Chapter Text
Andrew
Tilda and Aaron Minyard lived in a small two-bedroom home with a yard that was more dirt than grass. The walkway was cracked concrete, and the doorknob was worn down enough to rub away the brass finish. Looking at his new house, Andrew felt nothing more for it than he did for any of his previous ones. Just because he shared blood with those inside, didn’t make this one more of a home than any of the others.
Luther opened the door without knocking, marching inside like an army general, nose high and eyes disapproving. Andrew walked in and left the door open behind him. He needed to see what kind of people he was really going to be staying with and what exactly had been done to Aaron. Growing up he had discovered the quickest way to tear down false personalities was by being difficult. It worked out for him well, as he generally enjoyed antagonizing people and didn't enjoy doing what others wanted.
The house opened directly into the living area, a hall to the right and the door to the kitchen directly ahead. The floors needed a wash and there was the smell of something burning in the air. Aaron stood up from the couch as Andrew walked in, eyes wide and clear. Looking at his carbon copy, Andrew was reminded of why he was here.
Luther turned around and shot a glare at the open doorway. “Close the door, Andrew.”
Without looking behind him, Andrew kicked the door closed with a bang. Luther’s scowl deepened and Aaron flinched hard. Andrew’s eyes locked on the movement, catching Aaron pulling his sleeves down over his hands again. Already tense from the flight, Andrew felt his anger begin to simmer.
“Where is your mother?” Luther asked Aaron, turning his back on Andrew.
Aaron gestured vaguely towards the kitchen, muttering something about dinner. His gaze was locked on Andrew, looking up and down as if unsure where to look while also trying to commit him to memory. As Luther stalked off to find Tilda, Andrew levelled an unimpressed look at his twin but remained silent. Aaron’s anger left him scowling back at him, but his shoulders hunched as he tried to make himself smaller. The familiarity of it made Andrew's hands itch to hit something.
He could hear voices in the kitchen, but Andrew ignored them, crossing the small space between him and his twin until he was close enough to touch. Aaron eyed him warily, body turned slightly away.
“Hi,” Aaron said slowly. Andrew blinked in response, absently picking at an elastic from the rubber band ball he held in his right hand. Aaron’s eyes snapped down at the noise, confusion colouring his face. “What’s with the ball?”
Andrew weighed on whether or not he should answer. It wasn’t really Aaron’s business that he was given it for therapeutic reasons, one being a way to channel his anger into something less destructive than his usual methods. He could lie, but Andrew valued his word above all else and didn't like liars. Before he could decide, however, footsteps sounded behind him and then Luther and Tilda were entering the room.
The first time Andrew was seeing Aaron's mother, and he was not impressed. Tilda Minyard was barely taller than Andrew himself, but she was rail thin. She had the same shock of pale blonde hair as the twins, but her foggy eyes were a darker shade of brown. Her skin had a slightly sickly pallor, there were purple thumbprints under her eyes, and her hair was pulled into a frizzy bun. There was no warmth in her eyes when she looked at Andrew, and he knew his own were empty.
She plastered a smile on her face, the edges wavering. Taking in the tension that had gathered in the room, she glanced between the twins. “Hello. Welcome home, Andrew.”
Andrew snapped a band on his finger.
Clearing her throat, she flicked her gaze to Luther before going back to Andrew. “Aaron can show you to your room. You two will have to share; as you can see, we don’t have much space,” she said, flapping a hand about uselessly as she spoke. “I’ll give you some time to unpack before dinner.”
Andrew made a show of looking around, raising his mostly empty hands.
“We’ll need to get him some essentials,” Luther said, looking at Andrew coolly. Someone didn’t seem very happy with him. Andrew wasn’t sure why he was surprised; he had told the man he didn’t want to be here.
“You-” Aaron looked at his mother before looking back at Andrew, “you don’t have anything?”
Andrew pulled an elastic almost to the point of breaking before releasing it. The sharp noise rang in the otherwise quiet room. He wasn’t going to answer the obvious.
“It’s fine,” Luther said. “He can borrow your clothing until we can get him his own.”
Of course. It was almost comical, how he felt like this could just be another foster home. The parents giving him the scraps, the leftovers, always unprepared for him. Once, when he was five, he had asked his foster mother for a new pair of shoes because his no longer fit. She had struck him across the face, yelling at him that she wouldn’t waste her money on him when she had her own children to worry about. He had to dig into the back of the closet for a pair of shoes his foster brother no longer used, stuffing socks into the toes to make them fit. He had been hit again two months later for stealing them.
At least Aaron was a similar size to him.
Luther left them shortly after for his own home, spewing some nonsense about giving them time to 'bond'. For all of his talk about so-called 'family', he sure seemed eager to leave.
Between the three of them, dinner was a mostly silent affair. Andrew figured Tilda didn’t have much to say when she had given up one twin and then had been forced to take him back fifteen years later. Andrew was under no impression that she would have gone through with the adoption if Luther hadn’t gotten involved. And Aaron was no more than a stranger with his face. Andrew was fine with the silence, he didn't have much to say anyway. Instead, he focused on the food in front of him. It was lasagna, and the meat was the source of the smell Andrew had noticed earlier. Andrew sliced his into small pieces, eating around the beef. Tilda noticed and a deep scowl lined her face.
“Eat your food,” she said, clearly trying not to snap.
“I don’t like meat,” Andrew said. He realized it was the first words he had said in front of his twin when Aaron startled.
“Are you vegetarian?” Aaron seemed excited to learn any information about Andrew that he could, leaning over the table towards him.
“No.”
Aaron opened his mouth, clearly about to ask for more, but Tilda beat him to it, “It’s impolite to not eat what’s given to you. I worked hard to make it. Eat your food.”
Leaning back in his chair, Andrew fixed her with a hard glare, pushing his plate away. It was shit food anyway. He didn’t see why he should be grateful for someone doing the bare minimum to keep two kids alive. Tilda seemed torn between wanting to yell at him and being unnerved by his gaze. Andrew knew exactly what people saw when they looked at his face, and he had no issue with using it to his advantage. In the face of his unwavering apathy, most people crumbled. He had learned patience early on and rarely cared about anything, and therefore could outlast almost anyone. If Tilda wanted to have a power struggle over her shitty meal, that was her problem.
“Aaron’s eating it,” Tilda pointed out.
Aaron shifted in his seat, visibly uncomfortable, shoving a forkful of food into his mouth, chewing rapidly. Andrew didn’t move. Tilda became visibly agitated, her hand twitching and a blotchy flush spreading across her cheeks. It wouldn't take much, Andrew realized, to see what she was really like.
“Obviously this is an uncomfortable situation,” Tilda started.
“Is it,” Andrew said, not really a question.
Tilda’s eye twitched and Aaron shrunk down further in his seat, looking at Andrew imploringly.
“Let’s just eat our dinner,” Tilda said, faux sweetly.
Andrew didn’t touch his plate again.
The room Andrew shared with Aaron was small and only made smaller with the additional bed and dresser shoved into it. Aaron’s bed was on the left, the closet shut tight and walls bare. There was a backpack and notebooks piled in one corner haphazardly, a remnant of the recently ended school year. Andrew flopped down onto his bed, lying flat on his back, watching his twin move around the room out of the corner of his eye.
Aaron dropped some clothes at Andrew’s feet, “Here. There are extra toothbrushes and stuff in the cabinet under the bathroom sink.”
Andrew glanced at his twin but didn’t respond.
The scowl across Aaron’s face matched his mother’s, but the crossed arms and sullen attitude did not. “Are you ever going to speak to me?” Aaron asked.
“Are you ever going to say anything interesting?”
“Fuck you,” Aaron spat, eyes flashing. Turning on his heel, Aaron stormed out of the room. Hearing the slam of the bathroom door and the rush of water through the pipes, Andrew took out the stack of letters from his pocket, shoving them between the mattress and the headboard. Even without his eidetic memory, he would have known the words off by heart. There was no need to keep them. But he needed the letters as a reminder that Abram had been real, that there was someone out there who knew his secrets and didn’t flinch away from them.
Abram had said he wanted to come back for him, but all Andrew could do now was wait. Until then, he had to make sure Aaron was safe. Whether he wanted Andrew’s help or not.