StAS fic - The Storm's Knives
Fandom: F1
Title: The storm's knives
Pairing: Ralf/Michael
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I distort reality and turn it into lies.
Warning(s): Incest, lots of random Egyptian symbolism, rambly, slightly dark and twisty.
Word count: 3, 897
A/N: Loosely based on the legends surrounding the Egyptian gods Set(h) and Osiris. I took several versions of these legends and basically mixed them up beyond recognition. I apologise to Egyptologists everywhere! But yes, this randomly popped in my head and I just had to do it. It was painstaking effort, considering I haven't written since June, so I want to thank zeraparker, for holding my hand and encouraging me and looking over the fic for me when it was ready. And I want to thank this challenge, for kicking my muse back into gear. Due to running out of time (as always), this is the abridged version of the plot I originally wanted to write. Hope you'll enjoy! ;)
He dreams a stairway of seven steps, each step darker than the last, more terrifying. And yet, he feels no fear. He knows this stairway well, and he can climb or descend it whenever he wants, without a care. He’s not a lost soul, to be forced to the stairway’s trials. When he dreams, he’s a god.
He dreams of fire and he dreams of eternity, of a woman clothed with sunlight. He dreams a coffin, and he dreams pain, and he dreams the sweet pain of betrayal. He dreams of violent storms that turn the sky purple and then black, he dreams of golden sand that burns when touched. He dreams of scorpions, with their deadly bite, and of serpents fighting each other, with only one victor.
He dreams, and in his dreams they were born twins, not years apart. In his dreams, he knows his brother’s skin, the red flash of his fury, the purple of his storms and the black of his jealousy. In his dreams, he is betrayed and killed and torn apart, but the betrayal is sealed with a kiss that tastes sweet, and it is the memory of that kiss that keeps him company in the darkness of the golden casket that is his trap.
When he wakes, he doesn’t remember.
~*~
They should have been twins. The statement whispers at him, tugs at his consciousness like a long-forgotten dream. He doesn’t question the sudden oddity of it, or how it sounds right in his head. They should have been twins. It would explain the overpowering need to best each other, to come first, the need to deny each other, to destroy each other. Ralf knows Michael would have hated it, being half of a whole, that Michael would have done anything in his power to break that bond, to tear it to pieces.
Ralf wonders if their relationship would have suffered more or less, if they’d have been born minutes apart instead of years. Michael got seven years of being first before Ralf appeared, only to find himself pushed into second by his baby brother’s arrival. He wonders whether that was when it all started.
Ralf asked his mother -their mother- once, the golden dust of his sixth summer clinging to him, what Michael’s reaction had been when he’d been told about the pregnancy. She kissed Ralf's forehead and smiled and told him Michael had been thrilled.
That’s when Ralf knew his brother had been born a liar.
They should have been twins, but he doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, he looks at his brother without flinching, momentarily drunk on the dangerous flame of satisfaction burning inside him now that he’s taller than Michael, now that Michael has to look up to meet his gaze.
“I’ve been offered a Formula 1 contract. I signed it.”
The words drop like stones and the air between them crackles. He can hear the distant roar of thunder, and for a second, before he forgets, he could swear that he tastes sand on his tongue and that he hears the thud of a golden coffin’s lid being closed.
~*~
His brother tears him apart in dreams, and then the dreams become reality.
It starts off as a subtle attack. Michael smiles at him, eyes cold, and Ralf feels the fear he never feels in his dreams. He can almost see the hidden words, the hidden actions, Michael’s plan unfolding, Michael’s eyes, ripping him apart, Michael’s words, tinged with the deceiving sweetness of poison.
Ralf anticipates it, but he’s still not prepared for it. No one could ever be prepared for such methodical destruction, and when the end finally comes, when Michael throws him a victorious smile to celebrate his revenge, he can only run away.
Ralf runs, into the darkness, tired and weary and bleeding, feeling like he’s been chopped into pieces, like there’s nothing left of him. He thinks of each mistake, each failed race, and how well he’s played Michael’s game, how he’s given Michael all the material he needed to annihilate him.
He runs, and he lets himself fall, in the corner of a nondescript room in a nameless hotel made of shadows, trying to remember the staircase in his dreams, trying to remember the secrets of how to climb it.
She finds him. Whether she finds him days or hours later, he doesn’t know. She holds his hand, a perfume-scented warmth, and he finds himself surprised by this new side of her, this comfortingly silent and caring woman, hidden under her usual effervescence.
She finds him, and he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t demand answers.
Ralf lets her hold him, and it feels like he stops bleeding, like he stops hurting, like he’s healing. And in the midst of darkness, he asks her to marry him.
~*~
“I never knew you had it in you, Ralf.”
There is a smile hidden in the corner of Ralf’s mouth, but he doesn’t show it. Michael doesn’t know that Ralf has changed, and Ralf can only enjoy the advantage this gives him.
He holds Michael’s gaze, the gaze that wishes itself cruel, like Michael’s words, like Michael’s mocking smile.
“I thought you couldn’t get it up for a woman.”
The statement is crude, not what Ralf had expected. It shows him the depth of Michael’s desperation, provoked by Ralf’s lack of reaction to his taunts. The smile threatens to break free, but he keeps it in check.
“We’ll have a son,” he says, savouring every word.
Michael’s eyes narrow and Ralf can see his fury, a spark of red, a colour as rich as the one on Michael’s shirt. Ralf almost laughs, like a child caught in a summer’s rainstorm, remembering how Michael had always revelled in being the one with the perfect family, the perfect wife, the only one who’d given their parents grandchildren.
He steals another victory from his brother, and it tastes better than any champagne.
~*~
He dreams of eclipses, a starless night, an eaten moon, the absence of light, the thickness of darkness, enveloping him like velvet.
Michael kisses him once, when he knows she will see, and Ralf loses the battle by not moving, by not pushing Michael away. He loses, realising it only when he hears her run out of the room, only when he sees the glint in Michael’s eye. Ralf presses his fingers to his lips, not knowing whether he wants to brush the memory of Michael’s lips away or whether he wants to keep it forever.
Michael laughs at him and leaves, and Ralf chokes on the bitterness of loss, on the sweetness of betrayal.
His wife doesn’t look at him for days. She sees him, the twisted darkness inside him, the shadows that he should be controlling, and he can’t make up any excuses. Michael’s the liar in the family.
“Do you love him?” she asks, pouring milk and sugar in her coffee, not looking at him.
Ralf almost laughs, tearing a bun apart with his fingers before setting it aside.
“We’ve never loved each other. That’s the only thing we’ve ever had in common.”
Cora gives him a look that scares him, because he’s never considered that by seeing all of him, she’d see things he’s never admitted to himself.
Later, when they’re getting dressed, he watches her slipping on her hot pink shirt and tight glittery jeans, smiling fondly because he loves her like this; he loves everything about her that his brother hates. He reaches out to touch her, but she moves away, and he flinches because she’s never rejected him before, no matter the amount of nights he spent in someone else’s bed, no matter the amount of mornings when he’d come back to her smelling of someone else’s cologne.
She doesn’t look angry now, but she hasn’t allowed him to touch her since the night when Michael left their house, laughing. He misses the bittersweet nights when he held her, wishing he were a better husband, when he slept curled around her, feeling safe.
“You kissed him, Ralf. I saw how you looked at him. Most importantly, I saw how he looked at you.”
“He did it to hurt us! It was just another one of his mind games.”
“He wanted it to be that, I know. There is this intensity between the two of you that you try to destroy each other with. And whenever you’re facing off, it looks like more than hate.”
Ralf sits on the edge of their perfectly made bed, an odd stillness in his mind, unable to focus on the slow motion of his thoughts. He thinks of storms and confusion and chaos, the lingering roar of thunder in his ears, the blinding oblivion of lightning.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks her, his voice cracking on the curve of the question mark.
“I want you to stop fighting in this war he’s set for you before he tears you apart again. That’s what I want. It never ends, don’t you see? It will never end. He lives on it, thrives on it. You’re his counterpart, Ralf. Without you, he’s nothing. I’ve known that since the start. He did what he did to prove to me that you’re his. But I’ve always known.”
She’s not looking at him, focusing on her reflection in the mirror, going through her usual ritual. She brushes eye-shadow on her lids and curls her lashes and dabs her cheeks with colour and coats her lips in gloss and she won’t look at him.
She slips away from their bedroom, leaving a trace of perfume behind. He can hear their son’s laughter from another part of the house, and he lets himself fall back on the bed.
When he closes his eyes, all he can see is red.
~*~
He dreams a feather outweighing his soul on a balance. He dreams that he is the one judging himself, he is the one with the feather in his hand, he is the one who tips the scale. He is the one with the lost soul.
He startles awake and blinks in the darkness of another hotel room, the thousandth of its kind, and then he laughs at himself for desperately clutching at sheets in his sleep in his haste for redemption.
Michael catches Ralf once, in the middle of a five-star hallway, on the Saturday of a race weekend, coming out of a room that’s not his own. Michael’s eyes narrow, flashing mockingly, when he catches sight of Ralf’s dishevelled appearance, but then he freezes when he sees the golden number on the door Ralf’s just closed, knowing exactly who’s inside.
Ralf winks at him, aware of the danger but no longer hiding from it, looking at Michael with the taste of another man’s come lingering on his tongue. He feels oddly triumphant for no specific reason other than knowing that he still smells like sex, knowing that Michael knows.
“How can you enjoy something so demeaning, little brother?” Michael asks, his curiosity as venomous as a scorpion’s bite.
Ralf laughs, finding another triumph in Michael’s self-assured ignorance, in Michael's outstanding hypocrisy. He knows all of Michael’s secrets, every single one of them, and he keeps them filed up, at the ready for when the occasion arises to hurt Michael with his own poison.
Ralf presses his fingers to Michael’s jaw, feeling a muscle jump, Michael’s body tensing, but his mind too proud to allow himself to recoil. The warmth of Michael’s skin is always disconcerting to Ralf, a surprising sign of humanity. The image of a slain snake flickers in his mind, and he blinks it away, allowing his fingers to brush over Michael’s cheek. His thumb ghosts a caress over the corner of Michael’s mouth, and for a millisecond, the one that usually makes or breaks in the world they both belong to, he wishes he could remember the taste of Michael’s lips.
“You don’t understand it, do you? I suppose you can’t. You’re not familiar with how sweet it burns, with how addicting it is, the taste of it, the violence of it, the surrender...you don’t know anything. You think that what you do with your pretty little toy is a secret, and yet everyone’s whispering about it. You think that it makes you special, that the way you treat him in bed gives you even more power than you usually have.”
Ralf pauses, savouring the frozen shock in Michael’s eyes. Victory tastes sweet, after all, and he almost understands why Michael is the way he is, why he’s so addicted to winning. Ralf hasn’t delivered his final blow, the winning blow, the one that will win him the war, and he takes his time with it, moving closer to Michael, their bodies almost touching.
Michael doesn’t move away, and Ralf knows it would be too much to demand cowardice from Michael’s ego. It would be too easy a victory.
His fingers casually slip lower, barely there, following a trail down Michael’s throat, lingering on the pulse point, the headiness of sensation, Michael’s heartbeat against Ralf’s fingertips, Michael swallowing and Ralf feeling the movement.
“That’s not what will give you power, though, Michael. It doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t mean you have any finesse. And, besides, brother...you might fool yourself into thinking it when you fuck him, but he’s not me, is he? He doesn’t come close. No one will ever come close and it will drive you mad, because I’m the only one who can give you what you need. And I enjoy what that knowledge does to you almost as much as being fucked.”
The words are whispered against Michael’s lips, just before Ralf’s fingernails bite into the deceivingly soft skin of Michael’s shoulder, breaking it, making blood rise, the colour a shock against Michael’s pale skin, painting Ralf’s fingertips. It’s Michael’s colour, but Ralf wears it this time around, and he presses his fingers to his lips, tasting the deep richness of red, his eyes never moving away from his brother’s.
Michael inhales, a shuddering breath, and Ralf wonders whether his mark on Michael’s skin hurts, whether it burns with the sweetness he knows so well. He laughs at Michael, fully expecting his brother to tear down the hallway in his haste to get away from Ralf, but then Michael grabs his arms and pulls him closer and kisses him, biting at his lip, demanding entry, with a groan that sounds hungry. He takes away the taste of his own blood from Ralf’s tongue, along with the traces of Ralf’s earlier exploits, desperate like he’s been thirsting for it for months.
And then he does hurry away, leaving Ralf standing there, breathless. Ralf’s victory fades into insignificance against the memory of that kiss. Pressing his fingers to his bruised lips again, Ralf can only try to hate Michael for depriving him of triumph.
~*~
Even gods must fall.
Michael stops winning, drowning in his defeat with each passing day. Ralf sees it in Michael’s eyes, the useless fury gnawing at him, tearing at him. He watches his brother fall, their roles reversed, and he finds no satisfaction in it. The day Michael gives up on his red army, he becomes nothing, the colour that once gave him strength draining from him until he becomes insignificant.
Michael becomes a shadow, meaningless, forgotten, and Ralf watches him, because the realm of shadows is Ralf’s to observe. He’s used to living in the colourless dregs of Michael’s victories, but now Michael is the one who’s barely there, and Ralf is the one who lives, who thrives.
He watches Michael cling with almost desperate fervour to the remains of his reputation as a champion, to the red of his team, until there’s nothing to cling to anymore. Ralf smiles when he sees Michael’s little Italian toy moving on, leaving Michael behind.
The following Christmas, at the family dinner in their childhood home, Ralf finds himself wondering whether Michael shares Ralf’s dreams, those incomprehensible images and thoughts and feelings that Ralf can barely remember, can barely make sense of. He discovers new lines around Michael’s haunted eyes, and Ralf wonders how much longer his brother will conform himself with being a shadow.
Later that night, he wakes up from another dream, confused as always yet finding comfort in the silent darkness of the house. He gets out of bed, leaving the warmth of his wife’s companionship behind. He finds Michael in the unlit kitchen, and they stare at each other in the night, wordlessly.
Ralf watches Michael touching his shoulder, where Ralf’s mark has stopped being visible long ago, and Ralf craves the feeling of Michael’s skin breaking.
He walks a few steps towards Michael, and the look in his eyes must be feral in the barely-there moonlight, because Michael does back away this time around.
“I don’t know who you are,” Michael whispers, no strength in his voice, no more howling storms to command.
Ralf lets the laughter bubble, a harsh sound, his fingers wrapping around Michael’s wrist in a grip that wishes to bruise, moving closer.
“I am what you made me, brother.”
Three buttons from Michael’s shirt fall to the ground with an almost crystalline sound in Ralf’s haste to uncover skin.
When Ralf bites down, at the curve of Michael’s shoulder, Michael gasps and holds him closer, growing strong again.
They break apart a minute or an hour after that, and Michael runs, not pretending to be brave anymore. Ralf stands in the dark kitchen, the taste of Michael’s skin and Michael’s blood on his lips. Michael still tastes red. He always will.
The next morning, Michael and his perfect Corinna are gone. Ralf doesn’t see him for months.
~*~
Silver isn’t Michael’s colour, and it brings no victories. Ralf watches his brother struggle in the mid-field, surprised once more. He’d thought that Michael was addicted only to triumph, the triumph that allowed him to rule over others and belittle them all, but now Michael looks better than Ralf has seen him in years. Despite the long hours and longer exertion, despite the frustration of a poor car and a disturbing lack of pace, Michael is almost himself again, leaving the shadows behind.
Ralf watches his brother’s enemies laughing, finding pleasure in Michael’s struggles. He wishes he could be able to consider Michael’s current situation a victory. He wishes he could see it as Michael being humiliated, Michael finally being taught his place. He knows better. He knows that gods cannot be killed, even though they might be forgotten.
Ralf doesn’t feel amusement, the Saturday of Michael’s twentieth anniversary in Spa. He almost admires Michael’s bravado, meeting all the mocking looks thrown his way at the party with an arrogantly arched eyebrow and a smile on his face.
He sees the fatigue in his brother’s eyes, knows that Michael thrives on it, on destroying obstacles like he destroys the people who stand in his way to glory. He sees it all, close enough to Michael to follow the beat of his heart in the pulse point that Ralf remembers touching, years ago. He sees Michael being aware of Ralf’s gaze, Michael’s fingers curling, nails biting into palm.
Ralf knows things have changed. He’s not the foolish young man Michael once tore apart, and Michael, without the power he used to wield, cannot be a destructively cruel god anymore.
It’s a truce, and it feels as confusing as Ralf’s dreams. He doesn’t know how to react, how to plan his moves, but then Michael’s eyes finally meet his, defiant, and Ralf smiles with poisonous innocence.
~*~
There is a scar on the back of Ralf’s knee, the bite of a street dog when he was seven. He remembers Michael chasing after the dog, intent on punishing it. He remembers the shocking realisation that Michael would not tolerate others hurting what he’d claimed as his to torture.
They are naked in a dimly lit room, and it feels like a dream. Michael’s questing fingers search for and find the raised edges of the discoloured scar, and Ralf shivers, despite himself. He takes Michael’s mouth in a kiss, his fingers cruelly mapping Michael’s skin in return. When he moves away, a translucent, impossibly thin string of saliva refuses to break between their lips. Michael sees it, and sucks on Ralf’s bottom lip with a moan, making it disappear.
Michael touches the traces of white in Ralf’s hair, fingers pressing to Ralf’s temples.
“You’re growing old, little brother.”
“At least I’m not hiding it, like you.”
He cuts off Michael’s protest, the spark of a fight in Michael’s eyes, with another kiss, feeling drunk on it, drugged on it. Both their bodies feel feverish, and Ralf can’t stop touching, can’t stop kissing, can’t stop biting or sucking or tasting. When he pushes Michael on the bed that seems too narrow, he grins, watching Michael start at the uncomfortable familiarity of it. For a moment, they both forgot they were brothers. Instead they were twins, gods, indestructible.
“Have you thought about this? About me finally giving you what you need? No sweet Italian nothings, no whores kneeling for you, seeking the rapture of your attention? Have you dreamed of me?” he asks, not bothering to whisper, tasting sweat on Michael’s skin.
“Always.”
The reply is a broken whisper, and Ralf knows then, sees the shadow of the dreams on Michael’s face, tastes them on Michael’s tongue, the taste of incense and smoke and storms and blood and death and sunburnt sand.
He whispers words from his dreams, Michael answering him, Michael wrapping his legs around him and taking him in, opening to him, and Ralf drowns in the giddiness of a victory offered to him without a fight, Michael’s shameless surrender. It’s intoxicating, watching Michael’s reaction to what Ralf is giving him, the burn, the sweetness of it, the beauty of losing. And Ralf has to kiss him, over and over, kisses that are sloppy, messy, violently perfect imperfections. He remembers his brother’s skin from his dreams, but now he can relearn every part of Michael, every centimetre of skin, every breath and every sound. Michael holds him close, fingers clawing at Ralf’s back, and Ralf answers the gesture in kind, leaving bruises on Michael’s shoulders, on Michael’s hips.
They are broken from time, broken from the world, nothing but two bodies and heat and sounds and taste and smell and a pleasure that is blinding, intoxicating, a pleasure that belongs to dreams alone. Ralf’s blood is Michael’s and what little air is left between them tastes like both of them, red, like their blood and their sweat and their hunger and their need.
After, Ralf savours the calm on Michael’s face, the way this particular loss looks good on Michael, making him seem human where victory made him seem a monster. They breathe each other’s breath, at the same time, peaceful. There are no storms, no scorpions, no snakes, no golden coffins, no betrayals. There are no wars to fight, now that they’re in the same place, in the same moment, neither a winner, neither a loser.
~*~
He dreams of being whole, of a hard-earned truce and a golden peace. He dreams of redemption.
Title: The storm's knives
Pairing: Ralf/Michael
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I distort reality and turn it into lies.
Warning(s): Incest, lots of random Egyptian symbolism, rambly, slightly dark and twisty.
Word count: 3, 897
A/N: Loosely based on the legends surrounding the Egyptian gods Set(h) and Osiris. I took several versions of these legends and basically mixed them up beyond recognition. I apologise to Egyptologists everywhere! But yes, this randomly popped in my head and I just had to do it. It was painstaking effort, considering I haven't written since June, so I want to thank zeraparker, for holding my hand and encouraging me and looking over the fic for me when it was ready. And I want to thank this challenge, for kicking my muse back into gear. Due to running out of time (as always), this is the abridged version of the plot I originally wanted to write. Hope you'll enjoy! ;)
He dreams a stairway of seven steps, each step darker than the last, more terrifying. And yet, he feels no fear. He knows this stairway well, and he can climb or descend it whenever he wants, without a care. He’s not a lost soul, to be forced to the stairway’s trials. When he dreams, he’s a god.
He dreams of fire and he dreams of eternity, of a woman clothed with sunlight. He dreams a coffin, and he dreams pain, and he dreams the sweet pain of betrayal. He dreams of violent storms that turn the sky purple and then black, he dreams of golden sand that burns when touched. He dreams of scorpions, with their deadly bite, and of serpents fighting each other, with only one victor.
He dreams, and in his dreams they were born twins, not years apart. In his dreams, he knows his brother’s skin, the red flash of his fury, the purple of his storms and the black of his jealousy. In his dreams, he is betrayed and killed and torn apart, but the betrayal is sealed with a kiss that tastes sweet, and it is the memory of that kiss that keeps him company in the darkness of the golden casket that is his trap.
When he wakes, he doesn’t remember.
~*~
They should have been twins. The statement whispers at him, tugs at his consciousness like a long-forgotten dream. He doesn’t question the sudden oddity of it, or how it sounds right in his head. They should have been twins. It would explain the overpowering need to best each other, to come first, the need to deny each other, to destroy each other. Ralf knows Michael would have hated it, being half of a whole, that Michael would have done anything in his power to break that bond, to tear it to pieces.
Ralf wonders if their relationship would have suffered more or less, if they’d have been born minutes apart instead of years. Michael got seven years of being first before Ralf appeared, only to find himself pushed into second by his baby brother’s arrival. He wonders whether that was when it all started.
Ralf asked his mother -their mother- once, the golden dust of his sixth summer clinging to him, what Michael’s reaction had been when he’d been told about the pregnancy. She kissed Ralf's forehead and smiled and told him Michael had been thrilled.
That’s when Ralf knew his brother had been born a liar.
They should have been twins, but he doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, he looks at his brother without flinching, momentarily drunk on the dangerous flame of satisfaction burning inside him now that he’s taller than Michael, now that Michael has to look up to meet his gaze.
“I’ve been offered a Formula 1 contract. I signed it.”
The words drop like stones and the air between them crackles. He can hear the distant roar of thunder, and for a second, before he forgets, he could swear that he tastes sand on his tongue and that he hears the thud of a golden coffin’s lid being closed.
~*~
His brother tears him apart in dreams, and then the dreams become reality.
It starts off as a subtle attack. Michael smiles at him, eyes cold, and Ralf feels the fear he never feels in his dreams. He can almost see the hidden words, the hidden actions, Michael’s plan unfolding, Michael’s eyes, ripping him apart, Michael’s words, tinged with the deceiving sweetness of poison.
Ralf anticipates it, but he’s still not prepared for it. No one could ever be prepared for such methodical destruction, and when the end finally comes, when Michael throws him a victorious smile to celebrate his revenge, he can only run away.
Ralf runs, into the darkness, tired and weary and bleeding, feeling like he’s been chopped into pieces, like there’s nothing left of him. He thinks of each mistake, each failed race, and how well he’s played Michael’s game, how he’s given Michael all the material he needed to annihilate him.
He runs, and he lets himself fall, in the corner of a nondescript room in a nameless hotel made of shadows, trying to remember the staircase in his dreams, trying to remember the secrets of how to climb it.
She finds him. Whether she finds him days or hours later, he doesn’t know. She holds his hand, a perfume-scented warmth, and he finds himself surprised by this new side of her, this comfortingly silent and caring woman, hidden under her usual effervescence.
She finds him, and he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t demand answers.
Ralf lets her hold him, and it feels like he stops bleeding, like he stops hurting, like he’s healing. And in the midst of darkness, he asks her to marry him.
~*~
“I never knew you had it in you, Ralf.”
There is a smile hidden in the corner of Ralf’s mouth, but he doesn’t show it. Michael doesn’t know that Ralf has changed, and Ralf can only enjoy the advantage this gives him.
He holds Michael’s gaze, the gaze that wishes itself cruel, like Michael’s words, like Michael’s mocking smile.
“I thought you couldn’t get it up for a woman.”
The statement is crude, not what Ralf had expected. It shows him the depth of Michael’s desperation, provoked by Ralf’s lack of reaction to his taunts. The smile threatens to break free, but he keeps it in check.
“We’ll have a son,” he says, savouring every word.
Michael’s eyes narrow and Ralf can see his fury, a spark of red, a colour as rich as the one on Michael’s shirt. Ralf almost laughs, like a child caught in a summer’s rainstorm, remembering how Michael had always revelled in being the one with the perfect family, the perfect wife, the only one who’d given their parents grandchildren.
He steals another victory from his brother, and it tastes better than any champagne.
~*~
He dreams of eclipses, a starless night, an eaten moon, the absence of light, the thickness of darkness, enveloping him like velvet.
Michael kisses him once, when he knows she will see, and Ralf loses the battle by not moving, by not pushing Michael away. He loses, realising it only when he hears her run out of the room, only when he sees the glint in Michael’s eye. Ralf presses his fingers to his lips, not knowing whether he wants to brush the memory of Michael’s lips away or whether he wants to keep it forever.
Michael laughs at him and leaves, and Ralf chokes on the bitterness of loss, on the sweetness of betrayal.
His wife doesn’t look at him for days. She sees him, the twisted darkness inside him, the shadows that he should be controlling, and he can’t make up any excuses. Michael’s the liar in the family.
“Do you love him?” she asks, pouring milk and sugar in her coffee, not looking at him.
Ralf almost laughs, tearing a bun apart with his fingers before setting it aside.
“We’ve never loved each other. That’s the only thing we’ve ever had in common.”
Cora gives him a look that scares him, because he’s never considered that by seeing all of him, she’d see things he’s never admitted to himself.
Later, when they’re getting dressed, he watches her slipping on her hot pink shirt and tight glittery jeans, smiling fondly because he loves her like this; he loves everything about her that his brother hates. He reaches out to touch her, but she moves away, and he flinches because she’s never rejected him before, no matter the amount of nights he spent in someone else’s bed, no matter the amount of mornings when he’d come back to her smelling of someone else’s cologne.
She doesn’t look angry now, but she hasn’t allowed him to touch her since the night when Michael left their house, laughing. He misses the bittersweet nights when he held her, wishing he were a better husband, when he slept curled around her, feeling safe.
“You kissed him, Ralf. I saw how you looked at him. Most importantly, I saw how he looked at you.”
“He did it to hurt us! It was just another one of his mind games.”
“He wanted it to be that, I know. There is this intensity between the two of you that you try to destroy each other with. And whenever you’re facing off, it looks like more than hate.”
Ralf sits on the edge of their perfectly made bed, an odd stillness in his mind, unable to focus on the slow motion of his thoughts. He thinks of storms and confusion and chaos, the lingering roar of thunder in his ears, the blinding oblivion of lightning.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks her, his voice cracking on the curve of the question mark.
“I want you to stop fighting in this war he’s set for you before he tears you apart again. That’s what I want. It never ends, don’t you see? It will never end. He lives on it, thrives on it. You’re his counterpart, Ralf. Without you, he’s nothing. I’ve known that since the start. He did what he did to prove to me that you’re his. But I’ve always known.”
She’s not looking at him, focusing on her reflection in the mirror, going through her usual ritual. She brushes eye-shadow on her lids and curls her lashes and dabs her cheeks with colour and coats her lips in gloss and she won’t look at him.
She slips away from their bedroom, leaving a trace of perfume behind. He can hear their son’s laughter from another part of the house, and he lets himself fall back on the bed.
When he closes his eyes, all he can see is red.
~*~
He dreams a feather outweighing his soul on a balance. He dreams that he is the one judging himself, he is the one with the feather in his hand, he is the one who tips the scale. He is the one with the lost soul.
He startles awake and blinks in the darkness of another hotel room, the thousandth of its kind, and then he laughs at himself for desperately clutching at sheets in his sleep in his haste for redemption.
Michael catches Ralf once, in the middle of a five-star hallway, on the Saturday of a race weekend, coming out of a room that’s not his own. Michael’s eyes narrow, flashing mockingly, when he catches sight of Ralf’s dishevelled appearance, but then he freezes when he sees the golden number on the door Ralf’s just closed, knowing exactly who’s inside.
Ralf winks at him, aware of the danger but no longer hiding from it, looking at Michael with the taste of another man’s come lingering on his tongue. He feels oddly triumphant for no specific reason other than knowing that he still smells like sex, knowing that Michael knows.
“How can you enjoy something so demeaning, little brother?” Michael asks, his curiosity as venomous as a scorpion’s bite.
Ralf laughs, finding another triumph in Michael’s self-assured ignorance, in Michael's outstanding hypocrisy. He knows all of Michael’s secrets, every single one of them, and he keeps them filed up, at the ready for when the occasion arises to hurt Michael with his own poison.
Ralf presses his fingers to Michael’s jaw, feeling a muscle jump, Michael’s body tensing, but his mind too proud to allow himself to recoil. The warmth of Michael’s skin is always disconcerting to Ralf, a surprising sign of humanity. The image of a slain snake flickers in his mind, and he blinks it away, allowing his fingers to brush over Michael’s cheek. His thumb ghosts a caress over the corner of Michael’s mouth, and for a millisecond, the one that usually makes or breaks in the world they both belong to, he wishes he could remember the taste of Michael’s lips.
“You don’t understand it, do you? I suppose you can’t. You’re not familiar with how sweet it burns, with how addicting it is, the taste of it, the violence of it, the surrender...you don’t know anything. You think that what you do with your pretty little toy is a secret, and yet everyone’s whispering about it. You think that it makes you special, that the way you treat him in bed gives you even more power than you usually have.”
Ralf pauses, savouring the frozen shock in Michael’s eyes. Victory tastes sweet, after all, and he almost understands why Michael is the way he is, why he’s so addicted to winning. Ralf hasn’t delivered his final blow, the winning blow, the one that will win him the war, and he takes his time with it, moving closer to Michael, their bodies almost touching.
Michael doesn’t move away, and Ralf knows it would be too much to demand cowardice from Michael’s ego. It would be too easy a victory.
His fingers casually slip lower, barely there, following a trail down Michael’s throat, lingering on the pulse point, the headiness of sensation, Michael’s heartbeat against Ralf’s fingertips, Michael swallowing and Ralf feeling the movement.
“That’s not what will give you power, though, Michael. It doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t mean you have any finesse. And, besides, brother...you might fool yourself into thinking it when you fuck him, but he’s not me, is he? He doesn’t come close. No one will ever come close and it will drive you mad, because I’m the only one who can give you what you need. And I enjoy what that knowledge does to you almost as much as being fucked.”
The words are whispered against Michael’s lips, just before Ralf’s fingernails bite into the deceivingly soft skin of Michael’s shoulder, breaking it, making blood rise, the colour a shock against Michael’s pale skin, painting Ralf’s fingertips. It’s Michael’s colour, but Ralf wears it this time around, and he presses his fingers to his lips, tasting the deep richness of red, his eyes never moving away from his brother’s.
Michael inhales, a shuddering breath, and Ralf wonders whether his mark on Michael’s skin hurts, whether it burns with the sweetness he knows so well. He laughs at Michael, fully expecting his brother to tear down the hallway in his haste to get away from Ralf, but then Michael grabs his arms and pulls him closer and kisses him, biting at his lip, demanding entry, with a groan that sounds hungry. He takes away the taste of his own blood from Ralf’s tongue, along with the traces of Ralf’s earlier exploits, desperate like he’s been thirsting for it for months.
And then he does hurry away, leaving Ralf standing there, breathless. Ralf’s victory fades into insignificance against the memory of that kiss. Pressing his fingers to his bruised lips again, Ralf can only try to hate Michael for depriving him of triumph.
~*~
Even gods must fall.
Michael stops winning, drowning in his defeat with each passing day. Ralf sees it in Michael’s eyes, the useless fury gnawing at him, tearing at him. He watches his brother fall, their roles reversed, and he finds no satisfaction in it. The day Michael gives up on his red army, he becomes nothing, the colour that once gave him strength draining from him until he becomes insignificant.
Michael becomes a shadow, meaningless, forgotten, and Ralf watches him, because the realm of shadows is Ralf’s to observe. He’s used to living in the colourless dregs of Michael’s victories, but now Michael is the one who’s barely there, and Ralf is the one who lives, who thrives.
He watches Michael cling with almost desperate fervour to the remains of his reputation as a champion, to the red of his team, until there’s nothing to cling to anymore. Ralf smiles when he sees Michael’s little Italian toy moving on, leaving Michael behind.
The following Christmas, at the family dinner in their childhood home, Ralf finds himself wondering whether Michael shares Ralf’s dreams, those incomprehensible images and thoughts and feelings that Ralf can barely remember, can barely make sense of. He discovers new lines around Michael’s haunted eyes, and Ralf wonders how much longer his brother will conform himself with being a shadow.
Later that night, he wakes up from another dream, confused as always yet finding comfort in the silent darkness of the house. He gets out of bed, leaving the warmth of his wife’s companionship behind. He finds Michael in the unlit kitchen, and they stare at each other in the night, wordlessly.
Ralf watches Michael touching his shoulder, where Ralf’s mark has stopped being visible long ago, and Ralf craves the feeling of Michael’s skin breaking.
He walks a few steps towards Michael, and the look in his eyes must be feral in the barely-there moonlight, because Michael does back away this time around.
“I don’t know who you are,” Michael whispers, no strength in his voice, no more howling storms to command.
Ralf lets the laughter bubble, a harsh sound, his fingers wrapping around Michael’s wrist in a grip that wishes to bruise, moving closer.
“I am what you made me, brother.”
Three buttons from Michael’s shirt fall to the ground with an almost crystalline sound in Ralf’s haste to uncover skin.
When Ralf bites down, at the curve of Michael’s shoulder, Michael gasps and holds him closer, growing strong again.
They break apart a minute or an hour after that, and Michael runs, not pretending to be brave anymore. Ralf stands in the dark kitchen, the taste of Michael’s skin and Michael’s blood on his lips. Michael still tastes red. He always will.
The next morning, Michael and his perfect Corinna are gone. Ralf doesn’t see him for months.
~*~
Silver isn’t Michael’s colour, and it brings no victories. Ralf watches his brother struggle in the mid-field, surprised once more. He’d thought that Michael was addicted only to triumph, the triumph that allowed him to rule over others and belittle them all, but now Michael looks better than Ralf has seen him in years. Despite the long hours and longer exertion, despite the frustration of a poor car and a disturbing lack of pace, Michael is almost himself again, leaving the shadows behind.
Ralf watches his brother’s enemies laughing, finding pleasure in Michael’s struggles. He wishes he could be able to consider Michael’s current situation a victory. He wishes he could see it as Michael being humiliated, Michael finally being taught his place. He knows better. He knows that gods cannot be killed, even though they might be forgotten.
Ralf doesn’t feel amusement, the Saturday of Michael’s twentieth anniversary in Spa. He almost admires Michael’s bravado, meeting all the mocking looks thrown his way at the party with an arrogantly arched eyebrow and a smile on his face.
He sees the fatigue in his brother’s eyes, knows that Michael thrives on it, on destroying obstacles like he destroys the people who stand in his way to glory. He sees it all, close enough to Michael to follow the beat of his heart in the pulse point that Ralf remembers touching, years ago. He sees Michael being aware of Ralf’s gaze, Michael’s fingers curling, nails biting into palm.
Ralf knows things have changed. He’s not the foolish young man Michael once tore apart, and Michael, without the power he used to wield, cannot be a destructively cruel god anymore.
It’s a truce, and it feels as confusing as Ralf’s dreams. He doesn’t know how to react, how to plan his moves, but then Michael’s eyes finally meet his, defiant, and Ralf smiles with poisonous innocence.
~*~
There is a scar on the back of Ralf’s knee, the bite of a street dog when he was seven. He remembers Michael chasing after the dog, intent on punishing it. He remembers the shocking realisation that Michael would not tolerate others hurting what he’d claimed as his to torture.
They are naked in a dimly lit room, and it feels like a dream. Michael’s questing fingers search for and find the raised edges of the discoloured scar, and Ralf shivers, despite himself. He takes Michael’s mouth in a kiss, his fingers cruelly mapping Michael’s skin in return. When he moves away, a translucent, impossibly thin string of saliva refuses to break between their lips. Michael sees it, and sucks on Ralf’s bottom lip with a moan, making it disappear.
Michael touches the traces of white in Ralf’s hair, fingers pressing to Ralf’s temples.
“You’re growing old, little brother.”
“At least I’m not hiding it, like you.”
He cuts off Michael’s protest, the spark of a fight in Michael’s eyes, with another kiss, feeling drunk on it, drugged on it. Both their bodies feel feverish, and Ralf can’t stop touching, can’t stop kissing, can’t stop biting or sucking or tasting. When he pushes Michael on the bed that seems too narrow, he grins, watching Michael start at the uncomfortable familiarity of it. For a moment, they both forgot they were brothers. Instead they were twins, gods, indestructible.
“Have you thought about this? About me finally giving you what you need? No sweet Italian nothings, no whores kneeling for you, seeking the rapture of your attention? Have you dreamed of me?” he asks, not bothering to whisper, tasting sweat on Michael’s skin.
“Always.”
The reply is a broken whisper, and Ralf knows then, sees the shadow of the dreams on Michael’s face, tastes them on Michael’s tongue, the taste of incense and smoke and storms and blood and death and sunburnt sand.
He whispers words from his dreams, Michael answering him, Michael wrapping his legs around him and taking him in, opening to him, and Ralf drowns in the giddiness of a victory offered to him without a fight, Michael’s shameless surrender. It’s intoxicating, watching Michael’s reaction to what Ralf is giving him, the burn, the sweetness of it, the beauty of losing. And Ralf has to kiss him, over and over, kisses that are sloppy, messy, violently perfect imperfections. He remembers his brother’s skin from his dreams, but now he can relearn every part of Michael, every centimetre of skin, every breath and every sound. Michael holds him close, fingers clawing at Ralf’s back, and Ralf answers the gesture in kind, leaving bruises on Michael’s shoulders, on Michael’s hips.
They are broken from time, broken from the world, nothing but two bodies and heat and sounds and taste and smell and a pleasure that is blinding, intoxicating, a pleasure that belongs to dreams alone. Ralf’s blood is Michael’s and what little air is left between them tastes like both of them, red, like their blood and their sweat and their hunger and their need.
After, Ralf savours the calm on Michael’s face, the way this particular loss looks good on Michael, making him seem human where victory made him seem a monster. They breathe each other’s breath, at the same time, peaceful. There are no storms, no scorpions, no snakes, no golden coffins, no betrayals. There are no wars to fight, now that they’re in the same place, in the same moment, neither a winner, neither a loser.
~*~
He dreams of being whole, of a hard-earned truce and a golden peace. He dreams of redemption.