"Teach me how to be a person."
The adjacent reflection of one man sat across from the other, each a little off from the first. The one who had, up until this point, been reading, glanced up and observed his brother with a bemused and distant, dreamy expression. The more somber of the two fidgeted briefly with hands that sparked in nervous gold, ink which skittered across his knuckles and wrapped coils around his wrists.
"I don't follow, brother mine," said the dreamer, closing his book. The bespectacled figure across from him on the window seat sighed and worked his jaw, teeth digging into the inside of his cheek. The rain lashing against the window outside was as glum as the glow reflecting off the glasses he wore. There was a pressure to the moment the second (or was he the first; who came first?) didn’t care for. He instead smiled to himself and set his book aside, sitting a little more upright.
“Perhaps you’d care to draw me a diagram,” Remus suggested pleasantly. The tattoos of gold stiffened and retreated like snakes from Ireland’s shores up Dusek’s sleeves. The sudicky adjusted his dark frames and frowned at the floor.
“That’s—not precisely what I had in mind.” The care he took in enunciating each word wasn’t just particular. It was manically precise. Remus heaved an internal sigh, wishing his brother would simply…let go; speak plainly. Of late, he’d found an impatience in himself that had less to do with the fire kindling in his chest from a stolen draconic heart (or, rather, in a way, bought and paid for; or at least, lovingly donated) and more with the realization Dusek wasn’t one to easily accept help.
Except, this time, he appeared to be the one reaching out.
“Then please clarify another way,” said Remus, as tenderly as a man with the heart of a dragon could muster, “so I might better help you.”
Fidgeting with his fingers, picking at the ink stains he found there, Dusek was silent for such a long moment the chimera of a man before him thought he might’ve forgotten what else it was he wanted to say. The rain continued in its relentless downpour, dragging layer after layer of silvery damp against the panes. The thin cracks between the edges and the ledges offered a thin wind of chill that made Remus shiver—and in that moment, Dusek rose from his perch on the window seat and bestowed his jacket around Remus’s shoulders.
(It was just as well, Remus had begun to hoard every other jacket Dusek owned, so really, it was only a matter of time.)
Huddled in the goods of wool and cotton, Remus observed his brother’s face in the soft light of the reading room and the dimming moon outside. Dusek’s pale features shifted into an expression of unease, as they always did when looked at for too long. Remus tilted his head, lips pursing vaguely.
“…I don’t—believe I am a person, sometimes,” the Czech reporter said slowly, fingers once again twisting, twining, and writhing. “I just—I am…made for a specific purpose, and is that not what a machine is…?” His eyes flickered away; shame applying weight to the back of his neck and pushing him forward into a bow. He hunched and swayed, hugging a knee to his chest as his gaze sought the rain’s reflective eyes instead of his brother’s own. “I do not know how to be a person, Remus.”
There was a silence that threaded between them, and Remus tugged on that thread until he found his way to the source of the issue. It wasn’t that he was slow on the uptake—it was that a thought registering in Remus’s head was a seed that instantly took (firm, unyielding) root and he tended to branch out elsewhere, finding new ways to look at old problems…
“…You already are,” Remus offered calmly, reaching out to drape Dusek’s coat over both of them as his brother’s trembling caught his eye. “A person. You’re my brother. You’re a reporter.” Remus’s eyes sought Dusek’s own, and the fate-child finally returned the favor of his gaze. Remus smiled, offering a nod of encouragement. “These are the things you are, but also, you are you. Dusek. And it’s not up to anyone else to decide who or what a Dusek is. You’re not a blender,” Remus added, and Dusek snorted, watery eyes cinching shut. “Or a potato masher or some sort of punch ladle…”
“It was getting good,” Dusek said shakily, running a hand under his eyes—to fix his glasses, he’d argue. Allegedly fixing his glasses, Remus would shoot back. “Until your mouth kept going.”
“Part of being a person is being messy,” Remus pointed out.
“I don’t do messy, brother.” Remus’s heart warmed at Dusek’s rueful response, and he dragged him in for a hug beneath the coat.
“Too bad,” Remus murmured, as Dusek sighed with defeat at once again being hoarded.
“Messy is what we are.”