Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Coming to visit Roxy is always a treat. She's not only the most trustworthy witchy girl Jane could ask for, which is an immense help when she's found some bespelled treasure under the sea or when she needs a charm to ward off orcas, she's also a delight to talk to and has the best landdweller gossip. Jane doesn't come up enough to learn how everyone is doing, especially as she's got responsibilities in the pod, but she can learn all about Rose and Kanaya and Karkat's secret new beau and whatever else humans get up to. Honestly, what fun.

Plus, she gets to eat cooked food, which is a gift in and of itself. Sure, nothing beats a nice fat penguin, but Jane doesn't live close enough to get those every day, and lobster is really very good with butter.

"So," Jane says, polite enough to push her food to her cheek to talk so Roxy doesn't have to see it, but not polite enough to wait until she's finished eating, "she takes your french onions?"

"Takes them right out of my bag," Roxy confirms, leaning over like she's spilling state secrets. Jane knows. She's coaxed state secrets out of people before. It's part of the fun of being magic is people will tell you anything. "And I'm like, hey, what the fuck -"

"Language."

"- what the shitting fuck did you just do, girlie, I'll steal your eyes from your face. And so she says, nuh uh, I need these more than you do. Turns out she's right. She's like me too, and she needed something borrowed without asking to get her stuff done, so I'm like, okay."

"You're like, okay," says Jane, between swallows. She doesn't really get how comfortable Roxy is talking such things in public.

The eatery she's been taken to is nice. It serves just the most delicious seafood, save of course what Jane can get in the water, to which it is utterly subpar. (But she won't tell Roxy that.) The fun stuff is what Jane can't usually get, anyway, like this tasty wine sauce on the shrimp and grits she's shoveling into her mouth, or the pain-drink Roxy calls pop which Jane can only drink small sips of. It makes her eyes water, but it's delightfully sweet. She thinks it's called pop because of how it pops in your face when you try to drink it, but she'll have to investigate further to be sure.

Roxy's story really is quite interesting. Jane finds herself leaning forward in her seat as she eats, eyes on her gesticulating tablemate - and not where they need to be. She'll scold herself for it later, but for just a moment, there are no points of contact between her and her shimmering, precious coat.

The patio they sit on is bustling, though the humans are kind enough to keep their voices down. Jane takes a small sip of pop that crackles right in her ears and has herself a giggle at the nearly painful zing. Human life is really quite interesting - she can see how her father wanted so badly to be up here, when he was younger. But the ocean is her home, and she can't imagine for a second having to stay.

It's too loud here, and too dangerous, even when she's spending time with trustworthy humans like Roxy. Roxy barely even counts, anyway - she's a witch, she's safe.

She hears it before she recognizes what it means - the subtlest shift, like a soft little hiss without any of the bite. Jane holds her finger up to Roxy and sits up, on alert. The chair is cool against her back, the deep cut of the dress Roxy lent her baring her skin to the chill wood.

Jane turns, and sees the empty back of a chair.

She doesn't have to be a genius to figure out what's happened. Someone's taken her coat. Someone has taken her skin off her back and she's so, so completely screwed, there's nothing she can do, her coat is gone and she's let it happen like some daft old fool -

"Hey."

Jane's eyes snap down to where blank, black panes of glass reflect her own frightened expression. She watches in real-time as it melts to confusion instead.

There's a man kneeling by her chair. A human man, with strange hair arranged in spines like a pufferfish and skin that's barely on the cusp of olive. He has a nice nose. Strong. Not easily broken. She can't see his teeth, but his mouth looks just fine to her.

"You dropped this."

She manages to drag her eyes away from his reflective headwear and down to his hand. Strong shoulders on him, too, even if he is on the scrawny side. Well-built. For a human.

Also, he's holding her skin, so that's nice.

"Oh," she says, and then, after processing what's happening here, "Oh! I - you - my coat!" She reaches to take it, and it slides off this man's long fingers like water, brightening just slightly in the hands of its owner. She gathers her coat to her chest and dips her head in embarrassed thanks. "Thank you, I - I don't know what I'd have done if I lost it."

The man pushes to his feet, rocking back just a little. Jane isn't familiar with how humans carry themselves, but this man has all the stature of a bull who's interested in keeping his own turf. Impassive and dangerous.

He's really, really cool.

"No problem," he says, hooking his thumbs through the useless little straps humans put on their pants. "Can't have some sticky-fingered little vagrant coming and blowing his nose on such an expensive windbreaker."

Oh gracious. Do humans do that? "Oh, goodness no," Jane agrees, and the man offers her a strange jerk of his head upward before he turns to saunter off. Jane watches him go, coat held to her chest, and hopes her stare isn't concentrated enough to disturb him. Like most prey animals, humans tend to be able to tell when they're being watched.

She can't take her eyes off him, though. Something is wiggling about at the back of her mind, just out of reach. Something important...

"Hellooo? Earth to Jane?"

Jane blinks, and turns suddenly to Roxy, who looks quite amused at the whole ordeal. Jane privately thinks that this is very insensitive of her. Doesn't she know how bad this almost was?

"Janey," Roxy says, "are you ogling or what? Never seen you like that before. Is he your type? Tall dweebs?"

"He's not a dweeb," says Jane, looking down at her coat. It smells like his hands, oil and something unfamiliar. She opens her mouth to get a better scent, and finds a strange citrus tang, like some of the fruit-things Roxy has had her try. "He has quite the look about him."

"That dude was the nerdiest little weeb I've ever seen, and he's the weird shut-in every town has. I can't believe he talks, much less that he gave you your coat back."

Jane's train of thought derails and crashes into the mountainous thing she forgot about in a fiery explosion.

"Fuck," she whispers.

Roxy looks at her like she's started making friends with tuna. "Excuse me," she says, her eyebrows in her hairline. "Did you just swear in public?"

"Fuck my life," whispers Jane, dropping her face into her precious, magical coat. "I didn't even think about it, this is - ohhh, Jane, what have you done? Stupid, stupid, stupid."

"Janeycakes, I'm gonna need to be clued in here." Roxy leans over the table, puts her hand on Jane's shoulder. Jane leans eagerly into the touch. She definitely needs some comfort right now. Jane has just made the most colossal mistake of her entire life, and now, she’s got to handle all of this again, and try to figure out how she’s going to tell the pod, her brother, oh, golly, her dad...

With a deep breath, Jane wrings her hands under her coat and explains. "It's - it's such an old tradition, I didn't even think about it when he gave me my coat, but - gosh. Gosh diddly darn it. My father is going to be so disappointed in me." She looks up at Roxy, meeting those majjyked pink eyes with her own blue ones.

"I've just been wed."

Chapter Text

Dirk Strider doesn't go out much. He's on his roof enough to get the medically recommended amount of sunlight per week, he's active enough to stay exactly as healthy as he pleases, and, to be honest, he leaves the house only to work.

He's a mechanic. He goes out and he fixes things and he goes back in. That's all he needs to do outside of his house, and Dirk's happy with it. The rest of his work is done in-house and shipped off to wherever he pleases. He doesn't need to mess about with interacting with people. He isn't going to say something silly, like it's below him or he doesn't have time for that, even though it is and he doesn't. He just doesn't like talking to people.

And that's fine.

He doesn't make friends (except online ones that pay him for dick pics) and he doesn't deal with anything he doesn't have to. He's a well-oiled machine. No surprises. No spare parts. No wrench in the cogs, not that a full-sized wrench would do much more than clank against any standard set of cogs.

That's why it's such a surprise when he gets a visitor. He doesn't usually get those, especially because it very clearly says No Soliciting on his door.

Dirk doesn't get up and go to the door. If they really want his attention, they'll knock again. He's not in the business of giving people what they want. Unless they feel like paying him, in which case he'll give them whatever. Yes, he's concerned about money. He's only just striking out in this podunk little seaside town, and he sunk a lot of money into building this house pretty much from the ground up. He doesn't want to fuck up, miscommunicate with his own damn self, and Tower of Babel this shit so he falls off the cliff and into the unforgiving ocean below.

Oh yeah, he lives on a cliff. He likes the view.

There's an error with his surveillance camera. It's what Dirk's working on right now, so he can't just check and see whoever it is wasting his time outside. He's pretty sure it was some neighborhood kids throwing rocks or something. Kids do that, so he hears. He never really did that. He just got bullied until he got big enough to kick the shit out of everyone who ever tried to fuck with him, and he tried skateboarding for a while, but mostly he just sucked dick behind the skate park.

"Neighborhood kids" is a pretty weird way to put it, though, when he's a solid mile from anything and doesn't have a neighborhood. But hey, why not? It channels the perfect mix of naïve innocence and teenage delinquency to communicate the kind of shit he has to deal with lately.

Dirk wets his lips and tries to unstick this fucking adhesive. He must have been genuinely off his rocker when he attempted this build. He must have been so completely goddamn stupid he sold all his brains to the highest bidder. Just scooped out all his grey matter and tossed it in the garbage. Made a huge, drippy mess for the poor motherfucker who takes out his garbage. The guy picks it up and it drips every-which-where, smells terrible because it's been rotting in the Goddamned sun this whole week, and gives him an immediate trauma relating to garbage. His lucrative, but dangerous, career is ruined. He hires a therapist that he pays exact four hundred and twenty dollars per session. They make weed jokes but it isn't enough and he takes his life three years later because Dirk was dumb enough to use an adhesive that was going to melt and get brittle when exposed to heat fucking outside.

The adhesive - it's not technically glue, it comes out in strips, don't call it glue - keeps breaking, so Dirk has to try and winch the piece up to get under it. It isn't easy, especially because he has to get this part removed without it breaking so he can get a look at the rest of the hardware. He's still not at all sure what the problem is, but it'll be damage to the inner workings, judging by the dents on the outside casing.

From first glance, he was pretty sure the entire central system is going to be shot. Now, he knows it is, and also, the wiring has gotten itself all twisted from the sea winds.

It's a blessing in disguise, really. He should have sealed the inside of this thing to protect it from all the salt. Next time, the casing will be made of a better material. Maybe just plastic, but tough plastic. He can 3D print something and use filler to seal the holes, he still has some leftover filler from patching the walls up after all his shit fell over and busted holes in everything because he fell asleep and knocked over his tables and everything on them.

Yep. Blessing in disguise.

Or just hellish incompetence, but the difference between that is an outlook, says one of his online "friends". (They don't talk much because the man is insufferable.)

However, Dirk is never allowed rest, as the bags under his eyes can attest, but what gets the best of him this time is a thrum in his chest. Rather, the buzzer of outside-life-sounds from the headphones he took off, thrumming gently just under his collarbone. It's his visitor.

Dirk knows himself pretty well, he would say. He doesn't think that this little absent reverie was more than a few minutes, but as any door-to-door salesman can attest, a few minutes is an eon standing at a door, especially in this day and age. Whoever it is is either very stubborn or very necessary.

With a low sigh, Dirk unloops the headphones from around his neck, pauses the Sick Beats(TM) that were playing in the background at a level that he couldn't even recognize them anymore, and heads for the door. Whoever this is had better be important. It had better be someone with a lot of time to get chewed out and a lot of God Damned Money to pay him for whatever stupid bullshit they want him to do this time. It had better be the Queen of Sheba with her fucking titties out. That's who it'd better be.

Passing the kitchen, he realizes he's left some shit out for what might be approaching a week now. Dirk is a man who's been accused of fucking Mr. Clean on the side and taking up His holy, germ-free mantle, but he does this fun thing called hyperfixation where he forgets being alive exists in favor of literally anything else (but only one thing) for truly embarrassing periods of time. So this... isn't uncommon, in the one-man Strider household. Doesn't mean it isn't absolutely fuck-nasty, though.

Dirk makes his unwelcome visitor wait a few moments longer while he tosses all that shit straight in the garbage to torment that poor trash man along with his jellied brains, and then the plate, for good measure. He really wants to bleach everything. He's not a man to leave things unfinished -

Holy shit who knocks three full times.

Who on Earth knocks more than once, even. Knocking once is plenty. If they don't answer, they aren't home or they're avoiding you. It's literally just that simple.

Whatever rat bastard Dirk has attracted has done this fun thing called ignore all socially accepted boundaries, and that's Dirk's job, damn it. He pushes a hand through his hair, bites back an unmanly moan of annoyance, and finally, finally goes for the door.

"I am fucking coming," he says, grabbing the handle and yanking it open like he's the head guard who's yanking the dick off of whoever they're drawing and quartering this week. "I swear to God, I'm coming so goddamn fast my refractory period is already over. Does this please you, dude," that is not a dude.

Dirk blinks.

That is not only not a dude, it's the prettiest woman Dirk has ever seen, and, in fact, the same one he saw just a day ago (31 hours exactly, his brain supplies, even though he didn't need that information.) She has the coat that had slid off the back of her chair around her arms and arms only, the part that would go over her shoulders hanging down behind her, like she really is the Queen of Sheba. No smugness about it, though. She just looks up with those blue eyes that had been so scared before and smiles.

Damn, what is it about big teeth and sweet eyes that just gets to a guy? Dirk's fingers dig in a little to the doorframe. He remembers he's supposed to be mad.

Fuck being mad, now he wants to know what a lady in what has to be a mink coat wants with the mechanic that was fixing the fucking air conditioning at a restaurant he couldn't afford to go to if he sucked the chef's greasy cock.

"Uh," says Dirk, suddenly aware that she definitely said something he definitely did not hear.

"Uh?" parrots the mystery woman, tilting her head to the side. He'd call it cocking it if it wasn't such an exaggerated motion, her ear nearly touching her shoulder. "I know I've bothered you, but -"

"Yeah, you did," Dirk says, because he's an idiot. "I - I didn't hear you."

Why can he talk so eloquently in text and clam up the minute he meets a person like a virgin sphincter. Why is he like this. Hell is real and Satan has him in his lap like he swapped two letters. (He knows why: it's because if he was still talking he would be saying all this bull shit.)
"I said," says this apparition of status, "that we should be wed by your customs as well."

She offers the thing Dirk was too busy ogling her to notice, and Dirk notes three things at once.

One, she keeps glancing behind her like someone is watching them.

Two, she says "wed" like some Victorian moron with so many neck-frills they'll suffocate.

Three, she's holding out a ring to him, head bowed, submissive posture that doesn't suit her, his subconscious screams, she should be standing tall, because it knows something he doesn't.
It doesn't take much more time to put together the clues. Call him Sherlock Holmes, but it's really more of a Hercock Bones, because he's being punk'd. He wishes Ashton Kutcher would jump out and shout he was on a game show. That would be better than this, probably.

Clearly, she's been put up to this, and whoever did is waiting (poorly hidden) behind the third tree down the winding road up to his house. Something about it is disappointing. Dirk was kind of hoping for this to get interesting.

Well, he guesses this is kind of interesting.

"Sure, babealicious," he says, his voice adopting that lovely customer-service monotone every customer he's ever served hates. "Shall it be a Christian wedding? Will we consummate in your daddy's car and get handprints all over the windows, steamily spunking all over the place?" He leans in, using his height against her. "How many kids should we have? Two, two and a half? Fuck it, let's make it three and chop the baby's legs off so we aren't a statistical anomaly."

The woman retreats - recoils, he corrects himself. He doesn't let her go, leaning forward to pluck the ring from her fingers.

It's a pretty thing. Dirk doesn't wear rings - he doesn't want a nasty degloving incident considering all the heavy machinery he works with, and besides, they're gaudy. But he can appreciate the aesthetic of what appears to be bronze and copper inlaid around some shiny fuckin' gem he gives absolutely no shits about.

Thing looks kind of like waves.

He tries it on, but surprise surprise, it doesn't fit his finger. It's like she doesn't even know about finger measurements.

"Goddamn. And here I thought you loved me. You don't even know my ring size? Fuck it. Our marriage is off." He takes off the ring, and, with a flick of his thumb, sends it flying. It clinks on the cliff stone and bounces away. He doesn't track it - he doesn't care. This lady can afford another one.

"I'm," says the woman, blinking quickly, like she doesn't know what to say.

Dirk gets that a lot.

"Yeah, whatever. Go fuck yourself, dude." Dirk draws back and slams the door right in her stupid, pretty face.

Serves her right.

Chapter Text

" - a sham of a husband, I'm a disgrace to my pod, not to mention my family name, and my mate is a stone cold freak -"

"Okay," says Roxy, from her much calmer spot on the table, "I'll give you that one, but the others - Janey, I'm gonna make an issue of the other ones."

Jane stops pacing to whirl on Roxy like she's encroaching on her hunting grounds. If the hunting grounds were anger, then this would be a valid reaction, for sure. But Jane's just being pissy because she's spitting mad, and they both know it. Jane just really doesn't want to admit it.

Roxy sits there, looking stupidly wise and stupidly sure of herself and also stupid, and Jane relents. She collapses back onto the couch with her and whines, long and low.

"I can't believe it went that badly," she says, gesturing to the ceiling. She knows Roxy will get what she means. Having hands is fun because you get to do lots of things with the fingers, and motions in the air like you're throttling someone are always therapeutic. When she wears her coat, the motion is most closely echoed by biting into the water in front of you and shaking vigorously like you're trying to kill something. It is quickly becoming one of her favorites.

"Well," says Roxy, in the way that means Jane isn't going to like whatever is said next, "when I explained to you what human marriage was, I expected you to take him to dinner first. How did you already have the ring?"

"I bribed a siren," Jane says flippantly, "it's not important. What's important is that my mate-for-life despises me."

Roxy cannot deflect or deny that this is pretty important. She's said weird words like "annulment" and "divorce" but frankly, Jane doesn't know what those mean and doesn't care enough to look it up right now. Also, Google is too bright for her sensitive eyes. It's like looking straight at ice while the sun shines on it - you don't do it.

Jane just lets out a big sigh, a sigh as big as her chest, and looks up at the ceiling with all its strange patterns. How smart of humans to put patterns to look at on their ceilings. It gives something to focus on when they've robbed themselves of the clouds and the sky.

When Jane does learn what annulment means, she just rolls her eyes. Of course, humans are too indecisive to pick a mate and stick with it. You can't just un-wed someone. Selkies don't wed unless they're sure, and when their mate's chosen, if something happens, it happens. You can leave them, sure. Jane guesses that's like annulment. But if you have a mate and you're wed, you - you should stay wed! That's how it works, right? Sure, some selkies can stop being together or something silly like that, but's it's just - it's just not right. In Jane's eyes, she can't just stop seeing Dirk as her betrothed, that's just not how it works. Giving up on her mate would be like - like - well. She doesn't know what it would be like, but it's not good.

There’s a kind of magic in an old-style proposal! Selkies are very magical creatures. So are humans, in their ingenuity, whether they acknowledge that ingenuity or not. Even if they use it for stupid reasons.

She wouldn't be being true to herself and her beliefs if she just pretended it didn't happen. So Jane very tersely tells Roxy that's off the table.

They get into a little spat about that. Jane doesn't want to linger on it, so she doesn't. (See how easy that is?)

"I should go over there," Jane says, a few hours into their brainstorming session, "and give him a piece of my mind."

"So do it," says Roxy, throwing a lock of Jane's hair into her cauldron. However, Roxy rents, so she can't afford an actual cauldron, and the cauldron is, instead, a large pot on the stove.

Jane pulls her cloak tight around her. "Well," she grumbles, "I don't want to kill my mate before our very first date."

"Selkies call it a date too?" Roxy asks. She sprinkles powdered something into the pot. It explodes into her face, but Jane's pretty used to this, and just watches Roxy for the reaction she's supposed to have. Roxy seems fine, so she doesn't get up, just snuggling deeper into her coat.

"No," Jane mumbles. "I'm just trying to assimilate so he doesn't think I'm too strange to stay married to." Selkies call it first hunt, usually. She doesn't elaborate, because she really is a very private person, and Roxy isn't pushing.

Roxy wipes dust off her face and sprinkles it back into the pot. It smells like nothing, which Jane really does not like. Things are supposed to have scent. Things that don't are frightening and unknown, like swimming over deep, black water. She knows there's something there, but what, she has no idea.

And that's how you get eaten by orca.

"Pretending to be human isn't going to work forever if you're actually married to him. Aren't you the one who didn't want to lie to him?" Roxy asks, ladling out her concoction into two bowls.

Something about that clicks. Jane reaches up to rub her earlobe, which is a very fun thing considering that she doesn't usually have much in the way of ears.

Jane didn't want to lie to him. She still doesn't, even. She still thinks he's really cool, even if he did lose his pound of whale-blubber of a mind at her for no real reason, and very much hurt her feelings. He isn't the first choice, but if she had to pick anyone she barely knew to start courting, then he would be second on the list. First is that gorgeous hunk of muscle that keeps swimming around her pod's territory, but you know, second isn't bad.

"I'm going about this wrong," Jane declares, taking a sip of Roxy's witchy brew without thinking. Whatever it is lights a fire in her heart and keeps burning there.

"We're in agreement on that one, hot stuff," Roxy says in the midst of drinking. "Just get a selkie-divorce."

"No," sniffs Jane, feeling inspired by whatever she's just drank. She should probably have asked first, but she doesn't have time to worry about what Roxy's doing with her majjyks. It's not... really her purview.

Jane's just relieved there's no hairs floating in the mystery drink. She hates getting hair in her mouth. It's why it's best to split open a hunt to get to the juicy bits. Not that she gets a lot of things with hair, really, it's mostly feathers or just skin.

The drink sloshes back and forth, warm in the bowl Roxy gave her, and Jane opens her mouth to smell it. It's nice. A kind of... fruity, but not citrus.

Citrus makes her think of her new mate-who's-not, now. Now that she has his scent, she can't forget it. She almost wishes she could, but there's magic in a selkie's betrothal. They're bound together in a way a human can never understand.

Kind of sucks it's to a human.

Oh. Wait.

She's taking part in this inanity in a human way. Because he's a human. But he doesn't like human ways very much at all, if his reaction is anything to go by. (She doesn't have a selkie way of identifying whatever happened there. She's never seen anyone react like that. It's like he just lost his mind completely! What a shame, that her mate's given to bouts of random insanity. He better shape up before Jane skins him like she's trying to selkie-fy him.)

Actually, that's not a bad idea. Maybe she's sticking out because she doesn't have a proper frame of reference, and is trying to relate to this in a way she doesn't understand.

Maybe Jane should do things her way. Without all the useless human ruckus. She may take their form, but Jane is not, and will never be, a human. She is a selkie, a creature of the sea, and though she can be on land, her home is in the water. She should very well start acting like it.

"Roxy," Jane murmurs, "I think I know how to do this."

Chapter Text

She's back.

Richie Rich - or, Richelle Rich? Fuck, that's a better name anyway, Rachelle is a real name people have and Richie sounds like someone tried to pronounce Ricky with no knowledge of the letter K - is outside his door. He knows without checking because he's a fucking sensible person and he has security cameras, obviously.

She's a lot less hunched this time, standing tall in the grainy film of the camera, and she has been for the thirty minutes she's been standing there. Dirk keeps re-checking the footage. It isn't on loop, she's just... still there. Somehow. Who the fuck has this kind of patience? Doesn't she have a job? No, look at her. She's never worked a day in her life.

Dirk wastes a little more time before grabbing a blade and heading to the door. The sword's just in case. You never know with rich people. They might have hired goons or something. (She doesn't strike him as that type of rich person, but she does wear the world's softest fur coat at all times, so, maybe? He'll put her down as a maybe on the hired goons.) No point trying to wait her out. She has more patience than he does, apparently. Another strike against her, Dirk hates to be outdone.

He doesn't open the door all the way. Just enough to poke his head out, sword braced casually against his shoulders. His elbow just barely peeks out, too. It makes it both obvious he's holding some kind of weapon and easier to lean.

"What."

She bats those big blues at him like it's going to do anything. It definitely does. This is the kind of woman that reminds him why he's not calling himself gay anymore like he did in his teens before he got suplexed out of a handsome young man's life and told to check himself before he wrecks himself. He and his sister still live in town during the summers, and may or may not be a solid 15% of the reason Dirk only leaves the house on special occasions and to work. God, what if they saw each other. What if they made eye contact.

Yeah, he'd rather die.

By the look in Little Miss Sunshine's eye here, he might. And she what the absolute fuck she's holding a dead animal.

To be fair, it's in a basket, which is slightly better than if she walked up with a dead animal barehanded. It takes a moment for him to even comprehend what he's seeing, because it's something out of a dark comedy - Sweeney Todd or that other one with the kids and the murder. Whatever it is, it's about murder. Obviously.

The basket is nice. The kind of thing you'd send a bunch of fruit in, and, of course, there's actually fruit in it. A few apples and a pineapple, which is an odd choice. A good deal of flowers make a bed for the basket's contents. Red ones. He doesn't know what kind they are because he has better things to do than memorize flowers. And the figurative cherry on top, the creme de la creme, the finishing touch, is a dead turtle. A full, actual turtle. He didn't even know what a sea turtle really looked like until now, but it's unmistakable. That's definitely a sea turtle. Aren't those endangered or something, what the fuck.

"No," says his psychopathic visitor, cluing Dirk in to the fact he'd spoken aloud. "There's plenty where I'm from. Are you going to let me in or not?"

Dirk stares at the basket. He stares at the woman, who looks at him with a great deal of menace contained barely behind those pretty cat-eye glasses. He stares at the sky, wondering what the fuck happened to make his life like this. He stares at the turtle. It's lifeless eyes do not stare back.

"Yeah, okay," he says.

The woman hands him the basket and pushes her way inside. He turns to look after her. He turns to shut the door because otherwise he's going to stare at her ass forever. He can't help himself, he's an ass man.

He looks down at the basket, and then, surreptitiously, gives it a little sniff. Smells like flowers and fish. The turtle isn't a fish, but the smell is very similar. It hasn't gone bad, at least. That would be a whole lot worse to smell, and he would not want it in his house.

She's already made herself comfortable on his futon when he makes his way into the living room. Her legs are tucked to the side, knees together, like she's a statue or a poorly positioned comic book character. The woman leans on one hand. She just sits and stares at him as he enters, something predatory in her gaze. Dirk's momentarily put off.

As much as he hates to admit it, he's been knocked off-kilter. Generally, he's a man that lands on his feet, like if cats were somehow more queer, and he's pretty good at adjusting to whatever hell gets thrown in his direction.

She's different.

"Jane," the woman offers, like she's giving him a second unusual gift. He just stares at her until she elaborates. "My name is Jane. Jane Crocker."

Dirk doesn't offer his, rushing immediately to the important part of this discussion. Call him a speedrunner, he's clipping through the barriers of convention and jaggedly glitching up through the floor of actual discourse like in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. "Why are you here?"

The woman - Jane - gives him a look like he's a child she's just taught the meaning of sharing and is doing so to keep him from stealing the other kiddies' toys. Dirk feels remarkably small. For having such big, round, beautiful eyes, she sure can convey sharpness.

"As I said last time," she explains, with an almost condescending note, "we're wed, and I wanted to clear the air and make sure we both understood -"

"Stop fucking with me and tell me the truth." Dirk doesn't have the patience for this. He still hasn't set down his sword, but he lays it across his knees as he takes a not-very-careful seat on the arm of the futon. His shoe plants itself firmly on the cushion. "You can't just come into my house with a fucking dead turtle -"

"Originally," Jane snaps, with a surprising amount of growl, "I gave you a ring."

That is true. But that was a joke, something her hidden friends put her up to. He saw them himself.

... Unless.

Dirk hates very little more than being outdone, and one of those rare things is being wrong. His hackles raise at the thought, and he just barely keeps from drawing in on himself like the dead turtle he's got set on the table like the world's most fucked-up centerpiece. If he was wrong, then this crazy woman thinks they're married, and that would explain why she keeps coming back around and bothering him at all hours (by which he means the afternoon, when he sleeps if he ever bothers.)

But he's not wrong, so it's fine. "Bullshit, dude."

Jane gives him a truly withering glare, which definitely does not bother him at all. He stays steadfast, even when she tells him, "In my culture, to give someone their - their prized possession, is to propose marriage. Usually because you've been given access to it, so if you give it back, it means you're trustworthy and all that - the point is, you asked me to marry you, Mr. Strider."

"And you accepted, in this ridiculous hypothetical," Dirk snaps, accusatory, his hand tight on the handle of his sword, "because...?"

She flushes, faintly. "To be frank, I didn't give it much thought. But we are wed by tradition." Jane sits up, folding her hands in her lap, her strange, luxurious coat draped over her shoulders.

They lock eyes, and the reality of the situation hits Dirk slowly, cooling solder on a wire.

"You aren't fucking kidding," he says, with a breathless noise.

"No," Jane answers, blinking once, as if it was obvious all along. "I'm afraid I am not."