Brian’s chest is
tanned brown, and firm. Healthy. He fell asleep on Nick’s bed, too exhausted to
put his pajama top on after he showered, and Nick wants to put it on him the way
he used to dress Aaron and Angel for bed when they were really little and Mom
and Dad were passed out after a party, but he doesn’t want to wake him up. So
instead, he just sits there in the dimmed hotel light and looks at him, at his
healthy brown chest and the pink scar running down the middle of it.
Nick
can remember when Brian’s chest was not quite so muscular, and not so brown, and
there was no scar. When he was young and Nick was younger and Brian seemed like
nothing could hurt him, like he was some young and beautiful god, always just so
damn happy and so happy to be around Nick, to have Nick be around him. When
Brian hugged him and Nick’s head would come just high enough to rest against his
chest, and he could hear Brian’s heart beating loud and mostly even beneath his
skin.
Sometimes it skipped a beat, and Nick could feel his own heart
echoing it.
Frick. Frack.
Beat. Pause. Pause. Beat.
Now,
here, Nick turns off the light until everything is glowing silver in the
moonlight and shadowed, and he lays his head on Brian’s chest the way they used
to sleep when Nick was younger, before someone told him that men aren’t supposed
to sleep wrapped around other men that way, aren’t supposed to sleep with other
men at all. Back when he didn’t think anything sexual of it when he would fall
asleep with Brian’s arm thrown over him; it was just comfort, warmth, another
heartbeat against his in the middle of the night reaffirming that there was
someone there, that Nick wasn’t alone.
Brian doesn’t wake up, but murmurs
something Nick can’t hear and shifts in sleep, so that his face is pressed into
Nick’s hair, his lips against Nick’s forehead.
Nick feels smooth firm
skin beneath his cheek, warm and alive, and he presses his hand over the scar on
Brian’s chest, feeling its unique texture—jagged imperfection in the middle of
all this beauty. It doesn’t matter though. Brian is still beautiful; even more
beautiful, maybe, because of the scar. Because of the scar Brian’s heart is
beating evenly beneath Nick’s hand; he can hear it where his head is pressed
against Brian.
Beat. Pause. Beat.
Nick doesn’t sleep, but stays
awake all night counting the beats of Brian’s heart. Making sure that it never
stops or skips, because Brian’s heart has always been the biggest, most
important part of him. Of Brian, but also of Nick. It is the part that Nick
echoes.
Frick. Frack.
Beat. Pause. Beat.
If I could be
anything in the world that flew
I would be a bat and come swooping after
you
And if the last time you were here, things were a bit askew
Well, you
know what happens after dark
When rattlesnakes loose their skins and their
hearts
And all the missionaries loose their bark
All the trees are calling
after you
And all the venom snipers after you
Are all the mountains bolder
after you?
END
Title and lyrics from 'Andy's Chest' by Lou
Reed.
For Pixie.