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Title: Deceitful Above All Things Author: Delamore Pairings: KD/D & KD/DB/NB Rating: NC-17 for incest, hypoxyphilia, etc. A/N: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jer 17:9 It hits him again when he walks in, squirreling the borrowed key in his pocket. David's trailer has the leather-and-sweat musk of a nightclub, all the more oppressive and wrong because it's bottled inside a dozen or so square feet. Which has never stopped amusing Kelly; not the smell,but the digs. After all the tantrums and fuss actors went through, haggling producers and agents for plusher roles, for buffered handling, for spreads in L'Uomo Vogue and call-backs for Godson of the Godfather, all the chintzy perks Hollywood afforded--at the end of the day, they were pretty much living out of trailer homes. Not like any trailer home Betty Lou from Tulaloo would recognize in the park, but still. It's good for a laugh if you squint your eyes and think about it just right. And for Dave, his trailer home away from home includes among other things, a spatter of "isn't that sweet?" family snapshots stuck to the walls and the sporadic dropping of baby detritus. Chew toys, treats, canned food. Could have just saved himself the trouble and bought another dog, not that Kelly's the least bit cynical about the miracle of birth. It's just dogs are man's best friend and they never try to bum money off you or drink the last cold beer. They're good people like that. He hadn't even known that Mrs. Boreanaz had popped the baby, and would have kept on not knowing if Nick hadn't mentioned it. In passing, the way you would mention a weather report. Dave's wife had the kid, you might wanna dress light today. And if it weren't for the dismal twitch of Nicky's voice, the way he dropped his eyes to the carpet, Kelly wouldn't have been so bothered. Wouldn't have taken veiled looks at his brother, riled by a kettle of bitter gnats. Suspicion, jealousy, and all the others. It was incredible; no way Nick still thought he had a place with Dave. A cozy place between husband and wife that was nudged aside to make room for baby? The years of neglect should've eroded all of that crap and fuck, if Nick still thought that--Kelly couldn't even go there. Vases and furniture were in mortal danger if he gave the Nick and Dave story a revisit. Other reason for Nick's passive fit? Maybe he really wanted to be the one with a kid. Sorry, a *baby*. Everyone wanted an apple-cheeked down-haired sunny sweet cherub *baby*--not the growling, misanthropic teens or the fund-sucking college students. They didn't want the moody kids lighting up outside the school dumpster, fucking around in mom's station wagon, doing the minimum effort for maximum gain. But that's the cynicism talking, or possibly the hat trick of Coronas he'd scored off Marsters. Christ. Nick wanted a baby. With Tressa. Because Kelly couldn't give him one, not until modern science worked some evolutionary mojo and Kelly dusted off a latent need for motherhood. Which was to say, never multiplied by fuckingever. He's losing his brother to forces he can't touch to hit. Can't fist-fight domesticity and nothing else'll work if Nick's made up his mind. It's unfair. Sure, that's taking the pissy/immature low road, but it's fucking *unfair* that Nicky wants to bring a baby into the world, knowing as he does that their world is shades from healthy. Things would change and it'd be Kelly making the sacrifices, because he's selfless guy. That's what he does--he sacrifices and he loses, and Nick pulls him to Hollywood and makes him wait at home while jobs appear, disappear, while pretty things with breasts catch his eye, while he tries to get over Kelly. Which would be kosher enough--that was a laugh; Nick move on from Kelly?--if that fucking pinata gig had never happened. And to crown the insult, the movie sucked. A killer pinata was barely above killer dessert foods. Hysterical, really. If it weren't for de Figlia. But he *can't* keep blaming her for Nick. She was spunky and bright--not that Kelly's ever fallen for those qualities--and she had things to offer, two globular things and a rounded sense of normality that Kelly would always lack. Makes him sick to think of it, so he doesn't, except that it's all he thinks about. Even when he's out at dinner with his girlfriend, nodding to her powder-puff asinine girlcrap, anything but inattentive. Even when he's malt-warmed and hiding inside Dave's trailer on a lonely spot on the parking lot, waiting for things to go beyond his control. If only the place didn't remind him of a locker room. Too many regrettable memories attached, ballooning out like hair clogs from a shower drain. Kelly kicks around one of the football hides; rubs his fingers over it, pretends he's reading a sordid story in Braille. There's a deflated orange rind in the corner, but Kelly never had a thing for basketball. Baseball, sure. Football. Well, he had--*has*--a thing for the players. Could care less about the practicalities of the game itself, all the flow charts and flags. It's the vein-threaded, muscly jocks in their tight tights that does it for him. Those are the kinda guys that thought they were tops by default, but getting them on the bottom took a couple Jim Beams and three slicked fingers. Kelly's got it down to algebra. X plus Y equals fuck *yeah*, right there.   He drops the football when he hears yelling from the lot. It's the last couple days on set and everyone's coasting out the high of a big bang finale. There's an excited squawk of voices, nearer to a bird flock than anything human. It's irritating. Everything's irritating. Shit. Kelly's tired of waiting. Pissed off. Nervous that someone will knock for David and find that he's got a guest. For lack of anything better and because he's suddenly *really* curious, he flips through Dave's wardrobe, the one or two pieces that needed to get back to their handlers and the rest of Dave's personal line. He could set a metronome to the pattern of cotton, denim, and leather, cotton, denim, and leather, down to the end of the closet. Clothes for a genre TV star, just enough flashy to leave after-images in interviewers' eyes. The guy was well-groomed, it was no secret. Kelly preferred the hapless basics of Nicky's closet, but he preferred everything of his brother's. Speech patterns, shampoo smell, armpit hair, cologne, anatomy. Every scrap and speck of Nick, inside to outside. And it hurt Kelly more often than it comforted him. Hurt Nicky, too. That's part of why Kelly is here, amped and antsy. If there's someone out there who can hurt him more than his brother, it's Boreanaz. You just have to push him right and gravity takes over--Dave falls and all the Og Mandino-personal safari crap trails behind him like meteor dust. Everyone else gets tinted-glasses, touchy-feely Dave. And Kelly gets fucked. When the door finally opens and the man himself lumbers in, Kelly's already got a belt in his hand. Black, worn dull and cracked except for a gleaming cowboy-buckle. He proffers it like a question Daveowes an answer. "Been here long?" Lets the door fall shut, turns tolock it. "Depends on the definition of long, and yes." Kellyjiggles the accessory in his hand.  "I'm sure making me wait is your idea of foreplay. Which is kinda sad." Dave opens a script and flops down into his lounger; it's the color of cream and shiny as an apple skin. Kelly stares at him. "Like to keep things special for you. You're a special boy, Donovan." Still staring. Mouth getting wet. Countdown to speech: one, two, "You really are the world's greatest actor." There's prosthetic glue gummed to Dave's temples. He looks up from his script and puts a finger down to mark his place. "And you're surprised?" He's smiling that megawatt, Kiss Me, I'm Italian, smile. "Maybe you didn't noticethe five years of my own show?" "Easy on the ego, big guy. Might pop something." Kelly gestures with the belt, clanking the buckle on the ground. "Not that it'd matter, with your own show ending so soon." Thus concludes the small talk and the grin disappears. "Put it on." Kelly gives him a curled lip. "I'm not--" "Yeah, you are. Put it on." And there's a sharp comment in response to that, a thorn rolling on his tongue. He doesn't know why he gives in to Dave's shit. Or, maybe he just tells himself he doesn't know, because the reason is (Nicky) a sinister black urge, wordless and compelling. "Look, I'm kinda in the middle of something. So, be a good boy and put it on or be quiet and let yourself out. And there's baby powder if you want it." This is said with the sort of smile Ray-Bans would come in handy for and Kelly's tempted to ask for a pair of Dave's. Since he probably owns the entire line. But the script has caught up the other man's attention, and after a long second of pilsner-eased indecision, Kelly starts to move; he loops the belt around his neck and tries to adjust it, but his fingers are uncooperative blurs, slipping when he goes for the leather. Those are not tears in his eyes, either, it's just pollen. Allergies. His chest is swelled and heavy, a tree stump bloated with water set on two rubbery legs. Falling is imminent. He forgot the powder; this was going to pinch. "Why am I doing this if you're not even gonna--" Without looking, the fucking showoff, Dave grabs his swinging belt and *jerks* down. After the beers and the nervousness, it's easy to trip him; he stumbles, neck snapping his shoulders downward, hands scrabbling at Dave for purchase like a climber on a mountainside. He clutches for a split-second, then rears away violent enough to tip backwards. Good thing Dave's got him leashed. "Goddamnit." The back of his neck burns. "Do people know you're an asshole? Or is that another in the closet thing?" The answer is a tug, but Kelly's prepared for it. He falls onto David, who pulls and pulls, choking Kelly up to his lips. The world has vacuumed down to the two of them, their mouths and their breath, and Kelly sees red like the air is bleeding. The script falls between Dave's knees, then falls to the floor. "Lost your page," Kelly spits, unreasonably happy. Still happy when David grabs his ass and shoves him forward, palming him easily like you would a baby, which is bad thinking right now, babies and sex, but he can smell the work of Johnson & Johnson's on the other man's clothes. Baby-powder, soft as fleece with hints of floral, cologne of the family man. Wrong, so wrong, and words like two-timing and cuckold race around a little track in Kelly's head, though he's certain that second word would make Dave the wife. Can't think of a better one, just more synonyms. It's a thesaurus in his head--another word for wrong: awkward, faulty, criminal, corrupt, deviant--Dave's hand is tucking into his jeans, the other still fisting the belt-collar-- wicked, reprehensible, horrible--fingers twist over the head of his cock, like popping off a bottle cap and it *hurts* so beautifully. And words had their antonyms, so maybe it's possible that if you went far enough past wrong that you'd end up on the other side, back to right. Kelly can't get a substantial breath to moan, but he swallows again and again, scratching his Adam's apple against the belt, loving the choke of it. Takes the suffocation out of his heart and puts it into something tangible. Dave shimmers, breaks apart like a pond surface. Red pressure in Kelly's throat, corked and ready to pop, but he can't get it out. His danger-o-meter raises a needle to eight, but he trusts Dave. They have words and signals and he wants to drown himself without worrying. He thinks about Nick and their bedroom at home, making tents with Popeye sheets and campfires out of flashlights, filling the room with stories and ghosts and sweat. Didn't know it was wrong until their parents had a fight over it, screaming about things it took Kelly years to understand. Hurt, hurt so much, sealed his chest up in sickness and cement for the next two decades because Nicky never looked at him the same afterwards. Dave doesn't know about that, but he knows the Schultz's weren't the nice nuclear family. Knows that Kelly grew up with a textbook pathology of twin-dependence and that a few days ago, drunk and tweaking, Kelly almost beat the crap out of his brother. In time for their birthday, the humor of which is not lost--Happy Birthday, open up a can of this, bro. "--here," David says, as though he's said it a few times, "want you here, Kelly." Slaps at his face, but his hands are insubstantial mittens brushing against Kelly's swollen head. He wants to bite Dave, kiss him and suck him off until he's covered in the other man, but mostly he wants. Yeah. Fucking A. He wheezes and wheezes against Dave's cheek, draws spit-trails down his nose, scuffing his dick against the palm in his jeans. Rides out the hand-job like a sunny trip through Pasadena, sweat percolating on his skin, pooling and tickling down his neck. Close, he was close, going blind when it was so bright, blood rushing through his ears loud as tidal waves and it didn't matter that this was all one-sided, because he couldn't think about it to regret it. Until it stops. Belt loosens, hand slips away, and the world breaks apart the air-tight envelope surrounding him and Dave. "This isn't about you," he hears over the traffic-rush in his head, "fucking brat." Which he resents, but breathing has suddenly become important. His throat's stuck shut like a Ziploc-bag and he has no idea how it ever opened. Dave pushes him onto the floor and Kelly tumbles hard. Rolls on his back and stares at water-ripply things on the ceiling, eyes blurring and re-focusing until something pricks a hole in his throat and he can *inhale*. Has to cough it back out like the first drag on a cigarette, but it means something that he can still breathe. It's beautiful and lonely. Reminds him of Nick, age thirteen. Age twenty. Every moment he thinks no one's watching. "I'm--'m sorry," he says, frothing with spit. His mouth has the metallic, meat-processed taste of hamburger helper. What the fuck is he doing here? A scared little boy who can't get over the love of his life and can't stop *deifying* his own brother, who never asked for any ofit. They shared the womb and they shared a bed, they shared a shitload of things, but maybe they never shared the same need. Maybe they didn't and Kelly would have to get the fuck over it. He looks at David, who is a vast banyan above him, and says, "help me," although he'd meant to say "fuck you." "I can't help you," Dave shrugs, an easy-going Dad at the beach telling his wife the stand's out of hotdogs, "but I can hurt you. It's the same to you, right?" Kelly laughs up a spitful of copper. "Dude, I heard the same thing on Oprah yesterday. Dr. Phil's such a sadist--jesus *fuck*--" And they're starting again. They've been meeting for months, years, year after sunless year, with no regularity or schedule. Often enough that Kelly knows he's occupying the space Nick might fill if things lapsed, but not seriously. It's medication--yeah, Kelly's self-medicating with his brother's ex-fuck. Only man still living to bang both twins on the same day, between takes no less. And he's not thinking about that, no. He's looking at David's hands, his big hands, bigger than Nick's, and better manicured. They were the size of giant cane spiders, but very girly for a rough-and-tumble actionman. He obviously spent time soaking and moisturizing them in the finest imported salves. They're not gentle, but they're trustworthy and candid. Wrapped around a belt, leather spilling loose in a serpentine curve. "You're fucked up, you know that?" Kelly says, digging his knees into the recliner. Tense as spent bungee cord, waving and waiting over the canyon floor. "I appreciate that coming from you. Really." Imbecile's smile in his voice. "I mean, you've taken fucked up to this whole other level. Like an art form." Finger-taps down his spine like a xylophone. "So, it's an honor, you saying that." Kelly's mouth sours, a prune of anatomy. "Can we justleave him out of this?" "Can you? Don't think so, Kel. He's why you're here, putting your ass out for me--pretty ass, by the way." Begins to respond and then the belt *belt* crashes down on the thickest part of his upper thighs, controlled as a barbarian attack. Shock slaps Kelly's face to the cushion and he spits into the back of the chair. Gets enough composure to move and then Dave lashes him again. It's heavy, hard, but not. They did the feather-tickles with the riding crops and the thudding of paddles and hands, and this is where it's led. Kelly knows how to take it, knows with the sour pit of ten-year-old fear how to take a belt. That's it. That's why he's here. Or, not really, but he can't think straight. His ass hums, vibrates like hummingbird's wings. His dick is wet in his palm. "You're sick, Donovan. You should be locked up in a little white room somewhere." Dave sounds so congenial, informing the hostess that the tomato crostini is delicious. Kelly's hand stutters against his cock, brings a weird, awkward smile to his lips. "My boy, making a mockery of family values." Hits again. Hot hot stinging, leaves red flares in Kelly's sight. "My boy." Repeats. Again. It's a good, bruising dance of movement and impact, makes the muscles sing in release. It's everything love should be. Passionate, intimate, and primal. And it leaves a mark. "Very bad little boy," Dave says, corkscrewing a finger into the dint of his asshole, putting aside the belt and lending all that hot dirty power to his mouth. Uses his teeth to break capillaries beneath the skin of Kelly's neck, the soft slide-curve from chin to shoulder, and whispers filthy things that burn every inch of control out of his bones. "Been bad, haven't you?" And Kelly jumps, wanting so much in that voice, in those words, he could never express. "Your brother, your own brother," wiggle-pops another finger inside, "it's fucking disgusting," circles in a slow arc, just rough enough to steal a moan from Kelly's bastard throat. "Want to help you, baby," and Dave's wet at his back, dick out and drip dripping down Kelly's thigh. "Make you a good boy--that's what you want? Do what daddy says--good, *fuck* so good--be good for me--" words splinter and scratch against skin, making everything vulnerable, hurting. "Took my show, but you're here, always here," snorts against his neck, nothing makes sense, "want to help you." Kelly fucks back and back, his spine bowed and ascetic, laying everything down at Dave's feet and wanting it all back again and all he can think is goodboygoodboygoodboygoodboygoodboygoodboy They finish before a Ringo-haired crew guy comes knocking for David. Takes him away to the set for another go at a crucial plot turn. Kelly is hidden in the bathroom, folded into the space between toilet and sink. He stares at the gold-and-white flecked floor, rubbing the chafe around his neck while Dave jokes about hockey scores. First, he needs a drink and a lozenge. Then, should call his girlfriend. She must wonder where he is. And then he needs to find the grocery list for her macro diet, or call Maury to see about that extra part onLaw & Order. Dry-cleaning needs picking up; his mom's birthday is next month. He's thirty-three. He's too old for this shit. Not geriatric, but way beyond the miserable angstfest. Too old to still claim his brother as the only thing that distinguishes him.  Crew Guy says something about a fire alarm that makes Dave hem and hew, and then the voices start to melt like popsicles in the summertime, and they evaporate out the door. It's cold in the bathroom. His girlfriend is out, spinning or jazzercising or whatever her agent recommended, and the apartment is loud and empty. They need to get a dog or something. Kelly drops the grocery bags on the sofa, watches plastic-cups of organic soup spill out and turns to check the messages. Nothing from Nick. There's always a dilating second of hope in his throat, but it's easy enough to deny when it's gone. Just a hiccup. California light pours in the windows, a bright syrupy fog that should warm Kelly, but doesn't. There's a message from Dave. Machine informs him that it was left ten minutes ago. He pops open a beer while he listens, pulling slow swallows that scour his throat. Message received, he makes his way to the bedroom. Stacy's cosmetic tackle-box is under the sink and her concealer just happens to match perfectly on Kelly. He's replaced two tubes already, which was a trip. The counter-ladies at the nearest Sephora must tell unflattering stories about the wash-out from the vampire show. One time-warp later and Kelly's playing Madden on the Playstation, losing like no one's business. He was so conditioned to losing to Nick, putting up enough fight to ease suspicion and always backing down, that he's forgotten how to actually play. Disheartened with it all, he kicks the console and lo, the picture blips out. A quick-temper does wonders for expense accounts. Screw it then. Kelly grabs his warm beer and settles back onto the sofa, sofa Nick picked out, and lets the jetsam drift. Drifting leads him further and further out, backstroking in self-misery, so he grabs onto something. David. Thing about Dave. Is the parallel. He's an uncanny mirror so different from Nicky, but still a reflection of ghosts; things Kelly will never understand or truly see. Which sounds like the beginning of a bad monologue, but it's the truth. In his sophomore year, Kelly lost his virginity to a football player in the backseat of a Pinto. Before that, he'd spent years inside his brother, but they never thought to change it around. The fuck was more thrilling than a rock concert, bone-rattling adrenaline and sound with none of the greasy fat guys. The player's hands were wide and brawny, pancakes of veiny meat with the gift of sensation. He had beautiful, sad eyes, dark and sweet as a piano key. His last name could've been Boreanaz. He was an artist, too. An ah-teest, as Kelly teased, to vex him into smiles. He had a list of accomplishments the size of those mock resumes they made you compile in Careers, and he was popular. Superlatives had been crammed like cautionary fine-print beneath his picture in the yearbook. Most Handsome, Most Athletic, and on and on until you got to Most Artistic. It was a turn on for anyone. He sculpted, swathing his thick palms around the clay, modeling imaginary figures. The sculptures were heartbreaking things, not terribly attractive; they were unfinished thoughts too sad to explain. Kelly thought it was romantic at the time. He knew about sad, knew about thoughts that stopped your heart and corked your throat. In class, they had non-linear art lessons that went: Michelangelo, Rodin, Brancusi. The next week it was Boccioni, the week after was Ancient Assyrian, and so on. They looked at slides of the Venus of Willendorf and then they took a museum-trip to see the Double 'Burgs, as the teacher put it. Good ol' Claes and Robert. It made no sense to Kelly and he has no idea why it's stuck with him for years. Maybe he liked the idea that inside every material was a form yearning to show itself; everything had a heart that you could make visible. But he doesn't believe that because it's new age art therapy crap. Maybe he likes that it was the one thing he never shared with Nick. The football player painted Kelly once. A small watercolor thing, an exercise in 'automatic dribbling' or some shit, as their patchouli-dipped teacher announced. It was something to tie in with Surrealism. No one told her that the entire class was a lesson in Surrealism. The watercolor was bright and nonsensical, two things Kelly despised, but it *was* him somehow. It was a flutter of posturing and bullshit, almost too garish to look at, and it was wrong. It was troubling. The teacher, her beaded necklaces swinging like jungle vines, glazed out when she saw it. Flashback to some fractured time in Berkeley. No one else got it. Which was fine. It was surreal. There was a jock out there who liked the insides of things. And before he was rear-ended in his combustible Pinto, he liked Kelly. Who had something inside him the other kids would never. He was in love. With his brother. Wasn't until after the funeral that he realized how special that made him. Time erases nothing and he's still just as in love. The more Nicky grew apart, the more Kelly responded. You *can't* let your family drift like that, you just can't. Family ties are what made a person. Or, they were if you took Hallmark cards as gospel. Kelly was sentimental once. He got over it. Maybe he remembers those sculptors' names because he holds on to each thread that makes the past; all the ties that bind you, especially around holidays. Memories are more important for Kelly than for other people who don't wake up every morning with tastes of the past in their mouth, who don't see years ago when they close their eyes. He's worshipped all the scraps of his memories with a sacerdotal routine, giving himself over to the power of transience, kneeling and praying over his brother, himself, and what could have been. It's unhealthy, he knows. It's decades' worth of unhealthy and it was killing him. Holding on to whatneeded to be let go.   Then he tells himself that people in love do the darnedest things all the time; like wait and wait until the one moment when the sky is perfectly blue and all the air seems spun with sugar, and the person you love finally opens their eyes and smiles. Except in most cases, people aren't waiting for their siblings. At twenty after nine, Stacy stops trying to blow him and wipes her mouth on a cocktail napkin. There's plum-wax on Kelly's dick, which sags forlornly against his thigh. "Don't stay here tonight," she says, already notcaring, fishing out her lipstick from the bottom of her purse. The dismissal doesn't hurt like it should, but there's a wince of regret between his shoulders. Halfway to apologizing with lips and fingers, he stops. Considers. And calls a taxi. Dave's house isn't a skip away and he's betting that he won't want to operate a vehicle after the night winds down. Apparently Dave's thinking along the same lines, taking less than two seconds to administer the liquor. Kelly should protest--his head is a free-floating sugarcube and the night's still young--but he takes it because that's what Dave wants. The other things that Dave must want, out of this situation, and more broadly, out of life, are beyond Kelly. They've chatted before, but the talks are infuriatingly jolly. Bouncing from sports to cuts of suits to that new bar on Sunset to nothing at all. What Dave wants, he says through his control and his dependability, and that says more than his dork-brained words. Tonight, Dave's ordered Hawaiian take-out and he makes Kelly eat without his shirt on. The wife and baby are elsewhere, happy and ignorant with a party of other happy Hollywood mothers, and Kelly's chopsticking balls of sticky rice onto his chest. "These are the tools of evil men, meant to enslave the--stupid… shit." More warm rice down his front. "This is a whole new realm of kink, you know. Force-feeding me." "Like to watch you eat. What's wrong with that?" "Besides everything? My shirtlessness screams wrong." He twirls a clump of foreignly-thin noodles, aims them for his mouth and watches them pop from the sticks to land on the floor. He's making a mess, but Dave doesn't mind or he wouldn't be smiling, leaning forward to kiss the tangy sauce off Kelly's lips. It's stupid and embarrassing, but it makes Kelly want to take back the crap he's said of David. It makes him want to try one night without the game. Before he can decide on the right way to phrase the words, there's a knock on the kitchen door--which is less knock and more Nick stumbling inside, pixilated and bright-eyed. His pupils are shiny black saucers and even without the twin thing, Kelly would know he was high. "Hey. Bro." Nick says, scrubbing at his face, his nose. He laughs into his shirt sleeve, then stops, coughs some composure into himself. "Jesus, Nick. What are you doing?" Kelly moves for his brother, already anticipating the bone-and-musclesquirm of him in his arms, when he realizes that he'sasked a good question, but there's an even better one out there. "What are you doing *here*?" He pushes at Nick's shoulder, watches him stumble back against the closed door. Starts the laughing again. "What is he doing here?" Kelly turns on Dave, who is looking Nick over with a musing smile. "I thought this was a big ruse to slip me some romance and now, if you're thinking anything like I'm thinking I'm gonna punch you." "Was that a question?" Dave grabs for him, closes his fingers around Kelly's thin wrists. Their quiet threat reminds Kelly of bone-fractures and hospital visits. He itches to do something violent, but he wills it away. "Why is he here?" Dave smiles at him and bows forward to kiss his forehead. "I called him, sweetie." Nick perks up, dark penumbras beneath his eyes like spots on the sun. "He did. Said there was a party, but I'm not seeing any party." "Just a couple of queers," Kelly finishes Nick's thought, to show he can. Gets him a strained slip of a smile, then his brother's eyes harden. As much as they can, being mostly red and watery. "Now that you're here, I think we can start the music, huh?" Dave gives another of his puppyish smiles, then begins humming a tacky porno score. It's funny for a second, and Kelly's halfway to asking who ordered the pizza, when he stops being a complete idiot and realizes what's in the works. "No, no, no. No fucking way." He cuts at the air in anger, stomach turning over a hot stone in his belly. "No, Nick's going home, and I--" The air eddies around him and David is there, cupping his chin hard with one hand. "I've had enough of your lip, sweetheart," he says, still smiling. "I'm not here for this, man." The voice message left that afternoon. Serenading him with dinner and bed sheets, well-lit, gentle. Dave's a big damned liar and a better actor than critics know. "You're here for anything I want you here for, isn't that how it goes? You and your martyrdom, think that if you just give yourself one more time, your brother might notice. See you for the saint you are." He strokes the high bone of Kelly's cheek, thoughtful pique to his brow. "Not that I'm judging you or anything, but it's gonna take a lot to make you a saint." "Don't--I don't want that," Kelly's watching Nick now, who's halfway to looking like the RCA dog. "Much as I go for the asshole attitude, I'm not--it's easier for you two. It's so much easier and you don't even fucking realize it." He's working up a dark wad of spite, chewing it between his teeth when Dave laughs. Laughs. Pulls him close, cradling a hand behind the base of his head. "I know, baby, I know. Daddy'll make it easier for you, promise." "Stop," Kelly says, which is not what he means, and tries to swim from Dave's arms, but the surface is cemented over. They tangle, melt into a struggle then kiss, then back to struggle. Their teeth knock enamel and Kelly twists himself until Dave bends to still kiss him, lips smeared over the smaller man's chin, his cheekbone, his eyes, tasting the rich fringe of eyelashes. "You guys obviously have some issues," Nick says with the timid hurt of a third-party. Fuck you, Kelly wants to say, but his mouth is full; it takes a ruthless squirm to extricate himself. Not fully, because Dave girdles a hand around his painted throat. Holds him at a distance, like an old shirt you're not entirely sure you're ready to throw out. "Nah, we've worked most of ours out. But you two could do with some serious therapy," Dave says, shaking Kelly so his feet scuff the ground. The blood is soaring again, whooshing through his head. He's being choked in front of his brother. And it's making him hard. "Talk to Kelly. Or, strangle him, if you want." Bangs around the kitchen, hunting for a drink. "The bar's in the living room," Dave offers, still giving shirt-Kelly the appraisal. He's going to pop like a plump tick and splatter himself all over the clean white kitchen. "He's turning purple." Less concerned, more marveling. "Happens. Your brother's really in love with you, you know." Kelly's throat rattles and hums. He barely hears any of the talking, just the highways of his blood, the whirring of his brain slowing down and down; it's loud as industrial fans between his ears. In his ears. He's bursting, but Dave's not touching him. "Lot of people are in love with me. You should probably… let him go." His voice is coming from another country. "Do you know what you're doing, man?" "Kelly, baby, where're you going?" Dave's face is planetary, huge and spherical above him. Planet-lips kiss him with warm atmosphere. Then the planet zooms back into its galaxy and the floor catches Kelly before he falls through. Grateful, he rubs a hand down his dick, blood-swelled and *hard*, so hard it hurts. Dave's a fucking asshole and it's the best feeling. "Jesus." Nick is closer now, bridging the distance between countries, but he's a disgusted xenophobe. When Kelly speaks, the croak spooks both of them. "What? Jesus, your big brother's fucked up, Nicky? Funny thing, though. I think my little brother's just as fucked." Good to say it, a pouring of poison from his heart, or maybe it's just bitter blood. Bitter heart's blood, blood of a broken heart. He's dizzy, but the floor is reassuring. "You and your goddamned stubborn stupid romanticism, you think a family's really going to fix you? Stupid, Nicky. It's stupid. You're a stupid addict--" "And you can fix me? Right, Kel. You're Scotch tape and--and glue." Shaking voice, face like bruised fruit. "I love you, I'll do anything for you, you know that. Nicky." Dave pops open a beer in the pause. Shrugs when they look at him. "You know, you always. You think you're the only one--" Nick's hand shakes his glass, splashes vodka on the floor. He stares at it, eyes dark and shiny, the tips of two knives twisting in Kelly's gut. "Only one, what?" He asks, not wanting the answer. Needing it. Like Nicky. Who is suddenly sober with a shock, more grounded than he's been in months. "Only one that's lost anything. Only one who gave something up. Only one wh-wh-who," he stops, tries again, "who's been hurting. You've always loved to lie to yourself." It makes no sense. The words are onion peels bringing salt and water to Kelly's eyes, and his heart heaves with twenty year's worth of hurt. Nick can't know what that's like, he can't know or all of it would be pointless. Pointless glass-bits on a seashore, pointlessly stinging underfoot. "What the fuck are you saying? What the fuck does that mean, Nick?" The effort of speaking breaks him in half. He curls on his side like a pillbug. Didn't he decide he was too old for this shit? But Nicky is gone again, just a fleeting ghost in a window. The high speaks for him, a warm and fizzy nonchalance. "You can be such an asshole. A monumental asshole. Someone should give you a job for that." "Play nice, boys," Dave says, sweeping up to Nick and cupping him from behind. Parody of a slow-dance that pierces Kelly to look at it, but he doesn't mind when Dave plies the glass from Nick's fingers. "Probably shouldn't be drinking this, should you?" It's not a question, or maybe it is, blown soft over Nick's mouth right before the kiss. And that, Kelly does mind. He's a floundering sucker up to his elbows in quicksand, but he's not under yet. "Stop," he says, suddenly on his feet and through with this whole thing, ready to take Nick and leave for a long overdue talk, but there's a sound. A boneless sound, like the hiss of air from a balloon if the balloon were having an orgasm. Kelly stops, his ears ringing. He loves his brother so much and in that tiny fraction of a second he inhales and exhales enough love to paint China red, paint the whole fucking world red, and it's killing him, he's sure. Loving Nick like that. So when Dave pulls away and gives Kelly a bright smile, asks him if he loves his brother, it's easy as breathing to nod and say yes, yes, over and over. Surging forward like a tide, meeting Nick on the shore, kissing him with a wet open mouth. There's vodka, bitter as oil, and a smoky hint of opiate. Beneath that is the taste Kelly spent years sucking from his brother. He loves it, drinks it like a parched man in the desert, his desperation not at all coincidental. "Good boys," Dave says, sliding a hand inside Nick's waistband, smoothing the other through Kelly's hair. "You're both so pretty, aren't you?" A zipper-thrill up Kelly's back, hearing the note of a game in Dave's voice. "My pretty, dirty boys," the third word drops an octave, rolls around in pure sex before it hits the air. It draws rake-tines up Kelly's back, scratching every itch of need he's got and then some, hearing that out of Dave's mouth. He hovers a moment, like a car stuck over the edge of a canyon, before he crashes into the void and destructs. He whimpers, moans, somethings into Nick's mouth, his whole body nodding and nodding to Dave's litany. He needs this, he fucking deserves this, the punishment and the reward. Anything, anything from Nick. He'll take it. "Touch your brother," Dave says, pushing Nicky's hand forward, "he wants you to touch him, right, Kelly?" Nod, nod, his hips are bobble-hips, bumping against Nick's soft body, stilling only for the hand making its way behind the buttons. Hand as familiar as his own, just like home. This was so wrong that it took his breath away, but he would give it if Nick kept his hand where it was. Or, moved it, like he was moving it, sliding, squeezing down Kelly's dick. He'd been hard since taking those steps towards Nick, or maybe it was before that, but he's harder now than he can remember and his lower body is a purple knot of need-to-fuck. When Nick breaks the kiss to turn his lips to David's, it's not okay, but it's not surprising. Blows out a string of light bulbs down Kelly's spine, drowning out his happiness with dark. He tries to lick the brightness from Nicky's cheek, kissing the fish-white underside of his jaw. Spit and moans work inside thatthroat, rumbling against Kelly's mouth. He thinks if this were television and he were one of thosevampires, he'd bite his brother's neck. Someone says, "Kelly," and it's the hottest sound. Porcelain-scrape of teeth over his nose, then his upper lip, and he smells the vodka to know it's Nick. Clean, pure taste of him, his brother, his twin, his unreflecting mirror. They could be back in the womb, pickling in the same fluids, or in the cradle, swaddled against one another. They could be young and angular, sliding into place at night, always rocking quiet enough so no one would hear them. He can't give that up. Can never let that go. Tied to Nicky in every twisting strand of DNA. It's not just textbook lessons, it's flesh and blood. Understand that, he says with his tongue, lapping the spit from Nick's mouth, exploring every slick nook and cranny while the hand on his dick strokes rapidly. Dave sighs next to them, all his words a dirty nursery rhyme that puts stars in Kelly's eyes. He follows what they say, good boy he is, and drops the zipper on Dave's jeans. Another hand helps, hand like his own, and he works his tongue inside Nick's mouth while they pull Dave out, one hand twirling a dripping line from the head, while the other hand dives underneath. Peach-fuzzy fruit, swollen sac between Dave's legs. Heavy and round in Kelly's fingers. For a moment, Nick has them both men in a fist and it's the hottest thing Kelly's seen. "Good, so fucking good," Dave's constant worship rises and falls in the air, like Kelly, who turns his back to Nick and bends over. Emotionless swell in his chest that doesn't fit the space. Almost breaks his ribs and rearranges his lungs, but he wouldn't care. There's a tsunami wave of need plundering down over helpless villagers and he's one of them. Helpless. Warm silver musk in his mouth, bright as jewelry if he could see it, that floods his tongue with salt. He sucks up and down Dave's cock, familiar on his lips, on the roof of his mouth where it's worn grooves. Doesn't use his teeth until Dave starts fucking back, slow and easy, the laziest mouth-fuck in the world. Pets his damp hair, runs fingers through it like hayfields. Then the touch turns to scratching, nails down the tender delta of Kelly's neck, over the knobs of his spine. He whimpers, snorts air through his nose. Behind him, Nick has him unbuckled and bare, is spreading him open. It's wet, slick as morning gravestones. He can't wonder where lube came from him because he can't wonder about anything. There's no belt, no hand, but he's choking all the same, lungless and alone. Allegretto throb in his mouth, his jaw, his pulse climbing steadily; it's loud, just as loud as Dave stroking him off with words, just as loud as Nick's stuttery wind-sounds. Loves him, loves him so much. The thought is silk on bruised skin. His brother. Fucking loves him, *fucking* him, and he's never let that happen before. Didn't know he ever wanted it and Nicky never said anything; he hasn't had a reason to in a long while. It's all been too long. They've been apart for too long. A row of dominoes was only upright so long before you had to knock it over. Love--maybe love is a row of dominoes, waiting for the right--no, that's fucking stupid, he can't think about it. Just wants--he swallows Dave, stretches his mouth and deep-throats him. "So fucking good, such a good--beautiful mouth--" words are scraped off the bottom of his tongue, husky, dirty things. "Suck it--suck cock so nice, baby," he presses his fingers into the crocus-bruises of Kelly's throat, making things light up and sparkle in his eyes. He hasn't had to touch his dick, but now's a great time to start. His eyes water while he chokes and it's so perfect. "Kelly," he hears Nick, and he feels the sound in his gums. Jerks hard at his cock, pain sparking from his fingers as he fists himself. Quick, frenetic motions, the desperation of something about to die. Slows when his brother's hand reaches to help. Familiar as home, that palm. Could cradle him forever. Wet sounds of kissing above, Dave and Nick, while they're sharing Kelly, *using* Kelly. He loves both of them, in a warm bundle so bright it blinds him. Loves when Dave almost gags him, thoughtless and so very close to coming; loves the body-warmed spill of it in his mouth, salt and sweet apples, dripping down his chin. Loves that he can ride Nick back, squeezing himself so tight that there's nowhere to go and so Nick grabs his hipbones for handles, cock so far in that Kelly hopes it might stick like that. Then there are soft, soft cries in his ear, Nick apologizing and begging, coming inside him in wet, rolling waves. Sounds turns to white noise, the noise the universe makes and he heard that somewhere, but probably from that fucking teacher-- After the post-come firecrackers sizzle and burn out, Kelly's sure that when he reaches for Nick, his brother will pull away. It's the first time he's been right about Nicky in years. Dave watches them with dark piano-key eyes, then breaks away to use the bathroom. A week later, early in his treatment, Nick calls him from the center. He sounds diminished, tired. The reports say alcoholism, and it's not like the public needs to know the rest. No one's got any right. Kelly visits him there when he's allowed visitors; Tressa's already there, talking about a friend's wedding. She doesn't leave when he comes, but he's not terribly bothered; he has to see Dave in a little while, anyway. It's weird. The twin Kelly remembers is a specter, a slippery memory under a bridge. He watches as it knifes downstream, leaps once in the air, and disappears back beneath the water. Everything is different after that. -End