#nate benjamin

(this was absolutely @millportisntreal 's original idea but my version of it is completely separate from hers—having said that, please go read her version because she's actually writing it and it's fucking amazing)

The Beginning

Nathaniel and Joshua Wesninski were interchangeable.

Nobody was certain which one of them was which. Nobody knew which one was older. Nobody could tell them apart. They were, for all intents and purposes, one person duplicated.

I'll tell you a secret, though. In the privacy of their bedroom, the brothers argued. One of them wanted to be his own person. The other wanted them to remain inseparable in every way.

They found a compromise. Abram proposed that they distinguish themselves at Exy practice, and Benjamin agreed.

Abram and Benjamin were similar. They were physically identical in every way, but for the first time in their lives they allowed the slight nuances of their personalities to shine through. They played the same position, but they wore different numbers. Abram and Benjamin were similar, but they finally allowed themselves to be two boys, not one set of identical twins.

Then, Abram disappears.

Benjamin does not know where his brother went, he knows only that he fell asleep in his arms and he woke up cold. As the house heaves with chaos, Benjamin lays there, in their bed—in his bed—stomach whirling with confusion and terror and grief for a very long time, until Nathan comes in and drags him up by his hair.

“Which one are you, boy?”

Benjamin looks into the raging eyes of his father and knows in his gut that he has to survive this. He has to become his father's son.

“Nathaniel,” he lies.

Nathan nods in satisfaction, then backhands him.

Yesterday, Nathaniel did not know what to think of Riko and Kevin. Abram thought they were awe-inspiring, but Nathaniel was never as obsessed with Exy as him. He thought perhaps they were nice, if a bit bossy, and maybe they could be friends. After the four of them watched Nathan torture a man to death, he wasn't so hopeful.

Today, he thinks only of pain. He is used to sharing Abram's punishments. He is not used to taking them all for himself. His brother is not here to apologise for causing him pain. He is not here to promise Nathaniel that he regrets it. Today, Nathaniel it to be true anyway. Tomorrow, he may not have the same faith. But for today, he clings to his love for Abram and his newfound hatred for Riko.

Because Riko is angry. He was supposed to choose which twin he wanted, and that choice has been taken from him. Nathaniel is satisfactory. Good, even. But Joshua is the one that got away, and Riko has always wanted what he cannot have.

Nathaniel is never going to be good enough.

Over the years, Nathaniel grows used to the empty, bleeding wound in his soul and how it pulses painfully each time he wakes in an empty bed. He comes to rely on Exy as some dreadful escape from a life without his brother. In Exy, he and his brother can be one for a little while longer.

He is a backliner. He is Number Three of the Perfect Court. He is Nathaniel Wesninski. He is both twins compressed into one small body that struggles to hold them. He is just one boy.

He grows to resent Joshua for leaving. Each time Riko taunts him with the fact that Joshua should have won and Nathaniel should have died, he resents Joshua for leaving him alive.

Sometimes, when the hits are especially painful, he is glad to take this punishment so that his brother does not have to. Other times, he hates Joshua for it all.

Abram has many different names and many different lives over the years. He runs and he runs and he can never truly leave his brother behind.

Sometimes he reads the articles about Number Three and feels so jealous he can't breathe. Sometimes he thinks about Nathaniel Wesninski, son of Nathan, and feels fear all consuming. Sometimes he remembers his brother, his Ben, and he feels sick with grief.

He has everything that Abram has ever wanted.

Abram thinks it should have been him. Abram thinks Benjamin died when he betrayed them both and decided to become Nathaniel. Abram thinks Nathaniel is lucky.

(the Josten Twins au, part 2)

Nathaniel and Jean understood each other from the moment they met, long before they had a language in common. In each other they saw themselves. A boy with a sibling-shaped gap in his soul. A boy worth only whatever favour the Moriyamas could spare. A boy with no home to his name.

They hated each other.

Jean resented Nathaniel for giving up. Nathaniel loathed Jean for fighting when he didn't have the energy to any longer.

They put each other out of balance, fucked everything up. They were threats.

This hatred lasted mere weeks before Nathaniel got fed up of his rare and precious sleep being disrupted by the quiet sobbing of a broken boy. It shook him straight back to a time he could not afford to remember. He slipped out from under his own, cold covers and padded across the room, resenting how it seemed to stretch into eternity.

Kevin had called him lucky when he got his own room, and Riko told him it was more than he deserved, but Nathaniel disagreed. The space had always felt huge and looming and lonely. He thought it hated him. It seemed to warp and wrap around his emotions like it wanted to choke him. He was certain it would consume him if he didn't sleep with his back pressed tightly against the wall so that he could keep an eye on it.

Then, Jean had moved in, and the room was cavernous between them.

Now, he finally reached the edge of Jean's bed and stood, frozen. Two bleary, watery eyes peeked up at him from under the covers, and Nathaniel expected Jean to lash out at him for interrupting, to scream and shout and throw a pillow at him until he retreated back to his own bed and went back to pretending it was hatred between them and not a soul-deep understanding. He was certain Jean wouldn't tell anyone about this even if he could, so Riko would never learn of his weakness.

But Jean did nothing.

They stared at each other for a long time, unmoving other than the slight shaking in Jean's hand where it gripped the covers under his eyes. Nathaniel breathed, and shoved down the memories of a dead, sobbing boy, a sobbing dead boy, and thought only of his brother, alive and holding him. Each breath unfroze him a little further, until he could jerkily clamber onto the bed and under the covers with Jean.

Jean put up no argument, easily scooching backwards to make space for him, and they stared at each other across the pillow for only a moment before Nathaniel reached across and pulled Jean into him.

His sleep was uneasier than usual, as unused to sharing as he had grown, and with his back to the room, but the lack of sobbing was worth it. Shielding Jean from the world was worth it.

For a little while, the world was small again.

They still didn't like each other. They couldn't, while they were still threats to each other's safety. It wasn't until Riko finally beat Jean into obedience that Nathaniel could allow himself to get close.

He mourned that fire that had lived in him, but it was safer this way, for everyone.

He stood witness as Jean became cold and unfeeling—or tried to—and wished, in the quietest part of himself, that someone had been there to witness his death, too.

By the time they turned sixteen, they knew each other inside and out. They'd given up much more of themselves than they'd ever meant to, and taken nearly as much, and they resented and loved each other for it in equal measure. When Jean had confessed that he liked men as well as women, Nathaniel had cursed him out, slapped him, warned him away from any tendencies that would get him hurt, and then admitted that he was even worse off because he didn't have an attraction to women to fall back on.

Nathaniel and Jean kissed, the summer before they joined the Raven lineup, and got each other off exactly twice before mutually deciding to never try it again. The hazing trial that Riko thought up for them once they did join the Ravens made Nathaniel so sick that he thought he might not like men, after all. He kissed a woman, to at least try it out, and was so disgusted that he never tried again.

(the Josten Twins au, part 3)

Clearly, sharing a face with someone semi-famous is a pretty shitty way to be on the run. Luckily, Nathaniel's face didn't really show up in the news until he joined the Raven lineup, though, when they were sixteen, and by then he was...different.

Abram's breath catches painfully in his chest the first time he sees Nathaniel. He looks so much like their father. That's the first thing he notices. He hadn't missed the auburn hair, or the blue eyes. In all the years he's been on the run, all the years he's been separated from half his soul, all the years he's pretended to be someone he's not, he's never missed the auburn hair and the blue eyes.

He misses the soft smile his brother gave him when they read each other bedtime stories. He misses his brother's genuine laugh when they played. He misses the warm embrace of a body that fits perfectly against his. He misses his Benjamin.

Nathan's Nathaniel is not somebody Abram has any desire to know.

Nathaniel's face is fuller than Abram's, as if he's getting regular athlete's meals and isn't decaying from stress.

His nose has been broken at least once, probably because the only violence he receives is during friendly scrimmages. The violence that Abram receives usually comes in the form of guns, and other things that can kill him. He doesn't often get punches to the face, so his nose has managed to survive all these years unbroken.

His hair is cropped close to his scalp, closer than has ever suited them. Abram starts growing his hair out. He cycles through many different shades of brown. He runs. He survives.

His mother punishes him for having friends. He doesn't have any friends. His mother tells him to act like he's never had a brother. He acts like he's never had a brother. His mother changes him.

It helps. The changes, they help.

Making himself new. Making himself different. Making himself lonely. It helps.

He feels his brother in every step he takes.

Disclaimer for others: this post contains only very very slight spoilers for The Golden Raven (no actual details, just vibes mainly), so I haven't bothered to spoiler tag it but I will put the contents under the readmore

Omg hi Fred!!! Thank you for the askkkkk

This is perhaps the most awkwardly worded sentence ever but from The Josten Twins au: