Chapter Text
The thing is, you’re not good at interacting with people, not really. You never learned how.
You don’t know that at first, of course.
The first thing you say upon meeting the gaggle of trolls, bloodied and in various stages of mental breakdown, is, “Sup, looks like it was some party,” which really should have clued you in a bit.
There is a day or two of frenzied activity after you and Rose arrive on the meteor, in which everyone collectively decides to huddle together as one big unit to heal, meet-and-greet, and share as much information to “get the 8-8all rolling”, as Vriska puts it. You finally meet Terezi face-to-face; she calls you “coolkid” in a way that immediately makes you picture that worrying little smiley trailing after. She is small and pointy and somehow lives up to every expectation you never realized you had about her looks.
After most of the loose ends are tied up and it dawns on all of you that you won’t be going anywhere for a long time, the high energy plummets and you disperse into your own little socially-awkward bubbles.
You spend most of your time with Rose at first, which you figure makes sense considering A) she is one of your best friends, B) she’s technically your sister, and C) you are the only two of your species on a meteor of aliens.
Also, you went on a suicide mission with her, and emerged as gods from the green sun with her. You’re finding it hard to keep your distance after that.
Plus, many of the first few weeks of Meteor Living have to be spent figuring out how in the hell you’re going to survive well when you don’t know yet how to alchemize a wider variety of food that’s edible to you (cheesy tortilla chips and 100% unnatural juice make up the majority of your diet for an agonizing few days), and Rose knows better what you’ll need to stay in good health (vitamin D deficiency, for instance, is not something you would have considered--it’s alleviated when she figures out how to alchemize sun lamps).
Rose’s bedroom on the meteor is just down the hall from yours, so chosen in the unspoken agreement that you would both be too uncomfortable far apart. So, when you hear her scream in the night, you are down there so fast that the blanket is still halfway trailing off you by the time you get to her door.
Which is locked. Of course.
“Rose?” you call, because it’s gone quiet now and that is really, actually, starting to scare the hell out of you. There shouldn’t be anything on this meteor that can hurt you, since you’re not currently in a dreambubble, but that clown guy weirds you right the fuck out and you don’t know where exactly he’s been, seems like he’s just been crawling through the vents, maybe--maybe--
“Rose?” you call again, slamming the side of your fist on the door. Images of the green sun float around in your head, how she nearly left without you--
Rose opens the door. There are tired patches under her eyes, and her hair is a mess.
“I’m all right,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. You’re starting to recognize that gesture as embarrassment. “It was just a dream.”
“What kind of dream?” you ask. “A horror dream? A sex dream? One of those dreams where you’re flying but then you plummet to your death? I fucking hate those.” Your fist is still raised in the air, poised to knock, and Rose sighs in a way that is starting to make you feel more socially inept by the day. She rubs at her eyes.
“Was it a sex dream that turned into a sex nightmare?” you ask, because panic makes you stupid.
“Dave, I appreciate your concern and vigilance,” Rose says, “but we’re going to be spending three years on this floating rock. I think perhaps I’ve got to learn how to take care of myself and, I don’t know, interact with the other people here.”
“Uh,” you say, “yeah, okay,” and you let her close the door on you after a quiet ‘goodnight’.
It doesn’t take a genius to gather from that that she’s annoyed with your constant companionship, and maybe you don’t blame her, but it still feels like an eternity to shuffle back down the hall to your own room and lie awake in your own bed. Your first instinct, even now, is to open up Pesterchum and message John or Jade, but that’s obviously not an option. You already miss them like an ache in your chest.
Your second instinct is to do something you always used to do when it was late and you couldn’t sleep—try and snoop around in your Bro’s stuff. He was rarely home before 3am.
You aren’t sure how, or if, you miss him, yet.
You wonder if Rose would fly down the hallway and knock on your door if you ever yelled in the night. You have nightmares too, but you never scream.
You resolve to find a hobby. This turns out to be continuing your bout of Shitty Drawings with Terezi, but this time it’s Shitty Drawings with Terezi: Can Town Edition. This one has the added bonus of getting to know the Mayor, who is one of the raddest beings you’ve ever had the honor of meeting.
One afternoon when you are still thirteen, Terezi pulls you forward by the edges of your cape and kisses you. It’s probably one of the weirdest things you’ve ever experienced—the damp softness of her lips and the just-barely-felt pricks of her teeth--and it makes your stomach do wild flip-flops way up into your ribcage. She releases you just before the Mayor returns from his expedition to find more chalk, and you finish up your day of Can Town Construction in a nervous mix of awkward silences and stretches of aimless babbling.
Terezi tells you as you’re leaving that she doesn’t want to “human date” (“Or troll date,” she clarifies at your questioning eyebrow), which brings about the weirdest combination of simultaneous relief and disappointment that you have yet felt.
The truth is, that after week three of Rose steadily ignoring you and wandering the halls looking like a ghost with those deep purple splotches under her eyes, you’re starting to get angry with her.
You know she’s been inexplicably spending time with Karkat when she’s not with Kanaya, and you feel much less guilty about the possibility of having a confrontation with the former troll, so you stop him on his way into one of the common rooms.
“Why do you think it’s any of your business?” is Karkat’s response, which pisses you off, but you’re not really sure how to show that yet.
“Rose is my sister,” you say, even though that fact was not something you knew until fairly recently.
“So?” Karkat says, hoisting his computer (or “husktop” or whatever they hell they call them) under one arm. “It’s not like she’s been telling me your innermost secrets, Strider, horrifying and disgusting as I’m sure they must be. We’re just talking.”
“Why is she talking to you though?” you ask, and Karkat puffs up like a bird with ruffled feathers, which--is kind of hilarious, actually.
“I’m a good listener!” he yells, which actually makes you snort a bit with laughter--though the mirth is quickly swept away when Karkat goes on, “It’s not my fault she doesn’t want to talk to you. Maybe you should try slapping some kind of filter on your ignorance tunnel and being less of an unrepentant, fuckheaded jerk.”
He stomps away, and you don’t get the chance to tell him how you’re trying so very, very hard not to be.
You go through a sullen teenage day convinced nobody but the Mayor truly cares about you. Then he puts you in jail for trespassing.
You go with it, of course, because it’s the Mayor. When Terezi walks in twenty minutes into your sentence with her arms full of cans, the Mayor gives her a cheerful wave, and you think it’s your chance for a hilarious quip--but she walks out almost as quickly as she came.
“I’m trash,” you tell the Mayor.
He shakes his head, pointing at the sign on your makeshift cell reading “JAIL”; then he kicks away a few of the cans, giving you an exit, and opens his arms wide to the room. You’re free.
“I’m free trash,” you say, readying yourself to stand and make for the exit.
Abruptly, exhaustion washes over you, and you wrap your cape around yourself instead. “Maybe I’ll just chill here for a while, though,” you say. “Make some sheep, or something. Repay my debt to society.”
The Mayor pats you on the head sympathetically, and hands you a few balls of cotton. You sit until you can almost--but not entirely, being a god damned Time player--lose track of the minutes, aimlessly pulling at the cotton balls until they’re fluffy enough to maybe, possibly, resemble sheep.
“Are you okay?” Kanaya asks you one morning--or at least, you think it’s morning--as you’re going to get yet another cup of coffee from the alchemizer. You’re thirteen fucking years old, you never drank coffee before this--but you have the sneaking suspicion that making it is the only thing keeping you going right now.
Kanaya is holding what looks like a syringe in one hand, and she has what looks to be a small streak of some kind of blood on her bottom lip. She looks elegant as ever. Fucking trolls.
“No,” you tell her.
Kanaya sits down, flings one arm over the table, and rests her forehead on it. It’s the most age-appropriate gesture you’ve ever seen from her. “Neither am I,” she says. “I am not exaggerating one bit when I tell you that I despise this meteor.”
You stare into your coffee cup. “It sucks,” you agree.
Rose finds you in the computer room, messing with the cords on the back of one because you don’t know what the fuck else to do. Maybe one of them will work with your computer, since you fucked up alchemizing the last one.
She still has those dark circles under her eyes, and she looks like she was just recently crying. It’s the first time she’s spoken to you since that night you knocked on her door. You say, “What up,” because apparently you don’t know how to not be a douche.
“You’re not a ‘douche,’” Rose says, and you realize you said that out loud. Fuck. “At least, not as much of one as you seem to think.”
“Thanks,” you say.
“Kanaya, Karkat and I thought it might be nice to have some kind of group meal,” Rose says in a rush. Your face warms with jealousy you didn’t know you had in you at the phrase, Kanaya, Karkat and I, but you let it slide. “If not every night, then perhaps just a few times a week. It would be an agreeable way to break up the monotony a bit and actually have some social interactions, or share some cultural differences. I don’t know if... everyone would actually want to attend, but I’d like it if you did.”
You stop your manhandling of knotted wires. “‘Agreeable?’”
“Shut up.”
“And Karkat didn’t throw a fit over this suggestion?”
“I think he got tired of hating us,” Rose says. “We’ve got a long three years here. Maybe you could help me cook something?”
You think about the hoarded packages of microwave dinners and ramen noodles stowed in your bedroom mini-fridge back in Houston, when Houston existed. “I don’t actually know how to cook much beyond, like, microwave noodles,” you tell her.
“That’s all right,” she says, and she’s smiling, which is something you haven’t seen in a while. “I, myself, never got around to learning the finer points of the culinary arts.”
This is Rose, who inexplicably didn’t talk to you for almost a straight month, inviting you to dinner and not even insulting your presumed cooking abilities. Rose, smiling at you and not bringing up that month of silence.
“Yeah, okay,” you tell her, the relief breaking through you like a wave.
“Can we talk?” you say, once you've mustered up the resolve.
Terezi stops her drawing, and sighs in an overtly painful way. “Dave—“
“We don’t have to date,” you blurt, before she can tell you to get lost. “But, like, as far as I know I didn’t actually do anything to piss you off besides exist, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I mean, if I did actually do something and you tell me what it is, I will, but if I recall correctly you were actually the one to betray my trust in a pretty damn mean way, and I have yet to hear an apology for that—“
“I’m sorry,” Terezi says. There is a long, stifling silence, and you abruptly remember how her lips felt against yours, but that isn’t going to happen again, so you push the thought away.
“Thanks,” you say finally, because you can’t think of any other response.
“Allright, Dave,” Terezi says after another awkward moment, her voice heavy with annoyance, “you’ve got what you came for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in the middle of some very important business.”
She’s drawing indecipherable lines in red chalk, but you don’t point this out. “That’s not what I came here for.”
Terezi doesn’t look at you, because she can’t, but she does narrow her eyes in your general direction.
“Can you just tell me why you don’t want to hang out?” you ask. “I’m lost here and I feel like nobody wants to speak to me, but nobody’s telling me why, and I can’t fucking change something if I don’t know what it is.”
That came out a bit more aggressive than you intended. Terezi’s eyes widen. She takes a big, loud inhale through her nose.
“I don’t know why everyone else isn’t hanging onto your every word, coolkid,” she says, and the return of the nickname makes you feel marginally better. “But I—my alternate future self,” she pauses, “well, you know she changed things—one of them was sparing Vriska. Another was about not dating you.” She pauses again, and wrinkles her nose. “At least, I think it partially had to do with you, I don’t know. I don’t want to take any chances. The success of our session and my personal well-being is not worth risking just so I can fulfill some red whims.”
“That’s… fair,” you say, eventually, because that’s a lot to take in.
“So it was nothing you did,” Terezi says, with a defeated slump of her shoulders.
“Look, I get all that, I just--I just thought we could be friends,” you say, and god does that sound corny now that you’ve said it out loud. “Even if we just, I don’t know, talk on pesterchum or trollian like we did before this stupid meteor trip. We don’t have to date. If I’m annoying the hell out of you, or if I become too scorchingly hot for you to resist, you can tell me to beat it. But you’re the only one that understands my subtle sense of humor.”
Terezi thinks on this for a moment in a way where you can almost see the gears in her head turning. Then she grins, sticking out her hand. “I think I can do that,” she says, and when you grab her hand to shake she pulls you down on top of the chalk drawings, cackling as it smears all over your clothes.