Fanmix: A Terrible Beauty is Born (Fanmix, pre-series)
Warning: It's silly that I have to say this but, seriously, if you're allergic to any of the following:
(In chronological order) Brian/Brian, Brian/Brian's family issues, Brian/Michael, Brian/Brian's dick, Brian/Everyone else's dicks, Brian/Babylon, Brian/Half of gay Pittsburgh, Brian/Lindsay, Brian/Justin, Brian/Brian's ego issues...
Just... step away from the lj-cut. Seriously.
Now that that's out of the way... first, we're going to do something totally different and then... back to the norm.
Prologue
I remember the first time I heard your name. Michael says, "there's this new boy in school, Brian Kinney." For weeks that's all he could talk about. Brian Kinney this, and Brian Kinney that. Next thing, you're cutting classes. And then I come home from work one day and I find the two of you, fourteen and drunk. It was then I knew you were trouble, and you haven't disappointed me a day since then.
Well, at least you can't accuse me of being inconsistent.
Consistent heartbreak.
01. Intro - Kill Hannah
Don't resent what comes to light. Bear the pain of failings.
Don't blame anyone. Be aware of your past as it comes to light.
Don't force, don't dig it up.
Be aware of your part of the past or present trouble or involvements.
Rand's Objectivism holds that ... the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or "rational self-interest;" that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual human rights, embodied in pure, consensual laissez-faire capitalism.
(No excuses, no apologies, no regrets.)
02. Street Spirit - Radiohead
Rows of houses all bearing down on me.
I can feel their blue hands touching me.
All these things into position.
All these things we'll one day swallow whole.
And fade out again.
At 13 years old, Brian Kinney doesn't take anyone's lunch money. He doesn't take anything at all. But he wants to make people cry; he wants the world to hurt. He comes home with his nose bloody, his knuckles bruised, mud smeared on his shirt, and his father leans close, punches him lightly on the shoulder, call hims a real man. Every time Jack exhales his breath smells like beer. Brian lowers his head, goes to his room, nicks $5 from his mother's purse on the way upstairs. He knows she'll never notice. She's drunk, too.
Upstairs in his room, Brian smokes cigarettes, smokes pot. His parents disappear into work and booze, and Claire disappears out the bedroom window, probably going to fuck her boyfriend in some parking lot; Brian pops open a can of beer. Sometimes, he opens a bottle. Trying not to hear his parents fighting, in his room, he's all alone.
And Joan brings him to church with her every Sunday. They lower their heads in the presence of God. Joan says, "Pray for absolution" through her bruised and broken lip. ("Oh it's nothing," she tells Father Percy. "Just a little fall.") Brian sits still, staring at his scabs on his hand, shutting out the world. He doesn't say anything.
--Absolution
03. Trigger-Happy Jack (Drive-by A-Go-Go) - Poe
And I hate myself just enough to want him.
But I hate him just enough to get off.
But I understand him.
Maybe I'm just crazy enough to love him.
Why not?
They go bowling, sometimes. Jack, standing by the lanes with his fingers flexing, Brian toting the weight of a ball that's too heavy for him. The noise is a living mass of white noise - people mumbling and yelling, people celebrating victories, mourning losses. Brian watches money change hands (bets), and his feet feel too small in his rented shoes. He hates everything about the fucking bowling alley, but Jack lifts his beer and says, "That's my boy," so he rolls the ball anyway and watches it glide halfway down the lane before it ends up in the gutter.
Jack opens his mouth and says something unintelligible - drowned out by the hum of the people, the drone of music, the slur of his alcoholic mouth. Waiting for the ball to return, Brian closes his ears again.
In school, Brian never talks about his father. At home, he barely talks to his father.
But he thinks about his father. He thinks of every biting word and the bruises left by callused hands - the shouting that always follows when he finally escapes, scrambles up the stairs to grabs his ears and cry in his room. He always knows when the storm has passed, because he hears the stairs strain and cry under Jack's weight. Half the time the steps (heavy) stop outside Brian's door, and there's this tap-tap-tap. And then Jack is on the edge of Brian's bed, smoking and talking shit about football, about baseball, about bowling, about work. Staring out the window. He talks shit about the women at work, about Joan, about how he never should have stopped, never should have settled down. He says, "Don't ever get fucking married." He says, "They all want to tie you down."
Brian knows he's never going to come to Jack with his problems. So, he just sits there, playing with the edge of his blanket, wishing Jack would put down the beer bottle in his left hand. Wishing he could say something other than, "Yeah," or "Sure," or "I guess." Wishing Jack would finish the end of his speech, the non-apologies to no one but himself.
Then Jack says, "So, how about bowling, kid?"
Brian always says yes.
--The Anatomy of Love and Hate
04. Maybe It's the Way - Rachael Sage
I'm sharp as a chisel chipping at a stone.
Sculpt you in my imagination like it's time I own.
Don't want to say goodbye.
Maybe it's the way you laugh as loud as leather.
Maybe it's the day without you seems so cold.
Maybe it's the fraying of your only sweater -
The one you gave to me when I was too tired to go home.
Maybe it's the time that bleeds into tomorrow.
Maybe it's the line you're not too proud to say.
Maybe it's the grey behind the smile you borrow.
Baby, don't you cry. I promise I will... I -
I promise I will stay.
When Michael met Brian: The summer of 1985. They were 14. Brian was the tough kid, nobody wanted their kids to play with. Michael was the nice kid everybody wanted their kids to play with. The attraction was immediate...after all both boys understood why The Green Hornet was cooler than Spiderman. They also knew why the X-Men were the coolest.
--Showtime Website
05. Puncture Repair - Elbow
I leaned on you today.
I regularly hurt but never say.
I nearly wore the window through -
Where was air sea rescue?
The cavalry with tea and sympathy?
You were there.
Puncture repair.
Brian doesn't care that they've moved to Pittsburgh. Every place is the same as every other place. It's all just Geography.
And every place has the same people, even if they're wearing different skin. There's the nerds, and the geeks. The dorks. Outcasts. The popular kids. The cheerleaders, the jocks, and of course the endless ocean of who-the-fuck-evers that makes up most of the student population. Those kids who are just popular enough not to be the bullies' punching bags, and just anonymous enough that no one would care if they were.
Brian doesn't know where Michael Novotny falls - he seems more popular with parents than students, which kind of makes sense given how incredibly harmless he is. What he does know, what he notices maybe even before Michael does, is that Michael Novotny keeps looking at him. And maybe if it were someone else - one of the jocks, for example, or one of those freaks you kind of always think might be carrying knives or whatever - it would seem weirder. But on Michael, it doesn't seem weird. It seems sweet.
Maybe it's an weird fit, too - the bad boy, the good boy - but instantly they're inseparable. Brian spends half his life at Michael's house, and the other half asleep, or at school. Even at school it's always them, Brian and Mikey - Brian hopes it'll always be this way. When Michael asks, he promises it will.
Michael says, "I think we'll always be together. Like... Batman and Robin. Or Captain Astro, and Galaxy Lad!"
Brian never cared about Captain Astro until Michael.
He says, "Yeah, me too," and closes his eyes, head on Michael's shoulder.
(And here's Michael's fingers, pressed against the tips of Brian's, their hands growing apart in size with every passing day. With every passing day, growing closer together.)
--...and Galaxy Lad.
06. Little Light - Terami Hirsch
Little light,
If you know they love you imperfectly, why
Why do you try?
Water and winter, elemental.
Oh,
They'll snuff you out.
I remember you telling me once that one of the things we had in common was that neither of us had a dad. I didn't get it until I started to see how your dad was with you. Now I know what you mean. Anyway, I'm always there for you.
--E-mail from Michael to Brian, Showtime Website
07. Angry Angel - Imogen Heap
This is an obsession, a kind of aggression with himself - it's the way he'll always be
He loves to rebel to go against his ten commandments.
For him, thats just being free.
And he always will, get his thrills, the only way he knows how.
Well it might make you frown,
But he loves, being that dove, roaming where he cares to go
To a state of mind that no one knows.
The first time he does E, he's in the bathroom of the diner with Michael cramped in next to him, glancing at the door, whispering that they can't do this, that his Mom is in the front. Brian laughs, almost inaudible, and bites down on the knuckle of his thumb. "Don't be afraid," he says, "What the fuck are you, some kind of si--"
Michael says, "I'm not a-- Brian, my mom!" and Brian leans forward and kisses him until he stops speaking. It takes five seconds for Michael to notice the half-tablet dissolving on his tongue. He goes pale, looks down, but he doesn't spit it out. Brian throws back his head and lets it mingle with his saliva, trickle down his throat. "There's what I wanted to see," he says. "I knew I taught you better than that."
Almost seventeen years old, and Brian is straining against the bars of his life - feels chained down by classes, and curfews. When he's high he doesn't care, but when he isn't everything is fire, everything is heat, and he wants to break the world in half - expose everything. Every hypocrisy, every lie. Every bullshit teacher preaching morality and abstinence and safe fucking sex - he knows they're full of shit, because he sees things - he knows because he pays attention, and he knows because they've looked at him, wanted him, and sometimes even had him and half the time they didn't even have a condom on them. But he did.
Hypocrites. They're the worst thing. Sitting under the bleachers (a cigarette in one hand, face still flush from an encounter, any encounter, one of many encounters) he promises himself that no matter what he becomes, he'll never be that.
--Freedom is a Hard Song.
08. Today - Poe
Standing in the doorway of my life in this house,
Trying to find a way to get out.
Looking for a sign that I should open the door.
This craziness is getting me down.
But today is the day... we break free.
It's Michael who points out the clubs first.
"My uncle Vic used to go to that one a lot," he says as they pass, "Um, before he moved to New York. During his weird bear phase. He said there was leather and stuff, but I don't think he meant for me to hear that."
Brian laughs and watches the rows of buildings, and the dim glow from signs on and above the doors of bars and clubs. In the daylight, they're somehow embarrassing - awkward, unremarkable and out of place. He shrugs and asks if Deb can manage free french fries at the diner again, this time.
By the time they've finished eating, the sun has dropped beneath the horizon, and the lights shine neon blue and bright magenta in the twilight. The streets glitter, and outfits turn from denim and white shirts to black leather, tangerine pleather. The air is suddenly electric, alive. Brian watches the people, the lights, as he and Michael walk home - Michael's home, not his. He listens to whispers on the street, and he remembers every useful word.
Two days after his seventeenth birthday, he taps on the window outside Michael's window and says, "So, I heard about this place. Babylon?"
Michael rubs the sleep from his eyes.
Brian says, "Let's go."
--Babylon.
09. Driving Fast Through a Big City at Night - Bright Eyes
Where you heading, kid? Out with it.
Learning how to drive.
In a way, everything's led to this. Michael in the passenger seat of Jack's car and Brian checking himself in the rear view mirror before they fly away. Michael laughing at Brian's shirt, and Brian rolling his eyes at Michael's too-tight leather pants. The street in front of them, night-time broken by streetlights and the moonlight spilling, silver, over the road. Brian thinks of his father, his mother, his restricted little world, all the fighting and the voices that fade to nothing as they go. He lights a cigarette, tosses it out the window after three drags.
Brian parks the car a few blocks away from the club - he thinks plausible deniability as he checks out his reflection in a window.
Michael fiddles with his too-tight leather pants. "Are you sure you know where we're going?"
Brian watches him. "Yeah," he says, "I know."
--The Climate of Freedom.
10. Nightlife - I Am X
I want to know how to survive in the nightlife
The truth and dare of the drug for the first time
I click my heels and dance with the heat rise
I want to know how to survive in the nightlife
I want to know how to survive in the nightlife
The truth and dare of the drug from the baseline
The desire that the voodoo gives to a weak mind
I want to know how to survive in the nightlife
The room is smoke and sweat and blue lights, flashing lights, red and pink and white and Brian never believed in "home" until this. He moves through the crowd, between gyrating men and their sweaty bodies, their shirtless bodies - Michael's hand gripped in his, digging white marks into the back of his hand. Everywhere he looks, the lights burn into his eyes, and every breath he takes is heavy with the scent of pot, the scent of burning cigarettes. Seventeen, and no one cards him at the bar. He does shots until the bartender tells him he's had enough. Maybe he has, but only of booze.
The room is black and blue and white; Brian knows he's being watched. He should be used to it - everywhere he walks, he draws stares because he's too tall, too thin, and too beautiful even so. He should be used to it, but this is different. This is hard bodied men watching him like they want to devour him, and it's electric in his veins, and it's everything he wants to devour right back. He scans the room, gets hard just from looking, and from Michael's hungry gaze and the thickness of the air between them when they dance.
The room is thick air, too, and then there's this guy, 20 or a young looking 23, 25, staring at him, offering him E. He drops it on his tongue; he follows the guy through the crowd to the shadowy haven called The Backroom. Behind him, Michael watches from the bar. Brian feels that longing stare burning into his back and that's a high, too. That's better than the E.
Babylon is dark, but the backroom is darker. And Babylon is hot, but the Backroom is naked guys with their chests heaving, their asses out, and cock everywhere, and the thick, pungent scent of come and sweat. The guy tries to turn him around, press him against the wall. Brian says, "No," before he loses himself in the brush of unfamiliar lips against his throat, the rough touch of unknown hands, and the wetness of lips, of tongue, as they travel down.
--At First Sight.
11. Sex is Not the Enemy - Garbage
No evolution. Sometimes it depresses me.
The same old same, oh we keep repeating history.
The institution curses curiosity.
It's our conviction: sex is not the enemy
I don't feel guilty no matter what they're telling me.
I won't feel dirty and buy into their misery.
I won't be shamed cause I believe that love is free.
It fuels the heart and sex is not my enemy.
A revolution is the solution.
Babylon floods through Brian's life like a revolution, and he never wants to turn back; he wants to consume it all. And he does.
A decade is ending and the world is loud and raucous with change in the air. In the last months of senior year, Brian fucks his Vice Principal. He fucks his gym teacher again, though it isn't the same one. Conquests, he decides, carry over through work generations. After every conquest, he sits with Michael, under the bleachers, in the diner, Michael's room, his room. He tells stories, weaves them through the air like Scheherazade, a joint at his lips, his head in Michael's lap and like the Sultan, Michael listens, torn in two, and holding out for more. Brian watches Michael watch him, and offers another hit, another kiss, another tale.
Sitting in Sex Ed, he listens to lectures again - abstinence, they say, wait till marriage, wait till love. All that squishy, romantic bullshit that people pound through his head 24/7 in every romance novel and ever movie. And he'll never get married and he doesn't even know if he believes in love, but it doesn't matter. On TV, the ads say, "Just say No!"
Fuck Reagan, he thinks.
(But not literally.)
--Revolutionize the World.
12. Fell in Love with a Girl - The White Stripes
Can't think of anything to do, yeah my left brain knows that our love is fleeting.
She's just looking for something new.
And I said it once before but it bears repeating now.
Fell in love with a girl - fell in love once and almost completely.
She's in love with the world, but sometimes these feelings can be so misleading.
When Brian Met Lindsay: Penn State, sometime in the early 90s. They both enrolled in a Literature class entitled "Feminist Ethics." He because he thought it would be an easy credit and she because she wanted to pick up chicks...instead; they picked up on each other as they studied Angela Davis' text Women, Race and Class.
--Showtime Website
13. You Make Me Smile - Blue October
There's some kind of light at the end - stoned, forgetful, and then,
I'm drinking what used to be sin, and touching the edge of her skin.
And could you be the one that's not afraid to look me in the eyes?
I swear I would collapse if I would tell how I think you fell from the sky.
Yeah my words, they pour like children to the playground.
Children to the playground.
You make me smile.
The first time he saw her, he thought she'd bore the hell out of him. Inside a few weeks, her skirts are hiking, her buttons coming undone. He notices because he undoes them himself, kissing her throat in the darkness of her dorm room, or his. Her blond hair spilling over his fingers, over her forehead. He finds her hair in his bed, under the pillows, and her earrings on his nightstand. They smoke pot together, blowing circles at the ceiling. Sometimes, it's almost comfortable and almost right.
Sometimes. But then there are the other times, when he remembers the way she watches women pass, the way he watches men. The way he doesn't believe in relationships, really, and how his world is the dark corners of Babylon and the flashing blue lights - her world is pastel lights and flowers in crystal vases, china for the company, and the good silverware.
Sometimes she watches him, and her eyes are soft like her face. And her skin is glowing, golden, in the lamplight. He wonders if she's weaving stories, too - the white wedding and scampering tots. Things he doesn't believe in, can't believe in. Things he couldn't share with her even if he did.
So it isn't right, not really.
(But still.)
--A Breath Short.
14. Best Years - Andy Stochansky
Oh yeah, we will always be together.
It doesn't matter how far away you are.
Oh yeah, it didn't last forever.
We always said that
Those were the best years.
College days are mad flashes of light - images immortalized in photoboothes and snapshots by the pool.
They're Brian and Lindsay, splashing water in each other's faces, and the way she gets it in his eyes and he dares her to go skinnydipping just before the swim team is scheduled for a meet. Long walks through the endless corridors, letting the people around them think they're a couple, laughing about it when they're alone, knowing that in some ways, it's true.
They're Brian's weekends at Michael's house, and his excitement bubbling over when he waves the first issue of the new X-Men title in front of him, sharing his excitement. (And even though Brian hasn't read the book for years, he still knows even the most recent plots by heart.) Trips to the diner, and occasionally free french fries. Meeting Michael at work for lunch on random days, or driving him there when Brian doesn't have a morning class.
Loud music and bad singing - Michael finding his old guitar in the garage and the way he still remembers the Mr. Nervous B-Side song, even though he still can't hit the chords just right.
--Sunlight...
15. My Radio (FM Mix) - Stars
The truth, I'll tell, I'll tell the truth:
Sixteen on a summer roof, you ask for the facts
Well I'll give you proof.
Hot sun on skin, that crimson dress too thin.
All winter up her woods - I touched it, it felt good.
He speaks in a voice I know.
Sounds like sand when the tide is low.
We kiss to the voice each night, bathed in pale reactor light.
College nights are a hot haze of humidity and pot smoke.
They're following through on a promise of accompanying Lindsay to three straight weeks of Dyke Night, after the swim meet debacle. They're Lindsay's breath, hitching as she inhales against his fingers, or his lips. The way her fingers break up tendrils of sweet smoke, and how sometimes she still coughs when she inhales, even now.
They're hours of reminiscing with Michael under the shadowed ceiling of his ever-unchanging room. Michael yawning and rubbing his face with the ball of his hand, and stories about the assholes at work traded for stories about the assholes at school. Finding common ground despite uncommon circumstances, and the way they still connect, even now.
Lindsay and Michael walking next to him on the sparkling multicolored streets, dancing at Babylon, lying on the floor of Michael's apartment. The staticy voices bleeding through an old and clunky boombox, the tinny sounds of music drowning out the way Brian's breath sticks, his voice grows thick, and his heart drowns inside the ocean of them.
--And Moonshine.
16. Where Am I From? - Veda Hille
Every cloud has a silver line - it isn't true.
Where I am from, every cloud has another cloud behind.
And then there's you with whom I curl so well.
Where am I from? The past, it fades I find.
To each life must fall some rain - now that is true.
Where I am from, you love the rain or move away,
Which I didn't do. I love the rain where I am from.
Winter comes - the dawning of a new year blowing in on the wind. Brian watches the calendar pages flip by one by one. He loves new beginnings, but he hates endings. He hates Christmas, and he hates New Year's Eve even more. That's when he's called home for rituals - opening gifts, looking surprised, pretending that there's anywhere he wants to be less than he wants to be there, with them.
Near 10pm, Joan opens a bottle and the liquor starts flowing, and everyone starts talking, and soon everyone will know who hated their Christmas gifts and who hates everyone they live with and the answer is usually "everyone in the house."
So, this time, Brian decides to bow out.
He climbs out his window at 11, just when Jack turns on the television and shouts for another bottle. Jacketless, cold, Brian crosses the streets, darts behind backyards, with the wind cutting his face, and it's like it was when he was fourteen, running away from the cold wind of home to the warm glow of Michael's window. Every house is lit from within - golden lamps and the flickering of television lights. Every house is noisy, too - music playing, people cheering. Five minutes later, he scrambles up the branches of a tree and taps on Michael's window. It's like a scene from some cheesy tv show, or a play. Michael pushes the window open, dark eyes wide and wondering, and helps him climb inside.
Michael says, "Brian?" He says, "Jesus, I can't believe you climbed that tree. What's wrong?"
Brian doesn't know. He can't talk. All he can do is swallow back tears, try not to cry.
--Happy New Year.
17. Back Where I Was - John Eliott
My friend dropped me a line, said he'd pay a visit.
We were gladly met. He ran off to forget, I ran off to remember.
And when it hit me I could not sleep.
I decided I should hide away.
So I did, I- I did what I could.
I did what I did because you loved me.
And I was surprised, before I knew it I was back where I was.
Junior year ends, and away from campus, Brian feels unrooted and afloat. Upstairs, in Michael's bedroom, he rests his head on Michael's bare left foot. It's almost like high school again, and he wants to say they should skip classes, or meet beneath the bleachers for yet another story of conquest. And it's odd how, when he passes their old school, everyone looks so young and they're only a few years younger than him. Sometimes it's hard to believe how young he used to be.
Somewhere in the endless stretch of July, he pulls up in front of Deb's house in his Jeep - in the backseat, bags of clothes, a boombox, batteries and snacks. Hiding behind his sunglasses, he honks his horn until Deb screams to Michael to open his fucking window and Michael does - he leans out the upstairs window with his doe eyes wide and the wind in his unkempt morning bedhead hair. Halfway out the window, Michael shouts, "What the fuck are you doing?"
And Brian says, "I'm going on a trip." He holds up a bag from the local convenient store, filled with Doritos and Cheetos and potato chips - barbecue, cheddar, sour cream and onion. With his other hand, he holds up a six pack of Coke.
Even from the car, Brian sees Michael go stiff, maybe a little pale. He says, "How long are you gonna be gone?" And he's already asking himself questions; Brian knows him well enough to know that. He's asking himself what he'll do with the long, humid summer afternoons and the empty evenings of no pot, no Babylon, no Brian; he's cursing the summer months for being no better than the semester, and the road for taking Brian away, just like fucking did in High School, just like Lindsay did in college.
The air is thick and hot and Brian has the windows open, the too-weak air conditioner off. He says, "What do you mean, me?" He puts the Coke and chips down, pushes his sunglasses up, away from his eyes. He says, "Come with me!"
Michael stays still for thirty seconds, and then he disappears.
(The road is long and dusty and hot, and it's just them and the endless everything - the open sky and miles out before them. Brian imagines the worlds they'll see, the hell they'll raise, the things they'll know, and how they'll find them together.)
--Homecoming.
18. Calculation Theme - Metric
I'm sick, you're tired, let's dance.
Break to love make lust I know it isn't.
I'm sick, you're tired, let's dance, dance, dance.
Cold as numbers but let's dance.
As though it were easy for you to lead me
I could be passive gracefully
I wish we were farmers, I wish we knew how
To grow sweet potatoes and milk cows.
I wish we were lovers... but it's for the best.
It's impossible, they say, to quantify love.
(Michael doesn't understand why Brian does the things he does - that much is evident on his face. He used to, before college, before Lindsay, but these days Brian watches Michael watch him, and he knows Michael doesn't understand. For him, Lindsay was a foreign body and because of her, everything's changed between them.
For Brian, nothing has.)
--This in Measures.
19. Nobody Loves You - Garbage
Coughing up feeling just for you - to find something real to hold on to.
But there is a hole inside my heart where waves of my love come tumbling out.
You say that all the good is gone, that I have forgotten who I am.
Free as a bird, wild as the wind...
But somehow I cannot let you in.
Time moves around him, and Brian has always hated time - the way it changes things, and wilts the flowers, kills everything, everyone. During Senior Year, Vic tells them he's HIV positive, and Brian thinks of all the barebacking guys in the backrooms. He takes his first HIV test and spends a weekend comforting Michael, and letting Michael comfort him. He's always careful, has always been careful - the test comes back negative, and so does Michael's, but neither of them feel like smiling. In the end, time steals everything.
Brian hasn't spoken to his parents in almost a year and he's not even out of college yet. He has a new family, now - Lindsay over lunch, and Michael in the night hours, pressed against him, smiling in shades of blue. Michael in the morning sometimes, too, when he falls asleep in the passenger seat and lets Michael drive him to Deb's house, drag him up the stairs, toss him on the bed. On those nights when he gets too drunk to drive back to the stupid little apartment he shares with his ex-dormmate.
Sometimes, in that twilight area between asleep and awake, fingers still hooked in the curve between Michael's neck and shoulder, and wonders why they are what they are instead of what they could have been. He thinks of the hairline between the two. In the end he always closes his eyes again. In the end, he always drifts away.
--Tick-Tick-Tick.
20. The City Consumes Us - The Delgados
Streets like the rest of them but I can't forget.
Faces familiar and full of regret.
I hated this place and all who came from it.
I was convinced in my mind I was not of this kind.
Faced with the with banality I choose calamity.
For Brian, undergrad years end with a minimum of fuss, at least for what it is. In the end, even his father says, "Good job, Sonny boy," and ruffles his hair. Brian's almost tempted to take pride in his approval. Instead, he complains about the color of his graduate robes, and tells Lindsay he doesn't want to go to the ceremony at all, even though he does.
"You are so full of shit." She rolls her eyes, fits the cap over his hair and says, "It suits you."
Two weeks later, Michael's gotten an apartment at last - a small, cramped one in the upper levels of an apartment complex on Liberty Avenue. Brian sits on his floor, surrounded by graduate school applications, weighing function versus ideal. He says, "I want to get the fuck out of this place, Mikey. If I don't, I'll go out of my goddamn mind." Pittsburgh itself, he's realized, isn't much different from the house where he grew up. It's walls closing in with only this tiny strip of color in the middle of a grey room, and he wants to be somewhere, anywhere, else. But there are loans, and the way they grow when you leave home, and there are Ivy Leagues with their high tuitions and high demands, and he wants to escape but doesn't know if he can.
Lindsay tells him she's going to re-enroll in CMU. "It suits me. And we aren't all like you, Brian. We don't all want to run away." She says it softly, as though he isn't supposed to hear. As though he isn't supposed to know how much she'd miss him, if he went away.
Maybe it is running. Brian fills out applications and sends them out - he applies for scholarships and grants, and his letters all come back, one by one - accepted, rejected, accepted, accepted. Michael looks over them with him, and his hands clutch the paper till it crinkles and crumbles around his fingertips. One night, so high he might float away, he buries his face in the crook of Brian's neck. He hands clasped around Brian's waist, Michael trembles, he squeezes his eyes closed, but he stays quiet, never says a thing.
At home, Brian looks over his letters for an hour before he decides where to go. One by one, he drops acceptance notes into the trash - state schools, private schools, lofty and modest alike thrown into the gutter. So, it's Pittsburgh - grey and confining but filled with color, too. The flashing lights of Babylon, the glitter of Liberty Avenue. Lindsay's refined smile, and the way Michael never asked him not to leave.
--And There are Always Other Things.
21. Anthem 2 - Jakalope
Uh-oh, did you slip? Oh no, lost your grip.
Oh, just go with it. Don't be a secret.
You were born for this.
Be contagious. Be elated. The next reigner.
Be a believer. You were born for this.
No such thing as mistaken, just learn from what you're taking.
And oh be your own strength, your own destination.
When you stand on belief tower over defeat.
Stand up.
You were born for this.
They say there's a new leader in every generation - pull the sword from the stone, and you walk into legend. Brian has never believed in myths, but Babylon kneels when he walks into the room. A generation is coming to a close, now - the old King of Liberty Avenue can count the years he's lived on these streets in wrinkles across his forehead; soon he falters and fades away. As for Brian, he's always been terrifying; there's always something frightening in the wildness of his presence and the hard plains of his body, the way he hunts his prey, and the scalpel edge of his beauty. He's always been addictive, too, and the most addictive drugs are always the most dangerous.
At 23, his shoulders have filled out, his cheeks grown hollow and men on Liberty Avenue stop calling him "pretty," now. Usually, they don't call him anything. More often than not, they don't talk at all. Instead they watch him and he ignores them or, sometimes, if they're hot enough, he meets their gaze. Lets them see him deciding, measuring them against the other men in the room and against himself. Maybe there's electric there, a shot of lightning through his system, and a little clicking in his gut. Then, they follow him to the backroom, the men's room, the street, the alley, his apartment, and he lets them. They follow him anywhere he walks, a trail of sycophantic worshippers, and when he walks into the diner people whisper and everyone has knows someone who has a Brian Kinney story.
People ask how many men he's fucked, how many beds he's shared. Brian shrugs, changes the subject, never keeps track. It doesn't matter. Conquests don't matter. In some ways, nothing does but this: the heat of the room and bodies pressed closed, and the salty tingle of sweat on his tongue. The music surging through him in waves and beats. The way he breathes in time with it, feels it through the soles of his feet and in the tips of his fingers. The rough grunt of men beneath him, around him.
And Michael's smile. Lindsay's laughter. And the memory of the day he first stepped foot onto Liberty Avenue (fourteen and scared), and the day he came back to stake his claim, and Babylon got on its knees, and opened its arms, and welcomed him home.
--Camelot.
Interlude:
My City Shitty - Damien Rice
Branch me out, gonna kill my city.
Gonna kill my city, gonna kill me.
Still my stop, gonna stick your city.
Gonna stick your city, gonna stick me.
Be my doll, with the girls so pretty.
With the girls so pretty, I just can't.
This is my stop, where the air is shitty.
Where the air is shitty, and the drugs are free.
Before we go on, note that there is a second post, HERE. (It'll be linked again at the bottom but I'm paranoid that people will miss it.)
[1] Around two years ago, I posted about some ideas I had for stories. One of them was a Brian backstory fic - snapshots over the years, because I was really into snapshot fic back then. Never did get around to finishing it. And then came this mix, and the story of why there's a pre-series "prologue" is long and shall be told elsewhere, in case anyone cares, but suffice to say there was no way we could find quotes to define the years before Michael's voice over first informed us that it was all about sex. So, instead, we dragged out that old idea and I wrote ficlets.
The quotes (which are all pulled from Showtime's QAF website back in like 2001 or something, before they redesigned the site in a more standard tv show fashion) were from an old idea from before this became a 20 part series, which was to explain each song via a quote from a website or from a writer or actor, or whatever. That eventually got tossed out in favor of the more artsy-fartsy show quotes, but it gasps for a final breath here, because I figured Showtime could explain those moments of destiny/meeting/etc more clearly than I could, and more accurately, and also because I've already written Brian's first meeting with Michael twice and with Lindsay once, and I hate repeating myself.
The Objectivism/Rand thing came from not knowing how else to describe Brian's moral code, and the fact that CowLip kept referring to him as Randian (which I basically think he is, although obviously more complicated than just that.)
[2] The interlude idea came from having nowhere to put one stupid 1 minute song (My City Shitty, haha), and thinking about how this mix, along with the series-portion, is something like four hours long, and how 50, 60 years ago a movie that long would have an intermission with music playing while people went for a bathroom break or to buy pretzels or whatever you ate in the cinema at the time. So, I stole the idea even though it doesn't at all work on anything but a metaphorical level, since this is a fanmix and you need to sit there and listen to it if you want it to make sense. Whatever. It gave me an excuse to add more stuff.
[3] Uhh I put a fade on "My City Shitty" because the beginning was too abrupt. Also, this takes up two posts because IT WAS TOO LONG FOR LIVEJOURNAL'S CHARACTER LIMIT. Wah. ...that's all. Anticlimactic third note!
Zip File, including art and playlist.
Information about this Project.
All lyrics are accessible in the info tags.
Next Up: Brian, Part Two. Which has already been posted HERE. (If you have a comment, please put it there so it's all in one nice place and I dont get all frazzled.)