So Many Striders - Now With Illustrations!

Hal sniffs, and he'd lift his face off Dirk's neck to wipe his eyes but if he did Dirk would probably stop stroking his hair, so he stays where he is, face warm and slightly damp. He shifts his legs, trying to curl even closer to Dirk. His back hurts and he doesn't like it and it won't stop. Hal finds it a little hard to believe Dirk has nothing better to do than rub his back and hold him while he cries about Dirk rubbing his back like some kind of baby, but he doesn't argue the point. His breath hitches a little when Dirk snuggles him closer, and he squeezes his eyes shut, but it's not fear or anything, it's basically the opposite of that, it's comforting and warm and his back still hurts but Dirk wants to hold him, and that makes it almost worth it. "The sprites? You said Davepeta got in so much pain they clawed up your leg, but they kept going. And I am being honest, I've said to stop each time I couldn't take it any more, when I got to my limit."

 

"I didn't say they kept going without any breaks ever, or without using other things like heating pads and whatnot. Plus Daves and Equiuses seem to have abnormally high tolerance for pain. You haven't had a body with pain receptors since you were me. Considering that you're doing really well." Oh great, the tissues are all the way on the floor. After how Hal dealt with his emotional nonsense earlier the least Dirk can do is supply tissues. For now Hal seems to need comfort more than hygiene products though, so hair fussing continues.

"I just mean, don't force yourself to keep going again and again because you're worried about some strange, arbitrary standard you think you should be meeting. You don't have to wait until to becomes absolutely unbearable to take a break. I could go lighter for a minute, or do some other part, or take a shorter break instead of, of um, making you cry." Dirk didn't realize it was bothering him right until that moment. It's not about him though, so he rushes past it. "You HAVE been being honest with me though, that's good." Ugh, little sniffly sounds, nooo. He presses his cheek to Hal's hair. "You're good."

 

"Okay, well, when you put it like that it seems obvious." He grouches into Dirk's neck, then huffs a sigh against his skin. God it's so nice to have someone pet your hair, why the fuck would Dirk put his up so it can't be touched when having it touched feels like this? The only explanation is that Dirk's weird as fuck, but then he knew that already, so fair enough.

"Forcing ourselves to match strange arbitrary standards is a Strider staple, though. I. We could give the heating pad thing a try though, if you wanna. If we've still got any around the place." Hal lifts his head, moving it slowly along Dirk's so Dirk doesn't take his hand away from his hair, and rests his forehead against the side of Dirk's cheek bone, nose tucked into the space below his jaw. "Kinna don't really want to move away from you to find out, though."

 

Hal sighs against Dirk's neck and collarbone and the warm breath makes him shiver. "We got an electric one when they started becoming a daily necessity, later I'll see if I can fi-" Hal presses his forehead to Dirk's cheek, and speaks with his lips nearly on his neck. He shivers more noticeably this time, and swallows automatically. Dirk's hand had followed Hal as he moved, petting and scratching lightly, but his fingers twitch and go still just behind his ear. "Oh. O-okay. Later then." Dirk licks his lips nervously. Clearly outrageous flirting is one thing, but Hal is being so... so genuine. It's... He doesn't know. The thought miscarries, leaving it's waiting family bereft and at a loss for what to do next.

 

Dirk's hand goes still on his head and he's all shivery. Did Hal do something wrong? He frowns slightly, running over what he said, but it seems normal to him. Dirk is aware of his feelings, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he enjoys cuddling with Dirk. He worries his lip between his teeth, trying to work out what's wrong, then abruptly yips in pain and jerks his head back when his poor, abused lower lip finally splits, blood trickling down to his chin. "Fuck."

 

Hal goes still in his arms and that feels ominous, though he's not sure in what way. Before Dirk can make up his mind on what, if anything, he should do, Hal makes a sudden pained noise and jerks away from him. Dirk's hands fly off of him, oh shit, what'd he do now? "What happened?"

But when he finally gets a look at Hal his lip is bleeding, he must have done that to himself. His arm snakes back around Hal's waist; the very last thing he needed was to be in even more pain. "Ow, that sucks. The tissues are on the floor, but it's not bleeding much. Here, I got it." Dirk dislodges Hal slightly to lean over the edge of the bed and snag the box. He nearly overbalances and tumbles face first onto the floor but all that ninja training is good for something and he manages to heave himself back upright without embarrassing himself. Nursemaiding isn't something he's super used to, but when he was upset earlier Hal took care of him so he pulls one from the box and offers it. "Here, and be careful or you'll re-open it."

 

"S'okay, it just stings a bit. Caught me by surprise is all." Dirk seems much more bothered by the split lip than Hal is, now the surprise of it is over, but he's dislodged without complaint. Like hell he's going to turn down caring attention from Dirk, you know? Dirk looks like he's about to fall, and Hal reaches out to grab him, but he's already righting himself so Hal puts his hand on Dirk's shoulder once he's upright instead, like that was his plan the whole time. He takes the offered tissue, wiping at his chin and lower lip. The blood's started to dry already though, so he mostly just smears it slightly. He takes the tissue away, instead sticking his tongue out to lick down the trail of blood.

 

Dirk is glad that this isn't particularly upsetting to Hal, he feels so off balance today with him he doesn't know what to expect. "What even happened? Spontaneous face bleeding? Is that a thing you do now?" It's kind of weird that Hal touching him became normal pretty quickly, but he had gotten used to casual contact while in the game (when he was on good terms with people) so it's something he's likely primed to accept. Then he remembers that Hal likes him, which is hard to keep in mind for some reason, and it feels awkward all over again in a different way.

"Were you ready to keep going? I'm hesitant to suggest this, since it didn't turn out super well last time, but you'll likely be able to relax easier if you lay down. And I can promise not to trap you, and you can keep a hand on my leg like before." He fusses with the tissue box and puts it on the bedside table. "If you're not comfortable with that that's okay. We can sit like we were before just as easily."

 

Hal pokes at the split with his tongue, then pulls a face when it hurts because of course it does. "Nah it's not spontaneous, I've been chewing on my lip hard enough that it makes sense it'd break open sooner rather than later." He pokes it again and yeah it still hurts when he does that. He's got most of the blood off, and when he rubs his chin with the tissue again the saliva helps with getting off the last of it. He balls the tissue up in his hand, and then for lack of a better place to put it throws it onto the floor with Dirk's snot tissues.

"Could we try digging out a heat pad instead? Unless you want to attempt both at once but really that seems like it would be rather awkward. It's probably a good idea to keep working on it at some point, I don't want to end up Quasimodo'd, but. Maybe not for now?"

 

"Well, both isn't a thing, so you'll need to lay with the heating pad for a while and see how it feels after that. Or you could set it up on the back of your chair, but it would be more effective if you were relaxed." He shuffles to the edge of the bed and stands for the first time in what feels like ages. "I'll go find it now."

Since his big emotional break down and Hal's, er, confession he hasn't actually had any alone time to process things. He wanders around in his room, pretty sure that he'd used it on his neck not too long ago, and eventually finds it wedged between the bed and his nightstand. While he's looking he gets progressively more anxious about the whole potential relationship thing. He's proven himself bad at relationships, and even if Hal is different he's not that different. The awkwardness if things didn't work out might be lethal, but then, it might finally encourage Hal to find someone better to spend his time with.

Not that he would ever sabotage a relationship on purpose like that. That'd be awful.

Eventually he makes he way back to Hal's room. "Hey, found the thing."

 

When Dirk gets up off the bed Hal flops back to lean against the wall, closing his eyes. All the contact and rubbing and cuddling and shit was amazing, but he's also looking forward to some time just by himself. Lying there with a nice hot pad over his back, yeah, sounds pretty great. He sits up straight with a grunt, and gets off the bed, crouching down to pick up the used tissues on the floor, because if he lies in bed with them there still it's going to bug him and he knows it. He drops them in the trash, then heads back on over to the bed, flopping down across it on his stomach, arms under his head. He can feel his shirt's pulled up at the back, but he can't be bothered to tug it down.

Dirk enters the room again and Hal wriggles around so he's lying with his head at the foot of the bed, feet tucked under the pillows. "Sweet. Uh, there's a socket around here somewhere..." He tugs himself over the end of the bed, sticking his hand underneath it and feeling along the wall. "Found it! Pass me the plug?"

 

Dirk walks over and hangs the cord down where Hal can reach it while rooting around between the bed and the wall. "There anything else you need or want to do?" Dirk does not sound hopeful because he wants to avoid the fuck out of having to have another emotionally draining conversation but with Roxy this time. Nope. He's just so gosh darned helpful.

 

He takes the plug, feeding it under the bed to his other hand. There's some minor fumbling before he gets it in the socket, and scoots back down the bed so the top part of his body is no longer hanging off it.

"Well... I would really like it if you'd go finally message Roxy. You know, put her mind at ease." He holds up a hand to take the heating pad.

 

Dirk's face falls but he immediately smooths it over in order to look like less of an avoidant jackass. Instead of handing the pad to Hal he plops it on his head. "Yeah... I'm doin' it mom." Ugh. It would be so much easier to just flop in bed and not do hard things. Ever. He leaves with many regrets. "Text me a list of shit you need from the store, I'm going out later. Or I suppose you could just bug me irl about it if you want to be primitive."

 

Why yes on his head is exactly where he wanted that, thank you Dirk. He tugs the pad down to rest on his back, crossing his arms under his head and wriggling to get comfortable. "Whoa, I had no idea you were into that, but I can try it out if you'd like." He grins like the huge asshole he is. "I'll text you if I think of anything 'part from the clicker, phones tend to have a more reliable memory than humans."

 

Dirk flips Hal off over his shoulder as he leaves. "Here's your first lesson in sign language bro."

The conversation with Roxy, he reflects later, was much like lancing a boil. Painful, necessary, gross (feelings), yet weirdly relieving and fascinating. He is stunned that Roxy was merely angry with him for having avoided her, and not for stuff that went down in the game. She has since been drawing him into conversations with Jane and slowly working him around to the idea of Jake, though Jake himself has been somehow more difficult to get in contact with than Dirk. It is... distressing to say the least.

The days following saw a dramatic uptick in Hal obvious, sometimes outrageous, but never very serious efforts at flirting. He made little innuendo remarks far more than was necessary, touched him casually or baited Dirk to touch him, and once even pulled the cheesy 'arm-stretch-yawn-turned-side-hug' maneuver on him. Dirk usually snarked back, dead-pan stared, or on one memorable occasion became so flustered he snapped at Hal angrily. That... was not fun. After a while of happy comfortable Hal, the brief return to nervous avoidant Hal was jarring and unpleasant. More pleasant were little things he hardly noticed; food appeared at their door on something like a schedule, and once Hal made them grilled cheese. Sometimes when Dirk was completely absorbed in his work bowls of cereal or glasses of water would quietly appear in his general area when he came up for air. That part was nice; living with this version of Hal in general was nice, if awkward sometimes.

Dirk is preparing to do some exercises on the roof, and decides on a whim to stop by Hal's room before heading up. "Hey, I'm heading up to the roof if you want to join." There, that shouldn't put too much pressure on him if he's not up for it.

 

Hal has been having so much fun flirting with Dirk. Flirting in general is fun, innuendoing and making ridiculously over the top statements of infatuation and engineering situations that mean he just has to touch Dirk or vice versa, or a combination of the three. He prefers not to think about the singular time that Dirk snapped at him at the end of a particularly extensive period of flirting, as it was only once and all other times have been much more enjoyable. In fact, if asked he would claim that it was an outlier adn should not be counted. He's also been making himself more useful around the place with little things as they occur to him. It's surprisingly easy to set up a recurring delivery of groceries, so Dirk only has to go out for things when they use up more than expected, or one of them has a craving for something unusual. He also makes sure the blinds are all up during daylight hours, because if they're going to be reclusive shut ins then they're not going to be reclusive shut ins with a vitamin D deficiency (and yes he did make a joke about that). Leaving food and water out for Dirk is something else he works out pretty fast to do, now that he's fairly sure he won't get snapped at for intruding. It's a good life.

He's scrolling idly through clickbait articles on the computer when Dirk appears in the doorway, and he twists around (his back has been feeling better and better) to see what's what. "Oh, yeah sounds good." He pushes the computer chair out from under the desk, spinning around and up onto his feet. "You got any specific workout planned?"

 

When Hal gets up to follow him Dirk turns and walks as he talks. "Mmm, I was thinking of doing some kata, maybe flashstep practice or just plain running. We could do different stuff at the same time but in company, and spot or time each other if we do anything that needs that. I don't know man, freestyle."

 

"Cool. Winging it, sort of thing. But not literally because the roof's pretty fucking high up." He pauses to grab his sneakers from just inside his bedroom door, tugging them on then jogging briefly to catch up with Dirk. "Hey- thanks for inviting me along." It's probably a little tragic how glad he is that Dirk thought to give him the option of joining him in something.

 

"Hm? What? Sure, no problem." Dirk isn't totally sure of what Hal is thanking him for, he sounds way too grateful for just a heads up about fucking around on the roof. It's not like Hal didn't used to go with him everywhere, including rooftop strife practice.

The weather outside is nice, crisp without being cold and sunny in a non-burning way. Clouds on the horizon make it look like it might rain later, but it's fine for now. The roof is filthy with grit that the wind has picked up and deposited over years, but the traction isn't too horrible. Dirk decapalogs his heavy wooden practice sword, some water bottles, and DJ Roomba. "Gotta figure out how to turn off the cleaning function, he'll try to clean the roof and explode." He fiddles with it for a second and then sets him down to roam. The edge of the roof has a small ledge, so the little guy shouldn't be able to pitch himself off over the side on accident.