'TILL IT HAPPENS TO YOU
Title: 'Till It Happens To You.
Written By: superren
Timeline: Pre-show, and after 513.
Rating: R
Warnings: Jumping around from time to time. Sentimentality. Divergence from the typical h/c story.
Summary: The really great thing about friends and family is that they'll let you cry into their shoulder and then take you out to get spectacularly drunk.
1.
In freshman year, Michael comes home chattering about this new boy in his class. Brian Kinney. He's from another school. He's got all the coolest clothes. He's very smart, but doesn't care about school. Mikey hasn't been this excited since he discovered Captain Astro. Michael brings him over, and he's rather nervous, in the way that Debbie will come to associate with Michael bringing over a new boyfriend. Brian's a time bomb at fourteen years old. Too smart for his own good, tall and skinny. He's more well-spoken than Debbie had expected. And so it goes. By summer, Brian's spending four nights a week sleeping at the Novotnys'. He starts out on the living room couch and sneaks upstairs into Michael's bed when he thinks she's gone to sleep. It's not as though she's blind. Or stupid. She knows he does it. Brian becomes a permanent presence at the Novotny home, and later on, at the Liberty Diner. Occasionally he comes in bruised and standoffish. She learns not to ask, to heap his plate with onion rings and seethe with hate for whoever could do this to him.
In early September of his sophomore year, Michael doesn't call Brian for a week. The boys have had a fight, but Debbie doesn't ask what's wrong, because she knows Brian did something. Eventually after a week that Michael spends sulking, Brian comes back, abashed at first and looking like the cat that ate the canary.
Michael's on the cusp of being too old to tell his mother everything. But not quite yet. "He gave Mr. Lang a blow job, and then told me about it, like it was something to be proud of" he says, eyes wide, voice betrayed.
"Oh honey" she says. He leans against her, she strokes his hair. "You shouldn't let anyone make you feel this way, baby. Not even Brian." He looks up at her, eyes wide, and Debbie hopes that she's gotten though to him, a little. Even so, Debbie has the sinking realization that Michael's not going to make it out of this with his heart intact.
2.
Brian's a huge drama queen and has no idea what's he doing when it comes to Justin. He's the hottest thing this side of West Hollywood, and when he tilts his hips just so, men drop to their knees and open their mouths in awe. Justin, though. He moved on from awe several years ago, right onto wanting more than Brian can give. He wants commitment and roses, for Brian to be someone he's not. And in the process of proving to Justin that he's unable to commit the way Justin'd like, he manages to alienate Mikey, a feat that he never managed to accomplish even through sixteen years of fucking his way through all of Pittsburgh.
Well shit.
He calls up Ted, because he always calls up Ted to go to Woody's when he's had a fight with Michael.
Ted spends the next two hours talking about the Henderson account, Brian goes home with a tall black guy who has great arms, muscles sharp and defined. The next morning, he aches, in a good way. And he misses Michael.
I Need You Back - Ben Kweller
You must be hard if you're feeling all right
Hey hey hey, I need you back.
3.
The idea of him fathering her and Lindsay's child disgusts her. But Lindsay is adamant. It is Brian or no one. Given that kind of choice, which is really no choice at all, Mel agrees to Brian. Deep down, in a place she only plumbs during especially brutal cases, she hopes Brian'll die of too much drinking, too many drugs, too much sex, a combination of all three.
But he doesn't. He brings a cup of sperm, she carefully does not ask under what circumstances it got there, she helps inseminate Lindsay. She's vividly aware of how unnecessary she is in all this.
Linds gets pregnant on the first try, and as her belly swells, Mel worries and imagines that of course Brian won't be a good father. He's had precious little example of how to do it that he couldn't possibly know how.
"Why did it have to be Brian," she says one day, when she's restless and feels like picking a fight. "Why not someone else?" She recognizes her mother's wheedling voice in hers, but can't stop niggling, can't just let it drop. "If it had been anyone else, anyone."
"You know it couldn't," Lindsay says, exasperatedly. "It's too personal a thing to go to a sperm bank for. We've already had this conversation, Mel."
"I know all that, I just can't help thinking that things will turn out wrong somehow, that he'll want custody and push me out of your life, all these ridiculous things that will never happen. But they might. You never know. And all because Brian is his father."
"Hey," Lindsay says. "I'm supposed to be the one having wacky thoughts remember?" Lindsay kisses her then, warm and insistent. Slips her hand down Melanie's side and in between her legs, all the while murmuring against Melanie's lips "We'll be okay. It'll be okay."
Melanie lets her kiss her senseless, hopes that Lindsay's right.
4.
When he first moves to New York, he doesn't unpack. For awhile, it is because he doesn't have the furniture to unpack it into. His apartment, advertised as furnished in the newspaper, the most blatant lie he has yet to encounter, came equipped with a dingy white refrigerator and a bed frame. He scrounges up a mattress easily enough and proceeds to live out of his suitcases. That changes when his mother comes to visit, takes one look at his tiny apartment and takes him shopping for a proper dresser and bed.
"For a gay man, Justin, you seem to not give a damn about keeping you apartment clean. It's very odd," his mother says with a smile in her voice.
Justin gives her a deploring look.
He doesn't unpack because living in New York feels like vacation. Every day it feels like he's on an extended vacation, like the time in his parents took him and Molly on a cruise in sixth grade. Any day, he'll come back home to Pittsburgh, to Brian.
He mopes around for a long time, until Daphne gets fed up with it, and comes to stay for a long weekend. She bustles through his apartment, throwing out alien-looking things from his refrigerator, makes him take her out clubbing in New York.
"I brought my glittery hooker dress," she wheedles.
"It's a gay bar, Daph," Justin says.
"Whatever," she says. "Anything to get you to stop moping and waiting for Brian to call. It's like you're seventeen again."
It turns out to be just what he needs. He spends the night dancing, comes home buzzing and still high and paints the piece that will be called things like 'sublime' and 'refreshingly original' in the top art magazines.
Call Me - Blondie
Call me call me any anytime
Call me my love you can call me any day or night
Call me
Cover me with kisses, baby
Cover me with love
Roll me in designer sheets
I'll never get enough
5.
Brian meets Lindsay on his first day in a Women's Studies class that he is taking to fulfill a requirement on his transcript. All students must take a class that discuss the issues of a minority group. Black kids take Africana, figuring it will be easy. It isn't, there's hundreds of years of dates to memorize, names that defy pronunciation. Mexicans take Latin American Studies and it is all a rehashing of what they already know. There's a Gay and Lesbian Studies class available. Brian instead signs up for the Women's Studies class, because he figures he is learning more valuable things in various back rooms all over Pittsburgh.
He has a moment of doubt on the first day, when he walks in and he's the only guy there. Looking around, he can spot about five butch women with hair shorter than his in their heavy combat boots. Too late to back out now, and History of Native Americans, his only other option, is too boring and maudlin to consider. He walks in, sits down behind a young woman in a pale blue shirt. Soon the professor begins to speak, and Brian tunes her out easily, instead focusing on the blonde hairs clinging to the girl's blouse. He feels an odd urge to pick them off. He is about to do it too, but at that moment the professor says:
"Turn to the person next to you, and discuss the questions."
The two women on either side of the girl in front of him turn to other people, and so she turns back to him. She looks surprised for a moment, then regains her composure.
"Hi" she says. "I'm Lindsay"
"Brian"
"You do realize that you're the only man in this class, right?"
"No, I hadn't" he drawls in a way that will become utterly familiar to her over the years.
"Well, I think that feminism is completely and utterly dead," she says.
"Huh?"
Lindsay points to the board, and Brian feels like a dumb ass cause the questions they're supposed to be discussing are up there. And so it begins, this weird relationship they have.
It is a few weeks later, and he's got a Saturday night free, surprise surprise, and he's going to some party with Lindsay. As her date. It's a rainy night, and he's regretting agreeing to this. He could be at home right now, finishing a paper for History of the Americas, or better yet, out at Babylon.
He's driving too fast, but she doesn't mention it. She has this look on her face like she's a million years away.
"How did you know you were gay, Brian?" she asks.
"Because I like fucking men, I like how they're hard all over," he says.
"Don't be vulgar," she says. "It's just that there's this girl, Rebecca Tucci. I think I might love her. But it's wrong, I'm not supposed to." Her voice sounds oddly nasal and Brian realizes that she's starting to cry.
They've arrived at the party, and she stumbles out of the car, stands there, waiting for Brian to do the same. It's raining and she's crying, it's all mixing up on her cheeks. Brian comes around to her side and hugs her, patting her hair awkwardly. She cries into her shoulder, and then as she's still sniffling, he tilts her chin up and looks into her eyes in that way of his.
"Listen to me, Linds. Are you listening?"
"Yes I'm listening."
"Do what you want, and fuck what anyone else says. If you want to fuck women, then go ahead. Someone has to."
She nods and wipes her eyes delicately, looks toward the lit-up house.
"Hey," she says "Do you know of any gay bars?"
And that's how they end up at Babylon on a Saturday night, dancing till three in the morning. Another success story, courtesy of Brian Kinney.
Hard To Explain - The Strokes
I say the right things
But act the wrong way
I'll make it you see
I'm ever so pleased
Pretend to be nice
So I can be mean
I try, but you see
It's hard to explain
Written By: superren
Timeline: Pre-show, and after 513.
Rating: R
Warnings: Jumping around from time to time. Sentimentality. Divergence from the typical h/c story.
Summary: The really great thing about friends and family is that they'll let you cry into their shoulder and then take you out to get spectacularly drunk.
1.
In freshman year, Michael comes home chattering about this new boy in his class. Brian Kinney. He's from another school. He's got all the coolest clothes. He's very smart, but doesn't care about school. Mikey hasn't been this excited since he discovered Captain Astro. Michael brings him over, and he's rather nervous, in the way that Debbie will come to associate with Michael bringing over a new boyfriend. Brian's a time bomb at fourteen years old. Too smart for his own good, tall and skinny. He's more well-spoken than Debbie had expected. And so it goes. By summer, Brian's spending four nights a week sleeping at the Novotnys'. He starts out on the living room couch and sneaks upstairs into Michael's bed when he thinks she's gone to sleep. It's not as though she's blind. Or stupid. She knows he does it. Brian becomes a permanent presence at the Novotny home, and later on, at the Liberty Diner. Occasionally he comes in bruised and standoffish. She learns not to ask, to heap his plate with onion rings and seethe with hate for whoever could do this to him.
In early September of his sophomore year, Michael doesn't call Brian for a week. The boys have had a fight, but Debbie doesn't ask what's wrong, because she knows Brian did something. Eventually after a week that Michael spends sulking, Brian comes back, abashed at first and looking like the cat that ate the canary.
Michael's on the cusp of being too old to tell his mother everything. But not quite yet. "He gave Mr. Lang a blow job, and then told me about it, like it was something to be proud of" he says, eyes wide, voice betrayed.
"Oh honey" she says. He leans against her, she strokes his hair. "You shouldn't let anyone make you feel this way, baby. Not even Brian." He looks up at her, eyes wide, and Debbie hopes that she's gotten though to him, a little. Even so, Debbie has the sinking realization that Michael's not going to make it out of this with his heart intact.
2.
Brian's a huge drama queen and has no idea what's he doing when it comes to Justin. He's the hottest thing this side of West Hollywood, and when he tilts his hips just so, men drop to their knees and open their mouths in awe. Justin, though. He moved on from awe several years ago, right onto wanting more than Brian can give. He wants commitment and roses, for Brian to be someone he's not. And in the process of proving to Justin that he's unable to commit the way Justin'd like, he manages to alienate Mikey, a feat that he never managed to accomplish even through sixteen years of fucking his way through all of Pittsburgh.
Well shit.
He calls up Ted, because he always calls up Ted to go to Woody's when he's had a fight with Michael.
Ted spends the next two hours talking about the Henderson account, Brian goes home with a tall black guy who has great arms, muscles sharp and defined. The next morning, he aches, in a good way. And he misses Michael.
I Need You Back - Ben Kweller
You must be hard if you're feeling all right
Hey hey hey, I need you back.
3.
The idea of him fathering her and Lindsay's child disgusts her. But Lindsay is adamant. It is Brian or no one. Given that kind of choice, which is really no choice at all, Mel agrees to Brian. Deep down, in a place she only plumbs during especially brutal cases, she hopes Brian'll die of too much drinking, too many drugs, too much sex, a combination of all three.
But he doesn't. He brings a cup of sperm, she carefully does not ask under what circumstances it got there, she helps inseminate Lindsay. She's vividly aware of how unnecessary she is in all this.
Linds gets pregnant on the first try, and as her belly swells, Mel worries and imagines that of course Brian won't be a good father. He's had precious little example of how to do it that he couldn't possibly know how.
"Why did it have to be Brian," she says one day, when she's restless and feels like picking a fight. "Why not someone else?" She recognizes her mother's wheedling voice in hers, but can't stop niggling, can't just let it drop. "If it had been anyone else, anyone."
"You know it couldn't," Lindsay says, exasperatedly. "It's too personal a thing to go to a sperm bank for. We've already had this conversation, Mel."
"I know all that, I just can't help thinking that things will turn out wrong somehow, that he'll want custody and push me out of your life, all these ridiculous things that will never happen. But they might. You never know. And all because Brian is his father."
"Hey," Lindsay says. "I'm supposed to be the one having wacky thoughts remember?" Lindsay kisses her then, warm and insistent. Slips her hand down Melanie's side and in between her legs, all the while murmuring against Melanie's lips "We'll be okay. It'll be okay."
Melanie lets her kiss her senseless, hopes that Lindsay's right.
4.
When he first moves to New York, he doesn't unpack. For awhile, it is because he doesn't have the furniture to unpack it into. His apartment, advertised as furnished in the newspaper, the most blatant lie he has yet to encounter, came equipped with a dingy white refrigerator and a bed frame. He scrounges up a mattress easily enough and proceeds to live out of his suitcases. That changes when his mother comes to visit, takes one look at his tiny apartment and takes him shopping for a proper dresser and bed.
"For a gay man, Justin, you seem to not give a damn about keeping you apartment clean. It's very odd," his mother says with a smile in her voice.
Justin gives her a deploring look.
He doesn't unpack because living in New York feels like vacation. Every day it feels like he's on an extended vacation, like the time in his parents took him and Molly on a cruise in sixth grade. Any day, he'll come back home to Pittsburgh, to Brian.
He mopes around for a long time, until Daphne gets fed up with it, and comes to stay for a long weekend. She bustles through his apartment, throwing out alien-looking things from his refrigerator, makes him take her out clubbing in New York.
"I brought my glittery hooker dress," she wheedles.
"It's a gay bar, Daph," Justin says.
"Whatever," she says. "Anything to get you to stop moping and waiting for Brian to call. It's like you're seventeen again."
It turns out to be just what he needs. He spends the night dancing, comes home buzzing and still high and paints the piece that will be called things like 'sublime' and 'refreshingly original' in the top art magazines.
Call Me - Blondie
Call me call me any anytime
Call me my love you can call me any day or night
Call me
Cover me with kisses, baby
Cover me with love
Roll me in designer sheets
I'll never get enough
5.
Brian meets Lindsay on his first day in a Women's Studies class that he is taking to fulfill a requirement on his transcript. All students must take a class that discuss the issues of a minority group. Black kids take Africana, figuring it will be easy. It isn't, there's hundreds of years of dates to memorize, names that defy pronunciation. Mexicans take Latin American Studies and it is all a rehashing of what they already know. There's a Gay and Lesbian Studies class available. Brian instead signs up for the Women's Studies class, because he figures he is learning more valuable things in various back rooms all over Pittsburgh.
He has a moment of doubt on the first day, when he walks in and he's the only guy there. Looking around, he can spot about five butch women with hair shorter than his in their heavy combat boots. Too late to back out now, and History of Native Americans, his only other option, is too boring and maudlin to consider. He walks in, sits down behind a young woman in a pale blue shirt. Soon the professor begins to speak, and Brian tunes her out easily, instead focusing on the blonde hairs clinging to the girl's blouse. He feels an odd urge to pick them off. He is about to do it too, but at that moment the professor says:
"Turn to the person next to you, and discuss the questions."
The two women on either side of the girl in front of him turn to other people, and so she turns back to him. She looks surprised for a moment, then regains her composure.
"Hi" she says. "I'm Lindsay"
"Brian"
"You do realize that you're the only man in this class, right?"
"No, I hadn't" he drawls in a way that will become utterly familiar to her over the years.
"Well, I think that feminism is completely and utterly dead," she says.
"Huh?"
Lindsay points to the board, and Brian feels like a dumb ass cause the questions they're supposed to be discussing are up there. And so it begins, this weird relationship they have.
It is a few weeks later, and he's got a Saturday night free, surprise surprise, and he's going to some party with Lindsay. As her date. It's a rainy night, and he's regretting agreeing to this. He could be at home right now, finishing a paper for History of the Americas, or better yet, out at Babylon.
He's driving too fast, but she doesn't mention it. She has this look on her face like she's a million years away.
"How did you know you were gay, Brian?" she asks.
"Because I like fucking men, I like how they're hard all over," he says.
"Don't be vulgar," she says. "It's just that there's this girl, Rebecca Tucci. I think I might love her. But it's wrong, I'm not supposed to." Her voice sounds oddly nasal and Brian realizes that she's starting to cry.
They've arrived at the party, and she stumbles out of the car, stands there, waiting for Brian to do the same. It's raining and she's crying, it's all mixing up on her cheeks. Brian comes around to her side and hugs her, patting her hair awkwardly. She cries into her shoulder, and then as she's still sniffling, he tilts her chin up and looks into her eyes in that way of his.
"Listen to me, Linds. Are you listening?"
"Yes I'm listening."
"Do what you want, and fuck what anyone else says. If you want to fuck women, then go ahead. Someone has to."
She nods and wipes her eyes delicately, looks toward the lit-up house.
"Hey," she says "Do you know of any gay bars?"
And that's how they end up at Babylon on a Saturday night, dancing till three in the morning. Another success story, courtesy of Brian Kinney.
Hard To Explain - The Strokes
I say the right things
But act the wrong way
I'll make it you see
I'm ever so pleased
Pretend to be nice
So I can be mean
I try, but you see
It's hard to explain