A/N. I had fun with this one, I also had fun writing the opposite half which is part of a whole other monster.

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Never have, never will, just borrowing the characters.

Cross-Road

Of all the things Lyle had expected upon walking into the café, seeing Neil across the room hadn't been one of them. It was almost like looking in a mirror and his head was shrieking at him to run, far and fast, but he was already walking over to the table, slipping his gloves off and stuffing them in his back pocket.

"Long time no see," he drawled, slipping into the seat opposite his renegade older brother.

"You too," Neil replied with an equally easy and equally fake smile, "Didn't expect to see you here."

Or is that 'didn't want to'? Lyle asked mentally, but out loud settled with shrugging, "They've got the best coffee here."

"True, got to say I've never found anywhere quite as good as this."

"Been looking?"

"Sometimes."

It was a non-committal, end of conversation, word, but Lyle continued on anyway, not knowing, and perhaps not even caring as he pushed the subject in what might have been a casual fashion were it not for the fact he wasn't laughing. Smiling, yes, but it didn't reach his eyes so he wasn't laughing.

"What have you been up to then?"

"A little of this, a little of that, you know how it goes." Neil shrugged. "And you?"

"A normal job, normal university life, there's never anything particularly interesting happening here."

The whole conversation was turning into a game really and something told Lyle he should have been sad, but all he could manage was disappointed as he ordered a coffee and watched his older brother out the corner of his eye. This person who looked like him and sounded like him wasn't Lyle's slightly insane, ever grinning twin, but someone else, someone who had forgotten what it was like to build snowmen and participate in lawless snowball fights. He wondered idly, as he twisted the mug round between his hands, what had happened to that child and who it was that had replaced him. He figured he'd probably never know, yet he almost hoped that the child was still there somewhere.

The silence should have been a comfortable one, they were twins, supposedly on the same wave length or whatever, but Lyle felt none of that, only the space of the years apart, like the table between them, something solid and cold.

"You alright?"

The question made Lyle jump, pretty much the last thing he had expected his distant brother to say. He shook his head, smiled – "I'm fine" – and lied through his teeth, almost hating himself for doing so. He would have, once perhaps, given in, but that was a younger, less jaded Lyle, not the one he was now who lied more than he told the truth and ran when he should have stayed.

Neil gave him a look that said he clearly didn't believed his younger brother, but let it rest anyway, going back to clicking the lighter in his hand.

Lighter?

Lyle blinked and stared at the silver object for the first time, noting the packet of cigarettes beside Neil's empty mug. Putting his own coffee back on the table as Aislin ranted in his head and he asked incredulously, "When did you ever take up smoking?"

This he couldn't believe. He really, really couldn't. It made no sense.

Yet Neil just gave a wry smile and suddenly it didn't seem so strange after all because he was forgetting this wasn't Neil. "A couple of years back, everyone has their bad habits." That was probably the most honest thing Lyle had heard since walking into the café. Looking down at the lighter in his hand and clicking it shut Neil put it down. "I've been trying to kick it though."

"Good," Lyle said before he could stop himself. "Smoking kills."

"I know."

The lighter however did not reassure him of his brother's intentions. It was too well kept and too personal, even from where he sat he could see the initials engraved on the side, Neil's initials. He wanted to throw the thing through the window and wring his brother's neck and the anger took him by surprise so he kept quiet. He kept quiet and stared and tried to stuff the unwanted emotions in a box which he could hide in some corner of his mind where it could gather dust and be forgotten about again.

He tried to think of better things, of better times. He remembered smiling when he'd opened a gift a couple of years previous, the note reading 'well done on passing your test, little brother'. He remembered laughing as he pulled on the soft leather gloves. He tried to think of other things and other times, but all he could find was the lighter on the table and the gloves in his pocket.

Thinking didn't work, and the silence stretched on.

Part of him wanted to reach across the table and the years and drag his absent brother back, but he didn't, and Lyle stayed, nursing his cold coffee and dark thoughts long after Neil had left, the bell above the door chiming an almost unheard toll.


They were ten again. Walking back from the corner shop, the milk their mother had asked them to go and get for her in the bag in Neil's hand along with the lollypops she had not asked for and the change which was less than she was expecting jangling in his pocket. The day was bright, loud and cloudless, busy people with busy lives. Spring half-term was always good, only a few more weeks until the long summer holidays would begin. A summer which would probably be spent, in part, visiting with relatives and wrecking havoc at the beach, it usually was.

Summer was close, but not quite upon them yet, and there were still chores to be done or avoided with ingenious plans such as taking the long way back from the shop, cutting through the park and perhaps getting distracted along the way racing to see who could get up to the top of the hill and back again the fastest. It was always close enough – yet Neil always finished first – a draw. Then, with a guilty glance at Lyle's watch, they would grab the shopping and run towards the exit on the other side of the park. Laughing, always laughing. That was the one thing he remembered the most: the constant – real – laughter.

The roads were busy, not rush hour busy, but just holidays busy, family trips and the like. They had always crossed at the lights, like they'd been taught – the main road was busy after all and it was stupid to try crossing it any other way. The neighbour's eldest had been in an accident only last month, nothing worse than a couple of sizable bruises and a lecture they'd been able hear from their own back garden and a lecture for them as well that evening reminding them of the dangers and reminding them to always cross at the lights.

Lyle shook his head, puzzled, so why had they stopped here, half way down the road?

"Neil?"

Neil grinned, handing over the shopping bag and the change for their mother, "It's fine, don't worry."

"What are you doing?"

And it wasn't money but house keys he held.

"Sorry, there's something I have to do."

And he wasn't ten anymore nor was he puzzled, more just confused and irritated as he reached to grab his brother's arm, "What the hell?"

Neil shrugged and took a deliberate, casual step back – "You'll be okay" – back into the road, still grinning, hands in his pockets. "Take care, alright?"

Then he was gone. A bright blur of colour lost in the noise of traffic, screeching brakes and car horns and Lyle's own voice, yelling at him to come back.

And a door clicked quietly shut.

Lyle's eyes snapped open and even before he had thrown himself from the bed and wrenched the window open to scream bloody murder at his brother the Lancia was half way down the road, going well beyond the speed limit and well beyond his reach, but Lyle yelled anyway, every damn insult and curse he could think of and screw them if the neighbours complained.

He'd heard his brother leave, and knew he wasn't coming back – the silver lighter sitting on the table in place of his leather gloves was proof enough of that.