John stepped off the Greyhound bus for, what felt like, the thirtieth time, the final time. It was the middle of summer so the air was pretty stifling in Texas, not a desert as was depicted in so many bad movies, and when it came to bad movies John was the expert. But, he argues, what some-most-people think are bad movies are actually pretty good, y'know, from his perspective. . . No one else seems to think so, in fact, Dave, the person he is on his to meet right now, constantly reminds him of this.
Dave hadn't given John very good instructions so John had to walk into a Starbucks quickly, buy some coffee, get pestered by a Troll for a minute and get some MapQuest directions. He got all of this done efficiently, but in an untimely manner, what an oxymoron. He now stood before Dave's door, the house was quaint, not too flashy, though had expected it to be, the way Dave talks you would think he's loaded.
John knocked once, twice, three times and moment later Dave opened the door.
"Sup," He said, his voice barely audible over the loud music John believed the boy had composed.
"Hey," John responded Dave remained neutral; though it wasn't really something he could give away when he wore those glasses all of the time. After a few more moments of Dave bobbing his head slowly to the music John decided that he should just invite himself in, so he did that, slipping by Dave who didn't seem to notice. Once John was clear of the door Dave closed it.
John looked around and was amazed at how. . . Dirty Dave's house was it was just terrible. There were puppets with rather large rumps strewn around the room, the floor was barely visible and the parts of it that were occupied by a random assortment of sharp objects. Dave shuffled around all of this clutter masterfully, but John wasn't so lucky, he cut his foot, quite badly, he hoped that stitches wouldn't be needed.
"Bathrooms on the way to my room, you can clean your leg there." Dave said this without even turning around, how he had known that John cut his leg was a mystery to the boy. "People always cut themselves the first time they come here, sometimes it's funny, most times it's just sad." So from past events, it didn't behoove him to clean any of this up? Impeccable logic. . .
Over the next few hours the boys, or more, John played video games. Dave, however, preoccupied himself with the many records scattered about his room. This visit was turning out to be pretty boring, not at all worth the almost two hundred bucks it cost to get here, not including snacks.
John, after beating every characters story in Soul Calibur IV, jumped up and stormed over to Dave, yanking the headphones off.
"Do you plan to entertain your company or ignore me?" John fumed.
Dave for the first time to seemed to comprehend that someone else was in his house except him.
"Oh, uh, sure, whataya wanna do, bro?" Dave asked, keeping his composure cool, cooler than ice, nothing is cooler than Dave; well, except maybe Bro.
"I don't know, what else is there to do besides play video games and listen to music?" John asked brazenly.
There are many other things to do, Dave thought to himself. But instead of proposing his ideas Dave shrugged, this seemed to aggravate John more.
Just then Dave sensed a disturbance in the Strider home, there in his doorway, stood, or; er, sat Cal. Dave blinked and Cal was gone, eh, just imagining things, John was talking, but Dave had missed the beginning and wasn't all that interested in the middle or end. Cal was jumping around the room like only Cal can and Dave's head followed frantically, John laughed at his friend's weirdness. He was going to ask what Dave was doing, but all of that seemed moot when a puppet landed on his head, his mirth died immediately and he swatted at the thing.
Nothing was there. . . Uh, that's strange, he could have sworn.
There it was again on Dave's shoulder, okay, this was something to do, he guessed.
"What's that?" John asked, a little scared but more intrigued.
"Cal. . ." Dave muttered.
For the next hour or so Dave and John watched Cal bounce around the room, sometimes trying to catch him but failing every time. It all ended when Dave gave Cal a bro-fist.
The boys lie sprawled out on Dave's dirty rug, John still kept an eye out for the return of Cal but it seemed the puppet was not returning. This day wasn't a total bust at least.
Dave glanced at the clock 7:51 PM, he felt too tired to do anything else so he decided to just lie there. John did the same, until 7:56, this was a monumental occasion, because in this moment Dave showed a side of him John didn't know existed. Dave kissed John, this took a while to process, one reason was that John was half-asleep when this happened and another that it had happened so fast. When John glanced over Dave was turned away, 'asleep.'
John smiled and curled in the opposite direction, falling asleep.
Yup, this week most definitely will not be a total bust.