#timaeuse

pesterchum's voice call function is flawed at the best of times. when combined with the island's often touchy internet connection, the call is practically holding on for dear life.     “ oh, hold on, dirk--grandma ? the internet is on the fritz ! ”      he could fix it himself, if he really put himself to it, but he'd hate to leave dirk for that long ( and not just because he knows dirk could fix it in a matter of seconds, just as his nan is about to do ).

i see absolutely no issue w this post

it’s bad luck to see the dress before the wedding  --  he doesn’t exactly know how that translates to suits and all, but surely it applies. it’d just be unfair if all couples didn’t have equal access to the potential destruction of their marriage. double destruction, if jake’s suit is similarly cursed.

oh, well. he can handle the risk if it comes with seeing dirk a few minutes early  --  the suit fits him well, but of course it does, custom - tailored and then altered a dozen times. he remembers sitting through his own adjustments and whining all the while, more than happy to not wear a suit at all. he’s fine with it now.

Don’t make me laugh. Ain’t none of these fools having sex.

GOOD.

dirk vc: We can’t do EASY things, and you wanted us to do a HARD one?

dirk vc: That’s a funny trick to play on God.

STOP IT

he really, really doesn’t want to tell dirk all those thoughts that went through his head while he made up excuses to not look at his phone. sometimes, dating dirk felt like playing a zero - sum game, one where dirk wins if he’s right about his lover’s apprehensions. jake could never tell if he would rather win or lose; a loss seemed less emotionally destructive, yet jake always got the feeling that dirk needed to prove himself right. and either way, jake was in the middle, and the best way to handle a game you can’t win is to not play at all.

he can’t exactly take a third option now, though. and he doesn’t want to say the second part either, the part where he discovered that dirk had liked him more than he’d been expecting. jake could’ve (would’ve) faked his way through marriage and babies, the whole kit-and-kaboodle, but he couldn’t fake his way through being in love. and it does say a lot about him, probably, that he’d always figured love and marriage didn’t have to go hand - in - hand. his point was, the first time he saw the way dirk looked at him, those this is a fun little fling thoughts faded, and he didn’t know what to do with that.

but that makes it about dirk, when it’s really more about him. he had a thousand opportunities to either work things out or end them, and every time, he’d dance around the issues and hope it’d sort itself out. his belief powers weren’t quite so strong back then, but in retrospect, that might be a good thing. though the conversation its led to isn’t great.

“      i was trying not to hurt you.     ”     fat load of success that was.     “     i mean -- i didn’t want to tell you i needed space, and you think that means to go away forever, but i also didn’t want to tell you everything was fine when it wasn’t, so i decided just to...    ”     he sighs, bites down on his thumb just enough such that he stays grounded.       “      i kept saying i’d talk to you soon, but then i thought about how upset you’d be, and i didn’t want to upset anybody. i just overestimated my ability to keep you from finding out. though i guess i wouldn’t have had to hide anything if i’d just spoken to you.       ”