Chapter Text
One minute, you had The Best American Essays of the Century stuck on your lap with a lime-green highlighter (because the normal yellow one had long since run out of ink and you lost the blue one) in your hand. The other, you were being dragged away in a flurry of laughter, book thudding to the floor and highlighter still clutched in the hand not occupied with another.
With another tug, you were pulled onto the couch and sitting directly between Dan and Arin. Dan was still laughing, and Arin was scribbling something down on the notepad before leaning forward to start the capture again. You had no idea why you were dragged in while they were playing--you looked at the screen to figure out what they were actually playing--Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, but yet there you were, and neither Dan nor Arin was explaining what was happening.
“Welcome back to Game Grumps!” Arin said jovially, unpausing the game in the middle of a level.
“Heeey dudes and ladies!” Dan added, and you watched them just sit there, playing the game and not bringing up the fact that you were sitting there.
So, against the uncomfortable silence between you and the other two, you spoke, “Alright, so why am I here?”
Arin mocked startle, “Oh! (y/n), I forgot you were here! Dan, would you care to ex--FUCK!” His statement was cut short as the lava caught up to Kirby and he died.
But Danny got the point, “I’d be happy to ex-fuck, Arin,” with a laugh pouring out of his mouth. “I dragged (y/n) in here between episodes because she has been sitting at her desk with her nose in a book for three hours and I figured she needed a break.”
You groaned, starting to stand, “I was halfway in the middle of The White Album.”
“By the Beatles?” Danny asked excitedly, pulling you back down at the sacrifice of Waddle-Dee.
“No, by Joan Didion.” You just wanted to go finish the boring-ass essay before work was over so you could go home and actually sleep.
“I’ve never heard of her, what’s her essay about, (y/n)?” Dan prodded.
“Well, I haven’t finished it,” you started, voice tilting in an accusing manner to prove your point, “but uh, a lot of it has had police reports.”
“Weird. I wonder why it’s called The White Album then,” Arin mused absently.
“I dunno. The only music she’s really written about is her experience hearing the Doors record one of their albums.”
Danny jumped excitedly into the conversation again, “What album?”
“Uhhh, fuck. Lemme think. It was their third one, whichever that was.”
“Waiting for the Sun,” Danny and Arin said together.
You rolled your eyes. “Anyways,” you drew out the ‘a’, “I should probably get back to that.”
Dan once again wouldn’t let you get up, and gave you one of those looks. Another roll of your eyes responded, but you leaned back against the couch. Danny and Arin cheered that you were staying, and you chuckled a little, tuning out their banter and zoning out. After a few moments, Danny spoke up, jolting you back to their conversation, “Kevin, edit in that picture of (y/n) I took today while she was studying.”
“You took a picture of me?” you asked him.
“Yeah, you were sprawled on the floor and you had your hair all weird.”
“I put it out of my face, Danny, what do you expect from me?” you teased.
“Alright, alright,” Arin said, “now that the internet has seen that picture of (y/n) looking like a giant dork...Kevin, put in that one picture that I took on accident when Dan tripped.”
“No!” Dan yelled, “Not that one!” Then, his voice dipped low into a mock-scared voice, “Is it the one where my mouth literally is an entire black hole?”
Arin was laughing now, thinking about it, “Yeah, that--god DAMNIT! Next time on Game Grumps!” Arin had died again, and decided it was time for the next episode. He brought up the pause screen, and stopped the capture, writing down some more stuff on the notepad while you and Danny talked casually.
“Is there literally any reason why you brought me in here?”
“You were stressing, so I figured you could use a break,” Danny responded, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why do you care?” You hadn’t meant it to sound so accusing, but it came out that way.
Dan just took it into stride. “I care about you,” he responded, again in that light, easy tone he seemed to always have in his voice.
You didn’t know what to say in response to this, and he seemed to know that, to understand that. You got up, deciding it best to escape the situation since you didn’t understand it, and go back to reading Joan Didion’s boring essay. “I should probably get back to working on my prep.”
“Yeah, yeah, school stuff. I gotcha.” Danny was understanding, over and over again. You wondered where you could get that trait, the ability to understand and be understanding. But now wasn’t time to dwell on this, so you got up and went back into the main area of the Grump Space, and noticed that Kevin, Ross, and Barry were gone.
Suzy caught your confused look and said, “They went out to wherever for dinner.” You nodded in response, going to grab your book and pull the highlighter from your pocket where you’d shoved it in the whirlwind of being put between Danny and Arin. Suzy stopped you, “C’mere, (y/n), I wanted to talk to you, actually.”
A chill of fear went down your spine as you walked closer to her desk, but the smile that reached her eyes told you that she wasn’t about to deliver bad news. The fear still wouldn’t leave you alone, settling in your stomach. Her voice was low, maybe to avoid people over-hearing, or maybe because you’d just been in a room with two grown men who were yelling, “So you just got tugged in there by Dan, yeah?”
You nodded. What did that have to do with anything?
Suzy nodded, putting something together in her mind and turning back to her monitor, “Okay, okay. Just wanted to know.”
And that was it. That was it? You opened your mouth, “I...why was that important?”
“Nothing, I just wanted to know.”
You weighed your options on whether or not you should call her out, and decided it was a fair enough opportunity for you to, “Bullshit. Why is it important, Suzy?”
Suzy held up her hands in a mock surrender, “Woah, woah. Relax. Fine, I was checking on Arin.”
You rolled your eyes, knowing this was a lie, but you dropped it. Arin was known for a lot of things, but being unfaithful was absolutely not one of them. Suzy was coming up with an excuse, but for what?
Shrugging it off for now, you went back to your desk, grabbing your book and finding your place. You highlighted a few more sections as you went, and stood to stretch as Arin and Dan exited the recording room. As they walked out, Dan mentioned something about how he wanted some fancy drink from Starbucks, and Arin shrugged, saying he was busy doing something with Suzy that night. A quote from Joan Didion’s essay ran through the back of your mind.
Music people never wanted ordinary drinks.
You supposed that was true, Danny as your example. A music person who wanted a this-and-that topped with these-and-those.
Danny asked you if you wanted to go with him to Starbucks to get something. You glanced at your watch to find it was a little past seven. You shrugged, finding yourself agreeing even as the other part of your brain was yelling at you that you needed to go home and sleep for once. You shook this off as Joan Didion’s voice spoke in your mind again.
[E]verything I had ever been told or had told myself, insisted that the production was never meant to be improvised: I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did.
Never had you betrayed your script, your schedule, your anything. But going out with Danny just seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed right to ignore the rational voice in your head telling you that you had to do the dishes, you had to wash your laundry, you had to type up the notes you had written at work, you had to email Suzy those files; none of that seemed as important as going with Dan.
You shoved the essays book far into the bottom of your bag, hoping to drown out the sense of responsibility and Joan Didion’s creaky voice as you gathered your stuff.
As you got into the passenger seat of Danny’s car, he was smiling at you, before he caught your eyes and his face turned to a frown, turned to concern. You cursed yourself for letting your internal struggle reach your eyes. “You’re upset. What’s wrong?”
You shook your head, “I’m fine, I’m good.”
He let it go, but you had an uneasy feeling that it would be brought back up again.
You just leaned back as he pulled out of the parking spot, and Joan Didion’s creaking voice spoke again in your head.
I closed my eyes and drove across the Carquinas Bridge, because I had appointments, because I was working, because I had promised to watch the revolution being made at San Francisco State College and because there was no place in Vallejo to turn in a Budget Rent-A-Car and because nothing on my mind was in the script as I remembered it.
You let your head smack into the window of Danny’s car, and he let out a noise of surprise and a quick sputter of ‘Are you okay?’ to which you just nodded. If Joan was going to keep interrupting your night, it was going to be a long one.