Unfeigned Strength
Summary: Justin Taylor is anything but weak. B/J, B/M.
Author's Notes: The sub-headings are taken from Rufus Weinwright's song "Poses." General QaF spoilers through the third season.
such beautiful poses makes any boy feel like picking up roses
When Justin Taylor was seventeen, he was brave and impetuous, filled with a sort of blind courage that made him just wild enough to be interesting. Justin was seventeen when he met Brian, not really a kid, but far from being a man. Wide-eyed and naïve, Justin stepped off of the curb and into a world that was crazy and dangerous and invigorating and everything he'd ever dreamt it would be. And then he met Brian Kinney – it wasn't love the first night, it was lust, but Brian made him feel in ways that no one ever had before. And though he wasn't a kid, he was young enough to mistake rapture for love, although it didn't take long to turn into the latter. Justin was fervent, determined, and he stopped at nothing until Brian was his. Justin wasn't really strong, not yet, but he was certainly headstrong, and if people mistook that for true strength, well, he could live with that.
such beautiful poses makes any boy feel as pretty as princes
And then Brian showed up at the prom, and they danced the night away and Justin was happy, really happy, but sometimes the world is cruel to beautiful gay boys, because Chris Hobbes very nearly destroyed everything with one swing of his baseball bat. Two weeks later, Justin woke up in the hospital with no memory, no boyfriend, and no strength in his right hand.
"It could have been worse," the doctors told him, and he almost wished that it were worse, that he were dead, because that had to be better than being rendered incapable of doing any of the things that he once loved. But although in the beginning he wanted nothing more than to give up, he still fought and battled and won.
Because Justin was strong, and if anyone had ever doubted it for a second it was taken as an absolute truth now.
such beautiful poses, oh how can you blame me, life is a game and true love is a trophy
Few people were unsurprised when Brian stayed. Brian got Justin through the bashing and the aftermath, through the Pink Posse and the anger. Slowly but surely Brian let him in, let Justin be what no one else ever was: a boyfriend or a partner or a significant other, whatever. The point was that it was Justin who was strong enough to knock over Brian Kinney's resilient wall of defense.
And then Justin left, once, because he wanted romance and he wanted reality and he wanted Ethan, except in the end Ethan was none of those things except for himself, and Justin realized that that wasn't really what he wanted at all.
So he went back to Brian, tried to believe in him, understand him, accept him. And stay with him. And for a while it worked, or almost did, until it dawned on Justin that that the only thing that he really wanted from Brian was the same thing that he'd grown never to expect. And when the I-love-you's that Brian wouldn't say weren't enough anymore, Justin knew that he had to leave. Because while people used to say that Justin showed real strength in standing by Brian's side through thick and thin, Justin knew that he stayed with Brian because he was Justin's only weakness.
all these poses of classical torture
After Justin left Brian, it took a long time for him to feel anything but pain. He tried to love and couldn't, or maybe just wouldn't, but regardless, he didn't. He dated men, a writer and a student and a doctor, but none of them were enough, because none of them were Brian.
Sometimes when Justin was lying alone in bed at three o'clock in the morning, he'd swear that Brian was lying next to him, just a breath away, but when he reached his arm out to hold him, he grabbed nothing but sheets. And those were the times that Justin realized that he was still in love with Brian, even though he was too proud to tell him and finally too smart to go back to him. It took every iota of strength that Justin possessed not to go crawling back, because he needed Brian in the same way that Ted needed crystal meth; the attraction was self-destructive, and Justin knew that he had to resist it.
all these poses now no longer boyish made me a man
Justin told himself that he was over Brian, that he was past his adolescent desires. But when Justin first heard that Michael and Brian were dating, it burned. He couldn't put a name on it, but it just. It just hurt. He told himself that it was just because he wasn't there, that Michael was Brian's second choice, but no matter how much Justin lied to himself he never really believed it.
Sometimes Justin would go to Babylon and he'd see Brian in the backroom and he'd wonder how it worked, how Brian and Michael made it work, and he'd try to figure out how Michael – weak little Michael – managed to do what he never could.
But Justin was nothing if not smart, and it took him no time at all to realize that Michael possessed a strength that he never had, not a better strength but a different one: Michael truly believed in Brian, completely understood him, honestly accepted him. And still always – always – stayed.
Justin thinks now that he'll never entirely get over Brian, but he knows that he'll never tell him this. Justin knows that he'll move on, settle down with a guy that's so wrong for him that he's somehow right, and that he'll see Brian at holidays and will never, ever relapse into the love for him that once seemed so insatiable. Because Justin Taylor is anything but weak, and he uses all of his strength now.