The Best Medicine

LaVieEnRose

Brian and I spent a Friday night at the bar with our friends, and I don't know, it was just one of those nights where we're fucking kids again who can't keep their hands off each other. He ended up fucking me in the bathroom stall, my back pinned back against the wall for the kind of rough, rushed, spit sex we hadn't had in months, and God, fuck the apartment, fuck the new house, this was home. He drank, we danced, we laughed...it was amazing, and electric, and exhausting, and I woke up in the middle of the night hours later feeling about as sore and shitty as expected, but it was worth it. I curled up through a coughing fit, because that's what I do now when I wake up, and Brian kind of quarter-woke up and nuzzled the back of my neck a little.

I didn't want to get up because the bed was so warm and nice and Brian's cheek was pleasantly scratchy against my skin, but as much as I tried to ignore it I really needed some water after all that coughing, and at some point in the night I'd apparently—Brian's not the only master of the quarter-wake up—drunk the bottle Brian had become obsessive about making sure I have on the nightstand since I got sick. So after ten minutes of trying to pretend I didn't care about my dry as fuck mouth I sighed and got up and trudged to the bathroom. I felt kind of weird and I couldn't put my finger on why, which always is so annoying in retrospect, but it's kind of like...you know when you think back on your dreams, you can't believe that dream-you totally accepted everything that was happening and didn't realize you were dreaming? Well, pre-seizure me rarely puts together your vision is spotting out because you're about to have a seizure, dumbass.

Anyway, I peed and drank half a glass of water before my leg promptly gave out and I fell to the floor, taking half the shit on our bathroom counter along with me. One of my arms was still working and I caught myself with the knob on the cabinet, so I was okay besides my tailbone hurting like a bitch, but my leg was jerking hard against the tile and I felt really nauseous and echoey. I figured all the shit falling on the floor must have made a ton of noise, so I closed my eyes and rested my head against the cabinet and just waited for Brian to get there.

When I felt his footsteps I signed, I'm okay, without opening my eyes, and a few seconds later I felt his hand scratch lightly on the back of my neck as he walked around the bathroom, I guess picking up the shit I had knocked over. He lifted up my leg, and I said, Careful, because my seizing limbs have a habit of clocking the fuck out of him, but I think he thought I meant it hurt because he handled me really gently, slipping a folded towel under my leg so it wasn't banging right on the tile, which felt a lot better. He sat down next to me and put his hand between my head and the cabinet, and I kept my eyes closed until it was over.

Finally my leg stopped shaking, but it took a long time and I felt really bad afterwards. I leaned into Brian and panted, and he tucked my head into his neck and we stayed like that for a while.

“Okay,” I said eventually, and he nodded and gave me a firm kiss and helped me to my feet. Everything was kind of swimming, so he let me move slowly back to the bed, where he pulled back the covers for me and messed with the pillows some. He ran his hands over me to check for injuries—I'd dislocated my elbow a few seizures ago—but I nodded to him that everything was okay, besides the killer bruises I'd probably have in the morning. And this fucking headache.

He crawled into bed next to me and arranged me on his chest. Stay in bed now, he said, and I nodded and drifted to sleep.

In the morning I felt pretty okay. A little dizzy and a lot sore, but not so bad. Brian wasn't there, but he hadn't left a note so I figured he was still in the apartment somewhere. I sat up and got my feet on the floor and fell into my morning coughing fit, and when I looked up Brian was in the doorway, smiling at me a little and wiping his hands on a dishrag.

I swallowed. “Morning.”

He stuffed the rag into the pocket of his sweatpants. Good morning, Sunshine, he said, in that smarmy way, but he was still smiling at me. You remember last night?

I nodded.

His face got a little more serious. How are you feeling? You have a little bit of a fever.

I do?

Just a little. I'm keeping an eye on it. Your breathing doesn't sound too bad so far.

No, it's all right. I raised my arms up, feeling my muscles stretch and protest. He stayed in the doorway, watching me, and a cloud moved outside our window and the sun hit his face, and...God, he's so fucking beautiful.There are lines around his eyes when he smiles now. I have to tell him he hasn't aged, but of course he has. Like a fucking wine.

We kind of just watched each other for too long a moment, both of us smiling a little, neither of us saying anything, and then I started to get up and he said, What are you doing?

I'm hungry. I tested my body weight on my leg. It felt a little shaky, but not terrible, though the blood rushing to the bruises wasn't great.

I'm making breakfast.

You are?

Yeah, I'll bring it to you.

I laughed. I'm okay. I can get out of bed.

He came over to me, slowly, and gave me a kiss that felt like it would never stop. Of course you can, he signed, small against me, when he finally let me breathe. But why would you?

**

We ate eggs in bed—overcooked, but I don't turn up my nose at an opportunity to eat food I don't have to make myself—and had sex and took a nap and had sex again. The fever stayed low but still made me feel like crap after a while, but Brian monitored it diligently and there's a lot of comfort in that. There was something kind of erotic in the way he was poring over me that day, and I could tell he was leaning into it too, showering me with attention and keeping me from moving, bossing me and asking me questions and holding my wrists above my head, checking my skin and listening to my breathing and kissing the bruises on my hip. A domination thing, sure, but more than that. People don't talk about Brian's tenderness, the way his hands are always so goddamn gentle, and that's for everyone, not just me. But especially for me.

“I hope Jane gets your fingers,” I mumbled at one point while I was falling asleep, and I didn't figure out until later why he was laughing as I drifted off. I just floated away on the rumble of it under my cheek.

When I woke up he was sprawled halfway on top of me, his cheek on my bare stomach and one arm and one leg slung over me, scrolling through work emails on his laptop. I coughed for a while, dislodging him as little as I could, and played with his hair while he traced around my belly button.

He kissed my stomach and sat up a little, rubbing the stubble on his cheek. I'm going to give you razor burn.

“It's okay.”

He propped himself up on his elbow. Oh, you don't look good.

“No?”

He shook his head a little and reached out and felt my forehead. How do you feel?

A little sick. Not bad.

Fever's probably what gave you that seizure.

Yeah, probably. Most of my seizures lately had had some sort of definite trigger, which was a nice change of pace. Obviously the situation that required me to switch meds was about as shitty as it possibly could have been, but it did seem like the new meds were an improvement. And not just because they didn't destroy my bone marrow.

He scooted up the bed and lay his head next to mine on the pillow. Your leg's fucked. All black and blue. You've got to stop having seizures in the bathroom

I'll work on that. Not that it mattered; we were just a few weeks away from moving, and the house was a lot more seizure-proof than the apartment, since we renovated everything. We had cork floors throughout the house—carpet would have been nice, but what up, allergies—and rugs in the living room and mats in the kitchen and bathroom. All the counters and tables had rounded corners so I could stop falling and stabbing myself on shit, and we had a couple grab bars in the shower and around the bath. Basically it was seizure-heaven, and ever since we'd planned it out the apartment seemed like a death trap in comparison.

Brian brushed my hair off my forehead, and I sighed and leaned into his hand.

“We're supposed to be packing,” I said.

He shrugged. Tomorrow.

“I can get up.”

But your head hurts, he said, which was kind of funny, since I hadn't mentioned that.

“My head always hurts.”

He kissed the bridge of my nose. I know.

Can't stay in bed every day my head hurts.

Like I'd let you.

You've never complained about me in bed before.

He snickered and pulled me in under his arm, and we tugged and pushed at each other for a little while in something someone who isn't Brian Kinney might describe as 'cuddling.' I nuzzled under his chin and buried my nose in his neck. He always smells like leather and mint, since the very first night I met him.

Give me one day, he signed, small. Let me give you one day.

I don't think about it much anymore—I don't let myself think about it—but when I think about how much I love Brian, how I would feel if I were in his shoes...it's fucking unbearable, I know it is. When I'm really sick, of course I know Brian's worried, but I think I have to block out how scared he is on a day-to-day basis, all the things he takes into consideration for me, all the small things he worries about and takes care of so I don't have to, or else I fall into the guilt spiral and that doesn't help anyone. But when I think about when he had cancer and how fucking scared I was if he so much as cleared his throat, thinking he was getting some infection and he was going to die...God. And I know, I know Brian wants me out there living my life. Of course he does. That doesn't mean asking him to do anything other than wrap me in bubble wrap and keep me locked in a tower isn't fucking inhumane.

“I love you,” I whispered, and he closed his eyes and breathed it in like I'd breathed in him.

**

“I think I've forgotten how to draw,” I said as I fucked around with some oil pastels, a plate of toast crumbs down by my feet and the nebulizer in my mouth. I was supposed to be coming up with a draft of the piece I was going to make for our living room at the new house, but everything I did lately was so fucking boring. “Will you still love me if I'm pointless?”

He was stretching on the bed next to me. Maybe. We'll find a use for you. We'll keep you in a glass box and make people pay to look at you.

“I knew you'd think of something. Can we do that anyway? I think that sounds better than drawing.”

He chewed on his lip, biting back a smile. He's so fucking easy.

“Drrrrawing,” I said, and he groaned and hid his face in the pillow. He flopped his arm up over his head, and I watched the strip of skin above his waistband where his shirt rode up. He has this perfect glowing skin, even in the middle of summer. I don't know how he does it.

He said once—when he was drunk, obviously—that he calls me Sunshine because I create light, like it comes out of me. But God, irony of ironies, because no one in the history of the fucking world has ever glowed like Brian Kinney.

I smeared orange and yellow and pink pastels with my fingers until I captured the fucking miracle of that strip of skin and then I kept going, sketching out the curve of his waist and the soft folds of his t-shirt and the gold in his eyes and in his hair and after a minute he sat up so he could see it, and then he looked at me and smiled a little and just said, Justin.

**

It's hard to hate your body when it's with Brian's body.

You forget that this is, objectively speaking, a mess of a body, a body that shakes and freezes and doesn't always breathe, when it is with Brian's body, because it fits so perfectly into his, and nothing that fits into something this perfect could be bad. No body that makes Brian's breath flutter in the way I can feel through his throat and into my lips, that makes him squeeze his eyes shut in pleasure so hard it hurts, could be a bad body.

His mouth on my ear, his hands growling, God, your body, your body, you can't hate your body.

**

The sun went down, and Brian stretched up against me like a cat and dropped his chin to my shoulder.

I think I'm cured now, I said.

I knew it.

I kissed him, and he brought his face up to nuzzle against me, and I felt so, so goddamn safe.

Tomorrow we'll get up, I said.

He nodded a little.

Today we sleep.

He pulled me closer, somehow, with one arm, and I rested my cheek on his chest and felt his heartbeat, slow and steady like rain.

This counts as cured.