Chapter Text
The finger brushed under his chin, tilting his head up and Dirk had no choice to follow along, his amber eyes meeting Jake’s.Jake English was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen, he could admit that.
“Babe, why can’t you ever just behave?” Jake asked. What did he mean? Dirk was always a good boy, wasn’t he? He wanted to be a good boy for Jake, let Jake do whatever he wanted to him. To let him humiliate him, degrade him, push him to his limits… “You can never behave. You’re always hurting someone in one way or another. You hurt me by turning away, you heard Dave by raising him, you hurt Jane by just loving me, you hurt everyone you meet, why can’t you ever just behave?”
What? Dirk went to reply, to ask just what he was going on about but when he tried, his voice died and he made no sound.
What was happening? He just wanted to be good, what was…
“You deserved to be punished, don’t you?”
Oh, now that sounded promising. Dirk bit his lip and nodded. Maybe the insults were a bit unnecessary but Jake punishing him sounded amazing.
“Good boy… Now, I want you to take your punishment without complaint, alright?” Jake told him. He nodded.
Dirk closed his amber eyes, waiting for those hands to touch his skin, to hold him and ruin him for any other man, but instead he only hurt footsteps.
Dirk opened his eyes to see Jake walking away. Where was he going? He tried to call out for him but nothing emerged from his throat.
Then, he was being hauled to his feet by some unseen person and dragged backwards as Jake kept walking away and away. The scenery started to change and Dirk recognized it in a heartbeat. An ocean. Jake was still walking away from him, over the water as if he were Jesus.
Dirk turned his head to look back, seeing no one and nothing but the vast ocean and… the apartment.
No.
No, he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to go back! That meant he would have to be all alone again and-! No he couldn’t go through that again!
The next time he tried to speak, his voice came out and he screamed, “No! No stop! Please! Don’t take me back there! I’m begging you!” he struggled against the invisible hands pulling him back, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t break free.
He tried kicking, but that did him no good other than cause whatever it was that kept him out of the water to vanish, his feet splashing into the surface.
That was when whatever it was holding him, thrust him under the water and pulled him back up.
He gasped for air and coughed out water that he’d accidentally swallowed before they did it again.
The next time he came up for air, they were pulling him into the apartment and they let him go in the living room.
He thudded to the floor and coughed for a solid minute, trying to get to the salt water out of his lungs. There was so much of it and he was light headed, the world fuzzing around him in blurs.
He pushed himself to sit up only to be kicked back down, his face slamming into the carpet.
“You only hurt people and you know it. Why do you always have to fuck up people’s lives?” he heard his own voice ask him. The foot removed itself from his head and he turned to look up at the older version of himself, the person who supposedly raised Dave.
“You! You’re an asshole, don’t touch me!” Dirk yelled, pushing up so he scrambled back and jumped to his feet, that was until they turned to jello and he was sent crashing.
Bro Strider approached him laying on the floor stunned and gripped a fistful of his identical hair, tugging him up to his knees. Shackles appeared around his wrists, metal shackles keeping his knees glued to the ground where they were.
Dirk couldn’t get away.
Bro gritted his teeth and smacked him hard across the face, “You’re nothing. Look at me. Dave hates me. Dave hates you. You hurt him, you did. He sees you as nothing more than me, an abuser, someone to hurt him and abuse him for eternity.”
Dirk shook his head, “No! That’s not true! I’m his friend! I’m the older brother he wanted and I’m the older brother that he actually loves!”
“No, Dirk. He truly can only ever see you as me. I am you, so why am I like this, if you’re so different? Simple, you’re not. You’re just…” Bro knelt down and gripped his chin, “A monster. Just like me.” and then, he stood.
A moment of silence occurred.
One…
Two…
Three seconds…
Bro’s knee slammed up into his jaw and Dirk’s head flew back and clean off.
“God tiers..” Bro grumbled and kneed him again and again, repeating it over and over, never being able to truly end him.
Dirk was now sobbing, “Stop! Stop!” he cried. It hurt. He just wanted it to be over. He didn’t want all this pain.
Bro then instead kicked him across the face and Dirk nearly went crumpling to the ground had the shackles not stopped him from doing so.
“You’re just a whore. You manipulated Jake. You hurt him. You forced him to do what you wanted. It was all your fault.” Dirk painfully looked up to see… Hal? It was a metal version of himself and… Somehow he knew it was Hal, even if there wasn’t much to go off of.
Hal kicked him in the side.
“You hurt Jane.”
“You hurt Roxy.”
“You hurt Dave.”
“You hurt John.”
“You hurt Jade.”
“You hurt Rose.”
“You hurt Karkat.”
“You hurt Gamzee.”
Voices, all his, all of them were his, so many, so many voices naming off names, names of people he’d never even met like Mituna, who the hell was that?
He’d hurt him in some timeline.
He’d hurt Gamzee in some timeline.
He’d hurt Nepeta in some timeline.
He’d hurt Kankri in some timeline.
He’d hurt everyone.
“You hurt Jake.”
“Jake.”
“Jake, you hurt Jake.”
Jake Jake Jake
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Dirk screamed. He screamed and sobbed. He gasped for air, hyperventilating. He couldn’t take it anymore, “Please! End it! Make it stop! Kill me please!”
“God tier.”
“Prince of Heart.”
“Highness.”
“Heart.”
“Prince.”
“God.”
“Tier.”
“Prince of Heart.”
Prince of fucking Heart.
“Help..” he hung his head as he was kicked and yelled at, “Help me, please. Someone help… Someone I’m begging you. Anyone, please save me…”
“No one.”
“Save you?”
“You deserve this.”
“No one will save you.”
“You don’t deserve to be saved.”
“No one is coming.”
“Please, please someone help me… God I’m begging you, please…”
Then he heard screams, all of them were screaming and he looked up to see what it was. There was a bright light and then he watched as Bro in front of him shrieked when the blade was run through his stomach. He collapsed and there he was.
His bro.
HIS Bro.
Dave.
The one who’d killed those juggalos centuries ago.
Bro, his Bro was here to save him.
“Come here, I’ve got you.” he said, softly, the shackles disappearing.
Bro reached forward, under his arms and lifted him up before holding him close and Dirk bawled. He held onto his bro’s shirt and wailed, trembling and clinging to him. He was staining his bro’s snazzy ass outfit, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, he was too busy pouring his soul out to the man in front of him.
“There there, it’s alright. Bro’s got you now…”
“Thankyouthankyouthankyousomuchthankyou…” Dirk couldn’t even be bothered to make his strings of words coherent, he just bawled and bawled and bawled.
“I’m not awful, am I? I’m not. I’m trying. I want to be better than the others. I want to be the good guy. I’m not bad, right, Bro?” he sobbed.
He got no answer and so he sniffled and asked, “Bro?”
Nothing.
Opening his eyes, he saw that he was still clinging to Bro’s shirt, but it was white now, the sleeves were red and…
Bro Strider was on his knees as he looked up at the face of his little brother Dave Strider, blood running from his nose and bruises all over his face.
“It was ‘training’ you know, but you know what it really was? It was some vicious shit that was bad and sucked and I hated it. it didn't make me stronger, it did the opposite, it made me never want to fight. It made me never want to see blood or be near danger or hear metal sounds. It made me hate the idea of being a hero ‘cause he was a hero and he ruined the idea of heroism.”
Bro scrambled back, “Dave?” he asked and he had to look down at himself. Bro was just wearing what he normally did, so why did he find his outfit to be weird?
Dave was walking towards him, pointing at him and Bro scrambled back again, only to let his hand slip and he fell backwards into the ocean, shades cracking and breaking.
He felt his prince uniform fill up with water and Dirk watched as his shades floated away and he sank.
He was sinking and couldn’t move his limbs for no reason at all.
Dirk wanted to sob but he couldn’t move his face at all, he couldn’t even feel his throat besides for the immense burning that pulsed through it.
His lungs started to burn but he wouldn’t drown. He wouldn’t die, for he was the Prince of Heart.
His lungs just felt like they were on fire and he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t swim up, he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t even manage to fly.
He was just drowning.
Bro Strider was under him, his arms wrapped around him and hand covering his oddly colored eyes, hiding them from the world.
Bro shushed him, told him to be good. Said that he just had to accept his punishment for being the worst person to exist, that he was awful and that he deserved this.
Dirk felt his tenseness fade and he went limp in Bro’s arms.
Bro was right.
He did deserve this, didn’t he?
It didn’t stop him from wanting to cry, but he was relaxed now, gone complete rag doll in Bro’s hold.
Then the light got brighter and he was on the surface again, but he did not cough, he was just merely a puppet for Bro to play with, to be tossed around and forgotten when he wasn’t needed, used in porn, used for anything.
He was nothing.
Literally nothing.
“Dirk?”
What?
“Dirk?”
What did they want?
“Dirk?”
He was busy being nothing.
“Dirk!”
****
Dirk’s eyes shot open, his face was wet and his throat burned.
Jake’s worried expression was what he woke up to, “Dirk, are you alright? Talk to me!”
The blond’s eyes flicked around the basement, looked to see that this was real. He was a puppet, he wasn’t drowning, he…
He let out a sob and realized that he was no longer shackled. He reached up immediately, not questioning for a second why he wasn’t chained and clung to Jake as if he were his only chance of survival.
Jake wrapped his arms around him and held him close, “Dirk, what happened? Are you alright?”
“I-” Dirk tried to speak. He never wanted Jake to see him cry like this, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop sobbing, “I’m not awful, am I? I’m not a terrible person! I’m not! I don’t deserve to be hurt, do I?”
“No, of course not, love. What’s got you all like this?” he asked, “What happened?”
“A-A n-nightmare, I-” god, he was so uncool. This was so fucked for him, “I-I d-don’t… I-” he couldn’t formulate the words to voice his thoughts, “J-Jake… I-”
Jake held him close, shushing him, “Jane still isn’t back yet, why don’t… I’ll take a risk, okay? Let’s bring you upstairs and get you cleaned up and then we can both sleep in my bed, okay?”
Dirk sniffled pathetically and nodded, “Yeah… I’d like that.”
****
“Are you alright?” Jake asked, turning off the lamplight and sliding under the covers beside the man of his dreams.
Dirk was still trembling, but nodded.
Whatever the nightmare had been about, it was enough to fuck him up this badly and it hurt Jake to see the blond like this.
“I’m okay.”
X to doubt.
Jake sighed softly and wrapped his arm around his lover and softly started scribbling his finger over Dirk’s back in a calming way and then he started humming softly before he started to sing.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray…”
Dirk tensed a bit, but then relaxed again once he started to sing. Ever so quietly, but enough so that Jake could hear, Dirk answered, “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. So please don’t take… my sunshine away..”
Jake smiled softly and kissed the top of his wonderful boyfriend’s head, “Goodnight, Dirk.”
“Goodnight, Jake.”
Jake pulled his lover closer and he closed his eyes as he felt Dirk burrow his face into his chest and relax.