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“I have a door, you know,” the gentleman looks up from his cup of tea into the half-light. “A perfectly workable one.”
The shadow underneath his elm tree shrugs slightly.
“Are you using again?” Dori breathes out in a sigh, staring at his tea with regret. “It's hassle I don't need.” You know that, he doesn’t bother adding.
His brother steps into the circle of light provided by the porch lamp and gives him a wolfish smile, “Let me in, darling.”
“Or what?” Brother or no, Dori's hand strays to the only knife he still carries, strapped into his belt.
When he looks up, his brother has done the same, “Or I'll huff and I'll puff and –”
“I'm sure you will.”
He has no patience for his brother's ever present dramatics. And his tea is getting cold. He moves to his feet, joints cracking as they tend to do when one gets older, and gestures to the door.
His brother walks towards it, and it's then that he notices the sickening swing of his arm, the way he lists to one side and – “For crying out loud,” he groans. “I'm not a – please tell me you've been to hospital. Nori. Nori!”
“Little pig, little pig, let me in!” Nori sniggers.
He bolts the door behind him, and grins to himself when he remembers he's just locked him and his baby brother in with a psychopath. Just like old times.
“Shirt off,” he presses his lips together.
“Buy me a drink first, won't you?”
Dori thinks about burying the knife in his belt into Nori's other shoulder, but something (brotherly bonds? General disinclination to see the inside of a prison cell? Lack of good floor cleaning products?) stops him from following through.
“Nori.”
Nori giggles, but pulls it off so Dori can have a look. It looks like a knife wound, which is... wholly expected, really. One of Nori's... friends must have had a go at sewing it up, because there's black thread holding it together. So at least Dori doesn't have to do that part.
His little brother looks over his shoulder at him, lips quivering in the facsimile of tears, “Do you think it's fatal?”
“I will knock you out,” Dori hisses, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Like to see you try.”
“Keep your voice down; Ori’s asleep.” He rummages in his cupboards for antiseptic, bandages and tweezers. “This isn’t alcohol,” he adds in warning when he puts the bottle down by Nori’s side. “So don’t try.”
“I’ve had worse,” Nori counters, jutting his jaw out in challenge.
It’s an expression lingering from childhood, one that Dori saw countless times growing up, and so it’s an instinct and a habit to react, pushing it back into a rest position. He does it before thinking, and then drops his hand quickly, no little embarrassment playing in the back of his mind.
“Don’t drink it,” he reiterates with a mutter.
Nori giggles and raises his eyebrows, “Will my face stay that way?”
“It’d be an improvement.” The antiseptic isn’t made for something like this. It’s made for when Ori trips over on the stairs, or when Dori’s hands slip chopping vegetables. It’s not made for when Nori comes reeling in close to the witching hour with a knife wound in his back.
Dori’s not made for that.
And yet he does it anyway.
“Don’t tell me you did this yourself,” he tugs with a gentle hand at the uneven stitches. “I’m not even sure if it’s possible, but –”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Nori snaps, making a move to brush Dori off. “I’m flexible, darling, but not super-human.”
He slaps at the hand trying to push him off, but makes sure to hold back somewhat, “Trust me, nothing about you could surprise me anymore.”
“We could see about that,” his little brother – Christ, his little brother, even though they’re definitely eye to eye now and Nori might actually be taller than him, smirks up at him from his seat on the table. “I’m sure I could come up with –”
Whatever Nori’s about to say is cut off by a sharp inhalation of pain when Dori pulls the black thread holding his shoulder together hard. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Otherwise I’ll call the police. Is that clear?”
“Fucking crystal.” When Nori’s not trying to singlehandedly drive Dori into an early grave, his voice is lower. More of a growl.
He much prefers it though, to the higher tease that Nori’s voice is most of the time, the tone that jangles on every nerve like a cat caught in the strings of a piano. Nori’s low snarl is the sound of a bastard, but not the voice of a psychopath.
And that way, Dori can pretend.