Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You’re like a girl.”

Novak’s eyes flit up to Brandon, where he sits in the sun with his legs curled to his chest and billows of smoke haloing him. There’s a heavy pause.

“You’re passive, I mean. Passive like a girl,” Brandon says, taking another drag after a counted minute of waiting. He breathes out, his face gone vaguely sour, and his new words are punctuated with foul-tasting smoke. “Does it ever annoy you, being passive?”

Novak shifts where he's lying, just enough to hear polystyrene beans rustle underneath him. His mind is chugging slowly, having not enough energy to be burdened by these words, so they slip right off; he’s half-consciously grateful for it. The implications vaguely haunt him. He sits up a little, a hand jutting out in an attempt to steel himself and his spinning vision against the cold wall. It steals his warmth. He almost frowns.

“I don’t know. I guess not.”

Brandon’s watching the sky outside the window, reflecting the perfect blue in his eyes. If Novak could focus he might be able to make out white clouds in the glassy mirrors.

“Being passive is easy. It’s only when there’s no active party involved that it gets boring.” Novak sniffles a little and his kaleidoscope gaze settles on Brandon’s hands. His smooth skin is only lightly dusted with the dark hair of his head and it’s had time to tan slightly in this summer’s sun.

Brandon shuts his eyes tight, and tenses himself against the chair in preparation to rise from it. As he passes, slowly stumbling, he reaches down to run his hands through Novak’s short spiked hair, residual product stickying his fingers but not enough to bother. He leaves for the hallway. He leaves, probably to find Jesse, or Jenn, or Ryan or Raab.

Novak doesn’t think he’s a girl in the way Brandon wants him to be. He purses his lips to himself in the lonely TV room, so big and empty. When he looks into the screen on the low table he briefly thinks it’s disappeared and has been replaced by a portal which brings him further into the suburban room; but It’s just some cathedral chosen to be a backdrop for the choir hymns Brandon had left on. Novak can’t be asked to turn the thing off. Novak doesn’t think he’s a girl in the way Brandon wants him to be.

“God, Novak, you’re such a girl,” Brandon chastises, his Pennsylvanian drawl drawing out the grinning wickedness. He has in one hand a menthol cigarette, in the other a long island iced tea, and in the crook of his iced tea elbow, a skinny little waif of a lady painted in hues of orange fake-tan (And it’s not that Novak doesn’t find her pretty, or agreeable, or anything, it’s just…).

Novak’s dopey grin grows slowly, eyes half useless, sending only half the signals it collects to his brain. He thinks he’s going to forget what shirt he wore today (or night, or whatever), or who he's drinking with, or even his own first name. The signals he knows it won’t sacrifice are frames and frames of Brandon; his skin is pale as it had been in the winter.

Novak feels an orchestra of cold hands wiping their sweaty palms on his flesh.

“Brandon, I can’t feel my fingers,” comes a slurred reply, just to let him know he’s still listening. It’s almost unpleasant, almost too much, that his brain is so slippery and fuzzy that he can’t quite seem to pin down any one thought. “Why do you expect me to count?”

Brandon’s still smiling when he rolls his eyes, good-naturedly exasperated, “‘Cause I goddamn told you to.” He soon delivers an addition; “When Bam says jump...” He washes it down with a few mouthfulls of his tea. Novak's numb hand comes up to deftly swipe against his chin and the coarse stubble there.

That purse-dog of a woman hanging off Brandon speaks up, “He’s had twelve,” and she grins, and it reminds him of the Cheshire Cat, or the snake in Eden.

Brandon cheers with his menthol. “He’s had twelve! Only ten more to go.”

That’s right. It’s Novak’s birthday.

The ride home, a future void of memory for him, is foggy and humid; and, for the most part, he knows he won't be missing much when he wakes up still drunk. He could imagine Brandon saying he smells like Raab. The girl, not Jenn, is sat between Brandon and Novak for a while. She laughs at intermittent moments, and repetitive jokes. Novak doesn’t even notice (what with his languid eyes shut) when she leaves and finds the rest of her way home on her own. He's already beginning to forget. And, the rest of the night will be no different.

Brandon, if questioned, would say the same thing Novak might. He’d have not much to say of his cold fingers on Novak’s warm, bony shoulders, hauling him into his grasp. Novak feels as though he won’t be questioned about the way he lays his head flat on Brandon’s chest, ear pressed just so, listening to Brandon’s and his own heartbeat in tandem. He feels like a kid again, on a late night driving home from somewhere far away. Memories with no Brandon for context feel alien and lonely. But, Brandon takes another drag on his cigarette, and Novak’s eyes open; he's watching his fingers and knuckles flex, watching the little scabs there wriggle and the redness become stressed, and he knows that if they’re for anyone to see it's him.

Brandon smiles, not worried. “Stop staring, Novak. I feel like I’m being ogled. You’re always ogling me.”

Novak digs his head into Brandon’s flesh more, closing his eyes. He doesn’t think he’s a girl in the way Brandon wishes he was. It fits him ill and awkward. When he wakes up still wasted in Brandon’s basement with Jenn flicking through some magazine beside him, she tells him he smells like Raab. When he stops feeling like he’s going to expel all of his internal organs into a stinking heap of bile on the carpet, he herds himself up against the headboard, back flat against it. Jenn adjusts, too, until her shoulder knocks against his when she turns a page. Novak hazards a look and sees a spread of young men in various, mostly somehow compromising positions, with the header ‘skaters off duty’ (maybe- his eyes still aren’t working quite right). Jenn points out a picture of Novak and Brandon together; He's holding his pipe and lighting it while Brandon takes a hit. Jenn smiles.

“It’s cute, bet the girls love it.”

He doesn’t think he’s a girl in the way Brandon wishes he was.

Brandon dreams fuzzy shapes of control and decisiveness, and Brandon dreams vague outlines of holding someone’s chin like they're made of fine porcelain, and Brandon dreams slippery ideas of blood and claws and delivering retribution to sinners. Novak knows this, because he’s there. Passive Novak. He wonders if there's time to ask whether his purpose is tied to Brandon or if Brandon’s purpose is tied to him.

The only answer he’s offered is his own name; Brandon Novak. 

I suppose that tells all that needs to be told, apart from that Novak’s not a girl in a way Brandon can utilize.