Sleep, however, didn’t come as easily as I had hoped it would.

I watched as Brian tiredly pulled his legs up onto the bed, one at a time, then crossed them at the ankles and rolled himself over onto his stomach. He breathed out and closed his eyes, and I laid my arm across his back, running my fingers lightly over his shoulder as I closed my own eyes and tried to settle into sleep.

But Brian was restless, moving around and shifting positions under my arm.

“You okay?” I asked, after several minutes of Brian moving and shifting and sighing and grunting.

He stopped moving, but he didn’t say anything at first. It probably took him a full minute to speak, and when he did, it was barely a whisper.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” he said, his voice so small and sounding not at all like Brian. The last time I’d heard him sound like this was outside of Babylon on the night of the bombing. “I know I have to. But I don’t know how.”

I rolled over onto my side so that I was facing him, using my arm to pull our bodies closer. “You don’t have to know how. You’ve got all of us with you,” I said. “You’re not alone. We’ll figure it out together.”

I could see the tears shining in his eyes as he blinked slowly, biting his lip. “I couldn’t even listen to people tell stories about her,” he said, “because all it reminded me of was how Claire tried to do the same thing after Pop’s funeral, and no one really had anything to share. Nothing genuine, anyway. Not even my goddamned mother, and she was fucking married to him. When he died it was…” Brian paused and closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “I don’t know, it was almost relief. Letting go of the baggage, and all of the pain he’d caused me. Knowing he could never do it again.”

I kept running my fingers over Brian’s shoulder as he spoke. I hadn’t been there for his father’s funeral -- at that point, we weren’t really together yet, although Brian had long since stopped referring to me as his stalker and seemed to even like me a little bit. I was still in high school, and at the time I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have one of my parents die. I still couldn’t. I remember that I didn’t really know what to say to him then, and I didn’t know what to say to him now, but I was thankful he was talking to me. Opening up, even a little.

“But with Deb… there’s this… hole.” His voice was getting softer and softer. He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the pillow. “And it hurts.”

Brian’s body trembled under my arm as the dam he’d built around his emotions broke, and everything he’d been holding back for the past several hours came flooding out. His breath was coming in short, shaky gasps, as he pushed his face into the pillow. I tried to get as close to him as I possibly could -- holding him, rubbing his back, kissing his shoulder. Just letting him know I was there.

I was back to not being able to imagine how he felt, because I’d never been there. My mother was alive. My father might as well have been dead to me, but there was no love lost between us. To be honest, I wasn’t sure Brian had ever been there before either -- losing someone he cared about so deeply, who cared about him just as much.

I didn’t say anything to Brian for a long time because I didn’t want him to feel like he needed to pull himself together for me. I didn’t want to tell him it would be okay, because I knew it really wasn’t. He needed to let this go, and I wanted him to be able to do that. Most of all, I wanted him to feel safe doing it. To know that he didn’t have to pretend with me. He could be exactly as he was, no matter what that was, and it was fine. I’d be there to love and support him through it all.

I tried my best to comfort him as he cried, but every touch and caress only made him cry harder. And as much as I knew he needed to let go, I knew he also needed to get some rest.

“Did you bring your sleeping pills?” I asked softly, after he’d cried for most of an hour, with his pain only seeming to intensify with the passage of time. I could tell how desperately he wanted to check out for a while -- to feel nothing at all -- and I wanted that for him just as badly.

“I don’t want to take one this late,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I want to get up early to go to Michael’s, so I can help him.”

I sighed quietly to myself, wishing I could find the right words to say to convince Brian that he needed to take care of himself so he could be there for Michael, but knowing that there probably wasn’t anything I could say that would accomplish that.

“You need to sleep,” I whispered, slipping my right arm under Brian’s body so I could hold him, savoring the feel of his body against mine as I felt him lean into my touch. He turned his face towards mine, tear tracks staining his cheeks. I pressed our foreheads together. “I’m right here,” I said. “You’re not alone.”

I felt his body tremble slightly as he started to cry again, and I felt tears start to fall from my own eyes too as his right arm wrapped around my back, hugging me close.

That night, we cried ourselves to sleep.

The next morning, I don’t think either of us felt like we’d slept at all.

Brian was up before I was, and I laid in bed, listening to him in the bathroom, going about his morning routine. Early morning light was just beginning to peek through the blinds in our bedroom, which happened to be turned just the right way to get most of the sun in the morning. Brian usually hated it, but judging by the streak of sunlight that was stretching across his pillow, I guessed that morning it had been to his benefit, helping him to wake up so that he could go do whatever it was he felt he needed to do for Michael.

We’d only briefly talked about funeral plans the night before, because Michael had broken down into tears at the prospect, and Ben had gently suggested that we wait until morning to try to take care of all of that. Michael did manage to say, however, that Deb had planned everything already after Carl had passed away, because she didn’t want him to have to go through what she had while trying to plan Carl’s. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to sit in an office and try to figure out what another person’s last wishes would have been, nor would I want Michael, Ben, Brian or anyone else to have to do that for Debbie. Not to mention what a tall order it would be to even begin to do such a thing for Debbie Novotny -- a woman who had lived her life in the most non-traditional way possible, and who deserved a send-off just as unique as she was. It was best that she had made those decisions on her own.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, trying to clear the thick fog from my brain just like I did every morning now -- a lingering effect from my accident that was always worse if I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I put my feet on the floor, stood, and stretched, then padded into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee while I waited for Brian to finish in the bathroom so I could take a piss.

He emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later fully dressed -- jeans, a sweater, and boots -- with his hair done, looking ready for the day, and nothing at all like the man I’d spent the night holding as we both cried. I knew that man was still underneath of Brian’s perfectly poised exterior, though. He’d merely put on his armor.

I did what I needed to do and came back out still in my pajamas, looking every bit as out-of-sorts as I felt. Thankfully, by then the coffee was done. I was going to need a lot of it to even begin to get through the day.

I made us both breakfast -- mentally thanking my mother for leaving enough food to feed a small army in our refrigerator -- and we ate in silence. There wasn’t really anything that needed to be said. There probably wasn’t much that we could say, anyhow.

The whole situation sucked. It was bound to happen eventually, and I think on some level we all knew that, but being right in the middle of it still felt surreal.

I picked at my plate, feeling the first pulses of a headache starting behind my eyes -- another side effect of not getting enough sleep. Now Brian was the one asking me if I was okay. I wasn’t, and normally it wouldn’t have taken much to get me to agree to go back to bed, but that wasn’t really an option, given that I had to be the one driving if Brian was going anywhere in our rental car. I told him that, and he looked pissed, but he stopped trying to convince me to go lie back down.

I yawned as I stood up from my chair and scraped what was left of my breakfast into the trash can before I went to get dressed. When I came out, Brian was nowhere in the house -- I found him in the driveway, sitting in the driver’s seat of our rental car, installing his portable hand controls.

“Brian,” I sighed, rubbing my fingers over the space between my eyes and wishing this headache would go away because I needed to be able to function. “You can’t do that.”

“Fuck that guy and fuck what he said.” Brian finished tightening the wing nuts that would secure the device to the pedals and sat up straight. I could see in his eyes how little use it was going to be to argue with him, but my tendency to worry pushed me to anyway.

“What if you get in an accident? You’re not covered by the insurance.”

“Then I’ll buy them a new car.”

“Brian--”

“I should probably just buy my own damn car to keep here, if I’m not going to be able to rent one now without a damn escort.” Brian was continuing on as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “I could do that and leave it in the garage, and have Mikey drive it once a week so long as he promises not to get it fucking vandalized.”

I knew exactly what this was -- this was Brian getting agitated over something irrelevant just to have something else to focus on. I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut as a stronger pulse of pain worked its way through my head -- the sunlight was starting to get to me. That was what got Brian’s attention, and he stopped mid-unintelligible-grumble the second he saw it.

“Justin,” he said, his tone suddenly much softer. “Please, go lie down. You don’t have to go with me. I’m okay. I promise I won’t get in an accident.”

“You don’t know that. That’s kind of what ‘accident’ means -- you don’t know it’s going to happen.” I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore the pain in my head, but that was getting steadily more difficult. I really didn’t want to let Brian go by himself, but it was becoming apparent that my head had other plans, and I knew he was right -- I should go lie down, even though it made me nervous that Brian was going to take off in the car without me. Particularly since his mood the day before had turned on a dime several times, and today was likely to be much the same. I didn’t have the brain space at that moment to entertain the various options, though -- I was too tired, and I was quickly realizing that I really, really didn’t feel good.

“Well, I’ll try my best not to,” Brian said, gently bringing me back to reality. He hoisted himself from the car back to his wheelchair and took my hand, pulling me back toward the house, where he led me back to the bedroom and practically pushed me down onto the bed -- still gentle, but insistent. He dug my medication out of my suitcase, opened the bottle, and palmed a couple, handing them to me before he went to get me a glass of water, which he left on the nightstand. “You rest here, and I’ll be back this afternoon.” He laid his hand over mine and squeezed it reassuringly.

“Okay,” I whispered, the pain in my head having escalated quickly enough that I really wasn’t inclined to argue anymore. Not that Brian was going to take no for an answer.

He leaned in and kissed my forehead -- one of those sweet things Brian does just for me that he’d probably kill me for telling anyone else about -- then squeezed my hand again and said, “I love you,” before he turned and left the room.

I heard the car start outside just before I closed my eyes and let myself drift off to sleep.