john egbert (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riseup) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thoughtformed2012-12-18 11:42 am
riseup) wrote in thoughtformed2012-12-18 11:42 am
Entry tags:
(no subject)
who: dave and john, everyone else stay the fuck out.
when: oh god i don't care. sometime after mistletoe but before christmas.
what: best fries.
where: west 101.
[ The thing about being best friends with Dave Strider is you don't ask questions.
When his room is full of dead things in jars, you don't ask questions.
When he offers to help you study for history and it turns into a one-man rap-off about the Franco-Prussian War, you don't ask questions.
When he texts you to say he needs help making charts for a Christmas present, you don't ask questions. You just show up with a pack of markers and a can-do attitude, which is exactly what John does.
Through the window.
Because he's the best friend in the sitcom of Dave's life, except instead of a ladder he's got the windy thing. John wiggles his way through and rolls onto the floor, smooth as goddamn sandpaper. There's no one around, not even Souji — that's probably fortunate, not even Souji — so he calls into the apartment. ]
Dave? Your priority mail Egbert has arrived, dumbass.
[ Yeah the thing about flying into windows is that it's kind of like breaking and entering haha oops shh no one heard that ]
when: oh god i don't care. sometime after mistletoe but before christmas.
what: best fries.
where: west 101.
[ The thing about being best friends with Dave Strider is you don't ask questions.
When his room is full of dead things in jars, you don't ask questions.
When he offers to help you study for history and it turns into a one-man rap-off about the Franco-Prussian War, you don't ask questions.
When he texts you to say he needs help making charts for a Christmas present, you don't ask questions. You just show up with a pack of markers and a can-do attitude, which is exactly what John does.
Through the window.
Because he's the best friend in the sitcom of Dave's life, except instead of a ladder he's got the windy thing. John wiggles his way through and rolls onto the floor, smooth as goddamn sandpaper. There's no one around, not even Souji — that's probably fortunate, not even Souji — so he calls into the apartment. ]
Dave? Your priority mail Egbert has arrived, dumbass.
[ Yeah the thing about flying into windows is that it's kind of like breaking and entering haha oops shh no one heard that ]
no subject
[Which could be a signal to any mortal creature worth its brains to run for its life, but sometimes Dave is only an incomplete disaster. In fact, nothing is even on fire. 'Tis the season for Christmas miracles.
It's probably because Dave hasn't touched anything that could conceivably set anything on fire (though that's no guarantee of safety). He exits the kitchen bearing nachos and jalapeño cheese sauce and sets the bounty down on the floor next to a mess of construction paper and pattern-edged scissors. He even got a couple of those little circular punch-out things to make designs. You know what I'm talking about. Like hole-punchers. Except they make card suits instead of circles.
Dave sits there cross-legged, crunches down on a gooey chip, and then offers one over to John.]
Nancho? Pleasure before business, dude.
no subject
[ Luckily for absolutely no one, John is not entirely a mortal creature and definitely not worth his brains, so he doesn't even blink at the prospect of Dave in a kitchen setting. What could go wrong?
He does give the nancho party one half-skeptical look before partaking. They are indeed edible and unlikely to kill him any time soon, probably. In fact he's just gonna take like. Five more. BEST FRIENDS SHARE, DAVE.
He scans the spread of craft supplies before cocking an eyebrow at Dave. ]
So... what kind of mess are we making exactly?
no subject
We are making the kind of mess normally reserved for a rare breed of total asshole. The kind who needs a dedicatedly rendered treasure map to find the shits no one has to give about basically anything that comes out of his facehole.
[But it's like Dave's not even trying to sound rancorous as he selects the one piece of grey paper that came in the pack.]
So does Karkat like any colors you couldn't lift off a penitentiary wall or am I gonna have to get monocreative here?
no subject
John freezes for a moment, nacho halfway to mouth, before resuming Functioning As A Normal Human Being as casually as possible.
Laugh. Shake head. Insert nacho into mouth. Chew. Swallow. Inspect pile of construction paper. Holy shit, say words. ]
Dave, I have something important to tell you.
[ John's tone is overly-grave, in the way that indicates that this isn't important at all. ]
Karkat doesn't like anything.
[ Still, he brushes his nacho hands off on his pants before sifting through the paper. Haha. Nacho hands. ]
He will hate every color equally and with a passion we mere humans could never understand, so what's the difference?
no subject
[Dave picks up a pair of crocodile tooth-edged craft scissors and flips them around his fingers as he examines his paper of choice.]
Is that this is a birthday present for Troll Jesus, and I am nothing if not the poster boy for cross-cultural religious observation. Christ, John, show some piety.
[He hooks the nacho bowl with his foot and drags it over, grabs one with his scissor hand, and then scoots back to lie down on his stomach in the proper posture for one about to engage in some serious arts and crafts. He dips his nacho in the cheese and chews it thoughtfully.]
Though I guess if it's Karkat, we can't really go wrong setting him off like a Christmas cracker. Least I can do is give him an excuse to blow up in public.
[With that in mind, he reaches for a sheet of red paper to overlay on the grey.]
no subject
[ All the same, John scoots toward Dave and the rest of the craft pile, carefully picking out his own wavy-patterned scissors and uncapping a marker. He's about to say something about how this level of heartfelt dedication to a gift is definitely indicative of friendship when the pieces slowly finish their descent into place.
Vaguely, as if bubbling up from a dream, he recalls a conversation that he had long ago between one Dave Strider and one Karkat Vantas that involved spurning awkward advances and a terribly drawn mating diagram that basically told them to marry and reproduce with each others' sisters.
And here he sits, agreeing to help Dave with charts of unknown nature for an formerly-unknown recipient and holy shit.
He is now an accomplice to Strider's Revenge. ]
They are going to be shipping charts, aren't they.
[ See, he can rub his two braincells together sometimes.
Oh god get him out of here. ]
no subject
[He slides some more construction paper towards him in a haphazard rainbow: green and pink and purple and teal and even orange. He arranges them around him in a fan of color.]
The most breathtakingly moving and heartfelt.
[He picks one of John's markers at random, stops, puts it back, and starts pawing through them with a diligent look on his face. This is the expression of a Dave who will not fail in his self-appointed duty. This is a Dave who is doing this, man. He is making it happen.
This is a Dave who cares.
Cares about messing with Karkat, anyway. Which is sort of like caring about Karkat. In Dave World.]
Set of shipping charts any universe has ever seen. Dude, do you have any of the fruity-smelling markers? Those are awesome. Also, how do you spell auspiticistian?
[He chooses a jungle green marker finally and selects a Nanna-blue piece of paper.]
no subject
[ Ah, fond memories of keeping every smelly marker in one's flip-top desk and turning it into a veritable potpourri of fake fruit scents. Also licorice, but no one likes the licorice marker.
But more to the point. John lets out a low whistle as he begins cutting up various pieces of paper, holding off on the actual markage for now. ]
This is a pretty tall order. And I don't know— isn't it austipicizer anyway?
[ No. Neither of those are right and he knows it. It's just that he also has no idea how the fuck to actually spell it out. ]
We should probably just use the symbols.
[ Those he knows well enough, less from Karkat's endless rambles and more from his own decks of cards. With a stack of many-colored papers sufficiently wavy-fied, he picks one out — blinding lime green, like Slimer, awesome — and quarters it before drawing out each suit. ]
There, now we have a strategy guide. [ A beat. ] He's going to kill you for this.
no subject
[In the end he decides to fold the paper into quadrants first, taking care to crease it sharply, then adds the lines over it as shittily as possible. Geometrists would weep.
He leans over to look at John's, then copies the symbols, adding the hearts and diamonds in orange. Then he grabs the spade hole-puncher and starts attacking the paper haphazardly.]
Who're you putting in it? I mean not just in the autosplasticizing box, but all of them. I don't wanna bite your style.
i almost responded with poppop that would be a very different conversation
[ John bows low over the paper and starts drawing the shittiest recreation of Eridan's face ever in the spades quadrant. He's in the middle of coloring that shitty hipster hair outside the lines when he has to pause.
See, the thing about this is that it isn't a big deal. It's just another gag — a pretty brilliant one at that, John has to give prankster credit where prankster credit is due. Dave clearly hasn't thought twice about anything, he's simply involving John in a masterfully crafted joke because that's what best bros do.
Best bros also tell each other everything. Which is a thing that hasn't been happening, and it gnaws at John sometimes. He's not good at keeping secrets under the best circumstances, to say nothing of keeping secrets from Dave.
So he glances sideways and gives the weird situation an experimental prod. ]
What gave you the idea anyway? Just, like, payback for the shipping grid of yesteryear?
whos this asshole and why is he trying to tell me about a menage a trolls is he santa??
Pretty much, yeah. Plus he tried to spring some other charty griddy thing on me back on the meteor. At least this one's gonna be tasteful.
[He holds his work up to examine it, then shows it to John.]
What do you think?
[Diamonds and spades are still empty, but there is an actual jar of applesauce labeled a-sizzle in the auspistice quadrant. It apparently is doing a good job of managing Karkat's anonymous hatemance, since two SBaHJ-shitty hands are lovingly caressing the jar's sides. Or maybe they're just both grabbing for it at once. Maybe they're hungry.
And there, in the flushed quadrant, is a surprisingly clear, painstakingly crafted rendition of what can only be described as a human dog. Perhaps even a particularly simple one.]