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Jake lay sprawled across his bed, one arm slung over his eyes, the other resting lazily on his stomach. The room was dark, save for the dim glow of his computer screen across the way, casting long, flickering shadows over the walls. It was late, and he was alone—not just physically, but in that deeper, nagging way that had followed him since everything ended.
He let out a long, slow breath. It had been a hell of a day—weeks, really—and for once, he wanted to do something purely for himself. A distraction. A simple, harmless way to burn through some of this pent-up tension.
His fingers twitched as he started to reach down—dragging his hand over his chest, all the way down between his legs to palm at his half-hard cock behind the fabric of his pants. He closed his eyes, letting out a breathy moan as he traced the contours of it with his fingers.
It wasn’t long before he was popping the button and unzipping his fly, freeing his cock to the cool night air. He let it spring free, his breath hitching as he felt it throb against the material. With a steadying hand, he gripped the base and kicked down the rest of his pants, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Slowly, he began to stroke himself, relishing the feeling of his hand sliding over his sensitive skin. His cheeks were flushed, his heart pounded in his chest, and he let his mind wander as he started to build up a slow rhythm.
He imagined it was someone else's hand, someone who knew just how to touch him the way he liked, someone—
“Wow, really?”
Jake jumped nearly a foot in the air.
Across the room, lounging with obnoxious ease against the wall, stood him. Or the idea of him. That familiar, ever-present, infuriatingly cool posture. Arms folded. Shades reflecting the dim light. That familiar completely unreadable expression on his face.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” Dirk continued, leaning against the edge of Jake’s desk. “I’m just here to observe. Maybe provide some constructive criticism.”
Jake felt his face go red, quickly pulling one of his pillows over his dick. “Bloody hell, man, you can’t just—just pop in like that!”
“Pretty sure I can. Seeing as I’m, you know, in your head and all.” Dirk gestured vaguely to Jake’s head.
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would somehow dismiss him. It never did. He peeked through his eyelashes before opening his eyes again. And, as expected, still there.
“You’re starin’,” Dirk noted.
“No I’m bleeding well not,” Jake snapped.
“Uh-huh.”
Jake gritted his teeth, running both hands down his face. He wasn’t about to sit here and argue with a manifestation of his own psychosexual subconscious like some kind of lunatic. He was going to ignore Brain Ghost Dirk, and think of something else, anything else. Like he should have been doing this entire time.
He laid back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Okay. Right then. Maybe if he just focused hard enough, he could block Dirk out entirely and move on to the next thought.
He closed his eyes. Let his hands wander beneath the pillow where his dick was still hard as a rock again.
And then—
“Oh wow, you’re actually gonna do it.”
Jake jerked (not like that—yet). “For the love of—can a man not have one moment of peace?!” Jake refused to be deterred. Sure, he was thinking about Dirk, but his brain was also betraying him. What else was new though? He was used to that. He just had to push past the mortifying reality of being heckled by his own imagination and focus on—
“…Alright, alright, I get the message. What is this… Tomb Raider?”
Jake cracked one eye open, immediately regretting it.
Because Dirk had changed clothes.
Gone was his usual casual getup. Instead, he was lounging against the bedpost—at the foot of Jake’s bed, which was wholly unnecessary and frankly unfair—wearing a loose, half-buttoned white shirt, sweat-damp and clinging to his chest, sleeves rolled up to the elbows like some kind of sexy, effortless action hero.
Jake nearly choked on air.
“Since you were already picturing me like this, I figured I’d save you the trouble,” Dirk said, stretching leisurely. “So this is what does it for you, huh? Brendan Fraser in The Mummy?”
Jake’s cock twitched in genuine interest and he let out a strangled noise. “You—! Why—!?”
“Oh, c’mon,” Dirk drawled. “I’m just workin’ with the material you’re giving me. Hell, I can take requests. What else can you come up with before you just bend me over to see my pussy?”
Jake’s brain short-circuited.
“Oh, this is rich.”
It must have happened as Jake blinked or something, because when he opened his eyes again it had gotten worse.
The white shirt, the suspenders, and the desert-worn aesthetic were completely abandoned for something else: a black cropped tank top, fingerless gloves, shorts far too short, and a damningly familiar sexy thigh strap double holster, complete with the cool skull buckle and everything.
Dirk picked the guns up out of the holsters and struck a little pose. “Lara Croft. Tomb Raider. Right?”
Jake made a sound like a dying animal. “I—I am NOT—!”
“Oh, sure, of course not.” Dirk smoothed out the apron, making a show of it. “You just conjured this image up for no reason. Completely unprompted. Totally accidental.”
“This—this is NOT what I wanted—!”
“Oh? So you’d rather I try something else?”
Before Jake could even form a protest, Dirk was wearing something else. Gone were the gun holsters—now there was barely anything at all. Dark beads, leather straps, a loincloth that covered practically nothing.
It took Jake less than one second to recognize the outfit.
Or, more horrifically, the lack of one.
Jake had faced many trials in his life. He’d fought eldritch monsters, stared down death itself, and survived the apocalypse twice. But nothing—nothing—had prepared him for the sheer psychological warfare of seeing Dirk Strider, in all his smug, spectral glory, dressed like Neytiri… Yes, from fucking Avatar.
It was so wrong.
It was so much worse that it also looked so right.
Dirk glanced down at himself. He tugged at one of the thin straps and let it snap back into place. “This is kind of detrimental to my masculinity, Jake.”
“N-not my fault!” he stammered, gripping his pillow like a lifeline. “You’re—you’re the one—!” Jake let out a strangled noise, somewhere between a whimper and a plea for divine intervention.
“I’m the one what?” Dirk took a slow, measured step forward. The way the cloth shifted between his toned legs when he moved made Jake almost start salivating.“Parading around like this? You’re the one dressing me up. This is all you, bro.”
“I DID NOT PICK THAT!” Jake yelped.
“You kinda did,” Dirk pointed out, taking. “Like, let’s be real—you didn’t just pick this out of nowhere. This was sitting somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, just waiting for the right moment to surface. And now—” he gestured to himself, grinning— “here we are.”
“I DIDN’T—IT WASN’T—” Jake was so fucking horny he thought he was going to die. The only thing keeping him from wrapping his hand around his cock and finishing in record time was the humiliation of it all. It wasn’t actually Dirk standing in his room embarrassing the fuck out of him but he could still feel his soul shriveling up like a raisin.
Dirk took another step forward.
The loincloth moved again.
The absolute worst, most mortifying part was that Jake had, at some point, definitely thought about this before. Maybe not consciously, maybe not deliberately, but—it was there.
And now Brain Ghost Dirk had dug it up and was strutting it around in front of him, smirking, taunting, knowing.
Jake's face was on fire, and his heart was pounding like a jackhammer. He didn't know what to do, where to look, or how to handle this situation.
“We could keep doing this all night,” Dirk smirked as he gracefully flopped down on the bed next to him. Jake's breath hitched in his throat. “Imagine what you could come up with next.”
Jake felt his resolve slipping away.
“Fuck,” He exhaled sharply, tossing the pillow aside as he let his body move on instinct.
And of course, Dirk’s voice came in loud and crystal clear.
"Atta boy."
Jake shuddered as his grip tightened, frustration knotting in his stomach. He didn’t want to think about Dirk watching him. He didn’t want to think about the smirk on his lips, the heat in his voice, the way his breath was hot on his neck.
Except—he did think about it.
And once he started, he couldn’t stop.
Because suddenly, Dirk wasn’t just laying there next to him.
He was closer. Kneeling over him, straddling his hips like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Jake let out a low, desperate sound, moving his hand on his dick faster as his thoughts spiraled completely out of control.
Dirk leaned down, pressing their bodies together—nothing between them but heat and tension. Dirk’s mouth on his neck, lips dragging slow and taunting, hand on his cock, stroking in tandem with him.
Jake’s breath hitched.
Because at that moment, he could almost feel it.
The phantom weight of Dirk’s body, the warmth of his breath, the way his hips pressed down just right—
“Hey, remember this one?”
Jake opened his eyes again to see Dirk across the room, sat and slumped over in Jake’s computer chair. His legs were up on the arm rests, He was wearing absolutely nothing. Not even his shades. He had a hand on his bare chest tugging at one of his nipples and the other…
The other hand was between his legs, two fingers curling in and scissoring himself open.
“Oh, fuck,” Jake groaned, his cock twitching in his hand, aching to cum as his orgasm drew dangerously close.
“Th-the first time we ever sexted,” Dirk breathily reminded him of the memory, pulling his fingers out from his dripping wet cunt and sucking them clean.
Of course, he remembered that.
Jake’s mind raced back to that night. They had been chatting for hours, flirting and teasing each other, telling each other exactly how they were getting off on it. He was pretty sure that he was talking to the real Dirk that night. He hoped it was actually the real Dirk, instead of the autoresponder.
This is exactly how he’d imagined it, anyway.
“I wish you were fucking me right now.” Dirk bit his lip, fingers going back down to stroke at his clit.
Jake's mind raced with images of Dirk beneath him, turning him into a wet, writhing, and moaning mess as he fucked him into the mattress. “Dirk, oh fuck,” he moaned, breathing faster, heart pounding in his chest.
Dirk didn’t respond though, especially as Jake’s eyes screwed shut and his grip tightened around his cock as he finally reached the peak of his orgasm. He panted hard as he came over his own chest.
It took a while for Jake to open his eyes again. He waited until he was no longer gasping for air and his heartbeat returned to a stable steady rhythm The room was dark, and he rubbed the sticky mess from his hand onto his sheets lazily.
Dirk was gone.
It had felt so real.
The way Dirk's voice reverberated in his room. The feeling of his fingers and his hot breath on his skin.
He hoped it was real, but he knew deep down it wasn't.