By Cipher Muse

4/20/01

SUMMARY: Brian doesn’t use ink.

DISCLAIMER: These guys do not belong to me. It’s probably for the best. No money will be made by me for delving into their brains.

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Brian Kinney stays emotionally numb. It helps, keeps him cool and easy and functioning like a piston in his own machine. Smooth and certain, getting what he needs when he needs it and leaving nothing of himself behind. He likes drugs because they let him select his sensations. Sex goes with X, and amyl is confidence. All on a time limit, and part of his teflon and steel life. He likes to think of himself as beautiful and cold like an art deco statue of a man. Chrome and smooth lines, no signs of internal pressure.

Brian knows it's mostly an illusion, and that under the surface, deep down in the molten core of him, the emotions are there. Sometimes they come out, the pressure builds until feeling condenses in cold droplets on his skin. Sometimes he can hear the hammering thud of his heart, the shriek of metal stretching. Sometimes, he can't help but feel. And when he does it's mostly pain.

Michael is different. In almost every way, but especially in this. Michael feels everything, every pinprick of sorrow, every tingling joy. He radiates emotion openly, flashes anger, hurt, fear, desire, hope, joy, love like a kaleidoscope. He whines when he's tired, he bounces when he's glad. Michael's feelings are never clean and easy. Michael is emotional. Michael is messy.

When Brian's hurting, he likes to see it in Mikey's face. So after the munchers show him he is worth more to his son dead than alive, he meets his friends at Woody’s. He tells a story of Brian and Mikey at fourteen, his sharp words slicing red ribbons in his friend. Ripping mercilessly into Michael’s most cherished memories, exposing them to the light and to their friends and to the pretty boy who has had what Mike most wants. Brian keeps his voice deep and raspy with echoes of youthful lust. At first Michael’s face is contorted only with surprise at the unexpected betrayal, but soon enough small lines appear around his mouth as he fights to remain calm in the face of yet another of Brian’s bloody victories.

Each crease in Michael’s still smooth cheek is beautiful to Brian. He wonders as he quarrels needlessly with his best friend how long it will be until Mike, almost thirty, wears Brian’s pain as permanent wrinkles. He almost purrs with the thought, and his tongue aches suddenly with the urge to lick Mikey’s face. It won’t be long now until he has to find a trick to forget the guilt he will not wish to feel, but in this moment Brian Kinney knows eventually his name will be forever etched on Michael Novotny.

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