by J P Barnaby
“No, you didn’t set the alarm. God, if you don’t want to run the store, just fucking sell it. I don’t care anymore.”
“Yes, you do.”
Bren turned away from Patrick and marched into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Before their world changed, Bren would have bantered, always wanting to get the last word. Now he walked away before the fight got out of hand because he couldn’t stand to lose the one person left in his life.
“Okay, you win,” Patrick called after him. “I won’t turn the cameras off again. Just don’t be mad at me, Bren. I’m alone enough as it is.”
“Whatever,” Bren yelled in response to Patrick’s admission. He took a deep breath. God, you could hear everything in this house. In fact, some days when Patrick stayed away, he could still hear the ghosts of how their lives used to be. Maybe that’s why he refused to step outside the door, because the sounds of ghosts in the house comforted him.
He stood at the sink and splashed cold water on his face, trying to feel human again. Then he grabbed the toothbrush and toothpaste to clear his mouth as well as his head. Finally, after maybe five minutes of alone time, Bren stepped out of the bathroom, seeing his brother’s surprised expression before he rubbed a towel over his face. He tossed it back into the bathroom and threw a sharp nod in the kid’s direction.
“You gonna introduce me to your little friend?” Bren asked, trying to take the focus off his fucked-up head.
“Wait, you mean I’m still here?” the kid asked.
His brother stalled for just a moment, and it looked as though he wanted to say something else, but instead, Patrick pulled the boy forward and Bren got a good, nonfuzzy look. He was tall and lanky like Bren, but without the alcoholic emaciation. His eyes were a little red, and Bren knew that look all too well. He looked past the artfully torn jeans, the band T-shirt, and even the black-painted fingernails and saw a soul older than he was, maybe even older than Patrick. This kid had lived through something, and it was eating him from the inside out.
“Anthony, this is my brother, Brendan. Bren, this is our new stocker, Anthony.” Bren could hear the weariness around the edges of each word from Patrick’s mouth.
“Your adopted kid, you mean?”
“Shut—”
“Fuck you, I’m not a kid.” Anthony pushed Bren’s outstretched hand away. A fire blazed under the surface of his pale skin. Bren wanted to reach out and touch it, see if it burned his skin. Instead, he shrugged off the feeling.
“Whatever, Munchkin. You’re the one living in the attic of some guy you don’t even know because Mommy and Daddy are mean.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Let me guess, they took away your PlayStation?”
A flush rose on Anthony’s cheeks, and Bren wondered if he’d hit a nerve. But instead of backing down, Anthony just leaned forward so their faces were almost touching. He didn’t say anything immediately but took a deep breath.
“No, they threw me in the basement and forgot about me for nearly a decade. They sacrificed me to my brother’s fucked-up demons. Looks like Patrick may know a little about what that’s like.”
Bren reeled, the shock of Anthony’s words like a hot iron on his already tenuous mood. He understood exactly what that meant, because he was the brother with the altar and Patrick, the sacrifice.
Patrick stared at Anthony, the concussion of his bombshell response sending waves of understanding through the ramshackle living room. Bren could see the resemblances between the boy and Patrick—squared shoulders carrying the weight of the world, eyes that had seen too much and slept too little, and then of course, the wariness, waiting for the meltdown of an unstable brother.
“What kind of demons does your brother have?” Bren asked before he could stop himself. It shouldn’t matter. He didn’t want to take on anything else. His own demons were enough for anyone, but the anger in Anthony’s voice made him pause.
“He watched his best friend being raped and murdered while he suffered the same. The only reason he survived is because the guys fucked up cutting his throat.”
Bren didn’t even have to glance at Patrick to know what ran through his brother’s mind. He’d been exactly right to help this kid. No, he wasn’t a kid. He’d grown up soon after his brother’s madness had ripped through his life. Much like Bren’s madness had ripped through Patrick’s life.
“Jesus, I don’t even know what to say,” Patrick murmured and ran a trembling hand along the front of his shirt. He’d been doing that for as long as Bren could remember. It had gotten worse the day the man with the gun tore their lives apart for some spare change and booze.
“There isn’t anything to say,” Anthony told them. “That’s just the way it is. Aaron had night terrors and flashbacks. For the first few years my parents kept him doped to the gills. They threw me and my other brother into the basement so they could deal with him. He’d freak out about anything and nothing.”
“I know that feeling,” Bren admitted, and Patrick jerked his head toward Bren.
“You have flashbacks? Like the guys who come back from war, or something?”
“I don’t go back and live it again, no. But the memory is there, all the time. The pills and the booze makes it not so hard to see. You weren’t there, Patrick. You didn’t see the bullet tear him open. You didn’t watch him bleed out all over the floor. You didn’t see the look in that guy’s eyes as he put a bullet in me. You can’t understand.” Bren hated the pleading note in his own voice.
“I was eight hundred miles away while my father was murdered and my kid brother clung to life,” Patrick shot back. “My whole fucking family brutally attacked, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do but drive faster. Then I got there, and I just sat by your bed. God, so many times, I wished it were me so I wouldn’t have to deal with the funeral, the cops, and the fucking crime scene cleanup. But this?” Patrick waved an arm around the mess in the living room. “This I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
“Me either.” Bren got tired of hoping his legs would hold and dropped onto the couch, narrowly missing a closed pizza box. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had pizza. Patrick sat on the other end of the coffee table and shoved the box into the already overstuffed garbage bag.
“And look, Bren, I know you hate me for leaving, for not being there, but—”
“No, I don’t. I never did. The store wasn’t your thing, it was mine. You had your own life. Jesus, I know, I should just let you sell it or close it or whatever, but it just…. It feels like that’s all I have left, even if it’s not mine.”
Anthony pushed away from the wall, forgotten in the chaos of their confessions. He dropped like a pile of bones into an armchair no one ever used. A cloud of dust plumed up around him, and he coughed, breaking the moment.
“Bren—”
“Anyway, want to tell me why you guys stopped by at the ass crack of dawn and woke me up?” He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Talking about it made it all real again, and he didn’t want any of it to be real.
“The AC guy is going to be here by two to fix the compressor. I know you don’t like dealing with people, and he may need someone to go outside with him. So I’m going to leave Anthony here to help. He can’t run the register at the store, so I have to be there.”
Patrick stood, inching his way toward the door, and Bren glared up at him.
“You’re sending a seventeen-year-old to babysit me now?” Rage still burned his skin.
“Are you going to leave the porch?” Patrick asked not unkindly.
“No.”
“Then yes.”
“Outstanding. When the preschool lets out, make sure you send someone to watch over him.”
“You’re kind of a dick,” Anthony observed, dropping a battered paperback book onto the coffee table in front of him as he scrounged through a worn orange backpack.
“Well, on that note,” Patrick said with wary determination, “I’m going to lea
ve you two to get to know each other. One of you call and let me know how the repairs went and that you didn’t murder each other. Anthony, I’ll pick you up once the guy leaves. You’ll get paid for being here.”
“Great, now he’s a paid babysitter.”
“Good luck, Anthony.”
The door closed behind Patrick, and Bren wanted to throw something at it. Fucking Patrick and his fucking babysitter. So he couldn’t leave the house. He could open a window and talk to the repair guy through it. He wasn’t totally useless.
Well.
Yeah.
He kind of was.
“What are you reading?”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s the last book in the series.”
“I’ve never read them,” Bren admitted.
“Maybe you should. It looks like you have some time on your hands here. The series is one of the few things I brought with me. You can borrow them if you want.”
“You really are a trusting little thing, aren’t you? Don’t you know that monsters go bump in the night here?”
“Monsters go bump in the night everywhere. And I don’t trust you, but I do trust your brother.”
“Fair enough. You want a beer?”
“So you can tell Patrick?” Anthony asked.
“No, because I need one and it sounds like maybe you do too. Besides, what else are we gonna do while we wait for the repair guy?” Bren gave Anthony an appraising look.
“Yeah, I’ll take a beer.”
“Come on, then.” Bren hauled himself off the couch and led Anthony into the kitchen. Dishes sat in the sink from God knows when. Cereal bowls, pizza plates, Chinese takeout forks piled on top of each other in a heap. It was as if he had food ADD. If he actually had to mix more than two or three things together to make it into a meal, he wasn’t interested. On rare occasions, Bren made grilled cheese and tomato soup because something in his soul needed it. His mother had made it for him growing up, when the kids at school were mean or his big brother had better things to do than hang around with him. Bren thought maybe if he ate enough of it, it would make him feel better like it had then.
There wasn’t enough fucking soup in the world for that.
Bren pulled two bottles out of the refrigerator, which contained more beer than food. His half of the life insurance from their father’s death left him without money troubles, at least for a while. He hadn’t had any debt, and the house was paid off, so he just needed the alcohol to numb his brain and the food to keep his body alive. Patrick took care of everything else.
“Where are you from, k—Anthony?” Bren stopped himself at the memory of rage in Anthony’s face when he’d called him a kid.
“Just outside Chicago.” Anthony popped the top off the beer like a pro and took a long pull. Oh, yeah, this kid knows his way around a bottle too.
“So, of all the places you could have gone, why the hell would you come to Detroit?”
“I thought I had a friend here. Turns out, not so much.”
“Yeah, I thought I had a lot of friends here. Turns out fifteen minutes up the road is just too far to go to visit the madman.”
“That’s what Aaron used to call himself, the madman.” Anthony dropped into one of the chairs, and Bren joined him.
“Sometimes, no matter what polite society tries to tell you, it’s true.” Bren tipped his beer in salute.
“My turn,” Anthony announced, and while Bren’s shoulders tensed in anticipation, he nodded. Tit for tat.
“Go ahead.”
“Why can’t you deal with the repair guy?”
“That, my friend, is the question of the year. My brother brought me here when I got out of the hospital because it’s the only home I’ve ever lived in. He told me later that I just kept saying that I wanted to go home. Shit sucks out there.” Bren took another drink, letting the alcohol dull his memory.
“You’re not in therapy?”
“What the fuck is therapy going to do for me? I know why I can’t leave the house. I’m safe here, and the world isn’t safe out there. It’s not rocket science.”
They sat in silence for several minutes, contemplating, drinking, and contemplating about drinking more. Anthony sneezed, a byproduct of sitting in the chairs no one had been anywhere near in years. The cushions had that musty smell of age, and their pattern, once blue checkerboard, had faded to almost nothingness.
Bren’s leg started to bounce. He hated awkward stillness. No one except Patrick ever came over to the house. He didn’t have to entertain and no longer had the skills anyway. God, he’d been alone for so fucking long.
Anthony looked anywhere but at him, taking in the dusty, generic artwork on the wall and the dingy knickknack things in the shelves next to the table. Once, this had been one of the centerpieces of their house. They’d sit down at the table with their parents and talk about how things went at school. Then, cancer took their mother, a bullet took their father, and indifference took his brother. Now all he had left was the fucking dust.
“I’m done with this awkward shit,” Bren said, finishing off his first beer. He stood and walked over to the fridge for another. When he came back, he met Anthony’s eyes.
“And?”
“Christ, I don’t know. I haven’t seen another flesh-and-blood person in so long, I don’t know what to do with one. I got cards somewhere, or we could watch mindless afternoon talk shows. Hell, we can fuck. I’m just done sitting here watching the goddamned paint peel.”
Anthony stared at him, wide-eyed and shocked.
“What?”
“You want to fuck?”
“Who doesn’t? I can get groceries delivered. I can get beer delivered. I can stream porn. Not too many ‘hot guy’ delivery services in the greater Ferndale area.”
Bren didn’t bother sitting down at the table with his beer. He turned on his bare heel and began shuffling toward the living room. The bullet hadn’t left him with a limp, but his leg twinged enough sometimes that he compensated on his left side.
“Wait,” Anthony said before he’d gotten through the kitchen doorway. Bren turned around, and while the kid looked hesitant, there was also a look there he’d seen before. Want. Well, goddamn, someone wanted him. Praise Jesus and hallelujah.
“You want something?”
Anthony’s eyes turned dark for a moment, a memory that seemed to cloud his face. Before Bren could ask about it, the kid shoved past him into the living room and waited near the couch. He took off his thin T-shirt, and it seemed to Bren that he wanted to strip quickly before he lost his nerve.
Bren had no issues with that. He watched as the shirt fell to the floor in a heap next to a pile of clothes. Bren had no idea if they were clean or dirty. Anthony’s wiry frame made him seem more boyish without the shirt, but the shy way he looked at Bren from under those long bangs made Bren’s cock hard.
“Stop,” Bren said as Anthony started to unbutton his jeans. Anthony’s hands froze on the little piece of metal, and he didn’t bother looking up to meet Bren’s gaze.
“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t want me either.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I just wanted to do it myself.”
Anthony lifted his head at that. “What?”
“Come here so I can take your pants off. I wanna see your dick.”
“Oh.” Anthony took a step closer so they were almost touching. He fingered the sleeve of Bren’s T-shirt, all bravado lost in the stalled momentum of his striptease.
It took Bren less than three seconds to decide to wrap his hand around the back of Anthony’s neck and pull him into a hard, hot kiss. His thoughts spiraled when the blood left his brain and rushed to his cock. The way Anthony kissed and touched him seemed more like a dream than reality. The room around him, the hands on his body, the mouth across his, they felt surreal.
Years of space lay between Anthony and Bren’s last fuck buddy.
Anthony shied away for a moment but then seemed to find himself and
grabbed the hem of Bren’s T-shirt, pulling it up. Anthony smelled like sweat and guy—raw and pure. His body was filled out nicely, even if he was almost too thin.
Bren pulled them down onto the couch, and Anthony landed hard, but the couch cushioned him as Bren came down right on top of him. It took a little maneuvering, but Anthony got Bren’s sweats down over his ass, and his hard cock slid into Anthony’s hand. Bren whimpered, a needy sound against Anthony’s throat, the vibrations tingling them both. Anthony ground his hips against Bren’s leg, and his quiet little sounds made Bren ache. He’d never had anyone want him like that. Ever.
“Are you sure you’re real?” Bren whispered as he moved his hips, thrusting into Anthony’s hand. “It feels so fucking good.” He jerked the front of Anthony’s briefs down and fisted his cock, not matching the rhythm of his hips. They jerked each other in a chaotic mess of movement.
“You feel good too,” Anthony admitted, and their mouths crashed together again, swallowing sounds of aching need.
“Top or bott—?” Bren started to ask, only to be interrupted by the doorbell. Anthony tried to pull him back down on top of him, but Bren gave him one last kiss and climbed off the couch. He hiked up his sweats on the way to the door. Over his shoulder, he saw Anthony grab the hem of his briefs. Then he opened the door. The room filled with a long silence as he took in the pair of women in long dresses and pious smiles standing on his porch.
He did the only thing he could.
He snorted.
“You’re kidding, right? Okay, well, I’m fucking this guy on the couch right now. Want to try back in, say… half an hour?” Bren looked over at Anthony, giving his still-nearly-naked body a long appraisal. “No, better make it at least ninety minutes. This kid is hot. Then you can come back and tell me all about how my soul needs to be saved.”
