THE SIGN, PART 1 / 8
Summary: Four years post-series. Brian gets a phone call he cannot ignore.
A/N: There’s a shifting POV, denoted by a bigger line space. You’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure. It’s not rocket science. :-)
The story is complete and will be posted on a two-day schedule.
Comments of any kind are very welcome.
THE SIGN
PART ONE
Tony Damato, the bellhop at the Four Seasons Hotel, ignores Mr. Kinney’s cellphone for the first few beats. He knows the drill - Mr. Kinney never answers his cellphone, especially not in the middle of a blowjob. They've done this several times over the last year or so. Mr. Kinney is at the hotel a lot and when he can’t be bothered to find his own entertainment for the night, he asks Tony when he'll be off duty. That’s all he has to do. But then Tony pulls his mouth off the most beautiful cock he’s ever seen - and he’s seen quite a few - to smirk up at the man. Mamma Mia? Really? ABBA so doesn’t tally with his image of this guest at all.
Brian moves his hips backwards to stop the trick from starting up again, noticing his disappointed look with detached satisfaction. “You need to leave,” he says and tucks his rapidly deflating cock into his jeans before making his way over to his cellphone. It seems appropriate somehow to be properly dressed.
“I can wait for you to finish,” the guy says hopefully, no doubt fondly remembering the times they fucked before and reluctant to leave before he gets what he was asked here for.
By that time, Brian has reached the nightstand and picked up the phone. “Fuck off,” he says coldly and wonders whatever gave him the idea that being semi-polite would work. Tricks are always too keen for his attention to take a hint that doesn’t involve profanity.
He watches as the guy scrambles to his feet and makes his way out of the hotel room before he hits the button to connect the call. He knows who it'll be. Whenever he changes his cellphone number, he migrates all the numbers and their designated ringtones - as devised by one very baked Justin Taylor on a lazy afternoon a long, long time ago, in another life, well, someone else’s life almost. What he doesn’t know is how she got hold of this number because everyone, who's bestowed this great gift, is told in no uncertain terms to never divulge it to anyone under pain of being one of his blocked numbers.
“Kinney.”
“Brian? Thank God.”
He doesn’t even need to suppress a sarcastic response to that because the worried tone has increased his heartbeat in seconds. He knows she wouldn’t call for trivial reasons, otherwise he'd have heard from her over the past three years, but he doesn’t like this tone - at all. Still, it wouldn't do to appear too concerned.
“Mother Taylor. What can I do for you?”
“I’m in Mexico. On holiday. Well, on honeymoon actually. And I can’t get a flight out until the day after tomorrow.”
Okay. That is certainly a piece of information of questionable usefulness, but he thinks that she'll probably enlighten him as to why this should be of any interest to him if he stays silent. Only, he doesn’t like that she's so frantic and borderline incoherent. He’s only seen her like that once before and he doesn’t want to be reminded of long, empty hospital corridors and near hysterical mothers. He drops the slightly mocking tone of indifference that has stood him in good stead for so long.
“What happened, Jennifer?”
“What? Oh, right. I had a phone call. Justin's been admitted to hospital. He’s had some kind of accident. I can’t get there until the day after tomorrow. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but could you make your way there? I know you’re not... I begging you, Brian, I need to know what's going on. They said he‘s in a coma. I know that it’s a lot to ask, but could you go to New York? I don’t know who else to ask. You're the only one with the means to get there quickly. Please, Brian!”
Brian’s first reaction is to say no. He’s not doing this again, sitting in a hospital, waiting to see if Justin will live or die. This time he’s not responsible, this time he was miles away when it happened and he hasn’t even spoken to Justin in nearly three years. But he knows he'll always be responsible for the lad, no matter how far he removes himself from the scene and as much as he wants to say no, what comes out is: “I’m already in New York. Which hospital is he in?”
“You are? Oh, thank God for that! He’s at the Memorial. How quickly can you get there? I give you my number. Do you have a pen?”
He contemplates pretending that he needs to write it down, but then that seems too pathetic for words to him after all. He doesn’t play games anymore, hasn’t done for a long time.
“I have your number. What do you want me to do? I can go there, but will they even let me see him? Doesn’t he have a partner you could call?”
“Don’t get me started on Owen.” There's a mumble that sounds like, ‘Useless prick’. Then: “Of course, they'll let you see him. You're still his POA.”
The stupid twat! Why would Justin do something like that? How difficult can it be to make some simple changes to his medical records? Brian doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to go there. He doesn’t want to see him. He doesn’t want to make any decisions for him. He doesn’t want him to die. Most of all, he doesn’t want him to die. That isn’t part of the plan.
“I’ll leave right now, Jennifer.”
“Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Please call me as soon as you know anything.”
“I will.”
He presses the ‘end call’ button because he knows that if he doesn’t, she'll stay on the line all the way to the hospital. Not that he can blame her. She's Justin’s mother and she's understandably worried. Brian doesn’t want to get caught up in that. He’s been trying for a long time to stay away from a lot of things, but things - or rather, people - have a way of not staying away from him.
When he gets out into the corridor, after gathering his essentials, he runs into the bellhop, who's still lingering about. Some people really don’t understand the simplest instructions. How much more unambiguously than ‘fuck off’ could he possibly express himself? It always used to work. He must be losing his touch. However, for now this works in his favor.
“Get me a cab,” he barks at him without slowing down and he’s satisfied to hear the guy talk to someone on the phone or the walkie-talkie - or the bush drums for all he cares. All he knows is that when he walks out of the hotel, there's a cab waiting for him.
Half an hour later, he steps into the pristine foyer of the Memorial Hospital and walks up to the reception desk. After peering at the nurse’s name tag, he smiles winningly. “Hi, Sasha, my name's Brian Kinney. I’m here for Justin Taylor. He was brought in after an accident.”
“Are you a relative?”
“No. But if you look in his medical records, you will find that I'm his health care proxy.”
He keeps his eyes on her to avoid looking around, because all hospitals are the same and they all bring the same memories. But he can’t avoid the smell, that faint air of disinfectant and misery.
Sasha checks his credentials and directs him to the Intensive Care Unit. Of course, where else would Justin be? He doesn’t do anything in half measures.
A nurse by the name of Amanda, according to her tag, collects him by the ICU entrance and makes him wear plastic covers over his Gucci loafers and a hospital frock over his clothes. He tries to be annoyed about that, but his mind isn't cooperating for once. Just before they reach the cubicle, he touches her arm to stop her.
“What...” He has to clear his throat. “What kind of an accident was it?”
“Accident?”
“Justin Taylor. He was in an accident, wasn’t he?”
“Who told you that? Mr. Taylor was brought in with a case of meningitis. He was unconscious when he arrived this morning and he has been ever since. He's on a respirator. We’re keeping him sedated.”
“How is he?”
“We don’t know yet. We're monitoring him carefully. We’ll know more by tomorrow morning.”
“Who brought him in?”
“His lecturer. There's been a small cluster of meningitis cases at the university. It sometimes happens at the beginning of the new year. He was very lucky because the people there recognized the symptoms straight away because of the previous cases.”
She hands him a surgical mask. “You need to wear one of these. Wash your hands thoroughly when you leave and... don’t kiss him.” She smiles a crooked smile, part embarrassed, part curious.
“Really not a problem,” he mutters, slipping on his mask.
To an outside observer, the deep breath he takes before he goes in is imperceptible. He doesn’t hesitate or falter, just breathes deeply as he walks over the threshold. The cubicle is crammed with machines and IV poles and the bed and Justin looks smaller than Brian remembers him. The tube that's coming out of his mouth is secured round the back of his neck and makes him look like he's been gagged. Brian wants to rip it out because it looks so uncomfortable.
Justin’s hair is longer again, not as long as it was until he shaved it off for the Pink Posse but longer than when they first met. He's admonishing himself for noticing it and even more for wanting to touch it. He always loved Justin’s hair, especially when it's slightly sweaty like it is now. Only it used to be sweat-soaked for other reasons and now he feels sick for thinking it. There are a myriad of reasons why he shouldn’t be here.
The respirator makes a strange hissing noise at regular intervals, reminding him that Justin is alive. It’s not so much that he looks dead, it’s more that he doesn’t look like a person at all, more like a life-sized doll, inanimate and he half-expects him to feel cold when he touches him. But Justin’s hand is reassuringly warm and Brian finds himself unable to let go.
Amanda Hilton works around him quietly, checking her patient’s vital signs, making sure that all the machines are working correctly. She wants to offer the visitor some comforting conversation, but he doesn’t seem receptive. He doesn’t even seem to be in the room, although he has taken Justin’s hand. That’s good. It might help. Patients who've woken up from a coma often say that they could feel a touch or hear a voice. She doesn’t think it would be much use asking this man to talk. He looks like he doesn’t even talk to conscious people, never mind comatose ones.
The doctor turns up ten minutes later because she alerted him as soon as she heard that finally someone is taking an interest in her patient. Justin's been here for ten hours and this is the first visitor. It's strange because he looks like such a sweet boy, but his emergency contact is his mother and the hospital administrator’s secretary had some trouble getting hold of her. And then there's the small matter that she doesn’t have power of attorney, this man does.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Anderson. May I ask who you are?”
The man lets go of the patient’s hand with a frown, as if he's not quite sure how it ended up in his. “Kinney. Brian Kinney.”
“You're his health care proxy?”
A nod. “Apparently so. Although I have to tell you that I haven’t seen your patient in a few years, so I can’t tell you anything.”
“That won’t be necessary. But we need to know your phone number, so we can reach you at any time. By law, you’re the person to make the decisions.”
“What decisions? You give him some drugs. He gets better. Seems pretty simple to me, no decision making involved. That’s what you get paid for, isn’t it? Making people better?”
“I'd like your permission to do a lumbar puncture to confirm the strain.”
“Wanna explain to me what you’re talking about?”
So, Anderson does. He explains that they would like to draw some fluid from the patient’s spine to confirm that he has meningitis and which strain. He describes how the procedure is carried out and the risks. He has to do that because it’s the law, but he really thinks that the danger is negligible and, although the procedure isn't strictly necessary, it always irks him to treat patients by their symptoms alone, without scientific proof. Of course, he doesn’t tell this man that, but the guy looks like a reasonable man anyway. A man of the world.
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. You’re sticking a needle into Justin’s spine over my dead body.”
“Mr. Kinney, the risks are really...”
“This is not a discussion, Dr. Anderson. You asked for my consent. I’m not giving it. It’s a useless procedure to satisfy your curiosity. It won’t make any difference to his treatment, but it could paralyze him. The answer's no.”
“Mr. Kinney. There hasn’t been a single incident of that in the history of this hospital.”
“Irrelevant. You’re not doing it. I won’t allow it. Now tell me what you are doing.”
The doctor stares at him a little longer, annoyed that he's been overruled - he's always annoyed when that happens. Who do these people think they are, disregarding his expertise? He also doesn’t like the imperative tone, but he recognizes it for what it is, the tone of a man who's used to being obeyed.
“We'd like to take him off the respirator. For that, we need to lower his sedation. He should wake up naturally. The antibiotics have started to take effect and his fever’s going down. The only way to tell how he’s doing is by lowering all the medication and taking him off the respirator.”
“He should wake up naturally? There’s not an awful lot you actually know, is there? You want to stick a needle in his back to find out if he even has meningitis. You want to take him off medication to see if he wakes up. And I suppose you want to take him off the machine to see if he can even breathe. Now tell me exactly what risks we’re talking about.”
“Mr. Kinney, will you please stay calm.”
Brian laughs a sarcastic laugh. “Believe me, Doc, when I’m no longer calm, you'll be able to tell the difference. Now, we’ve already established that you’re not sticking any needles into him. Now tell me why you want to stop his medication.”
“The antibiotics have lowered his temperature. He'll need them for about ten days, but he simply doesn’t need to be sedated anymore. However, if we take him off his sedation and he wakes up, his own breathing - when it kicks in - will work against the respirator. It’s… unpleasant to wake up on a respirator, not life-threatening, but it makes most people panic.”
“And if he doesn’t wake up?”
“Not waking up isn’t a problem as such. The problem is that if he doesn’t start breathing spontaneously when we extubate him, then we need to re-intubate him straight away.”
Brian doesn’t think that not waking up can be classed as not being a problem, but he knows what the guy means, at least for that part of his statement. “English please, Doc.”
“If he doesn’t breathe on his own when we take the tube out, we will have to put a new one in very quickly.”
“So the choice is between waking up in a panic with a tube down his throat or stop breathing altogether if you take it out?”
Anderson hates it when his patients - or even worse, his patients’ relatives - think they can reduce his lifetime experience to simple phrases. There's more involved. It’s always much more complicated than that, but he has to admit that the statement just about covers the basics.
“Or he could just breathe normally when we take it out. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He’s young and fit and we caught it early. I'll reduce his sedation over night and we’ll re-assess him tomorrow morning.” He can’t wait to get away from this guy, who looks at him as if he's the most incompetent practitioner he's ever come across, not the leading expert in his field that he really is. He alters the chart and turns to leave, when the guy stops him.
“What if he wakes up before tomorrow morning?”
“He shouldn’t.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Anderson sighs. “If that should happen, the nurse will be able to extubate him... to take the tube out. It’s really not a big deal in that case.”
“Except for Justin, who will have a panic attack when he wakes up.”
God, what is with this guy? Who the hell is he anyway? Not a relative, just some guy who happens to have the right papers and has delusions of grandeur. Anderson hasn’t seen anybody this suspicious about a patient’s treatment in a long time. “I'll make this my first stop tomorrow morning,” he offers magnanimously.
Brian just shoots him a dismissive glance and turns back to Justin. After the doctor leaves, he looks at the nurse. “Will you be here all night?”
“Yes, until eight.”
“I need to call Justin’s mother. Do you want me to bring you back a Starbucks? I need to have a smoke as well.”
“I’d love to, but there’re no drinks allowed in the unit. But thank you.”
“When will you stop the sedation?”
She doesn’t mind him asking for information. He's well within his rights and it's refreshing to see someone who doesn’t take the doctor’s word for gospel, especially Dr Anderson’s. There's really no reason why the old fogey can’t come by a couple of times in the night to check up on his patients, like the other doctors usually do, but he won’t. Dr Anderson only ever turns up when he's specifically called.
“I’ll change the IV bag while you’re gone. Don’t worry, it will take a while to wear off.”
He nods and she can’t help smiling encouragingly. For the first time, he looks a little lost and hesitant, like he can’t tear himself away, but then he straightens and walks out of the room without a backwards glance.
Brian gets his coffee from the Starbucks across the road first, then shelters in a quiet corner by the side of the hospital to call Jennifer. She answers on the second ring and he can hear by the sound of her voice that she's trying not to panic. Or maybe she's just trying really hard not to admonish him for taking so long. He wouldn’t mind. People admonish him all the time. He doesn’t really care. Although Jennifer has always been one of the few people in his life who doesn’t presume too much, always proper, never overstepping her boundaries, even when he was involved with Justin. Involved. Strange expression, that.
It takes a while until she understands that there's been no accident and her initial relief gives way to dismay that the reality is no less life-threatening. Or at least was. It seems that the worst is over, but Brian knows it’s too much to hope that she'll release him from his obligation now.
“I’ll be there the day after tomorrow. Can you stay with him?”
“Jennifer, I’m not on vacation. I have work to do.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Brian. Of course, you go and do your job, but can you stay just a little longer tonight? I hate the idea that he's there all on his own when he wakes up.”
“What about his boyfriend then? What’s his name? Olly?”
“Owen. I don’t want him there. They won’t let him in anyway. He’s not related and he’s not in the medical files. You are.”
Yeah, doesn’t he know it. He still can’t get his head around that. Why would Justin still give him power over his life, quite literally in this case? Was it just an oversight, a case of not expecting an emergency, not wanting to think about it and ignoring the possibility? That doesn’t sound like Justin. He likes to make plans and be prepared for all eventualities. So it's deliberate and that's even worse.
He ends up promising that he'll stay a little longer because he can do nothing else. He can’t say no to Jennifer because he has no excuse and ‘I don’t want to do this’ doesn’t sound like a good enough reason under the circumstances. What difference does it make anyway? It’s not as if he sleeps at night. So he could be fucking the bellhop at the Four Seasons right now, but that doesn’t really cause him the slightest pang of regret either. He simply doesn’t care enough. The expression ‘it’s just a fuck’ has taken on a whole new meaning for Brian Kinney.
He finishes his cigarette and his coffee and makes his way back to Justin’s bedside.
Amanda Hilton is used to patients’ relatives being in the room. In her experience, there are two types: the quiet ones and the chatty ones. The quiet ones usually make a little bit of awkward conversation in the beginning - because they feel they should, being at such close quarters with her - and then fall silent, either because they're overwhelmed by the whole environment or because they're overcome with worry. The noisy ones are either compensating for their fears or simply don’t care enough about the patient. Sometimes she even gets hit on.
This guy doesn’t fall into either category. She has looked up his name - Brian Kinney - but there's no indication in the notes why he is the patient’s proxy. He doesn’t look like he’s related, in fact, these two men couldn’t be more different, physically. The visitor has taken his seat again, his long legs crossed, his hands interlaced on his thigh. He's dressed in black jeans and a charcoal sweater, both of them form-fitting and high quality. She'd call Justin Taylor pretty, even though he’s a man, but with all that blond hair and those even features, it's the only word that springs to mind. Brian Kinney is simply the most gorgeous man she's ever seen.
When he speaks, there's not a hint of being intimidated by either the situation or the environment, but if she expected him to be one of the chatty ones, especially after he offered to bring her coffee, she's surprised. She's never seen anyone so still. He simply sits there, not moving, his eyes trained on Justin. Even as she moves around to do her job, he doesn’t watch her like most people do, he watches Justin.
Later, she's doing some paperwork at the table in the corner when he suddenly calls her name in a low voice, with no hint of any emotion and a quiet confidence that she'll take heed. She didn’t realize that he'd paid enough attention to even bother to read her name tag. It's the early hours of the morning now and they've been silent the whole time since he came back from his phone call in the evening. When she looks up, he's not looking at her but the patient, so she gets up and takes the four steps to the bed. Everything seems to be in order. There doesn’t appear to be any change in the patient’s condition.
“He’s waking up.”
She looks at Kinney to see if he’s serious, but his eyes remain on Justin - who appears to be sleeping peacefully.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s waking up. I can tell.”
“How? He looks the same to me.” Her voice is gentle. She’s wondering if this is a delayed reaction to the situation, maybe a slight panic or even wishful thinking on his part.
Finally, Kinney looks up and holds her gaze. “I've seen him wake up hundreds of times. Believe me, he’s waking up and you have less than five minutes.”
It suddenly dawns on her why they're even discussing this: he wants her to take the tube out. She's not supposed to. It’s the doctors’ duty unless the patient wakes up unexpectedly and she'll have to remove it in a hurry. That's always awkward, more for the patient than for her. She has never removed a tube from a patient who wasn’t awake yet without a doctor to give the order and standing by to re-intubate if there's no spontaneous breathing. Not that she doesn’t know how to intubate in an emergency.
She looks at Kinney, whom she hadn't pegged as being gay at all, and his eyes are earnest, free from overwrought emotions and yet there's an understated pleading there.
“Are you sure?”
“Completely.”
She looks back at Justin, who's sleeping on unperturbed. The sedation would have worn off by now and this could be either sleep or a coma. She could get into trouble if she extubates him and he doesn’t start breathing, but she knows that it'll be an ordeal for the patient if he wakes up on the respirator. She looks back at Kinney, who just nods encouragingly, confident that she'll do what he asks.
Making a decision, she gets her equipment ready, then cuts through the gauze bandage which is holding the tube in place. She switches off the respirator and takes a deep breath before she removes the tube smoothly, much more smoothly than she ever could if the patient was awake and panicking.
Justin gives an extended cough and she smiles at Kinney, who just nods his thanks. And then Justin opens his eyes and looks at her with the bluest eyes she's ever seen. Somehow she knew they would be blue.
“You’re in a hospital,” she says reassuringly. “You'll be just fine.”
Justin nods and closes his eyes again.
When Justin woke up from his first coma, he was surrounded by people who loved him and yet all he could think of was the one person he expected to see but who wasn’t there. When he wakes from his second coma, the only one present is the one person he'd never have expected to be there, nor does he know how he feels about seeing him.
For a long while, he doesn’t say anything and just looks at Brian, whose designer clothes are covered by a hospital gown and whose face is partially obscured by a surgical mask. He can still see that the other man is impeccably, if casually, dressed and that he's still the most beautiful man Justin has ever laid his eyes on.
Brian is looking at him, so he must be aware that he's awake, but he doesn't speak either.
Much as Justin tries, he can't remember how he got here, so, with his head pounding, he asks the logical question: “Did I get bashed again?” As soon as he says the words, he wishes he could take them back because there's a spike of intense pain in Brian’s eyes. They may not have spoken for almost three years now, but Justin would never want to hurt him that way, or any way at all. Whatever happened between them or didn't happen, he'd never want to do that. He doesn’t hate Brian, doesn’t think he ever could, he just hates how he makes him feel.
Brian clears his throat a little. “You have meningitis.” His voice is a little rough, but his eyes have gone back to being expressionless, hiding his true self better than any surgical mask ever could.
Justin nods. He remembers the university now and a blinding headache and trying to reach the bathroom because he needed to be sick. He just hopes that he made it, because it would be embarrassing if he didn't. Then another thought strikes him.
“Why are you here?”
“I have a meeting.”
“Not New York here. Here here.”
“Your mother called me.”
Oh shit! His mother! She would have been on her honeymoon in Mexico. How did she even find out? And what, in heaven’s name, possessed her to call Brian of all people? Justin is surprised that she even has his number because he certainly doesn’t.
“She’s not coming, is she?” he asks, hoping against hope that she sent Brian as her envoy so that she can stay where she is and enjoy herself.
“She'll be here tomorrow. It was the earliest flight she could get.”
Of course, his mother would never not turn up when he's in trouble and if she can’t make it herself she'll send someone she trusts. Strange how that's now the one person she desperately wanted to keep away from him last time. And equally strange how that person is now here.
“So all I had to do was get Mom to call you and you would've come running?”
“Walking. No running involved at any point.” Brian doesn’t crack a smile, especially not when he adds: “And it wouldn’t have worked before this.”
Justin feels so weary that he's surprised he has the energy to feel so very hurt that the only way that Brian's willing to interact with him nowadays involves him being in a coma. He closes his eyes to go back to sleep, hoping that when he wakes up, the scenery will have changed as Debbie puts it, but almost immediately he's disturbed by the bustle of several people entering the room. He opens his eyes again to see three guys in white coats.
It doesn’t take Justin long to work out that Brian already had a run-in with the head honcho. It's obvious from the way they stare daggers at each other and exchange thinly veiled insults and then ignore each other. If they had fucked, Brian would be unconcerned, so Justin assumes it’s because of him. He answers the doctor’s questions as best he can, but since he’s only just woken up and can remember what happened only in the vaguest terms, it's not much.
Dr Anderson suggests that Brian leaves the room during the examination, but Justin just snorts mirthlessly at that. Brian will leave the room if he wants to and if he doesn’t, nothing either the staff or Justin could say will make any difference. Removing him under those circumstances would have to involve calling security. Brian doesn’t give any indication that he even heard the suggestion. Justin is okay with that. There's nothing Brian hasn’t seen before, physically or emotionally.
Anderson gives him a perfunctory examination and then declares that he'll be moved to a different room in the evening, where he'll have to stay another day or two before he can go home.
“He needs a private room,” Brian says evenly.
“I can’t afford a private room.”
“Yes, you can. You're still covered by Kinnetik’s medical insurance.”
“How come?”
“You freelance for us, don’t you?” Brian says it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Justin's been given occasional work over the last three years, more in the beginning than nowadays, but it's always come through Cynthia and he was under the impression that Brian didn’t know about it. Ted would have known but with him and Cynthia being mostly left to their own devices at the office, Justin has always believed that it was their own idea. How could he have thought otherwise when Brian cut him out of every other aspect of his life?
“I didn’t realize you knew,” he says and then feels stupid for saying it. It makes him feel like a stalker again, and he kind of was. It's been his only connection to Brian for all this time and no matter how pathetic it made him feel, he could not let it go. Justin was worried that if he relinquished this last tenuous hold on him, Brian would disappear from his life altogether. Or disappear, period. And at the back of his mind there was always the hope that Brian did know and that he was equally unwilling or unable to release this last bond between them.
Brian just smirks as if he knows exactly what Justin is thinking. He probably does. He always had this uncanny ability to see through people.
The doctor clears his throat to get them back on track. “So… a private room?” he asks to confirm and Justin thinks his whole demeanor has changed - sensing money, no doubt - and he likes the guy even less now. But thankfully Anderson and his sycophants leave quickly.
“Can I wear my own clothes?” Justin asks the nurse, who pulls a face.
“They’re not really in any state to be worn.”
Justin nods. He really needs to find out how much of an embarrassing scene he created at college.
“Could you get me some clothes from my place?” he asks Brian.
“Why don’t I just buy you some?”
“Because I want my own clothes.”
Brian registers the fact that he refuses to take a gift from him with a simple nod. It’s no more than he expected. Justin has always been fiercely independent and with the way things are between them at the moment, it’s a wonder that he hasn’t thrown Brian out yet.
“Why can’t you ask the boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Brian just nods again and tries to decide if it's said in that slightly worried tone that Justin used to have when they first met. Every time someone mentioned anything remotely smacking of coupledom in those days, Justin would get that scared look in his eyes because he feared Brian’s reaction. But it just sounds weary, like he's had to say it one too many times. Brian can’t pretend that he understands how Justin can live with the guy and still say that he’s not his boyfriend, especially when his own mother seems to think so. That's something Brian would do - and did - but not Justin. Justin is all about love and romance, isn’t he?
Brian sighs. “Give me your address and I’ll swing by and pick you up some stuff when I’m done with my meeting.”
Justin tries to work out if Brian genuinely doesn’t know where he lives or if this is one of his ploys where he pretends to be uninvolved. Before… before it all happened, he would have been cocksure about Brian pretending, but now he can no longer tell. Now, it's entirely possible that Brian has finally removed himself to such a distance that he's no longer keeping an eye on his friends in general and Justin in particular. Resignedly, he rattles off his address and closes his eyes to drift off into oblivion. Yes, a change of scenery would be a pleasant surprise when he wakes up. Or maybe a different life.
Brian watches Justin sleep for three hours until it's time to go back to his hotel to get ready for his meeting.
PART TWO: http://kachelofen.livejournal.com/19816.html#cutid1