Summary: "The ocean had always been there. A warning of the dangers that lurk within. A lullaby to put you to sleep. It had been there at the highs and lows of your childhood.
You miss it.
But the transportalizer closest to the sea is Jake's.
You really shouldn't. It's on his island, his sanctuary, you'd be invading his private space.
But meditation videos with the sound of the waves aren't enough anymore, you need to hear the real thing.
So, one evening as you're skipping out on a friendly meeting-slash-party everyone was invited to, you do the unthinkable.
You message Jake."
__
Slowly, but surely, Dirk and Jake reconnect.
Divergence-Convergence
Posted: 26/02/2023
Status: Completed
Author's note: Only tagged Dirk and Jake because the fic focuses on them, but a lot of the others get cameos as well. It's a friendship and reconciliation fest.
After it’s all over, things happen quickly.
The frog is born, healthy and spirited, a strong universe that will birth a terrible monster. A terrible monster you’ve already beaten, all together. Not killed, never killed. He will never die, but he can be defeated, and he was. And Sburb has beaten you all down so much, thrown you through so many unnecessary trials, you’ll take any victory you can to feel like it’s worth it. Like your suffering wasn’t for nothing, like it had a meaning.
You all gather on the platform to collect your hard-earned prize, have a few short conversations with each other.
You and Jake apologize to each other.
(You don’t have time for much else. You’re both quickly whisked away by the others. He looks almost relieved by that, like he’s been saved from another conversation with you, and your chest hurts at the realization. You fucked everything up with him, it will take more than some hasty apologies to make up for the way you poisoned him, tainted his pure light until it lost all its radiance. And that’s assuming you can even fix it. You don’t think you can. All you can do is destroy.)
You’re quickly introduced to everyone, told the names of those you didn’t already know. You already met Terezi, and Dave, of course. You get a polite greeting from Rose, and learn Kanaya’s name. Jade is chipper as she shakes your hand with a very firm grip, but you can tell she’s tired, both physically and emotionally, from your ordeals.
Dave introduces you to Karkat. You think they’re pale, but the way they bicker is more on the side of black; you conclude they’re both. You’ve always known about quadrants, grew up with them being heavily featured in the lost media you consumed obsessively to feel closer to your brother. But you’d never cared about keeping them separate. You don’t think they do, either.
You meet the sprites who made it.
(ARquius hadn’t followed you to the platform, he had his own mission. Had to keep Lord English and the clown in check inside Cal. Rotten work, but someone had to do it, and his combined abilities as a Heart and Void player, as well as a sprite, made him the best candidate. You had to put him there yourself, push his soul inside your childhood friend while he grinned at you and gave you a thumbs up. You feel like it’s another way you’ve failed him, failed Hal specifically. Lord English was weakened during that last fight, you’ve been told. You’d like to think this was thanks to Hal and the troll he was sharing a sprite with.)
You see Jasprose again, who spends an embarrassing amount of time calling you “father” and your legs “pretty” in the same breath, to Rose’s endless shame and Dave’s unabashed glee over the blatant display of “Freudian Bullshit”, as he calls it.
You finally meet John, though he makes a weird face when you go to shake his hand, as if remembering something unpleasant. You don’t know what to make of it. You will definitely overthink yourself into an anxiety attack later over it.
You don’t speak to your other friends. Not to Jake, beyond your awkward apologies. Not to Jane. Not to Roxy.
(You failed the girls just as much as you did Jake. If you’d paid more attention to her feelings, Jane wouldn’t have succumbed to the Condesce’s influence. If you hadn’t fucked up gloriously, Roxy wouldn’t have traveled back from another timeline, replacing the Roxy you knew. Surely, there must have been a way to avoid this. Surely, this wasn’t necessary for the stability of the timeline. You desperately want to believe that, desperately want to think that Sburb wouldn’t be so cruel as to put you through the wringer like that for the hell of it. You’d much rather believe that it was all your fault than accept that any part of this was needed.)
John, Jane, and Karkat open the door together like one would cut a ribbon for a grand opening.
The door opens, and your vision goes white.
You mess around with ectobiology, creating the beings who would populate the new Earth, which you all jokingly call “Earth C”. Humans, trolls, carapacians, and consorts are cloned and re-cloned. Most grubs cloned from Karkat end up either candy red or lime, which sure was a way to find out his genetic origins. He has a minor breakdown while the others both laugh at him and comfort him in equal measures.
You try not to think about the children who share your genes. You try especially hard not to think about those that also share Jake’s.
The newborns are left in the responsible hands of the many carapacians and consorts Jade brought from your planets, and you all skip thousands of years into the future, assured by both Rose and Terezi that it was safe and the decision that would have the best outcome.
The first weeks, everyone huddles together. The stress of the game is crashing back, and not everyone knows how to deal with it. Some break down in tears, others laugh hysterically. Some hug, others fight.
Some stay stoic, waiting until they’re alone to let it all out. Like you. Like Jake.
You feel a bit sorry for Jane’s father, having to deal with a group of traumatized teenagers all of a sudden, but he pulls through and does his best. He makes room for everyone, feeds you all according to your respective, sometimes restrictive diets (you learn the hard way you and Roxy are lactose intolerant, though he assures you it makes sense, since you’d never had access to lactose products before), offers fatherly comfort where he can.
But staying all together in a small space doesn’t suit everyone. Unsurprisingly, Jake is among the first to leave. He’s kept a controlled smile on his face the entire time, but you can tell he’s at his wits end, and wants nothing more than to have some truly alone time to deal with his feelings. You desperately want to follow him, but you don’t think he’d want you to, so you simply wave at him silently when he leaves to his island.
Others leave, too, though they often do it in groups, still too afraid to stay alone.
By the end, the Crocker house is inhabited only by Jane, her father, John, Jade…and you.
You bond with Jade easily. You have similar interests in electronics, among other things.
She spent three years alone, you learn, and you can certainly empathize with the total isolation she felt then. You also learn that, like you, her gender doesn’t match the one typically associated with her body type. And, like you, she’s never felt particularly worried or insecure about it. It’s a small thing for you, society had long since stopped existing when you were born, but still you like it. She was never taught shame, but even so she grew with media telling her she was wrong, or a joke. Meeting someone else like herself is a relief, she tells you. You nudge her into talking to Roxy not-so-subtly. They get along like a house on fire.
(Her eyes are just a shade off of the green you long for. Her face and skin so similar to the one you’ve admired so many times. You try not to think about it.)
Dave keeps in contact with you, regularly dumping paragraphs of red in your Pesterchum, not expecting you to answer, but always happy when you do. Despite his history with your pre-scratch self (not you, he says, you’re cool, he says), he enjoys spending time with you. You don’t understand, but you appreciate it all the same.
You don’t have much of a choice but to interact with Jane, since you’re literally living in her house. Your truce is fragile, not because you’d snap at each other. You wouldn’t. You’d rather cut off your own head again than show even the slightest bit of hostility towards any of your friends.
Rather, it’s more that it’s awkward. You and Jane were very close, before the game. She never held back on calling you out on your shit, easily exchanged friendly barbs and sarcastic quips with you, knowing full-well neither of you would take it personally. But with the stress of the game, and the…”Jake thing”, you’d grown apart.
But now that you don’t have a massive group to act as a buffer between the two of you, you talk. Small talk, at first, though you’re infinitely terrible at it. Then you ask her to teach you some simple recipes, an olive branch. She grasps it firmly, the both of you slowly but surely learn to know each other again. To become friends again.
Eventually, you leave, too. It feels strange for you, to keep intruding on the Crockers when you have no relations to them. They all tell you it’s fine, that you can stay as long as you want. But still, you leave. Jade and Jane both hug you goodbye, and you can tell Jade definitely gets her impressive strength from Jane, they both leave you breathless. John is more reserved as he waves you goodbye, but he has a small smile on his face. You’re welcome to visit anytime.
(He, too, looks so much like him. You try not to think about that, either.)
The entire time, Jake’s chumhandle stays gray.
Months pass, and you settle into a routine. Mess around in your dedicated “fuck around and find out room”, meet up with Dave, get scolded into eating regularly by one Jane Crocker, bounce off absurd robotics ideas with John and actually make them with Jade just to see if you can.
(You may or may not have caused a few explosions together.)
You’ve somewhat reconnected with Roxy, through Jade. It’s a bit awkward still, because she’s technically from a different timeline, but you’re both trying, and she’s still dear to you, regardless of timelines shenanigans.
You still haven’t spoken to Jake at all since the end of the game. None of you have.
You try not to worry. The consorts are sometimes speaking of him, so you know he’s alive and socializing with them, if no-one else. Still, you want to rush back to him, fall to your knees and accept whatever judgment he will give you. Try to reconcile, or accept that he wants nothing with you anymore.
But you’ve pushed him enough, too much. Past his breaking point.
You don’t want to do that to him again, so you wait. And if he never contacts you, never tries to reconnect…
…Well, that will be answer enough, won’t it?
You miss the sea. The sound of the waves crashing against metal, the cries of the seagulls in the sky, even the occasional storms that would jolt you awake from the noise alone.
You never thought you would miss it. You were stuck there, unable to leave, surrounded by vast expanses of blue that wouldn’t hesitate to drown you at the first opportunity.
But you do.
You’ve picked a nice spot to live in, quiet but not empty. But still, it’s too silent, something’s missing.
The ocean had always been there. A warning of the dangers that lurk within. A lullaby to put you to sleep. It had been there at the highs and lows of your childhood.
You miss it.
But you’re quite far away from the sea, and even flying to the nearest beach would take a long time. You could use the transportalizer and teleport to the spot closest to the sea, you’d all installed those in your homes and various important spots to facilitate meeting up, it was very useful.
But the transportalizer closest to the sea is Jake’s.
You really shouldn’t. It’s on his island, his sanctuary, you’d be invading his private space.
But meditation videos with the sound of the waves aren’t enough anymore, you need to hear the real thing.
So, one evening as you’re skipping out on a friendly meeting-slash-party everyone was invited to, you do the unthinkable.
You message Jake.
timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT]
TT : Hey dude. I won’t drop a whole fucking paragraph on you for the hows, whys, and whatever. I’ll keep things simple.
TT : I’m using the transportalizer to your island, the temple one. I really need to be near the ocean or I’ll go insane, and yours is the closest.
TT : I promise I won’t go into your house, or bother you at all. I’m just squatting your beach for a while.
TT : You don’t need to answer this at all. Just figured I’d let you know, so you don’t panic if you see some unidentified douche face-down into the sand. That’s just me.
TT : So. See you.
timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering golgothasTerror [GT]
Then you leave your shades and pretty much everything else at home, and input the coordinates to the transportalizer you all built in the remains of the frog temple. You built another right into Jake’s reconstructed house as well (well, Jade had, you’d split up to maximize speed, and you conveniently didn’t take up the task of building Jake’s pad, Jade seemed happy to get some time with him anyway), the island is big enough to warrant multiple transportalizer pads, but it would feel invasive to just barge into his home, and the one in the frog temple is closest to the beach anyway.
You’re already in your pajamas, a slightly-too-large tank top and sweatpants, but you don’t feel like dressing up. You can fly, so you don’t need to put on shoes, and any sand that accumulates in your clothes can quickly be removed through changing into and back out of your godtier clothes. The one nice aspect of Sburb : practicality.
And it’s not like anyone will see you, anyway, the island is empty save for Jake and a few lingering lusii. Said lusii being only the peaceful ones who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Jake…
…Well, Jake has made a point out of avoiding most everyone except Jade on her occasional visits to the island, so you doubt you’ll be seeing even a strand of his hair anytime soon. That’s exactly why you warned him of your visit, so he could avoid the part of the island you’ll be on.
So, off you go.
golgothasTerror [GT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
GT : Wait dirk!
timaeusTestified [TT] is an idle chum!
GT : Oh bollocks.
golgothasTerror [GT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]
The beach isn’t the same as being smack dab in the middle of the ocean on a concrete block, but it’s still nice. You actually like the sound of the waves without the worrying creaking of metal, without the constant, underlying fear that this is it, this wave will be the one to finally do your apartment in, to sink you and everything your brother left you for good.
It’s the same sound that rocked you to sleep, that made you forget your loneliness, just for a little while, with none of the stress, none of the fear of death.
You flop into the sand. Not face-down as you’d joked in your messages to Jake, you’re not looking forward to eating sand, but you lie down on your back, spread yourself wide. You look at the darkening sky, beautiful reds slowly leaving place to appeasing dark blue. The bigger stars are visible already, and you know more are soon to follow.
This is nice.
You close your eyes and relax, forget everything, mute all your thoughts and worries until you’re left alone with the ocean. A steady back and forth on the beach, occasionally lapping at your feet.
For a little while, you stop being Dirk, stop being at all.
You don’t know how long you stay there. You think you fell asleep at some point because when you open your eyes, almost all the stars are out. It can’t have been too long, because the smaller stars still aren’t visible.
There’s someone sitting beside you. Your instincts aren’t as well-honed as they used to be, so you didn’t even hear them come in. Though, if your suspicions about exactly who is sitting there are correct, you know they also have a lot of experience being very quiet to avoid predators.
And, indeed, when you turn your head to your left, there he is. He’s sitting with his arms on his knees, his head pillowed on his forearms, staring idly at the stars reflecting on the water.
”…Jake?”
He startles out of his thoughts and finally looks your way. You wonder how long he’s been sitting here with you asleep, wonder why he’s even here.
Looking at him, you notice that he’s bigger than before. A late growth-spurt, maybe? Jade did suddenly shoot up recently, too. His muscles are more visible, the result of regular exercise, but they’re a bit too defined, he’s too skinny, probably doesn’t eat regularly. His skin is darker now, having regained the melanin it had lost due to the lack of sunlight on your planets. His hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb in a decade, though. He doesn’t look too bad, overall, but you can’t miss the sullen look in his eyes, the way he doesn’t even bother putting on a fake smile.
Jake has been isolated all this time, with only Jade occasionally checking up on him.
You’ve learned the hard way that he prefers solitude, but even then he would at least talk to people on Pesterchum (not you, you were too much, too demanding, too exhausting).
But he hasn’t, his chumhandle has stayed gray this entire time.
“Good day,” he greets, then seems to rethink his words. “Well, good evening, more like.”
“Hey,” you return his greeting.
You don’t know what else to say. You just barged in and fell asleep on his beach, and the next thing you know he’s here, not even an arm’s length away. You could touch him easily, reach for his hand, his arm. You stay put.
Why is he even here? You specifically warned him so he could keep avoiding you. Why would he join you?
“I…can go back home, if you want.” He offers, grimacing a bit.
He was never particularly good at guessing what you thought. You certainly never spoke of your feelings, and your upbringing made it so that you never learned how to emote properly. On the flip side, you were never good at it either, having a hard time catching any of the more subtle expressions hidden behind his bombastic smile.
You feel it now, more than ever, the way neither of you can read the other, understand the other.
No wonder your relationship fell apart so spectacularly.
“No, it’s fine. You can stay. It’s your island, dude.” Your voice is quiet, barely audible over the waves.
He hums. And you both fall into silence again, avoiding each other’s gazes.
You don’t know what you can say, what’s appropriate for the situation, how far you can go without pushing his boundaries.
He’s fiddling with his hands now, a nervous gesture obvious enough for you to recognize as such. Fuck, you’re probably meant to say something, right?
Even after spending time with the others, the subtleties of social situations are lost to you. Carapacians and consorts are always straightforward, so they’re easy to understand, but humans and trolls are another story. Your friends learned to work around this, to avoid relying on implications and instead tell you things straight-out, and you appreciate it. But Jake’s never been particularly open when it mattered, he probably forgot after a decade without human contact.
You don’t blame him for it, but it’s certainly made honest communication pretty fucking difficult.
You’re about to bring out the big guns (i.e., your barely-adequate small talk skills), when he finally opens his mouth.
“Fucking hell,” he swears under his breath, “this is harder than I thought. Dirk.”
He turns to face you, looks straight at you. You try to keep his gaze, but it feels overwhelming without your shades as protection.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
Of all the things he could have said, you didn’t expect this one. He has nothing to apologize for, has already done his fair share of that back on the winning platform, before entering this world.
If anything, you should be the one to beg for forgiveness.
You open your mouth to express that, but he lifts a hand to stop you.
“No, listen. I know how you’re all about that self-sacrificing shit, but hear me out. I messed up, downright cocked it all up.”
You can tell he’s serious, so you try to ignore the idiom. But you sit up, level your gaze with his.
“Jake—”
“No, listen! I’m trying to get somewhere with this, okay?” He sounds frustrated, from your interruption or his own inability to form words, you don’t know. Perhaps both. “I know I already apologized, okay, but honestly that was the shittiest non-apology I could have come up with, and you deserve better than this.”
You really don’t. But you know he’ll get angry if you say this, everyone always gets either angry or sad when you do. So you stay silent and listen. It’s something you didn’t do enough, back then, listening.
“I pulled away without ever telling you why, not even bothering to tell you where I was going even though our planets were littered with angry, aggressive, hard-to-kill undead. And then, worst of all, I talked about you behind your back instead of bringing it up to you like a mature person! For all my so-called adventurous bravado, I sure acted like a damn coward! A selfish, lazy-ass coward who expected everything to go as he wishes without effort and who is once again making everything about himself even though I had a point! Which I’m still not making!”
He’s getting agitated, and you recognize the sort of mania that comes with lack of sleep. You wonder how much he’s sleeping each night, if he’s sleeping nightly at all, which you’re starting to doubt. You want to reach out, grab his shoulders or something to help calm him down, but you don’t know if he’ll take it well in his state.
And it’d be a bit too pale a gesture. Even if he doesn’t understand the implications, you do, and the guilt would eat you alive. You don’t care about quadrants, you think they’re more of a guide than a rule, but you don’t think you belong in any of Jake’s. Red didn’t work out, fell apart sensationally, and now he’s in this agitated state because of it, of you.
Going pale would be taking advantage of him.
He takes a deep breath, tries calming himself down, though his hands stay trembling. When he continues talking, his voice is quieter, more level.
“My point is. I’m sorry. I messed up quite spectacularly and I want to make it up to you. But more importantly, I want…” he falters, his gaze flicking downwards with uncertainty. “That is to say…I mean, I’d like to…it’d be nice if you would consider…”
He’s losing steam, is psyching himself out the longer he goes on. It was always a habit of his, one you feel responsible for after aggressively taking hold of his time like you did.
You slide yourself closer to him, and touch his shoulder, gently. An encouragement you hope he understands is one. You do your best to keep your eyes fixed on his face, if not his eyes. Direct eye contact has always been difficult, for you, especially without your shades, but you think it’s important that he know you’re listening to him, taking him seriously.
“I…” he mutters something, but it’s so low that you can’t hear it under the sound of the waves.
“Come again? Sorry, it’s just,” you gesture vaguely, “the sea. Didn’t hear.”
He breaks eye contact, looks straight ahead at the ocean. You think his cheeks darken, but it’s hard to tell with how dark it’s become.
(You’re briefly taken aback by how handsome he looks like that, despite his sorry state. Dark wisps of hair illuminated by the moon, skin tinted blue, making him seem almost ethereal.)
“I-I said! I’d like to…try again…if you’ll have me.” His voice is quiet, but his words are loud, resonate through your entire being.
He can’t possibly mean—
“Just asking, to be sure,” you keep your voice level, try to keep the agitation out of it. “Do you mean as friends?”
As expected, he doesn’t move his gaze back to you, keeps clutching his own legs to hide the tremors in his hands. You’re sure of it, now, he’s definitely blushing.
“Not…really,” is his answer.
Fuck.
Here you are, wearing your pajamas, covered in sand, having a difficult conversation with none-other than your very sleep-deprived ex-boyfriend by the sea, at who-the-fuck-knows o’clock in the night.
You want nothing more than to say yes, to gather him in your arms and try again. Even though you were the one to end things in the first place, even though you had to break up because you were hurting each other. But…
“Jake,” you don’t know how you should say this. How you can make him understand, without hurting him. “This isn’t… I…don’t think we should.”
You hate the expression he makes, then, a miserable thing, full of both acceptance and self-hatred.
“Right, of course. That makes sense. I just figured I would…um, well, maybe I should…”
He makes to get up and flee, but you grip the sleeve of his shirt tightly and force him back onto the sand.
“No, hold up. I listened to you, so now you listen to me.”
And he does, settles back down, keeps his attention on you, despite the hurt and confusion.
“Alright,” you continue. “I appreciate it, I really do. And it’s not that I don’t want to give this another try…”
“…but?”
“…but it won’t go well. I’ll mess up again, Jake.” He opens his mouth, tries to interrupt you, but you stop him like he did you earlier. “And you will, too. Because we’re both as we are, and knowing what’s going wrong doesn’t mean we know how to make it not happen again.”
But he’s not convinced by your excuse, is almost desperate when he answers, and it hurts you to see him like this, to see him so ruined because of you.
“But we were kids, Dirk! There was also the whole Sburb malarkey, and most of us were meeting other humans for the first time. It was all a big mess, but we’re older, now! We know better!”
You can tell he’s getting agitated again. You’d like to say you’ve never seen him so wrecked before, but you’ve started to have dreams. Memories of splinters and alternate selves. You’ve seen the memories of the splinter he gave life to through sheer force of will. You’ve seen Jake, in a cell, brought to tears from the torment inflicted by a Condesce-controlled Jane.
You don’t know how you should bring it up to him, this whole memory business, but you feel like you’ll have to, and sooner rather than later.
“…that brings me to my second point. Jake, have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?”
He looks confused more than anything.
“Um, no? I don’t make a habit of it, unless it’s to do my hair in the morning,” he says, but then looks sheepish when he runs his hand through the mess on his head. “I, uh, kinda forgot to comb it, today.”
And other days, too, you suspect.
“You’re a mess, Jake. You look like you haven’t slept in ages, and believe me, I’m the expert on not sleeping, I can see it. You don’t talk to anyone, besides Jade once in a blue moon. You almost never leave your island. Even the consorts say they’ve been seeing you less, lately. You have no support system, and you’re clearly vulnerable. A relationship isn’t what you need right now.”
You see the way he deflates the more you go on.
“…can’t you be my support system?”
“No, Jake,” you sigh. “Think about it. What happens, when someone has no-one to go to but their romantic partner? Nothing good. This will end in disaster. Hell, it may turn out even worse than the first time.”
He sighs, lets himself flop backwards onto the sand.
“Then, what should I do?”
You follow him down and turn to your side to face him. Your hair must be completely full of sand right now, and you certainly feel the small grains in places sand has no business being, but it’s okay. This is more important.
“Let’s be friends.” You slide a hand in the small space between the two of you. “I can’t be your support system, but I can be part of it, help you expand your horizons a bit.”
He stares at you in silence.
But then, after much deliberation, he slowly brings his hand to join yours. He takes your hand in a loose grip, loose enough that you can pull away easily if you so wish.
”…Okay.”
You and Jake learn how to be friends again. You chat with him casually over the net and sometimes in person. He’s afraid to leave his island any farther than the consort kingdom, so you meet up from time to time at either of those places, just to hang out.
Sometimes you slip, he looks at you with too much fondness, your “bro” hugs last a little too long. But for the most part, you keep to your word, and keep it platonic. Once he’s better, maybe you’ll consider it. Hell, maybe you’ll teach him that whole quadrant business and see where that brings you.
(You’d like to go red again, of course, you can’t deny the way he makes you feel, the way static electricity travels your spine when his friendly touches linger a bit too long. But you wouldn’t mind pale, would love it just as much, taking care of him, kissing his worries away, listening to his troubles like you didn’t before.
But ideally, you would like both. You just can’t help pitying him. Not in the human way, never in the human way, he’s strong and hardworking, despite what he thinks of himself. That sort of pity would be doing him a disservice. What you feel for him is closer to the troll’s definition of pity. A compassionate kind of pity, the one that makes you want to curl up around him and protect him from the world, to be his support, his rock, so he can live without worries.)
But for now, the two of you are friends.
It’s going better than either of you expected.
He tells you, one day, that he’s afraid of contacting the girls.
“I’d love to,” he says, “but then I remember everything that happened, and I chicken out. I only managed to talk to you because you contacted me first.”
So you suggest to start smaller. To hang out with someone he doesn’t have any sort of history with, and work his way up to people who know him better. You recommend Karkat, who’s obsessed with romcoms and makes a fantastic debate partner when it comes to movies. You also mention John, who’s been feeling pretty down since the game ended, and who would appreciate a nice, laid-back movie night once in a while. You remind him that Jade would also love nothing more than to spend more time with him, and that she’s been holding back so as not to overwhelm him.
He’s nervous, of course, but he takes all your suggestions to heart.
Surprisingly, but perhaps not so much, he gets along immediately with Karkat. As it turns out, Karkat’s habit of rambling about the movies he’s watching is extremely compatible with Jake’s indiscriminate appreciation of all movies, good or bad.
It’s a bit more tentative with John, mostly because they’re both pretty reclusive, but they have a nice time and develop a simple, easygoing companionship. They bring each other out of their shells, encouraging each other to leave their respective rooms a little more often.
And of course, Jade is ecstatic when Jake invites her to hang out, she’s always so earnest, especially with family. You can tell that they both see their dearly missed guardians in each other, but it’s a non-issue for them. She calls him “grandpa”, and he calls her “grandma”, and they laugh together. It’s sweet.
(She does come for your ass when she learns that you and Jake reconciled, because you didn’t think to mention it to her. In your defense, your renewed friendship was still in its early stages then, and you didn’t want to jump the gun too fast and possibly get her involved in the fallout.)
Through Karkat, Jake gets to know Dave (and fumbles a few times because Dave Strider was a celebrity in your version of Earth, but Dave takes it in stride—heh, and even signs his copy of SBaHJ : The Moive), and consequently, Rose (who intimidates him more than anything). And from those two, he meets Terezi and Kanaya (who also both intimidate him, for wildly different reasons).
Despite everything that happened, Sburb brought you all closer, and so the little things quickly have a snowball effect, and soon enough Jake is at least on good terms with most everyone.
The only ones left are Jane and Roxy.
He contacts Roxy first. They didn’t really have any sort of bad history in the first place, just lots of awkward feelings born of having been into the same guy, and her being from a different timeline. The moment she gets the okay to visit, she immediately throws herself into her transportalizer, and squeezes Jake within an inch of his life. Then, when she’s done, she grabs you too and also squeezes you like her life depends on it. You were only there to cheer Jake on while he contacted her on Pesterchum, and honestly hadn’t expected her to just come in right away, but you don’t complain. Roxy gives fantastic hugs.
(Later, she gets you alone, and asks if you and Jake are back together. You tell her no immediately, but her teasing grin forces you to add the missing part of your statement.
“Not yet,” you concede. She squees.)
Jane is…more complicated. Between her well-deserved outburst, then the Trickster shenanigans, and finally all that Crockertier business…it’s hard for either of them to look past this. Their relationship is tainted by anger, disappointment, and guilt. You don’t know how to help them see eye to eye, how to make them not forget their history, but learn from it, and grow together as people.
You don’t know how to help, feelings were never your forte. You were always better at breaking them down than building them up. Fitting for a Prince, you suppose.
As it turns out, though, Callie is a surprisingly good “friend matchmaker”, as she calls it. Perhaps you shouldn’t be so surprised, she was always so fond of analyzing interpersonal relationships in various cultures, but you thought she’d have a harder time putting the theory into practice by virtue of being a Cherub. You shouldn’t have underestimated her like this, another bad habit of yours.
When she’s done with them, Jane and Jake aren’t exactly friends again, but they’ve aired out their respective grievances about each other, and yet nobody’s dead or maimed. It’ll probably take a while for either of them to open up, to trust each other again, but they’re both willing to try, and that’s what matters.
You’d told him, at the beginning, that if he hasn’t changed his mind by then, he could ask you that fated question again, on the condition that he must be ready and there must be no doubt about it. No asking “just in case”, not out of desperation or convenience or out of misplaced feelings of guilt. He must be sure of himself, or you will reject him on principle, regardless of your own feelings.
So, when he asks again, well-rested, healthy, and relaxed when you’re both simply playing games together, sides pressed together like you’ve done it hundreds of times before, you say yes.
And…it goes well.
Every day, you live with that constant fear, that your issues will resurface eventually, sweep away your relationships and leave them ruined. But, just like the ocean never actually destroyed your home, your relationships remain unsunken. If anything, they are now stronger than ever, built better to withstand the inevitable storms.
Jake isn’t swept away, never to be seen again. He fell into your waters once, but has since perfected his swimming, built a sturdy boat, got himself diving gear in case he falls in again.
He tells you when he needs some alone time, and you learn to relax, to trust in him instead of immediately spiraling.
Things are not only better, now.
They are good.
In the end, Karkat is the one who actually teaches Jake about quadrants, since it was necessary knowledge to understand his movie rants. He doesn’t get it immediately, but a few examples using various fictional characters help him get a clearer picture.
He talks to you about it excitedly, asks you if you grew up with those in your culture. It wasn’t your culture, exactly, just remains of the one your Bro lived and died through, but you did grow up with it, and internalized many of its aspects.
Including quadrants.
It helps him better understand many of your friends’ relationships, so he makes a little list of relationships and what quadrants he assumes they’re in. It’s all speculations of course, and just in good fun, but he gets scarily accurate for some of those.
He is quick to put the two of you in the hearts category (so far, he only remembers the symbols associated with each relationship, but not their name), but then stops and thinks.
He hums.
“Actually…can you be both? Multiple symbols at once?” He asks you.
“Sure, why not? There used to be rules about this on Alternia, apparently, but it never took on Earth, and they certainly don’t matter here either.”
“Oh, superb!” He exclaims, and immediately adds a diamond between your names. You smile at his adorable enthusiasm, and feel warm inside at the fact he didn’t hesitate to put you both into both flushed quadrants.
He also adds a little diamond next to Karkat and Dave’s spade.
Like you said, scarily accurate.
Author's note: I lowkey write Dirk and Jake to both be on the autism spectrum, but in wildly different ways that tend to clash together.
They don't mean to hurt each other, it just happens because they don't realize how the other works.
And that's what honest communication is for, kids!