well ACTUALLY i feel like the only pairing we haven't seen is terrence x reader 👀
i need him w a girlfriend who loves him to death and supports his band even if he's a terrible singer (she'll never let him know she thinks he's tone deaf)!! she'd reel him in after wild nights. she would have to be the coolest person in the world to match his vibe, i fear. i feel like she'd either be way out of his league but he pulled her with his charms, or someone kind of nerdy that he manages to pull out of her shell.
diner dates where he gets cheesy and tries to share a milkshake with you. bike rides together on cool afternoons. going to listening booths at record stores together!!! he'd throw full blown house parties for any occasion (he just wants an excuse)!!! he's the type to see that shot in the breakfast club where the guy puts his hand in his girlfriend's back pocket and copy it immediately. he's soooo the first to apologize every time, even if he doesn't know what he did wrong. shotgunning kisses when you smoke weed together, yup. 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
i literally never send in asks but i'm terrence's #1 fan and had a lot to say ig 🙈
terrence wilson who sees a girl reading alone in a diner booth every tuesday and thursday and decides on week two that he’s going to sit across from you. doesn’t ask. just slides into the booth with his milkshake and his warm, enormous lacrosse-captain energy and drawls “whatcha reading” and you look up from your book like a deer that’s been shot at and he thinks oh no. oh no, she’s perfect.
terrence who keeps coming back. same booth. same days. you stop jumping when he appears. start leaving the seat across from you empty. start looking up when the bell rings. he doesn’t know you do this. you don’t know he notices.
terrence who asks about every book you read and listens (actually listens, chin in hand, eye contact so steady you have to look away) and then goes to the library and checks out the same book and reads it badly, but shows up the next tuesday with opinions that are objectively wrong but delivered with such passionate confidence you laugh behind your hand. your laughter is the best sound he’s ever heard. better than the crowd at a game. better than his band (which is terrible but he loves it). better than anything.
terrence who finds out you’ve never been to a house party and is personally offended. “you’ve never—okay. okay. I’m throwing one. this weekend. for you.” “you can’t throw a party for me.” “watch me.” he throws a party for you. it’s enormous. half the school is there. you stand in the corner of his living room holding a cup you haven’t drunk from with your back against the wall looking like you’d rather be literally anywhere else. he finds you in twelve seconds flat. doesn’t drag you into the crowd. sits down on the floor next to you, against the wall, hands you a different cup (juice, he noticed you don’t drink). and you sit there together on the floor of his own party while the music pounds and people dance and he talks to you about the book you lent him last week. his shoulder is warm against yours and you realise this party is for you. not the house full of people. this. the sitting. the shoulder. the boy who threw a party as an excuse to sit on the floor beside you.
terrence who does the breakfast club thing. immediately. the first time you’re officially together he puts his hand in your back pocket while you walk through the mall and you get flustered while he grins that enormous terrence grin and you say “people are looking” and he shoots back “good” and squeezes.
terrence who takes you to the record store and puts headphones on you in the listening booth and watches your face while the music plays. not listening himself, but watching you. the way your eyes close and head tilts. the way your mouth moves silently with lyrics you’re memorising in real time because your brain does that and he’s obsessed with it.
terrence who is a terrible singer but who serenades you in the parking lot after a game, sweaty and grass-stained, bellowing off-key with his lacrosse stick as a microphone. you cover your face with both hands and he pulls your hands away and kisses you, grinning and warm, happy that you came to watch him play.
terrence who shotguns kisses when you smoke together on bobby’s back porch. his mouth on yours, breathing the smoke between you, your eyes watering. his hand on the back of your neck, gentle, holding you close while the smoke curls between your lips. “you okay?” “I’m dying.” “you’re doing great.” you cough into his chest, pressing your forehead to his collarbone. he’s soo in love.
terrence who introduces you to bobby and brendan. bobby likes you immediately because bobby likes everyone. brendan likes you specifically because you’re the first person besides the companion who doesn’t try to fill his silences. you sit next to brendan at a cookout and read while everyone else talks and brendan looks at terrence over your head with an expression that says keep this one and terrence nods because he already knew.
terrence who learns your anxiety. who figures out (quickly, because terrence is smarter than people give him credit for, the class clown thing is a choice not a limitation) which situations trigger you and which don’t. crowds: bad. one-on-one: good. surprises: bad. plans: good. loud bars: bad. the diner booth on tuesday and thursday: the best. he restructures his entire social life around your comfort zone and does it so casually, so seamlessly, that you don’t realise he’s doing it until bobby points it out.
“he turned down mike’s beach party for you.”
“he said he didn’t feel like going.”
“terrence wilson has never not felt like going to anything in his goddamn life. the man showed up to a funeral he wasn’t invited to because he heard there’d be good food. he turned it down because you don’t like crowds.”
you confront him about it. he shrugs. “I like the diner better.” like choosing you over a beach full of people he likes and booze and fun isn’t a declaration of love so loud it should come with a megaphone.
terrence who doodles your name on his lacrosse gear. on his notebooks. on his hand. who writes “T + [your initial]” on the fogged-up window of bobby’s truck while bobby grumbles “dude, my truck” and terrence says “dude, my girl” and the argument is settled because terrence wilson has never lost a debate he cares about and he cares about this more than anything.
terrence who calls you his favourite nerd. who flexes after a lacrosse goal and grins at you in the stands. who picks you up and spins you in the parking lot and you’re laughing and hitting his shoulders and saying “put me down” and he doesn’t put you down. he has all that strength for a reason. who falls asleep on your lap while you read and your hand finds his head and your fingers start moving over his face and hair without looking up from the page. he makes a sound so content bobby throws a cushion at you both.
the popular boy and the quiet girl. the loudest person in every room choosing to sit on the floor beside the softest. because terrence looked at a girl reading alone in a diner booth, and saw someone whose silence had the same shape as his noise: a person trying to figure out where they fit. and he thought there. you fit there. next to me. on the floor. at the party I threw for you.
TW: betrayal by reader, wrench used for violence, blood, Yandere x rival, reader suffers
“Y/N, do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” Kara Mio shrieked in your face, rage evident in her face and voice.
“I was trying to save you!” You said.
“Fuck saving me! I was perfectly content with leaving that pellet alone.” She suddenly raised her wrench and hit you on the head with it to make you disoriented. “How’s that for understanding, dipshit?!”
You were crying now, begging and apologizing profusely, asking for another chance.
“SHUT THE HELL UP! YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE!” She screamed, “AND YOU FUCKING BLEW IT!”
“You’re fucking crazy!” You said. Immediately responding, Kara slams her boot on your chest, causing you to scream in pain.
“Don’t you dare push my patience. I’m already losing my patience because of you.” She demanded. “You want forgiveness? Fine.” She raised her wrench again, “Sit still, you little shit.”
With unimaginable force and speed, Kara’s wrench makes contact with your left shin, shattering the bone. You scream in pain, and beg her to stop.
“SHUT UP!” She yelled as she hit your broken shin again. “You hurt him, and you will pay.” She slammed her wrench on your other shin with even more force, the bone breaking on impact.
“Listen here, idiot.” She growled, “I don’t give two shits if any of you live or die. I just care about my beloved and that he’s loved in this hell I have turned into my MOTHERFUCKING HEAVEN! AND I WILL NOT LET YOU TAKE HIM FROM ME!”
Kara raised her wrench, slamming it on your head, craving your skull, and you bleed on impact. She slams her boot on your chest again, and you fight to get her off of you. Kara hits you in the head with her wrench over and over, screaming “KANEKI LOVES ME! I KNOW IT! YOU WILL NOT TAKE HIM FROM ME! YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD, YOU HEAR ME?! DEAD!!!” Blood splattered, hitting her face, hands, hair, glasses, and clothes. After the fortieth hit, you were dead. Good as dead. As she wants it.
The Ghoul (Kaneki) heard the commotion and smelled the blood, instinctively going to kill you. Not realizing until he got there that Kara already murdered you. Blood was dripping off of Kara’s wrench, and she looked up at him.
“Ah, Kaneki, my love. Dinner is served.” She said, gesturing toward your dead body. “I promised you that I will do ANYTHING for you.”
She went to the man of her dreams, unzipped his mask, showing his blood covered mouth, and she pressed her lips firmly against his, kissing him passionately.
“Don’t worry, my dear, this blood isn’t mine, and I will always love you.” She told him, caressing his face, and running a bloody hand through his hair.
Kat the carnal lust for Benny is killing me IT IS KILLING ME AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT 🫵 (thank you)
you're on the couch, a movie is playing. you stopped following the plot twenty minutes ago because brendan's mouth is on your neck.
it started as a kiss. just one. soft, dry, pressed fondly to the spot below your ear while you were mid-sentence about something that no longer exists in your skull. and then he didn't pull away. his lips stayed. opened. warm breath fanning across your skin, and his hand came up to cup the other side of your throat, fingers spread wide, tilting your head to give himself room.
he kisses you softly. small pecks trailing down the column of your throat, each one barely there, lips just brushing, his nose dragging along the skin between them. down to the curve where your neck meets your shoulder. back up. unhurried. another peck at the hinge of your jaw. another just behind your ear. another on the tendon that jumps when you swallow. mapping you with his mouth in these tiny, tender touches that shouldn't be doing what they're doing to you except they are, they really are, because each one sends a pulse of heat straight down through your stomach and between your legs.
you're getting wet from nothing but his lips on your throat and the warm steady weight of his hand holding you still.
then a long one. open-mouthed. brendan's tongue flat and hot dragging up from your collarbone to the soft spot under your ear in one slow lick and you gasp. your thighs press together and you feel yourself clench around nothing, a deep involuntary squeeze that makes your breath audibly stutter.
he hums against your skin. low, quiet, content. the vibration sinks into you and your hips shift against the cushion and he feels it because his hand tightens on your neck, just slightly, keeping you angled, keeping you still, and he presses another soft peck to your pulse. and another. small and sweet, then his mouth opens again and he licks into the hollow of your throat, tongue tracing the dip, tasting the salt, and you whimper.
you squirm, too. press your thighs together harder. you're clenching again, rhythmic now, involuntary, your body chasing something that isn't there, and the ache of it is maddening because he's barely touching you. just his mouth. just his hand on your throat, and you're falling apart.
he kisses back up. soft, soft, soft. little pecks along your jaw, featherlight, almost chaste, and then a deep one right on your pulse point, open-mouthed, wet, his lips sealing over it and sucking slow then hard, and you feel the blood rushing to the surface, the bruise forming in real time and your hand flies to his hair. fingers threading through, gripping, pulling him closer, and a moan slips out of you. soft. helpless. the kind of sound you make when your body has completely overridden your brain.
brendan doesn't stop. doesn't speed up, either. just keeps kissing your neck, alternating between those soft small pecks and the deep wet ones, his tongue working against your pulse, his hand warm on your throat, and you're moaning softly into the quiet room with your fingers in his sandy hair and your thighs clenched, your whole body trembling and he hasn't even kissed your mouth yet.
the movie plays to an empty room. neither of you will ever know how it ends.
Thinking about Benny having another guilt spiral while jerking off thinking about Companion 👀👀👀 like he feels AWFUL about it but it’s so good he can’t stop!!! (his guilt is so delicious to me)
the thing about brendan is that he’s disciplined about everything. his grades, his schedule, his social avoidance. brendan runs his life like he doesn’t trust himself with excess. because excess is messy and dangerous. brendan is contained and brendan is controlled and brendan does not indulge.
except in this.
he puts it off for weeks. sometimes longer. lets the pressure build and build behind his sternum, in his skull, in the persistent low ache between his thighs that he ignores through sheer force of will. he channels it into studying, into running, into organising his textbooks and cleaning the apartment, doing push-ups until his arms shake. anything.
anything that isn’t lying on his bed in the dark with his hand on himself and your name between his clenched teeth.
it never starts lewd, that’s the thing. it starts with your smile. the one you gave him yesterday in the kitchen when he said something dry and your whole face scrunched with delight. your laugh was so warm it hit him in the chest and stayed there, burrowing deep. it starts with your sigh. the way you say “benny” when you hug him, this little exhale against his shoulder that turns his name into something soft and lived-in. it starts with the way you tucked his hair behind his ear last Sunday without thinking, your fingers grazing the shell of it, and his entire body went hot and you didn’t even notice.
innocent things. safe things. the kind of memories a boy should be able to hold about his best friend without his blood redirecting south.
and then the other ones surface. the ones he can’t keep buried no matter how many push-ups he does. because he’s heard you. through the wall. through the thin drywall of the apartment he shares with bobby, he has heard you moan and gasp and say bobby’s name in a register that stripped the paint off his composure. he has a library of your sounds filed away in a part of his brain he’s never shown anyone, catalogued involuntarily across months of proximity and thin walls. the wobbly whimper. the sharp gasp that means bobby found the right angle. the low sustained whine that builds and breaks and builds again. the way you breathe “right there” in a voice that makes brendan’s fist clench in his pillow.
and the worst part, the part that turns guilt into gasoline: bobby has his face.
bobby’s jaw and bobby’s mouth and bobby’s hands on your body are brendan’s jaw and brendan’s mouth and brendan’s hands on your body and the substitution is so easy, so frictionless, that his mind makes it before his conscience can intervene. the man making you moan through the wall is wearing brendan’s face. the man between your thighs has brendan’s exact proportions. and the knowledge that you are, on a structural level, moaning for a body identical to his makes his brain dissolve.
he’s hard before the memory of your last moan has finished replaying. flushed from his collarbone to his ears. his cock straining against the cotton of his boxers, already leaking, a wet spot forming before he’s even touched himself. the pressure that he’s been suppressing for weeks has accumulated with interest, and his body is collecting the debt whether his conscience agrees to it or not.
he touches himself and the relief is so acute it’s almost painful. his hand wrapping around his own length and finding it slick with what’s already leaked, the precum coating his fingers, easing the first stroke. his hips twitch against the mattress. involuntary. his body chasing the friction before his brain has authorised the motion.
he imagines your smile first. your laugh. the scrunch of your nose. and then the images shift, darken, deepen. your arms around his neck. your wet mouth against his ear. your voice, the private one, the one bobby gets through the wall, saying, “brendan” in that breathy register. saying “i love you” against the sweat-damp skin of his throat while his cock slides into you for the first time, and the warmth of you engulfs him, and he finally, finally understands what every sound he heard through the drywall was made of.
his hand moves faster. the slick sounds filling his dark bedroom, his hips rocking upward into his own fist, and he’s leaking so much. dripping down his knuckles, pooling in the crease of his palm. he’s never been inside another body. doesn’t know what it’s like. other people unsettle him, overwhelm him, the proximity and the vulnerability of it too vast to process. but your body is the safe place. the only one. you are where brendan’s fear ends and want begins, and in the fantasy he presses into you and you wrap yourself around him, and the world shrinks to the space between your skin and his.
he imagines himself brave. not filthy, not the positions he would put you in, not all the mechanical, lewd details. the courage. imagining himself bold enough to hold your hips and thrust deep and make you mewl into his neck. deep strokes that pin you to the mattress, that make you cling to his shoulders and tuck your face into the damp curve of his throat and whisper a needy, “more, brendan, please” and in the fantasy he gives you more. every time. in the fantasy he is confident and certain and generous with his body, and he fucks you with a depth and a patience that he has never applied to anything except studying and you come apart beneath him.
he bites his own hand. teeth sinking into the fleshy base of his thumb to keep the sound in because bobby is in the next room. and the moan building in brendan’s chest would carry through the drywall and the irony of that, of bobby hearing brendan’s pleasure through the same walls that carried yours, is enough to make him laugh if he weren’t so close to crying.
he comes in thick pulsing surges that spill over his fist and stripe his stomach and drip down his wrist. his hips still twitching, still grinding upward into his slick grip, chasing the phantom of a body that isn’t there. his eyes burning, wet, the tears tracking from the corners into his hair. pleasure and shame and the ache of want so vast it can’t be addressed by a hand alone. his body spent and still rocking, still seeking, the ghost of your warmth around his softening cock a cruelty his imagination won’t release him from.
he lies in the dark. his hand still on himself. his stomach cooling where the evidence is pooling. his breathing ragged.
he hates himself so much he could choke on it.
he cleans up with a shirt from the floor, rolls onto his side. presses his face into the pillow and squeezes his eyes shut, willing the images to dissolve but they don’t dissolve. they never dissolve. they linger in the dark behind his eyelids, your face and your warmth and the fantasy of being brave enough to touch you. shame coats the inside of his chest with something bitter that will still be there in the morning when he sees you in the kitchen and smiles and says, “coffee?” as though he didn’t spend last night coming to the sound of your name.
what are some little ways in which brendan shows his love for companion?? is he more touchy, more soft spoken etc?
brendan's love language is attention.
he remembers everything you say. not the big things, those are easy. the small things. you mention once that your pen ran out during a lecture and the next time he sees you he gives you a fresh pack of pens without a word.
he reads books you recommend and shows up with notes. actual notes. marginalia. sticky tabs on pages he wants to discuss with you. brendan arrives with a thesis and a counterargument, and his ears go pink when you laugh at how seriously he took your offhand suggestion.
he makes you mixtapes. this is a big one. the one that gives him away if you look at it closely enough, except nobody looks because bobby makes mixtapes too and bobby's mixtapes are bright, obvious declarations of taste and feeling. brendan's mixtapes are something else entirely. brendan's mixtapes are conversations. each song chosen because a lyric reminded him of something you said, or a melody matched the cadence of your laugh, or the bridge hits at the three-minute mark with a shift that sounds like how your face changes when you go from thinking to laughing. he puts them in unlabeled cases. leaves them on your passenger seat or in your jacket pocket. never brings them up. and if you mention a specific song and say, “i loved track seven,” his ears go pink and he looks at his shoes and says, “oh yeah that one's decent” as though he didn't spend four hours choosing between two versions of that song because the acoustic version sounded more like the way you hum in the kitchen.
and the dancing. the dancing is the thing that belongs only to you two.
brendan doesn't dance. brendan has never danced. brendan stands at the edges of parties and holds his cup and watches and the idea of moving his body to music in front of other people makes his stomach clench. he's too aware of his own limbs. too conscious of being perceived. very certain that whatever his body does will be wrong and visible and wrong.
but you teach him. in the apartment. just the two of you. bobby's at work or terrence's or wherever bobby goes and it's a tuesday afternoon and one of his own mixtapes is in the stereo (the irony of this, of being taught to dance to a soundtrack he chose for you) and you say “dance with me” and he says “i don't” and you say “i'll show you” and take his hands.
his hands are sweating. his jaw is trembling. you put his hand on your waist and his fingers land rigid as wood and you step closer and he stops breathing.
“just move with me. don't think about it. feel where i'm going and follow.”
he follows. horrendously bad at first. stepping on your feet, overcorrecting, his body fighting the music instead of finding it. but brendan is a learner and you are patient. by the second song his grip on your waist has softened and his steps have found the beat. he's looking down at your feet and then looking up at your face and the expression he's wearing is the most unguarded thing you've ever seen on him. wonder. plain and simple. the wonder of a boy who spent his whole life standing at the edge of rooms discovering that the middle of the room is warm when you're in it.
it becomes a thing. your thing. tuesdays when the apartment is empty. the stereo and the living room rug and his hand on your waist and yours on his shoulder. he still can't dance in public, can't dance at parties, can't move his body when other eyes are on him. but for you, in the apartment, in the afternoon light with one of his mixtapes playing the songs he chose because they sounded like you, brendan dances. he gets better. he learns to lead, tentatively, his hand guiding your waist with a growing confidence that makes your breath catch because this is the edge. the same edge you see when he kisses you and the shyness falls away and something steadier and surer steps forward. brendan leading you across the living room rug is brendan without the walls and the walls come down only here. only tuesdays. only with you.
he's not touchy. brendan is the opposite of touchy. brendan maintains a careful distance calculated to the millimeter so he's always close enough to hand you something but never close enough to brush your arm by accident. but when he does touch you, because you initiate it, because you lean into him or take his arm or put your head on his shoulder, he goes completely still. absorbs it. lets your warmth sink into whatever part of him you're touching and holds his breath. doesn't move because moving might end the contact and the contact is the best thing that's happened to him today.
he walks you home and always positions himself on the street side of the sidewalk. he didn't learn this from anyone. it's instinct. putting his body between you and traffic.
he notices when you're cold before you do. his jacket appears on your shoulders mid-sentence. not offered. placed. every time. and when you look at him he's looking at something else entirely, as though the jacket migrated on its own.
he finishes your sentences but only in his head. you can see it sometimes: his lips moving fractionally a half-second before you complete a thought, mouthing the words you haven't said yet, predicting you from sheer accumulated data. he never finishes them out loud because that would mean admitting he knows you well enough to predict you.
he keeps a photo of you in his textbook. not framed, or displayed, tucked between pages 340 and 341 of his organic chemistry textbook where a pressed flower used to be. you're laughing in the photo. terrence took it. brendan asked for a copy and terrence gave it to him without asking why and brendan put it in the textbook and studies it with the same focus he gives the molecular structures on the surrounding pages.
the biggest tell is his voice. brendan is clipped and quiet with everyone else. efficient. words rationed. but with you his sentences get longer. softer. more eager. he uses more words than necessary. he explains things he could summarise. he circles back to topics you mentioned hours ago because he's been thinking about them and has developed additional thoughts and wants to share them and the wanting to share is so foreign to his usual self-containment that it surprises him every time.
Tags: Modern Punk Vampire x GN Reader | Domestic Comfort | Sleep-Deprived Reader | Forced Cuddles | Gentle Nagging | Warm Blankets & Quality Time Disguised as Concern.
AN If you saw the draft— no you didn't —
HEY it's been a bit, thought I'd finish this drabble I had and got carried away with. I see that request and I am on top of it.
.
..
The apartment is quiet save for the relentless tapping of keys.
The soft glow of your monitor paints the room in pale blue, swallowing the warmth of the lamp you'd forgotten to switch on hours ago. Empty mugs crowd the edge of your desk, a sweater hangs crooked over the back of your chair, and somewhere in the background the same playlist has looped enough times that you've stopped hearing it altogether.
Your shoulders have been aching for hours. That deep, stiff throb right between your shoulder blades that makes you roll them without thinking.
You told yourself you'd stretch after this paragraph.
Then after the next one.
Then after you just answer one more email.
Now the cursor just blinks at you, patient and accusing on the white screen. Your eyes are dry and gritty and starting to burn, and you rub at them with the heels of your palms until little stars burst behind your eyelids.
"...You've been blinking less." Carter's voice drifts lazily from the couch.
You don't turn around. "I blink."
"You'd know if you looked away from that screen." He's been lounging there for the better part of an hour, boots kicked onto the coffee table, lazily flipping through one of the botany books he'd borrowed from his own flower shop. Every few pages he'd glance toward you, watch your posture sink another inch, then go back to pretending he wasn't paying attention.
"You almost done?" he asks, voice low with light concern.
"Mhm," you hum without looking up. Your eyes are still glued to the screen.
Silence.
When you finally glance over, he's got one eyebrow raised, crossing his arms, watching you like he already knows the answer.
"...How long have you been 'almost done?'"
You don't answer. You just type a little louder, like that'll make it more convincing.
Carter closes his book at that, the sound just barely enough to break the stressful quiet through the room. "I asked a question, sweetheart."
"Just one more section," you mumble.
"You said that forty minutes ago."
"This one's real. I swear."
"So was the last one."
"Carter—" You sighed, fingers never leaving the keyboard. "I'm trying to be productive." You paused, swiveling your chair toward him, pinching the bridge of your nose. "I appreciate the concern but—"
"Eyebags." He suddenly interrupted, you finally blinked at him a few times in confusion.
"Excuse me?"
Carter pointed at his own eyes for a moment. "I can pull 'em off. I've got the whole mysterious undead thing going for me."
"You also haven't slept since, like... nineteen eighty-something." You half joke, giving him a small huff of a laugh.
"Exactly." He points at you now. "You, however, are trying to compete with a raccoon."
You gasp, offended. "I do not look like a raccoon."
"You've got the little tired eyes."
"I do not."
"You've squinted at that screen so hard for so long I'm pretty sure it's burned into your retinas."
You try to glare, unfortunately the glare loses most of its impact when it's interrupted by a yawn, Carter smirks. "Oh, that was embarrassing."
"I hate you," you mutter, slowly resting your eyes for just a moment before looking back at him.
"No, you don't." His voice is suddenly a bit softer, seeing through the plain lie, he knew exhaustion was nipping at you with every passing minute.
"...Not currently."
You turn back to your computer with an exaggerated huff, yanking your keyboard closer like you can barricade yourself in work. Your shoulders are tight, your spine is stiff, and you're determined to ignore the way he's just there. "I'm finishing this. For real."
Silence followed after, but it didn't feel like normal silence. It was a suspicious, weighted quiet, the kind that prickles at the back of your neck.
The apartment is too calm, no pages turning, no breathing. Do vampires breathe? —
"...Carter?"
Nothing.
Your fingers hover over the keys, you type another sentence just to fill the quiet, the clicking sounds almost too loud.
Another sentence, your pulse picks up for no reason.
Then suddenly —
Warm, strong arms slide beneath your knees and around your back in one smooth, practiced swoop. Your breath catches, the floor drops out from under you and your stomach swoops as you're lifted clean off the chair.
"CARTER!"
He lifted you as though you weigh absolutely nothing. Your hands instinctively latch onto his shoulders while your abandoned desk chair spins lazily behind you.
"Carter!" you squirmed and wriggled in his arms, your hands fisting in his shirt for balance. "Put me down!"
"No." The word is easy, absolute, like it's not even up for debate.
"I have work!"
"You have scoliosis."
"I don't have —"
"You will."
He starts walking toward the bedroom, his stride slow and steady despite you squirming like a cat in his arms.
You kick your feet uselessly, little thumps against his shins that make him huff a quiet laugh. "I wasn't done," you protest, weaker now.
"You are now."
"I have deadlines."
"They'll still exist tomorrow."
"You don't know that."
"They're deadlines, sweetheart. Not mayflies."
He nudges the bedroom door open with his shoulder, and the cool, quiet dark of the room washes over you both — dark except for the silver wash of moonlight spilling through the curtains, painting stripes across the bed, across his shoulders, across you.
He tosses you onto your bed with just enough force that your stomach flips and you land with a soft whump on the mattress, bouncing once as the blankets puff up around you.
You barely get a breath to protest before Carter climbs in after you, the mattress dipping deep under his weight.
Immediately, he flops sideways and pulls you into him like you were made to fit there. One heavy, warm arm wrapping tight around your waist, the other reaching over to yank the comforter up and over both of you in one messy tug.
"There," he says, satisfied.
You blink up at the ceiling, dazed and tangled in blankets and him. "...There?"
"There."
You twist to look at him. "...What are you doing?"
You could feel the texture of his scar as he settles his cheek against the top of your head with this big, put-upon, exaggerated sigh. "Sleeping."
"You don't sleep."
"I do tonight."
"...Convenient." You poke him hard in the side, he doesn't even flinch. "I have work."
"So tragic."
"Carter."
He's quiet for a beat, his arm tightens just a fraction. "I can't sleep without you." He says it so matter-of-factly, so casually, that you almost miss it under the hum of the outside world.
You look up, he's staring very determinedly at the ceiling, jaw set, ears a little pink. "...You're lying."
"No."
"You literally don't sleep."
"I said I can't."
"You physically don't."
"I've developed a condition."
"Oh?"
"Mhm." He nods gravely, all serious.
You settle against him despite your better judgment, feeling the steady weight of his arms tighten around you. For someone who insisted this was all about getting some sleep, he isn't making the slightest effort to close his eyes.
"You know," you murmur, "I still have to finish that."
"There." He repeats, his thumb tracing slow circles against your back, you could feel the tension move away with every push, and you're sure he could too. Yet Carter chose not to say anything snarky or teasing about it, not yet.
"I know."
Outside, the city hums softly beneath the night, distant traffic melting into the chirping of summer insects. Your heartbeat gradually slows where you're tucked against his chest, your breathing evening out despite every intention of getting back up.
Carter notices before you do. "Told you."
"I wasn't..." Another yawn steals the rest of your sentence.
He chuckles, low enough that you feel it more than hear it. "You work too hard."
"I just wanted to finish."
"I know." This time, there's no teasing in his voice. "You spend all day taking care of everything else," he murmurs, fingers combing absentmindedly through your hair. "Figure somebody oughta take care of you once in a while."
You don't answer immediately, and after a long moment, you mumble into his shirt, "You could've just asked."
"I did."
"...Did you?"
"'You almost done?'" He replied in a mocking tone, as if a child had said it.
"That doesn't count."
"It counted to me."
You can't help the small smile that came with that. "You are unbelievable."
"So I've been told." His chin rests lightly atop your head.
Long after your breathing grows slow and your grip on his shirt loosens, he remains awake in the darkness, watching the moon creep across the bedroom ceiling while one hand stays tucked protectively around your waist.
Every so often, he brushes his thumb against your side just to reassure himself you're still there.
When the laptop on the desk finally slips into sleep mode, its glow fading into black, Carter smiles to himself.
Imagine if the backrooms bleeds more into reality and BB becomes the monster under your bed. And Bobby has been pulling away and he didn't even touch you for a while so when one lonely night when you thought he was out somewhere but he wakes you up for cuddles you don't question the instinct that's screaming at you that something is off about him
you'd been asleep maybe an hour when the bed dips.
you don't open your eyes. you don't need to. the mattress shifts and settles behind you, then there's an arm sliding over your waist, palm flat on your stomach, pulling you back against a chest. and your whole body just goes soft with relief because it's been weeks. bobby's been pulling away. not cruel about it, not cold exactly, just distant in a way you couldn't name and didn't know how to ask about. you've missed him reaching for you like this.
so when his hand strokes up your side, slow, over your ribs and back down to your hip, you make a small, pleased sound and press back into him.
(there's something. right at the base of your skull. a low hum of wrong. you don't listen to it. you're half asleep, and you've missed him, and you're not going to interrogate the first good thing that's happened in a month.)
huh. he's cool. that's odd, isn't it? bobby runs hot. bobby is a furnace, bobby kicks the covers off in january, bobby has never once been cold in his life. and right now the skin of his forearm against your stomach is cool. not cold. just cool. like a room that's been closed up.
it's nice, actually. you're always overheating. you press closer.
he hums into the back of your neck. a low sound, wordless, vibrating against your vertebrae.
"go back to sleep."
quiet. so quiet. lips moving against your skin.
"you're so warm."
said like a discovery. said with something in it that isn't quite affection, or is, but the wrong flavour of it. like warmth is a fact about you he's just now learning and finding remarkable. his nose drags up the back of your neck into your hairline. inhales deeply.
"you're so warm."
again. exactly the same. exactly the same cadence, same fond... hunger.
his arm tightens. his hand finds yours in the dark and threads his fingers through. they're cool too and slightly too long but you're too far gone to do the math on that.
"I've missed you."
and god, you've missed this so much your chest aches with it. you turn your face into the pillow and squeeze his hand and feel him settle in behind you, chest to your back, knees behind your knees, mouth at your neck.
the thing at the base of your skull is screaming now.
you don't listen.
you only press closer.
and somewhere on the other side of the apartment, a key turns in the front door. it's bobby (warm, loud, real, calling your name from the hallway because he brought back food) and your eyes fly open.
pairing: brendan bennett franklin x f!reader, background bobby franklin x f!reader
wc: 9.9k+
summary: brendan bennett franklin falls in love with his twin brother's girlfriend at sixteen and never quite stops.
contents/warnings: twins au, unrequited love (?), pining, jealousy between siblings, parental infidelity/divorce (referenced), sexual fantasies, masturbation, guilt && self-loathing, social isolation/alienation, touch aversion/sensory issues (undiagnosed neurodivergence), feelings of brokenness around sexuality && attraction, heterosexuality-adjacent distress, emotional anguish, one instance of homophobic slur (from a bully), heavy angst.
notes: i've created many characters in my time. brendan/bb might genuinely be amongst my absolute favourites i've ever written. i've very purposefully kept this highly unedited to try and capture the raw nature of his feelings. i've also been writing this nonstop all day, so any mistakes are my own. might have also cried but that's neither here nor there. enjoy.
✶ better bobby series.
private property of brendan bennett franklin.
do not read. i mean it, bobby.
1985–1990.
september 3, 1985
new girl transferred today. junior, like us. you walked into homeroom twelve minutes late with your bag strap sliding off your shoulder and sat down in the empty desk by the window and i forgot what mr. hendricks was saying. i still don't remember. it might have been about the civil war. it might have been about literally anything. you glanced out of the window, sunlight golden on you, and opened your notebook. i missed twenty minutes of american history.
this is probably not important enough to write down.
i'm not sure why i did.
september 8, 1985
i have three friends. bobby, terrence, and the library.
i'm not popular. i'm the thing that happens to popular when you drain all the charisma out of it and replace it with advanced calculus and the inability to make eye contact. bobby got the face AND the personality. i got the face and a brain that won't stop noticing details nobody asked for and a body that flinches when people touch it without warning.
identical twins. completely different experiences of being alive.
bobby walks into a room and the room lights up around him. i walk into a room and can't figure out where to stand. people talk and i miss the cues. the pauses where i'm supposed to laugh, the shifts in tone that signal a joke, the invisible dance of human interaction that everyone else learned naturally, and i'm still studying from the outside like a foreign language i can read but can't speak.
most people forget i'm in the room. teachers mix us up. girls look through me to find him. i've been called "bobby's brother" so many times it might as well be printed on my birth certificate.
i envy him sometimes. the effortlessness of it. the way connection comes to him like breathing. for me every conversation is a translation exercise: hear the words, decode the meaning, calculate the appropriate response, deliver it, check the face for signs i got it wrong. and it's so exhausting.
the library doesn't require any of it. the library doesn't care if i'm awkward.
september 11, 1985
her name is—
actually, i don't think i should write your name in this. just in case bobby finds it despite the very clear warning on the cover. i know you. that's enough.
bobby talked to you first because bobby talks to everyone first. you were sitting alone at lunch and he just walked over and sat down and said something that made you laugh (this startled, bright, involuntary sound) and by the time i got to the table you were already part of the group.
terrence likes you. bobby likes you. everybody likes you. you're warm in a way i don't have a word for. not loud-warm. just warm.
you said hi to me and i said hi back and that was the entire interaction.
i've been replaying it for three hours.
september 17, 1985
you sat next to me in calculus today. not because you had to. the desk was open and you chose it from three others, and sat down and smiled at me. you said, "hey, benny" like we've known each other for years.
benny.
nobody calls me benny.
september 29, 1985
you asked me to help you with calc after school. we sat at the kitchen table for an hour and a half and you leaned into my shoulder while i walked you through derivatives. your hair smelled like vanilla and you looked at me like i'd performed a miracle when you finally got it right.
nobody looks at me like that. bobby gets those looks. terrence gets those looks. i get the polite nod. the strained, patient smile. the "oh, you're bobby's brother" face that i've learned to expect.
you looked at me like i was a person who knew things you wanted to know. like the knowing mattered. like i was someone and not just adjacent to my twin.
i am in so much trouble.
october 14, 1985
you call me brendan. full name. sometimes benny when you're teasing. never BB, which is what everyone else calls me. never "the other twin." never "bobby's brother."
brendan.
i could live off the way you say it for a very long time.
october 22, 1985
kyle weber called me a freak in the hallway today. not the first time. i was carrying a stack of AP textbooks and he shoulder-checked me and they went everywhere and he laughed and said, "watch it, freak." i was on my knees picking up books and trying to disappear into the linoleum.
and then you appeared out of nowhere. i don't know where you came from. one second i was alone on the floor and the next you were crouching beside me, stacking my books, and then you stood up and turned to kyle. you said something so quiet i couldn't hear it and his face went white. paper white. he looked at you and then at me and then he stalked away and he hasn't spoken to me since.
i asked you what you said to him. you handed me my books and shrugged. "i told him if he touches you again i'll make sure the whole school knows he cried during the sex ed video in freshman year."
"...did he?"
"oh, absolutely. terrence told me. the power of information, benny."
and you linked your arm through mine and walked me to class.
people touch me and i flinch. always have. bobby's arm around my shoulder makes my skin crawl. terrence's back-slaps make me clench my jaw. casual contact (a stranger's elbow on the bus, a classmate brushing past in the hallway) registers in my body as a low-grade alarm.
i don't know why. i've never known why. my skin has always been too loud for other people's hands.
you linked your arm through mine and i didn't flinch. i didn't tense. i didn't have to override the instinct because the instinct wasn't there. your touch landed on my skin and my whole nervous system went quiet. warm. calm. like coming inside after hours in the cold and standing next to a fire and feeling the tightness in your muscles release one strand at a time.
you're protective of me. you took one look at the quiet twin who can't make eye contact and decided he was yours to defend and nobody asked you to and you did it anyway.
i have never felt warm the way i feel warm when you do this. like the warmth isn't just temperature but a person. like i've been standing outside in the cold my whole life and you opened the door to a warm house.
november 2, 1985
you found me in the library during a free period. everyone else was at the pep rally. i was reading and you sat down across from me and said "i don't really do pep rallies" and opened your own book and we sat there in silence for an hour.
i've never been quiet with another person and had it feel like a gift before.
silence with other people feels like a failure. like i'm supposed to be filling the space and i can't find the right thing to fill it with. every pause is a question i'm getting wrong. with you the silence felt like a room we were sharing on purpose.
the noise in my head (the constant humming calculation of how to be a person in front of other people) it stops when you're near. just stops. like a machine powering down. and underneath the silence there's this calm i don't have a name for. this sense that i can stop performing and just exist and you won't find the existing strange or off-putting.
when you left you squeezed my shoulder and said, "this was nice, benny."
i put my forehead on the table and stayed there for a while.
november 9, 1985
a thing i've never told anyone:
i hate being touched, and i am desperate to be touched. both at the same time. all the time.
other people's hands on me feel like static. wrong pressure, wrong temperature. i pull away from hugs. i stiffen under friendly arms. mom stopped trying to hold my hand when i was eleven because i kept pulling free without meaning to and the hurt on her face was worse than the contact.
but when you touch me (your hand on my arm, your head on my shoulder, your fingers fixing my collar) my body does the opposite thing. it leans. toward you. into you. like i've been cold for sixteen years and you're the first source of heat and the relief of it is so overwhelming i could cry.
i want more. always more. every touch you give me i hoard and replay and it's never enough. i want your hand in my hair. your arms around my waist. your forehead against mine. i want to be held by you until the static stops and it only stops with you and i don't understand why.
i don't think i need to understand why. i just need more.
november 15, 1985
i can see it happening. you and bobby. the way you orbit each other is starting to change shape.
the group hangs out and i watch your eyes find him across the room. i watch his find you. there's a gravity forming between you two that everyone can feel and nobody's named yet but they will. terrence already calls you bobby's girl behind your back and you're not, not yet, but the "yet" is so, so heavy.
you light up when he walks in. i know that brightness because i feel it when you walk in and i have to look away before anyone sees.
you're going to end up with bobby. everyone in this school can see the shape of it forming. bobby and the new girl. the twin everybody notices and the girl everybody likes.
i'm being dramatic. it's only been two months. i barely know you.
except i do. i know you hate the crusts on sandwiches but eat them anyway because wasting food makes you feel guilty. i know you hum when you're concentrating and you don't realise you're doing it and the song is never one i recognise. i know you bite your bottom lip when you're nervous and the left side harder than the right.
i know you. i've been paying attention since september.
i need to stop.
december 19, 1985
christmas party at terrence's. you wore a red sweater too big for you and had a stupid reindeer pin on your collar. bobby was doing his thing. arm around you, charming and bright, making the room laugh. i watched you lean into him. two bodies learning how to fit together.
you found me hiding in the kitchen and bumped your hip against mine with a crooked smile. "you're hiding."
"i'm making a drink."
"you're hiding. come back out. i miss you."
you said i miss you and i'd been in the other room for ten minutes.
you dragged me back by my sleeve and sat me down next to you and kept your hand on my knee for the rest of the night. i don't think you noticed you were doing it.
i noticed nothing else.
january 9, 1986
i've started dreading the question. the one bobby and terrence throw around like a football. "so when are you gonna get a girlfriend, bennett?" bobby grins when he says it. means it lovingly. doesn't know the answer is a slow knife.
terrence is worse. "bro there are girls literally lining up for the bobby franklin face and you're just... sitting there. reading. with that face. it's criminal!"
i laugh it off. they laugh. everyone laughs. good old brendan. hopeless with girls. still a virgin. probably going to be a virgin forever because he can't string two sentences together in front of a pretty girl.
except that's not it. that's not it at all.
something is wrong with me.
i can't find anyone attractive. i've tried. jenny park is objectively beautiful and when she talked to me at lunch i felt nothing. matt from chem lab is objectively beautiful and when he sat next to me i felt nothing. the magazine under bobby's bed that he thinks i don't know about—nothing.
my body doesn't respond to people. it doesn't want anyone. i look at classmates the way i look at furniture. vague acknowledgment that they exist. no heat. no pull. no interest.
except you.
you walk into a room and every nerve ending in my body lights up. you touch my arm and my skin hums for an hour. you lean into my shoulder and i stop breathing. you, exclusively. only you. like my body was made with a single setting and the setting is you and there's no alternative use.
i don't know what this means. i don't know if this is normal.
i'm really scared it isn't.
march 8, 1986
bobby asked you out today.
he told me first. came into my room and sat on my bed and said "i'm gonna ask her" and his voice was trying to hide the fact he was scared. going casual, going loose, like if he holds the words lightly enough they won't be able to hurt him. and i knew what he was really asking. because dad is still fresh. the cheating. the years of lies, mom finding out, the divorce that split the house in half.
bobby was fourteen when he decided love was the thing that wrecks you. swore he'd never open that door. never let anyone close enough to do what dad did to mom.
and now he wants to try. for you.
he deserves this. after everything dad did, after watching his ability to trust get gutted by a man who was supposed to teach him how to love, bobby deserves someone who makes him brave enough to try.
i told him to go for it. meant it.
he came back an hour later. grinning so wide his face couldn't hold it. you said yes.
of course you said yes. you've been saying yes to bobby since the day you sat down at our lunch table.
i hugged him. told him congratulations. meant it.
went to my room. closed the door. sat on the floor with my back against the bed and stared at the wall until my eyes ached.
march 22, 1986
movies. bobby and you, me and terrence. your first group outing as a couple.
bobby had his arm around you. you had your head on his shoulder. you shared popcorn. your leg was pressed against mine the whole film. probably because the seats were small. i didn't move.
i should have moved.
april 5, 1986
you had a fight with your mom. showed up at our house at 10 pm, crying. bobby wasn't home.
you stood on the porch and i opened the door and your face crumpled and you blurted out, "is it ok if i just sit with you for a while?"
i made you tea. you talked and i listened. after an hour you ran out of words and leaned sideways and put your head on my shoulder and fell asleep.
you slept for two hours. your hand curled in the fabric of my shirt. your breathing slow and deep. i sat perfectly still. did not adjust my position even when my arm went completely numb. i would have let my arm fall off before disturbing you.
bobby came home at midnight. "thanks for taking care of my girl, man."
my girl.
the dent where your head rested stayed warm for a long time after you left.
april 12, 1986
short entry.
you fixed the collar of my shirt in the hallway today. just reached up and folded it down. your knuckles brushing my neck. "there. can't have you walking around looking rumpled, benny."
i can still feel your knuckles. four hours later. a stripe of contact burned into the side of my throat.
june 18, 1986
pool party at terrence's. you were in a bikini.
i'm not going to describe it. i'm going to acknowledge that you were in a bikini and that i spent four hours in a california swimming pool and was never warm. because all my blood had relocated to the problem of not looking at you and the secondary problem growing in my swim trunks from the failure of the first problem.
you asked me to put sunscreen on your back. i did it. my hands were steady. nobody watching could have told that the inside of my head was a five-alarm fire.
"thanks, benny." and you went back to the pool and bobby threw you in. you screamed and laughed and i excused myself to the bathroom and put my head between my knees.
august 30, 1986
senior year. last year of being in the same building as you every day.
bobby and you are solid. you're good together. he opens up around you in ways he doesn't with anyone else. you soften him. you make his edges less defensive. when he's with you, bobby is almost the person he'd be if dad hadn't shattered his faith that the people who love you will stay.
i want to be selfless about this. the good brother. the one who steps aside and means it.
i'm not that person.
i love you. i love you and it's getting worse. it was supposed to fade. crushes fade. this isn't fading. this is setting foundations, pouring concrete into the ground floor of my chest and building upward.
september 14, 1986
bobby made a joke today at dinner. mom was asking about girls at school and bobby grinned and elbowed me and said, "bennett here is saving himself. for what, we're not sure. science, probably."
everyone laughed. mom. bobby. even terrence, who was over for dinner.
i laughed too. good old brendan. the virgin. the nerd. probably going to lose it to a textbook.
i went upstairs and sat on my bed and thought: there is something seriously wrong with me. because i'm seventeen and i've never kissed anyone and i don't WANT to kiss anyone. i look at every other person in my school and my body is silent. flat. dead. no heat, no curiosity, no pull. and then you walk into a room and i can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and my mouth goes dry and i want to put my hands on you so badly my joints ache with it.
it's only you. it has only ever been you. and the exclusivity of it terrifies me because what if this is broken? what if i'm wired wrong? what if the reason i can't want anyone else is because something in me got stuck, got fixed in place the day you sat down in homeroom, and it will never unstick?
what if i'm going to want you, only you, for the rest of my life?
what if i already know the answer?
october 31, 1986
halloween. you dressed as an alien. green face paint, antennae that kept falling sideways. you asked me what i was and i said "a serial killer, they look like everyone else" and you laughed so hard you doubled over and grabbed my arm.
"brendan that's the funniest thing you've ever said. you have to say that to everyone who asks."
so i did, and people laughed. because you told me to deliver the line and so i did and the fact that people laughed at my joke felt good but the fact that you gave me the joke felt like being handed a lit candle in a dark room.
you fixed my hair at one point. reached up and pushed a strand off my forehead. casual. meaningless to you. your fingertips grazed my temple and i can still feel it hours later. a warm line where your hand was.
november 8, 1986
some senior from the baseball team cornered me after school. not kyle, a new one. shoved me into the lockers and called me a faggot because apparently reading in public is a sexual orientation now.
i didn't tell anyone. didn't need to.
you found out anyway. i don't know how. terrence, probably.
you didn't say anything to me about it, but two days later the senior apologised. to my face. in the hallway. with stiff, terrified demeanour. an angel of wrath had informed him of the consequences of future behaviour.
i asked you what you did.
"nothing." you were doing your homework, not looking at me. "he just had a change of heart."
"a change of heart."
"people grow, benny."
you're terrifying when you want to be, and i'm so in love with you i could die.
november 21, 1986
a guy at terrence's party wouldn't leave you alone. i don't know his name. some friend of a friend from out of town. he kept touching your arm after you pulled away. kept leaning into your space. you smiled politely and shifted sideways, and he followed.
bobby was across the room with a group of guys smoking something he shouldn't be and didn't see it. and you did that thing you do. that swallowing thing. that "it's fine, i can handle it" thing, and i watched your shoulders tighten, your smile going strained, and my vision narrowed.
i don't remember crossing the room. i don't remember what i said.
i remember his face. the way his expression shifted when he looked at me. i'm used to people looking through me, looking past me. this was different. this was a person looking at me and seeing a locked door they did not want to open.
i don't know what i said. that should scare me. it doesn't.
you found me in the kitchen after. leaned against the counter next to me. didn't ask what happened. just knocked your shoulder against mine and said "my hero" in that teasing, soft voice and i felt the anger drain out of me so fast it left me lightheaded.
but it's still in there. i felt it. a cold, patient, completely calm willingness to do damage if anyone puts their hands on you again. it doesn't feel like rage. rage is hot and loud. that's bobby's territory.
this is different. this is a door i didn't know i had, and behind it is a version of me that would do very quiet, very permanent things to protect you.
i don't know what to do with that information. so i'm putting it here.
december 1, 1986
i hate this
why can't i just be normal
everyone around me is dating. kissing. losing their virginity in backseats and bedrooms and talking about it at lunch like it's a rite of passage i keep failing to reach.
and i sit there and i listen and i feel nothing. no envy for the act itself. only this hollow awareness that i'm watching a movie everyone else is in and i'm still in the audience.
bobby asked me last week if i'd kissed anyone yet. gentle about it, for once. no joke. just "hey man, you doing okay? you know it's fine if you haven't, right?" and the kindness of it made it worse because he was being a good brother and i couldn't tell him the truth.
the truth is that there is one person i want to kiss until my lips go raw, and she's dating you and every other mouth on earth repulses me and i don't know why i'm built this way. i can't talk to anyone about it because the answer ("i'm not attracted to anyone except my twin brother's girlfriend") sounds like a confession that would get me committed.
what is wrong with me? genuinely. is this a disorder? is there a name for wanting one person so completely that everyone else might as well be furniture?
is this what love is or is this what obsession is and how do you tell the difference when you're eighteen and you've never been touched before
december 24, 1986
christmas eve dinner. you gave me a book. wrapped in paper you decorated yourself. little silver stars drawn by hand all over the blue.
"i saw it and thought of you."
six words. i saw it and thought of you. six words now living inside my chest cavity.
it was a first edition of a book i mentioned wanting three months ago. in passing. once. you remembered.
i held on to the wrapping paper after. folded the stars inside a textbook. i'll keep them.
february 1, 1987
i woke up at 3 am from a dream about you and i can't go back to sleep.
i'm not going to write down what happened. i'm not going to describe the way you looked or the sounds you made or what i was doing to you when you
no.
cold shower. stood under the water until my teeth chattered. didn't help. i can still feel the ghost of your body against mine. my brain invented the weight of you, the heat, the way you would arch into me if i
STOP.
this is just biology. i'm eighteen. this is normal.
it's not normal. nothing about how i want you is normal. the depth of it, the weight. i didn't dream about a body. i dreamed about YOUR body. your curves. the pitch of your laugh gone breathless. the way you'd say my name, not bobby's, mine, brendan, with your hands in my hair.
i want you so badly i can't breathe and i have no right to and the wanting is going to eat me alive.
february 14, 1987
valentine's day. bobby gave you a necklace. you nearly cried and kissed him and terrence heckled you both.
i watched from the kitchen doorway.
i didn't get you anything. getting you a valentine would be insane.
march 15, 1987
you told me today that you think i'm going to change the world.
we were sitting on the back porch. just us. you were eating an apple and reading over my harvard application essay and you put it down and looked at me and said seriously, "brendan, this is incredible. you're going to get in and then you're going to change the world and i'm going to tell everyone i knew you when you do."
and i thought: you know me now. you're the only person who knows me now.
may 14, 1987
bonfire at the beach. bobby and terrence went to get more wood. you were sitting next to me. close. your knee touching mine. the fire was low and orange and the light was painting your skin gold, catching the shadows in the dip of your collarbone, the curve of your neck.
and all i could think was: your throat. the soft patch below your ear where your jaw meets your neck. if i leaned over, if i put my mouth there. just my lips. how you would taste. salt and warmth and the lingering smoke from the fire. how your pulse would feel against my tongue. how your breath would catch.
i sat next to you with the dying fire and the crashing waves and bobby's laugh carrying from down the beach and i thought about putting my mouth on your throat for forty-five straight minutes.
you leaned your head on my shoulder. "i love nights like this."
"yeah," i said.
the fire burned to embers. i could still feel your pulse in my imagination. beating against a mouth i will never put there.
may 28, 1987
you held my hand today. just for a second. we were crossing a parking lot and a car came too fast around the corner and you grabbed my hand and pulled me back and then you didn't let go for the whole walk to the truck. just your fingers laced through mine. swinging between us. you were talking about finals and i was listening and your hand was in mine and it was a tuesday and i would sell my soul to feel this on a wednesday.
june 1, 1987
i want to touch you so badly my hands hurt
not ONLY sexually. i want to brush the hair off your face. i want to hold your hand in the car. i want to fall asleep with your head on my chest. i want the casual touches. the ones bobby gets without asking for them, the hand on the arm, the head on the shoulder, the absent fingers tracing patterns on skin while watching tv.
i want to be allowed to touch you the way he's allowed. not stolen moments dressed up as friendship. real ones. with intent. with honesty.
god i'm so fucking pathetic
june 9, 1987
graduation. we did it. senior year, done.
you found me in the crowd after. pushed through bobby and terrence and your parents and my mom and everyone else and grabbed me in a hug so tight my cap fell off. "WE DID IT BENNY" screamed directly into my ear with enough force to cause permanent hearing damage.
i hugged you tight and you laughed and your gown was billowing in the wind, and your hair was in my face. i could feel your ribs expanding with laughter against my arms and for ten seconds the world was only this. you in my arms. laughing.
bobby got the kiss. terrence got the secret handshake. i got the scream and the spin and i would trade everything i own for a lifetime supply of being the person you run to first.
july 4, 1987
sparklers at the beach. you were sitting next to me in the sand. our shoulders touching. the sky exploding in gold and red above us.
you turned to me, sparkler in hand, gold light on your face. "are you happy, benny?"
"yeah. i'm happy."
and right then i was. the wanting was still there, bedrock-deep, permanent. but for ten minutes it was quiet enough to hear the waves over it.
you put your head on my shoulder. i put my cheek on your hair.
i am never going to love anyone else. i know this the way i know chemical formulas. fact. fixed. tested and proven across every variable.
you are the only constant in my universe.
august 7, 1987
acceptance letter came. harvard. full ride.
you were the second person i showed. bobby first, because brotherhood, but you were right behind him. you took the letter and read it, your hands were shaking and you looked up at me and your eyes were full. you threw your arms around my neck and squeezed so hard i couldn't breathe.
"i knew it," you whispered wetly into my collar. "i knew it. i told you. i told you, benny."
and underneath the pride and the joy, so clear i could taste it... sadness. that's really far away. that's the other side of the country. and you didn't say it but your arms tightened and you held on longer than you needed to and i could feel the grief of it in your grip.
bobby grinned and hugged me. terrence lifted me off the ground cheering loudly. mom cried.
you held my hand under the table at dinner that night. three straight hours. nobody saw. your thumb tracing circles on my palm while everyone talked about the bright, impossible future.
i'm going to remember your thumb on my palm long after i've forgotten the letter.
august 28, 1987
last night before harvard.
you came over. just you. bobby was working late and terrence had a gig down at santa cruz. you knocked on my door and held up a wrapped package and decalred, "before you go."
it was a mixtape, but not just a mixtape. the case was hand-decorated with tiny drawings. inside jokes, all of them. a stick figure at a desk labeled "nerd at work." a tiny calculus equation with a heart instead of an equals sign. a drawing of me with ridiculous oversized glasses. on the spine, in your handwriting: "for benny. so you don't forget us."
i turned it over. on the back you'd written every track title and next to each one a note.
track 3 — this is the one i was humming during the calc final that made you glare at me.
track 7 — for driving at night with the windows down.
track 12 — listen to this one when you miss home. and by home i mean me.
and by home i mean me.
i stared at it for so long you got nervous. "is it stupid? it's stupid. you probably have a walkman with actual good music and this is—"
"it's perfect."
you looked at me. i looked at you. the room was very quiet and very small. you were very close and i could have kissed you. the distance between your mouth and mine was six inches and i could have closed it and everything would have changed.
i didn't. because i couldn't do that to bobby. i couldn't.
"i'm really going to miss you, benny."
"i'll call every week."
"you better."
i listened to the tape in bed that night with headphones on. track 12. over and over and over. your voice in the liner notes. and by home i mean me.
i held the case against my chest and closed my eyes, pretending your hand was there instead.
september 2, 1987
you hugged me at the truck. held on for a long time. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt.
"every week, brendan. if you forget about me—"
"i won't forget about you."
too fast, too serious, too much truth packed into a sentence that was supposed to be light. you pulled back and looked at me and your eyes were searching my face for something.
i don't know if you found it.
you kissed my cheek. close enough that if i'd turned my head half an inch your lips would have been on mine.
i didn't turn my head.
i got in the truck. bobby drove. i watched you in the side mirror, standing in the driveway with your arms wrapped around yourself, getting smaller and smaller.
september 18, 1987
i thought distance would help.
three thousand miles between your body and mine. no more shoulder-touches. no more vanilla smell. no more knee-against-knee in dark movie theaters. the theory was sound: remove the stimulus, reduce the response. basic conditioning.
the theory is wrong.
i miss you like an organ. like something was cut out of me at the airport and i'm walking around with the wound still open. i reach for the phone every hour. i play the mixtape until the ribbon starts to wear. i sit in lectures surrounded by brilliant, interesting people and i feel nothing. flat. grey.
here's what's strange though. i'm getting better at the other thing. the people thing.
harvard is full of people like me. the ones who read too much and talk too little and know the periodic table better than their classmates' names. for the first time in my life "quiet and intense" isn't the wrong setting. it's the default. i can hold a conversation in a study group without running the translation the whole time. i can sit in a dining hall and not feel like i'm performing personhood for an audience that isn't buying it.
i'm finding myself here, in small ways. figuring out which parts of my strangeness are flaws and which are just features nobody had a use for in santa clara.
but you remain the eye of the storm. the one quiet place where everything inside me unwinds.
harvard is teaching me how to exist around other people. you taught me that existing around another person could feel like rest instead of labour. and no amount of social growth, no amount of learning to make small talk in a dining hall, will ever replicate what you give me just by being near.
the silence that isn't empty. the touch that doesn't sting. the calm.
i am homesick for a person, not a place.
october 3, 1987
a girl in my organic chemistry study group asked me out. claire. smart. funny. objectively attractive.
i said yes because i'm supposed to say yes. because normal people say yes. because bobby would say yes and terrence would say yes, and this is what nineteen-year-olds do.
we got coffee. she was kind. she laughed at my poor jokes. she touched my hand across the table.
i felt nothing. absolutely nothing. like pressing my palm against a wall and waiting for warmth that never comes.
she leaned in to kiss me at the end and i let her and her mouth was on mine and all i could think was: wrong. wrong lips. wrong pressure. wrong taste. wrong person. WRONG.
i pulled away and said i was sorry and walked home. stood in the shower and scrubbed my mouth raw, and felt sick with how much i wanted it to have been you.
october 19, 1987
you called tonight. bobby was at work and you were bored and you called. we talked for two hours. my roommate left after twenty minutes because apparently i was "smiling weird."
you told me about your week. clark's being terrible. terrence's band. the stray cat on your porch. you told me everything and i held the phone with my eyes closed and you were there. in my ear. telling me about a cat like it was the most important news in the world.
"i miss you, benny." soft. sleepy.
"i miss you too."
the safest true thing i've ever said. because i miss you is allowed. i miss you lives in the acceptable zone. i miss you is what a friend says.
i miss you the way a lung misses air. i miss you so much i have rearranged my entire week around the possibility that you might call again.
but "i miss you too" is what i said.
november 12, 1987
there's a guy in my anatomy class. david. he's been friendly. eating lunch together, studying. today he put his hand on my knee under the table and looked at me with a question in his eyes.
nothing. nothing nothing nothing. i am broken or i am built wrong or i am simply, irrevocably, yours in a way that excludes every other human being on this planet regardless of what they look like or what's between their legs.
i told him i was flattered. i meant it. i am flattered that anyone wants someone like me.
i just can't want them back. the machinery only runs for you. i've tested it now. both genders. kind people, attractive people, people who deserved better than the hollow version of me sitting across from them. and every single time the same flat nothing. the same grey wall.
then you call and the wall dissolves and every colour rushes back in, and i think: oh. there i am. i was here the whole time. i just only exist when you're nearby.
distance was supposed to fix this. i was supposed to get better.
i'm not getting better. i'm getting worse. three thousand miles and i am worse.
november 26, 1987
thanksgiving. came home. you saw me in the doorway and your face lit up. you ran at me and jumped and i caught you. your arms locked around my neck, your face buried in my shoulder. you were laughing and squeezing me so tight i couldn't breathe.
i could have held you like that until the sun burned itself out.
bobby was right behind me. you let go of me and hugged him and kissed him and you stood in the hallway with your foreheads together and i carried my bag upstairs.
you run at me. you kiss him. the running is enthusiastic and warm and genuine. the kissing is intimate and private and his.
i want the kiss. i'd burn for the kiss.
and i hate myself for wanting it because bobby is my brother and he's happy and he deserves this after dad.
he deserves this more than me.
december 3, 1987
i think loving you is going to kill me.
i wish i could take my heart out and set it aside. put it in a jar on a shelf. come back for it when it's safe. but it's never going to be safe, is it? there's no version of my life where loving you is safe. there's only the version where i carry it and i'm going to carry it till my heart stops.
february 14, 1988
valentine's day. i mailed you a book. astronomy. because you said once, in october, that you wished you knew more about constellations. the note said: "saw this, thought you'd like it — B." casual. friendly.
you called to thank me. "brendan bennett franklin, you're the sweetest person alive."
i sat on my dorm room floor with the phone cord wrapped around my finger and thought: i am not sweet. i am a liar. i bought you a valentine and called it casual and you believed me because you don't see me. you look right at me with those warm eyes and you see a friend. a brother. a good person.
you don't see the thing underneath that wants to kiss you until neither of us can stand.
april 16, 1988
a girl at a party. i don't remember her name. i was a little drunk and she was pretty and i thought: just try. just try to be normal. to want someone attainable. someone who isn't your brother's girlfriend.
we went to her room. she kissed me and took her shirt off and i looked at her and felt... revulsion. not at her. at the wrongness of it. at my own body's flat refusal to participate in anything that wasn't you. i made an excuse. left. walked home in the cold.
the distance was supposed to make this better. the new people, the new context. a fresh start without you in every room.
but you're in every room. you're in the phone on my desk and the mixtape in my walkman and the book on my shelf with the silver stars on the wrapping paper that i kept like a goddamn shrine. you're in the way i scan every crowd for your face. you're in the hollow feeling when i don't find it.
what is wrong with me? what is fundamentally, structurally wrong with me that i can't want anyone who isn't you?
i sat on my bathroom floor and put my head in my hands and asked myself if this is what the rest of my life looks like. a series of empty rooms with the wrong people in them. a body that only responds to one person. a lock with one key and the key belongs to my brother's girlfriend.
yes. that's what it looks like. i know the answer already. i've always known.
april 30, 1988
i made a list today. of reasons to stop.
she's bobby's girlfriend.
bobby is my twin.
bobby loves her.
she loves bobby.
i am betraying him with every thought i have about her.
i am betraying HER with every thought i have about her because she trusts me and i'm lying to her.
i am twenty years old and i have never had a normal sexual or romantic interaction with another human being because my body won't cooperate with anyone who isn't her.
this is not love. this is fixation. i'm sick. i'm sick in the head.
if she knew what i think about when i hear her voice on the phone she would never speak to me again.
i am a bad person.
i stared at the list for a long time. each point is factually accurate. logically sound. irrefutable.
you called an hour later and called out happily, "benny, tell me about your day" and the list caught fire and burned to ash before you finished the sentence.
i am a bad person who loves a good person and the loving makes me worse.
may 19, 1988
my roommate has a girlfriend. they have sex in our room while i'm at the library and they think i don't know. i know because the sheets are different when i come back and the room smells like sweat and perfume and he's got that dazed, satisfied grin.
i looked at him last night (happy, spent, normal) and thought: why can't i be like that? why can't i want someone who wants me back? someone available. someone whose last name isn't franklin.
tried again in my head. conjured up every attractive person i've met at harvard. ran through them one by one, tried to imagine kissing them, touching them. like flipping through a catalogue of locked doors.
and then i thought about your hands in my hair and my whole body responded so violently i had to excuse myself to the bathroom.
why am i like this
why am i like this why am i like this why am i like this
three thousand miles. eighteen months of distance. dozens of kind, attractive, available people and my body is a locked room with your name on the door and no other key fits and i have tried every key and they all feel like violations.
i'm so tired of trying and failing and trying and failing and coming back to the same truth every single time:
it's you. it was always you. it will only ever be you.
and i can never, ever have you.
june 7, 1988
summer. home again.
bobby and you have been together two years and the cracks are starting to show. you don't talk about it. that's your flaw, the swallowing. the folding up of hurt into small squares and tucking them away.
i see it though. the way you wait for bobby to call and he doesn't. the way you make plans and he forgets. the way you press your lips together for one second when you're disappointed before the smile goes back on. nobody else catches it.
i catch it every time.
i hate him for it. my twin. who i love more than anyone except you. i hate him for having the thing i would dismantle myself to have and treating it like it'll always be there.
you won't always be there. patience has a floor and one day you'll hit it.
i can't say this to him. he'll hear what it really is. jealousy dressed up as concern.
july 22, 1988
you came over while bobby was at work. back porch. popsicles. you were telling me about a movie and your lips were stained red and a drop ran down your wrist and you licked it off and i—
i need to stop writing these down
"you're staring, benny."
"you have popsicle on your chin."
you wiped it off, laughing.
you don't know. you genuinely don't know what your mouth does to me, what your hands do to me, what the sound of my name in your voice does to me.
if you knew, you'd stop coming over. you'd stop touching my arm and leaning into me and putting your head on my shoulder. and losing those things would end me faster than never having had them.
good old brendan. safe brendan. bobby's quiet brother who helps with calculus and always has a book.
the mask stays on.
august 3, 1988
you fell asleep on my bed today while i was studying. lying on your stomach with one arm hanging off the edge and your face turned toward me and your mouth open and you were drooling on my pillow.
drooling. on my pillow.
the love i feel for you hit me so hard i couldn't move for half an hour.
august 15, 1988
please let me stop loving her
please. whoever is listening. let me stop.
let me wake up one morning and feel nothing when she says my name. let the hugs feel like hugs instead of slow immolation. let me sit next to her without mapping every centimetre between our bodies. let me be the friend she thinks i am instead of the liar i know i am.
i don't want this anymore. it hurts too much. please, it hurts. three years and it's only getting deeper and i can't
i can't switch it off. i don't know how. i don't think there is a how.
i think this is just what i am now. a boy who loves a girl who loves his brother.
september 6, 1988
back at harvard. unpacking. found one of your hair ties tangled in my clean laundry. you must have left it when you were over last.
i put it on my wrist. wore it all day. took it off before bed and put it on the nightstand and looked at it and thought: this is the closest thing i have to wearing a ring from you.
a hair tie. on a nightstand. in a dorm room in harvard.
september 22, 1988
i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be normal i want to be happy please i just want to be happy
bad day.
october 10, 1988
you called at 1 am. crying. fighting with bobby. your voice thick and wet.
"i don't know what to do, benny. i love him so much and he won't let me in."
and i sat on my dorm room bed with the phone pressed to my ear until it ached and told you:
"you're the strongest person i know."
and you said: "why can't he just say it, brendan? why can't he just say he loves me?"
i love you. i love you. i love you. three words bobby can't get past his teeth and i can't get past my conscience.
"he loves you. he's just scared."
"i know."
"give him time."
"i always give him time."
and i wanted to say: stop giving him time. stop waiting. he's wasting you. he's burning daylight with a girl made of sunlight and he doesn't even see it.
i said: "you deserve someone who says it."
long pause. your breathing slowing.
"thanks, benny. you always know what to say."
i don't know what to say. i know what not to say. there's a vast, dark, freezing difference.
march 30, 1989
spring break. you picked me up from the airport. standing at arrivals in a sundress holding a sign that said NERD in huge letters.
you dropped the sign and ran and i caught you and your laugh was in my ear and the sundress was thin and your body was warm against mine.
you drove us home. windows down. radio on. singing badly. your hand squeezing my arm at a red light.
i would burn harvard to the ground for this. for your hand on my arm, shaking me because you were so happy to see me. for the wind in your hair. for your voice saying my name like it's your favourite word.
i would give up everything. the degree. the future. the carefully constructed life three thousand miles away.
i would give up all of it for one day where you're mine.
one day. and then i'd give you back. i'd carry the memory for the rest of my life and it would be enough.
it would have to be.
HE FUCKING FORGOT, 1989
bobby forgot your birthday.
you didn't tell me. you wouldn't. i found out because terrence called me, and said "dude, bobby got too high and forgot" and his voice was tight with the anger he rarely shows.
i called you from the payphone in the hallway and said happy birthday and you said "thanks, benny" in that voice. that bright, fine, everything's-fine voice that i can see through like glass. and i heard the crack underneath it and the love hit me and the rage hit me in the same breath.
i called bobby after, and i don't raise my voice. i have raised my voice maybe five times in my life. but i said his name in a way that made him go quiet immediately on the other end and i said "you forgot her birthday" and the silence that followed was long and guilty.
"shit," he said. "shit, benny, i—"
"call her. right now. and if you ever do this again—"
i didn't finish the sentence. didn't need to. bobby heard what was underneath it. heard the edge i keep so carefully hidden, the cold thing that lives behind the shyness, and for a second i think he heard the OTHER thing, too.
the reason the anger was so hot, the reason it came so fast, the reason his twin brother was calling from three thousand miles away trembling with fury over a forgotten birthday that wasn't his to remember.
he called you. sent flowers the next day, took you out for dinner. you forgave him because you always forgive him.
i sat in the phone booth for ten minutes after with my head against the glass. my hands were shaking. not from anger. from how close i'd come to saying too much. from the size of the feeling pressing against my ribs. from the knowledge that i would burn my relationship with my brother to the ground to protect you from pain and the fact that this doesn't make me a good person.
it makes me a dangerous one.
may 2, 1989
your voice on the phone tonight, laughing about a terrible customer at clark's, imitating his voice, making me laugh until my stomach hurt.
i pressed the phone so hard against my ear it left a red mark and i thought: i don't want to die without having kissed you. i don't care about anything else. the degree. the career. the future. i just don't want to die without knowing what your mouth tastes like.
that's all.
june 14, 1989
you were lying on a blanket in the back yard. reading. the sun was on your legs and your feet were bare and you was chewing on a pen cap. your hair was pulled up and the back of your neck was exposed.
i sat on the porch steps and watched the back of your neck for twenty minutes.
twenty minutes. the back of your neck.
i am beyond help.
july 4, 1989
short one.
sparklers again. your shoulder against mine. same beach. same sand. same sky.
different year. same ache. same shape. same boy sitting in the dark loving the same girl who doesn't know.
happy fourth of july.
september 20, 1989
second year of pre-med. my hands shake from caffeine. i forgot to eat yesterday.
you called. i picked up on the first ring. i will always pick up on the first ring.
"brendan bennett franklin. eat something, drink water, and go to bed."
"i have a paper—"
"go. to. bed. if you sound this wrecked tomorrow i'm driving down myself."
i ate a sandwich. drank water. went to bed. fell asleep holding the phone.
you mailed me a care package last month. my favourite snacks. a note that said: "don't die. i need you."
i folded the note and put it in my wallet. i'll probably be buried with it.
november 23, 1989
thanksgiving. you saw me in the kitchen and your face did the light-up. the full-body brightening.
my hair is longer, brushing my ears and curling at the nape. you reached up and pushed it back from my forehead. your fingers dragged across my scalp and my whole body went rigid.
"look at you. all grown up and scholarly." you tugged a strand behind my ear. "very handsome, benny."
i said "thanks" to the refrigerator. my ears were burning.
bobby came in. you kissed him. i excused myself.
i sat on my bed and pressed my hand to my scalp where your fingers had been and breathed in through my nose for a count of four, and out through my mouth for a count of four for ten minutes because my heart rate would not come down.
handsome. you said handsome. you touched my hair and called me handsome.
next three lifetimes. i'm carrying this.
january 6, 1990
i had a dream about you. i'm going to write it down because i have to put it somewhere that doesn't judge me.
you were in my dorm room. sitting on my bed. and you said "benny, come here" and i went. you put your hands on my face and kissed me and i could feel it. the pressure of your mouth. the warmth of your breath. your lips parting and your tongue finding mine and the small sound you made when i pulled you closer.
and then you were under me. your legs wrapped around my waist. i was inside you. and you were saying my name. not bobby's, mine, brendan. over and over while your nails dragged down my back and your head fell back and i could feel you around me, tight and warm and perfect. every time you said brendan i went deeper and you arched into me.
i woke up so hard it hurt. sheets ruined.
i lay in the dark and put my hand around myself and thought about you beneath me and came in under a minute with a pained groan, and felt like the worst person alive.
you trust me completely. and i'm lying in the dark getting off to dreams about being inside you.
i'm sick
i'm not sick. i'm in love. but from here they feel the same.
march 2, 1990
your voice on the phone last night, sleepy and warm: "night, benny. love you."
casual. friendly. the way you say it to terrence. the way you say it to your friends.
i hung up and pressed the phone against my chest and stared at the ceiling.
love you. you say it so easily. like the words are light. like they cost nothing.
for me they cost everything.
march 15, 1990
you visited for my birthday. flew out alone. bobby couldn't make it.
you were standing outside my dorm with a bakery box and a toothy grin. "happy birthday, benny! it's lopsided because TSA manhandled it."
three days. you slept in my roommate's bed. wore my harvard sweater because you forgot to pack layers, too used to cali heat. it was too big on you. sleeves past your fingertips. collar slipping off one shoulder. bare legs. padding around my room.
i very nearly put my fist through a wall.
we stayed up until 4 am. lying in the dark on separate beds. your voice floating across the room. you told me things you haven't told bobby. things about your childhood. your fears. you talk to me differently than you talk to him. with bobby you're warm but with me you're open. like i'm the one place you can put things down.
"you're my favourite person." half asleep. murmured. "don't tell bobby."
i won't tell bobby. i won't tell anyone. i will take that sentence and compress it into a diamond and keep it in my chest forever.
on the last morning you hugged me at the airport. held on. your face in my neck and your hands gripping the back of my shirt and i breathed you in. vanilla and that warm unnamed you scent. stored it. another moment that belongs to me in all the wrong ways.
"come home soon."
i'm always coming home. you're there. there is no other reason needed.
april 27, 1990
you called me crying last night. bobby again. another fight. another door closed in your face.
and i sat on my bed and held the phone and listened and said the right things and the kind things and the things a good friend says. but underneath every word was this screaming, roaring, monstrous want to say: LEAVE HIM. LEAVE HIM AND LOVE ME. I WOULD NEVER DO THIS TO YOU. I WOULD NEVER FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY. I WOULD NEVER MAKE YOU CRY. I WOULD SAY I LOVE YOU EVERY SINGLE MORNING BEFORE YOU FINISHED OPENING YOUR EYES.
i said: "he's an idiot but he'll come around. give him time."
i'm such a coward
i am such a fucking coward
may 15, 1990
two entries in quick succession because i need to put this somewhere before it eats through my chest.
i came home for the weekend. you were at the house. bobby was at work. you were in the kitchen making lunch and you turned and saw me and made that sound (that little happy gasp) and threw yourself at me.
and i held you. my face in your hair. your body against mine. and you pulled back and looked at me with those eyes, and put your hand on my cheek, and said worriedly, "you look tired, benny. are they working you too hard?"
and your hand was on my face. your palm on my cheek. your thumb brushing the skin under my eye. and you were close enough to kiss. and i could feel my pulse in my throat and my fingertips and the backs of my knees and i was drowning in the scent of you, vanilla and warmth and clean laundry. my hands were on your waist and yours was on my face and the kitchen was empty and quiet, and i could have leaned forward two inches and—
bobby's truck pulled into the driveway.
you dropped your hand. smiled. went to greet him.
two inches. i was two inches from ruining everything and saving everything, and i don't know which it would have been and i'll never know. i stood in the empty kitchen and pressed my hand to the cheek you touched and breathed through my teeth until my heart rate dropped.
june 3, 1990
i love my brother. i love bobby since we were born seven minutes apart and he came out screaming and i came out quiet. i love him for his warmth. his courage. the way he tried to shield me from dad even when we were too small to name what was happening. how he always stood up for me, always tried to understand me even when he never could.
but when it comes to you.
when it comes to you i hate him too.
i hate that he has what i want. i hate that he doesn't always value it. i hate that he gets to hold your hand and kiss you and fall asleep with your head on his chest but doesn't understand what a miracle that is because he's never stood on the other side of it watching.
i hate myself for hating him. he didn't steal you. he asked and you said yes and i never opened my mouth. the silence was my choice. every single day i choose it and every day it gets heavier.
i love him. i hate him. i love you. i can't have you.
four facts. a box with no door.
july 14, 1990
i've gotten better at being a person.
three years of harvard and i can navigate a party without wanting to leave within five minutes. i can make friends. i can read a room without running the translation in real time. the machinery is smoother now. the performance takes less effort.
but it's still a performance. everywhere except with you.
you're the only place where i don't have to translate. the only person whose presence makes the noise in my head go quiet instead of louder. everyone else, even the people i've grown to love at harvard, requires a version of me. you just require me. the real one. the strange one. the one who needs silence and can't handle being touched by anyone except you ,and notices too many details, and feels everything at the wrong volume.
you've never once asked me to be different. you've never once made me feel like the way i'm wired is a problem to be solved. you just sit with me in the quiet and let me be strange and call me benny. hold my hand and everything inside me goes still.
the eye of the storm. every time. the one calm place in a world that's always too loud.
july 28, 1990
if i could have one day.
one day where you wake up next to me. where you reach for me in the dark. where you say brendan in the voice i've only heard in dreams. where i can put my hands on your face and say it out loud, in daylight, without shame, without the weight of brotherhood crushing the words before they leave my mouth.
one day where the "i miss you benny" becomes "i love you brendan." where the hugs don't end because you're pulling away to go back to him. where i can press my mouth to the skin on your throat i've imagined ten thousand times. where your hands are in my hair because you want them there.
just one day.
and then i'd give you back, and carry it forever.
i am twenty years old. pre-med at harvard. full ride. a life that looks like everything a person could want.
and every night i fall asleep missing a girl who sleeps in my brother's bed. and every morning the missing is the same size. the same depth. the same fixed point that everything else orbits.
i don't know how to stop.
i don't think i'm supposed to.
[undated, late 1990]
i love you
i love you
i'm in love with you
i've been in love with you since september 3rd, 1985, homeroom, twelve minutes late, window seat
i love you and i can't say it and the not saying is killing me, it is actually, physically, killing me
i love you more than he does. i love you better. i would never make you cry, i would never forget, i would never close a door in your face
no. that's not fair. he loves you. he does. he just doesn't know how. and i do know how and i can't and that's
i love you
i love you and i'm so tired of not saying it
i love you and i've never kissed anyone who wasn't wrong
i love you and you call me benny and it's the closest i'll ever get to hearing my name in your mouth the way i need to hear it
i love you and i tried to stop and i can't stop
i love you and i don't want anyone else and i've tried and i will never want anyone else
i love you and you held my hand under the table and i almost told you then
i love you and you slept on my shoulder and i memorised your breathing
i love you and you made me a mixtape and wrote "and by home i mean me" and i have listened to track 12 four hundred times
i love you and i am so afraid you'll find this notebook
i love you and i am so afraid you won't
i love you and bobby is my brother and i love him and i hate him and i love you and i can't
i love you i love you i love you i love you
i should write it down. the real way. once. clearly. not crossed out.
for every time i didn't say it but should have. for every hug where i held on too long and you didn't notice. for every time you fell asleep on my shoulder and i sat perfectly still and memorised the pattern of your breathing. for the mixtape and the silver stars and the way you said and by home i mean me.
for every phone call at 1 am when your voice was the only warm thing in my whole life. for every time you ran at me in an airport. for every time you touched my hair and called me handsome, and i said thanks to the refrigerator because looking at you while you said it would have ended me. for the parking lot where you held my hand. for the two inches in the kitchen. for the dream where you said my name. for the popsicle on your wrist. for your head on my shoulder at every bonfire. for your palm on my cheek and your thumb under my eye and the truck pulling into the driveway.
for the hair tie on my nightstand. for the book with the silver stars i still keep pressed flat inside a textbook. for the three thousand miles that were supposed to fix me and only proved that i am unfixable.
i love you.
i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you.
i love you and i should have said it in the kitchen when your hand was on my face. i love you and i should have said it in my dorm room when you were wearing my sweater and the collar was slipping off your shoulder. i love you and i should have said it at graduation when you screamed in my ear. i love you and i should have said it at the bonfire when you asked if i was happy.
i love you and i have never once been brave enough to say it and writing it down is the closest i will ever come and even now, even in a notebook nobody will read, the words feel too large for the page.
they feel too large for my hands. they feel too large for my chest which has been holding them for five years and is so full the seams are splitting and i am so tired. i am so tired of carrying this. i am so tired of being good and quiet and safe while the love sits behind my teeth and rots there because i will not let it out.
i love you. there. for every time i didn't.
i lo
[the entry ends here. the last two letters trail off the line, the pen stroke dragging sideways across the page before stopping. the ink on this page and the one before it is warped and buckled. the paper has dried stiff and rippled in places, the way paper does when it gets wet and dries again. the distortion is heaviest around the final lines, where the ink has bled and feathered outward, blurring the words at their edges. it is not water damage.]
