gallanttempest:
tatterdemaliongear:
Sburbia is a quaint little town, so quiet and seeped in calm that it makes you feel a bit ill. You want the smog of the big cities, the rowdy people and the dull, omnipresent buzz of humanity, but out here there’s just… silence, and chirping birds, and green grass.
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You’re snapped out of your momentary stupor (you’re just a little tired, is all. All that flying can wipe a guy out!) at the sound of fast-approaching footsteps. Lifting your head, you catch someone under your dreary (tired!) gaze, and are more than a little surprised when the stranger jogging towards you bears a vague (from what you can tell from this distance) resemblance to-
“Dave?” Your seeing isn’t the best without your glasses on, so the figure approaching your dad’s house is more of an obscure smudge of your tinted lenses, but when (you assume) the two of you make eye contact, he comes to a screeching halt on the side walk bordering your dad’s lawn.
Your eyes narrow as you try to unconsciously get a better look at the figure now swiftly collecting himself after an embarrassing moment (just like Dave always does) and sauntering over to you (in a very Dave-like way).
Your eyes narrow as you take a look at the person before you who is almost definitely Dave.
“Geez, you’re saying that too?” You frown, lifting yourself up to your feet. You notice he is wearing semi-casual clothing (which, incidentally, is a semi-Dave move if you subtract the formal half of the outfit). “Even Dad was saying that there is another me running around here, and things are getting so weird around here that I almost believe him!”
You approach Dave(?) to get a better look at your friend(?). You don’t recall him having that many freckles; the douche beard is a new addition, and his hair is shorter and he is taller.
And, oh yeah! He looks like he’s grown ten fucking years since you last saw him. Just how long have you been gone?
You have a lot to say to Dave. You want him to fill you in on what went down in Sburbia when the two of you were separated, what happened to him afterwards and why he looks like an adult, but most importantly you want him to tell you why your dad doesn’t think that you are his son!
You summarise all of your racing thoughts with a concise,
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuckity shit goddamn—you’re setting a record for eloquence in your head, looking down at the kid in front of you (‘He’s John, Dave, but not as you know him,’ and you want to punch yourself in the jaw for that Star Trek reference as soon as it pops into your head) with a growing sense of exasperation that you’re sure is showing up on your face. (Everyone’s always hung up on your height, and okay, intellectually you know it makes sense, but him opening with a statement like that doesn’t exactly give you much to work with. You opt to take its intent at face value and ignore it.)
You briefly entertain a thousand different directions this conversation could go in—the various ways delicate circumlocution could tip this situation in your favor, smooth the way for wherever the hell else this wild goose chase is bound to send you barreling—
“To the best of my knowledge, you’re in an alternate dimension, kiddo.” And there goes that train of thought. Your mouth running itself off independent of your brain aside, you really don’t have time for traditional mollycoddling or sugarcoating anyway.
Not that you’ve been explicitly told as much—been explicitly told anything, as a matter of fact, and if Evil Buster is still in one piece when you catch back up with him, you make a mental post it to boot him in the ass on principle. As much as Tailorbird loves to poke fun at your mental prowess, you’re not a goddamn idiot, and until further notice you’re instating a working theory that says you’re right until proven wrong.
His mouth flaps a couple of times, the bewildered but still genuine look of contentment that had overcome his features at first seeing you fading fast, and you feel—
Bad.
The same way you felt bad for Evil Buster on the rooftop: that infuriatingly inexplicable, kindling sense of kinship that had thrown the lion’s share of your carefully cultivated douchebaggery out the window before you could snap or bitch at him.
He looks—very lost, and just a little bit devastated, as your arm wraps unbidden around his slumped shoulders and you steer him back in the direction of the step he just vacated, mind a screaming mantra of ‘don’t cry kid don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry’.
Sitting him down and settling yourself next to him, you open your mouth and just… ramble, in a futile attempt to postpone flood of questions you suppose is inevitable after a statement like that.
“I’m this universe’s Dave—look, until we get this repeating name bullshit sorted out just call me Tatters, okay?”
