Chapter Text
You roll out of bed. The sun is shining and your eyes hurt. You feel like mold. You feel like a stagnant pond, festering and covered in bugs. You feel like a thundercloud holding back a torrential downpour.
Today feels like a lot like yesterday, you decide.
You rub your eyes. Ow. Ow. Ow. Can they stop hurting or is that something that's going to continue. From the way it appears, it's going to continue. Great. Wonderful start to a wonderful day. What do they even hurt from? Fuck, does it even matter anymore. That's not a question, just a statement. At it's purest form, it's simply rhetorical.
You drag a hand down your chest and stand up, shaking your head, and blonde locks fall in front of your eyes, obscuring your vision.
This place doesn't feel the same as home. This place isn't home yet. Your contacts aren't in yet, you can't see anything, and you're kicking boxes over as you walk to the bathroom. You're starting to think you're never going to get unpacked. You're starting to think this place will never feel like home.
You reach the bathroom. It smells like air freshener and Axe in here. You mostly blindly grope for your contact case, popping it open and popping your vision aides in before giving yourself a good look down.
Your name is Dave Strider, and you don't want to be here.
Your chest is covered in scars from Bro. Miscalculated thrusts of a sword really left a message on you. You rubbed a particularly bad one near your collar bone. This one needed stitches, you remember. And Bro was the one to administer them, in the large bathroom back in Texas. You'd never thought you'd say that you miss that place. It was pretty miserable there. Smuppets everywhere, sometimes trash piling up for weeks and gathering mold and flies and being nasty. Sure it was a penthouse apartment, but it wasn't inherently nice. But this place was worse.
Instead of an apartment complex, you were currently situated in a house. A fucking house. In the middle of Washington. May as well start being on the look out for sparkly vampires and Indian werewolves to fall in love and fight over you. That's always the life you've wanted. Bad Twilight jokes aside, this place is weird. So... quiet. Going from smack dab in the heart of Houston, Texas to a house in a suburban neighborhood in Washington. This all being said, you're only about 45 minutes from Seattle, which is rad. Seattle has a pretty cool music scene, you've heard. But, you wouldn't know first hand. You haven't left this neighborhood in the first month you've lived here.
You strip out of your pajamas and step into the shower, turning on the water. Cold. Cold showers help you wake up, get focused, get centered and not pay much attention to your stupid thoughts or feelings. Warm showers just made you kind of fuzzy and tired feeling.
Skipping ahead to about thirty minutes later would find you curled up in a windowsill in the study, cup of coffee in hand and your iconic shades on your face. What would you be without those things? From this angle, you could see most of the neighbors. Across the street, there was a well groomed lawn with a silly pogo bounce in the lawn, and a white car parked in the driveway, which was all topped off with a tire swing and a mail box. The red flappy thing on it was up. Guess the neighbors had mail. Or were sending mail. Did it really matter? You didn't suppose it did much.
Cars went up and down the street at a leisurely pace, stopping at the sign on the corner. You could almost hear wind chimes in the distance, and smell the burgers on the barbeques. This was summer suburban tranquility at it's finest.
The door creaked open, and under even under Bro's light footsteps, the floor panels creaked. When did he get upstairs? This house is so squeaky you thought you would have heard. Apparently not. A hand claps on your shoulder, and you look up at the man putting it there. Bro.
The best thing about him is that he never changed. Bro was a universal constant and you were so thankful for that. He sighs as he looks at you through those dumb, pointy anime shades.
"Dave. It's been a good month and you haven't left the house once. Under normal circumstances, it'd be more acceptable. But you don't even have internet here yet, man. What's up?"
You pick your phone out of your lap and wave it at him. He was the one who got you the stupid iPhone, and now, thanks to the 3G you're so glad you have, you've been occupying your days mindlessly blogging on your phone instead of your computer.
"Alright, makes sense. But, hear me out kiddo." He leaned against the wall by the window. "You're gonna wanna make friends before school starts, you know that, right? Hell, I've even made some friends. And I don't even need them. I am a grown man with a child, and once you start with that parenting shit, you no longer have a need for camaraderie. I just want you to fit in better here than you did back home, okay?" Without waiting for a reply, he pats your shoulder again and walks out of the room, going back downstairs to whatever it is he does all day. Every since you moved here, he's been pretty much retired from his puppet shit. Maybe he finally outgrew it. Thank god.
But, you got the point he was making. Making friends might help you a bit. But, all your friends were back in Texas or on the internet. And there wasn't anyone in the area that you knew of. Being social is hard and stupid. Why can't you skip the awkward friendship courtship bullshit and go straight to calling each other motherfuckers and playing video games till five in the morning?
Your coffee had gone cold. You decide that, what the hell. Going outside and trying to make friends won't kill you.
You feel like it's going to be a long day.