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The hospital was located between the Santa Maria courthouse and Neverland. When I got there I entered by a side entrance to avoid any fuss out front. On the hospital’s second-floor corridor there was an unusual number of people hanging around that was just typical about literally every outing of my dear little brother. There was a cluster of dark-suited bodyguards around one closed door to a private room, and they wordlessly parted to let me enter.
Inside the curtain was half-drawn. Michael was leaning against the bed, wearing only a striped hospital gown and matched trousers. I saw mother and Joseph there, too, sitting near the door. Katherine was clutching a rosary-bead in one of her hands.
“Hi, Erms,” Michael said in his usual whispery voice.
“What happened?” I blurted out. Michael winced, as if in a curl of disdain towards my voice. I spun on my feet. Sitting by the door of the infirmity Joseph merely watched us with a slightly raised eyebrow.
Michael answered for himself. “I fell in the bathtub and bruised my lungs.”
Bruised his lungs? How did he just fell and so easily bruise his lung? He was in his mid forties, not seventies. Michael seemed genuinely ill for a man his age, though. The thin medical gown they draped on him cling to his frame and, without those epaulettes and padded military-styled costumes that dressed him up like a little toy soldier rather than a real one, his narrow shoulders looked pitifully skinny. I walked up to his bed and saw him visibly cringed from my frame, as if he was scared of me. For no reason.
No?
“Was it that bad? You have a court to attend at eight and half, “ I wondered, as my fingers tried to reach for the sagging cloth hugging his chest, to possibly see the damage underneath, now wrapped in pristine white bandages. Instinctively Michael’s fingers went up around my wrist, to stop me. I could feel the protruding bones in his hand. A strange sense of foreboding suddenly came to me. I did not remember the last time I saw his naked chest. It must be back before he was 21.
“I fell on my rib.” He said, although his eyes were not cast at me. He kept stealing odd glances at the corner of the room. I turned my head at his direction and found Joseph. “And landed on it with all my weight. My body is pretty fragile.”
For a moment I did not move and neither did he. Why so wary? We had been very affectionate physically back in our youth. Back when we did not have enough rooms and Michael and I had to share one. Michael had been easily terrified by thunder and lightning; he believed it was a sign of Jehovah unleashing His rage, and sometimes when the fear became omnipotent he would crawl into my arms, trembling. But of course that was a long time ago, and our relationship had not warmed to better ever since.
I relented and let go of him first, if only because it was becoming odd to hold onto his gown. Michael slumped softly against the tented blankets and pillows. Joseph, seemingly cared not at all about the whole show of fuss, immediately launched into a monologue about possible future concerts hosted in China. Michael did not comment much but he also did not seem fazed. Both of us knew that’s how Joseph was; we had stopped expecting otherwise from him. After all, one could almost say he was offering consolation of his own kind, to Michael, by skipping the excruciating existence of presence and focus instead in a promising future, should there ever be one. Michael just sat there and listened and stared listlessly at some invisible point at the ceiling, his head lolled back on white pillows that looked less pallid than his face, ignoring all of us. For a time I thought he was falling asleep.
Then at some point he suddenly became agitated, and started to talk while gesturing so wildly in the air I was amazed the iv drip still managed to be tapped to the back of his hand. A vein stood out there like a blue worm beneath the translucent skin.
“This is all a despicable scheme.” He sobbed. “They want me dead. They want me dead so they can bury all the dirty secrets with me.”
“What are you talking about? “ I asked. "Who are ‘they'?”
He paid me no heed. “There was a time when they want me. Not anymore. Now it’s better off for everyone that I am dead.”
His bony hand struck on the stand near the bed, render it askew, and he let out a little cry of pain. Tears immediately welled up in his eyes. I rolled my eyes internally. Then the wide sleeves of his gown had been torn down a quarter inch by the move and there was something on his left wrist that caught my attention; purpled edge of a bruise that had not even gone yellow yet, that looked suspiciously like fingerprints.
“What happened to your wrist?” I wondered aloud.
Michael looked down at his body as if he had no idea what I was talking about. “It was an accident,” he said. He adjusted the cuff of his gown to cover them up in a manner so girlish it irked me. “It was nothing. I told you I bruise easily.”
He must either think I was blind or a fool; you did not get these kinds of bruises unless you just got roughly manhandled, be it some kind of strip search or in bed or both. Or he was simply expecting you to play along the game of a united lukewarm family front. After all it had been what you have constantly been doing all along, right? Pretending you knew, or cared.
I did not like how the soft whispery inner voice in my head sounded too much like Michael.
Strangely, our little exchange seemed to calm him, as if he just realized he talked too much and would spill some unwanted secrets in the air if continued to do so.
"Jermaine, I really appreciate you coming, " He said, softly as always, as if he expected people to strain and lean forward just to hear him speaking. He tried a smile, wan and thin. "But I am very tired now and need to rest."
He wanted the family all out. Joseph did not say a word when he walked out the room, and mother went to his side to kiss his cheeks. Michael received it with a murmur of love wishes, but I caught him glancing at Joseph again warily.
I did not move. The door closed behind us with a click; Michael regarded me carefully.
"I have a disc issue," He told me in a tone as if dressing a difficult toddler, "And I hurt my back badly in the late nineties. It's embarrassing, but don't act so dramatic about it."
"Is that what you've been busy doing when keeping your distance to your own family?" I asked him, "to let your Hollywood friends run their trains on you? Well, how many of them? Your attorneys? Allies? Producers? Do they get a chance just for asking?"
Michael's gaze, rested on me, inscrutable, did not falter. He did not even react towards my overt insinuation; the expression on his face was like a mask, pleasant and blank. He said: "I don't understand. What you are talking about?"
I reached for his shoulder in a fit of unspeakable rage. To shake him of this trance of mincing calmness, perhaps. Or simply look at me when I’m talking to you. It felt like gripping a bird, and he made a raw, involuntary jerk. In that flinch the robe slipped off his shoulder again, and I saw more, what the high neckline had been hiding. The bruises extended down, disappeared below the collarbone toward his chest. They were not symmetrical and looked very intentional.
Michael slapped my hands away with a strength that surprised me. He always was much more physically capable than his slender frame suggested. “Don't touch me.” He snapped, and although Michael almost never raised his voice - not truly; at times it became clear it was more like a defect than a conscious choice - there was a blade in it now. He sounded angry, and underneath the heat he sounded scared. The sting on my hand irritated me and I gave him a rough shove, pushing him to the head of the bed, and grabbed one of his wrists. Instinctively he tried to recoil and I used the chance to seize his other wrist and pinned both of them to the wall with just one hand. This caused the iv drip to finally detached and slipped and the tape remained on the back of his hand was smeared quickly with a smudge of red. He cried out in pain, and opened his mouth as if to scream or demanded his bodyguard outside to get me off him, and without a second thought, I leaned down while still pinning his wrists and pressed my lips to his, with proper tongue, licking and sucking at his gum. His lips were dry but very soft, and there was a sweet mint taste in his mouth, mingled with something pharmic and bitter.
Michael took a sharp intake of breath between my mouth. He tried to struggle, but it took no effort to pin his body down beneath me with my whole weight. When I finally let go his lips were swollen and red; it cast a luscious color on his white face. He was glaring at me incredulously, chest rising and falling in quick succession of breath. "What's wrong with you? Did you smoke anything when you got here?" He demanded, still trying to wriggle free of my restraint. I did not answer; busy trailing my hand down his torso until I reached the hem of his upper robe to lift it, and Michael curled his leg and tried to kick me in the stomach. I dodged at the last second, angered, and without another thought, slapped him open-handed, sharply across his cheek. The sound cracked ringingly loud in the room.
His sideturned face turned red so quickly it was a bit terrifying to watch. Michael bruised like an overripe fruit; changed color at the tiniest pinch or grip, or a slight breath at wrong direction. His huge eyes, when he looked at me in hurt and disbelief, were brimming with tears. His whole body was trembling like a loose leaf in cold wind, and when I tugged at the elastic of his sleeping trousers to drag it up and expose his legs he let out a whimper, trying to close his thighs. I shoved one knee between them to keep them splayed. He did not try to kick me again. Michael folded like wet paper in the face of slightest physical intimidation. He would retract, backstab or abandon people all he wanted - as long as it was behind their back. When confronted people he had betrayed face to face he became a pliant, servile, unresisting mess. This everybody who knew him long enough knew.
Now I could finally see the ruin map that was his naked body. There was brown patches of uneven pigments on his chest where it was not covered by bandages, sparse and small, like someone had splattered coffee across white paper. His sternum was visible on his chest, and I thought I could see his heartbeat from outside. When I tore the remaining clothing off, I see more colorful marks enclosing his upper arms and his protruding hipbones. Bruises bloomed around his collarbones, looking vicious on his pale skin. Michael watched me watch him, tearful, lips quivering, but when he spoke again his voice was eerily steady, almost cold.
"Happy what you see? Now would you get off me?"
Instead I crawled up to the narrow medical bed that creaked under my weight, between his open, bare thighs. Michael took a sharp intake of breath, and I watched with a bit of malicious amusement as realization of my intention finally dawned on his face, and he started to struggle, even more frantically, against me. For the first time he looked frightened and scared, the forever calm and cold demeanor he always wore around us stripped away. The mask that spoke forever how delicate and breakable and fragile he was, that made me want to reach out to squeeze his slender neck until he choked and begged. I wondered, unbidden, if it was exactly what he intended all along. And if that was exactly what they felt, watching him.
"Why, you whore yourself out to anyone you know at first sight, but cannot stand a chance with your own brothers?" I said. His whole body went rigid with facial immobility of disgust at my choice of crude words, but I just hooked one finger into the satin fabric of his expensive-looking underwear. I could see from his expression that he warred between opening his mouth to scream for getting other people here to stop the madness and letting others find him in such a compromising position. And I knew he would not take the risk of being found out like this. After all, he was the superstar here who got more to lose. I shoved two fingers into his slightly opened mouth. He hesitated, so I dug my fingers a bit deeper, watching him gag, and they came out shiny and wet.
I settled one hand on his one knee to spread his legs further apart. His thighs seemed to be the only part of him that did not look that much pathological; they were slender but shapely, and between the cheeks rested the soft pucker of his hole. I shoved two of my fingers, moist with his saliva, into it, and he let out a small cry of pain.The ring of muscle felt very tight around my fingers, but I noticed his hole was a bit puffy, as if used only recently.
"This… why are you doing this? It's wrong." he pleaded again, when I added another finger not gently, and scissored his hole with them. Tears were finally running down his face despite his effort, and his mascara - did he do a full set of makeup after he was rushed into the emergency room? Or did he go to shower, before his slip, with makeup on? With Michael’s queerness you could never know - was a smeared black mess around his eyes. “We are brothers.”
“Were we, “ I muttered, as I removed my digits to grip his hip to flip him on his stomach. He was so light; it hardly took any effort. A cry of pain broke from his throat as his back arched, unceremonious, when it hit the mattress. Distantly I remembered it was possibly not a very good idea to position him like this, with the back injuries he suffered from some earlier stage malfunction, or so he self-proclaimed. But in the end I just climbed up between his thighs. I grounded my erection, still fully clothed, against his bare ass.
"Come on, " I said, when he thrashed weakly beneath me, "don't put on all these act like a virgin bride. We both knew how many men had already fucked you."
Do I know? I was not entirely sure. Truth to be told, I had not known that much about Michael ever since my marriage to Hazel Gordy. But there had been suggestive signs, stretching backwards well before today, if I was being honest with myself. Back when we were still living together in Hayvenhurst: Michael would sometimes go out, late at night, and did not come back until the early morning of second day. Afterwards he always seemed sick, tired, fiddle-footed, and jumped whenever someone approached him. I had tried not to look too deeply into it back then, telling myself Michael was an adult man and that his private life did not concern me. And in the years after that, the long interval of time where Michael became stranger and stranger and drifted further apart from us, I had perhaps tried and failed to picture him with anyone in bed at all.
Not until today, where he laid those erotic marks motted his body bare. And something unspeakable in it enraged me; it felt despicable, for his part, to be such a soft, malleable creature with all those fancy, famous people he had seemed forever so worshipped ever since his childhood, while keep all the appearance around the family, people he should have trusted most, who were the only people who would remain and not abondon him when everything he had once had tumbling down to nothing. Had he not been ungrateful and had to now lay on the bed he himself had made?
Tho' I vow'd that I never would leave her,
She turn'd out a cruel deceiver...
I was already so hard in my trousers it somehow hurt. I got my cock out and used the saliva-coated fingers to gave it some stroke. Then I pushed the head of my cock against his hole and watched, dry-mouthed, as my thick, dark length stretched it. The stark contrast was almost grotesque. And very, very erotic. I had imagined it would be repulsive - after all, I did not even in an iota considered myself a faggot, let alone one into fucking his brothers - but strangely it wasn't. Michael had diverged so thoroughly with the rest of family since we walked into adulthood that, by now, the body beneath me seemed to belong to another different species. I felt like one sideway move from me would break something in him and this paradoxically turned me on. It felt good to be on top of him, holding him down, having him under my mercy. This cold, devious, manipulative little whore who cried when you slightly raise your voice and went undermining your collaborators and careers without an ounce of remorse the moment you turn your back to him.
I shoved in in one long brutal stroke. Michael let out a scream that was half voice, half air. Despite everything, he was dry and very tight to the point it hurt, and for a moment I simply buried there, savoring the heat of his inside. I had never fucked a man before in my life; it felt better than I imagined.
"Fuck," I breathed. A thin smear of diluted blood coated my cock when I slowly pulled out - likely something had tore inside him from the lack of proper stretching, the only slickness available today. I pushed back in just as slowly at first, dragging every inch out before sinking deep again. The bed complained under us. I pinned his hip down hard and ran my palm up the ladder of his spine, feeling every ridge. Michael had stopped fighting the moment I buried myself inside him. When the head of my cock dragged over that swollen, sensitive place deep inside, his whole body shuddered and his hole clenched around me in a hot, rhythmic flutter. I adjusted the angle, chasing that same spot on every stroke. Each time I grazed it he made a broken, high sound - half moan, half mewl. He was much more vocal than I’d expected, but again, I remembered he always squealed when he was a kid. Which reminded me of something.
"Did Joseph know? " I asked him, unable to shake off the suspicious image of him glancing at Joseph when I first got here. "What is there to know?" He managed to bite back, and I chuckled darkly at this obvious dodge, and drove in harder, deliberately slamming against that place. His arms buckled. He kept collapsing onto the mattress, unable to keep his ass up any longer. I thought about his ranting and wondered if he was alluding to more things I did not know yet, or had simply lost his total grip on reality. Michael just turned his head and coughed weakly, refusing to answer further. He seemed to not able to support his weight on his fours anymore; he kept collapsing onto the bed, unable to keep his ass up. I looped an arm around his torso to keep him upfront, and wrapped the hand around his cock. It had stayed soft so far, dangling uselessly in the air, and I gave it a harsh stroke. Michael emitted a high, womanish shriek from back of his throat as if in pure pain instead of pleasure.
"Do you want to be caught getting railed by your brother? Hush." I panted in his ears. I was not particularly worried, though; I was confident he would not call for help no matter what I did. The homosexual rumors had surrounded him for years, let alone the molest charges going on rampage now, where people uniformly believed like clockwork that if he was guilty he certainly was soley into sucking and masturbating the cocks of little boys. And getting caught engaging in homosexual intercourse - let alone being fucked by his own brother - saying it would be devastating for his public image would be an understatement, if at this point there was any 'public image' of him left at all.
So I bottomed out, deep and harsh, plunge to the hilt. Michael, as I expected, just continued to let out pained, tiny cries as I thrusted rhythmic into him. I did not touch his cock again. Somehow it felt strange, as if doing so reminded me unpleasantly that he was, indeed, a man.
Michael had lost all his grip by now and his face was mashed sideways in the pillow, his entire posture scaffolded entirely by my arm around him. His breathing had also become shallow and quick, and the pace erratic. When he inhale there was a nasal tone as if it physically pained him to even draw breath. I pulled out a bit, and watched his sideturned, tear-stricken face. His mouth was slightly open, trembling, as if he was trying to speak, only no sound came out. I wondered if he was begging Him for mercy and forgiveness, for commiting the crime of exnuptial adultary, licentiousness and incest. Michael had always been a believer, creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God and all that.
“Are you alright? “ I asked him.
Was he posing again? Michael had a notorious history of feigning illness to elicit pity. Everyone who spend enough time around him knew it. He had been so good at it that I suspected he himself started to lose track between what was fake and what was real. Somatization, is it what the doctors call it? I grasped his chin with one hand and studied his face closely. His very long lashes - I could not tell if they were fake or not - fluttered, but otherwise he just squeezed his eyes shut.
Well, if he was unwilling to answer, there was always a way to find out. I let go of his face and flipped him over again, and dragged his limp body across the surface until his legs were dangling on the edge of the medical bed, and I shoved back into him in that position, every thrust now deep and quick, using his body to chase my own release. Michael seemed to have no strength left to even wrap his legs around my waist, so I positioned one of them on my shoulder, holding it like a handle while I fucked into him. His face was still turned to the side and his face was now covered in a thin shen of sweat.
The orgasm hit me, and I thrusted one or two more times before stuttered to a halt. Cock still buried deep, grinding it on as thick white rope of cum filled his now sloppy hole. The sensation seemed to startle Michael from whatever psychic space he had retreated to, and he threw his head back as his body spasmed around me, weakly, as if no strength left at all. I noticed he did not get fully hard throughout the whole ordeal. I waited for a few second before pulling out of him, and watched his abused hole twitched, unable to close, and my cum dripped slowly out of it, leaked down from his thighs onto the soiled sheet. The sight almost got me hard again.
For a moment I was so tempted to just walk away and left him there. Michael, though, barely reacted at all. He just stared at the white ceiling with glassy eyes. Then slowly, as if in excruciating pain, he turned to his side, both bony arms raised to brace gingerly around his ribs, tried to drag his legs to his own stomach and curl into a fetal position. For a moment the whole room was silent save for the soft beeping of some remote machines and his labored, deliberately shallow panting.
Then he started coughing, one hand raised - in a still almost dainty manner - to cover his mouth, the sound came out initially was hoarse and weak; then the spasms deepened, wet and tearing, until it crescendoed into a violent fit of heaving convulsions that shook his entire emaciated frame. When he finally lowered his hand, a bright arterial smear of blood glistened in his palm. It blotched the pillow, ran down his chin, and soaked into the sheet beneath him.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I grabbed his shoulder and turned him towards me, and saw underneath the harsh light his skin, already colorless initially, seemed now to have taken on a greyish, clammy cast; there were fine beads of cold sweat stood out along his hairline and upper lip. His lips parted as if to speak, but another paroxysm seized him. Fresh blood sprayed across my chest in fine droplets. All remains of arousal inside me was doused to ice.
There’s no chance I could leave him like this. I grabbed some towels from the stand nearby, wet it, and wiped the mess from his face and chest. This, I mused, seemed to be another innate gift of my genius little brother: that everyone around him, regardless of their original job, would be at some point reduced to his nanny or babysitter. Nonetheless, there was something akin to deep agitation loomed over my chest as I pressed a clean towel to his mouth and held him upright enough so that he would not choke on his own blood. Then I retrieved another fresh one to clean between his legs, erasing the worst of those evidence. I stripped the sheet and disposed them into the biohazard bin. His hole looked swollen and abused, and there were fresh bruises blooming in his wrists and hips, and I tried to avert my eyes.
Through it all Michael was pliant and docile beneath my hand, letting me clean up the wound I myself had just inflicted on him and redress him like a doll. When I finally settled him between fresh pillows and held a towel to his mouth, he just coughed into it, until it gradually eased into wet, hitching breath. He used the back of his hand to smear away the spit and blood in the corner of his mouth.
"Do you get what you want from me?" He did not look at me. His eyes were cast downward, and his voice was hoarse. "If so, just get out."
I wanted to say something, things to tell, excuse, demand, desire, regret, loathing, spellbound, but all words eluded my tongue as I found myself staring instead, mesmerized, as if seeing him for the first time. His eyes were enormous and very dark on his gaunt, white face, and his lashes casting very lush shadows beneath the eyes. His lower lip was very red from being bitten hard. He looked so delicate and breakable and fragile. Suddenly I wanted to comfort him, tuck him in bed, wrap my body around him and kiss his long hair. A strange impulse but it arose unbidden. And not because he was my little brother, no. Had he been a woman I was sure I would just do so. Had he been a woman everything would have been infinitely easier. But he wasn't, right? And didn't that make everything confusing and complicated and detrimental and wrong?
Revulsion suddenly choked my senses. Where the revulsion were directed at - Michael, myself, or the whole situation - I could not tell. He did not spare another glance at me when I wordlessly got up and left the room.