Dave Strider X Reader {One Shots}

The Corner Between Sour and Bittersweet

      Whoops my finger slipped. 

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        At the corner where the two streets connect, you stand there with your hands behind your back and your eyes watch as the multiples of cars race by. You can hear the tires screech against the pavement when one of the cars makes a turn all too fast and you can see the marks it leaves on the street. Looking over at the walking light of the opposite signal, you read there are only 25 more seconds until you are able to cross and finally get home from your long day at school.

        When the street didn't have a signal light, you always had someone to walk with. That someone was always the same person. Dave Strider. In the time you two spent chattering at the corner waiting for the right moment to cross the street, you got to know each other more than he had known his own girlfriend. 

        You knew that he had a girlfriend. Only because she was in two of your classes. Only because you had seen her raise her hand everytime the teacher had asked the class a question. Only because her answer had always been correct. Only because everytime you passed her in the hallway, she smelled of the sweetest mix of flowers and peaches. And the way her hair flowed was more natural than the water falls - something you could only ever hope to imagine correctly. She was everything that was perfect.

        You on the other hand had many flaws you could point out on the spot if someone were to ask, but no one ever asked. You bring yourself to look at the walking light again. 21 seconds. 

        The way he looked at her always bothered you. You rarely ever caught him staring at her and when you had, or thought you had, you could never really tell if when he was really looking at her. You had caught him staring at you plently of times. 

        Maybe it was because of all your flaws. Maybe it was because you were in four of his classes but a year under him. Those classes were the only classes you had that didn't have her in them. Maybe it was because in those classes, you always knew the answer to every question but restrained from answering any of them and he had noticed. Maybe because whenever he had passed you in the hallway he didn't think you smelled pretty, but that you smelled nice. He had once said that you smelled like the aftermath of the rain, and explained that you smelled like a new beginning. Full of hope, like how the rain washed away and renewed the land after. Maybe it was the way your hair was always up in a ponytail, keeping him guessing of how it would look down and how beautiful you were without trying. You were everything but perfect. And maybe perfect was all that he saw. You look at the walking light once again, 15 seconds.

        After your last class together, he would always walk you across the street and then the two of you would part ways. Your house being the other way from his from that point on. Oh, how you wished the your houses were in the same direction.  

        When him walking you home became a regular occurrence, you began to wonder if you two would ever become more than the proximity you were at. You wanted to know more about it, not just about his day, if everything was okay, and the series of jokes the two of you would go back and forth with. Not to say that you didn't like it. You just wanted to get to know him more.

        You wanted to know what he hide so dearly behind the protective one-sided mirrors that shielded his eyes from everyone else, that shielded his emotions from you. You remembered saying "eyes are a window to the soul" to him. He chuckled and responded in a careful manner. He tried to explain that his eyes were a problem that he didn't like to discuss to people. 8 seconds. 

        That's right. You were just another person to him. You were just the girl that kept him company whenever he needed it, no matter if you were his second choice or his fourth. 

        He always told you how smart you were. How you could always figure out how the math problems in class; each problem having a story behind the answer and if you understood that story and if you could analyze it correctly, then you could accurately come up with the next part and the next part until you had a novel of mathematics. He said that you had a gift for knowing how to figure out things like that, logically, even though you were incredibly blunt and gullible. 0 seconds; You walk across the street. 

        You couldn't help but tell him how there was a horror in the fixed. How that when something is certain to happen then what could've happened is no longer a possiblity, because that means everything can be currently changed . How when everything is set to be one then nothing can be changed within that. 

        There was a horror in how he died. 

        When the street didn't have a signal light, you had someone to walk with. It was after your last class. It was after the long and agonizing day of sitting through each class, trying to survive so you could get a chance to think maybe you'll get somewhere with him today. It might have been that day if you hadn't so strongly believed in the fixed. 

        You shouldv'e looked both ways before crossing the street with him. Without him. Although he was talking to you, all your mind could do was think about what he could be saying. Not truly listening to him. You shouldv'e listened. 

        You heard the familiar screech across the pavement all too close to your ears too late. When your mind registered what had been happening, you were on the ground face down. What you had heard right before was a daze to remember. The loud smack you heard, at first thinking that it was you just hearing yourself fall down, but someone else's body hitting the bottom-front of the origin of the screech. 

        You slowly pick yourself up but you realize that you don't have the strength to bring yourself to stand, so you sit. You only start to notice that your eyes are clouded with tears as you look at a blur of red and white, although by every second that passes by the red seemed to be consuming the white.

        Dave Strider had worn a white shirt that day. Your nose started to burn as your voice failed you, trying to say anything that was audible but the only sounds that came out were sobs that you couldn't help. You couldn't tell if the ground was shaking or if your body couldn't handle the experience, thus shaking itself. 

        You slowly bring yourself up only to drop to your knees when you get over to him. You can't bare to look at him through the cloud of tears. Even through your blurred vision, you could see the scratch marks on his face as well as multiple cut wounds scattered from the high point of his forehead to the jaw line, the part you could never stop looking at while waiting to walk across the street. He was bleeding eternally and externally but you only knew that because you had gone in the ambulance ride with him.

         You already knew he was gone. The knot within your throat kept you silent as it pushed the tears out, threatening to keep you silent. You waited for his older sibling to get to the hospital because you felt like you should have apologized to him, but he couldn't look at you. He was all too busy mourning over the loss of someone who risked their life for just another person in their life. 

        He was mourning over Dave Strider, who saw the beauty in you and couldn't bring himself to think of a world without you. You had told him there was a horror in the fixed. 

        When the street didn't have a signal light, he tried to speak to you like you had meant something to him, even if it had been just a spark of what could've started a fire. Even though, to you, sometimes waiting for that spark to turn into a fire felt like the universe had enough time to expand and condense all at once. Even though it had been agony for you, he had enjoyed every second - because he thought, "At least I'm with her."