Chapter Four
Brian's POV 15 years later
(present day at age 29)
This was my sanctuary, as it had been for years. It was filled with pleasure and no inhibitions. Beautiful naked men could be found in abundance doing what men were born to do, fuck their dicks off. Welcome to the backroom of Babylon, my kingdom.
I was currently busy with the trick of the hour, a nicely built and tanned Latino who gave excellent head and had a nice round ass. As I pounded into him with abandon I let the stress of work and the 'gang' get lost in the carnal hunger I was currently feeling. The buzzing high from the E and Beam that had been recently consumed was magnified as I came into the trick's ass with a very satisfied grunt.
The second I was done I pulled out, stripped off the condom, pulled up my pants, and left. In and out with maximum of pleasure and minimum of bullshit, a motto to live by.
"Are you done for the night?" Mikey was at the bar and looking hopeful. He didn't have a single clue in that brain of his.
"Not even close Mikey," I replied as I ordered another Beam before turning to the dance floor to find my next conquest.
"But Brian, you've been at it for hours now. Don't you think-" Mikey promptly shut up when I started for the hot guy currently dancing with Emmett. "Asshole," he muttered before turning back to his beer.
Emmett was a little indignant when I stole his dance partner to take him home and have a fun time, not that the trick was complaining. This was my life, go to work as the best adman in all of Pittsburgh, down some drugs and booze at Woody's, play some pool and beat some sorry asses, and then go to Babylon to trick the night away. Tonight's take home trick was a little sloppy on the blowjob to say the least, but at least his ass was fuckable. Second I was finished with him he was out the door.
"Will we see each other again?" he actually had the gall to ask as I was showing him the door.
"Not likely buddy, one time fucks only." I informed him before closing the door on his ass. After the loft door clicked into place I turned around to survey my home. I'd worked all through high school and college so that I'd have enough to completely move out of the god-awful place I grew up in. I got the loft, got addicted to expensive high quality furniture now that I could afford it, and have just been coasting along ever since.
Feeling the night's high start to wear off I turn out the kitchen lights and head towards the bathroom for a steaming hot shower. As the shower turned on the usual silence of the loft seemed to be magnified by the pattering of water droplets. If I had thought about my future fifteen years ago this probably wouldn't be how I imagined, but it had grown on me.
After mechanically going through the washing process I dried off and slipped between my soft navy sheets for another night alone. I hadn't rolled onto my side for more than a minute before the other side of the bed dipped down and a warm body cuddled in close.
I turned my head to glare into the laughing eyes of the only bed partner I ever had before sighing in defeat and pulling the covers up. "Why have you not died yet?" I asked absently as I petted soft downy hair.
Fluffy actually stuck his tongue out at me as he wiggled his tail. Twenty-five years and the rabbit still had an attitude. "Go to sleep, and be thankful I don't make you sleep on the floor." I said with a soft smile only allowed at night as I pulled him in tighter.
Fluffy breathed out a content sigh and nuzzled in closer before falling asleep.
"Boss?"
"What is it Cynthia? In case you haven't noticed I'm up to my balls in work." I was glowering at the pile of papers that had greeted me the moment I walked into the office. I'd been working all morning going through the accounts but was nowhere near done. I was in such a mood that even Fluffy had made himself scarce in the first five minutes.
"Your mom is on the phone." She said, still with most of her body behind the door with only her head peeking cautiously in, obviously waiting to see the extent of my mood.
"What. The fuck. Would she want?" I asked very slowly, trying hard not to ground my teeth together.
"Um, something about your dad and-" Cynthia decided to close the door when I abruptly stood up from my desk. Fluffy cautiously glanced out from under the couch and saw me standing there gripping my desk so tightly that my whole body was shaking in anger.
The hatred I had towards my parents as a kid had grown to the point where it threatened to consume me when I was a teenager. It had been because of them that I lost the one person I could never live without. Wondering what the fuck was left that they'd want to take from me I forced myself to calm down enough to sit back down and pick up the phone.
"Brian, your father is sick and you will come home this afternoon to see him because it could be your last." My mother's clipped and haughty voice immediately invaded my ear and made me want to cringe away from the phone.
I forced a couple of deep breaths into my lungs before trusting myself enough to answer. "The only reason I would see that son of a bitch on his deathbed is to tell him to have fun blowing Satan in hell."
I went, but not to see my dying father. In fact I didn't even get within view of that house that had been my prison before I escaped. I went to the cemetery. I took off from work and drove off to where I had grown up not for someone who was dying, but someone who had died.
It had been twelve years since I had allowed myself to think of him for more than a minute, fearing that the piercing cold feeling I got from it would kill me. Now I stood at the edge of the cemetery, looking down at the headstone where I had carved his name and date of birth myself and left a bunch of sunflowers, now long dried and gone.
As I looked at his resting place with Fluffy held tightly in my arms like I was still a little kid, my mind flashed back to a night twelve years ago…
I was seventeen and more than ready to get the hell out of that hellhole I grew up in. I'd just started embracing my queerness and had a lot of stress from both that and school, since I needed some serious scholarships for college. Mikey and I had gone out to check out Liberty Avenue for the first time, since we'd both found out about our shared sexual preference I had actually started to like him a bit. It was quite late when I got home and I had been hoping it was late enough that no one was awake.
"And where have you been you little faggot?"
The cold sneering voice of my father froze me in my tracks. I had grown over the years since he started beating me and even he knew that if I wanted to I could beat him to a pulp. Even though he couldn't physically harm me anymore he knew the exact words it would take to make me feel like a worthless piece of crap.
When I finally got up to my room after the verbal beating I half wished it had been physical. Physical wounds I had grown up with and learned to build barriers against, emotional ones I had not, and they terrified me. Thinking that if I showed any weakness it would only encourage my father to do worse I decided right then to make sure no one could hurt me like that again. With that resolve my terror started to morph itself into anger over the fact that I actually had to do that to protect myself, no one should need to put up that kind of barriers to protect themselves from a parent.
I was angry, and I took it out on him.
"Why did you tell me being gay was a good thing? If you had just kept your fucking mouth shut everything would be going fine right now and my father wouldn't hate me more than he already did!" I yelled at a very shocked and confused looking blonde.
"But Brian, it's not bad to be gay. It's not really a choice we make it's-"
"Just shut up! For once," the intense hurt in those blue eyes should have told me to stop right there and apologize, but my fear of being cut open again in a way I couldn't recover from drove me on. "You're dead, why couldn't I have remembered that and just not listened?"
Justin's eyes looked like they were about to spill over as he opened his mouth to say something, but all of a sudden he started…fading. He glanced down at himself before his eyes shot back up to mine, wide with fear…
That was the last night I saw my angel. That was also the night I found comfort in alcohol and meaningless fucks, as they were the only things that could numb me. And when they stopped working as effectively, I slit my wrist. I had been close to the edge of oblivion when Mikey found me, being pulled along by Fluffy at his feet even though he couldn't see the rabbit.
A black bracelet to cover up my almost mistake and a long time in the hospital to think things over later, I decided to do what Justin had always encouraged me to do, make all I could out of myself to show those bastards that I was someone.
Twelve years later and here I am, standing right where it all began, remembering. I feel a tear escape from my eye as I kneel down and rest my hand over his crudely carved name I'd put on with a rock the night he left.
"I miss you Angel." I whispered as tears quietly streamed down, letting the breeze carry my words away into the slowly falling night.
