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[loyalless]

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[plantdaddy]

Alice bypasses Lydia and Custis without sparing either of them a glance; the problem ("problem") here is Morgan, whom Alice suspects is being aggravated further by his twin's snarling and his wife's.

...Lydia-ness.

He doesn't understand, and Lydia's efforts at explanation keep falling lame and uncomfortable. (He's never seen her like this. It's strange, to know there's something she can't rise to. It's strange, and beyond his comprehension.) (She said something about bruises on Darius's throat, of course. And she said, weakly, that it ought to be considered, but the statement came with a question mark at the end, and was quickly trampled by her brother-in-law.)

(What the fuck is going on, is what Alice would like to know. All this uproar over some cousin from Iowa?)

He approaches Morgan, then halts abruptly, staring at his (mentor) (somewhat-idol) brother-in-law-to-be. There's something familiar about the way the other man looks, and it's not because he has a twin, and it's not because Alice has worked closely with Morgan for almost a year.

That's the same fucking look Enri just gave him before the kid snatched the phone.

And come to think of it.

Come to think of it.

His head turns, and from the corner of his eye he takes in the other two in the room, and the door leading to the bedroom. He opens his mouth as though he means to speak. (Custis said he's older than his father. Not he's old enough to be his father.) He closes his mouth and fixes Morgan with a look, his head cocked, lips pressed thin as he exhales through his nose.

Fuck's sake, Morgan.

And.

Tell me this isn't what I think it is.

He doesn't think that's going to happen.

Instead of waiting for a miracle, he gestures vaguely toward the room behind the other man - let's talk in there - and if Morgan doesn't immediately go he slides past to let himself in, then waits with his hands crammed in his pockets until he hears Lydia herding Custis out.

(Not a new trick. Her idea, unspoken months ago: divide and conquer. They can't egg one another on this way.)

And, after a moment, he offers what clarity he can. "You and Lydia have the woods, together. He has - whatever he has with Darius."

And then, he raises his eyes from his examination of an end table, and fixes them on Morgan. Ventures softly, "Like father, like son?"