(no subject)

[knkfics]

I hadn't worked on these for quite some time, although I still intended to, until Lucian quietly snuck up behind me and smacked me over the back of the head. He's a brat like that sometimes. ^_^

This is more of Lucian and Bren's first meeting -- this part being where they actually, you know, speak to each other and stuff like that. If you're looking for their original original meeting, you can find that in this entry.



Brendan stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and took a few deep breaths. He knew that what he was about to do was probably stupid, even ridiculous, but he felt compelled to do it anyway. That morning, he had finished his first full-length piece. It was about three hundred pages, typed and single-spaced.

He was very nervous about this. He knew it needed work, but as it was with most of his writing, he knew he wasn’t a very good editor. He was too close to it to see where it really needed work. But he didn’t know anyone who could edit it for him. If he gave it to a teacher, he risked it getting back to his parents. He had few friends at school, and none of them shared similar pursuits.

That left only one person who had ever showed, even in the faintest way, interest in his writing.

He took a few more deep breaths.

Then he went down the stairs. Lucian had been in and out over the past few weeks, taking Monica out to dinner or movies. Monica didn’t seem enthralled with anything other than Lucian’s good looks, and Lucian didn’t seem enthralled in the slightest. However, since both of them were interested in keeping their parents placated, so far, they had continued to date.

It had gotten to the point where, when Lucian arrived and Monica was not ready (for Monica never was), Elise no longer felt the need to sit in the living room and gush. He waited in the front hall, usually looking impatient. Tonight was no exception.

Brendan scampered down the stairs, floppy disk clutched in his hand. Lucian was examining one of the paintings on the walls. “Uhm . . .” Brendan managed. Lucian turned and looked at him, his eyes dull as usual. “Here,” Brendan said, and shoved the disk at him before he could think better of the idea.

Lucian accepted it, and raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s not Christmas,” he remarked. “What’s the occasion?”

Brendan tried to suppress the dark pink blush that was spreading over his cheeks. “It’s my story,” he said. “I thought you might want to read it . . . maybe tell me if it’s any good or not?”

There was a long pause, then Lucian held the disk out to him. “No thanks.”

Sudden tears welled up in Brendan’s eyes, and he did his best to shove them back. “Why not?” he asked, hoping to high Heaven that he didn’t sound as whiny as he thought he did.

“Because, to be quite blunt as is my usual custom, if it sucks and I tell you that, and you throw yourself off a bridge, I don’t want that on my conscience.”

Brendan clenched his jaw. “You’re not even allowing for the possibility that it might not suck,” he snapped.

“No offense, but talent doesn’t seem to run in your family. At least, not in any appreciable quantity.”

It took a lot of effort to keep Brendan from shouting. Lucian thinking his writing wasn’t good was one thing, but Lucian comparing him to the rest of his family - to his mother and Monica - was just unacceptable. “What do you know?” he snarled. “You think I’m like them? You think I just sit around and watch soap operas all day like Monica does? You think I haven’t worked hard to write the way I do? You think I - ”

“Brendan,” Monica’s astonished voice cut across this tirade. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m bitching out your boyfriend,” Brendan replied, seething. “Because he thinks I’m a talentless slob just like Mom.”

“Tsk tsk,” Monica said, although she sounded quite amused. “Are you ready to go, Lucian?”

“Yeah,” Lucian said. He gave Brendan a rather thin smile, before taking Monica’s arm and walking out of the house. Brendan continued to stand in the front hallway and seethe for a few minutes, then turned to go back to his room. Once there, he realized with a sudden jolt that he wasn’t holding the disk.

He scrambled back downstairs, terrified that he had left it in the hallway and his mother would find it. Scribbles, short stories, poetry, those were all nonsense but acceptable. A full length novel would get him grounded. But the disk was nowhere to be seen, and he realized suddenly that although Lucian had held the disk out for him to take, he had never actually taken it back. He had been too insulted and too angry.

That meant that Lucian still had the damn thing.

Well, he supposed that was better than his mother finding it, but God only knew what Lucian would do with it. He cursed himself vehemently for being stupid enough to trust a total stranger. Who cared that Lucian had looked vaguely interested when Brendan had admitted that he was a writer? Who cared that it was the most life Brendan had seem in them since they had met?

Come to think of it, Lucian had seemed pretty lively just now, too.

Brendan groaned and flopped down on his bed. It wasn’t worth worrying about. He would just count the disk as a loss and try to find someone else who would read it for him.

~~~~~

As much as Brendan enjoyed having company, there were fewer times when he was happier at home then when he had the entire house to himself. These times were rare, with his adult sister living with them as well as his parents and his thirteen year old sister, but they did happen.

On this particular night, his family had gone out to a dinner party hosted by a social acquaintance. Elise had tried to insist that Brendan accompany him. Fortunately for Brendan, he had a gigantic history exam the next week, as well as his usual complement of math and English homework, and his father had intervened.

“Let the kid stay home and study,” Alan had said. “You know if you drag him along, he’ll only be bored out of his skull, and then he’ll fail the test besides. He won’t have time to study tomorrow because he’s got his karate class and the computer stuff I wanted to teach him. He may as well stay here.”

So Brendan had made a faithful promise that he would in fact do nothing but study all the hours his family was gone, and Elise had let him off the hook. Anna was not so fortunate; she found the dinners just as boring as Brendan, but was dragged along regardless.

While Brendan was at home, he had a tendency to live in his room like a hermit. However, the moment everyone else had left, he spread out into the rest of the house. Within moments of his family’s leaving, he had history notes spread all over the table in the den.

The den was without question his favorite room in the house. It was small and cozy, and had an actual fireplace that he was allowed to light fires in if his parents were home. However, as long as he had time to make sure it got properly put out, he would light one even if they weren’t. It gave the room a homey feel which he enjoyed. The only furniture was a plush sofa, the most comfortable sofa he had ever encountered, and a large table with two chairs.

The cook had made cider, and Brendan helped himself to a mug before starting in on his studying. As grateful as he was to not have to go to the party, he knew that he really would fail the test if he indulged himself by avoiding the homework.

The party had been scheduled to start at six. Brendan’s parents had left at five thirty - time enough for a forty-five minute drive, as the couple lived on the far side of the city and traffic was not going to make it a fun trip. That would put them at a fashionably late six fifteen arrival.

Brendan tallied what he knew of dinner parties. Dinner wouldn’t be served until seven at the earliest - probably not until seven thirty. That would last about an hour and a half, perhaps two hours. Afterwards there would be coffee. The women would chat and the men would smoke. Brendan didn’t expect his parents would leave before ten. If it had been a Sunday, they might have then escaped, as Anna would have school the next day. However, it was a Saturday, which meant they very well might stay until eleven or eleven thirty, no matter how much their youngest child yawned.

As much as most teenagers would have cringed to be stuck home studying on a Saturday night, Brendan threw himself into it with cheerful abandon.

At about nine thirty, the doorbell rang. Perplexed, Brendan got up to answer it. He looked through the peephole before swinging the door open and looking in surprise upon Lucian Ellison. Then he remembered how irritated he was with Lucian, and straightened his back. “Monica’s not here,” he said shortly.

“I know,” Lucian said. “She’s over at the Fletcher’s party. As are your parents, I imagine, and as are mine. Can I come in?”

Rather disarmed and confused by this, Brendan couldn’t think of anything to do other than stand back and let him in. As Lucian shut the door behind himself, Brendan realized belatedly that this might not be a good idea. He had no idea what Lucian was like, and the few dates he’d gone on with Monica hadn’t exactly been soul-sharing. He could be a criminal or a crazy - Brendan thought abstractly that growing up with the Ellisons would certainly be enough to throw him over the edge. He wondered how he could get out of the situation, but all his thoughts were abruptly derailed when Lucian held out his disk to him.

“Oh,” he said, looking at him. “Well, thanks for returning it. It wasn’t my only copy, though. And thanks for coming by when my parents weren’t here so I didn’t have to explain it.” He paused, then insatiable curiosity took over. “Why aren’t you at the Fletcher’s party?”

“I was,” Lucian said. “At least long enough to notice that your whole family was there and ascertain that you weren’t. After that, I decided I was bored out of my gourd and wanted to seek better entertainment.”

“Oh,” Brendan said again. “Where are you going after this?”

Lucian’s lips twitched. “You assume automatically that I wasn’t talking about being here.”

Brendan’s temper started to fray. “Don’t pander to me and don’t patronize me,” he snapped. “I get enough of that from my mother. Just tell me what you want.”

Lucian gave him a long, intent look. “I just thought it was interesting how violently you reacted when I compared you to your family. I had a very similar reaction once when someone told me how much I’m like my father.”

Brendan shrugged and looked at the floor sullenly.

“Do you want this or not?” Lucian asked, holding the disk out. Brendan sighed and took it. “You know what I think?”

“Do I care what you think?” Brendan countered.

Lucian smiled again, a slight smile, but there nonetheless. “I think you’re a very interesting person, but you’re in severe danger of being crushed by your family and forced into a life you don’t want. And I speak from experience, believe me, so I know what I’m talking about.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Brendan said, voice dripping sarcasm.

“All right,” Lucian said readily. “I read your book.”

Brendan groaned. “Oh, great. Is this when you say you won’t tell me what you think of it, lest I throw myself off a bridge?”

“No,” Lucian said. “Believe me, if I had thought it was terrible, I would have returned it without ever telling you that I had read it. I’m not the most honest person in the world.” He smiled again, and this time, it was a little crooked. “In any case, I didn’t think it was terrible, and there’s no need to throw yourself off a bridge.”

Brendan blinked at him a few times.

“Actually,” Lucian continued, “I thought it was pretty good. In fact, for a seventeen year old, I thought it was pretty damn good.”

Brendan couldn’t do much other than stare.

“It can be better, of course - there’s not one artist out there, whether it’s paintings or writing or music, that can’t be better. But you’re only seventeen, which means it’s all uphill from here, as long as you’re willing to put the effort in.”

“I am!” Brendan’s enthusiasm nearly exploded, and he blushed a little after his vehement reply. “You mean . . . you mean I could be a real writer?”

Lucian gave him a long look with his unfathomably intense gaze. “You’re a writer right now,” he finally said, with a shrug. “If you get up and you want to write, and you spend at least fifty percent of your time thinking about writing, and you put your hands to a keyboard or pen to paper and something comes out, then you’re a writer. And don’t let anyone tell you differently, whether it’s a friend or a teacher or your mother. My mother spent the better part of two decades trying to convince me that I wasn’t an artist, and all it did was cause both of us a whole lot of frustration.”

“But . . . but you mean a published author,” Brendan stammered. “You think I could be a published author!”

“With some effort and some editing, sure. That right there is nearly as good as what sells these days. And there’s no one that can’t improve with some practice and a good teacher.”

“Teach me,” Brendan urged. “I don’t know anyone else, I can’t trust anyone else with this. You seem to know what you’re doing. Teach me, please. I want to be good at this. I want . . . I want to show my mother that it’s not just worthless scribbling.”

Lucian grinned suddenly, a boyish, happy grin that was completely alien to every other expression that Brendan had seen on his face thus far. It transformed his face into something beautiful, and Brendan stared at him, unable to believe what a simple smile had done to him. “Actually, I was coming over here to offer just that,” he teased. “But you didn’t let me get that far.”

“I . . . oh,” Brendan managed weakly.

“Now, are you going to leave me standing in the front hallway?”

“No . . . of course not.” Brendan managed a wan smile, feeling rather overwhelmed. “C’mon.” He gestured for Lucian to follow him, and made his way back to the den, where he started picking up his history notes. “You want some cider?” he asked.

“Sure,” Lucian said, and Brendan got him a cup from the kitchen.

“So where do we start?” he asked.

“Well,” Lucian said, “we don’t start with that.” He pointed at the disk, which Brendan had left on the side table. Brendan made a face of disappointment, and Lucian laughed. “Sorry, but I think it’s better to start small. Once you have the finer points down, the bigger stuff might come easier. Do you do short stories at all?”

“Yeah, I have some.” Brendan brightened. “I even have printed copies. Wait here
for a few minutes.” He scampered up the stairs, suddenly feeling light and happier than he had in a long time. He grabbed a copy of his first two short stories and ran back down them, taking them two at a time. It seemed almost a given that he tripped over his own feet a few from the bottom in his haste, and went flying.

“Hey, be careful,” Lucian said, and Brendan found himself cradled in strong arms, against a warm chest. “Don’t kill yourself because something’s gone your way for once.”

“Uh - I - uhm - ” Brendan stammered helplessly and pulled away, blushing, wondering why he had been so reluctant to leave Lucian’s embrace.

Lucian snorted, amused at both his red face and his tongue-tied state. “Come on,” he said, and sat back down. Brendan forced back the blush and sat down on the sofa next to him, offering him the papers. Lucian sat down and read them while Brendan ostensibly went back to his history homework, but really just watched Lucian.

He found it amazing how little he had noticed about the man at their first few meetings. On the surface, Lucian looked - well, a lot like most of the people his parents knew. Handsome, but boring. Brendan looked closer, and saw some interesting things.

Lucian had wonderful hands. They were graceful, elegant almost. He twirled a pen absently in his fingers as he read, a skill that Brendan didn’t think he could ever hope to master. One of his fingers was paint-stained, and Brendan could see calluses from where he held his brushes. An artist’s hands.

At their other meetings, he had been wearing clothes that were, if not formal, then certainly classy. Button down shirts, ties, pressed slacks, shoes that shined. He had clearly come from the party their parents were at, but he had discarded some things. His tie was gone, the first two buttons of his dark green shirt undone to reveal the white T-shirt underneath. His khaki pants were somewhat wrinkled, and he had kicked off his shoes. Brendan realized that he was staring, and shook himself, going back to his homework. He was blushing faintly again, and he didn’t really know why. He knew that he had never put so much effort into thoroughly examining a person before, but he didn’t know why.

Lucian was thoroughly absorbed in his reading, which Brendan took as a good sign, and occasionally making a mark with a red pen, which Brendan didn’t take as a good sign. His dark brown eyes tracked back and forth across the page rapidly. Brendan realized he had to be a very quick reader, if he had gotten through the entire novel in less than a week.

“Well,” Lucian said, when he was done, “there’s a lot we can do here.”

Brendan wilted.

“Don’t look so glum,” Lucian said, clearly amused. “It’s still pretty good. Your novel is . . . not so much better, but better compared to your age. Novels are damned hard things to write. Short stories are hard, too, but the difficulties are more subtle. Should we start with big things or little things?”

“Big things,” Brendan said immediately. “Fix my grammar later.”

Lucian laughed. “Okay. Well.” He flipped to the third page and said, “Now, remember that I’m trying to help.”

“Uh oh,” Brendan said.

“This part here . . . I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this is very much a dramatic music moment for you.”

Brendan blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

“Do you picture dramatic music playing during this?”

Brendan blushed. “Well . . . maybe a little.”

“Good,” Lucian said. “That’s your cue. Whenever you hear dramatic music, you’re being too dramatic. You should never have a moment like that. You should never smack the audience in the face with what you think is important. It’s up to them to figure out what’s important.”

Brendan thought this over and decided it made sense. “What if they can’t? Or if they find the wrong thing?”

“Then you’ve written it wrong.”

He wilted again. “First you tell me that I can’t point it out to them, then you tell me if they don’t notice, it’s my fault. Which is it?”

“It’s both,” Lucian said. “Good writing is about subtlety. The audience should finish a story thinking exactly what you want them to think without having been told to think it.”

There was a pause while Brendan processed. “That sounds awfully hard,” he finally admitted.

A pause. Lucian twirled the pen, then his fingers stilled. “If you don’t want to do this - ”

“I just said it sounded hard,” Brendan snapped. “Not that I didn’t want to do it. But why are you doing it? It’ll take me months to teach me what I need to know. Years. I’ll never stop learning. Why are you willing to put that sort of time and effort into me? What are you getting out of this?”

“You think like your mother treats you,” Lucian said, disgust in his tone. “Like you’re not worth the time and effort. If I think you are, what right do you have to question that? You assume I have some ulterior motive instead of just thinking that maybe I like you and think your talent is worth something.”

Brendan blushed again, both because Lucian was right and it was somewhat embarrassing to be so quickly analyzed, and also because it was flattering to hear Lucian say it. “I just . . . I don’t know,” he mumbled lamely.

“I’ll tell you something, Bren,” Lucian said, “my life is fucking boring. You know that? I paint and get harped on by my mother and date Monica. It’s enough to make me want to drown myself. I think you’re an interesting person. And I think it would be a shame to let that talent go to waste. It’s really no more or less than that.”

“Oh,” Brendan said, and because he was now blushing fiercely, he turned back to his history homework. Then he remembered that they were supposed to be editing, and put it away. “Okay. Now what?”

“I think we started too big,” Lucian said. “Once you have some basic elements of writing style down, the big picture should fall into place. So let’s work on those.”

Brendan nodded, and they got to work. He enjoyed it more than he had ever enjoyed an English class in his life. Lucian was intelligent and creative, and found flaws in his writing he never would have noticed. He was also funny, and usually managed to put things in terms that didn’t offend Brendan or damage his already poor self-esteem. And when he did, he was gentle enough to coax him out of whatever funk he had gotten himself into with just a few sentences.

“You’re a lot like me, you know that?” Lucian mentioned, near ten thirty that night.

Brendan blushed. “I wish,” he said.

“You are,” Lucian replied, but he didn’t elaborate. Brendan wondered if it was because he didn’t want to embarrass him, or if he simply didn’t like talking about himself and his personal life. He clearly didn’t; over the course of the time he had been there, he had disclosed relatively little information.

The phone rang shrilly. Brendan frowned and got up to answer it. “Hello?”

“Hello, Brendan, it’s your mother,” Elise said briskly, and Brendan wondered why she always had to say that as if he wouldn’t recognize her voice. “I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right and that you were working hard.”

Brendan rolled his eyes. “Yes, mother, everything’s fine. Of course I’m working hard. This test is on six chapters.”

She sniffed. “Good. We’ll be home before midnight.” She hung up without another word.

Brendan smiled. ‘Before midnight’ usually meant at about five of, or else she would have said eleven thirty. That meant there was another glorious hour and a half that he had Lucian all to himself. He turned back to the sofa. “Everything kosher?” Lucian asked.

“Yeah. She wanted to make sure I was studying.”

Lucian laughed. “I suppose it’s true to say that you are.”

Brendan nodded happily and sat back on the sofa. They continued to work for a while, and chatted a little in between. Lucian left at about eleven thirty, and told Brendan to rewrite the short story they had worked on and try to apply what they’d talked about. Brendan was eager to comply.

“But how will I know when I’ll see you again?” he blurted out, then looked away, feeling like a child and a bother.

Lucian didn’t seem to mind. “Hm, that’s a good question,” he said, pinching his lower lip. “I know my parents wouldn’t approve of this and I can assume that yours wouldn’t as well. That doesn’t leave us many options. Do you do any after school activities at all?”

Brendan shook his head. “No. Mother says they’re a waste of time, that I can get better ‘stimulation’ somewhere else. The only extra-curricular I’m in is the honor society, and meetings are every quarter. I have my karate and tae kwon do, but Mom drives me to and from that. When I mention something like maybe joining band or a club, she always just rattles off stuff about private lessons, and I let it drop.”

“Any friends at school that could cover for you?”

Brendan shook his head and didn’t say anything else on the subject. Lucian gave him a look that was part pity and part understanding, without being condescending at all, which Brendan appreciated. “And my parents usually drag me to these parties. The only reason they didn’t this time is because I had the test to study for.” Which he hadn’t studied for at all. That grade was going to be fun to explain to his parents.

“Hm . . . a quandary, to be sure,” Lucian said. His face was one of sincere concentration, and Brendan felt his heart sink. There was no way they could conduct these lessons in secret. And if they had to go through a big hassle, why would Lucian continue to teach him? He was just about to say something when Lucian’s face again lit up with his boyish grin. “I know,” he said. “Let’s do it at the parties!”

“What?” Brendan protested immediately. “That would never work.”

“Sure it would,” Lucian said. “Look, we both know these parties. First there’s dinner. Then everyone splits up. The women chat, the men smoke and talk business. I usually leave around then, because my mother insists I put in an appearance, but my father hates it if I’m around while he’s toadying up to the guys. And all the kids get tossed in a room somewhere to talk or hang out and wait for their parents. No one would notice if we just found a quiet spot somewhere.”

Brendan thought about it. “Well . . .” he said dubiously.

“Come on,” Lucian said, smiling. “I can find out from Monica which ones you guys are going to be at, no problem, and I’ll just let those ones be the ones that I let my mother talk me into going to. Your parents would never know the difference.”

“But how can I get my stuff there?” Brendan asked. “I can’t just carry it underneath my shirt.”

Lucian appeared to think about this for a few minutes. “If we stick to short stories for now, you can just fold it up and bring it in your suit jacket pocket. I don’t have a better solution.”

“Okay,” Brendan said. “I’ll have to talk to Anna.”

“Your little sister? Yeah . . . she goes to the parties, too.”

“But she won’t tell on me,” Brendan said. “Not if I ask her not to. Geez, I don’t know . . . this is awfully risky.”

“That’s part of the fun,” Lucian said. “Right?”

Against his better judgment, Brendan agreed.

“I’ll see you in a week or two, then?” Lucian asked.

Brendan nodded, wondering why he was suddenly reluctant to let Lucian leave. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.”

~~~~

Ta da! Let me know what you think. ^_^