So Many Striders - Now With Illustrations!

"Snacks. We both agreed that chocolate is good and it's a shame you don't have any stashed nearby, and then that I would go get snacks." Hal rests his chin on Dirk's head, and he'd probably be more comfortable leaning back but this gives him a better view of the laptop screen, and also means he's closer to Dirk. He's enchanted all over again by the movie, gaze fixed on what's going on on screen.

 

Toward the end of the movie Dirk feels significantly less miserable and dizzy, which is lovely, but he's still likely not allowed to sleep for a while yet. The weird little family at the end of the movie always makes him feel happy and warm inside; found family narratives are one of his favorite. Not that Dirk doesn't love is weird pseudo-biological family, but that itself is a rather messy, cobbled together thing that he's not at all used to yet.

He yawns and stretches with his arms over his head, arching his back and generally making a nuisance of himself all over Hal.

 

Clearly they should watch Lilo and Stitch next. As the movie goes on, Hal pulls out the chips and water, although not at the same time, nuzzles Dirk's hair, makes the occasional comment on the movie, and generally behaves himself as far as his hands are concerned, even if the temptation to feel Dirk up doesn't actually go away at all the whole time. Curse this Strider and his appealing muscles.

It's pretty clear Dirk's feeling better when he starts being an ass, so Hal feels no guilt in running his hands slowly up the arms presented to him and humming appreciatively right by Dirk's ear. "Thanks for finally offering, I've been wanting to touch your muscles."

 

The ear thing is clearly a weakness that Hal has every intention of exploiting mercilessly. He's going to have to turn the tables somehow, when he's not in such an unfavorable position. He can't really get his hands on much of Hal at all while laying against him like this though. "I was just stretching. Don't blame me when you can't keep your hands to yourself." He lowers his arms but doesn't try to stop Hal or move away. The attention still feels nice, and he is sleepy enough to be pliant.

"How much longer do I have to be awake and how do you plan to entertain me until then?"

 

The ear thing is amazing and Hal loves it. He wraps his arms back around Dirk's waist, and leans on down to press a kiss to Dirk's shoulder. "I'm totally blaming you. You're the one who looks so good after all, how's that fair on me?" He kisses Dirk's shoulder again, lingering over it for a moment, before lifting his head again, resting it back. His neck aches slightly from leaning forward through the whole movie, but he still thinks it's worth it.

"I'm s'posed to monitor you constantly until you're not dizzy any more, and then supposedly you should go to sleep at your regular time, but I think that's about 10 pm for most people so we'll go with until then? As for entertaining you, we could talk, or watch another movie. I could try singing for you, but I'm not that great at it."

 

"Wow. Wow. That might be one of the most problematic things I've ever heard. I'm telling Kankri on you, see if I don't." Shoulder kissing is nice, almost enough to make him glad he's not wearing a shirt. His skin prickles under Hal's lips and he's a bit disappointed when he stops. "Hm. Well, I don't feel all that dizzy anymore now, but I guess I could stand up to try and test that in a bit. Er, talk about what?" If Dirk isn't allowed to work he can still chat about projects with Hal at least he supposes, that's always been helpful. Maybe he'll have some ideas for DJ Roomba's battle harness.

 

Hal lowers his voice into his best clichéd menacing villain impression. "Your threats do not scare me! Kankri is fucking hilarious to wind up and mess with." And then he returns to a more normal voice. "And I didn't exactly have anything specific planned, we can chat about whatever. Global warming, robots, Disney princesses, robot Disney princesses, Miyazaki's use of on-screen downtime to make the action sequences more meaningful and exciting, ancient mythology. You know, whatever you feel like."

 

"Does... does this new planet already have global warming? I bet Kankri would know. ... Actually I bet he'd have no idea, but Porrim would know. Man, I wonder if all these new trolls and humans think and talk about us as much as we do them. I mean, it's not like we've actually interacted all that much. Not for lack of some of them trying, and I imagine that a few of them would be alright to have around." He fiddles idly with Hal's fingers on his waist and rests his head back against his neck and shoulder. The dizziness really is much better, it's a huge relief.

 

Hal shrugs, shoulders moving under Dirk, and rubs his thumbs over the fingers playing with his. That's kinda nice, very domestic, and just pleasant feeling in general. "I mean it's already got all the technology and shit the other humans had in their times so it'd make sense it's saddled with global warming as well, right? I dunno. We're those weird mysterious Striders who never go out, so either they constantly forget we exist or they spread rumours about us amongst each other all the time. When we actually do the, you know, going outside thing, they'll all be so amazed that I'm not actually a robot and you don't have two extra eyes hiding behind your shades."

 

"Why would I have extra eyes? That's a weirdly specific thing for people to think I have. How many eyes do people think the Daves have then? Wait. Are my glasses actually cracked? I thought I saw that..." His stomach twists a little bit at the thought. He can replace them, but this set has been with him through a lot. "I lost my L'il Cal, which, yeah, turned out to be a good thing I suppose, but it would suck to lose those glasses too."

 

"I. I dunno if they're cracked. I didn't check." Hal drops his head, pushing his face into Dirk's hair. It's mostly soft and the tiniest bit scratchy, and it still feels a little damp against his skin. Dirk is sitting in front of him heavy and warm, and he twists his hands to try to grab onto Dirk's. He squeezes his eyes tight shut, but he can still see/experience the error messages popping up, warning him too much pressure was being applied to his frame. His arms tighten around Dirk. "C'n we talk 'bout something else."

 

For a second Dirk is really confused by the sudden upset in Hal's voice, but then he goes over what he just said in his mind a couple of times and internally kicks himself. Cracked glasses frames. His fingers tangle up with Hal's gently, and he reaches for something he can say. "Hal, I'm sorry, I didn't mean... um..." That's another time that Hal almost died, and then shortly after he kind of did for a while. Fuck. Fucking hell. "I'm a thoughtless ass, and you've almost died too many times." He frees one hand and finds Hal's leg beside him to rub the outside of his thigh soothingly. "I'm going to protect you... I can't make it up to you, it would be gross to try, but I'll look after you. I'm..." He presses back into Hal a bit and brings one of Hal's hands to his face and rubs his cheek on it. "Sorry."

 

Dirk talking and touching him of his own volition helps. He squeezes Dirk's fingers with his, rubbing his thumb on Dirk's cheek, his freed hand's thumb hooking into a belt loop on Dirk's pants. He's the one who needs grounding now, and he slides his face down out of Dirk's hair and into his shoulder, tucking in in between shoulder and neck. He's not stuck in a computer that's continued existence depends on the goodwill of others, he has his own fleshy meatsack made mostly of water and he can move around and pick things up and run away if he has to or wants to. He can feel the block in his throat and knows his voice is almost if not completely gone so he doesn't bother trying to talk and drive it the rest of the way away. "Mm-mh." He doesn't need- okay, he does need looking after, but the idea of Dirk doing it because of what happened rather than because he wants to is... unpleasant.

 

Instead of answering him, Hal makes a noise in his throat and hides his face in Dirk's neck again. His stomach twists in an even worse way; he made Hal go nonverbal again with his stupidity. "Fuck, you said you wanted to talk about something else and I just." He tries to sit up quickly and turn around to both be able to see Hal and to not be laying on him anymore. Touching him while he can't speak makes Dirk feel hideously uncomfortable. "Hal do you need your- oof." Mid-scramble Dirk is overcome with a wave of dizziness and collapses face first into Hal's stomach. It's ridiculous; his butt is sticking up in the air and his loose workout pants are probably riding down a bit more than is decent and he's trying desperately to not throw up because that would just make everything so much worse. That also means that he's carefully not moving. After a couple of deep breaths he hiccups, and it's totally not a queasy sob born of frustration at his inability to do anything right, no, why would anyone ever even ask such a question?

"I'm not gonna be sick." *hic* "I'll get off you in a sec. Please be okay." All of this is mumbled unsteadily into Hal's stomach. His legs slooowly slip out from under him and he ends up laying flat with his face pressed into Hal's abdomen, but at least Hal could easily escape if he needed to from under the weight of his head.

 

Hal clutches at Dirk when he starts to move away, eyes opening wide. No, he needs to keep holding Dirk, needs it to remind himself that he's real and solid and- Dirk's head falls into his stomach, winding him slightly. He doesn't wait for Dirk to be able to move off him, leaning forward and curling around Dirk's upper body, arms on Dirk's shoulders. He can't bend down enough to press his head against Dirk like this, but he curls forward as much as he can, head hanging, his fingers gripping onto Dirk's bare back. It's actually better with his eyes open, because he processes vision so differently in this body to the shades. And he can move his head and eyes to change perspective whereas before he could only zoom in and out.

 

Hal doesn't react how he expected. The last time Dirk triggered this Hal needed away from him, but apparently this time he needs to hold on to someone. "Sorry, I didn't realize you needed, it's okay, I'm obviously not going anywhere." There isn't a lot he can do from this position but he does wrap his arms behind Hal, holding onto him by his hips. Fingers dig into his back and arms press him further down into Hal's lap. This is really uncomfortable for all parties involved, it must be. "Okay Hal, it's okay." He can't turn his head enough to look at Hal like he'd originally wanted, but that doesn't really matter when Hal needs something different.

He rubs Hal's lower back with a hand. "How do you want me? You can't talk so just, move me I guess? I can move, I'm just scared of accidentally making you feel worse. I'm fine with anything."

 

Hal relaxes somewhat when Dirk wraps his arms around him. The position is still not comfortable at all, but it is at least a little more comforting. He kind of gets what Dirk was talking about earlier, when he claimed Hal was keeping him from falling into the sky, although for Hal it feels more like Dirk is the one keeping him solid and in a body. He wants to wrap himself around Dirk and hold him, gather him up in his lap and his arms, but moving too much makes Dirk nauseous (and he hasn't checked how his memory's doing in a while but he's pretty sure that's not likely to take a sudden change now given that it hasn't already? And he can't focus on it now anyway) so he makes do with what he's got now, Dirk's arms around his waist and his around Dirk's shoulders. He shifts his hands down slightly, to tug Dirk a little higher up his body, trying to do it slow out of concern for Dirk's head but god it's so hard to concentrate on anything but the fact that he might become the shades agai- is not going to become the shades again because that is impossible and the thought needs to stop.

 

Moving up is something Dirk can do, he's just scared of making Hal feel trapped. Wait... it's pretty fucking useless if neither of them verbally communicate what's going on. "I can move up to lay on you if you want, but I don't want to make you feel trapped. Or I can be on my side, or on my back, whatever." He's already scooted up Hal's body a little bit and he looks up at him from somewhere just below his ribs. "Don't worry about me, unless you're trying to get me to sit upright in which case you'll have to give me a minute." He looks so freaked out, it breaks Dirk's heart but he doesn't know what to do about it. "Help me help you dude, please."

 

With Dirk up this high, Hal can just about reach him by stretching down. He kisses Dirk's forehead before drawing back slightly, nibbling on his own lip. He really doesn't want to let go of Dirk, but he doesn't see how else to communicate what he wants, so he squeezes Dirk tight before letting go, hoping that he doesn't take that as a sign to move away. With a little bit of twisting, he can get both hands together where Dirk can see them. He lays the index finger of one hand on top of the index finger of the other, both palm-side up, then turns his hands so the fingers are next to each other on their sides, and curls the one that had been on the bottom around the one that had been on top. Hopefully, Dirk will get what he wants. That's as clear as he can work out how to make it without just shoving Dirk down and he's not going to do that.

 

The little finger puppet show is very informative; Dirk was just expecting Hal to physically guide/push him around but now he's pretty sure he understands what Hal wants. "You want to lay down behind me on our sides, I can do that." This will entail not being between Hal's legs anymore, usually not an obstacle but apparently changing the elevation of his head isn't a great idea. It takes some shuffling, but he manages to get himself off of Hal, roll onto his back, and then onto his other side. "Okay, yeah, that wasn't bad at all, I'm not even dizzy." A couple of pillows stacked helps support his head and neck, and he makes sure to leave lots of space on the pillow behind him for Hal since he seems to need to be really close right now. Dirk also finally pulls the blankets up around his shoulders, it's nice to be warm.