Chapter Text
Your name is Dave Strider and you awake precisely three minutes before a bird decides to smash it's stupid feathered body into your bedroom window.
You jump at the sound of bird colliding with glass, turning to watch as it slowly slides down the window, not able to tell if the look in it's eye is the sign of lifelessness or cold bird calculation.
"Another one to add to the collection I guess."
You roll out of bed and turn on your dim bedside lamp. Your eyes slowly acclimate to the illumination, the sun not yet high enough to reach your room.
You used to have a set of turntables on which you mixed music. Only now sits a desktop and a homemade recording booth made out of plywood.
You still have a shelf full of preserved dead animals though. You could never get rid of all the still and silent reminders of mortality. It's important to you to reflect on the existential experience that is existence.
That's enough of serious introspection for today though.
You stand to put on your signature outfit, black skinny jeans, white T-shirt and aviator shades.
It's currently 6 in the morning. Pretty early for you usually, but your first class, Archeology, starts at 7:30.
Walking out of your room into the shit kitchen of your shit Seattle apartment, you poor yourself a cup of shitty coffee. Everything is pretty shitty here. Coffee will make it better.
You make your rounds on the internet while ingesting liquid anxiety/laxative, checking buisness emails, bandcamp for any new hip-hop releases, Twitter to see if anything happened because fuck watching or reading the news, you don't particularly feel like being subjected to fear mongering, and...
Hovering over the Buzzfeed bookmark, you debate if you have enough time to loose yourself in a couple quizzes.
No. There's never enough time for that.
Half a cup down and you remember to finally have your morning cigarette. Remembering in the form of the intense pull of craving. At first you did it because you thought it made you look cool, but now it's become an actual addiction you can't break.
The lengths you used to go to be cool.
Ash cascades it's way down into the crooks of your keyboard keys and you blow it out before you forget and eventually find yourself having a malfunctioning keyboard. The thing is pretty jank already, being a ten dollar piece of trash from Circut City pre-bankruptcy, it doesn't need anymore reason to find a home in your trash can.
Why do you still have this thing?
Old habits die hard you suppose.
Slipping on your roulette colored Vans and black bomber jacket, you step outside of your apartment complex to begin your drive to the institution of forced fee higher education
You check your phone to find it at 50% battery power. You constantly forget that the outlet next to your bed is faulty, often finding yourself having half battery power or less.
Thank Christ for car chargers.
You step down the stairs into the parking lot in front of the complex, only to stop as you hear someone very loudly scream.
Looking up, you see a guy in a distinctly black sweater that is too big for him that you haven't seen before looking down at a mess of books, a laptop case and spilt coffee laying at the bottom of the opposite set of apartment's staircase.
He looks pissed.
Pissed enough to make Birdman think twice about maybe pulling up on him.
You watch as he stomps down the stairs, seething with anger as he begins to slam his books together and grab his laptop case before picking up his now empty coffee thermos and tossing it into a car.
Who the fuck drinks from a thermos these days?
You notice you've been staring at this angry, black sweater man for too long as he regards you with a snear and a defiant middle finger before getting into his grey bug and driving off at a ridiculous and reckless speed out of the complex.
Huh.
You shrug off the rude demeanor and climb into your red 2005 Ford Explorer.
Going through your CD collection, you find Ghostface Killah's Fishscale, the perfect morning music on an early September day.
After bumping your head for about 20 minutes straight and smoking another cigarette, you park your car into your usual spot and get out, ripping the cigarette from your lips and stomping it out on the ground, creating a mess of loose tobacco and a now yellowed butt.
Someone claps you on the back and you're immediately poised to punch someone's teeth out, but stop yourself before you fuck up your best friend John Egberts teeth anymore than they already are.
"Hey Dave! How's your morning?" He asks, big toothy grin and all.
You shrug, pushing his hand off of your shoulder. "Fine, I guess. Saw a new guy at my complex."
You and John begin to walk up to the school lobby, John accommodating your arrival each day by following you into the school as he lives in the dorms.
His family is well off enough to pay for dorm stay, while yours...
Well. It may be a shitty apartment, but it's yours. So. You can't really complain. Too much.
"Did you talk to him?" John asks, cheery as ever.
How the fuck can he be so bright this early?
"Nope. He dropped all of his shit and then gave me the finger and peeled off doing eighty out of the lot." You say straight-laced as you push the entrance open.
John merely hums in response as you shuffle down the lobby hall and into the campus proper. Stopping by the school store, you grab a Vitamin water out of the fridge and pay for it, John eyeing you all the way.
"Why do you drink that stuff? It tastes like feet." John questions as he scrunches his face in disgust.
"Because 50." You say with absolutely zero emotion.
"50?"
"Cent."
John stares at you for a solid 20 seconds before bursting into laughter.
"That's so lame, Dave."
You smirk to yourself as you walk to the Social Studies building, remarking that its a particularly sunny day for Seattle. Almost no clouds.
You give John a good Houstan dap before heading inside. Quickly finding the room, you sit down and see your new found acquaintance, Aradia Megido, smiling brightly and almost creepily at you.
"Sup, Aradia."
"Hey Dave!" She says with a little wave of her pale, skelton like fingers.
You regard her outfit. Black skirt going down to her thighs and a red zip up sweatshirt with black dress shoes, curly and unruly hair falling in bunches down her back and shoulders.
Strange combination, as always.
You snap out of your thoughts as the professor enters the room and begins the lecture.
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It's High Noon and you're already tired. U.S. History left you tired mentally, while Music, your favorite class, saps you of any and all enjoyment for the rest of the day. Especially seeing as your last class of the day is Pre-Calculus.
It's not that you're bad at math. Infact, you're probably the most skilled in the art of numerics in your class, a real Math Magician.
It's just not interesting. Too many things bore you until you feel like slamming your head into a wall. You used to have a lot of hobbies, when you lived back in Texas, but now that you're in College you've grown out of a lot of them.
You still get rabid Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff fans finding your new contact information and either pleading with you or threatening you to start updating the comic.
You just don't find it particularly fulfilling anymore is all.
You ponder on your poor past desicions as you stare at your half eaten pizza.
Yet again you're snapped from your thoughts from the sound of a door opening and closing, the ring of a bell atop the pizzaria's entrance.
You look up to see your sister Rose Lalonde waltz over to your outside table and set down a hefty ceasar salad and water on the table before swiftly and gracefully sitting across from you.
"Questioning your past 20 years of existence again, Dave?" Rose asks without looking at you.
Forget eating, snark for lunch it is then.
"Nah, I'm thinking about asking how you retain that figure, considering how outside of that salad, you routinely drink each night and gorge yourself with about 6 Nacho Cheese Doritos tacos. Without me."
Rose just snorts in response, silently tossing her salad for a couple moments of silence. Maybe she's decided to not fuck with you today.
"Your apple juice is still unopened, which is somewhat of a personal felony to consider as you drink it as a primary source of sustenance. You mean to tell me that you're that enraptured by my blood related to you yet albeit beautiful figure?"
Maybe not.
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
Rose stops tossing her salad and...is that incestious? Whatever. She stops mixing the meat, veggie and heavily ranched out combo to glare daggers at you. She taps the table three times.
"Honestly, Dave," The black lipsticked woman sighs, setting down her fork to begin drilling you.
"Honestly, Rose," You say, mocking her tone.
Her glare intensifies and you decide to stuff your pizza into your mouth while opening your Apple Juice to escape the tension.
Rose stares a second longer and seemingly gives up.
You both eat in silence the rest of lunch before you have to leave for your next class, flash stepping your way away from the table when Rose is throwing out her trash, making it back to campus in record time.
Just enough to enjoy a post-lunch cigarette and check Twitter.
It seems like you have some new fans following you.
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Pre-Calc is as boringly easy as ever.
You're solving daily problems like the wiz kid you are when the door slams open and in stomps in an out of breath short, short and angry guy. The guy from this morning.
The professor in all of his nerdy meekness is visibly startled, but quickly regains his composure and clears his throat to claim attention of the short man.
"You must be Karkat." The professor states.
So that's his name.
The angry guy nods at the professor.
"Take any seat, I'll be with you in a minute." The professor states.
Karkat looks to the room and notices his sudden entrance as everyone is staring at him and has an ashamed look for a fraction of a second before settling back into his seemingly permanent scowl. He quickly shuffles up the stairs and into the seat behind you.
You should've guessed he would be attending the same college as you by his books and laptop, but whatever. You continue to work on your problems, finishing the assignment before the rest of the class and putting the paper down onto the professor's desk, nodding to him up at Karkat's desk briefly before walking out of the room.
You climb into your car, lighting up a cigarette before pulling out and heading home.
Clouds have begun to appear and show signs of a coming storm, and as you reach the complex, it's already beginning to pour heavily.
You spend the rest of the day searching the Internet for new beats to use and recording songs.
At 3, you take a break to look out your bedroom window to see Karkat running up the stairs to what you assume is his apartment, completely drenched and very obviously spitting with anger as he curses to get his keys into the door before entering and slamming the door loudly enough that you hear it from your room.
The day winds down and your realize you never collected the bird that hit your window that morning. It's probably not worth collecting and preserving at this point you decide.
Wasting your time with buzzfeed quizzes for about 3 hours, you turn off the computer monitor, settling into bed.
You drift off into sleep.
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Opening your eyes, you see a large purple and gold-yellow grandfather clock tick back and forth for a few moments before chiming out 12 loud bell tones.
You awake and jolt from your bed in a cold sweat. You wipe your forehead, shaken up by the nightmare and slowly pull out a cigarette from the pack sitting on your bedside table.
You light up and immediately drop the cigarette from your mouth as a slam sounding from your window scares you.
Whipping around in an instant, you find a bird plastered to the glass, slowly sliding down. Dead.
You stand still for a few moments before feeling the intensive pain of heat on your big toe, realizing the cigarette had landed next to it and began to burn the skin.
You pick up the cigarette and hesitantly sidle over to the window to inspect the bird. You stare into it's eye, then it falls off of the window and onto the ground.
"What the fuck?"
What're the odds? You wonder as you brew a cup of coffee, taking a steady drag from your short before ashing it in the sink, throwing the butt into the trash.
You do your daily rounds on the Internet and...nothing has updated.
"Is the wifi busted?" You say to yourself as you pull out the router and inspect it. You find that it's working just fine.
Tapping your index finger on the desk, you shake your head and get dressed. Ready to leave the strange things happening around you in your apartment.
You step outside to find your sweater clad neighbor once again screaming at the scene at the bottom of the staircase.
"Shit."
Your name is Dave Strider and you realize you're living the same day as yesterday