i like my sugar with two teaspoons of coffee! 6

You groan a little to yourself, sure that she's going to make you pay for this somehow, at some point in the future, but decide you may as well utilize your time off. You do all of this while conveniently ignoring the tightening that happens in your throat and chest, which is making breathing a shade more difficult than normal. You, after all, are way to rad to be emotional over your boss giving you the day off. Or stoned for showing up, that also would not be rad in the slightest. The world would be severely deprived without your sick beats, a scenario which simply cannot be allowed to happen. So you guess you're not working today.

-- sent at 9:32am from 5554347 --

hey dave! this is john. i hope it's ok that jade gave me your number?? well i guess it'll have to be, because she did!  so unless you can go back in time and change the course of history, you can't get rid of me now! haha.

What the fuck kind of smiley even was that? Is that supposed to be John's teeth? Well, you suppose it's pretty accurate, if it is. Hehe. Buckteeth.

You continue on to read the rest of his (rather lengthy) text.

anyway, i am demanding that you make up for kicking me out yesterday before we even got a chance to hang out! i mean, if that's okay with you? either way, i am currently en route to bring you your bike, since it's my fault you didn't ride it home yesterday. so i'll see you soon!! 

The dude sounds even more cheerful over his phone. How he managed that, you are not entirely sure, because he achieves near-sunshine status in person without any assistance from overeager punctuation. If you'd been told this beforehand, you would've denied the plausibility of such a feat.

You should probably realize by now that Egbert and plausibility are pretty much mutually exclusive concepts.

You text him back a brief "cool thanks," since you can't very well send him back home if he's already on his way, and go to the kitchen to make breakfast.

You try not to think too hard about what's going to happen when Egbert arrives, so, naturally, it's all you think about.

You come up with several dozen scenarios, three ending with him leaving in an angry huff, two where he actually hits you, a few filled with awkward pauses and plentiful fidgeting and wonderfully prepubescent flickering glances at far sides of the room in an effort to avoid eye contact, and one where you shove your tongue down his oh hey was that the doorbell you think it definitely was a conveniently timed doorbell. How about that what a crazy coinkydink.

"Dave!!"

You are only mildly unprepared for when Egbert throws himself at you, wrapping his arms around your neck in a brief, but firm hug. You only fidget slightly and get a bro-ish back pat in before he releases you and turns to wave exuberantly at his car.

"Right, I'm on it!" John is at his truck with the bike in his hands almost before you can blink, you are following after him miles behind because Egbert is set to Turbo for some reason.

"Dude, chill. You're gonna roadrunner right through a mural painted on a solid cliff wall at this rate and I will faceplant it in my efforts to keep up. I believe I mentioned something about damage to my person and its being very not cool. This still applies.

"Right! Sorry. No more coffee for me I guess!" Egbert giggles, and you take a step back to usher him into the apartment.

"You coming in then? I'd offer you a beverage but I'm putting a ban on anything caffeinated, which pretty much just leaves apple juice."

"Haha, I'm fine, thanks!" He bounces through the door to your apartment as soon as it's open, and immediately begins casing the joint.

"WHOA are those swords real??" His nose is inches from one of the katanas hanging on the wall in the living room, you fear for its safety and have to refrain from yanking him away from the sword by his shirt before he slices his nose clean off.

"Fuck yes they're real, what else would they be, imaginary? Striders are always real, man. The realest. Straight-up 100% concrete all up in this bitch."

John laughs at you and hops over to the next item, the turntables, which you forbid him from touching in any way shape or form and thankfully he actually listens. Then he examines your video game collection and by the time he gets to the fireworks in the sink, he barely even pauses.

When he runs out of things to prod and poke and inquire about, he finally turns to you and falls quiet. You wish desperately that you had a mansion all of a sudden, a desire that had not even crossed your mind for the duration of your existence but seems a highly appealing concept right about now, anything to occupy Egbert and keep him from examining you like that sounds just dandy.

"Okay," he says, finally breaking the silence and taking a deep breath, words tumbling out of his mouth again at lightning speed. "Rose told me I'm not allowed to make you tell me anything you don't want to, so I'm not going to because that sounds pretty dickish and generally unhelpful, but just know that if you ever want to talk, about that asshole yesterday, or assholes at your work, or any asshole at all, even if the asshole is me, you can! Or Rose or Jade or anyone, we'll all listen and not be huge jerks and stuff. Okay?"

You are immensely glad for your shades and their permanent spot on your nose, because you aren't entirely sure what your expression is doing at the moment. You feel the same tightening constriction that you did this morning, except about a billion times worse and also there is something in your eye, you think, and your head feels kind of full and slow and it's hard to use your brain when it's in a fog and also a pile of mush. Can mush be foggy?

"U-Uh. Sure," you manage, not trusting yourself to say anything else at the moment, determined to say anything that will get him to stop fucking looking at you like that, all concerned and focused and like he can see straight through your damn shades and wow can he you think he might be able to if he is looking at you that hard and jesus your face is getting really warm is it hot in here can you get away with opening a window maybe or something or would that be weird?

"Good," he says, and then, with a bright grin that is all light and air and no hesitation, "let's go!"

"What, where?" you stammer as he grabs your wrist and pulls you out of your own apartment, but his grip is loose and not at all constricting. His hand is also very warm. You think yours might be sort of clammy and wonder if it bothers him.

"You owe me for yesterday, remember? Rose had the perfect idea, I swear it's not even mine so it's like a thousand times less likely to be shitty, and I already talked to Vriska when I grabbed the bike this morning and she told me she gave you the day off, so you can't object!"

He stops at the car with his hand on the open door, and looks back at you with a slight frown. He's asking you, giving you your way out. You know you could turn around and walk back into your apartment right now with a "sorry, not today," and he would probably just shrug it off and try again tomorrow. You know he would understand if you needed an actual day off.

---

Egbert. Takes you.

To motherfucking.

Paradise.

"So... Rose picked good?"

"Holy mother of fuck, Egbert."

Music, records, albums, cassettes, and CDs are everywhere. They line the walls, they sit in rows, they tower over the heads of everyone in the store. Old, new, pop, classical, rock, country, jazz, bluegrass, Gregorian chants, every genre known to man -- they are all present and accounted for, in delightfully nonsensical disorder. It's glorious.

"Jade said you talked about not wanting to work service industry forever, and that you mentioned music, and I saw the turntables, and you haven't been in the area long so I wasn't sure if you knew about this place --"

"Egbert, you are a godsend." You shuffle reverently down the aisles, gaze flicking over titles and labels and covers trying to take it all in, over the posters that are squeezed between shelves and stacks of discs. It looks to be organized chronologically instead of by artist inside the respective genres, and the store isn't a monster. It isn't disinfected and sparkly and pristine, but well-loved and stuffed full of music and smells like... like musty paper and smoke, faintly.

"This place is fucking amazing, I love it," you mutter, not really intending to say it out loud, but apparently Egbert catches it because he shuffles and blushes furiously. It might be the most precious thing you've ever fucking seen, and appears to be giving you a lethal case of the warm fuzzies. You decide to drown yourself in the sea of delight laid before you rather than dwell on it too much.

You immediately find about ten different albums that you want desperately, but you decide to wait on most of them until after your next paycheck. You spend an hour whittling down the stack to a couple you haven't been able to find anywhere and buy them for an amazingly fair price, and have absolutely no power to reign in the grin that is splitting your face in two. Your bro would be ashamed, and you can't even bring yourself to give a single fuck.

"Wow, I was in there for several eons, how are you not bearded and old already," you say to the amazingly patient boy who followed you around for an hour in a music store and didn't buy a single thing, merely picked up something every now and then between watching you, saying barely anything. You wonder if he even likes music, and hope desperately that he wasn't bored the entire time. You have a tendency to get severely distracted when it comes to sick beats.

"No way, that place was cool! I've never actually been in it before, because I have no taste in music whatsoever, I usually leave that kind of thing to Rose. I'm glad you found some good stuff, though!"

He's still smiling at you, somehow, and you can't find any hints of irritation or impatience at all, he just looks.... happy. He's barely recognizable from the idiot who would insist on having your attention nearly constantly back when he first started coming to the coffee shop.

Except for the smile, of course. That's never changed.

"Yeah, they had some stuff I've been looking for forever. Should make my next mixing session a motherfucking blast."

You both get back into John's car, and you tuck your spoils safely down by your feet, and turn slightly in your seat to face him. You feel like you owe him, somehow. You stare at your hands for a beat before reaching up to push your shades onto your head, as casually as you can manage.

John is staring at you, wide-eyed, so you keep your eyes mostly on your hands.

"Thanks, John. This place was really awesome, and I haven't. You were right, I don't really... know much, about this town. I've been working, mostly, and not thinking about much else, so. Thanks. For real and shit." You manage a brief glance up at him before returning your shades to their regular post at the bridge of your nose, hoping that John gets how much this means to you, that you're not just saying it, or being sarcastic or ironic or whatever the fuck else people interpret your usual bullshit as. You're not really great with the heartfelt stuff, you tend to be pretty fatally allergic to it, so a pathetic mumbled thanks will have to do.

"Anytime, Dave!" John says brightly, after a moment of hesitation. If it weren't completely insane, you'd almost be inclined to think there was a waver to his tone, but that's ridiculous and stupid. But you think he understands, at least a little, that you're not bullshitting him. You hope so, anyway.

You both go to get food again after that, and it's pretty normal. There isn't any more hesitation or awkwardness on his part, and you're always your calm, cool, and collected self. You will gladly rip out the still-beating heart of anyone who claims otherwise. 

Except when people make amazingly thoughtful gestures like taking you to hole-in-the-wall music stores, apparently, but we're not going to talk about that any more, the topic has been thoroughly beaten into the ground with a multitude of blunt instruments, you think.

He makes horrible faces when you order a burger and proceed to fill it with chips and ketchup and pickles and even a couple french fries. "An affront to fast food," he calls it, and sighs in appalled disbelief. You think "masterpiece" is much more fitting.

You refuse to let him pay, but he tells you that he's the one who dragged you out with him, and you go back and forth with increasingly extended metaphors on your part and threats of numerous future repeats of today on his until you come to a stalemate and end up splitting. You refuse to feel hopeful that his threats weren't empty ones.

Who are you kidding. You are hoping and wishing like Tiana on that damn star. When did you sink this low, you are sure you were not this sappy before you met John.

He drops you off after that, making you promise to come back to the apartment some time so Jade and Rose don't feel neglected, because they were horribly offended that you were making extra time for John and not them. You tell him they have to earn their Strider time, that this shit ain't free, you are a hot commodity. He says they'll all see you for dinner tomorrow after work.

As you watch him drive off, there's a familiar warmth churning away at the base of your spine, in that spot on the underside of your belly that is completely out of your reach and hideously vulnerable. You know the danger signs, you're painfully familiar with the exact place you're headed, and yet you are powerless. There is no escaping Hurricane Egbert, with his dark, unkempt hair and (notactuallyallthat)giant buckteeth and bubbling laughter that bursts out of him in a melodious explosion that lights up and decimates the dark corners of you.

You're drowning, and you don't think you have the strength left to swim back to the surface. It's darkness in every direction. You aren't even sure if you mind, anymore. This could very well be a repeat of Sollux -- it could end just as badly, just as disastrous, and you don't know how well you can handle that again.