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Andrew did not mean to interrupt them.
He can entertain himself just fine, especially now that Jack has allowed him unrestricted access to his workshop in the garage. Jack and Robby are doctors, and doctors are busy; he gets it. He’s been doing all right in his own company most of his life.
It’s just that they’re both home, and it’s been so long—two weeks and seventeen hours, give or take—since their schedules last aligned. Andrew has missed them. He just wanted to see if they’d be up for a movie. The master bedroom wasn’t locked. He knows to stay away when it is, but it wasn’t, and he could hear their voices inside, talking, laughing—that usually means he'd be welcome, when they’re in a mood like that.
Now, Andrew stands rooted in the doorway, shock rushing through his body like a jolt of current.
The view isn't so compromising, but enough. Somehow, just seeing enough to realise what he's looking at is worse—as if the concealed parts are harbouring a repulsive secret, a depth of depravity that can only live in one’s imagination. The covers in disarray. Jack’s broad back, muscles shifting under the freckled skin. A glimpse of Robby’s side, paler and softer.
Suddenly, Andrew is ten years old again, watching Smurf and Billy through a crack in the door. Two bodies contorted into a shared incomprehensible shape—it's a game grown-ups play, he knows, a terrible game with terrible rules and sounds.
Smurf used to tease that it made him jealous—her long fingers ruffling his hair, her laughter a peal of mirthful bells, are you jealous, baby? And maybe he was. Maybe that’s how envy feels. He’d white-knuckle the hem of her short dress and wish he were big and strong enough to throw Billy off the porch so hard his face would bleed and he’d never, ever set foot in Smurf’s bedroom again.
Seeing Jack and Robby together makes him feel other things, too. Wanting to die. Wanting to storm into the room and put his hands around Robby’s neck.
Andrew likes Robby. They've been getting along lately—not just because Jack wants them to play nice. Andrew learned to leave Robby alone after shifts, but when he isn’t dead tired or brittle with sorrow, he’s peaceful to be around. A good man, in ways Andrew would never expect someone so big to be. Big bodies are capable of violence to match, but Robby has never raised a hand in anger—he puts them to work cooking elaborate meals, tucking Jack’s curls behind his ear when they grow out too long, and messing up home repairs so Jack gets to swoop in and rescue the misassembled furniture.
Sometimes, when Jack is out of the house, Robby arranges himself on the couch and opens up his arms in invitation, letting Andrew crawl into the offered space and weather Jack’s absence.
Robby is Jack’s, and Andrew is Jack’s, too, so he’s learning to think of Robby as family. Maybe that’s why watching him in bed with Jack makes him furious and afraid.
He must have lost time, because Jack is looking right at him now—body twisted into a strained half-turn, eyes wide. “Andy? I didn’t— Shit!”
Andrew already knows how this goes. He doesn’t wait for Jack to scramble off the bed and give chase. Just like when he was ten—just like when he was sixteen, too, unwittingly catching Julia and Baz in the act—he turns his back on the sight and bolts.
On his way out, Andrew spots Jack’s leg detached and discarded against the dresser; that gives him an unfair advantage. The escape is so instinctive—an animal flight—that Andrew can only just keep his wits about him enough to avoid darting out the front door barefoot. A bathroom is the next best thing.
No sounds from the other side of the door. Jack has never attempted to invite himself into a room by force before and probably isn’t about to start, but Andrew checks the lock thrice just in case. Satisfied it will hold, he tugs his clothes off—he’s in a hurry, but they still go on the towel bar folded all tidy; he can’t turn that part of his nature off even while he’s shaking all over—and gets into the shower. The water is set to scalding. Helps take his mind off his roiling stomach. Just in time to stop him from retching, which is something of a relief—Andrew hates being sick; hates the sticky nausea that precedes it and the violent expulsion that follows.
The bathroom is stocked with a medley of products—according to Jack, people do a lot of unnecessary things to curly hair—but none works as well as the antiseptic stuff Robby sometimes buys just for Andrew. Jack and Robby won't touch it, say they get enough of it at the hospital, but the sharp chemical scent—unidentifiable, overwhelming nothingness—soothes Andrew. He’d wash with bleach if he could, but everyone in the house has to follow the No Hurting Yourself rule, so the antimicrobial soap will have to do.
He scrubs until his skin feels like a worn, scratchy glove, ready to peel off all at once. When he’s finally done and there’s not an inch of him left to clean, he shuts off the spray and stands still, listening as the water drips down onto the shower floor. Still nothing.
Safe to come out now.
He’s not going to feel any cleaner, so there’s no point wasting any more hot water.
The bathroom is large enough to be fully accessible to Jack, but there’s no escaping the mirror when Andrew steps out onto the mat. He catches sight of his face, crumpled into a grimace, and then the rest of him.
It’s a large mirror. Robby calls it a Narcissus special and swears that thing will give me a heart attack one day because flickers of reflected motion get creepy when you're using the bathroom at night. It’s daytime now, so the reflection is clear and inevitable.
Looking at his own naked body always makes Andrew think of Smurf's.
When he grew older and she started getting him hookers, most of them looked like her, so he couldn't forget if he tried—and he has tried. She was beautiful; she knew that, flaunted it the way men sometimes flaunt a loaded gun. Smooth bronzed skin—always so much of it on display—and golden-brown hair. That was before she started bleaching them white. The Cody boys each took something from her; each carries it like a mark, like the little carved-in symbols on the bottoms of fancy clay teapots from faraway places that Robby likes. Always recognisable as having been shaped by a certain pair of hands. Like mother, like son.
Overcome with revulsion, it's all Andrew can do to stop himself from smashing the mirror with his bare fist.
He looks like Jack, too—because that’s what they are: twins, carbon copies of each other. His features are Jack’s features, even though he doesn’t wear them with the same grace. Jack’s smattering of freckles, Jack’s sturdy build, Jack’s smooth chest and belly. Jack’s. Smurf and Jack are nothing alike, so the games they play aren’t either, even grown-up games. Andrew doesn’t want to be thinking these angry, filthy thoughts about Jack’s body. He squeezes his eyes shut so the mirror won't tempt him and feels his way around for a towel.
Jack is waiting in the living room when Andrew gets out. He looks ruffled and damp, too—must have taken a hasty shower in the other bathroom. The accommodations are less thought-through there, the relics of the time Jack and Robby were still learning their way around Jack's disability. They keep meaning to renovate, but it hasn't happened yet, and Andrew feels bad about keeping the better option occupied for so long.
“Hey, buddy,” Jack says in that carefully neutral tone.
Andrew hates when people talk like that—like he’s a bomb about to go off, and they're busy estimating the blast radius in their heads. Doesn’t sting so much when strangers do it—who cares what they think!—but from family, it makes him sour. He knows he deserves it, keeps giving them reasons to, but he still wishes they didn’t.
Back then, Julia thought he was angry, too, but Andrew wasn't. Sure, he gets confused about feelings a lot, but anger is the only emotion Andrew won’t ever mix up with any other, and it's not like that.
He knows, rationally, that Jack and Robby are married, and married couples have sex. Plenty of people have sex, and it's not the end of the world. Andrew even knows what it feels like first-hand—best be rid of that thought, or else he’ll be back in that shower; he imagines stomping the memories down with his boot like a bug, crunch, crunch, like crushing someone’s hand in a really nasty fight, cracking until it’s flat.
…he’s not wearing any boots. Andrew blinks at his bare feet, the mental thread lost. That happens sometimes. Gruesome images come flooding his mind when he’s upset, although he wasn’t really wishing for any such thing.
Jack is still on the couch, watching. Reluctantly, Andrew comes over and sits next to him, arms folded over his chest.
“You all right?” Jack asks, softer. “Sorry about… all that. I should have locked the door.”
As always when he’s trying to put something big and important into speech, words get all bunched up and twisted like old rags until nothing at all can come out. Andrew growls in frustration, the sound tearing through the lump in his throat. “Not… Not—”
The talking thing is like a stammer; getting worked up makes these mute spells worse. Jack doesn't tell him to spit it out or relax. When Andrew first came to live here, Jack would sometimes say never mind or offer to have the offending conversation at another time. Now, he knows better. They just sit there, waiting for Andrew’s broken brain to sort itself out.
Well, they would have, before—even last month, they would have stayed put. Now, Andrew leans forward and tucks his face into Jack’s shoulder, his favourite hiding spot. Even the inside of his mouth feels wrong—numb, like after a dentist visit. His lips and tongue won't move as they should.
“I don't… care,” he gets out, enunciating each word. “Do what you want.”
It comes out harsh, although he didn’t mean it that way. Andrew wanted to say that it doesn’t matter, that Jack and Robby can do what they like in their own house, their own bed, and it’s not their fault Andrew is wrong in the head.
When they were kids, Jack always spoke for two. He learned to talk early, and Andrew was late—he was late with most milestones—so Jack would guess for him. He got so good at it, it felt as if he could hear Andrew’s thoughts. Andrew didn’t mind.
Twenty years apart, and it only took Jack another year after their reunion to start guessing again.
“We want you to be comfortable, you know. It’s your home, too.” Jack reaches out and covers Andrew's hands with his, coaxing the nails away from the skin. Jack’s fingertips are dry, calloused in odd places from all the doctoring and fixing he does; he rubs over the scratches that came just shy of drawing blood until Andrew stops wishing they’d gone deeper, and then he says, “When we have sex, he’s not hurting me, and he’s not taking me away.”
Andrew glares at him before looking away. Sometimes Jack’s ability to guess what he’s thinking isn’t so pleasant. He resents Jack putting shit he hasn’t quite worked out in his head yet into words. It's not that he's never mulled over why sex sometimes brings out such a welter of emotions in him. He doesn't like where these guesses are going, is all.
His head is like no man’s land—Andrew saw it once, as a kid, in an old war documentary. A boundless expanse of mud marred by craters with god knows what at the bottom. Sometimes you're better off not dredging up whatever lies sunken down there.
Jack thinks that's smart. He says he’s better off not fishing for war memories, either.
“We good?” he checks again, giving them both an out.
Andrew nods, relieved that Jack knows not to make it into a whole production. The sticky horror has eased, and he doesn't feel like climbing out of his skin anymore.
“All right.” Jack studies his face, proving to himself that it’s true, and is satisfied. He gently nudges Andrew away. “Go find Robby if you're feeling up to it. He’ll be happy to know you’re not mad at us forever.”
Andrew thinks of Robby—his big hands that don't hurt people, and the bashful little grin he resorts to when he doesn’t know what to say, and how he gets sad and embarrassed about the strangest things. In that, Robby and Andrew aren't so different.
That surprised him when it first occurred to him a few months in. Andrew is used to being alike with Jack—that’s what they are, distorted versions of the same person. Twins. But there are things Andrew and Robby share that Jack does not. Jack is not complicated like that. Not perfect—although he comes pretty close, if you ask Andrew—but there’s hurt, and there’s messed up; there’s something about Robby that makes Andrew get him in ways he only thought possible with family. Figures anyone can get pretty weird if something was real wrong at home growing up.
Robby is probably upset at the commotion. Andrew doesn’t like the thought.
“Not mad,” he reminds stubbornly.
Jack reaches out and pulls Andrew closer, so their faces are right next to each other. Doesn't kiss him—kissing, even familial and chaste, is still dangerous territory—but the touch conveys the affection all the same.
“I know,” he says, certain and fond. Andrew squirms away, liking the touch but not wanting to hear another untimely insight, but Jack beats him to it: “If you ever wanna talk, we can. If not, it's no big deal.” He releases Andrew, but the words are already out, so now he doesn’t wanna leave all that much. Jack has to give him a little nudge again. “Now go. We’re okay, I promise.”
Robby is still in the bedroom, but it looks different with the covers all straightened out. He’s wearing his pyjamas, buttoned up to the throat. He never does up the top button; Robby runs hot. His face, though—it's open and oddly vulnerable when he meets Andrew’s eyes.
“Hey. Jack sent you over, huh?”
He doesn’t ask if Andrew’s fine, just offers up a space against his side the way they’ve been doing lately. Andrew curls up against him—body against body, skin brushing in places, the warmth seeping through the double layer of thin fabric. Robby even has a scent to him, clean and domestic—Robby and Jack smell like the hospital and each other, but they don’t smell the same; Andrew is still puzzling out why—and Andrew shivers with sheer relief when the contact doesn't set off another wave of revulsion. Still family. Still welcome to be close.
“Movie?” he prompts, gingerly hopeful. That’s what set this weird episode into motion in the first place. Might as well get what he was after.
“Sure,” Robby agrees, relieved in his own way. His grip around Andrew tightens—never restrictive, just less tentative. “Jack wanted to see some artsy WW1 flick about a shell-shocked poet. How does that sound? Awful, probably.”
Andrew has no objections to a war movie—that's Jack's thing; if Jack thinks a war that old is fine, then it's fine—or poets. So long as he can stay here with them, in this bed, wanted and safe with no strings attached, that sounds pretty good.