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And you, sir, you must be the famous Captain Cully, boldest of the bold and freest of the free, the wizard said.
“This motherfucker gesticulates so much with his hands while he’s talking.” Dirk said.
“Hehe. Gesticulate!”
They were fifteen minutes into The Last Unicorn and two-thirds of the way through their second bottle of soonhari. It was wedged like a puzzle piece into the clutter of Strider paraphernalia decorating the coffee table. A loose pile of katanas. Drapes and spools of electric wires. An orange skateboard. A bong with muddy pond water sitting on a lace doily. His house smelled like leather straps and pencil lead.
“Good word for this verbose douchebag. So far up his own ass. Can’t even… Put your hands down, motherfucker. You’re scaring the soup wench.”
Dirk got a lot less poetic when he was drunk. His mannerisms were all the same, though. Hands cadaver-stiff at his sides, keeping a rigid spine while still sunken into his claim on the couch. Jade couldn’t keep still. She was flipped turnways, her legs dangling over the back cushions, running her hands over the tip of her tail soothingly.
“I’m just glad you’re bothering to watch this with me at all. Dave and Karkat didn’t make it past the butterfly.”
“Not surprising. They were probably too busy making simmering eye contact to appreciate the adventures of this majestic-ass unicorn and her… her obsequious friend in the idiot hat.”
“Ahaha!”
“Didn’t even notice there was a movie on. Over the hot froth of unreal mindsex. Throbbing boners pressed hidden into the couch cushions, unacknowledged. No unicorns for these bros. Too busy brainfrotting their nothingcocks and not making eye contact.”
“No, no, they just… kinda yelled at each other until they turned on something else.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I get, you know? Dave and Karkat just don’t like this kind of stuff. I should have tried to put on something we would all enjoy!”
Sing us a true song, sing us one about Robin Hood! said Molly Grue.
“What did you end up watching?”
“I don’t know. Some troll comedy starring that guy who looks like Will Smith. We’ve seen it, like, four times already, so I just went to bed.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you all enjoy."
"Yeah, well, ehe…” Jade shifted forward to lie on her stomach, head cradled in her hands. Schmendrick was waving his arms around and wind was blowing everywhere. “It isn’t like I complained or anything! I just left. If I wanted us to watch something else I should have just said so.”
“Did you ever get drunk with them?”
“No, I don’t…I don’t like getting drunk around those guys. I feel like I always say something stupid.”
I don’t understand why nobody loves me. They laughed like you’d told a joke, and you laughed, too, stretched your lips and made a sound.
“Like what?”
“Like, um… oh man. I don’t know. Um, one time I got drunk when they weren’t home, and I did something REALLY stupid, aha.”
“You can’t just say that and not elaborate. Elucidate me here. Spin me a yarn of the follies of Jade Harley.”
“Well, if you want it all, we’d be here all night!!”
“Okay. Pluck one string, then. One golden thread in the idiot weave. Or, like, shed one innocent angel-white hair from your… bigass fluffy idiot tail. Tale? Tale.”
“Okay, okay, geez…” Fuzzy static snagged on her claws. She willed it down into smooth, ASMR-approved softness. “Um. So Dave and Karkat were out of the house. I don’t remember why, they don’t really… ‘go out' much? So I was cleaning the house, and doing my laundry. And getting drunk. Like, really really drunk.”
“While doing laundry.”
“Yeah! Yeah, I’m not sure, it was stupid. Anyway, I was drunk, and I was doing laundry, and Dave always forgets to check if I’ve already put a load in the washing machine. He just dumps all his laundry in there and my clothes get washed a second time. So, um, all our laundry was jumbled together.”
“Okay.”
“And I… like, I took off all of my clothes. And I put on Dave’s. Like, his clothes.”
Jade felt the long pause of silence settle in before she even finished talking. Her hair was hot against the back of her neck. She risked a glance portside, and Dirk’s face was the same metal casing of blank boredom it was all the time. Never any data in that face.
“It was a joke,” She scrambled. “I mean, what else could it be, right? He leaves his shit in my laundry, then I get to wear it. It was, like, a statement, and it made more sense when I was drunk.”
The metal face was unaffected. She couldn’t bear to look at it any more.
He's no ordinary hedge wizard, Cully. I don't know what he is, to tell you the truth.
“Which ones?” He said.
“What?
“Which clothes did you wear.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do.”
It was like he was radiating hot fire on the other side of the couch, but she looked again and he was the same, he was sitting exactly the same, his face was the same. Was he even looking at her? It would tax precious seconds staring right at his face to identify the little pinpricks of hot orange under the sunglasses. Anything could happen in that time.
“Um. Like, a pajama shirt. Long sleeved, cotton. It was winter. It was white, it had the red gear on it.”
“And?”
“And, um, checkered pajama pants. They could have been Karkat’s. They were a little big, I don’t think Dave’s normal waistband could fit around my hips, haha-”
“And?”
“What?”
“What else?”
“I don’t-”
“Boxers?”
“No! Don’t be gross, I-”
“You did.”
One more glance and she felt the full weight of his face turned to hers. Her whole head was hot, hot where the black hair curled against the dead shells of her human ears, hot pressed against her fur, hot on her neck and hot where her glasses pressed on her zygomatic arch.
“You don’t-”
“Come here.”
He stood up, not fast or slow– no data– but Jade still flinched like he’d lunged for her throat across the couch. She searched for words, and didn’t find any, and he was already down the little hallway, turning right into his bedroom.
Such an open ended instruction. Come here. Sometimes he did that, made little vague commands in conversation. But it was never something she wasn’t already going to do. Adjust your sword arm like this, give me your soldering iron, tuck your shirt in this way. She thought about making a joke sometimes, about how weird and rude it was to talk like that. But it was always just unserious enough to feel like she’d be annoying if she pointed it out.
She was pretty sure he talked to everyone that way. Probably.
“Dirk?” She called out. Vague rustling noises from his room.
“Dirk, I’m not gonna- I’m not going to go in your–...”
“The mirror in the hallway. Not the bedroom.”
“Wwwwhy…?”
I will keep the color in your eyes where no other in the world remembers your name.
There is no immortality but a tree's love.
Oh, God.
I'm engaged to a Douglas Fir.
She stood. A warm, lighthearted rush down from her neck as soonhari resettled itself across her lymphatics. It was probably all the alcohol, this was all happening because she drank alcohol and got stupid again.
She found the bottle on the i-spy coffee table and drained it. Cloying hot syrup coated her tongue and bit all the way down her throat. Too sweet, too fast.
The mirror in Dirk’s hallway revealed the precarious block towers of motherboards, pregnant with a thousand wires drooling all over the kitchen floor and snaking into the hallways and out the front and back doors and down into the engine room, and a nervous tail flicking back and forth stuck on a black mass of warm shivering dogmeat. Emo faggot. Where were these weird thoughts coming from? Who was that?
A doorknob rattled, and Dirk was holding a bundle of cloth. He gripped an end and suddenly it was two shirts, propped up on either arm. “Pick one.”
“Wwwwhyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”
A pause. She pretended to see gears turning in his brain. “Why did you get drunk to put on Dave’s clothes?” He said.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s find out.”
There was nothing to say to that. She was too fucked up. He was impenetrable. Better to fold and see where he’s going with this.
One was a simple orange workout tank. She had seen him wear it under his gear working on the engine, the perfect cut for Dirk’s high-power V8 bulk. That tight fabric would be made loose on her spongy shoulders. Drape down far past her armpits.
The other was emblazoned with the orange hat he wore on all his clothes when they were kids. She wondered how long that had been rotting in his closet. White, short sleeves. This hadn’t seen light in a decade or more.
“Um. The little one.”
He tossed it against her.
“These, too.” He vanished behind the portal of his doorframe and returned with a set of wide-cut pants and a belt.
“Dirk, I-”
“I’ll turn around.”
Jade wanted to tell him she’d change in the bathroom, or he should at least shut the door, but there was some sort of charged magic spell hung over this moment and she was scared any wrong choice would break it and whatever this was supposed to be would slip through her fingers forever, and she would never know. Blink and you’ll miss it. Dirk turned around.
She crossed her arms at her waist and tugged off both layers of shirt. Her ears fluttered as the neckline brushed against their fur. Wasn’t there some different way that boys took off their shirts? Where it was all one big arching motion over the head? Too late. Crop top and undershirt, both on the hall floor. She rolled the fabric against her fingers, picked at the cracking inkjob of hat on shirt. Could’ve gone further, shirt on hat on shirt. Hat on shirt on hat on shirt on hat. Dirk still turned away, shifts his weight, elbow on the doorknob.
It still had that metallic jock smell of his, preserved in amber inside his dresser drawer. It fit her better than she thought it would. She tried to picture a version of Dirk that was her same size, her same shape.
She hesitated with her fingers on her belt buckle. Buckles made so much noise. She winced as she unwound it from her hips, stuck her thumb between the frame and the bar, tried to make it quiet, make it small. Too much noise would make this weird dream too real.
She could hear the creaky whine of the ceiling fan in the living room, now that she was listening. Thwp-thwp-thwp.
With her pants gone, the bottom of the shirt framed her legs. She looked small. It didn’t look right. It wasn’t right. He wanted something out of this, and she didn’t know what it was.
What was there to compare it to? She pictured someone’s lipglossed girlfriend in a film, trouncing sleepily out of a bedroom door framed in a varsity football jacket. This wasn’t that. It was too… ominous? Obfuscated intent. It was Patrick Bateman giving you his raincoat because he wanted you clean when he made a spaghetti puddle of gore out of your coworker in the living room.
She tugged the waistband up to touch where her tail pushed off the small of her back and wound Dirk’s belt through the loops. Double pronged. Even at its tightest notch, it was sitting a little too slack to be comfortable. Her tail always made jeans sit half an inch too low. The whole arrangement felt precarious, loose.
The pants fell flat, straight-down, a fabric river. The shirt was unformed, too, cloaking her curves. It’s like Dirk’s persona was enveloping her utterly, masking her from the world. There were too many smells and textures in this room. His weight shifts again. Elbow off doorknob. Hand in pocket.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, you can turn around.”
She wanted more and more layers of Dirk until no Jade was left underneath. She wanted to tear everything off her body and run around on all fours naked outside. More fucking silence from Strider. She could punch his lights out.
“Okay, so, you like it, then?”
“What?”
“Your tail.”
Her mind blanked, whited out from surprise corner to corner, flanked with a crushing assault of embarrassment. She hadn’t even fucking noticed. In the mirror, her tail was vigorously dusting the wooden floorboards. Wagging, back and forth.
“That’s not– oh my god. I don’t have any control. Over that.”
He didn’t say anything snarky. Didn’t say it was cute. Didn’t emote, didn’t react. Blank, bored expression. Meaningless. Looking at Dirk felt like trying to see through a car window at night. You know there’s something in there, but there’s only your own face on the glass.
“Okay, I did what you wanted. Can you fucking say something? Please?”
He took one step and cleared the doorframe. Jade instinctively lurched back, scared to be touched like this, but she caught her heel, embarrassed at another obvious emotional flareup to be catalogued by this fucking robot man.
“How do you feel?”
“I… I don’t… confused. I guess.”
“But you like it.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know why you like it?”
Swish-swish. Tail back and forth. Is that how she felt? Or was that the id response of some animal, welded onto her body?
Do Jades even have feelings? What am I looking at? Who is that?
“I’m… trying to picture you in this shirt. It’s hard to imagine you were ever this small.”
“It’s from when we were kids. I forgot I even had it.”
“Right.”
Dirk came up behind her in the mirror, a shadow. Hooked his fingers under the shirt collar.
And Molly Grue said, where were you 20 years ago?
Ten years ago?
Where were you when I was new?
When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to?
How dare you?
“It fits you.”
How dare you come to me now, when I am this?