He walks like a cat who has tape on his paws, and has had tape on his paws for a very long time, and who never expects to ever again walk without scrunching miserably from side to side in a tangle of self-loathing and confusion. It hurts to look at him, but it hurts more not to.

House sorting under here I will fight you

This apartment, these walls and corners, these floors and doorways, they’re Dirk’s refuge. His shell, his armor. This place is light and warmth in an endlessly empty dark sea, a piece of the past to cling to in the wreckage of the future. A gift from his brother, a birthday present, the present of having birthdays, of being a human in a place meant for humans. Dirk could go out on rocket board, on rap-bot, on rafts, following the gulls, living free out under the sky, sailing by the light of the stars, but always he’d return to his sanctuary, his roost, his home. This apartment is Dave’s cage, and he spent thirteen years crammed up against the bars by a man who did not love him.