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“Mine, mine, he’s mine, he’s in my timeline, which isn’t yours, so hands off.”
There was the start of an objection, but the god tier Dave held up a hand. “Not even talking about this, beta-bro. Mine, end of.”
“Oh no no no nope. Not happening.” The other Dave butted in. “No boring-ass alpha veto-powers in this Davemocracy.”
“Lame, dude. That’d be lame even in text format” Davesprite observed, watching the two less feathery Daves as they faced off against one another behind their shades.
“Dude, you’re in my timeline. You had your chance; fucked it up, gotta face facts here.”
“That is bullshit shat from the finest bull. They serve that shit up on a plateau de merde avec du turd roti, and guess what, no-one buys it, because it’s a pile of crap.”
“Shut it, fuckass. This is just not something we’re talking about, okay?”
That was their timeline’s Dave, John was pretty sure. It was so weird, watching them; they had the same basic body-language, the same voice to use, but he could tell them apart no problem, probably could even if they were wearing the same clothes. His Dave was a little quieter, held himself a lot more casual, kept his face so blank by default you might think he was daydreaming. The other Dave stayed slightly tense, like there was some kind of background check running he never quite switched off, even here in the space between worlds Aradia had made them to muster her army.
And it looked like he lost his cool easier. At that demand, he grabbed the god tier Dave by his shoulders and shouted: “No, it fucking is, ‘cause guess what? You’d fuck up your chances too, you’d fuck up as much as any of us, but this timeline’s stayed alpha ‘cause of us, bitch, ‘cause me and seppucrow-bro and all those Doomed Daves put you here and kept you here. So you can think twice before you get veto-friendly with your fucking saviours, man.”
John wondered if he ought to intervene. He’d heard bad things about arguments with alternate selves. Just as he stepped forward ready to, Davesprite whistled and floated down towards them: “Chill out, Daves, you got company.”
They turned to face him as one, adjusting their shades with the same hand at the same speed. Alternate Dave was a little flushed; his own timeline’s Dave had slightly ruffled hair. Davesprite floated a little behind them with his head at the same angle as them, and John had expected him to look amused at the others getting caught in a severely uncool moment, but they all three wore the same expression. Blank to the casual observer, slightly serious to a practiced Dave-watcher. Not that he was compulsive about his Dave-watching, of course, it was just kind of a habit and whenever he caught himself doing it he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop.
“Sorry about that.” John’s Dave said. “Too many Daves harsh the Dave-chill, I guess.”
“Like cooks spoiling the broth.” The other added.
“Uncool, Dave,” John laughed, “That’s already a saying, it doesn’t count as a metaphor.”
“Like I said.” John’s Dave turned to look at his double, almost visibly glaring. “Too many Daves. Get gone.”
There was an awkward silence.
“So, uh, what exactly are you arguing with yourself about? I can be an impartial observer, if you want.”
They looked at each other. Davesprite spoke up from behind them. “Nope, you can’t.”
“I can’t?”
“Nope. Someone else could, I guess, but those mes are two self-conscious to ever actually tell anyone about their boring and kinda narcissistic disagreements.”
The other Daves broke off their argument to hiss ‘shut up’.
“Ha ha ha no, I’m the oldest Dave. I have Dave-seniority, bitches, I can judge my own self-involved whiny tendencies out loud if I want to.”
“Caw, caw, I’m the featheriest asshole, I took all the leaves out of Karkat’s book.”
“Me and my smug orange spritepowers are fucking nesting in those leaves, lusting after Karkat and his mad self-hatred skillz.”
Davesprite flashstepped over to John, or did whatever the equivalent was when you didn’t have actual legs. “The defensive idiots over there are arguing about our collective massive crush on you, dumbass.”
What. What?
“… You do know that isn’t actually ironic, right?” John asked, once his brain had flailed enough to restart itself and rebooted the program that let him use words.
“Like you’d know irony if it hit you with the dictionary definition of itself, Egbert.”
John couldn’t help but notice that there were now three Daves watching him closely. All Daves were individually intense and weird and interesting and fun to know, lonely eager geeks wrapped in rooftop ninja personas with an attractive coolkid topping, but having three of them in the same room as him when they’d flung out a statement like that wasn’t cool. He was being watched and judged, they couldn’t mess with each other on an even footing anymore.
But… John had just spent a fair few seconds freaking out about the multi-Dave situation, and none of them had said anything ironic or rambly or including the word ‘bromance’. In fact, they’d all stayed totally silent and still. John was pretty much the best there was when it came to Dave-watching, and that was not normal behaviour.
The sprite Dave scratched the back of his head, laughing a bit in a way that fooled precisely no-one. “Yeah. Sorry to make this really awkward, but this catastrophic dork-crush pandemic swept through the population of Davesville years ago, dude. Started about the time you sent us our shades, and no-one’s found a cure yet, the disaster’s just gone on and on. Widows wailing in the streets, unmarried chicks wondering why there’s so much gay but so little hot man-on-man action: straight up doom and gloom all round. Cause: unrequited emolove. Strider manflesh perpetually yearning for your tragically heterosexual derp—”
“Dude.” “Shut up.”
And then as one: “You’re embarrassing all of us.”
Davesprite’s intact wing was twitching, and he looked at the ground in what John was pretty sure was acute self-consciousness. John spent a moment feeling sorry for the guy, because he knew the moment after blurting out a load of personal shit well and that moment is no fun for anyone, but then reality kicked back in and he remembered the start of the conversation he’d walked in on.
“Wait, were you guys arguing over which of you repressed idiots gets to officially have a thing for me? Because I am pretty sure none of you have ever, y’know, actually said anything about it.”
“Uh.”
He turned on his own timeline’s Dave. “You could have said something about it. It’s been like three months since me and Jade got here, man, you’ve had time, y’know.”
“Precisely.” The alternate one said. Davesprite nodded.
“And sprite Dave, you were around for the whole journey!”
“John.” God tier Dave butted in. “Pretty sure you said you weren’t gay.”
“What, when?”
“To Karkat, during the first session, when he hit on you in the hatesex way. He ranted about it quite a bit on the asteroid.”
“I… Dave, you moron, that was before we even hit puberty! And he was being a weird alien with weird alien romance stuff, why would you even think that was a reli—”
“John. This is serious.” Davesprite held a hand up. It was clearly intended to be dramatic and therefore ironic, but he sounded kind of breathless. Since he didn’t seem to have to breathe normally, that was quite a feat. “Are you saying that you are not a heterosexual?”
John wanted to mock him for how husky his voice went, but there was a normal-human-shaped Dave on either side of him and the sprite one in front, and they were all very still and focused, the way Daves got before a fight or a life-or-death decision. It made him swallow, nervous, and the fact they would all notice that made him even more nervous.
His voice was as hoarse as Davesprite’s when he spoke.
“Well, I think I like girls and guys.” And he might as well go the whole hog, so: “And I’ve liked you like that for a while, dumbass. Any version of you, because you’re all Dave, whether or not you came from a timeline where things worked out okay.”
The Daves all looked at each other. John watched them, not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t. Dave was really pretty, and since he’d just admitted out loud he liked guys like that, it was okay to notice it. He was blushing and having three boyfriends would be a really weird way to start your love life, but there wasn’t ever really much hope thing would work out normal between any of the Sburb kids.
The Daves were still staring at one another, or so John had to assume. Maybe they were broken. That was alright, he’d happily wake them from their intense ironic shade-wearing staring contest
“… Perpetually yearning manflesh, you said?”
Three Daves went ‘bluh!’ in shock. John’s Prankster Gambit rejoiced; you got extra marks for entirely verbal assaults.
“No, seriously, Dave, have you been reading Rose’s fanfics? And is there really yearning going on, because I actually can’t resist your manly Strider charms. I might actually expire from being able to look but not touch.”
The sprite Dave looked affronted and then kind of astounded, like maybe he thought spriteliness made him off-limits as a romantic prospect. The other Daves looked something else, hiding being upset.
“Daves. Daves. Earth to Stridersville, population: three stand-offish idiots. I hear that actually having more than one romantic partner is the norm in our weird little colony.”
They each made a totally different confused-sound. It was adorable, so John grabbed the two human-shaped-Daves by their shoulders and kind of nuzzled affectionately at the confused orange face between them. It was not really a successful group hug, especially not for an attempt at romance, but it made one Dave laugh and another call him a derp, and the other ruffled his hair.
Then he realised he was standing on one foot and holding himself up with them, and instead of standing up with dignity he kind of fell into a Dave. Who caught him, and - John stared - pushed his shades up to his forehead, and kept hold of him once he was standing up just fine, and smiled at him really wide, eyes bright and more serious than John had ever pictured them.
“We’re so uncool for fighting over this. We love you, y’know. All the Daves this game has ever chewed up, probably more besides, we’re all big sappy idiots and we should know better than to fight over this ‘cause that shit isn’t cool, and we’re all the same when it comes to you…”
He shook his head, fingers brushing John’s cheek, face tender like John had never seen it before. It was definitely the most romantic thing he’d ever heard, and he was pretty sure the other Daves would agree with this Dave, and that they wouldn’t resent it when he accepted the words with a kiss.
Besides, there’d be time for the other Daves. For all the Daves.