Originally published on my Tumblr, nuttysaladtree.
"This is a five-hour-long plane ride, we're sitting together and you're deathly afraid of flying" AU ft. Dave and Dave. Thanks to dreamnorn for the prompt and to all my friends for encouragement.
Caveat lector: Unbeta-ed, strong language. Also contains wildly inaccurate depictions of the fear of flying and anxiety in general.
"Kid, if you grip the seat arm any tighter, it's going to snap right off. And judging by the angle of your grip, it's going to shoot backwards and up so fast that it punctures this beautiful metal box, and then we're all going down, like in Mission Impossible III - where you're the evil guy. Except you don't escape the plane and the old scientist geezer still dies."
Dave tightened his grip. "Why can't I be drugged to nirvana and back," he tried to deadpan, but his chest felt so tight that he just kind of rasped it instead.
His older counterpart shifted his shades. His face was like a frozen lake, eerie calm on the outside, shark grin on the inside. "Situational awareness, bro." He clapped young Dave's (Davito? Mini Dave? Li'l Dave?) back, harder than strictly necessary. Li'l Dave's nausea swung from "barely tolerable" to "projectile hurling imminent". "If you're higher than a kite, and this plane isn't, then how are you going to swim to safety? Find your soulmate in a volleyball with a bloody handprint and spend the years growing out your peach fuzz on a beautiful tropical island?" Big Dave gestured across an invisible horizon.
"Screw. You." Li'l Dave gritted out, but he wondered if he had really said anything. He couldn't hear himself over the blood rushing in his ears and the annoying shriek of the airplane engines and god, would the asshole stop smiling and he hated the smell of recycled air and fuck turbulence and
Why was he holding hands with older him?
"Hey, didn't know you felt for me that way, little homie. Sorry to say I don't swing that way myself."
Dave wanted to jerk his hand away, like he'd been burned. He wanted to scream. He wanted to strife this guy and wipe the smirk off his self-righteous face, other people and aviation regulations be damned. Screw visiting Egbert and screw getting away from Bro and his shitty katanas and evil puppets and screw everything! Screw his anxiety and screw everything!
…was big him's hand shaking?
He stopped doing the n00b thing of looking at his own reflection in someone else's shades. He actually looked at the guy. His hair was sticking up on the back, from where it'd pressed in the uncomfortable seat backs. His shades were slightly askew. His foot was jiggling, and the fingers on his other hands tapped out a tattoo on a knee.
Clearly, the man was in some distress. Really, Dave, what did you think? That seven years would be enough to wipe out a deep-seated fear of flying? You were just so wrapped up in your own fears, huh? You just didn't give a shit about your…you. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the fucking pride of the Strider family - douchenozzle number 1. He's so entrenched in himself, poor widdle Dave Strider, that he really doesn't give a shit about other people, the uncaring, psycho -
"Dave, stop." Li'l him wasn't really listening, so he tried again. "Hey, stop it. You've been too still for the last minute, and if you're anything like me" - wry smile - "you're blaming yourself for shit's that's not your fault. Stop. Stop. Thinking." He lay his cheek down on top of Dave's downy crown (ugh, that rhyme was terrible). "I was acting like an asshole, and you're being saddled like a rodeo pony by your phobia. Stop blaming yourself and jus - "
He found two skinny arms (Bro didn't feed him all that well…is the understatement of the millennium) wrapped around him, and Li'l Dave's face smooshed against his chest.
"Heh." Big Dave cracked a smile, even though it wasn't funny. He put his hands around Li'l Dave. (It's kind of hard when you're squished into economy class seats, but damned if he didn't try.) "where doing it man. where MAKING IT HAPEN."
"Shut up," Li'l Dave said, voice muffled by Big Dave's suit jacket.
Big Dave did.
(Li'l Dave eventually fell asleep, that poor fella. Must've tuckered himself out. Good thing, too, because Big Dave really needed to pee, and Li'l Dave's hugs were just as bad as Harley's.)
Li'l Dave under one arm and suitcase in the other, Dave Strider made a beeline for John Egbert.
(Why were they so fucking awesome? Because they packed so light they didn't need to check any luggage or wait for the damn carousel.)
John hadn't change at all. Windswept hair (Dave would never describe anyone else that way - cliched - but for John, it was just a bad pun), buck teeth, Ghostbusters tee, and khaki shorts.
"Hi, Dave and Dave!" To his credit, John did nothing but raise a brow at Li'l Dave's improbable position in Big Dave's arm.
"Brother from another mother." Big Dave nodded in acknowledgement. "Thanks," he said, as John took his suitcase.
"No problem!" John began heading toward the exit. "Dad's getting the car from the parking lot. How was the flight?"
Dave groaned.
("I'm taking the rocket board next time," Li'l Dave later said over ice cream.)