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Roxy, as far as Jake has gotten to know him, is a fairly laid-back person. When everyone made the dreadful mistake of playing Monopoly together one rainy afternoon, he was the only person present who didn’t walk away with some kind of grudge against another player – and that’s pretty impressive, since even Dave had eventually stopped making fun of everyone for taking things too seriously and had gone on an incomprehensible rant about the necessity of a planned economy and the intrinsically immoral basis of the game. Roxy hadn’t even ended up resenting Jane, who is absolutely ruthless, not to mention relentlessly smug in victory.
(Jake, knowing this from a childhood of racking up an absolutely staggering Monopoly money debt to her – which she kept track of – had opted to read comics.)
The point is that Roxy doesn’t flap easily. The whole Microwave Fire Incident – also known as the June And Jade Are Henceforth Banned From ‘Scientific’ Experiments In The Kitchen Incident – would’ve certainly escalated if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to simply unplug the machine and unceremoniously dump it out the window onto the driveway. He’d only laughed when he woke up to find Rose’s pet tarantula cozied up to him in bed. When the basement bathroom flooded due to a horrible pileup of puppet ass, he’d just shrugged and said, “Hey, at least it wasn’t the upstairs one,” and called a plumber while everyone else was still yelling at Dirk.
So it’s rather alarming when he immediately backs out of the kitchen right after having opened the door, closing it after him with a level of care that might suggest that the whole thing is rigged with explosives. He grimaces at the rest of them, widening his eyes, and gestures urgently in the direction of the living room they’d just left. Everyone else immediately seems to get the message, making Jake feel that there’s some secret code he must’ve missed the briefing on, and he gives the door to the kitchen a final alarmed look before following the rest of his friends. Is there a live jaguar in the kitchen, or something? Poisonous gas? A serial killer?
“Sorry,” Roxy says once the door to the living room has closed behind them, still keeping his voice in an undertone close to whispering. “We’re gonna have to take a rain check on that tea, ‘cuz Dirk is absolutely out like a light on the kitchen table.”
Everyone nods at each other as if they just had their suspicions confirmed, and at this point Jake is wondering if maybe he’s speaking an entirely different language. “I’m sorry, but… I fail to see the source of our impasse? Surely we can just tiptoe in there and boil some water in a brace of shakes, without bugging him too much?”
Dave gives him an incredulous look. “Hell no, absolutely not. You don’t get it, he wakes up if you even breathe too close to him. A mouse farting in the next room is enough to disturb him. You might think you can be quiet, you might practice your best ninja moves for years on a mountaintop somewhere, you tell your sensei that you’re finally ready, and then you walk in there and the first thing you do is allow yourself to blink like a fool. As you see that one single eyelash fluttering toward the floor, impact t-minus 2 seconds, you know it’s game over .” He shrugs. “Anyway, even if you managed to be quiet enough, the kettle won’t be.”
Jake frowns, confused, because what Dave is saying sounds like nonsense to him. Then again, most of what Dave says fulfills those qualifications, so he’s probably just misunderstanding him somehow. “Well, by Jove, why don’t we just wake him up! He’ll probably get a crick in the neck sleeping like that anyway.” There’s a fluttering of appalled gasps around him, as Jake’s friends gaze at him in disapproval. It makes him feel like he’d just suggested stealing ice cream from a grubby but honest street urchin and then drowning a kitten in it, rather than just wake up his dumbass best friend who’d somehow managed to fall asleep in the kitchen of all places. “What? What did I say?”
“Shhh.” June puts a finger to her lips in alarm. “I mean yeah, technically we could wake him up, but emotionally? God, at what cost?”
“It’s true,” Jane says with the slight treble in her voice of someone recounting a cautionary tale to the youngins. “Once I- I thought it would be funny to paint a mustache on him while he dozed.” She hangs her head in shame. “Of course he woke up in the middle of it, and he looked so miserable and embarrassed as he scurried off, I… well, I will never do anything like that again. I promise!”
“You’d better not,” Jade scolds softly. “He got even worse after that, and then he actually passed out at work a week later.”
“Consarn it, why do you all speak in riddles like this! It makes all of you sound like some sort of cryptic cult, do you know that? Is this some kind of prank?” Jake turns to the only other person who doesn’t currently live in the house, hoping he’ll be more reasonable. “Karkat, do you have any idea what they’re talking about?”
Instead of an answer he gets an alarmed look, and Karkat demonstratively slams both of his hands across his mouth, shaking his head.
“Yeah, Karkat isn’t allowed to speak while Dirk is sleeping, period,” Dave says offhandedly, as if it’s perfectly normal to just have a ‘my boyfriend isn’t allowed to speak at these times’-rule.
“Could someone please explain what the big hullabaloo is before I blow a gasket,” Jake says, very patiently considering how he feels like he might be losing his mind.
Rose sighs and rolls her eyes, but even so she also speaks in the same careful undertone, glancing in the direction of the door. “Dirk suffers from horrible insomnia due to,” a pause, a brief glance exchanged with Dave, “some unfortunate past experiences. It’s an uphill battle for him to fall asleep at all, and staying asleep for more than a couple of hours is a rare occurrence indeed. So whenever he actually manages, wherever that may be, we stay away and we stay silent, in the hope that maybe he’ll manage to get some rest.”
“I’m surprised you don’t know about it. You know, what with you being his boyfriend-but-not-really-boyfriend-yet and all.” Roxy says in his usual blunt fashion, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, and then promptly receives an elbow to the ribs from Jade and Jane at the same time. “Oh, we’re still pretending that’s not a thing that’s happening? Lol okay, have it y’alls way.”
Jake feels his face heating up, but honestly he’s happy enough to pretend to be distracted by his embarrassment, and by June groaning and explaining to Roxy that you can’t actually pretend something is not a thing if someone else just says it so everyone can hear, and by Karkat shushing both of them, since apparently that’s still allowed. He needs a bit more time to ponder what he’d just found out.
He tries to approach it like a scientific study, of sorts. Whenever he spends time in the Strilonde-bert-crock-ley Household – the name is still being workshopped – he tries to observe everyone’s behaviors whenever Dirk happens to be asleep, writing down little notes to himself on his phone. The first incident he observes involves Dirk’s housemates actually interrupting a party because Dirk had drifted off on the sofa, turning off the music and shooing their guests out of the door, before tiptoeing out of the living room without even bringing their drinks. They end up playing cards in the kitchen all night instead.
(This actually works pretty decently, provided some basic rules are established:
- Jade and Dave are not allowed eye contact, or they will count cards and demolish everyone else
- in the interest of someone who isn’t Rose winning, poker is played sparingly
- June does not get to deal, she cannot be trusted
- no one bets any actual money)
Incident number two occurs when one of June’s girlfriends is visiting, and she loudly yells, “I’VE GOT PIZZA, ANYONE WANT ANY?” the moment she enters the house. A moment later, Dirk sticks his head blearily through the door to his room, mumbling something about keeping it down, before stumbling off in the direction of the bathroom. Since Terezi turns out not to show even the slightest remorse for her transgression, all the disapproval is then moved to June instead, since she had invited the loud interloper in the first place.
Another occurrence is when Dirk actually falls asleep on top of his breakfast during exam week, and no one even moves his face out of the sticky pile of pancakes which he’d ended up using as a pillow. Jake suggests hesitantly that maybe they should at least make sure his hair isn’t slowly soaking up the syrup, knowing how particular Dirk is about his hair, and ends up being gagged with a kitchen towel and shoved out through the back door.
After several more incidents like this, Jake is forced to conclude that he can see why they’re all acting so silly. Dirk really will wake up at the very slightest disturbance, and usually he’ll then act like he was caught in the act of some incredibly mortifying crime when this happens, fleeing wherever he happens to be to go sulk in his room, and usually being absolutely terrible company for quite a while afterwards. And when Jake stays over a little longer, he has the opportunity to count exactly how many hours Dirk spends asleep, and the answer honestly alarms him. He apparently has medicines and goes to therapy for his problems, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. Jake had thought that his constant tired look was some kind of blasé, world-weary aesthetic he was cultivating, but it appears that the man is in fact just that exhausted.
Finally, Dirk comes home from a 12 hour shift at his job one evening, and only just manages to take his coat off before he actually collapses face-first on the floor. No wonder, because according to Jake’s calculations, he’s been awake for most of a week at that point. Jake had sort of vaguely been hanging around in the hopes of spending some downtime with him when he came home, and though he’s not surprised, he’s nonetheless worried. Everyone else just shrugs and gets up, though Dave gives his little brother a distressed look before evacuating the room on silken feet.
Jake sits stock still right where he is, not sure if they’re going to come back in after him, but it appears that at this point he’s trusted not to disturb Dirk. After waiting for a few more minutes, to make sure everyone else has relocated to the other side of the house, he finally gets up with a sigh. His efforts to step silently have more to do with paranoia that Dirk’s housemates will somehow hear than anything else, as he makes his way over to where Dirk is sleeping fitfully half on top of everyone’s shoes, his feet still on the doormat. He’d apparently taken one of Rose’s coats with him as he went down, and now it’s clutched in his arms, his face buried in the dark purple faux fur lining.
Jake kneels down next to him, reaching out his hand and fondly brushing Dirk’s braids out of his face. He immediately tenses up, amber eyes fluttering half-open behind lopsided shades, but Jake smiles and says, “Shh, it’s only me.” Dirk makes a soft sound in response, and his eyes slowly glide shut once again. “Here, I’m just going to take off your shoes, alright?” He doesn’t actually get a response, but he manages to wrangle Dirk’s winter boots off without him stirring. Then Jake leans in, shimmying his hands in under his fallen friend-and-possibly-maybe-more, easily gathering him up in his arms and getting to his feet again.
“Mmwhat? The fuck you doin’…?” Dirk mumbles against his chest, making absolutely no move to struggle.
“Putting you to bed, you great big pillock! That’s no place to sleep.”
“Mtired.”
“I know you are. Hold on...” He has to hunch down and use the side of his arm to awkwardly manipulate the doorknob, but then he easily pushes the door to Dirk’s room open with his hip. He doesn’t bother with the light switch, knows his way well enough in the dark. He’s been in there enough times, after all, usually to play video games or watch movies. The awkward not-quite-relationship stalemate between them means he still keeps sleeping on the sofa when he’s staying over. Of course there are different rules at play when Dirk visits his place, since Jake’s shoe box of an apartment doesn’t actually have a sofa. They don’t really talk about that, not yet, but Jake feels like maybe they’re getting to that point soon? Possibly? The man he fancies is a complete enigma, and Jake will fully own up to not being the smoothest wordsmith around, so they seem to be destined to do this whole song and dance in the most arse-backward way possible.
Putting Dirk down on the rumpled sheets, Jake is about to back right out of the room again, when he finds himself captured by Dirk’s hand grasping the leg of his pants. He doesn’t actually look up at him, his fatigue-heavy features locked in a dazed scowl. “Stay,” he mutters.
“Ah, are- are you sure? You’re a little woozy, perhaps we can talk about it in the m-?”
“Please.” That’s not a word Dirk usually uses with impunity, or indeed at all if he can help it, so it’s easy enough for Jake to catch the desperate edge in it despite the drag of sleep making the word slur slightly. “If you go… I won’t be able to go back asleep, alright? It won’t work.”
“...Oh.” Jake really had been trying not to make any assumptions on that score, but it had been damn hard work in face of the facts, which are these: Dirk had never had any problem getting to sleep at his place. Not even once. Nor did he wake up that often if Jake had to go to the bathroom or grab a glass of water, and if he did he would soon drift off again. A couple of times after he’d managed to roll over in his sleep and ended up trapping Jake under his body, Jake had even had to awkwardly poke him in the ribs or tug at his hair to get him to wake up enough that he could free himself. Those were always particularly awkward mornings, because to be entirely honest he enjoyed having Dirk asleep on top of him a bit more than he ought, and he usually had to find a way to fit a cold shower into his morning routine.
Dirk’s hand is still curled imploringly around his pants, his face half hidden in his pillow, outlined in silver in the light of the street lamp outside. Jake smiles and sits down at the side of the bed, reaching out and liberating Dirk’s shades from where he’s smushing them between his face and his pillowcase. He makes an affronted little noise which Jake pretends not to hear. “Alright then,” he says. “Scoot over, will you?”
Jake has no idea how the almost inaudible knock on the door manages to wake him, but wake him it does. He fumbles for his glasses on the bedside table, and then gazes down at the comfortable weight on his chest. Dirk has his arm slung around his waist, his face resting against the print on his official Waterworld t-shirt, and there’s a dark damp spot where he’s definitely drooled a bit on it, but Jake doesn’t mind. They’d ended up kicking the blanket mostly off themselves since they’d gone to sleep fully clothed, and now it towers like a white cloud somewhere around their knees.
“Dirk?” Rose’s voice is just as soft and almost-not-there as the knock. Trying to get his attention if he’s awake without waking him if he’s asleep, of course. Jake gazes down and smiles as Dirk makes a noise like, mrrphffupphh , and keeps sleeping.
“Come in,” Jake suggests to Rose. There’s a moment of silence which manages to be pointed even through the door, probably having something to do with it being rather early in the morning for him to be in there. Then she does as he says, but freezes almost instantly at the sight of Dirk, clearly still slumbering peacefully on his chest.
“He’s… still alive, isn’t he?” she asks deliberately, eyes narrowing slightly.
Jake rolls his eyes in reply. “Yes, clearly I come off as a fella who would remain cool as a cucumber with the corpse of my very best bro resting smack dab on my chest! No cause for alarm, it’s just that my dearest bosom chum appears to have passed in his sleep and I didn’t see any reason to tell anyone about it.”
“But he hasn’t woken up yet,” she points out, sounding fascinated.
“Well, it’s rather early, he’s off today, and if I know him he’s been applying his usual elbow grease to the old daily grind, earning an extra bit of cash before school starts again. He’s not exactly known for sparing the horses, so I’d say he’s earned a bit of rest.”
She gives him a Look which says she’s not particularly amused by him pretending not to know what she means, nor is she falling for it for an instant. She keeps staring at the recumbent Dirk in obvious fascination, and when Roxy passes by in the corridor outside, she reaches out and drags him inside, explaining the situation in a hurried whisper. Now two of them stand and marvel at the impossibility of Dirk Strider, apparently dead to the world without in fact being dead in any real sense.
“Did you drug him?” Roxy asks. “I mean, if you actually got him to get high of his own free will and it worked then kudos to you, but we haven’t tried that since the Weed Paranoia Incident, and anyway he was so embarrassed by, yanno, the way he kept listening to the walls and claiming They were watching him all night, that I'm sorry to say I don't think he’d try something like that again. So if you drugged him without his consent, you know, we will kill you.”
“No one will ever find your body,” Rose agrees solemnly.
“No! No, I didn’t drug him, you absolute maniacs!” Jake exclaims, scandalized. Dirk makes a slightly grumpy noise against his chest in response, burying his face a bit further against the printed visage of Kevin Costner.
“Hoooooly shit, he really is just asleep! June, hold up, you gotta see this...”
The audience keeps growing until the gathering encompasses every human member of the household, Jade’s dog, and a couple of extra girl- and boyfriends thrown in for good measure. Jake can hear Vriska and Rose starting to take bets on what exactly it will take to wake Dirk up. The last two who were dragged in were Dave and Karkat, and Dave actually looks genuinely shocked in a way the others don’t. Then he slowly starts to grin, looking more relieved than amused to be honest.
“The very most sacrosanct of holy fucks, I can’t believe that still works. That’s so fucking amazing, I feel like I might actually be dr- here, pinch me!” He reaches out an arm, and at least four different hands descend upon it. “Owwwww okay alright, 100% not dreaming, thank you, I’m convinced, y’all can stop that now. Fuck , Vriska, those nails! Jesus.”
“We don’t mind them,” Terezi says placidly, elbowing June for support, and only gets an embarrassed mumble and a pair of very pink ears in response, the latter of which should logically pass by her unnoticed. Something about her grin suggests she has a special sense for detecting blushing girlfriends, however.
Jake decides to just ignore that, raising an eyebrow at Dave. “What did you mean, exactly?”
“Well,” he says, still rubbing his stinging arm, “we, uh, we used to share a bed when we were kids. For quite a while, in fact. But, you know, it gets kinda… it feels weird when you get older, alright? Like here bro let me just get nice and cozy with your tiddies because it’s easier to sleep that way, kind of thing? Makes people think you don’t know how to sibling in a distinctly Utena kind of way, if you get what I mean?” He shrugs, looking embarrassed. “Since we stopped doing that, I think there just hasn’t been anyone he feels safe enough around to, you know, actually fall asleep with? So it’s nice to see he’s finally found someone.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence, save for Jade’s muted, “Awwww!” No one is showing any signs of leaving, just standing there and contemplating the two of them until Jake is starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Maybe he should just ask them to-?
“Oh my fucking god, what’s wrong with all of you?” Karkat suddenly explodes. “Yeah, let’s just stand here and gawk at this poor sleep-deprived bastard and his boyfriend as if that’s not a completely creepy and weird thing to do! By all means, let’s make this our new hobby! I’ll change my name to Edward Cullen and start appropriating the staggeringly boring fashion choices of an immortal white boy! It’ll be fun!”
Dirk lifts his head and glares muzzily at the crowd in the doorway. “What the fuck?” he says with feeling.
Somewhere at the back of the crowd, Jake hears Kanaya’s voice saying, “Well, looks like that will in fact do it. Vriska, I believe you owe me twenty dollars now.”
“Laaaaaaaame! Thanks for ruining it, Karkat!”
“Yeah, nice job waking him up,” Dave says and swats his boyfriend across the back of the head, before starting to drag him out of there. “Hey, don’t mind us, you were both being adorable as shit, you should get back to that.”
Dirk stares after them as they slam the door shut, then turns his bewildered gaze to Jake instead. “I repeat: What the actual fuck?”
“Nevermind them,” Jake replies, chuckling feebly. “Did you sleep well?”
“...Yeah.” He looks a bit uncomfortable, and since his shades are out of reach, he opts for planting his face back against Jake’s chest again, where he appears to sink into deep meditation.
“Do you… want me to go now?” Jake asks after a couple of minutes of inscrutable silence.
“Nah.”
“Are you still sleepy?”
“Nope.” He breathes out heavily, and Jake can feel the heat of his breath through his shirt. “I just want you here.”
Jake grins, and after a moment wraps his arms around Dirk, holding him close. “Alright-o. Whatever you want.”