(no subject)
Title: Men Do Not Sham Convulsion
Fandom: Brick
Characters/Pairings: Brendan/Laura
Ratings/Warnings: R, sex, less-than-soothing descriptions of injury. [Sex is between characters in their late teens but of otherwise ambiguous age; I'm proceeding under the assumption that they're 18.]
Written for: N/A
Wordcount: 2000
A/N: Thanks for betaing, Laura! (viorica8957 - the name is a coincidence, as far as I know.) Also, I'm now responsible for almost a third of this fandom's section on the AO3, which is... awkward. Title courtesy Emily Dickinson; the lines quoted are from the same poem.
She shifts as she steps in the door, stance and smile and way she thinks: from the aloof girl who makes even the Pin listen to the mourning clever socialite. Lonely and gentle.
He’s hunched over, still as death: nothing stops him, she remembers Em saying once, late at night over glasses of wine and a little else. Remembers him coughing. He’s tense and twitching under her hand, the curls of his hair sticky and damp, and with his glasses off he looks… different. Softer.
It’s surprisingly easy to find concern, to write out worry in the strokes of her fingers. “I’m sorry, Brendan,” she murmurs, measuring out the caring and the warmth to infuse her voice with the right meaning. My sympathies. My condolences. Nothing else.
He cracks, chokes, and she closes her eyes: this works, this is all right, he’s slipping down to vulnerable. “I’m so sorry.” I’m sorry that you’re hurting. I’m sorry that you’ve seen all this. I’m sorry that you have so much to carry. Simple meaningless kindness, not pleading or confession or remorse. She hovers outside it all, in the Laura she wants him to imagine, and focuses everything she has on the lines of his face as it crumples, on the swirls of his hair around her fingers and the way his shoulders shake against her. If she focuses hard enough she can distill people to modern art.
Except he keeps cracking, and cracking, crumpling into the pillow, and she forces back a thread of something that might become a high sick panic: she might have played the game too well. She didn’t ever really expect him to trust her, not enough, not this much. She presses closer, leaning into him as if they’re freezing and she just needs to keep him warm, and she can feel the sob shake straight through him - oh, God. He sounds high, raw, like a wounded animal, and it’s taking everything she has to stay serene. He sounds like he’s dying, and she doesn’t need to push anymore, she just wants him to stop -
I like a look of Agony - she remembers, slipping her fingers under his chin, Because I know it’s True - and he quiets under her hands, thank God, thank God, turning blindly towards her as if he’s some desperate dying soldier and she’s a doctor promising to take away the pain. She can, she knows she can, and she kisses him, cupping his face between her hands: come here, I can make you feel better, let me make you forget about it all. His mouth is bloody-tasting and damp, but she doesn’t care, just focuses everything she has on tongue and lips and skin, doing her best to obliterate everything else. His hand brushes hesitantly against her shoulder, right on the edge; she slips her tongue sideways and he snaps, clutching at her arm as he rolls them over, the remains of a sob buried in her throat.
Every bit of him feels like it’s headed in a different direction, his shoulders heaving as he clumsily rolls his hips and his fingers clench against her shoulders until it feels like he’s actually going to shake himself to pieces, like she’s physically holding him together. She rocks upwards, trying to guide the whole mess of the two of them into some kind of rhythm, twisting her hands into his hair as he buries his face in the curve of her neck. It feels off-kilter and familiar, and it takes her a moment to place the reason: two boys before Brad Bramish, she pressed her forehead against his shoulder and played shy and frightened far more calmly than she’s currently playing benediction. She wonders if Brendan held Emily like this, her loose blond hair spreading across his chest and the long fingers pressed against her cradling Em’s neck, and then he kisses her throat and she gasps, thoughts breaking off.
He’s pushing her sweater up now, cold hands brushing along the undersides of her breasts, squeezing - just a little too hard, but it keeps her sharp. She reaches for the edges of his shirt, digs her fingers into the muscle of his chest, and that’s when he yelps. She freezes as he pulls slightly back, but she doesn’t dare ask.
“Careful,” is all he says, staring uncomfortably at the sheets. She catches sight of a darker patch on his ribs before he pulls the edge of his shirt back down and attacks her neck again, faster, as if he has to make up for the hesitation. She’s as gentle as she knows how to be, barely skimming his skin, trying to focus through the kisses: sharp ribs poking through the hard-toned muscle, the sandpaper edge of a nasty scrape, the semi-rotten soft edge of a bruise that she traces inch by inch by fucking inch. It’s not the only one, either - two, three, four, and then he nips at her collarbone and she loses count.
“Kiss me,” she breathes, arcing into him. It’s exactly the wrong kind of thing for this, clever and domineering and filthy, but God does it feel good. He moans, and then everything’s sliding out of her control, all of the force and none of the power, but she can’t stand the thought of stopping, of prying his fingers loose from the death-grip on her hair or backing off from the heavy hot gasping weight of him or letting go at all.
She can’t keep thinking about - she can barely touch him without killing the mood, so she runs her hands lower, and this time Brendan’s moan sounds like a good thing. Some distant part of her mind is impressed that he can get it up right now; the rest of her is focused on his hands, on his lips back on her neck, on wrestling with his zipper. It’s strangely hard to get a grip, and she stubbornly attributes the unsteadiness of her hands to Brendan’s shove and pull against her, the obsessive all-consuming desperation. This, just this, let it block out everything else, exactly what she wants - wants him to do.
The sound he makes - half groan, half gasp - makes her shiver as she gets her hands on him. Skin on skin; she’s got condoms in her purse, carries everything, but if she breaks the moment they’ll think it through and with everything in place but the funeral schedules she has had enough of thinking, at least for now. Looks like I might be seeing that doctor after all, Em, she thinks and fights back a laugh, reaching for the front of her own jeans. She eases those and her panties off at once, trying to wriggle out of them against the mattress; to her surprise, Brendan helps, not just pulling the cloth off her hips but disentangling her legs, kicking the pants towards the foot of the bed.
“No point making a mess of them,” he mumbles hoarsely, echoing her thoughts exactly, and she wraps her hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in close. The muscles in his shoulders jump.
He’s a little clumsy still, slipping in, but it feels like he knows what he’s doing underneath that. Of course he does - Kara and Em - and then he shifts a bit just right and she whimpers, gripping at the mattress so it doesn’t feel like she’s pulling him away. The rhythm he hits feels right, natural, in sync, she thinks, edging again towards that laugh at the back of her mind. It isn’t even funny at all - ah, he thrusts harder and she loses the thought. Perfect. She just has enough of a mind left, as his gasps turn teary again in her ear, to think that if this were any different, if he hadn’t smudged salt all over her neck and she didn’t have to worry about the fucking brick and this wasn’t all but a threesome with a ghost then it might be absolutely incredible.
He comes with a sound like a sob buried in the crook of her neck. She half-expected him to call her Em, and the sick part is that she isn’t sure whether she’s relieved or disappointed. She wasn’t ready, either, didn’t take a chance to fake an orgasm of her own. He might not notice, the state he’s in, but she’s still cursing herself as he rolls off her, and then his fingers brush across the insides of her thighs.
This isn’t what she expected at all, only the faint shaky remains of clumsiness as he works his fingers up - shaky from sobbing or from sex, she isn’t sure and doesn’t care. She remembers Em saying he had a twisted sort of chivalry, and maybe that’s part of it, and then he’s knuckle-deep inside her and she finally, finally can’t think at all. Just for a little while.
It’s a long time afterwards before she pries herself up, feeling heavy and laden-down, sweater brushing uncomfortably against her sweat-sticky hips. She can see her pants crumpled on the floor, and hopefully her underwear too. Her purse is on the floor just inside the doorway; she’s just picked it up when she hears a rustle from the bed. Brendan is staring at her, red-rimmed eyes wide underneath the loose strands of his hair.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asks quietly. He shrugs, burrowing deeper into the blankets.
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
She closes her eyes. They need to strip the sheets and amble downstairs before it’s time for awkward explanations, and she should probably go talk to Tug again, make sure he’s thinking the right way and maybe try to wind him right, but the last thing she wants is to make him suspicious of her. And she’s sure she can get the brick and all the rest is out of her hands, and Brendan’s the one in the middle of that and he’ll do better if he’s slept. For sure he’ll get himself killed if he tries to lie as badly as that.
And she’s still so damn tired.
“Okay,” she says, grabbing a fistful of tissues and her cigarettes, and she drops her purse to the floor and pads back to the bed.
He smiles just a little bit, a tiny crook of his mouth that she wouldn’t even call a smile on anyone else, as she turns towards him on the pillow and lights up her cigarette. The play of the evening rolls over through her mind, step by step like a checklist: play them off each other and slide right under the radar, the pretty clever girl and nothing more as far as any of them are concerned. She’ll be rich on her own and she’ll have won, and all the steps to it feel like pressure now but it’ll all be worth it in the end.
Brendan looks softer like this, eyes half-closed and glasses off, like she could lay him out if she wanted. She remembers Em staying over at her house that once, stretched out dressed on the bed next to her, junk on the nightstand and helplessness and contentment glazed in her eyes. Laura doesn’t know if her plan for tonight would bother her, Tug and the Pin blowing at each other, but with Em hidden somewhere and rotting she honestly doesn’t care at all. Em and the kid, and Brendan’s all that’s left, lying there and looking at her like - like he trusted her for a moment and he doesn’t regret it.
“Don’t go tonight,” she murmurs. It’s a risk, maybe, that she knows there’s trouble, but - he’s bloodied and Tug’s running on plenty of sleep and it wouldn’t be hard for Brendan to get killed. Not easy, but not hard.
Stubborn bastard.
When he refuses she sighs and closes her eyes, giving in. She didn’t plan for this.
Cloth rustles next to the bed, and without thinking about it first she reaches across and pulls him close, keeping him next to her. She doesn’t need him stirring another loose factor up, and besides, while he’s next to her he’s safe. Keep a knife out of his ribs for at least the next few hours. Maybe she can even rest, a little bit. It’s a long night ahead of them.