THE CONFESSION
how do you think dirk did it? do you think that he said it right there when jake had finished kissing his head? I don’t really think so, personally; both of them know that moment was really awkward and not what either of them wanted their first meeting to be like. do you think dirk put it off for a week? do you think he got into fights with the responder about whether it had been long enough to be appropriate? do you think he tried to be incredibly casual when he did bring it up? “yo, man, I thought I’d ask if you were interested in maybe like, going out, or something. as boyfriends. like, romantically.” or was he really nervous and did he do the hand-behind-head foot-rocking pose after all?
and what about jake! the whole time dirk is putting it off out of nerves, jake is probably going back and forth. was the responder just fucking with him? is dirk really interested? why does dirk get so anxious looking when jake slings an arm around his shoulder? what on earth is the speech dirk keeps practicing to himself in the bathroom in the morning? (jake also practices a speech in the bathroom in the morning. it is considerably less coherent and he can never decide what to say.) he’s sure he didn’t imagine that dirk was into him but now that he’s actually seeing dirk in person it’s a lot harder to be sure because he is so fucking unreadable and unruffled. jake spends two full days convinced that he just read in too much, “just like with jane,” before dirk finally finds the gumption to talk about it, and then he is so fucking relieved.
(somewhere deep inside jake’s head, brain ghost dirk is just a giant, constant facepalm)