Started life commentfic re: oteap's prompt.
[warning: character death]
When they were mere children, unwise to the ways of the world, they'd skip into puddles and roll out of it. They'd take turns pushing swings or race to get higher and reach for the blinding sun.
Monkey bars, see-saws, merry-go-rounds.
They played and wreak havoc until the cows mooed the sun to set and Ma would scream and shout from three blocks down.
Then his brother would offer his right hand, and he would take it without hesitation. They would swing their hands, stretched out in front of them, and long behind them. And those were happy days.
Time passed and holding hands in public weren't the greatest thing to do for young men growing up in times of Troubles. It was a luxury they couldn't afford.
At night he would feign sleep and wait for his brother to sleep, and he would look at his hands, empty and bereft. He would try to remember what it felt like to have a loving hand holding his, and him holding back. Sometimes he wondered whether his brother felt the same loss.
They held hands briefly in semi-public, in the tattoo parlour, the happy ditty of his heart obscured by swearwords, the whirr of tattoo pens, and soft chuckles from that kindly tattooist.
They weren't tattoo junkies. It's just an excuse for them to hold hands in public.
It was supposed to be a routine hit, and they were supposed to be immortal. Or maybe all the news reports had gotten into their heads.
So he watched his brother fall, red blood rose blooming on his back, his chest, and he fall backwards into a puddle. The shooter ran, alive but not for long.
He tried to reach out to his brother, but he was too late, time moved on its own volition, never his. And he saw his brother fall, fall, fall, away from him.
It was the last time they held hands in public. He held on, in that puddle of brown sludge and brown-red blood, in whitewashed ambulance, his brother's warmth leeching out into him, until their hands turned cold.
