you help me lose my mind • copernicus & jasper

Hell has always been cold. Icicles through my veins, snowflakes drying before they reached hollow cheeks, evaporating into nothing like I so often wish to be. To freeze to death seems like an agonizing end- not for what it is but for what it means. The isolation and hopelessness that has snuck into my bloodstream through the neck of a bottle and whiskey stopped making me feel good a while ago. Now, it is my vice- a cure to which I depend completely. It stops the itching in my palms, the racing of my heart, it stops the pounding in my head so that I may finally think as a normal person. So that I may do as they do.

But hell has always been cold. It's been four years since anyone washed these bed sheets. I can tell because it smells just like him. Bittersweet blueberries hidden upon lips as red as a cherry and passion was like fire between the both of us. No touch was without a spark- the melting of the barricade that most everyone knew I had crafted; the breaking of the walls that he kept hidden so much better than I. We were not perfect- not even four years later do I think that his lips upon mine would free me from such a frigid plain rife with apathy and fear, but anything is better than this.

This cold, cold hell.

When I sit up my head spins and for a moment I'm tempted to take another drink from the near-empty bottle nestled upon my nightstand with as much care as I would have given a lover. It's pathetic how precious these things have become to me, acting as company when the nights grow long and to set myself on fire is the only way to stop from burning alive.

And it's been four years since I've seen my brother by soul, cousin by blood. Some nights, I remember calling simply to hear the sound of my own voice- to remember that there was someone other than me and Oblivion and the criminals I pursued. Some nights, I remember calling him but none of the words that spilt from between bitter lips made any sense whatsoever. I think the latter was much more common than I'd like to admit.

I think I'll die if I stay another second, listening to his laughs echo upon walls that begin to sway whenever I close my eyes. They creep closer and closer and I know that they are trying to suffocate me. To save me from this suffering but I am too much of a coward to die and so instead I stand, tracing worn bones in a mirror and brushing my hair until it is free of imperfections.

I'm not the Jasper that left Copernicus behind. He had a rounder face- short, dark hair that was kept away from his eyes and gelled into place because that is what his father wanted to see. I stopped giving a shit right after I fled. This Jasper's face is broader- jawline more pronounced with bags beneath his eyes and a worried expression permanently settled upon the bridge of his nose. His hair is long and unkempt, dyed a thousand different colors whenever he grew to hate the man staring back at him in the mirror.

Today it's blue.

And I'm starting to hate him again.

Change is only ever running away from the truth stowed behind such a pretty mask.

I used to crawl through his window- whenever his father was too harsh and curfew was set for some ridiculous hour. The marks made by smaller feet, by hands grasping at expensive plaster was there and the climb up to Copernicus' room was much easier than I remember.

The window isn't open- I can't help but feel a bit of a twinge in the hollow pit of my stomach at the revelation. How long ago was it that Copernicus started locking the window, sure that I would not be coming by in the dead of night when only crickets were awake to sing their melodies? He was sixteen when I left him, and four years changes a lot. But it hurts.

Nonetheless, the butt of my gun shatters the glass with some effort- clearing out the sharp bits of window and crawling through the man-made opening while slicing my palm open only twice. Fieldwork has left me more than capable of breaking and entering, fieldwork has left me capable of so much more.

I've propped myself up on his bed- back against a pillow and eyes fluttering by the time the door finally opens. His silhouette is not that of my little brother and for a second I think I have somehow intruded upon an actual robbery. My heart crawls into my my throat with painful vigor- head pounding hands shaking by the time they touch the hilt of my firearm.

I have ended all too many lives with the same trembling fingers.

But when he speaks- I know the voice well. A different pitch perhaps but the same annoyed tone that brings a genuine laugh past open lips and into the silence around us. "What do you want?"

I'm quiet for a second, trying to choke the desperate words that have been boiling within my cheeks from the moment I set foot into a past that I have been running from for far too long. "My brother." I mumble and curse myself for letting such childish words escape in a room that is occupied by two adult strangers.

Even if I don't want to believe it, we are not the men I left behind.

And I know that I hurt him.

"...if that is what you still want to be."

He would not be the first to decide he's better off without. He would not be the last. And that is what I have been running from, all these years.

When we were kids this was all so simple. Our problems were shared between whispers and jokes and to let the pain roll off our backs like beads of blood down skin was the point of it all. Though my tone is so cynical, I know, looking back on the days when I was happy because there was nothing about my life that should have made me as such. My father was cold, like a statue with cruel smiles carved into his cheeks and the realization that I have become an image so similar is one I have long since pushed deep into the back of my skull. My brothers were cruel, sinking fists into my flesh, locking me away within dark caverns for long hours- and those hours became days after Lilac was no longer around to show me even a fraction of the kindness that she was allowed to show. (Father would have called me weak, had I done the same.)

The first party I ever attended was with Oblivion. We were high school kids, I had just moved out of my fathers house and the bruises upon my skin were finally given time to fade. And I remember the smell of it, alcohol, the bitter and angry scent that made my stomach churn and it made Oblivion change. I did not like that. One drink, two, I don't remember how many I had but the way it made me feel was something sickening. Evil. I hated it so much that the lights began to burn the backs of my eyes and I thought I was going to be sick and so I ran out the door and braced myself upon the sidewalk, unable to keep the tears that I had hidden so well behind a stone facade from crawling onto the pavement.

He followed me, of course he did. I cannot make sense of him now, all the years we spent together- all of his pretending must have taken some sort of toll on him. I was just too lovesick a fool to see it. That must be what it was. All the same the feeling of his arms around me is something that I am incapable of forgetting- the way our bodies fit together was enough to stop the panic crawling up my throat in vile waves. (I don't like it.) I told him, hiding my face within his shoulder and holding him so tight that maybe I knew one day I would be without him. (You change, I change. I don't like drinking.)

I was eighteen when I started drinking again. The man I had become was a man weak and broken- a pathetic man that was not worthy of the world and so I drank to change. To become something stronger and better, whatever father wanted. I had no reason to rebel against him now that Oblivion was married and I was alone.

Copernicus is still sixteen in my head- glasses rested upon peculiar eyes. Ones that seemed to look right into your very core. He saw through the bullshit that was the perfect child I pretended to be for my father and, although we are no more than cousins by blood, we have been brothers for as long as I can remember. He's come into his own, the four years I've been gone. It hurts so much to see how he has changed and to know how much he must have come to resent me for running away from it all. From him. Leaving him with a monster for a father and not a soul to tell.

We were both boys the last time I had seen him. But now his shoulders are broad, I can make out his silhouette in the dull light cast upon this ebony night by an ivory moon. Perhaps we have both changed a great deal. And I am always running from my reflection only because I know exactly what is there. He is strong, with a body carved from bullets and blood- looking much like what every teenage boy would yearn to be. At first glance, he seems to be a hero. Medals pinned upon the breast of his white coat- detailing stories of bravery and self-sacrifice. And his hair is long- perhaps a feeble act of rebellion against my father who always insisted it be kept short and natural. All semblance of youth has drained from his face- replaced with light etchings of thin white scars and high cheekbones carved from slim cheeks.

My heart sinks when I smell it. See his hands wrapped around the neck of a bottle and perhaps I am a bit angry that he pours himself a glass of golden poison when I know damn well he has seen the way it has destroyed everything good about his older brother. I say nothing, however, shifting uncomfortably to turn my body away from the sight of it. I know that I sell my soul to the devil with every sip of rum but I would have at least thought that Copper was smarter than that. He was always smarter than me.

"I was engaged to an artist." I drawl, standing up and searching for the light switch upon his bedroom wall because I cannot stand to sit in darkness any longer. It begins to eat me alive, see, without a flame to keep my demons distracted. I can see him so much better once yellow light floods the dead of night- how much he has grown and how handsome he's become. I smile in spite of myself, keeping my eyes away from the glass in his hand or the bottle in the cart. (You change, I change. I don't like drinking.) "I have always been in love with that world, of songs and art and fairy tales with happy endings. But you know that."

I'm not quite sure why he bothered to ask.

"I don't know how to feel, about you growing so much." I cock my head to the side, frown tugging at the corners of dry lips. "Not that I have any right to be angry that life here kept on, even without me to ruin it. To raise proper hell." Even though I was the perfect son to my father I missed no chance to color outside the lines when his eyes were turned away.

"How are you? How is the pretty boy you're so sweet on?" Copernicus cannot lose his muse as well- the world cannot possibly be so cruel. Or, perhaps it is crueler to let him grow attached to what he can never have. Better than anyone I know how much it hurts to have the one you love wed another.

I hate that the world has become nothing but grey and the lines which I yearn to stay within have lost themselves in the mess.