8.

Brian ignored the buzz that announced he had visitors, and continued to stare at the computer screen.  He had taken Alex’s advice and headed home for a shower; instead of going to work, however, he had done something he never did and called in sick.  After that, he had crawled naked into bed and fallen into a restless sleep that had been disturbed by dreams; Brian had woken to lingering memories of tear-stained cheeks and wounded, blue eyes.

The dreams had been so realistic that before he had even opened his eyes, he had reached for the slim body that slept beside him; even now, hours later, he could still taste the remembered sweetness of Justin’s lips on his tongue.  The temptation to dive head first into a bottle of Beam had hit him hard when his hand had encountered crisp sheets instead of warm skin, but he had reached for coffee instead.

Now at nearly three in the afternoon he sat back and rubbed his eyes.  He had spent the last several hours reading up on clinical depression; he had devoured page after page of information.  As he sank back into his chair, he wondered how he could have missed it when it had been staring him in the face the whole time.  Like Deb, he had put Justin’s mood swings down to aftereffects of the bashing, or him just being a brat.  But with the information now seared into his brain, he knew that he was wrong.

Justin’s behavior had included not wanting to go out anymore; instead, he had pleaded several times for them to just stay in for the night.  Brian rolled his lips into his mouth as he recalled the very last time Justin had asked him to stay in.  He had prepared a fancy spread on the floor, and had greeted Brian with determination and hope shining clearly in his eyes; he had tried several times to convince Brian to stay home that night - just this once. 

But Brian had come home in a filthy mood; he wanted nothing more than to go to Babylon and have his cock sucked before taking his frustration out on some anonymous ass.  Brian swallowed as he thought back to how he had treated Justin’s attempt to what he had felt at the time was romance – his sarcasm had cut Justin deeply, and before Brian had left, the hope and determination that had been glowing so clearly in Justin’s eyes had been replaced with bitter defeat.

The thought crossed his mind and lingered when he thought back to the picnic; he had come back home after a less-than-satisfying blowjob, and an unfilled, anonymous fuck to an empty loft and no sight of Justin.  There had just been the lingering fragrance of burned out candles, and the food Justin had so carefully purchased now thrown in the bin. Why had Justin pleaded with him to stay home that night?  It had been the very next evening that Brian had scented stale sex on Justin – that had been the beginning of their end.

Other symptoms that Justin had shown included relying on alcohol and sedatives to sleep, not participating in activities he had once loved doing (tricking with Brian at Babylon – enjoying the chase and the game together, before going home and fucking their brains out), and being unable to concentrate on his schoolwork.  He had become closed off and withdrawn from the family, too – all symptoms of depression.

Then there were his feelings; becoming easily overwhelmed, whether it be by his school work, or his job at the diner.  Feelings of guilt, his lack of confidence in all aspects of his life.  How easily irritated he had become, his frustration erupting into mood swings that swung from despair to outright anger in the blink of an eye.  Dragging his hands down over his face, Brian shook his head.  Justin had been so noticeably unhappy, and Brian had disregarded it – at the time, he had thought Justin had been asking for too much, but really, what had the boy been asking for?  A mere hint that he was more than just a fuck?  Brian winced; he hadn’t even been able to give Justin that.

Skimming his eyes down the current page he was reading, Brian swore softly when he saw the thoughts that had no doubt echoed through Justin’s head according to the experts; ‘I’m a failure.’  ‘I’m not good enough.’  ‘It’s my fault.’  ‘People would be better off without me.’  Brian slammed his eyes shut, only to see Justin lying in a spreading pool of his own blood while Brian’s desperate screams had echoed through the garage.

“Brian… in one of his very first sessions with Alex, Justin had said that he had been told we would’ve been better off if you’d just left him lying there; he said the person who told him that was probably right.”  Blowing out an unsteady breath, Brian tried his best to ignore Debbie’s whispered confession and the burning anger that he felt towards Michael as he continued reading.

Physical symptoms could and had included being tired all the time, being sick and run down, suffering headaches, and muscle pains.  Then there were the problems that Justin had sleeping.  And from the glimpse that Brian had seen of Justin yesterday, there had definitely been significant weight loss, which showed that there had been a loss or change of appetite.  Cold, hard facts written in black and white that showed Brian how utterly he had failed the boy, resulting in the desperate step that Justin had taken to make his pain stop.

Brian was jolted out of his thoughts when he heard someone knocking on the loft door; only two other people had keys to his building now, and as he climbed to his feet, he tried to ignore the memory of finding Justin’s keys sitting by his answering machine as he rolled the door open.  But when he saw Michael standing on the other side, he scowled and began to pull the door shut again.  Michael’s hand shot out, and he gripped the door, all the while staring at Brian with pleading eyes.

“Please, Brian… I need to talk to you,” he said quietly, and Brian shook his head.

“I’m not ready to listen to you make excuses, Michael; I’m having a hard enough time not making my own,” Brian said flatly.

Michael swallowed hard, a jerking motion of his throat that was accompanied by a slight ducking of his chin as he acknowledged the harsh truth of Brian’s words.

“I know that,” he said finally.  “But I… shit, you’re already angry with me!  But this is going to make you so fucking mad, that I’m scared to even say it…”

“Say what?” Brian said, and when Michael hesitated, Brian’s face darkened with anger.  “Say. What, Michael!  What could possibly be worse than telling my lover that you wished he had died?  What could you say or do that is worse than that?”

“I went to see him,” Michael blurted out and then yelped when Brian grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and forcibly yanked him inside the loft.

Staring up into the angry eyes of the man he had known for so long, Michael was shocked to find that Brian looked like he was going to be sick.  Rage was noticeably warring with desperation in the hazel eyes that he knew so well, and Michael held his hands up in a placating manner as Brian stared at him.  It was only when Brian swallowed convulsively that Michael turned around and headed towards the couch.  Sinking into the beautiful Italian leather, he linked his hands between his spread knees and shook his head helplessly.

“I should have just listened to Ma last night when she told us not to approach Justin; I went there, Brian, thinking that if I just apologized to him, if I told him that we all knew the truth, that you knew the truth, that he’d come back to you.  To us.  I mean, he’d followed you around like a faithful puppy for nearly two years, you know?  You only had to crook your finger, and he was tripping over himself in his rush to get to you.  I went to him, thinking I would find the same person.  The same Justin he had always been.”

Michael shook his head again despondently as Brian stared at him silently.

“It was like talking to a complete stranger, Brian; he was so closed off… so fucking angry.  He didn’t want to hear a word that I said… he had an argument for every word that came out my mouth.”

“What did he…”

Brian broke off and compressed his lips to keep the words inside his mouth as Michael looked up at him.  Michael stared at him for a minute before he shrugged and made a helpless gesture with his hands.

“He called me out on what I had said and done; he told me that I had played judge, jury, and executioner with him.  When I told him that you knew, he asked me what I wanted him to do...just roll over with his ass in the air?  Like he thought that we believed that was all he was good for.  He said we had made our choice three months ago when this all happened; he said we had to live with that choice now.”

Dragging his hands down over his face, Michael laughed bitterly when he saw how badly his hands were shaking as Brian continued to stare at him, torn between wanting the information that Michael was giving him, and tossing his oldest friend head first out of the loft.

“Even after he was bashed, Brian, Justin never shied away from my touch when he was close to having a meltdown, and you weren’t there,” Michael said finally.  “Not after the very first time that he came to Woody's looking for you.  He told me today that if I touched him, he’d break my hands off.  The one time I did, he looked like he was going to vomit when he realized I was holding his hands.”

“Why did you touch him?” Brian asked as he took a step closer to Michael, and Michael shrugged.

“He went all funny on me; I thought he was going to faint or something, so I reached out to hold his hands.  It was like he disappeared into his own head, and whatever he was thinking about or seeing left him shaking and as white as a ghost.  I called his name a couple of times, and I was squeezing his hands gently the way we had been shown after the bashing when he opened his eyes.  He was standing right in front of me, Brian, and his eyes were open, and he was talking, but the look in his eyes… that scared me more than anything.  He was just… gone… there was absolutely nothing in his eyes that made Ma call him Sunshine.”

Brian sank down onto the couch beside Michael with his lips sucked firmly into his mouth as Michael frowned.

“What were you talking about when it happened?” Brian finally asked, and Michael blew out a deep breath.

“We weren’t talking, Brian; Justin was too busy flaying me alive to actually talk.  Three months… hell, eighteen months of resentment and held back words just came flooding out.  He was saying that I hadn’t cared about the truth of what I had seen.  That I hadn’t asked him what was going on with Ethan when I saw them in the street that day.  He said I hadn’t cared about how you would react to being told that he was cheating; that’s when he went all funny.”

Unwittingly, Brian looked over his shoulder behind where they were sitting on the couch; shaking his head, he tried to clear the images he could see, but they still played out in crystal clarity.  He knew what Justin had meant; it had been the night that Justin had come home, smelling of another man.  And Brian’s anger and jealousy had all but swallowed the boy whole.

“Go shower.  You stink.”

Dabbing the middle of his top lip with his tongue, Brian shook his head slightly.  He hadn’t stuck around that night; but after standing up, he could remember the sound of Justin scrabbling to his feet and fleeing to the bathroom.  The slam of the door and the sound of the lock being thrown had sounded shotgun loud over the hammering of Brian’s heart.  But he had left the loft, and he didn’t know what Justin had done between him going, and coming home several hours later.

In all the times he had touched Justin, never had he touched him in anger before.  Oh, they had had rough fucks in the past; fucks where Brian had tied Justin to his bed and left the boy a shaking mess who was incoherent beyond pleading for more.  Fucks where it had been fast and frantic with their pants barely down to mid-thigh before Brian was bending the boy over and burying himself balls deep.  But Justin had never before looked at him with fear in his eyes like he had that night.

“Brian?”

Brian shook his head to clear it and glanced at Michael who was staring at him with a questioning look on his face.

“You were fine when I told you about Justin and Ethan at Babylon…weren’t you?” Michael asked hesitantly, and Brian huffed out the sound of bitter laughter when Michael suddenly moaned softly as the color drained from his face.

“Oh, God, Brian… I am so fucking sorry,” Michael cried.  “You said you didn’t care when we spoke about it; you said he could do what he wanted…. You didn’t actually mean it, though…did you?”

Brian shook his head as the pressure inside of him built up rapidly and finally exploded as anger and regret collided.

“For years, Michael, I just didn’t give a fuck!  One fuck only; no repeats, no apologies, no regrets, right?  Well, I fucked him more than once the first night… I’m surprised he could even walk the next day!  And I went after his ass at every opportunity after that; oh, it was well concealed.  Justin was the one chasing me, right?  The one who wouldn’t go away…  My teen stalker…”

Brian rose from the couch in agitation as Michael stared at him with his mouth hanging open.   

“This seventeen-year-old twink that wouldn’t know his ass from his feet wore me down?”  Brian laughed bitterly, as he recalled Justin’s open enthusiasm for everything that Brian had taught him those first few months.  “Bullshit!  I was dragging him home and back into my bed at every opportunity!  Yeah, I had him in the jeep and at Babylon and the diner and Deb’s, and at every other place I could, but it was here that I wanted him… in my bed, where I could take my time; where I could teach him every trick I knew, and some I hadn’t even learned yet.  Regrets?  I’ve got ‘em now, Michael!  Apologies?  Owe him those too!”

“Go shower.  You stink.”

Brian bit back the moan that wanted to bubble up when his own voice whispered through the air; filled with anger and revulsion, Brian closed his eyes and once again saw Justin’s expressive eyes staring up at him as desire fled and left the ugliness of fear in its place.  Christ, could he have been any more of a hypocrite?

“You want to know how I reacted that night, Michael?” he asked finally.  “I came home, and I waited for him… I sat here drinking, and stewing on the fact that my boy was out doing exactly what I had taught him to do: fuck who you want, whenever you want.  He was happy when he came home!  Happy to have had his fuck for the night, and even happier to see me here…”

Brian broke off and shook his head as he bit his bottom lip.  He was unable to voice what had happened after that, but he was beginning to realise that his words and actions had done more to Justin than just cause him to lose his erection after Brian had told him he stunk.  Michael’s touch was unwelcome when he rose to his feet and crossed to Brian’s side to lay his hand on Brian’s arm; Brian glanced at him for a moment before he looked away again as he shook Michael’s hand off – he was still unable to connect the man standing beside him with the man who had been so cruel to Justin.

“Brian… Justin has loved you for as long as he has known you.  Go and see him; tell him that you love him, that you want to work it out,” Michael urged.  “The rest will fall into place; he’s loved you for too long not to listen to you.”

Brian smiled slightly even as he shook his head.

“You don’t know the half of it, Michael,” he said finally.  “Yeah… he did love me.  Once.  But I’m not sure he’d even piss on me if he found me on fire in the street nowadays.”

Michael shook his head and reached out to squeeze Brian’s arm tightly.

“Brian, he loves…”

“And I resented that easy, open love he had for me, Michael,” Brian said flatly as he pulled away from his touch again.  “You only saw what you wanted to see.  What I wanted everyone to see.  Two people lived that…that time.  Me and him.  But outside of him and me was every fag on Liberty Avenue.  The family.  You.  He had to listen to me deny any kind of feelings I had towards him.  He was just a guy I fucked more than once, right?  I don’t do love, I don’t do relationships, and I didn’t love him. 

“You heard what Em and Deb said last night; he has outright said that he was just a fuck to me.  A convenient piece of blonde boy ass.  That’s what he believes.  Deb said I could walk into his session tomorrow and tell him how I felt to his face, and he’d call me a liar; who could blame him?  You hear something often enough?  You begin to believe it yourself.  And I shouted that out loud and clear, for everyone to hear, including him.  Why the fuck would he want to come back to that?”          

Michael shook his head helplessly as Brian moved towards the large windows that faced the street.  He couldn’t stand to feel Michael’s hand gripping his arm as he tried to comfort him any longer; it felt like a complete and utter betrayal to Justin to accept comfort from the man who had hurt him with such horrible words.

“I didn’t help matters…did I?” Michael finally admitted.  “I should have stayed out of your relationship, Brian.  I should have reassured him when he would speak to me about you; instead, I was shitting all over him too, by reinforcing what he was thinking.”

“Yes, you were,” Brian agreed pointedly, his eyes unfocused as he stared blankly at nothing in particular.  “So why did you?” he finally asked, his voice terse.  Michael looked up when the whispered words met his ear, and he stood up to join Brian by the window.  Staring out across the street, Michael finally sighed and opened the can of worms that had been existing between them for far too long.

“I was jealous.”

When Brian dropped his chin slightly but remained silent, Michael licked his lips and spoke again.

“You knew how I felt about you; yeah, I know, it was never going to happen, I get that now. But back then… I could handle the tricks, Brian, because you had rules.  No repeats.  But then you met Justin, and everything changed.   I hated it… hated watching you with him, and seeing how happy you made him when you were together.  I couldn’t understand why you could offer it to him, but not to me.  But then David came into my life, and things sort of settled for a while, you know?

“I was kind of happy, and I could ignore the fact that you were still fucking Justin nine months after he had met you.  But then he was bashed.  Things fell apart with David, and I needed to be here for you; to make sure that you were all right, you know?  So, I came home, and Justin got out of the hospital, and he came to live with you.  I think on some level I resented Justin for that; I forgot that he had been bashed…no…”

Michael forcibly shook his head and turned to face Brian who was staring at him in disbelief.

“I didn’t forget; I ignored it, and hoped like hell that it would go away.  When he got out of the hospital, I refused to speak with him about what had happened, even when he begged.  I couldn’t forget how shattered you were that night in the hospital while we were waiting to find out if he was going to survive or not.  The fact that his blood stained your skin, or the fact that you wore that scarf every day around your neck after that against your skin gave me nightmares for weeks.”

“What do you mean he begged?” Brian asked in a low voice, and Michael sighed heavily when he heard the anger in Brian’s voice.

“He came to me one afternoon at home; he said he didn’t want to hurt you any further by talking about what had happened to him, and asked if he could he talk to me.  I told him no.  He asked why, and I said that it was over and done with, and the best thing to do was for him to forget about it and move on with his life.  That there was no point in hurting you over it.

“He came back a few days later and asked again; this time he was pretty upset about it, but I couldn’t get the image of you in that hospital out of my head.  I couldn’t speak about it, Brian…it hurt too much.  I didn’t know at the time that he had also approached Ma and Uncle Vic, too, but they had told him the same thing.  I’m sure if you ask the others, they would tell you variations of the same story.

“That was the last time he ever asked anything of me.  And he was better,”  Michael insisted as the words poured out now that Brian was staring at him silently.  “He was able to go out, and things between you guys seemed fine.  It was easier to pretend that it had never happened, than to remember what you went through.”

Brian’s mouth gaped open in shock as he turned to face Michael.  Was he for real? 

“What I went through?” he asked slowly, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.  “Michael, he wasn’t better… he was still having nightmares about it the night before he left here!  He was still suffering from headaches that would knock him out for hours on end, and cramps that would render his hand a fucking claw!  Fucking hell, Michael!  You should have come to me and told me what he had said!  I could have stopped all of this!”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked in bewilderment as Brian roughly slid his hands through his hair in frustration.

“Alex told me that Justin won’t talk about Prom; that he was never allowed to talk about what had been done to him.  The bas…. Prom didn’t just happen to me, Michael!  It happened to him too.  And it is still happening to him now.”

Brian swore as he turned away from Michael and headed towards his desk.  Picking up his phone, he scrolled through his contacts until he found Alex’s number and pressed the call button.  Michael approached Brian’s desk hesitantly as Brian waited for the call to connect, and when it went through to voicemail, he spoke quietly as he stared straight at Michael.

“Alex, it’s Brian Kinney.  Michael, in all of his infinite wisdom, decided to pay Justin a visit this afternoon.  He said that Justin went all funny on him, and walked away.  I know you said not to approach him, and I won’t, but…look, can you call me back?  You have the number.”          

Ending the call, Brian carefully settled the phone back on the desk as he continued to stare at Michael.  And when he finally spoke, it was through clenched teeth as he desperately bit back the anger that wanted to spew forth.  Bile rose in his throat as physical nausea threatened to overwhelm him.  

“I can’t even look at you right now, Michael,” Brian finally managed.  “Go home.  Run your comic shop, and fuck your hubby; stay away from me and stay the fuck away from Justin!”

Michael blinked in shock as Brian walked away from him, but he managed to find his voice and call after Brian as he stalked over to the bench where his wallet, cell phone, and keys were.  But as he picked his keys up, his fingers brushed the keyring that held Justin’s set, and his anger towards Michael turned molten as he looked down at the photograph of Justin with Gus that hung with those keys.

“Brian, I’m sorry!”

Brian spun around to face Michael as he stood there with pale cheeks and jabbed the air with his finger.

“Sorry’s bullshit!” he shouted.  “You were fucking TOLD not to approach him… we all were.  Do you think that I don’t want to go and hunt his ass down?  Do you think that I’m not sitting here, wondering what he’s thinking and doing, and wanting nothing more than to fucking talk to him?  Your own mother said that Justin didn’t want to see us… that Justin was too fragile at this point to have to deal with us!  You were fucking told!

“Jesus, Michael, what did you think Justin would do after your visit today?  After laying eyes on someone that he had once considered a friend, and after you told him to his face that you wished he had died!  Do you really think that he went skipping across campus to his next class?  Made some fucking daisy chains or sang fucking camp songs?  He tried to kill himself!  Do you not get that?  Do you even fucking understand what knowing that has done to me?  If he’s done anything…”  Brian squeezed his eyes shut briefly at the thought before he yelled, “Get the fuck out and go home!”

Brian crossed the loft and yanked the door open; glancing at Michael one last time, Brian disappeared down the stairs, leaving Michael standing in the center of the loft with his mouth open in shock.  By the time he scrambled out of the loft, and locked the door behind him, tears were already beginning to well in his eyes.  Running down the stairs, he bolted out onto the street, but when he hit the sidewalk, Brian was already gone.