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Welcome to scenic Austin, Atlantis where the view’s gorgeous, the neighbors friendly, and the endless expanse beyond the horizon an ever-present reminder that he exists cradled in the corpse of a decaying planet stripped of all resources, inhabitants, and culture. Totally not a bummer or anything. On the contrary, it just means Dirk’s gotten insanely good at keeping himself busy. He lives and breathes that #grindset. Productivity soars when all he’s got to focus on is what he can build from scavenged scrap metal and good old-fashioned spit-and-polish.
Doesn’t make it a walk in the fucking park, though, or give him immunity to soldering holes into one of his last few clean shirts. Ugh. This project was going nowhere fast. While ordinarily he’d get some distance from whatever step of the process was making him go absolutely goddamn bonkers by shooting the shit with Roxy, Jake, or Jane, all previous attempts at prodding his temporally-challenged pals ended in disappointment. Great. Would it kill one of them to give nightowl life a spin once in a while?
Nothing for it but taking a break and opting for one of his old standbys: going through every available piece of footage he can scrounge up featuring legendary director Dave Strider. About the only thing he has available to him as far as unwinding goes. He's played them so many times, interviews and candid paparazzi encounters where he cracks wise to the camera, to the point where he can quote them by memory. He leaves them playing night after night, letting the grainy audio lull him to sleep, afterimages burned into the backs of his eyelids.
This latest is from a red carpet appearance promoting one of his final movies. On his arm is a woman (of course it's a woman, idiot, what else would it be?) Despite her short stature, she commands enough attention to look several heads taller. Blonde, with a razor-thin smile. Is that supposed to be Bro's type?
A thought emerges, not for the first time. She looks like Dirk. Rather, it's more accurate to say Dirk looks like her. Stand the two of them together and, but for a scant few discrepancies, they'd be near-identical.
He thinks long and hard about it during one of his legendary infinite showers, the walls filled with scrawled shorthand for notes or breakthroughs he couldn't risk forgetting. Then, with a clean canvas, he sets to work on a new project altogether.
It requires less-than-careful surgery on some sacrificial smuppets to gather the material he needs. Fabric is hard to come by in the apocalypse, all the more so left in decent repair, making every well-maintained scrap precious. From there, it’s just a matter of lines and angles, some careful measurements meant to fit all the pieces together, and the sound of Bro’s laughter playing over commentary tracks to keep him company.
What feels like the work of a few minutes can only have been hours at minimum when he comes back to himself, losing all sense of time passing but for the indignant squawk of a seagull trying to rob him of his abandoned sewing shears. At long last, bleary-eyed and squinting into the reflections of the moon against the inky black ocean below, Dirk’s at last got something that falls just short of his exacting standards rather than passing miles deep below the bar.
He’s embraced “fuck it” as his nindo–his ninja way.
Good enough for an audience of one.
Dirk slips into the dress like fitting himself inside a shed snake’s skin, pinching and tugging until it lays just so against his angular frame. He lacks any of the softness that would normally fill a garment of this make out but, running a hand along the smooth planes of his stomach, it isn’t half bad. His gaze flicks to the screen in his peripheral vision, the scene that sparked it all sending a sudden rush of shame and heat through him.
His hand wanders lower, the gears in his head turning, ever turning, toward one of many threads he’s been untangling for years at this point. Somehow managing to send himself back through centuries, just like his gifts, into an era still teeming with people and promise. Trekking back to his (their) apartment, knocking on the door, and getting an actual answer. Spilling everything, all of it, fixing things, so they could–
Could.
Okay, pump the brakes, enough checking yourself out in the mirror, Cassanova. If he’s gonna do this, then it’s time to fucking commit. His turn in the director’s chair. Lights. Music. Go time.
It’s the world premiere of SBAHJ: sweet bro comes thru.......... AGAIN, made possible only through an eleventh hour directing call by yours truly. Not a big deal, but when genius runs in your genes, only a fool doesn’t press the evolutionary advantage. Archaic heteropatriarchal standards being what they are on Earth, they still default to men/women pairings as a matter of course for the red carpet meander, but that’s not going to stand in the way of getting his reward. All eyes are on him as reporters rush to compliment the newest lady on Bro’s arm, but he’s only got eyes and a secretive smile for one.
There’s no waiting until they’re back home. Bro’s hands are on him the second he slides into the car, hiking up the fabric of his dress for full access to roam free. He could rip the damn thing for all Dirk cares; no need for modesty when there's a pool of molten heat building in his abdomen, spurred on by his brother's hands on his thighs. His mouth against his neck, his jaw, the shell of his ear, whispering fragments of all the things he wants to do to Dirk, every filthy detail making his head swirl with possibilities.
It has Dirk jolting from the sudden sensation of his brother's too-warm grasp closing on his cock and setting a frantic pace. He gasps at the building pressure, progressing to an honest to god whine from the stimulation that’s too much, toomuchtoomuchtoomuch, until Bro cups the back of his neck with his free hand and squeezes, just so.
That’s all it takes. Universes collide into existence, rocketing through their trillion-odd life cycle and succumbing to decay before his eyes, all in the space between one breath and the next. All Dirk can make sense of besides the fact that he’s made a goddamn mess is the impression of his brother’s self-satisfied smirk, clear as crystal in his mind, dissolving as reality sets in.
Alone once more to clean up this mess all by himself.
Story of his goddamn life.