Chapter Text
I did text him, after that. I text him that night mostly just to get his pesterchum handle. I ignore him after that, considering my Peter Pan box, laid neatly on top of my ‘respectable’ attire. A week’s worth of blow stares back at me, hidden by the grinning faces of Wendy and Tinkerbell. The metal is worn, paint breaking off near the latch from constant use. One corner is dented in, flakes of rust beginning to show, brown specks on the blue-black night sky.
For the first time, I consider if it’s worth it. I mean, yeah, I thought of stopping before- mostly after nasty nose bleeds where the blood gums in my throat and makes everything taste metallic for a week. Or when the cravings start and I have to ride a stranger’s cock, watching him stuff more money in my bra with every downstroke. But it never seemed like a worthwhile investment. I’m managing, I tell myself, over and over again. I am managing my addic- habit in the best way I know how. I’m rarely incoherent, and I’m rarely over the top. I manage.
My phone pings at me again, John asking if I’m alright.
The box gets stuffed beneath my clothes. Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow turns into later that evening, inhaling half of what I normally would because fucking hell I am going to to punch someone and then die if I don’t keep myself controlled. Which is fine. I’m under control. Everything is under control.
I earn two hundred dollars that night, almost exactly.
John pesters me at ten the next day.
EB: hey.
EB: work cancelled on me today, do you want to do something?
AG: Why the hell not?
EB: i dunno, that’s why i’m asking!
AG: No, I mean, let’s do something.
EB: what do you want to do?
AG: You’re the one who invited me in the first place!
EB: right. fuck.
EB: we could go bowling?
AG: Sure, let’s go 8owling.
AG: *Bowling.
AG: Old habit.
EB: ....okay.
We go bowling. He teaches me how to swing my arm just so, body angled next to mine, too-clean shoes squeaking on the polished wood floor.
That weekend, we go to a park near his house and eat lunch. He says he’s worried I’m not getting enough vegetables. I tell him I’m fine. And then he smiles at me, he smiles at me over and over again, making faces out of cherry tomatoes and hats out of folded lettuce leaves.
I pull out all my old roleplaying books for him, dusting off the surfaces of editions one, two, two point five and three. He listens when I explain the subtleties between them, telling him how I like the combat from version three but the character building from version two and the inventory system from one. We spend hours cutting pages and pasting them together again, and make a better manual.
And we talk. We talk every day, whenever we can. I start waking up earlier to catch him before he leaves for work at noon. He starts staying up later, talking me to sleep when I’m too tired to think straight, when I can’t even count my money without nodding off. We don’t talk about Rose and we don’t talk about my mom, but everything else is up for grabs and is grabbed. Our life stories, work, friends past and present (mine are sparse- his are more robust.) We swap books and we make fun of Jake’s accent and we go to the library together, every two weeks.
And it is soon the end of May and we are sitting on his couch, eating ice cream out of the carton. He’s in old Ghostbusters boxers, long past the point of giving a shit if I see the outline of him through the fabric. We were marathoning his movies for the last twelve hours, one after the next, and after a while he stopped providing commentary.
“Where’s Dave? I thought he was pretty much always around.”
“His sister’s place.” We leave it at that. John comes back from every visit with no good news, typing at me at the speed of light. A few weeks ago, he stopped altogether. She doesn’t want to see me, he said, and I pretended I bought that.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together recently,” he comments, eyes focused on the TV. Enough that I know the rhythm of his life. Enough that I know when he sticks his tongue out, just slightly, he’s thinking about something he can barely remember. Enough that he knows I stretch out on any surface offered, even if my arms end up on his thighs and my legs in the air. Enough that my feeling of knowing him forever is quickly becoming reality.
“Yeah.” It’s non committal, gracelessly out of my mouth, like sputum.
“Maybe we should do something about that.” He shrugs one shoulder, and I stab my spoon into the frozen center of Rocky Road.
“Whatever. Do you want to?” I turn to face him, studying his eyes as he considers his next words carefully.
“If... if you wanted to?” He doesn’t look at me. He refuses, steadfastly, to look at me, blue eyes not really watching Mad Max.
“It could be cool. I wouldn’t write it off.”
“You think so?”
“John, you need to look at me.”
He doesn’t.
“John.” I try to sound on the edge of tough and sweet, I aim too far and he cringes.
“I don’t- Vriska, I like you, and you’re really neat and everything, but I don’t date people who have... problems, like you.” He can’t look at me, curling harder into himself, knees almost to his mouth. It makes him look small, fragile, like a turtle missing its shell. His cheek sucks in and I realize he is biting it.
Sometimes, a lie is kinder than the truth.
“I quit.” I let that hang between us, heavy, waiting. This isn’t entirely untrue- I cut down a fuckload, just enough so my hands stay steady and I don’t walk around with everything but a literal black cloud betraying my mood.
He turns.
And oh, does he smile. His glasses reflect Mel Gibson back at me, and I smile at him as well. He smiles, and he bites his lower lip, and he’s actually pretty godamn close to me now and then he’s on me, lips on mine, one of his hands moving to wrap around my waist and pull me in closer to him. It’s been a lifetime since anyone did this who I didn’t push away, who I didn’t call for Zahhak to punch out the door, practically, and I almost melt into him, catching myself in time to crawl onto his lap, pushing his shoulders back and leaning above him. My hair brushes his face and he swats it away.
“Hey, Vriska.” He says, grinning like an absolute idiot, blue lipstick smeared around his mouth.
“Hey, John.” I parrot back, kissing him again, rolling my shoulders down to cover him, his hands on my back and counting the notches of my spine, tapping up to my neck and then tangle in my hair. I move from his lips to his jaw to his neck, smiling through every motion. He jumps when I touch the hollow between neck and shoulder and I giggle, dizzy and ecstatic.
“This...” he moves, kissing my nose, “this is nice.” I cringe, almost instantly.
“Which means you want more.”
“No! Not if you’re not- no. I’m a gentleman, Vriska.” He half-smiles at me and I wrap my arms around his back and pillow onto his sweaty chest.
This could work.