Disclaimer: Though they are fictional characters from a show, they are based on real people. I do not own these people or the people who own them.

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Desperation Pushes Love Away

Not long after Taboo opened, George started using drugs.

He was famous now and it came with the territory, right?

After the night in the bathroom, things had never quite healed between Philip and George. They were on speaking terms, but it was very different. Then George and Marcus got back together and Philip was, as he usually was, left behind.

Sue had her hands full with Leigh, well, more keeping Nicola away for a few hours at a time so she could see Leigh once in a while. Marilyn, ever the Boy George groupie, kept herself busy spending George's money and leeching off of him, just as she always had.

With no club to tend to and preoccupied friends, Philip was left with little to do but sit around and dwell on the past. It was his favourite hiding place. In the past, he could be the happier, gorgeous version of himself that he wanted to be at all times. In his past there was no Marcus and no Leigh and no Nicola. Planets never closed and the freaks all still fell at his feet begging him to let them in.

As he begged George to let him in in the present.

There was no reasoning with his drug-addled friend and since it killed him a little more everytime he tried, he didn't anymore. Those who didn't know what had actually happened took it as Philip abandoning George.

As though he would ever do such a thing.

Then it happened. The bomb had dropped.

Marcus had sold a story to The Sun about George.

Everyone knew it was him - who else could it have been? No one else but Marilyn was close enough to George to get that sort of information and bitchy as Marilyn was, even she would never sink that low.

Because of Marcus' story, George was arrested and, though Philip would never admit it, he would rather see George in prison than on drugs. It seemed that there was some bit of good Marcus did but that didn't excuse that it was a low and deceitful way to do it. Plus he'd sold George out, the bastard.

Philip was desperate to do something to prove to someone, probably himself, that he hadn't abandoned George as everyone thought so he sought Marcus out to confront him about the story.

Until that point, love of George had prevented him from clawing Marcus' eyes out everytime he saw the fake bastard but Philip was able to push the thought of George's reaction out of his mind for a few hours to finally do what he'd been meaning to do from the very beginning.

He was going to denounce Marcus to their world as the vile creature that he truly was.

Lucky that Marcus had his mates surrounding him. Two against one was hardly fair, but all's fair in love and war.

The broken man they left bleeding on the street was not the same one that had come to confront Marcus. Marcus wasn't as horrid as he'd originally thought - he hadn't taken the money. And if the truth that Marcus was the bad guy was no longer a truth, where did that leave him? Philip found that in the real world he was not invincible as he was in his. He could not change people and he could not live their lives for them.

He could love them, but that didn't mean they were obligated to love him back.

They were not obligated and so they didn't.

Once Philip had resigned himself to this, he found that he could move past it.

The gorgeous and strong creature of the night that seemingly thought and cared only of and for himself had learned that the real world made him ugly and weak. He could not fend for himself there and in the real world the only laws honoured were the laws of the self. There were no heroes and no right to fight for.

Decency needed not apply.