Hi, everybody! Welcome to my silly cliche crossover fic, featuring DaveJade as the only pairing of real prominence. I have another Dave/Jade story that is giving my terrible writer's block, so I decided to do this one in the meantime. :) But even if you do not like DaveJade, you might still get a kick out of this because I prioritize humor before romance, really, so it's really more on the "genfic" section of the sliding scale of categories. Thank you very much for reading and please do not forget to review!
Dave in Vunderbarland
Dave often wondered why the hell he let silly little girls drag him into all the shithole situations that they encountered- all of them- but before he could ever figure out the reason, he'd find himself jack-deep in another one of the figurative pits with no explanation linking him from how he got from point a to point b in the elaborate task of jumping through shithole-hoops that he participated in almost daily.
He was like a one-man circus, what with all the sweet catches and dude dodges and acrobatic-fucking-pirouettes he did just to keep Rose and Terezi from peeling his psyche from him like a monkey peels the skin from the banana to get to the flesh beneath.
He told this gem of an analogy to his sister in the half-serious, half-joking asshole brother's classic lilt that Rose had declared his tone to always take whenever she was getting close to unwrapping some secret Dave discovery. She looked up from the book she was reading and responded to his banana simile, "I am stripping you of your defenses, quite. But a banana is rather phallic, isn't it?"
"Yeah, well, your book is gay and phallic."
"Phallic? At some points, most likely. But that is natural for a romance, particularly one aimed at heterosexual females. Also, Jane Austen's imagery is probably not going to be focused around something so, how shall I put this?" Rose glanced at Kanaya and Terezi, who were holding their own Pride and Prejudice books identical to their human friend's (except Terezi's had the additive and Zombies as well as several distinct slobber stains), and her painted lips quirked into a smirk, "For a strong, idealized male protagonist and love interest, Austen wouldn't fixate on literary stand-ins for Eros that could bruise so easily."
"Whatever, bananas are awesome. Don't be dissing my bunches." Dave held his ground and wondered how much farther he could push the innuendo without actually piquing the curiosity of his two troll companions and running the risk of explaining- in detail- what he and Rose were bantering about.
However, Rose wasn't inhibited- the backlash was all primed for her brother, not her. She mercilessly pushed his coolkid limits in this little contest of sibling rivalry. "Bananas for emotions? Maybe. But for anything else, bananas are too… tender and soft ." She leered at Dave. "And Mr. Darcy isn't so narcissistic that he would be fixating upon something that resembled himself so closely."
Dave fought the urge to turn as red as his irises, but he could feel his ears mutiny so he could only follow suit and retreat. "Fuck you, sicko," he spluttered.
"Oh, I'm sure I don't have the tropical flavor you are looking for, dear brother, although the genealogy of fruit is certainly as incestuous as such a forbidden relation would be. And such an idea makes you the "sicko", I do believe."
She then curtly went back to reading her book so that Dave had to sit and stew over his swift defeat and try not to encourage the confused and intrigued stare Terezi was giving both himself and his sister.
He could practically feel the teal troll's liberal giggles pouring out of her mouth along with a, "Hey Dave, why are you a banana? I like bananas, but I always thought you were more of a candy apple or maybe a cherry" because she didn't have a clue about how humans worked or how low of a blow his sister had dealt. But luckily for him, a distraction suddenly presented itself and the fruit basket turnover of a conversation he so dreaded was averted.
Liv Tyler bounded across the grass and disappeared into the brush at the bottom of the hill the group of four children had situated themselves on followed by a pair of red-slippered feet attached to an unbelievably shiny mass of black hair.
Dave shifted out from under the parasol protecting Terezi and himself from the sun and shouted, "Hey hound dog, it ain't rabbit season yet! What's goin' on?"
She didn't even look back at him before she followed the little bunny into the bushes. A little miffed, Dave leaned back out of the sun, grateful that Terezi had forgotten her question and was once again completely content to lick her zombified book like a lollipop.
A few minutes later, Dave heard a sound off in the distance that reminded him of the bang of Jade's rifle. He stood up and paced forward.
"What the hell was that?"
Rose calmly looked up. "What was what? I didn't hear anything."
"There was a shot. In the distance."
"When?" inquired Kanaya.
"Just now. How did you miss it? Terezi, I know you're blind and shit, but you aren't deaf like these broads. You heard it, right?"
Terezi pursed her distinctive lips and cocked her head to the side. "Nope." Her tongue flicked out like a lizard's to test the air. "Don't taste or smell anything weird, either."
"Whatever, I'm going. You girls can stay here with your heads in your little gay porn books. Or," he looked at Terezi through his sunglasses, "Or your tongues. Actually, just," he held up his hands to hold Rose's oncoming jibes at bay, "I don't even know. Keep an ear out in case I'm, you know, actually right about something going down in the woods."
He scuttled down the hill and ignored Terezi's cry of "Bring me back some cherry Kool-Aid!" in favor of following the much softer shouts sounding from deeper in the woods.
"Yo, Jade! Jade! Hey! The rabbit done died yet?" He called. "'Cmon, Harley, answer me!" When she didn't he only became more persistent. "Narcolepsy isn't an excuse anymore, sweetheart, you're over that bullshit." He started some bullshit of his own for his one-sided conversation. "There's no playing ninepins or SBURB with the dwarves, either. Nope, no Rip Van Winkle for you- instead you just play Ghostbusters with a bunch of trolls and salamanders and nobody goes to sleep for a fuck ton of years, no sir."
A few more minutes passed and Dave began to get worried.
"Hello, will the real Jade Harley please stand up? No? What? You can't? You've fallen in the well? Shit, Jade, you can't do that- you're Lassie in this equation. Who the hell is going to tell me where you are if you can't do it yourself? Whuzzat? You can't get up? Should I call Life Alert?"
He jumped over a little stream and moved a few tree branches out of his way. "I hear there's a furry convention over at the Humane Society as part of some new fundraiser-"
Suddenly, a hand slapped over his mouth and Dave's twisted boy-humor was halted in its tracks.
Jade Harley was the owner of the hand, of course, and she drew it away and put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet. "That bestiality joke you were going for there was really gross, but everything else was funny."
Dave opened his mouth to retort but Jade held up her hand again. "Ah ah! No talking. We've got a rabbit to catch." Little Liv Tyler gave a small wave from a few feet in front of them both.
Again, Dave tried to ask her why since Liv didn't look like she was running, but Jade pressed her palm over his mouth again. "Shoosh! You'll scare it."
He moved his head. "The hell I-"
Jade made a strict face. "No words!"
"But—"
"I said no words!"
"Then why-"
"Because!"
"Because wh-?"
"There's no time to explain!"
"Dude, I'm the knight of-"
"Dave, please just do what I ask you!"
He pouted (with that coolkid deadpan) and crossed his arms and kept his lips shut. He also cocked out his hips and impetuously put his foot forward in the arrogant "fine-I-don't-give-a-shit-I'm-too-cool-for-this" way that he always did and watched his friend while pretending to make it look like he wasn't waiting for her to say, "Jump!" so he could ask, "How high? Because I am the big man and I HASS the rock and the court is ON FIRE and I can go as high or as low as you want." But he was, and it was a good thing, too, because this particular silly little girl was the one that made Dave traverse through what were by far the shittiest shithole-circus-hoops that ever existed and he needed to be ready to jump higher than over the moon at a moment's notice when he was with her.
Once, he had played a magical game of some destruction because she had a dream about it and said it was destined that they play it, and so that is what they did.
She said it, and even though he thought he wasn't going to, he did it. Or he tried his damnedest and fell on his ass while he attempted whatever absurd task she had inadvertently set him up for. But the point was he always ended up doing as she told him and that was all there was to say on the matter, really.
It still was. Even now Dave felt himself falling into a brand-new pit trap because of the scheming mind of the green-eyed girl who ultimately snatched him from his pouting pose (she was stronger than he was and when it came to making Dave cut his childish act short, she was simply the best there was) and dragged him after the mechanical bunny. Liv gave a small hop and scuttled deeper into the woods before it suddenly bounced, flipped in the air like a character in a cheesy Kung-Fu movie, and disappeared into a messy hole gaping out from beneath a tree.
Dave's eyes widened and he valiantly tried to hold his ground as his plucky companion practically dove for the hole.
"Woah, Jade! Woah, girl! Heel!"
It was to no avail. He dug his feet into the ground, but he only succeeded in creating two smaller craters that ended and merged with the third and largest one, the same one that Dave found himself being dragged into.
Today's figurative shithole was literally a hole and he hoped to whatever higher power he had not met, denounced, pissed off, or tried to kill (assuming it existed) that it was not actually full of shit.
Down the rabbit hole he and Jade tumbled- it uncomfortably bumped them in a rhythmic staccato that suspiciously reminded Dave of the familiar and repetitive chafe flights of stairs gave him- and after what felt like an eternity, it unceremoniously deposited them into a long hallway with many doors, like the world's longest apartment hall. It twisted about as he tried to get a good view of it as he and Jade rolled along, but it wasn't until he felt himself hit the wall at the end of the tunnel and held a sudden meeting between his posterior and the ground that he could put his head on straight and look around.
But, as always, he neglected the setting in favor of running his mouth. "Damn, Harley, were you even looking where you were going?" He sat up and adjusted his glasses. "I could've seriously lost my cool and that would have been catastrophic. Hearkened the end of the world, for real this time." He looked around but didn't see her. Had he managed to lose her again already?
"Dave," he heard a squeak from below him, "I'm pretty sure I asked you not to say anything! But can you please get off of me?"
He looked down to see that Jade had broken his fall with her body. "Shit, Jade, you okay? I didn't realize you were down there. See, remember what I meant about that Lassie comment? You can't be the one falling the fuck down because-" He scrambled off of her and leaned back down to help her up, but instead he was pushed back up with another set of her fingers over his mouth.
"You are worse than Karkat at keeping your mouth closed sometimes, you know?"
Dave visibly bristled for a moment before he accepted Jade's implied challenge with a growl and peeled her hand off of his mouth and used it to pull her up.
"Thanks," she said, stretching her back and looking around. "This is a really neat place, huh?" She held up a pointed finger. "That's rhetorical, Dave. Just use your eyes to look and nod "yes" or "no"."
He really wanted to say, "What if the answer is "maybe"?" but he didn't. Instead he just shrugged.
"Aw, Dave, don't be like that! We're going to have lots of fun if you just trust me and believe that the world isn't as gloomy as your glasses make it!"
He just shrugged again. The hall wasn't unlike the one in the apartment he and his Bro had lived in, except the doors weren't all uniform in size. "What the hell," he muttered. "Are we in a building made for mice?" He kneeled down and put his eye to the keyhole of the tiniest door he had ever seen. "The keyhole is practically as big as the door. Damn," he griped.
Jade came over and put her chin on his head. "Daaave," she sighed, "I keep telling you not to talk! Why don't you ever think about what you are doing before you start running your mouth? You need to save your words for when they are important! If you keep using them like they're worthless, pretty soon they will be! They won't have any weight!"
Honestly, the constant chiding for him to be quiet was getting on his nerves, but he was inclined to do as she asked since she put her arms around his waist and tugged him into a backwards-hug. He tried to lean backwards and relax into her, but he quickly learned that Jade's hug was hardly a sign of affection. She tightened her grip and hoisted him up to his feet.
He screwed his face into a less-than-stoic frown and planted his hands firmly on his hips while she took a big, ornate key from her pocket and placed it into the keyhole.
"See," Jade said as she fiddled with the door, "This key probably opens this door. So if you give me a second, I'll open it for you and we can see what is inside! I wonder what it could be. But let's not guess! We should save it to be a surprise. Surprises are usually wonderful, if you look at them from the right perspective." The door loosened with a small click and Jade gently tugged it open and pressed her face into the doorframe. After a moment, she pulled back and beckoned to her friend.
He hemmed and hawed and acted disinterested while she stared at him with her big, eager eyes. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and joined her on the ground, trying his best to mask the curiosity that was leaking out from under his sunglasses.
The miniscule door acted as a window to the most vibrantly-colored garden he had ever seen. A thicket of magenta water lilies gathered together in clumps over water so blue and serene that it looked like blown glass right down to the little waterfall it trailed into. The crystalline stream filtered in and around patches of saffron daffodils and white roses so pristine that they reminded both children of sunlight being directed off of a mirror. Next to them, orange marigolds peeked out with celadon stems amongst a tangle of violet vines that continued around on the ground and up the gilded trunks of the manicured trees framing the whole picture. Above the emerald canopies of their leaves (all sculpted to resemble various objects of suspicious familiarity to Dave, though he couldn't quite remember what they were, exactly) draped an indigo sky littered with snowy clouds.
Jade pressed her face next to Dave's and giggled as they both looked through to the secret garden. She felt his expression change to one of awe from against her cheek but didn't say anything about it- he would stop the instant she pointed out that sometimes something as uncool as a garden could make him happy. He would stop letting the wonder seep through him and then he would start trying to regain his coolkid act by spouting nonsense and he'd ruin the magic. Instead she nudged him with her shoulder to send the message in a different way, a way that he didn't have to bother with trying to deny. He playfully pushed back in good-naturedly reluctant agreement and continued to look at the garden while she edged away and turned to watch him.
He was a funny guy, that Dave, in that he felt like he always had to say one thing even if he meant another. Especially if he meant another, actually, but his nonverbal cues were so clear that the words from his mouth meant almost nothing in comparison to the ones from the rest of him.
Amused, she continued to watch him with his mouth slightly open and his head turned a little to the side, like she imagined he must've done when he was much younger and his Bro hadn't fully instilled the rule of cool onto anything besides his eyes. Eventually, he noticed that she was staring at him and his gaze flitted from the rainbow of a scene before him and to her.
He turned his body so she could no longer see his scarlet iris through the side of his glasses and sat cross-legged, silently asking her, (What the hell are you staring at, Harley? I know I'm irresistible but don't be shy, come on up and ask for a picture with me. It'll last longer and then you can copy it and sell it to all of your furry friends for an ungodly sum of money. Yeah, I'd do that for you. Come and be my paparazzi, lady. Say Gaga.)
She laughed and egged him on, so he cocked an eyebrow and brought up his hands as in, (Hey, are you saying I'm not some kind of a sexual fantasy for all your rabid fur friends? Harsh, Jade, harsh. You didn't even break that one to me gently- my dream of being Mickey Mouse's pin-up boy will forever be a mere fantasy. Damn. Sonic the Hedgehog is never calling me back, is he? What a fucking tease.)
Jade fell over in a fit of laughter, sending her skirts all around her in a pool of fabric. She could hear his deadpan facetiousness in her head and his subtle visual cues only added to the clarity.
He gave a triumphant smirk and returned his arms to their neutral position in the crook of his forearms and biceps. With a flick of his chin, his attitude changed completely. (That's enough bullshit. Where the fuck are we and what are we going to do about it?)
Jade pulled herself back up and smoothed out her dress. (When had she changed out of her godtier outfit? The red slippers and striped socks were familiar, but she had definitely not been wearing an apron and the witching gown surely was not full of so much lace and ribbons every other time he had seen it.)
"Dave, I know you're a little bewildered, but I'm sure things will turn out fine. The little bunny and I were playing a game of tag and I shot a rock it threw at me and… you followed me, and now we're here!
(That explains jack shit.)
"Aw, don't be like that. We're here now, so we ought to make the best of it!"
He opened his mouth to reply, but she stopped him. "The rules here are different, Dave. Besides me, efurrybody will take you literally and that won't turn out well.
Dave leaned his neck forward to prepare for a snide comment, but pulled himself out of his slouch and realized, (Jade, you did not seriously just say, "efurrybody", did you?)
Instead of gracing him with an answer to the furry comment, she motioned to the garden. "Shall we go in?"
He tightened his lips and looked at the mouse-sized door. (Hup. Damn. Love to, but unfortunately I am not one of your "efurrybodies" named Jerry. I ain't fitting in there, and even if I could, my coolkid mojo would get stuck in the doorframe and hold me there like Mary holds the frickin' Christ child to her breast. I'm like God's gift to the world except I'm dying for your sane rather than your sins, apparently, and therefore there is no way I can fit through this door.)
Immediately, Jade's face adopted a mischievous grin that reminded Dave of John way too much for his liking. "I am the Witch of Space, silly coolkid!"
Within Dave's head, Jade's solution to the problem clicked. (Nonsense, pagan. I'll burn you at the stake), he'd have mocked had he been speaking.
Already, Jade had shrunk herself down and stood at the doorway, waiting. "Go drink the thing I left for you over there," she called, pointing to a little glass container on a table nested between two of the larger-sized doors. "But don't drink all of it! Just a few sips!"
With a feigned air of indifference, Dave excitedly scrambled over and took the bottle in his hands. The shape was familiar and Dave turned it over and discovered that the stopper was carved into the shape of a stem. He forgot Jade's warnings to keep his mouth shut. "Apple juice. Wonder if John is gonna tell me somebody pissed in it. As if," he chuckled to himself, and prepared to do what the bottle asked in the swirly green writing on the little parchment leaf until he heard a little voice whisper into his ear.
"Hey, d'you think Howie Mandel got his hands on that after Jade did?"
Startled, Dave whipped his head around to see a goofy, buck-toothed smirk made to match the one Jade had been sporting not moments before, except this one was on the face of what he assumed to be the world's largest flying mouse. It dipped and bobbed just above his shoulder and gave a little wave.
"John?" Dave questioned.
"I dunno, am I?" He gave a goofy laugh and flapped his big ears to move his body above the apple juice container in his friend's hands. With a plop, he sat himself upon it and snatched the label out of Dave's fingers.
"So it says, "Drink Me!", huh? I don't know if you should. Little Monsters are everywhere. Might be pee."
"John, we have had this conversation before. Not everything in this world relates back to your stupid movies and how people urinate into juice containers."
"Movies? What movies? You're the one who mentioned movies. In fact, you're the one who started talking about pissing in apple juice, not me!
"Yeah, well, whatever. This apple juice is one hundred percent juice. Actually, it's more like one hundred n' fifty percent juice. So juicy that it makes Juicy Juice cry tears of its own inadequate juice in a sad, sad effort to make up for their lacking percentage."
"You sure? You seem kind of hesitant to me."
Truth be told, John the mouse had inspired doubt in Dave- not directed at Jade, of course, but at the juice itself. What if the John-mouse, hoping to engage in the one thing sacred to all that is bromance (that thing is colloquially and technically referred to as "fucking with each other"), had popped open the bottle and relieved himself inside between the time that Jade had placed it there (when HAD that been, exactly? It could have been days ago, for all he knew!) and the time that Dave had picked it up.
Still, in this unspoken bromantic contest of who was the bigger jackass, John for tricking Dave into drinking pee (or for NOT drinking apple juice) or Dave for having the brusque guts to drink either substance in the face of a grinning cheese-chucker, Dave could not back down. It did not matter that the odds were against him- his pride as a boy depended upon him being the most foolhardy moron in the room.
"Whatever, this is so not pee."
"Hey, I'm just trying to help you out. I don't know if it is or not, either. Just thought it would be the best bro thing to do, warning you and all."
Damn that John Egbert. Damn him and his dewy eyes and innocent charm. Damn him to fucking hell and then un-damn him because Dave was too fond of him to actually leave him there with his damned "best bro" sincerity face. Dave mentally cursed him as he sneered and plucked the little mouse off the glass apple by the spindly tail poking out from the back of its blue breeches. "This isn't piss and you know it. You're just trying to trick me with your sweet talk and your big blue derpass eyes."
John stopped squirming long enough to blink at Dave from behind his glasses and flutter his eyelashes. "Oh, Dave, I'm swooning."
"John, you've been swooning ever since you met me. So have I. Unfortunately, both of us were swooning over the same person and that person happens to be the outrageously awesome guy holding you by the wormy tail. Now, I'mma drink me this apple juice that totally isn't piss and I'm gonna drink it all in one go so that you can see just how much of a failure your prank was, oh ghosty trickster." He unceremoniously dropped John onto the table, removed the cork, closed his eyes, hesitated, completely threw Jade's instructions to take a few sips to the wayside, and...
...downed the entire contents of the bottle.
Thank you for reading and please don't forget to review, even if it's just to say that you liked/hated it! Thanl you! :)