Chapter Text
“So this is where you, like…made us?” Dave asked as they entered the ectobiology lab, eyes flitting from one machine to another in awe, or the coolkid equivalent of awe at the very least.
“More like I pressed buttons like a jackass until suddenly there were eight babies,” John shrugged as he watched Dave go up to one of the big TVs. Dave began fiddling until he was viewing John in their current time on the TV. “When you were made, you literally screamed until I picked you up and rocked you. So, like, nothing has changed I guess,” John shrugged.
Dave glared at the brunette. “Say what you will, but I have control of the viewport TV thing and I can go back to when you tripped on air earlier today,” Dave smirked, rewinding the viewport until he was viewing John eating shit, jumping up quickly and acting like nothing had happened.
“You told me you didn’t see anything!” John shouted, cheeks turning pink. Dave shrugged.
“I lied.”
“Well there’s two viewports, so I can go back to when you were picking your nose when you thought I wasn’t looking!” John replied with a malicious grin, going over and bringing up Dave on the second TV, rewinding just 20 minutes earlier when Dave had his finger up his nose.
“I had an itch!” Dave cried out defensively.
“Oh yeah? Was the itch on your brain? Because damn Dave, you got some depth there!” John snickered. A message popped up briefly saying ‘target locked’ on the screen. “Oh! Looks like we are going to have to watch you eating your boogers forever, now that the target is locked or whatever!” John laughed, pointing at the screen. Dave’s ears went scarlet.
“Ok, fine, then I’m going back to when we wrestled earlier and you definitely got a boner,” He huffed, rewinding to hours earlier when John had called off their impromptu wrestling match. The two watched as past John adjusted the growing bulge in his pants, face red in embarrassment and arousal.
“It was an awkward boner! I couldn’t help it!” John screeched, face as red as his past self’s. The same message came up on Dave’s screen: target locked.
“Oops, sorry dude but the target is locked now. I hope you didn’t choke the chicken in the bathroom because we are about to see it happen,” Dave sneered. John shoved the blonde, who of course shoved back. This started another wrestling match between the two teenagers.
John gave a hard shove, causing Dave to stumble backwards into the buttons, his hand slamming down on a big blue button that had been pulsing lazily with light. All the lights in the lab began dimming and brightening rapidly, and the machines all began whirring loudly.
“What did you do??” John shouted over the noise.
“Me?? It was YOUR fat ass that shoved me into the control panel!” Dave yelled back. The machine noises were growing louder, and the control panel was lighting up frantically with various noises. There was a sudden flash of green light, and then everything hummed back to sleep. The lights went back to normal, both the viewports went black, and the lights on the control panel stopped lighting up at them.
John and Dave exchanged nervous looks. “What the fuck was that?” Dave finally spoke up.
“I don’t know,” John replied, ushering his friend to the exit, “But we better go before we fuck anything up for real.”
Dave nodded. “Yeah, I just hope that didn’t do anything irreversible like zap everyone into cockroaches or-”
Both boys froze in place suddenly. They slowly locked eyes. “That sounds like…”
“Yeah, but it couldn’t be…”
“Dave.”
“John?”
“Dave!”
“John no-”
“Dave, that’s a baby crying!” John shrieked. The two spun around to the source of the crying, and there was something squirming around on a platform across the room from them. John took a few hesitant steps forward and then flew as fast as he could with Dave chasing after him.
The baby was red in the face from screaming, her tiny fists swinging erratically at her sides. She had a tuft of blonde hair atop her head and nothing else covering her. Dave undid his cape and swaddled the baby girl, carefully cradling her in his arms while John warned “hold her head!”
The baby took a few hiccuped breaths and blinked her eyes up at the two teens, and they both took in sharp intakes of air. While the bit of hair she had was blonde like Dave’s, her eyes were the breathtaking bright blue John shared with her.
John cooed and gently took her from the other’s arms, rocking her gently. The baby sighed happily and stuck her tiny thumb into her mouth, nuzzling against John’s chest. Her eyes fluttered closed again as she relaxed back into sleep.
The two stared down at her in awe. Dave had even lifted his shades to see her clearly. John glanced over to his friend. “What now?” he whispered as quietly as he could.
“Hell if I know,” Dave murmured back, “But I know someone who would.”
Jane was humming to herself as she set the oven timer. She had about an hour to relax before her cookies were done. She was debating on going over to Roxy and Calliope’s place when there was a knock at her door. “Coming!” she called, though she was curious. Dirk and Jake had said they had other plans and wouldn’t be coming over. Had Roxy and Calliope come over to see her first? No one else really visited her that often.
The door opened and there was her ectobiological brother and the younger Strider. “Hey Crocker, we have a bit of a problem…we need your help,” Dave greeted nervously.
“Dave? John? What is-?” And then John was shushing her almost frantically. Jane blinked in astonishment, mostly because John was usually twice as loud as her at any given moment.
Then she noticed the lump cradled in John’s arms and her jaw dropped. “Is that a baby?” She whispered fiercely.
“I mean, yeah?”
“As in like, a human child?”
“As human as the rest of us,” Dave nodded, “I mean, us humans, that is. Not the trolls because they are actually not human. Besides they don’t even have babies, they have wigglers or something.”
“Wrigglers,” John corrected quietly.
“Yeah, that.”
“Where on Skaia did you find a human infant, and how??” Jane asked as she opened the door wider to let the two teens in.
“Well, uh, we kind of…um…”
“We made her,” John stated simply.
“John put his dick in my butt and got me ass pregnant,” Dave lied.
“No I did not!” John shouted, startling the baby in his arms. She immediately began to fuss, squirming in his arms. Jane held out her arms expectantly and John reluctantly handed her off.
“What actually happened, boys?” Jane asked as she bounced the baby gently to calm her.
“We were playing around in the ectobiology lab and we hit a button and I guess it accidentally combined my DNA and Dave’s and then there was a baby crying and we didn’t know what to do so we brought her here,” John explained.
“Well I hope you boys know that this child is your responsibility, seeing as you are her fathers,” Jane huffed.
“Don’t say it like that, it sounds so gay!” John complained.
“That is literally the least of our problems, Egbert, we have a baby to take care of and we literally just turned 18,” Dave pointed out.
“I’m not even 18 yet! I can’t be a father, especially not with another dude!” John cried, throwing his arms in the air.
“Stop centering on the homosexual part about it! We didn’t even have sex!” Dave shouted. “Not that it even matters, there is a baby here and no matter how she got here she’s here,” he grumbled.
“How are you not even freaked out about this?!” John screeched, and Dave stomped up to him, a full foot taller than him.
“You don’t think I’m freaking out?” He sneered. “I have no basis for parenting, John. The closest I can come to it is how Bro tortured and neglected me for thirteen years. How do I know I’m not going to fuck this baby up just as bad as Bro fucked me up?! I don’t know, John, I don’t know ANYTHING, and being gay is the least of my problems because now I am responsible for a whole new human. If you could get your head out of your fucking ass for TEN GODDAMN SECONDS, you’d see that as well!” Dave shoved past the brunette to the front door, slamming it behind him.
The baby in Jane’s arms started wailing loudly. “She’s probably hungry,” Jane explained, glancing at the front door worriedly. “You stay with her and I’ll go get Dave and go to the alchemizer to try to alchemize some baby stuff, alright?” Jane handed off the crying baby, grabbing a jacket and going to the door. “You should probably think of a name for her, you know. Anyways, bye! Keep an eye on my cookies!” Jane called as she ran out the door, waving as she went.
John looked down at the baby, who was starting to go red in the face because she was so upset.
“Great, what now?”