
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/116210.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Black_Donnellys
  Relationship:
      Jimmy_Donnelly/Tommy_Donnelly
  Character:
      Jimmy_Donnelly, Tommy_Donnelly
  Additional Tags:
      Sibling_Incest
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-09-14 Words: 1278
****** Knowing ******
by mercurybard
Summary
     The thing about Jimmy is that he knows
What nobody knew about Jimmy Donnelly was that he knew. He knew who it was
who'd been driving the car that had destroyed his leg. Ok, it wasn't a sure
thing, like knowing his own birthday, but he had a strong suspicion, deep in
his gut that it had been Tommy behind the wheel. Maybe it was something he'd
seen through the windshield of the black car as it bore down on him and Joey.
Maybe it was just the fact that his little brother was infamous for boosting
cars…until Jimmy got his leg crushed and then Tommy was suddenly all about the
straight-and-narrow.
It was just something Jimmy knew, but he wouldn't admit, not even to himself.
At first, he raged. Jimmy always raged—over spilled milk, over getting gypped,
over some half-imagined insult directed at him, at his family, at his people—it
was just the way the world worked for him. There was fun, and there was anger,
and after the accident, the line between the two got completely blurred.
Tommy didn't eat for like three straight weeks after the accident. Couldn't
eat, because every time he tried to get something down, it came right back up.
Ma Donnelly's hands were already full with Jimmy—surgeries and casts and pins
and pain killers that made him puke—and there was Tommy, so upset over his
brother that he was making himself sick. Kevin, at least, just did what Kevin
always did, and there was Jenny to keep little Seanie busy. If it weren't for
that, Helen might have gone crazy.
After a month of doctors the family couldn't afford and medicines that cost an
arm and a leg and didn't do much more than take the edge off, Tommy came
creeping out of his room in the middle of the night, a ghost with freckles.
Jimmy had been sleeping on the couch since the accident, so he wouldn't have to
share a bed with someone who kicked, and the throbbing in his knee was keeping
him up. Tommy didn't say anything, just lay down next to Jimmy on the couch and
buried his face in his big brother's t-shirt. Jimmy's first thought was to hit
Tommy with the comic book he'd been reading and tell him to get back to bed,
but then he realized his shirt was getting wet.
Tommy may have only been a little kid, but he knew that "I'm sorry" wasn't
enough—was never going to be enough—to fix what he'd done. This was his
apology, and suddenly, Jimmy wasn't that angry anymore.
The comic book ended up on the floor, and Jimmy ended up hugging his brother
until Tommy was all cried out.
-----
By high school, everybody knew that Jimmy Donnelly was one mean sonofabitch. If
someone crossed him, he came after them with vengeance enough to scare the piss
right out of them. And it wasn't any good getting backup, because Jimmy had
brothers. Never mind that two of them were still in junior high and Jenny
wasn't actually a brother or even a boy (because if she got involved, then
someone's testicles were likely to end up in the vicinity of their teeth)—those
damn Donnellys could fight.
But if Tommy stepped in, that's when everyone knew the shit had hit the fan.
For the kid who had such a reputation for always doing the right thing, he
could be downright ruthless in defense of his brothers. Involving Tommy
Donnelly meant someone, somewhere had crossed a line.
High school was when Jimmy finally discovered what girls were good for. Not
girls like Jenny, who still wore boy's clothes and played street hockey, but
the other kind who tittered and went to the bathroom in groups. He discovered
biting kisses and broom closet blowjobs. Girls were drawn to him because he
seemed dangerous, but he could never keep them. Eventually, he stopped trying
to hold them and just fucked them behind the bleachers, messy and fast before
someone caught them.
Until Irene Joyce. Irene whose smile could make his dick stand up and salute
with just the smallest curve of her lips. Prettiest girl in their neighborhood,
hands down (at least until Jenny Reilly stopped wearing that grungy red
baseball cap everywhere). Jimmy had a plan: he was going to ask Irene to senior
prom. A proper prom with a tux and a hidden flask of whiskey and maybe even a
room somewhere. He filched wallets, moved boxes in the store room of Mulligan's
grocery, and managed to win a couple hundred in a craps game. All he had to do
was ask her.
But, no, Irene decided—just hours before he got his nerve all worked up—to go
and be progressive and ask Tommy to the dance. Poor Tommy just stood there,
blinking in confusion, a smudge of charcoal across the bridge of his nose, and
Irene took that as a 'yes'.
That afternoon, Jimmy slammed his little brother into the wall behind the gym
hard enough to make Tommy's teeth rattle. "I was gonna ask her!" Slam. "You
knew I was gonna ask her!" Slam. Tommy may have been trying his damnedest to
get canonized, but there's only so much a man can take, especially when he's
Irish.
Five minutes later, they'd rolled into the heap of trash bags nearby, and Tommy
had something that might have once been a banana in his hair and all down the
back of his shirt.
Then, the Devil got into him—that's how Ma would've explained what Jimmy did
next if she'd ever found out, and to be honest, he's still not sure that she
wouldn't be right. Why else would he have crawled over to his brother (dragging
his lame-ass leg behind him) and unbuckled Tommy's belt, slid his hand down the
front of Tommy's too-big jeans, his shorts? Why else would he have wrapped his
hand around Tommy's cock?
(Tommy was half-hard already 'cause, shit, he was only a sophomore and
everything made him horny, even rolling around in garbage with his own big
brother.)
It might have had something to do with the way Tommy had ended up, arched back
over a bag of trash, his shirt riding up over his ribs, and his cheeks flushed
pink like a cherub in church paintings.
Or maybe it was because there wasn't a person—alive or dead—on God's green
earth that Jimmy loved more. And, at the same time, he hated Tommy. Hated him
for his shy smile that drew the girls like flies to honey and for how much he
looked like their pa when Jimmy could've been the mailman's for all he looked
like Bob Donnelly. But most of all, he hated Tommy for what'd happened to his
leg, and all that hate got mixed in with all that love, and suddenly there he
was, jerking off his own damn brother in the alley behind the school gym.
When Tommy began to moan, bucking his hips against his hand, Jimmy clapped the
other over his brother's mouth to keep him quiet (what a clusterfuck of epic
proportions that would be, if someone came by) and leaned over to whisper in
his ear.
"Yeah, you're liking this, aren't you? Rough and dirty and what's one more
secret between us, Tommy?"
Over and over in his ear until Tommy came, warm fluid spurting over Jimmy's
hand and the inside of the blue jeans as Tommy sank his teeth deep into the
flesh of his brother's palm.
Jimmy's still got marks there—faint white scrapes of scar tissue that only two
people know the truth of.
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