Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sometimes, your mother smells strange.  You can’t quite put your finger on it but it mostly always is accompanied by her chewing gum.  So maybe it actually is simply the smell of bubble gum.  You find that her chewing is just as strange as the peculiar scent.  She likes you standing up straight, she likes you eating without your elbows on the table, and she likes your habits not to include chewing gum.  You still see your older brother with a variety of colourful gum packagings, but you trust yourself to always turn down his proposed stick of gum.  

However, when your mother is smelling strange and chewing gum, that is when you like her the most.  She’s happier than usual, spends less time downstairs working, and will hold your hand all the way to the bus stop.  You can tell this is when your brother likes her the least.  You can also tell the looks other parents shoot her at the bus stop are not very friendly either.  It’s never made much of a difference to you, you like to hear your mother’s laughter.  

You had not liked it the last time she had been acting strange.  Your mother’s laughter is wonderful.  But it had been your first time hearing her crying and you had not like it at all.  And whereas in those specific moments she tends to see you more and pay you more attention, she had not seemed to be able to concentrate on anything very well that last time.  You’d tried to approach her to comfort her, but your brother had stopped you.  

You trust your brother’s word.  If anything, you trust it more than your mother’s because he is the one who pays you the most attention.  But you believe it would have been better had you gone with your instinct for once and had ignored his words of warning.  

It was the last time you’d seen her altogether.  Her spine collapsed into a slouch, both elbows on the table as she had fixated the bottom of her glass, tears streaming down her usually composed expression.  There was no bubble gum perfume to disguise the smell, but your brother had not said a word when you’d pushed for answers.  

She’d been gone for almost a month now; that was what you’d heard him say to one of his friends over the phone earlier this week, anyway.  He’s graduating in a few months, you know so, your mother had made a big deal out of it.  You’d graduate kindergarten, and he’d be graduating high school at the same time, and she was happy about it.  You don’t think he’s gone to school for a while though, and you know the paperwork on the dining table where you’d last seen her has nothing to do with his schoolwork either.  You’d only missed a few days of school yourself, but you’d prefer staying home.  He’d made you swear not to tell anyone of your mother’s disappearance, but your crying fits at school were even more shameful without the excuse of your missing mother.  

Your house is the biggest on the street.  Your mother used to tell you so proudly when she walked you to the bus stop, pointing at your home.  Your brother tells you the same thing when he walks you, but he doesn’t seem quite as enchanted by the idea.  He stares darkly at the empty driveway.  You knew the house was too big for the three of you to begin with.  Neither one of you had friends over.  And now it really only was the two of you in the oversized house.  

This morning is no exception.  He glares at the house, as if it were a problem he wished could go away.  You keep your eyes on the pavement.  He holds your hand, but he always does.  Your mother did only when she was giggly and chewing gum.  

Approximatively a dozen of kids waited at the stop at the end of your street for the school buses.  Most of the middle school and high school ones weren’t accompanied by their parents, about half of the grade school students were, and you and the only other kid who would step into the bus heading to the kindergarten both waited with a parent.  Or that’s how it used to be.  Unfortunately for you and your brother’s secret keeping, Mister Egbert happened to be very fond of your mother.  Out of all of the parents, they were the very friendliest one towards the other.  Good friends, even.  

He had not let her absence slide very lightly.  His daily inquiring had drained any excuses your brother had up his sleeve.  And so, despite the intimidating sport shades your brother wore in spite of winter’s continued presence, and despite the way he crossed his arms solidly, Mister Egbert still approached him, smiling politely.  

“How are you two boys faring?  Miss Strider is still hard at work as always?”  

You turn you attention away from what is sure to be yet another strained conversation.  Though you’d accepted not to tell anyone about your mother’s absence, you preferred not to tell flat out lies.  As such, you avoided as best you could to speak of the subject.  You spot his son instead, busy laughing at the young grade schooler with the unfortunate thick hair her mother attempted to brush out every morning under the bus shelter.  

You’re not a big fan of John Egbert’s.  Maybe his father was cruel in buying his glasses, but they were much too large for his face and gave him a constant bug-eyed look.  You’ve seen him take his glasses off to wipe them clean before, and the difference had been shocking.  He’d also lost his two top front teeth, and that had been back when your mother had still been around, you remember, and yet despite his boasting of being the first to lose baby teeth, no new teeth had yet shown any sign of growing in.  His voice carried far too, so any thoughtless comment he made was made much louder than anyone else’s.  

Possibly the worst of all though, he stared at you a lot.  He also talked to you a lot, and always stuck close to you at school.  It hadn't always been that way, in fact up until a random point in time, he’d never even looked twice at you.  It had changed without much subtlety.  And if it had been annoying before, the added bit to his repertoire on asking about your mother had pushed your distaste for him even further.  

Still, you found yourself looking in his direction often.  When his eyes found yours it felt like validation.  Validation of what?  You had not yet pieced it together.  The validation was quick and resounding this morning, his laughter had ceased as soon as you had looked at him, and your eyes locked automatically a few moments later, knowingly.  

You retreated immediately, glancing upwards towards Mister Egbert, in time to catch the quick progress of the conversation you had not noticed was at such a heated point already.  

“Is that so?  Because John’s told me Dave cries at school every day.”  

You try to glance back at John, but he’s still staring at you, and you instantly find yourself feeling trapped in the situation.  You slouch, distantly thinking of what your mother might say of the poor posture you’d been adopting as of late.  Your brother’s radiating tension and you do not want to find out if it is aimed at your now exposed daily show of weakness.  

“With all due respect, Egbert, I think I’m in a better position to know my brother’s situation than your six year old.”  

“I’m glad you’re able to make that age argument.  Don’t you think your mother is better suited to act like a parent to your brother than you are yourself?”  

Their voices weren’t particularly loud, but with the silence that had spread to the bystanders, they were embarrassingly clear.  Nervously, you glance over at John, he frowns at you and you can’t help but to frown back.  

“No.  And neither would you if you knew even the first thing about her.”  

You frown up at your brother now.  You’d slowly realised while at school, by listening in to conversations, that a lot of the things your brother did, even when your mother had been around, wasn’t particularly correlated to the role of a brother.  You had not thought much about it.  Your mother was alone, she had a lot of work.  Most children weren’t in that situation.  Mister Egbert was alone too though, you’d always thought he must have understood your mother and your household.  

Your brother’s hand wraps around your upper arm and your posture shoots back up to proper.  John takes a step out of the shelter, and his father opens his mouth to say something.  Your brother cuts him off however, and the force in his hand is a sure indicator of his irritation even when his tone fails to indicate as much.  

“Thank you, but no thank you.  We’ve had enough of your meddling.”  

You were guessing there was a threat in those words, but what threat it could be, you did not understand.  You were thankful however that your brother chose to storm off, dragging you along and away from a painful day of school.  You glance over your shoulder as he swiftly walks away and switches his hold of your arm for the hold of your hand.  Mister Egbert seems to have followed after you for the first few steps.  But he stood still now on the sidewalk, looking strangely small from the distance you’d already gained, his briefcase hanging close to the concrete.  John waves at you once he notices your gaze, small fingers spread out as he gestures energetically, but still glumly.  His frown still the same as before.  

An apology was crawling up your throat, but you did not manage to voice it.  Your brother’s grip was still strong, though it was more comforting now than it had been before.  It remained steady, unshaken all the way to your house.  Still, no words were exchanged as you pulled off your boots near the front door.  He marched into the house instead, disregarding the snow he was bringing inside.  

By the time you join him in the vast living room, he is already seated, arranging and rearranging the paperwork on the dining table.  His posture too has suffered, his hands shaken with tremors as they supported the weight of his head.  

“Can I stay home today?”  You ask meekly, trying to make sure you could abscond back upstairs to your bedroom.  

His answer seems random, unrelated, as he doesn’t tear his eyes away from the mass of papers.  

“I don’t know what to do, Dave.  She hasn’t left us any contact information, or any accessible funds.  I can’t pay for these bills, not by a long shot.”  

Had it not been for your name, you would have been unsure you had been supposed to overhear the words.  Much like you did not like referring to him by his given name, it was also rare for him to use your name.  You did not know how to reply, could not even understand what it was that had his voice hitching and his eyes tearing up.  

“Can I do anything?”  

He turns towards you, as if surprised you had been there all along.  And just as you felt the pressure in your throat was too much to fight against, he steals your haphazardly formed apology.  

“I’m sorry, Dave.”

You don’t understand the sorry, but you understand the sentiment it was born from.  It was the same driving you now as you step towards him, ignoring the fear you felt at hearing your name twice.  

The hug is not a good one, but it’s the best you’ve shared, or the best one you remember yet.  He doesn’t stand up to accept it, nor does he return it, but his posture is telling of him accepting your small gesture.  Your face is pressed to his chest and your arms don’t quite reach all the way around.  But this had been the way you had wanted to hug your mother on the last day you had seen her.  

He sends you off to your room eventually, and on the way up the stairs, you do peek in between the balusters of the staircase and understand that your hug could not have changed anything then, and did not change anything now.  

The idea doesn’t come to you immediately, but rather as you sit on your bed and stare out your window.  The sky is baby blue, streaked with the black of the overhead power lines.  The same as always, even though now everything is so different inside your home.  You pick your small schoolbag off the floor, where you’d left it upon entering your bedroom.  The contents are scarce, the school agenda taking up most of the space.  

The spine cracks as you open it to the very first page, where your mother had drawn out important information.  Your home address, phone number, emergency contacts.  Your brother’s cellphone number was listed first.  Mister Egbert’s information was listed second.  You could remember her taking note of it at the bus stop, pink fuzzy pen in hand as she had scribbled it all down.  Your fingertips brush the loops of her calligraphy, wondering if the numbers she scribbled down for her work were just as playful.  Your brother had snickered back then, something about your mother getting Mister Egbert’s number, but it was comforting to see it now.  

Your brother was adamant about your secret keeping.  But Mister Egbert was listed second as emergency.  Your brother was first, but…  He did not know what to do either.  It was only the natural order of things.  

Just the same, your heart raced as quickly as the patter of your feet as you sought out the upper floor’s phone.  You paused once there, holding your breath and trying to sense where your brother was in the house.  Surely still in the same spot.  

You dial the number painstakingly slow.  It picks up on the fourth ring.  The woman’s voice scares you with sudden enough of a quality for you to hang up the line.  Quicker than the time it takes you to understand it was a receptionist’s voice.  You’re too scared to call again, so you dial the number written just below the previous one.  At this time of day, he was surely already taking care of business.  His briefcase had been a strong indicator.  You ignore that.  

It doesn’t take a full ring.  

“Yes, Jonathan Egbert speaking.”  

You make a face at the phone.  Did John have the exact same name as his father?  Was his name John Junior?  Or even worse, Jonathan?  

“Hi, Mister Egbert.”  

You were not so sure it was as strong of an idea as you had previously thought it might be.  Your voice was but a whisper to the receiver.  

“Is this Dave?”  

The tone of his voice lets you know he had been either expecting your mother, or your brother, but not yourself.  You stand up straighter.  

“I’m sorry to bother you, are you at work?”  

“No, no.  We decided to follow Dirk’s example and to take a day at home.”  

You frown when hearing your brother’s name.  You shuffle your feet already, trying to decode the truth behind this claim.  Why had he stayed home?  You stay quiet too long for his liking, and he prompts you to speak.  

“What can I do for you?”  

“Well, my mom listed you as emergency contact.”

“Yes, I seem to remember.”  

His words were as cordial as always, but you don’t confuse them for cold or for detached.  The pink ink shaping the numbers are enough of a push to go on and to continue in your hurried whispers.  

“Mom left.  I don’t think Bro knows what to do.”  

You keep your eyes trained diligently on the pink ink and attempt not to berate yourself on the use of familiar language.  Remembering the quality of your brother’s voice as he had spoken to you earlier is enough to put your guards down however and you don’t think much more of it as you wait for the answer, for the life ring.  There is some shuffling on the other side of the line, and you start feeling faint worry.  

“Do you two know where she has gone to?  How long has she been gone?”  

You exhale.  

“No…  Maybe a month?”  

He wraps up that conversation in the time it takes to utter two sentences.  And that easily sets the rest of the day up to be a motion of blurs.  It is a race against time as soon as you hang up.  Down the stairs you go, crying sorry to your brother as soon as he comes into view.  His confusion is not long lasting.  The man you’d called over wastes no time to actually show up at the door, John in tow.  

Thankfully, you are in no way part of the screaming match between the two adults.  Though you don’t like to refer to your brother as an adult; your mother too had shared that opinion, saying he could only be considered adult once he had his high school diploma in hand.  It only takes a few moments for your brother to order you back to your bedroom in a fit of rage, but you don’t think much of it.  You are happy to swerve away from the confrontation, and almost happy that John had naturally followed your steps upstairs.  

You aren’t as thankful once he asks you why your brother is so angry in that voice of his that carries and echoes throughout the rooms of your house.  You glare at him momentarily, obviously choosing not to answer in the vicinity of the conflict.  

The first thing he does upon entering your room is take up the seat you had taken earlier on your bed and gape at your window.  The sky is baby blue, just as his eyes are, and the power lines are a dark, black contrast, just as his mess of hair is.  You don’t like it, you feel the urge to push him off the bed, but rather you take the chair matching your desk, facing him in a bored fashion.  

The silence has an estimate of  zero chances of survival when faced with his presence.  

“Don’t look so sad.  Maybe she’s fine?  My mom is dead for sure, that’s way worse.”  

You give him a look of incredulity, but he’s still watching the sky.  

“But I don’t have a father to count on.”  

“Well, how about your brother?”   

Your look is unchanged, but so is his.  You decide to stop paying attention.  Thankfully, with your door shut you can’t hear much of what is going on downstairs.  But you are definitely worried.  

“Dave?”  Unfortunately, you aren’t the best at not listening, and you give him enough credit to turn your head back in his direction.  “Sorry, what I meant to say is that I understand.  I know it sucks.”  

He laughs.  It isn’t a mean laugh though and you relax, slouching in your chair.  Maybe it was a stressed, apologetic laugh.  One of someone who was used to being told he was saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  

“Thanks.”

“But you really miss her, right?  That’s why you’ve been sad and stuff?”  

“Duh.”  

He only takes a second to squint at the sky, and you are thankful you are viewing him from the side, as to see his natural eyes squinting rather than the larger vision his glasses give of them.  He seems to be mulling over why it was that you were replying in beat to his question with strong single syllables.  

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah.”

You smirk when he whips his head around to glare at you.  His glare falters and so does your smirk.  

“Are you sure?”  

You shrug.  Your throat feels tight again and you press your lips into a tight line.  

“I’m a good listener, I swear.”  

You bet he’s not, but you only bother to shrug again.  You decide to switch seats and end up sitting next to him instead, staring out the window in hopes that he would return to doing the same.  He doesn’t and you feel completely scrutinised as a result.  

“You have nothing to say at all?”  He urges you again.  

Amazingly, when you shake your head instead of shrugging, he drops it completely, remaining silent.  Time doesn’t really seem to drag or anything after that.  But the horizon you can see through your window soon becomes painted with shades of peach and of midnight blue.  Your worries have reached a cap a while ago already and they have yet to settle.  And when the knock finally comes at your door, you have reached the conclusion that only the sight of your mother at the door could quell your worries altogether.  It isn’t her, and somehow your heart manages to drop a little bit at the sight of your brother.  

“Hey, kid.  I’m going to help you pack an overnight back, alright?  Lil’ Egbert, you can scram, your dad’s waiting for you downstairs.”  

John squeezes your hand before departing, and you try not to let it show that you had noticed at all.  He’d zipped out of the room quickly, but you watch your brother slowly, not bothering to stand up as he seemed to be moving purposefully through your room.  

“You’re not sending me off alone, are you?”  

He pauses at that, putting down the things he had already gathered onto your bed.  

“Listen to me, Dave.”  You flinch at the repeated use of your name, but he settles both of his hands over your shoulders, demeanour serious.  “I’ll always be by your side.  And I mean it, got that?”  

You say nothing of the obvious restraint not only in his expression but in his forearms.  Maybe it was because he had settled his sunglasses over his cap, showing off the fatigued air in his mystifyingly close to golden irises, but he looked completely exhausted.  

You don’t do much to help out because you too are tired and are feeling emotionally detached.  But you are docile enough when he tells you you’d be staying over at the Egberts’ household, for a little bit anyway, because he did need help to figure things out.  You aren’t the happiest person in the world, and never had you missed your mother as much as you did now, but you do not say a word about it.  

The rest of the day flows by in some way that is too distorted to allow much flow really.  Your brother would return in the following days to get more of the belongings you would be needing.  The Egberts had headed home as you had packed up.  And you had made the walk back to the bus stop, their household being the one adjacent to it.  The last of the arched street, the house standing right by the bus shelter where the yellow school buses passed every morning and afternoon.  

Your brother does not hold your hand, he has his bag in one hand, and the folder filled up with paperwork in the other.  You walk with your spine straight, but with your eyes riveted on the cracks of the pavement.  No one comments on the largeness of your house.  You don’t know how these things work, but you wonder if this house will remain yours with your mother out of the picture.  

And then dinner is served.  Something that looks like the spokesperson of the food pyramid, with well defined sections to the plate.  Sometimes your mother’s food wouldn’t look like food at all.  Sometimes it was more like a radioactive flan.  More often than not the spices were way off the chart.  Your brother usually took up kitchen duty to spare your tastebuds.  But it had always been interesting.  You don’t find much interest in the food here and spend the diner time staring at the white walls and the odd figurines here and there.  Later on in life, you will often compare this place to a waiting room, what with the carpeted floor and intimidating white walls, but as it is you can only tell that you prefer your own home.  

You don’t complain.  You don’t try to.  And your brother does not voice any business or arrangements with Mister Egbert.  They can’t, not with John’s chattering, which mostly revolves around what the two of you might have missed at school today.  That had just about been the last thing on your mind until then.  

Your brother volunteers for the dishes, and Mister Egbert leads you to the second floor.  The guest bedroom is downstairs, and you frown when you’re told that that will be where your brother will be sleeping.  You will be sharing John’s room, but it will be a remarkable opportunity for the two of you to bond, you are told.  You are also shown the bathroom, how the shower works, where the towels are; everything you could have possibly asked is systematically answered in the presentation.  

You can tell John tries to remain quiet, but he can’t help but pipe in with comments and remarks on everything around the house.  You kind of want peace and quiet.  You kind of want a room alone.  Which you have at home.  Some outside help is great and all, but you don’t see this temporary transition as necessary.  Or at least, you want to be in your brother’s room downstairs.  He doesn’t waste words, he analyses and picks out the best words.  John has too much to say.  You want to be alone.  

Mister Egbert senses this and sends John away for a shower as soon as the tour is over.  The both of them disperse, one descending the stairs surely to speak to your brother, and the other grabbing his set of pyjamas and heading to the bathroom.  You make sure the door is shut, and breathe in slowly, and breathe out deeply.  You change into your own pyjamas, crawling into bed immediately.  You try to set up some system of borders for sleeping tonight, but eventually give up, curling away from where John would be sleeping.  

You accept it when the tears come.  After all, you had not been granted the solace of school to be able to cry away from home today.  This was an acceptable substitute.  Besides, it was already dark outside, and the room was dark as well.  There was no one around to berate you.  So you cry, a lot.  Silently, but without stop.  Your cheeks are soon wet, and yet the tears keep coming.  Even when you hear the faraway roar of the shower come to an end, you cannot calm down or slow down.  

You miss your mom.  You don’t think she is coming back.  You don’t know what has happened to her.  Her car is gone, but nothing else is.  She did not say goodbye.  She had simply cried at the dining table.  She’d always been able to cheer you up when you had been upset.  But you had not been able to do the same for her, and now she could never do it again for you.  

So when the door opens, light from the hallway streaming in, you do not turn away from it.  You do not roll away, do not cover your face, do not still your breathing to put up the pretence of sleeping.  You continue crying, knowing full well no comfort would come.  Maybe, had you been less proud and allowed yourself to cry in the presence of your brother, he could have reassured you.  That was not going to happen.  Crying in front of John was allowed because he was around at school.  And he stared you down constantly, even when it was time for you to go through your daily meltdown.  

Today was not much different.  He stood in the doorframe for a good minute, not shutting the door, as if allowing for the light to expose what it was you were crying over.  He still had not spoken by the time he sealed that light away and walked around to what now had to be his side of the bed.  

“You’re sad?”  He whispered in a way that made his voice sound less peppy, less space consuming.  Ultimately, it was what kept you from answering with a sarcastic bite.  

“Yeah.  Yeah, I am really sad.”  

You felt him sit next to you, and from the way he touched your shoulder, you were certain he was still busy staring at you.  You were still not rolling over though, instead concentrating on the outline of the doorknob in the dark.  

He says, “I love you”, so you do end up rolling towards him.  And then he kisses your left cheek, your right cheek.  You recognise that this is how his father bids him farewell every morning.  Tells him he loves him, then kisses both his cheeks.  You frown.  Your mother, she wouldn’t behave in this way.  She would tell you, ‘See you kiddo’ and ruffle your hair before you stepped into the bus.  You decide to ruffle John’s hair in whatever returning gesture you could think of.  

It works because he smiles brightly.  Missing front teeth and the rest of the smile you’d never truly liked until now.  You don’t try to think of what was the purpose of his approach.  You accept it as nice, as caring.  

He gets under the covers and you’re starting to think that maybe the crying would soon recede and you could fall asleep and forget about today.  You say nothing when he kisses your cheek again, nor when he accidentally kisses your lips.  You even kiss him back when he kisses you again in the same manner a moment later.  

Then he asks you, “Are you still sad?”  

You shrug, but it means yes.  

He tells you, “Yeah, I’m still sad about my mom.”  He shrugs and you get the feeling your own shrug might have looked the same.  Dishonest.  “But I am still happy you’re here.”  

You don’t understand him.  You don’t understand the situation.  But you feel grateful, almost relieved.  You’d stopped crying.  You roll away after he kisses you one last time, and once again look intensely at the doorknob.  You couldn’t remember being kissed before.  It had been nice enough, strange maybe.  You decide not to bring it up with anyone come morning.  Maybe he was trying to be your friend.  Maybe he’d wanted to be your friend?  

Your mother is still the last one on your mind as you drift away to sleep.  You wish you could go through a day without thinking about her because you still had not.  And John had not sounded very promising with the words of his own mom.  But you wish she could be off your mind, if only just for a day.  You wish you could keep yourself from thinking about it.  

And that’s how you fall asleep.  

-001-

The first thing you’re able to take in is the noise.  As if dozens of conversations had started at once.  Kindergarten had never been quite this loud.  And you’d already found that a little too busy.  The second thing you notice is that perhaps you should not have stopped walking.  The person who pushed past you, shoving your shoulder as they go, has you taking a step back.  It’s not in your habits to flinch frequently, but you still do, hand moving to grasp your hair nervously.  The third thing you notice is that colours around you were dark, muted.  You feel the weight on the bridge of your nose, and assume you must have thought it was a good idea to go out with one of your brother’s pairs of sunglasses today.  You move them up to rest over your head, blinking at the school hallway.  

Your glasses drop back onto your nose.  

“What are you doing now?  Maybe don’t go into transe in the middle of the hallway?”  

It was John.  He’d pushed your glasses back down, and was pulling you out of the rush of students by the arm, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.  It was John, you just knew.  Even though his glasses were nice, and even though his two top front teeth were what had to be oversized.  Even though he was tall, and his voice much deeper.  But he didn’t seem to be taller than you.  The conclusion might have been quick, but it was a terrifying one all the same.  You were older.  You were not sure quite how old, but you were not six years old.  You could not remember being anything older than that though?  Breathing became slightly harder to maintain.  On more than one occasion, as he finds his way to his locker, you trip in your own feet, positive your legs were just too long to work.  

You only realise once you’ve stopped attempting to walk that he’d been babbling on about God knows what.  

You test your theory and interrupt his speech with the shy question of his name.  Your own voice still sounds familiar in your ears and that was of some consolation.  

“What?  Don’t give me that kicked puppy look.  I’m just saying, sometimes you’re spatially unaware.  You’re special though, so it can’t really be helped.”  

He wasn’t looking at you, putting books away in his locker and zipping up his winter coat, which came as some surprise as he pulled it out of his locker, what with the bermudas and short sleeved shirt attire he had on beneath.  

“Are you just going to stand there?  Because, I swear, you’ve given me such a hard time for not wearing full legged pants, you better put a coat on.”  

You were stuck on his claim that you were special though.  Not thinking of it as anything that could be of any other connotation than a positive, loving one, you smile softly.  You remember, last night, or maybe forever ago?  How he had said he loved you.  And you remember not answering to it at all. 

You clear your throat, feeling unconfident with your overgrown body and with the busy hallway.  “John?  I love you too.”  

“What?”  He doesn’t have time to finish his syllable, and you don’t have time to lean in and kiss his cheek because he pushes you away by the shoulders, giving you a shocked look in between the crazed ones he sends right and left.  

“What the hell?”  He looks annoyed now, and you automatically shoot your eyes downwards, trying to understand the pattern in your shoelaces and just why you might have picked those out.  

“Ugh, your sense of humour has only gotten worse.”  He sounds like he’s in a bad mood, and you don’t feel anywhere near comfortable enough to tell him there is a huge chunk of your memory missing.  

He closes his locker, turns towards you and crosses his arms.  “So you really aren’t wearing a coat?”  

Your eyes sting, but you don’t want to move the sunglasses to rub them.  John had just set them back into place immediately when you had moved them earlier.  You were already feeling small enough, despite your newly gained height, you were not willing to put yourself in another position where he could belittle you.  

You turn towards a locker anyway, shakily, and try to force your memory to spit out some combination of numbers.  

“Uh…  The locker to my right, Dave?”  Your name isn’t even all that reassuring.  You’d already known you were yourself, there was just something terribly useless about your mind, you did not need the confirmation of your identity.  You needed to remember not to attempt opening the locker to his left and rather attempt opening the locker to his right.  

You try to laugh, but the small sound does not get a chance to form at all.  His composure had immediately morphed into one of joy and of excitement.  

“You’re from the past?”  

Though he’d whispered, his words could not have been louder.  You glance around you, absolutely sure saying that you loved him should not have been more secretive than the idea that you had skipped an entire period of time.

For some reason, you think of answering ‘no’, but he keeps speaking so you can’t put your word in anyway.

“That’s great!  I was going to turn fifteen and I just dealt with ‘present you’ all year long.  Like, what?  Is fourteen year old me so annoying you don’t want to travel through time to see me?”  

You wish you were finding this just as amusing as he was, but you’re worried.  You don’t know what he’s talking about.  And you did not want to be in this place.  Fortunately, he seems to notice your discomfort, and wraps an arm around your shoulders, all the while unlocking your lock for you.  

“No wonder you’ve been looking so pitiful, there is no way in hell you are fifteen year old Dave.  How old are you?”  

When you fail to answer he blurts out number after number until you interrupt him with the correct number.  Six it is.  Not fifteen.  

His laughter might have been contagious, more than one person looked towards you, smirking at his enthusiastic outburst.  But you aren’t laughing.  If anything, you once again feel like crying.  

“What?  That’s adorable.  You’re not going to cry, are you?  You were such a crybaby at that age.”  

That cleanly cuts out your likelihood of bursting into tears and you moodily pick out random belongings out of your now opened locker.  

“Oh come on, don’t be that way.  You used to travel all the time back then, what time is it now?”  

“First time, you meanie.”  

He still laughs, but it quickly ends, and he takes the randomly matched books you’d pulled out of your locker and sets them back down.  

“You’re serious?  You don’t know what is going on?”  You nod your head.  The tears escape your eyes, as much as you do not want them to.  

You’d been too busy concentrating on your shoelaces to expect his full-body hug.  The hug is the best hug you’ve experienced.  Easily.  And somehow, it felt familiar despite the strangeness of the situation.  

“I’m so sorry.  I should have been more supportive.  I’m sorry about your mom too..”  

You blink once, and the last of your tears escape you.  You’d forgotten about your mom.  

“Did she come back?”  You ask, without yet thinking of asking how justly he had identified what was your last memory in this moment of time.  

He pulls back and you are momentarily caught up in the way he looks at you.  It’s fleeting and he breaks into an apologetic smile quickly, sorting your things for you and once again pulling you away by the arm once the locker’s shut.  

“C’mon, let’s go sit down.  I’m hoping we still have some time.”  

The formulation of his words only suggests more questions, so you let it go.  

“So, by the way, memorise the path we’re taking so this can successfully become our, current for me, but future hangout spot.”  

He doesn’t seem to care or to listen to your words of protest.  So you follow, actually completely detached from your direction, orientation, and whereabouts.  Granted, the hangout spot is a solid one.  What seems to be a ghost staircase, adorned with a window that might as well have acted as the wall, given its size.  He sits down at the plateau of the staircase, gazing fondly out of the window.  You watch him, ignoring as best you could the urgency that was building up inside of you.  

“So.  When you went to bed last night, did you think of anything specific?”  

You shake your head, but he rolls his eyes.  

“It’s ok, you can tell me.  Well, technically, you don’t need to.”  He finally looks at you, crossing his arms and turning serious.  “I don’t remember it super specifically, but something like wishing you would stop thinking about your mother.  Am I right?”  

“Wish I could get through a day without thinking about her.  How did you know?”  

He smiles again, and his teeth were not as strange as you thought they might end up being after their prolonged absence in replacing the initial baby teeth.  “Well, you told me.  We’re best friends, so you tell me everything.”  He waggles his eyebrows, you stare.  

“Best friends?  But you’re loud.”  

He laughs, as if to prove your own claim.  “You love me, you said so earlier, you were all over me!”

“Well, you said it first!”

“No, I really didn’t.”  

His smile is confident, happy.  You glare.  

“So what?  I thought of that last night and now I’m old as heck?”  

“It’s ok, you can say hell, I won’t tell your bro.”  He laughs again, but you successfully maintain your glare.  “Well, nothing.  You’re special, like I said earlier.  If you go to bed with a specific time, or a specific requirement for time, you’ll live it in your sleep.  Or something like that, we’re still working out the science behind it.”  

He winks at you, but you still don’t see any way of feeling amused or entertained by your predicament.  

“What?”  

“Look, all that matters is that you’re fine, you’ll wake up soon, and you can tell me about it.  Actually, you have to tell me about it.  Because we’re best friends, remember?”  

“But we aren’t.”  You definitely were not best friends.  Somehow, John was sort of well liked by everyone else in kindergarten.  This put a lot of classmates, and teachers even, higher up on the list of his potential best friends, than you could possibly be.  Besides, you did not have the time for a best friend.  You were fine by yourself.  

“No, trust me.  We’re best friends.  I know you know it too!”  

You look out the window, distracting yourself.  You hoped he was right and you would wake up soon.  You wanted to see your brother.  You wanted to actually sleep because this was not restful in the least.  

“Do you think this is the first time I’ve gone through a day without thinking about my mom?”  

He hums in contemplation and it isn’t nearly as annoying as you imagine it could be.  If anything, it is a little reassuring, given the surrealism afflicting your situation.  “Well, it doesn’t really work like that.  There is no chronological priority in times that can fulfil your request.  Or anyway, that’s what we’ve concluded so far.”  

You nod in acceptance because you don’t really think or want to think about catching up on this many years of unlocked knowledge.  

“But, honestly.  I’ve been with you every day since your yesterday.  And it is really conceivable.  It might be, yeah.”  

You nod again.  Maybe there was some good in that.  You weren’t alone, John was saying he would be there for it all, even if you don’t understand most of it.  

“It isn’t a bad thing.  I think about my mom a lot too.”  

You pull up your sunglasses, and he lets you this time.  You do nothing but observe his eyes, looking for the hint of something you did not know of.  

-xxx-

You try skipping breakfast.  Your brother pulls you aside and explains to you the importance of eating and of how feeling upset or feeling sad should not get in the way of that.  You pretend to understand and to agree.  It’s not that you’re not in the mood to eat because you’re too sad.  It’s that you’re not in the mood to eat because you’re not in the mood to sit down.  Restless is the appropriate word.  

But you sit through breakfast, move the pancakes around the plate, cut up pieces of it and pile them into small groups and take a few rare bites of the cut up strawberries.  Your brother nods at you encouragingly whenever your eyes cross.  Mister Egbert seems completely drawn into his newspaper.  Whereas both John and you had been granted another day at home, he was ready to head out for work.  And John was midway through his third plateful, speaking quickly and profusely.  He looked different than in your dream, but still, you could tell they were one and the same.  

Whatever conversation his father and your brother had was foreign in your ears and you successfully tuned it out.  Things did not seem so bad in the supposed future.  Maybe it was best to dissociate yourself from such things for now.  

Breakfast comes and goes and you are still unable to calm down.  You are still sad, but you are mostly excited, energetic.  Mister Egbert leaves, your brother stays at the table, and his expression is only slightly less worried than it had been at home.  You think about asking to go home, you think of sneaking out and slipping under the sheets of your own bed at home.  Ultimately, you don’t think sleeping would be successful.  You simply return to John’s bedroom.  He is chattering away, and you only belatedly think of the kindness he had shown you, now overshadowed by your alleged vision of the future.  

Once inside his room, you ask him, “Are we best friends?”  Which might have been ironic seeing as you had cut him off, without much interest in what it was he was actually saying.  

“Duh!”

“We are?”  

“Yeah.”  

He is dead serious.  Your energy is a bit lessened by this quick, few worded exchange.  You didn’t actually want to reveal what you had experienced all that much.  Mostly because you had not quite understood most of it, and neither had his future version it had seemed like.  

You try with, “I think I time travelled in my sleep.”  

He believes you immediately.  You are shocked.  

“Woah, that is so cool?  Where did you go?  Who did you meet?  How was it?  Tell me everything!”  And maybe you would have, but it was made impossible when he pushed with a considerable increase in questions.

His continued flow of conversation soon went into different options and possibilities of what it was you had meant to express in that one sentence.  So you give him a second sentence.  

“You don’t want proof?”  

His eyes are wide, wider than they could have been in your dream.  Too wide with those unfortunate glasses.  

“Was I there?”  He doesn’t allow you the time to answer or to nod.  “What was I like?”  

“You had teeth,” You explain blandly, not able to come up with a different answer.  

He seems satisfied, happy.  “My front teeth?  That’s great!  Please tell me you time travelled to next week.”  

“You were fourteen.”

“Oh no.  No, that’s really not what I wanted to hear.”  He hangs his head, immediately sulky.  You actually laugh, without even a hint of sadness.  

“C’mon, they’ll probably come in before then.  I’m just saying, you had your teeth.”  

“And we were best friends, huh?”  

You shrug, but he clearly takes it as a yes.  

“Well, I believe you.  We’re best friends.  My teeth grew in.  Why not?”  

“I want to prove it.”  

“Well, alright.”  

You sit down as he heads towards his nightstand.  You curl your fists, putting all your efforts into concentrating on any detail that might be of some importance.  He sits down next to you, posture bouncy and lighthearted.  The object he’d retrieved had been a deck of cards.  Your confidence dwindles.  

“Ok.  Here.  Tell me what are the top five cards of the deck.”  

“What?”  

“Well, if you can travel through time, you can travel to now and, since this has already happened, you’ll know which cards are on top.  Simple math.”  

“What!  No it’s not!  What if I can’t travel backwards?”  

“Do it or I’ll know we aren’t best friends in the future.”  

You gape at him and then down at the cards.  You could potentially try guessing.  But it was not a good bet.  The odds would not be working in your favour.  You swallow audibly.  And are then stopped by a sharp pain in the back of your skull, you whine as you clutch the back of your head.  

“Dave?”  

You jump in fright, turning towards the door, where John had just emerged, not sitting on the bed as he had been a second ago.  And as a matter of fact, neither are you.  

“Oh, are you back to normal?”  

“What?”  

“You enumerated the entire deck of cards.  The whole thing.  It took forever, it was so boring.  Like, I was sold after the first three.”  He sits back down, and you look out the window.  It didn’t seem as if you had lost any considerable amount of time.  “Oh, and you asked for a glass of water, you said your head would be hurting afterwards.”  

“Oh, yeah.  Yeah, it is.”  

You sit back down as well.  The glass of water quickly becomes history, the note that had been in your hand and now on your lap however…  It was hard to believe the cursive writing there was yours, but it must have been.  The complete order of the deck of cards.

John notices your staring and snorts in amusement.  “Yeah, you wrote that down like a maniac.  You said it took forever to memorise.”  

You shake your head, laughing, also somewhat happy.  

There is a note at the end.  The first time trying to read it is a challenge.  It becomes easier after the fourth time.  You read it over that day many more times than you do the order of cards;

hang in there i know things are hard 

but a friend is a friend 

it is worth memorising i promise 

Chapter Text

You’d been looking forward to the third grade. No longer young enough to be the prey of older kids, but not yet old enough to worry about the switch of schools or the teachers finding your lack of respect to be bordering acceptable. Honestly, now that you were a few months in, you could accept that those things you had been expecting did end up being true. Your teacher was demanding, fair, and hilarious. Even though you seemed to be the only child laughing in class. Classes too were interesting. And Dave and you always had the best packed lunches at the cafeteria table.

Yes. Third grade was going to be and truly was a blast.

The first snow had fallen, the holiday spirit was rising. Third grade, and the third Christmas with Dave staying at your place. That had not been up for discussion at any point in time. You had efficiently shot down your father and his brother’s constant talks of finding a new place for the Strider family; or so you had thought. Honestly, the cardboard boxes they’d bought and stored in the garage just seemed like a practical joke. You’d eavesdropped more than enough to learn that Dirk Strider’s job fixing up computers at that stuffy store in your town’s sad shopping center was not going to be enough to justify them leaving. The talks of affordability had only emerged after his internet business had started up. Dave’s told you what it consists of a few times. Mind you, he had not seemed more eager than you had been to discuss the topic. But you were pretty sure ‘puppets’ was not going to be a steady income.

A year of successful and expanding business had proven you wrong. That didn’t mean they had to leave. Four people in a house was not abnormal. Especially a house the size of yours. It was a reasonable arrangement, and no one ever complained. There weren’t any quarrels. It was completely fine as it was.

Yet, they’d made the announcement earlier this week that Friday, today, would be your last time riding the school bus back home with Dave. He was moving. To the opposite side of town too. Which shouldn’t matter, they had told you, because you’d still be together at school daily. And then the cardboard boxes had been pulled out of the garage, and things actually began to be packed away. Dirk had even brought your father to see their would be apartment, both dave and yourself had opted out of that excursion. Come tomorrow, you would have your entire bedroom to yourself once more. And Dave would have his own. He wouldn’t be back in the mansion at the summit of your arched street. He wouldn’t be with his mother. It would still be his brother and him, as it has been, only far away.

Third grade was great, really. Dave didn’t like your science classes. Often, you would look over to him, at the other side of the classroom because the teacher had demanded your separation (Dave tells you it’s because you don’t know how to whisper, but you’re certain he’s just as much at fault as you are), and you would guess the outline of the novel he’d surely hid inside the large textbook, eyes racing across the pages. Your father had told you, once, a long time ago, that Dave’s mother had been a scientist. You had to wonder why it had not been a gift genetically passed to him. Your best guess, which you actually knew to be true, was that he didn’t like reminders of her.

But he loved English class. He didn’t have to say it, you just knew it. He worked on the assignments long and hard, and went as silent as a tomb during classes. And would take out books from the library that were other works of authors you’d read for class. He loved to read, but you weren’t going to point it out. You knew, for some reason, he wouldn’t want others knowing what it was he truly liked with a passion.
And he was the worst in sports. You'd gotten into trouble for hitting him too hard with dodge-balls, on many occasions. The best way you could describe it was that the balls; soccer, basketball, football, regardless, did not exist in his universe and thus he could never dodge out of their trajectory. But where you were the first picked in sports teams. He was the first past finish lines, always. He ran like the wind and it filled you with a strange sense of envy. And then, how you could best describe it was that absolutely nothing existed in his universe. Not even a huff or a puff after races. Only that cold and reserved demeanour he was known for. He ran like he was free.

Third grade was great. Third grade was great because as your third year of grade school spent with Dave, you understood a lot more about him, you picked up a lot more about him, you were much closer to him than you had once been. But that was not going to be enough. You weren’t going to be satisfied just seeing Dave not pay attention to science class out of the corner of your eye, or accompanying him to the library on lunch breaks, or even watching him run far ahead of the group. You wanted him at home.

“Did you want to walk home? I don’t have my scarf. Or my gloves. Or my hat. Or a hooded coat on.”

You jump out of your thoughts. A few glances around reveals that the classroom had emptied and that Dave had decided to stand as straight as a white picket fence in front of your desk. You couldn’t recall the school bell ringing, or even the second half of the last class you had had. You turn in your seat, pretending to frown at the snowflake filled sky, when in reality you couldn’t wipe the expression of sorrow because of your incessant thoughts regarding what your house would soon be like.

“It was your responsibility to bring appropriate clothes. Don’t come whining to me.” You do your best impersonation of your father’s voice. You’d glanced furtively at the clock over the door, making sure that you did in fact have time to catch the bus. Last bus ride together after all. Though you had to admit that a walk home sounded pleasant too, it would take longer to get home, you could postpone having to deal with those cardboard boxes. You weren’t going to drag Dave through the snow storm though, not with the way he was dressed.

He mumbles something about the house being so close to the bus stop, there was no reason to dress too warmly, he wasn’t spending too much time outside. You only listen with one ear, putting your pencil case away and heading outside of your classroom, where your coat and boots waited for you, the only ones left. Dave had even had time to exit the classroom and come back inside dressed. Though his state of dress also featured sneakers instead of winter boots.

“Are we walking though. I think we might have time to make the bus if we run.”

In fact, you would have enough time if you crawled there. Comically enough, Dave had an extremely poor sense of time. That much had been revealed when you had asked him, often, upon his awakening, for how long he had been in a different period of his timeline. He was never able to tell. The only times Dave ever bothered asking you for the time was when he was from a different time; that was a sure indicator. He was working hard with you to make some sort of correlation between the time he could spend in the past or in the future, and the time he was asleep. The real answer was that there was no correlation, you had figured that much out. You’d even rented out a book about sleep cycles. There was nothing to be said about it. You didn’t tell Dave though. You preferred he kept thinking you would be able to crack the code for him.

“You’re so bad with time, Dave. By now? The bus is long gone.”

“What?” His face had paled considerably. He never managed not to be duped by your little tricks. You could even trick Future Dave, so that was loads of fun. As for now, you simply grinned at him. His mouth was slightly agape, showing where he’d recently lost teeth. Both of his top canines. Whereas you now already had all of your adult teeth, though you thought your two front teeth were alarmingly big compared to the rest of them, Dave had a mouthful of baby teeth, and now, unlike anyone you’d seen before, with two canines missing. You usually took every chance you could to make fun of them. But for now, you were already fooling him well enough with the promised walk home.

Despite the fun of the situation, you can’t stop yourself from sighing as you button up your coat. You look over at him, and it almost looks as if he has caught on to your shenanigans because he too is looking crestfallen.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” you reply mechanically. You try not to stare too much at his eyes.

You hadn’t really brought it up with him yet, but… His eyes had changed over the last few years. They were no longer the bark brown they had once been, but rather a very rich shade of chestnut brown. Under specific lighting, they almost seemed red. You knew it was related to whatever would happen to his mind whenever he would time travel. You do not want to bring it up. You don’t want him to put a stop to that. If anything, it was the one thing about him that ensured that you were the closest person to him. He’d never shared those temporal experiences with anyone but yourself. You were his closest friend, and no one could take that away from you because he wasn’t about to reveal this to anyone else, not even his brother.

“We can walk, you know,” He tells you.

You don’t consider it because you don’t want him in the emergency room with frostbite on the last night he could sleep in your bed.

“You know I was joking, right? That we’re going to make the bus on time?”

“I know. You weren’t staring into space for that long, not really.”

Your boots and coat are now on, and your backpack straps securely over both of your shoulders. But you don’t take a step towards the front doors, now instead deciding to maintain eye contact with Dave. You stare and you wonder if maybe his eyes just seemed different because he had seen things you could not have yet seen. Maybe those glints of reds were simply the fiery traces of wisdom.

“I was just thinking, we would be able to spend a little more time alone tonight if we walk home,” He continues on, voicing your previous thoughts without hesitation.

You don’t move still and wonder if that was your body showing its outright agreement for Dave’s proposition.

“No, look. You’ve been taking that bus since you were five. Before you even loved me. I’m not keeping you from taking it this one last time.”

He pulls a sour expression. He always does whenever you infer that he loves you. Granted, he’d only told you once, when he was way younger, but you still knew. You didn’t think it was anything to be ashamed of. Just the same he marches ahead of you, as if offended by your wording. You catch up with him without a problem, wrapping your mitten covered hand around his cold one. He never dressed well for the weather, you’d noticed. Even though he always needed extra blankets at home because he tended to feel colder than you did. You hoped he would have enough blankets in his new apartment.

“If anything, your relationship with that bus goes further back than ours. And so you should privilege that special bond.”

“It’s a bus. I’m going to be taking one from the new place too.”

You try not to wonder if he’s going to make better friends on that bus than the friendship he’d found with you.

You’re quiet for the rest of the way. He tries to wiggle his hand out of your grip once you’re closer to other students, moving to the end of the line of students waiting for the school bus numbered fourteen. But when you loosen your hold, he tightens his.

“D’you even want to move, anyway?”

You had never asked him because you hadn’t needed to. But now you did. Now you needed some validation that you weren’t the only one dreading tomorrow.

“Does it matter? Like it or not, it’s not my decision.”

“If you’d at least looked upset though, your brother might have changed his mind.”

His eyes are dark when he looks at you. You know you sound accusatory.

“It wouldn’t be fair to my brother.”

“Well, it’s not fair to me.”

You drop your hand, and cross your arms. You only feel slight guilt when he sneaks his hands into his pockets. He had the air of someone who’d rehearsed this confrontation in his head and who knew what he wanted to say, when, and how. You didn’t like it. You wanted an honest heart to heart.

“In the future… Have you seen your new place? Do you actually move away?”

“I’m moving by tomorrow. What could happen in between now and then?”

“Loads. Like, you could at least try to protest.”

“John.” You straighten up because that’s the high-pitched tone he uses to correct your posture. You slouch loads, but he only corrects you when he is aggravated, as if he were looking for reasons to use that sort of tone. “You’re not my brother or anything. This is normal. Everything before was not normal. This is normal.”

“You’re my best friend. Yes, it’s normal to be together.”

You’d quickly borrowed that aggravated tone too. You had the feeling that some things were not all that normal. You didn’t go out of your way to publicly broadcast that the two of you still shared a bed, for example. You could think up a few justifications for that, but ultimately using your night terror episodes to reason the arrangement wasn’t all that legitimate either. You don’t think you’ll ever shake off that near traumatised expression Dave had worn when you’d woken up the first time you’d had one after his moving in.

Still. It was nicer to have Dave around after them than only just your father. You could only hope you truly had already outgrown that phase of your life and that your nights of sleep would not suffer extremely from his departure.

You have to wonder how he feels about waking up without you after time travelling.

“We’re not going to mooch from your dad our entire lives.”

Thankfully, the volume does not escalate, and you do not get any concerned looks. He’s turned his attention towards the front of the line which is now moving into the bus. He seems dismissive, not fully committed to the conversation. You’re not surprised because he never uses those words. His brother does though, a lot.

“You don’t have to do everything he tells you, you know?”

“Well, yeah, I do.” He shrugs, still refusing to turn his attention back to you. “See, you don’t get it. Because you would do anything your dad told you to. You just don’t understand how it’s the same thing with Bro.”

“I just wish you cared.”

You wish he cared about this argument too because you knew it was slowly dying off. He was no longer engaging with it, as if he’d run out of energy in his first two lines of reply alone.

He often had that tired look to him. You liked to think he just napped and slept a lot in hopes of time hopping. Because he wanted to have fun and go on fun adventures, or something like that. You knew the truth to be different. You knew he’d get that look in the middle of conversations, as if the thought of an unpleasant situation filled him with a need to get away.

It worried you. You’d clued in long ago that tired Dave was something to avoid. Your father, whenever he not so subtly tried to question you in hopes of finding out how Dave was holding up, would mostly question you about his appetite and his energy. Both low appetite and low energy resulted in an unhappy father. So you’d always plead high appetite and high energy.

The worried looks he would give at the implications of a tired Dave had passed down to you now.

In a way, it was sign enough that he was saddened by the situation at hand. It was sign enough that, just maybe, he truly was happier staying with you than he had been in the Strider manor, or would be in the Strider apartment.

You don’t pry. You let him take the window seat in the bus, even though you usually wrestled him for that. And you pretend not to care when he puts his head down on your shoulder and immediately fades away into sleep. You pretend he’s visiting a different place in time, probably the past, where you needn’t worry about his imminent departure. You watch landscapes out of the window, and try not to twist this sight into more sad thoughts. You still do.

“Home,” is always how you wake him up when he sleeps in the bus. He usually sits up straight as soon as you pronounce the word, as if he were taking your word as a stab at his lack of decorum. This time, he doesn’t. He keeps his head on your shoulder and sighs.

The walk home is also agonisingly sad. All four minutes of it. The walk had doubled in length due to dragging of feet.

The house is empty when you arrive. The note on the fridge, because yes the fridge was your first destination when arriving home, indicated that both your father and Dave’s brother were moving things in. That is to say, the house isn’t emptied of its contents, only of its occupants. In fact, most everything looked untouched. But everything was put into motion already. Dave would just have to step into your father’s car tomorrow, and he would be shipped away like that, off to a place already tailored to fit his presence.

Speaking of Dave, he merely looked over your shoulder to peek at the note, and then he was gone. You sigh, more impatiently than anxiously this time, and take the opportunity to drink your cranberry juice straight out of the carton. Maybe you should lock all the doors, barricade the doors, never let your father back into the house. Maybe then Dave and yourself could stay living here, alone. Dave would be ok with you drinking juice out of the carton. And Dave wouldn’t have to go.

You almost grab an apple out of the fridge for Dave, thinking back to the worry that should be associated to lack of appetite or lack of energy. You decide that can wait for dinner. Given that your father was not home to prepare it, maybe the whole family would end up ordering pizza. Or maybe Chinese, because that was Dave’s favourite. And it was his last night home.

You frown all the way upstairs, guessing Dave’s location. Which does turn out to be face down into your pillow.

So you throw his own pillow at his head. He doesn’t move. You throw yourself onto the bed next to him. He doesn’t move. You rub the back of his neck; he specifically does not like having his neck touched. Yet, he remains passive.

“Are you trying to sleep more? What are you up to?”

You can make out his shoulders moving upwards. A pathetic looking shrug.

“I’m sure if you ask—”

“No, you’re not. You’re just hoping.” It comes out muffled, but it is clear in your ears.

You have no reply. Especially now that his things were gone. Only a few belongings were left stacked on your desk so he could comfortably get through tonight and tomorrow morning. You didn’t particularly see anything wrong with hoping he would stick around. But, you were not sure. You’d convinced yourself that you had been, but maybe you had never been. Maybe you’d known all along that it was a numbered day sort of thing. Maybe you should simply cut your losses and count yourself lucky.

“It won’t really be all that different, right?”

It’s a little too desperate and a little too soft. So you bend for him and put your head down where his pillow should have been resting.

“Yeah. I bet it’s a nice place. And you’ll have more time for yourself.” Those were things you’d heard his brother tell him in conversations between the two of them.

He turns his head to rest his cheek on your pillow. Lack of appetite and lack of energy were things your father checked through you too monitor Dave’s unhappiness. But now it was plain to see he was unhappy, no numbers on calories eaten or hours spent sleeping could convince you otherwise.

“You can have your own bed,” You try again, your smile feels almost mocking however.

“What if you have a night terror,” He pronounces the words slowly and you smile despite yourself, his missing teeth showing as he spoke.

“So? I had them before you.”

Maybe that had been cold, but he simply seems thoughtful afterwards. You wonder if he’ll follow your same train of thought. Night terrors spent alone for you, meant waking up confused and reeling for him after time transitions. So you cut him off right away.

“Besides, nothing will be different for you. You can fall asleep wishing to spend time with me, and I’ll be there instead of dreaming.”

You smile, a little more sincerely. His eyes still seem just as unhappy, strange colour beaming with a fierce and eyrie glow.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Things are confirmed for you. He was shaken by this. He would prefer to remain here. Not only would he prefer that, he was frightened by the idea of moving. You shrug at him, the same pathetic shrug he’d offered you earlier.

“It’ll be fine.”

He buries his head back into the pillow. Your words had obviously been unconvincing.

“Want me to make you some mac and cheese?” The only recipe you were successful with. “Or we could go watch some television? Play games? Watch a movie? Yeah?”

“I’m tired now.”

And a tired Dave was bad. A tired Dave reminded you of the first day your father had taken him into your home. Distant and absent. Being able to piece time travel with him had somehow seemed to subtly lift his spirits over the years. But now, that was easily being brushed away, revealing the same helplessness you didn’t really understand back then.

“What d’you want to do then?”

“I just want to sleep. Can you tell Bro I went to bed when he comes back?”

“Want me to bring you your pjs?”

He flips onto his back and nods sadly at you. You’re still smiling. You’re not sure why you can’t stop because you’re certainly not happy at all. You instinctively go to your drawers, but they have become very spacious. No more accidentally wearing Dave’s clothes or vice versa. You grab his pyjamas from the desk instead, hand them to him, and turn the other way as he changes.

You try to do more for him, propose to bring him up a glass of water, a snack, go get your father’s laptop to put up videos for him or something. He shakes his head at everything. You can sense that he’s not exactly sleepy, but rather does not want to be seen in a hopeless state. That’s too bad because you will not be leaving.

So he gets under the covers, and you lay over the covers. And you both stare at the ceiling and talk about random things, little things, none of the things that had to do with his move.

You hadn’t been sleepy. You don’t think he had been either. But you never hear your father come home. You fall asleep over the covers, in your day’s clothes. And when you wake up in the morning, it’s to your father calmly, nicely, reminding you that Dave will be heading out in an hour or two. And it dawns to you, quite harshly so, that you had managed to sleep through your last night together.

Dave looks just as tired as he had before falling asleep. He does not eat much of his breakfast.

-842-

Your father drives the car. Dave’s brother sits in the passenger seat, he’d just shown you the public transport card he’d purchased yesterday. He knows how to drive, Dave claims, but you’ve never actually seen him attempt it. Dave sits on the right side of the car, he always tells you that the left side gives him motion sickness, but you’re not sure how readily you accept this. And you sit in the place that’s left with your heart all the way down to your shoes.

It is one of the worst days of your life.

You didn’t need the three years of experience to sense the change in Dave. It is home hitting obvious. The aura of tiredness is no more about two minutes into the car ride. And it’s not that he’s suddenly excited to be here, oh no. It’s that he now has otherworldly knowledge.

The Dave sitting on the right side of the car is bouncing his knee, slouching, darting his eyes from one place to the next as if trying to take everything in.

Now, it is one of the worst days of your life. But there is no explanation to support that Dave would have gone to sleep one day wishing to live through one of the worst days of his life. The one thing you can conclude from future Dave’s presence in this situation is that this day is enjoyable for him to some extent. And his calm, serene smile is enough to attest to that.

You elbow Dave, maybe a little too harshly, but he does not seem bothered in the least.

“What are you doing?” You mouth to him.

He mouths back the exact same line.

You think of a few choice words to share with him, but thankfully your father unknowingly intervenes.

“So Dave, you haven’t seen the apartment yet? Are you excited to see your new bedroom?”

“Yes. So excited. I am really looking forward to it.”

His voice takes a higher pitch and you deduce that this must be an older Dave who can only perceive his third grader self to have an extremely high voice. Well, he doesn’t, and you wince at his answer. Solely because of that pitch thing, you swear. It has nothing to do with Dave telling your father he was excited and looking forward to no longer living with the two of you.

“You sure, kiddo? You seemed pretty mopey yesterday. I know, ‘cause you only go to bed when you mope.”

“Yeah, Bro. Was just trying to fast forward, you know? That’s how excited I was.”

His voice sounds a little normal now. Genuine, even. Your blood runs cold. You could have sworn he did not want to move away. What was that about yesterday? Was he just sad because his brother wasn’t home to hang out with? He wanted to fast forward through your last night together?

“I’m sure it’ll be nice to have your own bedroom again.”

You actually glare at the back of your father’s head, even though you’d made the same argument only yesterday.

Dave nods, his hands are balled into fists over his lap. You love Dave, no matter which time period he comes from. But Dave feels unfamiliar now, and you actually look away, instead of observing him as you often did when he was travelling. It was just too odd this time.

The car ride is excruciating and almost cruel, to say the least. All this talk of cheer and of excitement seems like a cold blooded stab to your back. You thought this would be alleviated upon arrival at the building. It looks almost like a corporate building, and you’re surprised to see it in your town. Of course, it was almost out of town at this location, just the same, you were used to only knowing people who lived in houses. You’d asked before, why it was that Dave and his brother were looking for an apartment and not a house. Your father had told you a lot of people lived in apartments, and you tried to imagine who it could be who lived in these.

You don’t have much time to appreciate or to criticise the location. Dave takes the front of the group, as if he’s taken these steps thousands of times before. So, your hopes of this not working out and falling through in the near future are but mere hopes. Obviously, older Dave recognises this place as home. Not you, and not your home. His own strange, corporate looking grey building in the middle of a forest. Then you decide you absolutely dislike this new place.

Dave wants to take the stairs. Your father tells him it is the top floor. He shrugs, and ends up racing his brother up the stairs. You take the elevator with your father, of course. And wish as strongly as you possibly could for this Dave to be gone by the time he reaches the top floor. You’d rather the mopey, saddened Dave.

He was painful to watch too. But you felt less attacked. You wait at their door only for a few minutes. Unsurprisingly to you, despite Dirk’s older age, Dave reaches the top step first. His brother’s breathing is laboured, but Dave strolls up to the door as if it were all nothing. You catch yourself smiling at this, unfortunately he catches that too and he grins at you in an unbearably cocky manner. You already feel as if you are seething.

“Dad, are we leaving soon?”

The cold look he gives you is expected. You only sigh and roll your eyes. Of course your father wasn’t going to let you act this rudely. It was worth a try. You wanted the other Dave back. Or you wanted to be gone; it was one or the other, but not this.

You find out that the place is not all that horrible. The layout is a bit quirky, but somehow it seems a little less bare than your own home does. You’re surprised to find out it is a one bedroom apartment. You wonder who the other tenants of the building are then, again. Certainly not families. Dave doesn’t seem surprised or confused when his brother explains that he’s much happier taking up the futon in the living room. That Dave’s bedroom truly was Dave’s and couldn’t be anyone else’s. It’s a smaller bedroom than yours. You believe Dave would be better off with you. But it’s clear this opinion is not very popular as of this moment.

The tour is short, but Dave’s brother is excited, and your father is beaming. And Dave is… Dave is strange. Hands deep in his pockets, shoulders slightly slouched forward. He looks happy in a jaded way. If only you could have him alone, maybe you could understand.

So you hang back instead, and eventually your father comes to join you. You’re angry. You don’t tell him as much, you only tell that this bedroom is not as nice as yours is at home. But he seems to understand. He tries telling you something about independency but you’re not all that interested.

And then he’s the person you’re trying to get away from, so you do emerge from Dave’s bedroom, if you even wanted to call it as much. You’re shocked by the sight that is waiting for you.

Dirk had gotten down to his knees to hug Dave fully, given their gap in height. Their hugs were a rare occasion, sure. That wasn’t entirely the issue at hand. No. This was the most emotionally invested hug you’d ever seen, from anyone, ever. And all of that emotion was certainly radiating from Dave, who was holding his brother tightly. Not to mention that he was silently crying as well, eyes shut as he hugged him with all his might.

The expression on his face read happiness and relief. As if he were getting out of some horrible situation or something. And never, never had you felt so betrayed or felt so angry at Dave before. Unfortunately, your father isn’t quite as hurt by this display. Once he follows you out of the room, he puts a hand to your shoulder, smiling fondly at the two of them, as if touched.

Dave at least has the decency to look embarrassed when he finally, finally pulls back. Rubbing his tears away with the back of his hands. “I’m going to go see my bedroom again, is that alright?”

He spoke in a hiccuped manner, one that spoke of the tears that had been spilled a moment ago. His brother looks happy. Truly happy, and he ruffles his hair before sending him off.

Your father approaches the elder Strider, happy too, and you take this chance to follow Dave into his bedroom, shutting the door soundly behind you.

His breathing has not yet returned to normal. And yours is starting to get dangerously close to furious.

“What was that about?”

He stares for a few moments. It is a defying gaze. Still future Dave.

“Well?”

“Well, nothing. I was just thanking him.”

What? Thanking him for getting him out of an arrangement where you could spend all of your time together? You don’t ask that. Instead you tell him.

“You didn’t have to cry about it. That was really weird. I thought you stopped being a crybaby.” He doesn’t seem to want to reply, so you press on. “It’s not kindergarten anymore, you’re not going to start crying every day again, right?”

And, yeah, it’s mean. But he doesn’t seem to care enough to react, and that seems to you to be even meaner.

“You never hugged me like that.” And that wasn’t quite what you had meant to say, but it certainly was what was on the back of your mind. You did a lot for Dave too, right? He never hugged you with such heart bearing emotion. He had never been quite as genuinely affectionate towards you as he had just demonstrated. You’d simply thought he wasn’t someone who pulled things like that, but now things seemed different.

“Huh?” He seems to have come back from faraway thoughts. And it angers you further. He could actually bother to pay attention if he was making the trip to the past. Was he only going to pay attention to his brother?

“What, are we not friends anymore where you’re from?”

“What?”

You don’t like the way he looks at you, as if you were irking him, or taking up his time unnecessarily.

Speaking of time, there was no way he’d be sticking around for much longer. Future Dave would soon be back in his place.

“You know what? I’m glad to have my bed just for me again. I’m really glad.”

“Oh, that’s real funny. ‘Cause you were in my bed last night.”

And there was still something smug about his air and about his words. Despite the traces on his expression left by his previous silent tears, and despite his cryptic words. He had that look of someone who was ready and willing to pick a fight.

“What’s your problem? What happened to you?”

“Nothing!” And it’s the same aggravated way he’ll correct your posture, you’d recognise it anywhere. And despite your view of this overgrown person in this child’s body, suddenly and finally he seems like the same child.

“What’s wrong?”

You’ve hit the nail right on the head.

His head drops, his frown deepens, he says nothing. Something is wrong, you know as much. And that sentimental hug seems like even bigger of a question mark now. An unresolved question mark that will be as much for a long time, you hope. Slowly, you gather that this Dave is defensive, and yet on the attack, and overall uncomfortable. But able to hug his brother unlike he’d ever hugged you before.

But the Dave before you now is clutching his head and whining, and it is the Dave that had dragged his sneakers through the snow yesterday to avoid coming home to cardboard boxes. In the end, he hadn’t anyway, because the boxes had already been shipped off, trapping him in the situation he was now in.

Yet, this all seems like an elaborate lie to you now. He’d come back to a happy time. Today was not supposed to be a happy memory.

When his eyes lock with yours, when he is able to withdraw his hands from his wrinkled forehead, you feel fiercely angry and replicate perfectly that defensive attack he had been putting up just a little while ago. His eyes are different. One shade closer to red after this timely possession. Or not really, not anymore. Those eyes were hardly brown now. They were brown by a stretch. You felt vile resent crawl up your throat. You do little to keep it down.

“Your eyes are turning red, by the way. Freak.”

Despite this acclaimed redness, his eyes register the pain of the word just as easily as it would have a day ago. You ignore him, even shove his shoulder as you push past him and out of his room for good. You don’t care for interrupting what seemed to be a casual, happy talk between the two adults.

“I’ll be waiting in the car,” you announce.

You take the stairs down. Each step brings a shred more of regret.

You realise, belatedly, that it had been you today who had felt defensive, on the attack, and overall uncomfortable. Dave is the closest person you have, and you were losing him as it was, cutting him loose was the predictable, expected move.

-xxx-

Sleepwalker. Or, ex-sleepwalker. You’d been told that when you were a little younger you would get up in the middle of the night, glassy-eyed. You were also told that you took a liking to drawing on your bedroom walls whilst sleepwalking. Your mother had washed the walls diligently, put your coloured crayons out of your reach. But you hadn’t needed crayons to draw, anything would have done. And by the time your mother was gone, your father had considerably fallen behind on the duties of erasing these nightly habits.

So the walls of your bedroom had been repainted after your mother’s funeral. You wonder if they are fabricated memories, but you recall that the things on your walls had not been very pleasant. Following that, your father had decided to tuck you into your covers and sheets extremely tightly, not leaving you any wiggle room. Sleepwalking had stopped. Night terrors had started.

But aside from your disturbing screams, there were not as many consequences to this new sleep disturbance. Your father had never consulted any sleep expert or anything of the sort. You hoped, as he did, it would eventually and simply fade away.

Eight years old is starting to be too old for night terrors.

And sleeping with your best friend too is a bit too young for your age.

On Saturday night, you do not have any night terrors nor any nightmares, and you do not share your bed. On Sunday night, you do not have any night terrors nor any nightmares, and you do not share your bed.

You sleep reasonably well. But it is uncomfortable all the same. On Monday morning, Dave drags a chair to your desk and talks with you before class, just as if nothing had changed at all. But his laugh is forced, his eyes are steadily kept downwards, and he’d quite obviously picked away at his cuticles.

You don’t really engage with the chat. This only results in increases in all of these behaviours. You feel bad. You feel guilty. You feel angry, and you want Dave to go away. Surely it would be easy to just tell him to go away. You’d called him a freak, that was much more hurtful, as was showcased by his presence now. But you don’t manage to say it.

So class starts, and he drags his chair back to his end of the classroom. Monday mornings were the worst for him, the first scheduled class for the day being science. You manage to only glance his way once. He isn’t secretly reading, he hasn’t even bothered to do that much. Instead he has put his head down over his crossed arms. The teacher never calls him back into order, and you wonder why that is exactly.

He doesn’t come over during other breaks, but you don’t go see him either. You wonder if he is trying to fall asleep, trying to get away. Honestly, you want to go over and apologise. But you feel too insignificant to take the initiative.

You hadn’t been fair. You knew. Your father hadn’t talked to you about it at all yet though. So you sensed you must have had some excuse. Because it was difficult to have Dave leave? Because it was difficult to know Dave had seen leaving as a positive turning point in his life. It was difficult to know he felt close to his brother in a display that would never happen with you.

By the time lunch comes, you have decided you need to make amends. You think of splitting your lunch with Dave. That would be nice. He was used to your father’s cooking, and you had no idea what he could have had packed for today.

Dave never comes into the cafeteria. You hold out for him, refuse to go ahead and eat until he can make an appearance. Until you can offer to go half and half on your packed lunch, and let him pick whichever half he would prefer. But he doesn’t sit at your table, or any other table.

Maybe his brother had taken him out of school for their own shared lunch. That shoots down your resolve to make amends.

He is in class when you return to the school building after recess though. He smiles at you, a flash, a tug of his lips, but you give up on smiling back.

He comes over. And you think, again, that you might be able to apologise, or to make up for your words.

“D’you want to come sleep over tonight?”

“Huh?”

“Bro is going to ask your dad if you can come sleep over.”

He is deadpan. His eyes are down. But why would they not be, you hadn’t been gracious in the way you’d pointed out the change in them.

“I want to go home tonight.”

His eyes flash up this time at your answer. It is menacing now with the shade of his glare and its sharpness, and you feel your own gaze falter.

“Why not?”

And instead of making things right, you tell him, “I like having my own bed.”

He fidgets. You watch him pick the skin of his fingers. You wonder if he’d actually eaten anything for lunch. And then you think of the way he had rested his head over his textbook during the first class of the day.

“Well, I don’t. I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” It’s not voluntary, it’s automatic. You want to hug him. Maybe kiss him. You remember you used to that a lot more when you were younger, whenever you thought he needed to be comforted. But it had started feeling wrong. You didn’t think that was necessarily a normal thing to do with Dave. But you can’t actually do either one of these things now anyway. You can only think that he’s better at hugging his brother, better at being open and heartfelt about it. You don’t care to try.

“Can you come over at least a little bit then? You don’t have to sleep over, I guess…”

You make an uninterested noise, and his head and shoulders sink further down.

“Uhm. But like, you didn’t stay long last time. You didn’t get to see everything.”

“I saw plenty, Dave. And I stayed long too, you just can’t remember any of it.” They were spiteful words. How were you supposed to forgive him? Forgive him for viewing his break away from you as a positive, happy memory.

“Ok, well, whatever!”

You look at him and his menacing glare is back. You recognise that the glare is less menacing than it is pained, but you dismiss that.

You sense his own spiteful words threatening to spill. But he turns on his heel and marches back where he came from. He wasn’t really prone to hurtful words, you’d forgotten. That was more you than it was anyone else, apparently.

You quickly discover a pattern as regret and guilt rises in you with passing classes. His presence irked you, rubbed salt in the fresh wounds and did not allow for you to push for a resolution. His absence irked you in a different way. As if you were expecting him to be the balm and bandages and not the salt.

By the end of the day you feel tired. You feel tired, and you have not eaten your lunch. You wonder if your father would worry about that. Fleetingly you think of going with Dave to avoid your father, but that was just not good enough of a tradeoff.

You do wait for him at the end of the day though, surprisingly. He doesn’t say a word as he shoulders his coat and follows you outside. But he grabs your hand, and you let him.

It is short-lived. His brother is waiting in front of the school. He lets go of your hand as if it had suddenly caught on fire. You glare at his brother.

“Hey, kiddo. Lil’ Egbert, you coming too?”

“What are you doing here, bro?” Dave seems upset. He is slouching considerably.

“So what, I’m not allowed to want to see my little brother? I wanted to make sure you came home straight away. We’ve got decorating to do still.”

Dirk is considerably upbeat in contrast. The bright smile he wears is unlike any you’d seen on him before. This isn’t reflected in Dave’s demeanour, nor his expression.

“Well, you’re not getting on the school bus.”

“Nah, wanted to show you kids the public bus path. It’s real good, you’ll see.”

You are a bit shocked at the contrast in between the two of them. The expression on Dave’s face now was akin to someone who was trying to pry their leg out of a bear trap.

“Don’t bother, Bro. John’s not coming over.”

“…Oh.”

The look the older man gives you sends shivers down your spine. Purely accusatory. They didn’t need you anyway. That was the whole point of them leaving. And in a second, Dirk seems consolatory, rubbing Dave’s back, promising him various of his favourites. You watch, bemused.

Dirk Strider had been the one who had been happy all along to be getting a new place, to be stable, independent, whatever it was your father had described it to be. Dave had never looked happy about it up until Saturday.

You try not to worry as you realise Dave had gone back to a time when his brother had been happy. Not a time he had been happy himself specifically.

“Actually, could I still come? Did my father say it was alright?”

So you end up tagging along. And you hold Dave’s hand securely despite his brother’s presence. Later that night, when you are alone, you apologise and kiss him. He smiles, honestly. But still pleads with you to check his eyes.

You lie through your teeth and tell him you’d only been exaggerating. They were just darkening with time, that was normal, you tell him.

Chapter Text

John's expression is a dead giveaway.  

You feel no need to ask or to inquire.  You'd swung the door open, and that had been quite enough for you to find your answer.  It was silly how quickly you'd accepted this answer when you'd spent the last hour or so following up your text for help pacing your apartment in worried silence.  

It wasn't as if there hadn't been any early warning signs.  In fact, you'd been obsessively checking for years now.  It hadn't truly gotten out of hand or out of your control until this very morning.  John even frequently joked about it, telling you the only substantial difference was that you could give much more meaningful and effective death glares.  And that had been true enough; there hadn't been enough of a marked difference for you to be veritably worried or to take measures to keep the situation from degenerating.  It wasn't an absurd side-effect, and though you did not care much for it, you did not perceive any tangible harms either.  

Slightly odd eyes weren't a dramatic price to pay when it came to using the ability to travel through time whenever your head hit your pillow and you bothered to put your mind to it.  Blood red eyes, however, branding you with the image of a horror film creature; yeah, you had more of a problem with that one.  

You guess the situation had either taken a turn exponentially for the worse, or you'd willingly looked the other way and let this get to the point it now had reached.  Which should not have happened, not when you spent every morning following a temporal excursion in the mirror.  Sure, you would see the difference when comparing the reflection to older photographs of yourself, but you didn't think it was anything too drastic that would draw attention.  

Would the shade the colour of your irises had jumped to over the last night be drastic enough to draw attention?  John's expression is a dead giveaway.  The answer is yes.  A million times yes.  Somehow, it had been the final push that would now qualify your eyes as red, and never as brown.  

"Is your brother home?" happens to be the very first thing he asks you as he enters the apartment solemnly.  

His logic is reasonable, given the fact that you look as if someone had poured too much of their time into some voodoo project involving you as the star.  That was surely supposed to be a cause of concern for your guardian.  The only sort of legitimately passable response you could think of in the context of your brother actually questioning you about the state of your eyes would be something along the lines of demonic possession.  

So thankfully, the answer to John's question is no, but surprisingly the information you have to add on the matter is; "But he was earlier, before I texted you.  He totally saw."  

He looks just about as worried as you do.  He is worried about your brother piecing your secret together, you know him well enough to be able to tell.  You would be worried about the very same thing too, but you can't be.  

"Uh, he didn't say a word about it," you confess.  He'd looked straight into your eyes and had gone about his day absolutely normally.

Unfortunately, John's immediate recognition had already stopped you from hoping that it wasn't all that noticeable.  It was extremely noticeable, but for some reason your brother had decided against commenting.  In fact, he'd never approached the topic with you, not once in the last six years of your progressively changing ocular pigments.  

John proceeds to pace your apartment just as you'd done earlier, until he stops and locks eyes with you.  You can guess his reasoning because you'd gone through the steps too.  Your brother cared for you more than you could say.  And so his motivation was not a lack of interest.  But then, what could it be?  

His lips produced a deeply thoughtful sound as he took a seat on your brother's futon.  "But your mom had weird eyes too, right?"  

You ignore both the past tense and the use of the word 'weird'.  

"Yeah, sort of.  When I was little, Bro would tell me it was because she didn't wear her safety goggles.  That it was because of the chemical fumes, or something."  You shrug, much less stressed now that you were thinking back to when you were younger.  "I thought it was just some Strider urban legend thing he would tell me so I'd wear my helmet when I went biking."  

As a matter of fact, you know that it is.  It wasn't really much of a coincidence that he would tell you this story in explicit detail whenever he was gearing you up to go on a bike trail with him.  

"Well, maybe.  Hear me out here.  Maybe, he's just guessing that, being raised in the same house where your mother had her lab, you were exposed to those fumes and this is a belated effect?  And he doesn't want to hurt your feelings by pointing it out?"  

You scrunch up your nose in disagreement and finally plop down next to John.  "Sure.  But this is Bro.  He's blunt as hell."  

He makes an irritated sound at your use of 'hell' which you find amusing, as you know that he swears more in the future than you ever do.  

"Maybe it's just not obvious?" you try without much confidence.  

You expect a sarcastic snort from John, but he only stares at you sadly.  It is, in your opinion, an even more valid testimony to your newly acquired freak status.  

"Was it really getting so much worse so quickly?"  You can acknowledge that you're not acting very cool at all.  That, even, you were being needlessly vulnerable.  But John doesn't really make fun of it, he simply wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you close to his side.  And, despite that with every passing year you promise yourself your best friend won't have to baby you anymore, you still let it happen.  

"Maybe it was just the tipping point, Dave.  Don't worry about it."

"But, we have school tomorrow."  

He opens his mouth, and you guess that he wants to tell you to skip.  He shuts his mouth, and you guess that he's remembered you have one of your end of the year exams tomorrow.  You know so because you'd gone through the same steps mentally as well.  You were just a week away from summer vacation.  If only you'd gone that one week without travelling.  If only...  

"We'll find something, maybe no one will even care."  You can both sense the heartlessness in this suggestion.  "We could go buy you some contact lenses!"

You shrug because you don't want to tell him that your eyes feel oversensitive.  That you don't like having the light shining in them anymore, and that even putting your face under the jet of the water of the shower felt painful.  Of course, none of that occurs when you are in another time.  Then light seems completely right and fine in your eyes.  But the more you escaped to those times, the more discomfort you felt in the present.  

You don't give him an answer.  It seems to worry him because he adds on to the suggestions.  "Well, maybe it's just the light here.  Maybe it will look different in school.  Here, come here."  

He maladroitly manoeuvres your head to rest on his lap and you shut your eyes immediately.  It is apparent that he is putting your face directly in the aims of the rays of sun coming through your living room window.  He fails to recognise the pained expression on your face and instead reassures you that he doesn't mind the colour of your eyes, that you don't have to hide.  

So you open your eyes.  Blink too many times for comfort, but concentrate on his to avoid turning over and keeping your face as far out of reach of direct sunlight as you could in the present situation.  

The look on his face is concentrated, but when he puts his hands over your cheeks you can convince yourself that his expression had gone considerably softer.  

"So?  Not too scared, are you?" you ask him, with the sort of sad smile that really wasn't redeeming you for your prolonged show of vulnerability.  

"Dave Strider.  You are just about the least scary person to have seen the light of day."  You attempt to glare at him.  "Yeah, you can glare all you want.  But I've seen you talk to birds, so.  I rest my case."  

You breathe deeply and shut your eyes.  He automatically takes it as a sign to run a hand through your hair in an attempt to comfort you.  It isn't.  It was to get the sunlight out of your eyes.  You don't turn it down, however.  You don't either deny that some comfort could be of use.  

"C'mon.  You're Dave Strider, you're too cool for people to mess with you anyway."  

It is a nice thought, one that he insists on repeating throughout the day until his father eventually returns to pick him up.  Regrettably, this statement is disproven as soon as the following day.  

The following day only has one positive highlight, and a predictable one too.  The final, end of the year exam you sit through is easy.  It is predictable because it is your math exam.  You don't actually get why exactly you should be gifted in the world of mathematics.  John tells you you're not good with time.  And you know you're not very good with dimensions and space either.  Though, typically you don't like to recognise out loud that you are apt to walking into walls.  

Signs point to you not being gifted in the domain of numbers.  As it turns out, you actually are.  You have to resist snapping your pencil whenever your teacher brings up the idea of a brilliant future waiting for you in your future chemistry classes however.  

So the exam is easy.  And John acts happy and upbeat, but it really is an act.  You know because he spent most of the period watching the clock rather than his copy.  You know because he'd spent the day desperately trying to keep your attention on him to ensure that you wouldn't catch anyone else's eye.  You know because he smiles at you too much at any given opportunity.  And, sure, he was the type of person to smile more often than not, but you were able to pick up on it regardless.  

The exam is easy, but nothing else is.  You're not really surprised that you get held back after class.  Well, maybe you'd been hoping against it.  You'd behaved well and you'd managed to stay out of other students' way.  It wasn't as if you'd gone around picking fights and really shining a spotlight on your, agreeably scary, facial features.  

But your teacher still asks for a moment with you after the end of the day.  John's presence in the doorframe is not exactly your idea of support.  His fidgeting is enough that you have to, more than once, keep yourself from snapping at him and asking him to go to the bathroom already if he wasn't able to stand correctly.  

You don't.  You pretend he isn't there instead.  You pretend to be looking at your teacher, though really your eyes are set on his chin rather than on his eyes.  You wouldn't dare, not when he was busy berating you for your inappropriate looks.  

His initial idea, of course, is that you are sporting creepy contact lenses to be edgy, or maybe defiant.  You earn yourself a lecture on pointless rebellion, and you nod your head docilely.

You honestly think it is insulting.  You are twelve.  You can tell when John puts his contact lenses in for his piano performances.  It is as clear as crystal.  The faint blue of the ring in the white of his eyes.  Contact lenses were easy to spot.  You could have done it two years ago.  Your teacher, an adult, was surely able to do the same.  

But when you drift your gaze upwards to lock eyes with his, he noticeably avoids them.  You try not to let it bother you.  Somewhere in you, without reason, you can tell he knows there is something wrong with you, that there really was no contact conspiracy behind it.  

"Just promise me we won't have this talk again, alright?  We just don't want to disturb the classroom uselessly, right?"  

You answer 'yes', through your teeth, with no heart.  

And you storm out of the classroom and past John.  But it really isn't all that bad, is it?  It wouldn't be all that bad if it weren't for the part of you, somewhere inside of you, that could actually use up reason for this scenario.  That told you adults were usually worried for you, without needing any incentive to do so.  It was the part of you that recognised that the school counsellor knew you by name, by sight, without you ever needing to approach her in the first place.  It was the part of you that understood why an adult would pull you into a conversation warning you not to be a rebel without a cause, because you could tell that was what adults seemed to be expecting of you.  

"Hey, what's wrong?  What did he say?  Did he notice?"  

"Gee, Egbert I don't know, what do you think?"  

He frowns.  

"Don't start calling me that.  Future you, does it all the time."  

That was true.  And future John would usually get excited when you'd visit and call him by his first name.  

You stop yourself from walking out of the school, at the very end of the hallway, and slowly turn towards John.  

"You know what he's talking about, right?  Everyone's already decided anyway."  

"What?  That you had contact lenses in, but that's a good thing!" he reassures you hastily.  

You only feel slightly peeved that he had been listening in.  

"No, not that."  You pause, but don't manage to take in an extra breath.  "No.  Everyone just expects me to be that weird teenager that keeps dead things on shelves, and talks to crows, and has a fucking dark closet, and goes to school on his skateboard, and wears shades indoors because he's a douche!"  

John gives you the look that translates that he is sure you have lost your mind.  

But you hadn't.  These were all weird things about your future which you weren't particularly fond of, and you were betting, the sort of rebel without a cause your teacher had just told you not to be.  You were the self-fulfilling prophecy.  And you'd like to blame only yourself, but you can't, not when people had handled you like an imported faberge egg.  

"I don't know, Dave.  That's really not what Mister Anderson was trying to tell you, I don't think..."  

He stared off upwards, obviously making efforts to recall the exact wording of the conversation which had only just occurred.  You feel annoyed.  

And suddenly, you feel more than annoyed.  

"I don't get contact lenses..."  you mumble.  His eyebrows go upwards too now, but you try not to pay it attention.  "No.  I just walk around with sunglasses like some blind loser.  Every single time I go to the future, John.  And you know who is always there to keep them in place?  Because I hate glasses and always pull them up?  You."  

You upset yourself further when your mind compares you to the only parent you know.  Your mother too didn't like the weight on the bridge of her nose, which was why she was never found with her safety goggles in place.  But obviously, you were going to grow past that if you were going to keep your eyes hidden in such a stupid way.   

Self-fulfilling prophecy seems like even more of an appropriate term now.  Of course you were  going to wear dark-tinted lenses, you already knew you were going to.  And you would probably start buying stuffed animals from taxidermists, and fuck with your closet, and learn to balance on a skateboard; because you knew you were going to do it.  Not because you had chosen to do so.  

You almost forget about John.  He looks immeasurably guilty.  You're reminded that you'd stop calling him by his first name too, because you'd heard from him in the future.  Not because you preferred it, or anything like that.  

"Maybe you get used to it?  It'll keep you out of trouble, for sure.  And it'll look good too!"  

You genuinely scowl at his words.  But given that he'd already been attempting to melt himself into a puddle of goo in order to escape you, his demeanour does not change in the slightest.  

You’re choked up when you tell him, “I just don’t want to be the person I end up being.”  

It is possibly one of the hardest things you’ve said so far in life.  You recall the way older John’s face instantly lights up whenever it is revealed that you are from the past.  You have no doubts that he too must dislike the person you end up being.  

He puts up a valiant effort, he pleads with you that this just isn’t true as you both leave the building.  He describes all of the qualities your future self has whenever he has the chance to meet him.  But your skin’s felt cold since speaking last and no compliment in the world will warm it.  You are doomed to be a person you will not be able to stand.  And you had entirely doomed yourself.  You had lost your grip on the controls of your life.  Had you not ventured into your nighttime activities, you would still have the option to shape up your future.  You had scratched out the option.  

When he speaks next it is to clarify what sort of plans you had together for the rest of the afternoon.  

You, however, tell him that you will be returning home, by yourself, in the sort of defeated voice that couldn’t be reassuring by any stretch of the imagination.  

He tries to follow you for the next five beats at least, you turn towards him and you’ve truly had enough for the day.  You tell him, “I don’t want to be around you right now.”  

Somehow he keeps following you.  “You’ve had a tough day, let me tag along.”  

“So you can do what, exactly?”  You do sound impatient, but you don’t manage to sound frustrated or irritated.  You only manage the choked up, defeated sound that you didn’t want to hear anymore.  “Pet my hair and kiss my cheeks and all the shit you like to pull?  It isn’t going to change any outcome.  I’ll still be dealing with the same piece of shit life.”  

His lips tremble, and you can’t decide if he is either upset with the situation or resisting to correct you on your continued use of vulgar language today.  

“Do us both a favour, go home.  You don’t ever really help me all that much.”  

“I know you’re upset, and that is why you’re saying this.  Let me come, I swear you’ll feel better,” he promises you in last resort.  

He must know it is his last resort, because when you point out that this is your bus stop and that you’d like for him to leave, he does.  But from the inside of the bus shelter, as you watch him walking away with his phone already pulled out, you can tell that he is more shaken than his strong exterior would have indicated.  He is just walking, and it is just his back, and you don’t really know if you should trust your judgement, but you still do.  You also try not to think of what will result of you pushing the idea onto him that you don’t want him around whenever you feel uncomfortable or unhappy.  You still do.  You think about when will be the last time that he will take those words from you.  You try to tell yourself it wasn’t the moment just passed now.  

When you board the bus, John is no longer in sight.  Perhaps he had called his father to come pick him up and had retreated inside the school building.  The skies are grey, you are expecting rain.  The bus ride is a lengthy one.  Your brother often suggests that you attend a school closer to home, but that’s not something you want to bring up with John.  You usually spend the time on the bus resting with your headphones on.  

By the time you get home, it is raining.  Home smells like food, maybe like crepes.  Crepes covered with hot chilli sauce, if you know the first thing about your brother.  You tell yourself that you do want to spend dinner time with him.  

“I’m really tired, Bro.  I’m just going to head to bed.”  But your words and actions end up with a different verdict than your mind had been reporting.  

Maybe he answers, maybe he doesn’t.  And though you’d immediately ruled out that he’d ignored your glaringly red eyes because he just didn’t care, now you were reconsidering it.  

It was stupid.  It was stupid because he was waiting out there, ready to cook for you and to spend the evening alongside you, and you would instead spend your time locked up in the sole bedroom of the apartment, speculating on his so called disinterest towards you.  

Your mind is quick to remind you that you had been short with John too today.  You had not been the best person you could have been today.  The thought alone is enough to push you to actually lay down in your bed and to close your eyes.  

You wish you were the best person you could be.  The person who wouldn’t see themselves as a freak and who consequently would not act out on that.  You hadn’t actually meant to go to bed as you’d told your brother, but your unwillingness to sort through your emotions pushes you into a deep slumber.  

-193-

The initial moment is always a struggle to find your footing and your surroundings.  It might have been generous to call it a contrast.  It was literally night and day.  From being in bed to being mid-movement, you didn’t have a fraction of a second to sink into the new moment.  

From your relaxed being, you had gone to tensed, nervous, different.  The gunshot is the best indicator to put you back into perspective.  

If the initial auditive cue is the clear sound of a gun being fired, your visual cue is even more of an assault to your senses.  You usually had many chances of not being initially blinded by the light of day.  There were chances of indoors, chances of early mornings or late evenings, and the very popular chance of having your eyes covered by shades.  This time, there is no shield to the strong sunlight.  To your eyes, the transition is a leap to strong sunlight, to your ears it is a leap to the single gunshot.  On your skin, you feel the heat of the sunlight, but the hairs on your arms are raised regardless.  

The only thought on your mind is the faraway wish to be someone better than the someone who’d collapsed onto their bed.  So, you run.  

You are surprised that you are able to read the context.  You are surprised, because your conclusion seems blurry in your mind.  But you still run ahead.  You sprint forward, with only vague, in the background memories of televised races and disorganised running in your gym classes at school.  The bareness of your arms and legs, the burnt yellowed grass ahead, the presence of others you cannot see ahead but can feel besides you.  You did not know exactly why there wasn’t a buffer of a moment in which you wouldn’t comprehend that you were starting a race.  

You just run.  

You just run and you don’t really consider who it would be you were against.  You don’t consider your height and you don’t consider the season.  You don’t consider any of the clues you usually liked to gather when you’d wake up in a different time.  All you really want to do is run for now.  Any thought that crosses your mind about John, or about your brother, or about your eyes, only motivates you to hit the ground harder and to take wider strides and to push through any discomfort or tiredness that should take over you.  

The race is a hot, white flash.  Your ears stutter on the echo of the gunshot that had woken you up into this world, and your eyes stay unfocused throughout the experience.  Your skin is warm, but you never truly feel warm until you pass the finish line.  That is the breaking moment.  When you gasp in whatever air you can, and press a hand to your forehead to feel the absolute hotness emanating from your flesh.  It is the moment in which all noise and sound breaks into your world and you can focus your gaze.  

The cheering is loud, but startling.  You are the first arrived.  Aside from the very beginning, you hadn’t really looked into identifying the sensation of others being near you.  It had evaporated neatly and quickly as you’d pushed yourself to run and to push your thoughts very, very, very far away from where you were now.  

Though that had felt like a daze, it all starts to feel like a dream when you hear your name.  There were too many people around.  And too many trying to talk to you at once.  But still, John was gesticulating in a way you’d recognise, even though his arms were lankier than when you’d last seen him…  Even though he was smiling at you as if you were the best person, and not the sort of person who consistently pushed him away.  

You move towards him in a lethargic way, but the tight hug you find yourself in immediately upon reaching him has some way of grounding you.  

There is more cheering, you don’t care to follow or to be as aware as you had been when you’d just gone for it and had decided to run far ahead from the group.  

“Can you believe it?  You were like, a full minute ahead of everyone else?”  He pulls away and he is all smiles.  

You feel slightly uncomfortable, you don’t have good enough a grasp of the day’s current events to feel confident.  You hear something about a five kilometre distance, and you feel sort of sick such a number had felt like such a constant daze.  

You don’t say too much, he reads you as cold as detached and you suppose you are.  

“How do you feel?  How are we going to celebrate?”  

You make some sort of a laughing sound, discouraged by the questions.  He hadn’t yet addressed you with anything which wasn’t formulated into a question.  

“It’s a big deal, don’t downplay it, ok?”  

Again with the questioning tone, despite no real question at the core of the statement.  You’re sort of wishing you’d wake up for real now, you feel out of place.  

“Dave, come on.  At least smile, you totally outdid everyone else.”  

So you smile.  All the running hadn’t really distanced you from what was going on in realtime, at home, though.  And now all there was added to your plate was a tiredness deep within your bones.  

The expression he pulls then is one of someone who had just figured something out.  You don’t know what it is exactly he has figured out, but it quickly materialises as he retrieves a pair of aviators, you’ve worn in the future quite often, from his messenger bag.  

You don’t understand the relief that washes over you once they are on, but he seems to get it, nodding seriously at your change in posture.  

He lowers his voice, tells you, “You were avoiding my eyes, so…”  

This sounds like code for something.  As if you don’t do it very often anymore.  It is somewhat reassuring.  

“Yeah, I’m just tired,” you admit, shrugging with the words.  

He keeps nodding understandingly.  

“Holy shit, I’ll bet.  You’re stoked though, right?”  

“I guess.”  

It truly was a guess.  You looked around, discreetly you hoped, as he kept nodding at your every word.  You didn’t recognise anyone else, you didn’t recognise the building, you didn’t recognise the grounds.  You truly were out of place.  

“Well, another gold medal for your collection, huh?”  

Was that a thing?  You glanced around warily, somewhat afraid of being whisked away for some dumb award ceremony.  You give him some sort of reply along the lines of a weak ‘woohoo’, but he doesn’t seem to be very fond of the reply.  

“Dave, come on.  You won the national track championship, and now crosscountry.  Dude, they’d bury you before making you pay a cent for college.  Aren’t you happy?”  

Your eloquent reply is, “What?”  

You hadn’t really kept up with that, but…  As he would have made it sound.  This was some big deal race.  You were a pretty big deal at this too.  And your brother wasn’t going to go broke to send you away to school because of it?  Automatically, you look around, hoping to find him, and you don’t admit it, but maybe also your mother.  

“Hey!”  He snaps his fingers a few inches from your face and you tense up, giving him a worried look.  

“How old are you?”  

He was frowning, and you weren’t exactly sure why, but now did not seem like the most suitable time to be dropping the news that you were acting weird for good reason.  

You make a guesstimate based on his looks and based on the college talk and go for seventeen.  

He frowns deeper.  

“Dave.  So help me god, do not tell me you ran like that as a six year old or some shit.”  

You laugh, shrug, tell him you’re twice that.  

He throws up his arms in frustration but soon is laughing too.  “You’re serious right now?  You beat out all those other bulky, scary guy as a little kid?  Or did you just show up, please tell me you just showed up.”  

“Well, I showed up for the gun shooting thing.”  

“And you didn’t even hesitate, ugh.”  He seems exasperated.  You don’t care, you’re sticking closer to him, hoping you could just go back home before you were put in a position where you’d unfortunately need to interact with people who weren’t John.  That would be real fun, speaking like a little kid to a college recruiter, you’re sure.  

“Did you want me to mess up,” you ask him in a whisper, edging closer and closer to him.  

“No, you dumbhead.  You’re just amazing, that’s all.”  

The sincerity in his voice poses an uncomfortable silence in your exchange.  He stares, and you stare back.  He’s never quite looked at you the way he is looking at you now.  You try to ask about it, but you’re not sure how to.  He is the one to break away from the connection, laughing to himself as he covers his eyes tiredly.  

“Dave, don’t look at me like that.”  

“Are you serious?  You’re the one who is looking at me all weirdly!”  

He laughs a little more, but it sounds distinctively sadder.  

“Yeah, that’s what I meant!  Don’t look at me like I’m looking at you weirdly.”   

You stay quiet, but also quietly fuming.  The least he could do for the poor boy that you are is make things simple and easy to comprehend.  You were supposed to be catching some restful sleep after all, not solving mystery after mystery.  

When he pulls his hand back though, his eyes have watered considerably and your aggressive stance loses all power.  

“Can’t I be proud of my best friend?”  

“Well, sure, I guess.”  But you would not have ranked prideful over regretful in your guesses.  

He removes his glasses under the pretence of having to wipe the lenses, but you see him brush his tears off his cheeks with the hem of his sleeve.  

“We’re still best friends, aren’t we?”  That fear had been the first one.  He was strangely moved, and you were afraid there was more distance between you now.  Based on what?  Probably, solely, on that strange look he had given you.  

He nods, almost anxiously, as he puts his glasses back into place.  His smile, however, is tired.  

You think it might be strange of you to harbour such long-lasting fears that your friendship would fall through, especially when you had not been too eager to instigate it.  You’d had to listen to yourself from the future to even go there.  But maybe you were already getting to that point where you valued his friendship dearly enough that you would go to lengths to warn yourself to invest everything into this friendship.  

But now that the idea had come into being, there was no shaking it.  Despite his enthusiasm and interested questions, he did seem to be treating you differently.  

“You sure?”  You’d calmed your tone back down to a whisper, glancing from side to side once more to make sure you eclipsing yourself from the race and into the crowd was still a thing that was alright.  

Unfortunately, he does not answer you in the way you had expected him to.  Instead, he puts his hands over your cheeks and gives you the same look again, only stronger, more intense.  

“Listen,  I love you.  I’m proud of you.”  

You look away.  Not only because he hadn’t clearly reassured you that you still held the elusive best friend status.  It was also because…  Because you knew what that look had meant after all, you just did not know the name for it.  

“You love me?”  If you had not sounded like a proper teenager before, now you certainly didn’t either.  You didn’t even sound like you were twelve.  You sounded the same as when your mother would tell you she loved you.  And you won’t admit that was because you never really were sure she was being honest, but you won’t deny that either.  

Though, you’d never had a motive to be unsure about John’s words before.  

“Yeah, no matter what.  So stop worrying.  Both present day, and wherever it is you came from.  Because at the very least, you always have me to back you up.”  

You smile.   You don’t look at him, but you do smile.  You don’t come anywhere near the part of your mind telling you that he truly was always there for you, that you’d never even managed time travel wherein he wouldn’t be waiting for you at the other side.  

“I love you, too.”   

When you look at him, his smile does not match yours.  

He tells you, “Too bad you only ever say it when you come from the past.”  

You want to say that that isn’t true, you wish you could say that that wasn’t true.  You can’t think of anything to back that wish up though.  Hopefully, you were just being forgetful?  But John does not seem as if he is making fun of you.  He doesn’t even seem angry.  He seems sad.  You wonder if that was what that look had been about, love and sadness.  The combination reminds you of a word you’ve read too often in novels whenever they would approach the subject of romance.  Longing.  But that doesn’t seem right.  

“Do you think you’re waking up soon?”  

You don’t want to say yes.  Though you also do.  Maybe you can tell John you love him in the present, show him you’re able to.  Keep the sad, strange look off his face.  

When you don’t answer he moves his hands away from your face to instead hold your left hand steadily.  

“Right, alright.  Let me just say, because I know I’m supposed to tell past-you at some point, and this seems appropriate.  Take up running seriously, ok?  It makes you happy and stuff, and you like it, so.”  

“Wow, that was inspirational.”  

Your tone is deadpanned, you only break into laughter when he punches your shoulder lightly.  

“But, don’t you think it’s concerning that running away is all I’m good at?”  

You expect him to laugh with you.  He doesn’t.  And there is enough time where he is unable to conceal his expression for you to read, as clearly as day, the look of anguished concern.  

-xxx-

You wake up extremely early.  It takes you a good ten minutes of staring at your ceiling to remember how you’d fallen asleep.  It is three minutes more than what it usually takes you after one of your episodes.  You text John obsessively until he too is awake, and once he is that is only when you bother to get out of bed.  

Your brother manages to wake up before you leave the apartment, which happens to be an entire three minutes before the time at which he’d usually wake you up.  Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything about you taking his orange rimmed sunglasses from the kitchen counter where they’d been, or about you wearing them.  Granted, they were a bit too attention grabbing, and a bit too large for your face to be ideal, but they’d substitute nicely for now.  

You don’t want to talk, but he still manages to shout at you through the door; “Have a good day, don’t get in too much trouble!”  

You’d fled the scene, and were racing down the staircase as the words reached you.  Maybe he’d wake neighbours, you think that would be funny.  

Racing down the staircase proves to be funner than national championships.  Maybe because you were no longer in a dreamlike trance.  Your senses felt sharp, and you could almost feel the smile curving your lips upwards.  And even as your feet hit the main floor, your stride was long and hurried as you continued towards your bus stop.  

It was particularly chilly for early summer, and you looked at the fog that had risen over the night with a strangely focused gaze.  Your eyes didn’t hurt too much.  Maybe they hadn’t even gotten redder?  You hadn’t bothered to check this time…  

As you’d arranged over text, John too arrives at school about an hour earlier than usual.  And at least a few minutes before you.  You find him sitting in one of the only two swings behind the building of your school.  You don’t say anything, and he doesn’t say anything.  But he is just as hurried as you are when he leaps out of the swing and marches over.  

The hug you share then is heartfelt.  And though you’d felt as if you’d patched things up with him just by seeing him in another temporal dimension last night, he acts the same way, despite the time apart.  You’re grateful for him, even when he pulls back and laughs at your sunglasses.  You punch him in the shoulder, in very much the same way he had done last night when he had been older.  It sends the memories rushing back, and you feel nervous as you clear your throat.  

You mean to tell him you love him.  Because you wanted to prove that.  You didn’t want him only hearing it from versions of yourself that were not current.  

The words that leave your mouth, instead, are; “Do you love me?”  

“Yes, of course.”  

He breathes it out in a moment.  You shouldn’t feel bitter or cheated over this reply, not when you had not been able to say it yourself.  But the way in which he had said it in the future, and the way he was saying it now, those were two very different ways.  And you cannot say it does not bother you.  

“What, did I pull something weird?  Like, in the future or past?”  

You dismiss it with a wave of your hand, but quickly you’re blurting out more words that won’t necessarily help this dismissal.  

“So, like…  We are pretty much guaranteed to keep being best friends, right?”  

“Well, duh, Dave.  Come on.”  

You don’t miss how he too looks worried now.  You don’t know how firmly either one of you believe in eternal relationships and bonds.  He tries to dissimilate it by hugging you again, but this time you do not hug back.  

“Ok, come on, Egbert, you’re getting a little bit too huggy.”  

He makes an annoyed sound and you almost join in.  Because, yes, you are annoying, you can recognise that.  

“Dave.  You texted me at dawn to make sure I could come here and reassure you that you are loved and that you are my friend.”  

You immediately wiggle out of his grasp, just to be able to glare at him.  It doesn’t work out too well, because as soon as you manage to break out of his hold, he simply puts his hands over his hips and doubles over in laughter.

You are guessing these aren’t the absolute best shades for glaring.  You’re also guessing that John is happy things were not as broken up as they had been yesterday.  

Still, you do not tell him you love him.  

“Ok.  No!  That was not the reason I asked you to come!”  

He laughs harder.  You try not to look flustered.  You try not to let your voice raise in pitch.  You fail at both.  

“No, I am serious John Egbert.  I had an important mission for you.  But you can just forget it!”  

“Like hell I will, you’re just going to tell me in like two minutes.”  

He wipes at his eyes.  You try not to think about the way he’d done it in the future.  Not out of mirth, but out of true regret and true desolation.  Or maybe, out of sincere happiness at the prospect that you could be happy too.  It was a pure hearted, yet heart shattering emotion that had radiated from him.  But of course, you think of it, a lot.  

You cross your arms.  It is enough to convince him to direct you onto the swing he’d recently been occupying.  

“Ok, c’mon, you big baby.  What if I swing you?  Like I used to back in the day when you were even more of a baby?  Will you feel better then.”  

You don’t uncross your arms.  You give him a strict and firm no, and plant your heels into the ground when he does attempt to push you forward.  

He heaves a sigh then,  crosses his arms over your back and rests his chin on the top of your head.  You can’t even pretend to be bothered by it, you remain quiet instead, staring blankly ahead.  

“So, my important mission?”  

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”  

“Did future you ask you to deliver me an extremely special task or something?”  

You make an exaggerated sound of disagreement, roll your eyes, laugh at his words.  But you quickly get over it and tell him the truth.  

“Well, not really.  I think it’s more like, future you had a mission he’d been given by me in the past, get it?”  

It was crystal clear in your mind.  And yet, John answers you with, “Uh…  No.”  

“Dude.  He gave me some prime information, future you, I mean.  Which clearly means, I had to indicate to him to give me that information one day.  So, that’s what I’m doing right now.”  

“What makes you so sure?  I’m sure I’m able to use my head myself, you know.”  

You want to keep bantering, because you don’t really want to tell him.  It seems tacky.  But also, in the future, it had seemed like a big deal altogether.  You’re probably going to need to suck this up.  If you tell him now, he’ll probably help you out with actually taking up running and stuff.  It was no secret that he was a little more athletically aware than you were yourself.  

“Like, it’s not a huge deal.  But it sort of is, in the future.  Get it?”  

“Nope.  Just tell me.”  

“Nothing.  I am just…  Good at running or something.”  

You say it quickly, so it’ll be out there.  But he still doesn’t seem to get it.  

“Yes, I know you’re good at running.  But you’re also good at running your mouth, so just tell me already.”  

“John, I am telling you.  I like, get really good at running or something, and you’re supposed to encourage me, or something.  To actually do it?  I don’t know, never mind.”  

You move to stand up, but he pushes you back down by your shoulders.  

“You mean, like serious running?”  

“Yeah, John.  I mean like, give me money to go to school because I know how to put one foot in front of the other without wiping out.  Yeah.”  

He pushes the swing after all, and you plant your heels in on your way back in.  

“Dude.  That’s great!”  He sounds the same excited as he had when you’d placed first in a marathon you don’t really know much of just yet.  

“Well, I guess.  You said it makes me happy.  So I guess that’s a good thing.”  

“Wow, happy Dave.  That’s a shocking idea, huh?”  

He finds it funny.  You know it’s a joke, but you don’t find it funny.  

The silence stretches and you let him swing you for real this time.  Eventually he asks you, “You know I was joking?  I can tell when you’re happy.  It’s not rare.  It’s still nice.”  

You hum, his voice sounds better when you have air rushing past you.  

“So what, are you going to start training for Ironman or something?”  

“Iron, what?”  

He pulls you back by the chains of the swings.  There is a moment of silence and you pretend you don’t actually enjoy John pushing the swing for you.  And of course, next thing you know, he’s erupted into hysterical laughter.  

You hop off the swing, turn around, and shove him by the shoulders.  This only incites deeper laughter.  

“John, shut up!  We get it, you’re the sportier one.”  

Between hiccuping laugher he manages to sputter out the words, “Really?  Really, yet you’re going to get sports scholarships.  This is so dumb.”  

You push him again.  He quiets down and leans in towards you.  His smile is soft by then.  You take a step back.  

“What?”  

“Nothing.  Just happy for you.”  

Just as he’d been in the future.  You’re not sure how you feel about that wording.  You suppose that sort of formulation excludes him from your happiness formula.  As if, he was only able to be happy outside of your being, outside of what you were doing.  

It’s flawed reasoning, you can tell.  But your composure still falls.  

“Hey,” his voice is softer too now, “I do love you.”  

He doesn’t hold you by your cheeks as he had done in the future, instead he holds your ears and leans in closer to kiss your forehead.  

You want to say that you love him too.  You feel as if you actually try to tell him you love him too.  You never do.  

He doesn’t seem to notice, doesn’t seem hurt when he steps back.  But he does not kiss you again.  Doesn’t offer the seat of the swing again.  He tells you you should be heading towards the classroom by now because you two had wasted too much time.  That you guys should hang out after class to look into actual races and things and actually educate you on what Ironman might be.  

You pretend to be excited.  You just want to tell him you love him.  

Chapter Text

“Can we go home yet?  My ass hurts.”  

You use the brake lever and come to a stop, despite how freeing it had felt to be riding with the wind at your back.  

“I swear to god, Dave Strider.  You better be putting those dumb feet of yours back on the pedals.”  

Surely enough, you look back and he’s metres and metres behind, feet grounded to the floor, and stern frown set on his features.  Your lips twitch upwards, even though you’d been trying to pull off the fiercely stern look.  It’s hard when you have to face his knee pad, elbow pad, glove, helmet, attire.  It’s overkill.  He doesn’t like biking, and falls over a lot, but you sort of wish his brother wouldn’t indulge him with all the protective crap.  Dave didn’t need all of that, Dave could be good!  But Dave always started whining about five minutes into a ride, so you’re probably going to have to rethink that too.  

“Put your feet back up, Dave Strider.  You need to start taking things seriously.”  

Screaming at him through the wind probably won’t amount to anything.  You always get this conversation whenever you take him out on a ride on Fridays though, so you’re counting on him to read your lips and to read your expression.  He seems bored out of his mind, you’re not so sure he really cares all that much to read into it.  

He rolls his eyes, brings his feet back up, and bikes the few metres forward.  You don’t bother to start off again, expecting him to come complain to you a little before giving you the chance to continue through the forest.  

“Remember how I had a vision of the future?  And it involved crosscountry and track?  It didn’t for a god damned second involve triathlon, not at any point in time.  None!”

You know the problem.  He doesn’t think he’s good at biking.  Nor swimming, judging on the times you’d brought him to the pool.  Running?  No one could beat him.  And he’d had future confirmation that he could do it.  Biking?  You could outdo him.  Swimming?  You could outdo him.  With a little confidence though, you knew he could become the sort of person to compete in triathlons, you just knew it.  

“A successful athlete would be able to cope with this, Dave.  And they wouldn’t ask me to go home after five minutes because their butt hurts!”  

He rolls his eyes again, but his knee is bouncing.  He’s getting restless, he’s probably going to want to start riding again soon.  

“Ain’t an athlete.  Not trying to be, either.  Just running.”  

This said, he’s put his feet back up, you imitate him.  And it is a small victory you rejoice in as you pick the pace back up, making sure not to gain speed on him this time.  

“It can only help your running though.  You need to cultivate your skills, and you can do that by keeping active and challenging yourself.”

If the wind had been loud in your ears when you’d stopped and spoken to him, it was even more apparent now that you were back in movement.  The roar drowned out every other syllable from you, but you knew Dave could hear you the way you could hear him back.  As if the elements simply could not be strong enough a buffer to your connection.  

“Lies, John, you just want to race me and win, ‘cause you can’t without the wheels.”  

You swerve towards him cheekily and he yelps just as you realign with him.  You laugh as strongly as the wind, and his strong response is thanking his brother over and over for his protective gear.  

“Dave, remind me, how old was the youngest Ironman finisher?”  

You bet he grits his teeth as he answers ‘Thirteen’ but you do not hear him.  You still know the answer, and move on to your second question automatically.  

“And how old will you be in two months?”  

You know the answer to that too, fourteen, this time.  

When you do finally glance over, his jaw is clenched.  Given the profile view, you are able to see his eye despite his shades, the aviators he hadn’t taken off in almost a year now,  and it has a focused, almost angry glint to it.  You wonder if you’d maybe crossed a boundary or two.  You shouldn’t have, you push him like this all the time.  You know he can do it, an extra push could only push him in the right direction.  

You keep your eyes forward.  You’d been around him long enough to know that his older brother pushed him a lot of the time too.  You recognised it as something that was in a similar spirit that you tried to harbour; constructive and helpful.  But still, you turned over in your mind, those times Dave had to explain to him the two percent he’d lost on a grade or the reason he hadn’t thought on his feet as well as he could have.

The forest floor is covered with leaves and pine needles, all painted in oranger tones with the summum of fall.  The bike path not in its most ideal state, puddles scattered as you travelled deeper into the forest, a reminder of the frequent showers the times had brought with them.  And everything smelled incredibly like the season.  You’d never asked anyone’s opinion on what this smell might be, you’d only ever interiorly decided that it was the scent of wet earth.  And though it wasn’t the most poetic of imageries, it felt true to what you would feel.  

Dave’s pant legs were completely soaked at the bottom.  You’d told him just about a dozen of times to lift up his feet off the pedals when he’d cross puddles, but that had left you in a predicament once when he’d completely stilled in the middle of a huge puddle.  You didn’t tell him anymore, and if anything he pedalled madly through puddles now.  

The affection you hold for him is very real in that moment, you can’t help the need to move faster, to bring yourself to a state of breathlessness, to push past your physical limits to escape entirely acknowledging these subtle yet overwhelming feelings of affection.  

“Ready to race, Dave?”  

There is no set goal, and no set time to begin the race.  It doesn’t matter.  He gains speed as easily as you do, and at every fork in the narrow dirt bike path in the pine forest behind your childhood neighbourhood, you both turn in sync, knowingly.  The wind seems to have gained now, both in song and in strength.  

You think of the way he runs, and you know it isn’t the way that he bikes.  And yet, you catch the sight of him, leaned forward in a way where he was a few inches away from sitting fully, the tension in his face, drained away completely.  You wonder, what it is he finds in gaining speed, in moving faster, in concentrating on such a task.  

You dismiss it in favour of pushing forward more forcibly, doing everything to put distance between you two.  It only works for a few moments, a few minutes, before he manages to fill in this gap, fill in the distance you’d established by all your means.  

Despite the wind, despite the rush, you still hear his laughter.  It is completely breathless, barely a laugh at all, but you lose feeling in your fingers, in your toes.  The feelings of affection now called for something other than speed and competition.  It called for something that made the space in between your thumbs and your forefingers ache with a strange sort of numbness.  

So, you lose.  He moves ahead of you.  And it is completely worth it.  You tell yourself that Dave is completely dumb.  Here he was, clad with his biking gloves, his knee pads, his elbow pads, like a child afraid to go out on his bike.  Yet, he moved his hands away from his handlebars, and slowly, just as a bird would spread its wings, he moved them outwards, reaching out in a way that let you even see energy emanating from his very fingertips.  

You could only picture the peacefulness that will have settled over his features.  The opening of his chest as his sternum projected towards the skies.

“You win,” you shout into the winds.  

He reacts immediately.  Turns his head with a jolt that told you clearly that he’d forgotten where he was and who he was with.  And just as Dave Strider would trip in his own feet were he to look behind him while walking, his bike wobbled and sent him toppling.  

You’re not alarmed, not panicked.  Sure, partly because he’d been one step away from wrapping himself in bubble wrap to go along with you on bike rides, but also because the forest floor was not a veritable danger.  Because a few scrapes and bruises weren’t enough to worry you, and weren’t enough to keep you from making it better for him.  You don’t think of those as wounds you couldn’t help with.  You knew Dave, and you knew there were things he kept to himself that you could not help with.  Now that, that was a cause of worry.  But his falling off the bike, even as the bike landed on him, did not worry you.  If anything, you felt lightheaded, and happy.  Your hands still felt strangely numbed as you brought your bike to a, in comparison, peaceful stop.  You set the kickstand into place easily.  

“Look, it’s a fallen angel,” you joke with him, crouching in front of the mess of limbs and bike parts.  

His shades have been knocked askew, and he’s only stayed in place, blinking up at the sky in a dazed fashion.  You think he might actually be ethereal enough to pull off that angelic look.  You think it might have something to do with his long, slender neck.  Or maybe the shape of his wrists.  But mostly, it was the little you could catch of his eyes.  They’d been a source of worry once upon a time, but now you saw them as otherworldly beautiful.  

You haven’t told Dave that, but you’re not planning to anyway.  

You rest your chin on your hand, watching over him as you wait for him to acknowledge you or even to acknowledge his fall.  

“Did you see that?”  

“Your fall from heaven?”  

“Nah, I beat you.”  

That was when he cracked the smile.  The earsplitting sort of smile, that wasn’t too uncommon, but certainly was for someone like Dave.  You smiled along with him, even though it was a smile that had taken over him in reason of your defeat.  

“Oh really?  Are you sure, I don’t think there were any witnesses.”  

“You were a witness, that’s good enough for me,” he remarks, rubbing his upper arm as if only now starting to recognise eventual pain or damages he’d taken from the fall.  

“A witness to what exactly?  Mister safety first Strider pulling a dangerous stunt?”  

“No,” he answers, almost arrogantly.  

“No, seriously, what was that about?”  

His next reply is too quick, too short, one word, ‘Nothing’.  

You stare.  

“You can tell me.”  

He does not stare back, instead finally moving the bike off him.  

“Nothing.”  

You stand up, prying the bike completely off him and setting it in place next to yours.  He gets to his feet awkwardly, but you don’t inquire.  You’d ask him tonight, he was sleeping over for the weekend.  Probably after his nightly shower, you’d check for serious injuries or anything of the likes.  

You were more interested in the way he’d extended his arms outwards and the way his chest had arched upwards.  What was going on in his mind?  What were his thoughts?  

“Did you finally feel the same way you do with running for biking?”  

He laughs, passes off his rubbing of his upper arm as dusting the dirt off his shoulders.  You don’t tell him about the streaks of mud on his clothes.  You don’t tell him that you suspect possible pain from the way he had landed.  

“No way.  There is nothing like running.”  

The tone is so simple, so pure, it does nothing but feed your curiosity, your questions.  

“Why though?”  

He takes hold of his handlebars, a steadying move.  You sort of wish you could both sit down on the path and talk it out.  You’re guessing you can do that at home.  Give him a good snack, get him out of those wet pants, make sure he was happy and that everything was completely fine.  

“I feel right.”  He stresses the last word.  

You can’t help yourself, you speak something you’d thought all along, since the third grade.  “You look like the wind when you run.”  

He laughs again.  But this time stunned, hollowed.  He mounts his bike, so you do the same, though you don’t really want to go yet.  You want to hear more about the laughter, of what was behind it, what he could mean.  

“John.  You look like the wind, always.  I don’t.”  

“Hey, it wasn’t a bad thing!  Don’t try to bounce it back to me!”  

He isn’t, you know.  He’d spoken fondly, as if revealing a soft spot of his.  You didn’t understand it yet.  

He shrugs first.  Then speaks.  

“Well, nothing.  You’re always there, you know?  Like, your presence can be fainter, or more obvious.  Like the wind, I guess.  And if I am going against you, it’s a huge struggle, but when I’ve got your support…  It’s all smooth sailing.  And you make the world come alive, like wind, anyway.”  

He closes it off with a shrug.  As if he hadn’t just said that.  As if you wouldn’t be able to understand that.  As if the winds that made forests come alive with music and movement, and beaches too, and anywhere in the world, hadn’t just been compared to you.  As if he hadn’t admitted to your presence being a constant, but positive thing for him.  As if you hadn’t just been shown that you truly were a force in his life.  

Your voice barely makes it out when you indicate that you should be heading home, before it gets any darker.  He shrugs again, and you have a hard time believing someone who could speak in such a touching manner, was able to pull back emotionally so successfully and so rapidly.  

You don’t race him home.  His posture is stiff and though you’d denied being worried earlier, that facade was starting to chip away.  The world was still orange pine needles and the smell of wet earth, but more than anything, the world was Dave and the way he’d let go of those handlebars, and the way he saw wind in you.  

You saw him as wind when he ran, free and unrestricted.  But he saw you as something much more.  

You’ve noticed that he doesn’t like to tell you he loves back.  You don’t want to comment on that, but you had noticed.  Just the same, sometimes, like now, his feelings for you were undeniable, and you were almost scared yours could not compare to his.  Not in amounts or anything like that.  You were positive that you loved Dave unreservedly.  But he had this purity of feeling you envied.  Unaltered, raw, feelings.  

You get home.  You store the bikes in the garage.  There’s a spot for Dave’s.  He lived too far from your house to bike over to go on rides with you in the forest, especially considering that he was the one who liked biking the least.  

So your father stored Dave’s bike in your garage, just as he did yours.  And whenever the both of you would pull them out for your ride, it felt incredibly good.  It felt as if you were still living together.  

He’d lived with you for three years.  He’d moved out five years ago.  More time had passed than he’d spent at home with you.  And yet, you missed him at home.  You missed seeing him in the morning, you missed taking the bus back home with him.  You missed all these mundane things like brushing your teeth side by side, or helping one another pick what to wear for the day.  You missed him.  

You missed him.  You’d heard it once, a few years ago, the way your father had described missing someone.  He’d spoken of your mother.  That the first day, he would tell himself, she’s been gone for a whole day.  And then the second day, it was two days.  And that turned into a week, and later a month, two months.  And as time advanced, more the gaps would widen in between the markers of time.  So it had gone from, your mother had left this world for an entire day, and to now, it had been eight years.  

Missing and grieving someone was an ache that survived throughout the years, but that dulled.  

The way you missed having Dave with you was something that had remained iron red.  The ache had not dulled, despite all the time you could still spend together.  The ache was present and throbbing.  

So putting your bikes back into place, one by the other, felt good.  Inviting him inside your home felt good.  Having dinner, followed up by movie night with both your father and Dave felt good.  And the way Dave would kick his legs over your lap during the movie felt natural and familiar.  You wished he was over every day.  

You wish he still lived with you.  You wish you’d had fought harder for him to stay.  You wish he could move back in.  You don’t tell him this.  You shower first, because Dave’s showers are always over half an hour.  And you set up your computer in your room while he does so you’ll be able to watch a second movie with Dave before bed.  He tended to fall asleep resting against you whenever you’d watch a movie in bed.  You liked it, it was reassuring in some way.  Maybe, like he was here to stay.  

When he returns, he makes a beeline for your bed, burrowing into your covers immediately.  You know this about him, somewhere along the years, he’d lost any initiative to actually towel off after his showers, and would run to your bed, wet and cold, seeking warmth.  You don’t mind it.  You actually think it’s sweet.  

You ask him how he felt about the movie you had selected specifically for him.  His answer is a combination of varying groans.  And as you set down the laptop you’d received only just a few months ago at the foot of your bed, he whines for you to turn off the lights, as he always does.  

This time, you ignore him, sit cross-legged next to him as the introductive credits roll on the laptop’s screen and pry his left arm out from under the covers.  He’d bruised badly.  He doesn’t shrug his arm away though.  The way he peeked at you lets you know that, had he judged you had not seen it, he would have.  

You smile softly at him, but instead he frowns at the credits on screen.  You pick his shades off his nose, setting them to the side, on the bedside table, and pet his still wet hair down.  

“Are you hurting anywhere else?”  

“I ain’t hurting at all.”  

So you press your fingers to his sides, and surely enough he lets out a sad, badly muffled, sound of pain.  

You don’t pause the film as you leave the room, getting the arnica cream from the bathroom cabinet.  When you return, he’s crossed his arms over the blankets.  He won’t ask for your help, but you also know he won’t complain too much if you do.  

So you find all of his bruises, on his arm, over his ribs, on his thigh, and apply the cream for him.  He doesn’t thank you but, finally when you go put the cream back, finally turn off the lights, and slip under the blankets with him, he does hug you around the waist and cuddle close to you.  That’s better than any thank you.  You wrap an arm around him too, and you feel this is a better way to channel your affections than to race with him or to let that strange numbness take over your hands.  

So far, neither one of you have really concentrated on the movie, so you ignore it in favour of talking in hushed tones in the dark.  

“So Halloween, huh?  It’s in a few weeks?  Any ideas for our yearly collaborative costumes?”  

He nods, smirking.  “I can go as a red pikmin, and you go as a blue pikmin.”  

“Uh. hell no?  This is just an excuse to see me in a full body unitard, I’m sure.”  

“I’ll go as princess Peach, you go as princess Daisy.”  

“Again, an excuse to see me in a dress and heels.”  

“You should stay as you are for Halloween, you’re perfect.”  

Now you can definitely tell he is about to fall asleep.  No tending to his bruises would usually justify the sweetness in his words.  

You brush the hair off his forehead and resist the urge to lean in and kiss it.  

“Hey can I ask you something?”  

He makes a sleepy sound in reply, and you take what you can.  

“Could you…  Just, not time travel tonight?  Just, I’d like it if you stayed next to me for the entire night.”  

You manage to see his eyes open thanks to the light projected by your laptop.  

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”  

You wish, how you wish that meant he wanted to live with you too.  It is the last thought on your mind, but that wish alone isn’t enough to make you skip a beat in time.  

-775-

You appreciate Dave’s intention not to travel through time for the night.  Still, it isn’t quite what you expect when he jumps awake next to you.  It pulls you out of your sleep, of course.  The movement is sudden, as he moves into a seated position, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat.  

You hadn’t thought your presumption of a nightmare was out of the question.  You thought, even, that this was the best hypothesis.

You reach out for your laptop, which had gone to sleep some time after the two of you.  You check the time on the screen before shutting it down.  Three in the morning.  

The light that is projected is enough for you to take a look at Dave’s eyes.  Red as ever.  His pupils are completely constricted.  It is not a reaction to the light of the laptop,  they had been as such as soon as you’d been able to see them.  

You wonder what is happening.  You fear the worst.  You fear what you sometimes theorise, when he hasn’t been around for a while and you ask yourself how his mind works, how it could allow his timeline to act in such strange ways.  You try not to interpret the constricted pupils as a sign that his mind was no longer able to recognise the quality of light.  

“Did you have a bad dream?”  you ask him, voice calm and soft.

His eyes don’t move towards you immediately, but when they do, they aren’t expressing any positive feelings.  

“Dave?”  You rest a hand over his shoulder, and that’s when his head falls.  

His hair hangs over his face and your heart feels wrenched.  This was a shade of anguish Dave rarely displayed.  He’d seemed at peace only a few hours ago.  He’d said he wouldn’t travel.  Had he, anyway?  Had he seen something that had put him in this state?  

Your hand moves to rub his back instead.  The tension in his shoulders still doesn’t go away.  

He asks you what year it is, in a hoarse, very hoarse, voice you would have failed to recognise had you not seen his lips move.  Of course, that would be when it clicks into place.  

You tell him that it’s October, that he’d be fourteen soon.  His look changes then, though the crazed glint is still there, somewhere.  

“The day I fell off my bike?”  He asks, words strained, coming out slowly.  

You nod.  Your throat feels tight.  He’d remembered a moment like this one?  It hadn’t been important only for you?  

“Yeah, yeah.  Are you alright?  When are you from?  What did you wish for?”  

His look switches back to dark and he seems to outright ignore your questions.  Instead he rests his head back onto the pillow.  You grimace, but eventually stand up to go put down your laptop on your desk.  You observe him once you are standing next to your desk.  

His eyes are shut, his body has relaxed now.  But the look on his face has the same strain his shoulders had held.  Pained, almost.  You know it isn’t the bruises.  It is something more.  It is the sort of thing you have to worry about immediately.  

You have to do more than worry because…  Because this is a Dave that knows more than you do, that has more experience, and is still suffering.  And there is so little you can think of that could help him.  

You get back into bed.  And you do the best thing you can think of.  You treat him just as you had the night before, not as if he were someone else.  Just as if he were the Dave who had stretched his arms out and who had called you the wind, because he is.  

So you wrap your arms around him, turn towards him and shut your eyes.  

His body relaxes even further, the weight of his head is heavy as it settles on your shoulder.  You can’t bring yourself to comment on the tears you feel there after.  His body is not shaken by sobs, his body does not tense up, he remains the same.  But you are sure, that pain you had seen on his face was translating to the wetness of his eyes.  

So you hold him, without another word.  You do not think it is enough, but you know it will calm him, will drain some of the pain out of him.  Even though, you progressively feel more of that pain in yourself.  You don’t want Dave to suffer, you never do. 

Eventually, he sniffs, and with that, his tears stop at once.  As if he’d forced a grip on himself.  He flips onto his back.  And you watch him, arms emptied of his presence.  

“You know, this is the first time I wake up in another time by like…  Literally waking up.”  

He still sounds hoarse.  Your worry grows.  

“Is that what’s wrong?  Like, it was shocking?”  You know that’s not it.  You just hope he won’t dismiss it too strongly or too violently.  

He doesn’t at all, actually.  

“I mean.  It was a little scary.”  

“But that’s not it?”  

He smirks, turns his head and stares you dead in the eyes.  

“You know, you’re a lot more astute as a thirteen year old than you are in the present.”  

You make the connection doubtlessly.  

“You’re upset because of me?”  And though there was no question behind it, your voice barely made it out of you.  

You didn’t want Dave to suffer.  You never did.  Never.  Dave suffering because of you?  It shouldn’t have been a connection to make at all.  Yet, he doesn’t deny it.  

“I guess it’s not too big of a deal.”  

“Big enough a deal to escape to another time to cry on me.”  

His expression hardens, so does yours.  You suspect he hadn’t expected this younger version of yourself to reply so readily, so combatively.  

“You don’t know the first thing about what’s going on.”  

“Enlighten me.”  

“It’s more complicated than that.”  

He goes back to staring at your ceiling.  But you can tell he isn’t really staring.  His gaze is dead, gone.  

“No, it’s not.”  It is by far your stupidest comeback of the night, but a whole minute of consideration hadn’t offered any better options.  

“Sure, it is.”  He is more energetic when he speaks now, you can tell he’s about to explain something he understands well.  “You’ll want to know how you've upset me.  If I tell you, you’ll be able to avoid it in the future.  Except not, you’ll still do it, because it’s determined.  Only, you’ll be doing it with the knowledge that you’ll hurt me.  Which, in turn, will make this more painful and more long-lasting.”  

“That’s stupid,” you tell him plainly.  “I just won’t do it.”  

“Then what?  The timeline stops making sense and all of this vanishes?” 

You frown.  Those were the sorts of questions you had to ask yourself sometimes when you were doing research on the subject.  But the answers had too big ‘if’s and you never managed to solve anything at all.  

“At least tell me how you feel then.”  

“I feel like I’ve wasted my life, and for jack shit too.”  

The words are final, bitter, disenchanted.  You have no idea how to react to them.  

“You feel like that now, but—”  

“But, nothing, John!  It’s the truth, I can pretend it’s not all I want, but it won’t go away!”  

The tears are back.  He’d broken through the hoarseness of his voice, and now it was nothing but a sad ghost of its usual fullness.  You ask yourself why a Dave from the future had spoken your first name, with conviction and emotion.  

“Then, I didn’t make you upset,” you state with a breath of relief.  

He was upset at himself, not at you.  He was feeling as if he’d taken a bad turn, or something like that.  That wasn’t on you, it couldn’t be.  And still, what he’d said earlier stood, and the way he looked at you, akin to a wounded animal, wouldn’t go away.  He looked the part of the wounded animal, and you felt like the part that was holding up the hunting weapon.  

But that wasn’t you.  You’d taken care of him.  You’d made sure he was happy, you wanted to as well.  And he’d seen you as the wind.  He loved you.  

He loved you.  But you had had talks with Dave in the dark already before.  Where he’d let everything in his mind out in a tangled mess.  And you knew his fascination with the idea that only those you cared about, only those you loved, ended up with the power to veritably hurt you.  You’d countered this with examples of some stranger swooping in and murdering his brother.  

But he’d told you, the event still involved his brother, who he loved.  Had it been someone else, he would not have felt hurt.  

You didn’t like his theory.  You didn’t have the capacity to hurt Dave.  You never would.  

“No, you’re right.  I’m to blame,” he finally breaks the silence.    

It isn’t sarcastic, it isn’t snappy.  It is defeated.  Then, he turns away from you.  It hurts more than you can express.  That he would be hurt by you to the point of turning away from you, even turning away from this version that is younger and who hadn’t done anything to put him in this sort of state of mind yet.  

You touch his shoulder.  He does not react.  

“What happened?”  

“Nothing.”  

“What happened,” you try again.  

“What happened is that I am the one who sacrifices everything for you, and you just don’t care about me anymore at all.”  

He doesn’t turn towards you to say it.  He doesn’t either raise his voice.  It is stated as fact, but you still turn it down.  

“How can you say that?  I care about you so much, Dave.  Don’t give me this.”  

“I can say it because I know.”  

All at once, he’s leapt out of your bed and onto his feet and has let his voice take a dangerous edge.  

“You don’t know anything if you think for a second that I don’t care about you.  I’d sacrifice everything for you too, I wouldn’t hesitate.”  You know this too.  You aren’t afraid of disagreeing with him.  

He paces your floor.  

“Do you?  ‘Cause you never want to spend time with me anymore.  You even make plans with me and end up carrying out those plans with some girl instead of me.”  

This piques your interest.  You’re sure missing a couple of plans with Dave wouldn’t have put him in such a state.  There was just no way this was the crux of his pain.  But some girl was involved?  

This, was good news.  It had felt as if you’d been waiting forever to be interested in a girl.  And now there was proof that you would be one day?  You felt reassured, as if this had saved you from something you could not name.  

“Is she my girlfriend?”  

He stops in his steps.  Doesn’t even look at you.  Simply rubs the back of his neck and stares at his feet, a sad shrug lifting up his shoulders.  

“At this point?  You know what, maybe she is.”  

Extreme relief floods your chest.  No girls were interesting at all.  But you wanted to like girls, you did!  You wanted a nice romantic relationship.  Even if this wasn’t going to happen for a few years, you were fine with that.  Just to know that it was still in your cards.  That was a nice thought.  

You only feel slightly guilty when you realise you’d been jubilating as Dave had continued brewing dark thoughts.  

“That doesn’t mean I love you less, though.”  

“Yeah, actually, it does.”   

You can’t argue.  Those words had felt like a lie even in your own mouth.  Usually, when you’d get upset about not having a girlfriend…  You ended up convincing yourself that you didn’t have time or space for a girl.  You had Dave.  Dave was too important to think about some girl.  But if there was some girl in the picture?  

“Come on.  I do.  You don’t have to be this upset…”  

“I’m not.  I’m upset because I give everything up for you, I put everything on hold for you.  And then you’re the one who decides you don’t want me anymore, but don’t even have the decency to say a word about it.  You just go around my back and start things with other people.”  

He is practically shouting.  You don’t have the presence of mind to worry about your father overhearing.  You have, however, the mind to start adding up the way things had been formulated.  Wanting Dave.  Starting something you’d had with Dave with someone else?  Someone else who was potentially your girlfriend?  

Meaning your relationship with Dave was…  Could it be?  You’d thought about it a lot, but…  You’d never truly been convinced.  It definitely wasn’t farfetched.  

“Look, you’re just assuming things.  That’s probably not what’s going on.”  You swallow hard, because it’s still fresh and weird to think of or to formulate.  “I could never cheat on you.”  

“Cheat?”  He shakes his head and puts his hands up towards you.  “No, John.  You never even wanted us to be an official thing.  There couldn’t be any cheating going on.”  

You feel like this conversation has repeatedly dragged you into wall after wall of bricks.  

“That’s crazy.”  But you have no idea what you’re talking about, really.  And you’re not sure you want to date Dave.  

Dating Dave, however, is not a crazy thought.  

He finally comes back to bed and sits next to you, grabbing his designated pillow and hugging it to his chest.  

“I don’t think you love me anymore.  But I have nothing else left.”  The words sound like they are a struggle.  Honestly, they are also a struggle to hear.  

You get on your knees.  You brush the hair off his forehead as you had a few hours earlier when Dave had been safe and had not been distressed in the slightest.  

“I love you.  You’re the person I love the most.”  It was true.  You didn’t understand the relationships that were playing out in the future, but you didn’t need to.  Dating Dave, or dating someone else, it was clear it was still Dave you loved the most.  Those other things were just details in comparison.  

He smiles.  His eyes have watered again.  This is one of the worst moments in your life.  “Trust me, once you’ve gone through the crap I’ve been through, you might not anymore.”  

You crawl closer towards him and hug him.  You hug his head to your chest.  And this time, he doesn’t cry quietly.  And where his tears wet your top, near your heart, they feel like acid sneaking through the cracks of your chest and into your heart.  

You pretend that tears do not escape you as well.

You don’t like hearing him speak like this.  You think, you really believe you’d gone through a lot together already.  You didn’t want to hear about him going through hard times again.  You didn’t want to think that this time you fail at keeping him safe and happy.  

“Let’s just rest together, alright?”  

So you lay down with him.  And you don’t hold him close.  Your limbs don’t tangle, your chests don’t press together.  But your hand squeezes his.  And your eyes stay locked.  

You can tell in his eyes.  He will not believe that you will love him until the time he is from.  You do not dare ask what time that is.  But you know he can believe that you love him still.  So you make sure to express through the hold of his hand, through your eyes, how much you do love him.  You make sure to show enough love to quench whatever was lacking for him in his future.  

You don’t question yourself about what he is to you and what it meant that girls were not as important as Dave was.  You didn’t have to deal with that for now.  

Your sense of time weighs on you heavily, so before you drift away into sleep, and before he can awake where he truly belonged, you ask him the question to which you most wanted the answer.  

“What did you wish for?”  

He shrugs, almost smiling.  

You squeeze his hand tighter.  

“To be anywhere but where I was.”  

-xxx-

Dave always complains, not much but anyway he always experienced it you could tell, about a strong pain in the back of his skull whenever he would snap out of his possession.  You called it possession, but it was strange to think of it that way when the spirit with which his body was inhabited was his very own.  

He would usually compare it to being lobotomised.  You don’t think it’s a very clever comparison, you’re not even sure lobotomies are supposed to hurt.  Besides, you didn’t like the look on his face whenever he’d add on that he really needed one.  You’d find yourself wondering about how troubled he felt by this whole time thing.  And you always resisted the urge to ask him why he didn’t just keep himself from doing it if it was such a disturbance.  Something told you, however, that this might be an insensitive approach.  

So, you do truly feel bad when Dave wakes up in the morning.  He doesn’t say anything, but his hand does not remain in yours for very long.  When you open your eyes it’s to find him curled into a ball, hands over the back of his skull and seemingly tugging at the roots of his hair.  

His face, is blank.  It does not express the sort of pain he was going through in the future.  His knuckles are white from the force of his grip, his wrists shaking, yet his face remains blank.  You feel a little sick, considering how much more pain he had to be in to let it show as clearly as he had done in the middle of the night.  

“You’re up early.”  He isn’t particularly, but it is one of the many generic lines you’d been considering in order to let him know you’re there.  

You don’t feel weird, you swear.  And you definitely had not spent most of the night trying to pull apart the things future Dave said and which position it was all of it put you in with Dave.  And you hadn’t woken up hourly, as if someone had set you do so, just to palpate his hand, just to check that he hadn’t gone away yet.  

It’s hard to make out the words he pronounces because he's decided this curled up thing wasn’t rocking, and instead plops his face down onto your pillow, just a few inches away from yours.  You know him well enough to know that the sentence had been, however; “Put me out of my misery.”  

You’re hesitant to touch him, and you don’t.  It’s because you don’t want to trigger more pain in his skull.  It is not because you are feeling weird.  You don’t feel weird about Dave.  And he didn’t feel weird about you, you knew his feelings to be pure and unreserved.  It was all fine.  

He asks you, a bit muffled, “Did I time travel just to come to your bed and cry?”  

There is a hard moment where you say nothing.  Apparently, he’d been able to tell that his headache did not have a sole source.  And apparently, he’d cried enough before sleeping before to know what it felt like in the morning.  

“Something like that.”  

“Was it really embarrassing?”  

He’d emerged now, resting his cheek onto your pillow and curiously looking into your eyes.  You silently admit to yourself that you do miss seeing his eyes and that those shades he still hadn’t put back on made him too much of a closed book for your liking.  

“It wasn’t.”  

“But it was worrying?”  

Apparently, you, are an open book.  

“Well, yeah.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an arnica cream for future problems.”  

He seems to remember his bruising now and rubs his left side automatically at the remark.

“Future me is a douche for bothering you.” He yawns then, shutting his eyes and pulling up his knees in a protective motion that let you know the pain hadn’t yet faded, but this was an attempt to ignore it.  

“You’re fine,” you tell him, emphasising the ‘you’.  

He opens his eyes, and there is an air of suspicion in them.  

“Don’t try to pull that.  You treat me differently when I time travel, I would know.”  

You shrug.  So, maybe you did?  It was hard to adapt and to adjust, to think of the things Dave knew, the things he didn’t, and what he still had along the road, or behind him.  Those were things you tried to consider, sure, sometimes, it was hard.  But most of the time you could pride yourself in treating Dave normally, the right way.  

“What was I on about?”  

“Nothing.”  Because you didn’t really grasp what the issue was.  He’d said a lot of things, but the portrait you could make with those pieces of information felt off.  You were missing a vital element, you could tell.  There was nothing you should be telling present Dave.  

Yet, he repeats his question; “What was I on about?”  

“I don’t know, alright?  But you definitely were not happy.”  

That shuts him up.  There is a flash of hurt on his face and it’s too much of a strong reminder of last night.  You’re almost thankful when he decides to turn away from you.  It still hurts when he adopts his curled up, obvious pain in the back of his skull, pose.  

It hurts too to know what was going through his head.  Questioning the possibility of true happiness in his cards.  

You didn’t treat him like it, why would you?  But the sadness that would take him was unusually frequent and unusually paralysing.  

“Dave,” you whisper.  

“I don’t know why I bother trying,” he tells you.  

The pieces still don’t fit together.  Why had he spoken of sacrifice?  And why had he spoken of you as if you’d become distant and unattached?  That just wasn’t going to happen.  It couldn’t.  

You get on your hands and knees and turn him onto his back.  He glares at you, his nose scrunched up.  But the back of his head would be hurting less by now.  That expression he was pulling was an act he was putting up.  

“Look at me.”  

“I am,” he replies, face still set in his glare.  

The glare does nothing to hide his feelings for you.  Like you wouldn’t notice Dave making sacrifices for you!  You’d probably stop him even.  You wanted everything for Dave.  

“What am I looking at?”  he asks after a while of you just staring at him.  

You open your mouth, but there are no good excuses.  

So you sit back on your heels, put your hands on his shoulders, and lean down to kiss him.  It’s not a comfort thing like you usually make it out to be.  It isn’t to calm him down or to communicate silently with him that you knew things would find a way of working themselves out.  It had everything to do with wanting to kiss him, and nothing to do with those things.  

When he kisses you back, that’s when your heart starts beating too hard, and that’s when you start doubting yourself.  The palms of your hands feel numb, his lips are warm.  But you don’t want to stop kissing him.  

You still do because if he hadn’t yet pulled his conclusions, he would soon.  

Your stomach feels like it has no bottom when you sit back.  Your chest had probably started heaving with the heavy weight of your heartbeats.  His eyes were wide and trained on you.  

“Was that a friendly thing?”  he asks you cautiously, though it’s lost behind his wide-eyed and reddened look.  

You don’t think, you just nod energetically.  

His eyebrows furrow.  There’s no doubt in your mind that you’d answered the wrong way.  

Or maybe not because then he sits up too, and leans in to kiss you.  He holds your arm to steady himself, and were you not concentrated on the way his lips touched yours, you would have felt self-conscious about the press of your chest against his, and the possibility of him feeling the violence of your heartbeats.  

As much as you’d pinned it on a friendly gesture.  The kissing doesn’t end.  And you end up straddling him anyway and pinning his hands down onto your pillows, either side of his head.  And as friendly as kissing could be, you’re not sure pinning him to your bed is the friendliest version of it.  You’re pretty sure that was more coherent with those scenes in movies when the protagonist was about to have a moment of passion with their love interest.  

So you stop kissing him.  With suddenness and urgency.  You’re off the bed, you’re out of your room.  You tell him, you have to go brush your teeth, that he tasted like morning breath, and you laugh loudly about it.  He doesn’t join in, he narrows his eyes, and you fidget for a second in your doorframe, but turn away right after.  

He didn’t taste like morning breath, as a matter of fact.  He tasted like your best friend.  He tasted like your most favourite person out there.  He tasted like winters spent in your living room, watching the snow fall from the glass windows.  He tasted like early afternoons in the spring when you’d walk out of school together.  He tasted like summers you spent outside, always by his side.  He tasted like the boy you saw in the forest yesterday reaching his arms out as if he could fly.  

And all of this made you feel sick with worry.  You weren’t going to march back in there and confess to romantic feelings.  You would sweep that under the rug.  You’d keep that for later.  

You consider the look of betrayal he’d taken up from the future.  You consider kissing him without being honest about your intentions.  

It was fine, you were never going to let that escalate out of your control.  You had it under control.  

Chapter Text

EB: hey, so let’s meet at the big window. after class, got it?

EB: dave? it’s after class. at least answer. 

TG: egbert

TG: the bell is literally still ringing

EB: i know i said to at least answer, but that was a test. you failed it. you shouldn’t be on the phone.

EB: you should be heading for the big window, geez!

You pocket your phone.

Talk about some weird texting, from yours truly, John Egbert. Best friend extraordinaire and all the other fancy titles that come with the position. Best friend whom you liked to meet at the ‘big window’, you usually did. Said big window could be found in an abandoned staircase of the school’s building, which you’d found out about on your very first trip through time.

You didn’t usually have to contact each other to know to meet there, it was part of the routine. And, usually, John would tell you to ‘hurry up’ if you needed to hurry up. He wouldn’t bother to tell you that the times called for you to not be on your phone.

Because the texts are weird, you go out of your way to take your time. You’re the last one out of your classroom, you even manage to strike up a conversation with the teacher before leaving. There’s really nothing you have to say about chemistry class, and you’re not even sure why after all of these years you’d even selected chemistry as one of your optional classes. You take the long way to your locker. Purposely hop onto your skateboard in the middle of the hallway when a different teacher comes into sight, so you can go through the one minute scolding, and finally, finally, you push the door to the staircase open.

It is a whole twelve minutes after your class is finished. You have time to put your foot on the first step, but no time to put your weight onto that foot. John comes barrelling down the stairs, you’re a little impressed he doesn’t end up tackling you to the floor.

“Dave Strider. Even if you had some sort of epileptic time vision thing, I wouldn’t forgive you for how late you are.”

You shrug. “Oh, boo hoo. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

You don’t comment on the description of time vision because it doesn’t fit into your life, not in any universe. John had recently become quite savvy on the subject of time travel and all of its iterations. His research skills had entered the realm of phenomenal. You, on the other hand, were becoming increasingly disinterested with it. Turning down theory after theory of what it may be afflicting you made you feel like a freak more than it did anything else. You think, you’d be touched if you had a true, undying interest in what it was that had altered your mind to such a dysfunctional point. As it is, you feel a little irritated that John had such a fascination for what was wrong with you, when you simply did not. You don’t ever raise that point with him though.

He checks his watch and you try not to stare too much once his eyes are off you.

“God, ok. Let’s just get going,” he mumbles to himself, not checking with you as he passes you.

“What, what about the big window? I thought we could talk, and stuff?”

You don’t sound desperate at all. It’s not like you two talk extensively every day. It’s not like it’s always you waking up in the middle of the night, texting him. It’s not like you need him more than he needs you, and you certainly have not been thinking about that this year. That would be a stupid thing to think about.

“Let’s talk on our way there, it’s cool! Loads of time for talking. Stay over for the night if you want.”

You make a face at the back of his head as he pulls open the door, but return to calm and controlled by the time he catches sight of you. You expect him to lead you to the front door to leave the building, you know, like a normal person. Because he’s been acting so normal. But instead, he opens the emergency door adjacent to the door to the staircase.

It opens up to the parking lot behind your school, but he doesn’t pause to gather his whereabouts, only marches ahead.

You get on your skateboard to keep up with him.

“Excuse me, but where are you taking me exactly? Doesn’t seem like the way to your place? Should I be concerned?” You don’t ask in a concerned voice. You’re cool, you’re aloof, which is why you are totally able to balance on your skateboard with both of your hands in your coat pockets. Dave Strider never falls off things. You’ve never swerved out of the path or collided with any sort of object because you were busy staring at a person or a dog passing by. That was totally not you.

“Dave. I am not going to kidnap you. If I even tried, I’m sure your future self would turn up and hit me with some cold, hard truths and I’d be stunned into non-reaction.”

He adjusts his scarf around his neck, just as if that hadn’t sounded like a terrible accusation.

“Why, ‘cause that’s happened before?”

You’ve been in the past before. It always seemed like a good time. Not like dropping cold, hard truths time.

“You know, it’s too early for you to have your skateboard out? Don’t give me this winter wheels bullshit. You’re accident-prone as it is, you don’t want a patch of ice to further prove that.”

You sigh, and the trace of your breath in the air might be an attestment to his claims. That didn’t really matter though. You divulged information like you breathed. You didn’t let John out of the loop of your findings. You always let him know about the things you knew in extra that he would later find out too. John never returned that favour however.

And no amount of searching in books to understand the fucked-up status of your brain was going to compensate for that.

“So you’re not taking me to a giant abandoned warehouse, right?”

“No, I’m going to go buy you a cup of hot chocolate, you dumb baby.”

“Which you could have done at the school cafeteria.”

He snorts. “Maybe, but I’m getting a cappuccino, and I’m sure as hell not getting it from the cafeteria.”

There is a pause in conversation where you concentrate on the sound of your wheels on the pavement and the sound of his breathing.

“Then why the rush?”

And though you’d showcased the question with juxtaposed silences, he still does not honour it with an answer, just as you’d expected.

You wonder if there is a place in time where he is supposed to be. You wonder if it had been you who had asked him to do so, in a time you could definitely not yet remember. And for the hundredth time, you wonder why you were not granted access to the information you went out of your way to share with him.

You spend the trip exchanging no, not vital information, but rather an account of the day. Your diverging optional classes, the people in class who were annoying, what you thought his father might be making for dinner, what new releases at the cinema were going to be worth watching, though you knew you’d probably watch way more than the list you’d agreed on. But you don’t try to push any more time stuff, and you feel him try to. But not in a way that would advantage yourself, only his research.

You think about telling him that you foresee a future in which you are his trick pony and his number one research subject for doctorates in time shenanigans. Again, you don’t end up putting that into words.

The place he’s selected for his dearest cappuccino is both out of the way from your place, and of his. It looks fancy enough, but not really haute-gamme enough to justify its location and the rush to get there. Not to mention how John is always pushing how impeccable and how perfect his father’s skills were when it came to hot beverages.

The interior, however, gives you a bad feeling. With the mahogany booths, the white tablecloths, the even darker wood of the bar, the hanging lights, sole bearers of light. It no longer just looks fancy enough, it also looks shady enough. The sort of place where you would meet up to put a hit on someone’s head, and the sort of place that shouldn’t really be fitting into the décor of your hometown.

You hold your breath up to the short lineup at the bar. John seems unshaken. You glance at the people in line. It isn’t like they’ve shown up in gowns, but for the casualness of their attire, the fabrics and cuts of their clothes left no place to wonder of the price range they might have found themselves in.

The place in itself is fairly occupied, but there are no traces of other students. It seems a bit grown up for John, but then again, the set of skills his father had with coffee beans maybe was suited for such a place. As you observe the individuals sitting, it seems clear that drinks were ordered over dishes in a heartbeat.

You spot various cups and glasses. There is only one cocktail glass. You lower your shades to find it is filled with a liquid of similar colour to your eyes. You’re betting it is a cosmopolitan.

You wouldn’t have recognised it a week ago. It had been the anniversary of your mother's departure this past week. Your brother had bought a bottle of vodka. He hadn’t taken a sip, but he’d told you, absently, about how it was your mother’s favourite and how much he hated it when she drank too much. But that he would gladly offer it to her were she to show up. That he didn’t want it to go another year. The ten year anniversary mark would be pushing it.

You hadn’t said much, but you’d looked up drinks using vodka until the sun had come up, which you’d regretted at school later. You did think a bit too much and wonder too much. And you asked yourself one time too many if those times where she seemed to like you most, weren’t the times where she smelled of vodka.

But given that night, you recognise the drink.

Though you had taken those extra twelve minutes to meet up with John, the clock wasn’t yet pointing to happy hour, and if your poor sense of timing was failing you again, you still found it odd that this single person had a cocktail drink in hand. You question who it would be that would find themselves in a pretentious place like this one, and would sit at a table alone with a cosmopolitan in hand.

You literally take a step back when you let yourself take in the appearance of this specific person. You think your mind might have gone a step quicker than you had done yourself and had filled in the blanks inappropriately. You also think it might or might not have had something to do with your reminiscence of your mother and of her supposed vodka and strange scent she had to her sometimes that might have indicated that you weren’t as liked as you had set yourself up to believe. But you absolutely know it is not your mother sitting at a mahogany booth in a place that had nothing to do with, but somehow was a part of your hometown.

It is in fact, not your mother. She seems older, for one. Even though you cannot quite manifest what the image of your mother could have been with an added nine years. Her eyes, secondly, are the same shade your eyes had once been. Plainly brown. Nothing to do with your mother’s bemusing shade. Though her colouring was strikingly similar, and her whole demeanour reeked of what your mother tended to project. It was not your mother.

If anything though, she looked a lot like her. And she looked even more like yourself.

You observe her, almost against your will. The leather-bound journal opened on the table's surface, the fountain pen that remained untouched next to it, and the drink she had in hand. She was dressed in the same subtle luxury others had adorned in the place. But there was something peculiar about her. Maybe it was the too dark shade of scarlet of her lips, or the catlike aspect her eyes had taken with the curve of her eyeliner, or even the impeccable way each strand of her pale hair fell and fit into place. You’re pretty sure, actually, it was because she looked just like you. Much older, perhaps, but nearly identical.

Sometimes, when you travel to the far past, you’ll catch your reflection here and there. It causes you to pause often, for looking into your reflection’s brown eyes was familiar, yet strange. As if you’d started up your computer and every update of every software had taken several steps back in ages. The feeling you get then is the same feeling you get now when her eyes leave the pages of the notebook, and instead still on you.

Whatever this feeling was, usually you would be able to see it on your face through the reflection. That should not have been the case now. Yet, it is. The expression on her face is an expression you could have read on your own.

When she stands up is when you bolt out of there.

It wasn’t and couldn’t be your mother. Of course, she would have been older now, so maybe the age issue wasn’t the biggest factor. But the family ressemblance didn’t make them out to be identical. It’s enough to scare you out of the place. Shutting the door behind you isn’t enough. You do not consider taking your skateboard to cover more space, you cannot. All you can think of is putting one foot in front of the other. Your pace was hurried, not hurried enough to what skateboarding would have given, but you needed to move. You did not have time for a pause.

You break into a run eventually. Years of training to run are a help, but you don’t feel are a help enough in this instance.

You weren’t planning to stop, you weren’t going to. But when your name is called, you are able to tell that it is John’s voice calling it. So, of course, you stop. Even though waiting for him when he is this far back will have you stopped in place for quite some time and even though that meant anyone else, even strange apparitions, could catch up with you too.

So you crouch down on the sidewalk. Your head hurts in a way that it would when you would be able to repossess your body. The pain blossomed at the back of your skull and reached across it, keeping it in a vice that prohibited you from focusing your gaze or from catching your breath.

Even when he reaches you, puts a hand on your shoulder, and repeats your name again, nothing comes back into focus. And after a few attempts of getting some words out, you start heaving. You’re thankful that he takes a step back when he does. It was already embarrassing enough to throw up in plain sight and in plain daylight, especially when you were so close to the asphalt yourself. It would have felt worse had you done it on his shoes.

“Oh, Dave. Come on, let’s walk a little, we should find a bench so that you can rest.” His voice is steady, controlled. So you wonder if he does understand what is happening inside of you. You wonder if he’d seen her too and had understood.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t understand how dreamlike time travelling felt like. And he couldn’t understand that the look she had shared with you was the look you’d share with yourself in those dreamlike states from time to time. He couldn’t understand the immense disconnect you were now feeling.

He manages to get you on your feet anyway. You know it’s a good thing. Staying huddled up around a puddle of your insides wasn’t going to be a bouquet of flowers. You still find it hard to advance, and you still find it hard not to pull out completely of his grip.

It doesn’t take you as long to get to a nearby bench than it does for you to snap out of wordlessness. He sits patiently next to you, hands folded over his lap neatly; so you know he’s at least seen her. He’s at least seen her, or else he would be bombarding you with questions. You’re grateful. At the same time, all you want to do is to speed away and to be alone. Maybe throw up again.

Eventually you cough, and your voice already feels like it doesn’t quite belong to you. But you still try. “So, how about that cappuccino?”

He opens his hands face up to indicate that he did not get the said cappuccino. You already knew, but you try to be interested in that.

“Do you need to go back? I can stay here, I’m good.”

Here happened to be a bench in the middle of nowhere, just off the street, just a few feet away from speeding cars in the relatively unfrequented road. This place felt blank enough to reboot your mind though, and you couldn’t have anything else to ask for.

“No, no, it’s fine. I can have my father make me one.”

Yeah, but that had been the case half an hour ago too. Your mood starts shifting.

“You knew she’d be there.”

It had shifted to accusatory in time to remind you of your initial thoughts. Thinking that maybe he had somewhere to be at a specific time and maybe even under your own future self’s orders.

“Who?” he asks you in such a small, innocent voice; you already know he is setting himself up for a lie you would not be lead to believe.

“Don’t play games with me.”

“Oh, you mean, that woman? Who sort of really looked like your mother?” His tone of voice hadn’t shifted, though he was playing a little clueless. For the first time, you start wondering if in fact he even knew the woman herself.

“Wow. How’d you guess, Egbert?”

You see the way his right hand grips his left one.

“What happened, why did you run away?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about, next time I feel like a milkshake, I get you, on purpose of course, at the same place at the same time as your dead mother’s ‘had she aged’ poltergeist and then you can tell me how you feel. And then I can question it, just like you’re doing now.”

Things get quiet. Only two cars pass during this lengthy silence. You idly wonder about the drivers' day-to-day life and their current day too. There is barely a shadow of guilt cast over you. It’s not like John was always there for you whenever you needed to talk about your mother’s disappearance. And it’s not like John had failed to mention, even once, any related issue to his deceased mother. But, in reality, it was just like that. And you probably had just screwed up. Even though, not a second ago, you had been the one with the card in his deck that made it so you were eligible to be angry, you were eligible to demand some explanations, and you were eligible to be the hurt friend. Not the other way around.

“I’ll tell you something.” But even when he says as much, a considerable length of silence passes afterwards. It is only after the third car passes that he actually ends up telling you about this ‘something’. “We buried my mother. I know she’s not around, and she’ll never be again. But if I knew she could be alive, and I knew I could be looking for her and asking questions about it, then, yeah, I would fucking love the opportunity.”

The fourth car passes before his words cross the line.

“But my mom didn’t leave voluntarily, yours did.”

Your feet hit the ground before you can think about the words. Your own words leave your mouth way before you have time to consider them. “Of course she didn’t. She was too sick to get very far, wasn’t she? Besides, who was going to pay her hospital bills if she left?”

Somewhere along the escalation of the argument, your face had flushed with anger, and your words had escalated to the appropriate pitch and volume. He took just one second to match that, match your stance by jumping off the bench too, and giving you a colder glare than you could hope to achieve, even with the red eyes.

“You shut up about my mom, you piece of shit.”

Had this been a year ago, you’d be hurt. But after the year you’d had, you don’t falter.

“I will when you stop looking around for lookalikes and substitutes to mine.”

“Did you ever consider that I’m just trying to help?”

“Did you ever consider that I don’t actually want her back?”

Just as quickly as the argument had escalated, all of its energy crashes ephemerally. John sits back down, lines of worry set into place around his eyes. You could recognise those now. He was worried because he was thinking of his mother, he was worried because of the things he had said, he was worried because of the things you had said, and now he wasn’t able to follow your track. That was always, by far, what had set him off in the past. A fear of not being able to follow. But you did everything for him not to worry. You never hesitated to share everything that you knew with him.

He, as always, never returned the favour.

“‘Cause I don’t. She only ever liked me when there were empty bottles in the recycling bin. The rest of the time, she didn’t look at me, John. Bro was always the real parent to me. I never belonged to her family. It was all a big show she could only bother to put on once in a while.”

“You don’t mean that. You love her.”

“And what if I do mean it? Do you think I want to look into the eyes of her identical twin?”

For a while you look at one another. He does the whole fish out of water routine, where his lips move to form words, but no sound ever comes out. You, after the fifth car, fifth you think, sit back down.

“I’m sorry about what I said. I shouldn’t have compared our mothers. Yours loved you.” You smile, even though it’s shaky. He doesn’t, but he puts an arm around you, so you dare hope he isn’t all that angry at you either.

“I’m sorry about, all that stuff. I was just, so sure she must have been related to you… Maybe, maybe she had answers you don’t have?”

You pull a face, but really you’re thinking about this possible meeting.

“Like. I even wondered… Maybe your mother time travelled too? Maybe that’s her, maybe she spent a few years in a different point in time?” You give him the look that means ‘shut up’, he misreads and keeps going, a little more excitedly. “Even the eyes would make sense! Hers were almost red too, you know? Chemical fumes, my ass.”

“Ok, alright, enough. I’m going to stop you right there. For one because that is way more likely to be me with a few extra years than it is my mom. So unless I went through some radical stylistic changes, and cracked the code on how to have two physical bodies in one given point on my timeline. Then be my guest to theorise, but don’t try to tell me I wouldn’t be able to recognise her.”

He looks perplexed. But then, he asks you if you want to go home. So you end up walking down the road to the nearest bus sign. You don’t feel like throwing up anymore. When he asks you your place or his, and frowns at your answer, you invite him over for the night. That gets you a smile.

But it doesn’t quite get him completely off your case. As you wait, he asks you one more question.

“You saw the ressemblance too, right?”

You shrug, and answer him only when the bus pulls up.

“It felt the same as when I look in a mirror in a different time. Like I’m looking at me, but everything’s suddenly off.”

He only stares after that. When you sit down in the back of the bus, that’s when he offers you to lay your head down on his lap and to shut your eyes, to avoid motion sickness and hurling a second time. You take the opportunity because you don’t want to be dealing with these sorts of difficult subjects and because you’re convinced it will be easier to pull off if you seem asleep.

You do actually fall asleep somewhere before the pull over to the second bus stop. Your mind conjures but a single wish.

You want John to be happy with you. You don’t want John going around your back trying to patch up the things about you that seem broken. You don’t want to exchange hurtful words. You don’t want him to give you that combined look of misunderstanding and of disappointment. You want John to be happy with you.

-503-

Sight hadn’t been a thing that had improved with the years. One of the downfalls associated with how secretive you were about your eyes was that you never actually were in a position to go get your sight checked. And so the years advanced, you kept the beloved aviators you’d received on your thirteenth birthday securely on your face, and no one was none the wiser about all the squinting that was going on.

Skipping into a different time always flooded you with relief and clairvoyance. Your sight was fully liberated in those times. Of course, when John had confronted you about all of your time hopping last Christmas break, that had seemed like an excuse you could have fed him. But that was a secret too. So you couldn’t tell him that you were jumping around because things between you two were messy, and you couldn’t tell him that you were jumping around because your eyes hurt a lot. So you told him you were bored.

Besides, the eye pain thing was something you learned to live with and were accustomed to ignoring. It was only in times like these that you remembered it was even there to begin with.

You open your eyes. You can’t make anything out, but it feels good. You blink five, six times, and the blue sky becomes clearer, the blaring light less prominent. You touch your face. No shades. Sunlight, but no shades.

“John, where are my shades?” You sit up. You hadn’t yet taken in your surroundings, but you could sense John anyway.

The clear, blue skies make sense in concordance with the union of the horizon and of the ocean, and the beach of sand leading up to it. Your hand moves over your bare arms as you glance down. Swimming trunks and a short sleeved shirt, also suited for the beach. You smile to yourself, even before you hear back from John. Not that you’d ever been to the ocean before, but the crash of the waves and the unoccupied beach had easily lulled you into a sense of comfort and of ease.

You turn your head in time to see John walking towards you and answering your mumbled question by the simple call of your name.

He pauses there, cooler in hand, presumably heading back from a second trip to the car.

You pause too. Regardless of how many times you’d travelled last year, you’d somehow forgotten to ask yourself why the range of yours and John’s age didn’t vary very much. Sometimes, the question would be on the tip of your tongue, in the back of your mind. Was your timeline a short one? Could you not go much further away from your present because you were destined to an early demise?

This was adulthood John. You could tell. Not anything to match up the nineteen year old self who had already visited John from time to time, but well onto his way into midlife adulthood John. The sigh of relief that leaves you had been held for years, unbeknown to you.

“You’re old,” you tell him plainly. Even though you like the way he looks. You like the shape of his face, you like the broadness in his shoulders, you like his aura of happiness. You’re surprised when you think to yourself that you had not yet seen him displaying this sort of genuine happiness. Even his childhood cheerfulness did not hold a candle to his current air of contentment.

“You’re young,” he replies systematically.

It does not change anything to his air though, if anything, it feels amplified as he quickens the pace towards you. He puts down the cooler, puts a hand over the top of your head, and flashes you the brightest smile you’d seen yet. The brightness of the beach could not even come close to the brilliance of this expression. You stare at his teeth, catch yourself thinking that his teeth somehow now looked like the perfect size, after all of these years, and you try to estimate his age almost manically.

“I’m not young, I’m like… Twenty-five?”

“Nope.”

“I could be.”

“Nope.”

You pout. It feels really wasted on him. You cross your arms. That doesn’t help either.

“I’m twenty-eight, if that’s what you’re trying to find out, by the way.”

You shrug. It seems right. You still think that twenty-eight doesn’t sound like the longest of lifespans. But things looked great and the two of you were still close. Even though this last year had been messy, and that strange woman had shown up today, you were still close at the age of twenty-eight.

He sits next to you, on the same towel you’re guessing you must have put out here earlier, and he stares you down fiercely. You avoid this by in turn staring down the ocean. But this doesn’t seem to have any sort of discouraging effect.

“You seem happy,” you tell him eventually, hoping it would ebb away at the intensity of his stare.

“Yeah, I guess. You slowed down on the time travelling. It’s nice to see you as younger again.”

You can’t feel if his intensity has gone down a few notches, but yours goes up after that comment.

“I should have known…”

You know he purposely steps over the comment. Your comment is dumb anyway, and the sentiment it is born from is even dumber. There was no use getting upset with yourself from the future or from the past. So what if you constantly needed to rethink if John liked you or liked your whole time travel gig. Either way, you were stuck with it, so he’d be stuck liking you. It was no use asking yourself if he only truly liked you when you weren’t being yourself within your body.

“I don’t know when you’re from exactly. You don’t look nearly as happy as you are nowadays though. So, like, it’s cool that I can tell you that you will be.”

The dark cloud over your head seems to grow. Despite the sunniness of the day and despite the sunniness of John’s mood.

“So how did you know anyway? Or was it just my air of misery?” You hadn’t forgotten how he’d stopped on his way to you, as if surprised to recognise your younger self. But how would he have done that anyway? “And where are my shades?”

“You don’t like wearing glasses. It’s not a big deal.” He shrugs. You narrow your eyes.

You turn towards him, partly angry. But it’s gone, instantly. He seems as happy and as attentive to you as he’d been when you’d turned towards the ocean. There was something going on, but you could not say what it was.

“How did you know?”

“You’re just a little different now. Again, not a big deal.”

Big enough a deal to have him stop in his tracks and to recognise you as someone much younger.

“Do you want watermelon? I brought watermelon.”

You shake your head, but you lay back down, as you’d initially awoken into this world.

“No, no. That’s fine, let the me from the present have it when he’s back.”

He’s still staring you down. You keep glaring. He is unmoved.

“Is there something weird with my face?”

His ‘no’ comes a beat behind what it should have been. His demeanour also indicates that you had gotten it right for once. Yet, that didn’t quite make sense. Your travelling did not change your physical attributes. There wasn’t really anything that could have been ‘weird’ about your face. And touching it now did not reveal any freak accident that would force John to have his eyes glued to you like this.

“There is something weird with my face,” you state openly now.

“Your face is perfection.”

He puts his hands over your cheeks and it is a gesture that is familiar enough to have you forget about the worries at home, in your real timeframe, and have you forget about your worries associated to John’s staring and new happiness. It is enough to melt your expression into one that could be more similar to John’s.

It is not enough for you to not notice the difference in John’s hands. Not just in shape, not just in size, but…

“You’re married.”

It feels like a bad surprise. You catch yourself looking over your shoulder when you sit back up, towards the hill where John had shown up, expecting a trophy bride to roll in. You do this, for some reason, before even checking your own hands.

He tells you he’s engaged, not married, before you check said hands.

It’s still not obvious, even when you check your own hands. You might not have ever thought about anyone outside of John, but then again, if John was tying the knot with someone else, you’d find yourself in a difficult position to turn a third party down. So you ask him, despite the matching rings; “Engaged to each other?”

“Yes.” He rolls his eyes and flicks your forehead. “See? There is no way you’re anywhere near twenty-five if you’re questioning that.”

Again, you cross your arms, just as if you hadn’t heard the best premonition you had had in life yet. Just as if a promised shared life bond with 'the' John Egbert was not, as he liked to say now, a big deal.

He seems pensive when he speaks next, and yet his eyes have not drifted away from you. “You know, until now, I never actually thought you’d doubt something like us. I guess, ‘cause I always assumed you knew things I didn’t. That you were doing things with purpose.”

His words are powerful, your shrug is not. You think, ultimately, this is what breaks his resolve. His face morphs and it seems almost as if he was able to summon up a counter-example in the moment immediately after he had spoken. You cannot tell what this example is, but somehow it automatically adds to your discouragement.

He stumbles for words in an attempt to fix the mistake you cannot yet make sense of, but his eyes still do not leave you. “I mean. Just, not about us, anyway. You loved me from the start, so… I don’t know. I thought you knew we’d be together.”

The words he uses are heavy with such finality and such decisiveness, you find yourself shaking your head and shrugging your shoulders repeatedly, as if trying to wave the sense of the conversation off yourself. “Uhm. Maybe I did. I don’t know, last year, was…” You wave your hand around this time.

He leans towards you, eyes alit with an obvious inquisitive spirit. “What was last year? Tell me.”

You breathe out. It is charged, it is heavy, it is a breath you had not breathed out until now. “Like, I don’t know? It was a lot of you wanting me around and close to you, like, close. Then a lot of you not wanting me around at all. And sometimes you getting frustrated and calling me annoying every other minute, and then other times it was you apologising for the dumbest things. I don’t know. It was weird.”

Maybe you’d been holding it in, for all of this time, because you’d believed it would have put things into perspective once spoken. It doesn’t. It does not feel good, and it does not clear anything up either. You end up laying back down and crossing your arms over your eyes and hoping for the sands to wrap you up and take you away from the sun and away from this place.

You don’t know what kind of sense this will make thirteen years too late.

John only confirms more fears when he tells you that you’d never said anything about it before. Meaning, you wouldn’t be bringing it up with John. Even if you wanted to, now you were bound to keep it to yourself.

You wouldn’t bring up that you’d lost hope about a possible ‘us’ because you’d felt jerked around for an entire year. That was going to remain with you and away from John, and there was nothing you could do about it, not now that you’d spoken with John, much, much, much later in the future.

He touches your arms, softly. “C’mon, don’t hide your eyes.” And that is when it becomes very obvious that he had been fixated with staring at your eyes throughout this encounter. Your eyebrows furrow, but you can’t bring yourself to ask for more specific clarifications.

“And don’t doubt us, alright? I’m always there. Even if sometimes, I’m weird, or whatever. You have my unwavering support, always.”

He doesn’t sound much different than fifteen year old John does. You can’t even say if this unwavering support has proven to be true in the recent year. You don’t actually want to put his words to the test though. The gap in age between you is very real, but the ring you now could feel around your finger held a promise that trumped that easily.

So you nod. Even if you aren’t at all convinced. Even if there was something wrong with the scenery and when you find out what it is it might just blow over this castle of sand. You still nod because he really does look happy and you really do need him with you.

You stay quiet five, ten, maybe fifteen minutes. His eyes don’t leave yours, not once. You don’t want to find out what the problem with your eyes is exactly.

As soon as it occurs to you that you might have wasted your time in a future where John wasn’t unhappy with you, fretting about and staying quiet, he takes your hands into his.

“I have a great idea.”

He pulls you up to your feet before revealing this great idea. The great idea is a race. You think it is a stupid idea. Running in the sand wasn’t the easiest, nor the most exciting.

It is a stupid idea. But he wins the race. And when you stop running, your breath is hard to catch.

You do not manage to outrun him. You know it is a stupid reason to start crying. But you do it anyway.

You feel as if something really important has gone missing. When he takes you into his arms, it feels as if he is consoling you because something really important has gone missing.

This is the farthest you’ve seen into the future. Something really important has gone missing, you’d felt it as soon as you’d woken up. You do not think you want to go this far into the future again.

-xxx-

“You know, I lied to you.”

The rain had started to fall whilst you had been away, yet still sleeping on the bus taking you back home. It wasn’t the most seasonal thing, and the combined landscape of snow and rainy skies didn’t exactly do marvels for your mood. A pause in the future, on a sunny beach, felt so unrelated to the situation you were in now.

John, stopping you in front of the doors of your building to tell you that he’s lied is also strong contrast to the John who could talk about wedding engagements like it was of a casual matter.

You say, “I guess,” but only because you don’t have much else to say. The end of the road John, who only had eyes on you and who seemed wise about relationships was not the John in front of you. And for once, you could not construct your timeline in a way that would lead up to such a John.

“I knew her. The woman.”

You don’t blink because you do not feel surprised. You’re mostly still thinking about the sinking feeling of realisation, that something had been missing in your vision of the future. But that something was not missing now and you could not put your finger on it.

You wonder why the two of you are standing outside. You want to go inside. He seems to think this is a big deal. And sure, maybe clues about your capacity to time travel could potentially be a big deal. You were just under the impression that maintaining your relationship was a bigger one. You were also under the impression that John wasn’t seeing eye to eye with you on that.

“Anyway, she’s my therapist.”

You’re still not surprised. You’re not even hurt he wouldn’t tell you about seeing someone about stuff. Stuff was heavy, you suppose. His sleep was fucked, his mother was gone, and his best friend was even more so fucked. You forget for a moment that you are thinking about John’s stuff, and not your own.

You absolutely know that it is selfish when you ask him your next question.

“You didn’t tell her my secret though?”

There wasn’t a reason in the world why this should be your first concern. For all of his interest, and all of his research. John had never slipped up. It had always been his secret to keep, and he’d done so. But both the feeling of crossing her eyes, and the feeling when you had not managed to outrun John have knocked some good sense out of you.

“No— Why would I? That’s not what I’m trying to get to!”

“Oh yeah? Because you tried to get us to meet with hopes that she had answers I did not. About what’s wrong with me. Unless you want her to solve my emotional dilemmas, I don’t think she is suited for my otherwise temporal dilemmas.”

He says nothing about it. He does not look at you. The contrast with his older self is still strong.

“Her name’s Rose Lalonde. She looks just like your mom, and like you too, I guess. I thought maybe you were related?”

You lean against the building’s wall.  You had now given up on the idea of heading inside any time soon. You shrug, and somehow it is devoid from the emotion that you had been sure you would feel were you to discuss this any further.

“Maybe I’m just not interested in meeting anyone related to me? I don’t know. I think I’m doing fine.”

He gives you a look that leaves no room for interpretation. He does not think you are fine. He will not accept that you are fine. Your patience wears thin.

“I’m fine with the time stuff, and I’m fine with the mom stuff.  I think what I’m least fine with is the you stuff anyway.  So maybe you want to reconsider your awesome plan.”

You don’t feel very loving. You don’t feel very kind. He looks at you, and he isn’t feeling that from you either, he hasn’t for a while, you’ll bet. You press more of your weight against the wall, and you feel as if, partly, you are melting.

“Do you want to come inside?”

“I don’t know,” he answers plainly, but just on the verge of miserably.

Or maybe it is the scenery. The snowy landscape, and the rainy skies. Maybe it is because, no matter how much looking away you did, he seemed tired more often and seemed slighter, and secret therapy sessions maybe weren’t as small of a deal as you’d automatically waved them off to be.

“Come inside.”

You don’t think he wants to. He still does.

You know he doesn’t want to play video games. Still, you get him to sit down and to play with you for over three hours. You don’t even divert the attempts he makes to bring up your time traveller status. You simply ignore his words.

By the time night comes around and he announces that it’s time for him to leave, that his father would be on the way soon; he looks just as lost as you do. You wait with him, in the stairs of the building, in the cold and in the dark. You try not to mind that he wouldn't be sleeping over despite the earlier offer.

You do not even sit in the same stair.

He asks you if things seem unfixable. You tell him no, but not with the conviction you should be portraying, not when you’d gotten the outcome and you were closer in said outcome than you’d ever been up until now.

“I love you though. I know I haven’t been the best of friends lately. I don’t know, I just want to put that past me.” You watch him wring his hands and follow the cracks in the pavement with his eyes. “I guess, I thought. If I could bring you some relief from all the time stuff and mystery, I could break even with the not so great stuff I did.”

“You were always great.”  You’re surprised to find that you aren’t at all lying.

He looks over his shoulder. His smile is carefree. He hadn’t heard a lie in you either.

“I don’t know. I feel like I had a huge teenager moment.”

Put like that, the strain the two of you had experienced hardly seemed like something to fret about at all.

“Maybe. It’s to be expected when you have to deal with all of the pressures of being the time traveler’s best friend, right?”

His smile does not budge.

“It’s no pressure. I’m the one pressuring you, if anything. But I have her card. Rose’s? If ever you want it.”

Your ‘no’ is cold and final. You know you’re mostly afraid. And you know she has answers you do not have. You simply do not want them.

John kisses you goodbye a few minutes before his father turns up. It’s sweet and slow, and like always, you try not to put too much into the gesture. That was just John. John just felt like touching sometimes. And there was no use turning over and over the possibility of a relationship. You’d travelled much too far into the future. There was too much time between then and now to worry about it.

Instead you spend the night worrying about what it is you might lose later on in your timeline, and worrying about Rose finding you and giving you the truths you had not asked for.

Chapter Text

You do not have a problem with your relationship with Dave.  You had one.  No, in fact, not even back then did you have a problem with it.  You’d just been frustrated with cracking the code of your relationship.  

The biggest problem you had, really, was that Dave had all the tools to decipher what was the bond between you two.  He had the ressources to look into the future and to understand how your relationship was supposed to pan out.  But did he ever tell you about any of those findings?  No.  And if he did not have the findings, then presumably he did not really care about what happened between you two, not in the way that you do.  

The biggest problem was that you’d bring the subject up as easily as you breathed.  You would outright ask him what was going on between you.  Dave was as silent as a grave.  Dave did not want to answer and never bothered to answer.  There was no better way to shut Dave up than to ask what there was between you two.  

After he’d come crying from the future about the failings of your relationship, and after you had been done freaking out about what you were supposed to decode in what you’d found out from his words; you’d simply resolved to clarify what there was in this relationship.  What all of this was supposed to be, aside from the obvious eternal friendship.  So you’d spent the year going from one extreme to the other, spending all of your time with Dave to no time whatsoever.  The experiment would have been a great one in theory, you’re sure.  You were supposed to weigh out what made Dave the happiest, what he responded best to in your friendship.  

But you found out nothing.  You would leave Dave in complete silence, not giving him a sign in days.  And he’d keep on going as if nothing at all had changed.  You pinned Dave to your bed, and he would be the same Dave that would listen to you talk about girls.  And really, there was nothing to be deduced from his reactions.  He was the portrait of cold acceptance.  

The whole experience had been frustrating.  But then it had gone from frustrating to devastating when you’d realised, maybe a little too late, that for all the lack of reaction Dave showcased, your testing of the waters had taken its toll on him and had left him with his guards much higher up than what they had once been.

It had hit you, one day, when you had been out at the cinema with him and had been debating with him the merits of every film listed.  He’d snapped, out of nowhere, and had told you, with a distress he didn’t often let on; “Would you stop jerking me around all the time?”  

You’re pretty sure it had been unrelated to jerking him around with the expectations of which movie you had been about to watch.  You're sure it had been about you jerking him around in your relationship.  Because maybe he had been the face of cold acceptance, but obviously he’d still noticed.  

That was when panic had hit you.  The track you were on was going to, indisputably, lead to misunderstandings and to the hurt Dave you’d seen that night.  You’d done the opposite of fixing the situation.  You didn’t know how to fix the situation. 

So you’d done your best to fix the time situation.  There was definitely an explanation behind Dave’s time travel, and you were going to bring it to him on a silver platter.  And you’d done a lot to follow through with this.  

Some measures, you probably had been wrong in taking.  Like, with Rose.  You’d seen her picture in the local newspaper your father had left on the table.  Something about her paper about some other thing, being published in some place.  Really, the picture was all that had interested you.  Maybe you should have contacted her, instead of tricking your father into believing you wanted therapy, and pulling all the strings to make sure you’d end up in her office and not in anyone else’s.  But no one was going to admit to time travel things without a bond of trust, that was for sure.  More time with her meant more chances for this bond.  

And you knew she knew something.  You didn’t find all that subtle her inquiring about your friends every time you’d meet after having seen Dave.  You didn’t either find it subtle when she had questioned you profusely about him on that day, when she’d approached you before you could run out after Dave.  

She knew.  You knew she knew.  And somehow, Dave was completely disinterested.  Dave didn’t want to know about his time powers.  Dave didn’t even like it when you focused on those powers.  You hadn’t made anything up to him.  

Any effort you made to strengthen your bond always managed to push him away.  

And though you did not have a problem with your relationship, and you never had had a real problem with it…  You’d still, at times, kiss as if it were your last day on Earth, and still you did not bring up any romantic feelings or possibilities.  Sometimes, you’d blame yourself for kissing him from the very beginning, maybe it had desensitised him to that sort of display of affection.  But you couldn’t take that back.  You’d loved him then and you still loved him now; but you needed to know where the two of you stood.  

Dave did not seem driven by that need.  You’d be lying were you to say that it didn’t matter to you that he did not preoccupy himself with this question.  You could not understand him now, either, counting his cards as if the game of cribbage before you was just as relevant or as important as the kisses you’d shared in your bed this morning, just a few hours ago.  

“Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, fifteen-six, three is six, and another for the jack.  So thirteen.  Man, you’re going to get skunked.”  

You were the one who’d been playing crib since your childhood, and yet he would swoop in, count cards as efficiently as your father had tried to teach you, and would not bat an eyelash about it.  You push your cards towards him.  

“Count mine.”  

He does, but he doesn’t look pleased about it.  He can tell that you do not care.  You don’t get how he can show distaste when it came to you being disinterested in a game, but wouldn’t care that you did not seem to put anything into establishing or naming your relationship.  Dave from the future cared, and you don’t understand the evolution that could lead to that.  

“John?  Your crib, you going to count it?”  

“Oh, yeah, right.”  

You flip your second hand of cards, but once again you can’t bother to put the numbers together.  

It was summer, this was when everything about the two of you intensified.  This was when it would become obvious that the physical portion of your relationship was not going to fade with time.  It meant more touching, more time spent together, less worries and concerns about school in your way.  But summer vacation had been underway for two weeks already, and your efforts to communicate distress, puzzlement, frustration with the situation at hand, have been in vain. 

Dave is still counting, something about your crib being ridiculously good and cursing the cards he’d handed over to you.  You put your elbows onto the table and lean in forward.  A few glances around confirm that your father was still outside, happily engaged in his yard work.  

“Hey, cut the card shit for a sec.  About this morning…”  

You don’t say anything more, you only emphasise your statement with a lowering of your eyebrows, trusting he could pick up on the route this was taking.  

He probably does, but he still plays the innocent card as he gathers the physical cards, starting off on his shuffle.  

“When you had the croissant your father purchased at the French bakery that was, let’s face it, destined to be mine?”  

“I don’t know, Dave.  You probably need to check your definition of destiny.  If it wound up in my stomach, that was its destiny.”  

You’ll engage with a minute feud over the fallen croissant.  But you won’t let it distract you.  You’ve lost too many hours of sleep over the topic you have in mind, it isn’t going to drop out of your sight just like that.  

“As far as I’m concerned, it had my name all over it and you lead it away from its path.  The poor thing was thrown to the wolves.  The wolves, obviously, being you.”  He’s smirking now and you’re not sure which it is.  Is it a victorious grin at the success of his pivot away from your question, or is it an amused grin of a Dave who truly did believe this might be the topic at hand.  

“You know what has your name all over it?  Pivoting.”  There.  That would clear things up.  

He waves a hand at you dismissively, deciding now to distribute cards rather than to come to any realisation about the conversation.  

“No way, pivoters are weak shits.”  

“Well, you’re weak shit,” you cut him off almost sourly.  

He turns his cards up.  Nothing is going to give.  

You forget to check for your father before raising your voice; “Listen.  Can we please talk about us kissing and…”  

He completes your sentence as if there was absolutely nothing about it.  “And grinding on your bed and all that.”  

You nod seriously.  You feel dizzy and you’re pretty sure it is because he is in fact vocally addressing what goes on with you behind closed doors.  You feel dizzy and you’re pretty sure it is because it doesn’t feel like he’ll throw in his opinion or a caring attitude, despite his oral recognition.  

You start to say something, but you stop yourself.  You think to yourself that you are just as bad at talking about this as he is.  But you know in your heart your display of concern and attention is an obvious one.  You know he should feel comfortable opening up to you because of this demonstration.  With his cold, increasingly detached front, you do not know how to form words.  

When he speaks next.  You are surprised.  

“So?  It’s not like it’s a big deal.”  

You consider, only for a second, being hurt.  You cannot.  The way he curves his shoulders forward, and the way he urgently puts the cards down into his crib both let you know that he’s the one who is preparing himself to feel hurt.  So you consider the obvious.  Maybe, he is attached to you and doesn’t want you to push him away from these sorts of activities?  But maybe that was wishful thinking.  Maybe, he was scared his honest feelings on the matter would hurt you, and in turn hurt him and your bond.  

He is preparing himself for an awful exchange, but you can’t tell if it is in fear of rejection, or in fear of having to reject you.  

“It kind of is.  Who else do you kiss?”  

He hesitates to answer, licks his lips, and you berate yourself  You are probably to blame, you know so.  Even now, you wanted to just pull him in and kiss him and forget about working things out.  You were risking it, you were risking the chances to actually be physical with him; he knew so, and you could pretend you didn’t, but you sure did too.  

“So?  What other kid have I lived with?  Who else do I share my food with?  Who else do I tell my time stuff too?  Who else has known me as long as you have?  They’re just details, it’s not ‘cause you’re the only one that any of these things are important.”  

His jaw clenches after this outburst and you think you get why.  None of those were details that weren’t too defining.  They all mattered, they all spoke volumes of how close you were.  But so did this thing you were trying to get answers for.  

“Egbert, god damn it.  You haven’t even looked at your cards.”  

You cross your arms.  You know you won’t be looking at the cards, you probably won’t finish this game at all.  

“Maybe, but you never say a word about what you feel or think.”  

“So what?  Do I have to spell everything out to you?”  

You would take his tone of aggressive, but you don’t.  He is desperate in clawing his way out of this talk, but he’s already caught on that he’ll have to sit through an unpleasant moment.  Unfortunately; there are no conclusions or resolutions in sight.  

“Please do!  The more descriptive, the better.”  

He makes a sound in the back of his throat, and you start to feel the urge to back off.  Dave’s temperament had considerably calmed with the years and it was rare now to see him fret or upset himself over things.  He is heading in that direction now and you are aware that you are the one doing the pushing.  

“What am I supposed to say?  Am I supposed to beg for you to touch me?”  

“No, that’s not it, Dave…”  You swallow loudly, gathering your thoughts and words poorly.  “I just wanted to know…”  

…  To know if we are together.  It is such a stupid question.  You do not want to utter such a question.  It felt like you were together, it had always felt that way.  It was you and Dave, and sure maybe kissing and that stuff didn’t matter all that much, just as he’d said before.  Regardless of circumstances, you were in all of it together.  Surely, it would be rude and insensitive to ask if you actually were together.  That probably was a given.  It was probably tacit.  You don’t want to back off.  You’re starting to feel as if you are.  

“Kissing is fine.  Crib is fine too.  I never mind what we do.  If you want to stop playing and do stuff right now, like…  In your bedroom, if you want to put it that way.  That’s fine.  Just don’t make me jump through hoops.”  His tone is assertive, but it hasn’t rid itself of the desperate vibe it had taken up.  He does not want to be questioned, he’s never wanted to be questioned.  

You feel ashamed though.  You pick up your cards and you blink enough times to push your tears back for a later time, maybe when you next excuse yourself to the bathroom.  Dave was taking up the role where things didn’t matter.  The real role under that though was that he was bending backwards for you, doing whatever it was that was on your agenda.  

You don’t feel any better, and you certainly don’t feel any closer to piecing things together.  

You play through the game.  The pace is languid and torturous.  He refuses to meet your eye, the shades do a poor job at hiding this fact.  You don’t talk about it again.  And you don’t reach for his hand over the table, though you do think about it a number of times.  

You’re starting to believe that…  Dating Dave had become the one thing you really wanted and needed in your life.  But you’re also starting to believe that you’d almost be bullying Dave into this position.  That didn’t matter.  You’d wait.  And you’d take what you could for now.  There was no use in rushing, you were together through it all anyway.  

You end up winning.  Dave goes on a long rant concerning your lack of expertise and your disinterest in the game.  But you smile in celebration, and he ends up smiling too, even just a little.  

“Are we still on for a movie tonight?”  he asks you as you start clearing the table.  

You pretend that he isn’t asking because he feels awkward from the questions you’d thrown at him.  Instead you warmly agree and invite him to spend another night over.  He doesn’t refuse, and your happiness levels keep rising.  So, maybe summer time was the time when all the questions amplified and took shape, but it was still the time when you could spend the maximum of hours together, and that would never, ever be a bad thing.  

“Should we go grab a few snacks at the grocery store?”  

Again, you eagerly accept.  Mostly because you knew how much Dave actually liked being in the passenger seat.  You were confused as to why he didn’t want to take up driving lessons, but he’d been very secretive when you’d casually asked him.  As for you, you’d gotten your permit as quickly as the steps permitted it.  

On your way out to the car, you call out to your father, hard at work eliminating dandelion roots, and ask for things he needed back from the store.  Dave’s already slid inside the car, indulging in the heated leather of the car seats, you’re sure.  He liked the confined warmth of cars, and you weren’t quite sure why.  You knew that, he’d always roll his window back up when you tried to have all the windows down and would press his cheek to the heated window.  You thought most of the appeal in driving was to feel the wind in your hair, but that didn’t exactly seem to be a shared opinion.  

The car ride, albeit short, is always satisfying.  You’re proud your father will let you drive his car, non too ceremoniously either.  But this particular ride happens to be quite quiet.  Dave presses his cheek to the window, of course, watches the landscape, but forgets to turn on the radio, as was usually the tradition.  

The grocery store rolls into view before you know it, and that’s only when you tentatively use your voice.  

“Hey?  You’re not upset, are you?”  

He shakes his head, but things remain quiet until you find your parking spot.  

“Are you though?”  He asks in a voice that confirms he is upset.  

You do not assume that it is about the conversation, though you strongly fear that it may be.  You know Dave though, he drags along a lot of things he wouldn’t divulge easily, and the weight of it you could feel by extension from time to time.  

“I guess?  I don’t know.  I don’t really think there is anything to be upset about, but…  I worry?”  

You worry because Dave’s future version gave you sufficient fuel to throw you into a full frenzy of doubts and fears.  You wonder if your future version might have given enough reassurance to Dave.  You wish you could speak to that guy instead, but that wasn’t bound to happen.  

“It’s cool.  Let’s get a binge amount of snacks, and concentrate on movies and their dumb universes instead.  The worries will fly away.”  

He smiles, not at you.  You unbuckle your seatbelt, but he takes a while to do the same, probably maximising his time inside of the overheated vehicle.  You’re not entirely sure you should be letting the worries fly, but you figure that for now it might not do too much harm.  You get out of the car before he does, and have to go open his door for him and basically wrestle him out of there.  When you finally get him out, he steps into your arms.  And though it is an impromptu hug, it is a heartfelt one.  

You start attributing his now tired and docile energy to the emotional strain the thought of you two’s relationship even remotely changing  had put on him.  You hold his hand all the way through the parking.  On most days, you wouldn’t do this.  You thought it to be a little weird for the two of you to hold hands in public now that you were older.  You push that ever present thought down.  

The run to the grocery store should have been uneventful and resting for both of your emotional drives, but it’s not.  

-845-

“John?”  

You turn your attention towards Dave.  Along the shopping trip you’d switched out your shopping basket for an actual shopping cart that was nearing full already.  Surely your father wouldn’t mind you splurging; it was food!  Everyone needed food and there would always be food.  

Dave has stopped mid-motion reaching towards your request for one more bag of Doritos.  

“Yeah, that one’s fine, Dave.”  

You forget to notice that he’s used John instead of Egbert.  But once he brings his hand back to his chest, almost as if he’d injured it, you’re reminded that these details matter with Dave, that these details could mean a lot.  

“Dave?”  you remind him.  

He physically jolts and your confusion grows.  

“Oh, yeah, no.  Everything’s fine.  And that one’s fine too, I got you.”  

You roll your eyes and let out a short sigh, thoroughly convinced this must be a young iteration of Dave who was still frazzled by simple trips through time.  So you reach out for the bag in place of him and let it drop into the cart.  

“I meant the Doritos bag, numbnuts.  You don’t have to act like you know what’s going on when you don’t.”  

“I’m fine,” he repeats.  

You purse your lips and narrow your eyes.  But you choose not to say more for now, strolling down the alley for all of three steps before taking note that Dave was not following.  Maybe you’d been too generous in guessing his age.  

“Dave?  Come on.  I said, don’t act like you know what’s going on, but maybe don’t just stand around like a lunatic?”  

He turns towards you but you catch the hesitance that is put into his weight as he shifts it.  

“Uhm…”  The silence drags.  “Do you mind holding my hand for a while?”  

You think it is a bit coincidental that he would specifically request this when you’d walked him here hand in hand just before he’d time hopped here.  At the same time, it makes you happy you’d held his hand earlier.  Obviously, that couldn’t be an entirely selfish thing if he was now requesting it.  

“Yeah, but you see me pushing this cart, right?”  

“Well, yeah.  Right.  Could I hold your arm then, or, I don’t know…”  

You feel bad, so you tell him ‘sure’ immediately.  But he doesn’t move towards you whatsoever.  You glance around, a little worried other shoppers might witness this brutally strange interaction.  

You feel something is off.  Had he just gone through a traumatic event in the present he was from?  Had his mother only just left him?  Why was he acting in such an odd manner.  

You walk back to him, leaving the cart in its place.  You offer your arm to him, he fails to give you an appropriate reaction.  

“Come on.”  

Again, he jolts.  You frown now.  

“Do you have your eyes shut?”  

“Uhm…”  

You lean in close, an inch away from his face to easily distinguish his hidden eyes.  You search them, he doesn’t, not once, meet your eyes.

“I know I’m probably older than you’re used to, but I don’t think I look gross enough for you not to want to look me in the eye…”  

His chuckle is forced and sounds terribly close to breaking.  

He finally does take your arm.  It is unnatural.  His grip is tight.  His transfer of weight is still hesitant.  You end up deciding maybe that’s enough food for the night.  

The cash register isn’t a smoother operation.  You have to dig into your wallet while Dave clutches at you like a drowning kitten.  By the time you walk out, you do feel frustrated.  It is impossible for you to carry the bags with the way Dave is acting.  So you decide to push the cart to the car, which means having to trace your way back to the store to put it back in place.  

Dave still doesn’t offer his help as you load the bags into the car.  Your frustration goes up.  Once the trunk is closed, you actually shake his arm off of you.  

“I’ll unlock the car, you get in.  I’ll just put the cart back.”  You want to be soft and melodious, you feel you’re pretty good at it when Dave skips through time in a moment of need.  But this time it feels distinctively different.  Dave has never acted in such a weak manner.  You try to pretend that the word ‘useless’ is not one that comes to mind.  Despite the lack of cooperation, that was still Dave in there.  Dave who you loved…  And who you wanted to date?  And who you wanted to spend all of your time with.  

You’re about to go up ten shades of frustration when you come back to Dave, not sitting inside the car, but sitting on the car, over the shut trunk.  That said, your frustration actually evaporates entirely when he comes into fuller sight.  

His shades have been removed and his collapsed posture, face pressed into his open hands, leaves no place for theories.  Once again, Dave had hopped through time only to come up a devastatingly emotional mess.  You’re not frustrated, however.  Because this feels different, ominous, almost.  Everything seems to slow down, lose its colour, lose its sound as you march back up to him.  

So you hoist yourself up to sit next to him.  You stare at nothing for a while, say nothing for a while, and let the heat of the day press down on the two of you.  There is a tiny voice inside of your head that wants enough time to pass to have the slightly tired, but amorous Dave back.  It is overpowered by your need to understand what was Dave’s timeline, what it was he went through by himself, and piecing together what you could to help yourself into a position that is closer to him.  

He speaks up once he is ready.  It sounds surprisingly cool and calm for someone who had climbed on top of your father’s car to cry.  

“I’m sorry.  It’s nothing, really.”  

The clear enunciation of his words is familiar.  You start reconsidering the assumption of a very young Dave showing up.  

“Sure looks like nothing,” you state blandly.  

You keep staring.  Even the air around you feels heavy.  

“It sort of is.  Mainly, it’s just a bad surprise.”  

You glance his way and you expect him to do the same.  He does not.  He’s staring into the distance just as you had been doing.  You fixate your eyes on his profile, but he does not respond.  

“Hey, would you look at me?”  

He manages to turn towards you, but his eyes, again, do not find yours.  

“Dave.  You can’t see.”  You meant it as a question.  But it is not a question.  His apologetic frown is not an answer either.  

“What happened?  Did you like…  Did you run out of time powers, or something?  Can’t see in a different time anymore?”  It seems like a quick paced and farfetched theory.  Clearly, the bad surprise and his reaction were one and the same and the coping he was using towards his lack of sight.  This must have been the first time it happened.  There was no way Dave could answer that question yet.  

Still, he shakes his head confidently, aware that the theory is not the right one.  

“Nah.  Nah, it’s more like…  It wasn’t there in present time.  I wanted to see if I could see in the past, but…  It’s a no-go.”  He laughs.  And again it seems to be teetering on the edge of breaking.  

“What?  Did you get hit with  pepper-spray?”  

It’s meant to be a joke.  And he does laugh.  But you don’t like the sound of his laugh very much.  You, wordlessly, decide to help him off the trunk and into his side of the car.  You don’t buckle him in.  But as you shut the door, go around to your side and enter the car, you know it was a good call.  He’s pressed his cheek to the window and has relaxed into the seat, soaking in the heat of the previously locked car.  

“Something like that.”  

You play with the arms of his aviators, which you’d picked up at the same time as you’d guided him back inside.  

Dave looked good in shades.  These in particular had always complimented his face, you’d found.  But that did nothing to take away from how special and intimate your connection feels when he has them off.  Somehow though, you’d prefer them on his face as of right now.  You don’t want to see the tears welling up.  You don’t want to see the emotion swell up.  

“It was my fault, anyway.”  His tone is dismissive and hollowed out from any vulnerability.  But his face crumbles and the tears slip away from him.  You have to wonder if he realises you can still see him despite his inability to see you in return. 

It seems like a dumb question because you want to already know the answer.  But you still ask, “It’s temporary, right?”  

“We’ll see, won’t we?  But I think what we’ve found out right now is that it fucking transcends time, so.”  

You expect to share a look with him, but of course, it doesn’t happen.  

“But…”  It was getting harder to swallow down.  Physical ailments surely didn’t travel alongside Dave.  Then, was this so called lost sight purely psychological?  “But, you’re going to be able to see once you’re back to being sixteen years old.  And you can confirm that…  So how could you possibly be unable to see right now?”  

“Yep.  That was the idea, Egbert.  I was going to go back in time so I could see your dumb face again.  Didn’t quite work out.”  

“Did you wish to see my face before falling asleep?”  Your question is abrupt, and unfortunately, it only occurs to you once it’s out that Dave’s wording might have been a joke.  

“Actually…”  You watch him lick his lips and you try to concentrate on the lips you love rather than the empty gazed eyes.  “I tried that.  Two nights in a row.  I was starting to get stressed that I wouldn’t be able to hop at all.  So I basically made a random wish to test it out, and now here I am.”  

You laugh, for no reason whatsoever.  He joins in, but again, the sound of his laughter is almost painful, so your laughter quickly fades in response. 

“Well…  We’re sixteen anyway, if you were wondering.  Summer.  You’re staying over tonight and it’s supposed to be awesome.”  

His eyes move sideways and this time you can tell that he was in fact trying to share a look with you.  It’s sad to look at so you end up looking away.  

“Sweet sixteen, huh?”  The bitterness in his words is poignant and no matter how much you try to push it back down, it’s still there anyway.  

“Yeah, well.”  You breathe in, breathe out, annoyed.  And you realise that what’s important here is if Dave could see or not, but you disregard that.  “How about you fucking tell me.  Do we end up together, do we not?”  

The words he answers with are a dead weight.  “So far, not so good.”  

The colour drains from your face.  You absolutely know that what  you need to pay attention to is Dave’s sight.  It’s not about some juvenile are we dating or are we not question.  Besides, that had been answered cleanly.  

“Oh.  Well, yeah.  That’s what I was expecting.”  

Again, his eyes try to adjust, his eyebrows furrow, and you try to paste his glare over the unfocused dead look he had kept on sporting throughout it all.  

“Oh, that’s nice, Egbert.  Kick me while I’m down, why don’t you?  I have to come back here for Bro, and then when I try to get away again this fucking shit happens.  I can kiss independence goodbye now that I’m a god damned blind.”  

Somewhere along his speech he had pushed away from the window completely and had poured all of his energy into a ferocious, angry tone.  It works.  You almost recoil.   

“And now I have the fucking privilege to have you tell me loud and clear, at sixteen, that you never had the intention to be with me.  You’re the same as always, just dragging me along because you can’t be bothered to, to…  To…”  

He lets out a sharp sounding breath.  You watch his chest heave, once, twice, and that’s all the time you can allow before you’re pulling him towards you, pressing his head to your chest.  

He doesn’t fight back, but you can sense him.  You sense that the high of emotion and the crash of sadness were still at full force.

“Calm down.  You know I love you.  Always.”  Your grip on him gets forceful to a point where you’re not really comfortable calling this a hug.  It was more of a hold in hopes of shaking some sense back into him.  You don’t think he minds.  You think he might even like it.  You don’t want to imagine having all the lights out after a full life of vision.  He needs someone steady now.  And you’ll be that person.  

“I know, I know!”  You’re surprised by this outburst, and you pay close attention to his weak followup to this forceful affirmation.  “I know you love me.  But I want to be with you.  I always have.”  

Your stomach feels empty.  Your hands feel empty despite the harsh grip you were maintaining on him.   You recover quickly.  Dave’s current definition of being with you was and had been in the past simply being part of your life.  If that meant being romantic, it would only be by your request.  

Not his.  He didn’t want that, or at best he was indifferent.  You regain your composure.  

“Is there anything you want to do?  That we should do?”  

“I don’t know.  I would have liked to fucking see your face.”  

You straighten him back up by the shoulders and then frame his face with your hands.  And finally you press your forehead to his and shut your eyes.  If anyone passing by the car sees you, that was just fine.  It was a weird display of affection, sure.  It was a weird situation though. 

You were really trying not to jump to conclusions.  Maybe Dave was just scared right now and his eyes would recover shortly.  There would be some ways of testing it.  You should ask for his age, and always check it from now on.  But you don’t.  Because you don’t really want to know.  

When you open your eyes, you notice the trembling in his hands, fidgeting over his lap.  So you pull back, grab his hands, and have him touch your face for once.  

“Well, you know.  If I wanted to see your face through my hands, I could have done that in real-time.”  

“Nope.  Not my fresh, sixteen year old face.”  

You smile wide and his hands tense slightly.  

A moment passes.  You tell him, “Come on, touch my stupid face.”  

“But it’s so god damned cliché,” he whispers back but in a hurried way that lets you know he did want to get cliché about it.  

If that Dave had plainly said ‘so far not so good’ when it came to your relationship, you had some doubts that he felt in a position in the present to grope at your face.  You’re sure he actually is, because similarly as how he does anything for you, you behave the same way towards him.  He just doesn’t know that.  

Still, you smile as his hands go over your forehead, down your cheeks to your chin.  His fingertips trace your lips, your eyelids, your eyebrows, the line of your nose.  It is with some difficulty that he gauges his positioning and kisses you firmly on the forehead.  The moment doesn’t last longer than twenty seconds, as if he’d wanted to memorise the feeling of your face at an impressive speed.  

You open your eyes, and surely enough he looks about ready to cry.  His eyes look empty.  It was strange to see such a vivid, lively colour, to be so still and to be so lost.  

“Did you know you have a sad smile?  I never noticed before…”  

You snort.  “Of course not.  I’m just worried about your eyes, dumb-dumb.  But I get the feeling they will be fine.”  You don’t have that feeling actually.  

Dave hangs his head, his eyes barely follow.  

“No, that’s not what I mean.  You’ve always had a sad smile.  Even when we were kids and I thought you were obnoxious and loud.”  

“You thought what?”  

You want to be able to act indignant and silly in response to this claim, but he seems totally pensive, lost in thought.  

“The muscles around your eyes don’t move when you smile.”  

“Don’t make me feel self-conscious, now.”  

“Have I been a bad friend?”  

You’re not smiling anymore.  Sure your smiling wasn’t always one hundred percent truthful, but you smiled quite a lot around Dave, actually.  He made you happy.  He made your heart happy.  It wasn’t because you didn’t always give the best smiles that that meant that they were sad, that you were sad…  You wouldn’t be sad, right?  What was there to be sad about?  

“You’re my best friend.  You go through a lot.  And I just want to be with you through it all.”  That was your explanation.  If ever you were tense, if ever you seemed sad.  It was just because you were trying to help shoulder Dave.  It wasn’t as if he had failed to help you with your own baggage, you were just bad at helping him out.  That was the explanation.   

“Yeah, and I’ve been busy trying to push you away.”  

You shake your head.  That doesn’t seem likely.  You’d jerked him around, as he had exclaimed back then, and still he hung close.  Dave liked being near you too, and you’d never honestly felt pushed away by him.  

“Well, then, I’m sure it wasn’t all that successful.”  

He presses his lips together and keeps himself from answering, you are sure of it.  His eyes, fleetingly, gleam with a light of danger.  It takes you by surprise, they’d looked so harmless throughout this encounter.  

You grab his hand and kiss him soundly on the lips.  

He tells you, without any bite, “I don’t kiss minors.”  

You shush him because you don’t want to know anything else about his age.  

You were always so busy feeling frustrated with Dave and with how secretive he was about information and facts you could not figure out without him.  But, all things considered, you didn’t like to receive pieces of the puzzle which did not fit into your prediction of the finished product.  

You sit in silence a while longer, exactly as you’d done on the outside of the car.  It doesn’t feel reassuring.  It doesn’t really have any connotation of a positive feeling.  

“How did it even happen?”  You finally try to ask him again.  

“It was my fault.  But it was something I had to do.  World wouldn’t make sense if I hadn’t…  Or, I think.”  

He sounds hesitant, regretful.  You’re not really sure he is believing the words he is using.

-xxx-

Dave spends the drive home clutching the back of his head and cussing at his future self.  

Your father is no longer outside when you come home.  You’re allowed a fatherly concerned speech and a long questioning on your doings at the grocery store.  You don’t want to say that you sat in the parking lot for an hour or two.  You guess Dave’s worn out expression doesn’t really help make your case that you were just having extra fun examining the grocery’s products.  

You share dinner, which hadn’t quite had enough time to considerably cool, at the table with your father.  You don’t look over at Dave once.  You don’t want to give your father any more reasons to worry.  

You propose to do the dishes, which you’ve never really done in your life, in hopes of getting a free pass to running out of the room.  Your father refuses your help, but tells you to stay seated for dessert.  So you grab Dave by the arm, ask your father to bring the dessert up to your room instead, and run off.  

“What the fuck, Egbert.  Did you receive some time mission you’ve got to get your hands on right fucking now?”  

You glance over your shoulder, not wanting your father to overhear the swearing.  Not wanting your father to overhear the term ‘time mission’.  

“No, come on.  I want to start our awesome movie night, remember?  We had to sit around some time stuff.  Movie night’s already on a delay.  And we have bags and bags of sweets for you, we don’t have to sit around and wait again just for some fancy dessert and coffee.”  

“Sure sounds like other me was a huge inconvenience.”  

You don’t bother to analyse the tone of his voice and simply hurry up the staircase.  

It’s only once you enter your bedroom that you finally breathe in, kick the door shut behind him and back him up against it.  

“Ok, listen— ”

“Holy shit, are you going to steal my money?”  It’s a joke, and he laughs, but you don’t laugh.  

You snatch his shades off his face.  And surely enough, his eyes had been focused on you.  There was no problem there.  

“You’d tell me if something was going on, right?”  

Because the feeling you’d had earlier wasn’t that things would work themselves out.  The feeling you’d had was that things were working themselves towards the failure of his eyes and that that was happening actively, presently.  

“Well, you know me.  If you back me up against a door, your wish becomes my command.”  

You breathe out a sound of impatience.  

“I’m serious, Dave.  What’s going on with your eyes?”  

What happens with his eyes is that the surprise registers in an incredibly obvious way in them.  You’d assumed, and apparently, you’d assumed rightly so.  

“Well?  They didn’t just change colour, did they?”  

“Well, the colour thing was a big deal, you know.”  He is speaking hastily.  Again, he is keeping information from you.  

“Stop hiding behind those shades, just tell me.”  You are being forceful, you almost have to resist the urge to grab him by his collar.  

“Nothing.  They’re a little sensitive.  I looked it up, other normal people, well almost normal albino people, with red eyes have light sensitivity too.  Calm down, jesus.”  

“And your vision?”  

You expect him to look surprised, to not know what you were on about.  You expect him to rebut immediately.  You don’t expect the look of guilt.  

So you repeat the question, sternly.  

“A little bit tunnel.”  

“What?”  

“It’s a little bit of tunnel vision, so what?”  

He tries to push past you, but you shove him back into place.  

“A little bit of tunnel vision.  What the fuck, Dave!”  

“I said, a little.  Not a lot.  A little dark around the edges.”  He is starting to mumble, and again tries to step past you.  You grab him by the shoulders, and you don’t miss the way he tries to flinch away from your touch.  

“Holy shit, and you never thought of, I don’t know, hitting up a fucking doctor?”  

You dearly hope your voice isn’t louder than you can hear it to be.  And you hope your father is nowhere near ready to come knocking at your door with a plate of dessert.  You couldn’t think of a worse time.  

“What, so they can tell me that nothing is wrong and that it’s all in my head?  And then they can cut my head open and take a look at my fucked up brain?”  

“What?  What’s even the link there?”  

You’re starting to regret the territory you’re advancing into.  These are all things you’d never heard from Dave, and you’re under the impression you are prying open one of his cans of secrets.  

“Look.  Let’s not pretend.  We both know what I do doesn’t really qualify as time travel.  My body doesn’t travel through time.  It’s my mind, I guess?  It’s fucked up John, something is completely fucked with my head.”  

He’s looking increasingly livid and you take a step back, allowing for him to walk away.  He doesn’t.  He simply slumps against the door.  

“It seems less dark around the edges when I don’t travel in a while too.  So it’s all in my head.  I’ve got this.  I’m not about to invite anyone else into my head.”  

You hesitate.  “Couldn’t you invite me?”  

He laughs, tells you, “But you have the key, John.  You don’t need a god damned invitation.”  

You think it might be one of the weirdest things you could have taken as a compliment.  You do though, and your chest feels as if it is warming in affection.  

You shouldn’t be feeling anything close to lightheartedness.  It sounded as if Dave was slowly finishing his sight off.  But, the clues would point to his eyes being fine without the time hopping, right?  He had said it was less dark around the edges when he stopped for a while.  Then surely, it was recoverable.  

You do not think about future Dave and his claims that he’d done it to himself in necessity.  

“I would have liked to have known without pushing you up against the door.”  You finally come up with, feeling as if breathing had become an extra challenge under the force of his gaze.  

He shrugs.  “Maybe I wanted to be pushed up against the door.”  

Your eyebrows lift and you take the step back towards him.  

“You?  No way, you’re much too innocent to be into that.”  

He snorts, but you don’t give him the time to add anything stupid.  Your arms coil around his waist as you kiss.  He does end up more pressed against the door than he had been during the short argument.  But you’re not sure if he’s more pressed against the door, or against you.  

Of course, you had believed the worst timing for your father to show up had been when you’d been fighting about his sight.  But you have to admit that it was much worse to have him knock at the door when your tongue had been inside of Dave’s mouth.  

You do your best to pass as decent and civilised when accepting the dessert offering, and blame your state of hair on wrestling with Dave when your father reproaches your appearance.  That was the explanation and not Dave tugging your hair passionately.  

The two of you laugh like banshees once he is gone, almost forgetting everything about the newly arrived raspberry cheesecake.  Your eyes cross once the laughter dies down, and you swear there is nothing inside of you that feels off or whispers to you that you might not always be able to share these intimate looks with Dave.  

The cheesecake officially is forgotten when he pulls you onto the bed and kisses you again.  You completely let go of everything and easily spend half an hour touching and kissing Dave.  

You still don’t understand the state of your relationship.  You don’t understand the things Dave keeps secret.  You are scared for your life that your chagrin and worrying about your relationship will end up being considered to be the calm before the storm.  You don’t want to ask yourself the important questions any longer.  You don’t want to know what is going to happen, you only want the present moment.  

Kissing him, everything feels right, but you absolutely know that everything is falling apart.  

Chapter Text

It hadn’t been a good idea to begin with.  Even your motivations now seemed to be weak.  

What had they been, anyway?  That you’d be gone next summer.  That you’d already travelled to the moment when you would get your acceptance letter that was going to lead you out of your small hometown.  That, were you to decide you wanted the answers later, it surely wouldn’t be as easy.  That come December, you’d legally be an adult.  That maybe, sure, you weren’t ready to hear anything Rose had to say, but that sometimes opportunities were only temporarily available.  

That had been your reasoning mostly.  Your last year of high school was about to start in just a short few days.  And you were going to get it out of the way.  

Alright, it had been fairly embarrassing when you’d asked for that card, years too late it felt like, from John only just yesterday.  He hadn’t reacted happily, nor sourly, he had simply looked at you, wide-eyed, as if he’d missed the important steps of the aforementioned detailed reasoning.  

You didn’t expect him to ask to be next to you as you called her.  When you did though, you understood why he would volunteer to be by your side.  It hadn’t occurred to you, until the number had been dialled onto your phone, that you could still back out of the call.  You would have, had John’s hand not been rubbing your back.  

You didn’t expect either that she would ask as soon as today to meet.  And again, you considered turning away.  But John had been there, and you hadn’t backed out.  

However, your third opportunity to back out is only just now being presented.  And you’d made John swear he’d be waiting at home for you.  He wanted to support you.  You’d told him you’d want support afterwards, but this was something you would be doing alone.  A choice you were now regretting as you paused in front of the door.  

It wasn’t too late to change your mind.  It wasn’t too late to go back home, and to be with John.  It wasn’t too late to finally let go of your mother.  It wasn’t too late.  

Your arms had broken out into goosebumps as you waited, despite the still lingering summer heat.  You rubbed the back of your neck, finding that the sensation of a cold sweat wasn’t only in your head.  You weren’t really sure if you were supposed to be here.  You would have given a lot for another version of yourself to possess you now and to take your decision for you.  You shut your eyes, count downwards from ten, but stay yourself.  

You miss the opportunity to back away.  The opportunity to get a few more slivers of information appears behind you.  

Rose Lalonde was just as put together as the last time you had seen her.  You eye her black laced parasol first in the door’s window’s reflection, and then with your own view as you turn around to face her.  It strikes you as belonging to a fashion you would not have associated with a fast approaching middle-age therapist.  You eye this item up until she triggers the latch and closes it.  

“Dave,” she announces your given name as if it’s sufficient of a greeting.  

You do not know how to reply.  So you open the door for her.  

She had first proposed the shop where you’d first seen her.  You thought it unfair that you would be put out of your element and out of your comfort zone to such a drastic point.  So, you chose this family restaurant that had been popular with the Egberts when you’d been a child and had lived with them for a number of years.  It had been the designated spot for birthdays, for celebrating the end of the school year, for just about anything.  It was familiar.  And maybe you’d asked John not  to join you, but you’d taken seat at this restaurant with him by your side countless of times before.

The waitress leads you to a table.  You disappear behind a menu before you can meet Rose’s eyes.  The pastel greens and pinks of the decor had a way of soothing you, but it just wasn’t powerful enough in this given situation. 

“Order whatever it may be your heart desires.  I will take care of the bill.”  

You do consider childishly peeking your head over the menu and glaring her down, but you choose instead to keep dragging your eyes over the printed words of the menu.  Your brain didn’t seem to want to register the actual meaning of these printed words however.  

“We’re not friends.  We’re getting separate bills,” you clarify slowly.  

Like hell you would be indebted to her.  It wasn’t as if you couldn’t afford this anyway.  

“Nonsense.”  This time, you do peek your head over the menu.  She hadn’t opened her own.  She seemed to have her eyes trained on the cocktail menu.  It is ten in the morning, you can tell she isn’t going to pick that one up either.  “I consider that we shall be on even grounds once you tell me the aims of this meeting.”  

You feel like throwing the menu at her.  You simply let it fall closed.  You didn’t like these sorts of games.  Of course she knew why you were there.  There couldn’t be any other reasons why you were there.  There was only one and it was plainly evident.  But of course, you’d be the one spelling it out.  

You cross your arms over your closed menu.  Then tilt your shades slightly downwards, revealing just a fragment of red.  

“My mother.  You know her.”  

Not something John had ever managed to confirm.  Not something you could confirm either.  It was still a bit of a shot in the dark.  If it proved to be fruitless, you’d leave now.  You’d be satisfied.  You wouldn’t have missed an opportunity, but you wouldn’t have burdened yourself with further thoughts of your mother.  

“Something like that,” she tells you in too much of a playful manner for the way your heartbeats slowed.  You could physically feel it in your chest, the dull, strong beat that already was chipping away at your cool attitude.  

“You’re related to her.  And to me?”  

“Also correct.”  

The waitress approaches but swerves away.  It might have something to do with the way the two of you stared at each other.  You, as if your eyes would be the key to her spontaneous combustion, and her as if you were a pleasant joke she would want to tell again later.  

“Look, when John told me you might have some answers, I wasn’t exactly looking for someone who can answer yes as I state things I might or might not know.”  

“John said I had answers?”  

You let out an enormous sigh of frustration.  Your face flushes, but not from anything like embarrassment.  You flush from fatigue.  From staying up all night and trying your best not to think of too unpleasant of things.  From being completely terrified.  You’d been completely terrified of someone who seemed more interested in playing with you, rather than giving you a fair chance.  So you succumb to your fatigue and put your forehead down into your hands.  

The waitress still hadn’t come.  You were sensing that might take a while.  

Rose doesn’t say anything else.  When you straighten back up, you notice she hasn’t even moved at all.  You’d quickly had enough.  John was back at home, waiting for you.  That would be easier to deal with.  That was the one person you wanted to deal with.  So you stand up.  

She says; “Sit back down.”  

“Why should I?  I’m not going to stick around all day to have you make fun of me.”  

She narrows her eyes and you are suddenly afraid she might be taking your automatic assumption that you were being made fun of as something of your psyche she might like to analyse.  You sit back down, simply in response to the force of her expression.  

“Good,” she addresses you in a way not unlike someone speaking to a very young child.  “Now, I do have things I could potentially share with you.  They happen to be things that could be considered to be a little extravagant, or perhaps unbelievable.  I do not believe simply listing these things off will do you any good.”  

You snort.  If only this woman knew.  If only she knew how much you had to deal with about yourself alone that could easily be considered unbelievable.  

“I want to speak about my mother.  If you’re not willing to do so, right off the bat, I’m going home.”  It seemed simple enough.  

“You might not like what I have to say— ”

“No, shit.  Of course I’m not going to like it.  But obviously I want to hear it, that’s why I’m here.”  

The eye narrowing doesn’t make you shrink as much as the last time and you sit tall, face stern.  

“Dave.  You and I, we are siblings.”  

You wait for her to go into some comparison or some metaphor.  When it doesn’t come, you’re the one narrowing your eyes.  

“Our father?”  You ask her, well aware a father had never been something you had asked about.  

If her sibling gist wasn’t a metaphor, it would only be explained by an absent father you do not know of, who, clearly would have been much too old for your mother.  But you know it is not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.  

“Our mother,” she states finally.  

And this time, it is in fact out of the realm of possibilities.  

“Did…  Was I adopted?”  It still wouldn’t work.  There wasn’t a biological clock out there that would allow this age gap in between siblings.  

She shakes her head and you notice the way her hair moves instead of coming up with anything else to fill in the blank.  

You lick your lips.  Glance sideways.  The waitress who’d been orbiting seemed to have given up sympathetically.  You appreciated it.  You lean towards Rose.  Lowering your voice.  She had mentioned ‘unbelievable’ facts and now she was claiming to be your sibling despite her advanced age.  

“Can you…  Time travel?”  

Clearly, if she had, it was not in any way that you could.  Maybe she had lived her life in a different period of time, had returned grown up to speak to you.  You wouldn’t know how.  You wouldn’t know why there had never been any hints that you had a missing sibling.  But it could be a genetic pattern.  

Your brother pops into mind.  You still had never told him, but maybe he was keeping the same secret from you?  

You don’t think about it much more because, finally, Rose has switched expressions.  She clearly had lost control over the conversation.  She shook her head again, just in the same way.  But her face read shock and awe.  

“Well, uh…  I’m not sure exactly how you concluded that one, but…  No, no I’m not the time traveller.”  She leans in forward as well, and in the same sort of whisper you had shared she tells you, simply, “Our mother was.”  

You swallow hard.  Was?  

The only word you can muster is an empty “What?”  

She goes right away, seeming scared you would turn against her and shoot down her shared secret.  “It is a bit extravagant, I’d warned you.  I know however that you also know it is true.  Surely there were some warning signs seeing as you were the one to bring up time travel.  Our genetic similarities are too heavy to ignore, but I’d be happy to go through blood sampling to furnish proper proof.”  

Your head is starting to hurt.  

“Was?”  

“I beg your pardon?”  

“Our mother was?”  You insist on the past tense.  

She nods her head.  Her hair bounces in the same way it does when she shakes her head.  You take a deep breath.  You don’t ask more about that.  Not now, no.  You needed to concentrate on other elements.  You couldn’t let them slip away from you.  

“So?  She had you in the past?  After…  After she left my brother and me?”  

The one worded answer of ‘yes’ doesn’t particularly please you.  

For a moment, you’re not sure if you’re sitting in one of your favourite restaurants, with the pink and green checkered floor, or if you are six years old, returning from school, looking at your house and hoping with all your might that your mother had returned while you had been away.  

“What is she now, Marty McFly?  You telling me she brought her Mustang to the future too?”  

“No, of course not.  What could possess you to think so?”  

You’re interiorly fuming at the painful and heavy realisation of feeling better informed than her, having more answers already.  How could she?  Clearly, she couldn’t skip through time.  No, that was just yours and your mother’s.  

“‘Cause her car was gone.  Did you know that?  She left with the car.”

“I’m not sure where she went to to travel, but I can assure you there were certainly no cars from the future.  Perhaps she simply abandoned it somewhere.”  

“Oh yeah?  ‘Cause we never heard back about the car location.  They never found your god damned car.”  

You exhale harshly, eyes riveted on the tabletop now.  You’d used the word ‘your’ as if you’d been angry, screaming at your mom.  Not the woman who sat in front of you.  The woman who supposably had the same blood as you.  

The waitress comes around.  Rose orders two glasses of pink lemonade for now.  Your mother would always make some during summers.  You know she knows that.  You don’t know what to think.    

You’d told yourself you would discard the following question, and yet you ask it immediately after the waitress turns her back.  “And now, now she’s dead?”  

“Uhm.  It is my theory that she had to die before the start of her timeline.  That is to say, she had started on a certain point in time, her conception as the date of her death would indicate, lived some of her life in a linear manner, travelled to a past before this conception, and had to depart this world before meeting a point in which two of her entities existed at once.”  

“Was it sudden, did she know it was coming?” 

“It was a sudden death, but I believe she would have easily pulled the same conclusion as myself before the event.”  

Your fingernails draw blood from the palms of your hands.  

“You know, she could have just returned to us at that point.  She could have come back here, she could have lived.”   

“Dave, please.”  

The way her eyes moved to the side didn’t encourage you to lower your voice.  But you do because you liked this place.  The pink lemonade comes.  Rose waves down any food for now.  You sip almost half of the lemonade through the straw at once, despite your earlier belief that you would be revolted to touch such a thing.  

She watches you and when you glance at her it is evident that she is watching you with fondness.  It reminds you too much of your mother so you do not engage more so.  She, however, reaches for your hand.  You notice hers was very cleanly manicured.  

“I want to say, though you might not agree, that I understand you.  My mother passed when I was six, just as she left your life when you were six as well.  We’ve been missing her with the same strength of heart, I’m sure.”  

“Are you?” you ask her, quick to pull back from the old styled red and white straw.   “Because I’m pretty sure I'm the one who's living in a world that no longer holds my mother since the age of six.  You?  You, I bet you tracked her down.   I bet you followed her like a freak as she grew up.  Hell, you probably saw me as a kid too.  You’re terrible.”  

You think of standing up, but she seems too shaken for you to find the heart to leave her in that state.  Evidently, you’d stricken a chord.  A chord that had been easy to strike.  There was an easy explanation for Rose’s presence in this town, and it certainly wasn’t career opportunity.  

“That wasn’t strictly out of choice,” she confessed softly.  “I was assigned by a task from our mother.  I had the beginnings of her research.  I was an active participant in something you might have called an ontological paradox.  Our mother’s solution to time travel was only achieved by documents that were delivered at her desk anonymously.  Once she was older, in her past, she was able to produce these documents herself.  And I was to be the anonymous source to deliver them to her.  You understand?”  

You understood perfectly well.  John had spent years blasting time travel terms at you.  You’d spent years yourself trying to trace the streams of information in your life and making sure you wouldn’t take a faux pas that would send everything crashing down.  

This revelation however proves to you that your mother had partly left out of obligation.  The same way you often found yourself trapped to do things in worries of crashing your timeline.  The way you’d often felt as if you’d lost all control over your actions.  Your mother, your mother she had only been presented by one of those dilemmas.  

She could have at least said goodbye.  You wish she would have told you goodbye.  Now, it was certain.  She never would be able to again.  

Rose squeezes your hand.  You hadn’t noticed that you hadn’t pulled back from her touch.  

“I was still young when I was with her, but…  But you were her greatest regret, Dave.”  You smile weakly.  “I know she loved you as much as she did her first son.”  

But it seemed you had misunderstood.  The regret did not seem linked to the lack of goodbye.  

“What do you mean?”  

She opens her mouth, but you had seemed to stump her this time.  

“Well, I, oh no, I didn’t mean to say you should feel as if she didn’t.  I was assuming you might have thought so, given the nature of your birth.”   

“The nature of my birth?  What the fuck, was I born by immaculate conception?”  

She was looking increasingly uncomfortable.  Dread was starting to cloud every single one of your senses.  

“No, I—  As a test tube baby, particularly one born for a certain reason, similarly to a saviour sibling born to provide an organ, it would be natural for you to have such feelings.”  

You understood what a test tube baby was.  You understood what a saviour sibling was.  You didn’t understand how they were related to you.  

“Was…  Was my brother sick?”  

The idea made you feel better.  You would have given something to your brother in the first place to justify all of the care he had given you throughout your life.  It would have made you feel better, but you knew it was not so, simply by the looks Rose was giving you.  

She takes a deep breath, steadying her resolve.  She was about to reveal information she clearly believed you already had access to.  “Her research required trial testing on a specimen sharing her genetic baggage.  The only available possibility at the time would have been her son, Dirk.”  She takes another deep breath.  “She could not bring herself to do such a thing to her son.  She decided to have you to fulfil her research.”  

You stare blankly.  

“Trial testing?”  

“Based on the papers I have delivered, I believe they were mostly of a neurological level.”  

“On a baby?”  You asked shakily.  

“Yes, if I understood correctly, the first few years of your life.  Of course, I do not believe it was her initial plan, but she came to love you very much.”  

The words were falling on deaf ears.  The time traveling, you’d accepted.  That hadn’t been unbelievable.  But now?  Now it had crossed into an area you did not want to accept, did not want to believe.  

“I’m sorry, I…  I think I’ll be heading home.”  

“Don’t concern yourself for the lemonade— ”

You nod almost dumbly, stumbling a little as you pulled yourself out of the booth and onto shaky legs.  She stands up as well and though she seemed ready to shake your hand, she opens her arms instead.  

You hug her.  And for the first time, you feel as if she had been right in saying you could understand one another.  You felt for her a closeness that was different from the one you felt with John.  

You’re pretty sure you thank her before leaving, but your sight goes a bit vague.  

You run back home.  You run back home despite your jeans.  You run because you know that when you run you don’t have to think for a while.  Unfortunately, your running brings you home sooner than you were ready for.  

When you finally stop at your building, both John and your brother are sitting in the staircase, laughing together over something, probably some childhood story of yours.  Too bad, you had your own childhood story to tell now and no one was going to laugh about it.  

John looks ecstatic to see you.  Your brother seems pleased too, though he did not know that you’d just gone to some fancy meeting with someone who’d thrown both him and your mother under the bus. 

“Kiddo.  I know you fancy yourself a star runner, but jeans, really?”  

Everyone anticipates a comeback, but yours drops like dead weight.  “You never called CPS, really?”  You imitate the tone of his question to perfection.  

His eyebrows draw together.  John’s mouth opens.  

“Nah, I think as a seventeen year old, they can trust you to make your own pant wearing decision.  If they tear, you’ll face the embarrassment.”  He tries, he makes a valiant effort to try, but you know he’s already seeing this conversation turn towards dangerous directions.  

“Ok, cool.  Glad to see that wearing jeans while running is further up on your list than letting your mom have a baby just to perform neurosurgery in her shoddy-ass basement lab.”  

John is the first one to react with an indignant squawk of “What?!” and your brother, which seems to set your nerves on fire, addresses John first.  “Kid, I think you should go home.”  

John’s eyes go to yours, and his swing to get up is stopped as he slumps his shoulders, eyes wide with worry.  

“He goes, when I go.  I really doubt there’s anything that will help you save face even if he were gone.”  

“I was a kid.”  

“Yeah, sorry, right.  What was it; ten, eleven, twelve?  Something like that, right?  I’m sorry.  You’re right, my realisation that basic human rights exist only just happened recently.  I should have been fairer, my bad.”  

John’s mouth is still gaping, it’s getting on your last nerve.  Your brother stands up, towering not only with his superior height, but the added bonus of the stair beneath him.  For the first time in your life, you find your brother intimidating, almost scary.  Perhaps you had never realised it because you’d always viewed him as your greatest supporter.  

“You weren’t going to have a bad life.  So it was unpleasant for a little while, so what?  I was always there, I was always pressuring mom.  And you were fine.  So maybe, you’re some special kid who would have called CPS on your mom at eleven, but do you know what I was doing at your age?  I was supporting us.”  

You don’t deflate, if anything, you stand taller, undisturbed by his height and his choice of words.  

“Wrong.  You were falling apart at my age.  I’m the one who made things better for us.  You were a scared kid without your mom.  Which was why you never called on her.  ‘Cause you were some spoiled brat, mommy’s favourite.”  

That is when John stands up, hurries down the stairs, and comes directly to your side.  The gesture is so important to you that your vision goes black for a second.  

“I did everything so you’d be fine, Dave.  I’ve always done everything.  Don’t you give this to me.”  

The flood of memories was certainly undeniable.  He had been the one to take care of you, to wash your clothes, to buy you new ones when you couldn’t fit into your old ones, to prepare your meals, to spend time with you…  He’d been the one there for you.  Which only made the present situation all the more hurtful.  

“But I wasn’t fine, bro.  I’m still not.  She fucked up my brain so bad, you have no idea.  You’ve never had a clue.”  

John puts a hand on your shoulder, and you understand this signal.  You were revealing too much.  If you weren’t careful, you’d be saying things that would give your abilities away.  

When you speak next, it is as if you had not just been arguing.  It is an empty reply.  “I’m sleeping at John’s tonight.”  

John’s things were in your bedroom.  You didn’t have a bag packed or anything.  But it seemed to be of little concern now.  You didn’t really need anything except being away from your brother.  

He speaks your name in a way that, again, scares you.  But you still walk away.  

He calls after you five, maybe six times.  And increasingly, it gets harder to leave, but John wraps an arm around you, and though your anger deflates, your intention to get away survives.  

The bus ride certainly seems shorter than usual.  You don’t even think twice, you tell John about every word that had been exchanged, every thought that had crossed your mind, every single thing that had felt wrong with the atmosphere.  His reactions aren’t worded.  They are facial expressions and onomatopoeia, but you feel good about that.  He was letting you speak, but still you knew you had his attention.  

Soon, you had calmed down.  The thoughts didn’t stop however.  

It is only once you’ve stopped speaking, when stepping out of the bus, that he finally expresses something.  

He says; “What if your mother hadn’t died though?  What if she’d just left Rose?  She’s done it before.  Maybe she exists right now, in this time period.  Maybe she came back once she knew her time there was up?”  

You stop in your steps.  You don’t actually feel anything aside from a soreness related to how far you had run.  A gust of wind blows, and just as you had been at the door of information you had not yet unlocked then, you felt a deep coldness within you.  

“I think she’s dead.  But if she were still around, I don’t think I’d want to see her.”  

John stops too.  When he touches your face, you shut your eyes.  You think maybe he was just in a cheek caressing mood, but soon he’s pressing his lips to yours with all of the simplicity and feeling in your little world.  You’re a bit surprised he is kissing you outdoors, so close to his home, but he’s leading you towards it once again before you have time to consider an answer.  

It’s too early in the day.  You spend the rest of your time in his living room, watching reruns of old sitcoms.  You’ve been completely drained.  It is the same feeling that would wash over you the night after a very important marathon under a very heavy sun.  Your running today might have been spontaneous, but it had been nothing comparable.  

John doesn’t say much either, but he lets you kick up your legs over his lap, and it’s as grounding as it’ll get, you think.  Eventually, you help him prepare dinner for his father.  You’re cleaned up, in pyjamas you'd borrowed, and ready for bed before eight in the evening strikes.  And still, nothing felt real enough to engage with.  

John asks you, “Hey, want to pull out the sleeping bags and sleep out on the balcony?  Like we do sometimes in the summer.”  

You get why he asks this.  He likes stargazing when he feels blue.  You think it’s a cliché idea that has been morphed into dozens of lyrics; that the endless skies of stars would put your problems and your position in the universe back into perspective.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for you.  

You still accept.  

By the time eight in the evening actually comes, you’re both snuggled into your own sleeping bags and staring up at the sky.  You hear that in some cities, it is hard to spot a single star.  But you’re accustomed to the visible milky way and all other wonders of the night sky.  

You still hadn’t really spoken, not since you’d poured out everything on the bus.  So you’re surprised when you hear John address you, having thought him absorbed in the stars, or out like a light already.  

“It’s not the reason you’re here, you know.”  

You turn and find that he’d already turned his head towards you.  Without glasses and shades obstructing your vision, and with the starlight, your breath catches.  

But you don’t answer, because you don’t actually know what he’s saying.  

“You weren’t born just so your mother could travel to the past.”  

Oh.  You shrug your shoulders.  It had seemed pretty straightforward when Rose had explained it.  You were also part of that ontological paradox she had mentioned, you had been the key to the second half of your mother’s research.  The one that allowed her to properly travel though time.  Unlike you, who stumbled around with a dysfunctional mind.  

“I don’t know, maybe it’s selfish, or tacky.  But I’m sure we had to meet.  I couldn’t find you unless you were born!” he exclaims almost proudly.  

He smiles, and it’s the sort of excited smile he’d always worn as a child.  Your heart races.  All you are able to do is stare him in the eye. 

“Thanks John," you whisper.  

You wanted to reach out for his hand.  You wanted to tell him you love him.  Instead, you choose a completely different path.  

You turn back to look at the stars.  You don’t feel smaller than you usually do.  Your problems don't feel smaller than they usually do.  You feel overwhelmed.  

“I was born because someone needed their time travel research complete.  My brother took care of me because he felt guilty about what happened to me.  You became my best friend because you were intrigued by my time travel.  That’s my life.”  

He answers quickly, sharply.  “What?  No.  You know why I became your friend, don’t even.”  

You break your eyes away from the sky and turn over and away from him inside of your sleeping bag.  

“That’s what I know, John.”  

And that was why you’d always been upset with John’s obsession about figuring your powers out.  When he would, you could predict your slow fall apart.  

He doesn’t argue with you, and that’s nice.  But he does scoot towards you, and brings his arms out of his bag to spoon you.  You didn’t want to say that it was, but that too was nice.  

As you shut your eyes you wish with all of your might for someone to be honest with you.  

-555-

Waking up as a child was one of the best feelings in the world.  Your vision cleared completely.  No darkness around the edges, no strain, and no shades to keep your face hidden.  

This clarity extended to your other senses easily.  You recognised the scene in the blink of an eye.  John’s arms were getting too long for his suit, you could see a full four inches of his wrists.  A look downwards revealed the same thing for his then very bony ankles.  Mister Egbert was sitting at the wheel, hatless for once.  Your black shirt and sweatpants seemed underdressed in comparison.  A feeling that hadn’t washed over you since childhood takes over you then.  The period of time when you’d grown out of the clothes your mother would buy you, but funds were low and your brother did his best to put away as much as possible.  Your brother would turn down Mister Egbert’s offers to dress you.  It was to keep you from feeling like a charity case.  The things you had to wear, however, made you feel just the same.  

The bouquet of forget-me-nots John was holding upright was an impressive one.  The days were starting to get warmer, but not warm enough to have you beg time to slow and to leave you in the car a little longer.  

You’d only gone with John to his mother’s grave, on her death anniversary, the three years you’d been living with him.  Your brother would always excuse himself for work.  You, however, had to feel like an intruder every time.  Which is why you had never gone back after moving out.  Besides, John hated going, or he did back then at least.  

It was a nice day.  You remembered parts of it.  The spot was very far away, it was a long drive.  Her mother, it had seemed like, had come from a family quite wealthy in lands and property.  They’d decided to bury her in the park on the grounds of her childhood home.  You still had never asked why John didn’t have any contact with his mother’s family.  You had wondered about it though, even back then.  

There is still a way to go as you watch the fields stretch by.  At least twenty minutes of continued silence.  You have to laugh at your own mind’s humour.  Was the only honesty in your life served in the shape of silence?  

The road progressively advances into the shadows.  The road soon turns to dirt and you find yourself in the sanctuary of maples you’d only seen in those three times, though maybe this could count as your fourth time.  

You stay slightly behind and watch as John jumps out of the car and dumps the flowers into his father’s arms.  There is a bit of a dispute and you know why that is.  He never accepted to approach her grave.  And as you’d done in the past, you choose the right fork in the pathway with him.  

Instead of leading you to the tombstone you’d never seen, it leads you to the small pond.  John’s told you it used to house koi fish, but that those days had past.  He’d said it in volumes of sadness you did not want to comment on.  Casting an extra shadow in the refuge of trees, was the small cherry tree, which was always found blossoming on the anniversary of her death.  It was the only cherry tree you’d seen in your life.  You liked it.  You liked the spot.  It was peaceful.  And you think, maybe John’s always felt the same way about it.  

“You’re being quiet,” he remarks.  

You try to find a grasp on time.  You don’t.  You guess that had been an honest thing to say.  You wonder if that’s all you would be allowed to have for the night.  

When you shrug, he, without warning, grabs your chin, tilts your head and inspects your face intensely.  

“I get it!  You’re from the past.  Gee, you were so quiet back then, thank god, I don’t have to deal with that anymore.”  

You break your gaze.  It felt odd to remember that you currently had those brown, innocent eyes you missed dearly.  

“Not quite.  You were almost right on the money, though.”  

His eyebrows furrow.  

“Yuck, you’re from the future?  Don’t tell me you go back to being a quiet loser.”  His smile is joking though, and you relax completely when he shoves at your shoulder.  

You sit down, gracelessly, next to the pond.  Watching the waters, expecting for a ghostly fish figure to appear.  It doesn’t.  You look over your shoulder, just in case there might be a womanly ghost figure around instead.  There isn’t.  

“Just had a rough day.”  Just had the roughest day of your life.  

The placeholder for that used to be the day you’d first called Mister Egbert, when you’d given up on your mother’s return.  Now it was a new day, the day when you’d given up on your mother’s possible love for you.  

He sits next to you, looks annoyed, picks up a stick and makes figure eights in the waters.  

“So what?  You wished that I could have a rougher day than you?  ‘Cause that failed, you know I don’t care about this stuff.  I think it’s dumb to come here.”  There’s something more to that feeling, you’re sure of it, but you’d never pressed for it.  You figured he could tell if he needed to.  

“Nah, I wished for some honesty.  If we take that last comment of yours into consideration, I doubt I’m going to get any though.”  

He throws the stick into the pond.  Then proceeds to wrestling his dress shoes off from his feet.  

“I do think it’s dumb!  I don’t have to drive all the way here to think of her.  I don’t have to bring forget-me-nots to make a point that I haven’t forgotten her.  I don’t have to prove my love to her.  It won’t make a difference for her.  She’s gone.”

Once he’s liberated his feet, he puts them into the pond, sighing in a satisfied way.  It seemed to you as if he’d failed to recognise the heaviness and depth of his statement.  

However, for you, it hits hard.  

“Yeah.  Mine’s gone too,” you finally admit to yourself.  Though you’d always had the feeling that she was good and gone.  Now it was definitely final.  You think of the day you’d seen Rose for the first time, the way you’d believed, even for a second, that that had been your mom waiting for you at that table.  It hadn’t been, and it wouldn’t be, not ever.  

“I think we’re going to find her!  Especially with your cool time powers, we are so unstoppable,” he declares energetically, puffing out his chest proudly.  

You almost feel bad when you follow up with; “No.  She’s dead.”  

He shakes his head, tells you that’s absurd.  You don’t bother arguing with him because even present day, he’d still come up with a theory that had your mother alive and running about.  You didn’t want to entertain that possibility any longer.   

You decide to dunk your feet into the pond with his, ratty sneakers and all the kit.  They’re falling apart as it was, some water wouldn’t make a difference.  But John still laughs at you about it.  

“Ok, listen.”  You knew what kind of honesty you wanted, and on which topic.  You were going to ask and if it didn’t work out, at least you wouldn’t have wasted this trip.  “What do you think of my time stuff?”  

“It’s awesome, duh?” he answers you without hesitation.  

“Yeah?  Do you think we would be friends if I didn’t have them?”  

“Uh?  We sleep in the same bed?  How exactly would we not be friends?”  

You kick your feet in the water, still careful of ghost koi.  

“I just mean.  Maybe the highlight of being my friend is the time shit.”  

“The highlight of your friendship is you though?”  

You sigh in frustration and pinch the bridge of your nose.  He seems unconcerned by this and kicks at your feet in the water.  

“It’s not like you take me along for the ride, y’know?  Doesn’t change anything for me.”  

“But isn’t the only reason you’re interested in me because of it?”  

And finally, he snaps from his lightheartedness.  His loud ‘no’ makes you feel like an eight year old again, not like a seventeen year old.  

“Like, you know that’s just plain not true.  If anything, you’re only friends with me now because we house together.  I was always the one getting ignored before that.”  

When he says so, the memories hit you with full force.  His insistent staring and commenting, how obnoxious you’d always found him.  

You laugh.  You laugh heartedly.  How could you have forgotten such an important detail?  John had always been, from the very first day when his demeanour had changed, the one chasing for your friendship.  

He bumps his shoulder against yours.  “Wow, did you like, get dumber with the years.”  

You confess that you have.  

You don’t realise that you are aiming for a little more honesty until another question escapes you.  

“So, your mom grew up here?”  

He nods, still trying to battle with your feet underwater.  

“Yeah.  My grandpa told me, when I was a kid, that this was her favourite spot.”  He quiets down, almost seems to glare at the water.  “Her mom died young too.  You know, my grandma was from Japan, right?  I’ve told you.  My mom’s never gone.  But she really liked hearing stories.  She used to tell me all the time about the koi legend.  About these koi fish that decided to swim up the river and up the waterfall.  And that it took one hundred years, but a single koi got to the top.  That the gods turned him into a golden dragon…”  

He paused, still seemingly angry at the pond.  You don’t say a word.  You realise, this is the most you’d ever heard about his mother.  He’d never even mentioned the legend in passing to you, not once.  

“I just— ”  Suddenly he seems upset.  “She used to tell me that if a koi could turn into a dragon, I could do anything.  I just had to work hard, like the story.  But…”  You don’t look at him, but you look at his reflection in the water.  Visibly, he was becoming just as overwhelmed as you’d felt last night before travelling  “But all the koi got sick after she died.  They got as sick as she was.  And now they’re gone.”  

He bursts into tears.  You’d never even seen him cry for his mother before.  But here it was, the whole waterworks and sobs and catching his breath because the emotion was too much.  

You pull your feet out from the water.  Kneel next to him.  And bring him into a full hug.  

He apologises through his hiccupping breaths.  

“I’m sorry.  I just wish she was still here.”  

“I know,” you tell him.  

You know.  You know this is one of the most honest moments of your life and you feel blessed.  You feel right.  You don’t feel as if your life is a sham.  You finally feel as if maybe John did need you around.  

-xxx-

When you wake up, the sun isn’t yet up.  John’s arms are still around you.  You pull your arms out from your sleeping bag, gently take his hand with both of yours and bring it to your heart.  You lay silently like so for a moment or two and then bring his hand up to your mouth.  With all of the softness in the world you mouth the words ‘I love you’.  

He isn’t awake.  You still haven’t managed to say it to him in your right state of mind, in your right time.  This was as close as you had gotten.  

But you loved him so much.  Everything about John, every little thing you absolutely loved.  You clench your jaw.  You know he had told you you hadn’t been able to say it in the present and the moment in which he had said that was coming up.  You could hold off until then.  You whisper the three words this time.  

He still doesn’t stir.  You are a mix of relieved and of disappointed.  

Of course, when you sit up, that’s when he goes wide awake.  

“Dave?  What’s going on?  Don’t go!”  He rubs his nose, eyes blinking madly to adjust to the darkness.  

You laugh quietly, ruffle his hair.  You’d almost forgotten the calamity of your past day, what with your dream.  You think of the persistent koi transforming into a golden dragon.  You don’t feel so bad anymore.  

“I’m awake.”  Those are the only words you come up with in aims of comforting him.  He groans, pushes himself up into a seated position too, rubbing furiously at his face.  

“You fell asleep too soon.  This is your fault, you’re lame.”  

“Excuse me, like you fell asleep later?  Unless you just held me and stayed awake all creepily.”  

His face clearly darkens, even in the poor lighting of the balcony.  

“What?  I was worried!  I was being, like, your guardian angel!  Don’t call me a creep.”  

You smile.  He looks surprised.  

“You’re smiling!”  

“Yeah, I…  I time travelled.  I feel better now.”  

His blossoming smile quickly dies off.  You know he worries you travel too much.  But you don’t.  You’ve cut back.  At the risk of sounding like an addict, you’d be able to put a stop to it at any time.

Well.  Maybe not entirely.  You still needed to colour in more black-outs you’d gone through.    That was a duty of yours.  Just, things didn’t always fall into place.  Often you’d travel in the future which didn’t particularly fill out any other blackouts, but that was out of your control.  

You glance up at the stars, and then down at John, still trying to motivate himself to be awake.  

“Hey, John?”  He grunts.  “No one’s bought our old house, huh?  No one lives there?”  

“Not a soul.  It sort of looks like a haunted mansion, anyway.”  

He’s starting to sound more awake, so you venture forward.  

“Can we go see it?”  

“Huh, why?”  

“I just feel like seeing it.”  

He gives you a strange look, but you don’t falter.  

So you end up taking the walk to your house, him and you, both in pyjamas and randomly chosen shoes.  He takes your hand.  And it’s not at all the way your mother would hold yours on days where she could.  It wasn’t either the way your brother had held it when he’d take you with him.  There were none of those feelings of guilt in the grip as you now understood your mother had carried with her, nor the feelings of protection your brother had absolutely needed to make use of.

It was the pure, unaltered love of the one person you also truly loved back.  

The house is eerier than you’d remembered it to be.  It was still too big, too strange looking for the street on which it had been built.  You circle it once, without John.  Follow with your eyes the line of one-way windows at the bottom of the house.  The windows of the laboratory.  She had them installed because she liked to work in the sunlight.  For the entire diameter of the house.  

When you reach John he goes with you for your second walk around.  You stop near the back of the house, get on your knee, and wipe with the sleeve of the pyjamas the grime that had accumulated over the window.  You still can’t see inside.  

You don’t remember anything from being an infant, but it still sends a sad shiver down your spine.  

You pull your hand back and stare.  

John takes a seat next to you, visibly more awake now.  

“Are you angry with your brother?”  

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly.  

“But you’re going to see him today?  He texted me a whole bunch last night.  I think he’s really worried.”  

“Sure,” you say.  

He glances at the paned, darkened windows.  

“Do you miss it?”  

You smile then.  

“No.  No, I’m happy.”  You mean it.  

He wraps an arm around you and presses you to his side.  

“Thanks for indulging me,” you add quickly.  

“Meh, not like you haven’t indulged me in the past.”  

By the time you’re walking back to his home, the sun has come up.  Before breakfast you call back home and tell your brother you love him.  John watches with interested eyes and you shyly duck away from him.  

You wanted to tell John you loved him too, but it wasn’t the right time.  The future had already dictated as much to you.  

Chapter Text

You hadn’t realised how well your life had been falling into place until all of the pieces had fallen. The changes weren’t drastic, but the collage of changes made for a life that was on a level higher than the one it had previously occupied.

First off, you felt good in your skin. And you’d never even known you hadn’t felt good in your skin beforehand. Sure, you hadn’t considered yourself to have outshining looks and had often felt frustrated with the way your teeth had looked. But you found yourself now even believing the way Dave described you to have magnetic looks. You walked around and knew you could command attention. And sliding your tongue over your teeth never seemed to reveal that they occupied too much or too little space. Standing straight and smiling a lot had never come more naturally.

Besides, your father had become increasingly lax with money. To the point where you felt your wardrobe outdid Dave’s. Of course, he liked to wear the same things over and over again, and always had a casualness to his state of dress, but you still knew he dished out a lot for the threads he liked, the same way he did with anything else he was interested in. But you felt more confident with your clothes, your schoolbags, your shoes, your glasses. The sense of superiority that came with it wasn’t really something that you thought of. You still felt better about yourself though.

And never had you felt so talented. Playing the piano had almost become easy as you’d grown up. You were one with the music, and you knew you were good. Other things became easier too. You were able to pull out a card trick or two that was sure to leave anyone nearby flabbergasted and starry-eyed. You almost never asked Dave for tips for programming anymore. You were actually becoming good at the things you liked. And the films you liked were better received as seasons passed too. And you had been good enough to get into every single university Dave did, even without any of his fancy sport scholarships.

Most of all, really… You recognised yourself as a driving force in Dave Strider’s happiness. He always ate with a normal appetite and never had any energy missing when pushing himself to run farther.

Years of asking yourself if maybe he wasn’t eating quite enough, or maybe he looked just a little too tired, had backed off into the shadows. Maybe Dave was truly a calm, quiet one by now. But he rarely ever cried. He rarely seemed panicked. He was peaceful. That had been your biggest victory.

Sure, in the back of your mind, you knew. You knew things would fall apart. You knew you would get to the point where you did the opposite from participating in Dave’s happiness. The clues had been there. And grovelling about it wouldn’t do anything. Trying to change it would have the reality you were in collapsing on itself, so you and Dave always theorised. You weren’t always going to make Dave happy. But for now, you were. And you could fool yourself into thinking you’d made it. You’d become a much cooler and much better person than you could have ever anticipated.

The best, coolest version of you still would not have predicted the contents of the conversation fast approaching you in the form of your very dearest childhood best friend. You hadn’t heard from him yet today. Granted, your schedules had been at their most mismatched ever this year. You thought that had been a good thing, a good preparatory last year of high school for what would be a lack of matched classes in your future years of education. But, not a single text?

These days, from what he told you and from what you trusted, he was often possessed by other versions of himself, but rarely felt like travelling elsewhere. But still, you consider he might have had an eventful or perhaps unpleasant night of sleep. You don’t really think so, but then again he often expressed himself in silence rather than outcries.

You consider it, though he practically jogs to your table. The quicker he moved, the better he felt. Or… Was it the opposite? Was he feeling worse when he moved quickly? You don’t really know. So, you decide to actually investigate instead of continuing your quiet investigation.

“Where’ve you been, stranger?”

He practically slides onto the metal bench. He takes a breath just as he opens his mouth. Promptly closes it. You assume he must have prepared a line and had just forgotten it or no longer knew how to say it.

“Ah, of course, that explains it all,” you joke. You bring the fork down. You’re not going to remind him to go grab lunch too. He was fine.

It’s not like those dark bags under his eyes were something you should bet too much on. Besides, like you could even tell what dark bags were or weren’t from behind shades! You were just being silly. You try sliding your tray of food towards him as a hint. He doesn’t even glance at it.

“I have a question for you.”

He’s to the point. Immediately, you think of possibilities related to his various time escapades. He was going to question you on something past or something yet to come. He was gong to dig his nails into presumptions and assumptions and you were going to have to pull him back from that. Not that it bothered you. It just worried you.

“Well, ok. I might or might not have an answer for you. Depending on if you actually do ask, of course.”

You’d blurted it out just as he had opened his mouth to actually speak of the question. Not purposely, of course not. But the increase in words might have been related to postponing actually hearing the question. The question would be fine, you weren’t scared of Dave.

You weren’t scared of the moment he’d walk away from you. The moment he’d realise you didn’t truly make him happy. The moment he’d understand why he wasn’t ready to love you in the present moment.

Not that not saying it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. But loving yourself this year hasn’t really brought any certitude forward when it came to wondering if Dave loved you too.

It is with these thoughts running through your mind that he asks his question.

“We should have sex.”

It is not, in fact, a question.

“Yeah, you’ve got my attention. What’s your god damned question?”

And because you’re too busy worrying about Dave’s love or not love for you, as you often are beneath the surface, you are not prepared to have ‘the talk’ with your best friend. Not even remotely so. You know it’s not an attention seeking statement. It’s a poorly constructed request, that had come out misshapen by stress. He was trying to ask for… For whatever it was he had said.

You still make him say it again. If even for a moment more of preparation.

“My question was, as I just said, are we going to have sex?”

“What, you’re serious?”

So you try to get him to state it a third time. Just in time to understand his anxious appearance and lack of a meal. It wasn’t a fun thing to ask, by the looks of it. You were going to put him through it again, just because you absolutely knew that answering would be more than three time worse.

“What’s there not to be serious about?”

Good question. Good question, but you have no answer. There is absolutely no answer you want to share. Sex? Honestly, you two fooled around a lot of the time. There was little to be said about the way your bodies moved in between the sheets late at night, and similarly, neither one of you had ever cared to discuss it. It was just a thing, the same way swapping spit was also a thing.

It happened, it happened a lot. But you never needed to talk about it. So even with precedent, the topic at hand is out of the blue.

“I don’t know. Talking about swiping our V-cards in the middle of the cafeteria isn’t really at the apogee of seriousness, is it?” The way you were treating this was just about the complete opposite of the apogee of seriousness too.

“Yeah, no, forget it,” he tells you quickly. You watch as he stands up and proceeds to sitting back down.

You stare one another down for a little while, until he adds again, “You’re forgetting it, right?”

You shrug. Like hell you’re forgetting that. Your stomach had basically left you to join the circus to jump from trapeze to trapeze. You were too weak.

“I sure am, are you forgetting lunch?”

He rolls his eyes, makes a big deal out of eating the leftovers on your tray. They’re not quite nearly enough to be an acceptable meal. But you don’t press him about it. Because, were he reacting anything like you were, his stomach probably didn’t even want to approach the concept of food.

The rest of the lunch is… Uncomfortable, to say the least. Whenever you cross eyes, you fake a smile. He asks you about two dozens of times if everything was chill and if you’d been able to dismiss what he had said. You say yes, obviously you mean no, and he knows so. He doesn’t contact you in the second half of your school day. You don’t contact him either. You both go back home without any communication.

Time drags almost painfully throughout the night. You realise that, yes, you did want to do more of those things with Dave. And you realise, much more importantly, that despite your confidence in who you had become, you still did not see yourself measuring up to being the object of Dave’s honest, true love, and much less prepared to take the physical steps that might point to you being able to fill those shoes.

There was a reason you loved Dave more than he loved you. You’re not sure if the idea feels like a bad one because you do not want to take advantage of your best friend, or because you are more than sure you were going to hurt yourself in the process of going farther with him.

You ignore the questions in your mind; why it was that in the beginning he loved you more than you could love him, and why now it had come to this point…

There is nothing to do to push down these preoccupations. Thus, you would have thought that you would have been prepared to the eventuality of the topic being brought up again on the following day.

It hits hard when it is the first thing you hear at your locker in the morning.

“About yesterday. I still think it would be a good idea.” Those are the exact words that await you.

Turns out Dave isn’t exactly very poetic or very romantic when it comes to asking for this. Or even very logical, for that matter. From asking you repeatedly to forget about it, he’d returned to you now with the specific request back in full force.

You’re weak. You’ve always liked Dave. You’ve always liked the shape of his fingers, the shape of his ears, the line of his elbows, and the line of his nose. He was attractive. And you liked his looks the most when his hands would fit into yours or when pressing your bodies together was the only viable option.

It’s not that you agree with him. You do not believe this to be a good idea. You still want to do it despite this belief.

“You know what I think? I think your idea makes no sense.” You lower your voice but still shut your locker with undisguised moodiness. “You know when propositioning me would make more sense? Maybe when we actually get worked up in bed. Not at our Monday lunch period, or Tuesday first thing in the morning. School’s not a really a massive turn on for me. For your information.”

You didn’t really need an erotic setting. Dave alone was enough to get you going. But this sort of development seemed akin to prying a can of worms open.

You decide to march off to class without another word. Which would have been a classy move on any day other than Tuesday. Day on which both of your first period was one and the same. So Dave keeps up with you and doesn’t miss a beat to counter your argument.

“I think the ‘heat of the moment’ isn’t the best time to make reasonable decisions. I don’t want it to be just that anyway.”

He doesn’t have to specify what else he wants. The implication is there. Dave was signing you up to be the person with whom he wanted to have a meaningful sexual relationship. Which to a degree, admittedly, made total sense. You were the closest to him, if he had to pick anyone, of course it would be you.

You start forgetting why this is supposed to be a bad idea. Mostly, because what had hinted you off had been but a mere bad feeling. It was nothing concrete, but it was enough to have you dodging and nervous.

“Charming, again. School hallways, topnotch romance.”

He pulls you off to the side, out of the flow of students, by the arm. He doesn’t look very aggravated, but you can’t find it in yourself to see him as happy or energised either.

“If you don’t want me, just say the word. ‘Cause you’re not really giving me any answers here, you’re just skirting around it.”

In that moment, you knew you should have been able to speak honestly. But Dave’s tone was too heavy with implied rejection for you to spit out anything that you had on the heart. You end up going with the easy route.

“We’re going to be late. Seriously. We can talk about this later.”

You do a brilliant job at continuing to avoid the topic later, however. Wednesday and Thursday go the same way, with minimal interaction and a matter of minute confrontation about the nature of your relationship.

Minimal interaction doesn’t keep your mind and heart from racing, nor does it keep your stomach from continuing to leap through hoops of fire. If you’d wanted to be with Dave before, it had now escalated to surprising levels.

You couldn’t even drop by one of his practices for more than a few minutes. His flushed face and visibly heaving chest didn’t do much to keep your imagination from roaming in domains Dave had recently opened wide. You found yourself thinking you didn’t want to see him tired and worn out from running, and would rather prefer him in a similar state exclusively thanks to the things you could do to his body.

And if in the past you’d allowed yourself to think of Dave in a way that wasn’t too much of public knowledge only in moments alone in the dark, the thoughts had taken over in no time, all thanks to Dave’s bland, lacklustre proposition alone.

You couldn’t even pride yourself in resisting the proposition. Not only because your motivations to do so were vague and diaphanous, but mostly because you only manage to resist through these four days.

On Friday, Dave only approaches you once he’s gathered the courage again to survive what could only be called a rejection from your part. This was the pattern you’d established in his ways halfway through the week for that matter. It is, in fact, only after school that he gathers the necessary amount of courage. It all happens in those few minutes you are able to glance at your school’s running track.

Fate would have you arrive just as he was trotting to his water bottle for a break. And as fate would also have it, he makes his choice and approaches you instead of his water.

“Egbert, you here to accept my offer yet?”

You shrug, but you’ve also already crossed your arms. There was a huge problem with the way he smooths his hair away from his forehead. There was an even huger problem with the beads of sweat rolling down his neck. Long gone were the days where Dave would run carelessly without ever breaking a sweat. Not that he’d stopped his undefeated title, he’d simply gone through the change that allowed him to actually care and to push himself past his limits.

Dave was too good for words. Your hands tighten over your upper arms.

“Well, it’s not much of an offer, is it? No date or location, talk about unspecific.”

“Specifics aren’t really needed when shooting me down.”

He’d replied tit for tat, already used to the banter surrounding the situation. Without his shades on, it’s easier to make out the harshness in his expression. You weren’t really sure why he kept asking, it definitely looked as if he was putting himself through a lot. But maybe, just maybe, you were about to show him why he had kept pushing.

“Well, how about tonight, my place?”

And there. That was the biggest leap you could have made. All in one go.

He, of course, does not follow immediately.

“Excuse me?”

“Remember? My dad’s away for the weekend? Sounds pretty perfect to me.”

He moves to check his wrist, though you know him to never wear watches.

“Today? Uh—” You pretend to not find it strange as he comes up with what to say. “Tomorrow’s better, what do you say?”

Again, you shrug. You don’t necessarily prefer tomorrow to today. You had just done it, the huge leap! And here you were, taking a step or two backwards.

“I see no problem with that.”

The tension between the two of you was unlike ever before. It was hard to grasp that you were discussing the possibility of intimacy in such formal sounding words. Yet, you didn’t really have a problem with that either. Maybe your stomach felt as if it were being wrung out like an old rag, but it didn’t feel unnatural. It wasn’t unwanted. It was as exciting as it could have been.

“Cool then,” he answers detachedly.

You pretend that his face hadn’t only gained in colour during your exchange.

“Yeah…”

There was a limitless number of questions you wanted to ask in that moment. What were the two of you even doing? What were you going to do? What would it mean? Did Dave love you? Was his happiness a big illusion? How were you supposed to feel? How were you supposed to prepare for this?

The questions build up and at the same time crush you downwards. Ok, you loved Dave. You loved tangling your fingers in his hair and you loved feeling his hips dig into yours. You were still afraid, you still didn’t think you were ready for this. Whatever ‘this’ would end up being. You knew what it would involve. It involved new levels of vulnerability for the both of you. You were already messy enough with emotional matters. Did you need this?

Dave takes your hand into his and the answer blares. You needed Dave.

“Tomorrow then,” you confirm.

“Tomorrow.”

His smile was a shy, small one, but was a smile nonetheless. So far, it is the most peaceful sort of excitement you've felt surging through you over the course of the week. Even if it didn’t happen, or even if it ended up going terribly, you had each other. For now, you had each other.

You try to watch his practice all the way through. You last about five minutes. It’s still too much to handle. You leave and pray that by this time Monday, the tension would be resolved and fully addressed.

Though it had seemed convenient when you had gone about accepting Dave’s proposition, you found yourself missing your father on your way back home. You stay on the bus home for two extra stops, getting off at the stop for the only shopping centre your town held. The one where Dirk, Dave’s older brother, had worked when the two of you had still been young and wouldn’t be getting up to anything like this.

You waste a good half an hour hanging around the pharmacy and pretending not to walk past the condom aisle over and over again. You don’t think you’d actually turn to your father for any help on the matter, given the awkwardness of it all. But you still do miss him and still do wish he was someone you could go to for worries concerning this specific thing. You do pick up a box of condoms. And you do pick up a bottle of personal lubricant.

You put both items back down eventually.

You don’t really know what’s got you anxious. You had been pretty confident just an hour or so ago. But now, faced with such things, you feel small and stupid.

You leave the pharmacy feeling helpless. You wander the long single hallway that was your mall. You often wondered about shopping centres featured in hollywood movies, with the multiple stories and large areas and different halls.

The shop you make a turn into, you’ve never been to. You knew of it. There weren’t enough shops not to know of any of them. It was something to do with home décor, you were pretty sure. You don’t think your father ever was a traditional decorator, and you’d never found yourself in this store before.

You spend maybe another half an hour in the candle section of the store, weighing which scent calmed you down the most.

You only think about what you’d purchased once you are seated on the bus. You hadn’t wanted to purchase condoms or lube. Yet, you’d bought at least a dozen of different scented candles, with some lame excuse of mood setting.

Setting the mood was important! But your choice of purchases were clear. You didn’t need Rose to analyse it for you. You knew the implications of your moves. Maybe you’d hopped on board with the whole taking up the physical side of your relationship by storm. What you wanted was a romantic relationship, with more than solely that physical aspect.

You wanted to do these things, and not only these specific sorts of things, with Dave in a romantic way, and you were doing a poor job at covering that up.

When you get home. You cry. A lot. You don’t remember crying in such a way since childhood and you consider that maybe you’d prefer to be a child right now rather than your already adult self. You envied Dave’s capacity to escape to a different age in that moment. You envied Dave for being so forward with his requests. Why couldn’t you just do the same? Why couldn’t you ask him out? Ask him to be yours, and for you to be his? The answers were overwhelmingly simple. Your best version of you still did not receive Dave’s unconditional love. You still knew that somewhere down the road you were unable to make Dave happy. And you had never truly felt on Dave’s level.

You liked to pretend. You two were the best of friends, on the same wavelength at all times.

And you try to convince yourself of this again, even through your tears.

You sleep for over twelve hours. Come morning, it’s easy to tell yourself that you’d been at your emotional capacity. Your meltdown had little to do with real problems, and more so to do with your unexpressed feelings for what was about to happen. Which you could soon express, physically, at the very least. So you tell yourself.

Your confidence wavers again when you confirm with your cellphone for the umpteenth time that you were well into Saturday. That Saturday was supposed to be the day when you and Dave would… Possibly? No, you would. You had to take the leap. There was no reason not to. And the reasons you’d believed you had felt and sensed a week ago had already quietly faded away.

Your confidence simply dies when you get Dave’s text, arrived even before noon.

TG: let me know when you want me over

And even though your confidence had been buried and the funeral had been very touching and all that, you still answer him.

EB: guess what, i want you now.

You pretend you are confident with this. After all, you’d never looked better. You’d never been better at stuff. And Dave had never looked happier. What was there not to feel confident about?

TG: ill have a run over then
TG: let me use your shower when i get there

You don’t really want to agree to that. You weren’t going to get Dave out of his clothes when his skin was still wet and his body smelling of the soap you used daily. That seemed a tad more sinful than what you’d had in mind. Of course, you don’t say anything. You catch yourself hoping that the two of you might get distracted watching movies or something after his shower and that all of this will be pushed off to the side.

He lives far enough that you do have time to fall in and out of these sorts of hopes. But by the time he gets there, you’ve resolved to go through with things. You line up all of the candles on your bed's wooden headboard. Once you’ve lit them up, you ignore any hopes of your room catching on fire and postponing this event.

You pull the blinds of your bedroom’s window down, shielding your room away from the strength of the light of day.

As soon as you do, your front door slams closed. Dave was here. By now, neither one of you had to ask to walk into each other’s homes. You had the keys and you had the freedom to use them. In this moment however, it feels much more different to hear the sound than it ever had felt to before.

You peek your head out of your room in time to see him jog up the stairs, breath still laboured.

His smile was relaxed, convincing of the happiness you’d seen in him this past year. You smile brightly in return.

“Hey sorry, I’m sweaty.”

You roll your eyes. You liked Dave sweaty. You always liked Dave.

“Just hurry up, loser.” You nod your head towards the bathroom door.

You want him to hurry up, not necessarily because you are ecstatic, but mostly because you do not want to be left alone. You do not want him to come back to any sort of breakdown on your part. You sit on your bed. You stand up. You pace your room. You sit again. You wipe your palms over your shorts. It’s no use.

When Dave comes back, you are busy convincing your fingers not to pull your hair out of your skull.

Dave has left his clothes, probably neatly folded in your bathroom, and has shown up in your doorframe only clad in the lime green towel that was yours. Your hands suddenly have no incentive to be in your own hair.

You watch his uncovered eyes trace the sources of the glow of the candlelight.

You wait for him to laugh at you, to make a snide remark. Nothing comes. But he doesn’t come near you either.

So, noncommittally, you extend your arms towards him, indicating that he had a space to fill out.

His movement across the room is a flash. You are thankful for the way he kicks the door shut behind him however, conserving a secrecy and intimacy in the atmosphere of your bedroom. When he reaches you he basically tackles you onto your back, curling atop of you like an oversized cat.

You don’t find yourself bothered after all that he is just about naked, still wet, and smelling of your body-wash. You cuddle him as you would have any other time, and you find that breathing his presence in actually does help to settle your nerves.

Of course when he does straddle you, it becomes extremely obvious that this is the most naked he has been around you. You see the mission in his eyes however as his hands flatten over your hipbones, and smooth over your chest, slowly bunching your shirt upwards. With a little bit of cooperation it finds the floor. You try to keep your breathing steady when he shifts around to be able to hook his fingers into your belt loops and help you quickly reach the state of undress he also found himself in.

Your breath only catches when his fingers slip under your underwear.

“No way am I taking those off without you taking that ugly towel off.” You don’t expect your voice to already sound so different.

“This is your towel.”

Arguing about the ugly factor of said towel seems wasted in this scenario. You push him off by his shoulders and he seems to understand the motion because soon you are both standing next to your bed, faces determined, and hands in place.

You think, possibly, this might have been uncomfortable, or awkward. But you feel strangely liberated as both your remaining garments hit the floor.

It isn’t even as if you find yourself ogling his body. If anything you were completely drawn to his eyes.

Even though you weren’t currently touching… It was the most intimate moment you’d shared. A simple look into one another’s eyes. Maybe it was the trust and vulnerability you could attribute to the shedding of your clothes. But your connection felt stronger, utterly incontestable.

You don’t really know who grabs who or who ends up on top of who, but it’s easy to fall into bed with him. It’s easy to accept your naked state, just like that. You were too in love with Dave to see it as anything other than a blessing to share your body with him and vice versa.

You were too in love with him and it was terrifying.

Your hands can’t touch enough of Dave’s skin and your ears can’t catch enough of the sounds dripping from his lips.

He digs his nails into your back when you manage to pull away from his lips. His whining dies off though as you kiss your way down his body. Your mind had quickly lost controls of your body and the only bold, flashy priority you could grasp was to make Dave happy. It had always been about that. And now, you had a new venue to do so.

Your lips are brushing the skin directly under his belly button when things take a turn for the worse.

-578-

Going down on your best friend, possibly soul mate, maybe lover, really shouldn’t be all that unimaginable. And yet, the violent way Dave’s knee collides with your jaw, and the way he shrieks aren’t really going along with the spirit of that idea.

“Dave, what the fuck?”

You’ve heard about pain being pleasurable in these sorts of moments. And sure, Dave’s nails in your flesh, and the pull he would use on your hair sometimes; all of that was great. But the pain blossoming in your jawbone is producing a sharp ringing sound in your ears instead.

“What? What the fuck yourself,” he claims, voice suddenly going up, and long limbs twisting in an effort to get away from your touch.

“Are you serious? I can’t go down on you? Oh sorry, next time Dave, maybe give me a specific itinerary of what kind of sex you want.”

The look on his face is enough to tip you off, but you don’t want to believe it.

“God damn it,” you mumble under your breath, the urge of pulling your hair out strongly returning. “Don’t tell me you’ve just turned into a little kid, oh my god, this can’t be happening.”

“No, I’m not— I mean, I don’t know what’s going on, but I ain’t a kid.”

Of course. Now you think you know why his proposition had filled you with dread. Of course this couldn’t go well. You sigh heavily.

“Ok, well no. ‘Cause we’re barely of age now, so like, no.”

“But, I’m eighteen.”

You stop rubbing your jaw and proceed to glaring at Dave. He’s modestly covered himself with one of your pillows, but you’re not feeling up to taking pity on him.

“What do you mean, you’re eighteen? We’re eighteen now! Which month are you from?”

“May?”

“Yeah, it’s fucking May right fucking now. The fucking second Saturday of May.”

You roll your eyes. You sigh harder. You're fuming, you can feel it.

The pieces are starting to make sense however.

“So you’re telling me, you from a week ago is ruining what’s going on right now?” Your impatience only slightly seeps into your words.

“What do you mean what’s going on right now. I didn’t sign up for this.”

Your glare only intensifies.

“Oh, please! You’ve been asking for this every day for the past week!”

“Guess why, John, ‘cause you just told me right now that I’m going to be asking. So of course I’ll have to ask.”

You feel on the verge of tears now. If anything, up until an hour ago, you’d been more so portrayed as the one being coerced into sex, not the other way around. You sling an arm over your eyes and ignore the hurried sounds of Dave’s breathing.

When your arm falls back into place, you know there is a new sort of light in your eyes. Dave visibly recoils as you crawl your way back over to him.

“Dave, come on. Don’t play coy with me.”

“Come again?” You know you’ve got him pinned now however. You’ve got him.

“There’s always a reason you skip through time. You get what your heart desires usually, right?”

“What are you saying?”

“I think you know what I’m saying. You went to bed wishing we could be having sex.”

He seems to melt into a pile of embarrassment, and a smile of victory fractures your intense expression.

It’s not enough of a victory to be pushy with him however. The turn of events isn’t either enough to convince you to hide away in shame as Dave had automatically done. You do however decide to pull the covers back for him, and finally do let your heart ache for him as he slips underneath the sheets gratefully. You also decide to lay under the covers with him, and are glad that you do so as he promptly attaches himself to you, arms wound around you tightly.

You try to ignore the way things had excited parts of your anatomy earlier, but you don’t think he makes a similar effort.

“You were actually going to do stuff with me?” he almost whispers the question to you. You like the way he does, you think it is fitting with the still candlelit atmosphere of your room.

“Yeah, I was about to. Then I got your knee to my face.”

That only seems to register with him now. He brings his body closer to yours and you feel as if you are being pushed closer and closer to the edge. He brings his hand to your face, inspecting your cheek and where he’d hit you.

“Sorry… It was sort of surprising, y’know?”

“It’s cool,” you tell him casually, catching his hand with your own and bringing it to your lips.

The hand kissing might have been too much of a romantic gesture, especially considering the circumstances. But Dave only smiles that small smile of his, with the faintly dusted red cheeks, and your heart is falling at the speed of light.

His leg moves in between yours. You do notice his features quickly devolving into a look similar to the one he had worn before his mood had taken a drastic change.

“Would you do something with me now?” His hand brushes over your hipbone. Your throat feels tight. “Like you said, I’m the one who wanted this.”

You laugh but it is a tight throated laugh.

“No, come on. You’re not going to have your first time in the future… Unless you already had your first time in the future?”

The thought was a rightful stab in your chest. Maybe, just like the way he only loved you when he could move forward in his timeline, maybe he only wanted to be physically close to you in that future too. You don’t know if it’s right for you to feel as hurt as you do.

“I didn’t, but— Come on, I’ll ask you for a full week, I promise.” He laughs at that. You try to join in on the laughter but it catches in your throat again.

He flops over onto his back and you breathe out heavily. Your body certainly hadn’t decided on calming down, and neither did his. Maybe that was the reason alone that he was interested still to do something with you, because you’d gotten him going in the very first place. Though, by the sounds of things, he’d managed to get himself going on his own, before bed, thinking of you and wishing for you…

Your face feels hot. And even a few weekdays spent trying to get used to thinking of Dave as a sexual person doesn’t prepare you for the sorts of things you find yourself picturing.

He doesn’t seem to notice your inner turmoil, eyes roaming wildly instead. You take comfort in the way his eyes move. You try not to think of an eventuality where he would indefinitely lose this trait.

“You’ve got candles and the whole hoopla. Sounds to me like a solid first time.”

You smile fondly. He hadn’t made fun of that after all.

“Well, I guess… I guess you didn’t seem too angry with me this week. Just nervous?” You shoot him a suspicious look.

His eyes focus on you again, and his smile is great, albeit maybe a little mocking.

“Oh man, I’m sure I’m just going to be nervous because I’m going to know how amazing you are in bed.”

Your face still feels heated. You complain through various sounds and by rubbing your face. “Dave, cut it out!”

He moves onto his knees and puts a hand over your stomach. You try to breathe. You can tell he isn’t yet as comfortable as he had been with finding himself without clothes. But now you can see why Dave had dropped the clothes without too much distress. He knew he had to.

“John, please.”

You refuse to think you will fall for that. You know his eyes too well for a wide-eyed pleading thing to actually work for him. It isn’t going to work…

“Dude, you can make your pleading as X-rated as you want. Go ahead.”

However, he chooses not to. It’s not exactly a blessing.

You like him too much. You are too naked. You are too aroused to have him straddling you like he decides to do. You’re not ok with the way he grips onto your bed’s headboard and you aren’t ok with the way his hips start moving.

The way you grip his hips possessively in return probably doesn’t paint that portrait however. The way you thrust your hips towards him to match up doesn’t really help your case either. And the hiss in your voice is nothing but convincing that you are effectively ok with this whole situation.

“Dave, you’re so obnoxious.”

You could pretend you were trying to offend him and to get him to stop. But you’re not in fact surprise with his response. His response being the way he dips his head, closes his eyes, and moans your name.

You feel as if there isn’t enough of him. There isn’t enough of him to touch. There aren’t enough curves in his body to drag your hands over. There is simply not enough of him and you want him to be everything to you and in your life. So you trace everything of him with your fingers, drink up every sights of him. The way his body moves, the way his face morphs into an open book, the way his breathing becomes increasingly irregular.

He is too much to bear. You kick off the covers, the sheets, everything you can. You push him off of you. Push him farther back, push him until you can be the one over him. He holds onto your shoulders, but lets his head fall back, even though you’ve pushed him to where his own shoulders could barely stay on your bed. The way he bares his throat naturally only has you forcing your hips against his with more urgency.

You don’t really know that you’re going for his neck until your teeth scrape over his skin, and you don’t really know you’re prying his hands away from your shoulders until you’ve interlaced all of your fingers together fully and intimately.

The sound that is born on his lips is positively sinful. It pierces through you however with a flash of clarity and of emotion. His fingers tremble, but you only squeeze harder.

When he opens his eyes, they seem almost eerie. You’re not sure if it is the lighting of the candles or if it is what his look holds. Something you never usually found in his eyes. Your chest feels as if it is collapsing. When you come undone, the thought that is on your mind is a heavy and charged one.

The thought that maybe Dave loved you just as much as you love him.

-xxx-

So of course you believe him when the only words he has to offer afterwards are “I love you”.

You believe him, but it had been as if your chest had just collapsed. And as if he was trying to put the pieces back together without any glue. Dave always loved the future of who you could be. It was never you. You were never good enough until later.

You never truly allowed yourself to think with such a bitter direction, yet here it was. Plain and simple. You weren’t good enough for Dave and he’d never gone out of his way to hide it.

You huff, but the breath is shaky, reminding you of both of your states. Dave is heavy beneath you, limbs limp and eyes dazed. You were cooling down though and not cleaning after yourselves seemed like the least tempting of options.

“I’ll be back. Messy,” you explain briefly. There is little response from him, but you still sit back and pull him by the ankles so his head can rest over the mattress instead. He smiles at you, tired and dazed still, but you don’t stick around for more.

Outside of your bedroom, everything is different. The light of the sun was still brilliant, and in it you tried not to feel ashamed that you’d just gone through with that. There was something that felt fundamentally wrong with taking Dave’s virgin status when he wasn’t really in his right state of mind. Were you to explain it to anyone else, no one would understand. But you understood perfectly.

Present Dave wouldn’t look at you the way he had. You were only lying to yourself by entertaining the thought of holding up this sort of relationship. He’d asked you repeatedly to do this, knowing that he’d be out of his mind when it would happen. Who were you fucking kidding?

Once you’re in the bathroom, it’s almost tempting to put your fist through the mirror. All things considered, that would be a bit too dramatic. So you stick to rubbing yourself clean with a wet towel. You rub until the skin of your lower stomach has taken a reddish hue. There was something about having Dave’s bodily fluids on you that you weren’t very comfortable with anymore.

You return to the bedroom pretty promptly. Mostly because you didn’t want Dave to wake back up from being possessed completely alone in your bedroom, with your own bodily fluids drying on his skin.

When you go back however, he is not clutching his head, he is not confused, he is in the same state you have left him in. So you clean him up too, and try not to rub with the same harshness you had done to yourself.

He tells you again, “I love you.”

You grin quickly, fleetingly, and proceed to tossing the towel off to the side. You get your hands on him to try to reposition him, to get him laying in the right direction again, but he takes ahold of your hands and stills you almost automatically.

“I said, I love you.”

You sigh. You feel aggravated. Hearing his past versions say so over and over again didn’t actually do wonders for you.

“So what?” It’s not intended to be cold, but you do hear the hint of it anyway.

“So. It’s the first time I’ve told you like… In person?” His eyebrows draw closer together as his look intensifies.

You’re the one who feels confused and who feels a sharp pain in the back of your head.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I don’t know. You orgasmed me back into my body, I guess. Beats me.”

“Wow, Dave. That was really romantic. That sort of statement basically goes hand in hand with ‘I love you’.”

The shock has registered in your face and in the stillness of your hands despite your insistence to one up him with continued banter.

“You know what’s even more romantic? Your blatant fire hazard over there.” He points behind you but doesn’t bother to sit up to do so, obviously drained.

“Oh, shut up.”

You don’t expect it when he snakes his arms around your neck and pulls you in close to kiss you fully.

You whine and complain when Dave pulls you even further in and you almost lose balance.

“Dave. The pillows are over there. Why are you over here?”

“Dude, I don’t know. That was forever ago for me.”

He totally knew why. Like he’d forget that. You’re not thinking about the incredibly natural way he had told you he loved you.

“Yeah right. Bet you think of it every waking hour.”

“You know me. Drooling all over you is basically my only hobby, ever.”

“You love me?”

You blurt that line out, even though that had been the last thing on your mind, you swear.

He decides to look up at the ceiling and to purse his lips. You remember now how very undressed you both are.

“I’ve wanted to tell you since… Forever? Basically?”

“Yeah, I know.” You’re not sure why you answered in that way when you had been ready to punch your hand through glass just five minutes ago, but you still do without it even feeling like a lie.

A moment of silence passes, and he asks the following in the sort of voice that barely rivals silence.

“Can we do it again?”

“Right now?” You’re pretty sure it won’t actually take that much convincing for you to side with him, but the emotional part of your being was still tripping over his confession of love, without any option of standing back up.

“Well, it was, like a whole week ago for me. And like you said, I had to think about it with every single waking moment.”

You smile, but finally you’re not really able to keep up with him. Instead you tell him you love him, just to hear him say it back. You say it again. And again. And again.

You do spend the rest of the night in bed. Sometimes with your bodies pushing one against the other. Other times, watching movies, playing games, eating. You would have taken a seat somewhere else, but your energy was better invested in getting to know Dave’s body than it was sitting at a proper table. He doesn’t make any comments about the way you had his hand in yours whenever you could manage to free up a hand. You don’t say anything about it either. You don’t tell him you want to date him. You don’t tell him you want to share your life with him.

You’re hoping the way you hold his hand will make a fair demonstration though. If it doesn’t… That was a mess you didn’t want to think of just yet.

Chapter Text

You had never left your hometown. The thought occurred to you only once your bedroom had been packed up. Not everything had been stored into the cardboard boxes, but there were enough of them around you to fill you with a mix of nostalgia and renewal.

You had never left your hometown. And in a way, you did not feel unlike a fairytale character bound to their tower who had just recently been freed. Over the years, you’d learned just how to feel cursed and unwanted. But from this point on you would be able to write your own story.

You would go to a place where you had no need to be reminded of your mother. And the very best part was that you would be able to bring the best of this place with you. You would have followed John to the end of the Earth. And that was precisely why you were grateful he had chosen to follow your decision and to join you in the same school.

You’d finished packing up your things just in time to watch the sun beginning its descent in the sky from your bedroom window. You remembered distantly doing the same thing in the mansion of your childhood on the last day you had been able to stay there. The colours seemed all different now. The air you breathed in and out felt different in your lungs too. Everything about you was different now, but you’d never felt more like yourself.

When you get the text from John (EB: could you come over?) you don’t hesitate to say ‘yes’ because you know this will be the last time in a while you’ll be able to go there. Your other home. Tomorrow, the two of you would be leaving this town, together. You feel an unexplainably calm sort of happiness.

You don’t change out of your jeans and hoodie to go over. You opt out of running as well as out of biking. You’ll just take the bus this time. The decision comes with the strong sentiment that you’ll be able to achieve better things soon with your running. That it will no longer be a pointless push forward. It’ll be running for a reason, something you’d had trouble wrapping your mind around since a very young age. Running with something more than just wanting to get away.

“I’m off to Egbert’s,” you call out as you step out of your bedroom.

Today, your brother must have broken his official record of how many times he could knock at your door in a single day. You weren’t sure if he was nervous, or if maybe he thought he would miss you, but you do feel some shadow of guilt in going over to John’s instead of spending some time with him. Especially given that you wouldn’t be separated from John. But he’d asked for you to come over and it wasn’t like you were going to break your trend of answering ‘yes’ on this very day.

Luckily, your brother shoots you a thumbs up from the kitchen, presumably cleaning off the counters, though it might have been but a coverup for another prank to dodge in the kitchen area. You pause a bit when you see him. There had been something between the two of you that had never settled back into place after your first talk with Rose. You’d never actually wanted to address it, but knowing you were leaving soon, you somehow manage to smile at him with a trueness of heart you’ve never really been known to display. When he smiles back at you, it’s a sad kind of smile.

So you leave the apartment and still manage to get some running in by racing down the staircase. You shrug off the thought that leaving this town might just be your most advanced form of running yet.

The trip in the bus isn’t a pleasant one. The whole time you spend awake, you spend wishing that you were actually running instead. Fortunately, you do sleep through most of it. Thankfully, you do not miss the bus stop. By the time you hop out of the bus, the sun has sunken considerably closer to the horizon. Stepping onto your childhood street fills you with the same sort of dread that usually only happens when directly approaching your mother’s mansion.

And yet you felt it clearly now as you approached the Egbert household.

John is, uncommonly, sitting cross-legged on his front lawn. By the pile of dandelions at his side you can guess the task he had at hand. You don’t think it’ll be appropriate for you to comment on the inefficiency of his method, and how he should pull at the roots, not simply snap at the stems. But something about the air of the moment tips you off that now wasn’t the time for that sort of comment.

You think it might be the way his eyes don’t move to meet yours and the way he doesn’t make a move to stand up that calls for you to sit down facing him instead.

He meets your eyes only once you’ve settled into place, your long legs stretched in front of you and leaning your weight back onto your hands. The red outline of his eyes is what tells you he’d been crying. Now, you had only seen John cry a handful of times. When he did, he cried with this sort of crisp abundance. He didn’t look like other criers. He looked as if there was just too much water inside of him and that was it, it needed to escape. Today, he looked like everyone else who would cry. Someone who, after they were done, was touchy and sore and ready to snap again.

The dread builds.

You cut to the chase, ask him, “What’s wrong?”

Not how everything was, or if everything was alright. You simply ask what is wrong. And somehow, you know it’s not just stress related to the move. You know it’s something that’s left behind a different sort of wound.

“Dad stuff.”

That’s his prompt answer and nothing else. But you’re not able to read his expression to find any other words to help him express what it was he was telling you. Had they had a fight? Or was something wrong even with Mister Egbert?

You feel that second option is the scariest, so it’s the first one you want to eliminate.

“Is he alright?”

He shakes his head dully.

Your thoughts are ahead of you before you know it. Maybe he was sick. It seemed like he was in the sort of age range when people would tragically become sick. But there were no signs of that. Again, you attempt to get an official ‘no’ on the theory.

“He’s not sick, is he?”

John laughs for only one beat, followed by another shake of his head.

You’re not sure why there is no huge wave of reassurance that hits you. Your sense of dread still hasn’t left you yet.

“Well, we don’t have to talk about it.”

And you don’t, not for a while.

He keeps at his mission of cleansing the yard of any newly budding dandelions. You toy with the ones that had already been chopped down in their glory. You try to remember directions on how to make a crown out of them, but you can’t recall. So you start rearranging them from shortest to tallest. You interiorly put yourself down for this blatant lack of artistry.

Even when he finishes, still neither one of you speak. It is only once the last rays of sun have disappeared from the landscape of your town that he bothers to say anything at all.

“It’s not health problems, it’s money problems.”

You nod your head. You feel like you should be reassured, but still you aren’t. You remembered going through that sort of stuff with your brother, but then it had been Mister Egbert who had been the one to lend a helping hand.

“We could help. You guys helped back in the day, remember?” Of course he would remember, but you’re not really sure what is the etiquette for these sorts of things.

“Yeah, I know. Your brother should help.”

He stresses the word ‘should’ and you can’t help but to detect the bitterness, the same sort of vibe you got from the red outline of his eyes. You decipher his words to be many things. The claim that your brother did not deserve his current financial stability, the claim that you still owed him a lot.

You decide not to be offended, but you still take down the mental note of what his reaction had been.

“Well then. How do you want us to help?”

He doesn’t notice how your words had taken the bitter edge he’d first adopted.

He rubs his temples and you start feeling worse about the entire situation.

“I don’t really know what’s going on so much. He won’t tell me. I just know we owe a shitload of money to the IRS.”

You stare off into the distance. You briefly think of how both of you referred to your guardian’s situation with ‘we’. It would be heartwarming, but the mention of ‘IRS’ sounds ominous enough for you not to think of that for too long.

“So like… It’s bad?”

He breathes out as if he’d been waiting for you for the whole time coming to figure that out for yourself. Yeah, it was bad and that was why you had even been called over in the first place.

“Yeah, it’s bad.”

You stare apologetically into the house, thinking that must have been where John’s father was. It sounded like the worst timing for John to be leaving him.

Your next thought is the worst one yet.

“You’re still coming tomorrow though, right?”

He runs a hand through his hair, seems to take interest in your assortment of the flowers; and you already know his answer just from that alone.

“No. We’d already payed for first term, but, thank god, we managed to get our money back. But I really can’t go. I’m not on any scholarships, y’know? There’s no money for that,” he speaks in a voice unlike himself, and you sense something alike a prepared conversation. “I’m probably going to start work somewhere soon. And then, just keep working until the debts are gone.”

“How long do you think?”

“Long.”

The world seems quiet, the night sky already bleak and dark. The dread you’d been feeling in your gut had evaporated, but your mind hadn’t caught up yet. The thought that what John had just shared would change everything was something empty of sense still.

“So you’re not going tomorrow?” you test the words again, trying to make sure.

“I’m sorry,” he almost mumbles the words. “I didn’t know how to tell you…”

You consider that, yeah, he’d probably known this for a while. You try not to think too much of that. Instead, you find yourself staring at the lineup of dandelions again. The night is a warm one and you’re still dressed inappropriately for the summer, despite the day’s progression into nighttime.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know that anything was up,” you finally match up with him.

Sure, he could have told you. But you could have sensed that something was off, at least. You hadn’t.


“It’s fine. The big reason I even wanted to go study was to be around you. So I can come cheer for you in the bleachers, you know?”

He laughs with that, and there was something that told you, even if his words had been the entire truth, that great sadness was hidden behind them. You nod your head as if you'd understood and had known what he had meant, but you couldn’t even make the proper effort to fully take his words into consideration.

“I’m not going without you.”

You don’t want to say that. You want to leave. You want to be that fairytale character who could break their curse. You want to get away from this town. You don’t want to spend half of your time here on this street where you were probably born. You don’t want this. You still say it.

“There’s no way I can go,” he says it softly. You are more interested in the way the wind blows the grass he’d ripped out of the lawn out of his hand.

“Then there is no way for me to go either,” you state calmly.

This is not the statement you want to make. You needed John with you. But you needed an out too.

“You have to go.”

There is something in the way that he looks at you however that puts it all very plainly. He doesn’t want you two to part. Neither do you.

“Don’t have to. I can stick around. Help you raise money and whatnot. We’ll be done quicker, and we’ll reapply places, you’ll get scholarships, it’ll all make sense in the end.”

It’s a poor plan and you don’t like it. But he still looks at you as if you were the last gleaming sparkle of hope.

“Who says? The future, or wishful thinking?”

That’s a good question. You proceed to imitating him and tearing up some of the grass too. You’d never actually seen a future where you were studying after high school, had you? Not once. And in the past weeks when you’d gone to sleep with college on your mind, you’d never hopped in time to actual college days.

The truth was that they probably didn’t exist.

You breathe out.

You rarely ever travelled to a time where you were outside of this forsaken town.

“I say. I’m going to go home and unpack.”

Part of you actually does expect him to crack, to beg with you to just go and to try your best. That there would be ways to stay in touch, of course there were. You didn’t need to see each other every day.

Instead, his composure completely melts away. He takes in breaths similar to ones of someone emerging from underwater and who had previously given up hope on breaking to the surface again. He looked to be experiencing excruciating relief. When he speaks, it is with that same exact quality.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

You try to convince yourself that it isn’t a sad moment. That you’d only just promised each other to be there for one another. That was fine. You would have wanted him to do the same had the places been swapped.

“Like I said, not going anywhere without you.”

It scares you to know that you’d at least considered it though.

Silence returns. You think of the shades of blue in the sky. You think of the house at the top of the crescent of the street. You think of running. You’d felt so strongly back at home, in your packed up room, but now you felt weak, sick, different. You don’t mention it. It’ll pass. You needed John more than you needed to break away.

When he eventually tells you that the bus line would be closing soon, you’re happy to help him to his feet, happy to walk him back to his front door. Happy when he leans in and kisses you. Kisses you like he loves you, because he does. And you try not to think of staying behind or of the bitterness laced into his looks and words.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” He asks you finally as you walk away from his front door.

You wave it off with your hand and keep walking. “I should probably go talk with Bro.”

You probably should, but you do not want to.

You try not to fall asleep in the bus mostly because you want the journey to stretch out as much as possible.

You do not fall asleep, yet the journey had never been quite as ephemeral before.

You should have gone up the stairs at a slower rate, but habit would have you racing up the stairs. The dull quickening of your heart as you reach the top flight doesn’t really settle your nerves or clear up the fog over your mind. The interactions with John had felt surreal, and since then you hadn’t yet really stepped out of that cloud of uncertainty.

It wasn’t too late to go back on your word and still leave tomorrow. But John would have stuck with you. You would do the same.

When you enter the apartment, your brother is seated on the couch with his arms crossed, hat tipped forward. You know him well. You know he is sleeping, but will pretend he had been awake the entire time when he does wake up. He was trying to stay up, anyway, because you weren’t yet back home. Not that this is a pattern he would admit to, but you know it anyway.

It would be easy for you to sneak into your bedroom, but you don’t really see how postponing the conversation closer to when your flight was scheduled was going to help you. So you take a seat next to him and he tips his hat back into place, the image of someone who hadn’t just been asleep.

“How was the Egbert kid?”

You watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. He’d heard the grogginess in his words just as you had and subtly was trying to correct it. You grin, but only for that moment.

“Not super swell, honestly.”

You bring your feet up onto the couch’s cushions, crossing your arms loosely over your knees. The key was to act coolly. Your brother had always been all about that. That was his comfort zone and you’d play right into it.

“Oh yeah? What’s going on, some college jitters?” he jokes lightly, grabbing the remote control on the armrest to turn the volume of the screen back up. He’d probably turned it down before drifting off. “You sure as hell haven’t gotten any yet.”

He ruffles your hair at the same time as he puts the remote back into place. The move is a rarely affectionate one, and you impress yourself by not wilting under the touch.

“Nah, it sounded more like IRS jitters.”

You try to imitate him by concentrating on the images on the screen. But when you look at him out of the corner of your eye, you catch him doing the same.

“His father’s in trouble, huh?”

He does not blink. Does not put any true appearance of questioning. It is barely a conclusion at all, more so pure insight, and you wonder how he’d done just so.

“Sounds that way.” You take a pause, think of the bitter way in which John had implied that both you and your brother still owed him a lot. “Shouldn’t we like help out or something?”

You see him try to readjust his hat again. It is code for him keeping things from you. At this point in your relationship you don’t take it as much of a surprise.

“I have.”

The way he’d spoken the words sends out a single message. That was all he had to say about it. That was all he was going to say about it. He’d helped. He didn’t need to tell you how, he didn’t need to justify his future actions either, and that was all you had access to. You don’t actually care about the way he’d spoken the words.

“So? John still can’t afford to go study. Doesn’t sound like much help to me.”

It is clear that you had not cared for the way he had spoken now. He reacts to it sharply, downright turning off the television before turning to face you. You somehow manage to keep staring at the dark screen.

“Do you even know what being in trouble with the IRS means, kid?”

You bite your tongue both figuratively and literally. You’re eighteen now. You’re no longer a child, and you’d never been a child to him either. Even if he was the closest thing to your parent.

“Means he owes them a lot of money,” you say plainly.

He scoffs at you, but you promise yourself that you won’t redden in anger, you won’t lose your cool. You had to play it cool with him.

“Why would you owe them money though?” You can feel his gaze, it is a cold and harsh one, but you still do not face it. “Let me tell you, your buddy, John’s dad, is up to his ears with tax evasion. He’s a fraud. He put himself in the position. The money he owes is the money he kept illegally.”

You don’t exactly want a tax lesson. Yet, you hadn’t had much more thought on John’s situation other than sadness and empathy. You hadn’t really considered anything like what your brother had just suggested. Well, not suggested, exactly…

“So?” You snap. Turn to face him. You have no doubt that the meanness in your eyes is obvious even with the cover of your shades. “Since when are you the poster child for legality? Where the fuck was that when I was born?”

He starts with the word ‘she’ and it’s enough for you to cut him off completely.

“She was your mother!” you complete for him, almost mockingly. “Mister Egbert’s my family too. More than mom ever was.”

“Because you’re going to compare scientific advancement to swindling money for your own gain?”

“Oh yeah, like time travelling didn’t end up just being for her own personal gain.”

His face falls in time with the falling sensation in your chest. Wrong words. Time travelling, not words to be included. Words that clearly did not ring any bells with your brother. If he was convinced of your mother’s scientific contributions, he’d never known them to include something temporal.

You wave your hand in the air. “It’s just an expression, don’t look at me like that.”

He looks confused for a moment, maybe two. When his confusion breaks, you know it isn’t because he’s understood the truth or even understood whatever you tried to convey in that last line. You recognise it as quiet resignation. It wasn’t something to speak of now, and he’d accepted that readily. It is a relief that doesn’t last amidst the tension of the conversation.

“Look, Dave.” He puts a hand over your shoulder and this time you do wilt visibly. “He’s been good to us. But from the start, he’s always advised me to do the same as him. Especially when I started online… He’s not good news in the money department, we don’t get involved with that, got it?”

“Got it.”

You say it against your will. Even when claiming that your bond of trust wasn’t the one you’d had once upon a time, the urge to please your brother and to conform to his wishes had never washed away.

His hand leaves your shoulder and you sense that you both relax. Back to your usual cool demeanours.

“John’s not going tomorrow then. How are you taking it?”

There’s no good answer to that. And certainly no true answers in order to conserve an air of ease.

“Not much to say about how I’m taking it.” You were taking it bad. But it hadn’t yet sunk in. That was the only small plus you could come up with.

“Eh, well, I know you never really bonded with anyone else here, but you’re going to be dealing with a lot more people who have common interests with you at university.”

You take your next breath through your nose. There is an urge to stand up, so you do. He follows you with his eyes and you can tell he was putting up a fighting stance again. He knew what you would say. You didn’t have to say it. But there you were, standing stupidly, stare unfocused, not even on the damned dark screen, and putting what you had to say together as uncertainly as if it were a castle of cards begging to be swept over.

“He wouldn’t go without me. I’m not going to go without him.”

And though you’d already been able to see that he’d fight you on this subject, his response is extremely calm and extremely reserved.

“You’re going.”

“I’m not going to go.” There is enough resistance in your voice that he already knows you don’t actually want to stay. He doesn’t need you to tell him.

“You’re going, you little shit. You have classes, what, for eight months of the year? You’d be here a third of the year at the very least. You’re not going to waste away here.”

You’d thought of that on the way over. Chances to see John outside of your schedule. Not only for the four months you had off, but for Thanksgiving, and March break, and Easter, and everything else under the sun. Opportunities would be there.

You couldn’t though. You couldn’t because you knew John wanted to go too. Or… You didn’t know. You didn’t know how John felt about your town. You didn’t know if he’d stop mid-jog from time to time to scream out in frustration like you did. You didn’t know if he felt like he was trapped in a room progressively filling up with lukewarm water. You didn’t know if that was how he felt, but it was how you felt. And because you felt as if you would have died had he left you behind, you decide you cannot put him in that position.

“I’m not going to waste, I’m not some spoiled milk. I can study whenever anyway.”

“Dave. You’re not happy here.”

Those aren’t particularly words you want to be faced with. You look away. You want to walk away too, but you’re glued to the spot. Standing as he stays seated. Though it should have given you some sense of control in the exchange, it doesn’t whatsoever. You feel ridiculously small, as if you were completely sprawled out on the floor, rather than standing.

“It’s good enough for me.”

It’s not that you were unhappy anyway. You were just bothered. Haunted, you thought to yourself sometimes. But you were happy around John. Whenever John was in the room, you were happy. That should have been good enough.

You try to ignore the warning bells telling you that relying entirely on a person for your happiness would end up screwing you over. You successfully ignore it because it is John and of course you can trust him with this, with anything.

Finally, your brother stands up and just like the world would have it, you feel lower than the floorboards now. And though you’d always felt some secret power related to the progressively vibrant red of your eyes to terrify anyone with a look alone, the look on your brother’s face is a dangerous looking one.

“You’d think anything is good enough for you,” he says it as his pointer finger jabs into your chest. You feel the move goes deeper than just your sternum’s surface, prodding at things you carried on your heart that you never cared to share. “The thing is that you don’t think you’re good enough for anyone or anything else. I don’t know, maybe because of your circumstances of birth.”

You only press your lips together, lower your eyebrows to make your glare more prominent. John had taken a psychology class last year, and as you’d helped him study you’d seen something similar in the papers. Circumstances surrounding one’s birth, such as a planned birth or not, did have a major impact on the individual. You want to shove at your brother. Like some eleventh grade psychology was going to define you.

Of course it’s more than just eleventh grade psychology. It’s analysis from the top caregiver you’ve had in this life. And the next words he speaks don’t only just show that but take out any fight left in your glare.

“That’s what it is, isn’t it? Mom’s gone. You were born for her research, but now she’s gone. So, what’s your purpose?”

It sounds just about as elaborate as an eleventh grade class. And yet… It cuts through any of your remaining defences and you deflate. You wish he wouldn’t go on, but you don’t either find a voice when his rises again.

“But you have purpose. You’re talented as hell, Dave. Damn, you’ll be a better scientist than mom. And you’re already a better athlete than I was.”

Still now, a day away from your planned departure, you did not know why you opted into studying in the scientific field, aside from the potential everyone had always seen you. You don’t know about becoming better than your mother. Maybe simply on an ethical level you could surpass her. As for athleticism… You were flooded with memories of driving to go pick up your brother from aikido practice, of Dirk training in the backyard with his bokken. He’d been good, yeah. You knew he still liked martial arts. Of course, all of that had stopped because of you.

You don’t feel like surpassing anyone anymore, anyway.

“Doesn’t matter,” you tell him, but you’re certain, even as you form the words, that it is falling upon deaf ears.

“And John sure isn’t the last person to love you, you got that?”

You swallow audibly, feel your face warm. You had a diverging opinion on the matter, but this must have been one of the only times someone outside of John or yourself had recognised his love for you. It’s hard to hear.

You want to nod your head, but you can’t cheat yourself that way. You hang your head instead.

“Dave. This town? It’s a poison to you. You’ll never believe in yourself until you get out of here. Alright? Please go.”

He’d shaken off the dangerous vibe completely. He was your older brother, who had always watched out for you, had always wanted the best for you. Who understood you. Despite your past struggles to feel understood, there were always those things your brother could pull apart about you without even you needing to know them in the first place. He’d asked you to leave with more kindness than you’d heard from him before.

It’s just not enough for you to turn your back on John. You don’t think anything will ever be.

“You can’t make me go. I’m staying. And if you don’t want me under your roof, just say the word.”

Of course he wanted you under his roof, that had been a bluff. But the way his face changes, even just the small shifts, has great guilt blooming in your lower abdomen. You leave the scene then and there. You couldn’t take the expression, the way he looked as if you had turned on him and had simply stabbed him in return with all of your might.

Nothing had convinced you to move during the conversation, but here you were, in your bedroom within a second, trying to work your computer chair against the doorknob in a way that would keep your brother out of your room indefinitely.

You pace your room in such a feral manner that you come to the full understanding of the image of a lion pacing its cage. You conjure wish after wish. You hadn’t tried any wishes in a while. Everything had been great then. You were going to leave here and succeed. And John loved you, actually wanted you in his arms, touched you in ways no one else could ever come close to. But now, just about any wish would do for you.

You wish you could be in college. You wish John could be in college. You wish the Egberts would be debt free. You wish your brother would turn around with a huge cheque. You wish you wouldn’t actually believe you weren’t good enough for anything, just as your brother had said. You wish you could sit in your backyard and watch your brother practice aikido, your mother watching over you two from the window. You wish you were on the plane. You wish John was happy.

Was John happy?

You take the time to change into night clothes. You take the time to make your bed, which you always did before going to bed, never in the mornings. Unmade beds didn’t help you fall asleep.

But finally as you slip in your bed, hours already long gone into the morning, your wish is that John would be doing better than now. Better than the bitter person you’d seen sitting outside.

-584-

The loudest sound is not the sound of the snowstorm, of the swirling gusts of wind. The loudest sound is the sound of your breathing, thunderous in comparison, heavy and hectic. The first sight are your lights going out. A flash of white, a dull to black, and finally the snowflakes rushing towards you, the streetlights casting but a faint halo onto the street.

Those aren’t the factors that make it a bad time to appear into. The predominant factor is the way you land on your foot, the way your ankle twists beneath your weight. That’s what makes you come to a halting stop. That’s what elevates your breathing to a whole different breathlessness, and what makes your lights go dark again.

There is no pain in your ankle, but you understand the picture. You understand your bare limbs in the storm. Of course you’d been running. But you’d never run before to a point that had you in this state. Your attempts at massaging your chest does not do anything for the excruciating ache you felt there. And when you do calm your breathing down, it is still not the wind that overpowers your hearing, but rather the sharp and atrocious ringing in your ears, in the back of your skull. But this isn’t you recovering from a possession, this was you possessing your body. And that body was overheating and in pain.

You don’t start back up. You take a few steps forward. Your body folds and you are gripping your sides, similarly to the way you’d needed to take hold of your chest just before. The sky overhead was one of night, but given the obvious winter surrounding you, it might still have been early. There is no traffic whatsoever however. You don’t know how occupied this street is supposed to be either. You do not know this street. But the pine trees you can make out behind the veil of angry snow flurries is certainly part of the forest of your hometown.

You give up, rest your hands over your thighs, curl over and breathe out again and again. You’d never felt like this before. Your chest was in pain. Your sides were in pain. Your ankle had twisted, but you still felt no pain there, you suppose that was a good thing.

You are not quite sure how long it is before a more important sound is brought to your ears. It is not a song that you know. Maybe it was a song not yet released where you were from. But the tonality is a giveaway, it is your cellphone. You have to pat down your clothes repeatedly to understand where it was located. It ends up being in a pocket you have to unzip in the lower back of your shirt. The clothes you are wearing are clothes a specifically athletic store would hold, you’re sure. You’ve never owned anything like it however.

It’s the same phone you’ve always had. The incoming call is ‘John’ and that is the first time you think of him since you’ve woken up. It strikes you as terrifying that this was the very first time you’d appeared somewhere without John by your side. It is more terrifying that you hadn’t noticed. But you were busy catching your breath. Maybe it wasn’t quite that bad.

You get the feeling that it is that bad.

John starts speaking as soon as your finger leaves the screen.

“Where are you? I’m outside.”

Stupidly, you look around. Though you are in fact outside as well, logic would point that he was directly outside of a building. Which building? You do not know. But there are no buildings near. If John had arranged to meet with you somewhere, you were certainly not making it in time; time shenanigan or no time shenanigan involved.

“I’m… I don’t know where.”

There is some cursing on the other end of the line and you can make out how he moves his phone away from his mouth to do so. You can’t really remember what it had been on your mind last when you had fallen asleep. Your body heat wasn’t lasting long out here amongst the rush of snowflakes.

“Are you shitting me? Again? Just stay wherever you are, I’ll track your phone. But you’re fucking stupid for going running in a god damned storm.”

With that he hangs up. You weren’t quite sure why, but the exchange left a bad taste in your mouth. It’s strange. The conversation, or whatever that had been, had not been untrue or unfair. You hadn’t made it to some meeting point. Apparently, not for the first time. And the other times probably included you going running and losing track of time, not unlike you. Running in a storm wasn’t either very wise. Nor was it when it was past eight pm, as your phone’s clock read.

There was still a bad taste in your mouth.

You pace as you wait, it vaguely reminds you of last night. That seemed to be a strange memory and completely out of context given your current scenario. And somehow, more distinctively than any other time in the past, you feel totally absorbed by this moment, even though it is not your present moment.

As you pace you have to pull your shorts back up a few times as they were slipping down your hips. You don’t think it is terribly convenient to wear shorts that do not fit while running. They’re new shorts too, the texture tells you as much. You berate your past, well probably future, self for his poor choices of purchase.

As the minutes drag on, you decide to instead berate him on your weight loss. You felt it whenever you’d bring your hand back to your chest to bring its anguish down. Your ribcage had never felt more like a birdcage under your skin, hard and obvious. You were probably just growing again. You definitely had some inches to make up for to come close to your brother’s height.

There is nothing noteworthy about the time you spend by the street. The lights are still dim, the wind is still strong, your chest is still killing. When the car rolls up, you feel as if you’ve been dunked into a bathtub of ice. Your skin, now covered in goosebumps, your breath hard to find now solely because of the cold.

The car is not the one you expect. It is a minivan, one you’ve never seen, almost worn down. It screams of suspicious and you don’t exactly want to approach it. Of course, it is your reticence that pushes John to actually roll down the passenger side’s window and to call out for you. His voice is recognisable, so you do limp over, even though you don’t really feel any pain in your ankle.

John drives off before you even close the door completely. You catch your reflection in the passenger’s wing mirror before you even buckle your belt. The sharpness of your cheekbones has given your face an allure you’ve never seen before. Your eyes had apparently finished its ascent towards scary shades of vibrancy and now held a dark crimson instead. You look away, feeling ashamed.

The bluish hue of your lips hadn’t convinced you to roll your window back up, but John eventually asks you to do it. It is the first thing he tells you.

He doesn’t seem impressed that you had, apparently, stood him up again. So you blurt out the only weak apology that comes to your mind.

“I don’t mind. You’re putting yourself in danger though, you know that? Course you do, I’ve only told you like ten times. Don’t go running in strange streets deep in the forest without telling anyone where you’re going. Do you care though? No, of course not. You’re Dave and the only person who matters to Dave is yourself.”

He takes the next turn pretty sharply. Not nearly as sharp as his tone and words had been. You’re not really sure you’d ever heard him speak in such a lengthy and aggressive manner before. You don’t think he means it.

“I didn’t know where I was going. I must have lost track of time?” The excuses would be more convincing if you’d known what had actually been going through your head before sprinting out into a snowstorm.

“We both know where you go all the time. It’s the pool. Or it’s out on your bike. Or it’s running at the craziest hours. All the time. Literally, all the time. I know you always ignore me when I tell you, but you’re overtraining, you really are.”

“I don’t think so.” Again, it is a weak defence. You don’t know the circumstances, all you know was the intense pain in your chest as you’d run forward. Overtraining does not sound farfetched to you.

“Oh no, you’re right. All of your clothes just magically stopped fitting. Had nothing to do with always fucking running.” You catch him glancing over and instead of meeting his eyes you concentrate your stare on your lap. “Even your new ones too. Must be something in your laundry detergent.”

You swallow, but it’s painful. Again, you feel pained and ashamed of your appearance.

“I said I was sorry.” And it is truly the only thing you can find to say.

He scoffs at you. John Egbert scoffs at you. Not in a chummy way, in a confrontational, cruel way.

“Look, don’t apologise. I’m dropping you off at your Bro’s. I’ll go hang out with someone else. Your knees are blue, I bet you go into hypothermic shock. That’s really not my problem though.”

Your expression must convey some sort of disbelief, but he never catches it. You look out your window, fail to recognise a way home yet. You must have run far.

“Well obviously I’m already cold. So you don’t have to be that cold with me too.” You think of mentioning the lack of heating in the car, but something tells you that must be broken.

He seems to pause at that, the car even loses some speed.

“I’m just upset you haven’t been reapplying to university, you know? I don’t need you around anymore. I have a bunch of friends from work now, you’re not my only friend. Besides, you’re not happy here.”

He echoes the same words as last night, but the memory of struggling with your brother just in order to get to this present point, where the person you loved the most wanted to act cold and cruel towards you, isn’t quite as painful as the thought of John only keeping you around because you were his ‘only friend’.

“Ok, well. I want to be here. So, there’s also that.” Maybe not convincing, but again, he hadn’t yet clued in on you not being quite your right temporal self.

“Well, Dave, there’s also the fact that I don’t want you around as the constant reminder that I’ve kept you from living your life.”

Now the car gains speed, and still, no amiable grounds have been reached.

“It’s not like that… I wanted to stay.” Your tone has taken up some pleading nuances, but it’s worth it, it’s worth it for John. But the bitter person you remembered was still sitting next to you. You’re not quite sure what you had wished for, but you’re pretty sure this is not what you had wanted.

“Look, I know I never told you. But I talked to future you, this you. I’ve known forever that our friendship had an expiration date. And this is it. So don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

Again, you tell yourself that he doesn’t quite believe those words. But it’s all too much for now. It’s too much because you expect the world to collapse around you. You must have taken a wrong turn. You couldn’t end up engaged to a person who had accepted that your friendship had expired. The timeline was nonsensical. But nothing changes and the minivan keeps going through streets amidst the pine trees, and you’ve had quite enough.

“Pull over, John. I need to get out of the car.”

His eyes dart over, and you realise that maybe he was coming to sense that your behaviour wasn’t falling in line with a current pattern.

“What, no? We’re still far away.”

“Pull over.”

When he refuses again you don’t just figuratively start kicking and screaming. You kick whatever you reach, but mostly the door. You scream, not words, true screams of distress. You do not know why. And you sense in yourself a fragile moodiness that wasn’t quite something you wanted to experience.

So he pulls over. But he also unbuckles at the same time as you do, and shuts the door at the same time as you do. You think of taking a running start, but instead you just take up a brisk walk. He calls after you five, maybe six times.

It triggers a memory within you. The day you’d met Rose, the day you’d gotten angry with your brother and had walked away from him. He’d called five, maybe six times, back then. And today, you knew, was the day you’d get angry with John and walk away from him too. The step that would leave your relationship hanging by a thread, as you’d done with your brother too. You’re angrier with yourself than you are with either one of them.

You turn around, face him, but take your steps backwards still.

“You know what happened last night? My brother begged me to get out of this town. Told me I could come see you on holidays. Told me this place was poison.” You breathe slowly. It wasn’t something you remembered quite well, the whole night fogged up by emotion and uncertainty. “And you know what? I never decided not to stay. Not once. ‘Cause you wouldn’t leave me either.”

He’s keeping up with you, but his legs don’t take the same long strides yours do.

“Dave. I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were from the past.”

“Guess the past me hasn’t yet reached the expiration date, huh? Funny, really.” You think of your brother, and you think of the way you’d told him, hours ago, that you weren’t spoiled milk. You couldn’t waste away.

When you turn, it’s with conviction and assurance. That doesn’t keep the lights from flashing out, doesn't keep a whiteness from taking over the scenery, and from your weight to do more than just twist your ankle under you.

The last sensation in your trip is one of falling. The last thought is that you’d wished for John to be better. You realise a better John doesn’t really include a better you.

-xxx-

You don’t feel sad exactly when you wake up. For some time you stay in bed and you consider your possibilities. You hadn’t unpacked. Your timeline had shown you some major discrepancies. The John you’d face soon, it had seemed like, would not be the John you’d seen at the beach once upon a time. Even if that near future had dictated your stay here, you think of leaving anyway. Why not? The timeline did not make sense.

What pulls you out of your bed are texts from John.

EB: what did your bro say?

EB: you know you can still go, right?

EB: i’ll have to work anyway, it’s not like i’ll be the most entertaining best friend.

You try to fight your answers, but in the end, you put the future to the side.

TG: he took it great

TG: dont worry about that shit

TG: maybe well be working but we still dont get any homework

TG: sounds like great hangout opportunities

Sounds like a great opportunity for John to turn his bitterness towards you and to call out your expiration date.

You could wait until the first snowfall to start worrying about that again though. Sounded like you’d be doing a lot of running until then anyway.

Chapter Text

You’ve heard that there comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to realise that their parental figures just aren’t perfect.  It’s a decent life lesson, you suppose.  

But the new life lesson you had gotten as an adult is the realisation that both of the adult figures who had been there for you through childhood weren’t just imperfect, but bad people.  

Sometimes, you stop those thoughts.  You think you may be too harsh, or too unforgiving.  But most of the time you settle on deciding that the both of them are bad people.  

First, it had been your father.  It’s not like staying behind for him had ruined your life, it had just considerably changed it.  You weren’t shattered, and it was much easier to swallow once you’d known Dave was going to be able to stick around for you.  The words that came to mind now when you crossed your father were ‘tax fraud’.  You knew the money you owed, it couldn’t at all have been a mistake.  They were scary numbers, telling of how long and of how elaborately he had pulled his trick.  And it had completely convinced you that your father wasn’t the good man you’d always seen him to be.  He was manipulative and greedy.  

You think you’re being unfair.  Your father was a good father.  He’d done so much for you.  Surely he was allowed to be called a good man.  You’d talked to him once, with all truths on the table.  He’d said it had started when your mother had gotten sick, an effort to alleviate medical bills.  The habit to maximise his funds had never been broken afterwards.  

But you still see him as a bad man nowadays.  

The second person to come into a bad light had been Dirk Strider.  Not that you’d really always regarded him as an authoritative figure.  When he had been living with you, when you had been a child, he really had seemed to play the big brother role better than any parental one.  It was clear however that it was specifically that role that he played in Dave’s life.  You’d come to respect him just as much as you did your father.  

You know things had changed as soon as Dave had decided to stay with you.  

After that it had been a matter of time, maybe just a week, for Dirk to show up at your doorstep.  He claimed he was there to see your father, and you’d sensed some relief then; hoping maybe this had to do with financial support.  Not that you believed your household was worthy of empathy, but you’d seen the numbers, and they were bad enough for you to keep hoping.  As soon as you'd told him your father was away, he'd entered the house, and everything seemed to have changed from then on.  

The talk you’d shared there had to be considered one-sided.  The words he shared with you were a fusion of crazed and maniacal bordering on berserk.  Dirk Strider had not been a happy man.   And it seemed you had been at the centre of it because you, you were the absolute only reason his brother was now trapped in a place that made him miserable.  

The conversation had escalated quickly, to the point where he had had you by the collar of your shirt and you had been afraid your feet were about to leave the floor soon.  The words he’d said were less fast-paced than the ones he had thrown at you until then.  Simply, he’d said, “So find some new friends.  And find someone else’s little brother to fuck, because he’s leaving as soon as possible and you’re not going to give him the impression that he’s the one you need.” 

You think that’s when you got how serious he was exactly with this whole thing.  Your sex life with Dave?  You’d never peeped a word of it to anybody, neither had he, and Dirk had referred to it in the most normal of fashions.  

That hadn’t certified him as a bad person.  You thought maybe he had just been concerned for his little brother’s wellbeing.  That was normal.  Though he’d never given you a chance to confess that you wanted the same.  Of course you wanted Dave to be happy!  But Dave was happy here…?

The next time you’d been over at his place though, he had leaned in towards you when Dave had been out of the room and had told you that the sooner you could get Dave to leave this town, the more he’d contribute to your pressing debts.  

The blackmailing had been enough to change your opinion of him.  

But all of that hadn’t been a reason to push Dave away, you didn’t think so.  Just the same, you did try to make new friends at work, just as Dirk had mentioned.  Because, why not?  Dave had his own life, and maybe eventually he could go to college without you?  It was better to have some sort of social life to fall back on.  You didn’t find anyone else to fuck though.  Not that your physical relationship with Dave had survived.   

It hadn’t survived and neither had your impression of his happiness.  It was easy to notice.  Where your life had become juggling two or three jobs depending on the week, and balancing a newly budding social life, Dave’s life became solely training, exercising.  At worst times, he could go without seeing you for an entire week, and seemed almost surprised of your existence when you’d show up at his place.

Dave pulling away had been your main incentive to push him away, just as his brother had wanted you to do to begin with.  

It was clear running had always been an escape for him, and seeing him put so much of his energy and of his time on it had done the best of jobs convincing you that he wanted to escape this place, had never actually been keen on staying back.  You had thought staying back wouldn’t have been that bad seeing as you had each other, but you had quickly begun to lose each other.  

Real lucidity hits you in the face on Dave’s nineteenth birthday.  Because Dave had come to you from this future, when he was nineteen, crying on you in the middle of the night.  And you’d foolishly believed the centre of his breakdown was his wanting to romantically be with you.  But now, now you remembered the most important words of that conversation.  Dave felt as if he was wasting his life away.  Dave felt he had sacrificed everything for you.  Those had been the words, and now they finally made sense.  

He had been upset because you hadn’t been able to give him enough back for his sacrifices.  

And that was it, when you understood that past this point, things weren’t going to work.  There was no use trying to make it work.  Dave could give everything up, and he had, but that lead him to the discovery that you weren’t exactly worth it.  And there was nothing you could do.  You couldn’t change your worth.  

Dave only comes visit you from another time, after he stays behind from college, once.  It’s the clear indication that this is not a period of his life Dave could ever wish for.  The timely encounter doesn’t help anything either.  And that’s when you choose to tell him that you know that you’ve reached the point where things could not be mended again.  

Dave never comes to visit.  But he travels.  A lot.  Maybe every night?  Who knows.  His eyes, which you saw uncovered often nowadays, because you could only ever cross him while he was training, had changed considerably.  They seemed concentrated with the colour of blood.  You knew it wasn’t a sign of badness.  You couldn’t bring yourself to see him as a bad person, as you’d slowly begun to do with everyone else, you could only bring yourself to see this colour as the colour of his injuries.  

You were eager to see Dave leave this town.  You knew it was going to be hard for you.  That even though Dave wasn’t doing well, seeking him out, knowing where he could be, those sorts of things were the most important ones to you.  But he wasn’t happy.  His brother had foreseen it.  Maybe his brother had known best in the end.  

Last week had been the first glimmer of happiness you’d seen in him in a very long time.  

Which had surprised you immensely.  It was already May, Dave hadn’t reapplied anywhere, hadn’t contacted any varsity coaches, had obviously given up on getting his life back on the track you’d kept him from taking.  You would have thought he would have been sadder than ever.  

He was quick to reveal the secret to his only slightly upturned lips.  

He’d shown up at your door.  You hadn’t spoken in three…  Maybe four weeks?  He hadn’t even been to your house since New Year’s.  And it had been the first time since that day too that you saw him in regular everyday clothes, and not anything that was easy to train in.   You found comfort in his grey zip-up hoodie and black skinny jeans.  Even though his clothes were too large for him now, you liked the look of normality that he was presenting.  Even showing up at your door like this felt almost normal…  The shades shielding away his changing eyes too made you feel better about everything.  

You were a little crestfallen when he’d immediately asked you, “Want to go take a walk?”  

His constant need for movement made you feel slightly uncomfortable, but you weren’t going to make a big deal out of that.  You hadn’t seen him in a while after all.  

So you’d walked with him and had attempted to get a conversation started with different variations of ‘How are you?’, ‘What’s up?’, and the likes.  

He only spoke once he felt like it, once you were out of your childhood street and walking by the main road instead.  

“I’ve got tickets for Houston, want to come with me?”  He pulled out said tickets from his hoodie’s pocket.  You were a bit taken aback.  The only time you’d ever even considered taking a plane hadn’t actually panned out.  

“What?  I have to stay here, work?”  You weren’t really sure what he was asking of you, but in case it had to do with moving permanently anywhere, you were setting the rules down.  

Not that you were full enough of yourself to think that Dave would still want to live with you.  Not after this year.  

“You’d only have to take leave for like three days.”  

You don’t say anything, but you do slow down your walking pace.  Which had been a little too quick for your liking anyway.  You make sure to convey through the movement of your eyebrows that you really needed more information than what he was giving to you.  

“We get there Friday night.  I do Ironman Texas on Saturday, and then we can come back on Sunday."

You stop completely.  

“What?  You’re going to do Ironman!?”  

You don’t really wait for his answer, and shove at his shoulders as a huge smile spreads over your features.  You ignore how bony his shoulders actually are under your touch.  

He laughs, that one shy happy laugh you hadn’t heard in ages.  Even puts a hand over his mouth to hide this and his equally shy and equally happy smile.  

“Well, I’m registered.  So I guess I am,” he tells you through his fingers.  

You hadn’t realised just how much happiness you’d been missing out on until then, sharing smiles with your best friend.  

“What a loser!  Since when?”  You shove at him again, but you decide not to do it again because this time there was no ignoring the way his bones felt.  

“Dunno, forever ago.  Come on, like me spending all of my life savings on that bike wasn’t a dead giveaway.”  

It hadn’t been, but it should have been.  You just remembered being mildly irritated by Dave’s frivolous spending when you were busy making every penny of yours count towards something.  In fact, all of the items he’d bought were suddenly making more sense, his training too.  

“Awesome.  Yeah, I’ll be there.  That’s amazing.”  You probably looked a bit shellshocked, you were feeling it too.  

“Yeah, you were always the one mentioning it when we were kids.  I thought you might like it.”  

And you do your best not to be touched by that single line.  You still are.  Because Dave had never had any interest physically outside of running, he wasn’t a triathlon athlete.  Still…  Still he was doing it, maybe as some homage to the way you always tried to push him to do those sorts of things when you were young?  Probably not, but you liked to believe so.  

That had been a week ago, more or less.  

Yesterday you’d taken the plane with Dave, right after your shift.  You’d taken your travel bag to work and he’d joined you there.  You’d taken the minivan you’d traded your father’s car in for a while ago and had parked it for good in the airport’s parking.  You tried not to think of parking cost.  And then it had been off into the airs.  

You thought the experience was more than literally uplifting.  Dave however, had put on his headphones as soon as it was announced that he could do so, had leaned his head back onto the headrest, and had slept through the flight, just as you’d seen him do hundreds of times before in buses.  You’d observed him a lot, but mostly because he had the window seat and you wanted to glance out the window.  He just happened to be in your line of vision.  

It was your first time in a city, and when you’d taken the shuttle directly from the airport to the hotel, you’d felt disappointed.  When you’d suggested going out for a bit, Dave had simply told you that you could head out without him, but that he preferred to stay inside.  You think it’s nerves, but he never actually said anything about it.  So you ordered room-service and he refused to eat anything at all.  

He was too busy setting up his things for the upcoming day, too busy doing crunches, too busy holding his planks, too busy shaking his feet and hands out nervously, too busy constantly readjusting his bike which had already been a hassle enough to bring over through the airs.  You had thought of trying to calm him down, but you haven’t been close to him in that way in so long.  You couldn’t think of the right words to say.  And anyway you don’t think you deserve any bond of trust with Dave.  So you stayed out of it, did what you could to help him out instead.  Called for a wake-up call when he asked you to.  You didn’t even complain that the wake-up call is for four.  But it definitely explained Dave settling in bed come nine. 

There was only one bed in the hotel room.  You never outright asked him, but you did sleep in the same bed as him because that’s always how it has been between the two of you, always.  But there was a definite space between the two of you, and that’s not something that had always been there before.  You don’t touch him once.  

Even before things had broken apart definitely, during the actual beginning of the fallout, you’d lost any ability to cuddle with Dave, to be intimate with him, to please him as you had done so confidently maybe just a year ago.  He never told you, but you thought you understood.  He didn’t like how much weight he'd lost.  You didn’t like it, neither did his brother, you don’t think anyone liked it.  But you could see the discomfort in the way he moved.  The embarrassment he moved with whenever he wasn’t running.  At first, when you’d still been busy trying to be there for him, you’d suggested food over and over again to him.  He’d always reply that he needed to make the right eating choices for his training to actually mean anything.  That obsession had been off-putting and alien to you then, but now you could see he’d been working towards an objective in competing today.  

Maybe he should’ve done that with some outside help though, you’re positive that his looks had gotten sickly.  

But because of this discomfort, because of this shame in his own body, he no longer seemed ready to have you touch him.  And you’d stopped that entirely.  Sleeping in the same bed however makes it very testing to keep your hands to yourself.  You still do, but with a heavy heart.  

When you’d woken up this morning, he’d been less restless than usual, which had been a relief, really.  And he did actually sit down and have a huge breakfast he had ordered from the hotel’s kitchens.  You think four is too early to be awake, and you’d barely slept knowing he was so close to you again, but he had seemed at ease when waking up, and that at least had been some consolation.  The taxi ride in the taxi he’d requested specifically that could hold his bike all the way to the Woodlands is over half an hour long which explains his eagerness to be up and at them.  

The number of athletes present is another part of the explanation.  And when you ask him about this number, just as one of the volunteers is busy writing his competing number in sharpie on his upper-arm, he answers, “Usually it’s like halfway between two-thousand and three-thousand.”  The volunteer confirms.  

Strangely enough, you think Dave seems unaffected, barely bothered by the masses of people in the decreasing dark of the night.  Even though he’d never been comfortable in his life unless it was just the two of you.  But you’re extremely aware for once.  Not that anyone is anything but radiating great energy, but the number of people is still intimidating.  

Those competing are much more intimidating than the supporters and helpers, you believe.  Though they were dressed like Dave, had a similar bike to Dave’s, and were there for the same reason, they looked much different to you.  Maybe it’s the age gap.  Though you’d drilled it into Dave’s head that the youngest athlete to finish had been thirteen years old from a very young age yourself, the age to participate here was still eighteen.  And as a nineteen year old, Dave looked it.  Maybe it was the body type too.  And though Dave was a part of all of the others who barely had any body fat, his built was nowhere near as strong.  Maybe he was similar to some of the very slim female athletes you crossed, but you had a hard time comparing him to his large shouldered counterparts.  

Dave looked like a kid compared to most of these people, and you felt nervous for him.  Dave, however, started actually looking less than nervous.  Maybe it was the rising sun casting a different light on him, or maybe it was the flashy green swimming cap the event handed out to all of the competitors, or even his swimming goggles.  But he looks better than ever to you.  Even though his wetsuit looks loose, and you probably would be able to wrap your hands around his thigh and be able to touch, he looks calm and collected.  

When it had come time for you to split and for him to line up at the lake entry point, he’d said, “Hope I’ll see you before midnight.”  Midnight being the official cut-off time.  

You thought it was silly.  You knew he could do it.  And before he’d left, you’d pulled him in by the arm and had kissed his cheek.  He hadn’t said anything after that.  You’d felt stupid.

You’d watched as swimmers were progressively indicated to take off.  Kept your eyes on him.  You couldn’t read any shame in his posture; it was another relief.  Once he was in the water, you quickly lost track of him.  

So you’d spent the day, checking the application on your phone to track Dave’s number and how he was faring, and tried not to collapse under the heat of the day.  Others around you were enthusiastic and always quick to start up conversations, but your mind was somewhere else.  Where?  You weren’t sure.  But everything felt a bit surreal to you.  You’d lost your close bond with Dave, but here you were, some states away from home, watching him actually do something you’d always been the one pushing for him to do.  It was out of this world.  You felt happy.  

It’s hard for you to judge just how well he’s doing.  But you’re relieved when he finishes swimming.  And ecstatic when he finishes biking, around lunch time.  You’d waited at the bike dismount line with many others.  You’d actually seen him as he’d changed out of his clip-on shoes to his running shoes.  He didn’t look much different than he did back at home; concentrated, tired but ignoring it, determined.  And he’d actually seen you too because your eyes did meet despite the crowd.  He doesn’t smile, but you feel something in his stare that is very familiar, very comforting.  

And that’s when you stop worrying about him, once he starts running.  Not making the cut-off for swimming, for biking, those two had been a worry, but running had never been a worry on your mind.  You eventually stopped checking your phone as Dave continuously passed runners that had been ahead of him in the previous disciplines.  

You make your way to the finishing line some time after having seen him.  All these people around you are tiring you out.  The constant cheering, the heat of the day, it’s too much when Dave isn’t there.  So you make it to Waterway Avenue and you’re pretty happy about it because, amidst people who are already there and media coverage, you wouldn’t have been able to stand close to the gates keeping the onlookers from stepping onto the final stretch of the run.  

It’s still long, and you still have to entertain conversations with strangers, over and over again.  Who are you with?  A friend, you have to say.  You don’t even feel worthy of calling yourself his friend.  And that’s not even what you want to call him.  You want to call him your boyfriend, your significant other, your other half, something of the sort…!  But you reply with a friend, you explain where you’re from.  You have to laugh and turn down any hypotheses that you might also be an athlete, a future competitor.  Though you have to admit you looked in better shape than Dave did…   You loved him just the same, but he was still too thin.  

Whenever strangers ask for your friend’s competing number, you lie and tell them you’ve forgotten it.  You’re nervous for Dave.  Even though just finishing the race at all was fucking amazing, and at the rate he was going, there was about no chances at all he wouldn’t finish outside of receiving some atrocious accidental injury, you still worry.  

It’s still only midday when the first person crosses the line.  Someone halfway through his thirties, someone you’re pretty sure who could beat the shit out of Dave without even trying.  But you don’t glare at him too much anyway.  Still, you think the man looks pretty impressively relaxed for having just gone full blast for the last eight hours or so.  

He’s distinctively farther away from the rest of the race, because a good five minutes pass without anyone at his heel.  The stranger next to you tells you it’s normal when you voice the question, that the gaps are usually pretty spacious in between the top runners.  There are over two-thousand athletes, so, no, you do not expect Dave to be part of the top.  

Yet, the next person to come into view is wearing a disgustingly bright orange top and has those stick arms you’re scared will snap.  And all the glancing at your phone and reading the number, and reading the number in person, does little to convince you that Dave had actually beat out so many people.  He’d been hundreds and hundreds behind when he’d dismounted the bike.  

But he still crosses the line without ever breaking his neutral expression.  It’s only in the way he absently nods his head when approached by news anchors and the likes that his fatigue becomes quite obvious.  Your heartstrings are tugged sharply.  There was no way Dave had placed as second.  Placed first of his age category.  He’d told you this morning in the cab that if ever he was lucky and there weren’t too many good athletes in his age category, he could qualify for the World Championships.  And you’d laughed with him as you imagined accompanying him to Hawaii instead of Texas.  

You couldn’t laugh now though.  It’s still some time before you’re able to approach Dave, and a few more people make it past the line, and you’d never felt quite the way you felt now.  It was more than pride, but you weren’t sure how you could explain it.  You were astounded?  He was the living embodiment of someone who could do anything he put his mind to.  

When you’re able to find him, you immediately wrap your arms around him.  He is wet all over, positively soaked in sweat, but you keep him pressed to you anyway.  You don’t like how far around him your arms wrap, but you like him so much.  You don’t know how long you keep him in your arms, but you do eventually feel him press his cheek to your shoulder and you feel worlds better than you have since finding out that your father wasn’t necessarily a good man.  

“You’re fucking amazing,” you whisper, sounding more awed than you’d known you were.  

He laughs, in a truly humble tune.  Shakes his head and keeps close.  

“Nah, it’s nothing.  Loads of these people have employment, and a family…  This is all I’ve been doing.  So like, yeah.”  

You grab his hips, ignore the shape of his hipbones, and push him away from you.  

“Oh my god, you’re a nerd.  You’re amazing.  None of these people have got anything on you.”  

Speaking of people, you didn’t even feel crowded anymore, not since you’d been reunited with Dave.  Thankfulness spreads inside of your chest.  God, you’d been dismissing Dave so much, trying your best to push him out of your life and out of your shared hometown, you’d almost forgotten just how badly you had always needed him in the first place.  

You can tell Dave is a bit giggly the rest of the time you spend there, collecting his things, calling back the taxi company, removing the wheel of his bike so that it’ll fit in the back of it.  He’s happy the entire time you spend together.  And this time, when you invite him to go out in the city, he accepts.  

He’s the one who walks ahead of you in the streets, as if he was part of the city to begin with.  He asks to stop in an Italian restaurant which looked a bit fancy, but mostly homely.  You watch him with fascination as he orders bruschetta and gnocchi.  You two had stopped eating together forever ago because Dave was obsessed with keeping his diet limited to lean meats, vegetables, and fruit.  But seeing him ingest abnormal amounts of carbohydrates actually is as good as anything else in your day so far.  You share dessert too, and he has half of your glass of wine which you luckily hadn't been carded for, which somehow manages to leave him red cheeked and glassy eyed.  

You stay out for longer than just dinner though.  You don’t really go see anything specific to the city itself.  You two both seek out normal things that could be found in any other city, but things that were still unusual for your small town.  You’re fascinated with seeing an actual shopping centre.  And he’s more fascinated with seeing shops from haute couture houses.  

By the time you stumble back into your hotel room and you call for another wake-up call, just to make sure not to miss your flight or anything stupid like that, it’s very late into the night.  But there are still people walking in the streets, there are still cars driving by, there are still lights turned on everywhere.  You’re not fond of it, but you can tell that Dave is.  

And you wonder, as you watch him strip out of his clothes, completely and uncharacteristically unashamed to do it in front of you, just what goes on in his mind.  How he must feel at home.  Was he lonely?  You’d never really considered it that much, it had been easy to make friends this past year, and you’re thinking that maybe any small effort can be rewarded in the sort.  But maybe friends wasn’t what Dave was after.  Maybe simply knowing there were enough people around him that there was bound to be someone who was doing the same thing as him, feeling the same way as him, was enough for him to feel more than just alone. 

You wonder if that’s something he can’t find in your town.  

So you ask him out loud, not afraid of him scaring once he’d see how your eyes were fixated on him.  

You ask, “Do you feel alone at home?”  

You’re surprised when he only turns his eyes towards you lazily.  He doesn’t shy away and finishes pulling his pyjamas on.  

“You have no idea.”  The words are cold, sound almost calculated, but they don’t manage to discourage you.  

“Why though?  Like, how?”  

He pulls a face that’s supposed to indicate that you were supposed to feel ashamed for asking such an offensive thing.  But you don’t, and he quickly loses the expression too.  He walks back towards you, the mattress bounces slightly as he sits down.  

“It’s not like…  I’m left out of anything.  I don’t feel excluded.  I just feel like I’m stuck instead?  Nothing’s in my control.  I’m just stuck in this cycle where I know what I have to do and I have no choice but to do it.”  That’s when he stops, when his voice gets too worked up, and his eyes too watery.  When he speaks again, it’s slower, more controlled.  “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out.  And I thought how it is worse to be locked in.”  

“That’s a quote,” you replied right on time.  He smiled weakly, as if thinking you’d seen no other value in his words but to point out the quote.  It’s not true.  

“Yeah, more or less, Virginia Woolf.”  

He falls backwards and onto his back.  You watch him still, and go back to wondering, just as you had more than a year ago when you two were applying places.  You had asked him over and over again just to apply for something that had to do with literature.  That’s what he’d always, truly, loved.  Science?  He’d always hated it.  It made no sense.  And you could only remember one thing he had to say on the matter.  He’d said; ‘I don’t have enough talent for the things I love.  I have talent for the things I don’t.”  But you had found it to be untrue even then.  

You wondered about it for a moment before lying down, facing him. 

“You mean like…  It’s not like others can’t reach you.  It’s like you can’t reach out to them?”  

Your voice had dipped down and had become serious, meaningful.  You noticed his face softening.  You can’t believe he really would think all you could bother saying about that was that he was quoting someone else.  

“Kind of.  You can put it like that.”  

He doesn’t seem to want to say anything more about it, but it’s pained enough that you don’t want to prod it any further.  

So you wonder again why it would be that a city would suit him better.  Maybe he felt better in an environment where he knew he didn’t have to reach out, because the city was too busy for that alone to matter.  You don’t know.  But you reach out and touch his waist.  The dip is too pronounced, but after tonight you at least have some hope for Dave to return to a normal diet.    

The touch is innocent enough, he’s the one to interlace your legs together and he’s the one who lets his hands roam your lower-stomach.  

Having sex with him isn’t exactly weird.  But his body had changed a lot, his eyes too.  And he seemed pained more often than he did pleased.  But coddling him is something you would have gone through anything to do again.  

You’d always thought it cheesy to refer to these sorts of activities as ‘making love’, and you never had before.  But once he’s fallen asleep with his cheek resting over your heart, you catch yourself thinking of what you’d just done with those terms. 

You don’t know why you don’t feel good about it.  You feel scared.  

-741-

You’re impressed that Dave carries the bike all the way up the flights of stairs leading to his apartment.  You’re impressed he’d, again, slept like a baby on his way back on the plane.  And you’re impressed that the both of you still hadn’t mentioned anything about last night.  

You’d been completely ignoring one another for a while now and now after yesterday, you were…?  

He pauses on the last step and almost drops his bike.  Back when you were still trying to talk to him at a consistent rate, you’d noticed he did feel dizzy a lot, but you recognise the pause, after years of experience, that had been a clear outcry.  

“Hey, you ok?”  

He doesn’t answer you, but does climb up the last step, and pulls out his keys.  He doesn’t say anything still as he brings his bike inside.  Still, he remains silent as he goes straight for his bedroom.  

“Hey, Dave?  Did you just time travel, what are you doing?”  

“Yeah, you’ve got a sharp eye,” he calls back to you.  

It’s a no-brainer, probably not a past Dave, rather a future Dave who moved with purpose and without confusion.  

You follow him further inside, leave your backpack near the door.  You distantly recall that you still had the key to this place, just never had any use for it anymore.  Some glancing around reveals that his older brother isn’t around presently.  Good.  You hated dealing with him.  You could only guess he would be furious with you for having gone with Dave to Texas and growing closer to him again.  Then again, with that sort of achievement, maybe you were helping him get out of here.  It’s not like any varsity team who’d wanted him before could refuse him after what he’d just pulled.  

“When are you from,” you ask when you enter his bedroom.  

You hadn’t been around in a while, but the mess in there does make you take a step back.  He never liked making his bed, unless he was just about to go to sleep.  You’d always liked that about him, it had never pushed you to qualify him as a messy person.  He liked to keep the rest of his things in order.  Even his wires had an order, could only overlap in the places he wanted them to.  

Now?  It was hard to distinguish the floor.  You were about to ask him about it, but he cut you off with the answer to your previous question instead.  

“A week from now.  Week in the future.”  

“What happened to your room?”  

He glances over his shoulder, as if confused by your question.  It looked like he was unpacking, but you weren’t quite sure.  The state of the bedroom gave you an uneasy vibe.  

“What of it?”  

“Dave, you can’t see the bedroom floor!”   

You think this was what you would expect of a teenaged boy.  But Dave as a teenager wouldn’t have been able to sleep in this room.  And Dave was an adult now too…  

You’re not really understanding anymore if he’s unpacking or not.  In all honestly, it looked as if he was packing more, or packing differently.  Maybe he’d kept from you that he’d signed up for Ironman, but you think it would be pushing it to think that he was leaving again on some other secret mission.  

“Hey?  What did you wish for?”  You come into the room fully now, and take a seat on the bed, where he was busy putting things in bags and, yeah, you might as well admit that it was some clear packing.  At least the bed wasn’t as much of a mess as the rest of the place.  

You wondered how it could have gotten like this.  As far as you knew Dave spent little to no time at home, or hadn’t been spending any since he’d started training.  But you didn’t bother coming over, even before your complete falling out, staying away from Dave’s place had been synonymous to staying away from Dirk.  Which was probably a good thing.  

You imagined Dave, angry and throwing things around his room.  There was little else you could come up with to fill in the gap.  You decide to not think too much about that.  

“I guess, I wished to be free,” he said, as if there was something different on his mind.  

He was speaking to you in a different way than the the way he had spoken to you this weekend.  You’re not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad sign.  It definitely was a little more casual and straightforward than he’d displayed before.  You still don’t know if that should be a good sign.  

You chuckled a little, and were surprised by just how forced it was when you came up with a reply.  “Do you ever get somewhere and wonder how the hell it relates to what you wished for?”  

You were starting to understand why it felt forced, it was right on the tip of your tongue…  

“Yeah, sometimes.  This time I wished to be free, and knew this is where I would end up.”  

And that was it.  Your words felt strained and forced because Dave’s answers were brief, almost scornful.  You were trying to keep a conversation fed with someone who did not want to speak to you.  

Many alarm bells start ringing at that.  Dave is packing things, there’s no other way of describing it.  Dave wasn’t actually interested in talking to you.  Dave was just a week from now and knew that this precise moment would be setting him free.  

“Hey,” you repeat yet again, your hand shooting out to grab at his sleeve.  He doesn’t shrug you off as you expect, and his facial expression is thankfully lightyears away from the tone of his replies.  “Please don’t leave.”  

Those three words, pronounced with all of the honesty you could muster, cloak the room in a silence that is anything but reassuring.  You feel as if now is the time he’ll shrug you off, but instead he slips his hand into yours.  But he doesn’t answer. 

“Like, look.  I know that, if you’re a week from now, then you probably think you’re doing something that you need to do.  But life isn’t like that, ok?  Don’t lock yourself in.”  

It’s a manipulative try, taking the words from the quote he’d used when you’d been able to tell he was opening himself up, displaying his vulnerability.  It’s desperate too because you know the opposite of your words to be true.  That things made sense, that there was a logical order and that he could perceive it better than anyone else.  

He shakes his head sadly.  

“That’s not it.  You locked me out this time.  You kept asking me to go.  And I’ve been planning to for a long time.  I just couldn’t do it without the certainty that it was meant to happen.  That’s why I’m here, now.”  

You get it, somewhat, in your mind.  You’d asked him repeatedly why he was sticking around this town.  You’d suggested him to just go even more times than that.  And Dave had never been the person to ignore your requests.  But he didn’t have the force to leave you behind, he didn’t have it in August, and he still didn’t have it now.  He needed the force of certainty on his side.  And now, he did.  

You squeeze his hand when he tries to slip it away.  

“Well, I’m asking you to stay.  That has to count for something.”  

He sighs, and this time he does manage to retract his hand.  You feel as if someone has decided to reach into you and to squeeze your stomach for all of its worth.  This was bad, and Dave’s next words only confirm how bad it is.  

“Look, I know where I’m going to be in an hour.  And I know everything after that up to the point where I went to sleep last night.  I have to be there in an hour.  I’m packing my things up, I’m leaving.  Your words can count for something, but not for much against the future.”  

It’s logical.  It doesn’t mean you want to hear it.  

“Then, just change it!  We’ll erase next week.  I’m sure not the entire timeline will collapse, just…  Just, please stay?”  

He sighs, moves around the room.  His bag is starting to fill out nicely.  Not enough for him to up and leave this place though.  Nothing would ever be enough for him to leave.  

“No, no…  I’ve probably time travelled as someone older than I am now.  Then what?  Those experiences are changed because I don’t leave right now?  That won’t just change next week, and you know that.  I know, maybe it’s hard.  But you wanted this.”  When his eyes land on you, they convey a pity you don’t want directed towards you, not now.  

You lick your lips, stand up, consider unpacking his things, but know in the back of your mind that Dave would leave empty-handed if need be.  

“But, we had such a great time this week-end, it was the best…!”  

“Maybe, ‘cause I knew I was leaving?”  You hear the tightness in his throat, and your chest constricts just as painfully as your stomach had.  “Yesterday that was like…  My love letter to you, you know?  ‘Cause I don’t write well enough.  I wanted to show you I’d do anything for you.”  He laughed at that, but it sounded close to a sob.  “I’d swim through a lake, bike uphill, and run for you, pretty pathetic, huh?  But I’d do anything.  Even leave this town.  I just wanted to show you again that I love you.”  

His smile was a weak, but truthful one.  

You sit back down because now you feel as if your knees are being crushed too.  

“I know you love me…  Please don’t go.”  

You couldn’t have asked him with any more heart.  And when he approaches you, leans down to kiss your forehead, you can tell he couldn’t have done so with more heart either.  

“Where are you going?”  

“I’m going to the bus station, and then I’ll figure it out.  I know that I do, so don’t worry.”  

“Can I—”

“No.  You’re leaving soon, then my brother is going to come home, and he’s going to drive me there.  I don’t need a lift.”  

You bite your lower lip.  

“I’m not going to leave you here.”  

And then the dynamics change entirely when he takes a breath and changes his approach too.  “Please, please would you leave?”  

And every time you’d done the same, asked him to be the one to go, you’d never meant it in your heart of hearts.  You’d meant it in some complex way that you knew everyone else knew he wasn’t in the best of situations here.  But you weren’t really sure of that anymore.  

He can’t want you to leave, because you’d never actually wanted him to go either.  

“You don’t really mean it.  You want me to stay,” you try against your odds; because, why not?  

Unfortunately, he answers, without even looking at you, “I don’t want you to stay.  Please go.”  

The crack in his voice should have convinced you to stay, honestly.  What pushes you to leave are the odds stacked against you.  What pushes you the most to just go was that Dave had not lied to you.  He did not want you to stay.  He wanted you to go.  

So you stand up, and you’re the one who feels dizzy when you do it now.  You lean in close to him, and you want to kiss him.  You don’t find the energy to do so, and instead take a step back.  

“You don’t have to do this.”  

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” he tells you sadly.  

He wanted you to go and even if that desire was simply born from an effort to have his timeline constructed in a logical and solid way, it’s still enough to pull you away from him.  

You don’t look back.  You don’t think.  You just go.  

-xxx-

You cross Dirk on your way down the stairs.  You’re surprised when he asks you about your weekend, as if you two were still on the same speaking terms you had been on when you had been a child.  As if you weren’t the same anchor that had kept his brother from reaching air and happiness.  

“Dave’s amazing.  He placed second.  He could go to the World Championships, don’t really think he wants to go though.”  

“That’s great,” he exclaims, giving you a friendly pat on your shoulder.  

You become stiffer.  You got the picture now.  His brother was still achieving things, even when stuck in this town.  That didn’t matter though.  He hadn’t been happy achieving this.  He’d worked himself to the bone just to prove that he loved you.  He loved you even if he was leaving you behind.

“No, it’s not.  Know what’s great?  He’s leaving.  You win.”  

With that you push past him and continue down the stairs.  

You think he must have thought of calling after you, but he never does.  And you never glance back up to get a sense of his reaction to your news.  You only slightly consider his offer to help your father out if you successfully drove Dave out of town.   Well, you’d done it.  If he was about to hold his end of the deal or not, you couldn’t tell.  As far as you were concerned, he was a bad person.  So you didn’t know.  Besides, your father was bad too, so you didn’t really care all that much if he did receive help from Dirk.  

But one thing that comes to your mind as you get into your car and drive away from this place for good is that you too had been a bad person.  You were a bad person.  And amidst all of that, you could not say the same of Dave.  

You’d struggled so much in your life trying to gauge what could make Dave happy.  What could be best for him.  What you could do.  How you could piece the temporal fragments together to make it one cohesive whole that could fulfil him.  

In the end, you had the feeling you should have never been part of that equation.  You were never meant for his happiness.  If he’d loved you from the beginning it was telling of his goodness, not of yours.  

You hold on dearly to the secret hope that he might be back in town eight days from now.  You expect every single day after the coming week to be an agonising day you spend wondering about Dave’s return.  

Chapter Text

You go running at sunrise. That is to say when darkness starts reverting and the very first glimpses of sunbeams make themselves known. This means that in the summer you’re running before anyone else is up. It also means that in the winter you’re running when all office workers have already started their day of labour. And in the early autumn, as it so happens to be today, you’re running when the streets are busy, you run along with the rush-hour. It’s your favourite. It’s your favourite because your existence feels more real than it usually does.

Once the sun reaches its height in the sky, that’s when you allow yourself to stop running. No matter where you find yourself, you walk yourself back home instead of running back. Unfortunately, this sometimes involves getting lost and wasting away your entire day. You’d ditched the cellphone a while ago; which had really been a pretty severe blow to your spacial recognition. It sort of begged for a GPS. You usually managed though.

Today, you manage again. Your apartment is on ground floor. It used to bother you. You’d gotten used to feeling high above ground. Of course, your favourite spot in your brother’s apartment could only be reached by busting the lock to the rooftop with your brother's help. And at John’s house, it had been his balcony. And so, you’d just decided to break the lock here too for whenever you did need to feel like your old self. As it was, ground floor resounded with hideaway for you, and you didn’t really have a huge problem with that.

You suppose the layout of it could also work along with that same idea. It was a single roomed apartment and you’d quickly gotten used to your bed just being the centre of everything. Having your mattress on the floor of your only living space became pretty normal. It wasn’t much weirder than the way you’d set things up with your brother in his apartment. It felt homely enough, and you were alright with that. You were alright with the space looking like an art studio more often than not.

When you unlock the door today, your phone is ringing. It’s a cream coloured antique thing that stays on the windowsill right above your bed’s head, or what you’d decided was its head anyway. You’d gotten it at a flea market because you’d believed it to be beautiful. The rotary dial was hard to use though, and you almost never could dial the number right on the first try. It was old and didn’t work well, but you kept it because you thought it was pretty. It was a frustrating thing to think about, and yet you held on to it.

The phone’s ringing, but it’s the first Sunday of October so you already know who it’s going to be. You just wish she could call a little later in the day.

You sit on your single pillow and pick up the phone, looking up to watch the sky through the windowpane. You wait for her to greet you instead of greeting her first.

“Is this a bad time?”

Well, that at least took care of one thing.

“Yeah, you should call later next month. I just came back from a run.”

“Is that so? I’m happy you’ve been keeping up with your running.”

You let an uncomfortable silence ease into the room then. That had spoken volumes enough on what the only person communicating with you actually knew of you. There hadn’t been a day that had gone by without you running. There hadn’t been a single day featuring you running enough to qualify as ‘keeping up with your running’. She did not know you ran at all, and she did not know how much you really should be running.

You don’t clarify any of that though. You don’t think it’s really worth it.

“Are we out of time yet?”

“I’m afraid you’re still not my client, Dave.”

She gets it though. You’d never given your approval to your brother giving her your number. His telling you that she was John’s therapist and that it might be good for you to have someone to talk to as well had never and would never sit right with you. You’d told him over the phone that the only reason he had trusted her was because she looked like your mother. When he had said nothing, you’d added that he was wrong even in trusting your own mother.

But that had been that and Rose had been calling on the first Sunday of every month and you never had changed your number or anything of the sort. You were grateful to have her conversations, but you didn’t want to show it. Your brother wouldn’t understand. He’d assume it was some therapeutic thing. But it wasn’t. It was someone who could understand you in a way that was hard for you to describe.

Though you hadn’t quite appreciated it a few months ago when she had told you she knew about your special abilities. That was not something she could understand, and it was not something you wanted her to understand. You’d simply told her not to believe every word of John Egbert’s.

“What can I do for you this time? What can I tell you? Do you want to know the colour of my underwear?”

Your conversations weren’t really all that, you suppose. But the truth was that you never inquired about her, and the second truth was that she probably read down through a list of questions for you. The third truth was that there was definitely a separate list in there featuring John’s questions, and you were the absolute best at dodging those and those alone.

She asks you instead, “How do you feel?” You probably should have prepared for this question; after all it is the first one she asks you, without fail, month after month.

You know how you feel. You don’t need to prepare for an honest answer. You had the honest answer. You felt as if you didn’t exist. And you only ever came close to it when shaping up your persona online. Your life was all on the web, and whatever you had in person only happened to be instruments you could use to shape up this life that lived outside of yourself. Most days, you did not feel real.

What you need to prepare, however, is a false answer. Because any discussion centred on how unreal you truly felt to be had within it a large piece related to your ability to time travel and to the huge disconnect it brought to you through the spangled quality of your memories. That’s not something you share.

“I feel good.”

It’s the only thing you find to say after a good twenty seconds of radio silence. It is the farthest thing you could have served her from the truth.

“Dave…”

You can’t quite read her tone. You don’t believe it is one of reprimand, but you do believe it may hold a shadow of pity and you don’t quite want it today. Today, today was something different, you knew so, but you did not quite know why yet.

“I don’t really feel like talking today though,” you add as something you are sure will put up the appropriate barriers between her and yourself.

It’s not usually quite as tense. Usually, Rose brought some sense of reality to you. Her conversation carried small whispers of how John could be and of what he could possibly be up to. But today, you do not really want to know.

“I do have one question I should ask you, even if we were to cut our conversation significantly.”


She doesn’t need to spell it out. If there was a question she was bringing forth, it surely wasn’t her own. It surely was the one John had put the most priority onto. You know so, and you’re positive she also knows that you know.

“I’d rather answer one of your own questions, Rose. You’re the one I talk to.” So you gently nudge her into the knowledge of what you knew that she knew that you knew. You hope the subtlety of it all isn’t lost on her.

“I ask you the questions that matter.”

You glance towards your kitchen, which is actually just the corner of the room, directly adjacent to the door. The single counter drawing the separation of the kitchen and of the not-kitchen holds the zen fountain you’d bought on discount rather than any actual food articles. The sound of rushing water helps you on most nights to at least find some sleep, no matter how restless it may be.

Usually, you’d be eating right now, you wouldn’t be on the phone.

“That’s great and all, but I’m hungry, maybe you can ask me next month?”

“Are you eating enough?”

“Yes, cool, you asked your important question.”

You should have found the power to hang up then and there. That would have been reasonable. Instead you listen intently and wait for any word that could eventually matter and that you could turn around and around for the coming month.

“Do you think you’ve forgiven John?”

And that was her question. The real one. You’d left more than a year ago. Soon it would be a year and a half ago. The question hadn’t come up until now. The day feels even stranger than you’d previously believed it to be.

“What was there to forgive?”

She answers quicker than you thought she should have.

“He had you convinced that he wanted you to stay behind with him. When you did, he clearly started pushing you away.”

That was a concise way to put it. You don’t recognise her words as John’s though and figure she must have had him tell her all about the situation and only then had she pulled her conclusions herself. It was a good effort, but you didn’t think it was quite right.

“Sometimes we do things we think we have to do. I thought I had to stay, he thought I had to go.”

It is the most oversimplified thing you could have shared with her. But what else could you have told her? That you’d understood over time that no one was at fault. That you’d perceived the future to be one thing, and that John must have perceived it differently with the fragments you did not have the same access to. It was unfair, but it was blameless just the same.

“So you do not think there was anything to forgive?” You made a small sound of approval and she went on. “I see.”

Silence returned. Your eyes followed the wooden slats that were the floorboards. You didn’t really want to put much more thought into it than you’d just done. But of course Rose would be pushing for more, it was Rose after all.

“That was my question. John’s question is have you forgiven him? Not, do you think you’ve forgiven him, but truly, have you forgiven him?”

That takes you by surprise. Without her clarification, you surely would have gotten frustrated that she’d repeated the same question. Logically you knew your answer should have been identical. Only one word had been taken out of the question, and the sense of it all had remained the same.

Somehow, you find yourself without words.

She doesn’t urge you to answer, you think perhaps it would be better if she did. Maybe that would trick your mind into giving you the answer. Had you forgiven John? And that was a question that had stripped away any thoughts you had on the matter. It wasn’t important that you both had perceptions of the future because of your skewed existence. Motivations weren’t important. You just needed to know if you’d forgiven him.

“Of course,” you say after a long time.

You don’t believe you sound all that convincing.

“Why would you have?” she asks it as if you hadn’t just previously told her that perceptions had been an actor that hadn’t tipped the scales in the favour of amiable experiences.

You don’t get upset though, and you don’t even try to tell her that you’d already answered that to the best of your abilities. Instead, you answer as genuinely as you can.

“Because I love him. You forgive those you love.”

There’s a sigh from her and you shrink in on yourself. You’re not under the impression that she knows you are being the sincerest you’ve been in a long time.

“Yet you did not forgive your brother for the things I revealed to you long ago.” She doesn’t give you a chance to justify this. “Contrary to what you may believe, there is no set protocol of how one should treat those they love. Love is never exclusive of other feelings or actions. This is why you can easily hurt those you love.”

“No. You can easily hurt them because you matter to them too.”

This is always what you’ve believed. Hurting one another in a relationship only meant that that relationship mattered. You’d always been convinced of that much.

“There is no emotional obligation to forgive those you love or have loved. You haven’t forgiven your brother, nor your mother. Why would you forgive John?”

The discussion starts being more challenging than you had thought it could have been. It was supposed to be a one question thing and then you could have hung up, lied onto your back and watched the ceiling for hours. But the questions are hard, and the answers, you don’t particularly want to know of.

“How could I not? It’s John.”

Your tone is distressed, your palms are slick with sweat, you want to put the phone away.

“What difference does that make?”

“He’s the most important person,” you reply in something that was perhaps too easygoing for what the impact of those words called for.

“Is he? You haven’t spoken in over sixteen months, is that correct? How can you justify that he’s the most important person?”

“Because he’s always been there for me.” You’re grasping at straws. She is going to make your words crumble again and you’re not sure you can handle that.

“Then I’ll point you to my previous statement. How has he been at all present for you in these last months?”

You can think of many ways.

You don’t do it as obsessively as you had been doing in the last months you’d been in the same town as John, yet still so distanced from him; but you do close your eyes at night sometimes and find him waiting for you, no matter what. You’d even become a master at hiding your temporally altered self in travels. But you could find him then.

Online too, anyway. John was the one person who would always comment in the form of questions, not unlike what he’d pass on to Rose to ask you. You never answered him, but sometimes other people following you online would answer him for you. The username ghostlytrickster didn’t exactly mystify you. You knew it was John.

If you’d always followed your brother's example when you had been young and therefore his lack of commitment towards his online endeavours, you weren’t like that anymore. Whereas your brother was able to put things up on the web that meant little to him, you had done so successfully as well as a kid. As an adult, you were only able to produce things that mattered to you. You felt better about making a revenue through dumb things like photography and vlogging and art installations and the likes, but John’s distant presence made that better too.

You never answered him. You never called him. You never reached out towards him. But he still felt as if he was on your side. He still felt as if he was the one supporting you.

You don’t tell Rose any of that.

“There comes a time when you need to recognise growing apart from people who have played a significant role in your life. Maybe forgiving John is a good step in that direction, but I’d encourage you to take more.”

Your stomach feels heavy as lead.

“What? Did John ask for me to be out of his life completely?”

You don’t mean to sound quite so alarmed.

“Pardon? Aren’t you already completely out of his life?” You say nothing. “Maybe I’m the one encouraging him to let you go fully, seeing as he already has the impression you’ve done the same to him.”

“Fine, Rose! Keep digging your fingers in other people’s business and manipulate him right out of my life. Obviously, I don’t care, and I’ll never care.” The way you react says quite the opposite. The words are almost embarrassing.

You hang up the phone just as she begins responding. It takes a lot of self-control not to throw the dumb vintage phone across the room. It takes a lot of willpower not to march up to that fountain and trash that too.

You remember the way you’d turn your room upside down before in the months leading up to your departure from your town. Your brother had never known how to react or what to say after any of your episodes. You’d broken many things that had been precious to you through these sorts of outbursts. And you’re starting to think you’d cleanly broken your one relationship that had mattered.

Once you’ve stood up, you kick the mattress. Nothing changes. You keep yourself from hitting yourself. You want to go running.

Instead you go to bed. There is nothing on your mind. There’s nowhere you’d want to be. You do not want to travel through time and feel realer than you do now. Today, you want these things to go away. You want your little living space to evaporate. You want Rose to lose your number. You want the things you bought for comfort to no longer be. You want John to be right here with you. You force yourself to drift off without that sort of want heavy on your mind.

You wake up feeling more tired than you had. You wake up feeling less real than you had. And you wake up with the hard knowledge that today is wrong, a day you do not want on the line of your time.

There isn’t much else to do other than to check your computer; which you surprisingly still hadn’t done today. You get on your stomach and fetch your laptop which had been on the floor by the foot of your bed. You keep all of your pricey belongings on the floor. You’re not sure why, but you feel it’s not something you want to share about yourself with anyone else. This sort of knowledge made you feel vulnerable for some reason.

You feel like today is a no content posting day. You had a lot of things lined up you could put out there, but you didn’t quite feel like it. You take your time surfing through various of your online presences, checking messages and activity. It ends up being your business email that reveals what’s wrong.

You hadn’t really lost sight of your brother, not really. You followed his material online, and you were positive he did the same with you. But you could count on one hand the number of times you’d communicated directly with him since you’d left. Not that you thought there was anything wrong with that. You didn’t like communicating with others. You liked being by yourself. You liked picking what you wanted to reveal about yourself, which you thought you could find through your online persona. As far as you were concerned, direct conversations took away from that quality.

The handle timaeusTestified is familiar enough that you remember it immediately to be your brother’s. You don’t know what the message is for, but you were hoping it was something mundane enough that would allow for you to push replying back to a later date.

You open it and the message does not read of something mundane:

Dave,

I don’t think I can apologise in a proper manner, but an attempt surely is better than silence.

I should have known how to better defend you. I see now that my trust had been misplaced at times in my life. Trusting you was the best decision of my life. Meeting you for the first time also happened to be the best day of my life. There was absolutely no way I would have made it this far without your help and support.

Even though I loved you that much, I never saw the pain you were carrying. Maybe I turned a blind eye. Maybe I was unfit to be the one looking after you. You were always so strong, it was hard to accept that you might have been suffering.

I want you to keep doing your best at finding happiness. I love you.

You keep scrolling. You’ve reached the bottom of the page though. It felt as if something was missing from the email. You read it over for good measure. Maybe it was the way he hadn’t signed off his name.

Or maybe it was the extremely serious tone in his unprompted message.

There was something in the way things were worded that made you unsure of things. It was as if he had washed his hands clean of you, as if he expected this to be your last interaction. Sure, you weren’t super good at contacting him, but you thought that was a bit harsh. You start surfing through his online pages before you do find it in yourself to react.

Your reaction is slow, maybe dazed. The message had been sent a few hours ago, if it was cause for alarm, you were already in a place that was too delayed to make a serious impact. You still crawl up your bed and back to your pillow, and still pick up the phone.

The dial is so tricky you have to recompose the number twice. You’re not sure if it’s still his number, you’re not even sure if you’d recalled the number correctly. The phone rings once. Only once. He picks up.

“Yes, John Egbert speaking.”

You feel gut wrenched. You remember his father had answered in the exact same way when you had been six years old and had reached a hand out to be able to help not only yourself, but mostly your brother. And this was that. And John had answered in the same, same, same words his father had back then.

Your stomach hurts.

“Hi, John.” Almost systematically, your mind calls for you to answer in the exact way you had when you had been a child. You feel like a child too. You should be able to handle this on your own. You should have called your brother, not John. You simply didn’t want to face the eventuality of your brother not picking up his phone.

That’s when the memory diverges. He says, “Dave,” in a rush of emotion and of breath. He doesn’t ask if it’s you. He knows it’s you. Two syllables and he knows it’s you calling. You sort of expect him to hang up, but you know that he won’t.

“Hey,” you say hesitantly. In the back of your head you hear the tick of an imaginary clock and you try not to panic with how lethargic you were acting.

“Hey,” he answers in the same sort of rush.

The sound of it makes you feel at home, makes you feel wanted, makes you feel loved. You wrap an arm around your stomach and press down. You knew why you didn’t look to contact John. Because you wanted to be with him. You didn’t want to be away. But everyone knew what was best and you’d simply followed the popular opinion right out of his life.

“I have a favour to ask.”

If you hadn’t felt bad about reaching a hand out towards him, now you certainly did. What a shitty way to open up a conversation. What a shitty way to address the person you’d ended up leaving behind. He doesn’t hang up though.

“I’ll do anything.” He spoke in the sort of way that had you convinced he thought a favour would be a bargain for you to return into his life. You don’t know what to make of that, but you hope that you’re off.

You start twirling the telephone wire. This was awkward to bring up, and the ticking in the back of your head was starting to gain in volume.

“I got this really strange message from my brother?” You didn’t want to say more, but even his moments of quietness had a way of wrapping you up in feelings of security, and so you continued immediately. “I just need someone to like, go check on him? Make sure he’s ok? Maybe I’m overreacting…”

The ticking stopped. You knew you weren’t overreacting. There was something in the way that the message had been worded that reminded you that you were in your right mind now.

“Don’t worry, I’m driving there now.” You did not try to read the sounds of his background, you did not try to guess if that was the whole truth or not. You were just going to trust. Because your brother had been right; it was such a shame when trust was misplaced. But it never would be with John. “Is there a number I can call back? To give you news?”

“I’ll call back,” you decided on instead.

And that should have been that. You should have hung up because that was the business you wanted to address. You wanted someone to go check on your brother, go check that he was more alright than his message would have indicated. But you don’t hang up because even through the silence you felt more like yourself than you had for a year now.

Ideas that spoke of things like needing someone else to be a whole person weren’t your favourite. Actually, they scared you. Two halves of a whole. That didn’t seem healthy. That seemed like a setup to be damaged and incomplete later on. And even if you hated these ideas… You still felt like a huge part of you couldn’t sink into place unless John was nearby.

You didn’t want to feel incomplete without him, so you forced yourself not to ever think that way. But when he was around, when you could speak with him, then you felt complete. And only was it brought into light just how wrong you felt without him by your side.

“Hey? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

You shake your head, even though he won’t see it. That wasn’t it, your lingering silence wasn’t a perplexed or doubtful one. It was a silence that was supposed to pull him in. Because…

“I miss you.” Because you missed him. And you didn’t want to say it. But the ticking had come back, and the tears wouldn’t disappear, and everything in your life felt so wrong.

“I miss you, too, Dave.”

It’s spoken in the way a gust of wind would move the branches of a tree. It’s spoken with a quiet force, but it remains a careful and enveloping way.

“I have to go,” you blurt out just as the silence had continued to extend and to embrace you. You’d hung up, finally, with those four final words.

Your heart was going wild in your ribcage. God, you did not want to go down this road again. You didn’t want to do this to yourself.

“What are you afraid of?” You mumbled to yourself as again, you launched yourself to the other end of the bed.

You fetched your computer, your fingers were quicker than your mind because your mind had jammed itself onto this question. What were you afraid of? What was the road you didn’t want to go down? The road where you really let yourself care about someone else? The road where you had someone you could count on, even though it often called for things getting messy in order to preserve that? The truth was that you’d left because you needed to leave. You needed to leave because you knew you were going to leave. The truth was that now, even if you did want to go back, there was no sign that you needed or were going to go back. There weren’t any nicks or indications in time that told you to return.

You purchase the plane ticket. It’s a one-way. It’s in first class because there were no other tickets available for the quickest flight. You don’t pack anything up for the flight because you’re not going back. Not for good, anyway. You were going back because what truly and honestly had you afraid was your brother’s choices in words.

So you leave with only your wallet in your back pocket. You don’t need anything else. The travel there is mostly a haze. You don’t turn down any of the food while you’re in the air, but you don’t either manage to swallow any of it down. Besides, you’re able to sleep through most of that. You don’t wish for anything though, you don’t think it’s a good time to get yourself tangled in emotions that belonged to another you from another time.

When you land on ground again, the sun is completely down. The night is dark, the air chilly, there is a strong autumnal scent in the air. This is only your second time landing at this airport. The first time, John had just about been the closest he’d ever been to you. You’d pulled him in unnecessarily close, even though you’d known you were about to leave. And promptly thereafter, you’d managed to push him completely out of your life. Or, maybe, extract yourself completely from his.

And even though that had been the end of that, the first thing you do once inside of the airport is march away from the luggage carrousel and dial his number into the nearest pay-phone. Thankfully, this phone is easier to dial, and your shakiness had already been significantly reduced.

He answers with your name instead of anything else. And you think that is the exact moment when your mind seems to reconnect to your reality. You gasp in a breath, try not to choke, and stabilise your sense of reality and of connection.

You’re surprised when you think to yourself that you’re back home. You don’t think about it too much.

“Yeah.” Yeah, it was you. And though you hadn’t been feeling much like yourself, now it was back in full force.

“Listen, where are you?”

There was no reason for him to ask this, unless the caller identification revealed something suspicious. You liked to think he could feel you nearby though. They’re dangerous thoughts, but this time you don’t stop yourself.

“Airport. Are you picking me up?”

“On my way.”

And that was all there needed to be said. Maybe you should have decided against this, maybe you should have taken a cab instead to cut waiting time. But John knew what was going on, and you wanted him close.

Still, even though that’s all there was to be discussed, again you find yourself waiting for more and keeping quiet.

He tells you, “It’s going to be alright.”

You look back to the other fliers, still waiting for their luggages. You look over to the different kiosk restaurants and their neon lights. You look down at your scruffy shoes, not entirely out of place on the poorly cleaned floors of the airport. You’ve never felt quite so alone. You’ve never felt quite so close to no longer feeling alone.

“Alright. Hurry up.”

You’re the first one to hang up, again. It’s not a victory.

You wait on the metal bench directly next to the sliding doors leading to the parking. The airport is some ways off from your town so you don’t expect John to be here soon. You should have gotten news of your brother over the phone. You push yourself to not do anything like wish to know your brother’s condition and fall asleep with your head resting on the wall behind you.

John’s the one to wake you up. In many ways it feels as if someone’s just woken you up from a very long and lasting nightmare. For one, he doesn’t seem to be in the right place at the right time. His teeshirt, shorts, and sandals would have seemed better fitting in the last season. In a way, it reminds you of the time of the year when you’d left him behind. As if time had stilled until your return.

You know that to be false. He seems taller, maybe by a few inches. The keys he was holding weren’t the ones to the minivan; he had a different car now. But the way his hand fits over your shoulder doesn’t seem to have changed, even though you’d been able to put more of your weight back on.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.”

It’s such an easy thing for him to say. So casual, so unlike the strain and intensity you associated usually to what was left of the two of you and of the bond that had once existed there.

“I was here,” you respond with. It’s such a cryptic thing to say, and you might want to blame it on grogginess. But he smiles, and you knew he knew you hadn’t roamed away into a different time period. You were with him for good.

Though you did also notice the way his eyes peered into yours. He wanted to see the colour of your eyes, the specific shade, the indicator of just how much you’d been hopping around. Just how much you needed him around and how many hours of sleep you were ready to volunteer for small moments spent by his side when not truly being yourself.

“It’s good to see you.”

When he holds your hand to pull you up he holds it in the same way someone would affectionately offer a handshake. You ignore this and use the leverage to pull him into a hug. It’s not either a romantic hug, it has that same tone of friendship. You realise that that alone for now is more than romance. It felt like the best friendship that had been the wind in your wings whilst growing up.

The car he leads you to is a small red thing, your mind associates it to a ladybug. You think of the car instead of your brother only for a little while.

“So?”

“So, I actually called 9-1-1 before going over. Which was a smart move, I guess?”

“Yeah?”

You turn up the radio and try to make this a non-frightening and casual conversation. When he glances over at you, you’re pretty sure he forgoes those gestures and simply catches on to your mood by the movement of your chest.

“Yeah. It was a bit messy. Looked pretty accidental, but based on your call, I’m guessing it probably isn’t.”

You hummed as if this was all very casually interesting, you tinker with the volume a bit more, unsure if you wanted to put it louder or quieter.

“I mean. They said your apartment was such a pit of dangers that it was shocking it hadn’t occurred before.”

You don’t even try to laugh. It was weird to even hear it referred to as your apartment. It was only your brother’s now. You had nothing to do with it. Yet here you were.

You’re on the highway before he adds anything more. You suppose these are the sort of news people didn’t specifically enjoy communicating. You shut your eyes and lean your head against the window. The car was extremely warm. You remember the minivan always having the air conditioner on whenever you needed warmth. It was a nice change from back then.

“Though, you know what, I’m not so sure? Pushing a sword into a plug socket sounds like a really lame suicide idea.” He glances over again, you keep your eyes shut. “But, I don’t know how he’s doing right now. It’s a lot of burns and nerve damage.”

You swallow. It hurts. You look out the window, all your eyes can make out are the very faint streetlights and the white lines rushing by you.

“Yeah, maybe it was an accident. I could see that.”

You turn the volume down. You turn it back up. He doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“What was in the message?” he asks you eventually.

You’d get why he would ask, but there isn’t much of it you find relevant enough to speak of.

“It was just some sentimental shit. Nothing that really screamed on the verge of suicide, y’know? Probably an accident.”

“Guess you must have a sixth sense.” He laughs then as if it was the personal joke it truly was. You appreciate it, but you could only wish you’d actually had some form of premonition for the event. All you’d known is that you had felt unreal for most of the day, and had felt the need to reach out as soon as you’d read the message.

You hadn’t identified any of your feelings as guilt up until now. How had you known? It hadn’t been a sixth sense, it had been the overwhelming sense of guilt of leaving your brother too and never bothering to check up on him. Never bothering even picking up the phone or anything like it.

You wheeze in a breath. Again, it hurts.

“It’s alright. You’re alright.” He glances over at you and you can tell, just in his eyes, and just in the movement of his fingers over the steering wheel that he would have been ready to pull you in, to comfort you. Of course, he just keeps driving the car.

You laugh, you tell him you’re fucked. And somehow, he doesn’t try to convince you otherwise.

It is the first time in your life in a hospital, you believe. You estimate that you’d been born into the world through your mother’s laboratory. Nothing else had ever lead you here. Even when John had made it his life mission to tell you in heavy detail just how you were overexercising your body, you still hadn’t wound up here or anywhere near even.

You’re surprised by the bureaucracy that takes place here. It takes you longer than you would have liked or expected to even get to your brother. And when you get there, you’re told he’s too heavily sedated to be woken up for your visit.

You don’t want to sit awkwardly at his bedside, so instead you wait in one of the areas designated specifically for that purpose. John stays by your side and though he’s doing what you need him to be doing, doesn’t ask you a single thing, you still feel frustrated.

“You know what this is, right? It’s some god damned emotional blackmail so I come back. This is fucking bullshit.”

The tears that come to you are pure unaltered frustration. As such, it’s easy for you to rub them away and to convince yourself not to melt into real tears. John puts a hand over your shoulder and you think you’d like to snap at him, but you do not.

“Dude. He’s wanted you out of here since day one. That can’t be it…”

You don’t ask how he knows this, but you do concede your first idea.

“I hate this, what is he trying to do anyway? What? He’s going to make me shoulder his guilt too to boot? This is so god damned stupid.”

Your voice was steadily rising. Being kicked out of here didn’t seem like such a bad idea anyway. Besides, you didn’t have to question why your worry had transitioned to anger instead of sadness.

“You said it might have been accidental…”

“Like hell it is!” You stand up, hands fisted. “What was that manipulative email anyway? Why did he have to push for me to go only to do this? God…”

You walk away, only take two steps before returning to your seat.

“He’s probably not going to wake up right now, you know?”

“I know.”

And you were guiltily happy about that. You didn’t want to face anything he had to say to you. You didn’t want to know what his big plan was. You didn’t want to know just how close you had been to losing him.

“I think maybe you need a night of rest?” He seemed hesitant to propose, and you’re grateful he at least has the decency to not be more self-assured.

“No way…” you retort, fingernails busy in burying themselves in the wood of the armrests.

“Just, I think it would be best if you got in bed, rested, calmed down, and came back tomorrow. Look, I don’t know what’s on his mind, or what was, but there’s no way he’s asking for a fight with you.”

You stare. The words float around in your mind, burns and nerve damage. Your brother was indestructible, he always had the upper-hand. And even now you were trying to convince yourself as much with schemes of manipulation and such. He didn’t have the upper-hand though. He was in more pain than you could think of; or that’s what John’s google searches had provided you with anyway when it came to near fatal electric shocks.

“I don’t even have the keys for the place anymore. Not like I want to be alone in the potential spot of my brother’s massive fuck-up.” That was it. You were cutting the term ‘suicide’ out of your vocabulary. Maybe you were right when saying it was accidental. Maybe it was all poorly timed circumstances.

You rubbed your face, a bit more of a time warning would have gone a long way this time.

“I still have the keys, but… You can crash at my place, Dave. That’s what I was offering.”

When you look at him this time it’s as if you were only just now taking in who he was, where you were, and who you were too.

“That’s nice and all, but we didn’t exactly part on the friendliest terms, right?”

Something you hadn’t bothered talking about, seeing as you were busy letting John pick your life back up for you.

“We had a disagreement.” He looks right back at you and you’re afraid he’ll say something that’s too heavy for you, and of course he does. “Didn’t mean I stopped loving you for a second.”

“Well, it didn’t mean I stopped loving you for a second either.” And you take the bait just as easily as that. Of course, you hadn't meant to confess to that.

“Then, what’s the problem?”

What was the problem with going over? Feelings of nostalgic attachment? Convincing yourself into staying here when, really, you had no idea if that was a thing that was planned for you. You hadn’t pulled that conclusion from any of your travels. But none of your travels had warned you for today either. Your mind hadn’t done it with a dreamlike prompt. So why not again now?

“Sure. Sure, one night. Then I talk to Bro tomorrow, without any fighting, and then I’m going back home.”

The word ‘home’ feels like fire in your throat. If you’re any judge of character it’s fire in John’s ears as well.

“Don’t you think you should stay a little longer. Your brother doesn’t have anyone else…”

“That’s not my fault, is it?”

You don’t want to bargain right now. You could see the truth in his words however and you yourself weren’t sure how quickly things would turn once you had that talk with your brother.

“Know you can stay with me as long as you need it.”

You swallow. This was already too close to comfort. You stand up and lead the way in order to establish more distance between the two of you.

“Sure, but I don’t even need it tonight.” You could find somewhere else to stay. Hell, you could have stayed right here and have slept the night away.

“You could stay with me for as long as you wish,” he reinstates.

The drive to his house is a bit more bearable than the drive from the airport had been. You can make out more of the landscape, see the sights that haunt every single one of the memories you travelled to. You were home, even though you knew it would be much better for you if you weren’t really. If your home was that room in that city far from here filled with things you personally loved and had picked out; things would be better.

You know the way to his house. You recognise the sights. The baseball court all the children liked, but to which you’d never found any other use than being a reference point. The only fast food restaurant on the main road leading to your childhood’s street. You’d only gone once with your mother one evening when your brother had been out for practice, you’d coloured in a picture while you’d waited for your kid’s meal, and the picture had been hung up in the restaurant afterwards.

Nothing hurts quite as much as driving into your street. It kicks in then; the shortness of breath, the thundering of your heart, the flashes of memories. The car is suddenly too warm for you. As soon as the car stops you claw yourself out of the seatbelt’s hold and find your footing outside of the car. You have to gulp in the night air for a few seconds before finding it in yourself to straighten up.

John says, “Welcome home,” and he’s all frowns and sadness about it.

You don’t want to argue with him, but you think he might already be interiorly arguing with himself.

He lets you borrow his clothes. He tells you again that you can borrow as many and for however long as you need. You remind him that you don’t need anything from him.

He suggests you take his bed and that he takes the couch. You don’t know why you do but you plead with him to stay with you. You refuse to face anything that has to do with how raddled you actually are and how deeply affected you are by your brother’s state.

You pretend you’re not the one who scoots close to him in bed once all the lights are out. His suggested time of sleep is a mere four hours so that he can get you to the hospital before going to work. You can’t complain.

You do want to complain about the last conversation you do share before drifting off to sleep.

“You should wish to see your brother happy again,” he tells you in the sort of whisper that felt unfit for just the two of you.

You laugh, but it’s an odd sound, and in comparison is much too loud.

“Trust me, I know this is the moment to wish for that. It’ll do you some good.”

His hand reaches for you and his fingers brush through your hair. You close your eyes and you have to fight off a sob in your chest. You did believe that he hadn’t stopped loving you for a single second. You wonder if he can believe the reciprocation of that feeling.

“I don’t want to travel,” you confess.

And it was clear when you thought of it. You’d spent the entire day with opportunities to make such a wish, to put your mind in a better place, one where you didn’t need to worry about your brother quite as much as your current situation called for.

You’d skipped over every chance and every opportunity because you were not deserving. You’d let your brother grow away from you as you did everyone else. But perhaps not John. Not with the way he was able to hold you. Hold you as if he could actually complete you, no matter how little you liked that image.

“Just trust me on this. I know this is what you’re supposed to do.”

You wonder if maybe he could also know if you were supposed to stay here. You need the confirmation.

You don’t ask, you wish to see your brother happy again.

-842-

Chapter Text

You don’t really sleep. You don’t really think there’s anything romantic in watching Dave sleep. You’re still not able to pull your eyes away. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you knew just what was occurring in his brain. Just where he was going, who he was seeing, and which day he was completing for his timeline.

Or maybe it has something to do with making sure he won’t jump awake, alone and worried. Something fed by the worries of just what sort of distress he might be battling through and the feelings he’d yet to sort through. You wondered if maybe this had been the worst day of his life. Worse than the day his mother had left him because his brother had wanted to leave, period. But you are not quite sure it is worse than the day he’d left because he’d been convinced you wanted him to leave you.

Maybe, most certainly, you believe, it had something to do with how every night you’d gone to bed without him. Every night, drifting away, convincing yourself that come tomorrow, things would return to normal; Dave would return. It hadn’t been all as strenuous as it might have sounded to others, you’d never given up hope. There was no doubt in your mind that Dave would be by your side with time. You had to give it time, you had to trust in the movement of time… You had. But you didn’t quite trust yourself to leave him out of your sight.

So you spend the few hours you’d booked for sleeping and resting instead drinking up the sight of him. You could pretend that it was in wonder of what his mind was doing, or in worry of his reaction to the events that had taken both of you by surprise, but it really was all about reassuring yourself in the knowledge that he was here. That he was not moving away from you. He was in the bed you’d always shared, in your own clothes, nestled into the sheets you spent your nights alone in.

Dave had come back and you definitely did not want to look away, not for a second. Even so, you still prepare for work, wake him at dawn, prepare him a breakfast he barely glances at. You shouldn’t be going to work. You’d left yesterday, in the middle of the day, unexpectedly, following the tone of the words of Dave’s voice from over the phone. It had been the right decision. Returning today? It might not be the right decision.

You’re about to ask for his advice. You’re already on the road to the hospital. His fingers have gravitated towards both the knob to adjust the volume of the radio and the knob adjusting the temperature of the car. His need to find the perfect settings is what pushes you to ask, to make sure you weren’t leaving him in a time where your presence made all the difference. Unfortunately, you never get to ask. He asks first.

“So when was the last time you’d seen him before yesterday? Bro, I mean.”

You don’t mind answering. You try not to piece his question apart as you push through your memories.

“Maybe two weeks ago?” That seemed about right.

Things had subtly changed. The longer Dave had been gone, the more prominent the changes became. Any resentment you’d held towards your father, towards Dave’s brother, had slowly evaporated. Like morning dew, soon to be forgotten under the rays of the sun. It wasn’t unusual for you to see Dirk, it wasn’t unusual for him to come over for dinner, it wasn’t unusual to see both him and your father discussing money questions quietly. It wasn’t unusual for you to find cheques he’d secretly passed along to your family.

He always asked you about Dave and your contact with him. It was always just as excruciating as the last time when you had to confess that the contact just wasn’t there. You’d never asked him the question back.

“And? Did he say anything, do anything? That would, you know…”

You knew. Even if eloquence was failing him, you knew. What were the early warning signs? Were they there to begin with? Could he have seen them for himself? Why hadn’t he seen them for himself? That last question was the one you were asking yourself too. Could it be you hadn’t quite been the only one he’d cleanly pushed out of his life?

“Nothing out of the ordinary.” You’re not sure you dare to speak the remaining things on your mind. You keep your eyes on the road to convince yourself to take the jump. “He asked about you a lot though. Asked me. Even though I never heard of you. Just makes me wonder…”

Just makes you wonder if Dave bothered to let his brother hear of him. You wisely decide against saying it as the words form. But you don’t actually believe that the silence hanging after your answer was one that gave many opportunities for a good and appropriate ending to form in Dave’s mind.

“How did it sound? His questions? Like he was angry at me, disappointed?” He fumbles with the different knobs, the volume hikes up to an atrocious screech and it takes him a second to set the volume back down. “That’s probably why he did this. To like, remind me I’m supposed to be successful at something. It’s my wake-up call.”

You don’t know what to say for a while. The game Dave was playing at worried you. The one where he had to come up with believable motives for his brother to justify such a violent act to be a calculated move on a chessboard. Something done with conviction and strategic thought.

He’d subtracted emotion from the equation and had left it as one of pure manipulation. You suppose that makes the idea of it more bearable for him. You’re not sure it is the avenue he should be taking.

You pull up into the hospital parking just as you find your words again.

“Not really. Curious, maybe? It was pretty casual. He always asked, like, almost out of habit.”

There was never any disappointment when you gave him the same usual answer. He wasn’t devastated by the lack of news. It had almost seemed topical to you at the time. But of course, given the current circumstances, you felt it was a bit called for to pick apart his different ‘habits’.

“So…” He unbuckles his seatbelt, and makes sure to readjust both the temperature and the volume of the radio before leaving you. “So, he did all this just to get news from me.”

He has one leg out of your car. You still do not know how to address all of that and you don’t think you specifically want to. You didn’t want to speak in Dirk’s place. You didn’t want to speak in Dave’s place. And for one of the first times of your life, it felt as if your voice had little to do with anything important that was happening around you.

“Hey, call me. At any hour of the day, for anything. You can call me.” It is the urgent thing you find to say as he slams the car door behind him and walks towards the entrance. You feel it is a useless thing to ask of him. You had been the one he had called yesterday. He hadn’t given you a sign, not in months. He’d still turned towards you, had leaned on you, had made you the person he could ultimately trust.

You rub at your chest. You didn’t feel all like yourself. You didn’t understand the shadows that were cast over your thoughts. You’d been the one he’d ultimately trusted. How could you not have made it so this entire situation could be avoided? Why couldn’t you have dropped by his apartment on that specific day? Why couldn’t you have taken a day off work to check on his brother without him having to call? He shouldn’t have needed to call. You should have made things better for him without being urged to.

You rub at your chest. You don’t feel like yourself, but you still drive off to work.

Once there, you turn the volume of your cellphone all the way up and set it upright against the monitor on your desk. You watch the phone more often than you do the keyboard. You spend your lunch break debating with yourself about just why you wouldn’t be the one calling Dave first. You do not call him. You rub your chest whenever you start thinking of him too much.

Eventually, you understand the crawling sensation in your ribcage. You recognise it as the growing dread that was overwhelming you. Dave didn’t have all that many reasons to stay behind. Taking care of his brother would be one thing, you suppose. But whereas his brother had gotten the most upset and vile he’d been in his life when you’d been the one who needed Dave’s help and had weighed him down into this town, you were quite sure Dirk wouldn’t ever play the part you had played in that. He wouldn’t want Dave around.

You wanted Dave around.

You wanted Dave around and in your head you’d become quite non-apologetic of this fact. You wanted Dave around and you were pretty damned sure he wanted you around too, even if you had no confirmation of this. If push came to shove, you were pretty positive you’d leave this place with him too. Even if it meant leaving both of your guardians to fend for themselves. It was a selfish option, but you were willing to take any option at this point.

The hours of your nine to five drag beyond belief. You get little work done. Your phone never lights up, never vibrates. You call him as you make your way down the stairs. Dave doesn’t pick up. You don’t worry about his location. You trust you will find him at the hospital, by his brother’s bed. You swear you do not worry, and if your chest starts feeling numb again, it has nothing to do with an increase in that sensation of dread.

-910-

When you pull into the hospital’s parking lot for a second time that day, the streetlights have already been turned on. The sky is the darkest of blues, the one anyone would consider to be the night sky. You disagree, you think this is the final sky before the night sky. A sort of transfer in between the rays of the sun and the slow automatically triggered lights of the streets. It is the last chance sky before the night completely sinks in.

You don’t cross Dave in any of the hallways that consist of the journey to his brother’s room. You assume he must be in said room. You do not panic when you enter and he is not there. You assume he must be away at the bathroom. You don’t think of other options. Dirk is up. He looks just as bad as you’d expect him to look. At least the burnt flesh of his hands and forearms had been bandaged away from your sight. But it didn’t change that deadly look he was wearing on his face, the redness settled deep within the bags under his eyes. He looked, appropriately so, as he’d survived death. He was sat up in bed when you arrived, his eyes did not move towards you.

“Mister Strider?”

And, as if in the same habit he’d had when visiting your house, he asks without missing a beat, “Did you cross Dave on your way here?”

You shut the door behind you, approach his bed.

“No? Did he only just leave?”

He nodded his head, only once, one move of his chin downwards, abrupt and short. Finally his eyes landed on you, though they quickly moved to indicate the chair that had been put off to the side. You imagined that had been the chair Dave had been using just a while ago. You find some comfort in pulling it towards you and taking seat in it.

“I’m sure you two had a lot of time to talk things out though, right?” You were hoping Dave had left to wait for you upfront. You hadn’t seen him on your way in though and you’re not so sure that’s what’s going on here.

“I don’t know. He was asleep when I came back to my senses. I didn’t really want to wake him up. We only talked for a little bit when he came back too.”

You press your lips together, think of how appropriate it is to describe Dave as someone who was ‘coming back’. He’d most likely been away in another time. No doubt.

“How was it?” you ask as if this was the natural flow of the conversation. It was normal to be talking about his brother and their talk instead of the events that had pushed him very close to the gates of death.

“I don’t know…” His eyes move towards the door. You try not to think of the stiffness in his posture, the charged and predatory way his eyes were moving with now. “He left pretty abruptly. His eyes went really unfocused, next thing I knew he was gone.”

You lean forward in your chair. A sudden change in Dave, a sudden change in his eyes sounded like a textbook time hop. You might have been jumping to conclusions though. After all, these sorts of things could make people act in a way that wasn’t much like them. You still scratch at your wrists nervously. You didn’t want Dave wandering away when he wasn’t quite himself. You were supposed to be with him when he hopped through time; that’s always how it had been.

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Yeah, he said home,” he said it naturally, in a way that suggested he knew just what Dave had meant by ‘home’. You didn’t know though, you were out of the loop. Where was home? Was he in the next plane back to where he liked to hide? Was he back in your bed? Was he back where his brother had fallen to the floor, unconscious?

You don’t want to ask. But you do want to investigate. And you’re about to spit out a few words of departure, just like that. Just as if this was a normal interaction that demanded for shortness of words.

You’re almost thankful when he doesn’t let you leave right away. Not that you didn’t want to go seek Dave out, make sure he was doing alright. But… But even with that, you knew who it was you needed to check in with. And, exactly that, it was the person who was in the hospital bed, who wasn’t moving with any of the ease he was known for.

“John? I heard it was you who made the call.” That was all for a while. Those were the only words dancing around the room. You didn’t know if you were all that ready for this talk, but you stepped into the water anyway, knowing that if it was him dragging you in, it was your duty to give it a go. So you give him a small nod of your head. “I guess I owe you a thank you, huh?”

“I guess…”

You hadn’t really known if it justified a thank you. You were no expert in the matter, and you’d never even wanted to deal with it before. You still didn’t even know yet if the accidental nature of his place in the hospital was a fabricated one. But you knew that before, whenever it was portrayed in one of the books Dave read, in a movie you watched, in the news… You always wondered about when people were kept from bringing the final blow to themselves by close relatives. Surely it did not deserve a thank you? Surely it was going against the final wish of that person? Maybe, in a long time and further down the road, when things had turned around, it would call for a thank you, but… You felt strange about it. You felt as if the only thank you you deserved was from Dave. Because you weren’t quite sure still if his brother wanted to be around.

“Mister Strider, I had a question…” He raises his eyebrows and you force yourself to think of how tactless said question felt to be in your mind already. “What were you thinking? Like why did you do it?”

And that was it. You’d put down the chance he had to clarify, to deny, to confess. And surprisingly, he too could accept it as something less tactless than you knew it to be.

“Not much…” For a while not much more was said. You looked outside. The dark blue final sky was already gone and you worried for Dave and where he might be all by himself. When Dirk speaks again it is with as much honesty as you are ready to give back to him. “I thought to myself, ‘what if I did that?’ And then I did it. Sounds dumb, huh?”

“Not at all,” you tell him immediately. Had you taken a moment more to reflect on it, surely you would have agreed with him. But as it was, it seemed… Logical to you, almost. “Have you… Uh, have you ever thought to yourself that you felt more locked in than you did locked out?”

You watched each other for a moment. It had just come out of you. You didn’t know why, and you sort of wanted the words to crawl back down your throat.

“What?”

You swallowed.

“I don’t know. Dave, Dave he said that once.” On the last night you’d spent together, as a matter of fact. It had always left a huge impression on you.

His eyebrows furrow, yours do too. You didn’t know why you had to relate this experience to what Dave had said then, and you suddenly feel scared about it. You stand up. You push the chair back to where it had been when you had entered, the sound it makes is unpleasantly loud.

“I should go,” you mumble.

He doesn’t say anything more. You don’t look back again. You leave, still wondering if maybe he needed your support more than Dave did, but felt unable to act on that idea.

You probably should have headed for the airport first. That was the scenario that called for immediate attention. Instead you head towards his old apartment first. You don’t question your reasoning, you simply decide to listen to your instincts. You park in the street, not quite checking if you could at this time, not taking the time to trek to the apartment’s underground parking lot. You forgo the elevator, and instead take the stairs, in the same way Dave had always done here.

The key to his apartment are on the same ring as your own home keys. Though, when you do try to unlock the door, you find it unlocked. You think of pressing your ear to the door to find out if it was Dave in there, but you never do take the time.

Of course, it’s Dave. Dave with his shades resting over the top of his head. Dave in the kitchen, on his knees, opening drawer after drawer. Dave with unfocused eyes. Dave, you’re certain now by the way his hands move from surface to surface, as if the handlebars of the drawers were raised dots of braille that demanded to be read, without sight.

“Hey, help me find the keys.”

He speaks without looking over at you, and you can understand why. You shut the door, this time locking it behind you.

“Did you get back here all by yourself?”

“Yeah, surprisingly, I just can’t see, but I still have legs.”

You walk over, expect him to stand back up once he feels your presence there, but he doesn’t. You feel faint of heart watching him go through drawers full of sharp objects.

“What are you looking for?” You just wanted to give him what he wanted, if only to put a stop to any eventuality of him injuring himself.

“Car keys. I just need the car keys. I thought they’d be easy to find, but I have no idea where they are.”

Of course he wouldn’t know where they were, his brother had only gotten a car in is absence. You look over to where they were resting, over the microwave, where Dirk liked to leave them. You look back down to your feet, where Dave was scrambling to find them.

“What the hell would you need them for?” You crouch down and rest your hands over his, putting a stop to his frantic searching. You sure as hell wouldn’t let him get in a car with total darkness as his vision.

“I’m going to wake up with them in my hand. In my left hand. But I can’t find them. Fuck, I can’t find them and I don’t know how long I have left.”

His hands felt unsteady under yours. You didn’t want him to get into any car, vision or no vision. He’d always avoided driving with the one excuse. He was scared he’d be possessed while driving and that it would lead to a crash. Over time, you’d learned to fear the same outcome.

“You don’t need the car keys.” That is all you find to tell him to remind him that driving is not in his best interest.

“I need them. I wake up with them. That’s how it goes. I’m just making sure it goes as it should. Where are they?”

You get back up, begrudgingly, take the keys and let them drop over the countertop. The sound is enough to convince him to stand back up, his hands patting the counter until they land over the object.

You watch him secure the keys into his left hand, hoist himself up onto the counter, and face you as his eyes shut peacefully, as if assuming the position for when he’d come back to his senses. Only a few seconds of watching remind you that that could be in an hour from now.

“You just going to wait there, or can we talk?”


You’re not sure why he bothers to open his eyes. They don’t focus. You watch them with great sadness as he shrugs weakly. You didn’t like to think of when Dave would lose his sight. It hadn’t happened, and you were hoping it wouldn’t happen for a long time. You still hadn’t mentioned it to him in the present. You didn’t see the point in scaring him. There was nothing that was going to stop the eventuality, and you didn’t want him to be dreading it as much as you did.

And you tried not to find some sick satisfaction in knowing that the event was still in the future and that the Dave who could no longer see wanted to see your face more than anything else. That you still counted and mattered to the Dave who lost that capacity. And if Dave didn’t care about you now, he was still going to care about you one day.

“You’re not going to use those, are you? You just want them so things will make sense?”

“Maybe things won’t make sense if I don’t use these.”

You feel helplessness tickling the edges of your senses, but you decide to ignore it for now.

“Maybe not.” It’s the smartest thing you find that can counter his words. Understandably, it becomes easy for him to best you.

“All I can tell you is that I’m leaving. You’re not going to want me to. You’re going to try to make me stay, but I’m still going to leave.”

You put your hands down on the counter, on either side of his legs, and lean in forward. His breathing changes once you’re closer to him, but you don’t want to think of it or comment on it.

“Why?” You don’t want a temporal lesson. You know everything you need to know. You know why it would be that events are fixed and that you do not have the power to change them, you only have the power to give them strength in their realisation. That’s not what you’re asking about. You’re asking him why it was that he had to go again. What was it that drew the distance between the two of you. You wanted to know what you had to do to get him to stay, or to get him to take you with him.

“Because.” He interlaces his fingers, elbows resting on his thighs, and he leans in even closer to you. When he speaks next, you feel it as calculated, and you feel his breath on your lips. “Because there is one last bad thing that will happen to me. And this is going to be it.”

You shake your head. It’s not what you want to hear. It would never be what someone wants to hear from the one they love. You didn’t want to give strength to events that could qualify as another bad thing happening to him.

“Don’t do this… Hasn’t it been enough already?” It’s silly that you still struggle. You knew just as well as he did that this was out of your hands. But there was no arguing with the weight on your chest. There was no arguing with your constant hope and prayer that Dave would end up being the happy one, the one who had everything.

“Almost enough, I guess. I just need to go through this one thing, and then it’ll be smooth sailing. It’ll all be worth it.”


You wonder how much truth there is in that. You don’t miss his fiddling with the keys, you don’t miss the bounce of his knee, and you definitely do not miss the implications of his words.

“You’re not going to see anymore…” One last bad thing could only mean the sacrifice he knew he was bound to make, the sacrifice the Dave in front of you had already made.

“It’s ok, John.” You’re surprised when his right hand reaches for you, cupping your cheek in a sweet gesture you hadn’t experienced in a long time. “The me who’s going to come back already doesn’t see much. It’s been a progression, you know?”

You shake your head.

“No, I don’t know. I know you came to me after it happened. It didn’t look like you sunk into this peacefully. You looked fucking upset. Look, I can’t do this anymore.” You’re surprised by the huge crack in your voice in the last word.

“Do what?” He retracts his hand. You can’t say you blame him. You feel as if you’re right on the edge of something, and distance might as well be a thing to put between the two of you.

“Do the thing where you go through everything and I go through nothing. It’s unbalanced as fuck.”

“Go through everything? We go through everything together.” His hand returns, touching your hair, making you feel better about yourself than you had any right to.

“How can you say that? We’ve been apart for ages.” Your words are hard enough that you’re hoping he’ll correct you, that he’ll let you know you can be reunited for good, and that the keys weren’t going to lead him far away from you. Sightless, and with no need to keep you around.

He’d never needed you around. He could always reach you in the dead of the night, through his sleep. The real version of you, the current, updated version, had never been necessary to him. You try not to choke on this realisation.

“Maybe. But we were both going through missing each other. We go through everything together. Trust me.”

Act like an adult, you tell yourself. You take a step back, bury your hands into your pockets, remind yourself to act like an adult. You were both adults now. There was no use getting dramatic, getting upset, getting emotional… Yet everything felt so high up, like it was just to the point of spilling over. You were on the edge, and your thoughts were about to spill. You blink, you breathe, you look around the apartment, wondering where it was that Dirk had decided ‘why not’ and had put his life in peril, successfully reuniting the two of you. But also, perhaps, dooming his little brother to blindness.

You breathe in more.

“Yeah? We go through all the same things? You were born into this world as some freak science project. Science project which habilitated your mom to leave. Science project which has definitely messed with your brain. You found something you’re great at, and I kept you from pursuing it. I hurt you so badly you had to isolate yourself for more than a year. Now, your brother’s suicidal, and you’re ready to kill off your remaining sight.”

You think to yourself, act like an adult. Don’t point out the things that potentially have hurt him the most. Don’t fall into that. But in that one rush of breath and stammered sentences, you’d gone ahead and done just that. For a while, you’re not really sure he’s going to reply. What was there really to reply to that? And of course, his head lowers, his hands returning to his lap.

“It’s not everything you make it out to be. None of those things are things that are problems for me now. Just trust me? This is the right thing to do.”

You breathe out.

You do not believe him. You want to, of course you want to believe him. But you’re having a hard time.


“So what, you just sit there and wait?”

“Yeah, I remember it really vividly. I’ll wake up, I’ll be staring at the fridge, I’ll have the keys in hand, and you’ll be right here. And everything will be fine.”

“Don’t you want to try, this one time? Hop off the counter, give me the keys, and change things?”

He smiles, and it is the sort of waning smile that warns you that you do not have much time with this version of him. “It’s tempting. But if I did, I don’t think we’d ever gotten close or even looked twice at one another.”

You frown, your cheeks warm, there is a rush inside of your chest. The statement was so utterly important, but you couldn’t grasp it right now.

-xxx-

The first thing that happens is that Dave’s eyes find focus. They focus on you, focus on the fridge, focus on the object in his left hand. When he’d lost sense of who he was, he had been at the hospital. And now he was back in his brother’s apartment, sitting on the counter with keys in hand. You expect him to take more time than he actually does to identify his surroundings and happenings of the situation.

There is something different in his eyes than only just focus and direction. Something wilder, more unstable, and definitely unhappier You ask yourself if maybe his future self had been right in implying that letting him go this time would be worth it. Even though letting him go last time had resulted into him devolving to this state in the first place.

For the first time you wonder what had been the words he had exchanged with his brother at the hospital. You wonder what he found out, what he understood, what he saw in all of this. You wonder too, when going over the things you had said yourself in there, if he still felt locked in. And wondered just how much of that had to do with feeling locked in by the restrictions he knew imposed by time’s flow.

He turns the keys over in his hands. First feeling the edges of his home key, and then moving to the new key, then the remote that could automatically unlock the car. You try not to associate the way he felt for things to the way he had done it just a few minutes ago, searching for them in the first place. You wanted to challenge what his future had said and not argue with him to stay back. If only you could make it so things didn’t happen as predicted, maybe he could keep his sight.

That reasoning is shallow and you don’t bother wasting another second on it.

“Bro’s got a car?”

You nod your head. The car he’d bought was a sleek, black thing. He’d even named it. With some perspective now, you could only wonder about his impulse purchases. You knew it was a tendency in people, to buy material goods in an attempt to fill a void. You knew because of Dave. He’d told you once, in your last year of high school, that when he felt overwhelmed or underwhelmed he’d go out and buy an item or two of new clothes. He said it put his mind more so at rest. You’d never gotten that feeling before, but maybe it wasn’t so farfetched to think that a new car could be related to some emotional troubles. Not when the two of them were related.

“It’s downstairs then? In the parking?”

This was not good. You didn’t want to argue with him. You wanted him to decide to stay. The quick association wasn’t giving you much time to juggle with though. Just as he’d predicted, he was transfixed by the item he’d awoken with. It was his sign. And you wanted to at least distract him.

“What did your brother tell you?”

Maybe it was a cheap shot. Or maybe it hadn’t been. It wasn’t as if his brother needed him to run right into trouble again, not now. He seems to only just remember his brother then, even though it had been his car he had been discussing just then.

“What?”

“You know, about his suicide.” Your tone has gone into an obnoxious zone. You wish you cared enough to rectify it.

“It wasn’t. It was an accident, he said.” There was no doubt laced into his words. The last two words had been tacked on not to cast a shadow on the validity of the statement, but rather to represent the authority of his brother’s words.

You glare a bit at the key and the way he twirled it with his slim fingers.

Had his brother told him as much in hopes of protecting him? Or had Dave fabricated it as a shield afterwards? Or had he just downright waltzed around the topic without addressing it? Where did that belief spawn from?

Why had it been that Dirk had seemed to speak so freely to you? He’d done it because he was wondering about the ‘what if’. And as banal as it could have sounded, it had made perfect sense to you. Testing the limits, just to see what would happen. And it’s what you would attempt, you’d keep Dave from stepping into any sort of car. You were going to test the limits of time and you couldn’t be bothered with the repercussions.

“So what did you talk about?”

“He wants me to go,” he announces it with little emotion, with little resolve. You think the only way his words fully impact is from the sound his shoes make as they hit the kitchen floor. You get right up in his space when he does stand.

And even though once upon a time Dirk would have blackmailed you into your grave to give his brother a chance for flight. The excuse is hard to swallow now. You’re not buying.

“You realise he’s not about to pirouette and leap out of his bed, right? He’s going to need a lot of help.”


“And I am!” It’s only then that he attempts to step out of your way, but you step with him. You watch the way the key digs into the skin of his palm as he readies his fists. “I’m giving him what he wants. He doesn’t want me in this town, I’m helping by respecting his wishes.”

“I call bullshit.” You swallow, keep your eyes on his hand, on his clutched sign. “I think you think there’s a reason you’re holding those keys. And that’s why you’re leaving. I don’t think your brother asked for that at all.”

“He’s asked in some point in time, anyway.”

You’re quicker than he predicts you to be though, you’re sure. Both in the way you step with him to keep him glued in his place against the counter, and also in your ability to pinpoint just what point of time he was referring to.

“You mean on the night I told you I had to stay? You’re kidding, right? You don’t think anything’s changed since then?”

He tries to push past you, shoulder to shoulder, and you push him back into place by his shoulders instead. You don’t see the way his lower back hits the counter’s edge, or at least you try not to see that.

“I’m still the same person, aren’t I? What’s changed?” You don’t like the way his voice has changed, as if he’s checking if you still love him. As if checking you won’t hurt him into staying. Or maybe that’s your conscience speaking, you still take a step back though. He pushes himself closer to the counter.

“What’s changed? I don’t know, this time it’s not a third party weighing you back with their problems. It’s not me. It’s your brother who needs you.”

You’re scaring yourself. You’re preaching. You’re manipulating. No one had forced you into helping your father, it had been your call. You couldn’t let expectations get in the way of Dave’s best interest. You couldn’t expect him to play things out the same way you had.

“I mean, there’s a reason I have these.” That is the only thing he comes up with. He jingles the keys to make the point. You know you are fighting a losing battle.

“Yeah, there is.” You take a deep breath. “You woke up now with the keys in hand. So later in life, you’re going to come back here and make sure you wake up with the keys in hand. That is really all that could ever mean.”

He uses the opportunity to move out of the kitchen, but you’re hot on his heels. He only sends you a single dark look over his shoulder. You move your eyebrows in acknowledgement, and the acknowledgement seems to remind him that his shades were up. He slides them back into place and moves towards the door.

“There’s nothing here for me anyway, John. Why should I stay with Bro? He doesn’t even want to be around at all. What am I going to be, his official dead weight keeping him from doing what he wants?”

The phrases are jumbled, mumbled, they are the strong clue that you had been right. He had known it wasn’t accidental, they’d surely spoken about it. But it was also clear there had been no buffer of time allowing for him to accept or to process this information. He’d been possessed by his future, and as soon as he’d gotten to his senses, he’d awoken with the keys to the car. It was a nudge from his future, to get his things and run. And the future was always right.

You follow him out of the apartment, don’t leave him any space as he locks the door, don’t leave him any space as he starts down the stairs.

“You’re not thinking straight right now. You don’t want to get in that car,” you plead with him as the two of you race down the stairs.

For what feels like the first time, it doesn’t seem like he’ll lose track of you. It doesn’t seem like you cannot keep up with Dave. You are at his heels still, and nothing was about to pull you further back.

He doesn’t supply you with any answer, and it’s when he’s almost reached the ground floor that you decide that that’s enough with that and that you cut him off completely, barring his way in the staircase. You have one hand clinging to the ramp, one hand flat against the wall. He doesn’t seem intimidated by you. You wouldn’t think so because he is a few steps above you, he is at the advantage.

You are at the disadvantage. He has inner workings of the future pushing in his favour, and all you have is your measly self.

“You’ve never driven outside of driving classes. You’re not getting in that car.”

“But I definitely am.”

“Have you forgotten why you don’t drive?” The pain in your temples sharpen, your chest and stomach both tighten as some sort of corset of concern. “You don’t drive because you could black out with time things. You’re not just putting yourself in danger, you know? There are people out there.”

For a moment you’re afraid he’ll either spit at you or slap you across the face. He doesn’t do either, but his expression of resentment is strong and absolutely does not budge.

“I don’t know if you noticed, I was already possessed just now? It’s not going to happen again right away, I’m fine. And not a public menace, but thanks for that.”

You try a different approach, ferociously insistent despite your disadvantage.

“My father always told me not to let someone leave when they’re upset. You’re too upset to go drive that car, it’s dangerous.”

For a second, his facial expression slips, but then it’s back tenfold.

“What are you trying to say.” It’s barked in such a way that you almost find yourself taking a step down another stair, but you do hold your ground. “How was I supposed to know he was upset? I left over a year ago. He was always encouraging me to do it. How was I supposed to know, huh? This is such bullshit.”

You jump when he hits his fist against the wall, you actually take a step back this time.

“I… I wasn’t referring to that, Dave! I would never.”

“It’s alright, I read you loud and clear.”

But he’s really not reading you well. And the tremble in his voice and the quiver of his lower lip do nothing more but solidify what you had said. He is too upset to drive a car. He is an inexperienced driver, things will not end well if he finds himself crying at the wheel. He ducks under your arm and continues to the ground floor. You follow. Words won’t come, but you desperately need them.

You follow him to the door opening to the underground staircase. Everything is different here, the walls no longer wooden, but rather white cement. The temperature has dipped down. The lighting is unbearably unnatural, and you are feeling desperate. The idea that you wouldn’t argue with him to stay is an idea long dead.

“Just tell me why you can’t stay.”

At this point, you’ve stopped following him. You’ve stilled in the first step down. He should have continued downwards, he should not have looked back. But he does both of those things. You’re not sure if it’s a cruel move on his part, allowing you to see one last glimpse of him before he’s gone again, or if it is a move of compassion because he’d heard your sincerity. You’ll take whatever you can get.

You close in the space between you until you are only a stair away from him. He is still at the advantage.

“I want you to stay this time. I want us to leave together. I mean it.”

You hope he’ll hear the sincerity again. What you don’t expect is for him to reflect that sincerity right back from his perspective. He opens his left hand, revealing the keys, but also revealing the red marks lining his hand from clenching around them.

“I’ll tell you why I can’t stay,” he whispers in a way that makes you glance behind him, as if checking the parameter, checking for the sanctity of this shared secret. “I can’t stay. I don’t have any confirmation from the future or the past, or whatever even, that it’s my time to stay. All I have are these keys. I have to trust that.”

You laugh. It’s a sullen sound.

“Can’t you trust me instead?” And it’s what you truly had on your heart. Because he’d always trusted himself over how much he trusted you, and this time you needed him to break the mould, break the habit.

“This is my sign,” he whispers again, his fingers still not closing over the keys.

“Can’t I be your sign?” You shake your head with your words, but it does nothing to keep you from tearing up just as he had.

When he turns back towards the bottom of the staircase, he doesn’t hurry off, so it’s easy for you to fall into pace with him. You’re taking the same strides as he is into the parking lot. He’s pressing the remote to unlock the car over and over again, searching for the car in the underground lot.

“It should be a sign, you know? It should count for something that we’ve always been together. That I know you as well as you know yourself. That I’ve loved you at your best and at your worst.” Your voice is slowly rising, but your pace hasn’t altered, and you still haven’t fallen out of stride with him. “I’ve seen you fall apart about everything. I’ve seen you finish first, come out on top. I know you, I love you. I should count. What I have to say should count. It should be just as good as that dumb fucking set of keys.”

And that had been the snapping point, you’d shouted, and he’d stopped. You turned back, a step in front of him, and met his eyes in a surprisingly shy fashion.

“Shouldn’t I be enough for you to want to stay?”

He laughs, moves his shades up onto his head to properly rub the tears out of his eyes. You feel bad.

“Of course, I want to stay. I’ve always wanted to stay.” He breathes out, shaky and unsteady. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to stay. I knew I was supposed to go in the first place. I knew because it had already happened. And this time I know, I got my sign.”

He brings his hand back up, showing the key, brings it back down, clicks the remote again and actually spots the flashes of the headlights this time.

You’re back to following as he heads towards the car. The sleek, black thing with the name you’ve already forgotten. The car bought surely to fill a void that had definitely not been properly filled.

“Let me be your sign. Trust me this time. Just trust me.”

And you’re not so sure now his future had been right in saying you’d argued with him to stay. This feels a lot more like begging.

He opens the car door. Your helplessness increases.

“Something bad will happen to you if you get in the car. Please don’t get in the car.” You think of telling him about his sight, about his eyes. You try, but nothing comes from your throat.

He sighs deeply, now seated. He wipes his tears off his cheeks once, twice, three times before calming himself enough to answer you.

“Must be the fate I deserve if I got the message from the future. Please, don’t make that face at me.”

You laugh, you do not know what face you are making. You just know you need him to stay.

“You can trust me,” you repeat.

You think that does it for him, because his expression melts away again and significant tears escape his eyes. His face has flushed a pretty shade of red. You do not want to upset him further, not when you know that you’ve lost and you know that he’ll be driving anyway regardless of what you’d tried to make of your case.

“I know. I know I can. It’s just too much right now.”

You disagree. You don’t think it’s enough. Nothing is enough. His brother hadn’t been enough to carry his intentions through, Dave hadn’t been far enough from you to find true happiness yet, and you just weren’t enough for him to stick around.

You don’t manage to convince him to stay. You don’t get to see him drive away, you return and stay in the underground staircase instead and you allow yourself to cry fully. You are not crying because you believe you won’t be seeing him again soon, in fact you think the opposite.

You cry because that had been the last time he had seen your face. And you'd both been wound up and frustrated. You hadn't really seen eye to eye at all. And you’d missed the chance of giving him one last moment to stare into one another’s eyes.

Chapter Text

Your brother had told you he’d wondered if there would have been a slightly higher level of happiness in the world had he not been born at all. He’d also told you that it wasn’t until the electricity ran up his arms that he’d remembered that he’d been born and had lived and there would be nothing in the world powerful enough to undo that. He did not cry when telling you this. His fingers twitched and when they didn’t twitch he was busy using them to pull at his hair, but he did not give any sign of crying.

Visiting your brother at the hospital only served to teach you the meaning of true turmoil. And if your chest always felt busy, and your head cloudy, all of it had dulled in comparison to him. You couldn’t have turned away from him. He was your brother. You loved him. A lot. You knew he loved you back, events had not changed that, but you doubted that your love had successfully been transmitted to him.

You wouldn’t have left. When you’d come back around, the pain in the back of your skull had felt laughably negligible. It was nothing compared to the knowledge that you’d left your brother there, pained with his own existence.

You’d clutched onto the keys you’d left for yourself and you had learned to lie. Or at least you had learned, on the spot, how to spew out enough lies to capsize your best friend.

Your plan hadn’t really been to plainly leave. You’d needed to go for a drive, that’s how you understood it from your future self’s layout. You’d needed to be alone, and you would have said anything to get that. You think it might just be the stupidest move in your life. Your drive revealed that the skies had fractured while you’d been busy arguing with John down flights and flights of stairs. The downpour was heavy, unanticipated, a cause of havoc that almost matched what you felt inside of yourself.

It’s a stupid move and the outcome is even stupider. Spectacularly failing at driving a vehicle; had it been justified by your temporal hopping, you think you could have given yourself a break. Blinding yourself with your tears is stupid. Giving up and crying harder is stupider. You think John is the stupidest for telling you that someone who is upset shouldn’t be able to leave, that someone who is upset is a danger to themselves.

You think it’s fair to say you’ve managed to do the job your brother botched up. You manage to convince yourself before you pass out that you’d only gone further than this point in your timeline as a ghostly resurrection and that might just be why John had his eyes glued to you when you traveled to a time where you were supposed to be much older.

You only open your eyes once afterwards, it is to greet the artificial, atrocious, asphyxiating hospital lights.

Your eyes slip closed again. You think of how John had forcefully sold himself as someone who wasn’t enough for you. You think of your brother thinking he was never enough to bring happiness. You think of your mother and how you had not been enough for her.

That’s all. You do not cry. You do not feel sad. You simply wish you had one more day you could spend with the ones you love. Just one more day.

-844-

You flinch. Even though it was light and soft, whatever it was, it still had landed squarely onto your face. You open your eyes to a bit more darkness. Wrapping your arms around what that whatever had been reveals it to actually be a pillow. You think of moving it away, but instead wind up hugging it to your face tiredly and tenderly.

“Rise and shine, Davey Boy.”

Your first thought is that your brother is well enough to be, from the estimate of the direction of his voice, standing. Your second thought is that he had not called you that in ages. Not that that had been a huge loss; looking into it later in life had only revealed that the best known man wearing that name was some famous wrestler you thought looked almost like a caricature of real life.

You don’t have any other tracks of thoughts you wish to explore because turning the words over brought into light just how young his voice sounded to be, as if it were still making a colossal effort to deepen with puberty.

You do move the pillow away. It’s the recessed lighting of the ceiling that tips you off first, and then the shade of paint of that ceiling. Indeed, if you were waking up in this bed, it would mean that Dirk would be under eighteen years of age.

“So? Have you decided you’re able to stand on your legs yet?”

It’s just as lazily that your eyes drift away from that ceiling to catch sight of your brother. The position of his hands and his proximity to the bed painted him as the clear culprit of the pillow to your face, though based on his cheeky smile you’d gauge that he wanted to be found out.

He looks very different than what you could have remembered. He still wore those pointed sunglasses based off that show you remembered him watching religiously, older now you knew it was from an anime, or you’re pretty sure it was, anyway. Your mother will probably scold him for his choice in dark clothing and fingerless leather gloves, but you used to think he looked cool anyway. You still do, even if it looks more like an adolescent look to you now.

“Alright, so you’ve chosen to instead be completely fascinated with my charming looks.”

You couldn’t help but smile warmly, though it’s only then that any sort of emotion crosses his face, something akin to surprise. He pulls your covers back and you don’t even as much as groan, much less move your eyes away from him.

“Right, before this gets creepy, go get washed up, I’ll have breakfast ready for you downstairs.”

You quickly fall into a routine you really should have already forgotten. You know he’ll have folded today’s outfit for you on the desk. You know your small kindergarten schoolbag is waiting for you by the door of your bedroom. You know which toothbrush is yours in the bathroom, and that the watermelon flavoured toothpaste is definitely yours. Your face isn’t quite as strange as it should be as it gazes back at you from the bathroom mirror.

It’s not exactly uncanny to see your eyes as the purest shade of brown they will know, if anything it is comforting, a whisper of a time where you were able to regard yourself differently from the way you do now. You start feeling uneasy only when your mind stutters on the idea of ‘now’. Now, when your brother wasn’t busy getting things ready for you only after he knew he was ready to get to school too, but where he was haunted by thoughts and ideas you’d completely ignored. Now, now being the end of the line for you, you knew. This was the last wish you’d had with your dying breath, you were convinced of that. And as you hurried down the stairs, you wished again for one full day. You knew it would be cut short, it always was, an hour from now the travel will be over, your life will be over. But you still attempt to wish for one full normal day.

Your pace slows down only once the doorway of the kitchen comes into view. Your breakfast would soon be moved into the dining room, but you don’t head towards the dining area. You’d spotted your mother, sitting on one of the kitchen stools. She poked her spoon into her bowl of fruits from time to time, seemingly more interested in being lost in space than scooping up any fruit to her mouth. She ate in the kitchen. Your brother and you ate in the dining area, you remembered that.

It was surprising when nothing came to you such as anger, hatred, disgust, betrayal. Whenever you remembered her, you tried to never do it in a fond manner. You don’t put in a necessary effort this time. Instead you stand, by the doorway, thankful that the door had been left open at the perfect angle to frame her timeless beauty. The morning light gave her a glow similar to a halo. You push back down any thoughts of her acclaimed death.

Though there was a familiarity both in the way that you looked, and the way Rose looked, and even in your brother sometimes, you remembered now that she was just about incomparable to anyone else. You liked how long her neck was, you liked the cut of her cheekbones, you liked the line of her ankles, you liked the shade of pink she’d used as a lipstick.

You liked that she’d felt your presence and that her head had turned towards the doorway. What you like most is that her face does light up when she sees you.

“Dave, there you are. Tell your brother you do want to try the crust. He’s been making it crustless for you this whole time, you don’t even know what crust tastes like yet.”

You don’t manage to take a step forward. You don’t even hear the banter they exchange after that. They must have been arguing about it before you’d wandered downstairs, because you did doubt that she’d gone from staring into nothingness to suggesting you try having crust in your breakfast.

You know what he’s making for you. You’d always referred to it as a honey and jam sandwich. It was really just strawberry jam spread on one slice of bread, honey on the other, and the two of them piled one onto the other. It wasn’t a gourmet breakfast, but to your last day it had still been your comfort breakfast. Though you never did remove the crust now.

“I don’t mind.” Stepping into the kitchen feels like stepping onto stage without any lines at the ready yet. “Can I eat here though?”

“Like, kitchen here?” He slams the fridge’s door closed, looking at the plate in hand as if it were an enigma. Could the plate rest on the kitchen island? Could a square peg fit a round hole?

Your mother pats the stool next to her excitedly. “Yes, eat with me, Dave!”

You expect to feel some sort of resentment, some sort of stunned disgust that she would act warmly towards you. Instead, you march on right over, don’t bat a lash when she hefts you up from underneath your armpits. You hadn’t even remembered that those stools were too tall for you.

Dirk serves you breakfast, crust removed, leans onto the kitchen island and chugs down his protein shake. Your mother goes back to staring at nothing in particular, spoon busy in her grasp. No one speaks to you as you eat your sandwich, you don’t think either one even looks at you, even though you’d just quadrupled your age overnight. You think you might need to feel lonely. You really do not. Your chest feels alright now. And though you could reason over and over again that once you open your eyes from this escape that it will be game over, you still feel happy.

He’s the one to take your plate away, even though you hadn’t managed to get through more than half of the thing. You shut your eyes for a few seconds, listen to the sound the water in the sink makes.

“Is your friend picking you up?” She addresses him just as she helps you off the stool. For a second, you feel transparent again, but she turns to you as soon as she receives the affirmative from your brother. “Are you ready for another day of school, Dave?”

Her eyeshadow is pink, her eyes are bright; you reckon she very much looks like a Hollywood actress. Your memories had progressively erased her cheerfulness and had given more room to her abilities to be distant. You’re not quite sure how to respond as to not arouse suspicions, you don’t remember how you used to hold yourself before you’d known that you were just a number in her equations.

Dirk tells you to have a good day before you leave with your mother. You almost crack then. Partly because, at this age, he is already more thoughtful than you’ve been yet in life. Partly because the contrast with his current self is nauseatingly extreme.

Your mother does not hold your hand on the way to the bus stop. You could probably ask, just as you’d asked to eat in the kitchen instead of in the dining room, but you do not really want to hold her hand. It doesn’t feel like something that will bridge the distance between you. She does not speak to you, you do not speak to her. Yet, her presence makes you feel safe. After all of the things you’d pieced together, and all of the things you’d learned over time… You still felt safe with her.

You arrive at the bus stop before the Egberts make it there. Of course, when they do emerge from their house, it is a scene in plain sight. Your mother is all waves and smiles. You find yourself analysing her behaviour before you can even observe John’s small form. She acted happy, bouncy, fingers twirling a strand of her hair girlishly. Her eyes were cold though, detached. You felt less as if there was distance put between the two of you, and more so as if there was a distance she kept towards everyone.

Your chest feels light as John arrives. There was no such thing as time travel without John, and you did not want your last trip to break this rule. He runs ahead of his father, seemingly pumped for the day. He does not run up to you though. Instead he runs up to that one grade schooler with the wild hair whose mother always needed to untangle her hair at the last minute. Soon, he was loudly begging the mother to borrow the brush to help her, which consisted of simply pulling the little girl’s hair, you knew this from experience.

You look away for a moment. You didn’t need your adult brain to decipher this. This was a day in a past where John hadn’t yet found an interest in you. He didn’t constantly stare at you and bother you. He was busy being his own person away from you. It only takes you a few seconds of reflecting on your current situation, one you’d gotten to by turning away from John and shutting down his worries and words, for you to feel better about the John who was running circles around the bus shelter.

Despite your continued transparency, you still hope to continue your lucky streak. The scenery hadn’t been taken away from you yet. You were allowed into this world where your brother was still behaving like a teenager, your mother was present, John was energetic and loud, and Mister Egbert a kind figure who’d never come close to wronging you. You were stepping away from most of those components by approaching the arriving school bus. But Mister Egbert kisses both of John’s cheeks and tells him he loves him, and your mother ruffles your hair and tells you ‘See you kiddo’ and it’s a childhood’s worth of emotions loaded into a single moment. It’s the very distinct memory of sharing these rituals with John in his bed, late at night, on the first night you’d taken a refuge into his life. It was the first day you’d reached out to him, and you never had let go since then. And yet, now you were in a time where that day had yet to occur, and there was no mutual holding here.

Your usual preference for bus seats, or for the school bus, anyway, was near the middle, by the window. John, you quickly remember, as he cuts you off to enter the bus first, sits directly behind the bus driver, and takes up the entire bench with his gesticulating. He holds a oneway street discussion with your bus driver, a man you’d never even bothered to properly look at before now.

And though you’d discovered right away that this wasn’t a zone of time where John wanted to look at you constantly, you still defy it. Just as you’d refused to go sit in the dining room, now you were standing next to John’s seat, ready to take your rightful place.

You’d meant for him to invite you to sit down next to him once he’d notice you were waiting, but he never turns to look at you. The bus driver hasn’t said anything yet, but he is waiting for you to be seated to take off.

“May I sit next to you?”

He was so loud, so space consuming, you didn’t think you would be heard. You didn’t think you were going to get the green light like you had in the kitchen. Your words felt too crisp, too clear, they did not feel as if they belonged in this particular day in time.

He doesn’t interrupt himself to reply, in fact his babbling only seems to gain speed, even though he’d looked over at you. Even though he’d expressed in his eyes more than one emotion, all pointing to how out of place you were here. He scoots over, without ever answering, freeing up one half of the bench. You sit because you suppose you’re allowed to take at least this much. Besides, there was no use being concerned with the linear state of the timeline, you were doomed already. You were meeting your end, you could mess up, it would be alright.

He’s already very animated when he speaks. The quickness of his words wasn’t limited by his lack of vocabulary, or his maladroit pronunciation; though that did serve to remind you to speak with less words, to seem more your age. You couldn’t quite follow the stories he was telling, and you knew for a fact that the bus driver didn’t even attempt to. You liked it even so. You closed your eyes, just as you had in your kitchen after the plate had been taken away from you, and simply listen to the way his words bled into one another.

John stands up as soon as your small school comes into view. The driver just about shouts at him to sit back down, it is the first thing he has said back to him. John stays up though. You, however, stay down. And when the bus pulls to a stop, you still stay down. Students are hurrying out of the bus. It takes John just one student exiting the bus before he does to start questioning you, still in a babbling tone, and repeatedly demanding for you to stand up.

You don’t really feel very convinced. You were never more than ten on this bus. In fact, that was most of the class, save a few children who were driven personally to the kindergarten by their parents. You’re in no hurry. You feel as if you should be, you feel as if your stay here will soon expire, after all you’d met everyone you loved in this short morning already, but it’s not quite right. There is no timer anywhere in your mind, and you feel safe in the knowledge that you could drag behind the group alongside John.

He doesn’t take it so well, eyes shooting daggers in your direction when you do not let him out of the bus before you do.

“Great! I’m the first one out, that’s how it is. Now I’m last?” Grumpy, would be the word you use for him. Happy is the one for you.

Up ahead, your teacher is welcoming the others, getting them to line up. You’re busy wondering why it was that John liked to be the first one in the bus, and the first one out. It wasn’t a particular quirk that had deserved any attention back in the day, John had been particularly bothersome to you rather than anything else, and by the time he was of interest, he was less interested in those habits than he was sitting and talking with you.

You wonder if it’s loneliness. If, perhaps, he needed the front seat so he could speak with the driver, and needed to be the first in front of your teacher so he could speak to that adult too.

You grab his arm before he has the chance to angrily stomp away. He doesn’t look you in the eye, even when you pull him to face you. His eyes haven’t changed at all, and even though this John seemed so far away from the one who’d so readily put his heart out for you hours ago, you love him just as much.

“Want to race me to the door?”

His eyes met yours. There is an icy fieriness to his stare, something close to savage. He doesn’t like you. He doesn’t know why you’ve approached him. You weren’t supposed to like him then. His two front teeth were missing and he was always the loudest person around. It doesn’t matter right now.

“I don’t want to. But I’ll win.”

He smiles, mischievous, you’re too distracted by it to react immediately when he takes off towards the door. You put the same force into your running as you would in later years, it doesn’t seem to make a difference though. You’re both two kids, and you’re matched in your slow running. Neither one of you stop when your teacher calls for you to stop, in fact you run right past her. You reach out towards the door and your fingers touch the wooden surface just as John’s do as well.

You get in trouble.

But you sit right next to John in class, on the carpeted floor in the semi-circle you made daily around your teacher. You ask him again, in the same words you’d used in the bus, if you could take that seat. Again, he does not give you an affirmative answer, but he does scoot to make room for you. It’s enough. You do not speak to him and he does not speak to you. He looks at you a lot. Not in the way you remembered him to do later in that school year, meaning the way he’d looked at you as if he was searching for something within you, as if you were something he needed, but what he needed was a round peg and you were a square one.

He looks at you now in a bewildered manner, in a manner that made him seem suspicious and jumpy.

You spend your first break outside in the yard facing the wall as punishment for running ahead and ignoring the calls for you to stop. John had tried to talk his way out of it, you hadn’t, yet you were both there. You think he would have preferred to be assigned to a different wall, because he still stares at you in the same fashion as before.

“I live on your street, you know?” You finally find the will to say something, anything. You lived on his street, how bad could you be; that had been the simple message. He doesn’t seem to bite.

“I know that,” he insists sharply. This time, his eyes don’t seek you out and instead stay glued to the bricks of the wall.

“Well, you never talk to me.” Your voice is so different that it makes the retort all that much more childish. It was true though, before he’d changed, John never took any time to speak to you. You’d considered it a good thing then, but now that you were back in those much smaller shoes… You’re the one who keeps your eyes on the wall this time.

“Yeah? You don’t want me to talk to you.” There is a pause in which you do not bring yourself to deny his words. “You think I’m loud,” he announces simply.

You glance over to find him watching you, not with quite the same air as before, but more so with a reserved curiosity.

“Who told you that?” Looks like you really weren’t going to deny it. Even though loud was definitely not on the list of qualities you kept of John anymore.

“Well. I’m not dumb.” He slurs the words together, and had you known him a little less well, you wouldn’t have been able to tell what it was he was trying to say. He wasn’t dumb. He could see you thought he was annoying. He could see you didn’t want him to approach you, and so he never had.

“I’m also not mute,” you mumble just as unintelligibly as he had. And somehow, even though he was not supposed to know you the way you knew him, he seems to catch it just as clearly as you’d understood him before. You weren't mute, if you thought him loud, you could say it yourself. He didn't need to fill in the blanks.

“First time you talk to me.”

It’s a brief reply, and you feel bad enough to turn your attention back to wall. That, in fact, was again correct. You lived on the same street, your parents chatted it up like there would never be a tomorrow, and you’d never bothered to speak to him. On the first day of school he’d almost talked your head off your body at the bus shelter, you hadn’t been able to place in a single word. You hadn’t wanted to place in a single word. And so, you never had.

You feel worse now knowing that your first steps towards him were ones taken by someone much older with much more life experience. Life experience which absolutely all featured John in a major role.

There’s not anything else you wish to say after that. His accusations had been less accusation than they had been truth. You did not wish to counter them, you simply accepted them. When you’re both freed to go run around for the last ten minutes outside, you don’t count on following after him again. Funnily enough, he doesn’t move away from you and you spend those ten minutes leaning back against the wall instead of facing it.

You’re guessing it’s only early autumn. You’re not wearing a coat, but your brother’s selected outfit had included long sleeves. Trees were only just starting to shift in colours. You were also guessing that this marked the place in time where John would start looking at you in a different way. Based on the words exchanged, you’re surprised it would prompt John into the desire of befriending you.

You don’t ask again to sit next to him when you return inside, you just end up sitting together throughout the rest of the day. He even angles himself towards you. He matches your quietness to perfection and you have to ask yourself why it was he could speak for hours on end, but had completely gone silent for you.

You thought of stupid reasons. Maybe, his loudness was his method to be noticed, but you’d noticed him already. You’d noticed him, you’d approached him, no matter how minimally, and he’d clung on to it immediately. It’s a stupid reason. You believe it because you know you will eventually run out of time. Optimally, you will only run out of time once your head touches your pillow again. It still wasn’t a lot of time, and you could afford a mistake or two. They would be more beneficial than a heavy burden of hesitation. So you believe the story you tell yourself; John is lonely, and with you he wasn’t.

By the end of the day, he’s decided to hang back in the line for the bus. He does not cut anyone off, he stays by your side instead. It strikes you as odd because you knew him to only adopt this behaviour much later on, when the two of you start living together.

He does slip into the first bench behind the driver though, just as he had in the morning.

“Can we sit in the middle?”

You’re not fussy. You don’t want to come off as fussy. There was no particular reason for you to ask him to take the middle seat. He never gives you that answer, he does stand up though. He does move into a seat near the middle of the bus for you, and even accepts it when you’re the one to take the spot next to the window.

You don’t feel like still sitting in complete quietness with him. Even though you’d spent most of what your day would be alongside him, you were extremely aware that his father would be at the bus stop, your mother might be at the bus stop, and you would split then. There would be nothing more, no other last words for John. You think it maybe is a little ironic that your last words for John would end up being some of the first ones, really.

You’d only have minutes to make these words count, to make them captivating enough, to a five year old nonetheless, to hold his attention until you’d reach out for him. Make these words the best that you could in order to create a powerful, unconditional sort of love, the one John held for you and the one that had never wavered.

You bring your hands down, palms over your thighs. You think of your environment, of the situation, of the setting. You, in your green sweater, that didn’t quite reach your wrists, and the brown pants your brother put out for you at least weekly; him in his white shirt and how it had remained exceptionally white throughout the day, despite a pattern previously established. The bus, your beloved school bus, with the brown leather seats and the windows that were never clean, and impossible to shut when left open by other students. The day, a peaceful, sunny one, that had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the downpour of your last night. The time in your life, when you’d been hard to notice, difficult to speak to, but you’d been cared for anyway.

It’s overwhelming. Your eyes start hurting. As the day had progressed everything in your vision had become more overbearing, sharper and clearer. And now it had already reached a point where every item seemed to hold a halo, similar to the one you’d seen around your mother just this morning. Though your vision had cleared up, it still felt just as if a fog had settled inside of your chest. It didn’t hurt, no. Not the way it did in the last reality you’d known. But you didn’t know if it did truly hurt or if it truly didn’t. It had become a grey area. You could tell what you saw, but you definitely could not tell what you felt.

“Dave.”

It is the first time in your life he would have spoken your name. The very first time. And you had to experience it now in what felt to be the very edge of your life, the tipping point of the end. His right hand moves to rest over your left one, over your thigh. It also happens to be the first time he would touch your hand.

You watch him. Now, you are the bewildered one. He looks at you with all of the understanding in the world. It’s too much for someone of his age, and you are starting to believe he’s the one holding the keys of time and not yourself.

Your next words were supposed to be life changing words. Words that would bridge that distance you felt towards everyone you loved here. Words that would allow for him to feel comfortable later to express his love for you openly. They were the most important words of your life. All you find to say is, “I like you.”

It’s silly. It is silly, especially when measured up to the span of your feelings. They’re the only words you have to grasp on to when he is the one to call your name and to touch your hand just as if a moment of attention had been enough for him to find it in himself to treat you as if you were precious. As if you already mattered to him and you were already unbearably real.

“I like you,” he repeated. You can see it in his eyes, in the way he is hesitant to form the words. He knows that’s not quite it. Those weren’t the words you should be exchanging. This had nothing to do with everything there was to say.

You swallow just as you try to take a breath in. Your stomach turns. You look outside, expecting for the blue of the sky to turn for the worse as well. This was it. This was the love of your life, and the first time in his life that you would be engaging with him meaningfully. You would share a bed with him countless of times. You would go through everything with one another. And then you would throw that away and hit the road. And when you would get the chance to trace your steps back, you would set that on fire too.

You’d set your whole life on fire.

He speaks your name again, tries to cover your hand entirely with his. You don’t understand how you’d earned this treatment. Just a while ago you were refusing to deny that you thought of him as too loud for you. But now, he was speaking your name as if it were the most important one he knew, and it didn’t feel that farfetched anymore that he could potentially fall in love with you one day.

You watch the sky. You wish the bus had stopped, had slowed down, hadn’t been its usual self. You’re not quite sure how you want to face the only time remaining in this past, in this world, without John with you.

“Your eyes look sad,” he tells you this simply, and without even looking into your eyes.

It takes you a while to focus back onto him. Your eyes hurt more now. It was from the visible auras of the scenery, or it was from the effort of keeping your tears in. Of all times John would bother and pester you after this point, as a small child, he’d never referred to your eyes as sad. He noticed it now because, at this point of your life, you’d never let go of any of that sadness. You’d held on tight, had dragged it with you, had let it accumulate past an acceptable point.

Oh, what you would give to do it again. And how readily you would have let go of that sadness like sandbags on a hot air balloon.

When you do focus, you realise that his eyes no longer gave out a message a suspicion, of distrust, but rather one of pure interest. A look he’d never gotten rid of. No matter the hard moments, no matter the moments where you weren’t really sure how the two of you would pull through, he would never look at you differently again. He’d maintain that look where you felt as if you were the most interesting, important person in his life. It had never gone away.

You don’t understand the motivation. Maybe it was seeing his father do it this morning, maybe from thinking of when he’d done it for you in his bed, on your first night over, but… You feel inclined to do it now, and you do. You lean in, dismissing any eyes that might be on you, kiss his left cheek sweetly, kiss his right cheek, pull back, and without breaking eye contact, admit that you love him. With those simple three words you’d never been all that great at sharing.

He watches you as if he has full understanding of what that had just been. He watches you as if he knows that had supposed to have been the purest showcase of your love for him, demonstrated in the same way his father would do it for him.

“You don’t know me.” The words hang heavy in the air, and you’re surprised he says it with such intensity at such a young age.

You aren’t afraid of not passing your age.

“No, I do. I know you.”

You put a hand over his forehead, you’re not quite sure why, it’s similar to the way you’d check for his body temperature, but it’s a gesture that means something else in this context. He looks at you as if you were a ghost, but you tell yourself that that’s enough. He doesn’t need to tell you he loves you, he doesn’t need to love you.

Because in your world, he’d been the one to say it first. That had never been the case in his, and you only understood that now. His insistence, always, that you’d been the one to love him first. Because it was the truth in his reality.

He’d loved you from your beginning, from the moment your life had started showing cracks. And you? You’d loved him from the very beginning too, from the times where he felt lonely enough that he would speak as many words as possible and demand not a single one in return.

The both of you forget to notice your stop. The bus driver has to remind you. You follow John out as if you’re walking out of, or possibly into, a dream. John’s father is waiting, and he welcomes his son into his open arms. Your mother hasn’t made it yet, but you see her making her way towards you a few dozens of feet away.

Had there been another day to come, you would have just bolted then, you wouldn’t have dared chance another glance at John, not after the way you’d exposed yourself.

Instead, you look at him until he disappears into his house. He doesn’t look back towards you, but you obviously understand that. Had you been in his position, you would have done the same. Still, you can’t shake the very strong desire to be able to hold his hand one last time. The way he’d tried holding yours just wasn’t enough.

So you head towards your mother. She doesn’t greet you, but she does put a hand in your hair, in a friendly pat. It’s enough, you guess. She comments on the beauty of your house once you get there, and you only now realise how when she does such a thing, she is barely addressing you at all. They are words put into the wind, hardly destined for you.

When you arrive home, you start up the spiralling stairs immediately. You were growing tired from the increased definition of your vision, and you sort of… You sort of wanted to die alone. You’d seen everyone you’d wanted to see. The sun was starting to get low in the sky and you’d already told John you loved him, you’d already caught enough of your brother to remember how he used to be. Even if something felt amiss, you were tired, your eyes hurt, and you were ready to drift into eternal sleep.

But your mother calls your name by the eighth step and it gives you a feeling similar to the one you’d had when it was John doing the same. You turn, and there she is, at the bottom of the staircase, not afraid of looking directly at you this time.

“Want to help me with the cooking? It’s tuesday, we’re eating before we go pick Dirk up from aikido.”

So, it was Tuesday. You didn’t remember ever helping her with any cooking, but you still do as you’re told and still return to her side.

Accordingly to your memory, you don’t end up helping. She ends up hefting you back onto the stool you’d occupied this morning and sets up her tablet in front of you to show you videos of liquid nitrogen ice cream being made. You only start thinking of her cuisine as experimental now, as she goes through all sorts of rituals that wouldn’t normally be associated with a kitchen.

“Is your cooking like, experimental?” You ask her at the end of a video, as soon as she comes back over to find something else to occupy your eyes with. You feel as if, at five years of age, you don’t really know much about experimental cooking, but she hardly seems to notice.

“Uhm? Oh, yes. I’m a fan of molecular gastronomy.” You turn to look at her, communicating that you didn’t quite understand. “It’s like culinary physics.”

That doesn’t clear anything up. You close your eyes from time to time as she prepares the food. The meal ends up looking less like food than you would have hoped for. The flavours, however, are not bad. Enjoyable, even.

You don’t try to engage with her, you still feel tired. But she does speak, and you’re not sure if once again they are words meant for osmose, rather than for you.

“Molecular gastronomy… Maybe I could do something with that.” And then you know that you’ve been involved because she looks straight at you. “When your brother graduates, leaves for college, we could run away to Paris. I’ll open an haute-gamme restaurant. It’ll be like a movie.”

She smiled, perfect teeth, perfect pink lips, eyes not quite as cold as you expected them to be. Rather, they looked sad. Just the same way John had told you your eyes seemed sad, you now felt the need to say the same to your mother. But, that wouldn’t be enough. That really wouldn’t be enough. Something was amiss.

“Mom?” She smiles encouragingly. Her eyes still do not connect to that smile. “I forgive you.”

You didn’t want to look at her. You looked at the squishy, green substance in your plate. You didn’t want to know where you’d found the willpower to forgive her, you just knew your life was calling for forgiveness.

“You forgive me,” she repeats, as if all of this made perfect sense to her. As if she’d been waiting for this forgiveness.

You nod once. She pushes your hair off your forehead from her seat from the other side of the dining table, and kisses you only once, though very warmly, on your forehead.

“I knew you would, the papers said so.” Her smile was a more emotional one, but which emotion, you could not quite tell.

You give her a helpless shrug. Of course, your whole god damned life had to be written in the stars, with all of the clues and evidence strewn about every single period of your life. She continues though, and you forget to feel angry about that.

“I’m very happy you’re able to come back to see me like this.” You don’t say anything. “I know I will miss you growing up.”

There are only two tears that escape her eyes. Big, gleaming tears in the light of the chandelier. You hang your head, pretend you hadn’t just been put into the spotlight. She knew what you were doing. You probably weren’t a failed experiment, the powers you’d been granted probably were meant to be as such. But you’re not able to prod for more answers. It is the end of your life and you can’t find the strength to ask for more.

Your mother leaves the dishes in the kitchen sink. You think it’ll be Dirk who ends up cleaning them. The drive to your brother’s school is a painful one, it’ll be your high school too one day. The sun is setting, but your eyes feel set aflame. When your brother gets in the car, it’s dark out, and he doesn’t take up the seat in the front, he takes the seat in the back next to you, and smiles at you.

The last remnants of the day you go through mechanically. Your shower feels strange in this body, and no matter how hard you scrubbed you still weren’t able to find your way out of this day. It’s only once your head hits the pillow, after you’d shared a meaningful hug with your brother on the way to your bedroom, that you are able to find peace and ease again. Your mother says goodnight as she switches off the lights of your bedroom, but you are already gone.

-xxx-

You open your eyes to darkness, but you do hear the sound of your breath, it is a frightening one, so the first thing you do is concentrate on making it sound natural again. Your breathing returns to normal, the darkness stays. Were you alive? Had you simply time hopped to a different time again?

“John?” So you ask for John because John was always supposed to be there. And, of course, he answers.

“Dave? You’re awake! Oh man, how lucky am I? I just got here like, an hour ago too.” You hear his footsteps, you hear the energy in his voice. You decide to wait it out, the lights would come back on.

“What happened?”

“You’ve been out for the last four days. Nothing bad, though! You just took a pretty hard hit to the head. Like, the car looks twenty billion times worse than you do.”

You smiled because he seemed upbeat, he seemed happy. You shut your eyes.

“Uh, could you call me a nurse?” you ask him, assuming this could only be a hospital.

You don’t think he understands what is wrong until you plainly tell the nurse that arrives. You cannot see. You wish you had not said a word about it. You don’t see John again for a while after you tell the nurse as much. You’re instead brought to test after test, you’re switched from a doctor’s hands to the next and you’ve never been quite so lost, though you know it is mainly because you cannot see what is happening.

The verdict comes in, you don’t know how much later, you don’t know at what time of the day. You don’t know anything without your vision.

Your eyes, are fine, they had told you. You didn’t understand the full-bodied explanation, but you heard the short and sweet explanation loud and clear. Your brain had convinced itself of permanent retinal damage. You could not see. But you should have been able to. They talk about neurological procedures, and you have to shut all of that down immediately. You just want to see John.

When you do see him again, you understand that you can’t really, and that you won’t really. Your heart starts beating faster. You hadn’t died, you hadn’t even near died. But you’d spent four entire days outside of your timeline, as a child, and the colour and definition of everything had intensified up to the point where all of the lightbulbs had burst. You wish you’d died.

He says your name, the same way as he had when you’d been a child. And you remember too, that he’d been drawn to you because you’d seemed to love him, because you’d said it.

Which you hadn’t accomplished up until now, after all of the things you’d gone through. You'd sacrificed your sight to tell him as much.

So you cry, and cry, and cry a lot. You care little for the sight of you, you care little for what you might look like desperately crying like this, you simply do it. It’s only once you start choking on your breath and have to sit up in a coughing fit that John wraps his arms around your head and brings it in to lean against his chest. You think some sort of messed up head swaddling is one of the dumbest methods of comfort you’d heard of.

He never says anything, and you’re quite grateful for that. What was there to say, really? There was nothing to say. You’d broken your eyes for good, from the inside of your mind. But you’d done it to tell John you loved him, to hug your brother, to forgive your mother. It was already fine. You were fine with that decision.

But you don’t stop crying for quite some time.

Chapter Text

When you had been a child, you’d imagined Rose’s office would hold a couch, possibly a velvet one, that stunk with just how expensive it was, and that you would have to fight sleep during your conversations because said couch would be more fit for sleep than a cloud could be. As an adult, you still found yourself wondering the same thing you had upon your first time entering this office. Why was it that the chair you occupied was less comfortable than Rose’s? Why was it that it was where she sat that looked of velvet and clouds? The wooden chair that was always offered to you was barely comfortable at all.

You found yourself wondering this, yet again, as she falls worryingly quiet. The chair factor only now feels symbolic to you. You, the patient with the bad ideas, and her, the professional with the throne. You’re not supposed to see yourself as the patient, you two are much more friends than anything else by now. You don’t even pay a fee to show up here. Client and patient, they’re both the same term, right? Having a friend treat your idea as a bad one is almost more harmful than having your therapist do the same though.

“Well?” Well, you shouldn’t be pushing for her to outwardly shoot down your idea. Besides, it was more of an announcement, rather than a request. And perhaps that was the whole reason why she had remained quiet. Perhaps, she was a full supporter of the idea.

“Well, the timing is… Rather unfortunate?” You’re not sure why her lips are curved upwards. You think it might be the natural look of her lips. They’re similar to Dave’s lips. But you’ve never quite wanted to wipe the natural upturn of his lips off his face as much as you do Rose’s right now.

“No. No, it’s not,” you claim, knowing full well that without more details, you’ll come off as desperate. So you make a quick bullet point list of things that would have been problems a few years ago. “Dad’s debt free. And he’s going to stay that way, ‘cause I help him with the revenue stuff every year. And Dirk’s sales are fine now because of that girl who’s helping out. And Dave’s, you know, getting used to the blind thing. The coast is problem free, really.”

“And you are satisfied with the idea of Dave getting used to a life-modifying condition?”

It feels like the sort of moment where she should be pulling out her notebook and where she should be making comments on what she thought it was you truly should do and what it was you truly should be feeling. Instead her eyes on you remain focused.

“Yeah?” Before she has time to even move an eyebrow, you launch yourself into heavier defences. “So, what? I’m not full of myself. I don’t think proposing to him is going to trick his brain into knowing that he can see clearly now and that the rain has gone. But that shouldn’t matter?”

“You’re both still in the town you grew up in. Town which you strongly believed was toxic to him some time ago.”

“Yeah, some time ago. Things have changed.”

In some ways you felt as if the darkness he was in had taken his environment away from him. It might have been your childhood town, but he could have been anywhere else in the world. You had your own place, just the two of you. You were together, it didn’t matter where you were. That’s what you believed on a personal level, anyway.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to propose at a time when he is less dependant on you? As of right now, you are very much the closest person to being called his caregiver.”

Her analysis sounds simple. To you, it seems mostly flawed and incomplete.

“It’s been four years. He doesn’t need a caregiver. And I’m not going to wither away waiting for him to see again? Those are like, separate issues? Our relationship isn’t leaning on the foundation of his blindness.” Just as you wrap up your idea, you notice the look in her eyes. She is in clear disagreement.

“But you only reunited after his incident.” It is a bland, yet loaded statement.

“We never stopped loving each other.” It’s a weak reply. You barely address her, it is more a thought that you’ve let yourself put out there. You’re not really sure if you’d come over to get her blessing, but you know you hadn’t wanted this. You didn’t want your importance in his life to be questioned quite so openly. “I already have a ring,” you announce, thinking of this new statement as your safety net.

“But, don’t you—”


So that’s when you pull the ring out from your pocket and put it down on the table. You weren’t very interested anymore in what she thought were the cracks in your relationship, especially considering just how important and just how fundamental she saw them to be.

“It’s made out of meteorite. So it’s billions of years old, and landed on Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

“That’s alright. But aren’t you more of a fan of the cosmos than Dave is?”

You swear you don’t try to come off as snappy after that. It just comes out that way.

“No? Dave loves the sky and sky-related things. We used to sleep on my balcony back at my father’s all the time. On that day where you totally threw his brother under the bus? We slept on the balcony, and it one hundred percent calmed him down.”

She put her hands up in mock-resignation. It didn’t put you at ease.

“Besides, with this, I can make a total metaphor to him being the meteor that completely changed my planet, you know?”

“No, John. I do not know, seeing as I find the idea to be perfectly clichéd and to belong in a young adult book sold for less than five dollars, rather than in your life.”

You make a noise that should let her know that you have so much more to say on the matter. But you actually do not. Or you do not think you do until you’ve put the ring away in your pocket, have gotten up and have put your hand securely over the doorknob.

“You know…” You turn back towards her, but do not move your hand away from the door. “Dave’s blind right now, has been for a while. It doesn’t matter how shiny of a ring I get him, he won’t see it. I think it’s good just having the material of the ring speak for itself, ‘cause he’ll be able to feel that.” You swallow, cast your eyes downwards, even though you strongly believed the words you were sharing now. “You can’t ever love the things in the sky at the right time, because of the lightyears that separate you. You don’t understand the reality of celestial bodies, because they’re in a different time. But when there’s a meteorite, your timelines can meet.”

You didn’t want to reflect on that idea. You knew none of it had been eloquent, and it had all sounded like an idea you’d only chewed halfway and then had spat out. Yet, somehow, Rose spoke to you differently afterwards.

“It’s a wonderful idea, John. I just believe you’d do best not to make the proposal overwhelming. Think of it as caged bird syndrome.”

You shrug at her, strong grimace present on your face. You don’t bother working on a better goodbye than that. You’d see her on the following month, and by then all of this will have panned out, and you won’t be frazzled by every other one of Rose’s words. Yes, you were nervous about this. And maybe, just maybe, you’d wanted someone to tell you it was a good idea. Dirk had barely reacted, almost looked confused as to why you would tell him before you’d even attempted proposing. But, it wasn’t as if you could ask anyone else for Dave’s hand in marriage. Your father had been the best person, you think. But his words and actions had mostly reeked of worry for the eventuality of your plan falling through.

Why wouldn’t Dave want to marry you? What was wrong with everyone? You’d basically always been together. Always. This was going to be an additional symbol of that. That you’d keep being together. You thought of the possibility of Dave not wanting to be with you for the rest of his life. You thought of the implications of the expression caged bird syndrome.

The honest truth was that the ring had been in your jacket’s pocket for three weeks straight now. The truth was that if you waited too long now you’d just end up waiting another year. This was the perfect time of the year. Winter was still very much present, but the Christmas season had already wrapped itself up. Late winter always brought you back to kindergarten, and the time when Dave had seemed the most miserable. The time when he wouldn’t ever look your way, but had cried at school daily for a month straight. It was the time when his mother had stepped away, and you’d stepped in. And you wanted to confirm that you were stepping in permanently. There would never be any stepping out from you.

You’d told everyone who even remotely mattered that you were going to do it, if only for a chance to go through with it.

You still hadn’t. You hadn’t even reached for the ring in his presence yet. You couldn’t come up with the best scenario. Despite Rose’s warning, you wanted something grandiose, something unforgettable. Something that was on Dave’s level. Though you thought the ring was perfect, you’d convinced yourself that the entire proposal thing had to be of those perfect standards too.

On your way back home you thought of the scenarios you’d seen in movies. You thought of scenarios you’d heard from friends of friends. You thought of every idea you’d had that could not match up. And you thought of the retreating line of snow. You should hurry up. Not because Dave would leave you if he were to find his sight back, not at all, you’d thought Rose even implying that idea was ridiculous. You knew it would be fine to wait a year because he’d still be there with you by then. You just believed Dave deserved to know your intentions. Dave deserved to be happy. You could be a source of that happiness?

You could be a source of happiness, you decided on it firmly, just as you finally parked your car in front of the garage.

You liked your house. It was on the very edge of your town. It was far enough from the monuments of your childhood that it didn’t quite feel like you were caught in an infinite loop of your childhood’s events, and it was just close enough from the nearest city to make it a day trip. It’s a small, white house. It wouldn’t matter what it looks like to Dave, but to you it looks perfect. You’d been the one who’d gone out to Dave’s apartment after his accident to get back his things, and you’d at least tried to include his eclectic style of comfort design for his new home with you.

On your way inside you check the sky blue mailbox. You pick up the envelope with a small smile. Despite Rose’s attitude, today was still going to be a good day. Who knows, maybe you’d have a stroke of genius and find a way to propose. Even if you didn’t, it was Saturday. Which meant no work. Which meant more time with Dave. You didn’t have to be engaged or have to be married for your time together to mean anything. You’ve just been meaning to do it for a while, and the constant postponing was starting to irritate even you.

You’d left him in between your candy pink sheets this morning. You’d kissed his forehead, had told him where you were going, but your guess was that he’d been too sleepy to take any of that in. And now as you entered your home, there he was, on your ivory coloured couch, still wrapped in the candy pink sheets, still sleeping his heart away.

You took seat on the arm of the sofa once your shoes were off, sighing contently as you put the envelope down onto your lap. You want to kiss him awake, tenderly, as you’ve done dozens of times before. Instead, you prod his back with your foot and try to push him awake. You knew what had happened. He’d woken up, maybe just ten minutes after you’d gone, had felt confused by your absence, had wandered around calling your name, and had eventually settled to sleep on the couch to await your return. He’d done it before. He was dumb. You’d told him before bed last night, and you’d told him this morning, he had no excuse not to know where you’d been. You still feel a little bad about not being more delicate with him when he groans himself to an awoken state.

“Where… John?”

There’s a twist in your chest that feels almost pleasant. No matter how many years went by, the effect his presence had had never worn down.

“Asshole, I would’ve thought you’d recognise the shape of my foot on your spine.”

He yawns in response, a slow and tired yawn, before flopping onto his back and reaching his hands upwards towards you. You grab his hands for him, not wanting for him to reach out blindly like that for too long.

“I did,” he complained, yawning again as soon as those two words were out. “No, I did, really. I just wanted to say your name. It’s my favourite name to say.”

The words were sappy, his tone was not. You clutched onto his hands and leaned down to plant a kiss on his forehead, just as you had done before departing today. He could act so amorous with you, he tended to, there was no reason for you to put too much weight into Rose’s words.

“You’re lucky you’re so pretty, Strider.”

He undeniably was. Now that he couldn’t catch you staring, you probably did it much more than could be acceptable. There was an openness, something unguarded with his expression, whenever he was at home with you without his shades on. A trust that had taken you a lifetime to earn.

“Am I though?” He eventually comes up with something to say and his face changes. But you find this to be a good thing, what with the open smile that paints itself upon his lips. God, you were back to loving that upturned line. “I could look like an ogre by now, and I’d have no clue.”

“You look like a dream. A dream.”

That’s when he pulls a face and most walls come back up. You don’t really care though. He does look like a dream. Living with him was a dream. Being such an integral part of his life was a dream. You dropped the large envelope onto his chest and his grimace turns into a frown.

“Come on, let’s play together.”


He groans again, shuts his eyes as if this would sell the idea that he’d fallen back to sleep. You stand back onto your feet and shake him roughly by the shoulders. He groaned just a bit louder before his eyes opened up again.

“I’m too tired for this shit.”

His eyes are the shade of a red rose. No purer red existed, you were sure of that much. When he’d woken back up from his coma, they’d been just like this. Vivid, as if he’d never been just as aware. And yet, he’d lost all sense of sight. And though he scarcely ever travelled through time now, his little slip-ups seemed to have no effect on this attention-grabbing shade.

“This one’s really fun though,” you declare, picking the envelope back up to tear it open.

“Says who? You haven’t even seen it yet.” He’s sitting up though, you know he’s interested.

“I know what I ordered, dumbhead.”

“What if the transcription is shitty as fuck. It’s not like anyone else gets their sheet music in braille. They can just put random bumps everywhere and sell that shit.”

You ruffle his hair, assure him he’s fine. He doesn’t take your hand to stand back up but you stay close. His white cane’s by the door, but he never uses it indoors anyway. The most use you’ve seen him get out of it is when he has cane fights with the woman who helps Dirk out. Terezi, she called herself, but you wish she’d give you her real name and not just the one she used for her online store.

The piano you’d bought for your place was secondhand and painted white. It often needed tuning. But you liked where it was, just right up against the bay window of your living room. You knew Dave probably didn’t appreciate it just as much as you did, but surely he felt the sunlight on his face. No one’s ever complained about sunlight before, right?

He sat on the left side of the bench and you sat on the right side. You admit that you’d taught him how to play with only one goal in mind. Alright, it was pretty fun, all and all. And it certainly was a good outlet for him. And there were a bunch of advantages that came with it. But mostly, you’d just wanted to play four-hand pieces with him.

Piano duets had never been your thing. You’d never enjoyed performing them, and the few partners you’d had had driven you up the wall. But you liked playing with Dave. You wanted to play with Dave, that was the whole point of teaching him from the very beginning. You were good on the piano. And maybe that was your whole spiel on not liking four-hand pieces. You didn’t really think you had any equals in this town, and even when you’d been following classes out in the city, you didn’t like the thought of bringing your level down to someone else’s.

You never thought you were stooping for Dave, not even when teaching him the basics. Well, maybe the challenge of also learning how to read music in braille was an active battle for you too, so you hadn’t had much time to think that you were wasting your time. But even so, as he progressed and no longer needed your help reading his sheet, and you could revert back to good old inked sheets, you hadn’t felt any different about the lessons.

You arranged his sheets first, and then yours, and you saw him passing his finger over the lines as you sorted yours out. That was his strength. His reading was fast. But he liked to take creative licence over the notes. He wouldn’t hold them when he needed to, would add in extra notes, wouldn’t wait the appropriate amount of time during pauses. And because of that, you knew very well he should have been the most irritating musical partner you’d had.

He really should have been. And you really should leave him a day by himself with the sheets rather than learn them at the same time as him. You can read the music while playing. You don’t need extra hands to accomplish that; he does. Besides, your skills by far surpassed his. As it is, you pause every other bar or so for him to learn the notes by touch. He doesn’t stick to what’s on the sheet either, and you have to modify the tempo of things just for him. Which had irked you a lot with the classical pieces, and surprisingly had irked you just as much once you’d switched to jazz for him.

He was an annoying musician. But he laughed a lot. Laughed every time your fingers stuttered over the ivory keys; always, you’d like to remark, when he would set you up for disaster with his improvisation. He also wore a face that was one of interest and of anticipation whenever he’d pause to read the next bar. And always, he sat there in awe of your own playing. You felt close in a dumb, sentimental way you didn’t really care to share that much. Whenever the two of you would go over to your father’s for supper and you’d play something for him on the piano together, you always had tons of excuses and reasons up your sleeve.

You wanted to challenge Dave’s mind. There were tons of great blind pianists, why not Dave? It helped you stay active with your own playing. You both needed an artistic outlet. There were a lot of good reasons.

You never told him it was some weird excuse to be close to Dave and to get to know him in a way no one else knew of. It was still the truth though.

You’d been playing for well over two hours when Dave suddenly stops playing. It isn’t to reach towards the paper though, it’s to look directly out of the window. You check his eyes. You tend to. Whenever he does see though, you know he’s from the past. You know, but you always hold a small hope. You’re always checking, just in case his mind unwraps itself and allows him to glance out the window veritably.

You’re not scared of him seeing again, unlike what Rose had said. Yeah, ok. Admittedly, your relationship had only rekindled after the shock of it all. Dave had cried for a month straight it had seemed. And you’d never budged. And eventually, when the crying had stopped, you’d fallen into place, one with the other. But that didn’t mean finding his sight again would lead him away from you. You wanted him to see. The month of crying was etched into you forever. Though the crying had stopped, it had never faded from you. The pain of the shock was something that had seemed to subside in him, but you hadn’t forgotten.

He looks out the window with an awareness that gives you that small hope still. He lacks direction and reduces your hope to something smaller.

“It’s raining,” he announces as you think to yourself that his voice sounds just as pure and just as clean as rain.

You don’t say that. You look out the window too, squint as you try to perceive any sign of rain. If anything, it would snow. There was still snow on the ground. There shouldn’t be any rainfalls.

“Why do you say that?”

His attention drifts back to the piano. He starts reading again, but the tracing of his finger is slow and you can already tell his loss of interest.

“Well. ‘Cause it is and I heard it. What can I say, my other senses have sharpened, and now I’m like some sort of dog,” he answers sarcastically, seemingly a little annoyed.

You roll your eyes though he will not see it. He’d noticed different things than you would much before the accident. He knows this. He’s being touchy. You know it isn’t frustration from learning the piece, he’s doing fairly well compared to previous lessons. It has something to do with the rain, you believe.

“There’s still snow outside. Do you really think it’ll rain?”

He shrugs, giving you the distinct impression that your question had been regarded as irrelevant.

“Sure? It’ll rain today. The temperature will drop overnight, there’ll be a sheet of ice over the roads tomorrow, and we’ll stay home because it’ll be unsafe to drive.”

You see the muscles in his left arm surge, the one he’s holding up to read the sheet with. He’d tensed his voice and posture by the end of the sentence, which had started off in something almost casual sounding. He didn’t have a problem with rain before.

Maybe you should have a problem with rain too. You remember the way it had felt to step out of Dirk’s building. The door had slammed behind you harshly with the force of the wind. The raindrops had made it impossible to see with your glasses on past a foot or so in front of you. And you’d been completely alone save from the roar of the rain. You’d felt just as alone a few hours later in the hospital as the rain fought hard against every windowpane you came near to.

You just know that it’s not every time you hear rain that you think of that night. You think it might be like that for him, however. He doesn’t like rain anymore. You’ve come home before, on rainy days, and found him in your bedroom, door shut, curtains closed, noise cancelling headphones on. Sometimes, the rain had stopped, but he couldn’t know that yet.

“Have you had enough?” you ask him. You’d pick it up later. It was a lovely song. And his hands were lovely when playing it, both over the keyboard and over the sheet.

He nods wildly. You get it. You get it as his sign; he doesn’t want to stay in front of the massive bay window. Even if he couldn’t see it, he could feel the sunlight, or the now fading sunlight. He could hear the heavier rain that was bound to fall soon. He didn’t want to sit here and listen to a rainy day, live through a night that still held a very real mystery to you. You get it, you really do. And it’s because you get Dave that you ask for what you ask for.

“Want to go for a walk with me?”

He flares his nostrils, shakes his head. He wore the look of disdain that let you know that he saw through you. He saw that you had motives and that you wouldn’t leave him a chance to counter your approach.

‘It’ll be fun. I’ll let you keep your pyjamas on. You can just put your yellow rubber raincoat over it.”

You brush the back of his neck comfortingly. You wonder what’s up with you and colours. Why every item in your house had to be a subtle and light shade of a pastel colour. You liked to describe everything with their given colour now. You wondered if it alienated Dave. You wondered if maybe you thought it would be easier on his eyes once he could come back around from the darkness he’d been submerged into to only face these light pastels.

“I don’t want to go outside,” he says it in a heartbreaking manner. Misery at the purest of states. You don’t know why it’s not enough to convince you to drop it.

“We’ll go feed the ducks. We can eat a snack on the way there too. We can use that purple flower umbrella I bought last month. C’mon.”

You take him by the hand to help him up this time. Not because he needs your help, but because you really want to go outside with him. You want to overwrite the memories he wasn’t shaking off of himself.

All he says is, “It’s raining.” That seems enough to complete his reasoning. But you don’t bother to address it. He leads himself to the closet, feeling for the rubber of his raincoat as you headed towards the kitchen instead.

You’d bought one of those tacky little fountains for your kitchen counter. It’s a sad little representation of a waterfall in a tropical looking forest. You’d gotten it because there’d been something similar in Dave’s getaway when he’d escaped this town. He’s never mentioned it, or commented on its presence. As it happened, anything that was an imitation of the haven he’d built for himself wasn’t brought up. But, sometimes, when you’re quiet enough while moving through the house, you do wander in and find him, elbows leaned against the counter, eyes shut, listening to the small rush of water.

He liked the cheap fountain. He could like the sounds of water coming from skies on end. He just needed to be reminded.

You stuffed two slices of white bread into the pocket of your jacket. The left one, not the right one, that was the ring pocket. The only reason you even had those things around was to allow for Dave to make his oh so famous honey and jam sandwiches.

Then it was only a matter of putting your shoes back on, retrieving them from where you’d removed them, some hours ago, when you’d still been on edge about Rose and her implications. You took the flower umbrella from the soft green umbrella stand, and grab the cane while you’re at it too. Dave is busy buttoning his coat up. His fingers aren’t anything like steady, you don’t miss that.

Outside, rain is starting to fall. Like long violin strings descending from the heavens, you watch the drops fall on the other side of the road. The skies had become greyer, giving less the impression of lunch time on a lovely Saturday, and more so like a bleak end of weekday.

The actual hour of the day reminds you to march back to the kitchen, where you rip off the greenest fruit from the banana hanger. Only Dave liked those as green as they currently were. You’ve peeled it for him by the time you get back to the front door, where he’s making empty motions to grab his cane out of the umbrella stand. Cane which you have under your arm with the umbrella.

“Looking for this?” You don’t stifle your laughter very well when he grabs the object out of your hand to find that it was the banana, not quite the white cane he needed.

“Are we going to play Mario Kart to get there? Because, I swear, Egbert, I will use this banana against you. Don’t make me.”

He’s already eating by the time you put the cane into his right hand. He switches the two things around in his hands, but he no longer complains. Somehow, eating a snack did seem like a good distraction from the heavy rain.

“Yeah, we can race there.” That’s typically what you asked him to do whenever he would visit from the past. Before he had time to analyse how old you were, or what kind of goggly eyes you were making at him, you had him running alongside you. Running made him happy.

You were pretty sure he could race the way he was nows. He just didn’t want to try. You have to admit that running into darkness sounds more like a nightmare than it does anything else. It would still be nice to see him run though… You’d liked seeing him run even before he’d truly started liking running himself. It was just special to you, it always had been.

He wraps his arm around your left one, though he keeps munching on the banana, seeming disinterested. Soon, you’ve shut the lavender coloured front door behind you and you’re advancing into the stormy weather. You hold the umbrella in your right hand, though you have to tuck your arm into your chest to be able to centre it above both of your heads. You would have thought keeping it open in these weather conditions would have been a struggle as well, but the wind seems to be on your side for now.

You glance over at him. He never asked for his shades anymore. And even though his eyes should have been more sensitive to light now, he seemed only to look for those moments of clarity. You shut your eyes for a while, letting him guide you instead of the other way around, listening to the tap of his cane, alternate to his footsteps.

“Yo, Egbert, I know you’re all about vanquishing my fears right now, but I could go without the dead silence.”

You laugh as an apology, but don’t bother speaking more. Instead, you just press your side more tightly to his and accelerate your steps. In protest of your continued vow of silence he pats you down and tries to stuff his finished banana peel into your jacket’s pocket. So, you take it away from him and stuff it in next to the bread slices, not in the right pocket, that was the ring pocket.

“I’m having war flashbacks,” he mumbles once the peel is out of his grip for good. Though his tone is joking, you press yourself even that inch more closer to him.

With the lights out and the urgent sound of rain, you could only imagine what it was that his mind recalled. Alone, upset, in the dark with the car turned upside down. You don’t know. You’d never seen the scene. It hadn’t even been you who’d called the ambulance. You’d been frightfully absent.

“Unless the duckpond is involved in some new bird warfare, I think we’ll be fine this time.”


That got his lips to curve further upwards.

“Whoever said warfare was reserved to gorillas anyway? This might not be the jungle, but this is war.”

That gets a true laugh out of you. He knew you knew what he was referencing. When he’d turned that essay in and, autocorrect he’d told you had been the culprit, but you still supported the theory that he’d mistakenly wrote in gorilla instead of guerilla. He’d realised the mistake before getting his copy back and had refused to ever even look at his corrected copy. So, you’d been the one to pick it up from the teacher’s desk for him, you’d also been the one to hand it to his brother, and you’d been the one to laugh the loudest when it had been pinned to his fridge.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” you ask once your laughter has died down. You’ve asked it in something you recognise to be an unsettling fashion. It’s plainly and unapologetically inquisitive. Maybe, it’s too personal to discuss for a casual walk to the duck pond down the street. But it’s not really casual, is it? Because the rain is hitting harder now, and Dave is shivering next to you, not from water getting into his red rubber boots, but because of the fear related to such a simple walk down the street.

“The worst? Dunno, brain registers dark, rainy day, brain decides to fuck up more massively. Maybe then I forget to walk too. Not that it would make a world of difference, anyway.”

You shut your eyes for a few more seconds, listen to the tap-tap on the pavement of the sidewalk. You open your eyes, look at the way the overgrown grass grew towards the sidewalk, as if it expressed as much of a source of light as the skies overhead did.

“You’re dumb,” you announce to him in your best official voice. “It’s not the rain. It was the hit to the head, right?”

Right? You wanted to be more insistent. You wanted to stress your curiosity. ‘Cause, sure, you could try to satisfy yourself with that explanation. His mind had been more fragile, more unstable, given the nature of his existence. The hit would have been enough to change things that shouldn’t have been changed. It wasn’t a scientific claim, or anything. But it was all you had to work with. Yes, you would have liked to have known what it was that had triggered such a big loss in him, but he’d never said anything about it. He’d only cried. And when he had finished crying, he hadn’t made it a priority to speak of that thing. He’d never spoken and you were left wondering. Wondering what, exactly, hadn’t gone as planned.

“Like, no. I know it’s not going to happen again,” he confesses eventually. He lifts his chin, as if he’d wanted to look at the sky, but you identified it as a movement to accept the raindrops onto his face. “It’s not going to happen again. But it happened, and it reminds me of it all, like, a lot. The rain, I mean.”

Surely, there was something good you could insert into the conversation right there. There was something substantial and relevant that fit in right there and that made the words Dave had spoken a little less intimidating, and a little less of a thundercloud on the horizon.

If there were words to be said, they were not words you had spoken. They weren’t words you had thought of, and had they truly existed, they’d escaped your grasp. Dave stops before you do. You might have wandered straight by the park without his pause. But he’d paused without you doing so, adjacent to the dirt path down the small slope leading to the few pine and oak trees. It was a park with a few imposing trees, without a bench, and with a one or two family duck population. But you’d spent summers here, Dave asleep in the grass, and you busy memorising the motion of the rise and fall of his chest.

“I think we’re here.” You watch as his cane moves further to the left, dipping into the muddy path. “Yeah, we’re here. Were you testing me?”

“Nah. I actually blindfolded myself before we left the house, you’ve been the blind leading the blind.”

He lets out a very flat laugh, but still pats at your face. You hiss at him for smudging your lenses, but you’re both soon laughing. Wordlessly, you take the cane away from him and fold it up, putting the strap around your wrist before putting your arm back into his hold.

It’s ten seconds of awkward side walking down the slope. The unsteady terrain is worsened by the continuous rain, and at times his grip on you tightens. A question begins to form on your lips. You press them tightly together once you understand just which question was on your tongue.

Once you’ve made it, you’re a bit at a loss as to why you’d brought him. You remember the ducks and wander away from him and towards the water’s edge.

“Can you talk or something? You’re not exactly wearing a cowbell, how am I supposed to follow here?”

You laugh, not at all as if you had just forgotten your blind lover behind you in the wet grass, under the rain, without the protection of your umbrella. Your laughter seems to be the perfect gem for his radar though and he takes the steps warily towards you, through the mud and the high grass. By the time you’ve made it to the water’s edge, he bumps squarely into your back. You think of turning around to greet him, but instead he wraps his arms around your waist and seems to collapse his weight onto you, chin pressed to your shoulder.

You don’t say anything. You don’t try to analyse his behaviour, though when you do anyway, you end up settling this as his tactic to keep under the umbrella’s circumference. Instead of trying to communicate anything to him, instead of updating yourself on how he was feeling about this rainy day, you fish out the two slices of bread, the ones now pungent with the banana odour and proceed to prepare offerings for the ducks.

Ducks that, honestly, do not seem to be interested in your patronage today. Ducks that seemed to have the opposite reaction to Dave’s when it came to rain. You still busy yourself with balling up parts of the inside of the bread, ready to dunk them into the awaiting body of water.

You throw ball after ball and watch the pieces sink into the dark water, without ever attracting any duck-attention. To be fair, you should have at least been attempting to aim strategically. But you can’t say you really care. You can’t say you even knew why this was what your mind had gone to when you’d searched for something to comfort Dave with. But you knew now that you were much more interested in Dave’s body against your body, rather than ducks getting an extra snack.

“How’s it going?” Dave asks you somewhere halfway through the first slice.

“Uh huh, it’s a real riot. A frenzy, they’re fighting for every last bit of this shit. They’re like addicts, I think it’s important we get these ducks help… Eventually, once we run out of product to sell to them.”

He snorts, and it feels more intimate than it has any right to against the back of your neck like that.

“They’re not eating, are they?”

You pout your lips, simply start throwing the pieces more aggressively, rather than in a better direction.

“What would you know? Dude, I wouldn’t just throw my bread into water. That’s, first of all, a waste for our kitchen. But second, and most important, a total violation of pond pollution legislation stuff.”

He presses his cheek to the side of your neck then, posture slumped as his eyes rested wherever his mind guessed the pond could be. He didn’t seem stressed or high-strung and it was enough of a comfort for you to relax too and to throw the pieces away more gently.

“The ducks aren’t where you’re aiming. Remember? I’ve got the superhero hearing.”

You shrug to let him know how little you cared about properly serving the ducks and that seems to close up the debate for a while. You can’t help but to think to yourself, as your bread reserves become scarcer, that it would be something else if Dave could start seeing again from this moment on and forth. Again, the same question begs to escape you. So you make sure to throw all of the bread away before delving into it.

And you do. Even though you know this cannot end well, you go right ahead and ask him.

“Hey, what if you saw again?” He stays quiet, and you pretend to picture the thoughts that came to him. Maybe he was scared you desperately wanted him with his sight back. It wasn’t true, but you could imagine the conclusion well. Instead, you take the very opposite direction with your question. “Do you think you’d leave me?”

It’s not a question born of your own thoughts, you tell yourself. It was Rose’s doing. Rose who had pushed that theory. Rose who was questioning your relationship, not you. Though it was you who hadn’t let it go. And it was you who had to bring it back up now. And you, who had believed Rose’s theory, at least to some degree.

“Do you think the water is cold?”

That’s the answer you get. And you assume, it’s all you’re going to get on the topic. You clear your throat first, try not to get upset, and do your best to give him an honest answer, unlike what he’d done for you.

“Well, yeah. It was still frozen last week, remember? There’s still ice on the edges.”

He takes his arms away from around you and you, possibly, feel even worse about the progression of the conversation. He steps towards the water and you’re the one to hold him back by his shoulder when he’s an inch away from stepping onto the icy edge. He chooses, instead, to crouch down and to put his hand underwater.

You crouch down with him, offering the meek shadow of your umbrella as his fingers move in complex patterns below the water’s surface.

“So, is the verdict in yet? Just how cold is this water, Doctor Strider?”

You chuckle and he smiles despite himself.

“It’s the level of fucking cold. I think I’m going to dip my feet inside.”

It sounds like a joke. And yet, a moment later, he’s sat down and removing his red rubber boots and pulling up his baby blue pyjama pants.

“You’re going to lose your toes,” you tell him plainly.

“Better than me losing more stuff via my brain. Rather lose to the cold than my own brain.”

He hisses when his feet enter the water. You see his lungs inflate all the way out. When he releases the breath, it seems relaxed, almost.

“Chill, Dave. You’re not at war with your brain. The rain is fine, and you’re fine.”

The next breath he takes sounds raspy, different, but you’re not entirely sure how. He turns towards you, makes an honest effort to find your face with his eyes. You try not to feel bad about the way his eyes move. You didn’t know how to describe it, and when he tried to describe his tactics to seek things out with his eyes, it doesn’t make much sense to you either.

“Not fine. Why haven’t I started seeing yet?” He breathes out, not relaxed, gives up on looking in your direction. “I’m not going to leave. I swear, I promise. I want to see though, I want to see.”

The last words go loud, high. Some of the ducks turn their heads in your direction.

You shut the umbrella. The rain falls more fully onto the two of you. He only seems to slump under the added water. Putting the umbrella down, you use your hands to fish one of his legs out of the water. One hand under his thigh, one hand underwater to rest over his calf. When you move it out of the water, he doesn’t put up a fight. He lets you move his second leg out of the water too. He doesn’t either put up any resistances when you pull down his pants’ legs and put his boots back on.

You don’t think you’re babying him, especially given the fact that he’s not even batted a lash. Unresponsive, you’d describe it.

“Want to go home?”

He nods in a very deft manner and you feel as if, almost, someone’s decided your heart would be better off stored in a juice presser.

You stand, and he does not. Not because he does not know you’ve stood up. You know that he knows. So you crouch back down to help him back up too. He’s remained unresponsive. You think, once you get home, maybe things will turn around. Maybe.

“C’mon, I’ll piggyback you back home. Just so you don’t lose toes, alright?”

He doesn’t nod, but he does cooperate with you. Soon, you have your arms under his legs, his arms around your neck. Though you have to carry the dumb umbrella, the dumb cane, and the not so dumb Dave, you don’t feel burdened in the slightest. The path back to the sidewalk is muddy, slippery under your feet, but you don’t mind. The walk home takes twice the time it does just walking it with a blind man by your side, but it’s alright. By the time you get home, the thunder is loud. You used to have some of your worst night terrors on thunderstorm nights. None of it matters.

You stop in front of your house’s front door. There’s the banana peel in your left pocket, the ring in your right pocket. You let go of Dave’s right leg to be able to put the ring onto his left hand before letting him back down.

It wakes him up. Not entirely, but enough for him to slip off of you. Once his feet are on the pavement he just lets out a sad sounding ‘no’. He turns the ring around and around, feeling for its material. You want to tell him that it’s meteorite, that the world had allowed for time to bend for you. You do not, you think of that sad, pathetic syllable of a no.

“No?”

He sighs, explains himself.

“Well, yes. But no, ‘cause I’ve seen the future, and you still haven’t planned a damned wedding four years from now. Can’t believe it’ll take you that long.”

You hit him upside the head, he smiles. You open the door, remember, not unlike many times before, that you’d forgotten to lock it behind you on the way out.

“That’s your fault for telling me I have to wait four years, are you serious?”

You grab his hand before entering the house. He doesn’t lose his toes. You don’t wonder again if he’ll leave you in the future.

Chapter Text

There is one single knock at the door. It is a sound that is something similar to a rock landing in a lake. A single sound that in no way impacted other melodies of the surrounding wilderness, but that somehow managed to call for attention just the same. You’d turn your head for something dropping into the water, even if nothing else around you had ceased or changed. You turned your head now for the knock at the door even though Terezi’s sewing machine was still going, the music pumping out of the speakers was still shooting vibrations along the floorboards beneath you, and the rhythmic metallic sound of your needle hitting your thimble over and over still has not ceased. You turn your head, maybe stupidly, there was nothing for you to see, nothing for you to witness, but you still do, in an automatic movement that years spent in darkness still had not erased from your muscle memory.

No knock follows, but no intimidating taps of high heels like the ones that had preceded the knock follow either. You are both aware that the person whose knock that had belonged to would be too proud to repeat the motion, yet too proud to march away. Rose Lalonde could hear the crap music you’d turned all the way up earlier and knew that the knock of her knuckles commanded enough attention to drown that chaotic sound almost completely out of your psyche. You don’t find it in yourself to get up from the floor, nor do you find it in yourself to call out to her to let her know to come inside already. Instead, you concentrate on the movement of your fingers, concentrate to give the impression that you know where you’re looking and can actually check your work. Terezi will check anyway, she had at least a decade of expertise. From the sounds of it though, her checking regimen usually consisted of pressing the smuppet’s stomach to her face and inhaling deeply. You suspected she checked more seriously later when you were away, possibly with your brother’s help.

You don’t find it in yourself to react in any way to Rose’s arrival aside from the broken sigh out of your lips. You’d put off the rendezvous as far as you could, and had only given up once threats of showing up to yours and John’s home became more of the tactic she fell back on.

“No one’s home.” So it’s Terezi who calls out, and you’re guessing, she must have heard that small sigh before she had. She must have sensed enough of your feelings to know it’s not a meeting you want. It’s a meeting that will happen however, and you trust for her to at least stand by your side and to at least crack enough jokes to make the whole ordeal at least bearable.

No extra knock, no marching of heels. Your mind calls for you to exchange a glance with your accomplice. You cannot, so you do not attempt it. Eventually, you do pick up the tiny remote to the sound system, the one that had been resting right next to you the entire time, and mute the sound at once. It is your sign that you are ready for this encounter, or are something close to ready.

“Well, come in. Even though no one’s home but Dirk Strider’s sweatshop,” she calls out again, with the impish quality to her voice that you’d always appreciated.

You smile despite yourself. A while ago Terezi had popped into the picture and had agreed on a business merger with your brother, thus reuniting both smuppets and scalemates under one single home on the internet. As far as you could tell, you would have much preferred growing up with her product than you had your brother’s, but that was besides the point. Most often it was Terezi who took up manual labour, seeing as your brother’s fine motor skills never had quite returned to their prior shape. And sometimes, you liked to join in. For reasons you didn’t like to think of, and then also because it felt pretty good to have someone around who you could talk to. Both born with a vision they had later ruined in life, you had something in common with Terezi that you didn’t with anyone else.

The clack and presence of Rose’s heels make themselves known to the inside of the apartment. You try to concentrate on the sound of the needle, try to put in enough focus on that alone to make it louder than her presence. Rose too was one of those people who understood you on a level unheard of to most others. But whereas there was comfort in being around someone who’d lost the same faculty you had, there was little comfort in being around someone who’d lost the same person you had. Rose surprises you by taking a seat next to you on the floor. You take the deliberate choice as something like compromise.

“Terezi, if you don’t terribly mind…”

You answer for her, not really because you believe you are on the same wavelength as her, but mostly because you do not want to address this by yourself.

“Nah, Tee-Zee’s going to stick around. She’s sort of like my bodyguard, so.”

You shoot a thumbs up in her general direction. You don’t think Rose sees any humour in this gesture of yours. Before she has any time to really shoot down your statement, Terezi’s taken up the spot on the floor to your left, opposite to Rose, and has slung an arm around your shoulders. The physical action makes your heart long for John. Rose had asked to meet you sans John, of course. That had been the prime reason why you hadn’t wanted her in your home. If you were going to sneak around, you were going to keep it away from the place where you slept.

Rose takes in a breath, and you imagine her appearance. She was probably sitting down in the proper way etiquette would call for, with both knees together, like she was on national broadcast rather than in a room with two blind individuals who’d been busy making plush friends just a minute ago. You take it she must have rehearsed her next lines. You still try to sew through the speech however, believing the distraction would be a good one.

“Dave. I was not only charged with delivering documents to your mother. I was also put in possession of a document I had to deliver to you specifically. However, there was no set time to fulfil this specific task. I was told to judge when the right time would be.”

You feel as if you are listening to an automated message. You put your things down, remove the thimble from your right finger and take in a breath. Sewing would have been a nice distraction. But there were no decent distractions when it came to talks about your mother.

“Uh huh, so you judged that the right time would be once I can no longer see the damned document, is that right?” The truth was that you really weren’t up for Rose reading you a letter from your mother out loud like this. Your frustration with your eyes spikes then and you physically press a hand to your chest in hopes of somehow reeling that frustration back in.

“I observed that, despite your convincing happy exterior as of late, you have been engaged for five years. You still do not set a date to get married. And I have finally judged that you are colliding with a mental blockage, that hopefully can be solved through the information in these papers.”

You imagine the way she brushes her hand over what is sure to look like a medical file of sorts. For some reason, you had not pictured her with the papers in question in her possession presently up until now. Granted, you could have gotten married in this last year, but things simply hadn’t panned out as such. That could very well be unrelated to a mental blockage. At this point, you felt very much in control of your mind. You rarely ever drifted away from your present. There were no blocks, you were more in control than you’d ever been before.

“I admit your impediment is unexpected and not ideal when it comes to me delivering the message. I have taken matters into my own hands, however.”

You can’t really find justification for her cool and calculated tone up until she puts the file down on your lap. You don’t need Terezi’s nudge to know to slip the papers out. The bumps lining the sheets are familiar and don’t particularly feel out of place. They were almost expected in a way.

“Don’t worry, I had them translated under the pretence that they were a work of fiction. I’ve destroyed the original copy, you will be the only one to lay hands on this information,” she explained briefly.

You don’t understand the aggressive pang of hurt that hammers itself into your chest. It is a quick, ephemeral thought and regret that accompanies the sensation. That you had lost the chance to see your mother’s handwriting once more, to hold in your hands something she had created with you in mind specifically. You try to forget about it, but your throat does tighten.

“Thank you, Rose.” It’s as honest as you can be.

Moments pass, you hold the few sheets loosely, wonder if they should make their way back into the envelope or if you were simply going to take the dive and let your fingers roam over the message that was trying to reach you. Rose seems to want to decide for you.

“I thought it might be best for me to remain nearby if ever there was something I could explain, or something I could help you through. Because, I…” She does not complete the sentence. You believe it might be for Terezi’s sake. You believe, in this instant, she was doing her very best to treat you as her family, to extend her hand in an offer to help.

You wish you could turn it away, but you simply do not.

As your fingers graze the surface of the message, you shut your eyes patiently. When the words take form and draw themselves onto the dark canvas of your vision, you imagine them to light up with the pink glitter you knew your mother favoured when writing messages. If your throat tightens even more so, you do not notice it.

Dave,

Apologies probably aren’t in order. Not only because I’ve already received your forgiveness, but mostly because I don’t think I can apologise for events that have brought you to this world. I am sorry I could not return however. It was a tempting dream. Maybe I lacked courage in the end. Or maybe it’s a sense of duty that you can also understand now.

More than anything else, I want to tell you that I love you. I loved you, even if I could rarely express it properly. I did not want to allow myself to feel as such, not when I fully knew the obstacles I’d set out before you already. I have not seen you in a long time now and I regret not being able to tell you in a better way than this one.

Terezi picks up the first sheet as soon as you set it on the floor. You make note to keep the following ones close to you.

I hope you understand, and I trust that you are the one person who has the faculty to understand. Leaving was my predestination. My actions, though not forgivable for just as much, were set by a web I weaved in time that I did not, could not, foresee. Don’t you think someone should let all those science-fiction authors know the real time-machine is the mind? Good one, right?

Sadly, my temporal step has taken me to a position in which I may not return to the previous one. I miss both you and Dirk. And there are now even more people I do not wish to leave behind. I am happy to say that you will not be put in the position I am in now. I assume you must have figured most of those things out already. But I have restricted your mind to travel without your body.

You reach the last page. You start to feel unwell. The message had no right being this short.

I do not think apologies are in order. But by the time my research was completed, I thought this could be my redemption. Your affinity with time and mine is a bond that will withstand anything. And the restrictions on your mind will give you a perspective and freedom no other can reach. I hope you can make the best use of it and find love and meaning even though I will not be there to watch over you.

I am hoping this will bring no strain to your body. That should not be a problem though. I have also restricted you to one thousand journeys. If ever you are to find complications, they will find resolution just as your mind will when it reaches that thousandth journey. I know you will be able to use these travels as tools to shape up a successful, happy life.

From your mother who loves you.

You don’t move your hand away from the last line for some time. It’s an attempt to get some peace and quiet. You can appreciate that Rose understands this call. Surely, she could see with her own eyes that you’d run out of words to read. Yet, she is not the first one to speak up.

“Your mom sure sounds sweet,” Terezi announces just as she leans over in an attempt to retrieve the remainder of the message from you. You shrink away from her far enough for Rose to be the one to pick up the two pages Terezi could not have yet read, and you knew, should not be reading.

“Sure.” Your answer does not sound as your own nor does it come out as anything close to your voice.

You feel it when Rose reaches over you and takes the first page away from Terezi. She is the one to sort the pages out again and to slide them back into their folder. The sound that invokes this image sounds final enough that you understand both of the girls by your side are waiting for a reaction from you, for a spark of anything.

In all honesty, you did actually want to pour your heart out. There was really only one person you did that with though, and it wasn’t either one of the friends you had around you now.

“Why wouldn’t you give this to me in front of John?”

“Well, I’m—”

You don’t mean to cut her off, but suddenly you’re doing just that. “‘Cause like, if you’re treating this as some sort of family secret, then why the hell is Terezi here?”

“Dave, you asked for her to stay.”

“You went out of your way not to include John. Don’t jerk me around here.” You’re not quite sure why it’s those words that come out. You’re not quite sure why it had become increasingly harder to breathe.

“Seeing as I’ve decided to hand these over because of your complete reticence when it comes to marrying John, I think it was your entire doing excluding him in the first place.”

You’ve never really been violent in nature, but in that moment you remind yourself that Rose is an older woman, probably frailer than you are, and that it would be out of the question to jump at her throat. But your mind flashes the suggestion for a fleeting moment anyway.

“That’s really none of your business.” You know it’s lacking in retort, so you take a deep breath, and you push for more. “And where do you come off giving me these so late anyway? You’ve known me since I was a teenager. You stalked me as a kid. Why the fuck did you take away my chance to see my mother’s handwriting again? Where do you come off?”

It’s not in your nature to be violent, but you feel those words might have sealed off the deal. You didn’t quite know what was the use in being so aggressive, or why you’d snapped to that anyway, but again you felt a piercing awareness and saw behind your eyelids the way your mother would have looped the words that had just been shared with you.

You’re lucky that’s the moment the door opens again. Whereas Rose’s presence had made itself known before her entrance, your brother’s movements always went unnoticed, silent. When you’d been much younger, the quality in his steps had made you nervous, but now it was more of a comfort, even though you could sense him less than ever.

“Looks like you attract all the ladies to the apartment, Dave.”

You’re surprised that you aren’t the only one to instinctively get up to your feet, you all do. Dirk’s playful tone had no business here and had not managed to change the levels of tension that had slowly risen to this point.

“I suppose it would be time for me to be on my way,” Rose announces. You aren’t sure if it’s in order to save face and to give off the impression that she still had some control over the situation, or if rather she didn’t want to answer your brother’s sure to come questions and was fleeing the scene sooner rather than later.

Either way, you make sure to agree with her. “I think it is.”

You escort her to the door, retrieving your cane once you’ve made it there. Terezi, unlike you, you can feel it, never walks around as if she is in need of help. She walks with a confidence that was loud enough that it got even your attention. You still hand her over hers. She does not thank you, nor does she refuse it, you can tell that to her a cane makes very little difference. Your brother is no longer in the doorway, you’re thinking he might have moved to the kitchen, probably to unload the groceries, or whatever else he’d brought home. But then again, his movement hadn’t made a sound you could pick up on. You take the chance to hand the envelope back to Rose before your brother could notice its existence.

You weren’t really going to exchange any formalities with Rose. Yet, she’s the one to wrap her arms around you, in what can only be a sincere demonstration of care and of concern. You do not have time to reciprocate, and by the time the sounds of her heels have departed from your current environment, you realise you would have given a lot for her not to hug you in that matter. Now that she had, a few things had settled in your mind.

First, you were happy John hadn’t been there. Second, the contents of the letter stressed you out. They stressed you out beyond belief, and none of the aggression you’d directed towards Rose had been purposely or even guided correctly. All of that had been frustration you had wanted to direct towards the letter.

“Tee-Zee? Want to go up to the roof?”

“Sure thing, cool guy.”

That was that. You turned back into the apartment, trying to locate somewhat which direction would be the correct one to address. “Bro? Can you drive me back home when I come back down?”

There is a stunned silence. There is no other way for you to describe it. And you get it, you truly do. After you’d lost your sight, John had always been the only one you’d accepted to be in a car with. Then again, you’d only accepted to travel through time afterwards to be able to fill in the last few holes your mind had left behind it. You, you didn’t…

You go up to the roof even before your brother gives you an answer. If he refused later, you’d threaten to call a cab. The trek up to the roof isn’t as difficult for you as some would think, you often still escaped there, in order to think, in order to clear up your mind, and you therefore knew the way just as well as you had as a teenager.

Terezi is a good person to escape with. She never says a word about the way you dangle your legs over the edge. She never worries, she simply matches your position and lets you act and talk freely. You’re thankful, but you also still want John to be the one you can confide in. That might be something you need to make peace with.

“So, what’s up?” She is the one to prompt you. Others surely would have let you decide when you were ready to speak up, but in a way you are thankful for the extra push.

“I think… I think, if I read the letter correctly, there’s a way I could see again.”

“Well, cool.” She expresses no jealousy, no envy for your situation, no curiosity as to what you could have meant, how it was that the first end of the letter she’d gotten her hands on could have transformed to that; she does however accept it immediately, as you know her to do.

“I don’t really think I want to do it though?”

“I wouldn’t want to see again either,” she says it with something that is heavy with undertones. You do not know of these undertones.

“Well, I do. I’m just scared of doing what I have to do to be able to see? Does that make sense? Fuck…” Soon you’re tugging at your hair, trying to keep your distress isolated inside of yourself. Inside of your head. Inside, where everything’s always happened.

Before she has time to pipe in, to hopefully reassure you that some sense could be made of your mess, you’re spilling even more. “I want to talk to John. He’s the only one I can talk to about this stuff, but I can’t… He wouldn’t want me doing that stuff either. But, but it’s worth it, no? I could see and he could treat me normally again, and he could have the life he’s always wanted.”

It’s a long time before she answers. It’s long enough that it starts snowing in the meantime. Eventually, when you move to grip at your hair again, it has become damper with melted snowflakes. You hadn’t grabbed your coat to go upstairs, you hadn’t thought of it. And though you’d worn a turtleneck sweater, it’s still not quite warm enough for you to ignore the coat you’d left downstairs. It’s long enough a wait that you realise that a lot of the things you didn’t want to face have started to come loose from the confines of your mind.

When she answers, she simply tells you, “I don’t think John doesn’t treat your normally. I think you don’t treat yourself normally anymore.”

You don’t answer back. You raise your head, tilt your chin upwards, and shut your eyes as snowflake after snowflake lands on your face.

Eventually, you do return downstairs with Terezi. She stays behind as you zip your parka all the way up and cover your damp hair with the fur lined hood. You want to take the stairs, but you do cave in immediately when your brother heads for the elevator. You spend most of the car trip trying to readjust the heat of the car. Reaching blindly for the dashboard isn’t as easy as all that, and you never manage to boost the heat all the way up. You could have in John’s car, you knew that car well. But you were grateful for the distraction. For an unexplainable reason, you feel the need to hug your brother before getting out of the car, and you do.

You make your way to the front door without his help, look over your shoulder, give a wave in his general direction, and pretend to fumble with the key. You wait until you hear the roar of his engine, and wait until the sounds of the car are long gone. Only then do you breathe a sigh of relief. You fold up your cane. It wasn’t going to be all that useful in the snow of your backyard. You do rest a hand over the garden arbor when you pass underneath it, but mostly you let it up to fate to guide you through the garden.

You spent too many days of the summer out here with John, wasting away all of your energy in planting trees and whatnot. It was ok. You liked planting flowers enough, even if you could only appreciate their beauty through John’s descriptions. It was alright. You liked gardening. You didn’t like that over the years John had replaced all activities that would have been normal for him, to new activities for you that wouldn’t remind you of your loss of vision. He’d shaped up a brand new life for you, where all of your experiences were new, and therefore understandably normal without your capacity for sight.


You weren’t ever going to be those two boys that stayed up all night watching movies and playing video games. You could be, because there was a market for adapting those things for the visually impaired. But you didn’t want that. You wanted to see.

Ultimately, that’s what helps lead you to the deck, to sit down with your head leaned back onto the terrace doors.

One thousand trips through time is a lot. It wasn’t even explicitly said that you could regain your vision by going through with that. You’d read it between the lines. It was a gamble, and just how long of a gamble, you weren’t sure. You’d never kept count of that. And piecing all memorable trips together didn’t put you anywhere near one thousand trips. What if you busted your mind beyond belief by trying to mend it back together?

You just wish you could have some guidance. And you wish for that to be a wish enough to move you through time as you fall asleep outside under the falling snow.

-974-

There is a melody being played on the flute. The melody in question is intriguing, mysterious almost, but the tone overriding this air is cuttingly melancholic. It comes to an abrupt stop with a few out of tune notes in response to the loud screeching voice spoken behind you, but resonating on stage though the speakers in front of you.

“John! Remind me again what’s the rule of thumb in the wings?”

Somewhere in front of you, you hear John’s much younger and brighter laugh.

“If I can see the audience. The audience can see me.”

You smirk to yourself. You weren’t sure who else was here accompanying the performing students during their on stage rehearsal, but you knew well that if John was signalling you something from on stage, it would go unseen by you.

“Now, do you want the audience to enjoy Bach’s flute sonata in G major, or do you want the audience wondering why I didn’t teach you how to be have in the wings?”

He doesn’t answer, but you know he wants to. Whoever’s on stage picks their piece back up, but you’re left wondering if maybe you could see any portion of John poking out from the curtains. You wish you could. You miss him. You miss seeing him. You shut your eyes, slump yourself further down in your seat as their teacher calls John upon the stage. You squeeze them closed even tighter as you hear John’s footsteps on stage.

The opening bar is all it takes. John is playing Bach too. John is playing Prelude and Fugue No.2 in C minor. You can still see the title on the front sheet clearly in your mind. You’d watched him practice so many times throughout that year. You’d listened to him complain over and over again that there were too many notes of music in the sheets and that he’d rather die than to have to memorise all of them. You’d remembered looking at the first page of the sheets, how every moment was a note for each of his hands. He’d told you later that he didn’t actually find it all that difficult, but that he could see how he could easily mess it up on stage.

So you know what year it is. It feels like so long ago, you barely remember your given age, but you knew what the year involved. It was the year when John couldn’t decide if he wanted to have you pressed up to him all throughout the night, or if rather he wanted to ignore your presence for a while. You try not to feel any resentment. After all, despite his odd behaviour then, he’d invited you to his winter recital as he always had. Now that he helped you through pieces on the piano too, you could find a new appreciation in the music he was playing, the way he moved his fingers and allowed for the melody to emerge. You open your eyes, nothing changes. You imagine the notes going in a different direction, you imagine something slightly different, a jazzier air to the piece. You remember how ecstatic you had been when he’d changed the classical repertoire he kept trying to hammer into your fingers, to the more flowing tunes of jazz pieces.

John plays possibly better than he will for the real performance, which you still remember vividly. You think to yourself, that he already plays like a celebrated concert pianist. And you wonder, not for the first time, if it’s something he should go after seriously, now that you were older adults. Maybe if you could find your sight again… Maybe he’d feel more comfortable doing it. The silence that falls upon your ears takes some time to register. In fact, it only comes to your attention once his teacher speaks into the headset, telling John, despite his poor backstage behaviour apparently, that he’d done an excellent job.

You don’t even get to hear the beginning of the next musician’s piece before John’s managed to race his way out of the backstage area and into the audience area, plopping down right into the seat next to yours.

“How great was that?” he asks you, excitement palpable in his voice. Again, you remember the way he’d moaned about the piece all throughout his lessons over the summer, and you do feel an overwhelming sense of pride for your best friend.

“I especially liked that part where you were coached on your manners. Sheesh, there you were tap-dancing off to the side while that poor kid was trying to make a name for themselves.”

He takes the bait, doesn’t notice your lack of perspective on who the poor kid on stage was or what John had looked like off and away from centre stage.

“Poor kid? Poor kid, really? Jade Harley is not a poor kid. She’s been messing around my entire life. You know she’s the girl I used to complain about all the time? She never took music seriously.” There’s a huff of breath. You imagine him with his arms crossed, pouting in an upset way. “Now, everyone’s saying she’s as good at me? She just woke up one day and decided to be good. She doesn’t even need to put effort in. If she were that good, it wouldn’t have been so distracting to have me peeping out from the curtain. Everyone would be too absorbed with her music.”

Oh, right. That girl, with the Harry Potter styled glasses, and the long beautiful hair. She was always so full of life, and had once been one of John’s closest music friends, you remember. And then she’d blossomed as competition. You laugh, and John makes an undignified noise about it.

“Oh, come on, Egbert. You’re not even on the same instrument. She plays for fun, and you play ‘cause it must be in your blood or something. She doesn’t have anything on you, you can calm down. And also cease and desist any plans to sabotage her performance.”

You hear him settling back into the seat. The saxophone player starts on stage, it’s Debussy. You’ve learned the accompaniment part with John on the piano. You shut your eyes again.

“So, you did think I did a good job then?”

You know you’ll be raving about it later tonight, all starry-eyed and the works, but you still throw him a bone for now.

“Best time I’ve heard you play it, yeah.”

He doesn’t give you a chance to try to appreciate the music. You make a mental note to ask John if you could go see some orchestral shows together sometimes in the future.

“Want to go get like a croissant from the food place?”

You shrug your shoulders, but stand up anyway when you sense that he does. You try not to let your hand reach out for the aisle seats as you follow him up. Thankfully, the stairs in the theatre are wide and are a slow increase in height. You’re still impressed that he hasn’t found you out once you step out the door behind him and into more of the lobby area. He starts speaking, which is the best thing for you, the best signal to follow.

“Doesn’t it suck how we only ever go out to the city for stuff like this? And then we’re stuck in the theatre all day. You could have gone shopping with my dad, you know? Still happy you stuck around though.” He sounds like he’s rambling. He might be nervous. Maybe it’s for his performance.

You walk right into him when he stops. He doesn’t seem to notice, he’s already busy humming and sighing in frustration as he tries to pick out a snack.

“Sign me up for whatever you’re having,” you tell him, again not wanting to pick out from a menu you still could not see.

“Yeah, yeah, it’ll be my treat. As thanks for sticking around.”

He approaches the cash register before you have time to hang closely to him and you stay somewhat in the background, fidgeting nervously as you try to find and maintain a good tactic to avoid getting found out. You’ve done this before. But your mind often liked to bring you to spots you knew well, like your past schools, John’s home, your home, comfortably seated in a movie theatre, or perhaps in a car. It had succeeded in seating you in the theatre earlier, but now you were stuck navigating yourself in a venue you did not know all too well.

“C’mon, Dave, let’s get one of those tables over there!”

You’d been too busy going through the list of your only travels since the crash. They were very few. They wouldn’t amount to anything close to a thousand. Maybe this would be your only attempt at resolving your sight. You couldn’t see yourself going back in time hundreds of times over and messing with this. You knew there was a certain point of time before which John could not know you’d lost your sight. It was all a very risky operation. Maybe just as risky as you trying to follow John’s footsteps, only to once again walk into the metallic edge of the table. Judging by the sounds the plates make on that very same table, you decide John was again too distracted by carrying the snacks to the table to notice your disorientation. You take your seat, not too smoothly, and drag the plate over to you, with not much idea what it could be sitting in your plate.

“So, happy with my choice?”

You nod, put your hand into the plate blandly, in what you are sure will be the all time most awkward seizing of a croissant there will ever be. He laughs at this, probably thinking you were trying to express something through the weird motion.

“Yeah, right. You always snob almond croissants when my dad brings them home. You know, when you said you were giving up on peanuts for me, I think it was just secretly ‘cause you’ve never liked any nuts, ever. You’re transparent, you know.”

You bite into the croissant. It’s sweet, it’s not bad. You’ll eat this.

“I’m not always transparent.” You’re referring to your excellent job at covering up your blindness, but it doesn’t take you any time to understand that John will take it in another way.

Right now, it’s the year he spends testing your limits. You can tell he’s seen your words as an attestation of how bad he is at testing those limits, of how little he actually knew of what happened in your mind. And, maybe that was true, but you didn’t have more of a clue of what happened in there either.

A thousand journeys through time and then your mind’s blockage would end? Was it really simple as that? Wasn’t that just a line for the novels? Would you be able to fix it? Were a few journeys in time really enough?

He clears his throat. You’ve only taken two bites out of your croissant. You put it back down, push it over to his side, signal that you’re alright with him finishing it for you. Somehow, you don’t think his little cough was to indicate that he was hungry for more though.

“Dave, look. I’m sorry we didn’t talk last week.”

“It was already forgotten,” you answer sincerely. Not as your adult self, but even as your teenaged self then. It had all been water under the bridge. John had never ceased to be the one person you could count on, even at times when things got harder. It was something you understood better now with a bit more perspective.

“It shouldn’t be, though? Good friends don’t just…”

The sentence is not meant to be completed. But there are many ways in which you could complete it for him. Good friends didn’t just spend an entire night making out with you just to ditch you for a complete week afterwards, and then still expect you to cheer for them at their piano recital. Maybe you hadn’t forgotten after all.

“Good friends go through a lot. A lot happens. It’s life. Good friends still want to be friends no matter what that a lot ends up being.”

You hear him pile your plate onto his empty one. He must have swallowed that croissant whole. You turn your head towards where you feel the light, hoping despite it all that you’d be able to look out whatever window was nearby. You aren’t able to. You aren’t able to get away from thoughts that whisper to you just what that a lot really means and just what is yet to come for John. You’re on the verge of telling yourself that you were never a good friend for him when he speaks for you instead.

“You are such a good friend, Dave.”

You jump when his hand takes a hold of yours where it had been resting over the table, but quickly settle down. You can imagine, based on the tone of his voice, that the look on his face must be very loving, must be very powerful. You wish you could see him, you wish you could look back at him with that same love in your eyes. Your eyes are dead.

“I wasn’t anyone's friend until I met you.”

You are very lucky, because John chooses to lean over the table, to put a hand over the back of your head, and to kiss you soundly. You’re not interested in who might see you, you are only interested in pouring the love that couldn’t reach your eyes into the kiss.

When the kiss ends, you expect him to tell you that he loves you. Instead, he says; “I played for you earlier. I’m going to play for you tonight.”

You squeeze his hand, he still hadn’t let go. You almost don’t catch what he says next. His hand in yours feels fainter somehow, the seat beneath you less real, his voice extremely far.

“I always play for you.”

-xxx-

“Dave!”

Your eyes open. The wind is loud, John is louder. The cold that grips at your uncovered fingers is not as tight as the grip John has over your shoulders. He was hoisting you up to your feet now. You don’t bother putting up any resistance. You feel tired. You long for days gone. You do not think you can meet that one thousand requirement. You don’t think you can reach the chance that might not even be a chance.

He steps you through the gap where the sliding door should have been closed. He must have been searching for you inside, he must have come from the inside to come rescue you out here.

“Dirk texted, he told me he drove you home. Thought it was a little weird, honestly. This is weirder.” He slings your arm over his shoulders, you think, belatedly, that he must have left your cane out there in the cold. “Why were you outside? Did you lose your keys? You shouldn’t have been sleeping outside. It’s freezing out there, this is so dangerous.”

You recognise where he’s walking you to, mostly out of familiarity, but also from the scents, as little as you care to admit that you can base locations off scent now. The bathroom smells like lemongrass. You still don’t put up a fight when John starts taking your clothes off for you.

“I’m not even cold, cut it out.”

You know John. He’ll pour you a warm bath, sit by the tub and pray to every living being for your health and safety. You think it’s ridiculous.

“Your cheeks are red, your lips are blue. You even smell like frostbite, give me a break.”

So, you let him. You let him unclothe you, you let him pour the warm bath as you’d predicted, and you let him hold your hand as you sit into the tub. You find again the position you’d taken outside. You could take another nap now? Then you could travel twice in a day. That would be fourteen trips a week, and over all sixty trips in a month. You frown as you close your eyes. Sixty was nothing compared to one thousand.

You think of the words from the trip. Some of the first ones. If you can see the audience, the audience can see you. You sink into the tub, think still of all those trips you possibly needed to make. You wish no one could see you. You wish you were forever in those wings. Maybe unable to see, but not subjected to anyone’s gaze either.

“Dave, what’s wrong?”

His voice feels almost as far away as it had before he’d ripped you away from his younger version. What if this too wasn’t your present reality? You open your eyes, and though you considered them to be nothing but unsightly and useless now, you are sure that there was some emotion in them now. You didn’t want to say that there was anything wrong. You didn’t want anything to be wrong. You acted content, Rose had been right about that. Couldn’t you just keep acting content?

“Dave, come on. You can talk to me.”

But this time, it definitely didn’t feel as if you could talk to him at all. You’d never, ever tried to keep secrets from him, not when it came to you and to your ability to hop through time.

“I don’t think I can.” Your voice sounds used up and maybe, just maybe John had been right in waking you up and dragging you inside.

His hand is in your hair. It’s a soothing touch, one you’d known for most of your life, but it’s just not enough to solve your worries and fears.

“You can tell me anything. That’s what I’m here for. Neither one of us ever needs to go through things alone.”

You shake your head. You knew that. You knew you had John. John had you. You weren’t going to let go of each other, however the burden of a thousand trips isn’t something you want to broadcast, to share, to lean on him to carry.

“You’re wrong. I have to if it’s in my mind.”

That’s when his other hand reached for you. Before you know it, he’s disarticulated himself well enough to have both of his hands over your ears, and your forehead pressed to his. You think there’s something important he has to tell you, but he stays completely quiet. Eventually, the force of his feelings radiates enough for you to be the one to crack and to say something.

“I can’t. I can’t do it on my own, but I have to.”

He doesn’t let you go until you’ve shuddered, given up, and gritted your teeth as the tears fall from your eyes. That’s when he decides you look well enough to not be qualified as frostbitten. He drains the tub, helps you back out, wraps a towel tightly around you. You’re still busy gritting your teeth, still busy fighting with your own head.

He asks you a question you knew he could ask, but somehow did not believe would be the first one.

“Why did you let your brother drive you?”

You breathe in through the nose, take in the scent of lemongrass, and answer just as plainly as he had asked.

“I wanted to be home quickly.”

You wanted to be home quickly. That’s all you offer. You do not explain why it was you had gone again previous judgements to stay away from other people’s driving. You simply needed to be home.

“Then why didn’t you use your keys? I felt them in your parka’s pocket when I undressed you. You had them with you.”

“Because I like the garden. We made it. It’s part of me. I wanted to be there.”

He accepts these simple, lacking answers. Even so, he asks the question you do not want to hear. He hits hard with his words.

“What did you wish for before drifting to sleep?”

You shake your head. You’d wished for guidance. You hadn’t found any, not that you had deciphered anyway. But you’d still managed to make another trip, to put your counter one digit up. That was something, that was the thing you were about now.

He senses you will not answer. He probably senses too that he had not been wrong in assuming that you had been away from your body. You had travelled, despite all of your previous promises to cut it down to the bare minimum, the bare necessities to complete your timeline. So he asks you another question. “Did your wish come true?”

You shake your head with more force.

“You’re being stupid. I have nothing to wish for. I already have everything I’ve wished for before.”

You almost wince when he brushes the pad of his thumb under your eye. You know what that gesture means. How could you say you had nothing to wish for when you’d lost something that was of such importance?

“That’s not important,” you argue against yourself out loud. It wasn’t important, then why had you done it?

Because somewhere within you there was a memory locked away of John playing for you, of John telling you he always played for you. And of John putting once and for all your worries of not being the good friend he’d always been to rest. That had been a memory that had waited for you, and you’d only gained access to it now.

“I’m ok,” you insist when no answer comes.

His answer to that is to kiss you, in very much the same way he had done while you had been asleep outside. It is a kiss born of love. It is a kiss that tells you that you are loved without John having to voice any of it.

Still, in this present, unlike when he had been a teenager, he tells you very clearly that he loves you when he pulls back.

Chapter Text

1000

This had proven to be the loneliest summer of your life. You suppose you just had never noticed that your summer vacation, your time off from school, did not correlate to a three month vacation for your father. So far, for every single one of your summers off school, you’d had Dave and his brother with you. And if even Dave’s big brother had shifts here and there, you always had had Dave by your side.

But this past year had not gone as planned, and in the end, Dave had moved into a new apartment with his brother, just as your father had told you they would. And you’d soon found yourself home alone, day after day. Thankfully, you had the frequent sleepovers at Dave’s, and starting today… Starting today, your father had an entire week off work, and he’d even given you the permission to invite Dave to stay over for that full week.

Which, at first, had appeared as a gracious favour, a cherry atop your sundae of a week. However, you’d understood, when you’d woken up this morning and your father had already been hard at work adding a fresh layer of paint to your entire house, that it had been an ingenious tactic to distract you while his true motives showed. Your father needed to get some work done at home, more than he needed to spend time bonding with you. You understood that, maybe. You were still grateful that he’d proposed for you to invite your best friend over. If he was trying to buy you an apology in that form, you were going to take it.

As it was now, you’d both picked up on the fact that your father was still perched up high on his ladder, busy freshening up the gables with a new blandly coloured bucket of paint, and that lunch hour had come and gone. So you’d let Dave talk you into crossing the main street to the nearest gas station to go purchase slushes and chocolate bars. A blue raspberry slush for Dave, a cherry red slush for you, and two chocolate bars that would wear the peanut-free disclaimer proudly. Even so, you still ask your father for permission once you’re out of the house, already wearing your sneakers, and Dave with the twenty dollar bill he’d pulled out from his wallet. Your father, even from all the way up there, lectures you on safety, even though you’ll be entering fourth grade soon.

You’d been doing well so far. When you’d crossed the road you’d looked both ways, twice, even though you hadn’t been able to see a single car, and you’d marched in the grass, feet away from the sidewalk to avoid being near any stranger’s car. You’d just passed the baseball field, and you’d recognised a few kids from your neighbourhood messing around there. You’d been mid-sentence, correcting Dave on his constant usage of ‘baseball court’ when his mood had drastically changed.

Drastically is putting it poorly. He’d simply groaned, all tiredness and misery, and just like that, had slowly brought himself to a position on his back, sprawled out on the grass, both hands pressed firmly to his eyes. You continue walking just for a little bit, expecting him to just get back up if you pretended hard enough not to notice, therefore not taking his bait, but none of that happens so you have to retrace your steps.

“We can always ask my dad. But I can guarantee it’s a field. You’re thinking of basketball… Or tennis, maybe? And volleyball, I guess. I mean, it can apply to a bunch of other sports, but that over there is a baseball field.”

You expect him to spew out more invented and nonsensical sport knowledge. But he doesn’t answer. So you kneel down next to him, cursing the grass stains you’ll find later on your kakis for doing so, and do your best to pry his hands away from his face. You’re impressed with his resilience, you can’t really say he’s ever resisted this well when you’ve friend-wrestled or done anything like that.

“Come on. Stop being a baby! We’re almost at the gas station! Think of the chocolate! Think of your blue slush, it’s waiting for you, it’s calling your name, Dave.”

He doesn’t make a peep, doesn’t move an inch of his body. You keep tugging at his wrists, but he’s not letting up.

“Well, you’re being dumb then! ‘Cause we didn’t put on any sunscreen and you burn like paper. So say goodbye to your healthy skinned face. Though I guess you’re covering that… And you’re pretty covered by your sleeves and jeans… Your wrists though are just going to be totally scorched red.”

Still, not a single reaction. You sigh, rearranging yourself to sit next to Dave. You rest your arms over your knees, watching the few clouds that were brave enough to face the sunny summer day sky drift in and out of formation. Dave could be difficult at times. But he didn’t usually just clam up randomly.

“I get it, you just time travelled!”

You take a mini-pause from cloud gazing to gauge his reaction. His hands aren’t covering his mouth, which lets you see the way the corners of his mouth are tugged downwards following your statement. You could take that as validation; it was all you ended up having to work with after all.

“Then… You’re frustrated ‘cause this wasn’t the moment you were aiming for?” You were wondering out loud, but even spoken in your own voice you could feel that wouldn’t be quite right. Dave wasn’t a picky traveller, in fact, he was rarely picky with anything. “No? Then you’re from the past? You time travelled as a baby, which explains why you’re acting like a baby now.”

That one had been a joke. But seeing as he wasn’t going to take the hint and laugh, you do it for him instead. It’s not quite as satisfying as you would hope it to be.

You try again, hoping for at least a shadow of a reaction. “Or you’re protesting how hungry you feel, ‘cause we haven’t had lunch yet. I’m hungry too. Pass me the money, I’ll come back with the goods, I promise.”

Still, not much at all changes. You catch the way his breathing changes the movement of his ribcage, and you feel you know him well enough to evaluate this slight change as an expression of his annoyance and of his frustration; both aimed towards you. You weren’t just going to leave your temporally challenged friend defeated in the grass like this though. Especially not this close to the baseball field, that just spelt out danger.

You try to match up his position as a change of tactic, but you fold your hands beneath your head as a slight variation to his pose. Your hair looked windswept enough as it was, you didn’t need it more messed up. It makes the cloud sighting that much easier, and you’re sure, will make Dave more comfortable with opening up to you, no matter how old he was. That was something you’d noticed already, no matter how old or how young, Dave stayed more or less the same. The same things set him off, and the same things put him at ease. And making sure to communicate that you were on the same level as him, wanted to be on it too, always helped.

“I don’t get you, you know? Getting to go some other place in time is pretty cool, right? But just lying down once you get there sounds pretty lame…”

You’re betting it’s your adopted position that convinces him to speak up next time, more so than the words you’d breathed.

“That’s what you think. But if this were the third time in your day that you go to some other place in time, you’d find it pretty lame and exhausting too.”

You think it’s almost funny to hear Dave’s voice sound so jaded, when it had sounded so elated just a few minutes ago. It wasn’t like he was going through a tough time. He was getting the entire week with you! And… Even if he hadn’t had said as much so far, you were betting all your savings that he’d missed you a lot. Maybe almost as much as you’d missed him? You wouldn’t swear on anyone’s grave, but, it wasn’t such an unlikely hope, was it? Anyway, he’d smiled all through this past weekend already, and not to brag, but you didn’t really see Dave doing much smiling towards anyone else.

This wasn’t a Dave who sounded as if he’d had a rocking weekend though, and you were curious as to why. You turn your head, again relying on the slight expressions of his face and body to help you through the dark.

“Three times? Then you’ve just been sleeping all day? Then cut it out if it’s bumming you out? You make problems for yourself, sometimes.” You were supposed to be teasing him, but you forgot to add in any laughter at the end of that and it comes out more serious and a little harsher than you’d predicted it to be.

He sighs, loud and impatient, and you find yourself lucky to have just changed your focus to his face, because you don’t miss the way his eyes are clenched shut, tightly enough to wrinkle the area around them, as he switches his hands' placement to a simple arm over his eyes. You think it, quite possibly, makes him look even more defeated.

“I’m filling up my time travel quota for my lifetime. It’s hard work, no matter how much sleep is involved.” You get the feeling that Dave too was trying out a joke, but the line is much too dry to even leave any place for laughter to follow. You still see it as slightly funny, especially when you thought back to the last joke he’d cracked today; something about your father painting white over white. He’d told it hesitantly, as if he was hoping for a few notes of laughter. This Dave didn’t seem to care much for your eventual laughter, but that wasn’t going to be enough to discourage you from getting him to open up.

You bring your legs in, give yourself enough momentum to spring back up to your feet. You ask him, just to make sure, “So, you could say you’re feeling down right now?”

He doesn’t need more than that answering moan charged with negative feelings to properly convey an answer, and yet he adds on to it, “I’m feeling down enough, Egbert, that I decided to throw myself on the floor in hopes that it'll swallow me whole.”

“You’re lucky, Dave, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I know the remedy to feeling down enough to hope for the floor to open up. And its name is laughter!”

His mouth moves to form a question, a question on just what you were insinuating, a question on just why you’d needed to sound so mischievous to be able to say that, but you’ve already sprung on him. You know Dave well enough to know his ticklish spots without ever having even tickled him in the past before. He wasn’t a touchy person, and you respected that enough to not ruin your closeness by throwing yourself into a tickle fight with him. Right now though, he was almost obnoxious with how much he wanted his fortress walls up, so you were going for it.

You were going for his ribs, because you’d brushed them before accidentally, in the school bus, in bed, or wherever else, and had noted down the way he squirmed away to be suspicious enough to indicate that, despite his cool air, that he was quite ticklish. You barely have to touch him now to get him to squirm in that very same way, and to move his arms away from anywhere near his face to your chest, in a push to get you off of him for good. It takes just the motion of you going for it for his eyes to fly open.

You just don’t know why your breath catches. Yes. His eyes were getting redder. Especially here with sunlight glaring right down at him, but they could still pass as brown. They weren’t different from when you’d crossed the street together earlier. You determine that it must be the way that he looks at you. You just don’t know what to say about the way he looks at you either. The force of it all is enough for you to never actually squeak a laugh out of him though. There was nothing casual enough now to justify a first tickle war between the two of you. In fact, the finality with which his eyes were resting on you made you feel embarrassed to have tackled and straddled him in the first place and you soon find yourself sitting back on your heels.

He matches you by sitting up though. You do not know how to describe the way he’s looking at you. It’s not anything aggressive, not anything frightening, but it’s something completely different from what you’re used to. It’s something that almost makes you feel self-conscious. So you’re not able to speak first. Unfortunately, when he is the one to do so, he doesn’t give you much to work with.

He simply states your given name. John. As if it was his last lifeline, and he hadn’t even clued in that it had been you bugging him just then to get him to stand back up. You know, that’s absurd though, he’d known it was you. Now that he’d seen you though, a switch had definitely been flipped.

You stand up, almost hurriedly, the call of your name making you feel just that much smaller. “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that, don’t really know what was the point.” You know tickling him is not a relevant topic of conversation. The scare that had come from it had been enough to divert this entire meeting away from anything like it.

He doesn’t stand up, doesn’t reply. He stares at you, in a same, unshaken way, and remains there. You’re the one to put your hand out to help him back to his feet. He takes it and you get that, just as seeing you had triggered something very real, the contact of your palm against his did something similar.

This emotion now is much easier to read. His face lights up. It truly does. And though that expression had rarely held anything literal to your understanding until now, his features really did seem to soak up the light of the day as he smiled. He smiled like the portrait of pure joy. Something… Something you didn’t usually imagine on Dave. He smiled at you, sure, he had done it all weekend, but it was a smile with a cloud. A cloud that overcast his feelings of joy with something that urged for him to keep both of his feet on the ground. You don’t think Dave liked to allow himself to be truly happy. You didn’t complain about it, nor did you comment on it. You were proud enough to know that he acted happy around you despite his self-restriction. You were worth enough to put that cloud slightly to the side. But now, his expression had lit up, all clouds were gone.

“John!”

Now your name sounded much different coming from his mouth. It sounded like the best word he could think of. You don’t understand it. You don’t understand where he had just come from. And yet, when he takes the step forward and throws his arms around you, you return the hug just as urgently as he hugs you. Your eyes sting enough that you fear, for a second or two, that you’ll be moved to tears. Moved to tears by what? You’re not quite sure. But you knew it mattered enough to have Dave allow himself to radiate this much feeling with this much strength.

He actually picks you up off the ground, actually spins you around. It’s the same surprising strength he’d used to resist your grasp earlier, but now it had you laughing in appreciation. And if this time, your eyes water, you could blame it more easily on this laughter. You’re discreet about wiping your eyes when he puts you back down with a huff. You’d gathered, by the way he spoke, that he was from the future. You didn’t want to sour the memory of your almost fourth grade self by doing anything embarrassing like crying randomly.

“God, I’m so…” His words are breathless, but you know it’s due to more than using his force to allow for your feet to lift off the ground.

“Happy?” you finish for him, a hopeful smile on your lips to match his bright one when he nods in response.

“I’m just so happy to see you.” He’s the one who seems emotional now, so you allow for the sting in your eyes to grow.

You don’t reflect for long before chancing a guess.

“You haven’t seen me for a while.” Maybe he’d gone on a vacation with his brother. Maybe he was really grown up and the two of you had spent a semester of school at different colleges. Maybe, maybe, maybe… But he had wanted to see you. Maybe he’d been travelling all day to find you.

But why hadn’t he simply wished to see you? And why hadn’t he reacted positively right away when he’d known you were with him? Those questions remain unanswered, but he does confirm some of your suspicions.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen you in so long. So long. God, I’ve missed you so bad.”

Not only does his voice crack, but he also has to wipe at his eyes, just as you’d done earlier. You realise then that there isn’t really anything all that embarrassing about him doing it though.

You smile to yourself. That had been a weird way for the world and time to answer your worries. Your secret fear that Dave didn’t miss you at all now that he lived away from you. Obviously he had the capacity to miss you, and here was the living proof. And despite the fact that this was what you had been hoping for all along, you still feel the instant need to reassure him, to squash those feelings of missing you down.

“Hey?” You grab both of his hands, and you’re surprised by the way his hands respond to yours, in a movement that felt overwhelmingly familiar to you. “I’m not going anywhere without you, alright? You’ll never have to miss me for too long. Best friends for life, right?”

Selfishly, you squeeze in another fear for him to shoot down. You could still be his best friend in the future, right? You were going to make it as his best friend, right? He nods, does just as you’d hoped for him to do, and you smile in a smile that is progressively getting as wide and as bright as his.

“Sorry, I must look so uncool. I’ve just wanted to see your face… I’ve really wanted to see it.”

Despite the lingering tone of misery in his voice, you feel pride swell up in your chest. Dave had missed you. Dave probably missed you as it was during all those nights you spent apart. He was just better at admitting feelings when he wasn’t in the moment present. You understood that, you understood him. In a practiced movement, you lean in and kiss both of his cheeks, smiling encouragingly when you tell him you love him.

He answers, “I’ve always loved you.” And you believe it completely and fully.

You hold his hand all the way to the gas station. He doesn’t let it go once, not even as you pick from the chocolate selection, and not as he sorts through the change he gets back from the employee. He only lets go of your hand once he comes back to his mind. You dare him to get a brain freeze from the blue slush as he struggles through the blossoming pain in his skull. He laughs at the joke. You laugh too.

You feel worlds better, and you thank the mechanics of Dave’s brain for reassuring you that you are worth being missed and that… Yes. Dave could miss you as much as you missed him. You feel so comforted by this knowledge that you never get back around to answering those unanswered questions behind the reality he’d come from.

————

Dave must think you are a complete idiot. You are not, in fact, a complete idiot. As a matter of fact, you’ve been suspecting his behaviour for a while now, but today truly did take the cake. After his shower this morning, he had returned to bed, had curled up, and had promptly fallen back asleep. When you’d managed to rouse him awake, insisting that it was Sunday and that you wanted to spend time with him, he’d requested to listen to music. So you’d set up the gramophone record, the one you’d purchased together when you’d dragged him to that one flea market almost two years ago, and of course… When you’d returned to him, he’d been asleep on your couch, just as curled up as he’d been in your bed.

So, of course, when he’d woken up, and had made the strange request for you to go to the nearby grocery store and to buy a pint of pink lemonade, you’d already known what was going on. He was going to take advantage of your absence to, yet again, fall asleep, and to, no one could convince you otherwise, time travel.

You knew Dave. Sometimes, he even told you that you knew him better than he knew himself. And you’d been around for a very long time. You’d been there the first time he’d moved through time, and you’d been there when he’d come back from his first travel after losing his sight. You’d seen him broken up with the blackness that had remained over his universe, even in a different time. And if you’d deducted over the years that travelling was just the same as him running away, then you knew what was going on.

You just didn’t understand where and when things had gone wrong. He was happy, wasn’t he? Well, you were happy. You were extremely happy. It had felt as if everything had worked itself out in the end, and you could finally and proudly fall asleep every night with your best friend in your arms. But that best friend was ready to run straight into the dark to escape his current reality. His current reality was so influenced by who you were too and which role you played in his life. You probably should have been sad for having failed him. But, you were mostly angry, angry that he was keeping this from you so guiltlessly.

So, you’re not surprised when you come home, call his name, and get no answer back. You put the lemonade in the fridge, and make a note to actually get Dave to drink that stuff, and head back to your bedroom. You expect him asleep, you still hesitate in the doorway when you find him deeply asleep, but not in your bed, oh no. He’d fallen asleep on the bedroom floor, not in that curled up way he tended to, but rather as if he were resting in something like a coffin, ready to be dragged downwards.

Just as you felt empathy gripping at your heart, he gasped himself awake. A deep and loud inhale of breath as he sat up suddenly, eyes snapping open as if he hadn’t been asleep at all. Eyes opening and finding yours in one same movement. You fight the urge to take a step backwards.

“Hey.” You’re not actually in any mood to entertain a young Dave that has no grasp on the way his current self was disregarding you to escape to other times.

And yet, that very Dave manages to crack a heartbreaking smile in reply to your greeting and… And even though you’ve started to feel on edge about your situation at home, you don’t resist the happiness that floods your heart when considering that this Dave, any Dave, was able to smile with such unreserved happiness.

“Want to go jogging with me?" you ask him, fully expecting for him to hop up to his feet and to go race down the street with you. Even though this would be the first time he wakes up in this bedroom, and even though he was still clad in his mismatched pyjamas.

“Not really, no.” His eyes do not leave yours. You do not find any hesitation, any doubt in his answer. He does not want to run.

Maybe it is the light filtering through the windowpane or maybe it is the angle at which you are looking at him, but you also find in his eyes something different in his irises. Something different in the unsettled and unchanged red of these last years. Bitterness reaches you before you have time to squash down thoughts of his triple nap taking. This Dave was faultless. You needed to reel it back in.

“Want to get off the floor?” you ask next, leaning against the doorframe and attempting a cool smile. You could at least try to project an image of a cool grown-up you.

You don’t think the projection works so smoothly, because his smile turns to something that gives you the impression that he finds your pose humorous; you ignore it for now.

“Depends, I guess.” You watch as he looks around the room. You see how his eyes can’t settle on one item in particular. The new surroundings he found around him were clearly a lot to take in. His eyes do finally stay on the window and again, you observe the pronounced difference in his eyes. “Can you show me the backyard?”

You don’t bother to question how his mind had worked its way up to that request. A simple glance outside could indeed let him know that this was the first story of the home, that the ground floor could potentially indicate a backyard, and for some reason, he wanted to explore that space. You could question him, but you choose not to. You are perfectly content watching him watch the world around him. So you nod, indicate for him to join your side, and you leave it at that.

He finds your side and you feel tempted to put an arm around him, maybe slide your hand into his, but you don’t act on that. Maybe you’d grown too accustomed to being in constant contact with Dave. Whereas he needed to feel for you to know where you were, you simply liked the contact. You never felt bad anymore reaching for it though because, by extension, it was a form of help for him too. Now, you were keeping your hands to yourself, hands finding the pockets of your vest.

So, you guide him outside, through the sliding doors, onto the deck, and you vaguely gesture to the outside of your small home. You expect him to nod and to move on, perhaps. You hadn’t questioned how he’d come to want this sight, but you also hadn’t questioned your expectations that all he’d wanted was a glance and nothing more. Instead, he carefully steps outside to follow you, and loops his right arm with your left arm, his side brushing against yours as he stepped to be directly next to you. Your body warms at that. You’re surprised to realise how similar this felt to the Dave you had with you now. This was how he’d hold you now. But without the use of his eyes it felt like a request for guidance, and with the use of his eyes, like now, it felt like an expression of care.

“So, this is it.” You gesture with your free arm. “It’s sort of like a garden. Believe it or not, you helped with everything.”

He responds to this with a look you’d expected. Something you could only describe as incredulous. You had expected it directed towards the garden rather than towards you, but it was more or less the same thing to you. You try to mimic the look he gives you, if only to get him to smile again, possibly laugh, but you don’t manage to make that happen. You get caught up staring at his eyes, caught up identifying what had changed there.

The red of his eyes looked milky, as if clouded over… Clouded over, yet with sharper focus than you could ever remember him possessing.

“So? Are you going to show me around? I would love to see what I’ve worked on.” This time, he does not smile at you. The intensity in his eyes is too strong to allow for him to make place for that expression of happiness you’d caught playing out on his face earlier. You find it hard to turn him down. You find it even harder to even vocalise an answer.

“Well…” You make the same gesture you’d made just before to indicate your surroundings. “This is our deck. We’re probably going to have to scour it this summer. Oh, it’s spring right now. Early. It was still snowing last week.” He nods at you, and you hesitate to continue. “That’s why, it might not look super impressive right now, not a lot of flowers are in bloom, but, you know… It’ll give you an idea.”

An idea of what, you’re not sure exactly. You usually felt like you had an upper hand with versions of Dave arriving from the past. You knew things he couldn’t know, you knew how cards would play out. But he looked at you now as if there was nothing you could reveal that would puzzle or faze him.

You realise then, that, for the very first time, Dave’s eyes held something of an element of clairvoyance. He’d struggled and kicked around all his life, at war with his mind, and it was only now that he looked like someone who had a higher power, who had access to something that was completely in his control. You couldn’t explain it very well, but it did a fantastic job when it came to intimidating you.

So you guide him down the stairs and basically waltz him around the garden he’d never seen before.

“See over there, there are some snowdrops out. I call that flowerbed the moon garden, ‘cause we’ve only got white flowers there, as white as your hair. See, next to it, we’ve got the Jacob’s ladder, and over there…” You went on and on, describing every which flower that hadn’t in fact yet bloomed.

Maybe he was bored, but he never interrupted you to tell you so. You continued on, describing the trees instead, loudly recollecting just how much hard work it was to plant them together. It almost escapes your mouth a few times that he was good with his hands even without his eyes. But that definitely was not something you’d share with him, no matter how clairvoyant his eyes had decided to look to be today.


“And this one’s our Japanese Maple.” You pointed towards the last of the trees, in fact the first one you’d planted together, with its strange shape and quickly growing foliage. He closed his eyes for a moment, and you imagined maybe he was listening to the wind chimes, or maybe the nearby fountain you’d installed last year. You knew he’d grown into the habit of shutting his eyes to perceive sound better, but you hadn’t believed him to have ever held that habit in a point in the past.

At that, he pulls his arm free from yours, you hadn’t even realised you’d stayed that way for the entire tour, and he promptly crosses his arms, looking around at the past sights you’d just shown him.

“Something’s missing here.”

The words are so strong, just as impacted as his gaze, that you find yourself keeping complete silence as he continues looking around. His eyes settle on the Japanese maple and yours settle on the grass. You shrug your shoulders. You liked this place, and you were hoping Dave would like it too if he ever came to be able to see it the way you could.

“I think…” He stalls his words, and when you finally meet his cloudy yet never clearer sight, it becomes obvious he’d been waiting for you to address him in such a manner to finish his suggestion. “There should be a koi pond.”

At first you don’t know how to answer, how to feel, how to react. Your first instinct is to look away, so you do. You’d been so young, and yet… Yet, even now you could remember breaking down in front of Dave, all the while talking about a koi who could transform into a golden dragon. And though you remembered it vividly, you hadn’t thought he would, after all of this time.

“A koi… Pond?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, innocently, and doesn’t divulge more. But you know him. You know him, and you’ve come to believe it when he tells you you know him better than he knows himself. So you know. You know that for him, it is a given that the fish would represent more to you than just a fish to look after.

So after a long silence, you tell him, “I believe you can do anything too, you know?” The words your mother would use towards you when she would tell you about the legend, and the words you knew Dave had stored into his somehow twisted memory.

“Yeah, I believe that about myself too now.” He does smile with the words. He smiles, it’s not overwhelming with confidence, but it certainly is a confident smile regardless. It sets something off inside of you. Something here is not quite right. Something here is escaping your attention.

“D’you want to go running now?” you ask him again. The clues weren’t building up to anything that made sense to you. Who was this Dave who’d remembered your breakdown next to the empty pond, who really did believe he could do anything he put his mind to, and who wrapped his arm around yours like the crutch you’d eventually become for him? Who was this Dave who, you could feel it, would again turn down the request to go running?

“No,” he answers negatively, just as you’d been expecting. “Show me the inside of this house. It’s ours, right?”

That same something that was escaping you was letting you know that he already knew the answer to that question. Of course it was your shared home, and he knew that already. Not by any temporal trick though, you were sure. It was as simple as you’d described how you’d done all the work outside together. Of course you would share this home. Still…

You think of grabbing his hand, but he grabs yours first. His side again is unbearably close to yours. It is again, a behaviour he displayed without his sight. Sticking close to you, to make sure to stay with you. So you check again, but he looks straight into your eyes when he smiles at you. You stay standing there for a while longer to observe the milkiness of his eyes. You push it back down, but the something that called for your realisation was pushing back against you with a growing strength.

“Yeah,” you answer him, maybe five whole minutes after he’d asked the question. But you finally do as you climb up the stairs with him and slip back into the house. “We’ve been living together for a really long time. Which is why the garden actually looks like a garden by now.” You don’t think there is much more to say about it, but you understood that you added that second bit simply to be able to voice it out loud. To make it clear that it was an easy conclusion he’d pulled, not some omniscient knowledge he was now displaying out of the blue.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I like the house. I mean, I picked more things in there than you have, but they’re all things I think go well for the both of us. I like it a lot, actually.” You smile, a bit more to yourself. This could be the potential confirmation of Dave liking the environment you’d built for the two of you. Sure, he had no complaints with the feeling of things, the scent of things, but… But he’d never seen any of it. And though you’d both learned to downplay this lack of perspective, the nervousness you were now associating to his first visual experience in your home was escalating quickly.

“Numbnuts… I meant. Do you like it. Living with me?”

You let go of his hand to slide the door shut. You let go mostly so that you’ll be able to fully turn away and to calm yourself down. There was something a little unsettling in him asking a question as if he were a different person from himself. No, in fact, what was unsettling was that he hadn’t asked it as if he was referring to another him. He had referred to you living with him. There was no future Dave. There was only this Dave. You swallow, try to ignore the signals being sent to you.

“Living with you?” The eyes that are watching you might have changed drastically, but you were still able to piece together the emotions that were playing behind their warped colour. He was honest, deeply invested in knowing the answer you would give him. “I couldn’t ask for anything more in the world, Dave.”

The way he ducks his head, and the way his cheeks quickly gain the pinkish hue that truly only belonged on his complexion, lets you know whichever past this Dave was from, he’d already grown considerable romantic feelings for you, and feel yourself flush quite similarly. This was no good, you didn’t even know his real age currently, you better not get caught up making a lovestruck man's eyes at him. You clear your throat, try to inject the air that was thickening between the two of you with something less disarmingly loving and romantic.

“I don’t think you could say the same. You keep disappearing to other times lately. Clearly you’ve got a lot left to wish for.” You laugh, it’s strained and it’s a meagre distraction from the fact that you were also treating this Dave as your current Dave.

He shrugs, not seeming offended by your sudden attack, though he’d returned to being less of the blushing bride role he’d taken up. “Well, show me around. Maybe I’ve been wishing for a better surround sound system. Let me inspect the place and be the judge of that.”

You watch him warily. You could discern that his words weren’t entirely serious, but his choice of example must have held some meaning regardless. “You’re not exactly the hugest fan of watching movies anymore, or anything like that. So, don’t exactly think that’s what you’ve been wishing for.”

He shrugs it off again, stepping further into the house and somehow becoming the one to lead you around. “Well, maybe there’s the secret. I want to get into it again. So I’m wishing for some better equipment. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

You give up on digging for more information. This wouldn’t be the version of himself that would be able to give you answers anyway. He wouldn’t be able to tell you why it was that Dave could find it in himself to wish for something three times over the course of one day. Besides, your goal had been to keep yourself from being charmed by this young version. And you’d successfully derailed the conversation to achieve as much.


What follows is a very long, very detailed tour of your household and the various objects making up the home. You spend a lot of time pointing out ever colour around you, something you did mentally with yourself usually, in an effort to imagine how inspiring it might be for Dave once he would be able to see all of these colours in his world. It dawns on you now that making sure of pointing everything out to a past Dave would allow for the present one to see the decorations and furniture of your house appear behind his closed eyes, based on the memories he would build now during this tour.

That’s one motivation for keeping it long and descriptive. But you know the real reason behind making it so. You wanted this Dave gone, your Dave, your present Dave to return, to talk to you. To explain why his eyes were alike murky waters now, and to explain why he was travelling enough to express deep misery. You’d pushed it back long enough. You weren’t going to be the person who wasn’t present enough for Dave. You were going to be there for him fully, even if that meant pushing more aggressively for truths he kept from you.

But you finish the tour, and he’s still looking at you as if you were the most beautiful angel to fall from above. And now, there were no doubts that he was the one making loving eyes at you, and with the intensity that had been added to his gaze, it was extremely hard to turn a blind eye to as much. You worry just how long he must be sleeping to achieve such a long trip. You knew now. You knew now how it had gone when he’d lost his sight. And days of comatose had only added up to one day in a different time.

“Can I see the front of our house?”

You fight the urge to groan, to get impatient with him. You simply decide to humour him, to nod along and to invite him outside with you. You feel him move to grab your arm, but you keep your pace up to avoid it. You didn’t want him clinging to his future, you wanted your real Dave back now, it had gone long enough.

So you step outside, shut the door, and just take a few steps back from it. The lavender colour of the door was supposed to please Dave’s eyes once he could use them again. You glance towards him, and again, something that wanted your attention called for you to pick up on the subtle details. There was nothing subtle in the way Dave paced himself to take the same steps back as you were taking. There was nothing subtle with the emotions playing over his face. He loved the colour. He loved the house. He loved the inside. He loved the backyard. He loved you.

Yet, it still didn’t feel like it was what you were after. You rubbed at your arm awkwardly, forgetting all about the exterior of your house and instead focusing your sight on him instead.


He glances over, puts his left hand up.

“So, we’re engaged, huh?”

You nod. You remembered he’d travelled to the future, to you, a few years back, and had asked about the ring then too. Still, the way he assumes the two of you weren’t yet married also called for your attention. You watch as he spins the ring. And again, you found it obvious that he loved the ring too.

“When are we getting married?”

“No set date.”

He breathes deeply before asking you again. “Yeah. But when are we getting married?” He seems to sense that you’ll only repeat the same answer, so he tries again. “Like. What’s keeping us from setting a date?”

“Well…” Well, that was a little more challenging to answer. At first, you’d had to push it away because you knew there was that point of time when you still hadn’t gone through with it. But that had passed and now… “Well, it’s just that. I…”

You start rubbing your arm more insistently. You certainly were being put on the spot now.

He seems to take that as the cue to answer for you. “It’s ‘cause I’m blind?”

You stop the rubbing. That wasn’t right. He couldn’t know about the blindness before it occurs. He’d broken down in your arms when he’d woken up without his sight. There was no way he’d ever known before it had occurred. It didn’t work with anything else in your timeline. You licked your lips. The fact of the matter was that you had to address what he’d told you, no matter how little sense it had made for him to come out and say it.

“No. Well, yes? Maybe. It’s more like… I want for you to be able to see again, and… I just haven’t solved that at all. I haven’t had a clue yet how to bring that back. If I can’t do that for you, I mean. What good am I going to be as your husband, right?” You laugh, but this time it’s not even one bit distracting. You knew what was going on now.

“But if I’ve solved it, we can set a date, right?”

Dave had woken up on your bedroom floor. He’d woken up from another time, from a trip he’d taken in his sleep, but he hadn’t woken another version of himself up. It was just Dave. Dave who had been blind when he’d asked you to get him pink lemonade. Dave who… Had woken up, able to see you again.

You shove him, you push him, both your hands over his shoulders. He stumbles back, surprised. The expression on your face must not be very frightening however, no matter how confused you were by just what it was exactly that you were expressing.

“What the fuck, Dave! Why didn’t you say anything!” You couldn’t even fluctuate your voice into a questioning tone. You could only shout, emotions still running at an all-time high.

“I— I looked you straight in the eyes! I thought that was enough! Besides, you just assumed I was from the past, I never said any of that!”

“You could have said something!”

He’s already back to smiling. A sweet, overly ecstatic smile, and you push him again, fighting to see through your tears.

“You’re so stupid! You have no idea how worried I was. God, I… I don’t even care how, I just…”

You approach him again, and though you’d pushed him back twice, he takes a step forward just as you put your hands over his cheeks and kiss him deeply. You feel the urge to push him again when you pull back, but you give up on that, instead melting under the weight and intensity of your emotions.

“I love you so much, you idiot. Why didn’t you say anything? Was that why you took three fucking naps today?”

He laughs, kissing you quickly before attempting to answer that.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know it was going to happen today, see, I… It’s a long fucking story, kind of the story of my life. But I travelled one last time. One thousand round trips, complete!”

You move to push him, but instead you wrap your arms around him and roughly pull him towards your chest. He laughs, understanding your hardness of movements as your poor containment of the emotions rushing through you.

“Dave. Dave. Dave…” You laugh with him, snorting in between bursts of laughter, trying to remember how to say something different from his name. “Dave, come on! What was it, what was your last trip, was I there?”

He wraps his arms around your waist, kissing you just one more time before absolutely melting your heart with his words. “Yeah, of course. You’re always there. I don’t need to jump through time to understand that anymore. I’ve got you.”

You only laugh harder.

It takes you the rest of the day to reel your feelings back in. And by the time you’re able to calm yourself down enough to form coherent thoughts, the only one that comes to mind is that; after all of this time, you were on the same page as Dave. You’d managed to keep up with his loops in time and finally, you were happy and content with the knowledge that the rest of your lives would be lived in unison, to the same beat.