yourattention | [noctium] ic inbox

[Blissfully unaware of the way Connor's thoughts turn, Dave shrugs at his response and leans in to take out a bottle of apple juice that's about three quarters full. He unscrews it as he hip-bumps the door shut and, since Connor said no, he takes a swig out of it before he sets it on the counter.

He steps away from it, fishing through another cupboard before pulling back with a bottle of vodka left over from the party ages ago. He's not really a drinker but, if there were ever a time to drink, he thinks it would probably be now.

He unscrews it, tipping it into the apple juice bottle until it is topped up again.]

What've you been up to lately? Feels like I haven't seen you much since... uh. The beach shit.

[He takes the full bottle in his hand, capping it to swish it around before uncapping it to take another swig.]

[Connor thinks about it, about panicking in the darkness and feeling so fucking out of control of himself he just wanted. He's still coming down off that, honestly, which probably explains his behavior. He could tell Dave that.

But he's not going to.]

Working, like usual. Ran around making ice boxes for restaurants during the blackout, tried to help out people who were kids, got my dragon back. [He shrugs.] Don't drink all that.

[It lands more on the friendly ribbing side of things, rather than the "platonically dom your friend" side of it. Mostly Connor doesn't want Dave drinking himself sick about the situation.]

[Dave nurses his big ass drink, listening to Connor list off his monthly doings. He seems to take it in stride, pulling a face at the comment.]

I won't drink it all if you drink some. [He wiggles it, temptingly, then pauses. He thinks, opens his mouth and closes it.

Fuck it.]

Did you say you've got a dragon?

[He doesn't drink, actually. Kind of hates it, always found his vices elsewhere. Still, he reaches out and takes the bottle from Dave casually.]

Did I not tell you about Puff? I tamed a dragon once. They love beef jerky, terrorizing visitors, and wool ponchos.

[Connor casually takes a swig from the bottle and then holds it back out for Dave to take.]

[Drinking is not something Dave engages in with any frequency and so, when he does, it's like watching a baby deer try to walk. Struggles and so easily knocked down.

He's not going to finish this. He takes a swig.]

Weirdly, I feel like you could have told me about it and I just put it in my catalogue of facts about you that seem like they should make less sense than they do and forgot about it. Like the trident.

[He shrugs his shoulders.]

I guess that stuff is normal to me, to the point where you'd probably be less normal if you were more normal.

[He runs his hand over his face, muttering to himself:]

Stop saying normal.

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm super normal compared to most people.

[His perception of this is... skewed. It's really skewed, because he doesn't consider musical theatre bullshit to be weird but everyone else does. He also just rates it on scale of "weird things didn't happen to me where I'm from" versus "weird things have happened in my life" so it's averaged weirdly.]

I don't know what you think is normal because I've had to piece everything I know about you together from crumbs like some bizarre recreation of what a blind person thinks Mt.Rushmore looks like.

[He drinks.]

But like, made out of crumbs. Anyway. I thought you were from America too but the America I knew only had guns and footballs, not dragons. So I kind of just assumed you were from post-apocalypse America which I guess technically I am too.

[He taps his chin as he rambles, thinking.]

Sometimes I feel like we've got everything in common and sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all.

Yeah, no. I'm boring as hell: I grew up in Philly, I went to private school until I got kicked out for dealing weed, I was on the swim team, I sucked a lot of dick. [He shrugs.] Then I died and a god brought me back to life and I tamed a dragon. Shit happens.

[These two things are really not related, but Connor says them like they are because why wouldn't he? To him they're related, but he's skipped over the part in the middle where the god brought him back to life in a different world entirely.

It's not, like, a secret? Dave saw Ensō, in the dream bubble. Connor simply assumes that Dave's put those pieces together without him having to explicitly say it.]

It's not any weirder than being here. At least I don't have to fistfight a fucking god here.

[Yup. He's just gonna keep saying shit he doesn't realize is absolutely fucking bonkers.]

Oh, yeah. I guess that's pretty normal.

[Contemplative, he traces shapes idly on the table.]

More normal than me, I think. I didn't really.. I dropped out, at some point. I don't really remember. But I was thirteen when all the Earth exploding stuff happened and I didn't think I liked dudes for the next three years so I sucked significantly less dick, too. I wouldn't rule out fistfighting Malachite just yet though.

Oh, no. If I fistfight Malachite, it's gonna be because I want to. I had to fight gods back home. It's why I already knew how to do this.

[He holds up his hand and water collects in his palm. Connor blows across the surface of it and it scatters into water droplets that sparkle in the awful lighting of Dave's kitchen.]

My god is Water.

[Dave blinks his eyes as the water scatters, cocking his head to the side curiously.]

See, I get that. Because my god is Time. Only I am also the god of it. Kind of. But I'm not gonna fuck around and show you--

I'm distracting myself-- You just said home is where you fight gods but you literally just told me your life is normal and you live in normal suburban America and I know I've seen other stuff but you didn't say that was home.

[It's not exactly that Connor is deliberately practicing sleight of hand whenever he answers people's questions or talks about himself. He simply... doesn't bring things up unless they're relevant. Or explain various disparate facts he's said about himself.]

I said I'm super normal. I never said anything about my life being normal. [A beat.] Although technically both are true if you only count "life" as the part up until I offed myself the first time.

[People who've never thought very hard about whether or not they count as "alive," given how many times they've died: Connor.]

Right. So you think when someone says they're normal they're referring specifically to themselves, physically and not literally anything that has happened to them?

[He furrows his brows, trying to follow.]

I was normal too until I wasn't. Sounds like you stopped being normal a long time ago.

I mean, even the stuff that happened to me isn't that weird. It happened to like... fifty other people, and all of them had fought gods before. Or something adjacent.

[This is... not precisely true! But he was the (1) extremely normal character in the game. He had no powers, no supernatural shit in his backstory. The worst thing that every happened to him was being kicked out of Hanover.]

So I'm still usually the most boring person people know.

[Connor, like, really and genuinely believes this for the record.]

Fifty people is a small sample size for like, a school. A state. A country. It's definitely a small sample size for, say, the entire universe. I think, probably, being one of fifty people that fought gods is kind of something abnormal?

[He's sort of drawling this out because he's still nursing his drink, but he looks mildly irritated with the conversation and so he just waves him off.]

Any other juicy goss? What you been up to?

[Fucked my brother lately? dances on his tongue but he doesn't say it.]

There were more people who came and went. I'm not the Historian. I don't keep exact track of them.

[He shrugs, looking away from Dave to check the time. Oh.]

Cookies are done. Do you actually have oven mitts or did you not bother?

[Is he avoiding the question about "juicy goss"? Maybe! Don't worry about it. Don't worry about the fact that he probably has oven mitts in the bag too either.]

Nah. I want to contribute.

[Dave gets up, too fast. Give him a minute. That's a lot more vodka than he usually drinks in five minutes.

He slinks over to the oven and reaches in for the tray, pulling it out and setting it on the stovetop.]

You never really get used to that. [He reaches out and presses his warm palm over the front of Connor's face.]

Toasty.

What are you, five?

[Connor waves away Dave's hand and turns to pull a spatula from his bag of tricks and thrusts it into Dave's chest.]

Get those off the sheet, I'll grab a plate to put them on.

[Of all the things he shoved into a bag, plate was not one of them. It was the only thing he was reasonably sure that Dave had, if only because they'd need them to put leftovers on occasionally. Everybody has plates, right?]

Six.

[He pokes his face before he can fully slap him away. He takes the spatula and regards it like one might regard an unpinned grenade but he turns to the cookies anyway.]

Bottom cupboard right next to the fridge. Gotta keep things low.. [Because Karkat is short.]

Because. What am I doing here?

You take the spatula and stick it between the cookie and the baking sheet to free the cookie.

[He's, um. Somewhat comically? Bent over trying to pull a plate from said cupboard. It gives Dave a great view of his ass, though, if he's looking.]

.... You do know how to use a spatula, right?

[It's entirely possible Connor's realizing the big flaw in his plan right now. The flaw is that Dave's fucking useless in the kitchen.]

Well yeah, duh. You spatch with it. [Dave says, as if he wasn't a little stuck on what to do there.]

How come you know all this stuff? Don't say survival skills because I know damn well you don't bake cookies in the wood... Not with a spatula, anyway.

Larry forced me to do boy scouts so out of spite I picked the most useless merit badges possible. [A beat.] Then a god trapped me on and island and all those skills turned out to be useful so joke's on him. I did need to sail a boat.

[Remember that part of the conversation where he insisted his life is super normal? Yeah, anyway.]

[Dave pulls a considering face, ultimately feeling like he understands that logic. Spite works.

Dave turns, with a freshly spatched cookie in his hand. Ruby is a blessing because now he knows the pleasure of a truly hot cookie.]

I'd pay good money to see you in a boy scout's outfit.

Like in a kinky way...?

[Connor straightens, holding a plate. He's giving Dave a considering look, mostly because he has definitely seen weird boy scouts porn. Is that a kink he's into? Unclear, but he's down to try it if Dave wants.]

Like you wanna be my Scoutmaster and corrupt my innocence.

You know, I don't actually know.

[And that's a dangerous line to dance around, but he's had a lot of that apple-vodka and it makes bad ideas good.]

On the one hand it's funny, on the other hand I bet you look good in a little kerchief.

[noctium] ic inbox

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: suicide mention

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

tw; abuse

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

cw: suicide mention