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Your name is Dirk Strider, you are thirteen years old, and you are playing hide and seek.
Jane was the one to suggest it, of course, and as much as you might like to think it was all some big tongue-in-cheek joke bourne from a sudden appreciation for irony it's painfully obvious that she honestly thought you all would have 'jolly good fun'. And then Jake leapt to agree with her, declaring that it would be a right adventure, and Roxy had kinda shrugged and gone “what the fuck, may as well”, and it'd been up to you to grumble and remind everyone that you're thirteen, not eight, and should be drinking and making out and wandering the streets. And then Jane had glared at you because Roxy actually had recently started drinking a bit and Jane was very clearly Not Happy about it but you shrugged it off, and the next thing you knew the lights were down and the little heiress was loudly counting to one hundred.
Your hands twitch as you walk down the hallway. You do not give the slightest shit about this game. You're almost tempted to just stand in the middle of a room to prove a point. It would hurt Jane, but a small, venomous part of you would find that oddly satisfying.
It's a game for little kids.
You kind of want to punch whoever decided it would be a good idea to play hide and seek in the dark. You trail your hand along the wall, feeling oddly annoyed that this breaks your patented Strider strut even if no-one can see it. It would be infinitely smarter to just take off your damn glasses and give yourself some kind of visual ability but there's a fat chance in fuck of that happening right now. Your hand reaches upwards subconsciously and you finger a pointed edge uneasily.
You've been walking through the hallways for a while (seriously, how the fuck big is Roxy's house, anyway?) when a sudden sound almost makes you jump out of your skin.
“Strider? Is that you, old chap?”
Fuck. You breathe heavily, hoping he can't hear you. Or see you. Fuck. “Yeah,” you say, voice steady.
“Are you...” You seriously cannot see a single goddamn fucking thing, and it's pissing you off. Possibly more than it would to just take your glasses off. “Are you still wearing those blasted shades?” Well, fuck.
“Yeah. So.”
“Jesus, man! The room is almost pitch fucking black! How on earth can you see?”
Your shoulders are stiffening. You don't want to talk about the fucking glasses, especially not with him. “I can see fine.”
“Bollocks. You're following the wall.” You drop your hand, rapidly wishing that Jake would just piss off already. You're in a bad enough mood already.
“Doesn't mean I can't see at all.”
Jake is shaking his head. You can't see him, but you can tell. You hate that you can tell.
“Well, fine. Have it your way, Mr. bloody coolkid.”
“I always do.”
Jake's footsteps walk further down the hall – isn't that where he was coming from? You are so goddamn confused. You are -
“Well? Come on, then.”
You almost sigh in frustration. “We're not supposed to stick together.”
“Since when did you give a rat's arse?”
Unfortunately, you can't quite argue with that. Lips pursed, you follow Jake down the hall and through a door on the other side. Embarrassed by being caught following the wall earlier, you decide with misplaced malice to follow Jake's footsteps instead, assuming the idiot wouldn't let you bump into anything.
You assume wrong. “Fuck!” You hop backwards, biting your tongue. Your shin is fucking hurting fucking fuck.
“What's wrong? What happened?”
“N-nothing.”
“Bollocks,” Jake says with unexpected venom. “Complete and utter fucking bollocks. What on earth happened?”
You grit your teeth, trying to stand on the foot. Immediately, you let out a hiss of pain. You have quite possibly never wanted to murder somebody more in your entire life.
“You hit something, didn't you? Is it okay? Is it serious?”
“Yes, English, I broke my goddamn leg hitting it against a coffee table. Bone cracked and all, full on poking out of my skin like a fucking hard-on.”
“Well, how do you know? You can't see a goddamn thing.”
“I can feel my own body, English.”
Jake sighs dramatically. “I need to have a look.”
This is a nightmare. “Fine,” you snap, gesturing wildly. “We'll go to the fucking kitchen or something and have a look, jesus, you'd think someone died.”
“No.” Jake's voice is steely. “No, we are playing this game, gosh fuck it, whether you like it or not.” The next thing you know, he's grabbing your arm and pulling you and fuck fuck fuck it hurts but you don't say a word.
Jake leads the two of you across the room and pushes you through a door. Luckily you were walking with your hands forward this time, because you feel the back wall almost instantly. Jake closes the door behind you both, settling onto as much of the floor as there is room.
“A closet.”
Jake sniffs. “It's our hiding spot.”
You want to scream. You actually, literally do. “Least original fucking spot ever.”
“Look, it fits us both, okay? And I need to see your wound.”
You can hear him breathing. You almost think you can feel it, but that's fucking stupid and you hate yourself for even thinking it. You almost feel like you feel his presence as though the air is literally dense around him, as though you're a fucking aura reader and even getting all up in his personal space will mean you're having aura sex or some shit. His voice is quiet, almost a whisper, and you almost find yourself straining, almost find yourself cursing the sound of yourself swallowing and the blood pumping in your ears because if you listen really, really carefully, you can almost hear the rustle of his clothing.
“Just let me-” and then his hands are on your leg, his hands are on your skin, pushing your trouser leg up and running up your shin. For several terrifying moments your brain actually shuts down, adrenaline shrieking something at you but what, and your skin is so hot and a tingle actually goes down your entire body from the roots of your hair to the tips of your fingers.
“What the fuck are you doing?” you yell, kicking outwards and pushing Jake away with an 'oof'. “Get the fuck off me!” You pull your legs back, scrambling to the back wall and hugging them to your chest. Your chest is thick and can't stop breathing and you rest your chin on your knees, rest your nose, your forehead.
You don't understand. You understand everything. You take advanced-level high school classes, you're self-teaching yourself physics, you're trying to make a fully sentient AI and it's actually fucking working and you still don't fucking understand. You don't understand why you're angry all the time. You don't understand why you have so much hate in you, and you don't know how to get rid of it. You battle robots and you troll morons on the internet but nothing fucking works.
You don't understand and it's one or the other and there are certain things Striders never do, but you feel like you're already breaking one, and you don't want to break any more. So you hate and hate and hate but it doesn't fucking go away.
Jake is quiet. You have no idea what you want to do or what you want him to do and it's driving you insane.
“I don't understand,” Jake says. His voice is quiet and you have to strain to hear him and you wish you didn't because then you wouldn't have to hear the hurt in his voice, cutting you in two and making you shiver and dig your fingernails into your legs so much it's painful. “What on earth has been up with you lately?”
You don't answer. You can tell he didn't expect you to, and that hurts, too.
Jake sighs, and you can hear him moving, shifting his position. “I know I did something. Don't try to argue with me, I can take it.” He laughs humorlessly. “I can tell. Because it's just me, isn't it? Jane and Roxy just think you've been moody lately, so it's just me.” He pauses, and his voice goes deeper, quieter. “I'm so sorry, Dirk. I'm sorry for whatever I did, and I'm sorry that I don't know what it was. I thought I could-” His breath catches, just slightly, something you wouldn't have to hear if he weren't speaking so goddamn quietly and you weren't both shut up in this goddamn box together.
You bring your head up, tightening your grip around your legs, staring at the small space of floor between you. “You didn't do anything.”
“Then what is it?” He isn't even angry. He just wants to know that badly.
“I'm just... fuck.” You cover your face with your hand, feel your glasses against your palm. “I'm just...going through something right now, okay? That's it.”
“What? What are you going through? See, this is exactly what I mean! We used to tell each other everything! We were best friends – brothers! And now it's like – we're not even friends anymore. Like I'm not your friend.”
Jake is probably one of the least selfish people you've ever met. He's brave and kind and all he's ever wanted to do is help you and – fuck.
“We're still friends,” you manage, horrified at the waver in your voice. “We always will be.”
There's the rustle of cloth and Jake sighs. Leans back. You curl tighter into your ball.
This world is fucking crap. It is and everyone knows it. In a good world, you wouldn't have to understand these things, because there wouldn't be a thing to understand. You wouldn't have to constantly ask and re-ask yourself 'what is this' and 'what am I' and 'what do I feel' and 'what is Jake' and 'what does Jake feel'. You'd be able to just say 'you're probably the best friend I'll ever have' or 'sometimes I don't even know how to tell you how much I care about you' or 'I want to kiss you and fuck you and make you scream and that thought turns me on more than anything else I've managed to come up with'. It would be there or it wouldn't, and you'd be there or you wouldn't, but no, it's just so fucking complicated and you don't understand.
Maybe if you did it the other way you wouldn't hurt so many people in the process, but you'd hurt yourself just a little bit more, and you can't handle that. You're too selfish for that. Too weak.
“She'll probably find us soon,” Jake says, and his attempt to break the mood pisses you off.
“Weren't you the one saying I don't give a rat's ass about this game? Because I don't.”
“What on earth has got your knickers in a twist about this game? It's just hide and seek.”
“Because it's a game for kids, Jake, and in case you haven't figured it out yet, we're not kids anymore! We're thirteen. We're growing up. Trying to hold onto kiddy shit like this is just retarded.” You breathe heavily, whiping at your mouth.
“Fine,” he mutters, and silence falls once again.
A few minutes later, the door opens and Jane towers over you both, saying delightedly, “Found you!”
Jake nods, and it's a little painful to hear how forced his cheerful tone is. “Yes, well done. I'm afraid that Strider and I both were in this little hovel; in retrospect it may have been a slight silly to put all our eggs in one basket like that, so to speak.”
Jane giggles slightly stiltedly, and the two of you shuffle out of the closet.
“Can we turn a fucking light on now?”
“Not yet, I still need to find Roxy! Want to help?”
Not at all, but anything is better than spending a few more minutes alone with Jake. “Sure.”
You split up.
*
Later, as the four of you eat ice cream straight from the containers, you feel Jake looking at you, that same worried, yearning expression you heard in his voice earlier.
You don't turn his way, but you do nod. It's all you can do, but it's okay.