i like 2 brushing past shoulder or waist i feel like you could do something really soft with davekat
i know you sent this so long ago and im so so sorry but i wrote. something! ish. its set in the aspec aspects verse if that sweetens it any
Dave comes unfurled like a night-blooming cereus, impossibly slowly and only with an incredible amount of patience. His spines are sharpened with years of hypervigilance and distrust, and pushing against them only hurts him and you. Instead, you just have to wait until he's ready to bloom.
It takes millennia for him to trust anyone other than Rose. In the beginning, they were inseparable in every sense of the word, so tightly fused that it was at times impossible to tell them apart. They were prickly and nervous and it took ages for you to crack that shell, to slowly coax the two of them into trusting you with themselves, and then each other. And even then, trust was a tentatively crafted definition, full of clauses and rules and lines that you didn't dare overstep. It takes much longer for Dave to feel comfortable.
It starts with little things. He sits close to you when you're alone, tentatively testing the boundaries of your space. His alternates are more daring, flickering in and out of him like shadows as they reach for tiny pieces of contact. Sometimes he's more brazen with it, feigning a level of casualness you don't think he feels as he claps your shoulder or elbows you. It takes work to convince him that it's okay- subtle work, because if you ever called him on it directly he'd shrivel and die in your hands.
When Rose holds your hand for the first time- just a quick squeeze, just to reassure herself of your presence- he quickly and eagerly starts to seek your hand all the time. He blames it on his vision, saying he likes to know where you are, but you think he just likes to know that you're there.
It's slow. It's so, so fucking slow, getting Dave to accept that the world won't end just because he reached for physical comfort. It takes even longer for him to accept it from you, to start trusting you enough to override his initial and instinctive nerves, jumpy at the sign of anything that isn't Rose closing in on his space. But slowly, he gets there too.
In the modern day, you sometimes find it difficult to reconcile how Dave started with the clingy creature you've turned him into. He plasters himself against you like he's reserved the right for the rest of infinity, and gets offended if you brush him off, so certain in his entitlement to your person that it actually shocks him when he can't hang off you for ten minutes. You'd find it irritating if you weren't so fucking proud of him for coming so far, or so desperately in love with him that you really do love it.
When you reach for him, he never flinches anymore. You touch him without thinking, now, a gentle hand on his waist as you slide past him to reach something else, and he glances over his shoulder just to see you, pulsing warm affection your way like candle wax melting. A phantom kiss presses against your cheek, cold like a whisper, and you find yourself fighting a grin, ducking your head to hide the heat on your face as you push forward.
It took time, and patience. But god, he is so beautiful when he blooms.
