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It was several months after Ingo had returned from Hisui. He and Emmet were back to working at the subway full time now.
It had been a frustratingly slow and boring day, but it was finally coming to an end. Emmet was even more eager than usual to meet up with Ingo and walk home. Ever since Ingo’s return, both twins had suffered from separation anxiety, so they disliked being apart anyway. But Emmet had woken up early that morning due to a particularly bad nightmare, making him feel even clingier than usual.
Surprisingly, though, that wasn’t the only driving force behind his impatience this evening. No, he had something else on his mind. Something verrrrry important.
Pizza.
He’d walked past some Depot Agents who were ravenously tearing apart a large pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust about two hours ago. The smell infiltrated his nostrils and filled his head with cheese.
Well, he wished, anyway. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his subconscious jumped at the chance to latch onto something other than the nightmare that had been playing on loop in his head all day.
The craving grabbed him, shook him by the shoulders, and hadn’t let go since.
Emmet steamrolled ahead with an intensity that made passersby scramble to get out of his way.
“Goodness, part of the subway must be down or something. I’ve never seen him power walk that fast before!” said an agent.
Emmet was going to ignore her, but he feared that doing so would cause unnecessary worry among the subway employees. So he stopped, turned around swiftly, and called, “I am Emmet. The subway is in order. My stomach is not!” before darting away into the sunset again.
Ingo immediately noticed Emmet’s demeanor when he rounded the corner. But before he had a chance to ask about it, Emmet firmly grabbed him by the arm, stared directly into his soul, and whispered, “Pizza.”
Ingo chuckled. It wasn’t like Emmet to be so direct when he wanted something, so this must have been an incredibly urgent craving. “Alright then, pizza it is. Goodness. You did not allow me to get a single word in!” he teased, smiling with his eyes in the way that Emmet had missed terribly. He had only recently begun to do it again.
Ingo’s first clue that something else may be going on with Emmet was his reluctance to let go of his arm. Ingo, Emmet, and Elesa were all quite happy to hang onto each other in private, but they rarely did so in public unless one of them was feeling overwhelmed. He honestly had no problem with them walking to the pizza place like that, but its entrance was a fickle one which required the twins to unlink from one another to fit through it. As excited as Emmet was to pick up the pizza- he’d practically dragged them both there- he paused at the door and frowned at it. He eventually released Ingo’s arm and the two of them walked inside, but his energy seemed to have dampened.
The two of them eventually made it back to their house and sat across from each other at the dinner table, nothing between them except the coveted, greasy box and a couple of paper plates. Emmet perked up again as soon as he took his first bite, much to Ingo’s relief.
“Tooooooo good!” he chirped, proceeding to obliterate his half of the pizza.
For the first time since Ingo’s return, Emmet finished his dinner before he did. In the past, Ingo had always eaten unbearably slowly, but in Hisui, he had to learn to scarf down every morsel he came across. He’d learned quickly that you can’t do that with the processed foods of the modern world and not expect to have some intestinal issues. Still, it was a difficult thing to unlearn. He looked up from his final slice and saw Emmet watching him, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the strange depth swirling within his eyes at the moment, suggesting the presence of an intense emotion that didn’t necessarily fit the situation.
“Hey, Emmet,” he said.
“Yes, brother?”
“I think…I think your head is full of cheese.”
Emmet snorted. His brother’s off-the-wall comment had completely caught him off-guard. He feigned a serious expression before deadpanning, “I am Emmet. My head is full of cheese,” and nodding solemnly.
They both laughed.
His eyes widened suddenly. “I just remembered something.”
Ingo raised an eyebrow. “Should I be concerned?”
“No. Maybe? I think I may have accidentally convinced some agents that I was running home to take a Snorlax-sized shit.”
Thankfully, Ingo had just swallowed. If he hadn’t he may have come close to choking on his pizza as he broke out into his booming laughter.
“Oh, Arceus,” he said between chuckles, “What did you say to them?” he didn't have the heart to be angry about his brother's potty mouth at the moment.
“I said, ‘I am Emmet. The subway is in order. My stomach is not!’”
“Emmet!” he tried to scold. He was laughing too hard to be taken seriously, though.
“I didn’t want them to think something was wrong! They were getting anxious because of how fast I was walking. I guess I looked like I was on a mission.”
“You always look like you’re on a mission, though,” he joked.
“Good. It keeps people out of my way.”
As he said that, his eyes deepened again, and Ingo could tell he was thinking about something else entirely. Ingo finished his pizza and the two of them cleaned up in silence. The older twin kept stealing glances at the younger in an attempt to figure out what was going on with him.
He came to the conclusion that Emmet needed something, but usually, Ingo could easily figure it out by watching for Emmet’s tells. For example, if he needed subtitles on the television, he tended to cross his arms and lean toward it, furrowing his brow in concentration. He was never good at expressing when he needed or wanted anything, but that was fine by Ingo. He enjoyed figuring it out.
There were times where not even Emmet could figure out what he needed. The two of them came up with a little game to help them both figure it out.
It always started with Ingo asking, “Did you take your medication?” and Emmet could never remember, so they’d go check his medication together. They always found that he’d taken it.
Then he’d go down the line bringing Emmet various things; a glass of water, a snack, a Joltik, a blanket. Sometimes, he’d bring Emmet the strangest and most random things he could find just to make him laugh, like a pair of Elesa’s stilettos.
If it wasn’t any of the serious things and none of the silly things made him laugh, Emmet probably just needed a nap. Of course, he would insist that he wasn’t tired, and Ingo would call bullshit. Ingo would then proceed to pull Emmet into his chest and talk about anything he could think of, and Emmet would completely melt against him within ten minutes.
Well, this wasn’t one of those times where Emmet needed help figuring out what the problem was. In fact, Ingo suspected that he didn’t want him to know he needed anything at all, despite him being so forward about his dinner preference that evening.
They sat down together on the couch to watch some television before bed. Here was where Emmet’s tells were most likely to shine through. He was distracted by whatever he was watching and his guard was down because he felt safe. So Ingo was careful to watch him closely without letting him know what he was doing. He eventually noticed that Emmet was subconsciously moving closer and closer to him. Ingo had to fight to keep himself from chuckling when he realized what was going on. This new hint coupled with Emmet’s reluctance to let go of him earlier made the situation pretty obvious to Ingo.
Emmet wanted cuddles.
Ingo knew, though, that he should probably get them both into a bed first because they’d probably fall asleep. He knew from bitter experience that both of their spines were incompatible with the couch.
He reached over and squeezed Emmet’s hand lightly. “I am going to take a shower. When you are ready for bed, come to my room.”
Emmet’s face lit up and he nodded.
Sure enough, Emmet showed up at his bedside with damp hair and a pillow about thirty minutes after Ingo got out of the shower. Ingo already had the main light out and his lamp on, and he had scooted closer to the wall to make a space for Emmet.
The older twin patted the bed and the younger one happily climbed in, donning the brightest smile he’d worn all evening. Both of them were laying on their sides so that they could talk to each other easier.
“I am Emmet,” he said. “I was foolish. I had a nightmare last night. I could not go back to sleep. I should have told you. I had reasons for not telling you. They didn’t make much sense.”
“What were your reasons?”
“When you were gone, I was weak. Certain people made me feel ashamed of it. They told me I needed to learn to care for myself. That I was holding both of us back. So I was trying to take care of myself like they said. Except I do take care of myself. I always have. I am my own person, but that doesn’t mean we can’t support each other. I take care of myself. You also take care of me. You take care of yourself. I take care of you. Independence doesn’t require you to isolate yourself from your loved ones. I realized that in the shower. I wish I’d realized that earlier today.”
“If you’re holding us back, then I guess I am as well,” Ingo retorted with some bitterness in his tone. “It would be different if we were sisters, I think. No one says those things about Elesa.”
“And they shouldn’t,” Emmet added.
Ingo nodded in agreement. “We are a two-car train and we always will be. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.”
“We always will be,” Emmet echoed.
“So anyway, you said you had a nightmare last night. How are you feeling now?”
“It was a verrrrry bad one. To be honest, it messed with me all day. Aside from when I was fixated on the pizza,” he added cheekily. “I feel better at the moment. You’re right here with me. Everything feels more manageable when you’re with me.”
"I feel the same way about you," Ingo replied, warmth bubbling in his chest.
Emmet took one of Ingo’s hands and used both of his to examine it. He lightly traced his own fingers over every line, scar, and callous. He used his thumbs to feel out Ingo’s metacarpal bones and knuckles and to rub circles into his palm. Ingo’s arm had gone completely limp and the rest of his form was relaxing rapidly. Emmet could feel his pulse slowing down through his wrist. He made a mental note to go after his brother’s hands more often. The man was practically purring with contentment.
Emmet found it all very fascinating. Their hands, like every other part of them, had been identical before. They were still quite similar. The basic shapes were still the same; they both had long, lithe fingers and thin wrists, but the terrain was different. Ingo’s hands were now worn and rugged. A couple of his fingers bent at odd angles, suggesting that he’d broken them at some point. Emmet’s hands remained smooth and even with the exception of a long, slightly curved burn scar on the top of his left hand. He’d been thirteen years old and had entered a baking phase. He was pulling a red velvet cake out of the oven when he stumbled and accidentally got the back of his hand caught against the top oven rack. He pulled it out hastily and somehow managed to not drop the cake in the process. Ingo, who had seen what happened, immediately grabbed Emmet’s hand and shoved it underneath the faucet of the kitchen sink, turning on the cold water. Emmet had heard since then that you weren’t supposed to do that with a burn, but it didn’t hurt much at all after that and it healed nicely.
Emmet also found Ingo’s reaction intriguing, curious as to why he was responding the way he was. He wanted to ask about it, but Ingo was smiling with his eyes once again, which was even more clear now that they were closed, and he didn’t want to disturb that. Besides, he had a pretty good idea already. He knew that people’s hands had some of the most nerve endings on any part of the human body, so they were already extra sensitive. And judging by the observations Emmet had made, Ingo had used them a lot to survive in Hisui. It probably felt psychologically healing to trust someone else with them, like letting your mother treat a scrape on your knee.
They both fell asleep soon after that, but unfortunately, poor Emmet fell into the grips of another nightmare.
Ingo was woken not by Emmet’s barely-audible whimpers, but by his sweaty death grip on his hand and his violent trembling.
His first thought was that he was pissed at himself for falling asleep before giving Emmet all the attention he’d planned to. The second was he needed to wake him up.
So he sat up and leaned over his brother, firmly taking a hand in each of his own. He kept squeezing and releasing Emmet’s hands while softly calling his name, and eventually he managed to pull him up into a sitting position.
Next, he needed to calm him down. He pulled him against him again and held him tightly. He synced his calm breaths with Emmet’s erratic ones and whispered, “Try to match my breathing, okay?” before gradually steadying his own. He had them both breathing at an exaggeratingly slow, yet comfortable pace after a while, and Emmet’s shaking subsided. Ingo could feel his twin beginning to relax against him.
“I woke you,” Emmet eventually mumbled.
“That’s alright,” Ingo assured. “What were you dreaming about?”
Emmet slowly looked up at him, a telltale mischievous glint in his eyes. “Cheese,” he said.
“Cheese?” Ingo asked skeptically.
Emmet chuckled softly. “No. I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t actually remember. I can guess, but I don’t remember.”
Ingo hummed in acknowledgement before pulling them both back onto the bed, intending to lull his brother back to sleep. “I knew your head was full of cheese.”
“I am Emmet. My head…My head is…Full of cheese.”
“It sure is, buddy,” he said. “Bring your cheese-filled head over here.”
Emmet plopped his cheese-filled head over Ingo’s heart.
Ingo carded a hand through his brother’s silvery hair, earning him some incoherent but happy-sounding prattling from the cheese head. He kept doing it for a few minutes and Emmet eventually quieted down. Ingo thought he’d finally fallen asleep until he let out a soft whine.
“S’matter, hm?” he asked patiently, pushing the hair out of Emmet’s eyes so he could look at his face.
“Breadsticks…We should have gotten some. Breadsticks. Yeah.”
“Ah. You want me to talk to you, correct?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Mm. Alright,” he replied. He started relaying all the harmless mischief Chandelure had gotten herself into that afternoon because she was bored. She especially enjoyed startling rude passengers, and that day she decided that six separate passengers were not behaving themselves.
Emmet absolutely loved listening to Ingo talk, especially when he was trying to sleep. It kept his mind from wandering into dark places, and the vibrations from his voice soothed him. It was also a constant, steady reminder of his presence, reassuring him that he wasn’t going anywhere.
He was out before Ingo had finished talking about Chandelure’s second victim of the day.
“Goodnight, cheese head,” he mumbled, not far from drifting off himself.