By all reports, Alasdair and Lovino had coexisted perfectly well as babies and young toddlers, burbling happy nonsense to each other and peaceably sharing their sweets and toys, surprising their parents, who would gather to coo about how 'sweet' and 'kind' they both were and praise them to high heaven for their behaviour.
Alasdair has no recollection of any of that, no more than he can remember the day it all changed. His mum had been watching them but, she'd told Alasdair years later, looked away for only a moment, and in that moment something happened. Something that blacked Lovino's eye and made him scream so loudly and for so long that he nearly passed out.
Through his sobs and tears and general wailing, he managed to scrape together just enough breath and coherent thought to blame Alasdair for everything. Mum had scolded Alasdair – that, he remembers vividly – and then poured all her sympathy onto Lovino, coddled him and cuddled him, and when that didn't work, plied him with his own bodyweight in chocolate until he finally shut up
She unwittingly created a monster. From then on, whenever Lovino didn't get to play with the best toy, or he lost at a game, or he simply wasn't getting the attention he thought he deserved, the waterworks would start, and because Alasdair was taller, stronger, and a whole three months older, it would inevitably be his fault somehow, even if he wasn't in the same fucking room at the time.
It was bad enough when they were little kids and they only had to suffer one another's company during family parties and the odd, optimistically-named 'play date', but then their parents' shared obsession with league tables and exam results condemned them to attend the same succession of expensive private schools and Alasdair was stuck seeing him every day during term time for the next thirteen years, too.
Whilst Lovino did eventually grow out of being a snivelling tattletale, he didn't grow into someone Alasdair liked a great deal, either. He was a bad-tempered arse, always complaining to anyone who'd listen about some trivial misfortune, inconvenience, or imagined slight, and he was cocky and sneeringly superior about a whole host of things that Alasdair considered utterly unimportant.
Grandfather thought they were important, though. Or, at least, he acted as if he did. Now, Alasdair can recognise it as part and parcel of some weird pissing contest Grandfather and The Shrike engaged in over the accomplishments of their respective grandsons, but as a child he'd resented being pitted against Lovino; compared to him and so often found wanting.
And Grandfather berated him about all these perceived shortcomings at great, disparaging length. What did it matter that Alasdair was captain of the rugby team, if Lovino could run rings around him on the football pitch? And what good was it getting the best marks in every other subject when he couldn't sweep the board, because Lovino always beat him in Art? And why couldn't he put a bit more effort into his appearance? Lovino was so neat, and polite, and impeccably turned out, whereas Alasdair looked like he'd been dragged through series of particularly thorny hedges backwards.
Throughout their childhood and early adolescence, Alasdair had dealt with all these minor provocations by pretending that Lovino didn't exist for the most part. He ignored him at school, at family parties and, later, guild functions, tuning him out by degrees until he receded into nothing more than a mildly irritating note in the background noise of Alasdair's life.
And there Lovino might have remained into adulthood and beyond, had he not committed two unforgivable sins.
The first and most egregious was fooling Dylan into thinking that he's worth liking; the second, getting along far better with Francis than Alasdair could ever manage.
When Francis' mum first started working with the UK Council of Thirteen, their respective guardians had often left the three of them to 'entertain each other' whilst they discussed Guild business. From their first, disastrous meeting, it was abundantly clear that Francis didn't find Alasdair entertaining in the slightest, but he appeared quite taken with Lovino.
They shared a passion for art and fashion, and both had travelled the world from an early age, staying in the very best hotels and dining in the very best restaurants.
Alasdair's taste in art was – Lovino had snootily informed him once – woefully pedestrian, and the only holidays he ever went on were the three weeks he spent in their Scottish holiday home every summer, where life carried on in much the same way as it did at the manor excepting that Alasdair and his brothers spent much more of their time dressed in tweed and flat caps, trudging behind grandfather carrying things whilst he shot at the local wildlife.
He's no gastronomist, either, but he knows what he likes and what he doesn't, and as far as he's concerned, Lovino's lasagne isn't a patch on Dylan's.
It has far more vegetables hidden in its depths for a start, deceptively enrobed by sauce and lurking in and amongst the meat, ready to spring themselves on the unwary. Alasdair spears one of the offending morsels on the tines of his fork and holds it aloft.
"What's this?" he asks Lovino accusingly.
Lovino gives him a withering look. "Celery."
"Dyl's lasagne never has celery in."
"I don't make it properly," Dylan jumps in, sounding thoroughly abashed. "It's much better made from scratch, don't you think?"
"No," Alasdair says, because the point of Dylan's lasagne isn't that it's the height of culinary excellence or anything like, the point is that it's hearty and familiar and, above all, comforting, which he thinks his brothers could all do with a spot of right now, instead of having their – apparently inadequate – palates and skills in the kitchen denigrated. "It's—"
"Well, I think it's delicious!" Francis says brightly, scooping another portion of the lasagne onto his plate with an eagerness that makes Lovino look hatefully self-satisfied.
Alasdair forgoes taking any more for himself out of a sense of brotherly solidarity, but Michael has no such compunctions. He and Alfred split the rest and the last few wilting scraps of salad, guzzling it all down as though they're still desperately hungry, despite it being at least the third helping for each.
After everyone's plates have been scraped clean and Lovino has basked in their compliments on the meal to his satisfaction, he retrieves his laptop from his car to show them the scans of Grandfather's book he had made.
"It's definitely a magical text, just like you thought," Dylan says, peering at the screen over Lovino's shoulder. "I don't know which one, though. Any ideas, Art?"
"I don't recognise it," Arthur says, "but I have seen some that are similar. It's written in cipher, like a lot of the old spellbooks were. We'll need the corresponding code book as well before we can decrypt it. I don't suppose you stole that too, did you, Francis?"
Francis shakes his head. "There was only that one book in your grandfather's desk, even though I had it on good report that there would be three."
"I can't imagine that Grandfather's got rid of them, if he needs them to read the spellbook," Arthur says. "They must be somewhere in the house."
"Or he could have taken them down to London with him for safekeeping rather than leave us alone here with them," Alasdair points out. "You know what he's like. He doesn't trust us any more than his henchmen."
"Even so, we can probably use a spell to translate it," Arthur says. "I don't know any suitable ones offhand, but there's bound to be something in the library. I'd need the original book for that to work, though."
"I'll fetch it for you," Francis says, and though the words are spoken with the sort of conviction that suggests immediate action will be forthcoming, he doesn't stir from his seat.
And no wonder, because he looks exhausted again, whey-faced and slumped down in his seat as though his body is a burden to heavy to bear without his spine bowing under the weight of it.
"Tomorrow," Alasdair says, and much more decisively he had every other time he had made the same suggestion this evening. "It's getting late, and we can make a start on all this tomorrow."
"It's only nine o'clock!" Alfred protests incredulously.
"That's pretty bloody late when you get up at dawn like we do," Alasdair says, gesturing towards himself and then his brothers. "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm knackered."
Dylan and Michael agree readily enough, but Arthur makes a few grumbled complaints before finally acquiescing, perhaps in an attempt to pass himself off as someone who doesn't habitually retire to his bed with a hot milky drink at ten on the dot and thus finds the hour just as ridiculously early as the superhero does.
"Right." Alasdair nods firmly. "That's settled, then. Let's all get to bed."
Circumstances being – dismal and unpleasant – as they are, it naturally falls to Dylan to settle Lovino in for the night once it becomes clear he has no intentions of pissing off back to his own perfectly good home for the foreseeable. Arthur offers to do the same for Alfred with suspicious rapidity, leaving Alasdair to deal with Francis by default.
"You can take my bed again," he says. "I'll sleep on one of the sofas in the den."
He expects Francis to mount some sort of token objection to the idea, if only out of politeness, but he must be too tired to play his part in that particular call and response of social nicety, because he merely smiles gratefully and says, "Thank you. Though I would like to clean up first, if I may. I doubt I'll be very comfortable" – he motions towards his unkempt hair, his expression doleful – "like this."
Privately, Alasdair questions the wisdom of the idea. Though Francis might be a little grubby after his encounter with the enchanted trees in the orchard, and he certainly smells more than a little ripe, it seems unlikely that he'll be able to remain standing long enough to take a shower in his current condition, and if he does pass out, Alasdair would hate to be put in the position of having to go in to rescue him, for a whole host of reasons.
"Of course," he says anyway, because he doubts he'll be able to persuade Francis otherwise easily, and he's too tired himself to risk getting into an argument over it. "I'll show you to the bathroom."
He grabs a clean pair of his own pyjamas from the downstairs airing cupboard on the way, along with a couple of fluffy new towels to replace the threadbare ones that tend to migrate into the dingy little bathroom he normally uses once Grandfather deems them unfit for use elsewhere.
He apologises for the state of the room once they reach it; shows Francis where to find the shower gel and shampoo, and fresh bottles of both if they happen to run out; demonstrates how to open the little window above the sink in case he gets too hot, because it always sticks halfway and needs a good, hard shove in just the right place; and then explains the intricacies of working the shower in painstaking detail, because it's a finicky death-trap piece of outdated shit.
"You can't turn the dial more than a couple of centimetres either side of here," he says, gesturing emphatically towards the worn-out number 5 on the shower's controls, "unless you want to be boiled alive. Oh, and if the water starts spluttering, just smack the pipes a bit. That usually sorts it out."
"Do you want to stay and scrub my back, too?" Francis asks, but there's none of the rumbling throatiness to his voice that there usually is when he says such things.
The archness of his smile confirms that it wasn't a play-act of flirtation, but a teasing admonishment. Alasdair is fussing too much.
Alasdair flushes just as hotly as he would have if it had been the other sort of teasing, stammers out an apology, and then tells Francis, "I'll go sort out my room and leave you to it. Come through whenever you're ready."
He'd need more than the span of a shower, even the most indulgently protracted, to get his bedroom fit for visitors. Francis had likely been too distracted by tiredness to notice the state of it earlier, and probably would be so again now, but there'll be no escaping the observation come morning, and Alasdair is ashamed by the sight of it all over again.
He scoops all the dirty clothes off the floor and stuffs them into his laundry basket until its overflowing, reorganises his bookcase so that the more embarrassingly juvenile volumes in his collection are safely hidden at the back of the topmost shelf, and has just finished remaking the bed when Francis shuffles wearily into the room.
His hair is still damp, drying into loosely coiled ringlets at the ends, which Alasdair thinks suits him far better than his usual pin straight style as the curls lend a balancing softness to the more angular planes of his face.
And he looks more angular than he ever has done before. He's always been slim, but he looks sparse and brittle now, with barely a spare ounce of flesh on his bones. Alasdair's pyjamas are far too big on him, the bottoms of the trouser legs puddling on the floor around his feet, and the sleeves of the shirt covering his hands to the tips of his fingers. The collar gapes wide around his neck, drooping down to reveal the brutally sharp lines of his collar bone.
Alasdair's heart twinges hard, and he turns his head abruptly aside to disguise his instinctive pained grimace.
"Well," he says, eyes doggedly fixed on the wall behind his desk, "the bed's all ready for you. Do you need anything else?"
"No," Francis says, his voice rough and thready. "I should be fine, thank you."
"Okay, then. I'll be in the den if you do need anything; two doors down the hall on the left."
That said, Alasdair should leave. He knows he should, but he can't quite bring himself to go. There's a far too big part of him that wants to wait until Francis is safely tucked up in bed, because he'd liked how Francis had looked there earlier. There was nothing prurient about it – not especially – he'd simply appreciated the way that the worry and fatigue that had been pinching Francis' mouth tight and lying heavy on his brow were smoothed away, and he'd seemed peaceful. Untroubled, and comfortable in a way that Alasdair had never dared to imagine to he could ever be in the manor. In Alasdair's own bedroom.
He's clearly not comfortable now, though, as he makes no move towards the bed. His, "Thank you," is spoken sharply this time, and just as clearly a dismissal.
Alasdair obeys it as quickly as possible, pausing only to grab his sleeping bag from the bottom of his wardrobe before retreating to the den with it.
Arthur has already staked a claim on the longest of the three sofas there, stretched out under a mound of blankets.
"You gave up your bed to Alfred, then," Alasdair says.
"Of course I did," Arthur says, sounding primly offended that that might ever have been in question. "I'd be a pretty poor host if I didn't, wouldn't I?"
"They're not really guests, though, are they? More of a… A taskforce or something. It's not like we'd be having them over for tea and cake if they weren't helping us getting to the bottom of this thing with Grandfather. Two of them are technically still our enemies, after all. By rights, we should have locked them up in the dungeons overnight."
"I will if you will," Arthur says, but only because he knows that Alasdair would never agree to that now.
Point won, and their disagreement settled to his satisfaction, Arthur rolls over onto his other side, presenting his back to Alasdair, a clear sign that he considers their conversation at an end and has no wish to speak further.
Alasdair considers starting it back up out of nothing more than the petty spite that Arthur so often inspires in him when he starts acting so smug and officious, but as soon as he sits down on the second longest sofa, weariness washes over him in a crashing wave.
He collapses onto his back and doesn't even have the energy to get into his sleeping bag, just unzips it and drapes it over himself.
He slips into a doze the instant he closes his eyes but is soon roused again by the creak of the floorboards by the door. The diffident rhythm of the footsteps is immediately familiar.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he hisses. "I thought you'd want to sleep with your…" The word 'boyfriend' catches hard at the back of Alasdair's throat, because he still isn't used to using it in relation to Lovino. Still doesn't care for the unwelcome reminder of his new, odious position in Dylan's life. "With Lovino."
"Oh," Dylan says, soft and surprised. "Well, I… He didn't ask me to stay, and I thought he might appreciate a bit of space. I didn't want to crowd him, so…" The floorboards creak again as Dylan shifts his weight towards the door. "Maybe I should go back? But he might have fallen asleep already, and I wouldn't want to disturb him, so—"
"For god's sake," Arthur snaps. "You're here now; just shut up and lie down. Some of us are trying to sleep."
"Sorry," Dylan says, scurrying to the last remaining sofa and hurriedly bedding down on it.
"Jesus," Alasdair breathes out, amused, into the silence that descends once Dylan has settled himself. "I can't believe we've all ended up being the ones to take the sofa. We're fucking shite excuses for supervillains, aren't we?"