Fate's Given Grace: Prologue (PG-13; Brian/Justin)
Title: Fate’s Given Grace, Act I - Prologue
Author: Etharei
Fandom: Queer as Folk (US)
Timeline: post-513 (future)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A bit of angst.
Betas: My heartfelt, hug-filled thanks to the wonderful and brilliant beathen and shadownyc
Disclaimer: Queer as Folk and all the characters and situations featured therein are the property of Showtime, Cowlip Productions and their affiliates. I’m only borrowing them for purely non-profit, recreational purposes, and promise to replenish the condom and lube supply when I’m done.
Author’s Note This is my entry for National Novel Writing Month 2006, where the goal is to finish writing 50,000 words over the 30 days of November. I won the challenge for the first time with this piece, and at 50k it was hardly finished. After a number of delays and much nail-biting, I’m finally posting it.
I can guarantee that at least a few fans will not like what I’ve written or how I’ve written it, especially when we get to Act II; I wrote this in full knowledge of that, so I’m expecting to lose readers over the course of the story. But at the end of the day there’s no way to please everybody, and so one might as well stay true to the vision of the story as the muses have revealed it.
♥ Merry Christmas, dear Fandom and Flist, and I hope you enjoy the ride! ♥
THE PROLOGUE
Here, sir, a slice of time
Grace, ’tis a charming sound,
Harmonious to mine ear;
Heaven with the echo shall resound,
And all the earth shall hear.
- ‘Grace, ’tis a charming sound’ by Augustus Montague Toplady
A small figure paces back and forth along the narrow hallway, restless as the bustling city outside the silent apartment. Occasionally there would be a flash of gold, when a passing car’s headlights manage to sneak into the dark space. After five minutes, the industrious pacer stops and starts banging on the door in the middle of the hallway with a mitten-clad fist.
“Justin! What are you doing in there?” the girl shouts. “Come out or I’m leaving without you. And when you get the call tonight because my dead body’s been found in an alley two blocks from here-“
The door opens, producing a red-faced young man bedecked in thick black winter-wear. “You hogged the bathroom for over an hour, and I’ve only been fifteen minutes!”
She snorts. “There’s only one girl in this relationship, sweets, and I’m afraid you don’t have the goods.” She pulls up her sleeve to check her watch. “OK, we’ve got twenty minutes to get there before the post-dinner crowd jams the place. Now,” she holds her hands up expectantly. “Lend me thine eyes, o artiste extraordinaire.”
Justin makes a show of examining her critically. “Nice- the outfit isn’t too obvious, yet still highlights your best attributes.”
“It’d better, considering you’re the one who picked it out for me.” She frowns at him. “And you look like you’re ready to go to a funeral, as always. Don’t you have anything besides black? I’m sure I saw a flash of color in that duffel bag when you moved in. I thought you’re an artist, not a secret service agent.”
He sighs. “Grace, I just like wearing black, that’s all. I wore white the other day, for your opening, remember?”
“Yeah, because I begged you to. And somehow you managed to make it look even more depressing.” She shakes her head and starts moving towards the door. “Fine, be a disgrace to all gay men alive, if you want. Now, come on, I might get a chance to talk to Jaime before the show starts.”
Her companion snorts. “Right, ‘talk’.” He reaches the door and automatically pats his pockets, checking for his keys and wallet. “I guess I won’t wait around for you after the show, then?”
#
As much as I love him, my apartment-mate, Justin, is a really weird guy. I mean, he’s an artist, and eccentricity is pretty much part of the package, but it’s not that. He’s… I don’t know how to describe it. He’s a great person, very polite and a gentleman in a way that you know must have come from growing up with money, and he takes his art very seriously. We’ve been living together for a few years (ask him if you want specifics, I’m not very good at counting) and sometimes I feel that I know Harriet from the coffee shop down the street better than I know him.
He doesn’t talk about himself a lot. Well, he talks all the time, but it’s always about his day, or what he’s going to do tomorrow, or stuff about his art; all about the now. Nothing on the time prior to his arrival in the City, and only the vaguest details about what he does when he visits Pittsburgh. Which isn’t at all unusual in great big NYC. A lot of people come here wanting to forget about what they’ve left behind. Heck, I don’t like to think about where I come from. My situation had been shitty as hell, but it’s just another sad story among many pilgrims’ to the Big Apple.
But I don’t think that’s the case with Justin. He may not talk about it, but being an actress means that I have an extra awareness of body language and non-verbal cues, and I’ve caught him at unguarded moments. It usually happens when he’s sitting with his sketchbook, thinking about what to draw next. He’d suddenly get this incredibly sad, lonely look in his eyes, and for a minute it’d be like he isn’t even there, like he’s somewhere else completely. Then he’d snap out of it, and he’d look my way to see if I’d noticed. I haven’t let on that I have, because it’s his life and I respect people’s right to figure out their own problems by themselves.
Still, I can’t help but wonder why he’s here. I mean, aside from his art and career. If he was obviously miserable then I might have pushed him to at least tell me some stuff, (not that he would, if he really didn’t want to; Justin is as stubborn as a mule, and just as snappy), but as far as I can tell, he’s… mostly happy.
It’s just the odd moments here and there, though they seem to be getting more frequent these days, when I catch a glimpse of another face.
#
“Hey Grace, Justin,” the bouncer greets them with a nod as they entered the Egg and Anchor.
“Hey Todd,” Grace replies with a smile. “How’s it going?”
“Good, so far, but I have a feeling that the place will be packed tonight. You here to see Jared?”
“Of course.”
Ignoring the guys’ snickers, Grace peers at the stage, where instruments are being set up and a group of musicians are in what looked like a heated discussion. “It’s probably better if I talk to him afterwards. They should be concentrating on the show right now.”
Todd grins. “I guess so, little miss.”
They take their usual table at the front, to the right of the stage. Justin is about to get up to fetch them drinks when a tall, toned brunette wearing tight jeans and a black leather jacket saunters up to him with an enticing smile. “Buy you a drink?” His eyes flicker over to Grace and he adds, “Your friend, too, if she wants.”
“No, thank you,” Justin says with an apologetic smile. “I’m not interested.”
The brunette shrugs and moves off. Leaning over, Grace slaps Justin on the arm. “I can’t believe you! Not even five minutes in a bar, a fucking straight bar, and you get propositioned.”
He makes a face. “Yeah, it sucks to be me.”
“And you turned him down!”
“I’ve got an interview tomorrow, and then a meeting with a gallery. Hey Jared!”
Grace scowls at her friend, then transforms her face into a warm smile to the young man who’d just stepped down from the stage and is heading towards them.
“Justin,” Jared nods at him before turning to Grace. “Grace.”
“Jared.”
Justin shakes his head. “I’m gonna get us beers, so don’t leave until I come back, unless you want us to lose the table- never mind, I’m clearly talking to a pair of potato sacks. Todd, can you come here for a second-“
#
Another weird thing about him, especially considering he’s a gay man in New York City, the unofficial gay capital of the US, is his total disinterest in attracting guys. He’s hot and knows it, but aside from a couple of fifteen-minute bathroom blowjobs a month, he might as well be a fucking priest.
OK, not really, because he takes longer to shower than most guys I know and I’ve had to wipe cum off our bathroom wall before, but he’s never brought a guy home, and he definitely doesn’t follow them home.
Justin’s a really private person, and I don’t go into his room. But sometimes I’d hear him talking on the phone late at night, really quietly, and I know that he’s not speaking to his mother, or Daphne the BFF, or the Comic Book Guy. I can tell because that’s the tone I use when I’m talking to Jared. So yeah, the most obvious story here is that he’s got a boyfriend back home.
I’ve asked him about it, a couple of times, but he either changed the subject or just ignored the question. Which he’s really good at, mind you. The fact that he didn’t deny outright it, though, is an answer in itself. Why he’d want to keep this from me when he’s privy to probably more of my love life than he wants to be is something you should ask him about. Another girl would probably have pestered the hell out of him. But he doesn’t bug me about the faint scars on my left arm, or where I disappear off to twice a year, so the least I can do is leave him alone.
I know it’s weird, to know so little about the person I’m living with, but just because I don’t know his life story doesn’t mean I don’t know him, you know? Whatever he went through between his first night on Earth to now, all that really matters is knowing the person he is.
#
Harmodius finishes playing just after midnight, and Grace sends Justin a sheepish and apologetic look before heading towards the door leading to the backstage area. A horde of girls have already gathered there, mostly calling out for Jared. (Grace feels bad for his band-mates, but since the boys have been together for most of their lives, she figures that the other guys must be used to it by now.) There’d been a change-around of the bouncers; Todd is guarding that door now. He smiles at her before deftly opening it just enough to let her slip through.
It’s a little chaotic backstage, but Grace goes through worse chaos before and after her shows. It doesn’t take long to find Jared; something about him just draws the eye. She hasn’t figured out yet what it is- smooth skin the color of light brown sugar, dark brown hair shining with a rich golden luster and slicked back so as not to obscure the fine features of his face; a well-proportioned body, all toned muscle; the almost-arrogance he exudes, which stops a breath short of being overtly offensive. He’s deep in conference with Terry the Bass Guitarist (one of these days, she promises herself, she willl learn the other guys’ last names).
After a minute Terry nods and smiles at her briefly before moving off, bass guitar in tow, and the way Jared turns around to greet her with his characteristically cocky smile suggests that he’d known she’d been standing there all that time.
“Hey Gracie,” he says, enfolding her in his arms. “Give me ten minutes to get out of this, OK?” He gestures at his sweaty shirt.
“Sure,” she murmurs, resting her head against his chest. “Or I can help you out of it and save us both some time.”
Pressed close to his body by his arms and the cramped hall, she feels him harden in his jeans. Jared grins, and his lips cover hers as he walks them backwards into a dressing room.
#
Jared Arsenios is the songwriter, lead singer, and unanimous leader of Harmodius, a modest little sort-of-rock band that plays every night at the Egg and Dart. He’s also the person I hate most in the world.
Really, I do. I scare myself sometimes by how much I hate him. I hate him because he makes me do stupid stuff, like wear skirts too short to be practical, or smile whenever I’m with him, or think about him whenever I’m not. Shit that I should be too old and too jaded to be afflicted with, really, but there you go. It’s probably karma for some crime against humanity I committed in a past life. Thing is, he hadn’t planned on enjoying my company beyond a couple of hot fucks, either. His interest in girls usually lasts for as long as it takes to convince them to let him fuck them.
Until I came along. But it’s a long story, and in any case I’m not a big believer in over-analyzing things that have happened.
Get one thing straight: we’re not a couple. The guys understand what’s going on, and I think the regular patrons of the Egg and Dart pretty much view me as the unofficial #1 Jared Groupie. Which, I know, sounds a little synonymous with ‘band whore’ to many people. If I actually cared shit about what other people think, this association might bother me.
Don’t ask me if I love him. I’ll probably throw something at you.
Justin and Jared don’t get along very well, and it’s pretty much all the latter’s doing. Jared openly disliked Justin until he figured out that Justin is too well-mannered to accede to a fist-fight. I’m not sure why, it’s not as if Justin’s competition or anything.
Justin disagrees, tells me it’s because Jared thinks I care about Justin more than him. Can’t really argue with that- at least Justin doesn’t make me want to kill him at regular intervals. I remember Jared, during Fight #462, yelling out, “Go on, run back to Justin!” To which I’d replied, sighing as I tried to remember what exactly attracted me to him, “Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I kind of live with him.”
Men.
They’ve got some sort of truce, now, thank goodness. And considering how level-headed Justin is, he’s surprisingly very supportive of whatever-this-thing-is (because God forbid I use the word ‘relationship’) I have with Jared. He doesn’t complain when I don’t show up at the apartment for days, or when I wake him up at two a.m. to let me in because in my hurry to leave Jared’s place I’d forgotten to check that I had my keys, or when I fill the place with cigarette smoke because Jared is spending the night with another girl. Everybody else I’ve ever lived with would have had a fit at any one of those alone.
Not hard to see why I hold a special place in my heart for that pretty blond boy, is it?
#
Grace returns to the apartment the next morning to find Justin coming out of the bathroom carrying his shampoo, liquid soap, toothpaste, toothbrush and floss. She glanced into his room and saw the usual faded black duffle bag, half-full, lying on his bed.
“Going somewhere?” she asks. It’s just a habit, from when she used to wait for him to say that he’d met someone, was spending a night at someone’s place. Three years later, she’s pretty much accepted that there would be no other answer.
“Huh?” he looks up from putting the toiletries into a Ziploc bag. “Oh, I told you I was going home for the next two weeks on Sunday, remember? I had to ask you about the dates when I was ordering the tickets.”
She sighed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
#
That’s another thing. He goes home at least once a month, sometimes more. Heck, he goes home right after the opening of every show. But what bugs me is the word itself- ‘home’. He goes home. And he always looks really… relaxed, every time he’s got a visit home coming up. When he returns to New York he’d be quiet and withdrawn for a couple of days, and one of the first things he’d do is plan out possible dates for the next visit. Sometimes he’d come back pissed off and snappish, but within the hour he’ll be at his desk with a pen in his hand and his planner in front of him. It’s part of a strange routine, based, not on time, but a sequence of actions and events, one after another. Tick, tick, tick, like clockwork. What intrigues me is not the routine itself, but how strictly Justin holds himself to it. Driven, is the word that comes to mind, though the engine, the cogs, are invisible.
Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m looking for.
Sometimes I feel like smacking him over the head and telling him to finish up whatever he’s doing here so he can just go home and stay there.
Chapter One >>
See Chapter List and Summaries
Author: Etharei
Fandom: Queer as Folk (US)
Timeline: post-513 (future)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A bit of angst.
Betas: My heartfelt, hug-filled thanks to the wonderful and brilliant beathen and shadownyc
Disclaimer: Queer as Folk and all the characters and situations featured therein are the property of Showtime, Cowlip Productions and their affiliates. I’m only borrowing them for purely non-profit, recreational purposes, and promise to replenish the condom and lube supply when I’m done.
Author’s Note This is my entry for National Novel Writing Month 2006, where the goal is to finish writing 50,000 words over the 30 days of November. I won the challenge for the first time with this piece, and at 50k it was hardly finished. After a number of delays and much nail-biting, I’m finally posting it.
I can guarantee that at least a few fans will not like what I’ve written or how I’ve written it, especially when we get to Act II; I wrote this in full knowledge of that, so I’m expecting to lose readers over the course of the story. But at the end of the day there’s no way to please everybody, and so one might as well stay true to the vision of the story as the muses have revealed it.
♥ Merry Christmas, dear Fandom and Flist, and I hope you enjoy the ride! ♥
THE PROLOGUE
Here, sir, a slice of time
Grace, ’tis a charming sound,
Harmonious to mine ear;
Heaven with the echo shall resound,
And all the earth shall hear.
- ‘Grace, ’tis a charming sound’ by Augustus Montague Toplady
A small figure paces back and forth along the narrow hallway, restless as the bustling city outside the silent apartment. Occasionally there would be a flash of gold, when a passing car’s headlights manage to sneak into the dark space. After five minutes, the industrious pacer stops and starts banging on the door in the middle of the hallway with a mitten-clad fist.
“Justin! What are you doing in there?” the girl shouts. “Come out or I’m leaving without you. And when you get the call tonight because my dead body’s been found in an alley two blocks from here-“
The door opens, producing a red-faced young man bedecked in thick black winter-wear. “You hogged the bathroom for over an hour, and I’ve only been fifteen minutes!”
She snorts. “There’s only one girl in this relationship, sweets, and I’m afraid you don’t have the goods.” She pulls up her sleeve to check her watch. “OK, we’ve got twenty minutes to get there before the post-dinner crowd jams the place. Now,” she holds her hands up expectantly. “Lend me thine eyes, o artiste extraordinaire.”
Justin makes a show of examining her critically. “Nice- the outfit isn’t too obvious, yet still highlights your best attributes.”
“It’d better, considering you’re the one who picked it out for me.” She frowns at him. “And you look like you’re ready to go to a funeral, as always. Don’t you have anything besides black? I’m sure I saw a flash of color in that duffel bag when you moved in. I thought you’re an artist, not a secret service agent.”
He sighs. “Grace, I just like wearing black, that’s all. I wore white the other day, for your opening, remember?”
“Yeah, because I begged you to. And somehow you managed to make it look even more depressing.” She shakes her head and starts moving towards the door. “Fine, be a disgrace to all gay men alive, if you want. Now, come on, I might get a chance to talk to Jaime before the show starts.”
Her companion snorts. “Right, ‘talk’.” He reaches the door and automatically pats his pockets, checking for his keys and wallet. “I guess I won’t wait around for you after the show, then?”
#
As much as I love him, my apartment-mate, Justin, is a really weird guy. I mean, he’s an artist, and eccentricity is pretty much part of the package, but it’s not that. He’s… I don’t know how to describe it. He’s a great person, very polite and a gentleman in a way that you know must have come from growing up with money, and he takes his art very seriously. We’ve been living together for a few years (ask him if you want specifics, I’m not very good at counting) and sometimes I feel that I know Harriet from the coffee shop down the street better than I know him.
He doesn’t talk about himself a lot. Well, he talks all the time, but it’s always about his day, or what he’s going to do tomorrow, or stuff about his art; all about the now. Nothing on the time prior to his arrival in the City, and only the vaguest details about what he does when he visits Pittsburgh. Which isn’t at all unusual in great big NYC. A lot of people come here wanting to forget about what they’ve left behind. Heck, I don’t like to think about where I come from. My situation had been shitty as hell, but it’s just another sad story among many pilgrims’ to the Big Apple.
But I don’t think that’s the case with Justin. He may not talk about it, but being an actress means that I have an extra awareness of body language and non-verbal cues, and I’ve caught him at unguarded moments. It usually happens when he’s sitting with his sketchbook, thinking about what to draw next. He’d suddenly get this incredibly sad, lonely look in his eyes, and for a minute it’d be like he isn’t even there, like he’s somewhere else completely. Then he’d snap out of it, and he’d look my way to see if I’d noticed. I haven’t let on that I have, because it’s his life and I respect people’s right to figure out their own problems by themselves.
Still, I can’t help but wonder why he’s here. I mean, aside from his art and career. If he was obviously miserable then I might have pushed him to at least tell me some stuff, (not that he would, if he really didn’t want to; Justin is as stubborn as a mule, and just as snappy), but as far as I can tell, he’s… mostly happy.
It’s just the odd moments here and there, though they seem to be getting more frequent these days, when I catch a glimpse of another face.
#
“Hey Grace, Justin,” the bouncer greets them with a nod as they entered the Egg and Anchor.
“Hey Todd,” Grace replies with a smile. “How’s it going?”
“Good, so far, but I have a feeling that the place will be packed tonight. You here to see Jared?”
“Of course.”
Ignoring the guys’ snickers, Grace peers at the stage, where instruments are being set up and a group of musicians are in what looked like a heated discussion. “It’s probably better if I talk to him afterwards. They should be concentrating on the show right now.”
Todd grins. “I guess so, little miss.”
They take their usual table at the front, to the right of the stage. Justin is about to get up to fetch them drinks when a tall, toned brunette wearing tight jeans and a black leather jacket saunters up to him with an enticing smile. “Buy you a drink?” His eyes flicker over to Grace and he adds, “Your friend, too, if she wants.”
“No, thank you,” Justin says with an apologetic smile. “I’m not interested.”
The brunette shrugs and moves off. Leaning over, Grace slaps Justin on the arm. “I can’t believe you! Not even five minutes in a bar, a fucking straight bar, and you get propositioned.”
He makes a face. “Yeah, it sucks to be me.”
“And you turned him down!”
“I’ve got an interview tomorrow, and then a meeting with a gallery. Hey Jared!”
Grace scowls at her friend, then transforms her face into a warm smile to the young man who’d just stepped down from the stage and is heading towards them.
“Justin,” Jared nods at him before turning to Grace. “Grace.”
“Jared.”
Justin shakes his head. “I’m gonna get us beers, so don’t leave until I come back, unless you want us to lose the table- never mind, I’m clearly talking to a pair of potato sacks. Todd, can you come here for a second-“
#
Another weird thing about him, especially considering he’s a gay man in New York City, the unofficial gay capital of the US, is his total disinterest in attracting guys. He’s hot and knows it, but aside from a couple of fifteen-minute bathroom blowjobs a month, he might as well be a fucking priest.
OK, not really, because he takes longer to shower than most guys I know and I’ve had to wipe cum off our bathroom wall before, but he’s never brought a guy home, and he definitely doesn’t follow them home.
Justin’s a really private person, and I don’t go into his room. But sometimes I’d hear him talking on the phone late at night, really quietly, and I know that he’s not speaking to his mother, or Daphne the BFF, or the Comic Book Guy. I can tell because that’s the tone I use when I’m talking to Jared. So yeah, the most obvious story here is that he’s got a boyfriend back home.
I’ve asked him about it, a couple of times, but he either changed the subject or just ignored the question. Which he’s really good at, mind you. The fact that he didn’t deny outright it, though, is an answer in itself. Why he’d want to keep this from me when he’s privy to probably more of my love life than he wants to be is something you should ask him about. Another girl would probably have pestered the hell out of him. But he doesn’t bug me about the faint scars on my left arm, or where I disappear off to twice a year, so the least I can do is leave him alone.
I know it’s weird, to know so little about the person I’m living with, but just because I don’t know his life story doesn’t mean I don’t know him, you know? Whatever he went through between his first night on Earth to now, all that really matters is knowing the person he is.
#
Harmodius finishes playing just after midnight, and Grace sends Justin a sheepish and apologetic look before heading towards the door leading to the backstage area. A horde of girls have already gathered there, mostly calling out for Jared. (Grace feels bad for his band-mates, but since the boys have been together for most of their lives, she figures that the other guys must be used to it by now.) There’d been a change-around of the bouncers; Todd is guarding that door now. He smiles at her before deftly opening it just enough to let her slip through.
It’s a little chaotic backstage, but Grace goes through worse chaos before and after her shows. It doesn’t take long to find Jared; something about him just draws the eye. She hasn’t figured out yet what it is- smooth skin the color of light brown sugar, dark brown hair shining with a rich golden luster and slicked back so as not to obscure the fine features of his face; a well-proportioned body, all toned muscle; the almost-arrogance he exudes, which stops a breath short of being overtly offensive. He’s deep in conference with Terry the Bass Guitarist (one of these days, she promises herself, she willl learn the other guys’ last names).
After a minute Terry nods and smiles at her briefly before moving off, bass guitar in tow, and the way Jared turns around to greet her with his characteristically cocky smile suggests that he’d known she’d been standing there all that time.
“Hey Gracie,” he says, enfolding her in his arms. “Give me ten minutes to get out of this, OK?” He gestures at his sweaty shirt.
“Sure,” she murmurs, resting her head against his chest. “Or I can help you out of it and save us both some time.”
Pressed close to his body by his arms and the cramped hall, she feels him harden in his jeans. Jared grins, and his lips cover hers as he walks them backwards into a dressing room.
#
Jared Arsenios is the songwriter, lead singer, and unanimous leader of Harmodius, a modest little sort-of-rock band that plays every night at the Egg and Dart. He’s also the person I hate most in the world.
Really, I do. I scare myself sometimes by how much I hate him. I hate him because he makes me do stupid stuff, like wear skirts too short to be practical, or smile whenever I’m with him, or think about him whenever I’m not. Shit that I should be too old and too jaded to be afflicted with, really, but there you go. It’s probably karma for some crime against humanity I committed in a past life. Thing is, he hadn’t planned on enjoying my company beyond a couple of hot fucks, either. His interest in girls usually lasts for as long as it takes to convince them to let him fuck them.
Until I came along. But it’s a long story, and in any case I’m not a big believer in over-analyzing things that have happened.
Get one thing straight: we’re not a couple. The guys understand what’s going on, and I think the regular patrons of the Egg and Dart pretty much view me as the unofficial #1 Jared Groupie. Which, I know, sounds a little synonymous with ‘band whore’ to many people. If I actually cared shit about what other people think, this association might bother me.
Don’t ask me if I love him. I’ll probably throw something at you.
Justin and Jared don’t get along very well, and it’s pretty much all the latter’s doing. Jared openly disliked Justin until he figured out that Justin is too well-mannered to accede to a fist-fight. I’m not sure why, it’s not as if Justin’s competition or anything.
Justin disagrees, tells me it’s because Jared thinks I care about Justin more than him. Can’t really argue with that- at least Justin doesn’t make me want to kill him at regular intervals. I remember Jared, during Fight #462, yelling out, “Go on, run back to Justin!” To which I’d replied, sighing as I tried to remember what exactly attracted me to him, “Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I kind of live with him.”
Men.
They’ve got some sort of truce, now, thank goodness. And considering how level-headed Justin is, he’s surprisingly very supportive of whatever-this-thing-is (because God forbid I use the word ‘relationship’) I have with Jared. He doesn’t complain when I don’t show up at the apartment for days, or when I wake him up at two a.m. to let me in because in my hurry to leave Jared’s place I’d forgotten to check that I had my keys, or when I fill the place with cigarette smoke because Jared is spending the night with another girl. Everybody else I’ve ever lived with would have had a fit at any one of those alone.
Not hard to see why I hold a special place in my heart for that pretty blond boy, is it?
#
Grace returns to the apartment the next morning to find Justin coming out of the bathroom carrying his shampoo, liquid soap, toothpaste, toothbrush and floss. She glanced into his room and saw the usual faded black duffle bag, half-full, lying on his bed.
“Going somewhere?” she asks. It’s just a habit, from when she used to wait for him to say that he’d met someone, was spending a night at someone’s place. Three years later, she’s pretty much accepted that there would be no other answer.
“Huh?” he looks up from putting the toiletries into a Ziploc bag. “Oh, I told you I was going home for the next two weeks on Sunday, remember? I had to ask you about the dates when I was ordering the tickets.”
She sighed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
#
That’s another thing. He goes home at least once a month, sometimes more. Heck, he goes home right after the opening of every show. But what bugs me is the word itself- ‘home’. He goes home. And he always looks really… relaxed, every time he’s got a visit home coming up. When he returns to New York he’d be quiet and withdrawn for a couple of days, and one of the first things he’d do is plan out possible dates for the next visit. Sometimes he’d come back pissed off and snappish, but within the hour he’ll be at his desk with a pen in his hand and his planner in front of him. It’s part of a strange routine, based, not on time, but a sequence of actions and events, one after another. Tick, tick, tick, like clockwork. What intrigues me is not the routine itself, but how strictly Justin holds himself to it. Driven, is the word that comes to mind, though the engine, the cogs, are invisible.
Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m looking for.
Sometimes I feel like smacking him over the head and telling him to finish up whatever he’s doing here so he can just go home and stay there.
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