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Your name is Dirk Strider, and if anyone were to suggest that being around other people for the first time in your life is a challenging experience, it would be a severe and flagrant understatement.
You had a habit of leaving the television on in your old home, so the noise isn’t new to you. You’re used to the sounds that people make when they talk, but the fact that they’re now capable of approaching and invading your personal space at any given moment, of touching you, is what you’re having the most trouble getting used to. It was worse back when they had to do it to get your attention sometimes, so you made sure that the very first thing you learned after entering the medium was what your name sounded like when spoken out loud.
It’s still easy for you to get overloaded, even though you’re technically used to the concept of people moving in 3D since you spent so much time sneaking around on Derse. Watching your friends interact is so unbelievably different from watching them on a screen that you’re only about 40% sure of your interpretations. Even though you’ve always made a point of studying on film the way people move relative to each other in every scene, the way they stand and walk together and look at things around them, and even though you’ve spent your life watching and evaluating people on footage the same way you spent a lifetime watching the weather patterns above your home, it’s so remarkably different in person. For one thing, the distractions are numerous and constant. The fact that these are real human people in front of you, not carapaces, is still something you’re getting used to. And that with such close proximity come sounds, like the shuffle of fabric when they shift, and the quiet rush as they breathe in and out. Being in a room with another person has a way of demanding all of your senses in a way you didn’t quite anticipate.
It’s nice knowing that they’re happy to be in each other’s company, and you’re glad that everything turned out ok, but you don’t have the kind of limitless stamina for interaction that they do. Truthfully, you had kind of expected (counted on) being left out of their conversations for the most part, since you can’t follow their rapid-fire talking, and having someone translate for you kind of slows things down. But Jake still has his Skulltop, and he’s more than happy to give you the gist of the conversation as it happens (Jane also has her tiara, but she’s been more cautious about using it since finding out the truth about the Batterwitch). Since you arrived, you’ve been working on a voice-recognition program for AR to use so he can essentially do the same thing, but programming it has been something of a challenge. Normally it wouldn’t take you so long, even with a program as complex as this, but your shades are somewhat limited, and the rest of your equipment is still in your home on your planet. You don’t want to risk an unnecessary trip with the skeletons roaming around, and you still haven’t figured out how to work the cryptic technological behemoths scattered around the meteor, so you’re doing what you can to develop your own translator, and in the meantime your friends are happy to fill that role. Especially Dave.
Even though he’ll be the first to admit that he kind of sucks at it.
TG: janes talking about her dad
TG: something about this thing theyd do when she was little
TG: god i cant believe how similar she and john are its like im looking at his female clone
TG: johns dad was apparently huge on clowns and shit too i mean what are the chances
TG: it must be genetic because it seems to run in the family
TG: i guess janes dad liked hats
TG: yeah she says he was into hats
TG: maybe thats genetic too i mean who knows they even lived in the same fucking house from the sound of it
TG: at least jane was actually into baking poor john hated cakes and from the sound of it thats all his dad ever made
TG: anyway i guess janes dad gave her a hat for her birthday once
TG: it must be nice to actually have parents who treat you like a child and give you actual presents for your birthday
TG: do you know what i got for my 12th birthday
TT: Can’t say that I do.
TG: a goddamn smuppet avalanche
TG: first thing in the morning wake up stretch my arms over my head yeah this day is going to be pretty cool being my bday and all
TG: take a single step out of my room
TG: oh well what do you know a mountain of smuppet dong like mana from the heavens
TG: a never ending tidal wave of foam ass to quench my nonexistent puppet thirst
TG: do you have any idea what that does to a kid dude
TT: Not really.
TG: ill be dreaming about puppets until the day i die from the repressed trauma and psychological damage
TG: then maybe youll finally understand but itll be too late to save me
TT: Dave, we’ve already been over this.
TG: yeah youre different people i get it
TG: but youre not that different like seriously its kind of creepy
TG: or not creepy like just really confusing sometimes
TG: i mean theres a lot of things
TG: or not that many things
TG: just stupid little stuff
TG: nevermind
Despite his minimal usefulness as a translator, you’ve found that being around Dave tends to be somewhat easier than it is with the others, and something of a reprieve from the constant bombardment on your senses that human interaction demands. Your friends are the most important people in your life, and you’d sacrifice yourself for them a hundred times over, but you quickly get burnt out from being constantly aware of them just existing in your space. Dave can have the same effect on you sometimes, but he seems to be learning quickly what your limits are when it comes to interaction. He’s quieter and less expressive, and he actually seems to prefer chatting with you over talking to them, although you suppose that might have something to do with the way he introduced himself when you first met. Roxy told you later after the meeting that he was upset over something regarding your alternate universe self, but when you brought it up with him later, he just said that he was ‘venting some shit that didn’t have anything to do with you’ and told you not to worry about it, so you left it alone.
The way he carries a conversation over Pesterchum is remarkable. You kind of like goading him on, pressing his buttons a little just to get him to rant at you. He seems to have a never-ending supply of witty metaphors and things to say about absolutely nothing. You like it when he types in his characteristic, unbroken paragraphs of metaphors and tangents, and you’ve equated his style of chat-prose with something like free-form, non-rhyming poetry with a complete lack of regard for syntax and flow. He seemed insulted when you shared your assessment, and it’s one of several things that he’s inexplicably sensitive about. You’re still testing the waters in that regard, trying to understand the delicate moving parts of this strange relationship the two of you are building. But you’ll readily admit that you’re only controlling half of this equation. People are difficult for you to read on a good day, and he makes it almost impossible with his shades, which aren’t even functional like yours, but apparently they have some sort of gift-related significance with a friend of his who has yet to arrive in your session.
TG: who john? yeah hes a fucking goober
TG: you might like him who knows
TG: once he figures out how to tone down the egbert charm
TG: gotta warn you though bro hes a hopeless nerd
TG: if nerd were a health condition hed have his own chapter in the medical textbooks
TG: doctors all over the world would use his symptoms as the benchmark for diagnosis
TG: all kinds of nonprofit charity organizations researching to find the cure for what hes got
TG: its the most tragic thing mankind has ever seen
TT: I see.
TG: sad music playing while pictures of his square rimmed glasses and buck teeth ghost over the screen
TG: donate now this poor bastard needs your help
TT: Sounds pretty fucking serious.
TG: dude you have no idea hes got maybe a few months left before it spreads
TG: then its nothing but experimental therapy and the success rate is pretty damn low
TG: and you know how expensive those treatments can get
TG: no insurance company in the world will take him
TT: Dave, I think this metaphor might be getting away from you a little.
TG: yeah youre right
TG: but youll understand when you finally meet him
TG: i think he and jake are going to get along like peas in a pod
TT: Is that so.
TG: yeah dude theyre practically clones of each other
TG: ok theyre not exactly the same but theyve both got that hopeless movie obsession thing going on
TG: in fact i never thought id live to say this but
TG: i think jake might be a bigger fan of movies than john
TT: The man does appreciate his cinematic indulgences.
TT: Unfortunately he has almost no sense of taste in film.
TT: Almost. He did like my Bro’s movies after all.
TG: shit thats right
TG: is there any way you can dig some of those up or something
TG: im just dying to see what alternate universe me did that made him so famous
TG: maybe improve my craft a little you know
TG: temper the already razor sharp edge of my ironic genius
TT: I’ll see what I can do.
TT: AR might have a few of them stored.
TG: fucking sweet
Like your other friends (especially Jake), he tends to talk at you out loud sometimes, even though he knows you can’t understand it (you once told him while comparing favorite music tracks from 400 years ago your time and 3 years ago his time that the voices are just a bunch of meaningless noise as far as you’re concerned, because the tune and rhythm is where the meaning comes through for you). He’s been especially helpful in teaching you a few key words and phrases, even though your innate pride and sense of dignity won’t quite let you sound them out yourself yet. You know what you sound like, you’ve tried to learn before, once you were old enough to read and figure out how the computers in your home worked. But you kind of gave it up as a lost cause after a while, figuring that no one was ever going to hear you anyway. You’re glad you were wrong. Mostly.
There’s one place on the meteor that you’ve more or less claimed as your own, somewhere you can retreat to when your head starts to ache from overstimulation, and it doesn’t even technically belong to you. The meteor itself is securely anchored on Jane’s planet, being the only one that wasn’t crawling with undead consorts and monsters. It’s the perfect fortress for your expanding group, especially since the new arrivals warned that their version of Jack is still hunting them (although he seems to have fallen behind apparently). The meteor isn’t exactly homely, but you can tell that Dave and the others spent three years making it into something livable. Back when your friends were still trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their new living spaces, and Jane decided to alchemize herself a room first, it took her almost a week until she was happy with the results. Roxy, who latched onto her alternate universe mother and hasn’t let go since, wasn’t in any hurry to move out of what had become their joint living space, so Jake took his turn with the alchemizer next, and after that you kind of stopped keeping track.
You like Dave’s room. He alchemized himself some basic furniture and enough ridiculous posters to keep the metal walls covered, along with plenty of his own drawings, which you still stop to admire during idle moments. He also has a fascination with the artifacts left behind by the carapaces, and has appropriated a large shelf covered in strange relics, pieces of technology, and bits of what appear to be strange creatures in jars. His taste in decor is what you’d call eclectic, but you told him that once and he went off on you for almost an hour about what his childhood home used to look like. While the others were furnishing their own rooms, or in Roxy’s case staying with her mother, you had kind of expected to find a reasonably comfortable niche to rest in, since actual sleeping was out of the question in a strange environment like this. But as the first night fell on the massive grey meteor, Dave ended up hunting you down and inviting you to his own room, under the pretext of complaining that Rose was having all the fun with her ‘Lalonde family time sleepover girl party’ and that as Striders the two of you shouldn’t let yourselves be outdone. It was a weak excuse, but you weren’t about to argue, especially since his room had an actual bed- which you didn’t sleep on for almost a week, since his invitations to take the bed while he slept on the floor weren’t going to fly with you, and a second bed wasn’t going to fit in his cluttered living space. Eventually, once you got used to him a little more and he became less guarded around you, a compromise was reached, and you decided that now’s as good a time as any to get over your hair-trigger anxiety about being in close proximity to other people.
Dave has turned out to be a very patient teacher in that regard. You’ve noticed, from comparing his behavior around others to when it’s just the two of you, that he takes things more slowly when you’re nearby. He doesn’t move around as much, and he’s more likely to sit down or lean against something and stay like that for as long as the two of you converse, you with your shades and him with whatever Pesterchum-capable device he happens to have at the moment. He tends to gravitate towards you when you’re in a room together, and you’ll admit that you like the way he preferentially chooses your company over everyone else’s.
There are a lot of things that you like about Dave.
And if you’re being honest with yourself, there may or may not be something a little less than platonic going on between you and this version of your brother. It’s nothing you’ve talked about so far, but things are different between the two of you at night, when your shades are in their usual spot on the makeshift table next to the bed, and you’re reduced to nonverbal interaction. When you lost Cal, you lost one of the few things in your life that you took comfort from. Dave isn’t Cal by any stretch of the imagination, but as you’ve shed some of that reflexive paranoia and become a little more desensitized to his presence by having him sleep next to you, sometimes your subconscious mind forgets that they aren’t the same thing, and you’ve woken up tangled with him a number of times. Normally you would be mortified in that kind of situation, but his reaction to waking up like that wasn’t at all what you expected. You’ve discovered that he’s more than willing to let you use him as a body pillow, and he seems to almost enjoy it, but there’s something sad about the way he’ll brush his fingers over your hair when you’re wrapped up in each other and he thinks you’re asleep.
You may be a little underprivileged when it comes to human interaction, but you’re not naive. You know what you’re feeling when it comes to your brother. You’ll also readily admit to hero-worshiping your own universe’s version of him, and no amount of multidimensional technicalities are going to negate that, but the feelings you had concerning your ancestor were complicated, difficult to navigate, and not something you dedicated a lot of time to untangling. He was dead, and you were alone, so you indulged in whatever scenarios and hopeless fantasies your mind wanted to invent. It was one of the few weaknesses you allowed yourself, figuring that since human society and culture were ancient history, it didn’t matter what social taboos or rules you might be violating. It was also one of the few things you took comfort in, imagining what being with him might have been like, someone who would have cared about you, taught you how to do things before you had to figure them out for yourself by screwing up or hurting yourself first, someone who might have loved you, in every sense of the word. You entertained a lifetime of fantasies before meeting the real thing.
You’ve never had actual, living family before. People who care about you for who you are, rather than what you’ve done for them or what you’re capable of. You care deeply about your friends, but they’re not family.
They’re not Dave.
You tend to retreat to his room when you need to be alone, and recently, “being alone” has somehow stopped applying to him.
As the planet rotates, the light from Skaia slowly dims. You’ve holed up in Dave’s room for the night (although if you’re being honest with yourself, it’s really your room too now). You’re sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of his bed, working on your voice-recognition program while AR helps you code the more repetitive parts. When Dave walks in through the sliding metal door, you don’t even look up. He’s becoming a natural part of your space, the way you thought no one ever would. You didn’t think you were capable of letting down your guard like that, but being around him has proven your own assessment of yourself wrong a number of times.
He makes a detour to his desk while you finish up a series of lines in the code and give some instructions to AR if he feels like working on it while you’re asleep. You flinch a little when Dave suddenly sits down next to you, legs crossed and facing your direction. His ever-present shades are gone, and he’s got one of his computer devices in his hand, tapping out a message. Your chat client lights up just as you’re finishing with AR.
-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --
TG: hey bro
TG: whats up hows it hangin
You close out the coding program and bring your chat client to the front.
TT: Nothing much.
TT: Still working on the program for AR. I’m a bit limited without the computers from my room, though. So it’ll be slow going for a while.
TG: well shit dude i told you id be more than happy to help you fetch that stuff
TG: youve been here for almost a month its about time you helped decorate a little
TG: we can make room for your things
TG: somehow
TG: i mean unless youd rather put them somewhere else
TG: its up to you i guess
You can’t help a small smile at that. The fact is, you’ve been waiting a long time for him to tell you to get your own space and quit using his room, but the days turned into weeks, and it was never brought up. You came to realize that maybe he wants you here as much as you want to stay, so you didn’t make it an issue, and it became one of those unspoken agreements between the two of you. The same way that Dave sleeping on the side of the bed facing the wall is an unspoken agreement, since you need to be closer to the door in case anything happens.
TT: That’s okay, I’d rather not risk anyone’s lives just so I can code this program a little faster.
TT: I’ve got plenty of data to work with here, the shades just have a slower processor, and trying to get this thing to distinguish between multiple people is difficult.
TT: It’s not a big deal.
TG: alright bro whatever you say but remember ive got the whole cant die thing going for me
TG: provided i dont go out in a blaze of heroic glory or do something that requires i be taken out for the greater good on the way over to tombland i can probably just go solo
TT: I’d rather you didn’t if it’s all the same.
TT: If something did happen,
You mentally pause, then delete that line and start over.
TT: Thanks for the offer, but we’ve got more important shit to do around here than fetch my old computer.
TG: yeah alright
He puts the device down, and spends the next few minutes doing nothing else besides sitting quietly next to you. It used to make you anxious when he’d invade your space and stay there like this without any sign of what he wanted from you or why he was doing it, but eventually you just filed it away as another of his quirks. About ten minutes go by, during which you resume tinkering with lines of code, before he frowns a little, then picks up his device again and taps out a message.
TG: hey bro
TT: Yeah, what’s up.
TG: so ive been kind of thinking about some things
When a few minutes go by and he leaves it at that, you’re more or less forced to ask for more information.
TT: Alright, I’ll bite. What kinds of things?
When almost another minute goes by and he still doesn’t reply, you get curious, and you almost message him again, but he ends up beating you to it.
TG: i dont know man ive just been wondering
TG: you want to stay here right
You blink at him, and he continues before you have a chance to reply.
TG: look i know we dont usually talk about shit
TG: which is fine like i spent my entire life working around that
TG: hell i was raised that way and look at how i turned out
TG: like i said thats cool and everything i get thats just how things are with us
TG: but for once do you think we could maybe kind of
TG: hash this out
TG: you know just set the record straight or whatever and be done with it
TT: You’re asking if I want to stay here.
TG: well actually
TG: i mean thats part of it but
TG: do you like staying here?
TT: Are you referring to the meteor in general or to your room?
TG: the last thing
TT: I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t like it.
TT: Jane asked if I wanted to stay with her after she finished alchemizing her room, since she didn’t know you and I had made an arrangement.
TT: But I figured that you wanted me here.
TG: i do want you here i didnt mean it like that
TT: Dave, it’s been weeks since you got here.
TT: If I didn’t want to stay with you, I would leave.
TG: yeah i get that
TG: shit this isnt what i wanted to talk about
TG: i dont get why this is so fucking hard
TG: and maybe im just losing my mind or something because this will probably sound like its coming out of nowhere
TG: so dont get freaked out or anything if you dont know what im talking about
TG: which is cool like maybe im just reading everything wrong
TG: in which case lets just pretend this didnt happen and then get on with our lives
TG: but do you think that maybe
TG: god i dont know how to fucking put this
TG: what am i to you?
You stare at him incredulously, but he remains silent.
TT: What?
TG: you heard me
TG: or read me
TG: whatever
TG: maybe im the only one between the two of us trying to figure this thing out
TG: in which case this was a doomed endeavor before it even got started
TG: dont tell me you havent noticed anything going on i mean i know youre not stupid dude
TG: i know theres something between us im not imagining it
TG: but i guess if that is the case after all
TG: shit
TG: ok nevermind lets go with plan b this conversation didnt happen
TT: Dave, hang on, I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say. Maybe if you’d clarify a little and stop dancing around the issue I could participate.
TG: i dont know how much clearer i can make this bro
TG: okay maybe im just shit at getting my point across when i talk
TG: cant help it i learned from the best
TT: What the hell is that supposed to mean.
TG: it means
TG: fuck
TG: look im sorry i didnt mean that
TG: shit this was probably the worst idea ive had all week
TG: i knew this wasnt going to work
You’re left staring at him as he puts his phone down in his lap and sits, looking down at his hands while you watch him. You’re starting to get an idea of what this is about, and you’re not sure you want to broach the topic any further, but you message him anyway because you can’t leave things the way he’s ended them.
TT: I’m not really sure what you’re upset about.
You sigh and run an irritated hand through your hair.
TT: Okay, maybe that isn’t entirely true.
TT: But I don’t really know what you want from me.
His device makes that little blip sound, audible evidence of your conversation with him, and he looks down at it, reading the screen, but makes no move to pick it up. Instead he looks at you. His expressions are so much easier to read when you can see his eyes, and you’re a little confused at the conflict you see there, like he’s struggling with himself.
Then without any kind of warning he suddenly reaches for your shades, and you reflexively jerk back out of his reach, his fingers just brushing against the side of your frames. He freezes, and the two of you stay like that for a long moment while you eye him warily.
TT: Dave, what the fuck.
His device blips, but he doesn’t look at it, instead lifting his hands up in what seems to be a placating gesture. When he reaches out again, slowly this time, you lean back to get away from him, shaking your head once for good measure since he seems to be ignoring you over Pesterchum.
TT: Dave, I swear to god, I’m going to give you a black eye if you don’t knock it off.
TT: Look at your fucking screen.
When you’ve leaned so far over you’re almost on your elbow, he shifts forward, bracing himself with a hand on your leg, and as the device slips off of his lap to clatter on the floor, you feel a rush of panic. He’s reaching for your shades again, and you shake your head, mentally sending out his name, even though it’s clear that he isn’t paying attention to what you’re trying to say.
Moments like this remind you of how powerless you really are when it comes to whether or not people elect to talk with you. Even though it makes you feel like a pathetic child, you point urgently at the device as a last resort, silently pleading with him to pick it up. But instead of responding to your gesture, he reaches up and covers your hand with his own, threading your fingers together. You’re a little thrown by it, enough so that you momentarily forget that you’re trying to get away from him, and you find out a little too late that having your fingers trapped means you’re rendered unable to escape without actually resorting to struggling against him. When he reaches again for your shades, you tense up and glare at him. He manages to take hold of them by a pointed corner, but before he can pull them completely off, you grab his wrist with your free hand to stop him. He’s already pulled them down far enough to disrupt the mental uplink, and you’re effectively cut off.
Fuck.
No.
There aren’t enough words to describe how not okay this is. You’re not sure what the hell he thinks he’s doing, or why he won’t just message you about it instead of acting like a cryptic asshole. He pulls on your shades, and you resist. He pushes your palms together with the hand that’s laced with yours, and you feel his thumb trace over yours. A comforting gesture? You think that might be what it is. It’s making your skin feel like static, and it’s extremely distracting, even though you’re currently fighting for your ability to communicate. He’s still looking at you, the two of you frozen in this bizarre position where he’s half leaning over you and you’re half reclining backwards, your back pressing against the side of his bed. He’s still trying to hold your gaze with his eyes, like there’s something he’s trying to say to you.
It’s almost like he’s asking you to trust him.
Which is stupid. There’s a difference between trusting someone and letting them do whatever the fuck they want, but he stubbornly isn’t letting go, and you don’t really want to fight him. So you slowly relax your grip, and he slides your shades off of your face, taking them from you. He folds them and clips them to the front of his shirt, a possessive action, and you think this might be the one time he’s actually managed to genuinely piss you off. You want your shades back, experiment’s over, Dave.
Then he does something that makes you completely forget about your shades and the way he’s violated your personal space, when he leans in close, and you feel his warm breath ghost across the skin of your neck, just under your ear. It makes every nerve ending in your body light up, and you can almost feel your eyes dilating with the sudden and unexpected sensation. He stays like that, breathing on your skin and disturbing the delicate hairs with every exhale while you’re frozen in place. His hands come up to grip the edge of the bed on either side of your head, and when he finally closes that last centimeter between his mouth and your skin, it forces a sound out of you that you’ve only heard late at night when you were alone, more breath than voice, as his warm lips press into the side of your neck. Your body responds immediately- both of your hands latch onto his shoulders, either to push him away or grab him and pull him closer, you can’t seem to make up your mind. Even though your shades are gone, you still send your thoughts to him as a reflex, and it comes somewhere along the lines of his name interspersed with stilted demands to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. You want him to wait, you want him to hold on, slow down, hurry up, god please don’t stop, it’s too much, you feel like you might be dying from this. As his lips part and you suddenly feel his teeth scrape against your skin, it tears a sound from your throat, incoherent and honest, laid bare for him like you’re afraid the rest of you will soon be, and you simultaneously want to shove him away and hide your face in the fabric of his shirt, so you do the latter, because you don’t seem to have any strength in your arms. You want your shades back. But you can’t tell him that because he’s taken that ability away from you. So you hide your face in his shoulder while his mouth works against your neck, alternating between gripping at his shirt until the fabric bunches up under your fingers, and pushing against him feebly, but he seems to be ignoring your nonverbal conflict.
When one of his hands leaves the edge of the bed and presses into the side of your body where your shirt is riding up and exposing skin, you finally muster the strength to push at him hard enough to force him back. He eases off enough to look you in the eyes, and being so close to another person’s face without your shades on as a barrier makes your head spin as he leans in and your noses brush. He says something, and you blink at him. A hand comes up to trail lightly along the side of your jaw, and around to the back of your neck, threading into your hair. He says something else, more meaningless sounds, maybe he’s trying to comfort you, from the way he holds your gaze like it’ll confer what he’s saying out loud, but he should know better, you think. Until he tilts his head to the side, his eyes flicking down and back up to meet yours, and he leans closer, brushing against your jaw with his fingers, gently, slowly tilting your head up just a little, and your eyes widen as he comes closer than anyone has ever been to you before in your life. You send out his name, weakly asking for him to hear you, you’ve never been so powerless before, and you tremble with the realization as his breath warms your mouth, so close you could close the distance if you so much as tilted your head forward a single millimeter. He waits there, breathing against you, brushing the side of your throat with his fingertips, trailing them down from your jaw to your neck, a light caress, and almost as much of a kiss as the one he’s not quite giving you.
When it’s too much, and you’re practically drunk from the overwhelming proximity of him, it occurs to you that he’s asking for this, and you’re not really capable anymore of analyzing the statistics and variables of why this might not be a good idea, so you breathe him in, let your eyes flutter half closed, and lean towards him, bridging the connection between the two of you and setting your insides on fire when you feel his warm, soft mouth against yours. You hear his breath hitch, feel the tremor in his fingertips where they’re touching the side of your neck, but neither of you moves to deepen the kiss beyond a simple contact of lips. It occurs to you that maybe he wasn’t expecting you to accept, to kiss him when he left you such a short distance to travel. When you soften your mouth and slowly move your lips against his, he makes a sound of his own that makes you think of grief, and he starts to move with you, hesitant, shaky, like he’s unsure. But you encourage him, parting your lips and sliding them rhythmically over his, gently, until he’s matching you, and then overtaking you. And the soft contact becomes harder, almost enough to bruise as he leans in and takes the lead after your encouragement, after you’ve chipped away a little at his restraint, because you’re done thinking about this, you’re tired of considering every angle and outcome, and you’ve suddenly never wanted anything or anyone so badly in your entire life. There’s an undercurrent of nervous paranoia that you still can’t shake, and your level of experience in this sort of thing is approximately zero. But he’s taken the lead from you, and you let him, feeling him suck on your lip, curl a hand around the back of your head to pull you closer, and you’re practically dizzy from the sensory overload, your world narrowed down to the warm, breathing, moving body in front of you, touching and making contact in the most visceral way you’ve ever experienced.
You can’t tell him what you want, that you’re suddenly desperate to have his hands on you, so you move to do it yourself out of something like vindictive frustration, slipping your hands under his shirt without warning, and the shuddering breath he lets go of breaks the contact between your mouths. His head dips down to the side, and he breathes hard with his face pressing into your shoulder while your hands explore the skin of his back in something like awe. You’re once again distracted, this time by the novel feeling of muscles and bone under another person’s skin, and you run your fingers along the ridges of his spine from where it starts at his lower back all the way up to his neck. You trace the outline of his shoulderblades, more pronounced than usual since he’s still bracing himself against the edge of the bed. His ribs are your next point of interest, and you marvel at the way his chest expands and contracts while he breathes. You eventually remove your hands to prop yourself up on the floor when he lifts his head a little and his mouth returns to the skin of your neck, but there’s very little sign of the restraint from before, and he’s got you matching his erratic breathing in minutes while he forcefully mouths at your skin. When his hands mirror yours and slip under your clothes, you gasp and shudder at his touch. You may have slightly underestimated how unprepared you were for what it would do to you, letting him touch your bare skin. The sensation is completely alien, and yes you’ve had skin-to-skin contact with him before and with Roxy and the others when someone holds your hand or gives you a hug (or tries to throttle you after you saved their lives), but this is so far removed from anything you’ve experienced, and you’re completely overwhelmed and terrified by it at the same time.
You need to get Dave’s attention, make him slow down since you’re quickly being overloaded, but he’s as lost as you are, and you grit your teeth to stop the pathetic sounds that want to come out. His mouth finds yours again, and you don’t fight him when he parts your lips with his and swallows the whine you make when his tongue pushes past your lips. It surprises you, and you don’t like the feeling of it at first, but he’s persistent, biting gently at your lip when you try to close your mouth and moving his tongue against yours until you squeeze your eyes shut and relax your jaw, letting him in, and he takes up every inch of your mouth while his hands slide down past your stomach. He grabs your hips and pulls you towards him, pressing you together, and the resulting sensation is almost enough to make you cry out. You realize how far this has gotten out of control, and then remember how you gave that up to him when you let him take away your shades.
You lose a lot of your self-restraint when he finally presses your bodies together, and your back arches of its own accord. You don’t have the presence of mind to be ashamed anymore, he’s taken so much from you already, laid you out like a gutted fish and broken you apart into little pieces. He’s more or less sitting in your lap now, his knees on either side of your hips, and you think you might honestly die from this, you’re already seeing stars, and you have to remind yourself to inhale so you don’t accidentally pass out. He breaks the kiss to lean his head against your shoulder again, breathing hard, just resting against you while you marvel at the weight of him. You want to talk to him, tell him what this feels like, see his reply in red text while he presses your bodies together and you can feel him breathing and shivering and living against you, but you can’t. You don’t have that ability anymore, but you can still move, and you do. When you wrap your arms around his shoulders he lets out a sigh, and when you experimentally arch your hips up against his, against the hard length pressing into your abdomen, he sucks in a breath, and just like that, the last shred of his restraint is gone, and when he meets your push by grinding down against you, your hands fist the fabric of his clothes hard enough to turn your knuckles white. It’s really amazing how your entire body responds to the rhythmic pressure of his hips against yours, how sensitive every inch of your skin becomes. His mouth latches onto your shoulder just above the edge of your shirt, conveniently the closest thing to where he is right now, except this time he bites down with his teeth, hard enough to startle you, but you can’t move away from him, and you quickly discover that even the dull pain of his teeth feels good right now. You think that he could probably cut you with his sword, like he does sometimes when you’re strifing and he time hops around you to compensate for your flash stepping, and it would only compound the building tension running down your spine. The pressure of him rutting against you isn’t doing enough though, it’s driving you insane, and you practically claw at his back trying to communicate this to him. Eventually he seems to get the picture when he pulls back with a final nip at your abused skin. His forehead touches yours while he looks at you with eyes so dilated they’re almost black, and you wonder briefly if you look the same, all flushed red and lost to your baser human instincts.
He only regards you for a moment before he seems to understand, and he works a hand between the two of you, sliding it down, past your stomach, over the belt of your pants, and presses his palm against your aching cock. You clench your teeth as your body responds on its own, your hips bucking against his hand, your breath coming shorter and faster, and you quickly give up on biting back the incoherent sounds coming out of your throat as he starts to rub in firm circles, massaging you through your pants, and his name becomes a mantra in your head as you silently beg with your eyes for him to do it harder. You’re not going to last. Your fingers are digging mindlessly into his back. You want to cry his name, even though you still can’t quite form the shape of it in your mouth, but you try anyway and mangle the one-syllable word, pushed to the point of desperation by the unrelenting pressure of his hand between your legs, and he leans down and says something to you, meaningless sounds in your ear, but it’s his voice, it’s the sound of him, and your back arches up against his body as he coaxes the orgasm from you, tearing through you like an electric shock that wrecks you and leaves you boneless and panting to catch your breath.
Dave leans down and buries his face against your neck, and after you spend a moment just remembering how to breathe, you realize that your back has slipped down the side of the bed, and you’re practically on the floor now with him leaning over you, straddling you with his knees. He’s not making any move to continue touching you, even though you can hear how worked up he is just from the way he’s still breathing. You figure he’s either waiting for you to do something, or he’s not sure if you’re still okay with this now that you’re not losing your mind with the need to get off anymore, maybe expecting you to lash out at him for pushing it. One of his most negative traits, you’ve found, is that he’s prone to being very self-defeating.
So you turn your head and press your face into his soft hair, while your hands find the warm skin of his stomach underneath his shirt. He shivers at your touch, and whines a little when your fingers skirt around the rim of his pants, slipping underneath to pull them down slowly. You hear him say something again, the sound of it smaller and weaker than before, and he shifts when the waistline catches on his dick. You’re aware that you’ve never done this before, and that you’re about to attempt something you’ve only ever done on yourself, but you’re sure as fucking hell not going to leave him hanging after giving you your very first orgasm with another human being. You ease his pants off of his hips, pulling them down until they’re caught around his knees, then trail both hands up the insides of his thighs, and the sound you get from him makes you kiss the side of his head as a gesture of comfort. He’s saying things again, whimpering sounds into your ear, and you decide that you like his voice like this, when his control over it is shaky and tenuous. Your fingers reach the swollen flesh of his cock, and he gasps your name, the only recognizable thing you manage to occasionally pick out of the slurry of sounds he starts to make as your fingers run back and forth along the length of his dick, teasing him until he shakes. You have mercy on him after a few minutes when he starts to practically sob with each breath, you might have underestimated how close he was when you started touching him. You pause briefly to pluck your shades from where they’re dangling on the front of his shirt and restore them to their rightful place, then wrap your fingers around him and squeeze, swiping your thumb over the head where a bead of precum was threatening to drip onto your stomach. His entire body shudders in response, and you pause one last time to bring your hand to your mouth and lick the inside of your hand, coating your palm in spit before returning to start touching him in earnest. You slowly slide your hand up and down his length while he bucks into it and throws off the rhythm you try to establish. He’s much louder than you were, which is understandable, and you recognize some of the curses when he’s not gritting his teeth together. You’re enjoying the sound of Dave losing himself for you the same way you did for him only minutes ago, but then he says something, and you get sudden flashes of romance films with couples standing dramatically in the rain or tangled up together in sheets. It’s a sound you recognize from scenes where it’s screamed at a departing train or whispered to a child at night before the lights go out, and you’ve watched enough movies with subtitles that it doesn’t take long to dig through your memory and find the letters that always go with it at the bottom of the screen.
I love you.
It catches you off guard so badly that you almost stop moving your hand, but he lets out a muffled sob into your neck as his body goes rigid and his hips start to lock up, so you squeeze him hard, drawing out the anguished sound he makes as you catch him with your other hand cupped over the tip of his dick, still reeling from the words you managed to pick out when he probably wasn’t expecting you to hear him at all. His cum is hot and wet in your hand, and you can’t stop some of it from dripping through your fingers, although you end up more fascinated by the novelty of touching someone else’s cum than you are concerned about the mess. Dave soon lifts his head just in time to see you experimentally lick the tip of one finger, and the face he pulls makes you give a breathy laugh. He quickly leans over and grabs his device from where it fell, struggling to catch his breath with his pants still around his knees as he types out a message.
TG: dude come on thats disgusting
TT: I didn’t see you complaining a minute ago.
TT: Although that could be because you confiscated my shades.
TT: Which by all rights I should be really fucking pissed off about right now, seriously. I want to know what the hell was going through your head when you decided that was a good idea.
TT: I thought we were going to talk about this.
He pauses, looking up at you, his hair a disheveled mess and his face still flushed red, and his words echo in your head again. You’re torn between telling him that you understood what he said or letting it go unacknowledged the way he seems to expect, and you decide to let it go when his shoulders droop a little as he types a reply.
TG: thats the thing though bro it doesnt work that way
TG: not with us
TG: honestly ive been trying to bring it up for days and nothing was fucking working
TG: maybe thats more my fault than anyone elses but i was getting kind of desperate
TG: so yeah i know taking your shades wasnt cool and i do feel bad about that
TG: seriously if you want to beat the shit out of me or something ill understand
TG: but i didnt know what else to do
You sigh, sitting up and wincing at the mess in your pants. Dave sinks back from you and pulls up his own pants, looking like he’s bracing himself for you to go off on him, but you can’t, because he’s right. You both have a tendency to use words as a barrier, and maybe forcefully removing those walls was the best thing to do. It’s something you could never have done on your own, you’re far too dependent on your words to have gone through with it, so maybe it’s good that he tears down your boundaries once in a while. You can’t really be angry at him for that, especially after what he said, even though it wasn’t really meant for you to hear.
He stands up and retrieves a wrinkled towel from a pile of clothes while you’re thinking, kneeling next to you and holding it out like a peace offering. You accept it from him gladly and wipe the drying mess off of your hand.
TT: I said “should be,” Dave. I’m not all that pissed off.
TG: oh
TG: well
TG: the offer still stands i guess
TG: seriously though?
TG: ill understand if you are
TT: No. You’re right.
TT: I’m actually kind of grateful that you did it.
TG: uh
TG: okay
TG: i mean youre welcome?
You reach over and punch him on the shoulder, and he grins at you. That’s better, you think.
TT: Just don’t make a habit of it.
TT: Imagine what you’d feel like if I taped your mouth shut and then had my way with you.
TG: well hey you could have just given me that black eye like you were threatening to do
TG: you know that i cant actually read your messages when im not looking at the screen right?
Dave laughs when you give him the finger, and the two of you agree that next time you’ll preface any intimate activities with a brief conversation about said activity first, and that maybe the bed would be a better place for such things, after you asses the dull ache in your lower back. Things more or less go back to normal after that, and you both eventually change out of your clothes and make your way to the bed. But after about ten minutes in the dark, you feel his arms encircle your waist, and you turn around to face him. He pulls you close and presses the length of his body against yours, and you wrap your arms around him, burying your nose in his hair and inhaling the scent of him with a sigh, thinking about how it used to scare you when he’d shift around in the middle of the night, or make a sound in his sleep and cause you to wake up ready to fight off a regiment of drones, but at this point you’re not sure if you could sleep without him next to you anymore. He’s not the person you grew up thinking about and wishing for when you were lonely, but he’s yours, and apparently, he loves you. You think that alone makes him far more important to you than any dead movie star.