I went through
hell to post this...god damnit took like five hundred tries and for some reason the fuckin ljcut isnt working so fuck...i just posted on here and I need a new layout...FML!
”God created Man, so that he wouldn’t have to feel anything. I think he just ended up feeling more than he did before.”—Maddy Muller “I didn’t think you believed in God anymore,”
Kevin’s voice was a cold curiosity from the doorframe where he leaned. Joe flinched at the sound of his older brother’s observation but didn’t move from his kneeling position on the floor.
“Why would you say that?” His own voice was weak and timid in response and Joe hates how it makes him think back to when they were younger and Kevin would catch him with his hand in the cookie jar. Young and greedy, naïve and stupid. Joe turned away from Kevin and splayed his fingers on the bed sheets before him.
“I don’t know,” And Joe can hear the shrug in his brother’s voice more than he can see it, “You just haven’t seemed that much into faith since Ni—“
“Stop it,” Joe hisses, seethes the words out from between gritted teeth before whirling on Kevin, his face contorted in harsh angles, like he’s daring his older brother to continue. Kevin only gives a hard bark of laughter, holding his hands up in surrender but Joe can read the wrathful mockery in his hazel green eyes.
“Whoa, fine. But Joseph, you can’t hide forever. Not from the fact that he’s gone, that he’s not coming back. No matter how hard you pray.”
A shattered roar tore itself from Joe’s throat and he lunges himself at the curly haired boy who stood feet from him. His own flesh and blood who mocked him in the moment of his most brutal and raw self-realization.
“Stop it! Shut up! Just shut up!” Joe screamed, his fists striking out to connect with something solid, something real, “Why can’t you keep your
fucking mouth shut for
one minuet. He’s dead! Our baby brother is dead and you turn it into a thing about faith and God?” Joe was livid, rage shaking his body and turning him into a crazed and frenzied version of the boy he used to be, “Well fuck God. Fuck him and his morals. It’s all just a joke. One big, fat
joke. I want nothing more to do with it. Nothing!”
“You talk about Nick’s death like it’s
God’s fault,” Kevin scoffed, grabbing Joe by the wrists in a vice like grip as the younger boy attempted to damage him like his words had Joe, “This isn’t a matter of religion, Joseph! Yeah, Nick is dead and gone, six feet under and all that
shit but don’t keep trying to turn this away from yourself!” Kevin’s words bit into Joe’s flesh like tiny bombs, detonating on impact and blowing away bit by bit till all that was left was a bloody mass and the cold edges of shrapnel, “Nick slit his wrists with
your name on his lips, not God’s. Our brother is dead because he couldn’t handle the sin you two became, just by
being together. Think about it Joseph,
you put the blade in his hands,
you put the nails in his coffin. Not God.
You.”
Joe was sobbing as Kevin finished speaking, he was wilting against the older boy, sagging to the hardwood floor under the weight of his guilt; the shackles Kevin’s hands around his wrists formed were the only thing keeping him up. His head hung between his shoulders and his dark hair fell across bloodshot eyes, red from the tears slipping down his cheeks and staining Kevin’s jeans in patches of dark blue.
“I
loved him!” Joe shuddered, his body heaving with the burden of his howling, “All I ever did was love him and even that wasn’t enough! So he was my little brother, so we shared the same blood, so I loved him in a way I shouldn’t have, but it was love right? Love all the same,” The raven-haired boy was pleading now and Kevin couldn’t actually tell if it was with him, or the god neither one of them really believed in anymore,
“Damn it! Paul,” Joe continued with a scream, thrashing his head from side to side, struggling to break free of
everything, “Nick meant the world to me, he was my life, my other half, my
reason and it sounds fake and
fucking cheesy, but now he’s gone, now he’s
dead, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Everything I believed in is
gonegonegone. I never meant for it to kill him. I didn’t think—“
“And that’s just it,” Kevin ground out, hard fire burning in his gaze as he dropped all the way down to his knees so that he could look his broken younger brother squarely in the eyes, “You
didn’t think. You didn’t notice how much he was fading, how much of him was wasting away. He loved you too, Joe, I know that, but love just wasn’t enough. It just couldn’t push the truth away. Nick was a sixteen year old growing up on his belief that God made him who he was, gave him all his faults, all his gifts. To fall in love with you was the biggest sin he could
ever commit. He couldn’t do it, Joe, he just couldn’t and love can only carry you so far,” Kevin wasn’t trying to be cruel, he was just trying to get Joe to see the grounds behind it, to see it the way Nick had, “You can’t face the world with just love in your pocket. You need something more tangible than that, something
more and that’s what Nick was looking for, that’s what Nick needed.”
“He had me Kevin! He had
me. Why wasn’t that enough?” Joe choked out, desperation turning his eyes black with grief. He yanked himself free of the guitarist’s grasps and tore at his hair, crying out in the pitiful agony brought on by his shattered heart.
Kevin shivered, sorrow and smoldering anguish melting at the edges of his cold and practiced façade as he watched his brother tear himself apart. They were both burning in the silent terror of loss, in the vast stretch of the petrifying realism that comes after the death of a loved one. Kevin didn’t know how much longer he could stay angry; how much longer he could blame Joe alone, for killing their brother, he knew at some point, he’d have to admit, to himself at least, that he only took this out on Joe because he was so afraid of what he’d find if he looked in the mirror.
Reaching out, Kevin brought Joe’s hands back together by his wrists, slapping the boy’s palms harshly against each other and keeping them there by enclosing them with his own. Freeing one of his hands, he jerked Joe’s face up with a firm grasp on his chin, forcing him to meet his deeply searching stare.
“Ask
Him,” Kevin spit, the bittersweet cut of his words splicing the air between them and he stood, leaving Joe kneeling on the floor of their deceased brother’s bedroom, hands clasped as if in prayer while the damned blasphemer cried, begging Kevin, begging God, begging Nick to allow him to repent for his darkest hurt.
A/N: So it’s 4 am and I just watched the most recent Gossip Girl and sobbed my eyes out and felt so hallow and reread basically every angsty fic I’ve written and some of Lizzie’s just for good measure and the Ani Difranco station on Pandora made me cry harder so I’m going to bed to just die. As always, let me know what you think.
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politelypuzzled's journal
hopefully depressed
numb
geeky
Nick, Come snuggle with me
sad
sick
disappointed
pissed off
life changingly epic
ly PISSED!
