BRIAN

A few days passed without Justin showing up. I didn’t go find him, not because I didn’t want to, but because Lindsay and Mel showed up handing over Gus, when Mel’s favorite aunt died. Mel’s family tolerated Lindsay, and Mel refused to let them dismiss Gus. It was one thing none of us would allow. It’s why Lindsay stopped taking Gus when she saw her parents, and why we all agreed my mother would never know he existed. Lindsay whispered, telling me that we could talk when she got back, likely hearing what happened with Mikey and worried about me. Deb came by my office and made sure I understood that it didn’t change that I was part of her family. 

I spent the next day telling Gus about Justin. Gus was one person that I trusted with my secrets. Of course it helped that he couldn't talk yet beyond Mom, Dada, and Mama. It felt good to talk to someone about Justin, even if Spongebob was all Gus really cared about. When Gus went to sleep I stood at the window each night, waiting, but Justin never showed up. I'd never been happy to send Gus home, but I needed to go see why Justin hadn’t showed up. When they got back Lindsay tried to stick around to talk, but left when I told her I needed to go.

Justin’s house was easy to find, only the person who answered the door wasn’t Justin.  He stared me up and down, then opened the door to let me in.

“He's being impossible. I'm Ben by the way.” He tells me, leading me to another door. “Hopefully he'll listen to you.” He said, walking off.

I walked into the room, looking at Justin sitting at a desk, his hands flying over a keyboard. The only real thing I saw was the bags under his eyes. Eyes that he had a hard time keeping open. He skin was almost gray, and he never looked up; as if he didn’t hear or see anything but what he was doing. It pissed me off that whoever this Ben was, he didn’t do anything when it was obvious Justin was running on fumes. I went to find Ben, to demand to know how he could let Justin get to this point. 

“What the hell is going on with him?” I ask.

“I don’t know what to do. Hell, I never know what to do when he gets like this.” Ben sighs.

“You get him out of that chair and make him stop. It’s simple, but it’s obvious you don’t give a shit about him.” I tell him.

“My job is to provide what he needs, something I was hired to do. So you're right, I don’t give a shit about anything else that doesn’t have to do with my job. It’s not like anyone can deal with him, or that he gives anyone a reason to want to deal with him.” Ben tells me, shaking his head when I glared at him. “I’ve tried, but the way he looks through people, barely speaking, it just works better to leave him alone.” 

“Did you ever even try to figure out why he might be like that?” I ask, not liking that Justin had people around him like Ben.

“No, why would I? He’s strange.” Ben said, looking uncomfortable.

“Strange? Or maybe it’s just hard for him to talk to people? Or could it be that he can tell what you really think of him and didn’t want to put himself out there when you judged him without knowing anything about why he would be the way he is.” I sneered.

“What do you know, other than that he watches you? Judge me all you want, but tell me what makes him the way he is. You don’t have a clue who he is, or why I don’t honestly even want to know anything about it.” Ben tells me.

“How do you know he watched me?” I ask.

“Look, I have things I need to do other than stand here waiting for Justin to finally fall over in his chair. Stay around him long enough and you’ll figure out you have better things to do too.” Ben said, avoiding my questions, while grabbing his things.

Ben slammed out the door, leaving me in the kitchen. I looked around for something to feed Justin before I made him go to sleep. I made him some food and walked back to the room he was still working in. I put the plate on his desk and went around to the side of his chair. Justin never looked at me, didn’t even seem to know I was next to him. I reached for his hands and put mine over them to stop him. He stilled, looking at my hands over his, almost as if he was confused at why he couldn’t move. I kept one hand over his and turned his face to mine, trying not to look worried at the glazed look in his eyes. 

“Brian?” He asked, like he wasn’t sure I was really here.

“It’s time to stop.” I tell him.

“I want it to stop, but it won’t.” Justin slurred.

“How can I help it stop?” I ask.

“You make it stop. Only… Jul… the noise.” Justin barely managed to get out.

He didn’t resist when I pulled him out of the chair, and I doubt he could, when I had to hold him up to just to get him to the couch in front of his desk. I helped him sit down, planning on getting the plate to make him eat, but even sitting up was to hard for him. Sleep seemed to be more important, so I sat down and made him lay down with his head towards me. He wouldn’t close his eyes, just kept looking at me. 

“I’ll stay, but you need to sleep right now.” I tell him.

It was all he seemed to need to close his eyes. I ran my hands across his cheek, wanting him to know I was still there. When his body relaxed I pulled a pillow over and put it under his head, then went to find a blanket because he was shivering, likely because his body wasn’t regulating his temperature, too exhausted to do what it should. Once the shivering subsided, I put the sandwich in the refrigerator, thinking Justin needed more than a cold sandwich. Even though I didn’t want to do it, I needed help. So I called Emmett.

“I need you to come to me and help me with something.” I tell him.

“Sure.” Emmett said, not even asking what.

Justin slept through Emmett’s arrival. And when I explained to him about Justin likely not eating in days, he went to the kitchen and started cooking. I went back to check on Justin. I didn’t even try to figure out what Justin was doing on the computer, none of it made sense to me. I looked around his house, just seeing basic things, no pictures, nothing that said anything about Justin. 

“Is he okay?” Emmett asked, looking worried when the noise in the kitchen would wake up a normal person.

“I don’t know. When I got here it he was working, although he was barely awake. I had to make him lay down.” I tell him.

“I know you hate explaining anything but…” Emmett left it up to me if I wanted to explain anything.

“I barely know him.” I tell him.

“But you’re here anyway.” Emmett points out.

“I don’t think he has anyone in his life, and for some reason I want to be someone he has.” I tell him.

“Brian, take this as me trying to be a friend, and listen to me. You do this, you see people who need a hero and try to help them. Only it causes problems, because people… Michael, misinterpret it to mean more than it is. It sounds like Justin might too.” Emmett tells me.

“Only he’d have been happy to keep doing what we were doing before we met.” I tell him.

“Which is? I know... none of my business.” Emmett says, willing to let it go.

“At first I didn’t know what he was doing. Just that he would sit across the street from the loft and watch me, but eventually he followed me to Babylon, just watching me. For a while I left it alone, but something about him made me want to know why he was doing it.” I tell him.

“Did you find out?” Emmett asked.

“Yes. But it’s something only for him and me to know.” I tell him.

“Do you want me to stay and help you with him?” Emmett asks.

“He doesn’t have an easy time talking to people.” I tell him.

“Can he talk to you?” Emmett asks.

“More or less, but we get each other.” I tell him.

“Call if you need me. And yes, I know, I wasn’t here and I know absolutely nothing.” Emmett tells me, heading for the door.

I ended up back on the couch when Justin got restless in his sleep. Eventually I moved him around so I could lay down, with him curled up on my chest. It wasn’t the most comfortable position for me, since I didn’t like people touching me when I slept, but it kept Justin asleep. Eventually I slept too.

JUSTIN

I thought I was dreaming, because it was the one where I heard Brian breathing with me. Only my bed was normally less lumpy, and I wasn’t exhausted like I always am. I opened my eyes, recognizing my couch but not the body underneath me. When I realized it was Brian, I rolled off the couch and hit the floor. Where the hell did Brian come from? I don’t even remember anything past Julian handing me a folder and telling me it was time to stop fucking around.

I looked around and I was in my office, but it didn’t explain how Brian was here. My stomach growled the way it does when I forget everything, and Brian leaned over, looking at me.

“I had dinner for you but you seemed to need sleep more.” Brian says, as if it was normal for him to be in my house.

“How…?” I barely got out.

“How long did you sleep?” Brian asks, looking at his watch. “Twelve hours. How about I help you up and you can ask questions after you eat.” He said when I looked confused.

I was confused. Twelve hours wasn’t something I’d ever managed, even when I was child. He continued to talk as if he knew what I wanted to ask.

“I might have pissed that guy Ben off when I showed up, wanting to know why he let you get this exhausted. If he’s the one taking care of you, it’s time to fire him.” Brian said, helping me to a chair in the kitchen. “Since I’m not a cook at all, dinner it is.” Brian said putting a plate in the microwave.

“I… I don’t… don’t remember.” I said, hating the way I couldn’t just say what I wanted.

“How could you? You worked yourself to exhaustion. I’ve done the same thing, and it takes days to get over it.” He says, getting the food out and putting it in front of me. I hated the worry in his eyes. 

“Why didn’t you sleep?” He asks.

“I’ve never been good at it.” I said, looking at the table.

“Didn’t it drive your parents crazy?” He asks.

“No.” I answered, since they would have had to be there for it to drive them crazy.

“Justin, nothing you say to me will change that I want to know you. If it will help, I’ll tell you about my life.” He tells me.

“Why?” I ask, when I didn’t know if I could do the same.

“Because I have a feeling knowing about it wouldn’t change how you see me.” He tells me.

I listened as he told me about his parents and what they were like. And about how he made the decision that the only person he could depend on was himself. That he believed for most of his life, just like I did, that being alone was all he could expect, and he let himself believe it was what he wanted.

“Only it changed the night you sat across the street watching me. Knowing you were there made it seem like there was someone there willing to share what he could with me, so we could both be less alone in this world.” He tells me.

“I don’t have parents. At least none that I know about.” I tell him, waiting for him to ask what I expected by telling anyone.

“And I had shitty parents. So either way, we were both pretty much parentless.” He said, instead of asking what happened to me.

I wanted to tell him, only because he didn’t ask. “I only stayed in foster care until they tested me and found out I wasn’t behind, but at a level that most children don’t reach until they graduate high school. They thought I was slow because I didn’t talk or answer. Until a student teacher was sitting next to me doing his homework, giving up on me when I wouldn’t answer his questions. I watched him get frustrated when he couldn’t solve the statistics problem he was working on, and took his pencil and wrote it out for him. Then they wanted me to show them what I could do. They didn’t bother to ask anymore, just put problem after problem in front of me. I could see the numbers in my head, and they made sense when nothing else did.” I said, looking at Brian to see his reaction to it.

“They wanted you to perform for them.” Brian figured out.

“They wanted me to perform and speak, which didn’t work for me. It was just, what I could say didn’t make sense to most people, and I hated feeling like I was doing something wrong because I didn’t know how to relate to people the way I could with numbers.” I tell him.

“So you gave them what it took to make them leave you alone.” Brian tells me, as if it’s what he did too.

“Yes.” 

“You decided being alone was easier. Being alone was what you were supposed to be.” He tells me.

“Yes.” 

“But being alone isn’t easy, no matter what we tried to tell ourselves. It’s why I watched you walk by every night. It’s why I stayed at the window when you looked up. Because I couldn’t lie anymore and tell myself that I wanted to be alone.” Brian tells me.

“I don’t know how not to be.” I told him.

“By letting me help you. We can do this together.” He tells me.

“There are people that watch me.” I tell him, since he needed to know.

“Why?” He asks.

“To keep me from doing anything but what they want from me.” I tell him.

“Then we let them try to stop you. Which apparently is a hard thing to do when you really want to do something.” Brian says, worried even when he smiled.

“If it becomes too much, I’ll understand.” I tell him.

“Is there something we need to worry about?” Brian asked.

“No.” I lied.

Brian didn’t say anything, but I needed to him to leave it alone until I figured out what Julian would do when I didn’t dance to his tune anymore. He liked playing with other people’s lives and I’m the one who gave him the toys he uses to play with. To keep Brian safe, I’d turn his life into a toy and spin Julian’s life out of control. Only right now Julian was safe. Until he made me show him what I could really do for someone who meant something to me.