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Del knew some people sensed something off about his and Basilio’s relationship. More than that, he knew that some people saw hints of some sort of perversion in it. They wouldn’t say so, they were too afraid of a thrashing from Basilio’s fists or Fidelio’s tongue, or both. But he knows some think it when they look at him askance. He wonders at it himself when he looks at Basilio with a warmth in his chest, but it ain’t like that. Yeah, he likes looking at his brother. He loves him, right? He’ll even allow that he likes looking at him because he grew up tall and strong and handsome. He’s proud of that. He’s proud that he grew up at all.
What Fidelio didn't realize was just how broadly those good looks were appreciated, not until they were escorting Count Louis into the state rooms of the Charadrius alongside a few of his old military allies he was renegotiating an alliance with. As Fidelio turned to sweep his gaze down the corridor behind them, he briefly faced Louis, and caught those crystalline blue eyes doing a sweep of their own, down the back of his brother's body.
Fidelio’s hackles raised. He never paused, never broke his stride, but he envisioned grabbing Basilio by the back of his coat and marching the both of them off the Charadrius, never to return. He would never do such a thing. They were too entrenched in the inner circle and Del was too practiced at swallowing his anger in the name of living another day to do anything so rash and so sudden.
So, why? He wondered to himself as he gazed over the room to spot any would be assassins. Why? He wondered as he laid in bed. What was wrong with him? If there were a man or woman alive worthy of his brother's affection surely it was Louis sodding Guiabern. Not that Basilio showed any indication of harboring any emotion for the man other than awe. Did Basilio even favor clemar? Did Basilio even favor men? As tightly knit together as they were, Del couldn't say. Basilio had spent his teen years gazing up at the ceiling and rhapsodizing about food in the way that boys of his age in less dire circumstances fantasized about women. At the mission, many–mostly young, Paripus women–had hung about him hopefully, but Basilio hadn't seemed to pay them any notice. Or rather, Del corrected himself, his brother gave them the same notice he gave anyone who gave him a kind word or a hot meal: a broad grin and a wagging tail.
Del punched the mattress of the cot he was laying on. He could just see it, Louis pulling his brother into bed, Basilio only half knowing what was happening yet sighing and puppy eyed and tail wagging all the same. The ghost of a growl ground in the back of Del’s throat.
Why did it rankle him so? Was he jealous? Did it trouble him that anyone else might love his brother? No, certainly he should be loved. In their shared fantasy of their future restaurant, Del more often than not envisioned a passel of chubby kits running about underfoot. They would have to be Basilio’s. They certainly weren't his.
“Who pissed in your porridge, Del?” Basilio said, approaching him one evening on the deck of the Charadrius.
“What?”
“You've been scowling all day.”
“I'm always scowling.”
“Not like that.”
Fidelio jerked his head and made a spitting, scoffing noise.
“Don't do that,” Basilio said, and there was slightest softness of hurt in his voice. “Don't act like I don't know you better than that.”
Del was silent.
“Come on, Del.”
Fidelio looked at Basilio a long moment before deciding to tell him the truth. “Louis was eyeing you. Before the meeting, couple nights ago.”
“Eyeing me?” Basilio asked, looking at Del askance, hands on hips.
“Like he might have been thinking about what you looked like without those fancy duds of yours.”
“Louis?” Basilio scoffed. “Me? Nah he wasn't.”
“He was.” But now that Del said it out loud, what Louis had done could scarcely be described as more than looking at Basilio.
“Nah,” Basilio said, and he settled to lean on the railing beside Fidelio. “He's got Lady Junah.”
“He's not fucking Lady Junah.”
“I didn't say he was.”
“He's fucking Zorba,” Fidelio declared, in part because he needed to get the suspicion off his chest and in part because he wanted to derail the conversation from where it was headed.
Basilio shuddered. “Really? You think?”
“Yes.” Del had only circumstantial evidence, but he felt sure.
“I ‘spose you're right,” Basilio said, though he still sounded doubtful. He gave Del a sideways glance. “Why?”
Del shrugged. His ideas of why anyone fucked anyone were mostly theoretical, but his inklings about that relationship only made the idea of Louis looking at Basilio with anything approaching lust trouble him all the more.
“I’d have thought,” Basilio said slowly. “That if Louis was sweet on me--and I'm not saying he is, mind--you'd want me to cozy up to him, like.”
Del’s lips pulled back in disgust. “Why would you bloody think that?”
“Makes our position more secure, don't it?”
“Or less secure. When he gets tired of you.”
“Think he'd get tired of me so quick, do you? Maybe I ought to suck him off or something. Help him out as a friend, like. Show him he can do better than Zorba.”
“Do not,” Fidelio ground out. “Touch Louis Guiabern’s prick with any part of your body.”
Basilio glanced at Del and did a double take upon seeing the real anger on his face. “I wasn't really!” He said, straightening up, hands up in self defense. “It wasn't on the table, Del! I would never have thought of it if it weren't for you. Why are you in a twist about this?”
“Because you would adore him and he wouldn't give a damn about you!” Del said, finally understanding just why the thought had been troubling him as he said it.
“Alright. Right. I won't fuck Louis,” Basilio said, crossing his arms and scuffing the sole of his shoe on the deck. “As if I were ever going to.”
Basilio remained sullen all that evening, but he would glance at Del occasionally with a twist of his mouth, on the verge of saying something he couldn't quite spit out or else couldn't find the words for.
They lived together in the same room on the Charadrius, a request Basilio had made, but he made it because he knew Fidelio had trouble sleeping without him near.
Fidelio was grateful, both for the reassuring lullaby of his brother’s soft snoring and because Basilio would sometimes get bad off before he realized. Their nearness let Del keep a close watch on him, a guard against pain and other interlopers.
Like now, Basilio was whimpering in his sleep in a way he never did while waking, a soft, childish sound that made Del’s stomach hurt.
Del rolled out of bed and put a hand on his brother’s back. “Hey.” He shook him gently when he made no response besides another whimper. “Hey, you sound?”
“M fine,” Basilio said.
“You were whimpering. You need more medicine?”
Basilio shifted gingerly and shook his head slowly against the pillow. “Not that bad, yet.”
Del made a sound of assent and turned to go back to his cot.
“Del?” Basilio said, grabbing Fidelio’s wrist before he could get far.
“Yeah?”
“Stay a minute.”
Del made an assenting “hmm” and sat on his bedside, near his hip, but he knew what Basilio was really asking for.
Del threaded his fingers into the hair at the base of Basilio’s neck, massaging his scalp and the nape of his neck. Basilio let out a breath held a little too tight.
They were too old for this. They had really been too old for this when they had started to do it, when the touch of someone who cared for them was the only comfort in their world. There was probably something stunted in Del other than his body, for doing this, for finding such comfort in this, but as Fidelio scratched behind Basilio’s ears and Basilio’s breathing slowed, the uneasy twist in Fidelio’s stomach eased all the same.
“Hey, Del?” Basilio said.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me.”
“Yeah?”
“What you said about Louis.”
There was a moment of silence. “Did you really think,” Fidelio said. “I’d want you to whore yourself out so we’d be a little more important to him?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, no. I mean.” Basilio burrowed himself deeper into his pillow so that his next words were a little muffled. “I’ve done worse for you, Del.”
The sick feeling in Fidelio’s stomach was back. His fingers stilled. Basilio flipped over onto his back to face him. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s not like that. Only…”
Del could only look down at him in suspense, the room too dark to read his expression.
“If you don’t reckon Louis is good enough for me, how do you ever reckon anyone is going to be good enough for me?”
Del let out his held breath from between his lips with a little pfft. “It’s not about being good enough. He’s a great man and I’m proud to be here, but if he touched you like that I’d be pulling my hair out. Someone like him… He’s got to be thinking about the whole world. He can’t think be thinking about just you.”
“So what would it take, huh? For someone to touch me like that and you not to pull your hair out about it?”
“You got someone in mind?”
“No,” Basilio looked away and shifted his shoulders. “But I like lookin’.”
Del let out a weak, scoffing little laugh.
“Don’t laugh at me, Del, I’m serious. How am I ever going to fall in love and it not make you mad? I couldn’t stand making you insane over it like that but I can’t stand the thought of not ever loving anyone either. What am I to do, huh?”
“You’d have to really love them.”
“I do love Louis, though,” Basilio said softly. “Don’t you?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it? What you said made me start thinking. I reckon I’d do about anything for him.”
“Do you want to?”
“I wouldn’t tell him no. I think you’re starkers and I don’t think he wants me like that, but I wouldn’t tell him no.”
“That’s not the same as wanting him. For me to accept you loving anyone, you’d have to really want them, really love them, not just let them, and more important, they’d have to love you back. Really love you.” Worship you. “Put you first.”
“You don’t think someone like Louis could love someone like me?”
“No. Not because of you,” Del said before Basilio could argue again. “Because I don’t think he loves. I don’t think he’s capable of it. Not really.”
“Really?” Basilio breathed. As if it were the saddest thing anyone had ever said.
What Fidelio didn’t want to say was that what had drawn him to Louis, beyond his talk of equality, beyond his competence and charisma leading Fidelio to believe that he truly had the ability to carry out his vision, was that Fidelio recognized in Louis Guiabern a kindred spirit. Not that Fidelio believed himself near as capable, no, but Fidelio recognized in Louis an anger so profound that it choked out everything else.
Fidelio didn’t know what had happened to Louis, or when, but he knew what had happened to himself. He suspected something had burned Louis’ every nerve, scooped out of him the ability to care, made him hate the world so much that he could do nothing but change it or go mad.
Sometimes, he envied him that. How easy it must be, to be beyond pain, beyond caring. Sometimes he viewed it like Basilio did now, with horror.
Because what Fidelio had that Louis didn’t was Basilio. Without Basilio, Del knew that he would be an empty husk of a person, if he had not lost the will to live altogether. There had been too much loss, too much pain, too much cruelty, and too many blind eyes turned toward the lot of it. In the end, he’d had to turn a blind eye to it himself, had to numb himself to it, because if he hadn’t, he would never have been able to protect Basilio. His one intact nerve connected him to his brother, and through him, he was able to connect to all else. A world that had Basilio in it was a world worth changing and not just worth smashing. A world with Basilio in it had to be made into a better world for Basilio to live in.
“I’d be the same way if it weren’t for you,” Fidelio confessed, and kept talking so Basilio wouldn’t dwell on that statement. “I want someone to love you, I do, because you deserve that, but they’ve got to see you as precious. They’ve got to see you as worth trading the world for, because you are.”
Basilio laughed, and after a brief, grinning silence, pulled Del down on to the bed, wrapping his long limbs around him, nuzzling his shoulder.