Big Brother
Despite appearances, not actually dead.
Title: Big Brother
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Pairing/Characters: Brian/Justin, Molly's POV
Author: knittedshadow
Rating: adult
Words: 3,866
Description: This is what she remembers. She was twelve years old and for the first time in her life she was an only child. A year before, she had lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, and he’s not on the back of milk cartons but he’s gone all the same.
Challenge: None
Disclaimer: Cowlip just won't hand over the QAF cast to me however many times I offer them money. Or better scripts. And thanks again to my super beta besame_bj who is awesome and helpful and just generally lovely.
Big Brother
This is what she remembers. She was twelve years old and for the first time in her life she was an only child. A year before, she had lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, and he’s not on the back of milk cartons but he’s gone all the same.
It happened in three stages and it doesn’t bother her that much anymore, thinking of him disappearing bit by bit. It’s funny but at the time she never noticed. It’s not until after, when it’s too late, that she looks back and realizes he left a long time ago.
She can picture him now, what was he? Seventeen, eighteen? All blond hair and smiles as he turns away from them, breaking her mother’s heart and pulling apart their family without a backwards glance. Yes, hand in hand with Brian Kinney, her wonderful older brother disappears.
-----
The first time is the most heated.
Molly, age eleven, skinny and pale, still sporting the grazed knees and short bangs of childhood. She sits crouched in her garage, fingers plugging her ears. Staring morosely at the bent front end of her Dad’s car, she wonders why no one bothers to tell her stuff anymore. And despite her fingers and the heavy garage door she can still hear the yelling, muffled and angry through the walls.
This is the first day she’s been home in nearly a week. Shuttled from friend’s house to friend’s house until she’s sick to death of special treatment and extra servings of ice cream at dinner time. She hates the way the moms all look at her with pity in their eyes and say, “You’re welcome here anytime, honey,” but whisper behind their hands about her difficult brother and broken family.
But her family’s not broken and that’s the problem, it’s still very much together, angry and shouting in every room. And her brother’s not difficult, he’s just not there. Came home one day from school with a busted lip, left that afternoon and didn’t come back.
Molly doesn’t ask where he’s gone and when she comes downstairs in the morning to find her dad asleep on the couch she doesn’t ask about that either. For all their shouting, it turns out her family hardly says anything at all.
Stuff disappears from Justin’s room, his uniform, books, so she knows he’s still alive. But he’s not mentioned in their house anymore and his photos disappear from the living room. Her father still sleeps on the couch.
Things go on like this, a kind of suspended belief that if the problem is not talked about then it will eventually go away. She spends more time on the floors of friends’ bedrooms than in her own bed and starts to think that silence is worse than shouting.
But the silence is broken now, and that’s why she’s here, crouching in the garage, seeing the crushed car for the first time. She’s trying not to listen to the sound of her mom and her dad and Justin and Brian Kinney. Because they’re shouting again and she hates it. She’s scared too because Brian Kinney’s here, in her house, sitting on her chair and she knows that means something big is going to happen.
She saw him arrive, he looks exactly how she imagined he would. Tall, dark and handsome, black-suited and smirking at her parents. Justin said proudly one morning over breakfast that Brian was his knight in Gucci armor and Molly can see what he means. There’s something dangerous blazing from the hazel eyes above his dark designer suit.
She knows what they’re arguing about, she’s not dumb, but she chooses not to care because when you care you get hurt and her mom taught her that. Silently she moves to her feet, wincing as her muscles at the back of her legs stretch out. Then she tucks her hair behind her ears and leaves the safety of the garage.
The moment the door opens the argument floods to her ears in full force and she grimaces at the noise. She reaches the entrance to the living room just in time to hear the words, “Justin? You coming?” before she has to dart out of the way to avoid colliding with Brian Kinney as he strides from the room.
And there it is. Their first meeting. Her eyes are drawn to his face, almost unwillingly and she stares up at him in open fascination. For a second his eyes flicker down and their gaze meets but then, without breaking his stride, he’s passed her. And she watches his back as it heads towards the front door, hating him with the cool detachment of someone she barely knows.
She’s already backed into the shadows by the time her brother follows and he ignores her completely as he leaves without looking back. So, that’s how it goes.
“Justin? You coming?”
And he spins past them all. Stage one.
A second after the door closes her father storms out the room too. He does acknowledge her, just for a second when their eyes meet. But then his gaze slides easily across her face to the drinks cabinet in the kitchen behind her and somehow that hurts more than Justin’s head-down departure. She tilts her chin up defiantly and ignores the chink of glasses and slow glug of scotch.
Instead she turns her attention to the living room and the, by now, familiar image of her mom, crumpled and tearful on the couch. She pads across the floor and sits next to her. Her mother jumps at the touch to her shoulder.
“Oh. Molly,” she says and at once the too bright smile is back in place though her eyes are still red and watery. “I didn’t realize you were down here, sweetheart.”
“Has Justin gone?”
The words make her mother flinch and the tears roll faster but that horrible stretched smile stays in place.
“Just for a little bit, honey. He needs to … to stay somewhere else for a while. A couple of days. He’ll be back though. He’ll be back soon.”
Molly leans in awkwardly, wrapping her arms around her mom’s shoulders and wondering at what point she became the parent. For a moment her mother’s stiff in her arms, still held in that rigid pretense that everything’s all right, but then she slumps and the false smile drops from her face.
A moment later her body starts to shake, almost uncontrollably, her chest wracked with sobs and Molly helplessly pats her on the back and tries horribly hard to feel like a grown-up.
-----
The second time is the most frightening.
Molly is lying in front of the TV, painting her nails. Her mom is tidying up from dinner in the kitchen and her dad isn’t there. The house is blissfully quiet until the phone rings.
Her mind is still half on the television, she waves her nails to let them dry and eavesdrops. Her attention switches from TV program to phone conversation just in time to catch her mother’s choked sob and a whisper of her brother’s name.
She trails into the kitchen, hands held high to avoid smudging the fresh layer of varnish. Her mother is slumped in a chair, like the first time Justin left, her face pale. She cannot even muster a fake smile.
An hour later and Molly is sitting on one of those orange hospital chairs and staring at the door of a room that she’s not allowed to enter. She grips the sides of the plastic seat until her knuckles turn white and only when her fingers start to prickle with lack of blood does she look down. Eyes vacant she stares at her nails and does not notice that the varnish is chipped and smudged down to the quick. Stage two.
-----
It’s odd but that memory, sitting in the hospital hallway waiting for someone to tell her what’s happened, is mixed with another. The second is hazier, filed among the things she only vaguely remembers.
She’s sitting on another orange chair, the ones that seem to have been picked on the basis of being the most uncomfortable type on offer. Another cold hospital corridor stretches before her sightless eyes. She’s bored out of her skull, yawning till her jaw cracks. She’s been here for a little over four hours, gradually coming to terms with the fact her dad has forgotten her again.
She came to the hospital straight after school, fifteen minutes walk but she dawdled so it took longer. Justin’s constantly in foul moods now that he’s moved to rehab and she no longer enjoys their visits. She’s not the person he wants to see anyway and she hates the disappointment in his eyes when he realizes it’s her instead of Brian.
Her dad was supposed to pick her up at eight, she’s staying at his house this weekend but it’s nine-thirty now and he’s forgotten, like he did three days ago and two weeks before that. Molly’s got used to it.
So she’s stuck here, opposite Justin’s bedroom, yawning and trying to sit comfortably. Her brother’s gone to bed already, gets tired quick these days. She should call her dad but she hasn’t got a cell phone yet and she doesn’t have his new number. And anyway, a cold little voice says, why should she bother? He clearly doesn’t want her there.
It’s not until quarter to eleven that a nurse notices her and asks if she’s okay. She explains the situation and is quickly bustled off to an office to borrow their phone and call home.
“Mom,” she says flatly. “Dad forgot. Can you come get me?”
The hospital is a twenty minute drive from home and at eleven Molly stands anxiously in the entrance of the hospital, peering out into the night to try and spot her mom’s car.
Five minutes later, a pair of distant headlights flash at her and the small figure of her mom beckons from behind the windshield. Pulling her school coat tighter round her, she stumbles tiredly down the steps into the parking lot.
She’s just heading through the last lane of parked cars, picking up speed to get out of the cold, when she crashes into the side of someone going in the opposite direction. Stumbling backwards she starts a breathless apology. And stops. It’s Brian Kinney.
“What are you doing here?” she blurts out before she can stop herself.
Brian looks at her oddly then recognition floods his face. He turns away, already a few feet from her when he answers shortly “Just here for a check-up” and hurries past.
Molly doesn’t mention the meeting to Justin and when her mom turns to her in the car and says, “Who was that?” she says, “No one,” because somewhere in her mind she can’t quite believe that the man was Brian.
It just doesn’t seem to fit somehow, with every glowing description Justin’s ever given, the blazing knight, the dangerous expression. Because she’s sure, in that brief moment when he’d realized who she was, something had flickered across his face. Just for a second, before he turned away, but she was certain she’d seen it, the sharp glint of fear flashing through his eyes.
-----
The third time is the most painful.
Molly’s mom is visiting an old school friend in Harrisburg and staying for the weekend. Justin, kicking and screaming all the way, has been forced to baby-sit. Her mom agrees to compromise. The compromise is standing just inside the door. Brian Kinney.
Molly’s been peering down at them from the top of the stairs for the last five minutes as her mother says goodbye and warns Justin, with a pointed look at Brian, to be sensible. As the door shuts behind her, Molly stays where she is, feeling inexplicably shy.
She’s used to seeing Brian surrounded by commotion, the anger of her father or that odd unexpected meeting in the parking lot of the hospital. He seems somehow out of context here, calm and casual on her doorstep
“You gonna show some manners for once, and come down here?”
Her brother’s words bring her back and reluctantly she emerges from behind the banister and makes her way down the stairs. She gets to the bottom and leans against the wall.
“Molly this is Brian. Brian this is Molly.”
“Hey,” she says.
He gives her a shallow nod, not moving from his position against the door. Justin’s eyes flick nervously between them, and Molly shifts her feet, awkward. Her brother suddenly feels as much a stranger as Brian and all three of them are squashed into four feet of floor space.
“How are things?” Justin says and it’s dumb but it fills the silence.
“Okay. You?”
“Yeah.”
She rubs her nose and frowns at him. “You look different.”
“Older?” he asks hopefully and she hears Brian snort.
“No.” She looks at him and grins. “Uglier.”
Brian pushes himself off the doorframe and pats her on the shoulder.
“I think I’m gonna like you,” he says and heads up the stairs to the kitchen.
As Justin scowls at her and flounces after Brian, Molly feels something loosen in her chest. Things are gonna be okay.
-----
They end up watching a movie, crammed together on the couch upstairs, bowls of popcorn on their laps, silences forgotten. Brian makes Molly laugh with his insistence on no-salt, no-toffee, no-fucking-sugar popcorn and the disgust on his face while he watches her and Justin stuff their faces.
“You realize that’s turning to pure lumps of fat the moment it’s past your lips?” he says maliciously to Justin. “Heading straight to the waistline.”
“That’s bull,” Justin says, his mouth crammed. “And I’m young. I don’t get fat.”
Molly giggles and grabs another handful.
The film they watch is atrocious. Appallingly predictable from the first frame to the last. Molly adores it.
Justin watches with his usual complacent enjoyment of anything trashy and Brian sits twitching in barely concealed revulsion. He’s only kept in his seat by Justin’s lazy smirk and a low murmuring in his ear which Molly suspects is about things her mom would rather she didn’t know.
Sometimes, when they don’t think she’s watching, her eyes flicker to the side and she catches them. Those subtle signs of being a couple that she knows would make Justin’s ears go pink with pleasure if she ever mentioned them.
Brian’s arm, which starts slung around the back of the sofa, but drops lower and lower as the film goes on, until eventually it’s draped across Justin’s shoulders. Her brother’s socked foot which drifts casually to the left until it rests against Brian’s calf. And a glance between them every now and then, when their eyes meet and they share a smile over some private joke.
She notes each one and is surprised to feel a slight ache in her throat, a feeling of loss that she only vaguely understands. It seems to her that, sitting next to him on the couch, their shoulders brushing close, she’s never missed her big brother more.
-----
By the time the credits roll it’s eleven ‘o’clock and pitch black outside. Noisily crunching on the last of her popcorn she purposely ignores Justin’s pointed looks. Eventually he grits his teeth and says, “Molly” in an even tone.
“What?” she says.
“Isn’t it time you went to bed?”
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “No.”
Justin looks at her pleadingly. “But you look really tired.”
“I’m not.”
“Mom said bed by ten-thirty.”
“Did not.”
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Did not.”
“Did!…Oh, shut up!”
Brian, practically forgotten on the edge of the sofa, raises an eyebrow and says dryly, “The level of maturity you two show simply astounds me.”
They both stick out their tongues and he rolls his eyes.
The bickering ends when Molly takes pity on Justin and his not-so-subtle hints. Argument grudgingly forgotten, she presses a quick kiss to his cheek and slides off the sofa.
It takes her a while to gather up her bowl and cup and when she’s returned from putting them away in the kitchen, she pokes her head round the door to say goodnight. But the words never reach her lips.
They’re leaning towards each other on the sofa, her brother and Brian, faces tilted upwards. And in the blue light of the television she can see something in their eyes which makes her falter and look away.
In that brief second before she turns her head and creeps silently down the hallway she sees it, that same expression mirrored perfectly on two faces. There’s a hunger in her brother’s eyes and an intimacy which she’s never seen before. And it hurts, stranger and stronger than she ever expected it to, right in the pit of her stomach, in a way that’s hard to explain.
For the first time in her life, she realizes Justin is not just her older brother or her mom’s son. He means different things to different people. And the knowledge hurts in a way that feels a little sad and a little final.
-----
She can’t sleep that night. Tosses and turns until her sheets are tangled round her ankles and her pillows are flung to the floor. It reminds her of the time, not so long ago, just after Justin got hurt, when he’d still lived here and woken her night after night with his screaming, until his hoarse cries for help had given her nightmares too and her screams had echoed with his.
And she thinks of the arguments, back in their old house, before Justin moved out. How she’d had to sit at dinner and swallow her peas as hatred burned between her father and brother. Or that time when Justin had come home to find one of his sketchbooks ripped to shreds and he’d blamed her and she’d pretended she’d done it because somehow she thought that would make things all right.
Perhaps that’s what keeps her awake now, the old nightmares, seeing Justin again. However happy he seems, however wide his smile, she still noticed his shaking hand when he made the popcorn and the vivid scar beneath his hairline. He’s not her invincible big brother anymore.
Perhaps it’s that, or perhaps it’s too much sugar before bedtime. But whatever the reason, she’s still awake at three and that’s when she hears the noise. The quiet clunk of her front door closing, the sound of shoes on the path outside.
She scrambles out of bed to peer through the window. All she can see past the glass is darkness and then suddenly, there’s a tiny click and a small flare of light. A lit cigarette bobs below her window. It’s Brian.
Taking care not to make too much noise, she moves out of her bedroom and into the hallway. She wraps her arms around herself and tip-toes down the stairs. She hesitates outside the front door for a moment, then pulls it open and slips outside.
The cold air hits her in an icy blast and she shivers. Brian, sitting with his back to her on the front step, cocks his head at the noise but doesn’t look round.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks softly. “More nightmares?”
Molly stares at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Yeah.”
His head whips round. “Oh” he says and looks surprised. “I thought you were your brother.”
She can’t be sure in the dark but she swears she sees him blush. Her own cheeks flare a little and she grimaces. “Sorry. We sound kind of similar sometimes.” She pushes the front door shut and moves to sit next to him on the step, knees drawn up under her pajama top. “Even my dad used to get confused when we spoke on the phone.”
Brian lets smoke trail from his mouth. “You still talk to your dad?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“Does he ask about Justin?”
“Not really.” She eyes Brian’s cigarette. “Can I try that?”
“Sure.” He passes it over. “Why doesn’t he ask about Justin?”
Molly shrugs again. “Mom says he’s ashamed. They argue about it.” She coughs out most of the smoke and hands the cigarette back to him.
“He’s an asshole,” Brian mutters under his breath.
“He doesn’t like you much either,” she says primly. “You corrupted Justin.”
He smirks and looks rather pleased with himself.
“And he says you’re the reason my brother got hurt.”
The smirk vanishes abruptly and his face darkens. “Yeah. Well, maybe the old man knows what he’s talking about after all.”
She looks at him thoughtfully, relents. “But that’s not what Mom says.”
He laughs but it sounds tight and a little bitter. “Go on then. What does Mom say?”
Molly looks at him coolly. “She says Justin’s good for you.”
Brian looks straight ahead. “Too good for me.”
At first Molly thinks he misheard but the words are a statement not a question. She corrects him anyway.
“Just, good for you.”
His expression remains unreadable. “And what do you think?”
She tucks her hair behind her ears and rests her chin on her knees, considers it for a while.
“I don’t know,” she says at last.
Brian doesn’t say anything, just takes a deeper drag on his cigarette.
Molly’s freezing, her bare feet turning blue from the icy ground. As the silence drags on between them she shuffles closer to Brian, trying to gain a little of his warmth. Minutes pass uninterrupted and, despite the cold she feels her eyelids begin to droop. She lets her head sink onto Brian’s shoulder, feels it twitch beneath her but he doesn’t shrug her off.
She can hear the comforting whoosh of air as he breathes out the cigarette smoke above her and the corresponding relax of his shoulders. She thinks of Justin, upstairs, his sleep dreamless and calm.
“I think it’s not your fault he got hurt,” she whispers softly. “And I think that you’re good for him too.”
-----
The next morning, Molly wakes early. She pads along the corridor and peers into her brother’s room. She’s not surprised to see Brian there too, lying tight together on Justin’s childhood bed, his dark head resting on the soft rise and fall of her brother’s chest. She stands there for a moment taking in the quiet scene, knowing that this is what stage three looks like, then she turns and heads downstairs for breakfast.
Munching on her cornflakes at the kitchen table, Molly decides calmly that that’s it, she’s lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, he’s not on the back of milk cartons. But he’s gone all the same. Eighteen and a bit, still all smiles and blond hair, her wonderful older brother lies upstairs, hand in hand with Brian Kinney
But Molly knows things have changed for the better, her family’s split now but not broken and her mother’s heart has mended. And she thinks that if she has to lose her brother at all, she’s kind of glad she lost him to someone like Brian Kinney.
Title: Big Brother
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Pairing/Characters: Brian/Justin, Molly's POV
Author: knittedshadow
Rating: adult
Words: 3,866
Description: This is what she remembers. She was twelve years old and for the first time in her life she was an only child. A year before, she had lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, and he’s not on the back of milk cartons but he’s gone all the same.
Challenge: None
Disclaimer: Cowlip just won't hand over the QAF cast to me however many times I offer them money. Or better scripts. And thanks again to my super beta besame_bj who is awesome and helpful and just generally lovely.
Big Brother
This is what she remembers. She was twelve years old and for the first time in her life she was an only child. A year before, she had lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, and he’s not on the back of milk cartons but he’s gone all the same.
It happened in three stages and it doesn’t bother her that much anymore, thinking of him disappearing bit by bit. It’s funny but at the time she never noticed. It’s not until after, when it’s too late, that she looks back and realizes he left a long time ago.
She can picture him now, what was he? Seventeen, eighteen? All blond hair and smiles as he turns away from them, breaking her mother’s heart and pulling apart their family without a backwards glance. Yes, hand in hand with Brian Kinney, her wonderful older brother disappears.
-----
The first time is the most heated.
Molly, age eleven, skinny and pale, still sporting the grazed knees and short bangs of childhood. She sits crouched in her garage, fingers plugging her ears. Staring morosely at the bent front end of her Dad’s car, she wonders why no one bothers to tell her stuff anymore. And despite her fingers and the heavy garage door she can still hear the yelling, muffled and angry through the walls.
This is the first day she’s been home in nearly a week. Shuttled from friend’s house to friend’s house until she’s sick to death of special treatment and extra servings of ice cream at dinner time. She hates the way the moms all look at her with pity in their eyes and say, “You’re welcome here anytime, honey,” but whisper behind their hands about her difficult brother and broken family.
But her family’s not broken and that’s the problem, it’s still very much together, angry and shouting in every room. And her brother’s not difficult, he’s just not there. Came home one day from school with a busted lip, left that afternoon and didn’t come back.
Molly doesn’t ask where he’s gone and when she comes downstairs in the morning to find her dad asleep on the couch she doesn’t ask about that either. For all their shouting, it turns out her family hardly says anything at all.
Stuff disappears from Justin’s room, his uniform, books, so she knows he’s still alive. But he’s not mentioned in their house anymore and his photos disappear from the living room. Her father still sleeps on the couch.
Things go on like this, a kind of suspended belief that if the problem is not talked about then it will eventually go away. She spends more time on the floors of friends’ bedrooms than in her own bed and starts to think that silence is worse than shouting.
But the silence is broken now, and that’s why she’s here, crouching in the garage, seeing the crushed car for the first time. She’s trying not to listen to the sound of her mom and her dad and Justin and Brian Kinney. Because they’re shouting again and she hates it. She’s scared too because Brian Kinney’s here, in her house, sitting on her chair and she knows that means something big is going to happen.
She saw him arrive, he looks exactly how she imagined he would. Tall, dark and handsome, black-suited and smirking at her parents. Justin said proudly one morning over breakfast that Brian was his knight in Gucci armor and Molly can see what he means. There’s something dangerous blazing from the hazel eyes above his dark designer suit.
She knows what they’re arguing about, she’s not dumb, but she chooses not to care because when you care you get hurt and her mom taught her that. Silently she moves to her feet, wincing as her muscles at the back of her legs stretch out. Then she tucks her hair behind her ears and leaves the safety of the garage.
The moment the door opens the argument floods to her ears in full force and she grimaces at the noise. She reaches the entrance to the living room just in time to hear the words, “Justin? You coming?” before she has to dart out of the way to avoid colliding with Brian Kinney as he strides from the room.
And there it is. Their first meeting. Her eyes are drawn to his face, almost unwillingly and she stares up at him in open fascination. For a second his eyes flicker down and their gaze meets but then, without breaking his stride, he’s passed her. And she watches his back as it heads towards the front door, hating him with the cool detachment of someone she barely knows.
She’s already backed into the shadows by the time her brother follows and he ignores her completely as he leaves without looking back. So, that’s how it goes.
“Justin? You coming?”
And he spins past them all. Stage one.
A second after the door closes her father storms out the room too. He does acknowledge her, just for a second when their eyes meet. But then his gaze slides easily across her face to the drinks cabinet in the kitchen behind her and somehow that hurts more than Justin’s head-down departure. She tilts her chin up defiantly and ignores the chink of glasses and slow glug of scotch.
Instead she turns her attention to the living room and the, by now, familiar image of her mom, crumpled and tearful on the couch. She pads across the floor and sits next to her. Her mother jumps at the touch to her shoulder.
“Oh. Molly,” she says and at once the too bright smile is back in place though her eyes are still red and watery. “I didn’t realize you were down here, sweetheart.”
“Has Justin gone?”
The words make her mother flinch and the tears roll faster but that horrible stretched smile stays in place.
“Just for a little bit, honey. He needs to … to stay somewhere else for a while. A couple of days. He’ll be back though. He’ll be back soon.”
Molly leans in awkwardly, wrapping her arms around her mom’s shoulders and wondering at what point she became the parent. For a moment her mother’s stiff in her arms, still held in that rigid pretense that everything’s all right, but then she slumps and the false smile drops from her face.
A moment later her body starts to shake, almost uncontrollably, her chest wracked with sobs and Molly helplessly pats her on the back and tries horribly hard to feel like a grown-up.
-----
The second time is the most frightening.
Molly is lying in front of the TV, painting her nails. Her mom is tidying up from dinner in the kitchen and her dad isn’t there. The house is blissfully quiet until the phone rings.
Her mind is still half on the television, she waves her nails to let them dry and eavesdrops. Her attention switches from TV program to phone conversation just in time to catch her mother’s choked sob and a whisper of her brother’s name.
She trails into the kitchen, hands held high to avoid smudging the fresh layer of varnish. Her mother is slumped in a chair, like the first time Justin left, her face pale. She cannot even muster a fake smile.
An hour later and Molly is sitting on one of those orange hospital chairs and staring at the door of a room that she’s not allowed to enter. She grips the sides of the plastic seat until her knuckles turn white and only when her fingers start to prickle with lack of blood does she look down. Eyes vacant she stares at her nails and does not notice that the varnish is chipped and smudged down to the quick. Stage two.
-----
It’s odd but that memory, sitting in the hospital hallway waiting for someone to tell her what’s happened, is mixed with another. The second is hazier, filed among the things she only vaguely remembers.
She’s sitting on another orange chair, the ones that seem to have been picked on the basis of being the most uncomfortable type on offer. Another cold hospital corridor stretches before her sightless eyes. She’s bored out of her skull, yawning till her jaw cracks. She’s been here for a little over four hours, gradually coming to terms with the fact her dad has forgotten her again.
She came to the hospital straight after school, fifteen minutes walk but she dawdled so it took longer. Justin’s constantly in foul moods now that he’s moved to rehab and she no longer enjoys their visits. She’s not the person he wants to see anyway and she hates the disappointment in his eyes when he realizes it’s her instead of Brian.
Her dad was supposed to pick her up at eight, she’s staying at his house this weekend but it’s nine-thirty now and he’s forgotten, like he did three days ago and two weeks before that. Molly’s got used to it.
So she’s stuck here, opposite Justin’s bedroom, yawning and trying to sit comfortably. Her brother’s gone to bed already, gets tired quick these days. She should call her dad but she hasn’t got a cell phone yet and she doesn’t have his new number. And anyway, a cold little voice says, why should she bother? He clearly doesn’t want her there.
It’s not until quarter to eleven that a nurse notices her and asks if she’s okay. She explains the situation and is quickly bustled off to an office to borrow their phone and call home.
“Mom,” she says flatly. “Dad forgot. Can you come get me?”
The hospital is a twenty minute drive from home and at eleven Molly stands anxiously in the entrance of the hospital, peering out into the night to try and spot her mom’s car.
Five minutes later, a pair of distant headlights flash at her and the small figure of her mom beckons from behind the windshield. Pulling her school coat tighter round her, she stumbles tiredly down the steps into the parking lot.
She’s just heading through the last lane of parked cars, picking up speed to get out of the cold, when she crashes into the side of someone going in the opposite direction. Stumbling backwards she starts a breathless apology. And stops. It’s Brian Kinney.
“What are you doing here?” she blurts out before she can stop herself.
Brian looks at her oddly then recognition floods his face. He turns away, already a few feet from her when he answers shortly “Just here for a check-up” and hurries past.
Molly doesn’t mention the meeting to Justin and when her mom turns to her in the car and says, “Who was that?” she says, “No one,” because somewhere in her mind she can’t quite believe that the man was Brian.
It just doesn’t seem to fit somehow, with every glowing description Justin’s ever given, the blazing knight, the dangerous expression. Because she’s sure, in that brief moment when he’d realized who she was, something had flickered across his face. Just for a second, before he turned away, but she was certain she’d seen it, the sharp glint of fear flashing through his eyes.
-----
The third time is the most painful.
Molly’s mom is visiting an old school friend in Harrisburg and staying for the weekend. Justin, kicking and screaming all the way, has been forced to baby-sit. Her mom agrees to compromise. The compromise is standing just inside the door. Brian Kinney.
Molly’s been peering down at them from the top of the stairs for the last five minutes as her mother says goodbye and warns Justin, with a pointed look at Brian, to be sensible. As the door shuts behind her, Molly stays where she is, feeling inexplicably shy.
She’s used to seeing Brian surrounded by commotion, the anger of her father or that odd unexpected meeting in the parking lot of the hospital. He seems somehow out of context here, calm and casual on her doorstep
“You gonna show some manners for once, and come down here?”
Her brother’s words bring her back and reluctantly she emerges from behind the banister and makes her way down the stairs. She gets to the bottom and leans against the wall.
“Molly this is Brian. Brian this is Molly.”
“Hey,” she says.
He gives her a shallow nod, not moving from his position against the door. Justin’s eyes flick nervously between them, and Molly shifts her feet, awkward. Her brother suddenly feels as much a stranger as Brian and all three of them are squashed into four feet of floor space.
“How are things?” Justin says and it’s dumb but it fills the silence.
“Okay. You?”
“Yeah.”
She rubs her nose and frowns at him. “You look different.”
“Older?” he asks hopefully and she hears Brian snort.
“No.” She looks at him and grins. “Uglier.”
Brian pushes himself off the doorframe and pats her on the shoulder.
“I think I’m gonna like you,” he says and heads up the stairs to the kitchen.
As Justin scowls at her and flounces after Brian, Molly feels something loosen in her chest. Things are gonna be okay.
-----
They end up watching a movie, crammed together on the couch upstairs, bowls of popcorn on their laps, silences forgotten. Brian makes Molly laugh with his insistence on no-salt, no-toffee, no-fucking-sugar popcorn and the disgust on his face while he watches her and Justin stuff their faces.
“You realize that’s turning to pure lumps of fat the moment it’s past your lips?” he says maliciously to Justin. “Heading straight to the waistline.”
“That’s bull,” Justin says, his mouth crammed. “And I’m young. I don’t get fat.”
Molly giggles and grabs another handful.
The film they watch is atrocious. Appallingly predictable from the first frame to the last. Molly adores it.
Justin watches with his usual complacent enjoyment of anything trashy and Brian sits twitching in barely concealed revulsion. He’s only kept in his seat by Justin’s lazy smirk and a low murmuring in his ear which Molly suspects is about things her mom would rather she didn’t know.
Sometimes, when they don’t think she’s watching, her eyes flicker to the side and she catches them. Those subtle signs of being a couple that she knows would make Justin’s ears go pink with pleasure if she ever mentioned them.
Brian’s arm, which starts slung around the back of the sofa, but drops lower and lower as the film goes on, until eventually it’s draped across Justin’s shoulders. Her brother’s socked foot which drifts casually to the left until it rests against Brian’s calf. And a glance between them every now and then, when their eyes meet and they share a smile over some private joke.
She notes each one and is surprised to feel a slight ache in her throat, a feeling of loss that she only vaguely understands. It seems to her that, sitting next to him on the couch, their shoulders brushing close, she’s never missed her big brother more.
-----
By the time the credits roll it’s eleven ‘o’clock and pitch black outside. Noisily crunching on the last of her popcorn she purposely ignores Justin’s pointed looks. Eventually he grits his teeth and says, “Molly” in an even tone.
“What?” she says.
“Isn’t it time you went to bed?”
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “No.”
Justin looks at her pleadingly. “But you look really tired.”
“I’m not.”
“Mom said bed by ten-thirty.”
“Did not.”
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Did not.”
“Did!…Oh, shut up!”
Brian, practically forgotten on the edge of the sofa, raises an eyebrow and says dryly, “The level of maturity you two show simply astounds me.”
They both stick out their tongues and he rolls his eyes.
The bickering ends when Molly takes pity on Justin and his not-so-subtle hints. Argument grudgingly forgotten, she presses a quick kiss to his cheek and slides off the sofa.
It takes her a while to gather up her bowl and cup and when she’s returned from putting them away in the kitchen, she pokes her head round the door to say goodnight. But the words never reach her lips.
They’re leaning towards each other on the sofa, her brother and Brian, faces tilted upwards. And in the blue light of the television she can see something in their eyes which makes her falter and look away.
In that brief second before she turns her head and creeps silently down the hallway she sees it, that same expression mirrored perfectly on two faces. There’s a hunger in her brother’s eyes and an intimacy which she’s never seen before. And it hurts, stranger and stronger than she ever expected it to, right in the pit of her stomach, in a way that’s hard to explain.
For the first time in her life, she realizes Justin is not just her older brother or her mom’s son. He means different things to different people. And the knowledge hurts in a way that feels a little sad and a little final.
-----
She can’t sleep that night. Tosses and turns until her sheets are tangled round her ankles and her pillows are flung to the floor. It reminds her of the time, not so long ago, just after Justin got hurt, when he’d still lived here and woken her night after night with his screaming, until his hoarse cries for help had given her nightmares too and her screams had echoed with his.
And she thinks of the arguments, back in their old house, before Justin moved out. How she’d had to sit at dinner and swallow her peas as hatred burned between her father and brother. Or that time when Justin had come home to find one of his sketchbooks ripped to shreds and he’d blamed her and she’d pretended she’d done it because somehow she thought that would make things all right.
Perhaps that’s what keeps her awake now, the old nightmares, seeing Justin again. However happy he seems, however wide his smile, she still noticed his shaking hand when he made the popcorn and the vivid scar beneath his hairline. He’s not her invincible big brother anymore.
Perhaps it’s that, or perhaps it’s too much sugar before bedtime. But whatever the reason, she’s still awake at three and that’s when she hears the noise. The quiet clunk of her front door closing, the sound of shoes on the path outside.
She scrambles out of bed to peer through the window. All she can see past the glass is darkness and then suddenly, there’s a tiny click and a small flare of light. A lit cigarette bobs below her window. It’s Brian.
Taking care not to make too much noise, she moves out of her bedroom and into the hallway. She wraps her arms around herself and tip-toes down the stairs. She hesitates outside the front door for a moment, then pulls it open and slips outside.
The cold air hits her in an icy blast and she shivers. Brian, sitting with his back to her on the front step, cocks his head at the noise but doesn’t look round.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks softly. “More nightmares?”
Molly stares at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Yeah.”
His head whips round. “Oh” he says and looks surprised. “I thought you were your brother.”
She can’t be sure in the dark but she swears she sees him blush. Her own cheeks flare a little and she grimaces. “Sorry. We sound kind of similar sometimes.” She pushes the front door shut and moves to sit next to him on the step, knees drawn up under her pajama top. “Even my dad used to get confused when we spoke on the phone.”
Brian lets smoke trail from his mouth. “You still talk to your dad?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“Does he ask about Justin?”
“Not really.” She eyes Brian’s cigarette. “Can I try that?”
“Sure.” He passes it over. “Why doesn’t he ask about Justin?”
Molly shrugs again. “Mom says he’s ashamed. They argue about it.” She coughs out most of the smoke and hands the cigarette back to him.
“He’s an asshole,” Brian mutters under his breath.
“He doesn’t like you much either,” she says primly. “You corrupted Justin.”
He smirks and looks rather pleased with himself.
“And he says you’re the reason my brother got hurt.”
The smirk vanishes abruptly and his face darkens. “Yeah. Well, maybe the old man knows what he’s talking about after all.”
She looks at him thoughtfully, relents. “But that’s not what Mom says.”
He laughs but it sounds tight and a little bitter. “Go on then. What does Mom say?”
Molly looks at him coolly. “She says Justin’s good for you.”
Brian looks straight ahead. “Too good for me.”
At first Molly thinks he misheard but the words are a statement not a question. She corrects him anyway.
“Just, good for you.”
His expression remains unreadable. “And what do you think?”
She tucks her hair behind her ears and rests her chin on her knees, considers it for a while.
“I don’t know,” she says at last.
Brian doesn’t say anything, just takes a deeper drag on his cigarette.
Molly’s freezing, her bare feet turning blue from the icy ground. As the silence drags on between them she shuffles closer to Brian, trying to gain a little of his warmth. Minutes pass uninterrupted and, despite the cold she feels her eyelids begin to droop. She lets her head sink onto Brian’s shoulder, feels it twitch beneath her but he doesn’t shrug her off.
She can hear the comforting whoosh of air as he breathes out the cigarette smoke above her and the corresponding relax of his shoulders. She thinks of Justin, upstairs, his sleep dreamless and calm.
“I think it’s not your fault he got hurt,” she whispers softly. “And I think that you’re good for him too.”
-----
The next morning, Molly wakes early. She pads along the corridor and peers into her brother’s room. She’s not surprised to see Brian there too, lying tight together on Justin’s childhood bed, his dark head resting on the soft rise and fall of her brother’s chest. She stands there for a moment taking in the quiet scene, knowing that this is what stage three looks like, then she turns and heads downstairs for breakfast.
Munching on her cornflakes at the kitchen table, Molly decides calmly that that’s it, she’s lost her brother. He didn’t die, he didn’t disappear, he’s not on the back of milk cartons. But he’s gone all the same. Eighteen and a bit, still all smiles and blond hair, her wonderful older brother lies upstairs, hand in hand with Brian Kinney
But Molly knows things have changed for the better, her family’s split now but not broken and her mother’s heart has mended. And she thinks that if she has to lose her brother at all, she’s kind of glad she lost him to someone like Brian Kinney.