Fabian didn’t back down. He didn’t even flinch. He didn’t bother lowering his voice or moving this mess outside. If his twin wanted to have it out, they’d bloody well have it out right here.
"Why do you care, huh? If you were meant to be together, she wouldn’t have chucked you, would she?"
It was a testament to how angry he was that he didn’t even regret it. He almost felt vindicated…satisfied by the flash of pain on his brother’s face. He was sick and tired of being the culprit. Of making himself the scapegoat for everything that went wrong, of the guilt he tried to handle. Of his brother adding more. Gideon was acting as if it was his bloody fault! As if telling him about this stupid announcement would’ve somehow reverted time, sent them back, stopped the wedding. Bollocks.
“But no! No, I’m obviously the villain here, for Merlin’s sake! How dare I hold off, try to think of how to tell you? Spare my brother’s feelings? But fine. You want honesty? Here it is. She’s married. There! Happy? You spend years pining over her, pretending you didn’t, doing fuck all about it…what’d you expect? Yes, I knew! I’m your twin, you wanker, of course I saw it! I saw how much you loved her! What should I’ve done? Hmm? I’d cut out my own heart, Gid, before breaking yours. So pardon me for shutting up and hoping for the best.”
And then came the name-calling.
“I’m the liar? Really? ‘I’m fine,’ yeah? The lie cuts both ways, you hypocritical prat.” Fabian was done with this. Pretending to be something he wasn’t to spare his brother’s feelings. “But yeah, fine. I’m depressed! There. I said it. Is that what you want to hear? I can’t sleep. I rarely eat. I smoke as much as you do. And I drink. I drink like a bloody fish, just to get through the day! I’m a failure and a disappointment and complete and utter rubbish as a brother, yeah. But at least I don’t waste my life shagging anything that moves, suffering in silence over someone I’ll never have. You could’ve got her back. Done something! But you didn’t. Consistently and constantly you nagged over me, pressing me on my life, hovering over me and Molly like a Beater over a Bludger. And here we are, and there she is. You blew off your own life, for what? For an alcoholic brother? What do you want me to say, Gid? I'm sorry I'm so fucked up? That I ruined your life?”
He could feel the words coming, wanting to choke them down before he passed the point of no return. Everything he’d ever done, he’d done to spare Gideon’s feelings. Hide his suffering to spare his brother the blame and the hurt he knew would follow. But forced sobriety hadn’t set him up well for this moment. Between the unexpected attack, the weight of everything he’d been hiding up until that point, and the realization that even Gid, the one person who’d always had his back, saw him for what he was, he couldn't bring himself to hold back. His brother prided himself on keeping his family intact. On pushing him back on course, back on the broom whenever he had to. But Fabian’d fallen too far this time. He’d failed his brother, like his brother’d failed him. And as he shouted at his twin, his other half, his best friend and unconditional support system, he knew there was no going back.
"Time was, I'd say it. But not this time. She's gone. And you've got no one to blame but yourself."
