Chapter Text
Dirk left his shades by the sink and hastily dropped the rest of his clothes onto the floor. He stepped into the shower cubicle. It was only when the—humanly impossible—hot water hit him that he allowed himself to groan in frustration. Jake English could do that to people, as did Dirk’s own responder. Incidentally he had just talked to them both. One conversation had been packed with stagnant innuendo and questionable—"all in good fun"—gay jokes and the other with not quite sincere (but not quite dishonest either) self-slander. It was the ordinary, really, but this time it hurt.
He raised his head as the water trickled down his face, closing his eyes and leaning into the contact as if he was being caressed. He snorted, so he had reached that level of touch deprivation. He couldn't even laugh it off; he felt agonizingly lonely.
He recalled having read something about hour-long scalding hot showers being an indicator of a need for human warmth and when the steam took Jake’s shape in his mind, he knew he couldn’t refute it. He was tired of living in the future. He couldn’t imagine his body against another, the sound of his name on someone else’s lips. He’d give anything to be held.
Even if he’d like to pretend otherwise, it was not only the space-time continuum that hindered his chances with Jake. For how much they joked about being into each other, Dirk sure felt it was one-sided. It was always him cracking up the whip and cornering Jake to get something—anything—out of him. And if he forced him to deal with one—just one—Strider on the daily it would be one thing, but he had two duplicates to come to grips with. To add to the already unpleasant experience.
Three Striders were apparently not enough to brazen it up and type it, that he liked him and that there was nothing he wanted more than to read it back. Without the irony, without the playful homoeroticism that was starting to get old, as comforting as it had been at the beginning. It had allowed them to test how far they could go before it became weird and Dirk inevitably wondered how much longer would that be. Somehow it was easier to bare his soul to his friend when he could finish it off with a "just kidding," which in truth was an "only kidding if you're kidding." Was Jake all that clueless or did he just enjoy the attention even if he had no intention of reciprocating? Dirk could not tell and that scared him.
He had gotten into the shower to blow off some steam. To take Jake—and the looming loneliness that treaded hard on his heels—off his mind, perhaps jerk off like the desperate teen he sometimes forgot he was. Once he was inside, though, he just couldn’t.
He braced himself tightly under the pretext of scrubbing his back and focused on the nearly scorching heat on his skin. As pathetic as he felt, it was comforting. More importantly, it fooled his brain into thinking he had someone to keep him company.
The following days would change everything. The perspective of finally destroying the world that had only been vicious towards him and meeting other human beings—particularly his internet friends, amongst them the boy he loved and the girl who loved him—was as staggering as it was promising. He could hardly wait.