New Fic: QAF "Back to the Beginning" (1/9)
Title: Back to the Beginning (1/9)
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Rating: G (for now, NC-17 eventually)
Disclaimer: CowLip's little sandbox, I'm just running around in it for fun.
Summary: Post Season 5, 3 years after 513. Brian shoulders an unexpected responsibility.
The call came in the middle of a presentation pitch that Brian had nearly finished to the Caribbean resort chain owners. Ted answered the phone, gulped when he heard the information, promised to relay it, and after considering what he could do, sent a silent text message to Cynthia. She was in the meeting with Brian, gauging the potential client’s reactions and taking notes, Brian’s second set of eyes and hands as always. Ted had worked at Kinnetik long enough to know that interrupting the boss when he was in full flow with a client would get him decapitated, and this news could wait for the fifteen minutes it would take Brian to land the account as he inevitably would. Ted also knew that Brian had big plans for taking Justin to the client’s exclusive hideaway once December’s snows blanketed Pittsburgh; if he barged in now, Brian wouldn’t think twice about pink-slipping him on the spot.
Besides, after thinking it over for all of a minute, Ted didn’t plan to give Brian this piece of news. He’d considered the possible outcomes, and he knew Brian wouldn’t want to show any weakness around him-once in a lifetime was probably the limit with Brian Kinney, and Ted had already used up that opportunity when he covered for Brian during the cancer thing. Somebody else would have to tell Brian. Cynthia would know how to do it, and the only reason she didn’t permanently blind him 30 seconds later with her patented “you are so dead” look for dragging her out of the meeting was the ‘S.O.S’ message he texted her.
“What’s so important it couldn’t wait 15 fucking minutes, Ted?”
“You’re gonna need 15 minutes to come up with what to say, Cynthia. Trust me.” Then Ted told her about the phone call. When her eyes went wide, he pushed a chair beneath her and left her alone to think.
++++++++++
When Brian finally had the client escorted through Kinnetik’s front door, one final handshake before the VIPs disappeared, he wasted no time in tracking down Cynthia. It must have been something spectacular for Ted to drag her out of a meeting like that, and Brian was going to get to the bottom of it. The steady stream of smoke billowing from her office gave him the clue he needed to find her.
Rounding the open doorway, he saw her sitting at the desk, chair spun so that she faced a wall, staring at nothing, taking another drag on a rapidly-disappearing cigarette. Brian was ready to leap down her throat for abandoning him with a client at the last moment, when something, some premonition told him he better not. Her body language was all wrong, all the fight gone from one of the hardest women he knew. Though Brian might not be an expert when it came to women’s bodies-an area of specialization he had decided to forego permanently after college-he did know Cynthia. Her shoulders weren’t set in the usual ‘fuck off’ manner that carried her through the day. Brian stopped in the doorway, looking at those slumped shoulders, and a wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. He never thought twice about what he said to Cynthia on any given day, but this was a side of her he hadn’t seen before. He rubbed a single finger over his lips while he paused, considering. What the fuck?!
Wary, puzzled, he knew he’d only get answers if he asked.
“What happened?” The words came out more softly than he intended, a tone of voice he almost never used at the office.
The chair spun slowly, and Cynthia stubbed out her cigarette as she stood to face him. The fifteen minutes Ted had given her hadn’t brought much in the way of answers, but it allowed her to look Brian in the eye as she told him. Fuck, Ted had been right, this wasn’t gonna be easy.
She squared her shoulders again, something of the Cynthia he knew returning to the room which was reassuring, but when Brian finally saw her eyes, he got one hell of a chill.
“Your mom’s dead.”
Cynthia waited for a reaction, but when it came it wasn’t like any of the ones she expected-she had played through all of them in her mind while sitting in her chair, waiting for him to arrive. A bark of laughter, a cynical comment about the deceased, some angry retort like “that’s what dragged you out of a goddamned meeting?” or even the basic “Good. May she rot in hell” followed by storming out the office had all been possibilities.
Instead, she got silence. Green eyes held hers, locked on and not letting go, and as the silence lengthened, it made Cynthia nervous. She said the only other thing she could think of. “Claire asked you to call, here’s the number,” as she passed him the slip of paper Ted had given her earlier. Brian reached out and took it from her before he turned to go, not waiting to answer.
She watched the back of his impeccably tailored French blue suit disappear around the glass cube wall, and said to no one but herself, “That went well.” Then Cynthia did the next thing she knew had to be done, even if Brian decided later that she had overstepped the mark. She flipped through her cell phone’s directory and called Michael.
Two
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Rating: G (for now, NC-17 eventually)
Disclaimer: CowLip's little sandbox, I'm just running around in it for fun.
Summary: Post Season 5, 3 years after 513. Brian shoulders an unexpected responsibility.
The call came in the middle of a presentation pitch that Brian had nearly finished to the Caribbean resort chain owners. Ted answered the phone, gulped when he heard the information, promised to relay it, and after considering what he could do, sent a silent text message to Cynthia. She was in the meeting with Brian, gauging the potential client’s reactions and taking notes, Brian’s second set of eyes and hands as always. Ted had worked at Kinnetik long enough to know that interrupting the boss when he was in full flow with a client would get him decapitated, and this news could wait for the fifteen minutes it would take Brian to land the account as he inevitably would. Ted also knew that Brian had big plans for taking Justin to the client’s exclusive hideaway once December’s snows blanketed Pittsburgh; if he barged in now, Brian wouldn’t think twice about pink-slipping him on the spot.
Besides, after thinking it over for all of a minute, Ted didn’t plan to give Brian this piece of news. He’d considered the possible outcomes, and he knew Brian wouldn’t want to show any weakness around him-once in a lifetime was probably the limit with Brian Kinney, and Ted had already used up that opportunity when he covered for Brian during the cancer thing. Somebody else would have to tell Brian. Cynthia would know how to do it, and the only reason she didn’t permanently blind him 30 seconds later with her patented “you are so dead” look for dragging her out of the meeting was the ‘S.O.S’ message he texted her.
“What’s so important it couldn’t wait 15 fucking minutes, Ted?”
“You’re gonna need 15 minutes to come up with what to say, Cynthia. Trust me.” Then Ted told her about the phone call. When her eyes went wide, he pushed a chair beneath her and left her alone to think.
++++++++++
When Brian finally had the client escorted through Kinnetik’s front door, one final handshake before the VIPs disappeared, he wasted no time in tracking down Cynthia. It must have been something spectacular for Ted to drag her out of a meeting like that, and Brian was going to get to the bottom of it. The steady stream of smoke billowing from her office gave him the clue he needed to find her.
Rounding the open doorway, he saw her sitting at the desk, chair spun so that she faced a wall, staring at nothing, taking another drag on a rapidly-disappearing cigarette. Brian was ready to leap down her throat for abandoning him with a client at the last moment, when something, some premonition told him he better not. Her body language was all wrong, all the fight gone from one of the hardest women he knew. Though Brian might not be an expert when it came to women’s bodies-an area of specialization he had decided to forego permanently after college-he did know Cynthia. Her shoulders weren’t set in the usual ‘fuck off’ manner that carried her through the day. Brian stopped in the doorway, looking at those slumped shoulders, and a wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. He never thought twice about what he said to Cynthia on any given day, but this was a side of her he hadn’t seen before. He rubbed a single finger over his lips while he paused, considering. What the fuck?!
Wary, puzzled, he knew he’d only get answers if he asked.
“What happened?” The words came out more softly than he intended, a tone of voice he almost never used at the office.
The chair spun slowly, and Cynthia stubbed out her cigarette as she stood to face him. The fifteen minutes Ted had given her hadn’t brought much in the way of answers, but it allowed her to look Brian in the eye as she told him. Fuck, Ted had been right, this wasn’t gonna be easy.
She squared her shoulders again, something of the Cynthia he knew returning to the room which was reassuring, but when Brian finally saw her eyes, he got one hell of a chill.
“Your mom’s dead.”
Cynthia waited for a reaction, but when it came it wasn’t like any of the ones she expected-she had played through all of them in her mind while sitting in her chair, waiting for him to arrive. A bark of laughter, a cynical comment about the deceased, some angry retort like “that’s what dragged you out of a goddamned meeting?” or even the basic “Good. May she rot in hell” followed by storming out the office had all been possibilities.
Instead, she got silence. Green eyes held hers, locked on and not letting go, and as the silence lengthened, it made Cynthia nervous. She said the only other thing she could think of. “Claire asked you to call, here’s the number,” as she passed him the slip of paper Ted had given her earlier. Brian reached out and took it from her before he turned to go, not waiting to answer.
She watched the back of his impeccably tailored French blue suit disappear around the glass cube wall, and said to no one but herself, “That went well.” Then Cynthia did the next thing she knew had to be done, even if Brian decided later that she had overstepped the mark. She flipped through her cell phone’s directory and called Michael.
Two