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There’s something of a connection between twins that even becoming mortal enemies can’t shake.
Dr. L.D. Curtain stands over his brother, who is trembling in fear and rage and regret, and it’s a wonder he’s conscious at all with his narcolepsy plaguing him in a way that Nathaniel hasn’t had to think of in years.
All that messiness is tucked away now. All that emotion. Nathaniel was always the neater one. The model child.
Passed over for this trembling mess beneath his shoe. Metaphorically. He wouldn’t put his foot on another human. These shoes are much too expensive to deal with whatever his brother might’ve tracked in.
Lip curling, Curtain prepares another verbal blow about Nicky’s worthless, undeserving—
“I’m sorry!" Nicholas cries desperately. "I wish they’d adopted you and left me behind! Maybe then you would still care about me!” He curls in on himself, already wincing away from another attack.
For one second Nathaniel sees a scared little boy huddled between bookstacks away from the verbal abuse of other children. And then he collapses.
The second he wakes up, he is furious at himself for letting Nicholas trick him into an attack and the door was open and everything! But then he registers it.
The fingers in his hair, the hitched breathing, so familiar from those nights where Nathaniel would wake from horrifying nightmares to find his brother beside him, doing breathing exercises (poorly) to manage his own fear and worry to be there for Nathaniel. Nicky always had the heart between the two of them.
But no. Nathaniel can feel his own. Beating beneath his skin, terrified of what this means for the airtight control he’s clung to for so long.
“It’s okay, Nathaniel. I’ve got you, it’s going to be okay. I love you.”
Nathaniel falls back asleep before the first tear falls.
Maybe it’s not global strings he needs to pluck like a master puppeteer. Maybe he can cling to this small, frayed thread between him and his brother. Maybe that can be enough.