Chapter Text
“Is there an Ambrose Strider working here?” You hear from where you’re laying under the shitbox Volkswagen you’ve been trying to fix for the past four hours. You consider kicking the lever on the lift until you’re crushed under the car to get out of whatever dregs of your past have caught up to you.
“Who’s asking,” the goldblood shift manager says, then chatters uneasily after a pause. You can hear the squeal of a chair as it grates against the concrete floor. “He’s in the second bay, over here.”
You shove yourself out from under the car with a hand to the chassis. You time it so you’re sitting upright as the troll leads the people looking for you around the front of the car, less vulnerable than laying flat on your back. Grease smears the length of your scarred forearms and you grimace down at it.
“Ambrose Strider?” The woman of the pair asks. She has a sheaf of papers clutched in her hands and a tired, firm set to her mouth. She makes eye contact with you for a moment before you watch her eyebrows fly up, eyes flicking away in discomfort. At a garage with mostly troll employees you’ve gotten into the habit of leaving your shades off—it’s too fuckin’ dim otherwise, and the trolls don’t care about your scars, besides.
“That’d be me,” You drawl, twist your accent to slide a little longer, curl around the edges a touch more. You pop the last knuckles on your right hand in a descending scale.
“We’re with CPS,” she says, and your eyebrow ticks up before you can beat it into submission and hog-tie it in place. You sure as hell don’t have any little tykes with your genes running around. “We’re here to discuss the option of you taking guardian-ship of your three year old half-brother. His current living conditions are not—tenable long term. Your father has signed over custody.”
On instinct, you want to look over your shoulder at the mention of your father. Twenty-one years old and out of that nightmare of a house for five years, and somehow he still makes a hunted animal of you.
The rest of the words catch up quickly, though, and your brain halts in its tracks at— three year old half-brother. A brother. Another kid your father has been tormenting for years. He—you—
“I’m not the kind of guy that should have kids.” You say, and you’re suddenly furious with your position straddling your creeper, set so far below the eyeline of the others. Your hands curl into fists over your knees.
“We try to keep family members together whenever possible,” the woman says, and the man with her shoots her a quick glance before looking back at you. You fight the urge to curl your lip at them and only manage to avoid using that trollish expression through pure force of will.
“He’ll go into foster care if you don’t take him,” the man says, and the woman does nothing to stop him. “He’s—a sensitive boy. He wouldn’t do well, and he deserves to be with family, don’t you think?”
“Reckon he’s in this situation ‘cause of family,” you say, and the goldblood manager—for some reason still hanging out—grimaces at your words.
“You were in foster care yourself, were you not?” The woman cuts in, voice biting, and you tighten up all over like you’ve been dropped in cold water. You can feel your heart in your throat. “You were taken out of that same house. You know what your brother has been through more than anyone, and you know what he may endure if he enters foster care. Is this really the decision you’re going to make?”
At some point in her tirade your shift manager turned away, ears pinned flat to their head. You’d respect the attempt at privacy if you weren’t swallowing a wretched kind of fury that only appears when you’re reminded of being a child. Helpless and bruised and lonely in that awful fucking house, and just as helpless and lonely in every foster home that followed until you aged out. You want to ask what the fuck she thinks she knows—how she found that out, why she went looking, why the fuck couldn’t she have left well-enough alone—
But the line of thinking works. You can almost picture a little blonde kid, arms too thin and clothes unwashed, covered in bruises he thinks are normal. A too-big hand reaches for him and you force yourself to stop.
“Where is he,” you grit out, hauling yourself to your feet in a smooth motion. The man stumbles back at your height and broad-shoulders, but the woman’s expression brightens. You expected to see self-satisfaction or smugness; instead there’s a relief in her eyes that convinces you of her sincerity more than anything else.
“We have him at our downtown office,” she says, and rattles off the address. You look down at your stained tank top and coveralls knotted around your waist. Grease stains the backs of your hands and crawls its way up towards your elbows. You don’t even want to think about the likely state of your hair.
“Go home and clean up, and then meet us in an hour,” the woman says, and then shoves a card into your hand. It has the address she gave you as well as, presumably, her name and number. “We’ll let him know you’re coming.”
You feel very much like things are moving too quickly, ground unsteady under your feet, but you’ve always had the balance of a cat—you roll your neck until it pops and heave a sigh as the two CPS workers turn to go, thanking your manager for their help.
When they’ve left and the garage is mercifully silent, the goldblood turns to you with a somewhat constipated expression on their face. You’re guessing it’s an attempt at sympathy but it falls somewhat flat. Most trolls don’t have faces for that kind of expression.
“Don’t worry about the job,” they say in Alternian. “I’ll have someone on the late shift take care of it.”
Good fucking riddance, you think, but don’t say. You just nod tightly and make your way out of the garage. It’s barely fucking midday and you have a CPS card in your hand and a kid to meet.
Your hair is still drying against your scalp when you step through the doors of the downtown office and shudder at the blast of cold air. You had thought they were tragically underfunded, but the air-con is running like global warming isn’t the slightest of concerns. You’re a little impressed at their ruthlessness.
“Can I help you?” A squat little tealblood asks from behind a broad, scuffed desk, polite in keeping her lips closed over her sharp teeth as she smiles. She can’t be long out of her adult pupation.
“I’ve got an appointment,” you say with a wry twist to your lips, holding up the card between your fingers. The tealblood is either expecting you or recognizes the card because she gets out from behind her desk and leads you deeper into the building.
It’s a touch shabbier back here, behind the lobby. It’s an older building with aged carpet and doors that have warped a bit in their frames. You do your best to avoid counting the doors and windows you pass because it’s a childish response to stress, and besides that you don’t want to admit that you’re stressed, but your mind seems to note them down anyway, little ticks in neat little rows in your head.
“Good luck,” the tealblood says, and you give her a nod as you step into a wider room. A number of cubicles and desks fill the center, but you can see the woman from before standing in front of an office door off to the side. You make your way over to her with light footsteps and your shoulders curled in, trying to avoid the curious eyes of the office workers. Yeah yeah yeah, stare at your nicest pair of jeans and the first clean shirt you found. You don’t know why you even bothered (you do know why, but you won’t admit it to yourself, like that makes any kind of difference).
“Glad to see you again,” the woman says, and she looks brighter out from under the shadow of the garage. “I think you’ll like him—Dave. He’s a sensitive kid, but sweet. He just needs a bit of patience.”
She goes to open the door to the office and you stop her with a hand held out. You make sure to move a touch slowly and keep a few inches between your hand and her arm.
“Has he said anything about,” you say, and cut yourself off, because you truthfully don’t want to say the words. Her mouth tightens and it emphasizes the lines around her eyes.
“He hasn’t said anything at all yet.” She says, and then opens the door before you can respond to that.
What the fuck. Jesus fucking christ, what the fuck are you supposed to do with a kid that isn’t talking? You don’t have a good record for speaking yourself, sometimes going days with something sitting low and tight in your throat and blocking your words—and you’re supposed to get a kid you don’t know to talk? The blind leading the fucking blind, apparently.
You step into the room anyway, something unhappy and rotten curdling in your stomach, and watch the woman crouch down in front of a small kid on a couch. There’s a plush carpet on the floor in front of him with a number of toys scattered about, but he’s practically strangling a ratty little blanket instead. Christ, never mind, it’s a fucking pillow case. Fuck.
“—your brother, Ambrose,” the woman is saying, a soft smile on her face. The kid stares at her and then glances up at you and away again just as quick. You heave a big sigh, tape around your chest stretching with it, and reach up to remove your shades. You loop them over the collar of your t-shirt and take a few big steps to reach a beaten up looking beanbag. It lets out a sad noise as you settle into it; it puts up a valiant fight to maintain its previous mold before giving up and practically swallowing you. You tip your head back and close your eyes.
“Yes, that’s Ambrose,” the woman murmurs. You pointedly do not open your eyes or move at all. Maybe the kid will think you died and won’t want to go home with you. “What—oh, his sunglasses? He might have sensitive eyes like you. Why don’t you ask him?”
You can hear the shuffle of little feet against the carpet. They come closer, hesitant, until they come round to your head. The room is silent for a few long moments before you crack your eyes open and tilt your head just enough to look at the kid.
He’s squatting off-angle to your head and just out of reach of your arms. You try to pretend you don’t notice that, and focus on him instead. He’s got that pillowcase in a choke hold but he’s staring daggers at your sunglasses. His eyes are a vivid red with an odd blue undertone, and based on the shade of his skin and hair, you guess he’s an albino. That probably didn’t endear him to your father.
You move your arm nice and slow, moving through fucking molasses to close your hand around your shades and slip them off your shirt collar. Just as slow you hold them out—slow, slow, until they’re held by the corner and extended out to the kid. He looks at the smooth surface, back up to you, to the woman—head jerking around like a baby bird, fingers digging and picking at the worn fabric in his hands. You close your eyes again.
After a few minutes—you’ve got good arm strength but you’re starting to get tired—tiny fingers close around your shades and take them from you. You pull your arm back to your chest nice and slow. Look at you, nice and reassuring for the abused kid, as if your broad shoulders and scars and intense eyes aren’t enough to unsettle the most well-adjusted children. You cross your arms and tuck your hands under your biceps. Tucked away. Practically shackling yourself in place.
“Careful with them,” the woman says, and you crack your eyes open enough to peek at the kid from between your eyelashes. He’s clumsily slipping them onto his face with one hand. They’re comically oversized for his little frame, earpieces jutting out behind his head and sharp edges catching the light. He looks at you—happier to be caught staring with a barrier to his face, maybe, and then shuffles a few inches closer. Within grabbing range.
You don’t move. He seems to take that as permission, scoots closer with his scuffed sneakers. The ties are messily knotted over themselves multiple times and you wonder if he managed that himself or if one of the CPS workers did it. He has a broad scrape over the bony curve of his knee that could be from playing rough—the ugly sallow bruise on the edge of his jaw is less likely to have an innocent origin.
Closer and closer—until your own skin crawls, the kid finally breaking into your personal bubble. He’s close enough to touch you. He does, reaches out with a hand attached to a too-thin wrist and gently, barely more than a breeze of a touch, traces the thick scar that cuts over the bridge of your nose and through the delicate skin under your right eye, hooking back up and making a V-shape to bisect your eyebrow. Goosebumps erupt up and down your arms.
He makes a curious noise low in his throat but doesn’t speak. You feel a little mean for it but don’t explain—won’t explain without him using his words. His finger gains a touch more pressure and keeps following the shape of the scar. It’s mostly numb, thick and ridged from the force that had rent the skin open. You can remember looking in the mirror after you got out from under your dad and seeing bone peek through the skin. You had taped the gaping wound shut with duct tape as best you could because you didn’t have anything else to use.
“How,” the kid finally mumbles, word breathless and near-mute. His voice isn’t hoarse from disuse, you can’t help but notice.
“Our da,” you say, and the woman makes an unhappy noise from across the room. The kid hunches his shoulders in and freezes like a baby deer. You avoid glaring at her. “He didn’t like my eyes.”
The kid leaves off your scar for a minute, a relief for the sensitive skin, and pokes an unsteady finger against the obviously cooked bend to your nose. He makes a curious noise and stares at you. You stare back without speaking. He pokes again, more forcefully, and you let your eyebrow lift a touch. A nonverbal question, answering his own. He sighs with more exasperation than you think a three year old should have.
“How,” he says, long-suffering. His grip on his ratty pillowcase has loosened and he’s instead stroking the plain cloth.
“Got hit,” you say, and don’t say how many times—don’t say at least one time it was from having your face bounce off the edge of the kitchen sink, blood pooling down the back of your throat.
“Who,” the kid pushes, and his finger prods the bone of your nose again, demanding.
“Dave,” the woman says, voice carrying a, frankly, unjustified warning, and Dave—the kid curls in on himself, tucking his limbs under his chest like a little crab. He doesn’t look at the woman; his gaze is fixed on the ground under him like avoiding looking will save him. Maybe it has, before.
“It’s alright,” you say, and don’t bother controlling the force behind your glare as you look at the woman. She seems unfairly stressed for not being the recipient of a child’s demanding questions and probing touches. Maybe that’s why she’s stressed—what, does she expect you to fly off the handle? Take it out on the kid, instead of handling your emotions like a god-damned adult?
“A couple of people,” you answer the kid’s earlier question, and stretch back into the beanbag a touch more. All faux-relaxation—who is the chillest, it is you. “Can’t remember them all.”
You really do expect the kid to ask why you deserved getting your nose busted, but for once a three year old’s propensity for asking difficult to answer questions is stalled. He stares at you from behind your overlarge shades. He’s still curled in on himself like a pillbug. You’re not entirely sure where to go from here. Presumably the woman wants you to take the kid home—your apartment is hardly up to snuff for a toddler, despite the flash-clean you managed before showering, but there isn’t a clear path from Point A to Point B, and it’s stressing you the fuck out.
“What’s your name,” you ask, even though you know it. The kid tilts his head at you like a bird. “‘M Ambrose. People call me Bro.”
It started when you were in foster care, though you never tell anyone that. The little kids in some of the houses couldn’t say your full name. Now people use it as a nickname or a shorthand—most of the time you introduce yourself as Bro. Less of a mouthful. Less of a reminder of your da’s voice barking your name, nasty and mean and full of ugly promise.
“Bro,” the kid says, testing, and you feel the corner of your mouth tick up in a little smirk.
“That’s my name, not yours,” you say, and you try for teasing. It fits oddly in your mouth. The kid makes a weird little noise, though, like an unpracticed laugh. He shoves your shades higher up on his small nose.
“Dave,” he finally says. He reaches out again—fucking hell, this kid is handsy—and gets a handful of your hair. You didn’t bother with product considering it hadn’t dried when you left your place and is now spiky as hell, curls and waves sticking out all over the place. He tilts his head to the side again and then lifts his other hand to poke at his own hair. He’s got messy, frizzy curls, jutting out at odd angles. Someone had clearly taken a brush to it without consideration for the state other than being free of tangles.
And now you’re thinking of what his hair looked like before—matted, maybe, unwashed. Tangled to shit and back like your own hair would get. Had your dad ever taken clippers to his scalp like he did to you when your hair got out of control?
Don’t think about that.
“Do you remember what we talked about earlier, Dave?” The woman says. The kid’s shoulders jump like a hiccup but instead of pulling away he curls towards you defensively. His hand is stalwartly gentle as he pets through your hair. “We mentioned you staying with your brother. How would you feel about living with Ambrose?”
The kid looks at you like you have the answers. As fucking if. You're not making this decision for him—if he doesn't want to be trapped in your apartment with you you’re not going to force him. A part of you doesn't want him to come home with you. Another part has no idea what you want.
“I remember,” he says slowly. You're not sure if he's stalling for time. You're not sure if three year olds are clever enough to stall for time, and then feel like that might be a dickish thought, and then remember that you don't care about being a dick.
“Do you like that idea?” The woman asks, pressing, and you feel like you should tell her to knock it off and let the kid answer in his own time. You’re not sure where the instinct came from.
“I,” the kid starts, stops. His hand goes still in your hair. “I can’t go back?”
The woman hesitates. You cut in before she can speak again.
“Did you want to go back to him?” You ask. Your voice is flat but not accusing—not blaming, not pushing. Flat and free of expectation. The kid looks at you from behind your too-big shades. His little shoulders hunch over more, until he’s pressed to his knees.
“No,” he finally whispers, like it’s a secret between you two. You nod.
“You can come home with me,” you say, and it feels like a foot pressing the brake flat to the floor, like opening a window at dawn and catching a breeze. “If you wanna leave I’ll bring you back here.”
“You won’t—” he hesitates, chews on his words. Your shades have slipped down enough that you can see his red eyes peeking over the edge. When he finally speaks its almost too quiet to hear. “You won’t sell me to the bad man?”
You suck in a low, even breath, well-versed in hiding your reactions. Your chest hurts around the roiling fury the question invokes. Your jaw aches for something to bite. You’ve done your best to put large portions of your childhood to death in unmarked graves in your head, but this spindly little kid somehow manages to get his fingernails under the coffin lids and lift. You remember—
“I won’t,” you say instead, even and so fucking chill you’re practically Antarctica. You don’t say anything more because the promise sits heavy on your tongue, clinging to the words like an anchor and chain, and because you’re not sure what else would come out. He seems to consider that for a moment before finally nodding.
“Okay,” he says, as if that’s it, and starts up playing with your hair again. You look at the woman with as little movement of your head as possible. She has a smile on her face that she’s doing a shit job of hiding behind her hand.
“I don’t have a car seat for him,” you say in warning. She leverages herself to her feet. “I can take him to the store and get whatever else he needs, but—”
“We have a seat we can give you,” she says, and she crosses the room to the desk tucked in the back corner. It takes only a moment of shuffling for her to select a sheaf of papers and bring them over to the couch.
“I’m going to go get Dave’s things and the seat for you,” she says, and sets the papers down with a pen from her pocket. “Please read these over and sign them. We’ll have a meeting later in the week to cover them, but for now I think Dave needs some time with you and getting settled.”
You’re pretty sure this is a little fast moving for foisting a kid off on someone, but maybe since you’re related it’s easier. You heave a great big sigh and the kid copies you, blowing a stream of air out of his mouth with pursed lips. He takes his hand out of your hair as you haul yourself upright. To your surprise he doesn’t move away.
“Is she coming back?” The kid asks, watching the woman leave the room. You tip yourself onto your knees and scoot over to the couch with the same amount of dignity rotting roadkill has and slump with your back to it, pulling the papers into your lap. He follows you and stands by your shoulder, tucking a corner of his pillowcase into his mouth.
“Yeah, she’ll be back in a mo’,” you say, and look at him. “But then we’ll leave. That okay?”
He doesn’t seem to really take the time to consider that—just nods and leans closer, closer until his warm side is pressed to your shoulder. You look back down at the papers and go through blindly signing them wherever there’s a line and big X indicating the need for a John Handcock. There’s something building in the back of your skull like a kettle reaching a boil. You do your best to ignore the warning rattle that comes before the scream.
You’ve just finished signing when the door swings open again. The woman returns with a car seat in one hand and a trashbag in another. You’ve been through enough foster homes to know what’s in there, and you resist the urge to sigh again as you start compiling a list of things the kid will need. Fucking hell.
“Any questions?” She asks, and you realize you never got her name. You decide you don’t care and shake your head. You glance over at the kid. He shakes his head as well. You’re not sure he really understands what’s going on, and you really, really don’t want to stick around to make sure he gets it, however much of a jackass that makes you. You drag yourself up with a hand on the couch and trade the papers for the bag of the kid’s stuff and the car seat. It looks legit, you suppose, though you have no idea how to even tell. It’s not like recognizing kid’s car seat brands was ever relevant before now.
“We’ll be in touch, Mr. Strider,” the woman says. You have a feeling she’d shake your hand if either were free and are glad you don’t. You give her a nod, ignore the foreboding feeling those words incite, and jerk your head at the kid.
He takes one step forward, hesitant, and you match him. As soon as you start moving he attaches himself to the side of your leg with one little hand clenched in the fold of your jeans. It’s surprising; you fight back the urge to flash-step away like a moron and steady yourself with a tight breath. You avoid looking at the woman as you cross the room to the open door and step out into the office space.
Exiting is massively relieving, despite the little kid clinging to you. He seems to have a good grasp on pacing; the only contact is his deathgrip on your pants. He doesn’t stumble or bump into you the entire journey out the front of the lobby, past the bored tealblood, and out into the baking Texas heat. Your gorgeous girl is waiting for you a few yards down the street.
“Over here, kid,” you say, perhaps pointlessly, and make your way to your truck.
“My name is Dave,” he tells you, and you snort mirthlessly.
“I was there,” you say under your breath. You have to set down the kid’s things to unlock the back door. The car seat is relatively easy to install and you give it a few good yanks to make sure it’s sturdy. You wish you had a mirror to jury rig on the back of the seat to keep an eye on him and add that to your list of things to get.
“In we go,” you say, looking down at him. The kid is staring up at you through your shades and you feel like a moron for forgetting he had them on still.
“Where?” He asks around the spit-soaked pillow-case. Jesus fucking Christ. You squat down to feel less like a predator looming over a helpless baby bird and meet his eyes.
“We’re going to the store,” you say. “I need to get you things.” He frowns.
“I have things,” he says, almost mutinously. He points at the trashbag on the ground next to you.
“Good for you,” you say, and then heave a sigh and swallow back the caustic emotion welling up in your throat. The kid copies you again and you can’t help your shitty little smile.
“You need more stuff,” is what you say, and the kid seems to think that over before nodding. As if you need his permission. He’s, what, fifty pounds soaking wet? You have no idea how much kids weigh but you’re sure you could just pick him up if you needed to.
“I’m gonna put you in your seat, now,” you say, because you’d like a warning if you were him. He nods again and tightens his grip on his pillowcase. You reach forward awkwardly, haltingly, hating yourself for your uncertainty as you slip your hands under his armpits. He’s very much a dangling deadweight as you lift him up and settle him into the seat.
“Why am I backwards?” He asks, looking around the cab of the truck like it’s interesting. You get to work buckling him in and making sure the straps are snug.
“It’s safer for you,” you say. Your throat is going sore. This is the most you’ve spoken in—well. As long as you can remember.
“Where will you be?” He asks as you tuck his bag of things on the floor under his seat.
“I’ll be in the front, right there,” you say, and point at the driver’s seat. He shoves a little bit more of his pillowcase into his mouth and you manfully resist the urge to yank it out.
You close the door firmly without slamming it and circle the cab of the truck quickly. The kid’s eyes are on you the whole way like miniature laser beams. What, does he think you’re gonna do a runner?
On second thought, now would be the best time, if you’d ever consider leaving your truck behind.
“Ready?” You say, even though the kid doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. You hear a mumbled ready in answer and assume he’s shoved more of that ragged pillowcase into his mouth. That’s probably something you should discourage, but you’re not sure if you care enough yet.
You pause, eyes on your scarred knuckles where they hold the steering wheel. Ten and two. The weight of the kid’s presence—Dave’s presence—seems to press in on you, something tangible, invading your personal space until you’re practically curled over, eyes squeezed shut for a long minute. Just a fucking minute. One minute, please, just—
Begging never got you anywhere.
You straighten back up and start the truck.
Dave’s eyes are big and curious when you come back around the truck to get him out. At some point he’s taken your shades off but clutch them to his chest with the same death grip he has on his pillowcase. At least he hasn’t put them in his mouth yet—you wince at the thought.
“This is the store?” He asks, craning his little body awkwardly to try and look over your shoulder. You don’t really think a Walmart deserves this kind of intrigue, but—
Did your da ever bother taking him out of the house?
The first time you had left the house was when you started school. You remember how overwhelming that had been, so many other kids, so many strangers; you, hunched over in your unwashed clothes and clutching your tattered backpack to your chest. You had ended up wedging yourself in the corner and rocking back and forth for the better part of an hour before the teacher had managed to coax you out.
Don’t think about that.
“This is a store, sure,” you say, and finish releasing him from the confines of the car seat. He looks up at you. You look down at him.
What the fuck were you thinking, signing those—
“What,” you say, and it comes out flat, ground out from between your molars, but the kid—Dave, Christ, he has a name, fucking use it— doesn’t flinch. He keeps staring up at you for a few more minutes and then looks back over your shoulder. Fuck. Okay.
“I’m going to pick you up again,” you say, try to ignore the sweat taking its sweet time meandering down the back of your neck. Fucking hell, it’s hot in the car park. Dave nods and goes perfectly still, like he’s trying to make it easier for you.
You feel—awkward, wedging your hands around the flimsy cage of his chest, lifting him out of the seat and taking care not to knock his head off the roof of the car. You go to set him on the ground and he suddenly moves, jerks in your grip and grabs for your shirt. You freeze because the alternative is flinging him away from you like he’s a diseased animal.
“Don’t,” he says, deadly serious. He doesn’t seem overtly concerned about his legs dangling a few feet off the ground.
“Don’t,” you start, let the word trail off. He keeps staring at you. Jesus, his eyes are weird. “Don’t what?”
Dave doesn’t answer verbally—instead he lifts his arms, one hand still holding onto your shades and his pillowcase, in the universally recognized signal children use for demanding uppies.
“You want me to carry you?” You ask, and he nods after a moment of consideration. Okay. That’s—that’s doable. You’ve seen people carrying kids before. Usually women with wider hips than yours, but you can make do. You’ve got the muscle mass to make up for it.
So you lift Dave a bit higher and hitch him onto your hip. One of his arms goes around your shoulders and the back of your neck, the other tucking into his chest as he drops his head to rest on your collarbone, and you feel—
Something happens, in your chest, maybe something cracking open—maybe a door opening that had been locked shut and boarded over so well you hadn’t ever noticed its presence. There’s the taste of burnt steak over the back of your tongue. You feel—not whole, not complete, but like something essential has finally clicked into place. An absence filling, or an expansion, or—
“Store?” Dave asks, his hair tickling your chin, and you snap back to yourself.
“Yeah,” you croak, clear your throat. Your shades dig into the side of your neck from where he’s holding them. You press your fingers into your sternum, abruptly cognizant of the fading itch there, and then close the truck door.
You’re used to getting looks when going out in public—pushing past six feet and covered in scars isn’t exactly conducive to flying under the radar. You get wildly different looks toting Dave around, you realize, as you grab a cart and one of the attendants smiles widely at you. He directs a softer smile at Dave, who shoves his face into your collarbone with enough force to bruise. The attendant doesn’t seem insulted.
The air inside Walmart is mercifully cool. You hike Dave up a touch higher and consider sticking him in the little kid seat the car is equipped with—decide against it for now. He’s got the collar of your shirt in a stranglehold. It’s better to let kids settle in, right?
Fuck if you know.
You’ve organized a list of basics for him based on tasks. First up is cleanliness. You drag the cart through aisle after aisle until you get to the sections with bathing supplies and give Dave a little jerk with the arm holding him up until he surfaces from your chest.
“You gotta pick, kid,” you say, and sit him down in the cart’s seat. He clings to your hand—Christ alive, he can barely hold on to three of your fingers—so you leave that be and point out his options. He wants a red toothbrush. Fine. He gets hung up on the toothpaste flavors but eventually picks one that’s apple and cinnamon, and demands everything is that flavor. You don’t bother telling him he won’t be eating the shampoo or conditioner.
All the curly friendly versions go into the cart. You’re a little lazy with your own hair, but like hell you’re going to let Dave’s fry off his scalp. You consider getting a bonnet for him and decide to see if any of your older ones will do instead.
Dave settles when you make it clear you’ll be keeping the cart close. He puts your shades back on, squinting in the aggressive fluorescent lighting, and you make a mental note to get a pair of smaller shades for him. With eyes like his he’s probably sensitive.
He waffles over picking towels but goes with the plush princess pattern. You’ve added a few bits and pieces while he picked—a scalp-gentle hairbrush in case he’s tender-headed, kiddie body wash, one of those loofah things. More for him to play with and less for bathing, probably, but whatever.
You head over to the kid’s section for clothes next. If you have your way you’ll be tossing most of what is in the garbage bag, unless Dave is inordinately attached to it (like his pillowcase). He seems a little overwhelmed by all of the options so you set him up to pick a few shirts and shorts and get his underwear and socks for him. In go a pair of bright red and black sneakers as well.
Next up is food—you take a detour to the pharmacy section and toss in some kid’s vitamins, kid’s ibuprofen, kid’s cold and flu medicine, a thermometer. Stuff you had no reason to have and never used as a kid.
It shocks you, the odd surge of bitter anger and jealousy, at the thought of the kid getting all of this when you never had it, but—
“Can I have apple juice?” Dave asks, quiet and tentative. He’s shoved your shades up into his hair even though he has to squint with the lighting. Something in your throat aches, hard and knotted, and you swallow past it.
“Alright,” you say, like it’s not a big deal, like you didn’t find out how much you like orange juice until a year out of your dad’s house, like you hadn’t been beaten for asking for things. Dave deserves better. It’s better if he isn’t as broken as you. Dave wiggles in place and smothers his smile in his pillowcase.
You grab a big pack of apple juice, and then a pack of applesauce, even though Dave doesn’t seem sure about what it is. A whole hog of other food types get tossed in as well. You’re more than willing to subsist off shitty food, but you know Dave needs better than that.
Last is the room section. You’ll have to refit your bedroom into one for Dave, but you don’t have the time for that now. You let Dave pick out a parrot squishmallow that he clings to like it’s going to be taken away.
“Anything else?” You ask, and immediately regret it, because Dave stares up at you with wide eyes. He has no clue—of course he doesn’t, he’s fucking three years old. You’re awful at this. Why the fuck did you—
“Home,” you say, unfairly tired. Dave drags the back of his hand across his eyes and clutches the squishallow closer to his chest.
“Home?” He asks, and his eyebrows pinch in like he’s worried. You don’t—
“My home,” you clarify, and Dave’s entire body relaxes, slumping over in the cart seat. He nods and tucks the edge of his pillowcase in his mouth, fingers flipping one of the squishmallow’s wings back and forth. You consider pulling the pillowcase out of his mouth, but—
Checking out is fine. The cashier smiles at Dave and stretches the scanner across the belt so he doesn’t have to let go of his squishmallow, which puts her in your good books, and doesn’t chat or ask any extra questions. The amount isn’t necessarily worrying—you have more money than you know what to do with, most days, between Plush Rumps and the jobs you pick up at the garage—but it’s certainly more than you would usually spend in one place. You figure you’ll be spending a lot more money in the next few weeks to get Dave everything he needs.
Dave is falling asleep as you strap him into his seat out in the parking lot. Makes sense, you figure; you don’t remember being a little kid but it’s probably exhausting. It’s a relief to be away from his gaze, anyway, and you fix the mirror you bought to the opposite headrest of Dave so you can keep an eye on him while driving. Look at you, a bona fide dad—
Not a dad. You don’t think you can do that. Brother, though—yeah. That’s doable.
Back in your apartment you settle Dave down on the couch with a pillow from your bed and let him keep napping. It gives you a chance to chuck all of his new clothes in the wash (including his pillowcase) and go through tucking away all of your sharp objects and more salacious puppets. The crawlspace is practically full to bursting by the time you’re satisfied.
You drop down silently, flicking the crawlspace shut behind you, and find Dave standing at the end of the hallway staring at you. Jesus pant-shitting Christ. That is unfairly terrifying.
“What’s up, little man?” You ask, aim for casual and probably miss the mark. Dave rubs his eyes and toddles down the hall towards you. He walks directly into your legs and leans against your knees, heaving a great big sigh that’s out of place on his little body. You smother a shitty little laugh and carefully, slowly, drop your hand onto his head, stroke over his ragged curls. Which gives you an idea.
“How about a bath?” You ask, and Dave looks up at you with a somewhat dubious expression. You don’t think you deserve that, so you lift an eyebrow until he nods with a long-suffering look on his face.
You pick him up without him having to ask and he squirms off your hip until he’s held at your front, both arms coming up behind your neck. It’s not a hardship—you’d hope you’re strong enough to carry a malnourished three year old. You back track to the kitchen where you left the shopping bag with Dave’s stuff and take the chance to switch the washing over to the little dryer. Hopefully it’ll dry well enough—if not you’ll pull the rack out of the closet.
You sit Dave down on the toilet lid with one of your towels as a cushion and set to filling the tub. His washing stuff gets lined up along the rim instead of put in the rack hanging from the shower head so it’s actually in reach. Dave still seems half asleep where he’s on the toilet.
Should you—you can’t leave him, right? That’s definitely not safe. Three year olds can definitely drown in the tub. But will he—what if he doesn’t want you to stay? You can’t leave him. Just the thought of stepping outside while he’s in the tub makes something hot and staticky well up in your chest, buzzing along your ribs. No. You won’t.
Dave doesn’t end up offering any objections, anyway. He strips his worn clothes off and clambers into the tub with your help, face lighting up as soon as he gets in.
“It’s warm!” He says, eyes wondering, and you have to be very careful not to punch a hole in the porcelain tub. To be so surprised at something as simple as warm water—
Plenty of people don’t have warm water. Get the fuck over it.
You let him splash and play for a bit before getting to work cleaning him up. You realize belatedly that you should’ve gotten clothes out for him beforehand. It would’ve been some of yours since all of his are drying, but—
You’re careful as you wet his hair and work your fingers through it with shampoo. Dave chatters away, singing some nonsense under his breath as he plays with errant bubbles on the surface of the water, and he goes willingly when you tip him backwards to wash his hair. He lets your hand around the back of his neck hold him up; it stretches to cover most of his upper back too, bony little shoulder blades poking into your palm like wings. You repeat the process with his curls, careful to comb through them with your fingers when you work the conditioner in.
“What about you?” Dave asks, smearing the body wash you gave him across his body. You’re not really concerned about him being thorough—more developing good habits. You hadn’t learned to properly wash yourself until you were pushing fourteen.
“What about me?” You ask, and it’s genuinely not to be a jackass, even though Dave’s put-upon face is amusing.
“You’ll take a bath?” Dave says, and helpfully scrubs his hand up and down your forearm where it rests on the edge of the tub. The soap makes your scars glimmer under the shitty overhead light.
“I’ll shower after you,” you say, and he nods solemnly, and then starts wiping the soap on the walls, and you decide that’s probably enough for bathtime.
You wrap Dave’s hair in a little hand towel and then wrap your biggest towel around him and have him sit on the toilet lid again. The tub hasn’t fully drained when you hop in, stripping and dropping your clothes outside the curtain and almost braining yourself when your heel catches suds. You spit out a curse and Dave repeats it with a little too much glee.
A quick shower later you step out with a towel knotted around your waist. Dave looks half-asleep again, drowsy and warm in the humid bathroom, and you pick him up and tote him to the bedroom. He curls up on your bed and you take the time to pull on a pair of boxers before going to the kitchen and checking the laundry. The smaller pieces of clothing have dried, thankfully, so you pull a pair of undies out and Dave’s slightly damp pillowcase.
Dave squirms into the underwear on his own and you hand over a shirt of yours. It swallows him whole, threatening to slide off his shoulders. He latches onto his pillowcase when you hand it over but looks around blurrily like he’s missing something.
“My bird?” He says, and you help him worm under the blankets before fetching it for him. He conks out expeditiously once he has it in his arms and you retreat to the living room, still partially naked. You sit down hard onto the futon.
There is a three year old kid sleeping in your bed right now (in the least creepy way possible).
Said three year old is your responsibility. You’re his brother—his guardian, which fits over your shoulders in a way that shouldn’t feel so welcoming. It feels right. You’re not sure what to do with that.
You’re still trying to figure that out when you slump into sleep, the sun setting over Houston throwing shades of red and orange across your walls.
You startle awake with a mangled gasp. You’re not sure, for a long breath, if you still have your sword wedged through you like a pin sticking an insect to a corkboard; not sure if the hot gust of dogbreath is washing over you; not sure if you can hear wings beating—and then your eyes finally parse the dim light of the room and you see the silhouette standing before you, leaning over you, wordless and watching, and—
You slam up against your locked strife deck in the same moment you realize it’s Dave.
Fuck, fuck, what if you hadn’t locked it? What if your blade had slid into your hand, what if you had—he’s too small, too slow to know how to dodge—you can almost see the glint of the streetlights off your blade, see where they would be swallowed by the blue-black stain of blood—
“Jesus fuck, kid,” you groan, heart thudding in your temples like a migraine. He tilts his head at you and you see another Dave, lit up from the inside in atomic orange, a familiar sword clasped in his clawed hands—
“Jesus fuck,” Dave says, and you drag a hand down your face instead of swearing again. Your palm slips through something warm and drying tacky under your nose, and a strong sniff stings with the taste of iron down the back of your throat. Great. Just peachy fuckin’ keen, huh?
“What is it,” you ask instead, and attempt to leverage yourself up. The pillow sticks to your face for a few long moments before you peel it off and realize your bloody nose was profuse enough to glue the fabric to the side of your face. Gross.
“I don’t wanna sleep alone,” Dave says, and when you look at him again you can see he’s got his pillowcase tangled in his hands but no wet spots. At least he hasn’t stuck it in his mouth since you washed it. He looks impossibly smaller in your t-shirt, swamped by the length and breadth. You dig your thumb into the corner of your eye and hiss at the burn that lances through your brain at the contact. Your eyelids light up neon green.
“Alright, kid,” you say, and Dave scoots closer to you, one of his hands closing in your sleep pants. The heat sinks through the fabric and you expect it to make your skin crawl—you’re not used to being touched, not like this, not without violence the intended outcome, but—
“Up?” You ask, and Dave bounces in place, nodding vigorously. You resist the urge to sigh and scoop him up. The both of you are more comfortable with the span of hours of practice at this, and he slumps against your chest like he’s intending to go to sleep right there. You refuse to let yourself be comforted by the weight of him.
Once in your room you toe the door mostly shut and walk over to your bed. Dave had rucked your comforter up into a little nest, pillows in a semi-circle, and you make the briefest rearrangement possible before turning and tipping onto your back, Dave making a shrill little noise of surprise as you fall. It turns into a few little giggles as he snuggles deeper into your arms.
“Whack me if you needa get up,” you mumble, turning your head so you get a noseful of soft curls that smell like apples and cinnamon. Dave doesn’t respond; when you cup a hand around his ribcage he’s breathing slow and even, already well-asleep, and you let yourself sigh now, and try to ignore the feeling of dried blood on your face. You really should’ve washed that off.
It’s odd, curling around Dave’s little body. When was the last time you shared a bed with someone? Not since you were seventeen and hiding in Roxy’s room in the group home, both of you holding your breaths, waiting for the floorboards to call out their warning—
You try not to think of her.
You’d expected Dave to be a quiet sleeper. Instead he twitches and mutters and wiggles, though he never goes far. Anytime your arms loosen from their hold around him he gets an angry little line between his eyebrows and you feel guilty enough (unfamiliar) to pull him close again. You wonder when the last time someone held him was, before you. Who did he curl into at night? You can’t imagine your da holding him.
You didn’t intend to fall asleep; hadn’t thought you’d be able to, with the years since you shared a bed stretching out behind you like a pothole ridden road. The little puffs of air against your neck from Dave’s breathing settles something in you, though, even with the spectre of your dreams looming over you. The itch in your chest subsides with his presence.
This is right, something in you feels, says, this is so right everything else in your life up till now feels wrong.
You don’t want to admit that—don’t want to feel like that, not with twenty-one years under your belt, not with the scars etched into your skin. You want your life to have meaning outside of the little kid you’re holding now, but there’s a sinking feeling in your gut like something settling in place. You think about that odd feeling in the parking lot of Walmart again, poke at it like a missing tooth. You’ve never managed to leave well enough alone.
Dave snuffles, kicks his little leg out and rolls closer to you. You let him.
You let him, and that’s the baffling part—let him shove himself into your space, let him take up your bed, make space for him (don’t need to, because there’s been something empty in you the exact size and shape of him that you never noticed before) like you never let anyone else. You had thought your father ruined you. You had thought you weren’t worth more than bent nails turned outwards; a leather grip worn down to the bone of the hilt.
Dave, though—
Dave makes you worth something. Your role in Dave’s life—as his older brother, as his guardian—there’s worth in that.
There’s something up with Dave.
You had thought he was settling in well after a week—no, fuck off, he has been settling in well. Practically fucking bloomed after that first rocky night in the apartment when he asked you to stay with him. He never shuts up, for one thing, even though most of the time he’s not talking to you—talking to himself, or the bargain bin toys he wanted—and he runs around like a real kid, full of energy and jumping on you and off the couch before crashing and napping for an hour or two. It’s a huge change from the quiet, nervous, near-mute kid you met at the CPS building.
But the past day or two he’s gone weird. Quiet, and secretive, and staring at you (worse than his usual stares, something anxious and probing and unsure in his eyes). You try to give him space and let him come to you because the idea of having a talk about his emotions makes you pre-emptively break out in hives. Christ alive.
It’s worth it, in the end, because Dave seems to like talking to you and telling you things, and it’s a cheery Thursday morning he finally breaks. You’re giving him a plate of neatly cut up apples dusted in cinnamon and a few slices of bacon for breakfast with your meal of a cup of coffee cooling on the counter when he asks.
“We’re brothers,” he says, and his little voice turns it into a question. You nod. You expect him to dive into his apples because even after a week straight of having them with almost every meal he’s still obsessed with them, but he frowns and pokes the edge of the paper plate with a finger. You wait him out.
“How are we brothers?” He asks, and you debate the merits of trying to explain sex and familial relations to a three year old before banishing that thought. As fucking if.
“We have the same dad,” you say. Dave looks up at you with his brows pulled tight over his eyes, and you can’t stop yourself from reaching out and smoothing his curls back from his face. They’re soft under your hand. You did that—you got him cleaned up and took care of his hair, so it sits neat and clean around his face. You clear your throat and try to banish the sappy, proud feeling from your chest.
“So if someone has the same da as me, we’re brothers?” He asks, and you—you stop in your tracks, stomach going tense and tight. The hair is standing up on the back of your neck, you realize. You get the horrible feeling you’ve missed something.
“Yes,” you say, and suck in a breath between your teeth and try to convince yourself not to kill the fucking CPS workers. You don’t know for sure. “Do you have a brother? Other than me?”
Dave’s face fucking lights up, eyes going wide as he nods vigorously. Fuck. Fuck.
“Where is he?” You ask, like a moron, because a three year old isn’t going to know. Predictably Dave’s face falls and he looks back down at his untouched plate. Why are you such a jackass, fucking—
“I don’t know,” he says mournfully, and sniffs a little, like he’s going to cry. For the love of God, please, no. “He left the house, too. But the—he got taken away. He always comes back so I was waitin’ but he hasn’t come back yet.”
“Okay,” you say, even as can be, look at you and your emotional restraint. “Do you know his name?”
“Dirk!” Dave says proudly, eyes still a little wet but lighting up at the simple thought of his brother. “He’s seven, and he likes orange juice, an’ sometimes he leaves the house but he always comes back and he brings food. Can he come live with us?”
Seven. He’s seven. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the fucking donkey they rode in on. Fuck.
“I’m going to pack up your breakfast,” you say, instead of breaking the fucking table and scarring your kid for life, “and we’re going to go find Dirk, okay?”
Dave fucking flings himself out of his chair and plasters himself to your legs, jumping up and down like an animal, but the smile on his face is the widest you think you’ve ever seen. He’s yelling garbled up words like he does when he gets excited.
He lets go of your legs in short order and starts sprinting around the apartment, yelling that he’s going to show Dirk this, no this first, no wait it’s gotta be this, and Dirk likes ponies, can we get him a pony?
You pack his breakfast in a little tupperware and chug your coffee. It scalds your tongue a bit, but you use that to try and ignore the hot ire building behind your eyes like a migraine. Those fucking liars. We try to keep family together your perfectly round, muscular ass. They’ll be fuckin’ lucky if you don’t blow the building up.
You herd Dave into the bedroom and wrestle him out of his jammies and into something slightly more respectable. He debates over his shirt for so long you’re close to just picking for him and strong-arming him into it, but he eventually settles on a soft orange one with sunflowers on the front.
“It’s Dirk’s favorite color!” He tells you, so fucking happy, and you can’t do anything but nod and smile and swallow around the foreign mix of grief and pride and love wedged between your teeth. Dave is—he’s too good for you. He’s too bright and loving, and you have an awful feeling that you’re going to ruin him because you’re too selfish to let him go.
You pull on the nearest pair of jeans and don’t bother changing out of your tank top. Your binding tape is starting to peel around the edges but you dismiss it—that’s a task for after Dave is asleep and you have the time to peel it off, strip by strip, under the shower.
Dave begs for the keys like he has every time you’ve gone out, so you let him take the carabiner and clip it to his shorts. The impatience to get to the CPS office—to find Dirk, fucking hell you’ve had another brother out there this whole time, this whole fucking time— makes you scoop Dave up like a football and tuck him under your arm. He shrieks in delight, brilliant red eyes screwed up, so you give into your desire to please him and the impatience in your veins and hop over the stairwell railing.
Dave practically deafens you on the way down, but he doesn’t stop smiling, and you realize you’re smiling back on the walk to the truck.
“Mr. Strider,” the tealblood says, peering up at you from behind her desk. She tries for another polite smile. You do not smile back. You let your lip curl up, in fact, and loom ever-so-slightly. She hunches down into her seat.
“I have been made aware of the existence of another brother,” you say coldly, tightening your arm around Dave where he’s perched on your hip again. The tealblood licks her lips nervously.
“I’m not really the—” she starts, and you lift a hand and place it delicately on the edge of the desk. She freezes.
“I’d appreciate it if you called up ahead,” you say, your voice cold and quiet and menacing, “and let the fine lady I saw last time know I’m here to collect my brother, Dirk.”
She nods, throat bobbing in relief at not being the one under the chopping block, and you step around the desk.You can hear her fingers punching in the phone pad as you start down the lobby.
“How did you do that?” Dave whispers around the bunched up fabric of his pillowcase. You glance down at him from behind your shades. He doesn’t seem frightened—awed, maybe. You don’t know which would be worse.
“They know they shouldn’t’a kept Dirk from me,” you tell him. “It’s easy to make people do what you want when they know they’ve done somethin’ wrong. No one likes to be in trouble.”
Dave nods solemnly at that, and because you’re already at the threshold for your not often stoked temper, you avoid thinking about what he’s been in trouble for. Nothing he deserves, probably, knowing your father.
The office is practically empty when you reach it; not surprising, considering it hasn’t even hit eight in the morning yet. The woman’s door is open, though, and you see her set the phone down in its cradle as you make your way towards it. She doesn’t look nearly as guilty as you think she should.
“Where is he?” You ask, and you do not shout, and you do not threaten. You are the adult, it is you.
“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Strider, and you too, Dave,” the woman says, and Dave, usually shy but relatively polite, turns to her with a glare he can’t have picked up from you. The flat, unimpressed line of his mouth, on the other hand—
“Dirk is currently with a foster family,” the woman says, and you slip your shades off and hook them in your top so she can see how unimpressed you are with that. If it has the benefit of forcing her to look at your scar, well—multitasking is a modern man’s virtue, and all that.
“I seem to recall an insistence that family stay together,” you say, and your voice is going mean around the edges. Dave’s arm around your neck tightens. “So color me surprised to hear that one of my brothers isn’t with family. Reckon that’s something approaching hypocritical, if I’m being generous—a lie, if I’m not.”
“We never lied to you,” the woman says, hands going up. “Dirk is—he’s not as well adjusted as Dave is. We were concerned about the responsibility and burden of two children, especially one who is—”
She hesitates tellingly, and you feel like you’ve swallowed ice cubes. What’s the chance he’s like you, socially stunted and prickly and particular to the point of hysteria. She doesn’t want to admit it—she might not even know about you, to be fair, since you don’t think it’s necessarily something that shows up on the run-of-the-mill background check they do.
“I think that’s a decision we should’a made together,” you say. She hesitates again but nods, shoulders slumping. You don’t care about her guilt or shame. You just want your kid.
“I’ll call his case worker and have him brought in,” she says, and you don’t gift her an answer. You cross the room to sit on the couch and pull Dave’s backpack off your shoulder. His excitement has dimmed, likely because of you and the tension in the room, and takes his tupperware without complaint.
“Can I save some for Dirk?” He whispers. You smooth a hand through his curls and wonder how someone so good can be related to you.
“How about you eat all that, and if Dirk is hungry we’ll get something for him after,” you tell him, and he considers this with a scrunched nose before eventually nodding. He goes for the bacon first and eats without complaint, eyes wandering around the office and legs kicking idly. He’s worlds different from the kid you met a week ago,
“He’ll be here in half an hour,” the woman says, stepping around the couch. You nod because you’re a jackass but you want to set a good example for Dave, who also nods but goes back to eating his breakfast without a word.
“You’ve done well,” she says. There’s a tremulous smile on her face. “With Dave, I mean. He seems to be doing well.”
“Not hard to do better, considering what he had before,” you say, and it’s mean and pointless, but you’re pissed with her and don’t want to have a friendly chat. Not when you could’ve been doing better for Dirk this whole time.
She seems to get that, at least, returning to her desk and working there while the office slowly fills with employees. You and Dave get a few looks but are mostly left alone, for which you’re grateful. You’re not a people person on your best days and today isn’t even in the same realm as one of those.
Finally, though—
Dave perks up like a fucking bloodhound from where he’s slumped against your side. He’s tucked his pillowcase into his backpack and has been playing with the little parrot squishmallow you got him from Walmart, idly flapping the wings. Now he clutches it to his chest and stares out through the open door. When you look up, you see a head of familiar blond curls attached to a kid.
A kid that’s practically being dragged across the office floor, what the actual fuck.
You lunge to your feet as the kid is hauled into the room by a man with an iron grip around his upper arm. Dirk is mostly limp, panting like a kicked horse and wild-eyed. His arms are covered in scabbed wounds that look frighteningly like bite marks.
He goes completely, utterly still when his eyes land on Dave.
The office door shuts behind the man—Dirk’s case worker, presumably, and you vow to never let that man near him ever again—and the sound of the jam spurs Dave into motion. He flings himself off the couch and stumbles into your legs, leaving his squishmallow behind.
“Dirk!” He cries out, eyes welling with tears, and Dirk throws himself forward. The case worker finally lets go of his arm and Dirk spills onto the floor, palms slipping across the carpet as he tries to catch himself, but he’s scrambling back up to his feet before you can step forward.
Dave collides with his brother and Dirk immediately wraps his arms around him, patting his limbs and eyeing him with amber eyes that are a few shades off of your own atomic orange color. He’s still breathing hard but seems more settled with Dave in front of him—Dave, who is openly bawling, and you use all of your self-restraint to not go hover over him.
Instead you fix your gaze on the case worker and glare until he holds his hands up and steps away, circling the room to go stand by the woman. Dirk perks up like a fucking guarddog at the movement and cradles Dave to his diminutive chest, eyes sharp as a hawk as he eyes the man and then you. His eyes jump away from yours like they’re opposing magnets. Yeah—just like you thought.
“Take a breath before you make yourself sick, Dave,” you say gently, folding your legs underneath yourself so you can sit on the floor. Dirk openly glares at you but Dave takes a deep breath, sobs stalling out for a moment. He hiccups loudly and scrubs a hand over his eyes before turning towards you, breaking Dirk’s grip on him.
Fuck, he looks pathetic—eyes red and wet from his tears, face ruddy from the force of his crying. He stumbles over to you and you scoop him up so he can sprawl across your chest; you reach behind you and pull his pillowcase free so he can bury his face in it. One of his hands goes out and grabs weakly in Dirk’s direction.
Dirk creeps over like a feral fucking animal. He obviously doesn’t want to get close to you, obviously wants to be holding Dave instead, but—
“This is Bro,” Dave says, wipes his nose on his arm. His voice is worn out and squeaky. “He’s our big brother. He used to live with—with da.” His voice dips low, hesitant, and you watch Dirk’s hands clench in little fists. The scabbed wounds are bite marks, you note. There are some old enough to scar over pale and pink.
Dirk doesn’t say anything to that but does finally look at your face; you keep your eyes off-centre but see the way he goes still when he notices the color of your eyes—or maybe it’s the scar. He crawls closer, hesitant but curious, and you keep still.
“Dirk has trouble talking sometimes,” Dave tells you, and then turns to Dirk. “It’s okay, Bro won’t hit us or sell us to the bad man. And he gets me apple juice. And he likes orange juice, too!”
Fucking hell.
You make yourself relax against the front of the couch. It’s easy to ignore the low voices coming from the back of the room with all your focus on the two kids in front of you. Christ alive, you thought Dave was thin, but Dirk looks—he looks ill, bony like his skin is going to split open over the joints. The bags under his eyes are so dark it looks like he’s broken his nose. His hair is greasy and tangled and his clothes are stained, and you wonder what the fuck his foster parents have been doing for the past week, because they clearly haven’t been taking care of him.
Dave stands on your thigh and scrabbles for his squishmallow, talking up a storm over his shoulder to Dirk, and you steady him until he’s got a grasp on the plushie. Dirk is staring at you when Dave settles again; wide-eyed, unapologetic staring that your dad mostly managed to beat out of you, and—
There is no fucking power on this planet that will be keeping you from taking both these boys home with you. A fucking meteor could come hurling into the atmosphere and you wouldn’t be stopped.
“You hungry, Dirk?” You ask. Dave seizes on this topic and bounces in place, one hand tangling in your tank top strap.
“Bro makes me special apples every morning,” he tells his brother, and the happiness in his voice over such a simple thing—so easily won—
“Special?” Dirk asks suspiciously, and his voice sounds like he’s been screaming non-stop for the past week. He glances up at you from under his bangs but scoots a touch closer—well within your reach. His fingers pick and poke over the fibers of the carpet. They’re covered in bruises and peeling scabs.
“Jus’ cinnamon,” you say, quiet and a little gruff, but Dave tries to vibrate at the speed of light and flings his hands up, one clenched in the parrot squishmallow and the other relinquishing your shirt. You and Dirk lean forward to steady him at the same time, and—
You get it, now.
“He can make you special apples, too!” Dave cries, and jumps off of your lap to tumble into Dirk. Dirk lets himself get bowled over and looks quietly, warmly happy about being tackled to the floor by his baby brother.
You push yourself up slowly, eyes on Dirk, and you see the way he stiffens as you move. No problem. You expected this, didn’t you?
“I’ll be right back,” you say, and lean over to brush a hand through Dave’s curls. The kid beams up at you before turning back to where he’s wedging the squishmallow into his pillowcase and chattering to Dirk. His brother has an iron grip around the hem of Dave’s shirt, but his free hand is tracing the embroidered sunflower pattern.
You circle the couch, happy to leave the boys alone for a few minutes in a room small enough for you to flash-step across, and come to stand before the desk where the two CPS workers have taken refuge. You don’t hide your disdain as you look over the man before addressing the woman.
“What do I need to sign to take him home?” You ask. You don’t make it sound like it’s up for debate, but you watch the male case worker puff up anyway.
“You’ve done well with Dave, but Dirk is a more difficult case,” the woman says, holding up a hand to quiet her coworker. Fuck, but you wish he would. Your knuckles ache for something to hit. “I’m not sure it would be wise—”
“He’s autistic and abused, so fucking what,” you say, and cross your arms over your chest. You are well aware of how many scars line your biceps and forearms. “Seen it in the mirror my whole life, haven’t I? Where do I sign.”
“Dirk is coming home with us, right?” Asks a little voice from around hip-height. You look down to see Dave at your side with Dirk’s hand in a stranglehold. You drop a hand onto his head.
“Now hold on a minute,” the male case worker says, pushing off the desk, and you watch Dirk go still—the Strider version of a flinch. If you go still, maybe you won’t get noticed, maybe you won’t get hit . You turn to him with a snarl on your face that cows him into silence.
“The papers,” you say for the third time, and it goes without saying that you will not ask a fourth. The woman stares at you and then at Dave and Dirk, clutching each other and almost opposites with regards to cleanliness and health, and holds her hand out to the man. He huffs and shakes his head but pulls Dirk’s file from his briefcase and hands it over.
“Sit on the couch while I sign these,” you say, turning to the boys. “We’ll leave in a mo’, ‘kay?”
“We’ll go to the store? For Dirk?” Dave asks, and you sigh around a shitty little smile and nod. He cheers and drags Dirk back to the couch—who is staring at you over his shoulder, and keeps staring over the back of the couch when the boys clamber up onto it. It makes your skin crawl, a little, but—
You don’t hesitate to pick up the pen when the woman slides the papers to you.