BRIAN  

Mom came with me to meet Justin, while Peter and John stayed with Shelly. She didn’t want to put off facing Carl, and told me that in the end she was the reason he never knew about me. I could understand how Carl felt, finding out he had a child he didn’t know about; of course for me it was different, because Lily would know me all her life.

When we got there, Carl and Justin were talking about where my brother and sister would stay. My house only had a couple of extra rooms, which Mom and the boys would be using. Justin’s had three rooms, so even his space was limited, since the spare room was his studio.

“If you guys wouldn’t mind helping, we could put Lily in my room and move the stuff in my studio to my garage. I could let the kids sleep in the living room, the adults can use the rooms,” He tells us.

“That's really generous of you,” My mom tells him.

“I like the idea of having people around,” Justin tells her.

I took Justin with me to his garage. It's my family, yet he doesn’t have a problem letting strangers stay in his house. He rolled his eyes when we passed the diapers.

“I would've made the arrangements,” I tell him when we were alone.

“When Carl mentioned it, it sounded nice having people around. Since Daphne had to go back to school, it's just me and Lily and she just grunts, so conversion is a bit limited,” He tells me.

“All you have to do is call and I can help,” I tell him.

“I'm sure you have better things to do, like work and Gus,” He tells me, moving boxes around.

“I want us to get to know each other. We can't if we don't talk to each other,” I tell him.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me things that you might not want to talk about,” He tells me.

“In the past, I wouldn’t even tell people I thought were close to me anything that bothered me. I had my subconscious telling me I would be giving them a loaded gun, and directions where to aim for maximum damage. I can't keep things from you, if I want us to be what I want,” I tell him.

“It shouldn't mean you have to bleed for me either. I get snippets of what you dealt with, but asking you about them seems wrong. I don't want to make you talk about things that could hurt you,” He tells me.

“I did things to avoid talking and still wonder how I'm standing here. My life consisted of doing anything to avoid hearing the voices screaming that my life wasn’t what I made everyone believe it was. I tricked, not even knowing if the guy I let into my home might be a psychopath. I took anything my dealer let me have to stay high, because otherwise I'd hear things I didn't want to, the same with drinking. It took seeing what was happening to Gus to get me to see I needed to get help before he ended up living a life worse than mine. Jack Kinney was a man who felt the need to break bones, walls, and tell me that I ruined his life by being born. My mother drank until she passed out, to pretend nothing was happening in our home. I spent my entire childhood learning the best places to hide if I wanted to survive. Then ended up having to take him on as an adult, which was when I finally saw him for who he was; a man who blamed everyone else for the failure he was. My sister became my father, but married a man who knew to get the hell out, leaving his kids to suffer with the woman who abused him. Which meant when my nephew was beaten worse than I was by Jack, I couldn't do everything I was taught and ignore it. I had to help my mother pick up her life, so Peter and John had someone they could depend on. After that everything just kept snowballing; Ted tried to kill himself, and Emmett showed up to tell me to get Gus away from his mothers. I had my life examined as if I was one step away from being Jack. It led me to show up in Alex’s office, admitting to him and myself that I needed help just to keep from succeeding where Ted didn’t,” I tell him, bleeding for him. “You know everything, even something Alex only guessed at. You don’t have to be worried now,”

JUSTIN

He said all of it with this blank stare, as if what he was saying happened to someone else. I hated anyone who made him question his place in the world. It was like he expected me to react badly to what he said, and was putting on armor to protect himself from me disappointing him for daring to tell me about his life.

“Tell me about the best day of your life,” I tell him.

“Holding Gus for the first time, knowing love wasn’t a myth,” He tells me.

“Favorite color?” I ask, since he smiled thinking about that moment.

“I would have said black, but I’m starting to like blue,” He tells me, coming towards me.

“What you would do if you could do anything,” I said, backing up.

“Keep anything that could hurt Gus or Lily far away from their lives,” He tells me, showing me he’s far from the person others made him think he was.

“What about you? What would you do?” He asks me.

“Figure out why you think this would work,” I tell him.

“All I can do is show you, it’s up to you to figure it out. I don’t know how to do this,” He tells me.

“Show me?” I ask.

“I want to see if my heart is really capable of loving you,” He tells me, pulling his lips into his mouth.

JOAN

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Carl asks.

“I didn’t want the one thing I could have of you taken from me. It was the wrong decision, but at the time I wasn’t making very good decisions. If I could go back, I would have left and taken what you offered me, but I didn’t know how,” I tell him.

“Brian suffered for your indecision. I don’t know how to forgive you for it, but I’m working on it,” He tells me.

“I blame myself, so it’s not anything new for me,” I tell him.

“You and Deb have that down pat, blaming you, as if what she did wasn’t as bad,” He tells me.

“She always acted like she was the perfect mother. She used to show up at the house, telling me everything she did right and expecting me to agree. She was far from the mother she thinks she is. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of good things to say about her,” I tell him, not really sorry for how I feel about her.

“I'd only been on a few dates with her, but couldn’t see continuing, even before you told me about Brian. Trust me, when her own brother was getting a restraining order to keep her away, I knew it was over,” He tells me.

“At least Vic figured out it was time to get away from her,” I tell him, happy for Vic.

“It took me years to get over you,” He tells me.

“I never did, but you deserved the chance to find someone who wasn’t as broken as I was,” I tell him.

“How’s life now?” He asks.

“I got my son to give me a chance to show him I can be the mother I want to be, so it’s getting closer to perfect. It took time to undo the damage I did, but Brian is willing to help me,” I tell him.

“I want us to be able to find a way to be in Brian’s life without avoiding each other. My son and daughter are coming, and I know they would like to meet everyone in Brian’s life,” He tells me.

“They don’t have to meet me,” I tell him.

“I think CJ needs to see that my taste in women isn’t that bad. He met Deb,” He tells me laughing.

“I can at least sympathize with the poor boy,” I laugh with him.

BRIAN

I checked to see that Gus was asleep and tapped on Emmett’s door to let him know I was going out. Even with everyone here, Emmett is who I trust when it comes to Gus, because he didn't leave me in the dark, but came to me the minute he found out. He answered and waved me to go.

After talking to Justin, I wanted time when neither of us had to worry about kids, family, or all the other things around us. He sort of gave me the idea, when he told me about painting late at night. Less distractions. Pulling up to his house, I could see his studio lights on, so I knew he was up. As quietly as I could, I climbed his steps, put a blanket on the top one, and waited for him to come to me. Sitting here in the dark, gave me time to myself. My life was going to change in the next couple days, but for once I couldn’t find a reason to worry about it.

Justin came out and sat with me. “Anything interesting going on in to your head?” He asks.

“I’m not seeing meeting my brother or sister as a bad thing. Which is new. Normally I'm trying to figure out the angle,” I tell him.

“I'd feel the same way if my father showed up the way yours did,” He tells me.

“So you don't see any happy reunions in your future?” I ask, wanting to know more about him.

“The last time we saw each other was when he tried to sue me for my mother’s life insurance. Which was probably the most ridiculous thing for him to do, since they'd been divorced and hated each other. He didn’t want my family to have to admit to the shame of me being gay. He lost, but told me he won because I was no longer his son.” He tells me.

“Hope you told him you counted that as a major victory for you,” I tell him.

“I wasn’t really up to it. He tried to keep me from attending my sister's funeral. The joke was on him, since I paid for it. He had to watch from his car. The whole life insurance thing was most likely his way of getting back at me for that one,” He tells me.

“He sounds like Jack without the flying fists,” I tell him.

“He tried once, but I smiled when he busted my lip. I think he expected me to cry. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction,” He tells me.

“What about your mom?” I ask.

“She was great, it took her a while to realize nothing about me changed, but when she did, she told me nothing was more important than me being her son. He even tried to make her death my fault,” He tells me.

“You said it was an accident,” I tell him.

“She wanted to visit and celebrate a big commission. They were driving at night and the other driver got distracted and hit them head on. He tried to make it sound like I forced them to be on that road when I should have been the one in the car that night. Grief can make you play the ‘what if’ game,” He tells me.

“It's a game I've never won. All the answers are hypothetical, in the end what happened doesn’t change,” I tell him.

“It still makes you want to believe you could change it,” He tells me.

“What if I ignored you in the park? My life would have continued, but a big piece would be missing. Maybe our lives led us in shitty directions so we'd eventually cross paths,” I tell him.

“It's strange when you think about it. I could have just picked the med student or the law student, but I picked a business major with a big ego,” He jokes.

“My ego had nothing to do with it,” I tell him.

“So I heard from Emmett,” He tells me, laughing.

“I'm feeling violated, but hey, you ever want the personal tour, just let me know,” I tell him to keep him laughing.

“You really make it hard… to resist,” He teases.

“I'm figuring you should at least get the experience my donation didn’t give you,” I tell him.

“I happen to own you, well, at least your donation,” He jokes.

“Why?” I ask.

“I wanted to make sure that if I wanted to do it again, the baby would be a full sibling. I didn’t want to have kids with different fathers,” He tells me.

“If we manage to get you over what you're worried about, I can give you as many as you want,” I tell him.

“Bribery will get you everywhere,” He tells me, pushing me down on the blanket.

“I'm not that easy,” I tell him.

“Do I have to wine and dine you?” He asks, leaning over me.

“You have to never look at anyone else the way you look at me,” I tell him, pulling him down for a kiss.

We hear Lily announce she needs attention. “Well Dad, our daughter needs us,” He kisses me, getting up.

“Changing a diaper, coming up,” I smirk, as we head inside and he grabs one of the boxes from the wall.