Fic #10
This is a Ted story with some hints of Ted/Brian. If Ted disgusts/disturbs/bores you, skip this one.
The balcony high above the frenzied mass at Babylon was relatively empty that night, and Ted was glad of it. He'd wanted something of a quiet place to just sip his vodka gimlet and watch the action. From his perch, he got a perfect, somewhat secluded view of the writhing, and he used that to good advantage - but not to salivate over the latest in boy flesh or shiver at the entrance of his former partners-in-meth. Ted kept his focus on one particular group of men dancing under the lights, sipping thoughtfully as he watched them wind themselves behind, in front, and around each other more or less in time to the music.
Ted had always been conscious of a feeling of not quite belonging at Babylon, though in the past, he'd chalked it up to his not being part of the big three - Young, Hung or Fun. Not that he'd not enjoyed the time he and the others spent there, but there had always, for him, been something of a distancing, an odd feeling that always had him scurrying to the sidelines after a few songs. Thinking on it now, Ted was sure that this feeling wasn't brought on by a sense of inferority in any degree. He had the answer now - the reason he felt so out of sorts was simply because he was not in love with Brian Kinney.
Watching Brian dance, surrounded by all of the others, plus a few dozen more drooling admirers, Ted wondered how he didn't come to that conclusion sooner. It was so obvious; Brian Kinney was the common denominator of all Gay Pittsburgh - you either spent your days waiting for him to fuck you or waiting for him to notice you. And you were content, if you were a fag worth your anal beads, to wait for one of the other - Brian Kinney was just that special.
But not in Ted's eye. He'd never been that taken by Brian. Sure, he thought he was hot, and fucking him had done more than just enter Ted's mind, but for all that, Brian was not on Ted's "to have" list. He did not go to bed with Brian's face in his thoughts, and he didn't waken to a hard-on provoked by a Brian-infused wet dream. He didn't stare dreamily across tables, gazing at Brian's profile. He didn't knock down innocent bystanders just to stand next to him. He didn't buy the same sort of cologne as Brian did so that he could sprinkle it on his pillow and inhale the scent, imagining Brian was there beside him. Ted was, simply, not in love with the man, at all. And, it seemed, that he was the only gay man in Pittsburgh who could say such a thing. It was , he reflected with a philosophical frown, kind of a lonely feeling.
But that wasn't all. His lack of passion for Brian seemed to him more than an anomoly, more than just a curious fact - it made him more than a weirdo or a person of "dubious taste" (in his own mind). Those who loved Brian seemed to be doing well for themselves. Of course, he didn't know every man who carried a torch for the great Kinney, but he was reasonably sure that if he were to do a poll, he'd find that the men who had stars in their eyes for Brian had not nearly died twice in ill-advised drug experimentation, had not been gang-raped by a gaggle of tweaked-out crystal freaks, had not lost everything they'd ever worked for - twice also - due to their own stupidity, and had not lost the love of their lives due, at bottom, to an inability to look in the mirror and not hate what they saw.
Ted's gaze lingered a little on Emmett, but after another measured sip of his drink, his eyes went back to Brian. Brian was, Ted thought with a tilt of his head, the missing link - the person who separated the cretins from those who still had a good bit of their material possessions, virility and dignity left. The evidence was all around him - he had but to look within their own circle of friends to see the truth in his theory.
There was Emmett, currently shaking everything he had, grooving to Brian's right, as happy and carefree, Ted reflected, as the night he'd turned his back on him and danced with Brian . . . putting the final nail in the coffin. And while Ted doubted Emmett and Brian would ever fuck - at least while both were sober - but that horrible night in Babylon just a few months ago, and Emmett's complete renunciation of their relationship, convinced Ted that in his heart of hearts, Emmett was a little in love with Brian.
He shifted his focus to Ben, who was doing some cute cuddle-dance with Michael a bit to Brian's left. Ted did not and would not question Ben's adoration of Michael, but he was sure that he wasn't the only one who saw the shift of Ben's eyes whenever Brian passed, and the slightly wistful, slightly bitter smile of a man musing on possible lost opportunities.
And of course, there was Michael. Michael was the picture of happiness, with his arms around Ben's neck and making those appealing little faces that Ted was sure Ben found irresistable. There was, though, a suspicion that Ted was sure was shared privately by others that though Michael gazed up with love at his man, it was Brian's face he saw in his mind's eye. Michael's love for Brian - the love that transcended the fraternal anyway, seemed to Ted much like the duel scene in Eugene Onegin - bound to end in disaster and carried on for no good reason. Except, Ted mused, Michael might have caught on that love for Brian would keep him from ending up a wreck like him.
Ted studied Justin last, which surprised him, since he figured that Justin's love for Brian was the easiest to see and to explain. Ted couldn't, however, figure out the complexities of Justin's in-loveness with Brian and the seemingly reciprocal sentiment on Brian's part.
Truthfully, Justin was not exactly the type of man Ted had pictured Brian building anything resembling a relationship, and he wasn't at all sure that the spark between the two would last indefinitely. Ted was sure, though, that Justin couldn't care less what he thought, just as he didn't seem to care that Brian was dancing rather intimately with a dark-haired guy who looked as if he had four rolls of tube socks stuffed in his pants. Justin, Ted noted, seemed content to be blond, 19 and hot all by himself in his own part of the dance floor.
Ted did another sweep of the usual suspects, none of whom had moved much since he'd last looked, and sighed a little. It was like high school all over again. All the cool kids were playing lacrosse or smuggling pot into the basement gym or getting T-birds back then. Now, all the cool, well-adjusted queers were buying Members Only jackets again and falling in love with Brian Kinney. Ted had gotten over the lacrosse and cars, and he had no taste for any sort of chic outerwear, but he wondered if it wasn't too late to do something about the Brian thing. Maybe he just hadn't tried hard enough to fall for Brian. Turning his whole theory over in his mind awhile, Ted finished his drink, and, coming to a resolution finally, shoved the glass out of sight and made his way steadily down the stairs.
He shoved his way through the crowd, not really knowing what he was going to do. In a way, Ted was sure it didn't really matter; all he had to do was open himself up to the Kinney magic, hopefully fall as helplessly in love as everyone else, and his life would stop sucking so much, finally. Cheered by that thought, Ted pushed forward, single-minded, tunnel-eyed, honing in on his target from several paces away.
"Ted! Where've you been?"
Startled, Ted looked to his left to see Michael beaming up at him, swaying slightly to the music. "We were getting a little worried."
Ted's answering smile was gentle. There was always going to be something about Michael that made his heart beat a little faster. If Brian could have even half the effect of one of Michael's crinkle-eyed smiles, then, hell, Ted was sure he'd be halfway to normal.
"In the bathroom. There was a line." Ted lied smoothly as he nodded at Ben and moved toward the inner sanctum where Brian was holding court. Socks-crotch was whispering something in Brian's ear, and Brian was looking suitably uninterested. Ted's eyes narrowed as he watched Brian blow the guy off with a not-quite smirk, a not-quite shrug, and a very loud and clear, "Fuck off."
Ted saw his chance. When socks-crotch glumly departed, he wriggled into the vacant space, face to face now with Brian. Ted peered into the slightly flushed face and waited for the magic to happen. He was in Brian's personal space. They were breathing the same air. There was glitter floating down. The perfect setting for losing one's heart to a beautiful, egotistical bastard who looked impossibly good in silver lame.
Brian's eyebrows rose as Ted stood staring. Then he smiled. Sort of. "Theodore. Still conscious?"
Ted ignored the barb, not liking the way Brian said his name. It sounded like a pronouncement of doom. Theeeooooodooooore. He imagined Brian whispering his name, or shouting it maybe in the throes of ecstasy, and was mildly surprised that he didn't find either way any more enticing than Brian's usual deadpan manner. He brushed that aside - part of learning to be in love with someone like Brian was overlooking any and all obvious flaws - unless one of those flaws happened to crabs or some other communicable disease.
"Brian." Ted nodded, then figured that maybe nodding was too cerebral a greeting for someone you were trying to fall in love with. So he tried a smile that made his lips hurt and caused Brian's eyes to widen a little, and then narrow a little. Ted felt a moment of panic. Brian was going to bolt! He could see it in those eyes that, at the moment, weren't having any sort of effect on him at all, and he knew he had to act and act fast.
Luckily, the music kicked in to save him. A song was put on that was fast and a little sexy and a lot loud, and Ted knew, at least, what to do when such a song came on. So without broadcasting his next move to anyone within a 10-mile radius, he pressed close to Brian and begam to dance his not-beating-very-hard-yet heart out.
Ted didn't flatter himself that he was a good dancer. Serviceable at best, scary, at worst. But that wasn't the point of the exercise. Just being in Brian's general vicinity wasn't doing it, staring into his eyes wasn't doing it, so Ted was going for broke in his quest to try to fall for Brian - he got close. He touched. He grinded. He gesticulated. He was reasonably sure he looked like he had mad-cow disease, but he kept it up, rubbing and twirling and shimmying and doing all sorts of things that would probably have had him committed in decades past.
Brian, for his part, seemed partly afraid and partly intrigued, for, after a moment's hesitation, he was dancing, too, thought not really as frenetically, Ted noticed, as he himself was. He wasn't pulling away, either, Ted noted with a sort of anticipatory thrill, almost as if Brian was prepared to outlast him. Brian was staring hard at him, and his gaze seemed a challenge. How long can you keep this up, it seemed to tease, and Ted grit his teeth, determined to meet Brian's derision head on.
In his periphery, he could see Emmett glancing over, and it seemed that Justin had drifted a little closer, too. In fact, Ted was sure half of Bablyon was staring at the spectacle. All those eyes, all belonging to people Brian held in thrall somehow, and Ted twisted and jerked against Brian, yearning to be one of them. Brian was beautiful. Brian was sexy. I could love him, Ted thought a bit desperately as Brian - shockingly - put an arm around his waist and drew him impossibly closer. Ted focused on Brian's lips and imagined kissing them. His gaze darted to Brian's neck and Ted imagined himself nibbling along the smooth column of flesh and lower. And lower. And lower . . .
Lower. Ted's eyes went huge, and for a moment, he forgot to move. It was several seconds before he could bring himself to believe was he was seeing - feeling - whatever. There was a hardness pressing against his thigh, warm and friendly like. A burgeoning hardness most definitely not emanating from him. Ted stared in horror at Brian, who, still moving, had his eyes half closed and was licking dry lips with a tongue that looked purple under the strobe lights.
The spell was broken then. Later, Ted would wonder if his lack of enthusiasm at actually making Brian Kinney hard on the floor of Babylon had been tempered by the suspicion that Brian had forgotten completely whom he was dancing with, but for the moment, he was forced to face the ugly truth - grinding with Brian was sort of weird, and it did absolutely nothing for him. His heart wasn't racing, he wasn't forgetting his own name, his insides weren't fluttering. And Brian's hard dick was not, Ted knew, getting anywhere near his mouth or ass, so its appearance was more a frustrating tease than a triumph, as evidenced by his own unexcited state.
When he broke away, Brian's eyes flew open, and a for a moment, he looked disoriented. Then he looked at Ted and down at himself. When Brian met his eyes again, Ted thought he could see confusion mixed with a bit of shame there.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Brian's words and tone were so ambiguous that Ted didn't know whether he was referring to his starting the dance or stopping it. Either way, it was over, and the failure of achieving his goal pinged in Ted's gut, but it was not the acute pain of loss, but rather the vague feeling that he'd missed the point somewhere along the lines.
"I think I'd better sit this one out. Thanks anyway." Ted gave Brian a less demented smile then and turned, making his way off the floor as speedily as he'd entered it.
On his way back to his little upstairs hideway, Ted let himself feel a little disappointed. He was not in love with Brian Kinney and never would be, and somehow, he was just going to have to live with that.
The balcony high above the frenzied mass at Babylon was relatively empty that night, and Ted was glad of it. He'd wanted something of a quiet place to just sip his vodka gimlet and watch the action. From his perch, he got a perfect, somewhat secluded view of the writhing, and he used that to good advantage - but not to salivate over the latest in boy flesh or shiver at the entrance of his former partners-in-meth. Ted kept his focus on one particular group of men dancing under the lights, sipping thoughtfully as he watched them wind themselves behind, in front, and around each other more or less in time to the music.
Ted had always been conscious of a feeling of not quite belonging at Babylon, though in the past, he'd chalked it up to his not being part of the big three - Young, Hung or Fun. Not that he'd not enjoyed the time he and the others spent there, but there had always, for him, been something of a distancing, an odd feeling that always had him scurrying to the sidelines after a few songs. Thinking on it now, Ted was sure that this feeling wasn't brought on by a sense of inferority in any degree. He had the answer now - the reason he felt so out of sorts was simply because he was not in love with Brian Kinney.
Watching Brian dance, surrounded by all of the others, plus a few dozen more drooling admirers, Ted wondered how he didn't come to that conclusion sooner. It was so obvious; Brian Kinney was the common denominator of all Gay Pittsburgh - you either spent your days waiting for him to fuck you or waiting for him to notice you. And you were content, if you were a fag worth your anal beads, to wait for one of the other - Brian Kinney was just that special.
But not in Ted's eye. He'd never been that taken by Brian. Sure, he thought he was hot, and fucking him had done more than just enter Ted's mind, but for all that, Brian was not on Ted's "to have" list. He did not go to bed with Brian's face in his thoughts, and he didn't waken to a hard-on provoked by a Brian-infused wet dream. He didn't stare dreamily across tables, gazing at Brian's profile. He didn't knock down innocent bystanders just to stand next to him. He didn't buy the same sort of cologne as Brian did so that he could sprinkle it on his pillow and inhale the scent, imagining Brian was there beside him. Ted was, simply, not in love with the man, at all. And, it seemed, that he was the only gay man in Pittsburgh who could say such a thing. It was , he reflected with a philosophical frown, kind of a lonely feeling.
But that wasn't all. His lack of passion for Brian seemed to him more than an anomoly, more than just a curious fact - it made him more than a weirdo or a person of "dubious taste" (in his own mind). Those who loved Brian seemed to be doing well for themselves. Of course, he didn't know every man who carried a torch for the great Kinney, but he was reasonably sure that if he were to do a poll, he'd find that the men who had stars in their eyes for Brian had not nearly died twice in ill-advised drug experimentation, had not been gang-raped by a gaggle of tweaked-out crystal freaks, had not lost everything they'd ever worked for - twice also - due to their own stupidity, and had not lost the love of their lives due, at bottom, to an inability to look in the mirror and not hate what they saw.
Ted's gaze lingered a little on Emmett, but after another measured sip of his drink, his eyes went back to Brian. Brian was, Ted thought with a tilt of his head, the missing link - the person who separated the cretins from those who still had a good bit of their material possessions, virility and dignity left. The evidence was all around him - he had but to look within their own circle of friends to see the truth in his theory.
There was Emmett, currently shaking everything he had, grooving to Brian's right, as happy and carefree, Ted reflected, as the night he'd turned his back on him and danced with Brian . . . putting the final nail in the coffin. And while Ted doubted Emmett and Brian would ever fuck - at least while both were sober - but that horrible night in Babylon just a few months ago, and Emmett's complete renunciation of their relationship, convinced Ted that in his heart of hearts, Emmett was a little in love with Brian.
He shifted his focus to Ben, who was doing some cute cuddle-dance with Michael a bit to Brian's left. Ted did not and would not question Ben's adoration of Michael, but he was sure that he wasn't the only one who saw the shift of Ben's eyes whenever Brian passed, and the slightly wistful, slightly bitter smile of a man musing on possible lost opportunities.
And of course, there was Michael. Michael was the picture of happiness, with his arms around Ben's neck and making those appealing little faces that Ted was sure Ben found irresistable. There was, though, a suspicion that Ted was sure was shared privately by others that though Michael gazed up with love at his man, it was Brian's face he saw in his mind's eye. Michael's love for Brian - the love that transcended the fraternal anyway, seemed to Ted much like the duel scene in Eugene Onegin - bound to end in disaster and carried on for no good reason. Except, Ted mused, Michael might have caught on that love for Brian would keep him from ending up a wreck like him.
Ted studied Justin last, which surprised him, since he figured that Justin's love for Brian was the easiest to see and to explain. Ted couldn't, however, figure out the complexities of Justin's in-loveness with Brian and the seemingly reciprocal sentiment on Brian's part.
Truthfully, Justin was not exactly the type of man Ted had pictured Brian building anything resembling a relationship, and he wasn't at all sure that the spark between the two would last indefinitely. Ted was sure, though, that Justin couldn't care less what he thought, just as he didn't seem to care that Brian was dancing rather intimately with a dark-haired guy who looked as if he had four rolls of tube socks stuffed in his pants. Justin, Ted noted, seemed content to be blond, 19 and hot all by himself in his own part of the dance floor.
Ted did another sweep of the usual suspects, none of whom had moved much since he'd last looked, and sighed a little. It was like high school all over again. All the cool kids were playing lacrosse or smuggling pot into the basement gym or getting T-birds back then. Now, all the cool, well-adjusted queers were buying Members Only jackets again and falling in love with Brian Kinney. Ted had gotten over the lacrosse and cars, and he had no taste for any sort of chic outerwear, but he wondered if it wasn't too late to do something about the Brian thing. Maybe he just hadn't tried hard enough to fall for Brian. Turning his whole theory over in his mind awhile, Ted finished his drink, and, coming to a resolution finally, shoved the glass out of sight and made his way steadily down the stairs.
He shoved his way through the crowd, not really knowing what he was going to do. In a way, Ted was sure it didn't really matter; all he had to do was open himself up to the Kinney magic, hopefully fall as helplessly in love as everyone else, and his life would stop sucking so much, finally. Cheered by that thought, Ted pushed forward, single-minded, tunnel-eyed, honing in on his target from several paces away.
"Ted! Where've you been?"
Startled, Ted looked to his left to see Michael beaming up at him, swaying slightly to the music. "We were getting a little worried."
Ted's answering smile was gentle. There was always going to be something about Michael that made his heart beat a little faster. If Brian could have even half the effect of one of Michael's crinkle-eyed smiles, then, hell, Ted was sure he'd be halfway to normal.
"In the bathroom. There was a line." Ted lied smoothly as he nodded at Ben and moved toward the inner sanctum where Brian was holding court. Socks-crotch was whispering something in Brian's ear, and Brian was looking suitably uninterested. Ted's eyes narrowed as he watched Brian blow the guy off with a not-quite smirk, a not-quite shrug, and a very loud and clear, "Fuck off."
Ted saw his chance. When socks-crotch glumly departed, he wriggled into the vacant space, face to face now with Brian. Ted peered into the slightly flushed face and waited for the magic to happen. He was in Brian's personal space. They were breathing the same air. There was glitter floating down. The perfect setting for losing one's heart to a beautiful, egotistical bastard who looked impossibly good in silver lame.
Brian's eyebrows rose as Ted stood staring. Then he smiled. Sort of. "Theodore. Still conscious?"
Ted ignored the barb, not liking the way Brian said his name. It sounded like a pronouncement of doom. Theeeooooodooooore. He imagined Brian whispering his name, or shouting it maybe in the throes of ecstasy, and was mildly surprised that he didn't find either way any more enticing than Brian's usual deadpan manner. He brushed that aside - part of learning to be in love with someone like Brian was overlooking any and all obvious flaws - unless one of those flaws happened to crabs or some other communicable disease.
"Brian." Ted nodded, then figured that maybe nodding was too cerebral a greeting for someone you were trying to fall in love with. So he tried a smile that made his lips hurt and caused Brian's eyes to widen a little, and then narrow a little. Ted felt a moment of panic. Brian was going to bolt! He could see it in those eyes that, at the moment, weren't having any sort of effect on him at all, and he knew he had to act and act fast.
Luckily, the music kicked in to save him. A song was put on that was fast and a little sexy and a lot loud, and Ted knew, at least, what to do when such a song came on. So without broadcasting his next move to anyone within a 10-mile radius, he pressed close to Brian and begam to dance his not-beating-very-hard-yet heart out.
Ted didn't flatter himself that he was a good dancer. Serviceable at best, scary, at worst. But that wasn't the point of the exercise. Just being in Brian's general vicinity wasn't doing it, staring into his eyes wasn't doing it, so Ted was going for broke in his quest to try to fall for Brian - he got close. He touched. He grinded. He gesticulated. He was reasonably sure he looked like he had mad-cow disease, but he kept it up, rubbing and twirling and shimmying and doing all sorts of things that would probably have had him committed in decades past.
Brian, for his part, seemed partly afraid and partly intrigued, for, after a moment's hesitation, he was dancing, too, thought not really as frenetically, Ted noticed, as he himself was. He wasn't pulling away, either, Ted noted with a sort of anticipatory thrill, almost as if Brian was prepared to outlast him. Brian was staring hard at him, and his gaze seemed a challenge. How long can you keep this up, it seemed to tease, and Ted grit his teeth, determined to meet Brian's derision head on.
In his periphery, he could see Emmett glancing over, and it seemed that Justin had drifted a little closer, too. In fact, Ted was sure half of Bablyon was staring at the spectacle. All those eyes, all belonging to people Brian held in thrall somehow, and Ted twisted and jerked against Brian, yearning to be one of them. Brian was beautiful. Brian was sexy. I could love him, Ted thought a bit desperately as Brian - shockingly - put an arm around his waist and drew him impossibly closer. Ted focused on Brian's lips and imagined kissing them. His gaze darted to Brian's neck and Ted imagined himself nibbling along the smooth column of flesh and lower. And lower. And lower . . .
Lower. Ted's eyes went huge, and for a moment, he forgot to move. It was several seconds before he could bring himself to believe was he was seeing - feeling - whatever. There was a hardness pressing against his thigh, warm and friendly like. A burgeoning hardness most definitely not emanating from him. Ted stared in horror at Brian, who, still moving, had his eyes half closed and was licking dry lips with a tongue that looked purple under the strobe lights.
The spell was broken then. Later, Ted would wonder if his lack of enthusiasm at actually making Brian Kinney hard on the floor of Babylon had been tempered by the suspicion that Brian had forgotten completely whom he was dancing with, but for the moment, he was forced to face the ugly truth - grinding with Brian was sort of weird, and it did absolutely nothing for him. His heart wasn't racing, he wasn't forgetting his own name, his insides weren't fluttering. And Brian's hard dick was not, Ted knew, getting anywhere near his mouth or ass, so its appearance was more a frustrating tease than a triumph, as evidenced by his own unexcited state.
When he broke away, Brian's eyes flew open, and a for a moment, he looked disoriented. Then he looked at Ted and down at himself. When Brian met his eyes again, Ted thought he could see confusion mixed with a bit of shame there.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Brian's words and tone were so ambiguous that Ted didn't know whether he was referring to his starting the dance or stopping it. Either way, it was over, and the failure of achieving his goal pinged in Ted's gut, but it was not the acute pain of loss, but rather the vague feeling that he'd missed the point somewhere along the lines.
"I think I'd better sit this one out. Thanks anyway." Ted gave Brian a less demented smile then and turned, making his way off the floor as speedily as he'd entered it.
On his way back to his little upstairs hideway, Ted let himself feel a little disappointed. He was not in love with Brian Kinney and never would be, and somehow, he was just going to have to live with that.