TOWJWAGABI, Part 8 (complete)
Okay, I finished this part--the new part is Brian's POV. I didn't change anything from the teaser!
The One Where Justin's With Another Guy, and Brian Interferes, Part 8
Dan drove around for awhile after leaving the coffee shop. He took the car out down 23 where he could open her up and fly, yet he was close enough to the hospital that if he was pulled over, the cop would undoubtedly let him off with just a warning.
He'd already made up his mind to tell Justin about the job offer, he just wished he had a clue as to how he'd react.
Fuck. If that wasn't indicative of ... everything.
God, he should know how this news would hit Justin. He should at least know what direction the wind was blowing, but Dan had no idea how it would play out. He could barely articulate his own feelings about the situation, how in the hell could he predict Justin's?
How did this...this thing with a pretty little college kid get so far beyond his control? How the hell could it happen when neither one of them was looking for anything?
And now, nothing felt right. The thought of leaving Justin was ludicrous, but the idea of moving with him seemed equally far-fetched. How the fuck did it come to this?
No closer to figuring anything out, Dan finally walked into the house with a "Hey," and recognized immediately that Justin knew something.
The air was charged as Justin carefully set aside his sketch pad. "Al Carter called," he said.
"Dinner party?" Dan guessed, tossing the mail on the counter and joining Justin in the living room.
Justin slowly shook his head, intently watching Dan as he spoke. "He wanted to give you a hard time about your all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas."
Dan froze for a second. He'd been so preoccupied about the Mass Gen job he'd forgotten about the medical conference. He nodded. "Ah."
"Al made it sound like a big deal to be asked to speak," Justin quietly continued. "Why didn't you say something?"
Dan shrug, careful to keep the defensiveness from his tone. "I should've. I just wasn't sure if..."
Justin sighed and continued shaking his head at Dan. "He asked me if I was going, and it was really humiliating that I hadn't heard anything about it."
"Sorry," Dan said softly.
Justin shrugged away the apology. "I figured if you wanted me to go along, you would've said something, so I told him I wasn't going. And you know, I'm okay with that. Whatever, you know? I wouldn't have cared, but he was, like, really surprised. He said it was always the one time of the year everyone knew Kevin wasn't a figment of your imagination."
"J, look..."
Justin finally stood up and began to restlessly pace in front of the couch. "I've been tellin' myself all this time that you're uncomfortable being out but that's bullshit! You never had a problem going anywhere with Kevin, did you? You're uncomfortable with me."
"What do you want me to say?" Dan said. "Yeah, I'm uncomfortable. I think everyone's judging me and thinking I'm some kind of pathetic old geezer, and you're only with me because I'm...
"Why do you care?" Justin demanded, arms flailing in frustration. "You know the truth! You know who you are, who I am..."
Dan scoffed and turned away, shaking his head at how wrong Justin was. "I don't know anything," he muttered.
"What?"
Dan sighed and turned back around, standing in back of a leather chair and grasping it, as if speaking at a lectern. "I'm not just going to present a paper. I'm also interviewing for a job at Massachusetts General."
Justin's irritation immediately gave way to shock. "Oh," he said vaguely. He gave a distracted snort that wasn't quite amusement and said, "When were you going to tell me that?"
"I don't know," Dan said tiredly and lamely continued. "Nothing's set...there's a million details still to work out..."
Justin made a sour face and rolled his eyes. "Christ, Dan, you're shitting at the idea of me going with you to some fucking conference, and you want me to believe it's all the fucking details that kept you from telling me about a new job? Bullshit!"
"Look, if you go with me to Boston..."
"Go with you?" Justin interrupted, incredulous at the idea. "How? I cannot fucking transfer to another school! Jesus Christ, I'm gonna be 40 before I get a fuckin' degree!"
Dan felt his face flushing hotly, and he stood there, mouth open, feeling flayed at Justin's initial reaction. "Wow, that was an easy decision, wasn't it?" he said, moving to sit down with a resounding thud. "Somehow I thought it would provoke a least a little discussion."
Justin gaped at him. "No fucking way are you going to turn this into some fucking pity party for yourself! If Al hadn't called, when were you gonna fucking tell me about all of this? When you were packing for the airport? I mean, granted I'm not the most observant guy in the universe, but even I would have noticed that, right?"
"Christ, I fucked up not telling you about everything, all right? I admit it, and I'm sorry! But excuse me for thinking there was enough between us that we'd at least talk about what it would fucking mean if I get the job!"
"What it would mean?" Justin echoed in amazement. "It would mean you live in Massachusetts and I live here! What else could it mean?"
Dan flushed again at Justin's callous assessment. "So you just categorically refuse to even consider coming with me?"
Justin gave a frustrated cry and pulled at his hair. "What the fuck? Are you nuts? I can't transfer again, Dan! I can't..."
Dan jumped to his feet, belligerently descending on Justin and shouting, "I'm supposed to pass on the fucking greatest job I will ever be offered because you can't spend another semester or two in school? Is that it?"
Justin looked whip lashed at the sudden change in the discussion. "No!" he denied. "Of course not. I'd never ask you to give up..."
"Why not?" Dan yelled. "If you won't go to Boston, why the fuck wouldn't you ask me to stay here?"
Justin was bewildered by the question. He shrugged helplessly at Dan. "What...what do you mean? I wouldn't ask you to sacrifice some amazing job..."
"Why not?" Dan said again. "We're lovers, Justin. That's what you do--you make sacrifices for each other. I'm asking you right now, if I get the job, will you come with me? Fuck school! So it takes you longer to get your degree, so what!"
"Dan, God!" Justin said. "You can't just fucking spring this shit on me and demand some kind of fucking..."
"Answer me!" Dan said angrily. "Will you come or not?"
Justin paled and turned away, brushing his hands through his hair. "I can't...what... Dan, I can't..." He sounded as lost and dejected as Dan had ever heard him, and the anger evaporated.
Dan came up behind him and hesitantly hugged him. "Brian Kinney may be a huge fuckin' asshole," Dan said softly, "But he's right about one thing, J. It's time to wake up. We can't keep coasting anymore."
The quiet words seemed more devastating than anything they'd said so far. Justin's shoulder slumped, and he turned to stare at Dan with hurt, haunted eyes. Dan slowly released him, and Justin backed away from him until Dan finally reached out and grabbed his hands to keep him from retreating any further. "If I get the job, do you want to go with me?"
Justin looked distraught at the question. His eyes pleaded with Dan to let it go. "Do you?" Dan asked again.
Justin stared brokenly at Dan, then dropped his gaze. "I don't know," he whispered, eyes slowly closing as if the words caused him physical pain. Averting his own eyes from Justin's face, Dan understood that pain when Justin said, "Do you want me to go with you?"
Dan heaved a sigh, but brought his eyes level with Justin's. "I don't know," he whispered, anguished by the admission.
There was nothing else to say.
Silent, they stood there, lost in thought until Justin led Dan up the stairs, and they made love wordlessly and a little desperately, and then they went to sleep.
In the morning, before they left the bed, before they'd even acknowledged to each other that they were awake, Dan whispered into Justin's ear, "Come with me to Nassau."
Justin sighed, but Dan continued. "Just...come. We're not gonna figure anything out right now, and if we're gonna be miserable, let's be miserable in the Bahamas."
Justin managed a grin and a soft snort of amusement. "What if ..."
Dan shook his head, hugging Justin hard to cut off his questions. "If we split up," Dan began, and was shocked that his voice broke. He paused for a second, resting his forehead against Justin's bare shoulder, then started again, whispering fiercely into Justin's ear. "If we split up, it's not going to be because I'm some fucking chicken shit coward."
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Bright and early Monday morning, Brian ordered his latte and moseyed over to Justin's table. The kid looked tired. Brian couldn't imagine anything he and Dan could have done over the weekend to lead to such a condition. He leaned into Justin's space and caught his eye. "I remember a hot little twink who used to recover from a night out with far more resiliency than this," he said, rubbing at the dark smudge under Justin's eye with his thumb.
Justin pushed his hand away, but grabbed his wrist before it was out of arms length. "You have to be anywhere right now?" he asked with a wistful note in his voice that cut straight to Brian's cock. Little fucker.
Still, this was new. Justin generally treated their morning ritual as something to endure. Actually engaging was rare.
Brian shrugged. "I always have time for you, Sunshine," he said magnanimously and sat down with a flourish. Justin smiled briefly at him, then proceeded to diffidently twirl his coffee cup between his hands.
After five minutes of silence passed between the two of them, Brian checked his watch. "Well this has been really nice," he said with faux sweetness. "Same time tomorrow?"
Justin snorted softly and shook his head. "Sorry," he said with a shrug. Then, in his typically direct way, he looked right at Brian and said, "Dan's interviewing for a job in Boston, at Harvard's medical school hospital."
Brian nodded slowly, sitting back in his chair to digest the information. Justin wouldn't look at him, concentrating instead on the paper cup in front of him. It wasn't like Brian was going to shed any tears at the back of Dan's head, so he waited for Justin to continue. When he didn't, Brian hazard a guess. "So... then what? He get pissed off when you said See ya?"
Justin didn't answer, just gave a careless shrug as he shook his head.
Brian leaned forward with a shrug of his own. "Fuck him. Either he gets over it or he doesn't. He gets over it, you can have some good break-up fucks before he goes. He doesn't, and he moseys off into the sunset. What's the damage?"
"Why do you just assume I won't go with him?"
Brian scoffed at the question. "Some ideas are so fuckin' ludicrous they don't come with an explanation," he said. "Or need one."
Justin gave Brian one of those steady, measuring looks that used to irritate the shit out of him. "When I say I love Dan, do you think it's something I've fooled myself into believing or that I'm willfully lying?"
Brian sighed, both at Justin's melodrama and at being lured into such a ridiculous conversation. "You're not a liar," he said, then made a dismissive face and shook his head. "But it's love like you love a pair of shoes or Deb's lasagna. It's fuckin' ordinary. And you don't follow a pan of lasagna to fucking Harvard."
Justin briefly cast his eyes toward heaven and said, "This has been nice."
Brian shrugged a what do you expect at Justin. "Callin' it like I see it, Sunshine."
Justin smirked at him. "I thought this was what you wanted all along," he said. "Me, hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh. I'm surprised you're not offering to help us pack and load the van."
"My salad days," Brian said softly, dismissing all of it with a shrug and a slow, measuring blink of his eyes.
But Justin missed it, staring vacantly into space. "I wasn't gonna be with Dan when I first met him, you know," he said. "I wasn't gonna be with anybody ever again 'cause, you know, fuck all that shit. But I saw him in here all the time, and thought he was really hot." He cast an eye at Brian as if daring him to make a comment. Brian responded with a terribly innocent what, me? expression that earned him another smirk.
"I gave him the eye once," Justin continued. "Right here, kind of... motioned to the bathroom to see if he'd take me up on it." Justin ducked his head and chuckled. "You'd've thought I asked him if he wanted to go shoot up or something. He looked...scandalized." Justin shrugged, still smiling. "I watched him for awhile after that. He just seemed so...nice. Normal. He always puts his change in the muscular dystrophy can, and he and his brother Charlie always seemed like they were laughing about something. I asked him out first, but when he found out I was in school, he wouldn't let me pay for dinner. He said I could make him dinner at his place the next night--it'd be cheaper, you know?"
Brian refrained from a snort of derision and pointing out that getting Justin back to his place might have had something to do with Dan's generosity. What the fuck, let the kid talk.
"That first night we were driving in his car with the top down, and we were stopped at a light and he looked over and said, 'Are you warm enough?' and I just... God, I thought he was so nice."
There was no censure in Justin's voice, but Brian still felt ashamed. He leaned forward in his chair and said, "So you send him a Christmas card at the holidays. No one's sayin' you have to forget the kindly old doctor who was there for you in your time of need."
"This should be a fucking slam dunk!" Justin said, looking suddenly bewildered. "He's so fuckin' good to me, and I think he's, like, the best person I know. Like, totally decent all the way through, you know? And the fucking thing is, if he wasn't gonna get this job, we'd be fine!"
"It would've been something else then," Brian said. "You would've been pushed to shit or get off the pot at some point. That's the way it fuckin' works." It would have been the perfect opportunity for Justin to point out how Brian always got off the fuckin' pot, but he didn't.
Justin nodded half-heartedly. "We already did once," he was saying. "When Mom died. Dan could've totally walked then, but he didn't. He stuck with me, and I was a fuckin' mess, Brian. There was a five-week span there when he was cutting people open on about two hours sleep a night. And he never shit on me about it, just said it was good to be reminded what it was like to be a resident. I think...maybe I owe him..."
"Stop," Brian ordered. "That's bullshit, and you know it. You don't fucking give up your whole fucking life, your whole fucking person because some asshole didn't jettison your ass when your mother died. Those were his choices to make, and you can be fucking grateful for them, but you don't owe him shit!"
"I don't understand why I feel or-or fucking don't feel..." he shook his head, frustrated at his inability to articulate what he meant.
Brian had been dancing around the very subject since he and Justin reconnected, but Justin had refused to pick up the insinuations. Brian started to speak, then hesitated just long enough to get Justin's full attention. "Do you even feel anything right now?" Brian asked.
"Don't!" Justin ordered, his face flushing in anger. "Don't you tell me I don't love him! You don't know shit!"
Brian held up a hand to stave off Justin's anger. "Wait, okay? Wait a fucking minute and listen to me." Brian almost chuckled at Justin's hostile glare as he flopped back in his chair, arms crossed before him.
"As much as it pains you to hear this, I know you better than anybody else on the planet, Sunshine. And pardon the fucking analogy but you are a shadow of the guy you used to be. Everything is fucking muted, Justin. You're so far off the playing field right now, you're not even in the fucking stadium. And the thing is, I think you know it, but you don't want to do anything about it."
Justin was crushed by the words, reacting as if they'd been hurled at him in vengeful anger. Maybe the fact that they'd been delivered in gentle affection made them that much harder to hear. Justin bowed his head and stared at his feet with hollow eyes, but there was no more joking about the quiet that fell between them. Eventually he spoke without raising his face.
"Before I totally came out of the coma, I was kind of awake. Not awake, exactly, aware. Like, I could almost hear voices in the room, and I could almost feel the bed beneath me or the covers on top of me. I almost knew my head hurt and my hand didn't work. But I stopped right before knowing what had happened."
Brian looked away from Justin's bowed head, uncomfortable as always when anything remotely related to the bashing was mentioned.
"I didn't want to wake up because I knew something awful was waiting for me," Justin said. "And when I finally did wake up, I was so fucking...devastated. And I felt really bad about that 'cause my mom and everyone was so happy, but for, like, weeks I wished I hadn't woken up." Justin looked up and stared absently at the door. "I wished it for weeks."
"So what!" Brian fiercely shot back. "Life is fucking hard. And it's a risk and sometimes really fucking shitty things happen. So fucking what?" Brian wanted to reach over and shake Justin; he wanted to chuck his long-empty coffee cup and him and shove him against a wall and scream at him to knock it off. And the irony--the unfairness--of it all was that Brian was the fucking king of coping in just the way Justin was now.
Brian numbed himself; kept himself just aloof enough to look like he was playing along, but in truth, nothing could touch him. That had been the plan anyway.
But the thing he'd always liked about Justin--Jesus fucking Christ--the thing he'd always loved about the kid was how God damned there he was. On the dance floor at Babylon, in an alley outside of Woody's, on a darkened street with a can of paste in one hand and a satchel full of fuck ass trouble slung over his shoulder, Justin was here and queer and the rest of the world had better get the fuck out of his way. He fucking lived. He didn't exist; he didn't coast; he didn't wait-and-see. He fucking jumped in, arms opened wide, ready to face whatever the fuck came next. God damn it, couldn't he remember that? Didn't he fucking miss that kid?
Brian did. God, Brian missed that fucking kid.
"That's so easy for you to say, Brian!" Justin cried. "You choose every fucking thing that happens to you! Your life is every fucking thing you want it to be! And nothing you don't. So don't sit there and tell me to suck up all the shit and get on with it because you have no fucking idea about anything!"
"Bullshit!" Brian barked back. "You think I chose some underage twink to turn every fucking thing I knew on its ass? You think I don't look at the steaming fucking pile of shit my life is right now and wonder what the fuck happened?"
"You made everything happen! You're not sitting there wondering what the fuck went wrong--you don't have to because you engineered everything!"
Brian started to argue with Justin, but stopped himself. He bit his lip and took a breath and sat back in his seat. "What do you want?" he asked. "Forget all the fucked up shit I do and just tell me what it is you want to happen."
"All I want is for everything to stay the same for five fucking seconds!"
"That's not on the menu," Brian answered gently.
Justin looked over at Brian. "Do you think... do you think if I really felt stuff like before... if I let myself feel stuff like before, do you think then I'd be okay about moving with him?"
Brian could hardly let himself think about what it said about Justin's fucked up life that he would ask that question of him. Wasn't there anyone else the kid could turn to for this shit? Brian already knew there wasn't, but Jesus, shouldn't there be?
How the fuck could Justin sit there with those big blue orphan eyes trained on him like Brian held the answer to every great riddle ever posed? And why the God damned fuck couldn't Brian look him straight in those big blue orphan eyes and say No. As a matter of fact, you're never gonna feel anything more for that pretentious fucker, so quit trying.
With a sigh, Brian stood up and moved over in front of Justin, forcing Justin to lift his chin to look at him. If anything, it exaggerated the pleading looking in his eyes, and Brian couldn't help the affectionate smile on his face. What a little fucker.
He brushed the hair off Justin's forehead and leaned in to gently kiss the spot he cleared. Then he offered the only answer he could to Justin's question.
"I don't know," he whispered, and left without looking back.
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The One Where Justin's With Another Guy, and Brian Interferes, Part 8
Dan drove around for awhile after leaving the coffee shop. He took the car out down 23 where he could open her up and fly, yet he was close enough to the hospital that if he was pulled over, the cop would undoubtedly let him off with just a warning.
He'd already made up his mind to tell Justin about the job offer, he just wished he had a clue as to how he'd react.
Fuck. If that wasn't indicative of ... everything.
God, he should know how this news would hit Justin. He should at least know what direction the wind was blowing, but Dan had no idea how it would play out. He could barely articulate his own feelings about the situation, how in the hell could he predict Justin's?
How did this...this thing with a pretty little college kid get so far beyond his control? How the hell could it happen when neither one of them was looking for anything?
And now, nothing felt right. The thought of leaving Justin was ludicrous, but the idea of moving with him seemed equally far-fetched. How the fuck did it come to this?
No closer to figuring anything out, Dan finally walked into the house with a "Hey," and recognized immediately that Justin knew something.
The air was charged as Justin carefully set aside his sketch pad. "Al Carter called," he said.
"Dinner party?" Dan guessed, tossing the mail on the counter and joining Justin in the living room.
Justin slowly shook his head, intently watching Dan as he spoke. "He wanted to give you a hard time about your all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas."
Dan froze for a second. He'd been so preoccupied about the Mass Gen job he'd forgotten about the medical conference. He nodded. "Ah."
"Al made it sound like a big deal to be asked to speak," Justin quietly continued. "Why didn't you say something?"
Dan shrug, careful to keep the defensiveness from his tone. "I should've. I just wasn't sure if..."
Justin sighed and continued shaking his head at Dan. "He asked me if I was going, and it was really humiliating that I hadn't heard anything about it."
"Sorry," Dan said softly.
Justin shrugged away the apology. "I figured if you wanted me to go along, you would've said something, so I told him I wasn't going. And you know, I'm okay with that. Whatever, you know? I wouldn't have cared, but he was, like, really surprised. He said it was always the one time of the year everyone knew Kevin wasn't a figment of your imagination."
"J, look..."
Justin finally stood up and began to restlessly pace in front of the couch. "I've been tellin' myself all this time that you're uncomfortable being out but that's bullshit! You never had a problem going anywhere with Kevin, did you? You're uncomfortable with me."
"What do you want me to say?" Dan said. "Yeah, I'm uncomfortable. I think everyone's judging me and thinking I'm some kind of pathetic old geezer, and you're only with me because I'm...
"Why do you care?" Justin demanded, arms flailing in frustration. "You know the truth! You know who you are, who I am..."
Dan scoffed and turned away, shaking his head at how wrong Justin was. "I don't know anything," he muttered.
"What?"
Dan sighed and turned back around, standing in back of a leather chair and grasping it, as if speaking at a lectern. "I'm not just going to present a paper. I'm also interviewing for a job at Massachusetts General."
Justin's irritation immediately gave way to shock. "Oh," he said vaguely. He gave a distracted snort that wasn't quite amusement and said, "When were you going to tell me that?"
"I don't know," Dan said tiredly and lamely continued. "Nothing's set...there's a million details still to work out..."
Justin made a sour face and rolled his eyes. "Christ, Dan, you're shitting at the idea of me going with you to some fucking conference, and you want me to believe it's all the fucking details that kept you from telling me about a new job? Bullshit!"
"Look, if you go with me to Boston..."
"Go with you?" Justin interrupted, incredulous at the idea. "How? I cannot fucking transfer to another school! Jesus Christ, I'm gonna be 40 before I get a fuckin' degree!"
Dan felt his face flushing hotly, and he stood there, mouth open, feeling flayed at Justin's initial reaction. "Wow, that was an easy decision, wasn't it?" he said, moving to sit down with a resounding thud. "Somehow I thought it would provoke a least a little discussion."
Justin gaped at him. "No fucking way are you going to turn this into some fucking pity party for yourself! If Al hadn't called, when were you gonna fucking tell me about all of this? When you were packing for the airport? I mean, granted I'm not the most observant guy in the universe, but even I would have noticed that, right?"
"Christ, I fucked up not telling you about everything, all right? I admit it, and I'm sorry! But excuse me for thinking there was enough between us that we'd at least talk about what it would fucking mean if I get the job!"
"What it would mean?" Justin echoed in amazement. "It would mean you live in Massachusetts and I live here! What else could it mean?"
Dan flushed again at Justin's callous assessment. "So you just categorically refuse to even consider coming with me?"
Justin gave a frustrated cry and pulled at his hair. "What the fuck? Are you nuts? I can't transfer again, Dan! I can't..."
Dan jumped to his feet, belligerently descending on Justin and shouting, "I'm supposed to pass on the fucking greatest job I will ever be offered because you can't spend another semester or two in school? Is that it?"
Justin looked whip lashed at the sudden change in the discussion. "No!" he denied. "Of course not. I'd never ask you to give up..."
"Why not?" Dan yelled. "If you won't go to Boston, why the fuck wouldn't you ask me to stay here?"
Justin was bewildered by the question. He shrugged helplessly at Dan. "What...what do you mean? I wouldn't ask you to sacrifice some amazing job..."
"Why not?" Dan said again. "We're lovers, Justin. That's what you do--you make sacrifices for each other. I'm asking you right now, if I get the job, will you come with me? Fuck school! So it takes you longer to get your degree, so what!"
"Dan, God!" Justin said. "You can't just fucking spring this shit on me and demand some kind of fucking..."
"Answer me!" Dan said angrily. "Will you come or not?"
Justin paled and turned away, brushing his hands through his hair. "I can't...what... Dan, I can't..." He sounded as lost and dejected as Dan had ever heard him, and the anger evaporated.
Dan came up behind him and hesitantly hugged him. "Brian Kinney may be a huge fuckin' asshole," Dan said softly, "But he's right about one thing, J. It's time to wake up. We can't keep coasting anymore."
The quiet words seemed more devastating than anything they'd said so far. Justin's shoulder slumped, and he turned to stare at Dan with hurt, haunted eyes. Dan slowly released him, and Justin backed away from him until Dan finally reached out and grabbed his hands to keep him from retreating any further. "If I get the job, do you want to go with me?"
Justin looked distraught at the question. His eyes pleaded with Dan to let it go. "Do you?" Dan asked again.
Justin stared brokenly at Dan, then dropped his gaze. "I don't know," he whispered, eyes slowly closing as if the words caused him physical pain. Averting his own eyes from Justin's face, Dan understood that pain when Justin said, "Do you want me to go with you?"
Dan heaved a sigh, but brought his eyes level with Justin's. "I don't know," he whispered, anguished by the admission.
There was nothing else to say.
Silent, they stood there, lost in thought until Justin led Dan up the stairs, and they made love wordlessly and a little desperately, and then they went to sleep.
In the morning, before they left the bed, before they'd even acknowledged to each other that they were awake, Dan whispered into Justin's ear, "Come with me to Nassau."
Justin sighed, but Dan continued. "Just...come. We're not gonna figure anything out right now, and if we're gonna be miserable, let's be miserable in the Bahamas."
Justin managed a grin and a soft snort of amusement. "What if ..."
Dan shook his head, hugging Justin hard to cut off his questions. "If we split up," Dan began, and was shocked that his voice broke. He paused for a second, resting his forehead against Justin's bare shoulder, then started again, whispering fiercely into Justin's ear. "If we split up, it's not going to be because I'm some fucking chicken shit coward."
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Bright and early Monday morning, Brian ordered his latte and moseyed over to Justin's table. The kid looked tired. Brian couldn't imagine anything he and Dan could have done over the weekend to lead to such a condition. He leaned into Justin's space and caught his eye. "I remember a hot little twink who used to recover from a night out with far more resiliency than this," he said, rubbing at the dark smudge under Justin's eye with his thumb.
Justin pushed his hand away, but grabbed his wrist before it was out of arms length. "You have to be anywhere right now?" he asked with a wistful note in his voice that cut straight to Brian's cock. Little fucker.
Still, this was new. Justin generally treated their morning ritual as something to endure. Actually engaging was rare.
Brian shrugged. "I always have time for you, Sunshine," he said magnanimously and sat down with a flourish. Justin smiled briefly at him, then proceeded to diffidently twirl his coffee cup between his hands.
After five minutes of silence passed between the two of them, Brian checked his watch. "Well this has been really nice," he said with faux sweetness. "Same time tomorrow?"
Justin snorted softly and shook his head. "Sorry," he said with a shrug. Then, in his typically direct way, he looked right at Brian and said, "Dan's interviewing for a job in Boston, at Harvard's medical school hospital."
Brian nodded slowly, sitting back in his chair to digest the information. Justin wouldn't look at him, concentrating instead on the paper cup in front of him. It wasn't like Brian was going to shed any tears at the back of Dan's head, so he waited for Justin to continue. When he didn't, Brian hazard a guess. "So... then what? He get pissed off when you said See ya?"
Justin didn't answer, just gave a careless shrug as he shook his head.
Brian leaned forward with a shrug of his own. "Fuck him. Either he gets over it or he doesn't. He gets over it, you can have some good break-up fucks before he goes. He doesn't, and he moseys off into the sunset. What's the damage?"
"Why do you just assume I won't go with him?"
Brian scoffed at the question. "Some ideas are so fuckin' ludicrous they don't come with an explanation," he said. "Or need one."
Justin gave Brian one of those steady, measuring looks that used to irritate the shit out of him. "When I say I love Dan, do you think it's something I've fooled myself into believing or that I'm willfully lying?"
Brian sighed, both at Justin's melodrama and at being lured into such a ridiculous conversation. "You're not a liar," he said, then made a dismissive face and shook his head. "But it's love like you love a pair of shoes or Deb's lasagna. It's fuckin' ordinary. And you don't follow a pan of lasagna to fucking Harvard."
Justin briefly cast his eyes toward heaven and said, "This has been nice."
Brian shrugged a what do you expect at Justin. "Callin' it like I see it, Sunshine."
Justin smirked at him. "I thought this was what you wanted all along," he said. "Me, hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh. I'm surprised you're not offering to help us pack and load the van."
"My salad days," Brian said softly, dismissing all of it with a shrug and a slow, measuring blink of his eyes.
But Justin missed it, staring vacantly into space. "I wasn't gonna be with Dan when I first met him, you know," he said. "I wasn't gonna be with anybody ever again 'cause, you know, fuck all that shit. But I saw him in here all the time, and thought he was really hot." He cast an eye at Brian as if daring him to make a comment. Brian responded with a terribly innocent what, me? expression that earned him another smirk.
"I gave him the eye once," Justin continued. "Right here, kind of... motioned to the bathroom to see if he'd take me up on it." Justin ducked his head and chuckled. "You'd've thought I asked him if he wanted to go shoot up or something. He looked...scandalized." Justin shrugged, still smiling. "I watched him for awhile after that. He just seemed so...nice. Normal. He always puts his change in the muscular dystrophy can, and he and his brother Charlie always seemed like they were laughing about something. I asked him out first, but when he found out I was in school, he wouldn't let me pay for dinner. He said I could make him dinner at his place the next night--it'd be cheaper, you know?"
Brian refrained from a snort of derision and pointing out that getting Justin back to his place might have had something to do with Dan's generosity. What the fuck, let the kid talk.
"That first night we were driving in his car with the top down, and we were stopped at a light and he looked over and said, 'Are you warm enough?' and I just... God, I thought he was so nice."
There was no censure in Justin's voice, but Brian still felt ashamed. He leaned forward in his chair and said, "So you send him a Christmas card at the holidays. No one's sayin' you have to forget the kindly old doctor who was there for you in your time of need."
"This should be a fucking slam dunk!" Justin said, looking suddenly bewildered. "He's so fuckin' good to me, and I think he's, like, the best person I know. Like, totally decent all the way through, you know? And the fucking thing is, if he wasn't gonna get this job, we'd be fine!"
"It would've been something else then," Brian said. "You would've been pushed to shit or get off the pot at some point. That's the way it fuckin' works." It would have been the perfect opportunity for Justin to point out how Brian always got off the fuckin' pot, but he didn't.
Justin nodded half-heartedly. "We already did once," he was saying. "When Mom died. Dan could've totally walked then, but he didn't. He stuck with me, and I was a fuckin' mess, Brian. There was a five-week span there when he was cutting people open on about two hours sleep a night. And he never shit on me about it, just said it was good to be reminded what it was like to be a resident. I think...maybe I owe him..."
"Stop," Brian ordered. "That's bullshit, and you know it. You don't fucking give up your whole fucking life, your whole fucking person because some asshole didn't jettison your ass when your mother died. Those were his choices to make, and you can be fucking grateful for them, but you don't owe him shit!"
"I don't understand why I feel or-or fucking don't feel..." he shook his head, frustrated at his inability to articulate what he meant.
Brian had been dancing around the very subject since he and Justin reconnected, but Justin had refused to pick up the insinuations. Brian started to speak, then hesitated just long enough to get Justin's full attention. "Do you even feel anything right now?" Brian asked.
"Don't!" Justin ordered, his face flushing in anger. "Don't you tell me I don't love him! You don't know shit!"
Brian held up a hand to stave off Justin's anger. "Wait, okay? Wait a fucking minute and listen to me." Brian almost chuckled at Justin's hostile glare as he flopped back in his chair, arms crossed before him.
"As much as it pains you to hear this, I know you better than anybody else on the planet, Sunshine. And pardon the fucking analogy but you are a shadow of the guy you used to be. Everything is fucking muted, Justin. You're so far off the playing field right now, you're not even in the fucking stadium. And the thing is, I think you know it, but you don't want to do anything about it."
Justin was crushed by the words, reacting as if they'd been hurled at him in vengeful anger. Maybe the fact that they'd been delivered in gentle affection made them that much harder to hear. Justin bowed his head and stared at his feet with hollow eyes, but there was no more joking about the quiet that fell between them. Eventually he spoke without raising his face.
"Before I totally came out of the coma, I was kind of awake. Not awake, exactly, aware. Like, I could almost hear voices in the room, and I could almost feel the bed beneath me or the covers on top of me. I almost knew my head hurt and my hand didn't work. But I stopped right before knowing what had happened."
Brian looked away from Justin's bowed head, uncomfortable as always when anything remotely related to the bashing was mentioned.
"I didn't want to wake up because I knew something awful was waiting for me," Justin said. "And when I finally did wake up, I was so fucking...devastated. And I felt really bad about that 'cause my mom and everyone was so happy, but for, like, weeks I wished I hadn't woken up." Justin looked up and stared absently at the door. "I wished it for weeks."
"So what!" Brian fiercely shot back. "Life is fucking hard. And it's a risk and sometimes really fucking shitty things happen. So fucking what?" Brian wanted to reach over and shake Justin; he wanted to chuck his long-empty coffee cup and him and shove him against a wall and scream at him to knock it off. And the irony--the unfairness--of it all was that Brian was the fucking king of coping in just the way Justin was now.
Brian numbed himself; kept himself just aloof enough to look like he was playing along, but in truth, nothing could touch him. That had been the plan anyway.
But the thing he'd always liked about Justin--Jesus fucking Christ--the thing he'd always loved about the kid was how God damned there he was. On the dance floor at Babylon, in an alley outside of Woody's, on a darkened street with a can of paste in one hand and a satchel full of fuck ass trouble slung over his shoulder, Justin was here and queer and the rest of the world had better get the fuck out of his way. He fucking lived. He didn't exist; he didn't coast; he didn't wait-and-see. He fucking jumped in, arms opened wide, ready to face whatever the fuck came next. God damn it, couldn't he remember that? Didn't he fucking miss that kid?
Brian did. God, Brian missed that fucking kid.
"That's so easy for you to say, Brian!" Justin cried. "You choose every fucking thing that happens to you! Your life is every fucking thing you want it to be! And nothing you don't. So don't sit there and tell me to suck up all the shit and get on with it because you have no fucking idea about anything!"
"Bullshit!" Brian barked back. "You think I chose some underage twink to turn every fucking thing I knew on its ass? You think I don't look at the steaming fucking pile of shit my life is right now and wonder what the fuck happened?"
"You made everything happen! You're not sitting there wondering what the fuck went wrong--you don't have to because you engineered everything!"
Brian started to argue with Justin, but stopped himself. He bit his lip and took a breath and sat back in his seat. "What do you want?" he asked. "Forget all the fucked up shit I do and just tell me what it is you want to happen."
"All I want is for everything to stay the same for five fucking seconds!"
"That's not on the menu," Brian answered gently.
Justin looked over at Brian. "Do you think... do you think if I really felt stuff like before... if I let myself feel stuff like before, do you think then I'd be okay about moving with him?"
Brian could hardly let himself think about what it said about Justin's fucked up life that he would ask that question of him. Wasn't there anyone else the kid could turn to for this shit? Brian already knew there wasn't, but Jesus, shouldn't there be?
How the fuck could Justin sit there with those big blue orphan eyes trained on him like Brian held the answer to every great riddle ever posed? And why the God damned fuck couldn't Brian look him straight in those big blue orphan eyes and say No. As a matter of fact, you're never gonna feel anything more for that pretentious fucker, so quit trying.
With a sigh, Brian stood up and moved over in front of Justin, forcing Justin to lift his chin to look at him. If anything, it exaggerated the pleading looking in his eyes, and Brian couldn't help the affectionate smile on his face. What a little fucker.
He brushed the hair off Justin's forehead and leaned in to gently kiss the spot he cleared. Then he offered the only answer he could to Justin's question.
"I don't know," he whispered, and left without looking back.
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