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It’s different when you’re young. you want everything to happen faster, to be grown up already. But at the same time you want to slow it all down, make the good times last. You don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re a confused teenager for god sake. You’re still trying to figure it all out.
Sometimes you think you’ll never figure it out.
Sometimes you think nothing is ever going to be okay.
Sometimes you wonder why you even try.
Your name is Dave Strider and life is okay, but not really okay at all. You think maybe it is your absent brother or the fact that you cant remember what your parents were like. Or the nagging feeling at the back of your mind that everything is wrong. You don’t know.
Aka: Your name is Dave Strider and you miss something that was never there.
It’s not like you’re poor (hell no, you’re loaded like a baked potato) and it’s not like you’re ugly or get made fun of at school. You get invited to all the parties and you are rarely home now-a-days. You’re at the top of the social ladder. But it’s all still off. Like maybe something is missing, but you don’t know what it is.
You can’t remember any real details about your childhood; no small bits and pieces of a story you once heard or a distinct memory of riding your bike for the first time or other snip bits you hear girls drone on about drunkenly. But when you sleep there are flashes of black hair and blue eyes and an overbite, a blonde girl with wands and a gaze that could pierce right through you, and a goofy green eyed nymph with a smile that couldn’t be anymore innocent. You’ve never met them before, and when you’ve asked Dirk about them, these people you remember as a passing dream but cant actually remember, he tells you that they are fictional, he’s never met them in his life. Sometimes you catch a glimmer of recognition, but it passes to quickly and you’re probably just imagining it. You aren’t so sure anymore though.
The nightmares are much worse than dreaming of the ‘mysterious three’ as you’re psychiatrist refers to them as. There’s so much blood, so much of your blood. Some of it is technicolor, yet your brain classifies it as blood when you first see it. There is blank white eyes and sadistic smiles. You scream your throat raw as people die before your eyes, people you don’t think you know but you’re crying (god you can’t breathe, they’re hurt you need to save them) as you watch them. These aliens appear, candy corn horns and gray skin. The seem so crucially important but for the life of you, you don’t know why. You don’t know much anymore. There’s millions of you, dead, dying, bloody and in pain. You can’t count how many times you’ve seen yourself die, over and over and over. You wake up with tears in your eyes and a scream caught in your throat. The flashes of Dirk (those are the worst of them all) terrified, holding a box over is head. You don’t understand these parts, don’t know why you want to scream and tell him to stop, that he doesn’t have to do this, or why his head is gone and his hands shook.
You know these dreams are important, in some crazy, fucking messed up way. You wish you knew why.
You wish you knew a lot of things.
The start of your junior year you see a kid in a wheel chair and he seems so familiar, the tall guy pushing him from behind even more so.
He asks you about your shades, says they remind him of someone and you just shrug in answer because you don’t know. There’s a missing detail from the time you had matching shades with Dirk to you wearing these. Another mystery that you cant seem to solve. They seem to recognize you too. What, with the way they watch you closely, trying to decide just where. Some part of you feels better, like they’re filling a bit of that gaping hole in your chest. You don’t understand it, not really, not truly. The tall guy wants to know your name and for some reason you don’t tell him and run.
Maybe you were scared.
In the supermarket the next month (or maybe not, time hasn’t seemed right since you were thirteen and the dreams started) you see Con Air in the bargain bin and buy it. The movie is horrible, you know that, but when you get home you watch it, and you wish you knew why you couldn’t stop crying. When you turn off the movie, you feel numb. You’re sleep that night is blissfully dream free.
After high school, you move to Washington. Dirk begs you to come home and you should feel bad because Dirk doesn’t beg for anything, but Washington feels right for once. You tell him there’s somethings you need to figure out, that you need to find yourself before coming home. He doesn’t fight you anymore on it, but calls constantly to check up on you.
You start up photography and develop a well-known name for yourself. You support yourself off of prints and you make just enough to slide by. You meet a girl from New York at one of your shows. She looks a lot like you, strange violet eyes seeming to see straight through your shades. She reminds you of the blonde from your dreams, and she informs you that you aren’t crazy. That she had dreams too. She becomes a part of your life quickly, filling a large part of what was missing. Rose becomes your only friend in Washington, the only person you can even relate to anymore, until she introduces you to Jade. Jade has the dreams too, but the more the three of you get together, the more they fade into the background of your minds. There’s still something missing when you realize the dreams have almost stopped completely.
Late at night you still wonder about dark hair and the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.
A few years later, you’re twenty-four now, and you meet a girl named Terezi. You tell her that you like her red shades and later that night she tells you that you taste like strawberries and loneliness.You two go steady for a year, but both of you feel that it’s wrong. When you tell her its over, she doesn’t appreciate you rapping it, but tells you that you never stopped tasting like loneliness.
You can’t help the sad laugh that falls out.
Or another string of rhymes aimed at her.
Dirk comes to visit you because you still haven’t found whatever you are looking for. He says its lonely without you there. Strifes aren’t the same with just him and Cal. You laugh when you strife later that evening, carefree even though that last part is still missing.
“Maybe you should stop looking.” Dirk tells you.
“Maybe you should start.” It seems like the right reply, but even if it wasn’t Bro took it to heart. You meet an islander named Jake on his next visit (your twenty-sixth birthday; he brings some home-land alcohol ) You thank him and, drunkenly tell him he’s a good match for Dirk and you’re glad they found each other. You might have rambled a bit and maybe got lost in another rap.
You deny everything.
Jake laughs and turns bright red, informing you that Dirk isn’t gay. You can’t stop laughing, barely able to get enough breath in to not pass out. Dirk doesn’t think it’s funny, but Jade finds it just as hilarious as you do. Rose takes pity on you and gives you more vodka. You later blame her for you running down your street butt naked.
The next day Jake shows up with a lot more alcohol for you with an embarrassed thanks.
You figure you are never going to find that last part of your puzzle; dorky glasses and an even dorkier smile is just out of your reach. You confide this to Rose and she’s stunned. It’s the first time you show how exhausted you are. How you just don’t see the point in searching for something that might not be there.
“Maybe he’ll find you.” She’s always been good at giving you hope, yet this time is doesn’t really work.
“Rose, I want to try with Jade.” You say two days later and she just snorts.
“That’s worse than your crappy raps.”
You do it anyways, try with Jade. She’s lovely and caring and doting. She’s too much for you. You try though, you try for her because she’s so happy. When she ends it a month later, Rose only shakes her head and Terezi comforts you and teaches you how to paint. She says it “soothes the soul.” You wake up with her in your bed and you tell her that this doesn’t mean you two are back together. She says she never wanted that and tells you that you’re a horrible boyfriend.
She raps it.
You don’t know whether you want to laugh or cry when the dreams of blue eyes get more intense.
Rose forces you in a suit during Kanya’s and her wedding because you are the best man. They met at a coffee shop Kanya worked at, she needed more money for fashion and her doctorate degree in heart surgery. Rose jokes it was “love at first analyzation.”
You’re happy for them and you drink the rest of the night away because you spot a tall man pushing a wheel chair around.
Later, when you look over your pictures in the dark room, your heart almost bursts. Your hands shake with excitement when you call Rose and ramble about the boy in your photos.
“It’s him! I’m sure about it Rose.” She says she’ll talk to Kanya about who he was and you thank her (multiple times, you’ve never said the word so much in one year).
He turns out to be a friend of a friend. No one could figure out exactly who he came with or who he was (there was one hundred or more people at the wedding) but you’ve gained new found hope.
He exists.
That summer you teach a painting class aimed at kids. You can deal with them, they listen to you better than the adult classes. A little blonde girl named Casey yells glob at you every two seconds and you know that sound, you have to know that sound. But you don’t. You can’t ever be sure anymore.
Before the class ens she pulls you down to her height and whispers “I’m a lizard in my dreams Mr. Strider, what are you?” before giggling and running off to help clean up.
You watch all the other kids leave, but she just sits there, kicking her feet against the step. You sit next to her, nudging her arm with yours. “I’m a hero.” You mutter. She giggles and smiles up at you, most of her front teeth missing.
“I’m so sorry Casey! Marry didn’t tell me you needed to be picked up!” Your head snaps up at the voice. And it’s him. You are pretty sure he can hear your heart beating through your chest and see the way your hands are shaking nervously.
“Uncle!” Casey yells, smiling and attaching herself to his legs. You want to smile, to laugh, but you’re frozen in place. He looks at you with a mixed expression of guilt and pleasant surprise. You think your heart might burst.
“She told me something strange earlier.” It’s the only thing you can come up with and it’s stupid but you can’t think. “She says she dreams of being a lizard.” He just laughs, a nice, soothing sound.
“Casey dreams big.” He’s smiling weirdly at you, like he knows a secret joke that you aren’t in on, “My name’s John, John Egbert. I’m a big fan of your work! I’ve gone to a lot of your showings!” You don’t know which showings he’s been to and hope that they weren’t your dream paintings. You are startled that’s he heard of you though, he doesn’t seem the type.
“Thanks bro.” You manage to say, your tongue is tired and your throat is dry and this is him.
“My favorite is the ‘Missing Piece’ it’s really good!” God, he even does the air quotes. He looks embarrassed now, though and you just want to kiss him.
“It’s inspired by some of my dreams.” Casey is pulling on John’s leg. You get a flash of an orange lizard and a dark land. It’s from one of your paintings, but it doesn’t seem relevant right now.
You take pity on him and ask for his number. He blushes (you see how bright his eyes are against the red of it and it’s amazing) and gives it to you nervously.
A month later you two schedule your first date.
Rose yells at you for your glasses and Kanya fusses about your outfit, ultimately picking it out herself.
He doesn’t show up.
You’re a bit (read as: a lot) heart broken and all the pieces are falling apart again. You close yourself off from the world and everyone is worried about you. You stumble around the house drunk, painting pictures of blue and red. Dirk surprise visits, Jake and a girl named Jane tagging along, and makes sure you eat. It’s hard to make your way around the apartment; paintings upon painting littering wherever they will fit.
You’re not expecting two days after they leave for John to show up at your door with a bouquet, Chinese take out and an apology on his lips.
You slam the door in his face.
Seconds later you open it back up. He’s still standing there and he looks scared, like he expects you to punch him or something.
Instead you invite him in.
Rose congratulates you a month later for your first major break through; no more dreams.
Your life feels like it’s getting it’s shit together.
You feel everything isn’t really okay yet, but it’s getting there.