He smells like vanilla cake batter and mint toothpaste.

He always has.

It used to baffle me, the way he just...smells like fucking vanilla cake batter, beneath every piece of him. Vanilla fucking cake batter.

At first I thought it was his body wash or shampoo. It certainly wasn’t whatever it was that he sprayed on himself when we'd first met because that shit had given me a headache and the little shit had thrown it out the second I started complaining about it. It blew my mind for months before he’d run out of the hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free concoction that had made its way into my shower within the first month and he’d continued smelling like fucking vanilla cake batter. Turns out, that stuff had no smell and using my very expensive Calvin Klein shower gel that smelled like vanilla and driftwood that blended perfectly with the leather from my favourite jacket, gave him a nice rash if he used it more than two times a month.

So that sucked.

He hadn’t been talking to his mother at that point, he was still so worked up over whatever it was his father had done that time, so there was no way he was asking her where she usually brought it from. And we’d ended up finding another kind that worked well so long as he wasn’t using it everyday and he’d insisted he could make do until he found the right brand, so I'd let him go about his life. Showering every two days and smelling like soy milk and kind of off coconut.

And by the second day, every two days like clock work, he’d smell like vanilla cake batter and he’d smile at me while I licked at his wrists or he’d clutch my shoulders while I sucked at the skin just below his earlobe. Either way he’d just let me. I’d press my nose against his soft, smooth skin like some sort of freak and he’d just let me.

Vanilla cake batter.

It was fine for a while. He smelled like vanilla cake batter and then he smell like vanilla cake batter and me. His mint toothpaste my favourite taste and the underlying tones of leather and driftwood that would cling to him the way he clung to me. I’d get drunk off it.

His hair started to smell like vanilla after a while, but that just enhanced the smell of the cake batter and drove me madder for him every morning, had me melting every time I walked past the patisserie during my lunch breaks.

He just had me. Him and his stupid vanilla cake batter.

It wasn’t until the fiddler that it changed. That he changed.

He never smelled...bad, per say, just-

Just wrong.

Kind of like he did when he could only use body wash every second day but worse. Like all the grease and the sweat of working the diner and putting effort into his school work and running around town to do shit instead of getting Brian to drive him or having the actual money to catch the bus was all building up.

It was all lingering on his skin for too long and his hair was shiny in a kind of gross way except he never looked gross because he was the Justin Fucking Taylor to my Brian Fucking Kinney and if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll dangle you from the roof of Meathook by your balls until you take it back.

He was wrong. The whole time.

And I knew it too. I knew he’d left the last of his hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free shower gel in it’s lonely little corner of the shower when he’d left and I didn’t really know what to do with it so it just stayed there. I also knew that shit cost $14.99 a bottle and I knew he didn’t have the money for that and I knew he had a rash on his chest and shoulders two weeks after moving in with Ian and I knew he’d wanted to beg me to just hand over the damn body wash but he’d been too proud. Or scared. Or stupid because he really could have just taken it.

And then, by the third week, he’d had a weird sort of raspberry scent following him around.

Weird because I was familiar with it...weirder because I couldn’t pinpoint where I knew it from.

And then I’d run into Daphne on my way to work, in all her peach lipstick glory, and she’d told me about how Justin had started showering at her place because the stupid little fiddler couldn’t afford Justin’s body wash and Daphne just happened to have a scented version of the one Justin preferred.

“Soap gives me acne.”

She was so full of shit.

When he’d returned, all those months later, he hadn’t smelled like vanilla cake batter.

His whole body reeked of exhaustion and dust and Daphne’s gross smelling perfume that I ended up replacing on her birthday because I’ll be damned if she was going to transfer that shitty off brand goats piss onto Sunshine’s skin. He’d giggled about it, bragged about how much I loved his friend and then tried to hide his sulking over the fact that I’d thought of her birthday and ruined his. My ass had more than made up for it.

He still stunk of grease and the kitchen floor of the diner but he’d always kind of smelled like that, ever since he started working there, and I’d always been used to that smell so it wasn’t even a problem.

But his breath didn’t smell like mint anymore and the smell of vanilla cake batter was barely noticeable on him and it drove me mad in a less sexy kind of way. He used a new brand of toothpaste because apparently the last one had closed up his throat and he wasn’t planning on risking it and then just..life, really. Life covered the smell of vanilla cake batter and it really just kind of fucking sucked worse than the Calvin Klein rash. I liked his mint toothpaste.

Spearmint just couldn’t compare. He tasted wrong for weeks.

And at that point he’d been avoiding leaving his shit laying around at the loft so I never really got the chance to notice if anything had changed in his day to day life until he’d applied fucking...roll on deodorant right before my innocent eyes.

It kind of clicked and also kind of made me even more confused because Justin had never worn roll on deodorant so obviously if he’d started then...yeah maybe that would lessen the whole vanilla cake batter smell his skin just emits but also-

Justin had never worn roll on deodorant so why would he start now and...why did it stop his whole body from smelling like a children's birthday party?

“Since when have you put that shit on your body? I would have thought it’d give you some kind of reaction.”

He chuckled under his breath, shaking his little blond head as he did it and then he’d smiled up at me with that almost-but-not-quite-Sunshine-smile that he got when he was embarrassed.

“Ethan brought it for me.”

I wish, I wish, I wish I hadn’t asked. I really do. Because maybe I could have forgiven the fiddler for stealing this lovely piece of blond boy ass from me but of course. No. I’d scoffed and let out a confused and slightly offended, “why?”

And Justin had shrugged, his smile dropping a little bit before he turned to pack his shit away like a good like house guest. “He said I smell like dirty sex and vanilla. And he hates vanilla.”

I wanted to laugh, honestly. It’s vanilla cake batter. Imbecile. And you don’t...buy someone deodorant and not fucking hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free body wash. Idiot. Why the fuck did I let this stupid little ray of sunshine run off to him again?

Maybe I’m the idiot.

I’d crossed the bathroom, my eyebrow raising as I reached around him and into his fucking stupid overnight bag that I wanted to burn because just fucking ask to move back in you little shit, and I’d taken that stupid bottle of vanilla cake batter suppressor and tossed it into the bin behind him.

“I like vanilla.”

He’d beamed.

Brighter than the whole fucking sun.

He never really got shitfaced in front of me until about the third month in.

He’d been drunk and clingy, drunk and tired, drunk and horny. Drunk and angry.

He’d never been drunk and sad though. Which, when held to Brian Kinney’s standards, meant being absolutely shitfaced.

I knew that because I’d gotten drunk and cried one time, way back in the September of 2000. Early on. He’d been drunk and clingy that night, all over me and giggling like he was the fucking teenager and he’d whispered too loudly “you’re fucking shitfaced” before doubling over in the middle of the half empty street in laughter. That had been a good night.

But then it’d been three months in and he was just sitting there. A mouthful of Beam left in the bottle between his legs and his head sort of bowed in a way that made me want to cry for no reason other than I knew he wasn’t okay.

“I fucking...hate the smell of this shit.”

He’d waved the bottle around a bit and then chuckled before swallowing down the last bit with a barely there wince.

“Then why drink it?”

He ignored me, his hand coming up to wipe the last of the drink on his lips, before leaning forward to slam the bottle against the coffee table. “It’s okay though. It doesn’t smell like the stuff he drank. Just...kinda smells like the stuff he drank.”

I didn’t ask again. Even though I wanted to. I was stupid back then, I didn’t know that the best way to get him to talk was to jab at him when he’s drunk. I just sat down next to him. Touched him. Pet his hair.

He didn’t cry.

He was just shitfaced.

And then it was four months and Ted was jabbing at him about it so he’d gotten drunk and turned me down when I asked if he wanted a blowjob before he’d stormed off with a huff about not needing some stupid vanilla cake batter to get good head. I didn’t question that either. I thought it was some stupid half-assed attempt at an insult and I’d laughed it off and waited for him by the door.

He brought a pretty good looking trick back to the loft and I’d sat in the living room while he fucked him.

And then five months in and he’d signed his parental rights away and he’d smelled like Beam again and he’d gotten shitfaced and even then I hadn’t pried too far into his head.

He’d avoided me for a few days but then I’d slipped into the loft while he was at work and pretended to be asleep when he’d come home so he had just snuggled up behind me and called me Sonny Boy while he sniffed at my shoulders. It took everything in me not to turn around and smother him with my love, so I just settled for relaxing back into him.

At six months he got shitfaced over his dad dying and then got shitfaced again when I tried to ask him about it and then he kicked me out and made me sleep at Deb’s for a few nights because “that’s where you live, Sunshine, so fuck off.”

When he let me back we ate Sour Patch Kids while I sketched him watching some James Dean movie that he knew every word of.

“He always smelled like cheap bourbon and fucking peanuts.”

I didn’t know what else to say back then, so I just mumbled “you hate peanuts” and he scoffed before muttering “I know”.

By eight months I’d taken a bat to the head and he’d developed a drinking problem that would have rivaled his fathers if not for the fact that he was doing everything in his power to never become him.

He’d come home with sex and bourbon on his skin and he’d scrub and scrub in the shower before getting into bed but the Beam would still on his breath when he turned towards me and I didn’t know how to tell him it gave me a headache, so we’d just kiss and then hope it would lead to something. It never did, at that point.

Eventually I’d grow some balls and tell him to brush his fucking teeth if he was going to breathe in my face after drinking half the liquor store and he’d chuckle and ask when I got so brave.

"In the May of 2001," I’d say. And he’d smile sadly when I imitated the swinging of a baseball bat.

Nobody ever tells you how fucking easy some things are. 

You hear a lot of “it’s hard but it’s worth it”’s and “god he drives me mad but I love that about him” but they never talk about how fucking easy a lot of this shit is. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s complete and utter torture to wake up everyday and have a nose full of blonde hair and a dead arm or to have someone who knows you hate corn so much they sit and pick out each and every individual piece that’s in your food before serving it because they’re just that considerate. And they’re so acutely aware of food allergies and that everyone’s tastes are different that they don’t even hesitate to accommodate. It’s infuriating. Good lord, Sunshine, I can handle some fucking corn in my burrito bowl. Piss off. 

But it’s easy to forget that there’s corn in my burrito bowl until the delivery boy has already blushed his way back to his car and I’ve started digging in to the disaster I’d so carelessly ordered specifically how Justin would have, even though he’s gone now and I fucking hate corn. It’s easy to stare down at it and think back to the call I’d made to get myself to this point and realise I hadn’t even stopped to add on my usual “everything but the corn” that had been my only request at that take away since I was fucking 17 years old. Until I’d made the same order again with Justin, except it was with him breathing down my fucking neck about how he loves corn, so I’d added it on and made some half ass remark about how he’d be picking that shit out of my side when it arrived. And then I was remembering how he had. I’d chuckled back then, but he had. Piece by fucking piece and then again a few weeks later when we were both high and craving it. And again and again and again. God it was so fucking easy to forget. 

It was hard to man up and eat it though, to ignore the off flavour of those disgusting little devils as I stubbornly shovelled the food into my mouth, ignoring the image of his little blond head smiling over at me as he proudly ate his half of the bowl, pulling corn away as it fell onto mine. Fuck him. 

—-

The break doesn’t last long, but it’s long enough for me to realise just how easy it really is to love Justin. You’d think I knew by now. You’d think I would have caught on and understood that he’s just it for me. He’s simply every single thing for me but I’m an idiot who’s never known love outside of friendship and I’m sorry but you’ll all have to forgive me for that. 

It’d been something dumb, really. But it wasn’t like he’d needed much at that point, cause I’d found solace in the bottom of enough bottles to give my old man a run for his money, and I’d fucked enough tricks to set Justin’s fear of germs alight and it spread like wildfire from there because he’d asked me not to touch him and, well, I’m an asshole. 

He’d asked me not to touch him, not to rub their ‘grime’ on him and I’d snapped something about dealing with it when he was fucking around with Ian and yeah, that part is on me, but I don’t do well with him refusing to be touched. It scares me. 

So I’d been an asshole and he’d shoved me into the shower and frowned through scrubbing me down and then he’d fallen asleep with his back to me and proceeded to have a nightmare that ended with him crying on the couch while I tried to get him to swallow some of the relaxants he’d been refusing since he’d first left the hospital. He doesn’t likebeing a robot, he doesn’t like having his senses taken away. I understand that, honestly, because at least with weed he’s choosing to mellow out. Taking a pill to ease something he can’t even run from in sleep, while you’re in the middle of trying to run from it, is pretty horrifying to me too. Especially when it doesn’t help you run faster. 

He’d pushed at me and cried and then cried a little harder when I’d all but forced the tiny thing between his teeth and then he’d cried for another half hour before he’d fallen asleep sitting half up and curled in on himself, and I’d left him there because it was 2am on a Monday morning and I had an 11am meeting that I couldn’t miss. It was one of those shitty nights. 

He was groggy in the morning and I’d called Deb and moved his shift to the afternoon, just after the lunch rush, and he’d batted me away when I’d leaned down to kiss his forehead, trying to inhale just a little of his scent because I do that sometimes and he normally doesn’t mind, and I’d left with a sour taste in my mouth because he’s such a little shit sometimes. 

It should have been a warning, but I’m an idiot and an asshole, so let’s not pretend to be surprised that I wasn’t looking out for all the little signs he was sending me. 

—-

Him leaving came three days later, after I’d stumbled home on a Thursday afternoon with a hickey on my neck that I wasn’t too pleased about and whiskey seeping through my skin because he just wouldn’t fucking look at me like he was supposed to. He wouldn’t even make eye contact while he bustled around me and chucked a tantrum as he set the table. He’d stopped dead in his tracks, mouth hanging open and tears flooding his eyes quicker than I’d expected, staring straight at my neck with the most devastating look that would have shattered my lungs and cut through my heart if I wasn’t absolutely shit faced before dinner. 

He’d huffed, still refusing to look at my face, and turned swiftly for the bedroom, scuffling around in there while my drunk brain tried to catch up, and by the time it had, he was already sniffling and rubbing at his eyes as he barrelled past me with his backpack and jacket, beelining for the sketchbooks on the counter. 

I’d tried, reached out to grab his arm, but that had just set him off. Back on his “don’t touch me” bullshit that was starting to make me angry at that point, but I’m not an asshole who hits the people he loves and drowns in the cheapest shit he can find, so I backed off. Literally threw my hands up, stepping back in surrender and rolling my eyes as I did so because I really needed him to know how I felt about the whole situation. I really needed him to hear my silent thoughts of, ‘really, Sunshine? You’re still going on about this?’ 

Apparently he had, because he’d moved around to the cabinet above the fridge where I kept his meds and he’d started stuffing those in with whatever else it was he’d grabbed, and mumbling on with things I couldn’t quite hear. He’d never done that before. He’d never pulled his shit down and started packing them, not even with the fiddler, so my mind has zeroed in on that. Seeing each box and orange bottle as he pulled them down, my own brain betraying me as I listed off what each of them were for in my head right down to his three fucking inhalers and both his drowsy and non drowsy antihistamines. 

“I don’t want them to touch you!” He’d sounded broken, torn down the middle, and I’d been too drunk and concerned by the fact that he was disorganising his perfectly lined up pills to listen in. 

“Who gives a fuck what you want,” I’d snapped, slurred, “put those back.” 

I’d had a thing about him messing with his medication, because he used to get confused by it all and I’d come home to find him crying under the table, afraid to face the stress of putting that much shit in his mouth without overdosing on any of it. Which was a relief and a pain, because at lease I knew he didn’t want to fucking die anymore but I also had to deal with the chore of helping him sort out his doses. As I said, even with the fiddler, I’d pop out each little pill and set them in his stupid weekly organiser and I’d hand them to him every Monday morning over a plate of diner grease. Like hell was I letting that other fucker touch Sunshine’s shit. He’d have been dead two days into their little romance. Half because the other guys spent 90% of his time on that fucking cello and 10% because Justin needs to be heavily coerced into swallowing them all sometimes. And by sometimes I mean at lease twice a week. He’s a work in progress. 

“No!” He’d sounded hysterical, all shaky hands and heaving chest. I’m a fucking asshole, we get it, but I didn’t even move to calm him. He didn’t want me to touch him, so it’s his own fault, really. “I give a fuck what I want. I give a fuck and I don’t want their germs, I don’t want their fucking germs!” 

And with that he’d been out the door, out into the germy world while I’d stood there, stunned and drunk. And it was so fuckinf easy to let him leave. 

I’d eaten whatever it was that he’d made straight from the pan and then I’d thrown it up in the kitchen sink and slept on the floor next to his side of the bed. I don’t really know why, but it felt like the right decision at the time. 

—-

He’d barely been gone a week a when I’d order the fucking corn in my burrito bowl, but I’d seen him at the diner so I knew he wasn’t dead. I was pissed off for reasons I still don’t fully understand, so I wasn’t going out of my way to fix anything. 

I don’t understand why I was pissed off because I know Justin is literally fucked in the head, I know he’s got issues he can’t control that all seem misplaced and out of character but that all stem back to the fact that he copped a baseball bat to the skull. I’m probably the only person who does understand that. I know he’s got some fucking problems and I still want him around anyways, I want to count out his antidepressants and the weird blue pills he takes to help with the tremors in his hand. I want to stay awake just a few hours longer to make sure he’s not being haunted by that fucking parking garage and I want to wake up with a dead arm from the weight of him because I understand he’s fucked up but he’s still Sunshine. He’s still Justin. So I couldn’t figure out why I was so mad at him and the situation, but I was, so I avoided speaking to him like the plague and he ignored me at Sunday dinner like the little brat that he is. It was whatever. I didn’t fucking care, I was just pissed off. It was easy to be pissed off. 

—-

I stopped being pissed off by the second week because I’d started trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with the kid and I’d noticed little things that should have slipped into my line of sight maybe like a billion weeks ago when they’d probably started happening. 

He’d washed his hands at least ten times at Deb’s during an impromptu celebration dinner for something Ted had done that I really didn’t care about, it was just an excuse for us to all have pasta shoved down our throats. I’d noticed because he’d washed them three times in ten minutes at one point and my brain just sort of went “he’s been doing that a lot lately” in some sort of pondering voice that sounded a lot like someone that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. And he had been doing that a lot, scrubbing at his hands or whipping out hand sanitizer from literal thin air and covering all the way up his forearms with it. He’d done it before, way back when he was still new to sex and he wasn’t all that comfortable having another mans jizz on his hands. His mother had said something about him having a thing for dirty hands as a child, just one time in passing, while she was doing that thing that mothers do where the reminisce on the life of their offspring. She hadn’t even been talking to me then. She’d said it to Vic and Deb and I was just being a nosy fucker. 

Anyways, he’d had his stints with hand washing and cock touching but he’d grown out of that after like a month because he’d deemed having certain body parts in his mouth to be just a smidge grosser and he’d gone on to start rinsing his mouth after every blowjob, until I fucked that right out of him and I guess I just got used to him being weird with gross things until he got used to them. Exposure therapy or some shit, I don’t know. He got over it all eventually. I didn’t even notice when he’d stopped, but I could probably pinpoint a moment in time. Like I said, Justin’s fucked up. And it all leads back to that fucking baseball bat. 

—-

His PTSD and antidepressants were basically a two in one package deal. Lucky him, right? He fucking hated the big ass horse sized pill he had to take but he endured it every fucking day, unlike the muscle relaxant, because he likes to be able to round corners without scoping out the new environment first. He likes not having to make sure nobody was coming up behind him. He liked not being triggered by someone knocking into him accidentally. The kid liked to be fucking happy, so he let me break up the tablet and add it to the pile of pretty little pills and he let me shove them down his throat every night like the good little blonde boy he is. Was. Was, because he’s a fucking little shit. Anyways. 

They were the same thing. It did the job and he got better and more open and less aggressive. He also stopped being grossed out by a lot of things. He didn’t scrunch his nose up at the the sound of someone coughing, he didn’t gag when I sneezed and a little spit landed on him. He didn’t find new and weird things to cry about when it came to sex and he stopped listing off random facts about how easy it is to get salmonella, “which comes from animal feces, Brian.” I’m surprised the kids not vegan. He probably doesn’t know about half the death traps hidden in his diner bacon. 

He stopped being afraid of a lot of things. But germs most especially. 

I should have noticed. 

—-

It wasn’t like it was back then, though, because he wasn’t just washing his hands after a quick hand job before work this time. 

He was screaming and crying through the night and freaking out at the thought of me touching him because he wasn’t sure where I’d been and then he was having a little fucking mental breakdown on a Thursday afternoon and leaving me drunk and dumbfounded over GERMS. 

This was way out of my league of expertise, but I tried anyways. 

I cornered him at dinner that Sunday, following him up the stairs and into the bathroom on his fourth trip up there, probably to wash his hands more thoroughly, and I locked the door behind me as he jumped out of his skin and glared at me in the mirror. 

“Out.” 

He was rubbing vigorously at his right wrist, twisting it and scratching a little in a way that made me nauseous. 

I decided in that moment. And it was so fucking easy. 

“I’m clean,” I started with, and he glared at me harder, just with a little more scepticism, “I promise.” 

That always got him. 

His lips tightened out and he glanced down at his hands, rubbing softer now, but still rubbing. 

“You know that shit Deb buys gives you rashes.” God I’m so fucking whipped. Shut the fuck up about it. I count and plan his daily dosage of drugs, me knowing what he’s allergic to shouldn’t surprise you. 

“I don’t want anyone to touch me but they keep doing it anyways.” He sounded so small, so broken and tired and I said the dumbest fucking thing I could have said but it was all I could think about in that moment. 

“Have you been taking your meds?” 

“I’m not a fucking imbecile,” in my defence, I didn’t have time to think of a better way to word it, a better way to ask. He hates his meds, but I’ll go fuck myself I guess. “I can deal with my own medication. I’m not a child.” 

He spat at me a little, spinning around and barely turning off the two taps before trying to charge past me to the locked door without actually touching me. 

“Sunshine...” I didn’t know what to say, again, because I’m really shitty at this stuff and it was one of the hard things about relationships that I had already faced head on with hi’ which means it wasn’t entirely uncharted territory. So I went with, “I haven’t tricked in a week, okay?” 

“Well you’re not fucking me,” he’d screeched in response and I’d fought the urge to smack my own forehead because this kid was clearly out of his fucking mind and I couldn’t just, you know, talk him down like a normal partner. 

“I haven’t drank since you left. I couldn’t really figure out why you left so I guess I wanted to keep a clear head until I got an answer but I just-“ talking is so fucking hard. “You’re washing your hands a lot.” 

“You stopped drinking?” Of course he’d zero in on that. Of course he’d go for the one I was expecting him to gloss over. Fuck this kid. 

“Yeah, I...you just left.” 

His big fucking ocean blue eyes stared up at me, all tired and shit, like some wounded baby owl. 

It was so fucking easy. 

“And I won’t start again.” 

“Why?” 

Fuck. 

This. 

Kid. 

“Because there’s something wrong with you, Justin.” His shoulders squared. “And I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I want to be a piece of the solution.” 

I whispered the last part, looking away and trying to pretend I hadn’t just said that absolute bullshit, and he let me. He let me take a metaphorical step back. It was so easy. 

“You can’t give up drinking for me. That’s not how it works.” 

“You’re pretty full of yourself,” I tried to joke, “I’ve got a kid you know. And I don’t want to be the dad that gets walked out on at 5 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon because he’s too drunk to realise his partner is falling apart at the seems.” 

“Okay,” Justin had said. 

Okay.  He hadn’t questioned if I’d stop the tricking, too, but I guess he didn’t expect me to. It was easy though. The fucking easiest decision of my life. I didn’t tell him though, just in case. 

—-

One simple yet excruciatingly long and drawn out trip to the doctors office had Justin’s meds switched and his blood taken and his arm pricked about 72 times in another allergy test to figure out what exactly it was in Deb’s handwash that had Justin’s skin puffing up and flaking off if it so much as shared the same room as him. 

He’d cried a lot, which wasn’t surprising, because he didn’t want to change his medication and he didn’t want to have allergy testing done because he didn’t want the nurses germs on him and he didn’t want to be in a building full of sickness and germs germs germs. It threw me back to that tired and scared Justin I found under the table all that time ago, desperate for a leg to stand on. He was brave though, so we’ll give him props for that. 

We could add extreme paranoia to the list of things that are fucked up about Justin. It was already there, but we can highlight it now, with a short and simple ‘germs trigger it’ in the footnotes. 

The doctor recommended avoiding alcohol this time around for him too, sending a firm eye to Justin as he stressed the severity of having as many pills as he did and mixing them with copious amounts of alcohol. 

He’d looked all shy and bashful and I wondered if he’d let me hold his hand on the way home. He didn’t. But he did smile brightly at me as we inspected his new tablets in the car, smaller than the last ones but apparently more disgusting on his tongue.

“Guess we’re sober together,” I said, holding the steering wheel tighter as I turned the corner onto our street. 

“God we’re gonna be so boring,” he replied. 

“Happy,” I corrected. It was easy. 

 The pill thing started when I was 3 years old.

It was around the same time my mother started noticing I got sick more often than the other kids (I know, it took her a second) and she’d started having me tested for all these different things to try and figure out why I was the way I was. 

I’m not really sure of the whole logistics or whatever - I was 3 - but I do remember some parts that still make my stomach clench in irrational fear or stupid things that shouldn’t matter. 

I’d been getting these shots for a few weeks, something the help with the allergies that were probably getting worse as I got older or something, and I didn’t quite mind the needles. They gave me a sticker and a fizz pop afterwards, and I thought that was a damn good trade in all honesty. Mom would take me home and I’d lay around in the living room for a while because the shots made me drowsy but I was very strict with her on my nap time routine, so she would pull out the vacuum or go dust all the rooms I wasn’t in while I just laid there with Gus-Teddy, thinking about whatever 3 year old Justin thought about. It wasn’t fun, but I wasn’t a difficult kid when it came to stuff like that. I pride myself in knowing I was more than willing to make my Mom’s life easier. 

Anyway it was an afternoon of one of my shot days and I was laying upside down on the couch, my feet resting against the back and my head barely reaching the edge, when I felt a funny sort of sensation in my legs that kind of scared me a little. I could hear the vacuum and I knew it would drown me out if I called, so I’d turned myself over and slid my feet onto the floor. I wasn’t supposed to go near the vacuum, because it stirred up a whole heap of dust that made me sneeze for hours, but I felt wrong and I wanted my Mom to make the funny feeling go away, so I let my feet drag slowly over to the stairs, swaying a little as I tried to take the first step up. 

I missed, my body slipping forward and just- 

You know how things happen awkwardly and you don’t really remember how it happened but suddenly you’re bleeding from your nose and you’re pretty sure the only reason it happened was because the world tilted on it’s axis...because that’s literally the only way you possibly could have ended up in the position? That’s what 3 year old Justin felt like. I was so fucking confused by how I’d managed to do whatever it was I’d done. 

I must have made enough of a racket though, because the vacuum shut off and I heard my mother worryingly call my name. I looked down at the blood that was dropping from my nose to my legs and I called out, “I feel funny,” and then I woke up in the back of an ambulance. 

I wasn’t very happy about that, of course, because my nap routine was ruined and I was verystrict about it. 

—-

I don’t remember what happened from then on with that storyline. I know that something had went wrong with the shots I was taking, some drug was in there or something that I was allergic to that triggered some sort of seizure or whatever. It wasn’t a one off thing, I had a few more of those episodes as I grew, but at the time it was like the end of the world for my mother. 

In reality it just meant I had to try a tablet version of the shots I was taking, just something that didn’t have that one specific drug in it, which wasn’t made on a liquid form because the world likes to see me suffer and burn, obviously. 

Except I couldn’t take tablets yet. I was 3. They put it on my tongue and I immediately spat that shit out. They crushed it up in some jam and I threw up on them. They hid it in food like I was a dog and I cried for an hour and refused to eat for 2 days. 

My parents took me to a doctor to see if he had any suggestions and he was a lovely guy, really. I thought he was pretty great. He took Gus-Teddy and tucked him into my arms, making me wrap them tightly around myself, and then he took a blanket that smelled like the backseat of an old car and wrapped that around me too, and then told my dad to hold me tightly in his arms and keep me straight so I couldn’t fight as hard. I’d felt safe. I always felt safe in my fathers arms back then, he was big and strong, stronger than Gus-Teddy, who fought off all the monsters while I slept. 

Then he’d started talking about how much of a big boy I was or whatever and he’d made me drink a few sips of water to prove I knew how to do it and then he’d popped a pill into my mouth and made me drink another mouthful, holding his hand under my chin and telling me to swallow all in one quick motion that was easy and simple but still something I never wanted to experience again because I gagged a little and it was just a generally shitty experience. 

I guess my parents thought that was the way to make me take my medication from then on, because that’s what I had to do every week and it become a routine that I hated it significantly more than the shots because I always thought I was going to throw up, I hatethrow up, and I never got a fizz pop afterwards. Not even a sticker. 

Then Molly was born and my dad started expecting me to let go of Gus-Teddy and he’d get frustrated with me for not knowing how to swallow pills alone yet and I mean...looking back on it, he could have just asked me to try it alone when I was like 6. But he didn’t. I stopped feeling safe in his arms. 

—-

Anyways those pills were switched to a smaller dosage once a day thing in as I got older, I learned to take my inhaler without my mom counting and my nightly nebuliser routine didn’t involve either of my parents coming in the check on me every few minutes because I learned how to do it all on my own. I even cleaned my own mask. 

Molly never got sick like I did, so she didn’t have to suffer through needles and pin pricks and hospital beds and tubes being shoved up her nose or anything like that. All that stuff was just a Justin thing. She didn’t even have asthma. Some sort of miracle child, that one. 

I took two antihistamines a day, one in the morning and a drowsy one a night, because I had sleeping problems or something like that. (I was almost always certain I was going to die from taking too many. I’ll never understand how medication works.) I have different sorts of sleeping problems now, but I think it had something to do with my asthma. I’m not sure, really. I had to swallow 3 pills a day and try not to gag around them every time and I just really developed a hatred for the act. I don’t choke on dick very often, but dear god do those little demon candies get me. 

Sometimes I’d get these nasty chest infections, or tonsillitis, or just the common cold and I’d need to take antibiotics and I’d literally cry on the bathroom floor because it just seemed like such a chore. I never fucking asked for this shit. I still don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me to this day. None of this shit makes any sense to me and I’ve been living with it for 21 years. 

What I’ve been trying to say is that I’ve got a complex when it comes to popping prescription pills. And they fucking scare the shit out of me because I’m allergic to a lot of them, but we’re not getting into that today. I’m messed up over them and since prom I’ve had to take like 80 a day. 

That’s an exaggeration, obviously, it’s probably like 10 and a few of them are vitamins I’ve been taking since the dawn of time, but it’s still a double digits dose of tablets. 

Brian likes to sort them out for me. He makes it seem like it’s some great sacrifice of his time if anyone catches him doing it, but he has them all lined up in the cabinet above the fridge and he organises them every week to make it easier for me and doesn’t make me feel guilty about the fact that he does it. 

I’d tried to let it be my own responsibility at first, I’d tried to get my own little system going but I was still bad at remembering little things and I wasn’t sure if I was meant to double up on some pills or not, my hand had turned into a very painful claw and all I could think of to do was crawl under the table and cry until Brian got home. 

It was all very dramatic. 

He took it in his stride though, taking the weight without a second thought and just being the truely great guy he can be. It was like a breath of fresh air. 

—-

Brian was the one who taught me how to swallow more than one pill at time, which shouldn’t surprise you really, but it was a sort of sweet moment. 

Sort of, cause I was crying around a mouthful of pills, sweet cause he’d just stood there stroking my cheek and smiling at me softly. 

“Just swallow like it’s a really good dick,” he’d said. I knew he wasn’t making fun of me, so I did just that and then I gagged and he’d wiped my tears and said, “was that so hard?” 

I nodded and he’d pulled me into his arms and then that was that. 

—-

The germ thing was something I’d dealt with my whole life. Some nagging urge that’s always sat at the back of my mind, willing me to keep my body clean and my hands cleaner, safe from anything that could land me in the hospital. I think more than anything that I’m scared of being sick, but it’s always lead back to germs. They’re so easy to imagine as actually gloopy, green chunks that slide around on you with their illnesses and just damn dangerous microorganisms. Disgusting. Get it off get it off get it off. 

I hate germs. I hate dirt and grease and any slimy substance that touches me. God it’s all so gross. I’d rather take a million baseball bats to the head than even sit and think too long about how dirty and virus ridden the world truely is. Ew. 

—-

Despite what people seem to think, Brian didn’t throw me into the deep end with the whole sex thing. Sure, the first time was this whole thing that was new and hurt like hell for a while but like...besides that, once he realised I was actually pretty fucking uneducated in that department and I was willing to dive right in, he was the most patient person on the planet with me. He took it one step at a time, kiss by kiss, a touch and feel sort of classroom on his bed. I didn’t give my first blowjob until a few weeks in, after he’d given me a few on at least 10 different occasions, before we reallygot into the good stuff, his way of ensuring I’d be able to hold off through the whole show - you know how teenagers get - and he didn’t ask for one in return until a while in. And even then he wasn’t really askingme to do the act itself, he just sort of offhandedly put out a “did you wanna try?” and I’d said a very slow and anxious “no” and then he’d smiled and rolled me over. I was never pressured into anything and it’s why I clung to him so tightly. I was terrified to go find another teacher, wary of the fact that they wouldn’t treat me so kindly. Fairly. 

Brian was gentle. He walked with me from the shallows and held my hand as I tread into the deeper waters, being so calm and patient while I felt my way out. Keeping my head above water but not forcing his support onto me. He taught me how to swim out here. 

The first handjob was gross, of course, and he’d chuckled at me while I made a face at his jizz and then rushed off to scrub it away. He was still smiling when I wandered back into him and he’d kissed my hand when I apologised. “It gets grosser,” he’d said. 

“Great,” I’d replied. 

—-

And it did get grosser, oh god did it get grosser. Have you ever had a dick in your mouth? It’s great, if you’re not acutely aware of the fact that at any given moment it could erupt with gross spunk, right there on your tongue. I was nervous the first time, trying so hard to do what Brian did and make it feel good for him, I put in the effort and made all the noises I thought I was supposed to make and then I cringed when Brian pulled away to stare down at me with one eyebrow raised. “If you don’t like it-” he’d started to say. I didn’t let him finish, because I wasn’t going to roll over and never give a proper blowjob in my life, but he didn’t complain so it couldn’t have been that bad. He’d come, his hands in my hair trying to pull me off and my stupid self pushing back because of he could swallow 10 of my loads I could take one of his. 

I couldn’t, of course, because it was the weirdest and most nasty taste I’d ever had on my tongue (I got used to it, don’t worry. I actually started to like it. But only Brian’s.) and I’d gagged right there on my knees before him. Yes, I’d spit it out and let it dribble down my chin because anywhere was better than on my tongue. Yes, I’d realised a little too late that now it was on me and yes, Brian had plucked two tissues from the table by the couch and yes, he’d been really sweet and wiped it off for me, cupping my cheek when he was done and pulling me in for a kiss. He hadn’t had the best first experiences with all that stuff and I knew that, so I appreciated that he was trying to give me something good. 

I heard a few days later around a game of pool at Woody’s that ‘spitters are quitters’ and I glanced at Brian with a little shame in my heart, but he’d just shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Who Care’s where your jizz goes once it’s out of your dick? At least you’re getting off.”

—-

So I got over handjobs being gross after I’d had literal spermon my tongue, and then I got over the blowjobs when I started experimenting with rimming and then I got over how gross licking assholes is when I started tricking because thatact in and of itself is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done because at least I know Brian showers, no offence to the others. But it felt nice and I enjoyed it most of the time. I was jealous a lot, but it wasn’t so bad when Brian would kick them out and shower with me once they’d left. I grew out of that being gross too. There’s a reason  exposure therapy exists. Anyways, germs are always something I’m conscious of. I know they’re there and I know their one and only job is to make me sick and spread around and make people sick and I hate them. I hate being dirty and I hate germs. Not to sound like Brian, but fucking sue meover it. 

Let’s get to the good stuff now, cause I know that’s what you’re waiting for and I’m getting kinda tired of having to give all this backstory or whatever. 

Turns out, depression meds are also used to help with phobias. Crazy, huh? I had the same pill for depression and anxiety as I did for my PTSD and the little fucker was working overtime and also tackling my fear of germs, too. Crazy, I know, this whole thing is just riveting. 

I didn’t want to be touched after prom because I was scared to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to be a position where I had no leverage or escape, I needed to be in control and I had nothing if I was being touched. That had nothing to do with germs, but it stuck with me and developed into an outright fear of being restrained, a fear of being helpless. It grew until I’d shake and back away from sexy games with Brian and he’d sigh deeply because he was sure we’d gotten past all that and he thought we’d be back to square one because I didn’t want my hands pinned above my head or whatever, but he’d back off and I’d feel safe again because Brian’s always held my head above water when I needed him to. He doesn’t make me dive in, like I said, he holds my hand and guides me. I’d let us get back into the mood and he’d keep his hands in safe places and I’d thoroughly enjoy every other aspect of the sex and there wouldn’t be any nightmares because just him backing off would be enough to make me feel so...protected. He’s really sweet sometimes. 

I didn’t want to be touched during those few weeks of us being apart, and a little before that too, because my meds were doing something weird inside me or they just weren’t cutting it anymore, and my whole mindset did awhile 180. I could all of a sudden see every single spot of grime that was on the planet and I could feel the sickness in people’s breaths. Brian was clean one moment and covered in a thick layer of disgusting green globs the next and I swear to god they were taunting me. 

I’d been riled up about his excessive drinking then, having to deal with him stumbling home drunk and stinky most nights of the week was wearing me down and I’d thought about just leaving again, just picking up my sketch pads and locking the door on my way out, not even stopping to leave him a note. But I was scared he’d hurt himself trying to get to bed and I was scared that Daphne’s apartment would be harder to clean than the lost is. I couldn’t spend hours on my knees trying to scrub her floors clean with a toothbrush, which yes, that was something I did during those god awful 3 months. The loft was safe and I was content with being able to only get my daily fix of filth from the diner. 

Then Brian had come home early on a Thursday fucking afternoonwith a hickeyon his neck and probably some other disgusting things under his clothes that I was not prepared to deal with, drunk out of his mind and swaying on his feet. 

My first and immediate reaction was to ignore the fuck out of him, because I’d been going on about germs for a few weeks at that point and he should have known to go straight to the shower without me having to be there to disinfect him, so I didn’t actually see the hickey until I’d turned to snap at him and then there it was.  

Iwasn’t even allowed to leave marks on him. Me.And I’m really fucking into the idea of that. I don’t know why that was the nail in the coffin but suddenly I couldn’t take how disgusting the air around me had become, so I was shoving clothes and my phone charger into this ratty only backpack that I kept tucked behind a few crates of art supplies in the closet, Brian was out in the dining area still swaying on his feet and staring at the table I’d set with a deep sort of frown on his face and my heart was picking up speed with every millisecond that passed. 

I picked up my sketchbooks and pencil case, shoving them in as gently as I could in that moment, which translates to: my art is fucking ruined. He grabbed at me, gentle of course, he not a total asshole, but his skin on my skin was contaminating me and I’d ripped myself away with a regrettably hysterical, “DON’T TOUCHME.”

He backed up, again: he’s not a total asshole, and I felt the familiar trickles of safeness, protection, Brian won’t hurt you, creeping up the back of my spine. But everything was strangled out by the growing stuffiness in the room. The extra oxygen being taken up by the slimy green monsters. 

I could hear Sober Brian in my head, hear this soothing voice telling me it was okay, I could feel his clean and sure hands resting on my shoulders, pulling me in to his strong embrace and holding me until everything just melted away. I could hear Drunk Brian in my head too, hear him complaining about me not wanting to be touched, hear him egging me on as I stormed around to the cabinet above the fridge. 

He seemed to catch up to speed when I went for my medication. It almost gave me pause when I opened it and saw how it was all lined up, set with equal distance between each box and bottle, split between morning and night doses down the middle by my weekly divider. Almost. 

“I just want you to shower and be clean, I need you to be clean so you can hold me. I don’t want you to smell like a bar, bars are dirty and if you’re dirty I can’t touch you. You get dirty when they touch you too, you know? And I don’t want them to-“ I spun around to him, looking at him for a second, but he was staring up at the cabinet. “I don’t want them to touchyou!” 

“Who gives a fuck what you want,” his voice was sort of blurry, like he was trying to speak around cotton balls, but maybe that was me and the blood racing past my ears, “put those back.” 

“NO!” I was grateful he stayed where he was, because if he’d touched me then I surely would have died from a fear induced heart attack. “Igive a fuck what I want! I give a fuck and I don’t want their germs,” some piece of my brain, somewhere right at the back, was clinging to Sober Brian, and I needed him to know that he wasn’t the problem, he was just covered in the problem, “I don’t want their fucking germs!” 

And then I’d been out the door. 

—-

I went to my Mom’s, because she’d always been considerate of my needs, you know, cause she’s my Mom, and it was immediately like a breath of fresh air. Her house was clean and sparkling and it was like she knew I needed space because she didn’t try and drag me into a hug as I shuffled into her condo. 

There was food cooking and I could hear Molly’s music playing from somewhere down then hall and I wondered when she got old enough to have a stereo in her bedroom, but I didn’t dwell on the thought because I knew she’d been spending more nights a week with Dad and Mom was complaining about all the shit he was buying her...it wasn’t that surprising that she had one and that her music was loud enough to be heard from the front door. 

“What a surprise,” I nodded in reply but she was already bustling off towards the kitchen. “Molly is,” she waved a hand in the direction of her room, “she’s studying, though I don’t know howwith all that noise in there. How are you, sweetie?” 

I didn’t want to tell her I’d walked out on Brian (again) because whatever form of Mysophobia I had was playing up so bad I couldn’t handle a fucking hickey on him, and I didn’t want her to think the tears in my eyes were from the paranoia I knew was swimming beneath the surface, just waiting for the perfect chance to trigger my Agoraphobia, so I said, “Brian’s been drinking a lot,” she gave me this horrified, yet pitying stare, “I just...I just need a break.” 

She didn’t question me any further, but she did reach out for a hug, and she did make another odd face when he stepped back from her reach. 

—-

Molly was a little bitch for the first hour that she knew I was there, sneering at me across the table for whatever reason, before she seemed to remember that it was me, her brother who she used to climb into bed with every morning before breakfast because Dad would lock their door to keep her out. Her brother who not only learned to braid Daphne’s hair so he could help braid Molly’s hair, but who also sat patiently with Molly to teach her to do it herself too. Her brother who would walk the long way home from school so he could pick her up on his way, even though she was meant to catch the bus, just because she felt safest with him there. 

Her big brother. Me. 

I got the feeling maybe Dad was just spending a lot of time talking shit about me to her, and she’d started to believe it, but she snapped out of whatever it was she was doing and started asking questions about Brian. She’d always liked Brian. 

Brian had liked her, too, the few times he’d met her, because he had tried to scare her the first time by saying something about feeding little girls to zombies, but she’d just laughed in his face and I was remembering that so clearly that I started to feel a little guilty about telling my Mom that my problem was Brian’s drinking. It was, in a sense, because it was getting worse and worse and I wanted him to stop, but it wasn’t the reason I was there in that moment. I was there because of my own fucked up brain, I just didn’t want to admit it. 

Molly was asking about Brian and Mom told her to quiet down about it, that Brian and I were having problems, so she changed the subject, but not before looking at me with a weird sort of grimace on her face. “Brian loves you, though. And not like in the way Dad used to say he loved Mom.” 

I didn’t comment on that, because I already knew. 

—-

What Molly said filtered back into my brain 4 days later when I was sitting alone at my mother island bench with all my pill boxes laid out before me in a horrifying mess that I was struggling to organise. Brian usually did that shit. Why the fuck had I taken them when Brian usually did that shit? He had a whole fucking system and everything, why the fuckhad I taken them?

When Molly was first born, Mom had to deal with having a new born and an 11 year old who had more allergies than Brian Kinney had condoms, and I remember her politely asking my father to help her sort out Molly’s clothes for her bath time while she pulled out my inhalers and antihistamines and whatever else it was that I was taking back then. She’d been so softly spoken back then, I always thought she had such a calming voice, but my father had been rude and dismissive, saying some shit about how I should have been doing my meds by myself and it wasn’t his job to bathe a baby when he’d worked all day while she’d sat around and done nothing. I knew my mother hadn’t done nothing. I knew. 

She’d allowed him to snatch the container that held all my stuff and shove it towards me and she’d dutifully shuffled off towards the stairs to get started with Molly while my dad had stood above me, hands spread out on the counter all intimidating and grumpy, nodding towards the stuff he’d just put in front of me. 

“You’re not a childanymore, Justin,” he’d said, “you can do that on your own.” 

I’d nodded, inhaling deeply and I’d let my shaky hands pick up the first inhaler I knew I had to take, and when I confidently sprayed the first puff into my mouth, he’d gone off to watch golf in the entertainment room. 

Long story short, I had no fucking clue what I was meant to take and I’d done something wrong and popped a Tylenol that wasn’t meant to be near my shit (yes, he’d put it in there carelessly) and I’d taken two of my morning pills instead of my nightly ones, which ended with a very scary trip to the hospital and my mother looking more tired than I’d ever wanted to see her. 

‘Brian loves you, though. And not like in the way Dad used to say he loved Mom.’ 

Brian had found me under the table and didn’t even fucking hesitate to deal with all this shit for me, because he’s not a complete fucking asshole. 

I know, partially, what I’m supposed to take and I know now to read the sides of the boxes for instructions, but that doesn’t take away the fact that Brian had gone out of his way to make the whole routine of me throwing back anti depressants and migraine tablets and some weirdly coloured blue pill that held off the seizures in my hand...as easy as mentally possible. As stress free as he could. So it’s a lot to go from having him be there to count out the pills and double check and to put them in my weekly divider, to not even knowing if he’ll ever look at me again. 

I cried for 2 hours, sitting there, recounting and double checking every ounce of progress I’d made. I just cried. 

—-

He’d glared at me in the diner the next time we’d crossed paths. I’d drawn his eyes more times than I think I could count, I’d seen them with every emotion I’d thought imaginable, but I never thought I’d have that look of pure frustration, unconcentrated confusion and a deep, hidden shard of fear. I’d drawn each of those emotions in those eyes, but I’d never seen them like that. I’d looked away in shame and washed my hands three times before starting my shift. 

—-

I’d stared down at my hands throughout most of Ted’s celebration dinner. He’d been 4 years sober or it had been 5 years since he woken up from his coma or something, I’m not really sure. I could feel Brian trying to catch my eye but I’d been pointedly avoiding his eyes, scared I’d see them clouded with those emotions again and terrified of the shame he’d see in mine. 

Ted had rested a hand just above my left wrist at some point, giving it a quick squeeze before thanking me for coming, he said he’d noticed I was having a bad week. I’d nodded silently and tried not to shove his hand off me, but Ted’s pretty great a taking a hint, so he hadn’t lingered too long. I’d tried to be subtle about the way I’d pulled out my pocket sized hand sanitizer and gone to town all over my arms, but I knew Brian had seen, because when I glanced around he was frowning in the direction of my elbows. 

—-

His whole body was kinder come the next Sunday dinner. He’d just sort of gently stared at me across the table, watching me like a fucking unhinged psychopath every time I moved towards the sink or snuck off upstairs to take deep and harsh breaths to try and calm myself down, to step back from that edge I’d been dangling over. I was sort of starting to realise that something was reallywrong that night, because I’d taken my anxiety medication and I’d gagged around it and then I’d cried because Brian was usually there to rub my arms and kiss my forehead whenever I was struggling to take them. It was terrible when I was with Ethan, what with his mindset being similar to my fathers, I should have known how to swallow a pill by now, but that Sunday dinner had been so much worse. 

I hadn’t even wanted to go. I’d wanted to be left alone because my moms apartment had started to get dirtier and dirtier and I was starting to think that maybe I was the problem, and everyone at Deb’s had decided to start randomly touching me and just rubbing their grossnessall over me before I’d even had my first mouthful of potatoes. Everyone except Brian, of course. I was going out of my fucking mind and I knew, I knewso deep in my soul that there was something going wrong with my meds but my brain kept telling me it was because the baseball bat was catching up to me and I know that hardly makes sense but I still believed it. 

Brian followed me up to the bathroom at one point, closing and locking the door behind him, but it was Brian, so I’d didn’t feel trapped. He still scared the shit out of me when I glanced up in the mirror he was just suddenly there. 

“Out.” 

He stared at where I was rubbing my wrists, trying to just get it all off off off before I had to jump in a boiling hot shower that would hopefully melt the germy monsters away. 

“I’m clean,” he said, and I let the heat I felt in my stomach bleed out through my eyes, ‘I’m not,’ I wanted to say, but I just stayed silent instead, “I promise.” 

I let myself look at my hands, willing myself to stop but not really knowing if I could. I was so fucking dirty and I couldn’t get clean enough. 

“You know that shit Deb buys gives you rashes.” 

‘Brian loves you, though. And not like in the way Dad used to say he loved Mom.’ 

“I don’t want anyone to touch me but they keep doing it anyways.” I felt tiny, like the world was too big for me to even stand on and with ever breath I took, I was getting smaller.  

“Have you been taking your meds?” 

“I’m not a fucking imbecile,” I snapped, because fuck him. Yeah, he counts out my meds or whatever but I’d done just fineon my own without him. I’d cried like a fucking lost little girl in a haunted mansion, but I’d fucking done it. “I can deal with my own medication. I’m not a child.” 

I’d tried to get past him, reaching around him for the handle but I couldn’t reach it without touching him and he smelled so so familiar and safe that it set my mind spinning.

“Sunshine...I haven’t tricked in a week, okay?” 

I said he’s not alwaysan asshole. Doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole sometimes, even if he’s saying stupid shit like that on accident. 

“Well you’re not fucking me!”

“I haven’t drank since you left. I couldn’t really figure out why you left so I guess I wanted to keep a clear head until I got an answer but I just-“ his breathing hitched, and I really really wanted to hold him right then. “You’re washing your hands a lot.” 

“You stopped drinking?” I mean I heard the whole ‘haven’t tricked in a week’thing but I didn’t care about the tricking. I hated his fucking drinking with a hot and seething passion. 

“Yeah, I...you just left.” I stared at him, really took in the bags under his eyes that looked more from a lack of sleep than from an excessive amount of alcohol. And I saw the sincerity in his beautiful brown eyes. “And I won’t start again.” 

“Why?” 

“Because there’s something wrong with you, Justin.” I pulled my back straight and dropped my eyes to his chin. “And I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I want to be a piece of the solution.” 

That was myBrian, my Brian who was soft and gentle and not always an asshole and he was trying so hard to keep his hands off me and I was trying so hard to be able to handle them on me but I needed to keep that conversation with my Brian going. Sober Brian. 

“You can’t give up drinking for me. That’s not how it works.” 

“You’re pretty full of yourself,” his tone was light in the heaviest of ways, “I’ve got a kid you know. And I don’t want to be the dad that gets walked out on at 5 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon because he’s too drunk to realise his partner is falling apart at the seams.” 

“Okay,” I said. 

And then he’d led me downstairs and out to the car, passing by the rowdy group in the kitchen without any fuss. 

—-

I cried when they said I’d need to have blood drawn and I cried when they said I’d need to do some standard allergy testing and then I cried some more when they told me their only solution was to switch my drugs up and then, because I’m the biggest baby on the planet, I cried because Brian didn’t force me to hold his hand, but he did put on a pair of gloves and rested his fingers as close to me as the thought I could handle. 

The nurse came in to me after she’d just dealt with someone else so I knew she hadn’t washed her hands and that made me cry too, but the worst part was having to be in that god damn hospital. Brian had gotten me in on the pretence that my reaction to Deb’s hand soap was so severe that I’d broken out in to a deadly rash or something, and obviously given my medical history they’d taken me back pretty quickly. I hated that place though. I was sure, every time I entered it, that it would be the place I died. It almost happened once, too. 

I got an earful from the doctor when they asked about my drinking habits, because despite how much I despised Brian’s slowly worsening problem, I wasn’t a complete angel myself, and then they’d told me to stay a little longer to make sure the new meds didn’t awaken some sort of demon within me that would form boils on my skin and close up my airways. 

I told Brian how gross they tasted on the way home, and his fingers kept twitching not he steering wheel  while I kept looking at my shiny new pills. 

“Guess we’re sober together,” Brian murmured as we turned onto Tremont. 

“God we’re gonna be so boring,” I sighed, all melodramatic and drugged up. 

“Happy,” Brian said, popping his door open and rushing around to my side so I wouldn’t have to touch the door handle. He was leading me inside before I could dwell on what that meant.