A/N: Hey guys! I hope you enjoy this chapter. R&R please :)
You're starting to wonder if Casey actually does remember her mom. It's been a few years since The Incident, so she would only have been 4 or 5 at the time. And it's not like she saw her that regularly even before everything turned into one big mess. Her mother would show up on your doorstep unannounced a couple of times a month demanding to see her daughter. On a couple of occasions she even had the audacity to show up higher than a parade ballon on Thanksgiving Day. Well, you can proudly say you did not let her even get one foot in the door before making her leave.
All of these thoughts pool together in your mind into a knot you can't work out. You're in the kitchen with Dave, but you're not sure if he's even sitting at the table with you anymore.
"SHIT!" Oh, there's Dave. You look up and see he's dropped cereal all over the floor. He bends down to pick it up, but decides to just lie down instead. Something about his position looks so comfortable that you abruptly get out of your chair and get down next to him.
"Good night," Dave mumbles. And within a minute both of you are out cold.
With all of the crying and panicking from last night, you could have slept for an eternity. When you wake up at 7 am every joint in your body aches, and your head is throbbing. Rolling onto your back, a series of pops and cracks issue from your hips.
"Dave?" you absently grope the air next to you for a human being.
"Egbert, I know I'm hot property, but it's too early for this." he swats your hand away.
Well, Dave's certainly not getting up. You know you can't be on the floor any longer, so you carefully get up and you're about to go upstairs when you remember what Casey said to you. A pounding begins behind your eyes, and you turn right around and head to the bathroom in the basement. In the shower, you crank the water onto the hottest setting, and as the steam begins to surround you, your muscles loosen under the hot water. Your headache eases up and you can finally begin to relax.
The pounding of the water is so loud you don't hear the door open. You do, however, hear hands ripping the shower curtain open. You instinctively cover your crotch, and Dave laughs and steps into the shower with you.
"Why so modest all of a sudden?" he chuckles, waggling his eyebrows at you.
"Why are you in here?!" you say, moving your hands to your hips.
"Hey, you're stressed, I'm stressed. You're always telling me to handle my emotions better. I figured you could help me out. You know,"
"Don't" you cut him off.
"You scratch my back, I scratch yours." he finishes anyway, "Well, scrub." he smirks before moving in and planting a kiss on your lips.
"Your breath tastes bad." you mumble against his lips, but you don't pull back. He leans in further, kissing you slowly and running his fingers through your hair. Your breath catches in your throat when he pushes his pelvis up against yours. You forget all about your lingering headache, and Casey's mom, and focus on Dave and the pounding of the water. That's all you can hear- the pounding water and a knock on the door. Wait, a knock on the door?
Before you can do a thing about it, the door is flung open.
"DAVE GRAB THE SHOWER CURTAIN!" you scream. Dave, confused, turns around and freezes. Your daughter and her mother are standing there, and it takes another second before Dave finally gets it in gear and pulls the flimsy shower curtain to cover up the two of you. You turn the water off, and everything is silent, but not for long.
"Whoa, John! Way to GET SOME!"
"VRISKA I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM MY HOUSE." you shout. How the HELL did she get in here? "CASEY. GO TO YOUR ROOM. NOW." your daughter dashes out of the room and you can hear her feet pounding up the stairwell. "YOU TOO." you shout at the tall woman leaning in the doorway. She begins to cackle manically and slams the door behind her.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, JOHN?" Dave shouts at you. His eyes are wide and there's a mixture of confusion and shock plastered on his face. He gets out of the shower, grabs a towel and begins to pace around the small bathroom.
"That's her? Really? John, what? No, this isn't happening right now." he's shaking his head in disbelief. You're starting to get cold so you grab your bathrobe and plop down on the closed lid of the toilet. The headache from before is coming back in full force, and you snatch a bottle of aspirin from the counter and down a few.
"John, are you even listening to me?" Dave is being persistent. He rarely gets this worked up.
"Just shut up and put on your god damn pants, Strider!" once that left your mouth you realized it wasn't a good idea.
"John, I'm not fuckin' around right now. Your baby mama is sitting 10 feet away and I need some answers." Anger flashes through his eyes.
"You think I know what's going on right now?" you say in exasperation.
"Last night after she called you promised me she wouldn't be coming around!" It's true, you had promised that. Vriska wouldn't stop calling, and you eventually had to take her call. You gave her the same speech as usual, and you thought she was taking you seriously for once.
"Dave, I know this is fucked up. I don't want her here, but obviously I can't control her. Casey must have let her in while we were in the shower." You grab some dirty clothes off the bathroom floor and throw them on. "Dave, get some fucking pants on and come up to the kitchen." you throw some clothes at him and storm out of the bathroom. Vriska is sprawled out on your couch and when she sees you heading upstairs she scrambles up after you.
"So John, are ya even gonna look at me?" Vriska's voice is like nails on a chalkboard.
You whip around to face her. You don't even have to try to look intimidating because you are so steamed that you are ready to get in her face.
"Vriska, you are not welcome here." you say, your voice straining. You want to shout so badly. "I told you not to come here. Yet here you are, again." It feels like you're going to pop a blood vessel with how intensely you're glaring at her. She just glares right on back. You turn around and continue on to the kitchen. Dave bounds up the stairs and takes a seat next to you in the kitchen. Vriska gets the message and sits opposite of you and Dave. No one says anything at first.
"Let's cut to the chase here, people." Dave breaks the silence. "It's summer. I don't work Mondays, John's a teacher, and I have no fucking clue what you do with your life," he nods in Vriska's direction, "Even so, I don't wanna spend today sitting around staring at y'all." He fold his arms over his chest and leans back in the chair. Already you can tell it's going to be a long day.
It was a very hot day, even for July. Your best friend Terezi took you down to southern California for the fourth of July.
"John," she'd said, "you need to get over this break up. Karkat ain't coming back." Terezi was always blunt with you. "Ya know what, you're coming to celebrate the 4th with me this year. You have one day to get your shit packed."
The idea of going to celebrate an overrated holiday with strangers was not an idea that appealed to you. But Terezi was right, you did need to get over Karkat. He'd dumped your ass and did not spare your feelings in the process. Everywhere you went something reminded you of him. Perhaps getting out of town was a good idea. Terezi did not tell you how long you'd be gone, so you shoved some basic clothing into your duffel bag along with toiletries. She was at your doorstep the next day around noon.
"C'mon Egbert! We gotta get on the road! The 4th might be two days away, but we gotta start burnin' rubber!" Terezi's flip flops clunked down your front steps, and you dragged yourself out after her. She lived right next door to you, so even though she was blind she'd made it to your house without a hitch. You still had to do all of the driving, though.
"So I'm thinking that we'll get to my cousin's house around tomorrow morning if we drive nonstop."
"Where does your cousin live?" you asked.
"Eh, somewhere out way far in the country. I guess there's a lot of empty space in California that you can live on real cheap." You pulled your beat up station wagon out of your drive way and Terezi used her teeth to rip open a bag of Cheetos. It was going to be a long drive.
After 20 hours in a car, 5 of which you spent asleep, you finally arrived at your destination. It was a ramshackle sort of house, with parts of the roof covered with tarp and some windows missing screens. Usually you would have commented on how questionable this joint looked, but in the car you'd promised yourself that you would let go on this trip. Live a little. Forget about the douche bag who ruined your senior year of high school. He dumped you two weeks before graduation, so technically not the whole year, but still! You'd be going off to college in the fall, so why not get all the crazy out of you where no one knows who you are?
"Hey cuz!" Terezi shouted, waving at some girl who'd come out of the house. She was older than Terezi, but just as vivacious. Despite her age, she was holding a beat up skate board. "You got the booze?" The woman held up a bottle of liquor as an answer to Terezi's question. Terezi shoves your bag at you and runs inside. You cautiously follow, not sure what manners to use in a situation like this. Terezi hadn't even introduced you to this woman, for goodness' sake. And what were you supposed to do about the alcohol? You knew that your dad would whoop your ass if he found out you drank underage. You ignored the voice of reason nagging at you, because you were 18 now, and you felt like enough of an adult.
The party didn't really get started until that evening. Even though it was a day early, a huge crowd of college kids came to the house with backpacks full of fireworks. To get your mind off the fact that fireworks and alcohol aren't a good combination, you got spitting drunk. What great logic.
It was probably the alcohol flowing through your system that made her catch your eye. Even though you identified as gay, you still found women to be quite attractive. She was full of confidence and a shameless flirt. She even seemed to be a bit of a self-proclaimed bad ass. You talked the night away. She was the same age as you, going to a college in LA, with dreams of becoming an engineer. Her ability to speak so easily to a person she'd just met fascinated you. After the fireworks started to slow down and people were packing up to go home, you invited her inside of the house. She happily obliged, and you ended up in bed with her. The decision to have sex with her was made in a split second. As far as you were concerned Karkat could go fuck himself.
The sex wasn't that great. It was sloppy, unfulfilling and awkward. You didn't know what to do, or how to touch her. You'd never had sex with a woman before. Vriska took charge and pretty much did everything for you. Finally, as you entered her body you could feel a certain unease come over you. You wanted to stop, but she urged you on and on, and eventually you came. Drunk as you were, it didn't occur to you to wear a condom.
And the rest is history.
She found you two months later. You're not sure how, but you think Terezi helped her track you down. She was pregnant, didn't want to be, and was blaming you. And you knew it was all your fault. You were an idiot and didn't wear a condom. She was a girl who thought she had a future ahead of her. You agreed to care for the baby after it was born, so she could move on and forget it ever happened. You went to community college, she returned to LA, and you obtained legal custody of the child after its birth. Vriska said goodbye for what you thought would be the last time, and you were ready to begin your new life with your child. It was hard to explain the situation to your father. Initially he'd been so mad he could've strangled you, but after letting it sink if for a few months he was willing to help you out. He helped you get into an apartment, get a job, and get back on your feet.
Then Vriska started visiting. The first few times it was okay when she came over. Something was suspicious though, and you knew it. One day while talking on the phone with Terezi she let it slip that Vriska was never actually accepted to the college she wanted to go to. She was depressed and her life was spiraling out of control. It was around that time that you wanted her to stop seeing your daughter. Vriska was a potential bad influence, and you wanted Casey to grow up as normally as possible. It had been a few years at that point. Casey loved her mom, and from their brief visits together you could tell Vriska loved her back. That's what made it so hard to tell her she had to stop coming.
You found out about The Incident from the Channel 7 News. You'd just finished putting Casey to bed and turned on the TV in your living room. The news anchor didn't interest you, but you nearly fell off the couch when you saw a mug-shot of Vriska appear on screen. Turning up the volume, you heard it all. How she'd gotten drunk. How she'd snuck into a night club. How she'd found a man in a wheel chair. How she'd beaten him nearly to death. You wanted to throw up. This woman could not see your daughter anymore. You figured anyone capable of such inhumane violence had no place in your daughter's life.
And, like you said, the rest is history.