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artificialqueens · 5 years

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And Now, We Wait (Branjie) - SnowBun

A/N: This took two weeks, at least ten cups of coffee, a visit to my best friend I haven’t seen in three years that lives eight hours away, and a fantastic beta (thank you and bless your soul pink-grapefruit-cafe) to write. Sorry to keep everyone waiting for this one since I announced I was writing this WEEKS ago, but it took a lot of planning and visualizing. I hope I do your Branjie dreams justice. If you have anything to message me or want me to write stuff, message me on holymolypestoaioli!! Xoxo

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Break-ups aren’t supposed to be this amicable. Not that he would know. To be honest, he’s really just guessing at this point.

The words and the bright white smile plastered on Jose’s face makes him think it’s not so bad, but then he sees the pain in his eyes. It isn’t like a knife that he plunged straight into his chest. No, it’s more like a flesh-eating disease.

He isn’t sure which one of them starts crying, but he knows he’s the first one to start laughing. His soft chuckle blends with his cackle, a cacophony of sound that paints the taupe hotel walls with miserable irony.

The smile on Jose’s face fades away with the laughter, and he thinks he’s never seen anything more heartbreaking before in his life. It’s all that is good and beautiful in the world, and he’s tearing it apart with his bare hands.

He opens up his arms, and when the shorter man melts into him, he realizes how unfair life is. The tears soaking through his grey t-shirt don’t belong there. The pained, heaving breaths don’t belong there. The only thing that belongs are the arms wrapped around his waist, tight like a corset.

Don’t leave.

He means for the thought to pass, but it lingers in his brain a little too long, just enough to make him wonder if this is the right thing to do. It’s just enough to make him wonder if this is what freedom should feel like.

There’s a final sob and shake to the fragile body with its skin like papers slipped under hotel room doors. He pushes away the thought, stores it in a filing cabinet that he might look at one day.

Jose pulls away from him, and he searches for the disease that dulls the glimmer in the brown eyes he’d started to call home. He hides them well enough for him to let any thoughts of taking it all back fade away.

He places a kiss on his forehead. There are words there, just floating around in the air, but he doesn’t say them. He leaves them there for Jose to find in the morning.

He loves him, he’s sure. He wouldn’t leave him if he didn’t.

December is easy enough to get through.

The number of whispers that she’s on season 11 are proportional to the gigs that she’s offered, and the ache in her chest decreases exponentially. Reducing everything down to simple mathematics makes the time pass by faster.

She’s finishing up a gig in Texas when she meets a man whose skin turns purple under the lights of the bar. When she pushes him against a wall outside the club and smears her lipstick on his mouth, she remembers that his name is Charlie.

The hook-up in her hotel room is so fast that she doesn’t even take off her make-up. She crashes onto the bed, sated and spent, and turns over to watch Charlie throw his legs off the edge. He laces up his shoes and takes a bottle of water out of the fridge.

All of a sudden, she feels too naked. She covers her lower half with the sheets, but she knows that it has nothing to do with skin.

She looks out the wide windows overlooking the city and wonders what the city below sounds like. Does it sound like stumbling out of clubs in Chicago, drunk on kisses and tequila? Does it sound like blaring car horns in New York when the cab can’t get her to a gig fast enough to calm a petite queen’s nerves?

“Hey.”

Charlie’s voice breaks her out of her reverie. As she watches him scribble something on the notepad on the desk, she realizes that he’s really not her type. He’s too tall and clean cut. Not to mention his ass is flat.

She feels nothing when he kisses her goodbye.

The walk from the bed to the desk feels nothing short of mechanical. She takes a seat and looks in the mirror she’s left there. The lack of a wig and the sullied /;/makeup only vaguely remind her of Brooke Lynn. It seems about right because she isn’t sure if she feels like herself anymore.

One wipe after another erases any trace of Charlie from her lips. She watches herself scrub at them, but she doesn’t stop when it starts to sting.

She looks at the notepad and sees that he’s left his number behind. She rips off the piece of paper, balls it up, and throws it in the bin along with the string of numbers she’d encrypted in her head five months ago.

When all the makeup is gone, he goes to the bathroom and lets the shower run for a minute. He thinks he needs a cigarette. Or maybe two. Maybe a pack if he’s really being honest with himself.

He allows the scalding hot water to turn his skin red. The colour doesn’t make him think of flushed chests with cat tattoos after too many shots. He swears it doesn’t.

It’s the last Saturday of 2018 when she decides to call her.

“Hey!”

Her voice is bright, like LA sunshine streaming in through windows over pancakes for breakfast. She tastes the ghost of the sweetness of real maple syrup, none of that weird synthetic stuff, on her tongue when they fall into bed together.

“Hi.”

The word comes out as a shaky, tired sigh. She doesn’t realize how exhausted she is until she hears it. The past month has been nothing but work, and if she’s doing it to distract herself from how lonely she feels, she let it happen anyway.

“How you doing?”

I just smoked a pack of cigarettes because I wanted to breathe in air that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.

“I’m doing good. You?”

“I got a gig here in Sacramento tonight.”

It’s 2000 miles too far away. She wants to see her, to just look at her to remind herself that she’s real, that those four months of happiness weren’t just a dream that she conjured up to keep herself sane.

As if on cue, she hears someone remind Vanjie that she has half an hour to get ready. She chuckles when she hears her reply with the requisite, “Yeah, yeah, I got it, bitch.” She misses it more than she wants to admit.

“Keep me company while I get ready?”

“Sure.”

She stays quiet, thinks of how she probably looks doing her makeup. The way she scrunches up her nose when she puts on the translucent powder, the way she squints her eyes when doing all the little details, the way she smiles when she thinks the contour is just right.

In contrast to the now blurred lines of her overdrawn lips after a night of performing and making out with trade, she thinks she must look perfect.

“Sooooo,” She drags the word out like a cigarette. “People suspect you’re coming back?”

“Bitch, I don’t gotta say a damn thing, all them hoes already know.”

She shrugs, feels the latex stuck to her shoulders as it shifts against her skin. “Well, no one deserved to come back more than you.”

“Awww, thanks B. Now, don’t make me cry or Imma head over there and whoop your ass.”

The banter is nice, normal, routine. It isn’t the game of pretend she was expecting. It’s friendship, and it’s a good one. She realizes it isn’t so bad after all.

“Shit.” She hears something fall. “Sorry, dropped my palette.”

“Damn, is it okay?”

“Broke an eyeshadow.” There’s a groan and she holds back a bemused laugh. “No worries, you’re going to get me a new one with that Anastasia money anyway.”

“You don’t even know if I’m going to win.”

“Ha!” She says it so loudly that she’s scared that she’ll lose hearing in her right ear. “You kidding me? I know you gonna win.”

She raises a sculpted eyebrow; ignores that she can’t see it on the other end. “What about the Dreamgirls, then?”

“Bitch, those hoes ain’t gonna give me shit if they win.”

The banter goes on, and if either of them remembers that the last time they spoke was when they woke up from drug-induced comas after being addicted to each other, they don’t mention it.

“You’re the only pussy I’ve ever fucked.”

She almost spits out her drink on the vanity. When she’d invited him to come to one of her gigs in LA, she wasn’t expecting him to be so distracting; but she doesn’t complain. He’s welcome to annoy her anytime, if she’s honest.

She spins around, throws a glare at the tiny Puerto Rican man cackling like his jaw has unhinged. His whole body laughs with him, his legs and arms flailing.

The laughter dies down into small chuckles, and she turns back to the mirror. She doesn’t remember putting that much blush onto her cheeks earlier.

The noise coming from the bar outside creeps its way into the dressing room, their safe haven. She wants everyone to shut up, wants everyone to respect how comfortable she is as she sinks into the blend of laughter and silence.

She’s called him every single day over the past two weeks, almost at the exact same time. She wants to be his friend, wants to be everything that she can to him without the commitment she knows she can’t afford. If it’s anything more than a desire for companionship, she overlooks it.

When she hears him humming along to American Boy, she stops begging for the music outside to stop.

She stares at herself in the mirror, all perfect lines and blended edges. She isn’t the best at painting her face, but as she watches the way her cheekbones shine under the fluorescent lights, she convinces herself that she’s damn good at it at the very least.

The material of her literal catsuit feels like a second skin. She looks at him through the mirror, watches as he scrolls through his phone and unconsciously bites his lip, and ignores how much she wants him to peel the layers away.

“Hey,” She turns to him, two lipsticks in her hands. “What color should I do?”

He taps a finger against his chin, and her eyes drift to the lips he’s puckered like he’s sucking on a Sour Patch kid. She’s mesmerized by the way his eyebrows furrow, the way his eyes narrow, the way he can’t stop making him look anywhere but fuck, stop it.

“The red one.”

Of course, he picks the red one. It’s his colour, and she knows it. He owns it, owns the ruby running through her veins, owns the plush velvet her feet rest on in her favourite hotel room, owns the sangria that goes straight to her head on Sundays with friends.

“Thanks.”

She draws his name, his body, his soul onto her lips. She sketches the sharp, precise lines, observes the way they turn into pleas stuck in the back of her throat because she’s too scared to be anything other than free.

“Good?”

He shoots her a smile and a thumbs up, and she wonders why she was expecting more.

There are three different moments where he thinks about refusing Jose’s offer.

The first is in the dressing room, when she takes off her mask and watches in the mirror as the one underneath smiles. He asks her if she wants to keep drinking at his place, laughingly says that it’s drinks and nothing more.

The second is when they’re walking, and all he can feel is the heat of LA, even in January. He sees the orange light of a streetlamp highlight the twinkle of Jose’s eyes in the absence of stars in the sky. He can’t really say no to that.

The third is when they’re at his front door, and Jose’s trying to dig his keys out of his pocket. “Shit, fuck, bitch,” He says under his breath, and he thinks he looks quite cute when he’s all frustrated.

He steps into the living room, and it hits him that everything is the same. Everything from the picture of Jose and his mom on the coffee table to the crease in the couch that he falls into when he gets home from the airport is the same.

By 3 AM, he has his long legs folded up onto the couch and his head set on Jose’s lap. There’s a hand playing at his curls, the colour of sunlight at noon. They listen to the sound of cars and steady breaths. It’s cosy, like sitting in front of fireplaces during winters in Canada.

“Remember those cream puffs we got that one time?”

“Mhmm.”

“Shit, I miss ‘em.”

He chuckles. He can still feel the alcohol coursing through him, even if it’s been half an hour since they’d last taken a shot of tequila that someone gave Jose for his birthday.

“You scared of anything?”

“What?”

“Anything.”

He thinks about his fear of showing too much emotion, his fear of failure, his fear of hurting people that fill the void that sucks everything up. They flash through his mind like a scrapbook, reminding him of all the things he pretends to not be afraid of.

“Spiders.”

“What the fuck?” He wonders briefly if the neighbours ever wake up in the middle of the night to that voice. “I was not expecting that.”

He laughs, and one of his curls is twirled around a finger. It’s intimate, but not romantic. It’s what they both need in a world as cold and cruel as the one they’ve signed up for. Not enough feels better than nothing.

“I have a flight at 10.”

There’s a groan, and an arm is thrown over his body before he can even make an attempt to get up. “Just leave your long log body here, we don’t gotta move.”

He looks up, sees the head thrown onto the back of the couch, and knows that the decision really isn’t his to make.

When Promo week rolls around, she suddenly feels the weight of thousands of eyes on her. They’re so heavy that she thinks that they might not even allow her to board the plane to LA.

They go to shoots and interviews, some of which she doesn’t even try to feign interest in. Her ears burn at the sound of questions repeated by different people who will never get to know who she is by asking her what filming was like.

The only thing that makes it better is drinking in Nina’s room at the end of the day. She’s sprawled out on the bed, Vanjie sitting on the edge beside her. Somewhere, she can hear Silky’s banshee laughter at one of Nina’s spot-on impressions.

The world stops in the small hotel room, too picturesque to be disturbed by the shitstorm that the rest of the universe is experiencing. As she lets the exhaustion from the first day seep into her skin, she feels the alcohol go straight to her toes.

“I’m going to stop drinking.”

She looks up, sees the eyebrow Vanjie’s raised so high it might just hit her wig line. Her eyes ask the question she can’t quite verbalize in the midst of Silky’s yelling. She shrugs at her, doesn’t bother to answer when there’s no judgment to answer to.

“Hey, you two.”

Their eyes travel to Nina who’s already out of drag and sipping on a drink.

“Did you answer each other?”

“What?”

Brooke’s eyebrows furrow together in puzzlement at the question. She looks to Vanjie, face blank like it always is whenever she doesn’t know the answer, and tries her best not to laugh out loud.

“When they asked you who the trade of the season is.”

“They didn’t ask me that.”

She watches Vanjie fold up her hands in her lap as her eyes fall. Her heart stops in her chest, suddenly petrified that pursuing this line of questioning would be too awkward for them, for this beautiful little thing they’ve built.

“Honey, we all know that I’m the true trade of season 11.”

Silky’s hands are on her hips, and she stares all three of them down. Laughter washes over the room, and the mood becomes infinitely lighter again. Brooke sees her shoot a quick wink at Vanjie when she thinks no one else is looking.

It dawns on her how delicate and fragile this all is. The rapport is perfect, probably the best thing she’s ever had since Steve came into her life. She can’t let it be destroyed by the world beyond the four walls.

She takes a deep breath, feels all her worry deep in her lungs. It slowly consumes her, devours her. She wastes away on Nina’s bed as notes of laughter and shouting harmonize all around her.

A hand starts to pat and stroke her wig, and she resolves to request that no interviews be done with them together.

The first thing she does after the episode airs is do a livestream with her.

They’re both de-dragging, making jokes in front of an audience like the history that they have with each other doesn’t run deeper than a friendship built off of competition. It’s acting, and they’re terrible at it.

She can’t help it that their dynamic is a mix of flirting and caring, the way it always has been. They joke about their comments on each other being trade, ask if they’re doing good, ignore the elephant in the room.

Her heart beats a little too fast each time she spots a comment saying that they look cute together or that they should hook up. She wants to shout, yell, scream at the top of her lungs that they’ve already tried.

It’s only then that she realizes the gravity of the situation she’s gotten herself into, the danger of putting a love that she never expected to have on display for people starved for it. She wants it for herself, can’t even have it for herself.

When the live ends, she picks up a pack of cigarettes and steps out onto the balcony. She looks out over the streets of Seattle, watches the people walking below- wondering what they’re thinking about, making up stories in her head for each one that strikes out to her.

With the first drag, she imagines that the man in the suit is coming home from the office to a wife whose beauty he no longer sees. He doesn’t really look at her anymore, aside from when he guilts himself into not starting an affair.

With the fifth drag, she imagines the girl, no more than 18, go to clubs that she should and shouldn’t be at. She takes shots, lets the fire burn down her throat, and dances with a guy that whispers empty promises.

With the tenth drag, she imagines the child, surprisingly still awake past midnight, arrive at his mother’s house. He asks why his dad can’t be there, asks questions with answers that get stuck along the way, and he’s rocked to sleep as tears fall onto the pillowcase.

Her phone pings. She looks at the message and returns to pretending that her story doesn’t exist. When she blows out the smoke, she asks it to take the parts of her soul she doesn’t want any more with it.

J: i’ll call u 2morrow

The first time he sees the story, a word flashes in his mind like bright red neon lights in the dark of night.

Shit.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He isn’t supposed to feel so invested, so concerned and so utterly relieved that she’s posted a song, their song on her story. He wants to take a red-eye just to ask what it all means.

Instead, he settles for Facetiming her in the back of the club he’s at. He’s received about ten different texts from Courtney about how she ever so casually and drunkenly mentioned him at her show, but he tries not to think too hard about it.

Which, knowing him, takes up way too much energy that he doesn’t have.

When she picks up, he can’t stop himself from thinking that she looks gorgeous. She is dark colours and skull dresses and everything he forces himself to believe he doesn’t want.

“Hey, you okay?”

She shrugs her shoulders at him, eyes throwing the question right back. Everything around him starts to fade away. Under the bright lights of the club, all he can see is the dejection on her face.

“You want to talk?” He almost has to yell over the music, tries his best to be coherent.

“Look,” She starts, and he knows that this isn’t going to go the way he wants. “I just had a few drinks. You know how I get all set—semti—all up in my feelings and shit.:

He opens his mouth to speak, but she shakes her head. This is not a subject to open up in a club, separated by cities and feelings that they haven’t come to understand quite yet. She tries her best to smile at him, and his heart clenches.

“You promise you’re doing okay?”

“Mary, I’m fine!” Her voice is joking again, no trace of the pain or hurt that he knows that they both still feel. “You don’t gotta worry about me.”

Someone goes in and out of Vanjie’s dressing room, and he’s suddenly conscious that he’s in public. He lowers his phone, tries his best to hide her from everyone else. Not that she’s his, anyway.

“Well, drink some water.” He says, and she laughs at him. “And uhm, can you send me that picture?”

She looks at him questioningly, and he feels like she’s right there, staring him down. Her eyes see straight through him, and he’s so terrified that he wants to hide behind the crowds forming all around him.

“Alright.”

Spending holidays with one of your best friends in the world is supposed to be normal. They’re times to be grateful, to express love. They’re supposed to be days straight out of Hallmark cards that he stuffs in a drawer because who the hell still buys cards?

He doesn’t consider that his best friend is an ex he’s still in love with.

They have brunch with Gia, go to a club with an old friend of theirs, and return to Jose’s apartment at half past eleven. He crashes onto the couch without a thought and doesn’t even think about how much it feels like a home away from home.

“So, you’ve never watched The Office?”

Jose shrugs, and hands him a bowl of chips. “Everyone’s been telling me it’s a show for white people.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not funny.”

He spends the rest of the night with Jose, trains his eyes to shift subtly between the TV and his face. He laughs whenever he does, and he tries to hide his lack of focus by crunching the lime-flavoured chips.

“I got something on my face?”

“Hmm?”

“You keep looking here, bitch.”

He’s supposed to feel even the slightest bit embarrassed that he’s gotten caught, but he can’t bring himself to care. He laughs lightly, and sits up - becomes aware of how he’s close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off of the other man.

“Just making sure you’re here.”

“Nowhere else I wanna be, baby.”

He knows the last word is an accident, a relic from a long time ago, but it isn’t taken back. He turns his head, looks at him with no shame. Jose bites his lip as he stares at the screen, but he can tell that he isn’t really watching anymore.

“Brock?”

“Yeah?”

“You gonna keep me waiting forever or what?”

There’s a laugh, and he’s suddenly lost in Jose’s lips. They taste like lime and tequila, but there’s something else there, something unique and familiar that reminds him of what happiness should feel like.

Before long, they’ve pushed their way into the bedroom, and he’s on his knees. It isn’t the best idea. Shit, he knows it’s a terrible idea to fuck their unspoken problems away, but it feels good; good enough that they don’t stop.

When he falls onto the bed, eyes closed and breathing heavy, he tries to kill any thought of consequences. He chases them as they run around his brain, and throws them out. They bang on the door, try to remind him that they’re there, but he begins to drift.

Jose’s arm drapes over his waist, and he is home.

He wakes up the next morning and untangles himself as quickly as he can so they don’t have to talk about the things he doesn’t know how to say.

The night before the finale is all hushed whispers, an attempt at cutting away the nerves that have turned into vines that wrap around his neck. Jose holds him, goes no further, and tells him that he’s going to be amazing.

They film the reunion a few days letter, and she sees the pain in her eyes when they act like she didn’t need her arms around her when she’d accepted that she’d lost. It’s all a game of pretend, and neither of them are winning.

When she finally says that they’re no longer together, she tries to soften the blow by saying that she loves her; but in the fantasy that they’ve built for themselves, she doesn’t know if Vanjie will recognize that that one thing is true.

She starts to wipe tears away from the corners of her eyes, and she comes over for a hug. She’s addicted to the smell of her cologne and the feel of her skin against hers, and she does everything to hide it from Ru and the rest of the world.

They’re all ushered back into the dressing room when it’s all over, and all the tension from the stage disappears. All the girls return to kiking with each other like they’d done for months after filming as they start to de-drag.

So, why does she feel like guilt blocks her airways each time she looks at Vanjie?

She grabs her wrist, and pulls her aside; but when she looks down at her in the corner of the room packed with queens, she loses all her words. All she can see is disease ridden eyes and the ghost of a smile that she wants back.

“I love you.”

Vanjie winces, and she wants to burst into tears. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s no fucking fair. Freedom should taste sweet like candy on Halloween, but all it tastes like in her presence is blood she draws from her lip in worry.

“I love you too.”

The words are strained, but she knows she means it.

They hug, and all the queens whoop and aww. She wants them all to shut up because this moment is theirs. It’s pain and pleasure and it’s theirs.

A fire starts in Jose’s apartment. It burns bright and scorches his skin, but he can’t take his eyes off of it. It’s all chaos and splendour, and he almost forgets that it has the ability to kill him where he stands.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The question is asked for the nth time. He stopped counting after the fourth time, when he realizes that he doesn’t really know the answer. It’s too abstract, too complex for him to try and explain.

“I don’t know.”

“Then what are we doing?”

He gulps, all the words falling into the pit of his stomach. It’s almost ridiculous that he’s scared of someone so much smaller than him, but they’re holding each other’s hearts hostage. The consequences could destroy them.

“We’re just friends.”

Jose huffs, and he throws up his arms in defeat. He wants to hold those hands that fit perfectly in his, but he’s too busy using them to burn it all down. The worst part of it all is that he knows he can’t blame him.

“Friends don’t fuck, say ‘I love you,’ then pretend it didn’t happen.”

The words are spit at him like venom, but he doesn’t mind. He knows that he deserves it after the hell that he’s put him through. Maybe they’re both willing participants, but his reasons are so selfish that he expects the pain.

He asks himself if anything is supposed to hurt like this. Maybe this is what breakups are supposed to feel like. Maybe they’re supposed to feel like someone throwing his heart into a blazing flame.

“I can’t fucking do it.”

The way he says it makes him cry, and he wipes the tears away. He sees something in Jose’s eyes, something akin to pity, and he wants to scream that this is everything he was afraid of from the day he’d fallen in love.

Jose walks to the door, opens it for him. He doesn’t move, at least not for a minute. He doesn’t want to. This is a refuge, a retreat, a goddamn home, and if he leaves, he knows he might never come back.

He thinks about begging for a moment. He thinks about falling to his knees and pleading for the forgiveness that he doesn’t deserve. He thinks about asking for an infinite chance because God knows how many times he’s hurt him before.

“I need you to go.”

It’s stern, and he knows that he has no choice. He carries his feet, and each step feels like breaking promises that he wants to make. Freedom is so close that he can taste it, but it still tastes like metal.

“I’m sorry.”

The door shuts behind him when he says the words, and it’s all over.

When he sees his tweets the next day, he crawls into bed and wishes for arms to hold him tight.

She almost backs out of their show together, but Nina holds her hand. She convinces her that Vanjie deserves better than a disappearing act that rivals their magic show. Brooke nods her head and does her best to smile.

“I’ll be right here if you need me, okay?”

Nina’s all warmth and love, and she thinks that she might be the luckiest person in the world. She squeezes her hand before she leaves her in the crowd to go to the backroom of the club.

When she opens the door, she’s greeted by the smell of her cologne. It assaults her senses, and she’s suddenly dizzy. The world starts to spin, and the tiny queen who doesn’t even bother to look at her as she finishes her makeup is in the center it.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

She still doesn’t look up, and Brooke thinks she might just throw up. The quiet makes her uneasy, so she shuffles her feet as Vanjie applies her lipstick. She hopes that she doesn’t hear her heart thumping against her chest.

“If you’re gonna say something, you better say it.”

One deep breath. The words make their way from her heart to her head. They shoot upwards, and it takes her a moment to comprehend them. They’re too vulnerable, but that’s what Vanjie’s demanding from her.

Two deep breaths. The words make their way from her head to her mouth. She says them in a rush, like a waterfall that she’s always wanted to visit with her, but knows that they’ll probably never see.

“I’m sorry. I love you, and I fucked it all up. I told you I wanted to be free, but I can’t be free when I spend my every waking moment wishing I could take it all back.”

Three deep breaths. The words make their way from her mouth to Vanjie’s ears. She sets down the lipstick on the table and purses her lips together. The minute of uneasy silence feels like forever to Brooke, but she doesn’t dare keep speaking.

“I can’t do it, y’know?” She turns her head, and Brooke sees that the disease is killing her slowly. “I’m not ready for a relationship with you right now, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s not.” It is. “Maybe one day. Right now, I just want us to be… us again.”

She walks over slowly, delicately breaches Vanjie’s bubble. Her heart races even faster, and she prays to every single god that Silky doesn’t burst into the room to ruin the moment that they’re having.

“Hi,” She holds out her hand and her hopes. “I’m Brooke Lynn Hytes.”

Vanjie regards her for a moment, assesses her as if they’d never met before. With a sigh, she shakes her hand.

“I’m Vanessa Isabella Vanjie Mateo.”

DragCon passes by in a flash. She hugs all her fans, takes pictures with other queens, and smiles proudly when she sees the queue for Vanjie’s booth grow infinitely longer.

They barely talk for the whole weekend, far too busy and tired to make any meaningful conversation. All they manage is a few photos for the fans, and texts reminding each other to drink water.

The season 11 tour starts, and they find themselves playing along with Asia’s light-hearted jokes. If it stings a little to have a love that she still feels be the butt of a joke, she tries her best to ignore it.

The morning of the second show, he catches wind from A’keria that Vanjie can barely get out of bed. Without thinking, he buys about eight different medicines and a Gatorade before rushing to his hotel room.

When he knocks on the door, he hears a groan come from the other end. “It’s me!” He calls out, and enters the room. The curtains are drawn, making the room dark enough that he can barely make out the person wrapped up in the blanket on the bed.

“What you doing here?” Jose’s voice is barely a croak, but he finds enough energy to sound pissed. “You’re gonna get sick, you idiot!”

“I’ll be fine.” He brushes off his concern and takes a seat on the bed. He places a hand on Jose’s forehead and grimaces at how hot it is. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit, what do you think?”

He laughs lightly and pulls out some medicine. It takes a small argument for him to convince him to drink it, and he smiles when he notices him hold the Gatorade bottle with both hands like a child.

“This is what happens when you work too hard.”

“You do it too.”

Jose sticks his tongue out at him, and he wonders if the childlike behaviour is because of the fever. There’s a voice in his head telling him that this might not be the best idea after agreeing to just casually get to know each other, but he cares too much to listen.

“Now go to sleep.”

“No way, hoe. I gotta get ready.”

It requires little force for him to get Jose to lie back down. “Oh no, you are not going to do the show like this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” He replies, but he’s already started to hike the covers all the way back up to his neck. Brock chuckles, and he thinks that maybe the warmth he feels is more than just from the fevered body next to him.

“Shut up.” He says lovingly. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

Brock strokes his hair, and when he stays a minute or an hour longer than he’s supposed to, he doesn’t mind.

He gets sick a few days later, and he gets a call from miles away.

“Bitch, I told you so.”

June is a hazy mix of cities and bars. They return to their routine of texting every day, checking up on each other whenever they can. He hesitates to start each conversation, wonders if he’s pushing it too far. The smile he gets with each Facetime is worth the worry.

In July, he sees him again for the tour.

He stares at the floor as Jose gets ready, doesn’t look up to watch him cover up the flaws that he thinks make him so beautiful.

“You’re thinking too loud.”

Brock laughs under his breath and sees him walk over to the couch. He sits down beside him, and he can’t stop the love in his eyes from shining through, even if he knows he needs to be more subtle.

“Yeah? What was I thinking about then?”

“I ain’t no mind reader, Mary.”

He picks up Jose’s hand and locks their fingers together. It’s almost imperceptible, but he sees the smile on his face. It reminds him of roses and rain and the colour orange. This is freedom, he thinks to himself.

“Baby,” His voice is soft, a whisper lost in the wind. “I’m not ready yet, okay?”

When Jose doesn’t let go, he squeezes his hand. A promise, perhaps? He isn’t sure, but it’s something. Hope is better than having a gaping hole in his chest.

“It’s okay, I can wait.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #snowbun #please remember your tags!#canon compliant #dragcon

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