[it is taking everything Dave has in him to not laugh at the hootin' nannies. because he does, in fact, know one. and, it's not really working; he raises the shades with the back of his hand to palm at his eyes, then just sort of holds his hand over his mouth in that way someone does when they're stifling their laughter.]
[you win this round, Sakamoto.]
They're hooting and competitive knitting, obviously. Makin' stuffed radishes for you to win in a round of DDR, or whatever.
Anyway, there's a record shop back in Houston that I really always liked. There's always my planet, too, if you're a fan of endless miles of lava, gears, and those crocodiles I mentioned earlier.
[maybe ... not the whole of his apartment, if they were to hypothetically visit, but just his room. that's safe, right? even if he'd sort of had a nervous breakdown last time he was in there, it's still very much a reflection of who he is. or who he always sort of wanted to be.]
[plus, the toilet that's still sitting there would be amusingly relevant. Dave would say that's just where he gets all his great ideas.]
I'd really want you to meet my friends, too, though. I keep getting the feeling that y'all would like each other.
[This a seriously buck wild conversation, but Ryuji's gotten close enough to know that a planet made out of lava, gears, and particularly yappy crocodiles is probably just another every day occurrence. No big deal. He'd like to visit that too, honestly. Stand at the edge of the planet and throw a ring into the molten abyss, feel accomplishment at completing this horribly nerdy cliche, and call it a day. Any place that's not the station sounds pretty damn chill to be in, even if that chill place is a nice and balmy fire wasteland.]
Like the type of place that sells LPs? Sounds cool. The best part about that is always flippin' through and seein' all the cover art. They got more room, so they can really go all out. [A steady Jazz resurgence all over Tokyo in the past decade has turned some of those old record stores into a hipster paradise, but there were definitely some hole-in-the-wall type places that still existed where it didn't feel like its style was eternally cramped by salarymen coming in and grabbing stuff up to try and hitch onto the bandwagon.
The toilet would be all types of amusing though. Why did the shitter have such significance to all things Dave and Ryuji? This wasn't supposed to happen, I swear.]
Yeah, you think so? Shit, I'd have to make a good impression. Make sure I cut this mop off, clean up my jumpsuit, shower a little extra hard. [Joking, really, he probably wouldn't do any of that.] You've met like, half my friends already. I uh. I hope you like 'em. They're all good peeps.
[that's fair enough — Ryuji could make the nerdy gesture standing next to Dave, whose last name is Strider, and who wields snapped swords for a living, thereby also making him a walking Lord of the Rings reference. it all works on multiple levels.]
Yeah. [that's an answer to both questions. Dave's music library is largely digital, on account of not always having the extra change to spend on physical records, but he did always enjoy at least browsing.]
[and yeah, he does like Ryuji's friends — and in this yarn of what-ifs they're spinning, he can't help but wonder how meeting everyone he knows would actually go down. his friends are a huge mess of very strong personalities, but ... that doesn't really seem too far off from what he knows about the Phantom Thieves, either.]
Wouldn't worry too much about making a good first impression, though. They'll probably think you're weird, but that's pretty much the one qualifying trait they're looking for in friendship. You'd fit right in.
You're gonna have to meet the mayor, too. [Dave's favorite thing about Sburb ever.]
[It's strangely intimidating to want to ingratiate yourself to a group of friends that he's never met; moreso that they're Dave's friends. Sure, he always has a little bit of well hidden anxiety in him that keeps him constantly moving and shifting between his feet to keep occupied, but Ryuji would want to hang with them, too. He knows how deeply influenced by his own friends he's become- Makoto got him to study more, Ren got him to open up, Haru showed him that not everything that looks delicate is- the list goes on and on; he's curious to see what watermarks Dave's friends left on him too. He already has a pretty high opinion of him, so he can imagine they're also equally great people to be around. Again, just swimming around in a sea of hypotheticals here, it was equally likely and unlikely that something like that could even happen.]
I like how you just low key called me weird. [He doesn't let him off the hook on that one, though. It's kind of true though, isn't it? Ryuji can't really be that offended. He's spent so long being around the same people, that it always felt like he was just being himself. The more people he meets on the station, the more he sees that he's an exception to the rule, not the norm. Sometimes Ryuji forgets how much of a complete loner he was for the years that led up to starting the Phantom Thieves.]
Oh yeah. You mentioned that guy before. [And here he was, putting 2 and 2 together a little bit more.] I'm gettin' the sense that we're not talkin' about the mayor of Houston.
Right, he's the mayor of Can Town. I tried to build a Reverie annex a few times, but someone kept cleaning it up.
[that ... hm. that probably doesn't make any goddamn sense out of context. then again, when has anything Dave ever said made sense out of context?]
[he falls silent for a minute, just listening to whatever's playing. letting the rhythm resonate. he's a lot more relaxed than he figures he ought to be, considering not too long ago they were both navigating probably the most awkward attempt at flirting that has ever been witnessed in this particular patch of space. maybe that's just how safe of a thing music is to him. Dave sort of feels like he could fall asleep right there on the floor.]
I haven't told you much of anything about the meteor, huh.
[or try to talk about himself a bit more. it isn't that he hasn't wanted to, he's just so hilariously bad at it — afraid of acknowledging a lot of it, rather. maybe he can figure out something more to say than jokes about hollering grandmas or emu ranches.]
Dave, I have no effin' clue what the hell you're sayin'.
[Yeah, pretty much right on the nose with that assumption there. And he's perfectly fine with ragging on him about it, comfortable in his own way of being fond of the bullshit that he runs with.
It is kind of cool, though. If Dave were a jigsaw puzzle, Ryuji gets a little piece every now and then, and sometimes the parts fit on opposite ends of the greater picture. And if Dave is worried that the jumbled up image that comes out of that is one that he doesn't like, this loser over here would protest that to the very end. There hasn't been a single thing between them that Ryuji didn't find himself liking more and more as time went on, and god, he's doomed to live out his days with these awkward feelings that he just doesn't know how to act on.
But, that's not what's on his mind at the moment as music wafts between their shared space. Mostly, just curiosity.]
Nah, not really. [Head up against the wall, his tone shifts a little more away from joking.] Tell me about it.
[it might be starting to sound like this mayor doesn't actually have the credentials Dave is building him up with. which is flat-out wrong, of course; the guy has a sash that says mayor on it — what other credentials do you even need?]
If I'm gonna get into Can Town itself, and ... everything else, though, I guess I'd need to start toward the beginning.
[and he's already turning the details over and over in his head, anxiously trying to sort through which ones were "safe" to share, while almost desperately wishing he were strong enough to also share the ones that weren't. Ryuji had already confided in him plenty of times, and he keeps getting the sense that it'd be perfectly fine to do the same. he wants to, even. he doesn't want to keep Ryuji at an arm's length like he does almost everybody else.]
[which. whoa. there's a hell of a feeling.]
[when Dave finally does start talking, it's still pretty curated, but it also just starts spilling out, like leaving a mug under running water until it fills and overflows, like he's really, really been wanting to try talking about this for a while.]
Well — okay, just puttin' a disclaimer here that I'm basically the worst person to try to explain any of this. Time's my thing, not sorting out the largely pointless fuckin' whimsies of Paradox Space and anybody who gets subjected to it.
I've told you the goal of playing Sburb before. But to make an incredibly stupid story short, we didn't win. ["they never got that far," he'd said earlier. they were never meant to. there were much larger forces than a single session at play, as largely important as perpetuating existence is to begin with.]
So, like you do with any video game when it's obvious you're not gonna make it to the end, we reset it. Started a new session, with new rules, new quests, new — [god, even just saying this feels like he's edging dangerously close to something really sensitive.] — new players. But, the game restarted pretty far from where we were at the time.
[there's a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, wondering if he's messing something up by disclosing all of this. but it's too late now, he's already talking, and he's not really capable of stopping.]
It took three years to get there. It was me, my sister, Terezi and a couple of other trolls in a lab that honestly wasn't too much different than this place, on a meteor hurtling through space.
[he's circling back around to something much safer now.] Anyway, that's where the mayor and Can Town was, too. Kinda had to make your own fun, y'know?
[Look, it's not like Ryuji knows that it was just the ribbon to a jar of mayo with an R scratched into it to officiate its own insistence. And if that's all it takes to claim power somewhere, hell, why hasn't someone else tried that within the station? Oh, right. There was a town hall. Nobody wanted anyone in a leadership role. Cans must've been serious business on this meteor. He doesn't question it.
It is, however, a really convoluted retelling, and he's doing his best to listen without interrupting. Nods when he says that time's his thing, because he can relate to being absolute shit at explaining things. Raises an eyebrow when he says that he restarted his session. He's picturing an old famicon system with a button that you flip up and everything glitches out for .5 seconds before going back to the title screen. Senses inklings of hesitation and things that are being purposely expanded or contracted upon. It's cool, he doesn't mind.
There's an implication, of course, that failing the game had seriously undesirable consequences. It tickles against the idea that Dave had repeated a few times already about the way things were "supposed to work out." Kind of weird to know that destiny had worked out its own red string that purposely built in a clause for the right ending to be... well, a bad one? There's not much more he can conclude from that. Having to reset everything to set things on the right path to move forward... what does that even look like?]
I was right about you, y'know. When we first met, I said you were a damn cheater. [In the way that thumb wrestling was serious business, of course. It's something he says to break the period of silence that ensues, and, yeah, he has some questions, but putting them into actual words is kind of rough.]
But... uh. It's kinda weird that you had to travel to get to your new game? Like... why wouldn't you just reset in place? Y'know. You hit the reset button on your sigma station and it's not like you toss the console into another room or anything.
[And, then, as if it were an after thought to everything, because obviously, they had figured out their own way to make fun on a station chilling in the middle of a galaxy that was far, far away from their own---]
New players? Should I be expectin' to see a new game plus Dave walking around here somewhere? [Awkward, but it's... a little easier than pointing out the incredibly strange subcutaneous question that kind of clouds that one. Did he really sacrifice everything in his game to make it work for someone else? Like, shit.
[leave it to Ryuji to crack the kind of joke that would put Dave at ease, even as he's also asking questions that don't really have easy, or pleasant, answers.]
Dunno how to answer these without being kinda blunt. [and maybe it's better if he just goes ahead and is blunt. maybe it'll get easier to talk anything out if he does, like when you have wound that needs healing, but you have to tear through a lot of pain to even get to that point.]
Yeah, I'll own up to it — I'm a damn dirty cheater. Kinda had to be, for things to wind up the way they did. Scratching a session is sorta like ... I dunno, resetting your game without saving and starting over. Or wiping your computer and having to rebuild your music library — it'll look the same in a lot of ways, but it also won't be built up exactly how it was before.
You have to cheat if you want to wind up on the other side of it. [they were the only bits of coding that remained from the original session. the data that defied the regular rules and escaped erasure, if only because it's something they were slated to do all along.]
[that's just one of those things you don't realize was intended until you look back on it. it wasn't really something he was expecting to survive, anyway, considering the way he and Rose had been arguing over who got to be the exploding Bruce Willis of their soon-to-be-rewritten session. the only way those troll ghosts were able to survive their Scratch was by dying, which. wow, that's a really dumb sentence i just typed.]
[Dave sort of feels like he's being a buzzkill now. like maybe this wasn't a really good idea. but he doesn't want to leave Ryuji's other questions hanging, either.]
But like I said, I don't really get why a lot of shit happens the way it does. I'm sure Rose explained why the new session was so far away, but fuck if I remember what it was.
And — yeah, I guess? He had his own shit to do, though, based on what Dirk's told me, and that didn't include Sburb. I couldn't really tell you what he was like, or really anything he did other than a few little things.
[It's definitely a lot to absorb all at once, but more than anything, he knows they're getting into territory that feels a lot more raw than the things that they talked about before. Something about all of this just makes him want to do something really dumb like branch an arm over his shoulder and pull him in. Ryuji doesn't really see this as a buzkill at all, rather, an explanation of things and the events that led up to him being here. And here, as much as it sucks most of the time, is made leaps and bounds better by the equally inept teen sitting next to him. It's on his docket to remind Dave of that, pretty much... as much as humanly damn possible.]
Shit... that ain't right. It sounds like. A lot of responsibility to take on all at once, and it kinds sucks that it had to play out like that. [He sort of gets it. The idea of purpose is something that Ryuji's kept close to him for a long time now, and he's not sure how he'd be able to stomach that everything he had done was pretty much a set up for something else to succeed. He doesn't have the full picture yet, of course, but that's how it reads, and he's slightly ticked off about it. A game where the cards are stacked against you indefinitely, and the only way to win that game is to blow a hole right through it.
He'd been in that position before. Ren said that everything had worked out in the end, and he had to believe it in order to keep on going. A video game, or in his case, a god, it sounds just. Dumb. All of it. Something you're not meant to win goes against the very nature of human drive.]
Everything kinda comes down to circumstance, anyway, if you look at it. [That urge to do something stupid rises up again in him, and it's killing him not to be outwardly physical about things. He'll practice a little bit more restraint, though. This is still a weird territory of... whatever "them" is.] That's a different Dave. So what? Y'know? You did enough on your terms, too. You deserve to be happy, no matter who that other butthead is.
[Ryuji may or may not realize just how badly Dave needed to hear that. it's easy to dismiss yourself when the collective universes do the exact same, and make it very clear that you were just a means to an end, that you aren't the one who's going to go on to actually win, to do whatever it is the Dave who isn't him is supposed to. like he's an inkpen that was tossed aside in favor of a better one, because the ink ran dry and there was no fight left in it.]
[but that means exactly jackshit here, doesn't it? this isn't the dream bubbles, there's no army of ghosts to be joining up with to fight the Incredible Hulk, and he hated that idea anyway. even if that were something he was meant to go back and get involved in, it's not like he would know which direction to start flying from here.]
[it's the tiniest of sparks in the pit of misery of what it means to be a time player — or just a player of Sburb in general. the sacrifices that have to be made. that particular end goal isn't his anymore, but ... that doesn't have to mean he's been denied one entirely. right?]
[boy, that sounds. hopelessly hopeful. kind of cheesy to boot. and it'll take a while for him to really believe it in a meaningful capacity. but even if Dave doesn't know what the hell his end goal actually is, it kind of feels like Ryuji has turned him around and at least pointed in the direction he should start walking.]
Yeah. Complete butthead. [does this count as dunking yourself???]
A lot of it was completely shitty, you're right. But it wasn't all terrible. My friends all lived really far away from me, so it was cool to be able to hang out in person. Or at least know that they were somewhere in the same space I was.
Wrote some of my best raps on that meteor, too. [it's The Little Things.]
[That definitely counted as dunking yourself, Dave.
But it does stand justifiable to continue down that path of thinking. Not the part where Ryuji thoroughly believes that he's the only one allowed to torment Dave like that (he bumps up a little against him to remind him on that point), but the acceptance that it doesn't have to be a fixed end point. If there's another Dave out that that gets to do the things that he doesn't, it isn't intrinsically true that whatever this Dave does is meaningless or any less fruitful. If there were millions of universes where either copies of them existed, hell, even a Ryuji living in Tokyo right now with a fixed family, or some sort of semblance of what constitutes a much better life, that's that Ryuji's prerogative. And, given the chance to know about the existence of that Ryuji, maybe he'd feel a little jealousy over it, but, shit. He's not about to let it ruin the experiences he's had. The friends he's made along the way. The insistence of the way he feels, right here and now, sitting as he drifts along in a lonely void of space next to Dave.
Hopelessly hopeful, or whatever that looks like... it's not invalid. He's always believed that freedom has its own form of vividly beautiful aesthetic; it's something he's said over and over again to just about everyone he's met. Do what you want to in life, don't hold back. That dumb, optimistic, punk kind of attitude.]
I dunno. Bein' with people you like and sharing time together is kinda worth all the sorts of trouble it takes gettin' there. Took me a pretty damn long time to figure that out.
[They're both pretty self-sacrificing people. Ryuji isn't so far removed from the reality of that to not accept it. If he knows how far he'd go for his friends, he has an idea of what Dave would do, too. It's respectable.
And, yeah, fuck it.
Under the blanket, he reaches out and wraps an arm around his shoulder, squeezing and smiling. It's been killing him to not do it.]
[if Dave and Ryuji hadn't pretty much immediately gotten into a physical thumb war altercation the second they first met, and if Ryuji had not placed an affable hand on his shoulder after holding a somber service for their fallen burrito comrade, then Dave might be reacting a lot differently to the contact now.]
[and, well — okay, this sort of has a lot of different connotations along with the usual ones, and yeah, he can't help tensing for a split second because of that.]
[this is ... okay, right? he thinks it might be okay. it somehow feels like this is really, officially, unwinding every single idea he'd ever had about himself, the way he thought he was, the way he thought he's supposed to be, and for that same split second it also feels like he can't breathe. just when he thought he had everything about himself, about his own place in the universe, figured out, Ryuji goes and turns it all on its side, and now he has no idea what to do about anything. like, suddenly, the last thing he wants to do is just accept what he's supposed to as a byproduct of a doomed timeline.]
[wait, shit — he just leaned in closer without realizing, didn't he? turns out while Dave's brain was panicking about whether this was really okay, the rest of him went ahead and decided that it was — it was something he desperately wanted, in fact. hearts, right.]
[there really is no keeping Ryuji at an arm's length, as it turns out. he'll be trying to sort out when he even made that decision for a while. also, try breathing, Dave. let's not have a repeat of last month.]
You're right — both those things you just said, I mean. [he'll be sorting out how entirely lame he is later, too.]
[At first, the tensing up doesn't go unnoticed and he starts to think that maybe he's overdoing it? Pushing too much, or something, because really. A guy that wears shades all the time to hide a part of his face doesn't exactly scream the mantra of "hey, I like to be touched." Which is pretty contrasting to Ryuji's open personality, constantly looking to hang off of people like a monkey from a tree.
But then again, Ryuji also doesn't think that Dave is just people, either. He knows it's true because he can almost feel his heart in his throat as he does it, and he's half expecting him to shy away after tensing. It's when he doesn't that catches Ryuji by a modest level of surprise, only deepened when he swears he can feel Dave coming closer- and he can't really tell if it's just him making it happen, or it's naturally occurring.
He's never had a problem being brave before. Why does it kick in now, when they're having a good conversation, when Dave's just peeled back a few layers of the onion exterior? Oh, right. Because Ryuji is crushing on him. That's a thing. He's so worried that he's going to misstep here that he denies himself thinking that he could do anything right when it came to romantic interest. Which is dumb. He's dumb.
It also doesn't stop him from wanting it so intensely that it lingers probably a second longer than it ought to. Putting this on instant replay, it's obvious what's going on here, but it's too in the weeds to notice it outright. Maybe if he had his way, they could always be like this. Maybe Dave could lean up against him, and Ryuji could hold him and rest his face against his hair and---
God.
Butterflies in his chest isn't the right metaphor. It's practically a fucking facehugger clawing its way straight out of him. This is cool. It's cool. He's admitted to owning these feelings, internally. Slowly, his hand unwinds its way around his shoulder, and it's so horribly idiotic how blind they are to what each of them are doing to each other.]
Damn. [To a lot of things, right now, honestly-] Feels kinda nice hearing that. Tell me that more often, yeah? I'm right. Got a nice ring to it.
[it almost feels like Ryuji had him in some sort of sleeper hold there, that if he had held on to Dave a little longer, he could have actually fallen asleep and Ryuji would have gotten the scenario he had been imagining. it is getting late, and they have been listening to music for a while. it doesn't ... really seem like he's overstayed his welcome, though, if he's reading the room right?]
[but he blinks, sitting himself up straighter, as if he isn't really sure what just happened, or can't really fathom it. he's getting a bit tired, but it doesn't really matter, because he's going to be up the entire simulated night trying to sort out what happened anyway — or rather, how he actually feels about it. just lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, racing from one explanation or feeling to the next.]
[but then, Ryuji goes and says that, and Dave, smirking in that low-key way that he does, just can't help himself.]
Yeah, okay.
[there's a pause, there, conveniently punctuated by the equally short pause in between songs.]
[Adding to the incredibly long list of powers that Dave already has, each one more discrete and situationally useful than the last, he's definitely read the mood right. He can stay as long as he wants or as little as he wants, because Ryuji's chill with whatever. If "whatever" means secretly being here as long as possible, of course. Maybe he should be more honest with his preferences, but that's at least, what? Two more weeks away? Hmmm...
But maybe some recharge time is needed to separate out, to second and third guess the thoughts that are eventually going to compile in compounding order, and he won't be able to sit still again. Probably end up going for a walk, or hitting up someone's smartwatch to bug them. Sleep sounds nice but it also sounds like it'll be something near impossible to do when he thinks about this entire thing. What was it about apples and temptation, anyway?]
Asshole.
[He breathes it low, knowing full well that Dave is going to hear him say it. How to tell when Ryuji's fond of you? He curses at you without the grit behind his throaty loudness. There's an entire checklist of other things that are also pretty obvious at this point, or at least, in retrospect.]
I'm always right. [Except the times he's not, and he knows that. He knows that Dave knows that, too. Still, it's fun enough to tease and see where it goes.]
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[you win this round, Sakamoto.]
They're hooting and competitive knitting, obviously. Makin' stuffed radishes for you to win in a round of DDR, or whatever.
Anyway, there's a record shop back in Houston that I really always liked. There's always my planet, too, if you're a fan of endless miles of lava, gears, and those crocodiles I mentioned earlier.
[maybe ... not the whole of his apartment, if they were to hypothetically visit, but just his room. that's safe, right? even if he'd sort of had a nervous breakdown last time he was in there, it's still very much a reflection of who he is. or who he always sort of wanted to be.]
[plus, the toilet that's still sitting there would be amusingly relevant. Dave would say that's just where he gets all his great ideas.]
I'd really want you to meet my friends, too, though. I keep getting the feeling that y'all would like each other.
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Like the type of place that sells LPs? Sounds cool. The best part about that is always flippin' through and seein' all the cover art. They got more room, so they can really go all out. [A steady Jazz resurgence all over Tokyo in the past decade has turned some of those old record stores into a hipster paradise, but there were definitely some hole-in-the-wall type places that still existed where it didn't feel like its style was eternally cramped by salarymen coming in and grabbing stuff up to try and hitch onto the bandwagon.
The toilet would be all types of amusing though. Why did the shitter have such significance to all things Dave and Ryuji? This wasn't supposed to happen, I swear.]
Yeah, you think so? Shit, I'd have to make a good impression. Make sure I cut this mop off, clean up my jumpsuit, shower a little extra hard. [Joking, really, he probably wouldn't do any of that.] You've met like, half my friends already. I uh. I hope you like 'em. They're all good peeps.
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Yeah. [that's an answer to both questions. Dave's music library is largely digital, on account of not always having the extra change to spend on physical records, but he did always enjoy at least browsing.]
[and yeah, he does like Ryuji's friends — and in this yarn of what-ifs they're spinning, he can't help but wonder how meeting everyone he knows would actually go down. his friends are a huge mess of very strong personalities, but ... that doesn't really seem too far off from what he knows about the Phantom Thieves, either.]
Wouldn't worry too much about making a good first impression, though. They'll probably think you're weird, but that's pretty much the one qualifying trait they're looking for in friendship. You'd fit right in.
You're gonna have to meet the mayor, too. [Dave's favorite thing about Sburb ever.]
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I like how you just low key called me weird. [He doesn't let him off the hook on that one, though. It's kind of true though, isn't it? Ryuji can't really be that offended. He's spent so long being around the same people, that it always felt like he was just being himself. The more people he meets on the station, the more he sees that he's an exception to the rule, not the norm. Sometimes Ryuji forgets how much of a complete loner he was for the years that led up to starting the Phantom Thieves.]
Oh yeah. You mentioned that guy before. [And here he was, putting 2 and 2 together a little bit more.] I'm gettin' the sense that we're not talkin' about the mayor of Houston.
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[that ... hm. that probably doesn't make any goddamn sense out of context. then again, when has anything Dave ever said made sense out of context?]
[he falls silent for a minute, just listening to whatever's playing. letting the rhythm resonate. he's a lot more relaxed than he figures he ought to be, considering not too long ago they were both navigating probably the most awkward attempt at flirting that has ever been witnessed in this particular patch of space. maybe that's just how safe of a thing music is to him. Dave sort of feels like he could fall asleep right there on the floor.]
I haven't told you much of anything about the meteor, huh.
[or try to talk about himself a bit more. it isn't that he hasn't wanted to, he's just so hilariously bad at it — afraid of acknowledging a lot of it, rather. maybe he can figure out something more to say than jokes about hollering grandmas or emu ranches.]
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[Yeah, pretty much right on the nose with that assumption there. And he's perfectly fine with ragging on him about it, comfortable in his own way of being fond of the bullshit that he runs with.
It is kind of cool, though. If Dave were a jigsaw puzzle, Ryuji gets a little piece every now and then, and sometimes the parts fit on opposite ends of the greater picture. And if Dave is worried that the jumbled up image that comes out of that is one that he doesn't like, this loser over here would protest that to the very end. There hasn't been a single thing between them that Ryuji didn't find himself liking more and more as time went on, and god, he's doomed to live out his days with these awkward feelings that he just doesn't know how to act on.
But, that's not what's on his mind at the moment as music wafts between their shared space. Mostly, just curiosity.]
Nah, not really. [Head up against the wall, his tone shifts a little more away from joking.] Tell me about it.
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[it might be starting to sound like this mayor doesn't actually have the credentials Dave is building him up with. which is flat-out wrong, of course; the guy has a sash that says mayor on it — what other credentials do you even need?]
If I'm gonna get into Can Town itself, and ... everything else, though, I guess I'd need to start toward the beginning.
[and he's already turning the details over and over in his head, anxiously trying to sort through which ones were "safe" to share, while almost desperately wishing he were strong enough to also share the ones that weren't. Ryuji had already confided in him plenty of times, and he keeps getting the sense that it'd be perfectly fine to do the same. he wants to, even. he doesn't want to keep Ryuji at an arm's length like he does almost everybody else.]
[which. whoa. there's a hell of a feeling.]
[when Dave finally does start talking, it's still pretty curated, but it also just starts spilling out, like leaving a mug under running water until it fills and overflows, like he's really, really been wanting to try talking about this for a while.]
Well — okay, just puttin' a disclaimer here that I'm basically the worst person to try to explain any of this. Time's my thing, not sorting out the largely pointless fuckin' whimsies of Paradox Space and anybody who gets subjected to it.
I've told you the goal of playing Sburb before. But to make an incredibly stupid story short, we didn't win. ["they never got that far," he'd said earlier. they were never meant to. there were much larger forces than a single session at play, as largely important as perpetuating existence is to begin with.]
So, like you do with any video game when it's obvious you're not gonna make it to the end, we reset it. Started a new session, with new rules, new quests, new — [god, even just saying this feels like he's edging dangerously close to something really sensitive.] — new players. But, the game restarted pretty far from where we were at the time.
[there's a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, wondering if he's messing something up by disclosing all of this. but it's too late now, he's already talking, and he's not really capable of stopping.]
It took three years to get there. It was me, my sister, Terezi and a couple of other trolls in a lab that honestly wasn't too much different than this place, on a meteor hurtling through space.
[he's circling back around to something much safer now.] Anyway, that's where the mayor and Can Town was, too. Kinda had to make your own fun, y'know?
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It is, however, a really convoluted retelling, and he's doing his best to listen without interrupting. Nods when he says that time's his thing, because he can relate to being absolute shit at explaining things. Raises an eyebrow when he says that he restarted his session. He's picturing an old famicon system with a button that you flip up and everything glitches out for .5 seconds before going back to the title screen. Senses inklings of hesitation and things that are being purposely expanded or contracted upon. It's cool, he doesn't mind.
There's an implication, of course, that failing the game had seriously undesirable consequences. It tickles against the idea that Dave had repeated a few times already about the way things were "supposed to work out." Kind of weird to know that destiny had worked out its own red string that purposely built in a clause for the right ending to be... well, a bad one? There's not much more he can conclude from that. Having to reset everything to set things on the right path to move forward... what does that even look like?]
I was right about you, y'know. When we first met, I said you were a damn cheater. [In the way that thumb wrestling was serious business, of course. It's something he says to break the period of silence that ensues, and, yeah, he has some questions, but putting them into actual words is kind of rough.]
But... uh. It's kinda weird that you had to travel to get to your new game? Like... why wouldn't you just reset in place? Y'know. You hit the reset button on your sigma station and it's not like you toss the console into another room or anything.
[And, then, as if it were an after thought to everything, because obviously, they had figured out their own way to make fun on a station chilling in the middle of a galaxy that was far, far away from their own---]
New players? Should I be expectin' to see a new game plus Dave walking around here somewhere? [Awkward, but it's... a little easier than pointing out the incredibly strange subcutaneous question that kind of clouds that one. Did he really sacrifice everything in his game to make it work for someone else? Like, shit.
That's rough.]
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Dunno how to answer these without being kinda blunt. [and maybe it's better if he just goes ahead and is blunt. maybe it'll get easier to talk anything out if he does, like when you have wound that needs healing, but you have to tear through a lot of pain to even get to that point.]
Yeah, I'll own up to it — I'm a damn dirty cheater. Kinda had to be, for things to wind up the way they did. Scratching a session is sorta like ... I dunno, resetting your game without saving and starting over. Or wiping your computer and having to rebuild your music library — it'll look the same in a lot of ways, but it also won't be built up exactly how it was before.
You have to cheat if you want to wind up on the other side of it. [they were the only bits of coding that remained from the original session. the data that defied the regular rules and escaped erasure, if only because it's something they were slated to do all along.]
[that's just one of those things you don't realize was intended until you look back on it. it wasn't really something he was expecting to survive, anyway, considering the way he and Rose had been arguing over who got to be the exploding Bruce Willis of their soon-to-be-rewritten session. the only way those troll ghosts were able to survive their Scratch was by dying, which. wow, that's a really dumb sentence i just typed.]
[Dave sort of feels like he's being a buzzkill now. like maybe this wasn't a really good idea. but he doesn't want to leave Ryuji's other questions hanging, either.]
But like I said, I don't really get why a lot of shit happens the way it does. I'm sure Rose explained why the new session was so far away, but fuck if I remember what it was.
And — yeah, I guess? He had his own shit to do, though, based on what Dirk's told me, and that didn't include Sburb. I couldn't really tell you what he was like, or really anything he did other than a few little things.
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Shit... that ain't right. It sounds like. A lot of responsibility to take on all at once, and it kinds sucks that it had to play out like that. [He sort of gets it. The idea of purpose is something that Ryuji's kept close to him for a long time now, and he's not sure how he'd be able to stomach that everything he had done was pretty much a set up for something else to succeed. He doesn't have the full picture yet, of course, but that's how it reads, and he's slightly ticked off about it. A game where the cards are stacked against you indefinitely, and the only way to win that game is to blow a hole right through it.
He'd been in that position before. Ren said that everything had worked out in the end, and he had to believe it in order to keep on going. A video game, or in his case, a god, it sounds just. Dumb. All of it. Something you're not meant to win goes against the very nature of human drive.]
Everything kinda comes down to circumstance, anyway, if you look at it. [That urge to do something stupid rises up again in him, and it's killing him not to be outwardly physical about things. He'll practice a little bit more restraint, though. This is still a weird territory of... whatever "them" is.] That's a different Dave. So what? Y'know? You did enough on your terms, too. You deserve to be happy, no matter who that other butthead is.
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[but that means exactly jackshit here, doesn't it? this isn't the dream bubbles, there's no army of ghosts to be joining up with to fight the Incredible Hulk, and he hated that idea anyway. even if that were something he was meant to go back and get involved in, it's not like he would know which direction to start flying from here.]
[it's the tiniest of sparks in the pit of misery of what it means to be a time player — or just a player of Sburb in general. the sacrifices that have to be made. that particular end goal isn't his anymore, but ... that doesn't have to mean he's been denied one entirely. right?]
[boy, that sounds. hopelessly hopeful. kind of cheesy to boot. and it'll take a while for him to really believe it in a meaningful capacity. but even if Dave doesn't know what the hell his end goal actually is, it kind of feels like Ryuji has turned him around and at least pointed in the direction he should start walking.]
Yeah. Complete butthead. [does this count as dunking yourself???]
A lot of it was completely shitty, you're right. But it wasn't all terrible. My friends all lived really far away from me, so it was cool to be able to hang out in person. Or at least know that they were somewhere in the same space I was.
Wrote some of my best raps on that meteor, too. [it's The Little Things.]
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But it does stand justifiable to continue down that path of thinking. Not the part where Ryuji thoroughly believes that he's the only one allowed to torment Dave like that (he bumps up a little against him to remind him on that point), but the acceptance that it doesn't have to be a fixed end point. If there's another Dave out that that gets to do the things that he doesn't, it isn't intrinsically true that whatever this Dave does is meaningless or any less fruitful. If there were millions of universes where either copies of them existed, hell, even a Ryuji living in Tokyo right now with a fixed family, or some sort of semblance of what constitutes a much better life, that's that Ryuji's prerogative. And, given the chance to know about the existence of that Ryuji, maybe he'd feel a little jealousy over it, but, shit. He's not about to let it ruin the experiences he's had. The friends he's made along the way. The insistence of the way he feels, right here and now, sitting as he drifts along in a lonely void of space next to Dave.
Hopelessly hopeful, or whatever that looks like... it's not invalid. He's always believed that freedom has its own form of vividly beautiful aesthetic; it's something he's said over and over again to just about everyone he's met. Do what you want to in life, don't hold back. That dumb, optimistic, punk kind of attitude.]
I dunno. Bein' with people you like and sharing time together is kinda worth all the sorts of trouble it takes gettin' there. Took me a pretty damn long time to figure that out.
[They're both pretty self-sacrificing people. Ryuji isn't so far removed from the reality of that to not accept it. If he knows how far he'd go for his friends, he has an idea of what Dave would do, too. It's respectable.
And, yeah, fuck it.
Under the blanket, he reaches out and wraps an arm around his shoulder, squeezing and smiling. It's been killing him to not do it.]
True. You do have the sickest flows.
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[and, well — okay, this sort of has a lot of different connotations along with the usual ones, and yeah, he can't help tensing for a split second because of that.]
[this is ... okay, right? he thinks it might be okay. it somehow feels like this is really, officially, unwinding every single idea he'd ever had about himself, the way he thought he was, the way he thought he's supposed to be, and for that same split second it also feels like he can't breathe. just when he thought he had everything about himself, about his own place in the universe, figured out, Ryuji goes and turns it all on its side, and now he has no idea what to do about anything. like, suddenly, the last thing he wants to do is just accept what he's supposed to as a byproduct of a doomed timeline.]
[wait, shit — he just leaned in closer without realizing, didn't he? turns out while Dave's brain was panicking about whether this was really okay, the rest of him went ahead and decided that it was — it was something he desperately wanted, in fact. hearts, right.]
[there really is no keeping Ryuji at an arm's length, as it turns out. he'll be trying to sort out when he even made that decision for a while. also, try breathing, Dave. let's not have a repeat of last month.]
You're right — both those things you just said, I mean. [he'll be sorting out how entirely lame he is later, too.]
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But then again, Ryuji also doesn't think that Dave is just people, either. He knows it's true because he can almost feel his heart in his throat as he does it, and he's half expecting him to shy away after tensing. It's when he doesn't that catches Ryuji by a modest level of surprise, only deepened when he swears he can feel Dave coming closer- and he can't really tell if it's just him making it happen, or it's naturally occurring.
He's never had a problem being brave before. Why does it kick in now, when they're having a good conversation, when Dave's just peeled back a few layers of the onion exterior? Oh, right. Because Ryuji is crushing on him. That's a thing. He's so worried that he's going to misstep here that he denies himself thinking that he could do anything right when it came to romantic interest. Which is dumb. He's dumb.
It also doesn't stop him from wanting it so intensely that it lingers probably a second longer than it ought to. Putting this on instant replay, it's obvious what's going on here, but it's too in the weeds to notice it outright. Maybe if he had his way, they could always be like this. Maybe Dave could lean up against him, and Ryuji could hold him and rest his face against his hair and---
God.
Butterflies in his chest isn't the right metaphor. It's practically a fucking facehugger clawing its way straight out of him. This is cool. It's cool. He's admitted to owning these feelings, internally. Slowly, his hand unwinds its way around his shoulder, and it's so horribly idiotic how blind they are to what each of them are doing to each other.]
Damn. [To a lot of things, right now, honestly-] Feels kinda nice hearing that. Tell me that more often, yeah? I'm right. Got a nice ring to it.
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[but he blinks, sitting himself up straighter, as if he isn't really sure what just happened, or can't really fathom it. he's getting a bit tired, but it doesn't really matter, because he's going to be up the entire simulated night trying to sort out what happened anyway — or rather, how he actually feels about it. just lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, racing from one explanation or feeling to the next.]
[but then, Ryuji goes and says that, and Dave, smirking in that low-key way that he does, just can't help himself.]
Yeah, okay.
[there's a pause, there, conveniently punctuated by the equally short pause in between songs.]
You've gotta actually keep being right, though.
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But maybe some recharge time is needed to separate out, to second and third guess the thoughts that are eventually going to compile in compounding order, and he won't be able to sit still again. Probably end up going for a walk, or hitting up someone's smartwatch to bug them. Sleep sounds nice but it also sounds like it'll be something near impossible to do when he thinks about this entire thing. What was it about apples and temptation, anyway?]
Asshole.
[He breathes it low, knowing full well that Dave is going to hear him say it. How to tell when Ryuji's fond of you? He curses at you without the grit behind his throaty loudness. There's an entire checklist of other things that are also pretty obvious at this point, or at least, in retrospect.]
I'm always right. [Except the times he's not, and he knows that. He knows that Dave knows that, too. Still, it's fun enough to tease and see where it goes.]