Hate is a strong word and so is my hate [Seraph]

The small icy construct fluttered around in white wings, letting out a small noise that pigeons usually made. It would cease the flying once Ryan made a small clicking noise with his tongue, and extended a hand for the bird construct to land on. Rustling icy feathers, it would sort of just sit here really. Sunlight streamed down upon the city, though the heat didn't seem to affect the icy construct as it once again took flight, though where to this time he had no clue really. Giving construct sentience might have not been his greatest move but then again it was likely not his worse move either, so nothing lost there. ”Well that was ten minutes i'll never get back.” He muttered to himself before shrugging, absently running fingers through slightly longer light brown hair. His musing was followed by a loud caw and something thwacking into the back of his head, taking the form of a black crow messily flapping around in a flash of feathers.

”Ouch, stupid bird.” Ryan grumbled as said bird reoriented itself and sort of perched on his shoulder without a care in the world. ”I...don't think that's supposed to happen either.” Normally birds didn't randomly perch on his shoulder but maybe that meant he was becoming snow white or something. Still, he had something to do but then again that was involved with a lot of him being lost. ”So bird….do you think you could help me with something? I'm looking for this music store….I don't really remember what it's called but it's….supposed to be somewhere around here.” Ryan said to the bird with no self awareness whatsoever or perhaps he just thought this was not your average bird, because obviously it didn't seem like one to him.

The crow only let out a caw as it sat there. ”You're right, you are just a bird.” He noted with a shrug before continuing the whole searching thing, internally cursing his own terrible memory. He knew he was supposed to be looking for his brother, or the person that looked a lot like him. The question really was why they hated him, or really disliked him, it had to be one of the two of those. Actually asking the question would happen after he found the music shop, which was slightly harder than Ryan had thought it would be. That was what lead to him walking around LA, rather than doing the smart thing and actually calling someone to give him directions towards said music shop like he should have. Still, he was sure he would find something eventually. Except now he had a crow for some reason, which made no sense to him but then again he did live in a world of superpowered people, nothing made sense in the end.

Luckily, now he could get along better with his own powers now that he was more properly trained with them and they weren't so hard to control it seemed. Made it a lot less rainy, which he really enjoyed in the end. Eventually after a good hour of searching he found the music store or something that looked like the one he was looking for. So that was all good as he stepped through the front door, and...why was the bird even still there? Not like he beckoned it to him by singing, as that would have made no sense and he was not too good with the whole singing thing. If this was the one where his supposed brother worked at, well they would likely notice him walking in. That was where things probably got interesting, or dramatic, it was one of those words.

Austyn ran business as usual. A smile and a thank you here or there, hating every moment of his time in these skinny jeans. Seriously how did guys do this out of choice!? There's little room for comfort. Girls...understandable. Guys like Austyn tended to be uncomfortable most of the day. Didn't retract from customer service really. Made his patience short when it came to dealing with idiots. Like the kid who came in insisting that he had a "special store" and he wanted to make a "donation". Just because Austyn sold Pink Floyd didn't mean that he sold the weed to go with it. Seriously though, those guys were freaking awful. Austyn almost wanted to ban it form his store, but potheads kind of loved the rock music. Pink Floyd was just...awful though. Seriously, you took weed with it because it made the experience worth living through. Weed was the ONLY thing that made it better.

  "Heya Matt. Woah, you're looking a little...ragged?" Austyn asked as he approached a familiar face, a familiar face he had seen just three days ago. In three days his friend seemed to come into a plethora of bruises it would seem as he smiled behind his glasses laughing and shrugging a bit, not really saying anything. That in it's own right was odd.  "You alright man?" Austyn asked. When someone like Matt got quiet they were generally in a bad situation and they just wanted to have someone nearby. Austyn let out a forced exhale through his nose like a bull before narrowing his eyes at his off friend and patting him on the shoulder. They just nodded before Austyn turned around. Matt meandered over to the desk and shook his head peeling his glasses off and sighing as he leaned onto the counter.

  "Dude...you know I got you back. No matter what, right?" Okay now that question concerned Austyn quite a bit. Picking up on the facial contortion Matt just smiled and nodded, as if trying to tell Austyn to settle down an assurance that everything was going to be fine or something along those lines. "I'm getting a new house I think. You, me and a buddy of mine who wants out of his dad's pawn shop. Think about it and get back to me. A'ight?" Well this was certainly unexpected. Well the invitation to move into a house with roommates wasn't, but the fact that he anticipated the conversation to go in a more... "suicidal" direction made this invitation rather pleasantly surprising. With that Matt nodded and pushed off the counter and leaving the shop. On the way out Matt saw Ryan and leaned to the side, intentionally bumping into him with a smile and a nod, a simple and playful way to say hello before winking and turning back on his designated route home.

   Austyn had been rather busy of late. He found ways to occupy his time, and kept away from the video broadcastings. Austyn had a lot to cope with. Truthfully it wasn't going all that well for him.  He recently learned he was a twin, possibly a triplet form the government records he pulled using a couple Seraphim strings. Of course Ryan was the brother who was kept by their original parents, a sting and scorn that Austyn had a hard time recovering from. There was a sense of betrayal inside him, bitter...agonizing. Then he couldn't help but stumble on the video feed where Ryan let their mother die to save several people in exchange. Austyn knew he would do the same thing but he had to wonder. God, why do you hate me? What have I done to you? How have I wronged you that this is justified? He couldn't help but sigh in irritation. His emotions betrayed him as his eyes began to turn a little red and he wiped his eyes. He may not have cared for his mother....but then again he never had a reason to. He was deprived...robbed of closure. The human Psyche cannot recover from something like that. The Psychologists even told him so honestly.

  That's how he met Matt actually. Matt works at a hospital designated to the wounds of empowered peoples and metahumans. He had a lot to do with psychology, though he was mostly volunteer the last Austyn knew. There wasn't much to be known about his odd friend, save for that he was a good guy who seemed to care very deeply for the wellbeing of others, it was uncanny the kind of lengths he went through and the hoops he jumped to get Austyn on the medication he needed. He owed Matt a lot for that and it did help him cope... but even Austyn knew that helping nothing isn't a crowning accomplishment. Austyn was on the path to self-destruction. The worst part? He didn't care....

   The door alert went off, snatching Austyn's attention. Most doors had a bell, or a beeper...but not this place. This place had a pre-recorded guitar rift and drum beat to an up-beat and rather popular song the entire time that the door slowly opened and closed. It was unique, and oddly fitting for the music store. Austyn leaned forward and sighed, shaking his head when he noticed the person standing there with an almost lost look on his face. It was his "twin" or brother or whatever he was. Austyn didn't even want to acknowledge his existence at this point. But that wasn't the right thing to do, now was it? Sighing Austyn arched an eyebrow. His twin looked pretty ragged too. What was this, terrible Tuesday or something? Wait was his hair longer? Motherfucker, that's MY thing!

  "Well you look awful. What happened to you? Get hit by a bus?" He asked with a bit of a sigh, struggling to even start conversation and grabbing a stack of CD's he had to stock.

Ryan should have expected to see Matt somewhere around this music store at some point, considering that he was the one who told him about it but that did not help lessen the surprise. It was a pleasant surprise of course to see a friend, and something that always managed to improve his mood no matter how foul. Not that he was in a bad mood, because Ryan felt pretty good actually. Of course circumstances had conspired to make things less than ideal for him but then again life was a sea of suck when you got down to it. Knocked slightly off track by the bump, Ryan sort of smiled at the male before continuing on with his whatever, with a random bird on his shoulder. Well if anything he could say that made his day slightly better, because Ryan had a feeling things would go bad from here.

With a wave of the hand he shooed the bird away, because as far as he could tell they weren’t allowed in music stores. ”Shoo. Go poop on a car or something.” He muttered as the bird seemed to take the hint and fly away to do bird things, like...poop on a car as Ryan had so eloquently put it. He was supposed to be here to talk to someone, his brother or the guy he assumed was his brother. Could have been a clone, since that made more sense in a world of superhumans anyway. Anything was possible, so he didn’t rule out the possibility of that being a thing just yet.Brother or clone, he wanted to talk with the guy and perhaps sort a few things out with him. Something told him they would not be too happy to see him, but he chalked it up to a gut feeling. Like a pair of hands wringing out his entrails for some reason.

Which sort of also makes the prior statement about the bird being there moot, but thats too much fourth wall breaking. Once he walked in, the first thing Ryan did was browse over the music until the male said something to him, something about how he looked like a bus had hit him. That made Ryan look to him with a slightly confused look. He wasn’t that banged up was he? Maybe the guy just noticed that he looked older, facial hair tended to do that though Ryan thought it made him look pretty cool. Unfortunate for him that not everyone shared that thought. ”Or something bus sized.” Ryan responded, not really catching the struggle to even start a conversation within the males voice. His brain sort of just did the talking, not that it was saying much about his brain.

”You’re not busy are you? Well…aside from what you’re doing right now. I was wondering if you could talk or...something like that.”

"Hey you're not living are you? Well...side from what you're doing right now?" Austyn countered, not really to be mean or spiteful, however the smirk on his face probably made it seem like he were joking or something tot hat effect. The fact that Ryan was just as intelligent as he remembered wasn't  exactly a strong starting point. With a sigh he tried to keep in mind that his brother wasn't the cause for all his woes...just a huge catalyst in them. This actually caused a moment of hesitation where he picked up the stack of CD's and began to carry them. "If you wanna talk why don't you go talk to Cale, or Silus?" He said quite plainly, though he immediately thought of how this could be rude. He blinked and then shrugged.

 "I mean I'll talk to ya. But You might need to repeat yourself. I tend to focus on keeping my job so if I tune you out for a sec I'm not trying to be rude. I just suck at multi-tasking.' Austyn said, maybe putting everything into perspective as he began walking throughout the first isle, looking at CD covers and then putting them in their alphabetically respective places. He could hear Ryan out, and honestly he didn't mean to ignore him. But he wasn't lying; if it wasn't high-stress like Seraphim operations... he didn't exactly excel at multi-tasking. That was a perk to being half an owner of the store, despite having to work ungodly hours to save the cheapskate other half some money.

”Umm...” Ryan sort of mumbled, only taking a few seconds to get the response and sort of going along with it. If he knew anything, well his brother did not seem to fond of him, granted they had not even really had a chance to get to know each other. That tended to happen when siblings were separated from birth or something along those lines. It felt like there was some movie that had a similar premise but he could not quite place a name with the movie. Still, the male did not quite seem to want to talk to him, which seemed to come across with him telling Ryan to go talk to Cale or Silus. Except the problem of neither being his siblings that he thought hated him, though he was iffy on Cale’s opinion of him nonetheless.

Silus was also probably busy doing SIlus things, like painting and being cool. Luckily they changed their mind and decided to actually hear ihim out, which made all of this so much easier when he thought about it. He nodded a couple of times, showing he understood what the male said while burying his hands into his pockets. Now there came the thinking about how he would exactly phrase the question, trying not to end up with Austyn blowing up on him or anything like that. Just thinking about it made him shudder slightly, but he had to keep the whole emotions in control. His powers were still pretty iffy when it came to that, but luckily he didn’t have to worry about freezing anyone accidentally. Well his mind happened to jump back to looking at the music for a second, before he had to force his attention back to Austyn.

”I guess I should start with this question. Do you….um...hate me?” It was likely, not quite very likely but it felt what way.

Austyn froze a minute with a smirk playing on his face as he sighed and shook his head. What was he, five? Seriously, he needed to ask if someone hated him and be worried over a thing like that? It was almost charming. Austyn had to think about this a moment though as he considered his answer. It took a small bit of soul-searching too. Not too much, as he had tread this ground before, but still a moment passed. Placing Cd's back into their place slowly, a slight symbol of how deep in thought he really was. He let out a curious hum for a moment as he seemed to ponder the thought more and more. Truthfully it was just to keep Ryan waiting in suspense for a moment to see how he'd react. Honestly he gave genuine thought and answered accordingly.

 "No. I don't hate you. Don't exactly like you either though. In fact I don't know much about you, except that you're my twin and just so happen to be friends with my friends. I also know that you froze over L.A, got some emo kid killed by sentient ice guards... and let's not forget that out mother gave me up while she kept you." He said the last part with enough sting in him that it was kinda of apparent that it bothered him. Even as he tried to hide it...he couldn't contain the hurt. The butt hurt that was abandonment was enough to make Voldemort seem normal. "Hate you? No. But things around you irritate the fuck outta me to the degree that it makes me pretty ticked off. You follow?" He asked as he continued down the line and began stacking stuff up in their alphabetized way.

Austyn seemed to go into deep thought upon hearing the question, as childish as it was to actually ask that. Ryan never really put too much thought into things like that, it seemed like the question to ask and so he went along with it. So he would wait until the male would answer the question, looking almost expectant as they appeared to drag it out for a little while. Eventually the answer did come, which was a relief within itself but then came so many questions after that as well as answers. They didn’t like him but they didn’t hate him either, which was okay within a sense. Having his past mistakes thrown back into his face was kinda painful but then again things were as they were and he would have to get over them.  Well the emo kid didn’t stay dead but then again there had to be an argument somewhere in there.

Their mother choosing him over Austyn seemed to be a major sticking point, though Ryan could never really understand why she did that either. Not like he could just ask that now of all times considering that Lucius did the whole killing her thing. All he did at first in response was nod, say the occasional mhm while appearing to be in deep thought. ”Yeah I follow..I guess.” Ryan responded, not fully understanding but then again he understood well enough. For some reason he was just so relieved they didn’t hate him, despite the fact that he did not really know them all too well beyond the fact they were his brother. Just having family he knew was alive, well it felt nice to Ryan in a certain way. Then he found himself wondering if perhaps they didn’t like him exclusively for the whole mother thing or not.

”Why did you lie...about me saving LA I mean.” He then hazarded to ask. ”If you told the truth I woulda probably went to jail...then you wouldn’t have to deal with me….probably.” It sounded right in his head but then again he did not understand Austyn at all.

"Because you're my brother and I'm pretty sure there's a disney lesson of "Family first" in here somewhere. Besides...if Silus vouches for you you're not that bad." Austyn said with a shrug as he began to rapidly put the CD's away with rather impressive focus. He had already tqken the time to identify where they went and think it over twice, so that was the furits of THAT labor right there. Meanwhile Ryan seemed to still be lingering there for a moment. Austyn sighed and ran his hand through his hair before looking to Ryan.

"You may be my twin....but this is MY hair style. We can look similar and sound the same...but don't be stealin' my hair. Austyn said, slightly playful but genuinely serious. He just wanted to individual...which was hard to do with his newly found twin having the same type of hair as him. He found himself out of the CD's in his hand and turned to go back to the desk and collect some more. As he did so he noted that the store was rather empty now. He decided that he had nothing better to do. Might as well waste time with his brother. "So uh...you know Matt? He's a pretty good friend of mine. Just like Cale... How uh...How do you know all these guys?" He asked Ryan, seeming to make small talk as best he could. Of course the real question he wanted to ask was and how the fuck didn't they realize we looked the same?

As Austyn began to alphabetize the next stack he'd listen to Ryan and likely entertain another question from the homeless hydro.

Well the answer was not one that he expected, but that may have just been that Ryan was so sure that Austyn despite what they said really hated him. Granted that may have been some small cynical part of him, but then again he did want to believe that what he said was true, so he ended up going with that rather quickly. Well there was also the fact that Silus vouched for him, and Silus wouldn't lie. It didn't seem like him to do that anyway, but then again that was just from what Ryan knew about him. He was his best friend afterall, granted Ryan was under the delusion that one could have more than one best friend so he assumed that everyone he considered his friend was his best because he liked all of them. That was when hairstyle came into mention and he realized that Austyn had brought up his own shaggy hair.

Running his fingers through his hair, Ryan chuckled in the realization that his hair was pretty messy and long. Not that he really could cut it himself, and in a sense he just grew too lazy to get anything done about that. Sure he could have probably asked Silus to fix that but right now he was talking to his brother. "But I'm not stealing your hair. It just...looks like this when I don't get it cut." It had looked like this before but luckily he managed to get it cut somehow, but this is becoming a tangent really so the post needs to get moving on. It was fortunate that the conversation jumped to how he got to know Matt and Cale, something that he could likely talk about.

"Yeah, I know him." Ryan answered with nod, easily getting out of that whole self conscious line of thinking rather easily. "I met Cale through Silus actually, there was a lot of glaring." Ryan paused for a moment seemingly staring off into the distance before snapping back to reality. "I actually met Matt the same way....I think. So I guess I know them all because of Silus, he sure knows a lot of people for an eleven year old." He started speaking without really thinking from there. "I guess it's magic." He shrugged it off, because that was easy enough to explain away. "So..do you have any powers?" Ryan may have not known if he was hitting a sore spot or not, he was just asking a question.