“What the fuck is going on?”

“Nothing... the fuck is going on.”

“You’re a fucking fall-down mess.”

“I’m beautiful. I’ll always be beautiful, you said so yourself.”

“You’ve cut yourself off from everyone, including me. You’re drinking... Christ, like I’ve never seen you before. Maybe you need to talk to someone.”

*****

“I haven’t seen him like that in, well… ten years. Not since right after his accident.”

On Christmas morning, Michael sat at the table in his kitchen just like he did every morning, with his coffee and his laptop. It was just him and Ben. Hunter and his fiancee had decided to go on a cruise, and they wouldn’t be back in town until the new year. Mel and Linds would be over later with Gus and J.R., but other than that, it felt like any other normal day. Not like a holiday at all.

“I think it’s understandable,” Ben said, stirring some soy milk into his coffee. “I know how I’d feel if it were you in the hospital. If I didn’t know if you were going to be alright or not.”

“I know. I get that. If it were you, I’d be a fucking basket case, but… Ben, he’s scaring me. This is worse than it was before. And I don’t know what’s wrong, because he won’t tell me. When I ask, he just shuts down. Insists he’s okay. But I know he’s not.”

Ben stood up, walked over behind Michael, and started rubbing his shoulders.

“You can’t make him tell you if he’s not ready,” Ben said. “Just keep reminding him that you’re there. I think he’ll come around.”

“I did, but God, Ben… Last night, I saw exactly what Ma was talking about when she told me she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone. I didn’t want to leave him either. I’ve known him long enough to be able to see when he’s just trying to stuff something down, or trying to wait it out until no one else is around so he can let it go then. And that’s exactly what he was doing last night.”

“You can’t smother him though, Michael. He’ll only push you away. You have to let him come to you in his own time.”

“I just… I don’t want him to have to go through this alone.”

“He’s not. You’re there. We’re all there. He’s not alone. But if he needs some time to himself, we have to let him have that.”

“Ma said he woke her up screaming the other night. That he fell asleep on her couch and had some kind of nightmare. Ended up in the floor, fucking screaming, and he didn’t know where he was. Clearly, something is wrong.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just telling you that you have to be patient. And you have to accept that he might not want to tell you.”

“I don’t like not being able to help him, that’s all.”

“I know. You care about him. You love him. You want to fix this. That’s just who you are. But you can’t fix this. You couldn’t fix it ten years ago, and you can’t fix it now. You just have to know that you’re doing what you can, and right now, that’s all you can do.”

“But I want to do more.”

“You have to wait for him.” Ben released Michael’s shoulders and walked back over to his chair, taking a seat across from Michael.

“I’m afraid he’s going to do something stupid.”

“Do you think he’s a danger to himself?”

“I don’t know, Ben, because he won’t fucking tell me what’s going on!” Michael’s voice was rising.

“I’m on your side, Michael,” Ben said, keeping his tone calm and even, like he always did.

Michael sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m scared. Last night, I think I would have given anything to go back to when we were kids, when he’d come over after his dad went on a rampage, and he’d let me hold him until he fell asleep.”

“You’re not kids anymore, though.”

“I know we’re not. But that’s what I wanted to do last night. And I think if I could have done that, maybe I could have gotten him to open up.”

Michael spent Christmas Eve trying to get Brian to talk to him -- really talk to him -- all night, to no avail. But Brian wasn’t engaging with anyone, much less Michael. He kept finding ways to go off by himself -- at least, as much as one could do that in Debbie Novotny’s house on a holiday. Brian accomplished it by doing the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing for most of the night.

They hadn’t been there for very long, and Michael was helping his mother pull every plate she owned out of the cabinet, when he noticed that although everyone else was in the kitchen or hovering near it because dinner was almost ready, Brian was sitting in the living room by himself, looking out the window.

Michael needed a convenient excuse to go over to Brian and check on him without looking like that’s all he was doing, so he told his mother he’d be right back, grabbed a mug, and filled it up with a ladle full of the spiced apple cider that was steaming in a pot on the stove.

Brian nearly jumped out of his skin when Michael touched him. Apparently he’d been off somewhere, lost in his thoughts. The first thing Michael noticed was that Brian didn’t look good -- he didn’t look like himself at all. His color was off and he just looked...worn out. His eyes looked so weary. They were dark -- just pools of blackness that echoed the despair that seemed to be etched all over his face.

Michael told Brian how glad he was that he was there, even in spite of everything that was going on. Brian turned away for a moment, and Michael thought it looked like he was trying not to cry. Michael had seen that enough times to be able to identify it, whether Brian wanted him to or not. It was something Brian did as a result of the years of training he’d had to never show any sort of emotion. And it was often followed by a sarcastic remark to try to throw people off the trail, although it never did for Michael. Usually, Michael knew what it was about and could easily redirect Brian’s energy to help him save face. Only this time, he didn’t know what it was really about. Was it about Justin? Was it about not feeling like he deserved to have people care about him? Some combination of the two? Or was he just emotionally on-edge because of something else that was going on in his mind? Did it have something to do with waking up screaming?

Michael tried to get Brian to talk to him then, but Brian wouldn’t engage.

He also tried to give Brian an out -- letting him know that if he needed or wanted to leave, all he had to do was say the word. But he didn’t take Michael up on it. He just sat there through dinner, hardly saying anything, and hardly eating anything either. Gus tried to make a joke that ordinarily Michael knew Brian would have laughed at, but it didn’t seem like Brian had even heard him. They were all gathered around together in the same room, but Brian might as well have been on another planet.

After dinner, Lindsay had been looking for Brian so she could ask his permission to try to repair Justin’s paintings, but he was nowhere to be found. Michael had excused himself to go to the restroom right after dinner, and hadn’t seen Brian since then. Trying to conceal his worry and not run through a million possibilities in his head of where his friend could have disappeared off to and what kind of trouble he could be in, Michael walked over to Ben and asked him quietly if he’d seen Brian. Ben tilted his head slightly in the direction of the back door, where, sure enough, through the window, Michael could see Brian’s back. He was sitting out there by himself, and it looked like he was smoking a joint.

Ben must have been able to read Michael’s mind, or else he knew him far too well, because the next thing he did was whisper in Michael’s ear, “Let him have some time. He’s okay.”

Resisting the urge to go outside immediately was like torture for Michael, who instead took a seat at the table where he could still see the back door, and kept glancing out at Brian, attempting to be as furtive as possible, since it didn’t look like anyone else had noticed him out there. Michael could see him looking up and blowing smoke into the sky for a few minutes, then he could see the faint glow of what appeared to be Brian’s phone in the darkness. Maybe he was calling someone, or thinking about it. As much as Michael wanted to be the person Brian confided in, he had to admit that he’d be relieved if Brian just called someone -- anyone -- to talk about what he was feeling, even if it wasn’t him.

But he never called anyone -- at least, it didn’t look like he did, unless it was brief and Michael had missed it while he was trying to not stare. The glow from the phone went out, and Brian continued to sit outside in the darkness. Michael couldn’t stand it anymore, so he looked over his shoulder to check and see that Ben was occupied talking to someone else, before he got up and slipped outside.

Brian offered Michael the joint, but he didn’t take it. He hadn’t smoked in years. The last time he smoked had been with Brian, actually.

They talked about Lindsay and the paintings, and Michael couldn’t help but notice how despondent Brian sounded. Even more than he had earlier that night, in the living room. It seemed like he was withdrawing. Like he just didn’t care anymore. Michael knew that never led to anything good where Brian was concerned. And it also drove the “fixer” in Michael to try to reassure Brian that Justin was going to be fine, even though, truthfully, Michael didn’t know that any more than Brian did.

Brian had made fun of him a little, asking him if he thought he was psychic or something, and Michael was relieved to see that tiny bit of the sarcastic side of his best friend that he knew so well, coming through. Normally, Brian’s penchant for sarcasm could be a bit annoying, but that night, it was so good to hear. Maybe it was the pot talking, but whatever it was, it felt normal. It let Michael forget for a split second that, in his friend’s world, things were anything but normal at that moment.

When it didn’t seem like his reassurance was working, Michael thought he’d try the promise of sugar -- Brian’s secret love that directly contradicted his whole “no carbs after seven” bullshit that he still pretended to follow for some reason. There were desserts and sweet beverages to be had inside, where all of the other people who loved and cared about Brian were. Maybe if Michael got Brian surrounded by people again, it might bring him back to life. It turned out that the promise of liquor was the actual way to Brian’s heart, and that only served to add to Michael’s worry. Was Brian about to go inside and get drunk? Was he about to fall into one of his old standby “pain management” methods?

Michael was a little surprised when Brian didn’t do that, and didn’t seem to even have the intention of doing that. He only had one glass of the bourbon that one of Carl’s coworkers had given him as a gift. Maybe Brian was a bit more in control than he looked. That still didn’t stop Michael from being concerned, though.

When Michael decided that he’d had enough of watching Brian try to navigate the social circus that was “Christmas Eve at the Novotny house,” he asked him if he was ready to call it a night. The relief on Brian’s face was clear. Michael only wished that “calling it a night” didn’t mean what it did -- taking Brian back to his hotel, where he’d be alone for the rest of the night.

Michael went into the hotel with Brian, supposedly to help him carry the containers of leftovers his mother had sent back with them, but really, it was to buy Michael more time to try to see with his own eyes whether or not Brian was okay. What his friend was saying at the moment couldn’t really be trusted. The truth would lie in how he looked and how he acted. And his looks and actions belied the aloof confidence he tried -- and failed -- to exude.

Giving Brian that hug and kiss and telling him he loved him felt so strangely final, and Michael didn’t know why. It wasn’t final at all. They were going to see each other the next morning. But Michael’s subconscious kept pulling his worries and concerns back to the forefront. Drawing his attention to the fear and uncertainty that lay just beneath the surface in his best friend’s eyes. Michael kept telling himself that he was being ridiculous -- that Brian would be fine. He didn’t seem particularly unstable -- he just seemed sad and disengaged, and maybe a little bit afraid. And there was nothing Michael could do about it that he hadn’t already tried to do.

There was only so much he could do, if Brian wouldn’t tell him what was really going on.

Michael didn’t think he’d felt this helpless since he’d been sitting in the hospital waiting room with Ben after having gotten a phone call telling him Brian had been involved in an accident. He hadn’t liked it then, and he definitely didn’t like it any better now.

It was past the time when Brian had typically been calling Michael to come pick him up and take him to the hospital, and Michael was fighting the impulse to call his friend and be sure he was alright. He hoped that Brian was sleeping, because Michael knew he needed the rest. He’d been looking exhausted ever since he arrived in Pittsburgh, and it seemed to only get worse with each passing day. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping much at all.

Michael was really wishing that he knew what had Brian screaming in his sleep the night he was at his mother’s house. Was it something that was happening often?

He could remember that Brian used to have nightmares occasionally when they were kids and he’d spend the night at the Novotny house. Sometimes they sounded pretty violent and scary, but Brian never would talk about them. Then, they’d graduated from high school and gone to college and started their adult lives, which meant no more sleepovers. That is, unless Brian had gone out and gotten drunk with his dad and ended up stumbling into Michael’s apartment late at night, so smashed that Michael was sure Brian wouldn’t have remembered any dreams he had. So Michael hadn’t given any thought to Brian’s nightmares in a long time.

Brian didn’t call until after 9 a.m., and the first thing Michael noticed when he met Brian at the hotel was that he didn’t look any better than he had the night before. He also hadn’t bothered to shave, so the five o’clock shadow was adding to just how tired and harried he looked.

Michael noticed that Brian kept rubbing his hands on his thighs as they drove to the hospital.

“Something wrong?” Michael asked. He remembered Brian having some problems with something that was basically like phantom pain, that had started a few months after his injury and really put him through hell until they found the right medication for it. But he didn’t think it had been an issue in a long time.

“My fucking legs are burning… Have been since late last night. I don’t know why I think rubbing them will help, considering that it’s all in my goddamn head anyhow.” He paused and leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on with my body, but I don’t have time for this shit.”

Michael had a number of things that he would have liked to have said, and lots of advice he’d like to give -- such as reducing stress by fucking telling someone what was bothering him and letting them help -- but he knew that if he said any of it, he would only incur Brian’s wrath. He didn’t want to do or say anything that might make Brian even less inclined to reach out to Michael if he needed something. So he kept his mouth shut.

When they arrived, Michael started to turn to park the car in the garage so he could go in with Brian, but Brian stopped him.

“You can just drop me off,” he said. “I don’t want to take up your whole day.”

“I don’t mind. We’re not doing anything until later. Until then, it’s just Ben and I. We’ll probably just be watching TV or something.”

“You should go enjoy your time with your husband.”

“Brian, I really don’t mind--”

“It’s fine. Just drop me off.”

Michael knew better than to argue with Brian when his mind was made up. All that would do was create a rift as well -- a rift that neither of them could afford to have between them right now. So he dropped Brian off at the door, and obeyed when he was told not to get out of the car.

“Do you want me to come by later and pick you up?” he asked as he watched Brian assemble his chair.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch a ride with Jennifer. I’ll be fine,” Brian said as he moved his body from the car seat to the wheelchair. “Go be with your family, Mikey.”

“It’s your family too,” Michael said. “Mel and Linds and Gus and J.R. will be there later. We’d love to have you, if you want to come.”

Michael honestly wasn’t expecting Brian to accept the invitation, considering that he’d been spending almost every waking minute he was allowed to next to Justin’s hospital bed. But he figured he’d put it out there anyway.

“Thanks, but I want to stay here as long as I can today.”

“I understand,” Michael replied. And he did. But he didn’t like watching Brian torture himself, day after day. Particularly when it was so obvious that he wasn’t getting the rest he needed. Michael wasn’t sure he was caring for himself very well at all, to be honest. And it sounded like Brian’s body was starting to fight against him, which wasn’t a good thing.

However, he knew better than to try to convince his hard-headed friend that he needed to take better care of himself. Brian was probably already well aware of that, but with everything else that was going on, Michael knew he’d probably never take time for himself.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mikey,” Brian said. “Love you.”

“You too. Call me if you need--”

“I know.” Brian cut him off. “Thanks, Mikey. I’m okay.” With that, Brian closed the car door, then turned and disappeared through the sliding glass doors at the front of the hospital.

Michael drove back to the house, having to remind himself that Brian wasn’t upset with him -- he was probably just angry at the world. And that was certainly understandable. Michael still didn’t like being shut out, though. He wondered if perhaps he’d pushed too hard the night before, trying to get Brian to tell him what was wrong.

He and Ben spent most of the day watching marathons of cheesy holiday movies on cable TV, in between eating the leftovers his mother had sent him home with. Ben had planned a mostly vegetarian meal for them to share with their guests later, with the exception of the turkey that they knew they had to have if they didn’t want a revolt from Gus, who truly was his father’s son and would not hesitate to express his displeasure with the lack of meat via a heaping helping of sarcasm. And, honestly, Michael wanted the turkey too, so he didn’t mind helping to prepare it.

Melanie, Lindsay, and the kids showed up in the late afternoon, as planned.

“We just came from the hospital,” Lindsay said as she took off her coat and scarf and hung them up on the coat rack by the door. “Looks like Brian got a good Christmas present today -- Justin was quite a bit more awake. And believe it or not, Brian was smiling. After the way he looked last night, I was so glad to see that. Justin’s still pretty confused and said his head hurts, but he was talking some.”

“That’s great to hear,” Michael said. Actually, he was downright relieved to hear it. Maybe that might help pull Brian out of his funk, Michael thought to himself. It sounded like it might already be.

Lindsay nodded and followed Michael into the kitchen, while Mel, Gus, and J.R. went into the living room, where Ben already was. “I hadn’t really talked to him since the first night we got into town. I couldn’t figure out if he was consciously avoiding me last night or not, but I kept getting pulled away by other people every time I’d start to approach him, and then he’d slip off somewhere else.”

“I think he was avoiding everybody. I wouldn’t take it personally. He didn’t want to come, but you know Ma. She left him no choice.”

“Well, I don’t really blame him. I just wanted to check in with him, see if there’s anything I can do to help besides what I’m already doing with the paintings. I wish we could stay in town longer, but Mel has to go back to work.”

“I know he really appreciates what you’re doing for the paintings, even if he hasn’t said anything. I know he’s kind of...preoccupied.” Michael stopped himself from adding that he was fairly sure there was more to Brian’s preoccupation than met the eye.

“Gus was even getting worried last night,” Lindsay said, keeping her voice low so no one in the living room would hear her. “And I know I was. He just didn’t seem like himself. Not that I was really expecting him to be the same old Brian, not with Justin in the hospital. But something was just...off.”

Michael certainly knew the feeling. While he knew that Justin starting to come around more fully probably wouldn’t be a quick fix for Brian’s mental state, he was sure that it would be a huge help.

Michael and Ben spent the evening with their little nontraditional family, part of which was Brian’s as well, and they all missed his presence. They understood why he was missing, though, and they were all happy that he was finally getting something he’d been wanting so badly. Maybe Brian’s week of torture had finally ended, and Justin would continue to be on the upswing from here on out. Michael hoped that would be the case, because he wasn’t sure how much more Brian could stand.

Eventually, Mel and Linds left with the kids, and Michael and Ben settled into bed together for the night. It felt to Michael like things were finally starting to look up, and he was thankful for that. Brian deserved to have a little peace -- for things to settle down a bit.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to get a phone call in the middle of the night, but around 3 a.m., his phone started to ring.

Michael fumbled around in the dark for his cell phone until he finally located it. He squinted at the screen, but barely registered whose name was on the display before he answered it.

“Hello?” he mumbled, about as clearly as he could when he had been startled out of a sound sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

No one said anything on the other end. He could hear someone breathing, and he thought it sounded like Brian. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. It was Brian. Or at least, someone using Brian’s phone. Although he didn’t know who else would be.

“Brian?” he said. “Is everything alright?”

Still, all he could hear was the sound of someone breathing. Sounding upset. Maybe a little scared. Or in pain? He couldn’t tell if the sound he was hearing in the breath on the other end of the line was a tremble or a hitch or a quiet sob.

Michael sat up in the bed and turned the light on. Ben was awake now too, and was looking at him with concern in his eyes.

“Talk to me,” Michael said, keeping his voice gentle as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, grabbing a pair of jeans and starting to pull them on while he held the phone to his ear with his shoulder. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

It was several more seconds -- with more unsteady breathing -- before Brian finally responded. His voice was quiet, and he sounded like he’d been crying. He sounded exactly like he had when Michael had sat with him in the hospital hallway on the night Justin was bashed. So much so that it gave Michael chills.

“I fucked up.”