Genre: fantasy
Language: English
Length: 1768 words
Published: 2023

When the confession comes, it’s not anything like Zsiga pictured. It’s not the best case scenario – he knew he’d never have that –, nor is it the worst, where Béla yelling at him would let him yell back and shake him until neither of them is holding back anything any more.

There’s no build up, no movie, no refreshing family argument to clear the air before laughing it off and starting afresh with all secrets laid bare. No music, no alcohol to soften the blow. The beers he had in the evening haven’t left behind even a buzz in his head, let alone that liquid courage he likes to find in the drink.

It’s just him. Just him and Béla.

The five feet between them could be the distance between continents.

His childhood bedroom has never felt less safe, not even when father’s drunken yelling carried up the stairs after their crying mother, running past the door so close that Zsiga’s hair stood on end until her steps faded away.

”You don’t mean what you just said,” Béla says. For all its quietness his voice has a pleading edge to it.

”You know that I do.”

”Zsiga—”

”Don’t.”

Zsiga stares up at him with hollow eyes. Béla has always been the taller one, but from this angle he towers over Zsiga. He has never terrified Zsiga, not with his gentle hands and soft voice that kept nightmares at bay through sleepless nights, but he can’t bring himself to meet Béla’s eye, and knows at once it’s fear. Fear for what he’ll see on that familiar face.

The silence stretches on and on.

”How long has this continued?” Béla eventually asks.

Zsiga shrugs. ”It has always been there.”

”Always?”

It hurts, hearing the pain in Béla’s voice and how it breaks under the strain.

”I think I knew when I was 13, 14, something like that,” Zsiga says, and the memories, though faded, come back to him as easily as flipping through a photo album. ”You were here the whole summer, because father couldn’t leave the office most days.”

”Was it… Was it something I did?”

”Heavens, no. You didn’t do anything.” He shakes his head. That’s the one thing he’s one hundred percent certain about – that it’s no fault of Béla’s. Béla was just there, existing, unaware of the snowball his presence got rolling down the hill. ”I don’t know when it started. When you came home, I suppose.”

Béla actually flinches. ”The spring I moved back?”

”Yeah, I think that was it.”

Zsiga risks one proper look at him, despite knowing he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, and confirms his hypothesis with laughable accuracy. There is dawning horror in Béla’s eyes. Zsiga turns away and pretends not to see the moisture gathering there.

”But I’m your… We’re…” Béla tries, voice hitching. It borders on hysterical; it’s a pitch Zsiga’s never heard in it before.

”I didn’t know you, Béla. You’d always been just a name – a signature on the backside of a bloody postcard.” Zsiga sighs irritably. ”Sit down, for heaven’s sake. I don’t want to address your midriff while having this conversation, if we have to have it.”

Béla staggers back and throws himself in the old threadbare armchair in front of the window. Whether it’s a conscious choice or not, he’s putting as much distance between them as he can, and it’s Zsiga’s turn to hurt. All this time it has been Béla’s closeness that has hurt the most, now it’s the reverse.

”How?” Béla finally asks after the silence has become overwhelming. ”When?”

Another sigh. ”Why do you want to know?”

”I’m just… I’m trying to understand. It’s a lot to take in.” He runs his fingers through his thick, brown hair and makes a mess of it. It sticks up exactly like Zsiga’s own does, all the swirls and waves in the same places as his. ”Merlin’s name, Zsiga. I didn’t think… I never thought that… Just. Bloody hell. Fuck.”

Zsiga lifts his legs on the bed and crosses them. ”Mum and dad barely talked about you all those years, you know. You were just another face in the photobook, someone who sent birthday cards and declined invitations to Winter Solstice dinners. I didn’t know you. There were just Gizi and I, until all of a sudden dad tells us we’re cleaning up the extra room, because you’re moving back in.” There’s no emotion in his voice. He’s just stating facts, facts that he’s turned around in his head so many times over the years that they no longer bother him. ”And then you were here. I remember holding Gizi’s hand when dad walked you to the drawing room and wondering, who is this person?”

”I remember,” Béla says softly. ”You both looked at me like I was a stranger.”

”You were a stranger, Béla,” Zsiga interrupts him. ”I had no memories of you whatsoever. I didn’t know who you were. You just showed up all of a sudden, without any explanation, and dad expected us to start playing family like it was no big deal.”

He hears how Béla inhales sharply, and takes twisted pleasure in knowing how the words must sting.

”So I moved back. What came next?” Béla asks.

”To me, it felt like you were here all the time, this handsome stranger that everyone expected me to treat like we knew each other. It was hard. I couldn’t even talk to you the first few weeks. I just stared at you when you weren’t looking and ran away as soon as you noticed.”

”I’d nearly forgotten how shy you were back then.”

Zsiga nearly smiles, then catches himself just in time. ”I remember thinking how lucky we were that you’d moved here. When mum and dad fought, we would hide in your room, Gizi and I. You’d read us stories and make us forget how scared we were. When we were sent off to school, you were the only one who sent us letters.” Something twists painfully in his gut and the next words come in a rush, ”I think I knew, then. Not all of a sudden, but little by little, over time. I looked at you and thought you were the most important person in my life. Someone who actually gave a shit about me, looked after me. You were the first thought in my head when I woke up in the morning and the last one before I fell asleep at night. I never wanted you to leave. I wanted you all to myself so badly, I hid all your letters and never touched them unless I was alone, and then I read them over and over again till I could recite them from memory.”

Béla is looking at him almost expectantly, without interrupting his stream of consciousness. Their eyes meet briefly and Béla just nods, once, and Zsiga takes a steadying breath.

”I think I realised it properly only when Kim and I broke up, you know. That I looked at you the same way I’d looked at her. As a guy. As someone I liked that way.” He swallows. Years have dulled the shame, but saying it out loud feels strange all the same. ”I never looked at you and saw my brother. You were always Béla to me. Just Béla.”

Béla has buried his face in his hands. Even in this dim light it’s easy to tell he’s shaking visibly.

”All these years?” he asks, voice heavy with anguish.

”All this time.”

”Merlin’s name, Zsiga.”

Zsiga laughs, a hollow, mirthless sound. ”I’m not going to apologise, if that’s what you want to hear.”

That seems to snap Béla out of his misery, because he looks up. His eyes are red-rimmed, his expression pained, but some of the familiar softness lingers in him when he meets Zsiga’s gaze. No disgust, no hatred, no pity. Just pain.

”No, I don’t want you to apologise,” Béla says, and Zsiga knows he means it. ”It’s not your fault.”

”It’s not yours, either.”

”I suppose not.” Béla sighs and runs a hand through his hair again. ”I don’t know what to say. All these years and I had no idea. It’s… It’s just so much to take in.”

”Do you hate me now?”

”Of course not!” He sounds shocked. ”I could never hate you.”

I wish you would, Zsiga thinks, but keeps it to himself.

They lapse into silence, listening to the endless tick-tock-tick-tock of the grandfather clock down the hall. It tolls ten o’clock, the sudden chiming loud against the silence of the house. Eventually, Béla gets up somewhat unsteadily. He crosses his arms, then uncrosses them and stuffs his hands in his jeans pockets, as if uncertain what to do with them. Or the rest of himself.

”I think,” he says slowly. ”I think it best if we spent some time apart.” Zsiga’s head shoots up, but Béla continues before he can speak up. ”Just for a few days. Just until the dust settles, you know.”

”You’re upset.”

”I’m not upset. I just need time to think. To adjust.”

”Adjust to what?”

Zsiga doesn’t mean to shout, but it comes out like a gunshot regardless. He gets up, too. He takes a tentative step toward Béla, heart hammering painfully in his chest, but Béla steps back, holding up his hands.

”Give me time,” Béla says, and there it is again, that pleading note to his voice.

”I’ve given you time already. Eighteen bloody years.”

I’ve waited so long, Zsiga adds in his head, and it hurts, it hurts all over again.

”I need time,” Béla repeats dully. A step, two, three towards the door. ”Please. I just need to be alone for a bit. Do some thinking.”

He’s at the doorstep when Zsiga spits out a desperate, ”I love you.”

Zsiga says it like a curse, and at the moment it is, because even though Béla doesn’t return his feelings, they both react to it the same way – by pushing away from each other. It breaks something between them in its finality like nothing else has.

Béla looks like he wants to run away. ”I’m sorry. I just… I just can’t be what you want me to be.”

”Likewise.”

He opens his mouth as if to say something more, but nothing comes out. He shakes his head, turns around, and goes down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Zsiga slumps back down on the bed as he hears the front door open and close, and he knows that Béla’s not coming back home tonight.