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Your wings rustle a little. The sound is unwelcome in the awkwardness of the silence.
“So you’re the time girl,” he says finally.
“Yes.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets almost as soon as you’ve let go. “I was told you wanted to talk to me.”
“Yes,” you say again.
“Um,” he says, after another thirty-four seconds of silence. “What?”
You tilt your head. “I wondered if my counterpart was similar to me. But...you’re not god tier.”
“Nope,” he says. “Pity, ain’t it.”
You watch him closely. “I don’t mind.”
“Everything still works,” he says, tapping his head. “You know, time-wise. I still got the beat.”
“The ticks,” you say.
“Yeah, those. You know the seconds.”
“And the minutes, and the hours,” you respond.
He holds out his fist, and it takes you a second to realise that he wants a bunp. You comply.
He raises his eyebrows. “You know you did that on beat?”
“I do everything on beat, Strider,” you say with a slight smile, still watching, careful not to miss anything he does.
He gives you a slight nod, of appreciation, acceptance, maybe.
The silence is there again, but this time not so uncomfortable. It’s now opportunistic, a chance to study the human time player in depth. You had not trolled the humans often during their session and had never gotten a good look at them. He has blonde hair – a novelty, considering that every member of your race has (had?) black hair. It looks soft. He’s got pale skin, arms and neck decorated with the occasional tan freckle, eyes shielded by big black glasses. You wonder what lies behind them. He’s skinny, too, skinny like Sollux is skinny, just a little more muscle than the typical skin-and-bones, tall and lithe and something akin to beautiful.
You wonder if, behind those dark glasses, he is studying you in the same way.
“So,” he says, in a voice that sounds dry, like he hasn’t used it for years. You retrieve the time in your mind. You have been staring for exactly six minutes and thirty-eight seconds. “Time players, huh?”
“Time players,” you repeat.
“We got to stick together,” he tells you.
“No matter what,” you tell him.
His mouth curls into a half-grin and he gives you another bunp and then – all too quickly – Dave Strider is gone.
For another three minutes and eight seconds you stare at the door, in hopes, perhaps, that he will come back.
It is difficult to be with everyone else in the Veil. You have never been overly fond of most of the trolls in your session. Vriska killed you – ironic, because she can never kill you again. Eridan is always hitting on you and every other living thing available (you caught him sweet-talking a fern once). You owe Equius a lot, but what he did still makes you angry and you do your best to avoid him. Mostly, though, you’re jealous of Feferi, her closeness to Sollux.
After you reached god tier, and got your feelings back, you remembered that you loved Sollux, and he loved you. Or at least, he had, once. Now he’s abandoned you for fish-girl over there and all you want to do is platonically grind her into sand.
Lately you’ve mostly given up on Sollux. He always gives you the saddest looks when he sees you. You wonder if that’s because he still feels guilty about killing you. He should know that it wasn’t his fault, it was Vriska’s. You hate that girl so much. Platonically. You hate a lot of people platonically.
You’ve considered it quite a lot. The only people you could even imagine yourself blackromming with are fish-girl and spiderbitch, and with spiderbitch already in a kismessitude with Justice Lady and fish-girl “against” blackrom you’ve got no chance. Then there’s redrom, but nobody wants to be pale or flushed with you. You’re the odd one out. The only one who’s been dead, knows how to travel the dream bubbles, knows everything that could happen or did happen, because you’re the Maid of Time. Nobody else understands. Wait – you should rephrase that – it’s hard, and nobody understands. There. Obligatory meme has been utilised. Now there’s no excuse for complaint.
For a long time, you had been warming yourself up to be “forevver alone”, as Eridan might put it, so dramatic and melancholy.
Then along comes Dave Strider, everything you need – ironic and witty and understanding and exciting – wrapped into a nice handsome package.
But don’t get your hopes up yet! He is a human, and he may not be attracted to you in the least.
You can dream, though.
So you do dream. You dream of dead Aradias and exploding Aradia-bots and Sollux descending from the sky with honey coating his lips and psionics whirling around him in an angry haze. You dream of ancient civilisations buried in caves and beneath soil, waiting for you to retrieve their memories, but dead no matter what you do. Everything is dead in your dreams. Including you.
Some nights you do not even try to sleep. These are the nights that you go out flying.
It’s one of your favourite pastimes. There’s a tall part of the building at the end of your wing, and those nights when you don’t sleep you run down the hallway barefoot, push open the door, take off right away and dance in the air. Your wings leave red glitter in their wake.
Tonight is such a night. The moment you approach your recuperacoon your mind is full of rust-coloured blood and honey-stained lips and red and blue fog and you back away almost instantly. Tonight is a night for flying.
The balls of your feet make a sh-sh sound as they hit the floor over and over again, and then you are turning the doorknob on the door and pushing off on your toes and you are flying.
You always get the same euphoria that you got the first time you flew. The sheer power you have is astounding. The ability to look down on everything below you is – wait.
“You look great,” Strider calls up to you. “Don’t stop on my account.”
But you do, anyways, gliding down to meet him and landing lightly on your toes. “What are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He shrugs. “Why did you stop?”
“It would be rude not to join you.”
“Nah,” he says. “You should keep flying. I’ll just watch.”
You study him again. “Can I see what your eyes look like?”
In a moment of triumph the coolkid’s mouth drops open and his hand shoots to his shades, and then his poker face is back. “Nope.”
“I won’t fly for you unless you show me,” you bargain.
“That’s a stupid idea,” he disagrees.
“Then we will just have to stand here in awkward silence,” you tell him, hiding a smile.
He frowns, barely perceptibly, but says, “Damn, Megido, how did you know my secret weakness is awkward silences?”
You stand there, waiting.
“Okay, fuck you,” he says, and whips off his shades.
It’s only a fraction of a second – point three two, to be exact – before they’re settled back on the bridge of his nose, safe and sound in front of his eyes.
“...they’re red,” you say, sounding far more surprised than you intended to.
“Now Megido, don’t be gossiping about the lovely cherry red of my eyeballs,” Dave says, wagging a finger at you (ironically, you suppose). “It’s top secret, confidential government-only material, got that? Can’t have any civilians getting their hands on this covert shit.”
“I understood only three fourths of what you just said,” you inform him. “But of course, I’ll keep your secret.”
You stand there for another few seconds, and then you say, “I suppose I should be working on my side of the bargain, now?”
Before he can answer, you’ve already launched off of the ground and into the air, spiralling up to the sky. It’s such a feeling of freedom, flying, and you wish you never had to land again.
But Dave is down there, and so you fold your wings in and drop until you’re three feet from the ground and then hover. With all the practice you’ve had lately, it’s easy to control your flight.
He’s looking at you – you might even say he’s staring – and his hand is held out, presumably to catch the shimmery powder that falls from your wings whenever you fly. The rust-coloured glitter dusts the tips of his fingers.
“Do you like it?” You despise the way that your voice hitches a little when you say ‘like’. Surely you’re not that red for the human. Not yet.
“It’s pretty,” he answers, still staring. At you or the glitter or your wings?
“Dave,” you say.
“Megido,” he says.
“Would you like to try it?”
“Uh,” he says, and his face drops a little. He’s not staring anymore, if he ever was. “Try what.”
“Flying.”
He glances to the side. “Egbert tried that once. Scared me out of my fucking mind.”
“I’ll be careful,” you say. “I’ll even fly low to the ground, if you’d like.”
He looks back up again, pushes his shades down just a tiny bit so you can see the very tops of his eyes. His eyebrows are raised in an expression of doubt. “You’re not going to drop me? If I die I’d rather it be in fierce battle, not being squashed on a floor after being dropped by a red fairy of time.”
“God,” you correct him, not unkindly.
“Yeah, god, whatever.”
“And I’m not going to drop you,” you say. “I would never drop a fellow time player.” You relax your wings a little, drifting closer to him, and brush your fingers along his cheek.
It’s an experiment, one that seems to have some effect on him. He visibly stiffens, and then just as quickly relaxes.
“Okay,” he says finally, after twelve seconds of silence. “I trust you. Let’s do this.”
You allow a smile to ghost across your face, and then hide it again behind an emotionless face, matching Dave’s impassivity, and then you flutter behind him and wrap your arms around his torso.
You’ve only done this once before, carrying Sollux. You’d hoped...but, no, that doesn’t matter anymore. Sollux belongs to Feferi now, and with your arms around Dave you can safely say that you are over him. At least, mostly.
You start off small, lifting a few inches off of the ground, can feel him shivering. “Relax,” you whisper into his ear. “Are you that afraid of heights?”
“Dave Motherfucking Strider is not afraid of anything,” he says, but it’s in a strained voice.
“Relax,” you repeat. “Don’t move. Just let me do the work.”
He doesn’t reply, but he does stop shivering. You decide to risk going a little higher. When he notices this, he grabs your wrist, and you tighten your grasp, in a way that you hope is encouraging.
“It’s okay,” you murmur. “Didn’t you say you trusted me? We’re both time players, Dave. Remember?”
“I know, it’s just that...” He swallows. “I’ve never been afraid of heights before. Used to fight on the roof with Bro all the time. Climbed shit. Hell, I’ve jumped off a few buildings. But for some reason I’m just, I just, in the past few days, weeks, months, whatever it’s been, I’ve just seen so many ways for me to die, over and over and over again, and dead Daves are the enemy – you know, you understand, right? You’re a time player. You get it. You get the...the dead bodies. Come on, Megido, tell me you get it.” He’s breathing hard, shaking again.
You breathe hot air onto his ear, press your chin up against his shoulder, twisting upward into the air. “Yes, I understand. Of course I understand.” You wonder if he always rambles when he’s scared, and then decide it’s endearing and that you’re 0k with it.
“Did you...did you ever have to kill yourself?” His breath falters, and you can see his irises darting over to his periphery to try and snatch a look at you. “To get to where you are?”
“No, it was an accident,” you tell him. “A happy accident, since I went from being dead, to a sprite, to a robot, to a god. This is probably the best incarnation I’ve had.”
He laughs a little, but it’s not all there. “I had to.”
“Terezi,” you supply.
“Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t. Couldn’t.”
“I know,” you tell him. “I couldn’t have done it, either.”
His hands tighten on your wrists. “Why am I telling you all this?”
“Because you’re my fellow time player,” you say into his ear. “We can share secrets because we trust each other.”
“Share secrets,” he says, and he laughs for real this time. “So what is this, a sleepover? I think we should play truth or dare. That’s what they always play at sleepovers.”
“Okay,” you say. He glances at you again, looking surprised. Normally, you guess, he would have better control of his emotions, but you’ve set him off a little bit by doing this. “I’m asking you truth. Do you realise how far we are off the ground?”
He glances down. “Oh, shit, Megido, why did you do that.” But he’s smiling, and you’re smiling too, because he’s smiling.
“Hold on,” you say. “Before we continue this game, let me show you something.”
You flit up to the little hatch in the roof. If one had not been informed of it, and one did not have the archaeologist’s eye for clues like you do, one would probably not notice the hatch, no matter how hard they looked. But you had, about twelve visits ago, and you enjoy using it.
You push a button beneath the hatch and it slides open, letting in cool night air. You wondered, initially, how exactly that works, since you’re on an asteroid and there isn’t much of an atmosphere. But you can breathe just fine, and you figure there wouldn’t even be a hatch if you couldn’t use it, so it doesn’t matter.
Dave makes a slight strangled noise. “Are we outside the building?”
“Yes,” you say. “Dave, I’m not going to drop you into the abyss, stop shaking.”
“I ain’t shaking.” He stops shaking. You notice his eyes are squeezed shut.
“I’m going to let you go,” you continue in the same nonchalant voice.
“Excuse me?” His voice goes up an octave. You are beginning to think that Freaking Dave Strider Out is a better game than truth or dare.
“Just trust me,” you whisper, and he seems to, loosening his grip on your wrist, and then you let go.
He falls for point six seven seconds and then hits the concrete squarely on his rear end. “Ow,” he complains.
“Oh, please,” you say, drifting gracefully next to him. “That was hardly a fall at all.”
He glares up at you, and his glasses are askew, and you can’t help yourself. You smile.
“Oh, you think this is funny,” he snaps, righting his shades.
“No,” you say, sitting. “I think it’s cute.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment – four point eight seconds – and then says, “Let’s keep playing truth or dare.”
“Okay,” you agree, flattening your hands on the concrete. There are stars here, bigger than those on Alternia because they’re so close, but perhaps that makes up for the lack of moons. They are beautiful. You hope Dave thinks so, too.
“Truth or dare,” he asks.
“...truth,” you say.
“All right.” He pauses. “Who do you li-ike?” He draws out the last word so it becomes a friendly taunt.
“I like a friend,” you say simply, staring out at the stars.
“A friend, huh? Which one?”
“Ah-ah-ah,” you say, and the side of your mouth furthest from Dave curls into a half-smile. “Only one question per round. Truth or dare, Strider?”
“Dare,” he says with finality.
Your eyes follow a line of stars. You’ve been trying to make them up into the familiar constellations ever since you found this place, this convenient astronomer’s seat. So far you’ve had no luck, but that doesn’t stop you from trying.
“I don’t know any traditional Earth dares,” you say.
“Well,” he says, “usually the best people can come up with is licking something, or kissing someone, or taking a shit on their living room couch.”
“Oh,” you say, puzzling over the sentence, but not really. There is nothing to puzzle over.
“Well? Dare me something, Megido.”
“Fine, then,” you say, and you turn towards him slightly and say, “Kiss me.”
Two point six seconds of startled surprise – Dave’s mouth drops - one point three seconds of interested consideration – Dave’s mouth closes – point seven eight four seconds of acceptance – Dave’s mouth curls into a smile – and then four three two one kiss.
It lasts exactly six point one three five eight seconds and it is everything you were waiting for (his eyes and yours are closed and his arm is around your neck pulling you closer and his lips are soft and his breath is warm against your neck when he pulls away, just slightly, just enough that his forehead is touching your cheek and his hands are warm on your back and you are breathing in the scent of his hair).
For a second you’re both silent, and then he whispers into your neck, “So, wanna use the timey wimey shit to do that again?”
“I don’t think we need that,” you whisper back.
You don’t, and you prove it.
When you break away this time, he leans back the other way, leaving a good foot between your heads, and you’re about to be disappointed when his hand slides over on top of yours. Casually, of course, because when is Dave Strider not casual, even when being awkward. It’s warm and it sends a shock up your arm and down your spine.
But tonight is not the night for anything more than a few quiet kisses. There are stars to be seen, and silence to be endured, and hands to hold.
“Well, aren’t we cute,” Dave mutters under his breath. You glance over at him and he’s looking at your hands and shaking a little.
“I think you mean you’re cute,” you tease.
“I wouldn’t be taking this bullshit from anyone but you, Megido.”
“I know.”
Five point three seconds of silence, and then you can’t resist blurting out, “Was that…strawberry scented shampoo?”
“It’s ironic, Megido.”
