op (maldito) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-11 17:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | hook, huntsman |
Who: October & January Fischer
What: A little sadness and some cutes
Where: The Fischer household
When: Directly after this (and by extension, this)
Warnings/Rating: You know Toby & Jan. Lots of brotherly feels.
To be quite honest, Jan didn’t know what was going on with March. He didn’t know what his brother had done to earn him the ire of a man named Russ C. who wished to break his knees, but he assumed it was something bad, something worthy of whispers and out-and-out threats. It had to be. Jan had a hard time imagining March doing anything terrible, but then again, he was his brother and he loved him, and Jan couldn’t help but think that that changed things in some way. That didn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t shocked to find a stranger on the log so viciously and righteously attacking his brother and to find said brother only encouraging it. It only got worse when Toby (who seemed at least aware of the nature of March’s alleged transgression) joined in too. Things deteriorated quickly (Toby called the police) and there was nothing Jan could do but watch. There had been no resolution. The man, Russ, hadn’t divulged a thing—he’d hardly said a thing—and March only wanted Jan to help calm Toby, so... that’s what he was doing. He didn’t pry. He asked and wasn’t answered, so he did as he was bid. There was nothing much on TV and nothing much that he wanted to watch, but the youngest Fischer brother was indeed home alone, and if what March needed was for Jan to entertain Toby, then he would. The past month or so had found Jan alone more often than was usual for the cheery boy. His conversation with his brother about their mother’s illness and the possibility of it surfacing in one of them had him somewhat down, in his way. It was so much to think about, so much to try to come to terms with, that he had made space for himself to just take it in. Jan hadn’t outright ignored calls or anything, but he hadn’t made any. To invite Toby over now felt a little odd, but sometimes things had to be done. Jan was on the familiar couch in the living room, wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts, his hair still slicked back, watching some infomercial with glazed eyes when he heard the front door open. The smell of the Chinese food preceded Toby's entrance into his childhood home, the home that Jan now called his own after Toby had left town to attend college some years ago. It wasn't that he was particularly hungry, but Chinese food seemed to be the sort of thing to pick up when going over to his brother's house after everything that had happened on the journals. Would it fix anything? Likely not, but it was the 'right' thing to do. "Hello?" he called out as he closed the door behind him, kicking his shoes off and over to the rug by the door for that purpose, carrying the waxed plastic bag towards the living room in time to catch sight of his brother on the couch. "Are you okay?" he asked, hesitating in the doorway, an awkward, unsure thing after everything that had happened with March. It still weighed heavily on his mind, but he had done as much as he could in calling the police. He'd be there to help pick up the pieces, but what more could he do when March didn't want him there? Jan was twisting on the sofa when Toby paused in the doorway. He smiled reassuringly at his brother, tugged a knit blanket up and over his knees to make room on the neighboring cushion, and quietly said hello. The Chinese food smelled good and even though he had eaten not two hours prior, it had Jan’s stomach growling in anticipation. He sat, cross-legged, on the sofa, flexible from years of yoga. "I’m good. There’s nothing good on TV," Jan’s thumb jerked toward the accused. He picked up the remote and changed the channel to some kid’s channel. An animated bear was talking to a turtle. "It’s good to see you." That wasn’t a lie. However avoidant he’d been, Jan always did like to see Toby (and March when he came around). He felt safer just for setting eyes on his older brother. Maybe things weren’t so bad. With space made, Toby sat the bag of food on the coffee table in front of the couch, dropping down to sit moments later with one leg folded up beneath his body. "Apparently. This is why I don't generally pay any attention to television. It either sucks you in and eats you up, or there's nothing good on, and people complain when they aren't entertained one hundred percent of the time." His smile, though strained, was good-natured, and as Jan looked him over, Toby occupied himself with pulling waxed paper boxes of food out of the bag. "Fried rice, lo mein, that shrimp stuff you like. And egg rolls. I almost forgot the egg rolls." Toby wasn't really hungry, but it all came down to that this was the sort of thing he should be doing. Have some food. Talk it out. Pretend the world wasn't crumbling around them. "This is why movies were created," declared Jan with a nod toward the two DVD towers, old school, that stood next to the old wooden-box TV, a relic from the 80s. It had lines in for audio/visual cables, so it wasn’t too old, but it had been sitting in the same spot on the shag carpet ever since Jan could remember. It was another of those things that lent a feeling of stability in its solidness, and simply by nature of the fact that it was so familiar. (That was why Jan liked the house so much, despite everything bad that had happened in it. Despite the fact that the living room was where his father had killed himself.) The food was dug into then. Jan took a waxed cardboard box from his brother with a grateful nod of the head, and then he grabbed a plastic fork. The shrimp stuff he liked made him feel better too. "I’m glad you didn’t. I would have sent you back out." Jan smiled at Toby. There was a small silence as he ate a moment, chewing thoughtfully. "I’m sorry I made you come out here when you wanted to be alone." "You were always more into the pop culture thing than I was," Toby remarked as he grabbed the container of lo mein and a pair of chopsticks, settling back to crack open the box and dig in. Silence was his friend for a long while then, just greasy noodles and vegetables, working steadily through a few bites before he gave a shake of his head. "It's probably better than I came out here, honestly," Toby remarked, thumbing the corners of his mouth clean. "If I was alone, I likely would have gone out to Turnberry to check on March eventually, and that would have ended badly for someone in the end." Toby let out a long sigh, prodding his noodles for a moment before he put the carton down. Part of him wanted to be able to tell Jan what was wrong, what had prompted the fight, but it wasn't his story to tell. If March wanted Jan to know, he would leave it to March to tell him. Jan didn’t think Toby would tell whatever it was he knew. If he was going to, he already would have. That only made the imagined bad deed that much worse. Jan was frowning about that, stabbing at a small, orange curl of a shrimp when his brother lowered the box in his hands. He looked up. "You called the police?" He still couldn’t believe it. He had no idea what was going on, but he couldn’t believe it. Jan ate the speared shrimp, bending the white plastic between his teeth (he’d never learned chopsticks). If he was more into pop culture, Toby was more into culture, and that was fine, because Jan had never belonged there. He wasn’t smart enough for it. He sat a moment with a worried expression peaking his two apostrophed brows. "I hope March is okay." And he did. "Yeah, I called the police. I don't know who this Russ character is, but people who don't know how to fight, how to punch, don't threaten like that. I just didn't want March to end up hurt because of this guy's temper." Toby didn't say anything for a long while, but he settled back with his back pressed against the couch cushions, one hand coming up to wipe down the length of his face. "And I hope he's okay, as well. I'll call after bit and check on him." A long sigh escaped him, shoulders falling with the release of air, and then he reached back out to grab his container of lo mein and tucked back in, drawing into his quiet once more. Quiet had always fit with Toby. It was comfortable around him and draped his shoulders, worn thin with care and use. It seeped into him, and, at times like these, out of him too, to fill the old living room, to curl around the base of the old TV and to catch itself in the tines of Jan’s fork. He peered at it. Quiet was good when Toby was around, but right now Jan didn’t think he could bear it. When he was home alone, he turned the TV on to avoid it. He sang songs and danced and listened to music, to the news, to animated animals having dopey conversations, all to avoid the lull. Quiet was not comfortable around Jan. It was unfamiliar and unwanted, and as he sat, fork halfway to his lips, he just looked at his brother and his blanket of silence. "I know bad things are always happening, but I wish that maybe... it could just stay away for a while." It was an awfully depressing thing for Jan to say, but he wasn’t sure what else there was. He frowned. Toby didn't say anything until he had finished his bite of noodles, the chopsticks shoved into the box as he shifted his body, turning towards Jan. "I want the same thing, to be honest with you," Toby said quietly. "But I think you and I know, out of all these people, that things will eventually look up. You just have to hold on until the storm passes." He paused, then balancing the box of food in his lap, he reached out to give a ruffle to Jan's hair. "It'll be fine, promise you that." And Toby knew it wasn't a promise he could easily keep, but he had always done his best to keep the darkness away from his siblings, and that wasn't about to stop just because they were adults now. Jan was the small, two-person Fischer family’s resident ray of sunshine. He was the smiling face, the kid who followed the more somber October around, lightening the mood, speaking in an overbright, cheerful way that was reminiscent of chipmunks and other adorable rodents. But even he had his off days, sometimes several in a row. The whole thing with their mother was still so fresh in his mind, wet paint on his cerebral walls, he couldn’t seem to get his smiles to stick. Not even Toby’s usually reassuring words did the trick. Jan sighed into his shrimp. The fingers in his hair did earn his brother a sheepish look and the beginnings of a smile, however weak. Jan leaned against Toby, shoulder to shoulder, little brother against big brother. "What are you supposed to do when strangers threaten your brother?" His hand fell away moments later, letting Jan lean against him, comfortable in the contact with his youngest brother. "What are you supposed to do?" he echoed quietly, his gaze growing distant as he stared out over the living room, towards the television though he paid little attention to what was on the screen. "You do your best to offer help and be there for the other person," Toby answered a moment later. "And if you really have to, you call the cops and let the professionals deal with it." A faint smile pulled at his lips then and he gave a little nudge towards Jan's shoulder. Toby’s smiles were—while not rare—were things precious to Jan. He liked to see his brother appear happy, even if that’s all it was. (This caveat being a recent addition to the equation. Before it was simply: he liked to see him happy.) And the trace uplifting of the corners of Toby’s mouth had his little brother smiling in return out of habit. He nudged back, lightly, then settled against the older man. He sighed again. "Yeah. You’re right. I just don’t understand any of it. I..." Jan trailed off, his dark eyes on the TV screen, reflecting the image there backwards and convex. He was obviously frustrated by something. "...don’t understand much, I guess." Toby didn't say anything for a while, instead settling on throwing an arm around Jan's shoulders to haul him in close, like they would have sat when they were younger and much more naive to the world than they were now. It hurt him more than he cared to realise to see how his little brother could be sometimes, and it worried him. Jan was the sun, the one that held all the light, the life, the promise of a new day, and sometimes he worried if that light was starting to dim. "You understand plenty," Toby eventually said, his voice pitched quiet. "You just see the world in a different way. Not a wrong way, not by any stretch of imagination. Just... differently. And I don't know what I would do without it." That was pure honesty there in those words, because without Jan, Toby honestly wasn't sure what he would do. Draw away, hide away, let the darkness that was creeping into the world drown him. The arm helped. Jan was pulled in close and he leaned heavily into the half-embrace, heavily into his brother, physically, but also emotionally. He let Toby’s words settle around them, and they helped too. If Toby thought he understood, and if he thought it was okay to see things differently, then it was okay with Jan—at least for now. He smiled again, much more genuinely, much more like himself, and he burrowed in closer, his head against his brother’s shoulder. The boxed food was set aside and crossed legs came up, knees to chest, and he sat. "I don’t know what I would do without you," he said. It was less of a confession when it came to Jan, because sincerity was far from unusual, but it still counted, didn’t it? It was still heartfelt. Toby was warm against his side. A rabbit chattered on screen. And for the first time that evening, Jan felt a little bit better. |