#fic:diamonds

[katreal-fic]

Day 3 — for #fictober 10/03/19

Prompt: “Now? Now you listen to me?”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: Cursing I suppose. 2nd Person POV

Characters: Dirk Strider & Davepetasprite

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x-x-x

Night has fallen by the time they leave, droppin’ you off on the roof of your rust-proof home like some love-sick damsel being returned to your tower, the dark sky just beginning to shine with a sea of distant diamonds. Only it’s ironic, see, because you both can fly, and you’re just two dudes on a get-to-know each other outing that went pretty damn fine, if you say so yourself. Which you don’t. Not aloud at least. You don’t say much of anything at all.

Dirk > Say Something. Anything.

You just stand there as they smile at you. Tell you it’s been a blast. That they’ll stop by after their Introduction-to-the-world tour. ARquius lived in Consort Kingdom, as you find out (you didn’t know. You thought he’d want to get as far away from you as he could but you guess you two like quiet and space and the sea and the Consort Kingdom has the smallest population) and they’ve got some massive trollmance of some kind to catch up on, so they’ll be around for a while. You’ll need to hang out again. Get pizza. You see a fist, you bump it on instinct, a static-like spark jolting through your skin as your knuckles brush theirs. You notice raised notches on their fingerless gloves. 

“Gotcha!” They laugh, and it’s so much freer than you ever could. Than Dave ever could. In that moment–and many others–they don’t sound like Dave at all. That arm ends up slung around your shoulder, pulling you into a clinging hug, the smell of energy humming and shifting and changing around you as their wings curl and flutter with their happy mood. 

“Keep that up and you’ll have my hair standing on end,” You free yourself with ease. Reluctant ease, because the crackle of energy lingers and sinks through your black tank and into your skin that’d probably be tickled pink with sunburn after today, if you weren’t immortal and all. “I put a lot of time and effort into looking this cool, you know?”

“Like it isn’t already defying gravity!” You’re only lucky you’re taller than they are, so you notice when they lift off the ground and lunge for your hair. Fully intent on messing that shit up. You dodge effortlessly, grabbing them by the back of the coat, and spinning with their momentum, letting them go when the trajectory is pointed away from the steel and concrete walls and out over the open ocean. 

You can’t help a smile, although the burst of adrenaline and rush of competition might have turned it into a satisfied smirk. “Nice try.”

They catch themselves in mid-air like you expected them to, hovering upside-down above the void, completely nonchalant, as if they wouldn’t be staring down at a thirty foot drop into dark–oil–water. “I’ll get mew yet bro! It’s a purromise! No hair is safe furom these paws!”

“Get back over here and try it. I dare you.”

You almost wish they would. 

What are you kidding, there’s no ‘almost’ about it.

They blow you a raspberry and right themselves, hovering closer, but not within grabbing distance, and orange and green flare in the night. They lounge in midair, chin in gloved hands, feet kicked up without a care in the world, the cream part of a creamsicle colored robe and jacket casually billowing in the ocean breeze. If they had a tail they’d be flicking it. You can imagine it. “Nah, I think I’ve learned my lesson. I can see when I’m not wanted. This little kitty isn’t looking to go for a swim tonight.”

“After dragging me around all day, now you decide to listen to me? Maybe I should have shoved you into the ocean hours ago.” Your throat is dry. You don’t mean that. But you don’t feel like you can say what you mean. Ice begins to harden around your heart, because you don’t like feeling like you need anyone. 

Today just made you realize you’re so fuckin’ lonely. You can still feel the sparks of their arms on your freckled shoulders.

“Like you could hold me long enough to even try,” They wag a clawed hand at you, taunting “Whelp, look at the time, I gotta scram. Don’t worry though, I’ll be back when you least expect it. I got a full on butt-wiggling pounce of friendship and complementary hair muss with your name written all over it.”

And just like that. They are gone.

Seeing them instead turn to fly away, that light fading. Bright orange and green quickening back to the strobe-light you’d first met them with, you can follow them for miles along the coast if you tried. Smaller and smaller, the further they get away from you. It’s a beacon–flying away on broken wings over an ocean of dark oil–and you don’t know whether you’re relieved they got out or disappointed that the kid couldn’t pull through and skewer the bastard.

But the world doesn’t fade into green fire. The sound of the waves and the empty wind closes around you. A vice grip. You breathe deep the smell of the salt air. No gulls tho. No feathers to find scattered across the roof. This place. This isolation. You’d purposefully retreated here, hiding in the one place that grounded you into your childhood and not–

But if you’re being honest, the silence might be making it worse. Trapping you in a malaise of lime-green poison and your own fuckin’ voice, too many voices, seeping in through the widening chasms of yourself, and yearning to fill the space with something else.

That something else is inevitable, you think. Maybe that’s why you keep yourself locked away. Grounded. Because you can’t destroy what you can’t touch.

The indicator light on your shades blinks in the corner of your eye, thankfully interrupting your train of thought. Pesterchum lights up, a friend request in orange and green.

DataJammer [DJ] wants to add you to their Chumroll. Accept?

You don’t even consider the other option.

Later that night you find a loose feather deliberately tangled in your hair, coming dislodged as you pull the comb through your careful ‘do. It lands on the porcelain sink, faintly shifting from green to orange as you watch. Dimly glowing even in the light from the overhead bulb.

Sonofabitch. They got you.

They got you good.

You feel strangely proud.

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[alittleillumination]

Chapter 18 is up!

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12365956/18/

[katreal-fic]

Day 2 — for #fictober 10/02/19

Prompt: “Just follow me, I know the area.”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: Cursing I suppose. 2nd Person POV

Characters: Dirk Strider & Davepetasprite

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x-x-x

It was pretty fun, until you got hopelessly lost.

“Just follow me, he said,” Davepeta quotes the you of an hour ago, hiding their fanged smile unapologetically behind their blue ice cream cone, “I know the area, he said. The best pizza ever, he said.”

Dirk > Nurse Your Pride

Your pride is not wounded, and thus does not need to be nursed. Entirely unruffled by the teasing. It does not bother you. You make sure indifference is the air you project as you respond with a mild, unimpressed glare—one they can’t see behind your shades—but you’re familiar enough with their expressive body language by now to realize they find even your glares funny. 

You don’t know how to feel about that. It’s actually quite the novel experience after the probably healthy levels of fear and distant awe your mere presence affords to anyone not connected to your particular pantheon of childhood friends. Who you probably don’t see enough as it is, living secluded out here in your workshop off the coast of the consort kingdom. Which is likely your fault, if you’re entirely honest. You should visit more. You can fuckin’ fly. What’s a couple latitude and several longitude lines to a god?

There’s always an excuse. When the lime-green poison and flashes of white begins to seep through the cracks in your heart you just shut yourself in and work. You’ll figure this shit out. And deal with it. You’ll have to.

You decide not to dwell on it any more than you already have, “Do you even need to eat? You already sweet-talked that salamander outta that ice-cream. You’ve probably already ruined your lunch with that shit.”

“Nah, dad, I’m cool.” They do it to see you twitch, you know they do, even as they take another lick of the sweet treat, “Just cuz I don’t need to eat doesn’t mean I can’t. No stomach, can’t get full. Being of pyurrre energy up in here bro.”

They pat their abdomen lightly to prove their point, the long, almost dress-like robe largely stays some cream color despite the constant gradient shifting, almost giving off an ethereal glow from within. A being of pure energy, huh? You wonder if that’s what they are doing with the food–residual game play processes immediately transmuting the energy into something compatible. You don’t know much about the sprites, for obvious reasons. You never were particularly close to any of the others.

Man, sprite physics has the potential to be fascinating as hell, if you cared to dissect it. It makes for a good thought exercise, mapping out what would happen to all thr excess energy.

“Let me guess, push it too far and you’ll just get hyper as fuck, huh?”

“Yup!” Another lick, a grin. They always seem to be grinning, but that might be just because the overlong canines always seem to peek out mischievously, “Roxy didn’t realize that until we were paws deep in a pumpkin eating contest. In all fairness, neither did I! I could probably devour an entire musclebeast all on my lonesome if I deemed it apurrrrropriate. I’d purrobably be clawing at the walls like Jasprose on catnip if I did tho. Not sure if the consequences are worth poking at it, ya’know?”

That…is something of a mental image. “Have you seen this particular occurrence?”

“Nah, but you remewmber how hopped up she was befur the big battle?”

Like you could ever forget.

“I’m sure you can imagine it then. It’s purrrrrretty hissterical.”

The elongated rs turn into a purring rumble, as expected. They really do go all in on the cat-thing, huh? Can’t be worse than ARquius’ obsession with muscles. And horses. Tho you do have to give him props for that one, Horses are fucking awesome.

Trolls just seem to have a Thing, you guess. Just like the Batterwitch had a Thing for subjugation. Cats and Horses and Muscles seem much more reasonable, framed in that light.

Once the purr runs its course, and you go back to scouring Booble Maps–which are kind of useless outside the Human and Troll kingdoms. The Consorts just Don’t Care and fuck if you know what’s up with the Carapacians–they decide to continue, “It’s just funny, with the way you talked this place up on the way over it sounds like you should have that shit on speed-dial or something. All Prince of Heart’s Seal of Approval, endorsed and all that. Tourism would be booming.”

“I like it quiet. Tourism is the opposite of quiet. Especially when people are here god-watching,” At least Jake’s TV show is filmed an hour’s flight away so you don’t have to deal with his groupies, even if some make the pilgrimage to try and catch a glimpse of you.

You grumble, trying to remember the name of the place. You do have it on speed dial, but it was listed as tmnt instead of using the proper name. Past you had been so proud of the reference. When was the last time you actually went instead of just got delivery sent to your beach-side drone deliverybot? When Dave dragged you out last?

…when the fuck was that?

You shouldn’t get lost. You live here.

Or, well, maybe you don’t. You’re standing here in the shadow of an unidentified Jungle Tree, in some unnamed suburb of the city of Hearthstone. A city that popped up near your abandoned workshop during the big ol’ Time Skip. A dot on the map and a place to deliver your shit. Nothing more.

You surreptitiously check the calendar using your thought controlled computer-shades, realize it’s still set to your personal pre-sburb calendar, marked with all the historical dates from a Time Before Yours and indexed with clips of your Bro and you really aren’t in the mood for childhood nostalgia whiplash, thanks—so you abandon that shit and go back to booble to see if you can find the current date on there.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, it’s been two years since Dave visited, although you’ve talked to him since then. You’re nearly twenty.

“Hey bro,” Davepeta, predictably, interrupts your existential crisis in regards to your detachment from the society and narrative in which you live, an unintentional action you mentally thank them for since you are so not in the mood to deal with that either, “That pizza place, was it called Half Shell Piez?”

That rings a bell. You nod, probably a little too forcefully as you mentally close the booble search window and start paying attention to the world around you, “I think so. It’s run by an older couple of turtles, if I remember. How did you know?”

“While you were brooding I asked around. Turns out people remember when two of their gods descend from on high to patronage their pizza joint. C’mon! World’s best hunter is on the case! We’ll stalk them wild piez and feast until we can feast no longer!”

You’re learning not to resist as they drag you away. Maybe they’re right. You really should be getting out more. You don’t even know your own fucking town.

The pizza is just as good as you remember it though. Better even, since you get it hot and steamy and fresh plopped right in the middle of the table in front of you, instead of luke-warm in an insulated delivery bag, sitting out on the table for you to grab as you work. Alone. Here, you find yourself surprisingly good company. You don’t even notice when the ridiculous chatter ends and conversations…shift. They did want to get to know you, after all.

You don’t think your shit is all that interesting personally, especially if you avoid the game shit because no one really liked talking about game shit since you all won, but they listen with rapt attention as you describe growing up in a world alone and feral, learning from and looking up to a Bro long since dead. They turn around afterwards and describe a wriggler, feral and alone, who grew up in the middle of a jungle and learned to hunt from a great purr beast, on an Alternia you’d never cared to learn about before.

You don’t comment when the last slice is gone and the pizza is taken away. You just…keep talking. Exchanging stories in that semi-private booth in a hole in the wall restaurant run by business-savvy turtles, long past an appropriate lunchtime, and well into dinner.

Time becomes a thing to dread, because you know they’ll be leaving tomorrow.

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[katreal-fic]

Day 4 — for #fictober 10/04/19

Prompt: “I know you didn’t ask for this.”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: Cursing, 2nd Person POV, Thoughts of Self Harm, fatalism, Descriptions of Temporary Death, Internalized Self Hatred

This is not a happy one. Sorry.

Characters: Dirk Strider & Dirk Strider (spoiler he doesn’t like himself much)

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x-x-x

You feel like you’re losin’ your mind.

Dirk > Pass the Time

The days drag by, a whirl of frantic activity where nothing absolutely happens. You throw yourself into work, but none of that work is actually worth shit. It’s all literal garbage. You’re lost in a haze that paints the walls a brilliantly familiar shade of green even if in your head you know it’s mostly neutral tones, metal and concrete. Your eyes slide off the product you’re supposed to be improving for Crockercorp as a favor, searching for--you don’t know. You feel like you should just be able to look and see and understand what it is you should be doing. What you should be working towards.

You know what you should be working towards. The what-ever-the-fuck contraption that rests dismantled on your work-bench. A favor for Jane. There’s a bug. A bug her engineers can’t squash. And even if you’ve turned into the world’s highest profile shut-in over these last couple years you still want-need to help your friends. To be useful, because that shit gives you purpose. Or it should. You just aren’t feelin’ it right now. Scraps of metal and half-gutted projects litter the surfaces of your workshop, but fuck it none of this matters. 

Right now you see nothing because it’s laughable. This is what you’ve resorted to spending your time on? Tinkering with toys? Any purpose you could grab at doesn’t matter. Irrelevent.  The one thing you were created for; it’s finished. Done. 

You aren’t even upset about it. It’s a fact, not a question. After preparing all your lives for something, only to have that final climactic moment pass, letting you and everything you love slide into irrelevance... 

What is left for you now?

Fuck, you want to take your wrench to your own skull and dig those slimey invasive questions out. The only reason you don’t is because you know such a death would be neither just, nor heroic (even if you think ridding the world of your horseshit might be a heroic cause of its own sometimes) so you’d just revive fit as a fiddle and bloody as hell, and you can’t be bothered to clean that shit up, especially when that blood and gore has a chance to splatter into the innermost workings of delicate electronics and fuck everything up. Even if your mood decided to take a swing for the depressive, and maybe nothing matters right now, the logical part of your brain that feels unnervingly like reading your autoresponder’s red text is calling you an idiot for letting chemical responses rule your organic flesh-lump of a brain. You’d think, as a god, having transcended biology considering you can’t fuckin’ die, you wouldn’t have to deal with this shit anymore.

It’ll pass. It always does. You throw the wrench onto the table when you find yourself looking at it for too long and make like a tree. Obviously you are not in the headspace to work today. 

You fold yourself into the crawlspace above the living room instead, your heart contracting painfully in your chest, as you look around the comparatively empty space even after all these years of living here. Your shit. All the shit bro’d left you. Shit that’d survived 400 years of sea-air and 6 months of game-time and the literal birth of the universe. Lost on the other side of that gate. You hadn’t even thought to go back for it. Hadn’t even occurred to you that you’d miss it. 

All you had was your shades, and whatever data you’d had uploaded onto them locally. Roxy might be able to hack into what remained of sburb’s network. Maybe. If you asked. Maybe she could retrieve your data, if nothing else. All the interviews, and notes. Personal shit. Things neither you, nor AR had considered important to back-up in his active New-World-Order archive.

Personal shit hadn’t been important when your destiny was to create a new world. 

You thought you’d want to move away from the past. To start anew. Yet as echos of lives you-yet-not-you never lived bear down at you, you find yourself grasping at straws to keep the core of yourself intact.

You yearn for a needle. Thread. Soft fabric under your fingers. In another life, the one activity that had allowed you to zen the fuck out and block out the fitful sound of a baby crying because it was too hot out and there was shit all you could do about it. In another life, it’d calmed you, muting the distant chatter of FASTER BETTER STRONGER ALWAYS STRONGER and the constant chorus of laughter.

Maybe you should try it. Stitch the fuck out of your heart. Close up the widening rips and tears allowing your own thoughts to seep through. 

You never asked for this.

You know you didn’t ask for this.

Your whole shtick was digging deep into yourself and cutting away the bits you don’t like, only to find it didn’t fucking matter because all of you is garbage and you can never change.

You’d just wanted the time to be better.

Maybe you’d wasted that in trying not to get worse.

You want to talk to Roxy. 

You want to talk to Jane.

You even want to talk to Jake.

Most of all, you want to talk to Dave.

But how can you talk to Dave like this?

You’d taken one look at Davepeta and never could completely step out of the shadow of oil and raging green flames. It loomed in the back of your mind, waiting for the silence to allow the growl of dogs to creep forward again. The shadow of death hovering over you. And honestly? That wasn’t so bad. You don’t mind death. Dyin’ in battle ain’t so bad even if you wish you’d been able to be the one to skewer the bastard. Your last memory was of the kid flying away. Injured, but safe. Off to fulfill his destiny. You much prefer being anchored there  than in hot summer days and bruises and babies crying because you’re too wrapped up in your own horseshit to care. Callous. Cold. A decade and change of neglect you know screwed Dave up. He told you. A hug. On a roof. Under a krypton green sky looking over a ruined city waiting for the world to burn. At least that memory is yours.

...isn’t it?

You’re lost. One day you worry you won’t crawl your way back out. Or if you do, it won’t be you any longer.

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[katreal-fic]

Day 1 — for #fictober 10/01/19

Prompt: “it will be fun, trust me.”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: None? Cursing I suppose. And 2nd Person POV

Characters: Dirk Strider & Davepetasprite

Spoilers for the end of the Comic

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x-x-x

“Well, well, looks like ARq was right. You ARE sulking.”

Dirk > Keep Your Cool

Even the slightest of flinch would have had you banging your head against the metal casing above you, but you don’t flinch. You freeze instead. Freeze, your brain rushing through a million thoughts during a calming count of five—who was that, how did they get in, this is your space—and then let it go. Place your palms against the floor and push yourself out from under the half-gutted chassis of your current project. The wheels of the jury-rigged creeper almost grating as they squeal in your ears. You need to oil them soon.

The source of the uninvited presence is obvious as soon as you clear the edge, floating crosslegged in the middle of your private workshop. You decide to push sprite-proofing your workshop up on your priorities list. ARquiusprite is the only one you’d thought would even bother, and you both have been mutually agreeable when it comes to forgetting the other even existed now that he’s not beholden to you in any way.

Clearly you were mistaken.

The flashing light is giving you a migraine. You stifle the urge to massage your temples, reaching for the shades you’d left near your toolkit instead, “You need to come with an epilepsy warning, bro.”

“It’s parrrrt of the charm,” You do notice that the light dims, however, even through the dark lenses, and the constant strobe light effect eases to a more subtly changing gradient. You could actually fucking look at them now without your brain trying to melt its way out of your ears.

You don’t. You work on cleaning up your tools instead.

“You missed a purretty cool shindig. It isn’t everyday someone survives getting tossed into a reality shattering black hole, only to get mission impawssible’d out the other side right as rain. Dave even dragged John along. The dude needs more dragging if you ask me; got himself trapped into a cupboard of depressed af and needs a helping hand to crack the drawer every now and then.”

You know the story. You’d heard it from Dave, in a glancing halting way, bonding over your mutual discomfort when it comes to your sprite alter-egos. Although at the time, Davesprite was thought dead. Not…

“I got caught up, sorry.” You can’t put it off. You look up. Taking in the green hair, shading towards orange where the color is beginning to change, opaque orange glasses hiding any expression other than a playful quirk of fangs. Wings are folded comfortably at the sprite’s side, although one is angled to allow the long flight feathers to be within range of absently preening claws. Dave was more expressive than he thought he was, you’ve noticed, and it all came down to his hands. That was something that seems to have not changed. You peer deeper, looking for Dave in the sprite before you, but find you only see the differences. The horns. The fanged grin. The wild hair. The wings. “I didn’t think I would be missed, all things considered. Shit starts getting heated when ARquius and I are in the same zipcode; vacillating in and out of quadrants, or so I’ve been told, and that’s a big ol’ do not want when you’re throwin’ someone a welcome back from the dead party. Thought I was doin’ my civic duty.”

When the news came, all the way from the Troll Kingdom, all you could think about were flashes. Another life. Of green fire and heat and barking dogs. One orange speck in the sky, limping away on a broken wing.

Bloodied fingers curl around a green and white disk, and then go limp.

“Your civic duty does not involve leaving us incomplete during an extended Strilonde family reunion, bro. Even Jasprose was there, and we got some love-uncomfortable af feefees hidden down that hopbeast hole. Look at me.” Oh, yeah you aren’t, are you. You’d let your eyes slide away, focusing on the blueprint you have hanging on your wall. You force them back, the sprite was closer. Too close. They’re hanging their arm over your shoulder, the humming energy present in all the game’s constructs feeling like it’s setting your hair standing on end. They are in your Bubble, and you don’t like it, but they’re Dave and yet they aren’t Dave and—the world is full of green fire and rivers of black oil—“I wanna know you, ‘kay? ARq’s waiting back at Jake’s, and we’re gonna take off for a whirlwind tour of the world tomorrow so—today I’d just like to spend some time and get to know my sideways Bro, okay?”

You have options. But there’s only one, in good conscience, that you could take. And you’re trying to not squash what slivers of decency you have left. Nurturing them like banked embers.

Those slivers are the only ones keeping those flashes, flashes, stopping them from creeping through the cracks.

“Okay. Just don’t expect much. The consort kingdom doesn’t exactly cater to the most…sophisticated clientele.”

“We’ll find something! Searching can be half the adventure. It’ll be fun, trust mew!”

They aren’t Dave. You aren’t their Bro.

You’ll just have to live with that.

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[katreal-fic]

Day 6 — for #fictober 10/07/19

Prompt: “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: Cursing, 2nd Person POV, Earth C world building

Part of a series. Please start from the beginning!

Characters: Dirk Strider & Roxy Lalonde

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It’s almost a twelve hour flight from Hearthstone to New City. The consort Kingdom was smack-dab in the middle of the largest ocean on the planet, the proverbial Australia-sized New Zealand of this new world if you remembered your Old World geography right, so nearly every single landmass was at least 10 hours away by plane. You fly faster than a plane, of course, but even once you hit land you have to cross a whole ’nother continent to reach Roxy’s lil developed patch of coast.

Not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump, but the remote location was half the reason you settled out here.

The other half was Jake English, but that was a handful of awkward slimy wriggling worms you’d much rather just casually toss overboard to turn into home-made chum. The fish would probably appreciate it.

Dirk > Jump Off the Shark

The original plan was to head out at four in the morning and be there by 7pm to crash whatever dinner plans Rox had going. But by the time you cleaned up your workshop--you have to keep things tidy. After all, you never know when you’ll have guests dropping in--and sent out your emails about any projects that were expecting activity in the next few days, you found yourself sitting on the edge of your roof, leg bouncing with nervous energy, looking off into the distance towards the dusk end of the sunset cascading over the--mostly--dark coastline.

You won’t be able to sleep tonight. You already know that. You hardly sleep as it is, except when you feel the weight of years you’ve never lived dragging down on you, long days and longer nights and crying babies and howling laughter winding their way into your dreams to the point where you find yourself taking random catnaps at uncertain intervals because it’s a moment of goddamn silence.

It isn’t one of those days right now though, thankfully, but on the flipside, it means you’re in for a stupidly long night.

If you bother to wait. There’s nothing saying you have to. All you told Roxy was you’d be there tomorrow.

You could leave now.

A sick set of orange and black headphones hang around your neck as you lock up behind you, killing the lights except for the courtesy red ones around the outer edges of the complex and the antennae. Your workshop isn’t on any publicly used maps, at least not the way Jake’s estate was, but most shipping lanes at least know to avoid this particular section of the coast.

You really hate that Hearthstone popped up so close to the structure. The consorts don’t bother, but sometimes troll merchants just had to shirk the commonly used ones. As if they weren’t designed to be the most efficient ones. Idiots. Always needing to go around the system. Believing they knew better than those who designed them.

Whatever. You slide your headphones over your ears, letting the laws of physics slide off you like they don’t even exist, your godly accouterments shimmering into existence over your usual black hoodie and slacks. You hate the tights, and the pants, but nothing else quite stands up to the quality of high-altitude insulation brought about by magic PJs. A thought, and you’re pulling up Booble Maps on your shades, relegating it to a small window in the upper right corner, mostly just to get your bearings. It won’t be very useful until you hit the continent, but it at least points you in the right direction.

Another thought and your headphones fill with some sweet tunes, blocking out the roaring of the wind and your own shitty thoughts as your stupid forked half-cape flaps behind you. You pull the hood up and over your head, protecting your ‘do from the wind the best you can.

You have a long flight ahead of you.

The ocean lasts forever, giving way to cliffs and mountains along the western edge of the great land of--you actually aren’t sure if they picked a name for the whole continent yet. The kingdoms don’t cover the whole giant slab of environments that makes up this particular piece of the world. You remember Dave joking about just calling it the New Land to go with New City and New Prospit and New Derse and New Skaia and The Farms and Village-by-Dong-Mountain--you get the feeling the Chess folk as a whole just like straightforward names.

You’re pretty sure everyone in that memo veto’d his suggestion immediately. You hadn’t really cared so you’d just peaced out and muted it before ever learning the resolution.

Booble maps should have it, but again, the Carapace didn’t much care to keep their records up to date. Just like the consorts. It drives you mad to think about not being able to acquire basic information due to someone else’s negligence.

You turn up the volume to lose yourself and just keep flying as the sky begins to turn pink in the east.

It’s a much more respectable hour of After Dawn by the time you touch down on the roof of a high-rise building you think belongs to Roxy and Calliope. You think, you aren’t entirely sure. It’s been forever since you’ve been out this way. Not since y’all got together and built the internet and Roxy came up with the greatest search engine name of all time.

The most recent address you found matches what you can tell of your general location, and the view over the bay--despite it being noticeably morning and not after dark--matches the picture you’d been sent in the email. So you shoot her a quick, ‘I’m here.’

Standing there in your godly PJs, slightly light headed from a 12 hr+ flight being completed in one shot. You slide your headphones off your ears to let them hang around your neck, your ears buzzing with the distant sounds of a city waking up, free at last from the mad shuffling skills your playlist had to go through in order to get you this far. Blinking in the pre-noon light, not even slightly bothered by the cool morning air or the autumn sun beginning it’s still toothless beat down on your skin. You’re a god. Radiation can fuckin’ suck it.

The door to the roof slams open. Roxy’s there in a blur of pink and white. She’s taller than you remember--almost as tall as you are now. Older than you remember--it’s been at least a year, maybe two. But she still squeals and throws herself at you, wrapping her bare arms around your  maroon covered shoulders. Her hands dig into the loose fabric of your cape. Her weight hits you, you rock back and shift to absorb it.

“Oh my gawd, you’re so early!”

“Yes, I’m aware.” You’ve hesitated for too long. A kid who barely learned how to interact with people before you fucked off into your own isolationist bubble. It takes you an embarrassingly long time to hug her back, “Your point? I did say tomorrow. Tomorrow is now today.”

“Smart alec! I told you to warn me, dummy!” Her weight lightens as she sheds her own hold on physics, and hovers to gain back the extra inch you have on her. Her hands come up and push back your hood with it’s attached tiara, freeing your surprisingly sweat soaked hair from its prison. Apparently even magic jammies had their limitations and you might have pushed it just a little bit

She leaves a big wet smooch on your right cheek, underneath your shades. Your eye twitches, but you sigh as she rocks back, disentangling the two of you and standing back with her hands on her hips. “That’s for makin’ me come up here at the ungodly hour of 9 am on a Sunday. I’ll be gracious and not punish you for also taking two years to get your cute little pantaloon’d butt out here to see me.”

“My bad,” You mumble, chastised. For a moment you see through her. A tall imposing lady, white dress and black lipstick. One of the few who could stop you, but too far away to realize that maybe she should. But you blink and it’s gone and she’s smiling at you. You let your princely get-up slide away into wherever the fuck it goes, leaving you standing in a much more reasonable--and tights-less--hoodie and slacks, “Time got away from me.”

“No duh it did. C’mon, let’s get inside and tell the peeps the good news. ARq owes me and ‘peta some ice-cream. He thought you’d chicken out.”

Of course he did. But you let her latch onto your arm and lead you inside.

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[katreal-fic]

Day 7 — for #fictober 10/10/19

Prompt: “No, and that’s final.”

Fandom: Homestuck

Warnings: Cursing, 2nd Person POV

Part of a series. Please start from the beginning!

Characters: Dirk Strider & ARquiusprite; ARquiusprite & Davepeta

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ARquiusprite is ignoring you.

That’s fine. That’s cool. Two can play at this game. You came despite having to deal with him. Not because of him. This works out for the both of you. If he wants to completely ignore your presence all throughout breakfast, not even so much as a sarcastic, “Long time no see” except in many more words and probably more than a little insultingly, that suits you just fine. You get enough of that shit seeping into your thoughts you don’t need it from an external source too.

Dirk > Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

You trail a little behind Roxy, her housemate–? You’re not exactly sure what relationship is going on here, but it feels a bit more than housemate–and an exuberant squared sprite as they wind their way through what amounts for a Carapace-targeted market. There’s a lot of…things… you would never have considered food items, being haggled over by chessmen (or women) of both the prospitian and dersite variety. You wonder if New Derse and New Prospit are as segregated as the names implied, or if they are merely historical relics at this point. It’s been several thousand years since y'all seeded civilizations and then completed your big time skip. You don’t see any obvious tension in the mingling of the two types here; and there’s even a few other races either meandering around window shopping or actually manning the shops.

It’s definitely an…interesting set of wares, as the three actual shoppers on this venture stop at a clothing shop. You keep half an ear on the others, Roxy and Davepeta’s chatter loud enough to track even over the odd clicking sounding dialect of the other patrons. A lot of different styles and colors of drapery, from things as simple as something you recognize as bed-sheets, exquisitely tailored little petticoats fitted for the unique cylindrical proportions of the caraparians. 

“Dirkleton! Stop being a stinker and get over here! It’s time for ice-cream!” Roxy quite literally drags you out of your head, latching onto your arm. You aren’t sure how long you’ve been gone, stoically looking out over the crowd with a tension that reminds you of the early days of the game, when you still were still hopped up on adrenaline from your dramatic entry into the session and the bone deep knowledge that your charge was in danger and there’s nothing you could do about it. Nothing you should do about it. Because baby bird need to stretch his wings and fly and it would doom them to coddle them. 

Ice-cream is an…event. True to Roxy’s word ARquiusprite is the one to pay for everyone’s sweet treats. Except yours. But you don’t want one. You hang back while Roxy and Davepeta put their heads together to decide on a good flavor for the cherub, who is wringing her (their? You didn't ask.) claws, a lime green blush staining Calliope's skull-like face.

You don’t notice the drift until you find yourself next to the red sprite that still towards a head above you, despite you finishing off your growthspurt in the intervening years. Not that the contest is really all that fair, what with the floating and the ghostly tail. At this point you’re fuckin’ committed, you guess. He’s still wearing that off-white tank with the weird arrow-shades on it that he had when he was prototyped, which lends credence to your wondering about the staticity of their appearance. The advantage of a tank-top, you note, is that you can see all his those freakishly big muscles. Bulging as he unconsciously shifts and flexes. You can almost see the tension running off his skin. So can the poor bastard pawn behind the register, who is sweating bullets glancing between you two.

Like Davepeta, ARquius’s shades are completely opaque. You can’t read anything, except for the perpetual frown hiding broken teeth. Black cracks running through the constructed shades stirring up the guilt in your gut. (Cracks. A pressure. Your life in his hands. You can do nothing but talk. Stall. Try to buy your right to live with logic and cajoling and guilt)

“How do you even plan to pay for this shit? I don’t see anywhere to keep a wallet.”

“Small-talk still isn’t your STRONG suit is it, Dirk?” ARquiusprite’s voice is a strange rumble, straight red hair shifting as he turns to regard you (you assume) out of the corner of his eye. It’s not like you can see it. 

“Can’t say it’s yours either, bro.” You shot back, before gritting your teeth, “You’ve barely said a word.”

“To you, maybe. To those DESERVING of my brilliance I am one loquacious motherf*****. I have a f****** degree in small talk, dude. Graduated from the sh**** auto responder school of horsesh*** and improvisation. I’m afraid being your entertainment is rather low on my priorities right now.” 

That’s more like it.

“They made you promise to behave, didn’t they?”

He twitches. Your lips curl into a smirk. “Dude, don’t hold yourself back on my account. I’m the interloper here”

“I’m not doing it for you.” He bites back, broken teeth peeking out behind a stifled growl, “I’m doing it because my moirail asked me a f****** favor. If it were up to me you wouldn’t even be crashing this party.”

“Roxy invited me.”

“It was an invitation for the future not right this f****** second. You knew full well she had guests and you decided to crash anyway. There’s no other word for that but inconsiderate as hell.”

He’s right. The fuckin’ arrow straight to the heart causes you to clam up, shut down. The protection of your shades and stoicism is nothing before a being that was once closer to you than anyone in the fuckin’ world every could be.

(you’d thought about it once; trying to create life. Looking at the result, you’re glad you kept to dumb as rocks chat-bots instead)

“You wouldn’t understand, Dirk.” It’s quiet. Nothing more than a rumble in his chest, “At least everyone else cared when they came back. I know you better than anyone–no one f****** matters when you get your head stuck up your own a**.”

Everyone came. Except you.

Before you can respond–how the fuck do you respond?–Davepeta bounds up with what looks like, and probably is, strawberry flavored ice-cream, Calliope with some hot pink flavor, and Roxy with cone full of mint chocolate chip. She turns that smile on you as ARquiusprite goes back to ignoring you (much to the relief of the poor chess dude behind the counter.) You watch as he reaches into Davepeta’s coat to withdraw a wallet from the currently mostly-green garment. Smart. Maybe ARquius didn’t have any pockets in his skin-tight sweat-soaked tank, but Davepeta lucked out into a much more versatile clothing selection.

“You sure you don’t want anythin’ Dirk? I saw they had orange sherbert in there. I kno you’d love that.”

You shake your head, not looking away from the way Davepeta flings themselves into ARq’s arms in excited gratitude. At the way ARquiusprite’s glow seems to intensify, curling his tail around them. You swear there’s a red blush staining his off-white semi-corporeal face.

“Yo, earth-c to Dirk, do you copy?”

You don’t understand?

Maybe you don’t.

ARquiusprite was one of the few voices you don’t have popping up in your head.

You wouldn’t understand, Dirk.

You have a feeling that’s gonna change.

“No, Rox,” You purposefully shake yourself out of your own head again, “No, I’m good.”

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