Chapter Text
The first time it happened, he was ten. It was just like any other day; Bro went to pick the kid up from school like he always did. He wasn't paying much attention to anything, just eying the moms in minivans warily as they casually drove too close to his car. Not that the car was worth anything- Bro had never been able to hold down any kind of proper job- but he didn't want extra scratches on it if he didn't have to have them.
He looked up and saw some kid step out of the building with a perfect swagger in his walk; not the dopey irregular steps of most children but a thing with a rhythm, and he'd thought it was hot. The thought was a bit creepy, but that was all; that was all it would ever be- except when the kid turned around, it was Dave, and Bro's blood turned to ice.
Dave flung open the passenger door, casually tossed his backpack into the back seat, shouted something back at his friends and plopped his ass down.
Bro knew his face was the same stoic nothingness it always was. But he didn't trust his voice. He didn't trust it.
"Sup." Dave said. Bro threw the car into drive and concentrated on battling his way through the parking lot, around the buses.
"Am I in trouble?" Dave only asked in response to Bro's silence.
"No. Seatbelt." he managed, and as he watched Dave buckle it from the corner of his eye, he felt nothing unusual at all, and sighed with relief that everything was normal again.
The second time it happened was more than a year later, when the kid was eleven and Bro went to pick him up from a pool party. He just wandered into the back yard, following the annoying sound of a bunch of screaming, laughing kids and happened to catch Dave exactly as he came out of the water and was pulling himself up on the side of the pool, and it turned him on. Bro felt nauseous.
First, it was so cliché it was about as far from irony as one could get. Second, the feeling faded almost instantly as Dave ran around the pool back to the diving board just like a child. And third, it was just no. Just...no. He tried to convince himself it would go away like it had last time- and then was completely appalled that he remembered the last time, long ago as it was.
"Hey Bro, watch this!" Dave shouted, and he ran to do some trick off the diving board and messed it up and even John called him derpy, and Bro laughed and shook his head, and everything was normal.
The third time, Dave was nearly twelve. He'd grown ridiculously fast over the summer and his pants were far too short to start school in, and there was no way in hell Bro was letting his kid be seen wearing clothes more dorky than John's. They were in the fitting room and Dave stepped out with no shirt on and a pair of jeans with a tag hanging off of them. He said something, but Bro was only staring at his chest, which all of a sudden had some tone to it that was never there before.
"Bro?"
"Get whatever you want." he said, and Dave nodded with approval, all of a sudden too mature for goofy smiles and excitement. Bro stared at his back as he disappeared into the stall and when he was out of sight it was like a spell had been broken, and Bro was certain he was the most evil thing that had ever walked the earth.
He was much colder to Dave after that as he tried to keep his distance.
Dave was twelve and a half. He had long since stopped being anything remotely dopey, goofy, or excitable. He was fairly good at keeping his emotions in check, not letting them show on his face, and less and less in his voice. Their conversations became ever more brief, ever more cryptic, as Dave started to hide more and more things from him. As it should have been.
The Problem, as Bro had come to refer to it in his own mind, happened whenever Dave broke his cool facade. He came home one day, hair mussed, shades cracked with a fat lip.
"Get into a fight?" Bro asked, getting up from the couch, a thing he never did, to talk to Dave face-to-face.
"Yeah." His voice cracked.
"Spit it out." Bro said.
"John." Dave answered. "Got himself into trouble again, I had to bail him out."
Bro snorted.
"That's what you get for being friends with the King of Dork."
Dave shrugged, and everything was fine.
Then he sniffled. And ugly, wrong things stirred in Bro.
"Hey, none of that shit." Bro said, and Dave nodded, but he didn't move, and he didn't stop. He sniffled again.
"Grow up." Bro tried again, because he couldn't take this thing. He didn't care if he was being harsh. A harsh moment now was much better for Dave than...than...
Bro felt like smashing his own head against the wall, to protect Dave from the horrible, awful thing that was Bro.
Instead, he reached out his thumb and wiped the stream of tears that had fallen down Dave's cheek. He put his hand under his chin and lifted his face.
"I lost." Dave replied. "John got beat up, too. I'm a shitty friend."
Bro pulled the kid into his arms, and he sobbed. Dave was crying but all Bro could think of was how tall he was now; how his face wasn't buried in his stomach like when he was young but was up to his shoulder, now. About how he liked feeling him against him, how he liked holding him in his arms, and he made absolutely certain to keep proper distance at waist level because it would give him away.
He was the most disgusting excuse for a human being that ever lived, because holding Dave was fucking hot and Bro's dick wouldn't let him ignore that he was turned on.
That night he very seriously contemplated leaving. He'd call CPS himself, tell them he was abandoning his kid, and vanish off the face of the earth, and Dave would never know. Dave would be hurt, he would hate him, but it would be worth it because he would never know a far worse evil. He'd never know the things Bro had known. He'd grow up innocent like a kid should.
But in the morning, Bro was still there, and after that, nothing was ever normal again.