I had mused to myself one evening as I sat in the comfy sofa and read one of my most prized books, my freshly brewed coffee in a crisp, white cup on the small table beside the armrest. I had paused to consider a particularly promising point that I had not paid any heed to in all the other times I had read it and then it came from almost nowhere. It had crossed my mind, stray and errant; that perhaps we are fated to lead the same lives as our parents.

I then chided myself, realising that my brain was becoming ensnared by the free floating intelligentsia that is the social 'so called' sciences. Evidently Tim's childlike ways of romantiscising things was getting to me.

It was basic logic that we are the shared genetic material of two individuals as offspring that is designed to function best in the environment that the parent material had adapted to through the evolutionary process. Socially they are the ones who raise us, providing morals and guidelines and in a small way the first personality we have.

Of course then when we go out into the world as adults, despite our best efforts, we are smaller and more dilute versions of those before us. Humanity and the natural world has taken millions of years to reach a point where we are almost exactly like the first living things on the planet. That doesn't boast much for the human race.

As a strong advocate for the natural sciences I had become irritated that I had allowed such a notion to arise and stay in my thoughts. I had become more irritated that it seemed to interlace some proof into my everyday existence. Like God hiding behind your living room curtains.

The following evening I had stopped in my tracks in a habitual movement from bathroom to the kitchen and noticed Tim's dark figure sitting in the living room. There was the faint red glow of the cigarette he held in his fingertips and I was too mesmerised to scold him for it.

I am a man of solid existence and never do I create an intricate and useless poem from the everyday and ordinary. Yet there I stood, just to watch him and consider how ill fitting his description of his parents to me had been to describe the boy in front of me.

I had tried to find ways to tar him with the same brush that I had his parents. The stray and vacant carers that did not care. In my mind there was little that could be said to redeem them for emotionally abandoning a little boy and setting him on the road to ruin. I would care for him now even if it meant something as sick and wrong as to be a father figure in such a sexual relationship. He needed that in someone and if it could be me I would happily oblige. Each time I thought of why Tim was the way he was instead of the way he was, it changed me a little inside and it changed my behaviour towards him.

It surprised me that he had never once criticised me for treating his intelligence so harshly. Each time he took it in good humour with a cheeky smile and a kiss. I regretted that now. I had always placed him lower than me and never complimented him on the fact that he did possess intelligence that most did not. That I did not. I seemed to base most of my interaction with him on comparisons, both for him and myself.

It plagues my thoughts when I'm blinded by physical release in the bedroom whether or not I am comparable to my own sister. I suppose with Tim I may well have compared his emotional sensitivity with Isabel's and that was the only reason that I ever saw anything wrong with how in tune he was to me. A ridiculous notion given that I have grown up with one and have chosen the other, both of whom have hurt me.

I stood in the hall and watched my inner thoughts as a very Tim like revelation came over me. A moment that sprang to mind from my childhood when I chided Isabel as I always had for her trying to mother me. Perhaps inevitably I was fated to lead the same life as my sister, the creature in my life who had nurtured me and mothered me; who had been my parent. It was always going to be that way with Tim and Isabel. What my sister and I shared stained through to what Tim and I shared whether I wanted it to or not. He was bound to become attracted to us both when we shared the same qualities that he found attractive.

Finally I had an answer to the question that haunted the existence of my very core. I now understood why Tim was so taken with notions of the romantic. I allowed myself that moment to believe that probability and proximity had led to my own heartbreak. A scientific release for the concept of fate.

Perhaps he had turned out like his parents. For the most part he was engaging and loving of everything but he could be selfish and vacant of the people who surround him. That was his problem. All this time I had been living inside my own head, finding solutions the puzzle, to the problem of Tim. He was not the problem at all.

He had turned to look at me then and given me the most beautiful and entrancing smile. My cold exterior softened and I went to him. He was hypnotic.

I didn't tell him what I was thinking as we lay on the sofa in the darkened room together. Being so connected to him psychically I had to be detached mentally or he would invade every part of me; through no fault of his own. We had lain like philosophers, pondering the heavens and the earth. Only one of us emotionally intelligent enough to appreciate it and one who belittled it in his own jealousy.

"What are you thinking," he had whispered. He was so close to my ear that the chill of it was arousing.

I had thought about how I had grown to be like my own 'mother' to keep him. In the comparison between Isabel and I, Tim had chosen her so I had stolen him and become more like her, softer and more gentle with him. Now I cared for him in ways I hadn't before, the way my sister had to me.

I had considered the resolute fact that I felt no guilt whatsoever in that Isabel was lonely and pining and I woke up to the wonder that was Tim each morning. I had pondered how I justified it to myself, arguing that Tim had chosen me and trying to be satisfied by the 'lifetime of putting my sister first and wanting something for myself' mindframe.

I had thought on how Tim had been smarter all along, content to think on things that led to a contented, human happiness where I wanted to best everyone even if it meant misery.

I reflected on the instant I had first realised that I loved him, long before I told him. Maybe even before I met him. I I had been thinking of how I longed for him to know exactly how I felt about him but there was no possible way to tell him for fear that I would spook him like a delicate mare.

He hadn't brought out the best in me, he had put it there. A part of himself that he had to spare and was willing to share with me. I thought about telling him exactly what I was thinking.

But instead I had stroked his soft and delicate hand in my own, bringing it to my lips to kiss it gently.

"Nothing," I replied softly.