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If you asked Bo to pinpoint the exact moment in his childhood he knew his parents would never love him he wouldn’t be able to tell you. The entirety of his young life was a blur of constant disapproval and physical abuse that melted into an ongoing festering resentment towards his brother and a pit in his chest caused by the lack of approval from his parents, his mother mostly. He was working on getting past the issues with Vincent, because really his twin hadn’t been spared the harshness of their parents coldness, their obsession with perfection, he just hadn’t been nearly as much a target as Bo.
And that’s what it was. Obsession. Victor Sinclair settled for nothing less than perfection and success and his own shortcomings festered within him more and more every day. Especially after the twins were born. The scarring on Vincent was nothing but a reminder of his own failures to operate to his own standards and his inability to access equipment needed to minimize the damage since, legally speaking, Dr. Sinclair had his license revoked years ago. And Trudy was an artist, every detail had to be finely articulated, every angle tasteful, everything in place and meticulous and beautiful. Vincent wasn’t beautiful, not to Trudy, but he had an advantage that earned him their parents approval if not their love.
Vincent couldn’t make much noise. Could barely speak and it was garbled when he did. Overall he’d been the less fussy of the two and the apparent calmness appeared to the Sinclairs as an obvious sign that he was the more behaved twin. Bo was often punished for so much as getting too loud while playing, or being too rough, and the more he was punished the more he lashed out. But things didn’t really take a turn for the worse for him until Vincent began showing an interest in art and a fair bit of natural talent. It immediately cemented Vincent as the good twin, the favorite.
Or as much of a favorite as a child could be when your parents refused to look at your face and forced you to cover up. Victor barely even looked in his failure’s direction. But Trudy, oh Trudy clung to that, to the hope that if the son whose looks were to her standards but whose behavior she found deplorable then maybe she could find some sort of salvageable beauty in Vincent. But there was one moment that stood out to Bo, maybe not as the definitive moment of acceptance to the fact his folks would always view him as a disappointment, but certainly a moment he knew his mother would never accept him.
He and Vincent had been getting along relatively well, despite Bo’s mounting resentment and frustration with his twin that caused him to lash out. His wrists were wrapped in gauze, dried blood itchy against his skin, and Vincent was beside him at the coffee table in the living room. They had a pack of crayons between them and some old colored pencils and were just coloring and sketching and making a general mess. Vincent had made a simple drawing of their mother, his lines clean and clear even if he hadn’t yet mastered shading and texture and the detail he would later in life. He watched Bo meticulously color in a lopsided vase, noting his twin getting frustrated with the details of the flowers in it and knocked on the table once to get Bo’s attention.
Vincent tapped his paper and then Bo’s and made a hand motion like he was holding a pencil and then tapped the flowers. Bo understood what he meant, probably due to some weird twin thing, something that persisted in life even once Vinny learned proper sign language. Bo didn’t bother beyond a few basics just to not feel left out once Lester came along and years and years into their future picked up a few things to talk to his older brother. But Bo didn’t need it, never had and never would, he would always understand what Vincent meant, words or no words.
“I can do it. I don’t need help. Roses is just hard ta draw.” Young Bo had protested, swatting Vincent’s hand away. Vincent nodded and sat back to watch more. A few more sloppy attempts and Bo gave up.
“Fine! If I draw the vase will you do the rose and we can give it ta ma together?”
Vincent nodded eagerly and let Bo crumple his fourth piece of paper and redraw the vase and color it in and then went over to get a book off the shelf. It was just a gardening book of their mother’s one that Vincent figured might have a good picture of a rose in it to work off of. He couldn’t quite reach it and he’d been scolded once for dragging a chair across the hard wood floors and scuffing them, so the young boy had just hopped up, bracing his foot on the second shelf and hauling himself to get the book down. The shelf creaked ominously under the added weight, but Vincent brushed it off. He almost had the book, the shelf would hold for a second. Except it didn’t. The shelf breaks with a loud crack and Vincent falls back, clinging to the bookcase. The entire thing wobbles violently back and forth and Bo rushes forward, using every bit of strength his small child body has to steady it before it falls on his twin. The damage is done though, and Victor comes in angrily shouting.
“What was that noise?!” And all he sees is a broken shelf, Vincent on the ground, mask knocked aside, and Bo gripping the bookcase as one of their dad's glass jars of something slides off and shatters from the shaking. Trudy is right behind him and she rushes to get Vincent out of the glass.
“Vincent! Are you okay? Bo, what have I told you about being rough with your brother! You could have damaged his mask!”
“Forget the mask look at my bookcase! I've had it with your recklessness and attitude. Pick that up, boy, now!”
“Bu-but I-”
“Now!”
Bo steps away to get the broom from the kitchen but their father grabs his shoulder. “You can get the bigger pieces with your hands. Maybe it'll teach you to be careful if you're focusing on not losing a finger.”
Vincent frantically shakes his head, trying to protest. He holds the book up for their mom to see and points to himself and the shelf.
“Oh sweetie, it's okay. I know you were just trying to get a book down. You can't help that Bo pushed you.”
Vincent shakes his head again but their mom ignores him and puts his mask back on for him. Meanwhile their father notices the multiple crumpled up papers.
“You wastin paper too boy? You think we're made of money?”
Bo winces from his spot on the floor as he gathers the last of the glass. “I was drawin. Vinny was helping me…we was gettin the book ta look at pictures of flowers.”
Vincent nods and presents their mother with the half done picture of a crooked vase with a few scraggly flowers and points to Bo. Their mother laughs, crumpling the drawing.
“Oh, Bo, honey, quit wasting your time and our paper. Stick to whatever it is you're good at and leave art to your brother.” She scolds, throwing the drawing and paper scraps away.
Vincent whines, distressed and tries to pick the drawing out again but Trudy smacks it out of his hands. “Leave it, sweetheart. Come on, let's get started on lunch and you can help mommy work on her newest project. Bo, clean this mess up and go to your room and don't come out until supper.”
Their father nods and scoffs “And I hear a single fit outta you boy and you're gonna be outside pickin a switch before you can blink, ya hear me?” He adds, walking off and leaving Bo to clean.
He remembers not even having the energy to argue it that time. Something about his mom's casual dismissal, the way she so carelessly tossed his drawing out, had hurt worse than being slapped. Then the time out chair or getting hit with a switch. He wasn't good at art, wasn't good enough for her, wasn't good enough for their dad. It was his fault the shelf broke, his fault the glass broke, his fault everything was the way it was, even when it wasn't.
He cleans everything up, not caring about shards of glass or splinters. He stacks the books that fell up neatly. He puts the crayons away after snapping all of Vincent’s favorites, just because he could and because it would upset the other, because if Vincent hadn't climbed that bookcase this wouldn't happen. If it was just Bo this wouldn't happen. If the bookcase had just fallen-!
He stops that thought immediately with a sick feeling in his stomach and goes to their room and hollers and kicks and throws things against the wall. Frustrated and hurt and bitter. He can't help it. As long as he can remember he's had to bottle things up. Couldn't make too much noise, couldn't get too rowdy, couldn't cry too much or it was a tantrum, couldn't ask for things more than once or he was selfish. So when things did spill over it was violent and their parents always responded with violence.
Their dad's footsteps thunder across the house and drag Bo outside by his ear and he picks his switch after kicking and screaming and earning himself a solid cuff over his ear that makes them ring and then takes his spanking with barely any sound and no tears and then gets dragged back inside to their room where he's tossed inside and their father stands and lectures him about making messes and being a child and a brat and how he breaks everything and should be more like Vincent while he supervises Bo cleaning and then slams the door to leave Bo alone with a final sentence of “and you'll be lucky if you get dinner at all tonight, so I hope you liked your breakfast this mornin, because that's all you get!”
Bo ignores him and sits on his bed, backside on fire from his spanking and pulls his knees up and buries his head. Hours later, after dinner, Bo knows because it's dark out now and he smelled it cooking, the door creaks open and Vincent creeps in. He approaches slowly and holds out a roll of bread he saved from dinner and a cookie.
“Go away, freak, I don't want yer damn cookie.” Bo huffs, kicking his foot out to shove him away. Vincent takes the kick and barely moves. He sets the roll and the cookie on the nightstand by Bo's bed and digs into his pocket and smooths out the crumpled drawing from earlier. Now with some roses drawn into the vase. They're simple line drawings colored in with pink and red. Vincent doesn't even look upset by the fact that the red crayon had been broken, which makes Bo more frustrated.
Technically they were born at the same time, had to be, but Bo always thought of himself as the older twin. The one in charge. Especially when Vincent looks so meek and apologetic as he hands the drawing over. Bo tears it in half.
“I don't want your stupid drawing either! Just leave me alone! This was yer fault, you stupid freak!”
Vincent lowers his head and nods once. He knows. He's sorry. He just wanted to help. He picks up the pieces of the drawing and puts them away in his own nightstand.
“You may as well throw that shit out. You heard mama….I ain't good at that art stuff anyway….I ain't good at anything.”
Vincent shakes his head in disagreement, but Bo already tucked himself under the blankets for bedtime. Back to his twin. The anger has bled out of him by now as it finally sunk in that no matter what he did, even when he tried to be good and make his mama proud he wasn't ever gonna be good enough. And it's also the night that turned the bitterness and envy he had for his brother into a years long resentment that festered under his skin. Driving the wedge between them in a way that Bo couldn't explain.
He needed his brother, but he couldn't stand him. For every time Vincent tried to reach out Bo pushed back. Because every time Vincent tried to help it just got worse, and eventually Vincent stopped trying at all and it just made Bo angrier, watching his twin stand to the side with his head down, lone blue eye turned away as Bo took the abuse and eventually turned it back onto Vincent. And maybe this moment wasn't the exact moment he realized his parents hated him, but it was a moment that stood out and maybe it's because it changed his and Vincent's dynamic for years.
****
Bo didn’t like looking back on their shit show of a childhood. It all blurred together into a long string of awful memories and angry voices and skin raw from straps and stinging welts from blows taken from either hand, belt, or switch, b ut picking through what was left of Ambrose weeks after the fire to see what could be salvaged before he and his brothers left for good was tugging at the aching hollow empty spot in his chest that would always crave his parent's approval. Their mama's more than anything. The museum was gone, the wax figures gone, the town stripped, and scorched. Their house, oddly, was mostly untouched. Only the basement and part of the lower level were affected by the inferno.
Bo's injuries, especially his face, ached. His jaw had almost been broken and Vincent had to reset it and his nose. There's still a good chance it had been cracked somehow and his ribs ached.
The arrow barely missed his heart too and Vincent had a limp from being stabbed in the thigh and a nasty gash from being almost impaled when he fell through the museum and landed on Bo. His mask was gone too so he was scraping up any wax he could to sculpt a new one but most of the wax and tools were destroyed in their basement.
Lester kicked over the broken remains of the high chairs.
“There ain't nothing worth shit here, let's just git gone already.” The youngest spits. The redhead's detachment to this place is to be expected, Ambrose had never been home for the ignored youngest child.
“Let's check the house at least. Tell Vinny to stop fuckin round in the wax death trap.” Bo grumbles, gritting his teeth as he makes his way up the steep slope to the house. Vincent materializes behind Lester almost on cue, an almost supernatural ability to sense Bo's moods and thoughts, as cliché as that is. Most of Vincent’s stuff had been in the basement workshop where he practically lived 24/7 but Bo risks the charred steps to go upstairs and see what’s left from his room and pauses at the top of the stairs. The door to their father’s old office is shut, so is Bo’s room which was once their parents, but the door to his and Vincent’s old childhood room, the room that eventually Lester got shuffled into, just like he was put in all their old hand-me downs. An afterthought, an unplanned third son they had little hope for after the failure they deemed Bo and Vincent as. All of the twin’s old stuff was still there.
Bo feels a little bad he and Vincent never bothered to make this space for their baby brother after both parents died. That he’d closed himself off into a routine and let the other two do their own thing and breathed a little easier with no disapproving eyes on him all the time. But it does tug at his nostalgia a little, for when they were much younger and his bitterness hadn’t festered so much. Figuring it couldn't hurt he steps into the room to look around and is shocked by how little it changed. How little it felt like Lester had ever belonged here. How little this place had truly been home for the youngest. No wonder he'd left at 18 and not looked back. Bo's not even sure what he was looking for. If he was even looking for anything specific or just letting himself drift like the long dead ghost of a normal childhood, but he finds himself opening drawers and looking through the closet.
He yanks open the drawer of Vincent’s nightstand and freezes. The paper is yellowed with age, held together by tape, and crumpled. Faded crayon and uneven lines look up at him from the old drawing of a vase and a few scraggly flowers and Vincent's simple roses, except now more detailed elegant drawings are among them, some shading added here and there too, combining the past and the present, a testament to how far Vincent had come as an artist and how Bo had stagnated.
The floor creaks under Vincent’s weight and his brother looks anxiously between the paper and Bo.
“You…why the hell did you keep this?”
‘You never got to finish coloring in the vase and…I thought a fellow artist wouldn't want to leave his work undone.’
Bo scoffs as he deciphers Vinny's sign language. “I ain't an artist, Vinny.”
Vincent shook his head, touching the edge of the drawing gently. He looked so genuinely enamored with the clumsy lines and clashed colors of the vase. So pleased to just have proof of Bo's effort, to share an interest. It's the look Bo had once hoped to get from Trudy.
“You really like it that much, huh? Well, shit, you're the expert here. Pack it up and anything else and let's get outta here.” Bo says, pressing the drawing into Vincent’s hands with a tiny smirk.
“Who knows, may be worth lotta money someday when we're both famous artists,” he adds sarcastically. But the words lack their usual bite and Vincent knows it. And if there's a brief shared smirk between them and the tenseness of the last 15 years melts away just sliver, then that's between them.
****
And if Lester watches the burnt out shell of Ambrose disappear in the rearview mirror of the pick up, Vincent and Bo flipping through the few photos they have, meager clothes in the back, Jonesy settled comfortably amongst their slim possessions, and a couple of old sketchbooks and some broken crayons in an old metal lunch box and smirks to himself, relieved to finally never have to look back, that's his business.
And if secretly Bo and Vincent are just as glad to say farewell to Ambrose, each feeling more and more at peace despite the loss of the only home they knew, then they'd deal with that later. It was a lot to process right now. Except for one comment from Lester. Disgust and disdain for the house and town that had never been home, masked by cheerful glee sums it up.
“Farewell Ambrose, hope ta never see ya again.”