Stop (R; Brian/Justin)
Title: Stop
Written By: Etharei
Timeline: Between 304 and 305
Rating: R
Warnings: Allusions to J/E, slightly spoilerish for up to 304.
Summary: A most unusual birthday, at a time when you should have been miserable and lonely. (Second-person POV, Brian Kinney)
Author Notes: I took some liberties with the timeline, particularly concerning Brian’s birthday. I also made the assumption that St. James Academy had a Middle School.
To those afflicted with chronic Fiddler Phobia, there is no mention of him by name in this fic, and only one very brief referance. I know that there are some disagreements about what constitutes to a B/J fic, but in my mind and in my personal classification, this is B/J.
Completely unbeta’ed, so all mistakes are mine alone. Though I've made more corrections from the version at the challenge site.
STOP
After the fiasco with your 30th ‘Death-Day’ the previous year, you’d gone out of your way to make it painfully, excruciatingly clear to everyone you knew that any future celebrations of your birthday would end with you either driving your brand spankin’ new Corvette off a suitably high cliff or bridge or parking complex, or swallowing every flavour of pill to be found in the loft. In one go.
It’s a measure of what the general opinion of you these days is, at least on the emotional/ mental stability front, that most of them seem to believe you.
So you wake up feeling your usual before-noon disgruntlement on the day in which, at least according to your birth certificate, you were pushed kicking and screaming out of your mother’s twat (OK, brain, get rid of that fucking image fucking now) and into this great big world, and feel relatively secure in the knowledge that only Debbie and Mikey would still dare to foist birthday-related articles upon you this day.
It has become a private tradition of yours to silently wish all manner of misfortune on the unwitting head of the doctor who had attended the birth. But this year you can’t rally the motivation to think up of anything particularly creative (unlike at 20, when you were living in a dorm and had set up a whole voodoo ceremony), and so you half-heartedly envision him getting a nasty bout of genital herpes from a hooker who’d been a patient, which would lead him to lose his medical license and his wife.
God, maybe your subversive brain really is trying to make put yourself out of misery. Or it. Whatever the fuck.
The loft suddenly feels too familiar, too full of things that aren’t really there anymore, so you take a shower, get dressed, and drive at the speed limit to arrive at Vanguard early enough to earn a surprised look from Cynthia. You make a special effort to be even more obnoxious and rude and critical than usual, and the fact that Vance doesn’t turn up to talk at you about ‘creating a supportive working environment’ convinces you that Cynthia had taken the initiative and spread the word about the date. So you stay behind your desk all day, not even getting up for lunch, and take pleasure from watching people enter the office looking like they’re about to go in front of a Russian firing squad.
The phone call that screws up all your intentions for a totally mundane unbirthday-like day rings out just as you’re considering going home. You grumble and press the speaker button, putting aside the boards you’d been thinking about taking with you.
“Yes?” you bark.
“I know you said no calls unless it’s for business,” Cynthia says quickly (your finger hovers on the End Call button, but after so many years of working together you’re pretty sure that she’s gotten the hang of how you work). “But it’s someone from St. James Academy.”
What the fuck? For a moment you’re transported back in time, back when things were simple- well, less complicated than now, and you could still believe yourself when you told people that you never loved him- and you’re surprised to find that you really, really miss those days, more than you miss being truly young and having your work being attributed to natural genius rather than a product of time and experience.
You absolutely, steadfastly refuse to contemplate the fact that the only difference between then and now, really, is an upward shift in your position at work and the presence of a certain blond twink.
“Brian?”
Oh, yeah. Phone call from St. James. “I’ll take it.”
Cynthia patches you through whilst you pick up the handset. An unfamiliar male voice speaks gruffly into your ear. “Mr. Brian Kinney?”
“That’s me.”
“Are related to Miss Molly Taylor?”
“Molly?” Yes, sir, I used to fuck her older brother. The words dance across your tongue, teetering on the tip, but the bitterness of the past tense supersedes any joy you could have derived from inducing a heart attack in a middle-aged private school teacher. “I know her mother,” you reply, sensing that you need to establish some sort of relationship to Molly and having nothing else true that you can say.
“Ah.” Years of dealing with clients let you read, in that one syllable, the faceless speaker’s assumptions about what you’d meant by your statement, swathed with disapproval of relationships not sanctioned by church and state. “Miss Taylor has been waiting to be picked up from the campus for nearly three hours. Would it be possible for you to come by at this time?”
What? “What?” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “I’m afraid I don’t understand- why do I have to pick her up?”
“She says her father was supposed to pick her up today, but he hasn’t appeared and neither of her parents can be reached.”
“What about her older brother? He’s a St. James alumna.”
“We have tried contacting him, also, but it goes directly to voicemail. I have left him a message, but it has been two hours and he has yet to return the call. Mrs. Taylor listed you as her secondary emergency contact.”
The last statement causes you to blink, because nothing in life or classic literature has ever told you how to deal with the idea that the mother of your ex- of the guy you deflowered at the age of seventeen and then fucked far longer than you should’ve, had, at some point, decided to entrust you with the care of her daughter in the event that immediate family were unavailable.
Talk about a minefield. Definitely to be ventured into only when comfortably cushioned by alcohol and guided by the sweet smoky trail of quality weed.
“Isn’t there anyone else you can call?”
“According to our records, Mr. Craig Taylor is the primary emergency contact, followed by Mr. Justin Taylor and yourself as secondary contacts. There aren’t any more numbers on the file.”
“I’m on my way,” you hear yourself say. You’re already reaching for your coat and suitcase.
“Do you need directions?”
“No, I’ve been to the school before.” In a Jeep with FAGGOT painted pink on black, windshield and headlights smashed, and threatening a student with bodily harm for giving a preview of what it means to be openly out at high school. And this was less than 24 hours after you’d walked out of Babylon still horny and with your cellphone fatefully turned off. “Tell Molly to stay put.”
You hurry out, yelling over your shoulder to Cynthia that you were calling it a day. Your head is practically humming from all the thoughts bouncing around in there, but you’re not brave enough to examine any of them, not when you’re still trying to figure out why Jennifer chose you, of all people. The one who had taken away her little boy, had let another boy crack his head open with a baseball bat, had given him a trick for his nineteenth birthday. (All right, you’re pretty sure she doesn’t know about that last one.) By all rights, she should hate you; until the phone call, you’d sort of assumed that she does.
It occurs to you that maybe she doesn’t like the fiddler, either, and it takes your mirror to make you realize that you’re smiling.
You’ve only made the journey from the office to St. James a couple of times (it was usually the reverse) but you’ve always had a good visual memory; it’s part of what makes you good at your job. Voices spring out at you- being told that you drink too much coffee, that that ‘asshole Hobbes’ had slammed him against a wall, that his ass was still sore after the pounding you’d given it over the weekend- even though you’re in a different vehicle.
Figures. Spend a fortune on changing the trappings, the vessel, the image, but at the end of the day the contents will still be the same.
Stop.
You’re there. You take a moment to survey the place, but it hasn’t changed. It’s almost unbelievable that nearly three years ago you’d skid to a stop right there. The area is pretty much deserted now, though you can hear something like soccer or football practice going on in the far field.
It’s only when you’re striding up the steps that you falter a little, because for one thing you don’t know, didn’t think to ask where Molly is waiting, and for another you’d just driven all the way here without considering whether or not this was a good idea. The latter is something you’ve come to associate closely with all things involving the Taylor family. The hesitation lasts for approximately five seconds, and then you’re the next step up, and the next, up, up, up. At least it’s Molly and not- not her brother.
And you owe Jennifer. Not really in the way that she’d think, but debt is debt, and if putting up with a ten-year-old (or was it eleven now?) for a few hours is what’s required of you, then you’ll just have to deal with it.
Turns out concern #1 isn’t too much of a problem, either; Molly is sitting on a bench a few steps away from the front door, outside what appears to be an office. She looks up at the sound of your approach, but in a tired way that tells you that she must’ve been doing it for a while, probably for every person to pass by in the last few hours.
“Brian?” The way she looks at you makes you feel, for a moment, like you’re Santa Claus or something. Sans the white hair and cellulite, of course.
“Hey Molly,” you greet her with a small smile and a casual tone, as if you’ve been picking her up from school every day of her life. “Ready to go?”
A man comes out of the office. “Mr. Brian Kinney?”
The voice confirms that he’d been the one on the phone. Funnily enough, he looks exactly like you’d pictured him in your head, a standard-issue model of the 3 Bs of Bore: breeder, balding, beer belly. “Yes. Any luck contacting the Taylors?”
“I’m afraid not. Can I please see some identification?”
You hand him your driver’s license. Molly looks like she’s gained colour over the last few seconds, and beams up at you in a way that makes your heart feel like it’s being poked by a rib. “Are we going to the loft, Brian?”
Frown. “Don’t you want to go home, or wherever your mom is?”
“Mom’s in New York for some boring convention. I’m supposed to be staying at Dad’s over the weekend, but he didn’t show.” She cocks her head to one side. “Did Justin send you here?”
“If you can just sign this, Mr. Kinney, then you and Molly can be on your way. I’ll leave a message with her mother and brother saying that she’s with you.”
“I’d appreciate that, thank you.” See? You can be polite and courteous; you just usually choose not to be. Just another matter of not can’t, but won’t. “Come on, Molly.” You’re not sure if you’re supposed to take her hand or something, but she looks too old for that and you don’t want to risk having to baby-sit a pouting pre-teen, so you just walk slightly ahead of her and keep your hand free in case she wants to take it.
It turns out that she isn’t a hand-holder, which is just as well. She wrinkles her nose at the Corvette, and you patiently remind yourself that girls, especially at her age, don’t really appreciate the true value of high-class automobiles. Once you’re both inside, she asks, “So where’s Justin?”
“Probably at school, working on an art project. He turns off his phone so he can concentrate.”
“Oh.”
You’re about half-way to the loft when Molly suddenly exclaims, “Oh my God, I totally forgot- you and Justin aren’t together any more!”
You grit your teeth and actively refrain from launching into some explanation about how you and her brother were never really ‘together’ anyway, because somehow you don’t think she’ll understand it, much less buy it. And you’re pretty sure Jennifer would never forgive you if you mess up both her children’s perception on love and life and fucking relationships.
She seems embarrassed by her outburst and slip of memory, and you’re reminded that this girl has pretty much lost her family due, however inadvertently, to your actions. “It’s OK, we’re still friends.”
Which is true, in a strange sort of way. You are momentarily stopped by a traffic light, and you glance down at the cowry shells encircling your wrist. You haven’t taken them off since he’d returned them, tied them, him, back to you. Ever since that incident, things have become almost easy between the two of you. You see him regularly at the diner, you talk like civilized adults, and the pain grows more tolerable with each passing night, as you knew it would.
You idly wonder if you would have let him go so easily, had you not known that you could survive whatever pain it would inflict upon you. That was the price of having a lifetime’s worth of lessons on pain management, of knowing that you can survive pretty much anything as long as you’ve got your pride and your principles- you don’t fight as hard as you should because you’re not afraid, really afraid, of anything.
Molly hasn’t been inside of the loft before, so of course she’s practically bouncing off the walls the moment she’s through the door. Something about the sight of her avidly examining the designer furniture and shiny kitchen appliances and the spacious bathroom is- not as disturbing and intrusive as you’d have thought it would be. You gaze in puzzlement at the covered trays of food you find laid out on your counter, until you figure out that they can only have come from Debbie, who seems to be eternally afraid of any of you starving to death. It’s only when you spot a small chocolate chip cake between the pasta and the salad, courtesy of Vic, that you remember it’s your birthday.
It quickly becomes apparent that high metabolism is a genetic trait shared by the Taylor children, because the moment Molly sees the food, she’s pulling open cabinet doors and drawers. You find yourself transporting trays as plates and utensils suddenly materialize on the dining room table. You start out planning only to get a few bites of salad so that the kid could have company at the table, but she keeps getting you to taste the dishes and pretty soon you’re putting actual lasagna into your mouth in between giving her watered-down anecdotes of Debbie and the guys.
At some point your cell phone rings, and you check the caller ID before answering it with a, “Don’t worry, she’s fine, we’re eating dinner at the loft.”
You hear her releasing a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Brian. I can’t believe Craig would do something like this! He’s always put business above family, but to forget his own daughter-“
“Calm down, Jennifer. Don’t pop a blood vessel, he’s not worth it. Molly’s fine, we’re eating Deb’s cooking so you don’t have to worry about me poisoning her. When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow evening. But I’ve called Justin, and he’s on his way there. He’ll stay with her at my house until I get back.”
“I’ll drive them. But Jennifer,” you bite your lip. “Why me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you put me down as an emergency contact for your daughter? I mean, for- for Justin I can understand, but Molly?”
“I thought that’d be obvious.”
“What?”
You think you can hear her shaking her head. “Brian, I have a number of people I theoretically trust to take care of my children. But out of all of them, you’re the only who’s actually proven you can.”
“Oh.” Brian Kinney, Atlas Ad Person of the Year, can’t think of a single fucking thing to say to that.
“Thank you, Brian.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not just about today, and you know it.” She hangs up, which is distinctly an un-WASPy thing to do, and you wonder if she picked up that habit from Justin or Debbie.
Just as you force down your absolute last mouthful, there’s a knock at the door, and you know who’s on the other side without a morsel of doubt, would have known even if his mother hadn’t just told you he’d be there. You get up and walk until you’re resting your forehead against the cool metal of the door, and feel proud that you only take a few seconds before you unlock it and slide it open.
Fuck, is just about all you can think when you see him. It must be because you don’t see him all that often now, that every time you do there’s a little jolt in your gut. He’s growing out his hair, and instead of looking girly he just looks damn fucking beautiful.
“Justin!”
You step aside because you know that the little girl would be barreling towards her brother at full-speed, and she does, but though he gives her a hug and a smile his eyes return to yours, and the first words out of his mouth are, “Happy Birthday, Brian.”
You feel like you’ve just taken your first breath in days.
Amidst cries of “Really? Why didn’t you tell me, Brian?” from Molly, Justin wordlessly hands you a rolled-up sheet. Your hand shakes the tiniest bit as you slip off the band and spread out the paper.
It’s a sketch, hand-drawn, of you playing with Gus the few times you’ve had your son over at the loft. It takes your breath away, and you wonder how long he must have worked on this, because you vaguely remember the depicted scene and it was quite a while ago, and you know that his hand still gives out after about half an hour.
It must have taken days to finish.
“Thank you,” you say quietly, and his answering smile turned the rib’s pokes into big fucking stabs. The two of you gaze at each other, like you had after he returned your bracelet, right at that very door. It makes you wonder if this is the closest you’ll ever get to him now, but you stop that train of thought when you find it a little hard to breathe.
“Your sister and I were just partaking on my birthday banquet, courtesy of Debbie Dining.” You gesture over towards the dining area. As if he doesn’t know. He only lived here for almost a year. “Would you like to join us?”
You’d pretty much expected him to decline, and so are surprised when he says, “That’d be great, if you have room for one more.” He walks inside, automatically slipping off his shoes, and his eyebrows go up when he gets a better look at the dining table. “And Debbie Special Delivery, too, since Brian Kinney will never risk being seen carting around this much food. Unless there’s an orgy involved.”
A few months ago, he would have said that last bit with some measure of bitterness, and the fact that he’s grinning as he says it now shoves another rib right in there, because it means that he’s finally over you, that you’ve officially settled into friends-only territory.
Stop.
You’ll survive. You always have, and always will.
And it’s better than- him not being there at all.
“What’s an orgy?”
The look on Justin’s face makes you laugh outright, eases off the ribs for now. You go and get him a plate and a glass and a knife and fork as he tries to get himself out of the shitpit. As amusing as his attempts are, however, the mention of sex has gotten your mind rolling and your body doing other things, especially since it’s been over a day since you’ve had any, and you’re in the same room as Justin. You try to think of something innocuous, like shoelaces, but your eyes travel to the dining table-
Walking into the loft after work, feeling too bone-tired even for Babylon, then freezing as you catch sight of Justin. More specifically, Justin lying on his back on top of the table, spread out and slick, two fingers disappearing between his plump perky butt-cheeks as he lowers his hips down, then lifts up, then it’s down again, the firm muscles of his thighs flexing. Totally naked, except for the clean new sneakers you’d bought him the day before. For some reason you find that hotter than if he’d been wearing leather boots or something, because the sneakers make him look young and innocent and debauched and fuck he’s even wearing socks
- Luckily neither of them seem to notice that you’re ushering them into their seats with unnecessary urgency, and you find that you have room enough for another helping of the marinara. The rest of the meal passes in relative ease. You find it surprisingly, terrifyingly easy to slip into a mode similar to the one you do when dealing with Mikey, and somewhere along the way you’d both managed to agree, without communication, to avoid all possibly uncomfortable topics.
Having his little sister there helped a lot, too.
Finally Justin says that they should be going to their mother’s house. You don’t even give Justin the chance to say that they’ll be taking the taxi, and practically herded the two of them downstairs and into the car. You also give them all the remaining carbohydrate-rich food, on the argument that you won’t eat it anyway, and growing children need proper nourishment.
When you reach the house, Justin gives Molly the keys and tells her to go ahead. His blue eyes look indigo in the dim light. “Michael mentioned something about dropping by later to take you out clubbing. Just so you know.”
“I appreciate the forewarning.”
A brief silence, then, “Thank you. For picking up Molly, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
“Like I said to your mother, it was no big deal. Though I still don’t get why she put me down as an emergency contact.”
He shrugs. “I always said she doesn’t totally hate you. And she really trusts you, in a weird way.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
You look at each other again, and for a moment you have a sudden fear of him kissing you on the lips, like you do to Michael. But he doesn’t, only holds your eyes for several seconds before smiling sheepishly and arranging the foil-wrapped packages in his arms, and you exchange the ritual “Later” for the night.
You don’t drive off until he’s locked the door behind him, and you can see their shadows through the window settling in front of the TV.
At Babylon, Michael comments that you don’t look as bad-tempered as you usually do on your birthday. You pull your best friend over to the dance floor and lose yourself in the eternal thumpa-thumpa, the cowry shells jingling around your wrist, confetti from above floating, swirling, getting into your noise and mouth and eyes and sticking to the dampness on your cheek.
Written By: Etharei
Timeline: Between 304 and 305
Rating: R
Warnings: Allusions to J/E, slightly spoilerish for up to 304.
Summary: A most unusual birthday, at a time when you should have been miserable and lonely. (Second-person POV, Brian Kinney)
Author Notes: I took some liberties with the timeline, particularly concerning Brian’s birthday. I also made the assumption that St. James Academy had a Middle School.
To those afflicted with chronic Fiddler Phobia, there is no mention of him by name in this fic, and only one very brief referance. I know that there are some disagreements about what constitutes to a B/J fic, but in my mind and in my personal classification, this is B/J.
Completely unbeta’ed, so all mistakes are mine alone. Though I've made more corrections from the version at the challenge site.
STOP
After the fiasco with your 30th ‘Death-Day’ the previous year, you’d gone out of your way to make it painfully, excruciatingly clear to everyone you knew that any future celebrations of your birthday would end with you either driving your brand spankin’ new Corvette off a suitably high cliff or bridge or parking complex, or swallowing every flavour of pill to be found in the loft. In one go.
It’s a measure of what the general opinion of you these days is, at least on the emotional/ mental stability front, that most of them seem to believe you.
So you wake up feeling your usual before-noon disgruntlement on the day in which, at least according to your birth certificate, you were pushed kicking and screaming out of your mother’s twat (OK, brain, get rid of that fucking image fucking now) and into this great big world, and feel relatively secure in the knowledge that only Debbie and Mikey would still dare to foist birthday-related articles upon you this day.
It has become a private tradition of yours to silently wish all manner of misfortune on the unwitting head of the doctor who had attended the birth. But this year you can’t rally the motivation to think up of anything particularly creative (unlike at 20, when you were living in a dorm and had set up a whole voodoo ceremony), and so you half-heartedly envision him getting a nasty bout of genital herpes from a hooker who’d been a patient, which would lead him to lose his medical license and his wife.
God, maybe your subversive brain really is trying to make put yourself out of misery. Or it. Whatever the fuck.
The loft suddenly feels too familiar, too full of things that aren’t really there anymore, so you take a shower, get dressed, and drive at the speed limit to arrive at Vanguard early enough to earn a surprised look from Cynthia. You make a special effort to be even more obnoxious and rude and critical than usual, and the fact that Vance doesn’t turn up to talk at you about ‘creating a supportive working environment’ convinces you that Cynthia had taken the initiative and spread the word about the date. So you stay behind your desk all day, not even getting up for lunch, and take pleasure from watching people enter the office looking like they’re about to go in front of a Russian firing squad.
The phone call that screws up all your intentions for a totally mundane unbirthday-like day rings out just as you’re considering going home. You grumble and press the speaker button, putting aside the boards you’d been thinking about taking with you.
“Yes?” you bark.
“I know you said no calls unless it’s for business,” Cynthia says quickly (your finger hovers on the End Call button, but after so many years of working together you’re pretty sure that she’s gotten the hang of how you work). “But it’s someone from St. James Academy.”
What the fuck? For a moment you’re transported back in time, back when things were simple- well, less complicated than now, and you could still believe yourself when you told people that you never loved him- and you’re surprised to find that you really, really miss those days, more than you miss being truly young and having your work being attributed to natural genius rather than a product of time and experience.
You absolutely, steadfastly refuse to contemplate the fact that the only difference between then and now, really, is an upward shift in your position at work and the presence of a certain blond twink.
“Brian?”
Oh, yeah. Phone call from St. James. “I’ll take it.”
Cynthia patches you through whilst you pick up the handset. An unfamiliar male voice speaks gruffly into your ear. “Mr. Brian Kinney?”
“That’s me.”
“Are related to Miss Molly Taylor?”
“Molly?” Yes, sir, I used to fuck her older brother. The words dance across your tongue, teetering on the tip, but the bitterness of the past tense supersedes any joy you could have derived from inducing a heart attack in a middle-aged private school teacher. “I know her mother,” you reply, sensing that you need to establish some sort of relationship to Molly and having nothing else true that you can say.
“Ah.” Years of dealing with clients let you read, in that one syllable, the faceless speaker’s assumptions about what you’d meant by your statement, swathed with disapproval of relationships not sanctioned by church and state. “Miss Taylor has been waiting to be picked up from the campus for nearly three hours. Would it be possible for you to come by at this time?”
What? “What?” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “I’m afraid I don’t understand- why do I have to pick her up?”
“She says her father was supposed to pick her up today, but he hasn’t appeared and neither of her parents can be reached.”
“What about her older brother? He’s a St. James alumna.”
“We have tried contacting him, also, but it goes directly to voicemail. I have left him a message, but it has been two hours and he has yet to return the call. Mrs. Taylor listed you as her secondary emergency contact.”
The last statement causes you to blink, because nothing in life or classic literature has ever told you how to deal with the idea that the mother of your ex- of the guy you deflowered at the age of seventeen and then fucked far longer than you should’ve, had, at some point, decided to entrust you with the care of her daughter in the event that immediate family were unavailable.
Talk about a minefield. Definitely to be ventured into only when comfortably cushioned by alcohol and guided by the sweet smoky trail of quality weed.
“Isn’t there anyone else you can call?”
“According to our records, Mr. Craig Taylor is the primary emergency contact, followed by Mr. Justin Taylor and yourself as secondary contacts. There aren’t any more numbers on the file.”
“I’m on my way,” you hear yourself say. You’re already reaching for your coat and suitcase.
“Do you need directions?”
“No, I’ve been to the school before.” In a Jeep with FAGGOT painted pink on black, windshield and headlights smashed, and threatening a student with bodily harm for giving a preview of what it means to be openly out at high school. And this was less than 24 hours after you’d walked out of Babylon still horny and with your cellphone fatefully turned off. “Tell Molly to stay put.”
You hurry out, yelling over your shoulder to Cynthia that you were calling it a day. Your head is practically humming from all the thoughts bouncing around in there, but you’re not brave enough to examine any of them, not when you’re still trying to figure out why Jennifer chose you, of all people. The one who had taken away her little boy, had let another boy crack his head open with a baseball bat, had given him a trick for his nineteenth birthday. (All right, you’re pretty sure she doesn’t know about that last one.) By all rights, she should hate you; until the phone call, you’d sort of assumed that she does.
It occurs to you that maybe she doesn’t like the fiddler, either, and it takes your mirror to make you realize that you’re smiling.
You’ve only made the journey from the office to St. James a couple of times (it was usually the reverse) but you’ve always had a good visual memory; it’s part of what makes you good at your job. Voices spring out at you- being told that you drink too much coffee, that that ‘asshole Hobbes’ had slammed him against a wall, that his ass was still sore after the pounding you’d given it over the weekend- even though you’re in a different vehicle.
Figures. Spend a fortune on changing the trappings, the vessel, the image, but at the end of the day the contents will still be the same.
Stop.
You’re there. You take a moment to survey the place, but it hasn’t changed. It’s almost unbelievable that nearly three years ago you’d skid to a stop right there. The area is pretty much deserted now, though you can hear something like soccer or football practice going on in the far field.
It’s only when you’re striding up the steps that you falter a little, because for one thing you don’t know, didn’t think to ask where Molly is waiting, and for another you’d just driven all the way here without considering whether or not this was a good idea. The latter is something you’ve come to associate closely with all things involving the Taylor family. The hesitation lasts for approximately five seconds, and then you’re the next step up, and the next, up, up, up. At least it’s Molly and not- not her brother.
And you owe Jennifer. Not really in the way that she’d think, but debt is debt, and if putting up with a ten-year-old (or was it eleven now?) for a few hours is what’s required of you, then you’ll just have to deal with it.
Turns out concern #1 isn’t too much of a problem, either; Molly is sitting on a bench a few steps away from the front door, outside what appears to be an office. She looks up at the sound of your approach, but in a tired way that tells you that she must’ve been doing it for a while, probably for every person to pass by in the last few hours.
“Brian?” The way she looks at you makes you feel, for a moment, like you’re Santa Claus or something. Sans the white hair and cellulite, of course.
“Hey Molly,” you greet her with a small smile and a casual tone, as if you’ve been picking her up from school every day of her life. “Ready to go?”
A man comes out of the office. “Mr. Brian Kinney?”
The voice confirms that he’d been the one on the phone. Funnily enough, he looks exactly like you’d pictured him in your head, a standard-issue model of the 3 Bs of Bore: breeder, balding, beer belly. “Yes. Any luck contacting the Taylors?”
“I’m afraid not. Can I please see some identification?”
You hand him your driver’s license. Molly looks like she’s gained colour over the last few seconds, and beams up at you in a way that makes your heart feel like it’s being poked by a rib. “Are we going to the loft, Brian?”
Frown. “Don’t you want to go home, or wherever your mom is?”
“Mom’s in New York for some boring convention. I’m supposed to be staying at Dad’s over the weekend, but he didn’t show.” She cocks her head to one side. “Did Justin send you here?”
“If you can just sign this, Mr. Kinney, then you and Molly can be on your way. I’ll leave a message with her mother and brother saying that she’s with you.”
“I’d appreciate that, thank you.” See? You can be polite and courteous; you just usually choose not to be. Just another matter of not can’t, but won’t. “Come on, Molly.” You’re not sure if you’re supposed to take her hand or something, but she looks too old for that and you don’t want to risk having to baby-sit a pouting pre-teen, so you just walk slightly ahead of her and keep your hand free in case she wants to take it.
It turns out that she isn’t a hand-holder, which is just as well. She wrinkles her nose at the Corvette, and you patiently remind yourself that girls, especially at her age, don’t really appreciate the true value of high-class automobiles. Once you’re both inside, she asks, “So where’s Justin?”
“Probably at school, working on an art project. He turns off his phone so he can concentrate.”
“Oh.”
You’re about half-way to the loft when Molly suddenly exclaims, “Oh my God, I totally forgot- you and Justin aren’t together any more!”
You grit your teeth and actively refrain from launching into some explanation about how you and her brother were never really ‘together’ anyway, because somehow you don’t think she’ll understand it, much less buy it. And you’re pretty sure Jennifer would never forgive you if you mess up both her children’s perception on love and life and fucking relationships.
She seems embarrassed by her outburst and slip of memory, and you’re reminded that this girl has pretty much lost her family due, however inadvertently, to your actions. “It’s OK, we’re still friends.”
Which is true, in a strange sort of way. You are momentarily stopped by a traffic light, and you glance down at the cowry shells encircling your wrist. You haven’t taken them off since he’d returned them, tied them, him, back to you. Ever since that incident, things have become almost easy between the two of you. You see him regularly at the diner, you talk like civilized adults, and the pain grows more tolerable with each passing night, as you knew it would.
You idly wonder if you would have let him go so easily, had you not known that you could survive whatever pain it would inflict upon you. That was the price of having a lifetime’s worth of lessons on pain management, of knowing that you can survive pretty much anything as long as you’ve got your pride and your principles- you don’t fight as hard as you should because you’re not afraid, really afraid, of anything.
Molly hasn’t been inside of the loft before, so of course she’s practically bouncing off the walls the moment she’s through the door. Something about the sight of her avidly examining the designer furniture and shiny kitchen appliances and the spacious bathroom is- not as disturbing and intrusive as you’d have thought it would be. You gaze in puzzlement at the covered trays of food you find laid out on your counter, until you figure out that they can only have come from Debbie, who seems to be eternally afraid of any of you starving to death. It’s only when you spot a small chocolate chip cake between the pasta and the salad, courtesy of Vic, that you remember it’s your birthday.
It quickly becomes apparent that high metabolism is a genetic trait shared by the Taylor children, because the moment Molly sees the food, she’s pulling open cabinet doors and drawers. You find yourself transporting trays as plates and utensils suddenly materialize on the dining room table. You start out planning only to get a few bites of salad so that the kid could have company at the table, but she keeps getting you to taste the dishes and pretty soon you’re putting actual lasagna into your mouth in between giving her watered-down anecdotes of Debbie and the guys.
At some point your cell phone rings, and you check the caller ID before answering it with a, “Don’t worry, she’s fine, we’re eating dinner at the loft.”
You hear her releasing a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Brian. I can’t believe Craig would do something like this! He’s always put business above family, but to forget his own daughter-“
“Calm down, Jennifer. Don’t pop a blood vessel, he’s not worth it. Molly’s fine, we’re eating Deb’s cooking so you don’t have to worry about me poisoning her. When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow evening. But I’ve called Justin, and he’s on his way there. He’ll stay with her at my house until I get back.”
“I’ll drive them. But Jennifer,” you bite your lip. “Why me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you put me down as an emergency contact for your daughter? I mean, for- for Justin I can understand, but Molly?”
“I thought that’d be obvious.”
“What?”
You think you can hear her shaking her head. “Brian, I have a number of people I theoretically trust to take care of my children. But out of all of them, you’re the only who’s actually proven you can.”
“Oh.” Brian Kinney, Atlas Ad Person of the Year, can’t think of a single fucking thing to say to that.
“Thank you, Brian.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not just about today, and you know it.” She hangs up, which is distinctly an un-WASPy thing to do, and you wonder if she picked up that habit from Justin or Debbie.
Just as you force down your absolute last mouthful, there’s a knock at the door, and you know who’s on the other side without a morsel of doubt, would have known even if his mother hadn’t just told you he’d be there. You get up and walk until you’re resting your forehead against the cool metal of the door, and feel proud that you only take a few seconds before you unlock it and slide it open.
Fuck, is just about all you can think when you see him. It must be because you don’t see him all that often now, that every time you do there’s a little jolt in your gut. He’s growing out his hair, and instead of looking girly he just looks damn fucking beautiful.
“Justin!”
You step aside because you know that the little girl would be barreling towards her brother at full-speed, and she does, but though he gives her a hug and a smile his eyes return to yours, and the first words out of his mouth are, “Happy Birthday, Brian.”
You feel like you’ve just taken your first breath in days.
Amidst cries of “Really? Why didn’t you tell me, Brian?” from Molly, Justin wordlessly hands you a rolled-up sheet. Your hand shakes the tiniest bit as you slip off the band and spread out the paper.
It’s a sketch, hand-drawn, of you playing with Gus the few times you’ve had your son over at the loft. It takes your breath away, and you wonder how long he must have worked on this, because you vaguely remember the depicted scene and it was quite a while ago, and you know that his hand still gives out after about half an hour.
It must have taken days to finish.
“Thank you,” you say quietly, and his answering smile turned the rib’s pokes into big fucking stabs. The two of you gaze at each other, like you had after he returned your bracelet, right at that very door. It makes you wonder if this is the closest you’ll ever get to him now, but you stop that train of thought when you find it a little hard to breathe.
“Your sister and I were just partaking on my birthday banquet, courtesy of Debbie Dining.” You gesture over towards the dining area. As if he doesn’t know. He only lived here for almost a year. “Would you like to join us?”
You’d pretty much expected him to decline, and so are surprised when he says, “That’d be great, if you have room for one more.” He walks inside, automatically slipping off his shoes, and his eyebrows go up when he gets a better look at the dining table. “And Debbie Special Delivery, too, since Brian Kinney will never risk being seen carting around this much food. Unless there’s an orgy involved.”
A few months ago, he would have said that last bit with some measure of bitterness, and the fact that he’s grinning as he says it now shoves another rib right in there, because it means that he’s finally over you, that you’ve officially settled into friends-only territory.
Stop.
You’ll survive. You always have, and always will.
And it’s better than- him not being there at all.
“What’s an orgy?”
The look on Justin’s face makes you laugh outright, eases off the ribs for now. You go and get him a plate and a glass and a knife and fork as he tries to get himself out of the shitpit. As amusing as his attempts are, however, the mention of sex has gotten your mind rolling and your body doing other things, especially since it’s been over a day since you’ve had any, and you’re in the same room as Justin. You try to think of something innocuous, like shoelaces, but your eyes travel to the dining table-
Walking into the loft after work, feeling too bone-tired even for Babylon, then freezing as you catch sight of Justin. More specifically, Justin lying on his back on top of the table, spread out and slick, two fingers disappearing between his plump perky butt-cheeks as he lowers his hips down, then lifts up, then it’s down again, the firm muscles of his thighs flexing. Totally naked, except for the clean new sneakers you’d bought him the day before. For some reason you find that hotter than if he’d been wearing leather boots or something, because the sneakers make him look young and innocent and debauched and fuck he’s even wearing socks
- Luckily neither of them seem to notice that you’re ushering them into their seats with unnecessary urgency, and you find that you have room enough for another helping of the marinara. The rest of the meal passes in relative ease. You find it surprisingly, terrifyingly easy to slip into a mode similar to the one you do when dealing with Mikey, and somewhere along the way you’d both managed to agree, without communication, to avoid all possibly uncomfortable topics.
Having his little sister there helped a lot, too.
Finally Justin says that they should be going to their mother’s house. You don’t even give Justin the chance to say that they’ll be taking the taxi, and practically herded the two of them downstairs and into the car. You also give them all the remaining carbohydrate-rich food, on the argument that you won’t eat it anyway, and growing children need proper nourishment.
When you reach the house, Justin gives Molly the keys and tells her to go ahead. His blue eyes look indigo in the dim light. “Michael mentioned something about dropping by later to take you out clubbing. Just so you know.”
“I appreciate the forewarning.”
A brief silence, then, “Thank you. For picking up Molly, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
“Like I said to your mother, it was no big deal. Though I still don’t get why she put me down as an emergency contact.”
He shrugs. “I always said she doesn’t totally hate you. And she really trusts you, in a weird way.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
You look at each other again, and for a moment you have a sudden fear of him kissing you on the lips, like you do to Michael. But he doesn’t, only holds your eyes for several seconds before smiling sheepishly and arranging the foil-wrapped packages in his arms, and you exchange the ritual “Later” for the night.
You don’t drive off until he’s locked the door behind him, and you can see their shadows through the window settling in front of the TV.
At Babylon, Michael comments that you don’t look as bad-tempered as you usually do on your birthday. You pull your best friend over to the dance floor and lose yourself in the eternal thumpa-thumpa, the cowry shells jingling around your wrist, confetti from above floating, swirling, getting into your noise and mouth and eyes and sticking to the dampness on your cheek.