Arsenic and Old Lace (slash) ficlet

[icarus_chained]

For a prompt on comment_fic. And yes, before you ask, I may be prompted to insanity at the drop of a hat -_-;

Title: Shades of Sanity
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Characters/Pairings: Dr Einstein, Mortimer Brewster. Dr Einstein/Mortimer, maybe implications of past Jonathan/Dr Einstein
Summary: Dr Einstein and Mortimer, and comfort in Jonathan's wake
Wordcount: 535
Warnings/Notes: Violence, implications of past abuse/torture/violence, and just generally all the attendant screwed-up-ness of AaOL
Disclaimer: Oh, so very much not mine

Shades of Sanity

There were times the good doctor wondered if the younger Brewster realised how ... unorthodox ... some of his views were. If he realised that his views on marriage, and relationships, and exactly what things are appropriate to do with old friends(-ish) of your brother, were not, perhaps, wholly conventional.

He wasn't complaining, you understand. Lying on his side, listening to the man babble cheerfully alongside him, feeling the casual (and gentle) hand skate absently along his ribs, he was most definitely not complaining. But he did ... wonder.

He'd always known Jonathan was insane. It had been difficult to miss, even more so to avoid, an ever-present terror lurking at the edges of your thoughts whenever the man was within a hundred miles of you. Jonathan Brewster had been mad, absolutely mad, and possessed of a truly unholy glee when it came to hurting people. The doctor, though fortunate enough to be too useful to damage out of hand, had still had first-hand knowledge of that. You did not escape unscathed, living under the auspices of Jonathan's madness.

Jonathan's brother, he thought, carried his own brand of insanity.

Not so gleeful, not so terrifying. The opposite, really. A man who had almost moved the doctor to genuine worry, who had almost (almost) made him step out of line, and into Jonathan's path. Cheerful, and inane, and somewhat stupid, all these things. Blustering, foolish. But not ... not Jonathan's dark glee. Not the vicious, lustful light in his eyes.

But insane nonetheless. A bizarre code of morals, a strange attachment to some rules over others, a determination not to visibly indulge the way his uncle had. But still detached, in his own way, from the generally accepted paths of sanity.

Cheerfully accepting the doctor's lust, for example, his fear and his hesitance, the cool touch of hands that lingered, perhaps, for too long on the expressive lines of his face, twitching absently for a scalpel. Blinking bemusedly at the soft plea, shrugging as he went along with it. Bizarrely content to lie on the floral hotel bedspread, and rattle off inanities of the stage and married life to soothe the lurking terrors of a life lived remembering Jonathan. Accepting, so very casually, these small insanities, in lieu of the greater, darker and more intrusive ones that had so shaped his brother. Accepting them, perhaps, because of his brother, and the memories of things that did not fit within sanity's bounds, that must be lived through regardless.

Yes, the doctor thought, curled beside him of a midnight's dreaming. Mortimer Brewster was, like the family that raised him, most definitely insane.

But feeling the soft tracery of hands that did not tighten to a vicious, bruising pinch on a whim, watching the dark eyes over the burbling mouth and the lucid compassion there, he did not think it a bad insanity. Not a bad insanity at all.

He smiled, faintly, a little quirk of a lip under nervous eyes, and curled close to rest his head on Mortimer's shoulder, only barely interrupting the flow of the rant. No, he thought. He was, most definitely, not complaining.

Perhaps a little insanity, in the right dose, might even be good for you.