Knowledge Series 2/?

Brian Knows

Brian knows a lot, always has. When he was just a small kid, he knew more than the others, even if it was because he was under the delusion that by getting good grades his parents would be proud of him and nice to him like all the other parents.

In his early teens, before the Novotny’s became permanent fixtures in his life, he studied in hopes that his father may be proud enough not to hit him.

Later, after the time Debbie found out that he got a 92 on his Chemistry exam and baked a cake to show how proud she was, Brian started studying for Debbie. (Though even to this day he’d swear on curse of losing Naked Man, that this wasn’t true)

And finally, when his high school marketing teacher told him he could have a real future in advertising, he started studying and learning for himself, and so that he could be better than his parents, in every aspect of his life.

To this day Brian still retains his knowledge and his flair for studying, even it this time around it’s not books…but people.

He knows that Emmett and Ted won’t last, no matter how hard they try to make it work. H knows that the professor is perfect for Mikey (even though he doesn’t believe in all that made for each other breeder bull). He knows that the Detective is nowhere near good enough for Debbie (but not because he thinks that no one is good enough for his surrogate mother…nope, not that). And he knows that the muncher’s relationship is in a calm before the storm phase.

Still, for all Brian knows, he tends to pretend he doesn’t.

He pretends not to know the fiddler’s name, even though it’ll haunt him forever, and that he sent the trick who let his name (Ethan) slip out, home because he just didn’t look as hot in the backroom as he did in on the dance floor of Babylon.

He pretends to not know any other artists, despite him working with multiple everyday, so that he has to ask Justin to do the carnival poster, and not because he notices he’s working too many shifts at the diner to pay for that shit hole he moved himself into.

He pretends that he doesn’t know Justin even change his hair and that he doesn’t want to pull the blonde by the long locks to the diner bathroom every time he sees those lips blow the strands out of his face.

He pretends he doesn’t know that telling Ian that there’s nothing noble in being poor because he believes it and not because he knows Justin wouldn’t go back in the closet after all he went through when he came out.

He pretends he doesn’t know that Justin is the reason his family dropped those inane charges, even if it’s because it’s the only thought keeping him from pulling Justin to him by the same hands slipping on his bracelet.

He pretends he doesn’t know that lately Justin’s sunshine smile isn’t quite burning at it’s usual wattage, so that he doesn’t have to think that maybe his sacrifice of his blonde boy was for naught.

And when he notices Justin wearing the same red sweater he was wearing the day before he pretends that he doesn’t know he’s wearing the same shirt because because it was yesterday, and not because he loves the way the dark red contrasts against his skin, and he pretends that he’s happy because he was right about words being nothing but bullshit, and not because now he knows he has a second chance with his sunshine.

But what Brian really doesn’t know is that he’s not fooling anybody.