Archive of Our Own

Why does following an ominous blood trail have to be such a fucking bitch?

Dave considers this as he walks in weird, looping circles, dissatisfied with this method of tracking whatever is bleeding its guts out over here, but having no real way to do better. Some things just don’t have the common courtesy to walk in a straight line while they’re dying.

With a sigh, he pushes his hands through his hair, tired red eyes following the little splatters into an alley, up to a shadowy something that wasn’t animal-shaped - nope, okay, that’s just a hiding place. Phew, because that is like, some bear size shit.

He treads closer, and, as is his nature, investigates.

It was just the kind of person he was, taking home the stuff he found on the side of the road - either Dave could mend a bird’s broken wing and nurse it back to health, or he has a sick new body to preserve. Vulture culture was a relaxing hobby, even if it stunk in both senses - watching something die was never good. Sometimes the best you can do for something, though, is give it a safe place to die, comfortable and warm.

He thinks it a snake, at first (so that's why it didn't go in a straight line). Couldn’t be a rattler because it doesn’t have a rattle, but the coloration was right. Light, some orangey tones, a nice beige on the sides, but he doesn’t originally see a diamond pattern. The thing is hiding in... a pile of trash, which was, uh, gross, but he'd pulled cats out of stranger places before. Mostly they were alright, though a little mad, but on occasion he picked up a really sick little one that needed safekeeping. (Dave is perhaps the person most up-to-date on his vaccinations in the world. He is not going to die of fucking rabies, of all things.) The snake was twitching, in a way that he's pretty sure snakes aren't supposed to, so he just bent down to real carefully pull off the top box.

The tail pulls into the pile in a way that snakes are not really supposed to move, and Dave revises his earlier thought. Lizard. Probably some kind of lizard. There were lizards in Texas, but maybe this was just a big beardie - escaped pet or something. Pets escape all the time. And some lizards got big - an albino iguana would account for the size and color.

And the sheer amount of blood on the sidewalk, too. No small animal can bleed that much and live, and this beast is living.

Dave knows better than to grab an injured animal by the anything, much less the tail. It’s best to coax it out and pluck it up when it is in full view and safe to handle. (He didn’t bring any bandages tonight, he was just going for a walk, but his shirt can staunch a bite if things go badly.) Instead of grabbing for a beast he can’t see all of, Dave brushes some trash out of the way, moves a trashbag -

And sees a tail as thick as a bike tire. That isn’t what lizards are like. But the tail dragged when it moved, not slithered, so this isn’t an anaconda. But it can’t be a lizard, because lizards just flat out are not that big, or coiled, and it can’t be a snake, because no snakes move like that, and it’s also just too fucking big to handle as a snake, so Dave is dealing with an escaped albino crocodile.

Hm. This is not what he is equipped to handle. Maybe he should call animal control.

“Alright,” he says, voice a little rough, “okay. Sorry to bother you, buddy -”

The coils part, extremely snakelike, and angry human eyes stare forward at Dave. And, frankly, he short-circuits, because even the crocodile was a stretch, and he doesn’t have any explanation for humans draped in snake tail with scaly cheeks and sharp teeth.

“Um.”

It strikes.

Dave falls more than jumps out of the way, and a human torso followed by a long rope of scales and angry thunks to the cement just past where he’d been standing. Dave scrambles back, fear in his eyes, and the beast rounds on him in a sinuous motion - and then stops, a single hand going to its side as it retreats back into the trash.

In the dimness of the streetlights beyond this mythic, liminal space, Dave can make out a blood-trail down the curves of its sleek, scaled body, and the - the - the thing is injured. This is the injured animal he was tracking. Except it isn’t a snake, or a lizard, or a crocodile, it’s a huge fuckoff monster and it tried to eat him! Who does that?!

But it’s hurt, though. Dave pants, his hands scraped on the road, as the wounded beast retreats, not pursuing Dave once he’s out of the immediate striking range. It settles back, tries (and fails) to pull things back over itself and hide in the pile of trash that had sheltered it until now. Its tail lashes, in the way he’s seen nervous cats do. He can almost imagine how this thing would hiss to match.

But it’s hurt, though.

Dave swears, and gets to his knees. He doesn’t dare to stand - even moving draws those glowing orange eyes over to him. (What kind of thing has fucking orange eyes? Fucking glowy-ass snake people, apparently.) When it begins to hiss again, hand tight to the slice in its side, he holds his hands up, palms out, fingers to the sky. He doesn’t move past that as the hiss dies down.

Dave shuffles forward, and the hiss escalates, a little. When he stops, it stops. This is hell on his knees. “Hey,” he starts, and is greeted with a shift of trash as the beast yanks its tail in with a curl of its near-human lip. It - no, not it, it’s a he, Dave can tell pretty conclusively - doesn’t attack, though. “Hey,” he begins again, and this time, his monster doesn’t interrupt. “I’m - I’m Dave.” The words don’t much matter, in his experience. Just the tone - soothing, calm, low. Not loud, either. It’s got to be a nice, comfortable quiet, or how would he be trusted? No way, that’s how. “Dave is my name. Doin’, uh, a lot of cool shit, is my game. You know what’s not my game, though?”

Head cocked, the snake-man listens, eyes still fixed on Dave. It’s got - he’s got ears, thankfully, it would be kind of weird to see a human head with no ears, but it’s pretty weird to see one with scales too. His free, non-bloody hand retracts, tucks up near his scally side. His limbs are a little bit too long. It freaks Dave out. Uncanny valley as hell.

“What’s not my game is getting fucked up by snake-dudes, bro. So can we be chill, homie? I just want a look at you. I’ll be nice and gentle, I swear.” He wiggles his hands, and the movement draws the beast’s eyes, but he doesn’t hiss, his eyes shaded by whatever that is counting as hair on his head, standing up in big, dumb spikes. He just… looks.

Dave thinks privately that hissing may have actually been more comfortable, but it’s not like he can stop it from being less openly antagonistic, right? This should be an improvement. “I’m gonna take that as a yes,” he says, and drops his hands so his scraped-raw but not-quite-bleeding palms rest on his thighs. “So I’m gonna stand up now.” He makes an ‘up’ motion, his hand flat and lifting upwards a moment. Dave doesn’t know if the snake gets it, because he just settles back warily, hand still on that ugly wound. With a low grunt, Dave pushes up.

Snake-man hisses again, angular features drawn back in a reptilian sneer. He gets Dave to stop half-crouched, his hand extended so the fingertips barely brush the ground anymore.

“... Okay, you don’t like that,” says Dave, calmly. “That’s fine too. I’m just - can I move? Do you mind if I move?” Dave talks, and the sneer fades. Hm. Worth looking into, he decides. Dave’s hoping he can just kind of… talk this unfathomable creature into letting him help him out. If nothing else, he’ll have given it a shot, and it probably isn’t quite as efficient a predator with blood loss and a big old open sore.

Dave moves to stand, but he keeps talking through it, slower this time. “Just let me up and we’re cool, alright? So cool we may as well be cucumbers. Well, I figured myself for more of a zucchini guy, not that I eat much in the way of vegetables.” The snake-man hasn’t blinked, still. Dave wonders if he has to as he straightens up. Not even the step further earns him a growl. “I don’t figure you do either, bro. You just kinda look like two things that definitely eat meat turned into one thing that super-definitely eats meat. Like, I coulda guessed even without those chompers.” The incessant chatter gives Dave enough wiggle room to take a whole three steps closer, and he’s just as close as he was before catapulting his fool ass across the sidewalk to escape an angry snake-man-demon-monster-thing.

“Fangs for the memories,” he jokes, and something in his voice makes the snake-demon-man cock his head, leaning forward, a little. The wince that causes is masked enough to be missed by anyone other than Dave, who also hides pain at any given moment.

“Okay, bro. I gotta get a look at that.” He holds his hands up again. Dave has no idea if that means something different in the culture of snakemen, but it isn’t really his call. That one’s on the monster himself. Dave nods towards the scalyboy’s shoulder, and snaps his fingers, twice. “Can I get a look at that?” He makes it as clear as he can that he’s asking permission, trying to make it so snakeman gets what he’s asking. Do snakes even ask for things? They’re snakes.

Snakeman doesn’t bite him when he gets close, which is good for Dave. Those fangs are no joke, from the brief glimpses he got in the yellowed streetlights. The crescent-moon curves in that angular face aren’t leaving his mind’s eye anytime soon.

Dave leans in, extends a hand for the reptilian’s side, and he’s forgotten what’s been keeping him safe in his intent focus to help. How easily he becomes distracted, he’ll think, when the consequences hit.

A firm hand snapping shut like a bear trap around Dave’s skinny wrist is the consequence. And Dave does not like that one bit.

Fight, flight, freeze. There are a lot of options to what happens when your life is in danger. It isn’t a binary system in the slightest. Dave, as always, tended towards the odder end of the spectrum, and he starts to talk.

“Woah nelly,” he starts on instinct, and he’d hate himself for it more if his mind could communicate anything but panic. “I just want a look, bro. Come on. Bro. Bromeo. Brohomo. Please don’t break my hand or kill me, I don’t want either of those things to happen and you are super fucking scary right now. I’m talking prostate cancer scary. Inevitable, uncontrollable force of nature scary. Tornado scary. And I was scared of the Wizard of Oz for a whole like bajillion years as a kid. It’s a scary book. Tornadoes are unstoppable, but magic tornadoes are so much worse. I just want to live a normal life and for that to happen I need to be alive and not dead, so could you let go now, bro, pal, buddy, snakedude, I really don’t want to die.”

The beast cocks his head, as if trying to take in the torrent of bullshit Dave couldn’t stop spouting. He’d seen that expression on humans before, but seeing it on a crazy, fuckhuge snake-monster made Dave want to laugh or cry. Of course, he does neither. He’s a bit busy at the moment.

“Just breathe. See? I’m sure you know how scared I am right now. You can probably smell it.” Dave’s eyes flick over the snakeman’s face. “I don’t see any heat pits, bro, but snakes can still smell shit without them. I think that might just be a viper and python thing. Not quite sure on that one, I’m not a snake expert. Snexpert? Sexpert. No, forget I said that - oh thank both God and Jesus.” The snakeman has released him, brows furrowed almost imperceptibly, and Dave isn’t quite sure why. Maybe the talk is soothing. Maybe he’s just… utterly nonthreatening.

He’s gonna go with that one. It’s not like the snakeman could be threatened by an unarmed human with shaky hands. If Dave had a little more self-control at the moment, and a little more situational control, maybe he could take this thing out without injury, but he fact is he doesn’t even want to. Thing’s hurt. Dave can understand lashing out. He sees it all the time in alley cats and feral strays.

“Hey, bro, thanks. We homies? We’re so homies now.” He reaches, again, but slower, making a flicking motion with the reaching hand to motion for snakeman to move his. “Can I see? Just let me see, I won’t hurt you.” He’s as reassuring as a flat-voiced dude can be, which isn’t much. Thankfully, he’s pretty shit at being flat-voiced. Maybe that plays into it?

The big scary monster delicately removes his hand, and, slowly, still talking, Dave goes to a knee.

“Alright, buckaroo, or vaquero if you want, both are good with me, just let me get a look at you. What’d you do, get in a fight with a blender?”

The wound wasn’t a single scrape. It was a series of large, crosshatched clawmarks - looked big enough to be from a mountain lion or something. One particular set had him worrying. If it was any deeper, it’d be life-threatening. As it was, probably still life-threatening, just… later.

“You are so fucked up, bro.”

The snakebeast just stares at him with those wide orange eyes, threatens him with a curl of lip and a flash of fang, but utterly fails to actually threaten or bite him at all. Dave figures he’s just showing off. Trying to be scary. As alien as he is, Dave can kind of relate - he hated letting people look at his wounds, too. Shows weakness. But he’s starting to get better about it.

This snakeman also has to get better about it, because Dave is going to fix him, and he is very sure of that. “Alright, come on,” he tells the snakeman, and he takes its hand in his own. A look appears on its inhuman face that Dave can only qualify as how dare you fucking touch me, mortal scum, but honestly he’s had worse from Karkat and Eridan when they start tiffing at each other, so who even cares. “I’m serious.”

He hisses at Dave with a snarl and a lash of his tail, and Dave himself just has to stare him dead in the face and pretend he isn’t spiritually and emotionally shitting himself at this exact moment. Just get through it. Don’t bend, if he actually goes for you you can drop it but only then. Like staring down a stray dog. It’ll stop barking if he just stays still and lets it yap itself out.

True to his belief, the hisses die as the creature in front of him quiets and stills, a gradual thing. He raises a brow so it barely shows above his shades, and the movement draws glowing orange eyes.

“Are you done,” he asks, flatly, and the creature just looks a bit more confused, but something in his tone gets across anyway. His head inclines, that sharp chin dipping down. Whatever is on its head - yeah, it sure as fuck isn’t hair - falls in its eyes, and it makes a noise of displeasure, which Dave is surprised to recognize. Some things are just universal, apparently. “Okay, I think you’re done. Great, now we can get down to business, to defeat your blood loss. It looks at least like you’re not too bad, but that’ll get infected for sure if we let you just hang around hiding in the trash.” Dave dips his head towards the injury, and the head of the strange beast - he has got to think of a name for this thing, or maybe just a goddamn species - dips to match, eyes tracking to the wound.

“You get me?” he asks, and to his shock, his new hand-holding partner just nods. Tone is so important with animals, Dave thinks with relief. This is so much better than charades. “Great. Let’s see if I can get you home.”

Dave tugs, and snakeman follows, with a more sinuous motion than before. It’s definitely a slither, kind of like a pissed off cobra would, with how he holds his body up. Dave tugs again, because he doesn’t know how to explain “Mega Fucking Snake Monster” to the nice lesbians that run the bakery, and he doesn’t want to have to try.

It is an ordeal, to say the least.

This isn’t helped by the way Dave almost trips over himself when he sees the giant fuckoff monster he’s guiding by the hand in light for the first time. He glances back, and it’s like it hits him all at once, the yellowed light of a street lamp illuminating the shape of the storybook monster that is following him like elephants do or something. With the tails? Elephants grab each other’s tails, he knows that, even if he feels a little delirious now. That may just be baby elephants.

This cannot be compared to a baby anything. The monster following Dave down the sidewalk, as sweet as this could theoretically be, is nothing but monstrous. Its face is wrong, in subtle, strange ways. The not-hair - he’s pretty sure those are feathers or spines or something - sticks to the side in odd, bleach-yellowed angles, which matches the angularity of its face. Scales fade out as they approach the middle of the face - they’re more like freckles once they get to his nose, which is super fucking weird. The slanted orange eyes glow even in light, and their slit pupils fix on Dave like a barracuda tracking someone’s wedding ring. He’s pretty sure serpentfuck here hasn’t blinked the whole time. It has some facsimile of a nose, and thin, delicate lips, like a human’s, but he is not quite sure if they stop where human lips do, they might go right back to his fucking jaw -

Its ears are pointed, for some godawful reason, snakes don’t even HAVE ears. This is ridiculous.

The monster makes a noise, and Dave is brought back to himself, instinctual fear leaving his head for a flighty embarrassment. It - he - isn’t nervous, but he looks unsettled, starts to pull back. He’ll abscond if Dave doesn’t do something.

“Hey bro,” Dave starts, sudden, and a little too loud, “bro, come on. We’re cool. All good in the hood. I know this is going to be weird but I need you to come with me, okay?”

He stares, and Dave remembers Mr. Hissy doesn’t know what he’s saying, because he’s a massive snake.

“Right. This is useless.” He half-smiles at snakeman, and he relaxes in front of Dave’s eyes. “Just keep staring at me and we’re gonna be fine. Follow me. I feel like the Little fuckin’ Mermaid but in reverse, I swear to God if you eat me I’m going to cry.”

The rest of the walk is uneventful, unless you count the shivers going down Dave’s spine every time a lamppost shines light over the sheer length of this beast’s tail.

What was he thinking?

-

It doesn’t like elevators, he thinks.

Flattened against the side of the elevator, he watches a massive snakeman coil himself into knots in one corner, hissing and chittering all the while. The chitter’s a new noise the guy started making once they got to the apartment. Originally, Dave had thought it positive.

Original Dave was a jackoff and an idiot. His new snakey friend is so mad he can (and will) spit. The commencing lash of that thick, broad tail - yellow and beige with pretty sick orangeish triangle patterns, he saw, once they got into a place with lighting - had knocked Dave to the side of the elevator once it started moving. He was perfectly fine with staying there, so as to avoid Death By Snake, and he did.

Dave takes a breath as the elevator starts to slow.

“Look, buddy,” he starts, and he’s greeted with a rattling hiss. “Knock that shit off right the fuck now, I am being so fucking helpful and you are ruining my night. I don’t like elevators either!” Yellowbelly over there just snarls, again, and Dave is hysterical at this point. Who cares if this thing kills him as long as he stops doing that dumb shit. “I said shut the fuck up!”

Another growl, and he -

“No!”

Whatever the snake was about to do is foiled by Dave just… yelling at him. He starts to hiss again, and again, Dave cuts him off, raising a finger.

“Nuh uh!”

A shift of scales, and he bares his fangs at Dave again.

“No, fuck that! Shut up!”

Another hiss -

“Ssshhhhshshshshh! Shut the fuck up!”

He stares at Dave, and then starts to hiss again, and Dave shouts, “NO!”

After a long pause, Snakeman… pretty much gets the picture. He sits back, in his corner, until the doors open behind him and he almost tumbles out on the penthouse floor. Serves him right, Dave thinks, a little bitterly.

And then he sees that’s made him start bleeding again, and Dave feels like a jackass.

He manages to get the very, very long tail of the poor injured monster into his apartment right as the door to the stairs opens, and his neighbor just gives him an odd look as he slams the door shut behind them.

Getting an angry, very well-lit, very scary, bleeding monster onto his couch is another problem entirely. After an attempt at grabbing him under the arms, Dave gives up on that, and just reaches for his tail. Looping his arms around it and pulling to lift its surprising heft in a bear hug. He tries to drag it onto the couch -

And sees stars. When he finally blinks them out of his vision, Dave’s head is pounding, he tastes a little blood, and fuck if he isn’t flat on his back. He reaches up gingerly, and taps his lower lip with the pads of his first two fingers. Oh, that’s definitely busted. Looks like he crossed some kind of boundary, because snakeman did not like that, not one bit. Dave groans, slowly, and his swollen lip thankfully doesn’t complicate normal old talking.

“Shhhhit, man,” he whines, tasting blood when his lip drags over his teeth, and he can almost imagine the spiderwebbing spread of red over white, “that hurt. Bro, what the fuck.” The monster that just laid him out doesn’t respond, but something in his general vicinity shifts. Dave can just barely make out a half-circle of thick, scales flesh over his head, the serpentine sufferer having slithered a rough half-circle around his head. Not coiling behavior - he just went around him for something, Dave thinks. As much as he can think. He isn’t sure what hit him, but the guy hits hard.

He rolls his head to the side, and then the other, to pop his neck. It goes back to the first side to peek at what snakeman is doing - apparently, digging around in his first aid kit. Dave is strangely fine with that.

After all, what’s he going to do? Stop him?

His visitor doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, so Dave rolls to his knees and shuffles awkwardly closer, reaching to shoo away those scaled, nailless hands. It’s so creepy to see fingers just end like stumps - but these are slim, graceful (if utterly unnatural) stumps. More like the ends of branches than hewn tree. Dave plucks out peroxide, and looks at his injured visitor and newest patient, and then regrets it, really, really fast. He doesn’t want to be hit again - once was enough to get the picture - but he needs to clean the wound. He clears his throat to try and… manage the situation. “So,” he starts, and his voice cracks when he talks because this will end badly and he knows it, “I’m gonna need to put this on you.” He lifts the bottle, which is stout, squarish.

Easily taken from him by a curious, demanding reptile. He sniffs at it while Dave watches tiredly, and then hands it back, nose wrinkling. Oh, so he didn’t like it enough to keep? Fucking prick. He twists the cap with a hollow pop and pours a decent amount of it onto an old rag he’s got stuffed in the first aid kit. This is his human one, not animal - the guy at least looks similar to a human on the top half, so it’s a bit much to expect him to take well to cat aspirin and feather brushes. Even if whatever not-hair is on his head reminds him somewhat of featherlike quills…

Dave warns him, again, “This is gonna hurt, broseph.” and then he presses it to his side nearly gets his shit taken out.

The at least partially instinctive reaction has his unruly patient swinging an arm towards him like he could use it as a club, and even if it’s inconvenient, it could clearly hurt a lot. Dave thanks his natural nerves that he’s smart enough to duck fucking fast. “Fuck,” he breathes, and the snake hisses back. Yeah, he gets the picture, buddy. Snakey no likey. “It’s to help you,” he snaps.

That doesn’t help, because why would it? Dave dabs again anyway, and the reaction is lesser. Just a slight hiss, and growl, and an aborted swing. Dave doesn’t even have to duck much this time, as he listens to the faint sound of the peroxide making gross bubbles in a deep, aching wound. He has no idea how he’s going to stitch those shut… maybe he just won’t? Gauze and bandages should work in a pinch.

“See? Helping. It’s helping, jackass. Just let me help you so we can fucking chill for a second and I can nurse my jaw, you menace.” He bares his teeth right back at his guest when he’s enough of a massive assblasting cunt to show fang while Dave is trying to help him. What a cruel world with cruel snakemen in it.

The hissing bare-your-teeth-time fight does die down after a moment, because Dave turns his focus back to helping. There isn’t much more bleeding happening, which, really, is just A+, but there’s still huge gross holes in the skin and holy fuck he hopes these don’t need stitches. Sure, he knows how to sew, but sewing and stitching skin back together is different - especially because this skin is covered with shiny golden scales and Dave is pretty sure a needle ain’t going through that shit.

Really, the scales are nice, though. A hand strays to stroke the pad of one finger over them, and Dave figures he may have been wrong about it. A needle could probably pierce this - it’s like a snake’s underbelly. Soft, nice to touch.

“... like if velvet was hard and also scales,” he finishes, not quite realizing he’s been keeping a monologue going. Oh. Yeah, that much be why he calmed down so much, that snakey boy - he seems to like it when Dave talks for some reason. What a strange choice. Most of the people Dave know practically beg him to shut up, and here’s a serpentine monster from a book of fairytales, and he’s soothed with rambling about baby ass (he’s pretty sure he talked about baby ass during the whole scale petting part of their one-sided conversation) and impractical comparisons to velvet.

“... Yeah, though, bro. That’s nice.” He pats the guy’s belly, and his skin twitches like a dog’s or horse’s trying to get a fly off of it. After a pause, Dave pats again. This garners the same reaction, though muted. “Dude. Bro.” Another pat earns an annoyed snarl, and Dave backs off, reaching for the gauze. He can take a hint. “I can take a hint.”

He may be able to take a hint, but reading snake body language is beyond him.

The hidden gratefulness in the snakeman’s eyes when Dave smooths a soothing ointment over the wound is clear enough without that knowledge.

Dave tapes it right up (it’s not hanging open, it’s just some slices), gauzes it, and reaches for the bandages. Immediately, his patient starts to pick at the tape, and Dave has to smack his hand to get him to fucking stop that, as he so wisely put it. “It’s bad for you,” he elaborates, and dives back into his first aid kit. Where did he even put the bandages? Theoretically those should be on top. They’re important.

The collision of a hand with the back of Dave’s head makes him stop doing that pretty quick. Incredulous, he stops moving, eyes flicking over to the face of the half-prone serpent that has just slapped him upside the head, like a toddler or something.

“... What the fuck, bro,” he starts, and then those bright orange eyes flick to his mouth and something clicks. Oh. Oh, wait.

“Dude, are you learning right now? Like, boundaries and shit? I’m sorry for your hand, then, okay, I could have just told you to stop -” He reaches for the snakeman’s hand, his other plucking the bandages from where they’d been hidden under a poorly folded sheet of medical tape. “I’m gonna act like I’m checking on it and making sure you’re okay, but I already know that you are, so that’s not exactly a huge deal. You’re, like, fine - there, see, I’m poking it,” and he does, “and now this is a safe spot or something. How can I make this look less like I’m patronizing you. Okay. See, this is healthy.” Dave pats his hand, plants the end of the bandage over a folded cotton (cotton? Gauze? He doesn’t remember what this is) lump on those scratches, and starts to wrap the snakeman’s wound. Given that it is on his side, he has to actually wrap it around his body.

That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his scaled survivor, and he gets whapped, again, and again, on the back of the head. Wearing, Dave pulls the last quarter of one revolution snug and looks up. “Hey - come on! Bro! It’s okay, fuck!”

The angular, alien face of this beast is twisted in all the most subtle ways to make it look mad. Dave feels a spike of fear, again, but he keeps to his guns, an endless blabber to keep both himself and the injured beast on top of things. “See? It doesn’t hurt! It’s just so you don’t strain or something, it keeps skin in place, it’s good for you, I fucking promise that it is good for you. I’m not a spider. This is not my web that came out of my ass. You saw me pick it up, I know for a fact you watched me because I was looking at you.”

Another swing is the answer, which, is fine, he guesses. “Alright, you’re just a dick. We can work through this.”

And they can, but it sure does take a lot of yelling, and Dave accidentally bandages his own hand to Jake the Snake here while trying to keep the beginning of the wrap tight against his skin. He’s more careful, after that - and it’s easier, because, apparently getting the picture, slim, scaled fingers brush Dave’s away and take up their spot. When he looks up, orange glows back at him, and the scales wrinkle as he sneers. That’s the clearest Stop wasting time he’s ever seen on a face, and not even much of it moved. Maybe it’s all in the eyes.

Those eyes are outlined with black scales, like traced kohl, and Dave sees more of it scattered unevenly down his sides in meandering lines. Like a toddler drew a dotted line and then erased it again. He’s surprised by the fact that he can’t stop looking, either.

He had to lean up, go over the gently sloping shoulders of this monster, to keep the bandage in place and cover all the gauze all nice. (He may have done it wrong.) Dave can feel heat emanating off his body, and he’s not sure he’s uncomfortable. Whatever he feels, it’s starting to make him nervous. Or that could just be proximity - which the snakeman doesn’t seem to mind, that smug bastard.

Tying the bandages off is easy in comparison. A gentle tap to the back of his hand, and the limb is removed, giving Dave the room to cut, tuck, and tie the wrap so it’ll stay. He sits back on his knees, looks at his work, and is proud. Even the immediate plucking his new snakey friend immediately got up to didn’t budge it, and, judging by the way he rolled his shoulders, moving wasn’t an issue. There isn’t much in the orange eyes that pin Dave to the spot but thankfulness. It nearly looks odd on him, though. Like he’s not suited to saying thank you.

Maybe he’s never had to, Dave thinks. He’s a big fuckoff monster, why would he need to say thank you?

“Hey, bro. You did great.” He gives a tired thumbs-up, and he can nearly watch the thoughts go through snakeman’s head as he takes the motion in. A little furrow of the brow as he analyzes it. A flick of his eyes, to examine all the little tweaks in Dave’s hand. And then, slowly, Scales here lifts his hand in mimicry, and gives a near-perfect thumbs-up.

It’s not the hardest motion to do, but Dave feels a weird sense of pride anyway. “Hooly shit, bro. Great job.” He almost laughs the words, and then turns his thumbs-up into a closed fist, offers it out to the snake. Predictably, he doesn’t know how to handle that, but he does mimic it again - giving Dave the perfect opportunity to lean in and bump fists with an unknowable terrifying monster-man covered in blood.

What a fucking weird evening.

“I can’t believe I just fistbumped a snake monster,” Dave comments, slowly pushing to his feet. He grunts and stretches, feels the hybrid’s eyes on him as he twists enough his back pops. The noise almost seems to surprise him. “I gotta think of something to call you that isn’t snake monster if you’re gonna hang around, though, bro. Like, “Hey, Hugh Jackman!” except I can’t call you Hugh Jackman, because that’s a person, not a snakeman. I’m called Dave,” he explains, even though it doesn’t matter, “so like, I gotta find something that goes good with Dave. Mave. Mavis. Mauve -”

“Bro,” parrots the snake monster, almost belatedly.

Dave stops that train of thought in its tracks, and says, intelligently, “What the fuck.”

“Bro,” says the beast again, and then, “Waddafuck.”

Dave’s aneurysm only lasts a minute or so, because it makes sense. He’d seen the twitch of the snakeman’s lips when Dave was talking, he’d watched him mimic the thumbs-up and even tried to fist-bump him, for god’s sake. (A little bunp gets his spirits up, alright.) So mimicking speech is just… the next level.

“You’re talking at me now,” he says, and the repetition of ‘bro’ makes him put a hand to his head. Shit, he has been calling him that a lot, hasn’t he? That was dumb. But he was nervous, he reverts to nicknames when he’s nervous!

He uses nicknames a lot. He’s usually nervous, honestly, but Solid Snake here knocked his normalcy meter on its side and then assfucked it, so Dave’s less nervous than he should be for keeping a monster in his home and just sitting there while it talks to him, like it’s allowed to do that, like it can just talk in the Southern twang Dave was letting sneak into his voice (guess what? Also because of nerves) and it’ll all be okay. It’s not okay, this is so messed up, Dave wants to puke or cry.

He does neither. “Alright. Cool. We can be chatbuddies. It’s like tanglebuddies except you keep your freaky snake tail away from me at all costs, you don’t have the venom glands anywhere I can see to be poisonous and I know what constrictors are about, son.” Dave wags a finger at the obligingly quiet beast, and says, “No coiling, and no tangling. Chatting’s all good though, bro. We can do chatting.”

“Bro. Chat-ting. Chat-ting. Chatting.” He doesn’t blink. Dave isn’t sure he can. “Call, Bro. You. You. Dave. Chatting. Dick.”

Of course he learned swears, why wouldn’t that be one of literally five words he just picked up through what seems to be sheer force of will.

“... You think Bro is your fucking name, don’t you?” Dave puts a hand to his mouth, and reflects back on everything he’s said and done - first this evening, then today, and then in his entire, cursed life. Oh, how he deserves at least a little death for the havoc he’s wrought. “Holy fuck. I just - you think Bro’s your name. You poor little shit. I’ve ruined you forever. I should have known an ironic nickname would go this far. You just don’t have the concept to handle it like you handled whatever gave you those wounds, bro -” And he corrects how he says it, almost instinctively. “Or Bro, I guess. Did you even handle that, by the way. Cause, like, kitty’s got claws.”

Bro - holy shit, is this it? Is this what he’s fucking doing now? Dave’s going to die - just cocks his head, the skin on one side of his scaled neck bunching up in two neat sections like the world’s most perfectly folded puff pastry. Serpentine or not, he’s got all the grace of a man who knows what the fuck he is. Which is great, because Dave so does not.

“Bro,” repeats Bro, and his voice is less strained, probably because he’s been using it. But there’s a little rasp, almost. Dave had unconsciously expected a lisp, but when Bro opens his mouth there’s a perfectly normal human-adjacent tongue in there, and it is not forked. “Hahndle.”

Wait. Maybe these words have meaning. He’d only started parroting now - maybe he was waiting? “You… handled it?” A brow creeps up over the rim of his shades, which were knocked slightly askew by the struggling earlier. Dave should really fix them, he’s not keen on looking dumb with stupid tilty glasses even if “Bro” here didn’t understand what “looking dumb” means because he’s a literal fucking snake. He ain’t got legs.

Dave’s stuck thinking about that until Mr. Quick Learner just sighs, and states, once more, yeah, this is definitely supposed to mean something, “Handle.”

Then he’s silent, again. Dave can’t help but stare. (He’s almost pretty, in the hard light of the fluorescent bulbs. The sheen on his scales is healthy, especially clean, though it’d be nice if he was a little cleaner. His shoulders are nice, sloping to make their broadness look a little less intimidating, but he is still intimidating, he’s a sight, he’s -)

Dave stops thinking about it when the raspy-rough voice interrupts him again. “Handle. Hm.” It really is a voice. Dave’s not quite sure how to deal with the fact that he’s got a voice like gravel when he’s a snake - it should be hissy, he thinks to himself - but then again it shouldn’t really be there at all. He may have actively watched Bro learn the words he was saying, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to ease his confused, nervous worries about it. It’s so weird that he just… can talk now.

This is all so weird. Dave doesn’t love it. He doesn’t even like it. But here he is, fucking dealing with it anyway.

Bro coils over himself like he’s tying himself in knots. Maybe he is? Maybe that’s what this is, he’s some ouroboros that’s - wait. That’s not what an ouroboros is. It’d only be an ouroboros if he started chewing on his tail, because the whole point of it is that it’s like an endless circle. Would it count as an ouroboros if he just tangled the tip of his tail in those scaled arms of his? Is that the same or is actually engulfing the tail important - does the arm thing count as engulfing, Dave wonders? His brows furrow as he watches Bro tangle and untangle himself. Tanglebuddies indeed. Rose would fucking love this.

“Handle,” Bro reaffirms, and then he goes quiet again, the only noise the way his scales slide over each other as he piled loops of his long tail atop itself. It’s at least twice as long as his torso. Dave can’t stop glancing down at it. It’s just so fucked up that he’s a snake.

“Well,” Dave says, after an embarrassing amount of time spent staring at Bro while he makes his own tail into a weird nest that he seems perfectly comfortable resting on, “good that you handled that, then, Bro.” He blinks behind his shades. “Uh - I kinda want you to stay here, at least for tonight, so we can keep an eye on these bandages,” he tells the snakeman he’s just accidentally named this like he can understand - because maybe he can? “So stay here, like, get all cozy, get some rest - are you - you’re already doing that. That’s what the tail stuff was, wasn’t it.”

The last curl of Bro’s tail drags itself over his shoulders, and he’s all tucked up like a ball python. That seems uncomfortable. Dave wonders how many vertebrae he’s got in his neck, because it twists around a solid 110 degrees.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yep. You’re already doing that. There was no point to this except for me to talk at you like some kid playing wallball. Except the wall is a hard light wall, and it absorbs the balls and very occasionally bounces them back, because it’s bot-learning like some askjeeves shit - I don’t actually even know if that’s what askjeeves did? I just didn’t want to say Cleverbot because then it’d have been “bot” said twice in a row - I could have said literally any other robot. Even a fictional one. Anyway, you’re the wall.”

Bro doesn’t blink, but he sure does stare at Dave through that whole thing. “Haha, see. You’re absorbing. Next thing I know a volley of shitty hardlight wiffleballs are gonna hit me in the dick.”

“Waddafuck,” whispers Bro, very quietly.

Dave laughs so hard he cries.

A little cursory research, started as soon as Bro rests, and Dave figures he should probably hide every stuffed dead thing in this place (easier said than done) before he learns if Bro eats by dislocating his jaw. He really, really doesn’t want to know. Should he buy some dead baby rats? Oh god, he doesn’t want to do that. The thought is wholly unappetizing, but also kind of alluring in a super weird and fucked up way.

He doesn’t want to admit it if he wants to know what it looks like to see Bro eat. Watching snakes eat is cool, but he thinks the fact that the snake in his apartment has a human face (and super ripped human pecs? what? why are those there) puts that squarely in creepytown.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, but he finds out he’s exhausted when he finally sits down on the couch that his freaky snake visitor is curled up next to and almost blacks out in an instant. He stays awake long enough to get off his socks and shoes, and then he’s just gone, out like a goddamn light. He has enough presence of mind to hope he doesn’t dream.

Of course, that doesn’t happen, because God hates him, but the fiery hell he watches crumble in on itself isn’t really a nightmare so much as just a weird dream. Everything is metal and steel and hot, and Dave sweats, and pants, and breathes as shallowly as he can.

-

Waking is hard. He’s warm, and comfortable, and the dreams of fire and metal left him a long time ago. Time’s a bit harder to grasp asleep, but it’s not like he fully loses track of it, not like some people. Dave was always pretty good at figuring out how long things take, and he’d been dreamless at least an hour.

Eventually, despite the comfortable pressure on his legs and the slope of whatever he’s laying on letting his shoulders drop all nicely, Dave slips from sleeping to dozing, from dozing to sniffling, from sniffling to awake. Hello, world. Dave’s back and here to party, except he’d really rather still be asleep. Sleeping is pretty great, especially not dreaming like he had been earlier. He likes to be asleep. It’s comfortable. It’s always best while he’s still asleep, though - even at this stage, the pull of we can do things now draws him to wake properly.

He opens his eyes to look directly into burnished gold ones. Maybe amber. They’re honestly closer to orange than anything Dave has ever seen.

Then, his fuzzy-with-sleep gaze travels to the side - a little group of speckles. Hey, this guy’s got freckles. Dave hums, tiredly, blinks twice, and pulls down one of the arms that’s stretched over his head. He always does sleep in weird positions. How silly of him.

His elbow bumps something hard and semi-cool, so he stops, because he can’t take it down any further. Dave sighs out, a long, heavy sound, and blinks again. Those are some pretty shiny freckles.

Oh shit, wait.

Dave’s eyes shoot open, and suddenly he sees the sparsely-scaled face above him in a new light. Things slot themselves into place much faster now - the way his shoulders drop, the thing his elbow bumped into, it’s because the snakeman he brought in last night is on top of him, an arm on each side, and oh yeah his tail is on his fucking legs and that’s why he can’t move.

Yeah, Dave screams pretty loud.

“FUCK!” Dave shouts, and Bro recoils like he’d been struck, but not far enough for Dave’s liking. He tries to jackknife up, into a sitting position, but one of Bro’s thick, heavy coils has looped itself fully around his waist, and he can barely move. Dave may be a scrappy little shit, but strength is not his pinnacle, so to speak. Guy’s a twig and he knows it.

“Fuck! Shit! Oh my god, don’t eat me, holy fuck he’s gonna eat me, I’m gonna get eaten by a snake monster, Bro, please, please no, this is so not my schtick, I promise I was joking last night -”

Yeah, he’s just babbling, but it does seem to keep Bro’s attention. It doesn’t occur to him until he’s got it exactly how much he doesn’t want that. “Please get off, please, oh my god get off of me, I don’t even have a sword on me right now, I can’t believe you jumped me while I was asleep - yes I can, you’re a wild animal. This is all my fault, I should have known I was going to die, I’m gonna be snake shit and there’s nothing anybody can do about it -”

Dave doesn’t die, but he shrieks and squirms and almost cries for so long Bro just stares looking bored. He doesn’t appear to have eyelids, but his face around his eyes squints up a little, and Dave figures that maybe that’s supposed to be half-lidded eyes like Rose does when he busts in her door at 1:14 AM to talk about the dog that he got chased home by. Dave’s voice trails off with a quiet, “ - because I’m totally…” and the last word (fucked, of course) goes unsaid as he stares up at the bored-looking monster on top of him. And then he pays a little more attention, and - oh.

He’s not coiled up. Dave had thought he was, and he is partially, with a few bands of snakeskin belting his waist and thighs, but as it turns out most of Bro is just sitting on top of him like he’s part of the couch.

Dave blinks, brings his arms back down to his chest from where they’d frozen mid-flail up above his head, and says, intelligently, “Oh. Sorry.”

Bro rolls his eyes. It’s so quick and subtle it may not have even happened, but he isn’t that slick, and Dave narrows his own. “Hey, watch it, Bro,” he warns, keeping his hands to his chest even if he did rather want to shake a finger at him. It’s probably just smarter to not do anything right now. “I just helped you, like, super good, and you’re not even being nice to me.”

The whiny tone of his voice isn’t exactly what Dave was going for, and all it does is make Bro roll his eyes again. He whaps Dave’s hand, earning a hiss (not a snakey hiss, just an annoyed one (it’s honestly closer to cat than snake (you know like Frigglish? (oh god he has to stop going into mental tangents)))) and Bro points to his mouth, which is set into a thin line. Dave blinks.

He’s not whiny when he asks, “You’re… hungry? You want, like, something to eat?” Oh no, Past Dave’s weird thoughts are coming back to haunt him. Present Dave has been listening to Present Karkat too much, damn it. “Eat, food. Like… do you eat rats? Fuck, it looks more like you eat cats or something.” A thick, scaled section of tail twists around Dave in a subtle motion that is incredibly distracting, especially because it super makes his shirt ride up, and he ducks a hand down to try and pull it away from the twisty motion. At this rate Bro’s going to turn his shirt into a lollipop wrapper and his skinny-ass hips are the stick. “Cats or dogs. Maybe even a pig. How wide is your mouth able to even go? Aye bih, show me what that mouth do -”

Even unable to speak most of English, Bro is apparently able to tell when Dave’s getting off topic, and he hits him again.

Dave resolves to stay on topic before he ends up lunch for reals.

“Okay. Okay. I get it.” Dave raises his hands up by his shoulders, and Bro’s amber eyes flick to them, like he’s considering pushing them flat against the couch and pinning Dave there to coil up the rest of him. “I’ll make breakfast.”

-

As it turns out, breakfast is a little harder than it sounds.

Not only did it take ages to get Bro actually off of him so he could make the food in the first place, but Dave had to fend him off the entire rest of the time he was cooking. Even expressionless and injured, Bro’s curiosity, apparently, was insatiable. From trying to stick his hand into the oven (premade biscuits are godly) to trying to stick his nose in the bacon grease (bacon? Also godly), Bro spends the entire time making a total ass of himself. It should probably bother Dave a lot less, but he’s become increasingly convinced he’s doing it on purpose.

When he turns his back to get some napkins, Bro’s already halfway through opening the oven, and Dave has to turn around really quickly to shut it again. He didn’t burn himself, thank goodness, but Dave has to take a minute looking him over and shooing him back. To his credit, Bro stays still while Dave examines him.

Dave’s still pretty sure this is because if he stays still, Dave turns around faster.

“Woah,” he shouts, over Pocketful of Sunshine, blaring from his phone’s tinny speakers. “Hey! Come on, man, I know you just reached for the fucking butter.” He pulls the biscuits out, and they clatter to the stovetop as Bro shoves him aside to try and grab one. Dave swears, kicks the damn oven door more firmly shut, because the stupid thing never closes all the way. “Stop it!”

Bro seems to be able to pick up the biscuit - or, rather, half the biscuit - without issue. The bottom, which hadn’t been scraped off of the pan yet, stuck to the metal, and some of the soft broiling-hot insides had stayed with it. What Bro is cradling in one scaled hand seems to be more akin to a shell. The hard part of the biscuit. Except it’s not even hard yet, it’s just “slightly firmer than the rest of it”, because it hasn’t cooled and Bro is a jackass.

“Have you ever heard of waiting?” Dave snaps.

Bro tosses the biscuit-shell from hand to hand, apparently starting to feel the consequences of trying to pick up something really hot. Dave shoves unsteadily to his feet as Bro retreats, his tail pulling in a wide arc that follows his path through the kitchen.

Stepping over his scaled trunk, Dave scoops out the bacon onto a paper towel, and folds it over to absorb the grease. Greasy bacon is alright, but it’s just better when it’s a moderate amount of grease. Like, you can’t drown the delicious crunchiness of good bacon, as far as he’s concerned - it’s got to be good bacon with a nice firmness to the edges. Otherwise, just eat ham?

He gets a momentary reprieve while Bro hisses over the hot thing he’s holding, and he spends the time opening his fridge to look for blueberries. He’d bought some, like, organic blueberries, or something fancy. They were on sale for about a dollar and he figured he could try to eat one fruit once in his life. Sure, he’s not sure if blueberries are fruit, but who cares, honestly. It grows on a plant, it’s a fruit, it is a plant, it’s a vegetable.

Jade had smacked him when he said that, but he knows he’s right.

Dave grabs a handful of blueberries, shoves them in his mouth, and leaves the carton open as he closes the fridge. He doesn’t even jump when he sees that Bro was standing right behind it. Yeah, yeah, he gets it.

Wait, he can’t be standing. Most of his body is on the floor. What’s it called when a snake chills?

Dave considers it as he moves to turn off the oven, the broiler-knob making a quiet click as he makes sure it’s all the way off. “It’s not laying,” he murmurs to himself, only half-aware that he was talking aloud, “because he’s partially upright. But it’s not sitting because he’s up and about, and he’s not standing because, one, no legs, might as well be a fish with how many legs he doesn’t have - or, uh, a snake I guess - but not standing either, because, two, most of his body’s on the floor…”

Bro leans in to see what Dave is doing, the biscuit-shell pinched delicately between pointed teeth, and Dave looks at him for a minute. The heat from the biscuit emanates out, and it’s still hot enough he can feel it on his face from a few inches away.

“What do you think?” he asks Bro, like he’ll get an answer. His hands are busy plating even as his eyes, shaded as they are, fix on his guest’s scaled face.

Bro holds his pilfered biscuit-shell between two fingers and pushes it into his mouth, eyes flicking over to Dave again. He pauses under the intensity - with Bro so close, he definitely feels scrutinized. He can feel a little pink dusting his cheeks, but he resists the urge to back up, get space. Those teeth are as much a signifier as everything else that this is a predator, and you stand your ground when faced with a large predator. Running means they want to chase.

The bandages catch his eyes. Yeah, those won’t stop shit from happening. Bro probably doesn’t even know what gratefulness is, much less that he should be it for the super good quick-patch job Dave did on his dumb ass.

Dave watches Bro swallow the lump of what was once a shell of biscuit, unflinchingly, and he gets chills. He can’t stop looking at him - the strange, sinuous curve of his neck, those weird thin lips, the way his whole body carries the rest of itself along when he moves. It’s all wild. It’s beyond what Dave was prepared for. Aesthetically, Dave can appreciate it, but all the thought does is bring more awkward pink to his tan cheeks.

“Y- uh, yeah, me too,” he mutters, staring straight at Bro, pinned to the spot by those amber eyes.

Bro licks his lips, after a moment and reaches to steal another biscuit.

Much of the morning goes that way. Dave finds that Bro has a penchant for meats, which he supposes makes sense, and he’s also got the quickest reflexes he’s ever seen on anyone outside of his immediate family. Flicking a blueberry at him just got it snatched out of the air.

(Needless to say, Dave spent an embarassingly long time doing exactly that.)

Bro eats. Dave cleans up. Bro tries to get himself involved in cleanup by not leaving Dave the fuck alone, and Dave figures this probably isn’t the same as the learning thing, because he seems to have no regard whatsoever for the actual process - he just wants to be there, for some reason that’s utterly beyond Dave’s tired human mind.

It doesn’t take long after that for Dave to put together that his guest is just… kind of an asshole. He pushes things, steals anything not nailed down, and stays within ten feet of Dave whenever possible, except when he doesn’t, at which point he hides somewhere until Dave wanders across him. Even when Dave stops looking (which he only tries once) it doesn’t really get him reprieve. He just came across Bro accidentally this time and got tripped by a huge coil of dun, patterned tail.

All in all, it’s a weird day, but it loses novelty after about an hour. Despite being a weird kind of clingy that reminds him of Karkat, Bro isn’t loud enough to stop Dave from focusing, and he doesn’t mind Dave’s incessant need to talk and fill the silence.

They’re an alright match. Dave talks and never stops moving, Bro usually only moves when eyes aren’t on him, and he’s silent when he does, save a few clumsy parrots that Dave’s coming to realize only happen when he’s unsure about pronunciation. He’s more and more sure, as the day goes on, that Bro is learning in silence, and has no intention of letting Dave know how much he understands. Just a theory (a game theory aha, he’s so funny) but it really just lends more credence to the scientific-style theory of “Bro is an asshole and enjoys watching Dave suffer.”

Yeah, Dave’s alright with him being here. Shit’s cool.

When Dave settles in to watch some shitty reality TV, because today’s been stressful, he isn’t surprised when Bro comes with. He can’t seem to handle being too far away from him or something, so Dave just lets him be there, turning on the television and muting the looping alt-pop from his phone that had been playing for… who knows how long (17 minutes).

“Hey,” he greets, offhand, as he’s gotten used to doing. The intensity of Bro’s gaze doesn’t lessen. Dave almost wishes he couldn’t see it - but he could probably feel it boring into him, blindfolded or not. “What are you, a fucking basilisk or something?”

Bro gets in the way of the screen, and Dave pinches the bridge of his nose. “Could - could you not?” When that doesn’t garner a response, Dave sits up, and waves Bro out of the way. “I’m looking at that,” he tells him, even as a peal of laughter peaks from the television. Maybe someone got tricked into something. Maybe they found something dumb. Dave doesn’t know because there’s a fanged menace in front of his face, and he’s tired, and kind of sleepy. He’d like to watch this please.

Bro’s lips twitch, which Dave has very little excuse for noticing. He thinks he’s mouthing the words Dave speaks, sometimes, but there’s no telling. Lip-reading is shit.

“... Here, come watch with me if you’re gonna insist on filling my personal space bubble with twenty feet of inexhaustible snakeman,” Dave suggests, scooting to the side of the couch and tucking his knees up in front of him, one thigh resting on the arm of the couch. He didn’t want to crowd Bro (despite not being offered the same courtesy) because he has big fangs and is scary. Also, he’s just a nice person, what’s it to you?

Bro responds sluggishly, to say the least. Considering how quick he can move, Dave doesn’t know how to deal with that, and his lips are just pulling apart from each other as Bro drags himself up onto the couch, about where Dave had slept the night before. “Okay,” Dave starts, watching inch after inch of this, scaled tail pile in loops and coils around and on top of Bro. “You’re a little close to me, dude. You’re gonna have to sit at kind of a weird angle that way, because you’re - laying on top of yourself. Can I just say that’s a little weird?” Bro just looks at him, hands flat on the couch cushions, and Dave reassesses his statement. “Okay, I guess humans sit on themselves, like, when they’re on their knees, or crosslegged. You’re right. That was silly of me. I should have remembered that, I’m a fucking expert at being on my knees.”

Dave looks back to the screen, and he doesn’t know if he imagined the raspy-soft whisper of “I am right,” as Bro settles down, but he chuckles anyway. Heedless of his prior worry, his hand finds its way to Bro’s back, and he pets absentminded over the smooth, almost soft scales under his fingertips as he watches a fat dude with a mustache get a thousand dollars of something he couldn’t identify to save his life.

It doesn’t surprise him when Bro’s head finds his lap, but he obligingly puts his knees down to accommodate him. Could’ve been worse, he could’ve been bitten.

He only thinks that to ignore the sparks of delight he feels at having someone’s head in his lap, an almost intimate thing, but Dave wouldn’t admit that to anyone but himself. He’s not starved for shit, especially not human contact - and even then, haha, checkmate, this isn’t human contact. This is weird snake-hybrid-monster contact.

It’s good anyway.

Bro lets out a rumbling, hissy sound at odd intervals, and Dave clings on to every odd riff and pitch. It’s fascinating. He could write something based on this - he’d be delighted to try, anyway, but he doesn’t know an instrument that can quite make a noise like that. Maybe one of the Eastern ones that’s more oblique? Something with strings, maybe a woodwind. Maybe a woodwind with strings. A harp except the holdy part is a flute. Holy shit, he has such great ideas.

Lost in thought, Dave forgets the shitty reality TV in favor of letting his hand migrate to Bro’s hair-not-hair. It definitely isn’t hair or fur in the traditional sense. There’s no curves to it, and it’s not quite fibrous - it’s like feathers, almost. Hey, feathers came from scales, it isn’t that much of a surprise - but these are stiff, too, in a way that reminds him of quills or spines. Kinda fuzzy. Fun to touch.

So he does.

Bro’s breathing is always silent, but he stills entirely under Dave’s hand. It’s not like he touched roughly - Dave would never, that’s so dangerous to both of them - but Bro doesn’t seem to know what to expect. And Dave, happy to be able to pet, just strokes his fingers through Bro’s hair, watching how he breathes, how he moves. He doesn’t understand him, not really, but he’s happy to try.

Bro twists on the couch, pulling coils of his tail up to hang over the arm, and Dave is treated to the truly singular motion of someone using his lap as a pivot point, head jammed hard into his thighs, so their back can arch. And Dave wheezes, because Bro smashed his fucking skull into his balls and that isn’t pleasant, actually, it mostly sucks.

“Please be careful with the jewels,” he whispers, fingers curling into Bro’s odd quill-hair. “I know snakes don’t have big swingin’ chandelier balls like some of us humanities, but I’m certain that it wouldn’t be great if I punched you in your doublepenis, now, would it?”

Bro’s eyes flick over Dave’s face, which is screwed up in a weird pucker, and then reaches to pat it. As he’d mostly just been making a big show of it, Dave isn’t expecting that - and he’s not expecting the fingers stroking up his face into his hair, either. The smooth, but edged scales catch on a few of the bumps on his skin, and Dave tilts his head awkwardly, to allow Bro, with his penchant for mimicry, to do what he just had - pet his hair.

“Oh,” says Dave.

Bro doesn’t say anything.

Dave’s back hurts from the weird hunch, his neck is a little strained, and he’s got his head at an odd angle, but he’s just so oddly delighted he can’t help but enjoy it. Dave sighs, rolling his head into Bro’s non-gentle hand. He doesn’t know if Bro would apply “gentle” even if he knew what the word meant - it didn’t really seem like something he knew about or would apply even if he did. As alien to his strange snakebuddy as snakey tails were to Dave. Gentleness isn’t his thing, and that’s just how it works, like having a giant crazy snake tail and probably also snake balls isn’t Dave’s.

With a little sigh, Dave sits up, pulls away. Bro’s brow knits together, but not a full knit - more like the loop around a needle before knitting actually begins.

“It’s alright,” he soothes, shifting, pushing Bro’s head out of his lap. Bro just looks madder. “No - I’m just laying down, c’mon.” He hooks his legs up onto the couch, slipping his legs into one of the few gaps in Bro’s big, annoying tail. (Is that a cottonmouth pattern? Fuck, maybe.) With a grunt, he lays down, alongside Bro’s dumb bitch ass, and is treated to his wide-eyed surprise. Dave feels… smug.

“I told you I was just laying down. If you still wanna put your head on me, put it on my bodacious man titties.” He pats his chest with a quirk of his wrist, flat-handed. “Right here. My nice, pillowy pecs.” Dave is amused, despite knowing that his snakey friend doesn’t have any idea what pecs or titties are.

Despite not knowing shit fuck, Bro is able to understand things via context clues - a fact that Dave absolutely forgot when asking him to put his face on Dave’s chest. Because he does it, and Dave is left a little shocked, pinned under the weight of a monster that’s half on top of him, and not minding near as much as he probably should.

He doesn’t have a problem with this. It’s hard to muster up an argument against some good, good cuddlin’, even if Bro is like, a snakeman, and kind of cool to the touch. 10/10 still comfy. No, cuddling is fine. Cuddling is not the problem.

The problem arises when Bro starts moving.

See, Dave, trying to lay out all comfy, has his legs in the knot of coils that makes up Bro’s lower body. And the coils move when he does, and he’s trying to get all cozy, half laying on Dave and all.

And one of them is between his legs.

Just at the ankle. Dave is fine for a suspiciously long time. But every time he starts to relax, Bro’s tail moves again, and the inexonerable curl presses further and further up - past his calves, along his knees, pillowed between the admittedly much more sensitive than he had ever realized skin of his inner thighs. He’s got pants on, but he can feel the kind of shifty gripping movement, the way that Bro must slither, and it’s starting to become a problem.

It isn’t until Bro’s newest awkward stretch presses his tail up comfortably against Dave’s twitching dick that he admits this is really turning him on.

He’s breathless, in a way. He tries to keep his breathing even, but every new slide-and-tense motion of that snakey underbelly knocks it right out of him again, and Dave is struggling to keep quiet more than anything. Another shift. Another drag against his aching cock. Dave casually puts his arm over his eyes, fingers curled just so, so he can focus on anything else. Another curl, it’s pressing against him now, he’s so fucking fucked up he’s getting turned on by a snake lying on him except it’s also a man so it’s not super weird -

The tail coils around Dave’s leg, in that gripping motion he’s seen snakes use to climb trees, kind of like a floppy rectangle, and that is the exact moment that he knows he’s fucked. Then, right then, is when he remembers the snake rubbing on his dick is als laying on his chest, and staring at him, staring like he had the answers to the universe, with those deep amber eyes and that almost-frightening nonhuman face and those pretty lips and all else he’s got going for him… he was looking at Dave.

So he isn’t surprised when Bro’s strong, scaled hands take his wrist and pull his hands away from his face, baring his flushed and panting dumbass self to the world.

Bro is over him again. Like he was this morning, all intensity in his gaze, all firm concentration in his face, all sinuous beauty from the shoulders down. No snake should have shoulders that pretty. Nothing should ever be that pretty.

Bro watches his face as another looping coil of his tail twists over Dave’s other leg - it’s thinner, so it’s closer to the end than the one trapping Dave at the moment. He continues to watch as it moves in strange motions, like a praying mantis does, side to side, and Dave prays it won’t hit his dick.

It hits his dick, half-loops around the tent he’s making in his sweats, and he can’t help but groan. Dave’s teeth dig into his lower lip almost hard enough to draw blood, but it just keeps happening.

Bro just looks smug.

In fact, Bro holds a resemblance to Rose (who he really does not want to be thinking about right now) in that he has the exact facial expression she gets when she thinks she’s found one of Dave’s kinks or some shit. She usually has, which makes it worse.

Dave didn’t think he had a kink for snakes, but fuck, this couldn’t be any worse than some of the other wild shit he dipped his toes into on occasion (though toes weren’t really his thing, even if being stepped on was. Hey, looks like this guy can’t step on him because of his LACK OF LEGS-)

The end of Bro’s tail, horrifyingly, loops around Dave’s neck, and his eyes go wide as his tailtip hooks the bridge of his sunglasses. He moves to claw for them, but Bro just flicks them off, Dave’s arms pinned at some point by a coil around his middle. It wasn’t like he was very strong - there’s no getting out of this. Holy shit this constrictor-looking-ass bitch is going to strangle him and them eat him, possibly whole, but not confirmed, he didn’t really seem to chew. Bro’s tail shifts against Dave’s groin once more, and he whimpers like a bitch. He can still breathe, theoretically, but he can’t draw breath - because, surprise, this is the hottest shit he’s ever seen.

The way Bro’s muscles pull as he leans over him, hands pressed to his slim shoulders, just makes his dick throb. It’s the feeling of helplessness as he’s coiled up, knowing he’s so fucking dead, not even able to care. It’s the endless slide of scales against his clothed dick. It’s the disconnected, almost uncaring look in the snake-man’s eyes as he watches Dave struggle uselessly, fingers grasping at nothing by his sides.

“Hm,” says Bro, like a biology major would about the unfortunate puncture of their dissection subject’s gizzard, and Dave gasps, finally, for breath.

“Don’t -” he rasps, and Bro’s eyes go once more to his lips, but he stays expressionless. Dave whines again. “Please - don’t kill me.” He doesn’t make excuses. He knows it wouldn’t matter, especially because Bro cannot understand the words for “I’m sorry my dick is telling me to get railed by a literal snake monster”, and probably wouldn’t appreciate whatever tone Dave ended up whining them in. Or maybe he would. That would actually be worse.

Bro does the opposite of killing him, which is not killing him, but he uses most of the word, swapping out L’s for S’s, which makes sense because he’s a snake and those hiss and holy fuck that’s a snake mouth on his lips.

Dave whimpers into his mouth. He can’t help but do it - Bro’s lips are dry, smooth, thin and soft and supple in a weird way. He tries to lean into it, but the tail around his throat tightens suddenly, both keeping him in place and giving him a very, very solid warning.

Dave gets the picture.

He still makes the softest little plainitive noise when Bro pulls away, and his tongue almost lolls. Dave now understands why Rose tried to call him a needy bottom. Hey, if this is what that means, he’s cool with it.

Shameless, now that he’s lowkey had his arousal validated, he tries to rock his hips against the tail rubbing his groin. It’s a lot closer to Bro’s body than it was - he’s shifted around so their hips are almost level (or where hips would be if Bro wasn’t a fucking ripped as hell snake man.) Dave jerks in his coils, and Bro hisses, of course, as snakes do. Dave didn’t expect that terrifying noise to make him harder.

“Please,” he whimpers again, but it means something entirely different. Bro kisses him again and it’s delightful.

He parts his lips, and he didn’t expect Bro’s tongue to shove itself into his mouth, but it sure did the minute the avenue was opened to him. It’s so long he almost chokes on it, but when he suckles like he’s sucking cock it just feels kind of weird. Dave grasps at nothing, hands pinned to his side, and leans into the kiss as much as Bro will allow. He gags for it, which fits, because he is so fucking gagging for it. His tongue presses against Bro’s slimmer one and he doesn’t know what that tastes like but it’s really fucking nice either way.

The way Bro half-snarls into his mouth draws another delighted shiver from him. Dave jerks up against him, and in return Bro coils tighter. He feels something lay over his front, slick even through his tight, tight jeans, and he can’t be bothered to focus on it. He rubs his thighs against Bro’s tail, and he feels Bro give him a pleased little rumble in return. The thing against his front rubs twice against him, and Dave whimpers, again, because it feels so good. All of this, everything - it’s overwhelming, it’s beautiful, it fills every sense he has, and the sound of Bro muffling hisses and growls into his mouth is the hottest shit he’s ever heard.

Fuck him.

It strikes him that he wants Bro to fuck him, and maybe that’s a thing to unpack another day.

Bro pulls from his mouth, his smooth scales twisting around Dave’s chest in a way that rides his shirt up, and the thing laying against his belly turns out to be a pair of thick, ridged snake cocks.

Dave rethinks that sentence. Back the fuck up, hold on.

A slit’s opened up farther under where Bro’s hips were than Dave expected, and a pair of almost orangeish-red snake dicks lay over Dave’s belly, ridges catching his bellybutton as Bro shifts back a little, pulls from his face. Dave can only stare, kiss-bruised lips parted, as the thick, tapered shafts slide out a little more from what he can only suppose is Bro’s sheath.

And he thought he wanted Bro to fuck him before. Holy shit. His hands grasp at nothing as Dave struggles in his organic binds. With a little growl, Bro’s tail tightens around Dave - and for a minute, he can’t breathe. That sends a spike of terror through him, but… well, honestly, doesn’t really detract from the whole sexy part of it, being scared. Terrified looks good on him, probably. Maybe Bro likes it?

Oh fuck he totally missed the opportunity for a joke about trouser snakes. He swears about it the moment Bro lets him breathe again. “Fuuuuck.”

Bro stares, a hand going to one of his cocks, the other thumbing Dave’s lip in a way that’s almost familial. Familiar at the very least. Woah, Bro, come on. Not the time.

“Not… the time,” Dave pants, because breathless and horny doesn’t mean he’s going to shut his fucking mouth. It’s just not on brand. His brand is so tight, too - just like his ass could Bro please try both of those out? “Come on. I don’t know how you’re gonna bang me when I’m all - all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. IS that even how people describe it?” He wheezes. “Might be Christmas turkey.” He barely notices Bro moving, eyes falling shut as his chest heaves. “I dunno. Thanksgiving has more turkeys, and more genocide, but Christmas has more little people slave labor -”

Dave can’t continue his mood-ruining ramble because there’s a dick in his mouth.

Obviously, this is a little shocking, but he should have paid more attention to where Bro was going. He tries to gasp, but it doesn’t work out the best, because he’s got a cock in his mouth and feeling the ridges on his tongue is a very strange sensation. He closes his eyes, breathes through his nose, and tilts his head up a little.

The tip of Bro’s cock drags a salty trail down his tongue. Dave throbs against the ribbed underbelly that’s wrapping his body, listening to Bro’s labored breath. His eyelids flutter.

He didn’t expect this. He would never have. But for once, he shuts his stupid mouth (around Bro’s meat rocket, which is, of course, the only thing anyone should ever call a penis) and gets to fucking work. His hands ball into fists, fingers dragging over the scales he can only barely brush the pads of them over. Dave whimpers for more.

Bro gives it to him. Those slim, nailless fingers curl tight into his hair, and Bro pulls his head back a little to shove his cock deeper into it. He’s gasping once, a breath pulled in through his nose, and then his throat is half-blocked by a ridged, tapering snake dick, the other sitting almost perpendicular, its side pressing against Dave’s cheek. He twists in Bro’s coils, and Bro’s coils twist around him, both laced with want, with need, with a kind of desperation for what was being given and taken from each.

Dave thinks he’s pretty good at sucking cock, so as he pulls his lips over his teeth, his tongue laving the ribbed underside of Bro’s dick, he adds a little flourish in a half-muffled groan. Bro rocks into his mouth, both hands focusing on keeping Dave’s head still, fisted so tight as to almost pull his hair out.

Dave tries to bob his head, and he just gets a tug of annoyance. He gets the picture.

After a few more aborted attempts, Dave sits back and lets his mouth be used.

It’s hot. Bro is demanding, and he doesn’t really give Dave any quarter. The sharp intrusions into his throat make Dave gag at times, which only seems to encourage the horny beast that’s got him trapped. He might as well be bound. He is bound, one way or another, but instead of rope it’s cords of muscle, which could squeeze the breath from his lungs and the life from his body, and Dave’s last words would be thank you gagged out around his dick.

When he opens his eyes, one of which is watering from the strain, he can see how Bro’s scaled belly shifts, muscles pulling tight with the thrusts into his mouth. He can imagine his own do the same under the pale snakelike underbelly that covers it, skin taut as he tries to grind against the coils sandwiching his aching cock. He wants more, but all he can settle for is fat snake tail rubbing torturously slow. Dave would demand more if he could.

But if he’s honest, he might get off just from how Bro is fucking his mouth.

And he is, make no mistake - he’s got a pace going, now, using Dave’s mouth - no, using his throat like somebody would his ass, and he’s desperate for more of it. He drools down his own jaw, and the bulge he can feel in his throat makes the coil around his neck just a little tighter. Dave feels possessed, used, owned, and he’s the fucking human here. He can hear a buzzing over the all-encompassing sloppy sounds he’s making while a snake dick, or snick, is shoved so far into his mouth he might as well be sword-swallowing, and for a moment, Dave is worried, before he realizes it’s an ad on the TV he left on like a stupid idiot.

And then salty-weird-nonhuman precum leaks onto his tongue and he can’t be assed to care.

Bro’s cock starts to twitch. He can mostly see it in the other dick (half dick? He’ll act like they’re each separate entities) jerking occasionally against his cheek. He can’t help but try to gasp around Bro, a mostly fruitless endeavor, but the way the next thrust cuts off his breath makes the next exhale into a muffled moan. He knows he’ll be talking with a rasp when Bro pulls out. It’s inevitable.

The thought about his missed trouser snake joke pops into his head, and he gets so distracted by the vast world it creates he forgets to be paying attention, and he gags around the shaft that blocks his windpipe and stretches his well-used and well-abused throat. Dave chokes. Bro just grinds against his face, and Dave’s cock throbs between his twisting coils.

Again, and again, the ridges drag over his tongue, his palate, eventually even the soft, warm flesh of his raw-fucked throat. Again and again, it makes Dave want to beg for more, but his mouth is all plugged up. He scabbles at nothingness, fingers digging into his own hips.

He’ll never admit it, but he ruins his own pants while Bro is still using his mouth like a fucktoy.

Dave comes back to himself a little slowly, dazed and breathless, and what Bro is somehow still doing definitely doesn’t help. He tries to talk when he’s only got the tip in his mouth, but the way Bro’s not-hips snap forward to silence him tells him he doesn’t want to be doing that. The damp spot on his pants rubs the ridges of Bro’s underbelly.

Bro cums down his throat.

And, with his other dick, all over his face.

He chokes on it, mouth and nose full of the salty-bitter taste of cum, even though he’s very sure that’s not what human cum tastes like. His eyes roll back in his head, and he closes them, which is a good thing, because the next shuddering jerk of the snake schlong not plugging his throat jets cum to lay in a nice line through his eyelashes.

He swallows. He doesn’t have a choice, but something in him knows he was always going to anyway. Dave’s jaw goes utterly slack, his head half-falling to the side, and his mouth aches. Fucking selfish snakeman, he thinks to himself, but he knows he’s smiling around the tip of Bro’s dick.

Bro pulls out of his mouth, his coils twisting in such a way as for Dave to realize he’s being used as a base to slither on. He flexes his fingers, once they’re freed, and lifts his arms to try and push himself into a sitting position. The half-blissed groan he lets out when he thunks uselessly back to the couch is enough of an indicator that he’s not fucking doing that, he almost didn’t need his TV-static arms to give out under him.

Bro coils him looser, easy loops of snakemantail around his slim little body, and settles with those arms of his half-curled about Dave’s shoulders. Dave is strangely okay with it, given his (eternity ago) recent worry that he would be suffocated and eaten. It’s comforting, almost.

With a little twist of his hand, he pulls the hem of his shirt up to wipe off his cum-covered face, and decides to deal with the fact he creamed his jeans while getting his mouth fucked later, because he’s so blissed out he might just fall asleep while being coiled by a vicious, well-endowed snakemonster, and then where will he be?

He can kind of feel Bro’s dick go back in its sheath, because it slips against his side to do it, which is, uh, super wild. At least it doesn’t fall off and he’s gotta grow another one when he’s done with it or something, Dave isn’t sure he’d be okay with that.

“Hh,” he tells Bro, intelligently. Bro nods, and repeats, “Hh.”

“No -” God his voice is raspy. He smacks his lips and tries again, but he still sounds like he got facefucked. “That wasn’t a word, stupid. Ffucking Bro.”

“Shut up,” says Bro into his hair, with a gravelly sort of sleepiness. His arms go tight around Dave, fingers intertwined with his where Dave’s got his arms tucked to his skinny little chest.

Dave does.

The TV has the fucking audacity to play a Red Lobster commercial while he’s trying to enjoy his afterglow.