Francis used to like David a lot more than he does now. But something about his oldest brother has changed, something vital that had made him seem more of a person, once upon a time, more of a figure that Francis could look at as fully human and real, even fun, and now when he looks at David, he sees a shadow of something that was neither David nor someone else, a badly pieced jigsaw with missing pieces and unmatched shapes jammed awkwardly where they didn't fit at all, and he can't look at him for long without feeling an itchy need to leave him.
It had started, he suspected, with their parents' death. Once David had not been so cautious, so constrained; once he would take Francis out and talk to him, really talk to him, like he was a person and not just a kid, not just a brother he was required to be around, but like someone he genuinely liked and trusted, even respected almost as if he were on his own level. Once David had asked Francis questions and really seemed to want to know his response, really seemed to care what he thought or felt about whatever topic was at hand. Once David had listened, really listened when he spoke, and even if he didn't agree, Francis knew that he had heard him, not with his ears alone, but with his thoughts.
It had all changed when David had had to take over. Something about being in charge, or attempting to be, with no one there to back him up or support him, no one there to relieve him of his duties or to go to for help, had strained David, put pressure on him that seemed to come within him and his expectations for himself as much as for any that others placed upon him. It seemed to Francis that David's view of what it meant to be head of a household was so rigid and constrained that David, nor any other human, would ever be able to properly fit into its mold. To David, a guardian would put food on the table, regardless of whether it was ever eaten; a guardian enforced cleanliness and duty, responsibility and work, and above all else, normality, even at the extent of human feelings and flexibility. A guardian meant being judged by what you did and said and produced rather than who you were or how you felt, and as David struggled to adapt himself to this view, Francis could see him pulling further away from them all, even as he struggled to keep them all together.
When Francis spoke to him now, he could see that David was looking him in the eye, but his gaze was glassy and unfocused, his thoughts shifting past what Francis was telling him to instead dwell on Francis's clothes or expression, on his uncompleted chores or the tone of his voice, and he could not hear at all what Francis was saying or what the meaning behind it was. When Francis began to withdraw from him, retreating to his room and no longer asking or offering to be around him, David seemed to take this not as a personal rejection of him and his changing, but instead as symptoms of teenage moodiness, of an average, expected, normal response, the sort of response that relieved him of his duties, and he focused not on what Francis was doing, but what he was not- namely, homework and chores.
It was doubtless the complaint of teenagers from across the nation, that their parent or guardian did not understand them. But for Francis, it seemed that much more of a betrayal, for David had once been on his side, and now David had become one of them.
Was it really too much to ask that even once, David took the time to really listen?