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It all starts with the JabbawockeeZ.
Back when Isaac hadn’t even hit puberty and Camden was just starting college, the two had a weekly “brother bonding night” where Camden would spend the night back home and drive back to his college in the morning. Isaac loved those nights best, especially because it meant that Camden would give their dad something to brag about to the people at his work.
The last year, when Camden was finishing his last year of college before he went off to the Army, they found “America’s Best Dance Crew” while flipping through channels. Isaac doesn’t really watch reality TV (mostly because of how much his dad yells about how insipid they are and how they’ll rot your brain) but before he can tell Camden they should probably switch the channel he hears Camden laugh.
“Whoa, Isaac, look at these guys!”
Camden is pointing to the TV screen, so Isaac figures that as long as both of them are watching he’ll be safe.
Isaac has listened to the radio enough to know that the song the dancers are performing to is called “Apologize,” but he doesn’t remember who sings it. The coolest thing, though, is their costume: they’re wearing black dress shirts and white ties and are donning red baseball caps, but the best part is that hey’re all wearing these freaky white masks that cover their entire face. Isaac immediately likes them. He likes how they all move, this almost robotic jerk to their movements, and how in sync they all are with each other. Isaac doesn’t really know much about dancing, outside of the school dances he goes to or the dancing in the old black and white movies his mother used to watch, but these guys don’t move like either of those. He’s not even sure this would be in the same universe as them.
When the dance finishes to loud applause, Camden turns to Isaac with a huge grin on his face.
“Little bro, I’ve found out what we’re watching on Thursday nights.”
It becomes a tradition after that. The JabbawockeeZ are Isaac’s favorite, although Camden likes Kaba Modern. Isaac’s happy about cheering on different teams, especially when every week both teams have been moving on. He’s especially happy during the Michael Jackson challenge, because he even gets Camden to admit that the JabbawockeeZ are amazing. The best part, though, is that Camden’s been looking up basic dance moves online, and the two will practice after each episode.
When the final episodes start happening, Isaac thinks he’s gotten pretty decent at the moves he’s been practicing, but he also starts to worry about the teams going home. When Kaba Modern is in the bottom two for the first time all season, his heart is in his throat all week, and he almost cries when they’re eliminated right before the final; before the first tear can threaten to be shed, though, Camden puts his arm around his shoulder and says, “well, now we can both cheer on the same team for the finale, right?” and Isaac is too happy to think about anything else.
The finale is amazing. Isaac gets to see JabbawockeeZ and Kaba Modern dance together on that big stage. When the JabbawockeeZ win, Camden and Isaac are cheering so loudly that their dad comes in to make sure no one’s died. When Camden starts to tell their dad what’s going on, he gets told that, honestly son, I don’t care about your dancing show, but I’m glad you’re happy about it. Isaac’s too busy basking in the win to really care one way or another.
The next few weeks before summer they just practice what they’ve been learning, and talking about the next season coming up. Camden’s going to be shipped off in May, a month before the next season, and while Isaac promises Camden to watch it for him, Isaac doubts that he’ll be able to, because while Camden might be able to get their father to okay the show, Isaac doubts he can do it on his own.
Camden dies in November, just shy of six months into his deployment. The Army can’t tell them what happened, but the entire town calls Camden a hero. Isaac gets used to the sympathetic looks from other people, and this sort of angry-blank face on his father.
It’s tense in the house for a while, neither of them really knowing what to do with each other, and the tension only breaks when Isaac’s dad loses his job at the high school right after the summer session.
Years from now Isaac will tell Derek Hale that it wasn’t all bad with his father, and that is true; but the year Isaac enters high school is the worst he’s ever felt. Isaac comes home to a worse and worse situation, and after the dozenth time he gets locked in the basement freezer he just… breaks. He doesn’t look anyone in the eye, and spends his hours at school trying to think of ways to appease his dad. This mostly amounts to doing all the chores while his dad watches him and never, ever doing anything that reminds his father of Camden. Sometimes, this works. But only sometimes.
Isaac’s father knows that not letting Isaac go to the school dances will look more suspicious than having him stay home, but when he goes to the Winter Formal, watching Stiles Stilinski dance with Lydia Martin and Scott McCall completely embarrass Coach Finstock, he never steps a foot on the dance floor, standing up by a wall close enough to the punch bowl to look social but not enough for anyone to actually talk to him. He is almost relieved when the entire school goes nuts after Lydia gets attacked, although he does feel bad for her.
(When he gets told to go to a rave and basically grind up on Erica, he gets back on the dance floor. But that’s a story for another day.)