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The chains dig into Roman’s hands, palms aching and sweaty in the hot weather.
He shouldn’t be out, he’s sure. It’s hot enough that the air is waving in front of his eyes, swirling patterns dotting his eyes as he stares out at the water, legs kicking and hands clenching hard. He’s practically covered in the sweat that’s dripping down his sides and arms and chest, his already gray shirt darkening to an almost pitch black, and he feels the pain he’s always associated with an oncoming headache starting to swell behind his eyes. It’s dangerous to be out, even. The weather app on his cracked red iphone had called it a heat wave, one of the worse in the last decade.
Roman has always loved the heat though, and he needs it now.
“There you are, Em!” A voice calls out, and Roman closes his eyes, biting his tongue and feeling the heat curl against his skin. He wants it to wash him away, boil his blood until it turns to mist and he can float away, until he can get out of the shackles he’s trapped himself in. It’s too good of a wish, of a hope though, so it doesn’t happen. He’s instead forced to listen to the footsteps as they get closer and swallow around the fact that he can’t leave, that there’s no way he ever would.
Remus skids to a stop in front of him, worry glazing his eyes over in a way he’s never seen his brother aim at anyone else, even his supposed best friend Janus, and he desperately wants to turn away. The heat of it hurts like snow against his skin or the rain that had beat against his skull during his last trip here. He doesn’t look away, his hands tightening until the metal creaks under them and his muscles burn with the air. His feet have stopped kicking and the need to move hurts, but so does moving now that he’s stopped.
“Hey, Re.” His lips are chapped and red raw from where he’d bitten into them constantly last night, and he hopes that Remus doesn’t notice.
Remus looks at them immediately and that worry eclipses the fake mania that he’d been trying to hide behind, and Roman’s lips twist, slipping back into his mouth before he can even think about it and Remus frowns, stepping close enough that he can feel his air against his mouth. Roman freezes, and Remus slips a thumb into his mouth, pinching and pulling until he lets it go. It doesn’t take long, his breath catching in his throat as Remus looks him in the eyes, now slick fingers slipping from his face and dangling dangerously nearby. Roman can hear his heartbeat in his ears and it’s worse, he thinks, to look at his brother, because he doesn’t look tormented or even slightly flushed, and the guilt that comes with that turns his stomach.
He shouldn’t want his brother to bear this burden with him, no matter how much being alone pains him, he should care about him too much for that.
But he does want that.
He wants to see Remus’ face curled up in confused, flustered, pain. He wants to see his mirror in Remus’ eyes and let it snuff out the alone, to let it clog his veins and dig its fingers into his heart, to crawl under his skin so he can never be alone. Salty sweat covers his lips and his hair is plastered against his skin, itchy and long enough that he could hide his splotchy red face from the world, even though he hasn’t done that in years and never plans to do that again. It’s not him, it should have never been, and he hates it as much as he hates his pounding heart.
Remus says something, but Roman isn’t listening, eyes wandering from the water ahead to Remus’ lips, which are pink and full and nothing like his own, and feels his stomach twist.
A hand lands on his own, curling around it and pulling it away, and his heart skips. His eyes dart up, looking and wide, but Remus is still frowning, his eyes now stuck on Roman’s calloused hand. The dry blood stuck under his fingernails blends in well with the red nail polish that his Mother had smeared on him, but he knows his brother saw it in the way his shoulders hunch, eyes going shiny and confused. “Emilia… Why’re you all bloody?” He asks it like he’s covered in it, like it coating his hands and turning the plastic under him red.
Roman wishes it was and immediately wishes he could swallow that thought back, because thinking it just makes it worse because now he can see it, can almost feel the dig of a sharp enough knife in his skin and he aches for it. A lump grows in his throat and he shakes his head. It feels like a herculean effort just to do that.
“Emilia…” Remus whispers, and he turns his hand over, spreading it against his and staring and he feels like an insect on display, like a pinned butterfly under that look even though it’s directed at his hand, at the blood he couldn’t get himself to scrub away. Not when he deserved it, not even for his brother who didn’t deserve this.
All of it stings and the heat barely helps, even as his vision dots and speckles. His stomach feels like a cold void, twisting and flipping and dropping all at once and his heartbeat can’t steady no matter how many hitched breaths he takes and he’s not sure how he’s still alive.
“I’m sorry.” Roman says back and it takes him a moment before he even realizes he’s said it. He wants to cringe away but he can’t. Trapped, he’s always been trapped, and he can’t get away. The steam of the air burns against his eyes and he blames it for the way his eyes water suddenly, it has nothing to do with the way his brother’s eyes shine in the bright light, nor the way his hands are gentle as he lets go and steps away. It has nothing to do with the fact that he steps away. Roman doesn’t believe it for a second, but it has to be true. The lump grows by the second.
But Remus is quick to crowd him again, grabbing at both chains and caging him in. His eyes are earnest but sad, and Roman feels the guilt return when a part of him likes that. Remus feeling things for him that he doesn’t for anyone else. Remus feeling bad for him. “Nothing to be sorry about. Unless you did something bad and you know me, sis, if you did do something bad then I’m just gonna congratulate you for finally growing a pair. Gonna be just like me—”
“Stop.” Roman whispers, voice strangled and torn, and Remus does. But he looks, and Roman doesn’t want that, but he does nothing to stop it like he should. His shoulders start to shake from where they’d hitched around his ears. “Just… stop talking.” He can’t take it, isn’t sure how he’s held on for this long, for years, for an entire decade and a half, and even though before he’d had to yank and pull to get the words out now they flow like a river from between his lips and he can’t stop them if he tries, “I’m not your sister. I’m not their daughter. I’m your brother, and I hate that name and I hate them and my hair and my body that doesn’t feel like mine, everything—” his voice cuts off and he can’t look, his eyes snapping back to the shimmering air and still water in front of him. It’s beautiful. He wishes he could become an oasis, or the air in his own lungs, wishes he could do what he’d always wanted and walk into the water and never leave.
Remus doesn’t make a noise until he does, his voice cuts through the heat and sizzles against his skin. “Ok.” Roman hesitates, but looks at him, catching his eyes and unable to look away. “Alright, that's cool. So you’re my brother…” He waits and Roman knows what he wants.
“Roman.” He finishes. He gives it to him, can’t imagine doing anything else. His entire being burns in the heat, his hand radiating warmth into the air so hot that the air around it seems to shimmer even more than the rest of the battered sky does. “I’m your brother… Roman.”
Remus smiles and the sun no longer needs to shine. Roman’s eyes burn again. “Roman.” Remus says, like he’s trying it out, twisting it around in his mouth until he likes the sound of it, and Roman can’t stop the cold shiver that crawls down his back, his mind curling into itself. His skin aches and his other hand clenches against unforgiving metal, the kind he’s always relied on for comfort and pain and hope. Remus’ smile morphs into a grin, “I like it, bro, it fits you good.”
It does, Roman wants to agree, but he can no longer talk. Tongue turning to lead in his mouth as he wonders if Remus notices. It fits them well and if it fits them then it has to fit him, that’s what he’d thought when he’d picked that name, that’s what he repeats to himself when he finds himself unsure, when he finds words too painful, when he finds pain too perfect for anything else to work. When his feet take him here and he can’t look anyone but his brother in the eyes even though the thoughts that haunt him always circle back to him, back to Remus, and he hates himself enough to turn the world around him into his own nightmares.
Remus starts talking again, and Roman doesn’t have it in himself to stop him a second time. Not after he’s already told him. “So do you plan on like, getting surgeries and stuff? Or just hair? Or nothing? Any’s fine, just, as your brother I think I should know.” It’s a tease and it knocks the breath from his lungs, his hand tightening again.
“No.” It’s harsh and almost biting and it makes Remus pause, and he squeezes his eyes shut and hears the thoughts again, feels them trying to envelop him, and he pushes them away, pushes them out of his eyes and off his tongue, feels the rabbit-pattering of his heart and the way his stomach drops, and wishes for blood and water and the radiating heat of a sunburn to scald his skin fresh. “I’m not doing anything.”
When he opens his eyes, Remus is looking directly at him, something dark and unreadable in his eyes and Roman wants to squirm away, Roman wants to curl into his chest and let Remus comfort him like Roman used to do with Remus when they were younger, Roman wants the heat to turn him into a shriveling husk of himself, Roman wants to never have been born.
“But you want to.” It’s not a question, and Roman doesn’t answer it. His body is shaking, he realizes, his hand slipping down on the metal, sweat sticking their skin together. He roughly shoves that thought away and looks away in a way that hurts as much as any knife could.
Roman is shaking and trapped and he hates this, he hates everything within himself. If he had the strength, he might even hate everything outside himself too. But he doesn’t. It’s always been only him his hate could carve at, only him that endures even when he doesn’t want to. Thinking of the boy he’d known forever, with his gap toothed grins and manic eyes and sticky fingers, the boy he’d shielded from their kicks and punches and looks with his own body, with his own mind, the boy who’d always crowded around him like they were both drawn in by an invisible force, who’d cursed and growled and patched him up, promising that one day they’d take them down and make them pay like he wasn’t talking about their own parents.
He thinks about what would happen, and he endures because it can’t happen.
That smile fading, those clothes disappearing, the glee fading from his eyes.
He would rather live than let all that die just for his own salvation that would taste rotten in his mouth.
“… You should if you want to, Ro.” Remus finally says, eyes soft and pained and Roman can’t stand that, but his eyes refuse to close again. Cataloging all the ways he’s hurting him, and storing it away for later when he’s alone and cold inside, burning and blistered and vulnerable in a way he can never be, even with Remus.
“I can’t.” He shakes his head, and swallows, his hair brushes against the hollow of his throat and it itches like fire ants. “They wouldn’t let me.” They wouldn’t, he knows, but that isn’t the only reason. He can’t say the second, the most important reason, though, he can never say that.
Remus’ eyes harden, and he knows that Remus knows that’s true, and when Remus’ hand slips from his he knows the conversation’s over. Disappointment and relief swell under his skin too big, and he feels like he might burst with it. That would be nice. He thinks he would like that. As long as he did it without Remus staring at him, or maybe he could be selfish just once and watch the grief burn through his brother's eyes while it swallowed him whole. But it doesn’t happen, and instead Remus grabs him by the wrist and pulls him onto his feet, the grass caving under him. His voice is light again as he orders him around like he always has. “C’mon, I wanna go swimming, Ro-Bro.” And Roman listens, like he always has, even as his wrist melts in his grasp.
Remus strips without an ounce of shame, muscles shifting and coiling as he moves to uncover himself, and Roman looks, shame eating him alive and jealousy swirling in his stomach. He should never change with Roman around, it isn’t fair to Remus for Roman to let him, has never been fair, to not let him know the thoughts that crowd his head, that want to look and poke and prod and pull and hurt and love in ways no brother should, in a way not even the heat that he surrounds himself with can burn from his bones, even though he tries and tries and tries. It’s branded into his skin, into his very being, a fact that can’t be erased, no matter his wishes, no matter the harm it causes.
Remus smiles over at him and Roman doesn’t relax, he doesn’t feel steady against the air because of it, he feels lost, like he’s never going to get over this. Remus reaches a hand out. “C’mon, Ro, get in with me.”
Roman grasps his hand and ignores the goosebumps and heat that erupts from the contact, lets his brother pull his own clothes off, just enough to pull him into the water. He doesn’t react when his knuckles brush his stomach or when his fingers slide against his collarbone or when his hand lays against his ribcage, but he can’t stop the sucked in breath when Remus leans his chest against him, warm and vibrant and too close to be anything good, too close to be anything bad.
Remus’ hands slide down to his waist and Roman suddenly feels like he’s lost the bottom of the world even as he digs his feet into the sandy bottom and slides his own arms back around him. His mind is whirling and screaming, his entire body aching with want and need, and he can’t get away, he can’t want to get away.
“Roman…” Remus’ breath puffs against his lips. “You’ve gotta stop me, if I’m about to fuck this up. I can’t fuck this up too, not this, not us.”
Roman leans in, connecting their lips in a burst of perfect pain, and it hurts so bad, it burns worse than the heat, worse than the fires he’d put out on his own skin, worse than the candle he’d held his hand above until the skin had started to char and dribble blood onto the coconut scent. And he can’t get enough, and this time he’s the one crowding his brother, swallowing him up like he always felt like he was being, and trapping him. His skin sings, his stomach swoops, his eyes burn, and he can’t pull away. He burrows his way inside, tongues slick and strong and together, hot and heavy and Roman pants, still breathing even through this. And he thinks that he shouldn’t be. Thinks that he doesn’t deserve it after everything.
Remus is the one to pull away, still smiling even as his eyes have settled. He looks like he’s happy, like he’s never been this happy before. And Roman wants to tell him everything, wants to become one with him and be like they should have been, wants to tell him that he thinks about that often, the what if’s of their life and their birth.
He thinks about a world where they could be together in public, both of them themselves and whole and unbroken and loved. He thinks about telling Remus about the thoughts that had started to pop up more often, telling him to run away, to grab Remus and leave everyone and everything else behind. That said that if he never transitioned they could be in public as a couple and no one would notice that they were brothers, no one would notice that they were one and the same. He doesn’t, can’t, because his doubt glues his throat together with the idea that maybe Remus doesn’t feel that way, that Remus would never want to go public with the way they feel or just the way Roman feels, that saying that would sound too crazy for even Remus and he would leave.
He would dig out the skin that Roman had touched and marked, he would find the hooks that Roman had inserted into his fragile skin as an innocent child and pull them out. That he would free himself from Roman and leave.
Roman would finally be left all alone with no one to stop the ache that burrowed and chipped away at him until he felt hollow and raw. He deserves that, he knows, for all that he’s done. For loving Remus his entire life, for making Remus love him back even though he wasn’t worth it, for not being able to hide the pain enough to ease Remus’ mind. For being alive and breathing.
He curls around him, wishes to be absorbed into him, and feels tears mix with their sweat, and Remus doesn’t mention it, his own face pressing into Roman’s neck and rubbing against him like a feline. Roman wishes he would bite down and never let go. Roman wishes he would kiss him again.
It’s soft and steady and it feels like pure Hell, and Roman is stuck. But he doesn’t try to get away, getting closer and squeezing his wet eyes closed.
“Love you, Ro.” Remus whispers in his ear and the fire that burns through him only solidifies everything that he’s ever thought about himself.
“Love you too, Re.”