Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

By the time she's ten years old, Rose Lalonde knows how she's going to die.

She wakes up, sweating and screaming, and her foster mother is holding her tightly, breathing anguished comforts into her ear and stroking her hair.

Rose clings to her foster mother's arm, tightly enough to dig in her finger nails and draw blood, but she doesn't see the room around her.

She sees a building top with a sky on fire. She sees a towering woman with grey skin and masses of tangled black hair and horns rising high into the sky. She feels her chest bleeding out, and solid gold piercing her lungs and her heart and her stomach and her liver and her spine. She feels herself coughing and feels blood drip down her chin and knitting needles falling from her hands. She feels herself collapse onto the building top, and hears the thump of something collapsing right beside her. She feels dizzy. She sees blackness closing in and the towering fish woman grinning down at her with sharp teeth.

Her foster mother whispers confused questions into her hair and Rose scrambles away. She falls onto the floor and shrieks because this is not her mother. Her mother is… her mother is… her mother is…

Her mother is Martinis and vodka and gin and rum and wine. Her mother is wobbling in impractical heels and her mother is magic and wizards and love with no way of knowing how to express it.

But Rose Lalonde has never known her mother. Rose Lalonde does not know how she knows her mother is science and hairspray and pink and cats and love and love and love and so much love.

Rose Lalonde does not know how she knows this is how she dies. But she knows. She knows this is no simple nightmare, and she knows that she should never tell anybody what she dreams of, and she knows that no one will ever believe her.

Rose Lalonde has always known things, you see.

Dave Strider does not know how he's going to die.

But he does always know the time.

At ten years old, he shares a room in a foster home with another boy, because there's too many kids without families or with families who can't take care of them in this part of town, and every kid has to share a room.

He wakes up at exactly 3:56 am. There's no clocks in the room, because his roommate doesn't like the ticking of analogue clocks, and he can't sleep unless its pitch black, meaning there are no light up digital clocks.

But he knows its exactly 3:56 am (wait… 3:57 now. He could tell you the second, if you'd like, but then he'd start counting).

He wakes up and he doesn't know why. He feels a twinge in his stomach and feels as if someone far away is in trouble.

He stares up at the ceiling, chewing on his lip, listening to the deep breathing of the boy on the other side of the room.

He falls back asleep exactly twenty two minutes later, and even though he wakes up thirteen minutes later than usual, he knows exactly which morning tasks to cut back on in order to be in time for school.

Dave Strider always knows what time it is, you see.

The next day at school, Rose flinches when she sees one of her friends playfully pretending to stab another friend with a fork.

The next day at school, Dave borrows a pair of sunglasses from his friend because his eyes are starting to hurt and he's tired, and he considers that maybe he should wear sunglasses all the time.

By the time Rose Lalonde is thirteen, she knows when she's going to die.

She wakes up breathing shallowly and shaking, but her foster mother is not there to comfort her. Her foster mother thinks her nightmares have gone, or, at least, gotten better, thanks to several therapists and a prescription of drugs no one is quite sure children should actually be taking.

Rose Lalonde quietly slips out of bed, turns on her bedside lamp, and looks into her mirror. She sees two faces.

She sees her own, current, face. Young and peachy and pudgy with baby fat. Rosy cheeks and large purple eyes with dark shadows painted underneath. Chapped lips and sleep tousled blonde hair reaching down past her shoulders.

She also sees her own, future face. Older, with thinner skin and sharper bones. Pallid cheeks and tired, purple eyes with dark shadows mixing with smudged make-up. Cracked black lipstick and slight greasy, greying hair ending at her chin.

Rose Lalonde blinks and looks around her dresser. Its scattered with make up and plates and cups and books. Behind her possessions, amongst them, on a table that isn’t hers far into the future, she sees black knitting needles and a sword and two take out boxes and a shitty, cheap birthday card with a big number 50 splashed on the front, but the 0 is crossed out in bright red felt tip pen and a 3 is scrawled next to it.

Rose Lalonde doesn't know how she knows that this is the night before she dies, but she does.

Dave Strider is never late, even when common logic dictates that he should be.

At fourteen years old he joins a sword fighting club in the community centre exactly eleven minutes away from school. He joins because one of his friends said he should get a hobby, and the classes are free because they're part of some 'area improvement' programme, and he thinks swords are pretty cool. He doesn't tell his new foster family that he joined it, telling them instead that every Thursday he joins a couple friends to study and work on anything they've let slide over the previous week. His foster family thinks this is an excellent idea and tell him that his new foster father will always be at the school gates at 4:00 pm to pick him up.

At the end of the school day every Thursday, Dave walks the eleven minutes to the community centre to sword fight. The class always lasts around fifty five minutes. At 3:55 Dave always walks the eleven minutes back to school.

During these eleven minutes, his grip on time always gets a little fuzzy. He thinks, logically, that 3:56 shouldn’t last as long as it does. But he always reaches the school gates a 4:00 pm, just seconds before his foster father pulls up and grins at him from inside the car. Dave always readjusts the cheap sunglasses he's taken to wearing, to stop his eyes hurting against the sun, and hops into the car.

Dave Strider is never late, even when he knows he should be.

At twenty two, Rose Lalonde knows who she's going to die with.

In her dreams, she sometimes catches glimpses of a person. A boy. A man. A blonde with sunglasses and the same jaded tone in his voice as her. She sees a freckled back, or a long hand gripping a sword, or the sleeve of a red shirt. Sometimes he says her name. Sometimes he blows smoke around her. Sometimes he wraps an arm around her as she types away at her laptop.

She meets him when she's twenty two. Three months out of university and she's at a party thrown by one of her old lecturers. He invited her because he's inviting all his recently graduated, promising students, and Rose is definitely promising. She's definitely promising because her final project, a collection of short stories about ghosts in the afterlife watching the real world they'd left, has been published by a small, indie publishing company.

The party is classy. Its small, and private, and held in a rented house out of town. Men wear shirts and ties and women wear smart dresses or long skirts. There are semi-expensive bottles of wine and semi-elegant plates of food.

Rose wears purple, because she likes purple. And she's straightened her hair, recently cut short up to her chin, and she even paid to have her nails filed and painted, because she'd never done that before.

She spends two hours casually making her way around the party, sipping on a glass of wine and catching up with several old classmates. She reminds herself to pace herself on her wine, because normal people don't usually make their way through a whole bottle of wine within an hour. She hadn't really drunk until recently, but after house party in her first year of university, she'd found she hadn't dreamt at all, and even though she had woken up foggy and feeling ill, she hadn't seen the small blonde girl she'd been dreaming about recently.

She thinks the girl is her daughter, even though she knows she's never going to give birth.

After two hours, she sees a boy wearing sunglasses. He standing next to a man she knows is another lecturer, but not in any course she's ever had any contact with. The lecturer who had invited her is there as well, along with several other new-graduates.

She doesn't recognise the sunglasses. They're not the same ones she'd dreamt of; they're cheaper, lighter, a slightly different shape. But she recognises the blonde hair they rest under. She'd dreamt of running a hand through it one night, briefly, before she'd dreamt of a small grey child without a gender and wizards being killed.

She sees this boy in a red suit and knows that she has known him, will know him, and will die with him. She sees this boy in a red suit and knows that eventually she will tell him that she dreams of the future, and he will believe her. She sees this boy in a red suit and knows that she has about thirty years with him to turn the world upside down.

Its exactly 10:04:19 pm on the 14th August, 1998 when Dave Strider looks up to see Rose Lalonde approaching him.

Chapter Text

Dave watches her slide easily into the conversation. She stands next to the lecturer he doesn’t know and smiles at him. The lecturer pauses in his conversation to shoot her a smile, and then goes back to whatever he was saying. She looks around at their small group, sipping carefully from her glass of wine. There's already several black lipstick marks around the edge of the glass, and she leaves one more. Her eyes land on Dave, and he pretends he doesn't notice.

She watches him carefully. He thinks she thinks she's being slick. Maybe she is. Maybe Dave's just good keeping an eye on his surroundings.

“-What do you think, Rose?” the lecturer he doesn't know asks, looking at the blonde girl.

Dave thinks she might fluster a bit, not knowing what the lecturer was asking because she had been too busy looking at Dave's face. But she just smiles, her black lips quirking up quickly, and takes a sip from her wine before answering.

“Joyce didn't ever intend for anyone to actually enjoy his writing,” she says, “he was much to dedicated to writing intricate puzzles and riddles he felt no one could ever solve, in order to make himself feel better about something. What, I’m not sure; I’m not very well versed in a dead man's personal affairs.”

The lecturer he doesn't know barks a laugh, and claps Rose on the back. Her smile twists into something slightly uncomfortable.

“You always did have a vendetta against that man,” the lecturer says.

“That 'vendetta' gave me the highest mark of any student you've had in years,” Rose replies.

The conversation goes on, and the lecturer he doesn't know introduces Rose as one of the best literature student he's ever had. He tells them all she's recently been published by a small indie company and jokes about how this party is brimming with the future's creative geniuses. The conversation then slowly disintegrates into several different conversations, and Dave is left leaning against the wall, looking idly into his glass.

Rose is somehow shuffled around the broken circle to him, and she downs the rest of her wine in one swift, elegant gulp. She places the glass on a nearby table, and then reaches into the bag hanging off her shoulder. She pulls out a compact mirror and a tube of black lipstick. She reapplies it, quickly, neatly, and then snaps the mirror shut, dropping that and her lipstick back into her bag. Dave watches as she rubs her lips together smoothly.

“Take it you're not a fan of James Joyce then?” he asks. Because he has no other current conversation partner, and neither does she. And this is a semi-fancy, artistic party and that's what people do.

Rose smiles at him, but he thinks he can see apprehension in her eyes. “I've really only read Ulysses,” she says, with a flick of her hand, “For my course, but after that I’m determined never to contribute to whoever's benefiting from that man's book sales ever again.”

“You don't like rambling, long winded, most probably pointless soliloquies about masturbation on beaches and taking a shit behind a rock?” Dave asks. Rose looks at him for a moment, and then laughs slightly. He can't quite tell if its a real laugh or not, but he guesses it doesn't really matter.

“I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that those are perhaps the best parts of the book, but I have said since I read the very first page that the indulgent stream of consciousness and constant change between lack of punctuation and perfect syntax is just a little taxing to read and analyse, making the entire text seem rather pretentious.”

Dave raises an eyebrow. “You really think so.” His tone is flat and deadpan, and he knows she knows exactly what he's thinking

Rose smiles, and looks up at the ceiling, “I also realise that's perhaps a little hypercritical of me. But I'm a literature student, or was, at least; long winded analyses are what I have been trained for.”

“Why I never went into lit,” Dave says, “Got to read all this old bullshit which are apparently all great pieces of literature just because a group of people a hundred years ago bought the newspapers they were published in. What is even up with that literature canon, man, you can't be a part of it if you weren't friends with the other people who were in it. Like some old dead man's boys club; you wanna join the refined canon of literature my man? I'm afraid you can't because you never sucked Ezra Pound's dick. Oh you didn't know that's how we decided who to let into the canon? Well that sucks for you but unfortunately that's just the way it is.”

Rose looks a little shocked. She looks around to see if there's a drink near, but there isn't. So she just says, “You're analysis of the canon is rather, ah, interesting.”

“Am I wrong?” Dave asks.

“I mean… probably not.”

Dave chuckles and pats down his trouser pocket, before slipping his hand inside and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?” he asks. Rose shakes her head.

“No, I don't smoke, but I'd be willing to accompany you outside; it's rather stuffy in here.”

They make their way out the back door. Rose snags another glass of wine off the table as they go, taking a large gulp. She did not expect the first conversation she had with the man she's going to die with to go like this.

Outside, there are several other people. A few are smoking. One couple passes a cigarette between them while leaning in very close to each other. Another girl stomps out her cigarette and then pulls out another one immediately. Quiet chatter reaches them, but not loud enough to intrude. Dave sticks his cigarette in his mouth and pulls out a lighter. He has to click it a couple times before it lights, but when it does, he lifts it to his face. Rose can see the reflection of the fire flickering in his shades. She can see herself too. In one lens, she's young, as she is now. In the other, she's old, as she will be when she dies. She blinks, and the image is gone.

Dave lowers the lighter and puffs a couple times before inhaling the smoke. Rose takes a sip of wine.

“I'm meant to be quitting this shit,” Dave mutters, looking down at the cigarette slightly annoyed. He grips it between his thumb and forefinger, taps it with his middle finger to flick off the ash.

"We all have vices,” Rose replies. Dave hums in agreement, and takes another drag, blowing smoke up towards the sky.

“My name's Rose, by the way; Rose Lalonde,” she says.

“Dave Strider,” he replies, “Rookie film maker, the asshole that wears shades indoors and at night, and overall badass.” Rose laughs, and Dave gestures inside the house with his cigarette. “That guy said you were an author or something,” Dave replies. Rose smiles.

“Sort of. I've only had one thing published, and only very recently.”

"Oh? What's it called, maybe I'll pick up a copy.”

Rose hesitates for a moment, taking a long gulp of her wine. “Its called The Other Moon. I'm not sure it'll be to your tastes though.”

“Why not?”

“Well. Its rather, ah, rambling and long winded," she gives him an uneasy smile, "Its also rather dark. Its about dead children, who watch the world from the afterlife.” She chews on her lips; its always quite unnerving explaining her work to new people. Dave shrugs.

“Hey, I can get behind dark. Almost dated this goth dude way back when second year. He was always going on about that Edgar Allan Poe shit and pentagrams and how much he wanted to die all the time.” Dave pauses and recoils slightly, then says, quieter, “He ah, wasn't very happy actually. Probably shouldn't of made that joke.”

“Probably not,” Rose agrees, and then brings the subject back to what it had been before his tangent, “I'd be flattered if you bought it though. Not many people I know have.”

“Really? Woulda thought family and shit like that would've been ripping the doors off the book stores. I'm sorry ma'am do you know who we are, our little girl's famous. Yes sirree she is published just like James Joyce, is your daughter published madame, no I didn't think so!”

Rose is biting back giggles. She's not sure if Dave is drunk, or if he's just always like this, but its amusing nonetheless. Once she's managed to control her giggles, she takes another sip of wine, and Dave watches her as he takes another drag of his cigarette.

“Well, any family I do have probably won't know they're relation has been published.  Grew up in the foster system.”

“Really?” Dave asks, surprised, “Me too.”

“Oh,” Rose, too, is surprised, “That's… well. Interesting. I've not met many people who grew up in it since leaving.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

Dave takes a final drag of his cigarette and drops it to the ground, grimacing. “Need to find a brand with better tasting filters,” he says, pushing it into the ground with the heel of his foot.

“I wasn't aware you were meant to smoke the filter,” Rose says.

“Nah you ain't, but the last couple drags always taste like it.”

They spend the rest of the evening with each other. Rose almost forgets that this is the man she's going to die with. They tell each about the several families they both had. They were both rather lucky; while not all the families were necessarily great, they definitely had it better than a lot of the other kids in the system.

He tells her he makes shitty films. She says she's sure they're not actually that bad. He says, no, they're shitty, they're meant to be shitty, I make them specifically so they're shitty. She doesn't quite understand why, he tells her he thinks its hilarious.

Rose drinks perhaps a bit more than she'd hoped she'd drink in public. Dave smokes less than he'd assumed he would.

At the end of the night, they switch emails as they stand outside waiting for their taxis. Dave smokes another cigarette and Rose finishes off her drink. Rose's taxi arrives first, and she smiles at Dave as she opens the door.

“It was lovely meeting you,” she says. Dave gives her nod, stuffing his hands in his pockets and smiling.

“You'd better look forward to that message,” he says, as she closes the door.

You'd better look forward to the next thirty years, Rose thinks, as her taxi drives away.

Chapter Text

Rose wakes up several days later after dreaming of her daughter. She knows the house her daughter is going to live in; it's a large, fancy house on the outskirts of one of her old neighbourhoods. She knows she needs to buy that house some time in the next thirty years. She wonders how she'll do it. How she'll get enough money to buy it. How her daughter will get there. How her daughter will survive.

She sighs, rubs her face and slips out of bed. She makes herself an extremely black, bitter cup of coffee, and then boots up her computer, tapping her fingers along the desk as her internet loads. When she opens her email, she sees a notification on the instant messaging feature. She opens it, and sees it’s from Dave Strider. Her eyebrows shoot upwards.

yo i bought your book

the other moon by r lalonde

front cover's eight shadows right?

it fucking better be your book cause i just bought it

Rose smiles at the screen. The messages were sent a few hours ago, so she replies.

That is, indeed, my book. I'm surprised, after a couple days I started to think you weren't going to contact me. I am, however, flattered, as I said I would be. Both that you messaged me and that you bought the book.

She lounges around in front of her computer for a bit longer, sipping her coffee, waiting for Dave to message back. When he doesn't, however, she gets up and wanders along to her shower.

Once she's had a shower, dressed and eaten breakfast (or, she supposes its more akin to lunch) she checks her messages again. Dave messaged back two minutes ago.

nah man three day rule you mustve heard of it

gotta keep those bitches guessing

does he like me does he not does he even remember me

then you get that magic text and you just cant be angry cause youre so used to being turned down that even when a guy makes you wait youll snap onto it faster than a shark in any shitty shark movie

which is all shark movies

thats why i love em

theyre all so shit and they fucking know it

cmon name me one shark movie that thinks is good

you cant

exactly

also yknow i was busy being hungover and then this project me and some other guys are working on

shits hectic yo

anyway this book is pretty dark wow

that first one is uh

well i did not expect suicide within the first two pages ill just say that

also you said the other night you didnt like joyce because he was pretentious and self indulgent well you are a fucking hypocrite because jesus christ lalonde

you could have condensed five of these pages into one sentence i swear

I apologise for the rather heavy reading material. You don't have to read it, I'm just truly flattered you bought it. And I know I share a pleasure for long words with James Joyce, but unlike him I don't attempt to weave unsolvable riddles into my work just to feel smug when nobody can solve them.

uhuh see the thing is lalonde all writers are kinda smug bastards anyway

mark my words within a few years youll set out to write the most complicated work of fiction known to man and youll fucking revel in everyone throwing shitstorms about what it means

when in fact it dont mean shit

i mean thats what i plan on doing

make the shittiest films ever get famous for how shit they are and just listen to people trying to find hidden meaning in them

nah man the stairs are not a metaphor for the protags life the stairs are just stairs and the protags a clumsy lil shit

end of

but if bitches wanna find the meaning of life in my work they are very fucking welcome to

You seem very assured that you will become famous enough for this to happen.

oh fuck yeah

definitely gonna happen ive already got some awards

im definitely gonna get an oscar for my shit

You already have awards?

yeah some bullshit indie thing

my final project last year got screened at this festival thing and apparently the masses loved it

gotta love the masses

they love me

ah shit gotta go

i can drag out the last minutes of my breaks for hella long but its always gonna end eventually

Break? You're at work?

She waits ten minutes for a reply, leaning on two legs of her chair, but she doesn't get one. Eventually, she sighs, closes her email, and opens the word document titled Insanely long with wizards and shit. She muses over how she should think of an actual name for this thing, and begins adding to her notes. 

She sits down later that evening with a bowl of chicken noodles, and rubs her eyes. A dull ache is beginning to bloom behind them from staring at her screen all day, and her fingers buzz slightly from typing frantically for several hours. She thinks she's managed to get all the recent ideas out onto the screen, but she's sure she'll remember something later, and she'll have to get out of bed and dig her notepad out of her draw. If it was a good night, there'd be a pen wedged between the pages. If it was a bad night, she'd search all over her flat, throwing away several non-working pens before settling on a pencil or, even worse, her eye-liner pen.

She sighs and picks up her fork with one hand, and checks her email with the other. Chewing slowly, she replies to her boss, telling her that, yes, she's willing to pick up a shift on Friday. She ignores an email from an old uni classmate who seems to think they're much closer than they ever were, and then blinks at the block of red messages from Dave.

yeah sorry i was using this shitty computer in the break room plus runnings a bitch

actors yelling left and right get me some coffee get me a bagel suck my dick

ok an actors never told me to suck their dick but i kinda wish a couple of em would

man sometimes i wanna tell them to shove it and ask what am i your bitch

then i remember that yeah being their bitch is literally my job

but it pays and ive gotten chummy with a couple high ups

gonna nepotise my way to top

is neptoise even a word

if not it should be

nepotise: verb: to use nepotism: origin: dave strider's genius mind

step back ladies and gentlemen dave strider's revamping the english language

Rose huffs out a short laugh, and chews on her chicken while thinking about a reply. Four more messages pop up.

wow rose remind me not to read this book after a long day at work

i mean its great and all but after making thirty cups of coffee per hour its kinda hard to wrap my head around “felicia wandered over the obsidian tarmac, swinging her backpack in a lackadaisical manner; the bottom skimmed the road every time it swung back and forth with a soft sound which reminded her of the quiescent wind that would roll around her house when she was a child – if she truly remembered that at all, that is, because sometimes that small, soft bed completely escaped her memory, pushed down by repression.

that’s a very long sentence rose

and this text is tiny

The text size was not my decision. But yes, I do have a penchant for long sentences.

I take it work was rather stressful today, then?

nah i just like to bitch

one of the best jobs i ever had

gonna push me into even better jobs

got it aaaalllll planned out

I'm astounded at your confidence in your plan to become famous

what you dont think its going to work?

Rose pauses, her hand hovering over the keyboard. She thinks about her dreams. Sometimes she sees large houses, and flashing lights, and red carpets. She sees herself dressed in expensive clothing, and old wine in crystal glasses, and a thin hand holding a cigarette from a golden packet.

The exact opposite, in fact.

Out of everyone I know, you seem the most likely to reach fame

out of everyone you know?

youve known me for like a day rose

I don't really know many people

yeah i figured

She hadn't expected her relationship with the man she's going to die with to be this casual.

They message quite regularly over the next few days. Somehow, they're breaks at work seem to sync up, and Dave will tell her about the extremely complicated coffee order he had to remember for a director, or Rose will complain about how people kept bringing books back late to the library and complaining when they get fined:

yeah cause thats totally

a thing that i

never do

Dave.

nah its literally a thing i never do but thats cause im so fucking awesome at remembering dates

except this one time that book was definitely a week late but i guess the system fucked and said it was in a week early instead

whatever i ain't complaining

When they're not working, they just shoot completely ridiculous, almost asinine messages back and forth:

dirty dancing is shit in the best possible way like yeah baby move over let me get some of that action

patrick swayze could teach me to dance dirty any day

I was always more partial to Jennifer Grey

oh yeah i mean she was super hot in that film too

but patrick swayze was my bisexual awakening

he holds a special place in my heart

That's not something you should admit to, Dave

fuck off i bet whatever chick made the gay rear its rainbow coloured head in you is equally embarrassing

Jane Russell. One of my foster mothers was partial to old films.

ok yeah i can see where you're coming from

jane russell was one hot lady)

She assumes Dave sometimes doesn't sleep well. Sometimes she wakes up to see messages sent at 2, 3, 4, 5am. Pointless thoughts and theories that could only be thought by a sleep deprived mind:

what if we're the aliens rose

rose how fucked up would that be

…

what if water is actually poison but it takes years and huge amounts to kill us

…

jesus christ it feels like its been 3:04 am for nearly an hour i know i wanted more time to finish this part of the project but this is bullshit)

She messages him back, every morning. Sometimes he messages back immediately, and she knows he hasn't slept at all that night. Sometimes its a few hours, and she hopes he at least caught a few minutes.

Sometimes she's also awake when he messages her in the middle of the night. But she doesn't reply then. She's too busy drawing up house plans for her daughter, or typing away at Insanely long with wizards and shit, or staring in her mirror, trying to blink away the image of her at fifty three years old.

But one night, she dreams about a boy.

She's dreamt about this boy before, but never in any huge detail. Snatches of spiky blonde hair, or spiky ridiculous glasses, or spiky silver robots. Her mind always just swirls around him before rushing off to her daughter.

But one night, it stays on him.

He's tall, and freckled, and blonde, and sits on the roof of a tall building with a fishing rod swinging down to the ocean below. He stares up at the bright sun through his pointed shades. Seagulls land next to him and he glances lazily down at them. He lets them peck around for a few minutes, until one of them pecks at his hand. He grimaces and shoos them all away, before pulling his fishing line up. There's nothing on it. He groans, and flops back on the roof. The phone next to him dings, but instead of picking it up, he just tilts his head.

Rose watches him stand up and go back inside.

Inside is cluttered with the weirdest shit; puppets and wires and robots and hats. Scrap metal and sword and screwdrivers and cans of food.

The boy taps his shades and music starts blaring out of speakers placed solidly in each room. He opens a cupboard and rifles through, letting cans fall to the floor, until he pulls out canned potatoes and canned soup and a can of orange soda. He opens them and throws them in pots and cooks them and Rose watches him slide down onto the kitchen floor with a plate of canned food and eat in silence; nothing but music that is hundreds of years old blaring out across the ocean.

There's a laptop on the table, and the boy tilts his head again. Pink and orange text flash up on the computer screen, both the boy and the girl he's talking to so quick with reading and typing, and so used to overlapping and understanding, that the paragraphs are gone before Rose can catch them and read them.

As the boy is gulping down orange soda, Rose wakes up.

She swallows and stares up at her dark ceiling. Her eyes are dry and heavy and she's sweating lightly, but this wasn't a violent vision.

She gets out of bed and boots up her computer. There are a couple messages from Dave, sent an hour ago, but she doesn't bother reading them.

Do you have a brother?

She doesn't know why she asked. She knows this boy won't exist for around four hundred years. She knows that she and Dave, that the human race, the world will be gone long before they arrive.

Maybe she's hoping he knows things, like she does.

nah not that i know of

guess its possible whatever people did the horizontal tango and left me on a doorstep had other kids

dont know about em if they did

why

I just.

I thought I saw someone who looked a bit like you the other day. I've only just remembered. I'll admit I've always been enamoured with the idea of finding a long lost sibling.

yeah i feel that

but sorry yeah you cant vicariously live that dream through me

…

hey you alright?

Rose sighs, and runs a hand over her forehead.

Yeah. Just not having a good night.

wanna talk about it?

I just have bad dreams sometimes. They wake me up and then I can't get back to sleep.

yeah i feel that

Rose's heart seizes in her throat. She swallows thickly, and her fingers shake as she types out her next sentence.

Do you ever get bad dreams? That feel… real?

not necessarily

i always getthat  theyre nightmares but

i cant ever do anything to stop them

and then like

i wake up sometimes feeling like something bads happening

like to someone

and i'm meant to be there to stop it

or sometimes i wake up feeling like i shouldn't be here

not in a

like a “i shouldn't be alive way” but in a

i should be alive but in a different place

doing something else

Yeah.

I feel that

glad im not the only mental one around then.

Chapter Text

hey you said you had this weekend off right?

Rose is at work. She shouldn't technically have her email open at work, but its a slow day at the library and her boss never bothers to come out of her office to check on the front desk anyway.

I did, yes.

got any plans?

Nothing.

is that a 'no i have no plans' or 'i have plans to do nothing'

because i make a lot of plans to do nothing and people never seem to get it

hey dave what you doing tonight

nothing

cool wanna go to the-

no i am literally planning on doing nothing

so if youre planning on doing nothing i respect that but if you just have no plans i might have something for you

Currently I'm planning on sitting in front of my computer banging my head against the table trying to get this book finished. But if what you're offering seems equally as exciting I might take you up on it.

man that sounds horrible

a film ive been working on is being shown at this shitty hipster art festival

its on all weekend theyve got like paintings and sculptures and real life art during the day

films and performances and some new fancy high tech art during the evening and night

foods cheap booze is cheap and i dont have to keep getting up to go outside to smoke

cause they've set up screens outside for some of the films which is where mine is

plus its still pretty warm

which while global warming is definitely a serious issue that will probably end in the death of humanity

im gonna thank for because goddam its so cold down here

grow up in houston for eighteen years think youre an almighty god against dramatic weather

nah bruh

turns out even though you can deal with summers hotter than the inside of satans asshole

you can ONLY deal with summers hotter than the inside of satans asshole

anything dropping closer to just outside the fiery pits of hell and youre shivering more than a fainting heroine who heard her love interest growl her name in that deep manly way every love interest seems to be able to growl names

have you ever heard someone growl your name in a deep and manly way rose

is it actually possible

 know for a fact i have never growled a name in a deep and manly way

dont get me wrong i can go deep and im very manly but i dont think humans can actually growl

Can you go deep, Dave?

ah fuck off i meant my voice and you know it

but i mean if your interested sure why not

many people with many varying degrees of preference for deepness have been exposed to my skills

want it deep want it shallow want it somewhere in between im your man baby

Oh my God.

you bought this on yourself rose

Yes I suppose I did.

but cmon you coming to a shitty hipster art fest or am i gonna have to go with my actual crew mates

who im honestly kind of sick of because we've spent every minutes of spare time together for the past four months trying to get this shit finished in time

You should know by now that shitty hipster basically encompasses everything I am. We met at a shitty hipster party, which was made even more hipster by the fact that it was trying to masquerade as a high class, fancy gathering. I'm sure it would have passed, too, if those two girls from that art course didn't start smoking pot at the back of the garden.

oh man those girls were so great

they were so high it was hilarious

i hope they go places in life

wow everyone with their abstract art they made while higher than a motherfucker

so is that a yes

It’s a yes. Just send me the details and I'll meet you there.

nice

So, that Saturday, Rose pulls on her coat (because even though Dave is right and it is quite warm for October, its still evening and its still chilly), and makes her way through town. She falters as she nears he museum and the park:

An outdoor art festival in October? Who ever thought that was a good idea? Even if it is warmer than usual.

shitty hipsters

I see your point.

because even though she and Dave have been messaging near constantly over the past couple months, they haven't actually seen each other since their first meeting. And she had already been slightly tipsy by then, and she hadn't thought she was going to meet him.

She gets inside the park and looks around, pulling her coat around herself anxiously. There's people milling around, a few sitting on the ground, some have set up chairs. A lot of people are picking food off of plates, or drinking from see-through plastic cups.

There are several… well, she supposes they're exhibits. A couple of screens set up on opposite sides of the part, each playing a couple different films, and a couple of dance numbers. Through the doors into the museum, she can see flashing lights.

She's considering checking inside when she hears her name being called.

Turning around, she sees Dave walking towards her, grinning. He's holding a plastic cup of booze in each hand, a cigarette between two fingers, and even though the sun is beginning to go down, he's wearing his cheap sunglasses. Rose smiles at him as he hands her a cup.

“Got you some wine,” he says as she takes the cup. He sticks his cigarette in his mouth and then removes it with his free hand, flicking away the ash. “Its cheap shit and no where near as good as that stuff at the at fancy party but it'll do.”

“Thanks,” Rose says, and takes a sip. She then grimaces and coughs, “Wow this is the worst thing I've ever drunk. And I used to use three dollar vodka as pre-drinks.”

“Aw shit that stuff's like paint stripper,” Dave says.

Rose smirks, “Exactly.” And, despite how horrible the wine is, she takes another sip.

“Oi, Dave!”

 Dave looks down at the ground, and takes an extremely long drag of his cigarette. “I feel slightly bad over how fed up I am of those fuckers,” he mutters to her, “buuuuuut I've only gotta get through tonight and then we'll probably never see each other again.”

“And you have me to help you through it,” Rose says, slipping her arm through his, “So why don't you introduce me.”

Dave finishes off his cigarette, drops it to the ground, throws her a grin, and then leads her towards a small group of people.

She meets Charlie, Oliver and Mary, two actors and the art girl for the film. Poppy and 'Dickhead' are “somewhere around”, and Harvey is “probably off getting high”. Dave leads them over to one of the screens, and they navigate through the crowd towards two people who Dave says are Poppy and Dickhead.

Rose thinks she'll never discover Dickhead's real name. Or why he's called Dickhead. He doesn't seem to mind though, he just grins at Rose with crooked teeth when he's introduced, and Poppy rolls her eyes and mutters something to him about going to the dentist.

Currently, the screen is playing some black and white film. Rose recognises the two actresses on screen as two girls sitting a few meters away from them. One of the girls is giggling and hiding her face in the other girl's neck, while they're friends around them congratulate them an each other. Rose smiles slightly at them, watching as the girl peaks at the screen just as the camera zooms in on her own face. She squeals and hides against the other girl again, who laughs and presses a kiss to her hair.

“Man this films really fucking gay,” Dickhead says. There's a collective groan from the others, and Dave huffs.

“No shit dude, pretty sure it’s about lesbians,” Dave says, rubbing his eyes under his shades.

“Yeah I know just didn't expect this place to be as full of queers as it is,” Dickhead replies.

Rose corrects her previous thought. She may never know Dickhead's real name, but she supposes she now knows why he's called it.

Dickhead and Poppy continue to argue, and Dave pulls a cigarette out of his packet, lighting it. “You get why I'm sick of them, right?” he mutters to her, smoke falling out of his mouth as he does so.

“I understand completely,” Rose replies, “I've also become fed up of arguments like these.”

Dave nods lazily, breathing in smoke, and then leaning over to blow it in Dickhead's face when Dave decides he's said something particularly aggravating.

The black and white lesbian film finishes, with a short roll of credits, and then a middle aged man in a suit stands up in front of the screen. He leads applause for the Black Violets Film Association, and then begins to introduce the new film.

“Oh shit this is us,” Charlie says.

“Are we meant to go up there or something?” Mary asks.

“BVFA didn't, they just stood up when he announced then,” Poppy says.

“Excellent, we'll do that then,” Oliver says.

“And now we have something a little more humorous,” the man at the front says, glancing down at a clipboard, “from a group of recently graduated students! We do love out fresh meat here!” the audience chuckles a bit, and Dave raises an eyebrow over his shades, “From the… ah…” the guy squints at his clipboard, as if trying to figure out if he's reading it correctly, “Plush… Rumps… From Tomorrow?”

Dickhead lets out a loud whoop and they all stand up. Rose leans back on the floor, attempting to draw attention away from herself. She watches as Poppy attempts to quiet down Dickhead, and as Dave takes another drag of his cigarette.

“Ah, yes. Uh… Plush Rumps From Tomorrow with… ah… with their film Guy #1 and Guy #2… ah, enjoy!”

The man re-enters the crowd and the audience applauds as the screen lights up and Dave and the others sit down. Some of the audience seem to be clapping out of pure politeness, not quite understanding what's happening. Others seem more enthused, relieved at something lighter after the previous lesbian tragedy, or just genuinely psyched for something ridiculous.

The film is…

Well…

Its…

Ok. It’s shit.

Rose spends the entire thirty minutes staring at the screen. Her mouth falls open, so she closes it, only for it to fall open again.

The acting is terrible. On screen, Oliver keeps pulling his script out from behind his back, and the camera keeps catching Poppy holding a microphone. At one point, there's a loud crash from off camera, and Dave can be heard yelling out “Shit! Fuck we're just gonna cut that out.”

“I take it you decided not to cut it out?” Rose asks Dave. Dave snorts.

“Honestly? We got kinda bored and fed up halfway through the editing process and kind missed out half the scenes.”

The audience seems to love it though. They shriek in laughter at the ridiculous, over the top slapstick, and the applause at the end is louder than anything Rose thinks she's heard. There's a short break between 'Plush Rumps from Tomorrow' and whoever's next, and several people come over to them. A couple spectators just congratulate them on their 'on point humour' or say 'how fucking awesome it is they don't give a shit and the entire film industry should be like that'. But a few people come over with very sincere statements about how they loved the commentary on modern society, or the decline in morals within humanity. Dave and the others just nod seriously and agree, but when they leave, burst out laughing.

Just before the next film starts, a tiny, grubby boy with a squashed nose stumbles over to them.

“Dude our film was fucking ace!” he yells. Dave winces.

“That's Harvey. And honestly, I can't deal with his high as fuck bullshit. Wanna go see what's going on inside?” he asks.

Harvey slumps down next to her, and the overpowering scent of pot wafts over to her. She nods to Dave. “Yeah, sure. I'm intrigued by all those flashing lights.”

Inside is… actually nothing special. It’s just a bunch of flashing lights and something akin to shadow puppets; albeit much more elegant and complicated. Rose and Dave watch what they think is a retelling of the Odyssey against flashing green, blue and purple for a while. Rose makes her way through four cups of terrible wine, and Dave eventually pulls her outside for a cigarette.

The night seems to be coming to an end; people are leaving, throwing loud yells and shrieks behind them, dropping cups and plates on the grass. Dave glances around for anyone from his crew, but doesn't seem too disappointed when he can't see them.

“Good riddance, you fuckers,” he mutters, lighting his cigarette. He sits down on the steps, downs his plastic cup of cheap booze, and throws the cup away across the grass. Rose sits down next to him, taking a gulp of her own drink.

“Hey, Rose?” he says. His words a slurred from the alcohol and he's staring down at his cigarette.

“Mm?”

“You know when… you asked me the other day? If I had a brother?”

“Yeah?”

“And you said it was 'cause you saw someone who looked like me?”

“Uhuh.”

“What did he look like?”

Rose looks over at Dave. He's taking a drag of his cigarette, and blows and stream of smoke down towards his shoes. She thinks back to her dream. Of the boy in the building surrounded by the ocean, filling silence with music and trying to make human connections across the internet.

“He was, ah,” she pauses, “he was tall, like you, and blonde as well but he was… he was younger. I think he was about… fourteen?” Dave hums and nods, so she carries on, “his hair was more gel than hair honestly. He had it styled in this… ridiculously spiky way. It was kind of defying gravity.” Dave snorts, and Rose chews on her lips before saying, “I think was really caught my eye was that he was wearing shades, but, ridiculous shades. These pointy triangle things. They were almost bigger than his face.”

Dave looks up at the sky, blowing smoke towards the stars. “Where'd you see him?”

Rose blinks. She wants to tell him. She wants to tell him so badly; how she saw the boy in a dream, and the dream was a vision about the future. That the boy lived in a dead world surrounded by the ocean and had no one but a girl on the other side of the country. How his brother and her daughter would mean so much to each other. They would die for each other, literally, and they would kill for each other, literally. They would cry together and laugh together and type out thousands upon thousands of words to each before they ever met face to face.

She can't tell him though. Because she's never told anyone. And she knows she's going to die with this man for that boy and girl. She knows that at some point over the next thirty years, she will be willing to die for this man, and he will be willing to die for her.

She wants to tell him. She wants to tell him so badly.

But she can't.

So instead, she says:

“In town. I don't remember exactly, I'm sorry.”

Dave frowns, and then catches himself, and smiles shakily at her, “Nah its fine,” he takes another drag, “Very unlikely some random on the street is related to me. Especially some random on the street here; any relatives I have'll probably be up in Texas or something. Whatever.”

A couple of people run out of the museum behind them and stumble down the steps, giggling. Its the two girls from the black and white lesbian film. They're fingers are locked together tightly, and they pause halfway across the grass. The smaller girl, the one who had been hiding her face, pulls the taller one in for a kiss, and laughs, before tugging her off again.

“You ever had something like that?” Dave asks, watching the two girls disappear through the gates. Rose shakes her head.

“No,” she replies, “I mean I’ve dated a few people but… nothing like that.”

“Me neither,” Dave says. There's a pause; long enough for Dave to finish his cigarette and drop it to the ground. “I lied, y’know. About Patrick Swayze being my bisexual awakening.”

Rose gives him a sardonic smile, “To be honest, I’d figured that out.”

“It was this guy on my course in first year,” Dave continued, as if he hadn't heard Rose, “Y'know I don't think I ever actually properly spoke to him. A ‘hi’ here, a ‘can I borrow a lighter’ there, but… I dunno. I just saw him laughing with his friends and strutting around campus and whatever and I just kinda went. Oh shit. He's hot. Y'know?”

“Yes,” Rose says, quietly, “I know.”

“Never asked him out. First off, didn't know if he swung my way, and even if he did I don't think I was comfortable enough with that new revelation to do it. By the time I was I guess he must've transferred courses, or maybe left uni completely, 'cause I didn't see him after first year.”

“I'm sorry.” Rose says. Dave shrugs, and stares down at the ground. Rose downs the rest of her drink and throws her cup across the grass.

She sways slightly on the steps. The grass in front of her tilts, and the stars in the sky swirl. Giggling from the last few stragglers seem far away, muted. Her eyes unfocus, so she closes them. She can feel nothing but a slight breeze on her left, and Dave's warmth on her right. She feels him shuffle, and she opens her eyes to look at him.

He's taken off his shades and is rubbing his face vigorously.

“Fuck, I am really drunk.” he says. He runs his hands through his hair and tugs at it, shooting her a smile, “I think I need to go home.”

Dave's eyes are red, and Rose thinks she can see stars reflected in them.

Rose's eyes are purple, and Dave thinks he can see the crescent moon curving around her pupils.

“Yeah, so do I.”

Dave stands up first, staggering slightly. He holds out a hand and Rose grips it so he can pull her up. They stumble along together across the grass and through the gates. They live on opposite sides of town, so they stand there for a moment, swaying together, watching a couple cars drive past them. And then they say goodbye, quietly, very quietly. Dave tells her he'll message her, and Rose says she looks forward to it. And then they walk in opposite directions.

Dave buys another pack of cigarettes on the way home, and smokes half of it before he falls asleep.

Rose buys a bottle of vodka, and drinks three quarters of it before she vomits into her shower and then stumbles into bed to fall unconscious.

They both wake up the next afternoon, hungover, with aching lungs, feeling like there's something missing.