Work Text:
You are breathing in concrete dust and the smell of blood when you feel your phone start to buzz in your pocket.
It's really not worth the extra wave of pain moving sends rippling through your torso—if you didn't know better, you might've come to the conclusion that one of your probably-broken ribs had punctured a lung, that's how much breathing hurts right now—but you still find it within yourself to reach around and tug the offending object out onto the floor beside you. You shift your neck a little, grit your teeth against the snarl of pain the movement threatens to push out of you, and study your phone through half-open eyes.
The screen has lit up bright red, the words crowding the bloodied screen, all scrambling for your attention in an even more incessant manner than normal. This time, you don't bother to bite back a groan.
Your name is Rose Strider, and of all the things you want to deal with right now, Dave Lalonde's tangential rampages about whatever mind-numbingly pointless subject he’s been gripped in the throes of since you last spoke that morning are definitely not one of them. They don't even come close to making it on the list.
Alas, a promise is a promise—even if you’re already planning on getting him back for roping you into that shit in due time—and you suppose not fulfilling it would be a categorically dick move, even for you. Even if you really, really don’t want to right now.
Regardless, though, you do have to prioritize here a little. There is an extensive number of things you have to attend to before you can even allow yourself to begin the necessary mental preparations for embarking on a conversation with Dave. First up, you have the main talk you’re completing right now, which is laying spread-eagled on across the roof deck, cheek pressed into the searing-hot ground, silently working on getting your body to a point where breathing does not feel like you're sucking lungfuls of broken glass down your windpipe. When you eventually reach that milestone—based on past experience, the way your vision is swimming, and the exact degree to which the sun above you is starting to burn your shoulders and neck, you're giving it about ten minutes before this happens—you plan on hauling yourself to your feet, collecting your knives from whatever corner of the roof deck they were kicked into, and head back down to your apartment. Presuming this is a course of action you get through without passing out or breaking your neck by falling headfirst down the stairs or somehow roping yourself into round two of getting your ass handed to you on a cheap paper plate, you then plan on locking yourself in the bathroom for an extended period of time with a bottle of antiseptic, as many rolls of gauze you can get your hands on, and a needle and thread. You try and avoid self-surgery when possible—you've heard one too many blank-faced, blithe remarks about the medical dangers of contracting gangrene to feel entirely comfortable with the process—but given the fact that the air around you is so heavy with the smell of blood it feels like you're drinking down mouthfuls of it, it might be prudent to forego any medical reservations you have about stitching yourself up for today. For your own sake.
Unless the smell of blood is a parting gift from your brother. Perhaps, in the haze of the fighting, the adrenaline-induced tunneling of your vision, you managed to wound him much worse than you thought, and his trek back downstairs was not one of his typical bored indifference but one of barely concealed injury. Perhaps he is in the kitchen now, face a dull mask of agony, treating his wounds with paper towels and the vodka he keeps in the second cabinet to the left of the oven.
Or perhaps you just got beaten again. Really, kicking his ass even just a little is a nice thought to entertain, but logically, you know it didn’t happen; if it did, you definitely would not be the one lying on the ground feeling for all the world like you'd just had the living daylights beaten out of you.
Or you would be dead. He's temperamental like that.
But you’re getting sidetracked here; back to the list.
All and all, you're pretty satisfied with it. Provided you get through everything else with relative ease, you suppose you can spare Dave the time of day—you sort of have to anyways, even if it's nice to tell yourself you have a choice in these matters sometimes. But even as a feeling of begrudging acceptance starts to set in as you resign yourself to the notion of enduring his bizarre metaphors and convoluted psychobabble for upwards of two hours later today, you still find that nothing in you really wants to deal with Dave Lalonde. You don't even want to think about dealing with Dave Lalonde right now. Just the mere thought of entrapping yourself into some assbackwards exchange with him makes your teeth grind together, and you're totally certain that's not to do with the now-nauseating waves of pain emanating from the left side of your ribcage.
Okay, maybe it is a little. Fuck, that hurts.
It’s your own fault, though, so you can’t really complain here. You were slow today; you were too focused on getting a good hit on your brother to remember his irritating habit for striking low. And for kicking. And for wearing those god-awful steel-tipped combat boots he bought off Ebay last month.
You think for a moment about setting those things on fire—not only are they distressingly effective during strifes, but they smell like something died in them three years ago, and just existing in the same stratosphere as them is starting to drive you up the fucking wall—before reasoning that whatever virulent sense of satisfaction such a course of action would give you would be vastly outweighed by how badly your brother would rock your shit if you did so.
God, it would be nice, though. You close your eyes, forcing another breath through your body. So fucking nice.
Beside you, your phone continues to vibrate. The screen is now so filled with red text you can't even see your background, and you let out another groan. It echoes around the walls of the deck, somehow ear-splittingly loud, and for a second you wonder if your brother can hear you.
Then you let out a laugh that turns into a cough at the end, sharp and grating. You're not sure why. You didn't think anything funny.
Your phone buzzes again. You roll onto your back and have to grip your forearms, nails digging into your skin, to stave off the urge telling you to pick the piece of technology up and throw it against the concrete beside you. Perhaps, like burning the combat boots, you would gain some initial satisfaction from it, but in the end, doing so would cause more problems than it would solve. Relying on the decade-old desktop you somehow managed to set up in your room without your brother making you strife for it for all internet access would be a bad move; the thing is held together by practically nothing but duct tape and your own sheer force of will, and even that isn't enough to stop it from getting so hot you're scared it'll burn a hole through your desk sometimes.
And if that thing finally decided to kick the bucket on you, where would you be? Probably nothing more than bored out of your fucking skull and missing your ability to talk to Jade and John, for one.
And Dave too. He isn't all that bad. If you were absolutely certain there was no chance in any living soul overhearing you, you might even go so far as to say he's probably your best friend—one of them, at any rate. He can be entertaining to talk to; at the very least, his convoluted metaphors and habit for combining the academic jargon of his innumerable psychology textbooks with the verbiage typically found in the more eclectic of internet chat rooms keeps you on your toes.
Really, he's not that bad.
Just persistent. Just nosy. Just entirely too perceptive for his own good—and yours. Add that to his penchant for attempting to psychoanalyze you like he's a well-practiced shrink and you're some bratty little kid your parents had to drag kicking and screaming to his office, and he verges into the territory of utterly insufferable more than occasionally. You find yourself thanking whatever deity still bothers to listen to you that they constructed the world so that Dave lives on the other side of the country; were he even a fraction closer to you, you're almost certain he would've showed up at your door by now, DSM-V in one hand, notepad in the other, ridiculously serious expression plastered across his face. You need to talk to me, Rose, he would say, eyes wide and unblinking, full of a parodical sort of earnestness; you need to talk about things.
At this point in the hypothetical scenario, you would slam the door in his face. Or, if he had worked his way inside—which, knowing him, he most definitely would have—you would probably throw a knife or two in his general direction. Or put on your brother's stupid boots and kick him in the ribs.
Another wave of pain rolls through you, starting in the center of your chest and expanding outwards like a firework, and you bite down on the inside of your cheek hard enough to draw blood—as if there isn't a short supply of that around you already, you think, mouth twisting. On second thoughts, you would not do the latter thing. Infuriating as his smarmy sense of all-knowingness may be, even Dave in his worst moments does not deserve whatever hell your brother's shoes have wrecked on your body today.
You cough again and start praying to every god you know the name of that the taste of blood in the back of your throat is just residual and not born of some internal bleeding. God knows how many items to your to-do list that particular turn of events would add.
No, he does not deserve this.
Not that there's something negative to be deserved here, really; this is sparring, plain and simple, and you are certain that Dave would see your side of things much better was his mother not the sort of parent who prefers her only interactions with her child to be ones of useless coddling and overbearing affection.
If things were different for him, you are certain he would see nothing wrong with this. Because there isn’t.
Something in your chest creaks—actually fucking creaks, goddamnit—and you grimace again. Okay, so there are a few things wrong with this—this being your general medical state, obviously—but , again, that's your own fault. Not your brother's. The two of you are in mutual agreement in regards to that fact; of course it’s Dave who has to be the only one to take issue with the proceedings of your relationship.
After all, you’re the one actually living with your brother. The logic follows, then, that you’re the one who can make the most accurate assessments in regards to the dynamics between and him. What does Dave know, a thousand miles away, trapped in the veritable bubble of his backwater upstate New York town? What new, factually-correct observation could he make about your life that you yourself hadn't already ascertained? What advice could he give you that you haven't already tried following or ruled out as ludicrous and stupid?
Too slow, lil sis, too fuckin' slow.
Nothing, that's what.
You cough again, and roll onto your side. The trains of thought careening around you that at breakneck speed are starting to get annoying. Now might be a good time to work on standing up.
Turns out, it's hard work. You fall over twice and acquire a newly-scraped pair of knees for your trouble, but you do it all the same, goddamnit. The universe is going to have to grant you a hell of a lot more than a couple busted ribs and katana slashes if it wants to keep you on the ground.
You carry the sense of vindication that thought gives you as you start up the search for your long-lost knives. Mercifully, they're not too far away; they lay discarded at the center of the roof deck, only a few feet from where you had been laying. You squat down to pick them up, ignoring the feeling of the ground pitching underneath you as you do so, and captchalogue them safely away, careful to keep them in the front card of your sylladex. You're almost entirely certain the earlier sparring match concluded your interactions with your brother for today—and maybe even tomorrow, too, if he's particularly busy with work—but he's always been one for curveballs.
And besides, if he knows he caught you unawares, it'll only be worse.
It's a good thing, then, that by the time you get to the door leading back down to the apartment, you're feeling almost normal again. Your torso still aches, and when you turn your head too fast or breathe in too hard the world around you starts to spin, but you've definitely had worse. You've since determined that the taste of blood in your mouth was in fact residual, your lungs have assuredly not been punctured, and you're able to walk in a straight line, so, really, there's basically nothing to complain about here.
You grip the handrail beside the stairs a little harder than necessary, and you think it might not be entirely to help you keep your balance. Your knuckles go white.
As always, you sense your brother's presence in the kitchen before you see it. He's sitting at one of the bar stools, laptop open on the counter in front of him, lighting his face up in an grayish glow, glinting off the frames of the stupid sunglasses permanently affixed to his face.. You're more than a little pleased to see you clearly got some good hits in on him before he wiped the deck with you; one of his forearms looks recently bandaged, red seeping through the rolls of gauze, and his normally-immaculate polo shirt is stained with streaks of dust and blood. There's a cut running the length of his cheek, half-congealed blood collecting in little droplets at the edge of his jaw, glinting there like little rubies.
At your side, your hands twitch.
He doesn't give any verbal indication that he's detected your presence as you step into the room, but you can feel the way he shifts from ten feet away: his shoulders draw up, his chin raises a fraction, his jaw tightens. You've never been able to discern whether these changes are simply out of instinctual habit or an attempt to make himself more threatening, more imposing in your presence. If it's the latter, the efforts are honestly laughable; any reason you have to be unnerved by your brother's presence is certainly not going to stem from the degree of curvature his spine holds while he sits at the bar editing his shitty puppet porn.
No, any adverse sentiments would probably stem from the aforementioned wiping the deck with you, only increased by the fact that him doing so is not exactly a rare occurrence. As it is, such sentiments do not arise, of course, but if they did, it would be from things such as that.
Because it's your brother. Shitty and cold and idiotically ironic as he may be, he's still your brother, and the idea of him making you unnerved, or uncomfortable, or afraid, even, is ridiculous, really.
The idea of anything making you afraid is ridiculous. You're a Strider. Striders aren't afraid of things. The man sitting at the computer is living proof of this.
You watch him for another second, an odd, tense feeling starting to build in your chest. You liken it to the sensation of bracing for a car crash for a few seconds, but then the feeling starts to irritate you, so you push it aside. At any rate, upright as you may be, your torso still isn't feeling that good, so you shake your head a little and head off down the hall to the bathroom.
You hadn't realized how much tension had been building in you until it all floods out in a rush the second you're able to lock the door behind you. You can practically feel the muscles in your neck and shoulders and jaw knotting as you stand there for a second, back against the wall, palms pressed flat against the plaster, breathing in and out for a second.
Then one of the inhales turns into a cough halfway through, a spike of pain drilling down through the center of your chest, and you remember why you came downstairs in the first place.
Medical attention. Right. You give your umpteenth grimace of the afternoon and turn to face the mirror.
Then really wish you hadn't.
You know, it's days like today where you are so beyond grateful that it's the middle of July—and that your brother is religiously convinced in the fallibility of the American public education system, thus meaning you haven't set foot inside a school since fifth grade—because holy fuck, there is no chance in heaven or hell you could go outside looking like this and not get CPS called on your ass in two seconds flat. Shit.
One side of your face is streaked with blood running down from a cut at your hairline, the stuff half-dried along the side of your cheek and neck, staining the collar of your shirt an ugly brown. There's a series of scrapes and cuts along your chin and nose, coupled with one gash running along the length of your jaw that, based on the jaggedness of it, is definitely going to leave a scar. It's not bleeding anymore, though—well, not much, at least—so you leave your treatment of it at a few experimental pokes and subsequent soft hisses of pain—stings like a motherfucker, of course—and turn your attention to the rest of your visage.
The problem with wearing tank tops and tank tops exclusively is, of course, the unobstructed access your brother's swords have to your shoulders. Though in reality you reason that a thin layering of cloth would do little but put you through the painful ordeal of peeling torn-up fabric away from your wounds, staring at the mass of cuts and bruises layering your left shoulder, you can't help but long for there to have been at least some protection. Just a little.
Luckily enough, though, the wounds are just surface level; the bruises and cuts will heal by themselves within a few days, and saying as you're able to roll your shoulder with only a dull wash of pain following, the worst internal damage you've sustained there is probably just a strained muscle or two.
Which is just as well, really, because you don't even have to pull your shirt up to figure out how royally fucked up your side is. You do so anyways—somewhere in the back of your mind, a miniature Dave emerges, mumbling about self-inflicted masochism; you beat him back with a broom, scowling—and are awarded with an eyeful of purple.
You squint at the mirror, frowning. Maybe purple isn't the right descriptor. Perhaps red would be better—a dark, blood red that makes the back of your throat tighten to look at. You don't think your ribs are broken, but they've definitely born the brunt of a few good kicks from those fucking boots, and you'd be deeply surprised if they weren't at least cracked by now. The still-bleeding gash just above your hip isn't helping matters much either. You touch your fingers to it, hissing under your breath, and they come away bright red, glinting in the flickering light above you. The whole bathroom is starting to smell like iron and oranges.
It's not looking at the wounds that bothers you, really—though the sight of your own blood splattered across your body, half-congealed and sticky, does sort of make your stomach turn—nor is it the heady smell of your own blood; it's the healing time for all this that's really worrying. The ribs will take upward of a month to re-knit themselves back together, and though upon further inspection you're able to discern that it doesn't need stitches, the cut on your side certainly won't be good to move around with for a few days—and that's being beyond stringent—and the notion of you being afforded a recovery period any greater than forty-eight hours—much less a few days, much less a month—is practically hysterical.
You grit your teeth, fingers curling around the hem of your shirt, and stare your stomach down some more in the mirror.
Fuck.
Honestly, as much as you're one to complain about how dingy and cramped the bathroom is, you're a little grateful for its small dimensions right now. It makes turning around to throw up everything you've eaten in the past twenty four hours into the toilet a ridiculously easy process.
You stand there for a second, doubled up at the waist, stomach churning in time with the dull throb in your ribs. Breathe in deeply through your nose, exhale loudly through pursed lips. Dig your nails into your thighs through the holes in your jeans. Bite back a shudder.
The good news is, by the time you straighten up, you feel a million times better. It's like someone's flicked a switch in your brain; your sphere of focus shrinks almost instantly, tunneling until it encompasses the basic steps you have to run through to treat your wounds and nothing more. You scrub the blood off your face and neck as much as you can, the water lukewarm and metallic. Deciding to leave your face and shoulder as they are now, you amass what supplies you can find—today it's just the last of a roll of gauze and a bottle of vodka you keep under the sink that serves as antiseptic when needed—and perch yourself on the edge of the tub, dabbing at the cut on your stomach with damp pieces of toilet paper and alcohol-soaked towels, finally wrapping your torso with the last of the gauze, all the while not thinking much about anything except for the movements of your hands and the cold tile under your feet.
You tie off the end of the bandage and drop your shirt back down, forcing a short breath out through your teeth.
This is your element, after all. Even more so than sparring on the roof.
The bad news—because really, you suppose there always has to be bad news as well with these sorts of things—reveals itself as soon as you haul yourself to your feet and start rifling through the cabinets, muttering whatever obscenities pop into your head first as dull flares of pain continue to run up and down the length of your ribcage. It's only after you've turned every available hiding space in the cramped room inside out that you're willing to acknowledge its arrival, though.
There are no painkillers.
You are out of painkillers.
Motherfucker.
A not-so-small part of you is suddenly overwhelmed with the impulse to put your first through the bathroom mirror. You're stopped from bringing this desire to fruition only by a slightly-larger part of you that reminds you of how unappealing the prospect of spending the next twenty minutes cutting your hands and feet up as you try to sweep up the broken glass sounds. It's not on the to-do list, you reason. It'd be too much of a hassle.
In fact, you'd almost be willing to do nothing about it—by now, you're tired enough to the point that you think you could probably go to sleep regardless of any extenuating circumstance, much less some manageable pain in your ribs—but then you shift just a fraction in the wrong direction and suddenly find yourself doubled up again, gripping at your forearms, head swimming as another dull explosion of pain works its way up your side. For a second you think you're going to pass out—no time to reposition so your forehead doesn't crack against the edge of the sink when you pitch forward, you think a little dazedly, and almost laugh—but then your vision refocuses enough for you to stand up, swaying a little.
The inside of your mouth tastes like dust. Every atom of air you take in feels misaligned, grating painfully against your trachea, smashing around the inside of your lungs in a way that makes your stomach wrench painfully. It's stupid, really—it's not like you should even fucking need painkillers to deal with this shit—but the hot, sharp feeling expanding throughout the left side of your torso hasn't subsided enough for your resolve to remain anywhere near where it should be.
You move on autopilot; you're almost surprised when, suddenly, you find yourself standing back in the center of the kitchen, staring your brother down, and opening your mouth to speak.
"Do you have any painkillers?"
Your voice comes out hoarse, raw-edged, a little shaky with lack of use. Everything between the two of you is so nonverbal that sometimes you can go days and days and days without speaking to anyone.
At the counter, your brother presses the backspace key a few times in quick succession, the corner of his lip twitching a little. There's an empty orange bottle beside him, the cap discarded a few feet away; beside his left hand sits a glass of water and two, circular white pills, a fine layering of dust falling on the counter around them.
If it was anyone else, you would assume the placement of what looks like the final two painkillers in this entire fucking apartment right there out in the open was simply a gesture bearing an unintentional amount of shittiness. But it's your brother, and for all his questionable characteristics, you have never known him to be someone who does things without severely regimented intention; you know, then, that it's a deliberate move, aimed at getting a rise out of you and nothing more.
For a second you are so angry you don't even remember how to breathe.
Then he speaks.
"All out." His voice is a flat, dry drawl, the vowels lilted in as strange a way as ever, a half-formed southern accent you know he attempts to suppress with everything inside him. You've always wondered why he hates it so much—after all, it's not like it'd be a weird trait to have around here; you live in fucking Texas, for Christ's sake—but that is not what's on your mind right now.
Right now, you're thinking about decaptchaloguing your knives and sticking them right through the center of your brother's shades, one in each eye. You play the image over and over again in the back of your head, not stopping until his own katana pops up onto the counter beside him, handle tilted so it's just within easy grabbing reach, the blade still stained with blood from earlier.
At your side, your own hands twitch, and you make conscious effort not to pull your weapons out.
Sometimes you swear your brother can read your mind, and it is terrifying.
"These are mine," he says, still typing, still blank-faced, bored-looking, corners of his mouth moving like he can't decide whether he wants to smile or sneer at you. "Unless you wanna, that is."
He lets the sentence hang in the air, thick and oppressive as the heat that's been working its way through the apartment since the sun rose. The unspoken strife practically hovers above his head, the words flashing like a neon sign with the bulbs about to blow out. Taunting you. Mocking you. Trying to get a rise.
Because that is the core of your relationship with him: he goads you in his weird, impassive, nonverbal way, and you goad him right back, spitting out insults into his ears even as he kicks your knives out of reach, punting Cal off the top of the roof deck, erasing his Xbox data and scratching his records and deleting his latest video files before he has the chance to upload them, and doing this all with ruthless satisfaction until his hand is wrapped around the neckline of your shirt and he's throwing you across the roof, katana already in hand.
And even then, with blood in your mouth or a blade at your neck or broken ribs keeping you on the ground, wheezing and coughing, it's still fun. Fun in the way you imagine arson might be: angry and bitter and thrilling enough to make your head spin. He is a man of few words, your brother, but even he has silent ways of transmitting the fact that you've pissed him off, and seeing this makes you so indescribably gleeful sometimes.
The phantom Dave in your head starts muttering about masochism and self-destruction again. You ignore him.
So, if you're being truthful here, you would love for nothing more than to participate in any activity that could guarantee you at the least the slightest chance of being able to impale your brother in three different places—or at least just make that stupid impassive facade crumble just a little, goddamnit—but you are also not an idiot, nor have your ribs stopped hurting enough to rise to the bait. You'll probably pay for it later—he hates you backing down from fights as much as he hates you starting them—but you figure that's a problem for a later time. The day after tomorrow, if you're lucky.
"It's fine."
You watch as he scrapes the two pills into the palm of his hand and tosses the back into his mouth, swallowing them dry.
Your hands twitch again. You breathe through your teeth.
"Sorry, lil sis."
He doesn't sound it in the slightest.
You leave him to continue pounding out the newest script for his latest breakthrough in cinematography, or whatever he thinks he's making, and head upstairs. The process is harder than you'd like to admit; twice you have to stop to catch your breath, massaging the space around your ribs with the heel of your hand, and by the time you make it to your room, you have to physically restrain yourself from passing out on the center of your rug. The thing is probably filthy. God knows what laying on it with a bunch of open wounds would do to your body. Unnerving thoughts of gangrene on your mind once again, you force yourself to make it to your bed—which is not a bed so much as it's two mattresses stacked on top of each other, one which you took off the side of the street last Christmas, with a few ratty blankets thrown on top—before collapsing.
For a second you just lay there, staring up at the cracks in your ceiling, vision spinning only a little, before you remember the final item on your to-do list. The groan you let out seems to reverberate around your entire body, bouncing around the inside of your beaten-up ribcage. You drop your hands onto your face and keep them there for a second, breathing methodically into your palms, listening to the way the air whistles a little.
As much as you desperately just want to sleep—want to do anything that won't involve talking to Dave Lalonde, really—you know you cannot leave him hanging. He's temperamental enough about getting ignored as it is; given the fact that he probably ascertained the reason for your abrupt departure from your previous conversation as being strife-related, you basically have to respond to him within the next five minutes before he lapses into a full-scale freak out. You've never been able to tell if he's joking about calling the cops on you—you don't even know how he would do that, realistically speaking—but if there's one thing you've learnt about Dave over the course of your friendship with him, it's to never suspect he can't do anything. You have the sneaking suspicion he can hear those assumptions, even from halfway across the country, and subsequently does the thing in question just to spite you.
You pull your phone out of your pocket again and scrub at the dried blood on the screen with the flat of your hand, frowning. You know, because he's a little bitch like that.
-- tenebroseTephrosis [TT] began pestering therapistGridelin [TG] --
TG: wow
TG: she fuckin lives
TG: ding dong the witch is actually not dead then i guess
TG: and i just got off the phone with the funeral director too damn it
TT: So heartwarming to know that’s how you spend your time while I’m gone.
TG: well what else was i supposed to do
TG: you were afk for a long ass time strider
TG: five hours and fourteen minutes long to be specific
TG: which a marked increase from the two and a half to three hours you normally spend strifing
TG: a dude gets bored
TT: You keep a record of that?
TG: you bet i do
TG: i have a spreadsheet
TG: i do not come to fuck around
TT: Jesus.
TT: You’re neurotic.
TG: and by the sound of it you just got your ass handed to you
TG: pardon the assumption and all
TG: but youre normally not this edgy
TG: like on average youre a pretty edgy gal but already were going above and beyond the usual benchmark and its only been like three minutes
TG: which leads me to two conclusions here
TG: one you busted out the good ol my chemical romance playlist again and have been listening to it on full volume while sitting in the corner of your room totally motionless
TG: which by the way if so
TG: dude
TG: we talked about that
TG: you plus angsty emo music about killing your girlfriend and stuffing her into the boot of a car or whatever the fuck they sing about is really such a horrible combination
TG: like the day you snap and kill someone will not surprise anyone
TG: me least of all
TG: but come on how lame would it be if gerard fucking way was the impetus for that
TG: think of how badly theyd drag your ass in juvie for that
TG: or two you got your ass kicked
TG: and im not a betting man but given the overarching context i think option two is probably a sure thing
TT: As always, your bedside manner never fails to amaze me.
TG: well you always get pissy when i try and be serious about this shit
TG: cant for the life of me imagine why
TG: well actually i can very easily imagine why but well circle back to that
TT: No, we won't.
TG: so im trying out a more casual approach
TG: is it working
TG: do you feel calmed by my presence
TG: are the psychological channels opening up
TG: readying themselves for some sicknasty dissection a la yours truly
TG: am i soothing you right now strider
TG: do you feel soothed
TG: emotionally speaking
TT: Soothed in the way one might feel after getting knocked unconscious by getting decked in the face with a cinderblock, perhaps.
TG: so thats what happened today
TT: No, you ignoramus fuck.
TT: How self-important do you have to be in order to think that texting you would be my first course of action undertaken upon having my face smashed open with a block of concrete?
TG: ooh ignoramus
TG: 62 points on scrabble if youre lucky
TG: i gotta be real did not know your vocabulary was as advanced as that
TG: i sorta thought the biggest word you knew was motherfucker to be honest
TG: which like i respect
TG: you can get a lot of mileage out of motherfucker
TG: but still
TG: wow
TT: Dave.
TG: rose
TT: Shut the everloving fuck up, please.
TG: rude
TG: were being casual here remember
TG: im not picking your brains right now
TG: the least you could do is extend me some courtesy and not tell me to go fuck myself sideways into the pacific ocean or something
TT: I literally did not say that.
TT: When did I say that?
TG: oh man
TG: i have been waiting to bust out the fuckin receipts hold up
therapistGridelin [TG] sent tenebroseTephrosis [TT] the file "roseisabitch.jpg"
therapistGridelin [TG] sent tenebroseTephrosis [TT] the file "roseisabitchpart2electricboogaloo.jpg"
TT: Okay, point made.
therapistGridelin [TG] sent tenebroseTephrosis [TT] the file "roseisabitchpart3revengeofthesith.jpg"
TG: you know looking back on it
TG: which i often do
TG: the amount of untapped material contained in your pesterchum messages to me could honestly occupy a very dedicated team of psychoanalysts until the sun blows the fuck up or something
TG: its always so funny to think about
TG: but no looking back on shit ive realized youre really not that creative with your insults
TG: which is fair i guess
TG: theres only so many ways you can tell a dude to go fuck himself before the rhetoric starts to repeat itself
TG: no hate here
TG: the art of keeping up your front of bitchy suavity is a taxing one and were all only human
TG: mistakes are bound to be made
TG: colorful threats of bodily harm are bound to be repeated
TG: oh speaking of your front
TT: No.
TT: Speaking of literally anything else.
TG: i mean hey
TG: an opening is an opening
TG: ill take what i can get
TT: That was not a genuine request for you to start interrogating me, I hope you realize.
TG: potato potahto
TG: were doin this shit now
TG: lie down on this futon bitch lets take a look at that tumultuous psyche of yours
TG: make some omelets out of the cracked ass basket of eggs you got up there
TT: No.
TT: Your posturing as a beta-tested version of Dr. Phil is endearing at the best of times, but I'm really not in the mood right now.
TT: If you want to have a conversation like the normal, functional individual you sometimes make a convincing impression of, I'm fine with that. But I do not have the time nor patience needed to sit through another round of your backhanded, stupid as all fuck mind games, Lalonde.
TT: Understood?
TG: fine fine
TG: get off the futon then
TG: shits mine
TT: It's cute you think I was ever on it.
TG: so
TG: howd it go
TG: with your brother i mean
TT: What did I literally just say, Dave?
TT: Here, I'll send a screenshot just in case your eyes decided to conveniently vacate your skull during that moment in time.
tenebroseTephrosis [TT] sent therapistGridelin [TG] the file "Useyoureyesdumbfuck.jpg"
TG: okay
TG: moving right along from the twenty observations about your inordinate caginess that are all springing to mind right now
TG: we can circle back to those too if youd like
TG: or even if you wouldnt
TG: can i not ask you a simple question now or what
TG: i mean seriously
TG: we were having a tight ass convo about the pros and cons between vinyasa and you beating the assbanging fuck out of that poor practice dummy you have held hostage in your room
TG: what did you name it
TG: calimari or some shit
TT: Calmasis, dumbass.
TG: yeah that
TG: it was a great dialogue
TG: you were getting really into it
TG: said i probably couldnt throw a punch to save my life which just to reassert i totally could by the way
TG: i said that the only reason you hate yoga is because if someone sat you down and forced you to focus on your breathing for longer than ten minutes without letting you take five to go drool over your weird ass knife collection halfway through youd probably start having a psychotic break
TG: it was great
TG: and then all of a sudden youre like lolsies gotta go get my ass whooped by my maniacal puppet fucking jerkoff of an older brother
TG: and then you dipped
TT: My brother doesn't fuck his puppets.
TT: He makes them fuck each other.
TT: There’s a pretty big difference there.
TG: oh im sorry
TG: forgive me
TG: its just sometimes when im presented with two scenarios that are so beyond fucked up i literally start to hear cop car sirens echoing around my head whenever i think about them my brain gets tripped the fuck out and i get them a lil mixed up in my head
TG: you know
TG: him fucking puppets versus him making them fuck each other
TG: theyre both so ludicrously batshit i just cant help but confuse em with each other you feel
TT: Can't say I do.
TT: Perhaps all that Dr. Phil really is starting to do a number on your cognitive reasoning skills.
TT: Honestly, I'm just surprised it didn't take longer.
TG: cool so anyways
TG: your bro
TG: howd it go
TT: Does the phrase "none of your business" mean anything to you?
TG: youre avoiding the question
TT: You’re starting to get on my nerves
TG: you say that like youre not in a permanent state of being pissed off at me
TG: kinda how you roll to be honest
TT: Careful. We're verging off the rails of casual conversation here.
TG: well we wouldnt if you werent so goddamn secretive about everything
TG: youre the one whos making this a big thing you could literally give me a five word answer and id back off
TT: We both know that’s bullshit.
TG: you act like youre gonna say something im not expecting
TG: like theres this whole air of mystery thats permanently descended around the strider household all us other poor schmucks are too brain dead to figure out whats going on
TG: willfully underestimating the intelligence of the people around you just so you can feel justified in being cagey about shit because its not like theyd figure it out even if you were open or however youre choosing to justify this course of action is a fundamentally flawed practice
TG: all it does is isolate yourself and make those around you feel as if you view them as inferiors to you
TT: And the train carriage has upended entirely.
TT: Lo and behold! It seems as if a few lucky passengers have survived the crash though. Truly blessed by the gods, they are.
TT: Buried under mounds of smoking scraps of metal and broken spokes as they may be, one can still hear their calls for help if enough of an attempt is made.
TT: Listen! I think I can discern their cries now. I'll provide a transcription for your sake.
TT: "Dave! Dave Lalonde! Please stop acting like the fact that you speed-read the DSM-V for the fifteenth time last night makes you even remotely qualified to make postulations on your friends' home lives!"
TT: "It is beyond infuriating, and makes more than one person want to put you in a bag filled with rocks and punt you into the Rio Grande! Please, Dave, please! For our sakes!"
TT: Truly, a tragedy that will echo in the minds for generations upon generations.
TG: you finished
TT: I can keep going if you'd like.
TT: I'm discovering this extended metaphor comparing your childish psychobabble to a heart-wrenching train wreck holds more fruit than I initially thought.
TG: if its all the same to you
TT: It assuredly isn't.
TG: i just wanna know if youre okay
TG: five hours is a long ass fuckin time to fight someone
TG: and youre seem a lot more on edge than normal
TG: which is saying something because you sort of wrote the book on being on edge so frequently im half convinced your ass is just glued there on a permanent basis
TT: I'm fine.
TG: tell me why i dont believe that
TT: Christ, Dave.
TT: I go offline and you crawl up my ass about it. I tell you I don't want to talk about these things and you crawl up my ass about it. I attempt to divert the conversation to more pleasurable topics of discussion for myself and you crawl up my ass about it. I give you an honest fucking answer and can you guess what you do in response?
TT: Crawl up my fucking ass about it.
TT: I can't win here.
TG: its not a game rose
TG: genuine interactions arent a game
TG: quantifying every exchange you have with someone in terms of wins and losses is only going to further perpetuate the notion you have that everyone is secretly trying to kick your shins under the table or some shit
TT: Jesus. It’s a fucking expression.
TT: You can’t wax psychological poetic about every goddamn thing that comes out of my mouth just because you’re bored and I’m the only one around to talk to.
TG: give me a rundown of the injuries
TG: whats it look like today
TT: You know, if you had kept to your word and agreed to shelve the child-psychologist act for long enough to have one goddamn interaction with me that wasn't undercut by your insatiable desire to pick apart everyone in your vicinity like they're a fucking owl pellet you found in the woods, I might've answered that question.
TT: As it is, you still prove incapable of believing me when I tell you that I like you a lot more when you're not trying to be my therapist.
TT: So I'm going to table this exchange before you dig yourself a deeper hole and really start saying some stupid shit, alright?
TT: Goodnight.
-- tenebroseTephrosis [TT] ceased pestering therapistGridelin [TG] --
You close out of Pesterchum and stuff your phone back into your pocket before Dave manages to sneak a final quip in edgewise. For a second, you can’t even formulate a coherent thought; your brain has dissolved into nothing but white noise, the sound dull, roaring, pounding against your eardrums, echoing around your head.
It takes a long time to get your breathing back under control.
Fuck Dave. You almost spit the words out loud as you sit up on the edge of your bed, curling into yourself, elbows on your knees. Fuck him and fuck his self-assumed superiority and the notions of jurisdiction he’s somehow managed to convince himself he has over you an your life. Fuck him.
You drop your head into your hands, the heels of your palms pressing into your eyes, fingers reaching up to curl in your hairline. You grit your teeth together. You breathe around the phantom grip that's tightening the back of your throat like a vice.
And you take every scrap of anger rattling around inside you, roll them into a ball, and drop the thing down some deep, inaccessible sink hole in the center of your chest. You don’t wait to see if it hits any sort of ground.
With a quick shake of your head and a little buzz you can almost feel through your whole body, you’re back to how you were in the bathroom—calm and collected, entirely in control of yourself. Any phantom traces of anger that bubble up in the center of your chest are quick to be dismissed; you kick them down into the sinkhole with the rest and drop a tarp over the whole thing for good measure.
Your anger is finite. It’s not something worth wasting on Dave.
It takes a few moments of stifled hisses of pain and a lot of frantic grasping at any surface within your vicinity to steady you, but you finally manage to get yourself moving, careful to keep your footsteps soft as you step out onto the landing outside your room. There’s not really a point in deliberately keeping quiet—one, your brother has most likely either retired to his own room or gone out for the night and two, if he wants to find you, he’ll do it, regardless of how softly you move around the apartment—but you do so anyways, bare feet sliding against the carpet as you descend the stairs, gripping the handrail just a fraction harder than necessary.
To help keep your balance. Obviously.
All the lights are off downstairs. You can’t help but feel reassured by this; not only does the darkness offer you some sort of cover, a boundary between you and whatever might be lurking around your apartment—you swear, if you see so much as even a glimpse of Cal, you’re decapitating that fucking thing on sight—but it solidifies the fact that your brother has well and truly retired for the night even more. Weird as he may be, he hates working in the dark with a strangely-vitriolic passion.
Not that you’d have a problem with him being here, but it is nice to be alone sometimes. Especially when your movements are still embarrassingly slow and jerky, the ever-present pain in your chest forcing you to lean on your knees for a second, breathing hard, after you finally come to a stop in front of the fridge.
You know he would hand you your ass if he saw you like this.
Straightening up, you give the appliance in question a trepidatious stare. On one hand, dodging whatever assorted weaponry is being stashed in there right now isn’t exactly an activity you’re itching to participate in; on the other, you're starting to notice more and more with every passing second just how tight with hunger your stomach has gotten, and if there’s any food in this house, it’s going to be in there.
You stare at the fridge some more, weighing your options. It’s when your stomach finally lets out its first growl—one out of many, you know, if you don’t hurry this shit up—that you cave in and open the door with a tug.
Amidst an entirely bare interior, Cal’s eerily glossy expression stares out at you, head cocked to one side. His grin is sharp, crooked, tinged with something that makes the feeling in your stomach switch from hunger to dread in an instant.
You slam the door shut and throw your back against the fridge, something sharp and irrational starting to make its presence known in the center of your chest, overshadowing any physical pain emanating from your ribs with ease; for some reason, you aren't grateful for this, not in the slightest.
No food.
You swear—honest-to-god swear—you can hear Cal’s little maniacal giggle sound from inside the fridge.
You breathe hard—in through your nose, out through your mouth—and try and wrestle the burning, buzzing feeling in your chest back into its sinkhole. From their position now gripping your shins, your hands start to shake.
No food. No painkillers. A clown puppet in your fridge. Great. Fucking great.
You keep trying to breathe. It’s hard around the burning in your chest; you feel like you’ve swallowed lungfuls of molten lava. You feel like you've been set on fire.
Sometimes it feels like your anger is infinite. Sometimes you feel like it’s burnt you up from the inside, eaten away at your bones, hollowed you out, leaving you paper thin and destructible, brought to your knees by a single kick to the chest.
The fridge feels ice-cold against your back, burning in sharp contrast to the muggy heat that’s worked its way into the apartment, hanging around you like a veil. Hot and cold, sharp and thick, freezing and suffocating at the same time. An endless cycle of contrasts, of contradictions, of things that shouldn’t exist together but still do out of pure spite.
There’s a metaphor in there. There’s always a metaphor.
Sometimes you feel like all you are is angry. Sometimes you feel all you’ve been out on earth to do is wait for it to burn you up completely.
The fridge is still cold. You feel your hands touch the floor, realize you’ve sank into a sitting position against it, and for a second, the only thing you can think of is how fucked you’d be if your brother walked in on this. How totally, utterly fucked.
You’re pulling your phone out of your pocket and opening up Pesterchum before you’re even fully aware of what you’re doing.
-- tenebroseTephrosis [TT] began pestering therapistGridelin [TG] --
TT: Small bruises and scrapes on my nose and the side of my face, likely sustained by falling against the concrete. Ultimately indeterminable though. They’ll heal in a day or two.
TT: A lengthier cut to the side of my jaw. Shallow but long and will likely scar. It’ll heal in a week. Maybe more
TT: Moderate busing to my left shoulder. Origination unclear, but probably from landing on it awkwardly at some point. Small scrapes and cuts around the area coupled with a larger gash the length of my bicep. Again, shallow but jagged; it’s going to scar as well. Stopped bleeding already; I’d put the healing time at one to two weeks.
TT: Ribs and side are the most pressing issue. Got kicked several times from what it feels like. Ribs aren’t broken but they’re likely cracked or very bruised at the least. Healing time upwards of a month.
TT: Gash to my side. Clean cut but deep. Not enough to need stitches. I only had supplies to dress that wound, so given that holds up for a while, I think it’ll heal fully in a month.
TT: Movement capabilities are restricted at the moment. Hard to walk up and down the stairs. Strifing would be out of the question right now, but if the next few days are relatively calm, I’ll be back to holding my ground by the end of the week.
You sort of hope he isn’t online to respond. You also sort of hope he is. You press your hands to the tile—cold, ice-cold somehow—and breathe through your mouth, watching the dots by his username appear and disappear as he types.
TG: okay
TG: do you need anything
TT: You can’t keep spending money on this.
TT: I can’t pay you back.
TG: dude
TG: are you serious
TG: dont worry about that
TG: im not expecting that at all
TG: what do you need
TT: It’s fine. I’ll manage.
TG: rose
TG: please
TG: let me help you
TG: this shit isnt transactional im not gonna hold you in debt to me i dont even want you to think about feeling like you owe me for this
TG: this isnt gonna put you at a disadvantage with me or anything
TG: this isnt gonna make you weak
TT: I know.
TG: let me help
TG: you’ve refused to let me smuggle you out of that nightmare ass apartment so my next option there is straight up kidnapping you
TG: which as batshit up the fucking belfry as it is im pretty sure that would classify as a felony in texas
TG: and my mom is a very chill of a lady but i still don’t think shed appreciate me getting my ass thrown in juvie for that shit very much
TG: so this is literally the least i can do
TG: please
TT: There’s no food.
TT: And no painkillers.
TG: anything else
TT: It’s fine.
TG: rose
TT: I could use some more gauze and antiseptic. Out of both as of today.
TT: Well, out of the antiseptic as of who knows when. Used the last the gauze today, though.
TG: what did you use today for antiseptic
TT: Vodka.
TG: jesus christ rose
TT: It works.
TG: okay ill just get you some general first aid stuff and some non perishables and shit
TG: itll come in like an hour
TG: is that okay
TT: Yeah.
TT: Thanks.
TG: course its no biggie
TG: and im sorry for earlier
TG: got a little out of control on my part
TG: not cool of me at all
TT: It’s fine.
TG: it doesnt have to be
TG: you can bring the verbal hammer of total and comprehensive takedowns of my moral character down on my head if you want
TG: i offer my miserable body up flagellation if itll make you feel better
TG: we can go full black plague on this shit
TG: you know like those weird monks who used to walk around muttering to themselves and whipping the everloving fuck out of each other and like muttering about how god hates them
TG: i bet you even have a whip stashed somewhere around your room
TG: all you need is a greyhound ticket to new york and were fuckin set
TG: point is
TG: i give you full permission to be pissed off at my ass
TG: seriously
TT: I’m always pissed off at your ass.
TT: It’s a permanent state of being for me.
TG: hardy har har
TG: you know what dont listen to what john and jade say i think youre hysterical
TT: John and Jade happen to be highly receptive of my sense of humor, thank you very much.
TT: I’ve been told on multiple occasions by the both of them that I’m hilarious.
TG: oof damn
TG: see cause we actually have a memo board called THE F IN ROSE STRIDER STANDS FOR FUNNY in which we all come together to talk about how if we have to hear one of your weirdly deadpan jokes about the erotic aura a freshly sharpened knife exudes were all going to lobotomize ourselves
TG: so clearly theres some backstabbing action going on here
TG: damn
TG: sorry i had to break it to you this way
TT: Photographic evidence of this would be deeply appreciated, of course.
TG: hold up
therapistGridelin [TG] sent tenebroseTephrosis [TT] the file “readitandweep.jpg”
TT: Dave,
TT: That’s a mirror selfie of you flipping the camera off while Jaspers sits on your shoulders.
TG: oh whoops
TG: my finger slipped
TG: silly me
TT: Quite.
TT: You need a haircut.
TG: hell no
TG: im growing it out
TG: the world bette start preparing itself for these sweet lalonde locks soon cause im telling you shits gonna look revolutionary pretty soon
TG: i can already put some of it into a little manbun look
therapistGridelin [TG] sent tenebroseTephrosis [TT] the file “finalformunlocked.jpg”
TT: Wow.
TT: Truly, that image does exude raw power heretofore unmatched.
TT: Hipsters all around the world are quaking in their boots.
TG: as they fuckin should man
TG: im gonna smoke all those bitches out soon enough just you wait
TT: Now I’m quaking in my boots.
TT: Your impact is unmatched, it seems.
TG: you know it
TG: okay i gotta head out mom needs help with some shit but ill text you when your stuff arrives okay
TT: Okay.
TT: Thanks again.
TG: anytime strider
-- tenebroseTephrosis [TT] ceased pestering therapistGridelin [TG] --
—
You wake up to the sound of buzzing again.
It's your phone—lost somewhere in the tangles of your blankets, no doubt—but you let it be for a moment, taking a few seconds to uncurl yourself, pop your neck, and pull yourself into a sitting position. The acute pain in your torso has faded somewhat, now manifesting in a blanket of soreness that feels like it's tearing apart the very fabric of your bones, dislodging key structural components within your body and rendering it near impossible to do much more other than prop yourself up against the wall with a pillow behind your head, groaning a little.
Beside you sits Dave’s package, the cardboard torn back in a fervor you only half-remember now—by the time the package had shown up in the apartment complex’s lobby, it had been nearing midnight, and you had grown so tense sitting in the living room waiting for Dave’s text that your teeth had started to ache from clamping them together and you had acquired a nice row of semicircular grooves to the surface of your palms. It had been wholly worth the wait, though; just the sight of the three packs of painkillers he had procured had been enough to make you burst into tears—metaphorically, of course—and things had only gotten better once you had caught sight of the food.
You’re still not sure how Dave does it—he must have someone in Houston he calls up and sends a list shopping list to, though you have no idea how that particular arrangement would’ve started—but you’ve found that sometimes it’s just nicer to let the questions fly over your head and eat your ramen in peace.
You study the remainder of the contents again—more packs of ramen, a few boxes of pop tarts, some ready-made sandwiches, bags of dried fruit, and several cartons of apple juice, as well as miscellaneous first-aid supplies—and your heart twinges a little in your chest.
Really, Dave is not so bad. Sometimes—more often than you give him credit for, really—he is actually quite good.
But it's still hard. It's hard to take his gesture—one of undeniable goodwill, because as faux-ironic as he may be sometimes, Dave is genuine through and through, more so than anyone else you know—at face value without feeling a sort of sinking feeling in the put of your stomach, even as desperate relief flows through you. It's hard to parse his intentions when your own frame of reference for sincerity is so distorted its not so much a frame as it is a haphazard pile of wood scraps and rusted nails.
It's hard to imagine that he does this because he wants to. You always find yourself on the edge of bracing for a message form him asking for payment of sorts, an offering you cannot give.
Sometimes, in those moments of panic, his text color looks closer to orange than red, and you have to bite the insides of your mouth, forcibly grounding yourself until you remember that this is Dave Lalonde you are talking to, not your brother. Dave does not deal in payments; Dave does things because he can, and because he wants to, and in all the years you two have been friends, in all the years he's been giving you handouts like this, he has never once asked for something tangible in return.
And yet it's hard to remember that all the time.
And reliance on his packages is dangerous; there will, of course, come a time where you will need too much too soon, or where he will stop electing to send you things, and you will have grown soft, weak, entirely too reliant on a boy across the country from you. You will need things, and he will not provide them anymore, and that's the point in which things will probably go to shit. Pretending otherwise is childish.
Sometimes you can’t help but think that everything would be easier if Dave didn’t offer to help so much. Sometimes you think things would be easier if he just let you do it by yourself.
And that makes little sense—you’re not an idiot; you can discern how oxymoronical that sounds easily enough—but still.
But still.
Outside, through the slivers you can see between your curtain, it’s still dark. Despite it being the early hours of morning, a time at which the poets might say the whole world is asleep, life outside refuses to rest. You can hear cars skidding by on the streets below, horns honking in the distance, the distant sound of voices from the pavement far below you. The light that pools into your room through your curtains is a dull, greyish-yellow, throwing everything in your room—the stacks of books you alternatively stole from bookstores around your neighborhood or received in the mail from Jade, your practice dummy, the collection of swords hung haphazardly up on the walls—into dull relief.
A siren sounds. The light creeping into your room flickers for a second.
You give your head a tiny shake and look down at your hands folded in your lap. They’re all sharp edges and chipped nail polish and scarred, cracked skin.
You think of the package beside you, and ball them into fists.
Sometimes your anger is so finite it ceases to exist; you are left empty in its absence, a cold mass of cells and blood warping the space-time continuum of the universe you reside in, opening up a thirteen-year-old girl-shaped void in the space around you.
Sometimes you feel like you are either angry or nothing. You are dragging your knife down your brother’s cheek, spitting obscenities out at Dave over text, haunching over yourself at the foot of the fridge, and then suddenly you are nothing. You are blank and hollow and empty.
Even though this defies the very notion of that it means to be a Strider, you find this feeling scares you. It scares you a lot.
Pulling your knees as close to your chest as your still-sore body will allow, you swallow. Despite the quantity of ramen consumed a mere few hours ago, the inside of your mouth has gone back to tasting like it did back on the roof: sour and chalky, full of the taste of dust and blood.
Back to normal, then.
You swallow again.