This story takes place about the time of the eighteenth episode of season nine, with some tweaks and potential fooling with the season's timeline. As I have zero desire to rewatch anything from that season (especially scenes of the wannabe-Dylan and the wannabe-Brandon) to be certain of details, I may have mistaken which person moved into Bren's room when Val left. If the details are inaccurate; well, this season severely lacked in logic of its own.
We now return to February of 1999, where Dylan's world is about to be knocked off its axis.
xx
Mendacity had become his conservancy.
He had learnt from the best: the bastion of lies, the seeker of quagmires. His father, the late Jack McKay, had thrived on deceit, on abandonment, on casting aside the women he no longer found of use.
And he, Dylan McKay, had begun to follow in his father's footsteps.
The jerk women loved.
It had been a simple game of Battleship. Words spewed out before he could stop them. That was the hazard of words, he decided; once they had been said, they could not be reversed. They festered, elongated until they became demons of the mind. Of the soul. Of the atmosphere.
He had befriended his demons.
In his anger, he had severed his connection with the one person he had promised to never forget: the one who had helped him to face his demons head-on.
It was Steve Sanders who brought it to their attention that dreary day. Cheerful, reckless Steve, the boy Dylan had known since before their individual sets of parents had divorced.
Yet, even Steve didn't know what Dylan hid.
Steve wondered why none of them had heard from Brandon since the holidays.
Brandon. The name invoked a sense of nostalgia in Dylan, borne out of the last time he had seen the man who the others said was working overtime in a Washington newsroom for the Clinton campaign. He and Brandon had once discussed travelling to distant countries with their respective women; a discussion that had never come to fruition.
Thinking of Brandon had been a terrible idea, for it had only led Dylan to one thought.
Battleship.
That, of course, led to another B; a haunting B.
Brenda.
Telling Kelly during Battleship that he had only connected with two women, neither of whom had been Brenda Walsh.
The same Brenda he told Kelly he had left two years before returning to Beverly Hills.
He had lied. Why had he lied? It had come easy, the lie; too easy. Would it have been better to tell the truth? To have Kelly know that it had been Brenda who had asked him to choose? To tell Kelly that he had lacked the strength to make the decision?
He hadn't had the courage to tell Brenda when he had left. He couldn't face their friends, the ones who had started as Brenda's and became his as well.
Perhaps he believed burying his memories of Brenda would ease the pain, that rewriting their history would permit him to move on.
He had thought that the thrill of chasing after Kelly would quench the ache he still possessed after all of those months away. If that failed, surely the kiss of Gina Kincaid would be enough of a distraction.
He had been wrong.
Just as he had been wrong that verbally erasing Brenda would erase her from his mind.
She had entrenched herself in there, entrenched like the drugs he had once again allowed to control him.
He had been forced to shake off his Brenda thoughts when Kelly, concerned over Steve's comment in a reaction that did not go unnoticed by anyone in the room, opened the door to a breathless David Silver.
"How was Buffalo?" asked Steve; forgetting, for the moment, his inquiry over Brandon.
"Freezing," said David, dropping his suitcase by the door.
"Unsurprising," said Steve. "And how is our Val?"
"She's been better." Donna Martin had followed behind David. Rather than greet Kelly with a squeal as was their custom, Donna hung back to aim a glance at Dylan which tried far too hard to be subtle.
"What?" asked Dylan, setting aside his uneaten tray of food.
"Nothing." The flipped edges of Donna's chestnut hair shook out against the low collar of her shirt.
"You aren't staring at me for nothing," said Dylan.
"It's just," Donna set her own suitcases down and began removing her shoes, "when's the last time you saw Bren, again?"
Dylan wondered if there would ever be a time when that name didn't stir up physical pain.
"He left her two years ago," said Kelly cheerily. "I told you that, Donna. He went to - what was the name of that mountain again, Dylan?"
"K2," said Dylan, who preferred to not utter the name of the mountain that reigned over his nightmares.
"Two years?" David exchanged a look with Donna as he spoke. "Are you sure?"
"Of course he's sure," waved off Kelly, moving her hand away from the shoulder of the attorney Matt Durning to emphasize her point. "It's been two years."
"Has it?" Donna peered at Dylan as if he had become a questionable organism under a microscope. "Has it really?"
"Something like that." Dylan echoed the words he had told Kelly.
"That's not what Val told us," said Donna as she took a seat on the couch. "According to Val, Brandon told her that Bren told him you left London at the end of last year. Barely that long ago. When Bren went on a tour. In Oceania, was it?"
"Well, Valerie's a liar," said Kelly with a dismissive air. "We all know that. You can't believe a word that comes out of that girl's mouth. She lies the way people breathe."
"I thought you had come to an understanding when she left?" asked David.
Dylan had noticed the way David automatically rushed to defend Valerie Malone whenever Kelly spoke ill of her, which caused Dylan to wonder what had occurred between the two.
He would never ask, of course; just as he hadn't asked why David had chosen to visit Val in Buffalo when he and Donna had been sent on a week in New York for their respective careers.
"We can have an understanding while I still point out how many times Val's lied," said Kelly. "Why should we believe her over Dylan? Brenda's just some girl he used to know, just like we're all people she used to know. I mean, when's the last time she's called any of us?"
Multiple pairs of eyes zoned in on Dylan, as the group piped up to tell Kelly of their last interactions with Brenda.
Donna had called her the night Dylan had returned to Beverly Hills. David was in regular email contact, and had been for a number of years. Steve had received postcards, one for each country included in Brenda's tour.
Perturbed to be the odd one out, Kelly reiterated Dylan's indifference.
"Then explain why Brandon backed up the story when we called him," said Donna. "Unless you're calling Brandon a liar, too?" she questioned Kelly.
Kelly's face showcased the same emotions Dylan hid. She, unlike Dylan, had never perfected the refuge of a poker face.
"I would never call Brandon a liar," said Kelly quietly. "But Dylan isn't lying either, so," she mulled it over, "so Brenda must've lied to Brandon! Yes, that's what happened. Bren lied. Bren's the liar."
"Is she?" asked Donna. The ferocity of her focus on Dylan would have put the interrogations of a prosecutor to shame. "Is Bren a liar? Did you leave her two years ago, instead of in October?"
He was the liar, thought Dylan.
"I -" he began, but Kelly cut him off.
"Why does it even matter?" she burst out in frustration. "Dylan's story with Brenda is over. Long over. He told me himself. They didn't even have a connection."
Donna's mouth opened, ready to speak words through lips painted in a deep scarlet.
Instead, Steve spoke.
"Hang on." Steve withdrew from his position beside Janet Sosna and her carefully parted hair to walk towards Dylan. "You honestly expect us to believe that?" he said. "That you never connected with Brenda? A connection I saw grow and deepen with my own two eyes?"
"I - I didn't exactly say that," Dylan sputtered.
"He said he's only connected with two people in his life," said Kelly proudly. "One of them's me and the other one was obviously Toni, so clearly Bren is no longer a thought in Dylan's head."
If only it were that easy.
"Kel, that sounds like Dylan's got some leftover brain damage from his latest hospital stay," said David. "Maybe the drugs turned his brain to mush, like those after-school specials always warned us about. Like all of you warned me about. Even if they didn't, how do you believe that? We all saw how he was with Bren. You saw it, remember? How he ran to her when she was arrested, how he would fight with you whenever you said anything against her?"
"Like Silver does with Val," noted Steve.
Dylan hadn't been the only one to notice David's attitude.
"That was a long time ago," said Kelly. "Lay the past to rest. Dylan doesn't care about Brenda."
"Oh," said Donna. "Okay. Then if Dylan doesn't care about Bren at all, I guess he doesn't care to know anything we know about Bren."
"What do you know about Bren?" asked Dylan, on instinct.
"You don't care," said Donna, shrugging her shoulders. "And it doesn't matter anyway, because if you broke up two years ago, then you wouldn't've been with her four months ago. Even if Brandon says you were."
"Four months?" The ball pit within Dylan's stomach sloshed around as if a feisty toddler had cannonballed in. "Why did you specify four months?"
He had been with Brenda four months before; before she discovered his stash, before she left for her tour.
Before she told him to not bother coming with her.
Before he slammed the door on their life.
"No reason," said Donna. "And I guess you really don't care to know that Brandon had to fly out to Australia in December."
"Why did he have to fly out there?" Dylan's indifference had begun to falter and now leant towards vexation that Donna wouldn't just spit out what she had learnt about Brenda.
"Because he got a call," said Donna.
"What kind of call?" asked Dylan, digging his nails into his palms to avoid yelling at her.
"A call about Bren. But seeing as you don't care and all and you haven't seen her in two years, I'm not gonna go into specifics."
Kelly hadn't once removed her eyes from Dylan.
"You're in your boiling mode," she noted, resting one hand on Matt's back and the other on her hip.
"What?" asked Dylan.
He had been numb for months, as he had told Gina whilst sitting on David's sofa. The drugs had been a temporary relief. Returning to the bottle had been another relief, something he hadn't touched in years whilst the twins had still been in his life.
Neither drugs nor alcohol would help in the situation he had found himself in - numb over Brenda, a numbness that increased with every second Donna remained mum.
If Brenda had been fatally injured on her tour, Donna would tell him; wouldn't she?
"Your boiling mode," Kelly repeated. "It's what I call it when your calm exterior is chipping away and you're about to burst. But why? You made it clear that Bren doesn't mean anything to you. Why do you care if my - I mean, if Brandon got a call about her?"
Ignoring her, Dylan turned to Steve.
"Give me your phone," he said without preamble.
"Why?" asked Steve.
"Because I deleted Bren's number out of mine," confessed Dylan. "Give me your phone, now."
He added an extra emphasis on the last word that packed a punch.
"What makes you think I have Bren's number?" asked Steve, holding his phone away from Dylan.
"I know you have her number," Dylan growled.
"Maybe I do," said Steve, "and maybe I don't want to give it to anyone who's decided to erase Bren from their memories."
"Oh please," scoffed Dylan. "When's the last time you spoke to her?"
"Shorter than two years," said Steve.
Would that lie continue to taunt him?
"If I tell you it's been shorter than two years for me too, will you give me your goddamn phone?" asked Dylan.
"You lied?" shrieked Kelly.
"I'm a little busy right now, Kel," he managed through his clenched jaw.
"I can't believe you lied to me," said Kelly.
"Oh, like you lied to me?" he retorted.
"How dare you accuse me of lying!"
Wonderful, he thought. Instead of calling Brenda, he had now unwillingly entered into a screaming match with Kelly Taylor.
"You and Brandon?" said Dylan. "You were gonna marry the guy, remember? I'm supposed to believe you thought you didn't swing from the chandeliers?"
"You said that?" asked Steve.
"Brandon said it first," said Kelly, which was news to Dylan.
He wondered if Kelly had simply parroted what Brandon had said, or if she truly believed in their lack of swinging chandeliers.
"What was that whole thing with you two trying to prove to us how unboring you were, then?" asked Steve. "Jeez, what is it with all of you? Do you think we don't pay attention? That we're too absorbed in our own lives to notice when our friends are full of shit?"
"Not now, Steve," said Kelly. "I hope you know I'm never gonna believe anything you tell me ever again, Dylan," she barked. "And you can forget about us being together."
Matt tilted his head down towards Kelly. "I didn't know that was an option," he said.
"It's not," Kelly assured him. "It's just; you all know how Dylan has been chasing after me since he came back."
"Like you're so lily-white," snapped Gina, who until that moment had chosen to silently watch the drama unfurl before her with a large bowl of popcorn. Her dark locks, so similar to Brenda's, were braided together into a high ponytail that stood out against her lavender fuzzy tube top.
"What do you care?" asked Kelly. "You don't think you're so special in Dylan's life that he wouldn't lie to you about Brenda, too? Please. You're just his bedwarmer until the next girl comes along. Probably another brunette. He likes them brunette, except of course when he wants to string along a blonde and ruin her European trip by hooking up with some cheap date."
"Shut up, Kelly," said Dylan.
He could tell it had hurt Kelly, uttering that phrase he hadn't said to her in years.
He made a mental note to apologize later.
"Someone who has Bren's number plugged into their phone, give me your phone right this damn second!"
Mobiles were the problem, Dylan concluded; cellphones, cellular devices, whatever one called it. He would have memorized Brenda's number, if it hadn't been for the built-in address book on his mobile.
Zero two zero. It began with zero two zero; that much he knew. The London area code. Two fours for the United Kingdom made up the beginning. 244-020. There was a seven in there; or was it two sevens? Five. A seven and a five.
He scrolled through his address book and chided himself for deleting Brenda's number during his Newark layover.
Even worse, in his drug-induced state, he had deleted every contact he had in London.
"I'd rather not," said Donna, backed up by Steve.
David looked at his phone and then at Dylan. "Tell us if Bren lied about when your breakup happened and I might lend you my phone."
"Silver, I don't have time for this," said Dylan, whose patience teetered on nonexistent.
"Kelly said Val and Bren lied," said David. "Tell her they didn't and I'll give in to your not-so-polite request."
"What is it with you and Val?" asked Dylan. "What's it to you if Kel says things about her?"
"Because I love her, okay?" David blurted.
The attention turned on him.
"You still love her?" asked Donna, more out of curiosity than jealousy despite their own romantic past and the reunion that had been brewing between them.
The latest tenant of Hotel Casa Walsh, Donna's current boyfriend Noah Hunter, had taken Steve's place beside Janet as they both kept their focus on Dylan.
"Yeah," said David. "Yeah. I do. I didn't break up with her because I'd stopped loving her. I broke up with her because I love her. But Val's moving on with her life, so I have to do the same. That doesn't mean I'm gonna let Kel stand there and call her a liar; sister or no sister."
"But she is a liar!" said Kelly. "We all know she is. She lied about the After Dark. She lied about a pregnancy. There's nothing she won't lie about."
"She lied about a pregnancy?" asked Gina. "This girl just sounds more and more fun the more Blondie shrieks about her."
"I'm not shrieking," said Kelly.
Dylan ignored both women. If they were going to engage in an argument as they were prone to do, he would need to take his leave before their antics created a migraine.
"If Brandon got a call about Val," he told David, "wouldn't you call her the second you heard?"
"The significant difference," said David, "is Val and I are still very much best friends who keep in touch and you don't care one iota about Bren."
"Would I be trying to call her if I didn't?"
Dylan had moved past frustration, dangerously closer to fury.
"Did they lie?" David asked again, slowly enunciating each word.
"No," said Dylan. "No, they didn't."
He heard the gasp from Kelly, but didn't move away from David to appease her.
Had he and David been engaged in a game of basketball, Dylan would have been in the perfect position to snag the ball and make the winning basket.
"Now give me your damn phone," he said, snatching the mobile from David.
He charged up the stairs before anyone could follow him, searching for something familiar, something that would remind him of Brenda.
Her old room had been made over; first by Valerie, then by Noah. Dylan hardly recognized it as either Val's or Brenda's.
He locked himself in, finding a momentary peace from the quarrel Kelly and Gina had begun downstairs.
Brenda's bookcase was gone. Valerie's pink walls had been repainted. The pictures they had both put up on the vanity mirror had been taken down, replaced with images from Hawaiian resorts and scantily-clad women posing atop sportscars.
Those women nearly drew his own attention, until he remembered why he had locked himself into Brenda's and Valerie's old room.
There it was: something familiar. The one thing that remained from Brenda's time in that house.
Dylan curled onto the window seat, opened the window to allow the fresh air to caress his face, and searched through the B index of David's mobile.
He dialed, uncaring of the difference in time zones.
Hi! You've reached Brenda. I'm probably out at rehearsal, but if you'd like to leave your name, number…
He contemplated leaving a voicemail of his own that Brenda would undoubtedly erase the moment she heard his voice.
Still, he decided to give it a shot.
The mailbox is full and cannot accept messages at this time, trilled the automated voice. Goodbye.
That was strange. Brenda never allowed her inbox to reach capacity before she checked her messages.
He could send a text, which would either go unread or be erased unless he impersonated David.
He ended the call and tried again.
Twice more.
On the fourth voicemail, Dylan checked the digital clock in the corner of David's phone. It had hit the last evening hour in London. Brenda wasn't one for an early bedtime. She may have been in rehearsal, perhaps out with friends.
If she was out with friends, she wouldn't return home until the early hours of the morning.
Dylan couldn't wait that long for an answer of her wellbeing.
He'd have to try another tactic.
Hurrying through his own address book, Dylan called a different number.
That one picked up, and then hung up.
He called again.
Second hang-up.
It went on like that until the fifth call, which went straight to voicemail.
Dylan gave up and called on David's mobile.
"Little Davey Silver," said the ebullient voice on the other line, "what can I do ya for?"
"It's not Silver," said Dylan. "Why do you keep hanging up on me?"
"So I wouldn't tell you to fuck off," said Brandon.
Stunned, Dylan swallowed down his hurt.
Brandon had never cussed at him before. It surprised Dylan that straight-laced, Boy Scout Brandon Walsh had begun cussing at all.
Washington. It must have been the fault of Washington.
Just as London was to blame for the coarse language that had been added to Dylan's and Brenda's vocabularies.
"I heard you got a call about Bren," said Dylan instead of acknowledging Brandon's statement.
"And I heard you're chasing after Kel again," said Brandon. "Some things never change, huh? Never mind that I almost married her. Never mind those years you spent telling me you'd never hurt my twin again. Second I'm out of the picture, you decide to go for it."
"I need to know about Bren," said Dylan. His grip tightened on the phone.
"Maybe I don't wanna tell you about Bren."
"Donna asked if I was with her four months ago. Why did Donna ask that, Brandon?"
"Why did Donna ask that?" Brandon echoed.
"Walsh, you're getting on my last nerve."
"You didn't even tell my sister you were leaving and I'm getting on your last nerve?"
"That's between me and your sister."
"Look, Dylan, the last thing Brenda needs is you messing around with her emotions again."
"Four months, Brandon. Specifically four months. You better tell me what's going on."
"Why should I? So you can play around with Bren and then toss her aside for Kel? Then toss Kel aside for Bren? Rinse, repeat. How many times are you gonna follow this pattern, Dylan? I thought that maybe, when you were in London together, when you called me up to ask for my parents' number, that maybe you'd made up your mind. Maybe you'd propose, maybe we really would become brothers. Then I come to find out you're back in LA, back trying to get with Kel, with my former fiancée only months after we split. So much for brotherhood."
"Who told you?"
"You don't think I keep in contact with my friends? You think after we Walshes leave, we just drop off the face of the planet and are never heard from again? That we only pop up every now and then to give video messages on special occasions?"
Dylan contemplated throwing the mobile out the window, but squashed down the idea that would inevitably result in his payment of a new device for David.
"Fine," he said. "I don't need to know."
"Glad we agree. Good nighty."
"Not so fast," Dylan hurried. "I don't need to know who told you. But I'm not giving up on finding out what you're keeping from me."
"You have plenty of connections, McKay. See if they'll tell you what happened in Port Macquarie in December, because you're not getting anything out of me."
Dylan had officially reached his limit. His back smacked against the wall to avoid his fist from destroying David's phone.
"Look, I get that we're no longer cool," he said. "Maybe we haven't been in a long time. Maybe we were just kidding ourselves, trying to revive something we reduced to ash. But listen; if Brenda's sick, that's something I'd want to know."
"What makes you think she's sick?"
"You got a call about Bren. You don't just 'get calls' about people without it meaning something. You don't just fly across the world when you get a call."
"Forget about it, Dylan. All you need to know is I'm taking care of her, and you don't even need to know that. Donna shouldn't've said anything."
"Well she did, and now I know. I'm not gonna drop this. I will hop on the first flight to Washington I find," Dylan warned. "I'll scour the hospitals. I'll trail your colleagues. I'll find out where you have her."
"Brandon? Who's on the phone?"
Dylan froze, having instantly recognized the woman's voice.
"Val?" he asked. "Is that Val? Are you in Buffalo?"
"This will be the second time I tell you to fuck off," said Brandon.
"Minneapolis?" Dylan would name every damn city on the planet if he had to.
"I take it that's Dylan," said Valerie in the background.
"The one and only," said Dylan. "You wanna tell me where I can find Bren, Val?"
"Not really," said Valerie. "Don't you have a blonde to go make a fool of yourself over?"
"Now, Val, I thought we were friends," said Dylan.
"And I thought you would at least have the decency to have broken up with Bren if you were going to tell Kelly that you left two years before I know you did."
"I didn't know Kel would spread it around to everybody."
"It's Kelly Taylor. What'd you expect?"
"Okay, you both can hate me all you want, but just tell me Bren isn't injured."
"Emotionally? Or did you mean physically?"
"Don't tell him anything," said Brandon.
"I wasn't about to," said Valerie.
"You both know all I have to do is put in a call to our old pal Jonesy to find out where Brenda is." Dylan thought of his father, looking up at him with a wicked grin as he crafted a threat Jack McKay would have been proud of. "Make it easier on all of us and give it up."
"You send Jonesy out and I'll show him a great time," said Valerie, undisturbed.
"Please," said Dylan, deciding to use a different approach that was more him and less his father. "Please tell me she isn't sick, or injured."
"I think your owner is calling you," said Valerie. "Kelly? The one you're panting after like a little dog? The one you always panted over, even when she chose herself? Except, wait; she didn't, did she? Because she went right over to Brandon to vow she'd get him back. And when that didn't work out the way she wanted, she brought Colin home with her for you all to play happy families. She treats you both like a boomerang, and you let her."
"Val, what did I tell you about saying things against Kelly?" Brandon said.
"Whatever," said Val. "I'm just spitting facts. Dylan's always gonna let Kelly let him chase her. He loves the chase. It's the catch he struggles with. She loves who she thinks she can make him become, not the person he is. She loves the chase. It's the catch she couldn't care less about."
"I will straight-up beg you," said Dylan. "I'll call every single Walsh. I still have Bobby's number. I'll call Bobby. I'll call Lottie. I'll hit up the Beevises, if I have to."
"Don't bother," said Brandon. "They know even less than you and I doubt any of them will pick up their phones if they know you're on the other end. That goes double for Jim and Cindy."
"Why are we still talking to him?" asked Val.
"Old habits?" A shrug carried through Brandon's voice.
"Well, I think we can break that, don't you?"
A protest sat on Dylan's tongue.
Before he could utter it, he heard a noise in the background.
"Who are you talking to?" asked the voice.
She could have been yelling at him and he would still think of her voice as sweet music, a bel canto unto his ears.
"Brenda," he said, voice laden in relief.
"Hiya," said Brenda. "You're making an awful lot of noise out here," she told her brother and Valerie. "I'm finding it hard to sleep."
She wouldn't be sleeping in Washington D.C.; would she? It hadn't yet hit evening. The city of Buffalo in western New York sat in the same time zone. Minneapolis was a mere hour behind.
Perhaps she'd been napping.
Or perhaps she was still in London.
He could easily track her down if she was in London.
He had done it before, and that time had only happened through a serendipitous encounter.
"We're just dealing with a nuisance," said Brandon. "We'll stamp it out; don't worry."
"You want some tea?" asked Valerie. "I can make you some tea."
"I would love some," said Brenda. "Can you make it like they do back home? It's so difficult to get a decent cuppa here."
That ruled out London. Anywhere in the United Kingdom. Hong Kong.
Ireland, too.
"I can try. Come on."
"Bren?" asked Dylan.
"Yes?" asked Brenda in that lilt he had known so well, the one tinged with a hint of her life in London.
"I can assume you're fine?"
"Sure," she answered. "May I have that tea now, Val?"
"Of course," said Valerie.
Dylan didn't like the tone of Brenda's voice when she spoke to him. She should have been furious. She should have been the one cursing him out and sharing just what she thought of him.
Instead of the apathy he had heard.
"Satisfied?" asked Brandon.
"Not at all," said Dylan. "Care to explain that tone?"
"What tone?"
"The tone your sister put on that severely lacked in the anger you and Val have had in spades on her behalf this entire conversation."
"Oh, that tone," said Brandon. "Maybe she's over you."
"Then she'd be telling me exactly how over me she is."
"Maybe she's decided you aren't worth it."
"Maybe you and Val are controlling her emotions with tea," bit out Dylan. "See? I can do that, too."
Brenda called out Brandon's name.
"Yes, sis?" Brandon answered.
"I forgot to ask who you're talking to."
Hadn't she realized when they had spoken?
Dylan decided there must have been static on the line that had distorted his voice.
"Bren, it's me!"
"Hi, Me," said Brenda. "My brother seems quite angry with you."
"I expect you probably are, too."
"Why? Should I be?"
Dylan bristled. "Oh, so we're gonna play it like that, are we?"
"I didn't know we were playing."
"Is this about Kelly?"
"If you want it to be."
"If I apologize for lying to her, will you pretend for a second that I still mean something to you? Scream, cuss, tell me you hate me. Dammit, woman; do something."
"Lying isn't a good trait."
Valerie called out to Brenda that her tea was ready for consumption.
"Thank God," said Brenda. "I'm bored of this conversation. Honestly, Brandon, you have the dullest friends."
"He's not my friend," said Brandon.
Dylan worked to block out the yells and door pounding from David that demanded the return of his phone.
"Well shit, Bren," said the now angry Dylan, "so sorry for caring."
"Is that what you call it?" asked Brandon.
"Don't be sorry for caring," said Brenda. "There wouldn't be any lenity in the world if people didn't care. And the world needs more lenity."
"How's your tea?" asked Brandon.
"Better than I expected. The ginger's helping, I think."
Ginger tea? Brenda had indulged in many a cup of tea whilst they lived together. It had become her daily fix, as were Dylan's mugs of coffee.
Ginger, however, had only been on the menu when Brenda had felt ill.
Dylan himself had made it for her during a particularly vicious cold that had sent half of the West End into their beds and given their understudies a chance in the spotlight.
"So she is sick," said Dylan, deflating at the thought.
He apologized for his outburst, which only led Brandon to make further digs on the things Dylan hadn't apologized for.
"I'm not sick," said Brenda matter-of-factly when Brandon had finished his haranguing. "I get the feeling you don't like him very much," she added to her brother.
"Dylan and I have a complicated past," said Brandon. "Nothing for you to concern yourself over. Why don't you try to get some more sleep?"
Dylan heard the telltale sign of an embrace between the Minnesota Twins.
"A past she obviously knows about," he said. "You're acting like she doesn't."
"Who's Dylan?" asked Brenda. "You should drink some too, Brandon. Ginger is good for your health."
"You'll never make a tea drinker out of me," said Brandon. "Val, want me to make you some coffee?"
"Forget the coffee," said Val. "I'm bringing out the wine. Me and you need it after this conversation."
The line went dead.
Dylan lost his grip on David's mobile.
He watched as it tumbled through the air, creating an adagio of movement until it hit the pavement below.
Where it shattered, as Dylan had done upon Brenda's inquiry.
"McKay, I'm going to kill you!" shouted David.
-x
Uncertain of how long this story will be or which couples will factor in, but you can bet whatever happens, no one's getting raped. Doubtful that Noah, Gina and Matt will remain permanent fixtures because I frankly couldn't care less about any of those three (Matt perhaps a bit more, which is only because of Daniel Cosgrove.)
There may be multiple POV's. I've not yet attempted Val's or Donna's, and I'd like to challenge myself to write from theirs.
Someone is coming who will cause Steve to question his brewing relationship with Janet.
Thank you to Dylan Loves Brenda and Beverly Beat, who both said I should write this story idea that's been pestering me for some time.
If I haven't said it enough, screw seasons nine and ten.
