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“Have you ever thought about punching me?”
“Have I ever thought about punching you?” Dave repeats. He’s pretty sure that he heard Dirk correctly, but that doesn’t mean that his question makes sense.
“Yeah, just like – “ Dirk mimes a lackluster punch, like that was the point that needed clarification, and looks at Dave. “Have you?”
“I mean… no?” Dave readjusts so that he can look at his brother as he thinks. They’re sitting on the couch at Dirk’s place, watching something that Dave lost the plot on pretty much the moment that Dirk hit play. While that’s typical for days like these, questions like these aren’t. “Like, okay, I cut your head off, I think we both remember that, but –”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t really count,” Dirk says. “I mean just, like – a punch. I don’t know.”
Dave just looks at him for a moment. It’s not that he’s unused to Dirk being weird, but this is a different kind of weird. Dirk’s not telling him more information than he even knew existed about robots or philosophers or something about his own alternate universe adult self. Instead, Dirk is staring at him, his shades placed on top of his head because they’ve learned that these hangouts tend to go smoother the less that Dirk reminds Dave of Bro, and the feeling starting to twist in the bottom of Dave’s stomach is a little too familiar for comfort.
“Yeah, no, not really,” he finally says. He wants to try for levity, to crack a joke or something, but Dirk’s gaze is telling him that that’s not the right answer.
Dirk blinks abruptly, like he just realized that he was staring, and leans back on the couch with a shrug. His posture is trying for casual, but Dave knows him well enough to catch the tension still lining his body.
“Fair enough,” Dirk says. “Well, would you want to?”
Okay, yeah, Dave has no idea what’s going on. The TV is still playing, but the glance he spares it offers absolutely no clarification, and the tension that won’t leave Dirk’s body is making Dave’s that much worse.
The thing is, okay, that hanging out at Dirk’s is weird. Rose first described it as “exposure therapy,” and as little as Dave likes that term, he doesn’t think he can dispute it. He and Dirk have talked about it a bit, especially back when they first got to Earth C – the whole, “Hey, with each passing day you look more and more like my abusive paternal figure that, uh, was actually literally you except not really, and I want to be friends but sometimes your silhouette makes me almost shit myself,” thing – and now, they can typically hang out without it needing to come up.
Of course, because that would be plenty weird on its own, it’s not even the weirdest part. The weirdest part is one that Dave has not and will never breathe a word of to anyone. Because the thing is that, yes, he was scared of Bro – terrified, to be more accurate. Yes, he got beaten to shit on the roof of his apartment pretty much every day from the time he was big enough to hold a sword to the day the fucking world ended, and it sucked even more than you’d think it did. Yes, according to Rose, he’s got PTSD and a million other acronyms jangling around in his pockets like the world’s most frustrating set of keys. The thing is, though, that sometimes, Dave catches himself looking at Dirk for just a bit too long, and sometimes, he’s not sure whether the cut of his brother’s jaw is making his heart skip a beat out of fear or something he’d really rather not name.
So, yeah, hanging out at Dirk’s is weird, and Dave has absolutely no idea what he’s supposed to say now that this conversation is making things, somehow, weirder. “Would I want to … punch you?” he repeats.
“You seem jumpy today,” Dirk says. He seems to realize that he’s coming on a bit strong, so he leans even further back into the couch cushions. That’s another thing that Dave tries not to think about too much when he can help it – for all his faults, for all the times that he makes Dave jump and go cold and find a new detail to talk to Rose about, the effort that Dirk puts in makes Dave’s head hurt a little bit. He doesn’t like to think about the implications behind Dirk trying so hard just for his sake, because then he starts thinking about how that makes him feel, and the whole thing’s a mess, really, but it has a weird tendency of working. “And I don’t know, it seems like it would be, like, cathartic.”
Dave narrows his eyes at that. “Did Rose put you up to this?”
“Nope,” Dirk says, shaking his head. “Just thought it might be a good idea.”
Just thought it might be a good idea. The way Dirk’s voice drawls a bit around the words jolts Dave back in time. The memory’s hazy, faded around the edges, but he remembers asking Bro why there was a camera in the corner of his room when he got home from school one day, and he remembers the answer, slow and dripping with a fake nonchalance that made Dave’s entire body go cold – ”Just thought it might be a good idea.”
Dave looks at Dirk for a moment, his body tense despite his attempts at steadying his breathing, and … yeah, okay, maybe Dirk’s right. Maybe this might be a good idea, even though Dave would be lying if he said it didn’t make him nervous in a couple of ways he’s willing to admit to and a couple of ways he’s not.
“Fuck it,” Dave says. “Why not.”
One of Dirk’s eyebrows lifts. “You sure?” he says. “We don’t have to, it was just an idea.”
“No, I think you’re probably right,” Dave admits. “Shit’ll be cathartic. As long as you know what you’re getting into – I mean, shit, it’s been a bit, but I did fight, like, every day for a while.”
“Alright,” Dirk says. His expression is carefully neutral again as he hits pause on whatever’s playing and stands up. “Let’s do this thing.”
They go up to the rooftop. There’s no discussion about that – tradition and all, Dave figures – but watching Dirk’s silhouette ahead of him as they climb the stairs twists Dave’s stomach into knots. What if he punches like a little bitch? What if he falls a little too far back into his memories and has, like, a panic attack on Dirk’s roof? What if he can’t make himself do it at all?
Dave does have a feeling, though, that if he can keep his shit together, Dirk will be right. If there’s no catharsis to be found in punching the shit out of the closest thing Dave has to Bro, then Dave doesn’t know where the hell he would find it.
The roof is just as hot as Dave remembers it being. The surrounding rooftops are different – Dirk had his place custom-built in the middle of a human neighborhood, saying that he couldn’t really imagine living in any place that wasn’t like the one he grew up in – but everything else is the same. There’s some boxy electrical equipment humming and buzzing and rattling in one corner, a couple of birds crying out as they pass over head, and the concrete seems to do nothing but reflect the heat of the midday sun.
“You alright?” Dirk asks. His tone tells Dave that it probably isn’t the first time he’s asked, and Dave gives his head a little shake. He’s not twelve, he’s not in Texas, he’s okay.
“Yeah,” he says. “Just – weird. I don’t get how it’s just as fucking hot here.”
“I haven’t figured that one out either,” Dirk admits. “It’s a lot hotter than I’m used to, without the wind off the water, but the climate on this planet kind of makes no sense whatsoever.” He looks at Dave for a moment, squinting a bit in the bright sunlight. “Do you mind if I put my shades back on?”
Dave snorts a little at that. “Go for it,” he says. “Gotta get the immersive experience, after all. Should’ve made you put on a stupid collared shirt.”
Dirk moves his shades down from the top of his head, and for a moment, the only thing that distinguishes him from Bro is the slight smile on his face. “I can alchemize one if you want,” he offers.
Dave shakes his head. “Yeah, no, I think I’m good,” he says. “You’ve pretty much got it down.”
“Yeah, well, having the same genetic sequence will help with that,” Dirk says. He goes quiet for a second, his face settling into the expression he swears he doesn’t make whenever he’s doing something on his shades, and a moment later, a set of hand wraps drops into his hands from his sylladex. “Here, give me your hands.”
Dave holds them out before he can think about it too hard and lets Dirk carefully wrap them. He’s thankful for the fact that the pair of shades between them completely remove any semblance of eye contact, because Dirk’s hands are steady and sure around his and that’s a train of thought that Dave would really rather not follow, not now.
Once Dave’s hands are wrapped, Dirk takes a step back and holds his hands out to his sides. “Alright,” he says. “Knock yourself out. Or me, I guess.”
Dave curls his right hand into a fist and looks at it for a moment. He can already feel sweat underneath the wrap. “Aren’t you going to wrap yours too?” he asks, finally looking back up at his brother.
One of Dirk’s eyebrows makes an appearance over the top of his shades. “What, do you want me to fight back?”
“Dude. I’m not just going to, like, whale on you while you stand there like a damsel in distress.”
“Alright, alright,” Dirk concedes. He gets out another set of wraps, winds them around his hands, and then stands back the way he was before. “Cool?”
“Cool,” Dave echoes, and then they’re both standing on the roof, just a foot or so apart, and all there’s left to do is to punch Dirk.
Dave takes a deep breath, looks at Dirk, winds his arm back, and hits Dirk in the arm with one of the worst punches he thinks he’s ever thrown. He can feel Dirk’s eyes watching him carefully even without seeing them and clears his throat awkwardly. “Uh,” he says. “Not my best work.”
“Then do it again,” Dirk encourages. “C’mon.”
C’mon, don’t be a little bitch. You’re a Strider, aren’t you? C’mon, hit me, hit me like you mean it–
Dave grits his teeth, looks into Dirk’s shades, shiny and pointy and the same as they’ve ever been, and slams his fist into Dirk’s cheek. Even with the wrap on his hand, his knuckles ache, and he has a feeling that they’ll be bruised tomorrow – a perfect match for Dirk’s cheek, which is already turning bright red as Dirk straightens up from where he’d instinctively bent over with pain. The sight makes something click into place in the back of Dave’s brain, and he’s swinging again without even properly realizing it.
Dirk grunts this time, as Dave’s fist catches him square in the chest and forces him to take a step backwards, and the sound of it floods Dave’s body with guilt and triumph and memory all at once. He swings again, again, again. The solid sound of skin against skin is deafening on the otherwise quiet rooftop – the birds have left and the only other noises are the mechanical hum of the machinery behind Dave and the rush of blood in his ears as he keeps punching. He doesn’t fully realize that he’s telling Dirk to “fight back, c’mon, fight back,” until Dirk’s fist slams into his cheek and nearly knocks him to the ground.
Dave’s arms flail a bit as he regains his balance. His whole head throbs with pain, and he’s twelve all over again. He’s twelve and he’s in Texas and Bro is in front of him, really settling into a fighting stance, but he’s not, Bro’s dead and it’s Dirk front of him, he’s not twelve anymore and he can swing back, catching Dirk in the stomach and watching the sun glint off of his shades as he doubles over with the pain.
Dirk straightens again and goes for Dave’s face again. Dave blocks the first punch with ease, but the next catches his nose and threatens to send him reeling. When he wipes his face, his hand comes away wet, and he looks down at the wrap to find that it’s stained with a bit of blood.
He doesn’t think about it. He just hits Dirk again, something unlocked in his chest and something twisting low and hot in his gut and a sick sort of satisfaction growing when he returns the favor, his knuckles connecting perfectly with the bridge of Dirk’s nose and knocking a bit of blood down onto Dirk’s lips. He thinks he might be crying. He thinks he might be soaking wet. He doesn’t know how neither of them have ever thought to do this before.
Dave’s next hit knocks Dirk to the ground, and he’s on top of his brother before he knows what he’s doing. His knees land on either side of Dirk’s torso and his fists are just hitting Dirk’s – Bro’s – face again and again, his shades knocked off, his orange eyes wide and wet and Dave never saw Bro like this, even in death he was stoic but now he’s bloodied and bruised and it’s all because of Dave, and Dirk isn’t swinging anymore, just letting it happen, and it’s all Dave can do to gasp out, “Stop going easy on me, c’mon, I told you to fight back. ”
The words take a second to get through to Dirk, but Dave sees the moment that they do. Dirk’s jaw tightens, and then Dave is blinking back a fresh wave of his tears as he feels his nose break, right in the same spot where it broke years and years ago, the same knuckles hitting the same fragile bone. It hurts worse than he remembers. He’s still trying to swallow back the blood that was knocked into his throat when Dirk hits him again, catching his cheekbone and sending both him and his shades toppling to the side, his arms scraping against the hot concrete of the rooftop.
They roll for a moment, shoving and gasping for breath, their bodies pushing and pulling against each other to the point of indistinguishability until they come to a stop, Dave flat on his back on the ground and Dirk on top of him. For a moment, they both just breathe. Dave doesn’t think that there’s a single part of his body that doesn’t hurt, and from looking at Dirk, he’d guess that he’s not alone.
Dirk looks wrecked, to put it lightly. His shades fell off at some point while they were wrestling, and his face is swollen and bruised. His lower lip is split, and his upper lip is dripping with the blood still trickling from his nose. Dave can’t quite believe that he’s the one that did it, that he’s turned Dirk into a sight he’s never really seen. Bro would get into fights sometimes, sure – he’d come home at midnight with a black eye creeping out from behind his shades, but it was never anything like this.
“You okay, dude?” Dirk asks. His chest is still heaving in perfect time with Dave’s, and he’s – he’s beautiful, like this, beat to hell and still looking out for Dave, his body hot and sweat-slick at every point of contact between them, and it’s all Dave can do to reach up, wrap his arms around his brother’s shoulders, and pull him down into a hug, nevermind the fact that he’s covering Dirk’s neck with blood and sweat and tears all at once.
“Yeah,” Dave manages. “You?”
“Yeah,” Dirk says. He pulls back just enough to look at Dave, and they’re so close together that Dave doesn’t know who it is that actually closes the distance. All he knows is that one moment, they’re looking at each other, and the next, they’re kissing, wincing against each other’s bruised lips as they both give in to something that, now, suddenly, feels like the most obvious thing in the world. Dirk tastes like sweat and blood, all salt and metal and something warm underneath, and it’s all Dave can do to grip onto the back of his brother’s shirt and hold on.
After a long time that’s nowhere near long enough, they break apart to breathe. Dave’s nose is a bright, sharp point of pain, he can feel blood still dripping down the back of his throat, and all he wants to do is hold Dirk close to him. Without saying a word, Dirk slowly gets to his feet and holds out a hand to Dave. Dave takes it without a second of hesitation.