Chapter Text
The days that followed were a peak in the rollercoaster that was her time here, and it felt like for once it might last for more than a moment. Classes were still quiet, but she preferred them that way, lunch was her and Dirk on the bleachers, talking about books or copying homework. Afternoons were the two of them driving around the sleepy barren streets, usually ending up at Walmart, or her trying in vain to teach him to cook (The boy was nearly as thin as the sword he carried) or him trying just as successful to interest her in his robots. But it was more than she ever expected to have, and everything she could have asked for.
Most lunch hour’s people left them alone like the social scourge they apparently were, which was all well and good by the two of them, but others were a bit more eventful.
They sat sharing lunches and watching their own sliver of the world go by one afternoon when among the throngs were Jane’s old friends, and their possibly-Taylor-named leader still chattering loudly about the Spring Fling.
“So you’re gonna ask her to the dance, right?” It was just as deadpan as anything else he said, but Jane was starting to learn when he was kidding. She mock gagged, but thoughts of the dance she had all but forgotten lingered. “Right on. Fuck these stupid things.”
To that, she could only shrug. “I kind of like them. People are well dressed, there’s dancing, and there’s delicious food.” It reminded her of home, Seattle big-city home, where things like that happened at least semi-regularly, rather than once or twice a year.
Thinking back on the miserable years of dances he tried so desperately to avoid, Dirk snorted. “Maybe in your neck of the woods. In about a month, all that’s gonna happen is everyone competing over who can look the most like a shitty boutique took a dump on them, someone will spike the punch, and everyone’s going to head back to a motel and hope they’re not the one that gets pregnant this year.”
“Aw, no part of you wants to watch the train wreck?” Jane laughed. It seemed appealing, if only a little bit.
Dirk clicked his tongue, leaning back against the cool metal. “Nice try. You wanna go see if it lives up to your expectations, you’ll have to face the swarms alone.”
That was something Jane was absolutely not willing to do, and she frowned at the realization. It would have been nice for a small taste of home, but he was probably pretty spot-on with just how similar (or not) it would be. Perhaps another time she would have argued the point a bit more, if not for the guest they’d just received, which for them, was quite the rarity. She smiled righteously at Jane, who offered a weak grin in return.
“Hi there.” Jane knew she was in a few of her classes, but other than that, she couldn’t remember a thing about the girl.
“Hi! Do you wanna come have lunch with me and my friends?” Nothing seemed wrong with the request on the surface, but there was a hint of hostility buried underneath.
“Oh, we uh-” Should they? It was an awfully nice request, especially after the solitude she’d been forced into lately, but she looked over at Dirk for his thoughts. He remained tight-lipped as ever.
The girl kind of gasped. “Ooh no, I wasn’t talking to him.” She said it like a dirty word. “You seem okay, despite your… issues.” Translation: ‘You’re a dirty homo, but you match our definition of socially acceptable so we’re willing to try and forget about it if you will.’
Her eyes flashed between the girl and Dirk, and there wasn’t a choice to make.
“Sorry, I uh… think I’m good here.”
Until now, Dirk had been slumped dejectedly, tense at whatever she’d say, but he brightened almost immediately and even grinned a little. Her classmate was doing anything but, though, and her expression turned nasty as she moved to walk away. “Fine! Be a weirdo! See if I try to help you again!” And with a stomp she was off, leaving Jane to only shrug at whatever that had just been.
They resumed their quiet eating until about ten minutes before lunch ended, when Dirk spoke up. “Hey, uh, thanks.”
“For like, I don’t know, choosing me?”
“Choosing you?” You aren’t a puppy, Dirk.” He was ridiculous sometimes.
“Yeah, yeah… just, I don’t know, thanks for not sucking?” He looked over at her with such a genuine smile that she would have hugged him, if she wasn’t sure he’d immediately push away. The bell rang then, just in time for them to head their separate ways to class.
After school on the day of the Spring Fling, Jane was alone in her room, some small frustrating part of her still wishing she had never said anything, had just swallowed her pride and asked some non-threatening irrelevant boy and been normal for a night. Maybe, by some miniscule chance, it would have been worth it, if only for the change in scenery, or for a part of the high school experience™. But she hadn’t, and maybe if she threw herself into her book enough, she would be okay with that.
A sharp knock on her front door broke her train of thought.
Downstairs, Dirk Strider stood on her front porch with a cheap tuxedo print t-shirt and a homemade flower crown, and when Jane opened the door, she barely had words.
“Dirk,” It was half a laugh, half a sigh. “What... are you doing?”
His smirk, as usual, was infectious. “What does it look like? We’re going to the dance.”
“We’re not going to the dance.”
“Well, what am I going to with this limo then?” He gestured back to what was very clearly not a limo, but his pickup truck, looking as old and beat-up as ever. Again, Jane raised her eyebrow in inquiry, eyeing the crown.
“And what is that?”
“It’s a corsage Jane, c’mon, it obviously goes on your head.” His mock eye roll was almost visible.
“This is…” she turned it over in her hands, “literally just a headband with fake flowers glued to it.”
“Yes, and I bought it the same place I bought this snazzy tux, so if you want to match…”
On her head it went.
“What are you doing?” she couldn’t help but laugh, “You remember the part of this where I was a lesbian, and that we can’t go, right?”
“As long as you haven’t forgotten I exclusively like dick.” Touché.
“Then what’s going on?”
“You told me that you wanted good food, nice clothes, and dancing,” He counted them on his fingers. “so that’s what I, as your friend, am giving you.”
The words brought a lot of reason to be doubtful, even nervous, but she took his outstretched arm regardless and hopped into his truck. He, despite assumption, was one of the most trustworthy people she knew.
But, where could they be going? He was driving the opposite direction of the school, and didn’t seem too concerned about it. The answer came about ten minutes later, when they pulled into a parking lot and Jane saw the sign in cheap neon letters. A freakin’ Walmart.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Here we aare!” he singsonged, running around to open the door for her. She had half a mind to stay in the truck.
“If you’re hoping to dazzle me, Dirk, I’m afraid I’m still waiting.” Truth be told, Jane had never been to a Walmart before, but if the flickering lights and the… colorful locals that seemed to shop there were anything to go by, she wouldn’t hasten her return after tonight.
He kept walking. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I could eat a -, well, not a horse, obviously, I would die before I ate a horse, and it’s not extreme enough of a hunger for such an exaggeration anyway, y’know? But I am hungry enough to eat a cow, which is fortunate because that’s just the sort of quality grub they sell here.”
“How thrilling for you.”
They stepped inside the doors and gave a polite nod to the woman greeting them. Her smile was as fake as the flowers on Jane’s head, but the girl didn’t mind. At least this woman could pretend. Behind her, a small distance, was another neon sign, this time adorned with golden arches, and this time the absurdity was too much for Jane to take with a straight face.
“This is your quality grub?” She made no effort to hide her laughter. “A McDonalds?” The last time Jane had been here had been years ago, and her heart wasn’t exactly breaking over the fact, but she followed her friend to the counter anyway.
“Big Mac combo, please. And for the lady?”
“A Chicken Sandwich, please.”
She would have offered to pay, but he seemed insistent, and there were enough school lunches she’d paid for that it didn’t seem a crime to let him pick up the tab just this once. They chatted as they ate, as if it was any other night, and after a while Jane couldn’t, and wouldn’t deny how nice it felt. It was… normal, the way she imagined prom would have been, and she was thankful, honestly, that Dirk had dragged her out. The “sweet grub” was possibly the more unpleasant things she’d eaten in her life (the Crockers had never been big on fast food), and the plastic and cloth amalgamation on her head was in a constant state of falling off, but she hardly acknowledged them.
“Does Walmart have a secret ballroom I don’t know about?” she wondered. The grease was still fresh on their wrappers, but the food inside was no more, and Jane’s thoughts were no free to wander back to Dirk’s other promise, and the unlikelihood he would keep it.
He smirked, because of course he did, and started gathering up their garbage. “Something like that.”
Several minutes later, the two found themselves in the electronics section, standing not in front of a ballroom or even a clear expanse of floor, but instead, a Dance Dance Revolution machine.
He presented her two quarters with all the grace of a prince.
“I’ve never played this before, just so you know.”
“I’ll go easy on ya.”
It was a far stretch from the grace and poise she was choosing to believe was going on at the dance right now, and there was a part of her, as there always was, who ached for that grace, for being lead around by a boy she found cute (or even moderately attractive) as something slow played over the loudspeakers. Instead, she was here with Dirk, at a DDR machine in the middle of a Walmart. She beamed.
It was a disaster of course, much like the fast food was, with pounding untz’s serving as the soundtrack to her flailing, off-rhythm steps, and just like before, she didn’t care. As it turned out, Dirk was amazing at Dance Dance Revolution, and if he was taking it easy on her, he wasn’t making it obvious. More than once, Jane could hear his jeers over the beat of the atrocious cover songs they danced to, but dare she say, it was perfect, and she couldn’t stop laughing if she wanted to. But she did stop
But she did stop eventually, as they slumped over half an hour later, sweaty and out of breath. Her crown had been bobby-pinned down at this point, or else it would have fallen off ages ago, and the same was true of Dirk’s sunglasses, but now that they were out of quarters, he returned the clips to her.
“Let’s go.”
“Hey, um,” Jane hunched her shoulders a bit. “Thank you for this, really.”
They were sitting outside now, tired and full, and still looking ridiculous. “Eh. Don’t worry about it.”
A part of Jane was almost panicked at the notion that they were just loitering, with no plans on buying anything, or really any plans to do anything. But the notion also occurred to her that this was… what teenagers did? Even the friendships she’d had back in Washinton had never felt so structureless, she was after all, heiress to a massive company, which came with no small amount of guidelines as to the types you could associate with. Here though, no one cared, least of all her, and it was the most genuine human connection she could recall ever having.
“I thought tonight was going to be miserable.”
“Okay cool, so you admit it wasn’t, then?” he said cockily. Jane would have punched his arm if she wasn’t sure it would hurt her more than it did him.
“It wasn’t.” Mock reluctance was heavy in Jane’s voice, but his smile was content anyway, and he meant every muscle of it.
“Good. ‘Cause you deserved to get your dance, lame though it might have been. Way more than any of those assholes deserved it.” He pointed a long finger at her. “You sure you still don’t want to go Carrie on their taffeta-covered asses? We could still find some animal blood somewhere and make it to the school in time. The wind will be in our favor, cars will crash into each other veering out of our way in utter majesty, because they know any crap they’re trying to do ain’t got dick on our nasty-ass shenanigans.” His smile was a little too triumphant.
How bad was it, though, that Jane was actually considering that? If for no other reason than she felt like she owed him one. A big One. “At least then you’d get some enjoyment out of the night.”
“Whoa, hold your horses, Crocker. Are you sayin’ I didn’t have a good time tonight?”
Was he possibly saying he did? “Well, it’s just that it was for my benefit? And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate it, but I’m quite positive you have better things to do on a Friday night than cheer my gloomy self up.”
"Like hell I do!" He almost sounded serious. "Jane, you, and I mean this in the least heterosexual way possible, are the best thing about this piece of shit town. Even banging my toe on the DDR machine, which was he most "inconveniencing" thing that happened all evening, was worth ten of whatever bullshit I would've ended up doing had I stayed home… This was cool. You're cool.”
While she couldn’t agree, particularly with the last bit, the sentiment comforted Jane, and she relaxed against the back of the bench.
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
They both gazed up at the sky just in time to watch the last wisps of the sun duck behind the horizon. Across town, they were rejected, forgotten about; they simply didn’t exist, but neither gave a shit, because here, watching the sunset on what had been one of the better days they’d each had in a long while, was better than any night of itchy clothes and slow jams. The sun had set now, and the night was for anything they wanted to be.