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The first time they kiss is in the strange middle ground between fall and winter. Dirk has slush pouring into his high tops because the weather can’t seem to decide between snow or rain. There’s nothing worse than cold, wet socks. But he has no spare brain power to allot to anything that isn’t the task at hand.
Jake is cupping his face with square hands, fingers pressed into blond sideburns. He pulls Dirk down and mashes their mouths together in a desperate gesture of intimacy, grabbing for anything, and Dirk is motionless as Jake’s buckteeth dig into his bottom lip. He jerks closer, like he’s suddenly remembered that these awkward doll joints and frozen limbs belong to him. The movement makes his shades clack against Jake’s glasses and knocks them askew.
He kisses back. It is clumsy and lost, the way spontaneous kisses are. Dirk wishes one of Jake’s maps could plot their way, as if kissing were a jungle. Maybe Dirk could turn kissing into an algorithm so he doesn’t need to rely on Jake’s expertise, a puzzle that he might solve with numbers and applied logic. Jake’s hands are hot and Dirk is shaking from something deeper than the weather, more than just soggy, cold socks.
The train’s steam horn blares and shatters the moment, attendants shutting the doors and preparing for departure. Jake breaks the kiss, breathing hard and not waiting for a moment. He avoids any eye contact, stooping to gather his 70 liter backpack off the ground. He runs across the station platform and slips through a closing door, flashing his ticket and, no doubt, a megawatt smile. Dirk watches, breathing ragged, as Jake disappears.
Jake does not look back.
They have not talked since.
-----
The kindest, and perhaps only, gift the Game has presented Dirk is the misty memories. No one can remember what happened in stunning detail; there is nothing but cloudy, half-recalled plots and events and people.
The world has been rebuilt under their feet, and if not for the fact that Dirk and Roxy were pulled from the future, and the four kids that were their guardians in another life, it might have been a dream.
They remember it like a dream, overarching themes and bright, short spots of time illuminated in intricate detail and everything else like sand, slowly slipping away into eroded half thoughts they can barely catch.
Dirk can remember brushing his lips across warm, taut skin and the low chuckle that reverberates through Jake’s body and into his chest cavity. He does not know if it is a memory or a self-indulgent dream. He remembers his aspect, that it had to be broken before he could realize his true potential. He thinks of grass green eyes hazy with afterglow and affection, impossibly bright against the deep brown of his skin. He decides that he is much happier not knowing whether they are fabrications or not.
-----
“Hey dickbag, you ate all the fucking Cheetos.” Dirk doesn’t jump like he would have six years ago. He can see Dave slumped against the doorframe in his periphery, but keeps his attention on the tiny screw he’s trying to get into place.
“I did. That’s what they’re there for, man. Consumption. Nutrients to my thin and fragile body.”
“I wrote my name on them, Dirk. Dave motherfuckin’ Strider all over the package, they were mine and you ate them like a slobbering animal.” Dirk raises an eyebrow over his protective eye gear, squashing his amusement down to concentrate.
“That’s exactly how it happened. Careful, I haven’t had my rabies shot yet.”
“You’re a bad man, man.”
“I know. Hey, careful with the apple juice. I really had to go on my way back from the supermarket and I can’t remember which bottle I pissed in.”
The noise Dave makes is choked and John is laughing from the living room. The door to his workshop slams shut and he can barely hear Dave talking about Howie Mandel and the violation of sweet, golden ambrosia. John’s laughter turns a little condescending, and Dirk hears him state that Little Monsters jokes are so pre-Game, Dave, give it a rest. Dirk knows that Dave won’t. Dirk and Dave will crack shitty apple juice jokes until they’re on their deathbeds. It’s easier to pretend that Dirk was always there when they take inside jokes to a new, infuriating level under the flimsy cover of irony.
Dirk returns his attention to the task at hand, the screw finally in place and wielding a different tool to tweak the logic board he’s preparing to wire into his newest creation.
It’s nothing special, really. A mechanical arm capable of both handling a small child and tearing solid rock asunder, but compared to Sawtooth, to Lil Hal, it’s a children’s toy. It’s a commission from NASA for their newest rover project on Titan, the largest moon in Saturn’s orbit. It had taken a long time to create a prototype that would be able to function in that particular atmosphere. He had spent a lot of time in Jade’s labs, carefully building the appropriate levels of chemicals to match Titan’s atmosphere and sending the prototypes out to play. They would generally short out and cease functioning within a few seconds, but there was one particularly fabulous prototype that erupted in a shower of multicoloured sparks before exploding in the most exquisite ball of flames.
He and Jade had bumped knuckles after the conflagration had been extinguished and Jade had put the footage up on YouTube.
There is a loud thump from the living room and John’s laughter takes flight, tittering over Dave’s pained groan. Dirk takes his safety glasses off and sets his project aside, pushing his shades up his nose and heading out into the melee. Dave is attempting to tug John off the futon and into a tussle on the floor. Dirk steps over them and kicks Dave in the ribs with barely enough force to startle.
“Hey, this isn’t your fucking fight!”
“Don’t care. That futon is sacred, don’t wreck it.” Dirk pads into the kitchen and combs through the pantry. It’s been ransacked, of course. When you share an apartment with a pair of growing teenagers, you have to do a lot of grocery shopping. Dirk grabs a sleeve of crackers to munch on, soothed by the dulcet sounds of Dave squawking while he and John wrestle. Dirk can hear the exact moment that Dave loses, doomed to a face pressed to the floor and an infuriating giggle in his ears.
-----
After the Game ended, Dirk and Dave had moved from Houston. There were too many memories in the cramped apartment, memories that were distinctly memories and not washed out possibilities in the back of his mind.
They were sixteen and thirteen. They were more capable than approximately ninety-three percent of the adult population, if Lil Hal’s math was correct (which it always was).
John was losing his mind in the Crocker household, seeing his not-father around every corner, steeped in the smell of freshly baked cake and burning tobacco.
Mr. Crocker dealt with all of the financial business that no minor would ever be able to finagle, if only for legal purposes. He refused the Striders’ cash despite Dirk’s insistence and secured a five bedroom apartment in Seattle, Washington, with John Egbert, roommate extraordinaire, in tow.
The extra bedrooms were meant to be spare bedrooms for the Harley-Englishes and the Lalondes. Instead, the largest bedroom was turned into a music room, complete with two sets of turntables and a baby grand piano, while the smallest was converted into a workshop for Dirk’s robotics.
There was a very official wrestling match to see who would get the bedroom with the en suite bathroom. Dirk won (like he knew he would) and scrawny little Dave ended up with the bedroom with windows that opened onto the rising sun.
Dirk often ends up on the couch when the Lalondes are in town. However, It’s not uncommon for Rose to rough it while Dirk and Roxy curl up on his bed and whisper to one another like before the Game, voices tinny through crappy speakers and cutting out from Roxy’s shitty connection. He’ll also give his bed up when Jane visits them, whether she’s in from Maple Valley for an evening or on break from her fancy culinary school in the French Riviera. Jade will end up in bed with John or Dave regardless of the empty state of Dirk’s bed.
Jake is an adventurer, following the story he built for himself, framed through his isolation and his obsession with cinema. Jake does not come to visit.
-----
“Dirk, why is there nothing to eat?” Dave is whining from the kitchen again. Dirk can hear John button mashing in the living room.
“Dunno. What do you want me to do about it, squirt?”
“I don’t fucking know, maybe grocery shop for your scrawny and needy brother?”
“You’re nineteen years old, butt trumpet. I’m pretty sure you can conquer the supermarket on your own.” Dave falls back against the cupboards and raises his hands, playing up his own melodrama. It’s not hard to equate this Dave with the Dave you studied on the director’s cut of the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff moives. Dave’s penchant for the dramatic seems to be a universal constant. This Dave’s irony cred leaves something to be desired, but he’s more to Dirk than some stranger on a DVD ever was.
“What if some pervert takes me away?” Dirk rolls his eyes and bites back a grin.
“I’d thank him for the three hours of peace he gave me before dropping your annoying ass off back here.”
“Rude.” Dirk ignores him in favor of chewing on the end of a pencil and editing the concept work of another little companion for Jane. Every great chef needs a small robotic animal to help them in the kitchen and the boardroom or whatever Jane’s going to be doing when she inherits the company. He falls back on the couch and erases a few measurements, rewriting them in easier to manage, more rectangular dimensions. John’s lecture notes are spread around him, uncapped pens and neon post-it notes littered across the carpet.
“What’s this bull?” Dirk asks, gesturing to the homework detritus.
“I have a test tomorrow,” John answers, blowing a zombie’s head off.
“Doing a little last minute studying, I see.”
“You know it.”
Dirk rolls his eyes and Dave drapes himself over the back of the couch, flopping one of his hands in Dirk’s face.
“Diiiirk, there’s nothing to eat and it is your fault.”
“Stop whining, asshole, we have a studying studier over there,” Dirk says, pointing his pencil in John’s direction.
“Yeah, Dave! Sheesh!” John’s input comes with a whoop of triumph as he makes it to the safe house.
“Shut the fuck up, Egbert, my stomach is more important than your Econ test,” Dave says. He hooks a leg over the back of the couch and wiggles until he’s laying across the back of it.
“Come over here and say that to my face, douche lord!” John’s eyes are still glued to the television. Dave doesn’t attempt to move toward him, draped over the couch like a gangly kitten.
“You two are fucking ridiculous.”
“Your face is fucking ridiculous.”
Dirk rolls his eyes again and elbows Dave in the ribs. Dave wobbles and has to grip the upholstery to stay on his perch. “Settle down there, Wordsworth, I can barely keep up to your intricate word play.”
“Fuck you.”
Dirk laughs, two staccato sounds clipped out of his smirking mouth.
“And it just keeps coming. Who knew I was related to the most talented wordsmith of our time? I’m so proud of you, Dave, really. You’ll have to bring me to one of your poetry slams.”
“You say that, but I haven’t even started up the sick fires.”
Dirk leans his head onto the back of the couch, rolling it and taking in Dave’s shit eating grin.
“Are we talking third degree burns here?”
“It’ll take your eyes–ow!” Dave catches the pen hurtling towards him before it actually makes contact, but he has his reputation as a drama queen to consider. John doesn’t turn his attention from his game once.
“That’s what you get when you distract me from my very important studying, jackass! And with such crappy, outdated jokes, too. Now shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”
-----
Dirk had always dreamed of ditching Houston for something grand, something different and busy, with crowds to lose himself in. Even when Houston turned out to be different in the supreme when it wasn’t underwater, he itched to be elsewhere, somewhere new and clean and not tainted by the memories of suffocating isolation. He wanted to be an anonymous face in a sea of sentience. He’d considered New York, London, Cairo. What he got was an apartment in Seattle, his GED, and a Masters in Robotics that he’d breezed through in the span of four years.
He got two brothers and a bed as wide and empty as a desert. He got Skype calls to his two best friends, to a little sister across the country, to a pal who he could drink himself stupid with and chatter with about String Theory and the positive aspects of using screws made out of tungsten instead of surgical steel. He got his crowds of people, his contact, his conversation. He found that, while the sheer amount of sentient life outside of himself was comforting, he dealt better with small groups of close friends or outright isolation.
Sometimes he thinks about Jake, about where he’s been and what he’s doing. He’ll think about the girls talking to him about Jake’s phone calls, stories about bull running in Spain and festivals in India where they fight with brightly dyed powder. He thinks about Jake’s phone calls, about Jake’s travels being fed to him second and third hand, about the pointed silence of his own cell phone, the emptiness of his email inbox and the Facebook account he made specifically to keep in touch.
He pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind, where he keeps all of the other remnants of a universe he would rather not remember.
-----
Jake sends mementos of his travels. Jane gets one first, a postcard of llamas on Machu Picchu in Peru. He’s doodled mustaches and little top hats on them, penned a quick greeting on the back. Jane is delighted, of course, and hangs it up on her cooking station.
Jade’s comes next. He’s had an African mask carved for her, tells her it’s from the same area of the continent that her Grandpa’s family was from. It’s as long as her forearm, all bared teeth and furrowed brows created from spongy wood. She tries to wear it in the lab for a whole day and ends up knocking over a beaker of acid with the elongated chin. She runs it under cold water for nearly twenty minutes before tucking it away in her office, fearful of its safety at her own hands.
Roxy’s is also a postcard, three weeks after the arrival of Jade’s mask. Three beefed up men pose on an Australian beach, and Jake’s taken the liberty of doodling a little Roxy in the corner with a martini glass, wide eyes, and heart shaped pupils.
When Dirk’s comes, he doesn’t tell anyone. It comes in a plain envelope, a myriad of stamps across the top and no return address. He opens it with careful fingers and he can taste his heart in his throat.
It’s a photograph of Jake. He’s standing on a mountain, a backpack strapped to his body and haloed by the colourful light of sunrise. He’s grinning. Dirk presses a hand to his mouth, breathing out heavily. There’s writing on the back, a date, Jomolhari (which, when Dirk Googles it later, he finds out is in the Himalayan mountain range in Tibet), and a quick message. Two words, barely an afterthought.
Miss you.
Jake is the lightening strike to Dirk’s ragged beach.
Jake strikes and Dirk is rendered motionless, a sudden burst of twisted glass refracting Jake’s borrowed light.
Dirk traces Jake’s grin on glossy photo paper, brushes over the faint marks where a pen has touched the back. Miss you.
He loosens the moorings and lets his last boat out into the waves.
-----
Dirk fills the empty months with working, taking commissions for robots that help with housework and simple AI to direct calls for large companies. He patents his ideas, sells software and components to Apple and Microsoft and Blackberry and Wacom, rakes in cash like brittle leaves in the autumn. Most of it goes to paying off his student loans, to ensuring that John and Dave don’t have to pay their own.
He tries to mend the cracks in his life with his brothers. He indulges their harebrained schemes and only rolls his eyes when John says something particularly obtuse, or when Dave gets into a metaphor that spirals so far out of his control that a forest in northern Canada takes the brunt of the crash upon impact.
He tries to integrate himself, tries to graft parts of them that he doesn’t possess onto his frame, the things that Jake took with him.
Every once in a while Dave will say something that sticks in his ribs, sharp and unyielding, and he will be reminded of the parts that are stunted and useless from isolation, from self loathing. He cannot tell which reminder is worse: the stolen parts, or the parts that refused to grow at all.
Every once in a while the sunlight will hit John just right, and he will be pinned with the realization of how alike he and Jake are.
Dirk builds his new life up with defective mortar and fragile bricks. When it falls to dust around him, he picks up the fractal pieces and rebuilds from the unsteady ground up.
-----
Dirk thinks in numbers. He has always thought in terms of parabolas and mile long algorithms, calculating probabilities and amounts. He bases every decision on logical calculations, clinging to numbers to eschew a sphere of human feeling.
The numbers scatter when Jake shows up at his door, random as can fucking be. It’s obvious he hasn’t shaved in a few days, he’s coated with the grime of living on the road and his backpack has been torn and mended countless times. His grin is sheepish and he knocks the toes of his worn hiking boots against the carpet in the hallway just outside of the apartment.
“What are you doing here?” Dirk is shocked and it’s obvious through the tense line of his shoulders, the slackness of his mouth, dark eyebrows arched high over angular shades. He has never been happier for John and Dave’s absence before.
“The flight I was meant to be on was canceled. I thought I might be able to bunk with you for the night.”
Dirk composes himself and leans against the door jamb, wondering if Jake has remembered his address or if he had to swipe it from someone else.
“Can’t find a hostel anywhere or something?”
“Are you going to invite me in or not?”
Dirk and Jake stare at one another for a moment, the irritated mark between Jake’s eyebrows smoothing out as he shifts nervously on his feet. Dirk pushes off to stand straight, holding his arm out to welcome Jake into his home.
“You hungry, dude?”
Jake, as per usual, is ravenous. Dirk forces him into the shower and listens to the water run while he makes pancakes in the kitchen. He does his best to deaden the reaction of Jake in his home, in his shower, naked and wet and so close.
Jake emerges in a cloud of steam, freshly shaven and dressed in ragged, if clean, clothing. He sits down to a stack of flapjacks and digs in, groaning his appreciation while Dirk drags torn pieces of pancake through maple syrup. Jake launches into a spiel about his adventures, talking with his mouth full about monks in Tibet and skiing in Finland and beach volleyball in Brazil. Dirk nods along and very carefully adds nothing to the conversation. He almost thinks that Jake doesn’t notice before he levels an annoyed glare across the table at him.
“Why are you being so antisocial? It isn’t like you’ve seen hide nor hair of me in a year. Normally I can’t get you to button your lip long enough to listen to me.”
Dirk wants to slam his fist down on the table and shout that it’s not his fault, he tried to keep up communication only to be ignored. He wants to curse Jake for his lack of self awareness. Instead, he takes a deep breath and remembers the sensation of cold slush in his shoes.
“Why are you pretending nothing happened?”
Jake looks down to his last, mangled pancake. He pushes the pieces around with his fork.
“I have a grand adventure and whatnot. Things to explore, people to meet. Places to be.” My plans don’t involve you are the unspoken words. His voice is small. It makes something fragile lodged between Dirk’s ribs shift.
“I’ll remind you that you were the one who initiated tonsil hockey,” Dirk says, and it comes out bitter.
“Do you ever dream?”
Dirk freezes. Jake’s eyes look tired and lonely and longing when he finally looks up again. He has a nick in the right lens of his glasses. Dirk swallows hard. Jake breathes Dirk’s name, a skeleton of his voice, bones cracked and chewed at the edges. Dirk thinks of matching tattoos and clanking gas mask kisses and feels some silent, crucial part of himself fracture. He is helpless.
The legs of Jake’s chair scrape across the linoleum and they’re kissing. The small of Dirk’s back is pressed against the kitchen counter and he knows it’s going to bruise. Jake’s mouth makes his half formed thoughts take flight like startled birds, barest fragments left behind like scattered feathers.
Jake lifts him up onto the counter and warm, square hands press against the apex of his thighs. Jake’s kisses are a microcosm of his personality: overeager and too fast and determined to prove himself. Dirk grips damp hair and pulls Jake back, tilting his head and diving in for a deep, proper kiss that isn’t comprised of teeth and tongue. He tastes like maple syrup and orange toothpaste and Dirk is almost 98% certain the breathy whines echoing between their chests are coming from his own throat.
Jake’s hand is gentle against the small of Dirk’s back, fingers seeking skin under denim, teeth of his fly catching against callouses from hiking ropes. Jake’s mouth is slick under Dirk’s, kisses saccharine, transient. Dirk is kissing a ghost, a possibility that will dissipate with the rising sun.
Jake is meant to be a hard-edged wonder, confident, strong. He trembles against Dirk’s chest, wraps unsure fingers around him and Dirk tastes his own soap off Jake’s neck.
Everything is too fast, blurring the details in its speed, and Dirk wants to sink his claws into the fabric of time and pull holes in it, pin it down until this moment is all the world will have to offer. He wants to be lost in a loop, feeling Jake’s hands on his skin, systematically devoured by Jake’s desperation. When this is over, the memory will be all he has. He focuses on what it feels like to be held against the sharp corners of the cupboards, the way the evening light refracts off Jake’s brown skin like burnished bronze. He drinks in the details, cataloging every sound, every harsh inhale Jake takes through his wide nose. He will subsist off of these memories.
Dirk comes into Jake’s hands. The sticky mess is pale in his dark palms. They move locations to rut against one another on the couch until they’re panting into each other’s mouths, until they can’t think of what will happen in the morning because their minds are lost in a haze of tongues and whispered endearments and thighs trapped by the waistbands of their trousers. Dirk forces Jake up, guides him into his bed and holds him down against the mattress. Bruises bloom on hip bones and shoulders, stories of physical love written across limbs. There is poetry in the possessive bite marks, in the blood gathering dark beneath skin, in the words written with oxytocin into two separate cortexes. Dirk falls asleep with the sun already rising over the Seattle skyline, cheekbone pressed against the pulse in Jake’s throat.
When he wakes up, he is alone in soiled sheets that smell like Jake. There is a missed call and a voicemail on his cell phone. He deletes it before he can listen to it.
-----
Dave’s smirk is a thousand miles wide when he notices Dirk’s long sleeved thermal and stiff posture. Dirk sneers at him.
“Little birdy told me that you had someone over last night,” Dave says.
“Is that so.” Dirk is tight lipped, jaw clenched hard.
“It is so, actually. A night time guest. A sexy night time guest. Do you have a rebuttal?”
Dirk slaps Dave upside the head, hard enough to startle, before heading to his workshop down the hall.
“Hey, the fuck was that? I’m here congratulating you and you resort to abuse?” Dirk slams the door in reply, digging his hands through hair sticky with pomade. He does not know how to interact with Dave when it isn’t upbeat, brotherly banter. Dave does things he doesn’t expect, says things that he shouldn’t and can’t keep to himself when Dirk needs it. Dave doesn’t know how to read Dirk’s signs because he has so few, just like Dave’s Bro. Dave never needed to watch himself with his Bro, and Dirk has plodded out such an in-depth emulation that Dave cannot see why he would need to take Dirk’s feelings into account. He takes a few deep breaths and sits down on his stool, grabbing a tiny screwdriver set and the Titan rover arm.
Concentration evades him. He does not want to leave the room, to subject himself to Dave’s teasing or hurt. To pass the time, he strokes the marks left on his skin. He breathes until his thoughts slow their tumultuous swirl, until they are little more than ripples on tepid water. Concentration seeps in as he turns down his emotional response, becoming as mechanical as the task at hand. It’s easier to deal with than thinking about Jake, than Dave’s easy camaraderie and teasing. He breathes in the metallic tang of his workspace and immerses himself in tedium.
-----
TG: jake sends his luuuuuuv!
TG: he sends piles of luv drik
TG: *dick
TG: *lol
TT: Does he now?
TG: of course he sends his loving love 2 errybody
TG: how dare u quesion my love delivery
TG: everyones a critic i swear
TT: He didn’t actually send me his love, did he.
TG: ....
TG: ok not directly
TG: but thats just a jakey thing!
TG: he just sends his love in a round about loving way
TT: I don’t care anyways.
TT: Fuck Jake English.
TG: but u already did that!!!
TT: Oh my god.
TT: Roxy.
TT: Shut the fuck up.
TG: :(
TT: Don’t frown at me, you manipulative vixen.
TG: :( :( :(
TT: Okay now you’re just milking it.
TG: he did send his love tho :(
TT: What exactly did he say?
TG: well
TG: uh
TT: Spit it out.
TG: he said send the girls his love
TG: but u kno ur just one of the girls dirk!! ;)
TT: Yeah.
TT: Okay.
TG: im sorry
TT: Not your fault.
TT: Appreciate the sentiments regardless.
TG: he does love u
TG: u know that rite??
TT: He has a strange way of showing it.
TG: hes just confused!
TG: hes down with the dirk dirk
TG: dirk dirk omfg
TG: that is ur new nickname im putting it in the book!!!
TG: but srsly
TG: he loves you a lot
TG: i can tell!!!
TT: Huh.
TG: yes huh!!
TG: and he asks about you evry time he calls
TG: no matter who he calls or what were talking aboat!
TG: aboat omg
TG: no matter what boats hes talkin aboat he always asks about the status of ur boat dirk
TT: Interesting.
TG: hes just a buoy tho
TG: hes drownin in his love 4 u
TG: its a big sea and ur a very desirable boat dirk
TG: he just needs a little more time ok
TG: i promise
TG: plz dont give up
TG: ur always so sad when we talk about him
TG: all i want is for ur supergay and his normal gay to combine into a super SUPER gay
TT: I’m gonna tell you straight, Rox Pox.
TT: This ain’t Dirk anymore.
TT: He deployed me after you said you were sorry.
TG: GOD DAMNIT
TG: THAT FUCKER
TG: >:(
TT: Yeah I know. Sorry.
TG: will u at least rp with me
TT: Even though I am a very busy computer program, there is a 98% chance that I will roleplay with you if we can roleplay about centaurs.
TG: ok dealio
TG: shock him for me while i pull up our old rps!!!
TT: You got it, pumpkin.
-----
Dirk falls back into his daily routine. It’s structured and he can ignore the implications of he and Jake fucking each other into a previously uncharted dimension. He doesn’t, however, forget. He presses the pads of his fingers into the bruises daily. He plays a game of make believe with his false Jake and their pretend relationship. He constructs Jake’s personality to fit his needs, removing and adding traits with impunity.
Dirk has a hard time recalling his real friend sometimes. If he is upset by his own selfish imagination, he callously reminds himself that Jake is as far from his grasp as a neutron star.
He daydreams about catching Jake and holding him in place, forcing him to grow into a mould that Dirk finds most appealing. Nausea laps at the back of his throat. He fights it down and keeps dreaming, swaying in the amniotic fluid of his thoughts like tangled seaweed.
-----
Seasons change.
Bruises fade.
Dirk makes new ones in their place.
Dave notices the bruises. He and John capture Dirk early in the morning, before he’s awake enough to be on guard, and tuck him up in a pillow fort with them. It is the only time he lets himself be touched for a significant amount of time, or held by someone he isn’t sleeping with, outside of Roxy. Dave’s face is a bitter blend of concern and confusion. It is as if Dirk has finally allowed the curtains to be pulled back, and Dave is recognizing that his brother really isn’t his Bro.
They cover his bruises with gentle hands and feed him dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch and refuse to let him out until they’ve watched twelve episodes of Sailor Moon and he’s quietly promised them that he will stop.
The look of relief on their faces makes guilt burn like acid in his esophagus.
He lets the bruises lighten and refuses to cry when they are finally gone. The sticky lump cutting off his airway stays for a full week, but he does not cry.
-----
The robotic arm is finished and sent to NASA with a comprehensive guide of what materials and hydraulic fluids to use in the gaseous environment of Titan, and a step by step walkthrough for attaching the arm to the rover. Dirk gets a pat on the back and ample monetary compensation for his design, materials, and time. He celebrates by getting Dave a new platter and tonearm for his turntables, John a bunch of magician paraphernalia for the new tricks he’s been dying to learn, and filling up the fridge and pantry with more junk food than anyone should consume. The majority of the check goes into his carefully chosen investment accounts and the rest gets tucked into his savings account.
Dave nearly shits his pants before spending the rest of the day fiddling with his turntables, replacing old parts with the new. John ends up putting a scorch mark the size of a tire on the ceiling. He looks absolutely flabbergasted and Dave laughs so hard that tears drip under the lenses of his shades.
Dirk is quiet. He watches the way that John feints at Dave, the obvious way that he doesn’t want to hurt him. He observes Dave’s response, a tackle that is more of a hug, the way their wrestling devolves into a giggling pile on the linoleum. Dirk is quiet while he watches and he is quiet while he leaves, side stepping them and heading into his workshop to start on something else, to try to chase the thoughts away.
He can hear their shenanigans through the door and wonders when he and Jake lost the ability to be friendly and content in each other’s company. He rubs his neck like the hickies are still there, eighteen months later, and punches down the desire to pinch them back alive.
-----
“You have to come. There are no exceptions.” Dirk holds his cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, huffing a bit and trying to get the smallest screw in existence into its threading.
“Rose. Sweetheart. I have a lot of shit to do.”
“Don’t give me that, Dirk. It’s my 21st birthday trip.” Dirk’s mouth quirks up at the corners.
“Dave and Jade are clearly barred from the celebrations. It’s only Rose’s birthday, no other birthday kids allowed, find your own cool party.” Dirk can almost hear Rose’s eyes rolling.
“Precisely. It’s four days of your existence that are all about me. Don’t remove this from the realm of possibility, Strider, I’m reaching for it so hard that I’m straining the tendons in my shoulders.” Dirk replies with an ambiguous hum, finally getting the goddamn screw into place. Rose sighs into the speaker.
“Not only is it Dave’s, Jade’s, and my own 21st birthday week, you promised that you would teach me how to play blackjack and cheat the dealers out of their chips.” Dirk is willing to bet a large portion of his monetary savings that the edge in Rose’s voice could be categorized as whining. He tucks the information away for future blackmailing possibilities.
“You’re a smart girl. I’m certain you can figure it out on your own.”
“That is beside the point. This is supposed to be a loving, big brother little sister bonding experience. There is no way I will let you off the hook.” Dirk sets his tools down and leans back in his chair, grabbing his cell and holding it against his ear so he can stretch out the protesting muscles in his neck.
“Is that so.”
“Yes.” There is a short, pointed silence before Rose drops a deftly packaged bomb.
“I’ll tell Jade you’re not coming.” Dirk’s eyes widen in spite of himself.
“You wouldn’t.”
“You underestimate me, brother mine. You will be there, whether it is of your own free will or if Jade has to drag you kicking and screaming through airport security.” Dirk sighs and he realizes that Rose has won. Few people would accept the threat of Jade Harley’s wrath upon their shoulders, and fewer still would successfully evade it. Dirk pretends that his stomach isn’t turning already, anxieties mixing with stomach acid and brought to a steady boil. He pushes his shades up and rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Fine. Get a notepad or something out, I’m going to start your lesson on card counting.”
Rose learns to count cards from three short lessons over the phone. Dirk isn’t surprised. Dave makes a cross with two fingers every time she’s mentioned because he’s convinced she summoned some kind of horrorterror from the farthest ring to imbue her with mathematical skills. John takes to throwing Cheetos at him every time he does it, until he’s conditioned Dave to be less of a douchebag.
-----
Las Vegas is just as awful as Dirk expected: nothing but gaudy light shows and half naked women and sunburnt tourists with Hawaiian style button downs. He can see the sock tan lines above their Birkenstocks nine times out of ten, like some horrible statistic come true. He’s constantly on the verge of second hand embarrassment. The sincerity with which people partake in this shit is fucking tangible. Dirk can taste it in the back of his mouth, polyester and Polar Ice vodka and cheap sunblock. It could reach all the way back to ironic, in appropriate circumstances.
Everything reflects off his shades, kept away with a lens of quiet, apathetic inspection. He is the unaffected bystander, watching his brother slap down his legal identification after ensuring it isn’t his fake one. John and Jade are already three drinks in and loudly conversing about their run in with a street mime. Jane and Roxy are giggling over their respective fruity pink fizzy drink and ice water, while Rose stands by his elbow, sipping on a nine ounce glass of merlot through her amused smirk. They watch as tourist after tourist bombs at the blackjack tables before she steps up to the plate, moving like grace personified.
Dave eventually joins John and Jade at the slot machines, feeding coins from Jade’s bucket of quarters. They all bump knuckles for luck and reach around to pull each other’s levers. Dirk is sure there’s a sex joke somewhere in that, but he’s too many drinks deep, tipping back the best whiskey sours he’s ever tasted and feeling them burn all the way down, gathering like a coal in his belly.
Dirk looks over at Roxy and Jane, twelve feet away from him. Jane’s face is red from alcohol and she’s feeding Roxy the fruit from her drinks, speaking French while Roxy pantomimes a fairly convincing swoon. He doesn’t want to interrupt them, to break up their dynamic with his stoicism.
Jake is losing at a black jack table with all the other drunken tourists. He looks like one of them, with his hiking boots and his white socks pulled up his tanned calves. The only difference is that Jake is about thirty years younger and his boots are worn from traversing Chilean mountain ranges, dirty from slogging through mud in the Amazon. Rose is at a different table, sitting straight and prim with her ankles crossed, almond eyes narrowed and glittering with charming wickedness. Dirk can see the chips piling up in front of her over the golden curve of her shoulder and feels proud through the whiskey haze.
Dirk surveys the bedlam of the casino for the majority of the night, quietly keeping tabs on everyone while he racks up his own tab, and is genuinely glad he came. But his happiness is cut with anxiety, like salt snuck into the sugar pot. It’s strange, having Jake in the same area as the others. They haven’t been like this for years, since they were eighteen, when Jake and Jane fell into the roll of leading the dependents in a life they were barely able to understand. For all of Roxy’s widespread intelligence, for Dirk’s brilliant mechanical mind, slipping into an unfamiliar societal context came with incredible struggle. They had to be taught step by step, leaning on shoulders until the learning curve plateaued. It was the first time that Dirk had felt like a child, and for all that reliance on another human life was necessary, it stung.
Jake is a walking dream interacting with the constants of Dirk’s life. He watches Jake clap a hand on Dave’s shoulder, watches as he and Jade take shot after shot of Jose Cuervo, Jaegermeister, two very brave Rocky Mountain Bear Fuckers that make Dirk wince in empathy. Dirk wonders if Jake might be a hologram. If Dirk tried to touch him, would his hands would pass through? He wonders if Jake would smile as he flickered out of the casino. Something in his chest aches when he can hear Jake’s laugh over the din, a response he’s tried to systematically petrify over the course of a year and a half.
Jake hasn’t looked at him once.
Dirk orders another whiskey. He remembers when he used to blame Roxy for her substance abuse problems. Ethanol makes his vision spin. He tastes pancake syrup and orange toothpaste under the burn and he finally understands.
-----
Dirk wakes up to a headache quite unlike he has ever experienced, in a vaguely familiar hotel room, with a warm, heavy weight against his chest. His eyelids are stuck together from whiskey residue and bad decisions and restless sleep. Nausea turns his stomach until it’s a low grade tropical storm. He presses his forehead against the warm nape of a stranger’s neck until he’s dry heaving into the pillows and rushing to the bathroom. His legs are shaking under him and his skin is clammy and he curses himself as he empties what little contents his stomach previously contained. He’s unsure if the vertigo is from being ill or from the alcohol that might still be in his sluggish system.
His mouth tastes like the mint toothpaste he has used to clean his mouth out with when he stumbles back into the main room. He notices that his bedfellow isn’t a stranger at all.
Dirk knows that he’s still drunk when he collapses back into bed anyways. He clings to Jake’s back and nuzzles his cheek against warm, brown skin. Dirk notices unfamiliar ink on the upper part of his thigh. There’s something pale crusted over the clean lines. He touches the hickies on his neck, the same spots they were in nearly two years ago, and feels a trill of nostalgia break through the nausea.
He is cracked through with confusion and abandonment and good intentions. He falls asleep to escape the way it feels when the cement foundation of his progress crumbles and blows away with the wind.
-----
When Dirk wakes up again, a shaft of light from sloppily shut curtains has laid itself across his face like a cat. There is something warm and wet against the slender curve of his neck.
He turns to investigate and cracks Jake in the forehead with his chin. Jake’s mouth detaches from his skin so he can spit impressive strings of curses into Dirk’s pillow. Dirk doesn’t say anything, hungover and confused and still sleepy enough that words evade him. He is pretty surprised to find that he has half an erection to go with his blinding, alcohol induced migraine. He didn’t think that sexual arousal was possible in a state of such physical and mental misery.
Jake’s mouth finds its way to Dirk’s and he turns his forebrain off completely.
The sex is slow. Dirk knows that it is because too much movement with such a serious hangover could possibly trigger a double projectile vomiting act, and yet he can’t help but think of it as intimate.
He entertains the idea of an alternate Dirk and Jake, who make lazy love in the morning sunlight and shower together and laugh when Jake burns the bacon. He tries to scrub the sliminess out of his chest cavity, expunge it from the spongy tissue of his lungs.
Dirk lives a life that will never happen in the negative spaces of their messy, slow coupling. Jealousy burns a swathe through his chest, and yet he cannot help but hope that somewhere, there is a Dirk who can be someone Jake could love. A Jake that will pull his Dirk along with him, like a well loved toy, like something he can’t bear to leave behind. A Dirk that is enough to come home to, who doesn’t categorize all of Jake’s flaws and think of the best way to wipe away his less desirable traits to build an ideal.
Dirk will never have it. They are too broken, too fractured. They have grown up stunted, jaded, unsure of how to operate in the binds of a romantic relationship. He will never have what his fossilized chest aches for.
But he’ll take all that he can get.
-----
The four day celebration turns into a whirlwind of gambling and alcohol and drunken hookups. Dirk finds it hard to remember things that aren’t Jake, the way his hips move, the way his skin shines under a sheen of sex sweat.
Dirk feels like he’s been strained out of his body, a dried out husk. He is playing with fire, and soon he will be nothing but burnt material, blackened and curled and floating away on the breeze.
On the final day, Jake is out of his hotel room before Dirk can wake up and say goodbye. The only message left is the possibility of one in the steam on the bathroom mirror. It has been wiped off. Droplets of water have rolled down the surface and dampened the frame. Dirk searches with trembling hands, blinking away the moisture that blurs his vision. He is tired and sick and wants to stop the ride, wants to open prize door number two and have his dream life waiting for him. Jake would reach out and take his hand and he wouldn’t have to upend drawers and tear apart sheets to find a glimmer, the slightest possibility that Jake might think of him beyond shameful sex, beyond feelings that hide like animals in the storm.
He does not find anything. He can’t tell if he is surprised or not. The inside of his skull is a dull buzz, vibrating hard enough to numb his bloated bones, to curl the edges of his brain like turpentine. Neurons spark but a connection can’t be made, there is an issue in the programming. He needs to strip the wires, cut the dead parts off, start anew.
Dirk wobbles to his own hotel room on knees that shake from his fourth hangover and the realization that he has been left again.
When he identifies the taste in his mouth as Jake’s semen, he vomits into the sink.
-----
No one says anything about Jake in the weeks following. John and Dave would seem completely oblivious if not for the way they treat Dirk, like blown glass, like his anxiety and depression are ballooning him out from the inside. His facade has grown thin, and his insecurities are bared to the world.
He can barely look at John anymore. Family resemblance is a bitch, even weird paradox ectoclone family.
Roxy and Jane very carefully do not mention Jake when they speak to him. Dirk allows any Jake related thoughts to be buried under the weight of his inadequacies.
Christmas comes. Rose and Roxy and Jade all make the trek to Seattle. Jane visits everyday, driving up from Maple Valley after spending the mornings with her father. She tuts at their junk food and spends a lot of time in the kitchen making proper Christmas baking, with Roxy as an assistant and John as a supervisor to ensure no Betty Crocker cake mixes are used.
Rose touches his hands a lot, her slim, golden fingers trying to cover his own. She doesn’t look at him with pity, but he can tell it is not far off.
He spends Christmas as a quiet presence, watching the festivities. He doesn’t have the energy to join in.
He wonders where Jake is.
-----
Two months pass.
Dirk pulls himself out of his funk, embarrassed by his actions and by how relieved Dave and John seem.
He starts working again. He has an inbox full of commission requests, and he takes the small ones first. Work is slow and frustrating, but his fingers relearn the tricks to working with tiny, delicate parts. He churns out product at a respectable rate, trying to use his robotics obsession as a healthy method of coping instead of letting himself drown in it.
A letter comes in the mail. The return address is Brazil. Dirk thinks of the photograph he has tucked away in a drawer, the strawberry sunrise backlighting thick, dark hair. He almost throws it out.
The envelope reveals heavy cream paper with a scalloped edge. Dirk is immediately apprehensive. Jake would never bother with that kind of pretentious stationary.
He removes it from the envelope. It is a wedding invitation.
Mr. Marcelo Azevedo and Mrs. Aninha Azevedo cordially invite you to witness the marriage of their daughter, Isabella Azevedo, to the love of her life, Jake English.
Dirk puts it aside.
He burns his fingers on the spot welder.
He keeps working.
-----
Dave and John walk on eggshells.
Dirk doesn’t even notice.
-----
Dirk does not save the date of the wedding.
He cannot muster the selflessness that would be required to watch the man who used to be his best friend marry another person.
-----
It works out in his favor when the wedding is called off.
He doesn’t stop working.
-----
Jake shows up at his door. Dirk’s thoughts no longer scatter like marbles. His deadened neurons flicker in a slow, haunted response that he’s helpless against. This is an old dance, one he knows all the steps to. He clenches hands that are sore from ceaseless work, tiny burns, tight muscles.
Dirk is tired. His body aches for the curve of Jake’s back; to wrap his arms around him and fall asleep; to sink down to the sea floor and make a home for them in sand tilled by the gentle current.
“Hi,” Jake says, and he’s rubbing the back of his neck. His backpack is on the floor by his feet. Dirk wonders how long it took for him to knock on the door.
“Hi.” Dirk’s voice is quiet, like it’s lost itself in the confines of his chest. He doesn’t know what Jake wants. He makes himself bland enough to fit into Jake’s narrative regardless of the direction it goes.
“I’d like to talk with you.” Jake cannot look him in the eyes. Dirk fails to see how this visit could possibly turn out well.
“Seems like a pretty trivial thing to come all the way to Seattle for.”
“I don’t think you’re trivial at all, actually.” There is a shadow in Dirk’s chest that pulses with infallible hope.
“And if I don’t want to talk?” Even as he says it he’s stepping back, opening the door as an invitation, like his body rejects his brain’s idea and has decided to perform involuntary mutiny.
“If you would rather not speak, I could fill the silence and you could listen.” Jake’s bag finds a home in the corner of the apartment, right by the door. He kicks his boots off and sets them beside it. Dirk watches. He was never good at keeping his eyes to himself when Jake was involved.
“Should we have a sit down?” Jake asks, leading Dirk to his own living room, as if he’s forgotten where the couch is. They sit at opposite ends of the couch, staring at one another. They fall into the kind of silence that is neither comfortable nor awkward. It is like a blanket, a huge, oppressive entity that bears down on them from all sides.
“So,” Jake begins. He falters after the word comes out, like he doesn’t know where to go from there. Dirk takes the reigns for him.
“So. You almost got married.”
Jake blushes and looks away, as if he is ashamed.
“I suppose I did, yes. I got cold feet. I went out and bought new socks, thicker ones.” Jake’s grin in a shadow of his old one. Dirk wonders if it has faded over time or if it is just a manifestation of how uncomfortable Dirk makes him.
“Did you love her?”
“I thought I might have.” Jake has turned his face away from him, picking at the pilled up fabric of his shorts. “I kept seeing the things she would do and thinking, Dirk wouldn’t do that. I called it off shortly after realizing that, I suppose.” The ever present hope between Dirk’s lungs does backflips. He wants to shoot himself in the chest, drink bleach, do anything to make that hope die.
“You’re like a virus, Dirk,” Jake murmurs when Dirk doesn’t answer. “You’ve gone in and started changing all of my internal processes and other thingamabobs to suit you and now I don’t know how to function. I can’t even friggin’ figure out if the things I feel are organic, or if you’ve programmed them after tearing everything else out at the root.” Jake rubs wide hands over his face. Dirk takes a deep breath.
“Do you want them to be organic?” Jake turns to look at him with an expression of thinly veiled fear, of nervousness and admiration and longing and maybe, just maybe, the faintest spark of genuine love.
“I didn’t want them to be. For the longest time I eschewed them, kept them held away with an iron cage. Now, I...I’m not certain.” Possibility and hope and happiness squeeze down on Dirk’s spinal cord. It is a deadly combination, one that he fears he will not survive. He feels guilt, yes, but the triumph of winning the boy of his dreams dashes that guilt to the far, dark corners of his psyche. He does not think about Jake’s fears, or the wobble in his voice, or the way he designed Jake in his mind. He only has room for the victory chant his hope has evolved into.
“Well, you came all the way here to see me, didn’t you?”
Jake laughs. It is hollow.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I did.”
Dirk’s hands shake for the first time in years when he reaches out to touch Jake’s wrists.
He leads them to bed. When they come together, it is slow, and it is intimate, and Dirk feels that he has finally got his prize.
-----
Dirk wakes up in the morning with a ray of sunlight in his eyes. When he reaches over to touch the empty side of the bed, the sheets are still warm.