Farewell, darling continent, if your intention had been that of keeping Ruth Meijer around you should have done better to entertain her. Currently, the lady was not amused.

She was expecting a lovely, little secluded village where she could comfortably interrogate her brother about why on heart had he chosen such a place, instead she had been robbed of any such question by an overwhelming presence of tourists, pretty decent weather, despite what everyone said of England and some charming little architecture that anyone with taste couldn’t fault. As far as her sister went, well, she could have probably been persuaded. Besides, any reason to leave home was a good reason. Even the ones she had just made up for both her siblings.

If they’d rather *not* have that, they should have been punctual according to her own traveling schedule, which she had provided in a very vague format in the letter she had sent. There was a lot and nothing in it, but the only essential part read “I will be at Whitby’s train station on the “ with the date of her arrival “I shall expect a proper welcome. Please make sure my room is properly heated, I would hate to lose my voice because of the inconvenient climate.” She had just assumed the invitation. Now she was piling up her -oddly small- luggage while waiting for a servant, a brother or a brother functioning as a servant in this particular situation. She wondered if her little sister was also going to make an appearance or if they were going to meet directly at the house. Either way, she was looking around for familiar faces.

[[CW: Zechariah has opted to fully return to the closet and it shows.]]

He loved and hated Nesah because she had his foibles, but was younger. Less experienced. Still brutalized him with her words, but no harder than he already had the callous for (usually).

Ruth, however. Ruth. Ruth had an entire book that shared a name with her, and it showed.

The letter that she had so graciously sent Zechariah at the last damned minute had, too, been opened mere minutes ago. It had arrived some time that morning, and with it a sense of dread. Thank God Nesah was still off frolicking in Paris, doing God knew what. (Probably things Zechariah would be jealous of, right up until the moment he remembered the torture that was other people – usually about thirty seconds before potential coitus).

So, with a frantic word to Mr. Benjamin to fire up the stove for no reason in the summer, and then instructions to serve something Parisian, Zechariah found himself having a staring contest with his more vivid suits before remembering his vow to not look too openly homosexual.

Drab brown suit it was, like the only thing getting sucked in Whitby was the color out of everything. Zechariah arrived at the train station an hour later, feeling his face self-consciously (for she had interrupted his second scheduled shave of the day! How dare she!) before stepping out. He looked about as thrilled as he had for years now: not, not even in the slightest. Was it the red hair, their maternal grandmother’s side burning out her scalp? Was that what made her such a mad, fickle thing?

Ah. There was a flash of red. Where was she hiding the rest of her baggage? If he just stared, would that will her back into the ether from which she’d burst?

No. He’d tried that one already, and so he approached.

“Ruth,” he said. “What an unexpected surprise!”

He glanced around pointedly in search of an escort or servant, then made a big show of spinning his hands as though that would summon up her entourage before frowning, dramatically, and finally taking a bag in hand.

“Where are the rest of your belongings?”

If he knew anything, it was that Ruth rarely packed in half-measures. He knew that from how his back usually felt after “visits” (truly, he suspected them attempted move-ins from her and Nesah both) to London.

If Ruth had been aware of how many “quirks” were attributed to her with any complimentary intent, she would have suggested some self-analysis and some family analysis at large, refusing to take sole ownership of most of it and laughing at any potential declaration of innocence on her little brother’s behalf.

Now when it came to the business of identifying one (1) brother in the “crowd”, Ruth looked around for something apricot, turquoise, or maybe emerald. Founding nothing of that sort insight for an entire hour, she concluded her brother had deserted her and started mentally composing an overly dramatic letter that was, in the best-case scenario, only going to reach their mother and one of their siblings.

She had just settled on the word “undignified”, while she looked for a carriage -a decent one!-, when a sad brown suit approached her. She was ready to scream bloody murder at the stranger approaching, when she recognised him as her brother.

“Darling brother! I’ve sent a letter! But clearly the mugging must have influence your short term memory! No worries, I’m here to take care of you and I will find you a watch!” She wasn’t loud per se, but she always spoke as if she was meant to be.

No trace of an entourage. No servants. Even her hat could have looked normal in a big town and nothing she was wearing was decidedly masculine attire.

“Oh, dear, I am trying this new thing adventurers and terribly wordly people do of travelling light!” Which was not like her, especially because there was no sign of a musical instrument around her nor a struggling valet trying to transport it.

She stared top-down at Zechariah. He was taller than her, but she was wearing hills -admittedly not the most practical shoes, but definitely the most fashionable- once again and then around him. No help. Drab suit. No shame derived from drab suit. Jaw less than freshly shaven. Was her brother in disgrace? “Where is your carriage?” She asked looking around, with a sinking feeling, waiting for the perfect moment to elaborate on what she was seeing or mercifully giving her brother the chance to explain himself before she could make assumptions that could hardly be contradicted.

It took him a moment to realize the first thing he had noticed about her. Not her loud hat, or her loud clothing, or her loud entourage, or her loud cross-dressing, or even her own loudness (which, to be fair, was one of the loud things she had not left behind) … but her hair. The one other loud part of her that could hardly be snatched away, any more than the voice she fretted so endlessly over (God, he hoped she enjoyed it baking like a loaf in the middle of summer per her maliciously followed instructions).

Mugging? Is that what left her in these straits? With a flat look, Zechariah reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold-accented pocket watch (which was far less modestly rendered than the rest of him this day). He flipped it open, looked at it, then looked back to her.

“Why, according to this, my dear Ruth, your letter arrived …” the pleasant pretense dropped, and his annoyance dripped off: “today.”

Even Nesah had saved him the trouble of lugging her over himself by just gently inviting herself through his front door like a cannonball.

He arched skeptical brows at her explanation. Of all the siblings that needed to be more ‘worldly’ … well, he supposed Ruth was less likely to have the redheaded troubles Zechariah Uriel had found himself with.

“It suits you,” Zechariah decided.

Meaning, it suited him because Zechariah’s heaviest lifting these days tended to be more accomplished men’s arguments.

“It is over there, Ruth,” he answered with a gesture to the road, in a patient tone that heavily implied said patience a finite resource.

Though Zechariah was not as smooth shaven as his own standards … Zechariah was a diva. There might be stubble to the touch, but the main indicator that he had not shaved in the last five minutes was no smell of aftershave.

He could see it in her eyes, searching for answers. A lot had changed … and recently, at that.

“England is offended by bright colors,” Zechariah deadpanned. “They begin to think you have illegal tendencies – those of the likes of Oscar Wilde, if you look too Bohemian.”

His tone had softened by the end of his sentence, bordering even on a look of apology. For all his flamboyance, he had never donned a dress and he had left their mother’s lipstick alone long before puberty.

He chose the lighter luggage to pick up, and then nodded again in the correct direction.

“You were mugged, Ruth?” he guessed, based on the accusations she lodged his way.

Maybe not. She hadn’t inexplicably accused him of abandoning her in Germany, so he doubted her predicament was a victimhood she could utilize.

Maybe, just maybe, Ruth would have been glad to be remembered for something that belonged to her regardless of how hard she worked. Or she would terribly resent it because it wasn’t one of the things she had worked so hard to get for herself and lashed back, as if it was Zechariah’s fault that the world was more interested in her “gingerhood” than any of the accomplishment she cherished so… well, loudly.

Ruth glanced with pleasure at the watch. Some things hadn’t changed then. Ruth shrugged off “The post is awful in the country,” she waved it away “I am sure it has nothing to do with when you check you correspondence.” Of course.

Ruth was already about to move to a different topic when Zechariah made a comment. It was an odd idea, that her brother could find anything suitable for her. She hadn’t been suitable in a while. “Of course it does, darling.” She absolutely was, worldly, who could possibly doubt that? She most definitely wasn’t in a rush. Also, looking at her stance, one would think *she* could do some lifting, but of course, as a lady, she would never confirm.

Plausible deniability, we were saying. That suited both these Meijers, apparently, in different ways and with different degrees of risk.

Ruth marched in the direction indicated. She was normally quick, but not *that* quick. Ha her eyes not shown something had happened, probably that would have given it away. Either that or she had gone postal once and for all as predicted by many. At least she had hit thirty before that.

Or, again, she saw some changes in him and she wanted to avoid seeing them and, at the same time, she was not especially keen on showing she had the ability of notice certain things at all. She wasn’t doing a very good job and was more out of habit than anything else, but she still was protecting her reputation, probably a mixture of leftovers from their childhood and family legends.

“Oh I see, threads and embroidery can and will absolutely change one’s behaviour.” She said that with less irony than her usual remarks. There was bitter note in her voice not directed to him “And it goes as far as this fishermen’s village.” Aaaaand back she was. No one could hope to have a moment with her, apparently.

Ruth shook her head “Oh, they can try,” she put on a threatening smile. “No, I just thought you were either the victim of a mugging or your closet had burnt to ashes.” Because of the brown suit.

And yes, oddly enough the accusation stopped there, for now. Ruth climbed the carriage, caring little for the hem of her skirt -was that even an actual skirt?- and to request assistance. She had probably waited too long to lose time with further femininity nonsense.

There was a haughty pride when she looked at Zechariah’s watch the way he wished his older siblings would look at him. Not even her kvetching about the post could take that away!

“I am very popular here,” he announced, firmly.

Not in a ‘had friends’ way, and not in a here here way, either. Mere technicalities. Besides, a letter from a sister was not what summoned that fancy letter opener to his hand like a returning boomerang.

Did it intimidate Zechariah, sometimes, that his sister stood more like a man in heels than he did in a suit and tie? In conversational comparison, perhaps. But, she was older. She had always been more. Questioning it was to question why the sun set and the stars shone: fun, but ultimately pointless.

His head tilted as he watched her get straight to business. No more speeches? Not a blasted out song to these many, many strangers who were not yet looking at her? He hefted the rest of her suitcases, this time with only an uncomfortable grunt.

Something was up with Ruth. Had she finally had her heart broken? Did she break the wrong windows with the power of her voice?

And then, with a mere opening of her mouth, all Zechariah’s sympathy was swept away in the wind of her words once more.

“Who says I ever behave the way I might be expected to?” Zechariah answered peevishly.

One of the maids who changed his teenaged bed sheets, for one. The months-long crying spell preceded by a dramatic friendship dissolution after an older boy started courting a girl, for another. Not to mention the awful, sullen spell that had come and never quite lifted after a brief mention of some sodomite murderer hanged a few years back.

“There is a woman in my life!” he huffed, partly out of frustration but truly mostly out of the weight of her few suitcases. “She is-” he handed off the suitcases to the elderly carriage driver eagerly, “-beautiful, and comes with a hefty dowry!”

Brothel. She came with a brothel, not that he was going to say that out loud.

“You are too kind,” Zechariah deadpanned with a roll of his eyes before getting in beside her and closing the carriage door. “So, who managed to wrestle you into a skirt?”

Ruth was quite possibly considering how Zechariah’s watch could become her watch. It paired perfectly with at least a few of her vests. Even more than a few, if she were to borrow from her little brother’s closet. Because crossdressing in Whitby sounded like an excellent idea. The plan slipped from her mind pretty quickly, like most things did, and, like most things, it was likely to eventually come back.

“Define popular,” she rebuked, so readily one would have thought she was reading a script. She clearly had opinions about Zechariah’s potential to be “popular” in the most common sense of the word.

Ruth actually had a lot of tenderness for that little brother of hers. If she had been a different person, she might have shared the respect she felt for the strong choices he had made in life and even some appreciation for his former wardrobe. Had she been different, she would have tried to create a safe space for some of the insecurity she was sure she had eyed in the past. But alas, she was too concentrated on her goals, too busy being so loud she couldn’t hear a single critique, too busy gaining the attention that was never spontaneously offered to her to actually put in the work necessary. It wasn’t the willingness to put that in practice that she was lacking: it was the consistency. She was too volatile and she had embraced that rather than trying to do better. She was imperfectly herself and she had made a point of shouting that at the world.

This normally would have swollen her chest with a song, but right now… right now she was thinking about what brought her here and this made her world terribly quiet. Which was why, when she emerged from it, she had words to say that wiped out any good will she might have incited in her brother.

“Trackrecords” she answered, raising an eyebrow, evidently not impressed.

And then a mention of a woman. That convinced Ruth for exactly zero seconds “I am sure she will be thrilled in hearing you describe her as attractive and loaded in the same sentence.” Oh, but she wasn’t going to stop at that “So you have horrible gambling debts, she is pregnant, both, or…?” They were inside a carriage, the wheel sound was going to cover her. She wasn’t shouting, right? Then she waved her hand, as to say maybe I don’t want to know.

“As per usual.” Was there anything she wasn’t going to remark upon.

The question took her a little by surprise. She rose her eyebrows then proceeded to cross her legs. It wasn’t a skirt. It was a pair of very large trousers that pretended to be a skirt. Unless she did that the effect was barely visible. She smiled triumphantly.

Define popular. Define popular! Who was the lawyer here? He huffed, and shrugged the suitcases as dramatically as his weighed down arms would permit.

“Surely, there is an opera that has described it in great detail to you.”

Who would have thought? Two gay, dramatic siblings, rooted as deeply in their love for each other as in their love for the truly flamboyant. While Zechariah had turned out to be one of the rougher siblings when it came to words, there were still flashes of the sensitive soul who had professed fervent ideas of what should be versus what was. Ideas that were a little more Nesah and a little less Menachem, much as their father had tried to suppress ‘excessive sympathy’ (though more subtly, too much empathizing) for the strange flowers that bloomed through so much as the slightest crack in pavement.

“I am a perfect gentleman, thank you very much,” Zechariah insisted.

What? If there was wine and dinner preceded by sky-high expectations and succeeded by a river down said mountain, what could possibly be more gentleman-like in their little gay worlds?

At Ruth’s criticism of Zechariah’s preferred ‘assets’ in a woman, he waved a hand back and forth as though to say, ‘same thing’.

Zechariah rolled his eyes again, but then answered with a sarcastic smile: “Both, my dear sister. I am certain you will love her just as much as she deserves.”

He looked at her proud shift of legs, basking in her victory! He then looked her dead in the eyes.

“Skirt,” he declared, as though it were nigh-debatable fact just for the sake of having left his mouth.

The carriage bumped on, unable to outrun their bickering.

“How kind has Germany been to you of late?” he asked idly, watching out the window of the carriage like a bored princeling.

The lawyer was the one that was allowed to study law and practice it. In ANY country. Would Ruth have been a lawyer had she been born a man? Possibly. She didn’t need that to be a judge…mental person.

“There is, of course. But you don’t know it. So I am asking what you mean, since I am fairly sure you do not share the values of a roman general, I’d like to hear yours.”

Lawyer, we were saying.

What made them similar was also what made them choose to express the same concept in their two opposite ways: while Zechariah had to hide and keep private his flamboyancy and more sympathetic side, maybe even to himself, Ruth wrapped herself tight in that, put it in front of everyone’s eyes so that they could concentrate on her sensibility and extraneous while forgetting about her more ambitious, independent side and a type of practicality that was deemed less than feminine. In general, putting effort into showing just how much she cared about clothes and presentation was a good way to make everyone forget how unsuitable that presentation could objectively be. They were both hiding in plain sight, in their own way.

“No doubts about that,” the response was given with a conviction and a speed that sounded very… fake. Also, she was staring way too directly.

Ruth placed her long fingers on the side of her faced and grinned, waiting for further information on the future Mrs Meijer. “Oh, so am I. I am *dying* to meet the woman you’d *die* for.” She said that so loud their relatives back in Prague could hear.

Ruth quickly changed the leg on top, too quickly for a skirt, as to display the wonderful abilities of her pants. It was a challenge to call them “skirt” once again, as her wrapped together arms suggested.

The bumping was considerable, but the pettiness was stronger in this ones.

Ruth made an effort to keep her poker face, but inevitably lost her verve in the dialogue “Adequately. Seriously, as usual. I suppose with the summer it has also gotten warmer.” All terrible expressions to describe a place where she was really excited about not so long ago. She had thrived living in Munich. She had a career there. She had friends. She had even written music about it. Yes, this wasn’t normal.

What was he supposed to say? ‘Journalists chase me’? Or, ‘sometimes I invite a man home, get drunk enough to fuck him, and instead get drunk enough to realize I do not even want to fuck him’? Or, ‘I posed as a woman, was discovered as a man, and fell in love with ink on paper’?

None of those aspects of his life were especially flattering … and Ruth needed to think his life was even bigger than hers.

“I have a Carrington as a client, now,” he said instead, with an air of absolute haughtiness. “On retainer, at that. I cannot tell you the details of my work with him, but,” Zechariah settled back into his seat, gloating, “I can tell you the pay is quite handsome.”

Out of his league, even. God forbid Darius ever figure that out.

“The nieces and nephews will hear about it,” he said with an amused crinkle of the nose. “Well, see it.”

He was still … undecided, about where Abraham fell in that lineup. Penina’s children were Jewish … but Uriel’s wedding had actually been officiated by a rabbi.

Zechariah steepled his fingers and looked over at Ruth, with that smug smile he got when he was feeling better than someone else.

“Come, now,” Zechariah sighed, devious smile still at full strength. “Are you attempting to suggest that an age appropriate, nubile young European woman of wealth and proper courtship is a worse selection than some American cowgirl old enough to be our mother?”

‘She is a backstabbing cunt!’ he did not add … verbally.

“I assure you,” he said instead with a mean smile. “You two will get along swimmingly.”

His eyes shifted down again, then back to her gaze with all the placidity of the center of a tornado.

“Skirt,” he repeated, serenely.

A brow arched in open, judgmental skepticism.

“Ah, yes. Pure poetry. The subpar Landschaft of Deutschland,” he extolled with a dramatic sweep of his hand. “The rolling hills of schadenfreude!” He traced hills in the air with a dramatic frown, then the smirk was right back. “Has the land of sausage failed our mermaid?”

Translation:

subpar countryside … Germany.