Chapter Text
You stare down at the phone in your hand and the picture lit up on the screen.
You’re not usually one for doing that whole ‘selfie’ deal that Dave’s into. You don’t think you’re all that photogenic, to be honest, but you’ve never been able to pass up a good prank.
The phone beeps, a load screen popping up, and you jump when it vibrates in your hand to tell you it’s ready to send.
You miss your old phone and the ugly, sharpie marker-ed ghost on the back of the case, but you kind of like that this one has a camera. And internet. And it’s not missing half the rubber-y buttons on it and can actually call people that aren’t in your contacts list.
Still, you’re not really used to the different tones and how bright it is. It’s even got a flash on it and you’d nearly blinded yourself when you were first messing around with all the new features. That double-sided-camera-screen-thing that lets you take a picture and look at the screen at the same time is pretty cool but it should come with some kind of hazard warning before the point a spot light in your eyes.
You don’t imagine squinting in your new selfies is all that attractive and that’s the idea right?
You guess it doesn’t really matter.
This isn’t exactly meant to be attractive anyway, and you’ve got the same, dorky smile you always do. You can even see your teeth and you automatically purse your lips to cover them. It’s the same as always. Your shirt is just missing this time and you’re doing that thing where guys hook their thumb in the front of their pants and try to act all cool and #swag or whatever Dave is always teasing you with.
You’re not cool though and you’re definitely not #swag, whatever that actually means, and that’s what makes it great.
Rose would probably approve, you think. She might even congratulate you on a fine round of snark-based humor at the expense of Dave Strider’s selfie taking habit and maybe even employ a similar tactic in her next passive aggressive text battle.
Okay, probably not.
You’re not even sure Rose has text battles, passive aggressive or otherwise. You’re not even sure she actually texts.
Flopping down on your bed, you input out Dave’s number, mumbling it under your breath as you tap your thumb against the screen.
This touch screen stuff is pretty cool, even if you’re still kind of getting the hang of it. Your hands feel a little big for the phone, fingers fat against the digital keypad but you’re getting used to it. Dave’s getting a kick out of all your typos too, so you guess it’s good for something else. As long as it stops correcting ‘shirt’ to ‘shit’ for you, anyway. Telling someone your typo’d-shirt smells like cake and sugar isn’t exactly the best thing in the world, even if it is funny after the fact.
You don’t really bother adding much of the message this time, though. That’d be a kind of over the top when the picture pretty much explains itself, so you just hit send and roll over to wait for what is sure to be a good reply.
Dave’s the Queen of good reactions and you really wish you could see his face when he opens up the message but you’ll have to settle for a delayed response. You know he’s going to retype his reply at least five or six times to get just the ri—
Your phone beeps and you glance over.
There’s a little envelope hovering in the center of the screen and the phone vibrates twice.
That was fast. Usually Dave takes a couple minutes, at least. The thought that maybe you shocked him into a keyboard smash or two makes the corners of your lips twitch, however and you open it up quickly.
Unfortunately, your moment of hopeful triumph is short lived and your eyes widen when a picture loads.
It’s a chest— well, most of one, at least. At the top of the screen there’s a gloved hand hooked around the bunched fabric of a white shirt and you groan when you glance down at the caption below it.
‘wrong #’
…and what are you even supposed to say to that?
Are you supposed to say anything at all? It’d be kind of rude to ignore it, wouldn’t it? Or would it be kind of intelligent considering you just sent some random-not-your-best-friend-dude a picture of yourself half naked and that’s kind of awkward?
This should be one of those things the instruction manual for your new phone covers.
So should double checking the numbers. And how to add contacts properly because Dave’s number has two threes at the end and not a three and a six.
Maybe just an Egbert’s Guide to Not Being a Technological Failure, would be good.
Your eyes dart back to the picture and you slap a hand over your face, sighing when the chest hasn’t vanished and you’re left with some guy’s skin in HD.
You guess… it’s not all bad though, right?
On the plus side, Dave’s nowhere near you to witness your embarrassment and then tease you constantly for the next twelve or thirteen years. On the down side, you’ll probably end up telling him anyway because you guys have this weird habit of telling each other everything that you’re pretty sure comes from being best bros.
Either way, you’ve got a chest on your phone and it’s kind of not a bad chest and you’re not hiding very well because you don’t really think peeking out from between your fingers counts as hiding.
You’re not even really sure why you’re hiding. It’s not like the guy sent you porn or something and just from talking to Dave and hearing the adventures that go on in the Strider household, you’re pretty sure that could have been an option.
Images of felt and Dave yapping about rumps filter to the front of your mind and you shake your head as you sit up. You drop your hand away from your face, taking a slow breath to try to steady your hands enough to reply and a strained laugh bubbles up, out of your chest.
Jesus, wow— you’re really kind of… lame.
Yeah, you’re kind of lame but you guess it could be worse because if there’s one thing you’ve learned from all the internet-ing and the texting and Dave, it’s that you can always fake cool.
And that it could always be worse.
And you’re pretty sure that, in this situation, ‘yep. my bad.’ is probably about as cool as you’re going to get and that’s not too bad, you don’t think.
If you were really cool though and your face didn’t feel like it was on fire, you might add a ‘nice pic, though’ or a ‘least it worked out well’ to the end of it but…
Well, maybe you’ll just delete the message and forget about it.
Or save it. That works too. It’s a new phone and stuff. You probably don’t know how to delete anyway.
Yep.
Totally your bad.