i’m getting likes on my fics again which like 1) thank you! 2) one day I will get around to cleaning up my masterlist and writing again (maybe). anyways thanks y’all
hello everyone! i know i haven’t been on in a long time — i’ve just been really busy:( that being said, i can no longer go to the DC gvf show this Monday due to some car issues i’ve been having, so if anyone wants the ticket, i’m selling it face value! just message me!
summary: josh helps nat unpack. (i think nat also meets jake in this one.)
word count: 2.2k
warnings: i don't think anything...swearing maybe. angst definitely.
author's note: sorry i forgot to post this monday. and yesterday. had a super busy weekend and then i need to recover. and then i got sick. so here we are. feeling awesome. feeling good. loving life.
Josh had helped Natalia make her room the way she had wanted it. He pushed the dresser into the corner she asked, the bed against the wall in another. He helped her hang photos of her and Bowie and Layne, and artwork that Layne had made for her. He helped her set up a place on the windowsill for her plants. He even worked out a way to get all the hanging baskets to hang from the ceiling near the window without having to drill holes in the ceiling. He set up her record player, grinning as he snooped through her collection, teasing her about a particular pop album that had her cheeks burning red.
It wasn’t even that she was embarrassed about it. It had been a gift from Bowie and she hadn’t had the heart to tell him that she hated the artist. She’d never be embarrassed by something her friends had given her because they had thought of her.
She didn’t know why her cheeks were burning red.
Josh stopped teasing though when he began to pull books out of boxes, stacking them onto shelves. He mindlessly flipped through each one, reading a page or two, before setting it down.
“You read a lot of poetry,” he commented, waving a copy of a collection of poems by Billy Collins.
“Mhm,” she replied with a hum, far too preoccupied with attending to a plant that looked particularly droopy.
She tried to gently pull its leaves upward, attempting to bring it back to life just by moving the leaves to make it look more alive. It did not work.
“Do you write poetry?” he asked.
“No. I just read a lot of it,” Natalia said. “Do you?”
She thought that maybe he did. Maybe it went hand in hand with how he used to do music.
“If not for you,” Josh began, speaking dramatically, waving his hands in an overly theatrical way that had her smiling. “The winter would hold no spring, couldn’t hear a robin sing, I just wouldn’t have a clue, if not for you.”
“You wrote that?” she asked.
“No,” Josh replied.
Natalia’s shoulders sank a bit.
“It’s a George Harrison song. Well, I mean Bob Dylan wrote it, but Harrison’s version is the most popular, I think. It’s the one I always listened to anyway, but isn’t it nice? I’ll play it for you sometime on the record player. I know I have a copy of it on vinyl somewhere,” Josh replied. “I always thought it’d make a good poem.”
“Songs are essentially poetry,” she commented, poking at the plant some more before wiping her hands down her pants. “Have you ever written a song?”
“Yes,” Josh said. “A few.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Natalia replied, absentmindedly. “You used to be in a band.”
Josh stilled. He paused his unpacking, resting his hands carefully on either side of the box he was standing before. His eyes were closed.
“Sammy told you about that?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Natalia nodded. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Josh replied, letting out a slow, shaking breath. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then he looked up, his gaze boring into her so intensely, she felt that she might wilt right alongside her plants. “Just what exactly did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me much,” Natalia said. She watched him carefully. “He only told me that you guys used to jam in the garage. Sometimes you’d play in a bar, or something like that, around your hometown.”
Josh was silent for a moment.
“Did he tell you about how I left?” he asked.
She wanted to lie to him. She wanted to lie and spare him from the truth. But she wouldn’t. She would not lie to him.
She looked down and sighed.
“Yeah.” She picked up a dead leaf off of the windowsill beside her. “He told me.”
“I guess he sort of had to,” Josh replied.
“I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t going to hold whatever Sam said against you because I don’t even know the whole story,” Natalia said. “I hadn’t heard what you had to say.”
“You’ve heard it all,” Josh said. It was a short, clipped response. One that shocked Natalia, made her wince slightly. “Sam’s a lot of things. He’s dramatic, sure. He’s a little bit of a shit sometimes, sure. He can even be a real asshole if he wants to. But he’s not a liar. I don’t think he’d lie about anything. I left. I distanced myself and I left because I couldn’t do it anymore.”
He fell silent, and Natalia didn’t push him. She stood there for a moment, watching as he finished unpacking her box of books. He didn’t flip through them anymore, didn’t read a page or two and didn’t ask a question about a poet. He worked robotically, methodically, hand to box to shelf and then right back to the box all over again. He was moving like a machine, quicker than he had before too.
Once he was done, he flattened the box and tossed it onto the pile of boxes that they had been steadily building. He reached into his pocket and checked his phone, sighing.
“I gotta go,” he muttered, disappearing out of her bedroom.
That’s how it was for the days after. Josh spent a lot of time out of the apartment while she was there. She didn’t know where he went, and he didn’t offer it to her. She figured after the conversation that they had in her bedroom, he didn’t want her to know. She guessed that he arrived home when she went to class during the day. She knew that he’d never neglect Willie Nelson. She sometimes could hear him coming home late in the night, Willie Nelson getting up from her bed to greet him.
She still slept with her bedroom door open.
Josh didn’t.
He was distancing himself from her now too, and it hurt. She didn’t know why, but in the short time that she had known Josh, the very short time that she had spent with him, he had sort of filled the holes in her heart, and held the cracks together.
She spent a lot of time with Layne, even more with Bowie. Sam was always around too. He never asked about Josh, but he took every bit that Natalia offered.
She felt sorry she couldn’t offer more.
She felt sorry that she had messed it up already.
Weeks after she had moved in, coming up on Christmas, the university shut down. There had been a horrible snow storm overnight, and Natalia sighed in relief when she read the email. She hated driving in the snow, and probably hated the idea of leaving the apartment to go out into this kind of cold a lot more.
She got up and looked out of the window in her bedroom. It didn’t even look like a lot of snow, but her university had a knack for having the power go out, or pipes freezing. She sighed and pulled away from the bright window, tugging a sweater over her head as she left her room.
Josh’s door was still shut.
She ventured into the living room, looking down at the plant on the TV stand. She stepped into the kitchen and pulled down a glass from the cabinet, filling it with water.
Quimby jumped up onto the counter beside her.
Sam had brought him and all of the stuff that he had bought for the cat over a week or two after Natalia had gotten settled into the apartment. She had visited Quimby at Sam and Danny’s apartment countless times before that, and had been very excited for Quimby to come live with her, excited for him to meet Josh and Willie Nelson.
Quimby had loved Willie Nelson.
He had stared at Josh curiously, as if he was trying to pinpoint him. He looked up at Josh as if he were familiar to him, but he wasn’t sure how.
Natalia rubbed at Quimby’s jaw.
“Hi, buddy,” she greeted softly. “Did you sleep well?”
Quimby meowed up at her.
He had taken ownership of the small cat tree that Josh had bought for Willie Nelson. Josh’s cat had shown no interest in it, so Josh had started using it as a sort of storage shelf until Quimby arrived. Suddenly, the clutter was removed and Quimby had claimed it as his favorite place in the apartment.
Natalia glanced at the feed bowls on her way back to the living room. They were both full of kibble, so Josh had been up and about before she had been.
Just like always.
She sighed as she watered the plant.
Her eyes caught on a flash of bright orange fur on the couch. She looked over to see Willie Nelson curled up there, blinking sleepily and slowly at her.
She set the glass of water down beside the plant and crossed the room to sit beside the cat. She placed her hand onto his head, and he pushed himself up into her palm, purring gently.
“Where’s your dad, hm?” she asked quietly.
She stood up and made her way down the hallway again, halting in front of Josh’s door. She raised her hand, hesitated, let it fall back down by her side. She shook her head at herself and raised her hand again, quickly rapping her knuckles against the wood.
“Josh?” she called softly.
She received no answer.
She knocked again, attempting to make it louder.
Still, no response.
She held her breath as she opened the door, pushing it open wide enough for her to see inside. She kept herself planted outside of his room though, peering inside.
His room was empty.
She frowned, her eyes darting around the room as if perhaps he was hiding somewhere.
Her gaze fell to the small book on his head. It was one of hers. It was one of the poetry books that he had unpacked for her. There was some sort of bookmark sticking out of the top of it.
She hadn’t known that he had it.
She didn’t mind.
She shut the door behind her when she left, leaving the room encased, isolated, just as it had been before she had opened the door.
She sighed when she returned to the living room, grabbing the almost forgotten glass. She dumped some of the water onto the plant and then approached the small window, where some of her other plants sat. She watered them too.
She was in the kitchen when somebody knocked on the front door. It startled her, nearly causing her to drop the glass she was attempting to put away.
Since she had been living here, no one had ever knocked on the front door.
She moved to open the door, glass forgotten on the counter. She pulled the door open, looking out in shock.
He looked like Josh, with longer hair, but there was no mistaking that he and Josh looked alike.
He looked just as shocked as she did.
She took a staggering step back, her cheeks flushing at the reaction. She hadn’t meant for it to be that intense, she just hadn’t been prepared to open the door to a Josh lookalike.
His shock disappeared much quicker than hers did.
“Did he leave you here?” he asked.
“What?” Natalia replied. “No. I live here now.”
Quimby tried to squeeze through her legs to run out into the hallway, so she stooped down to pick him up.
“I see.” he nodded. He sighed, rubbing his hand over his brow. “Did he even tell you he had a brother?”
She nodded. “Two. I’m friends with Sam.”
“So, they both failed to mention that Josh and I are twins,” he said.
So, he could tell what she had been shocked about. She felt her cheeks flame in embarrassment.
“Yeah.” she nodded again.
“Surprise!” he said sarcastically. “I’m Jake.”
He stuck his hand into hers, and peered over her shoulder.
“Is he here?”
She noticed that Jake never referred to Josh by name. She wondered why, just like how she wondered why Josh hadn't mentioned that he had a twin brother.
"No," Natalia answered.
"Do you know where he is?" Jake asked.
Natalia chewed on her lip, pulling her hand from his.
"He doesn't tell me much." she shrugged.
"Some roommate he is," Jake scoffed, rolling his shoulders.
“Why—” she began.
"Don't I live with him?" Jake finished. "Because I shared a womb with him. I think we're entitled to live apart."
He seemed to have some fake air of confidence saying this, like it was by choice that he wasn’t here. Perhaps he was just testing to see what she knew, or perhaps he was just trying to lie to himself. Maybe if he made it seem like it was his choice just as much as Josh’s distance, it wouldn’t hurt as bad.
"That's fair," she replied.
Simple. She wouldn’t force an answer out of him, or Josh, or anybody else. It wasn’t her place to interfere with their family matters.
Jake saw right through her.
"Besides, he wouldn't let me," Jake said, and she could almost hear some lithe of sadness in his tone.
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