Title: Six Months
Author: Simon
Pairing: Justin/Brian
Rating: PG-17
Summary: Brian deals with Justin's death
Warnings: language, major angst involving major character death
Disclaimers: These guys aren't mine, they don't belong to me, worst luck, so don't bother me.
Archive: Moonshadow Tribe and ATP
Feedback: Hell, yes.
WARNING: this is a sequel to the original ending of Christmas Presents and involves major character death.
Spare me the flames. You've been warned.
Six Months
Sequel to Christmas Presents
Original (deathfic) Ending FebruaryYou want to know who suggested that I write this down? It was Cynthia. Yes, I know, she's my secretary, my assistant, but we've been together for about seven or eight years now and she knows me as well as about anyone does. We spend eight or nine hours a day together, so I guess that's not all that surprising, but still. I didn't think at she'd be the one to start me back up on my feet again after what happened.
She knew, though. She knew that I was locking it all inside, just like I'm so fucking good at doing and she knew that it was killing me.
Shit. The bitch was probably afraid for her job. If I get my ass fired or took a long walk off a short pier she'd be on unemployment—just trying to save her ass, I'll bet.
Alright, I know. She actually likes me. I know that.
I like her, too. We understand each other, no bullshit.
She's been worried about me. I know, so I agreed to try her idea. I'm writing it down.
Shit knows nothing else was working.
I think you probably know the story. I arranged to take Justin up to Vermont just after Christmas so that we could get married. His mother was in on it and his grandparents let me show up at their house to spend the holiday with their family and the proposal was my present to Justin—it was a surprise and he was so fucking happy. Shit, so was I.
I've never been that happy, other than maybe right after we said the vows and we both knew that this was it. We would be together til death we did part. OK, that ended up being two days. More like about thirty-six hours, if you want to split hairs.
Well, I never was big on commitment.
Sorry. That was death humor.
I know. It's not funny.
That was two months ago.
I don't remember all that much about the first month after he was killed. I have little memories, sort of like flashes or picture post cards, but thye're like a slide show on speed or acid or maybe both. There's no continuity. I couldn't tell you what happened when or any of that.
Of course, the fact that I was pretty heavily sedated could have something to do with that.
The funeral.
Jesus.
The funeral.
Unfortunately I remember a lot of that.
Father Tom did the honors and what I mostly remember about it was knowing, in a detached way, that I was numb and that I was dreaming and that I wanted to wake up but I couldn't wake up because it was real. I know I had to pretend that it was a dream because some part of my brain knew that if I believed it was really happening then I'd start screaming or something and I didn't want to do that.
I remember the casket being open—that's a Catholic thing— and Justin lying there like a fucking mannequin. I just stared at his face through the whole service, knowing it was the last time I'd ever see it and thinking that it looked like him, but he wasn't there.
I remember Jennifer sitting beside me, also in shock, but crying quietly, wearing tasteful black and holding my arm in a death grip and sometimes leaning against me as if I was the only thing holding her up.
Molly was on my other side, crying, not understanding how her brother could be so happy last week and dead this week. I think I put my arm around her shoulder.
I remember Craig's face, pale and too stunned to even hate me.
I remember the family—Deb crying, for once wearing something understated. Justin would have laughed at that. The girls, were there and Ted and Em, Michael and Ben, Vic—all of them and all of them crying.
I was surprised at the number of people in the church. Daphne crying and hugging me hard. Students from PIFA, Ethan with red eyes, people from Vanguard. Gardner was there, saying to take as much time as I needed. Old friend's of Justin's, all of them his age and likely at their first funeral for a friend instead of a grandparent.
Joan wasn't there.
There were a lot of flowers.
I remember standing at the grave and someone—Melanie, I think, leading me away before they started throwing the dirt in, convinced the sound of it landing on his coffin was a memory I didn't need.
I thank her for that.
I remember going back to the loft and a lot of people being there and I wanted to be alone.
I remember that they were finally gone and I was up on the bed, still wearing the only black suit I own and Mikey came up and lay down and put his arms around me and for once not saying anything. That was nice of him.
I didn't cry that day.
Tears were too easy. They seemed almost cheap or something—you cry, you'll feel better. I knew I wouldn't feel better so why bother?
I hadn't cried at all, not at that point, anyway. Sometimes I'd think about it, but then I just didn't feel like it. It was like I thought I should cry because that was what you did, but I was so fucking far beyond tears that it was like a different planet.
I didn't go to work for the rest of the week, but since it was already Thursday, that was no big deal. I went on Monday.
Cynthia looked surprised to see me. Where else the fuck was I supposed to be?
I remember sitting down and looking at the folders and the mail she'd put on my desk. At some point Gardner walked in and asked if I was alright.
Fuck him.
No. I wasn't alright but I didn't answer, just asked him where were we on the Frito-Lay account and he said he'd have the ad exec brief me and walked out without saying anything else.
There was a framed picture of Justin in the bottom drawer of my desk. It was just too fucking hetero to have it actually on my desk, but I got it out and set it right where I could see the thing.
I took that picture.
It was one day in the park with Gus. Justin was sitting on the seesaw with him, sitting behind him to hold him and the two of them were looking at me and laughing and he had his smile. The sun was shining and the air was so fucking crisp that day it was like it you could taste it.
Shit. Listen to me.
I put it on my desk and I spent most of the day looking at it. I did that pretty much for the rest of the week, just sat there looking at that fucking picture then I'd somehow get home and sit there with the JB and look at some more pictures. I'd look at the pictures he painted and the pictures he took and—well you get the idea. Then I'd go to bed, alone and get up and go sit in my office with the door closed. Me and my picture. I started having conversations with it. No, not real ones, come on, but conversations in my mind. I'd talk and I'd imagine Justin's answers and sometimes he'd really piss me off. He was so good at that.
The phone didn't ring much and there were almost no meetings I was asked to attend and no one asked me anything until the day Gardner knocked and came in. I was looking at the picture. He turned it around and said something about how nice it was.
I knew he was building up to something—in fact I knew what he was building up to. Just because I was in shock and being swamped by grief didn't mean I'd gone stupid.
Anyway, he sort of cleared his throat and I thought "Fuck it, might as well help him out here", so I said, "You wanted to say something, Gardner?"
And he says some shit about how he knows I've suffered a terrible loss and that these things take time, but he was concerned—might I consider talking to a friend of his about what's happened? Let me guess. His friend was a shrink? Yup, right the first time.
Well, he was trying. Hell, he was still paying me my five grand a week and I wasn't producing shit, so I figured he might be trying to protect his investment here. Couldn't blame him.
Sure, Gardner, let's give him a ring.
I saw him that afternoon.
The guy was named Kim Modell and he was this grief counselor slash shrink Gardner knew from shit knows where.
He was one of those people who are so damned understanding that you want to tell them to fuck off. You know the kind, the ones who say, "I understand" to everything you say.
I fucking hate that.
Well, excuse me. But this asshole didn't understand. OK, he said that it was common for the grieving process to take two or even three years to work through and he knew I'd only been bereaved (what an asshole word) for a month or so, so he understood that I was still in shock and that was normal.
I don't care how long he's been a professional empath, but he didn't fucking know what it was like to loose—what I did. He had no goddamned idea what it was like to know that your twenty year old husband is dead on the seat beside you and you're walking away from the wreck you were probably responsible for with just a minor sprain. He hadn't ever had to call someone's mother and tell them their son was dead and he'd never stood in the Goddamned snow and watched the coffin he'd picked out for his lover be lowered in the fucking frozen ground and know that was it. Some men dressed in layers of sweats would shovel frozen mud on top and there would be this ugly mound and by the next day the fucking flowers would be just as Goddamned dead as he was.
There's not a single motherfucking normal thing about it.
I almost started crying then. Sitting in that asshole's office and with the picture of the casket being lowered in my brain like a movie stuck in a fucking loop, over and over. I did, I almost broke down then and I couldn't because if I did I wouldn't stop and I couldn't do that because—well, because I couldn't.
Whenever I need to really get a grip, when I'm afraid he I'm going to lose it I'll put my hand in a pocket or behind my back or somewhere it can't be seen and make a fist. I concentrate all the anger or stress or fear or whatever into my hand and hold it while I recite this mantra thing about control. It usually works. Sometimes I picture—I mean really focus all my brain—on a mental of picture of myself, except that I picture my body as a hollow shell and I see the little pieces inside cracking and breaking off. The thing is that they're all inside, the cracks and the crumbling and the rot and the outside, the part everyone sees, the fucking Brian Kinney package is just fine, and no one knows it's really an empty shell that's falling apart.
That's what I did there, with this shrink.
He had no idea.
Then he asked me if I felt that I was responsible for Justin's death.
Jesus.
He asked the sixty-four dollars question.
I told him that I was driving and he told me that the police report had ruled that it was an accident, that the road was dark and icy, there was no indication that I was going too fast or anything. It was an accident, it happens. Then he tried a typical shrink shit trick—pissed me off. He asked me if I thought that I was so powerful that I could have done something to change the outcome, if I could have—fuck I don't know, done something different.
I remember that I didn't answer him. Of fucking course I could have done something. I could have driven slower, I could have kept my eyes on the Goddamned road when Justin put his hand on my leg, I could have ordered room service instead of going out, I could have chosen to take us to Hawaii or waited until the weather was warm, I could have...I could have done a hundred things differently.
But I didn't and Justin fucking died.
Then the shrink told me that the report said that if Justin had been wearing his seatbelt he would have likely survived with minor injuries, that he'd probably be fine, he was an adult, he was responsible. He said that I couldn't blame myself for him not putting on the damn belt. That wasn't my fault.
You want to tell me why not? Aren't you supposed to look out for people when you love them? Isn't that part of the deal? If I'd seen, if I'd noticed that he wasn't wearing the damn thing I might have said something—I should have said something.
Just before he told me that my time was up, those fifty-minute hours, he repeated that it wasn't my fault. He kept telling me that and I wanted to tell him that he was full of shit.
He asked me if I was sleeping—I guess he saw my face and the circles under my eyes—and offered me a prescription for sleeping pills, asked if I would like something to take the edge off—that's what he said. Wouldn't want those edges, now, would we?
I said I was fine and agreed to some back in a couple of days.
MarchI'd been seeing that shrink a couple of times a week and he kept trying to get me to admit that that it wasn't my fault and I kept wanting him to fuck off about it. We finally agreed that he'd get off my case and I'd think about the possibility that it was just an accident.
Fat fucking chance. I was driving the car. I was the one who slammed the fucking car into the fucking tree.
I was the one who killed Justin.
The strange thing was that sometimes—OK every day—I'd wake up and I'd forget, for just a little while that he was dead. I mean, I honestly wouldn't remember. I'd see that I was alone in the bed and I'd just sort of think that he was in the bathroom or something and I'd get up and make coffee and then I'd put the kettle on for his tea. He never did like coffee. I'd make a cup of tea and them while it was steeping I'd look at it and I'd remember all over again and then—then the day would be –gone.
To get Gardner off my case, I started pretending that work was starting to matter to me again, sort of.
It was self-defense. I had to do something since I was there all day and I knew that my job was going to be on the line soon if I didn't at least go through the motions. I mean, I was spending a lot of my time there, so I might as well get something done.
The first day the staff walked into my office to show me some campaign that they'd been working on, you'd have thought they expected me to start weeping in front of them, especially when they saw that picture on my desk.
Screw that. As Justin used to say, "I'm not just some stupid faggot". I looked at the boards, looked the copy, told them they were shit, told them why, chewed a couple of assholes and felt better than I had for a while.
OK, it didn't last—fuck no—but it was a good twenty minutes.
After that Vance seemed to assume that I was just fine, thank God and about fucking time. He starting expecting me to be at all the fucking meetings, pick up with the fucking clients again, make some trips to deal with a few fires here and there. The usual drill—or at least it was the usual drill a few months ago before—well, before.
I brought in a couple of Justin's paintings, hung them on my office walls where I could see them.
The more I look at them, the more I realize that Justin might have been a major talent. I know he was young and cut short, but fuck, those are good.
When I look at them I think about that. I didn't just kill him. I killed his talent, his ability.
Shit.
AprilThe family, Deb and the rest expected me to show up at one of her ziti dinners the other night and I wasn't going to, of course, but Mikey and Ben came over to the office and Cynthia, that cunt, let them in.
I could have told them to fuck off, but it was Friday, I was tired and, shit, it was just so much easier to go. I figured I'd show up, have enough that Deb would get off my back and leave.
Yeah, right.
Everyone was there, of course, even Jennifer, saying she wanted to talk with me. They'd even brought Gus to the guilt card, planted him on my lap, he put his arms around my neck and—OK, I admit it, I fucking love when he does that.
It was a Goddamned intervention.
Now I've been pissed off in my life, but this may take the fucking cake.
When they started on that "We care about you, we're worried about you, we love you" shit I knew what was going on.
I wasn't going to sit still this, no way in Hell. I got up and started for the door—and I remember this perfectly—Ben just stood in front of me, blocking the way. He's a big guy, almost as tall as me and heavier, stronger. Fuck it, I didn't care.
I'm not Goddamned Ted with his pathetic problems needing someone to pull his nuts out if the fire. I just stared at Ben. He didn't move so I hit him.
I fucking stomach punched him as hard as I could and he doubled over enough for me to get past him.
When I got out to the car I drove back to the loft, turned off the phone and didn't answer the door.
Fuck them all.
MayI've been doing something that would dear old Mom proud. I've been going to church. Honest to shit—or honest to God, if you prefer.
I wouldn't go when I thought anyone I knew would be there and I didn't usually go to Mass. I'd just go and sit there in the off hours.
Sometimes I went to confession. I talk to Father Tom. He sits in his side of the booth, I sit in mine. We both know who's on the other side of the curtain, but I prefer having the curtain there, thanks. I've done this a few times. He knows the drill.
This one day I tell him that my husband is dead, that I killed him and how many Hail Mary's would it take, how many Rosaries or Stations of the Cross or lit candles to make it not have happened? How many would it be to have him still be alive?
I've given this some though—honest to shit I have. I was raised Catholic for a reason, Damnit.
I'll die instead, would that be alright with Jesus? It's fine with me—just give Justin back. Dear God, please make it not be true, let him have more time.
If I promise not to be gay anymore, if I never have relations with another man as long as I live, will that do it?
If I marry a woman, had kids, took them to softball games and never, ever set foot in a gay bar, would make a difference?
If I have dinner with my mother?
I think that's where I started crying. I hadn't yet, in all that time since he died, I hadn't cried, not really. Sitting in that dark booth, smelling of wax and incense and sweat and perfume, I tried to breath in and heard this horrible sound and realized that it was me and that I was breathing in sobs and I couldn't stop.
A while later—I don't know, a few minutes or an hour or something, Tom opened my side of the booth and sort of half pulled me out so he could reach me, I guess, and just sort of held me while I sat there on the damn floor and cried for about—shit, I don't know—an hour or two or three and he just held me.
I'd tried to stop after a while but then I'd think of something, like the color of his hair or how he's smile when he came or how I'd wake up and he's be looking at me and I'd start again. I'd think of him coming in after school with some story to tell me about his day or how we were promised for dinner with his mother or Deb and I'd pretend to be pissed, but he knew I didn't really care and he'd make it up to me later.
If I promised—God—anything. I'll do anything, just make it not be true anymore. Make it be some dream, some nightmare and let me wake up.
But it doesn't work that way. That's what Tom said. It doesn't work that was. I was staring at him, trying to understand what he'd just said and then I got it.
It doesn't work that way.
It took a while for it to sink in, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but it finally did.
It doesn't work that way.
I remember wiping the tears off my face, even though they still hadn't completely stopped, and standing up and walking down the aisle and not going back.
June
One morning I opened my eyes and I didn't think Justin was in the bathroom or up early watching Animaniacs.
I stretched my hand out across the bed and I realized that I was no longer sleeping on just my side. I was in the middle. I was no longer making room for him no longer allowing him the space he always wanted, he no longer took two thirds of the bed.
One morning I went over to see Gus and when he asked where Justin was, I told him that he was gone away, that he hadn't wanted to and that he'd like to be with us, but he'd had to go.
Gus cried and I held him, but I was alright. Sort of.
One day I went to work and I sat down at my desk and looked at Justin's picture and didn't just stare for an hour or two. I started my computer and worked, with him watching me. Cynthia came in and brought me coffee and didn't say anything, just handed me my schedule for the day and I went from one thing to the next like I used to do. She kissed my cheek at the end of the day. The bitch.
One night I walked into Woody's. The boys were there. I ordered a beer and sat down at the table with them. No one said anything directly but Emmett kissed my cheek and whispered some tripe about how good it was to have me back. I didn't stay all that long, just long enough for that one beer, but I'd be back next week or so.
I got up the next morning, knowing that I'd be alone, knowing that he wouldn't call or walk out of the shower and I wouldn't be tripping over his shit left lying around.
I knew that. I hated it, but I knew it and I knew hat no matter what I did or how much I wanted it to be different—this was it. Justin was dead.
Getting dressed, I went over to Jennifer's with a bag of bagels and lox.
I was ready to talk.
7/11/03
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