Look After Your Brother ch 8
Mar. 4th, 2005 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyCompensation to everyone who actually has me friended instead of reading this on the bds_fic group and got spammed by my archiving--Here, have a new chapter.
"This has got to be the fucken pinkest kitchen in all of Boston, Doc." Murphy commented over breakfast. "It's like I'm fucken drownin' in a bottle of pepto." Three days had passed. Connor was regaining his strength. Murphy was going house-mad.
"My w-w-wife picked it. God rest her soul, woman never did h-h-have an eye for color."
Doc bought the cheery green paint and over the next few nights the boys redid the kitchen while he was working at the pub.
When the wall-plates were off, they noticed that the wiring was corroded. Doc bought the supplies and they rewired the house's electric.
While in the garage changing out the fuse box, they noticed a covered up old car. They borrowed a Chilton's manual from the library and changed out the fuel pump and carburetor. Ran better than it ever had before, Doc told them.
It took Connor almost a month before he stopped expecting an indecent proposal to come at any moment.
The thrift store down the block delivered a second bed, and they managed to squeeze it into the tiny room. Connor slept in the one nearest to the door.
They lived in a home with a television set for the first time. The afternoon action picture became the highlight of their day.
It was a strange time in their lives. There was enough to eat every day. Nothing was expected of them. They took care of things for Doc because they liked him, not from a fear of being kicked out if they weren’t useful. There was no sense of impending destiny. This was their life, existing day to day, and it was good.
The room they slept in had been Doc's son's, before he went away to college in New York and never bothered coming back to the old neighborhood. "Pissant," Doc always said if the subject came up. "You should listen to him talk; y'd never even know he's Irish." But Doc had kept that room just as it was for years, so the boys were careful to not change it with their living there.
Sunday was God's day. They went to morning Mass and lit a candle for Ma. Father Mike kept giving them cards for people "to talk to." Just thinking about it made Murph twitchy, and Connor couldn’t see that it would do them much good, so they never called. They started being more careful about what they said in confession.
Tuesday was delivery day at the pub, and they would go in with Doc to move crates and bottles before opening. His knees were going bad and they hated the idea of him working so hard when they were young and strong.
Wednesday was Ma's day. They'd ride on the bus to the big library downtown, and read at each other through the aisles; architecture, law, philosophy, history. For lunch they'd find a bite to eat at a little Russian bakery, or an Italian deli, or a French bistro. It had to be authentic; somewhere that the people would speak to them in one of the languages their Ma had taught them. It seemed disrespectful to risk losing what she had given them by being lazy.
The rest of the time they just tried to help out who and where they could, and stay out of trouble. They weren’t always good at the second part. Sometimes Connor thought they'd have an easier time if they weren’t twins. They were more protective of each other than either of them would have been of himself.
Connor never cared if some thick fuck wanted to bad-mouth him, but he got into fights over the way someone looked at Murphy. Murph was just as bad. They'd be walking along and before Connor knew there was a cause, he'd hear a scrap behind him, turn and find Murph dukeing it out with three guys. And there was no way he'd let Murph get hurt, at least not alone.
"He called y' a faggot," Murph would explain later, when they were binding busted knuckles and dabbing bloody noses.
Connor would pass him a pack of ice, and know that it meant "He called us faggots," but it didn’t matter. They'd fight anybody if they could do it together. It was like grade school all over again. They might not always win, but whoever they were fighting always knew where they'd been.
They watched for their chance to atone for the misdeeds of their youth, watched for that one person that God would put before them to help.
Doc made sure they had a bit of walking around money, a few bucks here and there. It was enough for lunch twice a week, and it kept them in cigarettes from the machine in the pub. It wasn’t so much that it tempted them to buy beer
They had new clothes twice a year, at Christmas and at the beginning of summer. The second year that they lived with Doc, he bought them good wool coats, black and warm, with room to grow into.
They bounced around a few different jobs. They only took employment where they could work together, same shift, same location. Connor couldn’t stand to be apart from Murph. Murph wouldn’t see him upset if he could help it, so they ended up doing shite jobs, but at least they were together.
Connor watched his brother grow tall and strong, with graceful hands that never seemed to be at rest. He was beautiful in a way that made Connor's heart shiver, beautiful in a way that he couldn’t bear to think about too much.
At eighteen they went to a New Year's party that the church had organized for the young people of the parish. Dancing was something that was new for them, but they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in experience.
It may have been a misstep, one of them wheeling to the left when he should have wheeled to the right, or it could have been a conspiracy by their dance partners (young girls are evil by nature, after all), but one moment Connor was swinging the lass around, and the next he had an armload of Murphy.
For two beats of the reel, neither of them moved, but then Murphy grinned and Connor grinned, and they made a circuit of the dance-floor, each of them trying to be the one to lead. The girls all laughed, and the boys jeered, but who the fuck cared, it was funny.
At the end of the round they were reclaimed by their partners, and Connor tried to forget about the dance, how right it had felt to move with Murphy, to touch him. Thinking about it would make him like them, the men who wanted to touch Murphy enough to pay for it.
They danced until the ball dropped, and toasted with the kiddie-punch like the rest.
"C'mon, Conn, let's go, I'm wrecked," Murph said, bumping shoulder to shoulder. His grin was bright, his dark hair black with sweat. They walked home together, fast because of the fucken cold--happy because they were together.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
LOOK AFTER YOUR BROTHER
Date: 2005-03-06 07:03 pm (UTC)LOOK AFTER YOUR BROTHER
no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 08:09 pm (UTC)I'm not sure how you found my journal. On the bds_fic site, the first chapter has this Author's note:
A/N 2: So I owned the VHS copy of this movie forever, and of course in that version the only bit of their mother we hear about is that she insisted on their knowledge of languages. I think this gave me a very different perception of her as a person, so that makes this bit of fic somewhat AU.
Sorry if I dont put as explicit warnings and notes in my personal archive as I do when I post to the public groups.
-J
no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 06:26 am (UTC)My carpets are about that colour. Ick. Nice first sentence.
"You should listen to him talk; y'd never even know he's Irish." But Doc had kept that room just as it was for years, so the boys were careful to not change it with their living there.
That is really good of them. I don't think I read this bit when I read the first time. My eyes must have twitched or something. I wish my parents had kept my room the same when I moved out. Now I don't even have a bed. *grumble*
It seemed disrespectful to risk losing what she had given them by being lazy.
...
Then later you said they forgot a language and part of Cantonese or somethin I think. Subtle, but I caught the connection.
Connor never cared if some thick fuck wanted to bad-mouth him, but he got into fights over the way someone looked at Murphy. Murph was just as bad.
Thick fuck? Never heard that term before. Sick fuck, yea that one I know.
For two beats of the reel, neither of them moved, but then Murphy grinned and Connor grinned, and they made a circuit of the dance-floor, each of them trying to be the one to lead. The girls all laughed, and the boys jeered, but who the fuck cared, it was funny.
I was laughing and smiling at this. It was very cute. However, "who the fuck cared," makes it a question, doesn't it?
no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 03:25 pm (UTC)...
Then later you said they forgot a language and part of Cantonese or somethin I think. Subtle, but I caught the connection.
They tried to keep it...Farsi and Cantonese are hard languages for two Irish boys to find a native speaker of in Boston. They sort of slipped away.
Thick fuck? Never heard that term before. Sick fuck, yea that one I know.
Thick=Irish (and British) slang for dense or stupid. Thick, thick as a brick, thick as two planks, etc.
"who the fuck cared," makes it a question, doesn't it?
It felt like the "it was funny" brought the sentence back around to a statement not a question...maybe I should have broken that into two sentences.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 11:25 pm (UTC)