#sparkedblaze and i talked about it and oscar essentially having internalised homophobia by proxy for morris

[noxexistant]

thinking about. aro oscar. being told by his & morris’ parents and wiesel and everybody else his whole life that he’s going to have to stop coddling his brother someday, he’s going to have to leave his brother entirely, because he’s going to have to marry.

find a woman and marry her, start his own family - like his real family of morris wouldn’t or doesn’t count anymore. and oscar is as confused as he is angry, because why the hell would he ever leave morris at all, but particularly to go…find a girl. marry her, live with her, be with her until one of them dies. have kids. he doesn’t want that. does anyone want that? is he supposed to want that?

he can’t conceptualise the type of relationship that seems to be expected of him - expected of everyone. seeing glimpses of it confuses him, in passers-by on the streets or the newsies at work or in characters in books, and he doesn’t even have his own parents to reflect on as a familiar example because they never loved each other either. but he’ll ignore it just like he ignores every other expectation and bit of normalcy him and morris can’t fit into, another bit of the outside world that doesn’t seem to have room for them. they have each other, just them - that’s all they’ve ever needed.

but then morris starts getting crushes on guys as he gets older. his gaze lingers on them, and he starts smiling all shy when they look his way when he never used to smile at anyone but oscar, and oscar’s even more confused, but he also feels betrayed. because he thought it was him and morris both that were wrong, like it always is and always has been, but maybe it is just him. something missing from him that morris got to keep.

not that it matters, he knows, with some strange mix of bitterness and gratitude. they’ll both have to stay like this anyway - just the two of them together. because, even if he wanted to, morris could never be with a boy the way they’re both supposed to be with girls. he couldn’t marry one, couldn’t even try and flirt with one the way most guys flirt with girls. he don’t seem to like girls either, just like oscar don’t, so it doesn’t matter. they’ll stick with each other. maybe not both wrong in the same way this time, but still both wrong, like they always are.

oscar keeps telling himself that, as morris’ gaze keeps sticking to guys as they pass, the newsies as they chatter and laugh, men at their stalls and shops, his eyes alight with longing and heartache and loneliness like oscar can’t soothe. can’t even feel himself. so he tells morris to stop it instead - he can’t be like that, they can’t be like that. it’s no use staring at what he can’t have, just like oscar used to tell him when he’d be staring in the windows of fancy candy makers and toy shops. he keeps pulling morris away from men who try to talk to him, and watches him like a hawk when he’s interacting with the newsies around his age.

they’ll be alone together.