Chapter Text
I
When he was young, he would brush his hair in front of the hallway mirror for hours on end. His dark strands of hair would puff, like peachy, transparent stuffing in the light of the chandelier. His eyes wouldn’t stray from his reflection as he sat cross-legged on the floor, with a raised chin, a yellow sheen on the surface of his eyes.
He would brush the loose strands that fell from the tip of his hairline behind his ear, and, as his arms reached behind him, he would stare at the bones of his knees in the mirror and count the dust sprinkled on its yellowish glass as though they were his freckles.
Picking the bundles of dark yarn from his hairbrush, he would watch as the wind stole them for itself. His toes would hang from the edge of the porch, his red ankles and soles bitten by autumn’s teeth. His eyes would follow the wisps of hair— if a bit vacantly.
He would think about all the pain that had ever come from it. Mother and her glittery amber combs – and the way she had tried to fix him up after baths, tearing up every tangle with quick tugs, tired of her day, tired of Roman and his whines and yelps. He was four back then. He only brushed hair that wasn't his.
II
When torn, Roman’s hair smelled like olives. Grapevine’s twigs.
The pain on his scalp was bitter as he pulled his hair the wrong way—a sharp pinch near his ear, mostly—or when Remus thought it practical to grab a fistful of his brother’s hair and tug upwards, like Roman himself used to pick up his dolls from the floor.
When Mother found frizzly blonde locks in the trash, she hadn’t scolded Roman, or taken away his scissors. She threw away his toys while cleaning the twins’ room, saying they smelled of mould and were the reason bedbugs swarmed inside their shelves, and were so ruined it’d be a disgrace to donate them.
Roman hadn’t remembered a greater pain than that. Tears ran down his chin in gurgling streams, staining the collar of his shirt and putting shimmering powder on his skin as he cried. He tugged on his mother’s shirt, ripping apart the seams. His voice broke; he wailed like a doe in heat. The grapevine snapped and bled all over the ground.
Remus told his twin— he could play with his toys if he wanted to. Roman shook his head. He sobbed. He hid his head and cried into his little, shaky arms. The dolls had been perfect. They were everything he had ever wanted.
III
His heart is pounding. The grey handle of his scissors is covered in black spots as they lie amidst floral patterns of a tablecloth. He kneels on the kitchen floor – a crack between the yellow tiles grinds into his knee, painting a red line on his skin not unlike a run of knife. His hands pick up the loose strands of hair that didn’t make it to the dustbin, his fingers trembling against the floor, around the dark rivers of him— of him that was, anyway.
His face is yellow with sickness, his cheeks and nose a peachy orange. His forehead beads with sweat… he can feel every prickle of heat pressing into his skin. Plump, red hands of warmth rub his pits underneath the shirt with a print of an album he doesn’t recognize— one that sags by his arms and falls loosely on his thighs.
Remus’ scent lingers on the shirt – to the last atom of it, it does. He wore it yesterday, on his last day of work before All Saints.
The kitchen is warm. Roman thinks he can see fog spread across the window of their yellow cooker, but he isn’t quite sure.
He gets up to stand in front of the hallway mirror for a little while. He brushes his hair back with his palm, feeling as each strand of hair blends into one bush, as opposed to feeling every strand separately, like black strings hanging from a doll’s head. His hair shows more of his freckled face – the sharp line of his jaw, the shape of his orange cheeks. It shies away from his head, forms into messy thorns sprouting from the sides of his scalp. He thinks he likes it.
His chest gets so warm he can barely breathe.
Father says he should’ve gotten it in a bag and sold it— Roman says he forgot he could. Mother takes on a frown the second she sees him. There is a thing that passes through her eyes and – it’s quiet, incredibly blue. Like the sea at night.
Her personal fifteen-year-old project lies amidst apple peelings, toilet paper cores embracing used tampons, and gristles. Her lips are pressed really tightly together. She doesn't say a thing.
Roman’s shoulders relax – his head loses several tons of weight. He can’t help but shake it from side to side, swaying like a boat on rising waves. His fists raise before him and shake wildly, his knees loose as he dances in front of the hallway mirror— his teeth flash in a contained laugh.
His shirt sways with him, the fabric of his army trousers wrinkling with every rise of the knee with silk’s smoothness. Roman twirls and turns on his heel. Again and again. He holds his hair with a steady, pale hand, as though it were a wig and he’d do anything to keep it on.
He finally breaks into a laugh, his voice echoing breathlessly in the hallway. His eyes glisten – a bright yellow line splits his eye like a comet splits the sky. His grin is just— boyish.
IV
Inside their flat, Remus sits on a closed toilet lid and lights up a blunt. The smell of monkeys in the zoo fills up the bathroom that is small, with barely any space between an orange washer and a yellow bath. There's an arm's length of distance between the twins as Roman lies unceremoniously in water and Remus rests one leg against the sink, with the other stretching across the entire bathroom floor. He covers four puke yellow tiles with his leg, like an aeroplane's trail against a city sky, nightly bombarded by snow.
Remus' body hangs loosely as he rests one arm on his drawn up knee, holding the blunt like it's right and easy— like an extension of hand. The other dangles in between his legs, the hem of his shirt brushing against his wrist.
He looks like a painting. A naturalist could’ve made him, right there. With a dab of romanticism, too… His cheeks shimmer like a river's sheet in the sun, as murky as its frozen cover.
His eyes are distant, somewhere out there, as they always are when grey foam contours Roman's body; when he works a shampoo into a container and mixes it with water until it puffs out like a flower blooming in quick motion. Roman rubs the mixture into his scalp, moving carelessly, as if Remus wasn't there at all.
But he is. Roman looks at Remus looking at him. Their eyes are the same hazel colour— reflecting the same yellow light.
His brother rests his joint on an ashtray that is just ceramic bits of once a very pretty cup. He cuts his toenails with tiny clippers, setting up bear traps for Roman across the floor as he tells him about his day. About his perverse, violent, and otherwise ugly thoughts and revelations.
Roman tells him about a film they could watch. A game they could play. His fingers comb back his dripping wet hair, easing kiwi conditioner into his strands, and Remus puts the clippers on the washer with a cling.
He takes the blunt and sucks in the smoke silently; then he leans back a bit. Spewing out the grey, he says, “You've gotten much better at cutting your locks, you know. At least you don’t look butch any more.”
A smile tugs at Roman's face – his eyes dart downwards, to his bath and his knees sticking out from it like two lone islands. His hair is longer now, and he's come to like it as it brushes curtly against his nape— he's come to like it as Remus tends to bury his face in it, his breath warm against his bundle of dark wisps, his curtain from the rest of the world. His arm and leg are often thrown over Roman, only embracing him to the elbow and knee, as the rest of his pale skin splays over the washed up red of Roman's bedsheet.
He likes to be that curtain. Remus' night terrors are always about water of some kind. He finds Roman's bed like a sleepwalker finds the core of his dreams, and he doesn't speak— he never does— as his arms wrap around his twin brother from behind and his mouth hides in his hair, breathing only Roman's scent for the hours that are left of the night.
Remus always plays with his hair in the morning, when Roman lies without a sound. He pinches his strands and straightens them in the air— or combs them down with his fingers, or sucks on the ends until the wisps darken and fall like cloth on his skin. It took Roman a few visits to notice the distance between their hips that Remus always puts there – and it took a bit more to realise that one of his brother's only fears is closing it.
Fine, Roman thinks. He doesn't need to be more to Remus— his brother, his bit of flesh and blood, and one of the only cares he has in this world— than his curtain. Same as it always calms Roman down immensely when he is met with the crimson fabric that descends in a swirl, muting the applause before him like a sheet of water.
Remus tears him out of his head again, however, as he smiles and quips, “Next time you should cut it off entirely. Get it to a prickly little hill. Maybe they'll get you into the army thanks to that— into bare-knuckled matches or something.”
Roman snorts, scratching his hair dry with a long orange towel, his fingers catching in the loops of stitches that fall from one end.
Drops of water race down his legs, flattening out the hairs that normally just— stick out every which way. They run down his back like raindrops fall to the bottom of a window pane, and he's not quite sure whether the flutter of his limbs is from the chilly air or Remus' eyes, pinned motionlessly in his shoulder blades.
The bathroom tiles are promising ice under his feet. He offers a dumb thought about evening it out, how Remus should grow himself a facial so long he could braid it. “Monk style, or something.”
His brother's eyes crinkle with a smile. Before Roman can fully tie the towel around himself, Remus has already gotten up and left.