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There is a brush on the table, and it doesn’t belong to Aesop.
At first glance, it is mistaken as such. Aesop’s brows furrow as he spots it in his peripheral and reaches out to pick it up, thinking how strange it is, how he never misplaces his belongings. But upon further inspection, Aesop realizes this one does not belong to his collection.
No, this one is much more suited for paint, not makeup.
Light footsteps carry Aesop across the floor, and with brush in hand, he comes to stand unassumingly in the bathroom doorway.
“Joseph,” he starts, drawing the other man’s attention up and away from the sink where he’s getting ready for bed. “Where did this brush come from?”
Joseph’s eyes widen in the slightest of ways when they settle upon the object currently in Aesop’s grasp, one Aesop might pin as recognition but he won’t assume, all the same, only for Joseph to confirm his suspicions with an-
“Oh,” Joseph’s mouth screws to the side as he speaks, directing his gaze elsewhere as he mops up the stray water droplets on the counter. “I must have left it on the table by mistake, apologies. I can put it away for you.”
“I don’t mind,” Aesop tells him. Hands over the brush, ever so reluctantly, into Joseph’s upturned, waiting palm. “I’ve just never seen it before. Why was it out?”
There is something tense that settles onto Joseph’s face- expression twisted in hesitation, lips pulled into the flat line, he scales the line of Aesop’s body, looking past him, wondering if there is any conceivable way to drop the question.
But this is Aesop, he reminds himself. Who is not asking out of judgement, only simple curiosity, who will find nothing wrong with the answer he has to give. If only that made it any easier to spit out.
“I considered- pardon,” Joseph gestures to exit the bathroom, spurring Aesop to life as he stumbles to move out of the way. “I considered painting today.”
“Considered,” Aesop repeats in understanding, noting the stark lack of paint stains anywhere they might be present had Joseph gone through with his plan. “So you didn’t?”
“No,” Joseph frowns. “I didn’t.”
If Joseph minds Aesop trailing him back into the hallway, he doesn’t say, only opens their storage closet whose hinges protest with a squeak. Tucked behind various wares- a set of dish towels, cookie cutters, a baking tray, an incomplete pack of playing cards set atop their chessboard- sits a glass mason jar. He has to push a few things aside to reach it, and when he does, Joseph sets the brush inside it where it joins the others, clearly a matching set. From the quick glance Aesop gets, the brushes are wrought with age, faded wood and stained bristles, but still sturdy, like they’d been well loved and taken care of, once upon a time, even in the hands of a child spoiled rich with any possessions they desired.
And with that, Joseph shuts the closet door.
It’s only when they reach the bedroom does Aesop realize he’s still trailing the other, unsatisfied with the blunt, caged answers Joseph has given him, knowing there is far more to the story, but he can’t bring himself to ask anything else. Not tonight. Not when Aesop has work to do. Not when Joseph idles by the bedside, bags under his eyes clearly worn and weary and needing the sleep Aesop is keeping him from by asking all and nothing about paint brushes.
“Goodnight,” Joseph is sure to keep his tone soft, much unlike the defensive lilt he’d taken just minutes ago, wrings his hands as he turns to Aesop and after a moment’s contemplation, tips forward to press a kiss against his cheek.
“... Goodnight.”
The next day, not one, but the whole jar of brushes sits stubbornly on the table.
Perhaps it’s because he’s been up all night, and perhaps really he’s never had much of a filter at all, but when Aesop pads into the kitchen in the early morning hours only to find Joseph at the table, squinting critically at the mason jar of brushes, at the strange scene he can’t help but ask.
“What are you doing?”
“Considering painting,” Joseph mutters, the same thing he’d told Aesop the night before.
“With no paint?” Aesop asks as he surveys the table. Yes, there is a stark lack of anything essential to the task. No paint, no canvas, no easel. Just some brushes.
“That is why I said ‘considering,’ yes?”
“Do we even have paint?” Aesop yawns, digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets to stave away his exhaustion.
“No.”
“Why would you buy paint brushes and no paint?” In Aesop’s eyes, it’s a logical question. “Where did you get them?”
“They were- here,” Joseph chokes out, every word a mountain to climb and the sudden shift in his voice has Aesop feeling wide awake. “When we bought the house. When we moved in. I started unpacking and just found them in the closet. I thought that I recognized them, but I said to myself, Joseph, you are being foolish. It is not possible. And yet, every time that I touch them, I am frozen, filled with an ache so indescribably strong I cannot believe they belonged to anybody other than him. And so I could not bear to throw them away. And every time I try to paint,” Joseph’s laugh is mirthless, forehead cradled in his hand. “I think about how I would be desecrating his brushes with my horrible art. This is why they sit on the table unused.”
Aesop reels with the sudden influx of information, only having asked a simple question, he blinks rapidly, trying to find a place to start, to address all of what Joseph has thrust upon him.
“They were- your brother’s?” is the first thing out of his mouth, though it seems obvious, it’s informational crucial enough that he wants to ensure they’re on the same page. Joseph’s nod tells him that much. “But that doesn’t make sense. How would they get here all the way from-?”
“I do not know,” the desperation clings to his tone. “There is no explanation. It makes me feel-“
Joseph shudders. The room is not cold.
“It makes me feel as though I am trapped back in that awful place. Where nothing made sense. There was no time- no up, or down, or left, or right. It is as though we never left at all. Are we still there?”
“No,” Aesop tells him, sure of that much, though unknowing if his words will reach Joseph, who has begun to fold in on himself like he does. “We go into town. We see other people. We see the sun rise and set. There are no games. This is freedom.”
“Then what is this?!” Joseph stands then, throwing the chair back with such a violence that it screeches against the floor, rattles the table, nearly spilling the brushes in the process. Joseph points to the jar, limbs so stiff, movements so dramatic, for the briefest of moments Aesop expects to see a sharp white claw at the end of his finger. Such a small little thing, sat so imposingly on the table. “A cruel, sick joke! Mocking me, that’s what this is!”
“Could it not be the opposite?” Aesop poses, and that seems to take Joseph aback somewhat, some of the paranoia fueled fire dampening in his eyes, a bit of confusion around the edges more than anything. “Think about it. It’s a part of your past. Part of him. A gift to remember someone you miss in a way that lets you hold onto him without…”
“Without trapping poor, unsuspecting souls in my camera, hm? Without evading death? Without being driven mad by my grief?”
“Yes.”
“I find it hard to believe that fate would grant me a gift, after all those atrocities I committed.”
Aesop sighs.
He turns his gaze away. Away from Joseph, who is stubbornly refusing to stare anywhere but the floor. Instead, Aesop looks to the window above the kitchen sink, feels the tiredness resettle in his bones twofold when he meets the sun’s morning rays streaming in despite the curtain’s best attempts to keep it out.
“It’s too early for you to be up,” Aesop says. “You normally don’t wake until noon. It’s… it’s barely seven now.”
“And?”
“And I’m tired. And I know you are too. And you shouldn’t deprive yourself of a few hours sleep by sitting at the table, allowing yourself to be haunted by paint brushes. Come back to bed. Okay?”
A nap. A nap couldn’t hurt.
“Okay.”
And if Joseph sleeps in, well past noon, stiff as board until he crumbles in unconsciousness, curled up next to Aesop’s side- well. Neither of them mind.
A modest meal, too early to be dinner but still one that feels silly to call breakfast even if it might technically be just that, they’re just so used to operating on their own schedule apart from the outside world. After weeks, months, years, they don’t know, trapped in a place so separated from reality, the furthest thing from their minds is conforming to the bounds society has set for things when to eat, when to sleep, when to rise. It would be nice to go entirely back to normal, but normalcy is something Aesop doesn’t think they’ll ever be afforded.
But there is a sense of familiarity in their routine, a sense of comfort which has always been present in each other’s company, and so when nothing more is said of the brushes, when they do not appear on the table, it is a fear of toppling that balance which keeps Aesop from bringing it up again.
“Will you come with me to the shops?” Aesop asks him instead, one evening, a few days later, where Joseph’s outburst is still a lingering memory in their minds. “I- ah, need to restock my supplies and worry I won’t be able to carry everything by myself.”
“It must be quite a lot that you are planning to buy, then.”
“So that’s…” Aesop deflates. “That’s a ‘no’?”
“I never said that, cher. Come now.” Making his way toward the front door, Joseph lifts Aesop’s scarf up off of the clothing rack, passing it to his counterpart, then moves to wrap his own scarf around his neck in order to keep out the autumn chill. It is this, the season, that Aesop suspects has swayed Joseph into leaving the house, and he utters a silent thanks, the fallen leaves of warm hues scattered on the pavement more helpful than they know.
The route to restocking his supplies is one Aesop is familiar with- he takes the same cobblestone roads each time, the same bell chiming in his ears as the door swings open, exact change already counted out within his mind before he even sets foot inside- he just has to hope that Joseph isn’t familiar enough with his route to notice that the last store they enter is not one that Aesop frequents.
True to his word, half of their purchased goods rest in Joseph’s hands, the other half in Aesop’s, and he does his best to will down his heartbeat, hoping the sweat on his hands won’t make the parcels slip from his grasp. The last thing he needs is to spill precious chemicals in the paint aisle.
They come to a stop.
“Pick some,” Aesop tells him, words too clipped to waver like they might try to.
Joseph snaps from his daze.
“What?”
It is then that he notices exactly what they’re standing in front of.
“Aesop, I-”
“You said you were considering painting,” Aesop spits out, cutting Joseph off in his hurry to explain himself, a compulsion he can’t seem to stuff down. “But we didn’t have any paint. So I went looking for a shop that sold some. I found this place- I visited it once or twice before I brought you here, just to be sure, I-” he fumbles, readjusting his hold on the goods in his hands. “I know you said you didn’t want to… eh, desecrate? But, I think- I think you should try. You don’t have to be good. You can’t be good at something until you try.”
Among the array of vibrant pigments, stunned into silence by Aesop’s words, Joseph flounders for a moment, eyes flickering between his surroundings, mouth opening and closing in a silent argument, until he pulls his mouth shut into a fine line, as though that would quell the tears welling up in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Aesop says when the pause has gone on too long for his liking. “Was this not- was this a bad idea? I should I not have-”
“No, no,” Joseph is quick to halt that line of thought, he’d be waving his hands dismissively were they not occupied. “It is fine. I just was not expecting...”
A wave of relief strikes Aesop.
“Do you… want to pick something?” He tries again. Gestures for Joseph to pass over what he’s holding. “Here. I’ll take what you’re carrying.”
“I thought you needed my help with it, no?”
Though he protests, Joseph hands it over as the corners of his lips quirk upward, a wash of amusement amongst the turmoil.
“... I just said that to get you to come with me. Didn’t think you would, otherwise.”
The soft laugh that pulls from Joseph is more a comfort than it should be, at least to Aesop, who still teeters on the edge of regret, unsure that his plan had truly been the correct way to go, despite Joseph’s reassurance.
But the bittersweet smile on his face is enough, even with wet eyes he blinks away and takes a jar of paint into his hands- a deep blue- staring distantly into its color.
“He was always better at it than I was,” Joseph laments, the container of paint a heavy weight in his hands. “At everything, really. That is why I tried to learn, when he passed away. To be connected to him, and to prove that I was good at something. To make sense of why I had been the one to survive, even though I was less deserving of it.”
When it comes to this, Aesop will keep his mouth shut. Knows that anything he might have to say on the topic of death will inevitably lead to them clashing, a conversation they’ve had countless times, and it is not one Aesop particularly wants to have again in the paint aisle of a public shop. He doesn’t think Joseph deserves to be the one in place of his brother- of course not. Doesn’t really think death is an action of ‘deserving’ at all. It is simply something that happens.
And so, he opts to toe the line of something more productive.
“I think you should do something because you want to. Not because you’re expected to, not to prove a point.”
“Just because I want to,” Joseph repeats, a muffled echo.
“Just because you want to.”
They’ve fought too long, too hard to escape that place. To live a life they want. That seems to be good enough.
There are paints and brushes on the table, and they belong to Joseph.