#inforuss

The door opens, Russell still not bothering to knock when he knows this is where the Informant will always be waiting by the telephone, until the day he isn't. He looks up from his book, sitting on the couch and pretending to hold an air of nonchalant surprise.

“Who are you?”

What an interesting question, coming from Russell that is. One that simply has the Informant offering him the same smile like always.

“I’m the Informant, silly. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

He looks frustrated. Confused. His gaze drops to the floor, no doubt thinking over how to rephrase his question. The edges of the Informant’s smile curls tighter, crueler.

“Who do you think I am, Russell?”

His memory draws back to the first day they met, Gardenia’s harmless joke and how Russell went along with it. The fear and confusion layered deep underneath his answer is stark for the Informant. His fingers want to pry open that wound and tug out all the tangled thoughts he’s buried deep in it. All of Russell is a rotting wound under the thin veneer of bruised, scarred skin. It’s his job to drag it out. To remind him of his sin. Teach him to feel guilt.

What a tiresome, painful task it is, being born to be despised.

Still, if Russell wants to understand—if he wants to be rehabilitated truly, then he needs him. More than anyone else in this town, the Informant is the only one who can grant him any kind of sense for all those thoughts, sins, and pain he stored deep within.

Even now, he looks at him like he doesn’t understand. The Informant is an abnormal, outside element. All their neighbors have stories and mean something. Even those from the Dreamsend Inc. have an explanation. The Informant is nothing like them, and never will be. He can never be anything other than what he is. And for that, he will never know anything other than the utter disdain directed his way.

Russell balls his fists, shaking as he gets closer. The Informant thinks he’s going to strike him, but it’s much too soon for that. Instead, he collapses next to him on the couch, grips the sleeve of his shirt and continues to shake. Does he understand what the Informant is? Can he accept that answer?

Will he ever grasp how much more he could be if he just accepted him properly?

The answer has yet to be determined, Russell isn’t sure if he’s going to be rehabilitated. The Informant hopes he does, because then he’ll be able to give more. He can be useful in the way Russell needs him to be.

In a quiet, hesitant voice, he asks him a question.

Humans are so fragile.

Russell can’t count the number of times he’d wondered if he’d be killed when their father got too violent or how easy it’d be to murder another person. In video games, he did so effortlessly, but humans looked just as weak in real life too.

He can’t really help his feelings. They’ve always been out of his control and something he’s never quite been able to understand. His brother seems to read him and translate what is bothering him so easily, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t comprehend it nor can he quite make any of it go away.

Over and over, the second he tries to breach the world outside himself, a fear and deep envy overflows to the point where he can’t see anything but red. His brother handles it better than most; he’s always known him best, but it doesn’t stop the urges and it doesn’t stop the images that haunt him of bodies pushed off tall heights or of heads bashed in. It scares him sometimes, but other times he just doesn’t even think.

Like now, he can’t even remember what it is his brother’s said, all he knows is there’s a brief flair of anger, but the reaction’s all wrong. They’re on the same couch they seem to always be on with these trysts and all he knows is he’s frustrated. His brother is wearing that coquettish, knowing smile and his body is all but grinding up towards his even with Russell’s hands tightly gripping the collar of his shirt.

“Relax. I didn’t do anything to him. I didn’t do anything to any of your precious outsiders.”

Russell’s grip grows just a bit laxer, but his brother is still rubbing against his knee far more excited about their position than he likely should be. This sort of reaction, he’d grown used to even if it was something he still was unsure how to respond to.

“Y’know, for a minute you had me thinking you were even ready to kill me. In the end, you couldn’t though could you?”

His hand moves to wrap his fingers around his brother’s throat, but there’s no pressure behind the grip.

“It feels nice to have all of your attention on me.”

Just slightly he tightens his hold trying not to feel sickened at the way he can feel his brother twitch from the action.

“I want a-all of you Russell. Even this you is f-fine.”

Whether it’s from Russell’s tightening grip or from the slight stutters from pleasure, his brother’s words are forming less confident and assertive than usual. If anything, the notion behind his words is even comforting.

Humans are so fragile. With just the slightest grip, an accidental slice, the tiniest of missteps…

a life can be taken so quickly. Useless and disgusting people should just die if they can’t get out of my sight.

“R-Russell, p…please, ah.”

He hates the way his own body reacts to his brother. When it comes to things like this they both were used to seeing their mother, but somehow rather than be disgusted, his brother fell into a similar trap. It was disgusting, but he couldn’t help indulging him either. Russell had never been good at saying no, especially when it came to his brother.

The fingers around his brother’s throat loosen just slightly and Russell tries to ignore the moan that comes with the desperate gasps for air.

When it came down to it, he couldn’t kill his brother. The other depended on him more than Russell did him, but they had a kinship he couldn’t let go of no matter how disgusted or irritated or jealous he felt.

What’s worse is he knows it, he knows it and states it often enough to drive Russell up a wall, because he’s right. He’s always right.

“You need me so I can understand what you can’t.”

“You’ll always need me.”

“But it’s okay, because I need you too.”

Russell doesn’t know what he wants. He can’t bring himself to kill his brother and after listening to him, he can’t bring himself to kill anyone else as much as he wants to. He doesn’t know why he sits up to help him finish or why he agrees to let his brother touch him too.

It’s a strange intimacy he still doesn’t get. Each time he gets more and more comfortable with it, and bit by bit he isn’t sure whether to be more disgusted or irritated at him or himself.

“Even if you do come to kill me one day… it’ll be fine.”

“Because I know it won’t be much longer before you die with me.”

Russell wishes he could be more like his brother.

It wasn’t like he was the favorite between them necessarily. As far as their parents went, it was clear neither of them had wanted either of them. It was fine though. Neither of them were fond of their parents either, but having each other made it a bit easier. He had aspects to him that made him more social and frequent to make the connections Russell himself wished to, but at the same time he never gave any of them a particular special kind of treatment.

Russell never knew how he found out the things he did, but he always shared those facts with him a bright smile on his face as he did so; as if the information alone was enough to cure any ill intent he carried. He was a know-it-all and read people in a way that was almost frightening.

It almost made Russell jealous of him too, being able to connect to people and feel a happiness Russell himself had never understood, but his brother was the only person in this world he had. Except that wasn’t entirely true either, it just felt like it most of the time.

Though Russell was not one to start conversations on his own, there were many acquaintances he gathered and namely at least one person he felt he could call a friend. On the few days his brother was out and doing his own thing, there was a boy named Chris he sometimes spent time with. Sometimes even on days when his brother went home alone, he chose to go to such a seedy and dangerous part of town if only to feel less alone.

Without realizing it, his ever seemingly happy brother grew to be a distorted jealous figure as well. Russell arrived home early enough that their parents were still out and like always his brother was there playing a game on the couch. He greets him the same as always, but there is a slight difference. For once, his brother’s smile seemed more forced than usual, and there was no immediate offer for him to join in the game.

It’s obvious and being who he is, before Russell can even ask, his brother is already answering his question. There’s no familiar glee in his voice at reading and predicting a question before someone could ask it, instead there’s a cold tone that Russell isn’t used to having directed at him.

“I learn the things I do because it makes me feel smart. It makes me feel safe to have all this knowledge about the people around me. Those siblings at the church, that girl your friend has a crush on, that friendly zookeeper, that kind police officer who brings us home at night, that nurse that gives us compresses for our bruises—even that doctor who lives in the bad parts of town you keep wandering in.”

“I could go on, all those people and more I learn about. I find out all I can about their secrets and it doesn’t bother me if they never think anything of me.”

“Even you; we were born in this place together and so it’s only natural I would know the most about you. Things you lie about, the things you pretend aren’t true, and places you think I don’t know you go. You give me details and think you’re hiding the other stuff you think.”

“But even still… there are things I don’t know about you.”

There’s a sharp tug of fear as his brother pushes him on the couch they both hate, because he’s scared of the way he’s talking. Is he angry too? Was he wrong about how happy he seemed? Nothing he says makes any sense, but still his brother draws closer and closer until his bangs are just barely touching Russell’s face. There’s a brief moment of fear when he’s trying to place where his hands are, but they’re by his waist.

“You’re jealous of everyone. You’re angry at what they have that we don’t. But lately, you’re even jealous of me too aren’t you?”

“Do you hate me too Russell?”

“I thought we’d play together today, so you can tell me just how you really feel.”

“Do you want to kill me like you want to kill everyone else Russell?”

The questions keep coming as he draws closer, but there’s no real malice at all still. Russell remembers reading once that green was supposed to be the color of jealousy and always thought it odd that his brother seemingly empty of such a feeling was the one who carried green eyes. It was the only physical difference between them aside from his brother’s insistence to have a different colored dress shirt.

“No,” he eventually finds himself whispering, still afraid of what his brother might do.

“I’m jealous too Russell. I’m jealous of all these people you say you don’t care for that still are nestled in your heart. I hate the thought of becoming less important than them. I keep telling myself you’ll never let go of your disdain and jealousy, but if even I become a center of such feelings will you just wish to kill me also?”

“You’re the only good thing in this miserable world.”

He feels his brother clutch at his vest and rest his forehead on his.

“I don’t want to share you with anyone else. It’s bad enough those men look at you when we’re out at night.”

Russell still can’t really understand. His brother isn’t angry, but he’s jealous. Yet… he doesn’t want to kill him. If anything he just wants to possess him. If he’s not jealous of him, then he’s jealous of others?

“I don’t care if it’s filthy. The rest of this world is disgusting as is. If it’s what I have to do to find any sort of small happiness in this life, then I don’t care. Wouldn’t you say that’s only fair Russell? In the end, we only have each other.”

He still doesn’t really understand. His brother doesn’t want to kill him, but he also sees flickers of what those disgusting men do to his mother. Their mother.

But isn’t this different in its own way? He knows at the very least whatever it is motivating his brother isn’t the base lust other humans have. He isn’t like the men who sleep with their mother or the strangers who offer them candy. There should be a fear in how close he is and what he’s saying; the implications of what it means for them to do something like this and what it means to agree to being completely his.

The recognition becomes clear as he watches his brother read what few expressions he musters. Gently, he presses their lips together and though the action inherently wasn’t sexual, there’s a sentiment behind his brother’s action that isn’t entirely innocent either.

“They leave us alone all the time anyway. They won’t have to know.”

“It’s our own special secret Russell.”