Hey, guys! Computer is now virus-free and I'm here to deliver into your hot little hands a chapter of Davesprite and Jade, inspired by the update of 12/19/11 because I felt like Davesprite needed some love. Also a certain one of you asked about it and I was all, "YES I WANNA GO THAT ROUTE." Lastly, I mean, come on, all the Daves love Jade. All of them. I kind of plan on using that thought later on because can you imagine all the shenanigans a zillion Daves can cause? Oh wait, you've read Homestuck. You can imagine that.

Oh, and I refer to Davesprite as Dave sometimes because, let's face it, "Davesprite" is awkward to say all the time and he is still a Dave, technically.

Thank you so much to all my lovely watchers and readers and reviewers thus far! I really appreciate your feedback and I hope you will continue to comment and constructively critique as you see fit.

I do not own Homestuck!


Sick Jave, Bro!

The Beatles: Blackbird (DUUUUUHHHHH)

"Ha ha ha, you fucked up," he told John as the message in a bucket hurled itself into the portal Jade created for it.

His blue buddy cursed and submitted to letting his spirited friend give him a ribbing in real life, but soon he was swept away into the crowd of salamanders and turtles and (ugh) nakkodiles and Dave the sprite was left with no chums to pester.

Except Jade Harley.

"Feelin' so useless now, miss Witch of Space?" he said, nonchalantly gliding over to her.

She smiled and he suddenly felt as small as he had been not ten minutes ago when she had actually been his horizon. Her newfound joy was like sunshine. She was sunshine.

Come to think of it, that was no exaggeration, albeit she was a little greener than anyone was used to.

"You were right, I guess. Suddenly I just… knew what I needed to do and did it! It was so silly of me to think that I was useless earlier."

"Don't worry about it. It's all fixed now, isn't it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say it is all fixed." Her happy smile faded and she looked down at the planets in her hands. "But I know that we have taken a huge step in bringing everything closer to being that way."

Davesprite gestured towards her with his palms upturned. "Well, yeah, but I meant with you. I… we can't have you going off and deciding halfway through this thing that you just can't do it and bursting into tears again. I mean, it's your party and you can cry if you want to," he held up a hand and a wing to keep her from interrupting his flippantly expressed concern, "or at least, if you need to. There's no shame in that. It's just that psychologically damaging you would be a disaster on a cosmic scale." He chuckled. "And I mean that in both a literal and figurative sense."

Jade knew that while her feathered friend held a predominant sarcastic monotone, the undercurrent of sincerity in his face and voice was real.

""Thanks, Dave," she eventually said, casting her gaze to him.

Her eyes shone with gratitude and Dave swore he could see forever in them and knew right then and there that he wanted to do everything he could to keep them trained on him rather than wander off into the visions of the universe she was now a guardian of. "We can't have you breaking on me again. Or us. That'd blow. And besides, the-"

Whatever trite wordplay he was about to come up with dissolved in his mouth when she came up to him and tugged on his good wing.

"I'm pretty okay right now, but you aren't and we should probably focus on fixing that instead of sealing up the cracks in my newly- built confidence." She circled his waist with her arms.

Her fur tickled his face and he let out a startled puff of air at her intrusion to his personal space. Amusingly, her white ears reacted and bent back at the disturbance and he moved to put his nose in her hair and pull her in closer.

Before he could, he felt her laughter reverberate off his chest and her body heat fade as she took a step backwards. "That tickles! And even after I made that silly metaphor just for you!"

"It could have used some polishing before you offered it up in hopes of winning the great king Dave's praise, but he definitely noticed." He had also noticed the soiled bandage previously encasing his middle in her hand and realized she had not been trying to hug him at all.

"Excuse me, can you please wash this and find me a new bandage and a first-aid kit?" She handed the dirty cloth to an eager nearby salamander.

"I'm really not sure disinfecting a sprite wound is consequential. I think it's representational or some shit for spiritual damage on a different plane, kind of like how a health meter is just a way to show how fucked you are so far rather than show how much blood or something your avatar has lost, so-"

She shooshed him and gave him a pap on the back to lead him to the edge of the ship before turning to her yellow consort again. "Can you please bring me a brush, too, if it is handy?"

The salamander bubbled in gleeful compliance and scurried off to fulfill her request before she could even thank it. Beside her, Davesprite found Jade's perplexed expression amusing, especially since her new mutt anatomy amplified her confused look.

She had been their most recent savior, after all, so it made sense that they would want to grant her every wish. This was hardly like the original Wizard of Oz- no, here Dorothy and the Witch were one and the little people adored and revered her (and her little dog ears, too.)

The other three children of legend also made quite a splash in the strange land of Sburb, though, what with John mindlessly traipsing around and inspiring awe and Rose near-heartlessly using every advantage she could think of to move them forward. And although Dave Strider the Knight had cowered away from the limelight, he had certainly proved himself to be useful and formidable as well.

Dave Strider the sprite was just a flying monkey.

He blocked out those thoughts and cocked his head. "I get the logic behind the medical stuff, which is a moot point, but what are you going to do with that brush?"

A small sigh escaped her lips as she let go of him and planted her feet in a good-naturedly indignant stance and addressed the green atmosphere whizzing by in front of them. "It's the principal of treating the gaping hole in you that counts, okay?"

He let the brush question go in favor of the more promising snide comment. "If we were doing things on principle we'd be still playing an unscratched game just to say we did it the right way."

"I wish it were that easy."

Dave ground his back teeth as he realized how many negative thoughts he'd probably just fished out of the muck for which they'd just warped time and space to try to scratch out of their lives. "Hey," he said gently, "It'll be hard but I know we can do it. Nothing that's worth it is easy." A shaded iris wandered to the side of his face so that Jade could see it from where she was standing. "At least, it isn't easy if your name isn't Dave Strider and the bigass thing you are attempting is being so fucking cool it hurts. Totally worth it, though."

At first she giggled, but when his severed wing distracted her she stopped. "Does it hurt?" she inquired.

"…No."

She narrowed her eyes. There was no lying to her and no dodges (no matter how artful) went completely unnoticed.

"Like I said," he succumbed to changing his answer, "totally worth it." Dave crossed his arms and glued his vision to the viridian expanse of air in the hopes of staving off the onslaught of concern he'd just unleashed.

Luckily, the plucky little salamander arrived to save him with some materials and a bucket of water. "All we could find on board, Miss Spacey Heroine," it babbled.

Jade thanked it and it shuffled away with an affectionate beam of bubbles emanating from its mouth.

"Looks like somebody likes you," Dave teased.

Her huge green orbs grew and she whipped around to face him. "No! He was just being nice!" She chanced a glance to the crowd of adoring amphibians and reptiles (respectfully keeping a ten foot radius away from them despite their obvious hovering) You really think that salamander is an admirer?" Gently, she turned him around and started cleaning the hole in his abdomen but kept one eye trained on the consorts.

"One of many," he muttered.

"So I have a bunch of lovesick turtles and salamanders and nakkodiles?"

He shielded his wince from her with his shades as she dabbed at him and shrugged. "Nah, you got other stuff, too."

Then he realized what he said and wished he had not been raised with his mouth set on automatic no matter what the sicknasty rapping rewards usually were.

"Like what?" Methodically, she began fold the cloth the salamander had brought her so that it became the right size to wrap around her injured friend's waist.

Open foot, insert mouth. "That Karkat seems fond of you. Seemed like he was pestering you an awful lot." She set down her impromptu bandage and cleaned Dave's body some more.

"Oh, no. That was just Karkat being Karkat. He just wanted to scream at somebody."

Secretly, Dave congratulated himself on his nice abscond, but Jade's next words proved congratulations premature.

"But he's actually pretty nice once you get to know him."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He flies off the handle a lot but he was really helpful after my… spriteself created a big fiasco."

"…Huh."

"Yeah, he even tried to apologize to me and everything, in his way. He's really not that bad at all, just frustrates easily. He even kind of helped with the frog hunting adventure- he's a really hard worker." She reclaimed her folded sheet and began to wrap it around Dave's middle.

Dave didn't show it but his blood was absolutely boiling in a jealous rage. Fuck that abscond, he should have manned up and aggressed this issue rather than dance around it and hear about some fuckass trying to pull a heel-face turn to an emotionally vulnerable girl.

Had he known about his newly-tiered godself's friendship with Terezi and Karkat's conversation with him about it, he probably would have lost it and started inner self-loathing fires with wild abandon. And those fires wouldn't have even been the sick kind. Then again, they might've been quite sick- the lovesick kind. The whole situation was groan-worthy.

Jade finished dressing Dave's stomach and moved on to his damaged wing.

"I think Karkat just wants to be friends with people but doesn't know how."

"So you never told me what you planned to do with that brush."

Startled by his abrupt subject change, Jade raised her eyebrows and peeked at him around his plentiful plumage. He guarded his expression by pretending to adjust his sunglasses.

"Well." she decided that there wasn't much she could do for his clipped appendage and picked up what had grabbed his attention instead. "I know you have feathers and not fur, but I figured I could groom you."

"What? You think I don't keep myself clean or something?"

She gaped. "Oh, no! I just…" her voice got quiet. "Bec always liked it when I brushed him and I wanted to do something nice for you." She huffed and regained her chipper bravado. "I actually kind of like you, you know?"

As expected, Dave's face remained unmoved (Striders, even sprites of Striders, did not show emotion- that was for lesser creatures) but he could feel his feathers puffing themselves out as a warm feeling of euphoria and anxiety spread throughout his body.

It did not matter that Jade's comment was most likely platonic in nature. The fact that she was at all fond of him- just hearing her say it (it wasn't like they weren't friends already) - was the greatest news he'd gotten for the entire duration of his life as a sprite.

Still, his wings and chest were inflating at a rapid rate and he could hear Jade spitting out feathers as they engulfed her.

"Am I making you nervous?"

Lies were useless and escaping impossible, but he could still distract with a showy enough ruse. "Just making it easier for you to manscape."

It worked and pretty soon he felt hands shake as she gently pushed him into a sitting position on the edge of the ship as her frame was wracked with chuckles. "You are so silly!"

"Thanks, I'm here all week." And longer, if the three years Jade predicted held true. Honestly, he had a feeling that they would finagle their way out of such a long wait, but if a three year trip meant that long with Jade and him and a brush and no Karkat and no real Dave to take her away, he was completely okay with it.

He hated himself for thinking like that.

Jade, who had started humming as she brushed, noticed his mood change and paused in smoothing out his wings.

"What is it?"

"Hunh?"

"You… shooshed down your feathers suddenly. Is everything okay? Do you want me to stop?"

"No, no, it wasn't you. You're all good. Proceed."

Being a concerned and aggravatingly perceptive female (in Dave's world, there was apparently no other kind), she did not. "Do you want to talk about it?"

He stayed stock still for a moment. There was no lying to Jade and there was no effective way to run.

He found that he could hide nothing from her to be one of the worst things about her.

So he just said, "No, I don't want to right now" and she nodded and kept on brushing, dropping the issue completely.

He found that she would let him keep secrets anyway to be one of the best things about her, a quality that shone almost as brightly as her starry eyes.

The silence that fell wasn't uncomfortable, but Dave was known as both a human and a sprite to abhor such a doldrum. He tilted his head backwards to look at her face.

"Hey Jade," he said, "Caw caw."

She grinned and nudged him with her shoulder. "Woof woof."

He smirked in reply and closed his eyes, leveling his head and leaning back into her while she kept messing with his feathers.

The Knight of Time might get mad, he told himself.

And then, the more Davesprite thought about it, the solution was simple and appealed to all parties involved:

Fuck him.