Title: Ripple
Author: lildove42
Rating: doesn't need one
Pairing: Brian/Justin
Spoilers: Ep. 122
Words: 427
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Phases of a broken heart.
Brian Kinney thought the sound of his heart breaking would be a quiet one. He'd witnessed the overwhelming silence of others' broken hearts. There was Mikey's surprise birthday party. Mikey's heart had broken with the silence that lingers at the end of a question, that pause before an answer is formed, an answer you don't want to hear. Mikey had stood there with his silent puppy dog eyes asking the same thing they always asked when Brian walked all over him. Why?
But when Brian found his own heart breaking, it was so loud he could hear nothing else. His heart breaking sounded more like a bat smacking against some unyielding surface. His heart breaking was like a stone dropped into a pond, that first noise deafening, with each successive ripple lessening in intensity. The second sound of his broken heart was the hollow impact of skull on concrete followed by his incoherent pleadings and ending with his own sharp intake of breath as he clutched Justin to his chest.
Brian's heart broke in phases as well. It broke in colors and smells and tactile sensations. His heart broke in varying shades of red and white: ambulance lights flashing, blood staining his white scarf, the reflection of his own eyes, bloodshot and wide. Smells like the iron tinge of blood mixing with the heady odor of motor oil invaded him and etched their way into his memory. But what broke him, the thing that severed the tiny bit of tissue still holding his aorta together was the feel of that silk scarf, the same scarf that had slipped through his lover's hands only hours before, clenched tightly in his hands where he could hold it his face and feel it stiffening with drying blood.
Brian Kinney couldn't quite manage to do anything right in his friends' eyes. He tricked too much and didn't love enough. He never took anything seriously and joked at all the wrong times. He never acknowledged his emotions and when he did, he usually managed to fuck it up somehow. Being different, being difficult, had never bothered him before. He lived on his terms, and frankly, a broken heart was not something he'd ever given a second thought too. Brian Kinney didn't get involved enough to get his heart broken.
But here he was. Brian Kinney, sitting in this hallway, in a hospital for fuck's sake, fighting an already lost battle against tears with his heart broken in fucking two and there wasn't a damn thing he would have done to change it.