Against My Will I Stay Out Chapter 3
May. 29th, 2010 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nothing_rhymes_with_iantoChapter Summary/Teaser: Justin realizes he's lost something, and goes to Gus and Michael for help. Justin tries to talk to an inebriated Brian.
For a moment Justin froze, the sad, exhausted expression on Brian's face rushing him back years, to the frozen, chestnut feeling of aching, fiery, frostbite sting that came with leaving the loft for the Big City so many years ago. He remembered Brian's swollen expression as he held back tears, the grating scream that had pushed its way out of his mouth as he came hard before collapsing down on top of Justin, pushing his blonde hair away and staring into his eyes with such deep green sadness and loss and resentful acceptance, that Justin had nearly stayed. He wanted to push him away so he couldn't, and he wanted to bury himself in Brian and never leave. But Brian had nuzzled his head into Justin's neck, hot, unexpected tears falling against his throat, Brian's voice, rough with tears and anguish, a low, sandpapered, watery timbre, "I love you." And softer, a whisper, lips velvet against the skin of his neck, "I love you." And Brian's breath, labored with tears and empty despair, had evened out into sleep, his cock had softened and slid from Justin as if letting him go, and Justin had slipped out from beneath him, kissing the corner of his mouth, and left, without waking him, without saying goodbye or 'later'.
He pushed the thoughts out of his head and stood his ground, staring into Brian's eyes for a moment before shoving past him and into his loft. He looked around. Everything was generally the same as it had been years ago. But instead of the Naked Guy painting, which he'd sold after the Stockwell incident, there was a large one of Justin's own paintings. He raised an eyebrow.
"You're the one who bought that? What the fuck, why?"
"You didn't know?"
"My fucking agent said the buyer wanted to stay anonymous. He wouldn't tell me a thing. I didn't think it…" I didn't think it would be you, because we hadn't seen each other in years. Because I don't know how good we are together anymore. Because of the way you left. And because of the way I stayed. His thoughts went unsaid, but Brian tensed, as if he'd spoken them aloud.
"Once again, Justin, why the fuck are you here?"
"Your son."
"My son."
"What, did you swallow a recorder?"
Brian sighed wearily, made his way toward the bedroom. Justin was still standing by the door. "Just, tell me what you're doing here, or get the fuck out."
Justin followed him slowly into the room and stood by the couch, watching Brian sit down on the bed and pull off his socks. He didn't go into the bedroom, didn't know what would happen if he stepped into the familiar sanctuary of his life before New York.
"Your son flew from Pittsburgh to New York, on his own, and came to my front door to make me come home. He's got Kinney blood; I didn't exactly have the strength to turn him down."
Brian gave him a look that clearly said, You turned me down, more than once. You definitely turned me down. Instead, he frowned and shook his head. "Stupid shit. He's gonna get it for that."
Justin gave a little smirk at the familiar faux exasperation in Brian's voice. He felt a familiar flip flop in his belly and tried to tamp it down before it showed on his face. He stepped toward the window, picking up a coaster from the coffee table to occupy his hands. Brian gave him a look, but he couldn't decipher it, it was meaningless to him. His heart sank as he realized just how much of the Brian Kinney Operating Manual he'd lost.
Justin began to feel the tingling tendrils of nervousness wind their way around his stomach. He still wasn't sure how to approach Brian with the topic of the cancer, so he changed the subject. "My mother never invited me to her wedding. I'm assuming you had something to do with this?"
"You said you didn't want to come back here any more. So I told her not to send you an invitation. It took a little while, but she agreed. You did say there was nothing left for you in Pittsburgh. So, again, if there's nothing left, why the fuck did you come back here?"
Ah, Brian, always to the point. Justin shifted from foot to foot. He wasn't sure what to say. The tendrils crept farther up. "Ah, you know what? I…I'm gonna get going. I gotta book a hotel and things. And you know, you were probably sleeping or getting ready to go out when I got here, so I'll let you get back to that. So, uh, later."
He hurried to the door, the rumbling of the metal opening almost loud enough to cover Brian's soft, confused, "Later." Justin could feel Brian's frown on his skin.
Justin found himself outside Mel and Lindsay's house, fist raised to knock on the door. He sighed and did so, the hollow rapping of the wood sounding the way his heart had the past few years. He grimaced at the comparison. Lindsay answered the door with Melanie right behind her.
"Hi, Justin."
He smiled dimly at her. "Where's Gus?" he asked wearily. Lindsay blinked, then smiled gently at him.
"Upstairs, in his room. You can go talk to him if you want." He nodded and ascended the stairs, the girls looking on with concerned expressions. He ignored them. Knocking once, he stepped into Gus's room. Gus was clicking away at his computer, but he spun his chair around as Justin entered.
"Hey, what'd he say?"
Justin sank down at the end of Gus's bed, his hands folded in his lap, and looked everywhere but the boy in front of him. "I dunno. I can't talk to him anymore."
Gus scoffed. "What does that mean?"
Justin rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the pinch of sadness and regret in his belly, a blurred feeling of helplessness. "It means I can't. It means it's been too long. It means I dont… it means…"
"It means you lost the Brian Kinney Operating Manual." Justin frowned. He remembered when that used to be a joke between him and Michael, used to make him laugh. It lost its humour right around the time the cancer first appeared.
"How do you know about that?"
"I listen to Michael talk. I hear things. You know. So what are you going to do?"
"No idea." He sighed. "I don't even know why I came back here. It's not like I expected everything to suddenly be okay again."
"What do you mean?"
"Brian and I don't…we haven't talked in years. I don't know if we can even communicate the way we used to. So much has changed, we've both changed."
"But you still love him."
"I dunno. I guess. I tried not to. I tried to forget about him while I was in New York. I really did. It worked some of the time." He muttered the last part more to himself than to Gus. Thinking about Brian while he was in New York had just made the ache in his gut worsen at the distance between them.
"But you can't talk to him?" Gus didn't seem to understand. Justin realized he probably didn't; he hadn't lived with Brian long enough to understand what exactly the Kinney Operating Manual entailed.
"Brian….changes the rules when he gets hurt." He scrubbed slowly at his face, feeling lost and incredibly tired. "He'll fuck with the manual so he won't get hurt. You have to be around him all the time in order to rewrite it, in order to catch up. And I haven't been. And I don't remember how to….Never mind, you wouldn't understand."
"Then go reread the manual. Go remember how to talk to him. Please, Justin."
"Gus, why….why did you come get me?"
"I want you to talk to Dad. He won't listen to anyone else. It's the truth. That's it, that's all there is."
"You can't just expect me to waltz in to his life after so long and expect that he'd actually listen to me."
"Well, I can hope." Justin sighed. This meant he'd have to relearn the Brian Kinney Operating Manual, which meant he'd have to go over to Michael's.
"Alright. I'll try, I guess. But I'm not promising you anything. And I have to be back to my apartment in two weeks. If he doesn't listen to me by then, you guys will have to deal with him on your own."
Gus jumped up and flung his arms around Justin's neck. "Thank you, Justin!"
"Uh huh." He stood up. "I have to get to Michael's, then."
Michael's was just as he'd imagined it: loud, colourful, chaotic. He knocked on the door, and Michael's "Coming!" screeched through the door. It opened a few moments later and Michael stood there, clad in a dirty white apron, with Jenny Rebecca clinging to his legs and giggling, a stuffed bunny clutched in one hand.
"Oh, hi, Justin." He moved aside and let Justin in.
"Hey, Michael. Listen, I'm sorry about earlier. But, um, I need some help."
Michael raised an eyebrow, but didn't seem angry or suspicious any longer. He plopped down on the couch and opened his arms so Jenny could climb into his lap.
"So…what's up?" he asked once Justin had made himself comfortable in an armchair near the sofa.
Justin sighed and looked down, shaking his head. He watched his hair flop in front of his eyes. "I don't know. I've lost the Kinney Operating Manual. I can't read him anymore, can't talk to him."
"Why do you need to talk to him?"
Justin sighed again, this time out of resentment towards his coming back. "Gus came to my loft in New York and got me. He thinks I can convince Brian to start radiation. I said I'd do it, to humour him, y'know. Only, he's changed the manual again, and I've lost things. I dunno."
"I don't know how much I can help you. You practically wrote half that stuff, and you were the one who was with him during the…the…"
"Cancer. I know. I guess I've just forgotten how to read him. And how to talk to him so that he'll actually open up. You know, we didn't really part on the best of terms."
"I gathered that, since he came storming back here and locked himself in his loft for a month. Nearly drank himself to death, hardly came outside even for work. He just sort of disintegrated. Like he'd lost something."
"Christ," Justin exclaimed softly, a cold wave passing through him like a February wind. "I didn't know about that."
"Yeah. You fucked him up pretty bad." It wasn't an accusation, just the truth, but it hurt like someone taken his heart and twisted.
Justin dropped his head, his voice low and sad. "I know. And I want to help. But…I have a feeling that if I come back here and stay for a while, I won't be able to go back to New York. I won't be able to forget or ignore everything like I did before. I wont be able to go back to life up there. And most of all I don't know how to help Brian."
They sat for a moment in silence. Jenny got up off Michael's lap and wandered upstairs. Justin thought back to all those years ago, the first time the cancer hit, the fear that had sat low in his gut from the time he'd overheard Dr. Rabinowitz's message on the machine until after the Liberty Ride. He remembered the tense numbness, the sort of low-grade panic, the way his brain had clammed up if he'd even thought of the chance of Brian dying. He realized that that was exactly what his brain was doing now. He was numb, refusing to believe, refusing to listen to Brian's undertones, because he didn't know if the Kinney-ese beneath the regular words would tell him something he didn't want to hear, didn't want to feel, never wanted to experience again.
Justin nodded, as if deciding something. "All right. I'm gonna go over to Deb's and get some sleep. I guess I'll….try…to talk to Brian tomorrow. I…don't know."
Michael nodded, bit his lip. "Good luck." He parted from Michael's house with a wave.
The next morning, Justin sat at Debbie's kitchen table, silently musing over waffles and scrambled eggs about what to do about Brian. He remembered when he was living at Debbie's when he was a kid. Back then, he would have been brazen and confident and just gone straight ahead and done whatever he thought was right. Back then, he would have been able to read Brian in a moment. Back then, he would have queened out, then thrown himself into action. Now….now he was different. Maybe he would try to emulate the kid he had once been. Maybe it would help him with the Kinney Operating Manual.
He wished suddenly that Vic was still alive; he'd always given the best advice. But he wasn't, so he'd either have to settle for Debbie or just figure it out on his own. He decided on the latter. Yelling up the stairs that he was leaving, he began the walk to Brian's loft, figuring that the exercise and air would help him think and work out some sort of plan. Though, by the time he got to Brian's building, he didn't have anything, only the fact that maybe now he remembered some of the Manual after reviewing his teenage years on his walk over. He'd just try to be as stubborn and pigheaded as he'd been when he was seventeen. He rolled his eyes as he headed up the stairs to Brian's loft. Fuck it, he thought.
He took the stairs up, knowing that Brian would be able to hear the elevator. His feet slowed with nervousness as he neared Brian's floor. It felt like he was pushing through sludge, blue-grey nervousness clouding the edges of his vision. He felt jittery and lethargic at the same time, like a bad trip. He didn't want to do this, but it seemed to be the only way.
This time he didn't knock, he simply opened the door and walked inside. It was what his teenage self would have done. Brian looked up from the couch, where he was watching Rebel Without A Cause. Again. Justin wanted to smile at the sight. He remembered seeing that a lot when he lived at the loft; Brian sitting on the couch, watching some old movie and smoking a joint. This time he had a couple of JB bottles on the table in front of him, too. Brian sighed, a resigned sound that made Justin flinch.
"What do you want?" Justin walked into the loft, standing a few feet away from the couch. This felt awfully familiar, like years before when he had been living with Ethan.
"I'm sorry I left, Brian." He wasn't sure why that was what came out of his mouth. He hadn't planned anything to say, so it had just jumped out. He wasn't sure if he wanted to take them back, he no longer thought they were totally untrue.
Brian shrugged, indifferent. Justin knew that wasn't the case. His movements were slurred and strange from the alcohol and drugs in his system. "Yeah, well. It doesn't matter any more. You stopped needing us, you stopped needing me, so…."
"Did you stop needing me?" Justin's voice was hesitant and soft, he was terrified of the answer to the question.
Brian turned to him fully for the first time. His hazel eyes were stoned, drunk, vacant in a way that drugs could never do, in a way that loss too great to imagine does to you, a gaping hole that losing the most important thing in your life creates. Brian's voice came out drugged and broken, intense in a way that made him choke up. "I never stopped needing you, Justin."
Justin's knees were suddenly weak. An ache spread behind his eyes, bloomed in his heart. He wanted to collapse onto the floor of the loft in tears. This is why he hadn't wanted to come back. He hadn't wanted to open up the wound, let in the pain of leaving Brian again. Justin knew he would hurt for a while if he left once more, and soon it would be nothing but an ache. But he didn't think Brian would survive if he left again.
Brian clenched his teeth, his throat working. Justin watched his eyes turn inward, even though they were staring at the television screen.
"I never stopped." Justin didn't think Brian knew he'd stated it aloud. He said it again, so quiet it almost wasn't there, but to Justin, it was as if he had screamed it, and it echoed around the loft like the low toll of a bell.
Chapter 4
