Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/3885253.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Bro/Dave_Strider
  Character:
      Dave_Strider, Bro_|_Dirk_Strider
  Additional Tags:
      Stridercest_-_Freeform
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-05-06 Words: 3655
****** Earn It ******
by amporatrash
Summary
     prompted by tumblr user fishadee.
It's just been part of the routine for as long as you can remember.  You drag
your ass home from school and the food is waiting on the table.  It's always
takeout (chinese or pizza), or fastfood leftovers from something Bro got for
himself earlier.  Sometimes he's there, sometimes he's not, but either way you
haul your exhausted carcass up the stairs and shut yourself in your room for a
while.

The world sucks and you know it.  That's why you keep up so many ironic
websites and blogs.  Somebody's gotta be the figurehead for a generation that
couldn't get more disenfranchised if someone tore the label off of it and
shoved it in the gutter.  But you don't really care about shit like that on the
surface.  You're like a polished stainless steel wall, and everybody who knows
you is in awe of your seemingly endless supply of cool (or at least that's what
you tell yourself).  Your readers worship you.  You're a fucking king as far as
they're considered.  They don't know you're just a teenage boy who lives more
or less by himself.

Okay, well, maybe you don't.  But you might as well.  The tall spectre of your
Bro seems to haunt the corners of your vision.  You don't know where he goes
during the day while you're at school, and even when he is home, he's a bit
dodgy.  Oh, you can corner him every once in a while, and there are the handful
of times when you might stumble into the kitchen to find him making pancakes
and bacon, but more often than not he's got shit of his own to do.  You really
hope one day you might grasp the vastness of his knowledge and mad skill, and
you truly do have to bow to his pure mastery of irony.  He's the only one you
would ever consider bowing to.  Sure, his puppets freak you out, but that's
just further proof of how amazing he is.

There's nobody cooler than you, and he's the only one who can crack that ice.

You don't usually think about it in those terms.  In fact, whenever it does
cross your mind, you get a bit uncomfortable.  Something squirms in you and
your heart starts to thud, a sensation that travels from your throat to your
groin and back again.  You don't know what the fuck that means but you're glad
it doesn't come up very often.

Another summer passes though, and it starts coming up more and more.  You start
having dreams.  Dreams about him.  Dreams you can't shake and that make you
fucking nut in your sleep.  You feel sick at first but then one night you catch
him walking bare-assed out of the bathroom, fresh from the shower.  He's still
towel-drying his hair, a shock of blonde paler than your own even though you're
the one with albinism, and something about the taut curve of his lean, muscular
back and the round firmness of his ass sticks with you.  It's the first time
you ask yourself the question.  The big question.  The question a lot of guys
grow up hoping they never ask themselves, not that you care.

Am I into guys?

If the way you looked at your Bro is any indication, then yeah.  Yeah, you do. 
The way it made your heart hammer like a machine gun in your chest is a good
indicator, as well as the boner you had to flash-step into your room to handle
because no way was it going away on its own as long as you had that image in
your head.

That night you run a little experiment.  You make sure your browser is set to
safe before looking up pictures of guys.  Naked guys.  Guys doing it.  You're
more surprised by the fact that it doesn't bother you as much as you expected
it might.  This works in your advantage because you know if any asshole starts
throwing epithets, you'll be able to deflect them like the cool hard mirror you
are.

But it doesn't really get you going, not in most cases.  No more or less than
straight stuff, and even a lot of that you could give or take.  It's when you
stumble across a smooth, hard-bodied blonde that your engine starts to purr,
and you don't even realize at first what that means.  It doesn't hit you until
later.

When it does, it hits you like a fucking out-of-control Peterbuilt roaring one
hundred and twenty miles an hour down the interstate.  Got a load of beer on so
heavy it turns momentum into an unstoppable act of god.  Whoops, no air
breaks.  Wonder who cut the line.

Fuck.

Another summer passes, but it doesn't pass easily.  Bit by bit, it's like he
knows somehow.  He starts watching you when he doesn't think you're looking (or
maybe especially then, because he's got to know you are).  He's around more
often, spending more time in the apartment instead of wherever the hell else he
goes during the day.  He can't really know, can he?  You're sure you cleared
your browser history completely every night.  You're really sure.  You're... 
You're almost sure.  If he saw that you were visiting as many gay sites as
straight ones, he might.  If he saw that you were looking up pictures and
videos of blonde guys who kind of looked like him, then yeah...  He probably
knows.  But there's no way.  You know you never left a trail behind.

Months pass, and you start shaving.  You're not very good at it.  You always
miss spots somehow, a fact that baffles you.  Not as if the sparse blonde
stubble that's been showing up on your face is immediately visible anyway. 
Still.  

One night you make the mistake of leaving the bathroom door open a bit to let
the steam out after you shower.  You've got a towel around your waist but
that's it, and when he steps in he's grinning.  "Missed a spot," he says with a
chuckle.

"Fuck you," you spit, before you can stop yourself.  Your cheeks turn bright
pink.

"You wish," he snorts, and the lump in your throat feels as if it's swelled to
the size of Mount Everest.  You hiss.  You've knicked yourself.  

"See, now look what you made me do."  He said that just to fuck with your head,
you know it.  There's no way he actually knows.

"Bullshit," he grunts, flash-stepping close.  "How the fuck can you be so good
with a katana and so bad with a fucking razor?  Hold still."  Before you can
say a damn thing, he's snatched the razor from your fingers and taken you by
the shoulders to face him.  You're looking up at him still, but you won't be
for much longer; already you're far closer in height than you were last
summer.  He pulls his gloves off and sets his shades on the back of the toilet
before turning his cap to the side.  His vivid orange eyes gaze down at you. 
You see them so rarely, but there they are.  Who the fuck has orange eyes?  But
then you can't say anything; your own eyes are as red as rubies.  The last time
you asked about it, he just told you it was a family trait and left it at
that.  Somehow you knew better than to ask again.

You're so busy staring into his face that you don't say another goddamn word. 
You couldn't get one out if you tried anyway.  Mount Everest is currently
blocking up your windpipe and you do not currently have the dynamite required
to blast that sucker loose.  You swallow thickly around it as he sprays a
little shaving cream into his fingers and rubs them together before caressing
your jawline.  His touch tips your chin up, and when his fingertips stroke a
layer of cool cream down your throat, you fight the urge to cringe in on
yourself.  It tickles.  It tickles in a way that sends your blush right down to
your shoulders and makes your entire lower region feel numb.

He's far better with the razor than you are.  Makes sense.  He's had a lot more
practice.  Not a word passes between you--ironic or otherwise--as he slowly,
deliberately shaves your chin, jawline, and throat.  You don't really have any
peachfuzz on your top lip yet; it's just your chin and throat, and it's itchy
enough to be bothersome.

You realize you don't ever remember standing this close to him for this long. 
His proximity is more intoxicating than you ever thought it would be and you
don't even know why.  Maybe it's something in the way he smells, or the way he
looks ever so vaguely like you, but there's a familiarity there that you can't
help but want, that you actually need.  His face is perfect.  It's completely
perfect.  No flaws, no blemishes.  Just smooth and handsome and strong.  You
hope like fuck one day you're that good-looking.  Not that you aren't good-
looking already, of course.  Just.  You know.

Your Bro has always been on another level, in everything.  Including that.

When he rinses out the razor for the last time and tells you to rinse off your
face, you can't believe how fucking disappointed you are that it's over.  It's
probably one of the only "normal" rights of passage you'll ever experience with
him, and it's already gone.  You aren't even pissed at the fact that it kind of
made you feel like a dumb kid who didn't know what the hell he was doing.  In
this case, that is indeed what you were and now you know a little better.  Go
slower.  Move smoother.  He didn't miss anything.  Well, of course he didn't.

He gathers up his shades and his gloves ducks back out again.  You wait until
he's gone before shutting the door and leaning against the sink for support
comes as a shock when your fucking rock-hard dick jabs into the decorative
drawer knob.  You yelp quietly but instantly silence yourself.  All you can
think is that you hope to fuck he didn't notice.

Your hope is a foolish one, and you know it.

A few weeks later and you have a particularly shitty day at school.  By the
time you get home you're not even sure what made it such a shitty day.  You
could not care less about your grades in any subject.  Somehow you just get the
feeling that none of it matters and it's not your every day average teenage
angst generating the feeling, either.  It's something bigger, something you've
never talked about.

You stomp into the apartment and you throw your bag to your bed.  For the next
few hours, you busy yourself pouring your frustration into your music.  You
whip up some fresh beats so strict it's like they're fucking looming over you
with a ruler in hand, ready to smack your goddamn knuckles if you step out of
line.  You drop some motherfucking science, too.  So keen, you're like a Ph.D
or some shit.  Who the fuck needs school?

Finally you come downstairs to find something to eat.  Bro has parked his ass
on his futon, watching a newer Johnny Depp movie and eating something out of a
white box with a pair of chopsticks.  You'd bet your life it's orange chicken. 
Hoping to find some for yourself, you walk past him into the kitchen.  There's
a brown takeout bag on the table but when you get to it, it's empty save for a
spare napkin, some fortune cookies, and packets of soy sauce.  Disappointed,
you stomp back into the living room and glare at him.

"Hey fucker, where's mine?"

He doesn't even look up at you.  He just points into the box he's working on,
and you notice that the box is big enough for two orders of whatever it is he's
got.  Yep, looks like orange chicken.  Your stomach rumbles immediately, and
you drop down onto the futon beside him.  "Gimme."

You reach for the box but he pulls it away from you, grunting in the negative. 
"Nope.  Gotta earn it, kid."

You scowl at him.  "Earn it??"  You sound as indignant as a teenage boy who's
been denied food ought to.  "What the fuck do you mean, earn it?"

"You're smart, you'll figure it out."

When he goes for another morsel with his chopsticks, you try to grab the box
from him.  You're pretty sure it's the fastest you've ever moved, but he flash-
steps out of your reach, all the way to the other side of the room.  You
practically growl and fold your arms across your chest.  He flash-steps right
back to where he was, not a single hair out of place.  God, you fucking hate
him for all of about three seconds.

Then you start getting an idea.  It's probably the worst idea you've ever had,
but you do think of a way you might "earn" that sweet and savory chicken, and
maybe some other privileges besides.  When you reach over to brush the back of
your hand against the side of his knee, he doesn't react, though he surely felt
you do it.  You turn your hand over and begin smoothing it up over his thigh. 
The muscle beneath the fabric is as smooth and hard as you always imagined it
might be, and he has to be able to feel it.  He has to.

He still doesn't react.  He doesn't react and you don't know what to do.  Mount
Everest has scaled its way back up into your throat, though at the moment it
feels a hell of a lot more like Mount St. Helens.  Your heart is beating so
hard that you swear he could hear it over the sound of Transcendence playing on
the TV.

Wait.  Of course he wouldn't react to lukewarm weak-ass bullshit like that. 
You feel like an idiot for all of the two seconds it takes for you to really
summon up some fucking courage, and you squeeze at his thigh deliberately,
seeking to pull it closer to you, to spread his legs apart further.

He doesn't ask you what you're doing.  He doesn't even resist.  He settles a
bit lower against the back of the futon, letting his legs spread a bit wider,
and in that instant you know he knows.  If he didn't know, he sure as hell knew
now.  Either way, he's not stopping you as you massage your way up his inner
thigh to the warm swell of his groin.  You grip him through his pants and even
though he rocks his hips up to meet your hand, he doesn't say a damn thing and
he's not even looking at you.  He's focused entirely on the movie, or at least
that's how it seems.

That was all you needed, though.  In an instant, you're on your knees in front
of him, a whole wall of subwoofers banging behind your ribs and a bead of sweat
forming along your hairline.  It's not even that warm in the apartment.  It's
just that your cool has been utterly and completely wrecked, and he hasn't had
to say a goddamn thing this time.  The motherfucker is a master.

You fumble with his belt and something about the way the buckle jangles kicks
you right in the gut.  It's like a shiny metal wake-up call to the fact that
this is actually fucking happening and he's letting you do it.  You can't
decide just then which of you is is really the freak here, so you figure it has
to be both of you.  Does that make it easier?  Harder?  You have no idea, but
your hands are moving forward with this regardless, almost as if they were
independent of the rest of you and any hesitations you might have.  You lean up
so close to him that your arms end up draped over his thighs, and you're not
sure what drives you to use your mouth and only your mouth on him, but once you
get his fly open and his underwear out of the way, that's exactly what you do.

That's how it works in the videos and shit that you've seen.  They tend to like
it when you just use your mouth, so even though you've never done this before,
that's the strategy you're going for.  The scent of him is even stronger down
here, warmer.  It fills your senses completely, along with the taste of him. 
Clean, a little salty.  One-hundred-fucking-percent Grown Man.  He hardens up
rapidly between your lips, and then as much as you don't want to use your
hands, you need them.  He's big to the point of being unwieldy and there's no
way in hell you can take in all of him.

The movie rolls on behind you.  It's one of the actual movie channels so there
are no commercial breaks.  Your jaw starts getting tired but no way in fuck are
you willing to stop.  You don't know if he'll ever let you do this again, and
aside from that?  Well.

No way in fuck do you want to admit this to yourself, but you're enjoying it. 
You're actually enjoying the warm, velvety weight of his cock in your mouth. 
You want to say that's just because you're hungry.  Sure, you're hungry.  You
could eat a goddamn horse and the saddle besides.  Just so happens that you're
hungry for something else, too.  

He doesn't make a single fucking sound and it frustrates you.  You want to hear
him moaning and calling out your name and praising you, but he's not doing
that.  It just makes you go at him harder, harder and faster, all in an effort
to make him blurt something out.  Anything, anything at all would be more than
you could ask for, but he stays silent.  

Silent and stoic, just how he taught you to be all these years, and you think
of how silent you are when you jerk it in your bedroom, even when you're sure
he's not home.  You're suddenly as mad as you are turned on, your own cock
raging at the inside of your jeans, and you're about half a heartbeat away from
biting him when he throbs and something slippery and almost bitter begins
gushing against your tongue.  

You can't help it.  You gag and a drop escapes the corner of your mouth.  The
texture is like raw eggs and you don't like the taste of it, but you get the
feeling that this is somehow a test, too.  So you steel yourself like a fucking
boss and you swallow that shit, every last fucking drop of it.  You milk him
dry, and when you sit back, you wipe the bit that escaped from your lips and
chin, and you lick that up too, all while staring up at him.

He sets the box of orange chicken on the end table beside him and he reaches
down to fix up his pants.  He's slow and almost methodical about it, even if he
leaves his shirt untucked.  The fucker has to know he's teasing you, that he's
pissed you off.  You're still there, kneeling in front of him in the narrow
space between the coffee table and the futon.

Finally, he acknowledges your presence.  He lifts the half-empty bottle of Dr.
Pepper off of the end table and he offers it to you.  You snatch it from his
hand and twist off the cap, still glaring at him through your shades as you
drain it down in a few huge swallows, washing the taste and texture of his
spunk out of your mouth.  You have no idea how people can just guzzle that
shit.  It's fucking gross.

...was worth it though.

"Good work, little man.  Get back up here.  You earned your chicken."  He picks
it up and offers it over to you.  There's still a whole lot left.

"Thanks, big daddy," you spit with unconcealed sarcasm as you pick up his
chopsticks.  "This gonna be a new thing now?  I'm gonna have to earn my meals
by sucking you off every night?"

Bro kicks back with a satisfied sigh, propping his feet up on the coffee table
and linking his fingers behind his head.  "Wouldn't be so bad, would it?"  

It occurs to you that you haven't seen him look so relaxed in ... ever.  The
way he just lets himself melt back against the futon is almost
uncharacteristic.

"Asshole," you grumble, almost under your breath.  You don't really mean it and
the word utterly lacks force or conviction.  You eat your chicken and even
though it's half-cold, it's the tastiest shit you've ever had in your life.  

After a little while you both start making skillful, icy comments about how
Johnny Depp is starting to age and about the abysmal plot of the movie you're
both watching.  You give up on it before it's over though.  You're still half-
hard, he's not reciprocating, and you're just fucking exhausted in a way that
you didn't really expect to feel.  It's like something inside you has been torn
open and bled out.  The white elephant is off the fucking couch.  You shot that
motherfucker in the head with a goddamn howitzer.  There's nothing left but a
spray of red against the far wall and a rapidly rotting carcass that a pack of
jackals is swiftly dragging off.

You wave a lazy goodnight to him and go upstairs.  You're too tired to even
fucking shower so you strip and crawl into bed.  You haven't even touched
yourself, because you can't get over the fact that you fucking touched him and
survived.  He could have killed you so easily.  He didn't.

You know things have changed forever when he sneaks into your room a little
while later and returns the favor.
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