk, at the library, where she has been finalizing a new order of library books. 

“Yes,” she says. “We do.”

“Oh!” says the man with a relieved smile. “Great.”

Myrtle eyes him over the stacks of books and notepads on her desk. She has been a librarian for nearly four decades, and she’s seen all sorts, though she can’t recall anyone ever asking this particular question. The man in front of the desk is… hm. Muscular is the best word she can think of, though she would have more choice adjectives if she was a few decades younger and/or inclined in that direction. Chiseled, perhaps. Blonde, predictably, with the sort of haircut that had been popular on Ken dolls, back in the day (do they still have Ken dolls? Barbie has certainly traveled; she’d heard something about a breakup?). His smile is pleasant enough, though somewhat vacant, and judging by his question, this might be the first library he’s entered in his life.

But, librarians didn’t judge - not books by their cover, and not patrons by their questions - so she shifts away from her computer and says, “Can I help you find anything in particular?”

“Oh!” says the man, brightening at the offer of help. “The thing is, this guy Mike? He’s, like, really smart? And I’m not? So I thought, maybe, if I read some books and stuff, he might like me more?”

He looks so hopeful that Myrtle doesn’t have the heart to tell him that changing oneself is rarely worthwhile, and that his best hope with this “Mike” likely involves who he is now. The man misinterprets her silence and blunders forth with, “Not like like, obviously. Just as, um. Is there a word for, like, people who hang out all the time, and talk a lot, and think the other person is really smart and cool and funny and just make each other, um, I guess. Happy?”

Myrtle raises an eyebrow. “...Friends?” she says.

“Yeah!” says the man with the biggest smile yet. “Yeah. Friends.”

Myrtle has always considered her duties as a librarian to extend past the books and towards the well-being of her patrons, but she feels this man may need more help than she is able to provide. “What kind of books does this Michael enjoy?” she asks. “Any subjects he’s interested in?”

“Aliens,” says the man instantly.

“Aliens?” says Myrtle.

The man nods enthusiastically. “He knows everything about them,” he says. “Like, all the stuff the government’s been covering up - he got access, or I guess I gave him access, and he says it’s just what he thought the whole time and people are super not paying attention. And then he said a bunch of science things that sounded really smart. So maybe if you have some books that could, um, explain that?”

“You’re looking for,” says Myrtle slowly, “scientific books about aliens?”

“Yeah!” says the man.

Myrtle takes off her glasses, polishes them on her sweater, and puts them back on. “I’ll… see what I can do,” she says.

“Oh! One more thing,” says the man. “Sorry, I know you’re a librarian and everything, but reading, like, kinda sucks? So if there’s any books you have that you, like, don’t have to read to get smart - could you find those?”

Ah, she thinks. Thoughts of UFOs fly out of her head as she recalibrates her illicit judgments. There are reasons she is a librarian, and this man is one of them. She is suddenly and overwhelmingly grateful that this man has chosen this library, on this day, to walk in and present her with an opportunity to unlock literature, outside the written word.

“Have you ever tried,” she says, “audiobooks?”

An hour and a half later, she has loaded the man down with several audiobooks; a stack of graphic novels; links to browser extensions for changing font size/spacing and rendering text to speech; and, of course, a brand-new library card. 

“Now, these are all just starting places,” she says, methodically scanning out each graphic novel in turn. “If any of them don’t work for you, you don’t need to push it. But if it does work, then you feel free to come back and ask me for more, alright?”

The man, who, to his credit, did not flee when she went Full Librarian, swallows. “I - I guess,” he says. “But, I mean. Are you sure? Like, this isn’t really reading, right? Picture books are for babies.”

“These aren’t picture books,” she says snippily. “They’re graphic novels. It’s a perfectly legitimate form of literature, and if anyone gives you a hard time, you send them straight to me.”

He pulls the closest book towards him and flips through the pages, lingering over some of the more vivid illustrations. She’s had this conversation so many times she could have it in her sleep, but it still breaks her heart a little, to think a little thing like formatting has stood in his way for so long. 

“We’ve only had writing for about five thousand years,” she tells him, “but we’ve always had stories. True purists should still be sitting around a fire carrying on the oral tradition. There are plenty of ways to read that don’t involve words on a page.”

“Huh,” says the man, staring at a full-page spread of a detailed spaceship. “That’s - that’s kinda cool.”

“It certainly is,” says Myrtle. She finishes checking him out and slides the rest of the books and resources across the desk. “Good luck with your Michael,” she says, looking him straight in the eye. “And everything else.”

“Thanks!” he says with a bright smile. “You know, I always thought libraries sucked? But you don’t suck at all.”

Myrtle refrains from a sigh. “Thank you,” she says instead, and waves him out.

---

She thinks of him a few times over the next couple weeks. She doesn’t seriously expect to see him again; there are return bins outside, and her shifts are fairly irregular. But roughly three weeks later, she looks up and there he is, with a slight, nervous-looking man in tow.

“Hey, it’s you again!” says the man with an oversized wave. “Mike, this is the nice librarian lady who gave me all those, um, graphic novels. Hey, librarian lady, those links you gave me were so cool! I never knew there were all those things that would read emails and stuff to you, so you don’t have to read them at all!”

Myrtle does try to remain somewhat detached, but she can’t help but feel warmed by this outcome. Even better, Mike responds to this speech with a fond smile, first in the man’s direction and then in hers. “Thank you,” he says. “That was, um. Overdue, I think.”

“Oh, no, I turned all the books in on the day they said!” says the man quickly. “No library fines here!”

Mike laughs and pats the man’s arm. “Come on,” he says. “Didn’t you want to look for the Predator sequels?”

“Yes,” says the man, and tows Mike inside. Myrtle watches them go, still feeling like a job well done. Maybe she needs a new slogan, she thinks. Libraries: We don’t suck at all! She snorts and shakes her head. She’ll work on it. She has plenty more patrons to practice on.