(no subject)

[knkfics]

Because I promised maradaze. Yay for Lucian perspective!



Lucian sat in front of his painting, and as usual, his mind was wandering.

The meeting with Brendan had not gone exactly as he had thought it would. As a matter of fact, it had gone a great deal better than he had ever expected it would. The lesson he had intended had turned into something more friendly, more casual.

He was surprised at how much he immediately liked the younger boy.

It wasn’t just that he saw a lot of himself in Brendan, although he certainly did. The other man had the same sense of longing to please his family that Lucian had managed to ruthlessly suppress in himself. And like Lucian, he knew it was hopeless. Lucian could see where it had worn away at him, leading him to try so hard to not be himself.

Brendan was a good writer - not a spectacular one or a fantastic one, but a good one. And he would get better. Lucian’s intentions, although it seemed bizarre even to himself, were pure. He would teach Brendan so he would become better and become who he wanted to be - so he would be able to escape the emotional prison cell his family tried to keep him in.

It helped that he was so damn cute.

He wasn’t sure exactly what it was about Brendan. It wasn’t really anything precisely physical. He did have big blue eyes, and his light brown, slightly curly hair did give him a definite cute aspect. The horrible tortoise-shell rimmed glasses that Lucian was sure his mother had picked out only helped the image. But it was more than that. Brendan carried with him a youthful energy that Lucian didn’t think he had ever had. And the passion he had for his writing was downright incredible. Lucian thought he would probably be willing to do anything, give up anything, to be what he thought of as a ‘real’ writer.

Lucian knew he was drawn to that energy, mostly because there was nothing even remotely resembling it in his own life.

After quite some time of staring at the painting, he got up and began to pace around the room. He settled at the kitchen table with a mug of strong coffee and his sketchbook. He loved having his own apartment, even if he couldn’t come remotely close for paying for it on his own yet. He would be in debt to his parents forever, but it was worth it to have his own space, where he could sit and sketch at the kitchen table without being berated for it.

He had always enjoyed sketching; in fact, he enjoyed it even more than painting. Unfortunately, sketches were harder to sell than paintings and generally got less money, so painting was what he did for a living. Sketching was what he did for fun. He loved setting his pencil to paper and watching what was in his mind come out.

He began to draw Brendan.

The teenager was adorable, really. A soft little smile touched Lucian’s lips as he drew. He hadn’t known himself to ever get attached to anyone so quickly.

He couldn’t help but think back to when Brendan had nearly fallen. That one moment’s worth of time when the smaller man had been cradled in his arms. He could feel Brendan’s heartbeat thudding against his chest. Had he been afraid because he had nearly fallen? Or was it something else?

Lucian sighed and shook himself slightly. Brendan was really no more than a boy, even if he was one who was going to be a man soon. He really had no right thinking thoughts like that about someone who was at least five years younger than him. Particularly not someone who was clearly such an innocent.

Because he was sure that Brendan was that. He had never known anybody to blush so much within a few hours.

He began to sketch again, the figure taking form underneath his pencil. Brendan was what he was sure a lot of people dreamed of. A complete innocent. Someone he could teach. About sex. About love.

Lucian scoffed at himself. As if he were qualified to teach anybody about love.

He sighed and sketched a little more, rapidly realizing with a little discomfort that the figure he was drawing was naked, and that he already knew it was probably going to turn out to be Brendan. Well, he could always fantasize. That had gotten him through a great many years. Not that he couldn’t get sex if he wanted it - there were a few gay bars he went to occasionally, when he felt like a one-night stand. Sex with no hassle.

Brendan would be a hassle.

Probably well worth every second, though.

He sighed again. He was being completely illogical. For one thing, he was dating Brendan’s sister. Secondly, both their parents would kill them. Thirdly, Brendan was a teenager, embarrassed, blushed easily, nervous - no reason to suspect in any of that that he was gay.

Well, but if he was . . .

The mere thought made Lucian’s mouth water.

To be able to bring that sort of passion to his writing; he wondered what sort of passion Brendan might bring into an actual relationship.

The picture was taking shape underneath his fingers. A boy, nearly a man, sprawled out on a bed. Naked, head tilted back, eyes closed and face creased in an expression that was an odd mix of concentration and ecstasy . . . Lucian’s breathing was growing a little heavier. He drew Brendan’s glasses on the nightstand.

Of course, if there was no reason to assume that Brendan was gay, there was even less reason to assume he might be interested in Lucian. His older sister’s boytoy-of-the-week.

Lucian knew that his motives were not entirely pure. As much as it was because he wanted Brendan to be free of his family - to succeed where Lucian had been unable to his entire life - he knew it was, in part, simply because he wanted Brendan.

Probably a bad idea.

He looked at the drawing.

Oh, yes. Definitely a bad idea.

But a rather irresistible one nonetheless.

He’d just have to wait and see where it took him, which, for the moment, seemed like it was going to be a cold shower.

~~//~~\\~~

Walking out the door with the five-page story tucked into his suit jacket pocket was a nerve-wracking experience for Brendan. At every moment, he expected his mother to demand to know what he was carrying with him, make him hand it over, and wallop the verbal shit out of him until he was probably crying.

That would make a great impression on Lucian, he was sure.

Fortunately, if the papers made any bulge in his jacket, his mother didn’t notice. He figured that they must not, as she inspected him with her usual vigilance to make sure that he was ‘presentable’ before they left. Her standards had changed somewhat over the years, given that Brendan’s hair was slowly growing untamable as he got older. No matter how many times she hustled him away for a haircut, it just kept growing, and every time it grew, it got a little curlier and more unmanageable.

His mother was very irritated about this.

On this particular occasion, however, she simply straightened his tie, did her best to smooth his rumpled hair into something more attractive (although many people, Lucian included, would have been quick to tell her that the rumpled look itself was rather attractive on its own), and gave him a disapproving look.

Anna giggled and said, “Nice hair,” underneath her breath.

Brendan glared at her and combed his fingers through his hair, trying to undo what his mother had done. He didn’t know what it was, but if Anna was laughing, it had to be bad. His mother looked like she might protest, but didn’t. They loaded into the car, ready to leave. Brendan was pathetically glad that Monica had already left in her own car; the five of them squashed together in his father’s BMW (because God forbid they buy a family car like a station wagon or a mini-van, where there would actually be enough room for them) was something he always hated.

The party was one he seriously did not want to go to. It was a business associate of his father, and someone that Brendan intensely disliked. They had met on numerous occasions, and not only did the man seem to believe heavily in ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, but his wife seemed particularly afraid of him as well. Brendan had heard someone remark that his children were so well-behaved, and without thinking, he had replied, “They’re not well-behaved; they’re terrified.” Unfortunately, his mother overheard him, and he had gotten grounded for a week.

He was not looking forward to this party. His mother had already let him know that a) he was to be on his best behavior, b) his best behavior entailed being very nice to the man in question, and c) a sincere apology probably wouldn’t hurt matters either. That conversation had been a real doozie.

“All right, I’ll apologize. I’m sorry that he beats his children and his wife. That’s sincere.”

“Brendan! That’s not what I meant!”

“I’m sorry that it’s so obvious he beats his children and his wife?”

An imperious glare. “Young man, you are on thin ice. One more word - ”

“What are you going to do, ground me? If you ground me, does that mean I don’t have to go to the party?”

He had gotten grounded. But he still had to go to the party. He didn’t know if Lucian was going to be there, because he hadn’t found a tactful way to ask Monica, and he hadn’t seen what she was wearing before she left. His evening, therefore, was not looking up.

The party was excruciating. He saw Lucian’s parents there, and brightened up, but after the first hour had passed and no Lucian had appeared, he wilted. He wasn’t sure if the fact that he had depended on Lucian’s presence to make the party worthwhile was because he was starting to get much too close to Lucian after only one meeting, or simply because the party was that bad.

Dinner passed slowly. Brendan occupied himself by reciting the writing tips Lucian had given him to himself, committing them to memory. Anna fidgeted. Monica flirted with the person seated next to her, which Brendan found in outrageously bad taste. Elise made several leading comments in an attempt to get Brendan to apologize to the host, but Brendan pretended he didn’t understand them.

After dinner was over, they sat at the table with coffee and dessert. Brendan prayed that they would break into smaller groups soon - then perhaps he could talk to the host’s children and convince one of them to go to a teacher or child protective services.

It had taken him a long time to understand why he had such a fascination with domestic abuse and the people who had to go through it. It was something he had always been interested in - he had written a term paper in tenth grade on the subject, and his teacher had been so impressed with it that she had submitted an excerpt from it to a local essay contest. He had won second prize, and a fifty dollar gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. His mother had disapproved highly of this, and supervised his use of the money to make sure he only bought things that wouldn’t encourage his ‘unhealthy obsession.’

The subject of his novel was, in fact, about a woman who was being abused by her husband, and what she had sacrificed to protect her two children from him. Brendan’s eyes wandered over to the silent, stern Mr. Ellison, and wondered why Lucian had liked it so much.

In truth, Brendan thought he could probably peg the reason he had started learning about it; in seventh grade, one of his classmates, a boy named Miles, had been badly injured and in the hospital. The teacher told everyone that he had fallen down the stairs. Brendan had gone to visit him - they were not close friends, but they had worked on a project together and he enjoyed his company.

When he had gone into the hospital room, Miles was sitting there with his father, and Brendan had known - had just somehow known immediately - that he hadn’t fallen down the stairs. They had talked about it a little, although Miles was, not surprisingly, very reticent on the subject.

Brendan had argued with him for quite some time to tell a teacher or some other adult. He lived alone with his father, with no one else to protect him, and he simply refused to tell anyone. Brendan, unsure of what to do, had finally promised that he wouldn’t tell anyone either. But when his friend wound up in the hospital again, Brendan had gone to his father. Not his mother - surely his mother would have simply turned a blind eye to the problems of another society family. Surely his mother would have given him a lecture on how it wasn’t easy for a single man to raise a boy, the son of his dead wife. Surely his mother would remind him to mind his own business and not get anyone in trouble. Their troubles, she would say, were not his troubles.

So he told his father. His father listened, in his quiet, reserved way, to everything his thirteen year old son spilled at his feet. Then he said he would take care of it. He made some phone calls, and the next thing Brendan knew, it was taken care of.

Miles had never spoken to him again, but Brendan didn’t mind. He knew he had done the right thing. Not long after that, he had moved to his aunt’s house in South Carolina, and Brendan had never seen him again. Brendan had thanked his father, and ever since then, they had gotten along a lot better.

It wasn’t so much the events themselves that had made such a heavy impression on Brendan - he had still been young, and had gotten over the perceived loss of his friend fairly quickly. It had been Miles’ fierce silence, his protection of his father and his unwillingness to stand up for himself that made Brendan so fascinated.

Why, he wondered, would someone be willing to let themselves be hurt like that?

So he wrote about it. He explored it. He thought about it from every possible angle. He researched it.

But he never found an answer.

He shook himself out of his daydreams with a start as Lucian wandered into the room, looking absolutely unconcerned about the fact that he was two and a half hours late to the party. He said hello to his mother and kissed Monica’s cheek. Monica eyed the young man sitting next to her with a distinct air of disappointment.

The party split up quite soon after that, and the men went into the study to smoke while the women lingered over their coffee. The children were shooed off into a glorious rec room that Brendan wished he could own. Several of them plopped onto the leather sofa in front of the giant television and turned the TV on and their brains off. A few more sat at a table with a board game.

The host’s children, Samantha and Eric, were in the group by the television, so Brendan didn’t bother trying to approach them. He saw a pale bruise on Eric’s wrist when his shirt pulled up as he reached for the remote.

He let out a heavy sigh.

In the end, he settled in an armchair and stared vacantly at the television. He had started to doze off when he saw Lucian’s head in the doorway. He paused. He yawned, stretched, and then got out of the chair and simply wandered away. If any of them glanced at him, they assumed he was going to the restroom or going to go find his mother and ask how long they were staying.

“Hi,” he said, once they were out in the hallway, and reflected vaguely that Lucian looked great, but he didn’t know why he was noticing.

“Hi,” Lucian said. “Sorry about that. I got held up at my art show. Mom had threatened me with dire things if I didn’t show up for at least a little while - apparently this guy is quite the rising star in the social world, or some shit like that. But I couldn’t leave the show until it was over, so I missed dinner. Then I had to wait while she chewed me out. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” Brendan said, then without meaning to, “I hate these people.”

“No kidding,” Lucian said. “Anyway, I scoped out the place, so follow me.”

“Okay.” Brendan followed him into a small den, that had a table with several chairs. There were some papers and a calculator on the table; it looked like where the kids did their homework. They both plopped into the chairs, and Brendan handed over the story. It was very crinkled from having been in his pocket for so long, but still perfectly legible. He waited, fiddling, while Lucian read it.

Lucian put it down, and cleared his throat.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it,” Brendan said, a blush rising to his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I tried to do what you had told me to do, I just - ”

His words died in his throat when Lucian reached across the table and took one of his hands. “Bren,” he said seriously, “you need therapy.”

Brendan’s blush deepened. He muttered something - even he wasn’t sure what.

“Actually,” Lucian said, releasing his hand with a small amount of reluctance, “the reason I hesitated was because I was wondering if I told you how good I thought it was, if you’d even believe me. This is great, Bren. It shows wonderful improvement. I’ve never seen anyone learn as fast as you do.”

Brendan knew that he was by now surely the color of a tomato. “I - uh - ”

“Let’s get to work,” Lucian said, brushing off whatever he had been about to say. Brendan was glad of that; it meant that he didn’t have to try to finish the sentence at all. Lucian worked with him on descriptive writing for a while; even Brendan admitted that his descriptions of a character tended to read like an advertisement for a model.

“I’ve been thinking more about your novel,” Lucian said, after they had finished up with that. Brendan tried to think of something to say. “First of all, before I touch it, I think after a few more sessions I’m going to have you go through and try to fix it up yourself first.”

Brendan nodded; he had expected that.

“Then I’d like you to print a copy. If you can’t find a chance, give me a disk and I’ll go to Kinko’s or something and have them do it.”

“Okay,” Brendan said, already knowing that he would have to do this without a doubt.

“The second thing I want you to do now. Your book has a lot of intense stuff in it - a lot of really important stuff. I want you to think about what you think is the most important in it, what you’re really trying to say to the reader. There are a lot of messages someone could get out of a story like the one you presented, and I want you decide which is the most important. It’s okay to have two or three background themes, too, but I want you to pick out one central message.”

“Okay,” Brendan said, wondering how on earth he would even begin to do that. What sort of theme could his book have? Don’t beat your wife? Don’t let your husband beat your children?

“Take your time,” Lucian said. “It’s harder than it sounds.”

“Then I’m really in trouble,” Brendan said, with a weak chuckle, “because it sounds really hard!”

Lucian laughed as well. “That just means that you’re thinking about it the right way. Which is good. It’s great.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his tone was a little more cautious. “May I ask why you chose that to write about?”

Brendan shrugged. “My father doesn’t beat us, if that’s what you mean,” he said, and was surprised to see honest relief in Lucian’s eyes. “You . . . you were really worried about that, weren’t you.”

There was another pause. Lucian shrugged. “He doesn’t talk much, so it’s hard for me to get a measure of what sort of man he is,” he said, “and don’t think we don’t both know that if he did, your mother would never breathe a word of it. Family troubles stay private in a society like this.”

“Yeah, I . . . I know. But my dad’s a good guy, honest.” Without meaning to, Brendan started telling Lucian all about Miles and what had happened when he was thirteen. Lucian listened to the tale in interest, and nodded when he got to the end.

“That’s an interesting story,” he said. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out better for you.”

Brendan shrugged. “It worked out okay. He isn’t getting hurt anymore, and that’s what I wanted.”

Lucian smiled a little, looking at him fondly, with an intensity that made Brendan a little nervous. “Sometimes I think you have no idea what an interesting person you are.”

Predictably, Brendan blushed a dark red. “I’m not,” he said.

“I’ll let you keep believing that,” Lucian remarked, and Brendan tried to protest, but at that moment, his mother looked into the room.

“Here you are!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking all - why, hello, Lucian darling. How are you?”

Brendan was wonderfully grateful that his mother didn’t want to yell at him in front of Lucian. He took a precious few seconds wadding up the papers and stuffing them back into his jacket pocket while Lucian kept her occupied.

“We’re leaving,” Elise said, as he turned back around. “And I think your parents have already left, Lucian.” She paused, and Brendan waited for it. Apparently, she was unable to fight down the temptation. “Whatever were you two doing closeted away in here, anyway?”

“Just talking,” Lucian said. “I got bored and I found Brendan in here studying; we just chatted for a little bit. He told me all about Monica’s scrunched up face when she was a baby.”

Elise laughed; the mention of Monica was enough to put her back on her best mother behavior. “How sweet of you, Brendan, considering that you weren’t even alive when she was a baby,” she said, although there was an ironic tone to her voice. “Now come along.”

“Okay,” Brendan said. He made a gagging face at Lucian once his mother had turned her back, and he smiled, getting up to follow.

“I’m going to go find my parents, if they’re still here,” Lucian said. He walked past Brendan, and murmured, “Redo that story for next time,” as he passed. Brendan nodded a little, but didn’t reply.

“Honestly,” Elise said peevishly, “why did you have to hide in there?”

“I thought it would be a good idea,” Brendan said neutrally. “Otherwise, I might have asked Eric what those bruises on his wrists were.”

She shut up.

Brendan whistled as he walked out to the car, feeling that all in all, it had been a very successful night.