4.
Brian sat in the darkened loft and stared blindly out across the space. He was ignorant to the expensive furniture that sparsely decorated his home; instead, he saw images of things long past. Justin cooking in the kitchen and greeting him with a blinding smile as he walked through the door after work. Running his hands over slick skin in the shower as the scent of soap and sex rose between them. Lying in bed in the middle of the night, and watching Justin’s chest rise and fall with each breath that he took. Feeling Justin’s breath gush quick and jaggedly over his shoulder as the boy lay trembling and sticky beneath him.
But as hard as those images were to remember, there were other memories which were far worse. Memories of tear-stained cheeks, and ivory skin bleached white with distress. Soft cheeks flushed with humiliation, as the muscles in Justin’s jaw jumped and clenched as he fought to maintain what scraps of pride he had left. Those bright, blue eyes that had once shown every drop of emotion that Brian could barely name, let alone speak, had slowly shuttered over time until Justin’s eyes had become as blank as one of his canvases.
“Brian? I'm sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know what for. I didn't mean for it to happen.”
Brain had been so sure that Justin had left Rage, had left Babylon… had left him for the pretty musician. Ethan Gold – brilliant violinist in his third year at PIFA. Twenty-one years old; lived in an absolute dump of an apartment, in an even worse part of the city. An “A” student, one who was on a full scholarship, and destined for greatness upon the stages of the world while his adoring crowd marveled at his talent. A far better choice for Justin, which is why Brian had deliberately cut him down the night of the Rage party. Rage had been a big, fat, fucking success, and instead of celebrating the achievement with the boy, Brian had thrown him as far off the cliff as he could. And for what? Only to find out three months later that Ethan wasn’t Justin’s boyfriend, but the boyfriend of another musician named Sam? How the fuck did that happen?
“Brian? I'm sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know what for. I didn't mean for it to happen.”
Justin’s voice continued to haunt him; just what had Justin been apologizing for that night? Brian knew that Justin had fucked Ethan; he’d smelled the scent of sex on the boy a few days before his whispered confession. He had scented the stale aroma of sex on the boy more than once. What had the apology been made for? If Ethan had a boyfriend, had it even been Ethan that Justin had been fucking? And if it hadn’t been Ethan, had Justin merely been out tricking when Brian had all but attacked him after Michael’s revelation?
“Why did you stop? Brian?”
“Go shower. You stink.”
The look on Justin’s face at that moment… Nausea roiled violently in Brian’s stomach, and he swallowed hard as he recalled the fear he had seen in Justin’s eyes as Brian all but devoured him whole. Brian knew he could argue the point and say that by the time he dragged Justin to the ground, the boy had been rock hard and not trying to pull away. But the moment Brian had opened his mouth, he had felt Justin’s cock rapidly soften, before Justin had scrambled to his feet and fled to the bathroom. Not wanting to bear witness to the effect his words had had for once, Brian had left the loft and had gone to Babylon. When he eventually returned, Justin had been gone, and Brian hadn’t seen him again until Justin had come home and apologized.
“Brian? I'm sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know what for. I didn't mean for it to happen.”
“I know. You were the poor, helpless victim of a love-bashing.”
Fuck! Had that actually come out of his mouth? Brian knew he could be cruel, that he could, would, and had used words to tear people down. But to throw that in Justin’s face? Brian dragged his hands down over his face and blew out an unsteady breath. Emmett had been unable to look at Brian after revealing what little information Alex had given him; for a half a second, Brian had visions of running towards Alex’s house, kicking down the door and demanding to know the truth.
“Alex said that Justin didn’t OD; they think he tried to kill himself.”
When Brian had opened his mouth to refute Emmett’s claim, all that had come out was a sound that Brian had never heard himself make before. It had come from deep inside himself; deeper than his chest. Deeper than his gut. More than a moan, it had been thick with what Brian would later recognize as grief. The sound had echoed in the car; it had caused Emmett to look swiftly away from Brian, and start the car without comment. Brian couldn’t even remember making it through his own front door, let alone the drive home. He had merely collapsed by the front door, where he had remained for the next several hours.
“They think he tried to kill himself.”
Brian couldn’t make sense of it; not Justin. Not his boy. Not with his sunshine smile and ballsy laugh that filled with room with happiness. It wasn’t possible. There was no way in hell that Justin could sink so low into depression that he would attempt to take his own life. Not when the loss of all that sunshine would affect so many people. ‘What people in his life did he have left?’ Brian shook his head slightly, but the thought continued to linger in his mind. Who did Justin really have in his life now? His mother, obviously. Daphne; the girl was like a pit-bull when it came to her best friend. The fiddler and his boyfriend. Who else did Justin have?
The more Brian thought about it, the more he began to panic. There had to be other people in Justin’s life. Brian wracked his brain; he thought back over half-remembered snippets of conversation, searching his memory for names. Places Justin had gone. People he had spoken about. And the more Brian thought, the worse he began to feel. When Justin spoke about going out to the movies or for coffee, he always spoke about Daphne. Shopping with Emmett. Having drinks with Michael and Ben. Talking about math, and how it could be applied to playing pool with Ted. Enjoying dinner with Lindsay and Mel, while spending time with Gus. Working and living with Deb and Vic. Loving Brian.
Brian grasped his head in his hands tightly, and dry heaved violently; he couldn’t get the image of what Justin looked like earlier in the day out of his mind. Disturbingly thin, Justin had seemed like a shadow of his former self. Yes, his hair was longer, but it was so much more than that. Unsolicited, the memory of Justin tracking him down at Woody’s rose to the front of his mind, and Brian gagged on the taste of his own bile. Back then, Justin had been fearful of crowds and had shunned them at all costs.
Seeing him on Alex’s doorstep today was so much worse than that. It was almost like Justin had caved in on himself. No longer did he stand tall and proud, with his sheer presence making up for his slight stature. Justin had seemed more than brittle today – he looked like he was one small breeze away from shattering. Even at his worst after the bashing, Brian had never seen Justin appear this frail. That thought was reiterated by the way Ethan had handled Justin; Ethan’s arms around Justin hadn’t been merely for comfort – Justin had been unsteady on his feet as Ethan led him to the car.
Looking back at the memory, Brian wondered if Justin’s head on Ethan’s shoulder hadn’t been about comfort, but about sheer exhaustion. Brian knew from past experience that when Justin had been trying to recover from the bashing, there had been days where he merely curled into Brian’s side on the couch and rested his head in Brian’s lap. It hadn’t been about comfort then, either – Justin had given all that he had inside himself during that time, and some days he just had nothing left to offer.
Brian knew he needed answers; he knew that sitting on the floor would accomplish nothing in gaining those answers. He didn’t even know the fucking questions that he knew he needed to ask. And there were so many questions swirling around in his brain. But all the how’s, and why’s, and seriously, what the fuck’s wouldn’t change the fact that when Justin had needed him, Brian hadn’t been there. Again.
“Brian? I'm sorry.”
Brian thudded his head back against the loft door when Justin’s voice whispered through his mind again, and he swallowed against the constriction in his throat. Closing his eyes, Brian ignored the heated moisture he felt roll down the side of his face and concentrated on taking a steadying breath. Sorry wasn’t bullshit when it truly mattered. Sorry wasn’t bullshit when that was the only emotion that he felt. And he was. He was sorry, too.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Brian knocked on the front door quietly; by the time he had found the strength to claw his way up from the floor, it had been close to nine PM. In the moments after leaving the loft, Brian had had only one clear destination in mind. And when the curtains on the door parted, Brian had to swallow hard against the emotion that was tearing him apart when the door opened, and Debbie peered out at him.
“Brian?”
For a silent moment in time, Brian wondered if Deb was going to yell at him for the late hour. But as she looked him over, Debbie’s shoulders suddenly sagged, and she reached out to take his hand into her own. And at that moment, Brian came to the sudden realization that Debbie seemed unsurprised to see him. As she pulled him gently into the front foyer that had represented safety when he was a child, Brian spoke with absolute certainty.
“You knew. About Justin. You knew, didn’t you?”
Debbie looked at him for a long moment before she finally nodded.
“Yeah, honey. I knew.”
Brian searched himself for the rage he so desperately wanted to find as Debbie led him into the kitchen. But he was unable to find it as Debbie sat him down at the kitchen table, and turned to make him a cup of coffee. She maintained her silence as she prepared the two cups, and when she set it down in front of Brian, she sat beside him and reached out to grasp his hand tightly between both of hers.
“After Justin walked out on us at the diner, I rang Jennifer, and I told her that after everything I had done for Justin, I had expected more from him. She laughed, but her laughter sounded…wrong, somehow. She laughed, Brian, until all she could do was cry. She said that when she had let Justin move in with me, she had expected me to help her keep her son safe in this new world he had discovered. So, could I please explain to her why her son was in the hospital, and why a psychologist had spent the evening telling her that her son had tried to kill himself?”
Debbie sighed, and as Brian stared at her, she seemed to age right before his eyes. He couldn’t remember seeing the lines on Debbie’s face that he saw now, and it was with slight wonder that he finally realized that Debbie had been keeping this secret for months. But Debbie was looking at him with damp eyes, and Brian couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“She… I didn’t believe her at first. Not our Sunshine. But Jennifer ran straight over the top of my arguments, Brian. She said that Justin had been unhappy for months before he left us, and that we had all ignored it. He had been hurting since the bashing, and none of us saw it. He learned to hide how he was really feeling behind that beautiful smile, and somehow… we missed it, Brian. I put his moods down to the fact that he was a hormonal, fucking teenager, and I ignored what was right in front of me.
“I told Jennifer that I was going to call you, and we would be there within the hour. She said to me that if anyone of us set foot in that hospital, she was would have us arrested for child endangerment. She didn’t care if she had to raise unholy hell to do it, but she would find a way to keep us from seeing Justin. From hurting him any further than we already had. I’m ashamed to say, Brian, that I accused her of meaning you in that statement. She laughed at me and said that you were the least of her concerns, that you were at least honest about the fact that you took pleasure in humiliating people. It was the rest of us that she hadn’t seen coming.
“I demanded to know what the hell Justin had been saying, for her to speak to me like that. Jennifer said that maybe I should concentrate less on how she chose to raise her child, and more on how I had raised my own. No one speaks to me about Michael like that, and when I said that to her, she got real calm like. Then she asked me if I had raised my son to deliberately hurt children, because if I had, then she hoped that there was a special place in hell for me. She then told me that I was never to approach her or Justin again. Then she hung up, and I was left sitting here, feeling like I had been hit by a fucking bus.
“Brian, in the two years that I have known Jennifer Taylor, she has never said anything to me like that before. I didn’t say anything to anyone about the phone call; I went straight to the hospital, instead, and I demanded to see Justin. He wasn’t in the general wards when the nurse checked, and I had to wait for ages until Alex Wilder walked out, and asked to speak to me in private. He took me through the hospital, and through this set of locked doors. I’d never been in that part of the hospital; it was behind those locked doors that I saw Justin for the first time.”
Debbie swallowed and then tightened her grip on his hand.
“Justin was…they had retrained his hands to the side rails of the bed, and there were straps across his body. There was a nurse who sat right beside his bed the entire time I was there, and she didn’t take her eyes off him once. Alex wouldn’t let me into his room to speak to him; not to whisper his name, or to kiss his cheek, or to tell him that I was there, and that I loved him. Alex told me that Justin had been heavily sedated, and he wouldn’t know if the building was burning down around him.
“And while I stood on the other side of the observation glass, wondering what the hell had happened to lead him to this point, Jennifer walked in. She had aged twenty years overnight, Brian. And as I looked at her, at this wonderful woman that I admired and cared for, I connected with her as a mother. I knew her pain, Brian, because I felt what she felt. And I knew at that moment that I would help Jennifer in any way that I could. I would lie to all of you, to protect him. I would never fail that beautiful kid again.”
Debbie let go of Brian’s hands and sat back in her chair. She stared at him for a minute, before she picked her cup up and took a mouthful of her coffee. Setting her cup down with a soft thud, Debbie squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“Now; what do you want to know?”
There were hundreds of questions swirling through Brian’s mind. But only one came out in the form of a single croaked word.
“How?”
Debbie’s face contorted, and she reached out to grab Brian’s hands again.
“Honey, that isn’t important…”
“How, Deb?” Brian managed, and Debbie sighed as she squeezed his hands.
“I can only tell you what Jennifer and Ethan have managed to piece together, because Justin refuses to talk about it. The day he walked out on us in the diner, he went to Ethan’s where he had been staying, and he ran a bath.”
Brian’s whole body convulsed as the mental picture of Justin drowning in the bath flashed through his mind, and Deb immediately rose to her feet and gathered him into her arms. Pressing his head against her chest, Debbie rocked Brian even as her words ran into each other in her rush to speak.
“No, Brian, get that image out of your head right now. Justin loves taking baths; when he was living here, he would spend ages in the tub in the middle of the night. He probably ran the bathtub to relax.”
Brian could only nod, but Debbie still refused to let him go. For a long moment the kitchen remained silent, and when Deb eventually sat back down, Brian surprised himself when he was the one to reach for Debbie’s hands first. Her lips curved slightly as she rubbed her thumb over Brian’s knuckles, and then she began to speak again.
“When Ethan got home from school, he found Justin in the tub. There was a half-empty bottle of Beam on the floor, and an open container of sleeping tablets on the counter. Ethan called Justin’s name, and when Justin didn’t answer him, Ethan pulled back the curtain surrounding the bathtub and found Justin unconscious. Ethan tried waking him up, and when he couldn’t, he pulled him out of the bath and stuck his fingers down Justin’s throat. That move probably saved Justin’s life, because he spewed up some of what was in his gut.
“Ethan called an ambulance after that, and Justin was taken straight through to emergency. He had his stomach pumped while Ethan filled the hospital staff in on how he had found Justin, and then he called Jennifer. From what Jennifer said, Alex was called in after that, and things happened very quickly. Justin was sedated and moved to the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Alex sat down with Jennifer, Ethan, and Daphne to tell them that Justin had to be observed and evaluated, because this was a possible suicide attempt. Justin was in the psychiatric unit for close to three weeks before he was released; he was formally diagnosed during that time as suffering from clinical depression.”
“Why wasn’t I notified?” Brian asked quietly in the silence that followed. “When Justin moved in with me, I was put down as his POA. I should have been notified, Deb.”
Debbie licked her lips before shrugging in defeat.
“Brian, Daphne is Justin’s POA now. She had been for several months, even before all of this happened. From what I could work out, she and Justin filed the paperwork not long after he stopped dancing at Babylon. When I asked Daphne why Justin had given her his POA, she said that it wasn’t her story to tell, but she knew why Justin had done it, and it was up to him as to whether or not he told me.”
Brian pushed away from the table and walked to the back door. Leaning against the open door, he lit a cigarette and stared out over the darkened yard. Had things really been that bad for him and Justin, that the boy had planned this out? Did Justin think that he couldn’t have come to Brian if he was in trouble? If Justin hadn’t left him for Ethan, when had he finally decided enough was enough?
“Have you seen him?” he finally asked; he glanced over his shoulder at Debbie when she sighed.
“No, honey, I haven’t spoken to Justin since he left the diner that day. Jennifer looked into my eyes at the hospital, and she saw how much I loved her son. That is the only reason she has let me back in; we speak every day, and she keeps me updated on how Justin is doing. He has what Alex calls group therapy every Thursday; that’s when Jennifer or Daphne or Ethan is invited to participate in the therapy session with him. Justin knows that I am aware of what happened, but he hasn’t asked me to join a session; he refuses to let me back into his life for some reason. Alex said he doesn’t know if Justin ever will.”
Finishing the last of his smoke, Brian exhaled slowly as he closed the door, and turned back to face Debbie.
“Does anyone else know?” he asked, and Debbie shook her head.
“I don’t think so. I promised Jennifer that day in the hospital that I wouldn’t say anything to the family. That I would give her time to help Justin find his footing again. How did you find out, Brian?” Debbie asked, and Brian shrugged slightly.
“Alex approached Emmett; Emmett came to me earlier today, and took me to the park near Alex’s place. I saw Ethan and Sam waiting to pick up Justin.”
Debbie huffed out an impatient breath and shook her head.
“Alex might as well have taken out an ad in the fucking newspaper,” she mumbled, but Brian shook his head.
“It’s not Emmett’s fault, Deb; I think he knew for at least a week before he came to me. Do you know where Justin is living?”
Deb stood up even as she shook her head.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said firmly. “You do not approach him, Brian. Alex made that very clear to me. Under no circumstances was I to try and reinsert myself back into Justin’s life. Not while he is like this; not while he is still as fragile as he is. I’m sure the same would apply to you.”
“How is he fragile, Deb?” Brian asked, and Debbie pressed her fingers against her eyes as she sank back down into her chair.
“Justin has therapy three times a week, Brian. And three times a week, Alex makes Justin talk about the things that are hurting him. It tears him apart, each and every time, and the kid barely has the time to try and pull himself back together before he is torn open all over again.”
“What things?” Brian asked, and when Debbie shook her head, Brian finally found his temper.
“Stop shutting me out! I‘ve spent the last three months thinking that Justin was happy and living the romance of his life with the fiddler! Instead, I find out that he… what things, Deb?” he shouted, and Debbie pursed her lips together before she finally answered.
“His father. How Justin sees himself. His friendships and his relationship with his mom. School. Art. His lack of self-worth. His inability to understand why the people in his life want to be there, when he can’t offer them anything but himself.”
“What else?” Brian urged, and Debbie’s breath shuddered out of her before she spoke softly.
“Brian, there are two things that Justin refuses to talk about. Alex continues to try and make Justin open up about them, and Justin continues to shut him down. He won’t talk about the Prom and the bashing, and how he feels about it. And he won’t talk about you.”
Brian felt his lips part, and he wheezed out a puff of air that hurt him to exhale. Debbie stood up and closed the distance between them. Reaching up, she cupped Brian’s face in her hands and looked directly into his eyes before she spoke again.
“I may not have given birth to you, Brian, but you have been my son in every way that counts since you were fourteen years old. So, I think I am more than qualified to say that I know you. I know how you feel about Justin. I’ve always known, even before YOU knew, and started to lie, not only to those of us around you, but to yourself as well. You could walk into his therapy session on Tuesday, and tell him that you loved him like you should have done months ago. You could take out a full-color ad in every magazine in the country. And Justin wouldn’t believe a word you said.”
Brian rolled his lips into his mouth as he looked away from Debbie, who urged him to sit back down.
“I don’t know what set him off, Brian. I don’t know what triggered him to withdraw into himself the way he has. But he’s in a bad way. He said in one of his therapy sessions that the only reason that I let him live here was because Jennifer was paying me. Justin truly believes that if money hadn’t been involved, he would never have been invited to live with Vic and me. He thinks that we didn’t love him; that his presence in this house was a favor to you.”
Debbie let her statement sink in for a minute as she stared across the table at Brian. He could see the bewilderment in her eyes, and hear the hurt in her voice as she spoke, and then the truth of her statement hit Brian like a ton of bricks.
“If he thinks that about you and Vic... what else does he think, Deb? What aren’t you telling me?”
Debbie licked the corner of her lip before she reached for Brian’s hand as she spoke quietly.
“Brian, he thinks that none of the family really cared for him, that we all put up with his presence in our lives because you were fucking him. His words, not mine. That the minute he stopped letting you fuck him, we all showed him how we really felt about him when we turned our backs on him.”
Squeezing Brian’s hand hard, Debbie pushed the next sentence out of her mouth even though it hurt her to speak the words that she knew would tear Brian apart.
“He said that you never really cared about him. He believes that all he ever was to you was a convenient piece of ass. And no matter what Alex says, Justin won’t be convinced otherwise. Brian… in one of his very first sessions with Alex, Justin said that he had been told that 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.”
It took a full minute for Debbie’s words to make sense, and when they did, Brian stood up so fast that he knocked his chair over with a loud clatter. Debbie’s eyes filled and then spilled over as Brian backed away from her shaking his head, and she stood up slowly. Brian felt the bench bite into his lower back as Debbie approached him, and he could only stare at her as she reached up to cup his face in her palms.
“Honey… the Justin that we all know and love? He’s buried inside the young man that Ethan pulled out of the bath. It’s the depression talking for Justin now; that ballsy kid who lived here knew that you cared about him. If I find out who spewed that shit at him, I’m going to string them up by their balls. But that doesn’t change the fact that somewhere along the line, Justin stopped thinking clearly. We both know it, Brian.”
Brian swallowed convulsively, and when Debbie smoothed her thumb under his eyes, he ignored the moisture that he could feel her wiping away.
“Chris Hobbs rewired his brain when he bashed him, Deb. That’s what happened,” he said hoarsely, and Debbie nodded sadly.
“That’s what Alex and Jennifer think, too. And it’s up to us, to try and help him find his way out of the darkness. I honestly think that it’s time we called a family meeting. I don’t want the others to find out the way you did. Maybe I should have told you earlier, but I couldn’t do it, Brian.”
“Do what?” he asked as Debbie wrapped her arms around him tightly.
Tilting her head back to look up at him, Debbie smiled sadly.
“I couldn’t be the one to put the look on your face that is there now; I couldn’t be the one to break your heart.”
Later, Brian would wonder if he should have said something to dispute her notions. She couldn’t break his heart – you can’t break what’s already broken.