i can't count the reasons i should stay;

[wingborne]

He had no legs. Saved mega fake money on the shitty jpeg sneakers, but he had no toes, so that was a downer. Just a droopy wisp of a tale, pulsating bright colors as it wispily whipped back and forth in the air, working with no muscles, just the tendril of spritely magic. But Davesprite had no legs, floating worked fine, and he went even faster. Sure, he had the whole flash-tail instead of flash-step, but it was easy to grasp, and having a tail was easy to hold his bowl of Doritos. He just sometimes took a step forward and landed on his face because tails don’t have feet.

His wrists were thicker, his chest was stockier, his eyes opened slightly more when relaxed. The way he curled up on the ground was different. His body suddenly betrayed him like puberty gone John, gave out under him to this strange tilting style and a different texture to his skin, except puberty happened years ago when they'd still been young. They weren't young anymore. And fuck if when he rested his upper teeth on his lips, the sensation caught at his mind, like a leaf pulling through a thin spider web. But it wasn’t bad.

It was easier to manage than he thought. He wasn’t all Dave. Couldn’t speak like all Dave. But after John’s initial freak-out, he calmed down, and mostly let Dave do the talking. Though that wasn’t the right way to put it. They weren’t two entities in the mind. Sometimes one essence throbbed more strongly than the other, flooding the control of the body; but calling half of himself John felt arbitrary and stupid as hell, because he was John. He was Dave and he was John, and he was one body and one soul, and it was freaky as fuck, like in Face/Off when Nick Cage put on John Travolta’s face and like that wasn’t creepy as shit, couldn’t even tell if it was an improvement.

Little things like that made him the strange sprite being. Like his analogies were movies with an ironic loathing twist. It was no John’s reverential reference to Nick Cage’s hot bod, but no Dave’s overbite of a snarky comment of hatred against crappy movies. He had a loathing for cake and an unknown wariness of peanuts, and wouldn’t touch the apple juice. He liked the hot bass beating on his speakers, but he also put on piano music because it soothed his mind. He had strange urges to watch movies, and felt hot disappointment when he refused back.

Which was how the idea came to him.

When he finally gave in, popped in the movie, and started watching Con Air for what felt like the seventy-thousandth time with the lines reverberating in his cool mind. Except, the usual slow, grueling anger at Nick Cage’s face had into something else in the corner of his mind. Something soft, soothed. Happy. Dave Strider, when he was all Dave Strider, was happy, sure, he liked his beats and taking awesome photographs and being fucking awesome, Jesus. But John’s happiness was something else, like all the sugary goodness was condensed and he was seeing its raw form and it felt good, like a happy cat, waiting for catnip. Like everything good about him was even better when actually seeing his insides, splaying out his personality and wrapping himself up in a warm John coat in some creepy shit way, put the lotion in the basket.

Jade and Rose were hard at working, hitting the books, trying to figure out how to separate them. But Dave had felt strangely calm, and after a while, John was soothed. They didn’t have words with each other, but John didn’t seem angry about living in Dave’s body and Dave didn’t hate living in John’s temple. They just always knew what the other was doing, thinking, saying. Which was awkward as hell, seeing Bro thought he nursed a crush on Egbert for years, two truths one lie but would never admit which one. But John seemed oblivious, even when their souls were literally stitched together, so they lounged on the couch and watched the movie and Dave felt the pleased sensation, soft and warm in his mouth and the back of his throat.

Things were just better as John. Dave. John. Dave. Make up some weird name for themselves, like Jave or Dohn, except way less shitty. But all his self-loathing, laid out in front of him, was accepted without shame. All the little parts that told him that he was no hero, the parts that pressed against the back of his mind, were eased back, covered with the firm hand of Johnesque disapproval. He never thought he looked particularly handsome with his hands sketched across his turntables, but when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, something happy and warm flooded in his chest like a spongy splurge, Spongebob gone wrong, and that wasn’t there before.

Being one with someone was creepy, and he’d never wanted it, but now that he had it, it just wasn’t so bad. Not so bad to share the same breath, overlapping wind and time emblazoned on his chest. He could see inside of the Johnesque parts, the insecurities and the quiet denials shoved so far back, he could hardly see them, but he reached them and touched them and they were hard and black but they softened under his touch, under the way he loosened them from the hold. Less and less, there was that John and Dave barrier. They were just some being with the best of both of them, John’s geeky optimism, Dave’s coolness. So close to John he wasn’t even creepy-sniffing his hair like Nick Cage in City of Angels, but he was that smell, he was that scent, he was John’s courage and he was Dave’s deep and quiet affection, running strong through his heart. He found himself appreciating the way he could hear beats in every fluttering of wings, and appreciating the new simplicity the world possessed.

The part where John ended and Dave began had no point, just stitched together with no beginning or end or ending or beginning, just the way he said hell no to peanuts and fuck yes, shit, when it came to playing stupid MMORPGs, until he couldn’t tell who laughed at what joke and who slept at night and who talked at all.

He made the offer late that night, and he could feel “John’s” bounce of approval, except it wasn’t like John was really talking to him. It just felt like his thoughts bounced back to him against a wall, like he was just talking to himself. But he still felt a strange sense of relief, of tentative expectation.

But now, he sat curled on the bed, eyes flickering to the mirror in front of him. He glowed with a hot red, which swirled with every heartbeat to a cool blue, and another heartbeat, swirling back to the strange mix of colors. They weren’t purple, hell no. But he wasn’t red and he wasn’t blue, just both, and he stared at himself and then took off his shirt, and stared at himself.

He pushed his fingers between his lips, licking them. The unusual sensation of buckteeth scraping against the top of his fingers stretched the tendrils of his mind, the unrecognizable anatomy, the oversized teeth hanging from his mouth. He ran his fingers over the back of his teeth with almost disappointment that they were normal, that they were his own, but he could feel the faint back bounce back of excitement.

Strange.

He ran his wet fingers over the ridges of his back teeth, and he felt the faint intrigue running like electricity down his fingers, twitching them against his soft gums. There was nothing special about his own teeth, but the twang of pleasure made him think the Johnesque feelings weren’t as asleep as he thought they had been. But he was awake, too, awake with a mission, drawing a sharp sharp intake of breath when he pushed his knuckles against his buckteeth, the unmistaken spikes of pleasure rolling down in his stomach. This, he was trying to teach the Johnesque throbs inside him, this was where the money was, the front teeth not the back.

But he wasn’t listening to any of that, fingers damp and wet and running along the back of his molars to press along the sides of his gums and he moaned inside his mouth against his wrists, where the blood of his veins traveled underneath his skin. Like all the Johnesque portions of his body pulsated deeply to say, no, dave, you are a loser, look, you get off on someone rubbing your teeth, what are you some kinda creep.

Shit, no, son, he wasn’t a creep, get away from his teeth, dickhead, but he flickered open his eyes behind his prescription glasses shades and stared at his face in the mirror, to where his hair was rumpled in an Egbertian shape with Striderian strands and he sucked at his fingers, ramming his dam of front teeth to scrape along the backside of his hand, strings of saliva running down and pooling into the valleys of his knuckles.

If he wanted a creep, fine, then he could get a creep.

He drew away from mouth, sloppy drool splattering against the Ghostbuster sheets on the bed, and he began to work along his cock. The first touch was strange and warm, pulsating up his stomach. His other hand scrunched hard against the blankets, the smiley ghost pattern screwing into a concentrated expression. Where doing this, son, he told himself, but it felt like he was really just telling himself, there was nobody else around to see him awkwardly give a few damp strokes against his red-blue skin.

He kept his grip loose, at first, feeling heat pool deep in his groin. He could have concentrated on the feeling, forcing the sensation through a small pinpoint hole until he came like a volcano over his hand, but this wasn’t his body and this wasn’t his mind and this was his body and this was his mind, and he stared at the piano fingers playing over his shaft and his breath that he did not breathe choked within his throat, watch the strange colors play over his skin and felt the weird thing about being a sprite, the way the feelings pulsated across his body like a drumbeat.

He swallowed once, hard, and stared into his own eyes in the mirror. Of course he had a fine-looking booty, but he was searching, desperately, for his not-self. For the certain angle of his chin, in the light, that he used to see on John’s face, the childish mirth around his eyes, the way his chest had stocky weight over his lean frame, mouth parted with the strange teeth, and even his cock a little different, thicker, or maybe cut lower, and he couldn’t tell because he’d been Dohn and Jave for too long.

His wrist was thicker, with the outline of his bone pressing against his skin. Couldn’t remember which part was his, which part of John’s, but the sight made his breath hitch again, and he was rolling his fingers almost lazily against his cock, teasing himself, feeling the imminent heat and the sturdiness underneath his strangely calloused finger tips, the piano fingers pale against the head, deft against the movements. His tail flickered back and forth, almost rhymatically, against the foot of the bed.

But if he wasn’t certain if John was there, then he was certain now, because his other hand moved without warning, shifted away from the burrow of blankets and began to ghost along his thighs, the connected planes of his tail, brushing close against his heat. He thrust into his hand more sloppily now, jerking against his strange fingers and watching his strange hand touch his red-blue skin and he glanced up at the mirror to where his tail was nearly behind his head, touching his neck, his scalp, the warm parts, and his hand drew thin lines on his thigh-tail with nails slightly pressed down and he felt a choked laugh force out of his mouth when he accidentally thrust too hard against his hand.

Panting, he tried to move his hand away, but he didn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, now pressing the skin beneath his balls with two deft fingers and he drew back a sharp breath, teeth pressed against his lips until phosphorescent blood seeped into his mouth, because he touched himself with the lightest touches with the rolling of his wrist and he kept pressing into the warm, vulnerable skin, rubbing against it almost playfully until he could see the outlines of his ribs when he drew in drowning gasps too far.

His tail curled tightly around the blankets. His hand, almost absent-mindedly, began to rub gently along his balls, ghost touches, barely sensations, stroking with the hardness of his finger joints, but his skin was sensitive and he breathed harshly through his nose, grinding his hips against his hand. His hips jerked instinctively, stuttering rhythm smoothing out into quick hot filthy jerks against his hand, twisting around his head, smearing the pre-cum over his head. His fingers pressed along the underside of his cock, twisting along the veins, and when he let out the guttural moan from deep beneath his throat, the sound didn’t seem to come out of his body at all.

His pace quickened, needing the release, his soft groans playing like a song across the room, heart beating loudly against his ribs, and he felt the space in his bones and gaps between his fingers and his teeth grinding against each other and everything not him became him and everything him became not him and he looked at the mirror where he was fucking his own hand and he had strange teeth and strange eyes and strange hair and he was not two but one and he cried out, vulnerable, as he came into his hand.

He jerked a few more times into his hand, but he eventually let his cock slide against his side again. He wiped his hand clean with a tissue, but the smell lingered in the sheets and some phantom stickiness still clung to his hand. But he shuddered, frame still shaking, and he nearly collapsed on his tail when he tried to lean over the bed for his shirt again. Instead of trying again, he laid there, and stared in the mirror.

Somehow, his hair had gotten mussed when he rolled into the bed, and his dark glasses became askew. But his bare chest, though half-hidden in the blankets, still exhaled with shaky breaths, rolling along his abs and to his bare hips. He didn’t have a name anymore, not any oversimplification of two beings, but he was one, so much of himself and nobody else, no longer anybody else. The emblem brightened on his chest, then faded, quietly, into something deeper of his heart.