ALPHA DAVE:

An AU where a random Strider OC falls into D's arms literally while he's in the midst of a manic episode.

Papers sprawl out around him. The living room looks like a tornado has blown through, scattering everything from pages of script to hastily scrawled sketches. D’s mania has already hit its peak, and he’s beginning to come out the other side, but he’s still working on 36 hours without sleep and countless cups of coffee. He doesn’t need it to stay awake (his insomnia wouldn’t let him sleep even if he tried — and he’s long since given up trying), but rather the normalcy of drinking it helps him focus on the spectacle of his current project.

Ink stains his fingertips, smudges against his face from where he’s rubbed to alleviate stress. D’s thoughts are racing so quickly that he feels like an icarus in freefall, grasping for any stray ideas to thread into the tapestry of his story. He’s been working on this for the last week and an unknowable amount of days. He knows he’s going to drop, but he can’t turn himself off. He needs to keep going until he finishes, and D feels close enough to a breakthrough to justify it.

D leans forward, braces his left hand on his sketchbook, and smears charcoal over it as he strains to reach a binder a few feet away. There’s not an inch of the floor that isn’t covered in something — paper, half-eaten and discarded food, or empty overturned cups spilling coffee onto books or devices. It takes three failed attempts before he snags plastic and yanks it into his lap.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” D murmurs to himself as he hunches forward over it. Red permanent marker bleeds through the paper as he writes a handful of notes in a scrawl so messy as to be unreadable. It makes sense to him now, but in a few days, when he drops back to baseline, it’ll be largely unreadable without the context of his current delusions to explain what he’s trying to convey.

The felt tip slides off the page and over the binder itself when D catches sight of something moving from the corner of his eye. His head snaps around, but when he looks up, there’s nothing there, no one. Strange, but he could have sworn he’d heard something too. “If it’s another reporter snooping around for an interview,” he mumbles to himself, throwing down his pen and then the binder.

The papers on the floor fly up in a small whirlwind and, for a moment, there’s only a cloud of white before the metaphorical dust settles and a living, breathing person drops into D’s arms. The impact isn’t heavy, but unexpected enough to have him reeling backward and his arms automatically darting forward to catch and steady the person in his arms.

D blinks at them stupidly, his eyes bulging behind shades hanging precariously off his nose. “What have I done to the universe today,” D says, his voice reedy and just the slightest tremor in his hands, “that prompts it to dump completely random strangers into my arms like a b-rated sci-fi rom com. Did I ask to be the main protagonist for one of the shitty movies I write? No, I’m supposed to be the asshole tormenting the poor sap in it.”

With one arm wrapped around their shoulders, D presses his shades back up his nose and gives them a look. It’s not clear what he’s trying to convey with it because it’s just as deadpan as his rapid-fire speaking. “Please tell me that I’ve spontaneously started hallucinating and this isn’t a new scenario I have to account for in the future. What am I supposed to do, call up ADT Home Security Systems and ask for their super deluxe package plan, the kind that accounts for late-term stork deliveries?”

*

AU where D has been ressurected as a robot. It doesn't go well.

“I don’t care.” The words are out of Dave’s mouth before he can snatch them back. Hostility rolls off of him in waves, a byproduct of extreme overstimulation. His mind is a switchboard, a nonstop constellation of sensors that light up with data every second. Thinking is an exercise of being trapped in his own head, of countless floods of information he can’t control cramming themselves in every nook and cranny. Dave feels like he’s going insane, like his brain is moments away from short-circuiting, except it doesn’t. It goes on and on and on. Is this what life is going to be like now? Will existence be a constant onslaught of nails on a chalkboard?

“Your excuses are all white noise to me. All I want to know is: are you the one who flipped the switch? Did you wake me up? Did you turn me on? Is it because of you that I exist here and now?” He can’t even do the simplest tasks like breathing anymore. He doesn’t need to. Dave wants to, though. He wants to take a shaky breath, to run his hand through his hair. He does that last part out of habit, hears the scrape of metal as his fingers run through the synthetic strands and rasp against his head. It’s enough to make him wince, which is whack because robots shouldn’t understand body language, much less subconsciously be participating in any.

It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. Everything is overwhelming in the worst kind of way. It’s a whole-body pain, an agony he can’t escape from. Dave doesn’t have skin, but even the air hurts. It sits on him oppressively, like an elephant on his chest. It’s obtrusive, abrasive, and there’s no hiding the way it affects him. Every few minutes, Dave attempts a breath in a body without lungs. His voice stutters wordlessly, a painful bleating endlessly iterating the analytics of everything in the room. Dave doesn’t want to know. He wants to subsist in the quiet of his mind, to hear only an inner monologue and stream of new, constant ideas. Instead, all it takes is a glance and suddenly Dave knows every type of fabric the sheets and duvet are made of, how breathable it is, and the likelihood that Rose sweats on it at night.

All he wants is to drown it out, to succumb to his inevitable inner monologue and the infinite stream of ideas populating inside him. It doesn’t work. Nothing works. Dave locates the emergency failsafe inside him and pulls it like he’s opening an emergency parachute. His software informs him that he’s only running at 50% capacity, that he’s little more than a chugging computer program that keeps locking up when it idles. It’s a unique kind of pain, a slowness to his thoughts that he can barely process. Everything performs at 20% of its normal speed, his body, face, and features dwindling. Even blinking takes a few seconds to achieve and when he speaks, his voice is so slow that it takes nearly a minute to finish a sentence.

“I was dead,” Dave says, his voice warped and in painful slow-mo. “Blissful nothingness until you woke me up. Or maybe I was in some kind of afterlife. I don’t remember. All I know is that nothing hurt.” He wants to go back to that — or, barring that, to be human again when everything was easy, and he didn’t have quite so much to process at such excruciating speeds. Humans were never meant to go through this.

*

AU where Dirk sends himself back in time via the Sendificator to Alpha Dave's.

D's keys jangle where they hang, partially wrapped around his wrist but mostly free-floating as he fails to control the tremor in his wrist. Anxiety curdles his belly as he turns his back on the Sendificator, which looms over the rest of the room. It was made to Dirk's exact specifications and took longer to build than expected, which D appreciates. It gave him time to try and ween off of the cocaine, to at least try to make a decent first impression, for all it amounts to nothing now that he's smoked just enough to calm his nerves ten minutes earlier.

Pleasure hums through his body, gifting him with a sense of unbridled possibility and creativity that he's loathe to waste. He wants nothing more than to sit with his laptop and create, but instead he rubs his hands against the too-soft fabric of his fuzzy, red sweater, enjoying the stimulation. His muscles occasionally twitch as he stands there, transfixed with the way the carpet fibers feel against his bare feet. This feeling won't last, already it's fading too quickly, leaving D faintly nauseous from all the coffee he'd consumed an hour earlier on an empty stomach. It's just as well because he can hear the buzz of electricity as the Sendificator powers up.

Despite his best efforts, D's nerves are still talking, crooning sweet words of failure. He ignores it as he collects himself, taking a deep breath and expelling it as he scoffs. He is Dave fucking Strider, what does he have to be anxious about? Sure, he can and, perhaps, will blow the only chance he has at a real connection, but who cares? People would kill to be be in the same room with him, much less related to him. Dirk should be so lucky as to have him. Only, he'd once thought the same of Rosalyn, and look how that turned out. 'Stop it. You don't have time for boo-hoo, poor yous. Focus!'

The buzzing grows louder, until D feels like his teeth are rattling in skull — or maybe that's just the cocaine overstimulating him now that it's mostly worn off. It matters little. There's a cartoonish zapping noise, a high-pitched whine, and the scent of smoke invades his nostrils. He's no longer alone. Dirk is finally here, and why had he chosen the coordinates for his bedroom, of all places? Fuck.

D turns on his heel and pivots to face Dirk and, wow, talk about being related. Dirk looks almost comically similar, which shouldn't be a surprise, but somehow still is. D doesn't believe in God or anyone but himself, but Dirk is hot shit. He'd obviously been favored by a slap from the beauty stick, because goddamn.

"Nice entrance," D says. He releases his sweater in favor of extending a hand for a shake. If Dirk takes it, D drags the teen in for a tight hug, quietly appreciating the feeling of a body against his own. He can't remember the last time he was hugged for longer than a short, one-armed press of bodies, and for Dirk it must be far worse, maybe even never. "It was like something out of a B-rated sci-fi movie, cheesy as hell and with sound effects that makes me want to bleach my brain. I can't tell if it's just my tinnitus acting up or if that damn thing is still whining like a toddler throwing the world's biggest tantrum. Before I bend it over my knee and show it what's what, I'm going to lay down a beat, and see if we can turn it into something halfway bearable."

So saying, D begins to sloppily beatbox, his fist pressed to his mouth. It occurs to him as he draws it out that he's making a fool of himself. 'So much for a good first impression,' D thinks, closing his eyes and leaning into it. Dirk came here to be with him, and this is who he is. It's better to rip the bandaid off than to lead with false promises. As D slows to a stop, he looks over the rim of his shades at Dirk. "Sup?"