Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Years are a very odd concept for you, and the fact that people feel the need to celebrate the next one before it really arrives is something you never quite understood. Especially when you live in a family which two of the members tend to overexert themselves over holidays, you've been a rather consistent attendee to some of the most interesting holiday extravaganzas, that you never once asked to be a part of. In fact, if you had it your way, you would never voluntarily participate in any loud, crazy, uncomfortable celebrations. Not once.

Just your luck, however, you find yourself, once again, subject to some of the most arbitrary visual stimuli as you watch David cook a meal from your seat at the kitchen table. It reminds you of Thanksgiving, but with significantly less turkey, and significantly more ham. You don't really like ham, but then again, you don't really like turkey either. It's a 50-50 scenario that you don't partake in either way, so you don't mind.

David's appeared concentration steadies as he looks at you. You only look back.

"Help me make buttercream frosting?" David phrases the question easily, giving you a look that you still haven't placed into any sort of distinctive memorable memory file. For the sake of simplicity, you'll file it under "I'm asking you a question".

David must have forgotten about the faults in that plan, however, because he knows how much you hate how loud the hand mixer gets. It gets very, very loud, and you really, really don't like it. It isn't good for your mind, and today is already going to be really loud and really bright and really crazy, and you won't be able to handle it at all, even if you were to try-- which you aren't going to, you aren't dumb.

You groan in response, and leave the kitchen, going to the living room and sitting on the couch instead. You know that sitting on the couch, which is in the living room, which is right next to the kitchen, which is where David is cooking, isn't going to shelter you from very much noise, but it's better than being forced to stand right next to the hand mixer as David makes buttercream frosting. You don't think you'll ever understand why David feels such the intense need to cook and bake something so very extravagant for dinner every year on December 31st.

It obviously has something to do with New Years eve, or whatever the term is for December 31st, but you don't get why people want to celebrate the new year coming. What's the point? It's just like a birthday, but for the Earth. Therefor, it's literally just throwing a big party for Earth getting older, and therefor, Earth is one step closer to dying, and so is the human race. Why would anyone want to celebrate the annual step closer to the extinction of mankind? You definitely don't, that's for sure.

The sound of the front door opening, and then Dave and Bro walking in, and talking to each other, and the sound of the door closing, and the sound of them taking off their shoes and coats, disrupts you, and you groan at them, too, trying to get just a moment of silence on this hectic day. Which is damn near impossible for you to achieve on a normal day, anyway, so you don't really know why you're trying so hard. Your keen sense of hearing makes you wish you were deaf sometimes, just so life would be less stressful.

"Sheesh, sheesh," Dave huffs, cheeks red from the colder temperatures outside. He sheds his gloves and shoves them into his coat pockets. "Drama queen much?"

"No, not really," you reply, making no move or attempted move to greet the two of them in any form. You wouldn't say your mood is very sour, you just aren't feeling all that outgoing today, not that you really ever are in the first place. You happily keep to yourself most of the time, and the only person you really open up to is Jake. You still don't know why you're so enamored with him, and it's confusing and you don't think it makes much sense in the first place, so you often just drop it and let your face feel undoubtedly hot whenever he tells you good morning and asks how your day is.

"I think so, man." Dave just assumes this as he does whatever it is he's doing; you haven't really been looking at him since you watched him put his gloves into his pockets. The rustling that comes from the front door gives you enough of a hypothesis itself; Dave is probably stripping out of his sweatshirt and putting it aside. You don't know what Bro is doing, which is fine, because you really don't need to keep "tabs" (you don't really get what that means, still, though you have a feeling it might have to do with those small sticky-notes that people put on papers that they want to go back to or are significant; this actually makes a lot of sense, so you'll go with that for the time being) on everyone at all times. "The drama is absolutely radiating off of you."

That's false information (you have no idea how drama can radiate off of someone), but you don't bother yourself with an argument. You're not "in the mood" today.

The couch dips next to you and lets out a soft creaking noise as Dave throws himself down next to you. He doesn't actually throw himself down next to you, he actually just decided to leap backwards onto the couch so he fell next to you on his butt rather than on his knees. You don't know why someone would sit on a couch on their knees. It seems weird to you, for someone to do that, but not too weird. Just a little odd. Dave lets out his own little soft creaking noise, but it really wasn't a creaking noise, it just seemed like kind of a fun thing to think. It was mostly just a grunt, you think. "Just gonna ignore me, huh?"

"I'm not ignoring you," you answer, and for a moment, you're wondering if you're giving off that unintentionally pissed off vibe that you tend to accidentally give off, even when you're not pissed off or even near being pissed off in the first place. You don't want other people to think that you're upset with them when you're not upset with them. It just doesn't sit right with you.

"Calm, dude. I was joking."

You have absolutely no idea how that counts as a joke. "I don't know how that counts as a joke, but okay. If you say so."

"Which I do," your twin tells you. You think Dave winks at you, and you're unsure of how to feel about that, because you're pretty sure winking is something that people do when they flirt. The sound of the hand mixer starting up in the other room startles you, and you only realize you've started to scream when the hand mixer stops and David's standing in the living room's entryway from the kitchen. You stop screaming.

David appears to be startled, his left hand on the doorway where he's standing, and there's some butter on his face that wasn't there before when you were watching him cook. When Bro peers into the living room over David's shoulder, licking something off of his finger that appears to be butter, you have a feeling that he might have been the one to put the butter on David's face.

"Jesus," David huffs, bringing his right hand to rest over his heart. "Scared the shit out of me. Sorry about that, I'll give you some warning next time before I start the hand mixer."

David disappears back into the kitchen, though Bro remains where he is, pulling his finger from his mouth and wiping it off on his pants. You find yourself briefly wondering why he licked his finger if he was just going to wipe it off in the first place; not to mention the fact that it was most definitely butter, and butter doesn't taste too good on its own. Dave pats your shoulder in a way that you find highly distasteful. You don't enjoy being touched on the shoulder, especially in the form of rhythmic pats, because it doesn't feel nice, and you never expect it, and your shoulders aren't a place that you want touched. You make a noise deep in your throat, trying to convey the fact that you don't want him to do that again.

With an odd noise of his own, Dave backs off and scoots to the opposite end of the couch from where you're sitting; Bro walks over and sits between the two of you, and grabs you both into an incredibly tight hug.

For some reason, this action doesn't bother you at all. It might be from the fact that you watched Bro start to initiate it, or it might be from the fact that it was a tight grip around your torso rather than a medium-strength pat on the shoulder.

"Oh, sure, you like it when Bro touches you," Dave complains openly, and you glance up quick enough to notice that he's giving you a narrowed-eyed look. You've seen that one before, on a grand total of eight occasions, all of which included Dave being mad at you for some reason.

"Why are you mad at me? You know I don't like to get pats on the shoulder," you point out. You also don't really know why it's called "pointing out", not that you think about it. Because you aren't pointing to anything, or using any outward gestures whatsoever. It's confusing. You suppose you're just overthinking it, though, because you've brought it up with David and Dave on two separate occasions before, and neither of them had ever thought that hard about it. Maybe Bro will have a different answer. Dave beats you to speaking, though, and you don't even know how you would word that question.

"I wasn't patting you that hard." Dave is still stuck on it. You don't know why.

"That's why I didn't like it."

"I can smack you next time, if you want."

"A'ight, a'ight, that's enough out of both of ya," Bro interrupts your slight argument with Dave. "Stop bein' so butthurt about it and just enjoy New Years Eve, yeah? How long do we got until midnight, anywho?"

You appreciate Bro's attempts to put peace between the two of you. You don't enjoy fighting with Dave very much. "Erm," Dave grunts. "We have about three hours."

"What time is it?" Bro asks. That question confuses you. He should be able to put two and two together and realize that it's three hours before midnight, which is 21:00.

"Nine," Dave replies without hesitance, reaching up to rub just underneath his nose with the side of his left index finger.

"Exactly what time is it?" Oh, you know what Bro's doing now. He's doing the thing that calms Dave down. The time thing. When Dave moves to look at his watch, Bro stops him. "Nah, without the watch, li'l man. Exactly what time is it?"

Dave takes a moment to himself before he responds, his gaze at the ceiling. You take this cool-down moment and snap a mental picture of the outline of Dave's face against the background of the apartment behind him (technically to his left, but behind him from where you're sitting). You've always found it particularly odd how things seem to appear 2-Dimensional, and as if they were painted rather than being real life themselves, if you stare long enough. You really want to grab that canvas in your room and paint this scene now, but Bro is still holding you tightly to him, so you don't bother.

Once you're done with your "train" of thought, you realize that you've started to rock back and forth in your seat. Rocking back and forth in your seat reminds you of a lot of things, most of them just other occurrences of which you've caught yourself rocking in your seat, though the rest of them are you catching other people rocking back and forth in their seat, like that time when you and Dave were four, and you and Bro and Dave and David all went to an ice cream place and sat in the park and Dave was so energized that he rocked back and forth in his seat until he stood up and started running around to get rid of the excess energy.

Or the few times that you've spotted a differential array of your friends rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet.

Or that one time when you were twelve and you woke up at two in the morning to get a cup of water, and you saw Bro rocking back and forth on the couch while sewing one of his puppets. Most of your memories of watching other people rock back and forth in their seat are from when you've seen Bro doing it. You've questioned him about it, but he denies it adamantly. You still don't know why he denies it, and you've contemplated videotaping it just so you have proof to go off of, but you feel like that would be unnecessary, and you've since ceased pestering him about it.

"Nine twenty-three sixteen, seventeen, eighteen..." You don't know what those numbers that Dave is reciting mean, at first, until you realize that he's simply telling Bro the exact time he thinks it is. You check your watch, and he's correct, though the second mark has gone up a few seconds from where he's left off. You don't think you'll ever understand how good he is with time, and you would be lying if you were to say you weren't a little jealous of his ability to figure it out to the exact second. You have honestly no clue how it's even possible for him to be "spot-on" with it every time.

"Exactly how much longer do we have until midnight?" You look at your watch to calculate it yourself. It's 21:23:25. If you subtract that from midnight, you get--

"Two hours thirty six minutes and thirty five seconds?"

You groan, because Dave did it way too fast, and you wanted to figure it out on your own, which means you didn't want to hear it. You thought you had more time to calculate, but you miscalculated how much time you really had to calculate the time between midnight and now, and you find yourself in a figurative rut of negative emotions.

"Is that right?" Dave asks, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

"I have no idea." Well, at least Bro is honest. "What do ya think, Dirk?"

You calculate it like you had been meaning to before Dave spouted the answer, only to find that, as far as you know, he's right. "It's a few seconds less now, but otherwise, he's got it right," you say.

Dave immediately perks up, and opens his mouth to say something, when the hand mixer turns on again. David obviously forgot to give a warning before turning it on, but it doesn't bother you as much, as Bro has his hands over your ears before you start screaming to cover that loud noise with your own loud noise.

You scream anyway, but that's only because Bro startled you.

Chapter Text

Your hands are always driest just after you finish showering, and while you haven't quite figured out the logistics of that yet, you guess it doesn't really matter too much. Asinine dilemmas like that aren't really your forte, anyway; you tend to focus on things that actually mean something to you, like the fact that it makes you want to scream whenever you touch something with the wrong texture.

Or, to put it a little more specifically to the whole "dry hands" statement, the fact that touching any sort of fabric when your hands are as dry as they are after a shower makes you want to scream. You don't really get it, nor do you really want to get it. Most of the time, you just want it to go away, and you want things to feel the way that they feel when everyone else touches them.

Like textures that exist, that you don't mind.

Except for the fact that you do. You really, really do, and it seems like nobody really gets the fact that it physically hurts to touch fabric when your hands are dry.

That's why you've developed a sort of... "coping mechanism" of sorts? (You put that in quotes, because you're not quite sure what to call it. Maybe a "routine" would work better for it than a "coping mechanism", or maybe they both work equally, or maybe neither works, or maybe one works sometimes, and the other works the rest of the time, or maybe, just maybe, you're overthinking this).

Whenever you're supposed to touch any type of fabric, generally towels, you always run water over your hands. The water you run over your hands, is usually the warmest that you can possibly get it to, and even though it's so hot it's cold and it hurts, it helps later on, because the nerves in your hands are still tingling with the previous sensation of the very hot water when you're touching the towel or other similar fabric, and thus, it doesn't hurt as much as it would.

You generally only use this technique when you have to do dishes. Since your dishwasher is the worst dishwasher you've ever had, it doesn't dry the dishes, which means that you need to dry the dishes for the dishwasher, which is just plain stupid. The dishwasher you had before this one, which was about ten years old at least, before it broke, actually dried the dishes. This one just washes them. It was a tough change, when you swapped between not having to worry about drying the dishes, to suddenly needing to worry very, very, very much about needing to dry the dishes.

Since the dishwasher doesn't dry the dishes like the old one, redundantly, you have to dry the dishes. This wouldn't be too bad, if it didn't physically hurt to touch towels with the texture that your towels have. They are coarse, and grainy, and you can feel each and every individual thread on them, and you feel incredibly uncomfortable even thinking about it.

But it's not just that. There are also times, where you can't stand it when your hands are wet. At all. Which leaves you at a loss, because, not only does it hurt to touch the towels when they are dry, and your hands are dry, but as they soak up the water, they get that... incredibly disturbing, stuck-feeling when they get wet with the water, which your hands then touch, which makes you want to scream, and cry, and run your hands under hot water until your skin is raw, and then go sit in your room and shut yourself down for the rest of the night.

You told this to someone, once, and they gave off this odd little, "...huh," noise, that made it seem like they were either completely uninterested, or they thought that you were absolutely insane. Which you're not.

You don't really know why you can't stand these textures, and you have no idea why whatever greater-powered being decided it would be a good idea to give these very certain, picky sensitivities to you, especially when you're the one in the family that has to do the dishes.

Which is what you've been trying to talk yourself into doing for the past three hours, since you got home from school.

Bro has recently started driving Dave and yourself home from school, which means you don't have to wait an hour and a half at school, and you don't have to get bombarded by lecture after lecture from the teacher assistant lady that follows you around. You think she might be some sort of special-education substitute, but you aren't quite sure, so you can't really say. You just know that she does more harm than good, and the more she "chews your ear off" (she doesn't actually chew your ear off, that would be gross) about how, "Dirk. You should be doing your homework. Get out your books. Talk to your classmates. Talk to your project partner. Ask them their name. Get to know them. Don't be so lonely. Why don't you talk? God gave you a mouth for a reason, so use it," the less you want to do those things.

She said that last bit to you while you were chewing on your sweater sleeve, which you found kind of funny, because you were using your mouth. You just weren't using it the way she intended you to. She even pulled you out of class, once, for not talking to the people you were doing a project with, because you didn't want to be in a project with them. They didn't want to be in a project with you, either, and they later left you to your own devices and joined different groups to be with people they actually wanted to do the project with.

Which you don't mind, really. You don't work well in groups.

Anyway, you don't like this lady, and you're glad that Bro has since started picking you up from school.

What you aren't glad about, is the fact that Bro takes this time, these fifteen minutes over the drive home from school, to tell you that you need to dry dishes, and put the dried dishes away, and put more dishes into the dishwasher so they get clean. The last two parts of the chore aren't that bad, because they don't involve fabric or wet hands, but the first part is torture.

So, whenever Bro tells you to do the dishes on the ride home, you do everything you can to procrastinate before you actually do them. Today, you spent the first ten minutes going through a quick shower. Apparently, though, your hands dried before you could hang the towel on its rack, so when you went to pick it up from where you had set it, to fold it and put it back where it belongs, you realized this with a really, really bad feeling in your palms that seemed to scrape through your skin everywhere, and you almost cried. Afterwards, you washed your hands in really hot water, and then patted them dry on the very surface of the towel, so they wouldn't be too dry for the rest of the day. Then, you went through the rest of your little routine, which has become less and less strict the older you get.

It's really just more you doing your best to focus on trying to be spontaneous for once, rather than focusing on what you should be doing, when you should be doing it, and how you should be doing it. You've given yourself more or less some sort of "chill time" between the time you get home (around 15:15) and 19:10, which is usually when you toss on your sweatshirt and hop onto your computer to either watch YouTube videos, or talk with your friends, or do digital art.

The longer time draws on, though, the less and less your friends end up talking to you. The last time you spoke to Roxy was about twenty-three days ago, and the last time you spoke to Jane was thirteen days ago. The last time you spoke to Jake was on Monday, during gym class, which you both have during first hour every day.

You've honestly been pretty alone.

But that doesn't matter. It's not like you really thrive on being social, anyway, so it's fine.

You have been trying to ignore the time, and you have been trying to forget about the need to do the dishes, but it's still there, an impending task that's been "blinking red". You don't know if that's an actual idiom, but Dave says it a lot about things that are due soon that he hasn't even started yet. Half of the time, you think he's just making things up to try and get more credit, but some of the things he comes up with are funny, so you really couldn't care less.

You were watching a show about a psychic medium on the television when you got the notification from the Pesterchum application on your phone. You expected it to be Dave, but when you look at the screen and see the green text, you know immediately who it is.

-- golgothasTerror [GT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]at 18:55 --

GT: Whoa nelly!
GT: There is that contact i have been having a right old tussle with trying to find!
GT: Now that THAT fiasco is all tethered up i suppose it is time for what i planned for! Get ready for me to knock your socks off comrade.
TT: Jake.
TT: What the fuck are you talking about.
TT: Are you about to blow my mind with a magic trick that you've discovered over the internet? I sincerely doubt it, upsetting enough, because I'm roughly 80% sure that magic in the form you'd be most interested in, does not exist.
TT: Nor do blue women. Your dreams have been obliterated. How does that make you feel?
TT: And who is to say that I am even wearing socks?

You are wearing socks, you always wear socks. You hate not wearing socks.

GT: Ah bother!
GT: You know just as well as i do that you are most definitely wearing those fabric tubes over those homosapien pods of yours!
TT: And what the fuck does that mean?
GT: Well anyway
GT: I am not one to go about lying and taking this. I really did think that you would toss some exact number at me that would relate to your precious shenanigans though!
GT: Also if i must answer your question i would tell you that i feel very sad. You have actually ruined my dreams for all eternity and i am honestly really depressed now.

Shit. You didn't mean to actually make him feel bad. You quickly type up your apology, though it's fairly wimpy, compared to the paragraphs of text you have seen your friends and other people come up with to apologize to someone.

TT: Sorry.
GT: Whatever for?
TT: Crushing your dreams and making you feel depressed.
GT: Oh!
GT: Do not worry about that dirk. I was only just pulling your leg after all it was nothing but a harmless jest. A ruse, mayhaps.
TT: How was that a joke?
GT: ...
GT: Gadzooks.
GT: Now that you ask me i am afraid that i am not sure how this would be a ruse or joke of any kind! Not a very good one at least.
GT: Gussying up of my humor is most definitely in order i take it.
TT: Sure.
TT: Now, what miraculous thing did you come across this time? Is it an extravagance of ethereal sorts? Did you actually find Narnia?
TT: Finally. I thought you would never find it.
TT: Tell me, which closet is the fairy tale in?
GT: Ah excuse the classic literature for a moment!
GT: Real sorry bud. But i must break in and tell you that this thing i was to do was kind of important to me and i must also ask you to quiet down for a moment so i can actually get it through my fingers in a wad of actually recognizable text!

"Dirk." That's Bro's voice. He's right behind you. You know that tone of voice really well, because that's the tone of voice you've taught yourself to pick up on. It's his angry voice, it's his pissed voice, it's his, "I will take away your phone and your computer if you don't tread lightly around me right now" voice.

You shut off the volume on your phone as a few more "pings" from the Pesterchum client rings through as blaring notifications, and you turn to look at Bro. While you don't normally look at faces, you know that you don't need to, because you can already tell with his tone of voice, that he's pissed. You regret not doing the dishes before.

"Kitchen. Dishes. Now."

Bro has a tendency to split his requests up like that. Place, thing, time, in that order, with pauses between each word. You don't really mind. It's short, sweet, and cuts straight to the point, which you like. "Skirting" around things that are otherwise useless to "skirt" around never was something you were very keen on the idea of.

Bro disappears as quickly as he had appeared.

Reluctantly, you set your phone down on the couch next to you, and go to the kitchen. Completing the task is not fun. It's not fun at all. You bypass the "rinsing hands with hot water" stage, because that would just take up more time than needed, and you also don't want your phone to end up wet at the end of your dishes "adventure", even though this is hardly an adventure.

You hate it. You haven't even started, and it already hurts.

The first dish that you put away is painful. The rest of them make you want to cry. You end up shutting down any feeling you have the best that you can, and continuously telling yourself that it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling, it's just a feeling.

Thankfully, Bro doesn't come in and start "helping" you with the dishes. If there is one thing that you hate more than drying dishes, it's the fact that, sometimes, Bro decides to help you, which you truly despise. In your book, you either do things yourself to one hundred percent completion, or you don't do them at all. Bro does not help with that moral. Bro also has a tendency to screw up your natural pattern.

You do the top rack of dishes first, which consists of cups and bowls and thermoses. Then, you do the bottom rack of dishes, which consists of plates, cutting boards, and Tupperware. Finally, you empty the plastic silverware baskets on the right side of the bottom rack. Bro, however, normally comes in to help before you're done with the first rack, or when you're in the middle of putting the bottom rack away. He always works from whatever rack, with no discernible "rhyme or reason" (you never understood that idiom, either) to it, and he always puts the things away wrong, particularly the silverware.

He puts them away one at a time, rather than grabbing half of the silverware and putting the handful away, and then grabbing the other half of the silverware, and putting that half away. He grabs one from the basket, puts it away. Grabs one from the basket, puts it away.

And that's not how it should be done. It's just wrong. It's all wrong.

Thankfully, your chore is over before you get so frustrated that you actually start screaming, which would be terrible for "everyone involved", even though it's technically just you involved. Bro and Dave aren't even interacting with you, nor are they even in the same room as you. These walls, though, are "paper-thin" (they aren't actually paper thin, you're pretty sure that they are roughly four inches thick at least). You can hear everything through them, including the neighbors a hallway over, or the neighbors two floors down. You would definitely get a noise complaint.

At least no one calls the cops anymore. Everyone is used to your occasional meltdowns by now, and no one's particularly frightened by your screaming. You think. You don't know. You can't speak for them. You're not in their head. Your head isn't working right. You feel not-good. You feel very, very bad.

You slam the dishwasher door shut without meaning to really slam it, and then go right back to your spot on the couch, where you then proceed to curl up and unlock your phone. The amount of messages you had ended up missing is almost overwhelming, which you really don't need right now. You feel on-edge enough as it is. One more thing out of place, and you might truly, truly scream.

GT: So let me quickly do this thing.
GT: If it gets too cheesy feel free to stop me chum but i cannot promise you that i will see your message if i get too flustered
GT: Alright
GT: As you know it is valentines day so it should be rather obvious. Why i decided to do this today i mean not the fact that valentines day is today is obvious
GT: Which it is i guess. It is rather obvious that today is valentines day so i suppose i just disproved my own logic...?
GT: Blast.
GT: Anyway back to this thing i was trying to do...
GT: Its valentines day and this is for you.
GT: Oh boy
GT: Fly me to the moon
GT: Let me play among the stars
GT: Let me see what spring is like on jupiter and mars
GT: In other words hold my hand
GT: In other words baby kiss me
GT: Fill my heart with song and let me sing for ever more
GT: You are all i long for all i worship and adore
GT: In other words please be true
GT: In other words i love you
GT: So what do you say right ol pal? Mind flying me to the moon?
GT: In other words
GT: Will you be my. Err. Boyfriend?

You squeal, because a feeling erupts in your chest, and you know that you've felt it before. It's this weird, nice... squishy feeling, in one of the most unintelligent ways of putting it. In a way, it is kind of like there are clouds in your chest, but in a more literal and also more abstract way, because you know it's more than likely some subdivision of psychosomatic feeling due to whatever connections that your brain is making right now. You can almost feel the paths in your brain lighting up as you read the last few messages over and over again, curled into a ball on the couch with your face on the verge of smiling, because you don't know who is around you to see that, and you would rather not have them see you smiling at your phone like a love-struck teenager.

You suppose, however, that is kind of what you are right now.

 
TT: As much as I enjoy "Fly Me to the Moon", particularly by Frank Sinatra, along with pretty much anything relating to aforementioned 1964 version of the song, I have to ask.
TT: Did you just serenade me over a Pesterchum client?
TT: On Valentine's Day?
TT: Jesus, English. I'm going to have to step up my game if I'm going to even think of competing with that genius.
GT: Dirk!
GT: Just answer the question!
GT: Can you or can you not see that i am obviously immensely friggen flustered by the situation as it is! I am really trying to be romantic here as it is not every day that one does indeed serenade their best bro over the internet like this!
TT: I mean, I would give you an answer, but there's an issue here.
GT: What?
GT: What is the issue?
TT: I hate to break it to you, Jake, but I don't think there is such a thing as an "Err. Boyfriend?" to quote you directly.
TT: Unless there actually is, and I'm just being an idiot, which is also entirely possible.
GT: Oh please you know what i meant damn well strider!
TT: Did I?
GT: Tap dancing grasshoppers with top hats, my man. Ugh.
GT: I mean that ugh in the most playful of manners, by the way!
TT: Duly noted.
GT: Will you be my boyfriend?

You squeal again, and really do smile, because otherwise the pressure building in your chest behind your rib-cage and in your brain might explode, in a really figurative way, because you're very sure that you wouldn't literally explode in this situation.

TT: Yes.
GT: Really?
TT: Really.
GT: Happy walentines day.
TT: "Walentine's Day"?
GT: Oop.
GT: Happy valentines day.
TT: Happy Valentine's Day.

Chapter Text

Everything is green.

Well, almost everything is green.

The walls aren't green, the television isn't green, the kitchen isn't green, but there is a green sheet draped rather awkwardly over the couch, and there are green bedclothes on both your and Dave's beds-- you would not be surprised if it would be the same in Bro and David's room. The sheer amount of solid, one-colored things is kind of infuriating. There's so much disorder to pretty much everything in the house that it's making you inwardly freak out a little. The mess that's taken a figurative "hold" on the apartment is so distressingly different from the usual mess, it causes you to be alarmed.

"The hell is this?" Dave asks. His voice catches your attention, and you catch one of his brows quirked up in what you believe is a sort of confusion. His question could also extend into that point. The two of you have just journeyed through a majority of the house, save for the bathroom and Bro and David's room, both of which have gone unseen for a few (two, to be exact) reasons, which you think are rather logical.

One, you're not sure what you're going to find, and at a time like this, where pretty much everything (you use that term very lightly, as there are more things that could have been done up green) is just a solid color, you're afraid at what type of green drapery and covers might be in the bathroom and Bro and David's room.

Two, neither you nor Dave go into Bro and David's room for any reason other than to snuggle up together when you and Dave were really young, particularly when either you or Dave were sick, or whenever you had a meltdown, or that one time where you ceased to function as well as you were usually able to after a string of particularly bad, slowly increasing in strength and length, meltdowns. That sucked (not literally, how silly would that be?), but Bro and David let you stay in there while you tried to recover from whatever that was.

You give a delayed grunt at Dave's statement, but you figure he didn't hear the grunt of response, which was supposed to convey that you had no fucking idea why the hell everything was green, as Dave turned to you and spoke up again.

"Seriously, the hell is this?" Perhaps it's coincidental, but Dave "just so happened" (it may have been on purpose, though) to be picking at the rather unusual visual display of miscellaneous shamrock decorations hung up on green, shiny tinsel wrapped around the handle of the bathroom door. And every other door, actually. It's pretty much everywhere it can possibly be. You squint to see the words written in gold below the bulk of the laminated shamrock, and after trying to discern the letters for way too long, you manage, and promptly reply-- even if it was coincidental that Dave was asking and messing with it, you can't run the risk of not answering his question when he wanted it answered.

"That's green tinsel with a laminated shamrock with gold letters reading, 'Happy St. Patrick's Day'."

"Really? Thanks, I had no idea," says Dave. His tone was slightly awkward. You don't know how to describe it. He draws his hand back from the tinsel.

"You're welcome."

Dave huffs and turns his back on you, once again putting his hand on the bathroom door's knob. Instead of playing with the bright green tinsel and shamrock decoration, though, he twists his wrist and pushes the door open. What was inside, you could not have been prepared for.

Actually, technically, you could have, but in this specific situation, you weren't prepared for it, and you were very shocked at what was inside.

There was now a green rug, and now green shower curtains, and a green toilet cover. It's crazy, when you realize just how much all of this must have cost to buy. You know that David really enjoys his holiday extravaganzas, and you're used to waking up on Easter to find two Easter baskets and eggs hidden everywhere for an egg hunt (David is way too creative with his eggs. One time, he hid an egg-- it was lime green and had the cancer symbol on it [not the ribbon, the zodiac]-- so well, that even he forgot where it was. The only reason you found it was because it was starting to smell really bad near the bookshelf), and you're used to waking up on Christmas day for there to be a tree in the corner of the living room and Christmas decorations within every foot of area, but...

This much green might be a little much. You will definitely have to talk to David about this. He has a holiday problem, you think.

"Jesus flippin' flapjacks on a hot-seared burner, what the darn has happened to this place?" You are about to tell Dave that David is what happened to this place, until you realize that Dave wasn't the one who had said that. David is the one who spoke. You turn your head, and you notice that he's standing in the doorway, small rucksack in his hand. He's looking around.

"I thought you were the thing that happened," you say.

"Well, it sure as shit wasn't me. I just got home, and the place wasn't like this when I left." David has a point there. He sets his rucksack down on the floor near the front door, and kicks the door shut behind him. His fingers twist the lock and he's off into the kitchen, examining the shelves, and looking in the fridge, and searching the cabinets. What is he looking for? "If I didn't do it, who the hell did?"

David pauses, turns to look at Dave. "Wasn't me," Dave says, raising his hands up, palms out, by his face. Surrender. Wait, why is he surrendering?

David turns to look at you, instead. At least, you think he's looking at you. You honestly can't really tell, because you're standing right next to Dave, and both you and David have shades on, so it's not like eye contact is happening. Not that you would want it to. Eye contact is way too intense, especially with David. It's like he's staring at you, and it's really really uncomfortable to be in that situation, with him staring at you, right in the eyes, really intensely.

You shiver at the remembrance of David's confrontational stare, and repeat Dave's, "Wasn't me," in the exact tone of voice. David tenses up for a moment (you notice this, due to the way his body constricts as his muscles tighten and you imagine that on a skeleton, with the rhomboids and biceps and trapezius. You have always been oddly drawn to the trapezius muscle. It sounds like trapezoid, which reminds you of a puzzle you had when you were a kid [it was not a puzzle, it was a simple kid's toy with pieces of different shapes that could be put into a board, kind of like a puzzle, but it wasn't going to make a big picture or anything]. It had a little green trapezoid as one of the pieces, and it had a little wooden knob that you could grip to pull the piece out of the board, and you would spin it between your fingers and watch the color blur with the white tile of the kitchen floor. You always used to play on the kitchen floor, because the floor was cold, and the carpet felt sticky under your fingers).

"Dirk. Dirk." You startle when your shoulder gets nudged, just managing to hold back a surprised yelp. Out of anything that you could have been expecting, that most certainly was not one of the things you would be. It's a possibility, as the possibility of people touching you is constantly around to prove itself existent (not that it can speak), but you're never any less surprised when someone does touch you, without your specific permission. It does kind of bother you that people don't ask first. "Dirk."

You look over to Dave, who was apparently the one poking you. You could have guessed that, considering he is the only one standing right next to you. Once you've sated your hardly-there curiosity, you turn back to look at David. "What?" You ask.

"Stop doin' the spacey-thing." Dave withdraws his hand, rubbing the side of his left forefinger against the space of skin between the bottom of his nose and his upper lip. You don't know why he does that, but you've seen him do it multiple times. It's been a habit since he was little. Another thing he does is bite his nails, and he bites his sleeves and nibbles on the corner of his phone case-- and pretty much literally everything else that's in his vicinity. Babies do that, too. They chew on anything that they can get their tiny little baby hands on. It's cute, but it's really annoying when you would be playing with Jake's little sister and she would start to chew on your shades. You would then have to clean them, but you needed to wait until you got home to do that, because the smell of his soap is something very unpleasant.

"Let him be, Dave," David pipes up, the kitchen "erupting" (not literally-- you still don't really get that one, honestly) with noise. It draws your attention right back to where David was, and he's sitting there, holding a bottle of, what you can only assume to be, alcohol. Not the rubbing kind.

You're curious, but you don't say anything. Dave does. "What's that?" You catch him pointing out of the corner of your eye.

David doesn't say anything for a moment, but something gives you the idea that he might want to, kind of like how you didn't say anything even though you wanted to ask what Dave had asked. Not exactly like that, but similar. David's lips press together and he removes his sunglasses, folds them, and hooks them on the collar of his shirt.

"That'd be whiskey," Bro says behind you. His voice is low and kind of raspy, like he had been sleeping just a little bit ago. His hand rests on your wrist and squeezes, and you squeal. Bro does that as a sort of greeting, because he knows you don't wave hello or goodbye, and neither of you think it's necessary to say hello. "Got it yesterday."

David's eyes narrow at Bro.

"Okay, I got it today, right after y'all left."

David sets down the bottle of whiskey, straightens his posture. You imagine the muscles contracting on a skeleton again.

"Okay, okay. Four hours ago."

David crosses his arms over his chest.

Bro sighs out, "An hour ago. I got it an hour ago."

Seemingly satisfied enough, David uncrosses his arms and lifts his arms and moves his hands in a large, sweeping motion around him. "And you did all of this, because..."

"It's St. Paddy's Day."

You feel the air adjust around you and you look over at Bro, who is draped in a large, fuzzy blanket, the color of green. So Bro's the one who's become obsessed with holidays now? Has David's habit gone to him? Have Bro's habits gone to David? Have the two of them exchanged habits with each other?

There is a long silence, for a long moment, even though moments can go on for only so long, and no one says anything, as is relatively redundant with the literal meaning of silence. Your silence isn't exactly as general as everyone else's, though in a way, it's more so. The way everyone else describes silence, is just your definition of quiet. What everyone else hears and what you hear are two totally different things. In class, you'll hear people talking, and people listening to music, and people laughing, and the fans going on, and the teacher's computer running, and sniffs, and coughs, and breathing, and an odd noise that you can only describe as "roll-y".

Your silence is when you're in your room, alone, and you're laying on the floor (because your bed makes too many noises), and the curtains are drawn, and your door is closed, and no one's home, and it's the middle of the night, and the only things that you hear are the sounds of the things going on in your head, and the sounds of cars driving by and horns honking and people swearing at other people in traffic because they're pissed off that no one drives by their personal schedule. Even then, it's not silence, because there's noises you hear. Noise cancelling headphones can't even do their job right to you. You always just hear the sounds of blood rushing in your ears, and it's difficult to think, because it's too quiet.

Your silence is not as silent as people think silence is, and you guess that's just because they don't hear things quite as acutely as you do. Which is fine.

"You promised me that you would stop transforming our home into a ginormous f--... a ginormous shamrock when Dave and Dirk were two years old." There's an edge to David's tone, and a breathy element that makes you assume that he's been running for a really long time, but you know he hasn't been doing that. He's just been standing there, watching, occasionally talking, breathing, blinking, thinking, digesting, and his heart is beating, and his blood is flowing through his veins and body and his muscles are contracting and-- you could make a list of all of the things that someone does all the time without knowing. You should do that. You want to do that.

"Okay, okay, okay, but..." Those were the fourth, fifth, and sixth times that Bro has said "Okay" in the past five-to-ten minutes. He's gradually been saying more and more "okay"s every time he says "okay". Was that planned? Was it coincidental? "It's St. Paddy's Day."

"That is no reason to turn the place into a clover field."

"Shamrocks, dear. Shamrocks."

"Yes, Bro. I know. Shamrocks." David shakes his hands, and then runs his fingers through his hair. "And that's all fine and dandy, but you do realize this is a one-day celebration, right? You have to have all this down tomorrow."

"Tell that to the weeks on end of having Christmas decorations up," Dave snorts. "Or Easter. Halloween. Fourth of July..."

"Alright, Dave. I get it. I'm a hypocrite." David's face muscles relax. "Please, have this over with by Sunday, at the very latest."

You take David's side on this one, and give your piece. "I second that. Please get rid of all of this green. It's making my eyes hurt."

"Ah, lighten up a li'l, will ya? It's-"

David is obviously becoming annoyed. "It's Saint Patrick's Day, we know. You've said that already." Bro walks into the kitchen and grabs the bottle of whiskey, producing a shot glass from out of, perceivable enough, no where in particular. If you didn't know better, you would have said he did so out of thin air, though you are sure that he did not produce a shot glass out of thin air. The crack of the whiskey bottle's cap coming off makes David startle. He gives Bro a look that you can't really figure out. "Bro. Bro, you are not drinking right now."

"Oh, but I am."

"The k-" David cuts off, looks over his shoulder at Dave and yourself, and then whispers the rest, eyes narrowing. "The kids are right there. You are not drinking."

You're not sure why David whispered. You can still hear him.

David is too late in telling Bro no, however, as Bro has already poured himself a hefty shot of whiskey and has downed it without a second thought. That looked like it went down really smoothly. Whenever you watch people do it in movies, they always seem to tense up and really swallow hard to get it down, but the way Bro did it, it didn't even look like he did much more than let it go down by itself. That is perplexing. You're sure that you would choke if you did that.

Dave's foot taps on the floor beneath him. "Dude, awesome. Can I have some?"

"Sure, kid," Bro responds, pouring more whiskey into his shot glass. This startles you, because Dave is under age, just like you are. He should not be drinking alcohol. That's against the law. David seems to agree with your side, even though you didn't say anything to him about your stance to begin with.

"Derrick Brock Strider, you are not giving our children alcohol." When Bro lifts the shot glass up, David presses his palm against Bro's arm and forces him to put the glass back down.

"It was a joke." How was that a joke? "I ain't actually gonna give 'em alcohol. Not an idiot. C'mon."

Bro abandons anything alcoholic in nature for instead gripping the corners of the blanket still draped around him, over his shoulders. He wraps David up in the thing and tugs him into a hug. It's damn cute, really, and you kind of wish that Jake was here, so he could wrap you up like that. David and Bro talk to each other in hushed tones, and this time, you don't try to listen in. Instead, you look at Dave, who looks to be smiling. He jabs you in the ribs. "Dude, that's adorable." You agree silently.

The scenario doesn't last forever, though, as nothing does, and David is the first to pull away from Bro's blanket-hug. He pats Bro's shoulder, shaking his head. His chest inflates as he draws a breath in.

"You have a terrible sense of humor," David says. He's smiling, though. You are glad that he isn't frustrated anymore. "Now, if you don't mind, if you're going to be drinking, I'm going to go make sure Dave and Dirk don't have homework."

That tone of voice that David just used, is the tone of voice that he uses when he's trying to tell you and Dave that you both better not have homework, or else you'll both be in trouble. Luckily enough, you don't have homework to do, because you finished it at school during lunch, but Dave groans. He definitely has homework. David comes over to Dave and yourself, and places his hands on your and Dave's shoulders respectively, turning the two of you around and gently nudging you to head to your rooms. You expect David to stay behind as Dave and yourself head up, but he follows closely after you, his steps causing the floor to creak.

Halfway to your room, you speak up. "Why does Bro like St. Patrick's Day so much?"

David sighs. When he doesn't say anything in terms of response to your question, you almost expect him to not reply at all. He does speak, however, though it's not an initial response. You reach to open your bedroom door, but David stops you with a hand on your shoulder. You are not ecstatic for him to be touching your shoulder, but you accept it. Dave stops and looks at the two of you. "Dave, head to your room. I'll be there in a minute," David speaks. He pats Dave's back to get him to head on, which Dave does, quickly disappearing into his own room.

Figuring you have David's attention, you ask again, "Why does Bro like St. Patrick's Day so much?"

David's mouth turns up in a smile. "His father was Irish, bud."

You're momentarily confused. His father was Irish? As in, past-tense? Meaning he used to be? You think that it shows on your face, and before really thinking about it, you question. "What is he now?"

With his mouth open just the smallest bit, David laughs. "He's still Irish, I guess."

"That's not really something that you stop being," you tell David. He laughs again.

"I suppose you're right."

"I am right." You furrow your brows when he shakes his head, and you insist, "I am."

"I know. You're right." David takes a small step back and leans forward, so he's more or less face-to-face with you. His hands are resting on his knees. You keep your eyes over to the left of his face, because his shades are still off, and you don't want to look at him and his very intense stare. He doesn't seem to mind, though.

"Can I meet him?" You ask.

"Actually, you've already met him." While you don't remember ever meeting any of your grandparents other than David's mom, you know that he wouldn't lie about this. There would be no point in lying about it. It's not really important, technically, but it kind of bothers you that you don't remember it. "He was there when you and Dave were born. First person to hold you, y'know."

You didn't know that.

He draws in a heavy breath, and lets it out. He's still got a little smile on his face. "I'll tell you more about it sometime, if you want. Maybe I can dig up some pictures."

You would like that, you think. "Okay."

"Can I hug you?"

You nod.

David moves to kneel in front of you on one knee, instead of bend at the waist, so his hands are free to wrap around you and tug you close to his body. His suit is very warm, but his skin is kind of cold, and you press your cheek against his cheek, because it's calming. You can hear and feel him as he chuckles. He withdraws from the hug and kisses your forehead, and then he stands, letting go of you. "Now, I'm going to go help Dave with his homework, and then I'm going to go try to talk Bro out of making corned beef and cabbage for dinner. I'll come get you when dinner is ready, whatever it is."

"Okay."

David turns to leave, but you grab the edge of his sleeve before he's too far away to do it. He turns back to look at you. "What's up?"

You look up to figure out what it is that's up that David's asking you about, and then you remember that he doesn't mean it literally. You look back towards David. "My bed is still green, could you get Bro to change it back to orange?" He laughs, and nods. You don't think this is very funny. This is a serious matter, you really are getting tired of the color green.

"Yes, I will get Bro to change your bed back to orange. Can you manage while I help Dave with his homework, or should I go get him to change it now?"

You think about it for a moment, and eventually say, "I can wait."

"Good," he says. He pats your wrist and you squeal before letting go of him, allowing him to go into Dave's room.

Chapter Text

"Something about the Easter Bunny just doesn't settle well with me," you say as you examine the very few cracks on the small egg candy in your hand. An Easter delicacy, as Dave calls them. You've never found such a figurative charm in a pastel-colored sugary almond sweet; not to mention they're sold year-round at the local store. "It would take a fucking miracle to induce any thoughts or beliefs indicative of the opposite."

"I think we ran out of those after Christmas, Dirky."

Roxy's voice, quote end quote, "cascades," down the nonexistent walls of the field like an equally as nonexistent blanket of metaphorical bull-fuckery. It's at this moment, perhaps a little sooner, that you recognize your own personal confusion based around the similes you tried to conjure, quote end quote for a second time, "out of thin air", though you do believe you enjoy the general concept of similes. They're simplistic, yet complex, in nature, and their own figure of speech-like situational extravagance could lend itself towards a sort of fib, though they aren't fibs. It isn't lying when you say something is as if or like something, rather than if it is something.

In example, your AP US history teacher. She used to wear so much makeup she was like a clown that only finished half of its look before giving up and going out in public. Her face, and the sharp contrast of her highlighter pink eye-shadow was generally something that had hurt you to look at, and you're not afraid to admit that, if someone were to ask. No one has asked, however, so you've kept it to yourself, because you can't bother yourself to bring up the topic in general conversation. Why would you? It's never relevant.

At least she was a good teacher.

You lift the small candy egg to your lips and take a small bite out of it. You have to "give it to Dave" (not literally. He isn't here right now, and you don't want to give this particular candy to him), these small sweets are good.

"I thought," you pause to chew, "miracles were supposed to be things that never ran out and happened randomly throughout our asinine human existence?"

Roxy furrows her brows. "I honestly don't know where you got that definition." After a bit of pondering, you realize that her tone had been lower. Her intonation signified confusion (or, is that anger?).

"It was a joke. Besides, that was more of a connotation than it was a definition." You've been sitting on this log for damn near thirty minutes, but only now do you tug out the cigarettes hidden in your zipped sweater pocket. Normally, you kept the pockets unzipped, in case you felt the sudden urge to zip your hands into the pockets. The weight of the zipper against your wrist was satisfying, and you have given Jake many appreciative displays of you doing so while wearing it to show your thanks (because that's what people do for thank yous, right? Show people, typically the gift giver, that they wear it? You've never been one for significant verbal communication, or thank you notes). The only times you really keep yourself from leaving the pockets unzipped, are if you have something valuable in your pockets, like your phone, or your keys, or both. Another reason you zip up your pockets without your hands being in there, is because you tend to hide your cigarettes in your zipped pockets. Neither Bro nor David have figured it out, but Dave has.

"It was a joke? I honestly couldn't tell. You're way too monotonous in, like, a super sarcastic way." The corners of Roxy's mouth turn upwards. She is amused, you find, after another moment of analyzing the features of her face and the different expressions she typically uses. You have seen this one before, and between the flash cards you used to have displaying facial expressions (that you hated), to almost constant analysis of people and different social interactions that you've had to encounter throughout the seventeen years and counting of your life, you would say that you've gotten fairly good at telling which expressions are which, now. Of course, you still make mistakes, but they've gotten to a relatively managable amount. Not that they weren't manageable before, because they were, it was just more difficult to interact when you had no idea whether or not people were pissed off to an unfathomable degree at you, or if they were happy with what you were saying. You still do, sometimes, switch the different expressions up.

"I don't really understand your statement."

"Like, you always sound like you're being sarcastic. But... you never, like. You never switch from that sarcasm tone thingy? So you're just. Monotonous in a sarcastic tone..." Roxy trails off, tipping her head back and pressing her hands into the ground behind her to prop herself up in the grass. She stares up at the sky. "...y'know?"

It takes you a moment to process the words, but even after the words process you find that the moment where you understand what she said doesn't come. You're absolutely lost right now, and you're not quite sure how you're supposed to process, or reprocess, or if you're supposed to try to conjure up an understanding of her words. You feel panicked in your confusion, and you quickly decide to derail the topic completely, in favor of rambling on about a topic.

But what topic? You don't know. You can't really think of too much that you'd like to just ramble on about right now. You do remember that you were thinking about your history teacher earlier, however, and you follow that "train" of thought to a different "train-car" of a topic, and you manage to "land" on World War I.

"The Germans, contrary to popular belief, weren't the first to use poisonous gas in World War I. In reality, it was the French, but the French used it in such small amounts it wasn't exactly noticeable. Germany picked up on that and then proceeded with their larger gas attack on Ypres, Belgium, on April 22nd, 1915, which is when most people think that the gas attacks were first introduced by Germany. But it was France."

"L-O-L, Dirky, that has nothin' to do with what we're talking about."

You don't know why, but something about her statement makes it feel like there's something in your chest about to explode, in a bad way. You do your best to fight the urge to flap your hands, or squeal, as you would hate to give away the fact that you do that. It makes you feel rather distressed when people stare at you as you stim, because they don't know what to make of it. You're absolutely fucking tired with people thinking you to be stupid and weird because you rock and flap your hands.

The thing that bothers you more, though, is that you're so bothered so much by yourself flapping your hands or rocking in public. The pressure builds to an almost intolerable degree, before you take out the lighter in your other pocket. You remove a cigarette from the pack, after tapping the bottom of it, and proceed to light it. You wrap your lips in a firm hold around it. Before you put everything back into your pockets, you quirk a brow and examine Roxy, sitting there and watching you with one eye narrowed and the other with a brow quirked upwards.

"You want one?"

You tap the bottom of the pack and open it, offering a cigarette. "No, thanks. Got my own poison riiiiiight 'ere." Roxy's flask is small, and it fits in the palm of her hand easily.

"You know that's bad for you, right?"

Roxy laughs, "right, and the cigs aren't?"

"Good point."

You take the bit of silence to draw in a bout of smoke from the cigarette into your lungs. It's stiff, something you're used to, and satisfying to draw in the smell and taste. When the drag cuts off, you take hold of the cigarette between your right fore and middle fingers, and bring the cigarette away. You exhale. The smoke drifts up.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Roxy take a shot from her flask.

"You should quit before you get addicted," she says.

You roll your eyes. "I've been smoking for months, now, and I'm not addicted. I'll cut out the cigarettes when I want to. I can quit whenever I want."

"That sounds like something my mom would say." You lift the cigarette back up to your mouth.

"Hasn't she?"

"Oh, yeah."

Once again, the two of you go quiet, and with the dimming of the sun in the sky (not that it gets any less bright; it's just the revolution of the planets revolving around the sun which cause the day and night cycle), the mosquitoes start to come out, and the crickets start to chirp. It's very serene and quiet out here, and you breathe in another inhale-full of the smoke from your carcinogen.

Chapter Text

"Dirk! C'mon, we need to leave."

Your tongue presses out of your mouth and against your top lip in concentration, your fingers working quickly, and mostly completely still with the little pieces of the model boat. You would say that you are completely still and un-shaking, but that would be a lie. As far as you have been able to tell, it's virtually impossible for you to keep your hands perfectly still, especially when you're using them in such a way that they need to move and twist screws into place, or press glue from the bottle in between a crevice created between two pieces which weren't quite cut perfectly, even though they were absolutely cut from a machine, and machines should be perfect.

You understand that the thing that makes them tick (in a figurative manner, of course, unless it's a clock or otherwise something similar that causes them to make a ticking noise) is coding upon coding which, unless there are machines that create coding and input it automatically into the machine which needs coding, is typically inputted via human hands. Humans are constantly in the spotlight for error, so that could be the reason some of these pieces are flawed.

Speaking of, you wonder how many other copies of these imperfectly designed pieces there are in the world right now? It's a fascinating thought.

"Dirk!"

"Coming," you call back, setting down the small bottle of glue on your desk. You glance over the model boat one last time, making sure that you can, in fact, stop right here. If you can't, you're going to continue no matter what-- you can't just pull yourself from something you're in the middle of. Not usually, at least. You've gotten better at doing so, and as a result, you're typically much more punctual for things that you have to be on time for. Like meetings (which you like anyway, when you don't have to talk to people), or picking someone up from the airport (which you really dislike doing, because of the noises and the people and the colors).

However, with things like this (i.e: going to visit Bro and David for Father's Day), you think that you can typically push it off until you're sure that everything is in order. They are your family, after all. You grew up with them. They know your quirks, and what's difficult for you; they know what you dislike and can't stand.

Of course, Jake understands, too. He's just a bit of a "stickler for the rules" (that IS a saying, right? You think it is. You should probably look it up when you get the chance).

Needless to say, that chance to look it up is not right now, as Jake actually takes the time to walk from wherever he had been just a second (more than one second, of course; no one can walk from one end of the house to the other in a single second) ago over to your office. He bumps the second knuckle of his middle finger against the door-- which is already open, might you add-- three times to produce three, consecutive knocks. You happen to really enjoy the way Jake knocks, though you're honestly not sure why.

Maybe it's because it sounds different compared to your family's knocks.

In example, David always drums his fingernails against the door, creating a much more hollow sound. Bro always turns his wrist so the back of his hand is facing the door rather than his palm, and uses the knuckles of his hand rather than his fingers. His knocks are loud. Dave's knocks use the first knuckles of his fingers; he doesn't close his hand all the way when he knocks. His knocks are also longer. In fact, he used to knock on a door until someone answered. Thankfully, he's stopped that habit, because it was annoying.

"Dirk."

You tell yourself to stop thinking about knocks and go back to examining the boat, making sure you're at a proper stopping point. After determining that yes, you do in fact seem to be at an alright stopping point, you push your wheeled office chair away from your desk and look over at Jake. You glance at his eyes at first, just to let him know that you're listening without you actually telling him that you're listening. It's a trick that you've learned that doesn't wholly bother you beyond belief, though it still does make you a little uncomfortable. Jake seems to appreciate it, though, so you deal with it.

Jake is smiling. "Are you about done? We gotta go, chap." You know this. You've known for approximately a week, actually-- you were the one who brought it up to Jake, anyway, which is quite rare for you to do in general.

Holidays, in all generality, are pretty asinine to you. They don't really make sense. Granted, you've never bothered to learn about them, but you're pretty sure most people don't do any research on the holidays they enjoy, anyway. Most people just appreciate the holidays because that's what they've grown up with. You don't mind this, obviously; you grew up with a holiday-crazed guardian. You just don't get it.

New Years Day is just the first of the month. It's like April Fools, except without the fools, and it isn't in the month of April. It's just a day that people celebrate. You wonder if people celebrate it because they're happy they survived another year on Earth? Even though, just like birthdays, New Years is quite literally celebrating the fact that the Earth is one year closer to "exploding into a thousand fiery pieces of death," as Dave describes the end of the world. You don't think the world will ever literally explode-- unless under extremely dire circumstances. Dave would always argue his point whenever you brought it up, saying that the world would explode if the sun got too close, but you never agreed.

If anything, the world would just become so hot, fires would start randomly, and human life would cease to exist. We would all begin to "burn to a crisp"-- almost literally. Surely the plant and animal life would die, too, and the Earth would be inhabitable. It would be like an ice age, except the exact opposite.

Speaking of ice ages, if the sun managed to somehow shift away from the Earth, it would become so cold that the same thing would happen. Scientists say the world is overdue for an ice age, you think; you agree with the scientists. An ice age is most likely to happen, in your opinion, but that's just your opinion.

Jake says something else, but you're not following along at all. You don't want to tell him that and risk him getting angry at you, though, so you simply nod and stand up, pushing your desk chair into the little hole in the desk where your legs go when you're sitting down. You bite at the corners of the cuticle on your right hand's ring finger, padding out of the office and following a sad Jake towards the entryway. At least, you think he's sad. You didn't really look at his face, actually. Kicking on your shoes, you examine Jake's face and find yourself completely and utterly bewildered by his expression. Is he sad? Is he indifferent? Should you ask what's wrong?

Unduly, you start to panic.

"What's wrong?" You ask, torn between looking away and examining his face for a better understanding of what he's feeling. You end up deciding to look away, knowing that looking at his face is useless. You'll just get his expression wrong, anyway.

"Wh- hm? Oh," Jake sounds "taken aback" (briefly, you wonder where "taken aback" as a term comes from) and you immediately realize he wasn't feeling sad. "I'm, uh- perfectly fine, I think, Dirk. Why?"

A heat rushes to your face and your chest feels full and your throat tenses with an urge to let out a squeal. Not a happy squeal, either. You're feeling the feeling of a squeal that stems from feeling emotions you don't know how to deal with coming on. "Nothing. Never mind."

~*~

The drive to the apartment you grew up in is spent rocking in the back seat.

Only on your part, that is. Jake doesn't rock back and forth. Or flap his hands, or squeal, or spin around in circles in the living room, or anything like that.

Jake had asked you numerous times during the drive why you insisted on sitting in the backseat while you "stimmed to your little hearts content", so he put it. Although you know he's said that it's perfectly fine to sit up front and rock while he's driving, you still try to avoid it when possible. The last thing you want to do is cause a distraction while Jake is keeping his eyes on the road, scanning for oncoming cars and other things in the road, and around the road, and behind you as you drive, and simultaneously calculating how fast he should be going versus how fast the other cars are going, and measuring how long it should take him to get from point A to point B compared to the car immediately in front of you guys-- it's just immensely overwhelming. That's why you don't drive.

You can drive, of course. You have a license, and you've had a license since you were eighteen. You're perfectly able to multitask in the way that driving constantly involves. You just don't like driving. The signs and the lights are way too bright.

None of that makes a difference, though, because you end up reaching your childhood home easily and without losing any pieces, or provoking any freak outs, or "fight, flight, freeze" reactions. It's a good thing, you'd say. You never did manage to harden your ability to stay completely collected, particularly when you're crossing an area of road where deer are known to randomly prance through the streets. You've come very close to hitting a deer, multiple times, all of which freaked you out significantly, and many of which you actually drove off the road to make sure the deer was okay, and that it hadn't gotten grazed.

It's probably a good thing you've got an off-road car.

Jake drums his left hand's fingertips against the rim of the steering wheel while his right hand collects the keys from the ignition. "So, Dirk, did you ring up your family to let them know we've arrived, or are we just showing up completely out of the blue?"

Good question. You can't remember if you actually told them you were coming over.

You're just going to assume they already knew.

"They know."

"Alrighty, ol' chum. Let us get this show on- err, off. The road, then, shall we?"

You hum in agreement, your rocking slowly stilling itself as you press your thumb against the seat belt release button. Just for good measure, you tug it once it's in its natural resting position, watching it pull from its confines inside the small compartment near the door. You let go and exit the car, listening to the crunch of miscellaneous rocks and leaves that have fallen and dried way too early. It makes you realize just how old these trees are, really. They look a little "worse for wear" (whenever you hear that, you never know how to process the word and meaning of the word "wear"). These trees have been around since you were a kid twenty years ago. Holy shit. You feel so old.

For some reason, the thoughts of the trees and how old they're getting makes you develop the sudden, undeniable urge to walk over and hug a tree. You push the urge away, however, because that's a bit of a weird urge to get randomly.

Jake manages to get to the door ahead of you, his right hand lifting to knock on the door to David and Bro's place. You listen to his middle finger perform the knock-knock-knock you're so familiar with. You're curious as to how his hand doesn't hurt when he does that. Doors are surprisingly hard. You've run into and bumped your elbow on too many doors to count.

Before long, the door's lock clicks, and the door opens up to show an only slightly disheveled Dave. Your fraternal twin is, in fact, standing in the doorway rather than David or Bro, and you're momentarily curious as to what he's doing here answering the door. Dave doesn't live here. He's got his own place, and his own apartment, and you absolutely forgot that it was Father's Day today, thus explaining and answering any question you may have in this situation.

"Yo," Dave says, glancing up and down both you and Jake for a moment.

"Who is it?" You hear a familiar voice call. From the echo, it sounds like David's voice coming from the kitchen, though the living room is incredibly nearby the kitchen, so it could just be that he's in the living room.

"Hold on." Dave pulls his head away from the doorway and shuts the door just the slightest bit. "It's Dirk and pilgrim boy!" You glance at Jake, noticing his brows furrow downwards in an almost unnoticeable manner. You compare this image of his face to a previous image of his face that you saw, and you examine how they differentiate. You don't think Jake very thoroughly appreciates being called "pilgrim boy", and you can understand why.

"Oh! Let them in! Lunch is almost done!" So he is in the kitchen.

"Okay, you're through. The Queen allows you." With that, Dave stepped away from the door and pushed it open, letting both Jake and yourself step inside without much issue. Welcoming (you're pretty sure, at least), Dave pats Jake on the shoulder. Jake pats Dave's shoulder in a return of the sentiment. For a moment, you're concerned that Dave might actually try to pat your shoulder, too. You're really not excited for that, and you tense up involuntarily as you work on getting your shoes off.

Once you're upright, Dave steps up to you and wraps his arms tightly around you. Needless to say, you appreciate the hug much more than the pat on the back you witnessed, and you hug Dave back. Dave starts to pull away after a moment, and you pull back because you know that's the polite thing to do. You learned your lesson the hard way when you were a kid, having gripped on much too tightly for much too long on all of your family members, at least once. Dave, multiple times. Many times when you were little and freaking out about your surroundings, a few times when you were a teenager, and once after each of Dave's deployments, the most recent having been about a year ago.

Maybe you have yet to completely learn the lesson of letting go after an appropriate amount of time.

Dave exits the entryway in favor of making his way towards the living room. You don't follow him right away, your arms going around yourself to casually tighten the sweater's "hold" on you (not to say that the sweater has arms [the sweater does have arms, just not human arms to hold anyone with]). The concept of going back into that living room after having been absent from this building for a good long while, is nerve-wrecking at best. Of course, you still visit David and Bro; you're not a total dick. You just typically don't go inside. It's so weird to be back, like taking a step back in time, because the pictures from when you and Dave graduated high school are still hung up on the wall in the hallway, and your old jackets are still hung up in the closet where they've always been (you can tell because the door is open, like it always is; you don't have x-ray vision). You draw in a deep breath and head towards the living room.

There are more things going on in the living room than you expected, honestly. Bro's sitting on the couch in his usual spot, his thumb running over the inside seam of his regular, white polo-shirt's collar. In his free hand he holds a glass of whiskey. Neat, as always. Jake is sitting down on the floor next to Dave's dog, who is panting out breath in regular intervals, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

Dave's dog is a German Shepherd named Mayor. Dave insists that the name stems from completely ironic purposes and has no meaning at all, and you're inclined to believe him. Then again, Dave also insists that getting a dog was "absolutely, 100% positively Karkat's idea," and that he had nothing to do with it. However, you know for a fact that Dave was just as involved in the idea of getting a dog as Karkat was. Dave really likes animals, just like you do.

Speaking of Dave, he walks in just as you sit down on the other side of Dave's dog. Although you're initially hesitant to interact with Mayor, you eventually reach out to allow Mayor to sniff your hand when he looks at you. He leans forward, towards your hand, and starts licking it. You let him, listening to the clink of ice against glass. The noise is lessened by the liquid inside of the glass. You're not sure quite what the liquid is, yet, since you haven't looked up to examine it. You do so, and notice that Dave is holding a glass that is nearly identical to Bro's own glass of whiskey. The only thing different is that Dave's glass has ice in it.

You breathe outwards particularly roughly, though it wasn't for any particular reason. You just felt like sighing (could it be considered a sigh?). You turn your attention back to Mayor, eventually adjusting to pet him. You could easily do this all day. You find comfort in animals, and you hope to get a dog or something one day. Then again, that might not be a good idea, because if you got lost in petting a dog rather than in one of your continuous, ongoing projects, you would be screwed and probably fired. Not ideal.

"Dirk," Bro says, and you grunt in response. "How're you?"

"I'm good," you reply, running your hand over Mayor's back and feeling the fur under your palm. "How're you?" You respond, although it's mostly due to habit.

"Damn fine, kid. Damn fine." As if to finish off that statement "with a bang" (did you use that correctly?), Bro tips his head back and downs the rest of his whiskey. He sets the glass down and breathes out through his mouth after the shot. "Got any projects goin' on?"

You scoff, muscles tensing for a moment. "When do I not?"

"Good point."

"Are we just going to ignore the fact that Bro downed half a glass of whiskey without a chaser?" Dave pipes up, gesturing with his free hand. His own glass has downed in the amount of liquid inside, though not nearly as much as Bro's was, considering Bro's whiskey glass was now empty. "That was fucking badass. Holy shit."

"Agreed. And I've seen some damn elaborate shots performed! In the alcoholic sense, of course," states Jake. He sounds excited, but you don't look up to compare his tone of voice to his face. It probably wouldn't help much, anyway.

"Also in the gun sense," you state.

Dave laughs. "Dude, who the hell did you see perform those elaborate-ass shots? Your gramma?"

"My grandpa, of course. Though Gramma could just as easily hold twice as much liquor. Just, not in shot form."

"Doesn't count if it isn't a shot." Dave raises his glass to his lips, his smirk cheeky. "Oi, speakin' which, Jake, can you hold your liquor?"

With that, you begin to laugh. You're sure that Jake actually starts to blush, but you keep your eyes on Mayor the dog. "I- of course I can! What in the bloody dickens are you laughing about, Stri- err, Dirk?" He switches tracks easily in the ways of address, knowing that saying "Strider" in a house full of Striders was probably not going to get a particularly specific response from who he was trying to communicate with.

Quickly, you respond with, "you can't handle wine. Even I can handle wine." Granted, it's not exactly easy, because you don't like the taste of alcoholic beverages.

"Wine is disgusting, you cannot blame me for not drinking wine."

A noise comes from the entryway to the living room. Considering it was a vocal noise, and not just a creak of the building settling, you can guess that it was David. You're correct. He's stalking, thin and oddly formal for such a casual occasion, just past the door. His shades are off, and his tie is a nice touch of difference. It has a picture of Darth Mal rather than the usual plain burgundy or grey to match any of his suits (of which there are assuredly plenty). It's strange to you that David is choosing to cook while wearing a suit and no apron.

David runs a hand through his hair, which is slowly but surely starting to grow in grey; it's an odd gradient. Weirdly enough, it's kind of nice to look at. Yet, at the same time, it's peculiar to think that David is only a few months away from being fifty years old. Bro, on the other hand, hit the half-century mark two years ago. It makes your heart sink, in a way, because they're growing older. Just as it's settled in many times before tonight, you come to the startling acknowledgement that you and Dave aren't kids anymore.

"I'm personally offended by your disliking of wine," David says, his arms crossing over his chest. He rests his shoulder against the door frame in a casual lean. "How could you not love such a magnificent thing; the magical drink came straight from the Gods, Jake. Straight. From. The Gods."

Jake laughs heartily, his shoulders raising a bit. "I will take you on and win, Mr. Strider, in a debate over wine."

David narrows his eyes, significantly, and you briefly contemplate how he can still see like that. "Bring it on."

Dave and yourself share a look, and then you both groan.

This is going to be a long night.

~*~

Finally, after spending hours out and about rather than at home recuperating from the regular business week, you find yourself huffing as you flop into bed. You're clad in a long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants, shades resting on the nightstand next to your head, which is next to your fluorescent orange alarm clock. It's unbelievably nice to just sit and stare at the ceiling after bustling about with the day's activities. Fuck, are you thankful to be home.

Jake climbs in beside you in bed, wearing the same thing you are, except for the fact that he's decided to go shirtless. It is rather warm, you think, but you don't really act on your instinct to cool off. The fan oscillating in the corner will cool the bedroom down soon enough, anyway. You aren't too concerned.

"Goodnight, Dirk," Jake says, reaching over and offering his right wrist. With a chest "full" (not literally) of an emotion that you can only describe as "contentment", you reach over with your left hand and rub your thumb over the smooth, soft surface. Ever since the two of you first became friends and got close, you've been doing this. It started out as an accident, but ended up a routine of sorts-- a less complicated way of saying "goodbye" or "I'll see you later" or "Goodnight". For you, at least. Jake's perfectly content verbally responding to that situation, but he knows and understands that sometimes you just don't know what to say or how to say it, even if the logical answer would be "goodbye," or "see you later," or "goodnight." Jake smiles. "I love you."

"I love you, too." This is one of those phrases that you've come to realize is best appreciated when spoken aloud by both parties. You've learned, and you don't mind saying it now.

With that, Jake rolls over onto his other side, and you do, as well. It doesn't take too long for Jake's breath to even out in sleep, and you slowly turn your eyes towards the clock.
It reads 11:05 pm.

If you wait fifteen minutes, you can get up and continue work on that model ship.

And so you do. You wait fifteen minutes-- but it turns into twenty, as you become slowly more and more distracted and caught up in your mind. The steady sound of the fan oscillating helps you relax, and while you're absolutely content to just sit here and try to sleep, you know that you won't be able to. Thus, when the clock hits 12:00 am, you slowly sit up and start to slip your feet out of--

"Dirk?"

Shit. You woke him up. "Hm."

"Where are you going?"

In a flurry, you respond, "I was going to get up and finish the model ship."

"Oh." The distinct rustling sound of blankets makes you feel the need to turn around, because you're sure that's what Jake's done. You lay back down and turn to face him. "Do you have a minute to talk, you think?"

Your cheeks burn hot, your chest starts fluttering with a feeling akin to curiosity. "Yeah. What's up?"

"I..." You hear Jake swallow. It appears that his hand instinctively draws up to his collar to adjust it, though the action suddenly changes into a rub against his clavicle. "I just think we should talk, is all. Don't worry, it's nothing bad, it's just something that's been on my mind a lot lately, you know, and it's probably something we should hop to getting through and talking about!"

You're silent, waiting for him to continue.

"Since it is definitely one of those things, and all. Something very important--"

"I don't really mean to be rude, so I'm sorry if I come across as rude, but what are you talking about?" You were beginning to get annoyed by Jake's rambling, though you could kind of empathize with his awkwardness or embarrassment.

"Right! Um..."

Jake breathes in deeply through his diaphragm, sitting up just a bit and looking you in the eyes. You glance at his eyes every so often. Enough to let him know you're listening, but not enough for it to be considered steady eye contact. Jake doesn't say anything about it, because you're pretty sure he gets it. He breathes in again, mumbling "okay" under his breath. Then the eye-contact is back, and--

"I want kids."