je puis seulmente oublier.

[star studded]

Michael's note was discovered after the groggy way she pulled herself from sleep. Legs stretched, arms lifted and did the same, bones cracking back into place. She dusted her feet across the warm indent he left in the mattress and craned her neck to examine his absence. Slow footsteps took her to the desk that boasted a bright yellow post-it for her to read:

Left for a run. Back in time for breakfast. - M.

Biting down on the crease of her bottom lip, she felt a smile blossoming. It was a typical childish whim, but since she was alone, she could succumb to it. Feet skipped and stomped, fists tight, her throat eliciting a tiny shriek of sheer excitement. It had been a long time coming which explained its easy trigger. Collecting herself, she placed note back down and smoothed out the fabric of the red t-shirt she spent her entire evening in. Flicking the jagged strips of dark hair out of unfocused eyes, she padded towards shower, routine followed to a definitive letter, bird-call shower rituals and all. Hair was left to dry, pieces falling in strings around her face, leaving damp, dark spots on the shoulders of a red t-shirt.

Bare legs carried her back to where she knew she could retrieve post-its, and rather than use one of his pens, she stole her own from the depths of a messy purse. The fine-tipped sharpie was used to scrawl her reply in characterisitcally sharp and swooping letters. Grinning, she smoothed it to stick to the reverse of the front door, assured that when he slipped back inside from his run he would see it.

Hope you had a nice run. Come back to bed. -Althea

Even if it was only to announce breakfast and retrieve her. She had sunk underneath sheets and among pillows and mattress, luxuriating in warmth and associating herself with the shape he left imprinted.

<font color="#A7A49B" size="1">[ July 25, 2004 04:14 AM: Message edited by: everything static ]</font>

[star studded]

lately I've been thinking
lately I've been dreaming with you
I'm so resistant to this type of thinking
oh, now it's shining through
I was alone for the last time
for my night's vacation with you
alive from the first
now I'm denied by the ghost of you
I know there's little use in crying
it's more wide awake and dying than I'm used to
-- ghost, howie day

Whether it was routine or pure stubborn reaction to that evening's minor discrepancy she wasn't sure. All she could tell right now was that she had stayed and stuck herself between familiar sheets amidst body and the disarray that they (he?) had created. She was there because she preferred it to the open space of her own bed. For some reason it was easier to rest her head here, coasting along the crests of sleep and submerging into its deepest parts. Waking here was like washing up on some shore. In other places, it was like clawing for air until you reached the surface.

Awkward limbs tangled only slightly in the early hours, but she liked to think that even that was her own doing. It was easiest to burrow into arms when the other party was asleep. It was the path of least resistance. It was an easy thing to wait out until it could be stolen rather than offered up. Most of this was comprised of the pieces she could steal as opposed to the things she was offered. It took charm and trickery to have what she wanted. It took silent fits and constant questioning. She wasn't supposed to have to work this hard.

The windows were exposing, the kind that made her feel constantly naked even when she was dressed head to toe, or laying with the sheets tucked under her chin. Moonlight streamed in to create watery patterns around the room. It reminded her of a seashore wreckage, jagged rocks and strewn belongings that would all be swept back to sea by the time she left the shower in the morning.

She wasn't supposed to have to work this hard. In it, however, there was some satisfaction. Other people would have thrown up their hands in defeat and retreated after the first round of secrecy and silence. She liked to think that, at least. It would have been ideal for her to say she knew how to handle these things. She knew how to deal, how to demonstrate patience, how to accept and understand and lovingly encourage. That, however, would take time. The patience would come. The understanding would develop. Everything else would fall into place. Progress was being made in the tiniest of incriments, baby steps towards what was needed. He spoke more. He laughed more. She could stand the silence a bit more than she could in the beginning. More time was spent in each other's company. She cared more for him. He cared.

It was silly to even second guess. Of course he did.

There would just always be things that had to remain unspoken. There would be things she was quite sure she would never hear him say. There would always be those ideas that just went implied, written in invisible ink, spun between a skating hand over a shoulder or the glancing of a mouth to the line of bone beneath her eye. Someday it would all fit into place. She would have no need to press and prod and his silence would be regarded as the most beautiful sound.

Waiting, after all, wasn't that terrible when the interim was spent here, like this.

[star studded]

<center>Stuck under an office door, impromptu.</center>

[star studded]

"You have to stop doing this to yourself, Lincoln."

If Althea had counted how many times she had said this to her brother in her lifetime, she would have run out of fingers and toes to count on long ago. Her role was to scold and advise and his role was to ignore and disregard. This was how it worked, always and forever.

Hunched over his knees, Lincoln was desperately trying to fold himself in half. His arms folded across his chest, sandwiched between before he pried them away to wrap around his legs. No matter what position he twisted himself in, nothing was suiting. Everything felt sickening and uncomfortable. There was a phantom ache in a new place, or his stomach churned too violently for him to stand. Seated beside him was his dumbfounded twin who had only witnessed this once before, but nothing to this volume. Shaking to the core and covered in a clammy, cold sweat, the strong monument she knew her twin to be, crumbled.

"Stand up.. calm down, calm.." Without a direction to point herself in, Althea rolled up her sleeves and plugged up the bathroom sink. Lincoln still rocked on the edge of the tub, gasping in sobs and shivers. The sight and sound of it all was heartwrenching and pathetic, his face contorted into a folded frown. While the sink filled with cold water, Lincoln was being pulled to his feet by his sister. He stumbled, still hugging himself as tightly as possible before he needed to brace himself on the ledge of the sink. With the faucets turned off, Althea's hand at the back of his head guided his face into freezing water. He didn't bother to close his eyes. He didn't really care if he ever resurfaced. It took a tug to draw him from the submerged comfort he was taking place in. Pulled back out of the water, he took a dying man's gasp of new air. Blue eyes watched his reflection in the mirror, red-eyed and flush-faced. A shipwreck of mass proportions. Drawing in another breath, he felt his lungs shake from learning to pace breath without sobbing.

"Relax." Her nervous, commanding voice had gone soft and sweet again. They were transformed back into huddling children, hiding under the blankets during downstairs shouting matches or blinking matching sets of blue eyes out the window at red and blue sirens whizzing past. "What's wrong?"

Memory was interrupted by a present day voice that coerced attention, his head hanging, shoulders hunched, arms taut with the tension of holding himself up.

"I don't know." It came out in a rush of breath, his voice as awkward and transitional as he ever remembered it. Lincoln sounded like he hit a snag in growth and his voice never quite made the leap over it with the rest of him. Blue eyes fell shut and he backed over to the bathtub edge again, slumping into the porcelain rather than sitting on its ledge. Althea took that position over, folding herself on the lip of the tub, hands collected in her lap, her back pressed to the corner of the wall.

"You can't keep doing this. You have to know what's wrong." He knew, and he said nothing. That's what she had assumed all along, though she had always been famous for assuming wrong. The twins sat there, unconventionally perched in Lincoln's stiflingly small bathroom. Rather than respond vocally and have to witness the shock and horror of his own voice, he shook his head no. He had no idea what was wrong. He had no idea what was going on. He left Althea without clue or intuition.

"Lincoln.."

"Just stop fucking interrogating me for two seconds please!" The volume of Lincoln's voice lifted decibels and caused his twin to twitch in surprise. Drawing knees up against his chest, he clunked his forehead onto the ledge provided for him.

"Maybe you need to start seeing Dr. Walsh again."

"Why, why would you say that, what would make you say that, Althea." Lifting his head back up from its lazy loll against his legs, Lincoln moved to twist onto his knees, moving to reach some sort of eye level with his sister. She did her best not to shrink back.

"Just because.. this was how you were before you started seeing Dr. Walsh, before you started.. and then you were just.."

"I'm not taking those fucking pills again, Althea, you take those things, you chow one down every night and tell me how you feel!"

"Stop fucking yelling at me, Lincoln, I'm just trying to help you!" Scrambling to stand, Althea planted feet on tile, watching as her brother rose with her. He stepped out of the tub and she backpedaled towards the bathroom door in choreographed moves.

"You don't want to help me! You never wanted to help me, you just want to shut me up! You just want me to go back to a fucking shrink so they can pump me full of medicine, so I'll stop bothering you!"

"That's not it! I want you to stop doing this, Lincoln, I want you to stop.."

"You're a selfish bitch!"

"Yeah, well at least I'm not a fucking psycho!"

"Get out!"

"My, how the tables have turned!"

"Get out!"

<center> -- </center>

Locked safely behind her bedroom door, Althea Adler, for the first time in what felt like forever, let the weight of everything crash down. The sobbing breaths she took weren't out of sadness or self-pity. It felt more like disappointment. A heavy, hurting disappointment that settled in the bottoms of her feet and worked its way up to the top of her head until she was filled with it. Nothing was going according to plan. Nothing was getting better. Nothing ever had. Her brother's self-discovery didn't solve anything else he had inside, rotting away at who she remembered him as. All the honesty and 'I love you's' in the world couldn't change men who were made out of iron and steel. She was still the same person in the same place as she was six months ago: wide-eyed, stumbling and stupid.

Her hand was wrapped tightly around the smooth plastic of her cordless phone, thumb twitching over buttons that she never really bothered to press. What good would it do to call someone who said he could already hear you crying?

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 01, 2004 02:20 AM: Message edited by: everything static ]</font>

[star studded]

<center>I don't believe I'm beautiful
But at least I've got my mother's smile
And I resist the muses
But they sing to me in exile
And destiny's not deafening
But he hushed me like a child
And every time I feel as though I'm
Closer to the eye
The storm winds blow, I run inside
Destiny is deafening
Dead or alive</center>

Under dire crisis, all past indiscretions seemed to be forgotten and pushed away. Positions switched, this time it was Lincoln perched on the edge of his twin's bed as she attempted to curl herself into the most compact position, a pillow sandwiched between knees and chest.

"I swear to God, I will break that fucker's legs.."

"Shut up, Lincoln.."

"I'll end him. I'll erase him. He won't exist..."

"Stop it! Just stop it.." Muffled, she reached to press the pillow over her head, folding it over her ears to stop all sound from getting through. Silence dominated for awhile, interrupted only by deep breaths and the occasional sniffle of his sister's subsiding tears.

"Want me to make you something? Soup or.. I dunno, toast? I can't make much.." Unsure what to offer, Lincoln figured that since she wouldn't let him take a baseball bat to Michael's knees (which was how a problem or two was solved years before), he had to pull out a different sort of arsenal.

The pillow shook itself no.

"How about ice cream? I'll go get you some ice cream, or.."

"I don't want anything, Lincoln. I don't want to feel better. I just want to lay here for a few days and be miserable." A quiet groan left her throat as she sprawled out on her stomach, the pillow still held tightly over her head. Sighing, her brother leaned back and braced himself with palms against the mattress.

"You have to want something."

"You know what I want right now."

Lincoln's silence was all the admittance that she needed. She was right. He had every idea.

"I want to move back to Boston." It was a tiny, broken admission. "I want mom to take care of me. I want someone else to do my laundry. I want to go back to working at the cafe. I wish I never came here. I wish I never met him."

"That's not true."

"Okay, but some of it was. I want to go home." Like Dorothy lost in Oz, she wanted magic ruby slippers and a balloon to carry her to Kansas. Curling herself on her side again, she pried the pillow away to reveal flushed cheeks and red eyes. Lincoln was shocked at the sight. He knew Althea cried all the time. He had heard it behind locked doors when they were kids. But she never did it in front of him. She always waited until she was alone.

This made him uncomfortable. Enough to glance away.

"You can't go home. You have to be a big star."

"I'm never going to be a star, Lincoln. It doesn't happen. Movie stars aren't real people, they don't exist. They're robots. Things like this don't happen to movie stars, movie stars don't feel like this." Another wave of tears seemed ready to wash over and her face crumbled. Lincoln diverted his attention again.

"Look, if he's enough of an idiot to turn you down, you don't need to deal with his shit."

"I want to deal with his shit."

"But there's no need to." He protested, hunching forward again, arms resting on his knees as his sister stared at the numbers on the clock from behind blurry eyes. "It's not your responsibility."

"You don't get it. You just don't.. he's good for me. And I'm good for him. You don't feel like this over people that you aren't right for. It'll just.. these things take time. He just doesn't get it yet. He'll get it."

"You can't fix everyone, Althea."

For the first time in twenty four hours, Althea Adler drew herself from the prone position she had been content to lay in, just to bring herself eye to eye with her brother.

"Yes, Lincoln. I can."

Still I can't be still, still I can't be silent...

[star studded]

With the steam of the shower still sifting through open vocal cords, Althea hummed and squeaked with the ritual of waking and warming up in the same action. Christmas rested three days away and still her kitchen table was stacked high with envelopes and cards that had pretty messages scrawled in each, the envelopes decorated with glittery themed stickers. In front of her, the opened card that was separated from the rest stared up at her, blank and waiting, her pen poised with frozen fingers that hesitated to write.

It was ridiculous. There was no reason to be friendly and casual, and to act like nothing had happened. There was no reason to be the bigger person. There was no reason to try and bridge a gap that one had so willingly created.

But she wanted to. She simply had to decide what to say.

Pressing pen to the blank side of the card, she scrawled away in her large, looping script.

Doc,

Have a Merry Christmas. I have belated birthday/Chanukah presents for you and your sister. Hope all is going well and that you haven't dropped off the face of the earth completely. I'm not a harpie who's going to steal your soul if you talk to me. If harpies even steal souls.

Call or don't. I'll give Lani your present.

-Althea


Satisfied, she lifted the card and glanced over to read the generic printed greeting, smirking to herself. If anything, it better make him crack a rare smile.

"Matzel Tov! Happy Bar Mitzvah from your Grandmother."

[star studded]

<center>

Built your own television receiver
Staying home can't be that bad for me
Cause I'm not scared but I'd like some extra spare time
Easily earn me big money

I'm a modern girl, but I fold in half so easily
Wanna put myself in the picture of success
I could learn world trade or try to map the ocean

When you're dead in hospitals and freeways
When you're dead in resting homes and clinics
When you're dead, it must be nice to finish
When you're dead

I've had it with you and Mexico can fucking wait
And all of those french films about trains
Cause I'm not scared but I'd like some extra spare time
I'm not scared but the bills keep changing colors

When you're dead in hospitals and freeways
When you're dead in dress shirts and neckties
When you're dead in apartments and on beaches
When you're dead

They say California is a recipe for a black hole
And I say I've got my best shoes on
I'm ready to go

These are times that can't be weathered
And we have never been back there since then
These are times that can't be weathered
And we haven't been back there since then</center>

Picture of Success, Rilo Kiley

[star studded]

The Adler twins were veritable distorted mirror images of one another, the same figure compacted and stretched out in places, rounded off, curved, cornered, flattened and otherwise shifted. Althea, with her spring splash of wardrobe color and bright makeup, stood opposite her brother on the stretch of the park, an iced coffee posed in one hand and her purse dangling in the other. The carnival around them burst with sound, people walking their barking dogs, rollerblading, kids playing soccer, or the hollow rubber bounce of a basketball.

Across from her, Lincoln was less languid and at ease. Slouching with hands in his pockets, the hulking figure he cut against the pretty backdrop seemed to shift its weight restlessly. Black hair licked and swept in erratic directions as opposed to his sister's chic updo, which was in a total different sort of disarray. A planned one. She was chaos with fences and he was a twister spinning out of control.

"Stop looking at me like that," he demanded. Matching water-blue eyes stared at each other, round and wide before Lincoln's set ticked angrily away. Her silly, red-lipsticked grin and upbeat attitude was an infectious, deadly plague.

"Like what?"

"Like that." A long finger pointed at her face, detailing an expression he hadn't seen for months. The end of autumn and the onset of winter had seemingly robbed Althea of her blithe, giggling optimism, and Lincoln selfishly preferred her that way: heartbroken and in need.

"You've got a hickey." She taunted him in singsong, and immediately, Lincoln's hand lifted up to clap over his neck.

"Shut up!"

"I'm just saying. Cold spoon. I have some cover up, do you want that?" A hand reached to fish through her purse while her twin groaned and threw his hands up in a miserable sort of defeat. "Oh stop it. It's perfectly natural. Healthy, even! Here. Let me."

"We're in public." He pointed down at the strange stick of waxy pale cream and shook his head. "Keep that shit away from me."

"Do you want everyone in the city to know you're having sex, or for everyone in the park to know you're wearing cover up? Lesser of two evils, Linc." Althea moved in. With a few sweeps and a smearing blend of her fingers, she had done her best to cover up the wine-dark spot along the edge of his neck, leaving only a slightly rosy trace behind. "Beautiful. Good as new."

"Are you having sex with someone?"

"What!?" She squeaked in surprise, pedaling steps back and propping hands on her hips in an indignant pose. "Well, I never in all my--"

"Well, you said I get different, and you get different too, so why do you get to mock me, but all of a sudden when I say something it's like 'Oh no! The world is ending! My brother's talking about my sex life, wah wah wah!' I'm just asking--"

"I'm not having sex with anyone." She interrupted his tirade and mocking impression with a roll of animated eyes.

"Oh?" Lincoln rose a brow at her, skeptically staring before he settled back and rolled onto heels.

"Nope. Just kissin'." His sister struck a sweetheart pose and twirled in a quick circle.

"Kissing who?"

"Oh like I'm going to tell you. You make a career out of embarassing and hitting my prospective boyfriends. No way. You're not ruining this one for me."

"I didn't ruin your thing with Mi--"

"He Who Must Not Be Named." She corrected with dark brows creasing in a vee-shape.

"What the fuck, he's Voldemort now?"

"You read Harry Potter?"

"We're off the subject here!" Lincoln shouted. In a typical Adler streak of twitchy spastic motion, Althea flailed arms and let out an indecipherable squeak.

"Whatever! No. You're staying away from this one. Far away. Restraining order away."

"Fine. And to think I was going to have you come out for coffee with me and Jake."

"What?" She squeaked again, her voice now a whistle-shriek of sound.

"Nope, forget it!"

"You were going to let me meet your mystery man?"

"You blew it!" Lincoln's hands flew into the air as if to admit there was nothing else he could do for her sad situation.

"I didn't blow anythi--oh grow up, that's not funny!"

"I think it's hilarious. Anyway, you're not meeting him, because you won't let me meet your ... whatever. I bet he's a geek. What this time, a quantum physicist? A NASA scientist? A--"

"I don't know what he is. He rides a bike?"

"You're fucking Lance Armstrong?"

"I'm not fucking anyone!"

"You don't look like Sheryl Crow. You know he only has one--"

"You are insufferable!" She squeaked again.

"If you let me meet this guy, you can come to coffee with Jake and I."

Althea paused and folded arms across her chest. This was a crucial decision. If she didn't take advantage of the fact that her brother was serious enough about someone and something to let her be involved in it, she might never have the chance to see that side again. However, letting Lincoln in that far was dangerous in its own right. He uprooted everything solid and sent it spinning out of control.

"I.. alright. On the condition that you don't make any jokes that would be considered mean and embarassing to either David or myself. None."

"David, huh? Well. I can't do that. Four jokes. Two for you, two for David Copperfield, and then we'll call it even."

"Non-negotiable!"

"Fine, no coffee then."

"One! One joke, and that's it!"

"Two. One for you and one for David."

Althea flailed again and stomped her foot. "Oh, fucking... fine! Fine. Deal."

"Deal."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ May 18, 2005 01:39 AM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

Somewhere between Molly Ringwald's prom and the blue screen, we've managed to fall asleep. After two hours of Say Anything and another two of Pretty in Pink, we must have completely collapsed and conked out. Or maybe it was just a way to avoid the inevitable and awkward shift to bed after the single most humiliating experience of my adult life. It ranks somewhere up there with knocking one of my baby teeth out on the steps of Hayworth Elementary, or having Sara Margensen read my crush-confessional to Danny Dawicki in the third grade. No, it's worse than those things. Combine them and their respective humiliation, and multiply it by one hundred, and you're still nowhere near how terrible I felt. Feel. I can't decide if I'm still tired, or if the heavy feeling settled over me is still shame and embarassment.

The blue screen from the television casts a strange nightlight glow in my living room, and I struggle to stay on the couch. David has passed out pleasantly, buried between the cushions, as if the couch is as suitable a place to sleep as any. I'm in front of him, one arm dangling off the couch, fingers grazing the floor, trying to figure out the most elegant way to slip out from beneath his arm without waking him up.

What was I thinking? I keep running that question over and over in my head, and I figure if I ask it enough times, I'll manage an answer. I should have known that throwing myself at someone always backfires horribly in my face. It just makes me look desperate and girlish and very stereotypical and perhaps I am. Amidst all the jokes and silly faces and dance breaks, I am just a very stereotypical girl who wants a prince on a white horse, and that very notion makes me sick.

Princes don't ride white horses, and they don't wear crowns, and they don't make love to princesses on beds of roses. They swear loudly and drink too much and get into fights. They make things fly around without even touching them, and storm out during the one dinner you didn't fuck up (as far as the meal is concerned) and leave you blinking. They bring you pizza and panic when you loosen their tie and they ask you to marry them so much that you're starting to think maybe they aren't kidding. Princes aren't really princes at all. They are just men, but mostly boys, who are as awkward and insensitive as the rest of the world. They have names like Nick, Michael and David. Not a Charming among them. But you want them anyway because in the midst of all of their glaring, obvious failings, you find yourself clinging fitfully to the good things you find, and sometimes the good things are plentiful, and sometimes they are not.

I don't know. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know why I am so determined to sink my claws into someone who would willingly be dragged along anyway. Shifting warily on the couch, I dig my hip into the cushion and the couch springs creak in protest. I turn onto my side and my face is buried instantly in the stretch of David's neck. He doesn't even move. His arm slung limply over me is perfectly preserved in its spot. He smells like I imagine John Cusack would smell, like nerves and laundry detergent and an underlying pheromone that must be the key to why girls are/I am attracted to him. David, like John, isn't strikingly attractive. He's cute, a little odd looking, someone you can easily pick out in a crowd, but for some reason your heart melts when he's on screen/on your couch, and it's all you can do but put yourself in the role of the leading lady opposite him, or curl up and string your arms around him at four in the morning and refuse to move.

My thoughts wander back to Lincoln. And I shouldn't be thinking about him. My brother has the uncanny ability to swallow me whole.

In the morning, we will wake up. I will brush my teeth with a toothbrush and David will use his finger and my toothpaste. I will insist, even though he has no change of clothes, that we go out to breakfast. I will not apologize for tonight again, no matter how badly I want to. I will get chocolate chip pancakes with a whipped cream smiley face. I will say goodbye to David after he walks me home, and then I will come inside, call Jake, and cry my eyes out to him, or to his machine.

You don't cry in front of John Cusack, because he simply won't know what to do. Maybe one day you'll be able to, but you know it's not in tonight's feature.

[star studded]

Sticky fingered and leering over the mass of unfrosted cupcakes, Althea precariously balanced the frosting spatula in one hand while her other one held the tub of chocolate frosting. Behind her, the CD player spun music loud enough to keep her entertained while keeping her neighbors happy. The vanilla cupcakes in front of her stared up with golden, soft tops waiting for frosting and decoration, and she contemplated the best method of attack. She had made two-dozen, like the box instructed, and surely barely two-thirds would survive by the time she was finished frosting them. The white spatula dug into the smooth frosting and soon was smearing it atop cupcake number one.

Four cupcakes frosted and one eaten into her afternoon baking spree, a knock on the door interrupted her new ritual. With frosting spatula in hand, she shuffled feet towards the door and yanked it open. Blasted with warm air, she choked on the stifling feel of the stale hallway and took a step back. In front of her, a mirror image stood, twisted into different angles, but with all the same features in composite arrangement.

"Hey," Lincoln mumbled, a hand lifting weakly.

"Hi," she returned, not budging from her spot. "What're you doing here?"

"Uh.. just in the neighboorhood. Hey, are those cupcakes?"

"Not yours." The feel of a hand across her face and a bruise streak that had faded in time still felt new and fresh. It was an unforgettable shock into the present reality she struggled not to accept. Lincoln shifted weight to lean forward and take a step in, but Althea blocked his path with a small sidestep.

"Can I come in?" He asked irritably, impatient. Hands moved towards the interior or her apartment and he watched the expression on his sister's face shift from apathetic to thoughtful. The wheels noticably turned in her brain as she weighed options. Althea was confronted with a flashback of a crumbled boy's expression and his imploring. She remembered her firm resolve and her promise not to let time and silence cover over what had happened. This required resolve and discussion.

"No." A firm, sharp statement with her hand pressed to the doorway, the other wrapped around the sleek metal of the knob. This startled Lincoln, and his first instinct was to peer around her shoulder to see who or what she was hiding in there.

"Is David here?"

"What? No, no one's here."

"Oh God, some other guy's here, isn't he."

"No! Don't be an idiot, get out.." She groaned, trying to shove the door closed. Lincoln's foot jammed in the way and he lifted brows at her.

"So why can't I come in?"

"Because I'm angry at you. Because you forfeited your right to come into my apartment as you please. Because --"

"You're fucking kidding me." Lincoln's flat, unamused voice cut through her list of protests and slaughtered her phrasing. "You're not over that? It's been weeks, Althea, it wasn't even that big of a deal."

"It was to me." She corrected nervously, her hand grippping the doorknob in preparation to slam the door in his face the moment she saw warning signs flare up. His foot blocked the way, for now. "It was a big deal. You hit me, Lincoln. You hurt me. And you hurt David!"

"What the fuck does he have to do with anything!?"

"Any chances of you two liking each other and getting along were like.. completely thrown out the window because of you!" A finger nudged at him and Lincoln just rolled eyes. Another fault on his conscience. He was another source of blame. "He was more angry than I was that you hit me."

"So what'd he do, talk you into cutting me out? Tell you what a bad brother I was, just like Michael did, just like all your fucking boyfriends do?"

"Lincoln, you're being--"

"You don't even know what's going on! You don't even know what my fucking life is like right now, don't get on my case about it."

"I don't know because you don't tell me! You never tell me anything, you just expect me to know what's going on, and when I don't, you flip out and do this!" The sound of her voice echoed down her hallway, bouncing off walls and doors, but that did nothing to lower it. She wasn't letting him in, and there was no chance of her going out there to confront him without the safety of the door between them. Events had converted Lincoln from something volatile but harmless, into something violently prone to a drastic mood swing. "And David and Michael have nothing to do with this, they've never had anything to do with anything until you.. make them! God, go away, get out of my face. If you're not here to tell me you're sorry, or to tell me what the hell is going on, I don't want to see you."

The rush of words out of her mouth were a shock to both twin sets of ears. Lincoln's face scrunched into an angry scowl and Althea steeled herself to the spot. She envisioned him as a cartoon, his face reddening and steam blowing angrily out of his ears. Instead, all that came was a bellow of words aimed at his sister.

"You never understand anything! Everything is always my fault! Everyone's always fucking telling you how terrible I am and you believe them every time! You always side with everyone else!"

"This isn't about being on anyone's side, Lincoln! You hit me! You act like an ass and I never hold you accountable for it. There's--"

"Why now!? Why do you have to do all of this now!?"

"What is your problem, Lincoln!?" She screeched back at him, staring in awe at his crumbled expression. She watched him struggle with conflicting impulses, to lunge forward and crush anything in his way, or to crack and break under the pressure.

"You are my problem!"

Althea's eyes rolled and she stepped back, her shoulders sinking. "Oh my God. Just get out. Go home. I have to frost these cupcakes before David gets here, and I don't want him to see you here and get upset. You're so.. fucking irritating, Lincoln, you know that? You just.. you don't know when to quit. When to just shut your mouth and accept that you screwed up and now you have to deal with it."

Lincoln said nothing. Instead, he folded arms across his chest and angled himself away. He didn't step towards the stairs, but turned on heel to stare at the opposing wall. Althea ended up staring at his face in profile, struggling to discern what the glints of light in the corners of his eyes were.

"...Lincoln, are you crying?"

He scoffed at the notion, despite the pink flush at the tip of his nose and in the apples of pale cheeks.

"Yeah. I'm crying because my sister's the biggest fucking bitch I know."

Althea didn't bother to hesitate or press any further. With an angry swing of her arm, the door slammed shut and rattled on its hinges.