parodeity | subnautica ic inbox 3.0;

[ there's a few minutes of texts half typed, deleted, rewritten, deleted, and just. general dithering. a few minutes turns into probably ten, during which he won't respond to any messages dirk might send if he gets impatient. dirk usually waits, though, for dave to stumble through thoughts.

if he waited this time, what he gets is the result of dozens of attempts before dave whittled it down to a brief truthful sentence: ]

im not fine rn

[Dirk sends no messages in that gap. Maybe if a full hour passed, he'd go for it, but he knows Dave. He knows if there are that many interruptions, he is trying to say something true. That is always worth waiting.]

Yeah. I know.
Hypothetically speaking, I'd offer to hang out with you in person, or to just keep talkin' with you over text.

are you ok

I'm not at my best. I could even toss out suboptimal again. But I'm not doing bad.
'Ok' genuinely seems like the most accurate word.

stop trying to make suboptimal happen gretchen
did me saying im not fine make you more or less ok

Fuck you, Regina, suboptimal is so going to happen.
You're going to call me insane again, but as you can probably guess, it made me feel more ok. It was a relief to hear you say it.

for real though get a new pet word that i can actually get behind
one that sounds like
less obviously nerdy?

stay there

What's nerdy about a word that immediately invokes Optimus Prime? I am hip as shit, bro.

Ok.

everything you just said was the opposite of hip oh my fuck

[ he'll stop texting, though. he specifically told dirk to stay put. that was not an indication that dave planned on staying put, and his communicator is ditched into his sylladex. he doesn't bother to move at anything less than flashstep to get to the room and then the bed, at which point he's up the ladder of the bunk bed and crawling over dirk to get near the wall.

he doesn't actually say anything but this is happening now, i guess, sorry dirk. ]

[Okay, so he wasn't sure if he was being told not to move to continue a conversation at a distance or if Dave was actually going to come down here but apparently that did just happen, Dave is now on the top bunk, Dirk was a rug or minor obstacle over which Dave climbed to reach his preferred spot for when they share.]

I am so hip your intestines would get loose without me.

[Is that what hips are for. It probably isn't.

He turns so he can watch Dave. He is trying to read from body language if he's allowed to come closer to him.]

I'm pretty sure that's not the function of hips? They're more like, connective joint...things. Like the pelvis just connects shit.

[ not like he knows for sure.

dave's shifting around includes getting under the covers so he's probably intending to just sleep there rather than visit. he curls up on his side with his back to the wall and rests his head on his arm more than the pillow.

mostly his body language reads as tired and still a little controlled. ]

[Well then. Dirk will get under the covers also, instead of how he was before, which is to say he crawled on top of them to sprawl. He shifts closer, although doesn't actually go in for a cling yet.]

The hip bone's connected to the—ass bone. [A monotone, but to the rhythm of the song.] I genuinely do not know, so we'll take your guess. It probably supports some weight to hold the shape or some shit.

It's weird when you don't know random shit.

[ well. maybe it's not that random? it feels random, sometimes, even though it's not like irk is an encyclopedia and dave knows that. ]

[It's a fair enough feeling, really. Dirk does know a lot of random shit; he has had a lot of spare time. And he really likes learning.]

I'll look up more anatomy when I get my shades again. Wouldn't want to let you down by failing at Random Shit Omniscience.

You don't gotta pretend to be Encyclopedia Brown for my sake.

[ dave just shuts his eyes. he's never sure if sleep is possible again after he's already woken up and he's not sure if he's interested in bothering, but at the very least it's easier than staring at dirk awkwardly. his free arm curls against his chest. ]

Science-y stuff like that usually just falls in your arena.

My biology knowledge covers what I thought I'd need to know to keep myself alive, both in terms of combat and living on my own.

[If Dave's going to close his eyes, Dirk will, too. He curls closer to him.]

Since you were buildin' people random prosthetics, I assumed it'd be more than that.

[ dave won't shove him away, at least? he's still not, like, explaining anything about why he woke up apparently on his own or what he thinks he's doing, but it probably was just a nightmare. ]

[Dave said he wasn't fine; it might be too much for one night to say more. Dirk hasn't decided if he'll ask or not, but he thinks this kind of idle talk won't hurt.]

I looked up what the knee bone was attached to before I started on that. Information like that, I tend to learn as it comes up.

Do you actually know what to do if someone loses a limb in front of you?

[ it's an important life skill

especially if the limb is like a head and you hang out with dirk ]

Assumin' no immediate healing abilities, slow blood loss with pressure and possibly a tourniquet, plus raising the limb. Keep them from going into shock, keep them breathing, and so on.

[Also look sometimes a person loses their head and this isn't. a fair comment to make?]

That one was potential Sburb research. In truth, my biggest fear was something like that happening to one of my friends before the game started.

[The Batterwitch's assassination efforts. Jake's monsters. Roxy in the same hellhole Earth he knew. All of them entirely out of reach, except for what intermediaries he could send them in the form of his robots.]

I guess I never had to worry 'bout that. None of them were ever gonna get that injured. Most damage that ever got done before the game was meteors, and that wasn't really "before".

[ the only person in danger of that sort of shit was pretty much dave. none of bro's cuts had ever been that deep. it'd been a minor concern of his for years, but it'd never worked up into a fullblown fear.

if it happened, it'd happen. whatever. ]

The helplessness was not my favourite thing. For an ironic twist, it felt to me like the Strider was the safest of us. [The opposite of Beta kid situation.]

What'd that feel like?

[ being like. safe. dave's mouth twists after a second. ]

Stupid question. Nevermind.

[Hm. Dirk doesn't immediately answer; he's mulling it over.]

I don't know that I ever felt it right, then. There was still always the risk of things going wrong for me that no one could help me with. If anything, I felt guilty being relatively safe when Jane had assassination attempts on the regular and Jake couldn't step outside his room without encountering monsters. I never really felt a real experience of safety until Iniidae, where admittedly it can be touch-and-go. If I compare how I feel right here, though, to how I felt there, right now blows back then out of the lusii-infested waters.

I guess we only had the one assassination attempt. On Derse, I mean. Although I am pretty sure you mean IRL assassination attempts? And we took care of that dude.

[ That Dude made the mistake of trying to fucking assassinate rose while dave was within range. even if he hadn't been, that probably wouldn't have ended so well for the chess guy. ]

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