Disclaimer: Belongs to minds that aren't mine.
Author's Note: Implied slash and incest. Run away if you're immature about it.
Rocky, and Colt. And Flare.
Rocky doesn't like Colt's new girl. He tries to, he wants to - for Colt's sake, he tells himself - but she just . . . she's just so wild and feral and vindictive that he can't bring himself to trust her. He likes his women straight and narrow and blond and not, well, heartless that he wonders if he could ever get used to her. It doesn't help that she keeps telling them to call her 'Flare' but won't reveal her real name. Rocky wonders if she even has a real name.
And when sometimes in the middle of the night he gets up from hours of studying for his University finals and walks downstairs with an open book lying in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other, well she thinks she's so clever, she thinks he's Giles, and he doesn't turn on the light in the living room as he leans against the door frame while she pushes his brother back into the couch and moves up and down and moans and throws her head back and laughs. He knows that she knows he's watching. He knows that Colt has no idea.
He sighs and he stares and he wonders why he can't turn away. He thinks of her as a paper shredder as she tears her fingernails down his brother's tender skin. He doesn't ask about the marks in the morning.
Then one day she comes over and Colt isn't home but she sits down anyway with a cooler and a cigarette and they play a game of refusing to blink as she leans forward on the couch and he sits straight-backed in his chair. It is silent and uncomfortable and Rocky hates it but Flare doesn't seem to mind, waving her hands and blabbering on and grinning and snarling and winking and that's that. She flicks her ashes away and Rocky thinks about Colt just before she suddenly makes sense for the first time that afternoon, looking up at the ceiling as if reading the answers of it as she says, "I think your brother's a bit queer."
Rocky thinks of seeing her kiss other men and of seeing her kiss other girls and he frowns and leaves the room. He does not expect Flare to follow him, but she does.
"He sometimes whispers your name," she says in his ear and Rocky doesn't have to ask when. He lets her push him back onto the bed and undo his fly.
He hasn't seen Colt for three months now. It makes him feel a little sad and a little victorious, but he is glad that Flare is gone.
His youngest brother comes over sometimes to the now-empty apartment and raids his fridge and keeps him company. On his last visit, he looks up at Rocky as they stand at the door saying goodbye and says with a sad glint in his eye, "If only Colt hadn't caught Flare and -"
Rocky cuts him off. He has always been unable to think of Tum Tum as anything but eight years old and he doesn't want to hear about how Flare didn't mind.
