a Queer as Folk vignette
by
Destina Fortunato
The tiles lining the shower are cool, so he rests his forehead against them. It makes the memories seem a little more distant, clears them up, lifts the fog of regret for a minute so he can think things through.
In his mind's eye, he sees himself at Woody's the night before, surrounded by the sounds of glasses and bottles clicking and clinking, making the music of inebriation. The four of them - Emmett, Ted and Michael, and Brian - had been shooting pool and talking about cock. That is, everyone but Michael. Michael was pining for the asshole he was dating, the pompous prick who had made a pass at Brian the first time they met.
Brian's mind had been on a presentation he had to make, but he found he could spare a little brain power to cruise a couple guys at the bar. He'd made a mental note to find them later in the darkness of Babylon's back room. It hadn't seemed so strange that Michael didn't talk much, not until Brian caught Ted and Michael in an argument in the hallway by the restroom. It was an argument Michael didn't seem to want to pursue. His eyes had been angry, his lips pressed together - it was the disturbed-pissed-off-fuck-you look, and he had been giving that look to Ted.
Ted had turned to Brian as if he wanted to tell him something, but Michael had grabbed his arm and shaken it, and then Brian was sure there was something wrong. None of his business.
Later, at Babylon, Brian had time to score twice - drugs and dick - before Michael had finished his first beer. That made Brian curious, so he'd started to watch Michael a little more closely.
When he'd seen the mark peeking out from underneath the hitched-up sleeve of Michael's t-shirt, it hadn't registered as what it really was. He'd pegged it as a shadow, but then Michael had turned and the half-moon of a dark bruise was revealed. And something told Brian this wasn't about falling off a ladder, hitting a doorframe, this was not about an accident, because Michael isn't clumsy. He's careful.
Brian thought about that for a while as some guy was blowing him in the alley. He thought about it while he was dancing. He gave it due consideration, and then he'd gone up to Michael at the bar, and he'd gotten a little smile out of Mike because he was there. He loved that feeling, the smile he could get from Michael simply for existing in Michael's universe. He'd offered Michael something to get him high, and Michael shook his head and tried to start talking, finally, but not about what Brian had in mind.
Brian had let him talk. Until he'd been ready to cut to the chase, at which point he'd aimed his bottle at Mike's arm and asked him - what the fuck happened?
Michael had looked away. Brian had known then, known for certain what he'd been starting to suspect. He'd caught Michael's arm, lifted the sleeve and stared at the long finger marks, the angry streaks of rage left burned into the skin.
From there it had been a contest to see how fast things could disintegrate and who would drop to the bottom first. Michael had denied everything, he'd become angry, he'd accused Brian of imagining things. He'd tried to stop Brian from touching him.
Brian wasn't going to be put off so easily.
Michael had gone with him easily enough; Michael accepted comfort with only the smallest protest. Brian knew he was an idiot, and crazy besides, but he'd taken Michael in his arms and erased the pain, using the only methods he knew.
And Michael let him.
**
Brian wakes early; there's a body in the bed with him, warm and asleep, and he begins to remember, one fragment at a time - Michael. Hurt. Confused. Content with this, with Brian, but this is not what it should be, what it was ever meant to be, with them. Brian knows it. There's a cardinal rule, and he's broken it. Parameters of trust, breached and thrown aside, and now nothing can ever be the same.
He slides from the bed, so carefully, and makes his way to the shower. The water and soap should make him clean, should restore the feeling of righteous heroism, but nothing can do that now. Soon enough he gives up and makes his way back to Michael's side.
The longer he looks at Michael, the easier it becomes to see past the pale skin, past muscle and bone, underneath to the dark places where his heart is beating quietly. Brian can already see the bruise beginning. Just a tiny discoloration, or at least it would be at first, all shiny-purple and glistening. Soon it will start to grow, fed with each kiss like a cancerous lesion, magnified every time Brian turns to look at a boy in leather pants, darkening to black and blue when Michael realizes Brian isn't worth wasting joy on.
Michael is already rotting from the inside out, from the moment he came in Brian's mouth, from the moment Brian lifted his legs and entered him, and the disease took hold in the weak moment when he was as vulnerable as Michael, when he told the truth.
I do love you, Mikey...I do....
Brian lifts the towel to his face and blots water away from his eyes. Michael stirs in the bed, a rumpled plaything, sprawled across the sheets boneless, relaxed in the safety of sleep. Brian slides into the bed and looks down at Michael. The one toy he had promised himself he would never take out of the box...since toys invariably break, and little pieces of glass get ground in deep, twisting their way down, damaging the toy beyond repair.
Brian looks, and he can see those pieces of glass, and his reflection is mirrored in each one of them.
He kisses the corner of Michael's lips. He has always wanted to feel those lips against his own - to feel the joy when Michael laughed, to know it was because someone made him happy, made him feel loved.
He bends his head to that purple circle on Michael's arm and nuzzles it, and grows still for a moment. Sometimes a bruise is just a bruise, and sometimes it is a stain on the soul, the kind that nothing can ever erase.
Brian's hand falls to Michael's stomach, and he tucks himself in behind Michael, making a map of the contours of the slender body against his own. He closes his eyes until he's sure he can call the memory of this night up at a moment's notice, and then he leaves the bed, and goes to the kitchen, and searches for drugs. Any drugs. Anything to dull the pain of necessity.
When Michael wakes, he finds Brian eating breakfast in a pair of ripped jeans as he reads the paper. He pads from the bed on bare feet and wraps his arms around his newfound security, but of course it is illusory, just a wisp of smoke in the form of a man.
Brian is waiting for the kiss that falls on his ear, a kiss he has craved more than any drug, one he must reject along with the sleepy smile that accompanies it. He returns the kiss, a peck on the lips, his gaze always on the paper, and doesn't look to see what happens as a result, to see the smile disappear. He doesn't want to recall the details of fresh pain that will appear in Michael's eyes. The clasp around his chest loosens just enough, and he presses a hand to Michael's wrist, telling him he will be late for work if he doesn't hurry.
All true, and yet the words taste sour on his lips, and the taste of Michael's skin is fading behind that bitterness.
He can see Michael out of the corner of his eye, distorted at the side of his vision. Michael asks if he has showered, and of course he has; he did that first thing. He hears the breath that was to be an invitation; the words die and become ghosts of an abandoned idea.
The cereal in the bowl becomes a sodden mass because Brian doesn't touch it. The words in the paper might as well be in random order, since they carry no meaning, and he reads them over and over, trying to make sense of them, until the water stops running and Michael is picking up his clothes. And then Brian turns the page and begins all over again.
Michael dresses slowly, like a man crippled by his own body. First the underwear, then the pants; socks and shoes next, and finally the shirt. He's been dressing in the same order for as long as Brian can remember. Predictable and adorable.
Brian rises from the table and tosses Michael his jacket. Michael pulls it close, like a shield. Brian looks at the jacket, at the hands that are moving restless against the fabric, but he doesn't go near the look in Michael's eyes. Not there. Never there.
And then Michael asks him, asks whether there's something they should talk about, and Brian can hear the sound of Michael's hope shattering if he doesn't turn this around.
There's nothing to talk about, of course. It had been good. He's glad he could be there for Michael. He has a thousand things to do before work, so Michael should go.
Michael's arm drops; the jacket drags the ground. He looks up at Brian, then at the door, and runs a hand absently over his arm. Brian can still see the bruise in his mind's eye, more vivid every time he thinks of it
Brian just smiles and heads for the bedroom to gather up shirt and tie. Michael asks if he will see Brian later, and for the first time since he's known Michael, it's not a certainty that he will say yes. Michael knows this; he hears it in Michael's voice. It's not about their friendship, or about picking up men at Babylon, but about seeing. Michael is seeing, now, finally, he's seeing what everyone else has always known.
Brian answers in a tone of nothingness, taking on the air of a man who cares so little he can't be bothered to give even the smallest of what might be given. And then finally, he looks at Michael, so vulnerable in his living room, and tells him - let's not make a big deal out of this, huh, Mikey? Let's leave it at that.
Michael's lips form the most important of the words, imprinting them to be sure he's understood. Not a big deal. He answers, finally, to say it's no problem. His eyes reflect the multitude of ways he might say it was a big deal, that it was the only thing that matters, that everything is broken, now.
After a moment, he turns to go, and Brian calls after him, to say goodbye. The heavy door slams shut, sealing them into separate spaces.
Brian crumples the shirt in his hands and throws it to the floor, and then back once more to the shower, and the hot water, punishing, harsh, never enough.
He rests his head against the cool tiles and lets himself drift, carried by the sound of water rushing away, circling the drain, floating down into darkness.
End
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