oh no

Dirk considers forcing Ranboo up off the floor. He considers it, but ultimately, Ranboo's future back pain isn't his problem. On the contrary--his past dramatics taught him some valuable lessons about at least lying flat, or sitting up, or otherwise accounting for the fate of the future self he can't escape becoming. It's a learned skill, though. One painful lesson at a time, until the weight of those lessons is sufficient to shift even the most deranged episodes of hate and grief, or sharpening the point until it penetrates the most vitriolic, forced-submission spite at being alive.

So, he leaves Ranboo there to learn a lesson, and to keep them from being wholly dependent on him to hold their hand through this... well, episode. That's how he thinks of it. An episode.

He isn't heartless, though. He really isn't. The pathetic crumple of a man on his floor angers him in a way he can't place--like Ranboo's exhaustion is somehow spiting him. Instead of being insane about it, he chooses to try and solve Ranboo's feelings.

Which he does via perhaps the least easily-explained gesture possible: carefully selecting two puppets (a hairy pink-and-orange muppet and a ventriloquist's dummy with absurdly long limbs and a fixed stare) and propping them up with Ranboo. The muppet he tucks against their body as though Ranboo's a sleeping child, and the ventriloquist's dummy he places in the space where Ranboo's arm lies, in the curve of their collapsed form.

Then, after surveying his handiwork and finding it satisfactory, he leaves the room.