So Many Striders - Now With Illustrations!

TT: Alright, minor characters it is. Shall we start then?

And so it was that the brief and ultimately pointless adventures of the paladin-rogue Grolf the Pompous and the warrior bard Marsha'a with her battle bagpipes were had, leading to fourteen deaths, one Bagel Incident, and five very confused pigeons. Lots of fun was had, new possibilities for the future were explored, and finally Hal had to bow out to put his phone away and turn into Dirk's encircling arm to go to sleep.

 

Dirk wakes up from unsettling dreams to an unsettling reality. There are arms around him, and someone breathing against the top of his head. For a moment he thinks it's Roxy, they'd collapsed into piles now and again during the game before everything went bad. For a shorter, infinitely more awful moment he thinks it's Jake, the boy incapable of loving him back romantically, no matter how hard he tried. No mater how hard either of them tried. Finally his brain processed the fact that he has no idea of who is in bed with him, touching him while he's asleep. Unacceptably vulnerable.

He scrambles away from the interloper, pressing his back against the wall and yanking the blankets off his head so that he can see. There aren't any monsters or drones or carapacian assassins, just Hal. Just Hal in his bed.

Bluescreen. Reboot.

 

Hal falls asleep quickly, and stays peacefully unconscious until Dirk scrambles away from him, yanking the blankets down. This rather abrupt method of waking leaves him almost as startled as Dirk, and he stares up at him from the pillow until quickly remembering that he went to sleep in Dirk's bed last night.. Dirk looks scared, and Hal frowns in concern, reaching a hand out towards Dirk's, intending to take it and give a reassuring squeeze. "Hey, you alright? I'd like to think I'm not so ugly that that's your reaction to my face."

 

Yesterday happened. Good lord did yesterday happen. But that means there is a reason for Hal to be here. Oh. Oh god. There really is a reason that he's here. Hal is reaching for Dirk's hand and he flusters for a second before deciding it's too early to go full tsudere and just collapses back into his pillow.

"I'm fine." His voice is gravely with sleep and he doesn't even want to know what his hair looks like. "Just startled. Not used to waking up in bed with my own doppleganger, there's creepypasta that starts like that."

 

Yesterday definitely happened. Dirk doesn't move away or anything when Hal reaches for his hand, just gets a little red around the face, so he gives it a good squeeze and keeps hold of it afterwards, thumb rubbing back and forth over the nearest knuckle.

Dirk's hair looks rather good, really, all ruffled up and sexy-looking and shit, but is probably not how he'd prefer it to look. Hal shifts his arm under his head to rest against it. "But who was phone?" He yawns, then continues. "Anyway, how's your head feeling? You were able to sit up pretty fast there without falling over from dizziness."

 

"Still kinna hurts, but in a normal headache way, not a dizzy nausea way like yesterday." Hal is holding his hand. Yesterday kind of feels like something that happened to someone else, especially all the super embarrassing emotional bits. That's probably why Hal is holding his hand right now, fuck. "You don't have to nursemaid me anymore." He winces. "Not that I'm not grateful."

He turns his face into his pillow and groans. "I can't believe I'm being 'morning after' awkward without having even gotten any."

 

"And if I fucked off out the room, d'you think you'd freak out and think I'd died or would you be cool with it?" Hal makes no attempt to move anywhere, because he's enjoying being in bed with Dirk far too much to want to. Also, they're in the middle of a conversation, and that would be rude. He snorts with laughter when Dirk groans into the pillow, giving his hand another squeeze.

"It's okay, dude. I get that my nursemaiding has been unsatisfactory in the costume department and it's making you feel awkward, and I promise I'll do better if the situation arises again. What would your preference be, miniskirt or hotpants?" He is absolutely talking shit, but that doesn't mean he kind of likes the idea too.

 

"What? I mean, god, ew, yeah sorry about that. I'm good." That was totally a thing he did. There were a number of other 'panic at loss of control' things that he did, all of them alarming in the light of day. Dirk doesn't want to think about it.

Dirk also doesn't want to think about Hal in hotpants. He drags the blanket over his head and groans again.

 

"Hey nah, bro, no need to apologise for it. You were temporarily screwed over by the concussion, and it was making you panic. You are, if you'll let me repeat you here, good." Dirk drags the blanket over his head, and Hal's lips twitch as he tries to hold back a laugh.

"Whoa, dude, where are you looking there?"

 

Dirk yanks the blanket off his head, an angry blush on his face. He scrubs his hands over his face and hides there, like if he can't see Hal then Hal can't be a bag of assholes at him. "It's early Hal, in the actual morning." The wall prevents him from scooting even farther away. He cannot handle dealing with the repercussions of yesterday's Dirk's decisions without a shower and a pot of coffee. Two pots of coffee.

 

Hal grins, like a bag of assholes, although his actions resulting in Dirk no longer letting him hold his hand is a shame. He pats Dirk's wrist, then rolls onto his back, sitting up and scooting to lean against the head of the bed. "I mean it's not early early, but yeah okay, fair enough. Final result, then: sore but no longer with a concussion influencing your mental state? I promised I'd let Davepeta know how you were doing when you woke up."

 

"O- oh?" Dirk lowers his hands. "What did you tell them? And yeah, I think that sounds about right. I can't really be sure I guess but, eh, I woke up just now without having gone into a coma so there's a good indicator."

 

"That I almost had a very fatal accident, you saved me and hit your head hard, some of your symptoms, and that we made out a lot." Hal pulls out his phone, focusing rather over-intently on it as he waits for it to turn back on.

 

Oh Goooooood. Oh GOD. Dirk's eyes go wide and his face turns beet red. It feels like his stomach is being twisted and stabbed at the same time. He presses himself against the wall again, dragging the blankets to cover the lower half of his face again. His immediate reaction is to get upset with Hal, but no, Hal needs to be able to talk about whatever he wants with his friends. "Gnk!" He tries again, quiet and rather freaked out. "What... what did they say?"

 

Dirk makes a weird noise and Hal glances across, wishing for his shades (but that wouldn't be fair when Dirk's are still on the roof). He doesn't look mad at Hal for telling someone. Which is good. He's good. "They were uh... a little teasingly grossed out whenever I started to get towards any detail, as they see both of us as their brothers, but happy for me once I'd cleared up that you knew it was something I wanted and didn't just plant one on me out of absolutely nowhere."

 

Oh, ouch. Dirk feels a bit like he's been doused with cold water. "They assumed I would... I see." His body feels heavy and sad, but he's thankfully in control of his emotions enough now to keep from having some absurd emotional meltdown. The tension leaves his body and he kind of sags into the bed. His voice sounds flat and emotionless, he's glad of that too what with how he often sounded yesterday.

"But you cleared up the misunderstanding. Good." It's clearly inappropriate for him to be touching Davepeta and the others. He'll solidify plans for helping the sprites take over each other's physical therapy and care later.

 

"What- no, Dirk!" Hal is not good at recognising facial expressions, but a flat and emotionless voice is a flat and emotionless voice, and that's not ok. He drops his phone and leans over to flop on Dirk, arms wrapping around him as best he can and face pushing down insistently under the covers so he can tuck it in next to Dirk's neck. That was a sad reaction and not what Hal intended so Dirk is going to be cuddled until he starts feeling better.

"They don't think badly of you, Dirk, and I don't think any of the sprites do, but I can't say that for sure like I can for Davepeta. Davepeta likes you, we even had a whole discussion about them liking you. Which is a thing that they do. I think they think of you a lot like they do y- our big bro, because you took on that caregiver role so fast, so they have like some left over wariness from the physical similarity to the Other Guy but they do genuinely like you as a person, because you're likeable as a person. And shit. Uh. I've never been that great at this whole comforting thing, which is what I'm trying and wanting to do here, so if you could let me know if anything I'm saying here is helping at all that'd be good."

 

Suddenly everything is Hal and Dirk supposes that yesterday he would have needed this, but today it strikes him as an overreaction. Before yesterday Hal very rarely clung to him like this, and not for things as mundane as him ceasing to emote. (That's not to say Dirk doesn't enjoy being comforted and having his emotional states recognized, but he's not thinking about that. Not at all.)

"It's fine if they don't like me, I'm not expecting that or anything else really. And I know they're a bit uncomfortable having me take care of them. I've been thinking on ways to remedy the issue. Um." Dirk's arms are trapped in the blanket, but after a bit of struggling he manages to extract one and put it awkwardly around Hal's shoulder. "You don't have to comfort me, but I appreciate... and you're doing a good job I think. I'm not the best judge but, yeah, a solid B+." Dirk coughs quietly, he'd started to get into a nervous ramble and feels like he's trying to physically clear it from his throat.

"What, er, did you and Davepeta say about- about me? Not that I thought they hated me or anything of course! And they obviously can feel about me any way they like." Dirk lingers over an awkward pause and follows it up with disbelief. "They like me?"

 

It hadn't really occurred to Hal to hug Dirk when he felt like Dirk was feeling bad, before - or that Dirk would willingly accept such hugs, let alone that they might help him to feel better. But yesterday he'd clung to Hal, and Hal remembers it, and is trying to do better. Davepeta mentioned not wanting to apologise to Dirk for treating him like an Adult Person Who Is A Bit Scary and, well, is maybe not the only one who feels that way.

Dirk starts to struggle under Hal, and he draws back a little just in case that's what Dirk wants, but instead he gets an arm around his shoulder so he settles back down. "They do like you, though. I'm like 90% certain here, and I think if they didn't like you they wouldn't let you get involved in their PT at all. But they do, so they do, and... yeah. You're a good person, and shit, and they know it." Wow, telling Dirk he's good is way harder than telling Davepeta the same, or just flirting with him. Which probably means it's what he should be doing, or something, but he's really glad he's not having to look Dirk in the face right now and instead can hide down by his shoulder.

"Well there's some stuff they'll probably want to be the one to tell you, because we realised there was a thing they were doing by accident and didn't want to be doing, regarding how they treat you, but yeah dude. They like you. We talked about how I feel about you, and what your concussion symptoms were, which they empathise with by the way, and they were totally ready to call Bro to bully you to hospital because they were worried. Uh, what else... we exchanged a couple reasons why we both like you... oh yeah, and do you wanna join us the next time I stream a movie with them? Because we realised we've been kinda rude in never inviting you to that."

 

"Oh." Dirk rests his cheek very lightly against Hal's head and makes his arm more comfortable around Hal's upper back. He doesn't really know how to respond to all of that, especially with the mean, anxious little part of him that insists that can't be true and demands to know what Hal gets out of lying to him. "I'm glad... if somewhat skeptical. It's Davepeta, you know? They generally like and are friendly with everyone, even me."

Dirk feels uncomfortable when Hal talks about exchanging reasons they like him, it sounds fake. "What would their reasons for liking me even be, 'has never thrown a baby off the roof'? I just bet they know all about concussions. These are the lofty heights of brohood I aspire to. 'Has never intentionally given a small child brain damage.' I'll put it right at the top of resume. But um. Yeah I guess. You don't have to invite me to things but if you wanna drag me along to movie streaming I don't mind."