FAN FICTION POST: "Precious", part 3 (Queer As Folk)
Title: Precious
Author: me
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Brian/Justin
Summary: Too many times it has taken some kind of tragedy to bring Justin and Brian closer together.
Previous chapters: Prologue | I | II
p a r t | t h r e e
As soon as everything is able to sink in, Brian turns away from Michael to leave the office. He follows him out the door as he looks around and calls, “Cynthia!”
“What? I’m right here,” she says, appearing right at his side.
“Listen. Fire that new guy.”
“Black? Or Morrison?”
“Morrison. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, it’s dragging everything behind.”
“But how are you supposed to get everything done with just-”
Michael interrupts her saying, “Christ, Brian, don't you even have anything to-”
Holding up a finger to make him wait, Brian says, “We don’t need him today. We’re canceling the meeting.”
“Canceling?” Cynthia repeats.
“Yes. And...I need you to get me a round trip to New York and back for later today. Any flight that’ll get me there around...4:00.”
She still looks confused and disoriented, but even so she only hesitates a couple seconds before writing down a note on her clipboard. “For just you?”
“Yes, one seat on the way. But two for the way back.”
She makes a second note. “And what am I supposed to tell-?”
“I don’t really give a shit. Family emergency. Whatever sounds good.”
She sighs, “Got it,” and with that, he’s leaving. Cynthia gives Michael a questioning look and he almost tells her what’s going on, but it’s likely Brian wouldn’t want her to know the reason anyway, so he just shakes his head and follows him out.
As they walk towards his car, Brian asks, “What happened?”
He shakes his head. “All I know is she got hit by a car on her bike last night. It was some teenagers. The one driving might have been drunk, I don’t know. She died sometime after midnight at the hospital.”
“How did you find out?”
“Jennifer called my mom at the diner this morning and she left to go see her. Ted and Em were there when she heard and told me about it when I showed up later. I guess I figured that since Ted wasn’t at work you had found out and told him not to bother coming in or something. I thought I was the last to know.”
“No, Theodore just has the day off today.” They’ve reached his car, and Brian stops and taps his fingers on the hood, thinking. “Where’s Debbie now?”
“I just left her at the house frantically preparing lasagna. I’m going to go with her to take it to Jennifer’s. I don’t think she’s okay to drive. She’s a wreck. You’d think her daughter had died.”
“Luckily, at least your mom could make a half-decent lasagna in her sleep.”
Michael gives him a look, but knows him too well to be surprised that he has to make jokes at a time like this. Brian looks down at his feet for a second, playing with his car keys in his hands.
“Has somebody called him?” he asks, his voice sounding strangely small.
Michael nods. “My mom told him. Jennifer couldn’t handle it.”
Brian stands there silently for a second, and then nods toward the passenger seat of his car. “Come on. I’ll drive.”
When they get to Debbie’s house and she gets in the back of Brian’s car with an enormous dish of food, she immediately starts rambling despairingly and keeps talking during the whole drive, as if to stop talking would mean giving the horrible reality of the moment a chance to actually settle in her mind.
“...And poor Sunshine, my God,” she goes on. “I didn’t know how to tell him except just...tell him. There isn’t a right way to tell somebody that. Except definitely not over the damn phone. To think, he’s miles and miles away having to deal with this all by himself right now...”
Michael glances to the side at Brian, whose face is showing nothing so well that it's obvious to him it must be hiding something going on in his head.
When they get to the house, they see a motorcycle and a car that looks almost as expensive as Brian’s in the driveway. Brian feels a little stupid for not already assuming Justin's father might be there.
But along with that comes the sudden, surprising realization that he is a little terrified to see Jennifer. Maybe he doesn’t know anything of what a proper mother’s love is supposed to be like from his own experiences, but Justin’s mother has always seemed to him like something of an antithesis to what his own is like. He remembers then with a faint pang the day she came to see him at his loft and told him, "I need you to take my son" - "need," not "want." He remembers he thought then, That is what being a parent is. Complete selflessness. Once you create another life, nothing can be about you anymore. It’s about them, all the time, doing everything you can just so this child can grow to be healthy and happy and whole. And he cannot imagine how a proper mother who loves her child like she's supposed to and makes so many sacrifices for them, forgetting herself and her own dreams and desires, just so they will hopefully turn out all right some day, even begins to process a loss like this and suddenly being without them and just having herself. Suddenly they will never turn out okay or even be able to turn out completely fucked up and in need of therapy because everything is just over. And he can’t picture what is going to be left of her after having something like that torn away. How do you look into somebody’s eyes who has in the past ten hours experienced this?
Debbie is already expected to be back and goes right in without ringing the bell. Tucker appears out of a hallway, having heard them come in.
“Hi,” he says quietly, for the whole house is morosely quiet. For some reason Brian unconsciously steps very lightly when he walks further into the landing area like there is some horrible sleeping monster somewhere in the house they need to be careful not to disturb.
“Jen's in the living room talking to Craig,” Tucker explains. “You might not want to bother them right at the moment. Oh, thanks, Debbie, I can put that in the kitchen.”
As he takes the lasagna off her hands and carefully walks away on light feet, Brian’s ears begin to make out the sound of very soft speech coming from the room right down the hall. He walks forward to peek down the hallway and can see Jennifer and Craig sitting in there. It’s an odd sight because they are not watching TV or drinking anything, yet he can tell somehow that they’ve been sitting there like this for a long time. Jennifer’s hands are so still placed down in her lap.
“Brian,” Michael says in almost a whisper, just as he backs away before one of them can notice him there. Brian goes back to where he and Debbie are standing as Michael asks, “Is there anything we can do? You think we should just leave them alone?”
Tucker is walking back in just as Brian’s cellphone rings in his pocket, breaking the stiff silence and making them all jump a little. When he looks at the caller ID and answers it with “What did you get for me?” Debbie turns away rolling her eyes and crosses herself.
But Michael walks up to his side and watches him while he listens. He gets a pad of paper and pen out from inside his blazer and Michael sees him write down “Gate 12, 4:15.” Then he just says, “Okay. Right. Thanks, Cynthia,” and flips his phone shut.
Debbie and Tucker are talking with low voices to each other now, and Michael opens his mouth to ask Brian something but he walks away before he gets the chance and looks into the living room again. For whatever reason, Craig has gotten up and momentarily left the room. Brian braces himself as if he’s about to witness a gruesome surgical procedure instead of talk to Justin’s mother, and then quietly walks into the room.
Jennifer is resting her chin on her hand and staring off into space, looking into nothing, oblivious to him coming in. He puts a hand on her shoulder and says gently, “Jen.”
She takes just a split second longer to react than one would normally expect someone to, turning around very slowly. “Oh...Brian.”
She’s so much the complete opposite of a total wreck to behold that it’s worse than seeing somebody falling apart and sobbing uncontrollably. He recognizes what it is; the pain is not quite touching her yet. She is just drifting through this right now like something dead and unfeeling, something airy and intangible that can’t quite make contact with the reality just yet. The mind will do anything to protect itself. He’s seen this before in Justin, when after he got bashed he seemed to become somebody else for a while who showed practically no emotion, the real Justin locked away somewhere deep inside of him where he wouldn’t have to face all of that trauma. He thinks he’s seen it in himself before, too.
“Jennifer, I'm so sorry,” he says, and it comes out sounding wrong somehow. One of those things he is so unaccustomed to saying out loud that it sounds awkward and almost like a lie. But Jen puts her hand over his on her shoulder and just nods, not seeming to take any notice if it’s not the right way to say such a thing.
“Listen, you don’t have to worry about Justin getting home,” he tells her. “I’m taking care of it. So he won't have to come back by himself.”
“Oh...Brian, thank you. That...” She stops when she sees something behind him. Brian turns to see that Craig is standing in the hall gaping at them.
“I ought to...go,” he says. He turns and walks right past Craig going back into the landing area, where Daphne, who apparently arrived while he was in the living room, has now joined the group. Craig follows him out.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands.
The others look their way and watch the two of them nervously. Brian turns to him as he starts to get out a cigarette. “Mr. Taylor. My condolences for your loss.”
He goes from looking thrown-off and confused to angry, and steps forward into his face, breathing heavily. “You dare come into this house while we are grieving when you’ve caused this family so much harm. And mock me and my daughter’s death.”
“I’m not mocking you,” Brian says blankly. “I’m being completely serious.”
He stares at him for a long moment as if trying to figure out what kind of trick he's playing. “I do not want to see your face around here again.”
Brian stops in the middle of flipping his lighter open and takes the cigarette out of his mouth he was about to light, and everyone is frozen for a moment watching him. He flips the top of the lighter back down and turns to him. “As far as I’m aware I am as welcome in your ex-wife's house as you are. And I'm afraid you are going to have to see my face around here again. Because as it so happens your son is grieving right now, too, and I'm still part of his life, which you might have known if you could say the same. And if you do anything at all while I'm here that might upset him or Jennifer just because you can't handle that, I promise I will quietly drag you outside and then pay you back for all those bruises you gave me a few years ago.”
Craig's eyes go wide just as Debbie suddenly comes forward anxiously and gets in between them, practically pushing Brian out of the way. "Alright, now. Mr. Taylor, we're all friends of Jennifer here. I'm Debbie; Jen and I are in PFLAG together. This is my son, Michael," she says, gesturing to him. "I'm very sorry about your daughter."
He is still staring over at Brian with a poisonous look, but Debbie's attempt to turn the atmosphere in the room back away from hostile seems to be making him calm down a little. Brian turns away from them and finally lights his cigarette. Craig looks back at Debbie as someone stares through thin air, not even giving her the honor of replying, and then turns around and leaves them.
“Uh...Let me take that, Daphne,” Tucker says just to say something, taking the dish of wrapped casserole she's holding and going off to the kitchen again.
“Is there anything I can...do?” Daphne asks, looking overwhelmed by everything she has just walked in on.
“Yeah,” Brian says. He takes his notepad out again and tears out the paper he wrote on before, grabbing her wrist and putting it in her hand. “You can get a hold of Justin sometime soon and give him this information so he knows when and where to meet me at the airport. Okay? Thanks, dear,” he adds with a smile before she can even object, bending over to peck her on the cheek and patting her on the shoulder.
“I didn’t know you were going to get Sunshine!” Debbie says, looking surprised.
“That’s what you do when your friends lose somebody, isn’t it?” he says. “Make food for them, make their plans for them. So they don’t have to worry about it.”
Before he can make his way to the door, Debbie grabs him and kisses his face. Then she follows it with a light slap across his head. "But you shouldn't have talked to his father that way," she hisses quietly. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"
He ignores that and turns to Michael. “Come on, I need to change before I get to the airport.”
Debbie sighs. "Daphne, do you think you could give me a ride home so I can stay here a bit longer?”
“Sure," she answers as Brian opens the door and grabs Michael by the back of his shirt to pull him along with him. “But Brian, why can’t you - uh - ”
The door shuts behind them.
“...call him?”
Brian is driving a little recklessly as he rushes back to Kinnetik to take Michael to his car. Every once in a while he slams on the brakes too abruptly at a stop and it pitches both of them forward in their seats a little.
“Did you have to be like that to Justin’s dad?” Michael says.
“Yes,” he answers easily.
“I know he's a dick, but Christ. He just lost his daughter."
"Yeah, who he only gave a shit about because she was a nice straight girl who never did anything to hurt his poor little pride."
"Oh, come on. It's not like if it were Justin instead he just wouldn't care."
"No, but it is like I wouldn't. If you're willing to treat your kids like shit while they're alive then you hardly deserve any sympathy if one of them dies."
"That's pretty fucking harsh."
"Well, I was trying to be civil to him, you know, but you saw how well that went,” he says, rolling down the car window to throw out his cigarette butt. “I just don't want him to be the tactless and moronic loose cannon that we know he can be at a time like this just because I’m around. I mean, this is the guy who gave me a concussion rear-ending my car and beat the shit out of me right in front of his son, remember?”
"Yeah, I remember,” he says in an annoyed tone. "Well, I feel bad for him. And who knows? Maybe now that this has happened he'll stop being such as asshole to the one kid he has left."
Brian doesn’t say anything to that, driving silently for a while as if thinking about it. When they’ve reached the parking lot Michael says, “I think it’s good you’re doing this.”
Brian gives him a brief “give me a break” look.
“Because with the way things have been with you and him...I wouldn’t really have thought-”
He brakes so fast by Michael’s car that it cuts off his speech. “Bye, Mikey.”
He gets out of the car shaking his head.
On the flight to New York, Brian thinks about strange things. He never wondered about it at the time when his father came to tell him he had cancer, but he wonders now why Jack Kinney did not seem to be afraid of death. He wonders if it is kind of similar to how Craig doesn’t act that hurt when his child died last night but just goes on trying to be the big tough man all men are apparently supposed to be. He can’t decide if that’s a sad and unfortunate thing or not. And he wonders how many things he never fully felt just by telling himself he wasn’t feeling them.
He doesn’t even think he’s completely processed the idea that he’s going to see Justin very soon. He’s not sure why he had Daphne call him. If seeing Jennifer was something he could barely stomach, then the idea of even talking to Justin at the time just seemed impossible. Because Justin is different.
He remembers the bright white everywhere inside the hospital burning his eyes along with the tears he couldn’t stop, the white of the walls and fluorescent lights and also the scarf. And then there was the red. The blood was all over him as if it was his, too, and it wasn’t just Justin who had gotten hurt. Of course, in a way, it wasn’t. Brian couldn’t see Justin while he was recovering because he was recovering, too, and it was too much of a reminder. Yet he was drawn in there every night like a dazed sleepwalker after he’d already been out and had a few drinks and stood looking through the glass at him and seeing his reflection in it, too. The two hurt ones trying to heal apart from each other and not doing too well. He couldn’t face him, couldn’t face it, but couldn’t not go right to him anyway.
Just like right now.
At 4:25 the plane lands and Brian walks out from Gate 12 where dozens of people are sitting in seats waiting for passengers. Right in front of him a reunited couple run to each other and kiss shamelessly as if they’re the only two people around, and he has the absurd thought that they must be stupid for being so happy on a day like this.
Then he looks further away at all of the seats most people are getting up from now, and sees where Justin is. He is leaning over with his face in his hands, sitting next to a tall and rake-thin young man with dark hair and plastic-framed glasses who has his hand rested on Justin’s upper back. He notices Brian looking at them as he comes over and something almost like recognition comes into his face before he turns to Justin and says something that makes him look up.
When he meets eyes with Brian he gets the strange impression that he’s a little shocked to see him, even though his eyes look too tired to express anything like surprise right now. His friend stands up right away as if he suddenly feels like he’s in the way, and he walks up to meet Brian.
“Luke?” he assumes.
He smiles weakly. “Brian?”
He nods and glances over Luke’s shoulder at Justin. “Is he...?” He’s not sure what the right question is to ask, because of course he’s not okay, but Luke seems to understand.
“He’s...tough,” he just says.
Brian almost laughs and tells him, “You have no idea.” Instead he just looks over at him rubbing his eyes with his palms and says quietly, “Yeah, he definitely is that.”
“He wanted to just walk here on his own since I’d already stayed with him all afternoon, but I told him to shut the fuck up and drove him,” Luke explains. “I’m glad I just happened to be with him when he got the call.”
Brian realizes at that moment that maybe it was stupid to assume Justin would be alone, and he shouldn’t be surprised at all to see Luke here with him. All he could think about after Michael showed up at his office and told him was getting to Justin as soon as he could because he needed somebody there. For a split second he has conflicting thoughts - I guess you’re not that needed and It doesn’t fucking matter you asshole - but he pushes them out of mind.
“Well...thanks for bringing him,” he says.
“Sure.”
Luke turns around and goes back to Justin. “Babe? You call me sometime when you can.” He gives the smallest nod as Luke bends over and kisses him on the head. “Bye.”
Then he walks off, and it’s just them. Justin stands up even though it looks like it takes a great amount of effort to and looks up at him. Brian doesn’t want him to think he has to say anything so he does the only thing he can think of to do - pulls him forward and holds him. Justin makes a sound kind of like a gasp and sigh at the same time and clutches him around the chest so hard he can barely breathe, and this time it’s not like friends or brothers or fathers and sons hug each other, but their way. And they sink into the familiarity of it like everything that has changed in between the past and now is nothing and there is just this, the place they come home to. Maybe it’s just in his head, but Justin seems smaller and thinner in his arms than Brian thinks he remembers from such a long time ago; he can feel all his bones under the fabric of his clothes.
They stay that way for a long time, Justin wrinkling Brian’s shirt grabbing handfuls of it, before he lowers his arms and steps back a little.
“How long do we have until the flight leaves?” he asks, his voice sounding strained.
Brian looks at his watch. “About forty minutes.”
They sit down together and Justin leans to the side against the large pillar his chair is next to and closes his eyes like he has a bad headache. Brian notices then that his shirt is on inside-out. Suddenly a clear picture of how it happened comes into his mind: he and Luke dancing around his tiny apartment to the Velvet Underground or something like that blasting from a cheap stereo, laughing and goofing off, having fun together in the way two people can only if they are both still young, and just starting to playfully pull each other’s clothes off when Justin’s phone rings to give the bad news. And he has to tell himself a second time that it doesn’t matter to him even without Molly Taylor having just died, much less at a time like this.
Justin sits up for a moment. “Do you know much about what happened? Debbie didn’t tell me a lot...I mean...I don’t know if it happened really fast or if she actually...was conscious through it all...”
Although he can't seem to say it exactly how he means, Brian knows what he's asking is if she felt any fear or pain for long. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know,” he says. “Michael did say she didn’t die until she’d been taken to the hospital. And that was around midnight.”
Justin nods and then looks away from him, leaning over and resting his chin on his fist. He keeps looking away from him for a very long time. Finally Brian starts feeling restless and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Justin, it’s just me. You can bawl your eyes out if you need to, I won’t care.”
He turns back toward him with a laugh that is like what a laugh should never, ever sound like. “Thanks...I’m just...I don’t know, it’s like right at this moment it just feels kind of like a sick joke. It just won’t sink in that it actually happened even though...I know...”
Brian nods.
“And if I start I know I won’t be able to stop for another two hours, so it’s probably for the better,” he adds. He sits back against the back of the chair and crosses his arms, and for a while he sits there rubbing and itching his arms just a little like he can’t quite sit still.
After a few minutes, he looks to the side at Brian. “I’m glad it was you who came.”
“Daphne didn’t tell you I was coming?” he asks.
“I’d gone outside for a minute and Luke answered my phone for me and took the message. She just told him a friend of mine would be meeting me. I didn’t think...I don’t know, I just wasn’t expecting it to be you.”
Brian suddenly feels a deep ache settling into him. Justin puts his arms down, and he reaches over and takes his hand. Justin doesn’t meet eyes with him again, but holds it tightly in his lap.
Then they just wait while other people move past and around them, and the world feels so quiet.
Continue to part 4...
Author: me
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Brian/Justin
Summary: Too many times it has taken some kind of tragedy to bring Justin and Brian closer together.
Previous chapters: Prologue | I | II
p a r t | t h r e e
As soon as everything is able to sink in, Brian turns away from Michael to leave the office. He follows him out the door as he looks around and calls, “Cynthia!”
“What? I’m right here,” she says, appearing right at his side.
“Listen. Fire that new guy.”
“Black? Or Morrison?”
“Morrison. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, it’s dragging everything behind.”
“But how are you supposed to get everything done with just-”
Michael interrupts her saying, “Christ, Brian, don't you even have anything to-”
Holding up a finger to make him wait, Brian says, “We don’t need him today. We’re canceling the meeting.”
“Canceling?” Cynthia repeats.
“Yes. And...I need you to get me a round trip to New York and back for later today. Any flight that’ll get me there around...4:00.”
She still looks confused and disoriented, but even so she only hesitates a couple seconds before writing down a note on her clipboard. “For just you?”
“Yes, one seat on the way. But two for the way back.”
She makes a second note. “And what am I supposed to tell-?”
“I don’t really give a shit. Family emergency. Whatever sounds good.”
She sighs, “Got it,” and with that, he’s leaving. Cynthia gives Michael a questioning look and he almost tells her what’s going on, but it’s likely Brian wouldn’t want her to know the reason anyway, so he just shakes his head and follows him out.
As they walk towards his car, Brian asks, “What happened?”
He shakes his head. “All I know is she got hit by a car on her bike last night. It was some teenagers. The one driving might have been drunk, I don’t know. She died sometime after midnight at the hospital.”
“How did you find out?”
“Jennifer called my mom at the diner this morning and she left to go see her. Ted and Em were there when she heard and told me about it when I showed up later. I guess I figured that since Ted wasn’t at work you had found out and told him not to bother coming in or something. I thought I was the last to know.”
“No, Theodore just has the day off today.” They’ve reached his car, and Brian stops and taps his fingers on the hood, thinking. “Where’s Debbie now?”
“I just left her at the house frantically preparing lasagna. I’m going to go with her to take it to Jennifer’s. I don’t think she’s okay to drive. She’s a wreck. You’d think her daughter had died.”
“Luckily, at least your mom could make a half-decent lasagna in her sleep.”
Michael gives him a look, but knows him too well to be surprised that he has to make jokes at a time like this. Brian looks down at his feet for a second, playing with his car keys in his hands.
“Has somebody called him?” he asks, his voice sounding strangely small.
Michael nods. “My mom told him. Jennifer couldn’t handle it.”
Brian stands there silently for a second, and then nods toward the passenger seat of his car. “Come on. I’ll drive.”
When they get to Debbie’s house and she gets in the back of Brian’s car with an enormous dish of food, she immediately starts rambling despairingly and keeps talking during the whole drive, as if to stop talking would mean giving the horrible reality of the moment a chance to actually settle in her mind.
“...And poor Sunshine, my God,” she goes on. “I didn’t know how to tell him except just...tell him. There isn’t a right way to tell somebody that. Except definitely not over the damn phone. To think, he’s miles and miles away having to deal with this all by himself right now...”
Michael glances to the side at Brian, whose face is showing nothing so well that it's obvious to him it must be hiding something going on in his head.
When they get to the house, they see a motorcycle and a car that looks almost as expensive as Brian’s in the driveway. Brian feels a little stupid for not already assuming Justin's father might be there.
But along with that comes the sudden, surprising realization that he is a little terrified to see Jennifer. Maybe he doesn’t know anything of what a proper mother’s love is supposed to be like from his own experiences, but Justin’s mother has always seemed to him like something of an antithesis to what his own is like. He remembers then with a faint pang the day she came to see him at his loft and told him, "I need you to take my son" - "need," not "want." He remembers he thought then, That is what being a parent is. Complete selflessness. Once you create another life, nothing can be about you anymore. It’s about them, all the time, doing everything you can just so this child can grow to be healthy and happy and whole. And he cannot imagine how a proper mother who loves her child like she's supposed to and makes so many sacrifices for them, forgetting herself and her own dreams and desires, just so they will hopefully turn out all right some day, even begins to process a loss like this and suddenly being without them and just having herself. Suddenly they will never turn out okay or even be able to turn out completely fucked up and in need of therapy because everything is just over. And he can’t picture what is going to be left of her after having something like that torn away. How do you look into somebody’s eyes who has in the past ten hours experienced this?
Debbie is already expected to be back and goes right in without ringing the bell. Tucker appears out of a hallway, having heard them come in.
“Hi,” he says quietly, for the whole house is morosely quiet. For some reason Brian unconsciously steps very lightly when he walks further into the landing area like there is some horrible sleeping monster somewhere in the house they need to be careful not to disturb.
“Jen's in the living room talking to Craig,” Tucker explains. “You might not want to bother them right at the moment. Oh, thanks, Debbie, I can put that in the kitchen.”
As he takes the lasagna off her hands and carefully walks away on light feet, Brian’s ears begin to make out the sound of very soft speech coming from the room right down the hall. He walks forward to peek down the hallway and can see Jennifer and Craig sitting in there. It’s an odd sight because they are not watching TV or drinking anything, yet he can tell somehow that they’ve been sitting there like this for a long time. Jennifer’s hands are so still placed down in her lap.
“Brian,” Michael says in almost a whisper, just as he backs away before one of them can notice him there. Brian goes back to where he and Debbie are standing as Michael asks, “Is there anything we can do? You think we should just leave them alone?”
Tucker is walking back in just as Brian’s cellphone rings in his pocket, breaking the stiff silence and making them all jump a little. When he looks at the caller ID and answers it with “What did you get for me?” Debbie turns away rolling her eyes and crosses herself.
But Michael walks up to his side and watches him while he listens. He gets a pad of paper and pen out from inside his blazer and Michael sees him write down “Gate 12, 4:15.” Then he just says, “Okay. Right. Thanks, Cynthia,” and flips his phone shut.
Debbie and Tucker are talking with low voices to each other now, and Michael opens his mouth to ask Brian something but he walks away before he gets the chance and looks into the living room again. For whatever reason, Craig has gotten up and momentarily left the room. Brian braces himself as if he’s about to witness a gruesome surgical procedure instead of talk to Justin’s mother, and then quietly walks into the room.
Jennifer is resting her chin on her hand and staring off into space, looking into nothing, oblivious to him coming in. He puts a hand on her shoulder and says gently, “Jen.”
She takes just a split second longer to react than one would normally expect someone to, turning around very slowly. “Oh...Brian.”
She’s so much the complete opposite of a total wreck to behold that it’s worse than seeing somebody falling apart and sobbing uncontrollably. He recognizes what it is; the pain is not quite touching her yet. She is just drifting through this right now like something dead and unfeeling, something airy and intangible that can’t quite make contact with the reality just yet. The mind will do anything to protect itself. He’s seen this before in Justin, when after he got bashed he seemed to become somebody else for a while who showed practically no emotion, the real Justin locked away somewhere deep inside of him where he wouldn’t have to face all of that trauma. He thinks he’s seen it in himself before, too.
“Jennifer, I'm so sorry,” he says, and it comes out sounding wrong somehow. One of those things he is so unaccustomed to saying out loud that it sounds awkward and almost like a lie. But Jen puts her hand over his on her shoulder and just nods, not seeming to take any notice if it’s not the right way to say such a thing.
“Listen, you don’t have to worry about Justin getting home,” he tells her. “I’m taking care of it. So he won't have to come back by himself.”
“Oh...Brian, thank you. That...” She stops when she sees something behind him. Brian turns to see that Craig is standing in the hall gaping at them.
“I ought to...go,” he says. He turns and walks right past Craig going back into the landing area, where Daphne, who apparently arrived while he was in the living room, has now joined the group. Craig follows him out.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands.
The others look their way and watch the two of them nervously. Brian turns to him as he starts to get out a cigarette. “Mr. Taylor. My condolences for your loss.”
He goes from looking thrown-off and confused to angry, and steps forward into his face, breathing heavily. “You dare come into this house while we are grieving when you’ve caused this family so much harm. And mock me and my daughter’s death.”
“I’m not mocking you,” Brian says blankly. “I’m being completely serious.”
He stares at him for a long moment as if trying to figure out what kind of trick he's playing. “I do not want to see your face around here again.”
Brian stops in the middle of flipping his lighter open and takes the cigarette out of his mouth he was about to light, and everyone is frozen for a moment watching him. He flips the top of the lighter back down and turns to him. “As far as I’m aware I am as welcome in your ex-wife's house as you are. And I'm afraid you are going to have to see my face around here again. Because as it so happens your son is grieving right now, too, and I'm still part of his life, which you might have known if you could say the same. And if you do anything at all while I'm here that might upset him or Jennifer just because you can't handle that, I promise I will quietly drag you outside and then pay you back for all those bruises you gave me a few years ago.”
Craig's eyes go wide just as Debbie suddenly comes forward anxiously and gets in between them, practically pushing Brian out of the way. "Alright, now. Mr. Taylor, we're all friends of Jennifer here. I'm Debbie; Jen and I are in PFLAG together. This is my son, Michael," she says, gesturing to him. "I'm very sorry about your daughter."
He is still staring over at Brian with a poisonous look, but Debbie's attempt to turn the atmosphere in the room back away from hostile seems to be making him calm down a little. Brian turns away from them and finally lights his cigarette. Craig looks back at Debbie as someone stares through thin air, not even giving her the honor of replying, and then turns around and leaves them.
“Uh...Let me take that, Daphne,” Tucker says just to say something, taking the dish of wrapped casserole she's holding and going off to the kitchen again.
“Is there anything I can...do?” Daphne asks, looking overwhelmed by everything she has just walked in on.
“Yeah,” Brian says. He takes his notepad out again and tears out the paper he wrote on before, grabbing her wrist and putting it in her hand. “You can get a hold of Justin sometime soon and give him this information so he knows when and where to meet me at the airport. Okay? Thanks, dear,” he adds with a smile before she can even object, bending over to peck her on the cheek and patting her on the shoulder.
“I didn’t know you were going to get Sunshine!” Debbie says, looking surprised.
“That’s what you do when your friends lose somebody, isn’t it?” he says. “Make food for them, make their plans for them. So they don’t have to worry about it.”
Before he can make his way to the door, Debbie grabs him and kisses his face. Then she follows it with a light slap across his head. "But you shouldn't have talked to his father that way," she hisses quietly. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"
He ignores that and turns to Michael. “Come on, I need to change before I get to the airport.”
Debbie sighs. "Daphne, do you think you could give me a ride home so I can stay here a bit longer?”
“Sure," she answers as Brian opens the door and grabs Michael by the back of his shirt to pull him along with him. “But Brian, why can’t you - uh - ”
The door shuts behind them.
“...call him?”
Brian is driving a little recklessly as he rushes back to Kinnetik to take Michael to his car. Every once in a while he slams on the brakes too abruptly at a stop and it pitches both of them forward in their seats a little.
“Did you have to be like that to Justin’s dad?” Michael says.
“Yes,” he answers easily.
“I know he's a dick, but Christ. He just lost his daughter."
"Yeah, who he only gave a shit about because she was a nice straight girl who never did anything to hurt his poor little pride."
"Oh, come on. It's not like if it were Justin instead he just wouldn't care."
"No, but it is like I wouldn't. If you're willing to treat your kids like shit while they're alive then you hardly deserve any sympathy if one of them dies."
"That's pretty fucking harsh."
"Well, I was trying to be civil to him, you know, but you saw how well that went,” he says, rolling down the car window to throw out his cigarette butt. “I just don't want him to be the tactless and moronic loose cannon that we know he can be at a time like this just because I’m around. I mean, this is the guy who gave me a concussion rear-ending my car and beat the shit out of me right in front of his son, remember?”
"Yeah, I remember,” he says in an annoyed tone. "Well, I feel bad for him. And who knows? Maybe now that this has happened he'll stop being such as asshole to the one kid he has left."
Brian doesn’t say anything to that, driving silently for a while as if thinking about it. When they’ve reached the parking lot Michael says, “I think it’s good you’re doing this.”
Brian gives him a brief “give me a break” look.
“Because with the way things have been with you and him...I wouldn’t really have thought-”
He brakes so fast by Michael’s car that it cuts off his speech. “Bye, Mikey.”
He gets out of the car shaking his head.
On the flight to New York, Brian thinks about strange things. He never wondered about it at the time when his father came to tell him he had cancer, but he wonders now why Jack Kinney did not seem to be afraid of death. He wonders if it is kind of similar to how Craig doesn’t act that hurt when his child died last night but just goes on trying to be the big tough man all men are apparently supposed to be. He can’t decide if that’s a sad and unfortunate thing or not. And he wonders how many things he never fully felt just by telling himself he wasn’t feeling them.
He doesn’t even think he’s completely processed the idea that he’s going to see Justin very soon. He’s not sure why he had Daphne call him. If seeing Jennifer was something he could barely stomach, then the idea of even talking to Justin at the time just seemed impossible. Because Justin is different.
He remembers the bright white everywhere inside the hospital burning his eyes along with the tears he couldn’t stop, the white of the walls and fluorescent lights and also the scarf. And then there was the red. The blood was all over him as if it was his, too, and it wasn’t just Justin who had gotten hurt. Of course, in a way, it wasn’t. Brian couldn’t see Justin while he was recovering because he was recovering, too, and it was too much of a reminder. Yet he was drawn in there every night like a dazed sleepwalker after he’d already been out and had a few drinks and stood looking through the glass at him and seeing his reflection in it, too. The two hurt ones trying to heal apart from each other and not doing too well. He couldn’t face him, couldn’t face it, but couldn’t not go right to him anyway.
Just like right now.
At 4:25 the plane lands and Brian walks out from Gate 12 where dozens of people are sitting in seats waiting for passengers. Right in front of him a reunited couple run to each other and kiss shamelessly as if they’re the only two people around, and he has the absurd thought that they must be stupid for being so happy on a day like this.
Then he looks further away at all of the seats most people are getting up from now, and sees where Justin is. He is leaning over with his face in his hands, sitting next to a tall and rake-thin young man with dark hair and plastic-framed glasses who has his hand rested on Justin’s upper back. He notices Brian looking at them as he comes over and something almost like recognition comes into his face before he turns to Justin and says something that makes him look up.
When he meets eyes with Brian he gets the strange impression that he’s a little shocked to see him, even though his eyes look too tired to express anything like surprise right now. His friend stands up right away as if he suddenly feels like he’s in the way, and he walks up to meet Brian.
“Luke?” he assumes.
He smiles weakly. “Brian?”
He nods and glances over Luke’s shoulder at Justin. “Is he...?” He’s not sure what the right question is to ask, because of course he’s not okay, but Luke seems to understand.
“He’s...tough,” he just says.
Brian almost laughs and tells him, “You have no idea.” Instead he just looks over at him rubbing his eyes with his palms and says quietly, “Yeah, he definitely is that.”
“He wanted to just walk here on his own since I’d already stayed with him all afternoon, but I told him to shut the fuck up and drove him,” Luke explains. “I’m glad I just happened to be with him when he got the call.”
Brian realizes at that moment that maybe it was stupid to assume Justin would be alone, and he shouldn’t be surprised at all to see Luke here with him. All he could think about after Michael showed up at his office and told him was getting to Justin as soon as he could because he needed somebody there. For a split second he has conflicting thoughts - I guess you’re not that needed and It doesn’t fucking matter you asshole - but he pushes them out of mind.
“Well...thanks for bringing him,” he says.
“Sure.”
Luke turns around and goes back to Justin. “Babe? You call me sometime when you can.” He gives the smallest nod as Luke bends over and kisses him on the head. “Bye.”
Then he walks off, and it’s just them. Justin stands up even though it looks like it takes a great amount of effort to and looks up at him. Brian doesn’t want him to think he has to say anything so he does the only thing he can think of to do - pulls him forward and holds him. Justin makes a sound kind of like a gasp and sigh at the same time and clutches him around the chest so hard he can barely breathe, and this time it’s not like friends or brothers or fathers and sons hug each other, but their way. And they sink into the familiarity of it like everything that has changed in between the past and now is nothing and there is just this, the place they come home to. Maybe it’s just in his head, but Justin seems smaller and thinner in his arms than Brian thinks he remembers from such a long time ago; he can feel all his bones under the fabric of his clothes.
They stay that way for a long time, Justin wrinkling Brian’s shirt grabbing handfuls of it, before he lowers his arms and steps back a little.
“How long do we have until the flight leaves?” he asks, his voice sounding strained.
Brian looks at his watch. “About forty minutes.”
They sit down together and Justin leans to the side against the large pillar his chair is next to and closes his eyes like he has a bad headache. Brian notices then that his shirt is on inside-out. Suddenly a clear picture of how it happened comes into his mind: he and Luke dancing around his tiny apartment to the Velvet Underground or something like that blasting from a cheap stereo, laughing and goofing off, having fun together in the way two people can only if they are both still young, and just starting to playfully pull each other’s clothes off when Justin’s phone rings to give the bad news. And he has to tell himself a second time that it doesn’t matter to him even without Molly Taylor having just died, much less at a time like this.
Justin sits up for a moment. “Do you know much about what happened? Debbie didn’t tell me a lot...I mean...I don’t know if it happened really fast or if she actually...was conscious through it all...”
Although he can't seem to say it exactly how he means, Brian knows what he's asking is if she felt any fear or pain for long. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know,” he says. “Michael did say she didn’t die until she’d been taken to the hospital. And that was around midnight.”
Justin nods and then looks away from him, leaning over and resting his chin on his fist. He keeps looking away from him for a very long time. Finally Brian starts feeling restless and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Justin, it’s just me. You can bawl your eyes out if you need to, I won’t care.”
He turns back toward him with a laugh that is like what a laugh should never, ever sound like. “Thanks...I’m just...I don’t know, it’s like right at this moment it just feels kind of like a sick joke. It just won’t sink in that it actually happened even though...I know...”
Brian nods.
“And if I start I know I won’t be able to stop for another two hours, so it’s probably for the better,” he adds. He sits back against the back of the chair and crosses his arms, and for a while he sits there rubbing and itching his arms just a little like he can’t quite sit still.
After a few minutes, he looks to the side at Brian. “I’m glad it was you who came.”
“Daphne didn’t tell you I was coming?” he asks.
“I’d gone outside for a minute and Luke answered my phone for me and took the message. She just told him a friend of mine would be meeting me. I didn’t think...I don’t know, I just wasn’t expecting it to be you.”
Brian suddenly feels a deep ache settling into him. Justin puts his arms down, and he reaches over and takes his hand. Justin doesn’t meet eyes with him again, but holds it tightly in his lap.
Then they just wait while other people move past and around them, and the world feels so quiet.
Continue to part 4...