Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jade sits on the edge of the bathroom counter so she can swing her legs, which is silly, because it means that she has to bend down a little so her roommate can properly reach her face to help her with her makeup.

"When was the last time you went to a club?" Aradia asks, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s being asked judgmentally or out of legitimate curiosity.

"Uh," she says to buy herself a little bit of time, as if she really needs to think about it. "I’m not sure I’ve ever been to the club!" Not sure is her way of masking the absoluteness of the statement. She has never been to the club. Aradia’s eyebrows go up anyway, and Jade’s pretty sure she can see right through her, but she’s polite enough not to say anything.

It had been such an impulsive decision. It’s not that Jade doesn’t like partying—in high school, she was almost always the one dragging her friends to parties. Mostly, she just liked being around people, but there was also something about the energy in a place when there was loud music playing and drinks being passed around and people making out in bathrooms. She had been the person making out in the bathroom more than once.

Things changed when she started college, though. She moved to another country—another continent—and left behind everyone and everything she’d ever known, and the easiest way to cope with that was to throw herself completely into her work. She had always been a diligent student, but it was like being a diligent student was suddenly the only thing she was. And now, sure, she’s 27 and just finished her first day at NASA, but after a day of paperwork and tours and meeting her coworkers, it’s occurring to her that her twenties are almost over and she doesn’t have any cool stories to tell. Not stories that would be cool to anyone who didn't also study physics, anyway. She also doesn't think she's even kissed anybody in, like, a year, so it'd be nice to make out with a stranger at a club.

"There, what do you think of that?" Aradia asks, breaking through her thoughts, and Jade blinks a few times.

"I think you did that insanely fast," she says, before she twists her body to stare at herself in the mirror.

Jade doesn’t wear makeup very often. It’s not that she doesn’t like it or anything; it just adds too many steps to her routine to put on every morning and take off every night. When she had come home from work and somewhat frantically told her roommate that she needed to go out and do something fun, Aradia (who was very nice and only laughed at her a little bit) had been the one to recommend the club. Then she had come to Jade’s rescue with some borrowed makeup when Jade said she didn’t have any, and then she came to Jade’s rescue again when she couldn’t put eyeliner on by herself in a way she thought looked good.

Aradia is a little more heavy-handed with it than Jade probably would have been, and the colors wouldn’t exactly have been Jade’s choice either. Shades of red so dark they’re almost black go well with Aradia’s goth-y aesthetic, but Jade’s not sure it works for her.

"I dunno… don’t you think it’s a little bit much?"

"What? No way!" Aradia insists. Jade turns back to give her a somewhat skeptical look. "You look hot! Drop dead gorgeous! If I didn’t have to prep for the first day of classes, I would spend the night at Sollux’s so you could have the apartment to yourself and whatever poor, unsuspecting victim you bring home."

Jade laughs despite herself. "I’m not gonna bring anybody home. I’ve been back in Houston for like, two minutes, I do not need a boyfriend already."

"Well then you picked the wrong outfit," Aradia teases, and Jade laughs again but looks back in the mirror, tilting her head somewhat appreciatively.

Even where she’s perched in front of the sink, the short, tight dress she’s wearing makes her legs look a lot longer than they are, and the high ponytail she’s pulled her hair into draws extra attention to her bare neck and shoulders. It’s very simple, but she thinks it gets the job done. Rose would call it elegant.

"I wish you could come with me," she says after a second, hopping off the counter with a clack as her heels meet the tile floor.

"Well, that’s why we start school in September in New York."

Jade rolls her eyes and adds it to the mental tally she keeps of jokes Aradia’s made about how much better New York is than Texas. While she doesn’t have the heated loyalty to her home state that some others do, there’s an undeserved tinge of bitterness when she thinks about how her friends scattered to the wind after high school with no plans to come back. Rose says that she’s happy in New York, but how could she be when she’s so far away?

She checks herself out in the mirror a final time and takes a deep breath. "Okay. Okay! I’m going."

"Good! Have fun. Text me if I need to go to Sollux’s."

"I’m not bringing anybody home!" Jade laughs. Aradia just blows her a kiss as she closes the door behind herself.

She decides to take a cab to the club. She’s not planning to get drunk, but she’d like to have the option to have a drink or two, so it’s more responsible just to not take her car. It’s not like she’s hurting for the twenty bucks. Plus, not being the one behind the wheel means she gets to stare out the window on the way there.

It’s so weird being back in Houston without her friends. After college, John decided to stay near where he'd gone to study in Washington and Rose decided to stay in New York. Jade was the only one who decided to move back home, and it was so much more of a process for her. They did what they could to help, though. Rose recommended her Aradia for a roommate, since they’d gone to grad school together. John found a storage unit that would let her keep all her guns, which was surprisingly difficult in Texas. And they all agreed to spend Thanksgiving together at John’s dad’s house this year.

They pull up to the club and she offers the cab driver a bright smile and a bigger tip than is probably warranted. She’s in a good mood tonight. She’s excited! When was the last time she really got to go out and enjoy herself?

The first thing she notices when she walks into the club is that the music is good. It sounds good, obviously, but it’s also the energy of the crowd. There are groups of people packed together dancing like one giant body and individuals at the edges of the room bobbing their heads and shoulders along like they didn’t want to dance and just couldn’t help themselves. It’s exactly what she was hoping for.

She looks over at the DJ booth, grinning, but then her heart sinks.

Dave.

A wave of mixed emotions crashes over her so hard she feels like her knees almost buckle under her and send her crumpling to the floor. Guilt. Frustration. Nostalgia. Sadness. Desire.

Dave had been the reason she threw herself so hard into school. The real reason. She was always a diligent student, but in Houston, she’d had people. Rose was in her same day care because her mom worked with Jade’s grandpa. Jade informed her that they would be best friends because they both had Squiddles lunchboxes, and by some miracle, Rose didn’t argue. John had wanted to say hi to her dog at the park one day and Jade chased him around for hours until Grandpa asked his dad to exchange numbers. On the first day of kindergarten, she hit Dave in the face and then she cried about it. She doesn’t remember why anymore. She only remembers how enamored he had seemed before he tried to comfort her.

It was always him, after that. She realized she had a crush on him around the same time they reached the double digits, and they’d danced around the issue in middle school until, finally, she decided in freshman year that hiding crushes was for babies and asked him out. They used to plan to get their doctorates together and drove John and Rose crazy bickering about whether physics or biology was cooler. Before she left for New Zealand, they talked about eloping so he could come with her, but they decided to stick it out. And then they didn’t.

Rose is her best friend. John is her brother in every way that matters. But Dave was the love of her life. And now he’s here.

There’s a part of her that thinks about just turning right back around and going home. This was supposed to be a fun night, and unpacking all of her feelings about Dave does not sound fun.

But he’s working, she tells herself. He can’t flirt with her while he’s working, right? And he doesn’t even seem to have noticed her (even if that stings so much more than it should). And she doesn’t want to have to explain to Aradia why she’s home so early if she just turns right back around.

She pushes her way into the crowd and finds somebody cute to dance with. She’s never been to a club before, but she’s been to parties, and she knows the routine of making eye contact with somebody cute and dancing and grinding. It’s easy and it’s fun and it’s almost enough to take her mind off the fact that Dave is here.

Her eyes flash up to the DJ booth, though, and this time he is looking at her. She offers him a smile and a flirty little wave and then breaks away from the dance floor. Maybe she could use a drink.

Jade takes a seat at the bar, and the guy she'd been grinding against follows her. "Can I get you anything?" he asks.

All sorts of dire warnings about accepting drinks from strangers flit through Jade's mind in a voice an awful lot like her grandfather's. She reasons that this guy is probably fine, but it's not like she needs him to buy her a drink, either.

"I was going to ask you the same, actually!" she offers instead with a little grin. "I just started a new job, so drinks are on me tonight. What are you having?"

To this guy's credit, he accepts her offer to pay, and it isn't long before Jade has a cosmopolitan in her hand while he has a whiskey. She chats with him for a bit. He acts all impressed when she says "NASA," and he's working for some startup that sounds mildly interesting. Jade wishes she were paying more attention and listening better, but she can't help it. Dave is right there, and she's just supposed to ignore him? She knows it's obvious how her eyes keep shifting over to look at him, because she can see the guy she's talking to turning to look at him too.

"Uh... so the music's pretty good tonight, huh?" he comments. He must notice how he's struggling to hold her interest, so of course he's turning to the one thing she is interested in.

"It is!" Jade agrees. She tries to think of some quality of the music to talk about, but that feels disingenuous. "I actually know the DJ, if you can believe it! He's always been so good with music."

She sees a few small expressions crossing the guy's face—a bit of realization, then disappointment, then acceptance. He downs the rest of his whiskey. "Should I leave you be for the night, then?"

It's both embarrassing and a relief that she doesn't have to tell him. She'd wanted to make out with a stranger at a club, but she doesn't want to make out with a stranger at a club when her ex is right there. She doesn't even say anything about it; she just gives him a sympathetic smile, and he takes the hint.

"Thanks for the drink," he tells her. "Good luck with your NASA gig."

"You too!"

It's at that moment the music starts to shift. It's losing the electrifying feeling that hit Jade the second she stepped into the club, sliding into something that sounds more like a playlist someone's just left on. When she looks up, she doesn't see Dave at the booth anymore—some other guy is starting to take over. Jade suddenly feels silly for turning that guy down just because Dave was there. He didn't even stay there! It seems like his shift is over, so he's probably going home for the night, and she's spent half of her night of fun thinking about the boy she dumped eight years ago.

Jade finishes off the rest of her drink, and the next DJ starts his set. It's better than the playlist, but not as good as Dave's. Maybe she's just biased. Maybe she should just go home. This was a silly idea anyways! Why would she think that she should go clubbing for the first time at age 27? Just to say she had? This is stupid, she should just—

"Hey. Enjoy the music?"

Jade whips her head around, and Dave is sitting on the seat next to her. He looks good. He looks hot, but maybe it's because she's never gotten to see him up close in clubbing clothes before. He's got a thin shirt on that he hasn't bothered to button all the way up, and it's like he's begging for her to slide her hand over the part of his chest that's exposed. She doesn't, though. She has some decorum. She looks up at his face instead, which isn't exactly less distracting, but it does mean that it's not as obvious that she's ogling him.

"I did!" she confirms. "I've always liked your music." She watches his lips quirk up into that familiar not-quite smile that they always used to. She's seen him really smile before, but this is usually as much as he gives in public. Or ar least, that's how it used to be. She reminds herself that it's been five years since the last time they saw each other. A lot can change in that time.

"Glad to hear you don't think I've sold out yet," Dave teases. "If you came in here being like, Hey Dave, I liked your old stuff better, I'd have to quit right then and there. Sorry, all my gigs are cancelled forever, I got too mainstream. It's incurable."

Jade laughs at his joke more than she needs to. She wishes it were something she was putting on to be flirty, but she really just finds him that funny, and five years of no contact means she'd forgotten how funny he was. His lips are still doing that half-quirk thing that they do, and she's doing her best to avoid thinking about kissing them.

"Do you get free drinks for working here, or do I have to buy you something myself?" she asks.

There's a subtle change in Dave's expression, but while she knows his almost-smiles by heart, this one is new to her. She's not sure what it means. “They give me one free drink. Guess they don’t want the DJs getting too hammered while we’re supposed to be on the job.” His expression changes again, back to that almost smile, and he adds, “I have to get home tonight anyway, but I'm not gonna stop you from buying me something. I'm not too proud to have a sugar momma buying me as many virgin appletinis as I can choke down. You know me. All about subverting gender expectations. Let women bring home bacon, that's what I'm always saying."

Jade's laughing again, and it's hard not to lean into Dave while she's laughing so hard. She doesn't, though. She broke up with him; it feels unfair to push things like that.

"Speaking of bringing home bacon," Dave continues, looking at least a little smug for all the laughing he's having her do. "What brings you into town? Staying long?"

She offers him a coy smile and brings her drink up to her lips to leave him waiting for a beat before she answers, "NASA." She can see his eyebrows just rise over the rims of his shades. "If all goes according to plan, I'm staying for good. Or, I dunno, maybe in a few years I'll ask them to transfer me over to the Jet Propulsion Lab or the Ames Research Center to be a little closer to John, when he decides to start popping out kids. But at least for the foreseeable future."

"Holy shit—NASA? You've been talking about that since we were in middle school. That's amazing." Jade gets a brief glimpse of an actual smile from Dave, and that makes her feel warmer than any of the compliments the other guy could have made about her new job. "I mean, not that I ever doubted you'd get there. You got your doctorate and everything?"

"And everything!" she confirms.

"Hot damn. Dr. Harley." Jade thinks there's a bit of wistfulness to the way he says it, but maybe she's just imagining things. She knows they used to joke about getting their doctorates together, but now he's... here. "It's good to have you back in the area, though. Maybe we could..."

Dave trails off, looking like he's at a loss for words, which is unusual for him. Jade feels herself filling in the blanks, perhaps aspirationally. Hook up? Get back together? Get married like they always talked about when they were seventeen?

He doesn't finish the sentence. Instead, he says, "You planning on coming around here more often? I hear the DJ is pretty good."

"Well, I hear the DJ fell out of a window once in high school and now he's kind of a dummy," Jade retorts. "But what have you been up to? I didn't know you were planning to go into DJing in a professional capacity. I mean, you're good at it! But last I heard you were mostly a patron at clubs like this."

She knows him too well not to catch the way his face falls, just a little. Maybe that last line was too much of a dig? But it's not like it's untrue. Most of the conversations they had between the time they broke up and the time she stopped talking to him altogether seemed to focus around all of the partying he was up to.

"Yeah, well. Turns out they pay you to make music if you're good enough. I wouldn't really say this was part of the plan, but..." He makes a dismissive hand gesture. "You know. I also work a day job, but it's nothing interesting. Otherwise, not much going on. Not chasing anything too ambitious right now. Just taking it day by day."

By her count, he's been taking it day by day since they were 20 years old.

Jade sets her glass down on the edge of the bar and slides out of her seat to take a little step closer to him. She moves a hand to cup one of his cheeks, stroking her thumb against his cheekbone.

"I'm sorry," she practically breathes, and she's not completely sure what she's apologizing for. The insensitive joke, like she had a right to bring up anything that happened in high school? Digging up the old wounds of what he'd planned to do when she knew things weren't exactly going according to plan for him? Leaving him to go to college in another country for no good reason? Coming back? She feels like she should be sorry for all of it.

She hasn't had enough alcohol to be acting like this. She's had one cocktail, which wasn't enough to knock her on her ass in high school, let alone with a fully developed adult brain. It's not the cosmopolitan knocking her on her ass, though. She knows that. It's Dave. It's being with Dave. That was why they'd stopped talking. But right now she doesn't care why they stopped talking, because she hasn't seen him in five years and he's here and he's upset and she wants to make it better and they're the same height when she's wearing heels.

It’s hard to say which one of them leans in first. She’d like to be able to blame it on Dave. She’d like to be able to say that she was just a hapless victim of circumstance. She’s pretty sure in this particular instance they’re more like partners in crime.

Regardless of who leans in first, a moment later his lips are on hers and it’s impossible for her to do anything but melt against him. She was so scared of misreading the signals. She hasn't kissed him in half a decade, hasn't even talked to him in half a decade.

She's gentle with him at first. Whatever this is between them—if it's even anything, if it's even more than another ill-advised hookup because they can't help themselves—it seems so fragile. He seems so fragile, with the way he's melting into her touch. She has seen so many people hurt him, and the absolute last thing that she wants is to be another one of them.

She keeps stroking her thumb against his cheek as she tilts her head to press that tiny bit closer. Her free hand finds the exposed portion of his chest her eyes kept catching on earlier, and she brushes her fingertips against him gently there, too. Eventually, though, it's like some sort of muscle memory takes over. She sucks his lower lip into her mouth, and she can't help dragging her teeth against it.

It feels like it sets off some chain reaction. His hands find her sides and he pulls her in a little closer, and she retaliates by pulling him back with her to lean against the bar. Something in the atmosphere shifts, and he pulls away from her a little bit, but it's not far enough to break her out of the gravitational pull toward him. "Fuck," he breathes. "I missed you."

"I’m sorry," she breathes back before she closes the gap between them again. She kisses Dave like it's an adequate substitute for breathing. Like if she just kisses him hard enough she'll never have to pull away for anything ever again. Like she can't stop, which she really can't. He runs his hands along her sides again and it sends a shudder up her spine.

His hands slide further down to squeeze her hips, her ass, and then when they start to hike up her dress, the bartender clears her throat behind them. Jade lets out a little noise that she really means to be a protest against Dave’s mouth, but he doesn’t stop kissing her, and she doesn’t make any attempt to break it, either.

“Excuse me,” the bartender says a little more pointedly, and they finally pull apart again, though their faces are still so close to each other.

"Sorry," Dave says, and she’s not sure whether he’s talking to her or the bartender. Maybe both. "Wanna get outta here?" he adds, definitely to her, and she nods eagerly as he helps her pick herself back up off the bar.

She can’t entirely resist pressing another quick kiss against his mouth as she mumbles, "Your place? I have a roommate."

Dave grimaces. "I’ve got two."

She could text Aradia. Aradia had encouraged her to text her if she wanted to bring a guy home, and she probably wouldn’t make fun of Jade that much for changing her mind so easily. She starts to open her mouth and reach for her phone, but then he snatches her hand and practically drags her outside, and she suddenly cares much less about finding her phone in favor of following him.

"I—my car's over there," he offers once they step outside, nodding towards the same shitty old car he’s been driving since they were in high school, although it looks like the ironic bumper sticker about being the proud parent of an honors student has been replaced with an ironic baby on board sign. "No roommates in there. Like—if you wanna."

"I wanna," she answers far too quickly, and her cheeks burn. His car is hardly ten feet away, and she still uses her grip on his hand to tug him over for another kiss first.

Dave kisses her back and starts to walk her over to his car while they’re kissing, and it isn’t long before she’s sandwiched between him and the car door. He rolls his hips to grind against her and she breaks away from kissing him to gasp and moan.

She forgot how good he feels. She's had sex since the last time they hooked up, but none of that was with Dave, who she loves so much. She almost says as much, but then he pulls away to open the door, and when she starts to slide back into the backseat and impatiently tug him on top of her, her elbow bumps against something.

She glances over her shoulder and her breath hitches.

A car seat. A blanket. A stuffed animal. Baby things. Dave has a baby. Maybe that's not a big deal. They're old enough to have babies, and she's not too principled to sleep with a father. She doesn't even know why she would be. But he didn't tell her, and there are only a few things that can mean, and none of them are good.

Her heart is pounding against her ribs and her eyes sting, suddenly. He has two roommates. "Oh. You're... oh. Fuck, I'm so fucking stupid."

Jade broke up with Dave, essentially, two times. The first was because neither of them were handling the long distance well, and it seemed healthier to just be friends. The second time, though, she had invited him to her graduation for her bachelor's. Dave had been such a fixture in her life that she had wanted him there for such a pivotal moment. She paid for his ticket and hotel and everything, and after the graduation, it had felt... well, like it does now. Like every bit of pent up affection and desire was taking control of her body, to make up for the years apart.

At the time, it had felt romantic. She hadn't thought to question anything; it just felt right, getting to be with him for such an important night.

Then Dave's girlfriend called, and Jade realized she'd become the other woman.

She can't believe she's doing this again. It's been five years—she should have learned her lesson! This was the entire reason she stopped talking to him, and as soon as she sees him again, she's back in the same trap. She looks at his hands for a wedding ring and doesn't see one, but that's easy enough to hide in a pocket or leave at home.

Dave is staring at her like a deer in headlights, or like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar. He knows he's been caught, but Jade isn't fully sure what she's caught him doing. She needs to know.

Jade fixes Dave with her iciest look, her hands clenched into fists by her sides.

"Explain."

Chapter Text

"Explain."

Dave just stares at Jade for a moment. He still can't believe that she's actually here; this whole night has felt like something out of a fever dream. He'd been working his usual night gig, then suddenly bam, there's the love of his life, grinding on some random guy, but still looking up at him. Next thing he knows, he's finishing his set and he finds her at the bar. They talk, they make out, and then he had the stupid idea of suggesting they hook up in his car.

He should know better than to hook up with Jade in the first place. It went so badly the last time he tried it that she had refused to talk to him anymore. And sure, it's five years later and he isn't that guy anymore, but she had just said all the cool things she's been doing. She doesn't need to be weighed down with his baggage. He should know better.

Dave takes a breath. "Sorry," he says on instinct. "Forgot this stuff was back here. It’s—" There’s the instinct to lie, say it’s for work, but he feels like she’d see through it. Besides, she's moved back to Houston. There's no way he can keep hiding this.

"My son. I have a son." The words escape Dave like some breathless confession. "He’s three. His mom dumped me right after he was born and said she didn’t want him. Just—felt like it’d kill the mood to say it earlier. I was gonna tell you."

Jade looks up at him, and though the anger is melting out of her, Dave isn't able to tell what's replacing it. She reaches out and cups his cheek, just in the way he's always liked, and he leans into it. He's bracing himself for her to make another ultimatum about not seeing each other again, and he wants to get at least a bit of affection before it's taken from him again.

Instead, though, Jade lets out a breath and says, "Okay. Do I get to meet him? I know you're not supposed to introduce girls to little kids like that, but I feel like I might be at least a little special?"

This is back to feeling like a fever dream. Of course he wants her to meet his son. Jade is so nice and sweet and she'd love Zack, and Zack loves everybody, so he's sure they'd get along. It'd be his two favorite people in the whole world together. How could he say no?

"Yeah," he says. "You can meet him. I mean—not tonight. Li’l man is probably conked out. But we could hang out, just the three of us, sometime. Go to a park or something."

Jade nods and leans in to kiss him, but there's a different feeling to this kiss. It isn't the frantic, heated making out they'd been doing only minutes before. She looks at his face after she pulls back, brushing her thumb up against his lips. His heart is beating so hard it feels like it's relocated to his brain. Her lips quirk into a soft smile, and she lets out a small laugh. "You're covered in lipstick."

Dave wishes he could see himself. He always liked when Jade left him marks—bruises he had fond memories of receiving for once. More than that, he really just wants to kiss her again. He feels like Jade might want to kiss him some more too, but she slides away from him, making some distance. That's probably for the best. They aren't always the best at thinking when they're around each other.

"But—let's do that sometime!" she says. "Maybe we can go to that same park that we always used to go to, with that slide you liked when we were little."

He knows that park. He has a lot of fond memories of that park, both from when he was a kid and now that he has a kid. "Yeah. We should do that. He loves that park; he'll be so psyched."

Now feels like the best offramp. If they're going to separate without one of them ending up pressed against the car again, they need to part ways. He still offers, "How’d you get here? You need a ride back to your place?"

Jade bites down on her lip, which doesn't help him think about kissing her any less. "Maybe that's not a good idea," she says, voice gentle. "I'll call my roommate. Or a cab, maybe." It shouldn’t sting that she says that; Jade’s rejected him plenty at this point. But it does. At least she always lets him down gently. "But... do you want my number? It's different now, since I'm back in the country."

"Yeah, sorry. I just thought… if you wanted to save money." He tries to cling to the hope that at least she's offering her number, so that means that they're not back to being on no speaking terms. Still, he can't bring himself to look at her as he fishes out his phone from his pocket.

There's a picture of his son on his lock screen—it had been taken shortly after his third birthday this March, and he had tried to put on Dave's shades now that he was a "big kid." He's grinning at the camera, even as the shades are halfway to falling off of his face. He lingers on the screen for just a second before he unlocks the phone to hand it to Jade.

He still has her old number in there with a picture he took of her during that ill-fated trip to New Zealand for her graduation, and he hopes she doesn’t say anything about it as he hands it over. "Here. Add in your number. We can coordinate something."

Jade takes his phone and types in her new number, handing it back to him. Dave trusts it’s actually her number and not one of those tacky fake numbers some girls give out to guys who are being pushy—Jade has more decorum than to dump him through one of those. He pockets his phone again, and when he looks up at her, she's wearing a wistful expression.

"It is really good to see you again," she says.

Despite himself, Dave can't help but smile. "Yeah. Good to see you too. I'll text you tomorrow about the park. Get home safe."

From there, he watches as Jade walks back to the front of the club, presumably to order an Uber or something. Dave waits until she's out of sight, and then he hops into his car and drives home.

Home, for Dave, is the same shitty apartment that it's been all twenty-seven years of his life. He hates the slow ascent up the elevator every time he wants to go up to the top floor, hearing the creak of a pulley system that has probably needed maintenance for five years now. He hates the walk down the hallway that always smells a little off. And he hates opening the front door and knowing that, no matter what, Bro is going to be there.

"You're back late."

Dave almost flinches back at the sound of his own father's voice. Of course he's still up. Dave's never been able to figure out what his sleep schedule is, even after all this time. "I'm not that late," he gripes, keeping his voice down as he closes the door.

"I'm assuming you didn't get all that lipstick on you during your shift," Bro comments. Dave feels his cheeks go hot, but he keeps his face carefully neutral.

"Nah, this is all part of the new mixing strat. It's that ASMR shit. Put lipstick on a microphone and make out with it, mix a track to all the mouth sounds. Real big in the club scene these days." Dave knows that Bro knows that he's bullshitting, but this is the only way he's found to express the phrase I don't want to talk about it and actually have Bro comply.

"Sure. Kid's asleep. Fed him what you left on the counter. Been out for a few hours now."

Dave nods. "Thanks." He still doesn't like leaving his kid alone with Bro, but it's a necessary evil, and so far he's at least proven that he can do the bare minimum. He still makes sure to check for bruises on a regular basis. He heads back towards the bedroom, but Bro has one last comment for him.

"Might wanna wash up before you go to check on the kid. Your microphone was pretty thorough."

Dave flushes again, but mutters out another quick, "Thanks," as he veers towards the bathroom instead. He finally gets the chance to admire himself in the mirror; Jade really did a number on him. He touches each smudge of lipstick on his face, trying to remember what it felt like to have her so close again... and then he has to wash his face off. It's embarrassing enough to justify the lipstick marks to Bro. He is not going to have that conversation with his three-year-old.

Dave is still back to his room quickly, and he walks in quietly. Sure enough, Zack is curled up on his toddler bed, his arms wrapped around his favorite plush toy of Winnie the Pooh. Dave takes a moment just to watch him, to make sure that his chest is still rising and falling, to make sure that he's still alive, healthy, and whole.

He makes it to his own bed sitting across the room once he's confirmed signs of life. He crashes so quickly he doesn't even remember his head hitting the pillow.

He wakes up in the morning the same way he wakes up most weekends, which is with Zack sitting on his chest and shaking him. "Daddy," he says, tiny voice insistent. Dave groans to let him know that he’s awake, which doesn’t stop him from shaking him more or from adding, "Daddy, wake up. I wanna watch ‘toons."

Zack is still too little for Saturday Morning Cartoons, but on the days that they don’t go to daycare, Dave will set him up in the mornings with some of those baby videos the mommy blogs recommend. He likes the ones teaching the alphabet much more than he liked those awful sensory videos with the repetitive music and the dancing fruit, although there were extra delirious nights he thought about trying to make a mix out of those.

Dave finally checks his phone after Zack has finished his Pop-Tarts for breakfast and is seated at the kitchen table with his carefully curated playlist running on Dave’s laptop, and he tries not to let his heart sink when he sees a lack of text messages from Jade. Well—she was the one who gave him her number. His hasn't changed, but maybe she didn't feel confident enough to text last night? He decides to send a message, just in case.

hey its dave
hope you made it back okay

He feels like his heart is hammering against his ribs, and Dave sets his phone aside so he won't be tempted to look at it. "Hey bud," he says, and Zack glances away from the computer dutifully. "How you doin’?"

He’s not a nervous wreck or anything, but living under Bro’s shadow, it’s not like it’s entirely rare for Dave to check in out of nowhere. Zack doesn’t bat an eye as he answers, "Good!" and looks back at the screen.

Dave scoots a little closer to glance over Zack’s shoulder and see which video he’s on. "Oh heck yeah, they're talking about the letter B," he says, like the letter B is something to be psyched about.

"Heck yeah!" Zack repeats, and he does look pretty psyched.

"Lots of good words start with B," Dave continues. "Like bug. Button. Big. Bet..." He emphasizes the B sound every time he says it. He doesn't know if it's too early to learn the alphabet, but he figures there's no harm in trying to lay the groundwork. He feels his phone buzz, and his heart leaps into his throat.

"Butt!" Zack declares. Dave laughs and holds his hand out for a high five.

"Yeah, butt. Damn, you're so smart. Keep watching; I bet they're gonna tell you about C next."

Zack nods and returns his focus to the screen. Dave pulls out his phone.

hey!
its good to hear from you <3
i got back fine! my roommate picked me up

Dave’s eyes linger a little too long on that heart despite himself. It’s an answer, and it’s not the summary rejection he was expecting. Apparently it really is a little too long, because another text pops up a second later.

hows the kid? any big plans for the weekend?

He tries not to read into it and tell himself that she’s asking because she wants to make plans this weekend. Still, he starts typing back immediately.

kids good
hes not old enough for saturday morning cartoons so were watching some of those baby shows that teach the alphabet
no big plans for the weekend
i mean i got more work tonight but other than that our schedules wide open
might go hit up the park or something
what about you

He considers adding a question about if she wants to meet them at the park, but that feels too pushy. Maybe she's sobered up and realized that the last thing she wants to do is hang out with her loser ex and his kid.

i just left the gym and now i gotta go home and do the last of my unpacking
and i promised my roommate id hang out with her and her friends tomorrow
damn sounds pretty packed
or unpacked
as the case may be
haha
hopefully!
i know its my own fault for putting off unpacking the last of my clothes and books and stuff but its just like
uuugh i dont wanna :\
psh nah i get it
but hey im not gonna complain if you just leave the clothes packed
the clothes youve got unpacked looked pretty good to me
or you could always just walk around with no clothes on
whatever works

Is that too overtly flirtatious? He sees the little dots that indicate she’s typing pop up and disappear a couple of times, and once again he feels like he’s fucked this whole thing up.

lol i dont think nasa would like that very much!
but maybe if youre good ;p

He feels his cheeks heat up and glances toward Zack, who’s still completely absorbed in his videos. It feels weird to flirt over text like teenagers with his son only a few feet away. It makes him wonder if he and Jade would still be texting like this at this point if they’d never broken up. If they were married and Zack was hers. He promptly takes that thought and sets it to the side where he can ignore it.

Jade's texting him again, and he wonders if he took too long to respond again. It's funny; he always used to be the one who left walls of text. Maybe he rubbed off on her a bit.

so what are up to this week?
are you going to be working the club more?
nah not until friday this week
during the week i usually focus on the day job
whats your day job? :o
daycare
i get to have zack in there for free and hang out with him all day
toddler life hack
oh! his name is zack?
what a cute name! :)

They text on and off for the next few hours (more on than off, he notes, more than a little optimistically), until it’s about time that he should take Zack out for lunch and the park. Jade agrees that she should probably get to unpacking for real, anyway, but she responds enthusiastically when he asks if she would maybe want to meet at the park next weekend.

He spends that week buzzing with excitement. Zack and Bro both notice, and though he gets some raised eyebrows from Bro, he focuses on getting Zack hyped up, too. It’s not hard. Zack hears that they’re going to meet a new friend and he’s already pretty hyped, and Dave doesn’t even have to tell him about all of the ways that Jade is awesome.

They agreed to meet up for a picnic at 12:30 on Saturday, and Jade is bringing the food, but it takes some time to get Zack ready to go; he wants to say "bye bye" to Uncle Bro before he leaves, who grunts and tells him to have fun at the park. Even after three years, it's still hard for Dave not to try and hide his son away from him. Just because nothing's happened yet doesn't mean it won't.

He ends up being a couple minutes late. It takes some extra fiddling to get Zack settled into the car seat. The excitement at the prospect of meeting a new friend makes him extra squirmy, and even if it’s cute, it’s not super conducive to getting anywhere on time. He starts to run as soon as he's let out of the car, too, and though he can't run fast yet on his little legs, Dave is a little slowed down by the blanket and toys he's carrying under his arms.

"Woah, woah, slow down kiddo," he says, doing an awkward half-jog to catch up with his toddler.

"But I wanna meet our friend!"

"You will, buddy. I promise. But you still gotta stay close."

Dave feels a rush of relief at seeing Jade there. Though Jade's never stood him up (to the contrary, she's always been very upfront about when she thinks they're through seeing each other), enough of his past partners have that there had still been that feeling that she may not show up. But she's here, and she looks so much more like the Jade that he remembers seeing. Her skirt goes down to her ankles instead of her thighs, and her heels are swapped out for tennis shoes that leave him a little bit taller than her again, and she's got chapstick instead of lipstick.

Jade is apparently ready for the sprinting toddler, because she crouches down to catch Zack when he almost barrels straight into her. Immediately, it makes Dave’s chest squeeze with affection to see Jade picking up his son and laughing, even if it’s a little concerning that Zack doesn’t immediately react with terror at a stranger grabbing him.

"Is this our friend?" he asks, which makes up for it a little.

"Yeah, this is our friend," Dave answers. "Zack, this is Jade. Jade, Zack. Say hi."

Zack looks like being told to say hi is the most fun he's had in his entire life, and he beams at Jade with an enthusiastic, "Hiiii!"

"Hi Zack! It's awesome to meet you, I've known your dad for a really long time," she says, her grin equally as bright. Jade loves kids. She's always loved kids. When they'd been little, she'd proudly declared that she was going to have a million of them, which she whittled down to a slightly more reasonable four after elementary school. It drudges up thoughts about if Zack was hers all over again, and he is rapidly realizing he has no idea how the hell he’s going to make it through this picnic.

The smile she offers Dave is a little less bright and a little more apologetic as she sets Zack back on his feet and adds, "Sorry, the food might be a little room temperature."

"It’s cool," Dave dismisses. Whatever place she’d picked the food up from is undoubtedly still way nicer than whatever Dave would have been able to afford, if only because he can’t usually get anything much nicer than McDonald’s. Not if he wants to get out of Bro’s anytime soon, anyway.

She bends down to Zack’s level again. "So, I've got a quesadilla for you that's getting a liiittle cold, but I'm pretty sure it can survive five minutes of swings if you wanna play for a bit. Do you know how to swing by yourself? I can push you. Or there's the slides or the monkey bars—but I'm sure you're pretty much an expert at parks, so you can take the lead."

Zack looks up at Dave with wide eyes, clearly barely restraining himself from agreeing outright without asking for his dad’s permission. "Can I get pushed?"

Dave grins. "Yeah. You're on swing duty, Jade. Sorry, that's just how it's gotta be. Here—I'll take the food and get the picnic set up while you tackle swing duty." He shifts the stuff in his arms so that he has a free hand to take the food from Jade. Zack is already starting to zoom over to the swing set, though he pauses every so often to stop and look back at Jade to check that she's following.

Jade lingers a second and pecks Dave on the cheek. "Thanks for taking care of that," she says, and then she’s off after Zack.

Dave feels frozen in place. He hadn't expected her to kiss him, even if it's just a kiss on the cheek. He figured this was an olive branch—Jade knows that they’re bad together, but she can at least be friendly. He's trying not to get his hopes up. He knows that's a bad idea. He remembers how that went in New Zealand, and he doesn't want to go another five years without talking to her. He's not sure he could handle it.

He focuses on getting the blanket laid out in a spot that he's pretty sure steers clear of fire ant nests and works on separating out the food for the three of them. Once that's done, he settles to watch Jade push his son on the swings. She pushes him a little less carefully than he’d be comfortable with if she was anyone else in the world, but Zack is having the time of his life, scream-laughing at the top of his lungs. When they're done, Zack swings Jade's arm back and forth with his own little hand as she walks him back.

She smiles at Dave when they reach him, and it is a little brighter this time. "Hey. Sorry, I told Zack all about NASA, so now I have to send your kid to Mars."

"Oh, damn," Dave says, shaking his head sadly. "Well, I'm gonna miss you lil dude. You at least gonna say hi to the Martians for me?"

"Yeah!" Zack declares. He plops himself down on the blanket, and Dave slides the quesadilla over to him. He wastes no time in picking it up and starting to eat it. Dave grins and pulls out the massive burrito Jade had gotten for him.

"You remembered my order," he says, trying not to sound like she hung the moon. His order at every restaurant they went to as kids was nearly always the thing that provided the most calories, so it's not as though it's hard to remember, but he's still touched that she does. He distracts himself by pulling out the plastic knife and fork to start dissecting it. "Surprised you have room for it in your brain with all of your fancy physics equations and stuff in there."

"Uh, yeah," she says, suddenly sounding far away, and he glances over at her with furrowed brows. She’s picking at her nachos without eating and staring at Zack and he’s getting the vibe that something is wrong, but he has no idea what. Not until she says, "Say, who watches you while your dad is at his super cool night time job, anyway? I'll have to let them know about Mars, too."

He freezes, because he knows Zack will be thrilled to answer. He can't stop the trainwreck that's coming. He doesn't want Jade to know he's still living at home even though he's a fully grown man with a toddler. He's still there with Bro, and he needs Bro to watch his son because he's out of options. Zack's mother has blocked his number. He burned his bridges with basically all of his friends. Bro is the last person he can turn to.

He can't look at her when Zack cheerfully declares, "Uncle Bro watches me! He'll let me go to Mars." Dave takes a big bite of burrito instead, even though he's suddenly not hungry. Jade won't expect him to explain this while his mouth is full. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Yeah, I bet he would," she says a little faintly, but when she turns to look at him, there’s none of the anger or disgust that he’d been expecting. She looks… sad, he thinks, and it fills him with such a deep sense of shame.

Jade reaches out to rest a hand on his arm and he almost flinches away. He doesn't quite do it—he trusts Jade, even after she's hurt him so many times in the past, and even mentioning Bro doesn't eliminate the years of friendship and trust they've built up. Still, he feels like he can’t look at her. All he wants is to be able to raise his son somewhere safe, and he can't even do that right.

"Well maybe you could hang out with me sometimes. You have to do a lot of training to go to space, y'know," she says, and when his eyes snap to her, she’s looking at Zack again.

If Zack senses anything unusual about the interaction, he’s less interested in that than the prospect of going to space. He’s starry-eyed as he stands up, dropping his quesadilla piece onto the blanket in the process. "Yeah! I wanna train! Can I train?"

He looks to Dave, and Dave swallows around his bite of burrito as he reaches out to ruffle his son’s hair. "Yeah. As long as we don't bother Jade too much. Also, as long as you eat all your food. Can't send an astronaut to space if they're hungry."

Zack immediately sits down to resume eating with a comically serious expression, and Dave is content to watch him because that means he still doesn't need to meet Jade's eyes. Not until she slides her hand up his arm to cup his cheek like she had last night, brushing her thumb against his cheekbone again. "You don't bother me," she says softly.

Dave forgets to breathe for a second, and he's glad that Zack thinks finishing the quesadilla is a requirement to go to space, because he’s no longer paying attention to the two adults.

Dave isn't strong enough to pull away from her. He turns his head so that he can kiss the palm of her hand, then lets himself lean into it a little. The world feels a little easier when she holds his face like this, and despite his shame still weighing on him, he can't help the look of adoration on his face.

"You say that now," he says. "But you'd better watch out. Zack's dedicated. He's gonna be breaking down your door, begging you to train him 'til you're ready to send him up in a rocket." A pause. "I mean—you're busy. Building rockets and stuff. I'm not gonna ask you to start babysitting on top of all that."

"Good! Dedication is a huge part of training to go to space. Giving up is your biggest obstacle." She strokes his cheek again, and he wonders if there isn’t a hint of double meaning in it. Maybe he’s just being overly optimistic again. "And I am pretty busy, but I don't mind babysitting sometimes. Let your Bro have the apartment to himself for a night."

Dave knows exactly what she's saying. She doesn't care about Bro getting alone time—she cares about not leaving Zack alone with him. Dave feels the same way, and even if he hasn't seen Jade in years, he still trusts her with his son more than he trusts Bro.

"Yeah," he breathes. "That could be nice."

The rest of the picnic goes well. Dave lets Zack run around the park and chase some very fat pigeons, and he and Jade get the chance to catch up a little more in between bouts of playing with him. Dave tells her about his day job at Zack’s daycare, and he listens to her talk about her last few years of research in New Zealand.

Around two o' clock, Zack is starting to get visibly tired, and Dave scoops his son into his arms.

"Sorry—think it might be nap time soon," he says, which gets a grumbled noise of discontent from Zack. "Aw, I know. Don't worry, you'll get to hang out with Jade again. But you can't be an astronaut if you don't get your naps in. NASA rules."

"He's right, those are NASA rules. Even I have to take a nap every day and I'm a grown up," she agrees. Dave has to stifle a grin, which is a lot harder when it’s just him and Jade and Zack, even in a public park. It's fun having Jade play along with his little fibs about NASA, and it's nice getting to just be around her again. Maybe this time they'll actually be able to handle being just friends. He knows he'll never be out of love with her, but now that he's mellowed out a bit, maybe he can handle the heartache if it means getting to spend time with her.

Dave looks back at the blanket and toys, then at the toddler slumped in his arms, then back to Jade. "You mind helping me carry that stuff to the car? I kinda got my hands full."

Jade stoops down to gather the blanket and Zack’s toys without comment, but as they walk back to the car, she says, "This was really nice. We should do it again soon, while the weather's still decent for it."

"Yeah," he agrees. "This was nice. I'm usually just free on the weekends during the day, but I'm happy to come here whenever you're free and want to picnic it up again." He almost wants to ask her if she wants to make it a weekly thing—but he can't monopolize her time like that. He gets Zack settled into his car seat, double-checking that he's strapped in safely. "We'll be back home soon, bud," Dave assures him. He takes the stuff from Jade and fits it into the backseat as well, closing the door.

He turns to her to say goodbye, but he has no idea how to, nor does he want to. Whatever words he might have come up with are cut short when she touches his cheek again, and he lets out a slow breath. He hopes she never stops doing that. Even if he's not good enough for her, having even a little bit of affection from her could be enough to get him through a lot, he thinks. And a hand on the cheek isn't that romantic, isn't it? It can be platonic.

Then he notices that she’s leaning up to kiss him, which definitely cannot be platonic. Not with them, anyway. If he were a stronger man, Dave would pull back to try and preserve this friendship. He's not, though. He's weak for Jade—always has been, always will be—and if she wants to kiss him, then he's going to kiss her back.

He keeps it soft and tender, but he also makes sure it lingers. The fact that Zack is still half-asleep in the car is the only thing that keeps him from kissing her forever.

He pulls back and looks at her. He wants to marry her. He wants to go back in time and follow her to New Zealand so that Zack can be hers rather than being born to someone who didn't even want him. He knows he can't have that, though.

"Jade." He doesn't know whether he wants to follow that statement with an I love you or a We shouldn't be doing this, so he says neither, letting her name hang in the space between them.

"I know," she breathes. Her eyes slide toward the car and her lower lip finds a place between her teeth before she mumbles, "I could watch him tonight, while you're working. I don't work tomorrow, and you shouldn't have to leave him with your brother."

His eyebrows raise. It feels so soon, but he trusts her so much more than he trusts Bro. He takes a deep breath, then releases it. "I—yeah. That'd be great. Thanks, Jade. I'll drop him off around seven? He probably won't give you much trouble anyways. He'll probably want to go to bed around 8:30. I'm off my shift around midnight, so I'll come by after that." A pause.

"So—where do you live?"

Chapter Text

Jade texts Dave her address so he can save it for later if he wants it, and she gives one of his hands one last squeeze before she goes back to her own car, but she manages to keep herself from kissing him again.

There's not really anything that isn't toddler-friendly in her apartment in the strictest sense, but she spends the rest of the afternoon double-checking anyway. She also lets Aradia know that she's watching a friend's kid tonight so she can choose whether or not to be in the apartment, and Jade reminds herself to be normal when Aradia says she'll spend the night at Sollux's.

Around the time that she thinks Dave should be heading toward her place (based on how long the drive is from his old apartment to her current one, anyway), she decides she should text him to double check the details.

should i make some kind of dinner? weve got, like, mac and cheese and stuff, but i dont know if you guys eat dinner early
my roommate decided to go to her boyfriends btw
so just me and zack tonight :)

She doesn't really know why she told him the last part. Objectively, it's good for him to know who his kid is around, but he won’t be around Aradia.

Maybe she just wants Dave to know her apartment will be empty. There’s definitely no good reason for that, though.

oh shit, yeah
hes been fed but hell probably get hungry again
kid eats like a horse
i assume
people always talk about people eating like horses and birds and shit but i dont actually have any idea how horses or birds eat and i doubt they do either
anyway
were here
how do i get to your apartment from the lobby this place is so fancy i feel like im gonna get lost

She reads the texts in Dave’s voice and laughs in spite of herself.

haha, ill come get you <3

It's not necessarily hard to find her apartment—she doesn't think so at least. She's just a little overeager to see them, and it seems like a convenient excuse.

Jade is down in the lobby in a minute, and her breath catches when she sees Dave in his work clothes. Somehow, she had already forgotten how unfairly hot he looked in them. This isn't the same outfit as last night, but it doesn't leave much more to the imagination, and she has the experience to fill in the gaps in her imagination easily. Her eyes catch on a thin choker around his neck, and there’s the temptation to grab him by it, but it’s easy to put off because his toddler is right there. Instead, she teases, "Jeez, do you work for tips?" She thinks she sees his cheeks flush.

She offers Zack a hand to lead him down the hallway to the elevators with Dave following close behind them. When they're in one, though, she looks at Dave sideways again. "You look nice,” she says, a little less flirtatiously and a little more seriously, though her own cheeks are flushed and she can’t help biting her lip.

"Uh, yeah. Thanks. People are more likely to notice the DJ and ask for him again if he looks nice. Just a bit of job security," he mutters, and she can’t tell if he’s upset or just embarrassed.

In the excitement of Dave's outfit, she had forgotten to be self-conscious about her apartment, and it hits her all at once when she unlocks the door to let them in. It’s not huge, but it has tall ceilings and wood floors that don't even creak and real marble countertops—and it's decorated a lot like how she'd always imagined an apartment she shared with Dave would be decorated.

There's a bookshelf with rows and rows of old hardcover books. Picture frames on the walls with pressed flowers in glass. A model human skull sits on their coffee table on top of a copy of Hamlet, and she doesn't even remember whether it was her or Aradia who thought that was funny anymore. She still thinks it's funny, so maybe it was her. She's got plenty of plants around the place, but she's carefully moved them all a little higher where she thinks Zack won't be able to get his hands on them, just in case he pulls one of the more fragile pots down and it breaks. Aradia had come with classic paintings with contemporary imagery added in that hang around the walls now, like The Creation of Adam with Cthulhu looming in the background. Jade had come with her own paintings, little floral landscapes and beaches she’d painted shortly after moving to New Zealand.

"Nice place," Dave says, and he definitely sounds embarrassed.

Jade always had money. Grandpa was well off before she was born because of his work with SkaiaNet, and it wasn’t until she met John and Dave that she even realized it wasn’t normal. In high school, she and Rose were the ones who were teased for it, like being wealthy was some silly thing worth making fun of.

Now that they’re adults, she guesses the contrast is a little more daunting. Here she is in her fancy high-rise apartment while he still lives with his brother. Of course she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but after so long without contact, he probably thinks that she does. What’s worse is she has no idea what to say to make that any better.

"I figured we'd just watch a movie or something and then bedtime?" she redirects.

Dave is still gaping around the apartment, but Zack comes to her rescue. "I wanna watch Winnie!" he says, tugging on Jade's hand with an intent expression.

Dave snaps back to attention at that. "Uh—yeah. Zack's a big fan of Winnie the Pooh. Can't go wrong with one of those. Here, I brought Winnie with me…" He reaches into his bag to pull out a well-loved Winnie the Pooh plushie, and there's something about the image of Dave holding a teddy bear that makes her melt, even if it's only for a second before Zack takes it from him. Zack hugging the bear like his life depends on it doesn't exactly make her un-melt.

"Yeah, we can do Winnie the Pooh. Have you seen the Heffalump Halloween movie? That one terrified me when we were kids, and your dad was a huge jerk about it." Despite her words, she grins at Dave. It's pretty funny in hindsight.

"Jade, that was not a scary movie," he teases back, sounding a little bit more like himself.

"Yeah, you would say that. Don’t worry Zack, I won’t subject you to that. I'm gonna say bye to your dad real quick, and then do you want a movie snack?"

Zack's eyes light up at the idea of a movie snack, and he excitedly repeats "Movie snack!" as he settles his stuffed bear next to him on the couch. That keeps him occupied as Jade walks Dave to the door. He’s gaping around the apartment again as they walk, and her cheeks flush.

"Um... my roommate teaches at Rice. And... I got a pretty good inheritance when I finished my doctorate. Uh, trust fund. It's a trust fund." She always hates saying it that way, even if it's the truth, because she knows the connotations. Dave’s known her since they were little kids, so he should know better than anyone that those connotations aren’t necessarily applicable, but somehow, that just makes it feel worse.

"It's fine, Jade. I'm glad you're doing well," he says, but he says it like there’s something else he wants to say and isn’t.

The silence after lasts just a beat too long before she finally cracks. "So! Not too much sugar? Brush our teeth before bed? Usual kid rules?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty much. He likes bedtime stories if he has trouble getting to sleep. I usually just kinda run my mouth until he drifts off, but I packed a book for you. I guess… text if anything comes up? I'm not live 'til after he'll probably be asleep, so I can check my phone if you have questions. And... thanks. I really appreciate this."

She swallows, and her eyes flit to his mouth. She wants to kiss him. She wants him to kiss her. For just a second, she thinks maybe he’s going to, but then he takes an abrupt step back toward the door. "Right," she says, chest feeling a little tight. "No problem. I’m glad I could help."

He leaves, and she sinks against the door for just a second to catch her breath after it closes behind him. What are they doing? What is she doing?

Babysitting.

She joins Zack on the couch with a bowl of kettle-cooked chips, which was always her preferred non-candy movie snack. She'd give him candy, but she literally just confirmed with his dad that she should not do that.

"This movie's a lot of fun!" Jade says, trying to hype him up as she pulls The Tigger Movie up on her TV. It's one that she and Dave watched when they were little, and it feels nostalgic to show it to his kid, even if they were a little younger than Zack is now when it came out. "It's all about Tigger!"

"Tigger!" Zack repeats, kicking his little legs out with excitement.

The movie does an excellent job of holding Zack's attention for a good fifteen minutes, which given his age is probably still pretty impressive. But Jade notices him looking around her apartment, and about the time she notices is about the time he climbs off the couch to start wandering around.

"What's that?" he asks, pointing at an artistic statue of an atomic model that Jade has sitting up high on a bookshelf.

"Oh! That's an atom," Jade says.

"What's that?"

Right. Babies don't know anything about physics yet. "Atoms are the teeeeeeny tiny things that make up all the things you see! When you put enough atoms together, they can make something amazing. Like you!"

Zack cups his chin in his hand, which is so cute Jade has to hold back the urge to squeeze him into a vice grip of a hug. He really seems to think on it for a while, but then his toddler brain inevitably gets distracted, and he points at one of Jade's house plants. "What's that?"

He continues this for a while, pointing at new things around the apartment and asking about them. When he gets to the skull, Jade decides that she's not ready to introduce Dave's son to the concept of death or Shakespeare, so she turns off the movie and snatches him up.

It’s easy to plop Zack down on the couch and bury her fingers in his sides, for which she’s rewarded with squirming and shrieks of baby laughter. It’s relieving for him not to react poorly to the tickling, since she remembers Dave hating it when they were kids. She still breaks to let him catch his breath, but that only makes him laugh twice as hard when she moves her hands to his legs and redoubles her efforts. When she’s certain he’s completely distracted from the skull, she pulls her hands back into her lap, still grinning at him and the straggling, breathless giggles she’s earned that are still petering off.

She considers what kinds of hands-on activities she has for a toddler. Ideally, something that’ll tire him out enough to get him to settle on the couch and maybe even get ready for bed. There’s still a little over an hour until the bedtime Dave gave her, which is a lot of time for a three-year-old! "I’m hungry," Zack says, breaking Jade out of her thoughts.

She grins. "How hungry?"

Given what Jade knows about Dave’s home life—or at least what she knew about Dave’s home life, years ago, back when she was a part of it—she doubts Zack has much hands-on experience with cooking. The extent of his experience with home-cooked meals is probably limited to boxed mac and cheese and instant noodles. She can’t really blame Dave for it—he’s a single parent with a toddler and two jobs. It’s not like his brother is exactly the sort of stepping up and helping out guardian John’s dad would be if John had been the one who accidentally became a parent too young. Still, Jade has the resources to expose Zack to cooking that’s a little more advanced, so if he’s hungry and he needs something to keep him occupied anyway, why shouldn’t she?

"Have you ever made pizza before?" Jade asks as she carries Zack into her kitchen.

"Yeah," Zack answers, nodding dutifully. "I like the papanoni kind, but Daddy says it’s too ‘spensive."

Jade laughs and shakes her head. "I don’t mean pizza from a box, silly! We’re gonna make it from scratch."

"What’s from scratch?"

"I’ll show you!"

Zack is thrilled to make pizza dough with her, and he seems to forget he’s hungry when he sinks his tiny fingers into it, and then again when she has to give him a bath while it rests because he covered himself in flour. She tries to get him into the pajamas that Dave packed for him, and she does at least manage to get his pajama pants on, but she has to chase him around the apartment as he giggles to avoid the shirt. She manages to get him to compromise by offering him one of her NASA t-shirts, and even with Jade’s smaller stature, it still falls down to his knees.

She lets him shape his own pizza after she rolls it out, and he’s enchanted by the concept of baby pizzas, where they can each have a little pizza of their own. His comes out as more of a lumpy oval than a circle, but she thinks it’ll still cook fine, so she doesn’t try to fix it. She considers shaping hers into a squiddle, but she thinks that might take too much time and Zack might get bored.

"What is that stuff!" Zack yells, sounding a little horrified as he eyes the spinach Jade puts on her pizza suspiciously.

"This is spinach! It’s a vegetable that makes you grow big and strong."

"Like Uncle Bro?"

Jade winces, even though she knows Zack doesn’t really understand the connotations of calling Uncle Bro big and strong. She has to remind herself that he apparently has a fine relationship with Zack, and it’s not her job to decide whether he keeps it or not. "Yeah, like that. Do you wanna try some?"

"Yeah! But I don’t want a green pizza."

Zack is, Jade assumes, referring to the pesto sauce she put on her pizza in lieu of tomato, and she laughs. "No green pizza. Got it."

They play with some of the toys that Dave had packed for Zack while the pizzas bake. Jade watches on the edge of her seat as a small group of plastic dinosaurs who are also, apparently, superheroes battle against a "giant monster," which is actually a well-loved little stuffed chicken that Jade is pretty sure must be from the dollar store. One of them tragically falls in battle, until Zack forgets that he fell in battle and picks him back up so he can swoop in to save the day as the oven timer goes off. Jade claps enthusiastically. "Wow! What a cool story!"

The pizzas come out of the oven and they sit at the table, even though Zack furrows his tiny eyebrows and asks why they can’t eat on the couch and watch ‘toons. It’s adorable, but Jade has to hold firm. If she’s going to teach this kid about normal life boundaries, she can’t cave every time he’s cute—she’d never stop caving.

They make small talk while they eat, until eventually Zack’s eating starts to slow down and she thinks she sees him trying to stifle a yawn. That’s as good a sign as any that they’re ready to head back to the couch. "Hey, kiddo. You want me to put that in the fridge for you?"

"Nooo," Zack whines, pouting up at her. "I wanna finish my pizza!"

"It’s okay! You can finish it later."

"It’s gonna be gross!"

Jade considers pointing out that he’s not even really eating it, or making something up about how homemade pizza is good longer than the stuff that comes out of a box (she’s pretty sure that might be true), but she thinks she needs to take a different angle of attack. An idea strikes, and she perks up. "Hey, Zack!" she says, her eyes lighting up. "Do you know about Squiddles?"

"What's that?" he asks, just as he had been while he was wandering around the apartment and asking about her decorations.

"Only my favorite show ever! It's sooo much fun; I know you'll love it." Jade keeps a box set of every season of Squiddles on DVD, and it's no trouble for her to pull out one of the DVDs from the second season to put on for them.

Squiddles turns out to be the perfect thing to show to a toddler. Sure, some of the deeper themes about building community and the dangers of isolation might be flying over his head right now, but it's colorful, it's cute, and the theme song is dangerously catchy. Each episode is only about eleven minutes long, which is perfect for his toddler attention span. It only takes a few episodes before Zack is singing along with it, which may just be the cutest thing that Jade has ever seen.

Jade gets caught up in the thrill of watching her favorite cartoon with Dave's kid, and she realizes belatedly that she was trying to get Zack to settle down for bedtime. She checks the time on her phone and grimaces. Hadn't Dave said eight thirty? The only problem is that Zack is absolutely enamored with Squiddles, and Jade isn't sure that he's going to want to stop watching. She'll need to be creative.

As the next episode wraps to a close, Jade pauses. Zack turns to look at her with a little furrow in his brow, ready to be upset, but she's quick to chime in, "I really need your help, Zack! Can you show me how to brush our teeth? I forgot all about it!"

Zack perks up in a way that reminds her so much of Dave, and he nods, thrilled to be given a task. "Yeah! I can help."

"Great! Let's go to the bathroom and you can show me all about it."

From there, it's easy to get him settled and ready for bed. He really is a friendly kid, and it's easy to trick him into getting ready for bed by framing it like he's somehow helping her. He lies down on the couch and tucks himself under some blankets when Jade tells him that the couch is cold and he needs to warm it up, and he's eager to help with turning the pages of the book that Dave packed for him as Jade reads him a bedtime story.

It's about 10 o'clock when she sends Dave a picture of Zack asleep on her couch.

we got a little absorbed in squiddles @.@
sorry!
hes tuckered out now though <3
winnie is under the blanket but im afraid he may find his way to the floor before the end of the night

Jade waits up for a bit, but Dave doesn't get back to her. She reasons that he's probably working now—she's never been a DJ before, but she figures it's not a good look for him to be checking his phone in the middle of his set.

She winds up dozing on the couch, slumped over so she's laying against Zack, her head resting on his tiny hip over the blanket. She doesn't even realize she's fallen asleep until she's roused from her nap by an insistent knock on the front door.

Jade tries to blink away the grogginess from her eyes as she sits up and stretches. She double checks that Zack is still fast asleep, and then goes to answer it.

Somehow, she's a little surprised to see Dave, as if she would have expected any other visitor at midnight. Her eyes flit up and down him, and she's too tired to filter her own thoughts about grabbing him by his little collar—choker. It's a choker. Maybe she would like it better if her name was on it, but it's not. And she likes it pretty well now.

At the very least, she's not so tired that having those thoughts is the same thing as acting on them. It just means that when her eyes finally somewhat guiltily snap back up to his face, her cheeks are flushed, and she's looking at his mouth more than his eyes. "Hey," she says softly, voice still carrying some of that edge of sleep.

"Hey," he says back, his voice soft.

She takes a step back from the door to let him in, although she doesn't go very far. "Um, Zack is still asleep on the couch. His things are pretty much together, other than Winnie."

Dave walks inside, and she can see the way that he's looking around. She tries not to feel too self-conscious about the apartment again. It's just where she lives. It's silly to be embarrassed over having a nice place to live.

Dave stops a little way inside the door, giving her enough room to close it behind him, but he doesn't seem to be in a rush to get Zack and head home. "Thanks again for watching him," he says. His voice is still soft; he's undoubtedly trying to keep it down so Zack can keep sleeping. "Sounds like he had a lot of fun. I'm..."

He trails off, his brow furrowed a little. Jade bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from blurting something out and interrupting his thought process. She wants to hear what he's going to say.

"I'm glad he was here and not with Bro. I mean—he hasn't done anything yet. But I trust you more."

There’s something about Dave saying he trusts her that makes her chest squeeze, and she’s not sure if it’s with affection or heartache. Maybe both. She forces herself to smile as she says, "I didn’t mind! He really is a sweet kid, and I wasn't up to anything else. And I wanted to help…"

She thinks it must be obvious that there’s more she’s not saying, because Dave doesn’t respond to that. She holds her breath like she’s waiting for something anyway, until her smile falls a little and she swallows hard. She tries to meet his eyes through the shades, but she can’t tell whether he’s looking back at her or not. "I know what you're going to say," she starts, "but I would be happy to help you out. I don't like the thought of you being there. Zack either."

The silence after that is only, maybe, a couple of seconds, but it feels like it lasts an eternity. She wishes she could take the offer and stuff it back into her mouth. It’s pushy. They’re not together. They’re barely even friends again, and maybe she’s ruining her chances at them ever being friends again. Then he says it: "I—Jade, I can’t." His voice sounds tight. "It wouldn't be cheap. I mean, housing is it's own thing, but finding childcare for when I'm at work, making sure I can afford all his doctor visits and stuff... I can't ask for that level of help from you. It's too much."

In spite all of that regret she’d had a moment ago, she can’t stop herself from saying, "Dave, please." It bursts out of her almost against her will, and then she snaps her mouth shut so she doesn’t say anything else, even if that doesn’t take the words back. He's right, isn't he? He has to be right, because if she's paying for his housing and childcare and his kid's doctor's appointments and she's fantasizing about fucking him every time she sees him, she might as well just marry him.

They agreed a long time ago that wasn't an option.

Still, she wants to help somehow. She's desperate to help, even more desperate than she was to get into his pants last night, which is impressive in its own right.

Before she knows what she’s doing, she takes a step toward him, and then another, and there’s not that much distance between them in the first place. She doesn’t crash into him the way she had at the club, but her hands find his face and his chest again, cupping his cheek like he’s the most precious thing in the world. Her breath almost catches when he leans into it.

"Just... stay with me. Here. The night," she breathes, and it comes out all jumbled. "We don't have to do anything, I just... I don't want you to go back to him tonight."

Dave doesn’t answer her verbally. For a minute, he’s completely silent, and that’s so terrifying. She's never known him to be quiet when things are going okay. He only shuts down like that when something is going terribly, terribly wrong.

Then he leans in to kiss her, and she lets out a broken noise into his mouth and sinks against him completely. Her hand on his cheek slides around to the back of his head so she can bury her fingers in his hair. She doesn't grip it, just strokes her fingers through it and holds him close.

After a second, she walks a few steps forward until she can press him against one of the walls in her kitchen. She had told him they didn't have to do anything, and she did mean it, but then he kissed her and all sense went out the window. It's as if someone had hit the unpause button exactly where they stopped last night.

Dave wraps his arms around her and tangles his fingers into her hair and fuck, she’s missed him. It hits her all over again.

He pulls away just enough to mumble, "Your room?"

Her eyes slide toward Zack. They shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be doing this at all, let alone with his kid in the other room. But in her bedroom? With the door closed? Parents still have sex with their kids in the house. They just have to be sneakier.

She curls a finger under his choker and tugs him to walk backwards with her.

Chapter Text

Jade’s face is buried in his chest and he can feel her everywhere, and Dave thinks maybe he’s finally found peace, even though he doesn’t completely feel like he deserves it. He fucked things up with Jade so badly, and she reasonably cut him out of her life for it. How is it even possible that she’s giving him a second chance now? Does she seriously trust that he’s got his life together again just because he has a kid? He wants to believe that’s true, but it still feels like he hasn’t made up for all of the shit in his past.

Thinking about his kid reminds him that he still hasn’t technically laid eyes on Zack. He trusts Jade more than anybody in the world, but there’s a lingering sense of wrongness at not going through his nightly routine of making sure that his son is still breathing. It feels impossible to settle, no matter how big and comfortable Jade’s bed is. While he debates the merits of waiting until Jade’s asleep to slip out of bed, he mumbles against her hair, “Love you. ‘M glad you’re back.

”I love you too,” she says, and he smiles and lets his eyes flutter shut. Maybe he can check on Zack in the morning. Maybe everything will be fine. Then she adds tentatively, “You could stay here. With me.”

He opens his eyes to stare at her.

Dave wishes he could move in with Jade. He’d love to spend every night like this, tangled up in bed with her, but that's unreasonable. Jade’s apartment is not big enough for two extra people, and even if it was, it’s not set up for one of those people to be a toddler. Plus, there’s a voice somewhere in the back of his head that sounds a whole lot like Rose the last time they’d talked that says it’s still way too soon for them to move in together. He doesn’t even know if they’re officially dating.

”Don’t you have a roommate?” he says instead. That feels like a reasonable and less controversial counter. “She probably doesn’t want her place being monopolized by some guy and his kid. Plus—I mean, it’s okay to have Zack sleep on the couch every now and then. But I’d want him to have his own bed here if we were gonna spend the night more often, and where is that gonna go? I mean—I don’t hate the idea on its own. But I dunno if this place is ready for a toddler full-time.”

Jade’s wearing her stubborn face, the one that she puts on when she’s about to start an argument she knows she’s on the losing side of. Her lips are pursed and her eyebrows are furrowed, until she finally says, “At least on the weekends? I work during the week, but I could watch Zack while you work at the club, and then you guys could crash here…"

It feels kind of bit surreal to have Jade arguing with him about getting to spend more time together. He doesn’t want to argue about this, for a lot of reasons. Of course he wants to spend more time with her. He loves her and he doesn’t want to push her away, no matter how much he believes he isn’t worthy of her. Slowly, carefully, he says, “We can rock weekend duty sometimes. Probably not every weekend.”

Jade looks at him like she’s still seriously considering arguing with him. Then she sighs, and Dave relaxes because he knows that means she’s not going to argue. “Okay. Yeah. Maybe every weekend would be pushing it.” There’s obviously something else that she wants to say, and he waits to let her say it. Her tone is somehow both optimistic and bargaining as she adds, “But some weekends? Once a month, maybe. I put up with Sollux, Aradia can put up with you. I want you here, both of you, and I don't want you stuck with your brother."

It’s so touching he almost wants to reverse his stance and agree to move in. It would be a stupid idea, though. And she’s offering a solid compromise. He tugs her back against his chest and presses a kiss against the top of her head.

“Some weekends,” he agrees. “Can definitely do once a month. Maybe more if you want. Just—you know, make sure Aradia is okay with it. It’s one thing to have a guy over. It’s another to have a little kid running around.” He wants to ask if some weekends means they’re dating, but he’s also terrified of the answer, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Talking about Zack also makes it a lot harder to ignore that nagging feeling that he should make sure his son is okay. “Speaking of. Should probably check on him,” Dave says. “Wish I’d known you were gonna have me spend the night. I’d have packed a change of clothes for myself. Next time, I guess?” It’s as close as he can come to asking if they’re dating—if there will at least be a next time.

Fortunately, Jade doesn’t even seem to hesitate with her answer. "Next time," she confirms, and then hums. "Actually..."

Jade gets up and Dave whines in spite of himself, but when he leans up onto his elbows, she’s digging through her dresser. He raises his eyebrows. “What are you doing over there?”

”Hang on!” she says, laughing. Dave decides to stand up and pull his underwear back on, because he can’t exactly be butt ass naked to go check on his son. Just when he’s got them pulled up and is about to go over and see what she’s doing, Jade turns to hold out a shirt that he recognizes, although it’s been a long time since he last saw it. He hasn’t listened to this band since before he and Jade broke up, but he remembers being into it in high school. He dimly remembers Jade borrowing the shirt, and he's realizing now she must have never given it back. "Think this'll still fit?"

“Holy shit? So that’s where that damn shirt went. Jade.” He’s grinning as he goes to grab it, touched that she kept it for all this time, and he throws it on. “Yeah. Still fits. Haven’t changed much since I was eighteen, I guess. Can’t believe you hung onto this. Damn.”

He’s pretty sure he sees Jade’s cheeks flush, and she definitely bites her lip, little buckteeth just barely poking out. He wants to kiss her, but she turns back to the dresser to start digging for something for her to wear. She doesn’t look over her shoulder at him as she mumbles, a little sheepishly, “Well I still wear it sometimes…”

His chest squeezes. It conjures up the image of Jade sleeping in his shirt years after they’d stopped talking because she was thinking about him.

He drops a kiss against her shoulder and mumbles, “I love you.”

Jade’s whole body melts back against his, but he can see that she’s got a shirt in her hands. "I'm gonna run to the bathroom and clean up and change and stuff. But I'll see you in a minute?"

“Yeah. See you in a minute,” Dave says. Somehow, it doesn’t totally sting that she didn’t say she loves him too. He goes out to the living room and finds Zack still curled up on the couch, Winnie still miraculously held in his tiny hands. Dave lets out a sigh of relief and crouches down to watch him for a moment, looking for that steady rise and fall of his chest.

Something about the movement causes Zack to stir. He opens his eyes and blinks at Dave blearily. “Daddy?”

“Hey lil man. You sleeping okay?” Dave asks. He can already tell the answer is no based on the way that his eyebrows start to knit together; Zack is clearly out of it, and he's upset that he’s out of it. He shakes his head and holds his little arms out, WInnie falling to the wayside. Dave knows that means cuddles are being demanded.

“Alright, alright. I’ll stay with you.” Dave sits down on the couch, and Zack crawls into his lap, pulling his blanket with him. “Sorry I was out for a bit. You have a fun time with Jade?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Good. That’s good. I think we’re gonna start seeing her more from now on.” He helps pull the blanket around Zack a little more to make sure that he’s comfortable and strokes his hair. “Try to get back to sleep, okay? I’ll be right here.”

Zack starts to get comfortable, and as cute as it is to watch, it also means that Dave is pretty sure he's stuck on this couch for the night. It's kind of a bummer; he'd been hoping to spend the night cuddling with Jade, but Zack gets top priority. He tries to make himself comfortable, too. Dave doubts he'll be able to get much sleep in this position, but he might as well try and doze a bit.

He hears the shower running in the other room—Jade wasn't kidding about the acoustics of this place—and he listens to that like white noise to help clear his head. Then the shower turns off and he hears footsteps. First to the bedroom, then some puttering around before they come out to the living room.

He cracks an eye open, and for a second he thinks Jade looks almost worried—but whatever she's worried about soon fades into relief when she sees him. She walks over and settles on the couch next to him, sliding her hand behind his back.

"Hey, everything okay out here?" She's whispering even without him having to ask her to. It's probably not a hard assumption to make with a toddler curled up in his lap, though.

“Yeah,” he says. “Think he just missed me. This is his first time sleeping away from home.” Dave rubs Zack’s back as he clings to his shirt with his tiny hands. He still can’t get over how small the damn things are. “Might have to stay up with him for a while. You can go to bed—don’t wanna keep you up.”

"What? No, I'm not gonna leave you alone in here all night, that's dumb," she says, still keeping her voice soft. She leans over to kiss Dave's cheek and then hums. "He can come lay down with us, if you think that'd help?"

Dave’s about to protest that he can handle staying up with Zack if he needs to—that’s just what a good parent does—but Jade’s admittedly proposed something much easier. He knows that Zack really just doesn’t want to feel alone. When he’s gotten upset mid-sleep in the past, Dave usually has pulled him into bed with him. He just didn’t expect Jade to want to have a kid in her room that isn’t hers—especially not a kid who she’s known for less than a day.

There’s more room to share in Jade’s bed than there is Dave’s, he realizes. He still doesn’t want her sacrificing a good night’s sleep for him; he feels like he’s being selfish enough just by accepting her love when he doesn’t really deserve it.

“You’re sure that’s okay?” he asks, wanting to give her an out. “I mean, it’d probably be fine. He just wants a buddy to sleep next to. But I’m not gonna demand we commandeer your bed or anything.”

"Yeah, of course it's okay," she dismisses, already standing up from the couch again. She turns back to face him and briefly holds her arms out as though to take Zack from him. She seemingly thinks better of it and reaches out to grab Winnie instead, cradling the stuffed bear to her chest. "Here. Winnie would have fit right in on my bed like a year ago."

"Thanks—definitely don't wanna leave him behind.” Dave keeps his voice low as he talks; Zack is close to nodding off, and he wants to keep it that way.

He carefully stands with his son, tucking him up against his chest and making the short walk back to Jade's room, though he casts a glance over his shoulder to make sure she's coming with him. Jade dutifully follows along with Winnie clutched in her arms, which brings a small smile to his face.

He stares down at Jade’s bed once he's in her room. Unlike his bed, where he can tuck Zack safely against the wall where he can't roll off, her bed is placed squarely in the middle of the room. Still, her bed also has more room to work with, so it should be fine.

“Alright, we’re gonna settle here, right in the middle,” Dave mumbles quietly, situating Zack in the center while he lies down next to him. Zack curls up next to him on instinct, and he looks up at Jade. “You wanna take his other side? Kinda worried he’s gonna roll off the edge in his sleep or something, even if your bed’s got room for four people.”

Jade settles down on Zack's other side, propping herself up on one elbow as she looks down at the toddler. There's a soft look in her eyes that Dave thinks might be maternal, but it's not like he's ever had a mother figure to base that on. She looks up at him a moment later, and that soft look turns to something more teasing.

"Maybe it's a good thing my bed has room for four people," she says. "I've gone from one to two and a half in 24 hours. Who knows what tomorrow's gonna look like?"

Dave snorts despite himself. "Yeah, you never know. We might be hitting some kinda population boom, centered on this bed. Scientists are gonna study it decades down the line. Nobody knows how it happened, but somehow local NASA scientist ended up with one hundred and twenty-eight people all piled into one bed."

Jade laughs. "Anyways, my bed is great. That's really all there is to say on the matter," she says, pulling a faux-snobby look before she loses it to a grin.

"Yeah, yeah." Dave reaches out over Zack and lets one of his hands wind through her hair. It's nice, having his two favorite people right here, nestled under a blanket with him. He thinks he could get used to it.

Dave drops off to sleep faster than expected. He's never been able to sleep well at home, between the old, uncomfortable mattress and the fact that he knows his father is on the futon just outside the room. Here, he doesn't stir until well into the morning, when Zack starts to squirm between the two of them.

Even then, Dave doesn't fully wake up. He's aware that Zack is awake, dimly, but he's waiting for the usual weight on his chest that signals he has to get up or face the wrath of his toddler. It doesn't come, and so he drifts off again.

As he starts to drift back to sleep, though, there's that sense of wrongness again. The sense that something is missing.

It's enough to have Dave cracking open an eye and finding he's alone in the bed. His heart rate spikes.

Zack isn't there.

He can't remember the last time he woke up and Zack wasn't in the room with him, either asleep on his own bed or actively being the thing that woke him up. He can't shake the feeling that this isn't right. He's messed up somehow.

Reasonably, he tells himself he needs to at least check the apartment first. Jade isn't there, either, and this is Jade's bed. Odds are, Zack's with her, and he can trust Jade. He's known Jade for most of his life; she's great with kids. He can trust her.

Right?

"Zack!" Dave pokes his head into the bathroom first, but it's empty. There's still plenty of places to check, but it's still freaking him out. He turns to walk out towards the living room. "Jade? Where'd you guys—"

When he opens the door and steps into the living room, he has a clear view of the kitchen, and the smell of waffles instantly hits his nose. Jade is standing there, and though Dave can't see Zack over the kitchen counter, he can hear a delighted cry of, "Daddy!"

"Oh—good morning, Dave!" Jade fixes him with a beaming smile, and Dave feels his heart flip over a few times as his nerves give way to palpable relief. It isn't long before Zack runs out of the kitchen, galloping over to hug his leg.

"We made Squids!" he announces with a massive grin.

Dave may not consider himself a gourmet, but he is pretty sure this is not what squid smells like when it's being cooked. He walks over to get a better look. Apparently, Squids refers to waffles that are shaped like squiddles. Of course Jade has a Squiddles waffle press.

"Oh man, those Squids look delicious," he comments. "Do I get some too?"

"Yeah!" Zack walks over and pulls out one of the kitchen chairs for Dave to sit in, and he obligingly takes a seat. He notices that there's four plates set out and raises an eyebrow.

Jade must catch him looking, because she explains, "One of the chairs is for Winnie. We didn't want him to be left out!"

Dave bites back a grin. It reminds him of how Jade used to treat her stuffed animals when they were kids. "Well, yeah, of course. I wasn't even questioning that the fourth chair was for Winnie. That was pretty self-evident."

"Super self-evident!" Jade agrees with a little grin. She walks over and begins to put the "Squids" onto plates, including one for Winnie. Dave resolves to sneakily eat that, too, when Zack isn't looking, so that he can be satisfied that his stuffed bear got enough to eat.

Jade leans in and reaches her hand up, and for a moment Dave thinks she might be going for her standard move of cupping his cheek—but instead her hand goes for his neck, and she tugs him forward by the choker he belatedly realizes he's still wearing. Shit. Must have forgotten to take that off last night. Still, with the soft way she kisses him, he decides he can leave it on for a bit longer.

"How'd you sleep?" Jade asks once she pulls back, settling at her spot at the kitchen table.

"Amazing. I know I was joking about the bed earlier, but you were right. It's a good bed, and that really is all there is to say on the matter."

Jade beams at him, and Dave settles in for breakfast, drowning his waffles in syrup. It's been a while since he last had waffles. Honestly, he can't really remember the last time he had any breakfast—usually he holds out until lunch, but he'd be stupid to turn this down. Zack is babbling to him and Jade about Squiddles lore and Jade is happy to babble back. It's an easy moment. Domestic, even.

Then the door opens.

Dave can’t help the way he tenses up and ducks in on himself a little, like the sound of the door opening is innately a threat. When he looks at Jade, though, she’s smiling.

”Hey! We made waffles!” she says, and Dave decides that it’s probably safe to look toward the door.

He doesn’t recognize the girl in the doorway, which isn’t really a surprise, but still feels like a blessing somehow. She’s stepping out of one of those big chunky pairs of goth boots, but she’s not wearing any of the makeup, and she’s got an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. “We?” she asks, until she looks up.

She seems to spot Zack first, based on the flash of alarm across her face. “Oh! We!” She straightens out and then Dave sees her eyes move to him, and he gives her an awkward wave. She looks him up and down once. His cheeks heat up under the scrutiny, but he thinks he manages not to blush. “Who is this?” she asks.

”Uh,” Jade says, looking kind of like a deer in the headlights, and Dave would cut in to save her, but he’s kind of curious to see how she introduces him. As her boyfriend? As a friend?

Zack, who he’ll have to sit down and have a chat with about being the worst wingman of all time when he’s older, cuts in before she ends up saying anything. “I’m Zack!”

Jade blinks and seems to decide that answer is good enough, because she repeats, “He’s Zack.”

”Nice to meet you Zack! I’m Aradia,” Jade’s roommate says, with a grin and a finger wave. Zack enthusiastically waves back, and then turns back to his waffles, apparently having lost interest in the new person in the apartment. That has her turning back to him. “And who’s this one? Is this the friend who you were babysitting for?”

”This is Dave,” Jade says. It doesn’t give him any of the answers he was hoping for, but it’s also true, so he nods, as if Jade needed him to back her up. Then she adds, tentatively, “They spent the night last night.”

Aradia’s grin grows from creepy puppet to Cheshire cat, and Dave shrinks into himself again. “Oh my gosh, your new boyfriend is a dad and a freak!” she says, and Dave shrinks into himself a whole lot more.

Dave’s pretty sure his face is on fire, and he regrets leaving the choker on. He brings a hand up to hide behind so he doesn’t have to be a part of this interaction anymore. It feels like Jade’s roommate has punched him directly in the gut, like she can just look at him and immediately see what a mess he is. Jade starts, “Aradia—”

”You are so lucky. I have to tell Rose about this!”

Dave’s pretty sure the whole world stops.

She's friends with Rose? Jade's still friends with Rose? No—of course Jade's still friends with Rose. Jade didn't ruin her friendship with her like he did. The second Rose hears about this, she's probably going to talk to Jade. If he was in Rose's situation and one of his friends was trying to get back together with somebody who had screwed him over, he'd tell them. Jade's going to hate him. He was stupid to think he could ever maintain a relationship with her after everything he's done.

He feels hands on his shoulders and flinches, but he manages to curb any harsher reflexes; he’s managed to make it to adulthood without hitting anyone other than his father, which he didn’t even really have a choice in, and he’s hoping to keep that streak going. He’s rewarded with Jade kissing the top of his head and then pressing her lips against his ear to murmur, "Relax. Aradia likes you. That's the kind of stuff that she says about people that she likes. And I know better than to listen to Rose's opinion about anybody."

Dave tries to take some comfort in the idea that Aradia likes him, but he's not sure that Jade isn't just trying to calm him down. She'd seen him, grinned, and then called him a freak. Maybe she meant freak positively, but maybe she didn't. He doesn't know.

Rose, though? He’s not sure there’s anything Jade could say to reassure him about Rose. She has no idea what he did to Rose; it’s not like her opinion of him is some silly little thing. He hurt her, and he hasn't made amends. He hasn't even tried to, which might make it worse.

Jade makes some small talk with Zack while they eat, but the food feels and tastes like paste in his mouth. He hates it. He knows that Jade is a good cook, and he wants to be able to enjoy that while he still can. That’s probably selfish, though. He doesn’t really deserve to enjoy Jade’s good cooking.

When Aradia shuffles back out of her room a few minutes later, Dave wants to hide under the table, but he manages to stop himself at hunching over his plate a little bit. Maybe she already talked to Rose, and she’s here to tell Jade all about it. Maybe she’s here to kick him out. Maybe—

"We’ve got D&D tonight. Do you have anywhere to go? You're welcome to hang out, but Tav will be there."

Oh. Dave lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, although his eyebrows inch up at the mention of Tav. He doesn’t know who Tav is, but apparently, Jade doesn’t want to be around them, so he hates them on principle.

Jade’s eyes flash toward him for just a second in a way that makes his heart leap before he offers Aradia a tight smile, "Uh, yeah, I'll figure something out! No worries."

Aradia smiles and turns to leave as quickly as she’d come out, and it’s only once she’s gone that Dave is brave enough to speak up. “If you need to get out of the house, maybe we could do something?” He immediately feels silly for suggesting it. What does he really want to do with her? A date? Then Zack gets left at home with just Bro. He’s certainly not going to invite her over to his place, so the only option is going somewhere with Zack again.

Before he can walk it back, Jade perks up with her whole body, beams at him with that trademark Harley thousand-megawatt smile, and says, ”That’d be really great!” He feels her foot bump against his leg under the table and he can’t help mirroring the smile back, feeling some of his anxiety ebb away. He’d forgotten how cute she got when she was excited, and it’s bringing back memories of wandering the mall and watching her get psyched about a Squiddles plushie.

”All done!” Zack announces, holding up his plate, and sure enough, his entire squiddle-shaped waffle is gone. Dave is pretty sure he’s gotta be gearing up for a growth spurt. It makes him smile. At least there’s one thing in his life he’s managed not to fuck up.

Jade turns her smile on Zack. "Hey kiddo, do you wanna help me pack up the rest of these waffles into a Ziploc bag so you and your dad can take them home?"

It seems like breakfast is winding down, so Dave does his best to shovel the rest of his waffle into his face, which is fortunately a skill he’s honed over the years. When he brings his plate into the kitchen to drop it in the sink, Jade wraps her arms around his shoulders and leans up to kiss him, and he melts against her.

"Thanks for busting me out tonight. I mean, Aradia's friends are nice, I would have been fine, but..." She trails off.

”Yeah,” he breathes. “I’m happy to give you an out.” He wants to say always, but he doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. His eyes slide over to Zack.

"It's nice, getting to spend time with you,” she murmurs, pressing another kiss against his cheek. Before he can think of a response, she turns to ruffle Zack’s hair where he’s standing nearby kind of staring at them and adds, "And your dad is pretty cool, too."

Zack beams at her assessment of his father. “He’s pretty cool!” he echoes, and Dave can’t help laughing as he scoops him up to start gathering their things.

Jade bites her lip, and Dave thinks it’s unfair that she can just do that. “Are you heading out?” she asks, voice soft. When she says it like that, he really doesn’t want to.

”Yeah, I think it’s about that time,” he forces himself to reply. “But we can text later. Come up with a plan.”

She smiles again, giving him one last kiss. “That sounds perfect.”

Chapter Text

Jade doesn’t hear from Dave for a couple of hours after he leaves the apartment, and she looks up things to do in Houston with a toddler. She can’t really remember any of the things Grandpa used to take her to do when she was little anymore, or at least not anything they could do on such short notice. She’d loved the beach as a kid, but they would have needed to leave for that hours ago. Still, she makes a mental note of it.

When her phone finally does chirp with a notification, she’s in the shower, even though she’d just showered last night. There’s the brief temptation to send him a risqué picture, but she quashes it. What if Zack sees it?

hey sorry
bro was being the biggest dick imaginable
and ive got a pretty wild imagination

Jade’s heart lurches and her stomach churns with nausea. Dave had sent her so many complaints along those lines when they were in high school, but she had no idea back then what they meant. She does now, and she regrets not pushing the issue of them staying with her harder last night, even if he was right that it was rushed and that she should at least talk to Aradia before moving a guy and a toddler in.

oh no!
is everything ok?
no yeah
everythings fine, it wasnt anything physical
nothing really physical anyway
what does nothing really physical mean?
he like
just kinda grabbed me by the shirt and yelled at me a bit
but i got out of it without any bruises or anything so im gonna call that a w

Jade stares at the texts for a second. She doesn’t know how to respond. While she’s glad that Dave is being honest with her, he never used to tell her about this stuff—especially not in writing. It’s weird and kind of surreal, especially because he’s being so flippant about it. If they were in person, it would be easier to dig into his tone and all of the tiny microexpressions he thinks he’s so good at hiding to figure out how he was feeling, but over text?

im sorry
that sounds really scary
its not a big deal
i mean im used to it by now
and at least he didnt do it in front of zack so i dont gotta explain anything
anyway
whos this tav guy
you didnt seem thrilled when aradia mentioned em earlier

She recognizes it for the diversion tactic it definitely is, and she purses her lips as she contemplates calling him out for it. She’s not sure that would win her any favors, though.

hes this guy aradias been friends with since they were like babies
shes got this whole group of friends who shipped over here from new york with her i guess
theyre pretty fun most of the time!
but not tav
its really not a big deal
a little deal though?
perhaps edging into a medium deal
haha, daaave!
tavros is nice!
hes a nice guy!
he just has kind of a crush on me, i guess :/
and hes fine, hes not, like, weird about it or anything usually, its just…
awkward <_<

She feels bad for saying so. Tavros is a nice guy, and he’s been respectful every time he’s flirted with her and she’s turned him down. Sometimes she’s not even completely sure if she can describe what he does as flirting. He’s just kind of socially awkward, and that’s not really his fault, is it? The only reason Jade feels so awkward about it is that he’s Aradia’s best friend and he’s in their apartment all the time.

makes sense
not a bad dude just awkward when someones trying to hit on you
at least when you dont wanna be hit on
would it help at all if you told him you were taken?
im pretty sure i can still pull off the whole like
wrapping my arm around your shoulders and looking super intimidating schtick

Jade stares at the texts for a long minute. She feels giddy. Dave hadn’t been able to pull off the whole wrapping his arm around her shoulders and looking super intimidating schtick when they were in high school, but the idea that he wants to do it with her again is so thrilling. Does this mean that he wants to be her boyfriend again? Officially? They hadn’t gotten the chance to talk about it last night before Zack was in bed with them, and then Dave had slept in this morning and then Aradia got home and…

This doesn’t seem like the sort of conversation to have over text. If for no other reason, then because, if she officially gets to call him her boyfriend again, she thinks she should get to kiss him about it. She hadn’t gotten to do that the first time she asked him out because Grandpa was right there and it seemed so embarrassing.

haha, i dunno, maybe
we can talk about it more before the next time they come over, if you wanted to hang out with the whole group
speaking of which!
ive been peeking at stuff to do with zack
im thinking maybe zoo?
i feel like we could really sink a day at the zoo if youre up for walking around
we could rent one of those little strollers for zack
oh hell yeah
zacks never been to a zoo before hes gonna lose his shit when he sees all the animals
like hes gonna stand up and be like well dad i know you busted your ass to get me potty trained
but guess what theres no more shit left in me so that problem solved itself
lost it all when i saw the giraffes theyre so tall
but yeah definitely a stroller
feel like he might wear himself out from all the excitement
omg dave
well i dunno maybe we should skip it then…
i wouldnt wanna waste all that hard work or anything <3
but maybe we could meet up for lunch again? like around noon?
maybe we could even eat lunch........
at a place? :o

Dave insists on paying for lunch, since she’d gotten the food last time and made breakfast this morning. It’s hard to argue with his logic, even if she wants to, since she knows that she’s better off than he is. But she knows that a relationship (or a friendship, or whatever) that was entirely one-sided financially probably wouldn't feel very good. Despite the jokes at the club, she doesn't want him to feel like she's trying to be his sugar momma or anything. She’s still planning to surprise them with zoo memberships rather than tickets, though, so that Dave can take Zack back to the zoo as much as he wants. Those are going to cost more than whatever food Dave is planning to pay for.

She suggests that they go to McDonald’s, though, and she even has the courtesy to point out that it’s right by the zoo and has a PlayPlace like those are the real reasons. Dave doesn’t argue with her.

Dave is right. Zack loves the zoo, and Jade is almost more excited just watching him react to the animals than she is to actually be at the zoo looking at animals herself.

Almost.

She beams and makes faces at the penguins. Dave almost has to physically drag her away from the Galápagos tortoises when Zack gets bored. And she gets to tell Zack about how jaguars are actually native to the US and how they used to have them right here in Texas. Zack looks around at that, like they might get pounced on by a jaguar any minute, and she can’t help laughing.

By the time they get to the Children’s Zoo, she’s grateful for the break, although she spends a few minutes chasing Zack around the playground equipment anyway before some other kids show up. Zack immediately introduces himself, and it reminds her so much of herself when she was little. Maybe not so much with Dave, who she'd hit in the face the first time she met him, but with John and Rose. She and Rose had been instant friends because of their mutual love of Squiddles—by which she mostly means that she had informed Rose they were going to be friends and by some miracle Rose hadn't argued with her—and she'd half-dragged John across the park to introduce him to her dog.

"Gosh, he is sooo cute. How did you do that? I mean, you're very cute, too, but it's different." So far, she hasn't wanted to kiss Dave's child, other than the brief temptation to kiss the top of his head when he'd been sleeping between them that she was able to ignore, and she expects that trend will continue. But still, he's adorable. Dave did a good job.

Dave snorts. "I mean, I don't think I did much other than contribute the genes during a night where I was being extra dumb and careless," he says. "His uh." His face twists up, and she raises her eyebrows. "His mom. Did most of the work making him. I've just kept him alive since he got out."

Jade kind of wants to ask what the deal with Zack’s mom is, but just like texting hadn’t been the appropriate way to talk about formally getting back together, she doesn’t think the zoo is the place to ask about that particular piece of tragic backstory. Still, the idea that Dave can dismiss that he did much of anything and in the same breath pull a face when he mentions Zack’s mom, as if just calling her that is somehow painful, is so silly. She's not Rose, but it seems like an insane degree of cognitive dissonance.

She reaches over to grab one of his hands and gives it a squeeze. "Dave, keeping him alive is most of the work. And you're doing a lot more than that. You're taking him to the park and showing him baby shows that teach the alphabet and working at his daycare during the day. He's not a latchkey kid, even if you wish that he had better supervision during your night job—and you care who he's with at night. And you packed him a teddy bear to hang out at my apartment! You're a good dad. He's really lucky to have you."

Dave looks like she’s knocked the wind out of him for a brief moment, before he squeezes her hand back and breathes out, "I—yeah. Damn, I’m doing my best, but… All I meant was like. I don’t think cuteness is dependent on how they’re raised. Like, that’s all gene expression shit. I didn’t have as much of a hand in that."

Jade brings his hand up to her mouth to press a kiss against it. "You’re doing a great job," she says, a little more insistently. She’s not going to let him try to play this off like it’s a joke.

He stares at her, and even with his shades on, she thinks he might cry, so to try to lighten the mood, she adds, "And anyway, he looks just like you. If it wasn't for his eyes I'd be willing to believe he didn't have a mom at all and you just figured out how to do male parthenogenesis. I'm still debating if it's possible you just messed up the cloning process a little bit."

Dave lets out a startled sort of laugh. "I should start telling him that when he starts asking about why he doesn’t have a mom. I bet he’d buy it for a few years. Like Santa Claus or something."

Two things happen at once: Jade’s phone starts buzzing in her pocket, and Zack comes bounding up to them, pink in the face, breathless, and absolutely beaming. "Daddy, did you see how high I goed?" he asks. Then, before Dave has an opportunity to answer, he grabs the hand Jade’s not holding and tugs. "C’mon, I’ll show you!"

Dave looks at her somewhat helplessly, and Jade just laughs. She pulls her phone out and sees that Rose is calling her, so she squeezes his hand, kisses his cheek, and says, "It’s fine. I should take this."

Jade stands and gives Dave a little wave as he goes with Zack, and then she steps back so that she can have this conversation in private. She picks up the phone, and Rose doesn't even wait for her to say a greeting before she speaks.

"Hello, Jade. I heard quite a funny rumor through the grapevine recently. Would you mind if I confirmed it?" Rose always treats phone calls like they're military reports or something and they need to be over with as quickly as possible. She sounds mad, too.

"Hi, Rose," Jade says, rolling her eyes and hoping Rose can hear it through her tone. "Can we not do this thing where you pretend you heard some mysterious rumor and I go oh nooo Rose what could you be talking about that's crazy. I know you're calling me about Dave."

There’s a soft hiss on the other end as Rose takes in a sharp breath, like the mere mention of Dave’s name has stung her.

"Very well. I won’t beat around the bush," Rose says. "I have heard that you and Dave are back together. Furthermore, Dave appears to have a child now. The latter seems like a disastrously bad decision, but that, at least, is not your disastrously bad decision."

There's a pause on the other end, but based on the way that Rose ended her sentence, Jade knows there's more coming. She braces herself, looking back at where Dave is currently cheering Zack on as he tries to climb to the highest point in the play area. She feels sick over the idea that Zack is somehow just a mistake. Something to be ashamed of.

"I suppose I am… confused," Rose continues. "You dumped him in college, which was a good decision for both of you. Then you completely cut off contact after you graduated, which I also believe, in hindsight, was a good decision. I thought you had realized what it took an extremely ill-advised trip back to Houston for me to realize. I assumed that you had seen what he was—what he is—and realized he deserved no part in your life."

Another pause, but again, not one that invites Jade to speak up. "Dave Strider is a broken man, Jade. You cannot kiss him better. You should cut him off before this blows up in both of your faces."

Jade's chest is tight and her cheeks are flushing. It's a horrible mix of anger, shame, and anger at herself for being ashamed. It's almost unfathomable to her that Rose could somehow see some of the most self-destructive decisions she's ever made as a good thing.

"I'm not trying to kiss him better, Rose. We're not even officially back together! Has it occurred to you that maybe he wants to be better? Maybe he even wants to be better for his child? Who's great, by the way!"

"It had occurred to me that he wanted to be better, yes," Rose replies, but there's a venom behind her words. "Which is why, after both you and John gave him the cold shoulder, I agreed to help him. I coached him from afar for months while I was in New York working on the first year of my master's. I gave him pointers for limiting his alcohol intake. I helped him apply for jobs. I helped him find apartments within his price range and even agreed to co-sign a lease if he could get a place. And he played along for a while. For months, we had conversations where he claimed he was sober and that he was working hard. He promised he wanted to be better. I believed him.

"I was so dedicated that I intended to spend the entirety of my winter break helping him in person rather than relaxing after a brutal first year of graduate school. I flew back to Houston only to find that he hadn't gotten a steady job or even looked at apartments yet, but I set that aside and went with him as support. Unfortunately, after a two and a half weeks of devoting all of my time to helping him, we’d gotten nowhere. I showed up to his place to help him prepare for a job interview, and he was already drunk. He'd been lying the entire time about being sober. He'd never cleaned up his act; he'd just learned how to act sober over the phone.

"I left, upset, but I still came back the next day with plans to get him to actually quit. It turns out that he'd had plans of his own. He tried to get me drunk, even though he knows my history with alcohol. And then he came onto me and tried to kiss me, talking about how I was obviously into him if I was devoting this much effort to him."

Rose stops, but Jade doesn't know what to say to that. She doesn't know what she can say to that. Everything Rose is describing sounds upsetting, and Jade knows that she missed Dave at his rock bottom, but...

Rose continues talking before she can think of a proper reply. "I didn’t tell you sooner because I thought you had cut off ties with him, so there was no point in upsetting you. But you need to know that he is not the same boy he was when we were growing up, even if he can pretend like he is when it suits him. I don’t cut people off lightly, Jade. I don’t want to see you hurt."

Jade bites her lower lip as she considers Rose's words. It doesn't feel good to hear any of this, just like it hadn't felt good to hear that Dave had gone off and had a child during the time they'd been apart. But how is she supposed to believe that he's simply broken as a person after what she's seen so far? She doesn't think Dave has been lying or hiding anything from her.

"I'm not saying you're crazy, Rose," she starts carefully. "I know that he hurt you, and I'm not trying to dismiss that. I know that I'm the lucky one here who missed the worst of it. But I'm telling you it's different. He's a good dad. He cares about his son a lot, and I can see him trying his best. And it's not like I missed everything—I remember the clubbing and the drinking, too. But he's doing so much better. If you just saw him with Zack, I know you'd see what I’m talking about."

There's a tense silence on the other end of the line. Rose takes in another breath. "I would love to believe you," she says. "It would make me happy to know that Dave managed to get his shit together. But you’ve only been back for—what, a week? Two, at best? There’s nothing stopping him from putting on a show for you. Especially not when he’s been hung up on you for all these years. I know you want to see the best in him, Jade. But I’m worried he’s going to take advantage of that."

Jade feels a bit of doubt creep in. It hasn't been that long, and the first time she'd seen Dave, he tried to take her to his car to hook up. Is that really the sign of somebody who’s moved past their self-destructive behavior? Maybe he really is just acting...

Rose continues talking, as though she can sense Jade's hesitation. "Not to mention—I’m not surprised that he knocked somebody up. But last I checked, he was still living at home with his brother. Has he at least found his own place? Or is he subjecting… Zack to that miserable cesspit of a home? I don’t mean this out of spite, Jade, but I’m concerned. I don’t want Dave to pull you into his self-destructive spirals. You coming back and immediately dating him again is all but rewarding his bad behavior. In my opinion, the only interaction you should be having with him at all is through a report to CPS."

Jade's breath catches in her chest. Dave would never forgive her. More importantly, she would never forgive herself. Zack is the most important person in the world to Dave. She's seen how scared he was to leave Zack with his brother, even if nothing has happened, because he wanted to give his son the best life possible. She's seen how much Zack loves him.

Even now, when she looks over, Dave is smiling bigger than she's seen in a long time—maybe bigger than she's ever seen—and it's because of how excited Zack is about the zoo. Maybe Rose knows more about Dave's less-than-stellar history with alcohol and dead-end relationships than she does, but Rose hasn't seen the version of Dave who's a loving father. If she refuses to listen when Jade tells her how much he loves his son, then Jade knows she's full of shit.

She has to bite back on the angry comments that bubble up in her chest. She's never been able to have nastier arguments with anyone in the world than Rose. They know each other too well, and Jade knows she could cut deep with a sharp comment about how Rose is letting her own parental issues around alcohol and shitty dads cloud her judgment. That wouldn't make her much better than Rose is being, though.

She takes a deep breath, clenches and unclenches a fist at her side, works her jaw until it feels less tight. "I can't talk to you about this right now," she eventually manages to say, keeping her voice even. "Call me back when you're willing to acknowledge that you might be wrong. Because you are."

She doesn't give Rose another opportunity to get a word in edgewise before she hangs up. She makes sure to take a few more deep breaths before she goes back to Dave and Zack, when she can smile and it feels less strained. "Hey!"

Dave is currently in the midst of fitting Zack into one of the strollers they rented from the zoo, and there's a subtle tilt to his head that looks curious. He straightens up.

"Hey," he greets back. "Everything okay? Like, that’s not NASA calling about a rocket disaster you have to go deal with, right?"

She lets out a laugh. "Everything's fine! I've only been there a week. I don't think I'm going to be their go to person for rocket disasters. And anyways, I’m pretty sure we still have some giraffes to look at."

She hopes that's a good enough signal for we can talk about it later. Dave stares at her for a moment, but thankfully, he doesn't push the issue.

"Yeah. I dunno how much more zoo Zack has left in him in a post-playground world, but we gotta at least see the giraffes. Let's go."

As they walk, Jade finds herself feeling clingier than usual, and she allows herself to loop one of her arms through Dave's. They aren't really together, but she feels a protective urge, like just Rose saying mean things about him could hurt him. Jade knows better than anyone that it could, which doesn't make her any more excited to talk about it later.

For now, she tries to enjoy the zoo. As they get close to the giraffe enclosure, it's possible to see one of the giraffe heads poking up from the top of their enclosure, which has Zack kicking his little legs in his stroller from sheer excitement.

"Daddy! Daddy! Look!" Jade can just make out his tiny hand pointing up at the giraffe, and she wants to melt into a puddle.

"Yeah, I see 'em." Dave says, a grin on his face.

"What is it?"

"They're called giraffes. Hold on, let’s get a bit closer and I can get you a better look."

Zack's enthusiasm does not dwindle even a little bit as they get close enough to the enclosure to see the full height of the giraffes. As soon as Dave lets him out of the stroller, Zack is holding his arms out so that he can be picked up. "I wanna see!"

Dave picks Zack up and puts him on his shoulders, and Zack looks like he just might explode from how excited he is. Dave does an excellent job of keeping him stable as Zack flails his arms and points at the giraffes.

"They're so high!" Zack declares.

"Yeah," Dave agrees. "Those are some of the highest things to ever do it." Dave turns to look at Jade, and he's still wearing that giant smile. Even if it’s not the biggest smile she’s ever seen him wear, it’s certainly the biggest smile she's ever seen him wear in public. She's filled with anger at Rose again. How could Rose think that Dave was a bad father? That CPS needed to step in for Zack's sake?

Dave snaps her out of her thoughts. "Hey—do you think you could get a picture of us? This feels like a moment worth immortalizing."

Jade smiles at him. "Yeah! Of course."

She uses her phone with the mental justifications that Dave would have to put Zack down to dig for his and her camera is probably better anyway. Once he and Zack are situated with the giraffes in frame, she takes at least a dozen pictures in rapid succession, sure at least one of them will come out alright that way. Dave's smile is still blinding, even for the camera, and it makes her heart flip over. Dave is always handsome, but he's extra handsome like this. She'd kiss him if there wasn't a three-year-old on his shoulders.

Dave walks back up to her once she gives him a thumbs up, though Zack's head is turned so that he can continue staring at the giraffes. He's softly chanting what sounds like "'raffe, 'raffe, 'raffe," under his breath, clearly enchanted. It's unbearably cute.

"If he's anything like us, that might be the tallest he ever gets. We gotta preserve that," she teases as she shows a couple of the pictures to Dave. There are a couple with closed eyes, but there are several where it seems like even the giraffes are aware that they're posing for the camera. "I'll text the good ones to you."

"Thanks. Don't have as many family photos as I'd like, and the mommy blogs are all on about taking lots of pictures to remember this stuff. And honestly, most the family photos I do got are just lame selfies. It's one thing to be taking artful selfies when you're sixteen and trying to look cool to your girlfriend, but it's hard to match that vibe when you got a little kid who doesn't know how to sit still..."

Jade laughs and opens up her message app to send the pictures to Dave. She has several texts from Rose, and her smile falters, but she chooses to ignore them for now. Let Rose stew a little longer. She quickly sends the pictures to Dave and then stuffs her phone back in her pocket, feeling like she's going to be sick. She glances up at Zack with a strained smile. "Well, buddy, I think it's just about naptime for me. You wanna come back and see the rest of the animals another day?"

Predictably, Zack pouts at her and responds with a drawn out, "Noooooo!"

Thankfully, Dave jumps in to parent. Because he's a good parent, no matter what Rose says. "Yeeeeees," he intones playfully. "C'mon, don't you remember? NASA people need their nap times. It's mandatory. And we'll see Jade and all the animals again sometime soon, okay?"

Zack is still pouting as Dave lifts him off of his shoulders to go back into the stroller, but he at least gives a grumpy, "'kay" of compliance.

"I’ll be okay," Jade offers as Dave does all the hard work of getting Zack safely buckled in. "I nap all the time, you can ask your dad. Used to get home from school and conk right out, and then he'd send me a million billion text messages. That's why I'm such a qualified NASA lady."

Dave ruffles his hair once he's secured. "There you go," he says, a warm smile still on his face. That smile fades as he stands up and looks at Jade, though. He doesn't say anything, but he must be able to tell that something's wrong.

Jade offers the best smile that she can and squeezes his arm, mouthing Later. She feels her phone buzz again, so she turns it off. She can worry about whatever wall of text Rose has sent her later.

"...and it turns out Aradia knows the guy, although she hasn’t talked to him in a long time, which is a crazy coincidence." Jade is just finishing a story from work as they walk up to Dave’s car, with Zack at least 90% asleep in Dave’s arms now that the stroller has been returned.

"Damn, that is crazy," Dave agrees. He shifts Zack into one arm and pulls his keys out of his pocket to unlock the car in one fluid motion like he’s done it a thousand times—which, Jade reminds herself, he probably has. "I’m glad I’ve never run into anybody I know from high school at work. Well, barring one notable example." He grins at her, and she can’t help smiling back at him. But as Dave loads Zack into the car seat, she leans against the car and her face falls into a real, fully and truly exhausted expression.

"So, is the club the only place I can talk to you without the toddler there? I feel like this maybe isn't a club conversation." Dave emerges from the back seat with furrowed eyebrows, glancing at Zack for just a moment before he closes the door.

"I can go places without him," he says. "Just... means he's left at home with Bro for a bit. Not my ideal situation, but it's not like it hasn't been happening consistently through all of his life." He visibly hesitates for a second, and then adds, "Uh, is this, like… a conversation? Like, do we need to talk?"

Jade thinks about the last time they needed to talk. Dave had been excitedly babbling about what they might be able to do for what would have been her summer break, except she had just gotten an internship in New Zealand and she wouldn’t be able to travel. Long distance had already been hard, and by that point, they’d been doing it for over a year—it wasn’t going to get any easier. She thought that nipping things in the bud might be able to preserve their friendship even if they couldn’t make the relationship work. He was too important to her to just give up on.

She’ll never forget how it felt to watch the excitement drain out of his face, until his expression settled into something so dishearteningly… cold. He’d rushed out of the call, and she knows that he was almost certainly doing it to cry without her watching.

She slides a hand up to cup his cheek and leans up to kiss him, and she stays there until she feels him start to relax against her. "We need to talk, but we don't need to talk," she mumbles. Dave nods, although it’s a tiny movement so he can keep his mouth close to hers. It means that she can feel the way his breath hitches when she adds, "I talked to Rose."

For a second, Dave is just sort of frozen, and Jade worries that she’s accidentally activated some sort of fight or flight response. Eventually, though, he asks, "What did she, um. What did she say?" His voice sounds tight.

"Can we talk about it later?" Jade asks. She’s deflecting, obviously, because she really doesn’t want to have this conversation, but she especially doesn’t want to have this conversation in a zoo parking lot while his toddler sleeps in the car.

"Right. No, yeah. That makes sense," he says, taking a step back from her, and it’s ridiculous the way her heart lurches. "Uh. Maybe—there's a Starbucks down the street from my place. If you wanna meet there once I've dropped Zack off. Or we can meet later. Whatever works."

"Go home and get Zack settled in," she says gently, reaching out to grab one of his hands and squeeze it. "We’ll text and figure out a better time to meet. Let’s just keep today a nice zoo day, okay?"

Dave does a good job at keeping the anxiety off of his face; if she was anyone else, she probably wouldn’t even notice it. But she can see the way his jaw clenches and she catches the way his throat bobs as he swallows hard. "Yeah. Okay. I’ll text you later."

Jade nods. She wants to say that she loves him. She wants to kiss him again. Instead, she just gives his hand one more squeeze and peels away from him to go to her own car.

Chapter Text

When Dave gets home, he tucks Zack into his little toddler bed and makes sure he’s completely tuckered out for his nap. Then, he practically collapses onto the edge of his own bed to bury his face in his hands and wheeze.

Of all of the friendships he’s fucked up over the years, Rose is probably the one he feels the worst about, after Jade. Granted, he didn’t have that many friends to begin with, but he’d had plenty of falling outs with other club-goers in his early twenties—and after Jade stopped talking to him, John gave up on him, too.

But Rose? Rose he fucked up all by himself. He can’t try to deflect the blame and say she had acted irrationally, or that she was as messed up as he was, so she should assume as much responsibility as he has to. All she’d done was make the mistake of earnestly believing that he could be better, and he’d thrown it right in her face.

Jade said they had to talk, but they didn’t have to talk. He’s not sure what that means in this context—can they break up if they haven’t officially declared themselves to be dating? If not, then what are they going to talk about? The most obvious thing is that she never wants to see him again. If Rose told her what happened, that makes perfect sense.

He tries to do what she said and keep the memory of the day as a nice zoo trip with his son and the girl he loves, but it’s hard not to let it be tainted with anxiety. Bro feeds on that anxiety, too, and seems to take some special pleasure in being silently menacing around the apartment in all of the ways that make Dave want to throw all of his and Zack’s shit in bags and get out of there. They don’t have anywhere to go, though.

Jade doesn’t end up being available after work on Monday, and Dave really tries to convince himself that she’s not avoiding him. She texted him about it, right? She would be well within her rights to just ghost him, even if she’s never done it before, so the fact that she didn’t has to mean something.

It’s harder to keep that rationale when she’s not available on Tuesday, either.

He anxiously checks his phone every spare moment that he has while he’s working at the daycare on Wednesday. His nerves are buzzing every moment he can’t check his phone, which is, unfortunately, most moments working at the daycare. He tries to occupy himself with teaching the kids how to play tag, and it is a little relieving when Zack giggles and chases down a pack of kids slightly older than he is. At least if he’s fucked everything up with Rose and Jade, he’s still got Zack.

”Hey, Dave!” the other daycare attendant chirps, sounding more chipper than usual in a way that he barely manages not to grimace at right now. “Why don’t you go take your lunch before storytime?”

This is much earlier than Dave usually takes his lunch—when he even takes one. He’s sure that his coworker must be able to see how on edge he is, which only serves to make him feel more on edge, like Bro is going to pop out from around some hidden corner and kick his ass for being too vulnerable. Bro kicking his ass for being vulnerable would just about complete the Bingo card for shitty experiences from his early 20s, right alongside Jade dumping him again. “Yeah. Thanks,” he breathes.

He ruffles Zack’s hair as he passes him to go to the employee-only room, which is not especially impressive. Dave didn’t actually bring a lunch for himself, so he just sits at the table and lets his stomach twist itself into knots as he stares at his phone like he can will it to buzz.

hey, good morning! <3

Dave makes a mental note to test out his psychic powers later. For now, he has to text Jade back before she changes her mind about talking to him or something.

yo
whats up?
not much!
i just wanted to see if you wanted to meet after work today?
maybe we could grab coffee at that starbucks by your place?
i know i get off later than you, so we can pick somewhere close to your apartment!

He feels like his heart is going to explode out of his chest. She wants to meet up. She’s not ghosting him. But that means they have to talk.

yeah we can do that
starbucks is easy
i can just walk right over whenever youre good
you wanna aim for like 6?
that sounds great!
i will see you at 6 <3

He wants to try to initiate a real conversation, but he thinks see you at 6 is a pretty clear parting. He tells her to have a good day at work anyway.

He wants a drink more than anything right now. He doesn’t want to have to go through the rest of the day feeling like this—feeling like anything. He remembers days when he always brought one of those mini-bottles with him when he went out and reaches for his pocket on muscle memory. But of course, there’s nothing there.

It would be idiotic to get drunk right now. For one, he’s at work—at a daycare. A daycare where his son goes. For two, he doesn’t think he’d be doing a very good job proving that whatever Rose said about him is wrong if he showed up to this important talk drunk out of his mind.

(She’s not wrong about him. Rose always saw right through him, and that was just as true when she decided he wasn’t worth having around anymore as it was when they were teenagers hiding the situation with Bro from John and Jade.)

He takes a deep breath and drags his hands down his face. It’s fine. He can hold out until six. He’s better than this. He can be better than this for Jade.

He makes it through the rest of the work day under this new kind of stress, and it feels like only half of his brain is engaged with the kids while the other half is playing out all of the possible ways his conversation with Jade might go. Whatever way it goes, it feels like it won't be good. How could it?

Zack doesn't seem to notice anything is up, and he's happy to fill the silence in the car by babbling about how he’s going to draw his own zoo and listing all of the animals he’s going to put there. It's cute. It's so fucking cute. Dave wishes that Zack had decided to be this cute at another time, but he does his best to sound engaged anyways.

When they get back to the apartment, he sets Zack up with some 'toons. Normally, this is where Dave would try and play with him while there aren't other kids trying to get his attention. As it is, he just needs some time to try and calm down. He lies down on the bed and tries not to get too annoyed by the chipper voice that is teaching his son how to count.

He stares at his phone, looking out for another text from Jade, but she must be busy at work. That's fair, he guesses, but it doesn't do much to calm him down. Instead, he watches the time tick closer and closer to the meeting.

She said six, right? It's probably a ten minute walk to the Starbucks. Maybe make it fifteen, just in case. And hell, he might as well get there early, make sure they get a good table. Somewhere tucked away. Maybe he can order her a drink in advance? Maybe that would earn him some brownie points; he remembers what she liked as a teen. She was always more into tea than she was coffee, and he's pretty sure that hasn't changed. He probably can't go wrong with matcha.

So, leaving at 5:30. And better factor in the time to get past Bro, too, so...

Dave gets up and reaches down to ruffle Zack's hair. "Hey. I'm headed out for a bit. Let Uncle Bro know if you get hungry or anything."

Zack looks up at him, a furrow in his little brow—but luckily, he doesn't ask any questions. "'Kay."

Dave gives him a thumbs up and heads out to the living room. Bro is sitting on the couch like he always is. Dave takes a deep breath, but he does his best to sound casual. "Hey. I'm headed out for a bit. Can you watch Zack? There's a frozen meal in the freezer if he gets hungry."

Bro looks up at him, face mostly impassive, even if his eyebrows go up just a little bit. "You're going out?" he repeats. "You don't work at the club on Wednesdays. Where the fuck are you going?"

Dave's shoulders hunch. He has to remind himself that he's a fully grown man with a kid, not some teenager beholden to shit like curfews. "None of your business."

"Nah, it kinda becomes my business when you're saddling me with babysitting unexpectedly. What if I wanted to go out somewhere tonight? You consider that? I'm not just sitting around, waiting 'til you need me. I have a life."

Dave doesn't have a good counter to that. Sure, Bro doesn't have much going on most Wednesday evenings, but it's not impossible he'd have something. Based on how he's lazing on the couch, Dave is pretty sure this is just a shitty test, but that doesn't mean he's got a good come back.

"I'm just—gonna talk to a friend. Serious shit. Don't need Zack around. It's not gonna be that long. Two hours. Three, tops. I'll be back before nine." Shit. He's back to talking like he's a teenager with a curfew again.

"Oh yeah. Same friend you spent Saturday night with?"

Dave's skin crawls. He doesn't want to talk about Jade with Bro. He doesn't even really want him to know that he's going to see Jade specifically, though it feels somehow like he already knows. "Look—can you watch him?"

A heavy silence falls between them, and Dave is worried that Bro might just say no out of spite. But eventually, he shrugs and waves his hand dismissively. "Whatever. Back before nine. I'm not staying on babysitting duty longer than that."

"Thanks." Dave doesn't wait past that; he grabs his keys and wallet and he gets the hell out of there, swallowing down the nagging guilt of leaving Zack behind.

It only takes him about seven minutes to get to Starbucks, and once he's there he orders the matcha for Jade, iced, and just picks up one of the water bottles for himself, since he reasons it's cheaper than coffee. It's still too damn expensive, but it at least gives him something to nurse while he waits out the well over half an hour before Jade is actually supposed to be here.

He settles at the most private table he can get, and as people start to clear out, he moves over to the even more private tables until he's finally secured one off in a little corner, but with a decent view of the window. Jade's matcha sits in front of him, and he immediately regrets getting it iced. He's pretty sure it's going to melt. Fuck. Maybe that'll be the final straw that breaks the camel's back.

Jade makes it to the Starbucks right on time, which is a blessing, because Dave knows he'd have started sweating it out once the clock made it past six. He waves her over, and she greets him with a small smile before she sits down to join him.

"Hey," she says. "Is this for me?" She gestures at the matcha. Dave keeps his face the perfect image of neutrality, even if he's internally wincing a little.

"Yeah. Uh. Sorry if it's melted a little. Got here a little early to scope out good seats." He takes a sip of his water, and Jade takes a sip of her matcha, and if anything is wrong with the taste, she's at least polite enough to not say anything.

"How's Zack doing?" she asks after a moment.

"Zack's settled in. Pretty sure I feel a new animal obsession coming on any day now." He takes another sip of water. He knows they need to talk, but he's not really sure how to start it off. He's not really sure that he wants to.

"Well it's a good thing you can go to the zoo whenever you want then, huh?" She smiles at him and nudges his leg with her foot, which is a much more playful vibe than Dave was expecting from this conversation.

"Yeah," he says. "Thanks. I can definitely see us getting our money's worth outta that membership. Or, well. Your money's worth."

"Mmm." Jade takes a long sip of her matcha. Dave can't imagine it's really that good, having been sitting out so long; she's stalling. They're both stalling. She finally sets the cup down with a definitive tap on the table. "So. You tried to hook up with Rose?"

There it is. It feels like Jade's opened Pandora's box. Just kind of set it down in front of him, unlatched it, and kicked it open. The guilt and shame welling up inside of him are threatening to drown him. He runs a hand through his hair. How does he even talk about this?

"Yeah," he says after a moment, "I did. Is that all she told you?" Knowing Rose, he can't imagine she left it at that, but he doesn't like being in the dark.

Jade can't seem to look at him. "She pretty much said you were an alcoholic bum who lied about being sober for months so you could come onto her, and now you're trying to do the exact same thing to me because you know I want to see the best in you." It's all Dave can do to keep from wincing when she says the phrase alcoholic bum. It hurts, even if he knows she's just recounting Rose's words. It hurts because it's true and he's reminded how little he deserves her. She deserves someone better. Someone who's her match in smarts, in career, in kindness. He has no idea why she's so happy to settle for some washed out bum like him—

He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath in, deep breath out. No. He doesn't want this to be a pity party. He doesn't deserve a pity party. Jade's too good of a person, and if he starts to self-flagellate, she'll bend over backwards to make him feel better. He needs to just be an adult about this.

"Yeah," he says after a moment. When he opens his eyes, her hand is outstretched on the table. He doesn't deserve her, but he makes himself reach out to take it anyways.

"Yeah, that's all pretty much true," he says. "I mean, I wasn’t lying about being sober exactly. I don’t think I ever said I was sober.” It feels like he’s making the same excuses he did at the time, and he sort of grimaces at himself. He doesn’t want Jade to think he doesn’t realize what he did wrong. “But… I knew that was one of her conditions for helping me, and I never told her that I was still drinking, so I might as well have lied. I mean, I think she's assuming I had more intention behind it than I did? For a sec I think I did want to get better, kinda. I was at least gonna take her up on her offer of like, getting an apartment that she co-signed for me. Do the job interview thing. I didn’t really wanna cut back on the drinking because being sober sucked so much, but I did wanna try the other stuff. But then she was talking about getting me all tidied up for a job interview and I just—I dunno. It freaked me out.”

He remembers how disappointed Rose was when she showed up and realized that he hadn’t done anything on his own. It had all felt so overwhelming, and he barely even realized the months were passing before it was time for her visit and he hadn’t done anything. Once Rose was there, it felt like he was just going to screw it all up right in front of her.

He takes a slow breath and continues, "The idea of changing to work some shitty job was too much. The idea of Rose being disappointed in me for not changing to work some shitty job was too much. So I got hammered. Had the dumb thought of like, shit, maybe Rose would be happy if she didn’t have to think about working some shitty job either. I dunno why I thought that. I wasn't even happy." He rubs his thumb across Jade's knuckles. It's hard to believe she's here again, after all that. It feels like she was the last good thing he had—before Zack, at least.

"When she got there, I was so hammered that I did the thing I always tried to do when I was hammered and hit on the first pretty person I saw. Tried to imply she was doing all this 'cause she had a thing for me, so I went in to kiss her. Didn't push it when she rejected me, but I'm pretty sure I whined about it. That was just how I was. Probably still am, deep down. I'm not proud of it."

Jade's frowning. That makes sense—he did some pretty shitty stuff. It makes sense for her to be upset about it. But rather than pulling away and leaving him, she gently takes their linked hands and raises them to her lips so that she can drop light kisses across his knuckles.

"It's not how you are. It's not even how you were. You were going through something, Dave. You handled it poorly. That's not your fault."

Dave lets out a little huff of laughter, though there's no joy behind it. “I’m pretty sure that this is pretty strictly in the category of ‘my fault'. And—I’m not saying that as a way to be hard on myself or whatever. What I did was shitty, and it was my decision. It was just one shitty thing in a whole string of shitty things I did. Whole shit necklace. Though I think Rose is probably the person I hurt who I actually cared about the most. You know, after…”

He trails off, letting the you go unsaid. “Actually, that might make it worse,” he mumbles. “But—what I mean is, I had the capacity to do that to someone I care about. That capacity’s still in me. I’m trying to keep it under control. Do better. But I can’t sit here and pretend I’m the same guy you used to be in love with. I've fucked up. I've been a fuck up.”

There’s a temptation, suddenly, to list off everything he’s ever done wrong, like he’s sitting in a confessional. He’s never even been inside a confessional booth, but he thinks he might get the appeal now.

“I don't want to hide it, though. Like, if we're going to continue to be friends, or..." He wants to say more, but it feels like such a risk to float the idea of getting back together after she's just learned what he did to Rose. "Or whatever. I wanna be honest with you. So. Is there anything you want to ask about?"

Inevitably, he thinks of their other childhood friend. He hadn’t exactly had a dramatic falling out with John, but he wonders if Jade is going to ask about him anyway. He kind of hopes that Jade asks about him, because that story is much less complicated and emotionally charged.

Jade's quiet for a moment. Her expression is a little unreadable, but Dave thinks she looks more sad than angry. After a moment, she offers, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. It's probably not even my business. I mean, why would it even come up?" She's not quite meeting his gaze, as though there's something that's really interesting about her matcha that she needs to look at.

Dave braces himself for the worst. Jade’s never been shy about asking difficult questions, so the fact that she’s so hesitant now means that it’s probably going to suck. He wants to prove that he’s trying, though, even if it does suck. "Hey, Jade. It's fine. I'm not—I mean, I guess you don't have a right to know anything. Like, a court can't order me to say shit. But I don't mind telling you. I really want to make this work and I don't want to pussyfoot around what I’ve been doing for the past five years and have it come back in some horrible mess. You can ask. I'll tell you anything you wanna know."

Finally, she looks up at him. "...What's the deal with Zack's mom?"

There’s honestly an odd sense of relief at that. He gets why she was uncomfortable asking about it, but this is, at least, much easier to talk about than what went down with Rose. Sure, Zack's mom isn't the most flattering story, but at least it has a happy ending.

It does take him a second to think of how to explain it, though. Which parts to include, which parts aren't important. "Okay. So... probably about half a year after the Rose situation, I fell in with this woman. I... wasn't doing well?" He pulls a face. "I just got worse after I fucked things up with Rose. Barely remember most of that year. Anyways, we were together for a couple months. She was older than me and more put together, but she was at the clubs a lot. Think she may have been cheating on her partner with me, but I never really knew for sure, and I usually wasn't thinking straight around her." He lets Jade fill in the blanks—he doesn’t really want to tell her explicitly that he wasn't the best with safe sex practices when he was drunk, and he thinks she can probably infer that much, anyway.

"Anyways, she breaks up with me all of a sudden. I don't remember if she ever actually told me the reason. It was over text and she blocked me pretty much right after, so I went and drank about it. Like I said, not doing well. Seven months go by. I stumble my way out of a club and she basically ambushes me, clearly massively pregnant, clearly pissed as hell."

Jade's expression at this point is even more unreadable. "Was she ever... involved? In the picture? With Zack?"

"I kinda tried to make some stuff work with her during the last month she was pregnant," he admits. "Started cleaning up my act a little. Like—really little, but that's when I started getting more consistent DJing gigs at least. Figured I could send her some of the money to help care for the kid. We didn't get back together or anything, but I figured we could do a co-parent thing. I could take him a couple days a week. Whatever."

He lets out a soft exhale. "She went into labor and I went to the hospital to be with her. Sobered up during the labor itself. Had a hell of a hangover once it was done. But the nurses passed me Zack and it was just like." He makes a vague motion with his hands to try and capture the weight of that moment. It feels impossible. It was the moment his entire world shifted on its axis; he doesn't think there's any combination of words or hand motions that can convey that. "I instantly loved him. He was so small and didn't know anything and I wanted to hold him forever and never let him go." Dave feels like he's getting a little choked up just remembering it, so he moves on.

"Anyway. I went home after. Came back to the hospital the next day to her packing her bags. She said she wasn't cut out to be a mother and I could keep him if I really wanted to. She kind of seemed surprised that I even wanted to, but obviously I kept him. Had a hell of a time setting up the apartment for him. Had to blow through what little savings I'd started getting from gigs just to get him like, a crib. Diapers. His first toy was a plush chicken I got from Walgreens because it felt like a crime for him not to have any toys. I haven't heard from her since. Kind of don't want to—like, she decided she didn't want to be his mom, so she doesn't get to see what a cool little guy he's turning into."

Jade is staring at him without saying anything and he’s having a hard time reading her face, which is nerve-wracking. She still doesn’t look angry, he doesn’t think. Maybe she just looks different when she’s angry from how he remembers it. Is that the sort of thing that changes with time? It’s been such a long time since he’s known anyone that well that he’s not sure. He didn’t think that this would be the story to make her give up on him if she’s still willing to put up with him now that she knows about Rose, but maybe—

"See?” she says suddenly, and his eyebrows furrow. "That's the Dave I know. That's how you are. I'm not saying that you weren't a grownup who made some bad choices and that you can't be held culpable for your actions, but don't try to sit there and tell me that you're some bad person pretending to be functional and barely containing the beast like you're some emo high school kid when you look like that when you talk about your son.”

Dave gapes at her. How is it possible that she’s still trying to reassure him right now? It’s hard for him to believe that Jade could actually think that he’s worthy of her, but maybe she just sees something he doesn’t? She’s so smart; she sees all kinds of things he doesn’t. It’s just surreal for that to be some sort of value in him.

He’s still filled with that same fear he’s had all night—that if he dares to let himself hope she might feel the same way about all of this as he does, it’s just going to hurt twice as much when she realizes how stupid it would be to actually let him back into her life. Even if he’s somehow managed not to fuck everything up so far, even if she somehow thinks being around him is a good idea, it’s inevitable that he’ll fuck it up eventually. He shouldn’t be thinking about romance at all. He shouldn’t be thinking about how nice it would be to be able to call her his girlfriend again.

But he is.

He loves Jade so much, of course he’s thinking about how nice that would be. He wants to spend his whole life with her. He never really stopped wanting that. It seems like there might actually be some possibility of that happening again, if he can only push himself to actually ask her.

So he takes a deep breath, and he asks her. “So… does this mean I get another chance? I mean—do you want to like, be together again? Not that I told you this stuff just so that you’d want to be with me or anything, I just…" He trails off, trying his best not to grimace at himself. Yeah, he definitely should have just shut the fuck up.

Jade looks hesitant, and it makes Dave’s heart start beating harder. Shit. He really did fuck this up, didn’t he? This is just like him. Here Jade was just trying to be nice and friendly and reassure him so he didn’t feel like a fuck-up, and now he’s coming onto her. This is just like what happened with Rose. He really hasn’t learned anything over the last five years, has he? And he doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk, either, so everything she just said about this not being how he is? She might as well take that back.

”I’m not saying no,” she says, but her tone doesn’t exactly inspire optimism. “I love you a lot, Dave, I just… need some time to think about things. Can I have some time?”

He knows it’s not a test, but he also knows that saying no, just break up with me now and get it over with would be the wrong answer. He doesn’t want to wait, though. The three days it took for them to meet for coffee felt so agonizing, and who knows how long it’ll take her to make a decision about something like this.

But Jade deserves time to think, and if Dave wants to prove that he’s even kind of worthy of her, then he needs to be patient. It would be selfish to push her for an answer now. “Yeah,” he breathes, and he hopes his voice doesn’t sound too tight. “Take as long as you need.”

Chapter Text

Leaving Dave in the Starbucks to go back to her apartment is maybe the hardest thing Jade has ever had to do. Even though she hadn’t meant it as a breakup (can she even be breaking up with him if they’re not formally dating?), it feels exactly like when she left him the last time.

She asked for time to think. What she wanted to say was, Yes, of course I want to get back together, and what if we also eloped like we talked about when I moved away for college? But she recognizes that it would have been insane, and that it would not exactly have gone against Rose’s point that she was rushing into things headfirst. But she was always rushing into things headfirst with Dave—or at least, she was after she finally got over herself and asked him out.

She tries to think of all of the reasons getting back together with Dave would be a bad idea. There are reasons that getting back together with Dave would be a bad idea. He has a toddler, and as much as she already loves Zack (she’s not sure how anyone could ever not love Zack), she recognizes that he shouldn’t have a new parent introduced to his life so quickly. If she and Dave were going to get back together, they should take things slowly—at least for Zack—but she’s not sure they’re really capable of taking things slowly.

So maybe they just shouldn’t bother at all.

Plus, Dave has made so much progress while she’s been gone. Sure, he spent a couple of years spiraling first, but it seems so obvious that he’s recovered from that, no matter what Rose says. Rose is being a dumb jerk. Maybe she’s hurt, and maybe she has good reason to be hurt, but she should understand better than anyone that Dave was going through something and that people change—not just for the worse.

And what if getting back together with Jade impeded that change?

Jade is exhausted for the elevator ride up to the apartment, and she wants nothing more than to crawl into her big comfy bed and pass out. She can take a couple of days to think about this, right? Dave is reasonable. He’s not going to demand that she give him an answer tonight when she asked for time—and if he does, that should give her her answer.

”I’m home!” she calls out as she unlocks the door and steps inside. She takes a second to unlace her shoes, and then almost jumps out of her skin when she straightens up and sees Tavros.

”Uh, hey,” he greets, looking more than a little uncomfortable.

”Hi,” Jade says, trying her best to sound friendly. It’s not Tavros’ fault that she had a long night, and he shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of her frustration with this whole situation.

”Aradia and I are watching a movie. If, uh, that is a thing, that you would be interested in doing,” he says, sounding less and less sure of himself as the sentence progresses.

”Oh! That’s really sweet of you to offer, but I’m kind of exhausted, actually.”

”Oh. Uh, right. That makes sense. This is, kind of late for you to be getting home, actually. Did you have to stay late at work? Do you, uh, wanna talk about it?”

Jade recognizes this as Tavros’ usual, kind of weak attempts at flirting, and she hopes the way she smiles at him isn’t too pitiful. It always makes her feel a little bit condescending when she turns down his advances. He’s a nice guy! He’s exactly the kind of guy she should be interested in, if she weren't so fixated on a boy she broke up with most of a decade ago.

”I really just want to go to bed, Tavros. Sorry,” she says, trying to be as polite as possible.

”Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Uh, if you ever do want to see a movie or something though… uh, I’m available. You know, whenever you would be interested in doing that.”

”Yeah! That could be fun. Y’know, if there was something that everybody wanted to go and see. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for trashy romcoms and new Indiana Jones!”

”Uh. Yeah. Those are definitely the sorts of movies that everyone we know likes watching. It’s really cool and nice of you to, uh, know that.”

”Thanks! Y’know, I’m just doing my best to be a good friend to everybody!” Jade says as she finally starts to shuffle around him and make her way to her bedroom. Tavros seems to take the hint and doesn’t try to talk to her any more, and she lets out a long sigh when she closes her door behind her.

Jade sits on the edge of her bed with her head in her heads for a long minute, just collecting her thoughts. Why is she turning Tavros down?

She’s not interested in him. He seems like a nice guy, but she just doesn’t feel any initial spark there. It’s not like with Dave, where she can barely resist the gravitational pull toward him. With Dave, it’s impossible to imagine keeping her hands off of him. Even when he was telling her all about everything that happened with Rose and how awful he was, she couldn’t stop holding his hand and pressing kisses against his knuckles. She just wants him.

She shouldn’t want him, though.

She should want a nice guy like Tavros. One who thinks that she’s had a long day at work just because she’s getting home late and asks her if she wants to talk about it. One who knows when she’s getting home late because he’s learned her schedule without asking. One who has never cheated on anybody, and whose childhood friends all still talk to him and only have wonderful things to say about him.

But Dave is a nice guy. She knows that, and not just because of the guy that he was in high school. It’s the way he is with Zack. It’s the way that he insisted on paying for lunch before they went to the zoo even though they both knew she could afford more than he could. It’s the way he remembered her Starbucks order and got there early to get it for her, even if it was a little melted by the time she got there.

She loves him. That’s the core problem, isn’t it? Jade loves Dave more than anything, and she’s never going to be able to let herself move on to a nice, healthy, normal relationship with another guy if he’s still an option.

That was kind of Rose’s whole point, wasn’t it?

She just doesn’t know how to stop thinking of Dave as an option. It would be one thing if he wasn’t interested in her anymore. He shouldn’t be interested in her anymore, for a lot of the same reasons that she shouldn’t be interested in him anymore. She hurt him. It wasn’t really until she broke up with him that he started spiraling out of control; in a way, doesn’t that make all of this a little bit her fault?

Jade holds her breath. She knows that’s not a rational thought. Dave wouldn’t want her to think that. Rose would be mad at her for thinking that. John…

What would John think? Well, he definitely wouldn’t want her blaming herself for everything that happened with Dave years ago, but what would he think about what’s happening with Dave now? They never really talked about what happened between him and Dave—why they stopped talking. Jade always got the impression that John just cut ties when she did as an act of solidarity, but maybe he could provide more insight?

She stares at her phone a little warily as she opens John’s contact. Is he going to be worried if she calls him without any warning? She doesn’t want to worry him. Or maybe he won’t even answer—it’s not that late for him, but he has his own life.

If Jade's worried that John might not respond to a cold call out of the blue, it's for no reason. He picks up almost immediately. "Hey, Jade! What's going on?"

She worries her lower lip, falling back onto her bed as she holds the phone up to her ear. "Can you talk?" she asks. "I'm trying to think through something, and I'd really like your opinion on it."

"Yeah, of course, Jade! I'm free to talk whenever you want. That's what friends are for! What's up?"

She's not sure how to even start this conversation. She knows that John hasn't talked to Dave in years, but she doesn’t know what happened. She doesn’t think John has as much of a reason to be against Dave as Rose does, but her conversation with Rose still has bitter feelings and anxiety lingering in the back of her mind, and she can’t entirely convince herself that that’s true.

”Why did you stop talking to Dave?”

She knows that it’s a cop-out. It’s not irrelevant to her decision to get back with Dave, but it’s not what’s up like John asked. It’s a question designed to dance around the issue for a little while longer so that she doesn’t have to listen to John chew her out the way Rose did.

Then again, maybe if two of her best friends in the world are trying to talk her out of this, that should be her sign that she's doing something wrong.

”Oh! Uh,” John starts, sounding almost startled. It takes him a second to collect his thoughts, apparently, and he says. “Sorry. I didn’t expect you to ask that.” Jade grimaces. She has a pretty good idea of what he probably did expect her to ask. Rose probably told him that she ran into Dave again, meaning that Rose probably also told him all about their conversation at the zoo.

”Yeah,” she says carefully. “Sorry. I know that’s probably kind of out of nowhere.”

”No, it’s okay!” John dismisses. “I guess I just haven’t thought about it in kind of a while. It’s not like anything really dramatic happened or anything.”

Jade can’t help letting out a breath of relief. “I thought so. I mean, I don’t remember you telling me about anything like that, but Rose never told me either…”

John sucks in a sharp breath on the other end of the line, and she can picture him grimacing the exact same way that she’s grimacing. “No. Nothing like that happened. I guess… you guys broke up, and Dave kind of went a little crazy? Not crazy. That’s not the right word. But you know what I mean? Like, he dropped out, and then he just lost himself a little with the clubbing and the drinking. It was kind of hard to talk to him. And then you stopped talking to him, and I guess I was mad at him for hurting you so bad, so I just kind of… stopped answering when he texted me. Then eventually he stopped texting me at all.”

”You ghosted him?”

”I mean…” Again, she feels like she can hear John’s grimace. “Yeah, I guess so. That seemed less bad than having some kind of fight with him or something. Like… at least this way if he really needed me, then maybe he could reach out?” Jade thinks about asking if that’s true. There’s a part of her that’s almost angry about it—how many times over the years has Dave needed him and definitely gotten no response?

But before she can start, John adds, “Why are you asking about Dave?”

Immediately, Jade’s anger is replaced by guilt. "I mean, I was talking to Rose about it recently…” It feels like a lie. She doesn’t want to have this conversation based on a lie. She wanted John’s advice, and he can’t really give her that if she’s lying. “I ran into him again," she admits.

John's quiet for a bit, but then he finally says, "Okay." He doesn't even say it in a weird way, but just from his tone of voice, it just confirms what Jade already suspected—that he already knew. Maybe he and Rose already prepared for this conversation. Or, maybe John is more reasonable. She keeps going.

"I know Dave and I parted on really bad terms last time, but he seems to be doing a lot better now. He has a son now! He's so cute!"

"Oh, yeah! I think I remember seeing that," John remarks. It almost instantly feels like a betrayal.

"What? You knew Dave had a kid?"

John sounds surprisingly unconcerned about sharing this information. "Yeah. I mean, I never unfollowed him on social media or anything. He posted about it a little bit."

Jade pinches the bridge of her nose. Of course John somehow magically already knew about this. "Why didn't you say anything?" she asks.

"I mean, what did you want me to do? Go, hey Jade, your ex who you used to talk about having kids with all the time while you were together went and knocked some other girl up? I thought you'd be sad about it! And I didn't think you were ever going to talk to Dave again anyways, so..."

Jade presses her lips together into a fine line. It makes sense when John puts it like that. She would have been really upset to learn about Zack if she'd heard about him three years ago. But this is just another distraction.

"Okay. Well—that's beside the point! The point is that we're friends again. We've been hanging out a lot. And, uh..."

John is like a brother to her in a lot of ways, and she isn't really eager to say that she and Dave have already had sex—or that they were about to have sex within about an hour of reuniting. It still feels like relevant information, though.

"We've hooked up a little bit."

"Jade, ew! I don't need to think about that."

"I'm sparing you the details!" Jade insists. "But—things have been going well! His son is really friendly, and we've gone on a couple of pseudo-dates."

"So are you back together?" John asks.

"That's why I'm calling," Jade admits. "Dave asked if I wanted to, but… I'm not sure. I mean, of course I want to get back together with Dave! I still love him so much. I don't think it's even possible for me to stop loving him at this point. But there's so much baggage between us, and I always sort of feel like I can't help myself around him. I love him, but I don't want to rush into this and ruin any chance of at least being friends with him again."

The idea of never seeing Dave again is just a little worse, she thinks, than the idea of seeing Dave all the time and never being able to kiss him. Both sound terrible, though.

John is quiet on the other end of the line for a little bit, and Jade can imagine the little frown on his face that he wears when he's thinking really hard about something. Part of her wants to rush him and get him to just tell her what she should do, but that's the problem, isn't it? Rushing things?

"Well—I don't think it's my place to tell you what to do, Jade," John finally says. "And this is a very personal decision! But I think you should look inside and think like. What's good for you? What's going to make your life look the way that you want it to? Does Dave fit in with what you have planned?"

It's not a definitive answer, which Jade finds annoying, even though it's fair. She lets out a sigh and leans back, considering the question.

What does she want her life to look like? She's always wanted to work for NASA and do science. Before she broke up with Dave, she'd always assumed that they'd go to college, he'd get a job in palaeontology or some other related field, and then they'd have four kids and grow old together. After she broke up with him, she sort of just assumed she'd get a job with NASA, which she already has, and that kids were probably off the table now that she had nobody she wanted to raise them with. Now?

Being with Dave wouldn't necessarily interfere with her job. Maybe one day they could even get married and grow old together, even if he never got a doctorate like they talked about. Or maybe she could support him with her salary while he got his doctorate from Rice or something. Maybe they could have more kids, or maybe they'd just raise Zack together.

But what if she gets transferred? NASA has other labs, and some of them align better with her research. She'd been considering an eventual transfer to the lab in California that was closer to John. Can she really expect Dave to uproot his life like that? What if they have to go long distance again? That already failed so spectacularly the first time.

Besides, she's dedicated to her work. Would she really be a good mother? Is she even ready to be a mother? As a kid, she'd always assumed she'd be married and have kids by now, but it feels so different now that she's actually here. She has a job; she can't just drop everything to take care of Zack if he's sick. She doesn't know when it will be convenient to get pregnant if she wants another kid, or if it ever will be. Plus, Dave is still living with his brother. They're in such different parts of their lives. Maybe he doesn't really fit?

Maybe she's overthinking it—but is it possible to overthink something that's so important? Shouldn't she consider it from every possible angle?

"I... I think so," she says after a moment, though she can't keep the hesitation out of her voice. "I can't think of anybody I'd rather be with. And I feel like it could work." Assuming that everything goes exactly right.

"Even with—I mean, do you have any hesitation about, like... his past? Aren't you worried he'll cheat on you?"

"I'm not," she says. "He's doing so much better than he was when I last saw him. When you last saw him. You'd see it, if you came out to see him. And—the cheating wasn't on me. It was with me. Which I know is still bad!" She's already regretting the words as they come out, but she can't unsay them, so she at least tries to justify it. "But—I don't feel like he would do that to me. We have so much history, and—it's hard for us not to get together."

There's an awkward pause on the other end of the line before John says, "Jade, you know that's sort of... worse? Like, you see how that's worse, right? I'm just not sure how stable it's going to be. I hope Dave is doing better! Really! And I want you to be happy! But..."

John doesn't need to finish the but. Jade knows what he's getting at. She can't just overlook character flaws because they can't keep their hands off of each other. That was the reason she cut him off last time, right?

She lets out a heavy sigh. "I'll... I'll think about it a little more," she offers.

"Okay. Just know that I'm here for you no matter what, Jade!"

"Thanks, John."

Jade hangs up and allows herself to despair a little bit over the idea that she should cut Dave out of her life for good again. John made some good points about her future—points she had already considered on her own, maybe, but it was still sort of helpful to hear them from someone else. Especially one of her best friends. Maybe she really should cut Dave off for good—again—so she can finally move on from this whole thing.

There’s a knock on her door, and Jade perks up. She doesn’t really care who’s on the other side of it—even Tavros. She’s just grateful for the distraction. “Come in!”

It turns out to be Aradia, which Jade immediately decides is way better than if it had actually been Tavros. “Hey!” Aradia chirps, leaning against the doorway. “How did it go?”

Jade grimaces. Right. She told Aradia that she was going to the coffee shop to talk to Dave, even if she didn’t say exactly what they were going to talk about. Aradia is probably expecting some gossip about a fun, chill coffee date. “It went about as well as I could have expected it to,” Jade says, trying to keep things a little vague.

”Uh oh!” Aradia says, catching Jade’s avoidance immediately—like usual. “Damn, this wasn’t a fun conversation at all, was it?” Something about it makes Jade laugh, but it comes out a little bitter. Aradia crosses the room to sit next to her. “Alright. I’m getting the sense that there’s some history with this Dave guy. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Jade has to consider this for a minute. Aradia doesn’t know Dave, which means she doesn’t have any of the bias that John and Rose do. Maybe she could offer Jade some advice about this whole thing. Haven’t she and Sollux been together as long as Dave and Jade would have been if they’d never broken up?

But anything that Jade tells Aradia runs the risk of making its way back to Rose. John is too conflict-avoidant to tattle on her, but Aradia had already gleefully announced that she had to tell Rose about this the morning after they slept together. Jade is pretty sure that’s how Rose heard about this in the first place.

It’s not like there’s anything incriminating from the last couple of weeks—not that Rose wouldn’t have heard about already—but Jade doubts it’s anything that she would approve of, either.

Instead, she redirects. “Can you tell me about when you and Sollux got together? And how you guys have like… made everything work this long?”

Aradia raises her eyebrows, but she doesn’t call Jade on anything. “It’s kind of a sad story,” she warns, although she doesn’t sound all that sad about it. “We were in a really bad accident as teenagers—I mean, all of us. That’s how Vriska lost her arm and her eye, and how Tavros wound up in a wheelchair, and how Terezi went blind. I almost died, I guess! I was in a coma for a year. I don’t really remember it anymore. I mostly remember the rush of excitement, and then everything just kind of… stopping. And then having some really weird dreams for a while! But everyone else thought I was going to die. I think Sollux felt the worst about it because he came out of the accident mostly unscathed. Plus, he was my friend more than everybody else’s back then.

”I remember how relieved everyone seemed when I woke up. That was probably the most emotion I’ve ever seen my mom show! I spent a lot of time in rehab relearning things like how to walk and how to speak properly, and I also had to cram to catch up on school so I wouldn’t have to repeat a year. At the end of the summer, I took a test, and they decided I could start high school with my friends. Terezi’s parents threw me this party, and that was where Sollux asked me out. I was kind of surprised, honestly! I wasn’t very fun to be around before the accident, and it was even worse after. I was in therapy, but it took a while to really start seeing results. Plus, I just didn’t think Sollux was the kind of guy to ask somebody out! When we were kids, I always figured that I would have to do it one day. That was the first time I’d really felt excited about something in a long time, so I said yes. And we’ve been together since then.”

Jade realizes that she’s been holding her breath and lets it out slowly. As she does, she sort of deflates, sinking sideways into Aradia’s lap. Aradia takes the sudden contact in stride, running her fingers through Jade’s hair.

It’s kind of startling how much Aradia’s story parallels hers. Sure, there was no tragic accident, but some of the other things ring true for her. “Dave and I first started dating when we started high school, too,” she mumbles. “Only I really did have to ask him out,” she jokes, smiling, and Aradia snorts.

“I think it was obvious to everybody else that we liked each other, but I was so nervous about it. It’s silly, looking back on it! But I really thought everything was going to go wrong…"

In a way, everything did go wrong. She has to try not to grimace at that, especially when Aradia prompts, “And what happened?”

Jade takes a deep breath. If she’s going to ask Aradia for advice, she should have at least the basics of their history, even if Jade doesn’t really want to talk about it.

“For a long time, we were really happy. We dated for all of high school and we were, like, stupidly in love; you know, the sort of in love that drives all your friends crazy. We thought we were going to get married and have babies and do all of the things that grownups do in grownup relationships—at least, the stuff we thought grownups did in grownup relationships,” she rushes to correct. She knows that Aradia and Sollux aren’t really planning on the whole marriage and babies thing.

Jade sighs before she continues, “My grandfather died when we were 18, and it sort of threw a wrench into everything. I… didn’t handle it very well. And you know, Dave really tried to be there for me, but I don’t think I was the easiest person to be there for. I decided to move away for college, to get away from it all. I’d already applied for school in New Zealand because Grandpa went there. Dave and I tried to do the long distance thing for a while, but it was really hard. I don’t think we ever totally figured out how to be in a relationship as completely separate people. I mean, we’d known each other for so long—we met in Kindergarten! So… eventually, we broke things off.”

Jade doesn’t tell Aradia that she broke things off—that it wasn’t a mutual decision but one that Jade made, fueled by guilt at the fact that she couldn’t devote as much time to Dave as he clearly needed her to. She doesn’t tell Aradia that she and Dave tried to stay friends for a couple of years after their breakup, only for things to end in a disastrous hookup where Dave cheated on a girlfriend with her. She doesn’t tell Aradia that she ended her friendship with Dave because she was scared to let herself be happy.

What does it say about her relationship with Dave now that she’s trying to hide those things from Aradia, though? Is it really a good sign that they’re ready to try things again if she can’t be honest about how everything went down? Was the fact that Aradia doesn’t know about Dave and their history appealing because it meant she didn’t have any bias? Or was it appealing because it meant Jade could control what information she did and didn’t have about the story—so Aradia would tell her what she wanted to hear?

Aradia is quiet for a long minute, still brushing her fingers through Jade’s hair. The silence makes Jade want to squirm, but she forces herself to stay still.

”Sollux and I were long distance for a while,” Aradia eventually says, and Jade looks up at her with raised eyebrows. “When he moved to Houston for work, I was still in grad school in New York. We agreed that I’d move down here with him after I finished my master’s degree. Neither of us wanted me to drop out of school or him to give up a really nice job opportunity just so we could stay close to each other.”

”So how did you manage?”

”Well, for one, our time zones were only an hour apart, so I’m sure we had an easier time scheduling phone calls than you and Dave did!” Aradia grins, and Jade manages a small smile. It’s nice of Aradia not to assume that they were just idiots who couldn’t manage the basic communication that must have kept her relationship running. “We also weren’t alone. Well—I wasn’t alone. Sollux was alone, but he’s always preferred it that way. All of our friends were still in New York with me, so I don’t think either of us was really missing some sense of human connection that we could only find in each other.”

Jade frowns. Does Dave have any other friends? He hasn’t mentioned any. And she still barely has any other friends, at least any who are in Houston. Would she count Aradia’s friends as her friends? Would she only be counting them so that she could get back together with Dave?

She tries to push that aside, though. Instead, doing her best to sound amused and not guilty, Jade asks, “Did you guys go completely crazy when you were back together? Like, when you saw each other in person again?”

Aradia laughs. “Well, we tried to visit each other every couple months, so there wasn’t a grand reunion in the traditional sense—no matter what Terezi will tell you. But we were pretty excited when I finally moved down to Houston. I was living with Vriska and Tavros at the time. I think we did an okay job at keeping our hands to ourselves when we had to, but I spent most of those first couple of weeks at Sollux’s apartment.”

”It’s like I can’t help myself when I’m around Dave,” Jade admits, her cheeks flushing.

”Well, of course you can’t!” Aradia says, without any judgment, and Jade picks her head up to stare at her. “If you two were together for as long as you say and things were as complicated as it sounds, then there’s a lot of tension there to work through.” A pause, and then Aradia grins and adds, “Maybe you just need to hook up!”

Jade’s cheeks flush, and she lets out a mortified groan. “We already hooked up. You were there the morning after, remember?”

Aradia shrugs. “Keep hooking up. Let it run its course.”

”Aradia,” Jade snorts, playfully shoving her roommate’s shoulder. “I can’t just keep hooking up with him forever and ever.”

”Why not?”

”Aradia!”

Aradia laughs. “Listen, I can’t tell you what the right answer is here—there isn’t a right answer. And you’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to find one. You can hook up forever, or you can get back together, or you can stop talking, or you can do anything you want! Stop trying to plan around the relationship you want to have when you die.”

Jade stares at her again. She feels like her head is spinning as she tries to integrate this advice with what John told her earlier. The way he said it, it made so much sense that she should be prioritizing her future over Dave. There are so many things she wants someday, and she doesn’t know how to slot Dave into them, or even if she can.

But… she knows that she wants Dave now. Could they really figure the rest out later?

”Thanks, Aradia,” she says. Then, after a brief moment of hesitation, she adds, “Could you, um… not tell Rose about stuff with Dave? There’s just a lot of… history there, and I don’t think it would be good for anybody to dig into that.”

Aradia smiles down at her, and then mimes zipping and locking her lips. “I can’t promise that Sollux won’t be hearing about this later, but if you don’t want me to tell Rose about it, then I won’t tell Rose about it.”

Aradia leaves Jade alone in her room again, and Jade rolls to lay on her back and stare up at the ceiling. She can’t help but think again about everything she didn’t tell Aradia—and not just the bad stuff.

She had been crushing on Dave for years when she asked him out. They were starting high school, and she decided that hiding crushes was for babies, not high schoolers. She still tiptoed around it for most of the first week of school, but that Friday, she decided she was going to ask no matter what. She wanted to walk right up to him in the hallway and ask him out right there in front of everybody, but she thought better of it. What if he felt pressured to say yes? Or what if he wanted to say yes but was too embarrassed to say it in front of all of those people? So she planned to ask him after school instead.

She didn’t get to see him after school, though. She went home whining miserably to Grandpa about how she missed her opportunity and now she was going to have to wait the whole weekend, and he’d responded by asking her where her sense of adventure was and driving her to Dave’s apartment right then.

She wishes she could ask Grandpa for advice about all of this. He would know exactly the right thing to say. He always liked Dave, so maybe he would encourage her to get back together with him. Or maybe he would hate Dave if he knew what happened after he died—maybe he’d be threatening to shoot Dave for even talking to her after breaking her heart (as if she wasn’t the one who broke his heart).

John and Rose had encouraged her to get together with Dave back then, too. They’d been texting her under the table for all of lunch that Friday, asking when she was finally going to spit it out. She thinks that John just wanted to be there when it happened.

And now, they’re encouraging her to give up on him.

What does it say about her that she’s trying to find any excuse not to listen to them? Maybe she really is stupid. A person as smart as she’s supposed to be wouldn’t be in love with someone they had such a painful history with.

In love.

Jade sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. It’s the first time she’s let herself think the phrase. She’s acknowledged that she loves him plenty, but somehow, in love feels like more of a commitment. But she is. She’s in love with Dave, and as long as he’s a part of her life, she always will be.

She takes a deep breath. She knows exactly what she needs to do.

Chapter Text

Dave promised Bro that he would be back in two hours. He will be back in two hours. The conversation with Jade didn’t take nearly as long as he expected it to (or maybe he just hoped it would be that long), so he’s pretty sure he has more time left than he even actually spent talking to her.

He just… doesn’t want to go home yet.

Even that isn’t completely true. He wants to get back to the apartment and check on Zack. It always makes him uneasy to leave him with Bro, and it makes him extra uneasy to leave him with Bro during a time he wouldn’t usually be out. Their arrangement already feels so tenuous, and he doesn’t want to imagine what could happen if he pushed Bro a little too far.

He just wishes that when he was going back to the apartment and checking on Zack, his father wasn’t going to be there. With the uncertain place he and Jade had left things in, Dave’s mind is buzzing with worse anxiety than he’s had to deal with in half a decade, and it’s like Bro’s shadow is looming extra high even from the Starbucks. It’s hard to willingly step back into that shadow.

Dave reasons that he has another hour or so until he really has to leave. He could probably even push it to an hour and a half—technically, he promised Bro he’d be back by nine, and a glance at his phone verifies that it’s just cresting 6:45. It’s only a ten minute walk. If he really wanted, he could push it two hours.

But that would be leaving Zack with his father for two unnecessary hours, and that’s a whole lot worse than anything he could possibly find when he gets back.

Dave gives himself another fifteen minutes at Starbucks after Jade’s left to collect his thoughts. He wishes he had driven so he could enjoy the semi-privacy of his car in the parking lot, but the gas for the three-minute drive probably wouldn’t have been worth it anyway. Plus, he doesn’t want to break down over this, and there’s something about being in public that makes it easier not to, even if none of the people in here are actually looking at him.

Even though Jade only asked for time to think, Dave feels exactly like he did the first time she broke up with him. The second time had been different, because he wasn’t completely sober and he sort of had an awareness that he’d done something wrong—but the first time, he really felt like everything was going okay.

Long-distance was hard and it sucked ass. Jade’s semesters in New Zealand only half-aligned with his semesters in Texas for the period of time where they were both in college, so he had classes for half of her visit for what was supposed to be her summer break. Then she was in classes for his summer break and he couldn’t afford to fly across the world to go see her, so the best he could do was adjusting his sleep schedule so they could video call more often—which they did for basically every second of the day that they could.

Still, even if it was hard, he loved her so much that he thought it was worth it. They’d already gotten through a year and a half, so what was two and a half more? Yeah, maybe he was a little needy. He can own that in hindsight. And he can recognize why that sucked for Jade, who was trying to make a real life for herself in another country and probably had a hell of a time trying to fit him into it. He’d thought they were on the same page, though. He’d thought she needed him as bad as he needed her.

He knows that’s stupid now. They shouldn’t have needed each other in the first place. Codependent was probably a light word for how they were in high school, but then Jade started to figure herself out in college and she wasn’t dependent on him anymore. Things became more one-sided. He was probably a shitty boyfriend. No, scratch that, he was definitely a shitty boyfriend. And once she broke up with him, rather than trying to make himself better, he just spiraled out of control.

He’s not in that place anymore. At least, he doesn’t think that he is, most of the time. He’s cleaned his act up since Zack. He had slipped up a couple of times in the early years—on the particularly hard days, like Jade’s birthday and the anniversary of their breakup—but he hasn’t had a drink in almost two years now. He’s doing better.

What if Jade doesn’t think that, though? Sure, she talked about how he wasn’t a bad person—but then he asked if that meant she wanted to get back together and she started to backpedal, saying she needed to think about it.

Dave takes a deep breath. This is a stupid reason to spiral. Of course Jade should think about it. If he wants this to work, they should both think about it, or else it’ll probably go exactly how it did in New Zealand. He doesn’t want either of them to get hurt like that again.

Dave’s water bottle has been empty for several minutes, and he’s pretty sure he’s over the time he set aside for himself to keep hiding out alone in the Starbucks. He takes one more deep breath and then stands from his spot in the corner. He manages not to flinch or grimace when the barista at the counter asks if he needs anything else.

"Uh, no, sorry," he mumbles. He rushes out before he can get sucked into a real interaction.

The walk from the coffeeshop back to his apartment does a lot to clear his head. The part of the city he lives in is very different from where Jade lives. It’s not that it’s necessarily shitty, but where Jade’s got parks and museums, Dave’s got high-rises and warehouses. He knows where to find all of the cheap corner stores, and which ones sell the frozen pizza Zack likes or the bottles of Mexican soda he’s splurged on once or twice for special occasions. It’s not exactly nice in the traditional sense, but it’s what he’s always known, and that makes it comforting in a way.

That comfort evaporates once he actually gets into the apartment.

"Daddy!" Zack greets cheerfully from his spot on the couch. He abandons his toys to meet Dave at the door, throwing his arms around his leg like he was gone for a year and not an hour. Dave moves a hand to ruffle his hair, but he looks around the living room with furrowed eyebrows. His father is nowhere in sight.

Normally, he would be relieved not to have an encounter with Bro when he’s just been so emotionally vulnerable. It always feels like Bro will see right through him and punish him for opening up to someone. But right now, it just raises questions.

Did Bro leave Zack in the apartment alone? Dave knows he walked home a little slowly, but a quick glance at his phone shows it’s only seven thirty. Bro said he’d watch him until nine. Was he just lying? Has he done that before? The idea of Zack being left all alone in the apartment makes his heart race, and he opens his mouth to say something—but then the microwave beeps and his father emerges from the back hallway, where Dave guesses he must have been in the bathroom.

"You’re back early," Bro grunts, somehow sounding disapproving. As if he hadn’t made it perfectly clear he didn’t want Dave to stay out for long.

"Talk didn’t take as long as I expected," Dave answers. Bro grunts again and moves past him to get Zack’s food.

Dave can’t help but internally berate himself for thinking that Bro might have left Zack alone just because he’s nervous about stuff with Jade. His father was a shitty guardian at the best of times, but he’s not a liar. And he’s good with Zack, generally. Dave might not trust that to last—it’s not like he can remember being that little, so for all he knows, Bro might have been soft with him until he was big enough for training—but so far, everything has been fine. Bro even ruffles Zack’s hair when he gives him his dinner, which is more affection than Dave can ever remember receiving from his father.

Dave takes Zack back to their room to eat his dinner. Sometimes, he lets him eat on the futon in the living room instead—usually when Bro is playing video games and he’s able to pretend things are normal like he’s thirteen again—but his anxiety levels are way too high for it tonight. Zack doesn’t complain, babbling to him about Squiddles like nothing is up. To him, nothing is up.

"When can we go to Jade’s house to watch Squids again?" Zack asks, and Dave’s chest squeezes. Realistically, he knows that Zack would forget about Jade in a few weeks if they never saw her again, but it still feels like shit to have him asking about seeing her when he knows they might never do it again.

The rest of the night goes similarly. Dave gets Zack ready for bed, and he doesn’t ask about Jade again, but Dave finds himself thinking about her anyway every time his son mentions Squiddles or giraffes. He finds himself thinking about her extra hard when his son’s bright green eyes start to sleepily droop shut.

Dave isn't able to sleep that night. Honestly, he hasn't been sleeping well since their trip to the zoo, but that hasn't helped the issue. It still feels like any moment he might just get a phone call from Jade telling him that she's changed her mind and decided that actually, he is too broken, and she's not sure that a relationship with him would ever be worth the effort.

Of course he wants her to have the time that she's asked for. He's not going to go back on that; she deserves the time to think over her decision. That doesn't stop it from driving him up a wall in the short term.

It means that, when his phone rings at ten PM on a work night, he's only roused out of a light doze. He picks up the phone quickly before it can wake Zack up and answers it. He doesn't even really check the number, so while he's hoping it's Jade, he's bracing himself for a spam call.

"What's up?" he asks, voice low to keep his son asleep.

"Dave?"

His heart leaps into his chest. That's Jade. He sits up in bed, practically cradling the phone to his face now. "Yeah?"

"Can you come downstairs? I want to talk to you in person."

He feels like he's on the edge of panic. She's here? At his apartment? Did she really decide that quickly?

He knows he's going to need to get past his father again if he wants to see Jade downstairs, which could involve a conversation, or an argument, or a fight, depending on how unlucky he gets. He also knows that he might be going downstairs to a conversation that ends with him never seeing Jade again.

Still. She's Jade. If she has made the worst case scenario real for him, then he at least wants to see her one more time before she cuts him off.

"Yeah. I'll be down in a sec. See you soon."

He hangs up the phone and takes a deep breath. Alright. Time to do this.

Carefully, Dave slides out of bed, treating his bedroom floor like a minefield. He doesn't want to step on anything that might accidentally make noise and wake Zack up. Still, it's probably easier to get past Zack's toys than all of the wires he used to have in his room when he was younger. He remembers trying to sneak out once and accidentally pulling one of his speakers down, causing a cascade of things to fall off of his desk in a dramatic crash. Bro barged in to see what was going on, and he had to text Jade he wasn't going to be able to see her before he threw his arms up to block a strike.

This time, at least, he makes it out of the room, closing the door as slowly as he can so that it doesn't make any noise. The living room is dark when he gets out there, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means that Bro is probably asleep and isn't going to have his eyes peeled. On the other hand, Dave knows that the hallway is bright as hell. He'd gotten caught trying to sneak out because of that damn hallway a couple of times as a teenager. It's ridiculous just how much Jade has him feeling like he's seventeen all over again.

Dave holds his breath as he carefully walks from the hall leading to his bedroom up to the front door. He sets his hand on the handle and stands there quietly for a moment, just to see if Bro is going to say anything. He turns back to look towards the futon. He can just see the form of his father splayed out on the couch, the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Dave knows the trick to getting out is being fast. He steps to the side, opens the door just a crack, and slides through that crack quickly before he pulls it closed behind him. He listens at the door for a grunt or any kind of sign that Bro woke up and is about to come after him, but he hears nothing. He got out this time.

He heads for the elevator and presses the call button. He remembers feeling this anxiety many times as a kid trying to sneak out. Waiting for the elevator, looking down the hall to make sure his father wasn't about to burst out of the apartment and run after him.

He felt exactly like that the first time that Jade asked him out. It had happened something like this, in fact. She'd texted him to come down after the last day of their first week of high school. There'd been an odd tension between the two of them all day that Dave hadn't been sure if he was imagining or not. She'd kept looking at him through their shared classes, and the looks they'd gotten at lunch from Rose and John had weirded him out. He was worried that Jade might have been mad at him; it's not too dissimilar to how he feels right now.

Back then, when he'd gotten to the bottom floor, Jade had been there with her grandpa to formally ask him to be her boyfriend. This time, he knows her grandpa won't be there, and he has his doubts on the boyfriend part too.

The elevator dings as it reaches the top floor, and he jumps a little before he glances down the hall. Still no sign of Bro coming out to chase him.

His heart is pounding for the entire ride down, which makes the slow, rickety pace at which the elevator moves all the more insufferable. He should have just taken the stairs. As much as they’d joked about how those stairs were going to kill him someday when they were kids and as much as going down that many flights of stairs on foot would have sucked, he feels like he would have made it down faster that way.

Once Dave reaches the ground floor, he makes a beeline for the parking lot. Jade isn’t very far from the door, and he looks her up and down. She doesn’t seem mad, but she doesn’t seem like she’s buzzing with excitement to see him, either. Really, she’s sort of hard to read.

"Hey," he breathes. "I’m here. What’s up?"

Jade offers him a small smile. "‘What’s up?’ Dave, I saw you, like, three and a half hours ago," she teases, and it’s weirdly calming. He doesn’t think she’d be teasing him like that if she came to give him bad news.

"Hey, a lot can happen in three and a half hours," he jokes back. "Maybe you got abducted by aliens who were on sort of a time crunch. Like when you go to the dentist and they try to get you in and out as fast as possible and you’re sort of laying there like, ‘Damn, are you really getting all of the gross shit off my teeth up there?’"

Jade laughs, and Dave tallies it as another victory. "I didn’t get abducted by aliens," she says after a second, and she’s still smiling at him. It’s a little bigger now.

Dave kind of wants to stall the conversation. This kind of banter is so nice, and he doesn’t want her to tell him that they’re never going to do it again. He also doesn’t want to spend even longer stewing in anxiety, though, so he forces himself to say, "So. Why did you call me down here then, if it wasn’t to rescue you from aliens?"

Jade’s face falls, and she leans back against the hood of her car, which makes his heart jump again. Shit. Maybe she was just trying to be nice so his last memory of her could be something positive. He wants to lean after her, but it feels pushy, so he keeps his feet firmly planted in place. Finally, she mumbles, "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Dave blinks. "Huh?"

"Where do you see yourself in five years!" Jade repeats, although this time it’s so insistent it sounds less like a question and more like a demand.

Dave blinks a few more times and brings a hand up to run through his hair. He doesn’t think anyone’s asked him that question since high school. Maybe during the year and a half he’d been in college. Either way, he’d had an answer prepared then because he and Jade had talked about it so much. He hasn’t really thought about it since he stopped having a five-year plan with her.

He feels like this is a test, though, so he tries to give it some earnest consideration.

Five years from now Zack will be eight—which is kind of horrifying to think about, actually, but he pushes that aside. Zack will be in elementary school, which means Dave will probably need to get another job that’s not in the daycare. Maybe he could go back to school. He doesn’t really want to go back to school, because that seems like so much work on top of raising a kid by himself, but he bets that’s the kind of answer Jade would like to hear.

He shouldn’t just be fishing for whatever answer he thinks Jade would want to hear, though. He sighs. "Honestly, I don’t know," he finally answers when he decides he’s not going to come up with anything better. "For the last three years, my whole life has basically been being a dad to Zack. Obviously I’ll still be a dad to Zack in five years, but I guess I’ve never really had the luxury of considering what else."

He thinks that answer is a little pathetic, or at least he feels pathetic saying it. Jade’s expression is soft in a way that he thinks looks a lot like pity, too. "That’s good, though. That’s important. Being a dad," Jade says.

"Yeah," he says immediately. It’s the most important thing he’s got going on in his life—even more important than Jade, even if she doesn’t drop his ass. "I wanna get him out of Bro’s apartment, at least. I guess I’ll do whatever I have to to make that happen."

"Would you move in with me?" Jade asks. Her eyebrows are raised, but something about her face says that this is more of a hypothetical and not another real proposal to move in together like when they’d slept together.

Dave lets out a slow breath. "Someday, yeah. Definitely in the next five years. If you wanted to, anyway."

Jade hums like she’s thinking, and it feels like this is the turning point in the conversation. He’s just not sure if it’s the turning point where she finally reveals that she’s been fucking with him and she never wants to see him again, or if it’s the turning point where she tells him she wants to get back together.

"In the next five years," she says, nodding. Dave’s heart flops, and he raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she answers, pushing off of the hood of her car again. Suddenly she’s so close to him, and his breath catches in his chest. "I want you to be my boyfriend, Dave."

It's not a question. The part of him that likes being tugged around by the choker likes the idea of her taking charge and simply telling him they're dating; the part of him that feels insecure about the two of them together likes the certainty in her tone.

"Okay," he breathes.

"Okay?"

"Okay. I want to be your boyfriend, too," he says.

Jade slides a hand up to cup his cheek, and he still can’t help but lean into it. At least this time there’s no question about if he’s allowed to. A second later, though, she uses it to guide him down at the same time she leans up to close the minimal gap between them, and then Jade’s kissing him.

There’s no number of kisses in the world that could make kissing Jade feel less magical in this moment. He’s kissing his girlfriend—his girlfriend who is Jade, again, and it’s twice as surreal to think that now as it was the first time. Well, the first time he didn’t get to kiss her when she asked him out because her grandpa was right there, but the first time he got to kiss her when she was his girlfriend.

Jade starts to lean back a second later like she’s about to pull away, and Dave’s hands move to her waist so he can pull her closer again. He can feel her laughing against his mouth more than he can hear it, with the puff of warm air from her nose, and he grins into the kiss. He snakes one of his arms around her waist to keep holding her there, and he slides his other hand up into her hair, and this is literally perfect. He can’t imagine anything better than this.

The next time she tries to lean back, Dave follows her momentum until they’re leaning against the hood of her car, and Jade lets out a little noise into his mouth that makes his head spin.

Dave can logically recognize, at least, that they cannot have sex on the hood of Jade’s car in his apartment building’s parking lot in the middle of the night. It feels a little bit like coming full circle—the first time they slept together, they'd both been too scared of their guardians walking in on them to do it in either of their places and they'd done it in John's dad's car at some party or board game night or something. This would be far from the first time they were sleeping together—it’s not even the first time since their reunion in Houston—but it still feels symbolic in some way.

But they can’t. He needs to stop kissing her before his brain shuts off completely. The fact that it’s past his bedtime doesn’t make that any easier.

He manages to force himself to pull back. It feels like the hardest thing he's ever had to do. All he wants to do is keep kissing her for hours and hours—but he doesn't have hours and hours. He's supposed to be asleep. Hell, Jade's probably supposed to be asleep.

He does lean in to give her one more peck on the tip of her nose, because he can't help himself, but then he forces himself to peel away from her and use his mouth for talking instead of kissing. "Jade. I got work at six in the morning. I love you, but why'd you decide to do this past nine on a weeknight?"

As breathless as it is excited, Jade says, "I love you too!" Oh, fuck. He hadn't meant to drop it that casually—but then, it's not like they've never said I love you before. In fact, they used to say it all the time. He's pretty sure he even said it to her that night he stayed over at her place. But it still feels like he should have waited for a better time to drop it now that they're officially back together.

Jade smiles so bright that it feels like she's glowing, even in the dim lighting, so Dave figures she can't be that upset about it. "And I can bring you coffee tomorrow…? As an apology for keeping you up so late! It's okay if I drop by the daycare, right? They aren't going to freak out if a childless adult comes around?"

"No, you're fine. Just say you're there to see me. It'll be chill." He's starting to feel a little excited. It's not really that he's excited for coffee. He can take or leave the coffee. But he likes the idea of Jade showing up to his work. He likes the idea of getting to see her for a few minutes at the start of the day, maybe get in a kiss on the cheek or something. "I can give you the address, if you want?"

"Please!" As he pulls out his phone to text it to her, Jade leans up for another kiss. It feels like they're teenagers again and just discovering how fun it is to kiss each other, and he can feel those same metaphorical butterflies in his stomach that he did back then too.

"So—I'll see you tomorrow?" Dave asks.

"I'll see you tomorrow!"