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They are brothers, twins, two halves of a shattered soul. They were never meant to brush like this, never meant for their whole world to collapse at their feet, begging for forgiveness as two identical teenagers make eye contact for the first time.
They move in sync with each other like they're supposed to, the stars and planets within their reach watching from afar as the sun and moon start their dance.
Aaron is content with their arrangement for now, but Andrew kills their mother and Aaron doesn't think he can top that.
Andrew is the sun. He burns and burns and burns his feelings down to shreds of what he used to be before his brother, deadly in his rage and fire and emotion when someone is stupid enough to oppose him. He attacks with sharp words and sharper actions, wielding knives he knows how to use with deadly proficiency.
One day, he will burn out and take his planets with him. One day, he will fade from the sky and become empty, or a black hole, or just simply cease to exist. The stars will be lonely, he thinks, if Aaron burns out with him; he takes the time to gently ask the universe not to let his brother suffer as he has.
He hopes the universe listens to the cries of a dying sun.
Aaron is the moon. He is chilled to the bone with the weight of his regrets, reflecting off of the sun to let others receive warmth. He is a buffer, a means to an end.
He has no life outside of this; his body a barren wasteland of what could've been. One day, Andrew will burn out and crumble under the strain of his own loyalty and Aaron will stay until the end, watching over dead planets and keeping the stars from getting lonely.
He prefers clean, long range-guns to pretty knives, and hopes to every God that could exist that he'll never have to use them like Andrew does.
They exist like this: the moon loves the sun with every fiber of his existence, and the sun will do anything to keep the moon alive for one more day.
They orbit and dance in the stars around timeless possibilities, and Aaron thinks that one day, if they were to collide for real, the universe would shiver and bend with the explosion of a pair of twins who destroyed each other in the hopes of keeping the stars safe.
Andrew knows that the moon will dance with him until the end of time, but that doesn't stop him from staying up until the dead of night to count the stars with a cigarette between his fingers.
He breathes in the cold air, and loves (hates, hates, hates) the moon just as violently as the moon loves the sun.
(Andrew doesn't comment when he sees Aaron laying in fields of college campus grass, head tilted back and hands supporting his weight, resting with the sun's rays on his face. Andrew definitely doesn't comment on his pink cheeks later that day, or the brush of freckles on his face brought out by laying in the sun for far too long.
Aaron doesn't comment on the galaxies in Andrew's lungs when he smokes, or the stars of freckles on his shoulders and nose and cheeks stuck there through genetics.
Aaron especially doesn't comment on the universe held softly in Andrew's palms like a prayer, like a damnation, like a will to live. Instead, he watches when Andrew's eyes shut with a whisper and looks on from a distance how his lips mouth something only Andrew knows the meaning of.)
Aaron tops Andrew's messy accident (murder) by swinging Neil's racquet into the side of Drake's head. He watches the body fall with disgust, and snarls when warm blood splatters over his face and clothes and runs to his sunshine brother.
After that, they are equal. The moon and the sun whisper in the night and dance with the stars, carrying the universe in their livers and lungs and ribs, letting flowers bloom in the wake of corruption. Aaron loves the sun enough to put sunscreen on whenever he goes outside, and Andrew loves the moon enough to whisper secrets in the dead of night on the roof of Fox Tower.