Little Things Ch. 03 of 04

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Inside. I sit with tangled limbs beneath the stream of water in our cramped and aging shower. My face turned up to meet it, letting the hot jets flow into my mouth, to scour at my skin, to clean away the traces of him that I can still feel on my body. The taste of him in my mouth. I don't hate it. I hate that I don't hate it. Impulsively grabbing a sliver of soap from the dish, I pop it into my mouth, chew...a triumphant grimace through clenched teeth as the foul bitterness saturates my tongue. Better. This is what I should remember, what I should associate with this...mistake, this indiscretion.

It's not his fault. I mean, he's an idiot, fixating on me instead of getting out and sowing his oats, but...it would have been nothing, just a cute little infatuation, if I hadn't involved myself. If I hadn't fucking encouraged it, telling him it was okay, setting up these stupid excuses to indulge it...god, I'm such a fucking moron. A loser. What, I'm going through a dry spell, so I figure I might as well use my brother to get off? I'm feeling ugly and unwanted, so I trade him blowjobs for compliments? It's pathetic. It's sick. This is my baby brother - little Davey, sweet and innocent, with his eager smile and shy affections. Even if he is grown up now. Even if he's got the body of an Adonis, even if his arms can hold you close and treasured, his hands can squeeze so firm and loving...

Shut up. Screaming inside my skull. God damn it. I have to get him out of my head, have to think about something else. Someone else. The notion grabs, anchors in my mind. Yeah. I must just be desperate. Wigging out on him because he's there, and because all I've gotten from anybody else in the last six months are insincere compliments and some half-hearted flirting. Maybe all I need - much as I hate to admit it - is just a good proper screwing to get my head on straight. A quick winter fling, letting off steam so I don't explode.

It's an idea. A plan, of sorts. Not that I can go for it right now - Oakley doesn't exactly have a nightlife. I'll have to leave it for tomorrow. For now...I reach up, shut off the water, and sit there dripping. For now, there's getting through the night. Burden enough.

Little spoken that evening. Little that seems as though it must be said. I avoid time alone with David as long as possible, hanging out with Dad, watching football on the television. Some championship or other, I think. Only some time after he retires - the hour late, the darkness outside whole and total - do I grudgingly make my way up the narrow staircase to my old bedroom, opening the door slowly to avoid a creak.

David's already there, of course. Accustomed to an earlier rest, he's curled up in his bunk, buried beneath the bundled comforter, facing the wall. Still awake - not sure how I can tell, really, but it comes somehow in his pose, a little stiffness not yet dissolved by the repose of sleep. A too-controlled regularity, perhaps, to the faint rasp of his breath. Or maybe it's just the etching of pain I can see still in the curve of his spine, how he's huddled away, taking up scarcely half of the little bunk despite his size. Room enough for me to slip in with him, if I wanted to. If I could.

I don't. Don't say anything, either, even though he must know that I'm here, know that I know he's awake, know that...I don't know. Doesn't matter. There's nothing to say, anyway. A great, colossal nothing that stands between us like the hand of the censor. I've screwed us up, too. That's what hurts the most, I think; that we may have lost irrevocably what defined us, the bond that we deeper than friendship, deeper than family, now strangled by the albatross of memory. Can I ever hug him again, knowing the feelings it would arouse? Can we ever speak as freely as we once did? Can I ever again let him rest his head in my lap, and just lie together with an affection that was so perfect, so pure...the fatigue that fills me as I climb into my bunk is not entirely of the body. In my veins I feel the malaise of regret, wondering if I haven't destroyed the thing that was of most value to me. This, along with the misery I still feel for the boy in the bunk below, is my companion as I gradually urge myself to sleep.