7wildwaysup | Believe In Life ~ Part Two (Reply)

Title: Believe In Life …
Story Type: AU
Word Count: 3857
Rating: R, Porn…
Warnings: Passion and Lust…
Banner: tv_fan_2008
Beta Queen: tv_fan_2008

Summary: Brian starts to feels his childhood emotions resurfacing…

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, plot, etc. are property of their respective owners, including, but not limited to Russell T. Davies, Cowlip, and Showtime. The author of this story is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended…

Believe In Life… ♥♥♥

Part Two ~ Light and Dark…

Justin’s POV

I heard through Ted and Emmett that Brian was working twelve to fourteen hour days; didn’t go to Woody’s or Popperz; hasn’t been seen in the company of tricks and rarely meets the gang at the diner. That he has basically withdrawn from the group; the only thing anyone knew for sure was that he seemed determined that Gus wouldn’t be moving to Canada. Apparently he also has made a move to regain his full parental rights with equal custody.

I know how difficult it was for him to accept that he isn’t like his father and that he really loves his son. I’m sure everyone thinks he’s betraying Lindsay and Mel, but I can’t help thinking he’s finally standing up for himself and asserting his rights. In other words, doing the right thing for both Gus and him; it’s important that they know one another. Moving to another country is a over-reaction to the bombing at Babylon, plus neither one of them even has any job prospects lined up or a place to live. So yeah, it’s not really a good plan moving some place where you don’t know anyone or have a job. Trust me, I know. I’m experiencing it myself, thank you very much… The problem is that now that I’m here I just can’t go running home like a big failure, like all the times before.

Mel, of course, is furious with Brian for throwing a wrench into their plans. Then again, they shouldn’t have asked for his permission. Really, being a lawyer she didn’t think that one through very well. It seems to have given him an edge in their soon-approaching court battle. I think about calling him all the time to see how he’s doing, but I’ve only called him on Sunday afternoons so far. I don’t want to seem so desperate and needy, but I am. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and it feels like a lifetime. I’m going home next weekend. I just can’t take it anymore. I need to see him but he just doesn’t know yet. I also want my ring, it’s mine and if he didn’t return it, then I want it like a promise for our future; not a reminder of our past and what might have been.

Brian’s POV

I’m a little drunk and that’s when all those feelings start to creep in. I hear those voices - the ones that reach so far back in my mind telling me I’m no good, worthless and unlovable. My father screaming at me as I hunker at the foot of my bed pretending I’m invisible; he pulls me out from under the bed, belt already in hand. I think I got slightly intoxicated just cowering next to him from all the alcohol on his breath. I remember the first time he hit me I think I was three or four; he came home early from work. I didn’t realize he was drunk, his boss sent him home to sleep it off.

I was excited it was Father’s Day on Sunday and I was making him a card. This was back when Joan was still trying to be a good mother and we had fun together. I was at the kitchen table and I tried to hide the card so he wouldn’t see it and would be surprised. But what he did see was all the glitter that spilled into the glue and dried on the Formica table. He was so angry that I made a mess, even though it could be wiped up. He yanked me up from my seat and threw me against the wall; I had a broken arm and a concussion. My mother told the doctors that I fell off the monkey bars. That was the beginning of Joan’s lies and excuses. Never having to hit me, her looks and words cut me down worse than any of my father’s beatings.

God, I must be drunk! Why am I thinking about this? I never allow myself to wallow in the past. Will that scared lonely little boy ever go away? Will anybody ever really love me enough to actually stay and not just leave when things get hard or something better comes along? Will I always be alone? Lindsay’s right, I have to let him go… No matter how much it hurts. Oh God! I’m going to have a hangover in the morning; note to self - no more drinking. If I want to get equal custody of Gus I have to quit drinking, focus on my work, forget Justin… Well, that shouldn’t take me long - only a lifetime…

~~~~

The next couple of weeks I poured myself into my work, not a bottle of whiskey and it didn’t seem so hard to quit. Although I’m sure none of the guys would have believed it and it wasn’t like I wasn’t ever going to drink again. I’ll order a nice bottle of wine when I’m out to dinner with Justin or entertaining a client; I’m just making a conscious effort not to drink alone or in excess.

My mind is drifting back to missing Justin and my emotions are all coming to the surface as I fight back my tears. I cried for several hours the night Justin left and I swore I wasn’t going to cry anymore; but it’s that time of night when Justin would usually come to me and crawl up into my lap. Fucking call it whatever you want; it was cuddling. Maybe pre-coital bliss as opposed to post-coital bliss but it was cuddling, no matter what Justin says… Is he cuddling with someone new? I just don’t have the nerve to ask if he’s tricking yet, I’m sure he thinks I am. I’m sure everyone thinks I am, but I’m not…

~~~~

I wake in a cold sweat, shaking and paralyzed with fear. God, that was so real but it was just a dream. Well, no, it wasn’t just a dream, it was real. It just happened twenty five or thirty years ago… It was after school and I was playing dress-up with his sister and our friends. I was only seven or eight, wearing an old slip of Joan’s with a big feathery hat and a large rhinestone brooch. My father had called me a little faggot and took his belt to me, asking me if I liked it all silky and lacy; telling me no son of his would ever dress like a queer. Then he noticed that Clair had put make-up on me and he lost it and beat me with the belt buckle. My screams could be heard for blocks. There’s no doubt that this is one of the reasons that I’ve always dressed immaculately and on the masculine side, even if it is totally subconscious. I just sit on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette, trying to forget my childhood fears. God, I wish Justin was here! I need him so badly… I don’t understand why all these dreams keep coming back, it seems like whenever I sleep these days I have nightmares. Yet when I’m awake I miss him so desperately my heart feels like it’s breaking and I can’t breathe.

I’m a total bitch to be around at work. I make everyone’s life hell, and I know I always said - ‘no apologies, no regrets’ but I do regret letting him go. How can I not? This isn’t really going to work. I can’t stand being away from him and I don’t know what the right thing is to do. I just know I can’t live like this. I can’t, I won’t… I lie back down to try and figure out how to make this work, brainstorm ways for us to be together and still pursue our personal ambitions.

Justin’s POV

Maddie’s driver arrives to pick me up at 11 am, and I bring some old painting clothes with me for my first day of work. It’s such a classic - an old black Bentley limousine. Her driver apologies for her, saying that she had to take care of some errands before I arrived. She lives in the penthouse in one of the older apartment buildings on Central Park; the architecture is grand with columns and ceiling to floor windows. It’s so beautiful and huge, not to mention the view. It would be so great to paint in here with the light filtering through the large windows.

When we arrive I’m shown to the dining room where the table is set with fine china and crystal. I stand to one side, thinking maybe she needs help in the kitchen; one of her wait staff is sick or something. A few minutes later she enters the dining room, all smiles, dressed in a fine cashmere sweater in navy, faded blue jeans and suede boots. She motions for me to have a seat and tells me how much she hates to eat alone. She asks me to join her, if that’s alright with me? I smile and graciously accept a meal fit for royalty. She says it’s agreed that if I’m there during meal times, meals will be provided as part of my salary. While we’re enjoying our shrimp bisque she tells me that she’s going to be remodeling her apartment and will be repainting several rooms. She’ll also need help moving furniture, boxes and sorting things to be donated to charity.

Our next course is an Asian chicken salad and the best fresh-baked poppy seed rolls I have ever tasted. I can’t help noticing all the staff she seems to have circulating around the house. She notices my attention shift and says softly, “I know it seems I live like a princess, and I do, but they were employed by my late husband for years and even though I don’t need them, I could never let them go. That’s why I let Stella cook for me everyday, and some days we make food to take to the shelters or community centers.

I tell her I’m so sorry about her husband’s passing.

She smiles and says, “Yes, He just refused to quit smoking and even though he knew it would kill him…” She just shakes her head and says; “Men… I’m sure I’ll forgive Anderson someday.” She tells me that he would have liked me, liked my positive attitude and my gentle nature. She also tells me that I remind her of her son, Cameron. She sits back and looks off to the side sadly then apologizes, saying she was just lost in her memories. Then she confesses that she lost her son years ago and since then she’s become very involved in social causes and promoting the arts. Cameron was an artist and several of the canvases hung in the apartment are his works of art.

During the final course, flourless chocolate torte, I told her a little about myself. How I was an artist, but I didn’t finish art school. I tried to explain how I couldn’t apologize to some homophobic prick who would rather see me dead than get an education or have any rights. She smiled and called me her ‘little activist’. Even though we just met it felt like I had known her for years. I told her all about going to California and working on ‘Rage’ and how I always wanted to work in animation, but how hard it had been being away from Brian. Then I really told her about Brian in all his brazen wonder, how much I loved him and how much it ached being away from him. About our ‘almost wedding’ and how some stupid magazine article turned my life upside down. How much I feared that I might lose him, that he might crawl back into his shell and never let me or anyone else in again, how much I’ve hurt him.

We spent the whole afternoon talking and getting to know each other. We moved all the furniture out of her study then went out and looked at paint samples, bringing back about a half dozen little jars to try on the walls. After dinner we decided on a peach-pink color that seems to change, depending upon the lighting or time of day as well as how stoned you are. Yeah, Maddie is a little bit of a pothead, and for the first time in weeks I think I’m actually having fun, even if she is old enough to be my mom. We’re on our second bottle of merlot as I finish up telling her about meeting Brian, how nervous I was and how gentle and loving Brian had been.

She’s smiling - she has such a beautiful smile and she’s so open. Chuckling, she says,”Yeah, my dad hated Anderson in the beginning, gave him a hard time for the first decade we were married. He was so sure that Anderson would leave me… but that’s understandable. You have to appreciate that he was married once before to Dianna and she’s still living here in Manhattan. They had two daughters and when it didn’t work out she pretty much poisoned them against him. It’s really such a shame because he really did want to be involved in their lives but his relationship with them was always strained.

Then there was the fact that he was actually engaged, very publicly engaged to Charlotte Cole. They were to be married in two weeks, but then he met me and we both knew that this is what life is supposed to be all about - when you feel that love so deeply in your soul you can’t breathe without the other. His father was furious, my father was furious and Mr. Cole was furious. Of course Charlotte was heartbroken and Dianna had a field day with it all. And did I mention that I was only nineteen years old when we met and Anderson was eighteen years older than me? God, I miss him so much! Everyone says you just have to get past it, like there’s some date on the calendar that your grieving stops. He was my whole life. We were married for thirty-three years and I don’t really know how to function without having him to look after. He was a very stubborn man, set in his ways, but I adored him and his quirky way of looking at the world; he had a way of making you think.

Justin says, “It seems that we have that in common, but at least Brian’s not dead, just in Pittsburgh.”

We’re both drunk enough that we burst out laughing and I’m so glad I have a confidant that I can talk to and express all these pent-up emotions. And if I start crying she just cries along with me, we’re really quite the pair. It’s gotten late and she insists that I sleep over in her guest room which is so big I think my whole apartment would fit inside of it, and I’m just glad that I get to spend the night away from the fear and madness.

Brian’s POV

A few nights later Brian bolts straight up in bed, sitting there, listening, trying to hear, confused by where he was. Again it all seemed so real except this time he was hiding under his bed, listening to all the mayhem taking place in his sister’s bedroom next door. He was too young to understand what was going on in there then. Clair was four years older than him; he was still very much a child. But now as an adult when he remembers hearing her crying and screaming in the night and he knew that Jack had molested Clair regularly. It made him sick to his stomach as he ran to the bathroom and threw up; he was glad his father was already dead, because he would have killed him if he wasn’t.

Is it possible that Clair blames him for Jack’s behavior? Did she think that Brian should have protected her? He was just a kid himself, eight or nine years old, but he now understood when their brother-sister bond had started to break and they no longer hid in the dark together, whispering. But where was Joan during all of this? How could she have let all this happen under her nose, in her house? Would God forgive her for what she let Jack put her children through, or did she go to church everyday to confess her sins and ask for absolution?

He thinks he needs a drink but he hesitates… He realizes that he’s been getting stoned since he was in junior high, smoking pot and sneaking beers, and he’s spent the last decade doing harder drugs. Was it all just so he could forget? Did he spend his whole adolescent and adult life using drugs, alcohol and sex to escape the realities of his childhood? God, life is so much clearer when you’re not intoxicated, now acknowledging that he’s been in denial for so long scares him almost as much as his nightmares. He reaches for the phone to call Justin, just needing to hear his voice. But he stops before he actually dials his number, just holding the phone in the dark, wishing he was holding Justin. Feeling haunted… So all alone, vulnerable and once again unlovable…

Justin’s POV

I really like Maddie; we’ve become good friends over the last week as I finished up painting her study and started working on her library. She mentions that there’s another floor that overlooks the terrace, that it was Anderson’s sanctuary but she could never bring herself the spend much time up there without him. We venture up there and I’m just astounded by the space. It has huge rooms and a full bathroom, a living room with leather sofas and dark-coloured wooden tables, an office with lots of bookcases and a big desk and an atrium that is one of the most beautiful spaces I have ever seen in my life. She smiles and says she really needs help going through all of his things, sorting what should go to charity, what to pitch out and what to sell or donate to the homeless. I can’t imagine throwing out any of these things; they’re all incredible finds - leather-bound books, antiques, artwork, priceless knickknacks, antique maps. You name it, he had it. He was a total collector with very refined taste.

I can’t believe that she doesn’t want to give some of his things to his family; she tells me that the girls don’t want anything to do with him. I think Dianna signed off all their rights to the estate when they divorced. He has no other close family, his brother was killed in Vietnam and had no children of his own, and his parents are gone.

“I guess I should have had more children; we traveled everywhere and I loved taking Cameron with us, exploring different cultures as Anderson conducted business. You never think you’re going to lose your children, they’re supposed to outlive you but life isn’t always fair.

We’ve been spending a lot of time together over the last week, going through Anderson’s things. Anytime I show even the slightest interest in anything she gives it to me. I try to tell her I can’t, but you have to understand Maddie, she’s not the kind of person that hears ‘no’. Most people would never have the nerve to tell her ‘no’ or even show an opinion different than hers. She hates them, calls them ‘pod people’… I never got the memo so I tell her like it is, and you know I’m very opinionated. I think we’re soul-mates. Maddie asks me what color we should paint now and I ask her what she plans to use the space for. She just snickers and says she’s decided that she needs her personal assistant to live on the premises. I’m not sure which one of us is grinning wider. I’m smiling my big sunshine smile and say, “So, now I’m your assistant?”

~~~~

I wake from a deep sleep to my cell phone ringing, and see that it’s Brian. My heart races as I worry what might be wrong. I answer to his breathing – it’s erratic and I can just barely hear him trying to speak. I ask him what’s wrong, if he’s hurt. His voice is so low and cracking as he tells me he needs me; that he had a bad dream, that he can’t stop shaking. I tell him it’s all right, that I’m right here, and cringe as I hear my own words. I recover by saying you can tell me anything. He’s very quiet as I hear him shaking, trying to calm himself. Finally he’s able to whisper “I wish you had met him. I wish he had known that someone loves me; really loves me. He always made me feel so…”

His voice trails off but he just sounds sad. I don’t think he’s drunk. God, I wish I was there with him. It’s not like him to have a nightmare, that’s usually my specialty which has reared its ugly head again as well.

I tell him that I wish I had met his father as well; that I will never judge him; that I want to be the one he feels safe enough to tell all his secrets to. He whispers, “I just need to hear your voice, just talk to me about anything, anything at all.”

I start to tell him all about Maddie and how incredible her place is and how much fun I had tonight. How we seem to have similar experiences and how I feel like we’re soul mates. I tell him that Anderson had some publishing company and she sits on the board of directors now and how much she loves MOMA just like me. I tell him that she suggested that I be her personal assistant; I asked her what I would be doing for her and she just looked at me and burst out laughing and said; “I have no idea but all my friends seem to have one. What do you say?”

So I now seem to have a place to stay a new job and a new friend, who just happens to be loaded. We decided that my responsibilities will be to accompany her shopping, help out when she volunteers at charities, attend gallery openings and theater productions because she really wants to start frequenting all those functions again but the idea of going alone just mortifies her. She says I need to meet all the important people and she knows everyone.

Brian can hear the excitement in Justin’s voice.

He says; “I knew you’d be alright, Sunshine. It sounds like the world is falling right into your lap, I’m so proud of you.” Brian says; “What publishing company? Tate? Tate Publishing? You’re sleeping in Madeline Tate’s guest room?”

TBC…