barbara gordon (pythia) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-14 15:05:00 |
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Aaron’s home was a tiny two bedroom home off the strip. It was sparsely furnished in contrast, minimalist-esque Ikea bought prints hanging off of beige walls, but he didn’t mind. Decor was low on the list of concerns when only staying for weeks at a time. Even if he had no end in sight on this assignment. He sighed as he looked around the living room. The couch, brown leather, comfortable albeit plain, was at least a fold out. He hadn’t anticipated needing one but luck was on his side. At least how much it could be with Lin staying with him. Lin was... a complication on the scant plans he had in Vegas. It wouldn’t ruin his assignment (he didn’t think, he refused to think, he refused to let it) but it did muddle matters. Not in the least bit because of whatever trouble Lin had, which involved running into and pissing off psychopaths. Aaron sighed as he looked around his bare living room. Lin was getting the couch. There was a second bedroom but without another bed, the option was clear. And he deserved it. And a small part of him hoped it was uncomfortable. It was a small boon for this trouble. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Lin. Blood was, after all, thicker than water. But Aaron never did quite see eye to eye with his brother, and the passage of time and the distance hadn’t helped that. He didn’t wish for him to meet his end at the hands of a psychotic stranger, but an uncomfortable night on the hard springs of a fold out couch? It wasn’t so bad to wish him that. Lin was a complication. His entire life, he had been a complication. Too small, too loud, too smart-alecky, too rambunctious, too smart, too -- unwanted, too much for a fifteen year old, too little for whoever the father was. He tried not to think about it, and most days he managed to forget it, but then there were days like today, where it was just rubbed in his face every fucking second, over and over, and then he remembered, he had no choice, he was a complication. A thorn in the side of everyone he knew. Especially his brother’s. Aaron was eight years older than Lin and had always seemed a world away, and though, in his own way, the younger brother had looked up to his elder—he learned words from him and used them, he read his books, he wore his old clothes—it didn’t matter. Lin was too different and he couldn’t follow in anyone’s footsteps, even if he’d wanted to. He didn’t fit the same way. Still, the boy wasn’t so blind as not to see the effect his presence had on his older siblings. They would stop whatever they were doing when he came into the room, freeze in conversation. Even small, after making the mistake of asking ‘what?’ the first few times he was conscious of such, the little boy would pretend it didn’t bother him. He would take to tugging on their hands and asking them to play with him, but he never asked about it again. He didn’t want to know, he decided. He tried to forget about that too, which, again, most of the time, he was successful at. But now, in his car, the engine cut off, he sat, considering all these things, considering this Ian R, considering the words he’d said, and Sam, and all of it, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he should just go to the hotel. Aaron was his brother, yes, and he’d said it was okay to stay, but... Whatever. It was too late now. Fuck it all. Lin checked the address on his phone a second time, glanced at the house, sighed, and made for the door. He toted his heavy backpack with one strap around his shoulder and pressed the tip of his index finger next to the doorbell. And then he waited. Aaron saw the approach of the car first, movement spied through the thin curtains of his living room window. So when the doorbell chimed – half a second later than pressed, if Lin’s approach to his doorstep was anything to go by – and he took a moment before crossing the room and swinging the door open. The Nevada heat hit him immediately, the cool air conditioning blowing across his back, making him want to stop standing in the doorway as soon as possible. Seeing Lin was always somewhat of a surprise. Family visits were usually relegated to fall and winter holidays, and both of them had a track record of not returning home on occasion. His brother hadn’t changed much, then again his siblings tended to flit between being knee high and being adults in his memory. At once he could envision the man on his doorstep at family dinners talking about work and also toddling after him in the house with questions that would have blown past the head of most teenagers. “Lin.” The name was a greeting, curt and with a perfunctory nod. Aaron was nothing if not succinct. Pushing back the door with one hand he swung the other to the living room, gesturing for his brother to come in. The door opened. Aaron was there, unchanged in his black shirt and blue jeans, tall as a menacing tree. There were, perhaps, a few new lines around the eyes, but Lin wasn’t looking closely enough to notice. He was struggling to keep his bag from tipping him over onto his ass, but he still smiled—the same mischievous grin that had haunted the Alesi family for the duration of their youngest child’s childhood (and adulthood, were we being honest). He saw his brother. From the smooth skate of dark hair to light, flat eyes, intelligent, observant, but without the curiosity that flared in the brown rings of Lin’s own, like a flame that refused to be extinguished, and the boy smiled more because that was what he did. He came in. Immediately, the stupid purple bag was discarded in a heap on the floor and Lin’s kicks—a pair of primary colored Vans straight outta 1992—joined the shit in all of two seconds. Next to Aaron, Lin looked tiny, like a child. He was sun-bronzed skin and bones underneath a Space Camp t-shirt and blood red slacks. His socks were pink, his nails glinting a seedy green, and his own hair an upswept upset of messy black. Where Aaron had always, to Lin’s mind, appeared older than he was, Lin himself was consistently mistaken for much younger. Put the pair of brothers together and the image created was one of opposites so extreme as to border on hilarity. The clipped syllable of his name earned a wry look and Lin pushed farther inside. He took in bare, boring walls and straight-sided, minimalist furniture. Even their fucking homes were on opposite ends of a spectrum. The boy sighed and turned back toward his brother. Another grin flitted across his face and he came forward to—without asking—wrap his arms around Aaron’s thin form, uncaring if he got any sort of reciprocation. If there was ever a moment he was the youngest sibling, it was at times like this. Lin liked to hug, okay? Aaron watched silently as Hurricane Lin roared through his life and living room, dropping objects picked up elsewhere and left unceremoniously in his wake. He, however long it had been since he last saw this, wasn’t as surprised as many otherwise would be. He watched the unpacking with a cool, almost uninterested eye, barely raising a brow at this or that. He didn’t even raise a brow when Lin hugged him, long limbs wrapping around his form. Thank god he immediately lifted his arms up, already anticipating the movement. Not that Aaron believed, for longer than a half of a split second, that bodily harm would come to him. His training and the instincts to react first were easily clamped down, no threat to his person detected. To his personal space, sure, but nothing that required too much retaliation. He let Lin linger in the hug a moment, as he did, before letting his heavy hands clap firmly, almost awkwardly (one might say very awkward, if neither man had been used to it), on his brother’s shoulder and then again on his back. See? Aaron was a hugger too. Of sorts. Thankfully, he would say, he wasn’t a long hugger. He pulled back a moment later, a soft clearing of his throat, before gesturing to the couch. “Think you can manage on that?” Aaron was a hugger of sorts. The back-clapping sort. Lin liked giving proper hugs, none of this ass-out, stiff-bodied bullshit. But, apparently that didn’t run in the family. Not that his ass was out at all. However awkward Aaron felt, the shit was confined to him. The boy almost laughed at the weight of the hands on his shoulder and back before he was forced to let go and drop the embrace. He smiled up at his brother, despite the black cloud that had followed him from his condo to his car to Aaron’s, absolutely able to sense the fraternal resignation that tinged every word, every tweak of muscle. Lin looked to the stand-in bed with interest. He had yet to be terrified enough to lose parts of himself, and as such, he wandered over to the furniture, splaying his hands across its back, pressing his knees against it, and leaning forward to see that it actually accordioned out as a sofa-bed. It brought to mind, tangentially, the Russian silent film, Bed and Sofa. The boy smiled at the thing and the springs he imagined coiled within its matzo mattress. At least there were blankets and a couple pillows. He’d completely forgotten to bring his own. In his usual fashion, Lin clambered over the spine of the couch and plopped down with a chorus of springs, canvas stretched over metal. He twisted to face his brother. “I zinc this will do just fine,” he said with all the cheeky innocence in his small person, as if he was just so totally unaware he was punning the Periodic Table. The elder brother watched with quiet eyes as Lin touched just about every part of the couch. Just like him to be handsy with everything, as if it was his to handle. As if it needed to be handled! The sigh that rumbled through him was barely suppressed. The accent was new, but wholly unexpected. It was weird, strange and random, and those were words he regularly associated with his younger brother. It made him toss Lin a look before shaking his head. Things hadn’t changed in this many years. The months since he had last seen his brother shouldn’t have been any different, and he chided himself for expecting... anything else. “I’ll order us some food.” He had a been a decent cook, more practical than anything else, with only rare occasions to care about preparing meals for anyone but himself. This could have been one of those occasions, had it not been so unexpected. “Pizza?” The question was asked over his shoulder but already Aaron was moving back to the kitchen to order. It would be quick and simple and, more importantly in his mind, keep them occupied. Days spent living with his brother. He hadn’t had such an opportunity since they were just kids. He doubted the experience had gotten any better since then. However many years it had been, Lin was still fully attuned to his brother’s body language; he could still translate the smallest tick of severe eyebrow and each twitching line of disapproving frown, as was the way of siblings. It was obvious enough to the boy that Aaron was looking for some kind of diversion as he stepped back, something to have to keep their hands and/or mouths busy, so they wouldn’t have to sit in fraternal claustrophobia until one of them detached and feigned exhaustion. Perhaps the boring couch didn’t need handling, but it was getting it all the same. What was wrong with a little livening up? (A lot if you were Aaron, but luckily, Lin was not.) Two arms hugged pillow to chest and Lin sat, still pivoted, to watch his brother recede toward what he assumed as a phone. He heard the low voice order a pizza with no input from Lin himself. Not that he minded. Pizza was always fine by him. “Bromine,” grinned the boy, a demanding wave of the hand beckoning Aaron from the kitchen. His smile weakened only a touch as he patted the creaking mattress beside him. “Don’t you want to talk? About boys or girls or like, life or whatever?” Aaron looked up at the start of Lin’s greeting, pausing in his listening to the last bits of his repeated order. The space between the kitchen and the living room giving him an unimpeded view of his brother. With his pillow pulled to his chest, he looked more and more like the small child Aaron had known. Then again, there were only a handful of occasions that Lin wasn’t the exceptionally younger brother, all gangly limbs, wide eyes, and too many questions. The moment of nostalgia broke as Lin continued and Aaron merely scowled, muttered his confirmation to the pizza delivery place, and hung up the phone. Talking. The very last thing he felt like doing was talking. Not that he was particularly adverse to the act. Well. Perhaps a little. But more than that, he wasn’t feeling all that encouraged to talk about those subjects. Women. Life. These things were complicated, putting it absolutely mildly. Both were so intrinsically linked to his classified work that he couldn’t speak of them. He could try, certainly. Talk about a woman he had once loved. Talk about work that occupied every aspect of his time. Skirting over the actual details might have worked with anyone else but not Lin. Too much curiosity with Lin and Aaron’s true life would too much of an oddity for his brother. No, there wouldn’t be much talking on his part. Not about his life. “How’s work?” They didn’t have to sit there in complete silence while they waited for a pizza, and Aaron set the phone back on its cradle before heading through the kitchen doorway. Such questions - and he was sincere about wanting to know about his brother’s life - were normally reserved for the scant few times they saw each other at holidays. Now was as good of a time as any to catch up on Lin’s life. Especially since it seemed like he was getting into all sorts of trouble. It was a moment of incongruence - the question of talking and the answer being a question itself. Lin’s mind melded the two together after a blink and his smile dimmed a touch once again, wattage lowering. It was an obvious diversion. But why? His head tipped to the side, black to blue, and eyebrows met. He performed a half-hearted shrug, perhaps the most telling of all his actions since his arrival on his brother’s doorstep. Shrugs were as natural to Lin as blinking, and they could be quite transparent to those who knew how to ewas them. The brown string of Christmas lights that lit Lin’s eyes from behind flickered, power was iffy. Work. Work was easy. Work was not Lin’s life, like it was his brother’s. Work wouldn’t get him killed. “You really want me to tell you about bone crystallization? About the solubility of said bone from an altered to a fresh state? Because I will, but I’ll be offended as hell if you start drooling on me. I’ll tell Mom.” Lin smiled, hugging the pillow all the tighter and peeping over the tip at his brother without lifting his chin. He didn’t. Well, maybe a little, but not in the way Lin would explain. He’d take a documentary or wikipedia entry. Aaron wasn’t an idiot and he had a slight fascination in Lin’s world and work. But hearing his brother talk down to him for hours was not high on list of things he’d like. There were a thousand things he’d like more than that. “I don’t drool,” he replied mildly, though there might have been a hint of a smile there, just in the corners of his mouth. Taking a seat on the nearby armchair, he gave his brother a half shrug. “But a cliffnotes rundown wouldn’t be terrible.” Then again, a shorter version might not be any less illuminating. “Or anything other than work.” It had been a while. Surely his brother had been doing something besides getting into trouble. The thing about Lin was, his flagrant disregard for what others thought was at constant war with his own deep-seated desire to be liked. The manifestation of the two combined made up the majority of his personality, and, generally, that meant he avoided being condescending, at least seriously, as much as was possible. He didn’t like it when people treated him like he was stupid based on how he looked or talked, or just because they thought they were superior by necessity, and so he tried very hard not to do the same to other people. It was inevitable, at times, but usually he was good at it. As such, he would have been pretty fucking offended if Aaron had mentioned aloud his disinterest in being “talked down to.” Dude didn’t want Lin to assume he was stupid just as much Lin didn’t want the asshole to assume he’d treat him that way. The armchair was also noted. The boy’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his chin. “It’s Cliffsnotes,” he corrected with hyperbolic condescension, acting out in a way he knew would irritate. His smile vanished as four brown fingers and a thumb circled the corner of the hospitable pillow. The thing was lobbed across the few feet of space and into Aaron’s face with as much force as the corded muscle in the boy’s thin arms would allow. He laughed from the sofa. “Asshole.” The pillow slammed into the side of his head, though not nearly with as much force as Lin might have wanted. He was more surprised it connected so perfectly. The red pillow bounced off the side of his cheek and the back onto the floor. For a moment he just stared at it, then his brother, and then back to the pillow again. Mock sighing. he merely leaned forward, snatched it back up, sliding it against his back and the armchair. Pillows were privileges, and Lin had just lost that one. “Says he who’s correcting me.” It did irritate, but Aaron had decades of practice with Lin’s brand of irritation. It made him roll his yes, dramatic and obvious and not nearly as heartfelt as someone else might have meant it. This sort of teasing meant nothing. This was light, easy. There were far worst times for him to be annoyed with Lin so the eyeroll was nothing, as was the hint of a smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth. “That’s not an answer, though.” Rude! “Rude! Give it back—” Lin demanded immediately, when he realized the pillow was being taken away, his eyes wide with the absolute injustice of the act. His hand had been held out in expectation, but he let it fall when Aaron didn’t seem moved to obey. He grinned again, a thing more commonly found on a child’s round face, full of all manner of puckish intent, and for a moment, sat still as Aaron sighed and chided him. His feet moved idly over covers. He shrugged with all the bounce one might expect. He shifted to the edge of the mattress. “That was the joke, smartass. --” There was a pause. Lin’s fingers picked at the thin blankets fresh out of cardboard boxes. “Well, solubility is important in terms of understanding preservation, like conditions in sediment and states of preservation, as well as like, help decide selection for analysis, right?” As Lin spoke, he continued to move, just a little. He climbed to his feet, the look on his face thoughtful, as if he was very engaged in his explanation and needed to pace. “So, like, we know bones don’t keep their original crystals over time.” The boy crossed the small stretch of room, meandering toward his bag that leaned near the door. “They dissolve in a certain pH and repreciptate as carbonated hydroxyl apatite...” Before the last word left his mouth, Lin turned on his heel to plunge his hand down the back of Aaron’s chair, between the man’s spine and the cushion he reclined against. He wrenched the pillow free from its prison and hopped back to the bed with a gleeful laugh of triumph. The grin was a warning bell, setting Aaron quietly on edge though he didn’t look it. For all intents and purposes, Aaron remained his unflappable self, watching the other with an almost cool disinterest. He’d seen it enough through their youth and could easily understand that Lin wanted the pillow back. Too bad. “Not a good joke,” he reminded his brother idly, watching him fidget and twist on the cushions, just waiting for a move. He watched as he stood, he paced, following the train of Lin’s talk and nodding when appropriate. The line of thought wasn’t that hard to follow, neither was his brother’s clearly casual stroll to the door. He was going to make a break for the pillow, that much was obvious, and Aaron weighed the pros and cons of letting him have it, right until the very last moment when he didn’t stop Lin. Here was hoping that gloating would be less persistent than complaining. “Oh now you want the pillow,” he drawled with an eyeroll, settling back into his armchair fully. “Served you right for tossing it before.” Lin sighed dramatically as he returned to the sofa, the pillow back in its rightful place against his chest, and leveled Aaron with a patented younger brother stare, eyelids low, gaze flat, and lips pressed together. He was obviously considering his next move, which followed quickly, dovetailing to the thought and carrying on. The pillow was flung sharply once again, this time without much precedence. He could only hope it would somehow reach a speed high enough to give Aaron a nosebleed. “And that serves you right for being a goddamn asshole once again,” replied Lin sweetly, finally settling back on the bed, head against the spine of the sofa, legs long and extended on the mattress, arms cradling skull. He was grateful, as mentioned before, for the hospitality, but Lin’s politeness only lasted so long - like, five seconds, and then he was ready to defer deferential behavior. If Aaron wanted to continue being his standoffish self, then he could, but then he couldn’t expect Lin to be anything other than his very not standoffish self. The irritated look segued into a grin. “Now I want it back again, please.” This time Aaron was ready for him, one hand shooting out and snatching up the thrown pillow long before it even came to close to impact. He tossed Lin an arch look. Him. The asshole. Of course that’s how it was always, and he took the pillow (tossed at him, mind you) and slid it to its rightful place. At his back. To Lin he just stared, knowing the look would have been without any sort of anger. They’d been at this impasse often, he the immovable object and his brother the unstoppable force. Lin grin, he didn’t. It was just like at home. “You’ll have to take it back,” he replied mildly, settling back into his seat with that hint of a smirk. Well, if nothing, it would be a somewhat entertaining wait before pizza got there. |