Alcohol had been in Damien’s life since his childhood-- in his family, for generations.

It could be an alarming thought, but it’s a lot more innocent than it may seem at first glance; he didn’t start drinking until his university days, and not really in excess. At least, not to excess outside of a party.

His father was the mayor for some time. First, he was a councilman-- a path Damien finds uncomfortably similar to his own, years later-- but a politician all the same. Politicians and alcohol go together since time immemorial, and in a much more tolerable way than any of their other vices, to an extent; after all, a bit of social lubricant helps to turn over potential voters as much as a winning smile and the perfectly crafted sentence.

Damien had a skill for it-- part practice, part innate ability, and part grueling training from his father on social graces and charisma-- but his father was good. Sickeningly so.

His father’s charisma only extended so far, of course, and his parties were awash with the stuff, even before Damien became aware of much more than the noise downstairs. It helped to keep people merry, and keeping him in office through their votes and donations kept them rather pleased, in turn. A strange symbiosis, yes, but effective.

Even once he knew that these weren’t simple get togethers, he and his sister sat cloistered in their rooms under the close watch of their nanny, listening close as the band played on, the dull roar of a bunch of adults talking politics. It tapered off eventually, but he couldn’t deny he was curious about the goings-on.

(He was never brave enough to venture down on his own, not with the risk of his father’s wrath looming like a dark cloud. If anyone found them out, a pair of eight-year-olds slipping through the crowd to cause who knew what kind of mischief…

Celine held no such fear, it seemed, as she marched right to him one night, eyes hard as flint and determined. “Nanny’s asleep,” she’d said, reaching out for his arm. “We’re going to go steal some snacks.”

The fear kept him from enjoying the first snack, some piece off a crudite tray that carved the vegetables so to render them unrecognizable; after a few more pieces, and no Father waiting for him when he glanced back over his shoulder, the knots in his shoulders began to loosen.

The food was good, but the champagne they managed to swipe from an inattentive waiter dried his tongue more than a day in the sun. Celine wasn’t so expressive in her distaste, but she’s the one who dumped the rest of the glass into the ficus in the corner.)

He wasn’t sure he would ever be quite so brave as to sneak alcohol again, but university changed things. He was on his own, no father or even mother to watch his every move, the freedom of adulthood calling him just as much as the chance to properly socialize. After all, he’d need to make some good connections if he wanted to follow his dreams, and what better than a college party to do just that?

It seemed like a good idea, at least, until he woke to his alarm clock drilling into his head, the sun itself seemingly on a mission to burn his eyes out of their sockets. His mouth tasted like rot, and sitting up made the room swoop dangerously.

What a day to try and sit and write his midterms. If his friends noticed at all, they had to have chalked it up to late study sessions, because word never got back to his parents about his drinking. If anyone had said anything to his family…

Thankfully, there were few questions, and those that remained were explained away easily enough. A few dropped points were just… the new difficulty getting to him.

He didn’t stop drinking after that, but at the very least he got smarter about it-- never before a planned test, never before returning home, and always chased with plenty of cool water. It spared him the worst of the pains-- eventually, most if not all of the pains-- and kept his grades high enough to be above suspicion.

His friend, the lightweight, was never so lucky, but he was happy to stick around and tend them while they were miserable.

The relationship matured as he did, through his underclass graduation and his graduate’s. Drinking didn’t vanish entirely, no, but he was too busy to drink quite so much at these social gatherings, and the interest was shifting from getting as drunk as possible to relax, and more towards alcohol as a concept.

No, it wasn’t an obsession, but it was a fascination. These elixirs held such power, taking commerce and politics by storm, capable of enrapturing scores of people before they realized, taking their higher function and suppressing it. A simple potion-- really a poison-- taken so regularly, all in the name of purported social grace and amusement.

Incredible.

He studied composition, creation, and set up small stations in his basement to experiment.

A station for beers, both hoppy and malted, provided lightly bubbly and yeasty drinks-- not the most to his taste, but rather easy, comparatively.

Next came meads, wines-- fermented juices, fruit under the right conditions creating something much more complex. They were a little better, whether from experience or more to his taste. His friend favored these tiny bottles, sweet and flavorful.

It’s ironic, in some way, that the day he bottled his first attempt at a vodka was the day that ‘U.S. Is Voted Dry’ graced the front page of the paper lying on his front porch.

Obviously, he hadn’t been in agreement. Excess gave way to trouble, sure, but the mere existence of the stuff wasn’t a sin in his eyes; besides, he had full notebooks of notes, ideas, further experiments. Why should he give up his mostly-harmless hobby for a bunch of people he hardly agreed with at the best of times?

He kept his work in the cellar, where it always was; literal underground work wasn’t likely to bring him under any suspicion, and his status as a newly-minted councilman with sights on mayorship didn’t hurt his efforts to remain secret. With his reputation-- and to his chagrin, his pedigree-- no one would imagine him breaking the law, of all people.

He kept his head down, working on his pet project now and then as his duties drew him a bit further every day-- not enough to quit the endeavor all together, but cutting down on his output. Even then, anything he didn’t keep to test, or have a tiny glass of after a rough night, went straight down the drain.

Then, one day, Mark came to him.

“They stopped supplying my parties,” he said, blowing in like an errant wind, the door nearly slamming into the wall behind it from the force of his entrance. “Can you make brandy?”

Damien looked over the back of his chair, eyes wide. He had an open-door policy for Mark, among a few others, but… he couldn’t have really been asking what he imagined he’d heard. “Excuse me?”

Mark huffed, sweeping further into his home and only stopping a spare moment to tug off his shoes. “Your floors will be fine,” he grumbled, finally coming around to him in the living room. “Can you make brandy? Or vodka? Gin? Rum? Hell, I’d even take a bottle of your mead, if you haven’t already given it to--”

“Mark, what makes you think I make any alcohol, let alone keep it any longer?” He set down his book, resigned to the fact that he may not finish it this evening as he’d planned. “Didn’t you read the papers? Prohibition’s been in effect for a few weeks.”

“Damien.” Mark gave him his ‘suitably unimpressed’ stare. “You can fool everyone you like about your hobbies-- everyone except your nearest and dearest.”

“You are my nearest and dearest?”

The look shifted from unimpressed to withering. “I know you brew it. You never stopped, and you’re still brewing it. Will you give me some of it? I’ll pay you.”

That was the thing about Mark-- he never gave up, not once he caught the scent. A bit like a bloodhound, really, or a shark; talented as he may have been, he got every last bit of his prestige through that determination.

A bit of guile and ruthlessness didn’t hurt him much, either.

Damien sighed, reaching up a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose. It only just lessened the throbbing pain. “You’ll get it out of me one way or another. I have a mead I was experimenting with… would that happen to suffice?”

Mark grinned.

His order was small, really, hardly more than a favor: that single bottle of mead, as quickly as he could make it taste nice. It didn’t need to be especially fancy, nor specially flavored during his aging process. It just needed to be enough alcohol to supply a toast among fellow actors, celebrating a job well done and a brutal schedule finally coming to an end. As Damien had done much the same after long debates, he let it go. “It’s a gift,” he said, as an excited Mark reached into his pockets. “Congratulations on your film, and all. Besides-- it’s just one bottle.”

That’s all it seemed to be for a short while-- a one-off deal to help celebrate his friend’s blooming career. Then, scant weeks before the mead would be aged to his liking…

Well, he really needed this one done, Damien. A few bottles, for some producers; if he was ever to get his new script off the ground, he must have some friends willing to hand over capital. A brown spirit would be best, something really fine and old and expensive-- he was willing to pay.

Never mind that those brown spirits need years of aging, and never mind that he wasn’t trying to either get arrested or blow the roof off of his own home due to the buildup of fumes in the basement. Especially never mind that Mark, himself, is independently wealthy from his fame, with his sprawling home as proof.

“I can do you an orange brandy,” he’d said, instead. “It’s not going to be aged at all, but they’ll like it for after dinner. Just give me your oranges.”

Eau de vie doesn’t take years, thankfully, and with the amount of orange trees covering Mark’s estate… he had his bottles just in time to impress.

Of course, Damien kept his distillers going, because once is a favor, but twice, and so soon, is the start of a pattern. Mark found a source, and Damien knew better than to expect he’d let go so soon.

By the time Mark showed up with an invitation to poker and a burning question on his lips, he’d already bottled up some more brandy, a bottle of gin, some vodka. “You were going to ask,” he said, world-weary as Mark looked over the bottles with delight. “I thought I’d be prepared.”

All this being said, he didn’t really mind bringing along alcohol to those poker nights. He could enjoy the fruits of his labor and good company besides, let loose after the still-worthwhile grind of council busywork; even after he stopped-- which was a police matter and the single stain on his pristine reputation, and not something he liked recounting-- he still provided the drink in some way, whether sourcing out others in the same underground industry or serving the drinks, themselves.

Learning the balance of spirits wasn’t easy, but it came along with something unexpectedly: learning that they told a story, the story of whomever drank them. Certain people gravitated towards flavors, styles, presentations, all as particular and distinct as their fashion choices, their other preferences.

Of course, we know now that not all twins are strictly identical, veritable clones of one another and of the same sex. They don’t have to be the same sort of person in temperament, interests, style, or whatever else; a pair of twins can be as opposite as the poles of a magnet, with only the circumstances of their birth enough to tell you otherwise.

This is the case with Damien and Celine, but even then… many would be hard-pressed to believe them on it.

They don’t look much as all alike. Celine is shorter, small enough of frame to be considered slight, and a good deal paler than her twin, despite the same lineage. For his part, Damien rests at the shorter side of average, but maintains a broader, stronger figure than that of at least one of his friends-- he could never match up to Wil, even if he wished it, but Mark’s no challenge.

Her father’s coloring with her mother’s features, and his, the exact opposite.

She dresses in flowing, deep color, and his favor rests with the straight lines of a nicely-tailored suit.

She holds a taste for the macabre, the mysterious, and he busies himself with the mundane and realistic.

She’s the braver, the bolder, the more outspoken of them both, and Damien…

Found it much more of a struggle.

The air is tense. It rests heavy in the ornate dining room, the singular sound of cutlery sawing through meat and vegetables bouncing off the cavernous walls, coming back to him.

Celine, across from him, almost seems bored, methodically cutting apart her meal as if, a scant thirty minutes ago, she and her father hadn’t been nearly at blows. Still, she resolutely isn’t looking at any of them-- it has to be affecting her somehow, he just knows it.

His mother, at the foot of the table, says nothing. It’s regrettably her default state, these days, but with the energy radiating from her partner at the opposite end, feet interspersed with various dishes, he must wonder if it’s self-preservation or fury that stills her tongue.

He can’t make himself look down towards his father. Celine can rage and act aloof all she likes, but he can’t bring himself to lie-- he’s very frightened of the man. He’s held the power for years on end, over both this city and his own family, and if Damien’s ever going to get out from under his thumb-- unlikely-- it’s certainly not by rocking the boat, as it were.

His supper is an alright place to look, though, and he pays far too much attention to his fork and knife. Saw the meat, back and forth, but he can’t go too quickly; if he scrapes the plate, that jagged and earsplitting sound will equally split the tension in the air, and the aftermath won’t be pretty. Stay calm, stay polite, stay out of the way, and you just might make it through-- he’s learned that tactic quite well.

The dish of peas scoots towards him, and the tablecloth bunches. He doesn’t pay it too much mind-- he still has his own scoop sitting there, untouched, on his plate-- until it scoots again and several tiny peas spill over, stark green against white, one rolling to the edge of his plate.

He blinks at it a moment, the spell broken, and then looks up.

His mother places a bite delicately in her mouth in lieu of saying a word, but her eyes flick from his plate to him-- once, twice.

It may be difficult, out in the world, but his mother’s non-verbal communication has never escaped him-- likely through necessity. The bite he’d been sawing away at has come free, sitting on his fork; likely, any futher action would bring about that awful shriek he’s trying to avoid. Thankful for her help, he brings it to his own mouth.

Salty, savory, well-cooked-- it’s enough to stir his appetite all over again.

“Tomorrow, I’ll be making a call to that school.”

At once, his father’s voice turns the flavorful food to ash and dust in his mouth, and he struggles to swallow around the sudden dryness of his throat.

To her credit, Celine doesn’t start at that, retaining her disinterested expression as she expertly slices up more of her meal. “You’re free to do so, but I won’t be going. Like I said.”

“You will.” His voice comes as a roll of thunder down the table, a warning, and the hair standing up on the back of Damien’s neck could just as easily be from the lightning as it is from fear. “I’m trying to make something of the two of you, and you’ve been resistant at every turn. It ends now, Celine.”

“No, it won’t.” She looks up at him, finally, her eyes cool. “I want nothing to do with politics or any such thing. I have my own passions worth following, thank you.”

Damien keeps his eyes firmly on Celine, but he can’t stop from flinching as his father’s chair scrapes back from the table; he doesn’t need to look to know he’s looming over the end, dark and terrible.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he seethes. “You have to, because at the very least I can make something of you, unlike your brother--”

In an instant, the thunder ceases, the crackling electricity falling out of the air, as everyone in the room simply stares.

Celine, face twisted in barely-restrained, icy fury, sets down her newly-emptied water glass so hard that it cracks from the crystalline base. “I don’t have to do anything,” she hisses. “I’m leaving, and good riddance. Clean yourself up-- you have a meeting tomorrow, Father, and you really don’t want to miss this one.”

She whirls away, frosty air and an unsettling silence left in her wake, her shoes echoing down the polished hall until, finally, the slam of a door silences them.

Damien swallows hard and chances a look at his father.

He doesn’t make to move, but a tendon in his jaw twitches, eyes hard as flint, even as drops of water roll down his nose and off his chin. The thundercloud has stalled in place, headed off by the cold, but that can only last so long. It’ll come for him, eventually, like it always does.

But if she can just go, can just stand in the face of the thing that tore him down for years...

Before he can stop himself, he rises from his own chair, hardly worrying about the shriek against the tile. “I ought to go and follow her, see if I can… talk to her,” he explains, too full of nervous energy to quail before the look his father gives him. He swallows again, letting it course through him. “Water might ruin that tie. I would take her advice.”

The brief courage fails him, then, and he hurries off for the door, but not before he catches sight of his mother.

His mother, braving that storm every single day, even before they did. Who remained quiet and calm, because any push back might transfer more onto her children.

His mother, who gives him a smile just like his sister’s, because it was hers first: all-knowing, satisfied, proud.

He turns, and runs after his sister.

It’s easy enough to catch up with her; he has longer legs, and she hasn’t gotten very far. In fact, as he slows his jog under a gas lamp, she’s already turned to face him.

“I’m not coming back,” she says, matter of fact, eyeing him as if she expects him to try and change her mind.

The eyebrow she raises when he shakes his head makes him grin. It’s always fun to surprise Celine-- she always seems a few steps ahead of everyone else, though whether that’s through her machinations or some mystical ability, he can’t say. “I know you aren’t. I just wanted to talk to you, before…”

At that, she gives him the smallest smile, stance relaxing as she steps up beside him. “Sure. Come with me, little brother-- I need a drink.”

These days, it’s only proper to escort a woman after dark, but from the moment they step into the smoky bar, it’s very clear he’s the one being escorted; Celine strides in with a ripple of her lacy cape, paying no mind to the gentleman who raised their eyes to their intrusion.

They go back to whatever they were doing, but it leaves Damien a bit on edge as he picks out his barstool beside Celine.

He waits until she’s through ordering to speak up, the weight of her words truly settling in. “You’re leaving. For… good, this time, yes?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t look at him, keen eyes watching as the barkeep tosses the ingredients into a metal cup. “I thought you didn’t think I was coming back.”

“No, I do, and it’ll be good for you, it’s just…” The words remain lodged behind a knot in his chest, grappling with the idea that his sister will be gone. It isn’t until the drink-- some pale green thing in a frosty glass-- is in her hand that it loosens enough for him to speak. “I’ll miss you. I don’t know what I’ll do without you around to be the brave one.”

She eyes him behind the glass, savoring the drink for a few long moments. It feels like she’s reading deep into him, like no matter what, she’ll know everything about him. “You came after me.”

Damien frowns, confused. “Yes?”

“Against our father. You were scared to death all night, but you still came after me.” Finally, she smiles, something real and rare. “You’ll be the brave one, too-- you are.”

He doesn’t feel very brave, his stomach twisting in his middle at the thought of the strangers here, his angry father at home, university starting soon. Then again… “Well, I did say he’d ruin his tie if he waited any longer to change,” he starts, smiling himself as she chuckles. “By the way, about his meeting… does that have something to do with you?”

Celine snorts. “It takes no precognition to tell his awful manner was coming back to bite him, someday. I’ve heard people talking. It just seemed now was the time they might finally take the chance.”

“So, you aren’t actually magic?” He teases.

She smiles, her self-satisfied smile. “I didn’t say that. College will be very good to you. Here,” she continues, holding out her drink. “Try it. It’s better than the champagne.”

He does, because he knows university is rife with the stuff, and his sister won’t steer him wrong. It’s sharp, cold enough to sting, but under the zest is something sweet.

He raises the glass in salute to her, and she leaves it raised when she takes it back. She’s not going away forever, not completely, but in the meantime, he’ll take on the world. Just like she would.

--------

Gin Gimlet

--

50ml/2oz gin

25ml/1oz lime cordial

or 25ml/0.5oz each lime juice and simple syrup

Add ingredients to shaker with ice. Shake sharply and return to frosted martini glass.