BDS: sleeping alone
Guess who just saw Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Go on, guess.
sleeping alone
connor/murphy. 1400+ words. eight years on a sheep farm. R for violence and some sexual content. spoilers for the opening of BDS II.
Sometimes they don't talk for days. They'd eat corned beef and carrots from a can, heating them over their lousy fire, Connor always scraping away at the leftover bits to get every last lick. You live your life like a starving man, Murphy would want to say, but it'd be one of the silent weeks, where Murphy would wade out into the grass with the sheep while the rain was just a mist, and bury his face in their wool, and stare at nothing, and Connor would watch.
That's what he does best these days, watching.
*
Da cuts soda bread and heats it in the dutch oven with some potatoes for dinner, then settles down to where he's whittling a chess set. "The sheep are good, Da," Connor says. "They're getting fat." And Da nods, his hands steady as he ladles out thin, tasteless cabbage and barley soup, which Connor drinks from the bowl, hungering after the tiny bits of salted ham that's mixed in. There are no spoons on the table, just forks and chipped cups. The wind blows one of the socks hanging on the porch down from the laundry line, and their da, who still has ears like a junior high principal catching onto Connor and Murphy's funny business, says something to that effect.
"I'll get it after dinner, Da," Connor says.
Murphy, who still hasn't forgiven Da for not taking them to their ma since coming back to Ireland, doesn't say anything at all.
*
When they fuck, they fuck facing each other, hands gripped tight, silently, like a prayer sent up from the knuckles to the taut lines of their spines. But they haven't since Connor's started growing out his beard, letting the blade Da lent him to shave go to rust. It's supposed to be Murphy's razor too, but Da had handed it to Connor, and so Murphy doesn't touch it anymore. He doesn't need permission anymore than he needs to hear Connor's reasons. He just does what he does. In his mind, it makes sense, just like this isolated life, the smell of the sheep and the wet wood and his da's bad cooking make sense.
Love is never supposed to fucking make sense, Connor would have told him, but they haven't talked since Connor's stopped lathering his face as forcefully as he could with their cheap soap. You look like a fucking retard, Murphy used to tease, but he would get Connor to do it for him all the same.
Sometimes when it's late at night, and Connor's asleep, Murphy goes out to the grazing fields and jerks off. Once Connor caught him, and it was strange only because Connor didn't do anything. He just stood there in front of Murphy, and watched him, and Murphy stroked himself a little too fast, gripped himself a little too hard, so that it hurt when he came. He liked it. It reminded him of a kitchen in Boston, and his brother's hands holding him down. The smell of blood burning against a hot iron. That clear, clean sound of bullet casings falling to the floor. He thought of Connor's hands, big and steady, Da's hands really, thick with callouses from riding, from getting bitten by the sheep dogs, from the touch of leather and pennies and God.
*
Murphy has vivid dreams about Rocco, night sweat kind of dreams, but more and more he's started to forget. The face of Agent Smecker, or the way Yakavetta screamed for mercy in the courtroom. So easy to forget when he's surrounded by crushed grass, the lazy swishing of dogs' tails as they, he and the dogs and Connor, watch the sheep. It's what Da promised them in those hectic first days as they ran from the life he and Connor built up in Boston. Just for a while, just until you're safe. Sometimes it is about building up the peace inside you, my boys, he had said, and then it had been Connor who itched for a fight, who had to throw his guns in a crate so he would stop pulling them out and cleaning them.
But it was Murphy who had said that first year on the firm, This isn't what I left Boston for. That was when they still said things to each other, when they still talked to communicate, and then it had been Connor who understood, who crushed Murphy's restless hands in his own and told him, be patient, my dear brother.
And now, the silence. It isn't that they don't talk anymore, though there are weeks, almost months where Connor and Murphy won't. But Da tells them old ageless Irish stories sometimes, the ones his da told him when he was a wee boy. Connor and Murphy are almost thirty five now, but he has years of fatherhood to make up for. Connor sometimes tells his da about the sheep, about what they see out on their rides, about the grocer woman's fifteen year old son who comes to visit them sometimes with fresh eggs. But he never speaks of Boston, of Rocco, of their thirty five years apart from their da. He never speaks of their pasts as something that had been real.
Murphy knows that there's something in Connor, something angry and glorious and filthy that's swallowed all his words. He knows that Connor struggling with it, that Connor won't speak again until he's wrestled that devil to the ground and made the silence his own, a way of speaking instead of a way of not. Connor wants the gauze to settle over their memory's wounds, like dust covering a picture until it's no longer visible. Connor wants grace like he thinks Da's achieved. Connor wants incorruptible peace, to be a statue of a man in the grazing fields, complete and completely with God.
And Murphy knows what he wants. He wants Boston, he wants his ma, he wants Rocco to be alive, he wants to move and touch and do.
But mostly he wants his brother. And so he doesn't say anything. He just goes into the fields, rides his horse down steep cliffs, his hair long enough to fall to his shoulders as his horse galloped, almost breaking his horse's legs against rock as he urges it to go faster, faster, faster.
*
Connor starts the tattoo on Murphy's back in their fourth winter. The first prick goes so deep into Murphy that he has to shove his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. "Tell me if I'm going too deep," Connor says, and Murphy nods but doesn't say anything. His brother's hands are on his back, and as always, the pain is nothing.
When Murphy starts on his brother's back three years later, he spends whole minutes trying to keep his fingers from trembling as he rigs a needle with ink. His brother, spread belly down on the bed, face turned to one side, doesn't tell him to hurry up. He doesn't tell him anything at all. Just listens, and watches, and waits.
*
When the wolf infestation starts, the boys are ready. Shotguns, which they're not as good with, but neither of them are really sure they remember what a .9 mm feels like anymore. Their da finds them the next morning in the fields, trying to get rid of the damage, Connor dragging the wolves by their hind legs into a pile and Murphy carefully stripping the pelts away from the sheep so they could eat and maybe even smoke and dry the meat later. They do it methodically, with hands that don't hesitate, and because there are fewer sheep than wolves, eventually Murphy joins Connor. Both their hands are bloody, a deep ugly red. Their shotguns are propped up against a rock, crossed over at the tips, like the trajectory of bullets crossing in the skull to leave the head through the eyes.
For a brief second, Noah MacManus thinks to himself that if God could see his sons as shepherds, He would not let His son call himself a shepherd at all.
*
Then one morning it rains, and Connor wakes up to the sound. "Murphy," he says, and his voice is sweet and clear and clean. He is twenty-seven again, they are finding each other in the dark of the police station cell, and they are drowning. "Murphy, it's time to get up," Connor says, and Murphy does, and his brother is at the window, letting the rain fall on his face. Murphy knows that it's soon, soon, now, today even. He knows he will touch his brother again. He knows they'll talk again. He knows they remember how to hold a .9 mm.
And he knows it'll be okay.
a/n: I wanted to post this on gymnopedies, but I've long since forgotten the passwords to both the account... and the email address.
sleeping alone
connor/murphy. 1400+ words. eight years on a sheep farm. R for violence and some sexual content. spoilers for the opening of BDS II.
Sometimes they don't talk for days. They'd eat corned beef and carrots from a can, heating them over their lousy fire, Connor always scraping away at the leftover bits to get every last lick. You live your life like a starving man, Murphy would want to say, but it'd be one of the silent weeks, where Murphy would wade out into the grass with the sheep while the rain was just a mist, and bury his face in their wool, and stare at nothing, and Connor would watch.
That's what he does best these days, watching.
*
Da cuts soda bread and heats it in the dutch oven with some potatoes for dinner, then settles down to where he's whittling a chess set. "The sheep are good, Da," Connor says. "They're getting fat." And Da nods, his hands steady as he ladles out thin, tasteless cabbage and barley soup, which Connor drinks from the bowl, hungering after the tiny bits of salted ham that's mixed in. There are no spoons on the table, just forks and chipped cups. The wind blows one of the socks hanging on the porch down from the laundry line, and their da, who still has ears like a junior high principal catching onto Connor and Murphy's funny business, says something to that effect.
"I'll get it after dinner, Da," Connor says.
Murphy, who still hasn't forgiven Da for not taking them to their ma since coming back to Ireland, doesn't say anything at all.
*
When they fuck, they fuck facing each other, hands gripped tight, silently, like a prayer sent up from the knuckles to the taut lines of their spines. But they haven't since Connor's started growing out his beard, letting the blade Da lent him to shave go to rust. It's supposed to be Murphy's razor too, but Da had handed it to Connor, and so Murphy doesn't touch it anymore. He doesn't need permission anymore than he needs to hear Connor's reasons. He just does what he does. In his mind, it makes sense, just like this isolated life, the smell of the sheep and the wet wood and his da's bad cooking make sense.
Love is never supposed to fucking make sense, Connor would have told him, but they haven't talked since Connor's stopped lathering his face as forcefully as he could with their cheap soap. You look like a fucking retard, Murphy used to tease, but he would get Connor to do it for him all the same.
Sometimes when it's late at night, and Connor's asleep, Murphy goes out to the grazing fields and jerks off. Once Connor caught him, and it was strange only because Connor didn't do anything. He just stood there in front of Murphy, and watched him, and Murphy stroked himself a little too fast, gripped himself a little too hard, so that it hurt when he came. He liked it. It reminded him of a kitchen in Boston, and his brother's hands holding him down. The smell of blood burning against a hot iron. That clear, clean sound of bullet casings falling to the floor. He thought of Connor's hands, big and steady, Da's hands really, thick with callouses from riding, from getting bitten by the sheep dogs, from the touch of leather and pennies and God.
*
Murphy has vivid dreams about Rocco, night sweat kind of dreams, but more and more he's started to forget. The face of Agent Smecker, or the way Yakavetta screamed for mercy in the courtroom. So easy to forget when he's surrounded by crushed grass, the lazy swishing of dogs' tails as they, he and the dogs and Connor, watch the sheep. It's what Da promised them in those hectic first days as they ran from the life he and Connor built up in Boston. Just for a while, just until you're safe. Sometimes it is about building up the peace inside you, my boys, he had said, and then it had been Connor who itched for a fight, who had to throw his guns in a crate so he would stop pulling them out and cleaning them.
But it was Murphy who had said that first year on the firm, This isn't what I left Boston for. That was when they still said things to each other, when they still talked to communicate, and then it had been Connor who understood, who crushed Murphy's restless hands in his own and told him, be patient, my dear brother.
And now, the silence. It isn't that they don't talk anymore, though there are weeks, almost months where Connor and Murphy won't. But Da tells them old ageless Irish stories sometimes, the ones his da told him when he was a wee boy. Connor and Murphy are almost thirty five now, but he has years of fatherhood to make up for. Connor sometimes tells his da about the sheep, about what they see out on their rides, about the grocer woman's fifteen year old son who comes to visit them sometimes with fresh eggs. But he never speaks of Boston, of Rocco, of their thirty five years apart from their da. He never speaks of their pasts as something that had been real.
Murphy knows that there's something in Connor, something angry and glorious and filthy that's swallowed all his words. He knows that Connor struggling with it, that Connor won't speak again until he's wrestled that devil to the ground and made the silence his own, a way of speaking instead of a way of not. Connor wants the gauze to settle over their memory's wounds, like dust covering a picture until it's no longer visible. Connor wants grace like he thinks Da's achieved. Connor wants incorruptible peace, to be a statue of a man in the grazing fields, complete and completely with God.
And Murphy knows what he wants. He wants Boston, he wants his ma, he wants Rocco to be alive, he wants to move and touch and do.
But mostly he wants his brother. And so he doesn't say anything. He just goes into the fields, rides his horse down steep cliffs, his hair long enough to fall to his shoulders as his horse galloped, almost breaking his horse's legs against rock as he urges it to go faster, faster, faster.
*
Connor starts the tattoo on Murphy's back in their fourth winter. The first prick goes so deep into Murphy that he has to shove his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out. "Tell me if I'm going too deep," Connor says, and Murphy nods but doesn't say anything. His brother's hands are on his back, and as always, the pain is nothing.
When Murphy starts on his brother's back three years later, he spends whole minutes trying to keep his fingers from trembling as he rigs a needle with ink. His brother, spread belly down on the bed, face turned to one side, doesn't tell him to hurry up. He doesn't tell him anything at all. Just listens, and watches, and waits.
*
When the wolf infestation starts, the boys are ready. Shotguns, which they're not as good with, but neither of them are really sure they remember what a .9 mm feels like anymore. Their da finds them the next morning in the fields, trying to get rid of the damage, Connor dragging the wolves by their hind legs into a pile and Murphy carefully stripping the pelts away from the sheep so they could eat and maybe even smoke and dry the meat later. They do it methodically, with hands that don't hesitate, and because there are fewer sheep than wolves, eventually Murphy joins Connor. Both their hands are bloody, a deep ugly red. Their shotguns are propped up against a rock, crossed over at the tips, like the trajectory of bullets crossing in the skull to leave the head through the eyes.
For a brief second, Noah MacManus thinks to himself that if God could see his sons as shepherds, He would not let His son call himself a shepherd at all.
*
Then one morning it rains, and Connor wakes up to the sound. "Murphy," he says, and his voice is sweet and clear and clean. He is twenty-seven again, they are finding each other in the dark of the police station cell, and they are drowning. "Murphy, it's time to get up," Connor says, and Murphy does, and his brother is at the window, letting the rain fall on his face. Murphy knows that it's soon, soon, now, today even. He knows he will touch his brother again. He knows they'll talk again. He knows they remember how to hold a .9 mm.
And he knows it'll be okay.
a/n: I wanted to post this on gymnopedies, but I've long since forgotten the passwords to both the account... and the email address.