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Chapter 16:  The Fallout Begins

Justin

For a while there's just all this white noise in my head. At first I can't really take it in, can't believe it; I don't understand why I suddenly feel like I want to be sick. I vaguely hear Brian talking to Carl, but the first thing that's real to me is when I feel his hand, briefly squeezing the back of my neck.

Fuck!

I have to get out of here, have to. Before I explode. Or shatter. I … I can't be around Gus when I feel like this. I feel like if I shatter, he could be cut by the razor edges of my pain.

Brian is walking Carl to the door and I scramble around till I find my keys.

I've just found them when he walks back into the kitchen. By the look in his eyes he's not surprised to see me about to take off yet again. It's what I do, after all.

Being Brian there aren't any fucking platitudes about "are you sure you're okay to drive?" and all that shit.

He just nods.

"I have to," I say.

"I know," he responds.

Then he turns away, going towards the deck and the stairs down to the garden, going to Gus.

I head for my car. Then I detour, for once remembering to take my cell phone with me. In the car I hook it into the blue tooth unit and make a call.

By the time I finish that call, I'm starting to shake, but I've arrived at my destination, so that doesn't matter now. I just have to make one more call, then I can start falling apart.

 

*****
 

Brian

Fucking asshole piece of shit!

I want to find the bastard and shred him with fucking razors till he's experienced every agonizing frisson of pain he's ever caused his son. His son! What a fucking joke!

I get to the bottom of the steps and Gus comes running up; he's lost the fucking "camera", but he has both hands carefully cupped round something.

"Daddy! Daddy! Look what I found!"

He pulls his hands apart a little and waits for me to look.

All I really want to look at is him. He's filthy again already, but his eyes are shining and he looks happier than I can remember being at any point in my childhood. I take a grip on my anger and force it down into the spaces inside myself where I lock up all the things that I don't let myself feel; all the things that I don't let myself see, let alone anyone else.

"Look!" he urges again.

So I look.

"It's a ladybug!" he crows with delight. "Like in the poem. We had a picksher in a book at school."

"Pic-ture," I correct automatically.

"Picture," he parrots, still beaming. "Our teacher says they're lucky."

I nod. "Lucky lady bug," I hear myself say. Then from out of some fucking disused storeroom in my brain a tune winds its way down into my throat and I hear myself singing the words.

"Luck-y lady-bu-ug, lucky ladybug, lucky ladybug."

Fuck where did that come from? At least there's no one but Gus here to hear me.

He grins at me, obviously impressed by my vocal skills, which is more than anyone else would be.

"So," I ask, getting a fucking grip. "What do you want to do with him?"

"Her," he says firmly. "It's a lady bug."

"Okay. What do you want to do with her?"

His brows crease in concentration.

"I could put her in a jar and take her for show and tell," he suggests.

I nod. "Yeah, you could. We'd have to put holes in the lid and see if we can find something she might like to eat."

He sighs. "She really wouldn't like being in a jar, would she?"

He sounds as if he's hoping I'll say she'd love it, but instead I shake my head.

"No, I don't think she would," I say.

He sighs deeper. "Okay, I'll put her back in the garden."

"Can you remember where you found her?" I ask.

He nods.

"Okay, why don't you hold on to her for a minute while I go get Dus's camera and we can take a couple of photos of her on a leaf or something."

He brightens immediately. "I can show her to Dus."

It's my turn to sigh.

"Sorry, Sonnyboy. Dus had to go out. But we can take photos and show him."

He nods, "Okay, Daddy. But hurry with the camera."

Watched by his demanding eyes, I find myself racing up the steps into the house and down again, grasping Dus's fucking camera. How the fuck did I come to this? On the way past, I grab up my cellphone from the table. Just in case. I don't expect him to call. Fuck! He probably doesn't even have his phone with him; and if he does the battery's probably dead. But … well, just in fucking case a miracle happens I can't not answer my fucking phone.

We've just taken the umpteenth photo of a surprisingly co-operative beetle, when my cell rings.

For some reason my mouth is dry when I answer.

"I called Daph," he says. "I'm at the loft."

It takes my brain a moment to process what he's telling me. When I do I feel a surge of relief, almost of fucking joy, so profound I'm surprised my voice still works.

"I'll be there," I tell him. "As soon as she gets here."

I hear an exhalation, too short and sharp to be called a sigh.

"Okay," he says. Then, very quietly, "Thanks, Brian."

Little twat! Why the fuck does he think I need thanking? I'm the one who should be thanking him. Or thanking … fate, or something. The fucking Force. How do I know?

All I know is that this time he hasn't run away from me.

He's taken himself off so he's out of Gus's orbit; protecting our son from the fallout. But he wants me with him; and something inside me feels like it's breaking into a million pieces and rebuilding into something stronger and more brilliant than it's ever been because … he wants me with him. He's hurt and he's angry and he wants me, needs me even, maybe, to help him deal with the hurt and the anger. He trusts me to be able to do that, and that makes me feel like fucking Superman or some shit.

"Later," I tell him.

Amazingly I hear something almost like a smile in his voice when he repeats, "Later."

 

*****
 

Justin

I don't know why I called him. Or rather, I do know. Of course I fucking know. But I hate it when he has to drop everything to fucking "fix" me. But …

It's what I've told him over and over that partners do, that when the excrement hits the cooling device they lean on one another. I can't be expecting him to lean on me occasionally, to admit he's fucking sick or hurting or whatever, to let me support him once in a while instead of closing himself off and going into his famous fucking pain management shit, when I don't give him the chance to do the same for me.

Plus …

If there's anyone who will really understand how I feel about good ol' Craig, it's Brian. He knows a thing or two himself about shitty fathers.

But I bet even Jack Kinney wouldn't have pulled this shit.

Fuck!

People died. People I knew died and maybe my father was somehow involved in that happening. Maybe he's some kind of murderer; just because he doesn’t like having a fag for a son; which means people died and it might have been because of who I fuck. (And it's so fucking wrong that some fucked up WASP part of my brain is wondering if that should be "whom I fuck"!)

How do I deal with that? How do I face their friends, their lovers? How can the same man who taught me to worry about shit like 'whom' or 'who' and to ride a bike and which fork to use at fancy dinners be responsible for the fire and the ash and the agony in which people died?

I don't understand.

And it's making me feel … not real. As if all the things that defined me as I grew from a baby to a boy like Gus and then into the shit-scared gay kid Brian Kinney found under a lamppost, all those things have somehow been stripped away and in their absence I don't know who I am anymore. That feeling is terrifying and nullifying and it lasts until I hear the door of the loft slide back and then it just vanishes.

Because as soon as he walks through the door I remember who I am. I'm the out and proud gay man he taught me to be. The man who loves Brian Kinney. The man Brian Kinney loves.

 

*****
 

Brian

I have no memory of driving to the loft, only of wanting to kick the shit out of every single fucker on the roads, of the overfuckingwhelming need to see him that made even the smallest fucking delay almost unbearable. I don't expect him to be weeping in the dark like some pathetic little fag, but I don't know whether anger or grief or even some fucked up sense of guilt is going to be his primary response.

There's no doubt what mine is. If I ever come close to fucking Craig Taylor again I am going to be tempted to tear open his fucking belly with my bare hands, I want to rip his intestines out and feed them to him before I fucking kick his head in. I want to trample it under my Prada boots; hear it crunch and his brains squelch and him scream in fucking agony.

But I won't.

I'm going to sit back and let the minions of the law have their shot at him, and he'd better fucking pray that they get him and lock his ass into some nice cozy cell; even if it's with a fucking deranged psycho or, even better, a big bad leather bear who knows all about him.

Because if somehow he gets out of all this with just a slap on the wrist I am going to spend years making his life a fucking misery.

But right now, it's not him I need to think about.

I slide the door of the loft open and he turns to look at me.

For one moment all the fucking devastation he must be feeling is on his face and it makes my gut twist; it hurts so much to see that look that my knees almost give way.

But then, like the fucking hero he is, his head comes up and he moves towards me.

He grabs my shoulders and says in a voice that seems to be dragged up from the very depths of him, "I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me so hard I will feel it for a week. I want you to remind me who I fucking am!"

 

*****
 

Justin

When I say those words I see something in him … take fire. It's as if I set off some kind of emotional grenade, because he grabs me and kind of shakes me, so that I'm almost frightened of him for a moment.

"You want me to show you who you are, Sunshine?" he kind of hisses at me, while he's backing me across the loft so fast, my feet are slipping on the hardwood.

"You want me to remind you why your father and mine hate our fucking guts and my mother has probably worn a hole in her fucking prayer stool praying that her degenerate son will fucking see the light?"

I'm stumbling backwards up the steps now, still propelled by his hands on my upper arms.

"I'll fucking show you who you are!"

And with that he pushes me down onto the bed and without any fucking hesitation just rips my pants right off me.

Then he opens his own, and I'm mesmerized by the sight of his cock. It seems huge, like it fills the fucking universe, and so fucking … real. Everything else just fades away for a moment, but I can see every vein, every wrinkle as it fills and rises right in front of my eyes.

He grabs a condom from the stash and hands it to me as he kneels between my legs.

"Put it on me," he says, and suddenly any fear I might have felt is gone and even the grief and anger fade away into the background and I'm filled with … with joy. With joy and with love and I want to fucking laugh and crow and tell the whole world to get fucked because I have this. And I don't give a shit if they don't like it, if they hate me, hate us, for it. This is mine, and it's real and it's the most fucking honest thing there is.

I roll the condom over his beautiful dick and then pull him down onto me, curling my legs up around his hips.

He's trying to get a hand down to open my hole, but I shake my head at him. "Just fuck me!" I tell him.

So he does.

It hurts a little at first, but I think maybe I needed that. And then his cock finds that spot inside me and pain turns into a pleasure so intense I nearly lose it before he's even really started.

It's not a gentle fuck. It's not "making love". It's not sweet and tender and romantic.

It's hard and demanding and a bit painful and just what I fucking need.

By the time he finally lets me come I'm keening his name and almost begging him to finish it.

Almost.

Because in some corner of my brain I know I don't want him to finish; I don't want this to end. When it does I'll have to start thinking again.

But when I finally come, with his cock still hard inside me, he just brushes the hair out of my eyes and kind of glares down into them.

"You know who you fucking are now?" he asks.

And I do.

Thank fucking God, I do.

"I'm Justin Fucking Taylor," I tell him.

He gives one of his tongue in cheek smirks for just one moment, then he nods. "And I'm Brian Fucking Kinney," he says. "You ready to go again?"

And then he starts moving in me once more, not so hard this time, not so desperate; this might almost be making love.

Brian Kinney style at least.

And while my own cock starts to get hard again, while I'm wriggling for a new position that will let me loosen my cramping calves from around his hips, I think for a moment about what a fucking ridiculous expression that really is. You can't "make love". There's no fucking recipe or assembly instructions. It just is.

And when he gets tired of my wriggling, and pulls out so he can turn me over and put on a new condom he gives my ass one hard slap and I know that this is it. This is what love is. This is who I am.

And I don't give a fuck who doesn't like it.

But then his cock is inside me again, and from this angle, he can push in even deeper and I stop thinking, and all I can feel is the heat and the need and the sheer fucking bliss of knowing that I'm precisely where I should be, doing what I should be doing with the person I should be doing it with.

 

*****
 

Brian

After I've fucked him every which way so he doesn't know which end is up anymore, and then sucked the last few drops of cum out of his cock with my fingers jammed up his ass, I flop down beside him. I feel totally fucking boneless, but it doesn't matter because his head has wound its way onto my shoulder and I can feel him warm and more or less relaxed beside me.

"If we could bottle that," he says, "We could sell it as an antidote for all those fake fucking "gay cures"."

I huff a laugh at that, and he turns and plants a kiss somewhere on my jaw line.

"I fucking love you."

I huff another laugh and he nudges me in the ribs. "You don't have to fucking say it, but you don't have to laugh at me, either."

I just pull his head closer so I can reach his face and slurp my way across it till I find his mouth. He turns into my arms so I can kiss him properly; and then I don't have to say the words, but I know he hears them anyway.

"I'm going to have to call Mom," he says when the kiss finally ends and his head is back on my shoulder. "I can't let her or Molly hear it on TV or something. Oh, fuck! I should really go over there. I don't think I can tell her this on the phone."

I nod, and I'm just thinking about getting up and showered and heading out with him when my cell rings. I manage to reach my jeans where I dropped them by the bed and rescue it before it stops ringing.

I don't recognize the number, but when I press answer, I hear Carl's voice talking to someone in the background.

"Kinney," I say.

He breaks off what he was saying and there's a moment's pause, but then he says, "We've just made a whole bunch of arrests and we've brought Taylor in for questioning. If Justin's there, tell him he might want to let his Mom know, before she has reporters camped on her doorstep."

Fuck! That isn't something I'd even thought about, but knowing what those fucking vultures are like, they'll be looking for anyone who can fill up a minute or two of screen time and give them a sound bite.

"Thanks, Carl."

"I haven't told Deb yet," he says. "You've got enough to deal with."

"And you're going to be in deep shit," I tell him.

He laughs, but it sounds … weary.

"Yeah, well … this isn't about her. And her right to know isn't the top priority right now."

"You're a brave man," I say. Then, quieter, "Thanks again."

I press "End" as Justin gets off the bed.

"So have they arrested him?" he asks.

"They've made a bunch of arrests, but Carl said that … quote … 'we've brought Taylor in for questioning'."

"Whatever the fuck that means."

"I guess it means they're not sure yet how involved he is. But they want to talk to him before news of the arrests gets around and he has a chance to get his story all together."

He sighs and nods, and heads for the bathroom. "I need to see my Mom," he says over his shoulder. "But you should go home to Gus."

"Gus is fine with Daphne," I tell him.

"Brian, I don't need … "

I join him as he turns on the shower and reach past him to adjust the heat. He always turns it up too far and then curses when it's too fucking hot.

"I know you don't need baby-sitting, Sunshine," I tell him. "But Carl thinks that once the story hits the news there might be a swarm of reporters outside your Mom's place."

He gives me a look then that makes me want to throw up fucking barricades and hurl bombs at anyone who tries to breach them but that isn't going to happen and it won't fucking work.

"I thought maybe if we sit down with her we can work something out, see if there's somewhere else she could go for a few days till the excitement dies down a bit."

He sighs, and nods and without any more words we shower and get dressed again. If he's uncharacteristically fucking quiet, at least he lets me wash his hair.

We're driving to his Mom's place when he says, "There is somewhere I guess she could go."

I wait.

"Well, you're still paying the rent on that place for Lindsay, aren't you?" he says.

Fuck me!

The kid's a fucking genius.

I'd kept paying it because it was a six months lease and it wasn't that much more to keep paying than to break the lease. Plus it meant that if Linds …

Well, if she ever gets her fucking head together at least she'll have somewhere to come "home" to. Which means she's got no excuse to try to invite herself to stay in our spare room.

But meanwhile, if Jenn and Molly need somewhere to go, it's there. And no one will find them there.

It's not like Lindsay will be looking for somewhere to stay any time soon; she's got permanent accommodation where she is for the foreseeable future. And if she tries to leave there without the doctor's okay notarized and in fucking triplicate, she's likely to wind up in violation of the court order that put her there in the first place and find herself doing jail time for contempt of court. So she still won't need the apartment.

I'm about to admit that it's not a totally stupid idea when he pulls out his cell and after giving it a look like it's grown slimy fucking tits or something, he hits a key from his contact list.

It's not often he surprises me these days, but this time he blows me out of the water.

"Hey, Tucker," he says. "It's Justin. Are you with my Mom right now?"

 

*****
 

Justin

By the time we get to Mom's place, Tucker's motorbike is in the driveway.

I don't know why I called him. At least …

My Mom isn't going to take this well. She'll have to deal with the fact that the man she was married to for nearly twenty years could be involved in something like this. Or at least was involved with people who could do something like this. And that's not going to be easy for her.

She was at the fundraiser. She could have died; or I could have.

So …

She's going to be hurting, and she's going to be mad and she's going to need reminding that she didn't die; that she survived … the bomb blast, her marriage, all the shit she's gone through. And … I needed Brian. I really did.

So … maybe she'll need someone too.

Not a son or a daughter or even a friend; someone closer. She might need a … lover. And whatever I might feel about it, that's what Tucker is. He's her lover. And he's been around for a while now, so maybe they really have something special together.

So … I called him.

Maybe he won't be able to help her. But at least he'll have the chance.

 

*****
 

Brian

Mother Taylor is waiting for us and opens the door when we pull up in front of the house. She lets us in and leads the way into the living room.

“Tucker said you called him,” she says, and then she waits.

Justin shuffles his way onto the sofa, not looking at her. I sit next to him, not touching, but close enough for him to reach out if he wants to. He gives me one sideways look, takes a deep breath and says, “Where’s Molly?”

“She’s at a movie with some of her friends.”

Jennifer is looking more tense the longer this goes on; the little twat next to me needs to cut to the chase. I’m about to open my mouth and risk the wrath of Taylor when he blurts out, “The police are talking to D … Craig about the bombing.”

Jenn hardly fucking reacts except that her eyes widen and her cheeks go pale. She seems stunned, like she can’t understand what she’s hearing. I can understand that. Who the fuck could understand why any fucking father, no matter how big an asshole he might be, could possibly have any fucking thing to do with people who damned near fucking killed his son?

“Are you saying the police think Craig had something to do with the assholes who nearly killed Jenn … and Justin?”

I might resent the fact that Justin is an afterthought except that in a fucking scary moment of empathy I understand exactly where he’s coming from; those fuckers nearly took from him the most important person in his world. And he’s fucking pissed.

 

*****
 

Justin

Mom hasn’t said anything yet. She’s just sitting there looking like she’s maybe gonna be sick. It’s Tucker who starts spitting anger and disbelief. He’s gone really red in the face and his eyes are bulging a bit; he’s holding tight to Mom’s hand, or maybe she’s holding on to him, because he looks as if he wants to start smashing things. And his anger makes me realize something I should have seen a long time ago.

He loves my Mom. Like a lover. Like a partner. Like I love Brian.

It was right there in his words. What’s made him this angry is that he could have lost her that night in the fire and the smoke and the pain. He mentioned my name as well, probably because I’m important to Mom. But it doesn’t even seem to have occurred to him that he could easily have died himself; or been torn apart by the fragments of glass and metal and wood that shredded fragile skin and bones as if they were just so much paper.

The only thing that really matters to him is that those fuckers put my Mom in danger, and I realize that if Craig had something to do with the bombing, Brian and I aren’t going to be the only ones who want him to suffer for it, and are prepared to string him up by the balls if the cops don’t nail him for whatever shit he’s pulled.

By contrast with Tucker’s fury, Brian’s voice is almost eerily calm when he answers him, “The cops think they know the group responsible and they’ve made arrests this afternoon. Craig’s phone numbers came up on their call lists so they want to talk to the asshole to find out just what he knew and how deeply he was involved.”

If anything, Mom goes even paler. Then she gasps, “Oh, no! It can’t have been that. It can’t!”
 

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