All Your Ducks In A Row
Title: When I Think of You, Woodsy
Genre: 1st POV recollective
Pairing: none
Rating: PG13
Warning: hinted abuses, swearing, d'awwing at Gene trying to make Woodsy unnerstan', improper grammar/et al. Bromance in its most literal.
The topic of brothers came up. Woodsy had never had a brother, not a real one. He had an older stepbrother but that's not the same.
I had a little brother.
Had.
I used to risk shit for him:
The gummy blood in the corner of my mouth and scorched knuckles from the inevitable playground scenes, ears ringing from the blows my ma'd have to give me in front of the teachers to satisfy their wrath and maybe scare 'em a little into making sure those other kids never pulled shit like that within the grounds again.
The hot wash of dog stink and thanking God Almighty my jacket was thick enough armor as I pushed and swatted with the broom and screamed for everyone to get the fuck inside like it was world war fucking three, snarling growls like nuclear thunder between tender ears.
Shoving the only father I ever wanted to put a claim to down those stairs, the wet crunch and subsequent stiff posture he'd blame in the morning on a bad day at work.
My brother, though, I used to feed him. Christ, I never fed nobody in my life, not even myself, but I'd make this kid a sandwich when we were all out of mashed peas, wetting the bread with milk and spooning him this sort of sugary lump of peanut butter and cheap jelly. He was my science experiment, he was my stand-in pet hamster, he was my brother.
I had a sister, too, but all she ever did was tug my ear and insult me. Her and ma were a lot alike, all bitterness and perfection and rotting sanity, but I'll get to that part later.
So my brother, I'm trying to explain to Woodsy, it might not have been so different between us were I the younger one, see? 'Cos my brother, he. He came out... wrong.
Our kitchen had been a fuck-ugly mess of yellow and orange and brown, like all cheap rents. Linoleum and round metal edges and burnt little cigarette craters and the crawly feeling on your bare feet because your ma only swept up with the changing of the fucking seasons. My brother, well, let's call him John. Johnny. That ain't his real name 'cos I don't trust Woodsy not to look this shit up and get me all up on file and shit.
Cocksucker mole rat fink asshole.
No listen though, because Woodsy didn't know and I think it's a crucial part of a man's makeup, takin' care of someone littler'n you without any real obligation or payback. Really sets a standard, you know?
"Thought you said it wouldn't have mattered if he was your younger sibling or not." Woodsy's got this sly frown over his cigarette that tears me the fuck up sometimes, like he can't just let me be drunk and expository and cut me some fucking slack.
"No, man, it doesn't matter. 'Cos I mean the kid was born wrong. Bully target from day one. Only thing woulda changed had he been born first, 's he'd'a hafta waited for me to come along and get born to defend him. Might've starved."
"So why didn't you starve?"
"My sister fed me."
Woodsy gives me this shrug and roll of his eyes like oh, of course, and you have no idea how hard it is not to launch over this flimsy little card table and deck him. Just the booze pricking on my nerves, prolly. Let me finish my goddamn exposition, goddamn. "Why wouldn't your sister have fed him?"
I blow out a breath, relaxing into the passing air of the rotating fan set up on Woodsy's stack of Wallstreet Journal. It's sticky in this house like it was sticky in every house I've ever lived. Tobacco sticky. Armpit sticky. Cereal bowls in the sink sticky. "Babsy didn't take to Johnny. He wasn't blood, not all the way. The only reason she took to me was because she was too damn young to know any better. By the time Johnny got around to coming along, she fucking hated his dad's guts. Lucky she never tried to drown the kid." I flick the ash from my cigar, take a deep pull to keep the cherry, not really tasting it.
Yeah, Babsy... I almost tried to kill her once, when she was a teenager: insane and miserable and hurting me every three days out of the month. We were walking down the Union City river and it was all dried up and the concrete dam was about eight feet high (which is like, skyscraper proportions to a kid) and the bridge didn't have no siderail 'cos this was before society got stupid enough to walk off the side of dams. I nearly grabbed her by her blonde head and pushed her over.
I was sick that night, sick with guilt. Sick with a head full of what-if and a dream that she had never been born. I was ten.
The night she came home from a date and pushed Johnny over was the night I was arrested for giving my own sister two broken ribs and a black eye. I hadn't come out of that monumental row unscathed, exactly, but when you're a boy and you do violence you get sent to a cement room to cool off. I was fifteen.
Anyway.
Woodsy's all apprehensive over my mulish silence and I shrug, gift-wrapping a smile and passing it over the table like an apology. I wouldn't be half as hard a bastard as I am today if I hadn't had a rough start of it, but now's not the time for bragging.
"So, my brother, right?"
"Right,"
"So he's the only reason I ever started fighting. I mean, every man has it in him to fight; it's like for getting tough and surviving and shit, back when we had to hunt and fight over chicks and whatnot."
Woodsy gives a hum, acknowledging my spiel with polite indulgence. The fan hits us again, waits for a span, then starts it slow progress to the rest of the room.
"But I mean, I didn't give a shit what happened to me. Feh. Catholic guilt and all, thought I deserved it. I sure as fuck didn't care whatever mess Babsy'd get herself in, neither. 'Sides she could handle it all way better than me an' R--Johnny, combined. She knew how to kill things without caring. Spiders, mice, anything that got in the house, y'know, she'd kill. Without batting a fake eyelash. So my brother, he comes along and I know Babsy don't give a shit and I know his pa was too busy to really give a shit, though he did kinda when he wasn't off his ass, drunk and stupid."
I don't even remember the point I'm trying to make anymore.
My brother came along and I was only, what, four? You think somebody like me wouldn't be able to remember this shit but I remember the dog his Pa bought to guard the homestead, a dopey pit rottweiler mix that held infinite patience while baby brother crawled all over him and tugged his ears and his tail and fell asleep in the great warm curve of his side. I remember wanting to be that big dog, that huge scary thing who wasn't so scary close up, who my baby brother adored.
I was too young; I didn't feel that pinch of male sibling rivalry that most brothership don't survive. We were both in too much peril ourselves to fight with each other, though sometimes he'd break my shit and sometimes I'd rough him up. Nothing too bad. Usually he'd be laughing under my arm, egging me on 'cos he wanted to fly across the room and I wasn't that strong yet.
And it's a real fucking indescribable feeling, that kind of love.
I'm drunk off my ass and trying to make Woodsy understand why I let him hang around, why I make him food when I don't hardly make myself any fucking food.
"So he's this little guy, right? And I'm kinda this little guy too only next to him I feel like a huge fucking guy. Like he's this pink fleshy bag of bruises you gotta herd away from sharp cabinet corners and keep outta the beer his pa leaves laying around. I was just so young, man, I don't even know where that all came from. Ain't like I had a good example for it, christ."
Woodsy is contemplative over his newspaper, listening but not listening. He's got the names, Babsy and Johnny, and they're fake but he won't know that until he looks it all up and runs himself in frustrated little circles over his peatboard desk.
"And he grows up, and we grow up, and for some reason, like, one night ma's just giving me grief over my cigars and Johnny's like, what, you smoke?" I shrug my elbows in close, palms up helplessly, gesturing between me and Woodsy like he could maybe relate. "And the kid's never drank a spot of liquor, never smoked a day in his life, and he's taller'n me 'cos I just kept feeding him whenever I could and he's a grade-A fucking honor student and I realized that he didn't know I smoked 'cos I never smoked around him."
Woodsy looks a little more interested, probably catching on to a point I myself can't coherently name right now. "And?"
"And, that's it. I had a brother. Until I realized that the guy with the brother, that wasn't me. That guy was a good fucking guy. That guy, man, Johnny looked up to that guy. I set a bad example maybe with the way that Johnny treats his girls nowadays, but that's like. A whole different life."
"Wait, I thought your brother was gay."
"What?" I frown, more puzzled than angry. "Who says?"
"You did. He was born wrong; I thought that meant he was gay. Or retarded."
I snort, grasping for the parallel I was trying to make between Woodsy and Johnny. "I didn't mean wrong like that. I meant wrong for the whole fucking family, for this whole fucking fucked up world. People like that, if they survive, they usually survive to get rich and happy."
"Did he die?"
"No," I relight my cigar, eyeballing Woodsy because I can't remember why I ever thought of this burnt-out double agent like my brother, but then I remember; "No, nothing like that." Dramatic pause, dramatic exhale. "He works for the Feds."
Genre: 1st POV recollective
Pairing: none
Rating: PG13
Warning: hinted abuses, swearing, d'awwing at Gene trying to make Woodsy unnerstan', improper grammar/et al. Bromance in its most literal.
The topic of brothers came up. Woodsy had never had a brother, not a real one. He had an older stepbrother but that's not the same.
I had a little brother.
Had.
I used to risk shit for him:
The gummy blood in the corner of my mouth and scorched knuckles from the inevitable playground scenes, ears ringing from the blows my ma'd have to give me in front of the teachers to satisfy their wrath and maybe scare 'em a little into making sure those other kids never pulled shit like that within the grounds again.
The hot wash of dog stink and thanking God Almighty my jacket was thick enough armor as I pushed and swatted with the broom and screamed for everyone to get the fuck inside like it was world war fucking three, snarling growls like nuclear thunder between tender ears.
Shoving the only father I ever wanted to put a claim to down those stairs, the wet crunch and subsequent stiff posture he'd blame in the morning on a bad day at work.
My brother, though, I used to feed him. Christ, I never fed nobody in my life, not even myself, but I'd make this kid a sandwich when we were all out of mashed peas, wetting the bread with milk and spooning him this sort of sugary lump of peanut butter and cheap jelly. He was my science experiment, he was my stand-in pet hamster, he was my brother.
I had a sister, too, but all she ever did was tug my ear and insult me. Her and ma were a lot alike, all bitterness and perfection and rotting sanity, but I'll get to that part later.
So my brother, I'm trying to explain to Woodsy, it might not have been so different between us were I the younger one, see? 'Cos my brother, he. He came out... wrong.
Our kitchen had been a fuck-ugly mess of yellow and orange and brown, like all cheap rents. Linoleum and round metal edges and burnt little cigarette craters and the crawly feeling on your bare feet because your ma only swept up with the changing of the fucking seasons. My brother, well, let's call him John. Johnny. That ain't his real name 'cos I don't trust Woodsy not to look this shit up and get me all up on file and shit.
Cocksucker mole rat fink asshole.
No listen though, because Woodsy didn't know and I think it's a crucial part of a man's makeup, takin' care of someone littler'n you without any real obligation or payback. Really sets a standard, you know?
"Thought you said it wouldn't have mattered if he was your younger sibling or not." Woodsy's got this sly frown over his cigarette that tears me the fuck up sometimes, like he can't just let me be drunk and expository and cut me some fucking slack.
"No, man, it doesn't matter. 'Cos I mean the kid was born wrong. Bully target from day one. Only thing woulda changed had he been born first, 's he'd'a hafta waited for me to come along and get born to defend him. Might've starved."
"So why didn't you starve?"
"My sister fed me."
Woodsy gives me this shrug and roll of his eyes like oh, of course, and you have no idea how hard it is not to launch over this flimsy little card table and deck him. Just the booze pricking on my nerves, prolly. Let me finish my goddamn exposition, goddamn. "Why wouldn't your sister have fed him?"
I blow out a breath, relaxing into the passing air of the rotating fan set up on Woodsy's stack of Wallstreet Journal. It's sticky in this house like it was sticky in every house I've ever lived. Tobacco sticky. Armpit sticky. Cereal bowls in the sink sticky. "Babsy didn't take to Johnny. He wasn't blood, not all the way. The only reason she took to me was because she was too damn young to know any better. By the time Johnny got around to coming along, she fucking hated his dad's guts. Lucky she never tried to drown the kid." I flick the ash from my cigar, take a deep pull to keep the cherry, not really tasting it.
Yeah, Babsy... I almost tried to kill her once, when she was a teenager: insane and miserable and hurting me every three days out of the month. We were walking down the Union City river and it was all dried up and the concrete dam was about eight feet high (which is like, skyscraper proportions to a kid) and the bridge didn't have no siderail 'cos this was before society got stupid enough to walk off the side of dams. I nearly grabbed her by her blonde head and pushed her over.
I was sick that night, sick with guilt. Sick with a head full of what-if and a dream that she had never been born. I was ten.
The night she came home from a date and pushed Johnny over was the night I was arrested for giving my own sister two broken ribs and a black eye. I hadn't come out of that monumental row unscathed, exactly, but when you're a boy and you do violence you get sent to a cement room to cool off. I was fifteen.
Anyway.
Woodsy's all apprehensive over my mulish silence and I shrug, gift-wrapping a smile and passing it over the table like an apology. I wouldn't be half as hard a bastard as I am today if I hadn't had a rough start of it, but now's not the time for bragging.
"So, my brother, right?"
"Right,"
"So he's the only reason I ever started fighting. I mean, every man has it in him to fight; it's like for getting tough and surviving and shit, back when we had to hunt and fight over chicks and whatnot."
Woodsy gives a hum, acknowledging my spiel with polite indulgence. The fan hits us again, waits for a span, then starts it slow progress to the rest of the room.
"But I mean, I didn't give a shit what happened to me. Feh. Catholic guilt and all, thought I deserved it. I sure as fuck didn't care whatever mess Babsy'd get herself in, neither. 'Sides she could handle it all way better than me an' R--Johnny, combined. She knew how to kill things without caring. Spiders, mice, anything that got in the house, y'know, she'd kill. Without batting a fake eyelash. So my brother, he comes along and I know Babsy don't give a shit and I know his pa was too busy to really give a shit, though he did kinda when he wasn't off his ass, drunk and stupid."
I don't even remember the point I'm trying to make anymore.
My brother came along and I was only, what, four? You think somebody like me wouldn't be able to remember this shit but I remember the dog his Pa bought to guard the homestead, a dopey pit rottweiler mix that held infinite patience while baby brother crawled all over him and tugged his ears and his tail and fell asleep in the great warm curve of his side. I remember wanting to be that big dog, that huge scary thing who wasn't so scary close up, who my baby brother adored.
I was too young; I didn't feel that pinch of male sibling rivalry that most brothership don't survive. We were both in too much peril ourselves to fight with each other, though sometimes he'd break my shit and sometimes I'd rough him up. Nothing too bad. Usually he'd be laughing under my arm, egging me on 'cos he wanted to fly across the room and I wasn't that strong yet.
And it's a real fucking indescribable feeling, that kind of love.
I'm drunk off my ass and trying to make Woodsy understand why I let him hang around, why I make him food when I don't hardly make myself any fucking food.
"So he's this little guy, right? And I'm kinda this little guy too only next to him I feel like a huge fucking guy. Like he's this pink fleshy bag of bruises you gotta herd away from sharp cabinet corners and keep outta the beer his pa leaves laying around. I was just so young, man, I don't even know where that all came from. Ain't like I had a good example for it, christ."
Woodsy is contemplative over his newspaper, listening but not listening. He's got the names, Babsy and Johnny, and they're fake but he won't know that until he looks it all up and runs himself in frustrated little circles over his peatboard desk.
"And he grows up, and we grow up, and for some reason, like, one night ma's just giving me grief over my cigars and Johnny's like, what, you smoke?" I shrug my elbows in close, palms up helplessly, gesturing between me and Woodsy like he could maybe relate. "And the kid's never drank a spot of liquor, never smoked a day in his life, and he's taller'n me 'cos I just kept feeding him whenever I could and he's a grade-A fucking honor student and I realized that he didn't know I smoked 'cos I never smoked around him."
Woodsy looks a little more interested, probably catching on to a point I myself can't coherently name right now. "And?"
"And, that's it. I had a brother. Until I realized that the guy with the brother, that wasn't me. That guy was a good fucking guy. That guy, man, Johnny looked up to that guy. I set a bad example maybe with the way that Johnny treats his girls nowadays, but that's like. A whole different life."
"Wait, I thought your brother was gay."
"What?" I frown, more puzzled than angry. "Who says?"
"You did. He was born wrong; I thought that meant he was gay. Or retarded."
I snort, grasping for the parallel I was trying to make between Woodsy and Johnny. "I didn't mean wrong like that. I meant wrong for the whole fucking family, for this whole fucking fucked up world. People like that, if they survive, they usually survive to get rich and happy."
"Did he die?"
"No," I relight my cigar, eyeballing Woodsy because I can't remember why I ever thought of this burnt-out double agent like my brother, but then I remember; "No, nothing like that." Dramatic pause, dramatic exhale. "He works for the Feds."