You Are Not the Half of Me

12th October 1986, New York City

and I'm not feeling right at all, Diana. You are the only one who is able to make this right. Please make this right, Diana.'

What's worse than hearing a loved one cry?

Logan McLeod lay back from the typewriter and poured himself a second glass of cheap white wine. Drops fell onto the frayed leather of the blotter that protected the old desk; the young man wiped them with his shirt's cuff and set back to work. He was starting to have to squint ; the bright shine of the lamp hurt his worn eyes, and he probably needed glasses, but thing was, he had to type a clean version of the mess of notes and waste of ink that sat in the corner of the desk, or nothing would justify anything. And to hell the glasses he needed.

Diana wished there was a way not to look into those eyes, not to let them pierce through her skin.

The door opened with its characteristic grating noise. Logan let his mind wander over the fact he should grease the door as he heard the keys being thrown into the bowl over The Cure's music. After all, with the cold and humidity, doors shifted, and windows became hard to open, and hinges croaked like old toads. Winter wasn't Logan's favourite season, and that was just one of the reasons why it wasn't.

The person who had stepped in sighed, and a bag was dropped in the entrance hall, just before two feet started to drag on the floor.
A soft smell of tobacco preceeded the man entering the room. It was the exact acrid scent of freshly smoked Malboros, a smell that Logan knew very well.

"Hey, Logie."

A hand ruffled Logan's hair, and a smokey kiss was pressed on top of his head.

Logan rose his eyes from the yellowed keyboard. A redhead stood there, curly, venetian blond locks falling onto his forehead and slender neck, clear blue eyes enlightened by the beam of the lamp that sat next to Logan's typewriter.

"How was today?" James asked, walking towards the sofa.

"Okay."

Logan sighed, and left the hard chair, finding no point in writing anymore since James was there now. He downed the glass of wine as the ginger boy lit another cigarette.

Logan stepped heavily towards the full-lenght mirror that was precarily leaned on the wall next to the desk where Logan had been writing. It was there because the paint was crackling : they had moved it from the entrance into the living room to hide the decorative disaster.
He faced the glass, and right back at him stared the same redhead that was now smoking on the brown sofa. Same aquiline nose, same chafed lips, same watery blue irises and same eye vessels reddened by multiple conjunctivitis. Same lanky legs, same stronger arms, same rowdy shoulders. All the same, except Logan wasn't smoking. And his hair was much shorter, wound in tight curls onto his skull, where James' extended freely onto his shoulders, ringlets falling across his cheeks and ears.

Logan took a look at his twin brother sitting on the sofa. The young man had thrown his Members Only jacket on the armrest, crossing his jeans-clad legs and had opened the fanny pack that hung by his side to get out the tip money of the day.
James was a waiter. Logan glanced at the gathered $30.

"Pretty good" he just said, going for yet another glass of wine.

James took a drag from his cigarette, clenching it between his teeth, looking preoccupied.

"Christopher left me" he blurted out, letting the smoke escape through his chapped lips to go darken the ceiling.

"What?!" Logan gaped, dropping on the beat down brown sofa, glass in hand. "Oh my god, Jay, are you okay?! Come here, are you okay?"

He put the glass down onto the dirty oriental carpet on the floor, and pulled his inert brother into an embrace. Christopher! James had been so bloody happy to find him. If the scoundrel had broken Logan's brother's heart, there would be consequences. And not the less.
James hugged back briefly, before sighing and swaying away from Logan, and putting his cigarette to his mouth yet again. He held it elegantly, he smoked it elegantly, almost in a womanly way. Logan had always admired how James could just seduce out of pulling some smoke out of a cheap tobacco stick.

"It's okay. I knew it was going to happen." he mumbled, biting on the cigarette butt like it was, hypothetically, Christopher's very head.

"Was he cheating on you?" Logan asked, suspicious, leaving the glass onto the floor. "Because—"

"No" James stopped him, taking the TV remote from the overloaded coffee table, putting it on. "Don't bother with him. I'd rather never see him again. 'You working tonight?"

"No. Not my shift."

Logan was a security agent at a nightclub. It wasn't the best job but he was a pretty good karate fighter and kick-boxer. It was a childhood talent, and you can't just write for a living if you have to pay your rent and have no publisher, clearly.

"Okay."

Logan fished his drink from the ground again, glancing at the TV that was broadcasting ads, and sipped some wine. James was obviously trying to hide the fact that he WAS heartbroken. Logan just knew it. And James visibly knew that he knew it. It was now pretty much an universal fact, in their small, dual ecosystem of a brotherhood, that James was the saddest he'd ever been in months.
That angered Logan to no end, even if to show it he settled for staring at the TV. And James probably just knew what it meant, and it undubiously satisfied him, even if to show it he settled for staring at the TV.
And the only person involved who didn't just know Christopher was set to recieve a black eye within the week was Christopher himself.

Logan slipped out of his reflections slowly, already eager to punch his way through Christopher's face, to watch James kill the cigarette in the ashtray, near a spearmint chewing gum.

"Personally, I'm going out." James stated, standing up harshly to go see his wardrobe.

That was no good. James used to cry when he was sad, but that was no more. No. Now James went out when he was sad. And it was definitely no good, because Logan knew what he did when he went out and it wasn't something he liked to picture.

James threw out his pair of red crayon shoes, tight jeans, a sleeveless black shirt and an arabesque patterned red skinny tie. That just screamed 'edgy gay bar'.

Logan prefered it when James just cried. At least, he could comfort him back then ; now all he could do was watch his brother go and sit there, fearing for his life and drinking whiskey until he passed out.
James wasn't built to be reckless.

Logan finished the glass quickly as James got naked and put no underwear under his trousers.
He wasn't built to be reckless but he sure tried to be.