FIC: "Yesterday Upon the Stair"
Title: Yesterday Upon the Stair
Author: phaballa
Pairing: Adam/Brad
Rating: Adult
Word Count: ~8,800
Song: "The Man Who Stole the World" from The Man Who Stole the World
Warning(s): drug use
Summary: Brad doesn't believe in love.
Brad doesn't believe in love.
Well, that's not exactly true. He doesn't believe in falling in love, if he's going to be precise about it, and as it turns out, Brad happens to be a pretty big fan of precision. He would even go so far as to say he believes in it; he believes in being direct and to the point, in saying exactly what you mean and meaning what you say, in being as honest and forthright as possible with little to no waste of words or emotion or regret. It's not love that means never having to say you're sorry, it's the lack of regret when everything inevitably turns to shit and the wife you gave up everything for dies of cancer. Luckily that will never happen to Brad, because of how he doesn't believe in love, but also because he doesn't live in a lame '70s version of Romeo and Juliet and he'd never marry a woman, much less someone who went to Radcliffe. That's just gross.
He's been in love, so he knows it exists. Other people are, in fact, free to fall in love at any time, even to women who go to Radcliffe and look like Ali MacGraw, it's just that Brad refuses to have anything to do with it. He's planning to write a screenplay on the topic very soon, actually. It's already half-written in his brain and he thinks it will be like a much better 500 Days of Summer with an actually believable ending that isn't redemptive vis a vie love in any way. No, this will be about a man who figures out that he's much happier without the complications of falling in love, because he himself is so awesome that he doesn't need anyone else to make him feel like a worthwhile human being.
Also, because it's a fuck of a lot less painful, but Brad doesn't feel like discussing that portion of tonight's program. Not that he's projecting or anything. It's all fiction in the end.
*
When he was seventeen, Brad was pretty sure that Texas was approximately equivalent to the eighth circle of Hell, but with at least three times as many corrupt politicians as Dante ever imagined was possible. Not just Texas, which after all was bigger than France and difficult to stereotype now that it was half Mexican and half redneck and half fire ants, but more specifically the affluent Dallas suburb in which he languished the summer after graduation with only his sister, his best dyke, and his dealer for comfort. The summer before, he'd spent the majority of it in Cedar Falls helping put together the Hell House and rehearsing for his role as "Fag Dying of AIDS" while secretly documenting the entire experience for a performance art piece on the irony of irony. Not that anyone in the Eighth Circle had really understood it, even Candy His Best Dyke, who gave him a lecture on internalized homophobia while simultaneously denying her own Dykehood, which Brad was pretty sure only proved his point, but the final edited version was brilliant if Brad was inclined to be modest about it; it got him into film school, anyway.
But that was last summer, when he had the motivation of getting into college to escape his suburban Hell, plus the added bonus of his pick of a hundred Cedar Falls Christian boys wearing purity rings to convince that it's not gay if you're not the one taking it up the ass. But this summer was a waiting game, which seemed like much less a game and more like actual torture, and certainly not as entertaining as Project Purity. Five weeks until California. Five more weeks of smoking up with Candy and refusing to leave the air conditioned safety of his bedroom-car-Starbucks unless it was to attend a swim meet at his parents' country club, because only swimmers in speedos could shake him from his pre-Cali daze.
Okay, so maybe 'torture' was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was all so boring and utterly mundane. He was far too young to be feminine mystiquing it up already. That life stage was meant to wait until he'd accomplished all his goals (A: go to film school, learn, etc. B: make brilliant film. C: get famous. D: and hopefully rich.) and was ready to settle down with some sugar daddy in the Hamptons, or wherever rich, idle people will go in ten years.
Candy said, "I don't get why you have to go all the way to California. Austin's only three hours away."
"It's still within the boundaries of the Eighth Circle," Brad said, and passed her the pipe.
Candy rolled her eyes. "Texas isn't that bad. You just want to get as far away from us as possible. Deny all knowledge of your humble beginnings so you can Valley of the Dolls it up in LA."
"Please. Like I'd ever need to resort to amphetamines to stay thin. That's what anorexia is for." He took the pipe back and it was almost cached, but there was just enough for one last hit, which he held in his throat as long as he could stand, until the hot burn of it made his eyes water. Candy was sprawled on the faux white bear rug in the center of his bedroom, a fashion nightmare of dyed black and magenta hair, combat boots and cargo shorts and a new vintage Tide t-shirt, the very picture of a baby dyke if he ever saw one, and usually her extreme level of denial annoyed him, but today, high off the very best hydro his dealer could acquire, Brad found her incomparably endearing. At the same time, she made him sad the way that everyone here did, so utterly stuck inside the DFW bubble of rich white trash and that particularly heady combination of entitlement and ignorance that came with too much money too fast without the talent to back it up. Candy wasn't as bad as the rest, though, because at least she cared about shit, at least she had her own thoughts and feelings and opinions and she gave a damn enough to bother expressing them. She wasn't a sheep except about him, which was exactly the way Brad preferred his friends--free thinkers up until the point where they disagreed with him, because he got challenged enough about his right to exist from everyone else, he really didn't need it from his friends, too.
And the thing was, he knew she was right; he knew he could've gone to UT with her and it wouldn't have been like high school at all. He knew that Austin was a different world, that nothing could really match the self-righteous fakery of the Eighth Circle, but it was too close anyway. It was only three hours away, but anything within a day's driving distance would never be far enough. It reminded him of that song, the one about how in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely. Brad thought he would rather be lonely; he would rather get lost in a crowd. He didn't want to stop to consider what it was better than. That was kind of the whole point.
Because maybe he was running away. Maybe this was like the time when he was six and decided to run away from home, only no one ever realized he was even gone because he wasn't allowed to cross the street so he just kept circling the block over and over instead, hoping to spot an alternate route. He'd been trying to escape from pretty much the moment he was aware enough of this world to realize that he didn't belong in it, and his dad always said that men faced their problems head-on, they didn't back down or hide or give in, because apparently what it meant for his dad to be a man was actually being a stubborn asshole incapable of rational thought. But Brad had always known. When a place didn't want you, politeness dictated that you should probably just get the fuck out, said the joker to the thief. He was fairly certain that Emily Post would agree.
He would never be anything like his dad, anyway. Thank fucking Jesus for that.
So maybe he was running away, but Brad liked to think he was running to something, instead. "Semantics," Candy said, waving a hand in the air above her head for a moment to emphasize her point before letting it drop to the white cushion of faux bear fur beneath her. "It's like. Like saying seedless watermelon isn't fruit. Because of the no seeds thing. But it's still watermelon. You can't get past the fact that it's still a freaking watermelon."
She was maybe right about that, too, but Brad couldn't bother making himself care. He was too high to bother with anything, really, and he planned to stay that way until his sentence in the Eighth Circle was officially up.
Five weeks.
*
No one ever explicitly tells Brad that Adam is officially dating again, but it's not exactly hard to figure out even if Fox insists on labeling the new guy as Adam's "friend" whenever they show him in the audience, looking like an even gayer version of Bert Reynolds circa Shampoo and clearly stoned for every taping, or at least Brad hopes the guy is stoned, otherwise nothing can ever forgive his hideous fashion choices. And it's not like Adam didn't have plenty of opportunity to tell him about it. They don't talk a lot but they still talk and this seems like something friends would tell each other. Adam's the one who insists that they're friends, that it's important to stay connected, and okay, so maybe Brad doesn't tell Adam about the guys he sees, either, but that's different. Brad's the one who ended things so it's totally different and besides which, Brad doesn't really date. He doesn't do boyfriends.
Brad doesn't believe in love.
They broke up three times, but the second ending was the only one that counted because that was the time Brad said, "You're bringing me down," and he maybe meant it at the time, but he took it back later, only Adam never got over it. Brad's pretty sure he never got over it, either, and he still kind of thinks he was right, even if he knows now that they were bringing each other down because life is a highway and highways are two-way streets.
But in the moment it didn't seem that way. He was high and Adam was sober and that never really worked, and he thought being as honest and cruel about things would actually be a kindness. Clean breaks and all that Oprah bullshit. They were in the back alley behind Hyde or Area or whatever club was popular that week and Brad felt amazing and perfect, perfectly amazing, but Adam's fingers were too tight around his wrist and he kept saying, "You're shaking. Do you even fucking know that?"
Brad knew that, of course he fucking knew. He just snorted a bunch of coke so obviously he was shaking and Adam had done it before, it wasn't like he didn't know what it was like even if he didn't approve anymore, even if he had a bad experience a month ago or whatever and suddenly he was all, "Coke is bad, drugs are bad, I wish you'd stop, it's not even fun." Brad knew the truth, though, which was that drugs made Adam feel out of control; they stripped away all the lies he told himself on a daily basis--the next job will be better, I can move to New York whenever I want to, my talent outweighs my physical shortcomings, confidence is about attitude not content--and left him with the simple truth that he was done at twenty-six because he didn't have the balls to even try to make shit happen. He didn't love it enough, whatever 'it' was that week--music, acting, performing, singing--but it was never enough, either. Adam didn't know what he wanted because he didn't love anything enough to really want it, boyfriends included.
Brad twisted his wrist around in Adam's grip, shivering at the burning slide of skin-on-skin like the Indian burns he used to give his sister and staring at the homeless person slumped against the dumpster just far enough away that Brad couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. Like that David Lynch movie with the lesbians and the blue box and Billy Ray Cyrus, who had a show on the Disney Channel now, and wasn't that all just a metaphor for this moment, really?
So he was high and feeling brutally mean and he said, "You're depressed and you're afraid and you're bringing me down. I can't be with someone who gives up before he even really tries, Adam. I can't love someone who's so afraid of failing that he won't even let himself care."
The corners of Adam's mouth tightened into white spots in his face like the permanent dimples on his sister's Cabbage Patch dolls and his eyes lost focus suddenly. He was staring at the homeless person, too, and Brad thought for a moment that they'd walk over there to get a better look, just to see or find out--what, Brad wasn't sure, but it seemed like what they should be doing, exploring the seedy underbelly to get at the truth of things. Instead, Adam turned away and started off toward the opposite end of the alley, pulling Brad along with him, his fingers around Brad's wrist firm but not the deliciously tight grip of a moment ago.
"Didn't you hear me?" Brad said, because obviously Adam had heard him but he kind of expected more of a reaction. Anger or a "fuck you" or something; not this soft, hazy look in his eyes or the quiet way he shrugged and said, "If you're going to break up with me, I'd just rather it not happen with some drunk homeless guy watching and pissing himself, okay?"
At the time, Brad hadn't really thought of it as breaking up; he was high and fucked up and dealing with his own shit. He was about to graduate and he didn't have a job or even a prospect of one, and he could feel Adam becoming resignedly, complacently comfortable in this non-life they were leading, which was enough but it wasn't good. It wasn't even bad, really, more like limbo--like sitting in a doctor's waiting room without actually having an appointment or any chance of your name being called and only Sports Illustrated for entertainment. So he didn't mean for them to break up, but he knows now that it was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do, because he said that Adam was bringing him down, and maybe there was more to it than that but Adam never really tried to call him on it, which only proved Brad's point. Adam never really tried, and they didn't work. Not together.
This is what Brad tells himself week after week, watching Adam on television and purposely smoking up beforehand to prevent himself from analyzing anything too much. Cassidy says, "If you're still in love with him, just fucking tell him already. Drake annoys the shit out of me. I mean, have you seen his shirts? Fucking hideous."
Brad shifts the phone to his left shoulder and takes the last hit from his pipe. "I don't believe in love," he says in an exhale of smoke, and Cassidy laughs, sharp and loud in his ear. On the television screen, someone blurry and male is murdering a disco song. Brad closes his eyes against it.
"Bullshit," Cassidy says. "You believe in astrology. You believe in reincarnation. If you were rich, you'd probably believe in Xenu. Of course you believe in love."
Brad shrugs and lets Ryan Seacrest's voice wash over him like the warmest, smuggest blanket ever invented, says, "I believe in love, but it don't believe in me."
"Don't call me again until you're willing to stop quoting song lyrics and become a useful member of society," Cassidy tells him, "or at least until you talk to Adam. You have to take responsibility for your fucked up shit at some point, Brad."
"I wish you wouldn't call me that," Brad says, but the line is just dead air. Brad falls asleep before Adam's performance and when he wakes up at three in the morning, an infomercial for the Snuggie is on the television and his phone is still open on his chest, but he can't remember who he called or what they talked about, so it probably isn't important, anyway.
*
The third time they broke up, it was almost like a non-issue. Brad never used to believe people when they said things like, "It was a mutual decision," or "We just drifted apart." If those things were true, Brad was pretty sure that those two people were never really in love in the first place because they obviously didn't care enough to try to hold shit together.
Now Brad knows that sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes you get so tired from trying and fighting what seems inevitable that you just stop. You let go. You drift apart. Sometimes cliches are cliche for a reason, and Brad's pretty sure that his relationship with Adam covered all of them.
Adam called him the Saturday after Thanksgiving at three in the morning, drunk and confused. "When did we break up?" he asked, and Brad had to think about it for a minute before saying, "About a month ago, I think."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Not why did it happen, but why didn't you say anything. Adam's words were slurred and rough and Brad felt the sharpness of them, half-accusation, half-guilt. Adam should feel guilty, Brad thought, for letting this happen. They both should, but Brad was pretty sure that wasn't Adam's version of this guilt, because Adam had always expected this to end, and maybe that's why he never fought very hard to keep it going in the first place. Adam never thought he deserved it, and at that moment, Brad maybe agreed with him a little. It didn't make him feel better, though.
"You never said anything," Adam repeated, and Brad didn't answer because it wasn't a real question; it wasn't even a question for him. He just said goodnight and went back to sleep. Just because Adam had finally stopped to think about shit, that didn't change anything for Brad. They were still broken up and he was still in love with someone who didn't really know how to love him back, and it still really fucking sucked.
*
Despite all evidence to the contrary (ie smoking up almost daily, partying way too much, not having an actual job, and so on), Brad is actually quite busy. Very soon he plans to take over the world, and it turns out that world domination is a full-time job and quite demanding at that. He has videos to film and edit and upload to the fascist state of youtube; he's got songs to record and mix and photoshoots to plan and websites to run and fans to accumulate. He never talks about Adam but he talks around him enough that people start to pay attention, and that was kind of the whole point in the first place. He doesn't consider himself a famewhore, just opportunistic, and anyway, his picture has already been flashed on national television through no effort of his own, so he can't be blamed for taking advantage of Adam's sudden fame. Bill O'Reilly did all the work for him.
He doesn't particularly want to go to the American Idol finale. Not even the finale, but the after party, because Adam only gets a few tickets for the actual show and they're going to his family and the new boyfriend, which is as it should be. At least, that's what Cassidy tells him before going into a long and overly-detailed description of the concept for the jacket he's designing for Adam's final performance and Brad is forced to tune him out, because he loves clothes and he loves fashion, but there are only so many ways to describe rivets before it all just gets repetitively boring.
So Brad isn't planning on going to the after party thing even though he was invited, even though everyone else will be there and Alisan stopped by Thursday karaoke at Hamburger Mary's last week to tell him that Adam really wants him to come. But then the night before the finale, Adam calls him and says, "It won't mean as much if you're not there," and Brad immediately feels like a giant cunt for even doubting him. The guy is calling him after his last-ditch Idol efforts, voice a little raw and a lot tired, and yes, Brad is a total cunt. Adam's never been anything but sincere, even if it was mostly about his lack of sincerity.
"But what if you lose?" Brad says.
"It's not about winning or losing, though. I just wanted to see what would happen, you know? It's like you said that time--the time we broke up in front of that homeless guy?"
"I remember," Brad says. He was a dick that time; it's not really a pleasant memory and he kind of hoped Adam had forgotten it, but apparently not. Being a dick about Adam seems to be a recurring theme in his life.
"I spent so long being afraid of shit. Of basically everything. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to be able to control it all and I told myself that not risking the chance of failure was more important than succeeding could ever be. And so I guess I needed to prove you wrong. And I think." He pauses and laughs a little, softly. "No matter what happens tomorrow, I proved you wrong, so you kind of owe it to me to be there."
*
The first thing that Brad ever told Adam was a lie, a really stupid one, and he's pretty sure that's why their relationship was doomed for inevitable failure, because how can something based on a lie ever amount to anything lasting and strong and healthy and all that other Gay Men Are from Saturn bullshit, even if it did end up being true eventually? It was at a party and Brad was buzzed but not drunk, only two weakish margaritas an hour ago so he was basically almost sober, even, but Adam was completely wasted, cornering him on the fire escape and giving him a long lecture about the importance of getting his astrological chart done.
Brad didn't care about astrology or what his rising sign was or how the position of the planets might affect his job prospects, but he liked the shine of tequila on Adam's bottom lip and wanted to know if his hair was as soft as it looked, so when Adam stared at him expectantly, Brad just said, "I'm totally into astrology," and that was enough. Adam took him home and his lip only tasted like tequila the first time they kissed, but it flushed red and ragged when Brad bit at it until Adam held him down with a wide palm in the center of Brad's chest, so narrow that Adam's fingers lined up along his collarbone and left a necklace of blue-smudged bruises. Brad wasn't even close to being a virgin and he'd been fucked before, he'd even had really good sex before, once he figured out how to go about getting it, but this was completely new. It didn't feel like sex. It didn't even feel like fucking. It was more like ownership and Brad thought, he's drunk and it doesn't matter, but afterward when Brad tried to leave, Adam wrapped his fingers around Brad's wrist like he was trying to give Brad a matching bracelet and said, "Stay."
Brad didn't have anywhere else to be, anyway.
*
When Brad first moved to LA, he thought it would be different. He never pretended that his particular suburban hell upbringing was unique or special; every teenager thinks they have it bad, and every gay teenager thinks it’ll be better in the real world outside the bubble of high school cruelty/country club snobbery/ ignorant parents and teachers and pastors who don’t understand and don’t care enough to see them as people instead of missions. They grow up with this idea of "the real world," as if it's somewhere they can get to, as if childhood is some sort of macabre dreamland and the real world will be better because it'll be real. It'll make everything that came before, by definition, fake and therefor meaningless, just preparation for when real life starts at eighteen or whatever.
Except for the part where, in the real world, things didn't really work that way.
And it was hell because high school always is, and Joss Whedon was right about a lot of things but especially the hell part, especially how growing up feels like the end of the world, but Brad knew it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. He’d never been in the closet, never bothered trying to hide what he was because he was too flaming to get away with it, and he thinks that helped in a way. He had to be himself because he never had a choice. There wasn’t anyone else he could be, and even if most of the people he knew ignored or repressed it, Brad never could. He never wanted to.
Which was why it was so ironic that when he finally escaped, went west, young man, like Hurst and the Village People commanded, well-nothing changed. Technically, LA is different. Technically, people don’t hate him for being him here, and the only person who’s spit on him since he moved here was some drunk chick from a reality show who thought he was hitting on her fake reality show boyfriend. (He was, but that’s not the point.) He can go to a club here and not worry about a raid, and when he walks down the street in women’s lingerie and a wig, he might get hit on or stopped by a middle-aged dude in a BMW looking for a blowjob, but he won’t get his ass kicked, and that’s important. It means something.
So LA is different, in a way, but most of the time Brad thinks it’s just pretending to be different. It’s full of rich people who will never think he’s good enough, just like Dallas, and in a way it’s almost worse, because instead of trying to convert him or save him or whatever, people in LA just pretend that he doesn’t exist. Instead of being honest about their derision, they invalidate and deny and it's like his mother all over again, never acknowledging the gigantic pink elephant in the room, even when it's fucking a second, even gayer pink elephant. LA is its own sort of bubble in a scary, Blue Velvet kind of way, and he's never been blackmailed into having scary sex with Dennis Hopper, but it's pretty horrifying anyway, to finally realize that everything he imagined about the real world was basically a lie he told himself, and it’s not until Candy comes to visit and they’re lying on the cold tile of his kitchen floor passing his pipe back and forth, trying to get as high as humanly possible off an eighth of dro, that he realizes that absolutely nothing has changed. Including him.
"I'm fucking awful," he says, following the jagged line of the crack in his ceiling from its originating spot above the stove until it reaches the cabinets on the opposite wall and spiders out into too many small breaks for his eyes to follow right now, when he's high as balls and feeling completely sorry for his life. "How do I even exist? My hypocrisy knows no bounds."
"Oh my god, whatever," Candy says, knocking the toes of her combat boots together to create a slow, dull rhythm that goes thunk-thunk, thu-thunk like a funeral dirge or a Nine Inch Nails song, but one of the newer ones with no words or melody that barely resemble music at all, not the oldie-goodies, the ones about S&M he used to masturbate to when he was sixteen. "This is not a movie and you're not Doc Holiday or some shit, trying to make Tombstone a better place. And Adam Lambert is for sure not Wyatt Earp. Unless he married a whore when I wasn't paying attention."
"Okay firstly, if this were Tombstone, I'd totally be Kate, not Doc. I'm not a lunger, thanks, and I forgo bustles whenever I need to make a fast getaway."
"How lewd," Candy says. Thunk-thunk go her boots.
"Secondly, Adam would be Ringo. Cold and heartless and beautiful and perfect." Brad frowns, because that's not quite right in that it's totally the opposite of right, but it's definitely what he wants to believe and his brain is incapable of enforcing reality at the moment.
"And dead," Candy says. "Doc kills him in the end."
"Well, he was no daisy. No daisy at all." He pauses. "Adam is kind of a daisy though. Now. He didn't used to be, though. He used to be kind of retarded, and that was almost better because it made me feel less retarded? And now that he's not so retarded, he's making me look bad in comparison."
Candy rolls her head to look at him, eyes glassy behind her square frame Lisa Loeb glasses that haven't been in fashion since the Backstreet Boys were begging people to quit playing games with their hearts, says, "Can you even begin to unpack the Betty Draper levels of neuroses in that statement?"
Brad turns his head away, closes his eyes and concentrates on the feel of the cold ceramic against the bare skin of his arms like a chilly embrace, like he's Bella Swan without the suicidal tendencies. He's too high to unpack anything, and anyway, this is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be a break from all the real world bullshit drama. It's supposed to be about slipping back into Candyland where they were young and (slightly more) innocent and infinitely less jaded, so they can reflect on how much more awesome they are now, because they are adults and real people and didn't everything work out just how they thought it would, but completely different at the same time?
Except it's not like that at all, and Candy's fucking awful glasses are just another reminder of how everything's exactly the same in the worst possible way, because he's exactly the same, and his hypocrisy really does know no bounds.
"You're totally harshing," Brad says, swallowing hard against the scratch of smoke in his throat. "You're no huckleberry at all."
*
Adam never liked the whole name thing, but Brad always thought that was just because Adam never really understood it. Adam was a feeler, not a thinker; he didn't like to argue or debate and the very idea of the politics of self-identity was enough to get him smiling tensely and saying things like, "I try to leave the complicated shit to the smart people."
"You don't think it's important? Like, figuring out who you are and how you fit into the world and how to create a space that maybe doesn't exist in this dinosaur society that is our parents' legacy to us?"
Adam just shook his head and shifted from one foot to the other, one elbow on the kitchen counter with his hand hovering over his keys and a metaphorical foot already out the door along with his brain and his desire to stay here with Brad and Nick and Caroline during any sort of existential-as-applicable-to-real-life discussion. Brad watched blatantly while pretending to stir the pasta as Adam's guilt warred with his own conviction of his stupidity until Adam finally said, "It's not my parents legacy."
"People change their names all the time," Brad said. Adam's thumb brushed the ring on his key chain, snagging the silver hoop and dragging it toward him an infinitesimal amount, like he could possibly hide the whole thing where he was about to run away. Adam was big on avoidance. Brad maybe got high or drunk to forget shit more than he should, but he preferred that to self-imposed ignorance any day.
"For personal reasons, though. Like Angelina Jolie or Emilio Estevez wanting to get jobs based on their talent and not their parents' reputations. This isn't really the same."
"Names are important. Names have power. Names label things, and seriously, do you really think I can allow myself to continue to be labeled by my parents, who won't even acknowledge that I exist most of the time, much less my true self?"
Adam's fingers closed around his keys, and Brad knew he was lost. "Maybe," Adam said. He shrugged, eyes vague and far off. "I don't know. This isn't really my thing."
Now, when Brad watches Adam on TV or reads interviews or whatever, he thinks that maybe Adam is starting to get it--the idea of a persona, of embodying a concept that is more you than you could ever hope to be in everyday life, the compulsion to define yourself and not let your past determine your future. He thinks Adam is starting to get it, finally, but the Rolling Stone interview still comes as a revelation to Brad. It's different seeing proof in newsprint. And he knew Adam was going to talk about him, he knew there would be pictures because Adam made sure they got his permission and all, but having the hard evidence of Adam's evolution in his mailbox is still kind of freaky. It's kind of fucked up, and it kind of fucks Brad up, too.
"Get over yourself," Parker advises him, stealing a fry from Brad's plate that he chews with his mouth open just to obnoxious. "He clearly has, and it's not about you anymore. It's called growing up. You should try it sometime. You might learn something." Parker reaches across the table to steal another fry, but Brad smacks him on the hand sharply the way his mother used to do when he was a kid, only she'd say, "It's impolite to reach across the table, Brad. Always pass from left to right." Brad wants to eat his own fries, though, damnit. He didn't wait twenty minutes for a booth to open up so Parker could eat his food.
"Cassidy thinks he wants to get back together," Brad says. "Cassidy says the new boyfriend is just window dressing to get people to leave him alone about who he's dating and all that shit."
"Cassidy is just as deluded as you are," Parker says, rolling his eyes. "If you want my Psych 101 analysis, you're all so sickeningly in love with each other that it's just a co-dependent clusterfuck of retardedness waiting to explode."
"I'm pretty sure I never want your Psych 101 analysis," Brad says. He stares down at his plate, a shiny cream circle sullied with blobs of color--the brown-yellow pool of mustard, the slightly congealed mass of ketchup, the golden crisp of fries and the pink and purple stripes that flash on and off over everything, reflections from the neon sign hanging over their booth, proclaiming, "Sorry, we're open!" He pushes the plate towards Parker. He's not hungry anymore, and he doesn't want to think about this.
Parker's never right about anything, anyway.
*
Brad has seen every episode of Buffy at least three times, even the really shitty ones about gigantic cannibalistic insects or creepy robot John Ritter and his closet of dead wives, so when Rachel says, "I think we need to discuss this Evil Veiny Willow Place you're falling into," Brad knows she's serious. He knows it's serious, this is all Serious Business of the highest order, and he would totally pay attention because he doesn't want to be in the Evil Veiny Willow Place pretty much ever, especially if it means only wearing black or becoming a lesbian, except that he's much too busy puking to really concentrate. Instead, he just presses his cheek against the cold porcelain of the toilet and hopes the room will decide to stop spinning any moment now. It's just really unpleasant, and not very nice of the room, of which Brad thinks he's taken very good care these past two years of habitation.
"Did you hear me?" Rachel's voice is cold and the toe of her boot stings sharply against his calf when she nudges him. "The Evil Veiny Willow Place, Brad. And you know I love you, but I don't love your puke or almost getting us arrested or the way you treat people when you're like this."
Her voice shakes a little on the last couple words and Brad opens his eyes, looks up at her sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her eyes clenched closed tightly like tiny fists in her pale face. Brad heard her, he did. He wants to hear her. But it's hard when he feels like he's dying.
He says, "I love you, too," and then he's puking again. It feels like his whole body is emptying itself, purging the toxins and leaving him a hollowed-out husk, ready to be filled with something else, something better, something that isn't trying its best to kill him. He wishes there were something like that for his brain, some way to scoop out the uncategorized mess in there, so he could have another chance to get it right, like a start over button that could somehow turn him into a person he liked or actually wanted to be, instead of this fake non-thing he's transformed himself into.
Two weeks ago, he was with Adam. Two weeks ago, Adam was waiting for him when he got home from the after-after party of seeing Adam at the Staples Center. Two weeks ago, Adam was sitting on the aqua and maroon patterned carpeting of the stairway leading up to Brad's apartment, waiting for him and smiling a little and saying, "I just needed to be somewhere that felt like home."
Adam never lived here, they never lived together, but Brad knew what he meant anyway. It wasn't a 'where' at all, but a familiarity, a sense of the universe being right somehow just because you were with someone who just knew without being told. Brad nodded and unlocked the door, and even though he knew Adam had a boyfriend, knew they'd gone to Santa Barbara on holiday together like they were Bridget Jones and Hugh Grant or some shit, knew that Adam really liked the guy and Brad should tell him to go back to his hotel or his bus or wherever he was supposed to be that was pretty much anywhere but here--even though Brad knew, he didn't care. Because Adam was different now, Adam had proved him wrong, and that changed everything. It mattered. Brad wanted to prove it, too.
He let Adam in and he let Adam kiss him, let himself fall back into their old ways, let Adam push him to his knees and press him back against the wall, let Adam fuck his mouth until the world narrowed to just this: the feel of Adam around him and inside him and through him, and it felt like home, just like Adam said it would. Because this was the part they'd always been good at; this was the only thing that ever felt easy or right or perfect about them together, when the world went away and it was just the two of them and nothing else mattered. It felt like freedom and safety and release, like Brad knew his place in this world, could see how everything fit together into one brilliant mosaic with them at the center, radiating.
Afterward, though, Adam looked down at him, sprawled against the wall with come on his fingers from jerking himself off, and said his name in a way that Brad knew really meant, "I'm so fucking sorry." Brad never hated his name more than when Adam said it with that sad, surprised look in his eyes. Adam didn't say anything else, just his name in that horrible fucking way, and when he turned to go, Brad grabbed his wrist tight like he was trying to leave a mark, said, "Stay."
Adam didn't look at him when he said, "I wish I could, but it's not right yet. I thought maybe--but it's not," and when Adam left, he didn't look back.
Two weeks ago, Brad failed at a test he didn't even know he was taking at the time, and now he can't decide who he hates more: himself, or Adam. But he's the only one that's here and he's the one that he can punish. He's the one that deserves it, anyway, and sometimes Brad wonders if he really is such a manipulative fuck that he'd arrange his own rock bottom fucking pathetic moment of clarity like he was living in a Lifetime movie about how Drugs And Booze Are Bad, except instead of Tori Spelling he's got Rachel with her fists-for-eyes, punishing him even more with how she actually cares, even after all these things that he's done.
"I don't want to be in the Evil Veiny Willow Place," he says, his voice hoarse and thin. He swallows against the burn of stomach acid in his throat and shifts until he can lay his cheek against her knee instead of the toilet. He closes his eyes. He's so tired. Of everything. He's just so fucking exhausted.
Her fingers are cool against the back of his neck when she says, "Then don't be."
*
Brad doesn't go to Burning Man.
It hurts. It's weird how much it hurts because he didn't think it was all that important to him and last year was kind of awful; last year he and Adam were all but broken up but he was the only one who knew it. Him and Neil, who cornered Brad in his tent during an acid trip, wrapped an arm around Brad's upper arm so tightly he left a thumb-shaped bruise on the delicate skin of Brad's inner arm, said, "You really fucked him up, you know that, right?"
For a second, Brad thought Neil was going to kiss him, and it was a very strange moment of being utterly repulsed and fascinated at the same time. Neil wasn't unattractive but he wasn't Brad's type, either, and even though they were the same age, Brad still felt infinitely older, and maybe he was. Neil didn't grow up gay in suburban Dallas; Neil didn't have to go to church every Sunday with his family and listen to some red-faced white guy attempt to invalidate everything Brad knew to be true about himself while his mother watched his face for any signs of redemption, her fingers knuckle-white tight around her hymnal.
Brad just looked at Neil and said, "I know. If I didn't love him, I wouldn't have bothered."
It was only right, Brad thinks, that it ended at Burning Man, because that's where it started, really. They'd been together, kind of, before that. They'd fucked a few times and gotten high a few times and almost ended before they began because Brad didn't know how to take shit seriously; he didn't know at nineteen that he didn't have to be a cliche that fucked any hot guy he could, so he almost fucked it up, but at Burning Man none of that mattered. At Burning Man, lying on his back in the sand staring up at the night sky, the stars like pin pricks against the pure blackness, cracks where the light gets through, Brad thought, and Adam's fingers laced in between his until Brad couldn't tell which hand was his--at Burning Man he felt the reality of his own small, unimportant existence.
"You're important to me," Adam said, quietly beneath the din of the drum circle beating out a frenzied rhythm at the edge of camp, like a secret.
"It's not a bad thing, being insignificant," Brad said. "It's freedom, you know? No expectations, no obligations or pressures. I could do anything and it would be an accomplishment as long as it satisfies me, because no one else gives a fuck."
"I give a fuck," Adam said, and turned his head to look at Brad, teeth flashing white in a sharp smile.
Brad didn't just fuck Adam up. He knows this. He knows exactly how low he is and maybe he's not at the Evil Veiny Willow Place yet, but he's getting there fast, he's picking up momentum. His birthday comes and goes and he's twenty-four now, he's almost old and he hasn't accomplished anything, or at least not anything that wasn't directly linked to Adam. Cassidy says there's nothing wrong with that. Cassidy tells him that's what fame is, and Adam is happy to bring them along if he can, and Brad nods like he's agreeing, but he knows better because he remembers what he told Adam that night in the alley and he's knows it's still true, even if it's not true about Adam anymore. Even if he's just talking about himself, now.
The morning after his birthday, hungover with the taste of last night's martinis still on his tongue and last night's hookup still sleeping in his bed, Brad looks at himself in the mirror and thinks, what a fucking cliche. "Today," he tells his reflection, "is the first day of the rest of your life." He could maybe do something with it, for a change. It's an idea, anyway.
*
Brad gets a job at a straight bar all the way out near Malibu where no one knows who he is and anyone who did wouldn't give a shit anyway. He takes day shifts so he can work on his script, and it's hard at first because he thought he knew what the story was about, but it turns out to be completely different, not anything like 500 Days of Summer, even without the redemptive cheesy ending. It's more like Blue Velvet or a Dickens novel; circus freaks and coming-of-age metaphors and learning how to be a person in a world that's scarier than he ever imagined.
The real world, it turns out, is completely different from high school after all, and not in the way he thought when he was a kid doing everything he could to leave. It's hard and it hurts but it's good, too. He's learning and growing, Brad thinks. He's figuring shit out, or at least he's figuring himself out, and that's kind of important. It's maybe the most important thing he's ever done.
He takes a week off at Christmas to fly to Dallas to visit his mom. She got the house in the divorce and his old room has a treadmill in it now, but it's pretty much exactly the same as when he left. He's been back a few times since he moved to LA, but not often and never more than once a year, because as much as he knows that LA isn't any better, there's just something about this place and these people that make him feel like a stranger in his own skin. He's always surprised by how little anything changes. The HEB is exactly the same, the lawns are still perfectly manicured and the people still lose all ability to drive at the slightest hint of weather. His parents are exactly the same--distant, absent father, mother in denial, and him hiding in his bedroom with the stash of weed he left beneath the loose knob on the bed post, trying to escape.
On Christmas Eve after his mom has gone to bed, lying beneath the gigantic white plastic monstrosity of a Christmas tree his mother has set up in the living room, watching the blue lights flash in slow fades of smoky light between the branches, Brad calls Adam. Adam doesn't pick up; the phone doesn't even ring, just goes straight to voicemail, but that's kind of what Brad expected because Adam is important now, Adam has a life and a career and he's not going to answer his phone at two in the morning, not even when it's Brad calling, or maybe especially then.
"I just wanted to say that I miss you and I love you, and you totally proved me wrong. And just--I want you to be happy, you know? Be happy, Adam. I'm not sorry because I think, you know, everything turned out how it was supposed to in the end, so I'm not apologizing, I'm just saying. Be happy. Because you deserve it."
Brad falls asleep under the tree with his phone on his chest, and when he wakes up the next morning, there's a text from Adam that says, "So do you." More than anything, Brad wants to believe that it's true.
*
It's two thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in January when Brad finishes his screenplay. He pours himself a large glass of cheap white wine from the fridge behind the bar to celebrate, and he's not even sure if it's good or meaningful or if it even has a point, but he kind of doesn't care either way. The point was never really the story; he just wanted to create something true. He wanted to make something that felt real for once, without some sort of ulterior motive or ambition--just to tell a story that wasn't cute or perfect or perfectly flawed in that oh-so-precious Indie way, but actually said something real about him as a person like everyone else. An unimportant, small person who maybe doesn't get the dream job and become instantly famous and recognized for his talent. Someone who doesn't even get the boy in the end, but he'll be okay and he'll be fine because that's what real life is.
He finishes his wine and sets his glass down on the bar next to his laptop, watching the cursor blink on the 'd' in 'end,' wondering if that's the sort of declaration that needs a period, or if it's more meta to leave it hanging incomplete. The sun is streaming through the colored glass in the Coors Light window to the left of the door, a soft butter yellow that highlights a stream of dust mites to the scratched wood flooring. The door chimes and a guy walks in, takes off his sunglasses, and smiles.
It's Adam, and Brad thinks, this isn't real life, this isn't how life goes, but then Adam's leans forward, elbows on the bar and shoulders hunched around his ears, eyes wide and clear, says, "I was looking for you," and Brad wishes he hadn't just downed a glass of wine because this is real. It's perfectly real.
Brad smiles back, because he's scared out of his mind, because he doesn't believe in love, because he's spent the past year and a half fucking around and it was maybe a waste but it was important, too. Because even if this isn't his unperfectly mundane ending, it's real life, and he's happy. "You found me," he says. He's an Indie cliche after all, but it's better than being a parody, and anyway, at least it's totally and completely true.
Author: phaballa
Pairing: Adam/Brad
Rating: Adult
Word Count: ~8,800
Song: "The Man Who Stole the World" from The Man Who Stole the World
Warning(s): drug use
Summary: Brad doesn't believe in love.
Brad doesn't believe in love.
Well, that's not exactly true. He doesn't believe in falling in love, if he's going to be precise about it, and as it turns out, Brad happens to be a pretty big fan of precision. He would even go so far as to say he believes in it; he believes in being direct and to the point, in saying exactly what you mean and meaning what you say, in being as honest and forthright as possible with little to no waste of words or emotion or regret. It's not love that means never having to say you're sorry, it's the lack of regret when everything inevitably turns to shit and the wife you gave up everything for dies of cancer. Luckily that will never happen to Brad, because of how he doesn't believe in love, but also because he doesn't live in a lame '70s version of Romeo and Juliet and he'd never marry a woman, much less someone who went to Radcliffe. That's just gross.
He's been in love, so he knows it exists. Other people are, in fact, free to fall in love at any time, even to women who go to Radcliffe and look like Ali MacGraw, it's just that Brad refuses to have anything to do with it. He's planning to write a screenplay on the topic very soon, actually. It's already half-written in his brain and he thinks it will be like a much better 500 Days of Summer with an actually believable ending that isn't redemptive vis a vie love in any way. No, this will be about a man who figures out that he's much happier without the complications of falling in love, because he himself is so awesome that he doesn't need anyone else to make him feel like a worthwhile human being.
Also, because it's a fuck of a lot less painful, but Brad doesn't feel like discussing that portion of tonight's program. Not that he's projecting or anything. It's all fiction in the end.
*
When he was seventeen, Brad was pretty sure that Texas was approximately equivalent to the eighth circle of Hell, but with at least three times as many corrupt politicians as Dante ever imagined was possible. Not just Texas, which after all was bigger than France and difficult to stereotype now that it was half Mexican and half redneck and half fire ants, but more specifically the affluent Dallas suburb in which he languished the summer after graduation with only his sister, his best dyke, and his dealer for comfort. The summer before, he'd spent the majority of it in Cedar Falls helping put together the Hell House and rehearsing for his role as "Fag Dying of AIDS" while secretly documenting the entire experience for a performance art piece on the irony of irony. Not that anyone in the Eighth Circle had really understood it, even Candy His Best Dyke, who gave him a lecture on internalized homophobia while simultaneously denying her own Dykehood, which Brad was pretty sure only proved his point, but the final edited version was brilliant if Brad was inclined to be modest about it; it got him into film school, anyway.
But that was last summer, when he had the motivation of getting into college to escape his suburban Hell, plus the added bonus of his pick of a hundred Cedar Falls Christian boys wearing purity rings to convince that it's not gay if you're not the one taking it up the ass. But this summer was a waiting game, which seemed like much less a game and more like actual torture, and certainly not as entertaining as Project Purity. Five weeks until California. Five more weeks of smoking up with Candy and refusing to leave the air conditioned safety of his bedroom-car-Starbucks unless it was to attend a swim meet at his parents' country club, because only swimmers in speedos could shake him from his pre-Cali daze.
Okay, so maybe 'torture' was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was all so boring and utterly mundane. He was far too young to be feminine mystiquing it up already. That life stage was meant to wait until he'd accomplished all his goals (A: go to film school, learn, etc. B: make brilliant film. C: get famous. D: and hopefully rich.) and was ready to settle down with some sugar daddy in the Hamptons, or wherever rich, idle people will go in ten years.
Candy said, "I don't get why you have to go all the way to California. Austin's only three hours away."
"It's still within the boundaries of the Eighth Circle," Brad said, and passed her the pipe.
Candy rolled her eyes. "Texas isn't that bad. You just want to get as far away from us as possible. Deny all knowledge of your humble beginnings so you can Valley of the Dolls it up in LA."
"Please. Like I'd ever need to resort to amphetamines to stay thin. That's what anorexia is for." He took the pipe back and it was almost cached, but there was just enough for one last hit, which he held in his throat as long as he could stand, until the hot burn of it made his eyes water. Candy was sprawled on the faux white bear rug in the center of his bedroom, a fashion nightmare of dyed black and magenta hair, combat boots and cargo shorts and a new vintage Tide t-shirt, the very picture of a baby dyke if he ever saw one, and usually her extreme level of denial annoyed him, but today, high off the very best hydro his dealer could acquire, Brad found her incomparably endearing. At the same time, she made him sad the way that everyone here did, so utterly stuck inside the DFW bubble of rich white trash and that particularly heady combination of entitlement and ignorance that came with too much money too fast without the talent to back it up. Candy wasn't as bad as the rest, though, because at least she cared about shit, at least she had her own thoughts and feelings and opinions and she gave a damn enough to bother expressing them. She wasn't a sheep except about him, which was exactly the way Brad preferred his friends--free thinkers up until the point where they disagreed with him, because he got challenged enough about his right to exist from everyone else, he really didn't need it from his friends, too.
And the thing was, he knew she was right; he knew he could've gone to UT with her and it wouldn't have been like high school at all. He knew that Austin was a different world, that nothing could really match the self-righteous fakery of the Eighth Circle, but it was too close anyway. It was only three hours away, but anything within a day's driving distance would never be far enough. It reminded him of that song, the one about how in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely. Brad thought he would rather be lonely; he would rather get lost in a crowd. He didn't want to stop to consider what it was better than. That was kind of the whole point.
Because maybe he was running away. Maybe this was like the time when he was six and decided to run away from home, only no one ever realized he was even gone because he wasn't allowed to cross the street so he just kept circling the block over and over instead, hoping to spot an alternate route. He'd been trying to escape from pretty much the moment he was aware enough of this world to realize that he didn't belong in it, and his dad always said that men faced their problems head-on, they didn't back down or hide or give in, because apparently what it meant for his dad to be a man was actually being a stubborn asshole incapable of rational thought. But Brad had always known. When a place didn't want you, politeness dictated that you should probably just get the fuck out, said the joker to the thief. He was fairly certain that Emily Post would agree.
He would never be anything like his dad, anyway. Thank fucking Jesus for that.
So maybe he was running away, but Brad liked to think he was running to something, instead. "Semantics," Candy said, waving a hand in the air above her head for a moment to emphasize her point before letting it drop to the white cushion of faux bear fur beneath her. "It's like. Like saying seedless watermelon isn't fruit. Because of the no seeds thing. But it's still watermelon. You can't get past the fact that it's still a freaking watermelon."
She was maybe right about that, too, but Brad couldn't bother making himself care. He was too high to bother with anything, really, and he planned to stay that way until his sentence in the Eighth Circle was officially up.
Five weeks.
*
No one ever explicitly tells Brad that Adam is officially dating again, but it's not exactly hard to figure out even if Fox insists on labeling the new guy as Adam's "friend" whenever they show him in the audience, looking like an even gayer version of Bert Reynolds circa Shampoo and clearly stoned for every taping, or at least Brad hopes the guy is stoned, otherwise nothing can ever forgive his hideous fashion choices. And it's not like Adam didn't have plenty of opportunity to tell him about it. They don't talk a lot but they still talk and this seems like something friends would tell each other. Adam's the one who insists that they're friends, that it's important to stay connected, and okay, so maybe Brad doesn't tell Adam about the guys he sees, either, but that's different. Brad's the one who ended things so it's totally different and besides which, Brad doesn't really date. He doesn't do boyfriends.
Brad doesn't believe in love.
They broke up three times, but the second ending was the only one that counted because that was the time Brad said, "You're bringing me down," and he maybe meant it at the time, but he took it back later, only Adam never got over it. Brad's pretty sure he never got over it, either, and he still kind of thinks he was right, even if he knows now that they were bringing each other down because life is a highway and highways are two-way streets.
But in the moment it didn't seem that way. He was high and Adam was sober and that never really worked, and he thought being as honest and cruel about things would actually be a kindness. Clean breaks and all that Oprah bullshit. They were in the back alley behind Hyde or Area or whatever club was popular that week and Brad felt amazing and perfect, perfectly amazing, but Adam's fingers were too tight around his wrist and he kept saying, "You're shaking. Do you even fucking know that?"
Brad knew that, of course he fucking knew. He just snorted a bunch of coke so obviously he was shaking and Adam had done it before, it wasn't like he didn't know what it was like even if he didn't approve anymore, even if he had a bad experience a month ago or whatever and suddenly he was all, "Coke is bad, drugs are bad, I wish you'd stop, it's not even fun." Brad knew the truth, though, which was that drugs made Adam feel out of control; they stripped away all the lies he told himself on a daily basis--the next job will be better, I can move to New York whenever I want to, my talent outweighs my physical shortcomings, confidence is about attitude not content--and left him with the simple truth that he was done at twenty-six because he didn't have the balls to even try to make shit happen. He didn't love it enough, whatever 'it' was that week--music, acting, performing, singing--but it was never enough, either. Adam didn't know what he wanted because he didn't love anything enough to really want it, boyfriends included.
Brad twisted his wrist around in Adam's grip, shivering at the burning slide of skin-on-skin like the Indian burns he used to give his sister and staring at the homeless person slumped against the dumpster just far enough away that Brad couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. Like that David Lynch movie with the lesbians and the blue box and Billy Ray Cyrus, who had a show on the Disney Channel now, and wasn't that all just a metaphor for this moment, really?
So he was high and feeling brutally mean and he said, "You're depressed and you're afraid and you're bringing me down. I can't be with someone who gives up before he even really tries, Adam. I can't love someone who's so afraid of failing that he won't even let himself care."
The corners of Adam's mouth tightened into white spots in his face like the permanent dimples on his sister's Cabbage Patch dolls and his eyes lost focus suddenly. He was staring at the homeless person, too, and Brad thought for a moment that they'd walk over there to get a better look, just to see or find out--what, Brad wasn't sure, but it seemed like what they should be doing, exploring the seedy underbelly to get at the truth of things. Instead, Adam turned away and started off toward the opposite end of the alley, pulling Brad along with him, his fingers around Brad's wrist firm but not the deliciously tight grip of a moment ago.
"Didn't you hear me?" Brad said, because obviously Adam had heard him but he kind of expected more of a reaction. Anger or a "fuck you" or something; not this soft, hazy look in his eyes or the quiet way he shrugged and said, "If you're going to break up with me, I'd just rather it not happen with some drunk homeless guy watching and pissing himself, okay?"
At the time, Brad hadn't really thought of it as breaking up; he was high and fucked up and dealing with his own shit. He was about to graduate and he didn't have a job or even a prospect of one, and he could feel Adam becoming resignedly, complacently comfortable in this non-life they were leading, which was enough but it wasn't good. It wasn't even bad, really, more like limbo--like sitting in a doctor's waiting room without actually having an appointment or any chance of your name being called and only Sports Illustrated for entertainment. So he didn't mean for them to break up, but he knows now that it was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do, because he said that Adam was bringing him down, and maybe there was more to it than that but Adam never really tried to call him on it, which only proved Brad's point. Adam never really tried, and they didn't work. Not together.
This is what Brad tells himself week after week, watching Adam on television and purposely smoking up beforehand to prevent himself from analyzing anything too much. Cassidy says, "If you're still in love with him, just fucking tell him already. Drake annoys the shit out of me. I mean, have you seen his shirts? Fucking hideous."
Brad shifts the phone to his left shoulder and takes the last hit from his pipe. "I don't believe in love," he says in an exhale of smoke, and Cassidy laughs, sharp and loud in his ear. On the television screen, someone blurry and male is murdering a disco song. Brad closes his eyes against it.
"Bullshit," Cassidy says. "You believe in astrology. You believe in reincarnation. If you were rich, you'd probably believe in Xenu. Of course you believe in love."
Brad shrugs and lets Ryan Seacrest's voice wash over him like the warmest, smuggest blanket ever invented, says, "I believe in love, but it don't believe in me."
"Don't call me again until you're willing to stop quoting song lyrics and become a useful member of society," Cassidy tells him, "or at least until you talk to Adam. You have to take responsibility for your fucked up shit at some point, Brad."
"I wish you wouldn't call me that," Brad says, but the line is just dead air. Brad falls asleep before Adam's performance and when he wakes up at three in the morning, an infomercial for the Snuggie is on the television and his phone is still open on his chest, but he can't remember who he called or what they talked about, so it probably isn't important, anyway.
*
The third time they broke up, it was almost like a non-issue. Brad never used to believe people when they said things like, "It was a mutual decision," or "We just drifted apart." If those things were true, Brad was pretty sure that those two people were never really in love in the first place because they obviously didn't care enough to try to hold shit together.
Now Brad knows that sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes you get so tired from trying and fighting what seems inevitable that you just stop. You let go. You drift apart. Sometimes cliches are cliche for a reason, and Brad's pretty sure that his relationship with Adam covered all of them.
Adam called him the Saturday after Thanksgiving at three in the morning, drunk and confused. "When did we break up?" he asked, and Brad had to think about it for a minute before saying, "About a month ago, I think."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Not why did it happen, but why didn't you say anything. Adam's words were slurred and rough and Brad felt the sharpness of them, half-accusation, half-guilt. Adam should feel guilty, Brad thought, for letting this happen. They both should, but Brad was pretty sure that wasn't Adam's version of this guilt, because Adam had always expected this to end, and maybe that's why he never fought very hard to keep it going in the first place. Adam never thought he deserved it, and at that moment, Brad maybe agreed with him a little. It didn't make him feel better, though.
"You never said anything," Adam repeated, and Brad didn't answer because it wasn't a real question; it wasn't even a question for him. He just said goodnight and went back to sleep. Just because Adam had finally stopped to think about shit, that didn't change anything for Brad. They were still broken up and he was still in love with someone who didn't really know how to love him back, and it still really fucking sucked.
*
Despite all evidence to the contrary (ie smoking up almost daily, partying way too much, not having an actual job, and so on), Brad is actually quite busy. Very soon he plans to take over the world, and it turns out that world domination is a full-time job and quite demanding at that. He has videos to film and edit and upload to the fascist state of youtube; he's got songs to record and mix and photoshoots to plan and websites to run and fans to accumulate. He never talks about Adam but he talks around him enough that people start to pay attention, and that was kind of the whole point in the first place. He doesn't consider himself a famewhore, just opportunistic, and anyway, his picture has already been flashed on national television through no effort of his own, so he can't be blamed for taking advantage of Adam's sudden fame. Bill O'Reilly did all the work for him.
He doesn't particularly want to go to the American Idol finale. Not even the finale, but the after party, because Adam only gets a few tickets for the actual show and they're going to his family and the new boyfriend, which is as it should be. At least, that's what Cassidy tells him before going into a long and overly-detailed description of the concept for the jacket he's designing for Adam's final performance and Brad is forced to tune him out, because he loves clothes and he loves fashion, but there are only so many ways to describe rivets before it all just gets repetitively boring.
So Brad isn't planning on going to the after party thing even though he was invited, even though everyone else will be there and Alisan stopped by Thursday karaoke at Hamburger Mary's last week to tell him that Adam really wants him to come. But then the night before the finale, Adam calls him and says, "It won't mean as much if you're not there," and Brad immediately feels like a giant cunt for even doubting him. The guy is calling him after his last-ditch Idol efforts, voice a little raw and a lot tired, and yes, Brad is a total cunt. Adam's never been anything but sincere, even if it was mostly about his lack of sincerity.
"But what if you lose?" Brad says.
"It's not about winning or losing, though. I just wanted to see what would happen, you know? It's like you said that time--the time we broke up in front of that homeless guy?"
"I remember," Brad says. He was a dick that time; it's not really a pleasant memory and he kind of hoped Adam had forgotten it, but apparently not. Being a dick about Adam seems to be a recurring theme in his life.
"I spent so long being afraid of shit. Of basically everything. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to be able to control it all and I told myself that not risking the chance of failure was more important than succeeding could ever be. And so I guess I needed to prove you wrong. And I think." He pauses and laughs a little, softly. "No matter what happens tomorrow, I proved you wrong, so you kind of owe it to me to be there."
*
The first thing that Brad ever told Adam was a lie, a really stupid one, and he's pretty sure that's why their relationship was doomed for inevitable failure, because how can something based on a lie ever amount to anything lasting and strong and healthy and all that other Gay Men Are from Saturn bullshit, even if it did end up being true eventually? It was at a party and Brad was buzzed but not drunk, only two weakish margaritas an hour ago so he was basically almost sober, even, but Adam was completely wasted, cornering him on the fire escape and giving him a long lecture about the importance of getting his astrological chart done.
Brad didn't care about astrology or what his rising sign was or how the position of the planets might affect his job prospects, but he liked the shine of tequila on Adam's bottom lip and wanted to know if his hair was as soft as it looked, so when Adam stared at him expectantly, Brad just said, "I'm totally into astrology," and that was enough. Adam took him home and his lip only tasted like tequila the first time they kissed, but it flushed red and ragged when Brad bit at it until Adam held him down with a wide palm in the center of Brad's chest, so narrow that Adam's fingers lined up along his collarbone and left a necklace of blue-smudged bruises. Brad wasn't even close to being a virgin and he'd been fucked before, he'd even had really good sex before, once he figured out how to go about getting it, but this was completely new. It didn't feel like sex. It didn't even feel like fucking. It was more like ownership and Brad thought, he's drunk and it doesn't matter, but afterward when Brad tried to leave, Adam wrapped his fingers around Brad's wrist like he was trying to give Brad a matching bracelet and said, "Stay."
Brad didn't have anywhere else to be, anyway.
*
When Brad first moved to LA, he thought it would be different. He never pretended that his particular suburban hell upbringing was unique or special; every teenager thinks they have it bad, and every gay teenager thinks it’ll be better in the real world outside the bubble of high school cruelty/country club snobbery/ ignorant parents and teachers and pastors who don’t understand and don’t care enough to see them as people instead of missions. They grow up with this idea of "the real world," as if it's somewhere they can get to, as if childhood is some sort of macabre dreamland and the real world will be better because it'll be real. It'll make everything that came before, by definition, fake and therefor meaningless, just preparation for when real life starts at eighteen or whatever.
Except for the part where, in the real world, things didn't really work that way.
And it was hell because high school always is, and Joss Whedon was right about a lot of things but especially the hell part, especially how growing up feels like the end of the world, but Brad knew it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. He’d never been in the closet, never bothered trying to hide what he was because he was too flaming to get away with it, and he thinks that helped in a way. He had to be himself because he never had a choice. There wasn’t anyone else he could be, and even if most of the people he knew ignored or repressed it, Brad never could. He never wanted to.
Which was why it was so ironic that when he finally escaped, went west, young man, like Hurst and the Village People commanded, well-nothing changed. Technically, LA is different. Technically, people don’t hate him for being him here, and the only person who’s spit on him since he moved here was some drunk chick from a reality show who thought he was hitting on her fake reality show boyfriend. (He was, but that’s not the point.) He can go to a club here and not worry about a raid, and when he walks down the street in women’s lingerie and a wig, he might get hit on or stopped by a middle-aged dude in a BMW looking for a blowjob, but he won’t get his ass kicked, and that’s important. It means something.
So LA is different, in a way, but most of the time Brad thinks it’s just pretending to be different. It’s full of rich people who will never think he’s good enough, just like Dallas, and in a way it’s almost worse, because instead of trying to convert him or save him or whatever, people in LA just pretend that he doesn’t exist. Instead of being honest about their derision, they invalidate and deny and it's like his mother all over again, never acknowledging the gigantic pink elephant in the room, even when it's fucking a second, even gayer pink elephant. LA is its own sort of bubble in a scary, Blue Velvet kind of way, and he's never been blackmailed into having scary sex with Dennis Hopper, but it's pretty horrifying anyway, to finally realize that everything he imagined about the real world was basically a lie he told himself, and it’s not until Candy comes to visit and they’re lying on the cold tile of his kitchen floor passing his pipe back and forth, trying to get as high as humanly possible off an eighth of dro, that he realizes that absolutely nothing has changed. Including him.
"I'm fucking awful," he says, following the jagged line of the crack in his ceiling from its originating spot above the stove until it reaches the cabinets on the opposite wall and spiders out into too many small breaks for his eyes to follow right now, when he's high as balls and feeling completely sorry for his life. "How do I even exist? My hypocrisy knows no bounds."
"Oh my god, whatever," Candy says, knocking the toes of her combat boots together to create a slow, dull rhythm that goes thunk-thunk, thu-thunk like a funeral dirge or a Nine Inch Nails song, but one of the newer ones with no words or melody that barely resemble music at all, not the oldie-goodies, the ones about S&M he used to masturbate to when he was sixteen. "This is not a movie and you're not Doc Holiday or some shit, trying to make Tombstone a better place. And Adam Lambert is for sure not Wyatt Earp. Unless he married a whore when I wasn't paying attention."
"Okay firstly, if this were Tombstone, I'd totally be Kate, not Doc. I'm not a lunger, thanks, and I forgo bustles whenever I need to make a fast getaway."
"How lewd," Candy says. Thunk-thunk go her boots.
"Secondly, Adam would be Ringo. Cold and heartless and beautiful and perfect." Brad frowns, because that's not quite right in that it's totally the opposite of right, but it's definitely what he wants to believe and his brain is incapable of enforcing reality at the moment.
"And dead," Candy says. "Doc kills him in the end."
"Well, he was no daisy. No daisy at all." He pauses. "Adam is kind of a daisy though. Now. He didn't used to be, though. He used to be kind of retarded, and that was almost better because it made me feel less retarded? And now that he's not so retarded, he's making me look bad in comparison."
Candy rolls her head to look at him, eyes glassy behind her square frame Lisa Loeb glasses that haven't been in fashion since the Backstreet Boys were begging people to quit playing games with their hearts, says, "Can you even begin to unpack the Betty Draper levels of neuroses in that statement?"
Brad turns his head away, closes his eyes and concentrates on the feel of the cold ceramic against the bare skin of his arms like a chilly embrace, like he's Bella Swan without the suicidal tendencies. He's too high to unpack anything, and anyway, this is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be a break from all the real world bullshit drama. It's supposed to be about slipping back into Candyland where they were young and (slightly more) innocent and infinitely less jaded, so they can reflect on how much more awesome they are now, because they are adults and real people and didn't everything work out just how they thought it would, but completely different at the same time?
Except it's not like that at all, and Candy's fucking awful glasses are just another reminder of how everything's exactly the same in the worst possible way, because he's exactly the same, and his hypocrisy really does know no bounds.
"You're totally harshing," Brad says, swallowing hard against the scratch of smoke in his throat. "You're no huckleberry at all."
*
Adam never liked the whole name thing, but Brad always thought that was just because Adam never really understood it. Adam was a feeler, not a thinker; he didn't like to argue or debate and the very idea of the politics of self-identity was enough to get him smiling tensely and saying things like, "I try to leave the complicated shit to the smart people."
"You don't think it's important? Like, figuring out who you are and how you fit into the world and how to create a space that maybe doesn't exist in this dinosaur society that is our parents' legacy to us?"
Adam just shook his head and shifted from one foot to the other, one elbow on the kitchen counter with his hand hovering over his keys and a metaphorical foot already out the door along with his brain and his desire to stay here with Brad and Nick and Caroline during any sort of existential-as-applicable-to-real-life discussion. Brad watched blatantly while pretending to stir the pasta as Adam's guilt warred with his own conviction of his stupidity until Adam finally said, "It's not my parents legacy."
"People change their names all the time," Brad said. Adam's thumb brushed the ring on his key chain, snagging the silver hoop and dragging it toward him an infinitesimal amount, like he could possibly hide the whole thing where he was about to run away. Adam was big on avoidance. Brad maybe got high or drunk to forget shit more than he should, but he preferred that to self-imposed ignorance any day.
"For personal reasons, though. Like Angelina Jolie or Emilio Estevez wanting to get jobs based on their talent and not their parents' reputations. This isn't really the same."
"Names are important. Names have power. Names label things, and seriously, do you really think I can allow myself to continue to be labeled by my parents, who won't even acknowledge that I exist most of the time, much less my true self?"
Adam's fingers closed around his keys, and Brad knew he was lost. "Maybe," Adam said. He shrugged, eyes vague and far off. "I don't know. This isn't really my thing."
Now, when Brad watches Adam on TV or reads interviews or whatever, he thinks that maybe Adam is starting to get it--the idea of a persona, of embodying a concept that is more you than you could ever hope to be in everyday life, the compulsion to define yourself and not let your past determine your future. He thinks Adam is starting to get it, finally, but the Rolling Stone interview still comes as a revelation to Brad. It's different seeing proof in newsprint. And he knew Adam was going to talk about him, he knew there would be pictures because Adam made sure they got his permission and all, but having the hard evidence of Adam's evolution in his mailbox is still kind of freaky. It's kind of fucked up, and it kind of fucks Brad up, too.
"Get over yourself," Parker advises him, stealing a fry from Brad's plate that he chews with his mouth open just to obnoxious. "He clearly has, and it's not about you anymore. It's called growing up. You should try it sometime. You might learn something." Parker reaches across the table to steal another fry, but Brad smacks him on the hand sharply the way his mother used to do when he was a kid, only she'd say, "It's impolite to reach across the table, Brad. Always pass from left to right." Brad wants to eat his own fries, though, damnit. He didn't wait twenty minutes for a booth to open up so Parker could eat his food.
"Cassidy thinks he wants to get back together," Brad says. "Cassidy says the new boyfriend is just window dressing to get people to leave him alone about who he's dating and all that shit."
"Cassidy is just as deluded as you are," Parker says, rolling his eyes. "If you want my Psych 101 analysis, you're all so sickeningly in love with each other that it's just a co-dependent clusterfuck of retardedness waiting to explode."
"I'm pretty sure I never want your Psych 101 analysis," Brad says. He stares down at his plate, a shiny cream circle sullied with blobs of color--the brown-yellow pool of mustard, the slightly congealed mass of ketchup, the golden crisp of fries and the pink and purple stripes that flash on and off over everything, reflections from the neon sign hanging over their booth, proclaiming, "Sorry, we're open!" He pushes the plate towards Parker. He's not hungry anymore, and he doesn't want to think about this.
Parker's never right about anything, anyway.
*
Brad has seen every episode of Buffy at least three times, even the really shitty ones about gigantic cannibalistic insects or creepy robot John Ritter and his closet of dead wives, so when Rachel says, "I think we need to discuss this Evil Veiny Willow Place you're falling into," Brad knows she's serious. He knows it's serious, this is all Serious Business of the highest order, and he would totally pay attention because he doesn't want to be in the Evil Veiny Willow Place pretty much ever, especially if it means only wearing black or becoming a lesbian, except that he's much too busy puking to really concentrate. Instead, he just presses his cheek against the cold porcelain of the toilet and hopes the room will decide to stop spinning any moment now. It's just really unpleasant, and not very nice of the room, of which Brad thinks he's taken very good care these past two years of habitation.
"Did you hear me?" Rachel's voice is cold and the toe of her boot stings sharply against his calf when she nudges him. "The Evil Veiny Willow Place, Brad. And you know I love you, but I don't love your puke or almost getting us arrested or the way you treat people when you're like this."
Her voice shakes a little on the last couple words and Brad opens his eyes, looks up at her sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her eyes clenched closed tightly like tiny fists in her pale face. Brad heard her, he did. He wants to hear her. But it's hard when he feels like he's dying.
He says, "I love you, too," and then he's puking again. It feels like his whole body is emptying itself, purging the toxins and leaving him a hollowed-out husk, ready to be filled with something else, something better, something that isn't trying its best to kill him. He wishes there were something like that for his brain, some way to scoop out the uncategorized mess in there, so he could have another chance to get it right, like a start over button that could somehow turn him into a person he liked or actually wanted to be, instead of this fake non-thing he's transformed himself into.
Two weeks ago, he was with Adam. Two weeks ago, Adam was waiting for him when he got home from the after-after party of seeing Adam at the Staples Center. Two weeks ago, Adam was sitting on the aqua and maroon patterned carpeting of the stairway leading up to Brad's apartment, waiting for him and smiling a little and saying, "I just needed to be somewhere that felt like home."
Adam never lived here, they never lived together, but Brad knew what he meant anyway. It wasn't a 'where' at all, but a familiarity, a sense of the universe being right somehow just because you were with someone who just knew without being told. Brad nodded and unlocked the door, and even though he knew Adam had a boyfriend, knew they'd gone to Santa Barbara on holiday together like they were Bridget Jones and Hugh Grant or some shit, knew that Adam really liked the guy and Brad should tell him to go back to his hotel or his bus or wherever he was supposed to be that was pretty much anywhere but here--even though Brad knew, he didn't care. Because Adam was different now, Adam had proved him wrong, and that changed everything. It mattered. Brad wanted to prove it, too.
He let Adam in and he let Adam kiss him, let himself fall back into their old ways, let Adam push him to his knees and press him back against the wall, let Adam fuck his mouth until the world narrowed to just this: the feel of Adam around him and inside him and through him, and it felt like home, just like Adam said it would. Because this was the part they'd always been good at; this was the only thing that ever felt easy or right or perfect about them together, when the world went away and it was just the two of them and nothing else mattered. It felt like freedom and safety and release, like Brad knew his place in this world, could see how everything fit together into one brilliant mosaic with them at the center, radiating.
Afterward, though, Adam looked down at him, sprawled against the wall with come on his fingers from jerking himself off, and said his name in a way that Brad knew really meant, "I'm so fucking sorry." Brad never hated his name more than when Adam said it with that sad, surprised look in his eyes. Adam didn't say anything else, just his name in that horrible fucking way, and when he turned to go, Brad grabbed his wrist tight like he was trying to leave a mark, said, "Stay."
Adam didn't look at him when he said, "I wish I could, but it's not right yet. I thought maybe--but it's not," and when Adam left, he didn't look back.
Two weeks ago, Brad failed at a test he didn't even know he was taking at the time, and now he can't decide who he hates more: himself, or Adam. But he's the only one that's here and he's the one that he can punish. He's the one that deserves it, anyway, and sometimes Brad wonders if he really is such a manipulative fuck that he'd arrange his own rock bottom fucking pathetic moment of clarity like he was living in a Lifetime movie about how Drugs And Booze Are Bad, except instead of Tori Spelling he's got Rachel with her fists-for-eyes, punishing him even more with how she actually cares, even after all these things that he's done.
"I don't want to be in the Evil Veiny Willow Place," he says, his voice hoarse and thin. He swallows against the burn of stomach acid in his throat and shifts until he can lay his cheek against her knee instead of the toilet. He closes his eyes. He's so tired. Of everything. He's just so fucking exhausted.
Her fingers are cool against the back of his neck when she says, "Then don't be."
*
Brad doesn't go to Burning Man.
It hurts. It's weird how much it hurts because he didn't think it was all that important to him and last year was kind of awful; last year he and Adam were all but broken up but he was the only one who knew it. Him and Neil, who cornered Brad in his tent during an acid trip, wrapped an arm around Brad's upper arm so tightly he left a thumb-shaped bruise on the delicate skin of Brad's inner arm, said, "You really fucked him up, you know that, right?"
For a second, Brad thought Neil was going to kiss him, and it was a very strange moment of being utterly repulsed and fascinated at the same time. Neil wasn't unattractive but he wasn't Brad's type, either, and even though they were the same age, Brad still felt infinitely older, and maybe he was. Neil didn't grow up gay in suburban Dallas; Neil didn't have to go to church every Sunday with his family and listen to some red-faced white guy attempt to invalidate everything Brad knew to be true about himself while his mother watched his face for any signs of redemption, her fingers knuckle-white tight around her hymnal.
Brad just looked at Neil and said, "I know. If I didn't love him, I wouldn't have bothered."
It was only right, Brad thinks, that it ended at Burning Man, because that's where it started, really. They'd been together, kind of, before that. They'd fucked a few times and gotten high a few times and almost ended before they began because Brad didn't know how to take shit seriously; he didn't know at nineteen that he didn't have to be a cliche that fucked any hot guy he could, so he almost fucked it up, but at Burning Man none of that mattered. At Burning Man, lying on his back in the sand staring up at the night sky, the stars like pin pricks against the pure blackness, cracks where the light gets through, Brad thought, and Adam's fingers laced in between his until Brad couldn't tell which hand was his--at Burning Man he felt the reality of his own small, unimportant existence.
"You're important to me," Adam said, quietly beneath the din of the drum circle beating out a frenzied rhythm at the edge of camp, like a secret.
"It's not a bad thing, being insignificant," Brad said. "It's freedom, you know? No expectations, no obligations or pressures. I could do anything and it would be an accomplishment as long as it satisfies me, because no one else gives a fuck."
"I give a fuck," Adam said, and turned his head to look at Brad, teeth flashing white in a sharp smile.
Brad didn't just fuck Adam up. He knows this. He knows exactly how low he is and maybe he's not at the Evil Veiny Willow Place yet, but he's getting there fast, he's picking up momentum. His birthday comes and goes and he's twenty-four now, he's almost old and he hasn't accomplished anything, or at least not anything that wasn't directly linked to Adam. Cassidy says there's nothing wrong with that. Cassidy tells him that's what fame is, and Adam is happy to bring them along if he can, and Brad nods like he's agreeing, but he knows better because he remembers what he told Adam that night in the alley and he's knows it's still true, even if it's not true about Adam anymore. Even if he's just talking about himself, now.
The morning after his birthday, hungover with the taste of last night's martinis still on his tongue and last night's hookup still sleeping in his bed, Brad looks at himself in the mirror and thinks, what a fucking cliche. "Today," he tells his reflection, "is the first day of the rest of your life." He could maybe do something with it, for a change. It's an idea, anyway.
*
Brad gets a job at a straight bar all the way out near Malibu where no one knows who he is and anyone who did wouldn't give a shit anyway. He takes day shifts so he can work on his script, and it's hard at first because he thought he knew what the story was about, but it turns out to be completely different, not anything like 500 Days of Summer, even without the redemptive cheesy ending. It's more like Blue Velvet or a Dickens novel; circus freaks and coming-of-age metaphors and learning how to be a person in a world that's scarier than he ever imagined.
The real world, it turns out, is completely different from high school after all, and not in the way he thought when he was a kid doing everything he could to leave. It's hard and it hurts but it's good, too. He's learning and growing, Brad thinks. He's figuring shit out, or at least he's figuring himself out, and that's kind of important. It's maybe the most important thing he's ever done.
He takes a week off at Christmas to fly to Dallas to visit his mom. She got the house in the divorce and his old room has a treadmill in it now, but it's pretty much exactly the same as when he left. He's been back a few times since he moved to LA, but not often and never more than once a year, because as much as he knows that LA isn't any better, there's just something about this place and these people that make him feel like a stranger in his own skin. He's always surprised by how little anything changes. The HEB is exactly the same, the lawns are still perfectly manicured and the people still lose all ability to drive at the slightest hint of weather. His parents are exactly the same--distant, absent father, mother in denial, and him hiding in his bedroom with the stash of weed he left beneath the loose knob on the bed post, trying to escape.
On Christmas Eve after his mom has gone to bed, lying beneath the gigantic white plastic monstrosity of a Christmas tree his mother has set up in the living room, watching the blue lights flash in slow fades of smoky light between the branches, Brad calls Adam. Adam doesn't pick up; the phone doesn't even ring, just goes straight to voicemail, but that's kind of what Brad expected because Adam is important now, Adam has a life and a career and he's not going to answer his phone at two in the morning, not even when it's Brad calling, or maybe especially then.
"I just wanted to say that I miss you and I love you, and you totally proved me wrong. And just--I want you to be happy, you know? Be happy, Adam. I'm not sorry because I think, you know, everything turned out how it was supposed to in the end, so I'm not apologizing, I'm just saying. Be happy. Because you deserve it."
Brad falls asleep under the tree with his phone on his chest, and when he wakes up the next morning, there's a text from Adam that says, "So do you." More than anything, Brad wants to believe that it's true.
*
It's two thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in January when Brad finishes his screenplay. He pours himself a large glass of cheap white wine from the fridge behind the bar to celebrate, and he's not even sure if it's good or meaningful or if it even has a point, but he kind of doesn't care either way. The point was never really the story; he just wanted to create something true. He wanted to make something that felt real for once, without some sort of ulterior motive or ambition--just to tell a story that wasn't cute or perfect or perfectly flawed in that oh-so-precious Indie way, but actually said something real about him as a person like everyone else. An unimportant, small person who maybe doesn't get the dream job and become instantly famous and recognized for his talent. Someone who doesn't even get the boy in the end, but he'll be okay and he'll be fine because that's what real life is.
He finishes his wine and sets his glass down on the bar next to his laptop, watching the cursor blink on the 'd' in 'end,' wondering if that's the sort of declaration that needs a period, or if it's more meta to leave it hanging incomplete. The sun is streaming through the colored glass in the Coors Light window to the left of the door, a soft butter yellow that highlights a stream of dust mites to the scratched wood flooring. The door chimes and a guy walks in, takes off his sunglasses, and smiles.
It's Adam, and Brad thinks, this isn't real life, this isn't how life goes, but then Adam's leans forward, elbows on the bar and shoulders hunched around his ears, eyes wide and clear, says, "I was looking for you," and Brad wishes he hadn't just downed a glass of wine because this is real. It's perfectly real.
Brad smiles back, because he's scared out of his mind, because he doesn't believe in love, because he's spent the past year and a half fucking around and it was maybe a waste but it was important, too. Because even if this isn't his unperfectly mundane ending, it's real life, and he's happy. "You found me," he says. He's an Indie cliche after all, but it's better than being a parody, and anyway, at least it's totally and completely true.