Chapter Text
You’d been “going out” with Vriska for two weeks before the two of you finally went on a date, and she wouldn’t have it any other day except Friday—your usual movie night with Dave. Your stomach twisted uncomfortably as you sat heavily on your bed the night before your date and dialed Dave’s number. The time you spent with him had been diminishing since you’d asked Vriska out, but that wasn’t entirely your fault! Vriska seemed to know exactly when you and Dave usually hung out and pushed her way into your schedule, all blue lipstick and curling smirks, domineering in a way that made it impossible for you to say no. You licked your lips nervously, eyes fixed on the amorphous, neon shapes bouncing around your computer monitor as it slept.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Click!
“Dude, I just swiped a massive box of shitty VHS tapes the old lady downstairs was throwing away. Movie night is going to be so fucking rad this week, you don’t even know. Holy shit, there’s a copy of Coneheads in here, this is going to be—“
“Dave.” Your voice cracks. Dave falls silent, and you clear your throat and start again. “Um. Dave, I don’t thing I’m going to be able to, uh, make it to movie night this week.”
“Shit, are you sick? It can be at your house if you want, I can bring over the VHS player—“
“No!” You squeeze your eyes shut and pull your knees up to your chest. You felt sick. Your guts felt worse than the time Dad was out of town on a business trip and you tried to cook and gave yourself food poisoning. “No, I, ah, I have a date with Vriska. The only day she’s free is tomorrow.”
The silence on the other end of the phone is deafening. When Dave finally speaks, you expect a “Not cool, bro” or a “What the fuck man?”. Instead, he says:
“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it.” His voice is quiet, low. Angry. The two of you had been a little less open with each other ever since the day you decided to ask Vriska out even when Dave told you not to, but it wasn’t necessarily tense. It was hard to get Dave to lose his cool, but angry? You can’t think of a time you’d heard him angry before. You can’t force words out, your throat dry and closed up.
“Don’t lie to yourself, John. Don’t let her lie to you.” A deep breath. “That fucking bitch.”
“I’m really sorry, Dave—“ Your voice dies in your throat when another tinny click sounds in your ear, and you know he’s hung up on you. The twisting feeling in your stomach makes you feel sick, but then it does something different—it starts to burn. How can Dave be so selfish? He doesn’t own you any more than Vriska does! You’re in high school now, you can make your own decisions. You have a girlfriend, and you kind of want to kiss her, goddammit! Or at least hold her hand. Baby steps. Dave could stand to give up one damn movie night. His movies were always shitty, anyway. Yeah. Fuck Dave, you had a date tomorrow.
You stripped down to your boxers and went to brush your teeth, forced self-satisfaction thinly covering the roiling guilt in your stomach. After you spat, you tried to smile at yourself in the mirror. Confidence. Girls liked confidence. Dave could deal.
You didn’t sleep well that night.
♦
As it turned out, Vriska didn’t like ice cream and just ended up laughing at you when you got chocolate sauce on your nose, and then when you tried to walk her home she brushed you off, saying “Jeez, John, I’m a modern woman, I can take care of myself. Besides, I think if you met my mom you would shit yourself.” Then, with a snort, she was walking away with a vague “see you Monday!”. You stood among the empty picnic tables outside the shop staring after her, wondering what the hell just happened.
The weekend passes in a boring blur, with Dave still not talking to you and Rose and Jade busy with their respective lives (Jade mentioned something about a hunting trip with her grandpa, and Rose was ever the enigma—point was, nobody was on Pesterchum when you needed them). When Monday rolled around, Vriska ambushed you at the buses before you could meet up with Dave, pulling you behind her to hang out with her before class. You think you might have seen Dave pass the two of you as he headed towards homeroom, but if it was him he didn’t even look up.
After that, you had date night with Vriska every Friday, and you didn’t see Dave at all except for between classes. He kept leaving early, a cryptic text from Bro appearing on your phone around fifth period telling you to catch the bus home. Vriska seemed happy, though! One night, the two of you were sitting together on the horizontal tire swing on the playground outside the town park, both of your legs swinging in the middle of the tire, hands clutching the three chains that supported it. Vriska leaned over and brushed her lips against yours, smiling at you when she pulled away.
“I’m really glad you came tonight, John. I was starting to wonder when you were going to break one of our little date nights to go hang out with Strider.” She side-eyes you. “But you wouldn’t do that, I know now.”
You chuckle weakly. The familiar twist in your stomach comes back, just like it always does when someone mentions your best bro. Is he even your best bro anymore? It was hard to say. “Well, I don’t know if Dave wants to hang out with me anymore. More time to spend with you, I guess! Ehehe.”
Vriska flicks her bangs, but the cool night air swirling past as you gently swing the tire pushes them right back to fall over her left eye. There’s a gently rustling all around you, the fallen leaves scuttling across the ground when the wind decides to blow. It’s a little chilly, but your lips still feel warm from where Vriska kissed you.
“Good,” she says, breaking the slightly awkward silence. “I hated it when you hung out with him, you know. You two were borderling gay for each other. It was like you thought he was more important that I am.”
Instinctively, your start to open your mouth to say of course Dave is more important, you’ve known him practically since you can remember. He’s been your best friend since kindergarten, and you only met her this year—but the look on her face is steely, daring you to say it. You choke back on the words you were about to say and smile, reaching over to brush her bangs out of her eyes again. She smirks, then pulls away and jumps out of the tire, unbalancing it so her end nearly pops up and hits you in the face. You kind of fall out of the swing then, landing on your ass on the recycled rubber chips on the ground below. Her high, cackling laugh rings through the empty playground, and you blush.
“Oh my GOD, John,” she snickers. “You are soooooooo lame, jesus chist.”
She kisses you goodnight a few minutes later, smearing blue across your cheek and then punching your shoulder, not lightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, dork. Don’t freeze your ass off by staying out here too long, it’s one of your few redeeming qualities.” And with that, she’s gone again, and you realize you’ve still never seen her house. You shrug and walk home, rubbing idly at the lipstick at the corner of your mouth.
And so it goes on like that, for months. You don’t see Dave at all anymore, since your teachers seem fond of quarterly seat rearrangements and he appears to be making a conscious effort to avoid you. You do catch him staring one day near winter break, when you have a bit of a hickey left over from when Vriska attacked you that morning. Later, in the locker room, you saw that although the hickey itself wasn’t so noticeable, the blue lipstick smeared on your jaw was.
Rose has become aloof too, and you think this is mainly because Dave is clinging to his cousin almost constantly—he eats lunch with her and her friend Kanaya, does projects with her, and talks to her enough to more than make up for the time he used to talk to you. You’re not sad. You’re not! He was being a jealous asshole. Yeah. How did you ever think he was cool, look at him sulking there in his skinny jeans. Dumb emo scene poser, always wearing the shades… that you gave him…
You shake your head to clear it. You have Vriska, and that’s all that matters.
♦
You didn’t sleep well, most nights.
Vriska snaps her fingers in front of your eyes. “Heloooooooo, Earth to Egbert! Jesus Christ, I have something to say to you, so you’d better pull your head out of your ass and listen.”
You blink, refocusing your eyes. “Oh, hi, Vriska!” you say, attempting to look cheery. She's finally here! You hated when you started spiraling into those stupid dark thoughts, but she managed to pull you out of them with a quick kiss. Most of the time.
She grimaces back at you, upper lip curling. She leans back and crosses her arms, looking you up and down. You wait dutifully for what she’ll say next.
“Look, John, you’re cute and stuff, but I’m not going to lie. You can be fucking annoying sometimes, and I’m honestly pretty fucking bored the rest of the time. I want to do this before the break so I don’t have to deal with you during the holidays.”
You stare at her. Blink. “Do what, exactly? You haven’t really said anything, heh.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ll use small words so you get the message, genius. I’m breaking up with you.”
A chill trickles down your spine, and it takes you a moment to find your voice. “Wh-what?”
“Jesus, John, I thought you were smarter than that. I’ll give you a second to let it sink in. In the meantime, don’t text me. You’re annoying enough in person.” She flicks her bangs out of her eyes and turns, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “Happy holidays!” is the last thing she says before she strolls out to the buses, red Converse getting lost among the crowds of other students itching to get home for the break. You don’t move. You feel like you'd just been punched in the gut, all the wind forced from your lungs. When you finally do gasp a breath in again, the cold air burns your lungs and brings stinging tears to your eyes, although those might have already been there.
It's all you can do to keep standing there, to not collapse and let the darkness that's been prowling at the edges of your thoughts for months now overtake you. The image of the red converse plays over and over in your head. She's gone. She left.
How could she leave?
The shadows have lengthened by the time you can scrape together enough brain power to pull out your phone. The buses are long gone, and your Dad’s flight from Vancouver was delayed that morning because of snow. You need someone to come and get you, your brain finally, painfully concludes. The gears in your head feel rusty and grind unevenly, like she was the grease keeping everything running smoothly and everything was falling apart without her. You needed her. Why did she leave?
Everything feels cold, even inside your jacket, which has seen you warmly through several Seattle winters until now. You don’t think you’ve blinked since Vriska left.
Trying not to shake, you pull up your phone’s contacts. Vriska had gone through your phone a few months ago, deleting people she said she didn’t want you talking to. You hadn’t realized she deleted so many—only your Dad’s number and hers is left. A tear falls onto the screen, and you realize belatedly that it’s your own. Dave’s number was the first you entered into your phone when you first got it. How could you have let her delete it?
Your dad made you memorize his number and Bro’s in elementary school, so that you’d know them in case of an emergency. You hope Bro’s is still the same.