Glorious

Title: 1 – Why Am I Here?

Author: Jilligor

Summary: Ted's sent to England by Brian to work/"get a life," and he actually listens. This is about Ted with an OC.

Rating: M - even if the first parts are relatively tame.

Warnings: naughty no-no language, slashiness, and violence later on.

Disclaimer: Ted (and Brian) is a fictional character someone else made that I'm borrowing. But this is a work of fiction spewed out from my diseased mind.

Matty:

The light of the computer monitor glares in my eyes. It's starting to hurt a bit by now, after staring at it for nearly seven hours straight. But that's the beauty of working from home: you can get to it when you get to it. As long as it gets done. I decided to put it off a few hours later than usual today, hence the late hour as I finish up the last round of deciphering babbled dictation from blokes in white coats with their heads up their arses – surely that's where they must be, their speech is always so obscenely garbled over the recordings.

But I'm a fast one, I am – fast fingers on both versions of keyboards, evidently. One of the people I work for – a female voice over the phone, a typed name on an email, a disembodied entity which I've no proof of any actual existence aside from these easily explained-away instances that could very well be proxies – has commented that I'm one of the most productive workers they've never had the pleasure to meet. Seven hours, and I've no idea how many files I've sent back – but it must be a pretty penny... which I'll never see. I never get to see it in all its papered glory – just numbers on a sheet of paper I don't understand, and a few wads of fivers now and then from a discerning hand.

This is how I live; this is how I work; this is how I bide my time, apart from splattering paint on shoddy easels and biting my nails in nervous anticipation of what the night will bring. It's fairly routine, if a bit nerve-wracking, especially the night-time bit, where I'm not sure if it'll be peaceful and quite, or riddled with unspoken tension that eventually leads to blinding bouts of cursing and misplaced fury.

Speaking of which...

The clock in the corner of the screen reads 9:45. He'll be home soon. Best start to get dinner ready – has to be fit for eating after his normal winding down habits, yet not too cold to be disgusting once he's made it to the table. My own stomach hurts so much from hunger by this point, I can't stand to think of food, but I force myself to do so after sending off my last correspondence for the day. Normally I'd join him for dinner, but I just can't tonight. Oh, I'll be sitting right beside him – can't stray too far from the norm. But I can't possibly force a morsel down my throat.

I messed up last night, you see, so I wasn't able to relieve those familiar hunger pangs everyone gets when deprived for certain periods of time. By now, I've reached the point where those twinges have become almost debilitating nausea – which will abate soon enough. After I fall asleep, anyway. The kind of stomach issue that never feels righted until hours of unconsciousness have calmed the natural confusion of whether a belly can digest or reject something forced into it.

It's a bit like love, I suppose – starved for so long, the initial reaction to too much is outright rejection. Feeding constantly at small intervals can make one feel uncomfortable; binging now and again can bring about the same result. A healthy, regular, steady diet is what helps make one feel stable and strong. And kept away from it for so long... Well, sometimes you're not sure what you're putting in yourself, but... when it's pure, untainted, untouched by any poison or rot, it'll settle in you nicely.

Or some such nonsense. I suppose. I don't know. I'm just tired of thinking. I'm tired of everything. Almost too tired to turn the burner off when I see the slop in the pot is boiling ready. The sight of it alone makes me want to vomit – but I'm too tired to do that either.

This is a good thing, though. The weakness will lend to my mental time-out whilst he gets his rocks off or whatever tonight. I won't feel like riding that wave that's been retreating from my shores for the past several months, but I won't feel like stubbornly refusing to please him either; in fact, I won't even feel like pleading pathetically to stop, too overwhelmed by pain – it never does any good anyway, and I'd only be wearing myself out more, whilst earning another night confined to the flat at the same time.

I remember a time when I wasn't always so tired. I think. I think I kind of miss it, really. I could do so much more with a healthy dose of pure energy. Maybe I wouldn't mess up so often then. If only I could get it sorted. But it's a never-ending cycle with me. Caught in this hamster wheel, or like a snake eating itself...

Oh God... Eating... Bloody hell...

I can't think of food; it makes me feel ill. Then not eating makes me tired. Then I don't think of what I'm doing or saying and end up earning another hateful glare. Or worse. If I don't give up and let him have his way – physically or argumentatively. That thoughtless slip leads to another day of punishment. And he'll know if I cheat – he keeps track of what we have in the cupboards. He'll know if I've eaten, or if I've gone out – he knows every scrap we have, every cent in his wallet. Mine only comes to me by his hand. So he knows. But I have to do this right tonight. Except for last night's slip-up, I've been good all week. Earned myself a night out. Well, so long as I'm home at the appropriate time to have supper ready for him.

The only good thing is that he works over an hour away, so it takes him this long to get home. That's why we have dinner so late.

Sometimes... God forgive me... I wish he'd go farther.

Ted:

I groan when I see where my company-appointed guide is dragging me. Trust Brian to set me up with a freak who's convinced I'll "dig jazz" when I mention in passing that I have a severe adoration for music... failing to mention what kind of music, of course. Not that I can't appreciate this particular form of it – it's just not my scene.

"Isn't there an opera house somewhere nearby?"

My hopes are squandered – he just stares back at me dumbly, like I've just asked what's so important about this "football" thing these Brits are always going on about.

"Oh? But it's got loads a' gay blokes in it!"

Yeah... Trust Brian to set me up with this guy... He's done it just to annoy me, I'm sure of it. He knows my tastes; therefore he knows this will aggravate me to no end. Where I'd go for a simple glass of red wine and a stimulating conversation, he's constantly pushing me to take a step further – or, in my mind, skid ten miles down a sixty degree cliff towards oblivion – into his world. Fuck, going to Babylon is just about my limit anymore; I'm comfortable in my predictability and content in my happiness... which bears a striking resemblance to "boring" to the rest of the world.

"Nevermind," I sigh, resigning myself to the fact that I'll be bombarded with depressing – but not melodramatically wrist-slashing, as I prefer it – music and too much smoke for the next few hours. At least the guy with me isn't completely an embarrassment to be seen with. Even if he is straight. It'll give the impression that I'm taken, so I won't have to worry about finding someone to hook up with. Or, more accurately, I won't have to deal with the pain of being rejected by much younger British gentlemen who have the wrong idea as I wile away the time trying to make conversation...

See, it's not like I'm here for any recreational purposes, no matter how much this company guy who's escorting me insists he's trying to show me a good time in London. I've been sent here by my friend – and I use the term loosely, and prefer to call him my "boss," though that's also very loose – to help get this newly acquired branch of his ad agency up and running in England. A few months, he said at first; then maybe half a year. By the time I got on the plane, he was yammering to me on my cell that if things kept going as they seemed to be heading, I could be there long enough to raise my own little family. (Nevermind that I can't procreate, being gay and all.)

But six months, he said, six months at least. And after many of our friends went off to pursue their own dreams, his former lover included, Brian decided that he wanted to go travel the world. But... there was this little matter of his business to deal with. Since my own small interest in love quickly fizzled out – for the umpteenth time with that specific individual, whom I still love but simply can't be with, in general – and I was caught too many a time moping around my desk while fussing over why the one wasn't a two and the two wasn't a one in the cents column of the agency's account books, Brian came to a decision: the new branch of the agency was getting ready for launch, and I was going to be present and responsible for its success.

Meanwhile, he would live vicariously through me as I, and I quote, "party that old-fart ass off and get a life again."

What else was I going to do? A fully paid and accommodated, extended business trip to another country after living in Pittsburgh for too many years than I'd like to count, all on the company's tab? Better yet – on Brian's tab?

A week and a half into this misadventure of mine, I'm beginning to see the flaws in the plan. Brian planned it, after all. He's the one who set up my initial meetings with the overseas managers and executives, as well as some potential clients and such. He's the one who told Ricky here, my studly but strictly unavailable hetero guide, that I would enjoy a bit of the nightlife London had to offer – conveniently "forgetting" to mention that I'm not up to par with Brian's own idea of "fun." And he's the one who calls me on my cell every few days and asks, "Did you get laid yet or what? Well, get moving, you pathetically dull mope, I told you to get a fucking life!"

Some boss. Sometimes I feel like I should be the one with the leash.

As expected, the club is packed with sweaty groups of... unfairly attractive individuals... and plenty of smoke and booze. Luckily, as I've decided (against Brian's most heartfelt wishes, of course...) to remain as sex-free as possible while I'm here. I want to concentrate on work, and after the last unhappy ending, I'm more than eager to dive headlong into working late nights at the office, shouting senselessly at virus-riddled computers and trying to force mathematical laws to reinvent themselves to my liking.

But first, Ricky needs to feel like he's actually of some use to me as far as entertainment goes. I feel like telling him the most entertainment he could provide me with is a striptease, but I'm afraid that would just scare the poor boy off. Besides, I couldn't possibly say that to anyone I'm not steadily dating – that's Brian's style, not mine.

I let him buy me (on Brian's tab, of course) a few rounds of drinks, as strong as I can handle, and slink into a comfortable slump in my seat as Ricky yammers on and on in his thick Cockney accent about all the possibilities in front of me for the "pleasure" part of my business/pleasure stay here in England. Somewhere around ten-thirty, his face becomes wobbly and wavy, and I'm smiling stupidly back across the dimly lit table at him, too amused by the fact that he's so sure I'm listening to actually laugh at the jokes he's telling.

But then I hear it. As the live jazz band on the small stage at the back of the club slips out of a tune I think I may have heard here and there throughout my life, the small but lively crowd applauding appreciatively at the effort, there's a pause in the room – surely time and space continue as they're meant to, but for a split second, it's as if the atmosphere in the entire bar gasps (or maybe that's just in my mind; maybe the gasp is only from me, in fact, and that's why I seem to be the only one who hears it), and the once unnoticeable piano which had been playing along to the previous slew of miserable, upbeat, or dance-like songs breaks out suddenly in a dramatic flourish of arpeggios and pounding, breath-taking chords...

I blink several times at the gesturing man in front of me, who doesn't seem to hear the music at all over his own voice, then snap my head sharply to the side, as if the alcohol in my system has delayed my startled reaction, giving my physical actions time to catch up to my mental processing of the melody reaching my ears.

That's when I see him. Sitting at the nearly dilapidated wreck of a piano is a small, hunched lump of a thing – man or boy, I can't quite tell from this distance, perhaps even an androgynous woman for all I can tell – nearly being swallowed whole by a plain black sweater and a blue beanie cap. The torso sways gently in contrast to the flailing arms, which fly up and down the length of the keyboard, spitting out the sounds as gracefully as the body is moving – even if the hands are nothing but a blur to my drunken eyes... though, knowing my stuff about classical composers and the like, this kid isn't just fooling around, and those hands would still be blurs if I were completely sober.

He's good. He's better than good. He's...

I blink quickly several times, silently cursing the smoke in the bar for making my eyes well up, not wanting to miss a second of this impromptu performance. And as the other musicians on the stage huddle around and mutter to each other, probably discussing what to offer to the crowd next, the pianist ignores them, ignores the rest of the bar, probably ignores the entire world itself while continuing to play. The song is familiar to me, yet isn't – the style is one I know, but the song that originally caught my attention has morphed into something new, something apart from the composition written by someone else, but similar in a way. I can instantly tell the vivid influences as a few measures of one style gives way to several more of a different one. An improvised medley of bits from classical pieces, an amalgam of clearly classically-inspired originals, and finally ending with a humorously minor-chorded, Doomsday rendition of – of all things – Chopsticks.

I gawk at the back of the figure's head, utterly oblivious to Ricky's continued raving about the various clubs I can check out later, and try to muster some kind of telepathy to make the pianist turn around.

My message seems to reach its goal, and I can't help but blink yet again when I see, even from thirty feet away, a large set of clear blue eyes caught by the light from the stage, glancing furtively out toward the disinterested audience before turning further to catch the attention of the other musicians. There are a few words exchanged that can't be heard, and as the young man with the brightly-lit eyes and striking, pale face nods amicably while turning back to the piano, it strikes me as odd that no one's applauded him for that wondrous display of... well, more talent than the rest of the musicians have showcased so far.

On a whim – probably because I'm so inebriated that I don't think of how stupid I may seem – I thoughtlessly and loudly start clapping my hands, nodding my approval to his seemingly ignored (and now forgotten) in-between solo enthusiastically.

The musicians on the stage look out into the crowd, as the people in that crowd turn their heads this way and that, everyone looking a bit confused, trying to find the source of the apparently misplaced display of appreciation.

I catch Ricky staring at me oddly, and I only grin, nodding more fervently. "D'you hear that? That's some fuckin' music, man!" I slur obnoxiously, my claps increasing in energy and volume. I kick at Ricky under the seat, urging him to follow my lead, and after a few embarrassed casting of his eyes to others nearby for help, he finally relents and joins me. I let out a high whistle and am glad to hear that, gradually, if a bit half-heartedly, some others have picked up on it too and follow suit.

Even the pianist himself looks perplexed, I notice as I fix my gaze on him again; he has a funny look on his face, like he's not sure if he's hearing correctly, and scratches absently at the hair hidden under his beanie – and for some reason, I take note that it looks quite dark as a few loose strands sneak out from underneath the heavy cloth.

After the slight clapping dies down, one of the other musicians is kind enough to step up to the microphone and blurt out something so garbled that I can't possibly translate it accurately – something about thanking an audience member on the stage, and I realize he means the pianist himself.

So, my half-delusional mind pieces together slowly, the pianist isn't really part of the band, then, huh? Well, he's still damn good...

And, I notice drunkenly when the slight form stands to shift the seat a bit before launching into the next jazz-infested ditty, got a damn fine ass on him, huh...

And that's when I black out.

Damn. Good thing Brian's paying – I can't imagine ever being able to cover that much liquor in one sitting.

Matty:

I've been trying hard for a long time. Trying to make this work in my head and in my general life itself. Can't recall when exactly it became a chore to be in this relationship we've had for so long. It's never been "easy," whether it was external circumstances – or, as now, an internal struggle to mean every sentiment I know he needs me to say. To assure him.

But it's no longer an assurance of my devotion; it's now only come down to an assurance that he won't be left alone. An assurance as strong as the occasional ropes – a promise I wish I'd never made. They're just words, really. But the meaning behind them, which I've washed out so I don't have to feel them every time I say it, is far heavier than anything I can carry.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I am a liar. I don't think I was all the time. Before, it was so overwhelming, all I felt. There wasn't a doubt inside me at all. But it just... went away. After a while, it just went away. Not even after the first time he startled me with the other side of himself I hadn't been prepared for – even after the first several times... I sought any shred of honesty in his pleading; and I believed it all. Hoping was the next stage, when belief began to fade. Before I knew it, even that had vanished. Yet, even when these nights had become the norm, even when these things were no longer surprising, even when this was known, expected, just after letting one thing slip out or making one stupid mistake – still, I remained.

Why?

I still felt it. That was why.

But that... even that was a long time ago. These last few years have been less an attempt to keep together something I so preciously want, rather an inability to move. While I used to just want this to work so badly, to prove to myself, to them, to everyone, that it could work – it wasn't "traditional" or "normal," but I'd so wanted it to work...

I became so adamant about this one point, this vague principle, that I completely ignored the fact that... it was actually destroying us. Even worse, it very nearly destroyed me – literally. Now, I can't remember when it was that I last spoke those words of assurance with a heart-felt emotion. It had all become routine – all of it. Expected. But he still made me do it, still made me assure him. Still made me carry out all the actions, speak all the endearments, feel all the guilt over the hardships we'd overcome to be like this, together – and what for? For me to abandon him? Over what?

Nothing, really.

It wasn't even the pain the began to frighten me. It was the utter lack of anything else. No friends. No money. No life. No worth. No interest. At times, I didn't even feel the pain anymore. That was one of the few things that frightened me, whilst still drowning helplessly in my apathetic despondency.

I'd fallen out of love. And that was years ago. Fallen out of love – and into an exhaustive, numb role of one going through the motions, like washing your hands until they bleed. It's a trap, pure and simple, and I've nowhere to go – and my tunnel vision keeps me from seeing any options.

Basically, he has me right where he wants me – afraid, alone, clinging to him for my life... when all I want to do is run.