Work Text:
Gillian Murray prided himself on being a good man. A kind man. The sort of man you could bring home to meet your parents without a second thought. He was studying to be a doctor—a noble pursuit, surely—and engaged to a beautiful woman who would soon be his wife. They already had a daughter, a bright-eyed girl who adored him. He was smart, polite, always impeccably dressed. Yes, Gillian Murray was a nice man.
But even nice men have their flaws.
Gillian preferred not to dwell on his.
His eyesight, for one, was atrocious. Anything within arm’s reach became a fuzzy blur, forcing him to squint in a way he found deeply unbecoming. He knew exactly what the problem was—he’d studied the science of it in his coursework. Yet he refused to get glasses. The reasoning wasn’t entirely logical, but it was simple: glasses, he thought, looked ridiculous. He didn’t see respectable fathers on television fumbling with spectacles, so he wouldn’t either.
And then there was his voice.
Gillian had a thick Brighton accent—a rougher cousin to cockney, marked by clipped vowels and the sort of sharpness that invited judgment. It wasn’t an accent for professionals, or so he’d been told. Certainly not for a doctor. So he buried it. Nights were spent in front of the mirror, mimicking the polished tones of the upper class, practicing words until they rolled off his tongue like silk. He altered his vocabulary, swapping ain’t for isn’t, picking apart books for just the right lingo to sound properly posh.
Perfection. That was what he strove for. Perfect grades. Perfect posture. Perfect behavior. More so than his younger brother, who never seemed to care for such things.
Mike was the artist in the family. Sensitive. Creative. Reckless. He poured himself into his paintings, crafting vibrant, untamed scenes of oceans and forests and dreams that Gillian could never quite understand but always admired.
Gill was the only one who ever saw Mike’s paintings.
Because if their parents found out Mike had been wasting his study time on art—if they saw what he was creating—there would be consequences. There had been consequences.
A drunken night. Their father storming into their shared room. Mike on the floor, painting. Gill on the top bunk, book in hand, watching as their father tore his brother’s latest piece—a boat on the sea—clean in half.
Mike stopped painting in the house after that. He snuck out to the park instead, brushes and canvas hidden beneath his jacket. Gill went with him. To keep up the lie that they were studying together. To make sure Mike wasn’t alone. To see the paintings. Because God, he loved Mike’s paintings.
But those days were long gone.
When Gill turned eighteen and left for university, something shifted. He tried to stay in touch, calling between lectures and exams, but Mike’s responses grew colder, more distant. By the time Gill was twenty, he only learned through hushed family whispers—half in Korean, half in English—that Mike had applied to art school and failed. Worse, he was no longer welcome at family gatherings.
Gill left the house that night, dialing Mike’s number over and over, voicemail after voicemail. He rambled about memories, about missing him, about how things could still be different. None of his calls were returned. Eventually, a single text came through, slurred and misspelled:
“Lveqv mealoone.”
Gill read it as Leave me alone. Mike had been drunk when he wrote it. Mike was always drunk.
Gill drank too, though he belittled himself each time he did. And he didn’t nearly drink as much as Mike. He had an image to uphold.
But he worried.
Sometimes, in the dead of night, he lay awake wondering if his brother was even alive. He was supposed to protect him—wasn’t that what older siblings did?—but he had never been sure if he was doing enough.
Mike was getting too thin. Gaunt. Pale. Gill decided to buy him groceries. Maybe, if he showed up, if he gave him food, if they sat down and really talked—
He stepped up to Mike’s door. Groceries in one hand, the other raised to knock.
The door swung open when his knuckles touched it.
Unlocked.
“…Mike?”
He dropped the groceries.