Title: Fragility

Author: mao

Disclaimer: Velvet Goldmine belongs to Michael Stipe, Todd Haynes, and a lot of other people, most notably not me. I'm just a poor teenager not trying to make any money from this, and if you sue me, all you'll get is some soda bottles.

Author's Notes: Written after re-reading WolfHawk's most amazing "Dark Glass." This isn't not as good, but it's just a brief introspective piece on sex and love and how things get far too over-enmeshed sometimes.

Warnings: Crude, and quite likely highly offensive. Incest, m/m slash, sexual activities, and drug use.

***

If you close your eyes, you can feel his hands on your hips, guiding himself into you, pump after pump. His hands are gentle, and even though he's ripping you into two, you could allow this to go on forever and a day, if he'd just keep his hands on you, and just keep murmuring gently into your ear. You can feel yourself getting close and closer to your climax, feel his body shuddering above you, and you know you're coming to come, know it's going to be better than ever –

So you keep them open. You keep your eyes open so that you won't see what's still inside you after all this time. Even with your eyes closed, you're never sure which one he is – he could be Brian, with his soft lips and twisted smirk, or he could be your brother, with a glint in his eyes that wasn't quite sane.

It doesn't matter though – they were disturbingly similar in bed. They'd keep their lips hot on your shoulder, drop wet kisses on your earlobe, run their hands over your cock and tease you into a state of frenzied pleasure, all the while pumping their whole length into you, hard, forcing into you to a pleasing pain that would bring you to orgasm even as you wanted them to stop.

There's only ever been these two men in your life. Your brother…it was love. Maybe not the right kind of love – maybe it was wrong and confusing, but it was  the right thing for you, wasn't it? Even if the first night your brother climbed into your bed, whispering, "Shh, Curt, shh," as he slipped his hand into the bottom of your pajamas, you always knew he loved you and never really meant to hurt you.

It was the same with Brian. Even when he was coked out of his head, screaming at you in a bloody rage, his hands betrayed him. Like your brother, his hands were gentle, despite the rage the rest of his body would display even when you would tell him, over and over how you loved him.

"But I love you," you'd say to both of them. Your brother would laugh, his mouth open, the braying sound ringing out across your otherwise quiet room. And Brian, he would give you a look that made you wilt – a look that said, "You don't know what love is." Sometimes your brother would kick you, would beat you – but never with his hands. He took a baseball bat once, and knocked you over the head with it, didn't he?

You remember.

And Brian – once he kicked you out of the bed and proceeded to kick you, hard in the balls, the stomach, the knees – whatever he could get. Neither of them would ever admit with words that they loved you – but you knew.

You still know.

No matter what they'd say to you, or how they'd kick you or beat you, you could feel the love in the gentleness of their hands, in the way they'd use their fingers to play melodies over your naked body.

Even when you would suck your brother off and he'd knot his fingers – long, angelic, artistic fingers, fingers any woman would kill to have inside of her – into your hair, and thrust himself roughly into your mouth until you thought you'd choke – even then, he never hurt you. Not with his fingers or his hands. And after a while you lost your gag reflex, and even learned to enjoy it, to take pleasure in the taste of his dick on your tongue.

As for Brian…he likes to squeeze. He'll be inside you, his long, muscular legs wrapped around your waist, thrusting hard, and he'll lower his hand, wrapping you in it. He'll stroke gently, making a tunnel of his palm and fingers and then, if he thinks you're ready to come before he is – he'll squeeze.

The first time he did it you yelped in surprise and a sudden horror. And then, suddenly, there was that rush of gentleness again; the joy of him inside you, of him on you, of his hand of your cock filled you up, and you found yourself grinning in the simplicity of it all.

If you ever stopped to think about it, the truth would become painfully clear to you – as painfully clear as it became when your brother caught no blame for you sucking him off, as clear as Brian's harsh words made you realize that all you were really, honestly, and forever – was a junkie and fairy, alone in the world.

And the truth is this: you liked it when they hurt you, didn't you? You treasured the gentility in their fingers and their hands, but you liked it more when they ripped you in half, tearing your innocence like paper and toying with your fragility.

And when you close your eyes, you remember why you miss it.