WC: 2,606
Trigger Warnings: ableism and needles
This is Brandon’s earliest memory:
Brandon bounces up and down in his crib, shared with his best buddy Paige. He can just barely remember it, but he thinks Paige was crying for some reason. Brandon was trying as hard as he could to jump out of the crib and get help. He remembers that feeling so well.
Eventually someone came up, his mother or Paige’s, he couldn’t remember. But they were both soothed and put to bed.
He thinks this is the perfect set dressing for the rest of his life.
+++
When Brandon is 4, he gets obsessed with old 80s and 90’s cartoons. His mom had put them on one day and it was all downhill from there.
“Mami!” he would shout. “Can you put on the ‘toons?”
“Okay!” Carmen would giggle, doing as requested. Brandon would sit front and center on his small bean bag while watching. From things like Loony Tunes to The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, to Pokemon… Brandon had fallen in love with the Saturday morning cartoon.
“Ehh… what’s up, doc?” he would repeat again and again. Or, “Gotta jet!” Or even further still, “Pikachu, thundershock attack!” He loved taking what was thrown at him and throwing it right back.
He would often rewatch the same episodes again and again as well, trying and mostly failing to memorize the whole thing. But he’d pick up choice phrases.
“Goodnight, everybody!” he would quote, kissing his hand and tossing it out after whenever they would leave somewhere.
“IIIII’m ready!” he would say before school everyday, the moment he was ready. Then he would proceed to rush through the house as an airplane, repeating it again and again. “I’m ready! I’m ready! I’m ready!”
If his mom ever had any issue with it, he never mentioned it. Instead, she would go over and kiss his forehead and say, “C’mon, mijo! School time!”
And he would jump and cheer and clap and once more go, “I’m ready!”
“Paige, I know what we’re going to do today!” he’d say after school. And Paige would always go and ask the golden question…
“What’s that, Bran Bran?”
And Brandon would cackle loud and throw his hands into the air and shout, “TAKE OVER THE WORLD!”
Paige would giggle and so would Brandon and eventually Carmen would pick them up and take them home.
Brandon never really outgrows this.
+++
The first time Brandon screams his head off in public is at the doctor. He’s 5 and newly aware of things. He’s pretty sure he’d gotten shots before this, but he’s suddenly all too aware that needles are sharp. And when sharp things touch you, they hurt.
Brandon does not want to be hurt.
The doctor sighs as his mom and auntie come to calm him down, but it’s not working. Brandon is a sobbing mess.
“NO, NO, NO!” he cries. “DON’T HURT ME!”
“It’s only going to be a little pinch, darling!” Quinn tries. “It’s alright!”
“It’s going to hurt me!” Brandon says, not listening. “It’s going to kill me!”
“No, baby, it’s not going to kill you,” Carmen says, a worried chuckle in her voice. “I promise, okay? Everybody gets shots. It’s really quick! You’ll barely even feel it!”
“NOO!” Brandon sobs.
Brandon did not get his shots that day.
+++
“What are you, stupid?” Brandon overhears as he walks over to the play area one day. He’s gonna be 6 soon! He’s got a lot of energy and he’s bored, what with Paige taking a nap.
“I-I’m… I-I’m n-not…” A kid stutters. Brandon frowns. What was going on over here?
The first kid, in a slight accent, continues. “You can’t even talk right!” Brandon barely knows this kid, but he recognizes the other. It’s Bartholomew.
“I-I… I-if you… I-I…”
“Spit it out!” the kid shouts. Bartholomew looks close to tears.
Brandon had seen enough.
“Hey!” he shouts. “What’s the big idea?”
“What do you want?” spits the kid. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Brandon frowns. “You’re over here bullying my mans!”
“Y-your…?” Bartholomew murmurs.
Brandon throws a thumbs up and a wink his way. “I don’t take lightly to that, y’know!” Brandon says, quoting some old show his mom liked to watch at night. He then begins hopping up and down, holding his fists out. “Why I oughta…!”
“Kids?” Mrs. Kate calls. “What’s going on over here?”
“This guy’s bullying Bartholomew!” Brandon accuses. “They were callin’ him stupid and stuff!”
“Yusef, is that true?” Mrs. Kate asks. Yusef frowns and crosses their arms, but doesn’t answer. “Hm… let’s try this another way, then.” The teacher bends over Bartholomew and offers a hand to him. “Up you go, Bartholomew.”
The child takes his teacher’s hand and lets her pull him up. “Th-th-tha-nks,”
“Of course, hun,” Mrs. Kate smiles, bending down. “Now, tell me. Did Yusef bully you?”
Brandon watches as Bartholomew nervously looks past the teacher and at him and Yusef. Yusef pulls a finger across his throat.
Brandon had seen enough cartoons to know what that meant.
Suddenly, fear for this kid he barely knew turns into rage. “Hey!” he shouts, tackling Yusef. “You won’t be killing anyone today!”
“Oh, Brandon!” Mrs. Kate cries. Brandon ignores her, struggling with Yusef.
“GET OFF!” they shout. “GET OFF OF ME RIGHT NOW!”
“Not if you’re gonna kill him!” Brandon yells back.
The two of them go back and forth until Mrs. Kate is able to pry them off of each other. Brandon has a couple of bad scratches, but Yusef has a nasty bruise near his eye, so it more or less evened out.
Brandon remembers being scolded and sent home early that day.
+++
There’s a tap on Brandon’s shoulder the next day. He blinks, looking behind him to see Bartholomew.
“H-h-hey…” he mumbles. “Th-anks for y-y-esterda-y.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it, kid!” Brandon says, quoting one of his old cartoons.
“Can—can—can I sit wi-th y-you?”
“Yeah, man!” Brandon moves over a bit and pulls over a nearby chair. “Pop a squat!”
“P-pop…?” Bartholomew murmurs, confused.
“Take a seat,” Brandon translates.
“O-oh. O-okay.” Bartholomew smiles a bit as he sits down.
Even if he’d gotten a couple bad scratches getting here, Brandon smiles back.
This would be the start of a beautiful friendship.
+++
When Brandon is 11, he and Paige enter middle school.
Immediately problems arise.
Paige, full of goodwill, finds out that middle schoolers are mean. Very mean. Brandon watches on as kids poke fun at him, again and again and again. Seemingly everyday.
“It’s okay,” Paige would say whenever Brandon asked. “Stick and stones, right?”
Brandon frowns deeply. “Right…” He’s not happy with that answer, though.
It’s not until Paige is pushed over one day at lunch does Brandon put his foot down.
…Right on somebody’s windpipe.
Brandon doesn’t really remember that day well. It was a flurry of emotions and fighting and… he honestly didn’t like to recall it.
But he’s able to recognize it as the beginning of his middle school downfall.
The next day, as much as he can be, Brandon is glued to Paige’s side. He glares at people if they even think about getting close. He jukes at people who jeer. And when he’s not fast enough one day, Paige having been shoved down so hard he didn’t get back up for a minute, well…
Brandon doesn’t remember that day very well, either.
According to Paige, blood had spilt.
Brandon does not like thinking about it.
+++
Before Brandon knew it, he’d been branded Bad Brandon. And not bad as in good. Bad as in bad.
And he embraced it. If it meant keeping his best friend safe from others? Then so be it.
But, eventually, his anger starts to get away from him. People would look at him wrong and he would threaten them. People would giggle near him and he’d take it as a challenge. People would hand him things and he’d snatch it away.
Bad Brandon would go to school everyday and come home as Good Brandon, who was an angel. A sweetheart. His mom and auntie’s little Branflake.
But when the day would turn and Paige would have a different class than him, Bad Brandon would strike.
Sure, he never directly tried to start any fights, but he sure didn’t shy away from them either. Over the course of two months, he’d been sent to the dean’s office more than he could count and threatened with suspension just as much.
So, for a while, he’d tone it down. Then something or someone would anger him to no end, and the world would go red.
Red is Brandon’s signature color.
Red is the color of the blood he spits out behind the school one day, having been jumped by several older boys at once.
Turns out that kids have families, and sometimes those families feel enough hatred to get back at you.
Red was the color of his fists when he’d finally connected with a swing.
Red and blue were the colors of a police car that was flying down the street towards them.
Scared, the older kids ran. Brandon however, sat there on the pavement, breathing heavily.
The car had passed right by him. They weren’t coming for them. It was probably something more important.
Brandon groans as he lifts himself up and goes to try and get back into school before Paige could find him. He had to get to the bathroom. He had to clean up.
Red is the color of the water as the blood washes off of Brandon’s hands.
Brandon has seen enough red in one day to last him a lifetime.
+++
“B-Bran—Brandon,” Bro approaches one day, catching Brandon off guard. He’s about ready to attack, but the stutter processes as he turns and reminds him of who it is.
“Oh, hey Bro!” Brandon smiles, defenses down immediately. “How’s it hangin’, my main man?”
Bro’s expression is pensive. He works his mouth a bit before simply shaking his head and pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket and handing it over.
“What’s this?” Brandon asks, taking it.
“J-j-just r-read it,” Bro urges. So, Brandon does. It reads in just barely legible chicken scratch:
“Brandon,
“I can’t be your friend anymore.
You saved me once. I was so grateful for that. I was so grateful to have a friend.
Now you’re the exact thing you fought off for me.
Sorry. Come talk to me when you get better.
– Bro”
Brandon blinks down at the note. “I-I…” he stumbles, looking up. “I’m—”
Oh.
Bro is gone.
+++
Brandon slogs his way through the years. After he’d gotten that note, things grew dreary. He was a loose cannon now, people either too afraid to approach him or not stupid enough to tell on him.
He pulled pranks because it was fun. (It wasn’t.)
He gave hard stares at people because seeing them squirm felt good. (It didn’t.)
He would juke people out because the idea of being bigger, better, stronger, faster… it was intoxicating. (It was.)
+++
“Brandon,” Carmen says one day. “Sweetie, we’re going to the doctor today.”
“What?” he asks. He had just gotten his new console for his 13th birthday and was busy playing on it. “Why?”
“We have an appointment? I set it up a while ago, don’t you remember?”
Oh. “No,” he says earnestly. “But do we gotta go? I’m about to beat this dude!”
“Yes, honey,” Carmen says. “Just pause it, it’ll be right where you left it when we get back.
“Fiiine,” Brandon drones, pausing the game and getting up. “Let me go get dressed.”
+++
Brandon sits and answers the doctor's weird questions.
“Do you find it hard to sit down and stay still?” the doctor would ask.
“Yes,” Brandon would answer.
“Do you fidget a lot?”
Brandon looks down at his hands, which are twisting his hoodie’s drawstrings. He stops immediately. “...I guess,” he answers.
“How about your anger? How do you deal with that?”
“...I don’t wanna answer that question.”
“That’s quite alright.” The doctor shuffles through his papers. “We just have a couple more questions to go through, alright?”
“...Alright.”
+++
Brandon leaves the doctor that day with a prescription with his name on it.
When they go to pick it up, Carmen reads over the instructions and warnings while Brandon stares at the little pills in the container.
Ritalin. 5mg.
He didn’t know what they were for, but he’d look it up later. Right now he was supposed to swallow one of them.
“Just one,” Carmen instructs. “Then I’ll hold onto them until you need to take it tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Brandon nods.
Sure. This was fine.
Some weird doctor asked him some weird questions and now he had to take some weird medicine everyday.
“Just my rotten luck,” Brandon recites.
+++
For the next week, Brandon wakes up sick as a dog.
Carmen panics like there’s no tomorrow and rushes him back to the doctor after the 6th day.
“He’s been throwing up everyday, unable to eat, unable to stay in school the whole day…” he lists off. “Is there anything else we can try that maybe won’t make him so sick?”
“So sorry, Ms. Aguja,” the doctor frowns. “But I’m afraid the Ritalin is all your insurance will cover.”
“Oh.” Carmen takes a deep breath before sighing. “Okay. Okay.” He reaches out for Brandon’s hand. “Thank you, doctor. We’ll be leaving now.”
“Apologies,” the doctor says before they leave. “I wish you the best.”
+++
Brandon is 14 when he enters high school. Over the summer, he had spent time with Paige, his auntie and his mom. They’d done outdoorsy things like hiking, camping, the works. The whole thing had soothed Brandon’s soul in a way he never expected it to be.
So, when he steps into Ingenious High on the first day of school and spots none other than Bartholomew Bro, he gasps.
“Bro!” he calls, rushing over. “Hey man! I missed the hell outta you!”
“B-Brandon?” Bro blinks. “Y-you go h-ere?”
“Hell yeah I do, brother!” Brandon grins. “And guess what? Your boy’s back to square one with his bad self!” He smirks. “Literally.” He grows a little serious. “The Bad Brandon everyone knew in middle school is gone, Bro. I like, went out in nature and stuff. And I saw beautiful things. And I was like, you know what? Life’s too short.” He goes back to his natural demeanor. “But yeah! You know! Anyways, how’s life been?”
Bro stares at Brandon.
Then, he laughs. It’s all hiccupy and higher pitched than his voice normally is. It’s kinda cute.
“Th-at’s the Brandon I kn-ow and love, al-right,” he grins. “I m-issed you too. A lot.”
Brandon’s smile is wide for the rest of the day.
+++
Brandon is 16 and doing his best at life. Things aren’t awful or anything, but things could be better. He fights with himself everyday not to become Bad Brandon again at the littlest of things. And, for the most part, he succeeds!
But when his friends are busy, or he has a really bad day, or he does something and ends up upsetting himself… well…
He didn’t wanna talk about it.
But! That was all just water under the bridge.
Or, water in a still sinking ship, but you know. Eye of the beholder or whatever.
Still, things are good. He sits with his friends at lunch everyday, he’s getting back in touch with one he hasn’t really talked to since Freshman year, and he had recently become mail carrier for his best friend’s love notes!
So yeah. Things were going just fine.