No One Ever Wrote of the Brothers of Christ
Title: No One Ever Wrote of the Brothers of Christ.
Chapter: Chapter One: La Petite Mort.
Pairing: Brian Haner/Matt Sanders, Brian Haner/Jimmy Sullivan, various.
Rating: PG-15 - NC-17.
Word Count: 2894.
Summary: Brian is a perfectly generic young man. When he was young this was his dream - to live in New York with his best friend, taking photographs of the rich and the beautiful and the drugged. But in reality their apartment is falling into pieces, Jimmy's becoming all the more distant and he's scraping by with a career shooting crime scenes and redneck weddings - both of which are in a worryingly plentiful supply. But life is grey and dull, that's the reality of it, one he acknowledges happily; just like every other figure in the community of six billion known as monotonous humanity.

Only then bizarre events start occurring. Big and small, painful and pleasant, and their numbers are becoming all the more numerous. Brian's a cynic, he doesn't believe in this stuff. But when the man with the mirrored glasses appears he knows that the universe is falling off kilter.

The green eyed man making him remember things that never actually happened isn't helping much either.
Disclaimer: I don't own it because it doesn't exist. Which is deep. No, really.
Dedication: For my bride, tastemyrainbow :*

0: Prologue



Dirty and grimy before and white-blind delicious during, luscious and wanton and a hot shock of satisfying bliss.

A bizarre event to New York city is like an orgasm. They happen regularly, they're over fast, and if one happens to you in public people look at you strangely.

They take a long time to build up. A long, slow, agonising time, and throughout most of it you won't even realise how it's going to end. It's unsure, unstable, and the whole process can be broken by one flutter in the wrong direction.

Orgasms and bizarre events are delicate, fragile things. Things to be both abused and cherished in equal measure despite the consequences always leaving you in the same state: dazed, dizzy, worn, sore and so hungry for the next one you know you would claw someone's face off to get to it.

They're addictive and they're natural; the most pure, organic drug. They happen of their own accord and sometimes they happen by accident. One sneeze or one cough and one could occur; just one slip in your bicycle seat in the wrong (or right) direction.

It's in human nature to seek them out as they're essential to both survival and sanity in as much as they peel away reality. Like closing your eyes in a murky concert venue and seeing nothing but black, shrouded in nothing but noise. You look back to the world and it's brighter than you remember; you almost don't expect anyone else to be there. They are sanity because they are not. They are stress relief because they are stress - but of a different kind entirely.

They're the moment of fantasy in a world where fantasy is the produce of people who belong in white jackets, and yet while we would never admit it, we will always embrace them. You don't talk about them in public, not in polite circles, as they'll always be a taboo, but like all good taboos underground they're all the rage.

They happen all the same. Under the dark, sticky sheets of brothels, beneath imaginary stars on a patch of land where bombs have hit and trees now grow. In budgerigar cages and dentist offices; in the steaming bathrooms of gyms and on street corners. In rush hour, in the morning, with a thousand people passing a minute. So hot they melt the snow.

A long time ago they were considered magical, and now they're seen for what they are: Perfectly normal, often man-made, and utterly essential to the fabric of everything.

The only thing is orgasms and odd occurrences are both plentiful and forgetful, yet some never experience them at all. Some never even get that opportunity. But others? Others are whores.

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Jimmy pulls the door shut with a click and a snap of more locks than he can count. Long, spidery fingers slide bolt by bolt, instinctive and mechanical. It's a process he has performed a million times in the past and will perform a million times more.

The shop is dimmed as shutters are rolled down, a checkerboard of shadows cast across the floor in sharp blocks as he tugs down the rusted grating. It's oily and black and parts of it fall off in his hands like shards of sharp smelling newspaper print. The heating was cut off not five minutes ago but the entire floor space is already frozen; he's bare foot and his toes curl against tile that numbs his soles.

His arms stretch out to fumble with the switches for the overhead lights. They flicker once, twice, before an electric frazzle vibrates through the room with a whiplash crack and he's swallowed into a cold, dark mouth of noisy silence. Not even the outside glows. Not in this part of town. The lamp lights are smashed out and taxis don't creep down this bleak alley of a road.

Long legs wind around obstacle after obstacle as his eyes adjust blearily. He blinks a few times into the murk against outlines that sear, moving with an agility he doesn't seem to possess in the daylight. Like a duck returned to water, all awkward actions fading into lithe slides. He curls around the counter and stumbles up stairs that creak in pain beneath every light step. He walks on his toes, as though he is trying to be quiet for somebody. Maybe he's trying to be quiet for the shop; sending it to sleep with a brief smile over his shoulder.

In the black he can't see the leering carcasses, but he knows they're there, and that's comforting.

The upstairs is much like the downstairs, only the scattered objects of horrific miscellany don't have price tags here. A dusty thirsted sofa slouches like a lumpy, grumpy beast in the corner, one half of it covered by take-away cartons and plates, the other half smothered by the books that had made a leap of faith from the overflowing shelf cramped in beside it. The rugs are mismatched and gritty beneath his toes, wallpaper that may have once been a distinguishable colour peeling away in mouldy sheets.

His shirt, riddled with cigarette holes, is peeled from his body and thrown over a nicotine-stained lamp, the black vest beneath dropped to cracked tile as he moves from his living room to his bathroom. No door separates the two, not even a curtain, a hum of a song he hasn't heard in years vibrating from his throat and echoing through the grimy space. He doesn't clean - he doesn't have time - and even this shower at the end of a long, wearing day will be short.

Water splutters from the shower head before coughing into full force, sending a rain of mineral wet over his arm, splattering pants that pool around his ankles a moment later. He steps out of them, kicks them aside, underwear too, and moves under the icy spray. His spine trembles visibly beneath fair skin, cold Goosebumps bursting forth, offering texture to the inked lines of beasts and symbols that mean something only to him.

He's slim and wiry, stretched out, his hair hanging in front of his eyes. Blonde roots peek vaguely from his scalp, but not for long - he maintains two things in his life; his hair colour and his tax balance. Everything else is chaos.

Fingers reach out blindly to fumble around a mess of half-empty bottles. He lands on the one he wants and pulls it close, spilling gel into a cupped palm and dumping a dollop of it onto his head. Blue eyes, hazed and dreamy and so void of the things of the world flutter shut, foam drifting down his temples as he massages soap bubbles through the lengths, blue colorant merging into the white as it's rinsed down the drain between his feet.

Callused fingertips rub soap across the sharp angles of his form, over the fine dusting of downy-fair hair across his abdomen, skimming the flutter of muscle beneath. The water warms along with his skin as he tips his head back and allows the breath to be knocked out of him by the suffocating force of the flow.

The plumbing creaks and shivers with a nasty shriek as he twists the faucet into silence, dribbling drops striking the porcelain in a monotonous tick-tock. He doesn't bother pulling a towel around his waist. Tears of water slide in rivulets, pooling in the dip of his collar bone and spidering down the V of his hips. Wet fingers slide against the light switch and black falls in a blanket behind him.

Without his glasses his vision is fuzzy at the edges, but he's used to this, used to this space, to padding around the corner with cool, dusty air caressing his skin and fingers trailing to plaster as a dark haired figure reclines across his sofa. A stranger counting the cracks on his ceiling and kicking dust clouds into the air.

The sleeping store awakens with a roar that shatters the night.

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The thing about an orgasm for a virgin is no matter how good, it's never what is quite expected. It's either too much or not enough, or a different sort of feeling from the one imagined all together. So when it strikes it's very much like a mispronounced word; truthful, real, the dictionary definition, entirely kosher, but.. just not understood. Or believed. Some are left tottering away wondering if that was really it or if there's something else they're missing. And because they really do lack description of any kind, and because every time for every person is different, there's really no word to rely upon.

Which could lead a cynic to believe they just don't exist in the first place; The greatest hoax on Earth.

The experience happened, sure.

It just wasn't an orgasm.

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Brian Elwin Haner Junior is a pure bred cynic. It's in his blood and his bones and sewn in to his very genes. He comes from a long line of cynics too. Disbelieving men. Men of conspiracy theories and pessimism. From the womb he was questioning this new fangled thing called 'life' and he's been going steady with it for a good twenty-six years since.

At least, he thinks he has. You never really know, do you?

So as he drags himself up the steps to his apartment block the only worry on his mind is that he wasted a coffee he spent perfectly good, perfectly scarce money on.

The bricks that build the walls towering high into the black-blue clouds above are burnt and ash flakes onto his clothing as his coat catches. He keeps close to the wall because to the other side, where a metal railing should be, there's just empty space he senses but can't see in the dark.

He's not worried about that either. Because he's not a worrier, and not a fool, and not another gullible yuppie gurgling over internet forums about myths and jokes and giggles that have rational explanation.

He isn't an idiot.

There was just an air vent there. A hot vent that blew up the excess from the subway. And instead of pulling an iconic Monroe he decided to tear his clothing off.

Brian realises that if he lives in a world where that passes off as a rational explanation then there are deeper issues elsewhere - but brushes it away with a shiver and sniffle.

Because irony is his bosom friend he thinks he may be picking up a cold. Which makes the walk all the more agonising, feet he had been working on all day reluctant to drag up the crumbling concrete block steps. Hesitant and creaking as though all his cartilage has dried out and he's left with nothing but cracking bones to manoeuvre through the dark.

A crash whips through the night and startles him out of his grim mourning. His neck snaps a glance over his shoulder into inky nothingness, a streetlamp blinking a poor highlight over oozing trash and a flick of a black tail disappearing into the shadows. He smiles, half-hearted and weary and mocking only himself before he turns his leaden body to continue his trek.

Only to stumble into a body that smells of vanilla and spice.

One hand reaches out into nothing and the other grabs purchase of the wall before he tumbles down into the gutter, pale hands grasping his biceps to keep him upright and jade eyes threatening to knock him back down all over again. But he's just a guy. A little shorter than him, a little thicker around the middle. A guy.

He must have been coming down. That's all. Just another tenant walking down the stairs as he's going up. His head chants the explanation as his heart skitters, a low cuss reverberating from his throat and fingers skimming through his hair. "Sorry," he mutters, backing up to allow the other past.

The hands pull him back and he can smell something like cinnamon on warm breath. He can barely make out fair features within the dark depths of a hoodie.

"Don't go up there."

The voice is surprisingly high, and a lisp lingers at the ends of it as though his tongue is too thick for his mouth. And as pink and sweet and full as that mouth is it's still not enough to distract him from the fact that this dude is obviously crazy, and seriously fucking annoying, and his arms were beginning to bruise. But the space is too tight and he can't shake him off, and a step in the wrong direction spells a void for the both of them. He goes to shoulder past but the fingers dig in tighter. He's wearing two layers but he can still feel nails.

"I mean it. He's not ready for you yet."

Brian grits his jaw.

"Back off, buddy." It's a scowl and a mutter below his breath before he yanks the other's arms away, edging around him, so close his shoulder blades have to scrape the wall, hot footing it up the last few steps with his messenger bag bumping to his hip.

No one comes after him, but cinnamon still clings to his sinuses and the lights still flicker.

He twists the key anxiously and pushes open the door with a creak of hinges. In the dim warmth of his own home things feel less askew and the scent begins to fade, replaced by the musk of the incense that is always burning and the vague underlying tang of something rotting.

Brian wishes he could believe it was just some food stuck under a bookshelf somewhere, but knows that here the possibilities always have a sharper edge than that.

"You wouldn't believe the little shithead who just cornered me," he calls out, but splattering water is the only answer. He rolls his eyes and glances down at his watch. Ten in the evening, on the dot. And he would be out in another three minutes, too.

Scatty as a box of frogs yet he co-ordinates his shower times with a military precision.

Brian wishes such discipline could be applied to other aspects of general hygiene, especially as he stalks the smell down to the takeaway cartons forming a white cardboard tower on the couch. His messenger bag drops to the floor with a clang of expensive equipment, his coat thrown over the back of a chair and his shoes kicked under it. He doesn't usually notice mess. Things are left and life is dandy, but his senses have always been particularly delicate, and month old noodles were no help.

He shakes his head and rolls up his sleeves, lugging the garbage into the kitchen in one armful before returning. Pausing. He revels in his sudden peace for a moment, just a moment, letting out an utterly pleased groan as his muscles melt and his body flings itself habitually across the sofa. His legs are braced up on a stack of books and spines dig into the fleshy underside of his thighs, but as he closes his eyes and stretches out with a series of comfortable clicks he doesn't really care.

Today had been a rough day. A rough, confusing, bizarre, dreadful day. He had never been so grateful to be home, in his own apartment with his own friend, even if that meant wallowing in their own crap.

He's thinking all this just before opening his eyes and seeing Jimmy standing above him. Naked and wild eyed and seconds away from bringing a lamp down over his cranium.

The yell torn from his throat makes him wish he had taken hoodie-guy's advice.

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Jimmy's wet and nude and it makes him slippery in his grip, getting him to the floor and knocking grunts from the both of them. Knees scrape to the carpet and arms tangle and long limbs hazard kicks. He's not quiet as he goes down, screaming blue murder into the air and aiming hits and bites and a head butt that catches Brian in the jaw and sends him reeling backwards. The lamp falls at their feet with a smash and porcelain shards dig unnoticed into their soles. Jimmy seems to be fighting for his life, a wild animal writhing in his arms, crazed and dark and unrecognisable. He looks at Brian as though he doesn't even know him yet hits him as though he wants him dead already.

He doesn't want to hurt him, oh God, he doesn't. He hopelessly tries to restrain him, muscle straining beneath his clothing and jaw throbbing as they both fall backwards. Jimmy's back is to his chest and Brian's arms wrap tight around his torso, the rabid, arching struggle dying down with animal spits and snarls.

"Jim, Jim, Jimmy..." He doesn't even realise he's muttering his name like a soothing prayer until the yells quieten and he can hear his own whispers alongside their panting breaths.

Brian feels Jimmy relax slowly, and he slumps in a way that's worse than the battling. The trembles start, suddenly quivering through his frame and echoing into his own skin.

He doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream, so instead of uttering anything he drops his face into dark, damp hair and clutches at him until the birds caw a warning of sunrise.



Author's Note: Would anyone like to beta for me? This thing's slow, a chapter every two weeks or something, so it wouldn't be a huge job, but it's complex and I really need someone to distinguish what plot I'm actually describing and what's being left in my head =/ Email me? j.passey@yahoo.com