Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s bright.

Immediately, her eyes squeeze shut against the onslaught of surgical lights, lips peeling back into a grimace. There’s cool steel against her back, warmed slightly by her body being pressed to it for long enough. Her hand lifts from the surface at her hips, fingers spread in front of her face to try blocking some of the overpowering glare. It doesn’t help, but she muscles through what might be the beginning of a migraine to keep her eyes open.

Despite the shade, nothing comes into focus just yet. Her squinting minimizes the stab of bright bright bright into her skull, at least. Slowly, she goes to sit up, bracing her other hand against the steel and leveraging. Something is different, a floating and airy quality that escapes her. Something is gnawing on the back of her mind, something about how easily breath rushes into her lungs and how her legs tuck into a fold. Heels to ass, a properly feminine position.

“Rose?”

It’s a hoarse voice, familiar but not, tinged with a masculine drawl. Everything comes rushing back, dark water pulling her mind through the hazy recollections. The Tumor, Derse, and Dave.

Dave.

She remembers Dave, a slender silhouette in form-fit purple, with his finely-boned face and his pink lips. His calloused hand in hers, so much bigger and softer and painted at the tips of her fingers. Rose can put a name to the way his brows creased together, the terror in his eyes even with his head tipped to meet her gaze. She remembers that he stood with her anyway, despite the way breath hitched in his birdcage chest.

But there was more. There were serrated teeth, there were moments of suspended time, the Knight expending energy he didn’t have trying to stop the inevitable. Golden scales, coal black skin, a monster with fuchsia lips that halted The Tumor’s count and wrapped invisible fingers around their throats, their skulls, their conscious minds. She remembers Dave’s eyes sliding shut and she remembers the fear that prickled her own skin before all went blank.

“Dave?”

Her voice is different. Her accent remains, coming out nasal and sharp, through an unusual pitch. Rose parts her lips to lick over them, hand still cupped over her brows. Her gaze burns for answers, flicking around the room, trying to find something… anything to explain where they are. All she can discern is red, reflecting that same stabbing light back into her eyes, fuzzed at the edges. No, not just the edges. Nothing comes into focus, regardless of how she widens her eyes or scrunches them tight.

Panic is taking hold faster than she’d like. Choking, terrifying ice, sitting in her throat like a cat caught in a drainpipe. Dave speaks again, still strange and still familiar in a way she can’t parse. “Rose,” he says, and his fingertips brush her shoulder. Desperate, she moves to grip at his offering, he must be blinded by it all too and desperate as her if he’s reaching out.

Smooth, large hands greet her, pressing eagerly to her small and calloused palms. Rose feels her face tense in confusion. “Don’t freak out,” he says, and pulls with their joined hands, “—just come here.” Without question, she moves closer. The steel beneath her bare skin isn’t any cooler than what she’d awakened against, implying temperature regulation. All too suddenly, her eyes can make something out. Pale brown skin, unblemished and gleaming, never seen a hint of sunshine. Her cheek pillows to it, her chest presses to a broader one.

Blinking, Rose examines her hand for the first time, splayed out over a pec that it can’t even fully cover. Against the smooth skin below, her knuckles stand out with fissures and scars, skin so richly tan that she feels warm just looking at it. Her arm is thin. Her body is slender. Dave’s grip on her other fingers is firm, but his free hand settles against her waist on a curve.

In a shock, her gaze travels down. The world is blurry beyond their bodies, a haze of red metal and aching brightness, but she can make their twining legs now. A familiar length hangs flaccid between Dave’s parted thighs, the very source of years spent unsatisfied, characteristically curving to the left. An unfamiliar soft mound sits beneath her trim and toned stomach, something immediately sparking in her curiosity.

“Dave,” she whispers, all too aware of how soft her voice is, how the feminine pitch comes naturally without her consciously selecting words and smoothing her gruffer rumbles, “—is this… you?”

“In the flesh,” he supplies, and maybe he hasn’t quite figured out how to maintain a flat affect with her voice— Her voice with his words, is it his voice now? —because she can hear the shock that scrapes his long vowels. “In the buff, awkward, gangly flesh. I—” Rose hears him swallow, watches her Adam’s apple bob with the motion, “You weren’t expecting me to be this small.”

She digests the observation, mulling it over. “It’s different, from down here. I’m, well. I’m the pastry chef your mother warned you about.” Somehow the jab feels cruel to levy against her body, the one he’s inhabiting, the one with soft rolls that she’s actually somewhat amazed to press her (his?) abs to and wide thighs and lotion-soft skin unmarred by scars and weather. Maybe an apology would sound insane. Maybe this is already insane and she’s clinging to a fragment of sanity in the hopes of pretending this isn’t happening.

He’s a step ahead, as always. “Come on, Lalonde. Don’t knock the meat prison. I’m kind of digging all this girth. Sort of cathartic to be thick as shit after burning all my ass on the grind.” Which, he does have a point about being trim, but if the way her heels sink into his— her— his— her ass are any indication?

“I think we may have wildly different opinions on the exact fortitude of your cake, Strider.” She sounds so much more posh, refined, elegant. She’s loathe to give it up. If the way his black-smeared lips pulling into a lopsided smirk is any indication, he’s taking just as much comfort out of hearing a voice, his voice, match her so infallibly. “Though I will admit that where you have a handsome serving of angel food, I have a triple tiered assortment of red velvet and fudge. Heavy is the ass I must bear.”

A snort. “Happy to take it off your hands.”

Her teeth dig into her lower lip, cracked and scarred and perfectly lush. Her own grin is impish, sly, it feels perfect. “A liberation I will come to appreciate, surely.”

And, despite how they joke, she does. Rose finds herself rocking back to sit on her ass, hers hers hers, with her scarred legs kicked up over his wide hips to look him over. His inherited nearsightedness is something to adjust to, but a small price to pay. Hardly any price at all, if she’s being honest, because it allows her to map him out with her hands, to glean a new appreciation for once-hers curves. Dave takes it all, seated back on his palms but looking on with no small amount of appreciation for her, or him.

… No small amount of appreciation at all.

“Ah— fuck. Uh.” His hand comes up, black nails chipped and palm smearing more matte lipstick over his face, once-hers eyes cast aside in clear embarrassment. Dave’s caught between apologizing and proclaiming that nothing is wrong, touting his fineness like a badge, but what point is that in that? He flushes such a pretty red, fitting on his strong nose and burning down the back of his neck, but looks to Rose when she clears her throat.

Here, she takes a leap. This warm and liquid sensation in her, this euphoria, her palm slipping down carved muscle to the soft pouch of skin just above her pelvis. Rose eagerly presses her fingers against it, soaking that reality in. Slipping down further, until she’s tucking between flushed lips and withdrawing soaked fingers for his perusal.

“Your skin feels incredible,” she confesses, falling back on prose and poetry and half-formed adoration. “I know it was yours and these bones were yours to break but I can’t imagine living in a better place now.” Maybe she can convey how good this is. How much she doesn’t mind Dave’s lips parting for a sharp exhale because her, his, half-hard cock is weeping a drop of clear precum onto the red floor.

They can bask in these new sensations together. His mouth is opening, his perfect white teeth a contrast to the slightly crooked ones behind her lips, his hands are huge in comparison to hers and they mold against her hips. Before, there was fault and there was doubt and there was hating the very air she breathed because it was in her lungs, in her too-broad chest, in her too-broad body. But now it’s different, it’s crystal clear, it’s puzzle pieces that fit together and make one whole. It’s Dave, Dave, Dave in his entirety, and—

With a bang, something opens and tyrannical suffocation is back. Cold ink, seafoam and coal dust, wells up in the back of her mind, manicured claws dig into her middle and Dave looks back at her with terror before the black blots out her vision. It all goes blank. It all goes blank. It all goes red.

She hopes Dave is okay.

Chapter Text

This fucking blows.

As the Dude of Clocks, the Mans of Linear Progression, and occasionally even the Knight of Time? He’s uniquely equipped to say this is bullshit. Everything about it, from the weight of red and white shackles weighing his wrists down to the sprawling, grinning, heinously oversized alien sneering down at him. She’s being snide, in Her heavily accented tri-toned voice, about how She expected better.

—expected stronger, expected dangerous, expected them to expect Her interception of their timeline before they could ever grow up to be threats, it’s insane to follow Her logic when She describes them as successful paragons of media that stood up to Her regime, but She expected more, wanted a fight—

He’s heard it before, easily tuned out in favor of glancing to Rose. She still hasn’t woken up, conked the fuck out on the weird mat their captor laid them out on. Sprawled uselessly before what might be a throne underneath Her wild mane of hair, Dave falls back on resentment. He looks back to Rose, to— well. Himself, in a way. It’s strange to look over her body, his body, the close-cropped hair and long lashes and barely-handful tits, without that pinch of discomfort.

Without that… ache of hatred.

“Good, huh?” the tyrant asks, some fucked up interpretation of monarchy thrown through a blender. Ursula, but yoked and with only four limbs unless Her hair has something it’d like to tell him. He decides not to poke that bear, fixing the alien queen with a pinched stare. It feels good to set his jaw, wide and strong as his broad and squared shoulders. He can’t get over it.

“Yeah, yeah. Squint all you like. Come on, isn’t this nice?” Her hand is big enough to encircle his borrowed torso, lifting from Her throne to wave over at Rose’s prone body. “Think I ain’t noticed the two of you tryin’ to get under each other’s skin befoar? Reel-y went outta my way givin’ the gift that keeps givin'.”

Whatever iteration of himself and Rose teed this bitch off, he hopes to one day commend them. Or thank them for leading to this, giving Her the bright idea of trading minds to opposing bodies. Does She think it’s torture to look down at himself now? That he’s looking at Rose with discomfort instead of wonder? Man, fuck it. Whatever helps Her sleep at night.

He’s not interested in holding a conversation with Her layered voice giving him the first aches of a migraine, and She isn’t pressing the issue. Just grinding Her teeth together in what might be a smile. Dave doesn’t look too closely, crawling unceremoniously towards his companion with one smooth hand extended to brush her bangs back.

The instant their skin touches, Rose opens her eyes. Crimson stares up at him, and his stomach flips with something like euphoria. It fits her. It suits her. The grimace, the thick brows he never tweezed down, the way she recognizes him seconds later because he’s hovered close enough to be seen. Her smile with his gap-toothed teeth feels like a balm over his panic. “Dave,” she whispers, like she’s saying a prayer of thanks. Crazy bitch.

He loves that about her.

“Hey, gorgeous. You come ‘round here often?” he manages, reveling in how his voice dips easily and rasps around the vowels naturally. Her eyes scrunching tells him she likes it too. With his steady help, she’s setting up and gripping his wrists like a lifeline, forehead pressed to his shoulder. It’s got to be disorienting to have eyesight this good, and give it up for his. But that’s another thing she’s great at; adapting where no one else can.

They both startle when the tyrant sighs, picking at Her teeth with a pinkie claw that’s easily as long as his— Rose’s now— forearm. Jesus had no say when God was crafting this piece of work, that much he’d bet on. “You’re just as disgusting as half-formed ingrates as you were when you actually posed a threat. I should have known. Maybe you’d like to entertain us with that ugly mating display of yours, too. Just get it over with.”

Rose’s lips purse against his collarbone, eyes squinting at what he suspects is a blob of pink and black and gold. “Pardon my French, but are you soliciting us for a round of the horizontal tango? A leg in the sack race? Just a smidgen of pattycake, while you look on?”

Leave it to her, glorious and fearless and absolutely fucking blind, to find the jab that makes fins flex out into the open on every inch of the tyrant’s throat. The threat display is doubly hilarious when paired with Her voice, three parts and all whinging, as She snarls a reply. “Don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous. Who wants to watch two squishy upstart lifeforms writhe together like flagella?”

The humans share a look, painfully amused. “Not you, obviously. Nah, you’re completely repulsed by the mere thought of my burying my throbbing meat truncheon in her squelching slip’n’slide. That’s the worst thing you can even conceive of, which is absolutely why we’re on this springy mattress thing, in the buff, surrounded by monitoring equipment.”

A beat.

“Slip and slide?” Rose stage-whispers against his throat, barely choking back her laughter.

Dave has nothing to defend himself with, so he settles for telling the truth in an actual whisper: “I’m nervous.”

Immediately, his gut punches through the floor, bypassing his feet entirely, because her scarred hand circles his dick. Holy shit. That’s a sensation he never thought he’d experience, and he’s already pooling blood below the belt. He makes eye contact with the towering alien dictator staring them down, lips parted. Rose’s loose fist strokes him base to tip.

“I think we can do something about that, Strider.”

Their captor fits two talons between Her teeth and leans forward, fins laying flat with Her apparent interest. Dave’s fingers are already slipping to cup at Rose’s chest, her lips sealing against his throat in open kisses that send shivers through his core.

“Shit yeah, Lalonde. Let’s take this torturous bodyswap for a spin.”