(no subject)
You’re Dave Strider, and you’re driving around at sunrise to escape the nightmares.
Okay, so sunrise might be a more objective term- it’s about quarter past six in the morning and the sun is rising. The heat is starting to become unbearable already, in this city that never cools off. Your bro doesn’t ask any questions about why you need the car- he trusts that the 18-year-old he’s raised knows what he’s doing, and he’s heard the screams you won’t admit to when you wake up in the night from the horrorterrors of what could have happened if you and your friends hadn’t won that fool’s game. The fates of all the doomed Daves. John’s death. Jade’s devildog boss. Rose just being… Rose. So you took off out of the house on the pretense of getting the mail and picking up breakfast, something you didn’t necessarily need the car for but you took anyway. And now you’re out, milling around in your bro’s 90’s shitheap, puppets shoved as far down in the seats as you can get them, zipping around like you’re in the Indy 500 or some shit.
You want to scream, but you’re awake. Coolkids don’t scream over stupid nightmares when they’re awake. Coolkids don’t scream, period. They think up dope rhymes and start some sick fires that are actually sick. The only problem is that you haven’t been able to think up any dope rhymes that didn’t involve trolls and mystical magical bullshit apocalypse games since you were 13. You’d been doing pretty good for a while there when you were about 16, but then you tried to get back out and do your thing in public and you blacked out before your set. Freaked out John, who’d been watching on live webcam. Rose hadn’t been much better when she heard, and Jade wanted to immediately fly out from her volcano island thing and make sure you were okay. It took a week of hardcore convincing to remind them that you were a coolkid, and there was no way in hell you would ever be anything less than cool. Still, you’ve stuck to composition since, the background, something unnatural. At least you can still provide sick beats for your friends.
You pass the turnpike, and pull off at a Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s not the best of breakfasts, but truthfully you aren’t all that hungry. You want to cry more than anything but again, status. You don’t cry. You’ve never cried. You aren’t about to start now. But you can feel that knot in your throat. You make your way back home, put the greasy pastries in the kitchen for when Bro wakes up again (he’s snoring away on that futon again, legs akimbo and blanket haphazardly thrown over him as if it’s an afterthought for decency, like that’s ever mattered to him), and go back to your room. You’re about to try to go back to sleep when the pesterchum app on your phone beeps at you. Someone. Who. At this hour, who would even be awake other than one of the trolls or your friends?
EB: hey did you wake up way early too?
The smile that comes to your face is totally not one of comfort. Absolutely not. Or at least you’d never admit it. Your fingers aren’t even shaking by this point when you reply.
TG: always
TG: you too i see
EB: set up the vid feature, face time.
One of the blankets go over your window and the broken blinds, cloaking the room in dusky gloom, and then you start up the video. John’s room is darkened too, curtains drawn against the pre-dawn dim there. It’s pretty obvious from his bed that he’s been having the nightmares too, and you two talk until you think you can sleep without waking up screaming in horror. Still, you keep the video on, even while the two of you sleep, to ward away the dreams. You even set your status on pesterchum to sleep, so none of the trolls talk to you.
You are Dave Strider, and you are counting down the 27 days left until you start college, and you can have the Heir of Breath in a real-unreal game lull you to sleep each night with the sound of his quiet snores.