So Many Striders - Now With Illustrations!

Dirk twitches and then flinches hard as Hal pokes his ribs. Top secret information has been compromised. Extreme measures approved and ready to deploy. He automatically presses himself in the couch and snaps his arms down to cover his sides defensively. "Don't tickle me, I will not be responsible for what happens if you tickle me, I almost broke Jake's nose on accident the time he tried. The one time he tried." Welp. He's awake now. His breath is a bit wheezy and he tries to calm down. "And don't tell anyone. Please."

 

Wow. Well at least he's more awake now? Hal pulls his hands back, hugging his arms around himself instead. Look, no tickling, promise. "You got it, bro. My lips are sealed and my hands will stay firmly away from your sides at all times." Dirk is probably all tense again now, too, though. oops. "... Back feeling any better?"

Right after he asks, however, the buzzer at the door goes off and Hal groans, getting to his feet. Yay food, etcetera, but apparently sitting right back down with stiff legs after sitting in the same position for nine hours didn't do much to stop them from aching, who would have thought it?

"I'll get it."

 

He rubs his hand over where Hal poked and grumbles to himself. "What kind of bullshit evolutionary trait leaves a person breathlessly incapacitated due to light touches on the torso? Having a body is bullshit and I would like to register a complaint."

Hal comes back with food and he almost forgives him. "I'm serious about telling anyone though Hal. If Roxy tickled me and I hurt her on accident I think I'd throw myself off a cliff. I don't think she'd be able to resist trying it if she knew." The smell of food makes him nauseous, he's that hungry. For the moment he nibbles on some fries and tries not to sulk.

"My back does feel better though. Thanks."

 

Settling back down on the couch after dropping the bag of food off in the centre of it, Hal fishes out and then opens his pizza box and pulls out a slice of doughy, cheesy goodness, breaking the crust in the middle so he can fold it over itself and shove about half of it in his mouth at once. It's hot and greasy and pretty much heaven. His mouth is rather full as a result, so he just nods and gives Dirk a thumbs up until he's chewed the pizza enough to swallow it.

"Yeah, I'm not going to tell anyone. As far as I know, you've not told anyone about that whole heart to heart thing we had because I couldn't face going out of the apartment, so it seems like a fair exchange to me."

 

After a couple of fries his stomach settles and then hunger comes back online at full force. He finishes half the burger, hardly breathing in between between bites. He'd set up the TV a while ago, so he gets the worst of the burger juice (delicious) off a hand and starts flipping through random channels. "Say when, or did you wanna watch a movie? I dunno if I'll be awake for a whole movie." The couch is so comfortable, he sinks into the cushions and works on not eating so fast he gets sick.

"Man. Food is weird. It just shows up now. That's weird. I didn't have to kill anything, or worry about botulism. I mean. I think." He looks at his hamburger with mock suspicion.

 

Hal works his way methodically and hastily around the circle of his pizza, munching his way through it like there's some sort of prize at the end. (The prize is having finished the whole pizza.) He swallows the large piece in his mouth when Dirk picks up the remote, watching the channels flick by until he catches the opening sequence of Project Runway, and motions for Dirk to stop. "Let's watch people getting pissy about fashion, that's always fun."

He glances over at Dirk at the comments about food, and snorts with laughter when he looks at his hamburger. "I think you're safe from botulism, so long as you don't start killing your own food again. Shit now gets pretty well sanitised after all." He leans forward to take another bite of pizza, but grimaces instead, rubbing the back of his neck as it clicks painfully.

 

"You don't KNOW I'm not pining for seagull eggs and fossilized spam. Tastes like home man." He stuffs a handful of fries in his mouth and tries to continue talking. "We fould kee cfickens onna roof." He swallows. "Recreate some precious childhood memories."

The show holds his attention for a couple of minutes, enough time for him to start feeling uncomfortably full. He hasn't finished half his food though, probably just ate too fast. Then he notices Hal pulling faces. "Is it your turn to hop on the therapeutic pain train dude? I can make that happen for you." He cleans his hands with a napkin and makes wiggly fingers.

 

Hal shakes his head. "Okay, neither of those are things you killed yourself, but nice try. As for chickens, I'm not sure we're allowed to keep a small pet in the apartment let alone a pen full of chickens on the roof. Besides, if they belonged to us we'd have to clean up after them and feed them regularly and so on, and that sounds like more effort than I'm willing to go to to create something that's almost, but not quite, completely unlike said precious childhood memories."

He eyes Dirk's wiggly fingers and rolls his eyes, smiling. "Only if you want to. Eat your fill first though, dude, I don't want to be getting in between you and your food." He nods at the half finished burger.

 

"We could get some kind of pet though. Like a cat. Or a robot cat. Wait, the tech isn't advanced enough for a robot cat, damn." The technological confines of this universe were seriously chaffing his buttcheeks. They were going to need to reinvent a lot of the good shit themselves.

"My stomach needs to settle before I can eat more or I'll puke. Turn here." Dirk grins as he shifts to face Hal. "I promise not to throw up on the back of your neck."

 

"We could get one of those shitty robot dogs that fall on their sides a lot and whirr pathetically. I feel he and I would be able to sympathise a lot with each other." He's joking, and yet he can picture himself and a Teksta (TM) lying on the floor and whining together with ease.

"And wow, that's just filling me with confidence here bro." He turns his back to Dirk, pulling his legs up onto the couch to sit cross-legged, scooting himself closer to Dirk. "You need a bowl or something to be ready to puke into?"

 

"No way man. We're doing this Russian roulette style." He runs his fingers along Hal's neck and shoulders, feeling for obvious knots. "Tell me where it hurts and I'll make it hurt different."

"You know, I miss Squarewave. I feel like at the very least we could set up a kind of DJ Roomba in his honor until we have the tech to make weird, awesome little robots again."

 

Hal bites down hard on the inside of his lip to prevent a shiver when Dirk's fingers run over his neck and shoulders. This was maybe a bad idea, but if he says he wants to back out now, Dirk will want to know why. Damned overly sensitive flesh prison, who gave it the right to respond so openly to shit? He lifts a hand, pointing to right where his neck joins his torso on each side. "Here, mostly. Oh, and down here." He adds a tap to a point further along his shoulder.

"It is a bit strange not to get frequent, adorably hopeful requests to rap, isn't it? I'm sure he'd be thrilled to have a DJ Roomba added to the household in his honour, from where he looks down on us from the big server in the sky."

 

Dirk curls his fingers down over Hal's shoulders just beside his neck to brace his hands and pushes his thumbs into the offending muscle. He starts off gently since Hal's likely never had a massage before and he doesn't want to fuck him up for real. His body naturally leans close so that he can leverage his weight down more easily, applying pressure without having to exert a lot of effort. "Let me know if it hurts too badly, or isn't doing anything for you."

He laughs softly, more breath than sound. "Wouldn't it have been amazing if the game had given him a body too? And Sawtooth? Can you even imagine? I feel like Squarewave would have been incarnated as one of those insanely smart birds only nicer."

 

Hal's shoulders stiffen when Dirk's fingers curl down over them, which is the opposite of helpful. He's got nothing to worry about though, they've been getting along well and he was helpful and productive. "Mmh, could you press a little harder?" The harder Dirk presses, the faster his muscles will relax, he's 84% sure that's how it works.

"Like a parrot or something, with a big red plume on his head? Do parrots even have plumes or is that some other bird. Oh, and instead of screaming he'd totally rap loudly until you did whatever it was he wanted. Sawtooth'd be a raven, if he was a bird, for sure."

 

Dirk hisses when Hal tenses. That's gotta hurt. "You're gonna instinctively tense against the pain but that just makes it hurt worse. Try to relax." He squeezes harder like Hal asks, careful not to dig in too sharply and bruise him. He walks his fingers a bit higher along Hal's shoulders, almost on his neck, and tries to work the muscle there. That's where he hurts a lot of the time and it's really difficult to take care of himself.

"Yeah, I like Sawtooth as a raven. And Lil' Seb as a crow. One of those horrifically smart, asshole ones that con people out of their food and shit. But yeah, Squarewave would be a birb. One of the funny ones that would make us internet famous."

 

"I did notice the increase in pain, yeah. I'll try'n relax." Hal almost manages it, before Dirk's fingers move closer to his neck, and then it's right back to stress. A puff of air shoots out of his nose, but he presses his tongue swiftly to the back of his mouth to block any suspicious whining or whatever that might follow it. He experiments with clenching his fists and relaxing his shoulders, and it works reasonably well, in that it allows him to be tense without making the pain in his shoulders agonising.

He nods slightly at the suggestion of Seb as a crow. "Yeah. Sounds like him. Australian magpie for Brobot?"

 

"Ha! Is that those horrible attack birds? That sounds about right, especially since he was built specifically for Hell Murder Island anyway."

Hm. This isn't working. "It seems like you're using your shoulder muscles to sit or keep your head up or something. You wanna lean back against me? That might be easier for both of us." Dirk has been feeling a bit snuggly of late anyway, might as well if it'll help.

 

"Yeah, those are the ones. I feel a bit bad for Squarewave now though, he's the only one who's not a corvid. Maybe we could make him a jay instead of a parrot?"

Hal hesitates, because wow that sounds like a lot of awkwardly close contact, but it wouldn't be for long and he's starting to get sleepy anyway, with a belly full of warm food, which tends to make him less hyperaware of that sort of thing. So, he scoots backwards until he can slouch against Dirk, head resting on his shoulder. "This what you had in mind?"

 

"Yeah, here let me just." Dirk shifts his various legs so that they won't fall asleep, one pressed into the cushions and one hanging off the side of the couch. He wraps an arm around Hal's waist to support him and digs his fingers into Hal's shoulder with the other. "Let me know when I should switch sides."

"Nah. Square was too sweet to be an asshole jay. Those are mean birds. Plus this whole bird AU is based off of Square being a loud, hilarious rap-bird. He's the original man, make the others to match, not the other way around."

 

Hal feels a little like a ventriloquist's puppet, sat in front of Dirk like this, although if he was one he'd have Dirk's hand up his ass instead of resting on his waist. "Mm- yeah, I will." Hal can feel Dirk's voice vibrating in his chest, beneath his head, and there must be something evolutionary going on here because it makes him relax more, shoulders sinking as they ease up.

"That's true. Maybe we should shake it up with Brobot then... make him one of those Australian velociraptor birds instead of a death magpie. Fuck it, what are they called, cassowaries. They're bigger and less intelligent, which seems appropriate as he had the least developed AI."