Chapter Text
November, 2013
"Someone order a cab for two flighty broads?"
"Lovely to see you, too."
"Hey, I am nothing if not thankful for the opportunity to get out of the house for a few hours, and isn't that exactly what the holidays are all about?"
"Just open the trunk."
Dave smirked from his place leaning against the side of the car and cut his Pesterchum conversation short. Over breakfast that morning, he and Roxy had flipped a coin to see who would pick up the girls and who would collect the boys later that afternoon. At least, they'd flipped for it eventually after fighting over who got to call tails for ten minutes first. Driving east out to the Plattsburg train station gave him some different scenery to stare at than the usual trip to the airport so he wasn't about to complain, especially not after he'd only had a half-day of school.
"Aren't you cold?" Kanaya asked, eyeing Dave and his t-shirt.
"Nah, it's like almost forty or something," he shrugged. He opened the driver's side door and got back in behind the wheel while he waited for the girls to finish loading their bags into the car. He re-opened the Pesterchum app long enough to tell John he'd be driving for a while, because when the girls' train had arrived, they'd been in the middle of talking about why it was the worst idea in the world to collaborate with Karkat on a programming assignment. Rose slipped into the passenger's seat beside him and Kanaya sat behind her. "Why, are you cold?" He tossed his phone down into one of the storage compartments.
"No," Kanaya said, arranging her purse and coat beside her on the back seat.
"The car's got a heater, you know. I mean, yeah, it's a heap of shit on wheels but it's got a heater. And brakes, which is pretty fuckin' sweet since it didn't really have those when we got it. Well, it had brakes but they were as effective as bribing the border security guys to pick you up some Tim Horton's on their breaks. Man, they are stubborn as fuck. I even offered to bribe them in freedom dollars but nope, nothing."
"You drove the additional twenty five minutes to the border just to do that, didn't you?"
"Nope."
"And you skipped out of school an hour early to manage it."
"Why would I do that?"
"Dave."
"Daughter of Satan."
"Just put the heater on and drive us home."
"You didn't even say hello, you asshole," Dave said, reversing the car out the parking space with one hand while he reached for the console with the other. "Shit, it's not like you've been gone for three months or anything. Wow, college is so awesome and so hectic that I can't even find the time between classes and the library and necking with my girlfriend to reply to my poor lonely brother stuck back home doing the same old shit day in day out."
"I missed you, too."
"I didn't say I missed you, fuck. It's just basic fucking manners to say hello."
"How's Mom?"
"Batshit, when she's home. She's been out to Switzerland twice, London once, and down to the city a few times as well," Dave said. If there was a pause, or a hitch in his voice, he was thankful that Rose didn't point it out.
Roxy had been working more since the beginning of the school year. Instead of rejecting trips or putting them off like she'd done in previous years, she was accepting every opportunity that came her way. It was different, but not unexpected. She sometimes got busier when she was up for a promotion, or needed more funding for one project or another and needed to convince investors to back her team. That was okay. It had been okay for weeks, even for the first month.
Dave hadn't seen her until the beginning of the fourth week of school.
He'd come home that Tuesday after training to find her sitting on the couch, staring blankly at a rerun of Keeping Up With The Kardashians while she steadily worked her way through a bottle of vodka. It took him three episodes to realise they were watching recordings from the DVR because she wasn't bothering to fast forward through the ad breaks. He'd made two bowls of Easy Mac for dinner and thrown in a handful of shredded cheese in a piss poor attempt at making it seem like real food. Roxy hadn't noticed the difference. She'd fallen asleep on the couch by the time they were watching Dirk's old recordings of America's Next Top Model. He made sure she was lying on her side, threw a blanket over her, and slept on the other couch with his phone clutched tightly in his fist in case she stopped breathing.
He'd been sleeping on the couch a lot lately.
"You were saying?"
"Huh? Sorry, the shitbox was doing that thing again."
"The rattling noise?" Rose questioned.
"Yeah. Anyway, Mom's picking up Bro, his plane landed like forty minutes ago."
"Is he coming alone?"
"Are you shitting me? He's never gone anywhere without Cal."
"I was referring to your delightful stepfather."
"Seriously, no. Get it all out now if you have to because that joke? Not funny. I tried it again a few weeks ago and Bro threatened to knock me out and drop me in the woods with just a compass to find my way home. And not the directional kind either, the ones you use in math for drawing circles," Dave said. "Seriously, you'd think that'd be a solid goldmine of jokes but nope, he's a jackass. Jake's weirdly okay with them."
"Interesting," Rose mused.
"I know, it should be hilarious but he flies off the fucking handle if you even try. The old man jokes still go down pretty well though. I mean, not well, but I haven't had the abandonment threat for those. Yet."
"In case I haven't said so," Rose turned in her seat to face Kanaya. "Please just tell me if you want to leave, no matter what time it is. I'll drive you the two hours back to the station myself if I have to to get you out of this place. It doesn't take much for it to go from slightly obscure family sitcom to horror show for the uninitiated."
"Two hours? Pfft," Dave said. He glanced down at the clock on the dash. It was just going on two. "I bet we'll be home by three thirty, defs no later than that, even after we stop in town."
"And what do we tell Mom when she asks why we're back so early?"
"That your train was early, duh," he said, swinging the car around a corner. He stopped at the next set of lights.
"No train has ever been early the day before Thanksgiving. Even ours was ten minutes late."
"Thirteen exactly. Oh, shit, you've never had Thanksgiving, have you?" Dave said, suddenly excited as he glanced at the rearview mirror.
"Me?" Kanaya asked.
"Yeah, you. Man, shit's awesome. It's like the one day a year that Mom and Bro actually team up on something instead of taking sides," Dave said. "You've seriously been missing out."
"I don't see how not observing the holidays of the colonies is 'missing out'," Kanaya said.
"Oh snap."
"Oh snap indeed," Rose said.
"This is gonna be the best fucking Thanksgiving, I swear," he went on. "I mean shit, you're home, and Bro's coming home, and Mom swears she's gonna go easy on the booze because everyone's bringing someone home with them."
"Of course she will."
"Hey, what do you mean by that?"
"I don't mean anything by it, Dave. I'm sure she'll control herself in front of company," Rose said carefully.
"Damn straight," he replied firmly. He returned the fingers that had slipped to the bottom of the wheel to where they belonged, hands clutching the plastic tightly in the formal ten and two position.
"How's Paul?" Rose asked, deliberately changing the subject when she noticed him tense up.
She'd had a feeling that their mother wasn't coping too well with both her brother and daughter leaving in the same month. She knew her own brother inside out, and she was all too aware that Dave would cover for their mother for as long as he could. Switching the conversation to a discussion of his lizard had been a successful distraction technique since he was nine years old.
"How's Paul," he scoffed, his grip on the steering wheel loosening slightly. "You follow her blog."
"The lizard has a blog?"
"Of course she does," Dave said. Kanaya raised an eyebrow at him from the back seat, but he didn't turn around in time to see it. "She's old enough, she's seven. That's like twenty one in reptile years."
"I don't think that's true. Some reptiles have exceptionally long lifespans. Compared to those, she'd still essentially be an infant at seven."
"Don't bother arguing with him," Rose interrupted, turning around in her seat again. "It's really, really not worth it in the long run."
"He seems so sure of himself though and it's almost painful to watch," Kanaya said, wrinkling her nose.
"You learn to ignore it. And him, with practice. By the time I was six I could entirely tune out the pitch of his voice at will."
"Impressive."
"Very."
"Okay, okay, I'm a prick, I get it. Put a CD on or something so I can tune out your voice for a change," Dave said. It was only just dawning on him that while growing up with one sister had been bad, he didn't even want to imagine what it would have been like with two.
"Why do you have a copy of Artpop?"
"Because fuck you, that's why."
"That's the excuse you're going with?"
"I don't even have an excuse. Speaking of excuses though," Dave said, ignoring his sister as she deliberately slipped the Lady Gaga CD into the player. "You're gonna have to come up with one hell of a story to get Kanaya out of the basement."
"What?"
"Yeah, Mom's set up Bro's office for her. She got really excited. I mean, he's gonna hate it because she might touch something or whatever because he's still got his old mixing decks in there, you know, the broken ones, plus all the shit he drew on the walls because she wouldn't let him rip the plaster out when he left, but she set your old bed back up in there. She had to go and get a new mattress though."
"Well that's just not happening," Rose said, matter-of-factly.
"It already did. She made me help move everything."
"It's not."
"I had to go into the fucking hardware store to get bolts to put that thing back together. The fucking hardware store, Rose. Me."
Rose gave an undignified shriek of laughter before she could stop herself and had to muffle the sound with the back of her hand to prevent Dave from pushing her out of the moving car.
"Is that supposed to be funny?" Kanaya asked.
"It's more than funny," Rose said with a smile. "How did you manage that?"
"I took the one we could find and asked for a handful just like it."
"And?"
"And I hauled ass outta there before anyone could pummel me."
"One of the guys in his year works there," Rose explained. "Well, his father owns the store so it's more that he's forced to work there. Anyway, two years ago Dave was dumb enough to point out that it wasn't fair there was so much leniency on the guy, just because he's an athlete."
"Well it fuckin' wasn't, was it? They told me I had to get my shit together in math if I wanted on the state team again."
"Essentially, he's been going out of his way to make Dave look like an idiot ever since. Him even walking into a hardware store would be guaranteed to get a laugh when classes resume on Monday. It would inevitably become the start of hundreds of jokes, Dave Lalonde walks into a hardware store."
"Thanks, Rose, for making me sound like the idiot in that rendition."
"Anytime."
"That doesn't really happen here, does it?" Kanaya said. "I was under the impression it was exaggerated on television."
"Hell yeah it does. If I had to beg this bitch," Dave took a hand off the wheel to point a thumb at Rose, "to help me get my math up to a B if I wanted to keep running track, that asshole should at least need C's to play football."
"Yes, well, asking this bitch for help certainly paid off in the end, didn't it?"
"We don't talk about that."
"We should."
"We really shouldn't."
"He hasn't dropped below a B since," Rose explained, looking at Kanaya in the rearview mirror.
"Impressive."
"Man, would you just shut up? I'll actually throw you both out on the highway if you don't."
The rest of the trip was smoother, if repeatedly interrupted by requests for Dave to slow down. Every time he crept up closer to fifty, Rose made a noise of disapproval. He dropped down enough to get her off his back, until the road opened up again and he managed to creep up to almost fifty five before she threw him a pointed look.
He made a big deal about slowing down for the turns and corners, almost coming to a complete stop for the sharper ones, but every time they hit an expanse of straight road he took it as a challenge to see how fast he could go before Rose snapped and to see what she would do about it.
It wasn't like it was even a big deal, he argued. He was used to driving through slush to get to school since the roads were never plowed that well and he was getting pretty good at spotting the icy patches before he hit them. Besides, if they went off the road the snow banks were getting pretty high so they'd make for a nice soft landing.
She threatened to throw Mutie into the shower with him when he almost hit sixty. He slowed down after that, sitting at a consistent forty six miles an hour for the rest of the drive home just so he could flout the limit of forty five.
When they got home, he parked the car in front of the house and left Rose and Kanaya to collect their duffle bags from the trunk. He'd stopped in town to pick up a few things so he took the bag of groceries from the back seat and headed into the house ahead of them.
"Hey," he called. "Mom, I'm home! Mom?"
"Downstairs!"
"Where is everyone?"
"With me!"
He dropped the plastic bag onto the table and went straight to the fridge. He took a swig of apple juice from the carton and took it with him in one hand, and picked up a bottle from the groceries on his way to the basement.
"Got you something," he said, holding out his hand to Roxy when he walked into Dirk's study.
"Oh, thanks, baby," she said, taking the bottle of gin from him and planting a kiss on his cheek. She put it down on the edge of the desk and went back to making the bed.
It wasn't his job to point out that they already had more than enough bottles in the cupboard to last the weekend. She'd asked him to stop by the store for her so he'd stopped by the store. He knew that what he'd done was just enabling her. He knew she was drinking more than she used to, but he'd thought it was just a reaction to stress.
It wasn't any different than when Dirk regressed to his teenage habits by chain smoking half a pack when he had a deadline coming that he knew he wasn't going to make, working through more cigarettes in half an hour than he usually did in a month. It wasn't any different to Rose locking herself away, forgetting to shower or eat for days at a time when she began to crack under the pressures she put on herself. It wasn't any different to when he sometimes spent days popping pills every few hours in an attempt to stop a migraine before it had the chance to start. Everyone had their own problems and their own ways of dealing.
There was nothing he could do about his mom, except continue to be obliging and hope it stopped before it got worse again.
He leant back against the wall and tried to ignore the obvious sidelong glance Dirk threw his way.
"Hey," he said.
"Sup?"
Dave shrugged in response to his uncle's greeting.
"Not much."
"Awesome. How'd you get that?"
"Where's Jake?"
"Checking out some shit in the garage. How'd you get the gin?"
"Fake ID."
"Bullshit. Everyone around here knows you're not even seventeen until next week."
"Fine, Sam from the store down the road lets me buy it because he knows it's Mom's."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"You have no idea how lame that is."
"Kinda do, bro. He won't sell me beer," Dave pointed out.
"Good to know."
"There, beautiful," Roxy said, fluffing up one last pillow on the bed. "Still smells like sweat and Mountain Dew because I had an idiot man-child practically living in here until a few months ago, but there's not much I can do about that on short notice."
"Thanks, Rox," Dirk said pointedly.
"Anytime, bro. Everyone back upstairs, I've got a daughter and her girlfriend to smother with love and pie!"
Roxy snatched up the bottle of gin and hurried back up to the kitchen. If Dave was home that meant the girls were somewhere upstairs and she only had three days to spend with them. She was excited. She hadn't seen her own daughter since she helped move her to college and she didn't plan on wasting those three days.
Dave made to follow her, screwing the cap back onto his juice as he started walking.
"Hey," Dirk said again, to get his attention.
Dave stopped. He turned back around and slouched against the doorframe while Dirk leaned back against the edge of the desk. He waited for him to go on but he didn't, so he dropped his gaze and looked over the drawings on the walls instead.
Scattered between stickers were images of things that had come to mind while Dirk was working on a track and couldn't find any paper to write on. There were logos and lyrics, sketches that he remembered were important for some reason almost ten years ago. Dave's heights throughout the years were marked on the wall as well, between everything else. It was one of those things that, in retrospect, should have told him that Dirk was more than an uncle. Roxy had been marking out both his and Rose's heights in the kitchen for as long as he could remember. There was no logical reason to repeat the marks in the basement study.
Eventually, Dirk broke the silence by clearing his throat.
"What?"
"Don't make me wait any longer to hear the outcome of your existential crisis. It's been like two months already, man."
"Dude, you just got here and I just had to spend an hour and a half with two snarky bitches in my car," Dave pointed out.
"You mean two hours," Dirk corrected.
"I totally mean two hours."
"Nice save."
"Thanks," Dave said. He unscrewed the juice cap again and took another drink. "I'm keeping Lalonde."
"Right," Dirk nodded, trying to look thoughtful.
In September, during his whirlwind two hour visit, he'd signed the change of name form for Dave. They'd gone over it together in the airport lounge while they waited for his flight to depart, making sure that Dave had filled everything in right because if he hadn't then he'd need to print out another copy, fill that out, and post it to California, only for Dirk to sign it and send it back so he could submit it to the courts.
He made sure Dave knew what to do and where to take the form. He made sure that he knew it was okay if he decided to formalise himself as Dave Lalonde. He went over the form three times before he left Dave alone in the terminal so there wouldn't be any issues with it later on, if or when he decided to submit the paperwork.
Still, it was hard to keep the strange feeling of betrayal off his face.
"Let me finish talking before you start crying like a bitch."
"Hey, watch it," Dirk warned. "I might not live here anymore but I can still whoop your ass into next week."
"I'm only keeping it until graduation," Dave said.
The corner of Dirk's mouth twitched into something almost like a smirk.
"Really."
"You're smiling."
"Nah, that's just a twitch."
"Bro, that's not even a smile anymore. It's terrifying. Oh, God, I can see your teeth and shit what the fuck did I do to deserve that?" Dave asked. "Aurgh, Bro!"
The end of his sentence was muffled by a faceful of shoulder as Dirk moved quickly across the room and dragged him into a tight hug, trapping him in his arms.
"Thanks, Dave."
"I thought you didn't give a shit."
"This is totally me not giving a shit."
"Funny how your not giving a shit is so similar to Mom's giving a shit."
"Genetics, bro," Dirk said. Finally, he gave one last squeeze before he let go, when Dave started fidgeting in an attempt to work himself free. "You sure?"
"Yeah. Can we quit this weird feelings jam bullshit? I'm taking Strider, big deal. Oh, God, are you fucking crying?"
"Nope," Dirk said flatly.
"Oh come on, Bro, seriously?" Dave asked. He could see for himself that his uncle wasn't crying, but his eyes were definitely a little glassy. He chose to ignore the fact.
Dave turned to glance over his shoulder when he heard a door slam and then heavy footsteps in the rec room.
"You lads coming up for a drink?" Jake asked, coming to a stop in the doorway with one arm resting up against the frame. "Alright, Dave?"
"Yeah, I'm fine?" Dave said slowly, one eyebrow arching up from behind his glasses.
"Nah, he means hello," Dirk said.
"But he asked if I was alright."
"Yeah, but that's not what he meant. He meant hello."
"So why didn't he just say hello?"
"Because that's not how he works."
"Well?" Jake pressed, interrupting Dirk and Dave. "I do recall your sister mentioning that there would be drinks once the girls arrived and I can hear quite a few feminine voices travelling down from the kitchen."
"I could go for one hell of a whiskey right now," Dirk said with a grin.
"Do I want to know?"
"Nope," Dave deadpanned, ducking underneath Jake's arm to make a hasty escape. Dirk watched him jog up the stairs over Jake's shoulder and waited until he was gone before saying anything else.
"Strider."
"What?"
"Strider," Dirk repeated, the ridiculous grin still on his face.
"No, English. You're Strider."
"He's Strider."
"Of course he is, you idiot."
"He's keeping Strider. He's going to start using Strider," Dirk explained, unable to stop smiling.
"Oh, that's aces! I assume a congratulations is in order then, mate."
"Fucking hell," Dirk snorted. "I need that drink."
"Well then let's go and celebrate the fact your son is keeping your name with an unbelievably extraordinary amount of piss weak American beer."
+++
He'd given up completely when Dave came along.
For at least a year, he got by on naps. Rose went to sleep early, but she woke up with the sun. Dave would sleep later, but only after he was up half the night. He and Roxy had always traded off to ensure they each got at least a full night of sleep once a week.
When his career picked up, he was back to working nights and sleeping through the day. Even when he was at home in New York it was hard to switch back to a more regular pattern, so he would usually be up to help get the kids ready for school and then sleep for an hour or two in the afternoons before they got home. It was even worse when he was out on tour or working in Houston, where he was never in bed before four or five in the morning.
By Thanksgiving, he'd been retired for six months and, for the first time in well over a decade, had adopted an almost normal sleeping pattern. There was no way he was ever going to sleep through the three alarms it took to get Jake up and into the shower before five in the morning and he'd stopped trying less than a week after moving to California. He just got up when the alarms went off and made sure Jake did the same. He went and put the kettle on while Jake got ready for work, cooked some toast or oatmeal for him, and when the kettle finished he made a cup of tea that he always complained about but drank anyway. He stayed up until Jake left the house, then went back to bed until ten or eleven.
"Wake up," someone said.
Dirk actively chose to ignore the voice. He'd knocked back enough whiskey the night before that he'd slept right through until morning and he was convinced that whoever had woken him up was just asking for trouble.
"Hey, get up. Mom says you've got a half hour window if you want to make pancakes."
"I don't," he mumbled.
"God dammit, Bro, I didn't drive all the fucking way into town for bacon just so you could decide to sleep for fucking ever," Dave said. Dirk was almost convinced that he heard a foot stomp against the carpet.
"Too bad. Sleeping."
"You're an asshole."
"You know it, man."
"Fine, I'll tell Mom to do it herself and you know how shitty her pancakes are."
"Don't care. Not hungry."
"Dude, it's like ten already."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. The kitchen's free for another twenty minutes and that's it."
"You got up at seven on Thanksgiving to go find bacon?"
"Yeah, I had to go all the way into town for it so everyone better be grateful."
"You're a freak."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"I'll be there in three minutes."
"Awesome," Dave said.
"Hey, hang on," Dirk said, finally sitting up. He picked up his phone to check the time in case Dave was lying, but it was just after ten like he'd said. "Where's Jake?"
"Playing Goldeneye with Mom. He got up like four hours ago."
"Why?"
"Why what? Why'd he get up at six? Fucked if I know."
"No, that's late for him. His first alarm goes off at four thirty. I meant why's he playing Goldeneye?"
"Because we left the 64 plugged in last night and everyone's sick of Diddy Kong Racing already."
"Yeah, I don't even know why we bothered hauling that one out," Dirk muttered. He threw his phone aside and finally put some effort into getting out of bed. He got as far as the edge of the mattress before he stopped to stretch. "Okay, fuck off. Pancakes and bacon, I know. Give me a minute here."
"You're down to like sixteen minutes before Mom closes the kitchen to anything that's not pre-cooked and in a box until dinner," Dave pointed out.
"Dave."
"What? I'm just saying."
"Dave," Dirk warned.
"You know she can't get the pancakes into shapes and her bacon just goes kind of soggy and holy shit it's nasty. You want some crispy bacon? Ask anyone except Roxy Lalonde because she can argue with a Nobel Prize winner and come out the victor but holy shit is she useless at making bacon anything but chewy," Dave went on. At some point he'd stopped directing his comments at Dirk and was just mumbling to himself. "And like hell she'll let me do it myself because then she thinks she's an irresponsible parent if she does but fucking hell it's impossible to choke down that nasty ass bacon without wanting to hurl, and let me tell you now, that's a tragic fucking waste of cured pork."
"What are you doing next week?"
"What?"
"Next week. You got plans?"
"Yeah, I thought I might go to school or some shit, you know? I started this whole education thing so I might as well finish it."
"You want to come out to California?"
"Why the fuck would I want to do that?"
"Because I miss you."
"Gay."
Dave darted back out into the hall after that. Dirk heard him take the stairs at a jog to get back down to the kitchen. He followed a few minutes later, struggling to do the mental math required to figure out just how many pancakes he'd need to make to feed everyone.
The girls would probably eat a couple each. Rose would have two or three and he guessed that Kanaya would probably eat about the same, give or take half a pancake. He was pretty hungry and could go for a few as well, even though he'd just woken up. Jake would eat about six if they were there, especially since it was already close to the time he usually sat down for lunch. Roxy wouldn't ask for her own and would just steal bites from everyone else's plates when they weren't looking. Dave was in bottomless pit mode again and would just finish off the rest of the batch, regardless of how many that was.
A fuckton, he realised. He needed to cook a metric fuckton of pancakes, with an imperial fuckton of bacon on the side.
"Yo," he said, walking across the kitchen to get started on the batter.
No one replied, but he couldn't really blame them.
Roxy and Jake were sitting on one of the couches, which had been pushed closer to the TV to compensate for the wired controllers they were using. They were in the middle of a deathmatch but from where Dirk was standing he couldn't figure out how many hits they'd taken a piece. Rose was tucked into the corner of the other couch, her favourite spot, as if nothing had changed while she'd been away at college for a few months. The only difference was that now Kanaya was sitting with her, curled up in a similar fashion on the other end of the sofa but still close enough that their ankles comfortably crossed over one another's. They were both alternating between looking up at the screen and focusing on the novels they each had open in their hands. Dave was sprawled sideways over the recliner, his legs hanging over one arm and his 3DS in hand.
No one bothered to get up and help Dirk with breakfast until the sounds of bacon popping against the frypan filtered across to the living room.
"Morning," Jake said, clapping him on the shoulder as he walked past to get to the fridge. "You slept well."
"Yeah, half a dozen whiskey's will do that to a guy."
"Are they done yet?"
"Another five or ten."
"Batches?"
"Minutes."
"Right," Jake said, sitting down at the table with a glass of orange juice. "So, what's the plan of action for today then?"
"The plan is that I finish this, everyone eats, and then me 'n Rox start cooking dinner. You're banned from the kitchen after breakfast, by the way," Dirk explained. He flipped the current batch of pancakes out onto a large serving plate and started spooning more batter into the pan.
"You're joking."
"Nope. No one sets foot off the edge of the carpet unless we say so."
"Well -"
"We've never said so."
"What if you need assistance?"
"We've got this. Hey, remind me later to book some flights."
"Where to?" Jake asked. He raised an eyebrow when Dirk picked up his glass of juice, but didn't bother trying to stop him.
"Can Dave come over for a few days?"
"He's welcome anytime, mate, you know that. When were you thinking?"
"Probably Tuesday," Dirk said. He drank a few mouthfuls of juice before handing the glass back to Jake.
"Next Tuesday?"
"Yeah."
"We only get home on Sunday night, Dirk. We're back here in another few weeks for Christmas anyway. What about his next break after that?"
"Yeah, but his birthday's on Tuesday."
"And you've never missed a birthday," Jake sighed.
"Exactly," Dirk said. He turned back to the pan and flipped the pancakes. He rotated the bacon around in the other pan to make sure it was crisping up nicely before turning back to Jake. "I'll send him back by next weekend. He's got finals in a few weeks anyway."
"You know that having him over doesn't get you out of looking for some kind of regular employment, don't you?" Jake pointed out.
"I'm looking."
"You're going barmy cooped up in the house all day."
"Hey, downloading The Amazing Race doesn't mean I'm going nuts."
"It does when you download ten years of it and watch it in a month."
"Yeah, but how much have we learned about the world? You can't say we're not a hell of a lot more educated on obscure international festivals now than we were back in August," Dirk pointed out. He turned the last few pancakes out onto the platter and moved the whole thing to the middle of the table. "Hey, breakfast's up!"
Roxy swore loudly when Dave paused the game just as she was lining up her next attack. She tried unpausing it but he dove over the coffee table and flicked the power switch off, then somersaulted out of the way before she could hit him with the TV remote. He ducked behind the other couch and rolled across to the safety of the kitchen.
"Hey, pancake me, bro," he said from his place on the floor.
"You're an idiot," Dirk said flatly, stepping over him.
"An idiot who's starving to death down here, maybe," Dave said. He made a grabbing gesture up at the edge of the table.
Dirk didn't bother arguing. He dragged out one of the colder pancakes from the bottom of the pile and dropped it onto Dave's face.
Then he kicked him in the side when he tried to eat it without getting up from the floor.
"At least fuckin' pretend you know which side of a table is up."
"Never."
He ignored him after that. It took a few minutes for Dave to emerge from his place under the table, and even then, he only popped up into the space beside Rose because no one was giving in to his requests for bacon.
Jake and Kanaya were discussing their respective assimilation experiences. It had taken him a while to adjust but that had been a long time ago, when international phone calls were still expensive and more static than anything else. He'd come out to America alone and had been busy with work within a week of arriving. That had helped, he mused, being so occupied that he hadn't had time to think about anything else, let alone the drastic differences between California and Berkshire. It had been the little things he'd found most difficult, but in time those had become normal. He assured her the process would go by much more smoothly with easy access to online stores that could ship brand-name Jaffa Cakes to her door in three days or less. He knew of a very good online cookie store. He'd been buying a few packs of chocolate Hob Nobs every month for years.
Kanaya seemed grateful for that information. She'd been doing quite well and agreed that being busy had eased the initial transition, but it was very much the small things that she missed about home. The electrical sockets looked strange, she still kept looking the wrong way when she crossed the street, and couldn't understand why the first floor was suddenly the second floor in buildings.
Jake agreed. He pointed out that he'd been a citizen for well over ten years on top of the first few spent living on generous working visas, but still occasionally looked the wrong way in traffic. Dirk just nodded his agreement and Jake elbowed him in retaliation.
On the other side of the table, Dave and Rose were arguing over the syrup. He couldn't understand why they only ever had the fake maple flavoured in the house when they could practically see Canada from the upstairs balconies. Rose disagreed, but Dirk was sure that was only for show since Roxy was listening to their conversation, ready to swoop in and point out that she would never allow Canadian syrup at her breakfast table. Rose disliked the imitation syrup as much as Dave did but there was simply no arguing with Roxy when it came to Canadian products. Dirk could understand it, but only because he knew the logic behind her reasoning. The kids didn't. Rose had only ever been told simple answers to questions about her father.
Roxy had managed, for eighteen years, to avoid mentioning that he was from Quebec City.
Dave drowned his pancake stack in the imitation syrup regardless.
"You did good, baby brother," Roxy said quietly, leaning her elbows on Dirk's shoulders from behind, while everyone else was absorbed in their conversations.
"Huh?"
"He's fine. I think he looks after me more than I look after him these days."
"That's not what I was thinking."
"Yeah, it was. He told me before that he told you about the name thing."
"So?"
"So you did good if that's the route he's taking. You guys are okay, you didn't fuck him up so don't start second guessing your shit now."
"Thanks, Rox."
"No, thank you," Roxy said, planting a kiss on his cheek. She reached over and snatched up a forkful of his pancakes and took off across the kitchen towards the fridge, laughing as she went.
Dirk snorted and picked up a slice of bacon with his fingers. She was probably right, like always, about everything she'd said. He knew she was already a few drinks in for the morning despite the time, but that hadn't ever made her any less perceptive. As she poured herself a glass of orange juice, he noticed Dave watching her from his place beside Rose; he only continued inhaling his breakfast when Roxy started back for the table without stopping for the vodka first.
Maybe he had done something good. He'd never really stopped to think about how his life would have turned out if he hadn't returned the call from CPS over a decade ago. He wouldn't have stayed home in New York for as long as he had. He probably would have gone back to Texas, focused on his career, called his sister for Christmases and birthdays, all while never knowing he had a kid who'd been thrown into the system.
His sister and his niece would have been totally different people. They probably would have moved to Europe to be closer to Roxy's head office, only returning to the States for major holidays every few years. Dave would have never become a Strider, then a Lalonde, then a Strider again; he would have slipped through the cracks and never known anything like family, let alone the love and affection Roxy had provided him with over the years. He never would have met Jake, never would have moved to California, never been as content with his life choices as he was over Thanksgiving breakfast.
Dave falling into his life out of nowhere had kick-started a chain of events he couldn't picture living without.
He was a horrible cliche, he realised, as he shoved the remaining bite and a half of bacon into his mouth. His entire life was a disgusting cliche wrapped in something not quite ironic, but if anyone had to be stuck with a life like that, Dirk was okay that it had been him.