1000 Themes - #566 - Homestuck - Dave & OC

Jun 19, 2011 22:17

Title: i warned you about dorms, bro
Prompt: Nothing Wrong With Me (for challenge)
A post-SBURB Dave and his perfectly normal college roommate, having a perfectly normal college roommate argument discussion. Dave is failing trying to explain the following:

1) The fridge is full of swords

2) All the food is in the closet

3) Also Dave I have been warned about stairs you can stop now

4) Who's brain is in that jar, anyway

5) No, it can't be your brain

etc etc.

...Because while Bro is the coolest dude to ever slice a meteor in half, Dave has basically been raised by a lunatic.

^^^ actual prompt from Homestuck Anon Meme
Rating: PG
Warnings: OC, de-anon'ing from the Homestuck Anon Meme, also unedited from original posting
Words: 2,719
Series: Homestuck
Pairings/Characters: Dave & OC



Who's this douchebag.

Oh. Your name is ROOMIE, a city boy born and raised in south Detroit. No, you don't get an actual name, because no one would call you by your actual name if you had one. No matter what, you will always be referred to as something other than what you name yourself or whatever is on the birth certificate that you at least hope you have. Maybe you'd have a name if your roommate at this particular UNIVERSITY wasn't a coolkid fellow by the name of DAVE STRIDER.

When you met Dave Strider, you thought he was a pretty cool dude. You weren't wrong, not at all. He brought his brother's old game system for you two to play (he guesses, if that's your thing--which it is, didn't you know? you should know this, since you're you and all.), and has a turntable--some turntables? you're an Accounting major, that isn't exactly your thing--that he likes to make some sick beats and pimp out some mad rhymes to from time to time. Sometimes he says he burns sick fires, but things get quiet from there and you don't like to mention the fires being sick, like, ever.

Dude even brought a fridge from home. Crazy considerate of a guy you've only spoken to before over FaceBox, right? Right. He reminds you of this every time you even go near the fridge or the Xbox or his side of the room in general. He also tells you that he only got that FaceBox to make sure he doesn't have to bust any asses over Pesterchum, because there's some kind of ironic jackassery to trolling dicks and jerks publicly on their Walls. Ironic. Always ironic. But anyway, you shouldn't feel blessed with his Boxy presence unless you really want to, he only saved a couple of worlds, no biggie. No need to get on your knees and kiss his gogdamned shoes. You should also never spread the word that he has one, "Flighty broads, man, they'd be all over that shit in a doomed second."

So you comply with Dave's requests. He's a cool dude with rad sunglasses. If you didn't say so yourself, they came straight off Ben Stiller's face. When you mention this, Dave tells you that you returned the favor by staying up all hours of the night winning an auction for a dirty stuffed bunny held in Nicolas Cage's grimy convict hands. Confused and dumbfounded by the dedication, you just nod and continue with your homework. You hate both those actors, so you don't have much more to say on the matter.

The arrangement works out for a good while. Your name is ROOMIE and you're living with a coolkid with an undecided major who's taking random classes--who takes a criminal justice course just for the hell of it? or, sorry, for the irony--is, well, a cool dude with a cool brother and there's nothing totally weird about him. Yeah...nothing weird at all. Perfectly normal. Grade A normalcy. If there was a normal test, he'd pass it and make it on the Dean's list for it. Yeah. Right.

Okay, yeah, you're lying big time, this kid is Fucked Up in a completely non-ironic way.

---

It began one day when you were going to the fridge to get the bottle of Dr. Pepper you left in there the day previously. Dave wasn't in the room, but it wasn't like you were exactly looking for the guy or anything. You just knew. So when you got within a foot of the fridge, you screamed like your little sister when she met Mr. Garden Snake the moment Dave appeared out of fucking nowhere to block you from your destination.

He had a permanent poker face, and the only method of trying to read said face was to watch his eyebrows and body language. In this case, one brow lifted over the circular lens of his sunglasses, and his arms were crossed over his chest. You asked him to move, but he said nothing. It was a whole fucking minute before he nodded and stepped aside, leaving you to wonder how he even got into the room and right in front of you in the first place. Dude's a ninja, you swear.

So, too thirsty to think that, "hey, kinda weird that Dave, my trusty roommate, just blocked me for a whole fucking minute from opening this fridge, maybe I should take that as a hint for something," you open the fridge door. Your decision that Dave was a ninja of the Strider clan came to life in the future self-burial in a lot of swords. Damn, these things are pointy, why are swords pointy? Oh wait. Why were they even in the fridge to begin with?

That was the first installment of outright weirdness you saw from Dave.

When you finally manage to dislodge yourself from the sword pile--escape, escape!--you attempt to face Dave to ask him just what the fuck he was thinking, but before you can even get a word out he says, "Going out. Warning you about the stairs now, bro."

And then he's gone. Just like that. Fucking ninja with a mini fridge full of swords and one (1) bottle of untouched Dr. Pepper.

---

Dave doesn't come back until sometime the next day. You stayed awake precisely two hours later than normal with intention to confront him about the swords in the fridge. Swords in the fridge. Time to rephrase that: Real fucking swords in the goddamned fridge. It was insane! But, in retrospect, staying up past your bedtime was dumb. You should have known Dave would be out late, he always does. You were late for your Stats test, slept through your Lit class, and tripped up the stairs. Up the stairs, you haven't done that since junior high.

When you got back to your dorm, you were prepared to talk at Dave--the sleepiness at this point qualified a "talking at," you didn't think you could handle a long "talking to" or "talking with"--until you saw him squatting on the floor in front of his closet. Dumbfounded, you just stared, because he was putting his groceries in his closet. You stammered to him about the drawers and shelves you put in the room to store food, but he shook his head.

"Don't need 'em." So you ask why. "'Cause."

You ask him about the swords while you're at it, and he stops stacking bottles of apple juice--"It's gonna be like fuckin' Christmas all up in here everyday, man."--in his closet, rocks back on his heels, and looks up at you.

"You don't?" he asks back, and you honestly can't tell if he's serious or pulling your leg. You shake your head and tell him no, you don't, and everyone else in the world doesn't either. "That's because they kept wands and horns and shit in piles instead of useful things." he comments and you say What? They? Did I not just say no one keeps non-food items in their fridges, man?

Dave waves you off and continues unpacking his pathetic amount of groceries into the closet. "Jegus, it's nothing."

And you have certainly never heard "jegus" before. This guy is getting weirder and weirder everyday. At least that oddity is pretty funny, maybe even catchy. Soon enough you'll probably be using "jegus" and get offended stares because hey, you actually care if you bother people.

You roll your eyes and get ready to take a much needed nap. You sit on your bed, and realize that Dave's closet-stuffing is near obsessive, and from this angle you can see that he's burying it all into the far reaches. It's like he's...hiding it. Why would anyone be hiding food? You figured he was cool enough with you to not feel as if he needed to.

So you say that, you wonder aloud if he trusts you, and that he can, you're not going to eat his stuff. Dave shrugs. "This is where I keep my food. This is where I've always kept food."

You branch out and ask if his Bro has something to do with this. Were you neglected, Dave? Because you also eat as if it's going to get snatched from you at any second. "Okay, bro, no. Bro is the coolest guy you're ever going to even see so you better buckle up and enjoy your ride to unimpressed de-cooldom, got it?" So you shut up about Bro.

You ask if it's territorial or survival. Because really, if this is about male dominance, you don't give a shit's fuck. "Do you want trolls coming in and looking around for some chips and shit to go with their grubsauce? That's a fucking nightmare, I'm telling you." You stare at him and can't find words. "So in the closet it goes, end of fucking story."

End of fucking story, then. You crawl into bed and when it gets quiet you tell him that you fell up the stairs. That ought to cheer him up or something, that kind of thing is always hilarious.

"Warned you about those stairs."

---

It's one in the morning and you're almost done with your paper on irony. It's a twist of fate that you might have once found amusing in the ironic way, but since the past two months of Strider hell--which is a cool hell, you have to admit--you've come to hate it. The swords, the food, the stairs, the constant chilled out oddness of your roommate is getting to you. You thought about talking to your RA, but that would mean getting Dave kicked out for a weapons violation. You're not the kind of guy to get another dude kicked out for his refrigerated sword collection.

Dave comes back, and this is probably the first time he has while you've been awake. You share nods of acknowledgment, and you don't plan on speaking to him until he sets a jar on one of the food shelves you have on your side of the room. You know, where food goes. You think he's putting food up there, you said he could share, but there are no more thuds, or bag ruffling, or anything. Something tells you that you shouldn't look, you really shouldn't, but you do it anyway and stare at it long and hard. It's a surreal feeling, seeing a brain in a jar on your shelve next to your Doritos. It just is.

"You're up late," he comments, "didn't peg you to be a last minute guy." You brief him on your hectic day, and how you forgot about it until your classmate asked you about it. So here you are with a Monster and a headache. Dave moves along without missing a beat, dropping his bag on his bed and getting some apple juice from the closet. You always expected him to be an energy drink kind of dude, but damn does he love his apple juice. You wonder what'd he do if you gave him a pack of juice boxes for his birthday or something. He'd probably make them cool, and then everyone would start drinking from juice boxes.

You decide to take a small break and ask him who's brain is in the murky jar, anyway. He shrugs. "Mine," he says. You tell him that's bullshit, his brain is clearly in his head, or else he wouldn't be talking to you right now. "Could be mine from another time," he says. You tell him that's also bullshit, but drop the subject. It's probably missing from a bio lab, and he probably put it on your side of the room to be ironic. Because you're a math major, not a science major. Ha ha.

He's unpacking his bag, setting everything out on his otherwise unused desk. Where do you even go, you ask. He shrugs and taps his pencil on the red cover he put on his CRIM course book. "The Angle," he says. But there's nothing there after 6 at night, all the food places close. "Exactly, no one down there to use the net. It's faster than a--" Just stop, Dave, it's going to be vulgar and I don't want to hear it. He shrugs again and opens said red-covered CRIM book. It's the only book with a cover, and he says that it had to be red. It had to be. She would like that. Who "she" is, you've never asked; seemed like a bad idea.

And then you realize Dave isn't out doing coolkid things like going to parties or getting drunk with his friends or scoring with all the ladies. He's sitting alone in a corner with some apple juice, surfing the net. He's on his laptop the entire eight hour minimum he's gone from your room. You may ask a lot of questions, but you're not going to venture into finding out what Dave does online. For all you know, he could be a level-whatever elven ninja war leader from the jegus clan or something, but it's definitely none of your business.

"In case you're wondering what I do online for so long, I'm talking to friends."

You jump when he says that, when did he get the ability to read your thoughts. You ask what he means by that, can't you just call them? He says, "No, because a lot of them aren't on this planet." That's it. You can't even. The conversation is dropped when you save your work, shut your laptop, and leave the dorm, groaning in frustration when Dave calls out behind you, "Watch out for the stairs, bro! I've warned you!"

Really, this guy's getting on your last nerve. It's about time you have an actual "talk."

---

There were swords in the fridge. "Dude, that's totally normal. It's a pain knowing they're in my sylladex, waiting to be shot out at a moment's notice."

You put your food in the closet, and sometimes put mine in my closet. "I've already told you about that, man. That's where food goes, do you see a usable kitchen here? You know why? Because I got this food storage thing down, you don't even know."

Okay...well what about the brain. "I told you, it's mine." No, Dave, it can't be yours. "Yeah it is." No it's not. "I get it, you're jealous, you can't see your brain but--" Dave I mean it-- "--dude you need to chill."

Alright. You take a deep breath, and prepare yourself to lay it on him "chill"-like.

You tell him normal people don't keep food in their closet, or swords in the fridge. They don't disregard the proper use of a kitchen in favor of...well, whatever the practicality was in storing food in the closet. You tell him all this, you're being redundant, you know, but you are so frustrated by his trolls and his timelines. Your voice is raising, and you don't notice until you stop, when the room is quiet. Dave is staring at you, you guess, you can't tell with those killer shades. And you add, further more, that normal people also remove their shades at nighttime, when indoors, or, god forbid, when they sleep.

Dave's expression doesn't change. Not a single brow raises in defense. Hell, there's not even a muscle twitch in that stoic, relaxed frown. When he speaks, you don't expect it, because it happens just so that you didn't catch a sign of a twitch before he opened his mouth. "Sorry to lay it on you, roomie, but I'm not exactly normal. For the trolls, mostly, I guess, but I think the definition of 'normal' you're spitting out at me is debatable, and I don't think you'd be up for a rap battle to duke that one out any time soon."

Just who are you, you ask. "An insufferable pri--"

You shake your head and walk away, hoping that when you come back tonight your roommate will be a cool dude with a cool older brother, an XBox, and some sick beats all cooked up just for your unsuspecting ears. Then you'll open the swordless fridge, remove one (1) untouched Dr. Pepper, and chillax with the coolest roommate you could have. You know that won't happen, but it's worth thinking about. You've looked into room changes, and you wouldn't be able to switch out until the next semester.

Your name is ROOMIE, unless otherwise--aka never--stated, born and raised in south Detroit, and you're about to jump on the midnight train to anywhere because of one (1) DAVE STRIDER.

*challenge: 1000 themes, c: dave strider, rating: pg, w: 2700-2800, s: homestuck

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