[The training room was meant for Pokemon, but it turns out that there's no rules in place to stop humans from using it. Not that rules have ever provided adequate deterrent to Dirk Strider anyway.
Training under Dirk is like.... it's a lot like getting beaten up repeatedly with a fancy santa. But eventually, with hard work, determination, and enough brain cells and accompanying desire (or simple need) to actually fucking learn?
Yeah, you also get to punch Dirk Strider. And really, isn't that its own reward?
Hopefully that's worth the cuts, abrasions, and bruises that come with the learning curve.
Though apparently Dirk's cooldown drink of choice is... room temperature, flat orange soda? Which he stops downing (in one long, uninterrupted chug??) like 2/3 of the way through, raising his eyebrows in dramatic surprise.]
[No, no, it's definitely worth all of that. Giving Dirk a black eyes? Priceless. And you know, maybe he's got a few things he needs to work out engaging in some good old-fashioned violence.
This is wonderful. It's everything he's ever wanted. Just-- the sheer visceral nature of it all. He doesn't mind that he's sore all over. He doesn't mind how dog tired he is after it's all over, gulping down cool water like he's a damn fish. Sparring, it turns out, has the losing himself in physicality that he'd get from a good work out, but with that special thrill of getting to do most of what he really wants to do.
You know. With a few caveats.
One thing Dirk will probably notice is that given the chance to be, Steven is an absolutely vicious dirty fighter.]
[One of the perks to training an adult and not a fucking toddler is that Steven's early efforts are neither wild flailing nor desperate, clumsy attempts to perform his own individual moves that Steven has latched onto.
One of the other perks is that he doesn't have to sit down and walk him through putting himself back together after, physically or otherwise. Just had to stay alert that this didn't turn into something more homoerotic than a Strife between two bros, which was itself so intrinsically homoerotic already--]
Jesus Christ indeed. Sorry. Totally slipped my mind. I was in kind of hurry to leave before. But he hasn't fucking done much, anyway.
I mean, I was kind of in a hurry to escort you out given the whole disrespecting my boyfriend thing, so it's fine.
I wouldn't know about Heirs. Charley tried to explain 'classpect' once, but she ended up going into a lot of tangents on the way and she never did explain what half of them did.
[He takes another long drink from his water bottle.]
God, I think I talked to him once. Not for more than a quick exchange, but I remember a guy who typed in his color when I was bitching about Fail Whale after I first caught him.
['Disrespecting his boyfriend.' And Steven wanted to deny his role in the inherent dynamic of being a top? Unbelievable.]
Probably him, then. Noticed not many people do the coloured text thing... not actually sure why. seeing as it streamlines the visual flow of a conversation by like 97.2 percent with barely a .4 percent margin of error.
But even with a total retrospective view of human history, the slices of time in which that was a thing even on my Earth were pretty thin. It's weird.
[Basically just the PesterChum heyday, if he's being honest, but it was such a part of the zeitgeist that some apps like Serious Business actually wrapped around to prohibiting the use of colour text.]
But about Heirs. Heirs are powerful and all but they don't have to work for it... as implied by the title. They just inherit whatever it is so they end up being totally defined by the representational controls of their aspect. There's a lot more to it, but--and don't take offense, I'm just laying out the fucking facts here--you don't need any of that shit.
John blows in with the breeze and blows right back out again. Inconsistent and flighty as his--
[Pause. He wipes some sweaty hair off his brow, tucking it against his shades as he slams the brakes on that blazing dumpster fire before it drove it straight off mount goddamn overshare.]
[Ssshhhhhh. Besides, Jack would do the same for him.]
Right. Charley said there was going to be a timeskip. She would have recognized you right away.
[God, he misses his sister. So much. And that hasn't really changed. But man, she would have loved this. She'd have probably been all ready to set out on her Pokemon journey and done all the backpacking he'd held off on due to wanting the steadiness of a proper job, and they could have talked on the gear every day.
But she's not here. She's probably dead and he hasn't talked to her in five years. And he's been using other people as substitutes for her and god, that's been so shitty of him. Tyler's right about that.]
I think she said something once about how I was probably a knight? If that matters.
[Dirk puts down the soda to study Steven, and even with the shades there is a sense of very intense scrutiny coming from behind those polarised lenses. There's a twist to his mouth that might be bad, but might just be deeply judgmental, like he's evaluating every inch of Steven's character.
If he comes to a conclusion, he doesn't show it. His tone is a bit sharp, but. Well. This is a very loaded topic.]
You read the first five, you know Dave.
[A beat, to let that process.]
Fully realised Knights are heroes, in every way. Dave is the model of a true Knight.
[Dirk sighs a little, shuts his eyes. Tries to clear his mind. There's a lot coiling up in there, threads of threads so long they tangle and loop.]
But you? Depends a lot on what you're a knight of. They weaponise their aspect and serve whatever their session lacks most.
First four. I noped out at the Trolls, remember. And I don't have a session, because I never actually played the game. Because in my world, it's an exercise in fiction.
[But then he shrugs.]
Honestly, I'm starting to wonder what my world's fiction is, if yours is Homestuck.
[He's quiet for a long moment before he says,]
Tyler called me out on treating him like he was Charley. Well, he didn't know that's what it was until I told him. It's just--
God. I don't know. Do you ever catch yourself acting like someone's Dave?
...he said five, didn't he. Goddamnit. Stopped at five. Read four. He knew--he knows that--and it's too fucking late to salvage, god damn it he has to stop overthinking.
"Never. One, it's not--"
Pause.
There's actual seconds of silence.
Which Dave? The one he never knew, that he grew up knowing but never actually knew? The one he raised, trained, honed into the Knight he was meant to be? The one he only met as a teenager, full of hate and bitterness about his own, other, same self, the who didn't even want to fucking know him? The one he elevated, the one he left behind, the one he knows will come for him, the one he trusts to--
"Fuck. No. How could I? But I guess it depends on who you're asking."
"Bro or Dirk or-- whoever else you are in there?" Steven asks, shrewdly. "You said when we met you've been a lot of guys."
He shrugs. "I didn't raise her," he says after a long moment, because suddenly he does want to talk about her. "I mean, I'm older, but not by that much. She'd have been... your age. Tyler's age. Honestly, with that kind of difference we shouldn't have been close. And we weren't until she was four and I was thirteen, when she started breaking into my room and getting into my stuff. But she was-- special. Brilliant. Intuitive. I tried to teach her... god, how to fake normal, I guess. And why it was important. And she was someone I didn't have to be fake around."
Oh shit. Someone was paying attention. It's almost gratifying, in a way--to seed a conversation at a specific point in time and see the growth in later exchanges, the connection between points like a beautiful equation filling out a graph, a singular line extrapolated to generate not just data but meaning.
It's good practise, if he's being honest.
But Dirk is on the one hand fascinated by the 'authentic' sibling experience, and on the other wholly unable to relate to it in any way.
"If she was so special and brilliant, how did you confuse that with anyone else at all?" Though his question is such that they never actually left it, they can circle back to the subject of Dave in a minute.
The question itself is an uncommonly sincere one--almost non-judgmental, for once. Almost.
As non judgmental as the revelatory equivalent of being a goddamn alien could entail, anyway.
"I mean, I don't confuse her with other people," Steven says. "Maybe I see a little of her in people—" Carly. Connie. Even Armin. "—but that's— different. But the thing is... well. You've got to know by now that I'm no more a... normal, reasonable human being than you. I mean, Jack claims guys like us are normal in his future, but back home? Not at all. So my entire life I've had to learn how to fake it. And I'm pretty good at it."
He shakes his head. "Charley was a lot closer to normal than me, but she was still... more like me than most people. So she was the only person I didn't fake normal with. Like, I even did it with our parents.
"But, you know, with all the shit that's happened since I've got here, I've been... trying to be less fake with everyone in the Rockets. But I barely know how to stop faking it. All my experience with that is with her. So... it's just. Fuck. Easy to slip into the same patterns I had with her. Even though the kind of things people will take from you when you're their older brother are a lot different from what they'll take when you've only known them a month."
"I'd feign offense, but I'm more perturbed by you trying to put yourself on my level. Do you have any idea what you're implying? Don't answer that. I guess you probably mean more like one of me than all of me?" He's raised a single brow, but pauses his speech to drain the rest of his flat orange soda.
"Still a 'yikes' from me, but I'll let it slide."
Steven really does just put it all fucking out there. Repeatedly, and without hesitation. No clue what he's doing, no premeditation, just venting his desperation and insecurity out of every speakable orifice possible. Karkat. He's Karkat Vantas. Less loud and blustering, more puissant and ready to be something, but still breathlessly foisting his psychological infancy on Dirk at the first opportunity.
Time to nip this in the bud.
"Fucking listen. I don't know fuck about Jack's future or whatever the goddamn that's about, but I definitely know something about falling into patterns. And my advice is to start by not airing your personal baggage to literally everyone."
His expression remains unreadable, but his voice goes grim.
"Pick a person. Anyone. Probably not me, if you want my real advice. And definitely not the person you're dating."
Steven grimaces. "Fuck," he snarls. "I did it with you too, didn't I? Goddamnit. God-fucking-damnit. I hate this. The only thing I'd hate more would be to go back to being fake all the goddamn time."
He drags a hand down his face. "Fine," he mutters. "I'll find someone. I don't know. I'll ask Carly. I don't know who else to ask. I can't put this on Connie or Steve—Steve wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. And Lydia... she's not the kind of person to listen."
Dirk makes a short, mostly pensive sound and presses his hands against his face, rubbing his eyes underneath his shades and letting them fall back into place on his nose with a kind of practised fluidity.
"You don't even notice you're doing it." If Dirk's flattened, deadpan delivery isn't judgmental, then maybe the statement isn't judgmental at all.
Who the fuck is Lydia.
"No."
He regrets so much, every part of this entire conversation. Maybe he should have given Steven a concussion. Then maybe this wouldn't have happened.
"No. Don't... fucking. Don't ask any of those fucking people."
"I am working on fucking catching myself at it," Steven says, irritably. "It is a goddamn work in progress. And fine, then. Who am I supposed to tell? Not Tyler. I'm not doing this to him. I've fucked up with him enough already. Not you. Not Jack. Not any of them. Wow. That's everyone on Team Rocket, isn't it? So I guess I'm just screwed."
Steven takes a deep breath. Lets it out. "Yeah," he says. "Because you're a judgmental son of a bitch and also, I can't bitch about you to you. It just-- won't work."
"I mean, you're not the only person I need to bitch about," Steven says with a shrug. "But some of the dick moves you've pulled have featured heavily."
"Fascinating." His expression doesn't budge an inch. "And I'd love to hear all about it, really. But maybe hold onto that for another time, like next time I serve your ass to you repeatedly until you manage to land one back."
He is going to be feeling that in the morning. Probably. Maybe? He actually has pretty limited mortal experience with getting socked, since it's a feat that previously had yet to be accomplished by anyone except Connie or Ford. It'll be a fun learning experience.
Yeah. Dirk could tell. If nothing else, he's 100% positive Steven isn't kidding about his affinity for violence as a solution.
"What's a schedule you can keep? I don't know what you do with your time. But--"
Hang on, just a sec. Before they finish this off.
"I could be the most contemptible cocksucking piece of shit on this planet, but I got to where and who I had to be because I learn from my mistakes. You read me?"
"So in other words, start learning from mine," Steven says, tiredly. "Yeah, Dirk. I read you. Gimme a second to grab my 'gear so I can check my calendar. I'd like to shoot for at least one a week?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fingersandteeth) wrote2022-02-21 05:11 pm
[Action; sometime AFTER the Jack's House... thing.]
Training under Dirk is like.... it's a lot like getting beaten up repeatedly with a fancy santa. But eventually, with hard work, determination, and enough brain cells and accompanying desire (or simple need) to actually fucking learn?
Yeah, you also get to punch Dirk Strider. And really, isn't that its own reward?
Hopefully that's worth the cuts, abrasions, and bruises that come with the learning curve.
Though apparently Dirk's cooldown drink of choice is... room temperature, flat orange soda? Which he stops downing (in one long, uninterrupted chug??) like 2/3 of the way through, raising his eyebrows in dramatic surprise.]
--oh. Shit. Almost forgot.
John's here.
[Pause.]
You know, the Heir?
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This is wonderful. It's everything he's ever wanted. Just-- the sheer visceral nature of it all. He doesn't mind that he's sore all over. He doesn't mind how dog tired he is after it's all over, gulping down cool water like he's a damn fish. Sparring, it turns out, has the losing himself in physicality that he'd get from a good work out, but with that special thrill of getting to do most of what he really wants to do.
You know. With a few caveats.
One thing Dirk will probably notice is that given the chance to be, Steven is an absolutely vicious dirty fighter.]
... Jesus Christ.
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One of the other perks is that he doesn't have to sit down and walk him through putting himself back together after, physically or otherwise. Just had to stay alert that this didn't turn into something more homoerotic than a Strife between two bros, which was itself so intrinsically homoerotic already--]
Jesus Christ indeed. Sorry. Totally slipped my mind. I was in kind of hurry to leave before. But he hasn't fucking done much, anyway.
Guess that's Heirs for you, though.
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I wouldn't know about Heirs. Charley tried to explain 'classpect' once, but she ended up going into a lot of tangents on the way and she never did explain what half of them did.
[He takes another long drink from his water bottle.]
God, I think I talked to him once. Not for more than a quick exchange, but I remember a guy who typed in his color when I was bitching about Fail Whale after I first caught him.
Unpacks the Homestuck lore into this tag
Probably him, then. Noticed not many people do the coloured text thing... not actually sure why. seeing as it streamlines the visual flow of a conversation by like 97.2 percent with barely a .4 percent margin of error.
But even with a total retrospective view of human history, the slices of time in which that was a thing even on my Earth were pretty thin. It's weird.
[Basically just the PesterChum heyday, if he's being honest, but it was such a part of the zeitgeist that some apps like Serious Business actually wrapped around to prohibiting the use of colour text.]
But about Heirs. Heirs are powerful and all but they don't have to work for it... as implied by the title. They just inherit whatever it is so they end up being totally defined by the representational controls of their aspect. There's a lot more to it, but--and don't take offense, I'm just laying out the fucking facts here--you don't need any of that shit.
John blows in with the breeze and blows right back out again. Inconsistent and flighty as his--
[Pause. He wipes some sweaty hair off his brow, tucking it against his shades as he slams the brakes on that blazing dumpster fire before it drove it straight off mount goddamn overshare.]
Ugh. Forget it.
He's older than you read about him, anyway.
give me that sweet, sweet lores
Right. Charley said there was going to be a timeskip. She would have recognized you right away.
[God, he misses his sister. So much. And that hasn't really changed. But man, she would have loved this. She'd have probably been all ready to set out on her Pokemon journey and done all the backpacking he'd held off on due to wanting the steadiness of a proper job, and they could have talked on the gear every day.
But she's not here. She's probably dead and he hasn't talked to her in five years. And he's been using other people as substitutes for her and god, that's been so shitty of him. Tyler's right about that.]
I think she said something once about how I was probably a knight? If that matters.
no subject
If he comes to a conclusion, he doesn't show it. His tone is a bit sharp, but. Well. This is a very loaded topic.]
You read the first five, you know Dave.
[A beat, to let that process.]
Fully realised Knights are heroes, in every way. Dave is the model of a true Knight.
[Dirk sighs a little, shuts his eyes. Tries to clear his mind. There's a lot coiling up in there, threads of threads so long they tangle and loop.]
But you? Depends a lot on what you're a knight of. They weaponise their aspect and serve whatever their session lacks most.
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[But then he shrugs.]
Honestly, I'm starting to wonder what my world's fiction is, if yours is Homestuck.
[He's quiet for a long moment before he says,]
Tyler called me out on treating him like he was Charley. Well, he didn't know that's what it was until I told him. It's just--
God. I don't know. Do you ever catch yourself acting like someone's Dave?
This is prose now,
"Never. One, it's not--"
Pause.
There's actual seconds of silence.
Which Dave? The one he never knew, that he grew up knowing but never actually knew? The one he raised, trained, honed into the Knight he was meant to be? The one he only met as a teenager, full of hate and bitterness about his own, other, same self, the who didn't even want to fucking know him? The one he elevated, the one he left behind, the one he knows will come for him, the one he trusts to--
"Fuck. No. How could I? But I guess it depends on who you're asking."
Re: This is prose now,
He shrugs. "I didn't raise her," he says after a long moment, because suddenly he does want to talk about her. "I mean, I'm older, but not by that much. She'd have been... your age. Tyler's age. Honestly, with that kind of difference we shouldn't have been close. And we weren't until she was four and I was thirteen, when she started breaking into my room and getting into my stuff. But she was-- special. Brilliant. Intuitive. I tried to teach her... god, how to fake normal, I guess. And why it was important. And she was someone I didn't have to be fake around."
no subject
It's good practise, if he's being honest.
But Dirk is on the one hand fascinated by the 'authentic' sibling experience, and on the other wholly unable to relate to it in any way.
"If she was so special and brilliant, how did you confuse that with anyone else at all?" Though his question is such that they never actually left it, they can circle back to the subject of Dave in a minute.
The question itself is an uncommonly sincere one--almost non-judgmental, for once. Almost.
As non judgmental as the revelatory equivalent of being a goddamn alien could entail, anyway.
no subject
He shakes his head. "Charley was a lot closer to normal than me, but she was still... more like me than most people. So she was the only person I didn't fake normal with. Like, I even did it with our parents.
"But, you know, with all the shit that's happened since I've got here, I've been... trying to be less fake with everyone in the Rockets. But I barely know how to stop faking it. All my experience with that is with her. So... it's just. Fuck. Easy to slip into the same patterns I had with her. Even though the kind of things people will take from you when you're their older brother are a lot different from what they'll take when you've only known them a month."
no subject
"Still a 'yikes' from me, but I'll let it slide."
Steven really does just put it all fucking out there. Repeatedly, and without hesitation. No clue what he's doing, no premeditation, just venting his desperation and insecurity out of every speakable orifice possible. Karkat. He's Karkat Vantas. Less loud and blustering, more puissant and ready to be something, but still breathlessly foisting his psychological infancy on Dirk at the first opportunity.
Time to nip this in the bud.
"Fucking listen. I don't know fuck about Jack's future or whatever the goddamn that's about, but I definitely know something about falling into patterns. And my advice is to start by not airing your personal baggage to literally everyone."
His expression remains unreadable, but his voice goes grim.
"Pick a person. Anyone. Probably not me, if you want my real advice. And definitely not the person you're dating."
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He drags a hand down his face. "Fine," he mutters. "I'll find someone. I don't know. I'll ask Carly. I don't know who else to ask. I can't put this on Connie or Steve—Steve wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. And Lydia... she's not the kind of person to listen."
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"You don't even notice you're doing it." If Dirk's flattened, deadpan delivery isn't judgmental, then maybe the statement isn't judgmental at all.
Who the fuck is Lydia.
"No."
He regrets so much, every part of this entire conversation. Maybe he should have given Steven a concussion. Then maybe this wouldn't have happened.
"No. Don't... fucking. Don't ask any of those fucking people."
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"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you are."
He's so dramatic about this.
"You're getting emotional. Letting it make your decisions for you. That's your problem." One of many. But he's in good company for that.
"Stop talking and actually think before you let whatever the hell ever pop out of your damn mouth. You know why you don't want it to be me, right?"
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"Not exactly the answer I was aiming for, but you wouldn't be the first man to regale a therapist with tales of yours truly."
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He is going to be feeling that in the morning. Probably. Maybe? He actually has pretty limited mortal experience with getting socked, since it's a feat that previously had yet to be accomplished by anyone except Connie or Ford. It'll be a fun learning experience.
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"What's a schedule you can keep? I don't know what you do with your time. But--"
Hang on, just a sec. Before they finish this off.
"I could be the most contemptible cocksucking piece of shit on this planet, but I got to where and who I had to be because I learn from my mistakes. You read me?"
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He regards Steven impassively.
"Twice a week."
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