Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In this eerily familiar suburb on earth C it is quiet. serene. Peaceful. Calm. Boring. So, so boring God you are so fucking bored. If at some point you had the motivation to get up and do something then it too fell back onto your bed and went the fuck back to sleep instead of doing anything. As it is it’s now 7:00 pm, which means you spent the whole day asleep again and will be awake all night doing nothing because there is nothing to do at night. Again. You need to get and find something to do as soon as possible.

Get up. Now. Do it. Get up. Go John, go!

Nah.

You had plans at some point in time didn't you? Like there were things you were going to do after everything was over? Everyone else did. Rose and Kanaya had their weird baby project and their stupidly perfect relationship. Jake and Jane had their separate companies to manage. Jade had always had plenty of hobbies and projects to keep her occupied. Dave and Karkat were always out around the world having adventures, which sounds interesting but anytime they talk about it you can feel your attention span start to shrink. Roxy has Calliope (you aren't actually sure what it is they do together but damn if they don't look happy). Even when it seemed like things had calmed down some it felt weird to bother any of them. Like you were imposing? They all have their own lives and you just have this house now, and no one but yourself.

Wow! That’s A Lot to think about and there’s your motivation to get up you guess. You hate when you get all moody like this. Everyone else is happy. Why can’t you just be happy? Shit there you go again, it's time to stop.

You pull on whatever you grab off the floor first and start walking out… somewhere. Anywhere. Along the way you pointedly think of absolutely nothing and as a result realize a while later that you have no clue where you are. Suburbs all look the same from the ground, it makes them impossible to navigate. They all have the same monotonous, simple layout, same lawn, same architecture, same stupidly inviting friendly feel to it. It’s difficult to muster up the energy to care though when you can fly up to see stuff and teleport literally anywhere in space-time. Being lost in your own neighborhood is actually kind of a novel experience. A little bit hilarious even if you think about it. You keep walking.

You end up walking out of the neighborhood entirely, passing along the large lake on the outskirts of the houses, eventually ending up at the edge of a pier that you hadn’t even known was there. like. huh. really? You’ve lived here for years was there the whole time? Who’d have known? Everyone but you apparently. You sit down at the edge and look up and out over the water. There are no stars out that you can see, and only the distant, tiny glow of houses at the other shore. It’s still quiet out, but now it doesn’t feel like it’s physically weighing down on your neck and shoulders.

It’s just you, the gentle sounds of whatever a pier generically sounds like, and the feeling that you’re stealing foreshadowing from a particular, overrated 19th century novel that Rose would love to rip the asshole out of but that karkat would find genuine merit in somehow. Then your phone pings and it startles you so much that you physically jump away from it. There’s snort of laughter behind you and the sound of a pair of heavy shoes landing on the deck.

“You know I texted because I wasn’t really sure that it was you but I guess seeing that display works just as well as replying.”

“Holy shit I- Dirk? What the fuck! You could have just said something! What the fuck are you doing here? You don’t live anywhere near here”.

“I was flying over from visiting Jane. There’s a transportalizer station near here that Jade set up for us to use for that express purpose” his boots clunk further down towards you and you can see that they are… kind of hideous in the best ways. Huge and black with red and blue accents that don’t mesh in the slightest. They’re fantastic. He stops next to you “Would you have jumped less if I’d just come up and started talking out of nowhere? You seemed to be pretty deep into introspection territory, either that or something is incredibly interesting about the scenery despite it being 8 o’clock on a Wednesday night and also black as pitch outside.”

“I don’t know, probably? I just wasn’t expecting someone to pop up out of nowhere and-”

“Ah, yes” he just interrupted you! What a douche bag. “No one could possibly come around in this here public park in a moderately populated residential area.”

“It’s 8 at night! Who else would be out right now? Besides me I mean” you could see him starting to open his mouth to say something smart there.

“Wasn’t aware that you were the only one allowed late night jaunts” he sounds amused.

“I- shut up. It’s not even that late out. How did you know it was me out here anyway? It could have been anyone. You could have scared the shit out of some poor old lady taking her nightly walk.”

“Well it looks like I did with how you’re nagging me.” the corners of his mouth quirk up the tiniest bit.

There is a pause as your face rapidly goes through the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief from the tragic loss of your snark-o-meter - by which you mean your dignity - after that sick fucking burn. You are absolutely reeling.

“I’m gonna fucking fight you right now i’m not even kidding” at least you hide your hurt well.

“Egbert please, I can’t resist a challenge and we both know you’d kick my ass.”

“Hahaha yeah that’s true. Seriously though how did you know I was here?”

“Well first of all nobody has shoes that obnoxiously colored” he gestures downwards and you realize that you put on your bright-ass yellow god-tier shoes. Yet another blow, but this is fine you can recover from this.

“Excuse me sir, how can you say that when you are wearing those” he looks down and cool now you both look like tools staring at the ground.

“I…” he’s floundering for something good to say.

“Don’t you dare try to defend those” the snark-o-meter makes a miraculous recovery to the delight of friends and family.

“... retract my previous statement.” point Egbert! Bingo.

“Yeah that’s what I thought. What was the other thing?”

“Oh yeah. I can see your avatar on the snapchat map bro” he brings his phone out to show you and, oh. Yep. There you are. Standing next to his on the map. Apparently the lake is named after Jane that’s nice.

“Oh. Yep. There I am”

“Yup” he pops the P here “You sure are.”

…

…

Well that killed the conversation. He looks conflicted as to whether he should stay or leave. Fuck you don’t want him to leave this was actually interesting and fun. Quick! Think of something to say that isn’t weird or an insult. Uhhhh

...

“Sooooo, what are you doing out here anyway?” oh thank god he spoke. You thought you were going to have to be the one to supply a conversation starter. Except the only reason you’re out here is to stave off some bullshit internal crisis about never seeing anybody and feeling like junk all the time wait what? Shit.

“Ohhhh you know….. Stuff. I got bored sitting at home and decided to go for a walk.” That’s good because it’s true!

“Suppose it’s as good of a night as any to go for a walk. It’s kind of cold as balls right now though.” oh you didn’t even notice that, shit it is. You’re wearing a hoodie, but he’s got this huge, weather appropriate jacket on.

“Yeah, but I kind of like it” this is a lie. What has been noticed cannot be unnoticed and now you are literally freezing your ass off. He can totally see through that can’t he? Dirk is supposed to be the cool, annoyingly smart one, and if you know anything about yourself its that you fucking suck at lying. “It’s nice.”

“Ok well do you want to come over and hang?” wait what.

“wait what?” that makes you so absurdly happy for some reason.

“well you said you weren't doing anything and I've got nothing better to do. Video games are only so interesting when it's just you” oh right he's just bored of course.

“uhh, yeah sure that sounds fine” you feel really gross all the sudden “Is, uhh, Jake ok with that.”

“I'm not sure why he wouldn't be or why he would care except he’d be like ‘Wow! so glad my two chums are hanging out together’ or something akin to that.”

“Don't you two live together?”

“No? I mean, when I hang out with people its usually with him or Jane or Roxy just by virtue of us having already hung out a majority of the time before, and me n’ Jake are also working on some projects together, but living with someone else would be a lot for him besides that would be real weird for us especially to like, live in the same place”

That’s about the last coherent thing you hear from him. After that it just devolves further into mumbling that is too quiet for you to hear. Honestly you think he forgot you were there. His head isn’t really even turned in your direction anymore, more off to the side as he continues to go off on some tangent that you can’t hear. You have officially lost any sort of confidence that you might have had in this being a good social interaction. You fucked this up somehow. Dammit.

“John!”

“Fuck! What? I’m sorry.” shit he must have started talking again at some point.

“You were, like, staring off into nothing bro. Are you feeling ok? You seem kinda spacey and shit” oh no.

“No it’s- I’m good. I’m good! It’s all good haha.” add in finger guns and a wink. Nailed it. You’re the king of recovery. It is you.

“... Right. So do you still want to come over or what?” you wait a moment to try and gauge how serious he’s being. Ah, Christ he isn’t joking. If you say no to his face you will
make both of you look like asses and then you’ll have to walk home - oh yeah,you still have no clue where you are - knowing you told someone who willingly asked to hang out with you ‘no’ in person.

“Ummm, Yeah sure that sounds cool!” it does not. It’s cold outside and now that you think about it you are sure that you must smell like shit and things feel really dumb and awkward. It sounds even less cool than trying to find your house again does. You get up.

“Sweet, let’s get out of here then. Unless you want to spend longer in this weather?”

“Oh please this isn’t weather, this is just a normal day out here. Wait until it gets to be like October that’s when the rain starts.”

“Dude. It is October. And It rained all day today. I’m surprised it isn’t raining right now. It’s fucking cold outside! Its like 40 fucking degrees, are you sure you’re alright?”

“Ah man, is it really that late in the year already?” you honestly have not been paying attention at all. You float upwards in order to escape further questioning “Oh well I guess. Come on, let’s go”

You’re on your back in the air so you have to twist around in order to look at him properly. His mouth is open like he wants to say something, but instead he just shakes his head and rises up to hover next to you. Whatever he was going to say is gone now and you’ll never know what it was and it’s gonna bug the shit out of you. His head is turned slightly away from you but you can still feel him looking at you. Maybe from the corners of his eyes? Those sunglasses are so dumb, they don’t even wrap around his head properly. You can definitely see the color of his eyes from the sides. What color would that be anyway? like tangerine or something pretentiously specific like that? Amber? He isn’t even trying to be discreet about it. You make eye contact and it visibly startles him.

“*ahem* Yeah. So r’you planning on taking the lead then? I had no idea you knew the way to my house so well Egbert” you think his face might have been turning red if his skin weren’t so dark and this pleases you immensely for reasons that are entirely, absolutely petty.

“What? Oh, no. Please you go ahead. Lead the way” you give him the most shit-eating innocent grin you can muster. He turns away with a huff that you think might have been a laugh and starts flying. You follow to the side of him.

Looking around you at the scenery makes you realize that you probably couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag right now you are just that fucking lost. How far did you walk, Jesus. Oh well you’ll figure that out later, after you get back from Dirk’s house which you are going to. Holy shit, you’re going to his house? Who the fuck decided that? Oh yeah. You did not even two minutes ago. That was really super smart of you John. It’s fine. This is totally fine! Dirk is a moderately chill dude right? There are going to be video games there. Maybe you can bum some food off of him! No, that’s not proper house guest etiquette, walk in eat all his food and leave. Not that you really know what the proper procedure for this would be anyway because you’re a shut in who never visits anybody one-on-one like this ever.

He lingers, facing towards you for a minute and then turns and lifts into the air. You breath in an then follow after before you can think about it.

Chapter Text

You arrive at what seems to be a small, decent-looking apartment complex in Houston, taxes, where it is noticeably (thankfully) warmer than Washington, about 30 minutes later. Dirk discards his jacket almost immediately upon arriving and the two of you walk up a single flight of stairs in silence. Noises from the other inhabitants of the building filter into the hallway; Snippets of television, conversations, banging pots and pans, a dog barking. Everything is squashed into one space. You count maybe 30 steps between each door. Only thirty steps to live inside of, you can't even imagine unless you think about it, which you do not.

Dirk stops at the door furthest down the hall and fumbles with his keys for a few moments before opening it and stepping to the side. He waves an arm to let you in.

“Welcome to the hottest bachelor pad this side of Texas, John. You’re looking at the single most swinging place around for miles and you’re the guy lucky enough to see the inside.”

“Huh.”

“What, awestruck?”

“Uh-huh... Hey, Dirk?“

“Yes?”

“Don’t you have literal millions of dollars or better options or something?”

“Yeah.”

“This place is kind of shitty” In your head the thirty steps shrink to accommodate the furniture. “You could live literally anywhere else. Why here?”

he shrugs, closes the door, and walks to the couch “I know how to deal with what i'm used to I guess. Although i will say the neighbors are a new experience. Not so bad, though. It was a little difficult to sleep with the noise at first, but I got used to it.”

You’re surprised to find you like it. It feels very… lived in. You move forwards after standing there longer than you feel you should have. This feels weird. You aren’t even sure why (or if??) this is weird. It just is. This situation is completely against any expectations you had an hour ago about how your night was going to go. In fact you didn’t really imagine it ‘going’ anywhere with anyone at all, least of all him. You’ve never hung out with dirk one on one like this.

“You aren’t, like, a neat freak are you?” he asks. He doesnt turn to face you when he speaks. He fusses at his clothes and taps his fingers against one leg in the same rhythm on repeat “‘Cause’ you’re going to have a rough time hanging out around me if you are. ‘Messy’ is one of my major defining personality traits. It follows me like hounds do sheep.”

A ghost image of the nonexistent floor of your room floats from the ether of your brain accusingly. “I’ll manage somehow”

“How gracious of you”

You seat yourself heavily onto the couch while he sets up some game system. You have no idea what to do with your hands or what you should say, if anything, but silence is also not ideal. Looking nervously away from him you stare at the wall of posters more before he wordlessly offers you a controller and the two of you start to play a really terrible skating game. It’s the shitty Tony Hawk game dave would try to make you play when you were kids except it’s somehow even worse that you remember it. This character customization is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

What the game ends up becoming is seeing which of you can make the shittiest dude. This turns out to be a fruitless effort because Dirk starts going on about the “subjectivity of beauty and ugliness” in ways that make your head spin to think about when it becomes evident that you’re winning.

“See the fact that you are calling this guy your child gives you bias in the matter, which is illegal from a competitive standpoint. We’ll have to remove you are a judge. Obviously you’re going to laud him as the best; he’s your own flesh and blood. Its blatant nepotism”

“You know the funny thing is that you haven’t actually defended your kid at all. You’ve just been shit-talking mine the whole time, so you’re either admitting defeat or you just don’t believe in your son hard enough.“ is that rude? These are clearly just for fun of course it’s not rude, but what if he thought it was? You think your tone might have been a little harsh but it was just a joke but jokes can be unfunny. He didn’t even react. What does that mean?

“I’m sure he’s got enough talent that i don’t have to speak for him.” he says this through the middle of your train of thought and you have trouble keeping up with both. Why would he have been offended? That whole thing was stupid. Stupid.

”W-well of course. Look at him,” you try to keep on track and quickly gesture to the TV screen. You regret what you say before you say it “How could you not be just so proud of that?” blech ok that felt bad for no reason, or a stupid reason, so basically none at all.

“You’re right he’s gorgeous”

“Yeah, a real looke- oh god his face is so bad. Why would they even put a slider for that in there?”

“Hubris.”

“It certainly is bold.”

“Ok you admit it then. I have the clearly superior monstrosity let’s move on”

“I- what no?? Absolutely not. I am counting that as a forfeit if you press that button.”

“Fine i’ll concede, but let’s be clear here bro, i’m gonna smash you now that we’re actually doing some skating and not just fucking around with sliders” he hits the play button before you can say anything. You cannot let him have the last word.

“‘Smash’ my ass! I’m going to destroy you. Wait, shit” Dirk’s head whips toward you so fast you think you hear his neck crack. His eyebrows shoot up so you can see them a little behind his glasses.

Giving him the last word seems suddenly like a very smart idea that you should have taken up the moment the opportunity reared it head.

The awkwardness you expect isn’t there though. You stare at Dirk as his shoulders begin to shake. He works to hide his mouth with his hands and cover up the way his face scrunches when he begins to laugh. You see the laugh before you hear it really, like he’s trying very hard not to let it get to him at all. You get the feeling he doesn’t want you to see, which of course means it’s now your number one goal to get him to laugh as much as possible. After a few moments you join in, which just seems to set him off more.

“I- holy shit. That was golden. My god, i think Kanaya may have just woke up in the early hours of the morning in a cold sweat. That phrasing was impeccable, she can fight me over that.” he struggles to put his face back in order and you wish he wouldn’t.

You don’t really understand what kanaya has to do with this, you guess she’s all about being proper or something? You know she has a chainsaw, and that she knows how to use it. Hell, she could probably wield it in heels if she wanted.

“I think that Kanaya would definitely kick your ass if you got into a fight with her. Or Rose would at least for getting into a fight with her wife”

“Yeah, Kanaya’s built like an incredibly high class shit brickhouse. She would crush me like grape. I would probably be able to take rose though”

“That’s bull shit and you know it.” you say. He drops his controller onto the coffee table, throws his hands up and turns towards you in one smooth motion. It’s incredibly amusing. He seems annoyed at you laughing at him.

Wildly gesturing, he begins to get deeply into a comparison of the merits of ‘arcane majyyks’ versus ‘cold hard steel and a cold hard dude’. You immediately get lost again. He’s clearly talking out of his ass if he thinks he could ever get the drop on rose. Clever as he may be Rose is on another dimension. His rambling is helping calm your nerves somewhat at least. Gives you something to focus your mind on rather than going down the rabbit hole, but you’re still on edge. You feel weird, twitchy. The controller hangs loosely in your hand. Your palms feel sweaty.

Dirk manages to eventually segue out of the topic of if he could beat his sister and you both play a couple of rounds of this shitty, terrible game. Somehow you manage to keep the atmosphere somewhat comfortable. At least you hope so? You still have no idea how he’s feeling, but he laughed and he’s still talking to you. You feel his eyes on you again every so often, but you keep looking at him too, trying to gauge his reactions to what you’re saying; figure out how to make him laugh again.

He really does crush you at this game. You have never been super great at video games though, you aren’t surprised. Maybe he’s just played this game a lot before though, it seems very practiced. What a nerd.

You turn to glance at the digital clock on the side table and do a double take. The tiny, red glowing screen reads 11:47 pm. Have you really been here that long? You take time to measure the appropriate amount of emotional response to assess out loud the fact you’ve been here for like five hours without realizing it.

“What the fuck!” Well ok apparently now shouting your surprise out loud is what is appropriate. Why did you do that? Who does that?

“What? Wait, what? What happened?” he pauses the game and looks at you. Great. You startled him, nice going.

“It’s been like three hours. It was like 8 only thirty minutes ago”

“Time zone difference bro; Houston is two hours ahead of Washington. You’ve only been here for like an hour”

“Oh. Yeah, ok that makes way more sense” now there really is a silence that follows. The twitch in your hand makes a comeback.

The two of you sit there staring at each other for probably the worst thirty seconds of your life before dirk turns and relaxes back into himself. You try to do the same but you feel stiff and dumb. The momentum of the evening has ground to a halt. He speaks up first.

“Hey, John-”

“Yes?” you answer back too fast, cutting him off. He jumps a little when you do. You really hope he doesn’t ask if you’re ok.

“Are you hungry?” he says it slowly like he’s trying to fill up the space. You let out the breath you were holding.

“Yes! I, I’m starving actually. Do you cook?”

“Nnnno. no. Nope. I fucking suck at cooking. Jane’s trying to teach me some stuff, but i’m really not good at anything besides, like, cereal and very tentatively mac n cheese. I don’t even really have anything besides that in the house right now. I was just gonna order takeout. You ok with pizza?” that explains why the kitchen is nearly untouched at least.

“I guess. How are you supposed to get any better at it if you don’t practice though?”

“I see your point but i also like having, like, an un-burned house and shit”

“Oh come on nobody’s that bad dude. At least not after some practice. You should come over to my house some time. I’m probably a waaaay better teacher than jane. She gets a little impatient sometimes.” what are you saying? that’s probably a lie and jane will murder you if she hears that you said that. Dirk lets out a surprised laugh at it though, and you instantly forget about it.

“Maybe i’ll take you up on that some time” there is a flash of a smile, then he picks up his phone and dials the pizza place.

You think maybe that despite your apprehension this night feels like it is going less awful than it could be and you will gladly take that.

The call takes a short minute, during which you fiddle around on the screen going in little circles until your board clips through the ramp and you're stuck. Dirk rises after he's finished giving the address to restart the system. It's quiet without the
'Goldfinger' playing in the background. Dirk turns slightly towards you.

"Not this next weekend, but the one after that Dave is having some kind of thing at his place," the tv clicks back on. "for Halloween, with movies and costumes and all that."

"Oh, yeah" You think you might have glimpsed something like that. But parties and get togethers and dates always got swiped away and forgotten, and only remembered once they had long passed. You let your sorta lame answer hang in the air for a second, before surprising yourself by not making an excuse immediately "I can't just go as Nicholas cage again, but I do want to catch that movie"

"They haven't figured out what their watching yet. He, Karkat and Vriska keep vetoing each other's options. they'll be arguing about that until 30 minutes after they're supposed to start. I was thinking of being a freak and getting there right on time to catch the early show." The TV is back on but he's just standing by it, sort of hovering. He's not going to ask if you're going, but that's what he's doing.

"Ha! That sounds good." You nearly decline, but you figure that you can always chicken out later, rather than ruin the vibe now. "Maybe I will show up then too and we can start up the popcorn early"

The corner of his mouth turns up, and he moves to come sit again. "Dope. I'll see you then, maybe".