Work Text:
Dave hardly ever visited you without prompting.
It wasn’t that your younger brother didn’t like spending time with you, but Dave was always so busy with training and rehearsals that he never had much time to spare, and when he did, he asked Roxy and Rose along for dinner to spend as much time with his siblings as he could. You admired the littlest of your brood more than you ever let on, oddly proud in a way only people who helped raise smaller people ever were. While you admitted you had been sort of a jerk when Dave wanted to try ballet along with Rose (and only because Rose was trying it, at least back then), you were happy that your brother had found something he was fiercely passionate about.
You had attended all of Dave’s recitals, presentations and productions. You had also made it a point to be extremely obnoxious about it, buying enough flowers to fill his room at home and his dressing room at whatever venue he was dancing at that day. Dave hated on the gesture very vocally, arguing that he didn’t have any fucking space to change and his co-workers all hated his guts because of it, but Rose had told you before that Dave had nearly cried the first time it happened.
“Dirk? You gonna let me in?”
Right. Dave is visiting.
“Yeah, sure,” you answer, side-stepping to let him into the apartment, “I’m sort of finishing up some work, but you’re welcome to watch TV while you wait. We can hit the streets after.”
Dave hums in agreement, stepping into your apartment, while quietly sliding his shades off his face and hanging them on the neck of his t-shirt. You shuffle awkwardly in place, watching your brother look for a place to plop down, and only moving when the dancer has finally found his preferred spot on the couch.
Before you go into the living room you turn towards the kitchen and open the fridge to find the apple juice you always keep in case Dave comes around. Picking that up, along with an unfinished cold brew coffee you had bought that morning for yourself, you kick the refrigerator door closed.
Dave hisses when you press the (cold-ass) glass bottle to his cheek, but takes it with a mumbled thank you before twisting it open. He makes that small, hilarious sound of wonderment he’s been making since he was six when the lid makes the satisfying ‘pop’ of the seal breaking, and you smile at the back of his head.
“So, what’re you working on?” he asks, as soon as you’ve sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table, “Is it that thing with the thing-y you told us about the other day?”
You try not to laugh, “No, it’s another thing-y with the thing,” you reply, “remember Squarewave?”
Dave nods, taking another sip of his apple juice.
“I’m updating his vocab,” you tell him, typing a couple more things into the code on your computer, “He’s getting really easy to beat--the kids are starting to get really bored with him.”
“Aw, hell no,” Dave moans, frowning at you, “his outdated vocab is the best part of rapping with Squarewave! Why would you do that?”
“I told you,” you say again, smirking up at him, “Kids are getting bored with ‘im.”
“Those kids don’t know how to appreciate Squarewave enough,” Dave huffs, crossing his arms across his chest after he’s put the apple juice bottle between his thighs, “Why not take them Sawtooth? He’s impossible to beat--boredom? Gone. Problem? Solved.”
“You are aware the school would never hire my services again if I give the kids a robot that they can’t beat, right?”
“I learned enough rapping with Sawtooth,” your brother shoots back, red eyes fixed on one of the family portraits you have hanging on the wall in front of the couch, “Kids these days.”
You don’t answer after that, but you make a mental note to keep an extra disc of Squarewave’s old programming just in case Dave ever gets the urge to rap with him again. You’ve seen your brother at rehearsals (sometimes, when you’re bored and don’t have any otherplace to be, your feet will walk you straight into the Skaian Ballet Company dance studio) and you know he likes to fuck up numbers by adding his own raps over the pianists’ playing, which drives everyone insane.
He’s gotten better over the years, you know this, even if he hasn’t really shown you those skills straight on like he used to when he was younger and looking to impress you any chance he got. You’ve heard him improvise over those pianists. He never loses tempo, or pauses to catch the next word to rhyme with. You wonder if he works on his raps before he decides to mess up rehearsals.
Without meaning to, you smile at your computer. Dave does you a favor and doesn’t question it, but he does arch an eyebrow in your peripheral vision. You choose to ignore it.
He doesn’t turn on the TV like you told him he could, but he does put in his earphones to listen to some music. You can hear the faint buzz of whatever it is he’s listening to (pretty sure it’s one of his new numbers for the company, he’s gotten into the habit of listening to them on repeat to familiarize himself with them) and he slowly relaxes into the cushions, closing his eyes as he leans his head back.
You take a brief moment to smile at him now that he isn’t looking, reaching over to grab the apple juice he forgot between his thighs and setting it on the coffee table in front of his knees. One crimson eye peeks open briefly, before shutting close again without so much as a word. He’s not jumpy around you anymore, not like he was when he was fifteen and going through his weird rebellious phase where you both fought more often than talked, and you sit back down to continue working.
As you get sucked into your work again, you are only briefly aware of the way Dave’s right leg starts bouncing ever so slightly after a good twenty minutes have passed. You try to ignore it for a little while, but it starts getting more and more noticeable as time passes. You steel yourself, trying not to let the little movement get to you, and start working faster so the two of you can get out of the apartment and burn off some of your little brother’s neverending energy.
Dave’s always needed the extra movement. Growing up, it had been hard keeping up with him, but at least Rose had pulled him back a little, and you've had Roxy at some point to keep him entertained, too. Jake English’s Jungle Corner had also helped keep your little brother pinned to the couch for at least the 45 minutes the show went on. The older Dave got, the more difficult it got to keep him from becoming too antsy.
Ballet offered him a good outlet, at least, which was another thing that made your initial opposition vanish in no time. Dancing helped keep Dave focused. It was something he liked as well, and that he had thrown himself into even after his twin had quit. If asked, your brother would probably tell you it was one of his many ironic exploits, but you and the rest of your siblings really knew how much Dave lived for what he did.
(You paid for UT Austin’s College of Fine Arts, not to mention Dave busted his ass for a scholarship. He absolutely lived for what he did.)
You’re so engrossed in your work by then, that you don’t even notice that Dave has stood up from his place on the couch until he’s plopping behind you, setting his ass down right next to yours. You jump only slightly (imperceptibly so, he can prove nothing ) and look over your shoulder to side-eye him while he’s pressing his back to yours. He sinks into a position that looks dubiously comfortable, and you lean forward over your laptop to give him more room.
The position is uncomfortable, with you craning your neck to look at your screen, so you push the table away from underneath your laptop, and bring the computer to your thighs. You sigh softly, feeling less tense now that you can look down at the screen instead of head-on. Dave groans about you moving and you shush him back into sleep, wriggling in your place to find a position that’s comfortable enough enough for you and that doesn’t compromise your brother’s nap.
He hasn’t done this since he was thirteen. Dave had the uncanny ability to fall asleep absolutely everywhere, which as a child, meant it usually was on top of one of his siblings. He had stopped draping himself over you very early on, choosing instead to curl in Roxy or Rose’s lap. You had chalked it up to Dave having a closer bond with his sisters than he did with you, but it had still kinda sucked when he stopped searching for your body heat in winter when you were working on your projects and he was bored and cold.
It’s the middle of summer and your back is getting sweaty with his added weight, but you don’t dare to move. You listen to the little, half-asleep mumbles of whatever song he’s rehearsing in his dreams tumble out of his lips, the rhythm of his heart thumping a steady beat into your spine. His breathing evens out after a while, as he falls into deep slumber, and you have to balance his weight perfectly so he doesn’t slide off and tumble onto the floor.
You weren’t planning on working on anything other than Squarewave’s upgrades, having cleared up most of your day when your brother had called that morning asking if you were free for some well-needed bro-time, but now that Dave’s decided on this impromptu nap session, you have no other choice but to stay here until you die. Them’s the breaks, Roxy would say. Your cat falls asleep on you? Too bad, you’re there until they decide they’ve had enough or you perish. Whatever comes first.
(You snort. Roxy would be proud of you if she listened to your internal ramblings.)
It’s not so bad, you think. The position might be slightly uncomfortable and your legs will probably end up falling asleep just like your brother in a while (plus, your laptop doesn’t have eternal charge, so you’ll have to stand up to connect it eventually), but there’s a comfortable kind of warmth that spreads in your chest from having Dave in your personal space again after many years of distance.
You’d seen the little shit snoring on your back grow out of jeans, and shirts, and leotards, had watched him go back to Texas for college when you had tried to keep your siblings away from that miserable place that had tried to take them away from you; you had watched him fall in and out of love, and cry in Roxy’s lap more times than you could count; and you had listened to Jake English prattle on about animals for hours on end when little Dave had been particularly fussy and wouldn’t go to sleep without that faux-british accent lulling him to sleep.
He was your brother, as he’s always been. Tougher than you in the face of adversity and softer than you’d ever allow yourself to be, at the same time. At eighteen, you had had to become some sort of parent for him, and for Rose and Roxy, too. You became the bearer of a burden you weren’t quite ready to take, but you were grateful for it, somehow, in a strange, bittersweet kind of way.
Now, nearing your forties, you were happy to have become the keeper of your siblings wildest dreams and greatest fears. You had fought their demons and bandaged their wounds with care, and they, in turn, had kissed your injuries better with childish wonder and made you stronger--the best version of yourself that only existed because they made you that way.
You take in a deep breath and notice you’ve fucked up your line of code. Better focus on the task at hand.
//
Dave wakes up because someone knocks at your door. It’s hilarious because he startles and flails around until he hits the carpeted floor, and also off-putting because you completely forgot about him being there for a while. Your laptop was nearing its battery’s end, and your limbs had long since become numb to feeling, so you have to stretch before actually moving to the front-door. Your knees pop audibly when you stand up and your little shit of a brother reminds you you’re old.
(His joints are hella worse. He can shut the fuck up.)
As soon as the door is open, you find a pair of disgruntled sisters with arched eyebrows and perfectly manicured hands. You mumble a half-assed question that dies in the air, and Roxy steps around you, shaking her head and saying something about stupid men and their stupid robots. You remind her, matter-of-factly, that they’re her robots sometimes, too, but she’s not listening to you when she reaches the coffee table and starts reading the 52 messages she and Rose sent you an hour ago.
“We’ve been trying to reach you, brother,” Rose’s voice is soft as she passes you by, her touch on your shoulder even more so, her presence quiet like it usually is, “Both of you, in fact.”
“I fell asleep,” Dave mumbles from his place still sprawled on the floor, and Roxy pokes him in the ribs, “Shoo, leave me alone, witch.”
“I thought you said you’d make sure Dirk got out of his goddamn apartment so we could surprise him at the restaurant!” Roxy chastises your younger brother, and you raise an eyebrow.
“He really did forget,” Rose says again, giggling into her hand, “how many years has this happened in a row now?”
“That’d be five,” Dave says, right before yawning.
“Forget…?” your mind reels and you wonder what could it be that you--
Oh. “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh’, you dummy,” Roxy rolls her eyes affectionately, standing up again from her place kneeling over Dave, “It’s your birthday, Dirk! Your 38th birthday!”
“Yeesh, don’t scream it so loudly,” you tell her, “The little old lady that lives next to me still mistakes me for a teenager.”
Rose stares at you, eyebrow arched, and you wave your arm at her to leave you alone.
“Well, our surprise was bust,” Roxy continues, prodding at Dave’s ribs again with her toes, which elicits a small laugh from him, “Thanks to Mister-I-fell-asleep-on-my-brother’s-birthday, but I think we can still save the night.”
You try to tell her that it’s not necessary, but Roxy can be very insistent when she wants to, so she convinces you in the end. They allow you 10 minutes for a shower, and are off to find your favorite restaurant a couple of blocks down from your apartment after Roxy has wrangled a semi-decent button up onto you. Dave orders all your favorites and an italian orange soda with unlimited refills, while Roxy asks the waiter to blast the ‘happy birthday’ song on the speakers. You’re embarrassed and more than a little mortified because damn it , you’re nearing your forties, but your siblings seem to not give a shit.
When the torture is over and you’ve finally eaten, the four of you start talking about what you’ve all been up to. You tell them you think you might’ve saved enough to buy back Strider Records from Jack Noir, and watch as the table descends into excited blabber. Roxy squeals in your ear about how happy she is for you, while Rose starts prattling about how she knows a good PR gal that might be able to help you. Dave says something that you can’t quite catch, but you think it sounds oddly similar to ‘I’m proud of you, bro’, which absolutely doesn’t make you melt with brimming happiness.
You bring your siblings closer when they pile around to hug you, and mumble quiet assurances into their heads, ruffling whatever strands of blonde hair you manage to snag in your gloved hands. Dave’s offended squeak alerts you whose perfect hairdo you tousled and you tell him to kindly shut the fuck up and enjoy the tender Strider (Stri londe , Rose reminds you) moment.
It’s a nice day, all in all.
//
+1
You all file back into your apartment very late, already a little buzzed on tequila shots and margaritas. Dave slumps against your back again when you sit down on the floor, and Rose comes to bury her nose in your thigh, snoring in point-three seconds. Roxy’s blabbering about one thing or the other, still brimming with excitement while she grabs bottles of water from the cupboard in your kitchen, and your baby brother leans his head on your shoulder.
“There’s a,” he begins, voice shaky with drink, “there’s a dude . You know? Like--like, there’s--there’s a man .”
You wait for his next sentence, but it never comes so you prompt him with a hum.
“Like a man whom I like?” Dave says, and you think he’s smiling, although you can’t really see his face, “He’s the new pianist. He keeps tempo perfectly, never misses a beat.”
“You like ‘im ‘cause he keeps tempo perfectly?”
“No,” he answers, shuffling behind you until he comes to set his head down on the thigh that isn’t being occupied by Rose, his red eyes looking up at you, “I like ‘im ‘cause he’s very nice. Like extra nice. Like, if being nice was an olympic sport, he’d get gold in all categories.”
You’d tell him sports don’t work that way, but it doesn’t really matter, because you see him smile, and something burns brightly in your chest. The space reserved only for your siblings alight with happiness and dread at the same time, because you hadn’t seen Dave like this in a long time.
“There’s a man, Dirk,” he tells you again, eyes drooping closed, and he turns to bury his nose on your stomach, “He’s very nice.”
Both your hands come to tangle in blonde locks. Your left moves Rose’s sunshine-like bangs from her forehead, scratching behind her ear calmly, while your right comes to comb through Dave’s platinum locks. The twins sigh in unison and you smile. Behind you, Roxy sits with her back to you and let’s you rest your weight on her.
“They’re all grown up, huh?” she tells you, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it, and you nod.
“Seems only yesterday that they were six.”
You fall asleep on the floor that night, back propped by Roxy’s own, fingers tangled in the twins’ blonde heads. Your sister’s head had lolled back on your shoulder sometime that night, and yours dropped onto hers once sleep finally took you. The heights are all wrong and your necks hurt in the morning. Dave and Rose bump heads when they wake up and hiss at each other like cats looking at their own reflection. Getting up is one giant body ache and tequila filled regret, but it’s alright.
It’s perfect.