Authors Note: I own nothing. No ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210.

Chapter Twenty

I would like to blame it on the muscle relaxers or the sangria but while they had left me less assured on my crutches they weren't clouding my mind and my better judgment to this level. No that was caused by the sincerity of the words he had just spoken, the words that had collapsed my built up walls that protected me from my natural desire the one that screamed at me to be as close to him as possible.

The collapse of my defences had me leaning into him. It had me deluding myself that he truly wanted to be was going to be that man, that maybe one day we could finally make this work.

Kissing Dylan was a heady experience it always had been. His lips were soft like silk against mine, only ever rough when they were covered in salt from the ocean. His tongue was not forceful like he was trying to win something but instead it took control, led mine through a dance that was equal parts choreographed and improvised. Kissing him managed to feel both like coming home and going on an unknown new adventure. It's why after years of it, sometimes for hours on end, I still had not had my fill and I never thought I would. It was familiar but exciting all at the same time- it never got old.

My leg left me with limited mobility but Dylan without breaking our kiss… the kiss I had started by leaning in when he had finished his declaration, the kiss Dylan seemed adamant to not end.

Dylan without breaking our kiss lifted up my hips, shuffling me down and placing me across his lap, he did it all whilst never even moving a fraction away from my lips. Once I was secure- as close as he could get me, his left hand released my hip, his right arm though quickly replaced it by wrapping around my back to hold me close.

Dylan's left hand moved to my leg and with a featherlight touch he ran his fingers up my bandage making sure my ankle and leg were straight. Though he didn't stop when he got to the top of my bandage nor when he got to the hem of my raised maxi skirt.

As his fingers ghosted under my skirt and touched the outside of my knee, lifted up over the outside of my thigh and gradually moved across the top to gently coax my legs apart, I continued to hold his mouth to me, tugging and holding firm by the hair just above his neck.

This was the problem it wasn't all him. I was the one who started it, I was the one holding him to me. I was the one whose right hand was under his shirt running my nails across his abs. I was the one who was undoing the top button on his jeans. I was the one who was now running my nails across the elastic at the top of his Calvin Klein's feeling his skin underneath my fingers tense, getting ready to lift that elastic as he ran a finger down the satin of my-

Bang. "Bren Roy's on the phone for you." The knock on the door sounded again, "sorry I answered it but I saw Roy's name."

It was like I immediately floated back to my body, floated back trying to find my fortress trying to find my walls- shit how did I lose my head again?

Quicksand, Dylan was quicksand plain and simple.

While I was internally lecturing myself he laid one gentle peck on my lips and moved me off his lap. As he walked to the bedroom door he pulled down his shirt to try and cover the physical evidence of what had been transpiring in here as I tried to gain my bearings and right myself.

He opened the door just as Val was going to knock again. She immediately clocked what was going on even though we looked presentable, even though it had been all of ten minutes of me losing my head, she clocked it. I know she did as she raised an eyebrow at Dylan as she handed him the phone. He ignored it and all but slammed the door in her face, he obviously did not think Roy ringing required the immediate interruption. He silently walked the phone to me but didn't sit down once he had handed it off.

As I greeted my roommate, best friend, business partner, Director Dylan moved over to the desk and placed his back against the wood. He didn't lift the envelopes that sat there beside him nor did he stare at me, he just crossed his legs out in front of him and waited. His head down, eyes averted. It was the most submissive I had seen him since he wandered down that hallway at the start of summer school playing with his shirt. That day I had never seen him look so small, like he was being crushed under the weight of our breakup. Right now he was equally as small but not yet crushed. He was just small trying to stay hidden trying to hide in the room.

I guess he didn't want me to push him away, he didn't want me to ask him to leave. He was making himself small so he could stay.

I closed my eyes as the waves of nausea rolled over me, with each knew realisation it hit. Dylan my gentle Dylan the one I thought no longer existed the one I told myself had long since faded, the one I knew didn't live within the man who refused to return my letters, phone calls, slept with two of my best friends. No my sweet Dylan was gone, he was left in a cantina in Baja dancing almost all night with his first love. He had never returned, I was so sure of that in London. My Dylan had crossed the border never to return again.

Except I was staring at him right now.

Staring at a guy who once turned himself inside out to make me not leave him.

I was staring at a man who was literally not moving afraid that I'll remember he is here in the room and ask him to leave me to my phone call.

I should do that though, Roy and I have things private things to discuss but I can't. I can't bring myself to say the words, I can't turn my back on him like I did in that hallway I can't ask him to leave when he is doing everything he can to hold on to the moment. The moment I started by leaning in. The moment that I wouldn't have been capable to stop if not for a knock on the door.

As I look at him I'm hit with another wave of nausea, I can't crush him again.

Roy can tell I'm distracted but he doesn't ask, he knows I'm in a place that has ears everywhere, I'm sure that is why he believes I'm so quiet. When I get off the phone I breathe out. The room is silent.

"I preferred it when we didn't have cell phones."

It's a whisper but in the silence I still hear it.

"He would have just called the house phone, either way we would have been stopped."

He shifts but doesn't lift his head. "I should have known. On the couch when you took the day off school, after my accident, the kitchen after the play, now… every time we are on the edge of something of committing or recommitting we are interrupted. This house-"

I pick up his references straightaway but I don't get the connection to one of them. "What interrupted us in the kitchen here?" I remember the moment we were alone.

"Our insecurities. Our fear of being rejected." He breathes deeply and then straightens up. He walks to the bed but he doesn't sit down instead he kneels. "Okay, I'm ready."

They were not the words I was expecting. "Ready for what?"

"For you to reject me, tell me that it was a bad idea, tell me in was the pills and alcohol, the stress of the day. Tell me that it won't happen again… I'm ready." His eyes are the same, the same as the one's that once looked back at me as he told me that he was hurting real bad. Back then I did nothing I let him sit in that pain. Crushed him when he was pleading with me not to hurt him.

Back then he was a guy who had never felt love who didn't understand why I was taking it away, didn't understand what he had done wrong. That guy, those eyes were staring back at me waiting for me to walk away again.

"Dylan it wasn't stress, it wasn't that pills or the alcohol, it wasn't a bad or good idea- there was no thought at all. It was want it was need. I'm aware that that will always be there. I'm aware that it will always be in me, the need for you. The desire for you-"

He reaches out both hands and moves me closer to the edge of the bed. "Then stop fighting against it baby. Stop fighting against what feels right. I know I've got work to do. I'm committed to doing that, being strong enough, healthy enough to be the man you deserve the man I want to be. I can wait I can not ask but if you want I can do the work while we get to know each other again. I could do the work and still be there for you as your best friend as whatever you want or need me to be. I just want to be near you."

"Dyl-"

"Let me try. Please?"

"Dylan it's been a day it's been a long day. Let's not-"

"Bren come home with me?" What? Where did that come from? "Come home and just be there. Don't run, hide, push me away, just come and sit with me there, share space with me."

I look in his eyes, he's serious. It's a serious request. "Why?"

"Because I'm an asshole but I'm not the bogeyman, I'm not the guy-" he rubs his hand through his hair. "Okay maybe this afternoon I was, maybe this afternoon I was the bad guy but I'm not him usually. Come sit with me without Steve and David flirting, Brandon hovering and Val walking on eggshells interrupting us, without the girls hanging on… come back and just be with me."

"David and Steve flirting… seriously it's a joke-"

"Steve yes he's too scared and not delusional, he has always known he doesn't have a chance with you… David though, David… well Silver is lucky that he and I have been through things together otherwise he would-"

Oh my god, I don't think he is joking. "Dylan you can't be serious?"

"Yes I'm serious, he was looking way too long at you, appreciating you in ways that tell me he has no self preservation instinct. I mean to look at you like that while I'm next to you, if we were still at West Bev I would have had him up against a locker telling him to…" he breathes deep it calms him. "Anyway it doesn't matter. Let's let's just go back to mine. I promise I won't touch you unless you ask me to, I just want to be in your space. I want you to see that I'm not the guy that you have grown to hate."

"I don't hate you. I never have that's the problem. As much as I wanted to, as much as you deserved it, even when I yelled it at you in the park I never could."

"Maybe you should have, I more than deserved it and maybe hating me for a while would have protected you more." He rubs my water drop on my wrist, he understands he knows that it all nearly destroyed me.

Hating him, hating him had never been a real option for me. Hating him would have been impossible then, "your dad."

He nod's, he understands that circumstances didn't allow me to grieve our relationship normally. He needed me for his own overwhelming grief, and it was that that dismissal of my feelings by everyone, by myself that had caused the fracture. My feelings had no place once Jack died, they were irrelevant and in the aftermath of that I became irrelevant.

His "come home?" Pulls me from my thoughts.

"They are all drunk down there and look like they are in for a long night, sleeping on the couch can't be fun. Sleeping on the couch with them all being up drinking is never going to happen. I'll handle it all I'll be discrete tell just Brandon… just come back with me. Look I know you're not coming back to me, I know that you aren't there yet that I'm not there enough to ask but I just want us to have time together. Hear each other. There is so much mixed up between us, so many hurts that we are confused by. We'll never get through it all if it's just said as a drunken knock down or a jealous-"

"Jealous, jealous what? Blame fest?" I shake my head, willing my wall to reappear rebuild even in the face of his begging. "Dylan this afternoon you were yelling at me in front of everyone and now-"

"Bren I apologised I told you I should had got Steve to drag me out when that dickhead called you kitten but I didn't I lost my head." He smiles and moves a piece of hair behind my ear, "like you lost yours."

"Why are you smiling?"

"Remember after my accident how I called you stubborn to Brandon and two seconds later you were in that room annoyed wearing that blue robe, you kissed me after that. It was our first kiss post breakup."

"And me yelling at you reminds you of that, because?"

He leans into me a little closer and rubs his hands up my arms, "you wanting to yell at me is what makes me smile. You wanting to tell me how you are feeling and call me out, wanting to work us out that is what makes me smile."

Through his begging I can see hope starting to take over, me not saying no immediately me not being willing to crush him it's making this worse. "Dylan-"

He stops me before I can do it. "What did Roy say? You told him you understand that you'd work it out."

"He has to be down there till at least Tuesday, that's when the insurance company is assessing the damage then hopefully he can get them to pay for the rebuild and some of the film delays."

"So earliest he is back is Wednesday? You can't stay on the couch here till then and you have too many stairs at your place. Come home with me, I'll be as good as you want me to be. I'll sleep in the study and you can have our- my room." I sigh, "Bren they'll be back at college on Monday and Tuesday so they won't be much help here anyway." He's right- shit! Roy wants me back on the set Thursday. He wants to resume filming immediately. Today though, today has shown me that my ankle won't heal unless I truly stop pushing myself. Truly follow the exact advice of my doctor. I can't do that here, not with the split levels not with everyone out for hours on end.

I nod at the desk, "I will have to go to the studio either tomorrow or Monday with those guys and record-"

"I'll drive you and I'll be there the whole time, that idiot well he was pushing his luck you asked him to go-" I clear my throat seriously he was angry at Patrick for not listening. I wonder if Dylan is the pot or the kettle. He understands my less than subtle inference, "we, he and I are not the same." As I say nothing but keep my neutral face his fear gradually takes over, "right? He, you guy's weren't like us?"

I shake my head as much as I would like them both to listen to me, I can't lie. "No it wasn't anything serious, well not to me at least."

His fear immediately disburses as he lets out a deep breath in relief, it makes me tingle somewhere deep inside that he wants us to be special different from everything else. Fuck!

How on earth did I get here? How on earth did I let him get under my defences? I hated that I was seeing my Dylan, I hated that I knew that I was defenceless to him. Senior year Dylan freshman year Dylan they were hard enough to resist, hard enough not to throw myself at, but my Dylan sophomore and junior year Dylan I knew I wasn't strong enough for him. He I'd cave to.

As I tentatively nodded, agreeing to this stupidity I hoped that he couldn't keep up the illusion of this guy for too long. I'm sure twenty four hours at his house would see it drop or at least twenty four hours picturing Kelly and him on that futon would help me be less susceptible to him.

I breathe a calming breath as I feel my confidence grow, yep that was it. Getting to his house where nothing ever changes, that will help me build that wall again. I'm sure sitting on that futon thinking about that earring, picturing her popping over and him not kicking her out, remembering that Christmas make out I saw. Yep, I'm sure that my wall will be rebuilt this time even if Baja Dylan has somehow repossessed his older body.

Dylan all but carry's me from the house putting me in the car before I can change my mind. I don't even get a chance to say goodbye to everyone… well Brandon. He's got me in the car with all my bags and two envelopes as he runs back inside. On the drive to his house he tells me that he told Brandon in the kitchen what was going on. The fact my brother didn't put up a protest, and that he was going outside to the remaining gang members to lie and tell them I'd gone to bed upstairs taking another tablet because of my ankle, it told me that my brothers loyalty was still divided between Dylan and I. My twin may not let Dylan yell at me in public but he wasn't going to draw a hardline in helping me hold my position of not wanting to get involved with Dylan again. He wasn't going to help me stop from getting hurt by him again.

It was okay though I didn't need the help, I didn't need any help from any of these guy's.

As Dylan parked I was chanting in my head, don't give in don't give in. So he waited for you that summer. So you broke his heart by staying in London. So he was trying to protect you from finding out about Erica and the money, wanting you to have your moment in London. So that week meant as much to him as it did to you. Knowing that doesn't change anything. Knowing that doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't mean you have to give in.

When he looks at me, with that look he gave me up on Mulholland all those years ago; when he told me it was all worth it to get me here that all the hurt and crushing of him was worth it. I know with that look I have to deflate whatever is going on in his head.

"Separate rooms, no landslides, no automatic bombs."

"Okay no landslides but what about a little digging? You and I we are trying to piece this altogether in patches, maybe if we stop trying to avoid it we wouldn't cause as many landslides maybe if we give some space and time to talking properly that it wouldn't try and push through into every conversation as much."

I run my hand through my hair, "two questions a day-"

"Ten?"

"Five."

"Eight?"

"None?"

"Five it is, though you can ask me as many as you want but I'll respect your five."

"London, Patrick, that shit is all off limits though. It's none of your business."

He looks ready to argue but then he nods and begins getting out of the car, walking around to my door. As he helps me out of the car he squeezes my hand, "I can respect your desire for privacy but I hope one day you want me to know everything about you again. I hope one day I can prove to you that I'm the guy you can trust with all your secrets."

I say nothing in return but resume my chant as I hop on my crutches to his front door. I've never been so keen to see that ugly futon in my whole life.

As I hop through the threshold my face drops, I feel myself get paler. "When did you redecorate this place?"

He places my bags and envelopes on the dining room table and turns around to look at me. "A couple of weeks ago. I decided that it's time to grow up, it's time to make something of myself." He walks over and closes the door behind me, and then walks in front of me. "It's time to put myself back together properly. To be strong enough to be the man who you have always deserved, the man I have always wanted to be. To do that I needed to get serious about me and my life, including my home." He reaches out and rubs the top of my arms, "Bren I'm serious about this about us, I've never wanted anything more in my life."

Fuck fuck fuck! I should have stayed on the couch, stayed at a hotel, I should have stayed in London. Stayed far far away from this quicksand.