Midnight Whispers
QAF Brian and Justin Fanfiction

 


CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR


 


BRIAN


 


“Okay, Sonny Boy.  I’ll speak to you again soon.  Don’t forget, we’re here if you need us.”


 


“’Kay, Dadda.”  He yawns sleepily.  “Give Juss a kiss for me.”


 


I put the phone down and turn to Justin, who’s watching me worriedly.  “He’s fine.”


 


“You sure?  Because Lindsay was, you know, kind of freaked.”


 


“You said she’d been drinking?”


 


Justin shrugs.  “She said she’d had a drink.  And she didn’t act drunk, otherwise I’d never have let her take Gus.  But she seemed so strung out … like she was barely hanging on.”


 


“She’s been like that for a while.  She’s supposed to be taking Prozac, but it doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of fucking good.”


 


“Maybe she’s not taking it.”  He looks down at his lap, worrying his lip with his teeth.  “I’m sorry, Brian.”


 


I stare at him.  “What the fuck for?”


 


“For making things worse,” he sighs.


 


I take his chin in my fingers, making him look at me.  “Self-flagellation is my prerogative, not yours.  It’s not your fault that Gus loves you.”


 


“Yeah, but I could have deflected him somehow.  I just didn’t expect him to come out with that in front of Lindsay.”


 


“Gus didn’t do anything wrong, either.  He was making a perfectly valid point.  It’s Lindsay’s problem if she can’t deal with it.”


 


“Which makes it our problem, too.”  He flops back on the couch despairingly.  “Christ, this is so fucked.”


 


“Sunshine, you can’t keep fretting about what Lindsay’s going to do, or what Lindsay’s feeling.  We can’t live our lives tip-toeing around her, and we’re not going to.  You were the one who said as long as we trust each other then she can’t hurt us, weren’t you?  So stop worrying.”


 


“Brian, you don’t have to remind me that it was me who persuaded you to let her use the studio.”


 


“And has she?”


 


“She says not.  But I’m not so sure … when we were down there last weekend I just got the feeling that she’d been there … like things had been moved a little, that it wasn’t quite the way I’d left it.”  He sighs again.  “Probably just my imagination.”


 


“The whole point of her using the studio is for her to paint there, so I’m sure you’d have noticed if she had.  Maybe she’s just thought better of it.”  I can hope.


 


“The way she was looking at me today, I don’t think she ever wants to see me again.”


 


I lay my arm along the back of the couch, threading my fingers through his hair.  “She’ll get over it.  She’ll have to.”


 


He gazes at me with worried eyes.  “Maybe I should keep a lower profile for a while.”


 


I shake my head.  “Not gonna happen.  I don’t give a rat’s ass whether we see Lindsay or not, but Gus needs all the reassurance he can get right now, and he’s made it perfectly clear how he feels about you.  He missed you like fuck when you were in New York, and I’m not having you drop out of his life again just to please Lindsay.”


 


He smiles a little at that.  “Did he really miss me?”


 


“Yep.  Little fucker kept going on and on about where you were and when you were coming back.” 


 


He takes my hand in his, twining our fingers together.  “You know, he really took me by surprise with all that father stuff.  Not that it wasn’t nice to hear … I’d just never realised he thought of me that way.  I figured he probably saw me as some kind of older brother or something.”


 


 “Would you rather he did?  I thought you had a secret longing to be a father.”


 


“I’ve thought about it, sure.  But there’s too much I want to do, too much I want both of us to do.  I suppose it’s different for straight guys; I guess they don’t really get a say a lot of the time.  They just come home one day and their wife or girlfriend says, “Hey Honey, guess what?  I’m having a baby!”  How many of them would actually choose to be a father, I wouldn’t like to judge.  But we’re different … it has to be a conscious choice, and we have our whole lives to make that decision.  Maybe I never will.  Maybe there’ll always be too many other things I want to do.  Maybe I’ll never be mature enough to take on a child.  I just didn’t want to have that option arbitrarily closed to me, that’s all.”


 


I remember what I’d told Alex about my motives for fathering Gus, and it seems to me that Justin is more than mature enough.  But I can’t deny there’s a little part of me that’s hugely relieved he won’t be getting broody anytime soon … because if he were, and he’d laid that on me as a condition for his staying, I might have had no other option than to give in to him.  And I really don’t want to think about that scenario, because there’s a helluva lot I intend to do with him, too.


 


“What about you?” he asks, tracing idle patterns over the back of my hand.  “Do you mind … Gus thinking about me that way?”


 


“What, am I jealous or something?”  I chuckle.  “No, Sunshine, I don’t mind.  I’m pleased my son seems to have inherited my taste, and that you have this irresistible attraction where Kinney men are concerned.”


 


He wiggles happily and for a moment he’s that seventeen-year old boy again, the one for whom the most insignificant compliment from me could make light up like a beacon.  Then his face falls again.  “I wish Lindsay felt the same way.”


 


“Sunshine, it’s Christmas break in a few days.  Then we’ll be at Britin, and she’ll be out of our hair.  Aside from the party, I’m not planning on seeing anyone for three weeks.”


 


“Really?”  He gives me a seductive little glance from under his lashes.  “You’ll be sooo bored  … however will you cope?”


 


He gasps with surprise as I grab his shoulders and fall back on the couch, hauling him down on top of me, my right hand sliding under the waistband of his cargoes until it reaches the firm swell of his ass.


 


“I suppose I’ll just have to suffer,” I whisper, squeezing it hard enough to make him gasp again.  “And by the way, Gus told me to give you a kiss.”


 


So I do what my son asked, like any good father.  Only it sure as hell isn’t the kind of kiss he’d intended.


 


With any luck, we’ll have the worst winter in history and get snowed in for two months.


 


 


 


TBC


 

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