Chapter 68: The Brothers Who Measured Each Other
The air around Parc des Princes always carried a specific charge after dark—a mixture of distant traffic, the ghostly echo of weekend cheers, and the cool, clean scent of freshly watered turf seeping from the ventilation grates. Under the stark white glare of the stadium’s external lights, the service corridors were canyons of concrete and shadow. Remy Bernier stood with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jacket, his athletic frame held with a disciplined stillness that made him look like a statue waiting to be unveiled. He didn’t fidget. He rarely did. But his eyes, usually so calm, tracked every movement of the figure approaching from the opposite end of the corridor.
Georges arrived like a localized weather event. He was bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, a restless smile playing on his lips as he took in the industrial scenery and the two men occupying it. “So,” he said, his voice bouncing off the concrete. “Nothing says family bonding like a clandestine meet-up with an extraterrestrial HR rep outside the stadium. Did you bring a ball, Rem? We could do drills while we discuss our interstellar future.”
Remy didn’t smile. “Georges.”
“Remy,” Georges shot back, the mimicry affectionate and edged with provocation.
Zoruk stood between them, slightly offset, a neutral point in their charged field. He wore a dark, perfectly tailored coat that seemed to absorb the harsh light. “Thank you for coming,” he said, his tone conversational, as if they’d agreed to meet for a coffee. “This is a cooperation test. The subject is comparison.”
Remy’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Georges barked a laugh.“Comparison? Brilliant. Let me guess: you’ve got a chart. ‘Brother A: disciplined, reliable, mildly constipated. Brother B: chaotic, charming, potential arsonist.’ Do we get a score?”
“The score is your continued consideration for the voyage,” Zoruk replied, unmoved. He looked at Remy. “You requested this meeting be away from your home, from Alya’s orbit. You wanted neutrality. Why?”
Remy’s gaze stayed level. “Because where there’s an audience, we perform. Even an audience of one.” He didn’t look at Alya, but her presence was a ghost in his words.
“And you, Georges?” Zoruk turned his head. “You agreed readily.”
“Free entertainment,” Georges shrugged, shoving his own hands in his pockets. “Plus, I wanted to see if Remy would actually show. He’s been… elusive lately. Preoccupied.”
“I’ve been busy,” Remy said, the words even and final.
“Busy being the strong, silent boyfriend. It’s a full-time gig, I hear.”
“Enough,” Remy said, and the quiet word cut through Georges’ smile. “I have never wanted you to feel lesser, Georges. Not once.”
Georges’ smirk vanished, replaced by a flash of raw irritation. “See? That. That right there is exactly the kind of sentence that makes me want to break something expensive. You don’t want me to feel lesser. Which implies I am lesser, and you’re just magnanimously not rubbing it in. Thanks, brother. Really.”
The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the hum of distant generators.
Zoruk stepped into it. “Remy, what do you envy in Georges?”
The question was so direct it seemed to startle both brothers. Remy looked down at his own shoes, then out at the empty player parking lot. He hesitated, the internal calculation visible on his face. When he spoke, his voice was lower. “I envy how easily he says what he wants. Even when it causes trouble. Even when it’s stupid. He just… says it. He doesn’t sit there for three days composing the perfect, inoffensive sentence in his head that says nothing at all.”
Georges stared at him, his rebellious energy momentarily stunned into silence.
Zoruk turned. “Georges. What do you envy in Remy?”
Georges recovered quickly, a defensive grin snapping back into place. “His hairline. Definitely his hairline. And his contract. The money’s good.” He paused, seeing Zoruk’s unwavering attention. The grin faltered. He scuffed his shoe against the concrete. “He’s trusted. People hear him say ‘I’ll handle it,’ and they stop worrying. They just… believe him. He doesn’t have to joke, or charm, or do a little dance to get people to take him seriously. They just do. It’s infuriating.”
The admission hung between them, sharper and more honest than any argument.
“Interesting,” Zoruk murmured. “Two forms of expression, each believing the other has the easier path to authenticity. Now, let’s apply this to your shared context. Alya Dumont.”
Remy’s head came up, a defensive alertness in his posture.
“Remy loves her quietly,” Zoruk continued, pacing a slow circle around them. “He protects her by being a steady, private refuge from the noise. Georges mocks the world that adores her, because mockery lets him stand close to the spectacle without admitting his own curiosity. It lets him touch the flame without calling it heat.”
“Don’t,” Remy said, the word directed at his brother, not Zoruk. “Don’t use her to provoke me. Not with this.”
“Me?” Georges fired back, the lighthearted veneer fully gone now. “You think you don’t use your silence to provoke? You stand there, all calm and dependable, and you make everyone else look reckless and loud just for trying to be heard. You make me look like the asshole for pointing out that your girlfriend’s life is a circus you secretly hate!”
“I don’t hate it,” Remy said, his control straining. “I protect her from it.”
“By being so fucking perfect it’s depressing!”
Zoruk watched the exchange like a scientist observing a reaction. “Consider the other players in her orbit,” he interjected, his calm voice a scalpel. “Briv Rodin built a five-year fantasy on respectful distance. It collapsed in a single night when his admiration was forced to become possession. Rachelle Lebas offers impatient loyalty, but her protection is tangled with resentment—she guards the idol but envies the pedestal. Corinne Chagnon provides controlled, playful protection, a management that must constantly prove its necessity. Paris is a web of different accesses to her. Yours is blood. Old, intimate, and difficult to escape. You are each other’s first and most enduring comparison.”
The brothers were silent, breathing heavily in the cool air, their breath making faint plumes in the stadium light.
“I need one useful truth from you together,” Zoruk stated, stopping his pacing to face them. “Not an apology. Not a truce. A diagnostic truth. What is the core mechanism of the other’s performance?”
The question was brutal in its precision. Remy looked at Georges, really looked at him, seeing not just his irritating younger brother but the clever, watchful boy who had always learned that causing a distraction was better than being the subject of scrutiny. He spoke slowly, each word weighed.
“You are not irresponsible because you lack intelligence. You are irresponsible because being serious, being reliable… it would make your pain visible. If people saw you trying and failing, they’d see you hurt. So you never really try. You just… deflect.”
Georges flinched as if struck. All the color drained from his face, leaving his expression naked and young. He looked away, his throat working. The silence stretched, taut and painful.
When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped of all its usual performative energy, quiet and rough. “You are not noble because you are silent. You are silent because asking for more—more attention, more help, more anything—would make you less perfect. You’d rather choke on what you need than admit you need it. You’d rather let everyone think you’re a rock than let them see you’re tired.”
The two truths landed and lay there in the space between them, bleeding. There was no refutation. The accuracy was the injury.
Zoruk gave a single, slow nod. “Cooperation has occurred.Not reconciliation. Recognition. You have identified the prison each of you built for yourself, and you have seen that the other holds a key he cannot use on his own lock.”
He began to walk away, back toward the city’s ambient glow. Over his shoulder, he said, “The voyage ahead will demand more than performance. It will demand the dismantling of these defenses. You have taken the first step: admitting they exist.”
And then he was gone, absorbed into the deeper shadows beyond the cone of stadium light.
Remy and Georges were left alone under the brutal white glare. The air felt different, the silence no longer charged with old arguments but filled with the uneasy echo of new, uncomfortable knowledge. Georges finally let out a long, shaky breath, kicking at a loose piece of gravel.
“Well,” he said, the word lacking any of its earlier bounce. “That was fucking horrific.”
Remy didn’t answer immediately. He looked up at the towering arch of the stadium, a place where he knew how to perform, how to excel, where the rules were clear. This was murkier. This was real.
“Yeah,” he said finally, his own voice gravelly. “It was.”
They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t hug or clap each other on the shoulder. They just stood there, two brothers in the cool Paris night, holding the sharp, heavy pieces of truth Zoruk had helped them break off from themselves. The comparison hadn’t been erased. It had just been understood, and understanding, for now, was a quiet, hurting thing.
=====
A private lounge near Parc des Princes, Paris. After Zoruk’s paired test with Remy and Georges. Late at night.
Late at night, the private lounge felt like a sealed aquarium. Soft, ambient lighting glowed from behind smoked glass panels, illuminating low slate-grey couches and the ghostly green fronds of potted ferns. The air smelled of ozone from hidden air purifiers and the faint, sweet echo of expensive whiskey. Alya Dumont sat curled at one end of a large sectional, her knees drawn to her chest. She’d been waiting for an hour, the silence pressing in. The memory of the cold canal stones and Briv’s horrified face was a fresh bruise on her mind, throbbing with every heartbeat. She startled when the door hissed open, but it wasn’t Zoruk. It was Remy and Georges.
Remy entered first, his broad shoulders filling the doorway, his expression the careful neutral mask he wore after difficult matches. Behind him, Georges moved with a jittery energy, his eyes scanning the room like he was assessing an opponent’s turf. Seeing her, Remy stopped. His mask cracked, revealing pure, unguarded concern. “Alya? What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
Before she could answer, Georges let out a low whistle, his gaze darting from her drawn face to the empty room. “Family reunion. Charming. Did you get the abduction memo too, or is this a social call?”
“Zoruk asked me to wait,” Alya said, her voice thin. She uncurled, smoothing her dress, a simple black thing that felt like armor. “After… after last time. He said there was more to discuss.” She couldn’t meet Remy’s eyes. The shame of what happened with Briv felt like a stain he could see from across the room.
Remy crossed to her in three long strides, kneeling before the couch. He didn’t touch her, just searched her face. “What happened last time? You’ve been distant for days.” His voice was soft, the one he used when she’d had a nightmare.
“Nothing I can… it doesn’t matter,” she whispered, lying badly.
“Bullshit,” Georges said, dropping into an armchair opposite. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost who gave you a shit review. Spill.”
The door hissed open again. Zoruk entered, and the atmosphere in the room thickened, growing heavy and still. He closed the door with a definitive click, his presence absorbing the minimal light. He looked at each of them in turn, a slow, measuring sweep.
“The cooperation tests are progressing,” he stated, his voice a smooth oil in the tense air. “But some bonds require more… direct intervention. Some conflicts are triangulated.” His focus landed on Alya, pinning her to the couch. “You are the point of the triangle, Alya. The unspoken comparator. The silent prize.”
Alya shook her head, a cold dread seeping into her stomach. “No. That’s not—”
“It is,” Zoruk interrupted, not unkindly, as if correcting a factual error. “Remy’s discipline is a fortress built to be worthy of you. Georges’ rebellion is a protest against the world that idolizes you. You are the reason they measure themselves against each other. You became the yardstick long before you ever knew their names.”
Remy stood slowly, putting himself slightly between Alya and Zoruk. “Leave her out of this. Our issues are ours. Ancient history.”
Georges laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “Ancient? It’s right now, Rem. You’re standing in front of her right now. Captain Protector. Where does that leave me? The court jester?”
“You see?” Zoruk said, a faint, chilling smile touching his lips. “The mechanism is so elegant. So human. She is the gravity that bends both your orbits into collision.” He took a step forward, and the light seemed to dim around him. His gaze, which had been analytical, shifted. The rhythm of his breathing changed, syncing to the low hum of the room. “You are all so tired of the tension. The unsaid words. The performed roles. Let me give you a different language. A simpler one.”
Alya felt it first. The same warm, syrupy wave that had swallowed her will by the canal. It washed over her mind, not with violence, but with an irresistible, welcoming weight. Her fear melted, her thoughts slowing, becoming distant echoes. She saw the same glazing-over in Remy’s eyes, saw his protective stance loosen, his shoulders dropping. Georges’ defiant smirk smoothed into blank placidity, his restless energy dissipating like steam.
“Good,” Zoruk murmured, the sound vibrating in their bones. “Now, we translate that competition into cooperation. You have used her as a symbol of your conflict. Now, you will use her as the instrument of your bonding.”
He walked to Alya, cupped her chin. Her head lolled back, her dark eyes wide and empty. “You feel the weight, don’t you, Alya? All that wanting, all that comparing. It’s so heavy. Let it go. You are not a symbol tonight. You are a solution. You became the reason these two brothers compete. Now, you’ll help them bond.”
He released her face and turned to the brothers. “Remy. Georges. Get naked.”
Without hesitation, their hands went to their clothes. Remy pulled his shirt over his head with the same methodical efficiency he used in a locker room, folding it neatly on the arm of the couch before unbuckling his belt. Georges was faster, nearly tearing his t-shirt, kicking his jeans and boxers off in a single, hurried motion. They stood there, both tall and athletically built, yet fundamentally different—Remy’s body was a testament to disciplined training, Georges’ leaner, wired with a taut, restless energy. They were erect, their arousal a biological response to the command humming in their skulls.
“Now,” Zoruk said, his voice a low thrum of power. “Tear her clothes off. Until she’s naked too. Do it together.”
Alya remained sitting, a docile smile on her lips. Remy and Georges moved in unison. Remy’s large hands found the shoulder straps of her black dress, and with a sharp, efficient rip, he tore the fragile fabric down the front. Georges grabbed the hem, his fingers digging in, and yanked it downward, the material shredding with a series of soft pops. She lifted her hips to help them, the last of the fabric falling away. Within seconds, she was as bare as they were, her skin pale and perfect in the dim light.
“Beautiful,” Zoruk observed, circling them. “No more barriers. No more performance. Just flesh and function.” He pointed to the floor in front of the couch. “Alya, on your knees.”
She slid gracefully from the couch to the thick carpet, kneeling, her back straight, her hands resting on her thighs. She looked up at the two men, her expression one of blank, eager anticipation.
“Feed her,” Zoruk commanded.
Remy stepped forward first, his cock level with her face. Alya leaned in, opening her mouth without a sound, and took him in. She didn’t need guidance. She swirled her tongue around the head, then took him deeper, her cheeks hollowing as she began to suck with a slow, dedicated rhythm. A low groan rumbled in Remy’s chest, his hands coming to rest gently, almost reverently, on the sides of her head.
“Fuck, look at that,” Georges muttered, his voice thick with awe as he watched. He stroked himself, his eyes glued to his brother’s cock disappearing between Alya’s lips.
“Your turn,” Zoruk said to Georges. “She has another hole that needs attention. Get behind her. Make her take you.”
Georges moved quickly, kneeling behind Alya. He spat into his palm, slicking himself roughly before positioning his cock at her entrance. He gripped her hips and pushed forward in one relentless motion, burying himself inside her to the hilt. Alya moaned around Remy’s length, the vibration making him shudder. Her body arched back against Georges’ thrust.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Georges hissed, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. “Tight little princess. You like that, don’t you? Taking us both?”
A loud, muffled sound of affirmation came from Alya’s throat. Remy watched, mesmerized, as his brother began to fuck her from behind, each hard drive pushing her face further onto his own cock. The wet, filthy sounds of their joining filled the silent room.
“Talk to her,” Zoruk prompted, his voice a hypnotic thread weaving through the carnality. “Tell her what she is.”
“You’re our perfect little slut,” Remy heard himself say, the words feeling both alien and thrillingly right as he looked down at her worshipful face. “Sucking my cock while my brother fills your cunt. This is all you’re good for.”
“Damn right,” Georges grunted, picking up his pace, his balls slapping against her. “Thought you were too good for this, didn’t you? Too sweet, too pure. Look at you now. You’re just a set of holes for us to use. A fucking family bonding exercise.”
Alya’s only responses were hungry, guttural moans. She reached between her own legs to rub her clit as Georges pounded into her, her movements frantic. Remy watched her fingers work, watched her body convulse around his brother’s thrusts, and felt a possessive, dark pride surge through him.
“She’s going to come,” Remy said, his voice strained as her sucking grew more frantic. “She’s gonna come all over your dick while she chokes on mine.”
“Make her,” Georges panted. “Make our pretty little whore come.”
Remy tightened his grip on her head, fucking her mouth in time with his brother’s thrusts. The coordinated rhythm pushed Alya over the edge. Her body seized, a high, strangled scream trapped around Remy’s cock as her orgasm ripped through her, her inner muscles clamping down violently on Georges. The convulsion made Georges shout, his own control snapping.
“Switch,” Zoruk commanded, the word an electric shock in the heated air.
They moved like a single organism. Remy pulled out of Alya’s mouth, a string of saliva bridging her lips to his glistening tip. Georges slid from inside her, leaving her dripping and shuddering. Remy moved behind her, his larger frame looming as he guided himself into her soaked, spasming warmth. The fit was different, tighter, and he let out a shattered breath as he bottomed out.
“Christ, she’s still pulsing,” he groaned, beginning to move with a powerful, deep rhythm.
At the same time, Georges shuffled in front of her. Alya, still gasping from her climax, instinctively opened her bruised lips. Georges didn’t wait. He shoved his cock past her teeth, grabbing the back of her head with both hands. “Taste yourself on me, you filthy bitch,” he growled, fucking her throat with brutal, shallow thrusts.
Alya gagged, tears streaming down her face, but her hips kept pushing back onto Remy, meeting his every drive. The room was a symphony of grunts, slapping skin, and choked, wet sounds.
“You take it so good,” Remy gritted out, his hands on her waist, holding her steady for his punishing pace. “Taking your boyfriend and his fuck-up brother at the same time. You love it, don’t you? You love being our common ground.”
“She loves being a worthless cocksleeve,” Georges rasped, his thrusts into her mouth becoming erratic. “A perfect little peace treaty we both get to ruin. I’m gonna come down your throat, you angel-faced whore.”
Remy felt his own orgasm building, a coiling pressure in his gut. “On her face,” he grunted, the command for his brother as much as for himself. “We finish together. Mark her.”
Georges pulled out of her mouth with a wet pop, his cock glistening with saliva. Remy withdrew from her clenching heat, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Alya knelt between them, panting, her face a mess of tears, saliva, and blissful submission. She looked up, her mouth open, tongue out, waiting.
Remy took himself in hand, stroking hard. Georges did the same. “Now,” Remy growled.
With twin groans that tore from their chests, they came. Thick, hot streaks of cum shot across Alya’s face, painting her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, catching in her eyelashes and the strands of her hair. She kept her mouth open, sticking out her tongue, taking the final, spasming pulses directly onto her tongue, swallowing with obedient greed.
The effect shattered like glass.
One second, the world was a haze of pleasure and filth and unity. The next, the humming in their minds ceased. The warm, commanding pressure vanished, yanked away with a psychic violence that left a vacuum.
Remy stumbled back, his cum-smeared dick already going limp as a cold, nauseous horror flooded his system. He stared at Alya, at the white stripes drying on her face, at her wide, dazed eyes filling with a tsunami of realization. He looked at Georges, who was staring at his own sticky hands with an expression of pure, uncomprehending revulsion.
Alya made a sound. A small, broken whimper. She raised a trembling hand to her face, her fingers coming away wet. She looked at the mess on her fingertips, then at the two brothers, and her face crumpled. Not into tears immediately, but into a mask of such profound, soul-deep shame that Remy felt his own knees go weak.
“Oh, god,” Georges whispered, the color draining from his face. “Oh, fucking god. No.”
Alya scrambled back on the carpet, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, until her back hit the couch. She curled into a ball, hugging her knees, trying to make herself disappear. The sobs came then, wracking, silent shudders that shook her entire frame.
Zoruk was gone. The door was shut. They were alone.
The silence was a physical weight. The only sounds were the hum of the purifiers and Alya’s choked, muffled crying.
Remy moved first. He grabbed a small velvet throw pillow from the couch, its absurd delicacy a stark contrast to the scene. He crouched near Alya, but didn’t touch her. “Alya,” he said, his voice rough, scraped raw. “Here. To… to clean up.” He held the pillow out, a useless offering.
She didn’t look at him. She buried her face deeper into her knees.
Georges found his voice, high-pitched with panic. “He was in our heads. He was in our fucking heads, Remy. We didn’t—I didn’t want—” He stopped, looking at his brother, his eyes wild. “Did you? Did you want that?”
“No,” Remy said, the word a punch to his own gut. He thought of the words he’d said, the possessive fury, the dark pleasure. “Not like that. Not without her. Not without us.” He looked at Alya’s shuddering form. “Alya, please. Look at me.”
“Don’t,” she gasped into her knees, her voice shredded. “Just don’t.”
Georges started pacing, running his hands through his hair, leaving streaks. “He made us. He fucking made us. We have to report him. We have to tell someone. That’s… that’s rape. That’s all of us. He raped all of us.”
“And who do we tell?” Remy’s voice was flat, dead. He sat heavily on the carpet, leaning against the couch, a foot away from Alya’s curled form. He felt a million miles away. “The human authorities? About a mind-controlling alien recruiter? They’ll lock us up. Or we tell the Laurians? His employer? Lord Larothus? What do you think they’ll do?”
“So what, we just live with this?” Georges shouted, gesturing wildly at Alya, at the room, at the invisible violation. “We just fucking… carry on? After that?”
“After what, Georges?” Alya’s head snapped up. Her face was a disaster zone of streaked makeup and drying semen, but her eyes were burning coals. “After you called me a worthless cocksleeve? After you came on my face and made me swallow it? Or after Remy told me I was just a set of holes for you both to use?” Her voice broke on the last word, the fury dissolving back into agony. “Which part are we supposed to carry on from?”
Remy flinched as if she’d struck him. “Alya… those words… they weren’t…”
“Weren’t you?” she screamed, the sound raw and animal. “They came out of your mouth! You looked right at me and you said them! You fucked me and you said them!” She turned her burning gaze to Georges. “And you! You were happy! You were laughing!”
“I wasn’t me!” Georges yelled back, his own tears springing up, angry and hot. “It was like… like watching a movie of myself! I could see it, I could hear it, but I couldn’t stop it! It felt good and it felt fucking great and that’s the most horrifying part!”
“That’s what he does,” Alya whispered, the fight leaving her, replaced by a hollow exhaustion. She wiped at her face with the heel of her hand, smearing the mess further. “He makes you want it. He finds the part of you that’s already thinking it, the ugly, hidden part, and he turns it up until it’s the only thing playing.” She looked at Remy, her eyes endless pools of hurt. “You… you have never talked to me like that. Ever. Not even when we’ve fought. Where did that come from, Remy? Where was that hiding?”
Remy had no answer. He looked at his hands, the hands that had torn her dress, that had held her hips, that had been gentle with her for years. He felt seasick. “I don’t know,” he said, the confession tearing at his throat. “I swear to god, Alya, I don’t know. I love you. You have to believe I love you.”
“I believe you love the idea of me,” she said, her voice quiet and terrifyingly final. “The idea you have to be worthy of. The prize. He was right about that part, wasn’t he? That’s what he used.” She looked at Georges. “And you. You love the idea of corrupting the prize. Of proving it’s all just a shiny, empty thing.”
Georges opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. He just stood there, naked and shamed, the truth of it a bone-deep chill.
“He showed us the substrate,” Alya said, echoing Zoruk’s clinical term from the canal. She gave a wet, hiccuping laugh that held no humor. “The raw material. And now we have to look at each other, and we have to know what’s underneath. I have to know that my boyfriend, when stripped of everything, sees me as a hole to claim. I have to know that his brother sees me as a thing to defile. And you…” she looked between them, “you have to know what the other one sounds like when he’s inside me.”
The finality of that statement hung in the air. It was a truth there was no coming back from.
Remy slowly got to his feet. He found his clothes, moving with a stiff, mechanical precision. He dressed in silence. Georges, after a moment, did the same, fumbling with his buttons. The act of covering themselves felt absurd, pointless. The exposure was permanent.
Alya didn’t move. She sat on the floor, covered in the physical evidence of their shared violation, staring at a point on the wall.
“What do we do?” Georges asked quietly, his earlier panic subsided into a numb despair.
“We do what he expects,” Remy said, his voice empty. He looked at Alya, his heart a stone in his chest. “We carry it. We get on that ship. And we live with the knowledge that he can do that to us anytime he wants. That he can make us do anything to each other.”
He walked to the door, then paused, his hand on the handle. He didn’t turn around. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words utterly inadequate, dust in the wind. “For all of it.”
He left. The door hissed shut behind him.
Georges stood for a long moment, looking at Alya’s hunched form. “I’m sorry, too,” he mumbled, the words tangling in his throat. “For… for being the fuck-up. Even in that. I’m just the fuck-up.”
He followed his brother out, leaving Alya alone in the silent, spoiled room. She didn’t move for a long time. Then, slowly, she reached for the velvet pillow Remy had left. She didn’t use it to clean herself. She just held it to her chest, curling around it, as the last of the sobs finally, silently, shook her.