"And I want a pony." Bro was busy hoovering up the last of the icecream out of the bottom of Dave's bowl before starting on his own, prompting a frown from his brother. Dave decided to let it go, not wanting to get sidetracked.
"No, I'm serious man-" He tried again, trying to sound fairly casual.
"So am I."
"-I want to go to one of these, wait, what?"
"Nothing, keep goin'." Bro waved him on, flipping a fine spray of cold droplets from his spoon.
"You are seriously weird."
"You want to go to one of these conventions because..."
"I dunno, just 'cause."
Bro shot him a look. One that made it clear he had better want to do it for ironic purposes, or he was going to duct tape him to Cal.
Dave grimaced. "So a lot of the fans of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff are doing a panel and shit there. There's been a shit load of them asking me to go, and I'm all playin' it cool and sayin' hell naw, but I seriously want to witness the crazy in person. See what my shitty muse has wrought."
"You do know that shit rubs off. Like, gets into your hair and clothes, and then you bring it home and you can never get it out of the carpet."
"Why you gotta be hatin' on my crazy fans; they sustain my ego."
"Yeah, I know; like a kid needs a peer driven ego that size. And their hive mind saps five intelligence points per round while being in their proximity."
"You're seriously referencing D&D while knocking the ironically challenged. Seriously."
"Most of them probably grew up on D&D, bro."
"Whatever. Hey, we can rake in some sweet dough, man. I can set up an art booth, and they'd pay like, 20 bucks a pop just for some shitty hand drawn thing in pencil. You can't go wrong with that.
"Hah. Sellin' out: the pinnacle of irony." Bro scooped up another melted spoonful of the lowfat dairy treat, dribbling some on his chin.
"Hell yes. Hey, you can even, like, be a guest artist or something."
Bro stopped mowing down on his discount icecream and sent him an impassive stare.
"What?"
"I don't know if that's such- wait, no it would be awesome. I haven't been on the level for years. I can totally be the creepy as fuck invisible elephant in the room."
"... uh, what?"
Bro didn't answer for a second, too engrossed in scraping the bottom of his plastic cup with the spork. Dave could see he was vying for time; fine, he could wait. After all, it was on Bro's dime if this excursion was gonna happen. Finally, Bro fessed up. "Probably three or four years ago. I was a regular commissioned artist for some..." he waved his utensil in the air, "Puppet porn site. I got sick of it after a while, and put up some pretty nasty grim dark shit; you know, Henson with a dash of Saw, you know. For the lulz, man. People flipped the fuck out, like both good and bad. Some people were seriously into that shit, offering to pay obscene amount of money for more panels. And other people just wanted to rip my intestines from my gut. But it got pretty intense for a while."
"Okay, so typical internet bullshit."
"Well, yeah and no. This was the type of place people would be an hero, and honestly, I'm pretty sure my stuff made that place fucking certifiable. So I took off the hell out of there. I haven't really had my stuff associated with webcomics since."
"But you do online art all the time."
"Yeah, like one shot stuff. Splash pages and cover work. And my style's way different now. You would only know it was me if you'd followed my links pretty religiously." He grinned. "So hey, maybe a little cash on the side isn't a bad thing. 'Sides, I gotta use up my vacation days."
"Say what now?"
"Well. More like, I've been working overtime, and only just now I figure out they can't pay me for it. So I get to not show up to work for a while."
"Right. Hence your aggressive lounging routine."
"Hell yes. Work is for chumps, man."
Dave hesitated for a second, then took the plunge. "So we're going?"
"Yeah, why not. I haven't hawked my shit in hardcopy for a decade."
"Holy shit you're old."
"And back then I was cleaning your shit off the back of your legs with baby wipes."
Dave's poker face cracked a little. Him as a baby. Totally not cool.
"Yeah, man," Bro dug the barb in a little further. "I learned real quick a steady diet of eggrolls and chili make for some horrendous baby byproducts, not gonna lie."
"I hate you."
The whole place had the desperate, stale quality of recycled air and thousands of gallons of cleaning fluid that never truly managed to mask the scent of hundreds of bodies crammed together in one spot. Dave, a veteran of city living and the occassional motel room, barely noticed it after a few minutes. The noise was pretty phenomenal for something not a rave, and he kept getting surprised by random weird sounds you normally wouldn't hear going off, like a shrill fake schoolgirl screech, or a bunch of people meowing like cats, or a rousing chorus of proclamations declaring that it was in fact, Sparta. Weird and kind of funny, and really not too different from school, except no one was around to tell them to quiet down and stop trying to fake hump or kill each other.
Dave had to admit he had gotten a little more than he bargained for. He didn't tell his fans online he would show up, but he did make his brother book a table for them in the vendors section. That had been a memorable moment.
Bro had booked a table under, no shit, "Bro Strider. Yes, that is my real name. No, really. Jesus, it's on my birth certificate and everything, do you need a fax or something? You people are so ridiculously insensitive. Yeah, that'd be fine. Okay. Thanks." And he shot Dave a double thumbs up, coupled with a sadistic grin. If he wasn't mistaken, Dave was starting to see that Bro was starting to like messing with the convention registration guys a little too much.
Setting up was really not much of a big deal. He made some shitty word doc sign and propped it up against a blatantly displayed ghetto cash box, reading, "Pre printed prints: 5.00; Hand drawn art: 10.00; Comissioned art: 20.00; Guest art: 30.00 and up." And next to that, a stack of black and white print outs of some SBaHJ art he'd ganked from his own site, mixed in with some stuff he'd made late the night before and printed off. It was magnificent, really. The biggest joke was that Bro, an actually talented web-based artist, wasn't even the main attraction, and better yet that his stuff ran for more money. Rightly so, given that there were some pretty sick one of a kind pieces out to get bought, but it was unlikely Dave's fans would pay much attention to him, which was even greater.
It was just so many layers of irony, administered with a careful hand and a poker face. And of course, plausible deniability if it ever came down to it.
Mostly, they got a lot of weird, sometimes spiteful stares from other con-goers. It was like, "Who're these douchebags?" was written all over their faces. It helped that Bro looked like some random dude who ended up inappropriately appropriating a seat from a vending booth. After an hour of no traffic, and the novelty of the disjointed stares aimed their way, Dave scrawled a hasty "Guest Artist" sign, helpfully pointing a suggestive arrow brother-ward and set that up next to their wares sign. Perfect. Without bothering to secure their stall, they grabbed lunch.
"Do you think anybody's gonna steal our shit?" Dave asked around a mouthful of burger with a fake smoke enhanced flavor. Grody.
His brother grinned around a mouthful of burrito. "Fuck no." He chewed for a few seconds, then added, "Although, I would shed a singly, manly tear over the desparate circumstaces that poor fucker must be in."
Dave shared a smirk. Oh yes. Actually, it would probably make the entire trip worth it to have their stall hijacked, or vandalized, or something. It would make the entire joke that much funnier.
Sadly, although perhaps tellingly, their stall remained unmolested upon their return.
Then it was like the floodgates opened. SBaHJ fans seemed to fall upon them like ninjas (although upon reviewing a con schedule, he saw that the fan panel had just wrapped up, so they were left to their own devices). It took most visitors several bouncing looks between Bro and Dave to figure out if the signs were serious or mixed up or what. Dave would generally take pity on them and ask a, "Hey man, what's happening?" Which generally prompted a soft snort from Bro, a sure sign that Dave had somehow lost points in their coolkid antics. Whatever, dude could go stuff it.
One weird thing did happen. And it wasn't really the cool weird, or the good weird that came along with his ironically challenged fanbase.
It was the genuinely weird weird, the kind where you want to get up from your seat on the bus and find another because the dude near you is freaking you out.
Some tall, stringy dude with baggy clothes and a weird, acrid stench ghosted up to their table. He didn't make eye contact with either Bro or Dave, almost like he was making a point of refusing to, practicedly scanning the untidy piles of crapy MS Paint doodles. When Dave and Bro exchanged a glance, Dave caught the interloper glacing up and sending a furtive, piercing look to Bro, and then withdrawing when Bro moved to return it.
He must have stayed there for five minutes, fingering through the piles, straying to Bro's displayed works to stare fixedly at them, as if trying to somehow see through them. Other people who seemed to want to drift by changed course upon seeing him, or if they dropped by, they left shortly thereafter. There was something legitimately disturbed about the loiterer. Dave supposed it wasn't any surprise when Bro reached over with a surreptitious foot and dragged Dave's chair back away from the table a little bit, just out of arm's reach of someone on the other side.
It was just as the guy was turning away that shit got weird. He spun back, and scuttled to Bro's side of the table, one skinny hand reaching out to fasten on Bro's shirt. Everything seemed to get a little quieter, but thinking back on it, in that crowd it was unlikely anyone noticed the spectacle and stopped talking in shock; more likely, Dave's attention became laser focued on the previously weird but most unthreatening lurker. Although Dave was surprised that the guy didn't end up in a pile of disjointed human parts; his brother only cocked an eyebrow while he was jerked forward, his sharp chin getting brushed by the other guy's breath. They traded a few seconds worth of unreadable stares. Dave was on his feet and leaning over to detach him, while Bro reached under the table to keep him back, when the guy hissed, "Do you want to play a game?"
Bro's face spasmed, and he reached up to knock the guy away, breaking his hold easily. Dave could see a storm gathering on his brother's brow, but he didn't say anything as the guy coughed a laugh, and disappeared into the crowd. There was a few beats of stunned silence on Dave's end, as he looked stoically into the crowd. And then to his brother.
Who was going about stacking up Dave's printouts and securing the cashbox. Dave's heart fell, but he didn't say anything, and he studiously kept his face in its bland calm. Finally, Bro broke the terse silence. "Sorry, hombre, we're hittin' the road."
"Fuck, man, you get freaked out by some spoody motherfucker, and you're takin' off like a beaten dog? What gives?" Dave finally voiced his thoughts, crossing his arms and sending a flat stare at his sibling. Bro only tossed him a cursory glance as he put the tiny little jewelery lock on the cashbox. "Nothing gives, man. We're outta here."
Dave settled into his seat. "I'm staying." He didn't really know how to term it, but Bro's totally uncharacteristic zeal to back down from a confrontation irked him.
"Like fuck you are." Bro was suddenly closer to him, face near his. Dave jerked back in surprise, and then gave him an uncharitable scowl.
"Dude, are you on the rag? You need to chill." He made a show of stretching his legs out under the table, crossing them at the ankles, intent on telegraphing his complete lack of alarm. Which was totally not a great idea, because he fucked over his own center of balance, and ended up on his ass when Bro took the back of his chair and gave it a firm yank up. Dave was on his feet before Bro put the chair back down, stepping into his brother's personal space.
"What. The. Fuck." Standing this close to his brother, with this much indignant rage in his pubertal veins, he could see how much taller and broader Bro was than him. It really didn't help that Bro was evidently not in the mood to fight, and only ducked around him to snatch off the list of services from the front of the table.
"I'll give you the lowdown when we get the fuck out of here, but for now, just put a rocket up your ass, okay?" His voice was low and steady when he spoke, deflating Dave's outrage and replacing it with curiosity.
They were out of the center and in the blinding Texas sun, Bro's loping stride never faltering when he spoke again. It was in his normal, easy tone, and even though the incident was still fresh in his mind, Dave could barely reconcile the Bro here with the Bro at the tables.
"Didn't expect to see that jackoff. Sorry, man," and he turned to shoot a crooked, apologetic grin over his shoulder at Dave. "There's just some shit you don't wanna mess with unless you've got on gloves and a good supply of bleach, you know?"
"No?"
Bro laughed, tossing the cashbox back to Dave, who caught it, and jogged a few paces to catch up with his longer legged brother. "Remember how I was telling you about that puppet site I did some work for a while back?"
"Yeah." That was, like, a week ago, but he dimly recalled it.
"Some of the guys on there were messed up. Seriously messed up. I have no idea how they stayed out of prison. Anyway, he was one of them." He frowned lightly, stopping at a crosswalks to jab at the button. "And he was one of the guys who flipped when I started trolling the place. You know, death threats, emo whining, the whole nine yards."
Yeah, standard typical internet whining wait, "Death threats?"
"Yeah." Bro's head canted, and the sun washed out his shades. "All kinds of nice things. I didn't really put too much stock into it, until he sent me some pictures." The lights changed, and he moved, Dave scrabbling to keep up with him. They were half way across when Bro said, "I don't care if they were fake. The fact that he staged something like it was fucked up enough. And if they weren't fake, there's no way I'd be letting you stay in the same zipcode as that freak."
Dave fought between morbid curiosity, irritation that his brother was treating him like a kid, and a small amount of trepidation.
"Sides." And Bro arched an eyebrow conspiratorially at him. "He grabbed my balls."