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River should have just let herself in. She had a hairpin in her pocket and plenty of experience picking locks. She could have gotten away with it, too, probably - John didn't seem like the type to remember to lock his door, probably if she said it was open he'd believe her. Instead, she stayed outside and hoped he simply hadn't seen her I'm outside message yet. Probably he hadn't heard her knock. She could hear a commotion from behind the door that sounded suspiciously like roommates arguing over whether a nearly-empty milk jug should be thrown out or not.
Eventually, finally, she heard footsteps coming toward the door in a way that seemed to indicate someone had realised she was waiting. John opened the door with a smile that reached his ears. "Hello! River! You're early." She wasn't early. "Come in! How do you like your tea?"
"Do you like it with a thimble of milk?" called another voice from somewhere further into the house, out of River's sight. "Because if so, John is your man!"
"Ignore him," snapped John. "He's in a bad mood. Come inside." He pointedly stepped aside to let her in. He was leaning against the wall, but "Idris" - the cane that really didn't need to have a name - was nowhere to be seen. That shouldn't have been a surprise, River knew that he usually didn't use it in his own home. "I don't do a lot of walking at home," he'd explained some time back. "Unless I'm pacing, I mean. Or unless it's a really bad day, but then I'm going to try not to do anything at all." Still, it felt weird to see him without it.
River had invited him to spend countless days and countless nights at her apartment, but this was her first time actually seeing his house. Apparently he had wanted to clean the place properly before inviting her, and then spent the entirety of their relationship procrastinating on actually doing that. Or, well, possibly procrastinating was too harsh a term, considering that he was always tired and nearly always busy. But regardless of the reason, as River walked into the house and heard John closing and locking the door behind her, she had never been here before.
If this was the house after cleaning, River had to fear how it looked on a bad day. There were several miscellaneous objects strewn across the living room floor, scraps of paper and old packaging and bits of plastic that looked like they were broken off of a child's toy, but that wasn't that weird. What was weird was the whiteboard mounted on one wall that was completely covered in messy handwriting, most prominently a header reading THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE PUT IN A BOWL WITH MILK AND LABELED AS CEREAL. The list included things such as solid clumps of milk powder, ibuprofen, diced tomato, shirts, and pencil shavings.
"How do you like your tea?" asked John again, walking past her into the kitchen, not noticing how she was staring at the list.
"...Just a splash of milk," River answered, after a long pause, wondering what milk was used for in this house other than tea. "No sugar."
"Good thing I didn't throw out the last splash of milk, then," said John pointedly.
"I despise you," said the voice from before.
"Shut up and go introduce yourself to River."
"Alright, alright, lovebirds." The stranger - John's roommate, presumably - cleared his throat, and finally walked into view. He was wearing far too many layers, all of them looking far too thick, for a comfortable indoors evening. A knee-length brown coat, a darker brown suit jacket underneath, for the love of God he was even wearing a tie for an evening of cooking dinner and playing Mario Kart. His brown hair looked like it had so much wax in it that River expected it to melt if he went into the sun, or to just melt from the intensity of his sideburns. "I'm David but you can call me Davey."
"River. You've probably heard." She held out her hand for a handshake, but the arm he held up to return the hand gesture was missing the hand, and River didn't know how to react to that. She already had her right hand out, so now if she went for a left-handed handshake it would be obvious why. The issue was, was she supposed to go for a left-handed shake, or was she supposed to shake the stump? She didn't know that that wouldn't hurt him, but she also didn't want to seem like she was going out of her way to avoid it, so she just stood there, hoping that he would somehow take the initiative instead of her having to just make a choice.
"Sensing a lot of awkward silence from out there," called John from the kitchen. "Davey, did you make our guest uncomfortable by trying to police what she can eat as cereal?" Well, that explained the list. Kind of. And just about nothing else.
"No," answered Davey with a grin. "I think she's just, ahem, stumped on how to handle this social interaction." And then he had the nerve to move his arms as though wielding drum sticks in a ba dum tiss motion.
Well, at least that solved her problem, because a man who would make that pun wasn't deserving of any handshake. She attempted to throw her hands up in frustration at the lameness of the pun, but Davey caught her left hand on the way up and treated her to a handshake that lasted at least a solid twenty seconds, only stopping when John came back in with the tea. And then, as he released the death grip on her hand and took a cup, he muttered, "You could have asked."
That, admittedly, was true. River wanted to mutter that she hadn't wanted to offend, but then there was the fact that she had probably been staring at his arms in confusion for long enough to offend just about anyone. She also wanted to mutter to John that his roommate was really weird, but then she remembered that this was John she was talking about and he probably wouldn't be phased in the slightest. So she settled on muttering an apology, and Davey seemed to take that well, giving her what she assumed was a nod of approval.
"We've got an hour or so before we need to start on dinner," John continued, already starting to turn on the console. "So I think we should get in a few games of Mario Kart first. Also, this is unrelated to anything, but while I was making the tea I realised the movie's called Rat-atouille because the main character is a rat, and I honestly think that's so clever."
"Really?" asked Davey, frowning. "I thought it was because they make the dish ratatouille." River was growing to understand why the two meshed so well.
John pulled his best hurt face and gave his best puppy-dog eyes. "River, I miss you." She ignored him. "River, please!" She didn't flinch. "I don't understand why you're running away from me. I'm so lonely. Please come closer to me."
"Sorry it's so lonely back there in second place," she said coolly, inching a little closer to him in real life just to soften the blow of being better than him. "But I'm not letting you win."
"But I miss you," he continued to whine. "I'm so alone..."
"I'll come keep you company," offered Davey, beginning to catch up to him in the game.
"Go away, Dave," snapped John, and by his voice and the glare Davey gave him immediately after, River had to guess that Dave was an insult somehow, even though it was about a syllable away from his actual name. River didn't bother to question it, especially as she was currently focused on keeping in first place for the final stretch of the race.
She managed to speed over the finishing line while still in first place, prompting both John and Davey to throw up their arms in frustration, and they were both very eager to move on to the next race. The next track was one she was less practiced with, and Davey quickly took the lead, putting a substantial gap in between him and the other racers. He was so confident in his victory in fact that he started making small talk while he played, just to rub it in. God was he insufferable.
"So, River," he begun, with a grin that made her want to slap him. "I hear you're an author?"
"I suppose I am," answered River bitterly. She hadn't added a word to Melody Malone in some three weeks, but at some point she would get back to it and eventually it would become a bestseller. "Got a bit of writer's block at the moment."
"Oh?" asked John.
"Well, my main character, Melody - she's following this skinny guy who's going to get coffee. But then I realised, I have no idea how to describe him actually getting coffee. Like, the book's set in Manhattan, and I've never been - who knows what coffee shops are like in New York?"
"Maybe you could skip that scene and come back to it later," suggested Davey. "Or just write it without any description of the coffee place, and add in the description later on."
"Have him pee out the coffee," suggested John.
River turned to look at him and drove her character directly into a wall as a result. "What?"
"Have him pee out the coffee," he repeated, as though it was the obvious solution. "It'd get rid of the need to describe a coffee shop, and provide an explanation for why Melody's following him. I mean, I'd follow a guy too, if I saw him whip out his cool penis and urinate a coffee-coloured liquid into a cup."
Davey, who had been struggling to contain his laughter from the first mention of peeing out the coffee, was completely unequipped to handle the words cool penis, and now dropped the controller and slammed his fist onto the armrest of the couch repeatedly, laughing absolutely hysterically. He attempted to say, "Have him pee out the coffee," in a voice mocking John's, but his laughter was now rendering him incapable of speech and the sentence dissolved in his mouth. Tears were streaming down his face as his character, powered by the auto-accelerate feature but no longer being steered, drove into the same wall repeatedly and fell into last place.
River focused back on the game, eager to take Davey's place as the winner, a position that was now taken by one of the incompetent AI-controlled players. "Sweetie, please never say the words cool penis again."
"Why not?" he protested innocently. "I think a penis that can pee out coffee is pretty cool."
Wouldn't it be the bladder or kidneys that are responsible for what liquid comes out during urination? River decides she doesn't want to start that argument, so she ignores the issue. "The character's partially based on my dad, it feels weird to hear you talk about his dick."
Davey opened his mouth, probably to tell her about how she ought to get used to it because any fanbase she developed would certainly never shut up about it, but John spoke before he could, "Well, I think your dad had a pretty cool penis for being able to conceive you."
And that was it. The gaming session was never, ever going to return to normalcy. You don't come back from a comment like that.
Davey was trying and failing to fight off another violent laugh attack. River was struggling herself, but she maintained a straight face because otherwise John would be able to laugh off her protests. "Okay, sweetie, I appreciate the sentiment, but I need you to understand that that's not a normal thing to say." Neither of them responded, Davey still drowning in laughter. Yeah, this session was beyond saving.
It took them several minutes to get themselves under control enough to start on dinner after that game was finished. Davey was still incapacitated by his struggles to keep a straight face for much of the time River spent gathering ingredients from various cupboards with nothing resembling organisation. Looking for an onion was like a damned scavenger hunt. And then when she found the onion, hidden behind a stack of water bottles of all things, it's on her to cut it with her eyes burning purely because both of the men found some excuse why they shouldn't have to.
So, she finished cutting the onions and ungracefully tossed them into the pot and wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she went to the sink to wash her hands, because she'd touched her face and that was one of the rules of cooking, and washing her hands took longer than it should have because the hand soap was in some ridiculous hiding spot, and then there was somehow not a single towel in the kitchen and she had to wipe her hands on her pants and hope that didn't defeat the purpose of washing them. Wasn't there some famous saying about the relationship between knowing where your towel is and being a put-together person?
So with her hands still slightly wet, she turned back to see John and Davey, and her face fell. "What on Earth are you two doing?!"
"I'm just cutting the potatoes," said Davey defensively.
"With one - oh. Oh, yeah, that makes sense." That was, she supposed, the normal amount of hands for him to cut vegetables with. But then she narrowed her eyes at him, frowning. "Is that safe?"
"'Course it is," answered Davey casually. "See, come look." He beckoned her over with the knife-wielding hand, and that was slightly unnerving even though he didn't really have another hand to beckon her over with. "It's a one-handed cutting board. The spikes hold the food in place while I cut it." One corner of the chopping board had two raised sides, presumably to hold something square-shaped like a slice of bread in place; the other had two nail-like spikes, which a potato was currently resting between. "Totally safe."
"Oh. That makes sense." She turned to John, hoping that he would have a similarly reasonable-in-context explanation. "What about you, sweetie, what are you doing?"
"I'm putting chocolate sauce on a carrot," answered John cheerfully.
River watched as he poured chocolate sauce onto the carrot in his hand. "Why?" she asked cautiously.
"Because it'll be a while before dinner's ready," he explained, as though it was obvious. "And I wanted a snack before then." Apparently satisfied with the amount of chocolate sauce on his carrot, he put the sauce container down and took a bite out. "Want some? It's good."
River just rolled her eyes and went back to cutting vegetables. After a few moments, she dared to ask, "If you're done with that carrot, why don't you give us a hand here, sweetie?" She didn't look up from the chopping board she was using, and when she heard the carrot being tossed in the bin and John's footsteps, she assumed he was moving to help them. She was sorely disappointed when a large jar slammed onto the bench.
"Here's a hand," said John simply, grinning as though he'd just made a fantastic joke.
She stared at him blankly. "What?!" Then she looked at the jar more closely and her eyes widened. "Oh my God, that's a human hand."
"You're studying archaeology, shouldn't you be used to seeing bits of humans?" That was true, but the samples that were very occasionally bought to her lectures didn't usually have skin and flesh attached. "If a hand unnerves you so, maybe you'd be better off playing Minecraft instead of studying actual gravedigging. I hear they're adding archaeology in the next update."
"I am not going to play Minecraft," she snapped. "Where did you even get a human hand?!"
"It's mine," answered Davey nonchalantly, not looking up. "John, put it back in the freezer, will you?"
"It's yours?!" choked River, turning to him in astonishment. "They let you take it home?!"
"Why wouldn't they? It's my hand." He looked up at John and then glared. "I said to put it back in the freezer."
"And I said to help us with the chopping," said River.
"Actually, you didn't," corrected John, picking the jar back up and taking it to the freezer. "You just asked me to give you a hand and I did exactly that." River rolled her eyes at him. "Okay, okay, I'll give you a metaphorical hand. Can someone grab me a chair from the other room? Legs not feeling great."
"I'll go," River volunteered. She put down the knife she was holding, exited the kitchen, and immediately realised this was probably a job for Davey. She didn't even know what "the other room" meant. Still, she wasn't admitting defeat when she had already stepped up to the task. She walked down the hallway until she a room with chairs around a table, mentally compared the height of the table to the height of the kitchen bench - close enough - and lifted one of the chairs over her head.
She marched back into the kitchen. "Where do you want this?"
"Why are you holding it like that?!" asked Davey with alarm. "Are you trying to smash a lightbulb?"
River put the chair down and shrugged. When she was with John it was easy to forget that she, too, had a reputation for being the insane one among her friends. Compared to John, who was easily the most ridiculous man he had ever met, she definitely didn't seem like the sort of person who had once stolen a bus, but she had and Amy had bailed her out. It was only the small moments, the quirks in how she carried chairs most naturally, that outed her as being perhaps no less strange than her boyfriend and his roommate.
John took the chair, adjusted it, and sat down. The three resumed chopping vegetables. River hesitated.
"You know," she began, cautiously. "there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."
Davey attempted to take his cue to leave and get out of helping with dinner; River shot him a glare that froze him in place. John looked up at her, frowning slightly. "What is it?"
"Well, I've told you about my novel, taking place in Manhattan. And I've told you about how I'm struggling a bit with getting it location-accurate." She cleared her throat. "My best friends, Amy and Rory - they're planning a vacation to New York in a few months. And they bought up that maybe I could go with them, at least for part of it, to do a bit of research."
John pouted. "You're going to America?!" He tsked irritably. "You don't want to be in America. They don't have healthcare."
"They have healthcare, it just sucks," River explained, calmly and reasonably. "And we wouldn't be there for more than a few weeks, we're not going to need to go into medical debt."
"What if something happens? Nobody ever plans to get injured on vacation. What if you break your wrist in Manhattan?"
"Sweetie, I'm not going to break my wrist in Manhattan."
"You'd better not! And anyway, you won't know how cold anything is, they use Fahrenheit. They use the imperial system, too. You won't know how hot or long things are."
"I'll be able to figure it out. It's not that far from the metric system." She sighed. "John, I really think this would be a good idea. For my novel. You worry too much."
"Well, if you're asking for my permission, you don't need it. You're an adult, I'm not gonna try and stop you from having a holiday. I'll miss you, though."
"No, sweetie-" she put down the knife she was using and looked him in the eye - "you'd be coming with me."
That clearly wasn't what he was expecting. His oversized jaw dropped; he stared at her with wide eyes. "What?"
"Well," she explained. "Amy and Rory are together, so if I went with them alone I'd be third wheeling, and ... there's nobody else I'd rather go with." She cleared her throat. "We're still planning, it's a long way off, you don't have to come, it's just..."
"River, I can't believe that you - that you trust me enough to invite me to something like this. I'm honoured, really. But -" He stammered for a few seconds, gesturing wildly. "This is just, I don't know, it's a lot. I mean, America?! They have guns there. Guns everywhere. They keep guns in their bedside drawers."
"I keep a gun in my bedside drawer."
"You're not supposed to! I don't even understand why you need to go there in the first place, I maintain that you can sidestep all of the Manhattan issues by just having the skinny guy pee out all of the American things out of his cool penis." River tried to maintain a straight face and failed. Davey excused himself from the room with a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter.
"Sweetie," she said gently, once Davey was out of earshot. "I'm not going to argue with you about my novel if you'll insist on using the words 'cool penis' like that."
John opened his mouth to continue arguing, closed it, and then said, "That's fair, actually. But..." He sighed, gesturing vaguely. "I don't even know Amy and Rory. I can't commit to this."
"I'm not asking you to commit right now. I'm just - I'm putting it on the table. We wouldn't be expecting you to go to Manhattan with my friends that you don't even know, for the love of God, I'll introduce you before then. They're having a party next week, I thought it would be the perfect time for you three to talk, figure out if you want to get to know each other better." She had to hope, of course, that they would get along. She didn't want her boyfriend and her best friends to end up at odds with each other. But she understood that of all the men she knew, well, John was ... easily one of them. There was a quality about him that others sometimes found hard to stomach.
John grimaced. "Parties aren't exactly my style..." But then he brightened up, "But people do always tell me I must be great at them." She was debating whether to tell him that everyone who ever said that was being thoroughly sarcastic when her thoughts were interrupted by Davey's voice from the other room.
"Err, can somebody help me out here?" He sounded self-conscious. "I accidentally threw my shoe behind a shelf."
"How?!" choked River. "Oh, whatever, just give us a second." She held out her arm to John. "Can't leave you boys unsupervised for a moment." He used her arm to pull himself up, and led her out to what she assumed was Davey's bedroom. The bookshelf had a solid back, no chance of reaching through it, and covered so much of the wall that it was near impossible to reach behind it and retrieve the shoe, which was almost maliciously lodged right in the middle so that neither side would make it easier to reach. "How'd you manage this?" she asked Davey, who was standing there wearing one red sneaker that completely clashed with the rest of his outfit, the other foot covered only by a sock. Davey just shrugged in response.
"It's no use," said John, withdrawing his arm from behind the shelf. "I can't reach it, and I've got the longest arms here. We'd need some sort of - some sort of long stick, with a handle or something on one end that you could hook into the shoe."
Davey considered this idea for a few moments. "Pity," he concluded. "I liked these shoes."
"Personally, I always thought they were ridiculous. I'd suggest throwing the other one into the nearest lake."
"Maybe we could move the shelf? It'd be a lot of hassle, I know, but I'd rather that than lose a perfectly good pair of shoes."
"Move the bookshelf? We're both disabled. It'd be easier to go outside and destroy the wall from the other side."
"Oh, like that'd be much easier."
"River could help, she's broken down her fair share of walls." He turned to River. "River, would you be willing to help us retrieve the shoe through brute strength?"
River blinked at them both, wondering if they really were that stupid or if this was some kind of elaborate joke. They both seemed genuine, she just couldn't believe anyone was that stupid. She ignored his question, and asked, "Where's Idris?"
John blinked at her. "I don't need Idris just to walk outside."
"No, you idiot." She smacked herself in the forehead in frustration. "You said you'd need some sort of long stick, with a handle on one end. You're describing a cane and you have one. Where's Idris?"
The realisation dawning on both John's face and Davey's was unmistakeably genuine, and it made River once again question how she had managed to find herself falling for such a ridiculous man. "She's in my room," answered John sheepishly. "I'll go get her." He ducked out of the room. Davey and River were left in awkward silence.
"How did you accidentally throw your shoe there?" she asked, after a few moments.
"Well...." Davey begun.
John re-entered the room before he could continue, tossing Idris over to River. "You do it, my shoulder still hurts from the last time I tried."
River peered into the gap between the shelf and the wall, and was just able to see a glint of red in the low light. She swung the cane into the gap, and managed to hook the handle into the shoe, pulling it out. "You're welcome," she muttered, tossing the shoe back to him and handing the cane back to John. "I still don't know how you managed that."
"I guess it's a mystery," said John. "Let's get back to dinner, I'm hungry again. And for dessert, anybody else like the idea of carrots with chocolate sauce?" River stared at him, once again questioning how she had managed to fall for him of all people. Davey cleared his throat awkwardly, then left the room, presumably to get back to chopping vegetables.
River sighed. "I don't understand how you can eat the concoctions you come up with."
"It's good!" he protested, flapping his arms about defensively in a way that caused him to knock over several objects with his cane. "It's genuinely good. You should try it. Broaden your horizons." He cleared his throat. "I've been thinking, and, err - I'm not committing to anything yet, but maybe it would be a good idea to go and meet your friends at a party."
Her eyes widened. "Really? You'll come?"
John hesitated, just for a moment. "Yeah," he finally said. "Yeah, I'll come. I go to parties now. Parties are cool." There was just something so adorable about his unconfident smile. River pulled him toward her, wrapping her arms around him, and they begun to share a long, deep kiss. Davey was simply going to have to handle the vegetables himself for a while longer.