“Two years probation, two fucking years of fucking probation.” Debbie was still cursing, hours after they’d left the courthouse. Some of the regular faces around Liberty Ave that were in Woodies would stop by, give a few consoling words to the group and off she’d go again.
“I know sis, I know.” Vic patted her hand, half to calm half to wipe off some of the beer spilled from her exuberance.
“It’s nothing, absolutely fucking nothing. That fucking judge, ‘unduly provoked’? I don’t give a shit if Brian was rimming Sunshine on the dancefloor it doesn’t give that asshole a reason to attack him with a fucking bat!”
None of them argued.
Michael looked over to the bar where Brian was avoiding them, he hadn’t said anything since the sentencing. Even as they gathered together outside after, he just walked by them and left. He’d shown up at Woodies a while after they had and made a place for himself at the bar.
“You okay?” Michael asked when he approached him.
“Peachy.”
“Come off it Brian,” He snapped at him. “You can’t play the unaffected asshole on this. You care about Justin, you care that the guy who bashed his head in basically just got off scott-free. Stop acting like you’re above it.”
“Did you really think there was going to be another outcome? He’s a white 18 year-old with no record from a ‘good family’. We’re lucky he didn’t just get a fine.”
“A fine? What? $200 and you get to attack someone with a baseball bat?”
“$2500.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Because I was involved with a guy who got attacked with a baseball bat and he has brain damage so is pretty shit at giving an impact statement so it fell to me as the only competent witness.” Brian shrugged and took a long swig of his beer while Michael stared at him. “The prosecution lawyers needed something to give to the judge to sway him towards a harsher sentence. They knew not to expect much, the most he’d have got is a year in prison but even then he would probably only need to serve 3 months.”
“Shit, that is fucked up.”
“The great American justice system.”
_________________________________________
The rehab unit was scary. Michael had visited Justin a couple of times at the hospital before he moved over to the unit and since it was a private ward he only saw Justin but at the unit there were so many other people dealing with the same things as Justin or worse.
The unit was located on the University Medical Centre campus and specialised in brain injury recovery. As it turned out ‘brain injury’ was a very broad term and the issues the other residents had were just as broad.
There was a guy in his forties who seemed perfectly healthy, when Michael first saw him he thought he was maybe one of the therapists. He was well built, good looking and he moved without any issue but he’d fallen off a ladder, banged his head and now his entire vocabulary had been reduced to one word. There was a kid a few years older than Justin who had been in a car accident with his sister, she had died and he suffered a serious head injury which meant he laughed hysterically at everything - quite inappropriate at a funeral apparently.
One Saturday morning a few weeks after Justin had been at the unit he had run into the girls at the diner catching breakfast before they went to visit so he decided to tag along. Michael really didn’t like visiting Justin on his own, it was awkward as hell.
Justin had just been this seventeen year-old kid that barged into their lives and would have full on adult conversations with Ted that totally went over his own head, or he and Emmett would have stupid frivilous fun. Even Mel and Lindz took to him and isn’t it an unwritten rule somewhere that lesbians hate everyone? Of course then there’s Brian who never looked at the same guy twice but here he was dating a teenager. He was suddenly and inexplicably family. It didn’t make any kind of sense and it seemed Michael was the only one that saw that and it’s not like Michael dislikes him but he’s really not sure he ever actually liked him.
Besides, Justin wasn’t that seventeen year-old kid anymore. He wasn’t even the same kid that took off in his tux to go to prom. Now he was quiet, he didn’t really speak much whenever Michael was around (the near constant Brian inquiries had tapered off since Michael had come back), he usually huddled to himself like he was trying to take up the least amount of space possible and he would flinch any time anyone said his name too loudly. The kid that would shove you over in a booth and practically sit on your lap to make room for himself was long gone, Justin really didn’t like anyone touching him now.
There weren’t really visiting hours at the unit, friends and family were encouraged to visit whenever and to participate in the therapies since they were the ones that were going to be around after.
They had been sitting around a table in the day room, Justin and Gus in some kind of sick irony both playing with blocks during the conversation. Gus banging them against the table or waving them around while Justin tried jerkily to pick them up with his bad hand and stack them.
“If Gus decides to get bar mitzvahed will he have to get circumcised?” Justin asked and it sounds like a really out of the blue thing to ask but in the context of the conversation did actually make total sense.
The guy visiting with his own family at the next table over who looked like he could be anywhere from 50 to 12 million years old was someone he had seen around a lot. He was a loud and opinionated asshole that had karmically had a stroke and been left completely paralysed down his left side (and possibly from the neck up as well). He heaved himself forward in his monster of an electric wheelchair to a woman who was presumably his wife and conspirationaly spoke to her as loud as if he’d been using a megaphone.
“Fucking jews. Y’know the worst thing Hitler did was only kill 7 million of them.”
The place went deathly silent. Mel looked as though she was mentally debating the morality of beating a guy in a wheelchair to death. The wife didn’t dare look around, she just stared wide eyed at him and hissed 'Jim!'. Justin looked like he wanted to burst out laughing which was absolutely the happiest Michael had seen him in months but then hysterical laughter from Chuckles broke out, Mr. Vocabulary started yelling and the whole place turned into pandemonium.
And that right there was what made this place so scary. Take a tumble off a ladder at the Big Q, step off the sidewalk at the wrong moment or get bashed by some homophobe and he could wind up a half paralysed nazi sympathiser laughing uncontrollably and screaming ‘vagina’.
But he still braved it out for his Uncle Vic.
It had become their little ritual whenever he had a day off midweek. He’d meet Brian at the diner for breakfast, drive him to work and take the Jeep to pick up Vic.
The first time they did this it was his first time visiting although Vic was on his third or fourth. He’d been confused when Vic insisted on bringing his pill caddy with him.
“Are you going to play swapsies?” He’d joked and Vic chuckled.
It had become clear when they sat with Justin and a therapist of some kind, Vic emptied his caddy onto the table and the therapist tipped out a bunch of pills from a plastic cup in front of Justin.
“Ready?” Vic asked, settling in his chair. Justin nodded and Vic picked out a pill, showing it to him and dropping it back in the caddy. “Dronabinol, twice a day before main meals for loss of appetite.”
Justin cradled his bad arm with his left, supporting it as he aimed to pick up one from his own pile. His hand was curled and claw-like, he tried multiple times to grab one and to Michael it was like watching someone try and try to get a stuffed animal from a claw machine. Finally he managed it, he’d grabbed a similar looking pill and shakily moved it over to the plastic cup.
“Snap.”
“Come on.” The therapist encouraged when that was all Justin said.
“Right, yeah, um,” Justin’s brow furrowed and he looked at the pill in the cup and to Vic. “Drononol, two times, food.”
“Dronabinol.” The therapist corrected and Justin nodded with his eyes on his lap.
“Close enough, next,” Vic grabbed another pill and plopped it into his caddy. “Lamivudine, once a day reverse transcriptase inhibitor.”
Justin started the same long process of picking up a single pill, it felt like it took twice as long and all Michael wanted to do was reach across the table and grab it himself.
“Lora, um, Lorazpan?” He looked at the therapist to confirm.
“Almost, it’s Lorazepam.” She gave him a smile. “Great job, what else?”
“Night time for sleep.”
“That is not something I need help with thankfully.” Vic boasted light heartedly.
They continued on in their game for what seemed like the entire morning, the therapist giving corrections and encouragement when he got waylaid.
“Okay here’s my last one,” Vic grabbed what was quite obviously a peanut M&M. “Soliciumfrankolithicmixyalebidiumrixydixydoxydexydroxide, once a day to keep me fabulous.”
Justin smiled and it was a shock to Michael, the realisation that it was the first time he’d seen him smile.
Vic was great with him, he understood having your body be out of your own control. So every other week or so he’d give up his day off and sit uncomfortably for hours and watch his uncle spend time with Justin who had become a kindred spirit.
It almost made it worth hearing the word ‘vagina’ about 3000 times more than he ever wanted to.
Almost.
_________________________________________
“I miss Justin’s dick.”
Brian was stoned. He was sprawled out across the floor of the loft, a haze of smoke surrounding him. It was very obviously the good shit.
This was absolutely not the scene he’d expected when he showed up at the loft just to check if Brian was still alive since none of the gang had seen him in a week. No diner stop offs, no drinks in Woodies and no backroom visits at Babylon.
“Fucking hell Brian, I don’t want to know about your 18 year-old boyfriend’s cock.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Brian spat the last word out like a cat hacking up a furball with a disgusted look on his face, the kind of look that most normal men would make if he’d instead called Brian’s mother a cunt. Brian, not being particularly normal, would have agreed with that sentiment but instead has his knickers in a twist over the assumption that Justin is his boyfriend. Which everyone and their non-cunt mothers know is fucking true.
“Alright, if you’re still being a pussy about it,” Michael said under his breath which Brian gave him a bleary eyed glare for. “Your 18 year-old whatever’s cock.”
“Hey!” Brian sat up and pointed at him. “You remember Jacinta?”
“Yeaaaah.” He stretched out the word, not knowing where Brian was heading with this but if Jacinta was involved it wasn’t a place he wanted to be.
When Michael turned 18 - at the little family dinner in celebration - Brian had ceremoniously bestowed upon him his gift. A pink 12” long dildo as thick as a beer can tied in an elegant black bow. He proclaimed loud and unabashed ‘I call her Jacinta’. Deb swore, Brian grinned, Michael went a bit green in the face and Vic who was visiting from New York for the weekend sighed ‘kids these days, no ambition’.
Jacinta had followed him from his mother’s house, she stuck proudly out of one moving box as he rented his first place then again when he moved into the place he shared with Emmett now. He left her behind when he moved in with David, kept safe by his former roommate. He was pretty sure she was in one of the kitchen cupboards behind the waffle iron.
“I think I might need to take her off your hands.” Brian informed him with all the seriousness of a doctor telling his patient he had cancer.
Author's Chapter Notes:
A couple of snapshots from this universe.
Chapter End Notes:
I'm very sad to say that 'Jim' is real, and that Hitler comment is something he actually said in reference to the football team he supports signing an Israeli player.
The End.
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