A/N - Listen to the song "Before Dawn" by Isaac Shepard while reading this. It's one of the Isaac Shepard songs I listened to while writing this. It just fits the mood. Anyway, reviews are loved.
Disclaimer - I do not own Homestuck. Everything Homestuck belongs to Andrew Hussie.
It all started with the day that Bro shaved his head.
Dave had come back from school, overheating slightly from the trek in the harsh and unforgiving Texan sun. The walk was only about eight blocks or so and then a ride up the elevator to the top floor of the apartment, but the heat as the spring season neared an end was becoming unbearable. He would have skateboarded to and from school, but alas, he was banned from bringing the supposed "wheeled menace" to school—only for the short rest of this school year—after having tried to jump a stretch of people in the hallway during a passing time. Anyway, his return home from school had left him sweating, clothes clinging uncomfortably to his skin (which always burned, never tanned). Naturally, he made his way to the bathroom to take a cold shower and freshen up, but Bro was in there, shaving away the blonde locks that almost always stayed hidden beneath his cap.
For a moment, Dave just stood in the doorway of the bathroom, eyes behind his shades locked onto a clump of hair that was floatingly heading towards the rest of the mess on the floor. Then the words finally came out. "What the hell are you doing, Bro?"
"What's it look like?" His red eyes were trained on the mirror as he watched to make sure that no fuzz was left behind as he buzzed it all away. The pointed shades that rarely left his face were now resting on the messy bathroom counter.
"I mean, like, why?"
"It's hells of irony, little dude," Bro replied, not once sparing Dave a glance as he held a mirror behind his head to inspect the back. He didn't look even as Dave sighed and went to the living room, plopping down on the futon to wait for him to get out of the bathroom.
Every day since then, Bro was around less and less.
It wasn't that obvious at first, with Bro just showing up late in the night like he did when he had a gig. Perhaps he had been booked or something. Regardless of the reason, Dave didn't let it bother him, occasionally waiting around for him to show up or just going to bed. He wasn't going to snoop and get all up in Bro's business.
But as the days passed, he was seeing less and less of Bro. Their usual time together on the weekends was dwindling, where they watched shitty and ironic movies, played stupid video games that you had to restart every so often because you got stuck on some stupid 3D fixture. The loss of this time became more and more severe. They'd be halfway into a movie, and Bro would just get up and walk out of the door, saying something over his shoulder and just waving to Dave when the younger male asked where he was going. It'd be the first time that they had to reset the game, and Bro would set his controller down where he was sitting and flashstep away to avoid Dave's questioning look from behind the shades. Eventually it became that Dave only saw him for a few minutes in the morning before Bro was out the door, not returning until the few hours before dawn.
And then it came to be that Bro would disappear for days.
Just without notice, Bro would leave on any given day and reappear three or four days later. Sometimes it even happened to be from one day to the same one of the next week. A Monday to the next, a Tuesday to its following, leaving Dave absentmindedly checking the futon every hour of the night in high hopes that Bro's sprawled out figure would be there. Each hour, the hopes were crushed, but it never stopped him from checking. And, despite the lack of Bro, there always seemed to be some money on the smuppet-covered counter for Dave to get by with, despite there never being any other signs of Bro's presence. The times when Dave actually caught Bro when he was there, Bro acted as if he was there the whole time. He would just ruffle Dave's hair, say something brotherly, and abscond.
Then Bro never came home.
It left Dave a nervous wreck, though one that he would refuse he was in if Bro ever did come back. At some point, Dave stopped going to school, afraid that he would miss the moment that Bro walked back in the door. He had to be there when Bro came back; he had to be there to question where he had been going, what he had been doing, how he could leave him all alone like this. At some point, Dave stopped eating. He couldn't bring himself to get off of the futon that held Bro's lingering yet fading scent. Even if he could get up, he didn't think he'd be able to stomach the food. It would all just come back up and create a mess that he wouldn't be able to get himself to clean.
At some point, Dave got a phone call.
The ringing had pierced the stale, unmoving air of the top-floor apartment, the only sound that had actually been heard by Dave's unreceptive ears in all of the time that he was sitting there, staring blankly. He rushed to get the phone, stumbling over his unused legs as he did so. Hard to his knees he fell, but it didn't stop him. Across the floor he scooted, standing when he was near to the phone. Dave cradled it to his ear like it was his life-support, his forgotten voice a mere whisper as he asked who was calling.
It was the hospital.
They were speaking, but Dave couldn't comprehend what they were saying. Something about how Child Services would be there soon to arrange his new living situation, how they offered their condolences about Bro. When Dave finally found the broken voice that was hidden inside of him, when he finally asked what the hell they were talking about, he lost it. They were wrong. Bro wasn't dead. Bro never had pancreatic cancer. They had the wrong number, and this was a shitty joke, a prank that wasn't ironic in the least. They could just fuck off, and he would be telling Bro about this when the other came home.
At the sound of the door opening, Dave dropped the phone.
In place of the white polo-wearing figure of Bro were two men in suits, followed by a formally dressed lady. The identification tags that hung from their belts distinctly said "Child Services." Through the abandoned receiver, the sound of Dave's screams and sobs could be heard as he wielded one of Bro's shitty swords from the fridge and told them to all just go the hell away, to burn in a fire. Through the abandoned receiver, it could be heard as reinforcements were called in, armed ones. Through the abandoned receiver, the ruining of Dave Strider's life could be heard.
It all started with the day that Bro shaved his head to hide his cancer from his little brother.