Your name is Dave Strider, and John Egbert is supposed to be your best friend. You're still at Jade's soiree, and you're feeling very sorry for yourself. You also feel a healthy dose of self loathing, but it's surpassed by the agonizing self pity and an outrageous and righteous fury at Karkat Vantas.
You're sure he's a cool guy. He seems funny, and apparently he liked almost the same shitty movies that John liked. You just. You just don't like to see him with his hands all over John's back, whispering sweet nothings in John's ear, and gazing at John with adoration. It's unacceptable is what it is. John Egbert is your best friend, and even you haven't been able to do all that with him!
Granted, Karkat Vantas is his date.
Fuck.
You can't do this. Not when you remember the pain and loss all those years ago. You were a douche then, and if you had John Egbert in your grasp now, you would fuck him up again like you did to all your other relationships, like you did with him the first time around. This time it'd be worse, you'd have to physically see him crumple and you can't. You absolutely can't.
This is bad. You switch your attention from John and his young boyfriend and scan the room in search for Rose. Ah, there she is, sucking face with a mysterious ginger. That's the third person you've seen her with this week. Why is your sister's game so strong when you can't even make your childhood best friend look at you like that?
You did not just think that. That's something that didn't happen and it's going to stay that way.
You resolutely take a breath and snap your head back, take a cursory glance over to John and Karkat Vantas standing on the balcony, the stride stiffly around the grand room trying to socialize your way out of your emotions.
XXXX
You return home to a bouquet of flowers and a tiny black box.
Needless to say, you slept alone that night.
XXXX
Jade's gone off gallivanting around the world again, leaving John in charge of Skaianet headquarters. Rose is locked in her study with dozens and dozens of drafts for her new book. You, well. You're lounging about at the moment, slinging your feet on your shitty living room table, drinking beer and watching reruns of The Simpsons. Your living room is a mess. Dirty clothes all over the place, dishes remain unwashed and piled not only in the sink but in four corners of just about every room. You stack leftover pizza boxes artistically around your sofa and build a can town with the cheap break up beer you keep in stock for times like this.
Ah, the single life.
You can go out to a club right now and fuck anyone you want. They'd take you, oh yes they will, the great Dave Strider? People are queing for a grasp at your meat stick. Or you can do what you're doing right now, being a slob and not having your boyfriend- ex now- chide you around for watching shitty reruns and putting your feet on the table.
You like making the art of being slobbish an, well to be redundant, an artform. Usually you can't stand it. You can't stand the patches of dirt in places, the uneven placing of clothes, you even have stack your dishes in a particular way. You let loose by dirtying this place up and then cleaning it vigorously. Judging by the mess your suite is in, you really really need to let loose.
You liked him, you can even say loved him. Sort of. In a boyfrienish way. Adored him, certainly. He made you laugh, said interesting things, and was nice in bed. Your ex is pretty amazing, and you acknowledge that like you acknowledge the fact that all your exes were pretty amazing; they were all nice kind people who did nice kind things and made you laugh and call them a dork. It would be false and insulting to make a face heel turn right after a break up to say you've never liked this person seriously because you did.
You're always, always, pursuing them, talking to them, behaving around your lovers with an intensity and earnestness that you made sure to show. You want to tell them without really telling them, "hey i'm serious about you. i'm really really serious." You were afraid that if you didn't show that honesty, if you didn't show them the want and the pure force of your feelings, that anyone would just walk away, or feel unappreciated, or get hurt. Like John had.
Except now you're single again and there's no one in your life you want to chase after(shut up brain shut up shut up) and you're content to just let the feelings for this newest ex of yours slip away in the night. You try not to question the fact that if these feelings were really this easy to go away, were they real in the first place? That's silly, of course they were. You muse to yourself. Of course they were, but relationships end and Strider ain't gonna let anything bog him down. Gotta let the feelings free.
You end your internal monologue on these semantics and instead focus on watching Homer beat the shit out of his own son. Brings back happy memories.
XXXXX
Your name is John Egbert, and you are calming down. Karkat is rambling around some tangent that he managed to tangle himself up in again, and you flick him on the forehead to make him calm down.
"I'm alright now."
"Good."
You're both silent after this, and you take your arm off his waist because it was getting weird, and having your arm around a distinctively male figure just reminds you of Dave. Karkat doesn't mention Dave after meeting him, but you're sure that's out of consideration for your well being, because you haven't felt so raw and opened for such a long time. He ends up eating most of the small appetizers and refuses your invititation to a classier dining experience with Rose and Jade, Dave having already left a while back. He's tense and staring at Jade, who's shining with animation and cheerfullness, in a strange way and you guiltily feel protective over your big sister while at the same time you want to tell Karkat to go for it. One day. Maybe.
Dave doesn't show up in your radar for the next few days, he doesn't even message you to share inappropriate jokes or happenings at his workplace, but you are too busy working to worry about him for a while. You welcome the change, immersing yourself in conferences, numbers, inventions and all sorts of legalese. You don't think about Dave. You don't.
But one day Rose shows up with a bottle of wine and windex and tells you to go over to Dave's place. You take the two bottles in bewilderment, juggling them in your hands (you are a professional juggler, almost). You place them in a bag and put them in the passenger seat of your baby car Casey and drive on over the Dave's.
Knock.
No movement.
Knock knock.
Nothing.
You tuck the bag under your left arm and you plunge your right hand directly into the flowerpot, mucking around until your fingers grasp the key. You pull it out and shake the dirt, wiping it on your shirt, then fitting the key in the lock and turning the knob.
Dave's place is a mess.
You groan.
"Fuck this, Rose," you mumble to yourself, "I'm not Dave's fucking babysitter."
You call for Dave again, but either he's deep asleep or he's not here. You highly doubt that Rose would send you to an empty bachelor pad, but what do you know about Rose? (Quite a lot, but you pretend you don't to keep her happy) Sigh. The bag of wine and windex gets placed on the living room table after a couple of Chinese take out cartons are shoved off. The wine remains in the bag, but the windex comes out and you roll up your sleeves. Time to get this place shining.
You work your way steadily through the living room, throwing out cartons and organizing papers. You clean up a spill of milk that's pretty recent and had began to sour already, and you rearrange Dave's CD collection as retribution. Washing the dishes takes around an hour, you don't even bother drying them, you just put them straight into the dishwasher to hang. As you swipe the last follicle of dust from the TV screen, you notice a lumpy figure that had been lying in a niche between the sofa and the wall the entire time. The figure had blonde hair, shades, and was presumably still dead asleep.
Dave didn't have any blankets on his person, and he's curled up in a tiny ball with his hands pressed underneath his face, he's even drooling a bit, and his hair is all wonky. He looks so. Dave. Your heart calls out to him, but you don't do anything except to perform some complicated footwork to get behind the sofa and lift him out of his sleeping corner. He's still asleep, and you wonder when he went to bed (well, floor in this case) last night.
He's a soft and warm weight against your body. You want nothing more than to bend your face down a couple more inches just to brush your lips softly against his cheeks. That's all you want. Just a small kiss. He shifts in your arm, and you dispell any such thoughts. You carry him to his room, which may be the only clean room in the place- even by Dave's obsessive standards. You softly place him in his bed and drag the covers over him, and gently take away his shades, putting them on the nightstand.
Then, because you can't help yourself, you drop a kiss on his forehead, lightly.
It's dark outside already, and you don't feel like driving. You stretch and yawn, walking back to the living room and onto the sofa. A minute later, you're asleep and dreaming.
