Chapter Text
Dave never thought of Bro as his brother.
That’s not the entire truth.
He thought of Bro as his bro back before he knew any better. When he was a tiny little cool kid dodging mashed pea baby food, he thought of Bro as his bro. In fact, he never questioned Bro’s self-description until third grade. It made sense, on the outside. Other kids at school had big bros. None as cool as Bro, but Dave couldn’t fault them for that. There was no one else as cool as Bro. His peers (he was too cool for friends back then) admitted that the first time Bro came to pick him up from school.
There he was, waiting for his Bro out front with the other Kindergartners when out of nowhere, Lil’ Cal’s plush puppet fist appeared on his shoulder. He whipped around, looking for Bro, only to find a dozen wide-eyed Kindergartners staring in every which direction. They didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he did. This was far from the first time Bro had challenged him to a duel.
Dave went to grab his sword (not a real sword back then, just a knife, really), only to remember the lame school rule forbidding weapons on school grounds. They even did sylladex checks each morning. Bro hadn’t known that (or maybe he just hadn’t told Dave) when he sent Dave off to school that morning, but he’d instructed Dave to leave his knife at home anyway. Dave wasn’t quite skilled enough in sylladex use to keep objects from randomly flying out at inopportune moments. That was OK when Dave was at home and the only person he could injure was himself, but Bro wisely decided they’d hold off on weaponizing him in a classroom setting.
Dave youth rolled almost on instinct when he caught a blurry, shadowy haze in the corner of his eye. Lil’ Cal appeared in the space where he had been standing the moment he vacated it.
While he rolled, Dave reflected that it wasn’t like Bro to telegraph his attacks like that. He didn’t have long to consider the thought. He regained his footing and immediately began fending off Lil’ Cal’s plush attacks. Lil’ Cal was using tae kwon do movements, a sign that Bro wanted him to work on his own martial arts skills, so Dave shifted his stance and let the kicks and punches fly.
Dave was almost disappointed that Bro cut the battle short by letting him KO Lil’ Cal after only a few minutes of what was more a demonstration of his forms than an actual test of skill. But Dave was never one to look a gift Horse in the mouth. He knew the necessity of Bro kicking his ass on a regular basis, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Dave and Bro met eyes from across the sidewalk, both through identical cool shades. He couldn’t read Bro’s expression. He never could break that guy’s poker face unless Bro wanted him to. But that didn’t stop him from noticing the thumbs up both Bro and Lil’ Cal gave him.
The other kids, Dave’s peers, screamed their little heads off. Not because the little demonstration had scared them (the adults had that range of the emotional spectrum covered), but because they were actually cheering. Dave was so confused he actually forgot to return Bro’s thumbs up. For a second he thought they were cheering for Bro. That was the only thing that made sense. But all hundred of those little kid eyes were glued to Dave, not Bro. They were cheering for him. It was the first time anybody had cheered for him.
Before his new little fans could start crowding in, Bro swept Dave off his feet and ran back to their apartment. (Bro was as skilled a parkourist as he was a fighter. As far as Dave knew, he’d never once stepped foot in a car.) Bro knew without asking that he was hella confused. He explained once they were both back in the sacred confines of the Strider abode.
“Gotta establish your reputation, little dude.”
But this isn’t that memory. This is a completely different memory, from years later.
Dave was about to turn another year older than all the kids around him thanks to his late birthday (yet another way Dave was infinitely cooler than his peers). He was at home, chilling with Bro and playing a shitty video game he got packaged with his Burger King meal. This wasn’t the first time Dave realized that he thought Bro wasn’t really his bro, but it was the first time he acted on it.
Bro had this god awful habit of kissing Dave on the head that he no doubt picked up from some shitty 80’s parenting movie. He used to have several of those lying around for ironic purposes. No doubt the kiss was ironic too.
That kiss was really beginning to piss Dave off.
But it wasn’t just because being kissed on the head like a little tyke was the single most uncool action Bro subjected him too. It was slowly becoming more than just an indignity. It was becoming a symbol of everything that felt wrong between the two of them.
Looking back, Dave never could pinpoint when he started second-guessing Bro’s bro story. On the surface, there was nothing to question. Bro wasn’t old enough to be his dad, they looked alike, and other kids had big bros who kicked their asses. Usually it was because the big bro wanted to establish a proper pecking order instead of teach the little bro all their mad skills, but that wasn’t what got Dave to questioning.
There was never any evidence to make Dave doubt Bro’s story. It was just something he felt, and Strider's don’t ignore their instincts. He never questioned Bro on the matter. Come on, how could he? You can’t have a straight conversation with that guy. It’s all puppets and irony with Bro. Besides, it’s uncool to just cut to the chase like that.
What Dave did instead was possibly the single most uncool thing he ever did.
Instead of out-scoring Dave at another round of Sneak King, Bro glitched the game out, getting the King stuck in a knee-high bush. It was his signature coup d'état. Bro may have constantly pulled his punches, but he never let Dave win.
Bro leaned over to deliver another one of those shame-kisses like a punch to the skull. Dave couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d had just about enough of this shit. The instant before Bro made contact, Dave channeled all of his mad skills into a counter-attack.
Sparks flew as lips met lips. Dave’s system overloaded with the rush. Even before Bro broke the contact, Dave began wondering what kind of massive idiot he must have been to think that this was a good idea. This was so uncool. Too uncool. And too much more, besides. Dave was old enough already to understand just what incest meant and how wrong it was supposed to be. But all the while Dave was beating himself down, his gut told him he wasn’t wrong. Bro wasn’t his bro. Things were wrong as they were. They were family, that much was undeniable, but they were never meant to be brothers.
Bro pulled back, but he didn’t pull away. He looked down on Dave with his unreadable poker face for an infinitely long minute. Dave could feel himself boiling under that stare, but he held his ground, kept his own poker face as unreadable as he could. He’d already shown all his cards, no need to start showing his heart too. This was it. Dave knew it. This messed up situation was finally going to get resolved.
Then Bro, of all things, leaned down and kissed him again. Just a little peck on the lips, like Dave saw little old grannies do on TV.
It was infuriating.
And it was only the first of many. Bro stopped planting little tyke kisses to the top of his head and started granny kissing him instead. Every single day, Dave was subjected to this mockery. Bro knew what the kiss had meant, and he was throwing it back in Dave’s face in this ultimate display of irony. It made Dave burn with so much righteous fury that his swordplay suffered. The scar on his left hip was the result of Bro face-smacking him with, of all fucking things, Lil’ Cal. Dave had thrown every last bit of shame and anger he had into that strife. It was a huge mistake. The red haze that filled his vision left him blind and wide-open. Bro was a master swordsman. He’d never left Dave with anything more than tiny nicks that hardly bled. This had been Dave’s fault.
And to make matters worse, the cut had sliced through the top of his jeans, nowhere low enough to be scandalous but definitely in the pants area. Bro had held the bundle of bandages he’d thrown over Dave’s wound the whole run to the hospital, like he didn’t even trust Dave to do that properly. And all the while, a little voice in the back of Dave’s head mocked him: This is the closest he’s ever going to get to getting in your pants.
The cut just barely nicked muscle, but any sort of rigorous physical activity was out for more than a month after. The wound scarred, a permanent reminder of many things, the least of which was how stupid it was to lose his temper with a stronger opponent.
Another year past and Dave more or less gave up. He suffered the thousand little indignities, the evil granny kisses. His feelings never faded, like the phase he at one point attributed them to. In fact, they grew. But if there’s one thing Striders are good at, it’s ignoring their emotions. Cool kids don’t let their emotions take over. In fact, that is the exact opposite of cool. Dave expected the status quo to remain static for the rest of their lives.
But all that changed when Dave least expected it.
It was Dave’s 13th birthday. Bro had pulled him out of school for “family reasons” and drug him off to Peru without any warning or explanation. It wasn’t the first time Bro had dragged him off to some godforsaken corner of the world for training, but it was definitely one of the coolest. Dave had to fight hard to keep his poker face when he first set eyes on the ruins of Machu Picchu.
There was no one around. Dave had no idea how Bro had managed that one. Maybe it was because of the light rain, or maybe it was because they were there at the ass-crack of dawn, but they had the whole abandoned city to themselves.
It was perfect. The Strider brothers had their most epic strife to date. The strife went for three rounds, as was the norm. The first round went decidedly to Bro, but the second ended almost in Dave’s favor. Dave ordered Bro not to take it easy on him just because it was his birthday. He switched his stance to one of the newer forms he’d learned, one he wasn’t very proficient in, and taunted Bro forward.
Bro came at him like a bat out of hell. It wasn’t five seconds before Dave was flat on his back with Bro’s sword at his neck, completely defeated but not humiliated by the loss. There was nothing quite like a good ass kicking from Bro, not because he enjoyed the defeat but because nobody saw Bro this close to his best but Dave. Dave was the only one who would ever know just how powerful and how undeniably cool his Bro was.
Bro capchalogued his sword and wished Dave a happy 13th birthday. It was perfect, so goddamned perfect.
Dave’s body moved practically of its own accord. It was hard balancing out the warrior’s need to follow his instinct and his coolkid’s need to make every single action incredibly intentional, or at least seem that way. Dave’s downfall would always be “seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Dave grabbed Bro and pulled him down for some sloppy makeouts. No more of this granny kiss bullshit. He was thirteen years old and he knew what he wanted. He didn’t care that he was never going to get it, he just wasn’t going to let Bro ignore it and mock it any longer.
Dave was never more surprised at any point in his life than when Bro kissed him back.
Fuck, but Bro knew how to kiss. Predictable, in a way. There probably wasn’t anything that Dave was better than Bro at. Nothing good, anyway. But for this moment none of that mattered, except how good it felt when Bro opened his mouth and let Dave’s tongue slide against his.
But once again, Bro cut things short. A gloved hand found Dave’s jaw and pushed his head back down onto the damp stone. The disappointment was just as overwhelming as the euphoria.
“You know how to kiss.”
It was an accusation, not a question.
“Shit, did you think you were stealing the virgin kiss of a defenseless, Victorian maiden?” Dave drawled, a little more sarcastic than the situation called for.
Bro raised an eyebrow and Dave fought down the blood suddenly rushing to his face.
“I wanted to know how to do it properly. I can’t sit around waiting for you to teach me everything.”
Dave let the implication hang in the air and, god, he hoped Bro got it.
“Who?”
“Cindy Lou Who. Why the fuck does it matter?” Dave shot back.
Bro actually had the gall to laugh at him. Dave was a second away from shoving Bro off and repeating the past mistake that left him with that scar when Bro raised his free hand to his lips. He wiped away a small trace of spit at the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and the rest he licked away. The same tongue that Dave now knew the exact texture of slid across the lips he wanted more than anything.
Dave felt a smile spread under Bro’s hand as Bro leaned down to kiss him again. More than a smile, a goddamned declaration.
He’d won.