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⪩ ◡◡ pyrr 。

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Gender: Male
Status: In a relationship
Age: 17
Sign: Cancer
Country: United States

Signup Date:
December 17, 2020

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02/11/2021 02:56 PM 

// SOFT, SAFE
Category: Art
Current mood:  angsty

CW: ABLEISM, BRO STRIDER, BULLYING

 
[ -- Soft, Safe - chapter 1 draft -- ]
DAVE’S POV
 
As a kid, you always thought that Bro just didn't want to talk to you. Even if you had never, ever heard him speak to anyone. His constant silence drove you up a wall for so long during your childhood. Hearing how other kids' parents would talk to them about their day and communicate verbally. Your first years in school were spent being called stupid by your peers because you didn’t realize talking was a requirement. Teachers and councillors pulled you aside and asked invasive questions about your home life, seeming to believe that something was wrong at home that made you not speak. The incessant noise that was your peers talking made your head hurt, so you didn't see the point in adding to the headache. 
 
Eventually though, by halfway through fifth grade, you started speaking. At first, it was shaky, doubting pronunciations but picking it up quickly from so many years of listening to others speak. It shocked your teacher, who had looked around to see if somebody else spoke but realized that it, in fact, was you. She had smiled that sickly sweet smile that you convinced yourself was fake, confirming whatever you had said was correct. 
 
Maybe you would have found his silence less infuriating if he would have stopped waving his hands around like an idiot. But even then, something you learnt much later on, he wasn't just making meaningless gestures. He was trying to communicate with you, using whatever methods he could when he didn't have access to a phone or paper to write out what he had to say to you. Bro was always an oddity to you, and apparently everyone else as well. His silence, the fact you had not once heard him speak to you, or anyone for that matter-- was so annoying. Even then, though you denied it for years, you cared a lot about him, he was your guardian after all and he never once made an effort to harm you, unlike the stories you heard from peers about their parents. He was always trying his best to keep you out of harm's way. Sure, you still had strifes, but they were held with carefully laid out boundaries and he had always signed profuse apologies (a fact you only realized long after.) when he did hurt you once he had disinfected and bandaged your wounds, as slight as they may have been. He'd leave food in the fridge for you after those days, never too far away and sometimes when you'd return to your room you'd find a still sealed bottle of apple juice perched on your makeshift desk with a note that was just covered in light sketches of the characters of your comic.
 
His affection and words were shown through small gestures, a hair ruffle here, a firm pat on the shoulder there-- Bro never seemed to need verbal communication for you to read him. An open book, despite his near expressionlessness and careful posture. Emotions were easy to read with him, and though sometimes it got eerie to you that he seemed to never get mad at you when you were knowingly being a brat, you appreciated that you knew how he felt. He'd always strifed with you when you were stressed or mad after days at school, helping you regulate emotions that you never let truly show. You had always wanted to impress him, wanted to show him you could be expressionless as well.
 
When your peers started picking on you, he let you handle it, even when he saw you were distraught over what they had done. You had tried to toughen up, ignore their venomous words and keep your sh*t together, but it was hard. Words ebbed away at your tough shell and wormed their way through thin cracks into soft flesh underneath the barriers you put up. 
 
They ate away at your heart like maggots in roadkill long since forgotten despite it's rancid smell, blending into the background as it just becomes normal, expected even. Everything started to feel dull after those thoughts, those feelings, began to show themselves to you. It wasn't all this sudden brick wall sh*t you hear about in books and movies where the protagonist is some unfortunate tween girl getting relentlessly picked on by her peers, no, no matter how much you subconsciously related to those girls, you weren't them. At least they had parents who f***ing spoke to them. His silence wasn't so bad in your younger years, it was easier for you then. But now? It's so annoying. God, all you wanted was for him to talk to you, so what if you’d never heard him speak to anyone at all, he had to be able to speak. Right?
 
Everything always felt so slow, the analog clock ticked endlessly on the wall as you stared off. Past the wall, past this plane of reality, even. Sometimes you caught yourself daydreaming, wondering what it would sound like if your bro were to speak to you. It was practically self-torture, having convinced yourself he just would never talk to you because you somehow weren’t good enough for him to talk to you. Thoughts like that were such bullsh*t but you didn’t have any other way of rationalizing it that your brain would let you have. He was too cool, too calm and collected for him to just be mute. Only (r-slur) people were. Your brother could never, no way. He can do anything, can’t he? 
 
You just had to try harder, push yourself further. Prove yourself in the one place you had a real foot-hold in. Strifes. That was when you’d prove yourself to him, make him tell you he was proud of you. Yeah. That’s what you were gonna do, he’d have to notice then. Shove aside those dumb feelings, what’s the point in them at that point; you just need to be strong. He’d appreciate your efforts, right? It was always something he seemed to enjoy doing with you, so why wouldn’t he be proud if you took that seriously. Swordsmanship was always a skill of his, and getting to share any sort of interaction was better than the solid nothing you normally got from him. 

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