Defunct Fic: Fandom: QaF: Laura
I am still quite fond of this one, too, but there's nothing that I have to say in this fandom right now. And this story has been on my hard-drive far too long. Fly free!
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It was 3:15 in the morning and Brian had been asleep for a few hours. He lifted the phone to his ear, thinking that someone better be dead or really fucking sick to be calling him at this time of the night. As soon as he heard the baby wailing in the background, he regretted the thought.
“Justin? What’s wrong?”
Justin replied, voice thick and off-center, “Brian, I need your help. We need your help.”
“I’ll be there in three hours,” Brian said rolling out of bed, and pulling on his jeans. He heard Justin making shushing noises, but the baby shrieked on. “What’s the matter? Is she sick?”
“I don’t know. She won’t stop crying. I haven’t slept in…God, I’ve lost count. Brian, I’m sorry. I just…I just…fuck, I just need you here.”
“I’ll be there. Have you taken her temperature?”
“She’s not hot. I think she hates me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve changed her, I’ve fed her, I’ve burped her, and I’ve rocked her. I held her against my bare chest like the nurses told me to, and nothing is working.”
“Have you called her doctor?”
“Brian, it’s three in the morning.”
Brian sighed. “I know. I’ll be there in three hours.”
“Just hurry.”
::::
Laura had been born on a Wednesday morning in the middle of a thunderstorm. Kelly, the surrogate mom that Justin had found in the pre-med program at NYU, and whom Brian had interrogated, investigated, and taken it upon himself to personally read every medical record the girl had ever had, had agreed with Justin that the baby should be born naturally in a birthing center, not a hospital, and under the care of midwives. By the time the birth was over, Brian thought Kelly had earned every single bit of her $55,000 and then some.
Brian still had nightmares about Laura’s head emerging from that swollen snatch. He’d never been much for pussy and seeing Laura’s birth confirmed that for him in every way. He almost walked out several times, but each time he turned toward the door, one of the midwives would grab his arm and spin him around again. He’d catch Justin’s ecstatic eyes and he’d swallow back the vomit that had come up in his mouth and he’d force a thin smile. Justin would then turn his focus back on Kelly, being encouraging and strong for her.
There had been so many things about the scenario that freaked Brian out. First, there was Justin being thirty and wanting to be dad, which made Brian forty-two and still not wanting to be a dad, even though he was one and had been for twelve years. Second there was the whole surrogate mother thing; the risks involved had been deemed inevitable, though, when Justin admitted that Daphne had turned him down, telling him that her husband wanted her to share that experience only with him, and though Lindsay had offered, it turned out that her body didn’t agree with her heart, because artificial insemination didn’t work, and she wasn’t willing to go the IVF route. Lastly, there was the end product, the baby, a living, breathing, needing, eating, sleeping, wailing thing who would be part of Brian’s life in some way that he couldn’t control or define. That was the scariest thing of all.
When Justin had told Brian that he was ready to be a dad, he’d taken Brian to a coffee shop in Soho, and he’d made a very rational argument for fatherhood, if anything having to do with wanting to feel more fulfilled in life and to completely experience all of the ups and downs of being a parent could be called “rational” in any way, shape, or form. When he’d finished, he’d looked at Brian expectantly and said, “So?”
Brian had smiled and shrugged.
“That’s it?” Justin had asked. “No dire warnings, no freak out? I’m disappointed. I thought we’d be having a pretty dramatic breakfast.”
Brian lifted his eyebrow and said, “It’s your sperm. You can do whatever you want with it.”
“But Brian this does affect you. I mean, this will be my baby. It won’t be like with Gus who was raised by Linds and Mel…”
“I realize that.”
“And you’re okay with that?.”
Brian had shrugged again. What was there to think about? Justin had made up his mind and Brian had learned a long time ago that what Justin wants, Justin gets, and Brian would do well to shut up and help minimize the damage and intensify the awards. Except when Brian would do well to throw a hissy fit, shout, and slam doors, but this had not been one of those times.
Justin brought it up again later, while they were resting in the sweaty afterglow in Justin’s bed. “Brian, I really do want to have a baby.”
Brian groaned and muttered, “I don’t know how to break it to you, Sunshine, but when a man really, really, really loves another man, they put their pee-pees in each other’s mouths and asses, and, due to the miracle of nature, nothing happens.”
Justin shoved him a little and Brian grunted. Justin said, “Seriously, though. You’re okay with this? If you don’t start freaking out soon, I might freak out myself.”
Brian rolled over and grabbed a cigarette. Justin frowned; he’d been trying to get Brian to quit ever since Justin decided to start a macrobiotic diet and get clean of his chemical addictions to nicotine and caffeine. Brian ignored him and lit up. The truth was, he was kind of freaking out, but how could he stop this train? He’d seen it coming for the last eight years. He’d known it was only a matter of time.
He didn’t like kids, not really. He hadn’t liked being a kid; it’d been so powerless and dangerous, so small, with so little protection. He’d liked Gus, but Gus was his; he’d been obligated. He didn’t like the way children moved, unpredictable and often inelegant. He didn’t like the way they smelled, or the fact that they said ruder things than he did without even trying.
If he thought about it at all, he could imagine all of the many and varied ways that Justin having a kid would make his own life suck a little more. Justin wasn’t going to be just any dad. No, if he was going to do this, then he’d do it right. He’d be the best little fucking homo-daddy in the world, and Brian supported him in that. If you’re going to have a kid, then you fucking owed it to the kid to do the daddy thing the right way. Brian shook off feelings of guilt about Gus at that thought. Still, this wouldn’t be like it was with Gus, just like Justin had said.
They didn’t live together, what with Brian being in Pittsburgh three weeks a month, spending the last week with Justin in New York, so it wasn’t like it would impact Brian’s day-to-day life, but when Justin came for his week in Pittsburgh to visit, there’d need to be a place for a baby to stay, and then a small child, and eventually a teenager. God, what a thought. And, then, of course, with late night feedings and all of that shit, Justin wasn’t going to want to suck Brian’s dick any time he got the whim. Not that Brian couldn’t get his dick sucked elsewhere, Justin wouldn’t have a problem with that, but as he’d gotten older he’d found tricking less and less rewarding. He told himself it was because he was too busy with work and Justin to want to trick, but it might have something to do with the fact that getting older had increased the chances of rejection, and his ego still had a hard time dealing with that.
So, yeah, this kid that Justin wanted was going to impact his life, but Brian had known a long time ago that this day was coming and he’d take it, and everything that went with it, if it meant that Justin would stay around for another day, another week, another year. Justin was worth it.
When Justin found Kelly, that’s when Brian freaked out. He went into overdrive and almost ran the girl off, interrogating her, insisting on all of her medical records, and only agreeing to let her give birth to Justin’s child because Justin told him to back the fuck off with that look on his face that meant that Justin seriously meant it. So, Brian backed off and satisfied himself by having her tailed by a private investigator for the entire first trimester of the pregnancy, only quitting when the P.I. informed him that he was wasting his money. Kelly went to her classes and went home every single night, lights out in her apartment by 10:00 pm. Her worst offense was her addiction to the Chili Dog Shack, stopping by there every night to fulfill her cravings, but she’d already confessed that weakness to Justin, so it wasn’t even anything that Brian could hold against her.
And then Laura had been born. When Laura’s head came out of Kelly’s snatch, Brian had thought she was huge, but when he saw her nestled in Justin’s hands, she’d seem so incredibly tiny, so fragile. When Justin asked him to hold her, Brian took her carefully, looked into her face and whispered, “Well, little girl, your dad’s glad you’re here, and I… well, hey, it’s your first day on earth.”
He’d taken Laura and Justin home to Justin’s apartment in the East Village that very day, leaving Kelly in the capable hands of the midwives, and Kelly, who had held up her end of the deal so diligently during the pregnancy, excusing, of course, the dozens of chili cheese dogs, continued to do just that, taking Justin’s check, kissing Laura’s fuzzy little head, and wishing them all good luck, with nary a tear in her eye. Sweetly mercenary to the last.
Three days of endless bottles and diapers had followed. It wasn’t like the three nights of endless sex he’d had at the white party in Pheonix a few years ago. No, this gave a new meaning to the words “sleep deprived”. Whenever Laura was hungry, she squawled, and when she cried Justin went into a fit of anxiety, motivated solely by the need to make the noise stop at all costs. Justin darted around making bottles, washing bottles, burping and rocking, and changing diapers, and looking for all the world like he’d been dropped in the middle of a war zone, told to nurse the wounded, equipped with only a few bandaids and a tube of neosporin.
At the end of the first three days, Justin was shell-shocked, but Jennifer was coming up from Pittsburgh the next day, and Justin swore he had it under control, that he could handle it. That had been a few weeks ago, and Jennifer had left four days earlier to travel in Europe with Molly. Brian had suggested that Justin have Debbie up to help out, but Justin had declined, insisting that he had it under control.
Clearly, based on the phone call tonight, he didn’t.
::::
“She hates me,” Justin said again, as he opened the door, the sound of Laura’s wails continuing in the background. “She cries until she passes out asleep, then she cries some more when she wakes up, and she won’t eat. I can’t do this, Brian. I can’t do this one second more.” Justin thrust the baby into Brian’s arms.
She shuddered a sigh and Brian held her close, her hicuppy little sobs wet against his shirt. “Get in bed. I’ll take care of her. You sleep.”
“How can I sleep? She hates me. She loved my mom. She loved Molly. I think she’s angry at me because she doesn’t have a mommy anymore. She thinks I took her mom away.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “If you don’t get in the bed right now…”
“Fine, fine. I’ll try. It’s just, she won’t stop…” Justin slowed down and turned to look at Brian, his eyes narrowed.
“What?”
He gestured at Brian’s chest. Brian looked down at Laura’s face, mouth open as tiny puff of air came through her lips, her eyes shut, and no sound coming from her except the soft echo of her prior tears.
“She hates me,” Justin declared as he went to his room and shut the door.
::::
::::
It was 3:15 in the morning and Brian had been asleep for a few hours. He lifted the phone to his ear, thinking that someone better be dead or really fucking sick to be calling him at this time of the night. As soon as he heard the baby wailing in the background, he regretted the thought.
“Justin? What’s wrong?”
Justin replied, voice thick and off-center, “Brian, I need your help. We need your help.”
“I’ll be there in three hours,” Brian said rolling out of bed, and pulling on his jeans. He heard Justin making shushing noises, but the baby shrieked on. “What’s the matter? Is she sick?”
“I don’t know. She won’t stop crying. I haven’t slept in…God, I’ve lost count. Brian, I’m sorry. I just…I just…fuck, I just need you here.”
“I’ll be there. Have you taken her temperature?”
“She’s not hot. I think she hates me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve changed her, I’ve fed her, I’ve burped her, and I’ve rocked her. I held her against my bare chest like the nurses told me to, and nothing is working.”
“Have you called her doctor?”
“Brian, it’s three in the morning.”
Brian sighed. “I know. I’ll be there in three hours.”
“Just hurry.”
::::
Laura had been born on a Wednesday morning in the middle of a thunderstorm. Kelly, the surrogate mom that Justin had found in the pre-med program at NYU, and whom Brian had interrogated, investigated, and taken it upon himself to personally read every medical record the girl had ever had, had agreed with Justin that the baby should be born naturally in a birthing center, not a hospital, and under the care of midwives. By the time the birth was over, Brian thought Kelly had earned every single bit of her $55,000 and then some.
Brian still had nightmares about Laura’s head emerging from that swollen snatch. He’d never been much for pussy and seeing Laura’s birth confirmed that for him in every way. He almost walked out several times, but each time he turned toward the door, one of the midwives would grab his arm and spin him around again. He’d catch Justin’s ecstatic eyes and he’d swallow back the vomit that had come up in his mouth and he’d force a thin smile. Justin would then turn his focus back on Kelly, being encouraging and strong for her.
There had been so many things about the scenario that freaked Brian out. First, there was Justin being thirty and wanting to be dad, which made Brian forty-two and still not wanting to be a dad, even though he was one and had been for twelve years. Second there was the whole surrogate mother thing; the risks involved had been deemed inevitable, though, when Justin admitted that Daphne had turned him down, telling him that her husband wanted her to share that experience only with him, and though Lindsay had offered, it turned out that her body didn’t agree with her heart, because artificial insemination didn’t work, and she wasn’t willing to go the IVF route. Lastly, there was the end product, the baby, a living, breathing, needing, eating, sleeping, wailing thing who would be part of Brian’s life in some way that he couldn’t control or define. That was the scariest thing of all.
When Justin had told Brian that he was ready to be a dad, he’d taken Brian to a coffee shop in Soho, and he’d made a very rational argument for fatherhood, if anything having to do with wanting to feel more fulfilled in life and to completely experience all of the ups and downs of being a parent could be called “rational” in any way, shape, or form. When he’d finished, he’d looked at Brian expectantly and said, “So?”
Brian had smiled and shrugged.
“That’s it?” Justin had asked. “No dire warnings, no freak out? I’m disappointed. I thought we’d be having a pretty dramatic breakfast.”
Brian lifted his eyebrow and said, “It’s your sperm. You can do whatever you want with it.”
“But Brian this does affect you. I mean, this will be my baby. It won’t be like with Gus who was raised by Linds and Mel…”
“I realize that.”
“And you’re okay with that?.”
Brian had shrugged again. What was there to think about? Justin had made up his mind and Brian had learned a long time ago that what Justin wants, Justin gets, and Brian would do well to shut up and help minimize the damage and intensify the awards. Except when Brian would do well to throw a hissy fit, shout, and slam doors, but this had not been one of those times.
Justin brought it up again later, while they were resting in the sweaty afterglow in Justin’s bed. “Brian, I really do want to have a baby.”
Brian groaned and muttered, “I don’t know how to break it to you, Sunshine, but when a man really, really, really loves another man, they put their pee-pees in each other’s mouths and asses, and, due to the miracle of nature, nothing happens.”
Justin shoved him a little and Brian grunted. Justin said, “Seriously, though. You’re okay with this? If you don’t start freaking out soon, I might freak out myself.”
Brian rolled over and grabbed a cigarette. Justin frowned; he’d been trying to get Brian to quit ever since Justin decided to start a macrobiotic diet and get clean of his chemical addictions to nicotine and caffeine. Brian ignored him and lit up. The truth was, he was kind of freaking out, but how could he stop this train? He’d seen it coming for the last eight years. He’d known it was only a matter of time.
He didn’t like kids, not really. He hadn’t liked being a kid; it’d been so powerless and dangerous, so small, with so little protection. He’d liked Gus, but Gus was his; he’d been obligated. He didn’t like the way children moved, unpredictable and often inelegant. He didn’t like the way they smelled, or the fact that they said ruder things than he did without even trying.
If he thought about it at all, he could imagine all of the many and varied ways that Justin having a kid would make his own life suck a little more. Justin wasn’t going to be just any dad. No, if he was going to do this, then he’d do it right. He’d be the best little fucking homo-daddy in the world, and Brian supported him in that. If you’re going to have a kid, then you fucking owed it to the kid to do the daddy thing the right way. Brian shook off feelings of guilt about Gus at that thought. Still, this wouldn’t be like it was with Gus, just like Justin had said.
They didn’t live together, what with Brian being in Pittsburgh three weeks a month, spending the last week with Justin in New York, so it wasn’t like it would impact Brian’s day-to-day life, but when Justin came for his week in Pittsburgh to visit, there’d need to be a place for a baby to stay, and then a small child, and eventually a teenager. God, what a thought. And, then, of course, with late night feedings and all of that shit, Justin wasn’t going to want to suck Brian’s dick any time he got the whim. Not that Brian couldn’t get his dick sucked elsewhere, Justin wouldn’t have a problem with that, but as he’d gotten older he’d found tricking less and less rewarding. He told himself it was because he was too busy with work and Justin to want to trick, but it might have something to do with the fact that getting older had increased the chances of rejection, and his ego still had a hard time dealing with that.
So, yeah, this kid that Justin wanted was going to impact his life, but Brian had known a long time ago that this day was coming and he’d take it, and everything that went with it, if it meant that Justin would stay around for another day, another week, another year. Justin was worth it.
When Justin found Kelly, that’s when Brian freaked out. He went into overdrive and almost ran the girl off, interrogating her, insisting on all of her medical records, and only agreeing to let her give birth to Justin’s child because Justin told him to back the fuck off with that look on his face that meant that Justin seriously meant it. So, Brian backed off and satisfied himself by having her tailed by a private investigator for the entire first trimester of the pregnancy, only quitting when the P.I. informed him that he was wasting his money. Kelly went to her classes and went home every single night, lights out in her apartment by 10:00 pm. Her worst offense was her addiction to the Chili Dog Shack, stopping by there every night to fulfill her cravings, but she’d already confessed that weakness to Justin, so it wasn’t even anything that Brian could hold against her.
And then Laura had been born. When Laura’s head came out of Kelly’s snatch, Brian had thought she was huge, but when he saw her nestled in Justin’s hands, she’d seem so incredibly tiny, so fragile. When Justin asked him to hold her, Brian took her carefully, looked into her face and whispered, “Well, little girl, your dad’s glad you’re here, and I… well, hey, it’s your first day on earth.”
He’d taken Laura and Justin home to Justin’s apartment in the East Village that very day, leaving Kelly in the capable hands of the midwives, and Kelly, who had held up her end of the deal so diligently during the pregnancy, excusing, of course, the dozens of chili cheese dogs, continued to do just that, taking Justin’s check, kissing Laura’s fuzzy little head, and wishing them all good luck, with nary a tear in her eye. Sweetly mercenary to the last.
Three days of endless bottles and diapers had followed. It wasn’t like the three nights of endless sex he’d had at the white party in Pheonix a few years ago. No, this gave a new meaning to the words “sleep deprived”. Whenever Laura was hungry, she squawled, and when she cried Justin went into a fit of anxiety, motivated solely by the need to make the noise stop at all costs. Justin darted around making bottles, washing bottles, burping and rocking, and changing diapers, and looking for all the world like he’d been dropped in the middle of a war zone, told to nurse the wounded, equipped with only a few bandaids and a tube of neosporin.
At the end of the first three days, Justin was shell-shocked, but Jennifer was coming up from Pittsburgh the next day, and Justin swore he had it under control, that he could handle it. That had been a few weeks ago, and Jennifer had left four days earlier to travel in Europe with Molly. Brian had suggested that Justin have Debbie up to help out, but Justin had declined, insisting that he had it under control.
Clearly, based on the phone call tonight, he didn’t.
::::
“She hates me,” Justin said again, as he opened the door, the sound of Laura’s wails continuing in the background. “She cries until she passes out asleep, then she cries some more when she wakes up, and she won’t eat. I can’t do this, Brian. I can’t do this one second more.” Justin thrust the baby into Brian’s arms.
She shuddered a sigh and Brian held her close, her hicuppy little sobs wet against his shirt. “Get in bed. I’ll take care of her. You sleep.”
“How can I sleep? She hates me. She loved my mom. She loved Molly. I think she’s angry at me because she doesn’t have a mommy anymore. She thinks I took her mom away.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “If you don’t get in the bed right now…”
“Fine, fine. I’ll try. It’s just, she won’t stop…” Justin slowed down and turned to look at Brian, his eyes narrowed.
“What?”
He gestured at Brian’s chest. Brian looked down at Laura’s face, mouth open as tiny puff of air came through her lips, her eyes shut, and no sound coming from her except the soft echo of her prior tears.
“She hates me,” Justin declared as he went to his room and shut the door.
::::