"Gold and Silver Shines" - Nano Fic. Chapter One - "Only The Young"
Okay, here we go. I am using my ficalbum claim as a general guideline for Nano fic. I work best with prompts, okay.
Title: Gold and Silver Shines
Chapter: 01: Only The Young.
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Word Count: 2274 (Woo Hoo! I'm ahead on Day One!)
Gold and Silver Shines
By Severina
Chapter One:
Only The Young
Words were never their strong suit, and there are certainly no words now. Now, there is heat, and lips, and Justin’s strong hands framing his face and anchoring him to the earth. There is the way he knows every inch of Justin’s body, but goes about memorizing it all again just the same.
When Justin edges his way slowly and carefully from underneath his prone body, Brian pretends to sleep. He hears every rustle of clothing hastily donned, the quick splash of water in the sink. He knows that Justin is standing at the end of the bed, watching him, drinking him in, and he wills his body to remain still, his heartbeat to remain steady. The door rattles on its track as Justin leaves and then there is only silence, silence.
Silence is now all he has.
* ~ * ~ *
“It’s apartment rentals in New York. I can’t believe what they’re charging for this shithole.”
Justin to Brian, May 2001
They have an agreement to avoid telephone contact for one month.
Justin fought it, of course.
“That’s absurd,” he said before the sentence was even out of Brian’s mouth. He slapped a pair of socks into his overnight bag and scowled, and Brian just kept talking, hammering home his points like the good salesman he is, and eventually Justin relented. Brian removed the socks -- who puts socks in a carry-on? -- tossed them aside and replaced them with Justin’s allergy meds, and when he found the socks two days later he sat on the edge of the bed and crushed them in his hand until his fingers turned white.
The points were valid ones. Justin needs to get settled without interference, adjusting to a new home and city will take all his time, finding a day job and setting up contacts for his art and continuing his painting will leave him exhausted at the end of the day anyway but make sure to leave some time for play because the last thing he needs is for Justin’s dick to fall off from lack of use, and on and on. Brian had almost convinced himself that the Incommunicado Rule, as Justin disdainfully calls it, was all for Justin’s good. That is has absolutely nothing to do with the pull he feels whenever Justin is near, the fear he has that one late night call, Justin’s voice dark and hungry, will leave him shaking and weak and begging the damn kid to come home.
The Rule is best for both of them.
Then Justin breaks it within four days, and Brian’s heart beats faster when he sees Justin’s cell number on the call display, and he curses fluently and his voice sounds so loud in the silence, silence, deep echoing dark silence of the loft.
He resolves not to answer, even though it fucking kills him to hear that ringing phone.
Then he determines not to play back the voice message. His thumb hovers over the delete key, and then he lifts the phone to his ear and listens to the message anyway.
He figures listening to the message won’t hurt. It’s not like they’re talking. They’re still Incommunicado.
Brian won’t call back. He fine-tunes his work on the latest Remson campaign -- he knew that fucker would see reason, and he hopes that Ms. Stick Up Her Ass got a nice demotion out of that whole bullshit session -- and he makes a protein shake, and catches the last half of a Brandon film on the tube, and then the phone is in his hand and the line is ringing and Justin’s voice is there, there, and he can’t stop smiling.
“I knew you’d call back.”
“Smug fucker,” Brian says. There are a million things he wants to ask, a few of them because he actually cares and the vast majority because he just wants to hear Justin‘s voice again. But he settles on the most innocuous thing he can come up with. He still has a reputation to maintain. “How’s your apartment?”
“It’s a piece of shit!” Justin laughs. “It’s about, oh, the size of your bathroom. And I’m pretty sure I saw a rat the other day. Or a very large mouse.”
“Justin--”
“There also may have been gunfire last night. But September thinks it was just fireworks. New York is very strange, Brian.”
“September? Is that a person?”
Justin ignores him. “And I’m doing fine. I already found a job at this restaurant. Vanelli’s. And I’m making progress on getting studio space. So you can quit worrying.”
Rodents and urban warfare. Brian feels a headache coming on. He leans back on the sofa, crosses his bare feet, and tries for nonchalant anyway. “Who says I’m worrying?”
Justin laughs again. “Right. You are definitely not worrying. Silly me. Oh, and by the way,” he adds casually, “your Incommunicado Rule is total bullshit. I never planned to go along with it. It was just easier to nod and smile so you’d shut up about it.”
“I don’t recall much smiling and nodding.”
“Don’t you?” Justin asks, and now his voice is light and teasing, and Brian remembers the suitcase being pushed aside, Justin’s nimble fingers on his fly, Justin’s hand wrapped around his dick and Justin’s warm breath on his thigh, and Justin’s mouth…
“It wasn’t a ‘rule’,” Brian caves. “It was more like a suggestion.”
* ~ * ~ *
“You should be in New York.”
- Adam Lyon to Brian Kinney, May 2001
“Got a minute?” Ted pokes his head around the corner and waits for the answering nod from Brian before stepping the rest of the way into the room. He indicates the sheaf of papers in his hand with a wave. “The Roget contract,” he says. “All ready for your signature.”
Brian nods again.
Ted waits.
“I’ll just… put it right here then,” he says when Brian takes no move to take the papers. The contract joins the growing pile of paperwork at the corner of Brian’s desk. Ted can’t help giving the papers an affectionate pat as he puts them down. They do represent hard work, long hours, and a nice fat bonus, after all.
Brian turns back to his work.
Ted waits. And waits. And waits a little more.
Finally Brian glances up with a sigh. “Was there something else, Theodore?”
“Funny you should ask,” Ted says. “I was just thinking--”
“Always a dangerous inclination.”
“…that things are slowing down, now that the Roget deal is in the can and the Remson ad is up and running. We can handle things for a while. If you wanted to get away. To New York, for example.”
Brian arches a brow. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Come on, Bri. What’s it been now, three weeks? Four?”
Brian, who is well aware that it has been three weeks, three days and an odd assortment of hours since Justin left, shrugs almost imperceptibly. “Who the fuck knows?”
“Right. Well, I’m just saying--”
“Much as I appreciate your vaudevillian attempts to run Kinnetik when I’m away--”
“The generosity of your support warms the cockles of my heart, Brian.”
“… some of us have work that can’t be delayed by surfing the ‘net or sneaking out to the bakery for bear claws or trips to fucking New York!”
“Right.” Ted backs up. He thought his bear claw fetish was well and truly private. Time to find a new hiding spot. “Okay. Well, I’ll just, ah…”
“And send Mark in here with those Marcellus proofs!” Brian barks.
Ted’s ass actually does hit the door on the way out.
* * *
They manage to snag a pool table even though Woody’s is bursting with the pre-club crowd.
“So. Uh, Brian. How are the renovations to Babylon coming along?” Ben asks.
Brian lines up a shot. “They’re coming,” he says.
“Did you decide to go with that new sound system?”
“Best on the market,” Brian says.
“I imagine the search for new dancing boys has been… interesting.”
Brian grins, shark like.
“When are you going to visit Justin?” Michael blurts out.
Ben sighs.
* * *
“Just a lemon bar, Deb.”
Debbie leans across the counter and smacks him. “You asshole!”
* ~ * ~ *
“I’m going to go out of my mind. Who knows what I’ll become?”
Brian to Lindsay, May 2001
Brian makes a point to visit Babylon every day during the restoration.
He wanders through the construction zone, hard hat in place, and learns more about joists, electrical conduits, and sheet-rock than he ever thought possible. At first the workers happily explain everything to him; now he imagines he sees them scurrying away at his approach.
The noise can be thunderous, but he doesn’t bother with the ear plugs. He likes it loud.
He stops on the way home for quick blow jobs from dark haired boys with tired eyes and eager mouths. He closes his eyes, blanks his mind, rests his ass on brick-mortar-porcelain-whatever and gets off.
He comes harder and stronger and louder from Justin’s voice purring over the long distance line than with any sloe-eyed dark haired boy.
* ~ * ~ *
“When I walk out that door, I don’t plan on ever looking back. And I expect you to do the same.”
Brian to Justin, May 2001
Brian stops into Red Cape on his way home from work.
“Everything set for Friday?” Michael asks as soon as Brian walks in the door.
“Liquor cabinets stocked, thumpa-thumpa primed, and enough glitter to make even Emmett happy.” Brian leans on the counter, watching as Michael finishes clearing out the till. He regards Michael from under his lashes. “You’ll be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it!” Michael grins, grins wider when Brian leans forward to smack their lips together, and Brian thinks that maybe some things don’t change.
* * *
He showers and slides into jeans and a t-shirt before calling Justin.
“Hey, perfect timing. I just walked in the door.”
“How is that perfect timing?” Brian asks. “It’s a cell phone. You can answer it anywhere. You can answer it at the studio. You can answer it at work. You can answer it on the subway--”
“True. But I can’t pull out my cock and imagine your lips around it on the subway, now can I?
“Only if you don’t expect me to bail you out of jail.”
Justin laughs, and even that sound goes straight to Brian’s dick. “So what’s up?”
“I’m sending you a ticket for Friday,” Brian says, a little defiantly. Based on prior conversations and Justin’s irritating habit of assuming he’ll get his own way, he anticipates a long and involved debate over the merits of Greyhound bus travel versus first class airfare courtesy of Kinnetik. Brian is determined not to lose the argument.
“Friday?”
“Babylon.”
“You’re selling tickets to get into Babylon now?”
Brian presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Are you on some kind of hallucinatory medication that you haven’t told me about? I told you not to take candy from strangers.”
“Huh?”
“A plane ticket.” Brian holds his breath and---
“Oh. Ohhh. Brian. I… I can’t.”
-- lets it out, and knows, knows that he expected something like this all along, from the moment that Justin said we’ll see each other all the time, from the moment that they clutched each other desperately on this very spot, from the moment that he tasted Justin’s tears and knew that Justin tasted his.
He knew, but he was the master of make-believe for so many years.
“I’m so sorry,” Justin says. “I met an agent -- Henry? One of the guys that Lindsay recommended? -- and he really likes my work, and there’s this gallery in Chelsea that’s having a new artist showing or something, and the only time he can get me in to meet the owner is on Friday, and--”
“It’s fine.”
“I really wanted to be there.”
Brian pours two fingers of Beam into the glass, adds a third. Watches the liquid swirl in the glass.
“Brian?”
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s just a fucking club. Do what you’re supposed to be doing. Get famous. Wow them all with your talent.”
“Brian,” Justin says, and Brian downs his drink and responds in the right places, but he doesn’t hear any more.
* ~*~ *
“What do you think I want with some kid who doesn’t know shit?”
- Justin to Brian, May 2001
Brian can’t sleep. He wanders the loft. Chain smokes as he stands at the window and watches the late night traffic drift by. Lets his beer get warm and traces the condensation shapes left behind on the countertop.
He finds himself at the coffee table.
The box still sits there. He’s never been able to put it away. Michael would frown if he knew, and Lindsay would smile but not really get it, and Mel would have some choice words about the big pussy he was turning into. Justin would probably understand.
The others think that Justin is on some grand adventure. Brian alone knows what it’s going to take out of the kid to succeed.
And he will succeed. Justin is strong, determined, bull-headed, and cocky. He’s talented, more talented than anyone Brian has ever known. And he’s young. New York won’t chew him up and spit him out. He’ll do what he has to do to make it. Justin always gets what he wants.
Brian tucks the ring box away in a drawer, and goes to bed.
.
Title: Gold and Silver Shines
Chapter: 01: Only The Young.
Timeframe: Post Season Five
Word Count: 2274 (Woo Hoo! I'm ahead on Day One!)
Gold and Silver Shines
By Severina
Chapter One:
Only The Young
Words were never their strong suit, and there are certainly no words now. Now, there is heat, and lips, and Justin’s strong hands framing his face and anchoring him to the earth. There is the way he knows every inch of Justin’s body, but goes about memorizing it all again just the same.
When Justin edges his way slowly and carefully from underneath his prone body, Brian pretends to sleep. He hears every rustle of clothing hastily donned, the quick splash of water in the sink. He knows that Justin is standing at the end of the bed, watching him, drinking him in, and he wills his body to remain still, his heartbeat to remain steady. The door rattles on its track as Justin leaves and then there is only silence, silence.
Silence is now all he has.
* ~ * ~ *
“It’s apartment rentals in New York. I can’t believe what they’re charging for this shithole.”
Justin to Brian, May 2001
They have an agreement to avoid telephone contact for one month.
Justin fought it, of course.
“That’s absurd,” he said before the sentence was even out of Brian’s mouth. He slapped a pair of socks into his overnight bag and scowled, and Brian just kept talking, hammering home his points like the good salesman he is, and eventually Justin relented. Brian removed the socks -- who puts socks in a carry-on? -- tossed them aside and replaced them with Justin’s allergy meds, and when he found the socks two days later he sat on the edge of the bed and crushed them in his hand until his fingers turned white.
The points were valid ones. Justin needs to get settled without interference, adjusting to a new home and city will take all his time, finding a day job and setting up contacts for his art and continuing his painting will leave him exhausted at the end of the day anyway but make sure to leave some time for play because the last thing he needs is for Justin’s dick to fall off from lack of use, and on and on. Brian had almost convinced himself that the Incommunicado Rule, as Justin disdainfully calls it, was all for Justin’s good. That is has absolutely nothing to do with the pull he feels whenever Justin is near, the fear he has that one late night call, Justin’s voice dark and hungry, will leave him shaking and weak and begging the damn kid to come home.
The Rule is best for both of them.
Then Justin breaks it within four days, and Brian’s heart beats faster when he sees Justin’s cell number on the call display, and he curses fluently and his voice sounds so loud in the silence, silence, deep echoing dark silence of the loft.
He resolves not to answer, even though it fucking kills him to hear that ringing phone.
Then he determines not to play back the voice message. His thumb hovers over the delete key, and then he lifts the phone to his ear and listens to the message anyway.
He figures listening to the message won’t hurt. It’s not like they’re talking. They’re still Incommunicado.
Brian won’t call back. He fine-tunes his work on the latest Remson campaign -- he knew that fucker would see reason, and he hopes that Ms. Stick Up Her Ass got a nice demotion out of that whole bullshit session -- and he makes a protein shake, and catches the last half of a Brandon film on the tube, and then the phone is in his hand and the line is ringing and Justin’s voice is there, there, and he can’t stop smiling.
“I knew you’d call back.”
“Smug fucker,” Brian says. There are a million things he wants to ask, a few of them because he actually cares and the vast majority because he just wants to hear Justin‘s voice again. But he settles on the most innocuous thing he can come up with. He still has a reputation to maintain. “How’s your apartment?”
“It’s a piece of shit!” Justin laughs. “It’s about, oh, the size of your bathroom. And I’m pretty sure I saw a rat the other day. Or a very large mouse.”
“Justin--”
“There also may have been gunfire last night. But September thinks it was just fireworks. New York is very strange, Brian.”
“September? Is that a person?”
Justin ignores him. “And I’m doing fine. I already found a job at this restaurant. Vanelli’s. And I’m making progress on getting studio space. So you can quit worrying.”
Rodents and urban warfare. Brian feels a headache coming on. He leans back on the sofa, crosses his bare feet, and tries for nonchalant anyway. “Who says I’m worrying?”
Justin laughs again. “Right. You are definitely not worrying. Silly me. Oh, and by the way,” he adds casually, “your Incommunicado Rule is total bullshit. I never planned to go along with it. It was just easier to nod and smile so you’d shut up about it.”
“I don’t recall much smiling and nodding.”
“Don’t you?” Justin asks, and now his voice is light and teasing, and Brian remembers the suitcase being pushed aside, Justin’s nimble fingers on his fly, Justin’s hand wrapped around his dick and Justin’s warm breath on his thigh, and Justin’s mouth…
“It wasn’t a ‘rule’,” Brian caves. “It was more like a suggestion.”
* ~ * ~ *
“You should be in New York.”
- Adam Lyon to Brian Kinney, May 2001
“Got a minute?” Ted pokes his head around the corner and waits for the answering nod from Brian before stepping the rest of the way into the room. He indicates the sheaf of papers in his hand with a wave. “The Roget contract,” he says. “All ready for your signature.”
Brian nods again.
Ted waits.
“I’ll just… put it right here then,” he says when Brian takes no move to take the papers. The contract joins the growing pile of paperwork at the corner of Brian’s desk. Ted can’t help giving the papers an affectionate pat as he puts them down. They do represent hard work, long hours, and a nice fat bonus, after all.
Brian turns back to his work.
Ted waits. And waits. And waits a little more.
Finally Brian glances up with a sigh. “Was there something else, Theodore?”
“Funny you should ask,” Ted says. “I was just thinking--”
“Always a dangerous inclination.”
“…that things are slowing down, now that the Roget deal is in the can and the Remson ad is up and running. We can handle things for a while. If you wanted to get away. To New York, for example.”
Brian arches a brow. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Come on, Bri. What’s it been now, three weeks? Four?”
Brian, who is well aware that it has been three weeks, three days and an odd assortment of hours since Justin left, shrugs almost imperceptibly. “Who the fuck knows?”
“Right. Well, I’m just saying--”
“Much as I appreciate your vaudevillian attempts to run Kinnetik when I’m away--”
“The generosity of your support warms the cockles of my heart, Brian.”
“… some of us have work that can’t be delayed by surfing the ‘net or sneaking out to the bakery for bear claws or trips to fucking New York!”
“Right.” Ted backs up. He thought his bear claw fetish was well and truly private. Time to find a new hiding spot. “Okay. Well, I’ll just, ah…”
“And send Mark in here with those Marcellus proofs!” Brian barks.
Ted’s ass actually does hit the door on the way out.
* * *
They manage to snag a pool table even though Woody’s is bursting with the pre-club crowd.
“So. Uh, Brian. How are the renovations to Babylon coming along?” Ben asks.
Brian lines up a shot. “They’re coming,” he says.
“Did you decide to go with that new sound system?”
“Best on the market,” Brian says.
“I imagine the search for new dancing boys has been… interesting.”
Brian grins, shark like.
“When are you going to visit Justin?” Michael blurts out.
Ben sighs.
* * *
“Just a lemon bar, Deb.”
Debbie leans across the counter and smacks him. “You asshole!”
* ~ * ~ *
“I’m going to go out of my mind. Who knows what I’ll become?”
Brian to Lindsay, May 2001
Brian makes a point to visit Babylon every day during the restoration.
He wanders through the construction zone, hard hat in place, and learns more about joists, electrical conduits, and sheet-rock than he ever thought possible. At first the workers happily explain everything to him; now he imagines he sees them scurrying away at his approach.
The noise can be thunderous, but he doesn’t bother with the ear plugs. He likes it loud.
He stops on the way home for quick blow jobs from dark haired boys with tired eyes and eager mouths. He closes his eyes, blanks his mind, rests his ass on brick-mortar-porcelain-whatever and gets off.
He comes harder and stronger and louder from Justin’s voice purring over the long distance line than with any sloe-eyed dark haired boy.
* ~ * ~ *
“When I walk out that door, I don’t plan on ever looking back. And I expect you to do the same.”
Brian to Justin, May 2001
Brian stops into Red Cape on his way home from work.
“Everything set for Friday?” Michael asks as soon as Brian walks in the door.
“Liquor cabinets stocked, thumpa-thumpa primed, and enough glitter to make even Emmett happy.” Brian leans on the counter, watching as Michael finishes clearing out the till. He regards Michael from under his lashes. “You’ll be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it!” Michael grins, grins wider when Brian leans forward to smack their lips together, and Brian thinks that maybe some things don’t change.
* * *
He showers and slides into jeans and a t-shirt before calling Justin.
“Hey, perfect timing. I just walked in the door.”
“How is that perfect timing?” Brian asks. “It’s a cell phone. You can answer it anywhere. You can answer it at the studio. You can answer it at work. You can answer it on the subway--”
“True. But I can’t pull out my cock and imagine your lips around it on the subway, now can I?
“Only if you don’t expect me to bail you out of jail.”
Justin laughs, and even that sound goes straight to Brian’s dick. “So what’s up?”
“I’m sending you a ticket for Friday,” Brian says, a little defiantly. Based on prior conversations and Justin’s irritating habit of assuming he’ll get his own way, he anticipates a long and involved debate over the merits of Greyhound bus travel versus first class airfare courtesy of Kinnetik. Brian is determined not to lose the argument.
“Friday?”
“Babylon.”
“You’re selling tickets to get into Babylon now?”
Brian presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Are you on some kind of hallucinatory medication that you haven’t told me about? I told you not to take candy from strangers.”
“Huh?”
“A plane ticket.” Brian holds his breath and---
“Oh. Ohhh. Brian. I… I can’t.”
-- lets it out, and knows, knows that he expected something like this all along, from the moment that Justin said we’ll see each other all the time, from the moment that they clutched each other desperately on this very spot, from the moment that he tasted Justin’s tears and knew that Justin tasted his.
He knew, but he was the master of make-believe for so many years.
“I’m so sorry,” Justin says. “I met an agent -- Henry? One of the guys that Lindsay recommended? -- and he really likes my work, and there’s this gallery in Chelsea that’s having a new artist showing or something, and the only time he can get me in to meet the owner is on Friday, and--”
“It’s fine.”
“I really wanted to be there.”
Brian pours two fingers of Beam into the glass, adds a third. Watches the liquid swirl in the glass.
“Brian?”
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s just a fucking club. Do what you’re supposed to be doing. Get famous. Wow them all with your talent.”
“Brian,” Justin says, and Brian downs his drink and responds in the right places, but he doesn’t hear any more.
* ~*~ *
“What do you think I want with some kid who doesn’t know shit?”
- Justin to Brian, May 2001
Brian can’t sleep. He wanders the loft. Chain smokes as he stands at the window and watches the late night traffic drift by. Lets his beer get warm and traces the condensation shapes left behind on the countertop.
He finds himself at the coffee table.
The box still sits there. He’s never been able to put it away. Michael would frown if he knew, and Lindsay would smile but not really get it, and Mel would have some choice words about the big pussy he was turning into. Justin would probably understand.
The others think that Justin is on some grand adventure. Brian alone knows what it’s going to take out of the kid to succeed.
And he will succeed. Justin is strong, determined, bull-headed, and cocky. He’s talented, more talented than anyone Brian has ever known. And he’s young. New York won’t chew him up and spit him out. He’ll do what he has to do to make it. Justin always gets what he wants.
Brian tucks the ring box away in a drawer, and goes to bed.
.