thoughtformed | If you're lost you can look and you will find me [Open Log!]

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If you're lost you can look and you will find me [Open Log!]

Who: The Daves of Christmas present and future (no actual Christmas included)
Where: All over New Moore. The Dave of your choice will probably go to you. Or feel free to run into him somewhere while he's distracted texting--Present Dave's doing his usual pizza runs, while Future Dave's mostly wandering around, enjoying the sights, looking for familiar (yet super tiny) faces.
When: Throughout the event from 8/8-8/12
What: Look, is it so weird for a guy who's traveled over ten years back in time to want to hang out with his tiny teenage friends? Or his tiny grown-up friends, as the case may be? LOOK AT THEM. THEY'RE SO TINY. THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE IN FOR.

Future Dave had already made good on the outstanding loop that required he take his younger self out for ice cream and general breeze-shooting. So many incidental spoilers had been dropped the temporal logicscape looked like it had been carpet-bombed and then subsequently mugged at gunpoint, but it was hardly their fault. Everyone was going around changing things up, they both could feel it. But since it seemed like nothing was nudging New Moore's timeline off its alpha axis, they let things be, for the time being.

After what both of them decided was the coolest four hours of their lives, they split up so Dave--present Dave--could take care of his present duties, such as delivering pizzas, feeding Catthew, and persisently bugging people. Future Dave strode off on his own, hands in his pockets, noting the things that had changed--or, rather, reverted--from his timeline.

After a while, Dave pulled out his phone, scrolled down his contact list--he never deleted anyone--and finally opened a text message to someone he knew.

hey
got a minute?

((OOC: Please note which Dave you want to talk to when you reply, just to make it easier for me to keep track of what's happening. Thanks!))

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sure im busy.
busy eating all the doritos.
better get here quick bro or all youll get is the powder.

oh fuck you im there

Yeah, time powers didn't stop being a thing.

doors open dipshit.

And he probably knew that, standing right outside it the way he was, but still, he hesitated. He pushed it open quietly, peeking in like he expected a trap (not unlikely, really, all things considered) or, worse: nothing. A dark living room. The non-sound of an empty space.

But no. The lights were on. Bro was still here, he reminded himself. He'd only turned fifteen and a half.

"'Sup," he called, stepping inside.

"I was startin' to think you'd died or somethin', kid," Bro spoke up from the living room, sounding almost on the edge of a laugh as he pushed himself up from the couch to greet his brother. "How long's it been since you dropped..."

And then, there was the slow trailing off, the kind that you only think happens in movies until it happens to you, as he stared at the young man who was undeniably his brother, and yet not. He knew something had been happening today - of course he did, he wasn't blind to what was going on around him as much as he occasionally decided to ignore it - but.. this? Shit. He couldn't have anticipated this.

"... in."

A younger him would've been amazed to see Bro so lost for words, but as it was, Dave almost wanted to hide and call a do-over. This wasn't his time, and he'd be gone in a matter of days, but seeing Bro--

It made him want to stay.

But he looked down and toed off his shoes like it was no big deal, like this was any other day in New Moore and it hadn't been years since he'd last seen his brother.

"From your perspective, probably like four hours?" he guessed, straightening, slipping his hands into his pockets, and raising his eyebrows a little. Even if it hurt.

Speechless was a word for it. He almost swayed back in his surprise, needing to shift his weight subtly to settle himself as he simply stared at the man in front of him. It was Dave, that much he knew and needed no confirmation for. He hadn't spent thirteen years raising the kid to not recognise him just because he'd gained a few inches.

"It..." Not really four hours, but did it really matter how long it had been? Bro shook himself mentally. "Dave, what--"

He was trying to make sense of it. After everything he'd seen, everything that had happened to him here, this shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did, but seeing Dave grown up like this hit a tender part of his heart that he had long since dismissed as unnecessary, and hit it hard. He swallowed, bringing a hand up and planting it on the other man's shoulder.

"Shit... look at you."

"Yeah."

Dave knew what he looked like, because he was standing right across from it--all the angles he hadn't had as a kid showed now in his jaw and bone structure; all the lanky height he'd had, he'd finally grown into. He was still lean, still bordering on slender, but while his looks had favored Roxy while he was young, his baby fat had eventually melted away to better display the other half of his genetic makeup.

His gaze dipped again. "I'll hit a growth spurt in a couple months and shoot up like a weed. I'll also come over one night and eat literally everything in the house and bitch and whine a lot and then you try to trade me in for a better-behaved pet." A faint smile twitched up at the corner of his lips, then disappeared again as he looked up.

"It's been a little while for me. I'm twenty-seven."

Bro could see it too. Dave had favoured Rox more as a child, but now...

"Puttin' those genetics to good use, huh," he murmured, shaking his head almost at the ridiculousness of it all because this was ridiculous. Was teen!Dave still around here somewhere? How long was this going to last? Why was Dave looking at him like that?

All questions he should have asked, but didn't. They died in his throat before he even drew breath to utter them.

"... What happened to you? What the fuck are you doing here, Dave?"

Standing there in the middle of the living room was starting to feel weird, so Dave moved away, flipped a cushion over unerringly to find the bag of Doritos, and sat down to munch.

"What, like New Moore can have a time travel party and not invite me? Come on, Bro, you know me better than that."

He stretched his legs out, crossed one ankle over the other, the picture of nonchalance. If nonchalance liked Doritos. In the end, though, Dave tilted his head down a little in acquiescence to Bro's question.

"I have some things to check up on, and some shit to give to younger me. Then I'm out of here again."

Sometimes he wondered if he really did know Dave better than that, but let's be serious here. For all his unorthadox childrearing methods and the sibling rivalry that he'd deliberately nurtured to avoid the kinds of responsibilities that admitting his real genetic relation to the kid would bring up, he did know Dave, maybe even better than he knew himself.

So, he seated himself on the couch beside the younger man, one eyebrow faintly lifted.

"You look like shit, kid, do you know that?"

Dave broke character for half a second, looking at Bro like he'd just been caught sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight comfort snack, startled and vaguely hopeful that Bro would fix him something better.

But he caught himself and pressed his expression back into defensive neutrality, facing front again to shove a Dorito in his mouth. "'M hungry," he said. "And you know I get cranky when my blood sugar's low."

He wasn't hungry at all anymore, though, and for all the calm maturity he'd built over the years, there was something sharp and brittle about the set of his shoulders, like the wrong touch would snap and collapse him.

Usually, at those times, he'd just cuff Dave over the head and send him back to bed hungry, only for something warm and vaguely comfort-food-like to appear on the boy's nightstand not long after. Let it never be said he didn't care about the kid and he did keep some food in the house for emergency situations.

Just like Dave could read him, he caught that flash of half guilt, half hope before it could be pushed back. Bro was quiet a moment, sitting in a contemplative silence before he brought his hand up to Dave's shoulder and curled his fingers over it.

"How 'bout we eat out tonight, yeah?"

For all the social calls he'd been making in Past New Moore (Old Moore?), Dave hadn't yet let anyone touch him, and Bro's solidity seemed to startle him. Or maybe it was his own physical reality, the undeniable shape of his shoulder under Bro's hand, that Dave hadn't been expecting. Or had put out of mind.

He lifted his own hand in response without thinking, hesitated, and then gripped Bro's fingers for a second to reassure--well, at least one of them. His expression flickered again, but the expression wasn't one he'd often worn as a kid. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.

"Yeah. I'd like that." He let go and rolled the Doritos bag closed, his tone lifting to normal again. "You're paying, though. I sprung for like fifteen kids' ice cream today and my credit cards don't work."

Dave wasn't the only one who was startled, but Bro hid it well enough and the faint flash of uncertainty in his eyes were shielded from view by his shades. He gave the younger man's shoulder a squeeze when his hand was clasped, then drew it away. A faint, humourless smile touched his lips.

"I reckon I can swing one meal for my little brother," he said, pushing himself to his feet and casting a glance around the room as if he was looking for something. Whatever it was, he either didn't find it or was satisfied with its absence, and he gave a small jerk of his head to have Dave follow him.

"Just like old times."

Dave nodded and tossed the bag back more or less where he found it as he got up. He didn't come after right away, though. He stood a moment, eyes following the line of Bro's shoulders, watching his back

He hadn't realized, was the thing. With everything he'd been trying to achieve with this trip, everything he told himself to remember to do in this past, he hadn't taken Bro into account, and it was undoing him. Years of growth and defensive scarring were unraveling from him like Bro had stuck his finger in a spool and pulled time away from him until he was sixteen, fifteen, twelve again.

So when he took that step, he found himself reaching out to grip Bro's sleeve without meaning to, and though he dropped his gaze, he didn't let go.

Whatever it was he'd meant to say, he'd forgotten the words for it.

As rattling as all of this was he was just taking it like he took everything. If this was going to be temporary he wasn't going to spend the entire time making an ass out of himself, as difficult as it was not to assault this older Dave with questions.

He was heading for the door when he felt that grip on his sleeve, and he spent longer than he needed to staring at Dave's fingers before he looked up at him.

"Tch..." Bro shook his head, shrugged Dave's hand off his sleeve then turned around, pulling him into a firm, tight hug. "C'mere, kid."

Dave didn't make a sound. His breathing didn't change, he didn't swallow around the lump of emotion swelling in his throat, he didn't let on to any of his fear. He just held onto Bro for all he was worth. Maybe that said enough.

"I'm not a kid, you enormous tool," he murmured. "I almost caught up."

Almost the same age. Almost the same height. But it didn't matter. Bro was Bro, and he was still the kid he'd picked out of that crater.

For now, it didn't matter that he had to be more than that to pull through what he'd come back to do.

"Sorry, Dave... but you're always gonna be my kid."

There, he'd said it, and he was glad the lump in his own throat caught and stuck after the last word had made it out or that could have been really embarrassing. No matter what Dave did, no matter what he achieved and no matter how fucking proud Bro was of him he would always, always be that little toddler he picked up out of that crater.

That was never going to change.

"Now, come on, we're wastin' time."

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If you're lost you can look and you will find me [Open Log!]

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