Chapter Text
You’re sitting across the table from your ex-boyfriend of six years, and your eyes flit between your plate, the exit, and your best friend. You’re also wondering how the fuck you got yourself into this mess.
Rewind about ten years or so.
Dave Strider was that kid in high school that you were literally within seconds of murdering. Seeing his face alone (well, half of it. the other half was covered by those tacky-ass sunglasses) would make your blood boil. He jogged you when writing, threatened to sneeze on your food (more than once!) and had this weird habit of talking to you only when you really needed to get work done. It took some time, but eventually, you realised that these were all his various attempts of making friends, in some way shape or form, and that he wasn't trying (all the time, at least) to be a dick. God knows why the hell he wanted to be friends with your bitter, scrawny ass, but hey-ho. You weren't exactly a pleasant person in 10th grade, and you were convinced you were the edgiest person on the god damn planet, so anyone to add to your ever shrinking list of friends was always a blessing. Eventually, Dave Strider became a regular part of your life, joining your band of misfits, as well as introducing some of his own friends to you.
Inevitably, people began sectioning themselves off within your unusually large nerd-herd; Kanaya with Rose, John with Roxy, Aradia and Sollux, Gamzee tagging along with Jade and Tavros, whilst Eridan spent an unusual amount of time with Vriska and Terezi. It was purely out of chance that you and Dave sooner or later became inseparable. He came round your house a lot, sleeping over close to three times a week, while you had never stepped foot in his apartment.
It wasn't long before he opened up to you about his family- and yeah, at first, his brother sounded pretty cool. It was only really the way his smile seemed a little too false when he spoke about his guardian, that really started you asking questions, and in the end you were sort of glad you got nosy as hell. You came to the conclusion that one day, you would get hella buff, and kick the shit out of Bro Strider, if it kept your best friend safe.
Ha, best friend. Was that really the way to describe him?
It felt like the title couldn't encapsulate what you were to each other. It was a bond that you couldn't imagine sharing with anyone but him after all this time. To put it in extremely sappy words- he was your everything. You spent every summer joint at the hip, causing havoc side by side. He taught you to relax a little, make your high school day’s count, and you taught him how to motivate himself to do even the most mundane of things, take every day as it comes, and told him that it was okay to be selfish once in a while. He smiled more around you, wore his shades less, loosened up a little. You were good for each other. Still you didn't quite understand why when he smiled, you would feel your heart beat that little bit faster; or why his laugh sounded like music to you, or why him being around made you feel like you were walking on air.
In 11th grade, he was the one to talk to you first about questioning his sexuality, and then you returned his words.
In 12th grade, you found out you'd gotten into the same college. He took a course in media and film studies, and you in literature.
You remember that first week, as clear as anything: moving in on campus, getting your timetable, still not shifting from Dave's side. You remember the way stress bled from his body when you helped him move out of his shared apartment with Bro. You decided that from then on, Dave would go home with you for the holidays, rather than going back to that place.
You remembered the first time you saw him properly panic. Dave was freaking out about coursework and deadlines and exams, pacing and pacing and pacing (and it was barely past Christmas) so you talked him down, like you usually did, coaxed him onto his bed to sit, and hugged him to your chest. Worry flooded those eyes you loved so much. He was so afraid of fucking up. The fact that you had the exact same fear, you’d kept to yourself.
"What if I can't cope?", he'd asked you.
"You always do", you assured him.
He did, of course, do fine. And so did you, hooray! On results day at the end of your first year of college, Dave kisses you in the spur of the moment, and you see his eyes widen even behind his shades. You kiss him again before he stuttered out some bullshit apology, because fuck, you've been wanting to do that since high school.
You spend the rest of your two college years, hand in hand, supporting each other no matter what, until the end of your university experience, and moved in together immediately after. He was your best friend, worst enemy, a complete asshole, and the most important person in your life, all rolled up into one (incredibly hot) person. You had sappy double dates with Kanaya and Rose, stayed up late watching Judge Judy re-runs, and lived like your age matched your shoe-size, rather than acting like you were in your twenties.
Every kiss with Dave felt like the first, and every time he held your hand, you felt like you were in 10th grade again. Every time he pressed his lips to that spot under your jaw, you’d still shudder like it was the first time. Everything with him was always new, and exciting, and wonderful. He made you feel serenity for the first time in your stressful ass life, and was always there when you wanted to cry until your voice was hoarse. You couldn’t see yourself with anyone but him. But, as always, life had to smack you round the head someday, and things got gradually more and more difficult.
Six years into a relationship, you'd be able to understand that things were hardly happy families constantly anymore.
Way past the honeymoon phase, miles into reality: the nitty-gritty of the dating world. But, you hardly expected it to be like THIS. You and Dave argued too much, whether it was over something as small as who's turn it was to do the dishes, to how on earth you were going to keep up with the rent with you combined shitty salaries. No, you weren't exactly the most well off people in the world, but that didn't matter when you first got together all that time ago, so why should it matter now? Sure, you had your good times, and when things were good: they were great, but those times were getting rarer. But even then, you didn't even see it possible to doubt your feelings for him. Things were hard, as you'd expect them to be, sometimes, but they'd get better like they always did, right?
Wrong. You barely saw him anymore- which is difficult to sort of understand when you think about it. Dave worked nights, making his part time hobby of DJing into a career whilst he learned that making a million dollar grossing movie in your garage was close to impossible. He'd come back in the early hours of the morning a few hours before you'd have to set off for work. He'd come home tired, you'd come home tired 12 hours later, and so you just stopped having time for each other. You were both so busy trying to make ends meet, that you barely had time to catch up.
As anyone knows, tiredness leads to crankiness, and crankiness leads to arguments. So, you argued. About everything. For months. From what you saw of each other, you weren't very happy. You blamed yourself, as usual. Everything was tense and difficult and blue. Dave wore his shades more, spent more time on his music and those god damn comics, and you picked up extra weekend shifts at work just to fill time and get out of the apartment.
But it was Dave who first suggested the break. Now, this would've been a completely credible suggestion (after all, you were both just surviving rather than living these days, it was difficult to keep that up whilst keeping a healthy relationship, and you didn't want to end up hating each other in the end, because of all the arguments), but this led to the largest argument you ever had with Dave (again, exhaustion, crankiness), and you broke up entirely. Maybe you'd lost your spark? Maybe you were better off as friends?
Maybe things weren't how they used to be.
You moved out within a matter of days, feeling less claustrophobic, but more empty with each section of your stuff you shifted into Gamzee’s hotboxed apartment. It was temporary, of course. The last thing you needed to think was that you’d burdened both Dave AND Gamzee in a matter of months.
It wasn't long before you had heard Dave's good news from Rose, two or three weeks after the break up at best. Spotted online, blah blah blah, once in a life time opportunity, blah blah blah, going to Hollywood, blah blah blah. You didn't know much past that, and weren't sure you wanted to. You were happy Dave was chasing his dreams, but couldn’t help feel absolutely distraught at the fact that you weren't there with him for support. You soon found out (because everybody was fucking talking about it) that Dave’s shitty Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comics had been found online, and some rich scumbag wanted to fund him to direct it into a movie. Good god, what has the cinematic world come to?
Rose and Kanaya threw a farewell party of sorts, the night before Dave was due to catch his flight to LA. You stuck to the corners of rooms, excusing yourself quietly when you felt like there were too many people around you. You didn’t want to be there. Everything was Dave this, and Dave that. It’s like some cosmic asshole wanted to rub it in your face that you’d managed to push away the one good thing in your life. Dave was moving on to bigger and better things, which obviously did not have you in the picture. You had a feeling Dave tried to talk to you once or twice that night, but you really were not in the mood to cry in front of him. You’d done enough of that alone, the last thing you’d needed was for other people to watch this time. He texts you after you leave the party early.
TG: wish me luck
CG: GOOD LUCK.
TG: see you around kat
The next day, he was gone, your old shared apartment sold on.
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The first month was the hardest.
You kept expecting to wake up with Dave's stupid spider limbs tangled with yours, and, at first, it was extremely difficult to remember that he wouldn't be there anymore. Sometimes, you would wake up so bleary eyed in the morning that you'd still make breakfast for two, or sometimes subconsciously pick up a pack of chilli Doritos at the store. You spent a lot of time crying, and eating too much and sleeping too little, and not eating enough and sleeping too much. Everything was just fucking horrible, and you're not going to lie and say that you had completely not expected to feel this shit. You knew you'd feel this horrible after. After all, you can't get over almost six years of a relationship in less than a month. Either way, knowing that it would hurt didn't soften any blows, and you had to keep on reminding yourself about how unbearably tense the end of your relationship was. It didn't help much. You'd still cry if you found one of Dave's old shirts in your pile of clothes, and feel a pang of pain in your chest every time you so much as thought about what things were like when you first started out.
The absolute worst thing was when things started popping up on television. News of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson signing a contract or whatever, to be part of some indie movie directed by a guy no one had heard of before. You almost couldn't believe that Dave had somehow managed to rope in two actors who were that well known into an abomination like Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. You avoided magazines and shitty TV interviews for as long as you could as leaked images of the film set leaked into the media.
Three months since Dave's leave, and the trailer for his shitty movie is already out. You don’t understand how anyone could really make a movie that fast, but considering the trailer looked like it was made in Microsoft PowerPoint, you can’t really say you're surprised. What you are surprised about, however, is the fact that fucking Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are in it. The movie premieres in three months’ time. You bet he made the trailer before he even finished the damn movie. One week later, the trailer has a whopping 8 million hits on YouTube (not that you keep checking), and advertising is literally everywhere online. Critics who have had a sneak peek at the movie already have described it as “philosophically ground-breaking” and “the greatest dark humour to hit cinema screens”. You hope they’re being sarcastic- you’ve read Dave’s comics, they’re all pretty stupid (but you laughed at the time, didn’t you?), and you dread to think what sort of money went into making this abomination.
After that, things got a little easier. Sure, news of Dave’s movie was difficult to ignore online, but you barely saw anything on face to face regarding it, if you knew where to not look. You figure it’d be a lot more difficult to get over him if he were still in the state. However, you found it hurt to think about Dave’s success, and couldn’t help but think it was ironic that when you finally split, he gets successful.
Maybe you were holding him back.
You spend a lot more time with Kanaya, and whilst you think you’re starting to bug her, she insists that you aren’t. You don’t believe her. Both you and she go through and alarming amount of coffee, it’s quite disturbing. You think of all the Brazilian coffee bean farmers you’ve made millionaires, and feel very proud of yourself. Kanaya has this weird psychic ability to tell when one day is worse than another, and always pressures explanations out of you that you don’t feel like giving. You never tell her that you feel better for explaining afterwards- that’d just make her smug.
Aradia and Sollux (mainly Aradia) make a point of getting everyone psyched to see Dave’s movie next month, planning on seeing it on the night it comes out. You know that the theatre will be packed and the food will be over-priced, and that you’ll probably cry at some point during the evening, but fuck it. You tell her you’ll go, just because they are.
You’re sitting in Starbucks with Kanaya, when you ask her for the fiftieth time that day why she’s been so quiet.
“Are you going to stare out that window for the next hour, or do I have to put you in one of those torture chairs where they strap you down and hold your eyelids open with matchsticks?”
No response. She gives you one of those thoughtful looks, quirking a brow as she sips from her tea.
“Kanaya, just say what you’re going to say before I literally stand up and piss all over the god damn tabl-“
“Dave’s back for the week”, she cuts your sentence short, and you chew your tongue in your mouth. To be honest, you’re doing a pretty swell job at looking like you don’t want to run into traffic right now, but on the inside, a three second loop of you screaming at the top of your lungs is playing on repeat in your head. You break eye contact, and sip your latte, trying not to puke when it suddenly seems too sweet.
“..So what?”
“So, he’s coming down to ours for dinner the night he gets back. We want you there, Rose and I. Dave wants you there.”
You’re pretty sure you’re having heart palpitations. You want to back out, say no, and hibernate in Gamzee’s shed until Dave leaves back for LA again, but you sure as hell know that Kanaya would never let that happen. This is bad, this is really bad. Because this, Karkat Vantas, is how you end up across the table from your ex-boyfriend at your best friends house a week later. And maybe, just maybe-
Maybe you miss him.