Stars Made of Paper (4/7)
Genre: AU, non-h/c
Warnings: nothing more hardcore than canon, angst, Justin/OMC
Rating: hate to say it, but PG-13 for miles and miles, though Brian is a potty mouth!
Word count: this chapter: 4000
Beta:
moonbrightnites; all mistakes are mine.
A/N: This fic is for Sakesushimaki <3 Sorry for the delay, hope this chapter doesn't add insult to injury :P
Chapter 4
Brian had a small group of friends. More often than not, he wished it could be even smaller. Way smaller. Friends take claims on your time and sometimes they have ideas so monumentally stupid they make you doubt the future of mankind.
Like that time when Brian got hired after interning for three months at one of two top ad agencies in town. He’d worked himself into the ground running errands, staying in good graces of the firm partners, discreetly yet strategically showing off glimpses of his genius - and eventually it paid off. As soon as his friends caught wind of that, they decided to throw him a surprise party. When he came home to the wall-shattering collective shout of ”Surprise!” and took a look around the room and saw who was there - well, that was one of those moments he wished he'd had no friends at all.
He put on an empty smile and zeroed in on Chloe, his roommate. The party guests thumped him on the back, congratulated and toasted with beer as he approached her.
"Chloe. What the fuck,” Brian demanded when he finally reached her at the post by the refreshments table in the kitchen.
"Have some beer, Brian. Wow, isn’t this great? I think the turnout is about 95%.” She shoved a bottle of refrigerated beer at him - the kind he liked, not what everyone else was drinking. He was not mollified. And she could see that.
“Ninety-five percent of what? Where the hell did you--” he nodded at Tim, a guy he was teamed up with in freshman year at college for a market research project. The guy had nearly killed their project by undermining Brian’s authority as the elected leader. Now he was all smiles, squeezing Brian’s hand and patting his shoulder, words of respect and awe rolling off his tongue as if they were best buddies. Brian waited until he was out of the earshot before hissing at Chloe, “Where the hell did you find all those people? In my worst nightmares?”
He waved back at Maria, a team member from a sophomore project in graphic design. The one who was responsible for photoshopping their layout and who lost the source file after drowning their design in lens flares the day before deadline. Brian always suspected she lied about losing the source file after the whole team vetoed her vision.
At Maria’s heels came Bradley, Chloe’s boyfriend, and as soon as he saw Brian, he looked away, and kept looking away as he neared the refreshments table to grab a beer.
“Wow. Awkward.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell your girlfriend here.”
“I don't think I'll ever be able to look at you the same after I've read that creepy pick-up line you text to half of your tricks. Stay classy, Brian. Stay. Classy.”
Brian looked to Chloe for some clue. Chloe grabbed at Brad, but he was too fast getting away from them, shaking his head in dismay.
“Coward!” she called after him, left alone to face Brian’s rage that he was feeling approach slowly. “Anyway,” she said carefully, probing his state of mind and apparently her judgment was good tonight, because what came out sounded like one word, “wetookyourphoneandinvitedeveryoneintheaddressbookexceptyourparents,” that took Brian fifteen seconds to decode while Chloe ran off.
“I had fucking business contacts there, you idiots!” Brian shouted after her.
“Oh, they said they couldn’t make it!” Chloe’s voice came from somewhere in the crowd.
And Brian wondered what was wrong with him. Couldn’t he be meaner and less friendly so that he could live his life undisturbed by people? He should try harder.
+
After running into Tim, Maria, Phil, Jonah, Elizabeth and Martin, there was no-one in the whole state of Pennsylvania whose arrival could surprise Brian, or shatter his blissful state of zen enhanced by the amount of alcohol he consumed. So when he saw that Taylor kid, talking animatedly to some girl, his hands making sweeping gestures and his teeth flashing in wide smiles, Brian’s thought was Oh, of COURSE he’s here. With his… and then he didn’t know how to continue that train of thought.
Something was odd about Justin.
Not the way his face lit up even more when he glanced around and his eyes connected with Brian’s.
Nor how when the girl Justin had been talking to walked off somewhere with Daphne, and Brian was left with him and listened to the kid talk for half an hour and didn’t feel like smashing his own head into the wall. Not even the fact that while Brian's mind was completely blank of things to say to Justin after the way they parted, Justin didn't hit one hurdle in his monologue that was, admittedly, kind of chaotic and maybe a tiny bit nonsensical. But this was a party, after all. Brian would've been offended if anyone was sober at this point.
The odd thing about Justin was that he was so at ease with himself, how he seemed to mature over the… how long had it been? The two years since they last met. Brian was watching with fascination as Justin unleashed his inner geek and this time it was without the awkwardness and bashfulness he had at seventeen.
+
If you read the following sentence, Brian will have to kill you:
He was happy for the kid.
+
“We should get together again, yeah?” Justin said as he took his jacket out of Daphne’s hands and his voice sounded hoarse in the room that was already empty, save for the three of them. “I hate the thought I could one day become a sell-out like you, but I wanna try my hand at ad design sometime in the future and you could be a valuable--”
“Justin, shut up and walk out,” Daphne interrupted, obviously tired with waiting ages for her friend to finish his monologue. “Next time you’re getting drunk on tequila so you can’t talk at all. Bye, Brian!”
“See ya around, crazy kids.” Brian waved at them from the couch, even though they couldn’t see him.
He never got around to calling, and neither did Justin.
As far as Brian was concerned, that meeting was everything their acquaintance needed for closure. Justin was fine.
Brian let his breath out.
+
Brian had lived under the delusion that once he’d signed a contract, his status in the firm would rise above that of a coffee boy. Two months later, he was still waiting for that day to come. He was still mostly re-typing presentations for his superiors, hanging on the phone for hours waiting for a photographer or a stylist or a writer to pick up, doing research on corn syrup and realigning fonts in designs, only now he was expected to do it two times faster and more efficiently.
He’d been working there for nearly four months when one of the account managers bragged about being targeted by a recruiter from another agency for bigger money, his own office, and a golf club membership. Brian thought that was a poor compansation for losing the creative freedom that their firm offered him, but far was he from voicing that opinion. By the next week Brian and his soon to be ex-colleague became something of drinking buddies and Brian made sure the guy was very aware of Brian’s skill and dedication to his work. When Harry gave his notice, he suggested Brian and two other people to fill the positios his leaving would vacate.
“You get two weeks,” the HR manager told the three of them the next week, as his finger pressed down on the button of his pilot to switch to the next slide of the presentation. “Two weeks to turn this pathetic excuse for a press campaign into something worthy of our portfolio.The result won’t decide which one of you will get the vacated position, but it’ll help us learn about your other abilities than how fast you can conjugate 'buy me'.”
That evening @BrendanMcKinley tweeted to his 527 followers:
Looking for a graphic artist asap. Will pay in blowjobs.
+
The offers started pouring in immediately. The next morning Brian had nine artists in his roster, five of which had at least mediocre artistic skills. But among those, three were from out of state, which was rather inconvenient. They weren’t good enough for Brian to work around that inconvenience.
But at noon he got an email from some art college sophomore, who said he heard from a friend - or a friend of a friend - about Brian’s credentials and his ad project. Brian took a look at the guy’s portfolio and wondered if he was back in school after years of fighting a drug addiction, or if he was lying about his age, because no way a 20 year-old could have this kind of stylistic maturity.
Brian called the guy as soon as he got back home and fired up his laptop.
“Brian?”
Brian pulled his phone away from his face and silently demanded explanations from it.
He considered hanging up - it was probably some trick he'd given his number against his better judgment - but then realized that would've made him look suspicious.
“Yeah, who is this? I think I dialed your number by mistake.”
“I know. Smartphones, right? They're crazy. And not that smart at all.” Some kid sounded sarcastic and condescending on the other end of the line.
It was always refreshing to be on the receiving end of such treatment, for a change.
“Nice talking to you, smartass. But I've got to redial.”
“Yeah, me too. Later.”
“Later,” Brian replied automatically and by 'later' he meant 'never.'
Ten seconds later the same voice answered his call.
“Holy shit, Brian?”
“Holy shit, smartass, yes. Who's this?”
“Justin Taylor. You just called me ten seconds ago.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“No. I called some kid who's going to draw me layouts for ads in exchange for sexual favors. But you picked up instead. Again.” Shit. “...It means you're that kid, doesn't it?”
“Looks like it. Wow. So you're @BrendanMcKinley?” He even pronounced the '@,' like a little nerd.
“The one and only.”
“How did you get 527 followers, anyway?”
“I know, it's a travesty that I've got less than Kim Kardashian despite the obvious superiority of my sex tape.”
“It's probably because you didn't make any music videos.”
“Yet.”
“God help us.”
“I'm unfollowing you as we speak.”
“Right, that reminds me I should get a twitter someday. But anywho. You want me to make those layouts?”
“Oh. Yeah.” To be honest, Brian would've preferred the anonymous junkie kid he imagined behind that portfolio. That would've been far less complicated in ways that Brian would really, really rather not think about. But since that kid turned out to be Justin, and the rest were painfully mediocre, he didn't see a better choice. “Yeah, I do.”
+
After they set up to meet the next day, the phone immediately rang again.
“Brian?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it okay if I take money instead of uh. Blowjobs?”
“Why instead, not with?”
“Uh. I--” Justin stuttered and Brian could hear sudden distress in his voice.
“It’s a joke, Justin. Relax, I’m not gonna molest you.”
“Great. So. About the money.”
“Yeah. Here’s the thing: I don’t have any money to offer.”
“Oh. Well, nevermind. I’ll gladly do it for free.”
“Why?”
“Duh. I owe you like fifty favors.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Actually I do. You used to be late to class because of me. And not to mention the guys you--”
“No, fuck that, Justin. I’m not gonna request professional services from you on account of some old history, who do you take me for? And I was late one time. Alright? One time.”
“Still…”
“I’ll pay you. If I get the job.”
Justin sighed.
“I’ll pay you when I get the job.”
“I’ll do those designs for you even if you don’t.”
“You won’t, because I will get it.”
“Brian, this is--”
“We’ll argue when there’s actual money to argue about.”
+
He half-ran into the café twenty minutes after the appointed time, cheeks flushed and undone scarf trailing behind him like a tail. He scanned the rush-hour crowd and when he saw Brian, he maneuvered between the tables like a professional dancer, managing not to hit anything or anyone with the huge portfolio case he was carrying over one shoulder and the laptop bag slung over the other. And then he almost spilled someone’s coffee as he pulled the portfolio off. “I’m sorry!” he breathed out as he caught the mug right before it toppled over.
Brian bit back remarks, watching Justin disarm the rest of his equipment.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to stay in class. How much time do you have left?”
“Forty minutes, including time to drive back,” Brian answered flatly, launching Powerpoint on his laptop.
“Shit.” Justin yanked his hand out to catch the portfolio rested against the table leg before it fell over. “I don’t think lunch break is a good time for this, so maybe afternoon, next time?”
“Seems like it.”
“I’m really sorry, Brian.”
Brian looked up to see a frown on Justin’s face, like he wasn’t really sure why it was such a big deal that he was late. And it wasn’t. It took Brian a moment to realize he was staring daggers at the computer screen. He forced his face to relax.
“No, I’m-I’m not mad at you. It’s just. Been a long day.”
“Oh.”
“Relax. I used to go to school, too, you know. Stuff happens. Here.” He turned the laptop around and pushed it across the table to Justin. “This is the old design. We’re going to redo it from scratch.”
Justin pulled his chair closer, leaning forward. His brows drew together as he clicked through the presentation. “Good call.”
+
For the next week, Brian's daily exercise was weighing whether it was good or bad that he and Justin were back in each other's lives.
Pros: Justin was ridiculously talented. In fact, his talent was so overwhelming that he was too busy spewing out new ideas to remember to be snotty about them.
“It's kind of good.”
“I'm sorry. Kind of good?” Justin put down the coffee he was drinking and pointed to it. “This Starbucks is kind of good. The lightening in this shop is kind of good. Sex is kind of good. This concept? It's brilliant and it's no use being shy about admitting it.”
Cons: Brian was at a loss as to how to treat Justin. Who was this kid to him now? Should he even keep calling him a kid? Sure, he looked about fifteen (which was three years older than he looked at seventeen) and his time management skills were at the level of a four year-old. But then, the Justin Brian used to know always looked up to him and wouldn't say anything that was sure to earn Brian's disapproval.
“East of Eden what? Sorry, what were you saying? I fell asleep at 'East of'”
+
“Where the hell are you?”
“Brian.” Amazing how much contriteness could fit into two syllables. “I got caught up in a project for school. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be with you.”
“No.”
“Bria--”
“Tell me where you live, we’ll do this there.”
“I’m not sure this is a--”
“The address, Justin.” Brian was already pulling on his coat, leaving money on the table.
“Stop cutting me off,” Justin complained, but gave the address.
Brian got there in twenty minutes and when Justin opened the door, he was pushing boxes behind it with his foot.
“Sorry the place is kind of messy. We usually clean up on the weekends.”
“It’s only Tuesday.” The couch had piles of girl clothes for extra cushions and most horizontal surfaces were covered with empty mugs and plates. And dust.
“Well, not all weekends. You want some coffee?”
“I already had two,” Brian pointed out flatly, but his scathing stare was lost on Justin, who turned to pour himself a latte.
“Right. Some juice, then?”
“No, thanks. That your room?”
“Yes. Watch out for the tarp. I sketched up two proposals for you. I personally like the sixties one better, but I don’t know if you’re okay with it being so spiffy. Uh. You can sit on the bed, I’ll…” He pulled a chair from the desk and set his laptop on it. “Do you mind if I finish with the painting?” Justin asked as he got up to his easel anyway and picked up a knife.
“Knock yourself out,” Brian muttered.
+
After that, their work sessions moved permanently to Justin and Daphne's place.
Brian found that Daphne still had something of a crush on him and she was the easiest person to talk to. And thank god, because otherwise he'd be reduced to checking his email in awkward silence as Justin drowned in his little creative haze, picking on his schoolwork or fleshing out Brian's concepts for the campaign. And it was funny, really, how the history repeated itself, only now it was Brian's turn to hope that the obvious and mortifying topic wouldn't be touched. This awkward silence was all his fault now.
In normal circumstances, from a normal person, Justin would've deserved some explanations after the way they parted. But damned if Brian was going to offer those explanations voluntarily. No, maybe Justin could choke them out of Brian's lifeless throat, maybe even get an apology, too, if he turned out to be particularly crafty at torture techniques.
But Justin didn't ask for any explanations. It took Brian four days to accept the possibility that maybe this wasn't some passive-aggressive game on Justin's part. Maybe Justin had simply moved on from past resentment?
Although, seriously: Who does that? Wasn't that resentment painful enough to still be important? Brian used to be Justin's favorite person, didn't he? Why was it so easy to let it go?
Either way, once Brian accepted that weird possibility, it was slightly easier to deal with Justin's presence. And there were enough problems with the kid as it was.
Like how he could save up $90 to buy a piece of clothing that only served to express his disdain for fashion and for looking decent. Although, Brian had to admit, those carefully distressed t-shirts were doing Justin's chest and his strong arms many, many favors. Who knew lugging canvasses and waving a paintbrush could do so much good for one's physique?
And Justin's fashion sense wasn't even one of the bigger problems. Brian couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew that something about Justin was rubbing him the wrong way. When he couldn't flee Justin's room to join Daphne in looking for the ultimate cocktail recipe, Brian would try to catch up with his emails or do research for his superiors, but he'd never manage more than twenty minutes of that, because he just couldn't focus for shit. Instead, he'd keep glancing at Justin, acutely aware of being less interesting to him than the purple blob of color on Justin's sketchbook page.
“Stop fucking twitching,” he'd snap at Justin after half an hour of silence as he tried to come up with a polite way to tell some colleague who was emailing him, to go fuck himself.
And Justin would turn motionless, with that fucking all-knowing smirk of his, then continue his sketching with his feet perfectly still against the carpet.
Why did he even have carpet in his room, Brian would wonder. It must've been a bitch to remove paint stains from, and he could tell by the state of it that Justin had given up on trying a long time ago.
And Brian would grow more and more restless, because he couldn't blow up at Justin like he did on interns at the office when they were acting all-important and ~clever~. (He did feel kind of ashamed for that, seeing as he was but five months out of intern-dom himself and he knew their job wasn't exactly rewarding, but goddamnit, did they have to be so stupid?) Truth be told, several times he really wanted to. Or so he thought. He just wanted to do something to Justin. Perhaps strangle the smartass, for the urge was definitely physical.
+
First came the realization.
Brian would swear on his mother's future grave, and even his own, that he had no recollection of any futile and pointless thoughts like that going through his head right then.
But here's what happened:
He was on his way to ream out an intern from the art department (don't look at him like that. He'd had a stressful day and there was no way he could take out his frustration on someone who deserved it, because that someone was his boss). Then his phone rang.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Brian. Something came up tonight. I can't meet you.”
“Alright, no problem.” Wait, it was not cool. Didn't Justin's evenings belong exclusively to Brian? “Tomorrow, then?”
“Is it really fine? I'll have the color scheme ready by then.”
“Fabulous. See you tomorrow.”
And he forgot where he was going. It was still half an hour till lunch time. He took his coat and headed to Liberty Diner, where he had a black-haired twink in the restroom and a mid-fuck realization. It felt as if someone had gotten Brian's order wrong. That someone was Brian. And he didn't realize until he tasted it and concluded that this wasn't the thing he wanted.
Brian didn't have a habit of over-thinking anything. The next day, as he was driving to Daphne's place, he thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad habit to have. He was at a loss as to how the first step should look in these unusual circumstances.
Truth be told, he had no idea what could come out of wanting to fuck someone he definitely didn't want to fuck out of his life. At least not until he got promoted, thanks to Justin's work. Everyone knows you don't fuck your friends, that's rule no. 1 of whatever. Truth be told, again, Brian never wanted to fuck any of his friends, because his friends were a) women, and/or b) lame. None of them were hot. Which was also why Brian didn't know why exactly it was a bad idea to fuck one's friends, if they were hot.
When Justin greeted him at the door, he had bobby-pins in his green-smeared hair and rushed right back to his room as soon as he threw a distracted “Hi” over his shoulder. So Brian made himself coffee and gave Justin as much time alone with his painting as he could afford, which was less than ten minutes.
When Brian went into the room, he gave himself time. Two weeks. Not a day earlier. This campaign could be his ticket out of that shitty cubicle next to the copy room, where he couldn't get enough undisturbed time to finish a fucking game of solitaire, let alone get any work done. He would not fuck it up only because seeing Justin right then made him want to irreversibly fuck his painting up, with Justin's naked skin and his own fingers distorting every single stroke of undried paint on that canvas.
It helped that Justin barely looked at him three times over the evening, too busy staring at the back of that easel when he wasn't looking at their project in Photoshop. And by 'helped' Brian meant 'not in the fucking least.'
+
“If you’re not gonna pick up, turn off the phone.”
“Why are you so cranky today?”
“Because this thing has been buzzing every forty seconds for the past hour. I’m not gonna fire you if you pick up the call.”
“I uh…” Justin eyed the display - as he actually did every time the phone rang - and hesitated. “I don’t. Okay, give me five minutes.” He accepted the call and tried to put on a jacket one-handed. “Anthony. Hi.” He was smiling like someone told him Christmas was coming early by the time he got to the balcony door.
Brian’s concentration was shot to hell and his curiosity piqued. He only heard random muffled words through the balcony door, but he couldn’t look away from Justin’s face. He didn’t stop smiling as he talked, eyes downcast at his sneakers, like someone who’s too shy to look at the one they’re talking to, except there was no one to look at.
“No, better not.” Justin laughed, slipping back into the room. “I’ll call you tonight, k?... No! Bye.”
Oh.
Brian fixed his eyes on the page of a magazine and absent-mindedly read the whole article before he realized what he was doing.
-Next Part-
Warnings: nothing more hardcore than canon, angst, Justin/OMC
Rating: hate to say it, but PG-13 for miles and miles, though Brian is a potty mouth!
Word count: this chapter: 4000
Beta:
moonbrightnites; all mistakes are mine.
A/N: This fic is for Sakesushimaki <3 Sorry for the delay, hope this chapter doesn't add insult to injury :P
Chapter 4
Brian had a small group of friends. More often than not, he wished it could be even smaller. Way smaller. Friends take claims on your time and sometimes they have ideas so monumentally stupid they make you doubt the future of mankind.
Like that time when Brian got hired after interning for three months at one of two top ad agencies in town. He’d worked himself into the ground running errands, staying in good graces of the firm partners, discreetly yet strategically showing off glimpses of his genius - and eventually it paid off. As soon as his friends caught wind of that, they decided to throw him a surprise party. When he came home to the wall-shattering collective shout of ”Surprise!” and took a look around the room and saw who was there - well, that was one of those moments he wished he'd had no friends at all.
He put on an empty smile and zeroed in on Chloe, his roommate. The party guests thumped him on the back, congratulated and toasted with beer as he approached her.
"Chloe. What the fuck,” Brian demanded when he finally reached her at the post by the refreshments table in the kitchen.
"Have some beer, Brian. Wow, isn’t this great? I think the turnout is about 95%.” She shoved a bottle of refrigerated beer at him - the kind he liked, not what everyone else was drinking. He was not mollified. And she could see that.
“Ninety-five percent of what? Where the hell did you--” he nodded at Tim, a guy he was teamed up with in freshman year at college for a market research project. The guy had nearly killed their project by undermining Brian’s authority as the elected leader. Now he was all smiles, squeezing Brian’s hand and patting his shoulder, words of respect and awe rolling off his tongue as if they were best buddies. Brian waited until he was out of the earshot before hissing at Chloe, “Where the hell did you find all those people? In my worst nightmares?”
He waved back at Maria, a team member from a sophomore project in graphic design. The one who was responsible for photoshopping their layout and who lost the source file after drowning their design in lens flares the day before deadline. Brian always suspected she lied about losing the source file after the whole team vetoed her vision.
At Maria’s heels came Bradley, Chloe’s boyfriend, and as soon as he saw Brian, he looked away, and kept looking away as he neared the refreshments table to grab a beer.
“Wow. Awkward.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell your girlfriend here.”
“I don't think I'll ever be able to look at you the same after I've read that creepy pick-up line you text to half of your tricks. Stay classy, Brian. Stay. Classy.”
Brian looked to Chloe for some clue. Chloe grabbed at Brad, but he was too fast getting away from them, shaking his head in dismay.
“Coward!” she called after him, left alone to face Brian’s rage that he was feeling approach slowly. “Anyway,” she said carefully, probing his state of mind and apparently her judgment was good tonight, because what came out sounded like one word, “wetookyourphoneandinvitedeveryoneintheaddressbookexceptyourparents,” that took Brian fifteen seconds to decode while Chloe ran off.
“I had fucking business contacts there, you idiots!” Brian shouted after her.
“Oh, they said they couldn’t make it!” Chloe’s voice came from somewhere in the crowd.
And Brian wondered what was wrong with him. Couldn’t he be meaner and less friendly so that he could live his life undisturbed by people? He should try harder.
+
After running into Tim, Maria, Phil, Jonah, Elizabeth and Martin, there was no-one in the whole state of Pennsylvania whose arrival could surprise Brian, or shatter his blissful state of zen enhanced by the amount of alcohol he consumed. So when he saw that Taylor kid, talking animatedly to some girl, his hands making sweeping gestures and his teeth flashing in wide smiles, Brian’s thought was Oh, of COURSE he’s here. With his… and then he didn’t know how to continue that train of thought.
Something was odd about Justin.
Not the way his face lit up even more when he glanced around and his eyes connected with Brian’s.
Nor how when the girl Justin had been talking to walked off somewhere with Daphne, and Brian was left with him and listened to the kid talk for half an hour and didn’t feel like smashing his own head into the wall. Not even the fact that while Brian's mind was completely blank of things to say to Justin after the way they parted, Justin didn't hit one hurdle in his monologue that was, admittedly, kind of chaotic and maybe a tiny bit nonsensical. But this was a party, after all. Brian would've been offended if anyone was sober at this point.
The odd thing about Justin was that he was so at ease with himself, how he seemed to mature over the… how long had it been? The two years since they last met. Brian was watching with fascination as Justin unleashed his inner geek and this time it was without the awkwardness and bashfulness he had at seventeen.
+
If you read the following sentence, Brian will have to kill you:
He was happy for the kid.
+
“We should get together again, yeah?” Justin said as he took his jacket out of Daphne’s hands and his voice sounded hoarse in the room that was already empty, save for the three of them. “I hate the thought I could one day become a sell-out like you, but I wanna try my hand at ad design sometime in the future and you could be a valuable--”
“Justin, shut up and walk out,” Daphne interrupted, obviously tired with waiting ages for her friend to finish his monologue. “Next time you’re getting drunk on tequila so you can’t talk at all. Bye, Brian!”
“See ya around, crazy kids.” Brian waved at them from the couch, even though they couldn’t see him.
He never got around to calling, and neither did Justin.
As far as Brian was concerned, that meeting was everything their acquaintance needed for closure. Justin was fine.
Brian let his breath out.
+
Brian had lived under the delusion that once he’d signed a contract, his status in the firm would rise above that of a coffee boy. Two months later, he was still waiting for that day to come. He was still mostly re-typing presentations for his superiors, hanging on the phone for hours waiting for a photographer or a stylist or a writer to pick up, doing research on corn syrup and realigning fonts in designs, only now he was expected to do it two times faster and more efficiently.
He’d been working there for nearly four months when one of the account managers bragged about being targeted by a recruiter from another agency for bigger money, his own office, and a golf club membership. Brian thought that was a poor compansation for losing the creative freedom that their firm offered him, but far was he from voicing that opinion. By the next week Brian and his soon to be ex-colleague became something of drinking buddies and Brian made sure the guy was very aware of Brian’s skill and dedication to his work. When Harry gave his notice, he suggested Brian and two other people to fill the positios his leaving would vacate.
“You get two weeks,” the HR manager told the three of them the next week, as his finger pressed down on the button of his pilot to switch to the next slide of the presentation. “Two weeks to turn this pathetic excuse for a press campaign into something worthy of our portfolio.The result won’t decide which one of you will get the vacated position, but it’ll help us learn about your other abilities than how fast you can conjugate 'buy me'.”
That evening @BrendanMcKinley tweeted to his 527 followers:
Looking for a graphic artist asap. Will pay in blowjobs.
+
The offers started pouring in immediately. The next morning Brian had nine artists in his roster, five of which had at least mediocre artistic skills. But among those, three were from out of state, which was rather inconvenient. They weren’t good enough for Brian to work around that inconvenience.
But at noon he got an email from some art college sophomore, who said he heard from a friend - or a friend of a friend - about Brian’s credentials and his ad project. Brian took a look at the guy’s portfolio and wondered if he was back in school after years of fighting a drug addiction, or if he was lying about his age, because no way a 20 year-old could have this kind of stylistic maturity.
Brian called the guy as soon as he got back home and fired up his laptop.
“Brian?”
Brian pulled his phone away from his face and silently demanded explanations from it.
He considered hanging up - it was probably some trick he'd given his number against his better judgment - but then realized that would've made him look suspicious.
“Yeah, who is this? I think I dialed your number by mistake.”
“I know. Smartphones, right? They're crazy. And not that smart at all.” Some kid sounded sarcastic and condescending on the other end of the line.
It was always refreshing to be on the receiving end of such treatment, for a change.
“Nice talking to you, smartass. But I've got to redial.”
“Yeah, me too. Later.”
“Later,” Brian replied automatically and by 'later' he meant 'never.'
Ten seconds later the same voice answered his call.
“Holy shit, Brian?”
“Holy shit, smartass, yes. Who's this?”
“Justin Taylor. You just called me ten seconds ago.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“No. I called some kid who's going to draw me layouts for ads in exchange for sexual favors. But you picked up instead. Again.” Shit. “...It means you're that kid, doesn't it?”
“Looks like it. Wow. So you're @BrendanMcKinley?” He even pronounced the '@,' like a little nerd.
“The one and only.”
“How did you get 527 followers, anyway?”
“I know, it's a travesty that I've got less than Kim Kardashian despite the obvious superiority of my sex tape.”
“It's probably because you didn't make any music videos.”
“Yet.”
“God help us.”
“I'm unfollowing you as we speak.”
“Right, that reminds me I should get a twitter someday. But anywho. You want me to make those layouts?”
“Oh. Yeah.” To be honest, Brian would've preferred the anonymous junkie kid he imagined behind that portfolio. That would've been far less complicated in ways that Brian would really, really rather not think about. But since that kid turned out to be Justin, and the rest were painfully mediocre, he didn't see a better choice. “Yeah, I do.”
+
After they set up to meet the next day, the phone immediately rang again.
“Brian?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it okay if I take money instead of uh. Blowjobs?”
“Why instead, not with?”
“Uh. I--” Justin stuttered and Brian could hear sudden distress in his voice.
“It’s a joke, Justin. Relax, I’m not gonna molest you.”
“Great. So. About the money.”
“Yeah. Here’s the thing: I don’t have any money to offer.”
“Oh. Well, nevermind. I’ll gladly do it for free.”
“Why?”
“Duh. I owe you like fifty favors.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Actually I do. You used to be late to class because of me. And not to mention the guys you--”
“No, fuck that, Justin. I’m not gonna request professional services from you on account of some old history, who do you take me for? And I was late one time. Alright? One time.”
“Still…”
“I’ll pay you. If I get the job.”
Justin sighed.
“I’ll pay you when I get the job.”
“I’ll do those designs for you even if you don’t.”
“You won’t, because I will get it.”
“Brian, this is--”
“We’ll argue when there’s actual money to argue about.”
+
He half-ran into the café twenty minutes after the appointed time, cheeks flushed and undone scarf trailing behind him like a tail. He scanned the rush-hour crowd and when he saw Brian, he maneuvered between the tables like a professional dancer, managing not to hit anything or anyone with the huge portfolio case he was carrying over one shoulder and the laptop bag slung over the other. And then he almost spilled someone’s coffee as he pulled the portfolio off. “I’m sorry!” he breathed out as he caught the mug right before it toppled over.
Brian bit back remarks, watching Justin disarm the rest of his equipment.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to stay in class. How much time do you have left?”
“Forty minutes, including time to drive back,” Brian answered flatly, launching Powerpoint on his laptop.
“Shit.” Justin yanked his hand out to catch the portfolio rested against the table leg before it fell over. “I don’t think lunch break is a good time for this, so maybe afternoon, next time?”
“Seems like it.”
“I’m really sorry, Brian.”
Brian looked up to see a frown on Justin’s face, like he wasn’t really sure why it was such a big deal that he was late. And it wasn’t. It took Brian a moment to realize he was staring daggers at the computer screen. He forced his face to relax.
“No, I’m-I’m not mad at you. It’s just. Been a long day.”
“Oh.”
“Relax. I used to go to school, too, you know. Stuff happens. Here.” He turned the laptop around and pushed it across the table to Justin. “This is the old design. We’re going to redo it from scratch.”
Justin pulled his chair closer, leaning forward. His brows drew together as he clicked through the presentation. “Good call.”
+
For the next week, Brian's daily exercise was weighing whether it was good or bad that he and Justin were back in each other's lives.
Pros: Justin was ridiculously talented. In fact, his talent was so overwhelming that he was too busy spewing out new ideas to remember to be snotty about them.
“It's kind of good.”
“I'm sorry. Kind of good?” Justin put down the coffee he was drinking and pointed to it. “This Starbucks is kind of good. The lightening in this shop is kind of good. Sex is kind of good. This concept? It's brilliant and it's no use being shy about admitting it.”
Cons: Brian was at a loss as to how to treat Justin. Who was this kid to him now? Should he even keep calling him a kid? Sure, he looked about fifteen (which was three years older than he looked at seventeen) and his time management skills were at the level of a four year-old. But then, the Justin Brian used to know always looked up to him and wouldn't say anything that was sure to earn Brian's disapproval.
“East of Eden what? Sorry, what were you saying? I fell asleep at 'East of'”
+
“Where the hell are you?”
“Brian.” Amazing how much contriteness could fit into two syllables. “I got caught up in a project for school. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be with you.”
“No.”
“Bria--”
“Tell me where you live, we’ll do this there.”
“I’m not sure this is a--”
“The address, Justin.” Brian was already pulling on his coat, leaving money on the table.
“Stop cutting me off,” Justin complained, but gave the address.
Brian got there in twenty minutes and when Justin opened the door, he was pushing boxes behind it with his foot.
“Sorry the place is kind of messy. We usually clean up on the weekends.”
“It’s only Tuesday.” The couch had piles of girl clothes for extra cushions and most horizontal surfaces were covered with empty mugs and plates. And dust.
“Well, not all weekends. You want some coffee?”
“I already had two,” Brian pointed out flatly, but his scathing stare was lost on Justin, who turned to pour himself a latte.
“Right. Some juice, then?”
“No, thanks. That your room?”
“Yes. Watch out for the tarp. I sketched up two proposals for you. I personally like the sixties one better, but I don’t know if you’re okay with it being so spiffy. Uh. You can sit on the bed, I’ll…” He pulled a chair from the desk and set his laptop on it. “Do you mind if I finish with the painting?” Justin asked as he got up to his easel anyway and picked up a knife.
“Knock yourself out,” Brian muttered.
+
After that, their work sessions moved permanently to Justin and Daphne's place.
Brian found that Daphne still had something of a crush on him and she was the easiest person to talk to. And thank god, because otherwise he'd be reduced to checking his email in awkward silence as Justin drowned in his little creative haze, picking on his schoolwork or fleshing out Brian's concepts for the campaign. And it was funny, really, how the history repeated itself, only now it was Brian's turn to hope that the obvious and mortifying topic wouldn't be touched. This awkward silence was all his fault now.
In normal circumstances, from a normal person, Justin would've deserved some explanations after the way they parted. But damned if Brian was going to offer those explanations voluntarily. No, maybe Justin could choke them out of Brian's lifeless throat, maybe even get an apology, too, if he turned out to be particularly crafty at torture techniques.
But Justin didn't ask for any explanations. It took Brian four days to accept the possibility that maybe this wasn't some passive-aggressive game on Justin's part. Maybe Justin had simply moved on from past resentment?
Although, seriously: Who does that? Wasn't that resentment painful enough to still be important? Brian used to be Justin's favorite person, didn't he? Why was it so easy to let it go?
Either way, once Brian accepted that weird possibility, it was slightly easier to deal with Justin's presence. And there were enough problems with the kid as it was.
Like how he could save up $90 to buy a piece of clothing that only served to express his disdain for fashion and for looking decent. Although, Brian had to admit, those carefully distressed t-shirts were doing Justin's chest and his strong arms many, many favors. Who knew lugging canvasses and waving a paintbrush could do so much good for one's physique?
And Justin's fashion sense wasn't even one of the bigger problems. Brian couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew that something about Justin was rubbing him the wrong way. When he couldn't flee Justin's room to join Daphne in looking for the ultimate cocktail recipe, Brian would try to catch up with his emails or do research for his superiors, but he'd never manage more than twenty minutes of that, because he just couldn't focus for shit. Instead, he'd keep glancing at Justin, acutely aware of being less interesting to him than the purple blob of color on Justin's sketchbook page.
“Stop fucking twitching,” he'd snap at Justin after half an hour of silence as he tried to come up with a polite way to tell some colleague who was emailing him, to go fuck himself.
And Justin would turn motionless, with that fucking all-knowing smirk of his, then continue his sketching with his feet perfectly still against the carpet.
Why did he even have carpet in his room, Brian would wonder. It must've been a bitch to remove paint stains from, and he could tell by the state of it that Justin had given up on trying a long time ago.
And Brian would grow more and more restless, because he couldn't blow up at Justin like he did on interns at the office when they were acting all-important and ~clever~. (He did feel kind of ashamed for that, seeing as he was but five months out of intern-dom himself and he knew their job wasn't exactly rewarding, but goddamnit, did they have to be so stupid?) Truth be told, several times he really wanted to. Or so he thought. He just wanted to do something to Justin. Perhaps strangle the smartass, for the urge was definitely physical.
+
First came the realization.
Brian would swear on his mother's future grave, and even his own, that he had no recollection of any futile and pointless thoughts like that going through his head right then.
But here's what happened:
He was on his way to ream out an intern from the art department (don't look at him like that. He'd had a stressful day and there was no way he could take out his frustration on someone who deserved it, because that someone was his boss). Then his phone rang.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Brian. Something came up tonight. I can't meet you.”
“Alright, no problem.” Wait, it was not cool. Didn't Justin's evenings belong exclusively to Brian? “Tomorrow, then?”
“Is it really fine? I'll have the color scheme ready by then.”
“Fabulous. See you tomorrow.”
And he forgot where he was going. It was still half an hour till lunch time. He took his coat and headed to Liberty Diner, where he had a black-haired twink in the restroom and a mid-fuck realization. It felt as if someone had gotten Brian's order wrong. That someone was Brian. And he didn't realize until he tasted it and concluded that this wasn't the thing he wanted.
Brian didn't have a habit of over-thinking anything. The next day, as he was driving to Daphne's place, he thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad habit to have. He was at a loss as to how the first step should look in these unusual circumstances.
Truth be told, he had no idea what could come out of wanting to fuck someone he definitely didn't want to fuck out of his life. At least not until he got promoted, thanks to Justin's work. Everyone knows you don't fuck your friends, that's rule no. 1 of whatever. Truth be told, again, Brian never wanted to fuck any of his friends, because his friends were a) women, and/or b) lame. None of them were hot. Which was also why Brian didn't know why exactly it was a bad idea to fuck one's friends, if they were hot.
When Justin greeted him at the door, he had bobby-pins in his green-smeared hair and rushed right back to his room as soon as he threw a distracted “Hi” over his shoulder. So Brian made himself coffee and gave Justin as much time alone with his painting as he could afford, which was less than ten minutes.
When Brian went into the room, he gave himself time. Two weeks. Not a day earlier. This campaign could be his ticket out of that shitty cubicle next to the copy room, where he couldn't get enough undisturbed time to finish a fucking game of solitaire, let alone get any work done. He would not fuck it up only because seeing Justin right then made him want to irreversibly fuck his painting up, with Justin's naked skin and his own fingers distorting every single stroke of undried paint on that canvas.
It helped that Justin barely looked at him three times over the evening, too busy staring at the back of that easel when he wasn't looking at their project in Photoshop. And by 'helped' Brian meant 'not in the fucking least.'
+
“If you’re not gonna pick up, turn off the phone.”
“Why are you so cranky today?”
“Because this thing has been buzzing every forty seconds for the past hour. I’m not gonna fire you if you pick up the call.”
“I uh…” Justin eyed the display - as he actually did every time the phone rang - and hesitated. “I don’t. Okay, give me five minutes.” He accepted the call and tried to put on a jacket one-handed. “Anthony. Hi.” He was smiling like someone told him Christmas was coming early by the time he got to the balcony door.
Brian’s concentration was shot to hell and his curiosity piqued. He only heard random muffled words through the balcony door, but he couldn’t look away from Justin’s face. He didn’t stop smiling as he talked, eyes downcast at his sneakers, like someone who’s too shy to look at the one they’re talking to, except there was no one to look at.
“No, better not.” Justin laughed, slipping back into the room. “I’ll call you tonight, k?... No! Bye.”
Oh.
Brian fixed his eyes on the page of a magazine and absent-mindedly read the whole article before he realized what he was doing.
-Next Part-