Chapter Text
Violet tip-toed her way up the sidewalk like Bryn would hear them from inside the home, fifty feet away.
Fifty? Really?
It's a guesstimate.
I think it'd be farther. Er, maybe closer?
I don't know how far away fifty feet is!
Then why'd you say it!?
IT WAS A GUESS! And it's not like you know either!
Sh - shush! That's not the point!
THAT'S EXACTLY THe —
This is not productive.
Violet exhaled and tracked the cars lined up along the sidewalk. Bryn's car was graciously absent.
Bryn was nice and adamant that they had three healthy meals a day and wholly, entirely not understanding about how autism, ADHD, and math blended together to be their personal ten deadly plagues all at once. He encouraged them and said that they were holding themselves back and it was nice and all, but thoroughly unhelpful when they were staring down a behemoth of a math problem that may as well been a 100ft-tall Giant for how difficult it was to tackle.
Actually, scratch that, the Giant would've been easier.
How many people do you think it'd take to knock a Giant over? Like, if they all did it at once, I mean? Cain asked.
Violet glanced over her shoulder as she slid the key in the lock, then opened the door. I guess it'd depend on the — like, I don't know, the mass distribution or whatever, right?
Oh, like — yeah, Cain agreed as an image of an impossible amount of people tackling a giant mossy stone leg, each impact sending a red ripple across the stone, flashed through their head. I guess, true.
Violet dragged their backpack down to their room and took out their math homework. Wrinkling her nose judgmentally at it, she tore it up into the smallest pieces she could manage and let it flutter into the cardboard box Cain squirrelled away when they'd first moved in.
The box lived underneath their bed, hidden behind containers of old stuffed animals and other sentimental things Bryn would never think to look through. Even if he did, Stuffed Animals had been written across each side in sharpie, complete with a lid from another container that currently stored whatever random stuff from school needed a place. The fact he'd done so much digging at all would be reason enough to turn any resulting confrontation back on him.
Cain started reciting scripts for the scenario in the back of their head and Violet left him to it as she shoved the box back into its place and rearranged the containers in front of it. She laid back, going flat on the floor, and let her spine ease against the carpet.
Glow-in-the-dark stars spotted the ceiling. It was one of the first things Bryn had done when they moved in. The bag of stars had been left near the door, and Bryn had picked them up and immediately decided that was his project for the day. The stars they had assumed would remain a random floating bag until someone got tired of seeing it and stuffed it in a box somewhere were up within the day, and glowed by that evening.
At first, they'd thought Bryn was weird. Yes, he was their older brother — but by many, many years. Bryn was a legal adult by the time they were 8, and more than happy to focus on his school — and then his job — until he got his own home and left. They didn't know him very well beyond a few fond memories of ice cream and park visits.
Honestly? They couldn't blame him.
From the little time they spent with their parents, they didn't want to stick around either.
Cain hadn't like Bryn at first. He was too attentive, watched too closely, made it a little too difficult to get away with a lie.
And then he found Bryn's wavelength and learned to work it. He'd figured out how to pitch his voice just right, what to say to mislead him, and when to let Bryn get and keep the wrong idea.
Violet was a little tired of playing those social games. She was never quite as good at them with people like Bryn anyway. She panicked and stammered when someone called her out on it, even if she was the best in the game when it came to smiling and laughing through whatever other emotions she had.
So, she let Cain scout it out. Let Cain try to figure out what was up every time they off-handedly mentioned wanting to do something, and Bryn jumped up to make it happen. At first Cain thought it was a classic case of new-family-member-itis — doing everything with and for them to try to make them like him.
But then it continued, long past the point of "trying to be friendly". It didn't make sense, either — not with how freely he'd criticize their nutritional habits (or lack thereof), or pushed them to try something new when their brain insisted they'd fail, or challenged their beliefs on the police station and the people working there.
(Those opinions didn't change. But he challenged them, and that invalidated Cain's original theory.)
Here was the thing: people trying to gain approval did anything for it. Including compromising on their values, easing up a little on things they'd normally push on, and do things even when they were uncertain about it. Bryn hadn't followed that pattern — he'd held to his stubborn belief that the police could do little to no wrong, been just as firm that they needed to drink more water than caffeine in a day, and was perfectly comfortable telling them no when he couldn't accomplish something without compromising on something else.
So it couldn't have been that.
And then they'd started talking, and Bryn had started being honest — too honest, like he trusted them with a knife at his throat after just three months — and it didn't take long for Cain come up with a new, very plausible theory. The theory that Bryn used activity like Violet used art — something to do with his hands, something to keep his mind occupied so it didn't wander into less pleasant places.
No, no. Cain said. He's still weird.
Violet laughed and ran her hands through her hair. Short, thanks to the higher ratio of masculine leaning alters, but dyed blue at the tips on Violet's request. (Technically, Cain had considered dying it blue all the way, but conceded so Violet would have something with their hair).
Something rattled at the door. Violet jolted up and glanced over her shoulder at the door. Is Bryn home already?
Check the phone, Cain whispered, but he was already moving, and, okay, apparently it was his turn now.
Can you remember to water my plants? Violet worried.
"In a moment," Cain muttered. He grabbed the knife they kept between the bedframe and the wall and stood behind the door, ear pressed to it, listening.
The doorknob jolted, clicked, and the door opened.
A moment of fabric shuffling, a thump, and a light sigh that was unmistakeably Bryn's in the way it tapered off.
Cain quietly slipped the knife back into its spot.
Now? Violet asked.
"Yeah," Cain muttered. He grabbed the bright yellow cup sat on the corner of their desk and stepped into the hall.
"Hey, Cain." Bryn nodded in greeting from his spot on the carpet, crouched over his bag. "How was school?"
Cain turned left into the kitchen (or right? Directions) and bit his tongue as the cold tile bit his feet. "It was fine," he shrugged, positioning the cup beneath the spout and turning on the water.
"Fine, huh?" Bryn asked. He laughed softly. It was the same laugh every time he thought their scarcely offered information was amusing, but it still set Violet's nerves on edge and made Cain's grip on their cane tighten. "That's all? Nothing fun happened, really?"
"Not that I can think of," Cain shrugged. They'd switched recently enough he could get the basic points of the day, but none of it was particularly exciting and he couldn't understand most of the concepts taught well enough to carry a conversation about it.
"Wow." Cain's shoulders tensed with the word, but Bryn just barrelled on like he didn't even register how it sounded. "Come on, you've gotta give me more than that. Did you make any new friends? Hear any gossip?"
Cain rolled his eyes and shot Bryn a pointed glance over his shoulder. "Unlike some people, I prefer to stay out of drama."
"Ouch!" Bryn called as Cain walked back down the hall and back into their room.
Violet's plants sat on their dresser just beneath the right half of the window, the left half covered by the blackout dome over their bed they liked to call a "tent". Cain could never remember the specific names or pretty much anything about them except that you could take a leaf off one and it would grow a new plant.
One of them was placed directly in the windowsill — Because it needs six hours of sun and that window gives it partial shade the rest of the day, Violet happily informed him — and the other was positioned on the dresser a little behind the wall, so some of the light was blocked. Cain thought he remembered something about it having…filtered sunlight? Less sun? One of those.
Indirect, filtered sunlight, or it'll burn its leaves, Violet corrected as Cain carefully poured water into the succulent. Its leaves curved in a tight-knit circle, like a pale green rose. The soil soaked to a deep brown before Cain stopped and watered the second plant, rich green with rich red veins snaking through the middle. He waited until it was wattered about the same amount as the first one, then set the cup back near the door where it would be loudly neon enough they'd remember to check the plants for any tending they had to do the next day.
"I don't understand this," Cain muttered as he pulled about six squares off their personal paper towel roll — don't judge him, he didn't want water on their dresser — and folding three of each over each other enough to provide padding. "Isn't the whole point of having a drainage tray so the water doesn't leak onto the dresser?"
Yeah, Violet said.
"But then we have to dump the drainage tray, so we have to pad the bottom of the pot so it doesn't get water on it anyway." Cain picked up the red and green plant's pot and slid the drainage tray out, quickly replacing it with one of the towel paddings.
It's better than the water dumping straight onto the dresser, Violet pointed out. You want to clean up that mess instead?
Cain sighed as he repeated the process with the succulent. "No," he said. "I just think it's stupid."
He took the drainage trays to the kitchen and poured them, rinsed them, and sat them on the counter to dry. Violet said he didn't have to clean them. He didn't care.
He pulled up his phone and started scrolling Fumblr. It wasn't long before Bryn noticed and decided it was a crime that he personally had to rectify.
"Don't you have homework to do?" Bryn asked from the couch.
Cain sighed. "I got here like, 5 minutes before you did —"
"And that's why you should get a jump on it," Bryn said. "It keeps your motivation flowing."
If by motivation, you mean motivation to throw ourselves off a bridge. Cain didn't know who said that. Right now he was just inclined to agree.
Instead, he groaned softly. "Can I let the trays dry, first? Please?"
"Nope." Bryn hopped to his feet. "You're just coming up with reasons to not do it." He walked over and nudged Cain toward the hall. "Come on, I'll even help you start."
Cain groaned. He'd tried damn near every trick in his book to avoid homework. Bryn was annoyingly immune to all of it. Outlasting him barely even worked on the days that they just couldn't do it — it turned out being stubborn was a family trait.
Cain almost shuddered at the thought. Genetic trait. That was a bit more accurate.
"I don't want to," Cain complained.
"I know, I know," Bryn said in a tone that seemed only half-sympathetic and entirely too amused with their suffering.
Two hours later, homework was done, siblings were starving, and Cain desperately had to go to the bathroom.
"What do you want to eat?" Bryn had moved to the living room about halfway through, abandoning Cain to his cruel fate of Homework, so he could work on filling out reports or whatever police did at the end of their days.
"Edibles!" Cain called back, jumping into the bathroom and unintentionally shutting the door a bit too hard.
Something dropped onto his hand.
Cain jerked, pinpointed a small brown spider, and screamed.
His nerves lit on fire as he panicked, colors flashing by in swirls as he whipped around trying to shake the spider off, and eventually it landed on the floor and Cain half-crashed into the door trying to jolt away from it.
"What? What is it?" Bryn asked, beside him in the hallway.
"It was —" Cain glanced up at Bryn, one eyebrow lifted and looking at Cain like he was acting bizarre, and Cain exhaled. "Uh…just a spider. It startled me."
"Really?" One side of Bryn's mouth quirked up in an amused smirk. "A spider scared you that badly?"
Cain hunched his shoulders. "Wh — shut the fuck up! It fell on me! I didn't know what it was!"
"Apparently, you do." Bryn said, unashamedly grinning now. "It was a spider."
"Did and do are two different tenses, Bryn!" Cain snapped, and thank Violet for remembering what tenses are.
"Tenses, huh? Oh, you're bringing out the fancy words." And if Cain wasn't perfectly and painfully aware of every fighting thing Bryn knew and just how much he had over him in raw strength, he'd have punched him in the face by now.
"Can you just fix the bathroom please!?" Cain snapped, and with no lack of teasing, Bryn obliged.
They went out and got cheap fast food burritos and quesidillas that night, and past the cramps in his legs Cain didn't even notice two little dots on his hand, and the sting under his skin.