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Draw with me

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Your name is Dave Strider, and you’re farther in the closet than bros shitty swords. You’re so far in you’re finding Christmas presents.

No really this is a fucking big closet.

But at the moment you’re in a kitchen, which just so happens to be in an apartment you live in with your bro. And before anyone gets some mistaken idea about why you’re in a kitchen, no, it’s not because you’re hungry. Even if you were you wouldn’t go to this kitchen, you’d phone the pizza guy. This kitchen has a surprising lack of food of any kind; it in fact contains nothing but weapons and puppets.

At least with all of these smuppets you don’t get lonely. But a Strider doesn’t get lonely, not many make it to the top and you get used to solitude. Striders also don’t get sentimental, so you’re just going to stop thinking about it. Your bro’s probably hiding somewhere nearby, so you play it cool, like you’re just chilling. Which in a way, you are, but last time you were messing with your sylladex and you accidentally sent a sword flying through a window (it was an accident, everybody makes them, Jesus Christ, calm down, people) you swear you could hear your bro laughing. But you can’t be sure. You could put up a decent argument for pretty much everything a Strider is and isn’t, but you’ve really got nothing against “are all Striders paranoid?” Because to be completely honest you are paranoid. With your bro always showing up in the strangest places you’re always kind of tense, but you never show it through your poker face. You get the feeling your bro’s lonely sometimes, like he had more people in his life at one time and now all he has is you. You can’t help feeling a little hurt that you’re such a disappointment to him.

You run your hand through your hair, messing it up ever so slightly, and leave the kitchen. You really don’t have anything to do with yourself. None of your friends are online to screw with, you don’t have school. Never have, never will. And there’s nobody to talk to in reality except your bro. You could always go up to your room and mess around with your turntables in an affectionate yet professional manner but that seemed to require too much effort. You kind of just wanted to go die in a corner.

You make your way up the staircase to the roof. This is one of the only places you’ve ever seen your bro show any emotion. He’s always up here, looking at the sky. Once he took his shades off, and you were surprised by how sad he looked. How incredibly vulnerable he was without his shades to protect his emotions from the world. And his eyes were orange, which you found weird. You think about your relationship with bro. Shit, you don’t even know his actual name. You’re pretty sure the longest conversation you’ve ever had with him was when you asked him where the apple juice was and he responded “In your closet along with your sexuality.” Jesus this is probably the most times you’ve thought of closets for the past few years (and the last time needs no explanation). Closets aside you and your bro aren’t that close. You don’t know where you stand on that, whether you liked him staying out of your way or if you wanted him to be there for you. But you stop thinking about it because it makes you hurt on the inside. Hurt like… sadness. Except you’re not supposed to feel sad. It just doesn’t work that way. Life’s too short to care.

You’re so tired. You don’t even know how you got this tired by doing nothing for the majority of your life, but you can barely swagger without collapsing. You make your way to your room and sit down on the chair in front of your computer. It’s one of those swivel chairs, you love spinning around on them, pretending like you’re not having fun. The artificial light hurts your eyes even through your shades. You would go over and turn the lights off but that would require you to get up and there was no way in hell you were doing that.

You hear the whispering of laughter from somewhere in the hallway. Well that’s sort of a relief. If Lil’ Cal is out there laughing then at least it means bro isn’t in here. You can let your guard down for a minute, and you lean back in your chair thinking that you’ll only rest your eyes for a second…

When you open your eyes you aren’t in your room. It takes a minute for you to figure out what’s happening. You don’t feel as if you’re in any danger, in fact the clothes you’re wearing are really comfortable. And there’s a door and a window. Somehow you know you could just fly out that window or walk out that door anytime you felt like it. That’s something about dreams, how you know things without ever having to figure them out. You’re on Derse.

You lean out the window and look at the darkened streets below. Everything’s so… purple. It’s weird. You’ve never seen so much of one color in one place before. The room you woke up in seems made for you. There’s a purple bed, a few smuppets scattered around and lots of room to fuck around in. There’s a purple table beside your bed piled with random stuff. There’s a copy of Ranma ½ (you’ve actually never read that series…) some more smuppets, a dream type Lil’ Cal and a copy of Golden & Grey, a book you doubt the majority of the world has read. But you actually enjoyed that book, back when you actually read stuff.

You swing your legs out the window and sit on the edge for a while. You’ve had this feeling before. You don’t want to jump, even though you know you won’t fall. You’re not afraid of hitting the ground, but you still can’t just throw yourself out the window. There’s no wind, and nothing to knock you off the window, so you might as well have just sat there forever. But you hear people in the streets below, laughing, crying, shouting to each other, and you really don’t want someone to notice you were up there, sulking. So you gently edged off the window ledge. You only fell a few inches before you started floating. You couldn’t bring yourself to go down to the streets below, and you couldn’t go back into the tower. It’s not that it wasn’t possible, it just didn’t seem right to you. Something was pushing you to just keep moving forwards. You almost laughed at that. It sounded so motivational.

The building and towers passed beneath your feet, and you began to think about what would happen if your dream self stopped flying. It would be a long fall, unless you landed on a roof. You wondered what you would think, before you hit the ground. Who would you wish was there with you? Who would you want to apologize to and who would you want to have apologized to you? You found that ever since the game was brought up you thought of the worst case scenario and you always thought of what you would say to you friends.

Jade, you are the most optimistic person I’ve ever met or talked to. I wish I could have known you longer, or just known more about you in general. You could imagine yourself smiling now. And have I ever told you I really like the color green?

You’d been floating for a while, and the landscape changed. The towers were taller and the points of a few almost scraped your feet.

Rose, I know I’ve done a lot of stupid things and I’ve probably offended you countless times, but I never really meant it. I know this is a cliché time for apologies, but I want to say I’m sorry for being such a douche. You’ve always kind of felt like a sister to me, and I’ve always kind of felt obligated to keep up this sibling rivalry. But after a while it… kind of turned into something else. And I just want to say I wish I could have stuck around for longer to see it through.

The towers had grown so tall that you were dodging between them; Dersites were staring at you, dropping whatever they were doing, whether it was filing papers or eating a sandwich. You heard a few cry out or exclaim something like “What the devil?” but you just concentrated on not hitting the windows. But now you needed to think about John, which was something you always found hard. He was your kind-of-bro who ticked you off a lot, with his constant quoting of movies and misunderstanding irony. You always found it hardest to think about how you would say good-bye to him. You don’t even know if you’ve ever actually done it before. You figured you might do that one later.

The towers were now growing smaller, the gaping Dersites less frequent and the black sky… well, blacker. It was obvious you’d been floating for a long time. But you had an entire planet between you and your tower where you could rest. And anyways, you didn’t need to rest. This was refreshing. It seemed like this was what you’d needed all this time. Not making sicknasty beats, not strifing with your bro, not making poorly placed Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff references. You needed to go to an entirely different planet to relax. But you were here now, and it was great.

The cold air caught in your throat and stung your eyes, but it was a sweet break from the normal Texan weather. “Sweet cold front, come back.” There had been a few days of cold weather last week, but it had gone. You wished it had stuck around for a bit longer. A few months would have been nice...

Your shades were getting really cold, and, as a result, so were your temples and the bridge of your nose. The wind was picking up and was somehow managing to sting your eyes despite your shades. Though only your face and hands were cold, the pajamas you were wearing were really warm.

Your thoughts begin to wander, from how cold your face is to how relaxed you are to why you don’t have your own brand of breakfast cereal. Come on, people. “Dave crunch” would be such a kickass cereal. But you bet it wouldn’t sell as much as “KARKAT KRUNCH” would. You permit yourself a smile. You’ll have to ask him about that later.

Now you’ve been floating for at least an hour, you wonder just how big Derse could possibly be. There’s a bright light shining somewhere in the distance. You wonder what it could be. Someone’s house? The sun rising? But you doubted the sun ever rose over Derse. The light was getting a lot closer and you could make out some towers in the distance… wait, is that..? No, it couldn’t be…

It was Prospit. All the shining glory and golden towers of Prospit linked to the darkness of Derse. It was like one huge representation of Yin and Yang, except with planets.

You can see yourself on the other side. Not metaphorically, there’s literally a clone of you floating towards you. But they’re still wearing Derse pajamas. That’s weird… You reach your arm out towards them, and they mirror your movement. It’s almost as if it’s just a reflection…

And then your palm touches cool glass and you realize it really is just a reflection. You are currently right in front of an extremely large-ass wall of glass. Your feel what you guess is disappointment. You really wanted to see Prospit. But you guess being this close to it is the next best thing.

Chapter Text

Your name is John Egbert and you are dead bored. Honestly, if it was possible to die of boredom you would have been done with about an hour ago. You actually liked school last year, despite what everyone thought.

But this year you got an awful teacher for homeroom and you’re about ready to murder her.

But you don’t think that would go by well with the board of education.

The best thing you’d done all year was watch and take notes on “Slumdog Millionaire”. Your entire class is keeping their finger crossed that she’ll let you watch Bad Teacher at some point, but it’s more likely she’ll actually develop skills at teaching.

Which is basically nil-nil.

You sigh and run your hand through your hair. All you ever do is oral presentations, math and anything that doesn’t involve teaching. And you have homeroom all afternoon.

Hooray.

She’s such a young teacher, and she’s been teaching high school for a while. But currently she’s sitting at her desk, texting, while everyone is supposed to be doing some math. Well there is no fucking way you’re going to do math right now. You didn’t think it was possible for you to get any more BORED.

She probably wouldn’t even care if you fell asleep. Ok, maybe she would care, but only if she noticed. You lay your head down on your desk, the edge of your glasses digging into your face. The droning of people in the class buzzes around you, and you close your eyes, doubting you’ll actually sleep…

When you wake up it’s a lot brighter than it was when you’d fallen asleep. You’re also in a bed, which is weird considering the fact you were just at school…

Oh, right you idiot. Obviously you’re on Prospit.

Jade had told you so much about Prospit, even this morning she was talking to you about it before you left for school. She told you again about the great golden towers, the clouds and how today was an eclipse, and no one had ever gone out during an eclipse before. You’d asked her what happened during an eclipse, but she said she didn’t know; it was just the way things were done. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so you stopped asking.

But you didn’t have enough time to ‘go with the flow’ right now. You could wake up any minute and Prospit was AWESOME. You looked around the room you were in, absent-mindedly stroking the covers on the bed.

The walls were covered in drawings. They were really colorful, and badly drawn, so you couldn’t really tell what they were. But whatever. There was a little golden table beside you, and it was piled with stuff. There was a lamp with one of those little tassel rope thingies to turn it on and off. (You loved those tassel rope thingies they were so sophisticated) Beside that there were some brightly colored crayons (kind of smallish from scribbling all over the walls) and a copy of Sherlock Holmes.

You pocketed the crayons, smiling and wondering if you should write a giant “JOHN WUZ HERE” on the outside of your tower. But that seemed kind of petty.

You gazed out the window and squinted at how bright everything was. The towers, buildings, streets, everything was made of gold. The brilliant sunlight was bouncing off everything, multiplying how friggin awesome it was by about 1000%. There were people in the streets far below. Humanoid little figures, so white that they looked like little pearls with colorful hats from your point of view. They seemed to be going about their business, entering and exiting houses, shopping, bartering, haggling with and ignoring the many street stalls lined up and down the lanes. It was so weird, thinking of having two entirely different planets and waking up on one when you fall asleep.

Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

You leapt out the window and bit your lip to stop yourself from laughing aloud. You wouldn’t want to disturb the civilization below. You flew back and forth, feeling so stupid, but having so much damn fun. Eventually you calm down a little bit, but it’s not everyday you get to ease your boredom by flying.

You are so spoiled.

You dodge between golden towers, staring into the massive maze of streets below you. Not everything is made of gold. You see a winding stone staircase; the kind you imagine belongs to a crumbling castle, except this one leads to nowhere. There are tables scattered across a hilltop, set with white table cloths and ceramic jugs full of lemonade. People are milling about, sunhats and summer scarves being blown away in the warm summer breeze.

You soar around a bit more, going nowhere in particular, when you notice people running inside, pushing at each other to get out of the light. You hover for a minute. Gee, whatever happens during an eclipse must be pretty bad to make everyone so worried. But you can’t bring yourself to be concerned. Prospit is too nice to be dangerous.

With no one left to see you, you fly more freely, laughing and whooping as much as you wanted. You wonder if Derse is as nice as this. Probably, you’re pretty sure all dream worlds are awesome. Though you just kind of make stuff up a lot of the time to stop the questions. It’s a bad habit that you have, along with notoriously ripping off movie quotes and watching murder mystery series. But you’re not really aware of any of your habits; you just do whatever suits you at the moment.

Currently you really wanted to land on the ground and do something really cool, like start swashbuckling some random enemy. But there were a couple problems with that plan.

You didn’t know how to “swashbuckle” or anything of the sort. You think some chicks in your class know how to fence, which honestly you find pretty damn cool, but you’ve never held a sword in your life.

And it’s not like there’s anything for you to fight anyways.

The eclipse slips out of your mind as nothing bad happens. You were expecting… explosions, you guess? It takes a lot to get Jade worried about something, and she was pretty worked up over going outside during an eclipse. But she wasn’t your mother or anything, so it wasn’t like you actually had to listen to her.

And how bad could it be, really? If there aren’t any explosions, it can hardly cause enough damage to worry about.

The sun is bright and warm, the clouds drifting lazily past you, when you see something on the horizon. A pulsing, sickly sort of darkness. You stop flying in such a care-free manner. Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be out during an eclipse. But you really can’t see what it is from this distance, and you just can’t resist having a closer look, so you fly straight towards it.

The golden towers seem to stop shining and the darkness on the horizon sucked away all the light and life from the planet. You shivered, even though it was still warm on Prospit.

The blackness was speckled with purple, and you squinted through your glasses to make sure you were really seeing what you thought you were.

Derse, it really was Derse. The pulsing, horrible blackness of Derse.

So this was what happened during an eclipse. The two planets collided, allowing anyone and anything to get through. So then why wasn’t Prospit littered with Dersites and vice versa?

And then you saw a boy in Derse pajamas leaning against something. He seemed to just be up against air, but there must have been something else there.

“Hey!” You call out, but he doesn’t seem to hear.

As you draw closer you can see his whitish blonde hair and his relaxed, cool kid posture.

“Hey! Yo, can you hear me?” You shout. What the hell, you’re only a few feet away; he must be able to hear you… Oh my god, is that Dave?

“DAVE!” You land on the ground and take of in a run. It can’t be Dave; you’re just getting your hopes up. But oh man that would be SO COOL if it was, meeting Dave in real life? AWESOME! You can’t wait to see what he looks like in his shades…

You reach out to touch his shoulder, but you palm touches cool glass a few inches from him. It’s a wall of glass. What the hell is this doing here? “DAVE! IT’S ME, JOHN!”

Obviously he can’t hear you. Ok, so if the wall of glass is sound-proof…

You rap your knuckles against the glass, and the boy (who is indeed Dave) turns around, surprise temporarily penetrating his pokerface.

Chapter Text

Your name is Dave Strider, and you just had a miniature heart attack. The last thing you expected was for someone, (john, of all people!) to come sneaking up behind you. And they could have had the decency to actually announce they were there, unless this was John’s idea of a petty prank.

“That wasn’t funny, dude.” You stand up and face him, but he doesn’t seem to have even realized you’d spoken. “Not cool, John!”

He shrugs and cups his hand around his ear, so you shout even louder. “THAT WASN’T FUCKING FUNNY, JOHN!”

He ignores you, rustling around in his pockets for something. He pulls out a few stubs of colorful crayons, and starts writing on the glass.

I CAN’T HEAR YOU, DAVE

You look at what he’s written, and then look on the ground for something you can write with yourself. You pick up a chunk of purple rock, and drag it across the glass. It makes a horrible screeching sound, but John doesn’t notice, and you almost laugh at the huge purple streak it leaves. HOWD YOU GET HERE? LIKE ON PROSPIT WERENT YOU AT SCHOOL?

I FELL ASLEEP IN MATH CLASS You can see he’s laughing. You really don’t know what to say. When you think about the slight chance of meeting John it’s not exactly on opposite sides of a huge glass wall.

SO WHATS SHAKIN JOHN?

He paused for a moment, probably thinking about what to say. HOW SHOULD I KNOW? He finally wrote. IM NOT A SHAKEOLOGIST.

You nodded at him and he practically gushed with pleasure at the approval. FAIR ENOUGH You wrote.

You two sat in what could have been called “companionable silence”. Or at least as “companionable” you can get on opposite sides of a wall of glass. This wall is bullshit, who has the time on their hands to just build a friggin wall of glass? It’s stupid. JOHN I CANT BELIEVE YOU FELL ASLEEP IN SCHOOL I THOUGHT YOU WERENT SO BADASS

IT’S HARD NOT TO AT POINTS IF WE’RE BEING HONEST HERE He shrugged. AND DAVE I’M NOT REALLY BADASS SORRY TO DISAPPOINT BUT MY TEACHERS A BITCH AND IM SURE HALF THE CLASS IS ASLEEP RIGHT NOW Johns face splits into a grin.

SURE WHATEVER YOU SAY EGBERT He obviously doesn’t interpret it as an insult, which kind of relieves you, even though you meant it as one. You shiver, and he gives you a quizzical look. Oh well damn, of course it’s warm in Prospit. Because Derse literally gets the worst of everything. Even the weather.

Well at least it’s not raining.

He starts writing a long message, but crosses it out and draws a picture of himself. It’s really nerdy, with stupidly square glasses and teeth, but it’s probably better than you can draw of yourself. DRAW WITH ME DAVE He writes on the glass.

I CANT His face falls and he slouches a bit. You hate to see him like that, or at least you’ve only seen him for about 10 minutes and the entire time he’s been grinning, so it’s kind of a depressing change.

CANT WHAT? DRAW? OF COURSE YOU CAN DAVE How touching, he’s trying to convince you. Motivate you, in fact. But you don’t want to draw with him. It seems stupid and childish. You have a reputation to keep, and you can’t have him thinking he can get you to do something you don’t want to do.

JOHN IM NOT GOING TO DRAW A PICTURE OF MYSELF ON THIS

WHY NOT? I DID He’s biting his lip, which just makes his teeth look stupider. But you don’t point it out. He probably gets enough of that shit from other people. You don’t know how to explain to him that if anyone ever finds this drawing your reputation could be ruined, you could go from cool and untouchable to that kid who hangs out with nerds and draws on glass walls.

You’d be in a whole new nerd class of your own. IT WOULD BE A FORM OF INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE But he just gives you a blank stare. I JUST CANT OK? This is making you uncomfortable, you’ve never out right refused someone before, or had to deal with this much disappointment. You’d be a shitty babysitter; you’re really not a people person. But one thing you are good at is changing the topic, so you do that. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING ANYWAYS? THE WHOLE PROSPIT DERSE SHIT You almost flinch at how incredibly un-subtle that was. It was disgraceful, when changing the topic it should be a smooth way to get out of an uncomfortable situation, but you don’t really have a lot of time to think about the step-by-step way to change the topic of conversation, John’s already writing a reply.

I THINK ITS THE ECLIPSE OR SOMETHING. JADE SAID THERE WAS AN ECLIPSE TODAY AND IM PRETTY SURE THIS ISNT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME He gestures first at Derse and then at everything around him. You nod. That picture of John is still smiling at you next to the real John. It’s weighing down on your conscience, his smiley little face staring blankly over your left shoulder. And you don’t look away fast enough; he can tell you’re looking at the picture. How he can do that even though you’re wearing shades is one of the great mysteries of life.

He draws another picture; this time of what you guess is supposed to be Rose, looking all prim and proper with her laptop and dead cat next to her. You write FLIGHTY BROAD with an arrow pointing to Rose and SNARKY BULLSHIT pointing to her stuff. John laughs; his mouth silently moving. He smiles eagerly at you, silently urging you to draw something. Well you hate to disappoint, so you lean in closer to the glass and draw a quick picture of Sweet Bro. His grin gets even bigger (which you hadn’t thought was possible) as he draws some stairs underneath your picture. You draw some sicknasty guy grinding down the stairs, surpassing a Hella Jeff John had just doodled, a shocked expression immortalized on his face. This goes on for a little while, and you two stand up, sit back down and move sideways a few feet to get more space to draw. By the time you’re done, you’ve drawn some more little Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff scenes, a few more pictures of John and you even sketched a quick picture of yourself, shades, pokerfaced and all. Your rock is now no more than a pebble, so you throw it aside and begin hacking at a nearby crumbling statue with your sword until you break off a new one. John’s crayons are still holding up, though he’d already worked his way through an orange a green and a pink one.

The wind is picking up again and you rub your face with your hands, trying to get it warmer. You drag the rock against the glass. ITS SO COLD HERE It comes out as more of a plea than you wanted it to be. You don’t want his pity, though. You want his blunt admiration. Not to be cocky but you love praise, and you bet that if given the chance John could shower you with compliments. But you flinch back at the thought. You’ve never thought of yourself to be shallow enough to use a friend like that just for compliments.

REALLY? ITS SO WARM OVER HERE He gestures to the golden towers and green grass all around him. You touch the glass longingly. Prospit looks so nice. Everything you want is on the other side of this stupid glass wall.

I WANT TO BE WITH YOU JOHN You look at him, and seeing the expression on your face you quickly scrawl NOT LIKE THAT. I MEANT LITERALLY PHYSICALLY WITH YOU He nods and pulls out a blue crayon, quickly writing on the glass.

YOU ARE WITH ME

ONLY THERES A GLASS BETWEEN US

He gingerly places his fist against the glass, writing BUNP? next to his hand.

You reach out and place your fist against the glass, only an inch or two away from his, and you sit there for a second, fists nearly fistbumping, but still so far apart. That’s it, you’ve had enough. No glass is going to stand in the way of a Strider getting what he wants.You stand up, and John stands too, looking confused, but pulling out a crayon, probably thinking you’re going to draw some more. But you shake your head at him, and swing your fist at the glass, your knuckles throbbing from the impact.

But that doesn’t stop you.

And then there’s nothing else that matters, nothing but your ragged breathing, the glass wall and your fists swinging towards it. You see John press his hands against the wall, shaking his head and mouthing “no” over and over. But maybe he was actually saying it, you couldn’t tell, and that just made you hit the wall harder. A thin crack issues from where you’re punching, and you stop long enough to wave for John to get out of your way. He stands aside, chewing his lower lip, looking nervous and afraid.

The crack gets bigger and bigger, spreading out like a fine spider web. Your knuckles are bleeding and bruised but you hardly notice as the cracks spread out more and more, forking in different directions and making a satisfying splintering. Finally you break through, your fist sailing through the glass, shards flying out around your arm.

And then John gasps and you’re blinded with pain as the shards of glass reverse direction and fly back into place forming a perfect wall again. Your arm is whipped backwards, thousands of cuts on your arm and hand, thousands of tears in your pajamas. Everything is stained with blood. The purple ground, the wall, your clothes, and you collapse onto the ground, cradling your arm and your breath coming out in sharp gasps. You look up for John, not sure what to do now. Whether to apologize or tell him you’ll be fine.

But John isn’t there anymore.

He's left you, and now you're truly all alone.

Chapter Text

Your name is John Egbert, and you really hope this wall isn’t that tall. As soon as Dave’s hand was injured, you kicked off (kicked off? You guess that’s the appropriate term) from the ground and flew upwards as fast as you could, desperately trying to find a way over the wall of glass. Currently you’re still flying, your hand trailing along the cool glass, leaving the green grass of Prospit behind. Soon you’re up higher than the tallest towers of Derse, and about level with your golden tower you’d woken up in. Your hand is still touching the glass wall, so you keep going. You’re not really sure how to go faster or anything, so you just imagine yourself speeding up, hoping it will be like in the stories; will power will get you what you want.

Needless to say, it does jack shit.

In fact you’re pretty sure you slow down a little.

You wonder if leaving Dave was the best thing to do. Maybe you should be down there, telling him it’ll be alright? Maybe this wall just goes on forever. Technically anything is possible, you are in a dream. In fact, you’re so wrapped up with thinking about if the glass stretches up for ever that you overshoot the top by a few feet. You swear and begin your descent on the other side. The urgency makes everything slow down, though it could have only taken you a few minutes, your flight seemed to take an eternity.

You slow your speed as you get closer to the ground. You can’t see Dave. Where the hell is he? As you touch onto the ground, all the warmth and brightness of Prospit leaving you, you can hear someone half-singing, half-talking to themselves. You must have gotten disoriented while you were flying, you can see Dave now, clutching his arm to his chest a few feet away, his back turned to you.

“Head underwater,

and they tell me,

to breathe easy for a while.”

It’s Dave who’s singing. It’s weird; he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would sing. In fact he seems like the kind of person who would be all but disgusted by the thought of singing. Especially to himself.

“But breathing gets harder

even I know that”

He gasps (probably in pain) and stops singing. You don’t know what to do, or if Dave would be better off without knowing you’d heard him. But you’d recognized the song, and you couldn’t leave him alone with an injury like that. So you did the first thing you could think to do, and you started singing yourself.

“Made room for me;

it’s too soon to see

if I’m happy in your hands

I’m unusually hard to hold on to”

Dave whips his head around, startled. You’re kind of embarrassed to see he doesn’t have his shades on and he’d been crying. Without his shades he looked so vulnerable, it was kind of like he wasn’t wearing clothes. Except a lot less sexual.

“Blank stares at blank pages

no easy way to say this”

You trail of into an awkward silence as you realize Dave isn’t going to sing. He stares at you for a few more minutes, confused, and then probably realizes he’s expected to do something, letting out a soft “oh” Dave starts to sing again.

“You mean well, but you make this hard on me”

You join in for the chorus, sitting down next to Dave and getting gradually louder.

“I’m not gonna write you a love song

‘Cause you asked for one

‘Cause you need one,

You see,

I’m not gonna write you a love song

‘Cause you tell me it’s

Make or breaking this

If you’re on your way

I’m not gonna write you

To stay

If all you have is leavin’

I’ma need a better reason

To write you

A love song

Today”

You both lapse into silence, sitting so close your knees are touching. Dave shuffles closer to you until you’re practically sitting in each others laps. “You’re so warm.” He mumbles. All of this should seem so weird and embarrassing. You don’t sing, you don’t expect Dave to sing, and yet you both just sung a song that can be described as nothing other than a motivational chick song. And now Dave was basically cuddling with you.

You feel the desperate need to get back on topic. “Is your arm-”

“ ‘S fine” His face was nestled into your shoulder. You let out a nervous laugh.

“Ha, is it hot or is it just me?”

“Just you.” He returned the laugh. You could feel a blush creeping up your neck, but you couldn’t move away. Dave’s limp, bloody arm was staining your pajamas, although you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You wished you could be the kind of person to be swept up in the moment.

“Why the hell are you so warm, Egbert?” His breathing is getting more even. You don’t know what you would do if he fell asleep on your shoulder. “Stop it, John.”

“Jesus Christ, Dave. I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re all tense ‘n shit. Stop it.” You hadn’t even realized you were tensed up, so you relaxed, greeted with a soft grunt from Dave. You tried to stop freaking out. It wasn’t working. Were you even just nervous about being this close to Dave? Or were you just being all ‘no homo’? You tried to relax again. You were only 13. You couldn’t know if you were straight. In fact you’d heard something about it not being possible for a girl to be “straight”. That all females were either lesbian or bi.

And then you had to remind yourself you weren’t a girl, and that was why you were so uncomfortable with this.

“Egbert, you’re probably the most nerdy, stupid, awkward dork I’ve ever known or ever will know. You’ll never stop quoting movies, you’ll never stop getting on my nerves and pissing me off and you’ll never change.”

“Gee, Dave. Thanks.” Your tone was heavy with sarcasm.

“And John,” he lifted his head up from your shoulder, his red eyes meeting your blue ones, shades lost somewhere in the blood and rock. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” And then he kissed you. He leaned over, shutting his eyes and before you could react he kissed you, his mouth pressing against yours, sending warmth shooting through you, from your stomach to your knees. His hands were soft on your face, slipping around and cradling the back of your neck. You were glad you were sitting down. His tongue slipped over yours, you felt amazing, bold, devoured. Your hands moved to the back of his head, running your fingers through his hair. Every sense was sharpened, and you felt lighter, happier and more dangerous than you had in years. Probably in your entire life.

Finally you pulled apart, panting and feeling slightly insane. You leaned against the glass, and Dave sat right next to you, his good hand resting on your thigh.

Before you could stop yourself you shifted away, and you’d ruined the moment. Dave groped for his shades and slid them on again, covering his eyes and expression from the world.

“You should get back on Prospit.” He told you, reaching out and brushing your bangs away from your glasses. Of course, they just slipped back into place, but you didn’t even notice. All you felt was Dave’s hand on your face.

“You gonna be okay?”

He smiled at you, but only slightly. “I think I’ll be fine now.”

You turned to go, but you turned around and held out your fist. “One last bunp?” He nodded and gave you a fistbump, and then you flew up into the sky again. The air got gradually warmer as you travelled upwards and crossed over into Prospit, and by the time you landed again, Dave was gone. But there was a new message scrawled across the glass in colorful crayon. One you know you didn’t write.

THAT WAS MY APOLOGY

You laughed aloud. The bastard had picked your pocket.

But you didn’t mind.

In fact you’d loved it.