Chapter Text
It’s not the first time the two of you have run into some other version of one of yourselves—younger, older, with or without an entourage or an unexpected significant other or some baggage that follows them around the dream bubbles, haunting them even in death. But this time is different. This Tav’s rocking a pirate-esque bandana and a pair of booty shorts that make your own Tav grimace, but the guy’s got a sense of purpose and determination that’s not lost on either of you. Your Tav’s interest is immediately piqued—it’s not every day you run into a version of him with such a palpable go-getter attitude, especially one so young—and he goes over to have a chat. You watch them exchange greetings, make small talk, converse about this or that, and the little Tav tightens his fists, and your Tav furrows his brow, and your gut starts to sink as glances are thrown your way. Something about the way your Tav nods and turns back to you as the other Tav flies away makes you stuff your hands into your pockets and curl your fingers into the cotton lining. You hide your frown as Tav sidles up to you. Tav tries and fails to hide his apprehension.
“What’s up?” you ask.
“Uh,” he says, biting his lip. “That was the sort-of Alpha me, from before the, uh…”
“Before John threw a middle finger to paradox space and rewrote the timeline?” The gossip these days just keeps getting wackier, but that’s not your business anymore. Alpha You can deal with John’s reality-altering time shenanigans.
“Yeah,” Tav says with a nod. “He’s, uh…he’s gathering an army, for the purpose of fighting Lord English in an epic final battle, hopefully to defeat him definitively, and to rid paradox space of his horrible violence.”
“An army?” you repeat. “An army to fight Lord English.”
“Uh…yeah. And…he was asking if we would join, as part of…”
“The cannon fodder.”
“Well, he didn’t put it that way, exactly.”
You inhale through your nose and look up at the shattering sky. The cracks glow, creak, and splinter over and around your bubble, making you feel more than anything like a miniature Dave figurine trapped in a doomed snow globe. Tavros follows your eyes and examines the sky as well, and when you glance at him, the damning rainbow fissures are reflected in his dead eyes. He looks as anxious as you feel.
You know things can’t continue this way. Reality can’t sustain this kind of onslaught. Even the warped kind of reality you and the rest of the dead inhabit.
“Hey, let’s head inside,” you say. “We got time to think about this.”
“Okay,” he says.
Climbing the stairs to your apartment, you try to think back to a time when the sky wasn’t exploding into technicolor glass shards. You remember the first time it happened. You were both outside, enjoying another day in your post-mortem paradise, when the boom sounded and the gash broke like lightning across the horizon. Now, it feels like it was always there. The Furthest Ring is fucked up that way. Time means nothing. You can remember the starts and the finishes and the beginnings and ends, but at the same time, everything is always the way it is now, and the way it was then, and the way it will be. It fucks you up. What good is a time guy without any discernable logic guiding time?
Something about those cracks, though. When they appeared, they made it pretty damn clear that it was the beginning of the end. And they’re making it pretty damn clear now that you can’t just sit in your bubble with your dorky boy-matesprit-friend drinking AJ and shooting the shit for the rest of eternity like you once thought you could. You haven’t escaped Sburb, or Skaia, or horrorterrors, or the slow, unending march of paradox space forcing you to bend to its eternal will, even in death.
You open the door to your apartment and pause in the threshold, hand on the doorknob, staring at the fake reflection of the life you had when you were alive, combined here and there with dream memories of Tavros’s past. You’ve gotten used to the weird half-childhood, half-alien aesthetic in the years or months or decades or whatever you’ve been dead. You started to really appreciate your new life post-life. But it’s a fake life outside of a real game that’s still happening around you. Lord English is still your problem. Even in death.
“Dave?” Tavros says behind you. He places a hand on your back and nudges you inside. He closes the door. He stands with you.
“An army, huh,” you say.
“We don’t have to join,” he says. “He was just extending the offer. In case we wanted to fight and do important things again.”
“Bullshit. Who the hell wants to double die out in the middle of nowhere? He might as well start up a draft if he wants to flush out their front lines. Fuck, next thing you know, they’ll be drawing names out of a hat and we’ll be dreaming up handguns to shoot ourselves in the foot. We should get ready to conjure up a fake dream Canada where we can go to escape our patriotic duty until the Powers That Be offer us pardon years after the war has ended. I’ve never been to Canada, but it can’t be that much different from Texas. Where do troll deserters go when they don’t wanna join the troll army?”
“Uh…we mostly just die horribly if we do that,” Tavros says.
“Oh, right,” you say. He grew up on this do-or-die bullshit. It’s just you here, then.
“…Dave? We don’t have to. It was just an offer.”
You inhale. Something heavy settles in your chest. “Yeah, well. It’s not like there’s actually ever gonna be a dream Canada out here to run to anyway. We might have to take the troll route on this shit.”
“So…?”
“So we do, we die, and we don’t, we probably die. What’s going to happen to all this once shit hits the fan?”
You gesture to the room, and Tavros glances inside, over the tv, the posters, the games, the turntables, his stuff and yours, his life and yours.
“Maybe…the dream bubbles will be safe again, once we defeat the evil? Should we ask Aradia?”
“I dunno, bro. Maybe.”
“Well…we’re kind of dead anyway, right? That’s been a thing, for a while now. We were unusually lucky to have the dream bubbles at all after we died, and to have this time to be happy and generally pretty carefree, even if it had to end eventually.”
God. Fuck. You don’t wanna think about this shit. To have your life and afterlife laid before you for examination, to nod and say, ‘Yep, that was nice. Worth it. Had a good time there. 8/10, would do over, maybe with a few changes in the upbringing if push came to shove about it.’ It was hard enough the first time when you were actually alive, prepping for the godtier death you never actually got to experience. Well, you got the death part, at least. Alpha You got the godtier.
Being dead, though, and with Tavros, looking back and appreciating the time you had is different. Everyone knows they’re going to die when they’re actually fucking alive. It’s one of those little things that prod at your mind every now and then, reminding you, ‘Hey, bro, mortality is still a thing and it’s all gonna end someday.’ Once you were in the game, you could hardly avoid thinking about your own mortality, what with the constant threat of Dead Daves cluttering up the timeline. Hell, you fucking are one of the Dead Dave reminders of death. You’re your own momento mori, in the flesh, except less flesh and more ghost. Ghostly flesh. Real enough, but not quite real enough.
When you died and realized you had another crack at living—dead living—things got weird. Being dead, dying wasn’t really on your mind so much. It felt like time would go on forever, that you had a whole fucking eternity to do everything you didn’t even know you wanted to do while you were alive. Suddenly, dead you had a dead friend that turned into a dead lover who helped you be less dead uptight about all the insecurities you had picked up while living. Dead you could relive memories from your alive past but with someone who loved you, surrounded by someone who loved you, full of love for someone who loved you. Dead you was dead safe and dead happy. And so was Tavros. Just look at your fucking apartment. It’s you and him, mixed up in a memory bubble until the memories blur together and are made better for it.
You once thought about asking Rose—dead or alive version, who fucking cares—to hypnotize you into remembering different memories. You’re pretty sure that’s a thing that can happen. The right sleight of hand and trick of mind can create all sorts of false memories to replace the ones that are real. Not the good ones you had, populated by Rose and John and Jade, but the shitty ones. Hell, who cares anymore if it wouldn’t be real? You’re not real, and neither is Tavros, and you both have enough shitty memories between the two of you that a little hypnosis probably couldn’t hurt. You could dream up a memory of a nice, fake family, something the two of you could raise together, like you could’ve done if you weren’t both so dead and trapped in your collective pasts. With an eternity ahead of you, you reasoned, why the fuck wouldn’t you want to try to make an actual, somewhat viable future out of the redundant materials provided to you by your own lived experiences? You could pretend that you were real and alive and totally not chained like a prisoner to the life you lived before you died. And you and Tavros could be a real couple, with a real existence beyond the two pasts you ended up slamming together unceremoniously in your living room.
But that was then. With paradox space time the way it is, you can hardly remember what it felt like to feel like you have forever. Now, it feels like Lord English was always here, shattering reality around you. It feels like the cracks were always in the sky, creating a disco out of your dreams. And a real future is coming on, and it’s definitely not made out of your past, dead or alive. It’s made out bullshit you were really hoping Alpha You could have all to himself.
You took eternity for granted. In the blink of an eye, at any moment, paradox space could break. Everything could disappear. Past, present, future, time and space, like it was never there at all. Or like it was always there, and always will be there, but you won’t be in it anymore. Will this exact ghost version of you matter? All of your post-mortem growth, your slow realizations, your slip on your ego-defensive irony, and your embrace of the things you really, truly love? And this Tavros, will he matter, too? This Tavros, the Tavros that knows you so well now, the Tavros you know so well, whose long stay and shared experiences with you has made a fucking difference on the version of you you’ve become? Will Paradox Space record this you interlacing yourself with this Tavros in this apartment, the two of you kicking each other asses at fiduspawn and glitchy racing games, mixing beats and writing raps, laying on your bed while your fan blows sweat and heat off your bodies, talking and kissing and talking?
Will any of this matter? Will any of this fucking matter?
“Dave?” Tavros says quietly. You wish you had recorded more of his voice. Maybe if you throw one of the mixtapes you both made together as hard as you can into the void, someone real will catch it and know you mattered. You reach out and grab his hand, smooth your thumb over his ghost skin that feels so fleshy and solid to you.
“Hey,” you say. “Are we gonna do this, then?”
“I think…given the situation, we don’t have a choice. Or that we do have a choice, but one of the options would be objectively bad, and we know which one we have to choose.”
You let out a small and empty laugh. Way to say it exactly so you can’t avoid the reality of the situation. “Right,” you say.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“This ain’t a fight we can guarantee we’ll survive,” you say.
“Uh, well…every fight I ever fought wasn’t one I could guarantee I’d survive, so in that case—”
“Man, don’t start saying shit like that. You’re gonna freak me out.”
“Oh, yeah…sorry.”
Don’t think about it, you tell yourself. Don’t think about multicolored beams of destruction and flesh incinerating to ash off of bones, don’t think about the unimaginable lack of existence that true death is supposed to be, don’t think about the horrible emptiness of losing a part of your afterlife that you had once thought you would have for a literal eternity. Thinking about all the things you shouldn’t think about makes your heart ache and your limbs go cold, and you take a step into Tavros to feel something solid and warm and vital. He wraps his arms around you. You snake your arms under his and squeeze, and he squeezes you back.
“Are you scared?” he asks. He wants you to be honest. Opening your mouth and trying to push the words out makes your heart clench, but you get there.
“Yeah, bro. We got a sweet thing going for us, you know?”
“Yeah. Uh…um,” he says. He squeezes a little tighter. “Thanks, for letting me be a part of your afterlife.”
God, what a goober. ‘Thanks’? Is that where you’re at now? Expressing gratitude? Or is it appreciation? Fucking ‘thanks,’ like what you say to someone after they feed you or let you crash at their house or do you a favor, and now it’s over, and you’re moving on, but you want to let them know that it meant something to you? Fucking ‘thanks.’ You choke back a laugh, or a sob, or maybe something that’s not quite either of those things. You kiss his ear, card your fingers through his hair. His cheek brushes against yours as he turns his head towards you, and you feel his lips against your jaw.
If you could summarize everything you want to say, it wouldn’t be ‘thanks.’ But it wouldn’t not be ‘thanks,’ either.
His lips finally find yours, and you try to press words into his mouth that you don’t think actually exist. You transfer them from your tongue to his in a desperate, wordless speech. Body language is all you have for this kind of message. His hands slide under your shirt and up your back, his thumbs on your sides, feeling very real and familiar and urgent. You get a solid grip on one of his horns, and your other hand traces his jaw. You press your whole body into him. You want to brand the two of you together into a reality that’ll stay after the end of your existence. You’re afraid this is the last time you’ll feel him exist so completely, so within your reach. You’re fucking afraid of being alone, anchorless, meaningless, unreal. You don’t want everything to disappear.
He takes a step back and sits down on the futon, almost like he can feel you losing your poise. Your shirt comes off as you straddle him, and before you can sit back on his lap, he pulls your stomach to his mouth, hugging your hips. You cup his head as he presses kisses into you, burying his face into the taunt muscles of your belly. He’s trying to get lost in you, too. You wrap your arms around his head and hug him, and he starts making his way up, peppering your ribs with kisses, trailing his hands up your back. He loosens his grip enough to let you sit back and presses his tongue against your nipple. He knows you fucking love that. You arch your back and roll your hips against his lap, and you can hardly stand it when his teeth graze the hardened nub. You grab him by the hair and pull his head back so you can kiss him. He takes off your shades. You look down into his white, dead eyes, and he looks up into yours, both of your faces flushed and hot and bittersweet. You undo the snaps on his shirt so you can pull it over his head, and you slip off of him, leading him down onto the futon.
He lays on you, full body contact, just as needy as you are to feel your skin on his. He nips at your neck. You drag your nails down his back. He slips your shoes and socks off. You undo his pants and slide them down his hips, and the familiar sight of his bulge snakes out to greet you. ‘Aw yeah, xeno dick,’ you think to yourself for the how many hundredth time, and the irony is just enough to bring a tiny smile to your lips. You don’t know if Tavros knows what you’re thinking, but when he kisses the curl at the edge of your mouth, you can almost feel the affection radiating from his face like some kind of heat. All that love for one tiny fucking smile. You suddenly can’t stand that you’re still wearing clothes, and you fumble with the button of your jeans until he helps you yank them off. He turns away just long enough to shuck his pants as well. His bulge curls around your dick as soon as he’s back, and you wrap your legs around him to pull him as close as you can. You’re both so fucking hot, and your skin slides against each other with a forming film of sweat, but you can’t stop trying to get closer. His bulge moves, and you rock your hips into him, swallowing the noises bubbling up in your throat. His thumb slides over your nipple, and you whine into his mouth.
“On your back,” you say, and he immediately flops backwards and snuggles down into the futon for you. He watches you with keen, open eyes as you move to him, anticipation hitching on his breath in a way that almost makes you lose track of what you’re doing. He shifts onto his side and drops one of his legs, leaning the other on the back of the futon so you have a full, uninterrupted view of Tavros fucking Nitram, quivering thighs and curling bulge and a nook that knows exactly what’s about to happen. You straddle his leg, grab your twitching dick, and rub your thumb over the tip, smearing down a pearly drop of pre-cum. You could get off to this, have gotten off to this, watching him watch you pump yourself to orgasm over his begging body, but that’s not nearly enough for you now. You guide yourself to the entrance of his nook, and you bite down a moan as the head of your dick glides past his seedflap. You’re never quite prepared to be inside him, the way trolls work. The walls of his nook tremble and undulate like a goddamn sex toy, made for a bulge that moves just as much as he does, and he’s no less prepared for you, thick and hard and full. You can hear him gulping down noises, whining, moaning, panting, and fuck, your cool kid façade stands no goddamn chance. You lean forward and thrust so agonizingly slow, trying hard not to overwhelm him with the very human movement. He coaxes you towards him, and you press against his lifted leg, preparing yourself for your favorite fucking part. You feel his bulge slide under your leg and around your balls, finding its way to your ass, and you’re fucking shivering, waiting for him. It flicks over your entrance, wet and lithe and fucking erotic, and you still your thrusts, waiting, relaxing yourself.
“Fuck, yes, fuck,” you breathe as he pushes into you, his bulge stretched thinner from the reach than it would be if you were riding him straight on but making up for it in his knowledge of your body. God, how he moves. You roll your hips back onto his bulge and forward into his nook, and you can’t help the string of words falling from you. Your mind is static, your body heat, and Tavros presses against that sweet spot in you that you can never quite reach yourself. His hands are on your torso, his fingers brush over your nipples, his nook is fucking rippling on your fucking dick and his bulge is petting that goddamn fucking spot and you’re so fucking overwhelmed with sensation that you can’t even think to stop your orgasm from hitting you like a full-body trip to nirvana. You choke on the waves of pleasure, blinded, full of Tavros’s body and voice and smell, taunt with sensation. He tightens under you, bringing you to the edge of overstimulated with his own orgasm. You come down feeling blitzed and heavy and tired, and you twitch as he helps you disentangle yourself from him. You know there’s a mess, but fuck it. You play some futon tetris with him until you’re both comfortable enough to lay down next to each other.
You shove your face into the crook of his neck. He snuggles into your hair. You try to melt into this, to cool off and fall asleep, but as the heat fades away, you feel like you’re fading, too. You don’t know how to appreciate this enough. You don’t know how to love it enough, how to feel like you’ve gotten everything you could have out of it so that you can double die happy. You’re not ready to face Lord English. You’re not ready to double die, or to watch Tavros double die, or to stop existing.
You took eternity for granted. Maybe you took everything for granted. Now, at the edge of oblivion, all you want to do is hug Tavros on a sex-soggy futon and pretend that the rest of paradox space doesn’t exist, even as the cracks in reality throw a kaleidoscope of light onto your living room wall.