It should probably bother him that she leaves his bed at night to go to another's. The thought of her skin on someone else's lips, her lips on someone else's skin… It should enrage him, infuriate him beyond all rationality. It should drive him to kill her lover, to lock her away where only he can ever touch that porcelain body, where no other can ever get to her again.
It might surprise her to know it doesn't.
They never speak of it, where she goes. It's a kind of open secret. Sometimes he'll meet Elijah's eye across the room, having caught him out gazing at her, and feel a great swell of pity for all of them. A thousand years and still in the same boat. In love with the same girl. A damned shame, but there's nothing to be done.
He's in love with a girl who's in love with him, and if she's also in love with his brother, well… He can understand. It's not as though his heart is so faithful. It's just that in his case, the object of his affections is dead.
He wishes she would just admit to what goes on in the depths of her soul, but she's too young for that kind of honesty, that kind of acceptance. She doesn't understand yet that love isn't something biddable, isn't exclusive. She can't acknowledge that she can love two men in different ways without feeling shameful. One day she might, guilt torn and expecting recriminations, and oh, that day will be sweet. He'll take her in his arms, and she'll cry, and he'll grant an absolution that's all the sweeter because she'll never see it coming, but not yet.
They do their best to make it easy on her, never demanding she stay, never asking where she goes. When she slips out from under his arm in the dark he feigns sleep, pretends ignorance. It's the only thing he can do until she's ready.
He holds her close for now. She's deeply asleep, not for his brother tonight. But still not only his. He presses a kiss to her temple, nuzzles into her hair and whispers, "It's all right, sweetheart. It's okay."
If only she understood it's what they love about her most that she's that full of life, of love. It's the parts of her that are most human that let her love them both.
