FIC: Parameters (13/14)
Title: Parameters
Fandom: Queer As Folk
Rating: R/M for language -- if you’ve seen the series, you’re fine.
Category: Angst, drama, romance, friendship, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I any way affiliated with the characters, actors, or production company that were part of Queer As Folk. I am however the owner of the characters and places you do not recognize.
Warnings: Cancer!fic (NOT a death!fic)
Dedicated: For gundamnook who asked for this fic as the winning bidder from help_haiti!
Summary: Justin Taylor ignored the symptoms. Ignored the nausea, the headaches, the nosebleeds. But he couldn’t ignore the colorblindness. With a dire diagnosis, he’s making his way back to Pittsburgh for the first time in two and a half years to face the music of his mortality once again.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Eleven. Twelve.
BRIAN’S POV
“And I swear to God, Brian Kinney, that if he dies, I’ll cut off the one remaining ball you have left!”
I fail to see how she rationalizes that I could’ve prevented Justin from getting cancer, but Daphne’s frantic because she’s in Boston at school and not by his side. Though I do have her disliking Rae, solely on the reason that she’s slowly monopolizing the spot in Justin’s life that Daphne’s held since grade school.
Score one for me.
“I always loved your brand of sweet talk, dear.”
“Shut it. Just take care of him… and yourself, okay? You need to be tip-top for wooing Justin back.”
“Bye Daphne.”
I hang up the phone and wonder for the millionth time in my life why I let such an annoying twat into my life. By all means, it brings at least half a dozen twats-by-association that I’d be happy to deal without.
And then my stomach quivers in remembrance of what I felt like when he was bashed, and when the bomb went off, and again when he told me he had cancer. It was like the world was crashing and everything was dark. Because without him, there literally is no sunshine.
And thankfully there’s no tingling down there so I’m not growing a twat in place of a cock. Thank God for small favors. At least sounding like a dyke isn’t turning me into one.
There’s a dozen thoughts going through my head that prove without Justin, I’d probably have been dead a long time ago. Not that I’d admit it to him or anyone else, of course. Especially not to him. I certainly wouldn’t have had reason to live past my thirtieth birthday.
Not that living past it was all that brilliant. A few days later and I was covered in Justin’s blood. Trying to hold his brain inside his head as the ambulance seemed to take hours to get to the garage. It was just us in there. In that garage. Nobody heard my anguished screams over the late-90s idiotic bullshit those teeny boppers and Emmett thought was music. No one ran down, no one heard the ambulance. There was a blissful ignorance for those people. Never for me though. Never again.
Probably wouldn’t have lived past my thirty-first either, but I didn’t want everyone thinking Brian fucking Kinney offed himself over a teenaged twink who wised up and moved on from an aging party boy.
Wouldn’t have had reason after I lost my money, my reputation in the business world because some twat told me he had to fight for what he believed in and put noble ideas in my head.
Wouldn’t have had reason after my ball was cut out if he weren’t such a persistent little thing to come back after I’d told him I didn’t want him anymore.
Wouldn’t have had reason if that fifteen minute car ride to Babylon had proven fruitless. If he’d gone up in smoke and flame with the club. That’d have been it for me, definitively.
I love my son. I love Lindsay. I love Mikey. I love Deb.
But I love Justin.
Without him, it’s just hard to find any reason.
I know everyone else would be able to move on.
Gus and Lindsay would have Melanie, as much as I hate to fucking admit it.
Mikey would have Ben.
Deb would have Carl and Mikey.
If Justin’s gone, so am I. I feel like a fucking lesbian for admit it, for letting myself get to this point where my survival is solely dependant on whether another person survives or not.
But staring at him here, laying in this bed with tubes hooked up to him, a shaved head wrapped in filmy gauze, looking shittier than any movie or TV show perceives post-op cancer patients to be. He’s pale with yellow tones to his skin, bringing out vein and signs of exhaustion under his eyes.
And fuck all, I know if a genie came down here and told me he could grant me one single wish, it wouldn’t be to wish him away, wish I’d never saw the twat under that streetlamp, wish he had never came into my life and helped me become a better man simply by existing.
It would be to wish that nothing would ever hurt him again.
And if that included me, so be it. So long as he didn’t end up in this fucking hospital again.
I would let myself risk never seeing him again, if it meant that I wouldn’t hurt him, just so that he could live happily and healthily.
“He’s strong, Brian.”
Everyone keeps saying that. Over and over and it’s starting to piss me off. Yeah, he can be strong. But Justin can be weak too, vulnerable. He just doesn’t let them see it. No one else seems to figure that out, not even Jen.
But I know it. That’s why I’m scared.
Yeah, Brian fucking Kinney is scared. Because Justin’s been unresponsive for six days now.
Pryce said that it’s not unnatural for some patients to need longer stretches of time to recover.
But there’s a couple of words in there that raise red flags. Like ‘some patients’. Even Mel 2.0 has been concerned. She’s trying not to let anyone see it, but she finally snapped on Sean the other day, who was using his nurse knowledge to try and pacify everyone into thinking that this was routine, not uncommon.
Doesn’t mean we still aren’t freaking the fuck out, so shut the fuck up before I go Nurse Ratched on you.
I almost entertained the idea of liking her… but then I remembered she’s a cunt, so no. A momentary lapse in sanity. I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred before now.
Sanity is a relative term now anyways. Sanity won’t return until Justin’s back. Not awake, back. As in, his hair has grown back in, he can eat normally, he’s done with chemo or radiation or whatever the fuck they decide to torture him with. And then…
And then what?
What the fuck was I gonna do?
Kick out the AIDS patients from the hospice and take back Britin? Propose all over again? Give him some lesbian speech about he can paint anywhere and hop on a plane when he needs to go for business? Deprive him of any and all culture and growth he can get by living somewhere with an actual art scene?
I’m not gonna do th… “Stay.”
I know he can’t hear me. I’m not deluded into thinking otherwise. Because if he could, if he could remember what I said anyways, he’d know that I’d seen him in the hospital after the bashing. Every fucking night. Barely slept ‘cause I had to fuck any open hole or mouth I found, had to snort and drink my way to oblivion in order to stomach seeing him so fucking fragile. But I partied and then spent the early hours of the morning outside that hospital room.
I only went in once and that was enough. The whimpers in his sleep, the twitching of his hand as he was deep in his nightmares with no thanks to the pharmaceuticals. No escape.
Maybe the fact that he couldn’t hear me then, and can’t hear me now, is the whole reason that I can talk. Could say what I was about to.
“You’re gonna fucking stay, whether you like it or not. You’re gonna be with me, at the loft, while you go through treatments, and I’m gonna clean up the sick and make you fucking chicken soup like you did for me. You’re gonna whine and bitch and I’m gonna want to walk away and go get my dick sucked at Babylon nine times out of ten, but I’m not going to. Because you didn’t with me, and because the thought of getting my dick sucked while you’re throwing up from cancer treatments is…” I have to pause to clear my throat through the emotion. The thought makes me want to stab myself in the balls for being a hypothetical jackass. “A real turn-off.
“You’re gonna move back after you’re well enough. And we’re gonna go on, the way we were after Ian and after my cancer and after Los Angeles and breeder rituals and the bombing. We’re just gonna keep moving forward and we’re gonna work it all out in the way we normally do: you bitching and making demands and me letting you think you’ve won by acquiescing. So you need to fucking wake up, so we can get through all of this. Just… wake up.”
It was pure fear making me talk. I know that. But there was an underlying of truth. Shit I’ve wanted to say for years.
“C’mon, Sunshine,” I take his limp hand, the one damaged years earlier, between both of mine and cocoon it in a vice grip, “We’ll do the commitment ceremony… I won’t promise monogamy or kids or even a fucking dog, but I’ll do that much for you. For us. Please…?”
Note here the day that Brian Kinney begged a twink twelve years younger than him to walk down the aisle with him. Again.
It’s another one for the record books.
------------------------------
Obviously, I’ve extended this one more chapter. I wanted to post what I had so far so that I could move past this point in the story. It’s what massively blocked me, and I didn’t wanna just time jump in the center of the chapter and kinda smear across the emotional aspect of Brian begging Justin to wake up in his own Kinney-esque way.
If you’re not watching my community and haven’t noticed the apology I posted recently, I’d like to once again say how truly sorry I am about seemingly abandoning this story. There was lots of issues in my personal life after I realized that, contrary to my mind’s belief, I hadn’t posted the final chapter (which I reread, hated, rewrote, and got stuck around this point). But hopefully the final chapter will be up sometime by Sunday evening. I think now that I’ve decided to chop it off here, that I’ll be able to wrap it up with the next chapter, which may be a super short epilogue-styled ‘chapter’ followed by an actual short epilogue. All because I really wanna write my next QAF fic! :D You can read the full apology and some details about that story HERE.
Thank you so much to everyone that’s returned to this story after its unfortunate hiatus,
-- Ashley.
Fandom: Queer As Folk
Rating: R/M for language -- if you’ve seen the series, you’re fine.
Category: Angst, drama, romance, friendship, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I any way affiliated with the characters, actors, or production company that were part of Queer As Folk. I am however the owner of the characters and places you do not recognize.
Warnings: Cancer!fic (NOT a death!fic)
Dedicated: For gundamnook who asked for this fic as the winning bidder from help_haiti!
Summary: Justin Taylor ignored the symptoms. Ignored the nausea, the headaches, the nosebleeds. But he couldn’t ignore the colorblindness. With a dire diagnosis, he’s making his way back to Pittsburgh for the first time in two and a half years to face the music of his mortality once again.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Eleven. Twelve.
BRIAN’S POV
“And I swear to God, Brian Kinney, that if he dies, I’ll cut off the one remaining ball you have left!”
I fail to see how she rationalizes that I could’ve prevented Justin from getting cancer, but Daphne’s frantic because she’s in Boston at school and not by his side. Though I do have her disliking Rae, solely on the reason that she’s slowly monopolizing the spot in Justin’s life that Daphne’s held since grade school.
Score one for me.
“I always loved your brand of sweet talk, dear.”
“Shut it. Just take care of him… and yourself, okay? You need to be tip-top for wooing Justin back.”
“Bye Daphne.”
I hang up the phone and wonder for the millionth time in my life why I let such an annoying twat into my life. By all means, it brings at least half a dozen twats-by-association that I’d be happy to deal without.
And then my stomach quivers in remembrance of what I felt like when he was bashed, and when the bomb went off, and again when he told me he had cancer. It was like the world was crashing and everything was dark. Because without him, there literally is no sunshine.
And thankfully there’s no tingling down there so I’m not growing a twat in place of a cock. Thank God for small favors. At least sounding like a dyke isn’t turning me into one.
There’s a dozen thoughts going through my head that prove without Justin, I’d probably have been dead a long time ago. Not that I’d admit it to him or anyone else, of course. Especially not to him. I certainly wouldn’t have had reason to live past my thirtieth birthday.
Not that living past it was all that brilliant. A few days later and I was covered in Justin’s blood. Trying to hold his brain inside his head as the ambulance seemed to take hours to get to the garage. It was just us in there. In that garage. Nobody heard my anguished screams over the late-90s idiotic bullshit those teeny boppers and Emmett thought was music. No one ran down, no one heard the ambulance. There was a blissful ignorance for those people. Never for me though. Never again.
Probably wouldn’t have lived past my thirty-first either, but I didn’t want everyone thinking Brian fucking Kinney offed himself over a teenaged twink who wised up and moved on from an aging party boy.
Wouldn’t have had reason after I lost my money, my reputation in the business world because some twat told me he had to fight for what he believed in and put noble ideas in my head.
Wouldn’t have had reason after my ball was cut out if he weren’t such a persistent little thing to come back after I’d told him I didn’t want him anymore.
Wouldn’t have had reason if that fifteen minute car ride to Babylon had proven fruitless. If he’d gone up in smoke and flame with the club. That’d have been it for me, definitively.
I love my son. I love Lindsay. I love Mikey. I love Deb.
But I love Justin.
Without him, it’s just hard to find any reason.
I know everyone else would be able to move on.
Gus and Lindsay would have Melanie, as much as I hate to fucking admit it.
Mikey would have Ben.
Deb would have Carl and Mikey.
If Justin’s gone, so am I. I feel like a fucking lesbian for admit it, for letting myself get to this point where my survival is solely dependant on whether another person survives or not.
But staring at him here, laying in this bed with tubes hooked up to him, a shaved head wrapped in filmy gauze, looking shittier than any movie or TV show perceives post-op cancer patients to be. He’s pale with yellow tones to his skin, bringing out vein and signs of exhaustion under his eyes.
And fuck all, I know if a genie came down here and told me he could grant me one single wish, it wouldn’t be to wish him away, wish I’d never saw the twat under that streetlamp, wish he had never came into my life and helped me become a better man simply by existing.
It would be to wish that nothing would ever hurt him again.
And if that included me, so be it. So long as he didn’t end up in this fucking hospital again.
I would let myself risk never seeing him again, if it meant that I wouldn’t hurt him, just so that he could live happily and healthily.
“He’s strong, Brian.”
Everyone keeps saying that. Over and over and it’s starting to piss me off. Yeah, he can be strong. But Justin can be weak too, vulnerable. He just doesn’t let them see it. No one else seems to figure that out, not even Jen.
But I know it. That’s why I’m scared.
Yeah, Brian fucking Kinney is scared. Because Justin’s been unresponsive for six days now.
Pryce said that it’s not unnatural for some patients to need longer stretches of time to recover.
But there’s a couple of words in there that raise red flags. Like ‘some patients’. Even Mel 2.0 has been concerned. She’s trying not to let anyone see it, but she finally snapped on Sean the other day, who was using his nurse knowledge to try and pacify everyone into thinking that this was routine, not uncommon.
Doesn’t mean we still aren’t freaking the fuck out, so shut the fuck up before I go Nurse Ratched on you.
I almost entertained the idea of liking her… but then I remembered she’s a cunt, so no. A momentary lapse in sanity. I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred before now.
Sanity is a relative term now anyways. Sanity won’t return until Justin’s back. Not awake, back. As in, his hair has grown back in, he can eat normally, he’s done with chemo or radiation or whatever the fuck they decide to torture him with. And then…
And then what?
What the fuck was I gonna do?
Kick out the AIDS patients from the hospice and take back Britin? Propose all over again? Give him some lesbian speech about he can paint anywhere and hop on a plane when he needs to go for business? Deprive him of any and all culture and growth he can get by living somewhere with an actual art scene?
I’m not gonna do th… “Stay.”
I know he can’t hear me. I’m not deluded into thinking otherwise. Because if he could, if he could remember what I said anyways, he’d know that I’d seen him in the hospital after the bashing. Every fucking night. Barely slept ‘cause I had to fuck any open hole or mouth I found, had to snort and drink my way to oblivion in order to stomach seeing him so fucking fragile. But I partied and then spent the early hours of the morning outside that hospital room.
I only went in once and that was enough. The whimpers in his sleep, the twitching of his hand as he was deep in his nightmares with no thanks to the pharmaceuticals. No escape.
Maybe the fact that he couldn’t hear me then, and can’t hear me now, is the whole reason that I can talk. Could say what I was about to.
“You’re gonna fucking stay, whether you like it or not. You’re gonna be with me, at the loft, while you go through treatments, and I’m gonna clean up the sick and make you fucking chicken soup like you did for me. You’re gonna whine and bitch and I’m gonna want to walk away and go get my dick sucked at Babylon nine times out of ten, but I’m not going to. Because you didn’t with me, and because the thought of getting my dick sucked while you’re throwing up from cancer treatments is…” I have to pause to clear my throat through the emotion. The thought makes me want to stab myself in the balls for being a hypothetical jackass. “A real turn-off.
“You’re gonna move back after you’re well enough. And we’re gonna go on, the way we were after Ian and after my cancer and after Los Angeles and breeder rituals and the bombing. We’re just gonna keep moving forward and we’re gonna work it all out in the way we normally do: you bitching and making demands and me letting you think you’ve won by acquiescing. So you need to fucking wake up, so we can get through all of this. Just… wake up.”
It was pure fear making me talk. I know that. But there was an underlying of truth. Shit I’ve wanted to say for years.
“C’mon, Sunshine,” I take his limp hand, the one damaged years earlier, between both of mine and cocoon it in a vice grip, “We’ll do the commitment ceremony… I won’t promise monogamy or kids or even a fucking dog, but I’ll do that much for you. For us. Please…?”
Note here the day that Brian Kinney begged a twink twelve years younger than him to walk down the aisle with him. Again.
It’s another one for the record books.
------------------------------
Obviously, I’ve extended this one more chapter. I wanted to post what I had so far so that I could move past this point in the story. It’s what massively blocked me, and I didn’t wanna just time jump in the center of the chapter and kinda smear across the emotional aspect of Brian begging Justin to wake up in his own Kinney-esque way.
If you’re not watching my community and haven’t noticed the apology I posted recently, I’d like to once again say how truly sorry I am about seemingly abandoning this story. There was lots of issues in my personal life after I realized that, contrary to my mind’s belief, I hadn’t posted the final chapter (which I reread, hated, rewrote, and got stuck around this point). But hopefully the final chapter will be up sometime by Sunday evening. I think now that I’ve decided to chop it off here, that I’ll be able to wrap it up with the next chapter, which may be a super short epilogue-styled ‘chapter’ followed by an actual short epilogue. All because I really wanna write my next QAF fic! :D You can read the full apology and some details about that story HERE.
Thank you so much to everyone that’s returned to this story after its unfortunate hiatus,
-- Ashley.