Chapter Text
Dave Strider hadn’t expected to actually like the Oregon coast. A childhood in Houston and a career based in L.A., Dave felt like he ‘got’ the beach vibe and it just wasn’t really for him. Well, there wasn’t exactly a lot of beach in Houston - just unforgiving summers and roof. But plenty of beach ‘propaganda’ as it were, of supposed ‘babes in bikinis’ and beer on the shores. And with his arrival to California, Dave had found that the image from TV had been overwhelmingly accurate. On any given day the beaches were packed with skimpy swimsuits (even on the men), surferbros, and families screaming up and down the beach. Fighting and arguing and making beautiful memories. The ‘picture perfect’ families bothered something in his chest almost as much as the distracting men and women bothered something… somewhere else.
But despite that, the overwhelming feeling the beaches gave him was… discomfort. Ironically, going to the ocean made him feel like a fish out of water. In his long swim trunks and baggy t-shirt, Dave couldn’t help but to feel like everyone must know what he was hiding underneath. The scars he didn’t want to see the light of day, much less have them gawked at by every single soul on a busy California shore. He wasn’t really popular enough to truly think the ‘paparazzi’ would catch him and post the pictures, but the ingrained feeling like a camera might be on him at any moment had never fully left him and the California heat did little to prevent the hairs on the back of his neck raising when he went out.
His little budding career was… it was something Dave had carved with his own two hands. Or really, it had been carved by eight hands. The budding band - Suburbia Veil - had been formed between himself and his three childhood friends. Jamming together over skype had transformed into something greater. And after spending a year working hard, staying up through the night mixing tracks and finally moving to a new apartment, they had produced their first official album. And to a modest amount of success.
However, three albums in and the group had been feeling stumped on their next set of songs. So, this had been the deal. They would each get out of their modest apartment and spend a ‘sabbatical’ (you could tell which parts of the idea had been Roses’) proverbially drinking in a new environment, working out their own ideas and musical identities separately, and do their best not to pressure themselves too much with the idea of the fourth album.
Jade is actually the one that chose Oregon for Dave - insisting that the PNW was the right place for him, and he’d know why when he got there. His agreement had simply been to appease her, but his choice to stay through the Fall had been when her words had actually rang true. He was even wondering if the others would let him stay into the Winter, if only because he ached to see how the snow would look falling over the ocean.
Pacific Northwest beaches were nothing like California. They were… less inviting? That made them sound bad! And that was not the case! But the sand was rocky and rough against bare feet, unlike the soft textured sand of L.A. The waves cold and chilly, an effective barrier to anyone who would want to venture in. People still frequented the beach, but with Fall cresting over the horizon the heat wasn’t persuasive enough to convince would-be swimmers to brave the waves. Large chunks of driftwood - driftwood the size of entire trees - beached themselves for people to sit on and stare out at the sea.
And even better, in the sleepy small town that Jade and Rose had located for him, he felt somehow invisible. Like no one was around, that this was a place only for him. The large trees beyond him on the cliffy shores felt protective against prying eyes. Maybe just against… a specific set of prying eyes.
Something about it settled a part in Dave’s chest, the part that made his heart feel like a bird that frantically was beating its wings against a cage. He could - and did - walk up and down the beach for hours just listening to waves, the seafowl, and the rustling of leaves and that specific sound that the trees and ocean made when it rained. So different than the sounds of California and certainly distinct from Houston - the rattling of the A/C, the honks of horns, and the scrape of metal.
It had been doing wonders for his inspiration. Just his strolls into the fog that so often pervaded the shores made Dave inclined to sing and test out new lyrics and sounds. It was nice to take things so slow for once, in a way that surprisingly wasn’t boring. While most of his days were spent at the beach of in local small shops to meditate on songs and work on lyrics, if he ever got restless he just had to hop in his car and he could go up or down the coast, visiting any number of tourist traps selling kitcschy shit or hikes to stunning views or to Tillamook for the twelfth time just to get their huckleberry ice cream.
On one of these trips, Dave found his… it sounded so stupid. But he found his treasure. He found something he was sure was precious.
Dave had been poking around the tidepools, admiring the small ecosystems each contained. He had stopped by a national park information center earlier and had obtained a small pamphlet that helped him to identity all the little creatures.
At first he had thought it was a dead animal carcass of some kind. A deer or dog that had maybe… fallen and died down here? The idea that it was a dead animal might had made the average person shy away, or full on turn tail and run. But that was actually a bonus for Dave, curious to see how it had decomposed with the factors of the ocean and sea-air effecting it.
It was not, in fact, a dead dear or dog. It was… well the first word that came to Dave’s mind was a pelt. But it wasn’t a pelt. It did not have the tanned hide on one side the pelts had. Instead it was more like a blanket, but if it was a blanket it was unlike any DAve had come across. Fuzzy on all sides and a slick grey color, it was clearly not synthetic but also not woven or sewn together. It was a hole piece of fur, improbable in it’s existence and nature. As Dave moved the rocks that had pinned the piece down to the rocks, Dave knew in his heart that there was something special, something… almost sacred about the object he had found.
It looked like it had seen MUCH better days. The poor fur was bedraggled, dirty and stained in several areas, the fur pushed and muddied against the natural flow or the material. However it was silky between Dave’s hands, soft in a way that made Dave want to just keep running his hands over it again and again, not dissimilar to the way one feels when they dip their hands into a warm river stream. It was enchanting. And Dave instantly knew he had to take it home with him, abandoning the tidepools as the fur took up all of his attention.
Once home, Dave found himself remaining fixated on the fur. He ran a warm bath and gently washed it by hand - doing as much google research as possible to try and not ruin the pelt on accident. After that he knew it would be best to let it dry, but something about just hanging it up and letting it get… cold? Letting the inanimate object get cold? Something about that seemed wrong to Dave. So instead he got the fireplace started and let the fur warm up and dry there.
It was somehow even more gorgeous after that. The color shifted in the lights between a downy grey to a dark charcoal. Something about the way the shadows on it fell seemed… unnatural. Incorrect. And yet Dave could not quite put his finger on what exactly it was that trigged the ‘wrong’ buzzer in his head. It was like the way AI art or bad CGI just doesn’t quite seem right, somepart of your hindbrain realizing something your conscious brain couldn’t name. But unlike those examples it was not offputting, but added to the mystery and charm of the pelt.
Dave found himself laying on his couch, facing the fire, wrapped up in the strange fur and running his hands up and down it. And strangely, something about it all, made him feel a way he never had before. Like he was not alone - but not in the way that Bro had made him feel. Like there was another person with him, laying, sharing their warmth and their breath and comfort. And Dave found himself falling into the imaginary embrace. And he slept and dreamed of nothing except the subtle push and pull of the waves.
~~~~~
Somewhere across town, Karkat shifted in his bed, and felt as though someone was running their fingers through his hair, fingers trailing soothingly down his back. And for the first time in many, many years, his insomnia subsided and Karkat fell softly into sleep.