#i have no actual explanation except bro has been living in the vents for Decades | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreams-for-the-apoplectic · 4 years

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something i will probably never finish but like enough that im posting it anyway

Bro leans in the doorway of your room,

(and you see him from your periphery: boxers loose on bony hips and patterned with hearts, no shirt, can of orange soda in hand with shades neatly tucked on the bridge of a strikingly crooked nose)

and tells you,

(over the sound of the fans, three, overclocked on some jury-rigged upgrades he threw together last year when the air conditioner went schizo cherry apeshit, just like now, again, for the second time this week spewing out mad fumes all grey-black and choked from its old, dusty vents)

that you and he should just ollie outie of this midsummer popsicle stand and move somewhere the sun don’t actively to attempt murder you in the crispiest degree, KFC style.

And you jokingly tell him sure, fuck it, anything is better than clawing my way up Fire Death Concrete Mountain aka Texas Mordor, clutching this bitchin’ ring of power and muttering all manner of rapturous obscenities and salacious innuendos for my precious. Sign me up Major Douchenozzle, I’ll shimmy my fine ass up this fabled air-conditioned igloo any day.

A week later and you've packed your shit, grabbed your ticket, and are hopping the next flight to Vermont.

(four hours, fifty-one minutes, seven seconds, and Bro practically jumps off the plane hyperventilating when you touch down. you didn’t know how much he hated flying. you’ve never been on a plane before; if you didn’t know better, you’d think he hasn’t either. and if you quirk an eyebrow just over the rim of your aviators, and the side of your mouth makes a confused downturn for a second or two at just how fucking strange that that is, well, that was just a trick of the light, and the light is a dirty liar.)

He and you stick out like sore thumbs here

(with Bro in a crumpled white polo and asshole jeans and dumb fucking anime shades, one hand in his pockets with an impassive, calculating kind of expression that you’re more used to than the panic, checking through tabs on Complete Bullshit for god knows what reason; you in the same shirt you wore yesterday, hair a meticulously crafted unkempt, posture slouching something awful as you bop right the fuck along to some sicknasty new bassline Jade dropped on you the night before, thinking of ways to remix it into this new beat you’ve been working on)

among a crowd of home-grown New England faces haughty white and upturned and staring down at you and Bro like some trash that just rolled in from Doesn't Fucking Belong Here, USA.

(the luggage belt is moving so slow, so, so slow, it’s like watching a retarded crippled snail attempt a marathon against the goddamn salt shaker, and you wish you could just shake off the lingering, disdainful stares these people give the two of you, and you can, and you do)

(except you don't.)

You’re rolling through Montpelier an hour later, crammed up in the shotgun seat of an old, dirty, piece of shit pickup Bro apparently had nesting in the airport storage unit,

(it’s a rust hulk straight out of the early eighties, all torn up vinyl and engine rattling, with tacky, outdated bumper stickers on the back and a pine air freshener that does nothing to mask the smell of two-decade old cigarettes, and somehow you aren’t surprised this is his car because it is exactly how you imagined it.)

(you want to ask why he had a car in bumfuck, vermont and not in houston. you want to ask him if he even knows how to drive, but you hold your tongue nice and pretty and settle into the split vinyl seat cover)

moving past the city limits and into the countryside, over the state border and into New York. You give Bro the ‘what the fuck are we doing out here, man, is this the setup for a horror movie or some shit, because I’m not down to being the unwilling accomplice to some new echelon of fucked up smuppet snuff’ look, your fingers tapping in 4-4 on the dash, not really nervous so much as habitual.

(he ruffles your hair with a smirking, mean kind of half-smile, all teeth and teasing and unnatural. you swat at him uselessly.)

And then the road is quiet, and the sky is misting grey. It’s all evergreen and shrubbery and dark soil here, and small towns by clear water: fishing ponds, creeks and rivers, and more wildlife roaming these secondhand backroads than you’ve ever seen in Texas. It starts to rain a bit, ghosting against the glass, and over the soft creak of the windshield wipers Bro asks you if you wanna put on some music, little man, heard you were working on a new track and can I get a sneak peak at that delirious biznasty? And fuck yeah you have, even if it isn’t quite done yet, and you plop your phone on the dashboard, and the drive is comfortable,

(and you cannot shake this feeling that something is wrong.)

---

It isn’t an apartment, it’s a house in the goddamn woods; no, a fucking mansion in the goddamn woods, the design of it ripped straight from the personal architectural smutjournel of Frank Lloyd Wright, complete with white-foam waterfall and neo-American art deco pretension. Your mouth hangs open, and you know, you just fucking know a fly is about to buzz in that shit and set up a cozy little cottage, but you don’t care. This is straight wack, man.

(it looks vaguely familiar too, like something nostalgic stuck in your mental gears, cracked and rusted from disuse; something you saw once, a long time ago, in a place you can’t quite remember.)

Bro gestures you along along the concrete path, and you tell him no, wait, put the fucking brakes on Anime Goldilocks, what the fuck are we doing here, because this sure as shit can’t be where we’re living now, and I don’t wanna piss off the three bears. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and tells you in that deep southern mumble of his that, shit, kid, did you expect we’d just take a plane and end up in the same shitty apartment? And of course you didn’t

(even though you kind of did)

because that would be ridiculous, but-- you don’t know, you’ve been sharing a seven-hundred square foot living space with him for the past fifteen years. How are you supposed to react to a fucking mansion that just suddenly up and settled before you on delicate foundational popliteals and a stark-white concrete strapless all alluring and sultry? Just stand there stone-faced morose and stoic and fuck, that is exactly what you should be doing, isn’t it, because that was what he taught you, to

(stitch up the cuts slowly, careful with the needle and don’t fucking rush it, lil’ bro, even if they’re shallow you can’t just take it and jab that shit in, and for the love of god you gotta work on your dodge game, how the fuck do you expect not to get your ass served up sunnyside in a real fight?)

(̶̥̘͗̉̾̊͝ ̷̦̙̦͌͊̒́̍͛̀̀̈́́̚͘̕̚n̷̨̜̲͓̹̪͎̒͋́̊̎̐̍͌̆͘͝ͅͅͅ ̸̤̥̏́̌̑͒̈́̿́̃

̶̧̝͎̝͔͔̣̬͈̗̥̠̔̀͌̈́͆̒̇̋̋́̈́͐̈̚͝ ̷̡̛͕͚̰͉̦̼̤͍̘̝̹̮̩̈́̑̇̃̔͝͠ơ̷̡̧͔̘͇̖̫͉̳̳͖͇̰̻͗͛̿̋̾̏͘͝ ̸̨̧͈̱̫̩̲̦̭͖̿̃́̔͛̓̓͌̌͗̍̔̾͜ͅ

̷̢̮̮̠̠̬̖̙͈͋̍͛͆̔̈́̓̌̂̀͌̽͝͠ ̸̨̗̯̓͐̿̇͂͊̓́́̄̃̚͘͜͜.̷̲̙͓̮̮̬͓̈́̋͂͒̓̃͘͠͠)̸̧̖̪̦̥̪͙̫͍͙̩̻̺̩̒̌̈́͒͋͝ͅ

̵̬̯̪͛̓̈́̎̒́̂

It isn’t our house anyway, he says,

(and your mind slams on the brakes so hard you think you might flip this shit frontways, slam the roof on that motherfucker into the burning asphalt and skid off the edge of this brutal synapse fuckup.)

(you can’t remember what you were thinking. it’s blurry, and forgotten, and everything is normal again)

moving forward in long, atypical strides that you scramble to follow. The rain is still coming down, you realize, in a softer drizzle that dampens your shirt. Friend of mine lives here.

Holy shit, he has friends?

Yes, I have friends, you little shit, and you flinch when you realize you must have said that out loud. His arms flex, shoulder blades audibly popping with the contraction of muscle, and you flinch, and nothing happens. Her name is Roxy.

And shit, you guess that’s all there really is to say on the matter, because he doesn’t provide any further explanation and you sure as hell don’t ask. You duck under the porch roof and he raps a fat bar of knuckles on the door.

---

Roxy isn’t anything like you expect.

You don’t know what you were expecting, actually, considering you’ve only just heard about her, but she is perky and kind-eyed and so fucking sincere that the saccharine emotional font of exuberant delight that straight up sparkles from her is making you real uncomfortable.

She hugged you.

She hugged you and you liked it.

(and she hugged Bro too, made his spine go all weird fucking c-shaped wrongness as she crushes him against her chest, calls him Dirk like she fucking owns him.)

You’re ushered in as she turns on heel and sways away with a tipsy strut, sauced and sauntering and high stilettos tapping on the dark hardwood. She tells you to drop your things by the door, she can set each of you up with a room in a bit, and Dirk, honey, we have got so much catching up to do, I haven’ seen you and the lil’ guy in ages, and god yer both so fuckin’ tall I forgot about that bit,

(christ on the cross, she can speak at a mile a minute, accent a thickly laced New York staccato that matches Texas about as close to the intersection of nil and fuckall as you can get without running head-on into traffic.)

and Dirky, Dirkle, Dirk-a-licious, oh my god come here right now, I gotta show you this badass shit I‘ve been working on, it’s fuckin’ lit as hell, it has got switches and gizmos and all of the cool techy shit I know you swoon over, and you need to check out this code I wrote because you know I’m not about to trust anyone else to parse my sick lines, so come ooooooooooooon and there they go, Bro dragged stiff as cardboard across the floor by the hem of his fucking shirt. He gives you a side-eye look that says crosses somewhere between ‘don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back’ and ‘help me.’

You shrug and flip him off and leave him to his fate. His death glare could kill a lesser man.

(holy shit.)

And then, quite suddenly, you are alone.

It’s not quiet, you notice - just a more subtle murmur than the scream of a city, made emptier without Roxy to fill up the room. Slow, churning movement below signals the languid rush of water as it tumbles beneath the floorboards and off the cliffside. Some woodland creature skitters in wet dirt beyond the window pane, which filters in ghost-grey light and shakes a bit when a particularly heavy set of raindrops hit.

You shuffle about awkwardly, and glance around for a second,

(the interior is lavishly decorated, you notice. posh white starkness for fineass digs. sir asshole the stone swamp wizard sits plainly in the foyer, nested in arcane robes of the dimwitted and tacky. a cat is nuzzled up at the foot of some kind of bronzed vacuum. the whole place smells like perfume and vodka. it’s kind of intoxicating.)

before deciding the panicked, lingering gaze is kind of stupid, and waiting for Bro to come back like a pining factory girl in the nineteen-forties writing sappy missives to the brave boys in Okinawa was lame as shit, so you flop down on the couch, all loose, gangly puberty limbs and feigned indifference and the muted light of your phone glaring back at you. You pull open a pesterchum window, shoot a few messages to Harley,

(some off-the-cuff rap cooked slow on these sick fires, like just put some whip cream and a goddamn cherry on that shit and call it a sunday. you also make sure to attach a file for the new sbahj comic you’ve been working on. you’ve lovingly dubbed the new arc ‘the spaztastic furry hatesex maelstrom,’ and you hope know she’ll love it.)

and Egbert,

(and you admit, muddled up in tangents and similes that take forever just to get to the goddamn point, that you actually took his recommendation and stuck through the bitterly tasteless cinema assassination of the week. you even wrote a shitty review for it on one of your ironically maintained critic blogs, and send him a link)

(you won’t admit you laughed at groundhog day. he will never let you live it down. never.)

and Lalonde,

(who is on, surprisingly, because you know she has school right now, and fuck if the flighty broad doesn’t take every swat of the educational ass whooping with a snide, condescending seriousness that has a way of getting just under your skin. she wants to go to Harvard, or Cornell, or Oxford, because she is smarter than you, and John, and maybe not Jade but damn is she close.)

(she doesn’t respond either, though, so you cast the thought away and send her some custom made memes deep fried in a hundred layers of crystalline jpeg illegibility and wait, fuck, holy shit)

and then someone is standing over you, peering with an appraising interest, like they’re looking at a slab of beef splayed out dumb on the chopping block. And you don’t flinch, you really don’t, even though you’re about five seconds away from flipping this shit backwards and kicking dust up as you run for the hills.

You can tell this girl is nasty. She is stygian lips and white-blonde hair and violet eyes that politely inform you that this is indeed the fucking slaughterhouse, that you guessed it right, and you’re about to get served up with a side of collard greens and barbecue sauce.

So of course the first words out of your mouth are 'sup, Rose.

Wait, wh

(you see her past the glow of a verdant sun, because even a double universe killing superbomb can't outshine her. cascading orange silk stitch wrapped in a star-shimmering supernova of violet eyes and pallid skin. it's like a goddamn angel come from the heaven; a smirk beneath the hood and fire in her belly. she is the fucking sun now, and nothing can even fucking compare.)

at.

(what the fuck.)

What the fuck.

(what the actual fuck dude.)

Do I know you? Her voice is just dripping contempt.

And you don't fucking know her. She isn't here. Rose is a billion lightyears off in the gay space commune, deep encoded digital vaporware that went out of style twelve fucking years ago. She is a string of chat logs and embarrassing Fruedian slips that didn't happen, no, Rose, you don't have undercover mother-lust.

And she is here.

You've never even seen her picture, but you know. You know far beneath the skin, something deeper than blood or bone or anything else seething something above that spiritual core. You know on a fucked kind of metaphysical. It's self-evident. It cannot help but make itself true.

Uh.

Shit.

Shit dude fucking say something. She’s just standing there, and the downward curvature of those lips is about to break out of the spatial plane and into some hyper paranoid fourth dimension. You guess she has a right to be weary. Your gangly ass is seated firmly in her territory.

#homestuck #dave strider #bro strider #rose lalonde #mom lalonde #decided i should probably fulfill the whole 'occasionally write things' part of my blog that has kinda been neglected since like 2017 or so #and this has just been sitting abandoned in a google docs since like early 2019 or so but i like it enough that i figured fuck it why not #so here you go #my requisite one writing thing that i post a year #it will probably never be finished #enjoy i guess?

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