Emergency Contact

LaVieEnRose

Summary:

I had a mouth full of nails when the loft door swung open. “Hey,” I said, as best I could.

Justin circled the stool I was standing on. “Wow, a hammer and everything. This is very butch. Are we having a nervous breakdown?”

“Fuck off. Come help me with this.”

Justin dropped his messenger bag on the counter—normally he'd throw it on the couch, but, well—and dragged out another stool. “Why are you hanging a shelf?”

“Because I bought one.”

“Whhhhhy.”

“Because I have nowhere to put shit and it was cheaper than a table.” I paused, considering. “And possibly because I'm having a nervous breakdown.”

“There it is.”

“Stay down there and support it from the bottom,” I said.

“I always support from the bottom,” he said, with a cheesy grin up at me, and I did my best not to swallow some nails when I laughed. He lifted his arms above his head and head the shelf up while I worked.

I hammered for a while, and Justin chattered on about the new waitress at the diner and how Debbie was thinking of getting the booths replaced and other extraordinarily boring things that didn't bother me as much as they should have because...look, I'm not going to get sappy here, but he'd only been back for a few months and sometimes you miss having a monologue in the background. After I'd used up all my nails I said, “Okay, I think that's good, let go,” and stepped off the stool, and the shelf promptly fell right down and clocked Justin in the head.

“Fuck!” he said, clapping his hand to his head.

I laughed. “Yikes. Are you okay?”

“Fuck, don't laugh at me, that really hurt.”

“Let me see, come here.”

He took his hand away from his head and showed me a minuscule smear of blood. “I'm bleeding! Look what you did.”

“Hey, I didn't make the shelf.”

He rubbed his head. “Compelling. Fuck, this hurts.”

“Go sit. I'll get you some ice.”

He went and sat on the bed, because there was nowhere the fuck else to sit in this place anymore, and I wrapped some ice in a towel and brought it over to him. He was still pouting and rubbing his head when I got there, so I pouted back and gave him a hug. “I promise I'll never DIY again,” I said. “This is why God invented lesbians.”

He flopped back on the bed, holding the ice in place. “Do you think this gets me out of helping Daphne study tonight?”

“Sure.”

He chuckled and winced. “Why am I not surprised that's your answer?”

“Stay here. Stare at my empty, shelfless walls with me.”

“That does sound fun.”

I lay down next to him and touched his cheek. “At least let me wash the blood out of your hair.”

He smiled. “Okay.”

I didn't really think anything more of it.

**

I went out that night to the newly-restored Babylon, then woke up late Sunday morning and went to meet my trainer at the gym. I had a shower, fucked around in the steam room, and arrived home to a pitch-black loft, the lights off, the curtains drawn. It took me a minute to put it together, since that was definitely not how I left it, because Justin was supposed to be at work, first of all, and he didn't live here, second of all, and...it had been a few months, third of all.

I closed the door slowly, took off my shoes, and approached the bed as quietly as I could. “Hey,” I whispered.

Justin was curled up about as small as he can get, which is pretty fucking small, his arms around his head. “Uh-uh.”

I placed a hand on the small of his back. “Deb send you home?” She should have called me.

“Yeah.” He swallowed and shifted around some. “I threw up at the diner.”

“Eh, who hasn't.”

He groaned. “Don't make me laugh.” That did explain why he was here, though. The loft's way closer to the diner than his place is.

Still, it's a two block walk. “You should have called me, I would have come and got you.”

“S'okay,” he whispered. “Can I just sleep here for a little while?” He said it like it was a real question, like he really thought I might kick him out.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. You take your meds?”

He shook his head a little, wincing.

“Why the fuck not?”

“At Daphne's.”

It was probably too late for them to make much of a difference, but it might help it ease up a little sooner. He once had a migraine that lasted three days, before they figured out the right meds for him. “Okay.” I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “I'll be back in half an hour.”

He sighed, sounding relieved. “Brian.”

“Don't throw up in the bed.”

I knocked at Justin's place, but when Daphne didn't answer I used my key. “Daph? Don't be naked.” Still nothing, so I made my way to Justin's fucking pig sty of a room. The only pill bottles on his nightstand were his allergy meds and his anticonvulsant, which made me realize I didn't know what the fuck he'd been doing about those on the nights he'd stayed at my place. Was he just not taking them? No wonder he had a migraine, the idiot. I poured half of each into one of the the bottles and pocketed it to live at the loft.

I dug through piles of clothes and rooted through the metric ton of art supplies on Justin's dresser, but I couldn't find another bottle of pills. I looked at my phone, winced, and then bit the bullet and called Justin.

He answered after a while. “What the fuck,” he croaked. “I thought you didn't want me to throw up in the bed.”

I kept my voice low, for all the good it would do. “I know. I'm sorry. I can't find your pills.”

He took a shivery breath. “Medicine cabinet in the bathroom.”

Really should have thought of that. “...Yeah. Here they are.”

“Can I hang up now?”

“Yeah. I'll be back soon.” I hung up, stuck the Imitrex and the painkillers in my pocket, and on my way out stopped at his fridge for some of those nasty energy drinks he likes, because sometimes caffeine helps take the edge off when he has a migraine. He was exactly where I left him when I got back to the loft, so I fed him the migraine meds and one of his allergy pills because why not and lay down next to him, because it's not like there was fucking anything else to do. I didn't have a TV anymore, and I couldn't exactly read in the dark. Justin doesn't like to be touched during a migraine, not even by the cool sheets, so I kept my hands to myself.

I must have drifted off, but at some point I was aware of him vomiting again, thankfully not in the bed. I rubbed my eyes on the way to the bathroom and squinted in the low light. “Hey.”

“Uh-uh,” he said.

“You tried that already.”

He spit into the toilet. “God. Fuck.”

“Bad one.”

“Yeah.”

I got him another painkiller and a bottle of Gatorade to wash it down with. He took one swallow and tried to hand it back to me. “Getting dehydrated's just going to make you feel worse,” I said.

He held his head. “I don't think that's possible.”

“C'mon,” I said, helping him off the floor. He was shaking so small and fiercely, like he was vibrating. “Hey,” I said, when I realized he was crying. “It'll get better. It always does.” I kissed his temple, as gently as I could. “Okay, champ. Shower or bed?”

“Bed, I can't.”

“You're fine.” I guided him back to bed, trying not to worry about the way he stumbled on the flat floor. It was dark, that was all. He lay on top of the covers and curled back up, and I lay my hand on his back.

He shivered. “Don't...”

I took my hand away. “Forgot.”

He sighed. “'M sorry.”

“Don't be stupid. Go to sleep.”

He did, and I lay there and watched him, the best I could in the low light, and continued that trying not to worry thing.

He'd be better in the morning.

**

He wasn't. He sat on the bed, cross-legged, head in his hands, while I got ready for work as quietly as I could. I still didn't have a fucking office, obviously, due to not having a fucking job, but I was doing some consulting work for an old client and I had a meeting I really couldn't afford, literally, to miss.

I crouched in front of the bed and put a hand on his knee. “Where can I bring you?” I said softly. “Debbie's? Is Daphne home?”

“Can you drop me off at the clinic?” he said, and something in my stomach fell.

I moved my hand to the back of his neck, even though it made him wince. “Christ, it's that bad?”

His voice was so tight. “They can give me a shot, I need it to stop. I can take the bus if you—”

“Stop. C'mon.”

**

There was a forty-five minute wait at the clinic. I watched Justin fill out the paperwork and paced restlessly, looking at my watch. Even if he somehow spent less than five minutes with the doctor, there was no way I'd make my meeting on time.

Fuck fuck fuck.

This was stupid. It was a headache. The kid was fine. He didn't need a babysitter.

He was finished with the forms now, hunched in a chair in the corner, the hood of his sweatshirt all the way over his head, his face hidden in his arms to block out the light. There was a baby crying nearby, which had to just be fucking torture.

I stood over him and couldn't figure out what to say.

“It's okay,” he said, and I startled; I didn't know he knew I was there. “Just go. I'm fine.”

I ran my hand over my mouth. “I'll be done by ten. Call me if you're still here and I'll pick you up.”

“Okay.”

I bent down and kissed his cheek, and he gave me a small smile. “Feel better,” I said softly.

He nodded and bit down on the hem of his sleeve.

**

My meeting ended at quarter to ten. I texted Justin to let him know, and when he didn't answer I went to the diner—closer to the clinic than the loft was, marginally—for a late breakfast and to wait out his call. Michael was still off on his little adventure with Hunter, and I looked around the diner, full of people I vaguely recognized but no one I really knew, not even Deb, and felt a kind of fucking...loneliness out of nowhere. Then Emmett showed up and morosed at me about Ted and I remembered how much I hate knowing people, so that helped. An hour of that, and still nothing from Justin, so I headed back to the loft.

When I still hadn't heard from him at noon, I tried calling his cell, and when that went straight to voicemail, the landline at Daphne's, to see if he'd made it home on his own. Nothing there either.

At two, I called the clinic.

“He was a patient there this morning,” I said.

“We can't reveal patient information,” the bored receptionist said.

“I just want to know if he's still there,” I said. “I'm his emergency contact.”

“I told you, we can't reveal that,” she said. “And unless your name is, uh, Jennifer, you're not his emergency contact.”

He put his mother down instead of me?

**

At a quarter after fucking six PM, he called me.

“What the fuck?” I said.

“Brian?” he said.

“Who the hell else would it be? Where the fuck are you?”

“Can you come?” his voice was small.

“Yes,” I said, looking for my keys. “Except where the fuck are you.”

“At the hospital.”

I froze. “You're what?”

“I'm okay. I'll explain when you get here.”

“Yeah, no,” I said, slamming the loft door behind me. “You're gonna explain now.”

“You shouldn't be on your phone while you're driving.”

“Are you fucking—”

“Fourth floor,” he said. “I'll meet you by the elevators.”

“Allegheny?”

“Yeah.”

**

Justin was sitting in the waiting room when I got out of the elevator. He got up and gave me a hug, looking...a lot better than he had that morning, so I was officially fucking lost.

I held him. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I told them my medical history in the clinic and about the thing with the shelf two days ago and they freaked out and said I had to get an MRI right away.”

I stared at him. “Why didn't you call me?”

“I didn't have time, they put me in a fucking ambulance right away. I don't know how I'm going to pay for this.”

“You didn't have time then, fine, but that was nine fucking hours ago and an MRI takes forty-five minutes.” Fuck this kid and thinking I don't know the goddamn minutia of head injuries. Fucking, fucking fuck him.

And fuck me for not goddamn realizing I should have brought him to the fucking hospital yesterday as soon as he got a headache.

“I didn't want to bother you,” Justin said.

“You didn't...I fucking told you to call me when you were done if you needed to be picked up.” It wasn't what I wanted to say, it wasn't fucking nearly what I wanted to say, but it was something and it was easy.

“I'm not done,” he said. “My fucking neurologist is here and he wants to talk to me, I'm...the nurses are going to tell me when he's ready, and I'm...I don't know why he wants to talk to me.”

I sat down. “Okay.”

“And....and I'm scared,” he said. He shrugged, blushing a little. “I just wanted you.”

“Well, I could have been here nine goddamn hours ago.”

He shifted nervously from foot to foot.

I sighed. “Sit down. How's your head feel now?”

“Better. They gave me the shot at the clinic.”

“Then I'm sure everything's fine.”

He chewed on his thumbnail, and I rolled my eyes and knocked his hand away from his mouth. “Stop. This place is a cesspool.”

“Why does he want to talk to me if everything's fine?” he said quietly.

**

It turned out, to put the fear of God in us about Justin getting any more head trauma.

“You were lucky, this time,” Dr. Bartha told us. “Very, extremely lucky. Next time that might not be the case.”

“It was barely anything,” Justin said. “It's not like I lost consciousness.”

“You don't have to,” he said. “Not with your history. Justin...after what you sustained two years ago, you're incredibly fortunate to have recovered to the degree that you have. But that's a precarious thing. Repeated head injuries can lead to a condition called chronic encephalopathy, the symptoms of which are similar to Alzheimer's disease or dementia. This is serious.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Justin said. “You said no contact sports. I don't play contact sports. What am I supposed to do, wear a helmet all the time?”

“You're supposed to take a head injury seriously, especially when it's symptomatic,” he said, firmly but gently. “You're not supposed to wait three days to come get an MRI. You know that.”

Justin shrugged a little, looking down at his lap. “I just didn't want it to be a big deal,” he said.

“Nobody ever wants anything to be a big deal,” Dr. Bartha said, succinctly. “That's how people choke to death.”

**

Justin was quiet in the car, and in the elevator, and in the loft when I drained my first class of Beam, and my second.

Finally he said, “I'm sorry, okay?”

I slammed the glass down. “You knew you were supposed to get an MRI and you didn't say anything?”

“I thought he was just being—”

“You put your mother down as your emergency contact?”

“I didn't—”

“You sat in the hospital by yourself for seven fucking hours?”

“This is new,” he said. “You and I—”

“Oh, bullshit it's new.”

“I don't want to fuck this up,” he said. “I didn't want to get too...heavy or dependent or start...”

I snorted into my glass.

“Don't laugh at me,” he said, firmly. “I'm trying to make this work.”

“By lying to me again.”

“I didn't...” He sighed. “I didn't know if you'd want to be my emergency contact. I didn't feel up to having that conversation right then. And I...I thought I could handle the hospital thing on my own.” He shrugged, looking away. “I thought you'd be...proud of me or something later, I don't know. For being a grown-up.”

Everything I wanted to say stuck in my throat, no matter how many much I drank. Justin went up to the bedroom, and a minute later I heard the shower running. I poured and drank one more glass, then joined him, my words already starting to buzz a little in my head. Good.

I closed the shower door behind me. “Don't slip and hit your head,” I said.

“This is going to be fun, isn't it,” he said dryly.

I lathered shampoo in his hair. “This hurt?”

“No.”

We were quiet for a while while I washed him, my fingers ghosting over the scab from two days before. Eventually I tilted his head up, gently, so he was looking at me.

“I'm only gonna say this once,” I said. “So are you listening? Your brain isn't too fucked up to understand me yet?”

“So sensitive.”

“I'm your partner,” I said. “I should be your emergency contact. All right?”

His mouth quirked up in a smile. “You're my partner.”

“I said I'm only saying it once. Don't try to trick me.”

He ducked his head against my collarbone. I could feel him smiling against my skin.

Ah, hell. “I'm your partner,” I said again.