Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/3275906. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: Other Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Bro_&_Dave_Strider, Dave_Strider_&_Other(s), Bro/Dave_Strider, Dave Strider/Other(s) Character: Dave_Strider, Bro_Strider, Other(s) Additional Tags: Child_Abuse, Incest, Dissociation, Depersonalization, Grooming, Forced Prostitution, Non-Consensual_Oral_Sex, Anal_Sex, Victim_Blaming, Pre- Sburb/Sgrub, Homestuck_Kink_Meme, Body_Horror, Underage_Prostitution Series: Part 3 of Is_This_Weird? Stats: Published: 2015-02-03 Words: 2651 ****** Don't Make It Weird ****** by Makizushi Summary Bro makes Dave help him prepare for the end of the world. (Less triggery summery/reading alternative now included.) Notes Mind the tags. Though it provides some insight, reading this fic is not necessary for understanding "It's_Not_Weird_(Except_When_It_Is)" [Edit] As I feared, there are at least a few people who want to know what happens in this fic but who, for very valid reasons, cannot read it safely. So I decided to write a VERY spoilery summery of the story in as non-triggery a way as possible. You may read_it_here. Tsunamayo_Makizushi's_Writing_Tumblr See the end of the work for more notes Bro appeared leaning in the doorway to his room, and Dave fought the urge to tense. “There’s a guy coming over to spend some time with you today.” Dave was confused; usually no one was allowed to visit. “What does that mean? Why would someone want to hang out with me?” “What do you think it means? If I’ve gotta pay for all this shit for you the least you can do is help out.” Summer was almost over and school would be starting up again in a couple of weeks. Not that Dave went regularly; he put up with it just enough that he was sure he wouldn't get Bro in trouble. “Bro, wait! I can earn money; I’ll do newspapers or something. Or I just won’t get new school stuff, I don’t need it anyway.” Dave grasped the hem of his oversized shirt hard, trying to fight down panic. Bro dismissed his pleading impassively. “You cost a lot more than just your school supplies, little man. We’ve got important stuff coming up to get ready for. You’ll do what you’re told.” Bro looked Dave up and down before turning to leave. “And take a fucking shower.” Shaking fingers threaded themselves through slightly greasy hair and pulled; Dave needed to be present for this, he needed to think. This was probably the scariest thing that had ever happened, even including the past few years. When Dave was small Bro touched him as little as possible, so it was strange when he started being... affectionate. It was fine, Dave dealt with it the way Bro taught him to deal with everything; roll with it, be cool. After a while things got a bit intimate, and then kind of intense... It was okay though, everything was cool. Striders didn't get scared, and even when they did they handled it. They certainly didn't freak out like stupid little kids or anything. So a year or two ago when Bro started fucking him Dave knew he could deal with it even though it probably wasn't normal. But this… this was a whole new thing. (He carefully avoided thinking “messed up” or “wrong” because it was his Bro. What would even happen to him without Bro? Would he even be a Strider anymore? Who would want him?) Curling up in his chair and hyperventilating wasn’t helping, so he went to the kitchen where Bro was eating leftover take-out to see if there was anything he could do. Lil’ Cal stared blankly from the counter, sending a shiver up Dave's spine. He noticed Bro was drinking. Bro almost never drank. Everything was bad and weird. He tried to stop himself from anxiously fidgeting, that shit wasn't cool. At least Bro didn't seem to notice; he was resolutely looking anywhere but at Dave. “Bro please, I don’t want anyone else messing with me like that. I thought you said you were-” Bro slammed his beer on the rickety folding table they kept in the kitchen, causing foam to erupt from the bottle and spill everywhere. Dave’s feet were suddenly a million miles away. “You better stop, or you and I are going to have a problem. Just do it, and don’t make it weird.” Dave left, calm and dry eyed. He floated to the bathroom, and showered with tiny, far away stranger’s hands. That was okay. That was fitting, it would help him get used to it. When he was done he drifted out of the shower and into clothes, though he didn’t know why. People were talking to him on the computer, he let them know everything was fine. Chatting with John helped bring him back to himself a little bit. It was fun having actual friends. None of the kids at school noticed him with his old clothes and patchy attendance. All the neighborhood kids avoided him. Dave guessed they had been warned about the weird guy who was probably a drug dealer and his ratty little bastard child. Dave briefly considered running away, but he knew he wouldn’t make it out in time. Besides, he had nowhere to go, and even if he did have somewhere to go he didn’t have the money to make it there. He more than briefly considered killing himself, but he couldn’t just disappear on Bro and his only friends. The idea of writing them a suicide note made him feel like hideous wretched scum, so he didn't. Throwing up seemed like a solid preemptive measure, so he did it twice. He didn’t know what being an actual prostitute was like, but he was pretty sure throwing up on people got you in trouble regardless. He hoped to god they weren’t going to do it in his room, he hated when Bro messed with him there and this would probably be much worse. Just in case, he hid the comforter from his bed deep in the closet he used as a darkroom. Bro bought him picture development stuff sometimes, when he was good. There was other stuff too; he had a computer, video games, and dead things in jars. Dave was so ungrateful to be making a big deal out of this. Someone knocked at the door and Dave’s stomach roiled again, but there was nothing left to throw up. That was good. Dave had every intention of going to the living room, or at least the hallway so hopefully the guy would never even see his room, but he was frozen in place. They were talking, greeting one another. He heard footsteps getting closer finally found the ability to dart into the hallway. The capacity for movement seemed to have cost him his sight, which was a strange trade-off. Everything was kind of white, and noises didn’t make sense, so he just stood in the hallway like a little statue. Bro nudged Dave’s head hard to get his attention, and most likely repeated himself. “Hey, listen. I said you’re gonna be in here.” He gestured to his own bedroom, where Dave normally didn’t go. “You are gonna listen, and be good, do you hear?” The guy said something, but for the life of him Dave didn’t know what. It took Bro pushing him towards the door for him to finally snap back to awareness. To his horror, he completely lost his composure and turned into that stupid, freaked out kid he knew Bro didn't like. “Wait, wait! Please! Don’t just leave me with someone please, I’ll do anything.” Dave finally burst into great, heaving sobs and if Bro hadn’t been holding him by an arm he probably would have collapsed. The guy actually picked up Dave’s chin and looked into his terrified face. “It’s alright kid, nothing that bad is going to happen.” Dave still struggled to cling to the hand that felt like it would take his arm off. Bro sighed heavily, but to Dave, who had been expecting anger, he sounded almost uncomfortable. “I’m sorry he’s being a little shit like this, it’s just nerves though. He’ll be fine.” Bro hauled Dave into his bedroom with the big bed and the recording equipment. Half finished puppets and sewing supplies lay scattered across the desk along with computer parts and Lil' Cal. The guy sat down, but Dave was clinging hard to Bro, gasping a steady stream of “Bro please, no, no, no, please don’t leave.” “Hey man, I don’t want the kid to self-destruct or some shit…” Dave was shaking like mad, and his face was a disgusting mess. Maybe if he made himself super revolting no one would ever want to fuck him. “Um. I know this isn’t what you signed up for, but would you mind me sticking around? I think that might help.” Dave stopped breathing. This was what he’d asked for, right? For Bro to not leave? This was better, it had to be okay. Somewhere in his mind Dave knew Bro wasn’t just going to let him get away with pulling this kind of tantrum shit, so any option that made it bearable was a godsend. “Yes, that’s all I want. I don’t know him, please.” Calming the fuck down became priority number one, Bro hated it when he acted like a little bitch. The guy looked between them consideringly, and made an expansive gesture. “Yeah, why the fuck not.” Bro gave Dave a little warning squeeze on his already bruised arm, then let him go. He heard Bro scoot his desk chair near the bed, and settle down. The guy reached out to grab Dave’s slender wrist, and at his touch Dave was half way out of his body again. Instead of blacking out or anything dramatic like that, he felt like a ghost. He was a ghost that had been expelled from and was now haunting the breathing, trembling corpse he’d once animated. Looking through its eyes but not really there. His baggy shirt was pulled over his head and the guy handed it back to him, saying “Clean your face up.” Dave felt like a filthy, awful child. He was almost a teenager and he needed to be told when to clean his face. The guy stripped him the rest of the way and ran his damp hands all over Dave’s body. His ghost-self felt less and less of what was happening; or maybe it just became less important as he became less real, he wasn’t sure. When the guy reached up to mess with his now fluffy hair, he smiled at Bro and said “Shit, he looks just like you.” “Shut the fuck up.” Dave froze. That was the tone of voice Bro used when something seriously bad was about to happen. The guy raised his hands in a placating manner. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Why don’t you help me out here, remind me what he’s good at?” Words became impossible to process again, and anyway it all sounded so far away. They were talking about him, but they probably didn’t need his ghost’s input in any case. Dave was lifted onto the guy’s lap by his waist, and he started kissing Dave all over. At first he was so numb that he couldn’t feel it, so it didn’t seem like it mattered, but after a minute he started to panic. He was sure that the guy was trying to eat him, to bite chunks out of him like in a nightmare. Everything went a little bit surreal after that; he was rubbing against the guy’s naked chest like a whore, but couldn’t remember seeing him undress. He was on the bed and someone was between his legs but the sheets and the ceiling pattern were so unfamiliar they absorbed all his attention. At some point the smell and taste of Bro tethered him back to reality; surely it had been a nightmare, but he was on Bro’s cock and being fucked hard at the same time which made no sense. Even with his tenuous grasp on the situation at hand, his body apparently knew what was going on and he watched in fascinated horror as he bobbed, and pushed, and moaned, and squeaked. Bro came down his throat and pulled him off his cock by his hair. “Stop crying.” Dave blinked in confusion and found that there were tears there, but he wasn’t sure of how to stop something he hadn’t started. Mouth noises were making sense again though, and Dave struggled to keep up. Not being real was really scary, he didn’t like it. The guy fucking him – which was a thing he had somehow noticed and gotten distracted from – dug his fingers into his hip so hard and yanked him back so sharply it actually made him shriek in surprise and half felt pain. The guy petted all along every inch of Dave he could reach. “He’s perfect. How do you make him come?” Coming back to his body was an awful idea; he should have stayed a haunted corpse. He could have been part of his own dead things collection. “You basically have to snuggle him, rots my teeth out.” Shame washed through Dave like poison. For the first time since they’d started he spoke on purpose. “I don’t want to. Please, can I just go? Please?” When he was gathered in a sticky embrace, and a hand was fitted over his mouth, he deliberately went limp to keep from struggling. Before he had been convinced that Bro had corrupted him somehow, rewired him to like the shit he did. Now with this horrible stranger’s hand on him he knew that he was just easy, that he had been fooling himself. Dave's body twitched and whimpered as the guy stroked him and muttered filthy encouragements he could only half understand. The hand over his mouth was too tight, he breathed so fast he couldn't get any air, and he was trapped but couldn't stay still. He didn't want to be real for this, he wanted to be dead again, he didn't want to know these things about himself. Pleasure, nausea, and a splitting headache built in him until finally, thankfully, he was gone again. Eventually the guy and Bro left, though he could hear them in the living room for a little while. Sweat and jizz cooled on his skin. When Dave did finally move he was slow and sore. He couldn’t figure out if he was crying or not. To solve the problem he stumbled his way back into the shower. With water falling on his face it wouldn’t make a difference if he was crying. A couple of hours later he found himself curled up in his comforter naked and damp, hidden in his darkroom closet. For the first few moments of becoming aware again he was convinced he was dead. The moisture on his skin was from his decomposing flesh, the slick squishy feeling still inside him was his guts rotting like bruised, discarded fruit. He was buried and dead, except everything still hurt and that was bullshit. Complete bullshit. =============================================================================== A week or two later Bro broke the lease on their apartment, and moved them to a new, smaller place. Bro also quit his job, pulled Dave out of school before he could even start junior high, and spent all of his time either doing weird puppet shit or training Dave extra hard in martial arts. The training was so intense he had to stop video chatting with his friends. Dave knew the move had been expensive, but he didn’t know why they’d done it. They hadn’t been well off before, but even in the smaller apartment they could barely survive on Bro’s puppet smut income. The whoring only happened intermittently; once Bro used the money to get him a set of turn tables and some other stupid stuff, another time he had incredibly fancy internet installed in their shitty apartment. None of it made any sense, and Dave wished it would stop. There was something he had started paying attention to though. He finally knew why Bro treated him this way; he wasn’t a real person, not the way most people were. Bro never called him by his name, the neighbors never noticed him, and school didn’t contact him. It was like he was invisible, living in his own tiny invisible world. Even the people that fucked him, including Bro, looked right through him like he wasn’t even a thing. Though the body he haunted strove in every way to please it moved through its tiny life lightly, like it too was a ghost. Like he was doubly dead. He had never even met the only people who thought he really existed. Dave worked harder at being like Bro, because Bro was the most real thing in the world. If he could be just like Bro maybe he could be real too, and everything would be okay. End Notes [EDIT] A portion of this fic was re-written to be from Bro's point of view. You_can_read_it_here. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!