Haha... don't be too mad. I just couldn't write more than a few words of each story. It's bad when you get writer's block so earlier. xD Forgive me, kay? Enjoy the new chapter, anyone still interested in this. o.o

-o-

“Is that what you meant by cake?” I asked Mars, who stood on my doorstep with a bag of various types of alcohol that looked like it might rip at any moment in his arms.

“Well, baby brother,” he chirped, sliding past me and in to the house, “I was going to get you a cake. But then I thought, ‘Hey, who needs all the calories and fat of a cake?’ So I bought alcohol instead! We’re going to have fun today.”

I closed the door and paused to look at him as if he were stupid.

My big brother Mars. What was there to say about him that couldn’t be explained by his looks? He was tall, well-built, had perfectly straightened blonde hair, and a pair of expressive blue eyes. He had a perfect complexion and a nice tan that wasn’t too dark or too pale. He practically radiated self confidence. My complete opposite. Short, ugly, too small Matthias with the unruly brown-red hair and pale green eyes could never really measure up to his perfect big brother. But it was really pointless to spend any more time in my life hating him for it. I loved my big brother, in all his strangeness. I had learned to stop being jealous and just accept the ugly me, the Matthias that stood in his brother’s shadow and wasn’t noticed.

“Mars, you know I don’t drink.”

He looked mildly offended that I had said that as if I were speaking to a small child, but perked up right away. “I know, but it’s unheard of. I mean, most people are ecstatic to be able to drink legally. Hell, any sane person is glad to drink at all. Not to mention you’ve been able to do so for two years now. What kind of college kid are you, anyway?”

Not a very sane one, I thought grumpily. I could still feel the alcohol that had been poured on my head the night before, clinging to my neck and making my hair dry and nasty. I probably smelled like shit, too. I wondered briefly why Mars hadn’t mentioned it, but attributed his lack of teasing to his utter stupidity and wandered in to the kitchen after him.

He hummed as he set out a serious amount of alcohol on my counter top, ranging from Smirnoff to Captain Morgan to some foreign shit I couldn’t pronounce. Just the thought of drinking again made me feel woozy. Yeah, I had been in to drinking a little at one point in my life. Not an entirely legal one, either. But somewhere along the line I had watched my friends do stupid things like get drunk and wake up with STDs, or drive cars into telephone poles and end up working for entire summers to pay for the damage.

And I decided I didn’t want any part of that.

I plunked myself on to a stool and watched him warily. “To tell you the truth, I forgot... that I had a birthday today.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, baby brother. You’ve always been a little out of the box. I remember that time when you were eleven, you got the shit kicked out of you and everyone picked on you for it all day. Then, when you came home, everyone jumped out and yelled, ‘Happy Birthday!’ You didn’t come out of your room for a week.” He stopped to dig through my pile of CDs and I decided that he knew just how to pry open an old wound with a rusty knife and pour bleach in it without actually realizing just what he was doing.

He popped in a CD I didn’t remember buying and I winced as some random screamo band filled my ears with head-splitting noise.

“I’ll hide you in my walls, your body will never be found. I’ll wear your skin as a suit” Mars sang, grinning at me. “Pretend to be you, your friends will like you more than they used to.”

The sad truth was that they probably would.

“So, what shall we start with?” he asked, a finger toying with his lip ring in thought. I just stared at him miserably and shrugged. He hummed softly and picked up the Captain Morgan and a large bottle of Coke that had been sitting on my counter since only God knows when and poured some of both in to a red plastic cup. I stared at it when he handed it over to me. In it, I could see my doubts and fears and what could possibly be the end of my short life. Or not. I could really on ly see brown stuff that resembled innocent Coke, but smelled like intelligence-raping rum.

“Mom and Dad said they were sorry they couldn’t make it,” he said simply and drank some of his own concoction. I didn’t need to see his eyes to tell he was lying to me. My parents never bothered to remember when they gave birth to the second child. Mars usually reminded them anyway, despite my pleading for him not to. I had never wanted to be their burden. If celebrating the day I was born was too much to ask for, then I didn’t care.

“It doesn’t matter. I have enough to deal with just having you here,” I muttered, still staring at my drink in distaste.

“Isn’t that the truth?” he laughed happily, marching off to the living room and sitting on the couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table as I started to move. “I’ve been dreaming about you in a pool of your own blood, with your eyes gouged out by the work of my thumbs. The scent of your insides from under the floorboards; the perfect perfume for settling a score! You know, we should watch a movie or something. To clear your head of all he depressive shit I know is running through it.”

I raised an eyebrow at him and sighed when he launched toward my DVDs, tearing out and throwing ones he thought were crap and ones he thought I shouldn’t own at all. “Your taste in movies hasn’t changed,” he muttered, picking out The Butterfly Effect and opening it. “This movie earns so many brownie points. Ashton Kutcher nearly naked for my very gay brother and a ton of psychobabble bullshit for my own enjoyment.”

“M’not gay,” I said half-heartedly, biting my bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed.

He laughed and spun around. “Right! You keep thinking that, baby brother.” He popped the movie in and pressed play, then hopped back on the couch. The music that had been playing switched off, making me sigh in relief.

“Don’t worry, I will.”

About twenty minutes in to the movie, a noise drifted from the bedroom. An anguished moan, either coming from someone seriously hung over or someone on the receiving end of a really good fuck. Unless my walls were really thin and the old people next door decided to suddenly renew their sex life, I had a good feeling it was the former.

Mars paused the movie and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Is somebody else here?”

I could imagine my face went pale as snow right then. Aram. Shit. “Um... no. Not the last time I checked.” I really wasn’t a very good liar, whereas my brother was the King of All Liars. I knew he didn’t believe it, but I managed to stop myself from laughing nervously when he gave me ‘the look.’ The same one my parents used to give me, where even if I was telling the truth they’d look at me, eyes bulging, and I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.

The sound of puking began then and continued for a minute or two, but I imagined it was nothing but dry heaving and his sobbing. He couldn’t have had anything left in his stomach. I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if he was missing an organ or two, even if it was supposedly impossible.

“Right. And now you’re going to tell me that your walls are extremely thin and that’s your neighbor,” Mars deadpanned.

“Um... yes?” I murmured.

“You have ten seconds to tell me who is here, baby brother. I’m hurt that you don’t want me to meet them, so if you won’t introduce me, I’ll just have to find whoever the fuck it is myself, won’t I?” he said, a smirk tugging at his lips.

“Matth-Matthias?” A whimper. We both turned in the direction of it, and I felt like puking, while my brother’s eyes widened so much they looked as though they would’ve popped out of the sockets.

Aram stood in the entry to the bedroom, naked except for the sheet around his waist, morning erection proudly straining against the fabric, and crying like a child. He reached up and rubbed the tears away from his eyes with one hand, obviously trying hard to breathe as he hiccuped and took short, gasping breaths for air.

Mars turned to me. “Nobody’s here, huh?”

-o-

Expect a new chapter of something very soon, since it's summer now! Yay!