Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4423397.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Bro/Dave_Strider, Dave_Strider/Karkat_Vantas
  Character:
      Dave_Strider, Bro_|_Dirk_Strider, Karkat_Vantas
  Additional Tags:
      Incest, Control_Issues, Abusive_Relationship, Angst, I_Can't_Promise_a
      Happy_Ending, Porn_With_Plot, As_it_turns_out, Work_In_Progress, now
      there's_porn, I'm_dark_and_edgy_does_it_show, Lolita_Quotes, Drama,
      Family_Issues, Dom/sub, Alternate_Universe_-_No_Sburb/Sgrub_Sessions,
      Trolls_on_Earth
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-07-25 Updated: 2015-09-06 Chapters: 3/? Words: 9959
****** Great Strides ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     There are certain processes which are irreversible, a domino effect
     falling closer to order as the rest of the universe falls into
     disorder. You're making great strides towards something akin to your
     own damnation.
     You wish you didn't love him.
Notes
     I started writing this when I didn't feel like writing another,
     slightly longer story, but it took a life of it's own. Unfinished so
     far, and I know I probably shouldn't post the first chapter because
     of it, but I'm gonna put it out there because why the hell not?
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Fixation *****
“It was love at at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
You don’t know the name of the man on top of you, but you can't say that you
wish you did. Your eyes are closed and you’re biting back a name because you
wish it was him fucking you instead of the stranger you picked up at a gay bar
downtown. You're drunk enough that if close your eyes and keep on lying to
yourself, you can believe it’s really him. You don’t remember a time when Bro
wasn't occupying your mind, sitting there in his carved out space that you
haven’t managed to replace. He’s been your entire life, your childhood, your
hero, your greatest obsession. You used to think that all you needed was his
approval, and when you felt hopeless to gain it, the need to be him consumed
you, until it mutated into something that needed to have him, to keep him, to
touch him and feel him just to make him real.
When you reach orgasm, it’s a hollow satisfaction, because what follows the
afterglow is a painful glide back to reality, out of a fantasy world where
everything is okay, where your perversion isn’t sick at all, where guilt isn’t
even an afterthought, but here and now, you feel sick. If you had any less
control, you might be crying for loss of being able to go back to the way
things were, if it were even possible to identify how things were before and
why it was better than this. You leave the man’s bed, grabbing your phone and
your shades after redressing, and get out of his apartment before he has the
chance to ask why you’re leaving. It’s a one-night stand, but you don’t have
any commitments to even stay the whole night. You don’t think you even could,
being so close to someone who isn’t Bro, just a hollow image and a warm body
that you use to relieve your sexual tension..
It’s close to four when you pull into the reserved parking of your apartment
building. You probably shouldn’t have been driving drunk, but you were sobering
up anyway and you made it one piece. You walk up the stairs to your apartment
instead of taking the elevator. Bro’s been texting you since one-thirty, and
you’re really not in the mood to even look at him, much less face whatever he’s
got up his sleeve as soon as you walk through the door. You’d prefer to quash
your emotions for now, hold them down and just get some fucking sleep before
school tomorrow.
That won’t happen, though. You stick your key in the door as quietly as you
can, and slip in silently. Where did you put your sword? The apartment is
silent, and Bro isn’t in sight. You know that he’s home because both Lil Cal’s
trunk and Bro’s equipment is in the living room. You scan the area before
moving carefully to the kitchen. If you’re lucky, you can make it all the way
to your room. You grab a random sword from the kitchen, then move towards the
hallway. You’re in the archway when Bro taps you on the shoulder from behind,
making you spin around and block the first sword strike.
You’re not going to hold long; you’re (half) drunk and tired and you’re not
using your regular sword. Bro draws you out to the clear center of the living
room. You duck under his, and block his swings the entire way, but you’re shaky
and disoriented. Your head feels heavy, and you’re ready to just throw your
arms up and give in. But you don’t, because what follows a particularly
humiliating defeat is just one more problem you don’t want to deal with right
now. Bro dances around you, giving you strikes you can dodge, but he’s circling
you like a goddamn shark circling around a drowning swimmer. It’s making you
dizzy. He tests you with a maneuver he taught you last week, which you’re
barely able to block. After a few more strikes, he distracts you with a swing
to your right before he flashsteps to your left, and as you’re turning to face
him, he flashsteps again, able to fucking karate chop you in the brachial
plexus, kick the back of your knees, and pull the edge of his sword up to your
throat from behind you while you’re down on your knees, still clutching your
sword like it actually matters at this point.
His blade is millimeters away from your neck and you can feel Bro’s presence
above and behind you. You shouldn’t be turned on by this. You really, really
shouldn’t be turned on by this. You swallow and he brings the blade away,
allowing you to stand up and face him, still holding your sword. He sheathes
his own.
“Where the fuck have you been?” He asks.
“Friend’s house,” you say. It’s not entirely a lie.
“Did you drive home?” He crosses his arms. It’s the only sign that he’s being
serious as all hell right now, and you’re trying not to think about how
attractive he looks. He noticed you’re drunk. Fuck. You suppose it’s kind of
obvious, especially for someone perceptive like him. You really shouldn’t have
gone out on a Wednesday night. But you know what? It’s getting harder to
handle, having to hide and sneak out. The pressure is building, and you’re
getting close to just outright breaking.
“I’ll call next time,” you say.
“Like fuck you will. There will be hell to pay if I catch you drunk again.” He
turns and leaves you standing in the middle of the room.
You retreat to your own room, chucking the sword to the ground, followed by
your shirt and your pants before you climb into bed. You plug your phone in,
and lie awake, staring at the ceiling for a long time. You’re tired as all
hell, but you can’t sleep.
As you lie there thinking, you wish there was a way to get rid of your feelings
for Bro, find some way to be happy with someone your age, unrelated to you, but
the years of trying to drive him out of your head have proved that you’re stuck
with him to your very core. Even if one day you find that you’ve fallen in love
with someone, you wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just another replacement for
Bro, a hollow projection that will leave you always wanting more. He is the
Annabel to your Humbert Humbert, making your future bear a sickening likeness
to the plot of Lolita whether you want it to or not. At least you don’t like
twelve-year olds, just your older brother.
You don’t go out for another week, but it makes being around Bro unbearable.
It’s like being told you can’t eat your favorite food when you’re starving, and
it’s dangling tantalizingly in front of you, but you also know that if you eat
your favorite food, it will probably kick you out of the house and you’ll be
universally shunned forever or something. Well, you don’t really know what Bro
would do, but it’s the sort of thing that’s just don’t do, because it’s wrong.
Basic human morality stuff. You don’t kill people, because it’s just  fucking
wrong. You don’t make sexual advances towards you brother/legal guardian,
because you can’t.
Next friday, however, you can’t take it anymore. You sincerely give zero fucks
and you need to get out. You go out to your usual bar, order your usual drink,
and look for a guy who might pass for being blonde, muscular, and twice your
age. You find a man that fits one and a half of those qualifications and you
take the bait. You sit next to him at the bar, make your usual small talk, get
him to buy you a couple drinks, and this time, you don’t even bother to go home
with him. You take him straight into the bathrooms and get a quickie. He leaves
you with a noticeable mark on your neck and you don’t even care.
When you go home that night, Bro is on the futon watching a shitty inner-city
Sesame Street rip off from the eighties, and you think the universe might truly
hate you. He isn’t ordinarily here on Friday nights. You wonder if maybe he
stayed home just to see if you’d sneak out again, which of course you did, and
of course he caught you. You also realize haven’t eaten all today, on account
that you haven’t gone to the store this week to restock your closet. It’s
midnight, and you think maybe it’s not even worth it to hide where you’ve been
from Bro. You just don’t give a flying fuck today.
You can sense Bro watching you from his place on the futon, but you’re not
bothered by it. You stroll right up to the fridge, open it, dodge a sword, grab
a sweet golden beer from the door, and open it right in the kitchen with an
audible pop of the cap. Bro is on you in a second, snatching it from you before
you can raise it to your lips. He’s so close to the counter that you can’t help
but shove him back, successfully knocking him against the counter with the
element of surprise on your side. He doesn’t outwardly show it, but you’re
close enough that you can see his eyes blaze with rage. You know he’s about to
do something, so you pull your right hand back and land a punch on Bro’s face,
just beneath the glasses, knuckles connecting with the left side of Bro’s nose.
At the same time, you snatch the beer from Bro’s right hand. You take a
victorious swig, which doesn’t last long, but you can choke down about half the
thing before Bro tears it back out of your hand, spins you around and shoves
you back into the counter. The force is surprising, cracking a line of pain
where the counter digs into your lower back.
“Have a heart, man. I’m already drunk,” you say, squirming underneath Bro,
whose hands are on either side of you, pushing you into the counter. It would
be hot, if it weren’t for the piercing anger being shot at you like daggers.
You’re protected by two layers of shades, but you can feel it. Aw, shit, who
are you kidding, Bro is two inches away from you, pinning you into the counter;
this is hot. This is definitely hot and if Bro was going to beat the shit out
of you, he could at least have the decency to fuck your brains out first.
“Exactly. And now you think it’s okay to do this shit? You didn’t even bother
trying to hide it from me?” If you leaned up a little bit, you could do worse
than punching him. You could kiss him. Right fucking there. He hisses in your
ear, “and don’t you dare think you can get away with punching me like that.”
“I’m getting sick of hiding my weekly outings to gay bars just to get smashed
and fuck some random dude. Oh yeah, good time to mention that I’m gay,” you
say, not even fully aware you’re saying it until you see feel Bro’s miniscule
shifts in front of you. You should really shut up now.
Bro leans his face in close enough for you to feel the warmth of his breath on
your face. It should be intimidating, but you’re feeling more and more turned
on by the second, your pants getting uncomfortably tight. “Is that where you’ve
been going?”
“Gotta blow off steam somehow, what with this massive incest boner I’ve got
going for you,” you say, and that is the moment that Bro flinches in front of
you. It’s a small gesture, but you score another point, because you just
freaked the fuck out of him. Now, you just want to keep making him squirm.
“That Sigmund Freud would have a field day with, but I have to keep hiding. Or,
I guess not, now. Not to mention the men twice my age I use as distractions,
they’re not working so well lately. I’m starting to not give a single flying
fuck who’s screwing me, whether troll or human or whatever the hell at this
point, and believe me, I hate repeatedly explaining why I’m calling them
‘Bro.’”
Bro tightens his grip at your sides, but you can see him realizing other
implications the position could have, given your monologue just now. “Don’t
fuck with me right now,” he says, his voice completely unaffected, but his
movements slightly uncomfortable.
“I’m not. I actually want to ride your dick like a cowboy at the rodeo,” you
say, and in fact, you think that’s your brain screaming at you, telling you to
stop now, to take back every word and go back to hiding and fucking nameless
men and pretending you’re not royally fucked up. Bro just stares at you, boring
holes into your own. You’re waiting for a response.
“Grab your sword and meet me on the roof,” he says, letting you go while
somehow still slamming you back against the counter again. “Now.”
You grab your sword from the wall in your room with reluctance, resigned to
following Bro up the steps to the roof above, where you will fight pathetically
in your drunkenness, and hope maybe this is all just some fucked up dream and
you didn’t just tell Bro all about how you have the hots for him. You have a
very, very bad feeling about this, you think as you ascend the stairs to the
warm night above.
***** Entropy *****
Chapter Notes
     This took longer than expected to update, but oh well. Enjoy!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
“Be true to your Dick.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
You were pissed. You were pissed right the fuck off, not because your kid just
straight up told you he wants to fuck you, but because he thinks it gives him
the right to not give a single flying fuck about rules. Not just your rules,
laws, some of which can be downright idiotic, but he’s seventeen and sneaking
around to go to bars and sleep with men twice his age. He’s showing up drunk
and not even trying to hide it, which really gets to you because heknows that
you don't tolerate shit like that. The audacity of this kid is going to kill
you, really.
Not to mention, your nose hurts like hell; he’s going to pay for pulling a
stunt like that. Although, you must say, his punch has improved. You don't feel
as bad fighting him like this when he has at least a fighting chance against
you. You should really talk about the whole “I wanna ride your dick like a
cowboy at the rodeo” thing, but you decide to hold it off until after your
strife. You're feeling a lot of things about it, a lot of things that you want
to delay even thinking about until you've made your point about his outright
defiance lately.
“Might as well just beat the shit out of me, dude. Can’t fight for shit when
I'm drunk,” he says as he comes through the door, sword already drawn. You
ignore him. He should know how to fight, no matter the circumstances.
He’s prepared for the first strike against his sword, blocking with his own
before side stepping out of the way, but he wobbles, and it’s just plain sloppy
defense. He tries to get the next strike, but you block it without half a
thought and when your swords slide away from each other, you can instantly
swing back in a slash that very nearly catches his abdomen. He jumps back,
losing his balance momentarily when he does, but he regains it and tries to
take the next swing at you. It’s a stupidly easy move that would allow you to
disarm him from here, but you're not ready to let the fight end, so you just
aim for his shoulder, nicking it.
It’s enough to distract him for the half-second it takes you to kick his legs
out from under him, sending him straight onto his ass. You slash at him below,
but he has quick enough reflexes to both block and roll to the side all at
once. There’s not much he can do at this point, but he takes the opportunity to
throw himself at your legs, taking ahold of one of them, blocking your strike
from above with his other hand. He almost successfully makes you lose your
balance, but you use the leverage from his hand to kick his face, a low blow at
this point, but he’s there and he punched you earlier so you can’t really say
you’re sorry. His shades get pressed against his face, he looks visibly hurt in
the nose, and you’re pretty sure the force of your foot against his lip against
his teeth cut his mouth. You, at the same time, are falling backwards, but you
use the foot you kicked with to plant behind you, making you able to stop
yourself from falling with considerable leg and back straining. You can hear
your knee make a wet pop under the tension, but you shake it off and switch
your stances to prepare for Dave getting up.
His next swing at you is clumsy, allowing you just step out of the way
entirely. The way he followed through made him look like he was about to fall
over. You strike before he’s able to regain his balance, leaving a thin,
shallow cut across his torso. There goes that shirt. He winces and hisses in
pain, clutching at the area with his free hand. “Fuck,” he says.
You remind him to be alert by flash stepping behind him and delivering a sharp
blow to his back with your elbow. He spins around in an adrenaline-fueled
second wind, but he’s too disoriented to even block your swings, so you let him
fall to his knees, clutching the area that’s oozing blood. You don't even deign
the end of the strife worthy of the symbolic kill gesture, instead sheathing
your sword and helping him up, walking him to the door where you drag him
downstairs.
You sit him in the bathroom, on the toilet, head leaning against the wall
looking absolutely defeated while you grab the supplies you need from the
medicine cabinet. It’s a tight squeeze, but you manage to fit yourself in
between him and the shower, giving you the room you need to patch up the cut on
his chest.
You take off your gloves, and he looks at you like he’s mystified to see it.
“Take off your shirt,” you say while washing your hands, and he complies. The
collar skews his shades when it rubs past them, so he takes them off and holds
onto them in his lap. You snatch the shirt from him, and press it to his chest
firmly as you kneels down in front of him.
You hold the shirt there like that for a few minutes, just waiting for the cut
to stop bleeding. It’s not very deep, but it’s long and diagonal across his
chest. He tips his head back probably just to avoid looking at you, clutching
the shades in his hands. He looks like a wreck without them, his eyes betraying
his unwillingness to look at you, his hands betraying his frustration, and his
drunkenness prohibiting him from doing anything about either of these things.
After the wound stops bleeding for the most part, you grab the towel hanging on
the shower door, wetting it in the sink, and rub soap into it. You rub the
towel across the cut, seeing Dave wince slightly as you do. When you’re done,
you toss the towel on the floor and grab the neosporin-like stuff, squeezing it
out along the cut spreading it with your fingertips.
“I wish you wouldn't fucking do that,” he says, nearly shuddering under your
touch, Jesus christ, you wish he wouldn't do that, looking like you could wreck
him if you wanted to, and hell, you probably can, not that he would mind at
all. The thought sends a little wake up call to your dick. You don't need this
right now. That isn’t the message you should be sending right now.
You keep quiet, watching the way his torso moves when he breathes, made up of
wiry muscles and scar-riddled skin, all of which were from you over the years.
He’s tried to build muscle like you, but he just gets more definition than
bulk. He’s attractive, to say the least. The way he looks at you doesn’t help,
because the thing deep inside you that longs for control and power tells you
he’s exactly what you want, exactly what you need, which makes you that much
more certain that fucking him would be a mistake.
You reach for the wound tape and the small scissors, cutting small strips and
laying them perpendicularly along the cut. “You want to talk about what you
said earlier?” You ask, trying to sound comforting, but you think it might come
off as a little condescending. You can’t do the whole ‘sensitive’ thing.
“The gay bars part or the part where I admitted that I want you to fuck my
brains out?” Dave asks with a sardonic edge to his voice.
“I’m not trying to attack you here,” you say. Not verbally, you mean. You
already finished your fight.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I like you, it’s wrong, we’ll pretend I never
said it and everything will be fine,” he says. His face is caught halfway
between mortified and no longer giving a shit.
You get the gauze from the sink, and begin covering the wound. “You know why
it's wrong?” It feels like you’re talking to a child, which maybe you should
think about the fact that Dave is, technically, your child, but you’ve never
liked the idea of parenting, making it feel like one big ironic farce.
“Socially unacceptable, and I mean man, the babies. Can’t risk all those
inbreeding deformities that comes with incest,” he says, again being facetious.
“Yeah, well you could argue that incest is all fine and ethical so long as
babies are left out of the picture,” you say, taping the end of the gauze to
itself so that it stays in place and is pulled taut. You glance up as you say
it, and it’s a mistake because you can see right into his eyes, where there’s
an obvious glimmer of hope. Fuck, not what I meant. “But the real issue is
family dynamics. Shit is breeding grounds for power imbalance issues.”
You are a neon sign of power imbalance issues. You just need him to know that
you are the bad guy in this situation, that your own fucked up psychological
profile will be what destroys you both if you don’t have some self control. You
are, at your very core, a puppet master. The way Dave looks at you now, you can
see how much he’s hanging onto your every word, looking at you like he’s god
damn desperate and it’s killing you. By telling you, he’s given you power. He
is putting everything in your hands, and it’s taking all the self control in
the world not to use it. You’re afraid to say that you’re tempted to lean
forward and kiss him, give him everything that he wants, and you know, it’s
more than just finding you attractive. It’s a deep kind of longing, and it’s
eating away at the dark thing inside you that wants to have control. You’re
tempted for all the wrong reasons.
“Why are you telling me?” Dave asks as you gather the supplies you’ve left
around, organizing them and putting them back into the medicine cabinet.
“Because you need to understand,” you say. You need him to understand that you
are not what he wants, not what he needs in a romantic partner.
“Point fucking taken, now can we get out of here or what?” He asks.
You ignore his question. “Find someone your own age, will you?” You ask. You
think it’s a reasonable request, something you should say as a guardian,
another forced, trite way of protecting him.
He stares at you for a moment, before saying, “You don’t fucking get it, do
you?” You stare back at him in response. “I can’t find someone my own age, much
less find someone else at all, because they’re not you. And believe me, it’s
not for lack of trying.” He still hasn’t put on his shades, his face completely
readable to you. There’s a spark of anger in his eyes, and his lip has a
miniscule twitch in disgust at himself. He’s a mess.You wonder where you went
wrong, what you did to make him like this.
Your brain is waging an internal war against itself; your conscience is sending
waves of guilt at you because there’s another part of you that loves the sound
of desperation in Dave’s voice. You’re attracted to his desperation, for fuck’s
sake. If that doesn’t make you sick, you don’t know what does.
Except for maybe the fact that you find yourself walking back over to him,
leaning down to press your lips to his. He shakes slightly against you, unsure
of himself and unsure what you’re doing. He raises his hands to hover near your
torso, but doesn’t dare touch you until you’re parting his lips with your
tongue, deepening the kiss and sliding your own hands against his bare hips and
back. His lips taste like salt and iron from where one of them was split. He
pulls you closer and tries to hold your bodies together like the mere thought
of electrons separating you scares him, and you’re falling in love with the way
he kisses like he will never be able to kiss you again.
And there it is, in the front of your mind; the knowledge that you will do this
again, and again and again, despite your inevitably futile attempts at self
control, because you’ve already lost the battle. Kissing him is a mistake that
will lead to so much more, a chain reaction that you are as good as powerless
to stop. It’s a domino effect, fundamental physics in the transfer of energy,
that one process leads to another through a long chain of interconnectedness
and dependency on this very first choice to give into temptation. It’s a
classic tale, and one in which you have found yourself to be the monster, or
perhaps the tragic hero, not that it matters either way. Your choice gave Dave
hope, which will only serve to feed the more perverse part of your mind,
battling out against your conscience, as it loses more every time. Before this
decision, there was potential, the potential for an infinite number of things
to occur, and afterwards, you’re left with the product of an irreversible
process, the entropy of the universe increased as that potential is destroyed,
setting you on a path of inevitability and rightfully balancing the
surroundings of the system with could-haves and should-haves. Your system moves
towards order as the world around you moves to a state closer to disorder. It’s
basic thermodynamics.  
You realize how ridiculously dramatic you’re being and shut that shit down with
a mental iron fist. You only allow yourself to be amused for a very short
moment by the fact that this emotional shift demonstrates a basic energy
transfer by its very nature, from dramatic inner monologue to… less dramatic
inner monologue. See, you’re shutting this shit down, before you’re lost in
your head with bullshit about inevitability and entropy and limitless
possibilities.
You’re kissing Dave, and it’s probably one of the greatest feelings in the
world. It’s been a long time since you’ve been sexually involved with anyone,
mostly because you’ve had other things to do, what with a kid and jobs and
whatnot. But this, even this is different with anything you’ve had in the past
ten years, because he clings to you like he’ll collapse if you leave him and
kisses you like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t. His hands dig into your back
and you thread a hand through his hair in return. His eyes open, trying to read
your face and see through your shades. The almost eye contact should make it
all feel too intense for you, but instead it sends a jolt to your dick and
makes you smirk against Dave’s mouth.
When you break the kiss, one of his hands grips a handful of the back of your
shirt, like he could honestly keep you there if he wanted to. Jesus, kid, you
were going to pass out if you kept on going like that. You need oxygen at some
point.
He rests his head where your neck meets your shoulder. “Fuck,” he mutters
against your skin.
You run your fingers up and down his spine, your other hand rubbing the base of
his skull, running through the short hair there. He takes a moment to move the
shades in his lap, but still holds onto you the entire time. You start kissing
him again, his mouth opening easily for you, letting your tongue inside as he
claws down your back. One of his hands moves down to your hip, and he slyly
brings it down to palm at your erection through his jeans. You break the kiss,
but he doesn’t stop.
“This isn’t what you want,” you say, grabbing his hand. Of course it’s what he
wants, but it isn’t what he needs. He needs someone who isn’t twice his age,
someone who isn’t his brother, someone who didn’t raise him, someone who would
fuck him for anything other than how much he needs you. You know he won’t say
no, though, and maybe it shouldn’t ease your conscience because of that, but it
does.
“Fuck you, I know what I want,” he says. You don’t let yourself smirk at that.
Instead, you rest your hand at the small of his back and use the other to get
leverage underneath his knee. He takes the hint as you lift him, hanging on to
you and wrapping his legs around you.
You lay him down on his own bed, where he uses the legs around you as leverage
to pull you closer to him. He has a look in his eyes that says he’s getting
exactly what he wants, but really, you think, you’re not letting him do a thing
you don’t want him to do. You straddle his legs, your own on either side of
his, looming over him with a hand by his shoulder. He reaches his hand up to
remove your hat and then your shades, which you take from him and set on the
table to your right.
Dave leans up to kiss you, and you suck at the mark left by some other
douchebag earlier tonight, red and purple and marring the pale skin beneath
you. You make it yours, if just to assuage the feeling that bubbles up inside
you that makes you want to kill whoever did this to him. Dave lets out shaky
breaths as you do, hands fumbling around your belt, trying to get it undone.
Your hands go to the button of his jeans, which you make quick work of and yank
his zipper down just as he starts to tug at yours. You palm at his dick through
the opening in his jeans, hand rubbing against the material of his boxers. A
moan escapes from his lips and he moves his hips into the touch. He doesn’t
wait to get your pants down, just slips his hand beneath the hem of your
underwear and takes your dick in his hand.
You lift his hips so that you can shove his pants and underwear down around his
thighs, reaching your hand back, cupping his ass. He leans up to suck at your
bottom lip, his hand working itself around your erection, before he lies flush
against the bed, hand running down your back, over the material of your shirt.
His hand moves away from your dick and he dips his hand up under the hem of
your shirt. “Are you ever planning on getting naked or am I just getting my
hopes up?” He asks, his fingers tickling your abdomen.
You roll your eyes, before sitting up and removing your shirt, tossing it
somewhere in the middle of his room. You decide it actually might be worth it
to get off the bed in order to shed your pants and boxer briefs in one quick
motion, and Dave takes the opportunity to kick his the rest of the way off and
to the floor beside his bed. You get back on top of him, now lying completely
naked beneath you. He explores your chest with his hands, tracing scars and the
lines of your abs. He traces down to the insides of your thighs, and he leans
up, trying to bring his head closer to his body, but his eyes squeeze close
when he tries, so he lies back on the bed.
“Some asshole gave me this massive cut,” he explains, hand on his own chest,
covered with gauze.
Your fingers whisper across his torso, bringing them down to where you give his
cock a teasing stroke. “Someone thought it was a good idea to fight drunk,” you
say, punctuating it by rubbing your thumb over the slit of his dick, making his
hips buck.
“That was you, I didn’t want to do jack shit drunk, but hey,” he says, and you
cut him off with a kiss before he can say anything else. You angle your hips to
align his cock against yours, rubbing them together. Dave lets out a satisfied
hum, before pistoning his hips to try and get friction against yours. You wrap
your hand as far as you can get it around both, slowly rolling your hips up to
let your cocks rub together.
Dave props himself up on his elbows and smirks. “Fuck me,” he says, looking
straight into your eyes, making you just about lose it. You hope he never knows
what he’s doing to you.
You weren’t even supposed to kiss him, much less be rubbing your dicks
together. It’s an easy enough question to answer, and you’re glad because it
doesn’t make you feel guilty at all. “No,” you say, frankly, spitting on your
palm and spreading it on your dicks, trying to wet them.
“There’s lube in my pockets,” Dave says, reaching off the bed in a feeble
gesture towards the floor.
“Answer’s still no,” you say as you reach down to rifle through his pant
pockets, fishing out the little bottle with your torso pressed up against his
as you do.
Dave looks indignant, but you manage to wipe the look off of his face when you
slick up your dicks, rubbing the heads and massaging down the shafts. As you
close the cap and toss the bottle off the bed somewhere, you make a sudden
movement of your hips, fucking into your hand against his dick, making him let
out a low moan that makes you want to attack his lips with your own, sucking
his lips and licking into his mouth in time with the thrusts of your hips. His
hand joins yours around your shafts at some point, and he rocks his hips
beneath you. You're annoyed when you come first, striping Dave’s stomach with
white, but he’s not far behind, panting and tensing beneath you.
When you both come to your senses, Dave is smirking like he’s won something. It
doesn’t even bother you, because you know that his smugness only gives you an
advantage. You feel the familiar pit of guilt building in your stomach,
creeping dully back into the edges of your mind. You get up, feeling Dave
reflexively reach for you. You go to the bathroom and get a washcloth, wet it,
and bring it back to Dave’s room after giving yourself a preliminary wipedown.
You clean the come off his stomach, refusing to look into his eyes for fear
that the full impact of what you’ve just done will hit you if you meet them.
If he’s looking for some kind of affection, you don’t give it to him. Instead,
you leave with you clothes tucked underneath your arm, you hat on and shades
replaced, the damp washcloth in you hand. You leave him in his room for the
night, wordlessly, hoping that maybe he’ll change his mind about all of this.
Maybe next time he'll say no so that you don't have to feel that overwhelming
need to take control.
A smuppet catches your eye near the futon when you dump your clothes on the
floor. It’s beady eyes stare up at you with judgement, as if to say You're a
bad man, Mr. Strider. You know that already. You’re also completely fucked.
Chapter End Notes
     Did you know that formatting is dumb? Because formatting is really
     fucking dumb.
***** Le Petit Mort *****
Chapter Notes
     I was planning to get this out a week ago, but alas, that didn't
     happen. Hope you enjoy, chapter 4 will be coming soon.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
“Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Pain. There is pain everywhere, dull and aching, and you don’t want to move at
all. You're lying in your bed, naked, your body refusing to move or breathe.
You feebly try to go back to sleep, but you're up already. You silently hope
today is Saturday, and recollect what you can from the night before… oh. Yeah,
it’s Saturday.
You wonder if maybe the entire night was just a hazy, half-drunken dream that
blurred into reality, maybe there’s a chance you came home fine and just passed
out on your bed. But your muscles ache in the way they always do the day after
a strife, and your chest stings and itches like a motherfucker. When your hand
brushes up against your chest, you confirm that there is gauze stretched over
it, and your heart sinks with the realization that everything last night was
real. Half of you is celebrating, dangling bells and letting the Hallelujahs
ring out, but the reality of the situation is quickly catching up. You've just
crossed a threshold you can't uncross, and you don’t have a fucking clue what
the hell Bro is thinking. There’s a very good chance he’s just fucking with you
for the hell of it. Hell, maybe he’ll even pass it off as some sort of valuable
life lesson to be learned, like it excuses him at all. There’s a familiar pit
in your stomach, only this time it isn't guilt, but a horrible feeling that
you've made a terrible mistake.
Your phone buzzes somewhere near your bed, but like hell you're going to get up
just to find it. It’s probably Karkat making up an adorable excuse to see you
like he actually needs one, or it’s John telling you his dad is dumb for
whatever reason it is today. Or maybe it’s Rose, her weird freudian powers
tingling, knowing that you and your brother didsomething. She'd smile with
wisdom, and proclaim herself the great Sibyl of Incest, seer of all that is
perverse and thoroughly fucked up. You’ve been trying to deny your obsession
with Bro to her for years, and she still won’t let up. You barely even talk
about him except in passing, so you don’t know what the hell got the right idea
in her head.
You finally muster up the willpower to check your phone, rolling onto your side
to potentially find it by the side of your bed where your pants are. You find
it, but as you’re leaning over the side you look forward to see the discarded
bottle of lube from last night, and it seems almost comical just sitting there,
as if it could be staring back at you, confirming your actions and by
extension, your stupidity.
You roll back onto your bed, now suddenly exhausted once more from the effort.
You have a bunch of Pesterchum notifications from Karkat, and the numbers on
the screen inform you that it’s currently 12:27.
CG: HEY IDIOT
CG: FUCKFACE
CG: SUPREME BULGEWAD, KING OF ALL THAT IS AWFUL AND PATHETICALLY USELESS
CG: TAINT-CHAFING ASSBAG SON-OF-A WEASEL-EATING PROSTITUTE
CG: DAVE MOTHERFUCKING STRIDER
CG: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY USELESS ISN'T IT. I AM REALLY NOT IN THE FUCKING MOOD TO
SIT ON MY ASS ALL DAY AT HOME TO BE BERATED BY MY BRAINLESS HAVOC-WREAKING PISS
POOR EXCUSE FOR A LUSUS, SO PLEASE FUCKING ANSWER ME BEFORE I RIP MY OWN
FUCKING THINKPAN OUT OF IT’S RESTING PLACE INSIDE MY SKULL.
TG: naw man im here whats up
CG: FINALLY, YOU DEIGN ME WORTHY OF YOUR PRESENCE. I AM ABSOLUTELY FUCKING
HONORED BY YOUR GENEROSITY, OH GREAT BENEVOLENT LORD OF FUCK YOU.
TG: dude chill i just woke up
TG: still in my jammies and shit
CG: OKAY FIRST OF ALL, HOW THE HELL CAN YOU SLEEP UNTIL NOON? AREN’T YOU HUMANS
SUPPOSED TO BE DIURNAL? IT TOOK TIME TO ADJUST TO THIS STUPID FUCKING SLEEPING
SCHEDULE, AND HERE YOU ARE FUCKING IT RIGHT IN THE ASS WITH YOUR COMPLETE AND
UTTER INABILITY TO CONFORM TO YOUR OWN SPECIES’ EVOLUTIONARY CONVENTIONS. AND
WHO THE ACTUAL FUCK SAYS “JAMMIES?”
TG: i went to sleep at like four
TG: and i say jammies you weenie
TG: but really im just saying that to spare your delicate sensibilities
TG: im straight up naked
TG: i think the jammies goblin took my clothes in the night like the creepy
kleptomaniac sad sack of dicks he is
TG: i loved those jammies too man
CG: WOW, SHUT THE FUCK UP. I WAS THINKING OF ASKING YOU TO DO SOMETHING ALONG
THE LINES OF “HANGING OUT” BUT I SUPPOSE THAT WOULD BE PUTTING TOO MUCH FAITH
IN OUR FRIENDSHIP. I REQUEST YOUR PRESENCE, STRIDER, AS SAD AND PITIFULLY
LONELY AS THAT IS.
TG: aw karkles i knew you liked me all along *fucking swoon*
TG: should i be expecting flowers and saccharine declarations of love?
TG: if you buy me dinner i might even be willing to watch one of your shitty
romcoms
TG: and afterwards ill be tearing up because the love is just too much
TG: youll be a total hardass eyes fucking dry as the sahara desert
TG: but youll put a hand on my cheek and tell me our love can be the same
TG: and at that point everyones staring bc im actually bawling like a lil bitch
TG: but it was actually a ploy to touch my human boobs???
TG: what a surprising turn of events
TG: i knew you only loved me for my looks
CG: ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT, I RESCIND MY PREVIOUS STATEMENTS. I’M
TAKING THEM RIGHT THE FUCK BACK AND YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF. THERE’S ONLY SO
MUCH BULLSHIT I CAN DEAL WITH AND YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE IS BASICALLY AKIN TO
THAT OF AN INCONTINENT HOOFBEASTS ANUS. I DON’T KNOW HOW I EVER IMAGINE THAT
THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT. DO I JUST PSYCHE MYSELF INTO THINKING “NO, IT’S OKAY,
HE WON’T BE THE UNIVERSE’S BIGGEST GRUBFUCKER TODAY. JUST THIS ONCE?”
TG: whatever im down to chill
CG: FUCKING FANTASTIC.
TG: i can pick you up soonish but im actually naked so youre gonna have to give
me time to put clothes on etc.
CG: I WASN'T GOING TO MENTION IT EARLIER, BUT YOU REALLY HAVE TO STOP
IMPLANTING THAT HORRIFIC VISUAL IN MY MIND.
TG: please im hot and you know it
TG: bitches be up in my grill all the time
TG: they just cant get enough of me and it can be all hells of inconvenient too
like excuse me i have shit to do i cant be carrying around these bitches
everywhere
TG: these pants are for your protection karkat
CG: YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY HELPLESS, AREN'T YOU?
TG: whatever you love it
 
Thankful for the distraction, you pry yourself out of bed. Everything is sore
and your chest still hurts, but you’re more than willing to have an excuse to
get out of the apartment, away from the potential to find Bro lurking in the
living room. You're not ready to talk about what happened last night, or since
Bro is a man of little words, try to decipher the subtext of everything he
says, the calculated and precise crudeness that he’s always spoken with. You
got sick of the ridiculous mind games ages ago.
You quickly pull on some clothes from your closet, ignoring how much your body
is pestering you about being gentle with it’s dull aches. You quickly put on
your shoes and pocket your phone before heading to the bathroom, where you find
your shades (as if you needed yet another reminder), vaguely fix your hair,
quickly put on deodorant, and disapprove of the very obvious purple bruise on
the side of your neck. You can't get rid of it, and hiding it would probably
make it more obvious if anything, so you leave it and hope Karkat doesn’t make
a big fucking deal about it, which is putting a lot of faith in Karkat’s
willingness to be polite. Your eyes look like shit beneath your shades, but
with them your face looks almost normal, concealing most of the evidence of you
being kicked last night, and the heavy bags under your eyes from a built up
lack of sleep and usual exhaustion. While you’re at it, you pop a couple Advil
in your mouth and hope it’ll take care of the minor headache and pain in your
chest. It itches like crazy underneath the gauze, but there’s not much you can
do about that.
When you go out to the living room, you can’t see Bro, so you snatch your keys
from somewhere amongst the din of your kitchen counter and slip out as quickly
as possible. There’s no way to know if he’s out for sure unless Lil Cal and
Bro’s equipment are gone, and he doesn't ever take the stuff in the middle of
the day unless he’s travelling somewhere, in which case you would have seen a
stack of cash somewhere in the apartment to take care of yourself. He never
tells you when he’s going to leave, you just come home or wake up to find him
gone, leaving you to work out how many days he’ll be gone based on how much he
gave you. Anyway, Bro might be here, and he might not, so you don’t risk it and
get the fuck out of there before you even have a chance of confronting him.
Karkat only lives about fifteen minutes away, even in the post-lunch hour
traffic. You pull up the driveway to his hive in the middle of a mostly-troll
suburb, and then shoot him a quick pester telling him to get his ass out here.
Three minutes later, Karkat emerges with trademarked messy hair and long
sleeves even though it’s late September and almost ninety degrees out.
“Where to?” You ask as he gets into the passenger seat.
“Anywhere but here,” he says. “My lusus is going shithive maggots.”
“Lunch? I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday and I'm having some mad hunger,
yo,” you say, turning the ignition and backing out of Karkat’s driveway.
“Fine, but you do realize you only had a bag of chips and that vile swill you
call apple juice yesterday? How are you still standing?” He asks, with
concerned snark.
“I’m like Gandhi, dude,” you say.
“An extremely underweight vegetarian seeking the liberation of India?” Karkat
asks.
“To a T,” you say.
You pull into a relatively cheap restaurant that caters to both trolls and
humans. Most restaurants do, but oftentimes they’re more skewed one way or the
other, and some just have the little box at the bottom of the menu for the
idiots that don't like the food but came to the place anyway. Some troll places
have actually labelled the human sections as such, which has led to more than a
few humans being scandalized and throwing a royal fit about it, usually ending
up somewhere in the news if you look deep enough.
“You look like shit,” Karkat says after you both sit down.
“Love you, too,” you say, making yourself busy with the menu. You realize at
this point that you don’t even care what you eat, so long as it’s food.
“Hey, Sweethearts, what would ya like ta drink?” The waitress asks as she comes
over, slathering her words in possibly the most atrocious Texan accent you have
ever heard. She smiles with too many fangs and she has the neck muscles of a
god. Not surprising, given her gargantuan horns, but everything she does makes
her like like she’s trying way too hard to fit in with humans.
You and Karkat both order, but he’s more visibly balking at her, and you're
pretty sure his glare has somehow hurt her feelings.
“I think you made her cry,” you say as she walks away.
“I didn't, she’s fine,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You're going to feel bad and drown your sorrows in Fall Out Boy later, aren't
you?” You ask, raising your eyebrows. You'd almost forgotten that you face hurt
that much on your right side.
You feel a sharp kick to your shin under the table. “Better than the shit you
listen to,” he says.
“What have I played around you? N.W.A. and the Wu-Tang Clan? Are you saying the
revolutionaries of rap, the ultimate classics, are shit? Because if you are,
you better fuckin be able to beat Ice Cube in a rap battle,” you say, as the
waitress comes back with your drinks and the pad waiters always use to take
orders.
“Well, consider me utterly schooled on the concept of rap. Not like it’s a
completely inane and irrelevant art form,” Karkat hisses from across the table,
garnering a stern and confused look from the waitress, who even still continues
to try to break her own face with the size of her smile.
You and Karkat finally order, and you even manage to get Karkat to smile back
at her.
“I can get you into some cool Norwegian bands if you want,” Dave says.
“I can't even tell when you're joking or not anymore,” he sighs. “The irony
thing from your brother is kind of a huge pain in the ass, have I told you?”
The mention of Bro makes you go stiff. Not that kind of stiff, either, you
realize. You're on edge about the whole thing, you know you're going to have to
go home and deal with that. “I'm pretty sure you never shut your flapping
windhole about it,” you say, trying to pass of your weird hesitation.
Karkat lowers his eyebrows. “Are you okay?” he asks, rather sullen all of the
sudden. “Because I'm pretty sure you just had an emotion.”
“Wow, yes, thank you, I am capable of having those occasionally,” you say.
“I’m watching you,” he says.
The two of you don’t talk about much before your food comes. You scarf down
your food, practically inhaling it, while Karkat picks at his at his usual slow
pace. You're done long before he’s even halfway through, so you sit, just
watching him eat, hoping it isn't that weird to do so.
“You have a massive hickey on your neck. I've been trying not to mention it,
but it's been fucking staring at me this entire time,” Karkat says.
“Yeah, what about it?” You ask, crossing your arms, leaning on the table.
“Why?” He asks, as a piece of his strange troll food disappears into his mouth.
“Someone got a little carried away, you know, all the bitches can't keep
themselves in line all the time. Shit happens,” you say, trying to avoid having
to explain anything. Thinking about it makes you remember Bro’s mouth on your
neck, his hands all over you, his eyes staring down above you, dark orange and
still somehow overpowering in their nakedness. You swear to Christ, you are not
going to get a fucking boner right now.
“Please, shroud yourself in more mystery. It’s not like you need to be any more
of a douchebag, not like I'm your best and only friend within a 1000 mile
radius or anything,” he says, rolling his eyes at you.
“You don’t know them,” you say, because after three years knowing this guy, you
can't even remember if he knows you're gay or not. You're starting to realize
Karkat might have a point about the whole mystery thing.
“I don't know you, assface,” he says.
The waitress had apparently taken Karkat’s artificial smile as interest, so she
slipped her number behind the receipt for the bill, writing her name with
little hearts around it. You absently wonder if the hate-romance thing works
the same way with trolls, but you doubt Karkat would answer you without a
brutal, boring discourse on the more fine details of troll romance.
“What, you didn't like the Texan twang?” You tease, poking at the little slip
with her number.
“It’s bad enough being around you,” he says.
“I do not have an accent,” you say back.
“Listen to yourself sometime. And I meant that it’s bad enough being around
you, the king of all idiots. Please, tell me why I need one more in my life?”
He says as the two of you slip out of the booth.
“Aw, you like me,” you say, which earns a sturdy punch to your shoulder.
It’s late when Bro gets home, a few hours after you've said goodbye to Karkat,
an hour after you said hi John, right in the middle of watching something on TV
you don't really care about. He plants himself on the other side of the futon,
fitting into it like it was built for him. He does that with everything; he
makes it seem like the world is his, at his command and completely focused on
him. He does it with you, dimming the rest of the world around him, making it
so that he’s the only thing you can focus on. You look at him because there’s
nothing else to look at.
“What do you want,” he asks, not even looking at you, just seeing you staring
out of the corner of your eyes. Your heart feels like it’s pumping acid,
sending a sick feeling coursing through your body. At the same time, you're
tempted to curl up next to him, cling to him for dear life like a child, and
somewhere deep down, you know that’s because you're supposed to be his kid.
“We gonna get dinner?” You ask, matching his abrasive tone, resisting the urge
to launch yourself at him like one of Jade’s Squiddle toys.
Bro shrugs. “You know where the phone is,” he says.
You can feel his eyes following you when you get up. Your legs feel clunky and
awkward under his gaze, your movements unsure. You grab the phone, look at him,
and ask, “What do you want?”
He stares at you in response, so you go ahead and pick the Greek place that
does deliveries, ordering both of your usuals.
“Come here,” Bro says as you set the phone on the kitchen counter. You walk
over to the futon slowly, because you have that instinctual fear telling you he
might attack you at any moment.
You stand in front of him, between his knees, looking down at him on the futon,
and somehow feeling smaller than him. He does that with everything. He plants
his hands on your hips, holding you, staring at you. You think you’re learning
what it’s like to be unravelled from the inside.
He runs his hand up your torso, over your shirt, up to where his fingers touch
gauze.
“Is it bothering you?” He asks calmly, running his thumb along the line where
the gauze sits. His touch feels tender, intimate, caring. He’s making a
transition from unaffected to loving, and you know you shouldn't trust that,
somewhere you know that he’s fucking with you. You want to melt into his touch
so badly. You need him to care about you, even if you have to shut the parts of
your brain telling you this is a bad idea.
“No,” you say, almost under your breath, reaching to take grab his hand at your
chest. You wish you were saying no to him, not just his question. Maybe he
wasn’t even asking about the cut. You don’t care, you melt into his touch,
feeling yourself become utterly lost in his presence.
He pulls you in closer, and you half want to climb into his lap before you
realize you’re not that much smaller than he is. You have to force yourself to
remember you’re not a virgin, you're not a kid, you could be his equal. You
could, but you aren’t. You put a hand on his shoulder and lean down to kiss
him, lightly, your knee pressing into the fabric of the futon between his legs,
letting go of his hand as he moves it to your back.
Kissing is a strange action by itself; it’s just tongue and lips and spit and
the taste of flesh, never much more than that. Everyone you’ve ever kissed has
just been a substitute, a stand-in for Bro. You've only ever kissed out of
sheer desperation and blind lust, as an expected precursor to what comes next.
Right now, with Bro, it feels like you’re getting an answer of some kind, to a
question you didn't know you asked. He doesn’t smell like much, just a vague
hint of soap. You wonder if he smells too similar to you; you’re related and
living together. A day’s worth of stubble scratches across your chin as Bro
sucks your bottom lip in between his own, pulling you closer, drawing you in.
You reach up to push your shades to the top of your head, careful not to break
contact with his lips. You've never kissed someone like this before. It’s
comforting, at least temporarily, sending a wave of relief washing over your
body. You don't need to focus on anything else; the world is dim around you.
There’s only him.
And then there’s the knock on the door, whether it’s minutes or seconds later.
Bro gently pushes you off of him, getting up from the futon to go fish out his
wallet and pay the delivery guy. When he comes back, the room is filled with
the smell of gyros. You sit where you sat when he first came home, on the other
side of the futon. He sets the bag of food between you, letting you take out
your own polystyrene container and plastic fork as he sits down. Bro takes his
own food as you begin to eat. He switches the TV over to your ridiculously old
VCR, and soon the sounds of shoe-shining and an eighties beat replace the
silence.
Whoa, oh-oh-oh, let’s get on over to Pryor’s Place
Oh oh, we're gonna party, so don't be late
There’s a sudden slip back into normalcy, watching TV with Bro, not worrying
about what he thinks or what he'll say, just being near him. For the first time
in a very long time, you feel safe. You feel comfortable. And when he jerks you
off that night, you face buried in his neck, you think things might actually be
okay.
Chapter End Notes
     I love ending chapters on a happy note.
End Notes
     Please comment if you notice any typos or errors; I posted this
     without a beta reader, so it's my own editing. I think I got most of
     them, but you never know. Criticism and comments are always welcome
     with open arms.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!