His | (Hers 0.25) ✔

07| Rectitude

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R e c t i t u d e 

(n.) rightness of principle or conduct; moral virtue.

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Sometimes, you get the best light from a burning bridge.

    – Don Henley 

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Damien was afraid he'd forget what Aaron looked like.

It was all starting to become hazy now – his blue eyes and his dimples; his messy hair and his crooked smile – and it was only a matter of time before Aaron would become a ghost of a boy Damien once knew.

Damien couldn't let that happen.

He couldn't forget Aaron because Aaron was his brother, and even though the whole thing was unfair and disgusting, the least Damien could do was remember Aaron for the boy he was, not for the boy he became to be. Damien wanted to remember Aaron for his childish giggles and cheeky grins; Damien wanted Aaron to be the cheery eyed boy who reread Harry Potter when he was supposed to be finishing his French homework – not for the teenager with bags under his eyes, and helplessness in his lips. Damien didn't want to remember Aaron for the quivers in his elbows or the cracks in his voice – Damien wanted to remember Aaron for Aaron, not for the boy who was continuously trying to be something he wasn't.

This was exactly why Damien took up drawing lessons.

Of course Damien taught himself how to draw – he knew his father would've never allowed it – and after two weeks of no sleep, he finally got an idea of how to draw, and it was then that he started attempting to drawing Aaron himself.

It turned out horribly.

Damien would get Aaron's nose bridge all wrong, and he his eyebrows were too arched than what Damien remembered; Damien would make Aaron's cupid's bow more rounded than curved and his hair more tousled than messy – it was an actual shit show.

It was as though Aaron was fading right in front of his eyes, and it was scaring Damien because how – just how – could Aaron, his own brother, just disappear from Damien's brain like that? How could Damien have allowed himself to forget pieces of Aaron like that?

Damien remembered crying that night, ripping every paper he drew on into pieces and he ended up covering his hands in paper cuts, but it was as though it wasn't punishment enough for him.

James was the one who woke him up that morning in his study, gently shaking his shoulder, that soft look in his eyes that Damien saw on Aaron too many times.

It was James who actually cleaned up the mess Damien did the night prior, and his smile was gentle, but heartbreaking. "It's alright Damien," he said quietly, lightly patting Damien's head. "You'll get him one day."

Tears pricked at the back of Damien's eyes, and it was that day, that Damien leaned on James' shoulder, and cried.

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James cried the first time he talked to Adam.

Damien could never forget it: the way James eyes instantly watered, and his bottom lip quivered; how his fingers trembled, and his shoulders shook – how James was breaking, but mending at the same time.