Blame Me, Dear, For Any Disaster. (Shame)

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Title: Blame Me, Dear, For Any Disaster
Author: delgaserasca @ tja_rama
Fandom: Shame
Spoilers: for end of film
Warnings: references to self-harm and a (failed) suicide attempt
Summary: Sissy (Brandon); She's not a bad person; she's just in a bad place. Sissy heals.

When she's finally ready to be discharged, Brandon is there. Brandon's been there nearly every day since she woke up in this too-white ward, looking more and more like death come living, and she wonders, really, which one of them was dying. Cut me and I bleed. But what about you?





The food stinks. She hates it. Can't you get me a burger, she mutters, and Brandon watches, unimpassioned. Eat the food, Sissy. He says it with kindness; it makes him younger. It's been twenty-two days. The nurses have stopped coming in to fix her bandages, but the doctor wants to check her stitches – again – and set her up with a shrink – again – before he's ready to let her go. Watching Brandon talk to him is a revelation. God fuck it, she thinks, how come I never knew you were such a good liar? Looking at him you'd never know he matched her cut for cut.





She's not a bad person; she's just in a bad place. They make her jump through hoops just to take a piss. The doctor's in his fifties; Sissy puts on her sweetest smile to greet him. To begin with she'd thought he was cute, talked him up the way she knew would work. Took a look at the beard on his face and thought, yeah, maybe, next time I'm going to date a real man. Turned herself over in the bed at night, and pressed her hips down until she could rub against her hand in small, tight circles, scratching that itch the only way she could. But he'd looked at her like a ragdoll, so now she does it out of spite. Hey sugar, looking good today. I like your tie, she says, reaching out, running her fingers down the silk. He side-steps her reach, walks to the end of the bed.

What's the matter with you, she says, losing her temper. What's the matter, can't get it up? Your dick fall off? Fucker. He gets on with his job, checking her chart, her stitches, asking her whether she's going to finish her lunch for once, or if he's going to have to send her up to psych where they keep the pukers and the starvers. I'm not one of them, she tries to explain, because she isn't. She isn't the kind of girl who gets bored. She knows what it means when she sticks it to herself. I want to live, she tries to explain. I didn't do this because I don't want to live, but no-one is listening, and it doesn't make a lick of difference in the end.





Brandon comes like clockwork, the way he does every fucking thing in his life. Early, before breakfast, when the sun is coming up over the buildings, and then late at night. Sometimes he sits with her whilst she eats, but he never brings any food with him. He must be eating on his way out; she can't smell it on him when he comes in. It feels like mercy. He knows she hates the food. Sometimes she wakes up in the evening, and he's got his hand around hers, a little too tight, his face pressed to the sheets. Hey, he says, light and easy and quiet, like talking to her like a person is going to send her over the edge again. Hi.

He comes, every day, and he sits with her, and sometimes they watch cartoons, and sometimes he talks about the city, or the news - anything but what needs saying because Brandon's never liked to talk, and sometimes he holds her hand, so she can't say what she wants to say, not even if he deserves it, because she meant it when she said he's her brother, and she loves him.





Fuck, it itches. The nurses cut her nails, or what was left of them, but she can't help but pick at the bandages. She's done this before, of course. She's an expert. The itch isn't all in her wrists, some of it's in her chest; some of it's a fever. After the first time she peeled them off, a bloody mess, the nurses took to doping her up. She saw the shrink like that, a fat woman with thick-rimmed glasses. Jesus, skip a meal or two. Won't kill you, she thinks, and that makes her laugh, because that's irony, right? That's funny?

She doesn't feel right strapped to this bed, and she doesn't like the light, and she hates the food they serve, and she hates everyone, fucking Brandon, fucking Fisher, fucking Judas who left her with nowhere to stay until she had to knock on her brother's door.





When she opens her eyes she sees Brandon. You prick, she thinks, she says, it crosses her mind, you bastard. He might have been crying. He looks bruised enough, and someone's taken a swing at him some time recent. Maybe it was her. He looks as bad as she feels. She probably looks worse. Hung out to dry; well, they've been here before.

Prick, she says, as loudly as she can, but it comes out thread like a whisper. Brandon's got her hand in his, and she says it again. Prick. Bastard. But he just takes it, like he's earned it, and it takes all the fun out of her fit.

He squeezes her hand, like maybe he finally gets it, and she holds on until her eyes close again.





The first time— only Brandon had known. He'd found her in the ward and helped her to hide her arms so that no-one at school would see. It had meant something to her at the time. Now? Now it means even more. I didn't do this to hurt you, she thinks, she says when she sees his face, grey and heavy and bruised. I didn't do this for you.





To begin with, she sleeps. It's cold where she is. That's New York, she thinks. New York, New York.

blame me, dear, for any disaster
oh, how the kerosene ran dry.
we made our bed in that familiar graveyard
between the sternum and the spine.
-- chris pureka, song for november

end.