You know, yesterday's comment by @gyorklady on this post made me actually realise the actual length to which Cosmo and Oscar have kind of gone and probably gaslighted people (kind of cuz I don't know how else to describe it) Kind of a long post so...
Let's face it, Cosmo bought the Antiquarian when Oscar was his father and probably people would've known Oscar as his father/brother depending on the story given.
Now a few years pass and Cosmo has grown older and Oscar still looks the same, making the "Oscar is my father" introduction invalid, and making it suspicious for the people who knew Oscar as Cosmo's father cuz the elder is not aging but the younger is?
So Cosmo lies, lies his father is dead and the one you are seeing is an estranged brother who just coincidentally looks like his father in his youth. Some may believe it, some won't. But this starts a period of "Oscar is my brother" lies, which also comes to a close after a few years cuz again, Cosmo is aging but Oscar isn't.
Now, Cosmo may have been living in a different neighbourhood, may have been living separately from Oscar but they do visit from time to time, this time under the guise of brothers, which is slowly turning invalid cuz there's only a number of times you can justify that to be because "Oscar dyes his hair" or "He has the good genes"
Then comes the next story, "Oscar is my son/nephew" which will, again, look a little strange to the regulars to the Antiquarian because while they won't know the full family history of either of them, or the personal lives, they are certain to clock that the "brother" looks exactly the same as "the son/nephew" and no matter how much they tell it is the genes, it is bound to raise some suspicion.
Years pass and the "Son/nephew" image doesn't really cut it also anymore because again, the son doesn't seem to be aging but Cosmo is so comes the grandson image like "oh, he is my grandson out of marriage" or "he is the grandson of my estranged sister" etc.
So for the two of them, essentially, it has been decades of them literally being like:
"He's my father"
to
"He's my brother- oh he looks like my father? It is the genes"
to
"Oh! This is my son. Oh he's been living with his other relatives abroad and just came back to help me. It is just a coincidence he looks like my brother" or "Oh, this is my nephew, yeah it is not my brother's, it is another estranged sister's son and he has come to live with me now"
to
"This is my grandson. He's related to so and so/is my son's son and you just haven't seen him yet cuz my son is a little private. Oh, you haven't seen them both together have you?"
Just years of discussing and making back stories and fake relatives until people believe their lies to be the truth.
And Cosmo and Oscar have to also redefine their relationship through every single stage of it, Cosmo to be careful not to call Oscar his dad in front of anyone, to practice again and again so that they don't slip up in front of people, so much so they embody the lies even in the personal conversations even as they speak as father and son.
And they did it well enough that no one but the two of them except for a few Candela member actually knew that Oscar is Cosmo's dad. Even when Madam Glask and Dr. Elsie Roberts were so close to the small family. Don't remember if Cosmo was married and if he was, if his family knew the truth.
Edit: And just to the sheer number of people who have witnessed Oscar die and either come back to life in front of them or see him roaming around the next day because he has died 7 times before Tide and Bone and I don't think any of them would've been in his sleep. Suicide, maybe once or twice but apart from that? I think there would've been witnesses.
To those who read till the end, thank you for being patient enough to read through the rant. And maybe, just maybe, if time permits, I will write a fic about the Stories Cosmo/Oscar have spun over the years for their cover story
