So Many Striders - Now With Illustrations!

"Does that make me Dudley DoRight or Snidely Whiplash in this scenario? I mean, holding you down and hurting you is kind of the point." Dirk considers for a moment. "You wanna be on your bed? It'll be the most comfortable for you."

 

Haaaaaah. Hal's going to jerk his head in a quick nod and head over to the bed, tugging off his shades as he goes so he can get his face down and hidden at top speed. This isn't suspicious at all and Dirk totally won't be surprised by his haste, it's absolutely just that he's that eager to have the kinks (oh god) worked out of his back. "Bed makes sense, yeah."

 

Huh. Hal is acting weird again. Either his back is really hurting him or he wants to get this over with as quickly as possible. Dirk climbs onto the bed and kneels next to Hal's hip. He puts a hand on Hal's back and leans a bit of his weight on it, just to get him used to the pressure, and hesitates. "If you're not up for this right now, with your touch sensitivity, that's fine dude. I don't want you to force yourself, but back pain is also shitty."

 

It could be both of this things! Definitely nothing else though, nope. Because they are normal brothers doing normal brotherly things. Hal swallows, crossing his arms when Dirk kneels next to him, turning his head away and tucking his face into the crook of one elbow. "It's cool, I'm not stressed or upset right now so I can stand the touch thing until I get used to it again. It's when I've got some strong negative feelings going on that I can't stand it." Still, he has to deliberately make himself not bow his back away from Dirk's hand.

 

Hal's voice comes out muffled from his arm, but Dirk can still mostly hear him. "Whatever you say bro. Let me know if you need a break." Dirk leans forward and feels along Hal's shoulder blades, looking for obvious knots. "Help me out on where to go." He chooses a likely place high on Hal's back and digs his thumbs in on both sides. Hopefully they can get this done before Hal gets too overloaded.

 

Hal is hyper-aware of Dirk's hands moving over his shoulder blades, skin prickling unpleasantly as they pass over it. It's fine, though, massages are meant to hurt before they feel better anyway, and this is basically just an addition to that. It's fine.

"Aah-" He cuts the pained sound off by biting into his lower lip, shoulders jerking up when Dirk digs into his back. The bright spark of pain is slightly higher up than Dirk's thumbs, and he manages to grunt out a "Higher" with the middle of his lip still clenched firmly between his teeth.

 

"Hm." When working with Davepeta on their legs he found that verbal encouragement helped them to manage pain more easily. He shifts his fingers up and feels where Hal meant. "You're doing good, try to relax. Breathe, it'll feel better soon." He starts in on the painful spot gently, increasing pressure as the muscle warms up. "It must be weird for you. I can't imagine the digital memory of pain is the same as actually experiencing it in the present."

 

He mumbles in agreement, feeling a little like he's got sensation whiplash. It almost certainly shouldn't make him feel as happy as it does for Dirk to say he's doing good, even though it comes with the bitter thought that he might feel like this because of how rarely it happened in the past. The pain isn't as intense any more, now Dirk's pressing against the right spot, and he's able to relax his shoulders back down. Fuck, though, it still hurts and he's being touched and he doesn't like it. He lets go of his lip to reply to Dirk. "I've been in pain before in this body before, but yeah. It's weird. Digitally it was like uh... damaged nerve receptors or ones in danger of being damaged would send annoying popup messages that refused to go away. This's way more intense than I had any ability to understand back then."

 

"I figured, yeah. I'm sure you've already started building up a tolerance." He shifts his fingers, following the muscle to where its particularly knotted. "You also need to be able to tell the difference between normal pain and pain that says ' this is an issue that needs to be addressed' you know? Don't want any preventable problems springing up."

Dirk tries to work on both sides evenly but the angle is awkward, and he finds that he's hurting Hal more than he needs to because of it. Whenever he makes little pain noises or tenses Dirk automatically mumbles "You're good" and "Its okay" and other shooshy placation noises. After a little bit his arm starts to get sore from the weird position he has to put it in to reach the far side of Hal's back. "Can I sit across your legs? I'm at a weird angle right now."

 

"Mmmmfuck, ow. Yeah. I thought that's what all pain was for, though?"

The pain doesn't stop, well, being a pain, because that's literally what it is, but as the back rub goes on, Hal's able to relax a bit more as far as being touched is concerned, as the constant, predictable pressure of Dirk's fingers slowly desensitizes him to the experience. Being told he's good, though, is something he's not getting desensitized to at all. Each time it happens, he feels a little curl of warmth in his chest, and the corners of his lips twitch up. After a little while, though, he starts to realise he's feeling a bit uncomfortable in the crotch area. It doesn't feel like he needs to pee, though, more like- oh god.

Oh god.

He's so horrified at his body's reaction (what the fuck why is this happening why can't he make it go away stupid fucking boner no) that he totally blanks on what Dirk is saying. So, when he replies, it's with a distracted noise of agreement while still trying to will his dick to stop that holy shit this is so wrong.

 

"Eh. I mean shit that needs outside attention. Your leg hurting because you sat on it for too long isn't the same as a medical condition you need to tell someone about. We're not in waterworld anymore, there's like, medicine and doctors and shit in this crazy world we inhabit." Dirk rambles about the weirdness of this universe's readily available resources while shifting to sit across Hal's legs. His knees bracket Hal's hips and he rests his weight mostly on the top of Hal's thighs. From this position its much easier to lean forward and use his weight for pressure instead of tiring his arms out.

 

WORSE. THIS IS WORSE. THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE. He's tensing up again because oh god he just agreed to let Dirk sit on him apparently and Dirk is a heavy and solid weight on his thighs, his legs holding Hal in place and he can't escape and it's really really fucking hard not to start rutting rocking in time with Dirk rubbing his back and he's so tense that the rubbing hurts in a bad way and he's so turned on that it hurts in a good way and it's too much it's all too much but he can't move away because Dirk's sitting on him and he tries to tell Dirk to stop or to get off him or anything but all that comes out of his mouth is little gasps and his dick is still hard like he's enjoying this but he's really, really, really not.

 

Dirk tries to move on to other parts of Hal's back, but suddenly Hal is so tense he's actually shaking a little bit. He tries to feel out where his sore muscles are, assuming Hal will tell him to stop if he wants him to, but it only takes a few moments for Dirk to realize something is wrong. When Dirk starts paying closer attention he notices that Hal is unnaturally still, and is making a tiny gasping noise. "Hal, is something the matter?"

Oh shit, hold on. "Wait, can you not talk?" Dirk's hands fly off of Hal's back and he tips himself off of Hal's legs so that he's sitting on the bed with his back against the wall. He feels terrible. "Shit. Fuck. Um, shake your head if you can't talk. Did I hurt you? You probably can't answer that. Fuck, sorry. Um." He seemed to respond to soothing things well before. "You're okay. I'm not touching you anymore. I'll leave if you want, or stay, either. Goddamn it. Where's your phone?" He realizes that Hal can't answer any of these questions right after he asks them every time, and each time he wants to bang his head on something for being so stupid and unhelpful. He doesn't though, that would just make things worse.

 

As soon as Dirk is off his legs, Hal scrambles up the bed to curl up at the headboard, propped up against it, back to Dirk and knees pulled up to his chest because the boner may now be flagging due to Genuine Distress but it's still a thing and it might be noticeable and he cannot let Dirk see it. He closes his eyes and tries to stop shaking, focussing his attention on what Dirk's saying rather than the fact that Dirk was on top of him and he couldn't get free and he- no. Okay. Don't think about that. It's okay.

He shakes his head quickly from side to side, and it's strange but listening to Dirk panic actually helps him calm down, slightly. It's nice to know he's not the only one who doesn't know what to do when this happens. He's still tense and miserable and breathing too fast, but the shaking's stopped, more successful in doing so on its own than when he tries to force it. He tries to move his arm, to point out his phone where it's charging by the wall, but all he manages is a very delayed twitching of his fingers, and well that's fucking scary. He uses his head to point it out instead, nodding at his phone, plugged into the wall socket beside his desk.

 

The way Hal scrambles away from him, and won't face him has Dirk choking with mortified panic. He must have done something awful to cause this kind of reaction. He asked for Hal's permission before touching him, right? It's kind of hard to remember right now. He remembers Hal shaking under him, and how still he went, and how quiet his distressed noises where. It makes him want to cry, he didn't mean... Fucking emotional theatrics won't help right now, stop it.

As soon as Hal nods his head he starts looking for his phone, and after a moment Hal points him in the right direction. He hasn't moved an inch though, not even to unwrap his arms from around his knees. It's fucking scary. He shuffles over and grabs the phone, careful not to brush against Hal in the process. He holds the phone with his fingertips, and offers it to Hal without touching him or even getting too close. He'd rather stab himself in the gut than touch Hal again; he feels monstrous.

 

There are a long few minutes where all Hal can do is flick his eyes between Dirk's face and the phone and twitch his fingers in a motion barely enough to be noticeable. It's scary as fuck and he hates it. Then, it's like his brain abruptly remembers that it's connected to a body that it can move, and he stretches out his arm to take the phone, sitting up a little straighter and in a more comfortable position. His boner is well and truly dead.

[Sorry for freaking out like that. I don't know exactly what caused it.] That's a lie.

[Definitely wasn't just the touching though.]

[Stay with me?]

God, it's the last thing that's likely to happen right now, but he could really use a hug.

 

Hal doesn't move for what feels like an age. Or rather, his fingers twitch and his expression gets progressively more panicked. Dirk can't bear the thought that Hal is too freaked out to even take the phone from him. After a minute or two he whines low in his throat but quickly stops himself. Just before he's about to set the phone down next to Hal and back away Hal seems to come alive again, and finally takes it. Dirk scrambles away almost as urgently as Hal had before, and only just forces himself to wait for Hal to type before absconding.

He only remembers to take his phone out of his pocket when it beeps at him, and god damnit. He said he'd stay if Hal wanted him to, so he's going to stay. He's not going to hide in his room or throw himself off the roof. His throat works for a bit at swallowing before he can speak. "Yeah. Okay." Sitting on the floor while Hal is on the bed seems like a weird, dick move so he doesn't do that. He forces himself back where he was before, leaning against the wall and well away from touching Hal.

For all he tries to fix everyone's shit, sometimes he really feels his age. 17 is not sufficient for this shit. "What. What did I do? I don't ever want-." He's not going to whine, or cry, he's got this. "Hal?"

Dirk would like to thank not only god, but also Jesus for his shades. They can't hide the way his voice went all high, but at least Hal can't see his eyes watering.

 

Hal turns around slowly, after sending the texts, mouth twitching in a grimace at the corresponding pain from his back. He settles himself facing towards Dirk, knees still up and arms locked around them, phone held tightly in one hand. He'd started to feel so relaxed, when Dirk was working on his back while kneeling beside him, but then his stupid fucking body ruined it. God, he wishes he could just strip it off and- okay, no, he doesn't want that. He'd rather have the body with all its dumb flaws than be back in the shades.

He sucks in a slow breath through his nose, then lets it out explosively. Dirk sounds pretty fucking upset, and that's his fault, he fucked up and made Dirk sad. What an asshole he is.

[I wasn't paying attention to what you said, so the sitting on me thing took me totally by surprise and really freaked me out.]

[Obviously.]

[It was my fault, I swear. Not yours.]

He sits forward a little, knees separating into a slightly cross-legged position, and stretches out a hand to Dirk, palm up. Look, my fault not yours, it's okay, I love you.

 

Dirk's arms are wrapped tightly around his stomach and he is staring at his knees like he'll be tested on the subject later. His eyes flick to his phone. "Whatever Hal, you're basically contractually obligated to blame yourself for shit as a Strider. Don't want to weaken the brand name. It's not. I asked you if it was okay but." He loses the words for a moment.

Hal holds up his hand and Dirk doesn't know what he wants. A high five? That seems inappropriate. He gingerly reaches out his hand to reciprocate whatever Hal is trying to make happen, but flinches back. He can't touch Hal. He'll fuck it up, he's going to hurt him, just like he hurt his other friends. Hurting people is what he does; he's going to grow up to be a violent, hateful psychopath who dies alone and unmourned after terrorizing everyone stupid or vulnerable enough to be under his influence.

Hal wants him to do something here though. He tries again and manages to brush his fingertips along Hal's before revulsion at himself makes him cringe back. It's all very dramatic and he hiccups stupidly, because that's helpful.

 

Dirk is clearly disgusted by the idea of touching him, and god, who wouldn't be? Who fucking freaks out over something as little as a back rub? This weird, ex-AI, that's who. He pulls his knees back up straight so he can wrap his arms around them again and resume texting Dirk because oh yeah, that's another thing that's fucked up about him, when he starts to panic he just fucking loses the ability to talk out loud.

[And I agreed because I wasn't focussing. It was me being stupid, you didn't do anything wrong.]

It's fine, he'll just never ask anyone to touch him ever again. That sounds like what he deserves, and that way he won't be disappointed when people refuse to because he's such a mess. His shoulders shake, and he chokes on a loud sob.