Chapter Text
Jane tries to roll over and gets a face full of someone's arm and someone (else's?) hair for her trouble. She rolls back the other way, rolls one too many times, and smacks into a wall.
Flailing upright, very much awake now, she's met with Dirk's lone raised brow.
He's sitting on the other side of the bed, boxing everyone else in, although Jake is curled against his back and Roxy is sprawled with her limbs flung out so that she has one arm draped over Dirk. The other arm is the one Jane just rolled into. And when she glances down, it turns out the reason her leg is asleep is because both of Roxy's legs are on top of hers.
Honestly, there's nowhere near enough room on Dirk's bed for all of them. There's nowhere near enough room in Dirk's room for all of them, even if someone had been willing to take the floor (no one ever is, and Jane shies away from thinking too hard about why).
Jane sighs and props herself more firmly against the wall, trying and failing to disentangle her legs from Roxy's. “Dirk, are you seriously still standing watch?”
Dirk shrugs and looks away, but Jane doesn't miss the way he leans back into Jake. He only thinks it's casual. It isn't.
Where Jake hardly stops talking long enough to breathe, Dirk never speaks around them now that they've all (finally) met in person. Jane privately thinks it's cute how awkward and unfamiliar he must be with the sound of his own voice, if painfully sad. Jake keeps up a running narration now that there's someone to talk back; Dirk has reverted mostly to text, she thinks because he doesn't know how to keep his emotions out of his voice.
Roxy's commentary goes without saying.
Actually, between Roxy and Jake, Jane's not sure anyone but her has actually noticed how little Dirk talks now. There's no silence left to fill and that was Dirk's problem in the first place, judging by how loud his speakers go whenever she accidentally turns them on (not the whole problem, judging by the long, silent conversations with himself she's seen crop up in the occasional hastily-closed text file, but she isn't thinking about that).
“We talked about this,” Jane says, exasperated, when the silence stretches. “We're here so you can sleep. There are the robots to keep watch. That's why we're here, remember?” Anyone else's room would be more spacious, but it's hard enough to get Dirk to go to sleep. If there's the slightest chance anyone else is in danger he's liable to keep going until he finally just collapses. She sort of suspects he'd still be liable to do that even if he were (still) alone.
Dirk shrugs again.
Jane groans and bangs her head against the wall. “This is defeating the point, you know that, right? Look, I'm awake now! I'll stand watch, while you sleep.” She wriggles again, this time managing to dislodge Roxy slightly. “Quick, let's switch places.”
Dirk snorts silently and shakes his head no before going right back to staring out the window.
Jane gropes under the bedsheets (whoops Roxy) until she finds a smuppet, then lobs it not at Dirk, but at Jake.
It hits him full in the face. He mumbles in his sleep, winds himself tighter around Roxy's arm, and absently headbutts Dirk before stilling again.
Jane bangs her head against the wall again.
He's not looking at her but she knows Dirk is smirking. She knows.
She throws the next smuppet at Roxy instead and Roxy's reaction does not disappoint.
The other girl explodes upright in a giggly flurry of limbs, knocking Jake off the bed altogether and startling Dirk into a strife stance in the middle of the room. He's as careful with his swords as ever but at least one smuppet dies an early death because this room really is insanely crowded.
“Dirk!” Roxy giggles, rolling out of bed in a maneuver that Jane's brain refuses to accept just happened. Roxy had been all tangled up in the sheets and the minefield-scattered smuppets and Jane, how could she possibly just spring up like that? “Heeeeey y're sposed to be alseep, silly! Asleep! Sleeeeeeep, DiStri.” She waves her hands in front of his face, drawing them apart slowly. “Sleeeeep.”
Dirk lowers the sword, then puts it away after another long moment, but he doesn't make a move back towards the bed.
Jake snorts and flops over on the floor, still dead to the world.
Roxy flings her arms around Dirk and lets gravity take over, falling back to the bed so hard she bounces and yanking Dirk down with her.
Jane snickers even as she scrambles out of the way. When in doubt, sic his moirail on him, whatever that means. To Jane it means that Dirk is apparently unable to say no to Roxy, which she exploits shamelessly.
She probably should have scrambled off the bed while she had the chance. Rats. Now Dirk and Roxy both pin her in, and it's only a moment before the two of them lean over and haul Jake up again. He actually wakes up for a second, long enough to mumble “Thanks,” before slumping over the friend-pile.
Dirk taps something on the side of his shades and Jane is privately sure that several robots just ratcheted up an alert level or two. Dirk is kind of (justifiably) paranoid.
Roxy flings both arms around his neck and curls herself into him, causing the bed to dip in the middle and Jane and Jake both to roll in towards their friends. Jane catches herself and manages to squeeze a little closer to the wall (her legs still end up tangled with Roxy's somehow, but that's fine), and Jake just ends up pressed up against Dirk's other side with his head on his friend's chest.
Her heart still aches a little at the sight but even so Jane can't stop her smile when Dirk freezes for an instant, then slowly shifts to tuck Jake's head under his chin and put an arm around him. If Dirk is going to sleep at all it'll be while he has such visceral evidence that they're all right here and safe.
(She's caught him getting up and looking around to check everyone is still here and still breathing more times than she wants to count).
(She's gotten up to make sure he didn't go any farther from them than the roof more times than she wants to count. Because she knows Dirk's not... he's not entirely like her other friends. Jake only had his grandma and that briefly, and Roxy only the carapacians, but that's enough that they don't have the problems Dirk does. Because she doesn't know how obvious it is to the others but it's clear to her that even though Dirk is just as silently, desperately grateful to have other people around at last, sometimes he just can't handle it, and that's when Jane finds him alone on the roof or locked in the shower or, one or two times she's absolutely never going to let him know she knows about, huddled miserably in the closet in a pile of smuppets).
Despite her best efforts, Jane falls asleep before Dirk finally does.
When she wakes back up, he's sitting up against the headrest and fiddling with robot parts (she assumes), so who can say for sure if he actually slept? But she can hear Roxy in the shower (singing something Jane is pretty sure she doesn't want to know all the words to) and she's pretty sure Rox would have made sure Dirk got some sleep, so. She did her best, it's out of her hands now.
How in the world does he sleep with those shades on. All right, so she's seen Jake sleep with his darn skulltop on, but Jake is apparently the world's heaviest sleeper so that's far less surprising. Except for the part where every attempt to sleep on his island has resulted on everyone on high alert for not just game constructs but also giant white monsters, which, okay, makes his ability to sleep deeply anywhere somewhat disconcerting.
She used to wonder half-seriously how a boy as careless as Jake could survive living on his island. Now she wonders entirely seriously, especially once she's seen her friend's scars.
They don't exactly make any attempt to conceal them. She doubts it ever occurred to any of them to worry about it (why would it who would they be hiding them from-). Roxy has the fewest, scattered tiny scars from mistakes made learning to dodge and handle a gun, but she was still the safest of the three; Dirk has more, littered everywhere from building and fighting robots, strange looking scars from electrical burns and more from when he fought robots he'd built to outmatch himself.
Jake has the most by far, pale lines stark on his tan skin, darkened dots less noticeable but everywhere. His arms are the most heavily scarred, defensive wounds from the beasts on his island; there's a prominent knotted dark gash on the inside of his left arm that looks like it maybe had stitches at some point, though knowing Jake more likely he just wrapped a clean cloth around it until the bleeding stopped. Some of his scars are lighter than his skin, some are darker, and Jane's not sure why that is until she finally asks Roxy and learns that scarring can be different colors depending on how deep the injury is initially. That does not help. Even the fact that her friends know that does not help. There are parallel lines on Jake's chest whose distance apart make it terrifyingly clear how large the claws that caused it were. There's even a faint bite scar on one side of his nose and she's pretty sure the story behind that would give her a heart attack.
There's a scar right across the vein on his right wrist that nearly gave them all heart attacks, though he reassured them repeatedly it had been 'just' an injury from one of the frightened tiny flying bulls on the island.
It doesn't help that Roxy and Dirk are worryingly skinny. Jake at least looks like he's at a healthier weight, but he also inhales any food he can get his hands on. Jane makes a point of getting them all over to her own land at least once a week so she can bake because no, really, they all need to put some weight on, she can count Dirk's ribs from here.
(Did he ever have enough to eat? Did any of them?)
(She thinks of every meal she couldn't finish and every time she let leftovers spoil and all the cafeteria food she saw end up in the trash each day and her insides twist uncomfortably).
They have a schedule worked out for the shower by now- usually Roxy showers first in the morning, then Jane, and Dirk showers at night so he can hog all the hot water to himself for two hours.
Jake showers whenever the rest of them get fed up, shove him into the bathroom, block the door and yell until they hear water running. That happens increasingly often now that they all share a bed.
Jane had showered before Dirk last night though, filthy from falling into more than one mud puddle while fighting, so it's just Roxy this morning. Which is kind of a private disappointment to Jane- there's a lot of pretty neat automated stuff in Dirk's shower and she usually enjoys seeing what some of it does. The noise-activated sound system is by far her favorite feature, at least as of right now.
But Roxy in the shower and the two of them awake in turn means it's probably time to make the first attempts to wake Jake up, so Jane reluctantly shifts to get ready.
Stretching, Jane shoves Jake off the bed and into the smuppet pile. That doesn't accomplish anything but Dirk rolling his eyes behind his shades (does he know she can tell he's doing that? She has no idea). That's not a surprise. That's nowhere near enough.
Jane climbs off the bed- a bit awkwardly, since of course Dirk doesn't bother moving. She darts into the bathroom, hurriedly gets a glass of water before Roxy can hop out of the shower (the girl has no shame), and returns to upend it over Jake's head.
That works. She thinks Dirk might actually start to snicker before he hurriedly cuts it off as Jake startles awake.
“I say,” he complains, combing through his hair with his fingers. That doesn't make a difference that Jane can see but he drops his fingers, apparently satisfied. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Jane says at the exact same time Dirk makes a faint affirmative noise.
Jane notes that it's the first real noise Dirk's made in two days. She doesn't think it's a coincidence that it was in response to Jake.
Of course, now that he's awake, Jake's not about to leave room for anyone else to talk. “Oh that's just jolly good fun then, isn't it? Wake up a bloke like that, you're liable to give him a dangblasted heart attack,” he complains, sitting up and kneading at his chest, giving his shirt an affronted look like he suspects it's somehow complicit in his abrupt awakening.
Roxy eels into the room, clad in nothing more than a towel, and chirps, “Then it's a good thing we're all in good with a Prince of Heart, right?” She snags one of Dirk's old shirts and... someone's pants before skipping off again.
The first few times this happened Jake was bright red and unable to speak without stammering for at least an hour. Now he just keeps going, because Roxy is Roxy and no one is going to be able to explain the concept of shame to her. They've given up trying.
“That isn't remotely how these newfangled powers work and you know it.” Jake gets up and looks around, frowning. “What were we doing today?”
Dirk grunts, and tosses what he's been working on at Roxy, who's already back and dressed and catches it reflexively.
It's a gas mask in bright pink, the design subtly invoking a cat.
He tosses a second mask, in sky blue, to Jane.
“Capital idea!” Jake enthuses, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet a moment before snatching up his own mask. “We've been on all sorts of adventures as a foursome-” -and of course he doesn't notice everyone else's quickly masked expressions at that, of course he doesn't- “- But we've yet to adventure all as one here! Our final frontier!”
There's a long pause as everyone tries to figure out whether Jake's even aware of what he's referencing. When he shows no sign of either realizing it or ceasing to ramble about what kind of mischief four can get up to where two couldn't, everyone collectively absconds to the roof, masks in place.
Jane's mask is not actually all that different from Roxy's. While the Void hero's mask seems to be permanently grinning, Jane's suggests a far more subdued smile, although it does still seem ever so slightly feline. How long had these taken Dirk? They've all been in and around his apartment for some time now, and Jane doesn't remember seeing him work on the additional gas masks at all.
And it doesn't take long to figure out why Dirk might have wanted to bring the girls along as well and alone time be damned, because Jake has an extremely lenient view of personal safety. He leaps chasms so deep no one can see the bottom. He misses ledges and scrambles for holds. He darts ahead and then stumbles back with his pistols up, shooting wildly at whatever he's brought back to them this time. Occasionally he forgets to aim before he shoots, which Jane figures was probably less of an issue when the boy had an entire island to himself, uncounted monsters and a single robot. Stray bullets would have been less of an issue than they are now, where Jane and Dirk and even Roxy, who at least knows her own way around a firearm, have to throw themselves out of trajectories far more than should ever, ever, ever be happening.
Also, Jake never shuts up.
“Bravo, good jump there Roxy! Was a tad bit nervous there for a moment when you had to yank for that branch- oh, spot on, Jane! Good show! Dirk, how spanking, never would have thought to use those roots as a ladder- oh, yes, I suppose we all could have used that bridge, dreadfully sorry, didn't mean to shoot out the supports there- dust or whatnot in my eyes I suppose.” Jane is positive he's beaming under the mask. “This is brilliant, a real ripsnorter, I've no idea why we didn't think of it sooner! Oh, whoops, incoming. Rifles ready everyone! Well, varying strife specibi ready, I suppose, but that doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it- ooph! I say, chap, let a man finish what he's saying!” Jake casually riddles an imp with bullets whilst still chattering a mile a minute.
Okay, Jane is revising her opinion. Dirk is quiet not only because Jake won't shut up (ever, he never shuts up, never, ever, and did that imp just slap its hands over its ears and abscond?) but also because he needs all his concentration to prevent Jake's bringing every enemy within earshot down on them from swiftly becoming fatal.
Yeah, no wonder he wanted backup.
And of course, Dirk being Dirk he can't just say so, so all those nights in his apartment weren't for added robotic security after all- it was so he had access to everything he needed to make the new gas masks.
(Also, he won't admit it, but Dirk is just as fascinated by being able to finally, finally actually touch another person as Roxy and Jake, but that's still something Jane is determinedly not thinking about).
She almost wishes she was back on her own planet with Roxy, but-
“...and man, it was so hard when you had to get off Pesterchum to go to, like, school- what even is that like, anyway, Jane? Is it really like in the movies? With jocks and preps and nerds and Heathers and queen bees? Do they really do senior pranks? Is Mathletes a thing? No, never mind, later- but anyway! It was always really frustrating because you'd be all 'c'mon Rox go out and socialize you're always on' and I'd be going 'haha yeah' thinking yeah, okay, I think maybe I still have some canned green beans or something I can share with the carapacians? But they don't really get humans and they don't talk really and it wasn't the same, at all, and Dirk was so far away and maaaan we'd talk when you guys weren't on of course but we kinda ran outta topics a lot? There wasn't a lot to say about current events, like wow hey hi Dirk is the world still totally fucked oh hell yeah it is, second verse same as the first, so we didn't really-”
Yeah. That.
She can so sympathise with Dirk right now, because Roxy spent just as much time leading enemies to them back in the Land of Crypts and Helium as Jake is doing now.
It doesn't hurt that Jake's not talking about topics that make Jane feel stupidly guilty, and then feel stupid forfeeling guilty, because it's not like she picked out where each of them was gonna grow up.
But later, when the four of them are sitting on the roof of Dirk's apartment passing a flask around (thankfully one of Dirk's, so it's actually just clean water), Jane stares out at the horizon and pictures ocean stretching out unbroken all around her.
Then she thinks about the painfully cramped apartment beneath her.
She shakes herself and looks back at her friends.
Roxy's giggling at something Jake said. Dirk's trying not to smile. Jake enthusiastically loops an arm around Dirk's shoulder and she can tell Dirk's fighting himself for a moment before he gives in and leans heavily into Jake. Roxy leans over and pushes Dirk's head down onto Jake's shoulder, laughing.
(Roxy keeps a hand buried in Dirk's hair, scratching at the roots of it. Dirk shifts so his whole side presses against Jake. Jake's hand is clamped so tightly around Dirk's arm that his knuckles are white and the scars on them stand out).
Jane's moving forward before she realises it, hugging Roxy from behind. Roxy laughs again and squirms around until she can hug Jane back.
“I don't know if I ever actually said it,” Jane manages, though Roxy is squeezing her hard enough to restrict her breathing, “But it's really great to finally meet all of you in person.”
As Roxy topples them over onto the boy's laps, Jane feels more than hears Dirk huff out a breath just as Jake says warmly, “Yeah, it really is.”