thanks for all the help! if anyone was interested in my sad munch brother headcanons, i’ll be leaving them here <33
The oldest, the responsible one. He’s not supposed to be acting out, he has to pick up their father’s slack and watch his brothers while their mom works extra shifts to make ends meet. This makes him resentful, though he loves his brothers and does his best with them growing up. Deep down he knows it’s not their fault. Scrawny as he may be, no one’s jerking Bernie or Dave around. He may lose the fight, but they’ll never forget he did fight for them.
John helps them with their homework, plays basketball with them in the yard, lets them watch whatever they want on TV when they’re home alone. Which is often, yet not often enough. He jumped out of bed when they cried in the middle of the night so they didn’t wake up their parents, specifically their father. So as payment in the morning, yeah, he took the last of the good cereal! But he also made sure to hide a cookie in their lunch boxes. They might’ve forgotten about that.
The middle child, the overlooked and independent mediator. He wants things fair, but of course it’d be in everyone’s best interest if the scales tipped in his favor. David called him a tattletale, but he never told on him for putting a dent their father’s car with a baseball. He was better at math than his older brother, he stopped needing his help around ten but didn’t say anything because John would get in trouble for being lazy.
He’s always been smarter than he got credit for. Bernard knew how to stretch a dollar, he helped their mom with the grocery shopping. It was the easiest way to get her to spend time with him. He finished John’s math homework when he had fallen asleep at his desk after watching them all night. He helped David save and count up all his allowance for a new baseball glove.
Little details didn’t go unnoticed by him. He knew John’s closet wasn’t really a space ship, and he only hid him and Dave inside with flashlight when their parents fought. He knew why they had to be really quiet Saturday mornings, why they went to the park until noon. He knew why John and David split as soon as they could, it didn’t hurt any less when they didn’t turn back for him.
The youngest, the happy-go-lucky baby of the bunch who missed out on all the “fun”. He doesn’t remember their father, doesn’t remember how their mom held him close to her chest to hide him from the way she sobbed and cupped a bruised cheek. He doesn’t get why John and Bernie are closer even though their age gap is just as big, but he knows it has something to do with the things they won’t talk about in front of him. It’s fine, it didn’t bother him. Much. They didn’t have that much in common anyways, his brothers were nerds who liked to read and turn in their homework on time. They were always on his ass about something, it was annoying.
Yeah, sure, they came to his baseball games and taught him how to ride a bike.. and Bernie helped him make a lemon batter so he’d have a science fair award too.. and Johny helped him work on his pitch even though he really sucked with a bat, he only complained a little bit. Even when Mom stopped making his big brothers tail him everywhere, they still did things for and with him. It didn’t make him feel less like a burden, though.
So David tried to repay them the only two ways he knew how. He was good with his hands, passed wood shop with flying colors, and started working odd jobs. Bernie had been eyeballing a fancy calculator for a month before David rolled his eyes and bought it for him, saying it was an early birthday present. Johny had up and moved out, sent postcards from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine (who knew what the hell he was doing there) but when he came back and rented his first apartment, David helped him patch up the shithole. When he was old enough he left too, missing the days they all lived under one roof.
