Chapter Text
Look. There was no one out there who wouldn’t react badly to finding out they weren’t an only child like they’d believed for ten years. Black’s got a long-lost twin, even. That’s like… double the bad reaction allowed.
Fuck, a twin. “I’m back,” the twin said, and it sounded like picking up a conversation they’d put on pause ten years ago.
If they were really related, he was probably expecting a hug or something.
Black said, “Yeah? Who the fuck are you, then?”
Because it did not fucking matter. The clone could cry, he could beg, he could reach for Black’s hand, but Black wasn’t his fucking brother anymore. He wasn’t going to be moved by tears or the clotted sensation in his own rib cage that couldn’t be sympathy or grief or something pathetic, and had to be something like rage. Loneliness, because that was all Black knew.
He put himself back together ten years ago, and even if he’d fucking put himself back together wrong—
The twin was crying. Gross. But he kept talking, saying he was back and could Black please not be mad yet. Back from where, Black would like to know.
“I don’t have a little brother,” Black said and watch the clone’s face break apart. It was fucking creepy. That was his fucking face, slightly askew from the way he saw it in the mirror. Wrong than the way Black would wear it — like he’d ever cry, like he’d ever beg, like he’d ever look so fucking heartbroken.
Black grabbed the clone by the chin, tilting him back and forth like maybe he could see the seams. The clone’s skin turned red under his fingers in a way that made Black’s own jaw ache just to look, but he didn’t try to move. Shouldn’t he try to move, if they were fucking twins, because Black wasn’t treating him like people were supposed to treat their brothers, because this wasn’t his fucking brother.
What did the face-stealing fucker even want? He cried and make excuses and Black didn’t need to fucking hear them.
“Don’t come back here again,” Black said, because he didn’t care what the clone wanted.
Where the fuck had the twin been all these years? I tried so hard to find you, I’m sorry it took so long—
Why had he fucking come back, eyes shiny behind the glasses, when Black had been doing just fucking fine on his own, and now he had to confront the fact that—
Gumpa told fucking everyone about Black’s clone at the next meeting, making it completely impossible to forget the damn fucker. “I didn’t want people knowing about him,” Black said pointedly, because he wasn’t saying twin and the clone didn’t deserve to be called brother and he didn’t know the fucker’s name, either.
“He seemed pretty persistent, Black.”
Black scoffed. He already knew he had to be the more stubborn one, it was all he knew and all he had. The clone broke down crying immediately just because Black was a little mean to him. Black would have to win. They had to have nothing in common at all. “He’ll give up.”
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten you didn’t tell me someone was walking about with your face,” Gumpa reminded, though at least under his breath so none of the fuckers sitting around the table unloading the take-out noticed.
Like Black had fucking meant to lie. He didn’t know there was someone walking around with his face. “Not your fucking business.” And it wasn’t. Black’d never told anyone about his memory loss besides his mother, technically. All the doctors and the therapists, old friends, Todd — they just already knew.
“It is my business—” Gumpa was saying, which was the exact time the clone walked in.
Yok lost it. “What the fuck, hia,” he said. “You said Black’s brother, not his twin.”
Black had never been hunting or anything, but the expression on the twin’s face was probably the same as trapped animals made. He flinched, almost imperceptibly, when Yok started laughing. Black was almost impressed. He’d come back and he wasn’t running away.
Black would get him gone now, though. “You again.”
“Me again. Sorry.”
“Anyone ever tell you you apologize way too fucking much,” Black said, and already knew the answer. If they were actually brothers, Black would be so fucking annoyed with what a fragile, pathetic person the thing wearing his face was. But they weren’t brothers, and this was just another thing that Black had to deal with. He’d get him out of the fucking garage and out of his fucking head soon enough.
“We need to talk first,” the clone said, presumably just to be fucking annoying.
“Why.” What was the point in talking or knowing anything or letting this clone into his life to fuck things over now that he’d finally managed to stop hurting so much about expecting anything from his mom — and his expectations should have been even lower, apparently, but he fucking couldn’t tear himself open again about it or he’d never stop bleeding out.
His face on the stranger twisted, hurt, as he lashed out, but that had never moved Black, ever. Anyone you asked would say he didn’t have emotions at all, so he had no problem shoving the twin right out the door.
If the twin knew what was good for him, he’d stay away.
Gram frowned at Black over his fried rice. “Do you seriously have to be so mean to your brother? He’s got your face and everything.”
“Shut up.”
“He’s so clean,” Yok said, laughing. “You’re nothing alike! I didn’t know you could look so cute, you know—”
“He looked like—”
“All of you shut up,” Black snapped and everyone stilled for a moment, like waiting for an explosion. The fucker was ruining his street cred now. Now people would think they were entitled to questions. “It’s not your business. Don’t talk to him, don’t ask me questions. He’s not in my fucking life so shut the fuck up about him.”
“Black, seriously,” Gram said. “At the very least, he’s gonna get mugged.”
“I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him,” Black said.
“Dude.”
“Fine. Yok, go.”
“I’m eating, man.”
“No you’re not,” Black said, and Yok rolled his eyes and shoveled a bunch of food in his mouth, but he went. Of course he went. Orders were orders and these weren’t Black’s friends. He made sure of that shit.
Black’s good at ruthlessly grinding out faith in him. People tried, yeah. They’d offer class notes or lunch or call his name in the hallway, smiling. And then they’d fucking expect Black to be a human right back. Black wasn’t, though.
He didn’t work like that.
The way his mae talked, he’d been fucked long before the memory loss. She didn’t seem to expect it from him at all, taking everything he screamed at her with a worn-out grimace on her face. People only gave so much before they learned Black was never going to pay it back.
The twin was like that. He didn’t know that Black wrung out every bit of fucking kindness a person could offer until they had nothing left for him.
He’d grind the twin down too, if he came back. He’d make sure there was nothing to expect.
The existence of the twin was like catching something out of the corner of his eye and finding it gone when he turned his head. Like a rubber band in his chest threatening to snap. It was always fucking there. “I think your twin is cool,” Yok announced when he returned to the garage a day later, leaning over the bike Black was working on with serious disregard for how much damage Black could do with a wrench. “We sat on the bus together.”
Of course Yok had made friends with the fucking thing. Black was going to seriously have to lay down the law if he wanted the twin out of his life. “Don’t talk to him.”
“Why? He’s got your face.”
“And? That means we’re supposed to be close?”
“I’d be,” Yok said, which he could say because he hadn’t been surprised with the fact of an identical twin ten years — twenty-two years — after having one. “White’s cool! He realized I lifted his wallet.”
White and Black. Great. They had theme names. “And why were you lifting his fucking wallet,” Black said, dropping the wrench on the metal workstation. Yok startled, hands lifting off the seat of this bike like he hadn’t realized what he was doing. This was why Black could never show a hint of affection to anyone.
People started to expect it. He couldn’t have that.
“I just wanted to know his name,” Yok said, hands in the air now. “And you didn’t tell us he was Russian!”
Black’s hands didn’t flinch as he reached for the oil — he’d long since trained himself out of any reaction to surprising news, when he was twelve and there was a chance anything new could be devastating. But he was thinking about the four years of Russian-language lessons he’d insisted on taking for no real reason other than the wild-eyed panic that lived constantly in his chest.
Was that where the fucking twin had been all these fucking years? Had Black always fucking known it?
Did he now have to spend the rest of his life rediscovering things he knew, again?
No. Black swung out at Yok instead, managing to clip his shoulder even over the bike before Yok went skittering away, clutching his arm and saying, “What the fuck, Black!” Like he’d forgotten who Black was when confronted with someone else nicer with the same face, like he was thinking once again that Black was a person who could be reasoned with.
“Don’t talk to my fucking—” Black still wouldn’t call him brother. “I will kill you if you talk to him.”
“Fuck you,” Yok snarled, which was how Black liked it. “He said he’d be back Wednesday.”
Fucking of course.
Two days later, Black came in and found the clone — White, he had a name now — already in his fucking garage talking with Sean. “You shouldn’t be saying anything at all,” Black said, already fucking pissed and exhausted, because if this fucker was supposed to be his twin, shouldn’t he understand, through some innate twin-sense, that Black didn’t want to fucking see him?
Apparently being a twin did not work like this.
Gumpa held Black back by his shoulder, making niceties with the twin — White — and the twin was being nice back and everyone was going to think they were fucking regular twins who grew up together and who did not have brain damage and that Black was capable of being like that too.
“He can’t fucking call you that, hia,” Black snapped, because he was not fucking letting this clone be part of his life. He’d leave the clone here to get in trouble in his place before he let them fucking hang out together. He’d make another fucking life apart from the clone, if that was what Gumpa wanted.
The twin’s mouth twisted down, almost imperceptibly. “We really need to talk.”
Sean barked out laughter — everyone had been ribbing Black for two days straight about his nerd of a brother who wouldn’t leave Black alone, saying that was what Black deserved for being such a stubborn bitch and that of course Black managed to make even his own twin pissed at him.
Like twins were so special they can’t get mad at each other. The only thing Black felt towards the clone was anger. “No.”
“We have to.”
“Let me guess, you’re not going away until we do.” The twin nodded, sharp, and Black thought hey, look at that, he’s pissed too. “How’d you even find me?”
“I saw Todd at a party last week and he told me where you were.”
Black should have fucking known. He did know. He knew the little creep couldn’t be trusted and here Todd was, rubbing Black’s fucking nose in it — of course Todd knew, Todd had known Black before the memory loss, so he fucking knew, he knew he knew he knew—
The twin’s eyes were wide between the glasses as Black strangled him, his face turning red. “Tell me what the fuck Todd sent you for,” Black snarled, though of course the twin couldn’t answer him, because Black was currently crushing the life out of him. Tears leaked out of the twin’s eyes as his faced turned redder and redder. Crybaby.
Except Black swore he could feel it in his own chest, the rising, cloying bubble of panic unable to go anywhere. He couldn’t breathe, the harder he crushed down, the more he choked on it. Was he not capable of killing someone with his own face? Pathetic. But Black couldn’t fucking—
“What are you doing to me,” Black spat, hands loosening.
He’d never felt this out of control in his entire life. The twin was fucking doing this to him.
Then he was shoved away, his hands clenched around nothing. “Fuck, Black, what’s wrong with you!” Gumpa was fucking mad. Black was mad too and a little dizzy, the fresh air he sucked down making his head spin, because something deep in him that didn’t even count as him, really — not anymore — couldn’t strangle his own brother.
“What did you fucking do to me,” Black said hoarsely,
The twin lay crumpled on the floor like a wet tissue. Black swore he could feel every ache and pain in the twin’s body. Like he cared about him or something. He fought against Gumpa to get back to him, to pick him up and demand the fucking answers, what the fuck was he doing, what grip did he have on Black when they hadn’t even seen each other in ten years, when Black didn’t even remember him — how could he fucking make Black not kill him?
“What did you do to him,” Yok said shrilly.
“Seriously, Black, we’ve talked about this,” Gumpa said. He was using that calming tone of voice he always used, the one that said he cared and he was worried and that Black should let him take care of it, only it was mismatched. Gumpa’s face was a horrified, twisted mess.
“You can’t just fucking let that go, hia—” Black said, jabbing his finger at the twin, whose mouth was trembling like he was going to cry again even though his face was already a smear of tears. Gumpa was the only one who knew about Todd, either, and he must have heard—
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Yok yelled, shoving Black hard. “You nearly killed him—”
Black couldn’t dispute that.
He didn’t want it to come to this, but the twin was an unknown entity. At least Black knew Todd. Could track his moves. He didn’t know what the fuck the twin would do. Easier to just remove it.
And Black could go back to fucking normal.
“I’m fine,” the twin said, which devolved into coughs that wracked his body and made even Black wince.
“Stop that,” Sean said.
“It is not fine,” Gumpa said darkly, shoving Black behind him again. He squeezed Black’s arm, hard, right against the tiny line of scars that Black had in the crook of his elbow from something he didn’t remember but still were a little tender. “White. Let me see your throat.”
“You don’t even know him, hia,” Black said brutally as everyone fussed around the twin. The twin could be there for anything. Black didn’t even know how the twin managed to find him.
He was not going to let the twin just worm his way into his fucking life.
“I’m fine,” the twin said, though he didn’t manage to stand up properly on his own. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I’ll kill you for real if I see you here tomorrow!” Black surged forward and was slammed back by Yok this time, back into the garage so that Sean could take the damn face-stealer home. Did anyone have any fucking right messing with Black’s fucking business? “The fuck did you do to me!”
The twin has done fucking something to him and Black was maybe thinking it wasn’t going to go away even if the twin did.
“Heard you strangled your brother last night,” Gram said flatly over their lunch between classes.
Black shouldn’t have fucking come today. “Yup.”
Gram sighed. “Why,” he said, in the way that always made Black think he already knew the answer even when he clearly fucking didn’t.
“Why what,” Black said. “It’s my fucking business and I can do whatever I like to him.”
“No, Black, you can’t,” Gram said, which he said a million and one times. “He’s a person. Has he done anything wrong?”
“Messing with me,” Black said darkly. He’d been up all night thinking about it, eyes burning with exhaustion and head swimming, probably from the earlier oxygen deprivation — when he breathed in too deep, it ached. What did the twin fucking want from him? Maybe he was glad he didn’t murder the twin yesterday. He should get answers first. Then murder. If appropriate.
“Is that actually true or are you just mad he’s coming around?”
Black glared at Gram, which was an amateur mistake, because Gram now knew immediately that he was right. “He’s fucking with someone he’s not supposed to.” Weak defense, technically, but was also completely true that he hadn’t technically entertained killing the twin until the twin mentioned Todd.
Did he seriously thinking mentioning Black’s most-hated ex would be the way to go?
Gram sighed. “Look, I know he’s your brother—”
“He’s not my fucking brother,” Black said.
“You should be nice to him.” Gram pointed his spoon at Black. “Brother to brother.”
Gram talked about himself incessantly, so Black knew that Gram had three little sisters, though they were all several years younger than him. “I told you I don’t have a fucking brother.”
“What do you think is going to happen if you talk to him?”
Black had no idea but he was not about to find out. He worked hard to get where he was, even if other people didn’t find it that desirable. “I’m just not talking to him,” Black said. “You like yours but me and him aren’t like that, okay?”
“You can say his name, you know. Gumpa told me it’s White.”
Yeah right. If Black actually said it, that would make it real.
Gumpa read him the riot act. Black was unrepentant. “It’s my business, hia,” he said, rocking back on his heels. If he said it enough times, maybe Gumpa would get it through his head. “Not yours.”
“He’s running around with your face, Black! He could get in trouble.”
“Let him, then,” Black said, which was a stupid, emotion driven argument because if the twin was walking around with his face and someone found him, it was an easy jump to get Black arrested for something. Not that Black was imagining the twin anywhere near the scene of the crime, but still. It was a weak spot, when Black was in the habit of eradicating all weak spots. It meant that people were always going to be looking at the twin and wanting to find Black, which was stupid, because Black couldn’t even find himself most of the time.
“Black! Come on. If he’s been fingerprinted—”
“Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints,” Black said automatically, and while he did have some idea about how he knew that, it still pissed him off.
Gumpa rolled his eyes. “That is not the point.”
“No, hia, the point is you’re trying to fucking make me play nice when I told you to let it go,” Black said. “He might have the same fucking face as me but he’s not me. He’ll go away eventually if you don’t fucking encourage him.” Like a stray dog.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just talk to him.”
“He can’t be trusted!” What about this was so hard to understand? Did everyone think Black just scorned the fucking clone for the hell of it, did they not trust that Black had good reason to keep people out of this? No one asked why he didn’t tell his girlfriend about this, no one asked why Yok didn’t tell his mother, and no one asked Gram if he’d ever tell his sisters. Just because the thing had his face, Black should tell him everything?
Gumpa sighed, world-weary. He had been wearing this face for a week straight, every time he looked at Black. “He’s your brother.”
“I don’t care if he has my fucking face and he’s my fucking twin, you can’t trust anything he’s saying. You don’t know who—” Black didn’t even know who. Todd, he guessed. People should just listen to him. “Don’t tell him anything. You can’t trust that.”
“Black—”
“If he’s my brother, you can fucking trust me to handle it. It’s not anyone else’s fucking business.”
Gumpa turned Black around by the shoulder, hard. “Black! You aren’t handling it. Talk to your brother. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have—” Black started, staring up at Gumpa, but then a motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention. And when he looked, the twin was standing there in the doorway, instead of disappeared, like he was supposed to be. “Seriously?”
“Handle it,” Gumpa said, and just fucking left.
The twin was crying, arms wrapped around his stomach, and his black-purple throat on display.
Seriously, that wasn’t good enough? If the fucker weren’t crying so hard, Black would be almost impressed. Showing up the next day with his battle wounds bared, that was the sort of thing Black did. He didn’t expect it out of the twin, really.
“Why are you crying,” Black said, tired. He was so fucking tired.
“Nothing, phi,” the twin said, and Black was tired of hearing that too, being called something he wasn’t.
“You overheard me?” And the twin apologized over and over again, which just pissed Black off, because— “You were eavesdropping, you fucking sneak.”
And then the fucker didn’t even disagree with that. Just stood there still crying, like he wasn’t even that embarrassed of it. He reached out a hand and pulled back before Black could do anything about it. “Sorry. I won’t — Pa was really right, huh.”
Black didn’t have a fucking father. “Pa?”
“Yeah, he always said that I would just be inconveniencing you if I came back,” the twin said.
Now that pissed Black off too, not that he remembered shit about his father. Didn’t even know the fucker’s first name. But he guessed it made sense that if the twin was gone and the dad was gone, then they were gone together. “Can you seriously stop fucking crying?”
Apparently the twin could not.
“Leave,” Black said, then, “You will leave this time, right?”
The twin nodded. Fuck, if Black had known all it would take to get him to go away was just not trusting him, he’d have said it from the fucking get go. All that shit about wanting to talk, wanting to be in each other’s lives, and all Black had to do was not trust him? Easy. Black didn’t trust fucking anyone. What was so good about trust?
Black would rather be fucking liked than trusted, if they traded places.
“Can I give you my number, just in case you — in case you need something?”
There was nothing Black could need from the twin. “What could I possible need from you,” Black said with finality. “Leave.”
Gram caught him watching the twin go — towards the bus stop once again, hunched over like that would hide his throat. “You should be nice to him,” Gram said.
“No,” Black said.
“It sounds like he just wants to be in your life again. What, you cut ties with him when you left your mom’s?”
That was a great theory. Black loved it immediately. “Yeah, so don’t get any fucking ideas,” he said. “He’s just like her, alright?”
What a fucking lie.
He broke into his mother’s house for proof of a thing he already knew was true. He didn’t know what he was looking for — proof that his mother definitely had a second child? Proof that he had a father? Those were all things that he already knew to be true. He had to have a father to exist. The twin had his face and his last name. Whatever Black was looking for, though, it was in his fucking mother’s house, though.
He waited until it was so late it was early and he went in through the office window to rifle through all her fucking papers. Surely there had to be proof of his.
There wasn’t all that much, though. The household registry belonged to Black’s stepfather; it didn’t list his birth. Black had taken his passport and school records when he left, he’d taken the whole labeled file.
In the very back, though. There was one slim folder containing only a few photos. Black recognized his own face on two different bodies.
It was a picture of them playing the piano together. They must have been eight or so; White immediately identifiable by the glasses, Black by the scowl. And even though Black was upset, they were pressed together, hip to shoulder, curved together like they didn’t know to be apart. The way the twin talked, that was true; the way the twin talked, they knew each other down to the marrow.
Black stared at it, dully surprised. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already known in a way he refused to agree with, that the twin was the probable cause of his memory loss, but he was still surprised somehow that it was true. Maybe that he was alive after all. Black had always figured whatever it was that was so important he lost his fucking mind, it had to be long-dead.
Not coming back to see him.
The light flipped on, his mother in the doorway wielding what looked like one of the silver jewelry dishes from her dresser.
“Did you really come here with a plate to see if someone broke in,” Black said flatly.
She was still in her robe, her hair loosely pulled up, distinctly softer-looking than the way he always remembered her in, in her work suits and her frown, telling him he was ruining his good name, that he was sabotaging his future, telling him there was no point in him living here anymore—
She let her hand drop, sighing. “Black. What are you doing here?”
“Needed some files.”
His mother stared at him. “It’s four in the morning.”
“Met someone familiar recently,” Black said casually, flashing the picture at her. Her mouth fell open, eyes wide. “Ah. Not familiar, you know that. But he had my face.”
“I told him not to talk to you.”
So the twin really did exist. Of course he did. “He didn’t listen,” Black said. “Did he ever?”
“Black!”
“It’s a genuine question.” Black dropped the picture onto his mother’s desk. “I don’t remember.”
“Why did you go and do this?”
“I fucking couldn’t have, remember?”
No, the twin had found him.
“What’s he like,” Black said, more wistful than he’d really meant. There could have been someone who understood him this whole time? And now there was no one. There was no going back. “Did you — you talked to him?”
Her hiding his fucking twin from him should be the worst it could get but if Black was stumbling around alone for years while she just talked to him, lied to the both of them—
“He came to my office last month. I haven’t talked to him since he left.”
The rage didn’t burst, exactly. It smoldered with no open wound to escape from. “Since you made him leave.”
So they’d both fucking lost him.
“Black—”
“I don’t even fucking know where the fuck he’s been the last ten years,” Black said, and it all rose to the surface, every dying spark he’d been struggling to extinguish ever since he left this fucking house, because how could he kill it off when there was actually something that might have been worth remembering? “He’s a Russian citizen, apparently. Is that why I fucking wanted to learn Russian? Why you’d even let me do that?”
None of these are the questions he fucking wanted to ask. His mother didn’t seem inclined to answer anything either.
“What the fuck did you do to us,” Black asked.
His mother hadn’t even taken a step into the room. “We did what we thought was best for you.”
Black stared at her, coming close to her in the doorway like it would help him understand. She was his mother. She was his mother, so he shouldn’t be surprised at the depths of her unkindness. “You fucking could have brought him back here and given me my memories back ten years ago.”
His mother slapped him. She still had the jewelry dish in her hand and the collision rang metallic, alongside the coppery taste of blood. Black’s head jerked to the side. Who knew the bitch had such strength? Maybe she didn’t even know it herself, the way her eyes were wide and already sorry. “Oh, Black,” she said, putting her empty hand to Black’s face, over the red-hot bloom of pain. She never meant to cause harm, not that it mattered. Black got that from her.
Black slapped her hand away. Spat out a glob of black-red blood onto her carpet. “That’s not gonna stop me, you know.”
“Black, please take this seriously.” The silver dish was heavy, a lot heavy than any other blow she’d given him. How could he not take it seriously? “Your brother—”
“He’s not my fucking brother!”
Her mouth thinned into a line. On anyone else it would look like displeasure. On her, Black knew that was grim satisfaction. She’d made sure that White couldn’t ever be his brother ever again. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
“It doesn’t,” Black said, shoving past her to leave. Whatever reason she’d wanted them apart, he was going to fucking destroy it.
Black knew the exact date White had left. He’d known it for ten years. He could pretend all he wanted they’d been separated at birth like some shitty TV show, but Black’d been stuck inside of a dozen different hospitals and therapists’ offices, MRIs, cat scans, whatever. There’d never been any real explanation for what scooped out his memories from his brain cavity like a spoon.
Dissociative amnesia, they said. Psychological trauma instead of physical. Black’s a medical fucking marvel.
But White’s not dead. Even if Black made him leave forever, he’ll never be dead. He’d be out there, forever, thinking he knew someone who no longer existed. Black left him behind when he woke up ten years ago with nothing but loneliness. Not his name. His age. Where he was. Not his mother’s face when she came in wondering why he hadn’t eaten breakfast.
There’s no fucking recovering from that.
And hey. Black was frankly fucking fine being the loneliest person in the universe. He didn’t need some fucker to try and thaw him out, the way Gram and Eugene were always saying he did. Black was fine with pushing every person in the world away, so that no one could get within ten feet of him. He didn’t need to have people.
And a little voice in the back of his head — the twin’s voice, with that soft cadence and slight accent — said was that just because you didn’t have me, phi?
“What did you do,” White asked, when he saw the bruising on Black’s face, and it wasn’t the way everyone else asked, like it was Black’s fault. It was horrified and a little soothing, comforting, the way White put his hand up to his own cheek as he worried about it, like he could feel it. Though Black didn’t know what to do, when White cupped his face and inspected the bruise himself. Probably the last person who’d touched him so nicely was Eugene. It was… a nice gesture, if totally unnecessary.
As always, Black struggled to reciprocate.
“Tell me about yourself,” he demanded, and even that was selfish. He wanted to know the story of his own fucking life, which his mother had never, apparently, found worthwhile enough to give to him, and White had all the answers, because his memory worked just fucking fine.
Why had White survived their separation and Black slipped away into nothing, becoming someone else entirely?
White shouldn’t even want to get to know him, but he did.
Black didn’t know if he wanted to get to know White, really. It wasn’t like he’d been longing for something to fill the empty space in his life; it’d been ten years and the emptiness had been filled in long ago, with baseball practice and Todd rolling his eyes and yelling at his mother. Black’s been a whole person for a long time now. The clone’s fucking identical face made Black want to tear the entire world to shreds, like he was twelve again and putting all the pieces over together brand new. He rebuilt the world once, he could do it again, and maybe this time it wouldn’t be a fucking lie.
Maybe he just wanted to know — White had been taken from him, too, so maybe White was at least half as fucked as him.
“You’ve been acting weird,” Gram accused, casually bringing it up sitting on opposite couches, so Black couldn’t shove an elbow into his side. “Is it because of your brother?”
“He’s not my brother,” Black said automatically, which was kind of a stupid thing to say about someone wearing your face. Luckily, Gram took it for a sort of dig and started lecturing him on the importance of family, to which Black decided to argue that no one lectured him about the importance of family when he ditched his high-power judge mother who kept fucking up people’s lives.
No, it only mattered when it was a twin.
“Just be nice to him,” Gram said, exasperated. “He clearly wants to be in your life again, just — throw him a bone!”
“Why,” Black said, instead of saying that he already thinking about it.
“Because he loves you?”
“That’s not my problem,” Black said, though it was fucking much his own fucking problem. Nothing could be more his fucking problem at this point in time, and Black wasn’t exactly eager to be fixing it, but he’d never been too fucking prideful to admit when he fucked up. He had to admit that it probably would have gone better if he hadn’t strangled White on sight. “The fuck would I even say to him?”
Gram’s face softened, just a little bit. He saw the thing in Black that Black never bothered to hide, the thing that told everyone he wasn’t right in the head.
“You can just ask him how his day was,” Gram said, like that was easy. “And he’ll answer. And then you can tell him how your day was.”
“That seems too easy,” Black decided, but had no other options.
“Well, you shouldn’t have strangled him,” Gram said matter-of-factly. “Wouldn’t blame him for changing his mind. But yeah, that’s probably what you should start with.”
It wasn’t. White loved it, loved that Black was trying. He found it a little ironic, that they were starting from zero again after twelve years living together side by side, the same house and the same parents and possibly even the same room, not that Black could tell, and it cheered White up, weirdly, to talk about how weird it was.
Not that there was anyway Black could avoid it, given he actually was starting from zero.
White was… nice. Friendly enough. Black really couldn’t see being friends with him, exactly, and he wasn’t rushing to call him brother either. The most he’d say is my twin, which was a fact where brother did not feel like one. But he wasn’t a totally offensive human being.
And there were parts of them that fit together.
When Black got pissed at the couple eating next to them — he wasn’t good at being a twin, wasn’t used to the way people would comment on it or laugh about it or look at them, like it was some sort of fucking novelty when Black had had more than enough of being a novelty — he could look over at White and see all his feelings mirrored there perfectly. He didn’t hate that, which was the strangest fucking thing of all.
But he did hate that White was so fucking twitchy. He’d write it off as the awkwardness of getting to know someone you should know better than anyone, but he’d always been pretty good at picking up on when people were scared of him, because he was so good at making it happen.
And White was.
How are they supposed to be fucking related?
It was not nice to throw White head-first into the shitty, grimy bar he used to work at, a place that he never came anymore — he’d always been dead fucking tired working here at three a.m. only to roll into class five hours later, and he didn’t know how he passed a damn thing — but it was a place where people like Black existed and people like White had proved himself to be, thus far, did not. He even let himself get hustled at pool.
God, Black hated him. Black was so fucking tired of all this—
And then White stared at him and showed his fucking spine. Good. Yeah. That was what Black was looking for, the shit wrong in him that kept him coming back after being strangled, the claws that Black couldn’t detach from his skin.
Dully, in the middle of a stupid fucking pool game, Black came to understand that as much as he’d been waiting for White to break, he’d never fucking believed he would.
“You’re always just fine, aren’t you,” Black said, breathing out smoke. This was what he was coming to find. White could be twitchy or he could be casual, whatever, but Black seriously didn’t know how a guy who wanted something so fucking badly could be so fucking unbothered by anything.
“Had to be,” White said, a little sour. “You weren’t around.”
There was something slow-shifting, like a glacier. Black looked at him and felt more than saw him shove it all down under the surface.
Gumpa asked about White every so often, with disappointment that sliced through Black’s skin like a knife. He was not fucking happy with Black for not telling him he didn’t have an identical twin brother, not that it was any of his fucking business.
Black wasn’t fucking happy with the woman he called his mother for hiding it from him either.
“I dunno, hia,” Black said, because he hadn’t told anyone that he even was talking to White. He’d come here directly from his favorite coffee shop, where White hummed with pleasure when he took his first sip, the corners of his mouth curving up absently. Black had realized, just today, that White didn’t really smile a lot. He didn’t know what that meant. And he doubted he could fucking handle it if anyone was watching him, pressed close waiting to see when he’d burst. “We don’t talk.”
“Black—”
“I don’t have to fucking accept everyone who walks in this door,” Black said.
“It’s my garage,” Gumpa said mildly, taking Black’s can of beer from him. “I can accept who I like.”
“Not him,” Black said. “I don’t trust him.”
It was probably cruel to keep saying, but it was still the fucking truth. It was, also, the truth. They weren’t friends yet. Hey, maybe it could happen — Black didn’t just play with people for the fun of it, and he wasn’t playing pretend now either. White got what every single person close to Black got, nothing more, nothing less.
The only exceptions for most of Black’s life had been Todd, Gene, and Gram and even they were transitory, a few years that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Black wouldn’t discount the possibility of White become a Gram or a Gene, maybe. Not a lot of people made it there; there was no proof White would. For fuck’s sake, he worked at the fucking Ministry for Foreign Affairs! And Black hadn’t been fucking shy about saying what shit that was. So who the fuck knew?
Besides. Black’d been too much for just about everyone his entire life, so when would White give it up? Black could see traces of displeasure in his face, sometimes, a set to his mouth that made Black want to laugh because it was so familiar, he saw it every day on his own face.
It was only a matter of time.
Gram fucking followed Black to the fucking coffee shop. He just sat down on the fucking bench. “Seriously, this is where you’ve been going?”
And this was so not his fucking business. “The fuck are you doing here,” Black snarled, shoving at him hard enough to send him to the ground. Fucking nosy. Had he not made it clear enough that they shouldn’t talk about White, shouldn’t think about White, and definitely should not fucking see White?
White peered around Black curiously, the nosy fucker, and made a noise of recognition. “Oh, hello.”
“Do not fucking look at him,” Black said, pushing Gram’s head away.
Gram took this as some sort of excuse to start running his fucking mouth. “He’s been sneaking off lately,” he said cheerfully. “We were all pretty suspicious, you know, but no one would ever accuse Black of having cold feet—”
Black threw his elbow into Gram’s stomach. Gram at least got the message and shut up. “White, go away.”
“Don’t just send him away—”
Since Gram was too much of an idiot to get the message, Black jerked him up by the collar, dragging him away from where White was sitting, wide-eyed but still casually drinking his coffee, the way you might observe a couple having an argument in a public setting — interested, but pretending you weren’t.
“I told you not to fucking follow me,” Black said, displeased as he led Gram away. “And is it any of your business what I’m doing?”
Gram pouted at him. “You couldn’t just tell us? Sean thinks you’re about ready to call the whole thing off—”
“Shut up,” Black snapped, and waited until they were clearly too far from White to hear before stepping in close to Gram, like a threat. Which it was. “Do not ever,” he said. “Shoot your mouth off in front of White. Are you fucking insane?” He smacked Gram’s shoulder. “Do you think I’ve told him shit?”
“You haven’t?”
Black stared at him, unimpressed. “I know you’re not fucking going around telling your sister.”
“She’s fifteen—”
“So you will when she’s older?”
“No—”
“Yeah,” Black said. “You wouldn’t.” He jerked his head back at White. Was this hard to understand? “You think he’s like me just because he has the same fucking face? Don’t be fucking stupid.”
Gram had that look on his face like he wanted to argue but knew it was worthless. He had fucked it up, treating White like part of the team for no other reason than his face looked like part of the team. He should fucking know better; they all knew better. This wasn’t a shareable fucking hobby; they didn’t even text shit to each other beyond things like come over for beers tonight. “Alright,” Gram agreed eventually, clearly unhappy. “But I don’t know why you just didn’t tell us about it.”
Black breathed through his nose, trying not to lose his temper. Has he fucking ever invited anyone to know anything about him? “You think I’d give up everything for some bullshit that doesn’t matter?”
Gram deflated. No one could fucking accuse Black of not giving everything he fucking had for the cause. “Okay, but I want to talk to him.”
Yeah fucking right. “No.”
“Yeah,” Gram said, furrowing his brow. Black hated this look most, because it meant that Gram had given up something he didn’t want to give up to win something more important, and Black never liked finding out what the thing he wanted to win was. He’d never fucking let it go. “You’re not taking care of him right.”
Black bristled, heading back to White, still on the bench. The fuck did Gram know? Was he White’s fucking twin? “Hia said deal with it, I’m dealing with it. Stay fucking out of it.”
“Won’t,” Gram said, almost cheerfully, rolling his eyes as Black swatted at him again and, because Black couldn’t just kill him here, sitting back down on White’s other side, so that he was sandwiched in the middle of the two of them. “I’m Gram. Wow, you’re really identical.”
“How is this fucking news.” Black fucking hated when people said this. “You literally fucking saw him with my face.”
“From a distance!”
“It’s my fucking face, you can’t recognize it?”
“It’s my face too,” White pointed out, still stuck in between them, and Gram grinned, clearly delighted. Black rolled his eyes — of course they’d get along — but then quickly realized that they didn’t.
White didn’t fucking like Gram.
Black was kind of vindicated by this, seeing White so annoyed. Which wasn’t probably fucking fair; it wasn’t White’s fault that Black couldn’t hide his emotions as well. They were always bursting out of his skin like his body was too fragile to contain them; maybe White had learned to hide them in the curl of his palm, behind his teeth to compensate for Black. He wasn’t really bothering now, was the difference. Gram kept shooting Black betrayed looks, like Black had told White to be a bitch through magical twin-telepathy.
Black didn’t think anyone hadn’t liked Gram in his entire life, Black excluded, but there was something pointedly bitchy in the way White addressed all his comments to Gram. Polite, yeah. But definitely not pleased to see him.
It was pretty funny.
“You don’t like Gram or what,” Black asked, amused as Gram made his excuses and escaped.
White blinked at him. “He seems like a really good friend, phi,” he said, tone entirely innocent like he hadn’t just been kind of a bitch to Black’s friend for an entire twenty minutes while Gram wiggled around on the bench like he was being tortured.
White was kind of a bitch, Black decided. Shit. Maybe he actually liked the fucker after all.
It was actually fucking easier to think about — believe — that his mother had lied to him all those years than it was for him to believe someone he actually fucking loved had. But Todd had. There was no way Todd hadn’t. Todd probably fucking had pictures of all three of them together. And Todd knew all about Black’s fucking problems.
“Sometimes,” Black had said once, curled up in Todd’s bed, the sounds of the Mario Kart menu blipping annoyingly in the background. They were fifteen, maybe sixteen. “I dunno, I kind of want to know who died.”
Todd’s fingers had stilled. “...who died?”
At the time, Black figured Todd probably wouldn’t know his little sibling, if he’d had one. Or his dad. His psychiatrist had definitely thought he’d had one, not that Black’s mother had let him go to one all that long, but Black could read between the fucking lines. People didn’t just show up with memory loss, one day. Black used to search obits and cemeteries — but he never did find anything. “Yeah,” Black said, voice rough. “Someone died. Me, I guess.”
“You didn’t die,” Todd said, turning to look at him. “You’re still here, you know.”
At the time, it had been a comfort. It had been three years since Black woke up with nothing and he’d patched himself together just fine. He wasn’t going to sessions anymore; they didn’t scan his brain. He’d started at a new high school. Whatever it was he lost didn’t really affect him, more a distant idea that something had happened, but it was all over now.
And Todd had known the whole fucking time that it wasn’t over.
Black tried to kill the part of him that wanted to call Todd up and just ask, “Hey, what the fuck?”
It was probably what Todd wanted, though. Get Black to talk to him. Worse, get Black to admit that Todd got under his skin, that he got to him, that he wanted to tear himself apart thinking about the fact that Todd did this to him, had been doing this to him for ten years. Todd always loved to make an impression. Todd’s sticky fingerprints would live under his skin for-fucking-ever. Fucking bastard. He wanted it to hurt. He wanted to know he could hurt Black. And Black wasn’t about to fucking give him the satisfaction.
If he learned White, maybe he could dissolve the print with acid.
It pissed Black off, really, and White didn’t quite seem to know why — how fucking could he? What did it matter that Black wanted him to just know? Was it so hard? Todd would just fucking know and the fucker with his own face couldn’t? White just followed him, buying them skewers, and didn’t say anything?
The fuck was wrong with him? The fuck was wrong with Black?
“Oh,” White said, interrupting a good hour’s worth of silence. Black slowed his step just a beat, so that White was only a half-step behind him. “Is that — isn’t that where we used to go watch the bikers?”
If it was, Black didn’t fucking know, but it seemed as good as place to stop as any.
White was enraptured, his skewer nearly falling out of his hand. They weren’t the only ones watching — this overpass always gathered a crowd when the weather was good and the tunnel wasn’t half-flooded. Black had seen it a million times before. He’d been down there, wiped out one on of the ramps and needed stitches. White could look all he wanted.
Maybe he didn’t want that skewer, though?
That was probably a stupid thing to think. White was clearly having some sort of… moment.
But mostly Black was thinking that he’d finished his food twenty minutes ago and he was still hungry — hey, had White made sure to feed him because he’d figured out Black hadn’t had anything eat since lunch yesterday? — whatever, he was still hungry. If it were anyone else, Black would just take the food before White accidentally dropped it on the ground.
He’d take it from Gram or Gene.
Or Todd.
But White was still basically a stranger to him. Black didn’t share food with strangers. Once, White had taken the cucumber slices out of his fried rice and dropped them onto Black’s plate and it was so fucking alien that Black could only just stare at him, shocked.
White hadn’t done it since; now he laid his cucumbers out on the side of the bowl in a neat line like in invitation, and Black hadn’t managed to take any of those, either, even though he fucking loved cucumber.
Shouldn’t he just be able to do it? White didn’t even want it. And White clearly, obviously, wanted him to be more familiar, though he hadn’t said it. Anyone in the right fucking mind would be able to take it without even thinking about it.
Black’s heart fucking raced when he reached out and stole it and White didn’t even notice. Why would he? He didn’t even know Black was fucked in the head.
“He’s good,” White said eventually. He’d curled himself into a little ball, chin propped up on his knees.
“I’m better.”
“You still ride?” White didn’t ask that like he was surprised.
“You don’t?” Black didn’t know why he was asking that either. Clearly, White didn’t. White’s entire personality was so clean he probably took an eraser to himself every night to make sure there were no marks in the morning.
“Pa wouldn’t let me. I always — he said it was a hobby you dragged me into, so — it wasn’t proper.”
“Fuck Pa,” Black said, which was the first time he’d actually said the word since he was thirteen, probably, and his mom was telling him that his pa, whoever the fuck he was, wasn’t in their life and he should just accept his new pa, his stepdad. Now that he was thinking about it, he didn’t know why his mother didn’t lie and say that was his real one.
White burrowed his chin deeper into his arms. “But I wanted to do it first.”
Black stared at him. “Really?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Nope,” Black said, which was the first indication he’d ever given White about anything. And White didn’t even realize; just thought it was normal. Just like the skewer Black ate, he didn’t even notice what was missing.
Black:
did you really fucking call me at 4 in the fucking morning
what could you possibly fucking want
It made Black jittery, that White had called him in the middle of him setting a fucking fire. But there was no fucking way White could know what they were doing unless one of the idiots said something. For fuck’s sake.
“Have any of you been taking to White,” he said suspiciously.
Everyone stared at him.
Yeah, that was a stupid fucking question. Gram had told fucking everyone, with glee, that Black and White were hanging out, apparently not that put off by the fact that White fucking hated him, but Black had told them all a million times over not to talk to him. And while these fucking idiots loved ignoring him, it was way too much work for any of them to dig White up just to piss Black off.
Well, maybe not for Yok.
“He called me six times two hours ago,” Black said.
Sean lurched forward, grabbing Black’s phone out of his hand. “What the fuck,” he said. “I fucking knew you were—”
“You didn’t know shit,” Black interrupted, snatching it back. “I set the house on fucking fire, didn’t I, so if you want to talk shit about who’s a fucking coward—”
“Boys,” Gumpa said with finality, and they break apart, Black breathing hard, because he had inhaled a lot more fucking smoke then he’d have liked. “Sean. Be reasonable. You know Black isn’t talking to his brother about this.”
Because after Gram had shared with the class about meeting White, Black had sat them all down and made them promise not to tell him anything about what was going on here. You might think he’s like me ‘cause of our face, he said. He’s not.
“Well, no one else was talking to Black’s fucking brother about this either,” Sean said. “Did you fucking let something slip?”
Black stared back, unimpressed. “I don’t even let him in my fucking apartment.”
“You don’t even—” Sean trailed off, confusion overlapping his anger. “You don’t even let him in your house?”
“I wouldn’t have even talked to him at all if everyone hadn’t been so hellbent on it,” Black said, and didn’t care to watch everyone’s faces twist with some sick empathy. At least he was confident that no one had talked to White. So what the fuck was White doing calling him? What the fuck did White know?
But god, Black thought White knew nothing.
Maybe that wasn’t fair, because he didn’t know White enough to tell when White was lying, but White waved it at all off, saying he’d fought with their father. Black could write a million fucking stories of every day in his life just like that. It was something they could share, really, their fucked-up parents and how they hated them. Black didn’t even need to know their dad to know he hated him, so really. What was better bonding than this?
But Black didn’t like it, thinking that he didn’t even know White well enough to know if it was the truth.
He just had to live like that, half-understanding and knowing he never would.
He was walking down the street to meet White at a curry stand near the university and something in his chest just crushed, all the wind knocked out of him, a weird bubble of panic expanding even though he was just fucking walking down the street—
And then he saw White, halfway down the alleyway, being fucking menaced by some idiot that Black vaguely recognized. “I thought you were tough shit, Black,” the fucker said to White contemplatively, because White was a fucking target instead of a random mugging statistic.
Fucker. Black could kill him no problem. “I am.” The guy twisted around, his face a little clear. He was one of the annoying dealers who sold near the garage, and that just pissed Black off more. “The fuck are you doing, Ice?”
“What the fuck,” Ice said.
Phi,” White warbled, head lolling against the wall. When Black looked at him, he could practically feel White’s panic in his lungs, the trapped adrenaline swelling with no release, could almost feel it ebb when he saw Black, like Black would take care of it. It must fucking ache to be overwhelmed with it, to feel all that and be able to do nothing with it. A pressured bottle begging for relief.
Black wouldn’t know.
“What, you can’t tell me apart from him?” Black frowned at White’s face. “He has glasses. White. Where are your glasses.”
White’s brow furrowed, like he’d forgotten he needed them. “He threw them.”
Fucker. “He’s gonna regret that.”
Ice moved to press the knife down and Black just ripped him away, White’s strangled gasp in the back of his mind. Ice was trying to get away, the smart fuck knew better than to tangle with Black — but then he didn’t, did he, if he’d pinned White against the wall like a butterfly in a laboratory.
Black destroyed him, punch and punch after punch, and it was fucking easy.
Even when he got angry, it felt like nothing, it felt so natural it was like breathing. His fingers cracked and it was nothing; his knuckles were scrapped and bloody and he felt nothing and at some point, Ice must have managed to get him with the knife, because there was something ripped and wrong at the underside of his jaw, but all that mattered was Ice, smeared into the pavement. All that mattered was that Black fixed his fucking problems, and he knew this would fucking happen, that’s why he didn’t fucking want White—
“Phi, just let him go,” White said, tired.
Maybe Black should have been embarrassed, White seeing him like this — he used to feel that way with Eugene, sometimes, the way she’d look at him after he snapped at Gram. Like she’d expected him to be better than the wreckage he was. And White was expecting a brother, but Black didn't know if there had ever been anything under this raw rage.
He let Ice go.
White was propped up against the wall, one hand up against his neck. Black fucking hated him. He didn’t even fucking know what a mess Black was.
“You,” Black said. “Why didn’t you fucking do something?”
“I didn’t think he’d believe I wasn’t you,” White muttered. Black thought he was mad, that maybe there was something in White too that Black could understand, because White’s face was all tightly papered-up hurt.
(How did he do that? Black couldn't help but explode.)
The fuck was he so mad for? Black couldn’t control the people who hated him.
“Fucking,” Black said, raising his hand to his jaw, where he’d been sliced open, and found nothing. He frowned, looking at White, and then realized — “What the fuck?”
White’s neck was covered in blood under his hand. Black went cold.
“I’m okay,” White said, which was fucking not true.
Black grabbed White’s shoulder and a wash of pain went through his own at the manhandling and then ebbed, like it wasn’t his own. White remained hunched over it protectively, blood staining his shirt. Black twisted White’s head to the side to inspect the wound. “What the fuck,” he said as his own neck protested for no damn good reason. “I can fucking feel that.”
“It’s really not that bad.”
Like Black gave a fuck! If White wanted to downplay his fucking injury so bad he bled out here in the alleyway, fine, whatever, Black wouldn’t have bothered to fucking come save him then, but why the fuck could he feel it? He gave White a little shake. “It shouldn’t fucking hurt at all. The fuck, White?”
“It’s back.” The fuck was back? “You felt it when you, um, were strangling me — you couldn’t breathe—”
Black frowned, thinking back. When he was strangling White? He guessed he did remember a moment when he’d been crushing down on White’s neck, feeling the give of it under his hand, and suddenly he couldn’t make himself breathe. And everyone had pulled him off. He thought it was… guilt, maybe.
But now White was saying he’d made Black feel something. “That was you?”
White tilted his head. The cut sang. “It’s always me.”
Always? “This is fucking normal?”
“You know that,” White sighed, like he didn’t deserve to have this interrogation, like he didn’t deserve to have to be injured at all, and maybe he fucking didn’t, he definitely didn’t, but Black couldn’t control which people fucking hated him, whether or not that was his own damn twin. He just didn’t have it in him. He came here and he made sure White didn’t bleed out and White looked at him with that tired expression that said that Black had always been like this, that even when he’d been whole he’d been wrong. He just knew.
Well, Black knew fucking nothing. “I don’t know that,” he declared. “I don’t know you.”
White’s face fell. “Phi—”
“No, I’m not fucking kidding,” Black said impatiently. He didn’t have time for White’s sad little ruminations on the things they’d lost. Black’d been losing everything for a long time. “I have memory loss. Ten years ago, I woke up and I didn’t even know my own fucking name. I definitely don’t know you. So you fucking tell me why I can feel your pain right the fuck now.”
Later, he’d regret saying it like that. Regret the hollow cavity of White’s face, like the leftover crater of a bomb.