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nobrandheroRead on Dreamwidth under the cut, or over on AO3.
You don't know how you'd survive the empty apartment without John around.
It's not so bad at first. You barely even notice the difference for the first few months that Dave's gone; he hadn't exactly hung around much once college hit. Hell, it's not like the two of you ever interacted that often before college either. After he got out of diapers, you mostly just... let him take care of himself.
Who the fuck are you kidding? You ignored him for twenty years and your boyfriend knows him better than you ever did. Shit, that's some grade A parenting, right there. Why would he ever have dropped contact with you?
Still, you can distract yourself and just... forget that Dave's gone, for the most part. The only time it gets to you is when you glance in Dave's empty room. You should be fucking used to the sight by now, but even so you feel a sinking sensation in your chest -- the same sensation you get whenever you experience a heavy bout of Failure that no one must ever know about.
Shit only gets intolerable once summer vacation rolls around and John wants to visit family. He doesn't invite you, probably because you both know you'd hate it even on the off-chance you agreed to go. You don't care. Obviously you can't expect him to just ignore his family (like you do), so even more obviously you don't resent him when he flies off to Washington for a week or two.
You don't have to resent him to hate every goddamn minute of his absence.
Isolation hits hard and you're humiliated to admit that even to yourself. It's nothing to do with a lack of social interaction. It's just that you have no one to leave out leftovers for. If you want to pass out early, you don't have to worry that your boyfriend or your brother will be coming home after midnight. You can't wait around for someone else to go out and ask them to grab more milk on the way back.
It's just uncomfortable to have your expectations so thoroughly fucked with. Any bumps in the other room are just the water pipes or your imagination. They're not John. And they're not Dave. They haven't been Dave in half a year.
Sometimes you still expect to hear rap music blaring from Dave's room as if it's six years ago.
You pull out your phone. You haven't exchanged one word with him since he left, but it's going to kill you if you don't... something.
-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 20:11 --
TT: Hey.
TG: hey
TT: How's shit?
TG: shits cool
TG: you need something
TT: Nah.
TT: Just making sure you're still alive.
TG: yeah man
TG: havent managed to accidentally bring any giant cretaceous carnivores back to life yet
TT: Cool.
TG: ikr gold star to me
TT: Keep that up, I guess.
Dear fucking lord, you have no idea what you're doing.
How do you talk to this kid? You never talked. You exchanged cool nods and badass sword blows. You made fun of movies together sometimes. None of that translates into staying in contact after he moves out of state. You don't know how to smalltalk or emote. You don't know how to be a brother, let alone a dad.
You set your phone aside before you can say something dumb but Dave's stopped responding anyway. That's how relevant you are to his life now: just a distant relative to exchange a "hey, how are you?" with every so often. At least he doesn't hate you.
The instant John gets home at the end of the week, you snatch him into your arms, carry him to the futon, and hold him against your chest. You don't even bother with slobbering over each other for once. You just keep your arms wrapped around him, sometimes rubbing at his back, sometimes stroking his hair, always taking comfort in his warmth.
"Dirk?" he says after a while.
You grunt.
"What're you even doing?"
"Nothing. What's it look like?"
He chuckles, planting a kiss to your jaw. "I missed you too, dickhead."
* * *
School returns with a vengeance, snatching John's time and presence from your greedy arms faster than any previous semesters. It's barely one week in and senior year already fucking blows.
As John spends longer hours on campus, you step up the work on your websites. You slacked off too much during summer, taking advantage of John's free time while it lasted, and you have a shitton to catch up on now if you don't want your ad revenue to dwindle.
Constructing puppets and recording new videos gives you a good distraction anyway. You barely even notice that the apartment is empty (or that the jug of apple juice in the fridge has been sitting untouched for two months because you had never taken note of who actually drank it before). Who's absolutely not stewing over a sudden lack of roommates? Sure as hell not the guy making five new puppet porns a day.
John's always home before the anxiety from isolation can settle anyway. He kisses you in greeting, you throw some dinner together, then you both settle on the couch with your laptops, leaning your back against his and vice versa as you work mostly in silence. You crack a joke about the latest media scandal, he tells you a pun from Tumblr so wretched that you elbow him, and you both stop procrastinating for another ten minutes.
He glances over your shoulder once, makes a face just short of "about to hurl," and snaps his gaze back to his own monitor, blushing badly. Fucking idiot. You turn enough to kiss the back of his head. He leans backwards to nuzzle your neck.
With that steady interaction, you're placated until he leaves again the next morning. It's not an ideal routine, but it's not bad. Until midterms hit.
You wake in the middle of the night and instinctively fumble for John's warmth, finding only cold sheets. He must be in the bathroom, you assume in your half-asleep state. You wait for him. And wait. And you're kinda starting to wake up a little more in the amount of time it's taking him to come back to bed. You open your eyes and raise your head.
John's sitting in a corner of the room, using his laptop monitor as his only source of light as he types. He stops every now and then, scowling at the screen with a furrowed brow, before finally pulling over a huge textbook and flipping it open.
"John?" you grumble.
He starts and raises his head, the shadows landing eerily on his face in the light of the computer.
"The fuck are you doing?" You pat his pillow. "Get your ass back here before the sun rises."
He shakes his head, his gaze already returning to the blinding light of the laptop. "I have to finish this paper."
You yawn. "So do it tomorrow."
"It's due tomorrow!"
"Then take a fuckin' sickday."
"That's not how it works!" he shouts, his voice growing tight as he speaks too fast. "I have to submit this online with five more pages in the next six hours or I'm out twenty-five percent of my grade!"
You massage your temple. You have never been more grateful that Dave made sure you skipped the whole "getting an education" thing, if it causes this much bullshit stress over goddamn nothing. "John. Fucking breathe."
"I am!"
"No, you're clearly fucking not." You climb out of bed and settle on the floor next to him. "Deep breaths, kid. In through the nose, out through the mouth."
"Dirk, I haven't even finished reading the last two chapters-"
You set a hand over his mouth. "You can spare thirty seconds. Just breathe with me. C'mon." You breathe in through your nose a good six seconds, making sure he follows suit. You remove your hand so he can breath out with you for ten seconds. You repeat the process until he looks less on the verge of hyperventilating. You pet his hair. "You okay?"
He nods.
"You coming back to bed?"
He winces. "I can't. If I don't submit this on time, I'm fucked."
You resist rolling your eyes. "What, exactly, is the worst that can happen here if you don't do this, kid?"
"I fail the class, I get put on academic probation, I can't graduate, and the last three fucking years of my life will be meaningless and I'll never get a job and-"
He's talking too fast again. You catch his shoulder and squeeze it. "Breathe."
"Everyone's gonna think I'm an idiot!"
"Everyone who matters already knows you're an idiot and doesn't care." You cup his face and press your forehead against his. "I said breathe."
He takes a shaky breath and you have to breathe with him again to get him back on track. In for six seconds, out for ten. You watch the tension ebbing away from his features.
"In the grand scheme of things, none of that fucking matters, okay?" you whisper, relieved he's continuing the breathing on his own. "Passing this class doesn't matter, getting a piece of paper with your name and major on it doesn't matter, looking booksmart for other people doesn't matter. Got it?"
He glances down. "I want to graduate," he says, voice small.
You frown but kiss the tip of his mouth. "Then do that. Just don't be stupid over a grade, John."
He nods, leaning against you. You'd let him stay that way for the rest of the night if he needed it. Instead he nuzzles your shoulder after a few minutes and straightens. "Thanks," he murmurs, adjusting his laptop. "Sorry for waking you."
You pat his back before leaving him to it. Your head hasn't even hit the pillow before you hear more typing. At least it sounds less frantic than before.
It's hard to get back to sleep. Noise you can deal with, but you can't remember the last time you shared a roof with John but not a bed. The missing warmth keeps nagging at your mind, jolting you out of sleep.
It's barely a small comfort when you later hear he finished the paper on time with a B-.
It's not an isolated incident either. The longer the semester wears on, the more often you wake without John tucked against you. Your heart starts skipping a beat every time you reach out and can't find him. You don't calm as much as you should when you spot him studying in the corner again.
Everything's fine. It's not about you. You try to remind yourself that this has nothing to do with you, but dear fucking god you don't know what you'll do if you can't wake to him snuggled against you anymore. The apartment's already too quiet.
You're not afraid -- Striders don't do fear -- but a weight keeps settling in your stomach at the thought John might be slipping away and one day you're gonna wake to find you've lost him just like you drove off your brother.
* * *
After John stumbles home on the last day of finals, you give him a deep congratulatory kiss then drag him straight to bed. Within minutes he's asleep in your arms, too tired to even bother slipping off his glasses. He doesn't wake for fourteen solid hours.
