His cup had been sitting on the counter no less than a foot from him. The red plastic of a Solo cup had never been so interesting to him, even more so than these people he didn't like, dancing to music he didn't listen to. He wasn't even sure of what he was drinking- something with a murky honey-gold color and tasted of citrus and Coke, that sat heavily in the pit of his stomach.
Under the clouds of marijuana, his eyes settled on a tall bloke, tan skin, black hair, hanging off the arm of short squat woman who didn't look anywhere shy of horrified. Jake English, Jane Crocker- his mind supplied. The male caught his gaze and smiled, waving a strong fingered hand his way.
Tosser- his brain also supplemented. His stomach rolled at the thought of those strong fingers- for all the wrong reasons. It was just gross to imagine that a guy like that was dating his twin. Or imagining that anyone would be attracted to anyone related to him.
Family is a funny thing.
His cup bumped against the edge of his elbow and his attention snapped to it, and consequently, the gangly looking teenager who seemed to be steadying it.
"Bumped it, my brother." He supplied, eyes dark and bloodshot, bags prominent even in the low light. He reeked of marijuana and something sweet, like the antifreeze his neighbor's cars sometimes used to leak. Like pancakes.
He nodded, eyes sharp on the male for a moment before curling his fingers around the plastic once more, pulling it from the other's grasp. He was tall, in a way that made him crane his neck up just enough to make him uncomfortable.
"It's no problem- what's your name again? I feel like I've met you before." He hadn't, but with how wide-blown the other's pupils were, it's not like the teenager would remember if he was telling the truth or not.
The skinny teen's mouth seemed to grow impossibly wide, a smile with sharp, stained teeth. He found himself sweating for the first time that night that wasn't related to heat of the bodies around him.
"Gamzee." He drawled at last, offering a knobby, sticky fingered hand to him and they shook. He found himself wondering what the substance that rubbed off on his palm was, but didn't dare question it.
"Hal," he replied, nervousness prompting him to lift his cup to his lips and knock a fair bit of the concoction back. Something chalky settled on his tongue and in confusion, he smacked his lips.
Gamzee seemed to evaluate him for a moment, his long torso leaning against the counter, sharp elbows finding purchase on the granite. "I know your brother- Dirk?" His voice had a strange lilting quality to it, Hal noted, almost as if something was funny.
"Yeah- that's him." He found himself saying after a moment's lag. The lights seemed to have intensified during their conversation, the smoke of collective bong hits and cigarettes seeming to have thickened. He found himself pressing his forehead against his hand, the skin of his face feeling clammy against the heat of his hand.
"How do you... know him?" He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to will the burst of light behind his eyes away, beginning to feel horribly disjointed compared the blast of music and the rumbling bass around them. When he opened them again, Gamzee looked almost concerned with his dark eyes, though the set of his mouth suggested he was tense.
"You feeling motherfucking ok, brother? You look a little ill." A cold hand landed on his shoulder, and Hal jerked himself upright, knuckles tight around his drink.
"Fine, I'm completely fine- I think I had too much to drink, honestly." He murmured, despite only being on his second drink. He didn't have a huge tolerance but it wasn't this bad. Swinging his legs over the side of the stool, he righted himself, the lights of the party spinning.
A moment later, he found his nose pressed against the lanky teenager's hard sternum, the scent of something overwhelming sweet crowding his senses. "Sorry-" A thin arm with surprising strength wrapped around his midsection, holding him up. He found himself unable to find the strength, mentally and physically, to push the male away.
"You sure you're okay? I don't motherfucking think you are." His voice was low, gravelly with what Hal assumed was naturally smoker-induced. Something primal in the pit of his stomach was going off in alarm but he couldn't seem to connect together the right strand of commands to make his legs move.
The arm around his waist drew him closer, the mouth against his ear making him squeeze his eyes shut. "Lemme' get you outside, my brother, some fresh air might clear your head." He let out a hiss of air out, and finally, he got his head to shake in a painfully jerky "no".
But he was already being pulled from the bar, a hand around his upper arm, the other on his waist.
For the second time that night, his eyes connected with Jake English, who looked at him with a look of surprise at the large body holding on to him. He was sure it looked like Hal was holding on to Gamzee for dear life- not the iron grip around his arm with thin, nimble fingers holding him nearly entirely on his feet, so he didn't crumple to the floor.
Jake's expression was weary but he didn't see what was amiss so he smiled and waves goodbye to Hal Strider, who in his mind had no doubt found someone to go home with.
Stupid tosser- Hal's brain interjected, entirely too slow to think much else.
Gamzee turned down the hallway, dark and crowded with the bodies of couples, too intertwined with each other to move more than an inch or to let them by. When Hal stumbles against a stray shirt thrown off in a certain passion, Gamzee keeps him up, murmuring something he no longer had the coherency to understand.
His voice was nice, he smelt of pancakes, antifreeze, and weed, had dark eyes, dark hair and stained teeth. The fabric of his jacket was rough against the skin of his arms, his jacket left at the bar.
The door opened to a dark street lined with cars, the man working the entrance on break. In the dark street only periodically broken up by streetlights, there was no people, and Hal felt Gamzee shift his weight so he was more carrying him than guiding him.
He tried to thank him- to say something, anything to make the male go away, to let him go but Gamzee side-eyed him, making his words catch in his throat in what felt like terror.
There was a smile there he hadn't seen before, back in the bar. Something feral, dark.
"Ah-" was all he could say.
"Actually, brother, I think it'd be better if I just took you to motherfucking lay down." He said, starting down the brick steps. Hal's fingers trembled in the fabric of his jacket. "My cars over here," he said, pulling him with him before thinking better of it and sweeping Hal up under the knees and carrying him.
His car was dark, and the backseat of it even darker. It was parked unmercifully far from a streetlight and Hal's head throbbed when the male climbed in after him, shutting and locking the old, rusted Cadillac's door behind him, seats squeaking under their combined weight.
He closed his eyes, ignoring the way the lights burst behind his eyelids, and thinking of his abandoned solo cup left behind on the counter.
"Mr. Strider, your brother is on the phone for you." The prim woman with a sleek black bob he called his assistant said, holding out a phone to him from across the table where all his papers had strewn themselves.
"Which one?" The blonde said around the pen cap stuck in his mouth, eyes trained on the small screen in front of him. Actors flickered across the screen and his eyes followed them from behind his thick aviators.
The bobbed woman seemed to have trouble recalling a name. "Hal, I think." At which the man's dark brows drew together at. He couldn't recall the last time his younger brother had bothered with a phone call, and during the day too.
"Can he call back later by any chance?" There was a loud noise that crackled from the phone, no doubt the caller waiting having shouted something in rage. The bobbed woman pushed her glasses further up her nose.
"I don't think so-" The man took the phone from her hands, standing up from his canvas Director's chair and straightened his suit, walking to a nearby refreshment table and wedged the device between his shoulder and his ear.
"What can I do you for, sweetheart?" He oozed monotonously, pushing a bottle of water to his lips. When Hal spoke, he wasn't greeted by the litany he had come to expect from his darling younger brother, the more temperamental of the twins.
His voice was strained in a way the eldest wasn't sure he'd ever heard Hal express before.
"Can you come get me?" Hal said, sounding halfway between burnt out with the lilt of someone freaking wired. Dark brows raised as he chugged the better half of his water bottle, smacking his lips noisily as he deliberated how to say "I'm working" or "Call Dirk, you have a free twin favour access card."
He didn't, but rather said, "Where are you?"
The reply was quick and dreadfully quiet.
"I dunno'- maybe Patterson Avenue. I can see a Valero gas station and a homeless outcropping."
David frowned over the lip of his bottle. "What do you mean you don't know? How in the san heck do you not know where you are?" He could hear the bobbed woman over his shoulder, trying to direct a technician.
"I don't know, I just don't-" His brother snapped and over the line he could hear the sharp hiss of Hal's breathe when he accidentally prodded something that hurt.
"I was at a party last night. Woke up in a part of town I'd never been to. Make sense? Doesn't make a single iota of sense to me. I hardly drank and I- Can you please just pick me up?"
Ah, the truth comes out. The man snorted, and topped his water, throwing it in the bin.
"Sounds like your own fault. Maybe I should leave you for the vultures- I'm busy right now. Try calling Dirk." He drawled, finger already on the end call button.
Hal let out a noise, and Dave swore it might of been a sob or a dying animal's last cries.
"Please," his voice broke, curiously seeming like he was trying the swallow around the words. "Just, for once in your life come pick up your brother. Hollywood isn't going anywhere, hotshot."
He came, eventually. Told Hal to ask Siri where he was, as if she'd know anymore than he would. He took up residence in the Valero parking lot, watching for the slick Mercedes his piece of shit benefactor drove and counted every car that wasn't his.
He was somewhere past 87 when he saw a car about twice as expensive as any he'd counted before and he found his arms pushing himself up off the curb to stand before he could really think to do it.
His brain felt disconnected, scrambled, and a dark, hairy ball of anxiety had crawled into his stomach and made a home there. And when he saw the frightening pallor of his own face reflected in the Mercedes's tinted window, he concentrated inside on the door that opened for him.
David was in the backseat, suit and all, and if he'd been in a clearer state of mind he would of snarkily asked him to autograph his scrotum. Demand it even. But now he could only nod tersely, oddly aware of his missing shades when confronted with the dark sheen of his brother's aviators.
David was mercifully quiet as Hal climbed in the car, gingerly leaning against the soft leather interior. After the door shut, the locks snapped on loudly, and Hal felt his entire body recoil.
The seats squeaked under their combined weight and he shut his eyes, ignoring the way the light burst behind his eyelids-
But David's seats didn't squeak. And his vision was quiet of any lights.
Actually, the only sound in the car as it pulled from the dingy Valero was the air conditioning and the faint bass of some shitty rap song his brother had no doubt had a finger or two in producing.
"You look like death, freeze dried and then rehydrated." The man offered, his expression completely unreadable to Hal with his sunglasses on. Not even the set of his lips betrayed anything and Hal instead directed his gaze out the window.
"Do I?" He said plainly. In his peripheral vision, David reached a hand at him, and he forced himself not to twitch when the man seemed to pick something from his disheveled hair. It looked to be a bit of peeled up faux leather.
His stomach turned and he looked at David levelly.
It wasn't Hal's apartment they pulled up to after a too long car ride. He recognized the tall upscale skyscraper as the one David had moved into soon after his first blockbuster movie, when Hal had been 16 years old. David had decided he wanted to take work off for the rest of the day, insisting they would survive without him for one afternoon without making a complete cataclysmic wreck of everything.
Hal didn't believe that, nor did he really want to be anywhere but the confines of his own modest four walls, alone with no one but the small robots Dirk liked to build to keep him company.
The interior of David's penthouse apartment was just as obnoxiously designer as Hal remembered. There was still that residual clutter from the days the housecleaning didn't come, a comb by the foyer mirror, his brother's worn sneakers stacked under the kitchenette's table, his countertop littered with one too many bottles of alcohol, some of which he's never even heard of.
There's a stack of mail half stuffed in a kitchen drawer and a half empty jar of peanut butter on the island with the knife still stuck inside. It's like how he remembers, and all the doors are shut like they always are so when Hal walks by his old room, he doesn't look inside.
The equally stylish, equally uncomfortable futon from his teenage years is gone and there's a plush red sofa instead. David steers him into that sofa like he's a mentally vacant sheep and says something about checking to see if there's any towels in the bathroom and leaves him.
Hal sighs in blissful relief as soon as he is left alone and he examines the contents of the ceramic bowl on the coffee table. Just a few DVDs and a wadded up pair of underwear. He'd wonder who they belonged to if he cared enough.
The way he leaned over to peer into the bowl sends a faint stripe of red hot heat up his spine and he is more aware of his aching nether regions than he had been all day. He doesn't want to think about it, not until he showers and eats something and hassles his bro over these commander-less panties.
The sound of a door closing makes him straighten his spine and there's David Strider in a t-shirt and jeans like how he used to always look like, back when he was just 22 with two toddlers their deadbeat mom left for him.
So the story goes. It's not like Hal remembers anyone ever being a parent to him other than his older brother. He's never met his mother and he's never had the whim to try and find her.
Dirk says it doesn't matter, but something Hal thinks he secretly wants to see where he came from, where his love for all things engineering and that big, huge nerd brain came from. To see how exactly two twins who couldn't be any more different could be put together on this earth.
They'd grown up sitting up late at night discussing this. The twins were both 21 now, nearly David's age when he got them, and they no longer talked about things like where they came from or why they were left with an older brother to grow up.
A towel shoved in his face brings him back to David's swank apartment and back to his too soft sofa and ceramic bowl of undies. He looks at David, who looks like less of a jackass when he isn't decked out in suits that are probably worth more than his own shitty apartment and shitty clothes combined.
The shades are an allowed jack-assery, a tradition.
"You look better when you're sponsoring for Gap and Walmart." He says and David does this thing with his mouth where he's trying to look offended but it obviously isn't quite succeeding. A sneer-like frown that unnerves him almost as much as David's vacant "Brb Adulting" looks do.
"And you'd look better if you didn't have a bitemark the size of Minnesota on the side of your neck-"
A hot flash surged through Hal and he jerked up onto his feet, knocking a few obnoxiously overly stuffed pillows off David's couch, hand slapping over the offended area. "Excuse me-" Hal hissed through his clenched teeth, trying to shoulder his way past David who had suddenly become a cross-armed blockade.
"Seriously Hal? You let someone BITE you? What if they broke skin? What if-" Hal felt the skinny fingers of David's hand close around his upper arm, tight and he felt his heart stop.
A fit of heady panic washed over him, and he jerked himself out of David's grip, hand coming up to deflect his hand with a sharp slap of skin. He fell back a few steps.
"Don't touch me!" Even under David's aviators he could read the man's surprise, hands rising to form a nonverbal "Don't shoot" gesture. Hal stands there for longer than what is strictly necessarily, unable to push his mind around the suddenly hazy surge of overexertion that threatened to take him over.
"I'm going to go take that shower now," he said after a moment, still unable to really come back to his sense. His thoughts were distorted, disjointed and he could only think about how much he didn't want his brother to figure out what had happened to him.
Heck, he wasn't entirely sure he knew what had happened to him.
He retreats to the bathroom and leaves David, who seemed bewildered enough just to stand there and let him walk off. Hal suspects his brother is gonna interrogate him, but at a later date.
He's grateful for David holding off but not for the fact he knows his elder brother isn't gonna keep his mouth shut forever.
The bathroom is more of the same half assed attempt as decor that looks like something in a out of a Hanes catalog. There's a stainless steel bowl on the pearly white counter top, and it has fresh flowers of all things floating stagnant in the water. He thinks they're magnolia petals and some other white flower he never bothered to know the name of.
It kinda reminded Hal of a hotel bathroom when all his shit wasn't lying over the countertops, a medley of ninja turtle tooth paste and the little knock off transformer toothbrushes they acquired at dentist visits. Hal could remember Dirk's rage at being made to use children's toothpaste when he was nearly 16 years old, but Hal had found it endearing that David continued to buy it anyway.
All that stuff was probably pushed off into a drawer, and in a fit of curiosity, Hal yanks one open. Towels. He aims for another drawer below it. A couple stacks of magazines, all featuring David Strider.
"Unbelievable," Hal lets out a short, humorless laugh, the small feeling of affection for his weird older sibling dying, and he shut the drawer forcibly. Sometimes he wasn't sure if he hated David's fixation on his self image or admired it. He wouldn't be able to stand so many reminders of who he is in so many places.
The bathroom tiles were cold under his feet and he sidestepped onto the plush grey carpet next to the shower. If he didn't stop loitering around and contemplating his older brother's decor and reading choices, the latter mentioned was sure to turn up and bother him.
Luckily, he knew how to use the shower and it's over complicated dials and buttons. They came with the apartment and he's figured out all this shit as a teenager. One nozzle for hot, one nozzle for cold and he resists the urge to turn it to scalding and just throw himself in. Instead he curbs that urge by letting the water sear his palm before adjusting it to a more sustainable temperate.
He shucks his clothes, but wanders over to the rapidly fogging mirror to see the damage. The way his shirt drags against his chest makes nausea roll in his stomach but he fixes his eyes on the dark purple and blue mark that's staining the side of his neck.
What an ugly looking bite, his mind offers.
Most bites are ugly, it amends.
He has a sort of back and forth debate with himself about if he wants to see the back, because the front is pretty ok, with only a few strangely finger shaped bruising around his hip area. Hal decides to look anyways, and the back is like the front, not that bad. There's a bruise that kinda looks like a seatbelt buckle on his tail bone.
A loud knock on the door startles Hal to the point that he almost screams, but clapped a hand over his mouth before the sound actually made it past.
"Quit wasting all the hot water, short stuff!" David yells, sounding far away, as if he's only smacked the door in passing and continued down the hall.
"Asshole!" Hal let himself shriek, a bit like his teenaged counterpart would have. Also like his teenaged counterpart, he vows to take up twice as much water as he ordinarily would have. He turns away from the mirror and steps into the shower.
David was worried about his brother but more than he usually was. Hal had always been prickly, hard to deal with, and just a generally unpleasant person, ever since they'd moved to this apartment and David had picked up more and more prestigious work.
Sometimes he got the idea that Hal was trying to punish him for leaving them alone with a nanny more often than he should of but he had always considered his work a worthy cause.
Not that his brothers weren't worthy, it's just that being a stay-at-home mom didn't pay.
He sighed, picking up the pillows the kid had knocked off when he'd jolted up like a jack rabbit. He'd never seen the kid react like that when called out on his extracurricular activities- Hal would usually not comment or suggest David mind his own business.
Definitely not run away like a frightened rabbit and smack his hand like his older brother had burned him.
Once he'd tidied up the small mess Hal had left behind him, he noticed the unsuspecting wad of underwear hiding in the ceramic decorative bowl and picked them up. Maybe Hal had a fit because he saw some girl's undergarments in his brother's living room.
"That's unlikely," David said outloud, tossing the offending object into a nearby trashcan. He could faintly hear the shower running and the noise of Hal moving around, and impulsively, he let his fist hit the wood of the door as he passed by.
David said something along the lines of not wasting water and was a bit humored when Hal screamed an explicit after him, voice high just like it would've been had he been 5 years younger.
The older man let out a soft laugh and slipped down to the end of the hall, and opened the door to Hal's room. The twins had separated when they were pre-teens, puberty making close proximity a bit awkward for two boys, and it's been kinda funny when two red faced kids came to him and requested to have separate rooms. Dirk had taken a storage room in their smaller, dingier apartment and Hal kept their childhood room.
In the penthouse, they'd had rooms directly across from each other and he could remember hearing one twin or the other sneaking into each other's rooms at night, spending hours talking amongst themselves.
The inside of Hal's room wasn't too changed since his brother had graduated high school and moved out. Said he needed space, and then proceeded to move in with Dirk nearly a month later because he was lonely. Not that he said that was the reason, but both Dirk and he had known.
Hal was a hard kid to understand sometimes.
It was just sometime to busy his hands with before Hal reappeared from his shower, because he wasn't usually home this early, or anytime before 8 or 9 in the afternoon and there just wasn't anything for him to do but wait. He fidgeted with a few of Hal's desk nick-nacks, books and photographs, his old laptop- probably busted.
When he pushed the power button, it flickered to life for a few moments before promptly bluescreening. The man let out a loud snort and shut the lid.
The sheets on his bed was clean and unused, though David doubted he'd be able to convince Hal to stay any longer than an hour after his shower. The kid was always running off to go do something, or avoid him.
Call it brotherly concern, but part of David felt like he should rise to the occasion and sit down his younger brother for a manly talk about the dangers of over drinking. The other part knew Hal wouldn't stay if he tried.
Down the hall, he could hear the shower shut off and shower curtain pull back. Grabbing a shirt, pair of boxers, and pants, he headed back into the hall and knocked against the bathroom door.
"I got clean clothes for you- yours looked kinda grungy. I'll leave them outside the bathroom." He said, listening to Hal shuffle about the bathroom listlessly. As light footed as the kid was, he had a habit of scuffling about like a pidgeon.
After hearing what sounded like a grunt of affirmation and the older man went to go whip up a batch of pancakes.
The clothes that waited outside for him was from his closet here at the penthouse. Stuff he hadn't seen since he moved out, but they still fit, if not a little bigger than he remembered. The t-shirt hung off him, almost off his shoulders.
"So much for covering this up," he murmured, leaning against the cool counter and peering at the bitemark in the still foggy and damp mirror. He stared at it for so long, his vision blurred and unfocused.
"Hal?" David's voice reverberated through the bathroom, shaking him from the lapse of thought. "Got pancakes for you, kid." He opened the door and padded down the hall, feet still damp enough to stick to the wood. He turned the corner into the kitchen.
"There you are- was started to wonder if you drowned." David said, preoccupied with a pancake fresh off the skillet and stacking it on an already large pile.
"Shit, who are you cooking for? The queen?"
David looked his way, mouth quirking into a shit-eating grin. "Your majesty," he simply said, pouring more batter on. Hal slide around the counter and leaned against it, slapping his palms against the cold granite, almost nervously. The lip of the stone dug into his tailbone, cold against his skin when he shifted and his shirt rode up.
"You didn't have make all this," he commented, a strange sense of discomfort gnawing at the pit of his stomach.
"I know that. But I took the day off and I'm gonna make the most of it, so that means you and me are gonna eat some pancakes and kick it." His older brother replied, turning off the stove and flipping the last of the pancakes off onto the plate. Hal worried the skin of his lower lip but accepted the plate thrusted towards him with a word.
They sat on the plush couch, feet up on the coffee table and The Mummy Returns playing on the TV while they ate, occasionally one of them making a comment about the movie or the pancake's quality. David would insist no thousand year old lady would dress that way and Hal would counter that no good director would question another's artistic decisions when his idea of a good aesthetic was overly pixelated word art on a piece of colored craft paper.
"I haven't had pancakes since you late made them." Hal admitted between syrup and butter laden bites and David hummed a low note.
"Haven't made them since you last ate them." His brother remarked, already half-way down with his second stack but Hal was still on his first. He'd always been a slow eater, but the food was strangely heavy in his stomach and he wasn't sure he would be able to hold down a second serving.
David let out a long and heavy sigh, sounding like a rapid deflating balloon as he set his empty plate down on the coffee table.
"What are your plans after this?" The man starts conversationally, crossing one leg over the other in a maneuver Hal has come to associate with Directors who are about to ask you to do something unpleasant.
"I was going to call Dirk to see if he was awake yet," he replied, propping his feet up on the coffee table and straightening his back. "But if you're asking, I'm guessing you have a different idea."
David paused, eyebrows starting to raise. "Oh. I was going to ask if you wanted to stay the night." Bingo.
Hal exhaled loudly, sinking a bit down into the couch. "No, I should- I should probably get home. Feed Dirk." If left to his own devices, he'd probably forget to eat entirely.
"He's your brother, not your cat. He'll figure out the microwave, it's not like he hasn't taken it apart before. " The man chortled, not entirely wrong, and he let a short, tight breathless laugh escape him, oddly tense and eager at the prospect at spending the night at his teenage home.
You just want to pretend to be a dumb kid again, his mind whispered in accusation. Wear your old clothes and see what else David has changed.
"Funny. Well, if you really want me to take up space that bad," is what he says instead of what he's thinking.
"Just figured we could have a bro's night. Eat Doritos, drink tequila straight from the bottle. That sorta thing." The dishes clink when David picks them up and takes them back to the kitchen, and Hal finds himself halfway standing to follow him.
He steadies himself on the sofa.
"I would of thought you'd be more of a Grey Goose straight from the bottle man. " The image pushes itself into his mind, David with a bottle in hand impressing ladies at after parties with mouthfuls of liquid hell in a bottle. It also summons a red solo cup with a syrupy lemon concoction.
David's loud scoff can be heard even from the next room.
"I know I flunked out of college but I'm not that stupid."