Summary: People look at Don and Charlie Eppes, and see only what they want to see. If they ever looked deeper, though... they might not like what they find.
Disclaimer: As much as I wish I owned them, all these lovely characters are part of Numb3rs, and are therefore owned by CBS. Thankfully, that doesn't mean that I can't submit them to the tortures of my own twisted fantasies...
WARNING: This story is a Don/Charlie pairing, and is therefore Slash, Incest and Eppescest.

CHAPTER TWO

I AM DON EPPES

He thought about it sometimes… about the harsh truths that was hidden in the darkest recesses of his mind. Only ever when he was alone, in the quiet dark of his apartment, did he dig up his secrets, his own… darkness. It wouldn't do for anyone to know… Not his teammates and the bureau. Not dad. Certainly not Charlie…

His dad had told him that his first love had been that little gun, not baseball as he'd tried to insist. Dad told him that they'd chosen to distract him… but that was a lie, and Don knew it. He'd let them distract him because the way that gun had felt in his hand, toy or not… it had felt perfect. Plastic darts couldn't do much harm, but even he'd known back then that continuously pointing the gun at living things didn't bode well. It'd been the first time he'd known he was different.

So he'd tried to give it up. Tried to find a different path… but somehow he'd always known that, no matter what choice he made, he was going to end up with a gun in his hands. He'd only hoped that by joining the bureau, he could control himself.

A lie, a beautiful lie…

First, they'd called him a good shot. Wasn't too long before they started to whisper the words 'trigger happy'. So he'd taken the job in Albuquerque. Fugitive Recovery. They never did ask too many questions when a marked turned up dead. He relished the hunt, and relished the kill. Sometimes, waiting for the target to become threat enough to justify firing his gun was almost… torturous. Those were the rules, though, the only controls he had. But when he killed a mark on a hunt, alone with no witnesses, and made his mark disappear… that had been when Don had known there was no fixing his kind of different.

His… lethal tendencies, however, were only half the story. Half the lie. There was another that was much harder to acknowledge.

Don should have known, the moment his mother had told him he'd be getting a baby brother, he should have known. Being five years old was no excuse. Every chance he had, little Don had whispered to his little brother in his mother's tummy. Promised him love, promised him protection. He'd been there, at Charlie's birth – the second to hold him, before even his father had the chance. For the most part, Don had kept his whispered promises. He'd watched over Charlie's crib, he'd fed him, learned to change his diapers… his parents caught him one night, after he'd gotten up to soothe Charlie's cries. He even held Charlie at night, when nightmares and numbers and lightning storms were too much for him to bear. Was it such a surprise, then, that they'd forged a… connection?

So it went, through the years. The closest of brothers, an unbreakable bond. It might have continued that way, until that day. A man had come to the park with candy and promises. He'd left Charlie for only a moment, but he'd felt the wrong even before he'd heard Charlie's surprised yelp. Before Don had even known what was wrong, he was on top of the man who was trying to steal his brother away. He'd fought like no ten year old was supposed to fight, clawing and scratching and biting until the man had screamed in terror. He'd come to two realizations that day.

He enjoyed hurting that man, more than anyone ever should. He'd wanted to kill him… would have killed him, if their parents hadn't come to see what was happening. That was the first. The second…

He loved Charlie. Much more than he was supposed to… and he could never, ever let anyone know just how much.

They'd started to grow distant, Don had made sure of that. Even if he still kept watch from the shadows, he stayed away. It frayed on his nerves and it scratched at his heart, but it was for their own good. Even the girls… none of them ever looked like Charlie. They never thought like him or spoke like him. For a time, that had been enough. To be away from Charlie, to have all these nameless girls who were just so willing to throw themselves at a baseball jock…

He should have known that he wouldn't be able to outrun it forever, though. Not his bloodlust, not Charlie. When he'd hit that baseball with the crack of a gun… Don had known baseball would never be enough. No matter what he told the others about the major leagues – it had only ever been a believable excuse. And then there had been the fumble, an accident, a moment of weakness… but when he'd snuck out of the room of a brown eyed, curly haired freshman, Don had known it was time to break contact, while a clean break was still possible.

And so there was the academy. There was fugitive recovery. There was Kim Hall. He tried so hard with Kim. Maybe he did end up loving her, for a while at least. But in those rare moments he was honest with himself, Don had to admit that half the time, it wasn't Kim Hall beneath him. Maybe she'd known it too. Maybe that was why she hadn't put up much of a fight when he'd decided to leave for home and break off their engagement. His mother's illness was just… a convenient excuse.

Touching Charlie again, down in the garage, had nearly been his downfall. So Don had turned to anger instead. Anger was safe. Anger ensured a certain amount of distance… for all the good it did. It wasn't long, barely over a year, before anger had to make room for cooperation. They worked together… they worked together so well, it was like they'd always been meant to work that way. Don and Charlie, the wonder brothers, turning his team into the star case closers in the bureau. Pretty soon… there was no more room for anger. Just control. Iron control… but even that slipped, now and then. Like when he'd held Charlie after the shooting. When he couldn't help looking at him with just a little more love than he should, or letting a touch linger just a little longer than a brother should.

Sometimes he could even believe that Charlie felt the same way. The way Charlie looked at him, touched him, teased him…

Then Kim Hall disappeared.

He'd torn himself up looking for her. He HAD to make the effort, even if only to prove to himself that she really had meant something, once upon a time. But in the end, Don gave up. They thought he had a mental breakdown. That he couldn't handle the disappearance of the woman he'd loved, once. So they'd sent him home and told him they would approve him for duty again pending a psychiatric evaluation. For his own health, of course.

Perhaps that was his darkest secret of all.

Don hadn't stopped looking because he couldn't find Kim Hall. He'd stopped looking… because he had figured out who killed her. That had broken him… because it'd been Charlie. Charlie, his dear Charlie, who carded fingers through his hair as he lay on his brother's lap, Gulliver's Travels playing on the television. They shared more than just blood… They shared darkness. They shared love. They shared murder.

And Don knew that, one day…

…they were going to catch each other.

TO BE CONTINUED...?

Here it is, the second instalment from Don's point of view! I wrote this at 1am, so I apologize for any… roughness. Please let me know what you think but, more importantly, let me know if you want me to expand this story with them finally colliding!