Chapter Text
Dave's birthday is in two weeks and you don't know what to get him.
Since he became more than just a brother/parent figure to you, you've been thinking on and off about giving him something. He won't be expecting it, which is half the reason you want to do it, although you've mentally backed out a few times since getting the idea. It's not exactly a one-month anniversary, but it's close. Things are still a little weird between the two of you. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but neither of you are quite past that awkward stage of 'oh hey this is incestuous and illegal and could get us both in serious trouble, not to mention permanently ruin Dave's career and both our reputations.'
Regardless, getting him something for his birthday is a nice idea, but it's ignoring the single biggest problem with your plan, assuming that you don't abandon it completely for the third time this week. It's not that he's hard to buy for. Your Bro is the exact opposite of a person whose interests are a mystery, and theoretically the act of gift-giving should be especially easy on your part because you're more or less his kid. However, he's arguably one of the most famous people on earth, and as a consequence, one of the wealthiest. Whatever he wants, he can easily buy for himself, and he doesn't need you or anyone else to do it for him. So that leaves you with a nice sentiment and nothing to back it up with. This is in addition to the fact that you haven't gotten each other anything for a holiday or special occasion since you were a child. He stopped giving you shit for your birthday when you stopped bringing home macaroni art with "DAEV" written in smeared glue and glitter, and now that you're sleeping with him (figuratively, since he's been so busy this week that you haven't actually 'slept' with him in a while), the once-straightforward act of giving him a gift will now be colored by your new relationship. You know objectively that you have nothing to be worried about, but that knowledge can't seem to banish the nervous butterflies in your stomach at the idea of going through with it.
You eventually get fed up with yourself and dedicate an entire day to brainstorming, browsing the internet for inspiration, digging around in some of your old projects for clues, and lying awake in bed that night after failing to come up with anything (insomnia is a fact of life for you, and you stopped fighting it years ago, although Dave's psychologist friend Rose taught you a few tricks on your last visit). Your Bro isn't home tonight, and he's been uncommonly busy lately. It's the height of summer, and the blockbuster premieres and promotional appearances that he's scheduled are almost back-to-back. He's been getting up early and getting home late, he's got dark circles under his eyes, only visible when he takes his shades off, and he's been more distracted than usual, often forgetting things in strange places (leaving his keys in the refrigerator, for instance. He almost missed an important press conference and had to call a taxi). You've been helping in whatever small ways you can; it's easy to throw bread in the toaster before he finishes his morning routine, and even though he doesn't stay awake for long before he gets too tired to sit up straight, you hang around the living room until then, making yourself available in case he wants to interact. Whenever he does take you up on the unspoken offer, it soothes some of the loneliness that's been creeping back into your life, even if the only 'interaction' he has energy for is being on the receiving end of a long backrub. It's not unusual for Dave to be obsessed with his work, and it's no secret that you think he overdoes it. You’ve given up on trying to talk him into a less demanding lifestyle, though. He would be no less publicly adored if he put in a fraction of the work, but you also understand (after long years of friction and volatile fights that came close to breaking your family apart) that he can no more give up his popular artistic vision than you could give up your love for robotics or puppetry. You both resolved some time ago to stop fighting about things relating to his career, so all you can do now is try your best to make his life less stressful.
It's on the morning of the next day that you have a small breakthrough. The sun is just starting to filter through the closed window blinds, and Dave is still in the process of getting ready for work. He's elsewhere in the apartment, going through his usual routine while you sit patiently at the tiny kitchen table after putting some bread in the toaster, (neither you nor Dave use that spot much for eating, preferring to take meals in your rooms or in front of the TV), when you're suddenly aware of what sounds like the song "In Da Club" played in terrible quality coming from somewhere down the hallway. You hear Dave curse from that general direction, before he comes around the corner with damp hair and a towel over his shoulder, wearing nothing but a pair of faded designer jeans. He stands directly across from you, absentmindedly picks up the glass of apple juice you poured for him ten minutes ago (he refuses to drink coffee), and takes a sip while listening to the cell phone pressed against his ear. You sit with an elbow on the table, hand propping up your chin, letting your mind wander while you wait for the toast. You're at the perfect height to make steady eye contact with what is probably the most sexually attractive set of abdominal muscles to ever grace the Earth. Dave continues to be distracted with whoever is talking at him on the phone, while you consider the aesthetics of his midsection. He's still a little wet from the shower, apparently, and the fact that he's got little droplets of water clinging to the contours of his muscles is not so much hot as it is ridiculously funny, like he couldn't have looked more like he just stepped out of a cheap porno if he actually tried.
"No, I'm not running late. It's not my fault they moved the time- shit." He pulls his cell phone away from his ear and frowns at it, tapping in a number before lifting it up again and waiting for it to pick up. His eyes drift when he sets the glass down, and he notices you staring, but you hear a click from his phone and he starts speaking again. "Sorry, yeah, I got cut off. Anyway, I don't give a fuck if they get their collective panties in a bunch, twelve hours is bullshit. If they were going to move it, they should have done it sooner. Not my problem." He gives you a wink, and you can't help but smile in response. His hair is still wet and ruffled. He must have been in the middle of toweling it dry when the call came. "I said it's not my problem. I'm showing up at the original time, everybody else can just deal."
The toaster ejects two slices of lightly browned toast with a 'clunk,' and you stand to walk the several steps to the kitchen counter, depositing both onto a plate and spreading orange marmalade jam onto yours. You sense him come up behind you, and he gives the back of your neck a quick, affectionate rub before taking his toast. The simple gesture makes your face feel warm, and you duck your head to keep him from noticing.
"Look, just ... give Rob a call. No, Rob, with an 'R.' Yes. Have him deal with their bullshit, then tell him to call me, it's way too fucking early, I'm not even fucking dressed yet, I'm hanging up. God damn it." Dave mutters, glaring down at the cell phone in his hand. He takes a large bite of the toast before setting it back down on the plate, and rolls his eyes when you turn to look at him. "Can'f fuffkin giv'me a breffk."
"That's what you get for being popular, Bro. Didn't grade school teach you anything?"
He waves you off and leaves the kitchen to walk back down the hall, hurrying more than usual despite the conversation you just overheard. You sigh and take a bite of your own toast before leaving it on the counter to make your way to the coat rack by the door. His favorite leather jacket is hanging up, and you check the pockets for any stray objects. Things tend to accumulate in his clothes, and not the normal stuff like coins or paper. You once found a tiny bird skull in the left chest pocket, and he got inordinately upset when you threw it away.
You hear his ringtone go off again, and he swears loudly before answering it. He's already stressing out, and he hasn't even left the apartment yet. You're past the point where his anxiety rubs off on you (there was a time when it used to get to you, and it made your fights with him exponentially worse), instead doing your best to smooth the process of getting him out the door in the morning. It's more an art than anything else.
While you distantly listen to him argue with someone else on the phone (or the same person, who knows), you locate his wallet and retrieve his keys from between the cushions of the futon. The wallet gets tucked into its rightful place in the jacket's inside pocket, and the keys are left on the table, next to the plate with his toast on it. It takes you a little longer to find his calendar notebook, and by the time you rescue it from beneath a stack of unfinished scripts, he's kneeling at the front door, fully dressed in record time and attempting to tie his shoes with his phone wedged against his shoulder. You edge past to slide the notebook into the front pocket of the jacket, and by the time you turn around he's already in the kitchen, emerging a moment later with keys and toast in the same hand.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes, that's the absolute god damn best I can do, just stall them or something. Pretend I'm in the bathroom. Tell them I've got an enlarged prostate, the tabloids would have a fucking field day with that."
He makes his way towards you and you hold out his jacket so he can slide into it one arm at a time. After shrugging his shoulders until he's comfortable with how it hangs, he starts towards the front door, then pauses and turns to face you you, moving his phone away from his ear to press it against his chest. "Hey. Are you busy tonight?"
You blink at the question. "No. Why?"
He grins at you, leaning forward until your lips are maybe a centimeter apart, and he whispers "Thanks for the toast," before giving you a quick peck on the mouth and turning to leave out the front door. You watch him go, a little baffled as to what that was about, but it doesn't throw you off as much as it probably should, given that you've lived with him your entire life. It was a strange question, since you virtually never leave the apartment. If he has something planned for tonight, you suppose you'll find out what it is when he gets home, which could be any time between sunset and 2 AM given his schedule as of late.
You retrieve your own toast from the kitchen, and sit down at the futon to finish it while your mind wanders. You hate seeing Dave rush through his morning routine. Whoever he was on the phone with deserves to have the next few weeks of their lives ruined by the nonstop demands of your brother's self-inflicted workload. Taking calls in the morning makes it so much harder for him to get ready, especially since he has to hold the damn phone in one hand or awkwardly cradle it with his shoulder. You could maybe get him one of those hands free earpieces, you're not really sure why he doesn't own one already. Although it wouldn't help with how his calls keep getting dropped, the apartment must be in some kind of frequent blackout zone, since it's been a problem with every phone he's owned.
Hold on.
Whenever you need inspiration, you've found that the best thing to do is pay attention to your surroundings. What do people need that they don't have? It's the obvious answer to your problem of what to get someone who has access to everything. You simply get them something they don't have access to, something that doesn't exist yet. And Dave, even with all his well-earned fame and fortune, owns a cell phone that is complete and utter shit compared to what you could craft for him. There are very few ways in life that you surpass your older brother, and your talent for engineering superior technology is probably the most significant of them.
Purchasing and modifying a cell phone would be easy, but building it from scratch will ensure that you won't have to cut corners to accommodate the limits of commercial hardware. However, after quickly finishing your breakfast and sitting down at your computer to begin the research phase, you find out that the parts you'd need would take about a week and a half to arrive once you ordered them, leaving only several days to assemble the entire phone, and it usually takes you that long just to map out circuitry.
The disappointment that settles in your gut leaves you wandering defeatedly around the apartment, quietly distracting yourself with menial tasks like moving the used cups and dishes from the futon/television area to the kitchen, washing them by hand in the sink despite the fact that you have a perfectly good dishwasher, wiping down the stove and countertops, and walking the trash bag from the garbage can to the chute out the front door and down the hall, even though the bag is barely a quarter full. You end up standing in front of the kitchen sink an hour later, on the brink of determination. You could probably pull it off, if you really had to. The design will have to be finalized before you order the pieces for the outer shell anyway, which you can do by tomorrow if you start now and don't sleep, and programs can be written while you wait for the parts to arrive. The assembly will be the hardest part. Anything that goes wrong will set you back, and if by chance one of the parts arrives damaged or you accidentally break it, you can forget about giving it to Dave in time for his birthday. Plus there's no guarantee that it will work properly without time to test and debug it. However, assuming that everything goes right (and that's a very optimistic assumption) you could actually make this happen. It'll mean a few more all-nighters once the parts arrive, but you've got over a week to get everything else ready before then. After that it should just be a matter of twisting the wires and soldering the connections, stuff that you can pretty much do in your sleep.
With new resolve, you fill a glass with orange soda from the fridge and sit on the futon, then immediately get up to retrieve the graph-lined sketchbook from your desk and return to your seat, restlessly flipping through pages of mechanical drawings and equations, some referencing projects you've already finished, others left as scrapped ideas. You find the first clean page and set the book down on your lap with a sigh, staring through the charcoal blue and green sheet with an introspective frown. The outer design will set the constraints for what will be included inside, since you want Dave to really use it, not just accept it as a gift and tuck it away. For that to happen, it'll have to match his public image. In this you have two options; it could either be something elegant and sleek, suitable for his level of mainstream popularity, or it could be something ironic and gaudy like his movies, which would also work, but be more challenging to design. You can't decide on which to go with, so you start making rough sketches to visualize your ideas.
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The rest of the day is spent repeatedly coming up with designs and scrapping them. You never manage to decide on which idea to pursue, so you end up with about two dozen workable sketches, none of which seem good enough, and your confidence has waned significantly as the day went on until the light from outside is starting to dim and your hand is sore from holding the pencil and you feel like throwing your sketchbook under the table and saying fuck it. So far you've wasted an entire day with nothing to show for it, and you just want to crawl into bed and give up. It was a nice idea, but if you can't even get past the fucking theme of the phone, something that should have taken maybe an hour at most, then there's no way you can even hope to meet your own deadline.
You're still mentally beating yourself up when you hear the click of the door as Dave steps into the apartment, for once not pressing his phone to his ear. He's home much earlier than usual, and he's carrying something in a plastic bag, which he sets down on the kitchen counter before shrugging off his jacket and pulling his shoes off. You actually wish that he had been on his phone, because a moving visual reference might be just what you need to break past this idea block. He lifts his head and spots you sitting on the futon with your sketchpad in your lap and the television off, a pencil still cradled between two fingers, and you can tell that he's blinking at you, even though you can't see his eyes.
"What's up." He asks, partially a greeting and also a genuine question on his part, probably referring to why you're brainstorming at the futon rather than your traditional spot at your desk.
"Not much." You reply, doing your best to sound casual despite your mood. You refuse to let your own personal problems make his day any shittier. "What's in the bag?"
He straightens up with a smile, kicking his shoes against the wall as he does. "Takeout. You wanna watch the game?"
Ah. You had completely forgotten about the Texas State Wrestling Championship tonight, or rather, 'the game,' as Dave so eloquently put it. It's an opportunity for the two of you to bond over shitty takeout and ridiculously homoerotic pseudo-sports, a sort of tradition that you've been participating in for as long as you can remember having a television to watch it on. Dave always takes more enjoyment in it than you do, but it would be nice to have an evening dedicated to spending some quality time with him, even if that quality time involves staring at the screen while muscular young men overpower each other into slightly erotic positions. You're fed up and getting absolutely nowhere with your project, so you nod your agreement, and he goes into the kitchen to get plates and silverware, while you set your sketchbook aside and get the TV ready, flipping to the right channel where it seems that the fight has already started, and clearing the table of some of the clutter so he can set a pair of plates down, followed shortly by a large pile of lo-mein on his. He hands the box to you and scoops out pieces of sweet and sour chicken while you pick out a few forkfuls of noodles, not really in the mood for chinese but willing to humor him for the occasion.
Once you've both got your plates, he settles in next to you, placing his shades on the table and picking up the remote. He turns the volume up until you can barely hear the excited commentary from the sports narrators, and the 'thump' when one of the wrestlers in thrown face first into the floor and the other quickly straddles him. Dave, despite the ever-present dark rings under his eyes, chuckles at the television with a mouthful of noodles, and you smile, more at him than the television, but he catches you looking at him with that completely stupid expression on your face, and you quickly turn back to face the TV. He smiles and wraps an arm around you, and you lean against him, a little embarrassed at being caught looking so lovesick. You can't help it if you've been a little deprived of his company, but the warmth of him next to you makes the slip-up worth it. He continues to eat with his free hand, occasionally directing amusing remarks at the TV, and you reply in kind, noting that the lady in the front row next to the obese guy in the striped shirt looks like she's going into labor. He laughs at most of your observations, abandoning the plate of food after the first round to gesture in the direction of the screen as he talks. He's rambling more than usual, and you have long suspected that he might harbor a secret, unironic enjoyment of the sport. You also realise that with how busy this week has been, he must have specifically taken time off just to spend an evening watching sports and eating takeout with you.
"It's tempting, but pretending they're naked isn't as much fun, those uniforms don't leave much to the imagination anyway. I mean just look at the outlines of those perfectly defined glutes. Would you rather stare at his hairy ass or enjoy the delicate curves of polyester? Although I think the only way this could possibly be improved would be if uniforms were in two pieces like those bathing suits or bikinis or whatever, then you could watch the sensual rippling of abs as they force each other to the ground, sweat glistening or some shit, I forgot what I was getting at, that was Rose talking."
His last comment makes you laugh, and you pull your knees up to curl into his side, your own plate forgotten on the table. "The commentary alone is often suggestive enough. I imagine that similar commentary applied to pornography would have few differences."
"Oh man you have no idea, it would be in the same voice and everything, crowds cheering in the background, fuck if that's not the best thing I've thought about all day. 'He's arching his back, he's reaching, trying to get a grip on that choice cock dangling in front of him, but he's rolled over! He's in trouble now! I think we're about to see some rough action here, folks, I hope he's not going in dry.'" He imitates the voice of the commentators perfectly, and you swat at his chest, laughing into his shirt. On the screen the wrestlers flop around on the floor to the sound of whistles and cheering. "Although I'm pretty sure there're plenty of wrestling-style pornos out there. But try running some of this commentary over hardcore bondage or watersports or something, man, shit would be choice. I'd buy the rights to that in a second."
The fight goes on until it ends briefly with a foul. Your head is still resting against Dave's chest, and the screen is a little hard to see from this angle, but you're becoming increasingly distracted by his heartbeat and the sound of his breathing. He smells like the leather from his favorite jacket, something you've been associating with him since you were little. His voice rumbles in your ear when he speaks again, more subdued this time.
"We should get tickets to the game next year, sit in the back row, get the full experience. Cardboard popcorn and mystery meat hot dogs, can't get them that good anywhere else. Except at gas stations. Then you've got stale breakfast burritos to choose from. Don't tell me you don't miss those just a little bit." He starts to rub the back of your neck, and your eyes slide shut. You had no idea how tired you were until just now. Your entire day has been something of an emotional rollercoaster.
"Sure. The same way I miss those knockoff soda brands." You're briefly interrupted by a yawn. "HEB Citrus Rush was a dear friend to me before I discovered Orange Crush."
"You and your freakish orange soda addiction, I swear your teeth are going to rot and fall out before you hit the ripe age of twenty. Do you know how fucking weird tongue kissing someone with no teeth is? It's all gums, man. You do get used to it, though. I wouldn't hold it against you."
"Wh- ... dude, you haven't actually done that. Have you? Fuck, nevermind." He laughs and kisses the top of your head. "I'm serious, don't answer that."
"Relax, I was joking." He says softly, his nose buried in your hair while he rubs little circles into the spot where your neck meets your shoulder, and you're starting to get just a little bit turned on, but also trying not to get your hopes up. "Except for the part about not holding it against you. You can lose all your teeth if you want to. I mean that would be kind of shitty for you, but I'd still kiss you with tongue, is all I'm saying."
He kisses you on the forehead, and you're torn between feeling nauseated and basking in the way he makes your insides go all warm and stupid when he says shit like that. You're starting to suspect that Dave might be flirting with you, so you decide 'to hell with it,' give in to the faint hope that this might actually go somewhere tonight, and turn to press your head into the crook of his neck. "I'm not planning on losing my teeth, but thanks anyway. It's good to know that you'd still think I'm attractive."
He doesn't say anything, running his fingers through your hair, and the state championship match on TV has pretty much been relegated to background noise as he gently nudges your head away from his neck to press a lingering kiss to the bridge of your nose. His lips are warm and soft against your skin, and you're not going to pretend that this isn't affecting you, making you breathe faster when he moves in close. You lean your head back hopefully, your nose bumping against his chin, before he tilts to the side and his lips finally meet yours. The contact is soft and brief, and his fingers ghost along the side of your jaw before tilting your head up so he can mouth at your lower lip. Everything about this is careful, lately all of his advances have been hesitant and slow, asking permission in every touch and kiss, like he wants to make absolutely sure that this is okay, that you really do want this, and he's not pushing you into anything, which is all well and good, but having to reassure him every single time is frustrating. After a few minutes he pulls away to lean over you and slowly pushes you down, giving you ample time to stop him if you want to. You fist your hands in the front of his shirt as he tips you back, until you're lying beneath him on the futon, looking up into his eyes when he rests his forehead against yours. He smiles hesitantly as he whispers to you, "You're quiet tonight. Is everything okay?"
'Do you want me to stop' is what he really means, and yeah you're a little tired, mostly from worrying yourself to death over this whole gift thing, but you're onto something with the cell phone idea, and despite the shameful lack of progress today, you can't bring yourself to worry about it when he's here, so close that you can see the flecks of amber in his eyes, and instead of answering out loud, you raise your head to kiss along his rough jaw. You hear his breath hitch, and it's the best sound in the world because it's tangible proof of how much he wants you. He always needs encouragement like this before he goes any further, letting him know that it's okay, that you want him too. His hands grip your sides, and you feel his weight settle as he relaxes against you. Your tongue runs over the skin just beneath his ear, the taste a little salty from his sweat with a slightly bitter flavor that might be aftershave from this morning, and you arch your back to press your hips against his. He sucks in a breath before pushing back, pressing you into the futon, making you breathe harder with how good it feels to have his weight on you, to have him finally responding. He starts to grind against you, slowly, and you let out a few relieved, breathy moans to encourage him, because holy shit that feels amazing. He's been gone most nights this week, and you've been more stressed out than usual, and it's quickly becoming clear that you really need this tonight, despite how exhausted you both are.
The wrestling match continues to go unnoticed while he thrusts his hips against yours, panting into your ear, and you suspect that he might be a little more worked up than you are. His other hand threads into your hair, holding your head against his as you watch his back moving while he rocks against you. You're moving your hips with him, or trying to, but he's so much bigger and heavier than you that it isn't doing much, so you abandon the effort and wriggle a little until he eases up enough to let you wrap your legs around his waist. He kisses and nips at the base of your neck as you move, like he's restless and needs something to do with his mouth. Having him directly between your legs instead of on top is definitely an improvement, and you arch against him with a whimper when he resumes grinding into you with a particularly drawn-out roll of his hips. He slides his arm around your lower back and holds you tightly against him, and your whole body is rocking with him as he picks up the pace. You're panting with him, fisting your hands into the back of his shirt. You're not going to last much longer, and you whisper his name, feel the way he thrusts harder against you in response, his movements getting jerkier while the hand in your hair tightens, and he must be getting close too. He gasps out a few curses, then pulls your head back and crushes his mouth against yours, forcing your lips apart with his tongue and throughly claiming the inside of your mouth. The sudden roughness makes you moan into his mouth and buck your hips against his, and you're so close it's impossible to keep yourself still. Suddenly he pulls back from the kiss to pant against your mouth, eyes squeezed shut, and his thrusts become erratic as he hits his release. You try not to let the disappointment at how quickly this is ending dampen your arousal. It's pathetic and selfish of you that you can't seem to get enough of him, even when he's still engaged in the very act of getting you off.
After catching his breath, he leans back, bracing himself against the futon with one hand near your head, looking down at you, his eyes meeting yours. You're still painfully close, despite your silent self-admonishment, and he sees it. He leans down after a moment, both hands returning to thread through your hair, holding your head down, as his lips return to yours in a slow, open-mouthed kiss. His tongue finds yours as his hips start to rock again, and you let yourself moan for him, wanting nothing more in the world right now than for him to take you over the edge. His tongue strokes the inside of your mouth, your fingernails dig into his back through his shirt. He doesn't let up this time, grinding down into you with far more control than before, deliberately thrusting slow and deep and hard, pushing you down into the futon with every roll of his hips. He swallows all of your moans, forcing you to pant through your nose while keeping your head still with his fingers tangled in your hair. The feeling of being trapped by him is overwhelming- his tongue down your throat, his weight between your legs, you can't even turn your head because of his grip- and it makes you keen high and loud as you quickly hit your orgasm, shuddering against him helplessly. He lets you cling to him while you ride it out, holds you close, strokes your hair while he keeps kissing you, never breaking the contact between your mouths until you're spent, and when he finally lets you breathe again, he kisses along the side of your head, stopping to bury his nose in your hair with a sigh. It takes you several long minutes to catch your breath, legs tangled with his, arms draped loosely around his shoulders. You hope that you didn't bruise him with how tight you were holding on, but if you did, and anyone sees, he can probably play it off as the result of a sexy fling with a supermodel or something. You can't bring yourself to care too much at the moment.
He lies against you, unmoving, for so long that you think he may have fallen asleep. The wrestling match is over, and there's a commercial on for some kind of vegetable/fruit dicer. You're starting to overheat with him covering you like a blanket, and coming in your pants has left you feeling a little bit gross, so you start kneading into his shoulders with your fingers, figuring that if you're going to wake him up after what you just did together, you might as well be nice about it. He mutters a little but doesn't move, so you massage up and down his back with your knuckles, digging into the firm muscles along his spine, and that finally seems to rouse him. He shifts and pushes himself up to lean over you, blinking groggily.
"...Shit. Sorry dude, I completely conked out."
"It's okay. I'd just rather not sleep with you on top of me, it's the middle of summer."
He untangles his legs from yours and sits up on the edge of the futon to stretch his arms above his head."Hell, I won't argue with you there. It's hot as unwashed balls." He leans sideways to crack his back. "Which is to say, pretty god damn hot. Like, shit, I don't think it could get any hotter. Unwashed balls are just the sexiest fucking things in the whole world."
Over the past few weeks you've gotten good at recognizing when Dave starts to guilt himself over the sexual nature of your relationship. There is no amount of consent, spoken or otherwise, that prevents his occasional bouts of guilt, and that includes literally telling him that you want him to take you to bed and fuck you until you can't walk without a god damn limp in your step (his reaction to that was comical, to say the least. That was the reddest you've ever seen him get). You can't really blame him, and you're not going to pretend that there aren't a few things wrong with what you're doing, but at the same time it kind of hurts to know that he still sometimes regrets being with you.
"Dave." You can never think of anything to say, though. Even with how much you pride yourself on your linguistic skills, you still can't come up with the right words to tell him that it's okay. It never seems to make a difference when he gets like this, but you'll be damned if you're ever going to stop trying. "Thank you. For staying in tonight. I've ... kind of been missing you."
Your face feels like it's on fire, and having him on top of you didn't get you this flustered. But his happiness is one of the few things you'll always be willing to sacrifice your dignity for. He gives you a small smile, not his usual cocky half-grin, but a real, genuine smile with just a touch of sadness that reaches all the way to his eyes.
"Sorry. I meant to be home sooner, but ..." He sighs, and now you're mentally kicking and punching yourself because you were trying to make him feel less guilty, and you might as well just accept that you're terrible at this and incapable of comforting the only person in the world that you would truly and honestly do anything for. He notices your distress and stands up, taking your face in his hands and pressing his forehead against yours. "Hey. Things are going to get better soon, okay? All of the big premiers are almost over, I've just got some stupid press and media shit I've gotta do for a while, but next month is gonna be a fuckin cakewalk, and I wont be so god damn busy anymore. I promise." God Dave shut up you're making me feel even worse, that's not what I'm upset about, can't you see I'm just a shitty boyfriend or lover or whatever it is we are, I don't care anymore, I just don't want to see you hurting over being with me, because it hurts me too, why can't you see that.
"I love you." You say instead, and when it comes down to it, it's what you really meant anyway. He gives you that smile that you're hopelessly addicted to, and kisses you one last time before straightening up and placing a hand on your head to give your hair a soft, affectionate ruffle.
"Love you too, little bro." He stifles another yawn, and you're tired too, in many senses of the word. "I've got one of those super fucking early conferences tomorrow morning, so don't worry about getting up, I'll probably be out the door by the time you're awake."
"Yeah, alright." You actually are okay with that, it'll mean more time to work on your hopelessly stalled concept design. He gives you an apologetic smile and bids you goodnight before carrying the dishes into the kitchen and retiring to his room down the hall, leaving you sitting on the futon with the TV running through some kind of infomercial. You almost want to follow him, ask if he'll let you sleep in his bed tonight, but it really is too hot for what you actually want to do, which is cuddle up with him and bury your face into his chest while he holds you close. Nothing helps your insomnia like having Dave wrapped around you. But it's getting late and you've got work to do.
You find the remote and turn off the TV, then pull your sketchbook out from where it fell under the futon and carry back to your room, where you close the door and turn on the lamp over your desk. You need to make a decision about the theme now, no more of this sketching blindly until something 'looks right,' that was probably the least efficient way to approach the concept design, although it did leave you with multiple pages of material to use.
After a quick detour to your closet for a change of clothes, you sit down and mull it over. Suddenly the answer seems stupidly obvious. There's a reason Dave is the famous ironic movie director and you're the reclusive little brother who builds robots and never leaves the apartment. His movies are unique, coming from his own personal artistic vision, and as much as you are more or less his other half, he's the one with the real talent for irony. When it comes to machines and puppets, you're the undisputed expert, but when it comes to subtle layers of sarcasm and films so horrendously bad they're blockbuster good, that's where Dave really shines, and quite frankly you would be doing him a disservice trying to imitate him. So you rip out the pages with the ironic designs and start tracing parts from the outlines of the sketches that remain, keeping the extendable USB ports to make plugging it into his car easier, transferring the shape of the keypad from one of the earlier sketches so that it matches the larger display, and drawing in a small joystick, then replacing it with a stylus that attaches to to the back when you remember how much he likes touchscreens. The earpiece adaptor goes on the bottom since he always puts it in his pocket upside down, and the wireless module should be interchangeable since he travels so much and you want him to have a versatile internet connection. As the finalized design starts to emerge from the paper, you realize that all you had to do was think about Dave, and spending the evening with him was exactly what you needed to get this project off the ground.